#The people of her own culture aren’t accepting of her because she has parts of another

[kenniex2]

it is so painfully obvious that white gays have never been oppressed or marginalized outside of their queerness. y’all see Mizu, a woman marginalized into hiding her gender for her own safety and you think it’s a story about you. You’ve never been discriminated against as a woman of color. All the people on this site that I have seen saying the same things as me are other women or people of color, with few outliers, who understand what Mizu is going through. I’m sorry that you’re starving for representation but so are we, if you want to project go watch Nimona or Our Flag Means Death. If you want to understand, you need to sit down and shut up.

if you think this is a story about a trans man you are missing the point

if you think this is a story about a man you are missing the point

[infernoprogeny]

𝕾𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖚𝖊𝖗𝖙𝖊: 𝔖𝔞𝔦𝔫𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔇𝔢𝔞𝔱𝔥 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔊𝔬𝔡𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔇𝔢𝔞𝔡 

When it comes to death, there are many variations of gods that come to our mind from different cultures, since this process is an inevitable and crucial part of all our lives notwithstanding our ethnicity, race, social status, religious beliefs, etc.  

Most of us heard about one such deity: Santa Muerte, who is commonly known as a folk saint and is closely associated with Mexican el Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead. Usually she is depicted as a skeleton with traditional feminine features, long hair, flower wreath and in a bright dress. 

Despite her status among Spanish Catholics, the catholic church doesn’t accept her as an official saint since some other figures play this role in catholicism, as well as Santa Muerte’s eerie connections with witchcraft and narco cartels don’t quite fit Christian morals. 

But what do we know about the origin of the Mother of Death? 

Origin

Although Santa Muerte is an unofficial catholic saint, her roots are more complex than they seem and aren’t limited by her status among Spanish Catholics. 

There are a few main theories of where Santa Muerte comes from:

Aztec death deity Mictecacihuatl

Figure of Grim Reaper during Black Death

African death goddesses

And more others.

But there is no general agreement on which one is true. It can be confusing, but at the same time, it allows us to analyze and define the truth for ourselves.

Still there is one most popular theory which is related to Aztec beliefs.

Aztec death goddess

As we know, Santa Muerte has the most popularity in Mexico. From the history overview, the Valley of Mexico was earlier the Aztec home before the conquest of this land by the Spanish in the early 16th century.

Before Mexican el Día de Muertos, the Aztecs had their own celebration connected to several death gods: Mictecacihuatl and Mictlantecuhtli. Few principal gods were represented as female (Mictecacihuatl) and male (Mictlantecuhtli) embodiments of death and rulers of Mictlan (underworld).

!For the remark: they are not the only ones, there was goddess Tonantzin as well, but she is related to the other catholic figure. 

One of the theories is that Mictecacihuatl and Santa Muerte are the same deity because the Spanish had to accept some Aztec customs due to their cooperation. Also, Mictecacihuatl was a dominant death deity in the Aztec pantheon, so it was important to save her figure even under a different name.

Many faces of Mother of Death

Apart from Santa Muerte’s grim image and direct relation to death, she is patient with the newbies and her devotees and has a pleasant presence and nurturing nature. 

Like all deities, Lady of Death is versatile and can be both gentle and destructive. Don’t be surprised to learn that she has a strong connection with drug traffickers and many of them honour this goddess so she gives them protection and prosperity. 

Another feature is that Mother of Death accepts all people since death doesn’t care about your social status, sexual orientation, colour of skin, gender, and any other things. She is a protector of those who are rejected by society and helps them to stay safe and find their way in life. 

But you need to keep in mind that she should be respected as any other deity and she won’t forgive your ignorance or rudeness towards her. 

How to start working with Santa Muerte

As many of us know, it is important to understand which aspects have certain deities when we start working with them. It helps us to figure out for what purposes we can contact them. 

Santa Muerte is an universal goddess who has keys to the many doors on our paths. It is no wonder, because death is ever-present and has power over all. 

When you decide that you would like to ask Santa Muerte for something, you should define your request and reach out to one of her seven colours or aspects. 

!However, if you aren’t sure which colour is right, it is fine to reach out to Santa Muerte without referring to a certain aspect of her. 

The Seven Colors of Santa Muerte 

I will give a short guide of her seven colours, so it will be easier to define which aspect is most suitable for your problem or situation. 

Niña Blanca, White Santa Muerte

Protection, cleansing, renewal, starting new projects, healing, opening new paths, punishing enemies.

Niña Violeta, Purple Santa Muerte

Magic, secret knowledge, wisdom, spiritual growth, clairvoyance, divination.

Niña Azul, Blue Santa Muerte

Partnerships, social life, human interactions (she can both harmonize and destroy relationships).

Niña Dorada, Golden Santa Muerte

Money, wealth, prosperity, fate, luck (as well as lack of money, poverty and bad luck for enemies).

Niña Roja, Red or Pink Santa Muerte

Romantic relationships, love, lust, attracting a partner (it is possible to punish unfaithful partners with Red Santa Muerte’s help).

Niña Verde, Green Santa Muerte

Winning legal cases, justice, defining truth, protection from criminals, imprisoning someone, making someone commit illegal acts, endanger someone to be robbed or assaulted. 

Niña Negra, Black Santa Muerte

Neutralizing curses, malevolent spirits, ending bad luck or all kinds of problems, protection, spiritual transformations, harming enemies.

Associations

Planetary aspects: 

Moon and Saturn (but it can vary depending on the aspect)

Plants:

Rose, rosemary, syrian rye, tobacco, marigolds, aloe

Animals: 

Owl, raven, butterfly, snake, worm

Incense: 

Rose, vanilla, sage, copal, myrrh, rosemary, aloe, palo santo

Symbols:

Scythe, skull, flower wreath, golden jewelry, scale, cloak

Tarot:

Death, Queen of Swords, Judgement, the Empress, the High Priestess, the Hierophant (but it depends on your perception as well)

Offerings

Tequila, red wine, chocolate (or any other sweets), red apples, pomegranates, fruits (especially exotic ones such as pineapples, mangoes, dragon fruits), coffee and cacao, salt, bread, flowers (mostly red or white roses), red meat, chicken hearts, candles (the colour depends on the aspect or you can choose the black one as universal), incenses. 

𖤐

Let me know if you would like new posts about Santa Muerte. Mother and I will be happy to tell you a lot more.

[rebelspykatie]

Soulmate AU Part Four 

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Five

The night of the date, Eddie is pacing beside his front door. Wayne is watching from his armchair with an exasperated look, having already told him to sit down or he was going to wear a hole in the carpet. He jumps when there’s a knock on the door and shoots Wayne a dirty look when he laughs. Before opening it, he grabs the flowers off the counter and takes a deep breath, attempting to settle his nerves.  

When he finally pulls the door open, he’s still wholly unprepared for Steve Harrington to be the one standing on his doorstep, eyes twinkling in the haze of the setting sun, hair perfectly coiffed and yellow sweater sitting snug around his torso. He holds out the flowers before Steve can even say hello. 

There’s a beat of silence where Eddie almost pulls them back, but Steve hesitantly reaches for them, holding them delicately in his hands. “You got me flowers,” he says with a hint of awe.

“My mama used to garden a lot before she died, and I remember sitting with her as she talked for hours about the meaning of all of these different flowers she was planting. I don’t remember all of them because it was so long ago, but I do remember what these mean.” 

It’s never easy talking about his mom, but it’s not as difficult with Steve looking at him like he understands the importance of Eddie divulging something so personal. There’s a hopeful look on his face that reassures Eddie he can trust Steve with every dark corner of his soul. They’re not there yet, but they’re headed in the right direction. 

He looks down at the yellow and white water lilies with a watery smile, “Mama used to always say that water lilies were about rebirth and enlightenment. A lot of cultures tied that back to purity and religion. But mama used to tell stories of nymphs leaving them around those they wanted to protect or claim.”

Steve ducks his head, burying part of his face in the flowers. “Are you the nymph in this scenario?”

“If it means staking my claim, then yes.” A triumphant trill courses through him when Steve blushes. “I know the universe already did that for me, but I wanted to show you I mean it. I want to start over and actually give this a shot.”

“I want that, too.” Steve looks back at his car. “Maybe we can leave these here, though. I don't want them to get ruined sitting in the car.” 

It takes a few minutes to find something to leave them in. The Munson’s aren’t big flower people these days, but soon enough they’re on their way, Wayne shooing them out the door. Steve hasn’t told Eddie where they’re going, but it’s somewhere outside of Hawkins. 

As they exit the city limits, Eddie's nervous chatter has died down a bit. Steve quietly says, “I didn’t think you would be into flowers or any of that romantic shit.” 

“Just because I look mean and scary, doesn’t mean I don’t believe in love. I was just as excited as you were to get my soulmate mark.”

“Why were you so scared to tell me?”

“My own stupidity, I guess.” Eddie shrugs. “Things never worked out long term for any of the Munsons when it comes to soulmates. My mom died young and my dad fucked off after that, not wanting to raise someone that was a living reminder of what he lost. Wayne’s died in Vietnam. I wasn’t hopeful that mine would work out when it was the most popular guy in school’s name on my arm.”

Steve holds out a hand across the center console of the car, wrist up as a reminder of whose name is written there. Eddie slides their hands together.

“I had accepted that my fate was just like all the other Munson’s before me. You were happy with Wheeler and I couldn’t bring myself to get in the way of that.”

“We weren’t happy,” Steve interjects faintly, absentmindedly rubbing a thumb over the back of Eddie’s hand. “I think somehow Nancy knew it wasn’t going to be her name on my wrist. She’s perceptive in a scary way.” What little he knows of Wheeler tells him that’s true. After a beat Steve adds, “Sounds like we both had unrealistic expectations for all of this.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, squeezing Steve’s hand. “But we’re starting over, no more King Steve or Eddie the freak Munson.”

“Just Eddie and Steve. I like the sound of that.” 

“Me, too.” He’s about to ask where they’re going for the hundredth time, but Steve turns into a parking lot for what looks like a bookstore.

The building is nondescript with just a simple sign out front. Eddie is already bounding through the entrance before Steve’s turned the car off. Inside, there are walls of books, but it’s more than that. One side of the store is what appears to be a hobby shop, with puzzles, model kits of everything from boats to planes, and a whole display case of dice sets and miniatures.

Eddie’s frozen in place, just inside the doorway, bouncing on the balls of his feet excitedly, when he feels Steve come up behind him. “How did you find this place?”

“This kid I babysit plays Dungeons and Dragons, too. He’s the nerdiest little shit. Loves to read. Smartest person I know. He builds all kinds of robots that do stuff. His mom can’t afford to bring him out here all the time, so I started doing it. Let the kid go wild in here and he’s a happy camper. Easiest babysitting job ever.” 

Eddie might climb Steve like a tree right here in the middle of this store for everyone to see. He can’t believe the words Dungeons and Dragons just came out of his mouth.  

“This place is amazing. I’ve been using a secondhand set of dice from Gareth that he got from his cousin. I had no idea this place existed.” 

“You wanna get a new set?” Steve nods towards the display case. “My treat.” 

Eddie almost trips in his hast to sprint across the room and start going through the different sets, Steve’s laughter echoing behind him.

Part Five

[juniorfor2]

For all the racism that’s very obvious in the show, I really think one big one has been missed - C&H’s decision to make the Velaryon boys bastards, instead of Laenor’s sons by blood, simply because of their skin color.

Due to the writers’ decision to make the Velaryons black, but Jace, Luke, and Joffrey white, this was used to support the idea that they must be bastards. Rather than using hair color, only skin color is brought up as an issue (or at least that’s what’s obviously implied). Because the writers think that kids come out looking like a 50/50 mix of their parents. That if they aren’t exactly in the middle of Laenor and Rhaenyra’s skin color, then they can only be bastards.

But this just isn’t how real life works. Kids come out looking all sorts of ways, lighter or darker than both their parents, right in the middle, or only like one parent. My own mother is from Pakistan, but I came out looking exactly like my white, American father (except as a girl).

And that has consequences for a lot of people. Those who come out looking different from one parent can often experience difficulties as others refuse to see them as part of their group or culture. Biracial children are often forced to choose one race over the other, or are deliberately excluded from one group because they aren’t light or dark enough.

And the thing is, this issue is actually raised in the show. Vaemond actually gets the closest to the real life issue, when he says to Rhaenyra, “you wouldn’t know Velaryon blood if you saw it.” Because they are white, they are excluded from being Velaryon. They are viewed almost as weird colonizer-parallels, “stealing” from the only black family in the show, thereby erasing any racial culture the Velaryons currently have.

Even Alicent, despite not being part of the dispute, shows so much disgust towards the boys. They aren’t darker skinned, and so she views them as unworthy and unable to be part of the Velaryon family. It’s not even her fight, but she still is vitriolic towards them - and that’s how so many biracial people are actually perceived and treated in real life.

The issue of how biracial children are perceived should have been a fairly easy message to portray and resolve. We could have seen how Jace was ostracized and pushed away because of his looks, how much it hurt him for everyone to say he wasn’t Velaryon, even while Laenor raised him and viewed him as his son. We could have then seen how Jace eventually resolves this, realizing that it doesn’t matter what he looks like, because all that mattered was that Laenor was his father who loved him and raised him with Velaryon culture. That Corlys accepted him as well, despite the rumors.

But C&H, because they are both racist and mainly ignorant of how skin color works in real life, went the easy route and didn’t try to even find a single explanation for why the kids could be Laenor’s children by blood. I don’t need a complete reversal to make them undoubtedly Laenor’s, but some ambiguity would have been nice.

[toastandjamie]

Alright nuance time! As you might have noticed I’m a fan of Mat/Tuon but the thing that makes them so interesting is the fact that they aren’t a perfect couple and the reason I love Tuon is because she’s complicated so that being said- I think it’s really interesting how unbalanced the amount effort in the relationship is. Mat by far puts more effort into making the relationship work and this is because of two reasons, how they view their respective prophecies, and their cultural differences.

Tuon’s prophecy has a lot more specifics in it, having actual signs to look for unlike Mat who received only a title and told they would marry. Tuon’s prophecy encourages her to take a passive role in the development of the relationship because the signs are all actions that Mat commits on his own, stealing and setting her free. So she waits and watches. Mat meanwhile is given no guidelines, he knows he’ll marry her and he can see that unknowingly his head is already in the noose so to speak. Unlike Tuon, despite accepted the inevitability of fate and no longer running away from it Mat still seeks out ways to enforce his own agency within the confines of fate. If his neck is the noose he’ll jump off the ledge instead of being pushed. The outcome is the same but at least he gets to control it. Mat treats his relationship with Tuon similarly, he won’t passively await a loveless marriage instead he takes steps to get to know her, to find the parts of her that he likes, he makes the active choice to love her. Ironically his desire to have agency is what causes their fated marriage.

Once they begin to persue the relationship their cultures come into play. In Seanchen society the Empress is considered infallible, in Tuon’s mind she’s a divine authority in her own right. While she’s willing to consider and listen to the opinions and advice of those she trusts she believes wholeheartedly that she is not just in the right but righteously so. Mat meanwhile has a view on relationships more akin to our own where compromise is necessary to creating a healthy relationship. Andor where Mat grew up is a matriarchy. While the Two Rivers may not acknowledge the Queen as sovereign, women are still the final authority in Emmonds Field, and an expectation of husbands deferring to their wives. Mat is a pragmatist, as a person he’s willing to bend his own morality for the safety and happiness of the people he loves to the detriment of all else including his own physical and mental well being. This means that while Tuon refuses to change she expects Mat to do so, and Mat is willingly to change for the sake of making the relationship work. He’s willing to tolerate things he wouldn’t otherwise because he wants his marriage with Tuon to be happy and he loves her.

The issue is that because they are fated together Mat is willing to do and put up with just about anything to make it work because that’s the only agency he has in relation to their marriage. Where as Tuon views herself as a passive player in her own fate and expects Mat to bend to fit her world view. This creates a dangerously unbalanced dynamic where all the expectation and pressure of keeping the relationship happy is entirely on Mat.

However we also see that there’s the chance for improvement. Mat might be willing to put up with a lot but he still highly values his own independence and sense of self. So if he views Tuon as threatening that, ie. trying to take his hat or threatening his friends/home he fights back viciously against it. While Tuon is immovable in her beliefs in many ways she can be flexible when needed and she understands when a fight isn’t worth it. And of course, she does love Mat in her own way, she shows this by giving him privileges and listening to his wants and needs. Mat is just stubborn enough and Tuon just flexible enough that growth and improvement are possible.

[crazylittlejester]

since it’s almost Hyrule Warriors anniversary…do you have any lttc warriors facts you’d like to share 🤲 also I’m going to draw him as part of my drawing links from different links meets thing I do for each game’s anniversary. It will happen I promise you so uh. idk if you have additional facial descriptors for him that you left in the other posts 🤲 but I’m pretty sure I can draw him accurately enough with the information already provided 👍 anyways, hope you have a good rest of your day!

OH BOY A CHANCE TO YAP ABOUT MY BLORBO!!!!!!

- Zelda keeps trying to promote him and he keeps refusing and she’s so frustrated by it, but he refuses to accept a promotion for something he doesn’t believe he accomplished

- He genuinely thinks he’s so sneaky with the lifts he has in his boots, he’s genuinely convinced no one knows

- Proxi can acknowledge how much he’s grown, but she still sees him as her wet cat son who just desperately needed someone to look out for him. She’s very proud of him, but she still thinks he’s ridiculous

- It took him a hot minute to become fluent enough in ‘hyrulian common’ (english) to be able to understand fast conversations with slang in them and to be able to speak back and converse with other soldiers at that level because it’s not his first language (this is why he sometimes stares at people with an incredibly blank expression during the war, he doesn’t always understand what they’re saying). Proxi continued to speak on his behalf until he’d perfected a castle town accent as well because he didn’t want anyone knowing he didn’t grow up within Hyrule kingdom

-Regularly abuses the fact that the general public has a certain image of him in their minds, and when he does not meet that image he can literally walk around wherever the hell he wants without being recognized and it’s so good for his mental health. He’s still paranoid and worried, but people just don’t recognize him because they hear all the tales of a strong, confident young man and Warriors is actually fairly quiet and comes off as a bit shy, plus people just aren’t expecting the hero to randomly be walking around on his own. Without the make up, fancy clothes, and boots and all that, he can just walk around markets like a normal person, and without the green tunic, Mask can too. So he’d pretty regularly just take Mask around towns to buy sweet treats and they both got to experience what it might’ve been like for an eighteen year old to shop with his little brother

- During the war, he and Ravio got quite close. They’re a dangerous combination and make each other worse

- He and his Zelda are incredibly close, they’re extremely good friends and they like to get together every so often and just YAP

also for any additional descriptors: LTTC Wars looks pretty much exactly like how I headcanon LU Wars. He was deadass created from You’re A Part Of Me Wars when I one day sat back and went “oh my god at this point I’ve just made my own guy-” the main difference between LTTC Wars and You’re A Part Of Me Wars is that LTTC Wars grew up outside of Hyrule Kingdom surrounded by a different culture and he struggled a lot more with a language barrier when he went to Castle Town (while my version of LU Wars grew up IN Hyrule Kingdom and had to struggle with learning his mom’s side of the family’s culture while being unable to fully interact with it), and a few details of the war. But physically they’re the same guy, so my pfp pic could be used as an additional ref if you needed :) THANK YOU FOR DRAWING MY GUY I LOVE HIM VERY MUCH

i love to stick lttc wars and you’re a part of me wars in a room and see what happens, they’d both hate it but I think theyd have so much to say

[mswyrr]

I love this scene from Homicide: Life on the Street (from 2x04, "A Many Splendored Thing") and the surge in puritanical thought and purity policing language online keeps making me think about it.

BAYLISS: Tell me that you don't find all of this porno stuff, all this phone sex and S&M stuff, disgusting. PEMBLETON: Well, Bayliss, that's just the way of the world. It's been this way forever. When they dug through the ruins of Pompeii, they found, written on the walls: 'An vere fama susrrat grandia te medii tenta vorare viri.' It's a long, roundabout way of saying 'fellatio.' St. Ignatius High, New York City. Yeah, I had to do something to make Latin class interesting. BAYLISS: Granted, listen, perversion has existed since the beginning of time. Alright, we see it everywhere, but that doesn't mean that I am willing to accept that. PEMBLETON: Well, in any given ten square feet of this great country, there are people who think it's perverted for a person of your color and my color to sleep together. BAYLISS: No, Frank. I'm not talking about prejudice. What I'm talking about is kinky sexual acts. Dehumanizing acts between two human beings, alright. Sex is love. Period. This I believe. PEMBLETON: Oh, yeah right. So if a beautiful woman passes you on the street, you smile at her. Ooh, she smiles back. You're not thinking about marriage, you're thinking of her in a French maid's outfit. Bent over a straight back chair – BAYLISS: No, no, I don't. I don't think that way, Frank. PEMBLETON: Oh, well you're either a liar or you're a moron. If you're a liar, then fine. At least you've got a chance. But if you're a moron, then you're just a bore, y'know. I'm gonna have to take you out back and shoot you just to put you out of your misery. BAYLISS: Wait a minute. I don't think dirty so I can't understand the criminal mind. Is that it, huh? I mean….I…I…I don't want to kill someone, so I can't get into the killer's head, is that it Frank? I don't think about molesting some child so I don't how to investigate Adena Watson's murder, is that what you're saying? PEMBLETON: Then you really are a moron, aren't you!? BAYLISS: No, I'm not a moron, Frank! PEMBLETON: OK, let me tell you something. We're all guilty of something. Cruelty, or greed, or going 65 in a 55-mile-per-hour zone. But you know what? You want to think about yourself as the fair-haired choirboy, you go ahead. BAYLISS: Alright. OK, so, what're you saying, huh? PEMBLETON: I'm saying you got a darkness. You, Tim Bayliss, you got a darkness inside of you. You gotta know the uglier, darker sides of yourself. You gotta recognize them so they're not constantly sneaking up on you. You gotta love them 'cause they're part of you. Because along with your virtues, they make you who you are. Virtue isn't virtue until it slams up against vice. So consequently, your virtue's not real virtue, until it's been tested. Tempted.

Being terrified of one's own darkness/sins and eagerly seeking to live in denial about their existence is actually one of the ways that extremes of politics and religion capture people. (That and the disgust based morality Bayliss displays in this scene). That kind of obsessive purity is something I was raised with in fundamentalist Christianity. It doesn't lead to goodness; it leads to hypocrisy, lies, hiding and concealing and cultures of fear. It motivates people to actively prevent rather than support real goodness and sincerity and truth. It leads to people displacing and projecting their own darkness on others instead of having a healthy relationship with it.

[ninjakittenarmy]

I think my main issue with the plot of Spirit of Justice, despite generally liking it, is that you didn’t really NEED to have the entire conflict with the Kura’inese government to revolve entirely around trials alone for the plot to work. Spoilers ahead naturally.

See, the plot isn’t actually THAT far fetched in concept. Manipulation of the legal system to suppress dissent is pretty much ubiquitous among dictatorships. It’s the oldest trick in the tyranny book. And the fact that regular citizens can abuse it for their own gain is a very common side effect of it’s not intended in the first place irl. And targeting attorneys that won’t play ball is part of that pretty much always.

And honestly, the idea that a faith could have a murder trial have spiritual significance for the deceased is actually pretty interesting, and the justice system being of spiritual significance or even being intertwined with the local faith isn’t particularly unusual historically. My only issue with it is just that they don’t mention what happens if someone ISN’T MURDERED. The trial is established as necessary for the spirit to move on, and that seems at least partially true (gotta wonder if the spirits believing this has something to do with it, if they make a sequel they should build on this). So what happens if there’s no trial to be had? I assume it’s only necessary for murders, I’d just like to know.

The final trial isn’t that unbelievable either. Delegitimizing a ruler in front of both their subjects and the people they count on to enforce their will is how many a tyrant has fallen, and a trial where it’s proven that their rule was acquired through illegal means or they otherwise don’t have legitimacy is a perfectly legitimate way that can happen, especially since in this case, the queen’s goons were loyal entirely because they thought she was legitimately divinely ordained (sure, her coup didn’t matter to her royal guards so long as she had the necessary powers that gives you, but she uh, didn’t).

The main issue really is just that they overdid it. The trials seem to outweigh other forms of repression a dictator would use in tandem. There would need to be other elements to the government’s tyranny and the groups resisting it. You had one assassin when these regimes have whole death squads. And attorneys alone aren’t really a big enough group to justify having them be the main enemy your dictator “needs” the power to fight. There’s gotta be more. Other ideologies, other cultures, other faiths. Maybe a bit heavy for AA but dictatorships are heavy stuff and this series is already about murder.

And there would realistically be more groups opposing them besides defense attorneys alone. They’d probably be part of it. Lawyers have been part of tons of revolutions in the past, including America’s, in fact. I can buy one being a leader in fact. But it wouldn’t be like 90% lawyers with like, three other people. You’d have partisan sympathizers, vengeful families of those wronged, members of persecuted groups. Having the Dragons be entirely composed of a crack team of guerrilla lawyers isn’t plausible, and the absurdity of it isn’t noted in the narrative like the other wacky stuff in these games. You’re meant to just accept it.

Also, I don’t buy for a SECOND. That they’re all pacifists. You made their second in command a foreign commando soldier and had them presented throughout the game as a typical partisan rebel group. You want me to believe the most feared group of rebels in this country is pacifist? Pacifism is all about discrediting that notion, it’s REALLY HARD to make them seem like the boogeymen the government says they are. And it just felt in context like a cheap way to make them not TOO rebellious lest idiots accuse them of endorsing political violence, despite the fact that political violence against a democratic government and innocent people is completely different from violence targeted specifically at a dictatorship’s rulers and enforcers. You can still portray anyone who attacks innocents “for the cause” as evil. There’s a middle ground here.

[gloriousburden]

Hey, you don't have to apologize at all! <3 We all have our lives. Also, it is up to you to decide when you wish to answer or if you wish to answer some asks at all! This is supposed to be your space, so def take all the time you need!

I'm happy that I helped you put some thoughts into words, too! And like always, I agree w all you say!! Also, for the Sylvie shapeshifting part — there's a post on it (if I find it I'll send it to you), and sadly, it is true. I didn't connect the dots before, but now it makes further sense with how they use her character, too. It is stated multiple times in the series by Mobius, and in general they kept highlighting the fact that she's a female counterpart. I shouldn't be surprised, but I always am in the end 😔

And another point you made — for Ragnarok, I saw your rb and. Man. When I tell you my jaw DROPPED at that scene — like ... It's awful. I hope that we won't have that one day, even if that feels far away. None of you deserve this. Putting such lines is very harmful, because (other than the fact that it's just straight up disrespectful, racist and ignorant) while the film itself is fictional, it still has influence in real life and people could take that and think it would be fine, to belittle and mock others. I've learned about your culture and am still learning, and with everything that has transpired, things like this make everything worse. It's so widespread, too, the misinformation. Of course, the best weapon to this is to be respectful, open, informed, and curious about everything, but still, such lines should not be accepted at all. You have already stated it very well. Thank you for that.

Sorry you had to see that, Thor would never. Bruce either, that cannot be Bruce, I revoke him ... Oh, and I'm definitely up for listening to your points on this. I'm very curious about it. I'd also love to learn more about your culture!

(Including your other ask here as well)

Hey! I checked out a few of her posts about it. Is this it? [Link]

In all honesty, I’m not too sure about the shape-shifting thing. But… I assume her being able to shape-shift as well as the enchanting stuff would’ve made her too “OP” (not that they really care about that) and not “distinctive” enough from Loki lol. As for her being strictly female and not fluid… man, I don’t know. I guess they wanted to focus on female rep (which they’re not really good at either) instead. They already see Loki as male, so they treated both of them as only being female/male with the ‘Sex:Fluid’ thing being an afterthought to “please” fans. Basically:

‘OKAY SHUT UP YOU’VE GOT IT! WE THREW IN A FILE SAYING HIS SEX IS FLUID DURING THE CREDITS, BUT HE IS SHOCKED WHEN A FEMALE VARIATION OF HIM SHOWS UP! Uh… it totally wasn’t an afterthought or anything, haha…”

🤦🏻‍♀️ so stupid.

Female counterpart… the writing and handling of Sylvie being female felt misogynistic to me. Okay so Loki cannot call her out on her own flaws (because how dare a female character have flaws), but also she’s automatically stronger and is so “badass”, but also she has no depth and there was little thought put into her backstory. I can straight up say that as a female that I do not want to see robotic female characters with absolutely no depth, and no flaws! Instead of them correcting the misogynistic mistakes they’ve made in the past with making a strong female character, they make her robot like because I guess that’s easier than giving a female character depth.

I feel like a good example of a well written female character is Mikasa from Attack on Titan. She is strong, but also has depth. She loves Eren, but has a personality and motives outside of that. She has weaknesses, and is not immune to struggling. She’s one of my favorite female characters, and I think more should be written like her. Anime/Manga are notoriously BAD at handling female characters, but in Attack on Titan (though there are still flaws of course), they feel real. They aren’t just there for fan service, or just to shut up female audiences with no actual care put into any part of it.

Lol sorry I deleted the RB Because I felt no one saw it, but thank you so much for reading it!

[Link] for context.

I really do appreciate you taking the time to learn about my people, and our culture. Thank you for seeing us for who we are, outside of all the hatred. It truly does mean a lot, as I’ve been discriminated against throughout my life.

I also want to point out that the joke isn’t JUST beyond disrespectful to my OWN culture, but it is disrespectful to any other culture that’s cultural clothing includes headscarves. So many people who proudly wear their headscarves (and any other cultural clothing for that matter) are targeted in hate crimes and It’s just really gross to me that they chose to mock them. It fuels hatred and ignorance. It alienates people.

A lot of people when talking about anti Roma racism mainly talk about the G word (Gypsy), but there are more important things to me than that. Like the fact that Roma children are ethnically targeted in hate crimes by non Roma ADULTS and AUTHORITY FIGURES throughout Europe, but primarily in the Balkans where a lot of us reside/have ties to.

Politicians openly spew hatred against us, with little to no repercussions. They want my people to assimilate, but when they attempt to, they are mocked and just overall treated like garbage. There’s no winning. They want them to strip themselves of our culture. Of our traditions.

I will not get into it on here a whole lot as it is absolutely vile, but my people were targeted during the Holocaust and experimented on in horrific ways. How were they targeted? Nazi scientists studied our features, and how we dressed.

That’s why jokes about how we look or how we present ourselves really are not funny. It reflects real life.

I believe I said this in so many words on the OG post, but the weirdest part to me of all of it is how little sense it makes for Bruce to make that joke to Thor. Like it was just Mark Ruffalo going out of his way to be hateful towards us once again. Thor doesn’t pay much mind to the joke if you watch the scene.

It’s funny because Thor (after his banishment), has almost always been respectful towards other groups of people from what I can remember at the top of my head.

He was respectful towards humans when he was casted out to Midgard, and he CLEARLY tolerates them to a certain extent if he’s willingly in a relationship with one, as well as willingly associate with them (The Avengers.)

‘You can’t kill an entire race..’

‘You think yourself above them?’

Thor is supposed to be open minded for an Asgardian, so.. this really was just Mark Ruffalo and his racism again. And I know he portrays himself as being aware of and deeply caring about social issues, but I guess that awareness and care excludes Roma. That’s what makes it worse. What also makes it worse is the MCU’s history of racism against us. A lot of people have talked about this on here, but the white washing of MCU Wanda/Pietro. As well as Joss Whedon’s racism towards us.

Thank you for the ask! Once again, feel more than welcome to send another any time 😁

[tartheanmaid]

Can I ask why you ship Jon and Sansa? (I'm assuming that's what the Jonsa means in your bio) Not attacking you or anything just curious. They are half siblings and while Jon was a bit separated due to him being the bastard they still were raised together and he's much older. Ik incest and weird relationships is normal in GOT but still

i’m not much involved in the show fandom anymore, but going by medieval and asoiaf/book lore, jonsa isn’t incest. i can direct you to much more lovely people who could explain this way better if you like, but they aren’t half-siblings. ned is not jon’s father, rhaegar is. jon is lyanna’s son (ned’s sister).

westeros is very culturally against incest in all forms, but their definition of it is quite different from the modern world’s. i’m the kind of person who, when i engage in a piece of media, i try to do it through the lens of someone who would actually live there. that is why i don’t consider jonsa incest, because in westeros cousin marriage is not only accepted but extremely common. lysa, sansa’s aunt, wished to marry sansa to her cousin/lysa’s son sweetrobin. additionally, ned, lyanna, brandon, and benjen’s parents (the starklings paternal grandparents), were first cousins.

the only kinds of incest westeros and essos condemn are sibling/sibling, aunt/nephew, mother/son, and father/daughter.

i believe george intentionally didn’t make them interact at all in the chapters where they’re both in the same location. i also believe it is sansa, not arya or jeyne poole or alys karstark who is the girl in grey.

why do i ship them in a general sense? 1. i believe they are compatible and would work well together as a couple based on their own internal wants and feelings about love and marriage.* 2. if sansa is to hold some sort of northern leadership, she must marry a man who is willing to give up all of his titles + name for her so that they may continue house stark. jon is the perfect fit for that in my opinion ( @istumpysk has a great meta on this titled “find sansa’s husband”).

* “Sansa, two years older, drew the crown prince, Joffrey Baratheon. He was twelve, younger than Jon or Robb, but taller than either, to Jon's vast dismay. Prince Joffrey had his sister's hair and his mother's deep green eyes. A thick tangle of blond curls dripped down past his golden choker and high velvet collar. Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey's pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell's Great Hall.” - JON I, AGOT

as for the age gap, that part does make me sort of uneasy, but i do believe george feels the same way about that. which i think is why he tried so hard to make the 5 year gap work (if you’re not familiar, the 5 year gap was a scrapped time jump that was to happen in between ADWD and TWOW). if the 5 year gap had ended up working out, sansa would be around 17/18, and jon around 20/21. their age gap may seem like a lot because of how young they are, but when you age them up just a bit it starts to make a little more sense.

hope this helps! /gen

[kipandkandicore]

i do not know what is with tulpa word but want understand .

can you teach me about tulpa and why bad word ? in simple words thank you

we can try.

disclaimer: we are a white system and are not fully educated on tibet and vajrayana buddhism. we are though educating ourself on racism and how to spot it in our community and stand up against it. we are also not an active member of the tulpa community (we are interested in creating a thoughtform, though, and have lurked in these spaces for quite some time). our wife is an active in the tulpa community though, and she has successfully created a “tulpa” (which she calls a paro or thoughtform). what we know about tulpa language and the community, we understand from existing in these spaces and talking with her about her process and experiences.

(note - many of the testimonies in our google doc explain how tulpa language is bad, by those who are directly hurt by it)

(also we can sometimes get ahead of ourselves and can struggle to tell what words are simple and what words aren’t. if any of this doesn’t make sense to you, please reach out and we can clarify to the best of our ability)

so as we understand, the word “tulpa” was created in the mid-1900s by a french explorer named alexandra david-neel (adn).

she is not tibetan. nor was she ever fully accepted into tibet by the people who lived there, we believe. from what we know, she actually disguised herself as a beggar in order to be allowed into the region (we are currently reading her book - magic and mystery in tibet).

something interesting about that book… here’s an excerpt from the opening page:

This is the believe-it-or-not story of a strange land and a mysterious people. It records the author's fascinating experiences while traveling for fourteen years through forbidden Tibet. It is a thrilling story, told without bias or exaggeration, by one of the foremost of women explorers.

the book is written in this fashion… the language she uses to describe the people she is studying is strange, hurtful, and racist. it sensationalizes asia and the people of tibet, and fetishizes the culture of the tibetan people.

what we mean when we say this, is that the book paints the everyday lives of the tibetans and the religion they practice as unbelievable, fascinating, bizarre, and othering. it is a great example of oriental fetishization by a white explorer, who wrote and published her book in an era where it was incredibly popular and profitable to write exotic tales about asian people in far-off lands. white people ate this stuff up (and they still do today).

here is a post that explains how adn could have had ulterior, money-driven motives for writing her book (and may not have even ever visited tibet).

here is an article that explains why western explorer discovery literature is actually incredibly hurtful and reinforces colonialist ideas about the world while romanticizing and fetishizing other cultures.

so the term tulpa was created by her. how?

it is a combination of the tibetan terms “sprul pa” and “tulku,” which are words both used in vajrayana buddhism (the branch of busdhism primarily practiced by tibetans).

this is language from a culture she is not a part of. adn was french, remember.

if she had created her own french term to describe the phenomenon of vajrayana buddhist emanations, we’d still have issues with her and her works, but we wouldn’t have as many problems with the language.

but instead, she bastardized the language of the people whose practice she was studying for her exotic explorer literature. she, who is not tibetan, appropriated tibetan words in order to create a label that sounds exciting and would draw people into her works.

language appropriation is real. cultural appropriation of language is real. this is a serious issue that affects people from nearly every culture outside of the west. because the west has always had a massive problem with fetishising other cultures. in this case, it is the people of central asia whose culture has been stolen, twisted around, and paraded for profit.

do you see how this is harmful?

this is why tulpa is a bad word that needs to go. it was founded in cultural appropriation, by a racist white woman who studied the tibetan people so she could turn their stories into a book of exotic tales that would sell in the west as explorer literature.

if you want to hear more about this from asian buddhists who are affected directly by this choice of language, we highly encourage you to check out our document compiling testimonies by those affected.

tldr: alexandra david-neel, the coiner of the word tulpa, was a white explorer who wrote magic and mystery in tibet as exotic explorer literature which misrepresents and fetishizes the people of tibet. she was not asian or tibetan, but she stole two tibetan words and mashed them together to create the term tulpa, which was used at the time for her own benefit. language and cultural appropriation are both real and serious issues that many cultures outside the west struggle with. tulpa language is an example of this appropriation. it is a stolen term created by a racist, and changing that term would be hugely beneficial for the community, as it would mean confronting racial biases and shifting away from appropriated language.

glossary (links to definitions of terms that may be difficult to understand):

romanticization

sensationalization

fetishization

bastardization

colonialism

cultural appropriation

vajrayana buddhism

buddhist emanations (nirmanakaya)

we hope this helps.

(to anyone besides anon who sees this - if we’re misinformed about anything we’ve said here, please call us out!! this is a complex and nuanced topic that we are trying to learn about and discuss to the best of our ability).

[realmythsmoved]

@flownintothesun continued from here

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐌𝐀𝐋𝐂𝐘 for Lucienne seems like a plot twist in a book — the one before the great adventure, where the hero is looking over the terrain and realizing just how big the world is, and how far they’ll have to travel in order to succeed. Of course, her definition of success is different from maman’s in that she doesn’t know just what she wants yet — but she knows what she doesn’t. For all of her life, everything has operated under the guise of a well-oiled machine — and even her studies have been so. Things that looked impressive, things that would educate her to take over the world one day in one sense or another. She doesn’t even know how to put her own interests into use because she’s been too busy furthering maman’s. It also makes her a bit awkward around a pretty girl — living in stories are one thing — but realizing that she could live her own in the real world another entirely.       Of course, that’s only an illusion as well. These trips are meant to culture her to the world surrounding her — they aren’t a permanent escape — but they are the only place that she can go to escape the Mafia. Well, mostly. She does have a security team that discreetly follows alongside her — usually two men, just in case she finds trouble. Luci finds that often men themselves are the trouble — though she wouldn’t dare speak that to maman after what had happened last time. Besides, she’s well into her adulthood now — she scarcely needs to tell her mother everything.        “Lucienne,” she says gently, extending a soft hand manicured with french tips that are black instead of white. Her accent about half-matches her name — every bit the bastard of both Italian and French as the girl herself. “Or, mostly they call me Luci.” Mostly because they find the pronunciation of her very-French name more trouble than it’s worth back in Florence, where she grew up. “It’s nice to meet you, Alanna,” her lips curve into a smile. The other woman’s hand is soft in hers — and despite herself, Luci’s heart gives a sharp pound for it. Back in Uni, and in her private school before that — it had been easy enough for her to get into trouble. But since coming back to Florence, she’s been under her mother’s scrutiny. Probably, maman wouldn’t care if it didn’t mean dooming the family line, and all of the other dramatics Caterina Agosti can come up with.        “Unfortunately I’m only visiting,” she responds with a genuine apologetic tone, letting go of Alanna’s hand to absently twirl one of her own long curls, “Are you free this weekend?” she asks with far more confidence than she actually feels. She doesn’t know how it works outside — she’s at a disadvantage. “It’s just,” she says, pausing in the right places with thoughtful consideration, “Adventures are more fun when someone is showing you the places they love. I think it’s a great way to explore a new city — it’s one of my favorite things about people,” she says with her eyes shining, “To see and understand what they’re passionate about. It’s a little like looking at a painting and understanding what the artist meant, rather than trying to decipher it on your own.”

Alanna senses some nervousness from the other woman. She hopes she hadn't said anything wrong. The stranger seems perfectly nice. So Alanna wouldn't want to upset her. She does know that she can be strange sometimes. Even her cousins sometimes don't understand her. But luckily they support her anyway. She's the type who would rather be writing and/or drawing than almost anything. However, Alanna doesn't know any other way to live. She absolutely adores creativity in all its forms. She always has.

Sometimes, she wonders what her father would think of her now. Sure, she doesn't need his negativity in her life. He hadn't accepted her sexuality and she doesn't need that. However, a part of her will probably always miss him. As much as she adores and appreciates her mother and her side of the family. Alanna does wish she could show her father her success sometimes. Just to show him how wrong he had been to not accept her. But Alanna knows that's probably just wishful thinking. Her father is not going to understand and accept her for who she actually is. So she'd rather things stay the way they are.

Alanna takes the other woman's hand and shakes it gently. "Nice to meet you, Lucienne. What a beautiful name." It truly is. In Alanna's opinion it's straight out of a novel. And a beautiful one too. "I love your nails." Alanna had never seen the tips black like that. It's unique, which makes her love it even more.

"Thank you. Glad you're happy to meet me too." Of course, it could just be politeness. But Alanna has a funny feeling that she's met a kindred spirit. Perhaps she's reading into it too much. But she hopes not. It would be nice to make a new friend. At the very least. One can never have too many friends, in Alanna's point of view.

"Ah, I see. Where are you visiting from?" She can't help but ask, intensely curious to hear where Lucienne is from. She had noticed an accent but hadn't been able to place it. Perhaps it's a combination of things. Some people have many ethnicities after all. Including Alanna herself. Her mother is Indian, while her father is English. Though she no longer has anything to do with her father or his side of the family, she understands about being a blend of cultures. Since Alanna herself is one as well.

"Oh, yes." She replies when asked if she's free that weekend. Alanna nods along to Lucienne's words. "I agree. It's great to see what places people enjoy. Though I will warn you, mine aren't exactly touristy for the most part." Alanna tends to frequent bookstores and cafes and sometimes a place that's both of the above. She will try to think of some interesting sights for them to see together, though. The last thing she'd want is to bore Lucienne.

"I tend to like things that are off the beaten path. Bookstores, cafes, museums, that sort of thing. I will try to find some interesting ones for you, though. Do you like to read, by the way?" If not, the two of them can skip the bookstores, though it would hurt Alanna's soul a bit. Especially ever since she got her book published, she's loved reading. She always had, but publishing a work of her own had only increased her love for it. And she thinks that makes sense. Now she feels a part of something she had only been observing from the outside. Her current work in progress is a graphic novel. So she's been reading quite a few of those, to see what she wants to borrow and what she'd like to change about the genre with her foray into it.

[thestingerblog]

What Everything Everywhere All At Once Tells Us About Home

by Sam H. 

Read on our site

Everything Everywhere All At Once isn’t only a beautiful film in terms of its cinematography – its creativity has prompted fans of the movie to analyze every detail of the film to find every last hidden meaning. But after watching tons of videos about what the googly eyes and bagels all represent, my favorite way to view the movie is through a much larger, thematic lens.

To contribute to the large, ever-expanding pool of thematic interpretations of the film, I’d like to discuss Everything Everywhere All At Once exploring the idea of home. In a physical sense, the Wangs live on the upper floor of the laundromat they own and operate, forcing Evelyn to intertwine her work life and personal life. Their living space is clustered with their belongings, leaving little space for the family to separate themselves from one another. This crowded environment contributes to each family member feeling trapped: Waymond with his marriage, Evelyn with her work, and Joy with her family. That’s part of the reason why other universes are so expansive, both literally and figuratively. In the universe of rocks, Evelyn and Joy are simply rocks, overlooking a vast canyon that stretches out to the horizon and doesn’t seem to ever end. In another universe, Evelyn is a successful actress. The other universes that Jobu Tupaki shows Evelyn pinpoints a desire to escape the monotony that’s associated with home.

Though the film shows how home can be a difficult space that can trap people within their fears and doubts, it also acknowledges that it can be even harder to leave. In the climax of the film, Evelyn tells Joy to stop running, and Joy breaks down into tears in the parking lot of the laundromat, begging her mother to let her go. At this point, Joy associates home with her family and can’t stand to be around either because it reminds her of how her identity seems to contradict her identity as a first-generation Chinese American and could disrupt her relationship with her grandfather. To Joy, her family and the laundromat aren’t home because, just like her, they’re ideas that Evelyn tries to project her own desires onto them in hopes that she can rectify her past disappointments to her father.

When Evelyn realizes this and seems to let Joy go, the audience sees that Evelyn has let all these expectations go. But, we’re suddenly pulled back into the parking lot again where Evelyn tells Joy to stop and reveals that out of all the places in the world she could be, she wants to be with her daughter, living a mundane life. Even though Evelyn can access these universes via a simple Bluetooth headpiece or by falling through the creases of a couch in her own apartment, she chooses to stay in her reality and make the best out of it because her family is worth trying for, despite all the hardships. This is where the idea of home shifts from the one of a physical location, or even a possible alternative universe, to a concept sustained by love for family and others. The movie never tries to separate home and family but rather chooses to reframe it to show that creating a safe and loving home is a choice that families make, breaking the cycle of associating home and family with suppression and unreachable expectations. Ultimately, Joy learns to accept her family too and shirks her own expectations for her family and what they could be. And Waymond – well, Waymond, who has always seen the best in people, finally realizes the value of his kindness through his support of Evelyn during the multiversal tribulation and learns to do the same as well.

Everything Everywhere All At Once leaves the audience with either an aching for home or an appreciation of people who make them feel at home, especially first-generation Asian Americans. Many of us have a complicated relationship with our identity because we often feel disconnected from our cultural identity. While we may speak the language and celebrate cultural traditions, we’re also deeply immersed in American culture – yet, non-Asian Americans often see as us Asian before American. This leaves us feeling lost, often having trouble confiding in our immigrant parents who are also going through the same conflict but often refuse to explicitly acknowledge it. The film references this diasporic struggle by showing clips of Evelyn debating on whether to move to America with Waymond and start a completely new life. Furthermore, Joy being a lesbian in addition to being Asian American extends this consideration by bringing into question whether these identities can co-exist without constantly fostering a clashing internal conflict that manifests itself in the form of nihilism.

The best part about this movie is that the theme of home is only one interpretation. Everyone who has watched the movie has provided their own interpretation of the movie. But from analyzing Waymond’s unconditional kindness in relation to portrayals of Asian masculinity to Evelyn’s alternate selves disproving the stereotype of a passive Asian woman, the beauty of these interpretations is that they can exist in harmony, everywhere and all at once.

[jewishrizahawkeye]

i think part of the reason this whole gaylor discourse is so irritating (besides just being blatantly disrespectful and trying to assume that taylor’s queer and even despite her having now come out repeatedly as straight gaylors are still trying to prove she is queer and id just deeper in the closet, WHICH if that is true y’all are just doing nothing but trying to out someone who clearly wants to not be fucking outed) is because people are taking the evidence as her songs are queer coded as her saying she’s queer. because i won’t sit here and say songs line DWOHT or ivy or i can see you aren’t queer coded because they are, and even if i don’t interpret the song in that manner doesn’t mean anyone else’s personal interpretation is wrong, however trying to say that because those songs are queer coded automatically means taylor is queer is such a bad read.

like yes, she might be hinting at being queer in songs, BUT AGAIN it’s not our place to say it’s confirmed until she herself says it. but even if she isn’t, acting like a straight person can’t experience those types of situations and relationships is just really weird to do. secret and taboo relationships are not inherently queer in nature nor are they exclusively queer stories. there are plenty of straight relationships that are taboo even still today across many cultures for many reasons. and trying to say that only queer people can experience that is just wrong (i’ve seen this mainly more on tiktok in general). and trying to now prove that x=y with taylor’s songs now=her sexuality is WRONG. like, taylor wrote a song about her anxiety’s over the media finding out about her secret relationship and queer fans connect to it. okay that’s fine and normal. but then trying to say that because taylor’s song can be read in a queer light that means she’s queer is a big leap because those feelings are not universal to one group of people.

taylor has talked about writing songs for everyone to relate to and it’s clear she doesn’t mind if people personally interpret her songs in a queer manor (ie. ivy being used in dickson season 4 because fans said it was about the main characters relationship and was personal to them) as she is an ally and there’s nothing wrong with personal interpretation. but trying to now say that it’s her coming out or signaling she’s queer is wrong and stepping the line. which is what the response to the NYT article was about. it was about taylor saying she’s a straight ally and is tired of people trying to prove she’s gay when she’s come out atleast line three-four times now that she’s straight.

this is really disjointed and all over the place and probably is poorly written but i’m just really sick and tired of this same old discussion. taylor has made it clear she identifies as a straight ally. yes, she may be closeted BUT ITS NOT OUR PLACE TO SAY SHE IS UNTIL SHE TELLS US. she’s said she’s straight and people need to accept that. they need to accept that she’s a straight ally and isn’t okay with people assuming her sexuality is anything besides that. that’s what this is all about. yes, there are plenty of fans using this as a way to be homophobic, but trying to group all of the discourse behind that is wrong.

everyone needs to stop giving their two cents on what they think her sexuality is because none of us have any say in it. and again, she may come out one day as queen and that’s wonderful and fine and i’ll love and support her then too, but at this point she’s made it clear how she identifies and trying to prove that her own view of herself is incorrect IS WRONG AND DISGUSTING.

also, this is coming from someone who’s not only had people i’ve knowns sexuality speculated on as well as my own but also forced out of the closet. this shit isn’t fucking funny or fun. this type of discourse has caused queer people not only their jobs and families in the past but also their lives. a lot of queer elders died for our right to stay in the closet if we want and now trying to strip that right away from anyone is wrong. people have a choice in if or when they choose to come out. stop treating celebrities differently because they’re famous, they may be famous (and really out of touch with reality but that’s a whole other topic) but they’re still humans at the end of the day. they’re humans who get to chose how they live their life and express themselves and trying to assign them certain labels or roles based on the fact you want to treat them like fictional characters is wrong.

okay, that’s all. i’m going to try falling back asleep now or keep writing, idk.

[moonlarked]

So I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Songs post I made and the responses!

First of all: thank you @soryasongsaa @cogaytes @dizzythegreat @thebestbookshelf for responding! It means a lot to me that people are being so nice and willing to explain stuff!! ❤️❤️

My personal thoughts reading: I think it’s pretty messy. There’s no excuse for the stereotyping; it just seems lazy and unresearched. As someone who wants to get into writing myself, I would research for hours before even considering writing about a culture that isn’t my own. And, yeah, they’re elves, they don’t have human ethnicities, so it would be kinda weird to specify them as a specific nationality while not doing the same for the white coded characters, but Shannon should’ve put more into their characters.

Anyway, I still love the Songs. I feel like they’ve been fleshed our more, but it’s been pretty rocky. And now I’m gonna stop bc I don’t want to say more about a subject that I don’t really have a say in.

Thanks for giving me your perspective!

(below the cut is more of a personal vent, so you can stop here if you want. ❤️)

I’m gonna talk about my OCD now and how it connects to this situation.

It’s hard to explain, but basically I’ve discovered that I need my special interest (I’m autistic) to be perfect. If I find something that’s problematic about it - like a social media post - I’m gonna take the whole day to ruminate to try to get rid of that awful panic. Which sucks, because I have a life beyond fandom.

This started with Wanda Maximoff. The movie version. Basically the first character I ever really connected with due to her mental struggles and anxiety and coping mechanisms. I saw a lot of myself in WandaVision.

Now, this is Tumblr, and a lot of this discourse is on Tumblr, but in case you aren’t caught up: basically: Wanda Maximoff is a Jewish-Romani woman. The comic version, that is. The movie version is a white woman from a made up country called Sokovia. And many posts have called out the way that the mcu translation has been… less than accurate. They’ve added stereotyping and outdated tropes while not even letting her be her original ethnicity. And the actress playing her hasn’t exactly been well researched on the situation - she’s pretty ignorant and has said some problematic stuff.

“Whiteness” is a controversial subject and many people have argued over the race of Romani and Jewish people. Not to mention her representation in the comics is less than progressive in some areas. But having Wanda being played by a white woman takes away meaningful rep from historically persecuted minority groups.

Is any of this my fault? No. Did I still have a mental breakdown frequently about this? Yes.

You have to understand - I ADORED this character. In many ways I still do. This doesn’t excuse the problematic parts, but it caused me to be in constant self-loathing. I convinced myself I was horrible because I related to to this character. This caused me to look up posts about this subject in hopes of something that would fix this, something to prove all these people wrong.

It was a cycle. I wanted to die frequently. It may seem like I was overreacting, but my mind was in constant panic mode and to me this seemed incredibly important.

You know what saved me? Well, talking to my parents of course, and learning about ocd, and getting counseling.

But also: Keeper.

Returning to a series that genuinely gave me joy. Letting myself escape.

That’s where the Song twin controversy comes in.

You’ll probably guess I was pretty panicked when I found out about this controversy. It felt like Wanda all over again. I feel like I’m falling into this cycle again.

But I’m deciding I’m not gonna let myself do that.

I’m gonna accept the bad. I’m gonna like what I like. And I’m gonna talk about my feelings instead of bottling them up.

The Song twins are problematic. People have a right to call them out.

And I still love Kotlc. I will continue to love it and talk to others who love it.

I’m not going to fall into that misery again. I’m going to tell my ocd to fuck off. I’m going to go to therapy. I’m going to get better.

❤️❤️❤️

[swallowerofdharma]

Yes, this is exactly why I have been collecting these quotes here, in a blog mostly dedicated to the analysis of two different manga, two different visual stories, that have something in common: the depiction - in images and words, of states of mind and actions - of trauma: from the event/events that caused the wound or fracture to the condition of living with it and through it, dramatically changed by it. Because these aren’t real people, it is possible for me to look at this pain without feeling that I am prying on someone else’s, someone too real. Where the writers took the inspiration I can’t know and don’t need to know, but through their sensibilities they show that they have access to an understanding of pain and trauma and through art they transform reality into representations and narratives accessible to me to look at. How these manga are created, with a primary author that has to work within margins of freedom of expression - very limited censorship for example - yet within the reason of readability by people who belong to niche cultures - can lead to a particular kind of language in which expressions of pain and discomfort haven’t yet been suppressed or absorbed into various current ideologies that surround and influence our understanding of pain and trauma.

Casca is someone who doesn’t exist yet I can read about her, see her, because an artist imagined her and used her to express a number of things: how to live in a female body and be part of a group of mercenary men, how to fight for more than survival and how to become used to violence and war, how to trust and dream and how to be betrayed, how to get to have a little glimpse of the possibility of being accepted and loved both in mind and body, only to have that experience used against her. The types of horror and fear she experiences, the exploitation of her vulnerabilities are especially crude, but I don’t detect a form of misogyny in her representation, rather a form of exploration of the horror and fear of bodily harm, of sexual assault, of loss of autonomy or loss of self equally experienced by all of us, women or young men quite similarly. Reading yaoi to understand the context of the production of other stories within the same medium, and going back to Shōjo manga during transformative times like the 1960s and 1970s, I have noticed that many women mangaka would rather use male bodies to explore that type of narratives around trauma and/or sexuality. In some of the stories that followed, that we indicate as yaoi manga - the exploitation of male bodies - in the complete absence of representation of female bodies - can became gratuitous the more they try to replicate a model that sold well but without the same authenticity or inspiration, if you want. But this is an open world of possibilities.

What I have observed about Casca and other female characters in Berserk is the tenacity of the author to have characters who represent experiences differently and cooperate with the main character, a wounded man, and offer him insight into a world that isn’t exclusively male and made of fights and violence, of prevarication and conflict. Guts and Casca both survived the graphic violence of the Eclipse: rather than only seeing Casca as a disempowered victim, rather than understanding the choices about her characterization as bad writing, bad choices or an attack or general misogyny, I am looking harder to maybe find out if Miura was doing something that women mangaka showed him: the representation of horror and fear and in this case the representation of the fractured self and regression and loss of autonomy that the main character can’t have, because he needs to continue the story, and at the same time the impossibility of being able to fully represent the trauma in a body that is our own, so we use the “other”. Guts needs to understand how to stop the cycle of violence to have some form of success in the economy of the story and Miura surrounded him with women and girls like Schierke and Farnese and men and boys like Rickert, Serpico and Isidro and bright magical creatures, and a changed Casca, a woman that can’t give him any reward, especially of sexual nature, can’t give him something back nor can have his back in violence anymore, although they would reminisce about the past. Casca has been given a different role as a child herself and mother to a lost child, a woman who finds comfort in the company of other women, so different from when she was the only one, alone in a world of men. She was the one who had to adapt, now Guts has to adapt to her. How that will go? we can only hope that Miura left a solid indication to work with, now the story is told by someone else. And this can be disappointing to women who read the story and see a representation of gender roles that appear to be backwards, when in fact the story wants Guts to learn to be more of a person than a beast, to learn from the experience of others who are different from the people he grew used to, violent mercenary men who will always have the same response to trauma: more violence. Men that can’t fathom the possibility of showing the effects of debilitating trauma through silence or insanity or withdrawal or unconventional but non violent behavior and the need for compassionate people who won’t reject you and still value you.

Casca and Guts to me in various moments are the same character, what Miura couldn’t show through Guts he showed through Casca. A male writer, addressing a mostly male readership as his primary audience and mostly picturing themselves in the story, artist and readers: he isn’t catering to the wishes and psychological needs of a female readership. That’s freedom of expression too. Women can write and have written fictional characters and stories that have been using male bodies to show, understand and exorcise their fears and desires, often times completely disregarding the possibility of representing themselves or their physical bodies in the story. I am just fascinated by these forms of expression and I want to treat them as sources for reflection rather than for some intended or unintended recreational purposes. Misunderstandings and recriminations or manifestations of anger or disappointment, complaints and insults are just part of those recreational practices when we talk about media, visual media especially. I can occasionally see the point of that, but mostly I want to be able to understand artists and their expressions better, when they caught my attention like this.

Virtually every survivor of trauma, whether or not they experience diagnosable post-traumatic stress, returns to the regular world and quickly recognizes that things are not as they were. People behave differently. There is an element of strangeness, a sense, often uncommunicated, of being marked by a kind of scarlet letter, even if one has not violated any moral code. In fact, in these situations, one’s degree of innocence or complicity in events can seem almost beside the point, as if one’s luck or simple fate is what is at stake. Often this change of perception is expressed in physical, spatial terms, as if the scope of what has transpired is so vast that it serves to alter one’s material position in the world.

David J. Morris, The Evil Hours