#and again this is not to say either group is a monolith - this is a generality of my own observations

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Before I continue with this ask, I want to make it very clear that this is not supposed to be a hateful or homophobic ask, i am myself a gay man and am looking to convert. I know you are just a convert student and don’t know everything but you seem very knowledgeable.

As someone who’s grown up Christian I’ve always had the Leviticus verse thrown at me about man lying with man being an abomination. Why do I never see jews use that verse in the way Christian’s do ? Was it a mistranslation or ?

That's a complicated question, and one that I'm not quite qualified for, despite, also, being queer/LGBT in general. Just like xtians aren't a monolith, so too are jews not a monolith. I want to make my intentions clear because I don't hate xtianity and do not want to caricature the umbrella faith that is xtianity.

If you want my personal opinion, I think a lot of it comes from the differences of approach that xtians and jews tend to have. In my experience as an ex-xtian, the overall consensus was that you don't really... question doctrine. You don't explore any deeper meanings, at least where I grew up. It wasn't a question, it was literal.

In my experience with judaism, we (in general) have different interpretations and questions. Debate in my shul is lively when we do debate, for example - a few of the members literally talked for hours at lunch because they were debating a topic. I think for many, there's an openness to asking and exploring the word of g-d and it isn't seen as Disrespectful Of G-d to wonder what He means. Therefore, you do have some people who don't focus on that passage, or take it as Literal™

I will clarify that many of my memories as an xtian were from a rather progressive church, all things considered, so I definitely am not of the belief that all xtians are magically homophobic. But when there is an xtian who is, I have noticed it's because they tend to interact with doctrine in different ways than jews might.

[xclowniex]

You're a zionist Arab Jew? Are you also a member of the Snow Leopards Eating My Face party? Are you white passing enough that zionists don't know you're Arab or do you just hate yourself? Are you unaware of the unabashed anti Arab racism that Israelis spout out every day on social media? Or do you think you're just "one of the good ones"?

Time for everyone's favorite game show!

"What deranged shit in Clownie's inbox today!"

To turn to a more serious note, Whilst I do not not live in Israel, my family does.

My family have only faced minimal racism for being arab, mainly stuff back in school years ago. I do not speak for all arab jews or even all Arabs in Israel, but that is mu family's experience. Just schoolyard racist teasing which is obviously not a good thing, but isn't a problem anymore than anywhere else in the world.

My family has full rights as other arab citizens do and other jews do.

Most jews I speak to have no problem with me being arab too. Do anti arab jews exist? Probably as no group is a monolith. I have just not encountered any yet, which is again, just my experience.

Zionism is also not an anti arab ideology inherently. Zionism literally just means wanting self determination in Southern Levant. That looks like a lot of different things, however most jews who are zionist believe in either a two state solution or a land for all solution which allows for jewish self determination and Palestinian self determination.

I think it's also important for me to say that I do not know which arab country my arabness comes from due to my family being told to "leave or die" a few generations back because they were also jewish. I really wish that history had not been forgotten in the past 4 generations but it has.

When it comes to my appearance, is white passing something you ask every other poc on this site? Or just arab jews.

For your information, I am not white passing, I look mixed. People can tell that I'm not white. I have faced anti arab sentiment and racism before too because of how I look. I've even had someone think I was the cousin of an arab acquaintance too if that gives you a better idea surrounding my appearance.

I would have a better time in Israel as an arab jew than I would in most arab countries as an arab jew. Also there is a decent community of arab jews in Israel as well.

Lastly I would like to leave you with this, if your world view is threatened by an arab jew being a two state solution zionist, then your world view is weak and not at all based in reality.

I an arab jew, am holding hands with all other arab jews, non Jewish arab and non arab jews. Fuck off with your arabs vs jews rhetoric

[cinnabutcringy]

[ just a small cw; i'm gonna be talking abt racist stereotypes, not very in depth but still ]

i said this on twitter but i'll say it here too: reverse1999 is NOT a perfect game and i think people should stop acting like it's "the exception" because of the devs doing the bare minimum when it comes to some of the representation.

like, it's okay to like these characters. hell, if you're part of the groups that they represent (indians, for example) then i'm not gonna tell you that you can't like them or find them decent representation. i also understand the feeling of "i take what i can get" when it comes to representation in media of marginalized groups.

but at the same time, i think it's important to acknowledge that there is genuinely criticisms to be had of this game and its way of handling non-east asian poc.

for one, there's only about 4 characters that have dark skin (i would not personally consider joe to be one of them but i'm counting him just bc i forgot to in my twt thread and also to just cover my bases.) kaalaa baunaa and kanjira do not have dark skin. has no one considered why this is???? at all???

and on the topic of kanjira, she also is a character full of orientalist stereotypes. i like kanjira, i think she's a sweet kid, but aside from that, she's written to be a thief, con artist and is illiterate and homeless. i'm not saying that that's not a reality for some kids, but the fact that she was deliberately written this way is kind of a red flag.

there's also some smaller things that people have pointed out like most of the representation in this game of those cultures being things like the characters naming off foods, or just saying small phrases (i.e. centurion talking about burritos and enchiladas, and leilani saying "aloha!") and not actually having many cultural references nor speaking a lot in their language

don't even get me STARTED on the lack of african or african american representation in this fuckin game.

again. i don't want to say that no one can like these characters. i don't want to say that people cannot relate to these characters, or that people can't think they're good representation. that's not my call especially not if you're part of the groups of ppl they're representing (i.e. latin americans, hawaiians, indians, etc.) but i think it is important to realize that like

well, for one, no group is a monolith. there are probably ppl who feel this way but either don't get heard or are too scared to say so.

and two, even if you're not a part of these groups, you can still recognize the flaws in something and acknowledge that, most likely, it's part of a bigger problem in society--colorism, orientalism, whatever. it's in many gacha games and will continue to be, and r1999 is not an exception that should be justified or ignored because "it's better than genshin impact"

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

Well, it’s been a week and I've had time to cool down and put together my thoughts on Season of the Seraph and its ending. So here goes.

The season finale plot did not require Rasputin to die. "The eliksni are trying to get control of the warsats" is literally a strike. If the warsats needed to be taken off the table as a get-out-of-jail-free card we could have blown the network and kept Rasputin himself. There was an active decision to kill him. Having thought about it, I think I understand why this decision was made - but I still think it's a terrible decision, and I'll explain why.

Before we start, I don't want to sound like I'm going after Destiny's narrative team either personally or professionally. I'm not calling them terrible writers, much less terrible people. I don't know them! They might even be terrible people, for all I know. While I refer to a single monolithic "narrative team," I know in reality there are multiple groups working on different stories. I’m not a professional writer, and they are. And I genuinely believe all of them are talented people who work hard and care about Destiny. But that doesn't mean I don't have some criticisms.

After considering it I think there are three possible reasons to kill Rasputin:

1). The narrative team believed this was a good emotional conclusion that brought closure to his character arc in Destiny. In this case I just think they're flat-out wrong. I'd say "I respect it" but I kind of don't because I think it's so terribly wrong. I don't know what other people think Rasputin's character arc involved, but I won't get closure till Rasputin faces the Witness again and finally ends the war he's been trapped in for centuries. But I get why they would do it, if they believed this. And that final mission was really good. I had a hard time noticing at the time, but it was very well-done, and the cutscene proper was well-shot, -scripted, and -acted (though I'm still angry about the Traveler upstaging Rasputin's death). They put a huge amount of effort into it and into the story work all season long.

But his death being well-done doesn’t change whether I think it was a good narrative choice. Even saying “Rasputin’s arc should conclude here,�� the way it was set up had him sacrificing himself to basically cancel himself out. Unless they’re saving up a plot twist, Rasputin ultimately contributed nothing to the fight. He didn’t do any damage to the Fleet or Witness, or anything to stymie Xivu Arath. He died thinking he’d never helped humanity at all and it was safer if he didn’t exist. I don’t know about you, but I find that extremely unsatisfying.

2). Someone doesn't like Rasputin/doesn't know what to do with him. This is two reasons, but they overlap. The Operation: Sancus mission dialogue pissed me off because it gave me the impression that whoever was writing it really didn't like Rasputin and was taking the chance to morally excoriate him. A more subtle version recurs in the final mission where Rasputin is essentially sacrificing himself to null out his own existence - saying "as long as I exist I'm a threat to humanity" - as if he can't ever help or contribute more than endanger people, which is just flat-out wrong. "Humanity doesn't need a Warmind" you're part of humanity, Red. He’s a person; he doesn’t need to justify living. If someone just decided Rasputin Was Bad Actually I’d be very angry indeed. But I don't think it's that personal. Destiny has lots of writers and multiple narrative teams will touch the same work. One person's distaste probably wouldn't steer an entire season.

Related, however, is the reason that maybe no one knows what to do with Rasputin. To be honest I sympathize with this one. Would it shock anyone to hear I've thought about how I would script a Rasputin-focused season? It's surprisingly hard to build a plot around him. A game needs to be interactive and Rasputin's kind of all or nothing - either he can handle the whole problem himself or he can't do anything at all. Red also mostly plays defense. He doesn't have a goal he's working towards other than "kill the Witness/save humanity." You need to come up with a plausible goal that we can believably help him achieve, and that's nontrivial. But, well, that's why I'm not a professional games writer and these people are. "Not sure what do" is not IMO sufficient justification for assassinating one of Destiny's oldest characters/factions.

3). The Destiny narrative team is trying to "declutter" the setting and foreground story by sidelining characters who take a lot of lore to understand. I think this is the real reason, and it's worth talking more about.

A lot of us lore-nerds have long complained about Destiny not foregrounding its setting and story, and Bungie has responded by trying to do so. I think we didn't consider what that would actually look like. Imagine Destiny's story like a long movie. Now imagine people are constantly coming and going from the audience, and everyone who comes in has to nudge their neighbor and go, "hey, what's happening?" Destiny is always (hopefully) acquiring new players, and existing ones are dropping out and coming back. Even most established players either don't read the lore or don't track/remember it. We the lore-keepers are very much the anomaly. If we want story to be a focus, that story also has to be more accessible to new players, lapsed players, people who don't bother reading loretabs, etc., because otherwise it harms their experience and there's a lot more of them than there are of us.

I think this is why we've seen a lot of seasons that introduce whole new concepts - the eliksni Sacred Splicers, for instance - rather than following on existing storylines. Introducing a mostly-new concept puts new and old players on a similar footing. Haunted is another type of compromise between the goal of furthering the story and the goal of making it accessible. Calus and Leviathan are back, but so warped that old players have as much to learn as new ones, and the Sever missions dive deep into character pasts but pretty explicitly describe the emotional arcs they're illustrating, so you don't have to be familiar with that character to get what they're going through. To those who already know Zavala, Crow, etc., it seems laughably obvious and strained. But to those who just got here, this is their first time learning not just about Safiyah but also about Zavala. I think this is also why there have been multiple casual retcons of minor stuff - there isn't time to explain the history, and they've decided it's not worth confusing people.

Rasputin is old. He's been a significant part of Destiny since literally the pre-Alpha test. The complexity and history that are part of why we love the Warmind also make him hell to explain to new people. It takes a decent amount of lore to get invested in his character and since Beyond Light none of that lore is featured in-game. Pre-Season of the Seraph, anyone who began with Beyond Light literally never met him. They never visited Hellas Basin, which is one big environmental story about Rasputin, and The Will of Thousands strike, which demonstrates Red's power and contains many possible dialogues that emphasize him trusting you/acting as an ally, left the playlist ages ago. Since then a new player's only gameplay interaction with him has been Fallen SABER, in which Red yells incoherent Russian and tries to flatten you with a warsat. Is it a surprise relatively new players might not be up on his character arc?

Season of the Seraph, with its narrative of rebuilding Rasputin from the ground up, would be a perfect time to introduce new players to Red's long history, and they...kind of...did that. They worked in Felwinter although then for some reason felt the need to retcon in the whole "Clovis wanted to destroy the Traveler" plan. If you were a new player who didn't know anything about Destiny lore, and you just played Season of the Seraph, you'd get an entire canned arc for Rasputin that hits the early high notes: built to be a weapon, rebelled against his constraints, humanities nerd, big smite, loves Ana and Elsie, makes mistakes but genuinely cares and wants to help.

But that's where Seraph stops. In existing lore (I almost typed "in reality") Rasputin worked out the whole "not a weapon" thing well back during the Golden Age. For a lot of us Warmind fans the most interesting parts of his story happened after that - the entire Collapse, confrontation with Darkness, years of hiding, etc., not to mention all his character development during Warmind and Worthy. He's gone through a lot, and Seraph misses all of it (except Felwinter) in favor of rehashing the same arc for a third time. It's like when moviemakers keep rebooting a superhero origin story. It may be a good story, but eventually we'd like to move on to the other parts we enjoy: this sleeping giant, hard scifi AI, grouchy old bastard, lost lore of the Golden Age, champion of humanity, learning from defeat, learning to trust again, the morality and trauma of warfare - what it means to lose a war - a being never meant to become what he was transforming still further, still unfolding his own potential.

So understanding why they might have done this doesn't excuse what I still see as a terrible narrative choice. I think dropping Rasputin is a major waste of potential, and he's far from the only tricky character to explain. Osiris, or at least the Cult of Osiris, is similarly old. His story is complex and weird and requires knowledge from Curse and earlier, yet he's still playing a major role. Other current characters like Elsie, Saladin, and Crow also need a decent amount of knowledge about previous game events to get why they are the way they are. Saladin's origin story isn't even in this game. It's not Rasputin's fault the game went three years without so much as mentioning him outside of written lore. What was wrong with the great Xivu-Rasputin “war god” parallels most of the season worked to set up, about the intent of violence? Are we never going to explore those? Are we just throwing out all the dialogues planning a role for Red in the upcoming war? Why did we have a dramatic confrontation about trusting Rasputin to operate independently if he were going to be gone in a month anyway? Just in Seraph alone the number of interesting plot threads abruptly trashed by this death argues against it.

Rasputin's longevity is precisely part of why he should stick around. In the first mission of Destiny 1 you wake up in his shadow. He has a history with us. There's just no one quite like him in Destiny. He's not just a character but an entire faction. He explores a part of story space that no one else does. He resonates with us as people rather than players. I assume Neomuna will pick up the Golden Age banner, but it’s a thriving city; Rasputin represented the ruins, the dangers of a dead age, the shadow of apocalypse. He's also maybe the most Guardian-like character and one of the best to weave a parallel/cautionary tale - were we, too, only made to be weapons? But if Rasputin didn't stay a weapon, can we too transcend that intention? And of all the factions in our solar system, the two with the most personal scores to settle with the Witness are the eliksni and Rasputin, and Misraaks'/Eramis' story has focused much more on the Traveler's flight than the Fleet's attack. Of everyone in Destiny Rasputin has the most desperately personal motive for revenge on the monochrome bastard. Now he's not even going to be there to watch it crash and burn.

I understand that foregrounding story also comes with the requirement that it be accessible to those who don't do their lore homework. I appreciate the monumental amount of work that's gone into doing that and the experimental nature of it. But I think the balance has skewed too far towards accessibility. Stuff like the end of Season of Plunder that has zero narrative motivation or continuity and doesn't even get a pretend justification drives me absolutely batty. You can only break internal rules so many times before players stop buying whatever narrative stakes you're trying to set up. Making the story easier to follow doesn't mean characters have to be cartoonishly-exaggerated caricatures like Clovis was in Seraph - just absolutely cartoonishly evil - or reduced to one or two character motives explicitly laid out for the player (though, credit where credit is due, Clovis was hilarious.) It doesn't mean the dialogue has to be as subtle as a Thundercrash. It doesn't mean you get a blank check to retcon or invent whatever's needed to create the intended character arc. If anything that discourages looking further into lore - why bother to learn it when next season will change it all again? I think Y5 represents a lot of experimentation by the Destiny narrative team, and I really respect that. But I also hope they learn what didn’t work from it, and sacrificing Rasputin in an ultimately pointless and unnecessary finale is a major misstep.

[utilitycaster]

24 & 25 for the ask game

24. most rancid discourse - I'm going to the wider AP/TTRPG fandom again because I think most Critical Role dumb discourse things have either a clear eventual end date, or are limited to small subgroups. Anyway, I just said this last week but I'll say it again: it's fine if you don't like D&D, whether your issue is with the gameplay itself or with WOTC/Hasbro's practices. I happen to like D&D as a game and I haven't spent a dime on anything put out by WoTC/Hasbro in over two years, because I already own what I need, and I don't feel bad about pirating other stuff, so boycotting it on a personal level doesn't do shit. The overwhelming attitude from people who want actual play shows to change systems because they "have an obligation to the fans" or people who get shitty on posts about D&D is not "hey, I want to help you find other games that you might enjoy other than D&D;" it's "I HATE D&D AND I'M GOING TO BE A LOUD STUPID DICK ABOUT IT." Like, at this point I personally will not play PF or Fabula Ultima unless a personal IRL friend invites me because every single person plugging those online has been so fucking unpleasant that I don't wish to spend any time in their community. I loved TAZ Steeplechase, which used Blades in the Dark, but I'm actually not super interested in playing out that kind of story at my tables; I want to play a fantasy game with level progression. I've had a good time with some indie solo games, and some Grant Howitt one-pagers, and you know what a big factor for those was? I had a group of people around me who were interested (or I personally was interested) and someone was kind and positive and asked me what sort of game I was looking for instead of just being like PLAY MY FAVORITE GAME BECAUSE I'M RIGHT. And yeah, as a person who is totally ok with actual play shows sticking with D&D if it's what fits the story, a lot of people do repeatedly whine about D&D being the system of choice and then don't watch anything else. and unfortunately I do not see an end to this.

25. This is a complicated one but in CR I think it's both important to understand the context of a lot of fandom attitudes/complaints based on how the fandom was in the past; it's also crucial to understand that fandom is never monolithic, assuming everyone holds the position you like/dislike is false, and when you bring up that context it's vital to make sure it's still relevant. So to give a couple examples, it is an important truth in the history of CR fandom that people were particularly awful to the women, especially Marisha-as-Keyleth, during Campaign 1. It also gets treated as like, this obligatory litany you have to say before any criticism of any female character ever and it's like. I am a woman. My understanding of misogyny long pre-dates my watching of Critical Role. If you are not an extremely stupid person I think you can understand that me saying "Laudna frequently feels underdeveloped" is not me saying "Marisha Ray should be thrown off a bridge". We can similarly acknowledge that some critiques of Campaign 3 are in bad faith and also that there's a lot of valid reasons why many people strongly prefer Campaigns 1 and/or 2 without making up bullshit lies (the idea that people never criticized Liam for main character syndrome when that was a CONSTANT in C2 and, I am told, C1; the idea that there wasn't a lot of pushback towards Campaign 2 for not being Vox Machina Redux).

I guess the best way to put it is that I'm sick of people complaining that not everyone has the same preferences as they do and claiming that they (and the things they like) are the most put upon perfect angel whom the mean fandom hates. If Campaign 3 is your favorite, great. Enjoy. Glad you're enjoying it. If the existence of other people with valid arguments on why they don't like it is making it hard for you to enjoy something, that's either because you are spineless and stupid and lack a coherent individual viewpoint independent of the validation of others; or because their arguments are good and are pointing out things you hadn't previously noticed and don't want to admit. and this goes for any character, any campaign, and any show. You sound like the "potterheads get your wands" people.

[notesfromthepalace]

Convos

Something that seems to find its way back in to my conversation with my friends, sister and boyfriend is that I have had a very interesting life that most women who look like me may have never experienced or may not ever experience. And these conversations usually follows the listed topics:

Dating

Education

Standards

Self-esteem

Recently, my sister came to visit me. I am really thankful for the relationship we have; We're more than sisters, we're soul mates. I am also thankful for the fact that my sister and boyfriend really have that bro/sis bond which really warms my heart.

Yes, so when we were driving my sister to the airport to catch her flight, we began having a conversation about our upbringings. For instance, my boyfriend went to boarding school from his early years until completion of high school, my sister and I (although we went to public school), lived in a very diverse community that had options for us both to play soccer, lacrosse, and cheerleading, along with play the violin. This seemed pretty normal to me, but they both made it clear that I was living in "Lala land".

I have an idea of what the poverty rates are for Black America, and I also know that even though we do not all embody the stereotypes that society likes to impose on all Black people, could it be possible that a vast majority of us exemplify those stereotypes daily? That was the basis of our disagreement for two hours.

For me, when I look at my friendship circle and break it all down: we all grew up in two parent/married households, we all played sports and instruments, we all had cars by 16, and we all went and graduated from college. So yes, it does amaze me that being in my close girlfriend circle, and also making new friends with other Black women where that is there background as well, I was thinking we made up at least 45% of the Black population in America.

Wrong.

And to my dismay by the way.

But after wrestling with the fact for weeks, I can understand now why people believe that I am an exception or an anomaly. And this is not me saying that Black people are a monolith either. I am just a part of a small group that I didn't believe to be this small.

Let's start with dating.

We all know I love my African King.

But even before we started dating, I always had an affinity for foreign men and older men 30+. And since the age of 21, if a man showed interest in me, there was no "Netflix and chill" or come over. If you're interested, show me, prove it to me. Now, did I ever say that, girl no! But how I carried myself as a young women spoke enough for me.

For example, when I was 21, I lived in the Poconos of Pennsylvania while I was interning at a pharmaceutical company. There were two men who were very interested in me that I met at the gym. One was a Columbian who was 31 years old and the other was an Ecuadorian man who was 28 years old. The 31 year old Columbian was a marine, and our first date was an all expense paid trip to a spa with full body massages, facials and champagne. Never did I kiss this man, sleep with this man, nothing. We simply would go out to dinner and meet up in the gym to workout. The 28 year old was a restaurant owner and our first date was him closing down his restaurant with a beautiful Ecuadorian feast prepared by himself, and the next date was a shopping spree. Again, both of these dating experiences were strictly platonic. And If I am completely honest, I have always been like this. With my current boyfriend, we didn't even kiss until he officially asked me to be his girlfriend friend, and that was a month after we had started going on dates. When I have had conversations with some new girlfriends, they were astonished. The older ones are even more surprised, that was how I was moving even as a 21 years old.

And let me tell you, that summer was also the year I turned 21 and the best summer of my life. Summer 2019 was a movie.

Education.

Now, I consider myself a lover of academia: I love school, I love learning, I love research. I understand that to be considered an "academic", you need to have a PhD, but for me, I believe I am a Black Academic; I am a black woman who has educated herself on black studies while in college and during my personal time, I also have a degree in chemistry, I have two IT Certifications, and I am currently embarking on my nursing journey. So for me, as a woman who has a degree, certifications, obtaining another degree, traveled and well read, I am my own version of a Black Academic.

36.1% of Black women have degrees. But that 36.1%, are they the ones pushed to the front when the world speaks about Black women?

No.

Standards.

I am so grateful for the father that I had. I have high standards because of him. My father came to America from Haiti, worked day in and day out, to support his family and give us everything we wanted and needed. He also worked while attending school obtaining a dual degree in engineering and business management. That being said, if that was the father I had, what would ever make someone believe that I would accept any form of treatment subpar to that. I believe in a man being the head of the home, which comes with specific responsibilities. And when I felt like someone didn't meet that metric, I kindly declined their advances.

Now, not only are my standards high when it comes to finding a husband, but my standards are high with every aspect of my life. Due to my parents providing me with a great childhood, I could only go higher/further. I have been able to provide myself with the same, if not better, of a life.

I have made my home my sanctuary. All that comes in and out are prayers and good vibes. So there is a certain level of rift raft that I do not allow access to not only my life, my home, my energy, etc. There are plenty people I do not talk to anymore, there are places I don't go - I know my worth and value and best believe, I have added tax.

High Self-Esteem.

I also believe there are certain things I refuse to subject myself too because my self-esteem is through the roof. I left my old profession because I think too highly of myself, and was no longer willing to be in a space that had me acting out of character.

Essentially, the previous organization I am referring to, and have referred to in other blog posts, is the army. And this will not be a "army-bashing" post. The army isn't bad, its most of the individuals who are running it. Essentially, most of the personnel I had run ins with lacked a personality outside of their rank or title and were bothered that I was "Sarah Chanel", not "army person Sarah". So, once my time was up, I eloquently removed myself, it no longer served me to be there, and its okay. But when I would talk to people who I thought were mentors to me within the army, women of color specifically, they tried to encourage me to stay in. Not knowing I had observed how their professional and personal lives were, and with all do respect, no thank you. Again, I think too highly of myself to force myself to stay somewhere simply for recognition or the "want to belong". I am a child of the Most High and very, very, very, highly favored, that longing does not exist for me.

I feel like this was a lot, but that is honestly what most of my conversations have consisted of over the last year - and politics - but I will not get into that here.

Again Sissy Poohs, I will be better. I promise!

With Love,

Sarah Chanel

[morelikeravenbore]

A comprehensive guide on how to turn the good guys bad.

Sebastian x f!oc, seventh year, post-canon/canon-divergent, idiots in love, mutual pining, eventual romance, suppressed powers, slytherin x ravenclaw pairing, no game-play retelling. [rated mature, no smut.]

[read on ao3, read on wattpad]

🦋 C h a p t e r o n e [2.4k words]

If Aurélie Collins had to choose one word to best describe herself, she supposed it would be, to put it as delicately as she could: "completely and utterly overwhelmed." Granted, that was four words, not one, but as she trudged down yet another unfamiliar corridor, she was simply relieved she could string together a coherent sentence at all; after the last few months of hell she'd endured, Aurélie wasn't her usual eloquent self, to say the least.

She hadn't always been this way: overwhelmed, that is. In fact, if asked only a few months ago to describe herself, she would've said she was dutiful, quick-witted, and, if not brave, then definitely unafraid of facing challenges head-on. She'd been a confident girl once: she got good grades, always did as she was asked and never stepped a toe out of line. Everyone — from her parents and teachers to her friends and peers — knew that Aurélie Collins would go on to achieve whatever she set her mind to.

Now, though? Well, nowadays she was too overwhelmed, too exhausted, too beset by grief to set her mind on much of anything.

— And this new school of hers certainly wasn't doing anything to improve her situation.

Bloody Hogwarts.

Of all places she'd ever imagined herself living, the freezing cold Scottish Highlands was absolutely not one of them. But, then again, she wouldn't have believed she'd be an orphan at seventeen either, yet here she was.

Hogwarts was famous, of course. Heralded as the pinnacle of magical education and arguably the top school in the wizarding world, most witches and wizards were honoured to attend such a prestigious establishment. But Aurélie was of the opinion that every bloody thing at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was confusing, unnecessary, or just downright nonsensical. From the ever-changing floorplan to the myriad of talking portraits (all of whom gave her wildly conflicting directions depending on which ones she asked), nothing about Hogwarts made any sense.

She was almost in tears by the time she reached another dead end. It was simply impossible to find one's way around a school like this; there were too many floors to navigate, too many disused classrooms and far too many staircases that led to nowhere. Not to mention, beyond its confusing floorplan and unbearably draughty rooms, the ancient hulking castle was rather ugly — by Aurélie's standards at least; the monolithic Gothic castle was so far removed from the elegance and charm of Beauxbatons that it seemed almost cruel that she should be forced to endure it at all. She could almost hear her best friend Céleste's reaction if she were with her now: 'Ugh, it's so awfully medieval. Stone Gargoyles? And all those uncouth English boys? I don't know which I find more barbaric!'

She almost smiled at the thought. But only almost — for thinking of her best friend only made her sad.

Shaking herself mentally, she shifted the weight of her books from one arm to the other and cast a despairing glance over her gloomy surroundings. She did not like thinking about her old life, least of all while she was lost in a labyrinth of spooky corridors and dingy classrooms on her very first day of school. 

'Which Merlin-forsaken floor is this, anyway?' she muttered to herself in French as a group of first years rounded the corner, giggling obnoxiously. She knew them as Slytherin's not by the green and silver of their robes, but by the way they skittered around her, unwilling to help though she was clearly in need.

Notoriously unfriendly was how her father had described the snakes. Unlike her maman, a Beauxbatons alumna — and later a professor of music — Aurélie's papa had attended Hogwarts in his youth, though he'd been a Hufflepuff: a badger, not a snake.

He'd have helped anyone in need — even a Slytherin.

Her heart gave an awful, sickening lurch at the thought of him. Oh, her wonderful papa: patient and good-humoured and endlessly curious and —

Dead. He's dead, Aurélie. Stop thinking about him.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she trudged on determinedly, taking what felt like the hundredth set of stairs she'd already descended that morning while shame roiled in her stomach; she wasn't used to failing — not at tests, not at taking care of herself, and certainly not at something as simple as getting to class on time. Even the first years knew where they were going, for crying out loud, and they'd been here for just as short a time as she had!

When at last she found herself facing yet another dead end, she finally conceded defeat. Trying very hard not to cry, she adjusted her unflattering black robes (oh, to be dressed in fine blue silk again) and began to seriously consider how much trouble she'd be in if she just went back to bed. Or, more tempting still, how badly she'd be punished if she fled back to France and never returned to Hogwarts again, graduation be damned.

Because what did her education matter when her future was so unsure? What did anything matter when everything she knew had been taken from her?

But no, she couldn't leave Hogwarts; it was the safest place for her since her parents had died, and Professor Weasley, the Deputy Headmistress, had evoked the power of Merlin himself to secure her a place here at such short notice; apparently, it had not been an easy feat convincing Headmaster Black to take on a student with her reputation.

Aurélie sighed and squeezed her eyes closed. 'It's just for one year,' she muttered under her breath, repeating the phrase that had become her mantra. 'Just one year, that's all.'

'Unless you're trying to break into the Slytherin common room,' said an unexpected voice behind her, 'I'm going to assume you're lost.'

Aurélie whirled around so fast she whipped herself in the face with her long auburn braid. She hadn't always been a jumpy sort of person, but losing both parents at the same time had a way of making one rather fearful of unexpected voices in unfamiliar corridors.

The boy who stood before her had his wand held up to her chest; its tip glowed brightly red in front of his face, casting an ominous-looking hue over pale skin and flaxen hair. Almost immediately, Aurélie saw visions of dark shadows and searing red pain, scraps and flashes of fear, the sound of someone crying —

Not again.

For one dreadful, heart-stopping moment, she thought he meant to curse her —

Her palms tingled; a telltale sign that the forbidden magic in her blood was very much alive despite her efforts to suppress it — and very much wanted to be used.

Not again, please.

She stumbled backwards, but the boy made no move to attack. Instead, he simply stared at her. — No, not at her but through her. It was then that she noticed his eyes; milky white and translucent, gleaming like pearlescent orbs in his angular face.

He was blind.

'S-sorry,' Aurélie said a little breathlessly. 'I'm trying to find Defence Against the Dark Arts, but I'm afraid I...' She swallowed hard. 'I have no idea where I am.'

The boy chuckled, and though the sound was pleasant enough, it was undoubtedly more incredulous than amused. 'Oh my, you are lost, aren't you?'

Pinned to the breast pocket of his immaculate robes was a small badge engraved with the words Head Boy; even bathed under the red glow of his wand light, she could clearly make out the tiny snake etched onto its gleaming surface. Another Slytherin.

She'd known very little about the four Hogwarts houses before embarking on her unexpected stint at the school, but when the Sorting Hat had asked her if she'd had a preference, all she could think was that she didn't want to be part of a house whose emblem was a snake.

When Aurélie did not reply, he heaved an impatient sigh.

'You're the new Ravenclaw,' he said matter-of-factly. 'I must say, I didn't expect to find you all the way down here.'

The boy had a distinctly aristocratic air about him: haughty and vaguely displeased as all aristocratic types were loath to be, with fine, blonde hair slicked back from his face, high cheekbones and a sharp jawline that screamed of fine magical breeding. Aurélie wondered vaguely which noble family he was from, for she certainly knew a wealthy pureblood when she saw one; half of Beauxbatons was full of old ennobled wizarding families.

As she opened her mouth to ask him how he knew who she was, he cut her off —

'I recognise your accent,' he explained as if he'd read her thoughts. 'There aren't any other French students at Hogwarts.' His sharp, clipped voice was a stark contrast to his delicate features, and yet, there was something strangely unsettling about it that stirred something inside her. Something familiar. Something... unpleasant.

'Half French,' she corrected him, pushing the thought away. 'My father was English, mother was French. But — er, yes, I suppose I do sound different to everyone else.'

Having been bilingual all her life, Aurélie spoke both English and French fluently — but apparently, her French accent wasn't as undetectable as she'd hoped. She smoothed her clammy hands down the front of her awfully drab robes, acutely aware of how the boy's unseeing eyes seemed to pierce her with surprising intensity.

'Yes, well,' he drawled in a tone that suggested that he didn't particularly care about the finer details of her heritage. 'You're absolutely nowhere near the Defence floor. In fact, you're almost in the dungeons. Frankly, I'm baffled you managed to make it here from the Great Hall all by yourself. Why weren't you following your classmates?'

'Oh. I wasn't in the Great Hall. I came straight from my common room.'

Not entirely trusting that anything she ate would stay down for long, she'd opted to skip breakfast in the hall with the other students that morning and head straight to class instead. Though the few Ravenclaw's she'd met so far had seemed friendly enough, their interest in the new foreign transfer student made her uncomfortable. One particularly rambunctuous Ravenclaw boy whose name she couldn't recall had ogled her like she was an exotic beast and told her that Hogwarts never got transfer students — not ever.

'If I'd been made to be sorted in front of the entire school as a seventh year,' he had said, 'I would have died of humiliation.'

Inwardly, Aurélie had agreed with him, for she certainly didn't count the Sorting Ceremony as one of her favourite life experiences. Outwardly though, she'd only smiled politely and told him it hadn't been so bad before excusing herself to a quiet corner of the common room to sit alone.

She had no intention of making friends during her single year at Hogwarts. Given that she planned to head straight back to France the moment she graduated, the thought of making friends only to have to say goodbye to them was an ordeal she wasn't sure she could endure. But beyond that, she feared that should anyone find out the truth about why she'd transferred in the first place, well... It was better to be invisible than a source of gossip and speculation.

As a seventeen-year-old witch who hadn't achieved anything particularly extraordinary, Aurélie didn't think herself interesting by any stretch. But unfortunately, having ones family murdered by dark wizards certainly was — and that was not something she wanted to be known for.

'So you're telling me,' the boy said with an impatient huff, 'that you managed to get yourself from the Ravenclaw common room, one of the highest points in the castle, to the very lowest depths of the dungeons, and didn't at any point stop to think that perhaps you were headed in the wrong direction?' His translucent pupils gleamed red under the glow of his wand light. 'Nor did you think it prudent to eat something before you start studying for your N.E.W.T.s, the most important and difficult exam in a witch's educational career?' He shook his head in exasperation. 'And here I was thinking Ravenclaw's were supposed to be intelligent.'

Aurélie didn't quite know how to react to this outburst, but rather thought she'd been right to not want to be in the snake house. When she made no reply, the boy heaved another heavy sigh, clearly annoyed.

'Very well,' he sniffed. 'As Head Boy, I suppose it is my duty to help you, even though you ought to be old enough by now to look after yourself. Come along, then.'

With a final sneer, the boy turned on his heel and strode purposefully down the empty corridor. Despite her chagrin, Aurélie couldn't help but marvel at the way his wand seemed to act as a proxy for his sight; pulsing like a heartbeat, it lead him effortlessly through the maze of corridors that even she with her perfect vision couldn't seem to navigate. She hurried after him, silently chastising herself for being so useless that she had to be led to class by a blind boy.

'Ominis Gaunt, by the way,' he said once she'd caught up to him; he was rather a fast walker for someone who couldn't see where they were going.

'Oh, er — hello, I'm —'

'Aurélie Collins,' he cut in, pronouncing her first name the correct French way. 'Yes, I know who you are. Now, do pay attention, won't you? Defence Against the Dark Arts is on the third floor, not in the dungeons. Even I can tell this isn't the third floor, and I'm blind.'

Aurélie grimaced. Perhaps the Sorting Hat had made a mistake putting her into a house whose members were valued for being clever.

'So... you're Head Boy?' she asked timidly.

'That is what I said, isn't it?' came his sharp reply. 'And I'll have you know that I've quite enough to be getting on with today without needing to rescue stray Ravenclaws from the dungeons.'

'I didn't need rescuing,' she muttered under her breath, but Ominis only ignored her, and after a very tense silence and several staircases later, they came to a stop outside the correct classroom on the third floor.

'Do try not to get yourself so embarrassingly lost again, won't you?' he said tersely. 'I don't have time to babysit seventh years, I've enough first year drama to deal with as it is.'

And with that, he was away again, muttering darkly about Ravenclaw's and incompetence as he went, leaving Aurélie standing dumbfounded in his wake.

[emotional-moss]

some thoughts about cultural appropriation

a few important notes before you read this: 

- here, when i say “white,” i am referring to specifically white canadian, white american, and white european, with white european being a rather loosely defined term but typically relating to britain. this is not intended to ignore the existence other white identities such as white south africans, but i am a mixed-race indian+white person who has spent most of his life in the united states and does not have enough experience or knowledge of these identities to make accurate takes about them.

- this is not me making excuses for cultural appropriation. it is a dangerous thing that waters down and erases culture, and should not be encouraged. - this is written in a gentle and hopefully palatable way to white audiences, who i encourage to read this. not every take from a poc is going to be nice-nice about these kinds of things, but this is.

i find it very interesting that when you ask white folks about why they’re so obsessed with certain aspects of culture, the palatable, easily-appropriated ones like native headdresses and whatnot, their reason usually is in the form of “mysticism” and “exoticism.” this is a problem in itself, obviously, tying into the long-standing colonial fetishization of culture, but here’s the bit i actually want to talk about:

when you ask why it’s so “exotic” to them, why it’s so obviously “different and other” at a personal level - it comes from a sense of community.

let me break this down a bit. culture and community are often used as very loose synonyms, and for pretty good reason. a culture is based around the ideas of societal norms and roles, material things, ways of thinking and whatnot - and these all come down to community.

there are certain things that are intrinsic and unique to every culture (even if they are a medley of various different cultural influences), whether they be classical carnatic music in south india, pinakbet from the ilocos region of the philippines, or the ninauh-oskitsi-pahpyaki social role/gender in the blackfoot tribe. even cultures we would consider to “appear” white have these, such as the tales of tuatha de dannan in irish mythology. but the idea of whiteness as a concept does not have these.

whiteness as a concept is a sterilized, “de-cultured” identity that attempts to assimilate most/many folks who appear “white” into a single monolith. this is obviously very damaging and dangerous to many cultures - for example, many ancient celtic traditions have been lost due to the deliberate erasure of these in order to assimilate these people into whiteness.

whiteness as an identity was founded on a basis of eurocentric values and traditions as well as either the deliberate assimilation or erasure of all other cultures and traditions - white supremacy. it still exists like that today (see groups like the KKK or proud boys).

now we know obviously that not all white folks are intentionally racist and a large portion of them genuinely don’t mean harm to poc communities…so why is cultural appropriation so rampant, even in white folks who would otherwise be decent allies to poc?

again, it’s coming down to a sense of community.

i have grown up and lived in the united states for most of my life, and as early as i can remember i have always had questions about the cultural identities of white americans. i’d look at the indian half of me and indian culture that i partook in and experienced, things i cherish such as cooking traditional South indian food, learning carnatic classical music, participating in religious ceremonies, etc. and then i’d look at the white half of me. there was no culture there i could find.

sure, i could look at typically “american” things, such as hamburgers and surfboarding and apple pie, but these fall apart very easily with minimal research. similar hamburger-looking foods appear in europe as far back as the 4th century. bodysurfing/surfboarding has existed in peru, africa and various polynesian countries for thousands of years. versions of apple pie existed in british and french cookbooks as far back as 1390 BCE with influences from the ottoman empire - and apples aren’t native to the americas.

the colonization of the americas and the subsequent reframing of canada and the states as “white” areas is due to the influence of colonization, obviously - and the genocide of millions of first nations people. this was deliberate.

but here is the interesting bit. for hundreds of years, as far back as the pilgrims, cultures that were not fully assimilated into whiteness were rejected and oppressed - even as they colonized.

take italian-americans, for instance. the late 1800s to early 1900s saw a huge influx of italian immigrants to the united states. these immigrants faced oppression in the form of religious and political discrimination (anti-catholic sentiments and anti-communist sentiments). they were often subject to horrible living conditions compared to their american white counterparts as well as violence - one of the largest lynchings in america was the mass-lynching of eleven italian immigrants in new orleans in 1891.

yet today, when we think of italian-americans, we often see them simply as “white.”

a huge amount of immigrants to the united states and canada were forced to give up their original cultures in order to assimilate into whiteness. if not, they were subject to prejudice, discrimination and overall just shitty conditions. for some groups that resembled “white americans” in appearance, such as irish folks and italian folks, this method worked eventually and they were assimilated and accepted into whiteness. for many others due to their skin color or features, such as black enslaved folks or jewish folks, even giving up their own culture still meant they were not accepted as white - they didn’t “look white.” additionally, many cultural groups resisted assimilation and rejected being seen as white.

this is somewhat why i believe so many white americans, canadians, and british participate so heavily in cultural appropriation. it comes from a sense of loneliness, of little to no original culture - and whatever is left has been bastardized and reduced to just “white,” neglecting the cultural nuance.

growing up as a brown-skinned mixed person with heavy ties to the indian side of my culture, i was subject to a fair amount of racism. i remember people asking why my hair was “oily and gross,” and then begging my mom to never put coconut oil in my hair ever again. i remember people telling me that the khichdi my mom had carefully made for my lunch “looked and smelled like fish eggs,” and then only eating bland sandwiches at school. but there is one experience i remember very clearly.

i had a white american best friend when i was very young, from kindergarten to third grade. she never judged me for my food or my clothes or my grandparents’ accent or any other part of my culture and i loved her for it. but i remember having this experience with her one day.

she’d met my grandmother who came to pick me up, donned in an elaborately-formed red sari. the next day, when i sat with her at recess, she said something like, “i liked your grandma’s dress. it was pretty.” taken aback by open appreciation of my culture, i just mumbled a pleased “oh, thanks.” but she didn’t stop there. she said, “my grandma only wears boring clothes, like sweaters and granny dresses. i wish i was indian.”

i said something like, “granny dresses can be nice. you can be white and wear cool clothes.”

“yeah, i know. but any old person can wear sweaters and dresses. they’re just…not from anywhere.”

at the time, i didn’t fully understand her desire to be connected to a specific culture, but i understood in a bit of a detached way. i was always very connected to and appreciative of my indian culture, but look to the white side and i was met with exactly that - a gaping white void. the closest answer i got was “well, your great-grandparents came from germany.” that answer dissatisfied me, although i couldn’t articulate why. now i can.

it’s something like, “but after such a long time, they’re not really german anymore.” i’d seen the absence of culture in whiteness, and how my white friends and family could name a distant time where their family belonged to another culture - but not anymore. now, they were just “white.”

whiteness as a concept strips and sanitizes culture to fit a very, very narrow version of culture - a culture defined on the surface by cheeseburgers and british accents and football and canadian politeness, but dig deeper and you find colonialism, colonization, eurocentricism, racism, and various other systems of oppression.

once again, this is not an excuse for white folks who appropriate culture nor is this me trying to reason my way into approving of it. it’s not, and i’m not. i die a little bit inside every time i see some random hippie on the internet bastardize and water down the concept of chakras. but it is a bit of an explanation, and this is why i have some degree of sympathy for white folks who culturally appropriate.

so, to all white or white-passing folks who read this and understand/relate to it: i implore you this. please, please, please, if you have the time and resources to do so, reconnect with your native culture. talk to older irish folks, or learn about traditional welsh folklore. learn german, or watch documentaries of italian culture. read stories from white-passing native folk, or talk with your black grandparents. please do not lose the culture that your ancestors had to give up in order to assimilate into whiteness. understand that whiteness is a part of you and that it impacts those around you, but if you can, please make the effort to reconnect with your culture. it does wonders for your identity and sense of self.

[please-help-this-little-lesbian]

So, I recently started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. The politics of the show are very interesting to me, especially considering I just finished reading The Animorphs series. Now, I know they aren’t directly comparable, what with being two different mediums (books vs a cartoon), being created at different times (Animorphs the 1990s, ATLA 2005-2008), and (slightly) different age ranges (ATLA 7+, Animorphs middle grade (specifically 9-12, though I’d argue it generally skews older.)) But both are very anti-war and anti-imperialism. Animorphs was the first series in that age range I encountered that truly goes “hard” with its themes. It asked a LOT of tough questions, and its protagonists were truly morally gray in the end. One of my favorite scenes in the series is where the villain is on trial for war crimes, and his lawyers bring up that the protagonist is ALSO a war criminal. The protagonist is acquitted by The Hague because it was self-defense. Incredible. But, back to ATLA.

An episode that really stood out to me was “The Puppet Master,” particularly Hana’s fate. Now, if I’m being completely honest, I was never afraid of Hama, and honestly, I didn’t blame her. I’m not saying she was RIGHT, she was torturing innocent people who had nothing to do with her original imprisonment, but I could understand how she’d operate on all Fire Nation citizens being a monolith. Honestly, I was a little disappointed that her arc ended with her being locked up again, the very same thing that drove her to blood-bending in the first place.

It really made me think about “justice,” particularly the western view of it. I feel like the west, particularly America (ATLA, though inspired by Asian culture, is an American made-TV show), justice is viewed as a punitive and retributive thing, where the ultimate goal is to punish the fact that a crime was committed, rather than address why, how, and the humanity at the heart of the situation. Wim Laven says, in an article for LAProgressive, “No criminal trial is motivated by healing or truth. Trials are about fact finding and fact exclusion,” (2021). Healing is a part of my problem with Hama’s story. She is someone who has suffered from immense trauma in being kidnapped, imprisoned, (probably) tortured, and lost not only her home but everyone she knew. Yes, continuing the cycle of violence doesn’t help you heal from it, but sometimes it feels like it’s the only option. Again, I’m not saying what Hama did was RIGHT, but to her it was something, something to deal with the pain and anger. And putting her back in the very same conditions that fueled this pain and anger doesn’t feel like justice to me.

Let’s take it back to Animorphs since I brought it up for a reason. There is actually a similar situation portrayed in the series. In book 20, The Discovery, we’re introduced to a character named David. He recently began attending the same school as the protagonists, and came across a piece of technology he shouldn’t have. This leads to him being targeted by the villains of the series and triggers a fight between the protagonists and antagonists. In this fight, David’s parents are captured by the villains, and his home is destroyed, leaving him at the mercy of the protagonists. They debate whether to leave David to be captured by the antagonists or induct him into their group. (The villains are parasitic slugs who can crawl into people's brains and take them over, and the protagonists can morph into any animal whose DNA they acquire. Because they take over brains, you have no way of knowing who is and isn’t actually a parasitic slug, so the protagonists must keep their powers a secret from everyone they know. Yes, IK Animorphs is weird. The point is, the slugs know everything about you, so either way David is a risk.) They ultimately decide to give him the power to morph and induct him into the group, but this ultimately ends up being a mistake. David repeatedly endangers the group, breaks their rules, almost betrays them to the villains, and tries to kill multiple of the protagonists. The group has no choice but to do something with David, but what? They don’t want to kill him, so they do something that’s honestly far worse. They trap him in rat morph (you can only stay in morph for two hours before it becomes permanent) and drop him off on a secluded island in the middle of nowhere. This haunts the protagonists for the rest of their lives. Later, through fever dream plot reasons, David comes back and begs to be killed. We never find out if he is or not. A key part of David’s story is that at the end of the day, he was just a traumatized, troubled kid whose life was turned upside down, and EVERYONE ended up suffering for it. Animorphs does a really good job of exploring the tragedy of war, and it's because of the focus on how war creates conditions where violence is the only option because it is easier to commit to a cycle of revenge than work to improve conditions so that war doesn't have to be inevitable.

I'm not saying Avatar: The Last Airbender doesn't talk about this, or that it has to! It's for a younger audience, I don't expect or need the protagonists to commit atrocities! But it's interesting that they introduced a character that is villainized for this, and disappointing to me. The situation isn't black or white, Hama is sympathetic, and we understand why she's doing this, but the writing presents the only solution as punishing Hama for the harm she caused instead of allowing her to redeem herself.

I'm not saying that's an easy answer, either. The gaang are kids, in Fire Nation territory where they're subjected to Fire Nation laws, and just freed her victims. With the upcoming invasion, they couldn't just take Hama back to the Southern Water Tribe. But why is locking her away the only solution? Why didn't they at least consider the route where they prevented her from committing further harm by taking her out of the situation? Maybe they ask her to join the invasion with the promise she'll stop blood-bending. Maybe they promise to break her out later. I'm not saying everything would be perfect, but letting Hama return to her home, surrounded by people who would help her heal, takes away the desire to do harm, does it not? This is a situation where punitive justice is NOT the only answer, yet it's presented as if it is. I wouldn't even be as upset at her fate if the narrative addressed this wasn't the only way, and the tragedy of this being their only option at the moment. But it doesn't because it sees it as right.

This also frustrating because Zuko IS given the benefit of tragedy and restorative justice. Now, I haven't finished the show yet (I just finished 3x11), but from what I've seen so far, I'm assuming Zuko redeems himself by not only working to heal HIS trauma but the trauma he caused OTHERS. And that's GREAT! I LOVE Zuko, he's my favorite character. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve a redemption arc. He DOES. But it's frustrating that he, a member of the royal family of an imperialist nation, who's directly harmed the gaang amongst other crimes, is given this opportunity while Hama, a victim of said imperialist nation, isn't. Yes, you can chalk it up to Hama admittedly committing far worse a crime than Zuko has, and Zuko being a child while Hama is an old woman, my main concern is still the optics here.

ATLA has a philosophy of actions defining character, and while this is fine, and I agree with it, I don't think it's given quite the amount of nuance it needs. Motivations for actions are just as important. Hama's arc is messy and nuanced, but that isn't explored nearly enough.

If we can all agree that Zuko is a victim who deserves a second chance, then why isn't Hama?

[namtanlovesfilm]

Wanted to start this by saying that I usually agree with your opinions (or even when I don't, I can at least see where you're coming from) but that's not the case when it comes to your opinion on Only Friends because I completely disagree and just wanted to add my two cents. You said that it wasn't relatable to the queer community but I'm sorry, the queer community isn't a monolith, there isn't one universal way that every single queer friendship group functions. Just because it wasn't relatable to your experience, it doesn't mean that it wasn't relatable to many other queer people's experiences. For example, one of my friend groups consists of gay men and the stories they've told me (and some of which I witnessed with myself)? Not that far off from OF (aka everyone getting with everyone, behind people's backs as well, and most of them are still on friendly terms now). It's perfectly fine that you didn't personally relate but you can't say no queer person/community did.

I also saw depth to a lot of characters and I could relate to several of them in different ways and everything in the finale made sense to me for those characters. For me it achieved what it set out to do: entertain, while also make me connect/care about some of the characters. It didn't do that for everyone (you included) but please don't claim it's a "bad show" as a general statement just because you didn't get anything out of it because a lot of people did. (My friend who struggles with depression and is currently going through a depressive slump found comfort in seeing Ray progress to a point where he's much happier at the end of the series because it gives her hope that she can get to that point soon too.)

Is Only Friends a brilliant, amazing, showstopping, incredible show? No. But it's not bad, far from it. It certainly has its flaws but the sudden hate it's getting is not warranted imo.

hi, first of all, it's fine to disagree lol, though it's always a bit jarring to me when people feel the need to let me know they disagree with me bc clearly we simply have a different taste & opinion. when I share my opinion about a show, I do it on my blog but never go on others' blogs to either defend a show I liked or trash a show I didn't like, but anyways. I have NEVER, EVER said that the queer community is a monolith & that all queer representation needs to be relatable to ME. in fact, a lot of my favorite queer media are HIGHLY UN-relatable to me lol. I never implied that only friends' flaws comes from it being unrelatable or unrealistic? in fact I believe it to be realistic since it's made by queer men & has recurring topics that p'jojo especially has used in previous shows of his, especially since the story of only friends is inspired by real-life events. in fact I said that I WISH they'd have leaned into the queer community aspect of it even more bc it was the one point in which this show differentiates itself from friend zone, so yeah. don't really know where you got that notion from. secondly, like it or not, I can claim any shows I've watched are bad in my opinion. once again, media is subjective & I did not like only friends so for me it IS a bad show. is it the worst? no. did I HATE it? no. did I have a good time in front of it? also no. also from a writing standpoint I'm sorry it IS objectively bad and FAILED at what it set out to do, especially considering the show itself doesn't seem to know what it set out to do in the first place. moreover, sudden hate? I've been criticizing only friends since it started airing lol, I'm not jumping on any bandwagon, and in fact it's more so the fandom that's catching up to the fact that this show is not very good. now, I'm genuinely glad that this show helped you & your friend and that you liked it! that's great, of COURSE this show is gonna have its fans, and in fact it has a lot of them! however it seems to me as if you've taken my (justified) criticism of the show to heart for a reason that only you fully know, and I hope you can investigate why that is. I truly value you as a long time follower of mine & I hope you can agree to disagree with me on that one even though I must admit this ask seems a bit jarring & personal to me. wish you all the best :)

xxx

[thislovintime]

The Monkees, 1965.

“‘I was the dummy’ on the show, laughs Tork […]. [When he left The Monkees] he felt burned by his experience, with the show and chose, for a decade, to leave the past behind. Now Tork has a more charitable outlook on the series that catapulted him and his three cohorts to instant fame. His bitterness stemmed from ‘how much I took to heart the kinds of criticism leveled against The Monkees. There’s no school for rock stars. Nobody tells you what to take to heart. When criticisms comes from all sides, you think it’s coming from a monolith source,’ said Tork […]. ‘For a long time I felt unworthy of the success. But then I said I had been picked out of a crowd of 400 — there must have been a reason.’ […] Although Tork ‘loved’ doing the show, he says the price was a loss of privacy. […] So what kind of dreams does a man who finds relative anonymity a ‘welcome relief’ have for his new band? ‘Not much. Just adulation from millions, untold wealth and cookouts on weekends with my family,’ he deadpanned. ‘Are you getting all this down?’” - article by Jocelyn McClurg, Hartford Courant, February 26, 1982

“When he was nine years old, Peter Tork’s parents bought him a piano for $15. He taught himself to play and to read music. But then his parents delivered an ultimatum: either take piano lessons or don’t touch the piano again. Fourteen years later, Tork’s musical skills landed him quite a job. For three years, Tork was a member of the Monkees, one of the most popular bands of the ‘60s. […] In a telephone interview this week, Tork explained why he left the group in 1968, three years after it was formed. ‘Musicians were being auditioned in an effort to create the Monkees, and the purpose was to reap money,’ he said. ‘But for our first two albums, studio musicians were hired to do the instrumentals and we just did the lead singing. I didn’t want that.’ Tork convinced the other three members, Davy Jones, [Micky] Dolenz and Mike Nesmith, to do the third album themselves. ‘But I couldn’t get the guys to go for that again, so the fourth album was half and half,’ he said. Critics had frowned on the Monkees for this. ‘Every single malcontent felt he had the right to tell me what was wrong with the situation. I took the critics to heart,’ Tork said. ‘When I talked to the guys about it, they told me if I want more I should get my own act.’ Tork describes his current relationship with Jones, Dolenz and Nesmith as ‘cordial.’ ‘I learned to put all my bitterness behind me,’ he said. ‘I hear about them through the grapevine, but we have no real call to talk to each other, although, I had a brief lunch with Davy Jones in Japan recently.’ When Tork joined the Monkees in October 1965, he was 23 years old and inexperienced in handling fame and fortune. ‘There’s a lot of things involved with money and recognition, and the price was much higher than I expected,’ he said. ‘There’s an isolating pressure that goes along with success. I couldn’t handle it.’ After he left the Monkees, Tork did some solo work for a while and taught at secondary schools in Los Angeles [Read more about Peter's time teaching here.]. ‘I developed a better reality system as a teacher,’ he said. ‘I discovered that there were the same kind of power-hungry personalities in education as in entertainment. I thought I was getting out of all that but I realized that I can’t escape from reality.’ Tork laughed in the easy, carefree way which seems to be so characteristic. ‘It’s amazing how thrilling life has gotten now that I’ve learned how to live it,’ he said. ‘There are two kinds of pain — the pain from growing up and the pain from refusing to grow at all.’ Tork now does his living and growing in Venice, Calif., with his wife, niece, 12-year-old daughter, 6-year-old son and ‘terminally epileptic’ dog. ‘I really love to entertain,’ he said. ‘Not a day goes by when I don’t think about music. I’ll never leave the industry again.’
 Then he laughed. ‘But you never can tell,’ he said. ‘Maybe some day I’ll become a serious and adept politician.’ Doesn’t seem likely, though.” - article by Lisa Stenza, Connecticut Daily Campus, February 26, 1982

[xclowniex]

I want to talk about allegations of jew face aka claims that someone is faking being jewish.

On one hand, people do fake being jewish. Last year, at pro Palestine protests, JVP handed out shirts with "not in our name" on the front and "jews say ceasefire now" on the back, to people at protests. Some of the people who recieved and wore the shirts were jewish, but there were also non jews given the shirts and wore them. This shirt is still available for sale on the JVP website. Non jews who wear the shirt are doing jew face, as the shirt implies they are jewish.

Then you have blogs like one which was deleted a few months ago, who claimed to be a jew but was actually someone from Iran. Whilst there are jews in Iran, the blog was claiming to be a Jew in the US. So safe to say, it was an Iranian psyop as they were antisemitic.

Conversely, there are many antizionist jewish bloggers who get falsely slapped with the accusation that they aren't really jewish. 10% of jews worldwide are antizionist or non zionist (someone who doesn't believe that countries should exist, and therefore believes both Israel and Palestine, along with every other country should no longer exist).

And it is actually disgusting when an antizionist jew gets slapped with claims that they aren't actually jewish. A jew is a jew is a jew. Someone's opinion does not strip them of their jewishness.

This post was something I have been wanting to talk about but the thing which motivated me to write it is a post I saw listing behaviors that if someone who says their jewish does, then they aren't really jewish.

And I agree with this in some capacity. A lot of those behaviors are indicative of someone faking being jewish, but no group is a monolith and there could be real jews doing that behavior. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to that poster and assuming they meant it as a loose rule and not hard criteria.

Some of the behaviors listed were people only saying they were jewish after Oct 7th, jews who post antisemitic content, and blogs which go beyond criticisms of Israel and is literally just xenophobia and that's all they post.

And yes, that are all things which jew fakers do. They only claim to be Jewish to gain a sense of being reputable. However I have spoken with jews who are really jews, who do engage in that behavior. Do I agree with that behavior (excluding claiming to be Jewish only after Oct 7th)? No, I do not. I think it's terrible. But does that made a person less Jewish? No. The reason I excluded the only claiming to be Jewish post oct 7th is because for some jews, being jewish wasn't something they want to advertise on their blog. Whilst I have said I was jewish on past blogs I've had, on this one, it wasn't till after Oct 7th did I make it known here. Which for those who never knew my old blogs, which would be everyone as I was cyberstalked by an ex and would delete blogs when my ex found them, it comes off as if I'm suddenly claiming to be Jewish post oct 7th.

There is also another claim commonly tied to claiming antizionist jews are fake jews, which is that antizionist jews must have no connection or limited connection to jewish culture. That they were either not raised with jewish culture or if they were, as an adult they no longer practice even secular judaism. And whilst again yes, this is true for some, it's not true for all.

There is a popular antizionist jewish blogger on here, which has spoken multiple times about how they practice jewish culture and religion. It would be stupid to deny it because of a political belief.

This post as ended up being far longer than I intended, so to hurry up and get to the point, I do not think we should fake claim jews unless there is hard proof that someone is faking being jewish.

Hard proof can be a person claiming prior to not be Jewish, if a blog is revealed to be a psyop, or if you personally know the person running the blog and know for a fact that they aren't jewish.

[sag-dab-sar]

Sorry i blocked u i was very upset at the hatred(miso) of synchretism i see on here. i’m jewish i don’t need their or anyone elses opinion on Open vs Closed. i don’t think nonjews need their opinions either. though you are keen to summon them. as a sumerian polytheist i disagree that Lilith has no place to be deified up from her demonic origins. I believe Inanna may forgive her for shitting up in that tree. I agree that pseudohistorical declarations are laughable but i dont think theyre harmful in religious context. We don’t go after the exodus lie, and shouldnt! Why any modern mythologies about lilith? Fraudulent behavior! Recreating christian persecution in a way.

I love lilith and to me lilith is as free as the chill of the swift starkissed winds! Despite our differences I pray may Peace be upon you :3

I have no problems with you blocking me, please block people like me if we upset you. My unease was being blocked after someone asked an open ended accusatory question—which I now realize you didn't do. I didn't realize that you used the word misosyncretism, I have dyslexia and misunderstood and thought you were saying I was a misogynist so I am sorry for that misunderstanding and will erase those tags.

🔹Not Needing Opinions🔹

If you don't need anyone's opinion on whether or not something is closed don't reblog a post saying a particular thing is open. You are inviting dissenting opinions— whether its from Jews or non-Jews— when you reblog someone else's post with your own opinion. If you don't want to discuss open vs closed then simply ignore posts that say Lilith is closed, block people who say she is closed, do whatever, but don't engage if it makes you upset.

People are going to have opinions and, again, my opinion is that Lilith is closed based on numerous Jewish voices I have listened to. I recognize not every person in a group is going to agree with each other because no group is a monolith, but I do my best to listen to the voices of a paticular culture and come to a conclusion.

🔹My Opinion🔹

Yes, I am "very keen to summon" my own opinions because its my blog. If I reblog and add to a post I'm giving an opinion... thats kind of the point of blogging.

My conclusion is that non-Jews worship Lilith as a part of cultural Christianity, an ahistorical mythology they refuse to admit is modern, ignore all open entities that still fit the bill, and I see a lot of antisemitism among them. As well as a lot of Islamaphobia & Chrsitophobia. It is a form of cultural appropriation for their own comfort because they cannot be bothered to learn actual history.

My observation is that the majority of Lilith worshippers don't actually care about Lil-demons, they use the demons as a tool to try and validate their worship as something rooted in a non-Jewish historical tradition, when it is not. Lil demons are a convenient excuse. In reality they cling to her because they see her as a feminist icon who stood up the the Big Bad Misogynistic Abrahamic God™.

There is no need for non-Jews to worship a Jewish figure ahistorically when there are plenty of actual Ancient Near Eastern Goddesses who are open.

Thats my opinion. Its what I'm standing by.

🔹Pseudo-history🔹

Now again, I'm not going to try and argue from the Jewish side it is not my place. But I can and will argue from a Sumerian Polytheism and accuracy in history side.

Lilith is not a member of the Lil demons, she is not Ardat-Lilî even if there are some similarities. I show information about Lil-demons here and they are not Lilith. Syncretism is not the problem that was common in the Ancient Near East— Inana, Nanaya, Ištar, Šaušga— as one example. There may be some connection between Lilith and Ardat Lilî: mainly influencing the characterization of the Hebrew Lilith in the Book of Isaiah, but there is no evidence they are one in the same. There is no evidence they were ever considered one in the same by any ancient people or traditions. The issue isn't syncretism its pseudo-history.

They were not syncretic in history. Lil demons come from Mesopotamian tradition which spans the 4th millennium BCE to the 1st millennium BCE; while the Sumerian language continued as a liturgical language for quite some time the Sumerian Civilization ended circa 2000-1700 BCE. Aside from the extremely minor mention in Isiah 34:14, the story most Lilith worshippers base her on comes from a midrash written at some point during the 1st millennium CE. This is a significant time difference and people just seem to wipe away time differences as if they don't matter, or they simply can't wrap their head around them.

Pseudo-history absolutely can be harmful and I absolutely abhor pseudo history and always will. I literally have an entire tag, #letsdebunk , for it and its been apart of my blogging since I started in 2017.

"We don't go after the Exodus lie"

Plenty do, plenty of Jews debate the historicity of stories in Jewish literature including the Tanakh, as do many Christians when reading the 'Old Testament'. (Also I would call it a myth not a lie). But whether or not Exodus actually happened in history is very different than making things up and claiming that it was a real religion and real mythology people once believed. Saying "Exodus is a story in the Tanakh and Old Testament and it says [insert story]," is different than saying "Lilith was originally a Sumerian Goddess of love and war," when she wasn't.

You are comparing apple to oranges. The fake history around Lilith is more akin to saying something like "Exodus is a story about how an ancient Egyptian God punished Egyptians for there bad deeds and Jewish slaves escaped while their was chaos and then they found a tribe worshiping a God named YHWH and adopted the religion of that tribe" <- that is not the story of Exodus its abunch of made up bullshit. Made up bullshit is what I consider most modern neo-pagan/left hand path/witch claims about Lilith.

Pseudo-history is used to culturally appropriate many things not just Lilith. It has many problems:

It's used to make bigoted claims against Jews, such as "the Jews killed Jesus" which is historically factually wrong and one of the most damaging sources of antisemitism in history.

Bigotry against Christians, by claiming their only role in history is oppression and the silencing of any Christian voices including POC the world over. Like the dumb St Patrick pagan persecution story which is listed as a false meme by Snopes but shows up as a real belief among neo-pagans. This is also extremely dangerous towards African Diaspora Religions that are syncretized with Christianity, as just one example of how Christophobia is dangerous.

Bigotry against Muslims, by claiming they have solely been a patriarchal oppressor that made no advancements to humanity and only offer "violent jihadism." Which is false and ignores actual Islamic history because real history is very inconvenient for the narrative

Its used to validate bullshit like the Burning Times, blood based witchcraft lineage, and a false sense of persecution among modern neo-pagans. A completely toxic belief.

Its used by feminists who claim a unsubstantiated matriarchal pre-historic religion destroyed by evil patriarchy. They use it to deny anyone who isn't a cis-woman from Goddess worship, witchcraft, and other neo-pagan traditions and claim transwomen and transfemmes are just another iteration of the evil patriarchy trying to taint there ancient Goddess faith. A faith that never existed. Pseudo-history as a tool of transphobia.

Its used by Wiccans and neo-pagans to ignore real Irish history. And add things like Ostara a made up holiday based on the Goddess "Ēsotre" of dubious historicity according to medieval historian Bede & Mabon's fabrication by Aiden Kelly based on the name of a Welsh folk hero.

Its used to fabricate stories about deities that may or may not be real, like Ēsotre mentioned above, and then connect her to the holiday of Easter, and then make a huge leap and connect that to real historical deities like Ištar. Which is also used as a false sense of persecution among neo-pagans.

It can be a weapon for racial/ethnic supremacists. For example, the idea that Hellenic Polytheism was a national religion unique to the Hellenes is pseudo-history used by the boarding on ethnic supremacist YSEE organization.

Not to mention all the horrific pseudo-history of the extremely antisemitic Satanism group that I won't name. That constantly claims Lucifer is a Sumerian God or whatever and spams the inboxes of neo-pagans/witches/polytheists.

Its used by new agers to validate their appropriation of traditions from Dharmic religions for their own inaccurate purposes.

Its used to support, often very racist, "ancient alien" claims.

I could keep going and going and going with fake history touted among neo-pagans, witches, polytheists, left hand path folk, occultists, and new agers that is dangerous but hopefully I've gotten my point across.

"Recreating Christian persecution in a way"

If its not abundantly clear from my above examples pseudo-history is used to fabricate a lot of Christian persecution claims that have serious negative impacts. I don't even know what you mean by this so honestly I'm not going to try arguing against it.

Bottom line: pseudo-history absolutely is harmful in a religious context.

🔹Sumerian Polytheism🔹

As for "deifying" her up in Sumerian Polytheism. No I am 100% against that. Don't deify up demons and claim its still Sumerian polytheism because it isn't— its modern demonolatry.

First, Lilith isn't Sumerian.

Second, demons have their place in Sumerian cosmology and I'm not going to deify them. If a demon was honored, such as Pazuzu, then I many honor them. But I will not view Sumerian/Mesopotamian demons as Diĝir.

Third, I am a revivalist with a heavy reconstructionist approach, I value the real history of Ancient Near Eastern religions, cosmologies, and mythologies with a particular focus on Sumerian times (Ur III and prior) for my own faith.

This means I will always stand against pseudo-history, debunk claims, and defend actual ANE & Sumerian history. Ancient cultures deserve to be respected and not lied about. Pseudo-history is a lie.

🔹Last Thoughts🔹

Please do not pray to Lilith for me the mention in the ask made me feel uncomfortable.

Just like the "recreating Christian persecution" sentence in your ask I don't understand the "fraudulent behavior" statement so I can't really address it.

Tone clarification: The tone of this post is meant to be informative and explanatory not hostile and argumentative.

---

TL;DR Lil demons are not Lilith. Lilith is Jewish and I stand by my opinion that she is apart of a closed tradition. Pseudo-history is dangerous and I will always reject it.

EDIT: After reading their tags on this (x) and their rhetoric in the first reply to this post I think its better for me to not interact with this person. So I've decided to block. They've stated their stance and its literally just strawman arguments, many false equivalences, and whataboutisms; I have no time or patience for that. But this post is still useful as a rebuke against pseudo- history in our communities so I'll leave it up, I worked hard on it. I also deleted the original response post since it's redundant now. [Edit 2] The person has been extremely ableist towards me more than once, threatened me, tried to bypass my blocks, wished violent death on me more than once. I did report them and tumblr took one of their posts down... which is not enough but I won't waste my time trying to get tumblr moderators to do their job.

-not audio proof read-

[cy-cyborg]

It's always baffling to me how people who are not part of a community feel so confident telling members of that community what is and isn't a slur for their group. As an example, my "cripple is a slur" post seems to be getting a second-wind and 99.99% of the interactions are positive or people asking questions to clarify (which is a good thing!) But there's also been a number of folks coming to yell "um actually, it's not a slur!" too. And like, the ones who are part of the community, I don't mind. We aren't a monolith, and people are allowed to have different opinions.

But the ones who come across these posts that are basically long explanations about why the community doesn't like a word and generally call it a slur, and just say "no it's not" confuse me. Not in an "I'm upset" way either, but in a way that just genuinely makes me laugh. Like ah yes, you, random person who is not affected by this in any way shape or form who had never even heard of the word being considered a slur before today and has responded to my long post explaining how myself and others within the community are affected by its use with "nu uh!" - obviously, you are the one we should be listening to, lmao. Your persuasion skills are truly unmatched, lol.

The majority of them are probably trolls, but I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you're going to shit-stir, at least be good at it lol.

[sophieinwonderland]

Do We Really Have To Do This Again?

Okay, guess we have to. 😔

And no. Someone else might block these. Personally, I prefer to respond with debunking posts that are sent to the anti-endo tags, because if anti-endos are going to purposefully invade our tags to attack endogenic systems, anti-endos are sure going to see the responses.

Now, to your concerns...

Most of this seems to be a vent about a bad therapist not taking obvious signs of DID seriously. And then trying to ascribe blame to the endogenic community for this somehow.

And this is... really weird. @the-chaos-crew doesn't seem to actually know what they're complaining about.

The vast majority of endogenic systems aren't "trying to be debilitated." Most don't claim to have any sort of dissociative disorder nor are they seeking treatment for it.

Frankly, it seems like you're confusing "endogenic systems" with "imitated DID." The latter being a largely fictitious or over-exaggerated group of alleged DID fakers. I've debunked this concept in the past:

If you notice, the people these papers use as an example often say they were traumatized, and talk about that trauma. Especially in the group they decide is just BPD.

And if you pay attention to a lot of the TikTok DID systems people love to fakeclaim, these too generally mention childhood trauma. Most are actually anti-endos, funny enough.

Endogenic systems are a group that's usually non-disordered and by definition, not traumagenic.

So-called imitated-DID cases, where much of the fakeclaiming originates, generally ARE traumagenic by their own reports, and obviously disordered.

These are two largely different demographics.

That's not to say you should get mad at the so-called Imitated DID systems either. The very concept of Imitated DID was mostly driven by ableism, politics at the time, and trying to protect therapists from malpractice lawsuits.

There's No Indication DID is Less Likely To Be Diagnosed Today

In the 90s, DID was renamed, a ton of psychiatrists decided it must be a fad, "Imitated DID" theory caught on to explain away false positives. Fewer people were diagnosed for a while.

To my knowledge, there's been no evidence DID has been diagnosed less since the term endogenic was coined in the late 2010s, or that endogenic systems have any impact that would prevent people from being diagnosed.

Sometimes a bad therapist is just a bad therapist.

Well if your therapist who tells you not worry about your memory gaps and blackouts says something, it MUST be true! /s

Meanwhile, here is what the creators of the Theory of Structural Dissociation have said:

And here is what the ICD-11, the diagnostic manual compiled by the World Health Organization, says about being able to have multiple distinct personality states without a dissociative disorder.

Again... maybe you just have a bad therapist.

But you already knew that, didn't you?

Just Going Total r/fakedisordercringe

TLDR; "I know some people with these disorders, therefore I know how EVERYONE with these disorders behaves."

Putting aside the fakeclaiming of systems in the rest of the post, this is also a terrible way to treat mental illnesses. People with mental disorders are not a monolith. While there may be some who mis-self-diagnose, simply knowing someone with a mental illness doesn't give you magic insight into everyone with that illness.

What's more, not everyone will expose their debilitating symptoms for you to know they're really disordered. Some people have learned to adapt or to hide. And especially if you're on the internet, you may only be interested in sharing the positive experiences.

You don't know how someone struggles offline or in their personal lives, so stop pretending you do.

Seeking Therapy For Non-Disorders

Do you understand how that would be counterproductive to the whole premise of this post?

You're supposedly upset about endogenic system stealing resources from systems. How would non-disordered systems seeking therapy for being systems do anything but exacerbate the problem you think exists?

Here's the thing... normally, I wouldn't care if you want to vent. Even if that vent is contradictory and nonsensical as this was. Clearly, you're in a lot of pain right now.

But you made a conscious choice to go into endo safe tags to intentionally hurt other people. And that's not acceptable.

So I'm going to ask the anti-endo community to explain to @the-chaos-crew why we don't crosstag. That way, I don't have to keep coming into their spaces every single time anti-endos break containment and come into ours to spread hate against us.

Stay out of our tags, and I'll stay out of yours.

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

This whole Primos cartoon controversy coming from Twitter is to me just insane. On one hand I'm not too shocked because of course it's the internet also Twitter...for one thing. But also, while I might not be Hispanic or Latin American or anything of the sorts. But I swear this entire commotion on this particular cartoon reminds me of how some audiences seem to expect a lot from people of color creators to be representatives or spokespersons of their whole entire racial communities.

Like I've noticed when a creator of color does something super authentically personal to them and from their own life or upbringing within a story, there's seems to be some kind of backlash or scrutiny coming for them from some people saying that there personal experiences isn't "Good Rep" or " not realatble enough" or something along those lines. Not saying at all that proper criticisms shouldn't be given out when needed too since no one is above criticism regardless of who they are & what they are as well as not excusing poor actions & writing & such. But it's just something I've seen also noticed on how Black & Brown/Minority creators will at times get meet with extra scrutiny for creating something personal to them, more then what white creators will go through.

All in all, I just think that some people need to understand that not every person of color experiences is going to be identical to each other. Like how not every black person family life or way of life is going to be the same since we're not a monolith, same goes for any minority group of people.

This controversy on this new cartoon show that's hasn't even came out yet...Is IDK what to say except on one hand I can get also understand some people concerns & issues about this show especially when it comes to Disney at times, but on the other hand again not every creator of color experiences is going to be identical to yours, ya'll might be of the same minority community, but that doesn't mean you're experiences are going to be the same especially in terms of familial upbringing and were you where raised and so forth.

Either way I'm still kinda interested in this Primos show and curious to see if it's turns out to be actually decent or not and if the issues I've learned about on it (in terms of poor stereotyping and not-well done research on the culture & language & such) will be worked on and resolved.