#anyway America (including me) is literally so fucking ignorant of Indigenous culture that it is laughable. forever and ever.

[musicrunsthroughmysoul]

Okay, I got distracted because I remembered the live performance of "Come and Get Your Love" that Redbone did on The Midnight Special and not to be thirsty but WOW the men of Redbone were GOOORRRRRGEOUSSSS and I'm considering making a gifset of it. Maybe I'll make a gifset of their performance/video for "We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee", too, since I analyzed that song and all...the only problem with that would be that Tumblr's censorship bullshit censors Redbone, so unless I specify in the tags that they're the BAND, no one will be able to find the post(s).

Man, why are some of my favorite bands always fucking censored. It's bullshit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[piratemadi]

please make your critical post of supernatural those are literally the only posts about supernatural i care about, especially since i side eye the heck out of the many people who give supernatural a pass because they ship two boring white dudes (dean and castiel) PLEASE

omg ok nobody make fun of me for posting an earnest criticism of this show i enjoy critical analysis and being a hater

i think most of why this show sucks has already been covered pretty thoroughly but these r the main things abt it that piss ME off.

the racism runs so SO deep. supernatural is supposed to be an exploration of americana thru horror (and i’ll give them that. like the idea of deconstructing america and all its fallacies thru horror is genius and in competent hands it would be absolutely incredible. but anyway) but it only really scrapes the surface of what is inherently horrific about americana! something like that is supposed to be an INTERROGATION of monstrosity and how america (and western society more broadly) creates monsters out of human beings and how white christian morals are established as the ONLY acceptable morals and how anyone who falls outside of those norms (non christian, non white, lgbt, people with substance use disorders, prisoners, the poor, indigenous people/cultures etc) are monsterized, so to speak, because of an oppressive and unloving colonial society. like u cannot have a horror narrative abt monsters attacking family values and white suburban life without invoking some very old and racist conventions! but instead of subverting that supernatural just reinforces it! it consistently fails to make any kind of real statement because the most demonized parts of society are the people who are also treated the WORST in canon! native american beliefs are stolen and turned into stupid bogeymen without the show ever featuring a native character or seriously grappling with the inherent violence of america as a colonial state, black men are consistently portrayed as angry and evil while black women are treated like shit (dean’s happy ending at the end of s5 is with a white woman he fucked one time instead of with the black woman who he was in love with??), impoverished people are mostly ignored and when they’re not theyre monsters (theres one episode centered around a poor rural family that commits murder and cannibalism. no supernatural stuff or monsters. just poor people. thats the scare).

theres this consistent fixation on preserving american suburbia, on saving “normal” (read: white middle class) people and it sets up this dynamic of like. the “real world” is the white middle class and then there’s hunters including our mains who defend that “real world” against monsters and demons, which is just Everything Else. and the writers PRETEND to struggle w the question of monsters and what makes one but they just toss it around without ever actually committing to answering that question with compassion or narrative coherency. they have multiple episodes about characters who were raised human, who want to be human, but have to be killed because of an inherent evil nature. there’s a plot in the early seasons about how one of the main characters has demonic powers, and instead of saying that doesnt make him inherently bad and he’s allowed to fully access all parts of himself without being fundamentally evil, they consistently frame intrinsically neutral traits as inherently evil specifically because they go against a christian ideal of morality! and eventually he learns to suppress these powers and that’s that!

and then it establishes christianity as the guiding principle of america, not in a way of like “american culture and history is deeply steeped in white supremacist protestantism that has led to incredibly fucked up views on god and love and morality and thats what we have to deal with as people who live here”, but in a way of like “the christian god is real and he’s a white guy who fucking hates you.” which like. Ok. they bastardize and trivialize any religions that arent christian while building the entire series on christianity. Ok. like i guess its possible to write stories about white christianity without implying that every other religion is full of shit but supernatural did not do that on any level

its also just. really poorly written. i genuinely loved the first season i thought it was really well paced and that the characters were introduced really well like the first season is a GOOD horror story in terms of family as horror and the inherent terror of americana. but the pacing and the character development started tripping up in s2. by s3 they started raising the stakes Exponentially which honestly is such a kiss of death for good fiction like every season mounting a bigger badder antagonist than the last one is the surest way to kill a story bc it means the earlier entries in that story become basically meaningless in the face of the new bad guy. u dont need to raise the stakes to write a good story! a well written story abt the horror and drama of a close knit and unhealthy family caught up in something they don’t really understand isn’t Less emotionally resonant than, like, having to stop the world from ending, because at the end of the day its Fiction and none of it matters beyond what u can make the audience really Feel. im not gonna feel sorrow if 7 billion fake little people die. i didnt cry when the death star blew up whatever planet it blew up. what DOES make me feel sorrow is a few truly well written characters whose relationships are complicated and tragic and whose motivations i can understand and whose inner lives i can imagine. raising the stakes destroys a good story and thats exactly what happened to supernatural (not that the racism and misogyny and american protestant moralizing wasn’t killing it already)

also, the misogyny makes the female characters basically impossible to watch. like not a single person on that show is a good actor (except sterling k brown love u king u were the best actor that show ever saw) but they didnt even give any of the women anything to work with. its literally so cringey to watch any woman onscreen except maybe like. bela talbot and she was treated like utter shit.

god. you know that expression dont fall in love with potential? i dont do that w people i do it w fiction. i came off black sails and the untamed and frankenstein and i watched the first couple seasons of supernatural with my friend and it was like...there was so much room for it to SAY something about monsters and how society creates them thru violence and how deeply horrific american protestantism is. like theres so many questions and concepts that it brought up that it never actually SAID something about. shithole of wasted potential. and yeah dean and castiel is stupid there i said it

[landflier]

one day i wanna be able to say I’m Chilean and instead of ppl being weirded out and clueless, like wHat’S thAt and when i tell them making fun of Chile and pronouncing it 5 different wrong ways for laffs, that ppl would actually show interest in my culture or at least respect it

or just saying “u could’ve just said Mexican” or “so you’re Mexican” like ppl have actually done bcuz apparently it’s too much to expect they can distinguish different Latin American countries from each other and clearly they’re all the same

and bcuz of this i often just say im Irish when ppl ask about my heritage but then they say ��what, really? no way, you don’t look Irish, i would never have guessed” even tho my name is literally ERIN but they tell me i look “exotic” or “foreign” whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean, bcuz u know Irish ppl and other European groups who live in America are totally not immigrants in the same way let’s ignore indigenous people and the fact this land is stolen, let’s whitewash our worldviews

and white ppl try to tell me what my identity is and this one white girl said well u shouldn’t say you’re Latina cuz you’re white as if i am not equally Irish and Chilean, and also Latina does not mean non-white

also i didn’t ask u ❤️ smartass always telling ppl that she’s so “woke” as if she isn’t privileged herself and ignoring it because she thinks she’s above others but anyways, is there a white version of mansplaining like crackersplaining cuz she needs that

due to relative whiteness, i benefit from white privilege in society as a whole which is fucked up and i acknowledge that,

while at the same time half my family looks at me differently from my sisters for looking more like my mom, looking “more Latina”

i listened to my white classmates make fun of our teacher for her accent all year since she’s a native Spanish speaker and got so upset i literally started to cry in class at one point over how mean they were and also thinking about how people probably mock my abuela the same way since her accent is similar, but when i tried to tell them to be quiet they all looked at me like an alien with such anger in their expressions

and my white and non-Latinx “friends” have frequently laughed at me and mocked me and told me to stop whenever i say that teacher’s name cuz i actually pronounce it with Spanish pronunciation just naturally. they tell me it’s weird and to stop but i refuse to, but it makes me doubt myself when i shouldn’t have to. i am allowed to consult my language in everyday conversation especially when connecting with other Latinx people, few of which i get the chance to meet where i live

and when i discuss the Chilean food i eat they call it weird too, so i don’t mention things like that anymore and i don’t dare try to speak Spanglish with them

basically im sick of white ppl 💖 cállete tus pinches bocas pendejos you tire me out.

including u lgbt+ white ppl who think your lgbt+ identity cancels out your white privilege, so many ppl like that have hurt me.

white latinx ppl such as myself r certainly not exempt from this perceived lack of privilege, that’s definitely an issue too

white ppl need to do better, myself included, to consider the way our sheltered perspectives can harm POC in ways we might not even notice until it’s too late, especially BIPOC

stop making fun of food, dress, way of speaking, names, features (brown eyes, body hair, other certain traits), traditions, and other things that don’t fit your view of the world. if it is “odd” to you then shut up about it and respect that not every culture is the same,

if those things are “weird” to you in the first place then you seriously need to consider why you feel that way and how your bias is influencing your perspective

[alynna-menagerie]

I am beginning to hate the words “I’m genuinely asking”.  It almost always means its going to be followed up by hater discourse.

Sorry for sending so many asks my thoughts are fragmented as fuck but how does otherkin stuff use totemism besides the use of the word kin? I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong I'm genuinely asking.

Ain’t no problem homie.

Otherkin uses the concept from Totemism because of how similar they are when it comes to spiritual beliefs.

From what I understand, the Native Americans believe that their spirits is guided by a non-human being and they have a kin relationship with that spirit. The spirits can vary from any animal like a fox, wolf, rabbit, etc. This being is often called a totem.

Because of this they feel connected with this being, so eventually the persons spirit becomes their guide. In which many Natives and others identify with (which is why it’s often referred to as “spirit animal”)

This is where Otherkin comes in play.

Many people say that their kin with wolves, dragons and all that and claim that they’re not human, they’re Otherkin. That their spirit is *Insert animal/deity/person* and it’s who they identify and have a connection with. This is awfully similar to Totemism.

It doesn’t help when many try to use Native American beliefs as back up :/

I don’t have a problem with Totemism, that you have a spirit animal or anything similar. It’s a belief.

But when you’re running around saying that you were never human, acting as your supposed “kin” and start attacking others out of no where, it gets out of hand and taken to the extreme.

Hope this answered your question Anon!