#So many cultures that believe in reincarnation are being thrown under the bus by our discourse on what they should and shouldn't believe

[abyssalpriest]

Me: I am steadfast on the issue that cultural appropriation is an issue, but being drawn to research and talk to people of a spiritual culture and find out what you need to convert and/or appropriately interact with the culture is OK and that doesn't change when youre directed to start it by a spirit. If you're going to go through the proper means, the reason you started going through those proper means whether it's mundane or spiritual shouldn't matter. Many of the cultures in question are perfectly OK with people who think they are reincarnations of people involved with the group (for example monks taking on - taking BACK on - people who have memories of being in their monastery in a past life and who are now returning to said monastery to continue their work), or are OK with being drawn there by spirits of the group like hindu gods calling to people who aren't hindu because many Hindus see them as avatars of a universal God, and it's a rather uniquely western (for lack of a better term) idea that the only appropriate way to approach being drawn to another spiritual path is by completely mundane things, as if spirits and those groups have no autonomy nor ability to reach out unless it's through mundane means. Many of these cultures do not have the distinction of mundane therefore normal vs religion therefore not entirely real or able to be leaned upon as factual, it's disrespectful to tell cultures that believe in, say, reincarnation memories and autonomous/far reaching gods that you're Protecting them from.... things they believe are possible and ok... and not letting each individual culture make their own decisions on whether someone is respectful or not when they come knocking and give their reasons as to why they knocked is just in my mind much more harmful and intolerant of these cultures than the odd person genuinely appropriating

Spirits: OK, so here's where I want you to go research-wise and what name of mine I want you to learn about, it's directly connected to these people who you are not a part of, but I deserve to be able to not have my families and work on Earth ignored just because you aren't a part of them. If you want to be intimately close with me you need to meet my families, I will send you to learn about me from the people who know better than you and who are more experienced than you, and obviously I want you to do that in the way that's respectful to them, because they are my family, their importance and autonomy and the sacredness of their religion is exactly why I'm telling you who I am in their pantheons - it is about me honouring the work they have done with me over millennia. If you claim to love me then you should understand who I work with and why

Me: hmm....... Sounds like cultural appropriation tho....

#Insert what I just said about Leviathan being straightforward and ''if you want to actually do this work it will be hard and push #your understandings but if you believe in spirits then you better act like we're real and autonomous. If you want to treat us like #theories and lists of association you can go back to not talking to me and not listening to me and just worship my name'' #He didn't say that to me but it's what I've gathered from a lot of conversations with him on shit like... #People just automatically worshiping him and getting barely anything out of it bc they can't even talk to him so he just has to be vaguely #present - not even vaguely present most of the time he points out given all the cultures that just give him shit for existing #Not saying actual literal cultures are wrong I'm saying that there's a lot of cultural ''we honour this trio because they created us'' in #the way wed talk about a culture of drinking. Not like a culture as in a literal locational group of people. Anyway. #Stuff like that and talking about how yeah sorry put in the work if you want results and how the spiritual world does not conform #to discourse any more than the natural world on this plane does like.... Animals will still kill and torture and abuse other animals #even if we sit here debating if they should or not.... Likewise we can sit here and have discourse over whether spirits will or won't #reach out to people of other cultures and whether reincarnation only works within the same culture over and over which.... #I don't...... Unless you wanna use castes as your primary example of what Good ideas of reincarnation looks like....... #So many cultures that believe in reincarnation are being thrown under the bus by our discourse on what they should and shouldn't believe #for their own good??? Anyway this discussion doesn't have anything to do w reincarnation but that is one place where this attitude #is exemplified so. It's an example #ramblings // #Anyway. I know he's encouraging me to talk about it bc I know what I need to do and if I'm wrong I will figure that out #But man I spent enough years in a spiritual cult and then a borderline political cult online I'm so tired of being told I am evil #for having opinions on how to be Good and Appropriate and Kind. Bit even on how to get away with stuff I genuinely think the way #we approach appropriation is harmful to these cultures and I want to go about this more educated and understanding and.... #Aware that we all use discourse a lot of the time to denounce other cultures' autonomy and practices and beliefs #but because we can rationalise why what we're doing is Helpful and Good we just shut down any attempt to say UMMM not good.... #As being an excuse to appropriate and cross borders that shouldn't be crossed. Anyway #UGH. It makes my head spin to be sitting here like yes the most respectful thing for me to do seems to be reach out and learn #like. Because I know this spirit is real - shared by the culture I'm interacting with so if you shut me down saying yeah how do you Know #he's real you're shutting them down too which... Is most of my argument.... But because I know he's real that means he is a part of this #culture. This is a partner of mine. A best friend. Who has spent millennia in Mongolia with millions of people there. And I'm sitting here #like yeah yeah anyway we can't talk about Mongolia and what you do there and who you work with and why bc.... People on the Internet #will yell at me for it....

[pasta-abomination]

Well, Supergirl, it’s been fun.

When I first heard of the show last year, it was this—maybe a little cheesy, but that’s comics—fun show with a focus on relationships between women of all different types, a show about a woman growing up and coming into her own and finding her place in the world. And, of course, Kara and Alex. The sisterhood at the heart of the show. Of course there were some things that could’ve been done better—but it became clearer and clearer that it was an honest effort.

I hope you know how much of a leap of faith it took to follow Supergirl to the CW, as a queer woman. I hope you know that that’s—in my entirely unprofessional opinion—an indicator of how much good faith this show had. This show literally got the CW’s foot in the door with a demographic that it had all but completely alienated by this time last year.

I think it’s safe to say you’ve used that up.

I believe that representation matters. But it doesn’t begin and end with Sanvers. And this season I have watched:

1. A black man and a beloved DC character sidelined as a love interest with no warning, no real explanation, and no further treatment of it—now, as we know, to pair off Kara with the frat-boy reincarnation of Lar Gand 
 2. Kara’s entire arc this season (both Danvers sisters, actually) be reduced to her love interest. Jeremiah who? 
 3. The eighty millionth regurgitation of the “love of a good woman” trope. I don’t need to go into why this is inappropriate on so many levels in a supposedly feminist show that’s marketed towards young women and girls (but I will anyways). 
 4. Characterization and continuity thrown out the window in order to make Mon-El look good and drive the plot. 

 For Jeremiah’s deception to fool everyone but Mon-El, not only do we have to assume that it never occurred to trained government operatives that he could be a plant, we also have to believe that a) no one examined him at the DEO, b) if they did, no one knows the difference between a robotic arm and a human one, and c) we have to forget that Hank/J’onn is a literal mind reader. 

 You can only excuse so much before it starts to look like you’re tearing down your title character and your actual core ensemble in order to make a character relevant to the plot.
 5. Kara repeatedly insist that she doesn’t like Mon-El, she doesn’t want to be around him—only to have him harass her until she dates him (or forgives him). 
 6. Alex “Come near my family and I will end you” Danvers push her sister repeatedly at a man who Kara has openly expressed dislike for multiple times; who, once they’re dating, disrespects and lies to her repeatedly. She excuses his behavior on more than one occasion. (Are we sure they haven’t all been replaced with White Martians?) 
 7. Watch Kara be put in a position (sometimes transparently contrived, as in “Homecoming”) where she either has to apologize to Mon-El because he’s been justified by the narrative, or, for some unknown reason (usually prodding from another character, like Alex or the Music Meister), decides to forgive him. Over and over and over again. 
 8. An actual episode, supposedly focused on the Danvers family, where Mon-El has more screen time than the actual lead and drives a plot he isn’t even relevant to.

This show was, nominally, about Kara Danvers. Her as a whole person; trauma, family, grief, rage, jealousy—and her deep desire in spite of what she’d been through to give back to her adoptive home and do the right thing. It was about her professional life, trying to make her way in the world and working for the kind of woman that could help her learn how to do those things. It was about her assumptions being challenged—not narratively bludgeoned—and her learning. But most of all, it was about her becoming her own person. A whole person.

That show is gone. Her single main arc this season as a character is rehabilitating the galaxy’s most unrepentant frat boy by… arguing with him a lot and constantly being pushed to a point where she’s ready to break up with him, apparently. People are so quick to say “But he’s learning!”; “But Kara’s a stick-in-the-mud!”; “She’s prejudiced too!” (I’m pretty sure you call “prejudice” against a shameless misogynist “standards”, but what do I know, I’m gay). They’re missing the point. And that is:

Kara’s story now revolves around Mon-El.

Arguments and evenings with him have entirely replaced “sister nights” at the end of the episodes. His secrets, his disrespect, his actions, are now driving her development as a character. She mostly only reacts to events outside of that, like another threat from Cadmus, or rescuing Lena Luthor, or whatever’s happening with Jeremiah—but her stance towards those events is reactive.

In other words, Kara no longer drives her own story.

And Kara has lost her job at CatCo. That job that, last year, “kept her connected” to the people she was trying to serve? Disappeared with a whimper after a similarly half-assed treatment to the search for Jeremiah. Kara no longer has a professional life.

But okay. I’m gay; clearly I don’t understand what it’s like to be heterosexual, or in a relationship, and I’m obviously only in this for the Supercorp, right? I should just stay in my lane. I have Sanvers! What else could I possibly want?

Funny you should ask.

Flip side of Alex’s story—I’ve lived in queer communities. I’ve watched friends come out. Women who thought they were straight.

And I watched them struggle with the things they’ve been taught about relationships. What they should want and what’s acceptable from a partner. What love looks like, on that micro, interpersonal level. Things that are, in many ways, inextricably intertwined with gender, in our culture.

Mon-El is the closest thing I can think of to an embodiment of all those things that they struggle to unlearn. Mon-El—and stories like this one—are exactly how they learned those things.

Let me remind you, in case you’ve forgotten, that while the queer lady fanbase for shows tends to have a much wider age range, this show is primarily directed at young women and girls.

A show that’s marketed as “female-centric” has in fact become a show about a woman fixing a man—a man who, incidentally, doesn’t want to be fixed. He just wants to keep banging her.

And these girls are going to grow up and become women—straight or not—who will go out into the world thinking that this is normal. That this is acceptable—to be lied to repeatedly, to have your requests for privacy disregarded, your family spoken to rudely and your parents treated with hostility and suspicion, to have your house broken into, be accused of sleeping with someone by a jealous not-boyfriend, to shoulder the entire emotional weight of making the relationship work by forgiving him over and over and over again—

—Because in the end, the story goes, that will make him (them) better.

The reality is, so often, that it doesn’t. That a person will happily continue taking advantage of someone’s good faith if they think they can get away with it. That jealous behavior like Mon-El exhibits often escalates into physical violence. That a dude who seemingly doesn’t care is often exactly what he seems. Someone who doesn’t want to change will not change, no matter how “much” you love them.

That you owe it to that person to stay with them and pour all your effort into a relationship; that sure, you “deserve better” than to be lied to—But you’re still a terrible person if you don’t give them another chance.

Compared with a relationship that only gets five minutes of screen time most episodes, it feels a little bit like I’m expected to be happy with what I’m offered as a member of the queer female demographic and ignore the utterly cringe-worthy toxicity of the Kara/Mon-El relationship, the abrupt and kinda racist way James was removed from the field, the terrible narrative choices, the plot holes so big you could lose Fort Rozz in them, and, oh yeah—that Supergirl is no longer Kara’s story. It’s the story of Mon-El’s rehabilitation.

I can’t celebrate the representation I’ve wanted for fifteen years when it means I have to ignore the destructive messages the rest of this show is pushing.

And, kinda like a car crash, it’s becoming increasingly clear that whoever is driving this story is not letting off the gas. I don’t know why. But I can see it coming, so I’m bailing.

I want to support positive queer representation. I want to support shows about women, and their stories—all of them. It’s what made me willing to take a risk on this show after the move was announced.

But Supergirl is no longer that story. And damn, I wish it were different. But I recognize the signs. And I’m gonna be spending my Monday evenings watching something else. Something I can enjoy without feeling like I’m throwing anyone who’s not me under the bus. Hanging on and waiting for a change that’s never gonna come.

#supergirl #sanvers #karolsen #supercorp #kara danvers #anti-mon-el #tokenism #i am not here to be used to sell a toxic relationship