"Stories Should Teach Us [x]," "Stories Should Teach Us [y]," "Stories Should Teach Us-"

"Stories should teach us [x]," "Stories should teach us [y]," "Stories should teach us-"

No. Wrong. Incorrect.

If you are old enough to choose the stories you engage with for yourself, then you should be choosing stories with the lessons you need and staying out of other people's business when they choose to engage with the stories that weren't right for you.

discovered something terrible today. if you change plot elements early on in the story. later plot elements will be affected

Reading fetish erotica with absolutely pristine and morally upright consent and neat and tidy safer sex practices is like watching a Fast and Furious movie where they stop at every stop sign and signal for every lane change and always obey the speed limit.

Role swap au where Zuko was the Avatar who got frozen for a hundred years, so when he’s rescued from the ice instead of a goofy twelve year old Katara catches this mysterious teenager with long hair and a cool scar and a fucking DRAGON

Katara: BOY???? HOT BOY?????? HOT TEENAGE BOY?????????

Zuko: *speaks*

Katara: nevermind I hate him

Fighting back against oppression is not the same thing as committing oppression, and it is not hypocrisy not to tolerate intolerance from others.

That is not what a lot of supposed activism on this website actually does.

Guilt-tripping total strangers based on unfounded assumptions about their lives and experiences? Demanding attention and validation from strangers, as a way for said strangers to prove that they aren't Bad People, by demanding that what amount to personal vent posts be treated as meaningful educational resources on incredibly complex and serious issues? Trying to claim moral high ground over the fictional interests of strangers based entirely on some people's feelings of disgust as the only evidence of harm?

Wanting people around you to feel angry, or small, or ashamed, with no goal besides making someone else feel bad when it makes you feel better about the unfair hurt you've endured?

These aren't examples of activism or progressive ideology. They are examples of hurt people lashing out at easy targets with misidirected anger. They are examples of people engaging in the cycle of harm, when someone has made them feel small, and they chose to look for someone else they've decided should feel smaller as a way to make themselves feel big again.

I'm sure most tumblr users can think of at least a few posts they've seen like this, if not dozens or more.

Not just isolated posts, either, but posts with hundreds to thousands of notes worth of validation from other strangers.

That shit is harmful. Absolutely no one is ever obligated to engage with guilt-tripping, directionless anger that focuses mainly on punching down at one's peers, regardless of the source which originally inspired that anger. No matter how sympathetic someone's pain might be, it is not kindness to validate random cruelty as an outlet for genuine pain.

Engaging in meaningful activism is hard work. Hurting easy targets in the name of righteous causes is easy.

Being a decent person means being willing to ask yourself which one you're doing, and then being willing to step back and disengage not only when the answer is, "causing more harm," but also when the honest answer is, "I don't know."

Activism is not the same as causing harm. The corollary to that is that causing harm is not the same as activism, either.

On the heels of my more serious Felix Catton post, I would also like to take a step back into lighthearted hilarity and appreciate Felix's claim to Oliver early on that he takes more after his dad than his mom.

Truly an iconic line, said with all the unshakable confidence of bone-deep misogyny by a man whose personality is basically a carbon copy of his mother's.