‧⁺†Trials and Tribulations†⁺‧

My name is Pepper. Writing Ace/Aro & Racially Aware Hazbin Hotel Cope. Sometimes 18+ content but in words only.

[pepperparabellum]

Hello. Here's my stuff: { AO3 } { ABOUT } { FIC WIPs LIST } Mostly writing Hazbin Hotel cope/vent fics (not a fan!) Tl;dr I stole the cast & made it about disability rep, shit mental health & Alastor not being a caricature. I barely ever reblog anything Hazbin-related tho, don't worry.

Other content on this blog: mostly disability, sometimes aroace, sometimes racism, sometimes art, always somewhere anarcho-left. You can send in writing suggestions/requests. You can message me at any time, with anything. Also, posts that are opinions, reflections & rage.

[crippled-peeper]

find something they can’t take from you

[pepperparabellum]

An average fantasy of an average child in Hazbin Hotel fandom:

... have you even watched the show? HAVE YOU EVER LIVED???

[tinybed]

ppl rly hate girls with eating disorders tbh. did anyone else notice this

[tinybed]

like its funny that theyre seen as the primary perpetuators of diet culture and unhealthy eating and not as the most obvious victims of it

[horsesource]

[anarchistmemedistro]

[petrakaur]

in ordinary cases, force feeding under restraint via nasogastric tube is considered illegal torture by the united nations.

of course, anorectics are treated as a special exception. in hospital i got held down by a group of grown men, the tube forced down my nose into my stomach and the supplements pumped through me and fed like this three times a day every day for multiple months.

the threat of it happening again due to your noncompliance is always held over your head every day until you are discharged. in the community, the threat of being involuntarily committed once more and having the entire thing done to you again looms ever present.

i dont know anyone who hasn't ended up with resentment and trauma after inpatient. i think it's a broken system.

[pepperparabellum]

I am listening to Kat Blaque discuss Chud the Builder, where she covers a white, autistic trans woman's testimony about dating said man. Poor soul. Autistic vulnerability supports many poor decisions that cause embarrassment in retrospect. ANYWAY. 

The longer I think about the TME/TMA crowd, the more, and less, they make sense to me. From what I've seen, they're overwhelmingly trans lesbians and cis lesbians. Classic TERFs but Uno Reverse. 

But, my takeaway is this: It feels fundamentally incomplete to talk about transmisogyny without centering women who have experienced it in the context that severely impacts the 'misogyny' part. Unless I'm mistaken, Black and Latina trans women dating men face the highest rates of violence, which makes awful lot of sense.

Yet "protect all dolls" got centered around people whose primary interactions with men involved the sexist white peers they were expected to fit in with growing up. Half of them were probably nazis. That is a real and miserable experience if you're a closeted queer kid, one worth talking about, but somehow, it seems, few affected are willing to. Then, years later, "The Men" those transitioned sadasses interact with the most become trans men on the internet or irl queer spaces, and suddenly all of that unresolved baggage gets unloaded onto them. Cishet men out there wouldn't bother with any of this anyway.

That's my thesis, at least.

Sure, that's a deliberately hyperbolic way of putting it. But really, what do you actually know about transmisogyny if you've never tried dating (cis) men as a trans woman nor had close friends who told you all the horror stories? Or, at the bare minimum, listened to trans women talking about those experiences in interviews, podcasts, and so on?

You can't have a vast outlook on how various misogyny's shades and tints intersect with everything unless you've observed The Gays. Or trans men. Or both! All of them damned queers, actually. But some people have no queer experience outside of being closeted, WASP, and terrified of losing social standing. That's just how it is. And I don't want to downplay that. It sucks. Patriarchy suck for everyone. Thus... I suggest feminism???

…And so I thought ‘trans’ in transfeminism was for trans people?

So can you stop trying to colonize all the shit other people need too, thank you very much? 

Welcome to the TMA/TME Homeowners Association. Transfeminism was nice, but we've renovated it. Please identify yourself first. This is for community safety.

No, we have no interest in putting an intellectual strain on ourselves, finding common denominators, or sharing space across differences. And if we can't immediately tell from your mannerisms or face which side of our invented fault line you belong on, we get very uncomfortable figuring out which slurs we're morally licensed to use.

And if your case is unusually complicated… That’s where "please undress" would fit as the punchline, except this whole new Uno Reverse meta in the TERF game makes it a little awkward. But if someone paid me enough, I'm sure I could figure something out.

I think everyone would be better off if we separated the TMA/TME badge from transfeminism to save the latter, though I think it's already too late. It sucks! But it is what it is. 

If people keep noticing that some of the loudest voices in that ecosystem have an odd habit of sharing audiences, rhetoric, or enemies with crypto-fascists, the solution isn't to insist everyone is secretly calling all trans women Nazis. If you feel called out by that, maybe examine yourself, or at least the company you keep. And then yourself. There might be many different reasons why you sleep on it. I wouldn’t be judging those reasons alone, as a sick fuck myself.

Going back to Kat Blaque: notice how she has never seemed to have a problem saying, when it's relevant, “I grew up as a gay Black teenage boy.” She can acknowledge the social position she occupied without that being a threat to her identity or current social position. The other girl in this vid also went “I know what I’m talking about, I was gay.” No damn biggie. Trans men say “I lived 20 years of my life as a woman” and nothing explodes. Meanwhile, some people would rather punch three faggots (various) and one elderly Black guy in a wheelchair on their way out than ever utter the words, “I grew up being perceived as a heterosexual white boy.”

Intersectionality? Oh, we're besties. She just goes to a different school...

However we chose to phrase it, you probably get what I mean.

I think everyone is better off once they reconcile with the uncomfortable realities that shaped them just for mental health, if nothing else. Emotional honesty with oneself is crucial for intellectual honesty, which in turn is a must for any good activism or social commentary. It's of the utmost value, actually. Everyone has a blind spot they don't examine, and that’s fine. The problem starts when you build an entire ideology around refusing to look at it. And then others join you.

I don't care how many "I have gay friends" or "I have POC friends" or "I had sex with a XYZ and they liked it" they collect along the way. I genuinely hope those friends and sex buddies get their shit together, find Jesus and get woke. These people are nobody's friends but their own, no matter how many experience points they've invested in the debate rhetoric skill tree. Gaslight 82/100. 

I know people get dysphoric about the whole "socialization" conversation, but I'm sorry, we can't be that precious.

What are you going to do, become an anti-vaxxer for the social sciences? "Yes, I love feminism. Also every study about how gendered social perception shapes people's lives is bullshit." Become a tankie version of Hillary Clinton combined with manifested destiny? "Yes, I care about material conditions first and foremost. Also mine never influenced me at all, I was born pure and suffered for it. Don't you dare bring society into this, you MRA."

Sorry to bother you. I guess.

Get your shit together, why won’t you. Please?

[mikilavellan]

Today is a good day to remember the 1942 Zoot Suit Riots, in which WWII army members and the LA times accused Mexican American men as a unit of sexual assault and gang activity.

Earlier that year, a young Latino man was possibly murdered by an unknown assailant? (LAPD botched the case so bad no one is sure if it was actually murder) and 17 Latino boys were arrested without evidence. They were not given a fair trial, with accusers even going so far as to bring in a sheriff to claim Mexican people had a biological need for violence. Activists who helped get the case thrown out and the accused men released were investigated for communism.

US soldiers, cops, and white vigilantes used this as an excuse to violently attack Angelinos with Latino, Black, and Filipino heritage. These attacks especially targeted young men wearing the counter culture zoot suit, which they saw as a sign of gang membership and who soldiers believed flew in the face of fabric rationing. Media suppressed the truth. No soldiers were arrested but many People of Color were. The MEXICAN EMBASSY had to intervene, finally leading to investigations. Some scholars call it a program against the Mexican American Community.

[occidentalist]

Won’t anyone PLEASE think of the most privileged global citizens of the wealthiest country with access to all the stolen resources of the whole world? They’re literally sometimes impoverished and/or marginalised sometimes. What are they supposed to do? Actually take action to oppose imperialism internally as the population with the greatest influence on the continuance of its existence?? We ask too much of the poor, downtrodden USAmerican. For shame

[lastoneout]

"I am not a vessel for your good intent" goes hard as a line from a disabled perspective. Abled people care so much more about being their idea of a good ally than they do actually being a good ally. They shove their good intent right down your throat and then act surprised when you tell them they're suffocating you.

[soracities]

think it's a deep consolation to know that spiders dream, that monkeys tease predators, that dolphins have accents, that lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose, that otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. that there isn't their life and our life. nor your life and my life. that it's just one teetering and endless thread and all of us, all of us, are entangled w it as deep as entanglement goes. v neat i think.

[pepperparabellum]

So you're anti-racist. How about you stop?

A fascinating thing happened. Behold, a community: Alastor fanclub. Someone posts:

Eighteen patrons cheer and shake hands. Someone chimes in: 

Hmmm… I’m not here to comment on anyone’s art, but I did collect color samples: 

So I say, apropos of nothing:

...? OP, what did you just say to my face?

… 

…Okay, maybe he does. I haven't thought that through. To me, he's a screen. Doesn't matter.

Anyway, I got blocked on sight. 

Funny thing: if OP blocks you, every reply you made under their post disappears for everyone and of course you can't reply anymore. Neat silencing feature!

I joined a discussion that was supposedly about whitewashing, from the side that agrees whitewashing is bad. All I got was “blackwashing” and instant boot.

…WHAT IF I'M WHITE, HUH??? It was mid as fuck on my part anyway.

Seriously. How do you make a callout post about racism, do … that, and call it a day? Does this genuinely feel like job well done? Does it make people feel good? Is there no cognitive dissonance? Am I the congnitive dissonance?

I expected an argument, maybe. I was ready to explain what I meant. Educate. But this… what is this lazy, cowardly shit??? 

Is this a fetish thing? Broadly speaking. That's usually the safest bet. Has the rhetoric around "representation" gotten so detached from reality that all this passes for anti-racism now? To whom? 

It reminds me of people who want to touch Black people's hair because they "appreciate" it. Except they're online, eighteen, and know actually doing that is socially unacceptable. The language feels similar, though, and it's still framed as appreciation. 

What changes, if nothing changes? 

Darker skin tones on characters and textured hair tutorials are not a substitute for examining attitudes. They can offer a nice smokescreen, though, as pictured above.

So what, gather eighteen buddies, clap over a white man painted lightly brown with no interruptors?

…oh. Hm.

It really is the 20s all over again, isn’t it. Funny! Topical. You’d boot poor Al outta door first, is what I'm saying. And he’d be rightfully pissed. No one in this fucking fandom even likes the character! MAKE HIM WHITE AND GAY!!!! NOW!!!! but in a progressive, appreciative way :) Nothing says progress like covert racism and corrective rape for entertainment of the masses. 

…How do you live like that? Genuinely.

I'm not trying to be insulting. It just sounds exhausting to juggle ideas that obviously contradict each other. 

Obviously this is racist bullshit. That's not the confusing part. The confusing part is that it seems completely sincere.

Serious question:

Can someone explain how people like this operate?

Whether you've encountered them, used to be one, or anything else, I want to hear it out. This is for science. This site has already gaslit an adult with a degree into doubting their senses. (To be fair, I'm also mentally ill. Credit where it's due.) 

I would've fucking EXPLODED if I'd had to grow up in this environment as a teenager and actually cared. 

...FORGOT! Cherry on top, tags on their blog:

Whatever you say.

I get to be a cynical, obnoxious bastard about it, but most people are normal. That just makes me sad. It also pisses me off, because what good is being a spiteful bastard when the numbers are this lopsided and you don't even get a fair fight? 

Ah, fuck all of this. 

[pepperparabellum]

You are tripping I've been starring at those Alastor pics for a minute trying to find a difference. Like you have all reason to hate his design but idk what you were trying to do with that "change"

What I tried to accomplish was to make him look more like a Black/mixed man living in the 1920s/1930s. 

For not seeing changes in the pictures, that’s why the post has text descriptions about every adjustment made. Are you trying to tell me you can’t see a difference between the original and the last pic? I mean, you don’t have to like it, but… are YOU tripping?

[caribbeanangel]

when i was 8 years old, my mother packed me and four of my siblings into her toyota camry with everything we owned and drove us to florida in search of a new life. we spent 16 hours on the road, switching drivers between my mother and older sister, stopping at rest areas to care for my newborn brother. somewhere in virginia, a woman handed us a $100 bill because, as she said, “god told her to.” looking back, we needed it more than anything. we stayed with my aunt pumpkin in the middle of the swamps. the nearest store was miles away. her house was filled with old black imagery, herbs, and a glass table held up by two black panthers. i still remember a wolf spider trembling beside my head while i lay in her living room. she killed it without hesitation, and for some reason, that memory has never left me. i woke each morning to roosters crowing, frogs clinging to my mother’s windshield, and sunsets that looked painted by a dream. florida was also where i entered school for the first time and where i first became aware of life's impermanence. sitting in class, i was overwhelmed by the realization that one day, everyone i loved would one day be gone. i cried, terrified, yet somehow reassured that everything would be okay in the end. to this day, florida feels like the place that changed me. it woke me up and initiated me into what i now call life.

[caribbeanangel]

Haiti, 2012.

[pepperparabellum]

I love white American people, they are God's funniest invention.

[pepperparabellum]

[sherlocklovesboys]

no no i actually think it’s super fun that you took that aro/ace character and bent them over backwards to make them gay!!!! we all know being gay is more #progressive than being aro/ace so i’m so glad you freed them from having a storyline unconnected from romance and shipping!!! you go diva!!!

[catsruleokay]

also idk why bdsm people are seen as enjoying sex more than the average person...to me the opposite is true. u don't even like sex bc u need all these ancillaries just to enjoy urself. u had to turn it into something else like getting strangled or punched in the head. and this is backed up by the way they r constantly trashing 'vanilla sex' which is just sex like u hate sex...