#I NEED THE POC VERSIONS OF JESSE....

[order-of-the-bricks]

X

trauma dump

[bottlesandcats]

Pardon My 15x20 Rant

I woke up this morning with Thoughts, so time for a ranty post. Be prepared this is going to read more like word vomit than anything, but I just wanted to get my thoughts down on paper. No one may even read this bc I don’t have a lot of followers but it feels good to just get this off my chest and out into the Universe. Warning, there is a gratuitous use of caps.

So....I see so many fans on Twitter saying how beautiful and perfect that ending was and, I have to say, I’m truly bewildered by that.

 Even if you aren’t a Destiel fan, I’m not sure how you could’ve found that ending to be remotely satisfying. See list of non Destiel-related reasons below (bc I’m trying to see this from the perspective of someone who isn’t in that part of the fandom):

1. The MOW was crap; wtf was with the Halloween masks? When have we ever seen that with vamps? The dumbest shit I’ve seen. 

They trotted out some extra from season 1 like it’s supposed to be some fun little Easter egg. Why are we supposed to give a shit about her? I didn’t even remember her with the flashback. Who are you, again? NM, I DON’T CARE. It also honestly made no sense to feature a MOW episode after everything that just happened, it wasn’t necessary. It was clearly just a means to an end to get Dean killed.

2. They shoved some random family, for Sam, into the last ten minutes of the episode. Sam’s kid is named Dean? OF COURSE HE IS. And that whole father-son montage was so clunky and awkward, I would’ve been more convinced if you told me Sam actually just wandered into some anonymous woman’s backyard and started playing ball with her kid. 

We’ve seen how emotionally invested Sam gets in his relationships and we’ve had such beautiful moments: Sam/Jess, Sam/Madison, (even Sam/Ruby), and of course Sam/Eileen. And now we are supposed to care about Anonymous Brunette Woman #4? GTFO. I’ve seen some people saying they couldn’t get Shoshanna bc of COVID, but give us something to indicate it was Eileen. Have Sam sign something to her from across the yard; IT’S THAT SIMPLE. But no, not one single mention of her in either 19 or 20, after Sam nearly broke when he lost her in 18.

 I couldn’t even feel happy for him bc I had 0 emotional investment in this life of his. And it was all just rushed through so we could get to the “good part” where Sam dies and is reunited with Dean in Heaven. 

Also small note, what happened to Dean’s dog???

3. The wardrobe department really needs to reconsider some of their life choices. I’ve seen tufts of cat hair in the corners of my house that would’ve made a better wig than that rag they threw on Jared’s head. It was so ridiculous, I started thinking this was going to wind up being some big gag like The Mystery Spot” and The Trickster was going to pop out. 

And why did Jim Beaver’s beard look like they spray-painted cotton balls brown and glued them to his face? It was honestly distracting. 

4. After 15 years, and FINALLY achieving freedom and happiness, Dean gets taken down by a rebar and a Vamp-mime. The only way I could justify this to myself was that, now that they are no longer God’s puppets he’s not bending the rules for them and they don’t have that death-defying luck on their side now. But even that is weak. After all his fighting, sacrificing, and wanting nothing more than to chill on a beach with Sam and Cas, this is what he gets. This was a show about defying destiny, THAT WAS THE WHOLE PLOT OF S15.

 Dean always said he figured it was his destiny to die bloody, and that’s exactly why he shouldn’t have gone out this way. STORY ARC, WHAT’S THAT? Cas told Dean, when he first met him, that good things do happen. So basically, the only way Dean could get his happiness was to die? What a heart-warming message. 

5. Dean’s lack of emotion over the loss of Cas was the most OOC I think I’ve ever seen from him. Dean DOES NOT accept the deaths of those he loves in any way. He does not cope, he does not move on, he does not happily eat a bunch of pie. We’ve seen how Dean has handled Cas’s death in the past. It’s...not good, and it only became more unhealthy as the show progressed, with the last time (before 18) having Dean literally killing himself. Even in 15x19, we still got that desperate heartache from him with Dean demanding that Chuck bring Cas back. We also saw him sleeping amongst a pile of empty liquor bottles, which is very on-character for him. But in 15x20, he’s the one telling Sam they need to move on and keep living (oops) over a giant tray of pie slices at a county fair. Even Sam feels off. One minute he’s all “I’m sad about Cas and Jack” and the next he’s putting a pie in Dean’s face and is like “I feel better now!” You’ve got a direct in with God!Jack now, and we know from 15x19 that God can pull beings out of The Empty bc he did it with Lucifer! THAT WAS YOUR IN, YOU IDIOTS. You ask Chuck to bring back Cas, but not the one to whom he was a father to????????? 

6. Even if you weren’t a Destiel shipper, you should still be disappointed in the noticeable absence of Castiel, especially since he was left with such a cliffhanger of character development and was mentioned multiple times in episodes 19 and 20. He was a pivotal part of the show for 11 years. Even if you take out the Destiel stuff, the boys have called him their brother numerous times. Dean’s call him his best friend. Wouldn’t his ideal Heaven have his best friend in it?

7. I’m not going to rail on the scene between the brothers while Dean is dying. I didn’t really get Wincest vibes from it, though I never put much stock into that side of the fandom anyway. My one issue is this was the “love confession” moment they gave us. Dean dying in a barn and telling Sam he loves his baby brother. *SNORE*

8. The big reunion moment we were hoping for? They wasted it on Dean’s car. A FUCKING CAR. Yes, I get the Impala is important to the story, but come the fuck on. NO CHICK FLICK MOMENTS. MUCH BRO. 

All-in-all the whole ending felt like 1 step forward, and 15 years back. After all the character development and story arcs, it’s like they just threw it all out the window. Nothing changed. Everyone was back to where they started: Cas working for God, Dean being a good soldier and dying bloody doing the only thing he knows how to do, Sam being left to pick up the pieces with some distorted version of an apple pie life where he was basically just living to die so he could be with Dean again. I felt like the lesson was that the only way you get what you want is to die. It was gross. It was a disservice to the actors, the characters, and the fans. I can’t begin to even see this as fan-service bc I’d love to know who the TPTB thought they were serving with this garbage. And honestly, I don’t think they knew either. I feel like they were so worried about pissing off all the different subsets of the fandom that they went as safe as they could. *slow claps* Way to go, guys, really groundbreaking stuff.

At the end of the day though, it’s my fault for being disappointed. I shouldn’t have expected so much of a show that had mostly cis white men working behind the scenes. A show that’s killed almost every female character who stepped up to the plate (also, POC anyone? Nahhh). A show that took their one real LGBTQ character (also female), killed her and left her body in a bathtub (FRIDGING IS FUN) for absolutely no good reason. A show that, at the end of the day, is just a show about a couple bros who kill monsters, on the CW, and the CW is hardly the go-to place for real boundary-pushing content. A show that has managed to drop the ball at almost every opportunity though we, as a fandom, have continued to lower the bar for them.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 100 times? 

So with all that being said...

Peace out bitches.

[theghostbeaters]

my timeline of thoughts during my tlou 2 play through (bad and good and maybe even some silly) just let me vent because i can’t stop thinking about it tbh

- i was away from the internet for months because i didn’t want to be spoiled for anything, so when i started to play i had only the deceitful trailers to go by

- the beginning felt pretty normal for the last of us. they started you in the town and then on patrol for your hour of tutorial basically. i also remember thinking the recap of the first game was so nice because i liked seeing their younger selves in the new graphics

- abby was introduced, and like i said i had no clue what was going on because i had not been spoiled so my mind was going a mile a minute on wtf abby and co. were up to. when they spotted jackson my initial thought was maybe they do want joel and they will be the main antagonists? joel and ellie will have to fight them??? but because of the trailers, death of any sort wasn’t on my mind.

- i also had a very odd and pure hatred for owen’s voice, lol. i don’t know what it was but omg from the moment he spoke till his last breath i would always be like “why is he speaking like that??” in the back of my head.

- that scene happened. i’m a crier i’ll admit, but this was something else. I felt shocked, nauseous, numb. I don’t think I actually even cried till I saw the tombstone i was so taken aback by the way they went about this. I don’t care if they are fictional characters. It has been 7 years since the first game came out and almost 5 years that they released the first trailer for part 2. I did not wait this long, excited to see two of the most important characters to me in such realistic graphics get their fucking head caved in. at the very very least a fade to black and then to the tombstone would have gotten the same reaction you wanted from me, but it would have been done in a way less cruel way.

- i took about a 3 hour break. i could not get that image out of my head and it was really starting to upset me more then any media should. i don’t care or want to hear about any walking dead or apocalypse setting trope. it will never be edgy, deep, or meaningful to kill a favorite character in that manner. I want to state that again. In that manner. If they had killed joel in a more tactful way I could have possibly liked the game more.

-i remember thinking it felt forced. like the creators wanted this narrative so badly they seemed to go through hoops and hurdles to get there. there was a random horde that seemed to disappear as quick as it came, abby just gets lucky and has joel and tommy save her and then they go straight to the lions den? would joel from the first game be so quick to do that? Wait was she 100% sure just from two peoples names this was the guy she wanted? Ellie gets there just in time to see the final blow and then the others only get there just in time to miss everything and not be able to help? Whats going on??? This feels too structured and not genuine?? 

- going into his house was just as painful. i’m sorry but i’m going to bring this back up a lot-  if they would had just killed him in a more tactful manner i would have praised the way these little scenes were done. grabbing his watch, ellie smelling his clothes, seeing the pictures of sara and ellie, looking at his workshop and seeing how well he can carve! I couldn’t appreciate it the way I wanted to because I couldn’t get that image out of my head. i was literally bawling the entire time. 

-REVENGE TIME BEGINS:

+so the first scene was set: ellie wanted to go to seattle for revenge, dina was going to go with her, and tommy had already left. I remember having two thoughts here

  +“please tell me its going to be more then ellie just going on a revenge spree and then at the end she doesn’t kill abby because morals / murder is bad / not everything is black and white kind of tropes.” 

  +and “i have a wild feeling tommys gonna be like the only person that makes it out alive. he did it in the first game somehow hes gonna weasel his way free in this one.”

-ELLIES SEGMENTS:

+the graphics are amazing the sceneries are some of the most beautiful i have seen in a game. and it didn’t stop there. every area was amazing. I think most can agree to this. 

+i was determined, no matter what else the game threw at me i was going to see it through to the end and try very hard to visualize it the way the creators wanted it to be visualized. even if i didn’t agree or didn’t like parts, i figured hey the first game was so good this has to revive itself.

+i really liked the gameplay, it was a finer tuned version of the first game. i also liked the idea of the map and how it actively showed you different locations and crossed them out when you were done. but in the back of my head i was thinking “wow this would have all been so neat in the first game”. I shouldn’t be thinking about the first game. I should be enjoying this one.

+i was getting concerned none of the new characters were getting as much character development and love as some of the characters in the first one. I liked dina a lot, and by the very end of the game she did feel pretty rounded out (i especially liked her in the farm segment)  but the beginning and middle seemed almost more focused on “this is ellies girlfriend” instead of “this is dina”. I felt the same with jesse. I liked him but nothing stood out as much as it could and should have. I got more from tess in the short amount of time she was in the first game.

+there were certain segments that felt way more horror like and scary then in the first game and I loved them a lot. The new enemy (shambler) was cool and the settings where they used red lighting looked amazing. I also really loved the new take on stalkers. They were way harder to find and I found myself on edge to get jumped by one during those sections. They funny enough reminded me of dead space stalkers and i thought they were an improvement from the first games.

+at this point i pretty much understood what the creators were going for plot wise, but i personally just didn’t think it was needed. 1) i’m confident the majority of hardcore last of us fans already understand the concept of how every character can be good and bad and that not everything is black and white. we didn’t need to see one beloved character die horribly and the other be in that much pain and lose herself to understand that. 2) did we not pretty much already cover this concept in the first game? but....better? you remember...the ending?

- ELLIES FLASHBACKS:

+ of course I enjoyed them. its what i needed from a sequel. its what the whole game should have been, at least for me personally. the birthday flashback was the highlight of the entire game. i needed it so badly after the mind numbing, emotionally exhausting, weird out of place plot was putting me through. I was glad to finally see how ellie felt about the ending of the first game. but trying to crunch all that in 4 cutscenes? I just don’t feel like it was enough. you basically gave me one scene per year of joel and ellies relationship and you felt like that was enough to let me digest almost 5 years they spent in jackson?

- ABBYS SECTIONS:

+call me an optimist or maybe just stupid i’m not sure but when it rolled over and said “hey take over and check out the life of joel’s killer” my first thought was okay so i was right they want a “”nothing is black and white”” narrative but maybe doing it this way will be new and fresh? I can get through this and enjoy it? .... Its just not a fully possible reality and how could it be? had it been the first game in the series maybe it would had worked, but of course no matter how hard I tried I just felt disassociated from abby because I was already close to joel and ellie. I understood her reasons. I understood the narrative you were going for. I understood the damn parallels. I’m not an evil person that would just laugh about what happened to her dad, but how can you not understand as writers that a huge majority might be able to understand it, but still won’t be able to enjoy it. It felt so pushed and shoved into my face that I couldn’t enjoy it if i wanted to because the game just kept screaming “LOOK AT THE PARALLELS THO!!!”

+abbys dad seemed forced and out of place too. when abby and co. first killed joel i didn’t even think fireflies tbh. I thought it was something he did before he met ellie, or something he did during the 5 years in jackson. like yeah i got it, its not the worse backstory in the world but when put in context to the first game it just doesn’t make sense to me to use as the narrative you want to portray in the second game. maybe i’m nitpicking here but from all the personal notes and all the tapes you can read and listen to about the fireflies in the first game it makes it hard to believe the majority of fans would care for the second games narrative at all. they already made their decisions. it at the very least just seems like bad salesmanship? but maybe they already knew that and thats why the trailers were all lies? (just my thoughts at the time remember) 

+and oh god was the character development even worse for abbys friends. at least they tried to give abby a rounded character development that mirrored ellies but if you think ellies friends barely got character development, abbys friends got almost zero. I didn’t care about a single one. they felt so flimsy and husk like. “this is the boy she likes” “this is a medic friend” “this guy likes sex alot” “this is dog, so of course you like dog”

+I mean its great everyone was able to be so different. abby is muscular, ellie is a lesbian, there were many poc, dina is jewish, they brought in a trans character....but how can i enjoy any of it when more than half of these characters felt put in just to be there instead of well rounded characters you can appreciate for good or bad?

+the sex scene with her and owen was the scene where i personally felt myself giving up. it felt so much like this game wanted to be an HBO classic instead of just a video game that i felt myself detaching even more. (also whats up with owens voice??? lol)

+GROUND ZERO was a very good chapter. That shit was spooky in all the good ways, it felt a lot like dead space with the plastic everywhere, THE BIG ASS MONSTER HAD ME ON MY KNEES. The chase scene up to the actual boss fight was A+. Here is the one catch though - I forgot I was playing as abby. It felt more like just playing first person. Not a character at all. I don’t think that is how you want your game to be played, and no it wasn’t my intention. 

+I wish yara and lev had gotten more screen time. the game was so focused on the abby vs ellie thing and shoving it down your throat that most the side characters got washed out, these two included. Their story was interesting and it would had been nice to see more of them instead of whatever the weird love triangle abby had going on with her two friends I couldn’t care less about. (i stg chances were given, but as i previously stated they felt more like husks of characters then fully rounded ones.)

+getting hunted by tommy was actually a pretty cool highlight of the game for me. and even for a narrative i didn’t personally like it was a good idea to do! it reminded me of the sniper section (but holy hell tommys a better shot lol) and david’s hide and seek section in the first game which i thought was very well done. 

+this is when i went “oh maybe i was wrong, tommys gonna die. i give him a 20% chance of survival now that abby saw his face

-THEATER TIME

+why in the all out hell would you ever think it would be a good idea to tell the player to go after ellie? no matter what narrative? lmao. I died here the most literally for the soul fact i was scared there might be some kind of choice so i wouldn’t mash QTEs as fast as i normally would. and when i found out no, you just gotta power through it i literally found myself going through this 10 minute segment going “but i don’t want to do this”, “i really dont want to do this”, “do i have to do this?” “why do i gotta do this?” and yes i still understood your narrative but it doesn’t matter. it was just awkward. 

+This is where personally I would have put the cali segment if I really wanted to go with a narrative I still say didn’t need to happen because we already went through it in the first game, and then the happy farm bit at the end. 

-FARM

+i felt the game was going on too long and i was literally screaming at my screen to just end my suffering when i realized there was more after seattle. adding the extra PTSD scene just felt like an added fuck you towards the fans. I said it once, I’ll say it 1000x that scene with joel was seared into my brain already. I didn’t need that literal jumpscare. I already knew what ellie was going through dammit I was going through it with her! Let the girl and me for that matter have a bit of happiness after what you put us through!

+holy hell tommy fucking lived. he fucking lived. that mother fucker. hes the new telltales kenny. 

-SANTA BARBARA

+I said previously this section should have some how been merged into the seattle ending. I couldn’t tell you how honestly, but keeping it dragging like they did was so emotionally draining. it didn’t give me any feeling but more sadness and torment for a favorite character that didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. ellie looked so skinny and sad here. and i feel like it was what the creators were going for? because abby ended up looking just as sad looking. The ending fight was so sad and pathetic. I felt bad for both of them and that is what the creators wanted right? but at what cost? most of your fans, if they even managed to play this far, so emotionally drained and tired that they end up hating the game or not wanting to play it again? 

-ENDING

+so how do i feel now that i finished it? overall there were more cons than pros for me. as i said numerous times before this narrative is not new, this narrative was not needed. this narrative definitely shouldn’t have been lied about through trailers. this narrative was basically done better in the first game anyways. the ending did not give me “sad but hopeful”. it just left me empty and depressed. I don’t see myself playing this game ever again. 

+If anyone was able to enjoy it I’m truly happy you were able to and these were all just my personal thoughts and opinions while playing the game. I don’t hate anyone that liked it, I don’t even hate abby. I just personally hate they wrote a narrative that felt so forced down your throat in all the wrong ways. I hate that I wasn’t ready for that joel scene because it still hurts to think about. I hate thinking about how sad ellie looked and how they were both treated. It just wasn’t healthy for me tbh is the best way I can put it. 

[ifeveristoday]

Thanks for keepin up your Boom! Coverage, I was surprised to see how much Xander's storyline is pulling from Angelus- its interesting even if groan Robin implied XanderBuffy is more than friendship. I had always assumed any buffy version would feature the tragedy of Buffy and Angel - hellmouth, early Angel issues indicated that, but VampXander combined with the soul Mara-Kate silliness has me doubting. What new ground would be covered with an Angelus Buffy crossover?

I can't be the only one yelling into the void about how much I enjoy the Boom! Verse, so I figured I'd take you all with me. 🤣

I've posted before while I'm not excited about the Xander - Buffy storyline, I knew by all the clues that littered past issues that they were going to have to do *something* about it. And yes, Robin pressing Buffy on her 'true' feelings for Xander seems rather out of left field for him. Especially on a date - why is he so intent on pushing the girl he likes into admitting she has secret buried feelings for her as-far-as-he-knows, dead best friend? Way to stall a potential romance. (Though he was right to call her out on her martyr complex.)

Then Buffy extrapolating from Kendra's conversation that she would know when she knows re: Xander - I'm interpreting it as Buffy being in a particularly vulnerable position. A lot of traumatic things have happened within the span of a month - the Hellmouth opening then closing, Xander's apparent 'final' death, Willow leaving, Rose getting hurt, Kendra's arrival and disruption of Buffy's status quo. And she can't talk to anyone about it - her mother can't know her secret, she believes Giles is more impressed with Kendra, and Ms. Calendar is out of the loop. And Rose and Cordelia aren't really *her* friends. She's really alone like she said she wanted to be at the start of the series, and she tries to fix that by throwing herself into a relationship with Robin, because he assures her he's on team Buffy. (And Buffy wants to be liked and needed.) And then that stops before it even could start.

And with her unsettling slayer dreams and reluctance to share ("It's personal"), it's a very lonely place to be for Buffy. Xander coming back from the dead, sort of - well he's a charter member of Team Buffy, so I can see why she's conflicted. He's one of her best friends and even though his feelings for her are terribly twisted by the demon, he's a reminder of when she wasn't lonely. Willow is gone, but Xander is back.

Buffy's loneliness is something that hasn't been brought up much in the Boom! verse. At least not in conversation with the other characters directly. Willow and Xander had their mini arcs dealing with depression and their childhood bond, but Buffy was absent for a lot of that, as she was fighting on another plane of existence. Angel had some camp counselor like advice about loneliness, but then got possessed by the personification of an ancient evil, oh and omitted telling Buffy he was a vampire until the worst possible second, so her tentative trust in him is gone.

Which brings me to your point about how Vamp! Xander's obsession with Buffy is reminiscent of the Angelus story line (and boy is there a whole essay that could be written about how in TV canon, Angelus adopts Xander's nickname for Buffy, "Buff" and his manipulation of her and Xander's feelings and how eerily similar the toxic aspects of the men in Buffy's life can be drawn back to Angelus, etc.) and how it seems like the early hint of Buffy and Angel now feels like a red herring. I think while there are similarities, it's more aligned to the Jesse/Ford plots.

I can only wildly theorize from what print canon says - Buffy and Angel had to meet, and Buffy is going to change Angel's life. Just not now. The timing is off plus they have so much other stuff going on, though Buffy's got more internal chaos while Angel's is more focused on external forces.

And just by the characterization and consistent reminders that Buffy and her friends are sixteen and seventeen year old children - not CW/WB sexy 20 something teenagers, but awkward, messy, traumatized, occasionally shitty to each other children. Angel clearly is not a child.

In Jordie's interviews she's been clear that she wants to bring Buffy into a more modern time, embellishing what we loved about the show, and updating stuff we didn't - Jenny is a character outside of being Giles's girlfriend! Kendra exists and is shown to be a capable and dedicated slayer without Buffy needing to be all white savior about it, the queerness is explicit (Willow, Rose, and Kendra), Black and POC characters get to have lines and motives of their own, mental health is portrayed mostly sensitively and with compassion, and oh, Anya is a full adult demon woman and doesn't have to fit in with the gang to their comfort. And have I mentioned Dolly the cat?

Having an Angel and Buffy romance in that timeline now doesn't make any emotional sense. Also, Buffy seemed less than enthused with him by the end of Hellmouth, and we never get to see Angel's opinion about her at all. Buffy only exists as a prophecy in Lillith's convenient magic 8 ball of foreshadowing - and I also get the feeling that the creative teams just weren't talking that closely. With the new creative team coming in, it's another unknown quantity.

And yes. Kate as Mara/Marius just feels lazy and a complete scuttling of any attempt to make Kate a character of her own and one that isn't tied to Angel by some prophecy. Angel. Use Demon Craigslist and undead tindr or something. Just because Lillith is an omniscient power who can see what could be doesn't mean she's always right.

I think the only Angelus coverage will be in regards to Mara, because Buffy has no emotional connection to Angel. There's no devastation/conflict possibility for them currently, and honestly, Buffy would probably stake Angelus easily.

I can only speculate that these initial relationships are setting the stage for a future rematch between Buffy and Angel, but for now their writers are content to build their separate journeys.

Sorry I took so long to reply! It’s been in the mid to high nineties here in California and I mostly want to sit by a fan and disconnect.

[bloomvalyria]

Hi. Someone who has seen TVD here. I thought I’d put in my two cents here because @yel-it is correct: yes there is homophobia and racism in TVD and it’s very clear to see. I won’t go too deep into the show’s lore because it can get convoluted, but the sick thing is I don’t really have to go into a lot of detail to get the point across.

First off, just because a black woman is in a lead role does not mean the show isn’t racist. I mean that in general but also in reference to TVD specifically. That is such an ignorant statement. Bonnie is actively treated as nothing but a plot device for the entirety of this show. She is left in the background until the other main characters need her to use her magic to fix whatever new thing they’ve fucked up (in which she actually ends up sacrificing herself and dying like 3 times). Her father is murdered, her grandmother dies, her mother is turned into a vampire, her potential love interest who was manipulating her is killed, the love of her life has his heart ripped out of his chest, and don’t even get me started on the Kai situation.

Also, let’s just touch on how many of the “bad” or villain characters are POC. Arcadius aka the Devil is portrayed by a black man who is killed. Qetsiyah is a woman of color who had a lot of potential due to her insanely important backstory yet was pretty much reduced to nothing but a jealous, scorned woman. She’s also killed btw. Connor is a black vampire hunter who is killed just so one of the white main characters can take his place. Jesse is a black love interest for Caroline, but he’s taken against his will, experimented on, and turned into a raging vampire that they have to kill. Ivy is an Asian love interest for Stefan who is turned into a vampire and killed because of her bloodlust. Need I go on? Because I can.

And yes, you’re right there is LGBT+ rep in TVD. Good for them! But guess what? They’re all dead. Literally. I double-checked on the TVD wiki. Not a single one survives. Oh, and Caroline’s gay father kidnaps her and forces her into a version of conversion therapy to try and force her into not being a vampire. Nobody asked, but that doesn’t seem like very good LGBT+ rep to me. Oh, but I almost forgot! They have an openly gay writer, so the show can’t be homophobic! How silly of me.

Now don’t get me wrong, quite a bit of this does fall on Julie Plec’s shoulders. That woman couldn’t destroy the TVD universe any worse than she has even if she tried. But Brian Young has been involved with TVD since season one, and is not an innocent bystander. He is an active participant in the homophobia and racism it perpetuates, and based on what we know so far from the bare minimum we’ve been given about Fate, it’s clear he’s still perpetuating that bullshit to this day.

This isn’t a “true fans will love it” conversation because the true fans are concerned. And rightfully so.

So I watched Jenny Nicholson's 2.5 hours TVD video last night and let me just say that I am even more scared that Brian Young is running Fate now. I have never watched TVD but from her video it seems overly dramatic, racist, and homophobic. Signs of these traits in Fate have already been seen despite it not even being out yet. I can't even imagine what it might be like once it is out. In conclusion: Fuck Brian Young

Fuck Ignio Straffi

And Fuck all of us who are going to watch this show anyway.

[harmicist]

the torbcourse, version 2.0

around 2 weeks ago, i made a very long post about the amount of hate/types of hate being directed @ the character Torbjorn from overwatch.  I actually never expected it to gain much traction, given i only had about 100 followers at the time it was posted.  

thats the backstory.  it now has over 7,000 notes on it. if you never actually saw it going around on tumblr, here’s the permalink to it if you’re interested in what i said on it.  the tl;dr of it though, is that most of the hate has some root in ableism.  

Torbjorn has dwarfism.  i got too many people asking for the source on that, and so i’ll just say it up front. someone who medically has dwarfism is beneath the full grown height of 4′10.  Torbjorn is only 4′7.  regardless of any and all references and poking at world of warcraft “dwarves”, as dwarves dont exist in the real world this classifies him as the very first little person who is a playable character in a videogame, to my knowledge.

I should clarify before I begin with v. 2.0, as i should have then, that im not referring to how he’s annoying in game to play against.  the amount of responses i got that “i only dislike him because i dont like playing against him” is overwhelming.  I’m referring to comments about how he’s unshippable, the complete and utter lack of him in fanart and fanwork, to calling him ugly or claiming that he’s undeserving of any of the things has has, from his family to his wife to his friends.  those things are entirely unrelated to gameplay, and entirely related to how people producing and consuming overwatch fandom content perceive him.

I am gonna put the rest under a “read more” bc mom, holy fuck, this is a long, long read, but i tried to be as concise and answer the various rebuttals i’ve gotten over time that weren’t total nonsense.  Additionally, if you could spread this that would be nice, because, damn.  If i leave one good thing on this fandom without a doubt I do want it to be a reevaluation of how we treat certain characters.  

i think that deflection is actually a good bouncing point to start off with.  So many people say that “I only hate him because of gameplay” and i just want to say that is very much patently wrong. The most hated character to play against in overwatch, to my knowledge, is Mei.  Symmetra is quickly coming in as a close second because of how overpowered she’s become after the massive buff blizzard gave her.  And yet, you see tons of fandom content with both mei and symmetra.  Yes, originally, torbjorn was a very hard character to counter because of hero stacking, but after both nerfs hit and there was the elimination of hero stacking, he’s become far more manageable to play against and has been entirely eliminated from the meta.  The same is true of bastion- who also is included in overwatch fanworks frequently.

I cant say for lower ranking players at all how that works, but as i am a diamond player the meta is pretty close to what i actually play.  Frustrating? sure, but no more so than bastion, who is also difficult to play against in the short turn but if you counter correctly isn't much of a hassle.  Its actually to the point both bastion and torb need a bit of a nerf to bring back onto the player map.

However, there is an unprecedented amount of hate directed at him considering all of these factors, essentially I’m saying he’s actually less frustrating than other characters who receive more content than him and another character hated for the same reason also doesn't get the same treatment as torbjorn.  the reason im saying that is, is unconscious ableism.  I’m not saying you’re consciously thinking “he’s ugly, im going to add more hate onto an issue because of that,” im saying that there is a complex process where your anger and frustration towards his playstyle is aggravated by an unconscious bias against disabled people.  

Think of it in a different context- you are in a checkout line at the grocery store.  The cashier is going slow, because they are moving slow because, say, they have downs syndrome or are perhaps are an amputee.   the issue is yes, they’re being slow and you, in a humans inherently selfish manner, care about your time as well.  there’s that disconnect in your mind because you dont want to call someone the r-slur or point out that they are having trouble bagging because they dont have full use of motion.  (though some might not share your unwillingness, lord knows i’ve heard grocery store employees get harassed before).  But you are still irritated with them in a way they are undeserving of receiving.  Even if you keep it quiet while interacting, sometimes as I’ll hear my mother say after she leaves, “I understand they’re trying to be inclusive, but does it have to get in my way like that?”  Rather than being irritated at being slow, it transforms into irritation that they are disabled and therefore getting in your way.  

the tl;dr of that is that yes, even though you’re not necessarily angered/made upset by the disability it can become an aggravating factor in response to another irritant.

Moving on- the “creepy” trope as applied to torbjorn.  I would personally like to thank @necromin for this comment, even though I cannot tag you in this?  

It is true!  There is a massive trope and history surrounding the idea of dwarfs/little people as being depraved or perverse, or imp-like.  Our willingness to apply how some people use torbjorn to the character itself is not a thing that just happens in a void.  How fandom interprets the intent of his voice lines also does not occur in a void.  

Another commonly said thing in the tags was that oh, i only hate him because he hates omnics!!! and as many, many other people pointed out, that in itself is a fallacy, because plenty of characters in overwatch dislike omnics.  From Zarya (who outright threatens both Zenyatta and Bastion), to Junkrat (Also makes threatening lines towards the Shambali monastery), to Reaper (tin cans, a dime a dozen), there is a long history of hating omnics for a variety of reasons. Interestingly, he’s not even so much a “violent racist” as some would have him made out to be.  His line to bastion (I hate working with those talking tin cans!) actually does make some sense, because he did have to fight against them in the war, and can you blame him for not wanting to go into the Shambali monastery or Numbani after seeing what large numbers of omnics grouped together can do?  Far more violent omnic “racist” lines are Junkrats- (If these bots want to go into the light, I'd be more than happy to help), and (So we're delivering a bomb to scrap some bots and I'm getting paid for it. My kind of job!)

However, much like how characters who are also “annoying” to play again dont receive the same amount of flack, there is a hypocrisy in that a lot of the people who claim not to like torbjorn because of this, love and produce content of other characters like reaper, or zarya, or junkrat.  and so the question that lies therein, is “why does torbjorn get hated for this reason more than those other characters?”  the answer is back at the end of the second paragraph.  

And a lot of people call it “omnic racism”, but as a poc blogger who can state it far more elegantly than i can, racism is a very inadequate, if not inappropriate word to describe the relations between omnic and human in the overwatch world because of why omnics are hated.  they started a worldwide war that threatened the very existence of humanity, caused total chaos for an undetermined amount of time.  Racism is an inappropriate word because this implies that racism as we know it has a cause that is justifiable,  since “omnic racism” is rooted in a very much justifiable history. and thats just not true.  The same can be said of x-men being used as an allegory for racism, because there is a fear that is understandable, when in irl racism it is very much not.

but that is just a sidenote, and not really the focus of this.  

a lot of people also asked if this was a joke.  or treated it like a joke.  I am very much serious about this, and a lot of people agree with me that it got very much out of hand, and some people who were guilty of falling into the ableist route of mocking torbjorn for being ugly/unshippable apologized for it or admitted this opened their eyes some to their own internal biases.  Others still insist that hating him is just a meme.  Then, Lets move onto what i am talking about that i count as hate, but is a bit less obvious to see unless you’re looking for it- which is, the erasure of torbjorn’s character in fanworks.  first i’ll start with the math of it, and then i’ll go into other things of note.

If it is just a meme- than riddle me this-why can you quantitatively conclude that he has significantly less content of him than practically any other character in the game? 

The overwatch archive of our own has over 10,000 fanworks on it now.  The two most common pairings on it are mchanzo and reaper76, each steadily on their way to 2,000 works apiece. The 3 most-tagged characters are all original members of overwatch- McCree, Reaper, and Mercy.  8 of the 10 most tagged characters if you include Amelie and Fareeha, had some major relation to the original overwatch or were members.  9 if you include hanzo, being genji’s brother.  Each of them have over 1,000 fics apiece where they are tagged, and really more like 1,500-2,000+ fics apiece where they are tagged.  (Jesse with almost a whopping 4,000 fics where he’s tagged)

Torbjorn only has 437 fics where he’s been tagged.  Of those fics, he’s not in any of the top 10 most tagged relationships.  Compared to any of the other 5 founding members of overwatch that we know of, that is very strangely low.  Reinhardt is tagged in roughly 1,100 fics, Ana, 1,200 fics, 76, over 2,000, and reaper with over 3,400 fics tagged.  

As a side note, the only character with less fics than him is Bastion, who only has about 240 fics where they are a tagged character.  But this isnt necessarily not understandable- they have no spoken lines whatsoever that arent some sort of robotic onomatopoeia, or omnicmatopea, as i might call it.  Even sombra has more fics than him by a slim margin, but it strange considering she’s the new character, and he was one of the very first ones to be released.

The other interesting thing of note is the dramatic drop off in fics after Winston, who also has a relatively small number of fanfics compared to his role as one of the main characters of the series.  of the 7 characters who have less than 1000 fics to their name, 4 of them are women, 3 are woc, and 2 have confirmed disabilities that are unconventional in video games on top of being amputees.  

but please, tell me again that people aren’t interested in torbjorn because he’s a white man.  say it to my face while we both can see the enormous amount of content for Junkrat, Reinhardt, and 76.  

Its harder to quantify this, but when you read as much overwatch fanfiction as I do, you start to pick up on a few trends that are subtle but important to denote nonetheless.  First off, is that when in fics where the “original” members of overwatch are a friend group, Torbjorn is oddly left out.  Second, in the fics that take place prior to overwatch’s fall and there is some sort of science/ engineering/ mechanical fix involved, the role usually is given to Winston- even if it doesnt make sense timeline wise to have Winston even be there, in Overwatch.  

as another side note, an easy benchmark is this- in your overwatch fanwork, if Fareeha Amari is under the age of 18, then Tracer, winston, and genji aren’t yet members of overwatch.  Tracer and winston are both younger than Fareeha by a handful of years (tracer by 6 years, winston by 3) and Genji joined after he turned 25 (if Fareeha is 18, then genji is only 21)

Ok, but if Winston isnt a member, then who would be the one to do the fixes and technological stuff in Overwatch?  that should be easy, given that Torbjorn is both an original member of overwatch and a world class, genius engineer who is stated in canon to be the designer behind a great deal of Overwatch’s technology.  So why do i see time and time again that he’s just not present in these fanworks?  (See the end of paragraph 2).

The same is true in fanart.  He is mostly not included in comics where it would make complete and utter sense for him to be there.  If its a comic about the golden 7- dont exclude Torbjorn from it. (the golden 7 being, gabriel, jack, ana, reinhardt, mercy, mccree, and torbjorn).  As another person pointed out, he’s likely considered practically family to people like Mercy or Reinhardt or Pharah and Ana.  If I see a comic with 6/7 of them in it, and I dont see torbjorn, i do wind up very, very suspicious.  Not of the artist purposefully saying “I dont want to draw torbjorn because he’s ugly / disabled”, but of unconsciously devaluing his character and place in the series because of those aforementioned biases and so erasing him from the fanwork altogether.  

The same thing with him being “shipped” in fanwork.  I referenced this anecdote in the original post, and the numbers confirm that essentially no one is producing content with him in a relationship in fanwork.  It is not always so overt as people saying he’s disabled and therefore unattractive, but rather people finding him unattractive because he’s short, because he’s disabled.  

and lastly, returning to the point of him being a WOW dwarf and him being an uninteresting character for the special kind of ignorant-

“they just dont care about him so they dont bother reading about him, believe me, most people who make fun of torbjorn think hes a fantasy kind of dwarf rather than a character with dwarfism lol

im not saying that fandoms have not disliked a character purely because of their disability before but seriously, its kind of blizzard’s fault for making a character with dwarfism look literally a stereotypical fantasy kind of dwarf without a very interesting backstory or personality.”

Im not tagging this person, im not interested in “callouts”, but this person had both the accusation that people who dont like him because they dont care about him, and so they dont bother reading about him and then say explicitly they just dont care about torbjorn because they believe he’s without a interesting backstory or personality.

From literally everything about his character, how on earth can you conclude he’s not an interesting character with a good personality/backstory?  He was one of the 6 founding members of overwatch, of the 6 he was the only one with any sort of background in causing the crisis, even though he voiced disapproval of intelligent AI to businessmen who were looking to make profits over the safety of others.  In his profile, it says that his worst fears were confirmed when the omnic crisis began.  How come there arent a ton of fics about him seeing his worst fears come to light when that clearly would be a very interesting topic of fanwork- and a very common theme in Overwatch canon and fanon.  (Ie, mercy fanfics and addressing her resurrecting Gabriel, Hanzo’s regret about listening to orders and murdering genji.)  Thematically, the idea of your past coming back to haunt you places torbjorn in with the other characters very well. Similarly, in recall fics, torbjorn seeks out even now, post-fall of overwatch to right the wrongs he made in his youth with the creation of the omnics that are huge.  Storywise, torbjorn is actually both incredibly important and intriguing.  Thematically, his character also fits right in with the various themes established in the lore amongst the older characters.  

Overall, though, this person is correct, because yeah.  People dont read about him because people dont care about him.  But the question is why don’t people care about him enough to know that he’s actually a character who fits right in with everyone else?

And the answer to that question, is on some level, undoubtedly, ableism, due to his disability making him “unattractive” and therefore “unshippable” and therefore unworthy of most attention in fanworks, or his disability making him “unattractive” and “unworthy of friendships” and therefore not included in platonic works with the characters.  

Anyways.  I’m still tired.  Hopefully I communicated calmly what I meant + more people will be receptive to understanding what I’m trying to get across- that regardless of intent or the original reason of why they hated torbjorn, his physical disability is worsening insults and magnifying dislike of him, and causing him to be erased altogether in both fanart and fanfic.

[canaryatlaw]

alright, well today was an adventure. Woke up to my alarm at 9:30 and got ready, packing the last few things in my suitcase (basically my pajama pants, toothbrush and toothpaste) and taking it downstairs, then of course gathering all the kitty toys and then the unfortunate task of putting kitty in the carrier bag, which is....difficult physically and emotionally lol. She very much does not want to get in the bag so it’s a struggle, but it’s easier with two people so since I had my mom to help me it wasn’t too bad. once she was in there of course she still wasn’t happy, but not much I could do about it now. around that time the car showed up, my family was all scattered today with my dad and older brother at work, my younger brother still in North Carolina, my mom waiting for the fence people to come (to install a fence that Daisy can’t jump over) and of course my little sister can’t drive yet, so they legit couldn’t take me to the airport, they weren’t just being lazy this time, lol. I guess the car ends up being whatever is available, it’s usually a town car but apparently the stretch limo was available today, so I ended up riding to laguardia in a stretch limo, lol. I’d been in it before since the owner of the company is a family friend so we’d done city trips and such with it when I was younger, but it was still very cool. Made it to laguardia okay and made it to the door fine (which is always a toss up with construction so I was grateful for that) and then we made our way inside and had to wait in line to check in at the counter so they could check out the cat situation and make sure everything’s set there. Initially when I set the carrier down the woman was questioning if she was able to turn around in it, because that’s one of the requirements (though you’re also not allowed to have it be any bigger than a certain amount) but she’d already turned around like 4 times in the car lol so I knew she could and then she did it so the lady was like oh okay cool. made my way to the gate, I was very familiar with the terminal, having gone in and out of this one many times before. so I grabbed some food and snacks for the flight and settled in at the gate. Just as it was on our way to New York, once we had settled down and weren’t moving kitty was just chilling and seemed perfectly fine, so that was good at least. Had to wait for a bit for the plane but eventually we boarded, I upgraded the seat to have more leg room (aka more room for kitty) so I had one towards the front but I still had the super basic economy ticket that’s like board in the last group so I have to wait till the end to get there and then have the people who already boarded move so I can get in my seat. Settled in fairly quickly, as soon as kitty was put down I think she fell asleep and I did not hear a peep from her the whole flight, so I’ll take that as a win. Sadly this flight did not come with the tvs in the backs of the seats like the flight here did, so I spent my time doing a mixture of playing games on my phone and reading some fanfic I’d downloaded to my phone. The flight was fine, no complaints there, and once we reached the ground and the airport everything was going well. had to go to baggage claim to get my duffel, then set out to the designated rideshare pick up spot and requested an uber, then had to call them right away to make sure they were ok with the cat, which, to the credit of uber drivers, I’ve never had one so far that has said no about the cat, so that’s been nice. The car ride back was quiet, he was asking a bit about the best route to get home and I was just like buddy I know nothing about street names or routes but if you can get to this one road you can take it like all the way down to my place, so we figured that out and managed to get my home. I got dropped off and then spent a good 5 minutes standing at the door to my apartment building digging through my bags to try to find where I had put my keys, which included unzipping my duffel in case I left them in there. I did finally find them buried in my drawstring bag though, and hauled everything upstairs. Once I got into my apartment the first thing I did of course was let kitty out of the bag because I don’t like her being in there either, and of course she was very happy to be out. I’m gonna see if there are some more comfortable traveling carriers for cats in the future if I end up having to take her with me again, maybe something with a solid bottom because the one I have right now is kinda flexible and I think she didn’t like that. So I’ll look into that. She was very happy to be free of course and bounded away. I dropped most of my stuff in my bag and decided to make myself a bagel (I may have stuck 5 bagels in my carry on?? I have no shame) so I did that and then grabbed my coat and purse to walk to the store to pick up cat food and stomach medicine. I have plenty of dry cat food, but if I don’t have any wet cat food she’s gonna jump on me at 2 am like bitch where’s my food and not leave me alone and I won't have anything to give her which just sounds like a bad idea. and of course just stomach medicine because acid reflux and my body hates me (yaaaaay). Store was hella crowded, nice lady in line in front of me let me go before her because I only had two items so I appreciated that, the girl that was doing bagging was very friendly, it looked like she potentially had some sort of special needs but we had a lovely conversation about our cats and she introduced herself to me at the end and it was all just very nice. Walked home and started watching the final episode of the great american bake off, which I’m sorry is just not nearly as entertaining as the british version, especially when they went from the semi-finals had two POCs and 3 white women and they cut both POCs so the finale was just the 3 white women.....so that was, at the very least, unfortunate. Before I finished the episode though Jess came over and she wanted me to do the black mirror thing that she became obsessed with while I wasn’t here for her to hang out with where I had to make all the choices, I can’t say I enjoyed it very much, it was more stressful and anxiety inducing than anything else. It’s just not really my style, I haven't really enjoyed the few black mirror episodes I've seen (other than maybe San Junipero and Hang the DJ) so this wasn’t really a surprise. after we played that through  few times we decided to switch to Runaways and watched the first two episodes of the second season, though we ended up talking over a good chunk of it so we may have to rewatch that for substantive purposes, lol. Oh, and we ordered domino’s cheesy bread for dinner at some point. After the second episode Jess headed home and I started getting ready for bed and of course dawdled for a bit because it’s now 1:10 am and boy am I tired, I have an appointment with a new allergist tomorrow to talk about my allergy symptoms (that may or may not be cat related, idk) which is mostly just me being itchy as hell all the fucking time, so we’ll have to see how that goes. And with that I very much need to sleep now because I am very tired. Goodnight my babes. Stay awesome.

[muneerahwrites]

Black History Month

I decided to write some thoughts and short summaries down since I am unemployed at the moment (but nevertheless enjoying being at home Alhamdulillah). I actually started re-reading Fanon in late September because I wanted to revisit books that were being discussed in tutorials. But I read them so quickly to prepare for tutorials that I could not really digest them properly.

Also, the next book I planned to revisit is that of Du Bois. AND it is also Black History Month in October in the UK so I might as well aim to finish three books from black thinkers/activists this month.

I hope to read:

1. Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon

2. Souls of Black Folk by W.E. Du Bois

3. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X

What is Black History Month?

Historian Carter G Woodson and prominent African-American minister Jesse E Moorland founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History which sponsored a Negro History Week in 1926, choosing the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

Over the decades, cities across the US started recognizing Negro History Week.

Mr Woodson thought the teaching of black history was crucial in the study of race within society, and said: “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.“

With the growing awareness of black identity and the Civil Rights Movement, Negro History Week evolved into Black History Month on many college campuses.

Thus, each year since 1976, the President of the United States has officially designated February Black History Month.

In the UK, Black History Month, celebrated since 1987, is held in October rather than February.

Something interesting: My first exposure to Black History was in St Andrews, when St Andrews' Africa Summit (SAASUM) had exhibitions, talks and dialogues during the month. My friend told me to get involved but I said that I did not have African heritage so I shouldn’t intrude on a month dedicated to highlight a very much sidelined history. But apparently, the UK version not only recognises the contributions of those from African and Caribbean heritage, but those from Asia too.

I guess the POC (a phrase that I don’t agree with but this will be another post hahaha) in general. POC covers all/any peoples of African, Latino/Hispanic, Native American, Asian or Pacific Island descent, and its intent is to be inclusive.

(Information from: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/black-history-month-2017-what-is-it-where-is-it-held-what-is-the-controversy-a7556191.html )

Why observe Black History Month?

As a Singaporean, currently living in Singapore, Black History Month is something of a non-conversation because there isn’t a visible black community in Singapore, let alone the whole region. So why is it important to even start a conversation about Black History, let alone observe it and advocate about it?

History taught is often Eurocentric, with our political science classes filled with theories and thinkers that came from the West, with our history books written by the victors. Black History Month is a time when the education system is pressured to look beyond. So much of what we understand about history has been white-washed, especially recently often overlooking the darker side of modernity. BHM came out of necessity as there was a gap in the curriculum, the need to address the issue of decolonising our education is still present.

I feel it is so important to learn about figures (whatever the race) who are speaking out against injustice. As we shall see, much of what is being said by Black thinkers about race, justice and reclaiming the self is timeless and relevant to any community who has been or is going through difficulty and/or oppression. I, personally as a Muslim woman and a minority within Singapore, see that there is much to be learnt and reflected on from the experiences and history of a strong and proud community like the Black community.