#i see a character with a particular experience → i jewishize them

[radiocmyk]

I think I've actually read this side-comic before and even then I was like. Oh this is one of those stories. The kind that hits me right in the Jewishness

She's assimilated... she has a cultural disconnect just like me....

[reel-fear]

Bendy And The Power Of Representation

So those graphic novel pages huh? Seems I posted my cover post at just the right time because literally minutes after I was informed the preview pages came out and uh. This is Buddy and Norman!

Oh dear... I'll put the full graphic novel pages down below but I have so much to say on how awful this is it'll need several posts. However, right now I want to mostly talk about representation and briefly touch on why it's so damn important + inform others about the current shit Mike and Meatly are saying about the books n such.

Now note: All the things I'm saying below are based on my personal experience, maybe some people don't care about seeing the representation of their identities in the media they consume. Maybe some will think I'm merely being dramatic and I might be but I'm not lying when I say I personally believe being represented and seen in the media you consume can be one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.

Look I'm not here to argue with people who think that Norman in particular was never meant to be a person of color, I would argue he is very coded but the points I'm making here are not about how Norman particularly had to be black. The point I want to make is the lack of diversity in our cast in general and how Norman's design has heavily dwindled it considering most people [including myself] rightfully assumed he was at least one of three black characters in our cast. Not according to this though and looking at the the rest of the pages our chances of seeing any kind of decent diverse character designs dwindle more.

So firstly... Buddy a character who has been said to experience discrimination for being Jewish, lacks any kind of ethnic features at all. That's... Cool but yeah I think this shows a rather grim future for the character designs as a whole.

Also, Norman... As I mentioned he was largely assumed to be black due to his southern dialect, his voice, and other factors. But nope, he's a generic white guy. With... Gross looking hair tbh...

Sadly this is not the first time the topic of poor representation has come up concerning Bendy either.

[note how he disregarded the other mentioned minorities and specifically cites LGBTQ+ characters]

This sucks as a response but sadly considering Mike's recent behavior it seems to fall in line with the Bendy team's general lack of care towards representing anyone who isn't straight and white.

So how did Mike respond to all of this? Well...

TDLR - "Who cares if the Graphic Novel we're selling to our fans for full price sucks, we now no longer consider the books canon."

This is horrible, I know Mike and Meatly are only really in this for the money, the fact BATIM is in the state that it is proved that, but they really couldn't have been less obvious about it?

So basically when it benefited them, AKA when it meant people would have to buy the books to understand important lore like Boris' identity... [the character you spend all of chapter 4 trying to rescue] They were considered canon... At least the author sure thought so.

Hell even in the tweet Meatly made here he doesn't say the books aren't canon, he just says they're not needed to understand Bendy's world. Now Mike is using that as a shield instead of doing the right thing and saying "You're right, the poc in our fanbase deserve better we'll have it fixed right away!" Like most reasonable people would considering how his studio has literally been accused of bigotry, poor rep, and general lack of diversity before. Why risk making more people avoid this franchise?

Also just... Imagine how insulting it would be to be an author who helps flesh out so much of this world and gives its characters depth like NONE of the games have managed to do, filling in plot holes, creating a timeline for events, etc... Then because they couldn't bother to change the graphic novel for ur story to be better they instead throw out all ur writing and declare it non-canon.

If I were her to put it bluntly I'd feel insulted and horrible. Why make her do all the work of making sure her works align with the timeline and game's canon if they're not part of it?

I can't speak for her obviously but Meatly and Mike know of her account, so speaking out against this could very much risk her being fired or at least not allowed to work on Bendy anymore... So I would take all her tweets on this situation with a grain of salt. She very much is not in a position where she could be honest if she was against this.

So with all that history now, the question I'm sure many are wondering is... Why does this even matter? Who cares how diverse the characters are when it doesn't affect the story?

Well for one thing, if you think like that consider having more empathy for your fellow human beings but also it does affect the story. One of DCTL's themes is about the bigotry of the period it is set in.

Now the Bendy team has managed to make the discussion of this book centering around their bigotry which is ironic in a way I almost find funny... Though this entire thing is just a bit too hurtful and upsetting to find any humor in, at least for me...

But another thing is representation can bring people such joy when it's done with care. It really shouldn't be understated how far it can go to make people feel more comfortable in their own sense of self to have a franchise choose to represent them and their experiences. I know this from personal experience.

Now if you've been following me for a while, you know I'm a big fan of Transformers. I no longer engage with it much due to baggage from the fandom's awful treatment of me, but before I left I remember being able to witness the release of Transformers: Earthspark first few episodes.

These introduced the Maltos the family who meets the Transformers and serve as our protagonists and guess what?

It's a family of Filipinos!

Now look I'm not Filipino, but I am half Mexican and I have a lot of love for that part of me. So seeing the representation of any Spanish culture in this franchise I loved made me so happy! I remember just watching the first episode I was happily telling my partner how fun it was to see people like me and my family in a world I love!!

But it didn't end with the Maltos in fact... There was another character who spoke to me, their name was Nightshade. Their pronouns are They/Them and they spoke about it on the show! Not just mentioning it and moving on but actually sitting down to speak about their experiences...

This clip in particular really turned them into an absolute favorite among fans and well... I'll let you see it for yourself.

This scene... Fills me with a joy I cannot describe. It is the creators of a franchise I love telling me they see people like me and find the stories of people like me important enough to include in this series. There really is nothing like being able to say there are Non-Binary characters in a franchise I have so much love for. I was far from the only one too.

This is amazing, this is wonderful, this clip and character were moving to so so many people and...

This is a joy the Bendy creators have no interest in giving their audience. They don't care how you feel as a queer and/or black person, which... Hurts...

I... Discovered I was trans while in the Bendy community... It was where I learned the word Non-Binary and started using it for myself. To me Bendy will always have that connection... But the devs themselves seem to hate the idea of being forced to actually represent that in their games... And I still haven't really gotten over that pain or betrayal if I'm being honest.

So...

With Norman now being portrayed as white here, we are down to two black characters. Thomas [who Meatly has claimed is white in the past] based on a vague conversation with Sammy in DCTL they could easily ignore... And Jacob.... A book exclusive character which according to Mike means he is non-canon.

If we don't count Thomas' vague talk with Sammy about disrespect as confirmation he's black [which the devs don't seem to think so] then we have one black character in all of Bendy... And he recently got retconned into non-existence. Great.

Look... The Bendy fanbase has always been full of wonderfully diverse designs for the staff and even more diverse people creating them. Bendy's fandom was built with the work of queer people from all kinds of places.

If the Bendy team continues to show how little they care for anyone who isn't straight or white... I wonder who they are counting on to buy this book or in general financially support their franchise?

I know right now, I am furious, I am hurt and I most certainly don't feel like buying a book that's currently just a massive fuck you to the fans and I hope I've expressed why I feel this way in an easy-to-understand way here...

Either way, I will not be forgetting this anytime soon and I hope the fanbase does the same. Maybe just maybe, if there's enough backlash to this series of horrible decisions they'll learn better.

Right now, it's kinda of our only hope for a better future, and if you know any poc who are into Bendy right now... Maybe consider making sure they're feeling okay.

I know from experience how much this sort of thing hurts, to have the creators of a world you love straight up tell you they don't intend to fix the fact no one in their stories represents your identity or life...

What I'm trying to say is...

This is a really low point for Bendy and its fans... Even more for the poc who have to witness such ignorant and careless attitudes from Mike and Meatly towards their feelings.

Please don't forget them when you discuss these tweets or this situation. That's exactly what Mike and Meatly want right now.

For them to be unrepresented and therefore... Unheard.

[gynandromorph]

It's okay not to answer, I know it's broad territory, but I really respect you as an artist and writer. How do you handle people misinterpreting or missing elements of your work, especially when they may still enjoy it and get something out of it? As an artist I'm struggling lately with knowing my work will always inherently be read differently from what I intended as a matter of the human experience, as well as me being autistic complicating my ability to communicate.

An addition to that last ask. I don't know if it's clear what I'm asking so I'll give some examples. A 50 year old man and a 21 year old woman will get different things from a movie due to their lived experiences. As a gentile reader I might miss jewish narrative themes in a piece of work. That doesn't mean it's bad for us to have experienced it, but as an author I find it frustrating when something is missed or misinterpreted, and I don't know how not to be a control freak about it.

i feel you, i have ocpd and being misinterpreted when i agonized and stressed about how to present my wording makes me want to light myself on fire and it's something i'm working on. writers are supposed to expect and account for different perspectives ahead of time, so it always sort of shocks me when i hear interpretations i wouldn't have thought about at all. i know logically i can't predict all outcomes, but it's still surprising anyway!!! but i generally feel a lot of distress about being misinterpreted because i'm afraid it'll label me as A Bad Person, so i think that's where the experience diverges. maybe investigating why you need to or want to control the way your work is interpreted would help as a starting point? i think having a larger audience helps, too... it means more people will misinterpret your work, but it also means you're more likely to have at least One Guy who interprets it just right and makes fireworks go off in your brain, but there's no way to control how big your audience is!

anyway, the ways to control how your work is interpreted, to the degree that you can:

you can make it simpler. the more parts a story has added to its complexity, the more it's going to be misinterpreted.

you can make the intended message more blatant. you can have a character say exactly what you want the audience to think or hear, or something very close to it. don't want a detail missed? make it bigger.

you can reprioritize parts of the story. basically think of a group of interpretations you want the audience to have if you can, and then put them in order of importance. then the story has a hierarchy to lean on wrt artistic decisions.

you can give the story multiple meanings. more targets to hit. if they're mutually exclusive, i find this works better... i like making my stories ambiguous with conflicting interpretations a lot. yeah, people are going to interpret the story wrong, because it was made in a way that will guarantee it is interpreted wrong in some way.

you can layer the meaning so that less literate audience members will at least get SOME of what you intended. basically, close to the previous strategy, but like a hybrid of that and "make it simpler" imo because you're constructing multiple interpretations that are all supposed to lead to one conclusion (like a persuasive essay or something), but can act as an adequate conclusion on their own.

all of these options have obvious qualitative losses. if you have anything in particular that is repeatedly misinterpreted or missed, it's a good idea to think about Why you're making those choices. consciously committing to a higher-risk artistic choice will help you feel more in control of what happens to it once it's done. the way your art is interpreted isn't totally out of your control, you are making decisions that add to or mitigate the risk of misinterpretations, and you can bring those choices to a more conscious awareness to see them and appreciate them. sometimes it'll feel like a begrudging compromise, but it'll still be Your choice ultimately.

on an emotional level... hopefully this makes sense. there's always going to be the piss-on-the-poor scenario and sometimes i just remind myself that some people are not as literate as me, but it's great we were still able to connect through a work that was probably difficult for them!!! it was a privilege to get to grow up with a good education, access to art and technology, strangers who want to look at what i made, and there are times where i take this for granted, and my expectations of readers are actually kind of unreasonable!!! some people are younger than me and say stupid things like i did, but they aren't able to understand things like me yet, and it's important for them to learn by figuring it out on their own!!! i was and will always be That Guy to other artists and other writers, and i want to give other people the same grace as i get. some people have wildly different life experiences compared to mine, and these experiences can be much more nuanced than i could ever imagine, but it's a little gift that they made my world larger by sharing theirs through my art!!! it's terrifying and embarrassing knowing that i don't know much of anything, even about something i have total control over, but the consequences of that aren't always negative. and possibly the saddest but most common way i deal with this is nothing more than accepting that no one is ever going to understand me on the level that i want to be understood. sometimes my frustration has come from a place of miserable alienation, where the need to feel Seen can be quite desperate. i've made art explicitly about Me, and i've made art deliberately hostile towards its audience, art that's said they don't get it and they never will, but they still bothered to try. i made a game that said no one will win here and they still played it with me, and i can appreciate that. in many cases, they actually know more about me than i know about them. but more importantly, it isn't my audience's job to take care of that emotional need -- in fact, as much as art is made out to be a mode of pure self-expression, i don't think they can. it's a reality that i don't like, but i accept it. art made to benefit others is a one-way mirror: you make them feel seen, but they should never see you, because if they see you, the mirror isn't working.

[lemonlyman-dotcom]

Hi 🍋

I know you're busy with your rewatch but I was wondering cause I miss your rec lists: do you have a rec list for fics that heavily feature the 126's different religions? Them celebrating different holidays or discussing stuff or such?

Would love to see such a list, I feel like the fandom should have a general list where these fics are featured 💙

Hi anon!! Thank you so much for this lovely ask! Perfect timing, actually, because the fic I’m writing now, which I’ve affectionately been calling Eid Fic, centers around Marjan’s relationship with her faith and her family. It will heavily feature Marjan & TK discussing their own faiths, and sharing memories of holidays, fasting and family. And also how they grow together over the years and form their own found family.

I’m sorry my rec lists have fallen to the side lately! You are not the only person who’s asked me about them, and I promise they’re coming back! I’ve just been feeling a little overwhelmed lately (can you just be whelmed?). But I love any excuse to rec some of the amazing fics in this fandom. And this theme in particular is really exciting to me because we don’t have nearly enough of it! I have scoured by memory and my bookmarks for you, and here’s what I’ve found. Unsurprisingly, it mostly focuses on Carlos and TK’s faiths.

Disclaimer: this is by no means a comprehensive list, it is just what I remembered and what I found. If you know of other fics that feature religion, especially other characters, please reply/reblog with the links!

Carlos - Catholicism

The Line I'd Walk (For You) by TearsThisSideofHeaven Carlos lights a candle and says a prayer to St. Florian, the patron saint of firefighters when TK returns to work after being shot. TK asks him where he goes, so Carlos brings him to church one morning.

What is Sown, What is Grown by @never-blooms Carlos character study, beautiful glimpse into Carlos’s experience growing up Tejano and how his family shaped him.

I Swear I Love You (Te Juro Que Te Amo) by @never-blooms Nochebuena fic!! Beth gives us a really beautiful look at Nochebuena, which is the Christmas Eve holiday in Latinx cultures! This fic is full of everything you would expect from a good Nochebuena party: family, nosy siblings and aunties, chisme, delicious food and so much music.

to build a home by @freneticfloetry Carlos Begins, this fic follows Carlos from childhood through present day. Courtney gives us a lot of beautiful insight into Carlos’s background and culture, and there is some exploration of religious aspects especially in the last chapter.

And if you will allow a couple from me 🤭

I'm Not A Fortress, But I Will Try To Protect You TK & Marjan get together for pie after Marj breaks up with Salim and before TK goes back to Carlos. Marjan voices her fear of disappointing her parents with the news of the breakup, and TK offers to be there for her when she makes the phone call. Marjan also gives TK some perspective on what it was probably like for Carlos growing up in a conservative religious home.

The Greatest Gift I’ve Found, The Sweetest Thing I’ve Known My Nochebuena fic!! It’s got some holiday traditions and a lot of family love.

TK - Judaism

knock-knock-knockin' on heaven's door by rakketyrivertam Five prayers TK sang for other people, and one he sang for himself

a case of cruel to be kind by @maxbegone This is a really lovely AU based on the movie About Time. The plot is that TK discovers he can travel back in time to events in his past, and that he inherited the gift from Gwyn. But at the heart of the story is a really beautiful examination of Gwyn and TK’s relationship. This includes a look at some traditional Jewish funeral and grieving practices, through the eyes of TK after Gwyn’s passing.

The last day of Hanukkah by @ladytessa74 A very sweet little Hanukkah fic set in Tessa’s Elijah verse, in the future where Tarlos has a four-year-old named Elijah. This story gives us a glimpse of Hanukkah in the Strand-Reyes house, the little traditions and the food.

Looking at it now, it all seems so simple by @liminalmemories21 Enzo and Jonah come to town, set between seasons 3 & 4 (though S4 kinda makes it an AU now 😖). Explores TK’s relationship with his faith through Carlos’s eyes, they celebrate Hanukkah and have a Shabbos dinner, and there are a few conversations about what parts of their own cultures and religions they want to bring into the family they’re forming, and how they want to raise any future kids.

Rosa Mundi by fiddlersgreen TK, Carlos and Owen go to New York for Gwyneth's funeral. I must admit it’s been a minute since I read this, but this author gives a really lovely perspective of what Gwyn’s funeral might have been like with the Jewish traditions and customs.

[theoreticallysensible]

I cannot help but compare Aaron Bushnell’s poignant protest of the genocide in Gaza to the ideas presented in the book Catch-22, especially given the mainstream media’s craven instinct to frame his self immolation as insane, rather than a sane protest against an insane society, and especially given his role as a US airman, the same as the characters in the novel - a role he chose to highlight in his protest.

(This is not to say that we should all self immolate - sane reason can demand many different things of us depending on our position, skills, and character. Such self destructive tactics are never categorically necessary, and in a major sense Bushnell’s death is inescapably tragic and horrifying, but the conviction and symbolic power of his soberly deliberate death can be respected, even revered, nevertheless.)

Catch-22 contains several references to sanity and “craziness”. Its central concept, which entered into popular consciousness, is the eponymous Catch-22 described in the following passage.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

Catch-22 is a study of how one can become overwhelmed by one’s own sanity when faced with a world and other people who have all seemingly gone mad. This is the experience of seeing so many of our authority figures, in particular the supposed reporters of truth in the media, deny the fact that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, a genocide that is - and has always clearly been - a direct and necessary consequence of the process of Zionism as conceived as the establishment of a Jewish state through colonisation.

Throughout the novel, the main character, Yossarian, is appalled and disoriented by the fact that his valuing of his own life and freedom is considered insane by his comrades, but when he tries to claim that since he is insane he is unfit for combat, he is told (rightly) that this is fear of dying is actually sane, and so he is perfectly fit for combat.

Life in the military is one where you are expected to be willing to lay down your life for a cause, usually “the good of your country”. This is never, in the mainstream, considered to be insane, but rather noble - except, as Shaun pointed out in the video he released today on the Palestinian crisis, in retrospect, such as when Wilfred Owen’s poems lamenting the brutality and pointlessness of WW1 are taught and venerated in schools.

But what about when someone decides to lay down their life for a cause not endorsed by US hegemony? Is that, like that of the military hero, considered “sweet and fitting”? No. As we have seen, the voice of hegemonic values, the mainstream media, cannot conceive of a logic outside of its own framework. Anything that is outside of it, especially that opposes it, is “insane”, “disturbed”, probably dangerous.

Throughout most of Catch-22, Yossarian’s rebellions against the military machine threatening his life are ineffective. He never changes his circumstances or anyone else’s. Aaron Bushnell, unlike Yossarian, did not spend most of his time fearing for how his military career could endanger his own life; instead, he was outraged that his career made him complicit in the killing of others. His abnegation of that, his total rejection of it to the point of ending his life, was supremely selfless. As we now know, it was a result of serious deliberation borne out of a selfless commitment to emancipatory politics also reflected in his engagement with mutual aid and other anarchist actions in his local community.

It is notable that at the end of Catch-22, when Yossarian finally decides to desert and at last we have a glimpse of hope as he is able to convince others of the rationality and nobility of his rejection of the military, it is because he is now acting for the benefit of others. He turns his reasoned analysis outwards. He refuses to be complicit, in this case with the US military forcing Italian citizens out of their homes.

It is only through selflessness and solidarity that we can turn our private analyses of personal injustices into social analyses that people can rally behind and collectively act on.

The last scene of the novel contains this exchange between Yossarian and another character:

'I can't do a thing to stop them but embarrass them by running away. I've got responsibilities of my own now, Danby. I've got to get to Sweden.'

'You'll never make it. It's impossible. It's almost a geographical impossibility to get there from here.'

'Hell, Danby, I know that. But at least I'll be trying. There's a young kid in Rome whose life I'd like to save if I can find her. I'll take her to Sweden with me if I can find her, so it isn't all selfish, is it?'

'It's absolutely insane. Your conscience will never let you rest.'

'God bless it.' Yossarian laughed. 'I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.’

Yossarian is still called insane, but Danby supports him both morally and financially, finally recognising the sanity of his insanity. But rather than linger on this book too much I’ll end on the words of the present, of the final statement made by Aaron Bushnell:

"My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."

He died shouting “Free Palestine!” until his body was no longer capable.

[olderthannetfic]

I definitely think there are people who use those "diverse reading challenges" to show off, but I also think you can have a truly genuine desire to diversify your reading habits, and challenges can be a good way to incentive yourself to do that and keep track of it. And I'm not sure there's a go-to standard for who is "tryhard" beyond if they act cringey and show-offy about it on social media. I was going to say something like "do they genuinely seem like they're trying to branch out, or just reading the same things as they usually do but with a black lead" - but honestly, I want the people who are "just reading YA" or "just reading romance" or whatever to read more diversely, too. Like for romance readers specifically: Read more romance with COC or written by POC, read more M/M and/or F/F if you primarily read het, read more stuff written by people from outside of North America and Western Europe, etc. And if you primarily read serious "classic" literature, try reading one from Africa beyond the lit-class staples like Things Fall Apart rather than another white British author, just to give an example. I think everyone should do more of that. I think those can all come from a genuine desire to try new things, not just show off to your followers about how open-minded you are.

Actually, I think the big way to tell if someone's being "tryhard" is, yes, their reaction on social media, but particularly how they talk about the book when they're done. The one big Tell I see on Goodreads about people who want to be seen as "reading diversely" but don't really appreciate diversity is when they read a book about, say, Muslim characters and then leave a 2-star reviewing whining that they didn't like that the book expected them to know 101-level things about Islam like what Ramadan or the hajj is. (Or alternately, are mad that it DID explain that stuff "too much," oblivious to the fact that in Christian-majority cultures, that's a publisher expectation that you do that with any other religion, because of ignorant readers who will whine if you don't spend a paragraph teaching them what Ramadan is because apparently these supposed "diverse readers" can't be assed to learn literally anything about the best-known Muslim holiday.) I saw someone complain on Tumblr about Goodreads reviewers getting mad at all the "Jewish stuff they were expected to know" to read Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, and this person was like "I'm a goy and I understood all of it because it's stuff you would know just from having seen Fiddler on the Roof. If all the Judaism you need to know for a book is stuff that you can get from watching Fiddler on the Roof, then maybe the issue is not the book, it's you for not having such basic information about a major world religion and then reading a book about it."

Or as another example, when people complain about how the particular set of lingo this person who is oppressed in a way you are not used to describe their oppression is not the exact thing that Twitter discourse has told you is "correct" to use or that it is offensive. When they get mad that a book where a black person is talking about their life experience with police brutality has "too many descriptions of violence" and "I'm rating this lower because it might be triggering." (In general, when people seem to conflate "this triggered me" with the kind of "productive discomfort" that relatively privileged people NEED to confront in fiction about marginalizations they don't experience in order to grow as humans. But also it's just like... there are some topics where it would be doing readers a disservice not to describe them graphically. Not everything can be communicated in a way that would earn a G rating on AO3. That might mean the book is inaccessible to you, but that's on you to deal with, not on the author to censor themselves.) Or when they, as in the American Fiction example, expect it to fit some stereotypical ideas of "authenticity" and are mad that this POC or LGBTQ+ or disabled person's lives are more like their own rather than feeling like a museum exhibit about an exotic Other culture.

To me, "tryhard" is when you don't actually value diversity FOR diversity. If you're going to read diverse media, you can't get mad when it actually is diverse. If you want to read about stuff about/from other cultures and identities, then a) you need to be okay with being challenged, b) you need to not expect the author to hold your privileged hand all the time. You can look up unfamiliar words like "hajj" or "Purim." It's 2024. You have a tiny computer in your hand that is several times more powerful than the big computers that put astronauts on the moon. You can use it to go to Wikipedia when you see a word you don't understand, it's not that hard! Expecting authors from other cultures and identities to patiently explain every aspect of that to you like an elementary school teacher is the ultimate sign of entitlement and privilege, especially if you're reading, say, a book by a Congolese author about the Congo, not one that they wrote specifically for Western audiences!

When people make a big show of reading "diversely" but then seem to be upset that those books are actually, you know, DIVERSE, that's a big flashing sign that it's performative tryhard nonsense to me.

--

It's pretty sad when we'll go google some xianxia thing to watch The Untamed, but we can't manage to look at a ten thousand times more commonplace wikipedia article on a major world religion.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Not completely sure how to word this and sorry about it being so long, but do you think a good way of making it make sense that Billy & Tommy are not white but were born to and raised in white families with no concerns about adoption or affairs or anything that both of their families assumed that what’d happened was something like what’d happened with Liam in Shameless US? If you’ve never watched that show, basically Liam was born to Frank and Monica, two white parents, while looking fully black and being played by a fully black actor, and basically they explained how this was possible in-universe by saying that Frank had one black grandfather, and somehow because of that, Liam turned out to look fully black, so basically my idea is that Billy’s & Tommy’s parents each had like one Desi or Romani close ancestor, and they just assumed that they turned out to be brown because of them.

I want to clear up a couple things here-- first of all, Romani people are not desi. The diaspora originated in what is now India and Pakistan, but we are not interchangeable with modern-day Indian or Pakistani natives. Second, that Shameless storyline is weird as hell to me, on several levels, and I would advise you to never compare it to real-- or fictional, for that matter-- mixed-race people or families. I come from a mixed background, and I will admit, genetics are crazy, and you'd be surprised the way features can skip a generation. But casually and retroactively making an entire family of white characters, played by white actors, part Black for laughs is not what I'd call authentic representation.

I actually answered a very similar question a while back, and you can read that here. I recognize that acknowledging Billy and Tommy's heritage and/or depicting them as people of color creates a weird discrepancy, and there's no perfect solution to that. I think if Wanda had been drawn or more commonly recognized as a woman of color back when Young Avengers was written, we probably wouldn't have this problem-- most writers, I hope, would not choose to magically turn characters of color, even babies, into white people.

I do actually think that giving the Kaplan and Shepherd families mixed Romani and Jewish heritage is the easiest solution, but not if you're going to frame it the way Shameless did. I also think it's actually important that Billy and Tommy were not fully aware of this heritage growing up, or that they each arrive at different parts of their identities differently, because that is a real experience within diaspora. Having that experience represented within this family adds to the diversity of the story.

As far as character design goes-- if you assume that their parents are white-presenting, it might be more realistic for the twins to be somewhat lighter or more ambiguous in appearance than Wanda, just to diminish the obvious questions. But these are also magical cartoon characters, and Wanda's canon design is not that dark in the first place. It should be pretty easy to suspend disbelief, especially when we don't see the Kaplans more than once a decade. I've been using edits and recolors to make my point about representation for years, but at the end of the day, I think the look is a lot less important than understanding Roma identity and the historical context these characters exist in.

Additionally, I think that Billy and Tommy's unique situation makes the most sense if you view it as a metaphor for transracial adoption. It doesn't answer the practical questions about their birth or looks, but it is a real experience that maps very closely onto these characters and their identities. For Romani people, in particular, this is a very sensitive part of our history that ties into where the Maximoffs come from and what they've been through. Exploring that experience, even through allegory, adds a lot of depth to the representation these characters provide.

[arromantica-lucha]

i got a lot of thoughts about loveless by alice oseman and if this post seems very one sided well thats just how it read to me. my opinion isnt the end-all and i value how everyone interpreted and was affected by this book. this isnt a closed topic lets talk about it

gripes with loveless by alice oseman

took a while to actually explain that ace and aro are two separate identities and still not that well. it makes aro seem like a subset of ace which is entirely false. its cool there was an aroallo character involved but still

the book title 'loveless' is a real term and identity and the entirety of the book kinda shits on it by enforcing the ideal that its still okay to be aspec cause platonic love can be experienced and any type of love is required or at least better than "not feeling anything and being alone forever"

it was weird for her friends to forgive her over gestures that had nothing to do with apologizing before georgia actually apologized and explained but that may just be more of a personal thing that i didnt like. likewise the story being about platonic love it kinda sucks her deepest connection is with her roommate and not the people shes known for years and wronged

kinda sex negative. i mean rooney says she doesnt dislike casual sex but then that whole thing becomes the reason she hates herself and a reason to cope with being "unloveable" and its kinda lame. you can tell that story without making it seem like casual sex is just a means of devaluing yourself. and you can be sex repulsed and still not do that. it just feels unfair to aroallo people especially who are told they are monsters for enjoying and only wanting casual sex when this book is supposed to be about aromanticism too

(can we also be done with harry potter references??? lets stop hurting trans and jewish people thanks)

basically particular identities' stories shouldnt come at the expense of others and other ways of life. its great and important to write different experiences because no one is gonna relate to them all but no one has to replace romantic love with ANY type of love to feel good about themselves and be human. loveless and aplatonic people shouldnt have to read something that uses rhetoric against their identities within a book about aspec people

things i like about loveless

i didnt relate to it personally but the experiences felt very genuine. internalized aphobia, being hounded by aphobic comments, finding it hard to portray love even in a fictional or artistic sense, etc.

I appreciate the references to race and intersectionality that come with being queer even if they were minimal. so few times is it actually acknowledged that there is privilege when it comes to being understood, coming out, being accepted, etc. the references to that were nice to see because too often intersectionality being brought up is brushed off and blatantly ignored or people pretend like they understand

it was written by someone who is aroace even if there are some things that can be less isolating within the aspec community with the language being used. someone being open about their identities and how they choose to define them in the mainstream world is how we get more peoples voices in there

it has helped people discover their own identity though id still recommend further research on the actual identities being named and ones not named. these stories are the first introduction of aspec identities in mainstream and that hopefully means itll start to expand to other identities within that community that have not yet had representation

this should be the start of developing more rep. the first takes are not gonna represent everyone and its a good thing it exists to tell a few peoples story. but that doesnt mean it should be free from any criticism because thats how we make them continuously better. i hope to see an aroallo character soon. i want the term loveless to be properly used in media and expressed for what it is. i want to stop pretending like ace is the umbrella term for all aspec identities. i want amatonormativity explained as the sociological term it is that harms all life not just aromantic and polyamorous people. i want a polyam aspec character and polyam characters in general. i want disabled and ethnic aspec characters where the intersectionality is just as important to the narrative. i want a whole lot more and to stop prentending like any of that should be unreasonable

[national-hockey-gay]

do you have any poetry collection recommendations/poet recommendations in general just to like Read?

boy do i ever!!!

okay i have two all time top favorite poets (not ranked in a particular order):

1. Louise Glück: There was actually an anthology published of all the books so published from the start of her career to 2012.

(Poems 1962-2012 is 600+ pages of incredible poetry and relatively cheap, especially for its size and considering poetry tends to cost more than fiction books)

Glück’s poetry is actually the reason I started reading more poetry in the first place. She writes both long form and short form poetry (with her more recent working being longer than a lot of her previous poems), and her language level tends to be pretty accessible.

She writes about hundreds of different topics, but reading from the anthology you get a large mix of themes about motherhood, love, and nature and she also has collections that focus on greek mythology as well as jewish religion.

She has won a Nobel Prize for her poetry, which I consider to be a pretty good way to gauge the caliber of her work!

Highly, highly recommend her work!!

2. Ocean Vuong.

I’ve read his three most recent works: Night Sky With Exit Wounds, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Time is a Mother.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is actually a novel rather than a poetry collection but it reads a lot like poetry and I consider it to be an must-read.

A lot of his works center around his his experience as a queer, Vietnamese American and his relationship with his own intrapersonal identity as well as with his mother. I cant think of a single poem of his that isn’t absolutely incredible, and I think if you’re going to talk about the best poets of our age he’s a crucial mention.

I highly recommend reading his works in publishing order (which is the way I listed them above). His poetry is genuinely life-changing and I cannot stress how much I recommend his writing.

Outside of my two favorite authors I also recommend:

–Amanda Gorman, who is the youngest inaugural poet in U. S. history and is shaping the voice of modern poetry.

You can watch her recite her inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb” here!

She also has published a collection of her poetry, Call Us What We Carry, which I read all in the same day I bought it because it’s brilliant and captivating.

—The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, which is a fiction novel but the main character narrates the story through her own poetry, making it a poetry collection and a novel all in one. I read this for the first time when I was 13 and I pick it up again every single year.

(I do also highly recommend looking up trigger warnings for this book before you read it, because there are a couple scenes that can be intense!)

—The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi. It’s likely you’re familiar with this quote from it (which i see circulating tumblr and pinterest all the time):

“Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe. Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in.

I want an excuse to change my life.”

And I can guarantee the rest of this poetry collection is just as poignant and beautiful! Highly recommend, 10/10 stars always.

—Pablo Neruda is also one of my favorite poets! I own a large collection of his poetry, The Poems of Pablo Neruda, which places the original poem, written in Spanish, next to the English translation, which I enjoy a lot. He also has a lot of well-known quotes that float around tumblr a lot, so that sense of familiarity can be fun, especially when you’re not expecting it!

Hope you enjoy these recommendations!

[fantastic-nonsense]

If you’re comfortable sharing, I’d love to hear more about your thoughts/ideas about religion/the afterlife, and how that’s influencing your Batman religion fic!

the tl;dr is that I'm a cradle Episcopalian whose mother is an Episcopal priest and that's deeply influenced my view on both the afterlife and religion in general. Personally? My view on the afterlife is...probably closest to the "heaven and hell aren't any kind of physical place or specific experience, it's eternal communion/separation from God's grace and your loved ones" interpretation.

Generally, I think that organized religion should be a way for people to come together under a general agreement of doctrine and behavior, discuss/argue about any deep difficult questions they have about the universe together, and experience the divine as a collective. I'm happy with the Episcopal Church and I've never felt a reason to deeply question my commitment to their particular understanding of the Christian tradition; I like the beliefs, rituals, and practice I grew up with and even though I've explored other denominations and other religions altogether, I've always landed right back where I started. They're a progressive denomination that, as a collective body, is genuinely committed to living out what I see as God's mission for humanity: caring for the world as it has been given to us and loving and helping our neighbors as ourselves. So I stay here.

As far as those beliefs affect the 'Bruce Wayne Religion Discourse Fic' (as I've lovingly termed it):

DC has decided on multiple occasions that Bruce is an atheist, to which I say: that's dumb DC, you have multiple pantheons running around and one of his best friends was literally the Goddess of Truth for a bit. The Abrahamic god canonically exists in-universe and the Spectre is his wrath embodied. The afterlife is a place people can physically go to and come back from (otherwise resurrection couldn't happen). This is the hill I die on when it comes to comics and it's that absolutely no character who lives in that universe should be an atheist (I've talked a little bit about this before here in regards to Tim Drake). They can be a non-worshipper, and frankly that's a completely understandable place to be in the DCU, but being a non-believer makes them look unbelievably dumb and illogical.

Anyway: Bruce is canonically Jewish due to the Accidental Jewish Retcon, which happened when DC created Kate Kane, an explicitly Jewish character, in 2005 and then made her Bruce's maternal cousin. This makes Martha Wayne (and thus Bruce) ethnically Jewish. However, it is ALSO canonically true that Thomas and Martha were buried as Christians, and the Waynes have been heavily coded as Episcopalian for decades. And yet he's supposedly atheist despite growing up in two religious institutions that have long-standing and exceptionally forgiving traditions around questioning/challenging divine authority, exploring doubt, and doing deep dives into theological doctrine.

So we're in an interesting place where Bruce canonically grew up in an interfaith household until his parents were murdered and also explicitly explored the tenets of multiple religions and spiritual practices during his training years abroad. And yet no writer wants to touch it! We get oblique references to his Jewish heritage occasionally, but other than that we largely do not see religion happen in Batman stories unless the central character is Helena Bertinelli/Huntress (a devout Catholic) or Jean-Paul Valley/Azrael (a cult survivor who basically acts devoutly Catholic). So I went 'well okay, I'll do it.' So the fic is focused on Bruce’s childhood growing up in an interfaith household and his incredibly complicated relationship with organized religion as he grows up, becomes Batman, and starts acquiring kids.

While I have not written anything except a tentative outline for it, I think my own beliefs are probably affecting how I approach the fic even conceptually, as I'm both Episcoplian (influencing how I'll approach that part of Bruce's exploration) and more than happy to explore my personal headcanon that Bruce ends up with a frankenstein set of beliefs that mix-and-match Episcopalian Christianity, Reform Judaism, Buddhism, and a few other things. It would be difficult not to, given all that he's seen, done, and experienced. Bruce is a very skeptical person who deeply believes 'seeing is believing', and I'll be trying my best to balance Bruce's canonical approach to such matters with how the DCU has portrayed religion and how the varying religions deal with massive soul-searching questions IRL.

......also I simply think that if Ollie Queen ever tells him that he met Jason in heaven/the afterlife while he was dead, Bruce would go home and cry for an hour, and I kind of want to write that scene.

[grandhotelabyss]

Knowing that it's one of your favourite films, have you ever written or have any wish to write anything about Ken Russell's Altered States? I watched it last night and was appropriately dazzled by his images and high conceits, but I can't help feeling that, like Dostoevsky, the final embrace of love as a panacea feels forced and inadequate in comparison to the earlier spiritual darkness of the self that begets the high visions.

I haven't written extensively about it, but I did discuss the film, and particularly this aspect of it, with the poet Emmalea Russo at the end of our conversation from last summer.

Obviously Russell's spectacular aesthetic accommodates a tragic conclusion, as when he's working with the more "severe" literary source material provided by Lawrence and Huxley for Women in Love and The Devils, respectively. Chayefsky's script for Altered States could be described ungenerously as promoting the quotidian, even the bourgeois, against the pursuit of metaphysical extremity these earlier films indulge. We could even historicize this development, if we really wanted to be wet blankets, by seeing the 1980 film as a document of the transition between the residua of the radical '60s and the vanguard of the conservative '80s.

(Here I would distinguish Chayefsky from Dostoevsky, whose vision of Christian "active love" seems more extreme than what Chayefsky portrays: for example, if you contrast Sonya's extremes of self-sacrifice in Crime and Punishment, the novel's ethical model, with the more mundane portrait of an apparently resilient marriage in Altered States—and not even a resilient marriage as the spiritual communion of gnostic self-sufficient souls, as with Lawrence's Rupert and Ursula—or perhaps Rupert and Gerald—in the aforementioned Women in Love, but rather an apotheosis of loyalty and affection over this kind of soul-vision.)

And yet for all that I am willing to take Altered States on its own terms: there is nothing really there for us in that inner space or journey back down the brain stem the film's visionary sequences depict. It's not truer than anything else we experience for all that it may be more spectacular, hence the idea Pauline Kael alludes to that there is some conflict in the film between Russell's Catholic baroque and Chayefsky's Jewish iconoclasm. In any case, the film's thesis is that primordial holds no priority, that evil is not more interesting for being only the absence of love. I think the film is a coherent elaboration of this idea, but it's certainly true that Russell's visionary and occult imagery overwhelms the philosophy and is mostly what we remember—unless we join Emmalea Russo in our conversation linked above and romanticize the party sequence where Edward and Emily meet in the first place and allow the (erotic) charisma of the actors to challenge the memorable perversities displayed elsewhere in the film.

As for the overall question of whether or not a happy ending cheats an otherwise dark narrative or dramatic vision of its integrity, I tend to think not. Hegel gives us a test we can apply in his Aesthetics (I quote the Osmaston translation from Hegel on Tragedy):

Much as poets present to us the bare downfall of particular people they are also able to treat the similar contingency of the development of events in such a way, that, though the circumstances in all other respects would appear to give them little enough support, a happy issue of such conditions, and characters is secured, in which they elicit our interest. No doubt the favour of such a destiny of events has at least an equal claim upon us as the disfavour. And so far as the question merely concerns the nature of this difference, I must admit that I prefer a happy conclusion. How could it be otherwise? I can myself discover no better ground for the preference of misfortune, simply on its own account as such, to a happy resolution than that of a certain condition of fine sensibility, which is devoted to pain and suffering, and experiences more interest in their presence than in painless situations such as it meets with every day. If therefore the interests are of such a nature, that it is not really worth the trouble to sacrifice the men or women concerned on their altar, it being possible for them, either to surrender their objects, without making such surrender as is equivalent to a surrender of their individuality, or to mutually come to an agreement in respect thereof, there is no reason why the conclusion should be tragic. The tragic aspect of the conflicts and their resolution ought in principle merely to be enforced in the cases where it is actually necessary in order to satisfy the claim of a superior point of view.

In other words, a tragic resolution is only required if the narrative logic demands the sacrifice of the characters to a worthwhile principle higher than themselves. (Hegel's model is the ideological conflict between legitimate transcendent principles—the family vs. the social order—in Antigone.) Lawrence's extraordinarily ideal vision of marriage, to which neither Gerald nor Gudrun can measure up, might also qualify in Women in Love, and likewise Grandier's fidelity to a kind of robust human wholeness threatened with extinction both by the hysterical nuns and the pious witchfinders in The Devils. But if a character is immolated for a worthless principle, then we are, Hegel suggests, in the presence of a merely morbid authorial sensibility. On this account, Dostoevsky's Christian ideal and Chayefsky's humanist one deserve their triumph over the evils that confront them, however (merely) spectacular. Whether in aesthetics there is any such thing as a "mere" spectacle is another question, of course, and we continue to dream of a work of art that is whole and unriven, its theme and its form one and indivisible—at least as a picture of human happiness.

(You might please keep all of this mind as you read the forthcoming epilogue of my novel Major Arcana...)

[utilitycaster]

Unpopular Opinion: I hate Wintercrest and Oltgar as Santa because it feels like it's just shoving xtianity into Exandria, but more than that, I hate xmas fics that don't even try to dress it up as Wintercrest instead. None of these characters are xtian (except maybe Caduceus).

Where's my poorly desguised Ramadan? Why is there no NPC that's just Hillel renamed? Will I never be free from this? (I know the answer is no)

NGL I say this as a Jewish person, disagree and also it's baffling to me that I've repeatedly seen people think Caduceus is the closest to Christianity when like, he's explicitly designed to draw far more from like, Shintoism. I also personally happen to find the Clay/Stone/Dust attitude towards death to be much more compatible with my ideas of death and afterlife than the Raven Queen paradigm. Like literally if someone could articulate what is inherently Christian about Caduceus I'd love to see it because like. Vax or Pike's worship and experiences especially both read as infinitely more Christian to me than any character from later campaigns.

Also I just. don't read a lot of fic and when I do it's usually set on Wildemount so it doesn't have Wintercrest, but also idk man (gn), we live in a predominantly Christian society, and to be clear this is a discussion I've had with my Jewish friends and with my family all the time but like, people fucking love a Christmas special. It's not going to change because Christmas is popular to them, so like, I'll skip it, but I'm really not going to spend any energy on having emotions on it. I don't really care that the CVS is playing Christmas music as long as it's not Do You Hear What I Hear, the worst fucking song on the planet. Kind of lost my train of thought here but my point is like Wintercrest exists because it was the cast's Christmas game session before they were the cast even, but just a group of voice actors who played D&D together in Travis and Laura's house, and I just don't have the time to be mad about it.

ALSO I do NOT want D&D Hillel personally like, not reopening my thoughts on goblins again but so many attempts by Christians to put Jewish rep in D&D worlds and Exandria in particular often kind of suck, and actual play set in other worlds is just not where I'm looking for rep. At best it's flat; at worst it's giving me when they tried to put Jewish representation in the season of Arrow where I gave up on watching and I was like "you could pay any ten year old Hebrew school student in like, candy or Pokemon cards or whatever ten year olds like now and they'd give you a better pronunciation of those words than you're doing."

Anyway this is all to say *Lenny Bruce Voice* FCG's attitude towards the Changebringer is Jewish, Imogen's attitude towards the gods is Goyish.

[frances-kafka]

A big thing I run into with discourse around “The End of Eternity” is that modern readers miss a big point of the narrative and just are not going to stick out enough of the story to see how Asimov resolves it. We’re in the era of “any portrayal of a structure equals condoning it.” People don’t grasp that a particular structure is Objectively Bad unless that is pointed out early on. There is a real anxiety about not knowing who you are supposed to root for.

I feel like this ambiguity was a bigger preference for readers of lots of 90s work; you can’t really portray moral grayness now. I do not feel TEOE is a “gray” work - the author’s moral stance eventually becomes clear regarding the primary bureaucratic structure of the setting. However - the main character doesn’t really begin to question that structure until halfway through the book or later. And if you don’t stick out Andrew Harlan’s development (this is actually a very richly worldbuilt setting for its length and you will experience quite a bit of immersion into the Eternals before Harlan begins to question what he’s been taught all of his life) then it’s easy to make assumptions about the work.

I think this is hard for people who grew up with YA and haven’t engaged harder work, especially in sci fi, to engage with.

also the book has a lot to say about gender segregation in society and toxic masculinity but you have to stick the book out for that. Asimov didn’t just give you that on the first page. And if you’re the type of reader who has been primed to not empathize with *men’s* experience of that thing or with complicated, kinda fucked up male characters then you may not find Harlan relatable.

TEOE is easily one of Asimov’s most adaptable works, and Hollywood has been leaving money on the table for a long time, and Ridley Scott was going to adapt it but it got stuck in development hell at one point. At this point it probably won’t be made, as that was (well?) over a decade ago. An adaptation would probably leave out the parts that are the most problematic to modern viewers/readers. It would probably remove all the weird gender politics from the Eternals and make some of the Eternals women. (Understandably so; some of the assumptions about why women most often can’t be Eternals, are based in a cultural context of women’s lives in 1955, vs men’s; there was a far greater likelihood of a 1950s man leaving no descendants, than of a woman.)

unfortunately, if it did that, to me - it would sanitize away what’s actually one of the most interesting aspects of the book. I’m fascinated by what it has to say about gender, because to me, there is a way this book hits different if you can contextualize Harlan and the Eternals in terms of a strict gender-segregated society that strictly limits one’s understanding of and contact with the opposite sex so that every possible interaction between the sexes is tremendously fraught and full of tension.

There is a whole analysis of this book that’s possible if you have read authors like, say, Chaim Potok, and or are in general familiar with the gender mores of ultra-orthodox Jewish culture, or some other kind of equally regimented and gender-segregated culture.

Harlan doesn’t react to being attracted to a woman in a manner of a contemporary man who has grown up in *our* world. He hasn’t been taught to manage his emotions in any other way besides the most strict suppression, and is overwhelmed by them the first time he feels them. He was taken away from his family young and has only ever known this all-male world that has raised him.

There’s also a queer reading that’s possible, if you read it in a certain light, though Asimov would likely not have intended this. Andrew Harlan is basically a non-asexual hetero man in a world where that’s Bad, and basically the plot is that he’s going to be straight and do crimes.

the book doesn’t at any point get rapey, though Harlan’s emotional landscape would be alien to modern readers. Some things he seems to experience and express seem to be from the point of view of a man who has never been allowed to actually gain any kind of emotional maturity about relationships, and it’s actually a best case scenario in that regard.

a common complaint about the book is that Noys Lambent (love interest) is basically a human McGuffin with no real character development of her own but this actually comes off better considering Harlan as a somewhat unreliable narrator who doesn’t see the world beyond his own introspection. (This is easily one of Asimov’s very most introspective and personal works, compared to the tone in his other writing.) And basically the common complaint is that she’s Just A Pretty Face.

well… once again, people critiquing the book didn’t stick it out.

I really suspect modern readers require the “tells” a lot earlier in a book and a moral dilemma or surprise twist characterization can be missed when the thing takes too long to build.

[pet-shop-of-horror-fan]

Didn’t want to derail with a reblog and don’t know how to really organize my thoughts but… Ok firstly I 100% agree with your post regarding the problem of disability erasure for the sake of queer representation. I see it way more often than I’d like and it gets tiring. To say the very least. I’m asexual and even I wish people would stop looking at characters who are infertile or uninterested in/uncomfortable with having sex and immediately slap the ace label on them. It’s like the other side of the coin of people taking ace characters and insisting that ‘oh but they can still have sex or be sex positive’ for every single one, erasing those of us who aren’t. Sometimes there are explanations for the ways people act that aren’t queer, or romantic, or what have you! Not everything is about us!

I say that because I think another thing fandom often does is use queer headcanons OR disability headcanons to erase other important aspects of a character, and that can be just as bad. An example I’ve seen a lot is people looking at Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ as a metaphor for disability. While I can definitely see how that view makes sense, saying that was the intended interpretation feels… wrong. Looking at who Kafka was and the historical events surrounding the story’s creation gives a very different perspective on what it was about: Kafka was a Jewish man in a time and place where antisemitism was on the rise. He woke up to a world that saw him as vile and detestable for existing, a world that made it incredibly hard to survive without relying on others to do things he was no longer allowed to. The underlying idea of feeling like— or being treated as— a burden on others for existing is, understandably, very relatable. However, something being deeply relatable to one group doesn’t mean you can automatically “claim it”, so to speak, for that group.

Human experience overlaps a lot, but that overlap shouldn’t be treated as substitution; groups having shared experiences means respecting the shared part, not saying a given experience means it represents one group in particular over another. Two people can feel the exact same way about themselves for very different reasons, and that’s something that needs to be embraced more often in fandom, rather than looking at the experience and immediately chalking it up to being only a queer experience or only a disabled experience or something else entirely. Sometimes it’s both, sometimes it’s one or the other, folks need to learn to accept the latter, or even the possibility that it’s none of the above. Along those lines, nobody is immune to bigotry, and the first step to becoming a bigot is believing that you are. This is another lesson fandom needs to learn.

Sorry for this I just needed to ramble my thoughts off and I thought you’d have the best odds of understanding where I’m coming from.

[Post for context.]

Woof, I got to this late. Sorry, Anon.

Anyway, I am not sure if I understood 100% of what you were trying to say but I think we are mostly in agreement.

Though is should be clearly stated that there is a difference between explicit representation and metaphoric ones.

For example, in my original post, I was talking about disabled characters having their disabilities erased to read them as metaphorically trans. This is different from reading Metamorphosis as a disabled vs Jewish story, as Metamorphosis is not explicitly Jewish.

And like many metaphors that may not have been intended to be about disability, it maps on to easly. Let me ask, if someone slowly transphormed as shown in the story, wouldn't that person be disabled? And does the main character's experience not mirror what many disabled people go through?

Even if it was meant to be a Jewish story, due to both the metaphor and vagueness of its internet, it is a disability story.

As for the context you gave, I could not find any smoking gun as to whether or not it was indeed intended as a Jewish story. But taking your word for it, what I said still stands.

And I also have not seen a notable amount of people erase non-disabled stories to make them about disability. But I could just be missing it. IDK.

[shdwtouch]

What was the first muse that you’ve written? & How do you create an OC? What are your steps for developing an OC?

oh goodness, the first muse I wrote on tumblr was an alternate universe clint barton ! but first muse is general ? I don't remember. but considering I was roleplaying on a forum before I came here... it was most likely some sort of original character ?

I didn't write a lot of canon characters, since threads were usually organized around a central plot or location with multiple people playing one or more character, all of which were usually created specifically for the thread. however, I do remember two relatively clearly. one was some sort of... mutant ? he had been experimented on in a lab alongside a bunch of other kids, which ended up escaping and were basically being hunted as fugitives. the other was a professor at a magic school a la x-men, but he was actually like... secretly undercover investigating the school because there was some shady stuff going down ? I'm sure I could still find them on my account... but oh, the cringe. I did. and yes, it was very cringey. also the first guy was a vampire, not a mutant. all in the distant year of... 2011. I was eleven years old lmao

as for how I create an original character ? it kinda just... happens. at least, in regards to original / fandomless characters. others are a product of the fandom I made them in. Shade was created because I really liked the lore of the shadow-cursed lands and wanted to make a character that was involved in it. my (currently fandomless) original character Kaey started out as an antivan crow oc in drag-n age. my oldest original character, Lorence J Harving, started out as a team fortress 2 oc ! then I have muses like Zhu Dai and Yew, which were inspired by mythology and folklore. Wyn started out as a random picrew design I made ! Indi and Caoimhe were made for roleplay groups that were abandoned. it really just depends on what the inspiration is ! so I don't really have a tried and true method for original character creation. but trust me, if I did I would be bottling and selling it XD not to blow my own vertubenflugen, but I know people have expressed interest and envy towards my creative process... and I genuinely wish I could offer advice other than embrace the process !

as for developing an original character ? again, it kinda depends. with Shade just being able to talk about her to others and see how she interacts with other characters has done wonders for her development ! Zhu Dai was embracing different mythologies, cultures, and religious ideologies. if the muse is there then things will come somewhat naturally, but muse can also be fickle and wishy-washy so. it can definitely take time ! but I honestly believe that some of the best development does happen in the cooperative process that is roleplay. yet, I have other methods. music plays a lot into my muse and development, as does the media and content I consume ! I take inspiration from a lot of different places !

but if we want to talk nitty gritty... I don't know. I tend to walk my developments around quite a bit, feeling them out to make sure they're what I really envision / want for the character. I change my mind a lot, go back and forth on things. and tend to write very cryptic late night notes in my personal Discord server that awake and lucid me must then decipher for optimal impact. uwu; but in general... yeah I have no idea. it happens. sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. Kaey in particular has been victim to that indecision and, dare I say, overabundance in ideas. lets just say I can't kill my darlings. I cannot. but I also hate recycling ideas, so. make it make sense.

idk but here are my general steps / points I like to hit

character name [ex. shade]

what is their basic story ? [ex. a fugitive assassin doing their best to survive]

appearance [ex. long black hair, gray eyes, short]

cultural heritage / identity [ex. jewish + indian ]

notable features or characteristics [ex. spooky eyes, always wears a hood]

general personality, defined by arc / period in life, i.e. how has this characters personality, habits, etc developed and evolved through their story up to their current point ? (asking questions like why is my character like this now ? etc can help you figure out important points in their history that may have influenced their current state, basically providing a skeleton to work a timeline off of)

asking random questions. whats their favorite ice cream ? do they listen to podcasts, if so what kind ? do they celebrate holidays ? etc. (knowing basic details can help you paint a better understanding of your muse, and help you find their voice, especially in terms of decision making !)

important relationships, whether they be past or present, or even the optimal / wishlist relationships you would want to explore. (this can really help set a foundation for creating meaningful dynamics through roleplay !)

what does your character want ? what is their goal ? what is their optimal ending ? is their optimal ending what they want / expect ? if the character doesn't have a perceivable ending then consider how this journey impacts them ! do they have a turning point ? etc

alternate universes. ask all the "what ifs" you can think of, silly or not ! (even if you don't use these for rp, they can help you find your characters voice !)

turn them around and around in your head until you are either obsessed with them or sick / frustrated. if you are obsessed then you have succeeded in making an original character, congrats ! if you are sick / frustrated take a step back and come back to it later; go through the steps again, rework things as needed, but if you still end up frustrated... keep the things you like the most, discard anything that makes you go eh or nah, take a step back, then return with inspiration !

hope that helps ! ; w ;

EDIT: I have had a very long day so I don't know why I thought answering this now would be a good idea owo; but I just want to say... the gist of my approach to writing any character is this: we are all a tapestry of what we have experienced, the people we have met, etc and a good, dynamic character will reflect that. humans are also flawed and full of contradictions, so don't be afraid to embrace those !

but yeah. if you're ever stuck developing a character, figure out what about them ticks, then find out why it ticks. your character is really gruff, certainly they weren't born that way. did they have a rough home life ? were they in the military ? did they get their heart broken, did they watch a loved one die ? how has that impacted other aspects of their life and story ? have other traits / experiences interacted with this gruffness ? is this gruffness a product of an interaction between traits / experiences ? are they aware they are gruff ? do they care ? do they secretly wish like they could be less gruff ? do they need to be gruff ? what would it look like if they weren't ? I could literally go on and on listing questions that could lead to a thousand different tangents. point being: cause and effect. explore it. your character is a product of what they have been through, of their world. embrace it.

[this-is-z-art-blog]

This one was a little difficult for me because seeing a Jewish character buried not just in a visibly Christian cemetery but specifically under a cross themselves was staggeringly upsetting. I personally disagree, and do not care for gentile creators deciding it's okay for them to do to Jewish characters, but I have heard from Jewish friends that they can see wearing a cross for fashion being a fun 'fuck you' to Christian supremacy and a way to show not taking them seriously. But the idea of having my Judaism so erased as to be buried as a Christian was…one of the more distressing experiences I've ever had online.

It didn't really leave me in the mood for playful snark, so instead my goal for this drawing was more straightforward and sincere, a quiet bittersweet moment of visiting a passed loved one. I went with Sam's great-grandfather instead of Sam herself because I was not in the mood to do performative angst about killing off a Jewish character I know and love, vs her quite old relative who's presumably passed by the time the show even opens and is less of an acute loss. I drew a lot of stones left on his grave to show his memory is honored and beloved, implying strong, lasting connections to their family, friends, and community. And finally Sam's shirt, by which point I was feeling a lot better, I think speaks for itself pretty clearly: she's not just Jewish until anything, she's Jewish forever. Also this is a ghost show, so I wanted to play a little bit with death isn't quite firmly the end.

Also as an aside, I got a really lovely and supportive response from this one, and particularly enjoyed being asked about Izzy Manson- I love when people engage with the things I make! It makes online space feel collaborative and community-oriented On a day with a stark reminder of some of the drawbacks of being online, it was nice to be reminded as well of the very things I love about fandom in general and events like this one in particular.

[ID: digital drawing of Sam Manson standing in a cemetery. She is setting a stone on top of a grave for her great-grandfather, which is inscribed ‘Isaac “Izzy” Manson’, then his Hebrew name Yitzcak Ben David and a Star of David sigil, then finally ‘Inventor, Father, Friend’. There are a large number of stones on or around the base. Other gravestones visible also have Jewish symbol and small rocks. Sam is wearing scuffed black boots, a dark purple skirt, and a black shirt with purple text saying ‘Jewish til I die Forever’, as well as a Star of David choker necklace. Her expression is contemplative.]

DannyMay 2023 Day 19…2! It’s Grave Again.

It had been 21 days since I last saw Sam Manson drawn with a cross. How do I put this: folks, do not draw a Jewish person buried under a cross