they/them | over 18 | Wizard Hubris Extraordinaire
pfp by @smolspoopy i changed my pfp for the first time in 4 years (but still check out this artist for comms)
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You find yourself at the foot of a mountain, looking up to where its peak is obscured by mist and fog. A creature resides here…or so the village folk say. If one makes an offering, one receives a reward. Is the promised reward simply escaping with your life? A good harvest for the season? Or perhaps something more…
Trick question! It’s fanfic!
Ask box & DMs are open. Send prompts or ideas or whatever or just chat! I like to talk nonstop
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Other stuff:
sometimes I reblog 18+ jokes, be warned
brain is notoriously a jar full of bees
I’m ship & let ship, so if that bugs you this probs isn’t the place for you
I try to tag fandom media with the fandom + ship (if applicable) bc when I see a post and don’t know what it’s referring to I cry, so tags be upon ye
I do have a small discord server that’s for hanging out. the link is…somewhere (it’s also 15+, with 18+ content restricted to channels only for those 18+)
I like being tagged in tag games even tho I always forget to do them
I can’t think of anything else :( cry cry I want to write more, oh well
what they don’t tell you about being a writer is that returning to a long fic you haven’t touched in a while means rereading 50k words first because you don’t actually remember your own fics that well
I must not delay task. Delay task is the mindkiller. Delay task is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my task. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the task has gone there will be nothing. Only completed task will remain.
Reading my s class hunters webtoon and its honestly so funny that they're constantly pushing the point that "born s class hunters are almost inhuman and strange and scary" and then we meet more and more and they are indeed strange and terrifying but every single one is like "yea no that is for sure true but ☝️ do Not lump Han Yoohyun in with us 🙅Whatever the hell is wrong with that guy is his own thing 👍 He's a freak even to us, good luck"
if you're an adult behaving immaturely i'm not going to "treat you like a child" about it because i have a lot of respect for children as an oppressed and vulnerable class of people. i will however treat you like an embarrassment. which you are being.
like yes actually there is a conversation to be had about how a characters actions are framed and how they thematically fit with the rest of the story and it can in fact reflect the author's beliefs. some authors are even trying to make a point
not all depiction is glorification but sometimes it is and you need to be able to tell the difference. not because your immortal soul will be tainted by reading The Bad One, but because you need to have reading comprehension skills
the harm that comes from consuming fiction uncritically is that it impacts your worldview without you realizing it. fortunately! you can learn how to understand what parts of stories are showing bias or bigotry!
I’ve been reading a lot lately and a lot of what I read is horror, so there’s obviously some nasty stuff in it. when I read, I ask myself 1) what is the overall message of this story?
I know this question comes straight from a literature textbook, but it’s actually important. people who make media either intentionally or unintentionally put a message in the work. even shitty movies can have a message. let’s go with an example that pisses me off: 27 Days Later (note that there’s attempted rape, and I’ll be talking about it)
the plot twist for 28 Days Later, a zombie movie, is that the secure location the characters find at the end isn’t safe for women. the soldiers there have been promised women to sleep with, to ‘repopulate’ and to keep them going with morale. only one of the soldiers protests this, and in the end the main character (male) saves the day.
So what is the message here? The writers obviously were trying to do a pretty typical zombie/apocalypse plot. World Ends. Characters look for safety. Safety turns out to be corrupted. But that’s not the message in the story. You have to look at what happens and think about what biases are there. You could say that the message is that the Good Guys are people that form bonds and stick together despite all hardships, and yeah, you’d be right that it is a message there, but it’s not the important one.
Why is a group of former soldiers, who presumably were normal people before world ended, fine with raping women? You might say “oh well, in real life there are groups of men that are actually disgusting like that.” But you have to remember that the writers *chose* to write this plot. It is sooo unlikely they realized what biases they were putting into their plot, but it’s still there. Yes, some groups of people are horrible. But unless you believe in the “evil men bioessentialism” rhetoric, you’ll know that it’s really fucking odd for a group of functioning members of society to suddenly *all* be down with rape when the world ends. Especially when this isn’t a collection of like-minded people banding together. They were soldiers sent there, not a group of horrible people recognizing other horrible people and sticking together.
(If you disagree with my take, keep listening anyway because it’s still an illustration of what I’m talking about. It’s not the point here.)
What I’m getting at is that *it is not normal* for like 20 guys with mixed backgrounds to pretty much all be down for rape just because the world ended. Most people are not like that. One guy disagreed, but the others weren’t shown being passive out of fear. It was literally just that guy and the main character. So what is the message?
“Without society to enforce rules, you can expect most men to be fine with rape, and a woman’s safety is dependent on society protecting her.”
Something that Stephen King wrote in The Stand has stuck with me since I read it. One of the characters postulates that women’s safety is only permitted by men, because without a society where men agree to not harm women, women can’t protect themselves.
And yeah, when you think about a lot of apocalypse and dystopian media, that’s a bias that exists at its core. But not only does it summarize a message that we see all the time in Western media but don’t recognize, this brings me to my next point.
The next question you should ask is 2) are the biases shown a reflection of the character or the author?
This one is tricky, but you can learn how to do it. In media, there are always bad people. People who are violent, or racist, or enjoy the suffering of others. In *good* media, even the protagonists are flawed, although not to the extent of the villains. But just because a character has a viewpoint we consider bad doesn’t mean the author does. Going back to The Stand, we have to ask: does the character that said that believe what he said or he a mouthpiece for Stephen King?
You have to look at two things. The first is other characters. I’m actually going to use Stephen King again for this example because it’s been on my mind lately after reading the Bill Hodges Trilogy. This time we’re discussing racism, sexism, and fatphobia.
A lot of characters in Stephen King’s books are racist and/or sexist. He writes horror and doesn’t pull the punches on the parts that reflect real-world horror. But is he a racist? (Idc if you think he is or isn’t, this is just to illustrate how to start thinking about this stuff. People are probably gonna argue with me anyway but, piss on the poor website. It’s just an example.)
The characters that are sexist and racist are predominantly the bad guys. Not all of them, but the worst offenders are. But when we look at other characters and their internal thoughts, especially the good guys, they usually aren’t racist or sexist. If not everyone in a story has a certain rhetoric, and if the ones that don’t are the ones we’re supposed to like and cheer for, then that gives merit to the idea that the bias is meant to be part of the individual characters and not the author’s point of view.
Aside from the characters, you also need to look at the plot. “Does the plot reinforce this concept?” Are the non-white characters in his books stupid, useless, etc. Do horrible things always happen to the women, and do the women lack any agency?
In Mr. King’s case, you’ll find that the answer is actually no. His female and non-white characters are usually not only integral to the plot, but some of the most likable characters he writes. In fact, I am of the personal opinion that he can’t write straight white guys well, but his other characters are very often a delight. One of his most beloved characters—Holly Gibney—is a middle aged, neurodivergent woman. She and Jerome Robinson, a smart young black man, outshine Bill Hodges, the main and titular character of the Bill Hodges Trilogy. Carrie, though her story is a tragedy, is an entirely sympathetic character that you root for in her story. And he wrote that book because of girls he went to school with that weren’t able to express themselves & their autonomy and were hurt by society.
I’m not saying he never writes minority characters poorly, god knows he succumbs to the “wise spiritual black person” trope, but even if you think he’s bigoted, you should at least acknowledge that the stories he tells, while minorities do suffer, do not only focus on this suffering.
In contrast, let’s discuss his fatphobia. It’s bad, fam. Sticking with the Bill Hodges Trilogy, the main character is overweight and this is presented as a negative thing. What differentiates this from the racism and sexism of some characters is that *every* character treats being fat as something gross and awful. Every one. This, my friends, is a glaring sign of the author’s bias.
I said we should look at the other characters, and check! Seems like we have a bias here, folks. But let’s look at the narrative. Sometimes there aren’t other characters to reference, so we have to look at how the story treats being fat.
It’s actually a pretty important theme in these books that women are written off and ignored and by letting yourself be impacted by your impression of someone, especially women, you’re creating an environment that causes harm. Holly is first perceived as a dimwit, which is completely wrong and the book even tells us point-blank that the main character will regret thinking that about her. Neurodivergency is treated as something that annoys people and is used as an excuse to dislike them and disregard what they say, and the characters pay the price for this.
In contrast, there isn’t a single instance in the books where being fat is associated with something good or even neutral. Fatness is inseparable from things that are bad. Bill Hodges starts the first novel in a depressive spiral which, you won’t be surprised to find out, is thematically tied with weight gain. As his mental health improves, he loses weight. Characters go from constantly commenting on his fatness to praising him for looking good. One might argue that it’s an accurate reflection of how our society in the west treats fat people, but we’ve already established that all the characters think awful thoughts about fat people, and it’s not just Hodges. Any time a fat person is mentioned, they are someone that is morally undesirable. In the second book, a minor antagonist is extremely overweight as well as an asshole and a coward. His negative traits are grouped together. To Stephen King, fatness is a symbol of moral failing. Does he realize that he has this opinion? Who knows. But it’s abundant in all of his books, and it honestly made it really hard for me to get through the trilogy.
When ideas are repeatedly enforced, either by directly being stated or just shown over and over again, it changes how you think. In this case, these books reinforce fatphobia. But in other cases, even more violently bigoted ideals are hammered in.
TL;DR: if you want to learn how to recognize when media is teaching you harmful messages, you have to actively think about the media. You don’t need to force yourself to write out a full report or anything, just take a few minutes to ask yourself: 1) what is the message of this story? and 2) are any of the harmful ideals shown a constant in the story, unquestioned by anyone or the plot, or are they meant to be added depth to a character?
