#dicourse

I'm not in the scum villain fandom, but a few mutuals of mine are. And even I saw how Shen Jiu fans often get attacked and singled out by other fans in the fandom for no reason other than making content for their blorbo. So I can understand them getting defensive eventually

TL;DR It's gotten way out of hand and it's time to stop

Okay so originally I wasn't going to say anything, the original issue had nothing to do with e and it wasn't something I was going to comment on as to not drown out the voices of those who were hurt and needed to be heard. Now, however, suddenly the topic has changed and now the original issue is only part of the full picture.

Before I say anything regarding the main discourse I must preface: I am not trying to devalue or invalidate anyone's opinions, thoughts, feelings, or anything of the sort that my brain is incapable of making words for at the moment. I am merely stating my own thought's and conclusions from what I have personally seen, I also don't condone the harassment of anyone involved.

I don't want this to be super long so I'm going to try and keep it short. When the original issue of the quotes around the word system was brought up it was completely understandable for some people to be upset. If someone had referred to one of my beloved characters or myself as "Puerto Rican" it would make me upset as it seems they are taking my ethnicity (a part of myself) and acting as though it doesn't exist. At first glance you could come to this conclusion, the issue with text is that you can't derive any sort of meaning behind it other than whats written, which is why so often I try to clarify in the tags or in the text what I am actually feeling or trying to say as it's very easy to get things misconstrued.

I'm not saying those who came to the conclusion that the use of quotations was malicious are wrong for being upset, or anything like that, it's an easy thing to see especially when it comes to something so personal like an identity so I can completely understand where the people who were hurt are coming from. After those people had spoken out Jojo had issued an apology and explanation, it wasn't super lengthy, but it did give us insight to how this event happened, and how it can be fixed in the future. The event was caused by a linguistic and cultural grammatical misstep, the solution is to be more careful with her wording, and at least from what I saw most people accepted that, and if you didn't thats fine you have a right to not accept someones apology.

My big issue and why I am personally speaking out now is because with this original issue, some people have decided that this is the perfect time to dredge up old beef, or issues and present them as a reason to why we should believe Jojo's apology is insincere and that we should hate her. Now not everyone is doing this, but I am seeing it and I am shocked and appalled by this behavior from one of the more chill fandoms I've been in. I'm going to use a quote of something I said in a discord because I feel that is the best I could phrase it:

as of looking in the LU tag rn I think things have gotten incredibly out of hand to the point where some people aren't even talking about the original issue and are just bringing up things from years ago to be mad at her about

which concerns are valid, but when it comes to things that have happened years ago there has to be a line drawn on whether that behavior has continued or not and as of rn at least for some accusations i have not seen any evidence to that

and another: I think also digging up stuff from the past devalue the progress they've made to actively change its basically like saying "Yeah you've changed but that doesn't matter," it gives like the idea why even change if no matter what you're still going to be attacked for your past.

After the digging up of past actions Jojo issued a second apology, one that most people would not have, it was short, but it addressed the accusations in a sort of all over blanket statement which for a bunch of things that happened over 4 years ago is something I don't have an issue with. I will say that like I said above I think the act of digging up someones past to be mad at them is counterintuitive, I was a completely different person 4 years ago, heck I was a different person 2 years ago, people change over time and to act as though none of that matters and no matter what they can still be harassed and attacked for their past makes all of their progress to becoming a better person mean nothing.

We have gotten two apologies from a creator who made a mistake and has changed it and is looking to be better.

This is more than I've seen from other more popular creators who have done far more serious actions. Accept her apology or don't, either is fine, but trying to dredge up anything you can find so you can tear her down or harass her is something that is unacceptable and it has to stop, right now.

Looking through the tags there are several people who are making excellent points I didn't talk about regarding the issue, there's a whole other more specific bag of beans I didn't even bring up because it's just too much. Two notable people who I think are being civil and are making some good points are @phantom-noir and @war-in-time