Before we shout “no more man movies!” after seeing Wonder Woman, don’t forget men of color don’t have a lot of representation either. So supporting Aquaman, Black Pather, Cyborg, and Miles Morales movies does not make you less feminist.
White feminism always forget about men of color and even women of color.
We should shout “BETTER MAN MOVIES” instead. Men with feelings, men who are sensitive, men who are gay, of color, multinational, multilingual. More movies about complex men and complex women.
Every time I see a ‘modern au’ ft a character that has some sort of limb replacement like a metal arm or w/e and the ‘cool au version’ of it is a sleeve tattoo I literally want to reach through the screen and slap some sense into whoever posted it
They got a prosthetic in canon they gonna get a prosthetic in the au!!!! Because, I know this is a little far-fetched, but people who need prosthetics actually exist!!! In real life?! What a coincidence?!
Also you want cool prosthetics??? They totally exist
Want your character to have a cool prosthetic in the modern day?
steampunk? check
#aesthetic? Floral?
avant garde?
cyberpunk?
there are no excuses for erasing canonical disabilities
You can literally replace somebody’s meat limb with anything you want WHILE NOT BREAKING CANON IN THE SLIGHTEST. What sort of twisted mind you’d have to have to reject such a wondrous chance.
“But what’s worth more than gold?“
“Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren’t you worth more than that?”
I believe that there are people who truly dislike romantic gestures, in the same way that there are people who truly dislike sweets. And it’s certainly true that a lot of what passes for “romance” in our broad cultural definition—the Jumbotron proposal, the bed covered in rose petals—has been neatly split from genuine emotion, like a painted eggshell blown clear of its guts. It’s a charade of romance, a mask we give straight men to wear when they’re frightened or confused by showing their naked face. I truly did not want that, and I still don’t, and I never will. Being dragooned into acting as a partner in these romantic pageants is like having one of those dreams where you’re hauled up unprepared on stage.
But attentiveness, consideration, compliments, small and large kindnesses, feeling truly loved, having someone put you first while you put them first because you’re in cahoots to make each other’s lives easier and better: most people do like that, when it’s thoughtful and sincere. It’s here, more than in the big gestures, that romance lives: in being actively caring and thoughtful, in a way that is reciprocal but not transactional.
And yet, for most of my life, I never would have asked for or expected such a thing. Many women wouldn’t, even the ones who secretly or not-so-secretly pine to be treated like a princess. It’s one thing to fantasize about a perfect proposal or an expensive gift; that’s high-maintenance, sure, but it’s also par for the course. It’s asking something from a man, but primarily it’s asking him to step into an already-choreographed mating dance. But asking to be thought of, understood, prioritized: this is a request so deep it is almost unfathomable. It’s a voracious request, the demand of the attention whore.
Women talk ourselves into needing less, because we’re not supposed to want more—or because we know we won’t get more, and we don’t want to feel unsatisfied. We reduce our needs for food, for space, for respect, for help, for love and affection, for being noticed, according to what we think we’re allowed to have. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we can live without it, even that we don’t want it. But it’s not that we don’t want more. It’s that we don’t want to be seen asking for it. And when it comes to romance, women always, always need to ask.
So generally, I’m a good internet citizen, and as a rule, I don’t read the comments. On anything. Ever. With some of the publicity that the UfYH book has been getting lately, though, I’ll admit to briefly losing reason from time to time and reading some comments. And there’s one kind of comment I keep coming across that makes me want to scream:
“This is so stupid. I mean, it’s so easy. Just clean up your house. No need for lists or tricks. Just clean it.”
“Can’t this whole article be shortened up to: don’t be a slob?”
“Ugh, how hard is it these days that we need all these ways of telling people how to clean?“
And I always refrain from responding, because I haven’t completely taken leave of my senses, but here’s what I always want to say:
“If you think it’s easy, then this isn’t for you.” That’s it. If you think it’s easy, or stupid, or unnecessary, UfYH wasn’t meant for you. If you think articles and books about cleaning are pointless, well, I’m not sure why you read them except to be a jerk about it in comments. It’s meant for everyone else. For people who don’t know how to clean. Or who don’t know where to start. For people who can’t do it the way they were taught because that takes energy or mobility that they don’t have. For people who are overwhelmed. Or ashamed. It’s OK to be any or all of those things, no matter what sanctimonious strangers on the internet say. If you’re any of those things and you’re here, you’re using the resources you can find to try to make things better for yourself. Isn’t that the point of the internet (well, that and cute animal gifs)?
Screw those jerks who think that because it’s easy for them, that it’s easy for everybody. It’s not. Don’t let them fool you into thinking you’re somehow lesser in any way because you don’t innately know or instinctively do this stuff. There are way more of us than there are of them; we just usually keep quiet about it for any number of reasons (shame, fear, judgment, frustration…). They can go feel smug about their clean houses or whatever somewhere else. Now, go clean, be awesome, and don’t read the comments.
It is not a job. It is not school. It is not a contract. Participation in fandom is voluntary and it is not binding (commissions and paid work aside).
Yes, within fandom you should be bound by some sense of ethics or general decency: don’t steal art and fic, don’t willfully deceive people, don’t be a jerk or a garbage human, and so on and so forth. But everything else? The writing fic and the doing and the participation? It is voluntary.
So if you are writing a fic and you’re seven chapters in and you have eight chapters to go and you’re just tired and you don’t want to do it any more? You can stop. If you’ve been running a blog and writing about every single episode of every new anime show that’s come out and you can’t for three weeks? Don’t. If you told your 5 billion followers you were gonna post a piece of fanart and you’re just sick of it and you don’t want to do it any more? Give it up.
Sure, people will be disappointed and upset and some will complain. But life is disappointing and upsetting sometimes, and it goes on, and no one can sue you for not finishing a fic that they were enjoying the hell out of for free. No one can accuse you of not living up to the terms of your contract when you don’t post that fanart you mentioned three weeks ago. Because fandom is voluntary. It’s something that you participate in because it’s fun or fulfilling or important to you, and when it stops being those things, you should stop, too.
You are not bound by the asks in your inbox. You are not bound by comments on a fic or a piece of art. You are not bound, in fandom, by other people’s disappointments or their expectations.
Fandom is voluntary. Don’t let people pressure you into thinking that it is anything else.
Today I was chatting with a coworker who I knew had been in an abusive relationship in the past. She was laughing as she told me and another coworker about how her ex never let her leave the house. Like she was for real cracking jokes about his jealous rages and how she wasn’t allowed to so much as set foot outside their door if he wasn’t with her, and the way she was telling it was funny, so we laughed along. “That’s why I enjoy doing the little things now, like taking the bus and going to the bank,” she said, and we all giggled because who likes public transportation and doing errands, right?
Then she got serious for the first time since the conversation started, it lasted only for a few moments, but I will never forget the one sentence that she said without smiling: “I’m going to die before I let that happen to me again.”
There was also this one rape victim whom a relative of mine represented in court. The rapist’s lawyer tried to discredit her by pointing out that she’d laughed while giving her testimony. She was eighteen years old on the witness stand, telling a judge and a room full of people about what had been done to her. She giggled because she was embarrassed about having to describe the graphic sex acts, and she nearly lost her case because of that.
I have classmates who laughed while telling me about old men who stole kisses from them. Who made jokes out of stories about their boyfriends screening their messages and forcing them to do things they didn’t want to do. I have known girls who were molested and manipulated for years, who shake their heads and snicker at their own past selves, how could I have let him do that to me, I was so naive, hahaha. This one woman reenacted for me, complete with dramatic gestures and voice impersonations, how her ex-husband who was under a Temporary Restraining Order scaled the gate of her house with a gun, and how she’d locked herself in her bedroom and screamed at the police over the phone to come NOW. Both of us were in stitches at the end of her tale, clutching our stomachs in mirth.
Just because they laugh doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
I can laugh about my abusive ex now because I’m not with him and will never have to let him near me again. I also sometimes wake in a cold sweat because I dreamed that I didn’t leave him. Laughing about trauma is an odd coping skill, but it is super common because it helps people stay sane in the face of awful things. We laugh to keep from crying.
“Just because they laugh doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
There's a Mirror on the Wall 