Dreams In-Progress

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

Either you're having sex for love, or you're a wh*re

So aroallo people struggle to proudly exist because we're labeled "shallow" or "unavailable" when we don't fit into the lines drawn for us, without us.

We're just as real and just as normal as anyone else, but the constant shame surrounding sex pushes us to label ourselves wrong.

I cannot be the only person who labelled myself aroace despite knowing it wasn't true because I was scared of what others may think of me, even in my own communities.

Well that's bullshit. I'm not going to live in the closet because of others' ignorance. I want to be loud and honest and maybe if I'm lucky, I can help someone else feel just a little bit less alone.

You don't have to be afraid of who you are. Who you are is cool as fuck.

Check out our AO3 collection!

There you can choose from almost 100 works focused on arospec characters, written by arospec creators as part of our fanwork event, Aggressively Arospec Week, all in one place for you to enjoy.

This week on "I Love This Thing So Fricking Much," we spoke with with Lena Barkin, also known as The Fanthropologist, who loves her blorbos - the fictional characters that she finds uniquely fascinating. Find out the whole story by tuning in at the link above or wherever you listen to podcasts!

People commonly defend this practise with "But the audience isn't meant to understand!" or "It's inconsequential!", neither of which actually address a) their assumption that the [ideal Anglo] audience wouldn't understand, or, perhaps most crucially in the context of CCs, b) that this is a failure of accessibility. A hearing person who speaks that "foreign" language will know exactly what's being said. A deaf or HoH person – the people CCs are primarily intended for – who speaks or reads that language should therefore have the exact same opportunity to understand. It very much feels to me like an assumption that we deaf and HoH people couldn't possibly understand any language but English, so there's no point in getting those languages transcribed for us. I hope it goes without saying how profoundly audist that sentiment is.

There is also, I think, a profound misunderstanding or ignorance of Deaf culture at play. Which is to say, CCs in English-language media are written with not only the assumption that the audience will be native English speakers, but that all d/Deaf and HoH people speak English as their first language, so all other languages are as supposedly foreign to them as they are for hearing people. But sign languages are their own distinct language. BSL, ASL, ISL, AusLan, NZSL etc ≠ English (and are indeed different from one another), LIS ≠ Italian, JSL ≠ Japanese, and so on. So, if you follow the captioners' logic to its natural extreme, all non-signed dialogue is "foreign" to many d/Deaf and HoH people and should therefore be labelled [speaks foreign language] / [speaks English] / [speaks own language] / etc. – which is, obviously, a terrible idea that perfectly highlights all the biases implicit in closed captioning.

Part of socializing and having friends is being a good listener even when you don't actually give a shit about the subject.

Your are hurting other people's feelings when you bluntly respond with "Anyway..." and then change the topic.

It can not always be about your preferred topic.

The word genocide stays in your daily vocabulary but you didn't apply it to el-Fasher. As the aid community has begged and now today has sent an open letter begging the United Nations to act to prevent a repeat of el-Fasher in el-Obeid which is under threat of imminent RSF siege, you probably don't even know what country I'm talking about.

See, I've read and thoroughly enjoyed the various posts on the debates and conclusions reached by Jewish people about fantasy subjects and creatures, so that has me wondering...

Does Judaism have any stance on extraterrestrial intelligent life?

I believe this is one of those things that sums to "ask two Jews, get three answers" and "so long as they don't bother us, we'll treat them like any other people outside of our tribe".

We're not Christians, with the whole fixation on "saved souls" and all that (and I have seen stances from Christians on aliens, ranging from "Jesus died for their sins too and we need to convert them too" to "aliens can't exist because Jesus only saved mankind").

Scott Wiener did literally every single thing the Free Palestine movement said was necessary to be a Good Antizionist and it still wasn't good enough.