Normally I’d laugh along but no. I really can’t. Imagine Rose Quartz shattering someone’s legs and then demanding that they apologize to her for no longer being able to walk. Vriska is a sociopathic bully. Rose Quartz, while probably very SELFISH, consciously made a choice to never kill anyone, to celebrate life, and to defend the rights of the downtrodden rather than add to their suffering..

dukeofriven:

revolutionaryduelist:

Did you like, not watch the new episode yet? Spoiler talk below

Keep reading

Thoughtful and nuanced responses as always, RD – and, yes, I did see the new episode. Here’s why I still can’t bring myself to your position, though.

Let’s start with an excerpt of one of the most sickening scenes in Homestuck:

AG: Apologize, Pupa!
AG: Apologiiiiiiiize!!!!!!!!
AG: Say you’re sorry for being a cripple! Wheeeeeeee!
AG: Aaaaaaaahahahahahahahaha!

Keep reading

I’m gonna keep this short and stick to the core points where we differ

1. If we’re getting personal, I’ve actually been put in the position of keeping secrets for someone even when everyone involved is a loved one and nuanced conversation could solve stuff. It isn’t fun.

That said, neither of our experiences is universal, so all I’m going to go off is SU’s text–and in that context sure, Pearl took some pride in keeping Rose’s secrets, but love is a strong word in this case. She was very clear that she wanted to tell Steven, but physically could not. She was denied her own choice.

The right to be forgotten is all well and good when you’re deleting stuff from Google, but Pearl isn’t Google. Pearl is a sentient person who was forced into complying with Rose’s agenda for millennia, well past Rose’s own death, when Rose didn’t have to deal with the problems and consequences of her actions anymore.

To answer this: `Let me put it yet another way – if Rose’s command to Pearl wasn’t geas but a request, if she had begged Pearl never to reveal the secret the way us ordinary mortals would have, would Pearl be in the right to break that promise?`

Absolutely. Rose is dead. Pearl’s pain and Steven’s denial of his own history are not. And Steven benefits quite directly from knowing, because knowing Pink Diamond’s history gives him something the Diamonds want–and Steven has empathy powers who’s full potential we aren’t sure he’s reached, so…there’s lots of ways this knowledge could be used for the better.

If she was hypothetically expecting a peaceful existence from now on, it’s only more reason she morally should have done so, because the Gems fought for freedom for everyone and her lies and command were objectively imposing a lack of freedom on the Gems to make their own choices.

It might have been understandable, but it’s also selfish.
And it’s an ideological betrayal of everything the Gems fought for.

None of which is relevant to the way Pink Diamond made the decision, or that Rose Quartz never removed the command from Pearl’s life or…y’know, just told the Crystal Gems the truth.

I honestly think PD was just comfortable with exerting power fairly thoughtlessly, as is the role she was born expected to perform. Social conditioning is a powerful force, and PD was conditioned to assert her authority over others and be comfortable doing so. Old habits die hard!

The thing is, thoughtless abuse of power was behavior PD was expected to perform. In the same way, sadistic violence is behavior Vriska was raised being expected to perform, which she was intimately aware of.

It seems misguided to me to apply all this context to PD, but not to Vriska. Alternia demands cruelty and vicious callousness from its subjects by design, on explicit pain of death. They were traits Vriska personally had to develop just to reach her teenage years. And that’s before we even mention Doc Scratch’s exploitation of the girl.

You don’t get forced to become a serial killer at like 10 and come away from it well-adjusted and nice–you figure out ways to live with yourself and justify your own actions, and the trouble with justifying violence is that it becomes a lot easier to justify more violence down the road.

Which is exactly what Vriska does–she’s fairly explicit about the fact that, fucked up as her behavior was, in her own head she was trying to make Tavros stronger to help him survive on Alternia.

Obviously, that’s not what she did. But she’s a deluded 13 year old deeply alienated from her own sense of self, so it’s no surprise she doesn’t understand that her intent didn’t really match her actions.

Vriska is being cruel and sadistic, but she’s also kind of forcing herself to be on some level, out of what she fairly accurately perceives as necessity–she expected to grow up and join Alternia’s army, not to get whisked away into Sburb.

All of which is explicit in the text, since Vriska is told so by…

(Vriska) herself. I don’t really agree with your opinion that (Vriska) like, doesn’t count because she’s dead? She still tells us plenty about Vriska’s past and her potential growth as a person. And honestly it’s a little weird to me you’d shoot down (Vriska)’s contributions to the narrative using like…

The exact argument Vriska uses herself? Like, idk, I see this opinion pretty commonly that Vriska is ultimately the one who mattered and (Vriska) does not, and I just don’t feel it. Vriska is p clearly a parallel to Lord English, and (Vriska) is the one who ends up with her girlfriend, happy and showered in symbolic and literal Light/Importance.

Homestuck is not unambiguously taking Vriska’s side on any of this, and if anything I’d suggest it does the opposite. (Vriska)’s arc tells us more about Homestuck’s core themes, in terms of explicit, unambiguous text, than arguably any other character but MAYBE Calliope and Caliborn.

None of which excuses Vriska’s actions when they’re garbage, which is often, btw. But there’s plenty of context for her actions, just the same as with PD.

And uh, my silly meme post led us into discoursing about not just one, but both of them simultaneously, so yeah in terms of my original intent of paralleling their moral greyness and tendency to polarize fandom discourse (which is all I was really commenting on–A Vriska in terms of how Vriska was received by fandom, with all her layers and moral ambiguity, not in terms of the characters’ arcs being particularly similar) I’m going to say I’m sticking to my original claim. Even so, this conversation has been p fun!

stormsbourne:

revolutionaryduelist:

nuclearmentality replied to your post “You reblogged a post that said “the only harm [non-photographic child…”

of course, it’s important to not discount the impact of propoganda-type works on the course of history

however, more often than not they are more accurately treated as symptoms than as causes

To be clear, yes, that’s definitely true. My shock wasn’t at the idea that BOTN was impactful, it factually was. But trying to pin the stubborn and long-lasting horror of white supremacy, an ideology that’s defined the world for like…centuries, on a single movie? It’s myopic to the point of being dangerously nonsensical.

That was my point here.

a lot of “birth of a nation caused the rebirth of the kkk” discourse is completely decontextualized from all the many, many things going on in the us culturally, such as continued fallout from the civil war and reconstruction, which were both still very culturally fresh in american memory at the time. propaganda is indeed always a danger but a lot of “aha! fiction DOES affect reality!” arguments tend to ignore that the reality was already there – and the fact that the reality was there is what allowed the fiction to exist in the first place. america was already racist. germany had already been slowly immersed in a tide of antisemitism and racism before nazi propaganda became commonplace. jaws was based on actual shark attack scares up and down the coast and did not, on its own, cause a mass slaughter of sharks.

this is without getting into the fact that tumblr kids tend to consider propaganda and regular mainstream mass-marketed fiction and niche indie-produced fanfiction as being all on the same level of influence over the world, somehow.

last discourse i’m doing on this honestly, this breaks it down too well not to boost.

You reblogged a post that said “the only harm [non-photographic child porn] can do is if you read it” and I think that’s an irresponsible view for an author to hold. Fiction does affect reality, or good minority representation wouldn’t be important, Birth of a Nation wouldnt have led to a resurgence in the KKK, etc. Writers have an obligation to keep in mind what kind of impact their work will have on the people who read it, and normalizing sexual relationships with children is harmful.

annleckie:

nkjemisin:

annleckie:

Really? You think I haven’t thought about this issue? Is a story about recovery or dealing with trauma, is that “normalizing sexual relationships with children”? Should that be forbidden? Is that harmful? Should someone trying to deal with their own trauma by writing fiction that addresses it directly, should that be forbidden because it’s harmful?

Should I write only the sunniest, most proper fiction that never mentions anything disturbing or awful just in case some reader, somewhere, takes it as normalizing that awful? Is it my job to purge my work of anything that some kid, somewhere, might take in a way I didn’t intend and maybe be messed up by? Fuck no. Because let’s be 100% clear here, you actually can’t entirely predict what a reader will take away from a piece. One does one’s best. And I can’t tell another writer what to write, I can only tell them to be sure they mean to write what they write.

And the problem here is the sweeping condemnation of, what, the number of fics with particular tags? Seriously? As if it’s that simple?

Are you absolutely sure that every work tagged “pedophilia” on AO3 is wankfodder? Every one? None of them are stories where characters experience and process it, or just talk about it? None of them are stories where the authors are trying to process their own experiences? It’s never permissible to even mention pedophilia, lest someone be influenced wrongly? Should survivors never talk about or fictionalize their experiences? Really?

Do not lecture me on the responsibilities of authors–I have thought long and hard on the issue, and have come to the very considered conclusion that I have no interest in purity tests. Rape is bad, but not all stories about rape are bad. Racism is bad but not all stories about racism are bad. Pedophilia is bad but…you get the picture. Just saying “look at all these fics tagged “pedophilia” AO3 is doing a bad thing hosting them!” is so incredibly stupid I just don’t know where to begin. Are some of those fics toxic? Surely. Pretty much every other tag has toxic fics in it, too. Are all of them? I seriously have my doubts.

I am prepared to say that adults having sex with kids is bad, no nuance. I am NOT prepared to say that any fic about that topic is unambiguously bad. Because that’s not true.

I’m not in the business of telling people what to read or what to write. And you can take your list of things people somehow can’t write about because they’re bad and fuck all the way off.

What she and Foz said. And as to the anon’s point of fiction affecting reality re “Birth of a Nation” helping the KKK – let’s be super-clear, here, everyone. BoaN by itself did not resurrect the KKK. A toxic combination of economic motives, political cynicism, cowardice on the part of supposedly non-racist white people, and vicious opportunism caused that. BoaN was simply the best propaganda available for use by white supremacists who already existed, and who had long before implemented Black Codes and the Lost Cause myth and other means of retrenching America’s racist caste system. If BoaN hadn’t happened along when it did? The KKK would have found, or made, something else to use as its rallying cry.

Do I hate racist art? Yeah. But I deal with that by a) heeding warnings about it, and picking when (or if) I want to engage with it so that I minimize harm to myself, b) complaining about it when the people who publish it seem oblivious to the fact that it is racist art, and c) when I’m ready, writing anti-racist fiction that engages with it. I believe wholeheartedly in the notion that the job of the artist is to speak truth to power. But truth is many things. Truth is, sometimes, people writing out their rape fantasies so they can try to understand themselves better. Truth is people erasing the black characters from fanworks featuring their favorite media properties – and then getting called on it, and learning from the ensuing discussion. (Or not learning, and getting dismissed by a big chunk of fandom for it… and meanwhile, more quietly, truth is other fans learning from their fuckups.) Truth is critique, not blanket condemnation. (And not uncritical aggrandizement either.) This shit is too complex to handle with simplistic, black-and-white thinking. Love it or hate it, discourse ™ is the way to go.

Word.

Also read @nkjemisin’s books if you haven’t already.

did i really just read “a single movie revived white supremacy” as if it ever in the history of america ever, ever died? i am literally agog at this degree of delusion

Wait, with trolls, isn’t there no such thing as “boy” or “girl?” Pronouns are all based on where you have curves. So wouldn’t this mean that there’s no such thing as “trans” either? Agreed, Lanque may have a femme body and is trying to change it, but I don’t think there is more than one gender.

ao3sburbanite:

hexstuck:

Even if there were only one gender, transness isn’t just about biology, it’s about gender expression and identity, and to imply otherwise, especially with this notion of pronouns being based on ‘curves’, is not only based on inaccurate fanon but rooted deeply in transphobia.

So, miss me with that shit.

Regardless of troll biology (which, lest we forget, we know almost zilch about), trolls certainly have gender! All the homestuck trolls identify as male or female, and as far as we know any of them could be trans too.

Kind of like how, just from looking at/talking to a human, you can’t tell if they’re trans or cis.

The reason Lanque’s trans-ness is important is because Jadebloods are the only caste in which all members are expected to identify as female to fit their role as motherly caretaker stereotypes. Lanque may still want to look after troll babies with the rest of his caste but he’s obviously decided that he identifies as male.

Arguably, a transmale Jadeblood is the only type of troll who would feel the same societal pressures that human trans people do (although other trolls may have overbearing lusii who won’t let them present as their true gender).

In other words, Lanque being trans is super fucking important.

could fans like stop outright making shit up without so much as a source and then using their bad fanon to talk down to trans folk, that would really be so swell

wakraya:

Alright, let me put a few points of stuff I’ve seen on the tags to rest here.

1) Jades Are A Rare Caste.

They are implied to be less plentiful than other castes, yeah, I believe Seadwellers are also rare? But here’s the thing- We have six Jades. When someone says “There’s twice as many Jades as we have Rusts or Bronzes”, it sounds like, shit, yeah weren’t they supposed to be less abundant? Except. They’re still, in total, just Six. Alternia is a planet. Lore-wise, they may be a less plentiful Caste, but they’re not even… In the double digits. This is not even the population of a neighborhood, Xefros’ suburban area likely had more Trolls in total than there are Trolls in this Troll Call, and besides it’s likely all Jades are in the same place for some reason- Jadeblood School is the biggest headcanon right now, for example, so… Why wouldn’t you have a bunch of Jades there?

2) Jades Are All Female.

This is a straight-up misconception, yeah they’re mostly girls, but canon still leaves room for Jadeblood boys. So Male Jadeblood? Yeah, can happen, and there’s nothing going against the canon here.

3) Trolls Have No Concept Of Gender.

This one is honestly baffling to me because I haven’t heard about this until the discourse today. I am assuming this comes from the fact Troll Reproduction doesn’t care who provides the genetic material? Their reproduction is not tied to gender, which has made people assume Troll junk is the same for both guys and gals. Except… That’s about it. Even though it’s silly because they’re bugs and implied to be hermaphroditic, they still show sexual dimorphism. And even if they didn’t, they still have a concept of Gender, merely based on the fact there’s Troll Boys and Troll Girls? He/She divide? With Hiveswap expanding on it and showing us there are, indeed, NB Trolls that prefer They/Them. This Gender Divide is actually talked about by Porrim, who also implies that while Fuchsia-down Alternia seemed a Matriarchy, Purple-down it was actually a Patriarchy, informing us that not ONLY is there sexual dimorphism, but also, a cultural divide. By saying that Lanque can’t be Trans because Trolls have no concept of Gender, you’re either mistaking headcanons for actual canon… Or being transphobic by equating genitalia to gender. In which case, fuck off.

4) Trolls Don’t Care About Fashion.

This is something Karkat says, and I believe Kanaya also implies she cares about it more than it’s usual? But Fashion in Troll Culture, seems to be exactly like Mail. Karkat mentions there’s no Mail they do not get a Mailbox with a Flag, yet we see Xefros get mail! Except it’s not Mail. It’s parachuted delivery straight from a website. There’s no standarized Mail system on Alternia, but that doesn’t mean companies can’t deliver things themselves, directly to their Hives. Similarly, Trolls have no concept of Fashion- They don’t care about things such as trends, variety, being dressed properly. And… Hiveswap doesn’t break this. They have more colorful clothes, and some look pretty good! But. Look at Cirava. They’re an absolute fashion disaster. Diemen is just dressed like a hot dog. The Jades all seem to wear uniforms of some sort. Fozzer and Marsti, Skylla, they are more akin to work clothes. The Soleil Twins and Marvus are more flashy, because they’re likely part of a spectacle. Most of them are either a sort of uniform or outfit that’ll fit whatever they’re doing, or a basic color with their symbol somewhere. And you can go from Bright Pink Bathrobe Stelsa, to Pirate-Clad Remele, and back to Punk Denim Elwurd. Not being Fashionable can be about trends, they may simply dress however they want, because of their interests, or their jobs.

But let’s think about this another way. Let’s say that, yeah, they did retcon Troll Fashion- Would… Would you really be mad if they retconned Troll Fashion. Like… Would you be happier if every Troll shown was wearing a plain black shirt with their Symbol, and pants or a skirt, with slight variations of a jacket or a tank top. I don’t think there’s a single Hiveswap design I dislike, and they’re all visibly varied and easily recognizable, and tell a lot about the character, which is like. Character Design 101? So I honestly don’t know what the complaint here is exactly, except Canon Purity.

5) Hiveswap Ruined Fantroll Variety

How. First of all, the entire previous point. Just, expanding upon basic Troll Clothes, showing us the extent of how Trolls dress. But also like… What did they limit exactly? We’re going to learn more about Trolls and Troll Culture and Biology, of course headcanons are going to clash with canon, but so far, what have they limited? I’ve heard about Horns, but like… These horns have all been so varied, and sure there’s stuff like hooks with Ceruleans and Jades, and Four Horns with Golds but… This pattern is also broken, with Azdaja having three, for example. We’ve seen new Psionic colors, we’ve seen stuff like Horn Piercing, we’ve seen Troll Twins, we have seen horns where the orange part starts at different heights than you’d expect and even some of the parts jutting out having their own red-orange-yellow coloration separate of the main shaft of the horn. If anything, until now, there’s always been headcanons for Horns, like, “Oh this is their symbol so it’ll be like this”, or “this is their caste, so, they’ll have big horns”, but no, we have Purples with small horns, we have Bronzes with curly horns downwards, we have a cerulean with super uneven horns, we have a gold with three horns, we have a teal with flat horns, we have rounded horns, we have hotdog horns. I’ve heard people wonder about some Horn Shapes in the prior weeks, about how they didn’t match their restrictive headcanons, and NOW you tell me they’re restrictive? There’s also been complaints about caste roles and stereotypes, and I feel people really forget that Alternia is a Tyranny that forces the inhabitants in roles they are most likely not happy with, specially for the lower castes. Like… Rusts are disposable, and likely to be bound to a life of servitude. Because they’re the lowest of the low, society treats them as such, and there’s stereotypes like Indigos being strong, but that’s not any more restrictive than Psionics being a Gold-only thing, and much like we see Zebede not having Psionics or Elwurd and Mallek having normal eyes to every other cerulean’s messed-up ones… There’s exceptions to the rule everywhere. There have always been.

I’ve also seen complaints about no mutant bloods or things like Albinism and such? And like… The fact they didn’t include it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. We actually got Freckles with Zebede, so it already implies skin conditions are a thing, so Albinism could happen, if anything we have more PROOF that it may be a thing! Complaining about a lack of Limebloods and Violets, too, is just nitpicking, we know there will be Violets eventually, but either we haven’t been shown right now, or they’re just. In the sea. And we’re in the land. And Limes are likely to be a plot point, I’m expecting at least ONE Lime (Fiamet), if not more to show up at some point, and if there’s NO Limebloods I’m sure there will be at least talk OF Limebloods and their whole, you know, extermination, which is a canon thing that happened.

6) The Game’s Representation Is Bad Representation

Listen… Listen. I have friends ecstatic that there’s at LEAST three non-cis characters in Hiveswap (One trans boy, two NBs), without counting the possibility of other characters being Trans (Pretty much anyone could be), or NB (Like, I think about half of the characters don’t have pronouns on their bullet points?), not to mention, further acts with new characters. Hell, even Xefros or Dammek or Joey could be Trans. We. Literally know nothing about these characters, our information is so limited, and yet there’s already people cheering about it and super happy to see representation and I’ve seen one person in the tag encouraged to come out because Lanque is Trans. There’s also at least two Jewish Trolls, plus the possibility of Kanaya being Jewish as well, either her, Rose, or both. And yet, even though they have simply said this, in good faith, respectfully, and trying to add diversity to their roster, and even though we literally know NOTHING of how it’ll be handled yet, you… Bash them for it?

Like, okay. Lanque. The big topic today. He’s not particularly masculine, but as has surely been repeated over and over and over again, not all trans men are masculine, and not all trans people suffer dysphoria. And yeah, it’s true! It would be nice if there was a more masculine trans man! It would be great if there were trans girls! It would be great if there were more diversely coded NB characters! And there may be?? There’s going to be more characters, if not in this Act, in future Acts, and of the ones we’ve seen, many of them could still be NB or Trans. Like… Again. We’ve got three bullet points from each character. Like, I’m sorry you didn’t get a trans character that you could identify better with yet? But that doesn’t mean you have to bash the one we got? When there are people genuinely happy and encouraged about it? You’re not being progressive. You’re being an elitist asshole, if you only accept 100% perfect representation suited to your tastes, and everything else is garbage, or god help me, ‘fetishization’ or ‘disgusting’ (I have heard both on the Tags), like seriously. You’re being the oppressive one. You’re the one making representation harder than it should be.

Oh and if you’re on the OPPOSITE side of the spectrum and simply being Transphobic or saying how all of this is ‘pandering’ to the audience, really I have nothing to say, if you cannot have basic empathy for a group of people finding representation in a game which source material is extremely queer, and have to resort to bashing it down, screw you.

7) WhatPumpkin Are Doing A Bad Job

This is your subjective opinion, and I’d dare to say, a wrong opinion, but let’s not go there for now. WP has suffered a lot of hate for some reason? There have been lies and slander and bashing for absolutely no reason. People hate Cohen for some reason, and have demonized him, when so far what I’ve seen about him is that he’s a pretty chill dude. The writing of Hiveswap wasn’t like, a masterpiece? But it was fun and it got a good bunch of chuckles out of me and made me care for the characters, and even got me a bit scared and sad at some points during the game! It has that Homestuck Spark, and if you say ‘it’s not like Homestuck’, you’re… I’m sorry, you’re just an elitist, or simply don’t like the style anymore? But it carries a very similar charm.

I’ve heard complaints about Hussie not being involved in the project- Which is false, he did write the entire story FIRST THING, and is overseeing the whole project with the rest of the team. There’s also been criticism towards WP ‘failing’ at representation (Before actually seeing the representation apparently, again, we know NOTHING about the game and how it’ll handle stuff so far), and also accusing WP and Cohen specifically of adding representation because of Woke Points and like… WP are Queer as Heck? I don’t know all of them, I don’t even know how many people are working at WP. But they’re not all straight 100% for sure, and I believe they’re not all cis- And even if they ARE all cis, I also doubt a group working on such a Queer game would NOT hear out from Trans friends. What I’m trying to say, is that they haven’t shown at any point disrespect of ignorance regarding the diversity they want to tackle, they’re not doing things out of bad faith, and we haven’t seen how they handle it yet. Even if they didn’t handle it ideally! Does it need to be absolutely perfect, there can be missteps on the way there, god dammit if someone’s trying to better themselves but not quite getting it right you don’t insult them and tear them down! You show them what to do better next time or where they are mistaken, by pessimistically ignoring what they’re trying to do out of spite you’re discouraging good will and being an asshole! Which leads me to my last point for now.

8) They Could Have Told Us We Were Misgendering Lanque

This one is… Really, a bit ridiculous. Okay, let me explain. If someone is Trans and you misgender them accidentally, they’ll tell you quickly and you’ll, hopefully, correct yourself. Obviously. When the Trolls leaked, everyone latched onto Lanque as ‘Butch Lesbian’, and clung to that hope, and now that they were proven wrong, there was salt, at first, and THEN came the talk about Misgendering Lanque. And let me tell you, I think this is very selfish of everyone saying it.

What WP likely thought would happen is that they’d reveal Lanque to be a Trans boy, and people would be like “Oh! Nice, Trans Rep!”. Sure they could’ve told us back then but… Why? Lanque is not. A real person. He’s a fictional character, he’s not going to be offended because you thought he was a butch woman for a few months, in fact the SILHOUETTE alone ALREADY had people clinging to him as a butch woman. If he were a real person? Of course there’d be a quick correction. But he’s. A character. He’s just a god damn character. Who is Trans, out of good faith by a very Queer company, showing us a Trans man, who is a character, and expecting that, like NORMAL PEOPLE, we would not do something like THIS.

When you criticize WP for not telling us Lanque was a Trans Man, all I’m seeing is a shift of blame, not wanting to simply admit you were wrong and jumped to conclusions, and like- Even if there was Fanart or Fanfic of Lanque calling him a woman briefly, shipping him around mistakenly, who cares? You just. Go. “Okay, I’ll change it” or “Whoops haha this was from when we didn’t know he was a Trans boy!” Why the militant hatred? Why the absolute disgust shown today? I can’t understand, I simply cannot understand why your first reaction to “Trans boy Jadeblood” is “WELL I THOUGHT HE WAS A BUTCH LESBIAN!! I WASN’T WRONG BY ASSUMING THIS, WHATPUMPKIN WERE FOR TRYING TO MAKE THEIR GAME MORE DIVERSE”. It’s like… You just. Correct it? You just correct yourself? And yeah you can want more masculine Trans boys, that’s fair! But dismissing what we got, entirely, and insulting it, and getting like THIS, and blaming the team, it just seems.

Narcissistic. It seems narcissistic and extremely self-centered, and perfectionist to the extreme of not wanting anything other than a complete and absolute ideal, that may fit you but may also not fit others.

In conclusion?

People are happy about representation. This isn’t destroying diversity or representation, this is not reducing customization of Fantrolls, this is only building MORE on the already expansive system, and giving us representation and hope for MORE representation in the future, and if you cannot be happy for a genuine, good natured, and honestly, perfectly fine attempt, if you cannot feel empathy for the people who did feel for this representation, if you can only want to find reasons to bash something down and demonize something good and point out how BAD and NOT GOOD things are and how MUCH BETTER they could be, then honestly, you’re a deeply unpleasant person.

Give things time. Give people with good intentions chances. Learn to backpedal and learn from mistakes and simply correct yourself when you’re wrong instead of going down a hateful spiral. Learn to separate fiction and reality. Just like… Think, for a moment, when you’re writing something down- Is it a jaded opinion, or an objective fact? Will it hurt and discourage people who’re genuinely happy or trying to make others happy? Why do more harm than good when there are good intentions paving the way?

I just simply cannot understand the basic lack of critical thought and empathy of some people I have seen today, and hopefully with this I can make my opinion on the whole absurd Discourse that transpired today clear.

anyway homestuck is good and hiveswap is stellar

criticism is not inherently good or true by virtue of being criticism. being jaded, mean and tired is not the same as being kind, progressive or right. exercise critical thinking. take the time to question and consider accusatory and cynical narratives.

ESPECIALLY do so when they’re targeting the artists and content creators putting themselves out there in the public eye and trying to shift the cultural tide toward the positive, at a time when there are powerful forces pretty much everywhere on the planet that want to take us back to the fucking spanish inquisition days.

Do it for yourself and for all of us, because I guarantee you antis are doing less to help us than to help them. And by giving antis a support platform from which to spew their moral superiority at those content creators, a lot of fandom is doing the same.

fuck purity politics, fuck the belief in perfect representation and deeply and truly fuck this mindset of cruel, demanding entitlement that instantly resorts to biting and clawing at content creators who are demonstrably trying their best

landofsomethingsomething:

It’s so god damn easy to tear people down. People do it every day. It’s simple, it’s satisfying, it’s cathartic, it feels like balm to people who have been wronged, to people who have suffered, to people who have to live their lives outside this virtual space in fear and in real danger, in abusive households and abusive communities and situations that do not foster kindness, empathy, or the extension of good faith toward strangers. Being able to lash out safely from behind a screen at people that are safe to lash out at and who feel like a source of your continuing oppression – that’s novel, at first. It’s invigorating. It’s freeing. The ability to be angry, to say angry things, to express your hurt and rage at any number of nameless or unnamable things is so fucking seductive it’s no wonder so many lgbt+ people have spent time in that place, have had periods of their lives where they engaged in this behavior and said what they wanted and lashed out without thought and allowed others so similar to them to enable their behavior.

It’s so easy to find lgbt+ people who are in pain. To take these people who are in pain and to give them targets. To mold young people and your peers and take advantage of their trauma (so like your own!) and whip it up, normalize it within your group, foster it on any number of available platforms. Focus it on whoever you deem deserving at any given time. Actions speak louder than words. Context is irrelevant. Dialogue is weak. Abusers are abusers are abusers, except when you’re the abuser, because the abuse you have suffered justifies your actions. Your abuse makes you relatable. Your abuse is more important, more valid, more meaningful, more deserving of the care and empathy of others regardless of your coping mechanisms.

It’s so damn fucking easy to just say whatever you want on the internet. It’s so easy to paint a group with whatever paintbrush you like, because no one fact checks, no one cares about context, no one concerns themselves with nuance, no one views the words on the screen in front of them as coming from another human being with an entirely separate lived history full of its own tragedy and triumph and biases and triggers and needs and understanding and hard fucking learned lessons.

We separate into teams and look for ways to score points against the other side. We make ourselves willfully ignorant so we don’t have to switch sides, or even better, remove ourselves from the game entirely. We busy ourselves with tearing our enemies down with unattainable standards, ignore our own hypocrisy, and look to our side to tell us we’re right, we’re right, this time we are right and we will not be silenced and we will not be bullied and we will not let them win.

Our actual abusers don’t see any of it. They don’t care. They go on living their lives. We take our rage and our pain and our frustration out in arenas we understand, in the places we feel safe, and the people we lash out at are the people who should be our friends, our allies, our brothers and sisters and nonbinary siblings who have suffered so much in a world that denies our sexuality, denies our gender, denies our expression, denies our right to exist.

We know our abusers won’t listen. We know our pain is nothing to them, a drop in a bucket. So we hurt the people that can’t help but listen, because our stories are so alike.

I went through an angry phase. I spent a few years screaming at people I felt deserved it, too. Some of them did and some of them didn’t, and doing so brought me short term satisfaction and a deep sense of power that I had not experienced anywhere else. A deep resonance with my own identity that I was powerless to exhibit anywhere in my real life, because family is complicated, friends are the choir and speaking up about microaggressions at work gets queer people fucking fired every fucking day, and you need that god damn money to eat. to live. to pay for your fucking brain pills.

So.

When you have a platform and a fandom and you feel that thrill of being heard, finally – I get it.

But here’s the thing.

Your abuse never justifies levying abuse on others, strangers, people whose context you do not know and whose stories you have not heard.

Your emotions are valid. You are free to feel however you like. If you need to vent in private, among friends and colleagues and people you feel safe with, by all means.

Your favorite characters and your favorite ships and your favorite relationships and your fanfiction and your fanart may be how you express yourself or vent or cope. Your Shit means different things to different people, and to some, it means nothing at all. Let it fucking go. Your shit is not the bar of lived experience other people in fandom must meet to be considered sufficiently oppressed to spare them your bullying.

Your trigger and your context and your trauma is your own. It does not belong to anyone else. It is your responsibility to understand your limits and respect the rights of other creators, just as it is the responsibility of creators to properly tag and label their work to spare those whom it might upset the indignity of reliving their trauma within a space that is supposed to be safe for them. A space that for some may be the only safe space they have. A space that for some may be the only escape available to them. A space that, for some, may be the only way they can begin to express themselves, furtively, in stolen moments in an oppressive environment.

Fandom is where so many of us found ourselves. It’s full of us, lgbt+ people in various life stages, expressing ourselves in communities dedicated to content that made us feel enough to find ourselves here in the first place. It’s where children currently are discovering labels for feelings they have never had the words to talk about before. It’s where adults go in the midst of their busy lives to contribute to a body of work motivated by nothing but emotion for the source, for the community, and/or for the hope of encouraging feedback from their peers, their fans, their heroes, all three. It’s where everyone goes and discovers there are people out there just like them, after all.

It’s where people are picking their teams and suiting up and getting in line and hurting people just like them, every day.

It’s where people are putting the feelings and wellbeing and sanctity and rights of fictional characters over those of actual human beings who committed the grave sin of enjoying a thing a different way, or for different reasons.

Fandom is full of amazing connection and moments I wouldn’t trade for the world. I wouldn’t be married to my amazing wife right now without it. But it’s also a battlefield in a bubble where I watch oppressed people tear each other apart every single day, while of course, in the meantime, outside the filmy fucking boundary between this world and the real one, the same privileged sorts continue to dominate every aspect of mainstream media, the white house is full of incompetent, hateful people, some of whom are literal nazis, white nationalists feel safe enough to wear swastikas on public transit in liberal epicenters, gay men in russia are being sent to death camps, the police are murdering people of color indiscriminately without fear of personal or professional consequence, the supreme court is one death or retirement away from setting back civil rights in the united states a century, trans people have to watch a nation of frightened pissbabies scream about the sanctity of public bathrooms while they themselves suffer from an increased rate of being literally fucking murdered simply for existing, gay teenagers ostracized from conservative families sleep homeless in the street with winter fast approaching, hurricanes devastate a dozen nations because this century has paved a political landscape where corporate profits prevail over basic human rights – and you know what, fuck it, let’s make it a little personal –

half my family has never acknowledged the fact that I have been married for a year because they don’t believe it is a legitimate marriage because I and my wife are both women, my wife and I went to the hairdresser the other day and when we checked in with the same last name we were asked if we were sisters (and upon clarifying, the woman who was to cut our hair loudly and incredulously gasped, “is that legal here?”), one of my best friends, a woman I have known since high school (that’s 17 years ago, for those keeping count) was told she would have to undergo a thorough and lengthy process via working with HR, her boss and the owner of her company before she could represent herself as her correct gender at work – and even after she jumped through all those hoops, she was told she was absolutely not allowed to use the women’s restroom under any circumstances – When I told my father about my engagement, he tearfully turned to me and said “but you’re supposed to marry a guy, and have babies” – and because this was my father, who I have always had a good relationship with despite remaining closeted most of my life, who I have always and still deeply love despite the shit that comes out of his mouth sometimes, who worked 12 hour days in construction to support me after divorcing my mother when he was nineteen years old – I actually fucking felt guilty.

The memory of how I felt in that moment will follow me until I fucking die, and when I log on to this website at the end of the day and just want to fucking relax and spend time yammering about things I like with people who like those same things, when I just want to spend time in this space that makes me feel good, when I just want to create content for the joy of creating it and the joy of seeing others enjoy the thing I created – the fucking last thing I want is to see myself, my wife, my close friends and fandom friends alike being put on blast by petty people leveraging a nebulous, ever-changing definition of purity, backed by a group of people I know have suffered and hurt and feel justified hurting others because of it.

Fandom is where we go to escape the hellish fucking bullshit that is reality, for fuck’s sake.

I don’t fucking care who hurt you. Visiting pain upon others in the aftermath is your choice. Bullying others because a group of impressionable, hurting people looking for a leader will follow you into the trenches here on a battlefield where we should all fucking know better is your choice.

Your feelings aren’t always your choice. That’s fair.

The way you choose to express and react to and process and deal with those feelings IS your choice.

Your actions are your choice.

So try to be kind. Try to be empathetic. Understand your feelings and understand when you are being manipulated and for god’s sake, when other queer people come out in droves to tell their stories, try to think critically, even if they are on the other “team.” Block content that upsets you. Use tools available to you to keep yourself safe! Blacklist tags. Blacklist URLs. Block people. Be frank about your triggers if you are able and try to give people the benefit of the doubt – and if you can’t, put space between you and them, and then use the myriad of tools available to you to put a wall in that space.

I know all about the kind of catharsis that comes from being a “mean gay.” I know all about constructing a set of rules within a group and then judging others outside that group by that context and punishing them when they fail purity tests they knew nothing about. I know all about fighting disrespect with disrespect and anger with anger and logging out at the end of the day to go cry – not because I was sad, but because I was so fucking angry I couldn’t process the emotion any other way.

I also know all about walking away from that life, that toxicity. I know about taking a break. I know about reading, a lot, for months and years, about experiences both like and very much unlike my own. I know about resolving to be better. I know about cutting out the people who made me worse, and keeping the people who encouraged me to be better.

I know how much my life improved when I endeavored to keep my venting and negativity among friends who could actually support me, in places where I couldn’t hurt anyone, and present a positive force to the public, instead. To lift up the things I like and to block and move on with the things I don’t. To let creators have their space and their platform here in this one place where we can each carve out some small part for ourselves and feel like we are in control for once in our fucking lives. I know I stopped crying so much. I know my hobbies stopped making me so angry, all the time. I know that the only times I have been truly, deeply upset in my time in this fandom have been when I have been targeted or those I care about have been targeted.

I know how fucking hard it is to tear yourself away.

I know how fucking worth it it is.

Take care of yourselves.

My take on it, as someone part of this drama, is that when someone is so concerned about how certain identities get more of a say in fandom and criticism, when that personal also purposefully mislabels and misconstrues people’s identities, that is a bankruptcy of credibility that is very serious and is not on the side of the angels. There is literally and actually never an excuse to purposefully mislabel a queer person, and that it was used to benefit his narrative is…. a lot.

Mmmhm. Basically this @revolutionarygays . Like sorry but this shit is demonstrable and worth taking seriously whatever you think of the other lines of criticism he’s gotten.

revolutionarygays:

figured i’d lightly weigh in on this since i’m very aware of the situation:

i support swamp-wizard and i loved his blog content. this idea that keegan somehow wasn’t a good ally to lgbt women is just mind-blowing to me – he’s been such an influential voice (to me, at least, and a lot of other lgbt women i know) in pushing back against the rampant misogyny in both media and fandom, including being willing to actually listen to lesbians and make an effort to understand the experiences of gay & bi women when interacting with media. i’m shocked (but not surprised) to see people who are neither women nor gay leveling these accusations against him

Keep reading

Sigh. Ok, actual last word on this because I’d like to close off on a perspective that is closer to my values and less a byproduct of shock and anger. This is my ACTUAL last word on the matter in public, I don’t want to clog up fun happy fandom times with this nonsense, but revgays if you’d like to talk further you can contact me privately.

At least insofar as I and the people I know are coming from, it’s really disingenuous to pretend this is about “shipping” or w.e the fuck. What this is about is that swamp has repeatedly refused to stay in his damn lane basically and just, you know, be cool? Not be an enormous jackass to people he doesn’t know and incite harassment at them/call into question their LGBT identity as a way of undermining their Progressive Cred or w.e?

No matter which way you cut it, Swamp has mocked, vagued and ostracized several fan creators for having petty disagreements with him. He’s been called out on it and told its fucked up–by ME, when I was under the impression he was a cool dude and was making an effort to be friends with him as well as other people who he directly affected–repeatedly apologized, and then proceeded to do the exact same shit anyway.

As @callmearcturus said, he apparently didn’t even bother to clear up the mess he made wrt his accusations at her. That’s fucked up. This dude has 0 credibilities and that’s because there is a demonstrable pattern of lies and not caring about trust or goodwill w/ said fans he doesn’t agree with! That’s a lot of what has earned him this response so, tough shit.

As for the Hiveswap stuff, my honest opinion is that however reasonable his anger is, his reading of the game is flat out fucking wrong. It’s bad analysis.
It is demonstrably, blatantly untrue and says nothing meaningful. His lines of criticism were shut down by wp statements on the few pieces of narrative ambiguity there are.

Criticism isn’t all made equal, or free from criticism itself! Swamp is fundamentally engaging in bad, lazy criticism, in that he says nothing accurate or substantial about the game. This is insufferable given his arrogant posturing about knowing Everything About Homestuck (but like, frankly who am I to throw stones there?) and DOUBLY insufferable when he uses it as justification to rob lgbt creators from profit.

Now all of that said? I don’t hate Swamp. I don’t think I’m capable of hating much in general. as @ao3sburb said, I kinda hope he comes back someday. I don’t LIKE being mean, especially not to fellow LGBT people–there’s nazis out there, the world is scary, we need to stick together etc etc.

But I TRIED to be friends with swamp. Really hard! All I got out of it was a bunch of my friends being harassed and endless bullshit vaguepost drama. And I genuinely thought he was cool for the longest time. I seriously have not had a more dramatic, hurtful, and drawn out experience of being let down and let down by someone I tried to believe in, and every time I chose to give swamp another chance it usually ended in another friend of mine getting vagued or harassed.

I still feel guilty about that, so the idea of giving him a pass over it and letting you turn it into “shipping nonsense”? Fuck that. Swamp fucked up, and he was mean and cruel in contexts where it was completely unnecessary. Over and over and over again.

So like I don’t think he’s satan, I certainly don’t think he’s a FASCIST (LOL i cant believe I heard that one), but I do think he’s fundamentally misguided, and to the extent that he’s hurt he’s internalized a pattern of lashing out in really ugly and unwarranted ways.

I hope he gets better. I hope he takes care of himself. And when he comes back I hope he knows to just like, be fucking chill about stuff with his fellow LGBT peeps and shit. We deserved the understanding and nuance at least as much as he does now, according to your logic, and we. did. not. receive. it.

We are under no obligation to provide what he proved unwilling to give.

im probably not gonna answer any more asks about swamp. The bottom line is hes been an influencer in this fandom for a while and was willing to pirate Hiveswap and distribute pirated copies of the game because of his sense of ideological superiority. That’s the Disc Horse, that’s what I care about. if you want to find out about his past drama, ask someone else.