#(criticism

Please DO be that 'obnoxious' guy who brings up non-western trans men whenever other westerners start talking about issues of transphobia and misogyny like we don't exist.

A lot of the time, the risks for us bringing it up ourselves is much greater than that of a fellow westerner. Or we may not even be invited to the table to be able to say anything. We genuinely do need others to speak for us.

They might call you 'obnoxious' or 'reaching' but in times like that please remember that we are not a rhetorical tool

Trans men in the global south are REAL PEOPLE. Bringing us up is never 'strawmanning' or 'missing the point' or any other stupid ass excuse because we are not an imaginary 'other'.

It is always a good idea to bring up global southern trans men. And DO NOT let them make you feel guilty about it

these bills are about CENSORSHIP AND MASS SURVEILLANCE. “protecting the children” is a conservative smokescreen and by repeating that narrative, even in contradiction, you are reinforcing it. do not give these far right wingnuts an ounce of credibility. I know you know the words censorship and surveillance.

courtesy of past failures of legislation, it’s increasingly difficult to keep kids away from the dangerous parts of the internet, even in spaces that are supposed to be child safe. do not insult people for struggling to navigate the internet.

kids need opportunities to exist outside of their parents, and the internet is one of the last safe havens left in countries rotting under the weight of industrialization. children are already the most oppressed class in the world. do not encourage parents to invade their kids’ privacy.

again, and I cannot stress this enough, these bills are about CENSORSHIP AND MASS SURVEILLANCE. the goal of these laws is to allow governments to monitor and manipulate huge swathes of the human population. the goal of these laws is to weed out political dissenters and destroy access to information that contradicts propaganda. I do not believe it's a coincidence that this is happening now, in the wake of mass disillusionment with Israel.

Yes, yes, YES! Starting a new post, because this sums up so many of my frustrations with fan crit. Like, Animorphs clumsily attempts to tackle AIDS and slavery reparations and environmentalism and disability justice, and sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't. But at least it tries. AniTV strips all of that out in favor of a far blander "yeerks bad, humans good, we ignore race here" story.

There's this fallacy, where it's easier to criticize a failed attempt than it is a total lack of trying. In the Heights (2021) got smacked up, down, and sideways by critics and fans for its failure to include more dark-skinned characters; meanwhile A Quiet Place II (2021), Venom II (2021), Free Guy (2021), and Black Widow (2021) get no such critiques because they each include Exactly One Black Actor. Scholomance gets review-bombed for "fake" "forced" "diversity" (X) for featuring kids from all over the world, while Mortal Instruments gets a total lack of criticism for its cast having Exactly One Asian Guy (who is half-white).

I vividly recall a media professor ca. 2013 mansplaining to me that, actually, Orange is the New Black is sexist because it shows male characters having power over female ones, and there's no onscreen sex between the Black lesbians. Somehow he didn't feel the need to say this about Breaking Bad, Supernatural, Peaky Blinders, or any other series that went entire YEARS without passing the Bechdel test. No wonder TV shows have again embraced colorblind racism.

Both of these boys and then men are trying to escape their parents' standards for them. Both of them feeling like they can't be anything less than flawless. Shane freaking out about being left in the hallway is about homophobia in sports. It's also about him being Japanese/Canadian and having to work three times as hard to be seen as the same as someone who isn't. Being gay on top of that is too much for him. Ilya's father is a typical Eastern European dad who shuns any emotional complexity and degrades his son for perceived failings.

Being queer isn't something they can simply reconcile. It will cost them their passion and their livelihoods (and means of escape.)

Ilya meets Shane on Shane's terms, meets Shane's needs because he likes Shane. At first it's because Shane is his rival. The one he acknowledges on the ice as the best and he respects him. He then gets aggravated by Shane's perfect French because he likes that about Shane. That he's different from him. And what they have isn't defined because they can't define it. They can't be boyfriends. They aren't together enough to be lovers. And yet, they both soften to this other person who...becomes their person.

Ilya specifically can't be outed because he would be made an example of in Russia. His father would disown him at best. And like all queer kids with shitty dads, he still wants his father to be proud of him.

So he puts distance between him and Shane because it is too easy to care about him and that's a risk he can't take.

Like, it's real easy to say someone is a fuck boy when taking everything out of context. They only meet about three times a year. They know they put themselves at risk every time they do. What is it you think they owe each other at this point? Neither one of them is ready and willing to admit that this is real between them and what that means.