#but idk these are primarily whites defending her

[wc-confessions]

bro i did not know marinin was white i thought they were an indigenous brazilian person... 😭😭

yeah....and apparently to her and her fans its racist to even mention that???😐

[teaveetamer]

Regarding the last rb: I think most of us can recognize how patently ridiculous it is to just blanket accuse someone of misogyny or queerphobia for, idk, thinking that starting a war is bad. It's an annoying and unfounded accusation, but it's ultimately something most of us can shrug off.

But like... I really don't think the people making these accusations are aware of how badly that plays when the criticism you're trying to defend against is calling out bigotry.

Now, let me elaborate.

A few days ago I was on Twitter and happened to see that Edelgard was trending. So I figured I'd go see what that's about because it was probably a shitshow (since there hasn't really been anything official lately that would explain it, e.g. a FEH alt or a figma or something. So, obviously, drama was afoot).

Color me surprised to see there was a lot of criticism about Edelgard's treatment of Petra in canon (primarily, how she keeps Brigid a vassal state and holds that over Petra's head the entire war, instead of immediately granting Brigid independence when she obtained the power to do so). In sum, just discussing the racism inherent to the writing (for tiptoeing around that and definitely not condemning it like it should have) and often inherent to the fanbase (for justifying everything Edelgard does, including this)

And I was seeing two main "rebuttals" to this point.

It's not her fault because she was just a poor wittle girly who is just soooo powerless (nevermind the fact that she spends five years in a position of absolute power over the nation that is currently holding Brigid hostage. And, also, she's a grown ass woman for the entire time skip and events of the war phase), and even if she did it it's not her fault because society just raised her like that (nevermind the fact that people can grow and learn and you aren't stuck with the values your society forced on you when you were a child).

Accusing the people raising these points of misogyny and queerphobia

We could debate exactly how to approach this criticism (a mark against the character? The writers? Both? Was it intentionally written to be racist? Is it a product of social conditioning and unexamined biases on the part of the writers? Some combination?).

But you know what you probably should NOT do in, like, any circumstance? Deflect responsibility for the actions because "she was just a poor little girl who doesn't know better" and accuse the people raising these concerns of misogyny and queerphobia.

This is the kind of shit people are talking about when they say the FE fandom has a lot of unexamined racism. Your first response to someone bringing up racism is to basically say "Okay, but the reputation of the White Girl PNG I Like is more important than your feelings about racist writing/handling of PoC characters. So it's not her fault, and even if it was, you're just a bigot so you're wrong"

And just, like, there's this implicit elevation of the struggles of (white) women and (white) queer folk as more important, valid, or worthy of being defended than the struggles of people marginalized on the basis of race. Let's not even get into the fact that many of the people raising these criticisms were queer women themselves, and it's entirely possible to be a queer woman and also be prejudiced (it happens ALL THE TIME. The queer community and the feminist movements have a LONG history of explicitly excluding people who are not white. E.g. the whitewashing of Stonewall and white feminists excising black feminists from the movement to try and make feminism "more palatable" to racist white men).

Not to mention the double standard here. They'll be so quick to call out racism if it's a character they don't like, but the second it's their fave? Crickets.

Hate to break it to you, but if you only care about pointing out potential racism when it involves a character you don't like, then you're not an ally. You're an opportunist leech co-opting the struggles of real people to win petty internet arguments.

Inb4 someone accuses me of having a double standard for the Dimitri/Dedue relationship, as if Dedue following Dimitri completely of his own free will because he cares about him and believes he can help rebuild Duscur is in any way comparable to Petra being a literal hostage who risks the annihilation of her entire country if she steps out of line (and she knows it). There's definitely racist elements to Dedue's writing (I've even talked about some of them) but specifically his relationship with Dimitri/Faerghus is NOTHING like Petra's with Edelgard/Adrestia.

[aroace-cat-lady]

so uhhhh ahhh long rant incoming sorry~

I'm sure you're aware of this whole Matty situation...

I just need to say that I cannot support Taylor after this, for me, this is absolutely where I draw the line. Personally, I believe that knowingly dating a bigot, a racist for example - this is someone who has unashamedly admitted to watching racist torture p**n, imagine how twisted you have to be to do such a thing - it automatically means that you are also racist, because, as per *my* definition of racism, racism doesn't have to be outright saying racial slurs and actively harassing poc, I definitely classify this indifference and condoning of bigotry as racism too. You *cannot* claim to be an activist and proceed to associate yourself with someone who is against everything you apparently stand for, unless it is of course, purely performative and somewhat for your own benefit. You cannot seriously claim you stand with people of colour, trans people, jewish people, muslims, every marginalised group basically, yet associate yourself with someone who clearly doesn't??

I understand some people are conflicted, I mean so was I for perhaps an hour after it was confirmed, it is hard when someone who you might idolise, who you believed would advocate for you is actually incredibly apathetic, and who has proven that countless times but especially this time, that they didn't truly mean what they claimed... But how can one not draw the line at bigotry? You can't just shrug it off by saying "I love her but this is wr-" that means nothing, you can't seriously call her out for something and say you love her in the same sentence, does that even count as holding her accountable? Equally bad are those who are "looking the other way" so you simply just don't want to hold her accountable and then be held accountable yourself for not doing so.

Additionally, if you're going to date a literal bigot, and you are aware of the colossal platform and influence you hold, why would you do it publicly- oh and with a fanbase obviously including the groups said bigot has openly discriminated against?

Unfortunately, the main responses I've seen to this situation are: swifties who idolise taylor to an unhealthy extent attempting to defend and condone even matty's actions, the performative activists who pretend they care but continue to talk about how much they adore her and basically just shrug it off, those who are fully aware its wrong and look the other way, and the literal minority who hold her accountable. Oh, said minority's feelings tend to be dismissed and invalidated and belittled by the former 3 groups. Oh, and also, said minority is primarily poc. hmmm.

Something particularly annoying that people are doing is attempting to making this about misogyny when it quite obviously isn't ("ofc you guys are blaming a woman for a man's actions"). I swear, I have seen not one person who has even implied that Taylor is to blame for Matty's actions. We are holding them both accountable because they are both shitty. Matty is unquestionably worse, but does that mean Taylor shouldn't be held accountable? Really? People saying this either... have zero understanding of the situation OR just don't want to hold her accountable and want to *out-woke* us or something and I think most of them are guilty of the latter

btw you don't have to comment on this or anything idk I'm just upset lrpekfos;rjdlgi

Oh I'm commenting don't worry about that

Just!!! Ugh!!!

I'm so. Outraged. And disgusted. He's just another privilege white guy who doesn't care at all about making fun or offending ppl that are different from him and that doesn't even try to understand or respect them. He's the worst brand of white bread out there.

And most white fans are being so awful about this. Oh you're just making it about yourself oh she's just not thinking oh he's not that bad oh I actually think he's becoming a better person because of her. Shut up. Shut up. Just shut the fuck up.

I really don't know how to feel about Taylor right now. Like, all I can think about now is how a lot of ppl have said for years she's racist cuz she has never toured on latam. How there's literally no explanation for that. And I ignore all of that cuz, dude, it's Taylor??? She's one of the few ppl that actually try.

But. Is she?? Cuz she isn't trying a lot right now. She apparently doesn't care. Sure, she stands for human rights and say Vote Blue!! and all that, but at the end she doesn't seem to think that being racist antisemitic islamophibic etcetc count as a red flag.

I just hate feeling like this. I've always respected and admired Taylor, but I really just can't respect her right now. But I don't seem able to pull away from her.

I mean, I literally love her songs so much I learned a second fucking language thanks to her. My relationship with my sister got a lot better because of her music. I've met incredible ppl because I started blogging about her.

I guess I'm so disappointed and kind of heartbroken right now. Like, I got this feeling of you didn't just betrayed me, you betrayed all of us and, worst of all, you betrayed yourself

It's just a lot.

[scrambled-meat]

definitely a compulsion. definitely a compulsion.

tw nsft, HELLA tmi, dysphoria and/or trauma related stuff, mentions of drugs/withdrawal

hypersexuality causes some WEIRD shit.

i dont know if i fully agree w this tweet, or many of the other replies, regardless of what gender/sex theyre coming from they feel... kinda like a mix between infantilizing, slut-shaming, and victim-blaming??? idk i guess since im a guy, esp since im a guy thats mostly straight, i shouldnt be allowed to talk abt this but... im a guy that was born n raised female n went thru a LOTTA shit, shit that made me hypersexual, so ig im somewhat qualified???

most of the replies 2 the original tweet show concern, which i think is fair, b/c if u come at this from an empathetic place... it jus feels kinda... off, for lack of better phrasing

yes, i think hypersexual behavior such as this should be approached w concern, b/c, yes, if this is a coping mechanism reaction due 2 sexual trauma (trust me ive been there), we should be concerned, but should approach the subject w compassion instead of hostility. also, yes, this could be more malicious, i.e. a human trafficking situation, which is not only scarily a possibilty, but should also be approached w caution b/c if this IS the case we need 2 be super careful in order 2 assure the safety of the victim.

However

it is entirely possible that shes NOT being held against her will, n decided 2 do this on her own accord.

sure, if thats the case, it could absolutely be a trauma response - a coping mechanism of sorts, as a result of hypersexuality. is that smth to be concerned abt? absolutely!!--if its genuinely unhealthy.

which could very much be the case.

but maybe she genuinely wants to do this?? why are we infantilizing grown ass women, creating possibly false narratives for them, trying to defend them on their own behalf w/o reason 2 do so other than wanting 2 feel like a white knight??

if a cis gay guy did this, even if it was CONFIRMED that he primarily did this as a trauma response, would we have this same kind of reaction?

ppl jus wanna paint those born female as having no sort of agency or bodily autonomy. i think thats a big problem.

ppl are right to be concerned. but it seems like even other cis women claiming 2 be concerned are coming at this lady in a very shaming n victim-blaming way.

it CAN be a compulsion.

getting 2 the tmi part... it absolutely CAN be a compulsion. i dont personally understand that compulsion being vaginal, but im not everyone. hell, im not even close. maybe it IS for some people.

when i was coming off methadone, i reverted back to a state like a traumatized little girl. all i did was masturbate, b/c thats all i could think to do.

i felt awful. withdrawals were so bad i wanted to kill myself. but at one point, despite being scared of my own body, i started masturbating. thats the only thing not drug related that i could think to do that felt good.

so i did. again. and again. and again.

so many times in a row that i lost count after 30. it didnt even feel good anymore. it was just compulsive and i couldnt stop.

it wasnt "hot." it wasnt "sexy." it was scary. i literally couldnt stop myself. i only stopped because i was quite literally rubbing myself raw.

it CAN be a compulsion. and if thats the case, we need to be compassionate, not accusatory.

[lucienne-thee-librarian]

Jsyk I adore all of you and I'm glad what I was trying to say was coherent, and I'm not the only one annoyed by this lol

NOW in the interest of being fair I did dig a little into this; and the source seems to be Not My Fault, a song that wasn't in the main movie but as a bonus track, released with a separate music video. It plays over the credits. Among the lyrics are "Get her number, get her name, Get a good thing while you can Kiss a blonde (kiss a blonde), kiss a friend (okay) can a gay girl get an, "Amen?"

So that's not in the movie, nothing official, HOWEVER. I'm only defending them so much cause cmon. The marketing team and people who helped put this song together absolutely knew what the hell they were doing having the actress who played Regina singing a song with these lyrics as promo for the movie. They knew they'd get this sort of reaction.

And for the record, not really trying to trash Megan Thee Stallion or Renée Rapp here. I've said it before and I'll say it again: minus very limited and specific exceptions, I don't believe in holding actors (and guest star singers) personally and primarily responsible for EVERYthing surrounding the decision-making of a movie whose script and direction they usually have limited or no control over. Also to complicate things, it's not just necessarily The Straights At It Again...I know Megan is bisexual, and I have no idea what Renée has going on...but I'm not about to judge a stranger based on assumptions about her identity if I can help it. That's not a good road to go down, we've had numerous examples of why.

So yeah, not quite as bad as I thought but I still find it annoying that this theory is basically part of the Lore now, and the marketing team absolutely intended for people to notice and start buzzing about it. My original beef does still basically stand although it's primarily with the fans, still, for lighting up for this idea ages ago. Not trying to rain on anyone's parade but, as said before, can't relate!!!:))

Idk what I'm trying to say, this is super personal opinion and whatever...but to me that fan theory looks less progressive imo, on this particular point than a mainstream Hollywood movie made in 2004 and I will still find it frustrating. (TWO THOUSAND AND FOUR. OH GOD MEAN GIRLS IS 20 YEARS OLD NOW. TWENTY. As if it didn't feel like I'm in enough "old man yells at cloud" mode over this...)

God, at least the original movie was TRYING to make a statement that Homophobic Bullying is BAD and has a real effect on people, and it was part of the whole thesis on how girls enforce societal standards of femininity on each other to get ahead and sometimes just because that's what everyone else is doing.

(I will say, I will give the 2024 movie credit for not solely casting all the main roles with white actors, hopefully that's a good sign this remake is better on the racism front than the OG Mean Girls was. But that's a separate conversation and not really the point of this post.)

Tw: lesbophobia, bullying, petty bitching about the Mean Girls remake and a subset of OG movie fans:

I Know. I KNOW its a me thing. But I saw a post that broke containment about the new Mean Girls movie how OMG REGINA CANONICALLY SINGS ABOUT GETTING GIRLS IN THE END SONG and my first response was "oh god, really?"

Look, I was never wild about the whole "Regina George was secretly closeted and that's why she picked on Janis to distract from her own feelings and save herself" fan theory but at least it was JUST a fan theory. And I know the original movie ending where it turns out Janis isn't even really gay, she was Lebanese and Regina got confused, and see she dances with a boy at the end, it's all okay she wasn't ACTUALLY a dyke!!!! - yeah I rolled my eyes too. Yeah, that was dumb and a coward's move, but idk. At least the movie itself, even if it copped out at the end by not risking having two of the protagonists be ACTUALLY gay in a teen movie...at least it seems aware that homophobic bullying is bad??

The original movie, whatever else you can say about it, or how it handled that issue or any others...at least tried to take that shit seriously. Janis was an outcast years after middle school who flinches at the idea of Damian telling anyone new about what Regina said about her for fear any new friends would abandon her immediately over it. Even Regina herself (blithely, callously, of course, but it's meant to be that) admits that the bullying Janis got as a result of Regina spreading those rumors about her made Janis break down, cut her hair and have to leave school temporarily over the rumors. Regina said that. Herself. With no remorse but she said it. The movie is a comedy, but it doesn't shy away from how brutal bullying of all forms can be. That's kind of the whole point of the goddamn movie.

But idk if the fans of this theory haven't experienced that much bullying themselves or its just a coping mechanism I can't relate to...that theory of "oh Regina's a closet case homophobe poor thing" just completely (to me) softens the whole thing, these fans do it to by making Regina in a sense, another victim. They may not intend it that way, but in the few times I've seen a Mean Girls post and my nostalgia got me scrolling a bit I've stumbled on this. Seen it in various places online and it always made me want to hiss like a wet cat because it's always like "omg poor Regina comphet sucks <333" and. Hork. Im sorry, hork.

Sorry, but I spent too much time BEING on the receiving end of that shit in middle school, getting called names and treated like an actual disease up until I moved to high school with mostly a whole new set of people over the fact someone spread rumors I was a lesbian, to feel anything but frustration over that. Yeah. I was Janis. I'll admit I can't be "objective" here. I never did any of the shit she does in Mean Girls in revenge, I never had the power or inclination, it wasn't a former friend who started it, but yeah I'm biased because that character was me. I know what it was like to be her because I lived it. And yeah, it kind of sucked!!! Did get better, but yeah. Was what it was.

It's a big part of why I've never liked the trope in popular culture that the loudest homophobic bullies are actually closet cases. It's not that "right wing politician caught soliciting blowjobs" has never been a headline but come on. Most of the people who trash queer people do it because they just hate us. Its trivializing of homophobic harassment to act like that's 1) a good explanation for most cases 2) much less an excuse and that's how it can be used. It'd be one thing if a self-hating person's mindset was like. Actually explored with depth and nuance as part of a story. But otherwise, nah. Miss my formerly lowkey traumatized teenage ass with that dismissive cliched shit.

So even the idea that the movie might be lending any kind of weight to that theory about Regina, however subtle or subtextual, that is??? Yeah funny lol, such iconic, very Representation. Fucking bite me. My lesbian ass is tuning right the fuck out. I'm not paying movie ticket prices to see this, if I'm gonna basically get the sort of person who would've made my life hell as a preteen and tween get turned into One Of Us with the expectation that's going to make me freak out with joy. Even if allegedly they did actually make Janis a lesbian (which, good for them if they did).

Of course, it could just be fans blowing something out of proportion but. Like y'all are not making me want to see this movie MORE and I was at best lukewarm on it having never seen the musical and being lowkey burnt out on the idea of yet another remake.

[lulugeorge]

idk if i’m the only one who feels this way, but i don’t like the way the writers are currently handling the ‘Ava vs Mailin, performative activism’ plot.

tl;dr - the writers are trying to dismantle a few stereotypes surrounding black women (ava) and teach a pertinent lesson regarding performative activism and being a good ally, but are failing to properly connect it to the target, white women, because they further enforce these harmful stereotypes through not-so-great writing.

if we start at the beginning, the main premise is that ava wants mailin to educate herself and not come to her to ask her about racism. this would be fine (great, even for the non-black fans who want to be better allies), except for the fact that the show has also told us that mailin has been reading and educating herself, and ava still has an issue with her. we do still have around two episodes left of the season, so maybe this can be better explained via COMMUNICATION, but  mailin has done what ava wanted her to do - educate herself more on racism and not come to the only black person she knows for racism education - and ava is still unhappy with her.

this paints ava as unreasonable and having some sort of problem with mailin trying to be an ally, and this feeds into the already existing idea that black people are expecting too much from non-blacks when we tell them how to treat allyship. obviously, this shows in the primarily white female audience for druck and all other skam remakes. ava hasn’t properly communicated why she feels how she feels TO mailin, so white fans think she’s unreasonable, selfish, self-centered etc. ESPECIALLY because fatou isn’t shown to be affected by mailin’s allyship in the same way that ava has, it looks like ava is simply annoyed at petty things and she has a personal issue with mailin, rather than an issue with her performative activism.

my second gripe is that it’s obvious that they’re trying to dismantle the ‘strong black woman’ trope - ava is supposed to be a sort of mother to the group who puts everyone’s problems on her shoulders and deals with her own all the time. except ... they haven’t written her that way at all. she’s responsible, of course. she takes charge of the abi instagram account and merch, the flatshare, she tells the group BOTH TIMES that mailin suggests they do something risky (the camping trip and the cheating plan) that it isn’t a good idea and that she doesn’t want them all to get in trouble. but in terms of emotional burden, she’s shown to be a lot less considerate than other characters when the mains are having issues and they haven’t communicated anything. season 5, she was frustrated with nora for messing up the merch reveal and being generally distant. and now, she’s angry at fatou for messing up the inventory and being generally unreliable. it’s clear she favours being dependable and loyal, but she rarely takes what people are going through into account, and has been portrayed as angry, bitter  and a bad friend at basically every point. on the other hand, they’ve shown mailin, a character currently in conflict with ava, to be considerate and empathetic towards both main characters when they are facing hardship, being the only one to see when something is going on with them, and defends them when she knows so.

now, who do you think the majority white woman audience, who mailin is supposed to be emblematising, are going to side with? ava, the unreasonable, unsympathetic, bitter girl who supposedly cares about everyone but never shows it? or mailin, the misguided but well-intentioned, considerate girl who’s a good friend and always has others’ backs?

to conclude, ava’s character as a whole hasn’t been handled very well, especially if the writers are using her to teach white viewers how their performative activism comes off and affects us, and if they’re trying to show a non-stereotypical portrayal of a black girl. it’s important that these things are tackled, especially now that many non-black youth want to be good allies to the black community. but if/when we get ava’s season, i really and truly hope there are several black (especially DARK SKIN) women in the writers room, because it’s clear the stereotypes that specifically surround dsbw are only being perpetuated more.

[ballplayersxo]

About Lebron being colorist I agree and disagree cause all of his alleged sides are always none-black allegedly, but I do believe he finds his wife beautiful and has her on a pedestal even if they do divorce in the future he'll definitely not marry again, he seems like he'll date women a lot younger than him for sure!! A lot of people we're defending Bronny after that tiktok ikkyk saying he grew up in white neighborhoods and went too a private schools with mostly white and none-black women like whatever that's not an excuse at the end of the day he'll date who he wants whether it's someone black(dark/brown) or none-black 😶

yeah idk if i’d call lebron colorist either tbh but bronny is another situation. at the end of the day he can do what he wants and i don’t really care but i don’t wanna hear nothing about how black people can’t build generational wealth (ik it’s primarily because of racism but that’s not the point) when we can’t even keep our wealth in black hands for more than 3 generations. it is what it is tho

[norgestan]

crisana, norandro, jorgeva and amira x dani

ha, anon just wanted all the canon couples. fair enough!

CRISANA:

see, skam s3 is my favorite season of all time, but it has never been because of the love story. isak's story hits in a lot of sensitive places for me, and isak was also the first main character i encountered that was my age. i have a really special connection to him for that reason. on the other hand... i enjoy evak for what it is, but i never saw a future for their relationship after the season ended. in a lot of ways, isak's season ended just as their relationship started, a trope that i've never liked because how am i supposed to think that they will last? how am i supposed to know how they will work as a couple? it's just, ugh.

i had similar thoughts about crisana when i watched s2, except that the love confession scene and cris as a character made it even harder to get into the couple. moreover, the way people brush other characters' roles and presence on other seasons because they're so caught up on cris and joana is like... blegh. like it makes me forget that they're actually a well-written couple at times. because imo, og they never did anything really interesting with evak once they got together. but eskam........ oh, dear eskam.

there's something so beautiful about thinking of all the girls, the teenagers that will grow up watching a relationship like theirs on popular media. their entire subplot (??? can i even call it that) in s4 is proof of how GREAT of a relationship they turned out to be. like, i just wanna SCREAM thinking about it because, how is it possible that eskam saw evak and said "we're gonna make this SO good and we'll take our time and then tie it up in an incredibly satisfying and emotional way" and then did exactly that!!!!!! the way they respect each other, communicate, genuinely try to get to each other without dumb miscommunication. the way they understand each other and lift each other up! the way joana knew how to recognize cris' intelligence when everyone was telling her she's dumb, the way cris knows how to make joana feel worth it and show her affection in such a selfless, loving way. their last scene on joana's pov in s4 was the first time i cried during that season, just because it was all wrapped up so beautifully. because eskam understood that although the appeal of their relationship comes from the soulmate status of every evak couple, they had to also put in serious work to make it all work and they also managed to get that across with grounded drama, and also a hopeful message for people struggling with mental disorders. like AAAAAAAAAAAAA god what a great couple they are. maybe i'm too much of an eskam bootlicker but they're genuinely the best evak there is. i'll die on this hill. i'm so happy young wlw get to watch them as a guideline of what they should expect of a relationship.

NORANDRO: already done :)

JORGEVA:

i mean... it's eskam's fault, without a doubt. i love what eskam did with them in s1: the change of pacing, the way they created jorge, the little story changes to make it more nuanced, i think come together in a pretty satisfying way to show a teenage romance with no real support to last for more than a while. i don’t think eskam fully got the gist of what jonas was supposed to be, but it’s for the better if we think of the message in season 1. for that reason, jorge is like the one jonas who i really wouldn’t mind coming back to his eva. so why don’t i like them?

the answer is simply that i don’t enjoy their trope and i don’t think eskam made a real case of eva and jorge getting back together. they work well as friends, sure, and it’s clear as day that jorge still has feelings for eva, sure. but like, what tells me that they’re just ready to go all in again? eva goes through a really great arc and i would definitely agree she’s in a good place to be in a relationship again, but we know NOTHING about jorge’s journey. he’s just, silently pining on eva and that’s it. i do think it’s sweet and the hints of their lost romance throughout the show are wholesome, but there’s just nothing more to it. jorge and eva work AMAZINGLY as friends! i don’t see why they should push a romantic endgame for them. in my head, eva kissing jorge at that party was just a mesh of the excitement of a new era, the nostalgia of ending highschool, the high of being on this place with someone she really cares about, stuff like that, but it just ends there, and it’s great that way. nothing about eva’s character really led to her aching to be in a relationship again, and for me it feels right to end things with her being single and surrounded by great friends.

MAYBE if eskam had devoted some time showing us their progress and romantic potential instead of trying to convince us that kasim was a real, compelling character. maybe. lol.

DAMIRA:

(god, i don’t know how long this will be LOL)

i have. so many thought about this fucking pairing. let’s see what we can do LOL. the thing about damira is that i don’t think it’s a pairing that eskam had in mind when they laid out the first two seasons. the little hints of a friendship/childhood crush that happened during cris’ season really got the fandom and they quickly became the most popular non-canon ship in the show, so that’s where i think eskam said “okay, let’s run with this”. but it’s just...... meh. like i can tell that relationships like crisana were carefully crafted (well implemented in nora’s season, greatly wrapped up in amira’s season) but i cannot say the same for dani and amira. it’s almost like virihugo, where they just started giving each other Eyes on the middle of season 3, out of NOWHERE. it just feels forced to me and so i never really felt anything for the couple in question... like, for starters, i think nora and miquel were WAY more shippable than those two, strictly talking about their setup.

if you ever saw any of my posts during s4 then you should know how i actually feel about how they developed their romance (check my anti damira tag for more?) and i don’t wanna go through all those specific points again... but damira is not only an infuriating romance, but also a bad pairing in a narrative setting. like, damira clearly exists to answer amira’s questions about how would the future of a romance with a white guy would be, right? does she get an answer? no she fucking doesn’t, their final clip is like “after all these weeks, we still have no idea so we’re gonna cut things short, go back to our initial dynamic, and wait to see if amira any of us change our minds <3″. so like, even in that sense damira is a HUGE waste of time, and just like everything that happens to amira during her season it has no lasting impacts on her character or her settings.

and personally, i love couples where they’re both equal, and communicate at last, and both make great efforts to change so the relationship can flourish. this is why i offer so much praise to norandro and crisana, where in the first couple both character go through tremendous character growth and work through their problems individually before getting together, and in the second couple they show them clashing and fighting just to display their resolutions and show how willing they are to actually talk to each other and keep their relationship stable. dani and amira, on the other hand.... blegh. eskam wants me to think dani is a knight in shining armor for liking amira but that’s all he ever does. he doesn’t defend her in front of his friends, he doesn’t make efforts to get to know her and her world, he doesn’t communicate his real feelings to her, and the one time he did he humiliated her in public. like, idk, like, even MIQUEL explicitly defended nora when his roommates berated her for not drinking alcohol LOL.

at the end of the day the problem with damira is that it completely misses the point of yousana and its target audience. making yousef a white guy is not necessarily a bad choice if you implement it well (which eskam didn’t do btw), but you have to take into account that sana’s season exists to make a primarily white christian-raised audience relate and stand up for the muslim characters in the show. when the lazier partner of the main couple who makes zero efforts to work on the relationship happens to be white, it just means people will be sympathetic of him, and nor amira - and that’s exactly what happened in the show. people either thought amira was being too harsh by laying conditions for dani before they even began dating and making sure he respected her boundaries, or just wanted all the drama to go away soon so amira could kiss dani by the end of the season. so like, yeah. terrible stuff.

i would’ve liked damira’s impact on the season and amira’s journey a lot more if it had been about a one sided childhood crush from amira’s part. i thought their friendship was charming up to s3, and i simply hate that dani is literally in no way an older brother figure for the girl squad, since it’s a dynamic that’s lacking in the show and it would be a nice way to make dani be some sort of non-creepy eskild for the girl squad (but noooo, his only interactions w the gs are hooking up with eva and dating amira. smh). it would’ve been fun to have amira intimately dealing with those feelings just to learn a lesson by the end of it, at the time that she also falls for her muslim love interest - which is actually the isak/jonas/even dynamic when you think about it, also something that eskam didn’t really do with cris’ season. but also, all of this would mean that eskam had to do the good writing thing for s4, which they kinda forgot to do throughout the entirety of the season so, yeah.

[wc-confessions]

re: WC misogyny

This is solely to get my thoughts out abt this bc I’m probably not gonna be able to articulate this to the best of my ability but I feel like it’s incredibly important to say that these books are pretty damn misogynistic and so was the fanbase for the longest time.

Not saying that to be "throwing the word around without knowing what the word means", because misogyny is defined as a dislike/contempt against women. This can also absolutely be an unconscious bias (which is primarily what I see anyway!) I've seen far more people dismiss these characters while holding up male ones that do similar/worse things (i.e. Thistleclaw primarily but a lot of the MV characters to an extent)

The reason why discussion about sexism usually ends up against cats like Mapleshade, Squirrelflight, Frecklewish, and Nightcloud is primarily due to how the universe of the books is written to chastise these characters while their male counterparts go thru barely half of the shit thrown onto the girls.

Mapleshade gets her kids and herself exiled for breaking the code while Appledusk literally gets a slap on the wrist for breaking the same code she did? The Riverclan leader just tells him "well, you'll not do it again so you don't need to be punished" while Mapleshade doesn't even get to bury her kits. Even if she's the Warrior Cats evil woman that's still really fucked up!? And this goes to Frecklewish as well, who does not watch them drown oh my god. The flood that kills Maple's kits is incredibly loud--saying Freckle would have been able to do anything else OTHER than watch dismisses the fact going to the flooded stones was an idea doomed to fail (of which Mapleshade has a lot of in MV specifically.)

Frecklewish absolutely ended up in the Dark Forest over Oakstar or Ravenwing (who both condemned the kittens to their fate instead of?? idk punishing Maple and not the kits who didn't even know they were half clan?) because of the way the fandom perceived her at the time. Freckle's a lot like Squirrelflight where fandom opinion only recently shifted to people defending those characters--she's pretty awful for calling the same kits she doted on half-clan creatures! But I don't think she deserved to go to cat hell forever when the cat who actually caused those kittens to end up dead (and every other cat in MV!) ends up in Starclan without even so much of a trial.

Speaking of trials--Squirrelflight and Leafpool literally end up almost being sent to CAT HELL for following Starclan's orders. Leafpool ends up having forbidden kits but Starclan goes "it's okay!" until it isn't. Brambleclaw almost being involved in Firestar's fox trap murder never gets mentioned or brought up while both of the girls are questioned about if they even belong in Starclan because they "broke the code and lied"?? There's a pretty damn big bias towards the toms for doing bad/worse actions but Bramble never went to Starclan and had his ticket for heaven almost revoked. Oakstar didn't get put in the Dark Forest because he exiled 3 innocent kits.

I think it's important to note the fandom has a lot of say over how characters like these get interpreted (which is why Nightcloud ended up being hated a lot despite the fact Crowfeather is just. actually abusive to Breezepelt.) That's why I brought up unconscious biases, because I think generally a lot of WC content creators tend to stick to presenting the stories in a more radical/black and white way.

I think the discussion really should be that the books and the stories ARE pretty misogynistic but unconsciously so? A lot of the story beats I mentioned weren't written by just one person, and the Erins have different opinions on these cats than the fans do. That's not me stating an opinion, that's just me saying recognizing that it's very male-oriented IS an issue these books have.

Anyways this got way too wordy, Ashfur is one of my favorite villains so I don't even know why I typed all of this up /j.

[colorisbyshe]

oh and btw, help a fellow bi agender over here and rec me some youtubers/podcast/content lol that isn't crap

Podcasts: citations needed and i will say the dollop WITH the caveat that you need to understand the main dude involved is an anti-cop, anti-bigotry leftist but just... like if a historical piece he’s covering uses a slur, he’ll just fucking say it. he’s an older white dude so i won’t defend it but if you want history/modern commentary he’s pretty good at looking from a critical leftist lens.

book/reading podcasts: the stacks, reading glasses (they’re a bit... liberal but pretty good at inclusive recommendations)

triple click is a decent video game podcast that’s critical of industry practices and pretty inclusive but i think (not positive) everyone involved is white

i’m actually looking for more podcasts that aren’t just all/primarily white people so if anyone has recommendations for politics, video games (ps4/switch not pc/xbox if there’s a main focus), books, or i guessssss media like tv/film or more general stuff. no more true crime!!!

Youtubers:

News: Sxephil. Again, caveat that he’s pretty straightforwardly a white liberal who has grown a LOT as a person over the last decade in terms of politics and like... respecting people (so like anyone issuing a call out for him pre 2018 would probably be absolutely correct to do so) but if you want zippy, daily news that is fairly thoroughly fact checked (and will be correcter immediately) and involves heavier and lighter fare within 5-20 minutes... he’s decent. He’s good at keeping you up to date. I’m actually looking for other daily news people.

Booktube: Mina Reads. She mostly does romance novels and dabbles in scifi/fantasy at times, she’ll never have a hot take that pisses you off. Or at least hasn’t so far.

iilluminaughtii is an anti-mlm youtuber who tends to be informative and hasn’t said anything to piss me off yet

Caitlin Doughty is friends with Lindsay Ellis but that never comes up in her videos and she does a lot on death positivity--so like death rituals throughout history, understanding how dead bodies are handled during covid, suggesting green alternatives to normal burials, and she also does nice historic retellings of shit like the donner party

MelinaPendulum is ALSO friends with Lindsay, I’m pretty sure, and has some takes I do not like (like she’s friends with Reylos and I just... don’t like her takes on shipping in general) but she has really good media breakdowns and her perspective is always interesting to here, even when you disagree with it (like she did some weird in defense of Steven Universe-esque video that I didn’t agree with but enjoyed the perspective on). She’s good at calling out racism and misogyny and has her masters I think so like... she knows what she’s talking about.

This has literally nothing to do with anything but Flashbush Cats is a cat rescue youtube channel and if you wanna happy cry or learn how to get into fostering/TNR... they’re great

i’m looking for new anime review youtubers i watch mother’s basement but that’s just like one dude and... he’s fine. but i���d rather... not just have a dude telling me about anime? Get in the Robot does anime videos but I barely bother keeping up with them cause I don’t like their video format but maybe you’d like them

Renegade Cut has decent media analysis videos and is good at covering broader topics like capitalism in film or maybe how a single franchise desals with a theme like mental illness

“Babish Culinary Universe” has a Sohla cooking series if you liked her from bon appetit but no longer like bon appetit

Folding Ideas and  hmbomberguy are like quintessential “I hate everyone you hang out with but your videos are decent deep dives into media topics I never would have thought of.” Jack Saint is on a similar white guy has some spicy takes thread. Pop Culture Detective too.

If you want to recover from the white manliness of that bit, For Harriet provides amazing perspective on everything from politics to antiblack racism and how that intersects with misogyny to movie reviews with the same lens. She responds to a lot of stuff currently happening, whether it be the election or netflix movies like Cuties.

If you liked Cracked, Some More News has a lot of people from that with great leftist perspectives criticizing current events as they’re happening

Need to assert that for most of these, I do not follow them on other social media or watch all of their videos. I do not sign on to anything and everything they’v’e said, I’ve just had generally positive experiences with them. Most of them have flaws.

That said--I want more youtubers. Good topics: media analysis, anime reviews/deep dives, responses to current events, video game break downs, or idk... just video essays on random shit like I just watcched an entire video on how hyperpop might be the future of music by MicTheSnare

[yaz-the-spaz]

Hi ! I really want to know about the bullying happened to Liam? I’ve been listening to Zayn’s MOM and some lyric (know what you’ve been through etc) remind me of this.... I just thought it would really help me understand Ziam’s relationship better? Also if you know anything about Zayn’s early life I would die to know! Thanks! Hope it’s not too much to ask(btw I watched the videos that Liam’s high school girlfriend Shannon posted in 2010, he was so cute, that kind of triggered me to know more too

hey nonnie, i don’t really have much concrete information on this unfortunately other than what little liam’s shared himself. i’m not sure how much of that you’ve seen though so this may or may not be new info for you at all but i guess i’ll just sum up what i can remember of what he’s said which is pretty much just general stuff: 

he was bullied in school as a teen (not sure about before his teen years but it also wouldn’t surprise me) and didn’t have really have many close friends...there’s possibly also a point where he didn’t have any just based on what’s known about his 16th birthday which is that literally not a single person showed up after he invited (i think??) his whole class or at least a good portion of it and his family went all out with getting a big fancy cake and lots of decorations and i think even rented out a little venue space or something like that to host the party and it just ended up being the 5 of them...i can’t seem to find it at the moment but there’s a pic of him somewhere where he’s literally just sitting there at the table all by himself with this big cake (that was obviously meant for way more than 5 people) and it’s absolutely heart-breaking. idk if you’ve seen any of the backstory of sophiam but supposedly there was a girl in high school that liam really liked and he tried a few times to ask her out and every time she turned him down. sophia is rumored to be that girl (though how true that is, or how much it was just a convenient way to sell the narrative of them as some sort of super messed-up version of high school sweethearts i ofc have no real idea). but anyway that, combined with kind of off-hand comments i feel like i remember him making along the lines of being sort of unlucky in love growing up, i think also says a lot of how he was treated and perceived in school. there’s also the fact that at one point the bullying got so bad his dad enrolled him in boxing as a way to help boost his self-esteem and help him feel more confident about defending and sticking up for himself. and after he went on txf in 2008 things only got worse cause, despite whatever brief fame/notoriety and positive-ish attention he might have gotten shortly following his run on the show, after about a year or so of things with his music career not really progressing (and people around town recognizing him and noticing that he hadn’t “done” anything else or really “gone anywhere” in his career) he started getting publicly ridiculed. random people would literally yell cruel stuff at him in the street or in fast food restaurants about him basically being a has-been and stuff like that...

as for zayn i don’t really know much of his early life either other than little bit i’ve shared that i recall seeing. i know it was circulated that he was out as bi as young as 15/16 and that ppl from his school and from the bradford area (esp the areas close to his neighborhood) knew. he was also bullied in his early years (more around elementary school/primary school age) b/c his school at the time was primarily full of white and kids apparently they would literally call him “funny-looking” and stuff like that and make fun of him for being brown and muslim, but he eventually switched schools and things got a lot better. that’s about all i know for him though

[rotationalsymmetry]

Or, to put it another way: do you really think no basically good people (well-intentioned people) become cops? Or ABA therapists? Or ...whatever?

It’s important to shift from seeing harm as being caused primarily by bad individuals, to seeing harm being primarily caused by systems. Not cops, police forces. Not men, patriarchy. Not soldiers, war.

Sure, the goodness or cruelty of an individual can make a difference. But ACAB doesn’t mean that everyone who joins the police force happens to be an asshole, like, personally, and that’s why a police force is a problem. It means that people who join the police force and aren’t assholes, have to act like assholes. Or are pressured into covering for assholes. Or are forced out if they’re not willing to accept a certain amount of assholery. Bad systems, more than bad individuals.

So, snark aside, all seriousness: Toph could be a cop.

Not for the reasons I gave in the other post.

But because...

Because we live in a society, OK?

Because there’s no reason it would be obvious to her that having a police force is bad, any more than it was obvious to Season 1 Zuko, who had been raised in the Fire Nation, that Fire Nation imperialism was bad.

And it’s not wrong to just...rewrite canon so ther Toph doesn’t become the chief of Republic City’s police force. Flat out refusing to engage with copaganda is pretty reasonable. But...

Saying it’s because Toph would never do that. Because there’s just something about Toph’s character that would cause her to know that, what, that a police force could be a little too much like the Dai Li? That a police force in a world without white people would somehow be, like the US police force, based on propping up white supremacy? I don’t think that’s an accurate interpretation of Toph’s character. But if it is, it needs explanation, not just asserting it.

Or maybe it doesn’t. Idk. But. This is how I like to engage with fandom? Like Sokka. Taking things apart — characters apart, settings apart, symbolism apart — to see how they work.

(And it’s how I prefer to engage with social justice issues as well — which has some pluses and minuses, and I’ve learned that logic isn’t a substitute for listening to people’s lived experiences.)

Toph wouldn’t become a cop? OK, why. What do we know about Toph’s character that indicates that. What do we know about the police that indicates that. Defend your position. Take the pieces apart and see how they work.

“There’s no reason for Republic City to have a police force at all, unless it’s about propping up a system of inequality (such as continued Fire Nation hegemony, or perhaps a system that privileges benders in a way that goes beyond what was shown in the show)” or “they had a chance to depict the Republic City police force as having evolved from the Dai Li and having many of the same problems, and that would have been way better than what they actually did with it” is a much better critique than “Toph wouldn’t have been a cop.”

So is “Republic City only has a police force because it’s modeled on the US, and why would you do that?”

[dkettchen]

Today we’re having our first Ally Book Club! This fortnight we watched Disclosure (2020), the new documentary about trans representation in Hollywood starring Laverne Cox, among many others.

I’ll ask you all to focus primarily on the black trans representation discussed (and other links between how trans/gender diverse people as well as black people were othered since the dawn of cinema f.e.) rather than the trans aspects primarily, as we are focused on black lives matter and anti-racism at the moment. (And also cause I’m trans and nonbinary and I had a lot of feelings abt that whole aspect of it and this is not the place to discuss that (this is for allyship only and I will not be an educator about my own stuff today), I already made a post about that if any fellow nonbinaries would like to go vent about it over there lol) However if you are cis and would also like to share some trans stuff you learnt, you are welcome to ;)

This post is a space to share what you learnt from the media we watch, stuff it’s made you think about, and any progress you feel you’ve made in your own personal allyship journey following it. 

It is meant to be a positive space for allies to support each other in their learning, so trolling, harassment, hate/discriminatory behaviour (related to our subject’s group(s) or otherwise) or shaming will not be tolerated. (Read: I am not afraid to ban anyone from my blog who doesn’t follow these rules)  This doesn’t mean you can’t discuss the demons and biases you’re fighting with on this journey, it merely means ‘don’t be a dick about it.’ I know it’s the internet, but there’s other ppl with feelings and deserving of empathy behind those screennames and this is an exercise in empathy to begin with, so be a decent human being, please. (This also goes for the defenders of the innocent out there, there’s two sides to any argument gotten out of hand.) We’re here to encourage and learn, not to argue and alienate.

I’ll go first! 

The thing with documentaries (and video essays (I would know lol)) is they love to present themselves as factual and unbiased, when, really, anything is biased always. And in a society where they’re usually made by the people with privilege/the majority, it’s always the same status quo POV and we stop questionning it at some point, until a documentary made by disadvantaged/minority voices comes along and scews it in a new direction that we’re not used to.

Because I was paying Extra Attention to the black representation, and because I work in several London trans spaces, I noticed the disparity between numbers of black trans folks I saw on screen vs the ones I know irl (not as many as there were in this doc), and like- my numbers might be scewed by my own experience too, ya know, I prolly know less trans POC than a trans POC would, just like I prolly know more nonbinaries than a trans binary would (also idk what differences in ethnicity groups’ percentages there are between the US & UK population in the first place). But because the documentary presented itself as talking about representation in media at large, I was expecting a similar lack of black voices that I know happens irl in a lot of the world and that I know happens in media, and like- they talked about the lack of representation, but at the same time, they made sure to HAVE representation in their actual film.

I already think way too much about representation in media in general, but basically there’s a few different schools of thought on how you can approach it in any given media: 

-you can represent reality by representing the percentages of different groups among the population, so f.e. in this case you would try and match the percentage of POC and binaries/nonbinaries in the real life trans community to represent it (the BFI’s current diversity goals follow this principle f.e.). In practice though, this tends to lend itself to tokenism and ultimately minorities still end up with less or lesser-quality rep than the majorities, because we are minorities.

-alternatively you can represent reality by the clusters that happen irl. People of a given minority group tend to flock together so if you have one of them it’s highly likely that there’ll be more of the same group in their immediate social circle, so representing a bunch of them together makes sense and accurately represents reality. 

The issue my brain ran into here was that I was expecting the former and it ended up being the latter. Representing the way trans people are portrayed in Hollywood would’ve implied the population overview approach, but Laverne (as one of the producers) and the bunch, instead of kind of- rehashing the depressing statistical reality of how little rep trans people of colour get, they focused on their own experience as trans people of colour, and how they experience representation, whether it’s black rep or otherwise. They left out a lot of white trans rep that is around, because it’s not much different from the examples they used (you can have an argument about also leaving out a lot of what little nonbinary and other genderqueer rep we have in the process, and the unexplored stereotypes associated with that rather than trans binaries, as well as the generational thing where The Youth today prolly would pick different examples of media that impacted them, but still). It is very interesting and refreshing to see a format that is usually very white-cishet-normatively scewed instead being scewed toward the experience of a middle-aged black trans woman. (wow I didn’t know she was in her 40s, I thought she was like a good 10 years younger, good on you Laverne (@cis ppl: yes, even me, who literally works with trans ppl can’t fucking tell what age anyone is, it’s like a 20 year gap of a guess usually x’D))

Please write your own thoughts & stuff you learnt from the doc in the replies! (note: you don’t all have to write half an essay like this lol)  Be nice to one another, my banning hammer and I will check in on the responses later :P

Last post <<<>>> Next post

The next piece of media we’ll watch is the first season (or as many episodes you can manage, but we’ll suppose the whole first season so spoiler alert! :)) of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, a fun cartoon show with an all-POC (and mostly black) main cast (characters as well as their voice actors)!

[taegdcl1018]

3 Billion Dollars [Part 22] - G Dragon Mafia!AU

Summary: When your father owes 3 billion dollars to the mafia, he must repay his debt. Although things don’t exactly go the way he hoped.

Genre: Fluff?? Drama??

Warnings: Swearing, but like also prepare to get wrecked??

{part 1} {part 2} {part 3} {part 4} {part 5} {part 6} {part 7} {part 8} {part 9}{part 10} {part 11} {part 12} {part 13} {part 14} {part 15} {part 16} {part 17}{part 18} {part 19} {part 20} {part 21} {part 22} {part 23}

Masterlist

A/N: It’s the beginning of the end. Get ready. I kinda like this one?? Idk. Low key thinking about redoing some stuff but idk. It’s shorter than some chapters, bearly hit a thousand words with this one. I hope you like it, I have more stuff to post later. Please give me feedback, I really want to know.

~ Admin Brooklyn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The conference room was once again filled, all the seats taken up by important personal. Ji Yong sat at the head of the long table, leaning back into his throne-like chair. Youngbae and the eldest Seunghyun were to his left, leaving Daesung and the maknae to his right. Everyone looked towards Ji Yong, waiting for him to speak.

“It’s time we attack Flynn,” Ji Yong stated. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. “And it’s gonna end with him dead.”

Chaelin felt a small smirk creeping onto her face, enjoying Ji Yong’s dramatic antics. The room was silent for a bit, everybody sharing uncertain looks with each other. Saying it was one thing, actually doing it was another.

“I’m assuming you have a plan,” Se7en said. Everybody looked at Ji Yong, curious as to what he may have in mind.

“I hope this plan includes him coming to us,” Seung Yoon said. “Finding him the first time took months, and being able to find him again might be harder.”

“We could always bait him to come here,” Lisa said. Ji Yong looked at her, his eyebrows raised. He eyed Lisa, warning her to think her idea through. “With what?” Ji Yong pressed.

“With (Y/N),” she added.

You sat in your and Ji Yong’s room. He had refused to separate you from him again, thus you moved in by his wishes. You were currently putting your clothes in the closet, neatly folding and hanging them. Ai casually laid on the bed, enjoying a particularly comfy spot on the bed. You heard a knock on the door. You turned around just in time to catch Mr. Kwon being wheeled into your room.

“Look at you moving in,” he said, his voice somewhat cheerful. “Well, again.”

You smiled at him giving him a light chuckle. The man that wheeled him pushed him towards the bed and locked him in place. He bowed to Mr. Kwon, who dismissed him with a wave of his hand. You stopped your folding and sat on the bed in front of him, your legs crossing in front of you.

“How have you been?” You ask him, concern taking over your expression. He shrugs, not interested in your question.

“Fine,” he says. “Getting old, but what’s new.” You give him a warm smile. Fur brushes against your arm, and you lift it up, finding Ai climbing his way into your lap. “How have you been?”

“Fine,” you say plainly. “Training’s gotten a bit harder, which is nice. A little lonely, but that’s not new.”

“How’s the wedding planning going?” Mr. Kwon asked. You look at Mr. Kwon confused, not sure what he meant. He responded to you with a confused look of his own. “What?” He asked.

“What do you mean by wedding planning?” You ask.

“Well you and Ji Yong have to get married some time,” he explained. “After all this, I’m not gonna let my plan of a legacy fail. Not just that but with the ring on your finger I assumed that you had started planning.”

“Oh,” you say shortly. You had neglected the fact that this was a forced marriage, and now it didn’t seem as nice. You looked down at Ai, hoping to distract yourself, although as you quietly pet him you recall the fact that this is all a plan.

“Well, I guess that you aren’t planning the wedding,” Mr. Kwon said. “Awkward.”

Chaelin quickly looked to Ji Yong. He didn’t move, his eyes were locked on her. The room went silent, everyone keeping quiet. “She could be onto something.”

“What?” Ji Yong exclaimed, turning towards Seungri. He glared at the maknae as he started to explain himself.

“Think about it Hyung, there’s enough evidence to show that he really wants her. It’ll get him here easily,” Seungri said. Ji Yong opened his mouth to say something, only to be cut off by Seunghyun. “We’d need more than just (Y/N) to bait him though. There needs to be something else with her that’d tick him off so much that’d get him here.”

“Hold up-”

“Hyung’s right,” Daesung cut in. “There needs to be something else that’d push him to come here.”

“Something that’d make him jealous,” Youngbae added.

“The wedding!” Seungri shouted proudly.

“HOLD UP,” Ji Yong yelled. He glared at everyone around him. He was furious as he scanned over his members. He took a dramatic minute to calm down. “Now I don’t expect her to know better about (Y/N),” Ji Yong started, pointing at Lisa who sat there awkwardly. “But you four,” he said looking back to his members. “You guys are willing to put (Y/N)’s life on the line? This fucking psychopath already fucking kidnapped her!” His voice escalated, getting louder with every word. “And you fucking expect me to put HER FUCKING LIFE ON THE LINE AS BAIT!”

“Hyung,” Seungri said, his voice hushed compared to Ji Yong’s. “You know that none of us want her hurt.”

“Yeah,” Seunghyun added. “She means a lot to us too.”

Ji Yong continues to look at the guys bewildered. “Hyung,” Daesung said. “We want him gone too, and I’m sure she does as well. We wouldn’t don’t want to put her in situations that could hurt her, but no matter what we’ll be there with her.”

Ji Yong didn’t say anything, still pretty upset with the mention of you as bait. He didn’t love the idea. Seungri took Ji Yong’s calming demeanor to continue. “Besides hyung,” he said, grabbing Ji Yong’s attention. “I think I have a good idea that wouldn’t get her hurt, in any way.”

Everybody looked at him patiently. He sighed, “Fine, tell me.”

~~~

“I’m sorry what?” you said, your eyebrows furrowed as you stare at Ji Yong. “What do you mean by ‘can we use our wedding as a trap’?”

Ji Yong gave you a nervous smile, that you didn’t return. “Well,” Ji Yong started, already trailing off. “It was decided that you would be the best way to get Flynn to come out of whatever hole he’s in. It wasn’t my idea I swear princess.” You rolled your eyes, feeling your irritation seep through small cracks. “The plan was to use the wedding to get Flynn jealous and bring him here. We’d have maximum security, focused primarily on you, and we’d catch him here and well… end it.”

Ji Yong waited in silence as you didn’t respond to him. He was hesitant as you didn’t answer, no major emotion shown on your face. “So…” He said anxiously. “What do you think?”

“You’re using our wedding to trap a psychopathic borderline rapist asshat,” you say bluntly. “That is gonna be the reason of our wedding.”

“Well not exactly,” he said, hearing how it sounds. You frown, your arms crossing over your chest. “It’s just...”

“Ji Yong,” you said. “You just said that you wanna use our wedding to trap Flynn. Bait him to come here.” Ji Yong winced mentally. “You do realize how that sounds right? To me, it sounds like you wanna get married just to trap him.”

“I don’t want to get married for that sole reason,” Ji Yong defended. He felt anger bubble up inside him. You roll your eyes and scoff. “Oh right,” you say irritably. “We’re forced to do this. What is this an added perk? Killing off a rival?”

Ji Yong clenched his fists, extremely angry. “Of course not. I’m marrying you because I fucking love you,” he said. “Are you too fucking dense to realize that? Sorry that you don’t fucking understand.”

White hot rage fills you to the brim. “Are you too fucking dense to realize that maybe I don’t want to marry you because I have too,” you argue back. He looks at you confused, and it ticks you off even more. “Maybe I wanna marry you because I love you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

tag list

@breathe-think-dream-official @abbiedail @doubleb-nyongtorytrash @tie-dyevibes @francey-pants @pegacorn24 @panickedbisexual@sulennys @black-pink-reactions @beautifulparisiangirl@thedabdabchronicles  @darth-woozi @tiffanyknowsnothing

[heterokatedison]

Look I'm absolutely not trying to hate or anything and really agree with your post about more representation in shows but something I don't quite understand is when I'm part of both the wayhaught and kadena fandom but am constantly being told I need to watch The Bold Type bc of its wlw poc rep which I totally agree with but I feel like a lot of the wayhaught fandom already watches The Bold Type, a lot of people I follow were wayhaught blogs and are now kadena blogs

ok so I accidentally wrote a super long winded response to this and it’s like four thirty in the morning so it probably doesn’t even make sense and I’m sorry and you definitely don’t need to feel obligated to read it all but first I want to say that you phrased this message really nicely and I appreciate it and everything else is under the break

there definitely is a big overlap which is great, but I wasn’t trying to say “every person who likes [x show] needs to be watching [y show] too” because I think people should watch what they’re interested in and not sacrifice their time/money/mental health to make other people happy but also because in the grand scheme of things the views from tumblr alone aren’t likely to save a show from cancellation. I just meant that our community as a whole should be examining how we interact with rep/shows with rep if that makes sense??? particularly when it comes to how willingly/quickly we’ll watch something. some people (but obviously not all) will drop everything and marathon a couple seasons of show to get to white gay content (which I understand, because I’ve done that too) and then pressure everyone else to do the same regardless of whether or not they’re interested in it, but, when presented with lgbt characters of color, respond with “idk it’s not really my thing” “I’ll watch it at some point” “it’s not explicit enough” (all real things things I’ve seen said about the bold type, one day at a time, and the get down, respectively). so these stories already aren’t being as highly prioritized, but then we’ll also demand more from them at the same time.

with the exception of sk*m I watch(ed) all the shows I listed in the post, so in a matter of the past few weeks I’ve seen the wayhaught cheating storyline (understandably) get a lot of negative feedback but most of it has been to the effect of “I don’t like the normalization of cheating/how tropey it is” rather than anger directed to the characters themselves, whereas with kadena there seems to be a lot of people calling it bad representation specifically because adena hadn’t broken up with coco before kissing kat (even though she admitted to it and broke up with her the next day) and demonizing adena especially, despite nikohl’s tweet suggesting that coco was potentially dangerous. I mean I’m super against cheating but I can understand both of those situations to some extent, but there are still other people holding kat and adena to a higher standard of what constitutes “good representation,” which is unfair, particularly when wlwoc are rarer to see.

another example is how people reacted to lexa’s death on the h*ndred vs poussey’s death on oitnb. and when I say this I’m honestly not trying to diminish how bad or painful the lexa situation was for people because it was absolutely disgusting and unacceptable (especially when you take the baiting and interactions with fans into account) and people had a right to react the way they did. and they took their righteous anger and turned it into a global movement, and charitable actions, and giant billboards calling the cw out, which is beyond incredible. but then just a couple months later, oitnb killed poussey, a black lesbian, and people were less angry with that than they were about being spoiled for the show. an all white group of writers chose to kill off a black lesbian in a way that deliberately paralleled the real life murder of eric garner in some hamfisted attempt at social commentary, after months of discussing the psychological toll of the byg trope, not even a week after a massive homophobic hate crime that primarily affected poc, and not only were people largely unbothered by it, they were actively DEFENDING IT because “it sent a message.” except people who don’t care about real police brutality aren’t going to care about fictional police brutality, and even if they did, representation shouldn’t be sacrificed to teach oppressors a lesson.

and then after lexa was killed how many of us followed alycia to fear the walking dead??? (I did) we’re willing to watch a show that perpetuated the byg trope spun off of a show that perpetuated the byg trope (and I’m not even going to get into the way women and poc are disproportionately killed off in that franchise) because we like this actress who played a lesbian in a different show. and that’s not an isolated incident: wlw flocked to supergirl during season 2 for gay content, accidentally discovered katie mcgrath in the process, and suddenly the merlin fandom saw a revival four years after its series finale. but we knew at least a couple months in advance that laverne cox would be playing a trans character on doubt, and people didn’t turn up in huge numbers to watch it, and it got canned after two episodes. TWO. cbs yanked it off the air and didn’t even burn off the rest of the season until six months later. and I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t a great show (I mostly watched it at first because I like laverne cox, but it did improve over the course of the season imo), but cancelling it after two episodes is outrageous. there was no outrage from tumblr, though. even now if you check the tags there’s like two or three posts about it. and a trans woc in a main role on network television was so important!!! and laverne deserved so much better!!!

personally I blame a lack of support from the network more than anything: cbs didn’t promote doubt like it should have and axed it before it could find an audience. netflix didn’t promote the get down like it should have and released it at bad times. and like I said earlier, views from tumblr most likely won’t save a show in the long run. eyewitness and in the flesh prove that. but at least with them there were real genuine efforts to extend/revive them. it’s been three years since itf was cancelled and people are STILL petitioning to bring it back. and we showed that tumblr campaigns actually CAN have an impact: that’s why sense8 is getting a two-hour finale!!! between that and the “lgbt fans deserve better” project our community has shown that we’re relentless and stubborn and dedicated when we want to be. but the fact that we don’t always want to be is really sad.

[juliusschmidt]

Someone sent me this ask: I'm getting a bit overwhelmed with all these things happening in the US. Tumblr and other social media are saying that what trump is doing is extremely wrong and unconstitutional, but one of my Republican cousins posted a video with Bill Clinton proposing a ban on illegal immigrants and on the lines what Trump was saying in his campaign. idk I've seen how people are reacting to trump, I'd say they have different approaches to same things. But i'm not so sure anymore. this sucks

Oh goodness. That's a lot.

I don't know about 'unconstitutional,' but I'm certainly of the belief that a lot of what Trump is doing is 'extremely wrong.' (In fact, I think part of what's frightening to people like myself is that a good deal of it isn't clearly unconstitutional.) However, you're right to notice that things are more complicated than social media portrays them to be. 

This got super long. Topics covered: immigration policy, my opinion on these immigration questions, a note about citing politicians’ opinions, reactions to Trump and Trump supporters 

ETA: It’s been pointed out to me that a huge part of the immigration conversation revolves around whether or not people are ‘illegal’ or ‘undocumented’, so I’ve added a bit about that.

Immigration Policy

Immigration is a hugely polarizing issue in the US and I’m no expert, but I’ll try to paint the picture with broad strokes. 

People who oppose it are (openly) concerned about ‘cultural fragmentation’ (the idea that the English language, Christianity, and western dress are all essential to American Culture and worth defending to the point of imposing these norms onto newcomers), immigrants taking their jobs or their children’s jobs in a climate with relatively high unemployment, undocumented immigrants receiving benefits (schools, roads, healthcare, food stamps) without having their incomes monitored to see whether or not they should be paying taxes into the system that pays out for these benefits, and the arrival of terrorists and gangs/cartels from the middle east and global south.  

People who approve of it say that immigration is an essential part of our so-called American culture (that before we are English-speaking or Christian, we are a nation of immigrants), that we live in a globalized world where trade and ideas are passing between borders and in which we need to allow for people to also pass between borders to facilitate commerce and science, that immigrants are good for the American economy bringing necessary labor and skills and innovations and ideas that boost the quality of life for all Americans, that we have a moral duty to open our borders to as many people fleeing violence or oppression or extreme economic hardship as we can reasonably fit. 

Most Americans fall somewhere in between these two stances. 

Neither position is essentially Democratic or Republican. Even though, currently, Democrats are for the most part pro-immigration and this sitting Republican president is ‘protectionist’ (xenophobic?), a lot of (wealthy) Republicans (like George W. Bush) have traditionally been pro-immigration and a lot of (labor) Democrats have traditionally opposed more open borders. 

A lot of the conversation revolves around whether people are in the country legally or not, the preferred term for the latter being ‘undocumented.’ The question of how to deal with people who are not on the books in the US has, indeed, long been the biggest topic of debate. 

Trump’s conversation and actions have affected both documented and undocumented immigrants. 

So let’s separate out two related, but different hot topics. 

1) Trump said a lot on the campaign about a building wall and about ‘illegal immigrants.’ He signed two executive orders dealing with this last Wednesday. (Summary here.) These comments and these orders are mostly directed at immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America and primarily undocumented immigrants. Democratic presidents like BIll Clinton (and even Barack Obama) supported similar measures (partly to appease their labor base who saw immigrants from south of the border as a direct threat to their jobs). People on the left didn’t like this, but it didn’t strike people’s hearts the same way the more recent immigration related executive order has. T

2) The more recent executive order has to do with immigrants and refugees from seven majority Muslim countries.  (Summary here). Here is a comprehensive argument for why it’s unconstitutional. This affects many people with green cards and proper visas, well-documented immigrants. (It should be noted that because of this, the courts have put a stay on the ban, stopping it temporarily, until they can take it up and decide on its constitutionality formally.) 

Also, there’s been a huge outcry from people who would otherwise support this order because it took effect so quickly and so clumsily. The people who had to enforce the order didn’t know exactly how they were meant to do it. 

My Opinion on these Immigration Questions 

Obviously, borders exist for a reason. Very simply: different nations have different governments with different laws and taxation systems and different citizen rights and benefits/resources (roads, policing, schools, health care, military protection). We need to monitor immigration to manage which laws and which benefits apply to whom and at what time (especially, imo, so that the people who hold all the $$$ like Bill Gates and *cough* Donald Trump don't move about in such a way that they are paying taxes to no nation and reaping the benefits of all the nations) (oh. fucking. wait.) (ANYWAY!). (Which, by the way, did you know that eight people hold as much wealth as the poorest 50% of people in the world?)  

Additionally, immigrants and their demographics (where they come from, how much wealth they bring with them, and how educated they are) impact the local US economy (usually for the better, but not always and not for everyone). I believe that immigration policy (and trade policy) needs to be attentive to the American workers who are so often left behind, not by penalizing immigrants, but by helping out these out-of-work laborers, perhaps with tax benefits, extended unemployment benefits, and/or fully-subsidized new industry training programs. 

But all that is background noise. Here’s the heart of the matter for me: immigrants, especially impoverished immigrants, and especially especially impoverished immigrants on the ethnic and cultural margins (who don’t speak the language, who don’t practice the same religion, whose physical appearance differs) are vulnerable people. And we have a moral duty as human beings to protect and free vulnerable peoples and to uplift their stories so that history does not repeat itself. 

When a vulnerable person says, this policy hurts me and my family, we have to listen for the truth in that. And quite frankly, Trump’s most recent executive order re: immigrants has caused so much pain that it’s hard to miss it. Families have been ripped apart. People were literally being detained without legal access in airports around the world. People fleeing violence in their home countries, who have spent months and often years being vetted for entry, are now being turned away. 

(Also, as a person of the Judeo-Christian faith, I believe I have a Biblically-based ethical imperative to fight for refugees and accept and protect immigrants. But that’s a whole different essay.) 

Note about Citing Politicians’ Opinions 

My feelings about Bill Clinton’s policies are lukewarm so I’m not inclined to bite on that video. He was a moderate in his time and I’m a progress now, at a moment when the progressive movement has (for the better, imo) moved even farther to left (I believe and hope through dialogue with and leadership of vulnerable and marginalized people). Bill Clinton also wanted to be ‘tough on crime,’ using approaches to criminal legislation, policing, and sentencing that have been proven to harm communities, not help them. He also drafted trade policies that protected CEO’s profits not workers’ well-beings. 

It’s important for both progressives and conservatives to be careful not to agree with something just because it’s supported by someone we like. We need to make sure that our policies- no mater who supports them- are lining up with our values (mine being justice, compassion, and freedom for all). 

Reactions to Trump and Trump Supporters 

I’m of the unpopular opinion (unpopular in my progressive corner of the internet, at least) that we need to respect all human beings, even the most vile and oppressive ones. That does not mean condoning or allowing their abusive attitudes and behaviors. In fact, out of respect for their souls, we sure as shit should be confronting them. 

I’m also of the unpopular opinion that not all conservatives or even all Trump supporters are equal. Not all of them white supremacist nazis. Some of them are, yeah. But not all. 

People I love voted for Trump and guess what? I haven’t stopped loving them. 

A lot of the people I know and love that supported Trump have been frustrated by the political system for years, feeling like the professional class, which dominates the media, disrespects their culture and their work. A lot of them volunteer with their churches’ homeless shelters and soup kitchens and a lot of them care deeply for the vulnerable in their communities.

The creation of conservative media silos and the gaslighting of those stuck in them has effectively changed their perspective on reality. 

And it fucking sucks and makes me really angry at them, but it doesn’t change the fact that my dear family friend, who went on a loud pro-Trump rant in the middle of the hospital while his wife was having brain surgery, also gave me my first job and drove eight hours (roundtrip) in a day to cry like a baby at my wedding. It doesn’t change the fact that my Aunt Mary, who’s had a Trumbip sign proudly in her front yard since this time last year, babysat me five and sometimes six days a week until I went to kindergarten, showed me how to make mundane errands into an adventure, and taught me to laugh at myself. 

Continuing to be in relationship with these people means confronting them about some things and it means letting some things go. I do recognize that I  can continue to be in relationship because there’s nothing about my publicly known identity of which they disapprove. 

But what it comes down to for me is this: I’m not going to let the right take those meaningful, life-affirming relationships from me, too. I’m just not.  

So, in conclusion, yeah, it sucks. :(