really important lesson from Sailor Moon that a lot of people don’t pick up on: if you know a girl who’s lazy, whiny, immature, and wants to waste all her time playing video games–it might be because she’s the reincarnated princess of a forgotten mystical kingdom so show some respect.
FOSTA seems to have weakened the natural resistance of fandom and internet culture at large to the US’s broader puritanical, anti-sex culture. The purity movement formally began in the ’90s within evangelical culture as a way of normalizing an abstinence-only approach to sex, especially among teens. In the modern era, the language of this movement has converged with that of trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who enact a regressive approach to sex and gender expression.
“If you go into certain radfem forums, you’ll see language mirrored one-to-one,” Aburime told me, describing the way TERF rhetoric overlaps with and sometimes infiltrates fandom spaces. “It’s almost like a game — slipping some ideology secretly” into a fannish experience. “It’s misinformation under the guise of activism.” Like the US’s larger current moral panic over drag shows, LGBTQ people, and “groomers,” fandom’s culture has regressed toward sexual repression, attacks on sexual minorities, and censorship of art made by marginalized people. The shifts happening in fandom and across the internet help exacerbate this larger cultural shift.
You’re not immune to being the bully btw. You’re not immune to being in the wrong
“But i’m-” there is no identity or state of being that makes you immune to hurting someone. You can be convinced that you are in the right for doing so. You can be convinced that you’re defending someone by doing so. You have always got to examine if you’re taking pleasure in hurting someone or if you’re actually doing something good.
[Image text: there’s actually no political label or identity that absolves you of doing harm.]
And you will ALWAYS do more good helping people who need it than trying to punish people you think deserve it.
I honestly feel like the proliferation of LED headlights was the canary in the coalmine for the general attitude we see in the political climate these days and i’m not even remotely kidding
Very much in line with the attitude of “this choice will marginally improve the way I move through the world and make everyone else’s experience SIGNIFICANTLY worse, but I don’t really care, based simply on the fact that I am allowed to do it and there’s nothing they can or will do to stop me” ya feel me?
Concept: a D&D adventure where the party stops to rest at a village inn where they seem to be the only guests. The village appears prosperous and well taken care of, but its inhabitants are strangely morose and blunt-spoken. Whether the party decides to investigate or attempts to move on, it quickly becomes apparent that something is terribly wrong: any effort to initiate violence or utter untruth fails as the offender is wracked with terrible pain, unkind words stick in the throat unspoken – and worst of all, anyone who attempts to leave the village becomes confused and finds themselves coming back the way they came. When (politely) questioned, the villagers will say only that the party must speak to the wizard whose tower lies to the east.
Upon reaching the wizard’s tower, the party is met by a slender, youthful-looking man with an unnaturally deep voice, who greets them with distracted courtesy, and – after making brief introductions – reveals that he knows why the party is there, and that it’s indeed all his fault. Thirty years ago, the wizard attempted to cast a blessing of peace and prosperity over the village, but the spell went awry: the enchantment proved to be much more powerful and long-lasting than intended, and its notion of what constitutes a breach of the peace far more expansive. Not only does it prohibit physical violence, but also insults, lies both overt and of omission, and simple failures of courtesy. Even leaving the village seems to be construed as an act of abandonment, and therefore of emotional violence.
Luckily, the wizard believes he’s discovered why the enchantment has become a curse. Though it was intended to ensure that people would be kind to one another, it ironically rendered its own fulfillment impossible, as the villagers began to treat each other well out of fear of reprisal rather than true good will. A sufficiently great act of genuine kindness, unalloyed by self-interest, would shatter the enchantment in an instant – but how can such a thing be brought about, in a place where all have been made strangers to love?
