#can you tell i've written many a letter to elected officials in my time

[nevermindirah]

Don't Segregate Sam

here's the full text of the feedback I just sent to AO3 about their terrible plan to segregate the Captain America (Movies) tag. truly a ridiculously bad and offensive idea. send your own feedback here!

I'm writing to strongly oppose y'all's announced upcoming change to the Captain America (Movies) tag to segregate the Chris Evans movies from the Anthony Mackie movies. I can see how this change might make sense to an archivist with a passing knowledge of the MCU and I respect the volunteer labor of the folks who worked on this but I can't emphasize enough how much this change will not only be unhelpful to those of us creating and reading works in the fandom but will actively exacerbate the serious ongoing problem of racist sidelining of Sam Wilson as the legitimate successor Captain America.

Sam Wilson fans have had to develop word-of-mouth systems to help each other find works genuinely focused on Sam because on both AO3 and Tumblr the Sam-related tags are overwhelmingly filled with works that either portray Sam with racist tropes or don't actually feature him at all. This isn't a problem that can be solved with better system-wide tagging. It's a problem of racist attitudes against Sam as a character, attitudes that were inflamed by the announcement of Sam as the new Captain America. Your announced tagging change only plays into this.

This situation is nothing like the James Bond movies tags segmenting by actor, because of the wide variations in continuity between all those movies and because there's never been a racist backlash against any one Bond actor. This is like if there were an upcoming new James Bond movie clearly set in the same continuity as the Daniel Craig movies but starring, say, Lashana Lynch as the latest 007, and AO3 updated the tags to James Bond (pre-2025 Movies) and James Bond (Lashana Lynch Movies). The upcoming 2025 Captain America movie is not the start of a new continuity within the MCU — instead, it's the long-awaited return of Sam Wilson to the big screen for the first time since 2019, finally getting his flowers as a film lead with his promotion to Captain America.

Sam plays a pivotal role in the 2014 and 2016 Cap movies, a much bigger and more important role than Peggy Carter. The post announcing the tag change lists Peggy but not Sam as a key figure in those movies, perhaps unintentionally due to limited familiarity with the canon, but this error pressed on a raw wound in the fandom. Peggy has been highlighted as an alternate Captain America figure in several MCU properties of the past 5 years, including a much-publicized appearance right next to the first MCU appearance of Charles Xavier, while Sam, the first character to un-blip in Endgame and the rightful leader of future Avengers teamups, has only meaningfully appeared in a one-off episode of What If and his own contained TV show The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. Intentionally or not, your announcement post fed into this ongoing problem of fans and some MCU creatives seeking to replace Sam with Peggy.

Sidelining Sam has been a serious problem in the fandom since 2014 and now in the 2020s a problem in the canon as well. The announced tag change further legitimizes this racist sidelining of a main character in the franchise. It will do nothing to help people searching the archive for works about Sam and will only embolden those fans who wish to sideline him.

Please reverse your decision. Do not segregate the Captain America (Movies) tag.

[felixxthefrog]

scheduling this for January 1, 2025 at midnight. a letter to my future self.

for whoever the fuck i've become by the time i'm reading this later.

hey, i guess?

it's january 4th and i just put my playlist in dumpster for u. hope u like it. it's kinda shit, and the Bow Weevils don't fit the vibe, but then neither does Gravy.

i hope ur cool. ive been trying to get cooler. read more books, listen to more music, better books, and better music. i hope you're cool like i want to be cool. educated. witty. funny. i don't know if i'll ever be funny. but maybe you will be.

if you haven't yet, make sure to read that letter i left for you in the start of the green journal. it's sad, but it'll show you the parts of me that you'll inevitably repress.

the panic attacks have started coming back. i'm sorry. i hope you got better.

are you any closer to jacob? do you still go to the bookshop? how many books have we gotten in the last year? how many have we read? enough?

it's never enough books, is it.

have you found any new book shops? any new coffee shops?

how long is your hair?? what color is it?? did you bleach it??? i'm gonna be so mad if you've bleached it. is it curly again? i miss my curls, i hope you have them. take care of them, please. please don't cut them off. i miss them.

are the cats okay? they're big boys now, aren't they? officially two. they're all asleep right now, but they're menaces. does aster still get on cabinets? i bet he does.

what about 🐀? how is she doing? better? closer? comfier? more confident? how is work? still shit?

what about 🧸? how are they? and 🪱?

what about j🐦and 🐧 and 🐻‍❄️?

what about 🕷️?? does he have a partner yet?? i hope he's happy.

(i hope u know who i'm talking about with all the censored names. internet creeps and all. you never know)

how... how was the election? you voted, right? we did? how did it go? is everything okay? i know it probably won't get better but god i hope it does. and if it's not better... i hope you're ready. hurry. get ready, if you aren't. i hope everything is okay. you'll have to tell me who won. i wish i could reassure you. reassure me. know what you know. it's so scary, the not knowing

what about Palestine? israel is getting war crime charges from South Africa soon i think. i hope they get what they deserve. and i hope Palestine is free. i hope they're healing. thriving. i don't know if they will be. but i hope they are. the war isn't over yet but i hope it will be soon.

do you still have hope? do we still have hope? if we ever have a little girl, we should name her pandora.

have you painted the wall more? have you made more art? have you written anything? what about edith hamilton and ishmael reed and maya angelou? do you still love them? are they still with you?

what about.. mom? is she okay? has she grown? changed? is she accepting? does she call you felix? probably not. even if she was accepting, idk if she'd like the name felix.

are you still felix?? do you still use that name? still genderfluid? still a lesbian? jesus christ i hope so. i've been waiting to call myself a lesbian for 6 years now, since we were 14. i'm not giving that up any time soon. i hope.

is that stupid pothos still alive. do you drink more now that you're legal?

do you work? or are you still at home? are you going to school? i'm assuming ur not going to school. can you drive?

i don't know what else to ask. tell me everything.