Vent Things That Aren't Related To Chel, A.k.a. Miscellaneous

Figured that I would definitely set this up because even though it's not Chel-related, I think that a lot of issues kind of got brought to the surface by my experiences with Chel. It's like, Chel is the most on my mind because I'm trying to tell between "when did they have a point and when didn't they" and "should I just throw this all out because they can't bother to be consistent with their bullshit", but trust me, there's kind of a lot of stuff that's in my brain.

I guess to start with, I finally graduated from college at the age of twenty-nine. Honestly, if it wasn't for the worst college math class I ever took, I probably would have graduated earlier. It really doesn't escape me that before I transferred from a community college to a more traditional college, I was pretty much suffering in math until I found an actually competent teacher. It really makes me wonder if some issues I had with math really had to do with the fact I hadn't found the right teacher yet; I'll definitely be grateful for the final community college math teacher I had for actually giving a rat's ass and not only getting us to switch our phones off but also being genuinely kind and encouraging and not trying to treat us like crap. And then transferring to a traditional college started out pretty good and I still had some really good classes even during the pandemic, but I think Zoom classes could be a nightmare sometimes. I mean, I had a teacher who ganged up on me with the rest of her students when we were talking about which was the best thesis and I chose what they thought was the "wrong" answer. (I guess in retrospect it's a little funny? Not like funny-ha-ha, but kind of like "Who the fuck treats opinions on thesis statements like a life or death situation?") Stuff like that. She wasn't the only one who made pandemic Zoom classes a nightmare, though fortunately, I had a surprisingly sweet and kind Zoom class teacher who taught Shakespeare and pretty much actually asked about my mental health and how I was doing. I'm trying to remember people like him, and not to mention some...let's say school assistants that were supposed to help with my autism. Some were pretty shit (and I'll definitely say that the bureaucracy was fucking terrible to deal with when I tried to live on campus, and did I mention that Delta was going on at the time? Yeah, that Delta), but there were some who were some of the nicest people I could ever meet and actually made a real difference when I was trying to get through everything. I also met some classmates who were wonderful (like, we actually managed to have a surprisingly civil discussion about the Israel and Palestine thing), some who were terrifying (basically, someone acted like Brett Kavanaugh was only given a bad rap in the media because he was a white male. Yes, that Brett Kavanaugh), and some who I thought were jerks at first before they turned out to be surprising allies (there was one guy in a class devoted to basically queer representation in media where he got on my nerves at first, and then we ended up becoming surprising allies in class debates). So I guess I have a lot of mixed feelings to deal with, and I guess the negative memories are kind of powerful because when I was in middle school, I always had this idea that "once I graduate from high school, I want to go to this college", and I guess I'm kind of dealing with the fact that there were some great memories there, but also kind of some shit ones that kind of left me a little more unsure of myself than ever.

And so I've kind of got that damage. I sadly couldn't attend the graduation ceremony (to make a long story short, I kind of had some digestive issues, and that's all I'm going to say about that besides the fact that I'm better now), and of course, there's the fact that being in therapy, I'm trying to deal with my anxiety and OCD (pretty much got diagnosed with it at the age of twenty-one), through both talk therapy and medication, and I basically feel like I'm kind of alternating between medications to find something that suits me. So far, nothing's working, I've kind of had crying jags on and off (and to be fair, some of it's related to the whole Chel thing but that's a completely different vent thread), and the only consolation is that my mother's been remarkably patient with me and realizes that I'm just going through a weird post-college period in my life as well as trying to deal with different antidepressants. (I'm pretty much trying to remember what Crazy Ex-Girlfriend said about "antidepressants are so not a big deal" in order to, well, keep from getting too down. I still love that song for trying to destigmatize antidepressants and also kind of say that no, it's not your fault if antidepressants don't always work/have weird side effects and it's perfectly normal. Like, God bless you, Rachel Bloom)

On the bright side, my family's doing all right. Another thing that was pretty stressful at first was having some family issues (my sibling and sister-in-law, who I love dearly), but both of them are fine now. They're both the sweetest people, honestly. And incredibly strong. I kind of wish I could be as brave as them. (She says, while worrying her ass off about everybody around her because she has unhealthy coping mechanisms)

And then there's just how the whole thing just...the sad thing about the Chel situation is that it just reminds me of other people I've met who were pretty much...I guess the best way to describe them was a mixture of toxic and pitiable? I mean, I remember there was one woman in the TGWTG fandom (back when I was still there) who "joked" about shooting up Chicago after a Nostalgia Critic review made her angry just because Doug lived there. I mean, I don't think she would have been able to go through with it (and given that she lived in a completely different country I don't think she would have thought through the threat/"joke" anyway) but it still scared me, especially since, well, someone I cared about lived there at the time (not anymore, thankfully). And I guess part of it was trying to process "holy fuck, if she was able to go through with it and willing, she could have killed one of my family let alone countless innocent people, all over a video". I mean, I'll freely admit that New Critic was not exactly a Shakespearean masterpiece; I think he did rely on 2edgy4me humor (not that Old Critic didn't, of course, or the anniversary specials), but I just didn't think it was worthy of, well, that. It didn't help that she was kind of triggered by not only Demo Reel ending but how it ended, so it's kind of like I have a mixture of pity, disgust, and where-does-she-have-a-point. (I don't think she knew that I had family there in Chicago at the time, but it was still terrifying)

Then there was the guy I mentioned in my Moderation Horror Stories thing (and I guess if there's a bright side, the whole thing is so ridiculous that it warps all the way back to me just going "what the fuck happened", which I guess is progress), and the thing is, I could definitely feel sorry for him as well given that he'd had a rough go of life (and that's pretty much all I'm going to say about that), but I think some of the things he said scared the hell out of me later on, such as his "joke" about wiping out Earth because not everybody shipped Reylo. I mean, I still think that I should have just tried talking to him about the whole thing and tried asking him if he was okay (we weren't friends, though; I think at best we were acquaintances), but then again, given how hard it was to get through to him on everything even when you tried with the best intentions (I think he just really didn't take it well when people tried to explain their side of the story and why they didn't like what he said, and he just kind of doubled down whenever people tried, so I don't even know if things would have ended well even if I tried to play diplomat. I know that after he publicly shamed me for blocking him, the admin of the Discord we were both in tried to get me to talk to him; I was like internally "You gotta be kidding me" but at least sucked it up, tried to talk to him, but he wasn't exactly willing to listen. I don't know whether or not it would have ended well even if I had tried to play diplomat from the start, though), who knows if anything would have been better?

And then there was somebody else who...well, I think we got off on the wrong foot when a friend of mine and I decided to co-spork a Reylo fic by an author that I used to look up to.

(Trigger warning ahead for discussions of rape, racism, past sending of rape and death threats, and on a more downplayed note, general asshole commenter behavior)

Basically, said someone else kind of started out more subtle at first, kind of nitpicking, and then accusing us of "constantly harping on sexism" (let's say that the reason we ended up doing that was because said Reylo fic decided to have Kylo rape Rey through the Dyad while she was having sex with Finn, and then things kind of got worse from there. I mean, as much as I have an issue with canon Reylo, Kylo didn't enjoy cruelty to that extent. Like, he was a classist douchebag who had as much of an obsession with insulting Rey's parents as Glados from Portal, but he wasn't that evil like in the fic. All that stuff), and then things kind of culminated with stuff like her basically accusing us of not being able to enjoy "a good dicking" to our faces (did I mention my co-sporker's a lesbian? So yeah...) when we were critiquing another rape scene in a fic by the same author (said fic also turned Finn into a Birth of a Nation-style stereotype. It was a Beauty and the Beast fic where Finn was supposed to be Gaston, so you kind of get an idea as to how things went downhill from there), and then, after I thought we cut ties due to something that was kind of my fault (I kind of put my foot in it talking to her), she decided to go and attack me and my co-sporker on a completely different spork that wasn't even a Reylo fic and that my co-sporker was doing solo by deciding to accuse me of hating other liberals just because I made a mildly snarky comment about Lindsay Ellis. (Which, yeah, I get that Lindsay definitely got and gets treated unfairly sometimes, but it still hurt, and I had no idea why she decided to seek out my former co-sporker after she claimed that she wasn't following us anymore because in her words, we weren't "funny or insightful") Fortunately, the mod stepped in and deleted that comment for violating rules about politics when my co-sporker reported it. I mean, I guess me critiquing two questionable (to put it kindly) Reylo fics might have pressed that commenter's buttons given that said commenter kind of styled herself as defending the Reylo fandom despite not being a Reylo, but even then, I think she was kind of hypocritical about it because she kind of got pretty mean-spirited about the whole thing at times, like some of her stuff didn't come off as friendly ribbing but actual criticism that ranged from jerkish-but-still-has-a-point to outright pointlessly mean-spirited, like kind of having this pattern of shitting on their love of romance novels. (I mean, if somebody likes romance novels, they're not hurting you) While also yelling at me and my co-sporker for allegedly not getting romance novels and so I wasn't speaking Reylos' "language". Even though my co-sporker and I didn't say anything about romance novels being bad and we were focused more on stuff like the fact Rey got roofied in order to force her to have sex with Kylo to break the curse. Yes, really. (It's safe to say that no Reylos on Twitter I saw took that well when they found out, with some people bringing up that it was pretty shitty for the author not to tag it -- and they were right; the whole point of tags is to keep people from being triggered by seeing stuff like that. Like, somebody could have been triggered by that roofie-ing scene given that it wasn't tagged as so much as "dubcon" -- and others being outraged that Rose Tico, of all people, was the one behind it and justifying it with "the greater good" and all that, with quite a few people saying that Rose would never do that, and I think for all Rose Tico's flaws, she would never be onboard with that kind of cruelty)

It's like, even if we did make mistakes here and there, why the fuck was the only form of constructive criticism here "Y'all can't appreciate a good dicking"? Like, it wasn't exactly like we were being nice to the scene (and it didn't help that the author herself had sent rape and death threats to people over politics, so it didn't help that the fic just felt like an uncomfortable look into the inside of her head), but did we really deserve that? And of course it didn't help that this commenter kept switching sides constantly, going from "you both are stupid meanieheads" to "you both are so intelligent and insightful" depending on the chapter in question. I think in retrospect, it was good that we both put the co-sporking on hiatus because honestly, what was already pretty hard to get through was pretty much made worse by that commenter just being a jackass. I mean, I don't even know what I said to even warrant that level of out-of-nowhere vitriol sometimes, especially since she didn't have any issue shitting on Reylos for the much lesser offense of liking romance novels.

(She did occasionally have good points, like how some authors were really very much adherents to the "Thou shalt not portray Rey as having any partners before Ben" bullshit, but I don't think even that was completely accurate given how it wasn't every author who did that sort of thing from what I can gather. I think it did depend on the author themselves, really)

And then there's more minor stuff, like trying to sort of sort through that one Fangirlblog article (the thing is, I didn't use to dislike her; hell, I even defended her when she got some backlash for some of her, um, hotter takes, stuff like defending Leia in the gold bikini, but then after a while, I think her articles started to really irritate me, such as, well, this one: https://fangirlblog.com/2014/03/fan-artistic-endeavors-challenging-the-fandom-perspective/) and whether or not she actually has a good point or not. (Seems to be a recurring theme with me, just sort of like "What if this person's right and wrong?" Because I don't like just dismissing people. Well, there are exceptions, of course) I think I'm just scared of having the wrong answer, really.