Guess this is personal @oncedeadmun - Tumblr Blog

god, I'm so, so tired of seeing the biphobia regarding the bg3 companions.

No, Karlach isn't "actually a lesbian". No, Astarion isn't "actually gay". they are all bi/pan. canonically. just because Karlach is a big muscle woman and Astarion is a flamboyant twinkish man doesn't mean that either of them are any less bisexual.

when you say shit like "Astarion is romanceable for both genders but I think he actually is gay!" thats just one of the most basic biphobic stereotypes reheated. since time immemorial bi men who are not stereotypically masculine have been accused of being gay, actually.

erasing these characters' bisexuality because it doesn't fit your stereotypical idea of what a "real" bi person is like is just plain old biphobia and I'm getting tired of repeatedly seeing companion headcanons rewriting their sexuality to better fit into shitty stereotypes.

nuka-rockit

like what is this. what are we doing here

#BG3 #important

blackheartbiohazards

"I don't want to read this" is totally valid.

"This is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't want to read this because it is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

blackheartbiohazards

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

spellscarred

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.

blackheartbiohazards

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

blackheartbiohazards

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

blackheartbiohazards

"Censorship of some topics in fiction and art is good and I would be happy if it were to be enacted in a way I approved of"

and

"some things should be banned from ever being written or read about in fiction"

are both authoritarian viewpoints to hold and express, even if you don't have the power to enact them.

If you hold these viewpoints you are holding authoritarian viewpoints.

averageidiotenby

DUDE IT’S PEDO FICS EVERYBODY THINKS THEY’RE NASTY

blackheartbiohazards

Let me explain this to you in simple terms.

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.

kawaii-pigeon

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.

plague-of-insomnia

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.

scientia-rex

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.

ruffboi-mags

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.

nyxelestia

Going to add that fiction which had sexual abuse and communities which played around with it as a writing topic are the very things that protected me from irl sexual abuse when I was a teenager. I was in a dicey situation, and realized that while my situation did not match up to any of the superficial or textbook cases mentioned in passing (if at all) through school, it matched up a LOT to what I'd learned about irl sexual abuse through works of fiction and the rhetoric of my communities. I got out of that situation and dodged what was, in retrospect, one hell of a nasty bullet. If it hadn't been for that "nasty" fiction and those "nasty" communities, I would very likely have been abused, and subject to further violence spiraling out from that abuse.

benjis-house-boat

you can’t have *some* censorship.

the-real-seebs

Yup! It really is, in fact, pretty much that simple:

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

#important

godlessondheimite

fluffmugger

#so did they miss the part where gatsby ends up floating dead in a pool and all the miserable deaths in wuthering heights#or did they miss that because there weren’t any chapters titled In Which The Sinners Are Punished For Their Errors#like. even if you require explicit moral instruction from literature it’s pretty hard to miss the comeuppance in those.

pennie-dreadful

“What I assume my teachers were trying to teach me”

doctorbluesmanreturns

Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.

mikkeneko

I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance

please try this on for size:

there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present

three--rings

My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument. Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM. The message is that it is BAD.

My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.

lyricwritesprose

Huckleberry Finn can actually be seen as a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it, right down to vocabulary. And in that respect, it’s a heroic tale, because Huck—with absolutely no good examples besides Jim, who he has been taught to see as subhuman, with no guidance, with everyone telling him that doing the right thing will literally damn him, with a vocabulary that’s full of hate speech—he turns around and says, “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to participate in this system. If that means I go to Hell, so be it. Going to Hell now.”

(I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature. Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too. Worth noting that this person identified as an evangelical Christian, not because he was in line with what current American evangelicals believe, but because “they can change their name, I’m not changing mine.” Interesting guy. Sorry for the long parenthetical.)

Anyway, the point of Huck Finn, as far as I can tell, is that you can still choose to do good in utter darkness, with no guidance and no help and none of the right words.

And when you put it like that, it’s no wonder that a lot of people on Tumblr—people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice—find it threatening and hard to comprehend.

prismatic-bell

It’s also worth noting that Twain chose that word DELIBERATELY. The polite word at the time–the one we’d expect Aunt Polly, Aunt Sally, the Widow, etc. to use–was “Negro.”

This particular bit of satire has been mostly lost because we are not Americans in 1880, but the point of that word is that those “respectable” characters, the ones who’d say they’re “the good ones,” the ancestors of today’s “yes, my ancestors owned slaves, but they were nice slave owners,” were saying the quiet part out loud. Oh, sure, real-world people called them “Negroes” and said it sure was great the country was reunited–but they weren’t, in any great numbers, demanding equality for their darker-skinned fellow men. Even Lincoln said they should be free but that they were still inferior to whites. At the end of the day, “Negro” still meant that other word. It still meant “less than.”

Twain put their mental narrative into open dialogue, and boy howdy they did not like it.

And that’s why any “updated” version that replaces that word with “Black” or “Negro” or, in one very weird case, “robot,” has completely and utterly missed the point.

The point is the ugliness. The point is what they really thought. The point is “all right, I’ll go to hell” and a complete rejection of all those “kind,” “respectable” people (who, Twain is arguing, are neither kind nor respectable).

If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand the book. Period.

#important

captainkingsley

yet ANOTHER dnd character i will probably never use,

#dnd

go-spaghettininja

Here's my last round of D&D commissions, the final look and some early sketches! *commissions info*

The characters are:

Lilith, a phantom rogue changeling, only 23 yo, but has lived a hard life already - by @kookygadzooks; Mao, a changeling whose human disguise is a tired 30yo human with a smoking habit, Annwin - by @mmysbathotw; Aria, a stern half-elf who's a trained soldier and a capable killer, and Annabelle, a human fortune teller with the gift of precognition - by Hailey and Aaron; Parsnips, an innocent Harengon who is currently trying to convince her leonine boyfriend to stop eating meat - by @tranquilrabbit.

#dnd

skiptomy

finished commission for one of my besties of their changeling character in our D&D campaign !!

I'm running a special on this type of bust painting for the holiday season! more info here!

#dnd

arnaerr

years ago I made a series of portraits inspired by the godlike race in Pillars of Eternity and I still like these OCs a lot :) prints: x | x instagram | twitter

#dnd

fawnilu

Jaime and Tommen ♡ commission for lovely @/lariska_prgitay on twitter ♡

#got

maya-hawke

MOON KNIGHT (2022) episode 4 + callbacks

#moonknight

bebx

let’s talk about the fact Marc and Steven were never really on good terms and were actually at each other’s throats most of the time, but the first second they reunited they immediately rushed in for a big, desperate hug and were just so relieved they found each other again like they were best friends who hadn’t seen each other in ages, because even if they always fought, they knew they could trust each other while their lives were in danger. this scene was so wholesome.

#moonknight