#but it’s clear that this is a racial bias considering that Gai is based off of Bruce Lee / wears Chinese clothing etc

[sinnbaddie]

I think Kishimoto has a long list of problems within himself that he’s put into his work like his misogyny regarding the women, but I think his racism should also be addressed - specifically in regards to Gai.

Gai (Tenten and Lee as well) has been insinuated to be Chinese and besides the clothing to show it, he uses racial stereotypes to further it.

The stereotype that Chinese people are “all loud” comes to mind. He makes sure to draw a difference with Gai (and Lee) and the others by making them loud and “weird”. He’s almost always the butt of a joke if he’s a part of the story outside of the very few moments where he genuinely shines.

SP doesn’t help with his racial stereotyping because in filler there are jokes about Gai having a small penis which is a stereotype that Asian men (Chinese in this case) people have small genitalia.

Overall Gai is treated very poorly because of Kishimoto and SP’s racism and I think it should be acknowledged and talked about because it’s irritating and disgusting.

[blayzez]

I'm sorry, I know I don't usually post discourse on my blog. I'm just... really hurt right now.

At the age of 24, after spending my entire childhood forcing myself to believe I was straight because that's what my family and religion said I was supposed to be, I finally acknowledged that I was bisexual. Even then, I was still second-guessing myself: What if I only think I'm bisexual because the internet/social media makes it seem like the "In" thing? What if my sexuality is just a mask and not who I really am? What if, what if, what if. It was hard.

Then I saw Voltron. Lance seemed to have a bisexuality arc laid out for him, and it was obvious that he didn't quite know he was bi and/or wasn't emotionally ready to acknowledge it.

That was just so validating. It made me happy to know that being confused about your sexuality -- not being sure if you're the sexuality you think you might be -- was common enough to include it in a kid's show and it made me feel so much better! I was so happy, and with Lance's help (and the help of my friends and therapist), I was able to finally accept my sexuality for what it was. And I'm an adult. Think about how many kids his arc could have helped! Kids who were questioning, kids who were unsure, kids that might not being surrounded by a good support system and have to hide who they are. Lance was shaping up to be someone kids could really look up, admire, and in turn accept themselves for they are because of him.

And now that's washed down the drain. It meant so much to me, perhaps meant so much to a lot of kids that needed that role model, but it clearly meant nothing to the writers and that is just so disheartening.

This isn't even about shipping. I love K/ance with all my heart, but I would be okay with any endgame ship so long as it was written well. This includes keeping the characters in-character and allowing the romance to help in their character development. Keith was the most likely candidate -- he really did make Lance a better person and vice versa -- but if someone else filled that role and filled it well, I would have been perfectly fine with that! But that's not what we got. Instead, the boy who has been insecure ALL SERIES has to spend his only romance building up his partner and have that not be reciprocated. That most-likely-candidate boosted him up more than Lance's actual romantic partner, and that is just bad writing. That's not a good relationship. Relationships are two-way streets; you can't have only one of the partners be supportive -- they have to be EQUALLY supportive. And A//urance was not that. A//urance was rushed, did not help the characters develop in the slightest, and took away TWO great role models.

I don't like Allura. I think I've made this clear before, but I really don't like her. I was neutral to her in s1, then the whole Not-All-Galra arc happened in s2 and my opinion of her started going down at that point.

But she didn't deserve the hand she was dealt. She was the only woman of color in the main cast, and they KILL HER??? WHY????? I may not have liked her, but that doesn't mean she was a bad character! On the contrary, she was a great role model and I'm sure many girls of color looked up to her. And then they just kill her? First they take away the great role model Lance could have been as a confused bisexual character, and then they take away the only woman of color on the main cast. WHAT. THE. FUCK. You can't just do that! I feel so horrible for the kids who looked up to those characters only to have it all ripped out from under their feet.

Oh, but there was a random gay wedding at the end, so that makes it alllllllll better~

Except it doesn't. Adding in a gay wedding/kiss with little-to-no build-up is more likely to cause confusion than anything else. And it doesn't erase how dirty they did Lance and Allura. Both characters deserved better.

On the topic of shipping, yes, it was queerbait. I refused to believe the showrunners were doing that -- I absolutely refused because I trusted the showrunners completely. Surely they wouldn't have ALL OF THESE ROMANTIC PARALLELS between K/L with other canon romantic couples for nothing. Surely they wouldn't have developed K/L's relationship more than any other relationship unless there was a really good reason for it. SURELY THEY WOULDN'T BE OKAY WITH VAGUING ABOUT THE SHIP MULTIPLE TIMES AND BEING OKAY WITH DW USING K/L FOR MARKETING PURPOSES IF IT WASN'T GOING TO HAPPEN.

But nope. All of the media techniques to subtly hint at a romance used specifically for K/L meant nothing. It was just bros being bros nothing gay here.

And that is BULLSHIT.

Honestly, the whole season just screams, "SHOCK VALUE," to me. They wanted to shock people, but I don't think they really considered the repercussions of how they were doing it. I get shock value, bringing up the interest and encouraging audiences to rewatch the series to understand why the shock was actually built-up from the beginning, but there's right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. Voltron took the wrong way and screwed it up royally.

To be clear, I am not against straight ships. Far from it, some of my favorite ships are heterosexual. Nor do I fetishize mlm relationships -- K/L is only the second mlm relationship I've come to really love (the first being Hau and Gladion from Pokemon Sun & Moon). It's just that K/L really struck a chord with me and with so many other people, and to take that away for the sake of a straight ship and some shitty shock value? Dirty thing to do to the show's audience. Don't build up proper LGBT+ rep UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING HAVE IT. The only rep? Shiro, and a hastily-added Zethrid/Ezor ship. Blaytz, too, but that was glossed over tbh and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the audience (not on tumblr because we analyze everything to death lol) completely forgot about Blaytz's interaction with that make Galra. That's not proper rep. That's throwing it in and thinking, "It exists so our job is done."

Media in general has being doing LGBT+ rep dirty for SO LONG. Even when we had positive LGBT+ characters in media, they were still characters based off of gay stereotypes. They were good positive characters, but were still perpetuating a certain bias against LGBT+ by displaying these stereotypes as fact. Times are supposed to be different now. We're supposed to be progressing, making it BETTER. I really thought Voltron was going to be part of that progress, that it would give us a well-written, well-developed, well-loved LGBT+ representation for kids of this generation to look up to and admire and learn acceptance -- about themselves and about others -- from. Instead, the showrunners three half-assed, tacked on LGBT+ reps and called it a day.

THAT'S NOT COOL.

This isn't about ships. This is about proper media representation for the LGBT+ community -- something that is really scarce, even now -- and how it affects the LGBT+ community when it's done badly. This also goes for racial rep. You can take two misrepresented groups and treat them horribly and then call it good rep. IT ISN'T. The poor representation of the LGBT+ community has proved to be detrimental in society's view of them. THIS DOESN'T HELP.

*sigh*

Off the topic of that, can we talk about how shit the writing was? Because it was really shit.

I'll admit that while I like s7, it wasn't written amazingly-well. Still, it wasn't bad and did have plenty of interesting episodes. Even with all of the asspulls we got in the last episode, it was still awesome because we got to see Shiro back in his element after losing almost everything in prior seasons. It was a mix of good writing and bad writing, but the good writing made up for the bad.

The seasons previous to that were well-done. Maybe not s4, but the other seasons were well-written and really enjoyable! There's a reason the show took off; the plot maybe standard, but the characters, character dynamics, and relationships were fantastic and were the true driving force behind the series and its success.

So why was s8 so all over the place? Why were plot threads that had been hinted at or outright confirmed left hanging or tied together hastily? So many things were alluded to in previous seasons only to lead to NOTHING. WHY???

Why did everyone BUT Lance get an arc?

What was the point of Lance getting a sword if it was never going to be brought up again?

Why was Keith's arc suddenly thrown to the wayside?

Why did Allura have to DIE for her arc to reach its conclusion?

WHY?

So many people complained about bad writing in Voltron, but I had always believed that the writing in Voltron was relatively good. Sure, it had its problems (like the entirety of s4, and the MFEs being boring as shit), but it was mostly a well-rounded show with well-rounded characters.

And s8... just threw all of that away.

All of that potential, all of those good arcs -- wasted.

The writing went downhill SO fast, and it's just such a shame. Something that meant so much to me has dissolved into the mess s8 was. It's disheartening.

I also want to apologize to all of my followers who followed me because my K/L optimism and metas. I'm sorry if I got your hopes up; I really thought K/L was the logical conclusion -- everything was building up to it, right from the first episode and even continuing in s7 (hell, even s8 added to it) -- and I truly thought the writers were going to follow through with all of the logical conclusions the previous seasons built up. I had faith in them, but I was wrong. For that, I apologize. I know it's just a cartoon show, but I also know how influential and meaningful media can be -- especially for marginalized groups -- so if my hype bringing you up made your fall harder when s8 was released, I am so sorry. You didn't deserve that; nobody in the fandom did.

I'm so jaded and disillusioned right now. Voltron has been a major inspiration for me; I originally decided to be a cartoonist to bring LGBT+ representation to children's media because of Steven Universe, but it was Voltron that really motivated me to reach that goal. I looked up to Voltron -- it was my muse, my main inspiration. I've learned so much about writing -- writing character arcs, relationships, etc. -- from Voltron and all of the analyzing people did. Seeing it devolve into what it did is upsetting. Something I loved so much has let me down, and I'm hurt and disappointed.

But more than ever, I want to create cartoons that don't do this; cartoons that tie up its loose ends, follow through with obvious character relationships, puts the main characters through complete arcs, and give proper development to them all. Cartoons that have proper LGBT+ and racial representation -- with LGBT+/characters of color that can be admired, that won't fall flat, that will teach the children of the generation about acceptance of others and acceptance of yourself regardless of sexuality, skin color, gender identity, etc. Voltron failed in that aspect; it was a compelling show that failed in everything it needed to succeed in. I refuse to make that same mistake.

With that, let's all look ahead to future and enjoy the fanworks that do these wonderful characters justice. Let Voltron's failure inspire you to create and make something better, something that will be much more impactful, much more meaningful.

Don't let it get you down; let it bring you up.

[kacydeneen]

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens Dies

John Paul Stevens, the bow-tied, independent-thinking, Republican-nominated justice who unexpectedly emerged as the Supreme Court's leading liberal, died Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after suffering a stroke Monday. He was 99.

During nearly 35 years on the court, Stevens stood for the freedom and dignity of individuals, be they students or immigrants or prisoners. He acted to limit the death penalty, squelch official prayer in schools, establish gay rights, promote racial equality and preserve legal abortion. He protected the rights of crime suspects and illegal immigrants facing deportation.

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He influenced fellow justices to give foreign terrorism suspects held for years at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base the right to plead for their release in U.S. courts.

Stevens served more than twice the average tenure for a justice, and was only the second to mark his 90th birthday on the high court. From his appointment by President Gerald Ford in 1975 through his retirement in June 2010, he shaped decisions that touched countless aspects of American life.

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"He brought to our bench an inimitable blend of kindness, humility, wisdom and independence. His unrelenting commitment to justice has left us a better nation," Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement.

He remained an active writer and speaker into his late 90s, surprising some when he came out against Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation following Kavanaugh's angry denial of sexual assault allegations. Stevens wrote an autobiography, "The Making of a Justice: My First 94 Years," that was released just after his 99th birthday in April 2019.

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At first considered a centrist, Stevens came to be seen as a lion of liberalism. But he rejected that characterization.

"I don't think of myself as a liberal at all," Stevens told The New York Times in 2007. "I think as part of my general politics, I'm pretty darn conservative."

The way Stevens saw it, he held to the same ground, but the court had shifted steadily to the right over the decades, creating the illusion that he was moving leftward.

He did change his views on some issues, however. He morphed from a critic of affirmative action to a supporter, and came to believe the death penalty was wrong.

His legal reasoning was often described as unpredictable or idiosyncratic, especially in his early years on the court. He was a prolific writer of separate opinions laying out his own thinking, whether he agreed or disagreed with the majority's ruling. Yet Stevens didn't consider his methods novel. He tended toward a case-by-case approach, avoided sweeping judicial philosophies, and stayed mindful of precedent.

The white-haired Stevens, eyes often twinkling behind owlish glasses, was the picture of old-fashioned geniality on the court and off. He took an unusually courteous tone with lawyers arguing their cases, but he was no pushover. After his fellow justices fired off questions, Stevens would politely weigh in. "May I ask a question?" he'd ask gently, then quickly slice to the weakest point of a lawyer's argument.

Stevens was especially concerned with the plight of ordinary citizens up against the government or other powerful interests — a type of struggle he witnessed as a boy.

When he was 14, his father, owner of a grand but failing Chicago hotel, was wrongly convicted of embezzlement. Ernest Stevens was vindicated on appeal, but decades later his son would say the family's ordeal taught him that justice can misfire.

More often, however, Stevens credited his sensitivity to abuses of power by police and prosecutors to what he learned while representing criminal defendants in pro bono cases as a young Chicago lawyer.

He voiced only one regret about his Supreme Court career: that he had supported reinstating the death penalty in 1976. More than three decades later, Stevens publicly declared his opposition to capital punishment, saying that years of bad court decisions had overlooked racial bias, favored prosecutors and otherwise undermined his expectation that death sentences could be handed down fairly.

One of his harshest dissents came when the court lifted restrictions on spending by corporations and unions to sway elections. He called the 2010 ruling "a rejection of the common sense of the American people" and a threat to democracy.

As he read parts of that opinion aloud, Stevens' voice wavered uncharacteristically and he repeatedly stumbled over words. For the 90-year-old who'd worried he wouldn't know when to bow out, it was a signal. "That was the day I decided to resign," Stevens said later. He also disclosed in his autobiography that he had suffered a mini-stroke.

The retirement of Stevens, known as a defender of strict separation of church and state, notably left the high court without a single Protestant member for the first time.

"I guess I'm the last WASP," he joked, saying the issue was irrelevant to the justices' work. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who joined the court in 2017, was raised Catholic, but attends a Protestant church.

A great-grandfather, Stevens eased into an active retirement of writing and speaking, still fit for swimming and tennis in Fort Lauderdale, where he and his second wife, Maryan, kept a home away from Washington.

He is survived by two daughters, Elizabeth and Susan, who were with him when he died. Other survivors include nine grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. Stevens' first wife, Elizabeth, second wife, Maryan, and two children died before him. Funeral arrangements are pending, the Supreme Court said in a statement announcing his death. But he is expected to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, next to Maryan.

Born in 1920, Stevens was a privileged child of a bygone era: He met Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh at the family hotel and was at the ballpark when Babe Ruth hit his famous "called-shot" home run in the 1932 World Series.

He joined the Navy the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and was awarded the Bronze Star for his service with a Japanese code-breaking team. The code breakers' work enabled the U.S. to shoot down a plane carrying the commander of the Japanese Navy, and that targeted wartime killing later contributed to his misgivings about the death penalty.

After World War II, Stevens graduated first in his class at Northwestern University's law school and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Wiley Rutledge. As a lawyer he became an antitrust expert, experience he brought to Supreme Court rulings such as one ending the NCAA's control over televised college football games.

President Richard Nixon appointed Stevens, a lifelong Republican, to the federal appeals court in Chicago. Judge Stevens was considered a moderate conservative when Ford — whose nominee would need the approval of a Democratic-controlled Senate — chose him for the Supreme Court.

Stevens won unanimous confirmation after uneventful hearings nothing like today's partisan shows. Stevens' liberal bent once on the high court was "different than I envisioned," Ford acknowledged decades later, but he still supported and praised him as "a very good legal scholar."

Stevens' influence reached its height after other liberals retired in the early 1990s, leaving him the senior associate justice and the court's leader on the left. For a dozen years after, he proved adept at drawing swing votes from Republican appointees Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, often frustrating conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Stevens' clout diminished after Roberts arrived in 2005 and O'Connor was replaced by the more conservative Samuel Alito. But he didn't lose spirit. Throughout his career, Stevens unleashed some of his most memorable language in defeat.

He wrote a scathing dissent in Bush v. Gore, the 2000 case that ended Florida's presidential recount and anointed George W. Bush: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

Photo Credit: AP Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens Dies published first on Miami News

[duaneodavila]

Execution, When The Jury Feels Prison Might Be Fun

A persuasive argument not only makes the points in its favor, but acknowledges and addresses the points against it. ACLU lawyer Ría Tabacco Mar, who “represents L.G.B.T. people facing discrimination,” neglected to do the latter in her op-ed addressing the Supreme Court’s refusal to stop the execution of Charles Rhines.

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced it would not stop South Dakota from killing a man who may have been sentenced to death because he is gay.

Some of the jurors who imposed the death penalty on Charles Rhines, who was convicted of murder, have said they thought the alternative — a life sentence served in a men’s prison — was something he would enjoy as a gay man.

The first sentences is the sort that makes people bristle. Putting aside that the government shouldn’t be in the business of executing people at all, it’s comes off as disingenuous to contend that he was sentenced to death for being gay. They didn’t pluck some gay guy off the street and scream “kill the gay guy.” The second paragraph provides as much background as Mar is willing to offer, that he was convicted of murder. That’s a rather salient detail, and it was a gruesome murder.

The facts of Rhines are both grisly and bizarre. In 1992, Donnivan Schaeffer caught Rhines robbing the doughnut shop where he worked. Rhines promptly stabbed Schaeffer with a hunting knife, killing him; he later confessed to the crime.

Assuming, arguendo, that Rhines’ conviction wasn’t otherwise flawed, he might well be the sort of killer who ended up being executed. But the discussion inside the jury room wasn’t limited to the awfulness of what Rhines did to Schaeffer, but about the alternative.

That’s where deliberations went truly off the rails. The jury sent the trial judge a note posing several questions about the consequences of life without parole. Multiple questions seemed to indicate that jurors were concerned that Rhines, as a gay man, would enjoy himself too much in prison. Would Rhines, they wondered, be able to “mix with the general inmate population”? Could he “brag about his crime” to “young men”? Could he “marry or have conjugal visits”? Would he ever “have a cellmate”? After the judge responded that he could not answer these questions, the jury sentenced him to death.

This is the point where Mar picks up the argument, and takes the leap to Rhines being executed for being gay.

During deliberations, the jury had often discussed the fact that Mr. Rhines was gay and there was “a lot of disgust” about it, one juror recalled in an interview, according to the court petition. Another said that jurors knew he was gay and “thought that he shouldn’t be able to spend his life with men in prison.” A third recounted hearing that if the jury did not sentence Mr. Rhines to death, “if he’s gay, we’d be sending him where he wants to go.”

Even gay guys don’t “want to go” to prison, but when these bizarre assertions about Rhines based on his sexual orientation influenced, if not decided, the question of whether to put him to death, then the decision was made for the wrong reason.

And yet, the Supreme Court rejected the petition. Without dissent. Without opinion.

But its silence sent a deeply troubling message about the value placed on the lives of L.G.B.T. people.

This, too, is a disingenuous way to make the case, Granted, identity groups obsess over anything that impacts their identity groups, but a less myopic concern wouldn’t make this about the “value placed” on the lives of gay people but that the death penalty was imposed for a wholly improper reason, regardless of whether it was sexual orientation, race or blue eyes.

Indeed, the very fault of emotionalism that promotes making this a “gay” issue rather than a variety of alternative principled issues, is the same emotionalism that apparently compelled some member of the jury to condemn Rhines to death. Emotions flow both ways.

But why, then, didn’t the Supremes put a stop to this travesty? Not even the Notorious RBG or the Empathetic Sonia emitted a peep. Do they not value gay lives?

Juror deliberations are considered sacrosanct, but last year the Supreme Court carved out an important exception for cases of racial bias in the jury room. In a race discrimination case, there was evidence that the jury decided to convict an accused man of unlawful sexual contact and harassment because “he’s Mexican, and Mexican men take whatever they want,” in the words of one juror. The Supreme Court rightly found that such racial animus interfered with an accused’s person right to a fair and impartial trial.

The Supreme Court breached the “sanctity” of the jury room in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, holding that a conviction obtained upon bias against the defendant’s race could not stand. Here, there were distinctions, but were they differences? Rhines’ bias went to sentence, not conviction. It was sexual orientation rather than race (noting in passing that Pena-Rodriquez called it race, while it was in fact nationality).

Even though Mar imputes reasons for the Court’s silence, it’s unclear why they rejected the case. What is clear is that the jury that decided on execution did so under the bizarre belief that life without parole might be fun for Rhines. That reflects a detriment suffered because of his sexual orientation that denied him equal protection. He may well have gotten the death penalty regardless, and may have (at least in some minds) deserved it, but not because prison would be too much fun because he was gay.

Sadly, the court will almost certainly be presented with more requests to review convictions or sentences poisoned by anti-L.G.B.T. bias. It should take the next opportunity to correct this mistake and recognize that prejudice against people who are L.G.B.T. should play no role in America’s criminal justice system.

Was Rhines being gay the problem, or was the jury’s imposition of the death penalty based upon improper and irrelevant assumptions the problem? The Supreme Court is presented with all issues of impropriety in the imposition of the death penalty, from severely retarded defendants to assumptions about Mexicans. Had Rhines been sentenced to death because the jury felt all Muslims are evil, would that have made this sentence more palatable to gay people?

Is the problem identity, such that each group gets to challenge the value placed on their lives, or is the problem with death juries’ inclination to impose execution for the wrong reasons? Is the problem with the death penalty itself?

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