Hot take, but you never needed Yoshi P’s, or anyone’s for that matter, permission to do what you wanted. But the devs can’t keep their own lore straight, and I believe it was more a over-arching message of “do what makes you happy” rather than this is absolute canon now.
I wasn’t going to say anything but it’s almost 4am and I keep seeing posts about this reblogged and I’m salty. Don’t use this as an excuse to attack folks who like adhering to a stricter set of rules than you do. That “elitism” is a two way road. If someone declines to RP with your character from the First, character who’s traveled to the First, or whatever, it’s okay. It should be okay. You don’t get to say “Well Yoshi P said I’m right—!” The above scenario (declining RP) does not make someone an elitist.
I am not, nor will I ever condone policing someone’s fun. It’s about respect. Personally, I find fun in RPing in a world with certain limitations and like the challenge of finding ways to make stories in a world with pre-existing rules. Other people like more freedom. All the power to you.
If an expansion down the line wants to prove me wrong, I’ll happily accept it. But I’m not taking this statement as law, because it ain’t. Again, I reiterate, I believe he is encouraging people to create what they want, how they want. Which I agree with. What I don’t agree with is how many people seem to think that means they can force someone else to accept it as validation.
Seriously. Do what you want. Everyone else is. Agree to disagree. Don’t be a dick. Have fun.
when w. h. auden said “evil is unspectacular and always human” and ursula k. leguin said “this is the great treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain”
when toni morrison said “i just think goodness is more interesting. evil is constant. you can think of different ways to murder people, but you can do that at age five. but you have to be an adult to consciously, deliberately be good – and that’s complicated.”
when simone weil said “imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
I remember Brennan saying “laws are just structured threats made by the ruling socioeconomic class” during an episode of D20 and we truly just had to stan immediately
Many places are removing masking requirements. And I’m here to ask, if you are young and able-bodied, please keep wearing a mask anyways. We’ve known for two years that masks protect othersmore than they protect yourself, and that masks work when most people are wearing them. If only at-risk individuals are masking, they’re moreat risk.
Protect others. Help disabled people exist safely in public. Wear a mask.
I’m asking you to do this, as an immunocompromised person living in a home where we all have multiple conditions on the CDC’s list of conditions increasing risk for severe illness.
There are more of us than you think, our conditions are only rarely visible at a glance, and our lives shouldn’t mean literally nothing to you.
URGENT: EARN IT ACT IS BACK IN THE SENATE tumblr’s nsfw ban hitting the entire internet this spring 2022
February 1, 2022
I’m so so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this
WHAT IS THE EARN IT ACT?
The EARN IT Act has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organization in the country. This is a bill that will make children less safe, undermine online safety and security, and trample free expression, because it carves out another exception to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230), which the ACLU describes as “foundational to modern online communications.” This has been the law that has let the internet grow into what it is today, we’ve had this law since the 90s. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of this law because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)
The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship. Platforms will be incentivized to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSEM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.
If this bill passes, we’re going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms, for fear of the liability that could come with ever accidentally hosting CSAM, as well as the erasure of end-to-end encryption on messaging platforms.
This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal’s EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230.
EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please, (Right now, right wing organizers are catgorizing books about racism as ‘porn’ to ban them from schools) which is a cherished goal of organizations that seek to reintroduce obscenity prosecutions for content now protected by Free Speech jurisprudence. This will 1000000% be used to eradicate anything LGBT online.
What this bill says it does on the surface is make platforms liable for their users’ activity if that activity involves sex and minors. However, because of 230, platforms are not liable at all about their users’ activity. This has allowed platforms to grow and thrive and many niches online to as well. The bill also creates an unelected commission to create “best practices” to combat online child sexual exploitation. While these recommendations are nominally voluntary (so Americans have no decision on who gets to be on it), platforms that refuse to comply will be liable for criminal prosecutions and lawsuits should the government decide any of their users is engaging in online child sexual exploitation.
This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.
This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.
Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of “protecting kids” to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids.
The entire EARN IT act is based on *multiple* misunderstandings of the law and reality. It’s a really really really bad policy that will do serious harm. But because Senator Blumenthal wants headlines, he’ll pretend that it “helps protect the children.” It won’t. It’ll do real damage. It will make CSEM much much worse.
One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works – without fear of liability for any “failure.” Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.
(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on “obscenity” as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)
NCOSE, the far right anti-LGBT hate group behind the global anti-sex legislations, is pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.
The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill?
The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) along with a coalition of 26 civil society organizations urged the United States Senate to reject the EARN IT Act. Groups on the left and right, including the ACLU, Fight for the Future, EFF, and Hacking // Hustling oppose it. Because it threatens free expression online and will threaten marginalized people’s safety while being totally unnecessary and failing to fix the problem it claims to address. The EARN IT Act empowers states to give law enforcement access to users’ private conversations and force companies to create encryption backdoors for law enforcement. This is totally unnecessary. Platforms are already handing over CSAM to the federal government. It’s actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.
I don’t know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the “make child pornography worse” bill, but here we are.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
EARN IT Act was introduced yesterday! And it’s already scheduled to get marked up, which is the first step post-introduction. Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. IF YOU LIVE IN THESE STATES (IL, VT, CA, RI, MN, DE, CT, HI, NJ, and GA), CONTACT YOUR SENATOR AND HOUSE MEMBERS NOW. THIS IS URGENT. This is who gets first crack, and folks in all have Senators who are on the Judiciary committee.
I’m guessing this month or March is when the bill would be passed if there is no opposition The bill was re-introduced yesterday, already set for markup this Thursday. This feels like an attempt to fast track it this month. Additionally the current makeup of Congress favors those who want it passed. Back in 2020 it was mostly Senate republicans and democrats who are basically republicans (just like now, check the sponsors) pushing it with Ron Wyden using the filibuster to stop their efforts. The house dems didn’t want to give Trump a win and needed to appear as pro-privacy/free speech for the 2020 election. Now the dems have the presidency, both chambers of Congress and if you’ve noticed have spent a few years repeatedly demanding social media censorship and desperately want to give Biden victories. biden isn’t like obama who opposed sopa/pipa to appeal to younger voters. This is similar to how FOSTA passed with the group who made it happen last time back again. Far as I’m aware Wyden hasn’t spoken about new earn it yet but even if he does oppose it, it’s very possible there will be enough Senate democrats to join the republicans in passing it beating a filibuster. Then pelosi’s band of house idiots pass it and we have to choose between breaking the law because they can’t stop us from using encryption or being obedient sheep to a group who consider themselves above laws.
It already has a fifth of the Senate cosponsoring it. There is a very very very real chance this bill becomes law. This is an uphill battle that’s going to happen fast and quick. PLEASE, FIGHT NOW.
202-224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline.
This website takes you to your Senator/House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.
TLDR: The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship of any and all adult & lgbt content across the entire internet, open the floodgates to mass surveillance the likes which we haven’t seen before, lead to much more CSEM being distributed online, and destroy encryption. Call 202-224-3121 to connect to your house and senate representative and tell them to VOTE NO on this bill that does not protect anyone and harms everyone.
Okay, granted, it’s been a while since I’ve seen “all trans readers like one kind of fic, and no trans readers ever like another kind of fic, so it is Transphobia when you write the Wrong Kind.”
…but it hasn’tbeen that long since I’ve seen someone quietly wonder if they’re a Bad Trans Person for having preferences.
So it’s never a bad time to say: different people have different needs, and it’s okay to be fulfilled by different kinds of stories!
(heck, the sameperson might have different needs at different points in their own life, and that’s okay too)
fictional character discourse would be more fun if we all internalized the fact that characters are narrative tools, not people. once we have that basic fact down, we can start talking about what story the author is trying to tell using these characters, whether they’re successful, whether the story itself is successful and by what means we are measuring success—which are all really fun and interesting things to discuss! but we simply cannot get to that point unless we first accept that fictional characters simply do not have thoughts, feelings, opinions, or any agency on their own. a fictional character has more in common with the fictional chair theyre sitting on than with a real person
Some one explain this to me like I’m five
I’ll try:
The way we talk about characters in stories would be better if we really understood that characters are just tools that writers use to tell a story.
Once we understand that, we can start talking about how the character is used to tell the story, about whether we think it’s an interested story, and about what makes something an interesting story to us.
Which are all really fun and interesting things to talk about.
But we can not do that unless we accept that characters are not people. They do not have thoughts. They do not have opinions. They do not make decisions. They only exist as tools to tell the story.
Other tools in a story are things like a chair in a story where people sit, or a palace in a fairy tale, or the sun in a story about a hot dessert. A character is like that chair, that palace and that sun: only a tool to tell the story.
A character is not like a real person. A real person can be ‘good’ or bad’ (or both) because they do good or bad things (or both), a character can only be a useful tool or a not useful tool to tell a story.
So when we hear something like “I like this character”, what we should hear is “I like this tool because it is an interesting tool to tell an interesting story”, we should not hear “I like this person and approve of their actions and would do similar actions”.
I will pretty much instantly distrust a fellow leftist if they paint the enemy as being ugly (’all terfs have bad hair’, ‘all far-right bros are fat people with neck beards’, etc). It shows me they haven’t done some of the most basic work of un-linking appearance from character, which leaves them open to a vast array of bigoted tropes, from fatphobia, ableism and classism to homophobia, transphobia antisemitism and racism, because who we see as ‘attractive’ or looking ‘wholesome’ and who we assume to look ‘untrustworthy’ or villainous’ has been coded by all these things.
FYI this definitely includes small-dick-jokes/big-dick-energy , jokes about people obviously never getting laid, painting the enemy as all having bad hygiene, mocking the opponents speech patterns, etc. Stop that ableist shit.
IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED that a blog in the habit of producing pithy quotes must be in eventual need of a merch store
I’ve started a Redbubble store! I’m working on producing designs of popular themes from my blog, and the first one is “Get in losers we’re queering the text.” (Future themes will include “Is it gay or feudalism?” and “‘Queer is a slur’ is quitter talk”)
COME JOIN THE COOL KIDS. QUEER THE TEXT TOO. WITH MY MERCHANDISE.
I’m glad I managed to get at least one design launched while Redbubble’s #findyourthing sale is on; you can use the code to get 20%-60% off all kinds of stuff until June 1, 2021.
This is one of the best pieces of information on the COVID-19 vaccines presented in easy to understand language and addressing common concerns that I’ve seen yet.
I don’t have the spoons to transcribe all of this but if anyone does, tag me and I’ll boost that version as well.
[ID: Eight images comprising an infographic about the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines.
[1] The first image shows a needle inserted into a vial. The title is, “Pfizer vs. Moderna Covid-19 vaccine / What’s the difference?” and is credited to Amanda Howell, MPH. The rest of the images read as follows:
[2] Both are mRNA Vaccines Covid-19 mRNA vaccines provide instructions for our cells to make a harmless piece of what is called the “spike protein.” The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes Covid-19.
Covid-19 mRNA vaccines are given in the upper arm muscle. Once the instructions (mRNA) are inside the muscle cells, the cells follow the instructions and make the protein piece. After the protein piece is made, the cell breaks down the instructions and gets rid of them.
Next, the cell displays the protein piece on its surface (showing off its work). Our immune system recognizes that the protein doesn’t belong there and begins making antibodies.
Afterdeveloping antibodies, our immune system has learned how to protect against future infection.
The benefit of mRNA vaccines, like all vaccines, is those vaccinated gain this protection without ever having to risk the serious consequences of getting sick with Covid-19.
Facts about Covid-19 mRNA Vaccines: They cannot give someone Covid-19. mRNA vaccines do not use the live virus that causes Covid-19.
They do not affect or interact with our DNA in any way. mRNA never enters the nucleus of the cell, which is where our DNA (genetic material) is kept. The cell breaks down and gets rid of the mRNA soon after it is finished using the instructions.
[There is a Bitmoji of a light-skinned person pointing up at the sky. A DNA strand, a water molecule, an atom, a magnet, and an Erlenmeyer flask are floating around them. Above them is green text that says, “Science!”]
[3] MRNA Technology mRNA technology was discovered over 30 years ago and has been studied for vaccine purposes for nearly two decades.
In fact, scientists have been working on a coronavirus vaccine since the SARS and MERS outbreaks but funding dried up. No funding, no scientific advancements. (Look at what we can accomplish when we fund science!)
Early-stage clinical trials using mRNA vaccines have been carried out for influenza, Zika, rabies, and cytomegalovirus (CMV).
Recent technological advancements in RNA biology and chemistry, as well as delivery systems, have mitigated these challenges and improved their stability, safety, and effectiveness.
[The same Bitmoji from before is shown at a chemistry table with several bubbling vials and flasks.]
[4] Pfizer vs. Moderna Vaccine
Pfizer is 95% effective, Moderna is 94.5% effective
Pfizer is 30 [microgramme] mcg doses given 21 days apart, Moderna is 100 mcg dones given 28 days apart
Pfizer has 5 dose vials, Moderna has 10 dose vials
Pfizer must be diluted with 0.9% sodium chloride, Moderna requires no dilution
Pfizer must be stored at -112 to -76 degrees Fahrenheit [-80 to -60 degrees Celsius], Moderna at -13 to -5 Fahrenheit [-25 to about -20.56 Celsuis]
Pfizer’s trial had 36,621 participants, Moderna’s had 30,350
Pfizer is approved for use in people over the age of 16, Moderna for people over the age of 18.
Pfizer published safety and final efficacy results from Phas 3 on December 10th, 2020. Moderna announced primary efficacy analysis in Phas 3 on November 30, 2020
[5] Ingredients in the Vaccine There has been complete transparency around ingredients. You can find the fact sheet posted online and in the reference section of this post.
MRNA
Lipids (including ((4-hydroxybutyl)azanediyl)bis(hexane-6,1-diyl)bis(2-hexyldecanoate), 2[(polyethylene glycol)-2000]-N,N-ditetradecylacetamide, 1,2-Distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, and cholesterol)
Potassium chloride
Monobasic potassium phosphate
Sodium chloride
Dibasic sodium phosphate dehydrate
Sucrose
Good news for those that may have concerns or are vaccine-hesitant. There is no aluminum, mercury, or food allergens.
[6] Side Effects/Immune Response
Most commonly reported side effects:
Injection side reaction
Fatigue
Headache
Muscle pain
Chills
Joint paint
Fever
This is called an “immune response.” This is response without infection and it’s a good thing!
These short term, easily managed side effects are significantly less risky than taking your chances with Covid-19 infection.
[The Bitmoji from before is shown surrounded by germs. They have their arms up and look alarmed, and text under them says, “i think i’m getting sick”.]
[7] 99% Survival Rate A commonly asked question is “why should I get vaccinated if the Covid-19 infection has a 99% survival rate?”
Surviving and thriving are incredibly different.
Covid-19 symptoms can persist for months. The virus can damage the lungs, heart, and brain, which increases the risk of long-term health problems. Even young, otherwise healthy people can feel unwell for weeks to months after infection.
How organs may be affected by Covid-19:
Heart: Imaging tests taken months after recovery from Covid-19 have shown lasting damage to the heart muscle, even in people who experienced only mild Covid-19 symptoms. This may increase the risk of heart failure or other heart complications in the future.
Lungs: The type of pneumonia often associated with Covid-19 can cause long-standing damage to the tiny air sacs (alveoli) in the lungs. The resulting scar tissue can lead to long-term breathing problems.
Brain:Even in young people, Covid-19 can cause strokes, seizures and Guillain-Barre syndrome—a condition that causes temporary paralysis. Covid-19 may also increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Short-term side effects and 95% vaccine efficacy > long term health damages from Covid-19 infection
[8] Please get vaccinated The vaccine benefits outweigh the known risks of contracting Covid-19.
When the vaccine reaches your group, please get the vaccine. The sooner we vaccinate and establish herd immunity the sooner we can remove our masks and hug our friends again.
[The Bitmoji is shown at a water cooler. They are smiling and holding a paper cone.]
Just as a reference, these two posts are written by fanfiction loving gay cis men, who have a lot of great first-hand knowledge of the kinds of sex that two people with penises have! They are (used to be?) really well known, but I know a lot of younger folks may be writing fic and have never come across them!
Minotaur A well known classic, incredibly informative website with tons of information. Rather dated at this point with regards to the cultural descriptions, but the mechanics are spot on!
Gay Sex is All Wrong in Fanfic More recently written (2014), and addresses a lot of misconceptions that tend to pop up in mlm fic written by afab people!
Enjoy!
Rest In Peace, Minotaur. (He passed away over a decade ago.) he taught many fandomgoers so much via his website, & I’m glad to know his site is still an available resource (even if the terminology is no longer up to date.)
- An older adult solely hanging with younger teens (I’m talking 25yo & 15yo) and who doesn’t seem to have any other adult friend is a red flag.
- An older adult talking to a younger teen and saying stuff like “you’re the only one who understands me” “I’d hurt myself if you weren’t there” “You’re my only friend” is a red flag.
- Someone (regardless of age) who constantly ends up in discourse & drama is a red flag.
- If you’re afraid to talk to your friend(s), if you feel like you’ve got to tiptoe as to not set them off and get yelled at/ostracized/worse, that’s a red flag.
For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural,Teen Wolf,Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.
Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.
All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.
Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?
Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.
The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.
Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.
Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.
An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.
But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.
Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.
YES. With regard to racism, imperialism, and cultural bias / appropriation, this lays out the nuanced lines of where critique matters the value of respect and awareness in fandom so nicely.
trying not to think too hard about how gen z/gen alpha casually use leet speak but when millennials used it it was because it was cool and internet age slang, and when gen z and alpha use it its because they need to get past censorship restrictions that would cause their videos on LBGT and civil rights to be algorithmically hidden.
or about how people use terms like “real life game over” and “unalive” to avoid saying death out loud because video streaming services apparently suppress videos with negative language. we are literally living in an era that was theorised by many states of fiction about a high surveillance cyberpunk reality…
[Image ID: the meme which reads “You best start believing in cyberpunk dystopias, you’re in one”. End Image ID]
This is the generation that came of age during WWI and the 1918 flu pandemic. They witnessed their world collapse in the first war that spread around the globe, and they – in retrospect, optimistically – called it the “war to end all wars”. And that war was a quagmire. The trenches on the Western Front were notoriously awful, unsanitary and cold and wet and teeming with sickness, and bloody battles were fought to gain or lose a few feet of territory, and all because a series of alliances caused one assassination in one unstable area to spiral into a brutal large-scale war fought on the ground by people who mostly had no personal stake in the outcomes and gained nothing from winning.
On some of the worst-hit battlefields, the land is still too toxic for plant growth.
And on the heels of this horrific war, a pandemic struck. It’s often referred to as “the Spanish flu” because Spain was neutral in the war, and so was the first country to admit that their people were dropping like flies. By the time the warring countries were willing to face the disease, it was far too late to contain it.
Anywhere from 50 to 100 million people worldwide would die from it. 675,000 were in the US.
But once it was finally contained – anywhere from a year to a year and a half later – the 20s had begun, and they began roaring.
Hedonism abounded. Alcohol flowed like water in spite of Prohibition. Music and dance and art fluorished. It was the age of Dadaism, an artistic movement of surrealism, absurdism, and abstraction. Women’s skirts rose and haircuts shortened in a flamboyant rejection of the social norms of the previous decades. It was a time of glitter and glamour and jazz and flash, and (save for the art that was made) it was mostly skin deep.
Everyone stumbled out of the war and pandemic desperate to forget the horrific things they’d seen and done and all that they’d lost, and lost for nothing.
Reality seemed so pointless. It’s not a coincidence that the two codifiers of the fantasy genre – J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis – both fought in WWI. In fact, they were school friends before the war, and were the only two of their group to return home. Tolkein wanted to rewrite the history of Europe, while Lewis wanted to rebuild faith in the escape from the world.
(There’s a reason Frodo goes into the West: physically, he returned to the Shire, but mentally, he never came back from Mordor, and he couldn’t live his whole life there. There’s a reason three of the Pevensies can never let go of Narnia: in Narnia, unlike reality, the things they did and fought for and believed in actually mattered, were actually worth the price they paid.)
It’s also no coincidence that many of the famous artists of the time either killed themselves outright or let their vices do them in. The 20s roared both in spite of and because of the despair of the Lost Generation.
It was also the era of the Harlem Renaissance, which came to the feelings of alienation and disillusionment from a different direction: there was a large migration of Black people from the South, many of whom moved to the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Obviously, the sense of alienation wasn’t new to Black people in America, but the cultural shift allowed for them to publicly express it in the arts and literature in ways that hadn’t been open to them before.
There was also horrific – and state-sanctioned – violence perpetrated against Black communities in this time, furthering the anger and despair and sense that society had not only failed them but had never even given them a chance. The term at the time was shell-shock, but now we know it as PTSD, and the vast majority of the people who came of age between 1910 and 1920 suffered from it, from one source or another.
It was an entire generation of trauma, and then the stock market crashed in 1929. Helpless, angry, impotent in the face of all that had seemingly destroyed the world for them, on the verge of utter despair, it was also a generation vulnerable to despotism. In the wake of all this chaos – god, please, someone just take control of all this mess and set it right.
Sometimes the person who took over was decent and played by the rules and at least attempted to do the right thing. Other times, they were self-serving and hateful and committed to subjugating anyone who didn’t fit their mold.
There are a lot of parallels to now, but we have something they didn’t, and that’s the fact that they did it first.
We know what their mistakes and sins were. We have the gift of history to see the whole picture and what worked and what failed. We as a species have walked this road before, and we weren’t any happier or stronger or smarter about it the first time.
I think I want to reiterate that point: the Lost Generation were no stronger or weaker than Millennials and Gen Z are today. Plenty of both have risen up and fought back, and plenty have stumbled and been crushed under the weight. Plenty have been horribly abused by the people who were supposed to lead them, and plenty have done the abusing. Plenty of great art has been made by both, and plenty of it is escapist fantasy or scathing criticism or inspiring optimism or despairing pessimism.
We find humor in much the same things, because when reality is a mess, both the absurd and the self-deprecating become hilarious in comparison. There’s a reason modern audiences don’t find Seinfeld as funny as Gen X does, and many older audiences find modern comedy impenetrable and baffling – they’re different kinds of humor from different realities.
I think my point accumulates into this: in spite of how awful and hopeless and pointless everything feels, we do have a guide. We’ve been through this before, as a culture, and even though all of them are gone now, we have their words and art and memory to help us. We know now what they didn’t then: there is a future.
The path forward is a hard one, and the only thing that makes it easier is human connection. Art – in the most base sense, anything that is an expression of emotion and thought into a medium that allows it to be shared – is the best and most enduring vehicle for that connection, to reach not just loved ones but people a thousand miles or a hundred years away.
So don’t bottle it up. Don’t pretend to be okay when you’re not. Paint it, sculpt it, write it, play it, sing it, scream it, hell, you can even meme it out into the void. Whatever it takes to reach someone else – not just for yourself but for others, both present and future.
Because, to quote the inimitable Terry Pratchett, “in a hundred years we’ll all be dead, but here and now, we are alive.”
We are responsible for getting each other there. Please keep sharing and connecting.
When I was little my mom’s meatloaf was my favorite food. But ONLY her meatloaf. I didn’t like anyone else’s, and she told me that she would teach me how to make it when I was older. And when I was like 19? She finally taught me, but she told me never to tell anyone else and I was like weird but okay
Anyway, she was super fucking homophobic and abusive to me when I told her I was gay, so here’s the recipe
4-6 lbs of Hamburger/turkey burger
1 pk onion soup mix OR ranch mix
1 TBs ketchup
1 Tbs spicy brown mustard,
1 Tbs bbq sauce
1 Tbs steak sauce
1 egg
mix, shape into a loaf in a big pan, and bake at 350 for 2 hrs (maybe 2 and a half if you’re feeling dangerous)
You can get almost all of these ingredients at the dollar store, and have leftovers if it’s just you. The leftovers make great tacos if (taco seasoning is also like a dollar). Enjoy your revenge loaf
here’s a mashed potato recipe from my homophobic mother that i swore to never share that would pair perfectly!
(6 servings)
-2lbs red potatoes
-1 cup butter (2 sticks)
-1 cup cream cheese (1 pack)
-Chives (optional)
-Salt & Pepper to taste
1. drop those bad boys (potatoes) in a big ol pot. U don’t even have to chop them just wash them
2. boil til soft!
3. Drain
4. Mash (usually they’re small enough you can use a fork if u don’t have one of those squashers) until its a pretty chunky mix
5. add the other stuff. Keep mashing
I like my mashed potato consistancy more lumpy but its all up to you!! Peel the potatoes or keep them on, it literally makes the creamiest fluffiest mashed potatoes which she always served with the nastiest fuckin meatloaf
So after spending hours combing through the recipes in the comments of this post I have created a cookbook. Feel free to use it. The link should work for everyone, its the only file on the google drive! I have referenced all of the recipes I used, all of which are from this thread. I made it for myself, but figured after all that work I should probably share. Happy spite cooking!
