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shelobussy · 3 years

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I know you talk abou st*cky in the interracial ships stuff, but can we talk about st*ny? Iron husbands is literally right there, but I also always sees Rhodey as Tonys moral support only. And ik Tony is very shippable with most characters, but the fact his ship is Rhodey is one of the lowest ships in ao3 (ironstrange, winteriron and god forbid stark*r all had more fics in ao3).. It's pretty telling this side also has racism problems...

I'll go ahead and answer this here, but letting y'all know that I do have a marvel sideblog if you want to hit me up there (@themarvelarchives).

Hey, I'm going to ramble for a good minute.

So after I posted my very incoherent, controversial take on St*cky vs SamBucky, there were a ton of ppl who came onto anon saying that St*cky shippers were racist. I think I only answered a few, but y'all were pretty insistent on it. I personally have not observed that St*cky shippers are so I'm not calling anyone out on that side of the fandom for that.

I also did not call out anyone on this side of the fandom bc that's not what my meta was about. I think I mentioned maybe once or twice in the whole post that there was underlying racist in the fandom, but since you asked, we can talk about it here.

Covert Bigotry In Fandom Spaces.

To understand what's going on in the MCU, we have to first look at what I call "woke-queer" fandom.

So "Woke-Queer" Spaces is the phenomenon where certain fandom members like to call ppl out on their bigotry, while covertly harboring their own queerphobia/racism/etc. An example of this that we're all familiar with is TERFS and how they like to claim that they are progressive and woke, while also claiming that trans women are fake and trans men are sexist.

How this translates to fandom, however, is the hypocrisy that is cancellation and callout culture.

For example, Supernatural in particular is a fandom that likes to call out the writers on their homophobia and racism, and yet, somehow, the fandom is chalk full of homophobia and racism. If you want to read more about this, here is a truly excellent article from the perspective of a queer woman of color.

Moving on, I've also talked in a previous meta post, on the internalized acephobia that exploded in 2019 after Good Omens was released. Rather than reiterate everything I said in that post, I'll just leave it at this: the controversy in the Good Omens fandom can be summed up by the fact that queer audiences are claiming that Ineffable Husbands is the wrong kind of queer. The hypocrisy oozes off the screen, doesn't it?

A final way this viably translates to fandom, is in how the Doctor Who fandom evolved over time.

So Steven Moffat takes over as head writer and showrunner in 2010. It's a new series, a new Doctor, a new Tardis, and new branding. He steps up the action, changes the color grating, and raises the stakes. Women are sexier, the Doctor is smarter (and more of an asshole, but that's another meta post), and every companion comes with their own impossible mystery that makes them Special™.

Series 5-10 got tons of woke points for having lesbian characters, an episode where the Doctor is homoerotic with James Corden, and an underlying trans narrative with the Master's reincarnation. What a lot of people forget, however, is that his series was incredibly sexiest, incredibly lesbian/biphobic, and basically turned the Doctor into everyone's fantasy sex-object.

This, unfortunately, brought out the worst of the fandom. There was RTD Era vs Moffat Era wars exploding in certain corners, TenxRose shippers vs ElevenxRiver shippers.

What does this have to do with covert racism in fandom cultures though?

Hnnngng ok, so back in RTD era's we get Martha Jones, the Actual Best Companion On The Entire Show. Except for the fact, of course, that she is written to be in love with the doctor. She's a brilliant character--smart, sassy, flawed, funny, flirtatious--and her entire plotline is reduced down to a school-girl crush on a white man.

She doesn't do well with fans, they scrap her after one season.

We move on to Donna Noble (The Other Actual Best Companion On The Entire Show) and RTD's era ends with them scraping her too and regenerating David Tennant's Doctor.

It will be five more series (not seasons, SERIES) until Doctor Who will have another black companion--who gets extra points for being gay--only to fall victim to "bury your gays" at the end of the season (but not really bc no one stays dead on Doctor Who).

The fandom's reception of Martha Jones was historically bad. The comparisons to her predecessor, Rose Tyler, were rampant and everyone was finding a reason to hate her.

The fandom's reception to Bill Potts was also historically bad, as everyone was screaming that she was being written for more "woke points" and that they wanted Clara back.

Fandom has a historically bad reputation of being problematic and, I would argue, the majority of it has to do with these toxic undertones of bigotry that slip under the radar. "Woke-queer" spaces, as I call them, are these instances above where spaces that claim to be inclusive of gender/orientation/race are covertly bigoted.

Marvel and Cancelling

Now is an excellent time to talk about the MCU.

Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson) has recently come under a lot of criticism from fandom members for shutting down shipper speculation.

"The idea of two guys being friends and loving each other in 2021 is a problem because of the exploitation of homosexuality. [...] something as pure and beautiful as homosexuality has been exploited by people who are trying to rationalize themselves."

I can't find the rest of the quote, but Mackie goes on further to say that it was important to him to portray "a sensitive, masculine figure" without insinuating that there was romance involved.

Woke culture lost it's shit. Everyone was suddenly claiming that Mackie was calling them exploitative for shipping a gay ship as a queer audience, which could not have been further from the case.

Mackie actually makes some very excellent points in that sensitivity is not gay/queer. Woke culture loves to rag on Toxic Masculinity, but the minute someone plays a character who is loving and sensitive with no queer narrative in mind, they are immediately canceled.

What Am I On About

Okay, let's actually address what your ask was about, Nonnie. You pointed out--rather truthfully--that it is unfair to call-out racism on one side of the fandom, while ignoring it on the other side.

Well, I've gone back through my St*cky vs. SamBucky analysis (which is incoherent at best, I apologize for that) and I see maybe once instance where I called out fandom members for being racist. Here's what I had to say about racism:

"[...] Iron Husbands is a rarepair, probably because it’s an interracial ship."

"[there is] nothing wrong with shipping two white men, but it does become a problem when you ignore/bash POC/interracial ships to the determinant of your own white ship."

And then there was the post you brought up where I addressed interracial ships in the fandom. That one is probably more relevant to this topic, to be honest, as I actually addressed fandom racism there. I assume that your reason for bringing up Stony is because it's a ship that is more relevant to my side of the fandom, HOWEVER, the reason I highlighted Stucky instead was because I was comparing the fact that they've both been around the same amount of time and are relationships that feature the protagonist and their best friend.

You brought up St*ny in the ask, however, so I'm going to talk about St*ny for a minute.

As someone who never has nor will ship St*ny, it never even occurred to me that some of the problem behind the Iron Husbands tag being so small is because everyone ships the white, boring ship. You brought up a very valid point, but because I was never in that part of the fandom, I can't really speak to any possible underlying racism there, besides what I've already said above.

I would be interested in hearing a St*ony shipper or ex-St*ony shippers thought on this, but sadly I don't know any. If you have any more thoughts regarding this, Nonnie, pls drop back into my inbox.

You do make some excellent points in this ask though, and I would like to talk about racism on my side of the fandom.

So back to Mackie and his Twitter cancellation. Notice that Disney made him address the rumors and not his co-star, Sebastian Stan. Anthony Mackie is put on blast and made to answer fan demands and receives backlash, while Sebastian Stan gets to fly under the rader. This is not, by the way, a criticism of Stan, but instead of the blatant racism Disney has been displaying over the past few years.

How this ties in with the rest of my post has to do with my "woke-queer" spaces bit. The outcry across the MCU fandom over Mackie was swift and unforgiving. He was cancelled on charges of homophobia and bigotry--all the while these same fans turn a blind eye to any queer interpretation of other interracial ships and discourse in their own fandom.

The racism that I'm speaking about, of course, is an almost passive racism. Of course if you don't ship a specific ship for reasons other than their race, it's perfectly fine. It's okay not to ship Iron Husbands or SamBucky or any other interracial fandom ships. However, the distinct lack of shippers in the fandom IS telling because there are people who would ship that exact ship if not for the fact that one of men is black.

I don't have much more to say about this except to thank you for bringing it up and for listening to my long rambling post.

(Feel free to bug me about Tony Stark, MCU ships, MCU Meta and anything you want to talk me about on this blog and @themarvelarchives.)

#this got long sorry #iron husbands #sambucky #james rhodes #tony stark #sam wilson #anthony mackie #doctor who #moffat critical #my meta #ash does meta #ash does fandom #marvel #mcu #fandom critical #fandom criticism #long post

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apollostears · 4 years

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THICK GF [ k. namjoon ]

Request: nami with a thick, short, sassy, cute, natural haired goddess

group: bts

Pairing: namjoon x black!reader

Warning(s): swearing, lil freakness

A/N: soooo i have no idea how long this has been waiting to be done bc i’m dumb af and didn’t turn on notifications for this so this is done with extra TLC!!!!!

*gif not mine*

- namjoon is awkward as fuck, let’s make that clear. so him being with someone who’s lowkey bold is a good way to bring him out of his head.

- y’all balance eachother out so well!

- whenever the boys get around to teasing him, you’re there to shut that shit down (in a playful way) and go toe-to-toe with them every single time

- you are shorter than him by a good bit, so it’s always a little inside joke between the two of y’all (mainly him) about your height.

- nami is such a loving boyfriend all around. he loves how much smaller you are in height compared to him.

- definitely expect piggy back rides, no questions about them. nami will want to carry you no matter how much you weigh.

- speaking of weight, there’s some social stigmas surrounding height and weight, so since you’re on the shorter but thicker side of things, you might experience some moments of doubt.

- dating an idol isn’t easy, especially one as prominent and important as namjoon. when it came to your physical features, you were mostly confident and comfortable with yourself. but that was before you were exposed to millions of people at once.

- most people were chill about y’alls relationship, coming to the reality that the leader of BTS was his own person and that it really wasn’t their business who he dated, they respected y’all.

- however...there were some who weren’t real fans of BTS and a little more on the crazy side when it came to their attachment to the boys.

- they took any and every flaw they could find about you and exploited it. one of those things was your weight.

- you really tried not to pay any mind to it, nor tell nami about it because #hatersgonehate

- but at the end of the day, words hurt and there were times where you just felt like absolute shit.

- nami is an attentive person, so he noticed quickly that you were feeling down. he realized even quicker what you were feeling down about.

- and when i say mans was hot? he. was. hot!!!! jin had to prevent him from developing twitter fingers and calling everyone out who dared to say negative shit about and call themselves a fan in the same sentence.

- he was torn on what to do though. he loved you and all that came with you.

- your thighs were his home and your butt/boobies his pillows. your wide hips brought him comfort whenever he needed something to ground himself when he got stressed.

- every part of your body held meaning to him and it hurt him that you were hurt about the very thing that gave him comfort.

- he wanted to give you space because he didn’t want to overstep any boundaries, but his need to console you overcame anything else and that’s exactly what he did.

- you took a minute to express your feelings about the situation, but nami was there to ease you into telling him your emotions.

- this led to a very passionate moment between y’all where he showed you just how much he appreciated your body.

- after that, you didn’t feel affected by their words in regards to your body. nami always did his best to show you how much you meant to him and it never failed to quell your fears.

- speaking of thickness, mans will use you like a pillow with no remorse!

- you sliding thru the studio for the day? expect him to wanna take naps on your chest or rest his head on your ass after rehearsals.

- nami loves to feel you sitting on his lap. your thighs bringing warmth and softness for him whenever he’s producing or recording.

- once jungkook tried to rest his head on your lap so that you could play in his hair and that was an instant no-no.

- you didn’t mind it, but nami was a little possessive of you and knew how charming their golden maknae could be. once jungkook had you under his spell, you would baby him for all of eternity.

- without hesistation, namjoon picked jungkook up and carefully dropped him next to jimin on the floor before taking his spot on your lap.

- jungkook was #jungshook and the boys laughed at his surprised face while nami just snuggled his head into your warm thighs.

- when it comes to your hair, he thinks it’s the most amazing thing in the world!!!

- he will watch you do your hair at any chance he gets.

- you doing a twist out? he’s there watching and on stand-by to hand you whatever you needed.

- dreading wash day? nami is there as moral support until you allow him to help out with your routine.

- trying to put your own wig on? nami is there ready to help you make sure it’s straight and secure.

- he becomes so involved with your hair that you notice when you have new hair products in your cabinet.

- “nami, where did these come from?” you ask him from the bathroom.

- your boyfriend peeps his head in with a gummy smile. “i saw that you were running out so i got you more. plus there was a new product out that i saw you looking at and i went ahead and bought it.”

- before you could even get on him for the amount of money he spent on these items, he’s dipped from the bathroom and out of sight.

- when it comes to your wigs, nami spends RACKS on them hoes omg!!!

- god forbid y’all break up because he really spoils the fuck out of you with the wigs he buys you.

- i’m talking QUALITY hair!!!

- you stopped asking about the price when you noticed that one of the wigs he bought you came from the same place Meg Thee Stallion gets hers.

- he quickly becomes a hairstylist ngl.

- nami is a gentle giant and after much practice, he gets good at doing the basic plait or cornrow to help you out.

- it’s rough being in a Country with barely any black people there to do your hair.

- but don’t be mistaken, he will be the type to fly out a black hairdresser ASAP just to spoil you.

- switching topics, but because you are a sassy little thing that mouth often gets you in trouble.

- sometimes you’ll be hanging with the boys and you’ll get into it with yoongi (playfully of course).

- nami will try to jump in and calm y’all down because you guys WILL go rounds and he doesn’t want that, but you’re quick to butt him out.

- “Aht aht, the adults are talking.” Is your favorite go-to line because it never fails to make nami surprised.

- the other boys try to hide their smirks, but nami knows that they’ll use that against him any chance they get.

- so, he’s gotta make an example out of you. if you catch my drift *wink wink*

- whilst in the middle of roasting min yoongi, namjoon will scoop yo ass up and take you to his room.

- no questions asked.

- the boys know wtf be going on and are always shook to know that their leader be getting down like that.

- you still act up every once in awhile, because dominant joon is a different animal but the same beast

- i think overall, namjoon being with a black s/o and a thick one at that, would be such a cultural reset.

- like y’all mfers are on the cover of every magazine and doing couple questions with Vogue and shit.

- jay-z totally invited y’all and the boys to a Roc Nation brunch, don’t @me.

- you guys’ relationship is nothing but positive and wholesome behavior that we love and support a hundred percent!

#kmimagines #ambw imagines #kpop imagines #black!reader #bts imagines #kim namjoon x black!reader #kim namjoon imagines #bts namjoon #namjoon headcanon #bts headcanons #mayawrites #requested #namjoon x black!reader #namjoon x reader #kim namjoon

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thetypedwriter · 3 years

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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Book Review

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Book Review by Taylor Jenkins Reid

It’s funny. Two book reviews ago I went on a lengthy diatribe about how giving people books is often annoying and unwelcome (or maybe that’s just me). Recommending and suggesting books I love and can do all the livelong day.

I encourage people to tell me about their latest foray into fiction or that one novel they haven’t been able to stop thinking about for years, but when you actually physically give someone a book, well.

There’s pressure involved.

In that other book review post, A Man Called Ove, I outlined how one of three things would happen if someone gives you a book and you read it:

1. The book is good and you chastise yourself for being a moron and not knowing about it earlier.

2. The rare occurrence of the book being a home-run and has a place proudly sitting on your favorites shelf forever.

3. The book sucks, the whole journey was tedious and annoying, and the person who lent the book to you in the first place is disappointed or butt-hurt.

In the last review it was the third option, and to be fair, it usually is. Oftentimes this isn’t even because the book is bad per se, but more so because the book isn’t for me and my interest in it to begin with was tenuous and shaky at best.

Fortunately, in the case of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo it was option 1 with a small leeway into option 2. I had never heard of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo before or the author, Taylor Jenkins Reid, for that matter, and when my friend gave it to me I put it off on my shelf to collect dust for several months.

However, as my to-be-read list dwindled down to nothing and my newest shipment of books was not yet ready (I might have been waiting for all those Barnes and Noble gift cards I knew were lurking in unopened Christmas cards) I decided to give it a try, and oh boy, am I glad I did.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is an adult fiction LGBT novel that focuses on two different timelines running parallel throughout the book. We start off with our main character in the present day of 2017, Monique Grant, a biracial journalist in her 30’s who currently works for a publication called Vivant in New York City but wants more.

In the midst of an impending divorce, stagnating at work, and missing her long ago deceased father, the only thing Monique takes pride in is a piece she did about euthanasia and how there is mercy in killing before suffering a few years back.

Her life takes an unexpected turn when Hollywood legacy, Evelyn Hugo, reaches out to her through her job and asks to meet with her. What she thinks is simply a meeting about Evelyn’s recent gown donation turns out to be a life-changing decision where she not only learns about the life and loves of Evelyn Hugo, but also about herself and the choices she made along the way by being tasked to write Evelyn’s biography.

Monique’s POV is sprinkled throughout the story, thrusting us back into the present every so often, but most of the book is now an eighty-year-old Evelyn dictating her rise to fame from the 50’s all the way to the 80’s and beyond as she lays out the ugly, the beautiful, the sordid, and the desperate actions and choices she made to where she rests as an old woman before Monique, alone, filthy rich, and ominous about the end of her life from a first person perspective.

To be very blunt, I didn’t care much for Monique.

I liked the representation of her character, but she often came across as judgy, annoying, and rash. Several times throughout the novel, she has to apologize for speaking too quickly or for jumping to conclusions and for someone who is a journalist I found it to be an odd trait.

Her growth as a character as a direct involvement with Evelyn was interesting, and I truly enjoyed the fact that at the end of the day, Monique remains a single woman who didn’t want to settle for something less than she deserved.

That’s more than I can say for most YA protagonists who almost always end up with someone romantically because god forbid they remain alone.

Evelyn, on the other hand, I immensely enjoyed.

She’s snarky, manipulative, mean, catty, ruthless, and greedy.

She’s also hardworking, confident, intelligent, and passionate.

She came across as a real person to me, a real person with flaws and with qualities I admired. She was kind of a bitch, and I loved that about her. The other characters from Evelyn’s tale, mainly her seven husbands, her friends, and Celia St. James, were also well developed and nuanced characters.

Nobody was good or bad. Everyone had aspects of both in them and it was so good to see portrayals of characters that resembled real flesh-and-blood human beings.

As you would expect, there is a lot of scandal, romance, sex, and the glitter and glamour of Hollywood throughout these pages. What I didn’t expect were the themes of race, of sexuality, of gender roles, of death, and of forgiveness.

Having a bisexual Cuban-American main character detailing her rise to fame in 1950’s America was incredibly interesting from a variety of standpoints.

To me, though, the biggest theme was about love.

As the book is called The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, there is of course, an explicit understanding that love will play a large role in the novel. What I didn’t expect was the complex way in which love was depicted.

The author Reid wanted to convey that romantic love wasn’t the only love worth writing about, and how there are all kinds of wonderful and all-consuming loves that have nothing to do with romance or sex at all.

Parental love, friendship, inspiration, romance, and familial bonds were all represented and not one was shown to be more valuable or more interesting than the other. All of Evelyn’s relationships had merit, and at the end of the day, everything Evelyn did, start to finish, was for someone she loved one way or another.

In some ways, aren’t we all Evelyn Hugo?

Together with the myriad themes, the alternating timelines, the representation, and the juicy plot, the story was enjoyable from the first page to the last. The writing itself is very fluid and very easy.

This is not a hard read by any means. The vocabulary was simple and the writing was simple, but it was very entertaining and at the end, even thought-provoking.

It made me think.

Was I making the right choices in my life? Or was I settling for easy? For forgettable? Was I holding myself to high standards and getting what I wanted? What I deserved?

Books that make me sit in silence after I finish reading them, tears in my eye because I’m so emotionally overwhelmed are few and far between. This is what I did after finishing reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I simply sat on my couch, mind spinning, and tried not to cry.

That, to me, is the mark of an excellent book.

Recommendation: If you like strong and sassy female characters then this is definitely a novel worth checking out. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a whirlwind romance, but perhaps not in the way you would suspect. With fluid writing, engaging characters, a scintillating plot, and themes that will leave you gaping, what better way to start off the year 2021 than by giving yourself a truly fantastic read?

Score: 9/10

#the seven husbands of evelyn hugo #taylor jenkins reid #book blog #book #book review #Book Recommendations #popular fiction #LGBTQ fiction #lgbt representation #cuban american #books with poc #book rec #book reccs #romance fiction

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