sad pathetic weird hydra

purity politics

“None of my sisters are disposable!” Except for victims of abuse, according to this logic.

I also find it interesting on a rhetorical level that if someone puts up boundaries that exclude rapists, that makes them a “monster,” but a rapist categorically doesn’t get called a monster but a “sister” that must be protected. What the hell kind of standards are those?

I’ve seen this type of social dynamic happen before, both among trans people and among cis people. It’s horrible.

Should we have standards, especially when the legal system often fails?

Absolutely, yes. In fact, because the legal system so rarely delivers justice for sexual abuse, community-based accountability is often the only tool vulnerable people have. To reject that tool outright is to leave victims entirely defenseless.

She conflates all consequences with "exile", losing a job or having your social circle shrink are not automatically "cages." They are consequences. The severity of the consequence should ideally match the severity of the harm. She's treating a request for accountability as though it is the same as a prison sentence, which erases the nuance between a minor interpersonal conflict and a pattern of predatory abuse.

If she actually wanted restorative justice, she would be demanding that the accused take accountability, apologize, get professional help, make amends, and demonstrate changed behavior over time. Instead, Misstrogen simply demands that the community stop talking about it and accept the person back immediately. That is silencing the victims to make the community feel less "messy."

If someone has caused harm and refuses to acknowledge it, refuses to change, the community has a moral obligation to create distance.

And now, when I find myself making the mistake of going on Instagram, I get to see trans men themselves talking about how historically, trans men didn't do anything for the community, and so we need to step up now. Which, first of all, that isn't true, but second of all, if trans men's contributions are lesser, that makes a lot of sense if we listen to that trans woman talking about the trans men she was in community with back in the day. It's very hard to advance the trans cause if you're not alive.

-defines manhood through a cissexist framework and tries to force trans men’s experiences to fit within that framework. denies the manhood of any trans man whose experiences cannot be easily mapped onto cis men.

✓ “trans men ARE real men, but they are not granted systemic access to male privilege, and whatever benefits individual trans men ARE able to access are limited and highly conditional. We should expand our understanding of men/masculinity to better account for their unique experiences.”

how can anyone hate Flowery. he shows Aqua how to hold a knife safely. he teaches Seth how to be more confident. he's Orange's big brother and hypes her up. he's friends with Green, sparring partners with Yellow and dances with Blue.

It feels like the opposite of chapter 3's ending especially - instead of emphasizing a hopeful message about how the main Darkner(s) (I know the flowers are technically in-between Lightner and Darkner but narratively they fill the latter's role) and their feelings matter as much as the Lightners they love, and they should get to be happy and fulfilled outside of just knowing they served a purpose to their Lightners or whatever - we get an ending to the majority of their arcs that's basically just "well they did actually serve Asgore and make him happy in another way (in the Light World), plus they've already lived a lot longer than they were supposed to, so they can all just be satisfied enough with that to accept their world and their dreams coming to an end".

It really is the exact opposite oh what Susie said to Tenna, and she's been painted as correct at every other time in the narrative to view the Darkners as real and important.

But in this chapter, with the resolution they tried to give to Asgore's arc of him accepting he needs to face reality again and start living for himself, it kind of led to Flowery and the rest of the flowers getting swept to the side at the end in terms of their story arc and what resolution it could've had. Like in other media, a character needing to resolve to fully live in reality instead of just dreams, and/or that they need to do things just for the sake of their own happiness rather than for clinging onto others and a past they can't return to can be really good and impactful character arc! But this is Deltarune, a story that's based around how fantasies and dreams can be just as important and real and anything in the "real" world - so to make a character arc like this work, especially for aomeone like Asgore, it basically has to kind of disregard all of that? If his arc didn't end with him still not giving much of a thought to his flowers as "people", still really only viewing them as inanimate plants like they are in the Light World, then he couldn't cleanly come to the conclusion that he needs to resolve his problems by leaving this dream and going back to the "light".

I was thinking throughout the chapter that Asgore's story's theme would be about how even though he's obsessed with thinking he just needs to prove what happened to be happy again, so he can get back all of the love and respect he used to have, that in reality he's what's keeping himself from being happy again. Because even in this world where he does have people that love and respect him, he still just focuses on the past and his quest for revenge instead the potential happiness all around him. And that is pretty much how everything played out yeah, but it just leaves me even more confused on like, why does the culmination of him realizing this flaw in himself not include him making things right with all the characters that have directly represented how he treated his family in the Light World?? I thought that would've been an important part of showing that he's actually learned his lesson and is going to do better. The closest thing we get to some kind of payoff for the flowers in that conflict is the last conversation Asgore has with Flowery, but that really only focuses on Flowery's mistakes in how he treated Asgore instead of the other way around. And look, while it was very funny to see Asgore realize that maybe the discomfort he's felt from Flowery's advances is how he's been making his ex-wife feel this entire time, I don't think their relationship is similar enough to Toriel and Asgore's to make that comparison.

I know Flowery gets the reassurance from Ralsei at the end that he really did help Asgore and make him happy by being a flower he could care for, but (disregarding for now my thoughts on that being the message he's given at all, since there's a lot of elements at play with Ralsei being the one to say it + their complicated relationship with Flowery + I can't know writer intent for certain all the time) why does it have to be Ralsei that gives Flowery that assurance? In the timeline I know it's because Asgore already got snatched at that point, but I mean narratively. Especially with the other flowers that weren't at any fault in their interactions with Asgore, why don't we see him even give them any parting words? Why are they still only being treated as representations of Asgore clinging on to the past when we've gotten to know each one as a person with their own personality and interests and dreams?? Why does their pain seem to have such little importance by the end when almost every other chapter has made such a point for the ruling Darkners in each world, that even if they're misguided and sometimes cruel, their motives and their pain still matter??

I don't know, maybe all of this was made to feel unsatisfying and contradictory to the rest of the game's themes on purpose. I mean Asgore is definitely someone I can view as an unreliable narrator, so maybe we're going to revisit all this down the line and learn that he 100% was teaching himself the wrong message here. But since he got snatched and we have no idea when we'll get to see him again, I don't know if there will be time for that kind of thing. So for right now with the narrative framing not really giving us a reason to doubt Asgore's words, it just feels like his arc is meant to leave us with the conclusion that yeah actually, the Light World should be prioritized over the Dark World, it's not good to cling onto dreams and fantasy and you need leave behind that behind to grow and actually live your life.