We Are Never Alone

Greetings. This is the blog of Cheshire (it/its) and some other people who share a body.

[4rchangel-dragon]

General Info: Me/Us (aka Pinned Post ver.2)

Hello, I'm Cheshire, my pronouns are it/its, I'm a polytherian/polykin, my most relevant theriotypes/kintypes are dragon, arctic fox, barn owl, wolf, and cat but those are not all of them, I am also fictionkin but not really keen on listing all of those (also kind of turning over the concept of being a kind of fictive but that's a whole other debate internally). This is my and my system's (minus the ones who are underage in our headspace, we have A Rule about that, they may show up in prompt responses if they're 13+ but the youngest ones probably won't) blog for whatever we feel like.

Johnny (he/him) is probably the most talked about one, he's a fictive but none of us really likes talking about which fictional Johnny he is for several reasons. He claims the label of protector. He doesn't often speak for himself to the outside world, but he sometimes might.

Everyone else kinda doesn't much care, Hancock (he/him) is the caretaker by his own choice as well (we don't assign labels, headmates take them if they want them), he might pop up. None of us has the spoons to list all of us because we can't even keep track, it's sort of just a "come and go as you please" thing in our headspace.

We don't know how or why we formed, we don't feel it's safe for us to explore that right now so our origins are unlabeled. If you think that means we have undiscovered trauma, honestly, go fuck yourself, you don't have a right to assume that kind of shit about us. We know we have trauma, including some around the time generally indicated for DID/OSDD, we also can't say that caused it because we don't remember. Life is weird, we acknowledge our trauma without claiming origins we're not certain of.

Some of us, me included as said previously, are otherkin, therians, fictionkin, general alterhumans. Some are flat-out nonhumans. One of us is a godshard who for some reason is part of me specifically, that's just messy and I think it's kind of a subsystem thing maybe but he exists.

None of us wants to interact with underage people (we're not checking ages for random one-off interactions, we just don't follow someone if we know they're a minor for obvious reasons), TERFs, bigots generally, people who believe paraphilias are sexualities (they are disorders and deserve treatment as such without stigma, having a disorder is not a moral failing, we take issue with those who believe that these are sexualities and that it is acceptable to pursue contact etc. specifically), anti-alterhuman folks, anti-endos (we don't know if we are or are not endogenic and it stresses us out to see syscourse because of the implication that either we're somehow not real or we have trauma that we need to acknowledge for some reason), those who believe fictionkin and fictives can choose sources in all cases, basically just use common sense. If you don't like me/us, I/we probably won't like you and you should save us all the trouble and just not interact, mkay?

[4rchangel-dragon]

Lol someone messaged me on another site saying basically "you having nonhuman phantom limbs and being a therian is bad for humanity, plz stop", and I'm just sitting here, wings and tail out, going "you want me... To... Stop having an experience I have no control over and identifying in a way that describes it because you think it's bad for humans? I'm not even offended, especially because that account hasn't really been active in a long time, so this person went through the trouble of finding a half-dead account just to whine about my experiences not fitting their idea of what someone "should" be. That's so much of their time wasted just for me to go "this is basically spam, I'm ignoring this", then "wait this is actually so fucking funny, I'm going to share what happened and still not reply because I already reported it as spam, blocked them, and ignored the request". They accomplished none of their goal, wasted their own time, and gave me a laugh.

And like... I have too much time on my hands. I'm currently waiting for other people to do things that will move my life-plans forward because they aren't plans I can do without other people. I would never even think of wasting my time looking at, say, various exploitative cringe spaces where they mock people for being different, just to message people in them and complain about what they're doing. And they're doing demonstrable harm. I'm just sitting over here, being an owl, doing my own thing. I'm just a kitty who is hopefully gonna get a passport soon. Just a casual wolf doing people-things 'cause that's what I have to do. It's not just having too much time on their hands, it's having an inflated sense of self-importance and possibly a problem with cycles of negativity. If my being me bothers them so much, they can just not look at those spaces. There are so many better things to do with one's time.

[4rchangel-dragon]

Rambles About The Self And Physicality

There are two concepts that I've been dancing around that I think have the same root, a single question that I don't think can be answered easily; is there any real purpose, outside of medical situations which are not the business of strangers who are not actively involved in treating a medical condition, in separating internal from external with regards to the self? Practically speaking, this question leads to, in my case, two other questions- am I more male than female because of my internal self being altersex but leaning more male than female and am I physically partially nonhuman because I only partially internally experience being human as I understand it?

I don't have an answer to any of those questions. My mind goes around and around on it, my headmates all just kind of shrug because they don't have as much of a connection to the body as I do so it's not a question they feel they can answer. It would be nice to be able to think of myself as a mostly-male who is physically partially nonhuman, but I keep going back to a worry that there may be some reason for me not to. But then part of me wonders if that stems from ableist rhetoric about delusions and if so, how to know and to root it out because I don't want to buy into those kinds of ideas, I've already started stripping ableist language I grew up with out of my vocabulary more than others around me IRL have and I want to continue that process, especially as someone who has experienced mild delusions in the past.

This internal back-and-forth is interesting to me, honestly. It's not something I stress out about or get upset over, it's more a curiosity that my mind sometimes chases its tail over. But it's something I figure I might as well put out there.

[otherkin-confessional]

I often feel like I'm faking it or lying to myself because my kintypes are also my favorite animal/creature. but nothing else feels "right" to me so I'm really self-conscious about it

🌌

[4rchangel-dragon]

Thought: maybe some of us are drawn to our own kintypes because some part of us recognizes them as 'like us'. Example, I've been practically obsessed with dragons since I was little, so much so my mom would describe me daydreaming as me "flying with dragons", I read Dragonology almost religiously, you get the picture, basically a few hundred steps above the usual "dragons are cool" thing most kids experience. In a sense, what I've come to understand that as is me trying to understand myself. I am a dragon, but I haven't found a description of my specific species anywhere. It was a quest whose purpose I didn't know until now, given to me by my own subconscious.

In other words, it's ok, anon. Maybe they're your favorite because you're them.

[4rchangel-dragon]

I Am And I Was

I recently saw something talking about the idea of source separation and it brought up some thoughts that I'm not sure belong on that specific post (don't want to derail the OP's post) so I'll just make my own.

My IRL name is attached to one of my fictotypes. This name is the name that will be attached legally to the body I inhabit because I'm fronting 99% of the time and we all agreed to this. It is not the name of that fictotype in terms of the name I went by when I was him, but it was a name given to me by others. It's a name I could never embrace back then. A name rife with meaning and complex emotions and danger due to what it represented (and in a sense, what it now represents, but that gets into a lot of specifics that I'd rather not get into right now).

Now, I can embrace it. I can be proudly who I couldn't have been then, even if I don't have the same power as I did. In a very real sense, I am stepping beyond who I was then. I am honoring my past and looking into the future with that name. It binds me closer to that fictotype while also demarcating it as "the past", something that is not coming back.

The name holds so much meaning to me that the source of my source (because it's one of those modern reimaginings of an old source things in this world) has become part of my personal style. I will never separate myself from my source... And that doesn't mean I live in my past. I reminisce sometimes, I mourn sometimes, and I honor who I used to be, I also know that I didn't let my past hold me captive then, so why should I now?

If anyone tries to say that everyone must separate themselves from their source completely, they're saying I should refuse to honor my past. That I cannot possibly both have a connection to my past and exist as a person who is not defined solely by that past. That I shouldn't try to learn to play the lute again because it brings me closer to who I was, despite it being a skill that I think would be cool regardless of also having a connection to it.

My point here is, you can honor who you were and still create who you are now not as an effigy of someone you once were but as someone who may be influenced by who you were without being defined by it. If you want to be someone entirely new, to try to separate yourself from your source, go ahead. I know this doesn't work for me, I've tried with a source I'd rather not have and it just doesn't matter how long I go without acknowledging a source, it's still just as strong if something external brings me back to it. But maybe it works for you. You just don't necessarily have to do it to be a functional and healthy person now (small disclaimer, I don't know you personally, reader, you know yourself best, do what is healthiest for you if possible).

[capn-atlas-deactivated20250625]

SYSTEMS!!!!! I gots question

do you guys have a headspace? if so, what does it look like?

tell me I'm curious

[4rchangel-dragon]

We do, and it's basically a giant mansion that's constantly changing, except the fronting room is usually (now that we've been working on it) an airplane cockpit, specifically a somewhat older one which has a flight engineer position. Weirdly enough, this helps us with switching and control issues we've had (we can go into detail about that if anyone's curious but we will save that for if anyone cares lol), and we've changed the theme a few times, like it was once a steampunk/Renaissance theme, so like it was all wood with more oldschool switches and buttons.

Fenrir lives outside (by his own choice) in basically the yard. He has a den. I've never seen the inside of it and he's not awake right now so I can't really get him to describe it for me, but I bet it's pretty comfy for the home of a giant wolf (ie it'd be comfy to a wolf). Everyone else has their own room in the mansion and we have common areas and a garden. There is a neighborhood outside of the yard but we've never really felt a need to see if it's just scenery, like in a video game, or if, say, NPCs live out there (we have a handful of those and they do vanish sometimes so who knows).

[neonspectrumdreams]

What is everyone's current internal world system project?

[4rchangel-dragon]

We're working on making our internal fronting area into an airplane cockpit, one with four seats (two pilot seats, a flight engineer's seat, and a jump seat, we usually have a max of 3 co-fronting at a time but we want the extra seat just in case, though I guess we can always add another on the fly as needed) as part of trying to organize ourselves and get better at things like switching and sharing control. We figure hey, maybe if our fronting area isn't just, like, a room with a big window to the outside (what it was before this project began), that structure will translate to more control. And even if not, it's heckin' cool, but it does seem to be working really well for us.

We want to maybe make an external representation of the internal controls and instruments, but we're still working out what those should be and how to measure different things. We figure we might need to work on things like non-normal checklists and our quick-reference handbook for our body and then work backwards from that to what instruments and controls we'll need. It's still very much a work-in-progress and experimental, but we're all enjoying it. We might even try to get some time in an IRL flight simulator to get more familiar with how they work so our internal model can feel more real.

[4rchangel-dragon]

I hate how often games with non-bipedal protagonists refuse to allow 1st-person POV. It's frustrating when the only 1st-person cat game that's worth a damn that I can find is severely limited (Catlateral Damage and its sequel, both of which are good, don't get me wrong, they're just very limited and I don't really consider them separate games in any meaningful way, they're more like those old games that came on 2 CDs). I haven't found an actual 1st-person POV dragon game (and no, text-based ones don't count for this, as amazing as they are, they are not what I'm talking about). Same with dogs and wolves, and don't even get me started on the less popular non-bipedal beings.

It feels like game devs aren't willing to explore what the world is like from a truly, completely nonhuman perspective. Sure, you get games like Frontiers of Pandora where you're markedly not human, but you're still humanoid in-game. Bipedal, two arms, generally humanish shape with some additions (and this is massively oversimplifying, but it's also very clear that the game design did in some way take Na'vi movement into account but in some ways it did not, it feels bizarre to walk upright over certain vines and branches yet that is what happens).

Maybe I'm just missing something, but I want to really feel what it's like to be a quadruped again, to fly as a dragon again, and I haven't found a game willing to give me that. Even the game I love flying in the most, Frontiers of Pandora, forces you into 3rd-person when you fly, which I get given the difficulty of portraying the perspective of someone who is effectively temporarily one with another being, experiencing both sets of sensory input at once, but surely there has to be a way.

[4rchangel-dragon]

I am a traveling bard by nature, robbed of my musical gifts by callous fate and of my ability to freely roam by cruel society. Give me my icy homeland and my freedom to move, let me be free.

[fictionkinfessions]

hey can any endos explain to me why? Im not trying to be rude but having a disability that requires trauma while you don't have trauma seems a bit odd to me. Just trying to ask i dont mean this in a weird way i just want to understand it better :)

party note i'm posting this in good faith and also in the hopes it helps prevent someone from being a dick about endogenic systems in the future out of ignorance. please anon do not let me down, open thy heart and let a smudge of consideration in. Adapt, adopt, survive!

[4rchangel-dragon]

So, in addition to the things others have said and are likely to say, I want to add that the existence of the endogenic label would be useful even if 100% of plurality came from trauma (which, to be clear, we do not believe, we just don't really have the spoons to go digging for scientific sources on the subject so we're taking another approach to the question because it's one that impacts us personally).

I'm the host of a system of unknown origins. We're not in a safe place to untangle how we became plural, and the idea that we could very well have just been born this way or spontaneously split for no reason is comforting. The idea that it had to be from trauma is terrifying and when we are faced with that idea, we often feel a great deal of anxiety.

For us, it's not reasonable to get therapy right now. Between life plans that are vital to our mental and emotional health (and helpful for our physical health tbh), the cost of therapy, and our own current fragility, we just aren't in a place to be able to dig into the idea of childhood trauma safely. Thus the idea of potentially being endogenic is comforting to us.

We don't live in a perfect world. While I and the others in my system absolutely believe in endogenic systems (brains are weird, we don't see any evidence or reason to believe that a system can't form without trauma), we also recognize that this belief is not necessary to believe that the label holds value. We are evidence of a situation where a system may not be endogenic and still benefits from the existence of the label, because the world we live in is fucked up.

Also we don't view our plurality as a disability. We can see how dissociative disorders can be disabilities, but we don't dissociate enough to feel we would qualify for a diagnosis of one (I can point to two marked episodes of active dissociation in our life that I am aware of and our body is 25), nor do all traumagenic systems let alone endogenic systems. Our plurality is a different experience of existence, and while it may make things harder sometimes, it can also make life richer and more fulfilling. I deeply love my headmates and to call them a disorder would be to disrespect them in a way that I can't fathom wanting to. You may not have meant it like that, but it is how I read it.

What I'm trying to say here is that even if you don't end up being convinced, anon, I hope you can still see the value in the label and why it shouldn't be questioned the way it often is. Poking that bear, if the anti-endo crowd is right that every system has trauma, might end up harming systems who need compassion and care, not fakeclaiming and assigning trauma to us (yes, us, because assigning trauma to every system does include unlabeled ones like me and my headmates). I genuinely don't think you want that, based on this ask, I think it's easy to get caught up in certain ideas and not understand the other side of things.

[fictionkinfessions]

I've seen enough asks on here about the topic, so I just want to say:

If you identify as a system, GO GET THERAPY. Being a system is not a "normal" human thing and it definitely means you need fucking therapy. You can't just call yourself a system and call it a day. You cant just say you're KINNING, either, because the kin community goes back decades and it is bigger than some teenager on tumblr picking up kins from your mutual's posts. My honest, genuine opinion is that anyone with 100+ kinds or alters IS NOT ACTUALLY A SYSTEM. You are just young and impressionable and the world is in shambles right now and theres a sense of comfort in being someone else. Everyone wants to know who they really are and you will NOT figure it out until you're in your 40s. If it brings you comfort, fine. But go get therapy so they can tell you how to ACTUALLY cope with the real world instead of using "escapism." Escapism is not the answer to your problems and you still have to deal with them.

I say this as a person who felt inhuman since before I was 10yo. I even told my dad about it back then. And I've been watching the way the "community" has changed over time. You are not a polyfragmented system if you have 100+ kins, you are just trying to find an identity that fits you. Kinning nowadays is a good FIRST STEP. But I cannot stress enough that CPTSD, autism, and ADHD mix together to cause dissociative episodes. Maybe you should all look into it and find peace with yourselves before adding a new kintype to your list

All of this being said, yeah I do think having a bunch of kintypes is fine. It's okay for one alter to kin a handful of different people and shift between them. But you do not need individual listings for each separate one. You do not need to make a new proxy with pluralkit. I see people confessing to only seeing a character ONCE and kinning them. It doesn't work like that. Take some time to think about it. Its IMPORTANT to figure out if these similar kins are actually just the one person instead of assuming they're someone new. If you actually had 100+ kins (that you treat like individual alters) you would not be functional

...

[4rchangel-dragon]

"Go get therapy" anon says, like everyone can just "go get therapy". We'd love therapy, especially therapy where we can be open and honest about our full experiences. Unfortunately, we're nonbinary, trans, bodily AFAB, almost certainly neurodivergent, AND feel genuinely unsafe in our current country (which is controversial because we live in the US but we have our reasons). Being open would likely shut down every single aspiration and desire we have for our life.

Is this fair? Fuck no. Is this the world we have to work with? Yes. We also don't really have the funds for therapy so there's that. And we need to immigrate, thus we've put a hold on literally all psychological diagnostic testing we feel we need. No diagnoses = less chance of being told "you're too disabled". That's ableist as shit but it's also how the world works.

Anon sounds very privileged. Therapy is functionally not available to a huge number of people, whether due to cost, waitlists, safety, or larger concerns that necessitate hiding aspects of oneself/oneselves. We can't live in a fantasy world where therapy never has downsides. Some people also have trauma related to bad therapists, so getting therapy is not necessarily a good idea for them right off the bat.

Anon... You don't know what someone's situation is. Someone could be in a situation like us where completely open and honest therapy is functionally detrimental to people's lives because the world we have to operate in is fucked. And at the end of the day, non-traumagenic systems exist. Are we one? No idea, Johnny has made comments implying we might not be but we haven't the foggiest what could have caused it so we don't feel comfortable saying for sure one way or another. But they do exist.

What is and is not a "normal human thing" is wildly subjective and varies far more than you, anon, seem to think. Also if something works for some people, let them do it as long as it's not hurting anyone, ffs, chill out.

[4rchangel-dragon]

Gotta love playing "is this the state effectively asking for a legal bribe to settle my inheritance (definitively under $500,000, likely under $20,000, I don't know the full worth of it off the top of my head but we're not talking something that could be considered an estate in any sense that isn't "inherited property and/or money in legal limbo") or is someone at the courthouse being underhanded because I live in a big city and have a lawyer (paid for by my dad)", I want to s c r e a m.

[emerald-technologist]

I find myself curious, so - to my fellow vampires, whatever kind of vampire you may be, do you consider yourself-as-vampire to be human as well, or completely separate from humanity? Not in the sense of “I have a vampire kintype, but I’m also human,” but rather in the sense of “if I was physically my vampire self and not in my current body, I would/would not consider myself to be human”.

please just read the above paragraph or you may misunderstand the options

Yes, I’m also human

No, I’m not human

It’s complicated

Unsure

Voting ended onApr 2, 2024

Please feel free to elaborate on your thoughts and feelings about this in tags/reblogs; I find it an interesting discussion in-source, and I’m curious if others have thoughts on the matter here.

[toastynoodle]

I remember a while back when I was first in the dragonkin community, everyone always talked about wanting to eat rocks? Is that still a thing?

I personally don’t have those urges, but am really curious if others dragons have them.

For those dragons: Why do you want to? Is it something to do with your fire? Something else? Do they just seem appealing to eat?

[4rchangel-dragon]

I have exomemories of them being kind of like nutritional supplements? Basically, I could have one or two every day and they were very tasty (it's very sad that human tongues can't really taste what it was, I remember that it was a good flavor but I can't describe it or even get a good sensory memory of it, I do know there were subtle differences between different rocks and gems, rubies were my favorite), but too many would make me sick. Nothing to do with fire (I didn't breathe fire, though the really big ones I lived with might have? Unclear, but they were certainly more capable of things in combat), just... Some nutrient(s) my dragon body needed in small amounts at a time.

I still have the urge to eat rocks, I've found rock candy is too brittle for me but jawbreakers are too hard, plus I need to decrease my sugar intake anyway so I haven't found a good replacement yet. Small disclaimer, I have not put actual rocks in my mouth since I was a child, I feel like I need to say that just to make it clear that while I would like to, I entirely know why I shouldn't and I don't intend to do it.

[4rchangel-dragon]

I'm really fucking sick and tired of people shitting on anyone who has ever consumed certain media. Like, I'm fucking sorry I didn't do a deep dive into the creator before I watched a thing, I don't typically do that because frankly, why the fuck would I. There's a difference between informing others about a content creator's problematic statements, associations, etc. and just going "creator is bad and you should feel bad if you've ever consumed any of their content". Still don't know why the fuck one creator is bad and I've seen people bitching about the content repeatedly. Tried to find out why, found a confusing mess that I have not had the spoons to untangle.

I've seen some people treated like shit over nothing. Allegations that vanished if you so much as looked at the original content and asked someone who is affected by the thing the person was accused of and isn't someone who already hates the person accused. Allegations that literally had no leg to stand on besides "well he should have known it would embarrass him" (when the person who was embarrassed at the time of the incident was the one who retold the story in a way that very heavily implied "wow, I was silly to feel that way, he didn't care about the thing I was a little embarrassed about").

I've also seen investigations (as in criminal ones, I was a Kpop fan during a few big scandals that were about things that are illegal, whether just in SK or in any reasonable country) where there seems to be little to no evidence available to the public (at the very least the English-speaking public, I wouldn't know what's available in Korean which is admittedly possibly part of the problem but I was seeing others with the same limitations doing what I'm talking about), and in those cases, it was always "does the public like them" that determined how people reacted. A fandom was torn apart by that and fence-sitters were treated as enemies by both sides. Because how dare I want fucking evidence (either more solid evidence of wrongdoing or evidence that the appearance of wrongdoing is false/attached to the wrong person) before I take a side, right.

Anyway, fuck people who seem to want others to do a deep-dive into every content creator whose content we watch even super casually, I do not have the spoons for that and if you're going to talk about how bad someone is, please, please lay out what they did at least? If I can't find a comprehensive explanation relatively easily, it's going to become a case of "how much of my mental health is it worth if every time I get close to an explanation, it seems to vanish into the wind" and the answer for things I'm not invested in deeply will always be "not much".

[4rchangel-dragon]

mmmmmmmmm I do not feel good and it's not even like I'm sick, it's just, my sleep schedule is fucked (because nocturnal creature trying to live a diurnal life because society demands it) and my body is Doing The Thing It's Supposed To Do But Gives Me Dysphoria Because No Man Should Ever Know What It's Like (I am being dramatic, just to be clear, it doesn't make me less of a man, it's just nature being awful and tbh women shouldn't have to go through it either, nor other nonbinary folks, no one should, it's a horrible design flaw and if intelligent design were real, our designer would not be very intelligent, at all) and it's just a bad time.

[fictionkinfessions]

@ 744442324213530624/new-kin-agony-when-people-take-the-gs-off-words

Hey! Lets not pretend that people kinning from "problematic media" automatically means they support it or its creators! Thats actually really fucking mean! Especially when your wording goes as far as to imply they are invalid as kins!!! Let people have critical thinking skills. And How many times does it have to be said that people do not choose their kins (or fictives, which are also applicable here even though you did not mention them) before people stop acting like this! Its ridiculous! It's annoying!

Your "positivity" toward Eridan is meaningless when Homestuck is ALSO deemed problematic media by many people (and agreed, certainly didnt age well in many aspects) while you condem anyone who touches a different one.

You can choose not to interact with people who kin from things like Hazbin, but I refuse to let you put my fellow kinfolk down because you think Eridan holds exclusive authority over "not using g", or that Eridan's source ISNT full of issues as well.

~An Eridan kin, who also happens to kin Husk. What a funny coincidence. (/s)

p.s. its also just weird to act like not using g in "ing" words is exclusive to only these two characters. My Quirk isnt being basterdized. Many people who dont even kin dont type a g all the fucking time what the fuck.

Anonymous asked:

Hi Im the Eridan that just sent in an ask response and I realized I should include a very clear obvious example of Homestuck also having flaws. Mpc Please add this onto the other ask.

I AM CANOTICALLY A FACIST. ANON. ANON DO YOU NOT HEAR YOURSELF.

I know fandom widley ignores that because really what the fuck was that, but LETS NOT PRETEND THAT ERIDAN IS A PURE CHARACTER COMPARED TO SOME POOR GUY WITH ALCOHOL AND GAMBLING ADDICTIONS.

NEITHER OF THESE SOURCES ARE PERFECT. BOTH ARE FLAWED. ONE IS JUST HATED MORE RIGHT NOW THAN THE OTHER.

Anonymous asked:

maybe... DON'T bully people for who they kin? we don't kin for fun, dude. most people can't control it. i hate hazbin hotel, too, but that isn't an excuse to say this shit. ESPECIALLY sending it into a blog where a bunch of hazbin kinfolk have been kinfessing, so you're clearly aware at least one husk kin is going to see it.

#sid🪞

party note if anyone wants to continue this converastion plase like reply or reblog this post. no further ask responses will be posted for it. thank you.

[4rchangel-dragon]

I'd like to add (and fair warning, this is a little long), not everyone can healthily engage with behind-the-scenes content for media. I literally only know the name of the creator (and not that well because apparently I cannot spell and will not be attempting it, sorry) because I've seen people saying "oh [creator] is problematic" on Fictionkinfessions. I know myself, if I let myself get sucked into that rabbit hole, I will have mental health problems.

I've seen people falsely accused (a certain YouTuber drama semi-recently comes to mind wherein a large anti-MLM/business criticizing channel was literally trying to fabricate accusations against another creator who she had worked with), so I feel I can't just say "person bad because other people say person bad", thus I'm caught in a no-win situation. Either I go on a deep-dive over media that, realistically, I'm not paying for nor supplying with ad revenue even if I watch it because of my way of watching and I'm not going to buy official merch of and I risk putting myself in a bad place when I'm really working hard on being in a good place mentally because I need to be, or I just remain neutral.

I've also seen people call others problematic for things like (and this is true) asking what someone else's shirt said to be nice (look up G-Dragon bullying Suga accusations, it's fucking nuts, GD is not perfect, that one was just such a fucking nothingburger, people literally made up that it was "bullying" just to have an excuse to be pissy about him rather than rehashing very old arguments and discussions about his past/because they were too lazy to look into him at all), I'm not inclined to just believe every accusation even if it's widespread (I was in the fandom that made the accusation when it happened, people genuinely believed it because "well he should have known it would embarrass Suga because wasn't he poor, too, once" meanwhile Suga seemed genuinely happy telling the story like "one of my idols came up to me when I was a rookie and was actually interested in something I was wearing, that was super cool").

The idea of moral puritanism in media consumption is inherently restrictive in the extreme. I understand not wanting to support a creator and even thinking a creator doesn't deserve support (I certainly don't think JKR deserves support after her transphobic rants and everything else), I don't understand demonizing everyone who has consumed that media. I consumed some of JKR's media before she said anything overtly problematic as far as I know, as a white child in the American South (not by choice, fucking believe me, I'm glad I got the fuck out of there) who did not and was raised by someone who did not have the right kind of media literacy to spot the problematic ideas in her work at the time. I'd be a hypocrite if I claimed moral puritanism in media consumption, and probably so are a lot of if not all who do.