#but it somehow found the most racist way possible to do that

[thevioletcaptain]

was just making my morning cup of tea when my brain inexplicably dished up a long forgotten memory of what must be the most poorly thought out and cartoonishly offensive reality show ever produced (yes, even worse than milf island manor or whatever it’s called) and i had to google it to make sure it was actually real because frankly it seems like it should only be a wildly problematic fever dream.

but no, it was real.

it was called black. white. and it followed two real american families™ supposedly "swapping races" using hyper-realistic "makeup effects" and then going off to interact with society looking like rdj in tropic thunder and the wayans brothers in white chicks in order to "understand" racism and privilege (i mean presumably that was the point but yikes)

and this was not a show made in the 80's when you might expect some coked up executive to have thought it was a good idea, either. it was in fact made in 2006. and wikipedia is telling me that ice cube was one of the producers??

genuinely what were they thinking with this mess??????

[doberbutts]

I know you've said writing is a pretty fraught thing for you so I hope I'm not prodding against something tender without realizing, but I wanted to say that I think you have an absolutely lovely authorial voice, and I find your writing an absolute joy to read. I only discovered your blog a couple of days ago, but I've been reading through some of your post backlog and I've found myself consistently impressed by how you're able to make nuanced, complex ideas understandable for lay-readers while still maintaining a very fluid and compelling style.

Speaking as someone coming from academia, that blend of clarity, readability and depth of thought is both rare and takes a lot of work to develop, and I really admire it.

Oh, I appreciate the kind words actually!

It's not that my relationship with writing is fraught, it's that black people being called eloquent is a, umm, well often it is a microaggression when being said by a nonblack person.

Let me put it this way. Black people have our own dialect- AAVE- which is constantly both appropriated and also derided as unintelligent. This is despite the fact that most people who use AAVE also can speak and understand standard american english- proficiency in two (tbh even more than two bc AAVE is largely regional as well but w/e I guess) dialects is somehow unintelligent if you choose to use the one most common to your demographic for whatever reason. (I know the reason the reason is racism actually).

Black people learned a long time ago that in order to be taken seriously by nonblack and white supremist society, we needed to not only not use AAVE, but also be the most eloquent and well-spoken person in the room at all times or else some white asshole would find a reason to discredit us by saying we were too unintelligent to have a place at the table.

We aren't allowed to not be eloquent. And eloquent is only allowed to mean "speaks in purely academic words and phrases with no slang, using only standard american with no strong accent besides the news broadcaster 'no accent' accent" with absolutely no wiggle room.

Racist white society does not consider it possible to be well-spoken while using AAVE. It doesn't matter how educated or articulate the speaker is if they're using AAVE. They're just not considered intelligent enough to have a firm grasp on the subject. Even if they're the most experienced person there.

So when I say that black people and eloquence is a fraught discussion, I don't mean that I don't like speaking or writing. What I mean is, black people being told we are well spoken when we choose to remove our own dialect from our mouths because that's the only way we can get people to listen to us, often times with people saying this in surprise as though they did not expect us to be well spoken...

That entire mess is a whole tangled web of racism. It's a microaggression.

And it's also actually one of the major reasons why I talk the way I do. I find it to be a nice blend between pure academic lingo and casual street talk- understandable for the layperson but with an obvious enough grasp of the concept that I don't drown when discussing with people more used to using the more theoretical terms. It is intentional, and it's nice to see someone notice that.

[chaosabound]

MORE AU THINGIES YIPPEE

This is just going to go into more detail about the main 5 and the au, and at the end is art soo yippee!

Remember, this. Is. A. Crossover. Au. And that I'm probably not the best writer, so yeah.

Characters (The main 5 anyway)

Boyfriend

The “main” character

Rapper

19

Bi

4’11”

Girlfriend’s s/o

Pico’s Ex

Cocky

Stupid

Autistic

Likes: Gf, Rapping, S*x(No duh)

Dislikes: Gf dying, Her parents, Frieza’s murder attempts

Girlfriend

The Daughter of Mommy Mearest and Daddy Dearest

PopStar, Music player

19

Bi

5’ 6”

Boyfriend’s s/o

Unknown Ex

Kind

Caring

Autistic

Likes: Bf, Music, Her friends

Dislikes: Her parents attempts to kill Bf, Frieza’s attempts to kill Bf, Mentions of the deal

Frieza

The former Emperor of the universe

Bi + Asexual

5’2”

Single

Son of King Cold(Who is dead btw), and younger brother of Cooler

Cold

Quick to anger

Tired

Racist to an extent

Likes: Power, Control, Wine, Just some peace and quiet

Dislikes: Being powerless, Gf stopping him, Not being in control, Saiyans, Being called a “Powerbottom”, The deal

Pico

The hitman

20

Bi or Gay

5’ 1”

Single

Boyfriend’s Ex

Harboring a criminal

Friends with Nene and Darnell

Serious

Stern

Snarky

Schizophrenic

Likes: Getting hits, Earning Money, his friends safety, His guns

Dislikes: Not getting hits, Losing too much money, his friends getting hurt

Frost

The Criminal

5’2”

Pan

Single

Trust issues yippee

Anxious

A liar

Nicer than Frieza, at least

Is able to tell if someone is lying, basically a walking lie detector test

multilingual

Likes:his safety, life of luxury

Dislikes: His reputation, Frieza(For now at least), being on the run, Nene(She scares him)

Summary of basic ass story

Sooo anyways, let’s say this happens like sometime after the T.o.p and like a month after the base game of fnf. Bf and Gf were chilling when Gf was notified about someone coming over temporarily because of an arrangement. Surprise, surprise, it’s Frieza. Everything was chill, at least till Bf did something stupid, yet Frieza was forced to put up with it. Little did the trio know that the date Frieza would leave was delayed indefinitely.

Meanwhile Frost somehow found his way to universe 7 (Look, when fnf is involved, anything can happen) and ran into the trio of Pico, Darnell, and Nene. Long story short, Frost was almost seriously injured before Pico stopped the attack. Seeing potential in the blue ice-jin, Pico partners up with Frost to help make his job easier to a degree.

(give me a break, not only am I tired while writing this, I can barely write for shit bc idk autism, these aren’t exact events so y’all can do your own twists)

Relations yippee

(Also of the main 5 bc this post is long enough)

Bf + Gf : Dating soo pretty obv

Bf + Pico: Ex’s but on good terms

Bf + Frost: Meh, Bf mistook Frost for Frieza when they first met soo idk

Bf + Frieza: Bf has almost died several times to this mf, Frieza also started to call him a monkey after he did something stupid

Gf + Frieza: Friends?

Gf + Pico: Friends! Gf wants to help him with the whole Frost situation

Gf + Frost: Acquaintances, mixed feelings on Frost’s end

Pico + Frost: Partners in crime basically

Pico + Frieza: Don’t talk much, but they chill

Frieza + Frost: Strained to hell and back. But somehow getting better.

Other facts!

-The characters harbor traits from the people who were them in the stupid vrc thing (Ex. Frieza doesn’t really get much sleep, and possibly is very mentally unstable)

-Other series would come into play! It is a crossover au and fnf, anything can happen!

-Gf’s parents are overprotective

-In the vrc thing, most of, if not everyone is played by autistic people

-The vrc thing aint canon, just inspired this

-Pico and Frost sometimes stay with Bf, Gf, and Frieza

-Gf made Frieza play Hating Simulator… it was an interesting experience

-Bf and Gf are Hatsune Miku fans, while everyone else is more fond of Uta.

Annnd that’s all for now! Btw you can ask stuff about characters and I can answer them to the best of my ability, with drawings as well! Anything for motivation ig.

ANYWAYS, tine for the art!

Pretty explanatory

Gf, but with wings! She doesn't use them often.

The Hating Simulator incident. Also Senpai reveal hello-

Bro hyper, redraw of the results screen of fnf.

Annnnd here is a thing I probably will never expand upon, considering I don't have the motivation to write anything sooo... idk. Also for those who have seen Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris.. hi.

K now I'm done, I'll see yall again when I randomly come alive with motivation.

Edit: not this taking over 3 tags 😭

[scarlet--wiccan]

I was snooping around the Marvel Wiki and found out that Baron Mordo has a Romani daughter called Astrid Mordo only problem is is that apparently she’s the result of incest which is gross and racist for so many reasons (apparently: “Her mother Lilia is the half-niece of her father Baron Mordo.”) do you think they should try and retcon that out somehow and use her in the future or just throw her in the bin permanently?

Astrid Mordo is an extremely minor character who only has two appearances, and hasn't been in anything since 1996, so I'm not honestly that pressed about her. She was also incapacitated and banished to another dimension-- characters have come back from worse, but I really don't think we need to revive her.

The Calderu family mostly exist as racist set dressing for Mordo's backstory, and that one-off issue of Mystic Arcana, so I'd be perfectly happy if they all just faded into obscurity. Unlike other Romani characters in the Marvel world, I just don't think there's anything substantial or worthwhile to latch onto with them.

If you really, really wanted to, I do think you could recontextualize the Calderu family in a way that would feel, if nothing else, less tropey. Witch lineages, in any culture, are a more firmly established concept now, and there is more historical context for witches of all backgrounds to have been congregating and working together throughout the ages, especially on and around Mount Wundagore. I wrote about this more here. So I think it's possible, given this precedence, to include magical Romani characters in the Marvel world without necessarily making them into racist gypsy witch stereotypes. But I think you'd need to have a good reason or motive for those characters to exist, and I just don't think there is one for the Calderu family.

If nothing else, I think there is grounds to depict Lilia and Miarka as victims of both and magical and sexual exploitation by the Mordo men. There is certainly a very heavy and painful history of Romani women being targeted and trafficked by white men. I wish there could be more Roma characters whose stories are not based on victimhood and oppression, but it is, unfortunately, the most effective way to "redeem" a lot of this older, problematic material. This is definitely something that would require a knowledgeable Romani writer or consultant, and again, I just don't know if there would be any point unless Marvel wanted to revamp Lilia and make her a more prominent character. I guess now that there is a version of the character in the M C U, it might happen.

[beardedmrbean]

Oh yeah Ronald Erwin McNair, sorry I thought he was on that other space shuttle that fell apart during launch.

Also that program with Nichelle Nichols, I recall a lot of space exploration and travel polices were created to prevent another colonial empires power struggle which gave us the world wars and the eugenics horror show.

So space was showed to be “EVERY HUMAN CAN BE IN OUTER SPACE!” Now of course only humans of peak condition can be astronauts but stuff like Star Trek suppose to show a possible future where we all can coexist with each other.

Of course NASA was like “okay let not pull a Nazi and show that non whites and women can be astronauts too” but when most of your organization made up of geeky white people…

I can see why Nichelle Nichols was chosen as she inspired many people especially in the blacks and women into science with her uhura role.

And the whole racial tension that she of all people understands. So she basically help convince a lot of black people and women who you know grew up in segregation and heavy gender roles so NASA definitely felt like an out of reach idea for them.

Sorry you are a bigger NASA fan than me. I’m just curious how da fuck is math racist when we had a black astronaut that grew up in the Deep South?

🤨

He was, that was his 2nd flight, Challenger, Jan 28 1986. That's a day embedded in my memory.

NASA has pretty much always been THE government agency that didn't care about anything other than if you can do the job, obviously politics still showed up and they weren't going to send a woman or black man to the moon, woman bit was less sexist than it was a technology and biology thing, going potty and all, still sexism but it was really more cost effective to not have to worry about the other bits.

Nichelle Nichols thing, I hope she fully grasped how important she was to women in general and black women especially. This is the best anecdote about her, at least that fits the theme.

Roddenberry knew what he had created already, why else have a black woman and a Russian on the bridge crew, Nichols found out when Dr King let her know what she meant.

She also wrote that she had "a short, stormy, exciting relationship" with Sammy Davis Jr. in 1959.

GIRL!!! lol

>Sorry you are a bigger NASA fan than me. I’m just curious how da fuck is math racist when we had a black astronaut that grew up in the Deep South?

And a physicist at that.

It's not, I think the issue is that people don't like that there's going to be a right and a wrong answer for math, 1+1 will always equal 2 is problematic somehow.

There's also claims that the way it's taught is geared toward white students, which I'm not sure how that works, but even if that's true they're playing to the majority which sure would come out discriminatory but that's a no win situation unless you bring back segregation.

It's reading but, I think we may be in the market for this happening in math too.

As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”

The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.

Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. “In Oakland, when you have 19% of Black kids reading—that can’t be maintained in the society,” says Weaver, who received an early and vivid lesson in the value of literacy in 1984 after his cousin got out of prison and told him the other inmates stopped harassing him when they realized he could read their mail to them. “It has been an unmitigated disaster.” In January 2021, the local branch of the NAACP filed an administrative petition with the Oakland unified school district (OUSD) to ask it to include “explicit instruction for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension” in its curriculum.

From a different article same subject

I like that they put the numbers in this one,

But ya, they didn't like the system they had and even though they were getting year to year improvements with it they changed it because why not throw students under the bus.

Maybe they should learn from Ron McNair, but that would be the students taking the initiative and learning on their own, which might require a sea change in the community as it relates to education.

There's a reason this program has kept going since 1987, but ya colonization of students minds, there's a math one too not sure how good that is.

And there's people who just can't get some math honestly, I know I'm one of them, full spectrum dyslexia is not something I'd wish on anyone.

[bee-a-garbage-shipper]

Returning post Court take down has Dick and Tim both doing the Mark Me Down As Scared and Horny.

Jazz meanwhile has gotten everything they need for the spell. And is now giving Jason and Damian magic lessons with "help" from Ellie.

Jason now knows exactly how the racist caught fire.

Danny: So the Court is now gone. I put a temporary ward on where they have what they apparently call Talons stored. So if you're set you and Ellie can head in and freeze them. After that I'll put up a more permanent ward and send them to Frosty as he says he can take them.

Jazz: We have every thing set on our end just need you boys to carry the equipment.

Dan: Got it.

Jazz: Also I have a date.

Dan and Danny:

Jazz: Don't mess it up.

Dan and Danny: Yes Jazz.

Dan: Can't even spy because it would expose his secret identity. Bullshit.

Tim: You know, I'm wondering why you both seem to respect secret identities so much?

Dick: Yeah I'm gonna be real most heroes I know are to nosy not to at least try to find out another's identity.

Danny: We did the hero thing. Getting found out nearly cost us everything. There are two people alive who knows who we are in and out of the mask and aren't family. Everyone else died. And it happened in a way they don't get to have ghosta.

Dan: That's the thing about hero work. You don't just put yourself at risk. Everyone you love is leverage. And it's not possible to have everyone you care about also be heroes.

Ellie: Even if you somehow only deal with other heroes there's eventually gonna be a threat better than those people. Or better than you. And you're gonna be left standing at a grave of a person you swore you hated. Bitter that the chance for things to get better has been stolen from you.

Jazz: Even with me. I didn't go looking into that information. I found out and used magic to bind myself so that I can only speak of it with others who are aware. And I don't doubt that the others have similar plans if they ever figure it out.

Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian:

Dick: Okay, wow this is sad.

Tim: Yeah I'm with Nightwing. Let's handle the Talons and then Hood can go on his date while Danny and I deal with the Creep Assassin Cult that has a leader that doesn't take no for an answer.

The people of Gotham could do nothing but watch in horror as the Joker killed Dr. Fenton on live TV. The doctor had moved to Gotham a little over a year ago and quickly made a name for himself by setting up clinics and shelters in the seedier parts of the city. Many had warned him of the dangers, of the criminals that would potentially target him but he didn't listen. He continued his work and soon wormed his way into the hearts of many. That's why he made a great target for the Crown Prince of Crime. Because his death would be absolutely devastating.

And it was, until someone pointed out that the good doctor seemed to be twitching behind the Joker as his gloated to the camera. That twitching soon because full on squirming and the citizens could only watch in shocked curiosity as Dr. Fenton eventually twisted out of his restraints. Then he bent down to pick up a metal pipe lying on the ground and crept towards the Joker. Understandably, many were terrified. Why wasn't the doctor using this chance to get away? People began screaming at the screens for him to escape but he just got closer. Finally he was right behind his captor and brought the pipe over his head. In one fell swoop he brought the pipe down with a satisfying crack that all could hear.

"I usually keep pretty strictly to my hippocratic oath," Dr. Fenton said. "But for you, I'm willing to make an exception."

He then proceeded to drag the Joker out of frame by the collar. The live feed ended soon after. Later, when the police arrived. Dr. Fenton was found causally sitting on some steps outside the warehouse. As they got closer, they realized the steps were actually the Joker, alive albeit barely.

[zuko-always-lies]

I remember you mentioning that Lu ten is often idealised in fanfiction and it reminded me of all the lu ten lives aus.

Majority of them make him fanon iroh 2.0. He already knows the fire nation is wrong and is trying to fix it or he's just a chill nice guy. Azula rarely has any relationship with him and he seemed to exclusively help Zuko.

The one fic i remember that did not do this was called Juxtapose. That fic had the best Lu Ten for me because he was a racist imperialist as well as a spoiled brat. You know, like a fire nation crown prince would probably be. His character development is slow but never once does the author justify his behaviour and the unrelliable narration is great because of the tonal disconnect (the second chapter was horrifying in the best ways possible). Zuko and Azula are deaged in this au so they have less agency here which makes sense since Lu Ten is the Gaang's age this au.

But this is the only fic i found that represented him this way while also treating Azula and Zuko with some semblance of respect.

I cannot tell you how fustrated i am when i find Lu Ten lives aus and they make him iroh 2.0. If Lu Ten never died Iroh shoudl also be an imperialist but people make it so that his injuries somehow make Iroh reconsider or that he was held captive by the Dai Li.

Even more so im annoyed wiht the whole dynamics in fics with the fire siblings. Most of the time it focuses on only Zuko and usually either gets rid of Azula or villiases her further. Either Azula's is Ozai's spawn exclusivley or she's Zuko's mean sister. Lu Ten rarely has any relation to her outside of that.

Then again, most fics with the fire siblings either focuses entirely on one or the other or just skip past all the complicated sibling stuff by making them close already. Which i dont mind all the time, but with i wish people considered that when writing Lu Ten instead of making him the perfect cousin(tm)

I agree. Lu Ten grew up an imperialist environment, and died trying to complete the imperial conquest of the Earth Kingdom. He's not a good person, and him becoming one would probably require an extensive arc. He also grew up in the interrelation toxic dumpster fire which is the royal family, and probably was negatively affected by it significantly. He was also raised by Iroh, and Iroh's flaws as a parent are readily apparent in the series, after he already had significant experience with Lu Ten. So, yes, Lu Ten was also probably poorly adjusted, in addition to being high on toxic Fire Imperial ideology.

And even though it's possible that Lu Ten might have been "nice," like the fandom likes writing him as, it's also worth pointing out that most of the people who grew up in the royal family are pretty personally mean(Sozin, Azulon, Ozai, Zuko, Azula), so it's fairly like that Lu Ten was a bit of an asshole in person.

[avintagekiss24]

Hi! I don't want to start anything on here and am always willing for civil conversations. At this point there's so much I've found out about Seb (besides the video he liked, the tommy lee thing, and the girlfriend thing) that I feel so guilty if I would continue to support him. I love him sm but it just doesn't look good rn. He is associated/follows an organisation (for helping veterans) that has posted a blue lives matter flag picture and who's co-founder has sexual assault allegations against him, and worked with him in 'The last full measure'. His friend Paul Walter Hauser has done blackface in the past, and when called out on it he just listed a few people that also did blackface. There's more, I found a discussion on here that I can link. I seriously don't support "cancel culture" bc I don't think it helps anyone but there are just a lot of 'mistakes' and shady people that can be linked to Seb, I wish it wouldn't be that way. I honestly don't know what to think about it anymore.

Hi! I’m also open to having civil conversations and I don’t believe you’re trying to start anything. I really do think this situation of dragging up a four year old video and taking it completely out of context is harmful not just to Black people, but to fandom/activism in general. This is gonna be long because I’m going to take your points one by one, and I want to preface this by saying that I will not answer any derogatory, sideways asks pertaining to this subject. I will delete every single one and will block your silly ass. I’m not going to argue with people who think I’m blindly supporting Sebastian because I’m just trying to get fucked by him, or people who think I hate myself and am trying to appease some white man.

So, on with the discourse!

The video he liked - this video was taken completely out of context and that is my main issue with this whole situation. It was not a video of a white man saying that he thinks he should be able to say the n word as everyone claimed it was. They were quickly debating on whether or not it's okay to say in rap lyrics. He was told no, that's not okay, that's never okay and they moved on from it. That's it. End of story. That somehow was twisted into a click bait style headline of "Sebastian Stan likes a video of a white man defending his right to say the n word" when that is absolutely not true. My other issue is that people are more upset that Sebastian liked the video than they are about the white man in the video literally saying the n word. So, do you really care about the use of the n word like you're claiming? Cuz if you do, you'd be more upset at the white man that said the word than you would be about the white man simply liking the video. Or, are you just using this as an excuse to grandstand against a white man you don't like?

The Tommy Lee thing - Sebastian Stan playing Tommy Lee does not make Sebastian Stan a bad person. Is Charlize Theron a bad person for playing Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who started murdering men? Is Leonardo DiCaprio a bad person for playing a slave owner? Is Edward Norton a bad person for playing a nazi sympathizing racist? Actors play bad people. That doesn't mean that they themselves are bad people. 1990's Tommy Lee was a bad person, but that should have no bearing on who Sebastian Stan is or his character as a man.

The gf/Paul Walter Hauser thing - Why are we holding Sebastian accountable for what the people around him are doing? Again, why are we more upset that Sebastian is associated with people who have done questionable things than the specific people themselves? I'm not going to speak on the kimono wearing -- I'm not Asian. It's not my place to say whether or not its offensive because it's not my culture, but she posted that picture and attended that party before she started dating Sebastian, quite possibly before she even knew him. Same with Paul. I think that black face thing was long before he knew Sebastian. Now, if Sebastian was defending these actions, going around saying "I think it's okay for white women to wear Kimono's" "I think black face is fine" "I think white people should be able to say the n word" then we'd have a different story, wouldn't we? But that's not what we have, and that's not what he is doing. He is not responsible for the things his friends do or have done in the past just because he's more famous than they are, and he is not required to speak on them. Let's put it this way -- would you be comfortable having to be responsible for something a friend of yours did before you knew them? Would you want to have to be forced to answer for your friend when you yourself had nothing to do with the questionable behavior?

The organization that supports the military/blue lives matter - Sebastian cannot control what message that foundation puts out and it does not mean that he is or is not pro-police himself. There is not enough concrete evidence -- if any evidence for that matter -- that Sebastian is a blue lives matter supporter. Did Sebastian donate before they put up the blue lives matter post? Or after? I don’t know, cuz I don’t follow him that closely, but if he donates before they come out with a particular stance, that means he should be held accountable for that? I know I donated to an organization once and they turned out to support something that i’m 100% against. That means I’m a bad person because I couldn’t see into the future? Another point, how can we be certain that Sebastian saw the blue lives matter post in the first place? I know I’m not online 24 hrs a day, I miss posts all the time and I’m just an average person. I make three or four tumblr posts a day, and I’m gone. I have to play catch up on social media, and even then, I still miss stuff. So I’m sure the same happens to a working actor. As for the co-founder, I don't know who this person is and would rather not get into any allegations against them because I don't want to trigger anyone who comes across this post. If Sebastian knows about these allegations, is a willing participant/supporter of this person then yeah, that's pretty shitty, but we don't know the inner workings of this friendship/acquaintance/work relationship. We don’t know how close they are or if they even still speak.

I’m a pretty big fan of Don Cheadle. He’s a stand up guy, he’s a great actor, he’s funny, he’s political and stands up for what he believes in and in a very public way. I support him. Don Cheadle is also friends with Chris Evans, RDJ, Mark Ruffalo, and Letitia Wright (just to name a few). Chris Evans has a bipartisan forum that highlights/promotes right wing politicians, RDJ defended Chris Pratt during the whole “he’s the worst Chris in Hollywood” crap, who’s technically done black face, and who once said to a female reporter “nice tits” when she walked into the room, Mark Ruffalo just walked back his support of Palestine, and Letitia Wright retweeted/supported an anti-vaxxer/anti-trans Pastor who equated an ingredient of the covid vaccine to the devil because it contained some parts of the word Lucifer. Does that mean Don is now a bad person because he’s friends with these people? Why isn’t he getting any heat for his friendships with them? Why isn’t he being held accountable for what they’ve done and said? Oh right, because he’s not a white fave. So people don’t care one way or the other, which brings me to my next point. 

I can guarantee you that if Sebastian’s gf or Paul or this co-founder were not associated with Sebastian in any way, nobody would give a shit about her wearing a kimono, about Paul doing black face, or about the co-founder/organization being blue lives matter supporters and in that lies the actual problem. Being critical of people and their actions should be consistent and should happen all the time -- not just when they interact with your white fave. That’s when it becomes performative and looks like you just want to be able to show internet people that you follow/support/stan unproblematic celebrities, when really, you don’t care.

I think the moral of this post is that I think it's unfair to hold a complete stranger to a standard that I cannot hold myself to. I also don't view celebrities the way most teenagers/twenty somethings do, and that’s because when I entered fandom we didn't have social media, so I grew up with a wall between myself and said celebrities. There is no wall now with the presence of social media. "Fans" nowadays have a weird ownership feeling over celebrities because they can read their personal thoughts or view personal pictures and think that they have this personal quasi-friendship with them. I can't get on board with that. I prefer having the wall and I still keep the wall.

If supporting Sebastian makes you uncomfortable, then by all means, stop supporting him. Just make sure you are making this decision for yourself based on credible sources and concrete evidence and that you're not letting this fake woke activist mob make you feel uncomfortable. Internet activism means nothing unless you put your money where your mouth is in your real life and 90% of the social justice internet warriors do not. Real activism is bigger than changing your avi to a black square.

[charlotte-lancer]

Easy Tips to Avoid Accidentally Getting an Offensive Tattoo

Hello! Hi! I'm Ada, your friendly local tattooed person!

I'm sure by now we've all seen the posts of people getting Stranger Things number tattoos without realizing what they look like (ie the codes that the Nazis branded people with) (and for the purposes of this post I will be assuming ignorance instead of purposeful malicious intent), so today I'm here to give some tips on how to avoid accidentally getting a racist/offensive/otherwise unwise tattoo of your own! 😀

1. Research. Before getting any tattoo, use the internet to search "[tattoo idea] tattoo meaning", and read through as many results as you possibly can to make sure the design you're about to get isn't a Russian prison tattoo, or a gang symbol, or a white nationalist code-word.

IRL example, when I was an 18 year old goth kid, I thought I wanted a spider web tattoo. But then I googled "spider web tattoo meaning", and it turned out it was all three of those things! So I got a picture of my cat instead, because my cat was not involved with prisons, gangs, or racism.

2. Ask around. Draw, or pay someone else to draw, a sketch of your idea, and show it to as many other people as you can. Ask them to point out anything unintentionally offensive you might have missed. I don't expect any one person to know every possible offensive tattoo, so it's good to ask as wide a variety of people as you can. Maybe ask online, if you have a online friend group or a forum you trust.

IRL example, my coworker wanted a forearm tattoo of a sailing ship (he is an accountant, not a sailor), and found out that in many circles a tattoo of a fully rigged ship means that the person who has it has sailed 5,000 nautical miles, and was liable to get his butt kicked if the wrong people saw it and thought he was making a claim he couldn't back up. [Ultimately, he got it anyway, but on his chest, where it was less likely to be seen. Not the decision I'd have made, but at least it was an informed choice.]

3. Flash tattoos. Tattoo flash is the pre-drawn designs that you see hanging on the wall of many old-fashioned tattoo parlors, street shops, and temporary tattoo kiosks. Most are of simple, classic, or generic designs, though some artists have more elaborate flash. A lot of older flash is based on Sailor Jerry or Ed Hardy designs, and most flash tends toward American Tradition or Japanese Traditional in style. If you go to a reputable, licensed artist who has flash (and researching an artist is a whole other post), you're pretty safe picking whatever design you like and getting it immediately. No reputable artist os going to risk their reputation by offering racist flash art. (You might still want to run a Google search to avoid the Sailing Ship Butt-Kicking situation, but that's your choice.)

IRL Example: you've probably seen lots of flash tattoos without realizing it. If you've seen a tattoo of two swallows, or a heart that with a name banner, you've seen a flash tattoo.

4. No tattoos. If you don't want to do research into the meanings and associations of your potential tattoo, and you don't want a flash tattoo, the easiest way to avoid getting an offensive tattoo is to just not get a tattoo. If you have no tattoo, you have no offensive tattoo.

IRL Example: My uncle wanted a tattoo, but after 20 years working in the FBI organized crime department he decided too many things were associated with or claimed by different gangs, and just gave up on the whole idea.

Other Notes:

-Someday there might be a tattoo idea you love that you find out is offensive somehow. Do not get the tattoo. Do not think that no one will notice the connotations. Do Not end up like my OTHER coworker, who thought no one would notice the implications of the Rising Sun tattoo he got because it "looked so cool" and then had too spend twice as much money covering up when everyone asked why he had the flag of WWII Japan on his leg.

-Every tattoo is going to offend someone, but there's a big difference between getting a tattoo of slightly raunchy Hair Metal lyrics and getting a tattoo of, like, Nazi symbols. If someone tells you your tattoo idea is offensive, find out why, and do research into whether the association is something you really want to be representing. I'm not here to tell you exactly where to draw the line on how potentially offensive is too offensive, especially since it's going to vary by culture and location, but take some time to really think about what you're committing to before you do it.

Please feel free to add more! I don't know everything, so please add onto this, or correct me if I've gotten something wrong.

And please don't hesitate to ask any questions! My ask box is always open 😊

[thecoochiefairy]

imma come at you as respectfully as possible but also make an example out of you. we as black women, or black people in general already have an extremely hard time making our way out of being the butt of the joke, criticized, offended, DEFENDING ourselves. we are tired. this is a showmanship of how we literally can be minding our business and are somehow STILL talked about. you say you wanted to find the most offensive word, so you trail that back to using the hard r, when you could’ve found anything else to use, although, you shouldn’t be using offensive words at ALL. it’s not anyone’s job to educate you when you’re grown enough to educate yourself. it doesn’t matter whether i’m black, or what your ethnicity/race is, i’m not going to use a heinous word purposefully to prove a fucking point, or get a laugh, or try to pinpoint an excuse of “realism,” on a platform to showcase FAN-FICTION. you wanna know why? cause we come on here to provide a service of FANTASY, where fiction is also a noun, since i’m sure you need to up your reading. we write this for fun, entertainment, not to write the nasty corners of the world that regard rape, incest, or whatever the fuck you also write. it’s not my, nor anyone’s job to hold your hand, smack it and say you did a bad thing, especially after seeing that you weren’t open to criticism until a mass amount of people had to dig in your ass about it. you’re not racist, you’re absolutely correct. however, you are ignorant. if you’re so liberal as you say, a liberalist would’ve took the time to do research, asked questions, would know the corners of the world by picking up a book or opening your safari. you should never receive any type of threats, but don’t expect anyone to care about the backlash when you didn’t know how to take being on the receiving end of YOUR actions. take that shit to the chin, and watch your mouth.

a good while ago i posted a short fic on sukuna which ended up getting surprisingly popular. i didnt understand the flack i received for it, but several people took the time and energy to explain it to me. at first i didn't understand the issue and got immediately defensively due to the language used against me.

i wanted to use the most offensive words i could think of for sukuna to say. i didn't even think what the fact that it was a slur against black people implies. racism by ignorance is just as hurtful, and i ended up hurting many people. im genuinely sorry about that.

admittedly, i haven't been outside of the bubbles of urban asia, and can count the number of black people iv met irl on one hand. on the surface, i considered myself an open-minded liberal person who could never be racist, it just didn't fit with my idea of myself. when i, who was created and influenced by my local surroundings, clashed with the multi-ethnic multi-national online surroundings, the biases that i had never realised were there in me were revealed. the past two days, i read about the history of the n-word, its repercussions on the interactions between the black community and others, and how it's not just a silly little word that people throw around, but an actual remnant of of our terrible pasts. i can imagine someone just scrolling thru fanfics and getting hit with it out of nowhere, it must have been horrible.

iv deleted the post and picked up a couple reads on black history (do you have any recs?). i think overall, this was a good kick in the butt, i learnt many things i really had no idea of. iv always approached writing with the clinical detachment of a scientist poring over microbes, i shouldve thought more about what the contents of my works lead to. when the only people who were vocally defending me were literal trumpers (i dont want u guys here, please dont think my blog is a safe space for yall) it was a shock that really opened my eyes.

at the same time, the extent of vitriol i received wasn't okay. for fucks sake someone sent me a detailed message on how they would rape me. that wasn't okay, nor did these help any. many people actually got down to my level and explained things to relate to my sociopolitical context, and it was these conversations that made me understand how badly i fucked up.

to sum it up: i was ignorant and despite my intentions, my actions hurt people. i got what i did wrong, and im very sorry about that.

[slasherwife]

Really hope you’re still doing requests as of rn because I somehow forgot how much I love your work! Is it possible for you to write Thomas, Bubba, and Bo getting married to a yiddish S/O? Like where they step on the wine glass and whatnot? That’s a damn fantasy ngl 🤧🖤 If you don’t want to then I totally get it!

OMGSJSKKD THIS — 💕💓😤 guess whos the biggest Jew on tumblr... yes me💘my grandmother was sent Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen for being Jewish (when she was 4 years old), along with her Jewish mother. She was separated from her Jewish father at a young age because he was deported--It's a WHOLE STORY ngl. So thats my mother's side and then my dad happened to be descended from a line of jewish rabbis from Russia so thats cool. Anyway SORRY that's my heritage rant live laugh love if you're Jewish too, PLEASE hmu so we can be friends 💘(also, SO sorry it took me this long to do your request. i will always get around to requests it just will take a while sometime D: )

Tommy, Bubba, and Bo with a Yiddish!S/O

Thomas Hewitt

Tommy knew from the moment he met you, you were something else. While he fell in love with you for your dazzling smile and ethereal, dreamy eyes, he found out about your heritage some time into your relationship. You added a touch of foreign culture to the table, something that brought newfound joy to the Hewitt family.

The way you brought brought your fabulous culture to the family--two shabbos candles to Friday night dinner, handmade challah bread and hummus, matzo ball soup, or managed to scavenge some herbs every April for a “special dinner” you called it 💕If you have a Jewish/Yiddish mother, she will become best. friends. with Luda. You know how Jewish mothers are. Involved in everything. She meets the family, will probably dislike Hoyt, LOVES Tommy, and then she and Luda are just attached at the hip. They will probably gossip about you and Tommy LOL💘

He loves seeing you excited, it makes him in awe of your culture even more. You got so excited for your wedding because you put together a whole plan for the chuppah and the breaking of the glass to symbolize the destruction of the temple, "MAZEL TOV!" when you guys kiss, signifying your marriage, and so much more! Have fun with the Hava Nagila, and the Hora wedding dances. Tommy is not going to have fun with a bunch of strangers lifting him OR you in a tiny chair. He likes every other piece of the wedding traditions, and enjoys the foods very much though💘

notice: keep in mind Hoyt isn't the most complimentary person when it comes to cultural background. He's probably going to let loose a few racist jokes but since Tommy is so perceptive, he's going to shut Hoyt down before he even finishes his sentence.

Bubba

This boy is a party animal. He has energy for days, and will fit right into the Jewish party culture. He will go on the Hora dance and will never want to come back down, he is having the time of his life up there. While being married to you is exciting enough, being married to you at a Jewish wedding is enough to make him go crazy. He's the life of the party💘

He will probably want to be the one to break the glass, if you want to thats cool too :) He wholeheartedly and wholesomely loves your culture, appreciating it more than any of the other slashers. He just wants to experience every bit. He will prefer your Jewish dishes over his regular family dinners, incorporates your traditions and/or holidays into his life too💘Your culture becomes everyone's culture in the Sawyer house now :D

Your way of life is very refreshing to everyone in the Sawyer house. It's obvious you have a very different way of thinking, and approach to every day situations. The Sawyers find you interesting with your culture, and will curiously ask you questions about certain things. Don't be surprised if they come out a bit wrong, they just don't really know how to frame their words correctly but I believe they mean well since you're family💘

Bo Sinclair

He isn't someone to be totally into cultural practices. It doesn't mean he's not into you of course, quite the opposite actually, he's not that intrigued by culture! Like Tommy, he loves you for your gorgeous smile, flawless body, and that damn heart of yours that just melted his stone one. Bo, the hardest of hearts unhardened, saw you smiling at him for the first time and it was game over. Anyway sorry I'm ranting LOL--💕

He is more than happy to incorporate your culture into the wedding! He's not just going to reject it lol, rejecting your culture and heritage would be rejecting you with it so he would never. He'll smile as you go off about what you want at the wedding, all the special yiddish parts, and when you're done he goes, "well damn." With a grin on his face while he kisses you on the head, messing up your hair💓💓

He won't seem like it, but he is happy to do what you want on your wedding. He'll nod it off at first and be like "yeah of course." And you don't think he's going to really take it to heart. Then it HAPPENS and theres a giant chuppah for you two, he organized the whole party with some help, and then just put all this effort into making it special for you💕💕💕You two have an absolutely wonderful time and wedding

[pale-silver-comb]

So I know absolutely nothing about Leverage except what I've been seeing you post lately and I have to admit you're making it look tempting to watch! Can I ask what are some of your favorite things about the show/reasons you would suggest people watch it? And is there really a poly relationship that is canon?

Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I am going to do my best not to just “asdfghkjl” at you and answer coherently.

In a nutshell, Leverage is about 5 people. 4 are criminals (Parker, Hardison, Eliot and Sophie) with different and unique skill-sets and 1 is an ex-insurance investigator (Nate) who, at one point or another in his career, has tracked down (or at least attempted to) the other 4. The whole show is essentially: man reluctantly reforms 4 criminals to use their criminal powers for good and 4 criminals move into man’s life and stubbornly refuse to leave because, goddammit, now they have morals. 

I’ve got a lot of favourite things about the show but the main ones are as follows:

1. Found family. And I’m not talking about loners who come together to fight crime and happen to co-exist to the point where they realise they happen to have found themselves a family. I mean, Nate and Sophie are the Drunk Uncle and Wine Aunt who somehow become Mom and Dad to 3 beautiful criminal children. Mom and Dad love their criminal babies and the kids love them (as well as each other, but we’ll come to that in a moment). You get amazing family moments such as: Mom and Dad packing the kids lunch before sending them out to kick corporate greed’s ass; Mom and Dad giving the kids ridiculously expensive and personal Christmas presents causing their most Grumpy Kid to go very very quiet and soft as he runs off to gleefully play with his new murder toy; the kids interrupting Mom and Dad’s big Movie Style Kiss to ask if they can please keep their new underground layer and huffing and puffing when Dad tells them no.

2. Found family: the OT3 edition. To answer your question, the OT3 is indeed canon, confirmed by the creator. Now, usually, “confirmed by the creator” infuriates me because most of the time it’s a way for a creator to be seen as “progressive” without doing anything to actually be progressive. That isn’t the case here. The OT3 are built up carefully and while it is obvious the creators didn’t originally intend for all 3 of them to become a relationship in the romantic sense, by mid-season 5 we are given a very clear picture of where Parker, Hardison and Eliot are heading in their relationship. There aren’t any kisses at the end to signal this but there are solid marriage vows in not only one but two episodes. (And by marriage vows I mean literal equivalents of marriage vows: “for better or worse” and “’til death do us part”. I’m not even exaggerating). The OT3 also doesn’t need explicit romantic narratives to convey how much they love each other. Their love is laced through the whole show, from the way they teach each other things to the way they respond to each other and work as a unit. The way they fiercely protect and admire each other. Like someone once said, if you need characters to kiss or say I love you to let the audience know they love each other, you are writing them wrong. 

Aside from that, each of the parings in the OT3 are just. Gah. They are so well done, with friendship being the solid basis for them all. The creators never expect the audience to assume anything about them or fill in the gaps. They give us their relationships on screen and reference many things off-screen to show us how these relationships continue to build in between episodes.

Hardison and Parker are a canon couple and date in the show: it’s approached slowly and they are so goddamned sweet. They are basically every fluffy slow-burn trope with a healthy dash of mutual pining in the mix. They are basically that quote “love is patient, love is kind”. (I would like to add their romance never becomes the focus of the show or overrides the importance of any other relationship they have with the other characters, especially Eliot.)

Hardison and Eliot are the Old Married Couple and from day one are already bickering and looking at each other/making comments that are found in every UST fic ever (not to mention Hardison has a very good knack for making Eliot grin like a little kid, when usually he’s basically an Angry Little Chef Man). They argue, they play, and love each other plain as day. 

Parker and Eliot are more subtle but every bit as wonderful. They have an unspoken connection and understand each other on a level no-one else can. Parker and Eliot are not good with giving themselves over to affection for different reasons (and Hardison plays a central role in helping them realise it’s okay to want it and have it- that boy has endless patience) but there is something so beautiful in the way the two of them come together on their own and develop their own special bond that works for them. Parker and Eliot are that trope where the characters don’t need to speak to understand each other perfectly. They just do. Their love language is a lot of the time non-verbal but speaks volumes. (Parker also likes to annoy the hell out of Eliot and Eliot....just.....lets...her. Because he’s soft. The softest, grumpiest boy.) 

I could go into so much depth for each pairing and their dynamics as a 3 but that's for another post.

3. Subverting stereotypes. There is the occasional hiccup in the show regarding stereotypes but ultimately, Leverage gets an A+ when it comes to writing characters and making them 3 dimensional people who are not defined by certain characteristics or events. Nate could so easily fall into the White Man Pain trope where he uses the trauma of losing his kid as a reason as to why he is entitled to act like a dick. Nate is a dick but he doesn’t use his pain to excuse it and I appreciate that. Hardison is a black man who is soft and nurturing. Easily the most empathetic and patient of the group. He’s nerdy, an actual genius, and has the biggest heart of all the characters. Nate is maybe the glue but Hardison is definitely the heart. Media’s usual aggressive, amongst other, racist stereotypes can fuck right off. Parker is canonically autistic (I am sure this was confirmed by one of the creators) and she is not defined by it. It’s not written as some kind of singular personality trait. It’s part of what makes up Parker but it’s only one facet of who she is and not once is her actions, thoughts or feelings treated like a joke. Sometimes people don’t understand why she does and says the things she does but it’s met with patience and fondness over the course of the show. Equally, it’s not met with over-caution. Parker is just Parker. No-one tries to change her. The other nice thing is Hardison, who always makes sure Parker knows she’s amazing because of who she is and not in spite of it. Finally, Sophie is in her 40s. She’s not treated like she’s past her prime. Ever. She’s sexy, smart and never is she pitted against or compared to Parker (who is younger) for anything. Sophie is amazing and there’s never even a conversation of “I may be older but I am still *insert adjective typically associated with younger women here*”. Sophie is possibly the first female character I’ve ever seen who isn’t just unapologetic about her age but has never had to apologise for her age. It’s a non-issue and that’s that. The women on the show are written so well, right down to secondary characters and it’s beyond refreshing.  

4.) It’s just fun. The show has a “monster of the week” type format. Except instead of a ghoul or a ghost, the monster is some corrupt wealthy and powerful individual or organisation. The show draws on real-life individuals to do this and therefore closely parallels real-life people and events. It addresses important political, economical, social and environmental issues while at the same time remaining fun and light-hearted. The characters constantly get the chance to play dress up and by GOD do they have fun with it. You get to watch Eliot beat up bad guys in the most delightful of ways, usually after a witty non-sequitur and with a weapon you’d never think could be a weapon. The dialogue and back and forth between the characters is everything. And finally - my favourite thing- the team can never resist striking a dramatic pose after they’ve taken down the bad guy, making sure the bad guy sees them. I mean, they COULD just walk away, satisfied they’ve taken the person down, but nope. They gotta be dramatic bitches 24/7 and pose like they are models for every single month of this year’s Criminal Calendar.  

5.) Competence Porn. So. Much. Competence Porn.  

Honestly, I could list a thousand reasons for why Leverage is amazing but to list them would to be spoiling so many amazing moments you’d get to discover for the first time on your own if you do choose to watch it. It’s the kind of show you can watch with an eagle-eye and sink your teeth into. But it’s also the kind of show if, you would prefer, put on in the background for something entertaining while you do something else. Each episode is about the job at hand but it’s made up of so many moments between the characters that show how much the creators and writers care about them. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll do whatever it is you do when something Soft and Wonderful happens that makes your heart melt. I am so beyond grateful for Leverage. It’s everything I always wanted in a show. Nearly every show I’ve watched in the past 10 years has disappointed me in some way, usually either because the writers run out of steam or characters who I love are treated poorly or given some kind of unnecessary “shock value” arc. Leverage doesn’t do that. Leverage is what it says on the bottle. Fandom isn’t something I joined because I needed canon fix-its. Fandom only enhances and celebrates an already excellent canon. 

[cassandraclare]

I'm sorry to hear that your hard work was leaked but I was curious about what happened. I hope the person faced consequences because that was a very selfish thing to do leaking your work like that :(

I haven’t taken action against the person who leaked the book. I know who they are, since they uploaded the page I signed for them, and I was able to match that against my records. 

I haven’t refrained from taking action because I feel sympathy for them. I don’t. It’s beyond shitty behavior to receive an early, signed book as a gift, and to then leak the entire book online. It’s a shit thing to do to the authors and an equally shit thing to do to other fans. However, I don’t want to put myself (and Wes) through the exhausting, grim and expensive process of legal repercussions. It doesn’t mean what this person did isn’t horrible, and it doesn’t mean they haven’t cost the entire fandom any chance of there ever being an early contest giveaway like that again. They did. There never will be. There will be no ARCs of Chain of Iron, either, and you can thank them for that, too. 

Part of what makes piracy such an issue for authors goes far beyond the individual assholes who upload and distribute and translate stolen books. It’s that the whole system is set up to make it incredibly difficult for us to do anything about it. Publishers do little to nothing to prevent piracy, and authors shoulder the entire burden of searching out and reporting illegal copies of their books. And even then, we’re dependent on whether or not the reported website feels like complying with copyright laws or not. Twitter is incredibly slow to respond, Tumblr is about fifty-fifty on bothering at all. They’re legally required to take action, but they also know that the effort of doing something about it if they do not falls on exhausted, overburdened artists who often can’t afford to follow up with a lawyer’s letter.

And like, I get being broke and wanting to read books; there were a lot of books I had to pass up reading when I was broke (I will be forever grateful to the library system of New York and Brooklyn, which is how I read books at all from about 2001-2004.) I was broke enough that I slept on a bare mattress because I couldn’t afford sheets, but I’m pretty sure if I broke into Bed, Bath and Beyond and stole a bunch of fitted percale bedding I wouldn’t have encountered much sympathy if I got caught. 

I talked about this on Twitter before, and I’ll say it again here though I know it will make very little difference: pirating books doesn’t just hurt the author of those books. It hurts everyone at the publishing company, where the margin of profit is razor-thin (and yes, publishers should do more to protect themselves against piracy; I agree there); it hurts bookstores, especially indie bookstores (I remember doing an event at a store that told me, sadly, that they were likely going to have to close because people “came into the store, looked at the books, took notes, then went home and pirated them.”) It hurts libraries, who rely on circulation for funding, and the shutting down of libraries hurts people who actually can’t afford books.

Now, I know is no way to talk people out of piracy; the internet has normalized it, and besides, people will generally do the cheaper, easier thing — you can’t talk people into not doing something they want to do by telling them it’s wrong, in my experience. They’ll find ways to justify it, whether it be that they can’t afford the book or it isn’t yet available in their language or that they find the author “problematic” and this is the way they’ve chosen to punish them. 

The reason I put “problematic” in quotes is because yes, of course you can read and enjoy work that has problematic elements. Pretty much everything has some element that’s going to be found problematic by someone — which is exactly why deciding that it’s morally excusable to steal from people you think are creating flawed work is more than problematic. Holding creators accountable for their work means critiquing that work, not stealing it.

I listen to a lot of political podcasts, and some of them review work by extreme right-wing politicians etc. who have written books that the podcasters find morally despicable but wish to, or need to, review and discuss. Since they don’t wish to give money to the authors, they buy second-hand copies or take the book out of the library. They certainly don’t steal, translate and distribute copies of the books because they genuinely do not like them and do not want more people reading them. That’s what it looks like when you have an actual moral problem with a book or author. 

However, running multiple fan accounts for a book series, naming your internet identity after characters from that book series, and talking endlessly about “your favorite parts” and how this is “your favorite book” entirely invalidates any argument that you’re doing this because you think the books are bad, evil, etc. If you claim a book is actively homophobic or racist but are so desperate to read it that you’ll steal it, so excited about it that you’ll share that stolen copy, so obsessed that you’ll illegally translate a whole book and provide that stolen translation to as many people as possible, and so dedicated to the fandom that you’ll name yourself after the characters in the books and write poetry about them, I have to tell you: the last thing that looks like is that you actually find the books problematic, regardless of what you say to the contrary. It looks like you like them but don’t want to pay for them, because in fact, that’s the case. (Either that or it looks like you’re really into racist, homophobic books, and making sure as many people read them as possible, which is your problem.)

One of the issues I have with piracy is that it teaches you to hate creators. You have to hate them, because you’re doing a fucking awful thing to them and you have to justify it. This results in lying about creators — about their process, their translations, their research — as if somehow, even if they were bad researchers, that would justify widespread theft. (It doesn’t.) Those who steal books wind up in a headspace where they are obsessed with the content of the books, and entirely unwilling to accept the reality that those books were created by a real person that they’re really harming. It encourages the mentality that I didn’t create Jem or Magnus or Will or Cordelia: they came from some kind of sparkly outerspace planet and I was just lucky enough to get to write down their adventures. It invalidates the hard work creators put into what they create, and in fact, erases their very existence. The internet attitude toward creators is already incredibly toxic (especially if they’re women, LGBT+ and/or BIPOC) and the feeling of entitlement to free content, and vicious hatred toward those who aren’t providing it (even though a lot of creators, me included, provide a great deal of free content) contributes to that. Genuinely, if you’re stealing someone’s work, the least you could do is not also be an asshole about them. (Or pretend you’re Robin Hood. He stole from the rich who had taken property and goods from the poor, and returned that stolen wealth. He didn’t steal from artists and independent bookstores and use that stealing to benefit himself and his friends. The idea is actually kind of funny.) 

 I understand there is a pressure to be up to date on the books that are being released so as to participate in fandom, and I do get that. Unfortunately, piracy has real consequences that stretch beyond just hurting me and Wes. Because LGBT+ books are pirated at such an incredible rate, and we’ve definitely seen that with TEC, I am left wondering if there will ever be an actual Spanish translation of TEC, or whether the publisher will decide not to bother because it’s already been so thoroughly pirated in Spanish. I have to wonder if there will even be a third book of TEC at all, or whether publishers will feel it isn’t worth doing. And I have to wonder why the people who create this situation so often have usernames that include Jem or Magnus or Alec or Cordelia or Julian or Tessa. What an incredible misunderstanding of those characters, to imagine a world in which Will Herondale or Magnus Bane or James Carstairs would approve of stealing books and harming writers. And why name yourself after a character who absolutely couldn’t stand you? I don’t know. I don’t get it, any more than I get hating someone who provided you with something you claim is your favorite book. 

That was a much longer answer than you were probably expecting or hoping for, and I know I’ll get yelled at quite thoroughly for writing it. Writers always do, when we engage with the issue of piracy. I know most of you reading this acquire your books honestly; most of you are not like this at all. But like most things on the internet, a small amount of people really do have the power to make things pretty rotten for everyone else.

[evanescentjasmine]

Writing Egypt and Egyptian Characters: Rusty Quill Gaming Edition

I’ve finally caught up with the Cairo arc of Rusty Quill Gaming, which I was anticipating and dreading both. Fiction set in my country usually reduces it to a caricature of itself, especially when it takes place in the Victorian era, but considering everything they’ve said in their metacasts I was hoping Rusty Quill Gaming was the exception.

It wasn’t. 

I’m aware the game world plays fast and loose with history and setting, but the problems in this case are more than just inaccuracies. However, because I want to help fic writers and artists be able to portray Hamid and his family well, this resource will be split into two parts. The first part will tackle details I’ve been asked about with regard to the setting; it may touch on things RQG went wrong, but I’m writing it primarily as a resource for artists and writers. The second part will be my criticism of RQG, and why I found the Cairo arc actively harmful. This includes discussions of Orientalism and some racist text.

I should also preface this by saying I’m not a historian. Everything I say in this resource is a combination of what I grew up with and what I remember from school, supplemented by Google and guesswork. I’ll be explaining my thought process throughout, which can help you see what’s actual history and what’s my extrapolation.

Part One: On Egypt

Historical Context:

Figuring out the history of Egypt in RQG terms is a bit complicated, so bear with me because this will take a while. 

In real-world history, Egypt was a Roman then Byzantine province from 30 BC to around the mid 600s AD, at which point the Arab conquest swept through and Egypt became Muslim. 

What this means is that when the Meritocrats took down Rome and took over the world, Egypt was still a Roman province. That gives us a several hundred year gap before the Arabs that may have maintained the same culture? Or morphed a little back to some pre-Ptolemaic Ancient Egyptian, given their Meritocrat, Apophis, is named after a great Pharaonic serpent?

Either way, given Hamid’s name and the fact they live in Cairo, the city built by the Arabs, we can assume the Arab conquest still happened somehow, despite having a Meritocrat in Egypt. Maybe a Meritocrat out there is Arab and settled in Egypt for a bit with or before Apophis? Maybe it took a couple-hundred years for the Meritocrats to get all the previous Roman areas under control? Maybe there was a whole war and the Arabs won and settled and eventually they got to a truce or got absorbed into Meritocratic lands?

Many Muslim dynasties ruled throughout the period from the mid 600s to the 1500s. Given the lack of Islam in this world, probably the Arabs were unified by some Pre-Islamic deity/deities and brought them over as well, because I refuse to just sweep everything under the broad Greek God rug. 

In the 1500s, another Muslim dynasty took over--this time, from outside of the country, which is why it’s considered separate from all the rest. At this point, Egypt became part of the Ottoman Empire until the 1800s, which is when the Mohammed Ali dynasty started to try and secede and rule independently. And there was a brief blip of the French occupation for two years around then as well.

And, of course, we can’t forget about British colonisation, which started in the late 1800s with a veiled protectorate.

Presumably, since France and Britain are also Meritocratic and it seems like Apophis is currently ruling, we can disregard everything from the Ottomans onward. This changes, or should change, a ton, because Ottoman rule informed a lot of things from fashion to slang to nobility and so on. 

What we’re left with is most likely a Cairo that is still Arab but with much more Pharaonic influence, as Apophis is in charge, as well as continuing Greek influence due to the Gods. I am not a Coptic Christian, so I cannot speak to how these changes in history and religions would affect the Coptic language and culture, but no doubt it would still be around.

There would also be a bigger, more long-standing connection to other Meritocratic countries. This explains why Hamid was British-educated and so many people speak such good English without a British occupation to create the power disparity that would make that necessary to rise in Egypt and such a mark of status. 

However, this presents several confusing and contradictory aspects of the world building:

Why doesn’t this go both ways? Why aren’t there people in England and France who know Arabic or are influenced by Egypt? All we get is that the Tahan family are big. That’s it. If these countries are equals, it sure doesn’t look like it.

If Apophis is pharaonic and Ancient Egyptian culture and knowledge are so ubiquitous...why would they hollow out a pyramid to put a bank inside? It’s a tomb. It’s made to bury dead kings in a way that follows possibly still-existing cultural and religious beliefs. It’s the equivalent of someone building a bank inside a mausoleum. It’s bizarre.

Relatedly, if Ancient Egyptian culture and knowledge are so ubiquitous, why is Carter mentioning the Rosetta Stone? Why would the knowledge necessary to translate hieroglyphics have been lost? 

I mention these questions so fic writers can keep them in mind while writing and, of course, it’s entirely possible to create a workaround. For example, maybe the Rosetta Stone is supposed to be translating something else, like an ancient hidden magic?

Describing Cairo:

I want to make one thing very clear: Cairo is not, despite Alex’s description, like Vegas. While we do certainly have hotels and casinos, to reduce the city to only that is very harmful for reasons I’ll go into at the end of this resource.

Cairo is a very old city with a mix of architectural styles and is very heavily Muslim in real life. In Arabic, its tagline is often “city of a thousand minarets,” so clearly RQG Cairo will be fairly different. Given Apophis’ influence, Ancient Egyptian styles might be more prevalent in Cairo, but very likely not in the form of pyramids unless those pyramids were for the dead. In real life, some buildings do incorporate Ancient Egyptian flavour, usually just in the form of lotus columns or hieroglyphs. These would only be found in public institutions, however,  or, frankly, tourist-bait. 

Residential buildings tend to be clustered very close together and, since it’s an old city, streets are crowded and winding as the city keeps building on itself and spilling out of its previous bounds. Estates do, of course, exist, but I’d suggest against using Bryn’s example of Alhambra as a setting for the Tahan home. Alhambra is a palace fortress in Spain and, although it’s Andalusian and therefore influenced by Muslim architecture, it’s very different than anything in Egypt. It’s as absurd as saying a posh British character lives in a house that’s basically Versailles and leaving it there. I’ve included images of some Egyptian residential estates below, all from the 1800s to early 1900s.

And here are some photos of Cairo in the 1800s:

As you can see, not quite Vegas.

A fic set in Cairo can certainly still have the Cairo strip with all the casinos, since that’s an aspect of canon, but a place like that would probably be geared more to tourists and foreigners than locals. So long you’re aware of this while writing, and that Cairo would exist beyond it, you should be fine. It might also be worth having characters explore the actual city.

Weather:

The stereotype is that Egypt is just hot and sand year-round. It isn’t. The further south you go, the hotter it will get, so that Upper Egypt (which is in the south, yeah), is hotter than Lower Egypt, which is where Cairo and Alexandria are. Alexandria, by virtue of being on the Mediterranean, has fairly cold (for us) and rainy winters and mild, humid summers. Cairo gets very occasional rain and has harsher summers but is also dryer.

And, of course, a thing to remember is that even in the depths of the desert, the morning might be quite warm but the night will be quite cold as well.

Sandstorm season (called khamaseen) takes place from April - May but in the middle of Cairo it’s more of an annoyance than anything else.

Language:

Since they speak Arabic, it’s important to note that spoken Egyptian Arabic is very different from written Classical Arabic. Egyptian is a mishmash of Arabic, Coptic, a bit of Greek, and a bit of French (and, in the real world, some Turkish too) all smashed together. Accents differ from city to city, and Cairene Arabic is best known for the fact we pronounce the letter jeem as geem (so all soft Gs are turned into hard Gs) and tend to replace the letter qaf with a glottal stop.

This means that a Cairene wouldn’t be called Jamal, they’d be Gamal. A Cairene would pronounce burqa as bur’a.

Since religion plays a big part in language, RQG Egyptian Arabic may be a bit different. For instance, the greeting most people associate with Arabic is “Assalam alaykum” but that’s very specifically Muslim or at least associated with Islam, and might not have been as wide-spread given...y’know, that Islam doesn’t exist. I’m not saying it’s incorrect to use, just explaining the context.

Alternatives could include “Sabah/masa’ el-kheir” which means “Good morning/evening,” and “Naharak/Naharik saeed” which is, “May you have a good day.”

Fashion:

Although this didn’t really feature in RQG, I’ve received a lot of questions about the period’s fashion and honestly it’s my favourite thing ever so I probably would have touched on it anyway. I’ll only go into broad strokes, as there are plenty of regional variations and, again, I’m no expert 

Women

Egyptian women covered their heads and sometimes their faces not out of religiosity but out of a cultural expectation of modesty. This may well have come about as a result of the Arab/Muslim cultural majority, as to my knowledge this wasn’t the case in the Greek and Roman periods, but women of all religions covered their heads so that would likely still be the case in RQG’s Arab Egypt.

This isn’t with the hijab we know today. It may have been a cloth or kerchief tied over their heads and then the melaya laf (which is larger cloth, almost a sheet) that they wrap around themselves and over their head, as follows: 

The black face-covering was called a burqa or bur’a (not the same as a Muslim burqa, which serves similar modesty functions but is a separate thing) or a yashmak and may have been opaque black, white, or netted, such as in this picture:

Underneath the melaya they would be wearing a long, loose, patterned dress:

Upper class Egyptian women tended to wear Western dresses with a white yashmak that covered their faces and heads. A yashmak is Turkish, however, and without Ottoman influence this style and name might not have caught on in Egypt.

Men

While the melaya laf and yashmak have disappeared from Egypt, the traditional men’s gallabeya and ammama, or turban, are still seen widely today. The gallabeya (or jellabiya, outside of Cairene Arabic) is a long, loose garment with wide sleeves and no collar. It’s in muted, neutral colours, usually lighter ones like white or beige in the summer and navy blue or grey in the winter. You’ll have seen examples of it in the pictures of Cairo above, and here’s another one: 

Middle to upper class men and civil servants, however, tended to wear English suits with a tarboosh, or fez. Since fezzes were also a result of Ottoman rule, RQG Egyptians might not wear them.

And yes, impressive moustaches were also very much the fashion.

Names:

The running joke is that Hamid’s name is unnecessarily long, but my name is longer, and I don’t think that’s particularly unusual. We don’t usually go around introducing ourselves with all of them, admittedly, and I’m not sure whether Hamid does this as a way to indicate he’s overly fancy or because Bryn doesn’t realise it, but four names is not long. My ID boasts five, and I know of at least one more.

Arabic naming conventions use patronymics for all children, regardless of gender. What this means is that my name and my brother’s name is identical except for our first. 

Mine is Jasmine + Dad’s name + his dad’s name + his dad’s name + his dad’s name

And my brother is also First name + Dad’s name + his dad’s name + his dad’s name + his dad’s name.

Egyptians do not typically have last names, but an important family may all choose to identify under a name and use that as their last, such as the Tahans. In my case, I use my fifth name as my last name and introduce myself in everyday life as Jasmine Fifth Name. Notably, my brother does not, and goes by First name + Dad’s name instead. This isn’t unusual. On paperwork, however, we still have the same name.

Additionally, Egyptian women do not take their husbands’ last names in marriage, nor do children take any of her names. 

I’m not sure why, according to the wiki, Hamid’s sisters seem to have taken their mother’s name. Following Arabic naming conventions, they would all be First Name Saleh Haroun al Tahan, and their father would be Saleh Haroun al Tahan. A possible workaround might be that halflings have their own naming conventions that mean daughters have matronymics and sons patronymics. 

A note to podficcers: please google name pronunciations beforehand because Alex and Bryn’s are actually often wrong. Ishak, for instance, is not pronounced Ee-shak. It’s Iss-haaq or Iss-haa’, because of quirks of the Egyptian accent I mentioned earlier.

Part Two: Criticism

I understand it can be difficult to portray a country different from yours with accuracy. I understand the RQG crew will not have had the perspective on Egypt and Cairo that I do by virtue of living here. I do also acknowledge that I’m sure none of this was actively malicious or on purpose.

But it doesn’t have to be on purpose to hurt, frankly, and given how often the RQG crew have talked about their responsibility with a game that’s intended for an audience, I expected better. Bryn has spoken about not wanting to fall into stereotypes for Hamid and, to be fair, by being a non-religious fancyboy Hamid does neatly avoid the religious zealot and the noble (or ignoble) savage routes. Unfortunately, he falls into another, which was hammered home by the portrayal of Cairo and the Tahans as a whole.

Our first glimpse of Cairo, after the sandstorm clears, describes it as “basically Vegas,” with hotels and garish casinos catering to the rich all along the “Cairo strip.” From then on, our only other images of Cairo are vast estates and a pyramid in the desert. 

The only named Egyptians we meet are the Tahan family, who are introduced through an absurdly lavish estate compared to the palace fortress of Alhambra, a gambling problem that apparently runs in the family, murder, and corruption, as the head of the family who has already covered up a crime for one son then turns himself in to protect the other.

Then, to top it all off, Hamid is apparently utterly incapable of understanding why letting his brother get away with murder is an issue until the paladins point it out.

Do you see the pattern, here?

I understand this was aiming to be a criticism of the rich and powerful, but the fact remains that the Tahans are the only representation of Egyptians we get. While this may not be harems and hand-chopping levels of Orientalism, the image presented is of Cairo as a den of excessive wealth and vice, and Egyptians as corrupt and immoral.

This isn’t new.

The Middle East and North Africa (as well as India and China and everywhere else considered “the Orient”) has often been tied to images of wealth and overt splendour, usually hand-in-hand with the Oriental despot and corruption. This view went beyond just fiction and influenced the policies with which we were ruled. 

Cromer, Consul-General of Egypt, wrote books called Modern Egypt. He had this to say about us:

“The mind of the Oriental, on the other hand, like his picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod description. . . . They are often incapable of drawing the most obvious conclusions from any simple premises of which they may admit the truth.”

In his opinion, our inability to follow logical reason led to us being inherently untruthful and, therefore, immoral. Similarly, British statesman Balfour was of the belief that:

 “Lord Cromer’s services during the past quarter of a century have raised Egypt from the lowest pitch of social and economic degradation until it now stands among Oriental nations, I believe, absolutely alone in its prosperity, financial and moral.”

Egypt was under British colonial rule from 1882 - 1952.

You can see, I hope, why a storyline focused on an Egyptian family’s corruption in an Egypt characterised almost entirely by its casinos and one lavish mansion was very uncomfortable. The fact Azu was one of the people trying to explain morality to Hamid keeps it from sliding into a clear East vs West dichotomy, but the fact remains this is a British show featuring British players and this is the story they chose to tell. 

The rest was just salt in the wound, really. 

I expect mispronounced names and pyramids and jokes about camels in most media, but rarely do the makers of said media then go on to pat themselves on the back for doing their “due diligence” on a metacast about sensitivity.

I see weird naming conventions and mispronounced names and “basically Vegas” and “crocodile steak” and “camel’s milk froyo” and I do not see due diligence.  

I see a setting that barely looked past Cleopatra and I do not see due diligence.

I see a storyline that shows only excess and immorality and corruption and I do not see due diligence.

I see a disregard for me and mine, and I do not appreciate it. 

Literature I’ve referred to in writing this criticism:

Orientalism (1978), by Edward W. Said

Orientalism in the Victorian Era (2017), a paper by Valerie Kennedy

Orientalism in American Cinema: Providing an Historical and Geographical Context for PostColonial Theory (2010), a thesis by Samuel Scurry 

Popular Culture, Orientalism, and Edward Said (2012), an article by Robert Irwin

[consumeconstantly]

Lady Cross (first aid)

Summary: Somehow, Marinette always ends up biting off more than she can chew. It started off with a kid and a nasty gash on their knee. The sudden escalation to treating the new head of Gotham’s underworld? It can only be explained by the fact that she’s catnip for trouble. 

_____________________________________________

Marinette supposed she should have expected something like this to happen eventually.

Really, she patches up a few street kids and offers a meal and some resources and suddenly she's made a name for herself in the slums of Gotham. It’s not like she’s doing anything revolutionary. Well, okay, maybe she does cheat a little bit and uses her healing powers on a few of the tougher cases that really should have been out of her realm of expertise, but she’s living near the slums of Gotham for a reason. That reason being Marinette is just a little broke and can’t really afford to send everyone she comes across to the hospital, and the people who are injured certainly can’t. It’s not like she can leave them to die. That would be heartless.

When she stopped treating scrapes and cuts for kids on the streets as she came across them and instead found her apartment balcony frequented by families who needed her help, she couldn’t just say no. And so, more and more serious wounds started coming in. Kids brought their parents and friends. The parents and friends brought... well, if the police stopped by her apartment any time soon, she’s fairly certain they’d have a field day.

But again, it’s not like she’s going to turn these people into the police when they’ve come to her for help and have a small army of people who swear up and down that they’re good people and only doing what they have to do in order to get by.

Morality comes in such a variety of shades, who was she to judge? Ladybug and Marinette have both certainly had their fair share of mistakes that they’d gladly go back in time to rectify, and her hands weren’t clean of blood either. Sure, the Miraculous Cure may have brought people back, but their deaths were still on her. And Hawkmoth? Yeah, he’s alive now, but she hammered him into the pavement after dropping him from the top of the Eiffel tower, and she’s not going to pretend that she didn’t take a bit of morbid joy in that moment.

But back to the matter at hand. Which was, the notorious Red Hood—responsible for a coup amongst Gotham’s drug dealers and responsible for taking down a man whose morality truly vanished with the wind, Black Mask himself— was currently bleeding out on her second floor balcony, smoking a cigarette and lounging against the rail like he owned the place. 

“Lady Cross,” he inclined his head.

“Red Hood,” Marinette returned his greeting.

God, she really didn’t want to get involved with Red Hood. She wasn’t opposed to helping out street thugs and criminals, but Red Hood was a different league. He seemed to be a fairly decent guy, ensuring that kids weren’t dealt drugs and tried to keep them out of the circuit as much as possible. He took down plenty of worse criminals while he was at it. In fact, Marinette would go so far to say the Red Hood as one the good guys.

But the issue was, once she started treating people of a certain level, she’d be open game. And that didn’t seem very enticing to her. Not at all. Everyone knew that Red Hood had beef with the Bat Family for some reason or other, and also made enemies with almost every single rogue in Gotham, and a good number of enemies outside of it as well. Basically, Red Hood was a universal enemy of both the vigilantes and rogues. Someone she shouldn’t get involved with while she was trying to investigate the darkness surrounding Gotham whole running her online boutique and going to college at Gotham University.

Unfortunately, Tom and Sabine and her own stint as Ladybug taught her that she could never ignore someone in need. Marinette sighed and slid the mesh open, leading Red Hood to her living room. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

“Real nice place you got here,” he said.

With the mask covering the whole of his face, Marinette had no facial expressions to figure out whether he was poking fun at her current living situation or not. His voice sounded genuine, but vocal emotions were easy to fake.

The apartment she was living in was not on the nice side of town. There were three bullet holes in the wall between her living room and bedroom that she just didn’t have time to patch up, some pretty nasty looking stains on the ceiling near her kitchen, and a huge, spray painted red cross on one of her walls, which was where her street name derived from. Her floor and coffee table were also in states of disarray; she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to clean up after working on two commissions and the last guest whose wounds were heavy enough to warrant several rolls of gauze, which was now half stuffed into a garbage can sitting next to rolls of fabric. Perhaps not the neatest or most sanitary situation, but she didn’t have time to clean up before every single one of her unexpected guests came in.

Look, it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have time to fix things up real nice and neat. She’d only been living in the apartment for a month and a half, and most times, she barely spent any time in it other than to sleep, cram last minute projects for her design course, or to help heal people. Her living situation wasn’t the biggest of worries.

“Sit,” Marinette gestured to the one of the few pieces of furniture that she specifically bought for the apartment. She didn’t mind the stained, half broken, and extremely creaky couch the last owners left behind for the first week, but after she started bringing back her first… visitors, it seemed important that the couch was comfortable, sturdy, and most crucially, cleanable.

Rummaging through a cabinet, she pulled out a tattered briefcase she thrifted a while back to keep all of her medical supplies in. Not the prettiest of things, but she tried not to keep expensive looking items in her apartment because she wasn’t a fan of getting mugged. The medicine she kept was already expensive enough, she didn’t need to attract everyone’s attention by owning one of those metal containers used in hospitals. Even though most of the people who dropped by her apartment were thankful to be treated, she had a few instances where people tried to steal things from her.

“What’s the damage, doc?” Red Hood’s voice came through rather tinny through his helmet. 

Marinette grimaced. The helmet must have awful air circulation. It looked like some sort of metal, and wet and metal never smelled good together. “I don’t know, you tell me.”

“Thought you were supposed to be some mystic healer who came from the far east.”

She paused and looked at the man, trying to judge whether he was racist as well as rude. “That’s rather insulting.” 

Red Hood shrugged. Marinette applauded the man for showing no outward sign of pain at that, even though there was a bullet embedded in his shoulder, and shrugging had to bite. “That’s what the word on the street is, though you sound French to me. Thought I’d come and check out who’s healing Gotham’s criminals. What’re you planning?”

“Sorry to foil your plans, but I’m not planning anything other than getting my college degree and not pissing off the people I live near.” She paused, flipping the lock on the briefcase upwards. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use me as your go to healer from now on. You’re going to bring trouble my way.”

“Trouble? Me? Perish the thought.” His hand rested comfortably on the holister of his gun, ready to shoot if the girl pulled out a weapon from the briefcase. “We’ll talk about repeat appearances after I see how you do today.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Any wounds other than the obvious?”

“Just need the bullet out, and some stitches on the gash.” His shoulder and his abdomen, respectively. The gash looked nastier than the bullet; no shrapnel, but the cut on his stomach was jagged and wide. Not a normal, sharp blade. Probably needed a good cleaning.

She grabbed the tweezers, a sterilized needle, and medical thread. “That’s fine. Now are you going to undress, or am I going to have to cut your… costume… up?”

“Getting me naked already? We haven’t even had our first date yet.”

“Very funny, little Red Riding Hood. Now hop to it. I have class at 9 tomorrow and projects to finish tonight.” Somehow, trouble always seemed to find her when she least wanted it to. Not that she wanted to have trouble find her at all, but luck was a two way street, and for all that being Ladybug granted her good luck, she attracted criminals like catnip. 

“And here my informants had me thinking you were a regular Florence Nightingale.”

Marinette snorted. “They wish. I’ve got to ask who told you, because everybody should know the rules. You know, the ones where they don’t speak of my existence to their higher ups?”

“I’m not a rat,” Red Hood said, taking the top part of his outfit off. “And it’s not like you would have gone unnoticed anyways. You might be treating small timers now, but people catch on to healers pretty easy.”

“Because some gauze and sewing skills make me such a prime target.”

“No, your magic does.”

Shit. Marinette never told anyone she was using magic, and she rarely used it unless it was a dire situation. If she could patch them up using regular skills, she did. 

“Yeah right, if I had magic healing powers, do you think I’d be shoving my fingers into your shoulder to get a bullet out?”

“Not a very good liar, Lady Cross. You have this deer-caught-in-the-headlights look about you.”

“Thanks for the compliment. I’m also the deer that tramples through your windshield and takes a dump on the driver’s seat.” She maneuvered the tweezers a little rougher, hoping to make Red Hood hiss in pain. He just chuckled, amused. His high pain tolerance was getting rather annoying. She had half a mind to pour hydrogen peroxide over the wound just to see if that would make him show he was in pain, but thought better of it. Even though she didn’t like the man, she also didn’t want to piss him off. Or worse, have him come back and make her fix him up again. 

Threading the needle, she made quick, small stitches on his shoulder, sewing the bullet hole up, then put some petroleum jelly to speed up the healing process and reduce scarring. At least the wound was in a position that didn’t require a lot of gauze. She needed to go out and buy some more soon. She barely had enough to wrap around Red Hood’s waist.

“So, the magic,” Red Hood started. “Is it a conditional thing? Can you not use it all the time?”

“Again, I don’t have magic.” Marinette did have to use some antibacterial on the knife wound. He would need to take good care of that one to make sure it didn’t get infected. 

“So a meta, then. What are you doing in Gotham? Everybody knows Batman hates metas.”

“Not a meta, either, sorry to disappoint.” She tied off the gauze, then stood to wash her hands. “Make sure to clean the stomach wound well. Hope you have your tetanus shot, otherwise you should look into getting one.”

“Surprisingly, I’m inclined to believe you on the not-a-meta thing. Back to the first thing, then. Magic. Why don’t you show me the old razzle dazzle? Do you have to say one of those weird spells like the godmother in Cinderella? Bibbity bobbity boo?”

“You’re hilarious,” Marinette dead panned. 

“How’s this for magic? Bibbity bobbity boo, kindly leave. Shoo.” She followed his suggestion, made a show of jazz hands as well. “Pity I don’t use magic otherwise you’d be gone now. Anyways, it’s time for you to make your exit. It would be great if you didn't visit me again. Ever. Thanks.”

She ushered him out onto her patio, then slammed the sliding door. He saluted her before dropping off the side of the building. She could imagine the man under the helmet smirking.

Marinette ran a hand through her loose hair. “He’s going to come back, isn’t he.”

@jasonette-july-2k20

[stillness-in-green]

The sentiment that the league can be sympathized with but not overhaul makes sense bc readers take things like abuse personally but it doesn’t stop it from being annoying

When you’re right, you’re right, anon. I suspect it’s a combination of two factors. First, as you say, that issues like abuse hit much closer to home, so people take them much more personally (and, in our current fandom environment, get much more reactionary and nasty about the characters involved) than e.g. arson and murder.

Second, there’s always that issue of character familiarity: Overhaul abused Eri, who is about as picture-perfect a victim as you could imagine, a bedraggled waif with recent wounds, limpid eyes and a halting, fearful manner. He also killed Magne and Nighteye, both named characters who’d been around long enough to accrue at least some measure of audience affection. By comparison, while the League has obviously harmed significant characters, the people they’ve actually killed/permanently taken out of the action are either villains (Curious and Overhaul; a bunch of skull-masked quirk racists) or people who we see mere glances of at best: a schoolboy Toga attacked here, a Twice clone killing a then-unnamed hero there, Shigaraki’s Decay wave catching heroes we’ve spent little to no time with and/or a bunch of MLA soldiers/civilians whose presence we can only posit because it’s unrealistic to suspect that everyone was able to get out of his radius in time.

Then there are Dabi’s thirty innocent victims, and for the purposes of this post, I want to talk about them a little more, because they’re the ones that really get to me.

So like, we assume that a lot of those thirty people are like the roughs Dabi killed in the alleyway in Chapter 115, and I’ve seen a lot of people suggest that those guys can hardly be called “innocent” (and therefore, by implication, that burning them alive is totally fine). But those men were innocent, at least of any wrongdoing to Dabi.

As best we can tell, he walked into their alley, they turned to face him and made some broad, aimless, face-saving threats that didn’t even reach the level of serious plausibility: ”Buzz off or die,” one said, with his hands still lowered at his sides, and the other speaker hadn’t even taken his hands out of his pockets. Dabi raised his hands first; Dabi murdered them for no reasons but that they’d given him some lip after he walked into their patch, and that they were eyesores whose “type” the League (or he himself, or the world at large) didn’t need.

Every single one of those street dudes could have had Twice’s backstory. Or Magne’s, or Spinner’s. They could have been like Overhaul’s trio of Tabe, Setsuno and Hojo, clinging to the only friends and the only place to belong they’d found after years of being treated like disposable trash. We don’t know, because we don’t know them, but the average person with anything to do with their life probably isn’t hanging around being surly in a dark alley. But, again, it’s not like they lured Dabi in to mug him; he came to them, showing the same callous disregard for their lives and their worth to society that he would himself later face from Geten.

Yet somehow, only Dabi’s indignation is righteous.

Like, I don’t care if people like Dabi despite his wrongdoings; all my favorite characters in this series are villains too! What bothers me are the double standards, the way certain villain fans just trip over themselves rushing to downplay and excuse everything bad the League does while at the same time espousing the most uncharitable interpretations possible of characters they hate, in some cases even if that interpretation is blatantly at odds with the text itself!*

I hate these ridiculous Who Has Transgressed In Ways Too Problematic To Be Forgiven debates. They’re like fandom’s version of the Oppression Olympics, and it’s not possible to play those games and maintain any level of consistency and intellectual integrity. Just accept that people are allowed a) different interpretations of the text than you and b) to like fictional characters regardless of their equally fictional wrongdoings. It is seriously not that hard.

Thanks for the ask, anon! Go in peace and love your problematic faves.

* For example, I don’t think Kotarou was hitting Tenko on the regular, nor do I think Endeavor was beating Shouto outside the confines of his (definitely abusive; don’t get me wrong) training regimen, but at at least you can argue those things without necessarily contradicting the text. But things like, “Endeavor crying in his hospital room was a abusive manipulation tactic to make his family feel bad for him,” when Enji started crying while he was alone, before anyone else even entered the room? Like, there’s having a different interpretation of the canon, and then there’s being so stratospherically wrong that I have to wonder if people are even reading the manga at all, or if they’ve just moved on to getting all their information from their friends. Which is fine and all, but at least fucking own it.