#discourse hell

[anghraine]

I saw a whole group of screeds today about how it's wrong to headcanon ostensibly cis characters as transitioning to any gender other than the one they present as in canon, because the idea of the canon character not yet knowing what their deal is, knowing but still living life as their assigned gender during the source material's era for social or other reasons, or otherwise not being out and fully transitioned in society before the story ever starts is misgendering the character and is therefore Wrong.

ngl it feels of a piece with "isn't it suspect when SF/F authors invent secondary worlds with systemic homophobia that impacts the characters? what sort of person reifies homophobia by creating homophobic societies when they could have created accepting, tolerant ones in which obstacles to queer love are never about bigotry?"

[brawlite]

ok i know i'm somewhat jaded, but if you wanna ship a pairing with a large canonical age gap, just fucking lean into it? please, i'm am begging you. that's an old man! or even a middle aged man! he has wrinkles! and grey hair! and a belly! if you don't want the age gap, if you don't want that man to be old, literally just ship something else! pick a different guy!

i know, ship and let ship, to each their own, etc etc ad nauseam—but this ends up just feeling like skeevy a toss up between, "i am inherently grossed out by a power difference in a pairing, but i ALSO find it compelling and don't want to look at that too hard because i'm afraid of my own desire," and also a very big and very powerful, "i am terrified of getting older" cult of youth thing.

horrible vibes. wretched.

and also... just plain fucking sad.

like, i'm sorry, but sometimes i really just want to shake strangers on the internet and be like, "your desires are ok! growing old is ok! embrace both of those things and allow yourself to be a human being!! relish life! PLEASE!"

[shamebats]

It's so unreal seeing people on here talk about "female privilege" as if being perceived as a woman means you'll be treated nicely by everyone in society and that means you're privileged, when I just got banned from the misogynistic hellpit that is r/AskMen for arguing against that exact kind of bullshit, what the fuck is going onnnnn

[satelliteoflove-sys]

"Just trust me bro!" is not valid evidence, especially for something as severe an accusation as race-faking and faking DID.

[toast-ranger-to-a-stranger]

Speaking of parasocial relationships:

If people (fans) start shipping you with one of your buddies no matter what you do or say, I don't think it counts as queerbaiting when they give in and play up that relationship. I think it's just fanservice at that point.

Also, men are allowed to be affectionate with one another and-- surprise to hopefully no one-- not be romantically in love with one another. Just because you perceive that affectionate relationship as queer doesn't make it so.

(Additional note that is more specifically targeted and can be ignored/skipped: Arin Hanson isn't queer baiting you when he says he thinks Jason Momoa is hot and could rail him, he's just stating a fact I think a lot of us can agree with AND has admitted to being "probably bisexual" even if he only realized and embraced it later in life-- and just because he married a woman before that, it does NOT invalidate his self-proclaimed queerness in the least; Dream is a 21 yro dude that got famous still in his teens and a lot of people seem to have issues with the kid "queerbaiting" his "young and impressionable fans" when it was the fans that started it in the first place.)

Gimme a fucking break. It is NOT a script that someone deliberately wrote to bait us queers into hoping for queer representation. These are people who are interacting with their friends and HAPPEN to be internet celebs. Their behaviors can influence our perception of them and their relationships, but our perception does not define those people or their relationships.

It is not their job to represent your perceptions. Their job is to play video games on the internet.

(Final side note: there is a part of me that believes celebrities of every walk-- internet, movie, music, politics-- has a responsibility to their fans to not provide them with misleading or harmful information. However, that responsibility does not necessarily mean they have to follow every whim of their fanbase.)

[shipsanddip]

Can I just say that tumblr may be dead but it’s still endlessly preferable to the Twitter discourse hellscape

[darthcontusion]

I’ve been kind of trying to put together a take on why Tamaki bothers me without coming across as moralizing, and I think I’ve done it. Like I’m someone who liked Kill La Kill and Konosuba, so it feels wrong to take a prudish angle on this stuff. 

Putting aside how I’ve grown to dislike fanservice, I think the Lucky Lecher bullshit bothers me because I don’t like Tamaki? Like at least where I am she’s basically a stock Tsundere character without anything else to define her. And I’m supposed to think she’s sexy? Another issue is that I just don’t feel like she’s got any chemistry with anyone, so trying to stoke that fire is like throwing a match into the grand canyon.

I’m told Fire Force takes like 90 chapters to get good, so if she does get better after that then RIP because I’m not reading that much of a thing I don’t like.

No accounting for taste I guess.

[stvlti]

I know y'all wanna be liberal and woke but please learn some nuance, please I'm begging you

It's not racist to criticise foreign governments for homophobia and other types of bigotry, governments aren't the people they govern. When you criticise the Chinese government you are criticising the structural issues and problems with the system that allow attitudes like homophobia to reign free; you are not criticising the actual citizens of the country. I mean, who do you think is in charge of the censorship of LGBTQ+ content? Queer Chinese people? Of fucking course not.

You can also criticise foreign governments and criticise the stances / policies of domestic corporations at the same time. It's not either/or - you're not automatically blaming all of the corporation's faults on foreign markets once you start criticising the foreign governments... Plus, most of your domestic corporations are global conglomerates tbfh, of course their 'foreign' marketing strategies count towards their overall political stances - their values and beliefs are global.

So when we criticise the fact that Hollywood is crawling into bed with the Chinese government to profit off of a largely anti-black and queerphobic audience - that's not racism, that's us criticising the governments and structures that also oppress minorities in China. That's us acknowledging and criticising that these business partnerships are only encouraging bigoted Hollywood execs to carry on and export the same status quo that suppresses LGBTQ+ content to foreign viewerships. That's what it is. It's not cut and dry racism. Trust me, I'm Chinese myself, queer, and lived in Asia most of my life; I'd know what is and isn't racist.

It's 2020, please learn some nuance if you wanna engage in postcolonial discourse. Not all criticisms of foreign countries are automatically racist. Because the other thing is - the racism card is what ethno-nationalists in the Chinese government love to use as an excuse for their worldview. So don't follow that narrative. Unless you're content to be seen as a tankie dealing in apologism for bigotry, in which case, carry on as you were. Just do not fucking interact.