#but you refuse to acknowledge it. and in refusing to acknowledge your cultural upbringing youre only shooting yourself in the foot

[james-silenthill]

People that refuse the concept that things might be culturally christian are chuckleheads

[animentality]

"trans women don't know the unique experiences of being a woman-"

there is no fucking universal experience of being a woman. you only think that if you're a fucking white woman who forgets women of color exist on an hourly basis.

you only think that if you assume your experience is the only experience in this world to have.

you don't know what it's like to be a black woman, a disabled woman, an indigenous woman, a Chinese woman, a mixed race woman, a Latina, a Pakistani woman, a Cambodian woman, a Muslim woman. You can't know.

You can't pretend to know.

You can't even use "universals" like all women are afraid of men or all women have been sexually assaulted or all women know what it's like to be condescended to, because different women experience different things according to their cultural upbringing. Some places are better or worse than others. Some places are not better or worse, but have their own equivalent issues.

Some places are densely populated and full of weirdos, some are backwoods redneck towns, full of more intimate weirdos.

Some people experience sexual grooming, sexual assault, catcalling, stalking, gender discrimination...and some people don't.

Some people have families that support them and their sexuality.

Some people live in abusive patriarchal households and grow up haunted by their own gendered "differences," painfully aware of how wrong the world is. Some people live in a pretty okay world, with only light grievances, and microaggressions.

Some women identify only loosely as female, and some people who are assigned female at birth reject womanhood entirely, and that completely negates any "standard" of womanhood that you cling to, because it's just a word.

It's a label that humans use to make sense of themselves.

But you can rip it off any time you like. You can also paste it on, even if you weren't born with it.

Trying to apply your own womanhood to other women is wrong, foolish, and a waste of time.

And that's why your transphobic ass is ridiculous.

By trying to "generalize" the female experience, you just totally neutralize any point you're trying to make.

People should be able to talk about how different their experiences are, so we can talk about why some people have it worse.

Terfs are so fucking annoying because they're typically white feminists, who don't care about black female experiences or any other WOC's experiences.

They refuse to acknowledge how flexible the very notion of being a woman is.

And as a result, they're nothing but a blight upon this world, whose only purpose is to pretend that they, the angry white women, are the only people who matter.

Fuck you and fuck that.

[saintsenara]

One thing I find really compelling about ronmort is that the horcrux which targets ron is the one most "maternal"-- tom's mother's locket, which you so cleverly pointed out was also the one which he erected a complicated defense for in a place that was meaningful to his childhood. Everything the locket says to Ron just feels so charged? Wym you've seen his heart and it's yours? Wym you've seen his dreams and his desires? The fact that Ron can hear the locket's heartbeat before anyone else... I don't know how to explain it except that the locket's antagonism of Ron feels almost intimate in a way. The shenanigans would be sexy. Not least because Ron can apparently do a passing imitation of parseltongue (hot).

that each of the trio destroys the horcrux which most connects to something fundamental about themselves is a detail which obsesses me.

the diary

harry - an orphan, desperate to meet someone else who can understand the strangeness and isolation of his experience; searching for the truth about himself, and what in his life is inherited, but unable to ever fully uncover it - destroys the diary, not only the sole horcrux which is an explicit link to lord voldemort's upbringing as an orphan in the muggle world, but also a metaphor for the state of orphanhood itself.

the diary is a quasi-palimpsest - an object which has to be written in; an object in which a layer of text is written and then overwritten by another; an object in which these layers of text can be stripped back until only the original layer remains only with extraordinary difficulty - just like the orphan's search for meaning, trying to decipher the layers of themselves which were inherited from their parents, but only ever being able to see these partially, with the text missing or corrupted.

voldemort's creation of the diary-horcrux is explicitly connected in canon to him coming to learn about himself, his parents, and his heritage - and, connected to this, to him refusing to sit with the grief of orphanhood, refusing to understand his parents as whole, complex people, and refusing to embrace his "real" identity [which, as the text understands it, is that of a half-blood named tom marvolo riddle] by creating a fake one [that of lord voldemort].

harry destroys it after rejecting voldemort's self-constructed view of his own exceptionality - "the greatest wizard in the world is albus dumbledore" - his refusal to acknowledge the complexities of lineage and orphanhood, and his refusal to embrace his muggle heritage - "my mother died to save me. my common, muggleborn mother". he does this using a tool directly connected to voldemort's rejection of all but his slytherin heritage - the basilisk's fang - in a location similarly connected to voldemort's rejection of his muggle blood - the chamber of secrets.

the cup

hermione - an outsider, whose place in the wizarding world is unstable - destroys the cup, one of the horcruxes to which voldemort has the least personal connection, but which he selected to hide his soul because of its historical significance, anchoring him to a millennium of wizarding history and culture he was otherwise brought up disconnected from.

voldemort's creation of the cup-horcrux comes at the end of a period of his life in which he is disadvantaged in wizarding society purely on the basis of his name and background. he rejects the ministry jobs which would have made him dependent for the rest of his life on slughorn's patronage - and, therefore, pressured him to do what slughorn wanted - and ends up, as he himself puts it, as "a poor shop assistant". hepzibah smith is a pureblood, who is also descended from one of hogwarts' founders - yet she doesn't make use of this superiority ["all sorts of powers it's supposed to possess too... i just keep it nice and safe in here..."], and she doesn't realise [and he can't prove to her and hope to keep his job] that voldemort is someone she should think of as her equal [or even superior]. she - as harry observes - essentially treats voldemort as doll she can play with, posing him with her treasures and pretending his glacial politeness is really repressed affection, she speaks to him like he's an idiot, and she evidently considers him to be her social inferior.

hermione destroys the cup after seven books in which the discrimination she faces on account of being muggleborn is explicit. obviously, she's the victim of violent bigotry - she's petrified, she's called a mudblood, she's the only one of the trio who also has to worry about the muggleborn registration commission - but she's also the victim of seemingly benign, genial bigotry too - the muggle world is treated as a quaint side-show, even by characters like the weasleys; she's praised for her intelligence by slughorn, but this intelligence is still considered in some way unusual for someone with muggle heritage. she gets spoken to by many wizards in ways which aren't far removed from the way hepzibah speaks to voldemort.

as a result, she - like voldemort - spends a lot of time trying to acquire enough knowledge of the wizarding world that she appears to be native to it [this is why she's so obsessed with hogwarts: a history]. but - unlike voldemort - she then embraces her heritage and refuses to hide it - "mudblood and proud of it!".

and - shortly after this - she destroys the cup, in a place - the chamber - and using a tool - the basilisk's fang - which are both directly connected to the bigotry she experienced, since they're part of slytherin's belief that people like her should be driven out of hogwarts and out of the magical world more broadly, and therefore send a big "fuck you" to voldemort's blood-supremacy.

the locket

and ron... whose greatest desire is to be recognised for his individual achievements, who has a complex and uneasy relationship with his place in his family [simultaneously longing to be something other than "one of the weasleys" and fiercely loyal to his parents and siblings], who is the only pureblood of the trio, whose childhood we hear the most about in canon, and whose childhood appears to have been happy...

destroys the locket, which is voldemort's only link to his mother, and the only horcrux for which he constructs an elaborate defence in a place meaningful to him from childhood.

we don't actually know who voldemort kills to create the locket-horcrux [jkr has said in interviews that it was a muggle tramp, although this contradicts dumbledore's statement in half-blood prince that voldemort created his horcruxes from murders which were significant to him], which is a neat metaphor for how little he knows about merope - since he doesn't know morfin's name, for example, we can assume he doesn't know hers; everything he ever tells harry about her is something he's invented [especially his belief that his parents' marriage was consensual, and that tom riddle sr. abandoned her because she was a witch].

the horcrux attempts to torture ron with his insecurities about being a mammy's boy who's always been afraid that he's a bit of a flop at the task - especially when compared to siblings like ginny, bill, and percy. and ron is so susceptible to it because voldemort is also an inherent mammy's boy [ronmort nation, rise up] who never got a chance to have a mam, and who responded to the grief this caused him by suppressing it, pretending it never existed, and convincing himself that the only viable thing to be is unique.

ron destroys it after he returns to the trio - having attempted to strike out on his own [the thing he's wanted since philosopher's stone, when he sees himself standing alone in the mirror of erised] - and accepts his place as part of a group. he does so using the sword of gryffindor, which again represents him embracing not being exceptional - his entire family have been in gryffindor, something he's shown to feel simultaneously proud of and uneasy with right from his first appearance.

[pluckyredhead]

I read your ollie and SA post and I def agree with how they don't treat that incident as rape but I'm also....I'm not excusing it but I don't like this history of making Asian women villains casually or not that DC does....

Having cool, complex villains is one thing but they disappoint me so much

Again I def don't think this at all negates what's happened to ollie, it's all terrible

Oh 100% agreed!

DC is in love with this trope of the sexy ambiguously evil rapey dragon lady Asian woman and her noble white baby daddy and the child torn between the two. See also: Talia, Cheshire, Shiva. (I know David Cain is not a good guy but Bruce essentially fills the role of the noble white baby daddy for Cass as well as for Damian.) (Also I should note that of all four of these characters, I would only classify Cheshire as an out-and-out villain - Shado was originally more morally ambiguous than anything else, Talia goes back and forth, Shiva was originally a heroic character. But DC has definitely used them all as villains at times.)

It's a huge part of why I try to be really careful in talking about Shado and this history, because again, it's important that we recognize that what happens in that story is rape because our culture is bad enough about consent already - but the writer (Mike Grell) clearly was not intending to portray Shado as a villain there and I don't want to toss out an interesting, complex Asian character because a writer steeped in rape culture made a mistake 35 years ago.

It comes back to holding multiple ideas in our heads at once, and all of these can be true at the same time:

DC has historically been enamored of a really racist, sexist trope.

Some of these characters have committed rape and we need to call it what it is (Shado, Talia although that's been retconned out, and there is some real murky stuff with Cheshire and Roy in Rebirth Titans).

(Actually it's not clear whether the Shado incident is in canon anymore either or if the New 52 totally overwrote it. If it's still in canon then she had an affair with Ollie's dad that resulted in Emiko and raped Ollie and maybe also made out with Connor, which...fucking yikes.)

These characters have all been written as complex and nuanced and sympathetic at times.

They've also been written as villains and it's not racist or sexist to acknowledge the things they've done on page (murder, nuking an entire country, whatever the hell Damian's upbringing was like), but it's fair to acknowledge that often the writing that sparked those random heel turns was racist and sexist.

It's okay to enjoy them as villains, or to want them to be more heroic, or both.

It's important to have diverse villains as well as diverse heroes.

It's more important to not turn every Asian female character into this trope.

So yeah, it's messy and complicated for sure! But I think that's why it's important to look at the context behind these stories instead of just saying "she did a bad thing, throw her away forever" or "I like this character so I refuse to acknowledge that this bad thing happened." Which is basically what you said but a lot more long-winded lol.

[cherrixxox]

In Princess Zelda’s defense: Misogyny in the Legend of Zelda (and every fandom really)

(Spoiler Warning for BOTW and TOTK)

One thing I’ve noticed as Tears Of the Kingdom has come out, is this incredibly shameless irritable misogyny in the Legend of Zelda fandom. With fandom and internet culture really boosting in the last decade, I feel as if people are less fearful of what they say, and I’ve noticed it in the fandoms I love, like Legend of Zelda specifically.

What could I possibly mean? Doesn’t everybody love Zelda? You’d be incredibly surprised what people say about her.

I can’t image why. She’s incredibly kind, smart, interesting and an emotionally complicated character, which I personally find endearing and not at all bland. However, I think I’ve finally come to understand *why* she’s so hated in the fandom as of this last couple weeks. I think I finally get it.

Zelda is a complex character. I know this doesn’t fit with some of the fandoms fantasy of her being “boring”, but I challenge that with a question. Why is it that every female character, regardless of personality, backstory and upbringing, actions and speech patterns are all boring to you? Is it because they’re actually boring? Or is it because female characters, no matter how developed, will always take the back seat to male characters even with less complexities?

I think I would be remiss if I didn’t mention shipping culture playing a huge part. It’s unfortunate, because, as a gay person, I do think that a lot of the fujoshi/bl community is misogynistic and hates admitting that: so they turn towards the only thing they can- picking and choosing small scenes and lines out of context to demonize a perfectly fine character.

Let me remind you all that I don’t care about harmless shipping. Mostly everyone in fandom ships characters. It’s normal and as long as you aren’t being weird about it and everything is morally correct: who cares. However, I do think that shipping culture has made is hard for people in fandom to correctly distinguish media in any other way. And that’s unfortunate. But I’ll come back to my shipping point later.

Zelda, for instance, is not fond of Link in the beginning of the TOTK/BOTW/Age of Calamity timeline. That’s very apparent from the very first memory in order from Breath of the Wild. In context, that all makes sense why and it’s explained very well. She very quickly after takes a liking to Link, and the rest is history.

However, you have people saying that she’s awful, hates Link, treats him badly, etc. She’s being treated like she’s helpless, something that, in game, she despises feeling. If you can’t tell from context, many times it’s said out loud and in your face. Take this memory with Urbosa for example:

She feels like a failure and Link being appointed to her just reminds her of that feeling.

Despite feeling this way, she’s proven to be a character that can grow and develop. She takes a liking to Link, as previously mentioned before, shortly after said scene with Urbosa explaining to link why she is the way she is. After her heart crushing memory where she’s sobbing about how she couldn’t save her father, the champions or Hyrule, Link is in danger. He is close to death and still he refuses to give up. At the very moment he is going to die. Zelda *finally* is able to release her power, after many many years, and in turn, his life. Why? Because she loves him.

Mipha hints at this being the way she can release her power. Though she doesn’t outright say it, it’s incredibly obvious she’s trying to get across that Zelda think about love and who she cares for.

I feel like if a man had that same backstory, people would acknowledge how incredibly complex of a character he was. They never do this with female characters, and instead take their emotions at face value, like how Zelda has multiple scenes where her determinations, wants and hopes are explained with heavy emotion and people throw it all away for some screwed up, incorrect perception of a character who is more multifaceted then they can ever comprehend.

And why do I think people refuse to look at the truth when it comes to Zelda? Yep, I’m going back to shipping. Like I mentioned before, specifically the fujoshi shipping community seems to be incredibly misogynistic as a whole. And if you self identify as a fujoshi, please stop. It’s not a good term or a nice term. Obviously this isn’t about people who enjoy gay ships in general as I don’t see any harm in shipping whatever you want as long as it’s not morally wrong. However, as someone who has been heavily engrained in fandom culture for the majority of my life: women are second rate citizens to the vast majority of these people.

With the appearance of Sidon in BOTW came a brand new ship that, though I think it’s a very very weird ship considering that Sidon looks like this when Link first meets him:

I never had anything much to say about it. I didn’t ship it, but to each their own since Sidon is very much an adult in current day BOTW/TOTK.

However, the birth is Sidon as a character has incredibly turned the tide when it comes to how people view Zelda. Every bit of character growth and backstory has been dismantled because they see her as a “home-wrecker” to this very much headcanoned ship. I genuinely think people who do this have very little ability to understand female characters in any piece of media, but Zelda is a great example of this. Now that TOTK has come out and Sidon (reminder from the beginning of this post, that I said there would be spoilers) canonically has a Fiance, I feel like this misunderstanding of female characters has just completely gone off the rails and people are now just saying things completely untrue.

For one: I don’t think arranged marriages are ever the best way to try to convince an audience that two characters are in love, and I give that to the shipping community completely. Arranged marriages are not good 9/10 times. Though, sometimes they work out, it’s often for political reasons, and almost never are these two people in love. It’s not a good trope. *However*

Sidons case is different. Yona, a brand new character in the series, is his fiancé. She’s, in my opinion, is quite pretty and helpful to the Zora community, as she seems to be their main healer in the domain.

A lot of the fandom is taking the fact that he saw her as a sister when he was a CHILD out of context as he quite literally says in the next paragraph that his feelings for her start to change and become “difficult to quantify” which clearly, in this case, means that those feelings are changing. And then, he seems to get to embarrassed to go further as those are for more private thoughts. Not only that, but Sidon very clearly calls her his love multiple times, even when she isn’t around.

And how does this character, the kind and caring Yona get treated?

Badly. Just from the first month of this game being out I’ve heard that she should die, she’s a dumb bitch, she’s ugly, she’s boring (how creative), etc.

I can’t help but notice that these comments are clearly coming from a place of distain that Sidon isn’t a free man, and believe it or not hating a female character because she gets in the way of your ships is misogynistic whether or not you think it is!

Now that Sidon isn’t free for grabs, I feel like that brings considerably more backlash upon Zelda yet again because she’s just not a character that can be ignored in favor of Sidon anymore. I’ve noticed an incredible increase of this hate that just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Hating female characters just because they get in the way of your ships will never be cool, but will always unfortunately be a part of fandom that I will refuse to get behind. It’s not just The Legend of Zelda fandom. I can name multiple female characters who get hate for the same exact thing.

This may have just been a rant that went on too long, maybe a mini essay, I’m not sure, but I genuinely challenge the Zelda community to interact more with the actual game over who belongs with who and stop picking at straws to find faults in characters that ruin your perfect perception of who you want to be with who. And please, judge the female characters the same way you’d judge the male characters.

-Cherri 🍒

[hagoftheholler]

🔥 Ancestor work!

This one... is one that's been brewing for a minute I'm not gonna lie. I'm gonna start by saying that if you don't wanna do ancestor work, that is perfectly fine. It isn't for everyone. You do you.

This is mainly about people who specifically say they won't work with their ancestors or even acknowledge their existences because their ancestors were all the bad people you can think of, and therefore want no affiliation with them... then proceed to speak on decolonization and generational trauma a lot. So yeah, this is mainly directed at white people.

Half of ancestor work, for me, has been learning about my family's past and observing how that has affected (or benefitted) the family today. Yes, I mean the racists. I mean the homophobes. I mean all the flavors of white supremacist and bigots. By doing this, not only am I making myself aware of the details of my family's unsavory history but also making myself reflect on my upbringing. Therefore, I reflect on myself.

Not wanting to do ancestor work is okay. As I said before, it ain't for everyone. Everyone vibes with something different. What I'm not gonna sit here and tell you is that saying you refuse to affiliate with your ancestors, that saying you don't "claim" your ancestors, because they were shitty people is doing something useful. It's not. White people, I'm saying this as a white person: most of our ancestors were fucked up people, did fucked up things and the results of that can often be observed in our families today. You don't erase that by saying you don't "claim" them.

If you want to decolonize, and learn how to be better, some of y'all are gonna have to suck it up and accept not "claiming" most of your ancestors isn't giving you brownie points. It's the same energy as pagans saying they don't "claim" white supremacists or nazis that identify as pagan, and then proceed to appropriate Indigenous cultures or try to claim Lilith is some kind of girlboss Goddess. Saying you don't "claim" certain people isn't doing shit, and further ignoring their existences ain't doing shit.

If you're doing the work, then you know this doesn't apply to you. Simple as that.

[ravenalla]

Alright episodes finished, thoughts under the cut

Overall, best episode of the season I’d say just in terms of technical aspects. It looked a lot more cinematic and less cheap, the choreography is still awakened as hell sometimes for the fight scenes but it was at least entertaining.

I’ve known about the IG-11 thing months before the season started because of leaks and was dreading it. It’s such a silly idea to give Grogu an iron man suit, and the fact that it’s this basically made out of this character who had an emotional death in season 1 really rubbed me the wrong way. Seeing it now it definitely isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to look, but it still feels kinda lame to do that. Like they just wanted some reason Grogu would even be on this mission besides Din.

However, speaking of that WE FINALLY GOT SOME MORE DAD! DIN DJARIN CRUMBS YESS!!!! Grogu being a insistent little toddler who wants his way while Din just is so done was so fucking adorable. Also guys I don’t know if Pedro was in the suit for that season or he just had an extra boost of motivation while recording seeing it was finally a scene where he got to show some of that prior personality Din had, but he didn’t sound the same monotone he has all season, he sounded so lively again with inflictions in his voice like in season 1! It was like an oasis in the desert I loved it.

As for the elephant in the room..urgh yeah let’s talk about that scene with Din and Bo-Katan. I know the shippers are going to go crazy over it, but I refuse to believe this confirms some love story. Din has always been shown to be respectful and loyal. As he said, honor is his way. To me that is all that was, Din once again showing he’s a dependable person when he is helping people and knows how to let those around them truly see themselves. Am I happy that after reducing his character to be nothing but Bo’s sidekick he has a like proclaiming his service to her? Fuck no, but at the very least I can say this doesn’t seem out of character for me if we just accept that Bo-Karan’s past is never going to be properly addressed and she just is a good person now Din would trust.

Which like, istg you had a scene with her admitting her past failures to the other mandalorian and there was nothing about her ACTUALLY BEING DEATH WATCH??? SHE WAS A TERRORIST!!! And yet that’s not brought up at all, it’s just more “oh don’t feel bad you tried your best 🥺” God even when she is saying how she failed everyone it’s a new situation they wrote where she was clearly in the right for trying to save her people, why tf did they write her in Clone Wars to be this complicated messy individual if Dave just wanted to basically erase all that and do the shes simply misunderstood thing. That’s so fucking frustrating, if you want to have your character grow then actually acknowledge their past flaws.

On a more brighter note, Moff Gideon will never not be entertaining, even if it makes the season 2 finale worthless in another way THANK YOU FOR SOME ACTUAL COMPELLING CONFLICT FINALLY. Him with the Mando helmet and suit looked fucking sick (in a villain way of course I mean this is clearly cultural appropriation and genocide we are dealing with here). I know people are gonna be freaking out from the Thrawn mention and whatever else sequel triology related stuff they said but I don’t care I’m just happy Moff Gideon got to come back and antagonize once more for my entertainment lmao.

Sigh. Paz. You were just starting to get a bit more fleshed out and they killed you off. Don’t get me wrong its an honorable death at least, but god see this is what I mean when I saw Bo-Katan has taken over everything, Din’s known him practically his whole life and we didn’t even maybe get to see a shot of him seeing him killed as he was dragged away, it’s just a moment between Bo and him because she is the protagonist at this point. Maybe if they had had a conversation about their personal different upbringings or something, but as is it just feels like a random moment between them. Oh well, still made me sad because I like Paz and at least it meant something saving both factions of Mandalorians I GUESS? That also has been handled pretty poorly imo, since this show doesn’t let people actually talk to one another hardly (unless it’s assuring Bo she’s a great person yada yada). I have one thing that really bothered me about that confrontation scene where Grogu stepped in, but I’m gonna make another separate post for that.

Finally, let’s talk about our main man himself. Din getting kidnapped at the end is slightly insulting after having to be saved by Bo constantly all season, however on it’s own I do love the vulnerable spot he is in and this creates a cool cliffhanger that makes me actually excited for next week! (first time all season lmao). I really thought they were going to take his helmet off in front of everybody right there, which idk I think that would have been a cool way to just further insult the mines and Din after he (albeit pretty easily and cheaply) redeemed himself, especially in front of Paz. But we didn’t get that so eh, maybe next episode is where we get our helmetless Din Djarin sequence who knows. I am so hoping for him to finally get the spotlight next episode and get a personal scene between him and Moff Gideon, it’s not going to feel as satisfying as it would be if Din had the proper development this season he deserved but still it would be better than nothing.

So overall, best episode of the season in my my opinion, but that still doesn’t mean there isn’t the same problems the whole season has had concerning Din and I wouldn’t say it’s the best of the series by a long shot. I do actually want to see the ending though, but apparently it’s going to be very controversial. I don’t know what they’re gonna pull up their sleeves but as long as Din and Bo aren’t confirmed to kiss at the end like a Disney princess tale or some shit, I will be cautiously waiting.

[pinkcadillaccas]

I'm just feeling so struck by the infinite variation of gender. Obviously, trans and queer spaces are always talking about how there is no single unifying physical trait or internal experience of gender, cis or trans, but that's ALSO true for the purely social aspect. It entirely depends on your culture and how society views you, and how you view society! Autistic, black, trans, Christian and poor women (just to name a few) are all going to have vastly different experiences of womanhood and interpret their socialisation differently. Yes there are general uniting factors, as a rule of thumb we can say women are socialised to defer decision making to others and men are socialised to speak up over others, but I can guarantee you will find thousands of people for whom this was either never the case or their specific personality and upbringing just never allowed those traits to be embedded. Bioessentialists are not just clowning because they refuse to acknowledge the infinite variety in the biological world but ALSO in the social world. They say trans women are men because they grew up with a penis and trans women are dangerous because society makes men dangerous and these are all given as fact. None of this is true. You will never be able to fit everyone identifying or assigned at birth as one gender into any one physical or social trait and attempting to do so will only do harm. There is no such thing as a strictly binary gendered world even in places where that binary is massively socially enforced. The infinite variety of the human condition simply won't allow it to happen.

[banhchao]

This might be a dumb question, but what counts as fetishizing Asian men? East Asian specifically

Not a dumb question! Uh well I guess racial fetishization all works the same but just in different fonts lol. It’s dehumanization through objectification, hypersexualization and/or infantilization of people of colour. It’s stereotyping people of specific races to look or act a certain way. Preferring phenotypical features like dark eyes, dark hair, tall height, wavy hair etc. is not fetishization cause they are objective features. But a so-called “racial preference” is based solely on stereotypes as a) race is a social construct b) ppl’s looks vary across races. For example, saying you are only attracted to East Asian men without a stereotypical portrait in ur head makes little sense as East Asian men vary in hair types, hair colour, skin colour, height, facial features, body type etc. It actually makes no sense to make a generalized statement like that.

same goes for personality type - East Asian men are usually emasculated and infantilized, viewed as “innocent and pure and baby 🥺” when in reality, East Asian men vary in personalities, upbringings, experiences, interests etc. To say u want to date an East Asian man cause “they seem so sweet and loyal like in the kdramas! 😍” when In reality, everyone is different. Either that or because of kpop they can be hypersexualized - which isn’t any better considering at the end of the day, you wanna be seen and loved as a human not a trophy meat on a stick! 🍖🍢 or even just in general, treating your s/o like a prize you won because they are of a certain race. All of these scenarios, they are seen and treated like objects, not as human beings.

The last guy I was seeing was East Asian and he was the complete opposite of the “pure Asian boy stereotype” lol and I adored him for who he was and how well we clicked together and our similar upbringings. not at all because Of this preconceived notion of who I thought he was based on racial stereotypes! i liked him for him! But now I’m talking to someone new who isn’t East or Southeast Asian and yet we have our own unique bond and click well too! ✨☁️💓 the basis of a relationship is yes, partially attraction but majority is that strong emotional connection! And race plays no factor in that (unless u r the same lol)

ppl with racial fetishes usually say things like “I want a (insert race here) husband to have exotic mixed babies! 😍”, or “I want a (insert race here) boyfriend, they are so (Insert racial personality/behaviour stereotype here)!” Also I find it a lil hard to believe that u can only be attracted to one racial stereotypical phenotype and not appreciate other hair textures, colours, skin colours, facial features etc. cause personally I am attracted to ppl from all races (and this is because I never base anything solely on race!)

(that being said, POC that are not attracted to or refuse to date yt ppl are the most valid)

Date ppl for who they are - their personalities, their quirks, their funny sayings, their jokes, how they make you laugh, how happy their smile makes you 🥰. How well they treat the ppl in their life, how you can talk to them for hours, how you are counting down the seconds until you see them again 🥰. Creating bonds and connections with another soul 💞💕 This is the beauty of love and relationships - pursue and date people as people!! and yes nothing wrong with acknowledging cultural differences but never go into a relationship wanting someone for their race or having race be such a main focus - it’s weird!! Go into it because u like them and they like you - as human beings. Not as preconceived notions of racial stereotypes perpetuated by racist media and society.

and remember - fetishization is not a privilege!

[tinynebula]

the latine identity is like the opposite of gatekeeping you literally just have to learn and participate in the culture. learn spanish/portuguese/indigenous languages. learn our history as taught by us. travel and visit our countries. listen to our music. read our books. watch our movies and shows. learn our customs. eat our food. make our food. celebrate our holidays. wear our clothes. eat our candy. listen to us. we love to share. we go nuts at literally the slightest acknowledgment of "this is a beautiful culture." everyone is welcome to participate. what you can't do, is to refuse to do all those things, blame your parents or your grandparents or your upbringing and still have the audacity to try and call yourself latine.

[hermioneismyrealname]

*brings out the notepad*

So it seems that the subject has decided on collective suffering. Thankfully, there is not a long wait. A week will pass and another episode will be released to soothe their ache. *looks at OHSHC and Yuri On Ice fandom* the same cannot be said for them. However it appears that my theory that good and high quality series include a story of suffering and pain. The reason that the fandoms continue to search out pain and suffering unknowingly is yet to be determined. Will continue to monitor. Predictions include several remedy fanfic eventhough Thai series rarely have the balls for a bad ending.

Now for my off the chart predictions. There is an angry rant coming. I put my tea down for this.

As for last twilight. Mmmmm. I don't know. Like GMMTV has not the best records with top notch series and their endings. The ending will either have a satisfying (cowardly) happy ending. OR It will be a bad terrible awful ending for the stories. Don't mistake it for a sad ending for the characters. That can be a good story considering that they have the momentum for it. If the writing is solid, which is has been up until this point, the ending will be perfect; in which the characters will end up without each other and only have an ambiguous (implied happy) ending.

Next, PitBabe... there is no bad ending here. Acting has been phenomenal. (Pissed, so fucking pissed that Pavel will not be getting an Oscar for his performance for that episode). Now, omegaverse rarely, very rarely has a bad ending. How do I know? I've been reading the Mangas, the manhwas and the fanfictions since 2014. I know. How old was I? Regardless of that, I'm too young now. What 20 year old needs the information of how an omega male can give birth. But this series is refreshing. Apart from the X-man feeling about it, it's nice for a new take. It's nice when ITS NOT ALWAYS AN OMEGA X ALPHA PAIRING! *ehem* I apologize and digress. This will not have a bad ending. It will have a cheesy ending as per custom to Thai series where everyone is together smiling and desperately avoiding the camera's gaze hoping the scene would just fucking end already. Bonus if there is a baby or Babe faints again when he realizes Charlie is alive. Now, where are all the Charlie is sus conspirators now?

Finally, the sign will have a good ambiguous ending or a fantastically written bad ending for the characters. So far, Saint has kept proving that he, the company and the artists are ones to look out for in this industry. GOOD FOR HIM. Saint deserves this recognition. This respect. This fear that he will do a great job in the industry. That he will succeed. Love by chance, bless its heart, was good. But he didn't deserve that bullshit as a way to start his career. He is protecting his artists. He his producing top-tier series. What the actual fuck. This man is managing his company better than certain companies I could. *everyone knows which one*. I am glad this series is beautiful and brilliant in its story telling. It's embracing the Thai culture, history and traditions with dignity and grace.

NOW WHO AND WHAT WAS THAT FIASCO ABOUT IT SUDDENLY BEING INAPPROPRIATE ABOUT NOT WEARING A SHIRT?! Two things. We have seen implied sex and fornication and now people are bothered with culturally accurate shirtlessness? 2nd, I'm Malay with Thai ancestry and nothern malay upbringing that was heavily influenced by thai culture. In the kampungs near to thailand, it is not uncommon to see a shirtless man only wearing a kain pelikat, though it is rarer now because it was the much older generation. There are literal statues depicting how the ancients present themselves. Heaven forbid anymore thai period peieces. So i say, fuck off with your inappropriate BS when you refuse to acknowledge THAT THIS THE CULTURE, THE TRADITION AND THE HISTORY OF THAILAND. KAU NAK CAKAP BENDE BUKAN BUKAN PASAL SATU SATUNYE NEGARA TAK DITAKLUK OMPUTIH AKA ฝรั่ง. นี่ ลัอเล่นใช่ไหม? อย่าโง่นักสิ! *begins to swear every english malay, thai, Japanese, French and Malay mandarin word i know.* *proceeds to sigh in disappointed southeast asian*.

Oh and DFF. meh. I have no opinions. I'm not watching. I will, but not right now.

Alas here we are. 2024, year for vampire Thai bl. And what better way to begin it with suffering. *goes back to sipping my tea condescendingly in banana fish trauma*

Yeah bingeing shows once they are finished is great and all but there’s something really cathartic about being apart of the collective suffering of the fandom while you wait for a new episode every week.

[skullsandwineglasses]

Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) - Eps 1-3 Impressions

I’m not a knowledgeable enough of a Star Wars fan to give an insightful review, but as a casual prequel fan, I have to say that this series is great fan service. 

-The first 5 minutes of the first episode shows a highlight reel of the tragedy that are the prequels and Anakin’s downfall. Say what you will about the writing and dialogue about the prequels, but the dissolution of the relationship between Anakin, Padma, and Obi-Wan is almost Shakespearean. 

-Obi-Wan indirectly referenced Padme like, 5 times already in 3 episodes. While I’m glad that Padme is finally getting the acknowledgement she deserves since The Clone Wars series, they still haven’t outright said her name yet. What are you afraid of?? 

-In Chinese culture, it’s often said that if you suffer in your relationship with someone, then it means that you must have owed them something in your past life and must now repay them in this life. Obi-Wan must have really owed Anakin in a past life because dang, he just can’t catch a break with the Skywalkers. It feels like Obi-Wan’s whole life has been devoted to guiding and guarding the family. 

-In order to give Obi-Wan an excuse to leave Tatooine, he has to save Leia, who’s been captured to lure him out. I’m just wondering how he is able to safely go back into hiding now that everyone knows he’s out there. 

-It’s nice to see Leia being talked about in reference to Padme, as well as Leia’s curiosity about her birth parents. I always felt that Leia never really cared for her birth parents like Luke did, which is understandable given that Leia had a much more loving and privileged upbringing than Luke. In the OT, Leia only talks about the birth mother once about how she has a distant memory of their mother being beautiful but sad. In the sequel trilogy, Leia doesn’t really talk about her Skywalker lineage at all, even though her son is obsessed with her father (in fact, the sequel trilogy seems to have so much disdain for the OT and prequels, as seen by the retconing of Luke and an overemphasis on Vader rather than Anakin). But Leia resembles Anakin in temperament (even though Obi-Wan says her stubbornness is more like her mother) and resembles Padme in leadership. You can see both of her parents in her. I wish someone would talk about Padme’s legacy with Leia because Padme’s leadership deserves to be remembered, and it would be nice to see Leia look up to her mother as a senator. In the Book of Bobba Fett, we see Ahsoka remark how much Luke reminds her of Anakin, and it’s almost heartwarming to see Luke being referenced to Anakin instead of Vader. And now, we see Leia being referenced to Padme. The sequels refused to connect the OT and prequels, but I’m glad that theses series are bridging that gap. 

-I like how this series fleshes out Leia’s character, even though she’s only 10 years old in the series. You can see how her experience with Obi-Wan, and the conversations they have, influence her and will shape her in the future. Leia is clever and perceptive and can read between the lines. I’m sure that she’ll look back on this adventure with Obi-Wan and realize how much her birth parents mean to him and how great they were. 

-In episode 3, you get a very distant view of Hayden’s hooded face as Obi-Wan hallucinates him. Poor Obi-Wan is haunted by Anakin. And in their very unbalanced confrontation at the end of the episode, we see that Obi-Wan is not just out of practice, but his trauma and guilt prevents him from matching Anakin. Anakin, now Vader, is like a ghost that has come back for revenge. And boy, does Vader crave revenge, as seen by how he recreated the flames from Mustafar and dragged Obi-Wan through them. It’s hard to watch. It’s sad. It’s unforgivable, but also frustratingly understandable. 

-The prequels were all about building angst, from Anakin and Padme’s forbidden romance, to the brother-turned-enemy relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan. This series explores that angst. It’s probably the angstiest addition to the franchise. It’s emotional. It’s intense and full of rage. Even Uncle Owen lashes out against Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, meanwhile, carries all of these memories with no one to share them with. He’s been alone for 10 years, living the same day over and over again. The only way he marks the passing of time is seeing Luke grow up, which then reminds him of having watched Anakin grow up. He’s stuck in the past, but the past no longer exists. Anakin no longer exists. Obi-Wan used to be a protector, but now out of self-preservation and protection of Luke, he watches idly as people are tortured. Bail Organa calls him out on favouring Luke over Leia. Obi-Wan is no hero, but he’s a damaged man. Instead of serving the galaxy, he’s serving the two descendants of his closest friends. 

It’s hard to believe that I’m already halfway through this series. It’s obvious that things won’t be resolved in the next 3 episodes. Obi-Wan and Vader don’t confront and conclude their relationship until 10 years later. Maybe this is the last time that their paths cross. Anakin is also the closest (physically) he’s ever been to his daughter. We know exactly what will happen, and therefore we also know exactly what won’t happen. Anakin won’t find out about his children, Leia won’t learn the truth about her birth parents, and Obi-Wan won’t find peace. The point of this series isn’t to add or further anything. The point is to show us the emotional turmoil that both Anakin/Vader and Obi-Wan go through for the rest of their lives. 

-Speaking of emotional turmoil and Padme, I wish they would show Vader mourning Padme. That’s not something that’s been presented in canon yet. In fact, it would be interesting to see Vader being haunted by the people in his past. He clearly has never stopped thinking about Obi-Wan, but what about Ahsoka and Padme? We all know Vader from the OT. He’s cruel and ruthless, and we see his merciless, sadistic cruelty in the third episode. But he was once human. He was once a boy who loved too much. And so, that’s why I think seeing him lash out at Obi-Wan for leaving him for dead on Mustafar is almost cathartic (albeit still difficult) to watch. It shows that Anakin is still in him. Vader isn’t cruel for the sake of being cruel. He’s cruel because he feels wronged as Anakin. 

Both Anakin and Vader are unforgivable. I don’t even think he redeemed himself at the end of The Return of the Jedi. Killing Palpatine to save your son and bloodline isn’t exactly altruistic. It doesn’t repent for the fact that Anakin killed probably millions of innocent people. But knowing that Vader was once Anakin, Obi-Wan’s once padawan, brother, son, and friend, does evoke some sympathy. 

-Overall, I won’t judge whether or not this series is well-written. I think I’m too emotionally invested to give an unbiased review. But I will say that it answers some questions we have about Anakin and Obi-Wan’s state of mind after Revenge of the Sith. 

[nolabballgirl]

Im a white girl and im just learning here so forgive me if im slow on this. But i don't understand why druck is put on a pedestal with regards to how they've tackled race/developed their characters of color. Druck also tends to dismiss race entirely (Sam, David, Fatou and Abdi) or make the trauma of characher their whole character (Ava and David) or underdevelop characters when they've had space to do more (Amira, Sam & fam). So why is druck deemed better than other remakes in this area?

hi, Anon! thanks for your ask. okay, so for me to answer your questions, you have to accept two premises:

neither skam nor any of its remakes (including druck) are perfect.

when a remake acknowledges audience pain and admits that it has made mistakes, hires writers of color, and then greatly improves upon its mistakes, that has to be commended.

so, let's break down race and representation for the remakes. and as you will see below, the remakes are so egregiously bad when it comes to race and representation, that when you compare druck after jünglinge took over, it's on a separate level altogether and that's why i believe druck is deemed to be better when it comes to race and representation. (also, i'm skipping skam nl and skam austin from this analysis because who knows how those two would have ended up...and begoña owes me a heart to heart after she ruined by beloved skam españa, but let's be real, eskam had a long way to go too.)

druck -

well, from the list in your ask and from the hard work that skamofcolor put in, druck is a remake with one of the most racially diverse main cast members in both the old and new gens as well as the most characters of colors in side characters as well, so that's an improvement compared to the other remakes. but you're right, there were a lot of missed storylines they could have tackled with the old gen.

druck's sana season (amira mahmood) does not put their sana through weeks of torture or ruin the girl squad in the process. (and as a muslim, i will say their handling of islam was the best among the remakes but i digress...) however, amira did not get her full 10 weeks of screen time and the show missed a huge opportunity diving into shared microaggressions and racism that sam, abdi, etc. also faced. and druck was ripped for it! for cutting amira's time and playing it way too safe and not giving sam her fair due, among others.

now, here's where druck does something that no other remake has done and honestly, this is where i think most of the praise stems from. they listened to the criticism! wait, showrunners and writers can do that?! do you mean we are not just yelling into the avoid? not only have the writers said the ways in which they could have improved (even after s6 they discussed audience perceptions and overestimating how ava/mailin would be received, etc.) but they also hired JÜNGLINGE to bring the new gen to life. if you are unfamiliar, this is how they describe themselves:

JÜNGLINGE is a film collective of mid-twenties raised in the hybrid cultures of post-migrant Germany. We believe that young, European film needs to tell queer, diverse and most of all – specific – stories about growing up and living together in our societies.

so looking at that progress over time from druck s1 to druck s6, i can't help but give them them props for such a marked improvement. in fact, i don't think ANY single skam season covers race and ethnicity as well as s5 and s6 did. sure, they were not perfect (see point 1 above), but my god, the strides that these two seasons made. so much so that in s6, we had a non-white interracial couple as main, who were both unapologetic about their ethnicities and upbringing and culture (Gambia and Vietnam). and having fatou/ava's friendship be so prominent, listening to them talk about black hair, and referencing nazis in germany - yes to all of this!

and let's talk about ava! what an amazing character who was allowed to be angry, giggly, happy, sad, and express herself, without falling into tropes like imane from skam france, and so many people can relate to her struggles with white liberal mailin. there was a sensitivity there that's so rare in these remakes. and what druck couldn't do with amira/kiki, they were given room to explore here, and i really do feel that it was an important story to tell, especially in the age of whitesplaining, white feminist tears, and white liberals talking over women of color.

skam france -

eight seasons in and skam france is STILL mistreating its characters of colors and not given them their full due. now with bilal literally taking a back seat to jo (look at the YouTube header for crying out loud!) but ever since yann in s1, skam france has done such a horrible job with its depiction of POC, especially black characters. daphne is one of the most racist vildes and the treatment of imane (even beyond her season) has been vile and unfair.

and you would think that post s6 and after a new showrunner and writing team was hired on, that there would be improvements (similar to what druck did above), but no! look at how both aurélien and judith were treated in s7, and after a strong opening for s8, it looks like bilal is now taking a backseat to jo, and once again, skam france and its new team are prioritizing a white character over a character of color.

and has there been any acknowledgment by the skam france team of the criticism over the years? rather, david has often doubled down in the face of fan critiques - just an unwillingness to listen, and so we are left with this as a result.

skam italia -

say what you want about skam italia but when it comes to race?well, they certainly take the cake for the whitest remake, so much so that swaths of fans will refuse to watch this remake for the "wana" debacle, and rightfully so. (whitewashing of the sana casting) and remember how people tried to defend this casting decision? but don't forget that italy has a higher percentage of muslims living in the country than norway does! give me a break.

and how can i forget how hajar brown was dragged after she, as a woman of color, deemed to shade and criticize casting decisions for this remake?

wtfock -

do i even need to get into wtfock and its representation on race?! i mean s4 and s5 are arguably the two worst seasons of any skam remakes period. and the complete lack of acknowledgment from the showrunners after the torrent of criticism they received. the egregiously racist writing. i am a defense attorney by profession, and even i am struggling. there's seriously no defense for them here...

so given all this above, i hope this explains why i value the steps druck has taken, especially in s5 and s6, to tackle and improve their depiction of race and representation.

[butterfly-winx]

Things about each other’s cultures that the girls find most difficult to understand/cope with (pt1)

Solaria

Layla & Musa: Capital punishment

The fact that there are crimes punishable with death, even if only in religious courts (or especially because of this distinction) makes them recoil. Both Andros and Melody have actually had histories of blood feuds and whole families wiping each other out as an acceptable form of punishment for benign slights, which have since been outlawed and adherence to the new rules is very strictly enforced. Though this cultural past might influence the girls’ strong reaction to this practice.

Bloom: Perpetual daylight

Realistically Bloom knows that even Earth has parts at the poles where the sun either doesn’t set or doesn’t rise depending on the tilt of the planet, but it absolutely twists her mind that Solaria always has one of its suns ON. People living at the Solarian equator follow studied schedules for when to go to bed and when to rise again, regardless of the amount of light they get. Bloom, an intuitive sleeper relying on normal melatonin production ty very much is absolutely thrown off and her sanity suffers a lot after a while spent planetside.

Tecna and Flora: Royal cult

The adoration of a singular leader over everyone else is a very foreign practice to both girls. Tecna fails to see the logic in assuming the infallability of a leader, be it religious or secular, in making all the final decisions for a country with only a minimal parliamental intervention. Flora simply refuses to acknowledge the need for a strict governmental institution. They both agree that it is weird how secular power and religious adoration of planet, its suns and its ruler melt in the leader cult of Solaria. They especially find it funny knowing Stella while also knowing royals are supposed to be untouchable and perfect, cause come on, Stella? Really?

Lynphea 

Layla and Bloom: Corpse conservation

Visay Lynpheans, like Flora, don’t bury their dead (they live on treetops, where wold they even go) but instead embalm them and lay them to rest in a family hut. Combined with practices regularly tending and redressing their long gone relatives, it is not something Bloom or Layla ever really encountered before. While Bloom is just superficially perturbed, Layla does lay awake at night uncomfortably aware that there is a building next door that houses all of Flora’s ancestors. In Androsian culture it is only the soul that belongs to oneself, the body, which came from the earth needs to be returned to it for the family and the deceased to gain final rest. 

Tecna: Lack of roads

Tecna, the second they land in the forest: where are your roads? How do you transport goods and services? What do you mean this animal is your mode of transport? They really don’t understand the reliance on living things to base one’s infrastructure on, and how despite weather and moody animals, stuff still gets from A to B on time.

Musa and Stella: No centralised government

While municipalities do have a governmental organisation, it relies an a clan-like organisation bolstered by social credit (like comparative wealth, seniority, amount of contribution to the community) and is not at all the rigid structures they know from Solaria and Melody where a ruling class is fixed and revered. They ask a lot of questions about things they are absolutely convinced a government is necessary for, such as visas, voting, welfare benefits, not as a mean spirited got ya! mind you, and are incredibly thrown off by either the Lynphean homebrew solution or the general shrug “we can do without that” answer they get.

Melody

Bloom and Stella: Limited mobility

Melody and its countries are visa entry regulated regions. Even if one is granted entry to the planet via one of its countries, it does not mean one can just go and visit all others. On the contrary, entry to Tengalu can for example prevent one from being permitted into Melody due to border tensions between the two countries. Stella, used to diplomatic immunity, and Bloom, used to being at least awarded tourist visas without conditions, think these regulations are very arbitrary and unnecessary, (but they will admit to not understanding the cultural conflict between the affected countries fully.)

Flora: Gender norms

As someone who is so outside of the Melodean beauty ideal, the strongly enforced gender norms for women weighs on Flora hard and makes prolonged visits uncomfortable for her. Urban environments have moved on from the need of traditional gender separation in work and social life even. Rural life is the other extreme, but Musa’s home of a mid sized city is its own hellscape. Maybe Flora’s issue is that while she looks off to Melodean eyes, she is not visibly foreign (her Lynphean face and eye shape are kind of similar to Melodean’s) so aunties and grannies do comment on her appearance and free contact with her unmarried boyfriend. She gets mad on behalf of Musa and Melodean girls frequently.

Layla and Tecna: Inherited fate

Both of them think that one’s life belongs to oneself, for the better or worse, to make of it what one will. For Layla this is more a personal conviction, culturally speaking Androsians do think one owes some form of filial piety, but not in the way Melodeans do. Not only does one owe their parents to become successful to honour the sacrifices they made for one’s upbringing, but one is also born with all the fortune and misfortune inherited from one’s past lives according to Melodean beliefs. It has up and downsides, but the most upsetting aspect to Layla and tecna is clearly the perceived lack of agency over one’s present life, always dictated by what came before.

[beguines]

There’s something you’re missing. The hallmark of a good Christian denomination, or of a good RELIGION for that matter, should not be that it conforms to the times, swaying in the wind at the culture’s beck and call. A good religion remains steadfast in its time-tested beliefs while still ministering to those on the margins. So no, perhaps Catholic theologians aren’t preaching the virtues of progressive politics, but that’s not what makes a good religion or good theology. The Church has maintained its positions for thousands of years. There is truly no reason to deem it unworthy, or theologically lesser, just because our society has collectively lost its mind over the past 60 years. How bold you are to insist that the Church should center itself around you and your modern beliefs!

I want to start this reply by pointing out that it's very natural to have a visceral reaction when reading a criticism of beliefs and institutions you hold dear, so I'm not going to hold your attitude problem against you. That being said, to assert that I'm belittling Catholicism is really missing the mark. I read, post, and engage positively with a lot of Catholic theology on this blog. I practice a lot of Catholic traditions in my personal faith life, and I'm grateful to belong to a noncreedal denomination that's very open and welcoming towards those practices. You can clearly see that I engage in criticism of Protestantism as well, despite the fact that it's the faith of my upbringing to which I still belong. Protestant denominations are guilty of the same antisemitism, racism, homophobia, misogyny. The religious institutions we love should not be exempt from criticism but subjected to it all the more stringently.

The Catholic Church hasn't maintained its positions for thousands of years. Some of them? Sure, so far. But the church has reversed its position on thousands of teachings and has instituted a multitude of new practices over the millenia of its existence as cultural mores have changed. Vatican II is the obvious example, but for all I know you could be a sedevacantist. Just like people, all institutions should change with the times as we collectively learn, grow, and acknowledge our shortcomings. For powerful religious institutions, those "shortcomings" have frequently resulted in death and destruction that's difficult to even fathom. Change isn't inherently bad. It's not a betrayal of values, and "values" aren't values when what you're valuing is the dehumanization of others. It is not the hallmark of a good person nor a good religious institution to refuse to change.

There's this belief in some circles that modern "culture" is a monolithic beast, demanding that all surrender their values to the idol of Progressivism. This simply isn't true. The dominant culture neither endorses nor contributes to the end of systems of domination. Neither does liberalism. But the fact that you're so afraid of systems of domination being dismantled says much about you. I believe in economic justice. I believe in the inherent worth of all people, regardless of faith, political affiliation, race, gender, or sexuality. And if I could not reconcile my religion with those beliefs, I would leave it. You've perhaps (if you are or were a follower of this blog) seen me post about apophatic theology—the idea that we can only accurately describe God with language by saying what They are not—and I can quite definitively say that if a faith tradition follows a God they believe doesn't endorse those things, it's not God. I don't think the church should center itself around me or my "modern" beliefs. I think the church should be centered around fostering the common humanity and well being of all people, which you apparently find to be a controversial take.

The Catholic Church is helplessly constrained by the nature of its extremely hierarchical structure, which was intentionally institutionalized as a way of maintaining and wielding power by a select few. This is a criticism of Catholicism that you will see many Catholic theologians make (my mind immediately goes to Boff, but he's certainly not the only one!). The point of my post was simply this: Protestant theologians, being largely unencumbered by that repressive theological hierarchy, are the source of dynamic, engaging, life-affirming theology that you frequently don't see from Catholic theologians, who are at threat of severe punishment if they do not conform strictly to Church teaching. Both Leonardo Boff and Ernesto Cardenal have been victims of this, and Ratzinger as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was used as a brutal instrument during Pope John Paul II's papacy to silence and shame Catholics for speaking out about injustice. The lack of a formal hierarchy within Protestantism as a whole has enabled creative and groundbreaking theology to flourish in a way that Catholicism has been unable to match because of active and intentional repression, not a commitment to a nonsensical kind of traditional values that contribute to the oppression of the children of God.

[trinrose3]

I maybe wrong, but it seems Splinter is letting his own trauma guide him into parenting. The boys may remind him of the day he lost his humanity, so he watches TV over spending time with his children. He resented his family, so he neglected to properly teach them about their family history and how to wield their weapons. Splinter is just so fucking complicated. He was thrown into fatherhood so suddenly; all by his own choice, sure, but that doesn't mean he isn't going to struggle. Yes, he has most likely unintentionally emotionally neglectedthe boys, but that doesn't make him an evil abusive shitbag. An abuser is someone refuses to apologize or fakes their apology and goes right back to the abuse. Knowing his character, he would admit to his faults, ask what he can do to change that, and work hard to be better. And I believe he's already started doing this. (@bitchapalooza )

Yeah that seems to be the case! Does that still make his actions in the past okay? Absolutely not! You can understand where someone is coming from without excusing their behavior and acting like it never happened or that it was less bad/impactful because of their past.

Its also not like ALL of his actions weren't unintentional either tho.

Unfortunately it is a very prevalent issue, but a lot of people think that hitting children is okay. Its not. Full stop. Culture or youre own personal upbringing be damned. It's never okay to hit someone especially someone youre meant to love and care for, especially if theyre your child. I truly dislike how often its used for physical comedy and ROTTMNT is no exception to this. Whether its an issue on the writers part or if thats just genuinely a part of his character thats not something I feel like should be comfortably looked past.

Splinter really is a complicated character but its more of a disservice to act as if he doesnt have these flaws then it is to acknowledge them, Which is something that I see A LOT of fans do, which made me want to make that post in the first place.

He definetly seems to be taking steps in the right direction if the ending of season two was anything to go by. I guess well just never know if we dont get a season three GIJIRGHIRGSRH