sahonithereadwolf

[sahonithereadwolf]

can't stop thinking about this

[sahonithereadwolf]

[sahonithereadwolf]

I think it's really funny to see racist get mad that the Pulitzer-winning "our most political rapper" guy was indeed...political.

[sahonithereadwolf]

my family is lucky enough to own a 26 acre mountain property, log cabin and all. Most people would go up there and think that it is fairly pristine nature. There’s the cabin, and a few dirt roads for 4-wheelers, but the surrounding woods look untouched.

But we actually carefully maintain that nature. We cut down the deadfall. We pull invasive plants. We trim the elderberry bushes. We get more animals than almost anywhere else on the mountain because we put up salt licks and water troughs.

some of these same things are true of national parks. A lot of places that you think of as “untouched wilderness” are influenced heavily by human care and maintenance. And this isn’t a bad thing. We are animals too. In many ways, our ecosystems depend on us to keep them healthy. Many “wild” plants that are useful for food or building materials are actually semi-domesticated because indigenous groups cared for them and encouraged their growth so they do better with human care.

we have a place in nature. We just need to be conscious of our actions.

[sahonithereadwolf]

[sahonithereadwolf]

Salutations. This is your Uncle Sam. And this is the Great American Game.

[sahonithereadwolf]

Being asked to empathizes and relate to others lived experiences and what they mean to other people a facet of the human condition. It's an ability assumed of non-white audiences constantly, no matter how alien the experience might be, and that's because that experience is seen as a default. This assumption of the default is part of why my experiences as a decidedly non-white person becomes inherently political just by existing.

Do I want that? Of course not. It's an exhausting way to live. But as long as people like this guy see the idea of experiences outside of his own as inherently forceful, aggressive, or impossible to see the humanity in, it will continue to be how I must live.

There is no version of representation subtle enough for a lot of folks. Expressing an experience is too forceful. Seeing someone is "out of place." Mentioning something in passing is "trying too hard." And a story focusing on a person of color is a terrifying piece of "propaganda."

This assumption of humanity is rarely if ever asked of the default. It's a cynicism you can see in marketing and criticism both. A native film will always be talked about as a native film first and rarely anything outside of that. No one expects you to see a native film if you're in the default, but god forbid your non-white friend never saw star wars.

The fact that people get scandalized at the inclusion of non-white folk, disabled folk, and queer folk in their stories should be looked at with the same sort of withering outdated pity as someone upset a married couple shares a bed in a movie. It's weird that they didn't.

Also, just as a final note: When you see someone use the term "DEI" in disparaging terms, you should replace it mentally with a slur they're too cowardly to face the consequences of saying. That's what they mean, even if they've twisted themselves in a knot to excuse that away.

I want to speak out against the whole push towards DEI. I feel that ever since you made the push to make identity the forefront of a character it has hurt the stories you tell. Captain Sisay's race was never the focus of her character and she was a complete badass! And I fear if you did it over again Gerrard would be trans, black and disabled just because. It also cheapens the stories of world devastation when characters worry more about their gender than Bolas destroying everything.

The reason I started this blog is so we can have frank conversations about things, so please let’s talk about this.

Imagine if every time you turned on the TV or watched a movie, no one looked like you. For some of us, that’s never happened. We see ourselves constantly, so it’s hard to truly understand what not seeing yourself represented in media is like.

I do have a personal window to this experience. While I am white and male, there’s an area where I am the minority - my religion. Jews are just under two and a half percent of the US population. I have had many experiences where I’ve been in situations where everything is geared towards a group I do not belong to, and zero consideration is given that not everyone at that event is part of the majority.

You just feel invisible and like an outsider. It’s not a great feeling. And I just experience it a tiny portion of time, only things that are geared specifically towards something religious. Most minorities have this feeling all the time, whenever they’re outside their personal community.

Now imagine, after years of not seeing yourself ever, you finally see someone that looks like you, but nothing about the character rings remotely true. They don’t sound like you, they don’t act like you, the facts about their day-to-day life are just wrong. It’s clear whoever wrote the character didn’t truly understand the lived experience of the character, so the character feels fake.

You bring up Sisay. Michael Ryan and I didn’t technically create Sisay (she played a small role in the Mirage story), but we did do a lot to flesh out her character as the creators of the Weatherlight Saga. We turned her from a minor character into a major one.

And while I’m proud, in general, of our work on the Weatherlight Saga, I don’t think we did justice to Sisay as a character. Neither Michael nor I have any knowledge of what it’s like to be a black woman. Nor did we ever talk to someone who did.

And if you’re someone like us that has no knowledge of that experience, you probably didn’t notice. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

Imagine if we made a movie about your life, and we just made everything up. We invented people you never knew, we gave you a job you never had, and we had you say things you’d never say. The movie might even be a good movie, but your response would be, but that’s not my life - that’s not me.

Now imagine we put the movie out, and people that never met you assumed that was what you were like. When people met you for the first time, they assumed things, because, you know, they’d seen the movie.

That’s what misrepresenting people does. It not only makes them feel not seen, it falsely represents them, spreading lies, often stereotypes, making people believe things about them that aren’t true.

Our move towards diversity is just us trying to better reflect the world and the people in it. We’re trying to do to everyone else what a certain portion of people get every day without ever having to think about it.

But why are we “making it the forefront of their character”? We’re not. We’re making it a part of their character. But in a world where you’re not used to ever seeing it, it feels louder than it is. Things that are a natural part of the world that you’re used to feel like the background of the story because you understand the context to it.

If a man kisses his wife before going off to a battle, that’s not a big deal. It’s just a thing a husband might do to his wife when he leaves. It’s not the forefront of his character. It’s just part of his life. But you’ve seen it hundreds of times, so it feels normal.

When someone does something that isn’t your lived experience it pulls focus. It seems like a big deal, but only because it’s new to you. It’s just as mundane a thing to that character as the man kissing his wife is to him.

Even the turn “pushing” implies that it’s unnaturally here, that we’re forcing something that naturally shouldn’t be. But why? That thing exists naturally in the real world, and it doesn’t make the real world any less. Maybe you’re less aware of it, but is making you aware of how others live their life “pushing” something on you?

How you live your life is represented constantly, everywhere. Why isn’t over-representing your experience at the expense of everyone else’s “pushing” it? Why is media only being the experience of those in power the “proper way”?

Having more depth and variety doesn’t lessen stories. It makes them deeper, more rich, more nuanced. In short, it makes them better stories. In my former life, I was a professional writer. I took a lot of writing classes. One of the truism of writing is “speaking truth leads to better stories”.

There’s another famous quote: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” You’re used to being over-represented, so being a little less over-represented feels like something has been taken from you. But really it hasn’t. Having a better sense of the rest of the world comes with a lot of benefits.

I’ll use food as an example. Let’s say all you were ever exposed to was the food of your heritage. Yeah, that food is really good, but sometimes isn’t it nice to eat foods of other nationalities? Isn’t your life better that you have a choice? Isn’t your exposure and access to the food of other nationalities a positive in your life?

Exposure to variety is a positive. It allows you to learn about things you didn’t know, experience things things you’ve never experienced, and get a better sense of understanding of your friends and neighbors.

Our actions are not to harm anyone, and if you think that’s what we’re doing, please take a minute to actually absorb what I’m saying. You’ve spent your whole life metaphorically eating one type of food, and we’re just trying to show you how much you’ve missed out on.

And while this might not impact you directly, we’re making a whole bunch of people felt seen. We’re bringing joy. Think of it this way. We make a lot of cards. Not every card is for you. But if it makes someone else happy, if they get to include it in a deck, and it makes Magic better for them, how is it harming you that we include it? You have so many cards that you can play.

To this poster or people that share their viewpoint, the narrative that a gain for someone else is an attack on you is just not true. As I just pointed out above, you play a game all about personal choice, about players getting to choose how they play and enjoy the game. Why should life be any different than Magic?

Thanks for reading.

[sahonithereadwolf]

every time you see a headline like this

I want you to remember these ones

[sahonithereadwolf]

Hey. International people.

Keep calling it the Gulf of Mexico or whatever your term is for it. Do not allow the Republican regime to label that body of water the Gulf of America to the world. The name came from a the term Mexica, what the Aztecs called themselves. It’s been called the Gulf of Mexico since the 1600s.

Keep calling it Denali. The original name before it was Mount McKinley. Don’t let the Indigenous Peoples/First Nations be erased.

It may sound stupid and petty. But it is an attempt to rewrite history and make us forget the origins. It is a literal white washing of history. This type of censorship is a beginning to greater evils.

[sahonithereadwolf]

[sahonithereadwolf]

neopets forum posts i reference all the time but nobody gets

[sahonithereadwolf]

the fact that pro-monarchy arguments have degenerated, over the past few centuries, from “the king rules by divine right and is accountable to nobody but god”, to “uhm the royals generate a lot of income from tourism” will never stop being extremely funny to me

[sahonithereadwolf]

Louies Vs. Tirras ‘Bomberman Fantasy Race’ PlayStation Support us on Patreon

[sahonithereadwolf]

Wolves trekking through mud

[sahonithereadwolf]

[sahonithereadwolf]

stretches my legs out so far with all toes spread out wide

[sahonithereadwolf]

[image description: a drawing of mitsumi and shima, standing back to back, surrounded by sweets and candy. mitsumi is holding a panda cake pop and looks delighted. shima is holding a heart shaped chocolate and looks conflicted. End ID]

heart shaped