#Well-Intentioned White People

[beaulesbian]

I'ts like there's a rope attached to my chest and it keeps pulling me towards you. And it feels so right. - Red, White and Royal Blue (2023)

"On purpose. I love him on purpose." - Red, White and Royal Blue, chapter 13, by Casey McQuiston

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Broke (2016): BBC Sherlock is a phenomenal piece of media and anything that seems like a flaw just hasn't been fully explored yet

Woke (2020): BBC Sherlock is an incredibly flawed series run by an egotistical writer, it never deserved the hype and is actively bad on so many fronts (especially representation)

Bespoke (2024): BBC Sherlock is flawed and bogged down by increasingly poor writing, which many fans refused to see while it was airing, leading to hugely misplaced expectations (particularly for the final series), AND it has the seeds of some compelling characterizations and portrayals, some genuinely solid performances, and touches--albeit imperfectly--on complexities that are still being discussed today (particularly as it relates to the relationship between Sherlock and John). The huge cultural impact of the show has created a massive pendulum effect in its public perception, leading to most people today remembering a caricature of the show (whether positive or negative) rather than appreciating its nuanced merits and failings...that being said Season 4 sucked

[haunted-xander]

BBS is a tragedy in many ways, but one of the things that gets me is that the catalyst, the one big thing that caused this mess to begin with, is so avoidable.

Like, the story starts primarily because Terra starts to fear himself (because of the darkness he has unwittingly 'used') and this causes a spiral of doubt and obsession. A spiral which he could've escaped from or maybe not even started if he just 1) had been taught the balance between light and dark properly (that darkness is more than just unquestionable evil, that light is more than unquestionable good, that they can and should co-exist in balance), and 2) had consistent socialization from more than the same 3 people.

Like. BBS is a cautionary tale about what happens when people aren't exposed to a wide enough variety of people and, therefore, end up naive and overly trusting because they never learned that people have ulterior motives. Terra is consistently manipulated and used by people literally everywhere he goes, because he can't see that they might not have the best intentions! He can't see the red flags because he doesn't know there are red flags to look for!

Xehanort knows this. It's why he targeted Terra to begin with: because he would be susceptable to his words. The main reason he couldn't use Aqua is because she was too confident in her own values, she didn't have the seed of doubt that Terra had. It's the only thing that prevents her from being used the same way he is, even though she is just as naive and trusting as he is.

Ven probably has it the worst socialization wise. Unlike Terra and Aqua who, presumably, has/had a family and life outside of the Land of Departure prior to beginning training there, Ven doesn't remember anything before then (not that he had much he'd be happy to remember anyway). And since he's the youngest and most 'fragile' one (due to being in recovery for most of his time here), he gets somewhat coddled and shielded by everyone else. Not to mention the way Eraqus completely forbid him from leaving and never intented for him to ever see worlds outside the Land of Departure. Sure, Terra and Aqua aren't typically supposed to leave either, but at least they'd be allowed in certain situations. Ven wouldn't.

Ven isn't allowed to interact with anyone outside of home. He's not allowed anything that involves the outer worlds. (He and Naminé are a bit alike in that sense. Though at least the people he's stuck with are nice to Ven and do genuinely care for him, unlike Naminé...)

BBS happens largely because Eraqus failed as both a teacher and a parental figure to all of them, but Terra most of all.

[lemongrass77777-moved]

the fact that most of the people in this fandom don’t even seem to like the books😭if you didn’t enjoy canon why the fuck are you here. fandom is for nerds. this “fuck canon, canon doesn’t matter, well sirius and remus were ~straight~ in canon so i hate it!” shit is actively anti nerd. deeply annoying and also not even technically true.

[aloeverawrites]

If you want to learn math, no amount of good intentions and warm feelings alone is going to help you understand math.

If you want to learn science you can’t just sympathise with a biology textbook without reading it.

If you want to learn another language you can’t just smile at the text until you understand it.

So if you want to learn how to be an effective ally, you have to learn about the people you’re trying to help and the bigotry you’re trying to fight.

It’s a nice attempt but you can’t purely affection your way out of the bigoted teaching that the dominant culture taught you.

You’re going to have to do some studying.

[bunnyboy-juice]

im begging people to turn on the post dates for your feed bc sometimes i see ppl rb advice with good intentions but the advice is from 2010-2017 and therefore is WILDLY outdated!!!! and that's not good!!!!!

[claitea]

thinking about anthea and concordia and how they knew n's time growing up in the castle was awful but they probably couldn't do much about it because they were also under ghetsis's "care"

[musical-chick-13]

See, I think the thing about deranged, toxic relationships in fiction, is that everyone involved has to actively choose to walk into or keep coming back to this relationship. That's the interesting part for me. What would make someone, against every single ounce of reason, decide that being in a relationship like that is genuinely worth it for them? Why would someone willingly put themselves in that situation? What has to be going on in their psyche? What do they get (or think they get) out of it?

If the toxicity is one-sided or one party is completely railroaded into the relationship at every turn until they finally cave, or there's some outside force trapping both of them in the relationship and they don't actually want to be there, that's not particular interesting to me, personally.

(Obviously, other people can disagree with this; people have a wide variety of opinions and ways they engage with fiction, which is good, actually. I'm simply talking about my own thoughts.)

[robotrightsactivist]

Alien Romulus was cool but I have to say the dynamic between the white girl main character and her Black synthetic brother was like. Idk. That was definitely a choice the writers made

[bananonbinary]

thinking about this post and i don't necessarily want to add this to a reblog because I think it might be sort of off-topic, but anyway.

i think the "woman and nonbinary" trend is obviously being transphobic by treating nb and trans people as "women lite," AND is just incredibly hateful to all men, trans men included, but i think it's ALSO borne of the radfem-type ideology that says "women are the oppressed and cannot be the oppressors." in the same way that white women say they can't be racist, and straight women cozy up to gay bars, cis women feel right at home in trans spaces. women in general need to get a LOT less comfortable treating their womanhood as an automatic buy-in to all minorities. you're welcome if you're an ally, but you have to actually do that work first.

[wisheswagered]

read the ganji letter leaks... trying to decide how i feel.

[rebelontherocks]

i think it's a little concerning that ppl watch dune 2 and don't realize that paul is a villain

[llycaons]

mexican gothic is really fucking good huh

[radicalposture]

on reflection the term WASP ie white anglo saxon protestant is kind of strange to me given that the anglo saxons were invaded and colonised by the normans

[vamptastic]

Hey so I doubt anybody cares about this given that my blog has like, 50 followers and half of them are inactive or old friends, but if anybody's been wondering why I have so few posts on here about Israel compared to other political issues it's because I'm not putting anything on here that isn't credibly sourced. I noticed quite a few posts containing misconceptions and some straight up hoaxes early on and I've just really not noticed anybody start to think more critically since then, so I'm just not posting anything unless I can take the time to verify it.

I think a large part of this is just that I'm on the English side of the internet and most people are not able to read Hebrew and Arabic so there's just going to be more misinformation than American current events. But ngl, there's been some stuff that I really can't understand why anybody would not immediately flag as a hoax unless motivated by anti-Arab racism or antisemitism of the conspiratorial variety.

Also I just have complicated feelings because I grew up very involved with Judaism and my first Rabbi was a hardcore Israeli Zionist, and I also spent a lot of time at Chabad which was also quite Zionist. So while from a logical & moral standpoint I am, as far as I can tell, quite anti-Zionist, there's just some personal feelings in the mix that are hard to let go of. So I'd rather not invite conversation unless it's with people I trust to be understanding because I grew up with an extremely biased view on this and there might be some ideas I still hold without realizing they're motivated by my upbringing and not the reality of the situation.

Again, I can say with 100% certainty that Israel's actions since October 7th have been reprehensible and that it is their actions in the years before that led things to this point, and that I wish Israel had at the very least not had such heavy British colonial influence in its' founding, if it was ever possible to found a morally good Jewish state in the first place.

[starredforlife]

a message, hi, hello, to the predominantly white estadounidense community on tumblr: I hope it depresses you to be American. I hope you are realizing how much blood we have on our hands. Decades and generations of it. I don’t want it to make you hopeless and helpless and victimized I want it to make you ashamed and devastated and motivated to do something. Your tax money pays for weapons that kill children overseas and if you got a minimum wage job here you couldn’t afford to live between paychecks. What a shit fucking country. Are we supposed to accept this? Is this how you want to live in ten or twenty or thirty years from now? Do you want to continue to shoulder the responsibility of our great acts of “justice” and “mercy” and “intervention” on the countless souls who don’t even live in our borders? What can your own soul live with? Don’t we owe it to humanity to at least feel the gulf of guilt we���ve made for ourselves?