I've seen a bunch of "fandom etiquette" posts on my dash today and I'm going to say something that is maybe going to be unpopular but;
The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.
And I am not going to mince words here:
A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.
That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.
"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.
So much of "fandom etiquette" seems to be about insulating creatives from Feeling Bad and hostility to any kind of negative feedback is a pretty big contributor to why bigotry festers in these spaces.
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Never getting over Charlie Kirk getting shot in the throat right after he uses it to downplay gun violence. Gotta be a top 3 assassination. Up there with Shinzo getting doohickey'd.
It's on some straight up Greek play shit. Man who uses his voice to justify violence and stir evil for years meets his end as that very violence tears out his throat. Poetic. Captured live from multiple angles. People stole his blood soaked merch to hock and his wife was giddy about sale numbers during his funeral.
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nobody worry too much because they all produce various oils and have different densities of fur to keep them dry and warm as well as seek out shelter under thick vegetation
Is your landlord invading your privacy? Is your apartment heated inadquately? Do your utilities keep getting shut off because your landlord isn’t paying? Have you been trying to get them to repair your dishwasher for five months and they won’t replace the spray arm part even though it’s visibly broken?
You’ve heard of employee unions using collective bargaining to force the bosses to provide better pay and better working condiditions. But did you know if you rent an apartment in an apartment complex, you can do something similar?
It’s called a Tenant Association, and it’s basically a union for renters.
Here’s an overview of the why and how of forming a tenant association
Here’s a more thorough organizing manual
When it comes down to it, you and your fellow tenants are the ones paying your landlord’s salary. Go remind them of that.
It's so awesome cool and progressive that the second result of looking up a trans woman on this site is a dedicated hate blog that specifically states "DNI if you defend this trans woman"
But it's okay guys, they put a sign saying "don't harass the tranny! Just let me collect all the reasons that she is unforgivable in one place :)"
It is incredibly telling that there isnt a massive anti-oneyplays fandom despite Smiling Friends being an equally popular show among tumblr queers and those guys actually doing everything gooseworx has been accused of and more
"She joked about being the next Shadman!" wow that's crazy. Chris O'Neil housed Shadman and actively defended all the vile shit he did on twitter, including lolicon of real actual children. Why is nobody talking about this. Where is the anti oneyplays fan club. Or anti GameGrumps. Or (and this is a hot one) anti Dropout. Why is there only a hate club for the tranny. Why are the hate clubs only ever for the trannies? But of course, "DNI if you make it about her being trans, thats totally not why she became our target"
I would appreciate it if people reblogged this version that specifically calls out that none of the cis men in the same industry are held to the same standard even when they've done worse, continue to do worse and have not shown any sign of changing or regretting their past actions besides "I stopped saying the n word because people would get mad at me" and not because it's racist.
For god's sake the same people that deride Gooseworx on every social media site will sometimes straight up have Max "hotdiggitydemon" "Steven Jewniverse" "Steven N***averse" "Sans from Undertale calls Papyrus the nword" "Still actively racist" Gilardy profile pics with zero self reflection. And I'm supposed to take anything ever said about "holding trans women accountable " seriously? Gimme a break
Arin Hanson def get some of that and more often than not it's because he refused to be an asshole in lockstep with the rest of the Newsground bully squad, it's actually quite fun.
"Wow I can't believe you're criticizing Newsground when that's where you got your start" and him having to go yes I grew out of that. You guys are assholes.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
The "designated survivor" is one of the weirder aspects of America's (very, very weird) political system.
Each year, during the State of the Union address, when both houses of Congress and the President are all under one roof, a single political figure, in the line of succession for the presidency, is spirited away to a hidden bunker, just in case the US legislative and administrative branches are decapitated in a single, spectacular terrorist strike:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_survivor
Initiated during the 1950s, designated survivors are a paranoid relic of the Cold War, but they're also a relic of an era when America was a less chud-dominated, more technocratic land. It's a longtermist sort of procedure, in stark opposition to vibes-based MAGA chaos in which the Mad King makes daily announcements of new wars, tariffs, monuments, and existential threats to the nation.
America's ruling class have always sought an equilibrium between its pure Id of hatred for labor, autocratic yearnings and apocalyptic fantasies, and its patient, scheming Ego, the author of endless FedSoc judicial nominee listings, Projects 2025, and decades-long schemes to overturn Roe and reverse the New Deal.
(Democrats have their own version of this, of course – the endless contest between the McKinsey wing of the party's right and its infinitely embroidered Machin-Synematic Universe.)
The problem is that once the atavistic, impulsive elements of your project escape containment, the resultant turbulence sucks everyone else into their chaotic vortex. How can you plan for anything when you're buffeted by endless stunts, feints, and distractions?
Nowhere is this failure to plan more vivid than in the age distribution of both chambers of the US legislature, its presidential candidates, and its judicial appointments. What's more, this is equally true of the Democrats and the Republicans.
The equilibrium of all of America's key institutions is brittle: legislative majorities are often just one or two seats wide. Key federal circuits and the Supreme Court are knife-edge balances. We keep getting presidential races between septuagenarians and octogenarians.
The question here isn't whether old people can be good at those jobs. They obviously can be. The problem is actuarial: old people are far more likely to die, or suffer severe medical episodes, than younger people. This is a fact of life that every person understands, and the older you get, the better you understand it.
I'm 55. 20 years ago, it was unusual for just one of my peers to die in a given year; now I lose a couple every year. It could be me next (my doctor just informed me that I am cancer free, following excision, radiotherapy and immunotherapy). Anyone who pretends this isn't true is setting themselves and the people around them up for terrible things.
If you're a writer, this means making plans for the smooth management of your literary estate. For the past couple decades, John Scalzi has been my anointed literary executor. He's a great choice: a fabulous writer with a good head for business and a strong handle on my politics and artistic sensibility, whose personal ethics are above reproach. The only problem is that John is a couple of years older than me, which means that he'd be a great executor if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, but not if I keel over with a heart attack in 20 years.
So this year, I added a second executor, Molly White, who is also a fantastic writer, also extremely ethical and also very attuned to my politics and literary sensibilities. Molly is 20 years younger than me, and she has relevant experience: she's also the executor of the literary estate of her great-grandfather (EB White).
In the unlikely event of my untimely death, Molly and John will do a great job running the estate (which mostly will consist of reviewing my agents' recommendations). And if John keels over right after me, Molly will be fine on her own.
Of course, the only reason I need a literary executor is that my kid is only 18. At 18, she's a remarkable, level-headed, ethical young person, but she's not yet fully formed. Literary history is filled with descendants who take over a literary estate and run it in terrible ways. The most notorious example here is Stephen Joyce, grandson of James Joyce and a colossal asshole:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_James_Joyce
The most likely destiny for my literary estate is that I will grow older alongside my daughter, who will mature in ways that make her a perfectly suitable literary executor (in addition to being the beneficiary of my literary estate) and in a few years I'll send a note of thanks to John and Molly and change the paperwork. But in the unlikely, awful event that my kid runs into serious challenges that make me question her judgment and probity, I'll be covered.
That's what planning is all about: thinking through various scenarios, including low-likelihood, high-salience ones that have easy mitigations, and taking appropriate and proportionate steps to avoid disaster.
You know: like squirreling away a designated survivor in a bunker far from DC during the State of the Union.
This is what makes America's political gerontocracy so weird. In their true hearts, the nonagenarian (1), octogenarians (5), septuagenarians (27) and late sexagenarians (7) in the US Senate know that they could keel over at any moment, and that in a 53:47 Senate, this could spell doom for their political project.
Sure, Mitch McConnell might be secretly dead and that's bad and weird. But it wouldn't be exceptional. We're talking about a legislature whose members sometimes disappear for months, only to be discovered in care homes with advanced dementia, while still somehow holding office:
It's a legislature whose most prominent grandees cling to power at the very brink of death's door, long after they can be effective leaders, just so they can anoint their successor during the next election:
Elections have consequences, but special elections, called after the sudden death of an elderly lawmaker, have wild consequences.
Of course, anyone can die suddenly. 15 years ago, one of my dearest friends, a contemporary, went to bed in seeming perfect health and never woke up. He was only 44. I still miss him, every day:
But the likelihood this happening goes up the older you get, and once you cross a certain age threshold, odds rise sharply. If you're part of a political project that's laying and executing long-term plans whose outcomes turn on hair-fine majorities, this should factor into your thinking. The failure to do so can throw everything you've worked for into disarray:
It's not limited to the legislature, of course. The Supreme Court's slide into its role as handmaiden to totalitarianism began when the dying Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to step down, because she wanted her successor to be picked by the first woman president:
The amazing thing here is that RBG made her name as a master strategist, but when it came to this incredibly consequential matter, she set strategy aside for hubris:
Security practitioners know that anyone can be hacked or scammed, and that the biggest vulnerability of all is to be so confident in your own procedures and discernment that you assume it could never happen to you. If you think you can't get scammed, you are a danger to yourself and others:
By the same token, any politician in their 70s or 80s who thinks that they can't suffer a stroke or heart attack or the kind of lapse that makes you freeze up during a presidential debate is a danger to their party, their politics and their nation:
This isn't about how healthy or robust any given politician is or feels; this is about the cold reality of actuarial tables. The older I get, the more those actuarial tables factor into my own decision-making. The fact that our political classes seem to think that they can choose the time and manner of their passing is baffling.
