Alkonium

I never thought that I would ever see something that I agreed with printed in the “World Socialist Web Site” but here we are.

My most recent example of this was with HBOMax. I was fully ready and willing to tack on another streaming service to my monthly finances since it seemed that HBOMax was going to have a lot more content that I was interested compared to, say, Disney+.

So it drops, I'm ready to look into it... And I'm unable to get it. Why? All through my house I have Roku sticks: they're the easiest for my mother to use and I like being able to easily stream stuff on a TV. The company that owns Roku has decided to strongarm both HBOMax and that service that CBS made because they want a piece of their subscription-revenue, i.e.: If you want those services you not only have to pay HBO or CBS, you ALSO have to pay a secondary fee to Roku.

HBO and CBS said 'Lol, fuck you', and, thus, no HBOMax for me.

Oh, I could get it for my laptop but why the fuck should I pay for a streaming service that's locked to one medium. That's one of the reasons why shit like Quibi is such a fucking joke.

When netflix buys the streaming rights to something, that means the first episode will not become available until like, a month after the final episode airs in Japan. The fansubbers have torrents available within about six hours, and the quality of the translations is actually better in many cases, so why the fuck would anybody pay extra to wait around for a worse product?

the original saber and what people usually refer to when they say ‘saber’. her identity is arturia pendragon, or king arthur except a girl basically.

saber alter. arturia but with depression. lacks ahoge and has lighter hair.

santa alter. saber alter but pretending to be santa.

saber lily. arturia but young and idealistic. doesn’t actually make canon sense but its ok because she’s cute. wears ponytail instead of braided bun and ahoge points up instead of down.

saber lancer and saber lancer alter. arturia but in a different class. saber and lancer are both class names so that terminology doesn’t actually work normally but ‘saber’ has become synonymous with arturia at this point. has longer bangs and also huge boobs for bullshit reasons.

saber nero, or red saber. her identity is nero claudius caesar augustus germanicus. unlike with arturia they didn’t even come up with an excuse for why she’s a girl. her hair is more vibrant gold and the bangs make that arc at the top.

nero bride. also called saber bride. the game insists that this is a completely normal bridal outfit.

saber of red. not to be confused with red saber. her identity is mordred. i don’t think there’s really an excuse for why she’s a girl either we just roll with it at this point. probably the only saberface who has a good reason to be one. has spikier hair and braids on the sides.

sakura saber. her name is okita souji. literally completely unrelated to all other sabers. no explanation whatsoever for why she’s a girl. made as a joke but well liked nonetheless. hair is pinkish and shorter in the back than the others.

mysterious heroine X. originally from an old aprils fools joke. her goal is to destroy all saberfaces. literally just arturia wanting to get rid of the competition.

Violet Evergarden

Alright. Gather ‘round children and let me tell you the stories of some of the worst cases of cyberbullying I’ve seen in a long time: the ‘popping bottles’ post and the ‘feudal lord and handmaiden’ meme, complete with links.

So @avatarskorra made an untagged personal post the day before the finale with the phrase ‘we be popping the biggest bottles when Makorra happens tomorrow.’ It wasn’t actually meant in seriousness and was an inside joke between her and another user, largely because basically everyone in the fandom (including Korrasami shippers) accepted the inevitability of either a Makorra ending or a ‘Korra ends up single’ ending given how Book 4 had progressed. Korrasami actually happening was not on anyone’s radar, even the serious Korrasami shippers.

Fast forward to a couple of days after the finale. A Korrasami shipper found the post on her blog (because her blog was one of the recommended blogs in the makorra tag at the time), reblogged it and mocked it, and made it go viral. She was bullied viciously over the incident, sent death threats, told to kill herself, sent messages that said she was homophobic trash, and basically mocked to high heaven for it. For the first month or two, it was mostly by Korrasami shippers. Then somehow the post got out of the fandom proper and onto tumblr as a whole, where people who never even watched the show started mocking the post and sending her hateful messages. She is still receiving those messages a full year later.

On the “feudal lord and handmaiden” meme: so let’s rewind back to about…I guess it was March or so. Maybe April. A non-native English speaking Makorra shipper who didn’t live in the West made a poorly thought out and poorly worded analogy about Korra and Asami’s relationship that compared it to that of a ‘feudal lord and a handmaiden,’ basically stating that in the Korra/Asami relationship, Asami acted like a handmaiden to Korra and did ‘whatever she needed done whenever she needed it done’ and was basically only there as a character (by Season 4) to help Korra, etc etc. Basically a post that had a legitimate point in some ways but was very poorly worded, in poor taste, had homophobic undertones, and used a lot of social justice buzzwords like ‘heteronormative’ and stuff because the girl wasn’t actually familiar with how they were used in the West and thought it would help her case. It wasn’t an okay post, but that still doesn’t justify the reaction that happened because of it.

So there was some lowkey fandom drama about it; Makorra and Korrasami shippers alike called her out on it, though the Makorra shippers were exceedingly more polite and willing to educate her on why what she said was wrong. The Korrasami shippers basically mocked her to high heaven, called her homophobic as hell, and started sending her anon hate and death threats. A day or two later, some asshole Korrasami shipper submitted the post to genderoftheday, who made a post saying that ‘today’s gender of the day is: feudal lord and handmaiden.” The post gained 30K notes in two days and exploded onto tumblr as a whole. The entire meme was rooted in hate and the harrassment of a shipper. The girl got tons of death threats, anon hate, messages telling her to kill herself….and the Korrasami shippers laughed the entire time and defended that. And very few of them called out the shitty behavior of the Korrasami fandom during that time.

And if you don’t believe me, I have the proof in my tags: these posts have the bare bones basics of the whole thing.

And both of those things barely touch the surface: Korrasami shippers calling Makorra and non-shippers homophobic/biphobic just because they didn’t ship Korrasami, telling Makorra shippers that they “weren’t really LGBT” and/or “weren’t really POC” because they didn’t ship Korrasami, constantly crosstagging and throwing hate around, lecturing us about how Makorra was “abusive” and how we shouldn’t ship it, the constant bullying and name-calling…the list goes on and on, honestly.

So I was thinking to myself, “what’s the most depraved act ever committed in the history of fandoms?” I think I’ve narrowed it down to two.

1. That person who made needle cookies to feed to the Undertale artist because they didn’t like their ship.

2. Fans blackmailing the Voltron: Legendary Defenders crew to make their ship canon.

But it’s a big, dark world out there with some evil stuff in it, so if anyone wants to reblog this, including details and stuff. I have a weird fascination with just how awful people can be for the most inane of reasons.

Me: My pills make me not want to die tho

They: You shouldn’t want to die, that’s not normal

Roxy Lalonde from Homestuck^2-Nonbinary

Status: Alive

So, no, you can’t just casually refer to people as things like “privileged” any more, and expect them to not feel estranged. They know what you and your peers mean by that. They know the implications. It’s not just a simple analysis to them, and you shouldn’t be surprised when they get defensive. 

But they’re probably not prepared to let those things go as pejoratives. Because they’re afraid of the same estrangement. Because they’ll get painted as a “centrist”, or a “liberal”, or even a “conservative” (the horror) if they recognize that being born a certain way isn’t evil, and that how you treat people is what matters. 

As it’s practiced now, it’s a form of means-testing to determine whether someone is Worthy™ of being allowed to eat certain foods or wear certain clothes, getting or keeping a job, listen to certain music, write certain literature, be treated like a human being, or so on and so forth.

Christianity has original sin. Social justice has “privilege.” At least there’s a way to get rid of original sin.

Born with the wrong chromosomes, skin color, or sexual orientation? Nope, fuck you! You’re marked for life.

It’s clear what these people are saying when they use words like “privileged”, “straight,” “cis”, “white”, “man”, “sexist”, “racist”, “bigot” or “-phobe.”

What they’re really saying is “infidel” or “heretic”.

CONFESSION: