#i have not posted in like a year i know.. so shameful

[bayetea]

there are many things about hazel's povs that have an intensely de-racialized vibe to them (read: divorced from the black girl experience) but I think any black person will tell you that the most obvious sign is the complete lack of attention paid to her hair

like firstly:

she's from the 1930s her hair was definitely getting permed and straightened (it was not acceptable to just wear your natural hair out back then. optics + cultural assimilation/you'll be hard pressed to find photos of black american girls with unstraightened hair in that time period unless they're from like..... harlem)

I do believe that marie was straightening it for her For A Time but then she became more neglectful and stopped so hazel had to do it herself. I'm almost positive that hazel wouldn't have even been permitted to set foot in her school building without straightening it because that's just how much of an expectation it was

ok she comes back from the dead. what's she doing to her hair now bc it's not just gonna be cutesy effortless curls falling over her shoulder no matter what the length is

how does she feel about living in a time period where natural black hair is more accepted (read: more, absolutely not fully)

there are no black people around her At All. in fact she's around a lot of white people on the argo (+nico) so that would probably be giving her some intense feelings of double consciousness (look this term up if you don't know what it means) and that would inform how she feels about her hair

theoretically she ought to be wearing her hair in braids for simplicity's sake but I think it's more likely that she would cling to what she knows (perming/straightening) because it's not easy for a 14 year old girl (PSA hazel is 14.5 in hoo not 13 btw 👍) to go from assimilating to deeply-ingrained white hair beauty standards to just proudly wearing a distinctly black hairstyle all by herself

mind you black women and girls can do whatever they want with their hair and straightening/perming it does not always/have to come from a place of self-hatred or whatever but in this particular case back then straightening one's hair was political And a survival tactic. it was as normal as brushing your teeth. it was enforced through dominant cultural messagings about the Absolute Necessity of conforming to white conventions of beauty. if you don't understand then think of it similarly to how you'd think of 1930s women needing to be perpetually dolled up and modestly dressed in order to be considered "good women" and anyways I'm just saying that this would be a lot to unpack for a 14 year old girl so hazel's probably just continuing to do this impractical thing (straightening her hair all the time) like 60% out of habit and 20% out of shame and 20% she doesn't know what else to do

something something about a missed potential character arc regarding all of this and in general there's so little mind paid to race in hazel's povs which is just ridiculous to me because a black girl from the jim crow era should have at least a few feelings about where she fits into modern society even if that society is camp jupiter. rick demonstrates his capacity to talk about how his characters feel about their race most notably in the kane chronicles so I don't think was too much to ask for. see this quote from an early son of neptune chapter:

^ like....... hazel's feelings of out-of-place-ness are There in the text and important to take note of when understanding her character (note that she's been there for like a year already and she still feels like she doesn't belong) but the emphasis is always put on her Being from a different time or Being undead and is never put on her out-of-place-ness regarding her race as a black girl from segregation times who is literally so out-of-place in this weird post-racial camp jupiter society. it feels like such an obvious thing to consider so its glaring absence really bugs me when I reread her povs and it bugs me when her hair is never talked about by extension because It Matters

you might be thinking "well she had a lot going on and she's not a superficial person maybe she just didn't care what was going on with her hair" and my response is simply that Black girls don't get to "not care" about their hair it is not the same thing as a white person going to school with bedhead it's not the same thing At All (if you aren't black then chances are you've never actually seen what untouched black hair looks like in the morning), especially when it's been beaten into your head for your entire life that your hair is ugly and you have to "do something to it" for it to be acceptable (and again...... she's from the 1930s so that feeling is magnified like 50x over). remember that perpetually dolled up modest 1930s woman I mentioned previously. picture her time traveling to camp jupiter of all places in 2010 and struggling to drop all of her makeup/hairstyling routines and internalized misogyny and conceptualizations of what women are "supposed" to be. this is the kind of fascinating character exploration that we really missed out on with hazel (and tbh regardless of her race she was never believably written as someone from the 1930s. I don't think rick even really tried to be honest)

you might also be wondering "how was rick supposed to know/attempt to portray any of that" and then my second answer is that If you're going to write a character who is not the same race as you then you should do some research and we have the internet now so research has never been easier 👍 this would be especially important to do if that person is a poc from the jim crow era I think! (he could have at least googled black hair 1930s)

anyways what I choose to believe (this is pure fanfiction) is that during hazel's first year at camp jupiter (remember that she was there for about a year before son started) nico would have helped her figure something out after observing her distress over her hair c: like they both secretly watched youtube videos on black hairstyles circa 2010 and then they got attacked by monsters for using a laptop (neither of them know how to use a laptop but he's trying his best for her) but then after killing them he helped her do her hair as something she likes that is easy to maintain <3 (I could also see reyna doing this because she surely knows a thing or two from her spa days)

[bookshelfmonkey]

Ok but imo (as a trans guy) the dress moment could also work very well as an ftm Gender Moment.

I feel like the basis of the dress moment being so significant (or even being included in the show, although god only knows what the creators meant it to show) isn't that he's* considering wearing a dress. We see many other crew members wearing dresses at the party, laughing with everyone else and generally having a good time, and it's never brought up again, because it's a costume worn to a party. To Fitzjames, it seems to be more than a costume, hence his reluctance, hence the significance of the scene.

The common transfemme angle (as I see it, correct me if I'm wrong) is that this represents a moment where Fitzjames confronts the fact that his desire to wear the dress runs deeper than a desire to dress up for a night. This is more than a costume, this is a significant, meaningful expression of a desire that he's hidden for years, a desire that he knows (has been taught) is shameful, and now he has the opportunity to show that part of himself and have no one bat an eye and he just can't do it because it feels too vulnerable.

The transmasc angle is more complicated, so I'm going to explain my own experience real quick. When I was younger, I had to wear dresses and I hated it, but it was what was expected of me, so I didn't feel like I had a choice. Refusing to wear dresses and presenting masc was an act of rebellion for me, a hard won victory. It was also, up until I medically transitioned relatively recently, the only way I could pass. So I have that background: the years of having to wear dresses, and many more years of being pressured to wear them even after I'd repeatedly expressed that I didn't want to. But, now, I am living as a queer man. A lot of the men I surround myself with are more androgynous/feminine than I am, and none of my friends would bat an eye if I wore a dress. I also pass pretty much 100% of the time, and if I went out in public in a dress, I'd just be seen as a man in a dress (which comes with its own issues, but I don't have time to get into that right now). So I could wear a dress, and not massively run the risk of no longer being seen as a man, something that means a lot to me because it took a lot to get to that point. But I still haven't worn a dress since I stopped when I was 7. Look, I've got some internalised shit going on, it's not necessarily healthy, but it does help mimic the kind of shit that would be going on in the mind of someone living in 18th century england. Wearing a dress would-- to put it simply-- make me dysphoric. Not because I see dresses as something only women wear, but because it would remind me of when I had to wear them, and because I'd feel like that would be all people would need to see through me to my past and start seeing me as a woman again. To bring it back to ftm Fitzjames, this could easily apply. He knows that the crew see him as a man, he knows that a cis man in his position could (as many do in the show) wear the dress as a costume, have a good time, and never experience any kind of consequences for it-- he knows that he could do that. But it's more complicated, because, although he knows that it'd be fine, wearing the dress feels too vulnerable, too familiar. It breaks down the performance of the perfect (cis) man that he tries to keep up at all times, and so he doesn't do it.

Or maybe I'm just projecting, idk.

* just gonna use he/him throughout the post for consistency

i don’t think we consider ftm fitzjames enough like yes of course we had the dress scene which was crazy but also have we considered a guy who is So Obsessed with living up to the victorian masculine ideal despite everything going against him from birth. and yet somehow he is able to rise above all of that until they’re stuck in the arctic where society has all but forgotten them. and he can only really accept that it’s okay not to be this perfect heroic guy when he becomes friends (lovers?) with another guy who has long stopped trying to be the perfect victorian man because him being irish and lower birth status means society will never accept him as such. and again i recognize the Gender Moment of the dress but from the ftm angle the whole fucking show is a Gender moment

[maydazey]

you lose if you worry. you lose if you hesitate.

happy late birthday to this loser

[heartorbit]

if we could stay connected, just like this

[triglycercule]

horror being very specific with table manners and he berates people (dust and killer) for eating like fucking pigs

i think it'd be morbidly funny that because there was no food in horrortale but the cutlery and stuff was all there that maybe he would pretend to eat with no food on the plate. it was in a satirical way that he would joke maybe around horror paps or alone where he would pretend to eat and have really good table manners but then the satire joke became REAL and now horror is incredibly specific about how to eat food

you MUST hold the fork in the left and knife in right says horror. no killer you can't duel wield the fucking knives this is a table not a slaughterhouse. dust pick up your elbows off the table. actually how about you get your entire upper body off the table tf why are you SLEEPING ON THE FOOD??? killer's sitting fetal position in the chair because of course he wouldn't sit normally like the idiot he is. dust is forced to put his hood down and reveal his face no more mysterious shadow style because it puts horror at ease. they cannot have a single peaceful meal because once they get past the table manners phase it then becomes a completion to see who can eat the least (because they suck at everything including eating)

[twinstxrs]

there’s probably something deeply wrong with me because every time i see someone react to the pok gukgak interrogation scene it’s like “oh no oh my god is riz’s dad a bad guy?” when the first time i saw that scene my only thought was “oh my god is riz’s dad HOT??”

[sieglinde-freud]

thinking about them and banging my head against the wall again whats new. they are making me so emo. god. what the fuck

[britneyshakespeare]

barnes and noble has been raising the prices of everything and further pushing for their premium membership option (which they raised the price of by 60 percent this year!) and then when they have big sales events, they're less than what they used to be.

last year at this time you could get one of their leather-bound book annex tomes for $12.50 (without a member discount) because of the 50 percent off all hardcover sales. but they raised the price of those tomes from 25 bucks to 30, and they decreased the sale from 50 percent off all hardcovers to 1/3rd off. so that same book that was $12.50 at last year's end-of-year sale is now 20 bucks. and that's supposed to be savings enough to induce me to walk into one of their stores this week?

i'm sorry but b&n has just gotten so greedy, even though their business has only been doing better and better in previous years. they do not have to be raising prices like they have been, and they can damn well afford to have the same savings events they used to. if you went to one of those hardcover sales a year or two ago, even if you lived in a less populated area like i do, you had never seen a b&n so busy in your life. things were flying off the shelves. they WERE making bank.

and as a company they've only been growing and growing (as much as the publishing industry has been, in recent years). but there are so many other ways to buy books. CHEAPER ways to buy books. MORE SUSTAINABLE ways to buy books. and since books and booksellers are doing really well right now, i don't see why barnes and noble is getting so greedy when they don't have to be. i dont like new shiny books that much. people buy books for the content, ultimately. sometimes we as consumers might make the choice that a new shiny book is worth paying a bit more for, but not that much. barnes and noble has just been demanding more and more of their customers' money for less and less benefit.

[moongothic]

Re: Crocodile as the Missing Kuja Empress-theory

I do wanna throw it out there quickly that we know Shakky retired from being a pirate and the Kuja Empress 42 years ago at the age of 22, while Hancock took the throne 13 years ago (age 18), meaning the Missing Empress' reign/era lasted for about 29 years

And while we don't know how long the Kuja might've been without a ruler between empresses (like do they have a system set where they know who will take the throne next Immidiately After the previous one steps down/dies/etc, or might they spend years without an empress until they find a new suitable ruler?)

We do know that when Shakky retired, Crocodile would've been four

So unless Crocodile became The Kuja Empress at Age 4 (or unless the Kuja were completely without an empress for almost a decade and then gave the throne to a literal child), then there's no way Crocodile could be the Missing Kuja Empress

[phagodyke]

dating an art student was so crazy I'm just thinking abt that one birthday I had where my ex got me stickers from the etsy of the person they were cheating on me with....

[swagging-back-to]

not sorry. i extend very little sympathy and patience towards tras who are underage, and the only ones who do get said sympathy are TIFs. but again. it's MICROSCOPIC levels of sympathy.

[camellia-thea]

initially this post had some commentary about interests right now. and then it turned into a ramble about personal healing in the tags. so the interest post is going separately.

[patheticpuppyboyslut]

(not hornyposting just musing lol) so i’m a singer-songwriter and performer irl and i’m thinking about the fact that i go around on a day to day basis singing serious, professional songs that use dogs and brainwashing and cannibalism as painful heartbroken metaphors. and i’ve been doing this for years but little by little all these things i process my anguish through in songwriting, have also become how i satisfy my sex drive. and i don’t know what to do with that information i just think it’s wild!! fun fact abt me i guess. i go out there in public singing about how service is my fulfillment and calling myself a good boy and i sing about wanting to be violently torn apart and eaten and i’m like. yeah it’s a metaphor. yeah dw i’m really normal. i don’t fantasize about having my humanity stripped from me and being treated like a stupid sweet puppy barking and whining for my lovers sick and twisted pleasure what are you TALKING about. i just like the poetic imagery of it. i SWEAR.

[maybelleteas]

how do I get over the feeling of being a bad Bisexual Woman when I used to think I preferred men, had more sexually intense desire for them, and wanted to marry a man but still desired a casual fling with a woman back then when now, since then, after the only sexual touch I've gotten in my 30 years of life is from a woman, I am essentially a febfem wrt a long term situation, and want to marry a woman. I feel like I'm betraying this hypothetical person in my head bc I didn't always feel this way 😭

[tokyoteddywolf]

22 isn't very much at all, I think.

[inniave]

posting music is scary but i'm going to keep at it because otherwise i don't think i'll ever release anything at all and at some point i *do* want to actually put together a project For Realsies so i gotta get over my fear but damn this fears got hands 😭