#crit rambles

Okay so this just in, Skizz apologized /pos

We're going to talk about it, my thoughts on it at the very least. This is coming from a generfluid lesbian latina in AZ.

He seems genuinely apologetic for the whole situation, which is good. For right now, I believe this apology, and as long as things genuinely do change I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Here are the concerns I have with it.

No one I've seen was asking him to get rid of mods *just* because of a different political viewpoint. It would have been one thing if the mods were right leaning, but didn't say anything harmful. The situation would have sucked 10X less if that was the case. But it wasn't just that. The MAGA mods weren't just being casually right wing. They were retweeting transphobic, racist things from everything I've been able to find. With no genuine apologies. One of them ended up trying to cover up her hateful tweets.

It does seem he got rid of the mods, recently based on what he's said.

I'll need to see change before I make any other decisions about Skizz. But for right now at least, I'm going to choose to believe him, if only for the hope I need right now.

I did really like knowing that the topic was discussed throughouly behind closed doors with the rest of the hermits tho, with others explaining to him why his actions were harmful

Yeah I 100% agree. I think, based on what he said there were probably hurt feelings about the mods.

And I definitely think we would not have gotten an apology if the community had let it be swept under the rug (although we definitely had to fight to keep people talking about it tbh).

He encourages posting this on other platforms

But at the same time. It wasn't enough.

I do think he's uninformed and I do want him to grow and learn. And that takes time. But the apology we got also wasn't enough and that leaves me in a weird place.

That's very true, it is a common trope in vampire media (and fantastical genres in general). I think I had just hoped that them creating the vampire function and being able to pick and choose which vampire lore they draw from (and also change up how it works) wouldn't lead into ableist territory.

It is one thing to include characters who are ableist into a story (that's fine and can be good for a story if done right), it is another to make a system that gets rid of disabled people in general so long as you go with it. (Shelby no longer needs glasses to see, which is a disability aid, Owen got rid of his lesions by turning into a vampire).

It... It feels like a cop out of having to write chronically ill / disabled characters in general as well!

And before anyone goes: "well they didn't *mean* to do XYZ."