Coughing up blood doesn't make sense for 99% of injuries and illnesses in fiction but it's HOT and I think the sexiness of whump outweighs the medical accuracy most of the time. I WILL die on this hill and I will be coughing up blood as I do so.
I’ve noticed some posts around about how you can’t romanticize your life during a fascist regime and while I deeply sympathize with this sentiment, I want you to try to understand that’s what they want you to believe.
Fascism thrives best in the cesspool of hopelessness. They want us so confused and hopeless that we give in. When you give in, you don’t fight back.
If you wait for life to look good to do the things that bring you joy; life will still be bad - you will just have less joy.
As someone who has struggled with my mental health a lot for the last thirty years, I know this struggle firsthand. And changing this belief system - the one where you spend all of your time expecting bad things so you won’t be surprised when they happen - it’s the hardest work that I have ever done. And I’m not perfect; I still have setbacks. I still experience really real fears about the state of the world and the US, in particular, because that’s where I live.
But I made a vow to myself that I will not let the choices of others ruin my life. When I made that vow, I was thinking of my parents - but it applies to the state of the government right now, too.
There are still flowers in my garden, and ripe tomatoes, and it’s almost pick-your-own apples season, and I have plans with my friends to go to as many cemetery ghost walks as we can find this October.
I still deserve to live. I still deserve to laugh. I still deserve to love. I still deserve to be as happy as I can be.
Bro, blocking someone and then using their tag like this is, all offence, weak as fuck. Like all you had to say was, na bro I don't promote pedo protags on this here blog, because I wholly agree with the premise of your argument given contexts (i.e., writing abusive relationships to show the evils, great; writing abusive relationships to show the romance, yikes).
This response is so, so comically shitty within the context of that tag, oh my god.
Something being nasty is not a good reason to ban fiction about it.
If we accept that "something being nasty is a good reason to bad fiction about it" then we give a foot in the door for all the people who truly, genuinely believe that queer people are nasty to ban all queer literature.
This is not about defending bad people this is about defending the freedom of good people from tyranny, you moron.
I think if you take it to its logical extreme. Say, banning people from writing stories of sexual abuse. That could then be said "well ANY talk about sexual abuse is bad."
And from that, you could ban books that talk about it irl. Or books like how to recover after being abuse. If its not something to be discussed AT ALL.
The fact that I’ve seen this post in some form on my dash like 100x and each time there’s new idiots who do not get that you can’t have *some* censorship.
Either you’re for it or you aren’t.
The moment you agree that something should never, ever exist in fiction is the moment that anything can be banned.
Remember a while back how Tumblr banned a bunch of tags, including many popular innocuous ones that even people who are for censorship used and were upset about?
When censorship happens, stuff YOU like can and will be banned. That’s how it works.
Remember how a bunch of people had their accounts terminated here only last year for writing about their own sexual abuse?
When you ban “pedo” topics, say, any talk of child sexual abuse in any form, that means people can no longer write about their own experiences. It means people cannot educate others so they can learn how to protect themselves or get help from these situations.
Censorship is authoritarian. Full stop.
Even if “everyone” agrees something is “gross” and “shouldn’t exist,” that does not fucking matter.
Do you know who generally believes queer people are gross and shouldn’t exist??
The same people who are banning books left and right solely because they have queer characters or relationships.
The same people who attack and kill queer folk for simply exisiting.
This is not just some fandom matter or a case of being chronically online.
Protecting freedom of expression is essential, and if you do not get that, I don’t know what to say to you.
And the people who keep bringing up child sex abuse as a reason for censorship are doing it very specifically because everyone feels like then they HAVE to agree with the person in favor of censorship.
It’s not that there isn’t widespread societal agreement on this. It’s that they want you backed into a rhetorical corner where you feel compelled to agree with them.
Also, like, we KNOW how this shit shakes out in fandom because it's happened before.
In 2007, Livejournal capitulated to the "pedophilia and sex crimes!" cries of (hate group) Warriors 4 Innocence, and you know what communities got shut down? Slashfic communities. Sexual assault survivor support communities. Authors who'd written non-smut m/m fic even got caught up in it. It was DEVASTATING to fandom spaces. I think pretty much everyone knew at least one person whose account was literally DELETED, or were a member of a community that was wiped off the map because they were considerate enough to include topics like "sexual assault" or "BDSM" in the profiles under the badly-named category of "interests" to indicate that posts on said blogs or communities may include discussion of things like that. Even if it was for a SUPPORT group. And it was because a group of religious bigots came to LJ and said essentially "EVERYONE thinks it's gross and that it's promoting CSA, we should ban it."
Like, strikethrough and boldthrough were a large part of what propelled AO3 out of a more unfocused conversation on one person's blog about hosting a site INTENDED for fandom content, into being an actual archive and nonprofit. And it's a large part of why you won't find AO3 banning topics that you find "gross".
Censorship is authoritarian and it will ALWAYS have more collateral damage than you can imagine.
LJ also deleted a lot of chibi-style art, because they couldn't understand that the characters were not children.
I once read an interview with a county sheriff who thought Animal Crossing should be banned because he could only see it as pedo bait. I really don't think the problem there was with the game.
I do not remember the sheriff doing that but I remember this video (link to reddit since I cannot find the original) going around about Animal Crossing being "dangerous for kids"
The "pedo" argument is what we call a Straw Man Fallacy, and it's one of the most common logical fallacies in bad-faith arguments. It's when someone misrepresents an argument to make it harder to argue against.
Example:
Me: I think clergy who sexually abuse children should be held accountable for their actions.
Straw man: OMG why are you persecuting Christians????
What we're seeing here is the same thing.
Me: Censorship is bad. Freedom of expression is crucial to a free society.
Straw man: OMG why do you love pedophilia????
Literally nobody is saying that. But framing the anti-censorship position as somehow being pro-pedophile is a) bullshit and b) a tactic to force anti-censorship advocates to back away from their position.
It's exactly the same as when people advocate for defunding the police or holding them accountable and the GOP comes back with WHY ARE YOU SOFT ON CRIME, WHY DO YOU LOVE CRIMINALS?
So congrats, you're using the same arguments as fascists.
If you want freedom, that means some of the things people choose to express are going to make you uncomfortable. That's the price of doing business, y'all.
But some of y'all don't actually want freedom. You want to feel comfy and safe at all times. Those two things are incompatible.
Y'all really need to let go of the idea that reading or watching something "impure" makes you evil. We're talking about fictional works here. As in somebody's thoughts. You're saying "this person shouldn't be allowed to share their thoughts."
Isterik nation, I bring you gifts and goods in the form of delicious, juicy devnotes.
The scene at Nebakov gives us a few things to take note of already. First, the fact that Erik sees Hansry and instantly realizes that they're a threat, and then the fact that Isterik clearly know each other extremely well:
Also worth taking note of here is the fact that Erik is pretty much heavy breathing in every single scene.
Then, we've got the torture scene where Henry decides to throw out some choice statements about Erik that very clearly do their job in getting to Istvan:
We see more of the heavy breathing from Erik coming up again the last time Isterik see each other. Erik is clearly someone who is at all times trying to hold back emotionally, and it seems that Istvan (or things related to Istvan) directly correspond with a loss of that control.
As you already know, we get a lot of Isterik moments in the scene where Henry kills Istvan, but in case you wanted to see the highlights, I've got you covered:
What really struck me here is how Istvan acts as a fairly direct mirror to Erik in terms of emotional control. Erik seems to be the one thing that can make him fall apart in two seconds. He's so calm in most of that scene, but if Henry starts talking about how he'll kill Erik, Istvan starts screaming.
We fast-forward a bit. The scene where Erik is given the news about Istvan is like a masterclass in physicality from him. We upgrade from breathing to snorting and snarling to everything else. Huge props to Jim High here on turning Erik into what is effectively an animal in that scene.
At the Italian Court, Erik has to actually hold it together because he's literally commanding a bunch of men. And even there he struggles substantially in the face of all of Henry's jeering:
Yet again, we fast-forward, this time to the scene where Henry can fight Erik. But this time, it's to my favorite part of the Isterik devnotes by far. Namely, this:
Like, we get so many hints. So, so many. But this could not be more blatant in reminding us that yeah, there was so much between these two.
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