@aph-japan / aph-japan.tumblr.com
[image description: tweet by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg (@TheRaDR) from 12/2/18, 9:44 AM saying ‘We need diverse representation not only so every kid can see themselves as the hero of the story, but so every kid can understand that *other* kinds of kids are *also* the heroes of the story.’ id end]
I might have mentioned this before, but developments I am genuinely glad of in fandom over the last couple of decades:
I mean, don’t get me wrong, fandom today is no picnic; it’s not like homophobia or sexism have gone away entirely (and to an extent they’ve gone underground, which complicates things), and of course we have the new puritanical backlash, which can sometimes be even more complex to challenge. But fandom back in the day was far from perfect, as well, and some of the ways things have changed are a real breath of fresh air.
Bringing this back around because a) it started getting more notes than anticipated, so I thought it might be worth a rerun and b) someone tagged it #fanthropology and I cannot believe I never thought of that word, it is glorious.
Japan and Greece getting angry together.
hi! i love post-level reblog controls, very good feature. i saw in the teaser for it posted a while ago that there were originally "people you follow" and "only you" options, and i was wondering if those would ever be added? i think those would be lovely additions to the feature!
Hey there, @soulofazazel.
Thanks for this question, and we couldn’t agree more—it’s a fantastic idea. We can say it’s on our wish list, but we can’t say when we might get the chance to start work on it. We’re sorry we don’t have anything more solid to offer right now, but keep an eye on @changes for any updates.
This is great feedback. Thanks also to @galatoma for getting in touch to ask the same.
Best,
—George (Tumblr Engineering)
FAVORITE HETALIA QUOTES: 22/? APH France in The Beautiful World, Episode 5, subbed
this episode+quote was adapted from the manga strip of the same name!:
Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros Movie (2023)
Hear me out here.
We're not fucking rare Pokemon and you bastards have been misdiagnosing or ignoring us for generations and we're demanding to be helped.
So, FYI you guys, sometimes if you go to your favorite writers and flail at them a lot about how much you love their fics with lots of specific examples, they will let you read thousands of words of their unpublished WIPs and you can flail even more. Also sometimes after that you get to be friends, too, and help them come up with ideas. And vice versa! This is pretty much the best thing in the world and it is called fandom.
THIS. SO MUCH.
Logging out of the internet and volunteering at your local lgbtqa shelter/youth groups/center etc bc its 1000x more productive than your sorry excuse of “activism” on the net over this useless discourse
Seriously though, it’s both weird and kind of concerning that people on tumblr feel entitled to other people’s personal information.
There seems to be this idea that if you don’t publicly expose every single detail about yourself, then you’re “hiding something” or “keeping secrets” or whatever.
I’ve seen it time and time again on this website, and honestly, this is a very toxic attitude to have. You are NOT entitled to other people’s personal information. What information a person is willing to share is entirely up to that person, and you have no right to demand that they hand over information they are unwilling to share.
We all have a right to privacy.
If it would be inappropriate or rude to treat a stranger a certain way offline, it’s still inappropriate or rude to treat them that way online.
Online life is real life. The people you speak to online are real, the things you say to them are real, their feelings about those things are real, the rules of basic respect and common decency are the same. If you would never in a million years consider treating a person “in real life” a certain way because you know that that behavior is wrong and uncalled for, then it’s no more acceptable to treat someone that way online either.
People who identify as both bi and pan are super badass and they have all my love
Wait...i always thought the q in lgbtq was for queer??? Am i wrong? And why is it considered a slur?
This was exactly my reaction when, in 2015, a 15yo on Tumblr came and sent me a load of hate for being “an OMG ACTUAL ADULT” calling myself ‘queer’ and using ‘queer community’.
Like, how to put this. In Australia since the early 90s, ‘queer’ has been the accepted term to call that community. It’s a mainstream word. We say ‘queer theory’, ‘queer community’, ‘queer organisations’, etc. Another Australian who words for the government said it’s a perfectly acceptable term to use in policy documents and funding applications. Here, in Australia, queer hasn’t been a slur at any point in my life. The only Australians I’ve ever come across who think it’s a slur are people who spend too much time around American youths on social media.
I did a post about the international queer community, it got 5-7k notes (ish) and people from at least 10 other countries said ‘queer’ is not a slur in their country and it’s just the word that’s used for the queer community.
This is why it drives me nuts when a 15yo from South Carolina, USA assumes:
1) Her experience with ‘queer’ is the same as everybody else’s
2) A small number of people having a bad experience with ‘queer’ is an acceptable reason to deny and police usage by the entire wider international queer community
The short of it is that it’s not acceptable. Many older queer folks have used this word for decades - it’s been in common use since at least the 80s. In the past 3 years it’s become very fashionable (mostly only on Tumblr, but on pockets of social media elsewhere, too) to treat queer as this Big Bad Slur (forgetting that there are many other slurs and most of our language gets used as slurs at some point by various people) and to pop up on every fucking post that mentions queer like “UM EXCUSE ME IT’S FINE FOR YOU TO CALL YOURSELF QUEER BUT IT’S LITERAL ABUSE FOR YOU TO USE IT FOR OTHER PEOPLE LIKE AS AN UMBRELLA TERM AND YOU ARE A BAD PERSON!!!”
like. babe. I’ve never met you in my life. You live an entire world away from me and you can’t tell me what language I’m allowed to use for myself and my own community. If you don’t like the word, you have trauma associated with it or whatever, I accept that. I feel for you, I have trauma about some words, too. USE XKIT BLACKLIST. Your trauma is your problem, just like my trauma is my problem. Yes, really. Get counselling. It’s not everyone else’s responsibility to change their identities and language because of your trauma. That’s not a lack of empathy from me, that’s a hard life lesson you need to learn about the world not revolving around you. I am not abusing anyone by using the language I’ve always used about my own community.
It’s not the end of your world, though. You’re not doomed to read ‘queer’ all over tumblr forever. There are many many many tools available for you to protect yourself and avoid triggers. You should be responsible for yourself and your experience online and protect yourself from seeing things that upset you.
“BUT I’M A MINOR!!”, you cry! okay, true. Get up from the computer, go directly to your parent or guardian, and let them know you’re not old enough to police your own internet usage and ask them to do it for you. It is not my responsibility to take care of you. It is no one else on Tumblr’s responsibility to take care of you. The internet is not just for kids. If you can’t take care of yourself, your parents need to help you do that.
The short of it is if you’re old enough to know the word ‘queer’ upsets you, you’re old enough to download xkit blacklist and add ‘queer’ to the blacklist words. If you’re not doing that, I have to assume you’re actually trying to pick fights with queer people and it’s more of a power struggle to you than anything about semantics.
“BUT I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO USE XKIT! IT’S AN EASY CHANGE FOR YOU!” Dude, you’re asking me to change my whole identity. You’re asking me to change my lexicon for you. It’s not an easy or fair change for you to ask me to make. Xkit is a quick and easy solution for you (and now, you can use the tumblr innate tag blocks, too). If that’s too much for you to do, I have a feeling you’re just looking for a fight and not actually traumatised by ‘queer’.
NEVER. NEVER. Come onto a queer person’s post and start telling them anything about how to use their word. Queer folks get policed and oppressed enough by cishet folks. We don’t need people from our own community trying to police our language and language we’ve used for decades and continue to use in many countries and in many parts of the US.
There is absolutely no reason to derail posts being “””””””helpful”””””””” by repeatedly, constantly, aggressively spreading rhetoric that shames people for using language we have used for ourselves and our community for decades. Your problem with the word queer should not be my problem, so don’t make it my problem.
This. All of this.
