Sparkeythehamster @sparkeythehamster - Tumblr Blog

Tobuscus Rant:

I know that in light of everything being said about Tobuscus, no one really needs my thoughts on it but I have them and I felt like giving them to y'all anyway so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ buckle up friends I’m about to rant about whatever the hell is happening on YouTube right now.

If you don’t know what’s going on in the world of the Internet this month, well-known and well beloved YouTuber Toby Turner, AKA, Tobuscus, has been accused of sexual assault and abuse by his ex-girlfriend and fellow YouTuber AprilEfff. Let’s dive into this situation with first, my thoughts on rape.

It’s disgusting. In my opinion, rapists are the most vile of the criminal offenders and rape is absolutely, 100% evil. As a victim of sexual assault, I know how hard it is to come forward and say the truth and a lot of factors play into this. Fear of being judged, fear of not being believed, embarrassment, shame… The list goes on. If you are a victim of sexual assault, please, PLEASE tell someone. Report it as soon as possible! It isn’t something that should go unpunished.

Now I’m gonna jump onto the true topic here: Did Tobuscus sexually assault AprilEfff? My answer is as it is for pretty much everyone involved: I don’t know. And this isn’t because I don’t believe April. I do. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt that she is honestly reporting abuse. In the same regard, I want to give Tobuscus the benefit of the doubt as well, just because that’s the kind of person that I am. Innocent until proven guilty in both cases here. No one should be afraid of not being believed. That’s the heartbreaking part.

The other heartbreaking part however is that at the same time The Internet has this mob mentality that immediately when somebody is accused of something terrible, they are automatically guilty. We pitchfork mob and riot and rant about how terrible these people are and it’s none of our business. That’s the other unfortunate thing about the situation is that of course since it is a rape accusation people should be aware of it but to post it for the whole world to see rather than taking it to the law is only going to damage both parties publicly. She pretty much threw herself into the fire here which sucks because no matter what happens, there are always going to be people against her.

All of the ex-girlfriend’s stories add up. Toby Turner was a terrible boyfriend. He was addicted to drugs. He was addicted to sex and he was a serial cheater and he couldn’t stay committed in any of his monogamous relationship because of his insecurities and because of his drug problem. They’ve all said that they felt pressured into doing drugs and pressured into sexual situations but none of them have accused him of rape because all of them said no and he backed off immediately according to them.

This isn’t to say that maybe this situation was different and maybe he was angry and maybe he did drug and rape her but the fact of the matter is, no one can know for sure besides him and her. Do the signs point to him being a terrible boyfriend? Absolutely. Does it point to him being a bad person? Most likely he’s not a good person to be in a relationship with, platonically or romantically. Do I think he raped AprilEfff?

I think they did drugs together. I think they had sex and I think it’s very probable and likely that she was pressured into it. I don’t think that a person can consent to sex when they are on mind altering drugs. Sex has to be consensual. Nonconsensual sex is rape. Do I think it was malicious? No I don’t think so. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that she was uncomfortable and he probably took advantage of the fact that they were doing drugs together and that she wanted to please him because she was a huge fan of his rather than friend that he started dating.

The whole situation is so complicated so complex that there is no way for anybody to know for certain what happened. All I know is that if somebody comes forward with an accusation of rape they shouldn’t be disregarded. That only furthers the victim blaming societal hole we as a people have fallen into.

I know that my thoughts probably don’t mean a lot because I’m not close to the situation in any regards but I have been thinking about it all day, it’s been bothering me all day and it’s probably gonna bother me for a very long time. I just felt like I needed to get all of my brain nuggets down somewhere.

Toby Turner is an extremely damaged human being. I feel sorry for him and I feel sorrier for the people that are in his life that he is affecting negatively because of his addictions. AprilEfff, I admire you for coming forward and standing up and saying your part of the story. I admire your bravery and your courage in a situation that is scary and potentially threatening to your career and to your personal life. I do hope that Toby finds the help that he needs for his addictions and his problems. I hope that April find justice for whatever wrongs were done to her.

The complexity is too much for me and for anyone yet to make a verdict and say Toby Turner is guilty or AprilEfff is lying. We as a group of people on the Internet should not be creating a mob scene for or against any of these people because we are blind to the situation as a whole. Justice will prevail for those who deserve it. I just hope that it does soon.

sparkeythehamster

I think this is probably the best sum-up of these events I’ve read. I’ve largely been avoiding the story because I didn’t want to get pulled into the mob mentality either way as I firmly believe it isn’t the job of the internet to act as Judge, Jury and Executioner, but I had to reblog this because it probably summed up the most intelligent and balanced opinion on the matter that I’ve read.

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熊八

motherofsucculents

My fav human adaptation so far!!

gif87a-com

icwutudidthardotcom

batberryboo

WHEN WILL FORD COMMIT

vyseniablack

icedollgalaxy

i was trying to actually find the full scale version of that poster from last month, but the closest thing i could find was in a naegami theory post

so here i guess

tageborkoff-deactivated20200713

Naegami by root8beat

chrisnerdwick

By テマリ

sleepindrs

Original: Dangan Ronpa 4koma Kings vol. 4

Artist: 神崎りゅう子 (Kanzaki Ryuuko)

albinos-ruined-me

by ジャン ※Permission to upload this was given by the artist

semezla

らくがき by ジャン.

munasak

[ insp. ]

sparkeythehamster

Shipping: Is It Controversial?

Any Ships Tagged in this are ships that are being defended, not attacked.

I just started to ponder shipping something recently, and thought I’d have a look at the Tumblr tag just to see what sort of ideas other people had about it, and was shocked to find the whole tag had been taken over by people arguing about whether the ship was sick/disgusting and if people who shipped it had something wrong with them.

When this ship first crossed my mind I didn’t consider it a controversial ship at all, I could name at least five other ships I either ship or have heard of that were more controversial.

So I thought there wasn’t any harm in writing a post debating this question.

The Crack Ships

I’ve seem some hate posted on crack ship tags - people yelling down or dismissing the people who ship something on the grounds that it is crack. But really I have to ask, is there are problem with this?

Of course if somebody with a crack ship jumped onto another ships’ tag and started stating how their pairing was basically canon, then they of course should expect people to disagree with them, preferably on arguments discussing comparisons and ideas as to why the ship is or isn’t canon.

I have many ships I acknowledge are total crack, not planned or implied anywhere in the show, but I can still sit around and read and write fanfiction about them. I will give my touché nod of the head to the people who ship the canon pairings those characters are in, but I will continue to explore the theoretical idea of the crack ship in area of the fandom that allows it.

People who ship Crackships are not necessarily anti-the canon ship, and they’re not delusional, they just may find the canon ship lacking in the spark that they find interesting.

Ships Involving Underaged Characters

The first thing I’d say with this is that it covers a whole variety of topics, some I personally would find more controversial than others. So for those who throw all the ships with underage characters into one basket, I’d really re-evaluate your arguments.

The starting point here is that paedophilia involves the sexual exploitation or fetishation of minors. Thinking two 14 year olds in a pairing are ‘cute’ is not the same thing.

1. A Ship between two under-age characters either the same age or a year or two apart.

Why people condemn this sort of ship I have no idea. There is a difference between finding the interactions between two young characters cute, and sexualizing them.

An example of this I’ve seen is in South Park, where the same people who are happy shipping the canon couple of Wendy and Stan, have a problem with the (potentially) canon couple Craig and Tweek, stating that it is wrong to ship two children - despite the fact that very few actually ship the characters in a sexual nature without ageing them up to at least 16 or 17.

2. A Ship between an underaged character and an ageless character

This one I believe relies wholly on the context, and (at least in my eyes) would require that the relationship not be a sexual one until both characters seem to be of the same age, and are at an age-appropriate age for things such as kissing or anything further to be taking place.

There are several examples I can use here, which either fit this pattern or circulate around it. But before I begin with them I want to reference ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, an award winning film that involves a romance between two people who are ageing in opposite directions. Nothing truly happens between the characters in a sexual light until they both reach a midway point together as consenting adults, and yet none of the reviews about this film condemned it, no they praised it.

Steven Universe I’ve found is a place where this runs riot, as well as in Black Butler.

Example ships like Steven/Peridot are labelled as pedofilic, even if the shipper was not shipping the pairing in a sexual way. Steven is 14 and Peridot is ageless, with no way of figuring out her real age or how it equates to human years. But similar with the South Park example, the same people who accept or ship Greg/Rose, yell down Peridot/Steven, with the same arguments that would undo the first ship. The only difference is that Greg is potentially 19 or 20 rather than 14 when he meets Rose, but she is still thousands of years old and immortal, however they look a similar age. I am not arguing in favour of sexualizing a pairing with a 14 year old, however shipping a pairing doesn’t necessarily need to be sexual. A 14 year old is perfectly capable of developing a crush and having normal 14 year old feelings about it in real life, so if writers reflect that in their stories then that is just keeping in time with that.

In the case of Black Butler which is a slightly different case as the situation presented to us in the Canon does not show an ageing and ageless character to be in the same age category. But this just presents a situation similar to the one in The Curious Case of Benjamin button. Many people who write for this ship age Ciel’s character up, so that it fits within a category where the ageless character and ageing character are on equal footing, and they then write appropriately for that age group.

3. Ageing Characters where one is older than the other.

Emma by Jane Austin is always a good reference to call on here. Emma herself is 20 and Mr. Knightly is 35. He has known her since she was a baby, and the two grew up knowing each other very well. It is never implied anywhere in the story that Mr. Knightly considered Emma as a potential wife when she was very young, however in the setting we are given where Emma is 20 and he is 35 is a different scenario.

Having an adult be sexually interested in a child is unsettling, but having them not take notice of that person in that way until they are an adult isn’t.

Perhaps some may argue that it is different if the two characters knew each other when they were younger. It might be deemed more acceptable for characters with this age gap to be involved if they met for the first time at 20 and 35, this I am perfectly happy to leave down to debate.

Stories where characters are related

Well this is another situation where you can’t just empty everything into one basket, and is perhaps the most prominent area where different cultures need to be taken into account as well as the setting a story is written in.

If you were say writing a story based in Medieval Europe, having two cousins being married would be in place with the setting as it was very often done, particularly in the aristocracy.

At the end of the day in most shipping cases we are still talking about fictional characters, which I think is the most important thing to keep in account when considering how much to yell at someone when you venture onto a tag you shouldn’t really be on anyway - if you have so much of a problem with it.

1. Cousins

First you have to ask what do you mean by ‘Cousins’? Do you mean First Cousins? Fourth Cousins? Fifth Cousins, Twice Removed?

Culturally the extent this is considered incest varies from country-to-country, as does the controversy of such a thing.

2. Siblings

Perhaps the most often done in the world of Wincest, Thorincest etc.

And I agree there is controversy on a global level surrounding this one, however in the realm of fiction I think the context matters. The characters themselves are not real and the odds are that this falls under the world of ‘Crack’ as well (See arguments above). So why spend time getting angry with people who might enjoy writing or theoretically exploring the idea between two fictional characters.

Unhealthy Relationships

I title this category this way because they would describe some ships like Hannigram if they existed in real life. In the case of Hannigram, due to it actually being canon we are shown rather clearly through the show that just because the pairing is something that most would consider an unhealthy relationship, doesn’t mean it isn’t right for the two people involved.

People who ship characters in a ship that might be considered ordinarily unhealthy, does not mean that the people who ship it are into abusive relationships.

In many relationships like Hannigram, Kyman from South Park being an example, people write and see the two on equal grounds, it is very rarely an example of one character physically and mentally dominating the other. It is an unhealthy situation where the two characters are perfectly happy in their situation provoking or manipulating the other. The understanding between the two characters is always consensual in this regard, with neither partner unaware of the situation they are in.

So Where Would I personally draw the line?

For me personally the main line is drawn when a ship becomes about souly beneficial exploitation. One character in a ship that exploits or abuses the other against their will or takes advantage of a character who doesn’t understand the situation they’re in.

I don’t enjoy these ships as they seem to be more about the suffering of a character involved than the mutually beneficial type of relationship that those above may have.

For this reason if I do ship a pairing with characters who are underage it is never sexual, as this would simply be a hands down example of the exploitation or ignorance from one party on what I described above.

A Ship should be about equal love, whatever form that may take, the moment you break the equal nature or begin abusing the characters, tainting the idea of love, then it is no longer a ship to me.

zenon-karr

^v nice post! I like what you said about Hannigram!!!! If people watch the entire series you see actually the violence between them actually only happened because they were not on the same page and mostly misunderstanding. Because you didn’t realize and Will didn’t realize that Hannibal framed him so he could fake Abigail’s death so they could later run away. So he was feeling it was his only way. But then Will was so angry he wanted to kill Hannibal because he ‘killed Abigail" and then he decided he was gonna seduce Hannibal to catch him and Hannibal caught on and gutted him because he didn’t know any other way to be or to react to being heartbroken because he’s never been in love. So then it was back and forth because the other thought the other was playing mind games when both of them actually are in love with each other so they try to rid themselves of each other. But people won’t get it cuz they don’t get passed season ½ and or they only see what happens by synopsis and or gifsets. :/ I just felt the entire series was Hannibal trying to help Will not hurt him but it just happened along the way. It’s mutual between them and it’s heartbreaking.

sparkeythehamster

This is exactly as I saw the show. People spend so long forcing their own idea of what ‘Normal’ is on that characters that they don’t appreciate Hannibal and Will for the complex characters they are.

We might perceive from a normal standpoint that what Hannibal is doing is evil, but as he sees it he’s helping Will and being affectionate in the only way he knows how to be.

People also forget that Will was just as manipulating of Hannibal and Hannibal was with him, both of them seemed to enjoy the chase of leading the other on, and double guessing each other’s bluff to work out what was really going on.