#but also from immigration stuff iirc

[butmakeitgayblog]

Like a lot of me and me pals read your fics! But i bet ya there’s some laddies and lassies who i don’t know that reads yours stories too. And you can call us Invernessians 🤣. Our accent is a wee bit softer than the people from *whispers* glasgow

Well we already had an Aussie lowkey shit talking/exposing fest on here so might as well let the Scots throw down 💪 Also, is it offensive... that I read this entire thing in my head in a Scottish accent?🤔 it's just too fun not to. Lassies and laddies, I love it. Makes me think of Nacho's Scottish Lexa fic 🔥

[tobiasdrake]

The Namekians originating in the Demon Realm clears up a lot of the incongruity between classic DB and the later Z lore when it comes to Piccolo, but I'm more excited by the prospect that that Third Eye thing the demons are after could be connected to Tenshinhan

They already connected Popo to Daimakai so I could see them roping Tenshinhan in there too. Kinda feels like Daima is interested in using Daimakai to patch the parts of early Dragon Ball that were never well explored.

IIRC, Namekians being from another reality and immigrating to the regular universe was one of those plot details that Toriyama rattled off in an interview but that never saw light of day in DBS proper.

...or maybe it did, in the Granolah arc of the manga? Gah. I can't remember. But its main purpose was to explain how Namekians can be scattered to other worlds and making Dragon Balls for everybody without having to trace an origin story for every single one of them back to Namek. Namekians are capable of spacefaring technology but is not an active participant in galactic civilization, so it'd be hard to explain why everybody suddenly has a local Namekian.

It's a little janky because. Like. There shouldn't be Namekians on a fuckton of worlds making Dragon Balls for everybody. Dragon Balls being so scarce throughout the universe as to basically be unheard of outside of Namek was an important plot point in the Frieza arc.

But DBS stopped at just having a third set of Dragon Balls and left it at that. So. That's fine. Three is okay.

With Piccolo... I don't know how I feel yet. His demonic abilities came from him being a demon. He was the evilness of God cast off into the world so that God could ascend as being of pure goodness. He was also a Namekian, but his Namekian traits were something distinct and separate from his demonic traits - which were lost following his reincarnation.

I don't know that establishing Daimakai as the really true actual origin point of Namekians for realsies is going to affect Piccolo's background much. But it might. It will be interesting to see where they're going with this.

I have, admittedly, low expectations because I'm just expecting it to be an excuse for Daimakai to have a set of Dragon Balls, and to maybe remix some Planet Namek stuff into the show.

[thewickerking]

hey. what?

well. For context everyone im assuming this ask is referring to this post and my tags below

im assuming because of the. The.

Many. Prev tags on it lmao but anyways here's more context. ill try to keep specific elements vague cause i don't want to doxx my grandma and by extension myself. But yeah let's go

my grandma (maternal) ran away from home in her teens (not sure the exact year/age but 70s ish) to join the circus and worked there for an amount of time doing ticket sales and miscellaneous jobs that aren't performance based

she met a guy also working there and they dated. this guy joined a satanic cult after joining the circus (? I think. Mightve been the other way around) and performed ritualistic sacrifice within the cult/with his murder victims. he was not in charge of the cult but was an active member and serial killer across around 4 states, maybe more (evidence was found for about 4 states iirc)

anyways he got caught for evidence of multiple murders but confessed to upwards of 20 (they couldn't find evidence of this so its unclear if he was exaggerating or if there simply wasn't enough irrefutable evidence) and went to prison while my grandma was pregnant and she was also arrested as an accomplice and had her kid in prison. She was 18 at the time. Idk how long she spent in prison but it was long enough to have her son taken away

her son (first of her four children, was my oldest uncle on my moms side) has adopted parents who changed his first and last name and didn't let him know about his biological parents (and were also extremely abusive) and so my mother and her siblings and her mom did unsuccessful research to find him over the years and he found our family a few years before he turned 30 (my moms ten years younger than him btw) and we've been in contact since and he was my personal favorite of my moms siblings

Oh also the serial killer got sentenced to life without parole and is currently on death row. My uncle died last year from unrelated circumstance (I posted about it some last year if anyone remembers) and my mom adopted 2 of 3 of his kids (3rd was a legal adult already) and then they got kidnapped and their kidnappers won the custody battle against my mom so. Yeah

Oh also worth noting my mom is the youngest of the four. my grandma had four kids with different men so im not related to the serial killer but he is in my family tree? Anyways yeah different fathers. My grandma remembers the serial killer and my moms father (my abuelito ♡ love him) but doesn't remember the fathers of the middle children (my aunt and uncle). So they're my moms half siblings technically and nobody knows if the middle children have other half siblings on their dads' sides 🤷‍♂️ but my mom has a half sister on her dad's side! She's 2 years younger than me bc my abuelito got married to his ex wife later in life but they're not together anymore (?) Not sure. They broke up idk if they legally divorced but they live in different countries and don't talk to each other. So.

Id love to meet her someday! But I don't know if thats feasible. She lives in Mexico and only speaks spanish so it would certainly be difficult. But I want to.... she almost immigrated to the United States like. 6 years ago?? My mom paid for documents to be legally translated and stuff but stuff happened and it didn't go through.she also tried to kill her mom once. But she's doing better. That's all a long story. We have a picture of her in our house from when she was little!

Ok thats very tangent-y. I have a lot of family stories. But also if anyone was curious this post below was also about my maternal grandmother

shes a white woman who likes to weaponise having "friends" in nepal when people are mean to her. She's a character. if ppl are curious abt any of this i will answer btw i love talking abt my family they're deranged

[official-megumin]

I completely forgot to post about this

But I finally had a doctor's appointment yesterday, my GP checked for noticeable neurological problems(she couldn't find any thankfully) and checked my recent bloodwork to see if any levels were off.

I had a low-ish blood percent and normal leaning slightly towards low b12 levels IIRC.

So she ordered some more bloodwork to further check iron levels and other stuff.

I then asked for written notes about what is up to give to the immigration office we'll visit tomorrow to extend Cuppy's visa. She said she wouldn't have them ready till later yesterday till today and said I could just come pick them up today. I told her that I could not do that, and she asked why.

I had just come to her telling her that I can barely work and struggle to even lift my arms...

So yea, who knows what will happen from here, but at least I have some blood tests ready for me to get closer to an answer. But yea, it was definitely not worth the multiple week wait time.

...On a positive note, the package that got delayed finally arrived! So that is cool.

I also got started on my staff today and have gotten the basic shaping and gluing done. So likely I'll have it ready for saturday where I'll be going to a ren faire with my mom and Cuppy.

Wish me luck, last time I tried something like this, I had to give up within an hour or two to go home. And that was before I got this sick.

[iconsumeheadcanons]

other than the donnies(tho im curious about thoughts for them too!!), how educated* do we think each of the ninja turtles are?

like theyre all homeschooled (so relying on one adult for all subjects which usually sucks ass afaik, little outside socializing, perhaps not as high paced, but hopefully more catered to their needs/abilities?), have little to no access to resources for education, some parents are adult immigrants from other countries w no support, some have actual rats who became sapient as teachers, few will ever have the chance to attend further education even if they wanted, and all started becoming full time vigilantes and/or child soldiers around age 15.

when do u think they might have stopped school learning? we never see it in the stories iirc

how many april o'neils had to give impromptu lessons on "normal" stuff the kids never heard of?

would the kids know anything about human anatomy for purposes other than combat/defense?

also how my neurodiversity come into play?

*i cant think of a better word rn but basically would they have the have subject matter knowledge expected of peers in their area and age range?

[sydmarch]

Hey can I ask what you meant by a formal dx putting your autonomy at risk? I just got dxed a couple months ago and I keep seeing people allude to this stuff, but can’t really find any sources. Though I’ve chosen not to disclose to work or to my doctor (just psychiatrist) so maybe that makes a difference?

I dont have any sources atm honestly it's mostly a decision I've made based on anecdotes I've heard from fellow autistic trans people discussing how having an official diagnosis has made it more difficult for them to get gender affirming care & as someone who's interested in a somewhat non standard top surgery (reduction rather than a complete removal but not really like the "usual" reduction bcus im already relatively speaking small chested) I don't want any potential barriers in the way of that getting taken seriously. I'm also interested in tubal ligation and thats already something ive heard enough horror stories about even cishet nt women who already have children having difficulty getting doctors to give the ok to so i am NOT looking to have a potential barrier in the way of that either & yeah things like disclosing at work & other situations could potentially open up another can of worms but I don't really know much about that side of things. I also just like, don't have much faith in things in the world getting better ableism wise anytime soon lmao & when countries like australia (& possibly nz iirc?) already prevent disabled people including autistic people from immigrating it just does NOT feel worth it to me to have a dx on my record when who knows if other countries might follow suit someday, & who knows if eventually I'll have to get out of the USA for some reason? but this is just my somewhat pessimistic view & I feel like getting a dx or not is something deeply personal and depends on your circumstances. if the benefits someone will get from it outweigh the potential downsides great! I personally don't see any real benefit to getting a dx since I've gone undiagnosed long enough that I've managed to figure out how to deal with things on my own. maybe it would've been nice for people to have noticed I needed help when I was younger & VERY OBVIOUSLY dealing w lots of sensory issues looking back & I wouldn't have HAD to figure everything out on my own but that's water under the bridge now. anyway this kind of got away from your original question but yeah

[armorabs]

and also I'm looking at the older hc stuff, is Krabs also German or. i mean like last name wise anyway

not actually sure tbh. probably not? at least not immediately. like canonically, mr. krabs is scottish... and he's canonically scottish through betsy. but as for victor and redbeard, or anyone further down the line on that side of the family, i don't actually know. they have the same (or similar) accent as betsy, who is canonically scottish, so i'd assume they're meant to be scottish too BUT that doesn't mean they're only scottish. ancestry can get really complicated - especially when immigration and intercultural exchange is involved, let alone the high seas piracy that the krabs family has engaged in for several generations.

iirc i played with the idea of human krabs being kratz and human plankton being plouton - because a site compiling a list of list names i was going through had those names listed and mentioned one meant greed while the other meant wealth i was like oh i could throw symbolism in there with their names to represent their complicated relationship... of course i don't even know where i found the names or those meanings anymore??? can't verify if they were accurate or not. so suffice to say that's an idea that won't actually see much use from me outside of a brief pondering. but anyways, then i was like wait krabbe is literally already a last name that exists and is commonly used in various european countries AND the us so why even try making a human krabs named kratz when krabbe is already a real last name and more similar to krabs than kratz or kranz are

[wiiidgeon]

In case y'all think voting for a third party is a viable option and splitting the vote of the left won't just get Trump elected, something similar has happened before

Now, I'm just going off of the top of my head with stuff I remember from my U.S. Gov and History class several years ago, but iirc Taft and Roosevelt in this representation were the most akin to voting between Biden and a third party now. They split the vote of their side, leading to Wilson getting elected.

Obviously, the situation now is significantly more dire. We are in the middle of a rise in white Christian nationalism, project 2025 is a very real and terrifying prospect, and everyone who isn't a white, Christian, conservative man is at risk. I'm not a fan of Biden by any means, but I will be voting for him in order to ensure future fair elections and to keep what little rights I have as a trans, queer, mixed person. Even a lot of my family members who are gun-lovin' Republicans or who are just conservative Catholics/Christians are voting against Trump, whether it's to keep half of my family from being deported (Trump's trying to get rid of citizenship by birth for people born to immigrant parents), because they respect the fact that I'm gay and love is natural and they want to see me get married someday, or because they just know that Trump's aim is to become a democracy hating dictator.

So please, when election day comes, if you are a US citizen eligible to vote, vote blue.

(Also forgive me if some of this rant is unintelligible, I just woke up like 30 minutes ago after getting really high last night. Love living in a state where weed is legal lol)

u realize most sane americans dont fuck with biden or trump right like theyre both genocidal insane fucks why u reblogging genocide joe shill posts

Because I have people in my life who I care about who live in America and I know what a 2nd Trump presidency will be like for them.

Biden's stance on Gaza is absolutely horrendous, I don't think anyone should give him an inch once he's re-elected. But unlike elsewhere in the world, the USA is a two party state and those are the options they have.

I'm not going to preach not voting in the US elections, because, as others have put it, politics isn't a boycott. By not voting, you are giving up your power. Everyone should be voting this election and rejecting Project 2025.

[zims-left-antenna]

on the topic of representation in media, I feel like it's important to consider rep that doesn't include the USA.

ofc, rep that includes ppl in said country should obviously exist. my point is that the focus has been too much on them for so long, it's understandable cuz they have the monopoly of the entertainment industry, but like other ppl (with experiences outside of the US) deserve their time to shine too, idk ???

(warning. after this I start to ramble a LOT and probably exaggerate stuff cuz idk it's one am. TLDR I feel like latin american rep is not living to its potential and that sometimes is just like, overlooked idk)

and now that I'm talking about this, I'll mention the US' latino rep. which by definition, their use if the word "Latino" is kind of wrong already, so it's not a good start and probably an early sign of ignorance towards a large group of people. but maybe I'm being too harsh (and exaggerating) on american media

latino, as a group, is SO broad. iirc, it includes anyone with roots in countries with latin based languages, so it's not limited to Latin America, it includes the latin part of Europe too (Spain, Portugal, France, Italy). I get that Latino is used as a shortened version of latin american, I just don't like how the word is being transformed into something that doesn't define the term in its entirety. anyway.

what we mostly see of us in media is just based on the US, and most of that are characters who are descendants of immigrants.

and that's good! but it shouldn't be the staple of latin american rep. it fits more the rep of latin american immigrants (1st gen, 2nd gen, that'll depend on the characters)

now, about latin american rep, there's so much to cover!!! because there is NOT one way to be latin american. because it's just a piece of land that some ppl happen to be born in and live in.

there's no point in making ambiguously latino characters or having said characters follow one way to be latin american. that just makes no sense.

what shapes the characters into what they are is their environment, which will differ from country to country (it's not the same growing up in Venezuela and growing up in Uruguay), social class, financial situation.. well, y'know, that kinda stuff.

so I believe there should be more focus on the countries inside latin america. ofc, if u don't know about X country's culture and want to start s project related to it, then you'll have to do ur research, that's not a bad thing anyway

maybe it's just me, but I feel like there's has to be more than just stereotypes when it comes to representation. as dumb as what I'm gonna say may sound, it sucks being constantly told in subtle ways that ur not truly X nationality\etc. just because u are not like others think u should be like. just cuz ur not like some of ur peers. it just beats the point of rep, imo.

also bad rep in media can easily make the ppl who don't know about who the rep is about, even more ignorant about said group of ppl (sorry I'm so redundant). see some twitter users act towards argentinians for example. apparently to them, Argentina was not part of latin america (even tho it's in the territory) because some argentinians are white or white passing. yup. it was kinda funny to see tho lol

[hypokeimena]

Re your post about vampires, I definitely agree...I have a half baked thought that there's something really interesting also in how iirc Dracula mentions ancient heros who fended off the turks (I think referring to himself) and how this is the so called land of the Turk so that religious tension exists narratively, but the fear of Islam as a colonial anxiety obsession isn't quite in the mainstream discourse yet. There's an interesting shift in right wing discourse after world war ii from anti semitism to (still antisemitism but also) anti Islam - at least in western Europe but also so much of the conversation in the Balkans conflict is about age old religious divides - and so for the modern reader, the sort of 'spectre' of Orientalism as Said might describe it is discursively there but not quite developed yet

YES. i think it's interesting to see the way jews are like, variably uh... i haven't read enough theory not to make an ass of myself on some of these issues but i guess the way jews are variably orientalized. like in the time period of stoker there's a sense of Foreign and Otheredness, and obviously a big component of antisemitism is the uh historic Statelessness of the Jew (there we get into like wandering jew shit, right) and the diaspora, like, "the jews don't have their own state so they must want to infiltrate ours" kinda shit. whereas the turks/ottomans were doing afaik more like, outright conquest and then state/administration stuff. so there are different kinds of social anxieties that are definitely interrelated as well, like it's not JUST antisemitism that animates dracula, the idea of "reverse colonization" from the east that was going around is absolutely also topical... and like in addition as i think i mentioned tangentially there's like the ways in which certain forms of antisemitism have become recognizably less publicly acceptable post wwii while at the same time being present / other forms of antisemitism developing and strengthening at the same time, sort of a forcible theoretical assimilation of the jewish with the mainstream and then turning destructively towards the middle east... (eg the word judeochristian which means Literally nothing, serves to forcibly identify jews With christians, AND to other muslims). obviously there is a lot of stuff going on there but i am not a modern history knower so i will tap out after like 1900 but.

i just think it's neat to see what social anxieties in dracula are like stated outright (cf. all the orientalizing ethnic group stuff in eastern europe + as you mention positioning dracula against the Turks; talking about the ways that internecine ethnic conflict has bathed the land, etc) and which social anxieties that are closer to home and directly parallel the ones discussed.. can't be discussed openly (eg obviously antisemitism and xenophobia towards jewish immigrants, but also as other posters have mentioned analysis of various british and irish vampire novels as referencing colonial anxieties around ireland, etc)

[lonelier-version-of-you]

I can’t remember if Henrik home was ever seen. But how do you imagine it - traditional? Minimalist? Flat? House? Do you think he cooks Swedish food at home or has books in Swedish or due to trauma do you think he tried to completely assimilate even in his own home as an adult? Sorry if I sound victim Blamey trying to discuss this. I’m not good at Henrik meta so I’m just interested.

It's alright! I'm not easily put off when it comes to Henrik, unless people, like, infantilise him or pull the "Henrik never showed interest in men before Russ" type of stuff. (And I apologise for leaving this in my inbox for hours, I got distracted and caught up with some other stuff.)

We've seen Henrik's home thrice, I believe. S20E11 "The L Word" has Roxanna visit him, S20E13 "No Matter Where You Go, There You Are - Part Two" shows him at home at the very start (although it’s only a brief scene), and S21E30 "Don't Leave Me" shows him at home quite a bit. He definitely seemed to be living in a house in all 3 episodes, though it's not one we saw much of - the S20 eps only show the living room IIRC, and "Don't Leave Me" only shows the spare bedroom. (He also canonically has a flat in Stockholm, for whatever it's worth - we see it in S15E13 "Hanssen/Hemingway". It seems he lived there when he was a med student, going by Maja's mural there which is dated to 1983.)

I've always figured he probably keeps things fairly minimalistic. His house was a bit of a cluttered mess when Roxanna visited him, but he was having his post-Fredrik breakdown at the time, so I've always put it down to that. When he's in a better mental state, he's probably a lot more organised. Having said that, he is also definitely the sort of person who owns a LOT of books and has a ton of bookshelves around the house to hold them all. So his house is probably still a bit too cluttered to be totally minimalist, lol.

(I also headcanon that Henrik is a Doctor Who fan, and his favourite Doctor is, of course, the Eighth - the incarnation played by Paul McGann, for those who don't know their Doctor Whos. I mean, canonically, Henrik could be a Whovian! If nothing else, he's friends with Jason, who is a DW fan - he references the Fourth Doctor when offering Essie a jellybaby in S19E64 "Always Forever". So even if Henrik wasn't familiar with the show already, Jason could've got him into it.

Anyway, where I'm going with this that's relevant to Henrik's home decorating is that I love the idea of Henrik collecting Eighth Doctor action figures. Just because the mental image of Henrik bringing all his stuff over after moving in with Russ and Russ growing increasingly disturbed as he helps Henrik unpack all these mini John Gaskells is hilarious to me.)

We also know Henrik has a penchant for gardening, and in S13E44 "One of Those Days", he mentions that he grows roses. So I've always imagined he's got quite a lot of plants growing outside, but granted, the fact that we never saw his home during his first stint means that we don't actually know if where he was living then would be the same house he was living in after he came back to Holby (especially given he was planning on moving to Sweden permanently when he originally left).

Do you think he cooks Swedish food at home or has books in Swedish or due to trauma do you think he tried to completely assimilate even in his own home as an adult?

Oh, I am so glad you asked because I think I could talk about Henrik's identity as an immigrant all day. It's genuinely one of my favourite parts of his character, the way he doesn't quite fit in anywhere and nowhere quite feels like home to him - he's too Swedish for England, and too English for Sweden. I wish the show had explored it more.

I think he leans more towards the "tried to completely assimilate even in his own home as an adult" option, but not totally so. He's very detached from that part of his identity, but I think he does still get homesick and nostalgic for Sweden sometimes.

So he probably cooks Swedish food occasionally, and I absolutely believe he has some Swedish books around (I've actually mentioned it briefly in some of my unpublished fic) - mostly ones he bought when he was a young adult still living in Sweden and has kept hold of since, or copies of books he remembered enjoying when he was little. (We know he liked some Astrid Lindgren books in his childhood, and I have a strong headcanon he grew up reading the Moomin books - the woman who wrote them, Tove Jansson, based several aspects/characters in the stories off her own relationships with her girlfriends so... yeah, I just love the idea of young Henrik reading them so that he at least had one thing to turn to where there was some acceptance of queerness.)

He probably has books in a variety of languages, thinking about it, as he seems like an avid reader and we know he's quite a polyglot (alongside English and Swedish, he also canonically speaks French and German, and I think maybe more but those ones I know for sure off the top of my head).

[dancedance-resolution]

andi mack friendom, are you interested in some more thoughts about my andi mack / american girl crossover (which is actually just a thinly veiled info dump about american girl history and drama)? if so, you're in the right place!

the andi / buffy / cyrus doll set i designed would be a contemporary line.

CONTEXT (forewarning, this is basically just an ag info dump about the 2017 contemporary line) (also, tagging @kirstensleepey because i think this write up might be useful for the ag project you're working on <3):

so in 2017, american girl did a brand new thing. they released 3 dolls who were contemporary characters but not girls of the year. (prior to these dolls' release, which are called "the contemporary line" by the ag fandom, the only categories of ag dolls were historicals, girls of the year, and just like yous.)

the contemporary line was controversial for many reasons.

first, we have our main character, tenney grant. (tenney is basically taylor swift as a doll, if taylor were uncool and a r*publican lol.)

one of the reasons why tenney is so controversial is that she overshadowed the girl of the year (henceforth abbreviated as goty) 2017, gabriella mcbride.

tenney was released only one month after gabriella's release. ag's social media gave much more focus to tenney than gabriella. upon tenney's release, gabriella's store displays were downsized (which is unheard of for a goty). tenney even had a larger collection than gabriella!

why are we mad about tenney overshadowing gabriella? well, gabriella was ag's first (and as of 2021, ONLY) black goty. also, gabriella was ag's first doll to have an explicity confirmed disability - her stutter.

BRIEF INTERMESSION - SOME STATISTICS ABOUT DIVERSITY IN CHARACTER DOLLS:

only 7 out of the 22 total historical characters have been dolls of color. only 3 out of 22 historicals have been black (one of which is now retired). only 2 out of 22 have been aapi (one of these dolls, ivy, was just a best friend doll and is now retired; and the other doll, nanea, has a problematic face mold. i wrote an essay about why her facemold is problematic here!). only 1 historical doll, josefina, is hispanic, and ag has actually misspelled her name as "josephina" on their social media before.

only 1 doll EVER has been native american, kaya'aton'my, who is a historical character from 1764. (not even any of the just like you dolls have had kaya's face mold! kaya is truly the only indigenous doll!) in fact, ag has had more colonizer characters than indigenous characters. felicity and elizabeth are white character dolls from 1776, and their books fail to address the issues surrounding colonization and treatment of native americans. and kirsten is a swedeish immigrant to wisconsin in 1854. her book does acknowledge the existence of native americans, and kirsten has an indigenous friend named singing bird. (i haven't read kirsten's books and i'm not indigenous, so i can't comment on this storyline.) ag actually had a controversy about kirsten just this year - in 2021, the t-shirt design for kirsten said "settlers gonna settle", and ag actually ended up changing the design to "cabin sweet cabin" after backlash.

moving on to the girl of the year line - out of 21 goty dolls, gabriella is the ONLY black goty. only 6 out of 21 gotys have been dolls of color. there have been 2 hispanic characters (luciana, who is generally regarded as an excellent doll; and marisol, who is controversial because her book talks about how her family moved from pilsen chicago - a real area of chicago that is home to many hispanic immigrants - to a white suburb due to crime. this storyline involves racist stereotypes.) also, goty 2016 lea clark (slightly tan skin, blonde hair, light green eyes) is 1/8th brazilian, and some brazilian ag fans consider the emphasis on lea being 1/8th brazilian racial feticization. next, there have been 3 aapi gotys. one of these dolls, sonali, was one of two best friend dolls for chrissa (goty 2009) - yep, you heard that right, yet another doll of color that is a side character! sonali is the bully in chrissa's books, but she gets a redemption arc. to this day, sonali is ag's only south asian character doll. [additionally, there has been some criticism that all of the aapi gotys are mixed race - jess mcconell (goty 2006) has a japanese mother and an irish/scottish father, kanani akina (goty 2011) has a french/german mother and a japanese/hawaiian father, and sonali matthews has an indian mother and a father of unknown race/ethincity. perhaps notably, the only aapi historical doll who is not currently retired (nanea) is also mixed race (hawaiian mother and scottish father).]

as for the disability thing i mentioned - ag also has a disappointing track record regarding disability representation, lol. it was very lightly implied that mckenna (goty 2012) had a learning disability, but that was never confirmed. mckenna's tutor, who used a wheelchair, was ag's first big disability rep, but she was just a side character in mckenna's story. then, many ag fans were disappointed when mary ellen, a historical character released in 2015, was able-bodied (in canon, she had polio as a child, so it would make sense for mary ellen to be disabled and use mobility aids). finally, in 2020, goty joss gave us some disability rep - she has a hearing aid.

ag's lack of disability rep is very frustrating, especially considering that doll companies, like our generation, have made some really cool disabled dolls. and ag has been doing this ad campaign with the paralympics that feels performative to me - like, they want to seem inclusive by featuring dolls with prostetic legs, but they don't even sell dolls like that!!!

lastly, religious diversity - iirc, there are three jewish dolls (rebecca, goty 2001/2002 lindsey, and goty 2009 chrissa). the rest of the dolls are either christian or of unspecified religion. there has never been an explicitly muslim, hindu, or buddhist doll, or a doll who is a member of any religion other than judaism/christianity/unspecified. (there is some hope that we might get a muslim doll, though, since an outfit with a hijab was leaked, and ag trademarked a persian name that i can't recall off the top of the head at my moment. but take these with a grain of salt - ag trademarks a ton of stuff that they don't use, and the leak could be false or just a truly me outfit.)

END OF INTERMISSION - BACK TO THE TENNEY/GABRIELLA CONTROVERSY:

so, we get our first black goty, and she's being totally overshadowed by tenney.

here's where a conspiracy comes in:

we can track when ag trademarks their character names. goty names are usually trademarked early in the year prior to their release (by may). but gabriella mcbride wasn't trademarked until october, iirc.

and gabriella is a very underdeveloped character in comparison to most gotys. one of her main hobbies - dancing - was the same main hobby as both marisol (goty 2005) and isabelle (goty 2014). her store displays were underemphasized in comparison to tenney's, as i mentioned before. she was the first goty who didn't get a movie in six years (since kanani, goty 2011). and gabriella didn't even have a big ticket accessory item available until summer!

so, we get our first black goty, and she's underdeveloped, underemphasized, seems to have been rushed (due to her trademark date), and overshadowed by tenney just one month after her release. why is that?

well, some people think that tenney was actually supposed to be goty 2017! (i agree)

tenney was trademarked earlier, had more development, had a bigger collection, etc. we think that tenney was supposed to be goty 2017, but ag decided to do a doll of color (gabriella) at the last minute. (keep in mind the climate of 2015/2016 - ag probably wanted some clout for doing a black goty, and they also probably heard the ag fandom's demands for more dolls of color.)

so that's tenney.

next we have logan everett. logan was ag's first boy character doll. i'm glad that ag had a boy character doll, but logan kinda missed the mark for me. the main source of controversy surrounding logan is his face mold: he, a white boy, uses the kaya face mold. !! it kinda felt like a slap in the face to many indigenous ag fans - kaya is literally The Only Doll with the kaya face mold, and when we finally get another doll with her face mold, he's not even indigenous.

lastly, we have z yang my beloved <3. z yang was done dirty - she is yet another doll of color who is a mere side character, and also, she was available for only a total of 20 months before being retired!

so, that's everything i have to say about the 2017 contemporary line.

now i'm going to talk about the 2021 contemporary line :3

so, it's summer 2020. the black lives matter is becoming more mainstream. brands are now getting clout for appearing "woke."

so, admist this climate, ag is (as always) facing demands from its fandom/collectors to diversify its doll line. so they announce that they're going to be doing a new contemporary line, to be released in "the second half of 2021"!!!! and they promise that the contemporary line will have a black lead character

fast forward to modern day. thanks to ag's trademarks, we can safely assume that the new contemporary line will be called "world by us." we can safely assume that the line will have 3 characters. the 3 characters all live in washington dc and are best friends :) we can safely assume that the characters will be maritza ochoa, evette peeters, and makena williams. i talked about makena and maritza on that ask regrettable-username sent me about my andi mack/ag headcanons! personally, i'm excited for world by us, and i think it has a lot of potential!

alright sawyer, that's the end of the ag info dump fhjhdhfskf.

now for my andi mack friends:

i think the andi/buffy/cyrus line would be structured similar to world by us: andi is the main character, and buffy and cyrus are her best friend dolls :) all 3 dolls would be released at the same time. andi would have 3 books that have buffy and cyrus as side characters, and buffy and cyrus would have one book each.

the big ticket item for this collection would be andi's andi shack. i'm imagining its design sort of like kira's tent mixed with lanie's camper mixed with blaire's farm. andi the walls of andi shack would open up so that when it's fully opened, the four walls are on an even plane with the back wall and extended out like wings. you remove the roof before opening up the walls. the shack is tall enough that the doll can comfortably stand up even with the roof still attached, and wide enough that all three dolls (andi, buffy, and cyrus) can comfortably stand next to each other inside of andi shack.

andi shack would come with a ton of craft supplies inside of it. it would also come with a little flower box that has cece's african violets, like blaire's flower box. (thanks to regrettable-username for coming up with the african violets idea fdjfsj.)

alright i have to go now, so these are all my andi mack/ag thoughts for now, but i might be back later with more thoughts fhdfjs (hopefully not though, since typing this out took me over three hours [sweating emoji]).

sorry for any typos and sorry for how scatterbrained this is! also this may have some forgotten things/mildly incorrect things bc my only source is my brain (and a photo of all the dolls so i can count how many dolls for the statistics portion) and my brain is not the most reliable thing on earth lol.

[inmyarmswrappedin]

So, because Fatou’s season ends today and, as far as we know, Druck hasn’t been renewed yet, I want to go over the things I feel the team did well in this season and the things I hope they take with them when they sit down to write the next season (which I’m manifesting will be Ava’s).

I think that s5 and, perhaps to a bigger extent, s6, were the team’s attempt to address fan feedback for and criticisms of s3 and s4. So I have hopes that, after possibly the most scrutinized season of any Skams, they are still willing to read even more feedback and sit down once again to craft a couple more seasons (possibly even 3 or 4 more seasons!).

So, without further ado, things that were done well! (Do I have to add “in my opinion”? Do I??)

I liked that for both s5 and s6, the thorough-line for the season wasn’t made obvious or shared in a press release, but rather it was up to fans to connect the story threads for themselves.

I loved that the team sought to address one of the biggest criticisms of s3, that is, that Matteo was given so many symptoms of a mental illness, but it ultimately went unaddressed in the narrative. They did this by giving Nora a dissociative disorder, and Fatou dyscalculia. (Matteo has been headcanoned as being mentally ill and having a disability.) It allowed the teams to develop both fan theories into full-blown seasons and give each of them the importance they deserved.

I have said this already, but I really appreciate that the team chose misunderstood, misrepresented and underrepresented mental illnesses and disabilities. I feel like s5 and s6 will be referents for many years, because they really took the time to portray a dissociative disorder and dyscalculia in a down-to-earth, unhurried way that isn’t meant to shock and awe, but simply allow us to understand why and when Nora and Fatou will struggle. Druck got the viewers to anticipate when Nora and Fatou would struggle, and that’s the first step in being able to anticipate and accommodate the needs of the Noras and Fatous of the world. I really can’t overstate how important this is and what a difference it makes in a real, tangible way. These seasons aren’t meant to be enjoyed for voyeuristic reasons, but they will legitimately help people.

One of the biggest criticisms of s4 was that Amira and Sam didn’t connect as women of color. In fact, it seemed like in s4 Sam was treated as another white friend, when in s2 both she and Amira were the victims of Kiki’s racism. The team addressed this by giving us Ava and Fatou’s friendship, which I want to say might be the first friendship between main characters of color where their race is a substantial reason for their bond. (There are the Sanas with their Jamillas, but the Jamillas aren’t main characters, and then there are friendships like Jo and Megan and Zoya, or Imaan and Liv, or Luca and Yasmina, but iirc in every case their bond as women of color isn’t made explicit.)

Another criticism of s4 was the way Kiki turned into the world’s most understanding white friend offscreen. The team addressed this with the Ava and Mailin storyline, which I think was wonderfully and subtly set up in s5, then built on with the biology test leaked answers.

On the topic of race, I think a major criticism of s3 was that David’s ethnicity wasn’t acknowledged (to the point where a white actress was cast to play his sister gvhvhv). The team has made up for this with Josh (more in the s6 sm than in s5, but I still count it) and with Kieu My. Fatou and Kieu My bonded over being first/second gen children of immigrants, and in doing so, they acknowledged that these characters aren’t white and have different experiences than white Germans.  

The first 6 episodes of this season were some of the finest writing in the Skams. The storylines all connected and built on each other. The motifs were just so good and beautiful and fitting. The themes were all clearly defined and easy to follow.

The tortoise plot was one of the most fun and imaginative storylines in any Skams, it connected Fatou and Ismail in a believable way. And not to rave about a fucking tortoise, but animals can be really uncooperative and that tortoise delivered every fucking clip. Druck has a reputation for being one of the most depressive versions of Skam, but the Maike/Burger plot was just plain fun.

I feel like some of the old gen’s instas were a bit self-indulgent. I’m thinking specifically of Matteo’s memes and how they they weren’t necessarily the kind of memes a gay dude born in 2001 would pick, but someone a decade older. I think this is much better done with new gen. Fatou’s memes reflect her age and her sexuality, and not just that, but Ava, Mailin, Kieu My, Josh, etc. all pick memes and even focus on different aspects of recent news, based on their gender, race, personalities, interests, etc.

I appreciate that the team found a way to fit a sex scene between Fatou and Kieu My to add to the small catalogue of wlw sex scenes on Skams (I’m including the scene in lovleg or we’d only have two lol). While I understood the reasons eskam opted not to include one, I thought there were ways to feature a sex scene that didn’t sexualize the actresses and didn’t require nudity. Cases in point: the lovleg scene, and this scene in Druck.

And it also needs to be said. This is the first original season with a main of color, and the third season overall (after Liv and Imane) where 10 episodes are given to a character of color and no one else. Of the three, it’s certainly the season that loved and respected its main the most. The bar is so low it’s in hell, but Druck did clear that bar!

With all that said, let’s talk about the things I would really want the team to address in following seasons:

The thing I most want them to fix might be small or unimportant for a lot of people, but I think it’s at the core of why the season has been unenjoyable or certain plot points haven’t come across the way the team wanted, for many people. I am talking about the overly expositional nature of the writing.  It appears as if the team approached the writing of the clips with the intention of hitting each beat as noted in their agreed upon outline, and absolutely nothing else was to be added. This is an issue both in s5 and s6. It’s just less noticeable in s5, because s5 is setting up stuff for Fatou’s season, and possibly even seasons that haven’t been written yet. The fact that absolutely every second counts makes for a stressful watching experience for me, because the narrative tension is always heightened. Whereas with Skam, the narrative tension would build throughout the clip. Take the Pride scene in Skam, for instance. The clip allows for Isak and Eskild to get increasingly more agitated as they butt heads. I feel like if this Druck team had done the Pride scene in s5 or s6, the clip would’ve started with both Isak and Eskild already on edge, and cut much of the dialogue that got them there.

On the topic of naturalistic dialogue, this season doesn’t have it. Here is an example from ep 10 clip 2, Wieder vereint/Reunited 11:37.

Fatou: I’ll get a certificate too and bring it over to you. And I checked it, I only have to change one course and my schedule will work.

Teacher: Miss Jallow, you are not the first one to come to me with an epiphany. We could fill entire school weeks with the lessons you missed. In addition, Doctor Steinberg told me about your, well… activities. You don’t have a lot of arguments on your side. 

Fatou: But I’ve spoken to all of the teachers and they said they are okay with it. 

Teacher: You seem to have friends among the teaching staff. Mrs Pavlovic put in a word for you. Okay then, do it and go before I change my mind. [translated by @kieu-tou! Thank you!] 

Like. This is the bare bones version of a dialogue. This should be the first draft, not the final version. The coordinator goes from absolute no to yes, with just one line from Fatou. The coordinator gives reasons that would necessitate more than one sentence of counterargument, like Fatou’s absences and the Biology test leaked answers. The coordinator even says Fatou doesn’t have a lot of arguments on her side, and yet it takes Fatou one line to change her mind!

And of course we viewers don’t want or need a lot of time with the coordinator. And particularly at this point in the season, no one would enjoy a naturalistic dialogue with the coordinator of all people.  But my point is that this is an issue with the dialogue all this season (and last season as well, but this season has been more scrutinized), the reason I picked this example is because of how easy it is to see here.

Which brings us to the pacing of the clips, and specifically the Friday clips. Because the script goes straight to the information the team wants to convey to the viewers, skipping the build up to it, many Friday clips have fallen flat, felt abrupt, and have been, tbh, unsatisfying. Again, I had this issue in s5, but as that season went on, I felt like the team had a better grip on Friday clips. But then they did it again in the first Friday clip this season, and so I think this is something the writers really should work on. The first Friday clip in Isak’s season closes on Isak being sandwiched by Emma and Even on a bench, visually setting up the love triangle, or more accurately, the personifications of who Isak should want to hook up with and who he really wants. But in order to get there, we’re shown a good amount of info, from the way Vilde, Eva and Sana are handling Noora’s absence, to Chris and Kasper, Even hovering around Isak, Emma trying to impress Isak, Isak escaping and, like, draping himself on the walls because he’s so over it all. Isak playing a game on the bathroom to stall for time. The paper towel maneuver to immediately give us a sense of what a weirdo Even is. A conversation between Isak and Even that gives us some clues about Even’s shame, as well as establish interests in common (like weed), and this is all before Emma even joins them! Just think of all the stuff we learn about who Isak, Even, Emma, Eva, Vilde or Sana are as people, before we get to the point of the clip! Fatou’s season simply didn’t have that. Compare it with the first Friday clip of Fatou’s season where the cashqueens quickly talk about the leaked answers, one of the major storylines this season that only gets a couple lines, before Fatou says she doesn’t want to talk about school (Fatou’s struggles with school, another major storyline), and then we’re onto the point of the clip, which is that Kieu My likes girls too. AND FADE TO BLACK. When people say they want longer clips, what they mean isn’t artificially inflate the clip length or add more plot stuff. Just let us watch the characters interact with each other so that we get a feel for how they relate to each other. I know I wish we’d have gotten more of Ava and Fatou interacting with each other before things turned to shit, and Ava with the other girls, so that I know why they all like and value Ava so much. I wish we’d have gotten more of Kieu My talking to the cashqueens about, like, why she didn’t make use of the biology test answers, instead of getting it on a chat. Or food combos they don’t like. So it makes more sense that later on Kieu My actually thinks she and Fatou are friends.  And every line doesn’t have to count. In Skam España, the characters are constantly talking and not everything they ever talked about ended up being relevant. When one of the characters lied about her house undergoing renovations to hide the fact that she was poor, the characters joked about Italian marble and put on bad Italian accents and made that Italian hand gesture. None of this was important to the plot because those renovations weren’t real to begin with, but they made viewers feel like these were real friends joking around, instead of characters needing to hit every storyline beat in a clip.

I have this joke with my friends about Druck always going 🤪🤪 in the last third of every season, in which a season that was very tightly written and cohesive suddenly pulls something inexplicable and pretty much impossible to resolve in 1-3 episodes. Hanna’s season suddenly switching to Mia, Björn creeping on Mia in episode 9! of a total 10, David getting outed in episode 8 and then disappearing for a whole week, Amira’s season pivoting to Mia and Hanna. It has happened in every season except Nora’s, so I thought the team had learned its lesson, but then the forgotten date with Ava happened. To be clear. It really makes no sense that Nora would have hung out with Ava several times since Tuesday, and the topic of the cashqueens being officially introduced to Kieu My wouldn’t have come up. it’s just not realistic.gif I feel like at that point the writing for the rest of the reason became super contrived to keep Fatou miserable and apart from Kieu My and Ava to artificially delay the reunions until episode 9 and 10. Why add a cheating insinuation and the main checking her partner’s messages in episode 8 if you know you won’t be able to properly resolve it? Why make Kieu My mock Fatou’s “uhm” if it’s not going to be addressed in their reunion clip? Kieu My had taken the initiative for a lot of the relationship, so it’s okay for Fatou to take the initiative when it comes to making up. You don’t have to add things that can only be resolved through an expositional info dump. (Please no more exposition than it’s necessary! I think we’ve established that at this point lol.) In the case of Fatou’s season, this is even sadder because I feel like Kieu My’s intimacy issues could’ve been the reason to drive them apart for two weeks, rather than the Maya/uhm stuff. This could’ve also been resolved through Fatou and Kieu My explicitly negotiating their boundaries and how they want to be comforted and how they want to comfort each other, which I thought was the issue with Fatou rejecting Kieu My’s attempts to help while wanting physical touch, while Kieu My didn’t want to be touched but rather seen.  

There are going to be many thinkpieces on why a myriad of stuff didn’t work for people, so I’m going to keep this simple and address one last thing. I think that choosing to focus on Nora’s mental illness and Fatou’s disability is a great choice that doesn’t complicate the themes too much, but Druck (and all the Skams, but I’m invested only in Druck succeeding at this point) still struggles with being intersectional. This is the major reason why the Ava/Mailin storyline ended not with a bang, but a whimper. There just wasn’t enough work done to connect Fatou’s struggles not just to her disability, but also to her race (and even her sexuality). I think that if people really want (and lbr, it’ll be mostly poc who will put in that effort and work), they can see how Fatou’s race affected the way other people and especially adults reacted to her, but this wasn’t made explicit. If Ava and Mailin are going to argue about racism all season, why not connect that with Karin firing Fatou from Aquarius? As it stands, Karin fired Fatou because of a disability neither of them knew Fatou has, and that was the resolution to that storyline. Why not make it explicit that the Physics teacher had preconceived ideas about Fatou because Fatou is black? Why wasn’t Fatou’s disability addressed in the meeting with the coordinator? Why didn’t Fatou express to Mailin that Fatou, too, had issues with how Mailin was acting wrt racism? It felt like, with the way the season was putting so much emphasis on racism, all these threads were going to be connected. In the end though, it almost felt as if only Ava is affected by racism (aside from Mailin mentioning Fatou in the last episode). It’s not like talking about how racism affects Fatou is going to make the topic redundant for Ava’s or Ismail’s season. As a light-skinned black lesbian with a disability, Fatou’s life is going to be impacted by racism in a different way than Ava’s will, as a dark-skinned black fat straight cis girl, or Ismail’s, as a Turkish-German possibly Muslim possibly non binary person. All these experiences are specific enough, and different enough, that they can be touched upon in different seasons without becoming redundant. The fact that Fatou’s season almost seemed to forget at times that she is a black lesbian, doesn’t bode well for Ava’s and Ismail’s season to acknowledge all their struggles.

The bottom line is that this season really was great and did a lot of good, and I feel like the writing just needs to be tweaked a bit for further seasons to be even better and more enjoyable overall. I am very pleasantly surprised by how the team took s1-s4 fan feedback to heart and worked to implement suggestions, and so I really trust them and hope they keep working on the show. It’d be a shame if Druck wasn’t renewed, with this team at the helm.    

[ofherlionheart]

reasonable bedtime is an excellent priority; thank u for answering!!! listening to AAPI artists in a mini identity crisis is also hugely relatable n prob a huge part of why the boo chronicles speaks 2 me so strongly. def gonna check out ur music recs!

omg of course!! can i take this as an excuse to blab more abt AAPI musicians?? i love gassing up AAPI creators who don’t even know me lmfao. artist names will link to youtube vids of specific songs b/c im nothing if not comprehensive

we all know by now that i never shut up abt AUDREY NUNA but it’s honestly thanks to REI AMI that i ever awakened to the fact that there are folks from my community who are making mind-blowing, sometimes unhinged music. both audrey and rei are korean american; rei was born in korea and immigrated to the US when she was p young. they’re also both in the“anti-pop” category—lots of pop and r&b influences, but not quite either of those genres. another anti-pop baby is curtis waters, who’s a nepal-born, germany/canada-raised nepali-canadian.

keshi is vietnamese-american, born and raised in texas in a primarily chinese community, iirc. mega softboi/fuccboi vibes, but in a way that slaps. he’s collabed with rei brown, who’s japanese-american. and when i think of keshi’s slower/softer songs, i also think of sylo nozra (korean-canadian), luke chiang, and this lovely collab (dane amar, who’s laotian-american, and jereena montemayor, who’s filipina).

i love charli xcx, who’s mixed indian and scottish, b/c she goes off the rails like audrey and rei but usually in a dance-y major key. rina sawayama (japanese-british) does both, and she’s queer! yaeji, a korean-american DJ, also does dance/electronic. similarly upbeat vibe to these three is priya ragu, who’s tamil-swiss.

more incredible mixed women: saweetie, who’s Black-filipina-chinese. im obsessed with this collab saweetie did w/ jhené aiko, who’s also mixed. and then jhené did this collab with H.E.R., who’s Black-filipina and another incred artist in her own right. UMI is Black-japanese and delivers some of the sweetest, softest songs. tsunari is a uk-born, thailand-raised, thai-british-trinidadian artist—her stuff is transcendental.

for more rap/hip-hop/r&b: bohan phoenix (chinese-american), brb. (singaporean), agust d (korean), kris wu (chinese-canadian)

uh uh more indie/alt/bedroom pop artists: spill tab (french-korean), SASAMI (korean-japanese-american), DADARAY (japanese—their bassist was on terrace house: opening new doors), japanese breakfast (who’s the mixed korean-white american author of crying in h-mart, which was recently expanded into a full memoir), olivia rodrigo (mixed filipina-white)

and this is all, like, a sampler. there is so much fantastic music out there by aapi artists!! if links like this are annoying (lol), check out spotify’s jasmine, dope af, and aapi pride playlists.

[kendrixtermina]

For added context, IIRC their seized maps from some militants & the festival wasn't marked, plus some recorded audio shows some expressing surprise.

Now a thorough third-party investigation party will be needed. IDF lies every time they speak & were caught faking too many times to count, but Hamas also has incentive to lie, PR is a big part of this war.

I don't buy Haniyeh's claim that zero civilians were targetted because its NEVER zero & no matter what the orders from the top are there's always individual guys getting trigger happy, plus there are some humanitarian org peeps reporting eyewitnesses that saw ppl firing at passerby's etc.

Still there's a huge difference between ordering deliberate atrocities & torture and all the ISIS-style stuff that was claimed, and some individual soldiers taking opportunistic revenge disciplined purposeful military raid. It's worth mentioning that the population of those towns is pretty armed. They know they're next to the border, after all. (I have to grant that they weren't so wrong to have guns given what happened but the line between village & fortification/outpost blurs somewhat & the militants had reasons to assume any combat-aged person may start shooting. )

Still, if my government fired on ANY amount of my fellow citizens I'd be livid, leaving aside the exact proportion. They did demonstrably put 20 year old recruits who'd never fired an attack helicopter before.

For all that they're calling their scorched earth vengeance "defense" they did a lousy job at actually defending / repelling the attack.

Many ppl who lived in the villages surrounding Gaza say they're not coming back, which is kinda a victory for Hamas. Their objective is to make Israel unattractive for settlers to live in & void the zionist "selling point" of safety.

It#s worth noting that Synagogues in the west really DO have to have armed guards a lot of the time, (not cause there's that many antisemites imho, but because they all come running from their holes & every far right asshole wanting to prove they're tuff sees them as a target.20/80 principle. It takes only a few bullies/tyrants to make everyone's lives miserable. Same as with creepy catcallers. ) so Israel isn't competing with a baseline of zero, there's a reason the sales pitch works. It promises pride to the humiliated.

Still, regular bus explosions & ppl having to frequently go to bomb shelters, flying rockets... The safety thing is a lie, but they have a handy scapegoat & tell ppl if all the palestinians were gone they would have perfect safety. (actually, they're unsafe BECAUSE they oppress, at least as far as Israel goes)

I mean, ppl deserve safety. Wanting safety isn't bad. Wanting to protect your family isn't bad. But the palestinians have that exact same impulse of "I will murder you if you hurt my family", and nothing to lose.

It's just that far right nuts everywhere know how to channel fear & desire for safety onto scapegoats by telling ppl who to blame.

It's not so different from the western far right nut who says "blame immigrants for taking the jobs" so ppl don't get on the case of the bosses underpaying them all. Then the same people hating on immigrants pass pro-corporate laws, making the poverty worse...

"Bash the arabs" is not the solution for more safety, quite the opposite...

fascism in all its form is fundamentally a con.

This makes me laugh so hard I swear

Well there is your proof. Hamas didnt even know abt the festival. Ofc it's made up its israel afterall

[vyvesvi]

yo I'm sorry if this is coming out of no where but I'm in hs and I realllllly wanna study anthropology and since you're an anthro major,,,, can you tell me what that's like, ik every prof and school is a lil different but like . yknow

yeahhh no problem! if you have specific questions that might be easier for me to answer but i’ll keep it a lil general for now. edit: i tend to ramble so my main points are bolded.

it’s kinda important for me to note that i started as a government major but found my school’s department to be really impersonal (idk how to describe it but the vibes were rancid, that’s the best i can do rip). so i switched to sociology the first day of classes lmfao. i later ended up having the same problem with soc, but it was kinda late in the day so i just kept it and added my other two majors, one of which is anthr

all of that to say, i’ve found the anthr department to be a much more “human” place? like in terms of caring about people and how academia impacts the “real world,” which is extremely important (imo).

in anthr, at least at my school, we focus a ton on methodology and for lack of a better word, morality. stuff like how the history of anthr’s formation and establishment as a legit academic discipline impacts future study (super basic version: sociology as “a study of the west” and anthr as “a study of the rest.” obviously that’s very based in racism and colonialist ideals, so an important question becomes “how do we proceed in a discipline with such a past? how can we use that to make us better academics?” etc.)

in terms of workload: very reading heavy, right now im taking two anthr classes and i would say i have around 70 - 100 pages to read a week? that’s light/average compared to other humanities (i’m also majoring in religious studies, that’s like 70 - 150 pages? and soc, as a social science is more like 30 - 80 pages. i minored in east asian history and that was actually pretty light for humanities, it really ranged from 40 - 100 pages iirc). also, i think this is often the case but at the lower level you have more quizzes and busy work, usually with short response and short (5 page) papers. as you take upper level courses you have less busy work, more readings, more presentations, and longer papers (10+)

random advice: i would really recommend taking a language! idk if you have specific goals for what you want to do after graduation but one of the best things is to get a PhD and do research. personally i want to focus in methodology (bc i suck at languages lmfao) but the more typical (and fun) part of anthr is the area studies part, and knowing a language makes you incredibly competitive. of course, you don’t need to do anthropology in an area that requires you to learn a language (like i can do english speaking places as is, and there are also like a billion sublevels of anthr at the grad level, like medical, historical, etc that don’t require a language) but it will def make getting into research easier

the really cool thing about anthr is that it pairs well with most stem and social sciences! you can pretty much pick anything subject in those fields and there’s a subfield for that. like i know a grad student who’s doing the anthr of math (don’t ask me what that entails bc i have no clue), a friend of mine did a final project on the anthr of modern witchcraft, i know a few people who are working on projects related to college students during quarantine. personally my undergrad work is on marginalization and apathy + immigration and humanitarian aid. the possibilities are truly endless.

on that same topic, im not sure that people in creative writing would agree but i’ve heard some famous author give this advice to aspiring writers: don’t major in english. their rationale is that you can learn to write anywhere, and that it’s much more important to have other knowledge so that you have something to write about. i would say something similar about anthr- it’s a lil useless on it’s own. that being said, i personally think minoring or double majoring is a must with anthr. like, it just means more if you have other outside interests.

i’m not sure if you’re a college student but if you’re not yet and don’t know where you’re going yet, this seems obvious but definitely look at the course offerings and major requirements before you apply (if possible)! there’s always gonna be stuff you learn by being a student (and if you can connect with students in the department, definitely try to do that!) but there’s still info that you can glean from the websites. simple stuff like “how would i build a semester schedule from this? would i enjoy these classes?” etc. you can also email professors if you want! most of them legitimately want to help students, and the worse they can do is not respond!

that’s kind of it off the top of my head, but if you have any specific questions about anthr or college feel free to ask! i kinda just rambled because i wasn’t sure lol