#i know you didnt mean anything negative by it dw

[pastelpousay]

That anon was a total moron. They call themselves normal when they’re literally a tumblr user lmao. Like we tumblr ushers are not normal that’s why we’re on tumblr 😂

Like I’m anti-proship and all that’s stuff too and I genuinely don’t see anything wrong with your self ship with Hades! There’s nothing controversial about Rina and Hades! I mean Rina is 25 so…idk what they were talking about fr. I self shipped with older dudes when I was 15 too (of course I did the same thing you do by making the ocs legal lmao) 😂 I think we’ve ALL been guilty of that I mean look at those “I was sold to One Direction” fics on Wattpad back in like 2014 😂 Legit I self ship with dudes old enough to be my grandad like c’mon dude! Nearly half of tumblr ships themselves with old men lmao its what we’re all about 🤣

As long as the character isn’t a p*do or doing in*est stuff or horribly illegal stuff or stuff like that then you go for it! Hades literally a Disney villain like the most controversial thing he’s done is try to kill baby Herc lmao and he didn’t even succeed in that lmao, that god is just a big ol hotheaded dork lmao! Idk if that anon was an adult or not, but they should be ashamed if they were. The older self ship community should be looking out for the younger ones too! I think Rina and Hades are adorable! Keep up the awesome art and writing!!! I’m glad you didn’t let that anon get to you! Good job standing up for yourself! ☺️💕 (and sorry if this came off as weird! 😅😅 I wasn’t trying to be! I was just saying I did the same thing when I was a teen so I know how it is lol)

HIHI ANA!! DW YOU DIDNT COME OFF AS WEIRD AT ALL WHAT YOU SAID WAS VERY SWEET AND SO SO TRUTHFUL!!!💗

ALSO YES LITERALLY THE WORST THING HE DID WAS TRY AND KILL HIS NEPHEW LIKE WHAT AND IM ACTUALLY BAFFLED THEY HAD THE AUDACITY TO CALL HIM A “problematic character” 💀 LITERALLY WHAT CHAT?!? I HAD TO SIT THERE FOR A GOOD 5 MINUTES ACTUALLY PROCESSING THAT THROUGH WITHOUT LAUGHING MY ASS OFF 💀 NGL I THOUGHT IT WAS A PRANK AT FIRST. ALSO LITERALLY YES WHY ARE YOU GROUPING YOURSELF AS NORMAL YOUR ON TUMBLR FIRST OF ALL SECOND IM ASSUMING THEYRE A SELF SHIPPER CUZ HOW ELSE WOULD THEY FIND MY ACC 😭 SO LIKE DUDE THATS BASICALLY A DOUBLE NEGATIVE TO BEING NORMAL MY GUY💀😭. I LITERALLY DONT KNOW WHY THEY HAD THE AUDACITY TO COME HERE WITH THIS “ur a proshipper 😿” BULLSHIT LIKE DUDE I LITERALLY MADE SURE RINAS BRAIN WAS FULLY DEVELOPED BEFORE I EVEN MADE LORE 💀😭 like yea it’s an age gap but like she’s literally a human and Hades is a whole ass god LIKE WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO😭 but ohhh when someone else ships themselves with Dracula it’s not a problem 💀. I WAS LOWK HOPING IT WOULD JUST BE ME THO THEY SENT THIS TOO CUZ IM A BIT CONCERNED LIKE WHAT IF THEYRE SPREADING HATE TO OTHER HADES SELF SHIPPERS OR LIKE OTHER SELF SHIPPERS IN GENERAL. I was honestly contemplating on deleting it but I’m too petty for that lmaoao ALSO THANK YOU SMM ILL BE SURE TO KEEP UP WITH ALL MY STUFF AND I WILL CONTINUE TO DRAW THEM SMOOCHING JUST TO PISS PPL LIKE THIS OFF 💪😼 It gives me life.

THANK YOU AGAIN ANA THIS WAS SO SWEET 💗 I HOPE YOU HAVE A GOOD DAYYY, NIGHT WHATEVER TIME IT IS IDK BUT YEA!! If this person comes in ur inbox dw 💪🐺 I’ll take care of them /j

[themindelectricdemo4]

i think to myself lke. back lke 2 year ago, im like...my friendship with my friends was so good, what happened?

really, i let myself go. i got a lot of disappointment in my regular life (couldnt get disability, more illnesses, treatment failing, family dying) i found that gong to college has helped me so much. because its like...setting a life for myself. getting a routine. having something to wake up for.

when all i wanted to wake up was for my friends, they were the brunt of everything, especially my moodiness that was becoming more & more unstable. i keep wanting to apologize but i hope i can form better wording in my head that articulates what i want to say the most (firstly that it doesnt justify my actions, and secondly, that im not crawling back to rekindle) im kind of stuck with overthnking it, so honestly.......it could be a world where i never directly apologize because i fear what my words sound like

i havent changed in that aspect in that i miss the connotation of my words often...maybe i could show it to my partner for proof reading, but i wouldnt want to involve a lot of people or anything ive accepted this is my human flaw & i continue to try & wrap my head around implications but it doesnt work. i do feel dumb ..oh well what can i do. i try to ask people to ask for clarification if they think something i said was weird (because if my intentions were mean ...i would want to make sure you knew for sure ...LOL.) but if they dont.. dont know what to do. but ive find in college, my friends ask me, they respect that, they make me feel like a human being & not some dumb (insert a barrage of slurs i could call myselfhere). self inflicted words..because i wish i could just learn social shit like a normal person & i feel dumb for not being able to mask this, or be able to study it enough to even pretend like i understand

im happy with the way my life is going now... i went to college, met my partner irl, i havent thought about genuinely kmsing myself in a good while now, like i couldnt go a month or two without planning it in my head, but im...actually doing good? its crazy...even my psych said she was so proud of me today saying she couldve never imagined me how i am today just because of how bad i was. i dont take that as a negative btw cuz thats me past tense. im proud of it.!!! really like, after whatever the fuck happened in august '23 i was like, ok. no more of this shit.

& it worked? i got all As, im in college. holy shit. the several times i would blow up on my friendsin the past into HUGE fights? the most heated i got was exactly one time where i snapped after a long day of being spoken over (by this person that i didnt particularly want to hang out with, as agreed upon with my friend because even that person agreed we didnt have a lot in common) & that...was it??? like im shocked. all my rage . gone . whar. .. & my friends are like.......they ask me what im doing/feeling based on things i do cuz they think im mad (the rbf & monotone voice) & im like oh!! oh my gosh no, im good! im sorry for worrying u & they were like oh! dw just checking. cuz i curated the baddest bitches of autistics who just get it fr . me & my current bestie we just ask each other the most blunt questions to get clarity on situations & i love that 4 us ... hes supa nice. love all my fends . but wow idk im proud of myself & this turned into a ramble where im positive cuz i was acually gettng mad at myself sadge but yea. i do wanna apologize but im afraid of being misconstrued & my paranoia over this manifests into probably never doing it. i got lving with my mother probably to blame fo r that (dont get me started on the shit she pulled over winter break that everyone in my family agrees she is ridiculous for with physical proof ok im reeling

[ariapmdeol]

Oh, I apologize. I didn't mean 'like Genshin Impact' in a negative way. I'm just saying that genshin impact has a lot of connected organizations & 'lore' just like this game seems to; and so people are having fun with analyzing the various factions & trying to figure out what it all means because the story is incomplete & so leaves room for interpretation. It's fine to be into something with an incomplete story! That's not a bad thing at all, I just thought it'd have more canon.

OH NONO you had asked if "is it a story where there isn't really much of a story, but the fans like filling in the blanks with their own writing & making ocs?" when CoE is VERY VERY MUCH STORY AND CHARACTER CENTRIC and the fact that I had given you that impression had... scared me a little bit. it is literally the polar opposite of that phrase specifically.

i'll go more in detail under the cut! I promise i'm not mad i just think I may have misled you somehow. Cell of Empireo is a part of a layered series; the CoE part of it is complete, with the DLC acting as its prequel/epilogue. Think of it like-- You can theorize about the new games in a series before they come out, but that doesnt make the previous games LESS complete, if that makes sense?

the DLC/HR/Interlude expand on the lore and bring it into the main story in a really engaging way. I would think of it less as 'CoE is incomplete' and more of 'a series with multiple parts'. COE is Game 1, The DLC+HR are additional parts of Game 1, Interlude is 1.5, and CoM (unreleased) is 2.

Considering the base game takes ~16-20 hours to complete one playthrough, and it has seven Endings, plus ~10+ Hours of DLC content, (not counting Interlude) we are not lacking for canon content adslkjdsalkjdsa.

i'm just not sure how much canon you think cell of empireo has? The eng TL alone has well over 25+ hours of footage

I just think that bc i opened with a niche detail of lore, I may have accidentally given a skewed perspective if that makes sense?

[thoriffix]

i dont mean this in a mean or rude way (you were obv just rambling and its not actually a problem i swear youre cool) but you cant really say anything about disliking pat negativity if you didnt have the tag blocked

ah no dw abt it i get what u mean im a big boy i know my responsibilities n all that 🤟 n yeah its wack lol

[throwing-summers-at-the-walls]

Hello half valid anon here (i like my nickname 😂). I got through all your fics and they were all great. Right now im just reading a lot of poi fanfics and watch fanvids cause i can't accept that the series is over 😂 --- i know what you mean about fics affecting you negatively. I had this with 13rw (the Show and some fics) everything was so dark and hopeless that i had to stop watching it. I also love to seek out fics where someone is hurt so i can feel my pain through the characters (1)

But i try to read only fics with lots of comfort so it kinda feels like i get comforted as well (dont know if that makes sense). If it makes you uncomfortable or if its unhealthy for you to write about this i completely understand and i dont mean to come of as pushing you to write. I just hope whatever you do will be the right decision for you! As for you feeling suicidal im sorry to hear that. Let me know if there is ever anything i can do to help! I wish i could say sth more comforting but Im not super good with words :( i just hope you have people in your life that support you! 💛

maybe root will grow on you too? Or maybe you can skip her scenes and enjoy John, Harold and most importanly Bear! 😂 Yeah Shaw definately looks really good. She is a bit like Reese minus the caring. At first it seems she doesnt care about anything at all but thats not exactly the Case. There was an episode with Shaw and a little girl (3x5) and i really loved it (have you seen that one?).

I really think Shaw would grow on you (especially since in the beginning she does a lot with John) but then again a lot of her later scenes include Root so im not sure. Yes i love that there were never any romantic undertones with her and John!!

yeah the core four were great. I was so sad when Carter died! :(

i guess everyone sees chemistry different, i think Shoot and Rinch post have great chemistry ☺️

as for John being good with people: YES!! he is always so compassionate and such a great listener as well. I especially like him with children. John and the baby were so cute or John with the boy who offered to pay for him. John + Kids was always a great combination and i wished we would have seen it more often. Also regarding children we did we never got to see a John Taylor scene after Carters death? I needed that!

yes John the badass is also amazing! His character has so many different sides and i love him so much!!

i think Grace Harold was really cute but i dont really see a future for them, i mean he lied to her for so long! but then again they really loved each other so idk maybe they work it out. Im also not into John/Harold/Grace but like you said good for the people who like the ship :)

John and Zoe were great! i wish Zoe would have appeared more often!

I have so many things to say about John and the boring therapist but i think i better not say them :D i wish i could just erase their relationship from my mind!

of course he didnt die! i didnt see a dead body so i refuse to believe he is dead! i also just wanted them to be happy. what kind of an ending is it to let the main character die? i refuse to accept this! -- thank you for the rec i will check it out :) while i do like fluff i mostly read h/c (with the focus on the comfort) cause i just want John to get his much needed comfort :D -- i have no idea where season 1 is supposed to be boring. but idc the people can live with their wrong opinions :D

(today: tumblr user nourann3 discovers the option to indent text after almost 5 years on tumblr...)

Hiii !! It is a very valid nickname 😂 That's nice !! Hmu if you want more recs ! Lol same honestly, I can't believe it's been 4 years since the show ended ! I can give you a link to my poi/Rinch fanvids playlist if you're interested 👀

Oh boi 13rw is so cursed, can't believe I watched all of the 1st season 😬 I remember being afraid of the suicide scene making me uncomfortable but it was so cringe, unrealistic and just bad that I wasn't even that uncomfortable, I cringed when she cut her arms but that's it.

Yeah big mood I project a lot on comfort fics as well. For suicide fics, I think it also depends on how the fics adress the subject. It's something that is complicated to write. If I read a suicide fic with no recovery I'm gonna project but feel like shit. But with recovery, I can project into the recovery as well so it's better ! I read a really good ace attorney fic showing Miles recovering after a suicide attempt, it was thoughtful and didn't fall into the pitfalls of magical super fast recovery/love heals everything, and some lines stuck with me, it was really good and comforting. But yeah if it's just a suicide/suicide attempt then I don't think it's good for me (but sometimes I still read it bc I'm a Dumb Bitch).

Dw you didn't come off as pushing 💜 I'll see how I feel about continuing it or not. I have to figure out if writing about suicide is positive or negative for me 🤔 I mean I'm not portraying John's suicidal crisis as a positive thing, and he reaches out to Harold, and considers he might get better so I don't think it's bad for me ? Another problem is that I have a tendency to drop my wips to write a new shiny idea I get, and then I never finish anything gkgkffjfjf I dropped the suicide fic for the body horror fic which I dropped for the time loop fic, and there's also the hanahaki fic I started last year but I haven't touched in months, plus a bunch of random shit floating around OneDrive lmao someone stop me

What helps the most is venting, just getting that shit out is helping y'know. I appreciate your support ♥️ at least it's not as bad as it used to be

I doubt Root will grow on me, catch me watching her scenes at 1.5 speed lmao, also yes you bet I'll enjoy watching them !!

Yes I remember that ep ! Iirc the little girl tells Shaw she has feelings but the volume is lower than in other people or smth along those lines ?

I hope she'll grow on me bc she seems cool. I remember I was a bit afraid of her just becoming a sort of hollow copy of John, like "look we added another badass to the show". Seems to be more than that though ! Also I'm curious about their mayhem twins dynamic. But yeah if she has a lot of scenes with Root idk how much it'll annoy me

I feel like I wouldn't be able to get the Shoot chemistry bc I'm too biased against Root lol

Ikr the crossing hurt me so much. But thinking about it takes me back to my careese days and my first fics lol. I feel like the death of one of the core four + the abandonment of the library really alienated me from the show (did I already say that before ?). And here I'm gonna shamelessly derail from Carter to the library bc boiii do I have a lot of feelings about the library !! And you're here, talking about poi, so you're the perfect subject to throw these feelings at. This post really says what I feel about it (I'll put the link at the end as well if you wanna read it after you're done with this l o n g reply). It was in a way its own character and its forced abandonment/destruction really hit me (fucked me up when they broke that glass board). It says something that it's one of the few things I remember from S3 along with Carter's death and 4C. I loved it a lot, it was a cornerstone of the show. It was a safe place, a home for Harold and John (and Bear !). I love when they're together in there, I love this cracked glass board, this yellow stained glass in the windows !!! (at least I assume it's stained glass ?), these lights, Bear's cushion, the whole cozy/safe/isolated feelings, just absolutely everything. And yeah later they have the subway, idk when it's introduced I don't remember if it's early enough for me to have watched it. And maybe it's nice, I can't judge rn. But it's like trying to give me a new MC after a MCD, make him as nice as you want I'll be clutching the previous MC until I die. Gkfkfkff I went overboard and off topic but I just love the library ok

Ikr I love how he's badass but also gentle and understanding and nice to people ! I love him !!! Yeah wolf and cub is really good, also I love when John smiles to Darren at the end !! I use this moment as my pfp bc I love it so much. He's just so cute ! I wish he smiled more (did we ever hear him laugh in the entirety of the show ?). Baby blue is so great, Harold and him are such a married couple in this ep ! Yeah same more content with John and children would have been nice.

I never thought about how much we needed a John Taylor scene but yes !! We were robbed :((((

Speaking of John being a cool badass. Here's a badass John vid rec it's super good

Yeah they were cute in the past. I think it's good he went back to her bc it gives closure to both of them. But I don't see their relationship working again. She grieved, probably started to move on after all these years and knowing he lied all this time probably won't make her want to go back with him. I've never been in love so what do I know lol, but were I her I probably wouldn't want to go back with him and I'd just be happy knowing he's alive after all.

Same I need more Zoe (also she's hot)

Lmao let's just forget about that weird relationship shall we

Aren't we all the same, firmly believing he's alive and happy out there ! It was foreshadowed since the first ep and it made sense but do I care ? No, fuck that shit John is very much alive

You're welcome ! John needs all the comfort and the love !!! I think I have a preference for fluff bc he gets hurt enough in the show lol

Indeed they can, veryyy far away from us

Sry if this is shit I have like half a functioning braincell today

The post abt home bases I mentioned

[feraldavestrider]

hey i don't usualy like sending these kind of messages but as someone who has beeing doing CBT, that post you reblogged is just... outright wrong? there are people in the notes who word it better than i could in an ask but op is basically describing CBT with other words, the treatment (when done well) should never make you ashamed or guilty of bad thoughts. the whole point of dealing with intrusive thoughts/impulses is accepting you have them and that doesn't define you. 1/2

OP might've had a bad experience but it's dangerous to say those things about CBT (like the relapse, without sources) when it's the only thing that works for many folk like me, and it might put them off to giving it a shot. sorry for the knejerk reaction to it, have a nice day. 2/2

ok first of all i know this isnt a funny thing but for a whole ass minute i fr thought these asks were about cock and ball torture HDSSKDFDJSKFHDSKJFHDSFKJ

so i do this thing on tumblr sometimes where i skim read posts and i dont like... process every part of a post? like i read it all but sometimes i just dont actuall. READ all of it and tbh i didnt even really read the cbt bit and frankly i know like... barely anything abt cbt, i have never and probably will never have therapy and i dont know that much abt various therapy methods. thats on me for reblogging a post w/o properly reading all of it/not knowing or caring abt what was actually the main point of it so my bad

i mostly reblogged the post bc of the last two paragraphs/opening paragraph which doesnt actually mention cbt:

Not being mean to yourself doesn’t mean censoring self-deprecating humor, it doesn’t mean snapping a rubber band on your wrist when you have a negative thought, it means taking time to sit down and think about yourself as if you were another person, to really take stock of who you are from as objective a perspective as you can muster, and if you really want to grow, realizing that this person you see can’t grow if the person closest to them, which is you, spends all their time berating them and making them feel like shit.

Being friends with yourself is not a series of therapeutic exercises, it’s challenging yourself to evaluate why you’re a dick to yourself in a way you aren’t to other people, or maybe you are a dick to other people, and maybe you want to be a dick to yourself, which is goofy as fuck, but if you’re still suffering, maybe ask yourself why the fuck you want to be such a dick, the answers may surprise you.

i dont have a problem w ppl using the rubber band (cause i know it helps for those recovering from self harm) or censoring self deprecating humour, but ive had people before act like bc i make self deprecating jokes or jokes abt killing myself that im not trying to recover. ive kind of jumped around on my opinion on this in regards to myself and others, and i used to fully think those things were just funny and that i didnt have to make an effort to try and get better in regards to my mental health, and then i embraced the idea that if u do things like make those jokes ur only hurting urself n that u hsould try not to say bad things abt urseld ever in order to heal. 

ive tried that and it didnt work for me personally; for me, i can engage in occasional downtalk of myself, serious or joking, but it was more of a process of thinking and meditating on my reasons for my self hatred and suicidal thoughts, and then working on healing the causes for that shit rather than trying to just cut out the symptoms of my mental health issues. if u get me? and im doing a lot better now! 

sorry i didnt mean to go on a rant abt my stuff, but yea so like... i dont really know much abt cbt and if it works for u, ur very valid like i think every one has their own ways which is best for them to overcome their personal issues. i hope u can see y i reblogged the post, those two last paragraphs do rlly speak to me on my view on my own issues but i didnt really read all of it dshfsfjdshfjdskhfdskfdhf

anyway ill delete my reblog, im v sorry and dw abt sending asks like this like... sometimes i just reblog bad stuff that i only partially read or im just stupid or smth so like! when ppl r nice abt it im always happy 2 get asks like this. enjoy ur day anon

[sol1056]

EPs: "we chose Netflix to explore things like sexuality" (nothing was explored or was explicit for even 2 seconds) "when they told us u cant kill Shiro, we knew we could push the reveal 4 later" (so nice of them to admit they stopped our rep just to be able to kill him) "when we found out about byg we knew we coulnt kill Shiro & we thought we'll find rep w another character. Then we learned we could go on w/ Shiro as the rep" (theres ANOTHER REP WE DIDNT GET?? Was it vague then erased? Whatt??)

I think these are two separate issues. One is related to who made VLD, and the other is related to the EPs’ ignorance of characterization. The second overlaps with a bunch of asks I’ve recently gotten about race and representation, so here I’m just keeping it to a general discussion of characterization, with Lance as example. And then about Shiro in particular, how the EPs’ statements reveal their lack of thought.

Behind the cut. 

remember where these people came from

The team behind VLD is almost entirely formerly Nickelodeon. DreamWorks wanted to break into television on a much larger scale, and since they almost always promote from outside the company, they lured over Margie Cohn from her position as a Nick VP. As VP/exec levels tend to do, Cohn brought a bunch of people with her.

One of those was Mark Taylor, who’d been involved in both AtLA and LoK. Taylor, in turn, brought JDS, LM, and I think one or two of the other producers. Taylor also probably brought over Hamilton, Chan, and Hedrick, as known entities with proven track records. 

These are people who — for for the last ten or more years — have swum in Nickelodeon’s considerably more conservative fishbowl. It’s entirely possible (given what people tell me about storylines in HTTYD, and DW’s open support of She-Ra) the former Nickelodeon team automatically downgraded DW’s “go ahead and explore these heavier/darker topics” to mean “maybe kinda mention in passing but don’t be too obvious about it.”  

Now, to be fair, the EPs may have pushed for more LGBT+ rep, and their obstacle might not have been DW, but Taylor. It’d explain how the EPs could praise everyone (read: DreamWorks staff) as supportive, yet allso complain about pushback (read: Taylor’s Nickelodeon-influenced sensibilities). Two different parties were calling the shots. 

It’s also possible what the EPs saw as ‘rep’ was still considerably toned-down from what DW execs (and the VAs) may’ve expected. After all, that one-minute scene in VLD might’ve required an act of god at Nickelodeon. VLD’s staff may have genuinely considered this scene landmark because even that tiny bit was far more than their previous employer would’ve allowed. 

Cue the victory lap and excited chatter, and seeming blindness to Korra being long since surpassed by Steven Universe, Young Justice, Bob’s Burgers, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, RWBY, Rick and Morty, Clarence, BoJack Horseman, Danger & Eggs, Big Mouth, and Summer Camp Island. Remember, it wasn’t until 2016 that Nickelodeon would have a married gay couple (in The Loud House), and they’re not even central characters. The VLD staff may’ve thought itself bold, and unprepared for the reality of modern (non-Nickelodeon) audience expectations. 

No, I don’t think that absolves them. It just seems the most reasonable explanation. That is, short of seeing the EPs as so utterly cynical they’d pump up the audience for what amounted to a nothingburger in light of what else popular media now delivers. 

and then there’s representation

VLD’s troubles can all be traced to one crucial detail: the EPs don’t understand that characters are the bedrock of stories. And as such, there are no shortcuts.

Ever had the misfortune to catch a home decorating show? Here we have a windowless basement: mock up a mantle from polystyrene, paint the walls gray, put up sconces with flickering lightbulbs… it’s still a basement. It’s just now desperately pretending to be something it isn’t. The bones of the structure are undeniably American Suburbia, not generic castle keep, and those bones are integral to how we experience the space.

The average person isn’t trained to be aware of those bones — the underlying architecture — and its subtle impact on our experience, just as most non-storytellers aren’t trained to see how and where and why characters create plot. I guarantee you, though, you will never mistake a late-century Kmart for the Centre Pompidou or the Forbidden City or Mount Vernon. Just as you would never mistake a beginner’s first novel for Lord of the Rings or Left Hand of Darkness. 

That is, the dressed stone isn’t paint and plaster; it’s a core element informing (even dictating) height, width, and depth of a space. Characterization is the same: it must be structural. In turn, characters inform the breadth and depth of the story. If your characterization is shallow, wild swerves and dramatic reveals can make the story fun, but they will never make it deep. 

I empathize with the (hopefully genuine) intent to avoid making Shiro’s sexuality a ‘reveal.’ The unfortunate truth is: waiting 60+ episodes to even mention in passing makes it a reveal. It wasn’t structural, or viewers would’ve been sensing it from the very beginning. 

This isn’t a haircut or a pair of jeans. It’s a person’s identity, and that has crucial impact on hopes, fears, desires, and needs. It doesn’t start only once the audience is let in on the secret; it was always there. It should’ve informed the character’s actions and reactions all along. 

If Lance is Cuban, and the story takes place in a quasi-future America, then to understand Lance’s perspective, we need to ask questions like: is Cuba still under embargo? Is it a free democracy now, or did Lance’s family flee at some point? Is he part of an exchange program, or is there a lottery that let him come to the US for his education? Did he leave his family behind? How young was he, when he left? What was his childhood like, and how does that differ from what he found in America? What was his parents’ relationship like, and how does that influence his expectations for friends and lovers? 

Was he fluent in English when he arrived, or did he only become fluent later? Does his Spanish have a noticeable accent, and if so, has he felt isolated from other Latinx at school? Or is he the only Latino at the Garrison? Is he proud of his heritage, or ashamed of it? Did he get bullied for being foreign, and how did that change what he says/does? Even if America is joyfully multi-cultural, he’d still be an immigrant or foreigner, and that’s a different experience from a non-white community that’s multi-generation American. What was his impression of his new life? What compared favorably (or not) to his childhood? 

It’s not just, “He’s a boy from Cuba.” You have to think about what it means to be ‘from Cuba’ and how this is different from, say, growing up next door to the Garrison (like Pidge probably did). If you put that much thought into it, if you talk to people who’ve lived that experience, if you push yourself to imagine as deeply as you can how Lance’s life would have shaped him? 

By the time you’re done, Lance would never need to say a word. 

His reactions, his assumptions, maybe a few mannerisms, his humor, a few throwaway comments about his family or things he did as a kid — and there would be Cubans in the audience going, “hey, wait a minute, he’s just like my cousin.” Or brother or uncle or friend. By the time someone asks at a panel? Half the audience would be saying, yeah, we were right, Lance is totally Cuban. 

Or you don’t think about it, and you use stereotypes in hopes that’ll do the work for you. As @sjwwerewolf commented:

Man, I’m ready to rant about Voltron. I’m Cuban. Lance, oh boy, Lance. From season 1 on, he has been written as a huge stereotype. The flirtatious, passionate comic relief character who’s dumb. Like. He’s literally Antman’s sidekick. That character. All you need to make him a full caricature is like, “I have a gangster brother.“ 

The stereotype is a shortcut. It’s slapping on behaviors without thought for a real person’s experiences or perspectives. VLD is, sadly, full of them: the Latino (wannabe) lover, the big guy who likes food (with only the slightest twist to have him actually good at cooking), the boyish-girl who’s a brain and likes computers more than people, etc. 

just pull shiro out of a hat

At some point early on, the EPs said (once again in an interview, not in the story) that VLD is a world without homophobia. The story itself contradicts that ideal, or at least, it emphasizes a certain level of heternormativity over an open embrace of diverse relationships. What’s in our face for six seasons is Lance’s lover-boy stereotype, Allura’s attraction to Lotor, Lotor’s attraction to Allura, Matt’s attraction to Allura, and so on… and the closest we get to anything resembling an alternate attraction is one blush from a servant in a flashback, and Kuron’s startled reaction to Keith’s return. 

All VLD had to do was have Hunk mention his moms. Or Coran mention his late husband. Or Lance mention his sister’s wife. Something explicit to offset the heterosexual attractions going on. Frankly, for six seasons it was an open question whether homosexuality even existed in VLD: the absence of a negative is not proof of the presence of a positive. 

That absence means we really have no idea how being queer in VLD’s world would affect a character — and it would, have no doubt. Our sexuality affects every single one of us; it’s just that straight people have the benefit of seeing the roadmap of their sexuality played out in a million books, movies, and television shows. If you haven’t given thought to whether this is also true in your world, then you don’t really know how a character could discover, define, and map their sexuality, or how they’d quantify or qualify relationships that overlap their sexual preferences. You don’t understand the structure. 

That lack of thought means, nine times out of ten, the creator has said to themselves, “it’s easier to just say this character’s experience of their sexuality is exactly like the one I, as a straight person, vaguely recall having (that I never actually had to question because it was already mapped out for me, everywhere I looked).” That’s not a queer character. That’s a character with a label slapped on their forehead that says here be a queer character. It’s paint, because the structure underneath is straight person. 

Which means that of course the EPs could consider making someone else “the rep,” because they really seem to believe this is as easy as removing the label from Shiro’s forehead and sticking it on someone else. And it’s not. People don’t work like that. Sexuality is no more a simple paint-job than race, gender, culture, or dis/ability. Each of these things is etched on our bones, literally or metaphorically, and that changes us all the way through. 

The short version, then, is: no, we wouldn’t have gotten any other rep, just as we haven’t truly gotten any rep as VLD was delivered. Shiro has a label on his forehead, but unless and until the canonical story demonstrates this goes all the way down to his bones… he’s just a straight suburban basement with a mediocre paint job and some fake queer columns.

[flower-of-the-desert]

I get feeling the show has ruined Izzy,simon and clary.but why has the show ruined Maia,Alec and Luke for you?

Under the cut for negative opinions on the show’s handling of these characters. If you dont wanna read it, scroll past, any anon trolls that might pop up will be deleted.

My issue with Alec has always been for the most part in how he’s written in his relationship with Magnus. I admit a certain amount of bias comes into play here because I love Magnus and any time someone fucks him over (or the narrative fucks him over in favour of someone else) I end up wanting to scratch that character’s eyes out. Alec has done some pretty shitty things to Magnus in canon - the DNA thing, the SS lie, the lashing out at him at the beggining of s02, his behaviour after they broke up, his behaviour in the s03 finale just the other day. Now these things in themselves arent the problem. It’s not like I expect Alec to be perfect, nor do I want him to be. But the lack of consequences and/or developing/changing his attitude and learning to grow and be better is what lead to my dissatisfaction with Alec.

Let’s just go over the big ones real quick:

1) when Jace is with Valentine in s02 Alec tries to emotionally blackmail Magnus into helping him (”Why cant you do this one thing after everything I’ve done for you”) -> yes, he “apologizes” later but the way the narrative framed that scene it made it look like he was only doing it so Magnus would relent and help him anyway

2) the DNA thing - mere days after Magnus is tortured at the hands of the Clave, Alec decides to follow Clave orders and ask for a DNA sample -> again later on goes to “apologize” but again the scene is off because Alec apologizes for the wrong thing and doesnt seem to have learnt anything as a result because then we have:

3) the Soul Sword accident - again Alec follows Clave orders and lies to Magnus, his boyfriend, the “love of his life” about something that can literally kill him and every other DW in NYC -> worst still when confronted with this he acts condenscending and accusing Magnus of overreacting and being silly (not his exact words but that was the implication) -> doesnt apologize for any of this, only keeps saying sorry I didnt tell you which by this point doesnt carry much weight for me. He doesnt seem guilty or like he regrets his decisions in the aftermath, even after Magnus breaks up with him

And then there is the outside of canon issue with the way the writers consistently write Alec within their relationship as really passive and... not that emotionally invested? I’m not sure how to describe it but like just compare his I cant live without him lines when it was about Jace and when it was about Magnus and you’ll see what I mean. And when you compare this with how invested Magnus is, how far he’s proven he’s willing to go for Alec and has actually done it, meanwhile I have no reason to believe Alec would do the same for him and that pisses me off like nothing else.

Maia, oh Maia. This is probably the biggest disappointment I’ve had this season, next to the dropped plot line about Magnus’s HW position. It’s not so much Maia as a character that I dislike as what the writers did to her. First they made her into a Luke cheerleader with no reason or rhyme last season when she had legit points about Luke’s crappy alpha leadership and she was absolutely right to call him out on it... then they apparently decides they’ll give this role to Russell because Maia will be too busy dating Simon.

And then they had the balls to make her a main character only to waste her completely on doing nothing but being Simon’s oh so loving and supportive girlfriend (while at the same time hyping up Simon/Izzy and knowing full fucking well they were gonna go there sooner rather than later) and just when it looked like she might get to do something on her own when Jordan showed up? They.wrote.her.out. Just like that! What bullshit is this, I ask???

And lastly, Luke. My problem with him is probably the most straightforward - I dont like how he keeps putting shadowhunters before his pack. He’s supposed to be the alpha of these werewolves, to take care of them, he’s part of the DW now  for what? 20 years already yet he keeps acting like a shadowhunter who cares only for the well-being of other shadowhunters. Now I get that Simon and Clary are important to him and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing or that he should abandon them or anything. Just that they should be as important to him as the pack is and he shouldnt be so quick and unhesitating to throw the wolves under the bus whenever Simon and/or Clary need help. The last scene of the finale where he literally ordered the wolves to risk their lives in order to save Clary was just... yeah no. I’m glad he’s no longer alpha.