A collection of odds and ends found by a young lolcat named Tabbi on her perilous journey through the Interwebs. Expect lots of weeb shit and video games. Sometimes I do the cosplay thing.
This is a Not-Safe-For-Work blog. I'm also a pretty lazy tagger (i.e. I barely tag anything at all.) Follow at your own risk.
Y'all for real please do these. Even if you’re certain your posture doesn’t suck. One day you will wake up with impinged shoulder pain like I did and let me tell you it fucking HURTS. Do these exercises even just once a week and it will make such a difference. Especially my fellow creatives out there, stop shrimping over your work and go do these right now. RIGHT NOW.
my knight you have to live you have to get up you have to put your hand over your wound and hold it there. you have to keep walking and walking and walking because you cannot lay down yet, it’s not time. wipe the blood off your breastplate and look up into the sun. lean on your sword if you need to. lift one foot after another. get up. get up. this would be a pitiful grave.
(grabs you by the shoulders) you have to make room for new experiences in your life. you have to go through the unpleasant work of leaving your comfort zone, even if just for a few minutes at a time. because if you don’t, your brain will trick you into stagnation. you will start to believe that the world can barely fit you in it. but that’s not true. it’s the opposite way around. you can fit the whole word inside of you. your task is only this: to welcome it with open arms
Love the tags!
ah lads not the stagnation i’ve been tricked again
I understand the desire to signal to other marginalized people that you’re not here to jumpscare them with regressive drivel. I also recognize the appeal to mercy, re: “Hello, random bully! Please don’t harass me over this fic for X when I myself am Y.”
However, I implore you to consider the precedent this sets for fanwork (and art overall). By normalizing these disclaimers, we are legitimizing a police presence at the gate of every fic. No one should ever feel the need to show an ID to an armed guard just to be “allowed” access to a certain kind of character or subject matter. There is no “you must be this disabled/queer/traumatized to ride” sign, and anyone who tries to card you for the art you create and consume should be treated like a fucking weirdo. Please do not let these trolls goad you into answering their riddles three or fulfilling their identity fetch quests. You don’t owe them any personal information, least of all the bits that could be used against you in the future (like your triggers, your marginalized status, etc).
A couple nights back I read a fic where a disabled character did something that made me go, “A disabled person would never write that.” The actions of the character were so nails-on-a-chalkboard incompatible with my own experience of disability and chronic pain that it seemed unfathomable to me that the author could share my background. But my experiences are not universal!
If I may beat a dead horse, what art and representation uplifts one marginalized person will surely offend another. If I use the #author is disabled tag on my Ao3 fic to signal safe harbor to other disabled people, I’ve set myself up for failure, because the kinky sex scene that reads like empowerment to me will read like fetishization to someone else; the heroic rescue that reads like validation will read like infantilization; the tragic ending that reads like catharsis will read like punishment. You being from X group does not guarantee the comfort of the fellow X who reads your work.
And fuck, even if you disagree with me and believe there IS an objectively “correct” way to portray X marginalized character or Y subject matter…where does this ticket system leave people in the closet?? Where does it leave survivors who don’t feel comfortable broadcasting their trauma to complete strangers?? Even if you believe certain types of fiction should only be created and consumed by certain types of people, you have to admit that a lot of X people writing about themselves and their experiences will be caught in the ID crossfire.
Normalizing these kinds of disclaimers just empowers bullies to gatekeep more and more art. Plus, I can tell you from experience that once you’re in a troll’s crosshairs, the gateposts shift. Your clearance level is never high enough to justify your work.
“You’re a gay author with gay characters? I bet you’re not really a man. No gay man would write something this blatantly fetishistic.”
“You’re a survivor writing about abuse? That’s actually worse because you should know better than to harm other survivors with such a romanticized depiction of abuse.”
The conclusion is always the same regardless of your credentials: you’re the wrong kind of X. You’re a danger to other X people. If you want to be the right kind of X and help other X people, you need to delete Y.
Would you let a Moms for Liberty protestor card you on your way to the library? When she stomps your feet and tells you the stories you read make you a bad and dangerous person, would you assume she wants the best for you and your community? Would you nod and promise to wear an “I’m gay” pin and burn your books? Or would you tell her to go fuck a cactus??
Honestly I’m glad to see others sharing this opinion. It’s one I’ve had for a while now.
“As an [x]” feels very… defensive. It’s a pre-emptive defense from a perceived attack, and that has its place. But how we make imagined barbie dolls behave and act isn’t one of those places?
The way I write trans characters is extremely empowering to me, but is probably extremely dysphoria inducing for others and definitely fetishistic. And that sucks for the folks it makes dysphoric, but I’m not going to stop writing what makes me feel good. And I understand why someone would want to basically check my trans card for it, but it’s. Not their business. Magical sex changes make ME feel empowered and I write for Me, for example.
For me, a setting where everyone is just inherently fine with queer stuff is. Idyllic and sweet, but usually unbelievable without worldbuilding behind it! I don’t usually like those stories on their own! I prefer writing and reading stories where queer characters being queer means something and affects their place in society, unless I am specifically looking for the warm fuzzy sweetness of the former category. But if I’m looking for Empowerment? I want the struggle because I want to see them overcome something.
For a lot of people? Bayonetta is a feminist masterpiece and a power fantasy! For me it makes me very uncomfortable! And that’s okay! That doesn’t mean that Bayonetta wasn’t made to be a feminist work it just means that it didn’t resonate with me in particular and that’s okay.
ALT
