#absativelybadical

A coat of arms for my long-time friend and comrade turbo-mediocrity! The colours are taken from a flag of his own design, with a minimalist shield shape. The central creature he dubbed the “cthulion”, for it draws from H.P. Lovecraft’s squid-headed elder god (representing his fondness for cosmic horror and general bleakness) and the lion (symbol of nobility and authority in his country, The United Kingdom). It’s flanked by two honeybees, symbolic of Manchester, his hometown and a major part of his identity.

Done for my old roommate, this coat of arms draws from the flag of Brazil (his home country) and especially the heraldry of the state of Parana (his home state).

The subdued orange-red i from the latter emblem, as are the thick black borders, and the Parana pine and mate plants represent the state identity and his passion for forestry and herba mate tea. The sun, source of life, light, warmth, and attributed spiritual and moral significance in many cultures, enshrouds the helm of a green knight, protector of natural splendour. The hawk or eagle astride the Parana shield has been substituted for a dragon; both the knight’s helm and this reference his love of fantasy video games and D&D.

A coat of arms done for my old buddy twitchy-one! The simple palette and shape of the shield, with an understated background design and emblem, is based upon her down-to-earth nature. The guinea pig is her favourite animal, and one she has a particular affinity for. The dramatic flourish of the angel wings reflects her medical training, her empathy, and her penchant for fascinating (and often winged) roleplaying OCs.

A coat of arms done for my mother.

The shield shape, helm, and motto were passed down from our ancestor Adrien Trudel, who was knighted in France. The colours reflect her nature tapestries and paintings, often done with somewhat surreal and whimsical pastels. The waves reflect her love of the sea, the golden maple tree her love of nature and her Canadian patriotism. The gold-and-silver sun and moon, as well as the tree, reflect her new-age spiritualism.

A coat of arms done for geraltsbeard, as thanks for always being so great to work with on commissions!

She’s fond of blue, especially teal, so I stuck to variations of that. I emphasized artistry and detail in the choice of shield and the gilding along the edges, as well as the banners. The symbols upon the shield reflect elements of her self-image, as well as her own digital artistry.

A coat of arms done up for skeleton-bat, depicting a few of their favourite symbols atop a beetle carapace in the colours of the asexual flag!

Well, having been blocked by sunquail for disagreeing too prominently with a toxic mindset (which I was pretty down for at this point, to be honest), I’ll address @agouti here. I’d “stay in my lane”, but since Tumblr’s a social media site and you posted it publicly, sunquail, you turned into my lane.

If the terminology co-opts an emotion, feeling, or relationship I am party to, why shouldn’t I have “the right” to argue about them? Not that I think language should be parceled out to people based on their demographic intersections to begin with, really, but your argument doesn’t even make sense within a typical social justice construct, at least not to me. Does that mean that non-whites who find certain denonyms derogatory, and don’t wish to have them applied to them, can’t voice this displeasure?

As for @sunquail​ blocking me... as I said, I’m fine with that. While I admire their artistic sensibilities, I knew I’d be blocked as soon as I opted to reply to their little “call out” post of that anti-SJW who started the “friendship” meme. Their original reblog on the matter looks something like this:

As you can see, it follows the same poisonous mindset that I, in earlier posts, have taken issue with sunquail about. Essentially, a person said something that sunquail found disagreeable. This was something as understandable as saying that a ‘queerplatonic” relationship, which can be experienced by anyone as stated in its own definition, might just be a deep friendship. This same individual posted that a “platonic date”, which is just a dinner with a friend, might not been the domain of queerdom or non-heterosexuality. I hold these same views (though I fully acknowledge the legitimacy of asexuality, or people simply not being interested in sex or romance whatever their stated orientation).

sunquail holds with the notion that people who don’t respect the legitimacy of these terms are bigoted, with “shitty” and “wrong” opinions. They would prefer you unfollow them, and notify them so that they can unfollow and block you, so that sunquail can live in a reaffirming little bubble of like-minded people and never have to so much as encounter a dissimilar viewpoint. I take umbrage with this, because that sort of mentality is what leads to myopic little communities (online and in real life) where people begin to live in their own delusional pocket dimensions, drowning out reality with a chorus of mutual reassurances that they are infallible.

Now, there are other things sunquail believes that I, personally, find ridiculous-- multiple systems and kintypes and such. This isn’t about that, though. This is about the fact that, when sunquail was having difficulty actually justifying taking such a strong stance on such a minor and seemingly contrived issue, and cutting off even unrelated contact with people because they didn’t share that view... sunquail could not. sunquail instead posted a few mildly-insulting posts assuming my sexuality, insinuating that I was “skeevy”, a “dick”, and had “crappy” opinions, and then went silent on the matter...

Until, of course, they were able to dig up “evidence” (unsubstantiated claims from the Tumblr call-out culture rumour mill) that the originator of this meme which had so offended sunquail’s sensibilities was a pedophile. See those tags in the above image again: how sunquail immediately latches onto this dubious assertion, presumably having done no research into its veracity, and then attempts to imply that this alleged pedophilia is SOMEHOW CONNECTED to not believing “platonic dates” and “queerplatonic relationships” are somehow distinct ideas related to identity politics or sexual orientation instead of regular old friendship. In essence, because sunquail saw someone on the internet say that one person who feels differently about “platonic dating” wants to diddle kids, sunquail can safely disregard everyone who holds that viewpoint (or really any viewpoint sunquail disagrees with) as a pedophile or disgusting garbage monster of some ilk.

By the way, I looked into it. It seems @steven-universe-official likes futanari porn (problematic to some, but hardly illegal, or immoral by most liberal standards), porn of video game characters (on the internet? outrageous!), and once used an explicit image of a grown-up Inkling from Splatoon as a profile pic. That’s it. If there’s some secret pedophilic past to steven-universe-official, I apologize and rescind my defence but... If this is it, I can see why some people might take umbrage, but calling them a pedophile is ridiculous, and calling someone a pedophile so that you can feel superior to me is the grossest goddamn thing I’ve seen recently, at least barring alt-right shit and the President of America.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? This toxic attitude, this urge to block out criticism and to personally attack and discredit those who disagree with you? That’s how alt-right hives of scum and villainy function. They invent persecutions and conspiracies, and spread rumours to discredit and denounce their perceived enemies. They attack or banish anyone who so much as thinks out of line, or dares to question whether or not every single idea they think is correct. They make bold statements about the nature of society, language, reality, and if you question them they declare you “cuck”, “degenerate”, or some other memeworthy catchphrase.

Or, to borrow from sunquail, “shitty”. “skeevy”, and a “dick”. Or, if you really irk sunquail, a pedophile. And once sunquail (or any number of other alt-left, super-SJW bloggers who think like them) denounces an idea or a person in such terms, everyone and everything connected to them needs to be cut away like a cancer. Discussion and understanding are impossible. They don’t want to speak about it, think about it, or encounter it ever again. They remain insulated from the world at large, and they build this buffer out of protected linguistic artefacts tied to either real maters of sexuality, gender identity, culture, and ethnicity, or else to fringe internet fads.