#polyroci

This is always super hard for me...

1. I like that I’m able to enjoy being alone.  Going out to eat or to the movies by myself doesn’t bother me.

2. I like that I’m always keeping myself entertained with daydreams and talking to myself and singing and dancing and generally being a giant dork all by myself.

3. I like that I’m the kind of person that’s always trying to be and do better.  Able to sit down and listen to people different from me to learn about them and where they’re coming from.

4. My hair.  It’s soft and silky and I just love running my fingers through it.  It’s nice.

It is frequently acknowledged that radicalized groups who claim a faith are not representative of the typical example of a believer in that faith. Islam is the most prominent example but there are others. Why then is it not acknowledged that, conversely, weaponized Western Christian Colonialism isn’t really reflective of people who believe in and worship Jesus Christ as is actually recommended in our Bible? 

The suggestion that Christianity APPROPRIATED Judaism for example is a gross misrepresentation of how religious development works and ignores the fact that Jesus WAS a Jew. Anyway, the MET thing is highly typical and doesn’t really offend me, but it is offensive to suggest that Christianity wasn’t taken up and corrupted and used against its purpose just as much as other faiths just because those colonizers were more successful in their campaign of hateful “religious” violence.

Hi. Born and raised Catholic Christian here, actually. I think it’s worth noting that the post, as I was interpreting it, was talking specifically about western Christianity, as well as what my tags were specifying, because I know that western christianity is a very particular brand and things are quite different in other places in the world.

I’m a big supporter of Christianity being used and interpreted the way it’s actually supposed to be in western politics, if people believed and acted what was actually in the Bible: love for the poor, for refugees and outcasts of society, generosity and charity and acceptance of different faiths and peoples. Unfortunately Christianity in North America is usually rooted in very white, western Americanized Christianity, which is none of those things. It’s for a number of reasons (white saviour complex particularly comes to mind) but it is what it is, and while things are changing, it doesn’t erase what history is actually here.

And as I’m obviously not Jewish I’m not going to get into a debate of whether Christianity appropriates the Torah and other Jewish texts. (Given his belief system, Jesus aligned a lot with the Essene Jews, which is really interesting, but that’s a separate discussion as well.) But there is the fact that one of the ways early Christianity gained support in the Roman Empire was by reaffirming that they weren’t Jewish, and has had close and violent antisemitic ties since basically the founding of Christianity. It’s also worth noting that the post never said that Christianity had appropriated Judaic elements (there are many differences between the Torah and the Bible, what’s coming to mind now is the omittance of Lilith from most Christian texts, though), but that parts of Judaism have been appropriated in a “Judeo-Christian” country. And while I’m not educated on any particular details and can’t think of any right now (which is on me, I need to do more research) it would also align with the antisemitic elements that have always existed in Canada and the United States as well.

It also stands to the fact of false equivalence, namely that Christianity exists in a different cultural context then any other religion in the West. Any other religion is largely seen as other, or under suspicion, or grouped together with unrelated others (I’ve seen posts of Sikh and Muslims being mistaken for one another, for example). There are violent Christian groups, like the KKK and many others, and Christian extremists in other parts of the world and here in the states, and yet Christians are never looked upon with the same derision or distrust that many Islamic people face. Christians are never looked down upon for having to take their holidays off, because they already get them off. Even appropriating Christian culture and imagery doesn’t have the same impact—again, in the West—even if someone could, as it is Dominant in society, because Christians have never really been marginalized in the West. 

While many religions and different sects of Christianity faced upheaval and persecution, which is part of the reason immigrants came to America and Canada in the first place, the fact is in a modern context, the most someone might think about another group of Christians—Mormon, Orthodox, Catholic, etc.—perhaps is that they’re a bit quirky, or very religiously obnoxious, but that’s about it. Even though Christianity above any other religious group has had a very violent history in the west with forceful conversion, antisemitism, and in-fighting in England and other countries. But is people and faiths from largely non-Western countries that hold the majority of our current fear, despite them having not stamped violence on ours and other’s history nearly in the same way that we have.

I want to thank you for following me for all this time, and thank you for making it to the end of this post. (I don’t think you’d get any hate for this, but if you do I’m happy to take it down, or if you’d like for me to respond privately, that’s an option too.) But I hope that perhaps my reply has helped you understand a bit better about where that post was coming from, even if by all means you don’t have to agree with it, and even here in my reply there’s a lot more I could have touched on. I also don’t mean to imply by this post that you don’t know all of this information, because you very well may, but this merely where I was also coming from upon reblogging it, and I stand by it as well.

I absolutely love this, but it breaks my heart for Quentin with regard to his own kids. He literally never sees Sara and cannot have his Laurel back.

All the more reason I love this relationship. Because Oliver doesn’t have a parent. His mother and father are both dead. And Quentin can’t bare to see Oliver go through life without some parental guidance. 

@polyroci replied to your post “your fic is cool but you whine way too much about your life. I’ve done...”

Good job responding to this. I'm sorry you had to see anyone being like this, but you must be doing something right to attract the attention of enough people to find someone like this with a lot of audacity and no sensitivity.

I mean, tbh, if that’s what people think of me and how I go about my personal life, I’d much rather they didn’t read my fic at all. but yeah, thanks. I was pretty angry when I was writing this haha.

@smilinstar replied to your post “your fic is cool but you whine way too much about your life. I’ve done...”

aw hun i can't believe the sheer dickishness of this anon's ask. you don't deserve it, and you should never had to have explained yourself like this. you're stronger than you know and you're wonderful *hugs*

I know, like in all my time on this hellsite I’ve never had anything this douchey or entitled. and like I wasn’t even going to post this but I thought I should put it out there for any future dickish anons with similar ideas. [shrug emoji] also my friend you’re wonderful too *hugs back* 

@crollalanzaa replied to your post “your fic is cool but you whine way too much about your life. I’ve done...”

You are without doubt one of the best people I know. That anon is not only rude but without any empathy at all. They no doubt think of themselves as enlightened for reading fic, and believe a smile solves everything. An exceptionally good answer, but you should never be put in the position where you have to detail your life to justify your blog because of an appalling ask. I hope they read your answer and not only leave you alone but consider how to approach people in the future. Take Care xx

thanks croll. the thing is I often write about emotional and psychological vulnerability in my fic so you’d think people who read it wouldn’t have that kind of apathetic mindset. but hey, who knows. I hope this person realises how much this kind of thing can hurt. I appreciate your support <3

@clorkegriffin replied to your post “hey Mina I just saw that anon you got and like... fuck them? your...”

I agree, that person is disgusting and needs to reevaluate their own life if they think it's ok to come into your ask box and say shit like that.

I mean sometimes there ISN’T a poly ship tag that’s recognizable. Also sometimes it’s possible that a fic focuses on a particular aspect that could be under the monogamous ship tag. Like there would definitely be a situation where it was overtagging, but I think it’s also fair to use the mono tag when it’s actually relevant.

I’m going to preface this by saying the tagging system, despite the hard work of the wranglers on AO3, is shit, especially if you are looking for a rarepair that often plays second fiddle in fics for more prominent pairings. And I probably should have mentioned in the op that I was talking specifically about AO3.

That being said, I respectfully don’t agree with that. I’m sorry this is long, but I am not pithy by any stretch of the imagination and I wanted to make sure I was explaining myself completely and without room for miscommunication. 

When it comes to recognizable tags there are two spaces that come to mind. There’s Tumblr and there’s AO3, and that theory doesn’t hold up in either of them.

When it comes to Tumblr people make up tags for their ships all the time. Sometimes, if there are enough people and the ship is new enough, they band together and hold a poll to see which one the majority think they should use. If there aren’t enough people, then it is a more organic process where people who ship it all eventually start using the same tag for a ship. And this happens through the use of the fandom tag or the individual character tags, not by tagging two person ships that happen to be in the poly relationship.

On AO3 it’s literally the simplest thing to tag. The largest obstacle in your way is figuring out which order to put your characters in. Should it be A/B/C or B/C/A or C/A/B? But that’s what the wranglers are there for. They figure out what ship tags have the same people, but are maybe not written the same way, and make sure they all come up when you search that ship, no matter how you spell people’s names. It’s literally what they volunteer to do.

If you are running into the problem of your fic not getting enough attention on AO3 then it’s most likely that it’s such a rarepair that no one is really looking for fic for it. In that case, the answer is simple. You post a link to your work on tumblr, in the fandom and individual character tags. Adding tags for the individual ships within a poly ship is like a straight man going into a lesbian bar hoping to run into a bi woman. It’s not your audience, dude. She’s there for a reason and you are not it.

In the case of a fic only focusing on two characters in a ship and thus tagging it so, I can kind of of see your point. It falls both under the poly ship and the individual ship. However, if you are still bringing the poly ship into it it is a poly ship fic. A bi person doesn’t turn straight if they are with someone of the opposite gender. They don’t turn gay if they are with someone of the same. They are still bi. A fic about two people in a poly relationship is still a fic about a poly relationship. 

And I will admit that I have a history here that biases me. I had a ship that I was super into and then almost overnight everyone was shipping these two in a poly ship. And hey, that’s great. It added in another character that fit really well into the original ship and there were great connections between them all. And people obviously felt comfortable shipping a poly ship. Yay stigma erasure! (at least a little. I know there’s still of a lot of hate for poly ships out there. especially real-life poly relationships.) But it took over the tag. And it’s been spreading into every fandom and a great many of my ships. It’s great that people are supporting poly ships instead of love triangles, but as someone who gets exhausted even thinking about a poly ship because I can barely handle myself and another person, it makes ships tags into something that have to be waded through with very little reward. Every single ship I frequently read fic for, I have to bookmark a result page after actively filtering out the code for poly ships just so I can get fic that is only for that ship. Every. Single. Ship. You see something you don’t care for often enough and you start to get angry at it, no matter how much you may support what it means to people as a whole.