Whatever

BUT she hurt and betrayed those closest to her without ever allowing others to be able to hold her accountable. The "we just saw her character development in reverse" argument tends to overlook Bismuth. We can argue that what happened to Volleyball and Spinel was when Rose was ignorant and volatile which she seemed to overcome with radicalization. We can argue that Rose only meant well when it came to silencing Pearl or hiding her identity from the other gems. What happened to Bismuth though should make it apparent that Rose refused to confront her own failures.

Rose poofed Bismuth and then hid her for centuries! All her friends had to presume she was missing, corrupted, or worse and Rose chose to never bring her back even after the war or tell anyone where Bismuth really was. All because doing so would expose her actions. She presumably would've kept Bismuth hidden away FOREVER! How little Bismuth's autonomy and friendship mattered to Rose in comparison to preserving her own image and personal peace is nothing short of selfish and cowardly. Something that she has never grown from and hasn't evolved from since before forming the Crystal Gems.

When I saw the trailer, the comedic bit where Toph wants the others to verify if the passed out airbender is attractive and Zuko saying "he is, it's in the bone structure" weirded me out. Maybe I'm making a big deal out of what's supposed to be a funny exchange but I still thought "that's weirdly superficial of Zuko".

The more I saw of this movie, the more it irritated me how... chiseled everyone was. Aang didn't even look like himself beyond just being older. He was too angular and masculine. Everyone was too "hot" but of course a lot of fans enjoy that. I thought maybe I was being a stickler for finding it shallow of the movie to give everyone toned bodies and fleek eyebrows, so it was reassuring to see other PoC noting how the ethnic features were removed and the gaang was essentially turned European.

The cherry on top for me was when Toph bended the most useless armour onto herself, still leaving most of her body exposed--only thinking to shield one shoulder, her forehead, and some of her forearms--with her hair coming loose. It was purely done for aura and nothing more than the writers wanting to see Toph with her hair down and, dare I say, in skimpy armour. I'm sure I'm yucking someone's yum but it genuinely annoyed me how the movie luxuriated in aura farming (never thought I'd use that term in my life) despite the impracticalities.

Mistress inviting Gia Gunn onto her YouTube channel right after she made transmedicalist statements against other trans drag artists should've bothered you

Mistress making fun of Tina Burner and provoking her fans to hate on her because "she's too serious/sensitive" when Tina is AUTISTIC and is literally not able to pick up on or rationalize certain "social ques" should've bothered you

Mistress becoming maliciously fatphobic after losing weight--even if it's just to be a troll--should've bothered you

Mistress persistently ganging up on Ginger Minj when her pathological lying is a compulsive coping mechanism that isn't her place to shame (and is quite frankly pot calling the kettle black) should've bothered you

Mistress bullying children online for content should've bothered you

Mistress instigating a dangerous situation in which a drunk older man got to come onto and sexually assault a young lesbian that Mistress refuses to feel accountable for SHOULD BOTHER YOU

There is a lot of controversy surrounding the mangaka of Go For It Nakamura as people caught wind of Syundei's other works that portray age-gap relationships between adults and minors. People are debating if the response to this revelation was too harsh or if Syundei deserved to be scrutinized at all. What I want to address is the naive expectation that BL writers should keep their fetishes out of their works when yaoi is already inherently fetishistic.

There has been a rebranding of fujoshi culture as a "safe space for cishet women" rather than as a fetish community; that yaoi is actually just a source of escapism from the weight of patriarchy. I understand the oppressive nature of constantly being perceived as a woman and how objectification is inescapable. There is real comfort in being able to just consume something without having to constantly be aware of how women are being watched/dressed/judged/treated/harmed/etc. However, it's misogynistic to just remove women from visibility altogether in order to avoid the chances of bad female representation. Escapism is not activism and I've become deeply frustrated with this self indulgent mentality that privileged women can justify with faux-feminist lingo. If cishet women's consumption of BL is strictly escapism and not fetishistic then why do they turn their nose to lesbian stories? Not only are straight women disinterested in GL, many of them exert lesbophobic and misogynistic ire towards women in fiction (ie. the backlash to a lesbian story in Bridgerton, hate against female characters "getting in the way" of gay ships, the lack of support for women's stories, etc). The use of progressive language to mask fetishism has made us assume yaoi/yuri is a genre based in solidarity and appreciation when in actuality, it centers cishet people's desires and dismisses queer people's feelings.

Despite its fetishistic overtones, yaoi and yuri still depicts gay love and intimacy that provides much needed representation for the queer community. However, we mustn't mistake that just because the genre is about gay relationships, that it is LGBTQ+ media. The exclusion of trans people, the lack of queer community, and the assertion of gender norms makes it evident that the ultimate intentions of BL/GL is to provide a sexual fantasy of gay bodies for the pleasure of straight readers.

I have to play devil's advocate when it comes to the controversy surrounding Syundei because the reality is; Syundei was always making content for fetishists, NOT gays! The crackdown on Syundei for her age-gap fetish is frankly being oblivious to the genre Syundei is partaking in. YAOI IS A FETISH GENRE!!! We were never the target audiences, there was never an objective to portray gay people in a sincere light, and it's why when it came to reacting to Syundei's other fetish, the anime/manga community took her side. We're the ones who are out of line here because we expected authentic representation to come from our voyeurs. We can't control a space that never humanized us, we were always just objects of perversion to these people. What we should focus our energy on is seeking out and supporting works actually written by queer people for queer people. There are plenty of real LGBTQ+ manga that deserve attention and their own anime!

Something missing from the discussion about Hybe excluding and slandering Manon is that there's video of Manon shouting "free Palestine" to a crowd of fans.

I don't think it's over conspiratorial to believe that it could've played a role in her current erasure from Katseye, if not the contributing reason. Hybe is a hyper capitalist company who has repeatedly worked with and sponsored Israeli/Zionist brands. The CEO of the American branch that Katseye is under is expressly a Zionist.

We've witnessed public figures become blacklisted and kicked out of projects for supporting Palestine. Paramount has an entire blacklist of pro-Palestine celebrities, Scream 7 infamously kicked out Melissa Barrera from their cast, Khelani was removed from music venues and pride events, the Epstein Files shows complaints against celebrities like Zayn Malik for supporting Palestine, etc. Even your every day lower to middle class workers lose their jobs over supporting Palestine.

Hybe has been not-so-subtly trying to make their consumers question Manon's likeability so once it's necessary to play victim--like they did with New Jeans--they've already cultivated a bias against Manon that makes her look "lazy and selfish". It is a misogynistic and manufactured hate campaign that has been successfully utilized multiple times (including against Min Hee Jin and members of New Jeans); where celebrity women who expose and sue abusive men become public enemies for their "bad attitudes" and are accused of being "greedy and vindictive". Whether or not they show tangible evidence of their mistreatment, they've already been publicly exiled.

I don't think Hybe never intended to keep Manon in the group, although they failed to promote and treat her equally since the beginning. They're not acting ahead of a lawsuit either. I wouldn't be surprised if Hybe's leaders are so prideful and petty, that Manon simply asserting her boundaries made them bitter enough to punish her for it (I mean, look at how everyone treats Chappell Roan for her boundaries and pro-Palestine activism, many of them actually being bots and fake accounts). But the most legitimate cause to Hybe excluding Manon from their current promotions is her stance on Palestine, which is a taboo and career-endangering stance in the celebrity industry. They're going to push her to the side for as long as they can until she quits the group herself, breaks her contract, and then they'll put her through legal and financial hell for it.