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andreal831 · 3 months

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I found it so absolutely crazy that the Mikaelsons (especially Klaus and Elijah) were constantly throwing Marcel’s background back in his face and just the fact that they lived in/on the same plantation that he was a slave on was absolutely wild. Marcel was so blatantly “othered” by the Mikaelsons, even though they said he was family, they always reminded him that he wasn’t ever one of them/a mikaelson and Klaus would always remind him that he was a slave before. Someone made the analogy that it’s like when a racist white family adopts a black child and make it clear that he’s not one of them and that’s quite LITERALLY what happened.

I would go as far as to say that Marbekah is not just weird because Rebekah knew him as a child, but also because of that strange power dynamic of her being a rich white woman and him being a black slave boy and that subtext there and it just doesn’t feel right (and this is a feeling I don’t get from normal interracial relationships, just THOSE TWO). And if you like Marbekah, that’s great! I just don’t lol.

And the fandom always says that “it’s just Klaus’ personality that he does and says these things to Marcel, etc” like… ugh.

And there’s other poc in TO that deal with the racism like Vincent and Inadu, etc

I love the Mikaelsons but they were so problematic to the point that I have to retcon certain things or at least insert headcanons to make me not hate them. Because you are absolutely right. It was literally a racist family playing white savior. People try to give Klaus props for killing an enslaver and freeing Marcel, but we see him kill one enslaver and free one person who was enslaved. He didn't do it because he was morally opposed to slavery. He did it for his own selfish reasons. Otherwise we would have seen more of this. People using the excuse that "oh it's just x's character to make racists comments" is very telling. It means the character is racist. They are literally saying it is part of that character. The Mikaelsons thinking it was fine to live on an actual plantation both when it was functioning and after is proof of this.

I personally do like Marbekah but they are not necessarily in my top favorite ships. I love both of the characters but I also hate how they began (same with Freelin, but I'll go into that in a moment). But again, you're absolutely right. There is not only the inappropriate dynamic that she helped raise him, to some extent, but yes, that he grew up being treated as a second class citizen, not only when he was enslaved but also when he was taken in by the Mikaelsons. There is also the bad dynamic of how possessive Klaus is over Rebekah and her romantic life. People love to say Klaus daggered Rebekah when he found out about Rebekah and Marcel because he was protecting Marcel, but let's be honest, he wouldn't have cared if it was anyone else but Rebekah. Klaus didn't have any issues going after teenagers, why would he care that Marcel was being groomed by an older woman? Klaus always treated Marcel as more of a friend than a son and we all know Klaus is not a good friend. I, once again, have to insert my own headcanon that Rebekah was not heavily invovled in Marcel's upbringing. I pretend Klaus was just as possessive of Marcel with Rebekah as he was with Elijah. We only see the one scene of Rebekah training him so I just pretend that was a one time thing and they hardly interacted outside of that. This not at all what the writers intended. They loved creepy, grooming relationships so it is completely understandable to not like them.

Marcel was treated as more of a possession than anything. I'm biased so I like to believe Elijah saw Marcel as a child at first and wanted to mentor him before Klaus got in the way. You mention Elijah throwing Marcel's history in his face, do you have an example? I am genuinely asking. I've seen people make this comment before and make comments of Elijah calling him "boy" but I for the life of me can't remember when he does, because yes, that is obviously racist. I am trying to think past my Elijah blinders, but welcome any help. Elijah is definitely condescending to him and it would be foolish of me to assume part of it isn't racism. Again, I insert my own headcanon that it is more to do with his elitism and how he speaks to everyone (i.e. the scene where he calls Klaus and Hayley "chiiillldddreeen" for bickering). But I also acknowledge that my headcanons are my own and we still need to call out the characters for their problematic behavior. The fact that Elijah doesn't lift a finger to help a single person who is being enslaved or to even condemn the slavery when he very much had the power and privilege to do something about it shows his racism, if not overt racism than at the very least covert.

I personally headcanon that Celeste set Elijah straight while they were together and got him more invovled in the abolitionist movements, because I refuse to believe Celeste was fine being with a man who was fine with slavery. I also love Elijah and refuse to love a racist so I have to insert my own head canons to fix the racist writing. I would also be remiss to point out how problematic it is that Elijah is constantly given partners who are women of color but the show only emphasizes his white counterparts. There is more love for Eelijah, a crack ship, in the fandom than Celijah, one of the two people Elijah loved by his own admission. I love haylijah, but how the women of color he dated were treated by his family, the writers, and his family, even by him, speaks volumes to their racism.

But back to Marcel. It would have made sense for Rebekah to be a mother figure to him since she is always talking about wanting kids, but the show makes it clear that there is a distinction between biological children and adopted. Here the Mikaelsons have a chance to be parents and they all squander it. It's hard to not talk about Marcel's race in that discussion. Rebekah loves her time taking care of Hope, who, while her blood, is still not her biological daughter. Why wouldn't she jump at the chance to raise a frightened boy who lost his mother at such a young age? Why wasn't he given a mother figure? Hope has like five. Marcel isn't even given a father figure. Again, Hope has like five. Because Marcel was never viewed as a child. This is a common trope where black characters, especially boys, are not seen as kids. Rather they are forced to be more mature and treated as adults, while their white counter parts are allowed immaturity. Marcel was never allowed to be a kid because the Mikaelsons didn't want a kid. They all had their own selfish desires for Marcel and they were all terrible.

I do think the Mikaelsons are also just a toxic, dysfunctional family. Literally none of them treat the others well. I love certain relationships over others, but it would be lying to say they weren't all toxic to each other. So it's no wonder all of their relationships with Marcel were toxic. Klaus undaggers Kol and instead of being angry at Klaus for keeping him in a box, he turns his anger and frustration on a literal child. You would think this resentment would fade when Kol starts dating his nephew's daughter (sorry, couldn't help myself), but it doesn't. Marcel and Kol still harbor so much animosity for each other and Kol's is merely based on Marcel being more included in the family, which is sad considering how little Marcel is included in the family. But even that extent was too much for Kol.

The writers had a fresh slate with The Originals. There was no book to attempt to follow or even to dictate character relationships. They could have done anything with Marcel, but they chose to make a black slave from the 1800s that Klaus "saved" in order to play into the idea that Klaus was a good guy underneath it all. So instead of focusing on Marcel's trauma, the story is told through the Mikaelson's perspective, the white perspective. It reminds me of so many movies, The Blind Side comes to mind. Media loves to focus on the white saviors and praise them without mentioning the trauma they actually caused while playing savior. In these stories, the white families aren't adopting a "child" they are "investing" in what that child can do for them.

I mentioned Freelin earlier and I don't think it is a coincidence that the only two instances where a white Mikaelson's endgame invovled a person of color there is a massive power imbalance. I want to love Freelin so much because I like both the characters but I struggle to get past how they met and how quickly it changed. Freya never even felt guilty or apologized for literally kidnapping and torturing her. The show loves to match up characters, especially women and especially woman of color, with their abusers with no repercussions to the abuse.

I could write forever about the blatant racism in this show.

Thanks for the ask! I hope I answered everything. As always, please let me know what you think or if you disagree with anything I said.

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moistvonlipwig · 1 month

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so how many of these little hearts am i allowed to send you :D (maybe we can start with 💖)

💖: What is your biggest unpopular opinion about the series?

I'll assume you are asking about Supergirl. ;) I kind of have 3 that I couldn't pick between and I have a Lot to say about all 3, so this is going under a cut for anyone who doesn't want to see me kvetching about one of the worst-written CW superhero shows for *checks word count* 3681 words.

Opinion number one is that I like Lena/James as a ship. I think they had good chemistry and the thorny history between them makes for an interesting launching point for a relationship. I prefer them as a ship to Kara/James (which is fine and cute, but it doesn't compel me -- plus it's much more in the vein of modern rom-com romances vs. Lena/James which is written more like a screwball comedy romance which I infinitely prefer) and to any non-Supercorp Lena ships. While I admit the build-up in 3A isn't particularly well-done and the implosion of the relationship in S4 didn't do it any favors, I think they're really good in 3B and there's a lot of potential there for a super interesting relationship. (And, I mean, when it comes to Supergirl, which is Very Bad at romance and honestly not even particularly good at friendship, I think 'they have good chemistry, some great scenes, and there is solid potential for them to have an interesting relationship' is kind of the best you're gonna get. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

And to turn this into more of a kvetching session: I truly don't begrudge people for not liking them as a ship -- as I said, there are some serious writing problems afflicting their relationship. But I will say that, even putting aside the more egregiously and blatantly racist strains of the fandom and how they talk about the ship, I get frustrated with the way a lot of fans (even nominally pro-James ones) tend to dismiss the relationship (and Lena's feelings for James in particular) out of hand.

A lot of fans love to talk about Lena "not caring" that James was Guardian, but, like, she did care? She didn't get mad at him because she had no actual reason to. She and Guardian had no beef! He did not maintain two separate relationships with her as both himself and his alter ego Countess Boochie Flagrante! Wild how NOT doing that can greatly improve an alter ego reveal, lol. And the scene with James telling Lena he's Guardian ends with Lena opening up to him in turn about the fact that she herself manufactured the kryptonite. And then they kiss about it and they have sex. That, uh. That is not the reaction of a woman who does not care what her boyfriend just told her, that is the reaction of a woman who is deeply touched that he trusts her (which, it's both sad and telling that that kind of trust is not something she just Expects from a significant other) and who wants to share part of herself with him in return.

And a lot of fans also love to talk about Lena breaking up with James as if it were something she did on a whim because he ethically disagreed with one of her projects. But, um. She explicitly did not break up with him because of that. She told him that was why they were breaking up, but several episodes later she explicitly tells Lex (and thus the audience) that she actually broke up with him because she was scared of him breaking up with her once he found out she was helping cure Lex. Again, this is both a sad and telling moment about her character, that she would rather not give someone the chance to respond to her with grace because she so greatly fears that they will fail to do so, to the point that she would rather sabotage a relationship she treasures with her own hands, so that at least she will be in control of the loss she suffers. And it's a character beat that you miss entirely if you are dead-set on pretending that Lena didn't really care about James.

What's, shall we say, interesting is I don't really see this kind of casual, pervasive dismissal of Kara's relationship with Mon-El, which was much more of a trainwreck on all fronts. Even people who hate that relationship generally take Kara's feelings about it seriously. They don't deny that Kara felt strongly about Mon-El (whether they take the position that she was actually in love with him or that she just convinced herself she was). Why the difference in approach, when if anything, Lena's feelings about James are made more blatantly clear by the text than Kara's often extremely contradictory feelings about Mon-El are? ...Well. I can certainly think of one reason.

Opinion number two is that I don't care about the Danvers sisters relationship. I think there is a potentially interesting set-up to their relationship, where Alex was essentially parentified as a teenager and forced to rearrange her whole life around keeping Kara safe. The inevitable consequences of this -- that Alex has neglected her own happiness and devoted her life unhealthily to protecting her sister, and harbors some unspoken resentment over this fact, and similarly that Kara has had to contend with her older sister trying to manage her life and control her choices well into adulthood, and harbors some unspoken resentment of her own over that fact -- are touched on somewhat in S1 and S2 and then summarily dropped by the show. As the show went on it became clear that the Danvers sisters relationship was one in which no consequences existed: they could do anything and say anything to each other and by the end of the episode they would have a feel-good Danvers Sisters Couch Scene.

There are flaws in how the Kara & Lena friendship was written but one thing I will praise about it is that every interaction they had mattered and had tangible consequences to their relationship. Kara's massive fuckup re: the kryptonite debacle mattered two seasons later in a show that sometimes struggled to remember what happened in the previous episode. I might object -- strenuously, in fact -- to how their conflict was resolved and framed in S5 but at the very least they didn't outright ignore the things that happened between them. When one of them did something that hurt the other, that impacted the relationship. This is in sharp contrast to how the Danvers sisters relationship is written from around S3 onwards.

Two story beats in particular really stand out to me here. Firstly, there's the S4 plotline in which Alex forgets that Kara is Supergirl -- which is an actually rather clever storyline with some great emotional beats...while it lasts. Then Alex gets her memories back and it's like nothing ever happened. People complain a lot about the writing of Once Upon a Time, and rightly so, but at least on that show, when characters had their core memories magically erased/replaced with other memories, and then had their original memories returned to them a season or half a season later, it actually affected their characters. They had to grapple with who they were with their fake memories, and who they were with their real ones, and which self they liked better, and which aspects of their selves they wanted to embody going forward. Not so with Alex Danvers. If you watched S5 without having seen S4 you would not know she spent the last half season not knowing that Kara was Supergirl.

Secondly, and even more egregiously to me, is the events of 5.08 "The Wrath of Rama Khan" and the emotional aftermath, which is to say, the complete lack of an emotional aftermath. Not only does Alex spend a good chunk of 5.08 wanting/trying to nuke Kara's best friend -- which is significantly worse than anything Lena does to any of Kara's friends, and you can imagine that if Lena had indeed done anything on that level then the show never would've had Kara let it pass without comment -- but she manipulates Kara in the process, and specifically in a way that echoes one of Kara's fundamental traumas from her backstory. By using Kara's genuine attempt to reach out to Lena as a Trojan horse to lower Lena's shields (so, again, she can point a nuke at her), she not only thoroughly sabotages any possibility of trust and reconciliation between Kara and Lena for the foreseeable future, she also uses Kara in the same way that Alura used Kara to capture Astra, which Kara was rightfully furious and heartbroken about when she found out about it.

In the hands of better writers, this could've been a stroke of storytelling genius, the catalyst for the long-awaited collapse of the Danvers sisters relationship that was so desperately needed so that they could build it back up again from a better foundation. But you've seen the show, you know what happened: Kara barely blinked. Alex might as well have just eaten the last hot pocket instead of, you know, betrayed Kara like her mother did in order to nuke her best friend, for all that Kara reacted to it. To me, that was the ultimate death knell for the Danvers sisters relationship, the moment that cemented once and for all that this was not a relationship in which actions had consequences or in which anything the characters said or did to each other mattered in any way. So...why should I care?

And thirdly and finally, my hydrogen bomb of an unpopular opinion: I don't like Cat Grant. Which is nuts, because I SHOULD like her on paper. Her character archetype is usually my FAVORITE character in a line-up. Cordelia Chase, the self-proclaimed "nastiest girl in Sunnydale history," is and has always been, from Episode 1 of Buffy, my favorite Buffyverse character. (And my second favorite female Buffyverse character is Lilah Morgan, who is basically just "Cordelia but an evil lawyer".) Regina George is an indisputable legend no matter what bizarre format they turn Mean Girls into next, and I always root for her and am kinda sad when Cady successfully sabotages her. Regina Mills of Once Upon a Time fame is even more of an indisputable legend, a badass mass-murdering HBIC who took no bullshit and coddled no bitches. Miranda Priestly, on whom Cat Grant is clearly based, is an amazing, iconic film character -- and despite what Supergirl 5.01 "Event Horizon" would have you believe, she was not the '''villain''' of The Devil Wears Prada. Discworld's Granny Weatherwax is one of the greatest characters ever written and is also, like, my idol. I love me a good bad bitch. So...why don't I like Cat Grant?

Part of it is that I don't find her as purely entertaining as a lot of the other characters on this list -- I just don't think the Supergirl writers were skilled enough to craft a character who is mean in a way that delights and amuses me as opposed to rubbing me the wrong way. I think she is frequently cruel in a way that I just personally struggle to find humorous or iconic, particularly given her status as Kara's boss, and it doesn't help that Kara often seems so affected by Cat and invested in what she thinks of her. I think if Kara were written in a way that gave her more power in their interactions, where she didn't truly need or care about her job at CatCo and thus, while she might not snark back at Cat in the workplace, she was also unaffected by Cat's barbs, I wouldn't mind their interactions so much. (This is why I enjoy Andrea and Kara's back-and-forth much more -- they seem to genuinely be on equal footing.) But the way Kara and Cat's dynamic is written, Cat really does have all the power, and the fact that she often uses it to emotionally terrorize Kara grates on me.

One of my biggest gripes with Cat is how so much of the '''humor''' around her character is her deliberately mispronouncing people's names. And, uh, as someone with a non-Anglo name, I don't think that's fucking funny! (And once Cat realizes Kara is Supergirl, I actually think it becomes extra ghoulish to do this, since she must then surely also realize that "Kara" is a name given to her by her dead family from her near-extinct culture. Like I know this is just a case of the writers not thinking the implications through, we're not meant to look so deeply into it, but the implications are really bad.)

Consequently, I don't think it's '''sweet''' when Cat finally deigns to call Kara by her actual fucking name at the end of S1. That moment honestly reminds me so much of that time in S1 of "The Good Place" (aka back when I liked "The Good Place" lol) when Eleanor repeatedly mispronounces "Senegal"/can't bother to remember that's where Chidi grew up, and then at the end of the episode she's like, "I have a present for you: Senegal." And Chidi is like, "Um, that's not a present, that's basic human decency." Like...exactly!!! Cat pronouncing Kara's name correctly is the bare minimum, it is not something that Kara should have had to earn, and it is extremely grating to me that the show itself seems to think otherwise.

Which ties back to one of my fundamental problems with Cat Grant, which is the framing of her character. All the other characters I listed above are framed as very complicated characters (Granny Weatherwax, Regina Mills, Miranda Priestly, Cordelia Chase eventually) or as outright antagonists (Regina George, Cordelia Chase in S1 of Buffy, Lilah Morgan, Regina Mills as well because she contains multitudes). Their status as difficult, proud, not-very-nice women is part of their complexity and/or antagonism, and as a defender of women who are not very nice, I gravitate to them in all their messiness. To quote phoukanamedpookie, one of my favorite meta writers, in this excellent post: "I genuinely find ['difficult' female characters] likable, often specifically because the narrative doesn’t tell me that I’m supposed to like them." (Emphasis mine.)

But you ARE supposed to like Cat Grant. And Cat Grant is not actually portrayed as particularly complex -- she is instead framed as an aspirational feminist role model for Kara. I wouldn't go so far as to say that her meanness is not portrayed as a flaw at all, but I think it's telling that every time the show allows Kara to actually get mad at her for her cruelty, the episode ends with Cat giving some speech about how women have it harder than men and Kara realizes that actually Cat, by being mean to her, was being a great feminist girlboss mentor the whole time. Which, like. What. And there's a scene where Cat talks about the double standards between men and women and she complains that Perry White can get away with throwing chairs at his employees but people call her a bitch or whatever. And, like, double standards are real, I'm with you there girlie, but, you verbally abuse and disrespect your employees on the daily, often to the point of tears, and you still have your high-powered influential well-paying job -- what more do you want?

There's a great line in the Mean Girls musical -- which is weird to type out, because it is not on the whole a very well-written musical -- where at the end, Regina tells Cady, "I know I was harsh. And people say I’m a bitch. But you know what they would call me if I was a boy?” And Cady enthusiastically chimes in with, "Strong." And Regina says, "Reginald." That line is so stellar precisely because it acknowledges the double standards while also poking fun at the obviously false idea that Regina was actually some kind of amazing feminist this whole time. That sense of humor about her status as a 'mean girl' is what I think was missing from the framing of Cat Grant -- we're meant to really take her seriously as a character who is legitimately a good mentor and feminist, whose critics truly are just sexist.

Which leads me to another major issue I have with Cat's character. Supergirl as a whole is very much in line with, like, 2012-era pop White Feminism™. It never really stops being like this; even when it tries to pivot to discussing other issues, it never goes beyond mainstream understandings of those issues to make any serious structural critiques, even when it doesn't get mired down in allegories that don't quite work and trip over its own feet in the process -- presumably because said structural critiques would call into question the fundamental assumptions upon which the show is built. (Much love to Azie and the effort she and J. Holtham put into 6.12 "Blind Spots", which was easily the show's best attempt at tackling any social issue, but by nature of only being one episode, it could not result in meaningful structural changes to how the Superfriends operate beyond "thinking about racism more", and the episode ends with a promotion of Robin DiAngelo's insufferable pop anti-racism self-help book White Fragility aka my villain origin story.)

That being said -- I think S1 and S2 are kind of the worst offenders when it comes to Supergirl's pop white feminism, not necessarily because the show gets any better about it later (although it was surely an improvement when they actually started incorporating women of color into the main cast starting with Sam Arias in S3), but because S1 and S2 are really fucking obnoxious about it, especially S1. And Cat Grant is THE mouthpiece for Supergirl's shallow, grating, capitalistic, overwhelmingly white understanding of feminism. While the single most cringey pseudo-feminist one-liner in the show is probably Alex's "No touching without consent!" from the series finale, most of the others come from Cat.

Just as an example, there's the bizarre monologue about how Kara is wrong to be offended by the obviously infantilizing name "Supergirl" (in contrast to "Superman"), because Cat is a girl, and girls are cool, and are you saying you don't think girls are cool? If you think it's wrong to call women "girls," you're the real sexist! Or, again, all her speeches about the double standards she's faced in her career -- and yet no interrogation of how Cat herself makes things so much harder for the women working for her (and, largely due to Supergirl's cast line-up at the time, absolutely no lip service given to the fact that women of color have it even harder). Or the egregious line about how Barry, Kara, Winn, and James look like the "attractive but nonthreatening cast of a racially diverse CW show" -- which isn't about feminism but does speak to the show's total lack of self-awareness about its racial makeup. And you could say these are structural problems with the show, not just with Cat, and you'd be right -- but given that Cat is so often situated as the mouthpiece for what the show thinks feminism is, and that we are meant to see her as a wise, progressive mentor, it becomes very difficult to separate her character from those structural problems.

And speaking of having trouble separating my feelings about her character from the structural problems with how the show uses her character...let's talk about Andrea Rojas, and how S6 thoroughly demonizes her with the end-goal of propping Cat Grant up. Andrea Rojas/Acrata is a Mexican hero in the comics; in Supergirl, they randomly make her Argentinian and they introduce her in S5 as more of a grey hat. Then in S6, the demonization begins.

The show (even in S5) emphasizes over and over how obsessed Andrea is with "clicks" and yellow journalism, which the show (and fandom) insists isn't what CatCo Should be about. Except...that was also Cat Grant's vision for CatCo! She also ran the magazine based on celebrity gossip and sensationalized reporting! It was James and Lena who took the magazine in a more serious direction. Andrea is shown to engage in increasingly unethical business practices throughout S6, culminating of course in William's narratively pointless death due in part to her actions, and Cat taking over CatCo again in the last episode is seen as a righting of this wrong (because, you see, Cat cares about turtles now, for some reason). This is despite the fact that Andrea is consistently shown to be a better and kinder boss than Cat was; not only does she actually call people by their real names, but when Nia falls asleep in front of her, Andrea very nicely tells her to take a mental health day. Cat would not have done that! So we have this bizarre storyline where we are meant to see Andrea as essentially this unethical interloper into Cat's rightful position -- even as they have literally the same goals, and even as Andrea is objectively a much better person to work for.

And look, I don't know how Julie Gonzalo identifies racially -- I know enough Argentinians to know that many of them who look like Julie do actually ID as white -- but even if she doesn't identify as a woman of color, the Latina identity is still a deeply racialized one in the United States. And it just does not sit right with me that one of Supergirl's only Latina characters -- and the one who is most consistently and strongly identified with her Latina heritage, and is based on one of DC's few Latina heroes -- gets demonized and 'put in her place' to prop up a blonde white Anglo woman as the one who should 'actually' be in power, even with her history of abusing that power at every turn.

Fandom doesn't help in this regard -- many (NOT all, fandoms are not monoliths) Cat and Supercat fans, and even a significant chunk of Supercorp fans, do NOT like Andrea and consider her much like the show does, as a usurper of the rightful throne of CatCo. I try not to let fandom affect how I view characters if I can help it, but when it's a narrative the show itself falls into, it gets a bit harder. Again, this isn't Cat's fault in-universe, but it is very difficult for me to extricate my feelings about how the storyline played out with my feelings about Cat -- especially since I'm already disinclined to be favorable towards her character. If I already liked her, I'm sure I'd be more forgiving, but, well, I've never claimed to not be a filthy hypocrite.

So yeah. I don't like Cat. Whoops. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#this got so damn long and i went on so many tangents lol #sideguitars #up up and away

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olderthannetfic · 1 year

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I feel like I keep seeing antis/anti-leaning people claim that proshippers are against discussions of racism in fandom. Obviously there is the basic bad faith interpretation (deliberate slander), which I'm not inherently against, but do you have any idea if there's a potential good faith interpretation of why they think this? Is there a specific fandom where the proshippers are actually yelling at the antiracists?

I get this question all the time, which is ironic since I tend to be public enemy #1 for the "AO3 is racist" crowd. (Or maybe they've moved on by now. I don't really keep up with them.)

No, there is no good faith interpretation. It's recycled Star Wars wank from 2015, SamSteve vs. Stucky wank from the same period, etc. etc.

The "anti-racists" in question include a lot of big names who should know better. Their central arguments boil down to:

The demographics of which characters get shipped and/or written about on AO3 are racist.

A lot of individual fics about characters of color on AO3 are racist.

AO3's refusal to "listen" and then censor is racist.

Fans of color "need" to be able to speak up about fic that is racist... in that fic's comments.

It's all ass-backwards because it focuses on the needs of the reader to find the content they want, which is content creator influencer hell, not the writer-focused AO3 approach.

The whole point of AO3-style fandom is that everyone has access to posting, and you can write what you want. Want more fics about your fave? Write them.

There are individual AO3 fics I find racist, but the vast majority of the discourse around the site focuses on things like writers who ship the black dude but use him as a prop boyfriend and not the single perfect tear woobie who's obviously their favorite. Is the pattern racist? Well, yeah, but you won't solve it by trying to restrict those fics. And the extreme form of this turns into a cliched top/bottom shipwar, which just makes everyone involved look like a moron.

Teaching people how to write their tops with personalities is far more likely to make the collective fic in a fandom less racist than demanding that they switch which pairing dynamic they're into. Making more original media where the man of color is the woobie in the first place would also help.

Plenty of the discourse is crying that such-and-such a m/m ship is super popular on AO3, temple of m/m, while gen about characters of color or some particular het ship with a nonwhite character is less popular. "Why don't you ship het instead of m/m" is a gigantic red flag for people who refuse to understand libido or accept it as a valid reason for anything.

A lot of the discourse is anti-kink despite lying about this fact. "Boo hoo hoo, I for sure psychically know who's a racist white person and who's a kinky black person whose id doesn't match up with mine!" etc.

There's also a lot of "This fic is race kink!" nonsense thrown around about any fic where a man of color has a big dick, as though penis size by itself is the racist cliche often summed up as "big black cock" and as though all ethnicities and nationalities are subject to identical stereotypes. This garbage gets uncritically repeated by newly-minted "woke" people falling over themselves to correct hundreds of years of injustice by yelling at others for a couple of days on twitter.

This is where the "you're calling me an anti to silence me" garbage comes from. Sound like a kink-hater, get treated as one.

AO3 does have bullying problems by now, and the various blocking and muting features were overdue. They are now being implemented, which is great. Anyone with half a brain cell should see that these are key anti-racist measures so that people can block idiots who write fic they hate or who leave shitty comments...

But a certain number of jackasses complain even about that because it will ~silence fans of color~ who need to go tell someone they're a racist in their fic comments.

These dumbass arguments have been circulating for years at this point, so the talking points have boiled down to catch phrases.

Damn right I'm against "discussion" when it means telling everyone that only white people would like nasty kink.

When the whiny "plz censor AO3" crowd stops sounding exactly like that asshole who used "freaks of color" in a past discussion about these kinds of things and when they're ready to discuss how to write extreme kink about their faves non-racistly without reducing the kinkiness, then I will be ready to listen to their arguments.

But they have none other than "write the kind of fic I like!"

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canonicallyobserving911 · 7 days

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https://www.tumblr.com/canonicallyobserving911/751961757836345344/if-its-true-that-kr-wrote-the-finale-then-its

She did in fact write the finale tonight which is just *sighs* I don’t understand what we have to do to finally be free of her. I thought we were with the move to abc honestly. Yet here she is. Giving yet another lack luster season finale.

Side note I’ve been hoarding chapters of your fic, I’m still in love with you but… because I had a feeling I’d need some good buddie content by the end of the season, I think I’ve got like 9 or 10 chapters to catch up on? And after tonight am I ever so glad for that lol.

Hi @mattsire and thank you for the ask.

I'm so disappointed in the finale and learning KR wrote it just makes it so much worse. I truly do not understand why she's still being allowed to have creative control of any kind, especially after seasons 5 & 6 were such cluster "Fs" but alas, this is the cross viewers have to bear instead of getting good episodes that carry a lot of depth.

Her writing used to be good, for example the Eddie and Ana breakup scene in 5x3 was great and the emotional beats were there but it's unclear why the pacing has been off since then. Also, the cringey sexual innuendos she always includes for Buck's character are so bad and someone needs to tell her that. I mean, I get it, Buck's not celibate (at least he hasn't said he is in CANON) but every season he's paired with people who don't value anything about him except his "Firehose". If he was still Buck 1.0, it would make sense but he's not and he hasn't been since season 1 (season 2 if his hookup with Taylor in the bar restroom counts). It truly saddens me for OS and Buck because it's been 7 going on 8 years and he's still being put in these lackluster relationships with one dimensional love interests. Also, T*mmy is a jealous jerk who wishes he was Buck and season 8 is going to be horrifically horrible with Gerard's old ass around making racists and bigoted comments.

Buck wants to be in love with someone (EDDIE) but for some reason, the show won't let him have it. He's still on the hamster wheel and at this point, what are they going to do if they don't get a season 9? It's past time for them to stop delaying Buck's and Eddie's love story especially since network TV is on the decline and they're replacing procedural dramas with reality TV BS and game shows but I digress.

After that finale, I'll be writing Buddie fanfics all summer and I'm more determined than ever to finish the last 12 chapters of "I'm still in love with you but... I needed to learn how to love myself too!" It's my baby and I love that fanfic so much. Actually, I love all the fics I write but that one is where the Diaz family gets to just be as they navigate life as two husbands and their son.

Happy reading my friend and based on what you mentioned, you're in for some good reading especially if you haven't read past chapter 21 yet. That's when they leave the country headed to Europe.

I'm working on the last two fics in the "Their Firsts, At Last" series and I hope to have them posted soon but in case you missed them, the "Wedding Planning & Preparation" and the "Civil Marriage Ceremony" fics are available on AO3. I enjoyed writing both of them and the next part will be posted hopefully within the next few days.

Finally, I completed two season 7 finale speculation fics and they're available on AO3 as well.

Thanks again for the ask and have a great day/night (depending on your time zone).

#buddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #911 abc #911 on abc #911 spoilers #911 season 7 #911 season 7 speculation #anti bummy #anti bucktommy #anti tommy kinard #Canonically Observing 9-1-1 Speaks #911 speculation

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rappaccini · 4 months

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I get what you're saying. I adore him in spiderverse though I think he's better in the comics, but I get the feeling the writers think they have to bend and twist other characters to prop him up, which isn't needed at all. Its like how they changed Miguel to an asshole, Peter is made to look incompetent and careless and Gwen's entire character is sacrificed and water down to sell her as a love interest. I lowkey get the feeling they're gonna try to make it to where Peter's more inferior than him: like how they're framing it so far, Peter couldn't do this, or that, he couldn't save this person but Miles can cause he's better. He's special. And yes, he is a great character but you don't have to water down other characters for his sake. He's already great on his own. I mean as someone who loves both Peter and Miles I think they should be able to coexist without putting one another down, but it kinda feels they're setting up the story to be that way. And while yes, hit at the critics and racists who bash Miles all you wany, but putting it to where you think he's a superior than Peter because...whatever isn't exactly the way to do it and will only make things worse.

yeah, i feel that.

i wrote a whole novel about how i hate that gwen's been watered down to make miles look more special, so i won't repeat that here.

man i feel sorry for comic miguel fans. they've been fighting for their lives bc of atsv. i have conflicted feelings about this version of miguel, because on the one hand i think the role he plays in the movie works and he's a great villain, but i still wonder if they could've come up with a different plot for atsv that didn't revolve around responding to the backlash against miles, or at least made someone who isn't another poc the face of the backlash.

peter b though... hm. one of the biggest problems with him in the comics pre-itsv (which still pops up, but less lately) is that he keeps being built up as this oh-so-special chosen one that all the other spider-ppl have to kiss the ring of (especially miles), and it's so annoying. so taking him off the pedestal and saying 'no, he's kind of a loser' is very satisfying.

it also highlights how the presence of miles in his life can inspire him to finally grow the hell up for good instead of being stuck in this constant state of arrested development. and since itsv was most people's first impression of miles, it was SO important for miles to not be following peter around with puppy dog eyes, and for peter to instantly understand and appreciate how special miles is (because if peter does it, so does the audience).

atsv is where i think the problem comes in. peter b being so benched doesn't track with his characterization. like, you're telling me a girl miles went on one bus ride with who friendzoned him is risking her life to come see him, but the guy who mentored him for days and loved miles so much he decided he wanted to be a father because of him won't? no. absolutely not. if anyone was going to sneak away from the society to see miles it should have been peter. and no way in hell would he be grinning taking selfies with his baby while miles is being hunted by the society. they flushed the miles-peter dynamic down the toilet to replace it with miles-gwen and it sucks.

it also doesn't work with the metacommentary. because let's be real: the canon events all center around peter parker. he's the blueprint, and the movie doesn't mention it at all. like, isn't that weird? there are more peters at hq than any other type of spider-person, and nobody mentions it? wouldn't peter be uncomfortable with being put on a pedestal like that? wouldn't miguel have a huge inferiority complex about not being peter parker? wouldn't this be a great opportunity for the original spider-man to tell the racist fans who won't accept miles that they're full of shit? why is he just wandering around in a robe and slippers.

as for miles being superior... i think btsv is what'll make or break it. as of the end of atsv, miles thinks he's better than the spider-society and that's why he thinks he's going to be able to break canon. he's proud of himself for "beating" them, he keeps telling gwen he's gonna be the guy who'll be different for her (he won't), he wants to be the most special spider-man who gets to cherrypick his canon events and he hasn't considered that the idea that canon events are mandatory might be the real problem. if btsv revolves around miles realizing he's wrong and helping everyone else break their canon too, i love it. but if btsv ends with the theme of 'sure, canon exists, but some people, like miles, are special enough to be the exception' instead of 'everyone deserves better' that undermines the whole story. i'm just gonna wait on it.

#asks #spiderverse salt #they also took from hobie for miles' you-should-have-been-the-prowler narrative fwiw

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ineffable-writer · 1 year

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Ahh hello! I would love to hear more about your criticism of Babel and your experience in the field, if you're comfortable sharing <3

Ah gods, this is gonna get me crucified but sure. For some background, I’m a writer (working on historical sci-fi) and academic myself, and I’ve done a lot of academic work with language, so I’ve got some experience here.

First—it’s just not well written. It has a lot of other sins, but the characters use a lot of modern phrasing (“Nice comes from the Latin word for ‘stupid’”? Really? In 1828?) and even ignoring that the prose is so… on the nose. Footnotes which explain the obvious. Characters explaining their political beliefs at length. Lots of telling without showing.The whole thing’s written in exactly the patronizing tone the author seems to want to criticize.

The fucking footnotes, man.

I love linguistics! I should be enchanted by the footnotes! But it’s just a bunch of notes on etymology with little nuance. Again—the thing I quoted above—that’s 2000s-era-Republican-talk-show-host levels of reaching. How can a book about language, written by someone who should know better, have such shallow insights?

Etymology is great, but ultimately you can’t derive meaning from it, you know?

Second—the villains are caricatures. I don’t have an issue with every white guy in the book being a villain, but making them into caricatures actually does the patriarchy more good than harm. For such a tome, Kuang had room to make them so fucking insidious and didn’t take any of those opportunities. They’re just bad and racist.

Which—yes, some people are bad and racist. But the portrayal perpetuates the idea that racism is obvious and blatant. It’s not. I wanted to see some subtle racism—not just evil white men and a whiny, barely-tolerated white girl. (Why were they even friends with her? She felt like she was just there to prove a point.)

This is speaking as a Jew who is constantly frustrated by portrayals of antisemitism as obvious: if you want to engage with racism, engage with the insidiousness of it, you know? Mustache-twirling villains are a symptom! If you’re gonna write 500 pages about the evils of colonialism, engage with what it actually looks like.

The protagonists giving soapbox speeches don’t help the matter. I agree with them! I should be happy to listen to them! But I’m not. They’re literally preaching to the choir. Hell, it’s annoying when IRL friends speak that way—and again, who talks like that in 1828?

Third—(actually I’m gonna remove this point—I don’t feel like I can comment.)

Fourth—oh my god that tagline. “Every act of translation is an act of betrayal” are you KIDDING me. I know it’s just the tagline. I know it’s not the book. But it’s just so exemplary of this anti-academia mindset that drives me up a fucking wall. There are huge swaths of academia dedicated to language preservation, and translation is so huge for accessibility to other cultural worldviews! That line just fucking GETS me. It reeks of isolationism.

Like do you KNOW what translation can do for erased languages? I just. Ugh. It makes me so mad. I get what she was going for. I know that’s not the point. I just hate that tagline.

This whole book is anti-academic in all the wrong ways, I guess. It rages against the wrong people. I’ve spent so much time working with people on language preservation—there are SO many dying languages due to colonialism!—and nearly every young academic in the soft sciences is trying to do something revolutionary. It feels… I don’t know, it just reduces the whole environment into something that’s Twitter-levels of two-dimensional.

There’s a lot that’s wrong with academia, don’t get me wrong—I’m currently seeing some of the worst of it IRL—but she just didn’t hit it right. The whole book felt like she was fighting with a straw man when the real bad guy was like, right there.

I don’t know, I have a hard time explaining my feelings here. They’re very dense and complicated. I’m working on a response novella, actually, about the last three speakers of a dying language. It’ll explore my feelings better than I can do it here. I don’t think a direct analysis will do it justice anyway.

I think I hate it so much because I really, really wanted to love it. It had SO many things I was thrilled to see, and it just… failed. The whole thing feels immensely shallow. I haven’t even mentioned how lame the magic is, because the magic isn’t even worth mentioning. I was so looking forward to a really good take on colonialism and language magic, and instead I got something that’s well-educated but not insightful.

So—yeah. My slightly-fevery thoughts on Babel. There you go. I’m sure fans will pick this the hell apart, so please know that this has NOT been written at maximum capacity lol. I’m sure I’ve made some bad word choices.

Take this as good faith, y’all. I really wanted to like it.

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paperstarwriters · 6 months

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(you don't have to publish the ask but make sure it's anonymous) please please please don't worry about the anon I think it might be the same person who made a harrass discord group...of course it's good to acknowledge wrongdoings of creators but it doesn't make anyone obligated to stay away from fandom. If you don't support the racist mess that happened it's totally fine if you stay in arcana fandom. Don't worry.

of course, of course. I'm not feeling pressured to leave the fandom right now don't worry about that. I know seeing it can cause a bit of anxiety, and for a little while it did make me feel anxious, I recalled why I wanted to write a lot of the fanfics I make in the first place, I didn't like how they wrote Muriel's ending, and I didn't like how they represented him a lot, so I wanted to make something that fit the image I had of him instead.

Anyways, I was much more curious about the note they made about the problems with Julian being a bird or the various bird motifs and that being antisemitic. I was wondering how or why that was the case, as when I tried searching it up I wasn't really able to find any definite explanations, so I was wondering if they could point me to a resource or something on the topic. I've heard that a merge between an owl and a human can often be antisemitic especially when that owl is presented as an almost demon-like entity with feathers forming horns like that of a great horned owl, and their beak being presented as a large hooked nose. That much, I do understand, but I'm unclear if it applies to the wider range of birds as well, or not.

In my initial search I found a story called Jewbird written by Bernard Malamud, an American-jewish author, and while it serves as the allegory of antisemitism not only coming from outside but inside as well, the nature of the intelligent bird being representative of an older more traditional Jewish individual (according to another source who were likely more able to draw the parallel than I was), presents him as a human-merged with bird individual and the whole point of the text seems to present it as the pure opposite of being antisemitic.

Of course, I can see the possibility of it, that he was presented as a bird in order to subvert the initial expectations and stereotypes, in the same way that Maus by Art Spiegelman does, but I would still like to be better able to understand the bird-antisemitism connection. Does it apply to specific birds? What kind of bird-like representation causes issue? Would the image of birds flying freely over the sky be considered problematic imagery? Why and how? is it the caged bird that is problematic? Why and how? Is there any possible way that this birdlike imagery can spread into other spaces and cause issue? Should Julian never be given feathered wings, regardless if you're creating a bird image or not? is his bird familiar problematic as well??? this is like telling someone unfamiliar with racism against African-american individuals that cotton is not good to them without telling them about the whole history about slavery and cotton picking, leading them to believe that they just take issue with the material of shirts or something.

I know I probably sound kinda nit-pickey, but I am genuinely curious and would love to avoid making any antisemitic mistakes when including Julian and Portia in my works. I wish to avoid this all the time, of course, but most especially now, as discussion on Palestine has spurred a lot of antisemitism due to the cultural genocide from Israel. And while it's clear that what Israel is doing, it's also clear that not all Jewish individuals support that, even though some news groups or people talking about it frame it as if it is.

Of course I'm open and eager for discussion on the other LIs as well and the intricacies of their problematic representation and how that must be handled corrected or re-framed, especially since in the early more.... hostile days of this fandom, I tended to stick to Muriel's route since I hadn't played the other routes in a while/all the way through so I'm a little unaware of all the other characters' misrepresentations (so if you're mentioning Muriel I probably have heard about and considered that one before—this man does not leave my brain lmao)

I can see the possible issues on Nadia being constantly represented as domineering failing to recognize softness in her (which I belive, though correct me if I'm wroing, is about dark skinned women being seen as violent and tough instead of soft or kind), and Asra being represented through Orientalism (mystic, but lesser other with messy foreign traditionalistic magic that must be corrected through the western logic and science—this partly originated in ancient greece so not entirely western as in America)

But yeah, I'm just really curious about it, cause my initial search only brought up news articles about people apologizing for being antisemitic, or the history of antisemitism. Rather than some of the various possible forms of antisemitism or it's possible relation to birds.

#answering asks #the arcana #I put it in the tags on that one post sorry. You probably didn't see because you didn't want to scroll through the hate post #and that's fair #but yeah I'm here for research purposes & to remember and learn from the mistakes of the others in the past.#Anonymous #julian devorak #portia devorak #nadia satrinava #muriel #muriel the arcana #Muriel of the kokhuri #antisemitism #lit analysis

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nefariousrat · 1 year

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chainsaw man deep dive chapter 2: pochita's whereabouts

warning: spoilers for the entirety of the manga as this is a re-read and analysis

we start off almost immediately where we left off. makima wastes no time whisking denji away to tokyo where he'll start his new life as a dog to the public safety bureau. on the way there, poor denji who hasn't had food aside from a piece of bread gets hungry and his stomach rumbles. makima has them all pull over into a gas station where they order a bowl of udon each and a corn dog. conveniently, as they're ordering, a man in distress bursts into the station claiming a devil has his daughter. makima states that her udon will get soggy and tells denji to take care of it in her stead.

at this point we've already seen that makima can, at the very least, be hot and cold with her kindness. but now it's becoming pretty evident that there's more to her meanness. not to mention, she doesn't seem to care that a child is in danger. so denji, threatened with execution if he doesn't obey makima's orders, grudgingly heads off to save the day.

the dog and his master

at this point, fujimoto is REALLY beating us over the head with the dog comparisons. fujimoto isnt hiding anything here; he's telling us everything we need to know about makima and denji before we actually get to the major reveals later on. it's great foreshadowing.

the udon scene was fun for me to analyze. makima and denji are balanced on a sort of seesaw; a scale that depending on which side tips over decides who is the master and who is the dog. makima is training denji to submit to her without him even noticing.

makima having denji go work before eating reminded me of how a trainer teaches their dog to obey and exercise patience before jumping straight to their meal.

contrary to denji's thoughts in the car where he was shocked by makima's graciousness towards him, makima has been doing the opposite the entire time. her kindnesses have been superficial from the very start.

for denji however, i think this scene and his confusion towards makima, especially as a stranger, shows just how much he's willing to sacrifice for a connection. he's willing to overlook blatant mistreatment and threats and rationalize them, and it's sad because its actually a realistic trait for someone like him to have.

the death of denji's individualism

or: "yes" to "woof"

makima's infamous statement "you're my pet now. all you get to say is 'yes of woof'" initially angered denji. as he's searching for the devil, he's fuming over the dog comparisons. but then something interesting happens.

the girl and the devil are playing together. obviously, this was a ploy by the muscle devil to trick whoever came to let down their guard so it can kill them.

this isnt confirmed as far as i know but i wouldn't be surprised if makima set this situation up because it parallels pochita and denji's friendship so well and shows denji that despite this, devils are not his friends. and because pochita's pseudo-death is so fresh, it must be gutting for denji to be tricked in such a way.

so when he heads back to makima, he says "woof". this here is the death of denji's individualism.

makima won.

the muscle devil's lesson

i think the muscle devil event shows us that devils are just like people: good, bad, biased, racist, and flawed.

some are like pochita, some are deceptive. and denji doesn't have the social skills or support system to adequately deal with that.

denji's reaction to this betrayal is an immediate switch to extreme violence. he's quick to act and react, and it makes sense because he grew up with violence. its synonymous with survival. but only after its all over does he let himself feel betrayed. but as we'll come to find out, he doesn't let himself truly deal with these emotions.

pochita's whereabouts

i want to try going through each chapter and talking about why fujimoto named it such. i think that this chapter is a taste of just how out of place denji is now. before the zombie devil and makima, denji had carved himself a little place in the world. he had a job, a purpose, even if it was ultimately a purpose that would have never been realized. denji himself knew he would die before he paid off his father's debt.

so now denji is lost and confused and placed in an unfamiliarly dangerous environment. and he doesn't even have his sole partner, his friend, to stick it out with him.

to end this on a slightly more upbeat note, i did want to mention how makima's comment about there being historical precedence for people merging with devils makes me hopeful that yoru and asa's relationship will becomes a true friendship in a parallel to denji and pochita's. its rare within the world of chainsaw man but it can happen.

thanks for reading!

rare shot of denji being "clever" and my favorite scene of the chapter

love him.

#csm deep dive #chainsaw man #csm manga #chainsaw man spoilers #chainsaw man manga #csm #denji #denji chainsaw man #aki hayakawa #chainsaw man aki #makima #chainsaw man theory #chainsaw man chapter 2

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nesswrites · 11 months

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Skyrim Rambles

Okay, so I'm playing skyrim again, this round as an Imperial Khajit, but as I go through this, having played both Imperials and Stormcloaks (I alternate my files to make it more interesting)....I have opinions.

FIRST from a logistical and "connection" standpoint, if you go into Skyrim blind to the internal politics, the Stormcloaks are actually "better" in a lot of ways. Ralof and Ulfric know you were innocent and about to be killed, and no matter how other Stormcloaks feel, they are willing to accept and protect you. Meanwhile, on the other end, Legate Rikke was going to have you executed even though you weren't on the list.

SECOND, FUCKING HADVAR. Look, I love Hadvar, he's great, he and Ralof are ex boyfriends. But he's also a goddamn moron. Man couldn't write us a recommendation letter? Give us a signet? Also like, he heads off to Solitude first, while we play message boy for his family to the Jarl, go through the Barrow, and likely defeat a dragon before we head to solitude ourselves (story wise). Hell, I went and got the rest of my Fus Roh Dah before heading to Solitude this time, and took the scenic route past the college of winterhold. Hadvar arrives after you, who he didn't even write a letter for, after sending you to THE SAME WOMAN that was gonna murder you, and hope she believes you.

THIRD... while everyone likes to compare the Stormcloaks to some unsavory racist types (and it is earned in some ways) they are very much also an equivalent analogy to Native Americans. The Dunmer settled primarily in Windhelm, with the stormcloaks. Windhelm, despite being the racism capital, is the city that opened their gates to the refugees. There's tons of other cities, many far more pleasant, and yet most of the dunmer are in Windhelm. The soldiers also recommend going to the Dunmer shops for buying/selling, and I'm sorry to the shopkeeper but he's just nice Hisoka in my mind. They also never run to the cringey "one of the good ones" language if you're a Dunmer or Argonnian or Khajit, they just accept this warrior based entirely on "Ulfric and Ralof say they are cool".

Adding in I don't think making the Dunmer live in the slums or making Argonnians live outside the walls is cool, but the slums read more like that's where the refugee camp was, inside the walls for protection. I am all for eat the rich but also most family homes in skyrim are probably built by your grandpa. And if we wanna go there, why is the Dragonborn able to own like 12 properties, not rent any out, and never be home other than to get money from their spouse.

Third and a half - while not related, a BIG part of the conflict is after Windhelm was so accepting of the Dunmer / dark elves, the light elves come flouncing in and make it illegal to worship their main god, Talos. The Dunmer don't care and in some cases even think this is a stupidly bad ruling, but they are caught up in the blame. ESPECIALLY since the Thalmor / Altmer themselves are the kind of assholes who would probably run a smear campaign against the Dunmer.

Fourth, the imperials are also fucking racist. Be a khajit sometime and tell me they're not as you hear the same three lines again and again. "Awwh did someone steal your sweetroll", "SKYRIM BELONGS TO THE NORDS" "Watch your back sneak-thief". Also when they defeat Ulfric and take over Windhelm, things do not change for the Dunmer nor the Argonnians, nothing gets better, and that drunk racist douchebag still wanders around town screaming at people because he is essential for a fishing quest. They have almost no Dunmer in solitude. They are not opening their gates to refugees. They're the nice shiny capitol city that doesn't let the rabble pollute the streets.

Extras:

On the things I like about Imperials - Hadvar may be stupid but I love him. Rikke may have wanted to kill me in cold blood, but now I'm her little meow meow, and she trusts me. The high queen of Skyrim is there, as is the Bard's College. The imperial drip is better than the stormcloak drip.

The gay rights is great. Ulfric and Galmar came to my Lesbian Lizard Stormcloak wedding in my other file. I presume Legate Rikke or someone similar will come to my lesbian cat's wedding. No comment about how i only play lesbians. I used to have a gay boy cat married to Derkeethus but.....my himbo lizard husband and the only man I enjoy courting.....He's SO broken and stupid. Man running from Solitude down to his original home every single day. At normal running speed. And hope I don't follow him because dragons always love attacking. Meanwhile my preferred wives are lizard lady what sometimes gets murdered if you don't solve the Windhelm murders asap, and strong orc woman whose one desire is to NOT marry a man, but if you are a guy character don't worry she doesn't mind marrying you for the alliance (though she reads very lesbian)

#skyrim #I don't even like either side all that much #but stormcloaks kinda get a worse rap than they are #Plus #for the head of the stormcloaks Ulfric was sure cheerful about me getting married #like this man got an invite to some Argonnian and Orc wedding and went FUCK YEAH THATS MY GIRL

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uncloseted · 2 years

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Lol @ the logic that a celebrity is "problematic" because they make more than minimum wage and haven't magically fixed class/economic strain on greater America society. It's almost like you guys WANT that girl to be some kind of big secret racist instead of actually discussing bridging political views because it's easier to be able to just blame someone for everything wrong. It's also hilarious how people are spreading lies and misinformation about the girl and the post itself to make it seem worse and then being angry at the right for not understanding leftist political movements because they weaponize and believe in misinformation to discredit the movement. Ironic af.

To me, it's also just like... how much of this is actually public outrage that Sydney Sweeney posted a photo in which there's a guy wearing a Thin Blue Line shirt, and how much of this is just schadenfreude masquerading as moralism? Is this really a conversation motivated by moral integrity and intellectual rigor with the goal of combating racism, or is just a pretext for knocking Sydney Sweeney down a peg because people feel like she's annoying and overexposed? I know you all are going to come at me being like, "no, it's absolutely the shirt thing," but is it really? Is this the same level of response you would give a friend who posted a picture alongside a guy wearing a Thin Blue Line shirt? Is this even the same level of response you would give a guy wearing a Thin Blue Line shirt? I find it hard to believe that all the people on Twitter calling Sydney's family KKK members or accusing them of being insurrectionists would do the same to some guy they saw on the street.

And if you're really, 100% convinced that it's about the shirt thing, what do you want from Sydney Sweeney? An apology? A long post insisting that she knows her family is wrong and she's desperately trying to change their minds? As this Mic article says, all that would amount to is virtue-signalling damage control, and I don't think that would have been well-received either. Certainly, the actual response she gave was tone-deaf and not great. I'm not going to argue about that. But I don't think anything she could have said or done would have been considered adequate at this point. Which raises the question... what exactly is everyone hoping to gain from this? And I think the answer is that they're not really hoping to gain anything. The "Sydney Sweeney situation" isn't about convincing racist people to stop being racist or to draw attention to police brutality or to discuss prison abolition or even to spark a conversation about how to have difficult discussions with our own racist family members. I think for a lot of people who have jumped on this topic, it just feels good to feel morally superior to a conventionally attractive, successful young actress who has too much money.

I want to be clear that I'm not trying to defend Sydney Sweeney here. I really don't care one way or another what happens to her or her career, and I'm not upset that people are mad at her specifically. What I am is concerned about the lack of empathy that appears every time a celebrity does something that could be construed as problematic. If we did something problematic, wouldn't we want someone to call us in and explain what we could do differently? Wouldn't we want to be faced with kindness and understanding? Wouldn't we feel defensive if someone called us out on that behavior? Wouldn't we feel even more defensive if thousands of people aggressively called us out on that behavior and made assumptions about us and our family lives? Wouldn't that defensiveness make us dig in our heels and maybe start resenting the people who tell us we're wrong? And so why should we treat celebrities any differently when they fuck up than we would want to be treated? And why are we looking to celebrities to be paragons of morality and virtue, anyway? They're just people.

So before we jump on the train of declaring someone "problematic", I think it's important to take a step back and ask ourselves what we're hoping we'll be able to change by doing that, and what that person could do to redeem themselves in our eyes. I think doing that can help us to prevent ourselves from jumping on a bandwagon just because it feels good, and to make sure that our actions are focused on an actual goal.

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beatbawksradio · 1 month

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vent about being irish diaspora

here i go venting in public again but Man.

there is something very strange about being an irish person born in america, and being subject to this weird "unbelonging" from both sides of life. like... my family came here as a direct result of the great potato famine, and most of them lived up north in canada and such, but my parents moved down south just before having kids. so i was brought up into the world essentially believing all white people are the Same and that i was just as responsible for the horrific historical atrocities as the rest of the white southerners were.

but. but I'm not. my family had nothing to do with that. my family was still in Ireland during all that. we only came here less than 200 years ago, as a result of the same people who colonized this country having subject us to a horrifying genocide that wiped out millions of my people, and ended up nearly bringing our language and culture to extinction. we are just as much victims of colonization and oppression as every other victim of the colonistic white people.

and that's really hard to wrap your head around when you're born southern...

but, the fact of the matter is. im not actually "american." im ethnically European. im Irish. and i dont feel like i belong here, on this soil, with this people, speaking this language. its this existential dread i battle with every day that i wake up and look at the world around me. a world that my oppressors built. a world that ive been assimilated into, bc no one ever bothered to correct me or let me know what my heritage actually meant.

and its strange. bc on one end, i have americans who look at me like I'm a freak and a weirdo for wanting to move to Europe, wanting to learn a second language, wanting to embrace my cultural paganism- why go through so much effort when i could just stay here and survive? but they're all so ignorant, they're unaware of how shit this country is and how shit the situation is for someone like me, given my family's history. as ""free"" as people like to sing the praises about this country, there is nothing "free" about our judgmental society that constantly battles to stifle those who don't want to conform.

but, on the other hand, its also difficult and anxiety-inducing to be accepted by Europeans, too. i often feel like im trapped in a destiny that i didn't have a choice in, bc i was born american and disconnected from the motherland. i want to learn another language, i want to speak like a european person, i wish i had a cool accent from a language that isn't my colonizers language... but trying to actually do that in front of others feels so scary. so humiliating. like I'm pretending to be something i could never be. like ill never be good enough to be european bc i wasnt born there.

doesn't help that I've had a european person say that to me, as well. telling me that ill never be able to understand or belong with Europeans bc im simply not one. my circumstances are too different and there's nothing i can do to change that.

but how nonsensical is that, how absolutely insane is that, when im ethnically a european person myself? europe is literally WHERE i belong, its where im supposed to be, and you're telling me that im just supposed to stay here, stuck in this land my colonizers stole, speaking my colonizers' language? you're telling me that my disdain for the english language is somehow "racist"... when I'm fucking irish?? are you out of your goddamn mind?

im so lucky, and so thankful to be rid of those people, and to be with the wonderful, aupportive, loving, and most of all intelligent european partner I've had the honor of being able to fall in love with. they've been helping me undo all these misconceptions about life and helping validate and support my journey into leaving this country. they're helping me learn their language, being so patient and so understanding and listening to every little weird thing i have to say about what I've discovered about my history. its so refreshing to finally have the support I've desperately needed for so long, and to be able to feel empowered that i really can make a difference in my life, i really can pursue and fulfill my dream of returning to where i belong, and leaving behind this oppressive, deceiving world I've found myself in

because i deserve to be where i belong. i deserve to feel like i belong. and i belong in europe

#vent #sessionvibe #vibevibe #chootvibe #tutajvibe

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