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The way black and brown people are treated in fandom spaces is fucking horrific honestly, and people refuse to acknowledge it.

So many white people are so obsessed with the idea of fandom being a Safe Space that they completely disregard POC feelings. They’ll preach that they care about us sooo hard, but as soon as they have to put their money where their mouth is and actually act like they give a fuck, suddenly the Angry POCs are just “starting discourse” and “picking fights” and “ruining the fandom”

If you are told something you think or believe is actually racist and your first response is to fight tooth and fucking nail to defend yourself because you don’t want to have to care, you are racist. If you refuse to listen to POC when we say something or someone in a fandom space is problematic, you are racist. And it is so tiring.

White people will NEVER understand what it feels like to have to constantly defend yourself like this. When a fandom seems perfect and peaceful to YOU, it’s because none of the issues affect you. Being able to live in a blissful existence and forget racism exists so you can have fun with your stupid little fanfics and whitewashed fan art is a privilege not everybody has. Some of us need to be on the defense all the goddamn time just because white people want to “avoid discourse”

Fandoms will NEVER be a safe place for everybody until they stop being a safe place for racists. And that means white people have to start giving a shit about issues that don’t affect them.

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A bit late but happy Lesbian Visibility Week!

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In Defense of Shitty Queer Art

Queer art has a long history of being censored and sidelined. In 1895, Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence in the author’s sodomy trials. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the American Hays Code prohibited depictions of queerness in film, defining it as “sex perversion.” In 2020, the book Steven Universe: End of an Era by Chris McDonnell confirmed that Rebecca Sugar’s insistence on including a sapphic wedding in the show is what triggered its cancellation by Cartoon Network. According to the American Library Association, of the top ten most challenged books in 2023, seven were targeted for their queer content. Across time, place, and medium, queer art has been ruthlessly targeted by censors and protesters, and at times it seems there might be no end in sight.

So why, then, are queer spaces so viciously critical of queer art?

Name any piece of moderately-well-known queer media, and you can find immense, vitriolic discourse surrounding it. Audiences debate whether queer media is good representation, bad representation, or whether it’s otherwise too problematic to engage with. Artists are picked apart under a microscope to make sure their morals are pure enough and their identities queer enough. Every minor fault—real or perceived—is compiled in discourse dossiers and spread around online. Lines are drawn, and callout posts are made against those who get too close to “problematic art.”

Modern examples abound, such as the TV show Steven Universe, the video game Dream Daddy, or the webcomic Boyfriends, but it’s far from a new phenomenon. In his book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, queer pop culture analyst Matt Baume writes about an example from the 1970s, where the ABC sitcom titled Soap was protested by homophobes and queer audiences alike—before a single episode of the show ever aired. Audiences didn’t wait to actually watch the show before passing judgment and writing protest letters.

After so many years starved for positive representation, it’s understandable for queer audiences to crave depictions where we’re treated well. It’s exhausting to only ever see the same tired gay tropes and subtext, and queer audiences deserve more. Yet the way to more, better, varied representation is not to insist on perfection. The pursuit of perfection is poison in art, and it’s no different when that art happens to be queer.

When the pool of queer art is so limited, it feels horrible when a piece of queer art doesn’t live up to expectations. Even if the representation is technically good, it’s disappointing to get excited for a queer story only for that story to underwhelm and frustrate you.

But the world needs that disappointing art. It needs mediocre art. It even needs the bad art. The world needs to reach a point where queer artists can fearlessly make a mess, because if queer artists can only strive for perfection, the less art they can make. They may eventually produce a masterpiece, but a single masterpiece is still a drop in the bucket compared to the oceans of censorship. The only way to drown out bigotry and offensive stereotypes created by bigots is to allow queer artists the ability to experiment, learn through making mistakes, and represent their queer truth even if it clashes with someone else’s.

If queer artists aren’t allowed to make garbage, we can never make those masterpieces everyone craves. If queer artists are terrified at all times that their art will be targeted both by bigots and their own queer communities, queer art cannot thrive.

Let queer artists make shitty art. Let allies to queer people try their hand at representation, even if they miss the mark. Let queer art be messy, and let the artists screw up without fear of overblown retribution.

It’s the only way we’ll ever get more queer art.

_

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"Why don't people recognize Link in TOTK" bc everyone imagines the legendary swordsman to be built like Ganondorf and Link doesn't bother correcting anyone bc being hailed as a hero is like on the bottom of his priorities, which are topped by things like "Bake one of every pie"

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my favorite love language is waiting

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This may sound mean, but...

If you send me an ask containing links to Good Omens fan fiction you think I should read, I'll delete it. Do it again and I'll (regretfully) block you. This is a general blanket sort of thing -- I don't want to read it, legally I can't read it, no I won't make it into the next series, and, no matter how pure your motives, it's crossing a line.

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the moon is a lesbian and she hates terfs

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when autism

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So we all know that Tumblr is US-centric. But to what degree? (and can we skew the results of this poll by posting it at a time where they should be asleep?)

Reblog to increase sample size!

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I...tried to make a meme and got carried away and made A Thing that is like partially unfinished because i spent like 3 hours on it and then got tired.

I think this is mostly scientifically accurate but truth be told, there seems to be relatively little research on succession in regards to lawns specifically (as opposed to like, pastures). I am not exaggerating how bad they are for biodiversity though—recent research has referred to them as "ecological deserts."

Feel free to repost, no need for credit

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THE LOVERS Trailer by Studio Heartbreak

An animated thriller about the romantic tension between a seafood chef and a siren, set in a dark fantasy Philippines

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One more joke hate: You may claim to be a woman but biologically you are a featherless biped and thus a man.

Finally a good argument for why I'm actually a man

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My animation of a flour sack. Words can’t express how proud I am of these 11 seconds.

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everything u need to know about me can actually be explained by the fact that i read that poem about the serving girl wearing the pearls so they're warm for her mistress when i was like 11 and it rewrote my brain chemistry forever

like this Changed Me

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had a dream that I met a wizard and we fell in love and became unhealthily attached to each other so we decided to meld into one single creature together but the process was horrifically slow and painful and most of the dream was us lying in bed holding hands while lesions opened up in our skin and seeped out blue and green fluid and the wizard said "this is going to take a very very long time" and I said "that's ok"

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lord the peasants are so loud today

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