Room 508, Sunday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy hadn't intended to spend the evening grumpy. She had intended to get a more studying in; her AP classes were a lot more grueling than anything Fandom could come up with and she didn't have any dedicated class time to work on them. But after two hours of staring at Calculus problems and Spanish vocab, Kathy had decided she needed a break. She took Minako out for a walk (and fortunately, she hadn't wanted to stay out in the chill any longer than Kathy had!), and stopped in a common room long enough to boil some water for tea, but when she got back to her room, she found herself pulling up Tumblr on her laptop rather than settling back with a text book.

It's okay, she rationalized to herself. I'll just spend a few minutes catching up on my dash and then I'll get back to work.

An hour later, Kathy was typing VERY ANGRILY at some ass over racist Halloween costumes and the sexual fetishization of young girls in general and young Asian girls in particular. "Don't you even tell me that it's 'just a preference', you neck-bearded, mouth-breathing, spunk-stain!" Kathy snapped aloud. "You've been culturally conditioned to believe that we're all docile, pretty, and doll-like, who want nothing more than to cater to your every puerile, colonial fantasy!"

Yeah, there wasn't going to be any more studying done tonight.

[For one, please!]

Comments

[not_every_mage]

Anders, meanwhile, had been innocently intending to show Lachlan to Kathy (or possibly the other way around) and possibly clarify a point he'd left hanging when she went off to fight crime on Friday. Kathy's outburst had him freezing at her door, kitten clutched more closely to his chest.

"Maybe this wasn't quite the right time for a visit."

[spin_kick_snap]

Maybe not, but Minako had picked up the scent of not one but two new playmates and was now barking excitedly at the door. Kathy clicked on the send button with a kind of savage intensity, before looking up at the little dance her puppy friend was doing. "Hello?" she called, before sliding the laptop onto the bed and going to open it. "Is someone--Anders!"

She didn't look like she was about to bite his head off. That was something, right?

[not_every_mage]

"Hi, did I interrupt something?" he asked cautiously, clutching Lachlan more closely since he'd never met a dog before. "I heard you calling someone a spunk-stain."

A beat. "I'm a little impressed you knew that expression."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Minako, Minako, hush!" Kathy said, reaching down to pick up the excited little puppy before she could jump up into Anders arms like she seemed to be trying to. Which made an excellent cover for how brightly she was blushing, yes.

"It was an apt comparison," she mumbled. "And I know lots of expressions. I just don't use them much." Kathy lived on the internet. She could have quite the mouth on her if she chose. "It seemed nicer than calling him a son of a bitch, is all. His mother might be a very nice person for all I know."

Minako corralled, Kathy stepped aside. "Come in? I promise not to use any nasty words on you?"

[not_every_mage]

"There's a promise I don't get every day," Anders remarked, and went on in. "This is Lachlan, by the way. He's just a cat."

He ran a hand through his hair. "So ... what did the poor bastard you're fighting with do?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"As soon as I convince Minako that she doesn't need to show her love by scaling your legs like Mount Everest, I'm going to coo all over Lachlan and give him all the scritches in the world." Because Lachlan was a tiny kitten and Kathy was a sucker for all things small and furry.

"As for that guy--ugh." She rolled her eyes and grimaced. "Just this asshat on Tumblr who's convinced that we live in a post-racist society, which means that his 'preference' for fantasizing about Asian girls dressed as geisha for Halloween is totally okay."

Which would absolutely made sense to Anders, yes!

[not_every_mage]

"Lachlan will like that," Anders confirmed. The cat in his arms was starting to settle a bit, which was good -- his fur had puffed out alarmingly at his first sight of Minako, and he'd made a strangled little yelping sound.

Talking about the cat gave him a moment to try to process the rest of what Kathy had said. "Er. Asian is -- the one you are, isn't it?"

If there was a sub-101 level, he was at it.

[spin_kick_snap]

Oh Anders. You had just set yourself up for a Social Justice 101 talk. Were you even the least bit prepared?

Either way, though, Kathy was utterly thrilled to be having this talk.

"Yeah--East Asian, though usually when someone mentions 'Asian', they mean East Asian. My family's from South Korea, originally." She tossed Minako one of the squeaky balls she'd gotten at the pet shop and let the puppy go tearing off after that before holding her hand out for Lachlan to sniff. "Geisha is a Japanese word, though--they're a different East Asian culture. But a lot of people can't tell the two apart." She sounded sour about that.

[not_every_mage]

"And that's bad," Anders said, gathering as much from her tone. "So he wants to fantasize about girls with your coloring dressed up in a costume that has nothing to do with you?"

He gave Lachlan a little nudge toward Kathy,and the kitten happily poked out for pettings. "Sorry, I hope I don't sound stupid. This is still all new to me."

[spin_kick_snap]

"No, no, it's okay," Kathy assured him while showing Lachlan that she, too, knew the magical spot underneath his chin. "You don't have any reason to know this stuff. And it's something I really like talking about, so all the better. You're a much more receptive audience than Tumblr anyway."

He wasn't an anonymous troll in her inbox, for one thing.

"It goes beyond just not having anything to do with me," she added. "For a really long time, there was this belief that Asian girls were meek and submissive. A lot of guys still buy into that power fantasy that having an Asian girlfriend means they get to macho around and she's happy to be a various bunch of holes to be filled whenever and however he wants."

[not_every_mage]

Lachlan went into an ecstasy of purring,helpfully turning his head just so so Kathy could get the angle exactly right.

Anders frowned. "What do they think the Asian girlfriends get out of that? It sounds a bit -- one-sided."

[spin_kick_snap]

Aww yeah and Kathy had lovely nails just so she could scratch right. That was 100% why they were there. Just for scratching little kitty chins.

"That's part of the fantasy," she said dryly. "I don't know whether they don't care that the girl gets nothing or they think the girl doesn't expect anything or maybe they think that she's somehow fulfilled just by the privilege of dating them. But if they were thinking of her as a person in the first place, they wouldn't be so quick to diminish her to an ethnicity and a handful of outdated, bullshit stereotypes."

She gave Anders an apologetic smile. "You came in on Kathy's SJW Rant Hour. Sorry about that."

[not_every_mage]

".... hunh," Anders kept frowning as he processed that. "No, it's interesting, even though I can't imagine thinking like that. Some people at home get a bit funny about elves, but I'm not sure it's quite the same."

Though, given the number of city elves who ended up in brothels, it probably wasn't too far off.

"But what's an SJW?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Shorthand for Social Justice Warrior," Kathy said, blushing a bit. Someone still wasn't over the embarrassment of having used that name for a bit in her early heroing days. "Depending on who is using it, it means either someone who is really passionate about social justice issues, like race and feminism and stuff, or it's someone who pretends to care about that stuff, but only does it to be shallow and stupid and get more friends on Tumblr or something."

[not_every_mage]

"Well, warrior is good, isn't it?" Anders asked. (Cleverly avoiding the fact he had only the foggiest idea what feminism was.) "And Tumblr's ... a computer thing? You go and fight people on the computer to make friends, is that it?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I think it is," Kathy agreed with a slight lift to her chin. "I like knowing that I'm fighting for something I believe it, even if it's just words on the internet."

Which was why she'd adopted the moniker for a few days. It had been a poor life choice; she understood that now.

"As for Tumblr, it's probably easier to show you than explain," she said, pulling her laptop back over and opening up her dash (with her computer facing her at first because she had several tabs open and Anders didn't need to know everything she was looking at, cough cough). "At it's most basic, it's a collection of posts and images and videos that people find cool, or funny, or interesting. They reblog them to share with their friends, which people can respond to, and so create a dialogue. See?"

[not_every_mage]

"Sort of," Anders said, eyes flickering down the page. "Oh! That cat is wearing a necktie."

If anything involved pictures of cats, Anders was all-in.

"And people go on it and argue about racism to try to make friends." He sounded skeptical about that bit.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Anders, if you like silly pictures of cats, Tumblr is so your speed," Kathy laughed, clicking on her 'cats are cuter than humans' tag before handing her laptop over to him to scroll through. She had something like fifteen pages worth of images to share. "It's a toss-up whether the internet has more porn or cat macros."

Though, if pressed, Kathy would probably guess porn.

"But, according to people who think that feminism is stupid and racism is over and straight white guys are the most oppressed segment of the population out there--" Pardon Kathy while she rolled her eyes "--social justice warriors just hang out in one giant collective or something and the ones who yell the loudest win the most respect from the others. They think that being an SJW is stupid, so they assume that everyone's is doing it for selfish, small-minded reasons."

[not_every_mage]

Give Anders a moment. He was going to scroll through perhaps seven of those fifteen pages, make a few squeaky noises, and consider whether Lachlan would consent to dressing or being posed in several of the ways pictured before he answered Kathy properly.

Cat photos were so his speed.

"Why would anyone feel oppressed for being male?" he wondered, finally. "And that sounds -- frustrating. Immensely so. Like arguing with brick walls."

[spin_kick_snap]

They would be coming up with an appropriate Tumblr username for Anders before the evening was out, weren't they? Especially once she introduced him to Tumblr like cat_shaming and emergency_kitten.

Bwahahaha, hers was an evil laugh.

"That's pretty much what it's like, yeah," she said with a sigh. "Only worse, because at least brick walls are quiet. They don't talk back and tell you to shut up, show them your boobs, and to get back into the kitchen. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother."

[not_every_mage]

"So why do you bother?" Anders asked, having turned his attention back to the cats. "Why not just look at these, or -- that handsome fellow in armor with the metal arm and the bandanna."

Re:

[spin_kick_snap]

"Mmmm, isn't he hot?" Kathy asked, because no one could look at those pictures and think otherwise. "But, well, I bother for a couple of reasons."

She had to lean back, away from the gif of the assassin doing incredibly sexy things with a knife so she could better focus to answer Anders' question.

"This stuff is really important to me," she started, trying to find words to fully explain this. "It all started because I was, well, always quiet in real life. Back before I came to Fandom, I didn't really have many friends. Okay, that's not true. Back before Fandom, I didn't have any friends, other than my little sister. I was the quiet, bookish girl in the corner who was always overlooked. And I kinda didn't know how to change that. But online, I had a voice. I didn't have to be me, I could be anybody. I wasn't hiding behind my username, I was literally using it to be someone else--someone who wasn't afraid to voice her thoughts or opinions, someone who thought they were actually worth something. Worth sharing. You know?"

She peeked up at him to see if he was following so far, even though she hadn't really even begun to answer his question.

[not_every_mage]

Not really. Not at first. But when he thought about it --

"A little, actually," he said. "Before the Templars took me away I was like any other brat in my village. I didn't like the deep woods or large animals or going to the privy at night without a torch. But once I'd been in the Circle a while, I stopped caring about any of that. Nobody else remembered who I'd been at home. Nobody was going to tattle to my father. I could be who I wanted to be."

Though one more point of difference remained.

"However," he added, "I'm sure you'll be stunned to hear I was never exactly quiet. I just didn't have as much of a purpose to my chatter before the Circle."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm boggled by this revelation," she said, trying for deadpan but unable to keep her lips from twitching. "I may end up falling down off the bed in shock."

She thought she was hilarious.

"But, yes, like that. Online, I could be something other than quiet, boring, Kathy." Much like her Banzai persona now, in fact. "I was someone with things to say who wasn't afraid to say them. And, well, people started listening. I got to learn fascinating things that spoke to me as honest and true but that I'd never heard said before and then I got to turn around them and share them with other people. People who were ignorant, but ready to learn. People who had never heard these things either, but needed to. Young girls who needed to hear that they didn't have to be thin and pretty and sexy and whatever else the media tells them that they have to be. And that's important, because it was the kind of stuff I needed to hear, too."

She had dropped her eyes again, nervously playing with her hair so she didn't have to see if Anders was looking at her like she were crazy.

"Like you said, it gives me a purpose for my chatter. Like...imagine you could tell all the little kid mages that they were okay for being angry at the Chantry for taking them away, that it was normal to feel hurt or scared or to question the teachings. Sure, maybe you'll never sway a Templar to thinking that you deserve to live your life free from the Circle, but you might be able to reach the mages who are watching your argument, staying silent, but listening to everything you have to say."

[not_every_mage]

"Oh, shut up," Anders said in response to Kathy's hilarity, with a snort that suggested he wasn't so offended at all.

He listened closely to the rest of what she said, barely sneaking a few glances at the cats on the computer screen. (So cute.) "That would be fantastic. We once got a letter from an Antivan Circle and it made its way from hand to hand until it fell to bits. If we could talk like that whenever we wanted? You couldn't keep us down."

"Also," he added earnestly, "I know this isn't the point but you are thin and pretty, and you could be sexy if you wanted to." Parents' weekend had proven that much, though he doubted Kathy wanted to be reminded.