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inmyarmswrappedin · 4 years ago

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High key concerned by how many people think it might be Ava's season next. I don't think druck has the sauce, i don't think any of the remakes have the sauce, to turn this fandom into a fair and balanced one when they are met with people that look like Ava and can be quite assertive . An Ava season at this junction would be strongly rejected by the masses and seems like an express lane to cancellation. Who do u think will be the next main? Sorry if you've already shared your thoughts on this.

Hi anon! 🌸 I think the next main will be Fatou.

As for Ava, I don’t think her storyline with _huelk has played as big a role in the episodes as Fatou/Kieu My. I’m also a bit unsure about whether _huelk will actually show up on Thursday tbh. I’d feel a bit more sure he’ll show, if Ava told the girls about him and she asked Nora to come along with her.

This fandom will inevitably be a shitstorm when Ava is the main, but I mean, wbk. Let’s just look at the reactions to any Sana season, not just from fandom, but casual viewers and even people who don’t know anything about these shows, but have a lot to say about a show choosing to feature characters like the Sanas.

But I also don’t think that should be reason not to do it. Like, we can’t just keep these characters as sidekicks until a time in the future where people won’t complain about them being main, or we’ll be waiting forever lol.

I know this is the dumbest example ever, but ever since SPN ended, I’ve been thinking about how different the TV landscape was 5/10/15 years ago.

(Some rambling about 00s TV shows no one cares about)

When SPN premiered in 2005, the idea that any of the male leads would say ILU to another dude was absolutely unthinkable. A fan gave Dean’s actor an essay about his character being bi at a con (sidenote: cons should probably be abolished) and he wrote “?? No” on it and gave it back. In 2020 Castiel told Dean he loved him, and Dean’s actor was, like, swapping reaction videos to that moment with Castiel’s actor.

Likewise, when Glee premiered in 2009, the show immediately sidelined Mercedes for Rachel, and constantly made jokes about how Mercedes would never be lead because she was lazy, unprincipled, didn’t want it enough, etc. In the finale episode, which aired in 2015, the show acknowledged that Schue (and by extension the show/network) never saw Mercedes as the lead because of the way she looked (both misogynoir and fatphobia).

And I could give sooo many examples of Kurt storylines that were obviously rewritten to pacify homophobic viewers. For instance, in one s1 episode Kurt comes a little too strongly on Finn (but I should note everyone on that show came a little too strongly on their crushes, it was pretty much your usual teen show with toxic examples of human interaction). This angered a man to such a point that he approached the showrunners at Comic Con and demanded that Kurt apologize for being a creep. So in s2, even Kurt’s own dad calls him out on being a creep towards Finn, and he’s made to back off from a duet with a straight dude character because everyone makes him feel he was a creep for even thinking about it.

Later on, Kurt switches schools for a while because he’s being targeted by a bully and he and Blaine talk about how no one does anything about homophobic bullying because people seem to feel that if you’re gay, then you’re just going to suffer. This line reminds me so much of how showrunners have approached Sana seasons. All the characters sort of act like, well, the Sanas have dared to be hijabi and racialized, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ there ain’t much the other characters can do about that suffering ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The point I’m trying to make is that, yes, Castiel dying right after confessing he loves Dean and Dean’s feelings being up for interpretation is total bullshit when you can watch 73589 Netflix shows and a handful of Isak seasons with canonical representation, same gender affection, sex scenes, etc. but it is also something no show would’ve done when SPN first premiered in 2005. (When queer rep was a female character showing up in town during sweeps week to share a kiss with one of the female leads and then disappear to never be talked about again.) It was only possible because SPN lasted into 2020 when that scene is tame compared to what audiences are used to seeing in other (some more niche) shows. It was bullshit that Glee painted Mercedes as lazy to justify Rachel getting all the solos, but at least they lasted long enough that they could say, “yeah that happened for racist reasons.” It was bullshit that Kurt could only get face time if he was being tortured or crying, because homophobic audiences couldn’t take a, to use your word, “assertive” gay character who behaved like all the other Glee characters with crushes. But if it hadn’t been for Kurt and other similarly weeping gays, who’s to say we’d have had Isak (who was created in response to Norwegians teens watching American teen shows, remember!), Cris, Matteo, etc. etc.

Are audiences going to be racist and fatphobic and misogynistic in response to Ava’s season? Yep! But an Ava season would do something Glee never allowed Mercedes to do, and it’s to be the star of the show. (And ngl, “it’s yo girl Mercedes” was such a recurring phrase on Glee that I’ve wondered whether Ava’s ig name is a lowkey inspired by it.) Without Kurt there wouldn’t be an Isak, and without Mercedes there wouldn’t be an Ava. So an Ava season needs to happen regardless of fandom being ready for it.

#ask #druck #also anon I'm sure that's not what you intended to do #but your ask sounds like concern trolling #Anonymous

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liskantope · 4 years ago

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Hopefully this will be my last-ever post complaining about what someone said on social media, because current events are simmering down and once they’ve reached a moderate enough hum I’m going to redouble my previous efforts to stay away from it. But the particular interaction I’m going to describe seems to have furthered my progress slightly in understanding why so many people shout their views in the way that they do and how I should learn to better accept it.

One of my “closest” Facebook friends for over a decade, whose life’s passion nowadays revolves around anti-racist work (mainly in childhood education; she is white) posted a few hours after Biden’s victory was officially called last Saturday to preach that white Biden-voters shouldn’t claim any of the credit for his victory because it was BIPOC and particularly black women who carried this election (her justification for why they “carried us” was that as a demographic group most of them voted for Biden while as a demographic group a majority of white people voted for Trump), and that nothing will be better now except for who is in the White House because “whiteness and white supremacy have not disappeared” and that “your” responsibility is not diminished and “you” are not absolved as a good white person. She ended with an exhortation to bow down and “bend your knees” to BIPOC for “saving our asses”.

(Just realized looking back at her post to write this one that the phrasing was not “bend the knee” as I repeatedly misread at the time, assuming that it was a direct reference to Game of Thrones of which I know she’s a fan, and having recently listened to this insightful 8-minute Sam Harris podcast episode which used the phrase. This is slightly unfortunate since it was the obnoxiousness of that particular phrasing which tipped me over to acting against my better judgment in not just ignoring this like I have with so many dozens of other statements. I still find it obnoxious, though, and sanctimonious, and terrible messaging, and using poor arguments about causation, and reflecting an insistence on viewing as much as possible in terms of race at all times, and the epitome of identity politics.)

So yeah, after waiting a couple of days, I broke my usual silence and wrote a very polite but argumentative response that turned out to be enough paragraphs to make me feel a little embarrassed that I would take that much of my time on it. I knew there was virtually no chance of convincing her of anything substantial, but I figured just maybe some insight into how foreign and alienating this “you are responsible for what everyone of your color does and are never good enough and have to kneel in deference to those of a color which is” messaging is bound to be to anyone who’s less in an academic bubble than we are (which is, like, most people). I made the point that individual BIPOC didn’t contribute any more than individual white people did to Biden’s victory and that if we’re going to judge blocs of voters according to race we should be blaming Cuban-Americans for Biden’s loss in Florida, and that in fact Trump gained votes from among BIPOC and lost white male votes since four years ago. I wrote that implying that the only salient feature of us individuals is race is exactly what people complain about when they use the term “identity politics” and that the results of this election suggest that maybe we’re doing something wrong with our messaging.

It wasn’t a disaster. I got a very cordial response which completely avoided ad hominem and at least engaged the points I had made while clarifying her views. I didn’t find the supposed rebuttals of my points at all convincing, of course. For instance, my complaint about treating individual voters as merely people of a certain color was met with “It’s important in anti-racist scholarship to be able to analyze demographic trends in terms of race” (I would... never disagree with this?) and that focusing on individuals allows people to only look at their own actions and those of their friends and feel too good about themselves. She also expressed skepticism about my statistics about where Trump gained/lost support, which I was able to back up with a quick Google search which pulled up a Vox article among others (I thought it was only the insufficiently committed white liberals like me who sucked at Googling?). But her own views, while still resting on axioms I fundamentally differ on, just sounded a lot more reasonable when restated? E.g. “Moments like this shouldn’t be centered on whiteness” and “the ‘good white liberals’ should be aware that they aren’t as a big of a demographic in our race as they should be” (I don’t know any white liberal who would disagree or who doesn’t realize that white people vote majority Republican or is okay with that?) and that the bowing and bending the knee was not “a literal statement” but simply meant to convey that we should greatly respect how BIPOC voters contribute. She ended with providing a long list of anti-racist activists (the only one of whom I’m familiar with is Ally Henny, who I mainly remember for statements about how I’m encased in so many layers of racism that I would never be able to peel them off if I spent my whole lifetime doing nothing but trying) as a “starting point” of study.

I replied thanking her for pointing me to sources and agreeing with her implication that I should read more with a mind towards understanding what they’re saying before spouting off any more opinions. (Guess I have to make good on that promise now.) I made clear that I see a difference between her restatements and the way she worded things in her original post and suggested that some of this might even be on me for interpreting these kinds of posts more as logical arguments when they should be understood in a slightly more poetic manner. I gently gestured towards my suspicion that the current scholarship in this area might reflect a university culture (which I am very much a part of) more than the concrete priorities and concerns of the majority of people of color, although I’m in no position to positively claim anything about this. I got no response.

Anyway, in writing my last response, a little more clicked into place for me about a different lens through which I should process all the behavior that drives me nuts in a written context online (I mainly mean social media but am being even broader than that). This is going to sound condescending but ironically it might help me to have a less condescending attitude?

The fact is -- and I just have to accept this -- that making efforts to be nuanced and to “meet people who disagree where they are at” and to aim for the truth but no farther than the truth are simply not highly-valued principles for most people (social media -users and otherwise). They may kinda-sorta agree in the abstract with these principles, but in practice they hold a much lower status than the principles of conveying anger and strong words as a sign of commitment towards Fighting Evil. Some people I know do have an “argumentation value system” closer to mine, and I know who those people are -- it really shows in what they write online. But those people are a fairly small minority.

And this alien “argumentation value system” isn’t something that really shows in casual real-life interactions very plainly at all (which of course is what almost all human interactions were up until 10-15 years ago), while in contrast social media is an environment that augments its effect.

The sooner I accept this, the more moderation I’ll be able to manage in my negative reactions. I can remind myself that there’s less fundamental disagreement on most actual issues between me and the people I know: we instead disagree on a sort of meta-level issue of how one’s views should be presented. And that issue, taken by itself, seems somehow like something more minor. I wrote a few months ago about how knowing what so many people in my life write publicly oftentimes interferes with my capacity to view them as potential intimate friends/partners. Maybe I can be a little more accepting when I recognize that the things they write which turn me off perhaps don’t come from a place of such irrationality as I thought, that the differences in our ways of thinking might not be quite so fundamental (although this differing system of values for argumentation still strikes me as something that could badly affect a marriage, say). And in the practical short term, I can ignore things that bother me more easily in the future -- instead of feeling like I’m on a tilted playing field where everyone else gets to vent without inhibition while I have to carefully monitor and qualify everything I say, I can try to just round a lot of this off in terms of different preferred writing styles and somehow that bothers me less?

A similar underlying principle holds for the things that annoy me on dating profiles, what with the collective obsession with dogs and boasts of being “fluent in sarcasm” and so on. This probably doesn’t reflect much about the way the creators of these profiles actually are as humans in real life. Not that many single women really view their dogs as the most interesting thing that ever was or will be about their lives. They just choose to have a certain style of exposition about themselves because of peculiarities of the environment of online dating sites/apps, where showing enthusiasm and individuality in some way seems to pay and the topic of dogs would seem like a pretty safe place to direct this performed enthusiasm. Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t demonstrate some aspect of incompatibility with me or that I’m not going to be more instantly attracted to those with profiles that have more refreshing things to say than stuff about how amazing dogs are or of those who *gasp* actually prefer cats or *deeper gasp* prefer not to have pets at all. But it means that I can read the dogs-and-sarcasm-enthusiast profiles a little more charitably maybe?

This slightly altered mindset is a far from perfect solution, but I think it helps. A lasting three-quarters-of-the-way disconnect from social media entirely still needs to be a goal at this point.

#Social media #better decision 2020 #social justice #online dating #pets

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kdtheghostwriter · 5 years ago

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SNK # 127 - End of the Night

In terms of pure composition, this is one of the best double-spreads Isayama has ever produced. I love it so much that I’m starting this meta with a breakdown of the different elements. From a wide angle this honestly looks like a Renaissance painting. The linework is crisp and the shadows are gorgeous especially in relation to Pieck’s Titan, but I want everyone to take notice of the way Isayama has blocked this scene off.

Every faction is cordoned off. The Survey Corps, The Volunteers, and The Warriors are all sat together in an attempt to break bread. The tension, however, couldn’t be more tangible. Our attention has literally been directed to it. This is so genius not only as an artistic choice but also as a cheeky answer to those critics of the closing panel of Chapter 126. No, we’re not all friends here. No, no one wants to be here doing this. Yes, we have a long way to go with not lots of time to cover. If you were to purchase the physical copy of this volume you could literally cut the tension with a knife.

I have been accused before of being afraid of confrontation. A pushover if you will. Even though I see myself as a pacifist it is not because I shy away from confrontation. Simply put, it’s much easier to disengage and go about your day. As humans, our goal on any given day is to procure our sustenance and return to our shelter. Everything else is extracurricular. It must be pointed out, then, that there is a difference to be had between being assertive and being combative.

These two have been building to a proper rematch for a minute now and despite what Annie says in the following panels you don’t just say something like this unless you’re looking for a fight. I don’t care if it’s true or not (it’s not). She knows these people well enough. She knows what buttons to press.

And this guy. Maybe this will be the end of hope that Magath is in any way reasonable. He has a soft spot for the Warriors because of his proximity to them, but he is firmly in the “My Eldians are the Good Eldians” camp. PSA: this is still racist and Not Cool, folks!

Also notice the framing here. We see the older Magath stubbornly debating with Jean over his right to keep breathing; just below him we see Reiner and his cadets. It’s much easier for people to accept and interpret new information before they are 25. Reiner is in his early 20s while Falco and Gabi are just now pubescent. They know the truth now of how the Island came to be and the war that lead to Eldia’s exile. If we assume that Magath is in or around his 40s, chances are that even with Founder Ymir’s story in hand he would find a way to blame all Paradisians (and Jean personally) for their current shitstack situation.

This gets broken up by Yelena. Abandoned by her god Zeke she sees no need to cooperate even when it is revealed that she was a Marleyean all along. Yes, the same Marley she literally volunteered to destroy because even if you’re from there it’s Fuck Marley Season.

She stirs the pot well as the one character with no more skin in the game. She brings up the fairly salient point that all of the soldiers around her have spilled way more blood, much more violently than she has. Yelena takes the cake for flamboyance but if you really stop to think about it…

Reiner’s plan to bust open the wall on that fateful day lead to the culling of one-third of Paradis’ population. Annie’s rampage through Stohess ruined countless lives beyond repair. Armin simply transforming in Liberio essentially nuked the town. Because this violence was not interpersonal like the assassination of Zackley, it doesn’t feel as extreme. This is how the Jaegerists came to exist in the first place.

And you had to figure this was coming at some point. After so much time passed Jean had certainly given up on ever learning Marco’s true fate. He’s never had a root cause to associate with his friend’s half-eaten corpse because…well, he never needed one. Humans got eaten by Titans. Most Scouts didn’t survive their first mission. And even this was after more excruciating detail offered by Reiner with no further prodding. I’ve seen some wonder why he kept talking but there’s an easy enough explanation.

The 2011 film Shame follows a young New York professional named Brandon who is a sex addict. Much ado with the title, he purposefully seduces women in relationships in hopes of getting caught and assaulted by their jealous partners. He has several reasons for doing this but it’s mostly an attempt to feel anything besides...well, you know.

Reiner is not an addict of any sort but he is very much dead inside, having suffered a series of mental breakdowns of increasing magnitude. He already hates himself for being an Eldian. He hates himself for living a lie. He hates himself for leaving his friends behind and getting Marcel killed. He sees his chance, not for forgiveness, but for human engagement. The fact that Jean is bashing his face in is a bonus for him.

This whole entire update was such a great exploration of Hange’s character but I like this scene especially because of how it mirrors Erwin during his final stand. I don’t consider it an explicit death flag or whatever. To me it’s just a natural progression of human emotion when you’re finished with running for the time being and get a chance to gather yourself. When the adrenaline wears off you really begin to question every choice that brought you to this point.

The knowledge of an outside world beyond their own should have been a triumph. The joy of discovery. The anticipation of adventure. None of which is possible because their entire island is Ex Communicado like John Wick with the Whole Entire World waiting for the first moment to end their whole career. It’s crushing and Hange sold that weight. Yet they still acknowledge that their comrades would not have wanted this outcome even if the cost was their security. It sucks! But genocide sucks more, so they have to get up and try.

Dude, tell me about it.

Stray Thoughts

- We get a window into the multiverse that contains the Jean that followed through on his promise to have an easy life in the Central District. I like the choice to slow down the narrative a bit to have a check-in of sorts. It’s important to let your characters feel and absorb what’s happened to them. You can’t do that if you never stop moving.

- It’s cool to have Annie back but I don’t really know what to think of her yet. Does anyone else she’s going to be a wrench in whatever plan they come up with? Is that just me?

- Speaking of: killing Eren is the only way to stop him in my opinion and I think he’s counting on it. My big question is how do they get that chance? He has an army of Colossal Titans in front of him and his own Titan is gargantuan to an unimaginable degree. Nevermind the struggle of finding him and getting close. With the Coordinate under his control, he can command all of the Eldians on this team to halt their advance entirely should he choose. Mikasa is literally the one person on Earth who can stop this. Welp.

“I took a personal interest in her,” Pieck says. I mean, she’s not alone tbh.

- My initial reaction to seeing the final panel was [eeeeeks in @falcon94ssy]. Jokes aside, I have wondered for months where Kiyomi was. She is always conspicuous in her absence whenever it occurs. By the look of things, Floch (who looks gigantic here) is looking down past Kiyomi. I would be less worried for her well-being and more focused on whomever it is she’s conversing with.

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severalspoons · 4 years ago

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Long Rambling Trigun Meta Discussion 2

I *hate* the reply function in Tumblr. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t function. It doesn’t even open up a findable page so I can respond, and I can’t directly answer the reply. That’s why I reblog.

So, here’s the next best thing:

tiggymalvern

I don't recall anything like that fic you mention from either canon. It's a lovely idea, if only I could imagine Vash and Knives stopping arguing with each other for long enough to do it.

This fic I’m remembering was surprisingly hard to find, and now I’m wondering if it’s from FF.net rather than AO3. Will share once I find it!

The twins argue while doing it, IIRC, and have very different approaches. Luckily for the humans, in this fic the engineer likes the plant and takes care of it well, given how little is actually known about how to do so post-crash. Even so, Knives almost kills the engineer, but Vash stops him and leaves behind a little journal full of advice and encouragement.

IMO, I feel like this is something Vash would be motivated to do more than Knives:

-- to repair his relationship with Knives

-- because he feels responsible for the people Rem saved

-- because he wants the bulb plants to be safe and happy

(listed in the order I thought of them)

But Knives would see this as slight progress towards Vash seeing things his way, so he’d go with it. What do you think?

tiggymalvern

I've never been entirely clear on the manga ending myself, and I think Nightow left it somewhat ambiguous deliberately. Vash and Knives are fighting, and then the earth forces attack them both, Livia intevenes and Vash and Knives fly off and

six months later we find Vash in hiding with the people who saved him, because Knives convinced them to, and then Knives plants an apple tree to help feed the peopl looking after Vash, and then he vanishes...

I assume he chose not to stay with humans and just went off somewhere, but it's left open

Interesting! Yeah, I got the sense it was supposed to be deliberately ambiguous, too.

Many people say that Knives died giving his last energy to save Vash, to the point where I thought that was canon.

No matter what happened with Knives and the tree, I have questions. If Knives planted the tree before dying or disappearing or whatever, I’d want to know where he got the apple seeds, and if providing the energy to make that tree survive on Gunsmoke killed him. If he turned into a tree (which I thought was the canon, but maybe not?), how? I can see why you didn’t interpret Knives as turning into a tree.

All I know for sure is, if Knives were dying, he’d want to do it on his own terms. Ideally in a way that would express his point and make an impression on Vash. I was going to say that creating a tree doesn’t seem like Knives’ style, but then I thought about the apple tree scenes in the anime. However that tree came to be, Vash would most likely associate it with happier times on the ship. Maybe he’d be fucked up enough to see it as a gesture of love.

Maybe it was the closest thing to a gesture of love someone as manipulative and self-absorbed as Knives could manage...

tiggymalvern Knives really is a person with no middle ground. When he believed Rem's teachings, he believed them wholeheartedly, that everything would turn out fine and people just needed to be given a chance. When he rejected those teachings and decided it was all just rubbish, he went maximum speed to the other extreme. Reject ALL humans, not just the individuals who had proven that they suck. And reject as in eradicate, not just avoid...

I love Knives’ all-or-nothing way of being. Maybe because I know and love so many people with a little streak of that. And it’s so believable. Reminds me of a quote I read somewhere about how a misanthrope is a disillusioned idealist.

Knives thinks in utilitarian terms (”the greatest good for the greatest number with the least possible sacrifice”) as a kid for the few short scenes before he turns evil. He also seems to think in terms of groups rather than individuals (”humans,” “spiders,” “butterflies”). It saves him the grief Vash goes through at coming to know and lose so many people, but it also helps him justify a racist ideology. I love that about him, actually. If I were to write a Knives redemption fic, a key arc would be helping him learn to see others as individuals. I have a few paragraphs of something like that written...

Kids definitely need wonder and to see the beauty in the world, but it's also a good idea to mention the possibility of weird strangers offering candy that are best avoided. For these bizarre new non-human children, those warnings would have been extra pertinent, and maybe would have reduced the shock of what came after. Knives is definitely more mature than Vash in those flashbacks. Like you say, he wants to discuss issues with Vash, and Vash just parrots Rem.

Agree.

I have a theory. Earth, in Trigunverse, seems a lot like our world, only worse.

I’ve seen a lot of people’s sense of wonder, beauty, fun, and curiosity squished. I was the weirdo in preschool, among other four year olds, for being too much like that. Maybe on Trigun Earth, a bleak place to begin with, that’s the norm. (And destroying people’s wonder/curiosity/etc. leads to depression and the ennui of modern life, but that’s another essay).

Some people, like those who run Waldorf schools, overreact by going to the opposite extreme. The worst, most ideologically rigid ones, deliberately wait to teach kids to read so they can explore the world unmediated by words a little longer. (And will even discourage kids who learn to read early, grr). Waldorf philosophy assumes young kids are basically sensing, feeling, and imagining beings, rather than thinking ones.

I get the sense that Rem is one of these sorts. She was squashed and made to feel worthless for the way she saw the world. Maybe that’s part of the reason she was so depressed and needed Alex’s help. She’s raising the twins the way she wished she had been raised.

That sort of parenting wasn’t appropriate for a plant, of course. But no one had raised independent plants to adulthood before. No one knew what was appropriate. No one knew how to teach them about danger (or how not to).

Growing up as a neurodivergent person in the Dark Ages, the only kid with allergies and sensory processing problems, etc., I understand all too well how badly things can go when even the most loving parents just don’t know what to do, and can’t find helpful information anywhere. Where helpful information isn’t just hard to find, but it doesn’t exist yet.

So as critical as I’m being of Rem, I sympathize with her. She really didn’t have much to go on but her own knowledge and experience, and she bravely did the best she could.

Vash isn't thinking for himself yet, but he's a kid, so that's allowable. It does make it harder for Knives, though, who feels he has to be responsible for them both.

You know, Knives does feel responsible for them both, and I hadn’t thought much about it and about the implications of that. No wonder he was so frustrated and furious. There’s definitely a sense of “something is deeply unfair and wrong” for a child trying to raise not only themselves, but their younger sibling(s). Perhaps that’s part of the reason I saw Knives as caring about Vash, in his toxic, screwed up way.

Plant biology is MASSIVELY confusing, and the more you try to piece it together, the more your head hurts LOL. But I think that's almost the point? ...Leaving the readers struggling to figure out the plants is the human perspective.

What do you think about the anime being so much from a human pov, especially considering that the most important characters in it are not?

Wolfwood is the support Vash needs to learn to control his plant powers among other things, the powers that have terrified Vash for so long that he ignored them. But Wolfwood isn't scared of them - or rather, he is, but not scared enough to abandon Vash because of them. He knows all about Vash, he knows all about July and the hole in the moon, he's seen Vash transform into some weird crazy thing with feathers, and Wolfwood still stays. Wolfwood lets Vash know that Vash's mistakes can be forgiven, and Vash is still a worthwhile person despite them. And because Wolfwood believes it, Vash can start to believe it.

Between how well you put this and the dynamic itself, I’m...blown away and don’t know what to say.

– “Vash, take care of Knives.” This breaks my heart because so far … he hasn’t. First he follows Knives around. Then abandons him. Then attacks him. I really do think Vash was trying. He followed Knives around for so long while being so angry with him for what he'd done, and yes, part of that was because he didn't want to be alone himself, but part of it was him trying to follow Rem's advice.

Yeah, true, he did try at first. I undervalued it because by the time the series starts, that was far into the past and Vash probably doesn’t even remember it, but still.

In the manga, Rem specifically says, 'Vash, don't leave Knives alone,' because I think she recognises that Knives is prone to extremes and needs a balance.

See, that instruction makes so much more sense. And I think the plants would have agreed. (Well, of course they would. They’re a collective consciousness, after all).

Rem probably also knew it’s bad for anyone’s health or sanity to be alone, and an emotionally unstable twin plant even more so. Knives would be in a solitary confinement of his own making.

Vash tried and tried to get Knives to change; he spent so much effort trying to explain why genocide wasn't the answer. But Vash failed, and eventually he recognised that he was always going to fail. So he left Knives, because he needed a life that wasn't that failure. He needed to do something to compensate for Knives. He took upon himself the responsibility of not only protecting the humans from Knives, but protecting the humans from the worst in themselves, which Knives' actions brought to the surface. And that is one hell of a lot to take on, and not a recipe for a happy life.

Yeah, that’s...a heroic life, but not a happy one. In a way, it seems almost as doomed as trying to change Knives.

#trigun #meta #character analysis #vash the stampede #knives millions #millions knives #rem saverem #baby plants #oversharing #me irl #nicholas d. wolfwood #vash/wolfwood #vash the stampede/nicholas d. wolfwood #vashwood #killing time #fucked up sibling relationships #trigun anime #headcanons

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lunanoirre · 4 years ago

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Episodes 11, 12, and 13

Ok, it has been a hot minute!!!

Merry late Christmas and Happy Holidays to all, and since the 19th of this month has passed, I am now 19!!!!

I am still the same ol’ dumbass reviewing Supernatural in 2020 though, so let’s get this show on the road!

Episode 11, the episode which I forgot that I watched. Not to say that it wasn’t a good episode!!! It was, and it scared the shit outta me.

The scarecrow design looks eerily like the one in the OG prints of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, and that—.... Horrifies me. So that was awesome!

But, unfortunately, this episode finally shows the boys getting into contact with their father again, and I really did not like it!

I mean, calling up your KIDS at complete random, when they’re worried sick about you, beebopping around America looking for YOU, and just???? Barking more orders at them??? Forcing them back into a job??? I mean, no wonder Sam got sick of this shit, and left for Cali to try and find John himself.

And poor, poor Dean... I really hate watching him bend over backwards to please their dad, and this is the worst example so far.

At least this episode showed how much these brothers need each other to continue this job successfully, which is wholesome yet sad. Siblings shouldn’t be forced to become codependent for survival.

Oh. And what the fuck was with the hitchhiker lady Sam met???????

Of course that hasn’t been answered yet, smfh.

Episode 12 didn’t... really have much in terms of character development???

OH WAIT NO!

This episode shows just how much Dean doesn’t value his own life! Mmm, Christmas fun!

But seriously, an episode about a Grim Reaper that looks like one of the Silence from Doctor Who, was interesting. Well... Interesting until Dean started insinuating that his life wasn’t worth as much as the girl with the brain tumor.

I’m just...

GOD!!!!

Spn, please stop milking me of my empathy for Dean???

Though, this would have been more impactful if his disability lasted more than 3 minutes.

I understand that Sam desperately wanted to get him better, since a prognosis of a week to a few months was visibly tearing poor Sammy to shreds inside...

But...

Rectifying the illness within 3 seconds of introducing it... killed the oomf this event would have held if left to marinate.

Yes, yes, I know, Season 1 still has the monster of the week type vibes and all and it doesn’t yet feel comfortable enough to dive into these inner issues... But it’s just???? Y’know, an odd choice at minimum.

Though it punched me in the gut to hear Dean speak so lowly about himself in regards to the fact that he... admits that he doesn’t feel like he’s worthy of living?

And that hit hard, as someone who has struggled with those sorts of thoughts. The worst part is that nothing really rose to challenge his opinion on that. Not even Sam decided to combat the way he was speaking.

And the fact that he didn’t even fight the Reaper, knowing that he was risking death??? Entirely because he felt like it would save someone who was worth more than him???

GOD.... I am GOING to cry.

And episode 13 was even sadder!!!

Exploring Dean’s first love seemed like it would have been fun... Until he started expressing the fact that he regrets opening up to Cassie. Because Cassie immediately interpreted his truth as an elaborate lie to break things off with her.

😐

Now, I’m not saying Cassie is abusive. She is not (I honestly love her SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!), and her reaction to hearing that he was a professional ghoul hunter was completely rational.

But!

Hearing that this event caused Dean to shut himself off even further... Hurts me???? Because I know how that feels.

I know how it feels to feel the need to hide integral parts of yourself because they’re abnormal, and you know most people wouldn’t react well to it. I know that pain.

So it kinda felt like a slap in the face to see that Dean’s hurt was kinda... pushed aside in favor of make-up sex??? I mean... being on the asexual spectrum myself, I cannot imagine doing something like that anyway, even if the partner was a beloved ex... But with my bias aside, it still felt wrong.

Neither of them are in the wrong per se... Although, the fact that Cassie seemed kinda aggressive when apologizing to Dean about the hurt he was hiding also rubbed me the wrong way. She knows that he hides his inner feelings, so spitting on them like that was the obvious wrong step, but since they’re straight, make-up sex makes everything better right?? 🤪🤪🤪

The answer is no, no it doesn’t. I liked the shirtless Dean fanservice though.

GOD he’s attractive....

But, aside from that, I was glad to see Dean enjoy himself a bit, and be a little vulnerable.

For god’s sake, it’s such a big deal that he told Cassie anything!!!!! It’s just such a shame that she took his confession the wrong way... That, and she point blank told him that she couldn’t see things working out in the end.

Annnnndddddddd I’m sure Cassie won’t reappear anytime soon, if at all... which is sad.

I really do like her!!!

Now, onto episodes 20 and beyond!

Man, a couple more episodes and I’m into season 2...

EDIT:

oh. My GODD HOW DID I FORGET TO MENTION THE FUCKING RACIST TRUCK??????

I DID NOT EXPECT THE RACIST TRUCK TO APPEAR SO SOON?????

#supernatural #spn analysis #spn season 1 #spnfandom #dean winchester #sam winchester #john winchester #jensen ackles #jared padalecki #I JUST FOUND OUT THAT JOHN WINCHESTER’S ACTOR WENT ON TO PLAY NEGAN IN THE WALKING DEAD????#I don’t like the walking dead but like. I Did like Negan whenever I caught it with my dad so—

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vivithefolle · 6 years ago

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Why I headcanon Hermione as white, an essay by me

I’ve been told to post this as an individual post since apparently I was making good points - so here ya go. Please don’t bake me into Dementor cookies.

Okay, so I never thought of Hermione as being anything but white, because in the books there are a few lines that describe her has having pale skin; however “going pale” is also a euphemism for being afraid. Same as “going green” is a euphemism for sickness.

However, I never thought of Hermione as anything but a British white girl because of her lack of reaction to the word “Mudblood”.

Okay so now I’m gonna dig myself a grave because people will accuse me of racism, but hear me out on this one. To be clear: I don’t mind fanarts of Hermione or Harry with varied skin colors. Hell, draw and interpret canon in any way you want, buddy, it’s your interpretation and it’s awesome! But when I write about Hermione and Harry, in my mind’s eye, I envision them as your average caucasian kid.

Below are my explanations for it. You’re free to disagree or call me out, but please read them first before you condemn me to twelve years in Azkaban.

When Hermione is being called a Mudblood, she doesn’t react. She understands that it’s an insult but she doesn’t seem to grasp its actual meaning, even after she’s learned what it’s for, and as the series progresses, she still doesn’t react to it. She mostly tries to keep Ron from beating Malfoy into a pulp over it.

Now, this behaviour doesn’t strike me as that of a socially inept, extremely opinionated and argumentative, very bossy young woman.

I mean. Would Hermione be the sort to let herself be insulted without doing anything about it? She replies to Pansy Parkinson’s cruel barbs by comments of her own. She defends herself when she’s being called out by her friends. She has no problem insulting Ron when she thinks he’s being insensitive. Rita Skeeter talks shit about her and she ends up locked in a jar for a week!! But have Malfoy call her “Mudblood” and she remains silent, at least until the sixth book.

What if it wasn’t because she’s used to racism, but on the contrary because she doesn’t know how to handle it, because she’s never experienced it?

I mean, had Hermione ever gotten grief over her skin colour, she’d be outraged and disappointed that this ideal, magical new world, that she would consider an outlet from the racist bullies back home, had actually its own form of racism, right?

Seeing her reactions to being called a racial slur, Hermione doesn’t strike me as a person who experienced racism - it’s because she’s not used to it, because to her it’s isn’t someone insulting her heritage; rather, it’s just some bully calling her an insult that feels distant and faraway to her.

For example. I once got called a whore. I’m asexual, I’ve never dated anyone, and never once dressed in anything that could be considered as remotely risqué. Still I got called a whore. And it mostly left me a bit confused rather than offended, because I knew that if there was a word to use to qualify me, “whore” would definitely not be one. (For the curious ones, the guy called me a whore because of my lifelong obsession with Pokémon. Yes, I fail to see the logic as well.)

So when Hermione hears someone call her a Mudblood, she doesn’t really registers the word as being a racist comment, instead she considers it some trivial, playground-level insult. It’s exactly why Ron gets so angry and protective on her behalf: because she should be offended by such a slur, and she isn’t. Anyway, that’s always how I’ve read it.

Also, her comment on horses when she talks about Firenze. Now I know that people of color can be racist as well, but she says it so… casually, so flippantly. It’d strike me as odd that someone so sensitive to the plight of creatures seen as “subhuman” would be able to say something like that without understanding the implications… Unless she has no idea that referring to centaurs as “horses” is an extremely offensive thing to do, because she doesn’t realize how racist it sounds, because she herself has never heard someone, say, call her “a monkey” for being black.

And you know, I think that having Hermione as a white girl isn’t so bad, come to think of it. My opinion is probably going to come off as controversial but I really, really want to voice it.

We have Harry, Ron and Hermione, a set of three characters, all from different backgrounds, and all privileged in different ways.

For Harry, it’s fame and fortune. Being the Boy-Who-Lived, no matter how much he may complain about it, is something that puts him ‘above the rest’. It allows him to get away with ballooning up Aunt Marge because Fudge won’t have the Saviour of Wizarding Britain in prison over something as minuscule as one tiny breach of the Statute of Secrecy - yes, it’s sarcasm. The point is: Harry’s status as Boy-Who-Lived may cause him grief, but it certainly comes with a few perks.

Ron’s privilege is, of course, his blood status. Being a pureblood is valued among the magical community and could even make some Death Eaters think twice before killing you. I think Voldemort would want to preserve as much of the Sacred Twenty-Eight’s bloodlines, considering how few there are left. (and yes, I have my own headcanon for how exactly he’d keep them alive. Wait for it…)

Hermione’s privilege is, quite simply, her normal, comfortable life in the Muggle world. A life where nobody looks down on her origins; a life where she never had to experience a war and its aftermaths; a life where she might feel a bit the outcast due to her brains and accidental magic, but would you rather be an outcast and live, or be considered “impure” and be killed without a second thought?

So, each member of the trio has some form of privilege, and it’s counterbalanced by a lack of privilege somewhere else. The ironic thing is that it’s usually the privilege of another one of them!

Harry’s, we all know: not everyone can be raised in a loving, accepting home like Hermione and Ron do, and it hits him full force with the Dursleys. For all his money and fame, Harry lacks a true, warm family (luckily Ron is quick to offer him one). And even if he can see the Weasleys every summer, he still has to return to Privet Drive and be reminded for a few weeks that yes, these arseholes he’s forced to live with are his only still living relatives.

The Weasleys’ poverty is evidently one of the ways Ron lacks privilege, but the very thing that is considered a privilege in the magical community turns out to be a double-edged sword; being a blood traitor, in dear Bella’s own words, is “right next to being a Mudblood”. Now, I mentioned I had a headcanon for how Voldemort might try to keep the old bloodlines running? Well, even though they’re blood traitors, the blood’s still pure, right? You’d just need them to stop supporting these pesky Muggleborns… you could have one of them conceive an heir, a perfect blank slate whom you’d teach all about blood purity… Now wouldn’t that be convenient? (I am aware that this headcanon is absolutely horrifying and I’m sorry I ever came up with it. I was just thinking of what Molly might have said to try and stop Ron from going on the run in DH, and suddenly this popped into my head and I was like “oh this is so awful!… it’s perfect”.)

And finally, Hermione’s lack of privilege solely resides in the Wizarding World she loves so much, and is probably what she considers the only downside to her being a witch: the fact that she’s looked down upon by blood supremacists who hold on to archaic views, and sadly these guys are from rich families and have influence over several important people… since they can bribe the less morally sound, it makes them much more dangerous than a couple of penniless drunkards shouting abuse in the street.

Making Hermione into someone who’s been dealing with racism her whole life instead of giving her this comfortable, safe home to return to - it breaks the delicate balance of privilege / lack of privilege in the trio.

I personally think that Hermione’s character is much more interesting if you make her come into the Wizarding World as this wide-eyed little kid who’s already persuaded she knows everything and that she’ll be hailed as a prodigy, only to have her understand that, just as respect is not something you’re entitled to, but something you have to earn - that’s the first lesson she’ll learn from Ron - there are also people who just won’t respect you because they’re prejudiced little buggers - and that’s where Malfoy comes in (and sorry but he’s just here to be a disgusting bigot, not to be redeemed by Hermione’s luuuuurve).

I get it, the the whole “Hermione is discriminated in both worlds” theme makes her a very tragic character… But that’s exactly the problem. If you take away Hermione’s privilege, it ends up being “the terrible, tragic, angsty tale of Hermione Granger, woe is her”, and she ends up in a position where people will just throw her a gigantic pity-party.

The trio’s characters are carefully balanced, and making Hermione a victim of racism in both Muggle and magical worlds ends up screwing over the remaining two by putting more woes on Hermione’s shoulders. Making Harry a victim of racism as well does the exact same thing - and I’d argue it makes it worse, because Ron-bashers are already very eager to scream “omg so wha t if he doezn’t hav moneys he complain for nuthing what a t erribl e freind�� and to completely disregard Ron’s struggles… so add discriminated, rejected-by-both-worlds Harry and Hermione into this mix and Ron’s issues would be downright ignored in favour of Harry’s and Hermione’s, who would seem to have “more misery” on their plates compared to him, at least in a purely mathematical sense (the argument being that “more issues to deal with = more misery”).

Okay, you’re still with me, you haven’t unfollowed me, and you’re not completely outraged at my reasoning? Then let me tell you again: I don’t care about the characters’ skin color, and you can interpret them any way you want. Make Harry have Asian ancestry or have Hermione be a black woman, be creative, have fun. This is the way I see the characters and the way I interpret them, and my own reasoning for doing so. A trio is a balancing act and must be carefully constructed so there is equilibrium on every side. Add or substract something and it all tips over. It’s the main reason why the trio is so unrecognizable in the movies, with a Harry as bland as canned soup, a Ron turned into both a joke and dead weight, and a Hermione as realistic as a turtle dancing the boogie on ice-skates.

The triangle is the most stable geometric figure. Without Harry, Ron and Hermione have no purpose (besides falling in love and living happily ever after of course). Without Hermione, Harry and Ron manage but lose a great deal of time, and then it might be too late for them to save the day. And without Ron… Harry and Hermione are downright unable to function, kind of like a horse with a broken leg.

Why do you think Rowling had created only three different wand cores at first? Or why Harry, Ron and Hermione present some qualities from Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff respectively? (yes, I associated Ron to Ravenclaw, because Rowena wanted “wit beyond measure” and Ron has wit in spades, and Hufflepuffs are known to be hard-working, which fits Hermione’s work ethic perfectly) Or why there are three Hallows, and why each member of the trio picks a different one? It’s all for the sake of the balancing act. A duo is made of opposites. A trio is made of complementarities.

… Well, this turned into an impromptu lecture on literature. I hope this’ll help you if you ever need to create your very own trio of heroes.

#harry potter #harry potter discourse #hermione granger #rip me

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thechekhov · 7 years ago

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I am currently an exchange student in Japan, do you have any advice?

Hmmm, yes.

[Image text - TIP#1: If you find a conbini snack that you love, buy it now. It will disappear when you least expect it.]

Japanese conbini and their ever-changing stock of seasonal flavors exist for one purpose only - to teach us the great fleeting nature of love. Nothing you are attached to will last forever. That flavor of Coolish ice-cream you confidently bought yesterday and plan to eat again tomorrow? It’s not going to be waiting for you. All things end. Especially conbini foods.

So buy it. Buy it now. Because who knows when they’ll stop selling it? Probably next week. Better be safe.

[Image text - TIP#2: Sorting your trash into 20 different types of recyclables might be a pain in the ass, but that doesn’t mean you’re above doing it. Do it.]

I know it’s annoying. You threw away your plastics like you were supposed to - but suddenly, the trash grandma is back at your door, and she’s given you your entire trash bag back. Because your trash was trash. You put in the PET plastic bottle with the REGULAR plastics, which means you’re in the red. Redo the whole bag and start again!

Don’t be so quick to scoff. Just because it’s not something you were used to back in your own home country doesn’t give you a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card to disregard it here. Being polite in the smallest situations and taking care to do these simple things will help you in the long run, trust me.

[Image text - TIP#3: Forget the 和 (wa). The important thing is to follow a more basic universal rule: Treat others how you want to be treated.]

A lot of expats think that they have to figure out the whole ‘mystique’ of the country, like it’s a puzzle or some kind of a plot-heavy chapter of manga with lots of symbolism. Then, when they think they have, they parade it around like they’ve cracked the whole thing like a code.

But I recommend leaving those exotic stereotypes behind. The people you will live with/study with/work with are all normal people who are just trying to get through their day, like you. Don’t read too deep into it. They just want to be treated with basic respect and decency.

That being said! Do take care to notice the difference in customs and acknowledge that some things are different in your home country and Japan. Sometimes, when in Rome...

[Image text - TIP#4: Before you make a big decision, check in with another person, especially if you’re on a team.]

This is called 相談 (soudan), and I give this advice to a lot of people who are from Western cultures who are abroad in Japan. Most likely (sorry for assuming) you are from a country that values initiative and taking charge. Making a decision on your own might be viewed as a sign of leadership and strength.

But be careful about this - especially if you’re working on something as a team, or if your decisions might influence others. Teamwork is not just the result of each person pulling their own sled at their own pace. Unison is something that is achieved, first and foremost, through communication. If you have an idea, first you should communicate it to your higher-up - your boss or your teacher - to have another person evaluate your thoughts. This shows that you are willing to be considerate of others thoughts instead of just charging ahead on your own.

TL;DR: Leeroy Jenkins: DON’T.

[Image text - TIP#5: If you are about to start a sentence with “Japanese guys are...” or “Japanese girls always...” ...Stop. Think. Maybe don’t.]

Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re living in another country - it’s stressful. It’s difficult for your feelings to be understood by the people you’re surrounded with. You have different life experiences, different values, and different viewpoints. And some of the trends that you’ve seen lately and really bugging the hell outta you.

But generalizing an entire country is not always going to be the answer to that. Especially if it’s based on sexist or racist interpretations.

There are times when generalizations are going to be made to point out an overall larger problem in society - like Japan’s racism, or Japan’s sexism. But unless you’re discussing these issues, don’t divide up the people you interact with on a daily basis into stereotypical categories. It doesn’t make you enlightened. It just makes you a jaded foreigner.

(This message brought to you by my frustrations when browsing subreddits, where white dudes write 8 paragraphs about how ‘All Japanese girls only wanna get married, have babies and force you to work as a salaryman to support her.’ Fuck off with that, honestly.)

In fact, don’t try to pretend like you know the country better than the people who live in it. Because...

[Image text - TIP#6: If you’re a foreigner in Japan - Good! Your job is not to assimilate. Your job is to learn new things, share what you know, and be yourself.]

I see a lot of exchange students doing their best to ‘blend in’. Like the end goal is to be the most Japanese-like foreigner you can possibly be. But that’s not what you should be aiming for!

If you’re different - if you look different, have a different culture, different viewpoints... none of that is a bad thing! Be you! (As stated previously, do be respectful.) You don’t have to shave away parts of your personality just to fit in.

And one last thing, so we can finish off on a funny note, since this got hella heavy:

[Image text - TIP#7: Watch out for gajin traps.]

They’re called that for a reason.

#japan #living in japan #expat #exchange student #ask #japanese culture #JET #JET Program #Anonymous

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cookinguptales · 7 years ago

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SO. Some thoughts on the shorts presentations.

(Note: I only go to the live-action and animated ones; the documentary shorts are harder to see in my city and frankly, they’re often too intense for my current mental health.)

I went to see the shorts yesterday and like I said earlier, I thought the live-action shorts were generally very good and the animated shorts were generally a waste of time and In A Heartbeat was fucking robbed. The live-action shorts were mostly based on true stories, oddly enough, but they were still beautiful.

(This is two years of underwhelming animated nominees and I’m like ughhhh bc some years everything is amazing but recently I’ve not been agreeing with their picks at all.)

I’m about to discuss like 13 shorts, so it’s all under a cut.

Live-Action Shorts

DeKalb Elementary

I have to be honest with you, considering our current political climate, I started crying from the moment this short started until it ended. Like I saw the title come up on the screen and I was like OH NO. The short is based on the real-life school shooting at Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, and I teared up just typing that sentence. However, this school had one of the few “happy” endings of a shooting; a receptionist at the school started talking to the shooter and calmed him down until he could admit that he really needed medical help and didn’t want to hurt anyone. She probably saved a lot of lives, and this dramatic interpretation of her 911 call is really deeply touching. The acting was really incredible, and the connection between the two of them was palpable without lessening the terrifying suspense of the moment. A really beautiful and deeply affecting short.

(Though, all that said, I wonder at the decision to create a mostly apolitical short about school shootings in today’s climate…)

(cw: guns, threatened violence, mental health issues)

A Silent Child

Surprise, I cried through this one, too! A Silent Child is a short about a young deaf girl in the UK whose parents refuse to learn sign language or teach it to her. This is a depressingly common experience in real life, and watching this girl’s nanny teach this girl sign language and seeing her really come alive now that she could truly communicate, neither the mother’s jealousy and self-consciousness nor her eventual decision to fire the nanny and forbid her child from ever using sign language again surprised me.

To keep a somewhat objective approach, I do think the end of the short was a bit maudlin; it seemed kind of odd that the girl, in that situation, would choose to sign “I love you” — this seemed more heartstring-yanking than something that felt realistic. That said, the rest of the short was really heartbreakingly realistic. It’s a personal subject for me; deafness runs in my family and my little sister is profoundly deaf. My parents started learning sign language the day she was born and made sure I did, too. I grew up in a truly bilingual household and didn’t understand until I was much older that many hearing parents don’t do this for their children. At first I was sitting in the theater like “well, my parents knew it might be a possibility; they were prepared before she was born” but then it is revealed that the mother in this short knew of a family history as well; her utter self-involvement and ego become more and more clear throughout the course of the story.

The short presents a very complicated familial relationship that felt very foreign and very familiar to me at the same time, and I’ll admit I cried a lot. Despite some shortcomings in the character writing, it really is a very important topic to talk about. I think I would have preferred that the emphasis be a little less on the nanny’s feelings and a little more on the girl, but it was overall a very good short — and notable for using an actual deaf actress and real BSL.

(cw: Ableism, child abuse)

My Nephew Emmett

This is a dramatic retelling of the experiences of Mose Wright as he tried to save his 14-year-old nephew, Emmett Till. If that name is familiar to you (and if it’s not, google this important case — but guard yourself for some deeply upsetting events and imagery) then you can probably figure out about how this short went. The story is a familiar, if horrifying one, but this film is interesting in that it doesn’t show much of the part we’re all familiar with. There isn’t that much graphic violence (IIRC, punching a boy in the stomach, manhandling him, and threatening folks with guns is the extent of it), and the very famous pictures of Emmett Till post-attack are not shown. (Though they are evoked in animation during the credits.)

Instead, this film really focuses on the emotional build-up of the event, and very palpably expresses the horrors and tensions of living during this time period in this place while black. There is some absolutely gorgeous imagery in this short, and some of the images of Mose sitting up all night with a gun, waiting for his nephew to come home, will stay with me forever. The acting and cinematography are top-notch, and there is a sort of dignity to these people that is not always afforded in shorts that can easily become misery porn for fascinated gawkers. Really just beautifully, meaningfully done. Media based on true stories like this can sometimes be wooden or insensitive. This was neither. A familiar story, but a breathtaking short.

(Cw: extreme racism, including racial slurs, violence, child death)

The 11 o’clock

In a year full of strong contenders, this Australian short was a glaring weak point. It’s a film about a psychiatrist who gets a patient who believes he’s a psychiatrist, and the rest of the fairly predictable short is pretty much just who’s on first shenanigans that get annoying very quickly. Also, after the powerful DeKalb Elementary, it felt uncomfortable poking fun at people with mental illness and using personal delusions for comedy.

But hey, at least it was short.

Watu Wote (All of Us)

Though it was a great year, this was probably my favorite of the shorts. As the film introduced itself as being about racial tensions between Christians and Muslims in Kenya, I was kind of bracing myself for some of the frankly racist/xenophobic content I’ve seen in some past years. However, this short was actually about an event in 2015 during which the militant group Al-Shabaab stopped a bus with an eye towards killing the Christians onboard, but were thwarted by the Muslim passengers who protected their Christian co-riders with, quite literally, their lives.

The short follows a Christian woman who is traveling home to visit with her sick mother, and the trip clearly terrifies her. It is later revealed that her husband and child had been killed by anti-Christian radicals years before and she still views Muslims with a large amount of wary mistrust. She clashes with other passengers on the bus, but she is shocked when the bus is pulled over and the Muslim passengers immediately move to protect and hide her. There are some truly tense scenes during which she is hiding from the militants and Muslim passengers are arguing with them about how un-Muslim their actions truly are. The short is not without bloodshed.

The short could have veered into being preachy at any time, but was instead a very raw depiction of these religious and ethnic tensions in this part of the world. While you could not fault the protagonist for being wary after her experiences, a lot of catharsis is felt when she realizes that there is a large difference between the men who killed her family and the terrified yet heroic passengers on her bus. It’s a true story and one respectfully told. I’d heard about the event when it happened, but didn’t know all the details; it was nice to have these heroes (particularly the fallen ones) commemorated in a moving short like this. The acting and directing was incredible, and again, I cried. A lot. I cried through basically this entire shorts presentation with a short break during the psychiatrist one, during which I ???ed a lot.

In a time where there is so much anti-Muslim sentiment in the world, I think this film made a very powerful statement, and I was glad to see it. I cannot believe this was a student film.

(Cw: ethnic/religious discrimination, blood, violence, death, child endangerment, mentions of dead children)

Honestly, this was a very strong year for the live-action shorts, and I would happy if any of the non-Australian shorts won.

Who I think will win: My Nephew Emmett or Watu Wote

Who should win: Very, very narrowly, Watu Wote

Animated Shorts

Negative Space

This is a French stop-motion film, and probably my favorite of the animated shorts this year — not that that’s saying much. It was kind of slight, frankly speaking, but the animation was really inventive and it was a joy to watch, at least, even if it was mostly just a guy relating a brief anecdote about his deceased father. Besides praising the really visually interesting animation, I’ll admit there’s not much to say about this one.

(Cw: death, you see an open-coffin funeral)

Garden Party

Beautiful animation, for the most part, but like. The entire plot is that a bunch of frogs take over this rich guy’s house after he’s murdered, which is…again, not that much of a plot. I guess the main point of it was “nature doesn’t care about riches or human life” and “corpses are funny”, which I’d tend to agree with and disagree with, respectively. While I appreciated the rising tension as you notice all the creepy details of this broken-into house in the background of cute frogs cavorting, the “punchline” of this short, which was a detailed close-up of the prior resident’s mutilated, bloated corpse that’d been sitting in the pool is just like. Pointlessly disgusting, and after watching a short about Emmett Till, it felt almost unconscionably callous. Honestly I was like. Mildly interested for most of it, and completely repelled by the end. People talk about this short’s “dark sense of humor” and I’m mostly just reminded of all those edgy assholes I met in college and was happy to never meet again.

(Cw: violence, very, very grotesquely graphic depictions of a corpse)

Lou

This one is Pixar’s inevitable nomination, and it’s very… Pixar. Idk, this one was kind of fun to watch, had a typical slightly-maudlin moment of sentimentality at the end, but it really wasn’t Pixar’s finest. It’s a pretty slight film about a bully befriending a sentient lost and found and learning to Be A Good Dude along with some stuff about the cycle of bullying that was dealt with too briefly to really be hard-hitting. What was odd to me while watching it is that I found myself thinking “wow, this animation does not seem up to Pixar’s usual standard”, which really surprised me. Like, it’s by no means bad! It just reminds me of the work that Pixar was doing several years ago, y’know? All in all, kind of cute but ultimately forgettable.

Revolting Rhymes, Part 1

(Longer review because this one was a half hour long as opposed to the rest, which were all 5-7 minutes.)

Ugh, okay. So the Academy, in their infinite wisdom, keeps nominating children’s specials for this award. They’re typically long-winded, rhyming adaptations of children’s picture books with subpar animation, and while Revolting Rhymes was better than The Gruffalo or Room on the Broom, I still felt my eyes glazing over. Plus, frankly, I take issue with this “short” even being eligible. It’s not a short. Shorts (in the Oscars) are 40 minutes or less. Revolting Rhymes is a two-episode miniseries that makes up one hour-long children’s program. In other words, if you see this at the short’s presentation, you will only see the first half of the story. (I googled the second half when I got home so I could properly review it.) They just split it into two; that doesn’t make it two discrete shorts. But I digress.

So this is your typical fairy tale retelling, and while I liked some aspects of it, others were trite and overdone. It was fun seeing Red Riding Hood go full vigilante, I suppose. It was actually frustrating as hell, especially because of In A Heartbeat’s snub; Revolting Rhymes really seemed like it was about to go to the f/f place with Red and Snow White. I was starting to get interested. These women were fighting for each other, giving each other flowers, embracing, leaning against each other, they eventually move in together… Like it was pretty fucking gay. AND THEN THEY NO HOMO’D IT AT THE END. I even looked up the second half to be completely sure. So that was really going to turn me against this film anyway because there’s nothing more tiring of getting one of those “in the future, they are gal pals and Red grew up and had kids!!” epilogues, especially when an actual queer love story was utterly ignored in favor of subpar shorts.

That aside, though, it’s just overly long, predictable, and kind of dull after a while. Frankly speaking, it’s for children and it doesn’t really have great crossover appeal for adults.

(Cw: pretty intense non-graphic violence, some sexist overtones, no homo-ing)

Dear Basketball

This short is just incomprehensible to me. It’s a short poem by Kobe Bryant that’s animated by the legendary Glen Keane with music by John Williams. Which should tell you how bewilderingly weird this whole scenario is. The whole time I was like “Is this a vanity project? How did he get such talent to sign on for such a self-indulgent little film? Did he just start throwing money around? Are both of these men closet Kobe fans?” Like I really don’t understand what even happened for this film to get made. It was inexplicable.

I guess it’s exactly what you’d expect. Kobe Bryant has written a saccharine poem about how much he has always loved basketball, and how he is now sad he has to give it up. It’s beautifully animated with a sweeping score. I am deeply confused, and cannot understand why this was even nominated in the wake of the #MeToo movement, considering the allegations against Bryant.

*shrugs???*

(And the highly commended shorts. IN A HEARTBEAT DIDN’T EVEN FUCKING MAKE HIGHLY COMMENDED, FUCK THE OSCARS COMMITTEE TBH.)

Lost Property Office

Another short about a lost and found…? I mean, okay, why the fuck not, this year is clearly a debacle anyway. This one was basically about a guy who works for the MTA lost and found, and he’s being let go because no one ever claims anything. The film, to be fair, does have a really interesting visual aesthetic… But the direction it goes in, again, is just kind of like. Okay. Not exactly emotionally gripping.

(Cw: no one actually commits suicide in this, but the short very clearly utilizes imagery that conjures up suicide)

Achoo

Trite little film about a dragon I’m supposed to think is cute but I really thought was kind of gross and annoying. It’s this thing about how this annoying dragon wants to make a fireworks display better than the mean bully dragons and he sneezes goop everywhere and uses chemicals (which feels like cheating..?) and accidentally invents fireworks. It’s always, uh, awkward when there’s a piece of animation that does some cutesy depiction of another culture’s faux “mythology”, and this one really didn’t particularly do it well.

Weeds

Short about a dandelion (I guess? They didn’t really look like dandelions, but oh well.) trying to move from a dead yard to the yard next door full of sprinklers. It dies before it makes it and its seeds float over to the lawn. Then you get some inspirational quote about NEVER GIVING UP and I’m like okay but it died???? It didn’t make it????? Is this some really depressing point about the struggles of immigrant parents or something or did you actually think this was inspirational?

Forgettable.

Who I think will win: Negative Space or Revolting Rhymes Who I think should win: In A Heartbeat

IN A HEARTBEAT WAS ROBBED NEVER FORGIVE NEVER FORGET.

#oscar nominated shorts #long post

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hereayourmirrors · 4 years ago

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Secret Garden

I know, I know, it's an assignment book, but I will still include it in my reading log, and I do this because while reading this I had all sorts of questions. So let us dive into our small Q&A session

Q.#1 Why does the author dislike Mary so much?!

It is not really hard to figure out that the author hates Mary at least at the beginning. This poor girl has ALL the qualities to be disliked and even hated by the reader. Almost at the beginning of the book, we get a pretty explicit description of Mary:

So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way also. [1, p. 2]

It seems like the author doesn't miss any chance he gets to accentuate how ugly and disgusting she is in every way possible. She has no manners, she hits people, she waits for everybody to do everything for her and doesn't even think to say please or thank you. Nobody really likes her, and the author seems to coerce the reader to despise her, but I rejected that position. Why do I have to hate the poor girls, who got half-raised by Indian servants and never truly belonged to anybody? Why do I have to hate Mary for her lack of obedience and manners if she has never been taught how to behave?

I don't think I have an answer, although there is an assumption. The book was written in 1911, and at that time, the didactic influence on children's literature remained relatively strong. Deborah Stevenson, in her article "History of Children's and Young Adult Literature" states:

Didacticism remains a strong element of contemporary children's books ostensibly designed for pleasure.[2, p. 180]

So there we have it, Mary is designed to be disgusting at the beginning of the book because children who do not behave cannot be good. They have to take a spiritual journey, understand how to be a good member of society, stop being disagreeable. Only then they can be worthy of pleasing adjectives.

Interestingly enough, Marina Nikolajeva in her article “Did you Feel as if you Hated People?” states, that Mary is depicted in that way, because the author doesn’t want readers to relate to characters, to merge with their personality.

The “just-like-me” assessment of characters, frequently adopted by novice readers, is restricted by the readers’ experience and does not foster empathy [3, p. 101]

Nevertheless, the author admits that most of Marry's problems are a consequence of the complete absence of her family:

If she had been an affectionate child, who had been used to being loved, she would have broken her heart, but even though she was "Mistress Mary Quite Contrary" she was desolate, and the bright-breasted little bird brought a look into her sour little face which was almost a smile. [1, p. 23]

In this context, the word "desolate" caught my attention. Having looked at the Online Cambridge Dictionary, I discovered the meaning - "extremely sad and feeling alone".

So Mary is not "ugly", she is not "quite contrary", not "fretful". She is just desolate and unjustly deprived of the basic human need - the need of a family, the need for being loved and cared for.

Q.#2 Is Colin really different from Marry?

Well, no.

That would be the simple answer and the most evident one, as the author tells us more than once, that Colin and Marry are equal in how horribly they behave towards other people. Nevertheless, while reading, I couldn't help but notice how different author makes us feel about them.

Colin, who is another unfortunate child without a proper family, never gets to be called something as ugly or fretful. He is shown to be pretty egoistic, but from the author's perspective, it doesn't look like he needs to go on a spiritual journey to become "a good child". Moreover, not only once is he described as a beautiful boy, even though he often has tantrums and never goes outside.

He was a very proud boy. He lay thinking for a while, and then Mary saw his beautiful smile begin and gradually change his whole face. [1, p.129]

Now, maybe he is portrayed like that because most of the time, we see the world from Marry's perspective, and she evidently fancies him. That is why, despite him being a "brat", he has a beautiful appearance.

Q.#3 Is the book really racist?

Well, yes.

Although, that answer, just like the previous one, would be the shallow one. Let us dig deeper.

As I already mentioned, we see the world from Marry’s perspective, except only for two last chapters, where we see robin’s and Mr Craven points of view. She is the one who encountered Indian people, and she is ultimately the only source of information about India that all the other characters possess. So, being a spoiled little girl as she is, is it any wonder that she talks about Indian servants in such a humiliating way? I bet she would speak like that about any person who served her, no matter the race or nationality. There was also an interesting dialogue between Martha and Marry:

“Eh! I can see it’s different,” she answered almost sympathetically. “I dare say it’s because there’s such a lot o’ blacks there instead o’ respectable white people. When I heard you was comin’ from India I thought you was a black too.”

Mary sat up in bed furious.

“What!” she said. “What! You thought I was a native. You—you daughter of a pig!”

Martha stared and looked hot.

“Who are you callin’ names?” she said. “You needn’t be so vexed. That’s not th’ way for a young lady to talk. I’ve nothin’ against th’ blacks. When you read about ’em in tracts they’re always very religious. You always read as a black’s a man an’ a brother. I’ve never seen a black an’ I was fair pleased to think I was goin’ to see one close. [1, p. 15]

From this passage, we can see that Martha has nothing against black people. In fact, the notion of “respectable white people” comes out of her lack of proper education and the absence of intercultural communication.

In the world 21st century, it is tough to say something without enraging certain people. I dare say, the silencing imposed on the Internet speech came to the point, that you are afraid to state your opinion without being condemned (Twitter campaign with hashtags RIPJKRowling as the most recent example).

The same thing applies to the books such as Secret Garden that cannot fit into modern cannon. Should we ban them? Where is the line between book propagandising the racism and the book that has racist characters in? Should we simply deny the existence of such people? And if yes, wouldn’t this denial be more dangerous than just putting the reality of the world out there for children to see? How do we insert that kind of people into a book and at the same time show that what they say isn’t quite right?

These questions are not part of our Q&A session, because, sadly, I don’t have the answer. I doubt that anyone does.

Q.#4 Why would author put that Yorkshire accent in the text?

That is a question that I asked myself pretty frequently. Actually, I wondered about it every time I struggled to read and understand it... so, every two pages more or less.

When I first encountered it, I instantly remember the books of Stephen King. In almost every one of his books, some people speak a southern American accent, making it hard to understand them. Reading those books, I didn’t bother wondering, what was the point of that kind of speech. Still, in the case of Secret Garden, the answer came to me quite quickly - it is actually a great author’s linguistic attempt to make the reader feel like Marry.

She comes to a place totally different from what she knew all her life, and even though people speak her language, she still struggles to understand them. It definitely helped me to relate to Mary, because, let me tell you, the Scottish accent is not an easy one to understand! So, I felt (and still sometimes feel) very awkward keeping asking people to repeat what they just said, just like Marry.

Q.#5 Is “The Secret Garden” anti-feminist?

It is not that hard to see, that "The Secret Garden", although started as an Entwicklungsroman, where the main character is supposed to develop and mentally mature, suddenly lost its point. The focus just shifted to Colin, and Mary was not even at the end of the story, discarded as a redundant character. While it may be seen so, there is an interesting article by Linda Parsons "' Otherways' into the Garden Re-visioning the Feminine in the Secret Garden" [4] where she argues that this novel is feminist in its core. Therefore, the author points out the fluidity of the gender depicted in the book. She gives an example of Ben Weatherstaff and Dickson, who are both caring and close to nature, something that is considered to be feminine qualities.

Also, she argues that the shift of the focus from Marry to Colin is justified. From her perspective, the author's intent to show that Collin is expelled from the Garden. Therefore, it is still Marry's story, because she matured and grew as a person, while Colin, even though healed physically, couldn't reach her emotional level, so he has no place in the Garden. I accept her interpretation, although I would point out, that I can't entirely agree with her last statement "I rejoice that Mary remains forever in the garden" [4, p. 267]. The fairytale-like endings that include nouns such as forever cannot be perceived as positive. The characters should evolve, both mentally and physically, but staying in one place forever would prevent Mary from doing that.

So at first, it was tough to understand Martha and Dickson, but with time it became more comfortable for Marry as well as for me. She even started speaking in Yorkshire sometimes, and that is a way of the author to show us one of the small but significant changes in Marry. Not only she becomes more kind towards other people, she genuinely wants to learn how to speak their language. Even Colin starts to master it, I guess, this skill he acquires after his magic ritual.

Interestingly enough, in the retold version, characters don’t speak Yorkshire anymore. I think although it makes it easier for children to read it, the book itself loses a valuable lesson of acceptance of other cultures and the assimilation. I would even argue that it’s one of the most important ones, as in our age of globalisation being acceptant of different cultures is a vital skill.

___

References:

1. Frances Hodgson Burnett “The Secret Garden”, The Project Gutenberg, accessed on: 07 Oct 2020: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/113/113-h/113-h.htm

2. Deborah Stevenson. 19 Oct 2010, History of Children’s and Young Adult Literature from: Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature Routledge, accessed on: 12 Oct 2020: https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203843543.ch13

3. Maria Nikolajeva (2013) “Did you Feel as if you Hated People?”: Emotional Literacy Through Fiction, New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship, 95-107 pp.

4. Linda Parsons “’Otherways’ into the Garden Re-visioning the Feminine in the Secret Garden”, Children’s Literature in Education, Vol. 33, No. 4, December 2002, 247-268 pp.

#secretgarden

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spotlightsaga · 7 years ago

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Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews... Dear White People (S01E01) Chapter 1 Airdate: April 28, 2017 @netflix @JSim07 Ratings: Privatized @DearWhitePeople Score: 7.5/10 TVTime/FB/Twitter/IG/Tumblr/Path/Pin: @SpotlightSaga **********SPOILERS BELOW********** Dear White People, Brown People, and any People who are reading, listening, watching, or paying attention... Eventually it was coming. Eventually this series had to be addressed. But how? The last thing a Sexually Fluid, White Scotch-Irish, Ginger Male in an 11 year+ gay relationship, living in an Argentinian neighborhood within a city that has massive pockets of square miles with +80% people who speak Spanish as a first language... Or large numbers of neighborhoods with Haitian-Creole voices blasting loudly from friendly faces throwing friendly waves from a group of old men, who for some reason are always sitting at a major bus stop in North Miami Beach (but never going anywhere or taking any busses), wants to be labeled as is a 'Pseudo' or even a 'Hardcore-Leftist' who's desperately out to prove that he isn't racist. You won't be getting that article from me. You won't be getting anything of the sort from this 10-Piece Project that I assure you I will be taking my time on. I am not Left. I am not right. I'm barely in the middle. This isn't political, though it might have political undertones and repercussions. That's on interpretation, not me. By now you know that Spotlight Saga never reviews anything in a traditional manner unless it's an everyday type series that doesn't carry a particular tense or emotional impact. We go at our own pace and I prefer existential challenges, but all are welcome. I had made promises to write articles to accompany 'Dear White People', brought to us by the new & true, multitalented Justin Simien, to multiple readers, but I was waiting for the right time. Sure, I have an army of unreleased articles and reviews ready to shoot out of an iOS cannon when I'm not feeling particularly inspired, but that just hasn't happened lately, so expect last second 'Big 4 Network' reviews to start spewing out sometime in September, because everything from 'Gotham' to 'Lucifer' to 'Colony' awaits you. Oh boy. Now let's get something straight, particularly to the people on Social Media whining and crying about the show's polarizing title, claiming to cancel (or to the ones who actually did cancel, though I doubt it) their Netflix subscriptions because the title evoked some sort of feeling of uncomfortable paranoia, or what they felt was divisive rhetoric, even though it was them who were attempting to divide themselves from Netflix and causing a stir... Ultimately giving the show free promotion in the process. DWP isn't a series that is out to make anyone feel shame, wagging a brown finger across your noses, or smacking you over the top of the head with a rolled up newspaper, preferably Sunday (because there are some people who actually deserve it). The show's main protagonist narrates the thoughts of Justin Simien directly and quite accurately, right off the bat. "Dear White People is a misnomer. My show is meant to articulate the feelings of a misrepresented group outside the majority." @jsouth71 on Twitter, one of many racist, idiot keyboard warriors (I'm personally singling out him because he no longer seems to be active - guess he came, he typed, and he successfully looked like an idiot), responded to the original trailer (legit on March 12, 2017, the show didn't even air until April 28th) with multiple hashtags claiming that Netflix was racist. His most hilarious claim (to me anyway) is the one claiming that the show, what it stands for, and those that support it are all full of #LiberalBS. Well what now, Joey Southworth? I'm not even Liberal, Black, or some sort of seemingly desperate apologist... I have no agenda, except to review a Netflix TV Series in a way like no one has ever done before and while doing so, tell you all MY story, my letter to White People, because there is one thing I won't do... Tell someone else's truth... Unless they ask me to, I am for hire, y'all. Ironically, Lionel (DeRon Horton), says something eerily similar to what I've just said and said before a million times. Some people, *coughAVCLUBcough*, don't understand that telling someone else's 'truth' isn't necessarily the point of journalism, but sometimes it does involve telling another person's story from your OWN perspective, after a little help from gaining a bit of someone else's. So let's kick this thing off, shall we? It's going to be a doozy! Samantha White aka Sam (Logan Browning - ah, yes we see the ironic juxtaposition of those names already, especially since the character is biracial) attends an Ivy League school called Winchester University and hosts a radio show on campus called 'Dear White People'. As the aforementioned quote pulled directly from Sam's mouth would suggest, she really just wants to be a voice not normally heard without some sort of filter or applied lens to trickle out what people feel safe with. Sam isn't prejudice or even remotely a bigot, she doesn't seem to be whatsoever. As a matter of fact, Sam's reactions to environmental stimuli and certain situations remind me of me. She is shown often attempting to pull back when faced with a possibility of reacting off of an emotion, but when that emotion becomes overwhelming, she caves and takes control by spiraling out of control. There is a blackface party on campus and it is quickly revealed by the end of the episode that the campus crew, Pastiche, had their Facebook hacked and invites were sent out after the school's administration had already shut down the idea of the party even going forward. Did Sam send it? Please remember we're talking E1, and I don't go beyond that. She claims to have sent the email in an emotionally provocative, genuinely stirring speech she delivers after her radio show is pushed to the sidelines. She had shown up for her time slot and someone else had taken her place due to the recent controversy. This all forces Sam to make a split, snap decision, overthrowing the DJ booth like a straight up BOSS... A prime example of what I mean when I say she 'takes control by spiraling out'. Sam is also seen videotaping the party and later editing & going over the footage. So far, 2+2=4, but if she did indeed do what she said she did, then she's not the only one playing games to prove a point. She's outed to have a white boyfriend, Gabe (John Patrick Amedori), who she seems to genuinely like and in turn he is definitely enamored with her. Yes, by the way, one can be racist and have a significant other of an alternate race (as we covered in an article in S2 of the E4 & Netflix series 'Chewing Gum' after talking with and interviewing several women of color from the Caribbean)... Thats related to the fetishization or perversion of race, skin color, or anything of the like, but that isn't what it looks like what is going on here. There's definitely some real life chemistry brewing. Of course, some of Sam's peers look at her with disdain after Gabe puts their ongoing, once secret relationship on blast with an Instagram pic and a hashtag... Amazing what hashtags are capable of these days, ammirite? Well, in this case it's less the hashtag and more of the 'tagging' of the pic done by Sam's arch nemesis, Coco (Antoinette Robinson - who my white, CW loving ass recognizes from the God-awful 3rd season of 'Hart of Dixie', yeah I see you, Lavon's Niece!)... All of this confusion and animosity is what Coco wanted but this isn't what she necessarily got, not in the exact form she was aiming for, at least. Here comes the fun part! Through self-reflection and talks with her best friend, Joelle (Ashley Blaine Featherson), Sam realizes she does in fact like Gabe and decides to embrace the couple's outing... Bringing him along to her usually, black only, weekly viewing of 'Defamation', a hilarious satire of Shonda Rhimes' (who might just answer this cheeky mockery, since she just scored herself a Netflix contract) ABC political thriller, or just plain dumbed down (sorry Rhimes' fans) version of 'Scandal' (as if it could go any lower). Ouch! Anyway, according to Sam, 'Defamation Wednesdays' are the cornerstone of black college campus life.' It's just that, well, Gabe is obviously feeling a bit 'fish out of water'... Come on, white people, think about how you feel when you are the only white person in the room, you get it right? Well, that's more than likely how your good friend of color feels when you invite them out and they are the only black person to show up at your Baby Shower, Birthday Party, 'Girls Night Out', whatever the event may be. It takes time. It's admirable that Gabe came, it truly is, but this isn't exactly the same situation that I used for environmental comparisons. Sam has a show called 'Dear White People' for Christ Sake, she has an obligation to stick to her guns, sure... But love is love, and as long as there is no perversion of skin going on, who the fuck cares? Mind your mother fucking own! Oh, but that's a tale as old as time, people just love to give no fucks about this or that, while simultaneously giving all kinds of fucks about who someone lays next to at night. I can attest to both of these things, or some version of it, at least... As I live in a part of the States where I'm the only white guy that's not a Euro-Tourist in an incredibly wide radius, also being in a gay relationship, I get quite a few double takes... And the giant Red Beard doesn't help. Yet, I've come to a point where I've been here so long and become so accustomed to a different environment, being amongst other white people makes me a tad uncomfortable. More on that another episode, another day. Reggie (Marque Richardson) isn't too happy about Gabe's presence at the 'Defamation' viewing party... I'm guessing it's a lot less because he's white and a lot more because Reggie feels like he should be the one holding Sam's hand. Reggie comes off as a bit of a jackass, then again, Gabe is not only encroaching on what appears to be Reggie's love interest, but he's also aggressively inserting himself into the group. It's not that Reggie, or most of Sam's friends and acquaintances are prejudice of intolerant, quite the opposite, really. It actually seems more like a 'too much, too soon' situation. Take race out of the equation for a second, take out that fact that Sam's ideals are being broadcasted over the radio, representing a whole lot of people. EVERYONE eyes the 'new' guy or gal in a group, especially if that new person is also a new significant other, I don't care who you are. It's always best to sit back, shut your mouth, and let people come to you... Not stick out your hand and affirm loudly that, 'Hi, I'm Gabe, and I'll be taking a prominent role here now, whether you like it or not.' I love the fact that just like we all have a long way to go as a society when it comes to understanding where everyone is coming from, why people feel what they feel, so do the characters of 'Dear White People', all of them... Black, White, and everyone in between... Especially the girl in between! Yes, it appears that Sam is telling the truth in her guerrilla takeover, emotionally charged, campus wide, broadcasted admission... And if she wasn't she appears very much ready to to take both the praise & the heat (something not yet shown in E1) that she was the one who hacked the Pastiche Facebook and sent out the invites, encouraging the culturally ignorant to show up in Blackface and other embarrassingly idiotic, culture appropriated, misfortunes of human error to a party that had already been given the axe... But the show is still playful in its righteous delivery. The narrator (Giancarlo Esposito) points out a white girl and guesses that she's in a Nicki Minaj costume... Later on, while in her feelings, Sam quickly switches her music from a soft, feminine country crooning track, Suzanna Spring's 'Some Blue Sky' to 'Black' by 'Innanet James' on her way to the radio station when passing a group of Black acquaintances... It's ok to laugh, it's ok to point out the confusing parts of a sliding identity. It's ok to be who you are as long as you are true to whoever that is... Unless your a fucking hateful asshole, then Fuck You. *Somebody cue a 'Run The Jewels' track, please* *********Written By: Kevin Cage********** http://www.tvtime.com http://www.facebook.com/spotlightsaga http://www.spotlightsaga.com http://www.facebook.com/groups/artsentertainment

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teachanarchy · 7 years ago

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On 22 February 2014, I published a post on my blog. I titled it “Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race”. It read: “I’m no longer engaging with white people on the topic of race. Not all white people, just the vast majority who refuse to accept the existence of structural racism and its symptoms. I can no longer engage with the gulf of an emotional disconnect that white people display when a person of colour articulates their experience. You can see their eyes shut down and harden. It’s like treacle is poured into their ears, blocking up their ear canals. It’s like they can no longer hear us.

“This emotional disconnect is the conclusion of living a life oblivious to the fact that their skin colour is the norm and all others deviate from it.

“At best, white people have been taught not to mention that people of colour are “different” in case it offends us. They truly believe that the experiences of their life as a result of their skin colour can and should be universal. I just can’t engage with the bewilderment and the defensiveness as they try to grapple with the fact that not everyone experiences the world in the way that they do.

The Guardian's Audio Long Reads 'Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race' – podcast

For years, racism has been defined by the violence of far-right extremists, but a more insidious kind of prejudice can be found where many least expect it – at the heart of respectable society Listen

“They’ve never had to think about what it means, in power terms, to be white, so any time they’re vaguely reminded of this fact, they interpret it as an affront. Their eyes glaze over in boredom or widen in indignation. Their mouths start twitching as they get defensive. Their throats open up as they try to interrupt, itching to talk over you but not to really listen, because they need to let you know that you’ve got it wrong.

“The journey towards understanding structural racism still requires people of colour to prioritise white feelings. Even if they can hear you, they’re not really listening. It’s like something happens to the words as they leave our mouths and reach their ears. The words hit a barrier of denial and they don’t get any further.

“That’s the emotional disconnect. It’s not really surprising, because they’ve never known what it means to embrace a person of colour as a true equal, with thoughts and feelings that are as valid as their own. Watching [the documentary] The Color of Fear by Lee Mun Wah, I saw people of colour break down in tears as they struggled to convince a defiant white man that his words were enforcing and perpetuating a white racist standard on them. All the while he stared obliviously, completely confused by this pain, at best trivialising it, at worst ridiculing it.

“I’ve written before about this white denial being the ubiquitous politics of race that operates on its inherent invisibility. So I can’t talk to white people about race any more because of the consequent denials, awkward cartwheels and mental acrobatics that they display when this is brought to their attention. Who really wants to be alerted to a structural system that benefits them at the expense of others?

“I can no longer have this conversation, because we’re often coming at it from completely different places. I can’t have a conversation with them about the details of a problem if they don’t even recognise that the problem exists. Worse still is the white person who might be willing to entertain the possibility of said racism, but who thinks we enter this conversation as equals. We don’t.

“Not to mention that entering into conversation with defiant white people is a frankly dangerous task for me. As the hackles rise and the defiance grows, I have to tread incredibly carefully, because if I express frustration, anger or exasperation at their refusal to understand, they will tap into their presubscribed racist tropes about angry black people who are a threat to them and their safety. It’s very likely that they’ll then paint me as a bully or an abuser. It’s also likely that their white friends will rally round them, rewrite history and make lies the truth. Trying to engage with them and navigate their racism is not worth that.

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“Amid every conversation about Nice White People feeling silenced by conversations about race, there is a sort of ironic and glaring lack of understanding or empathy for those of us who have been visibly marked out as different for our entire lives, and live the consequences. It’s truly a lifetime of self-censorship that people of colour have to live. The options are: speak your truth and face the reprisals, or bite your tongue and get ahead in life. It must be a strange life, always having permission to speak and feeling indignant when you’re finally asked to listen. It stems from white people’s never-questioned entitlement, I suppose.

“I cannot continue to emotionally exhaust myself trying to get this message across, while also toeing a very precarious line that tries not to implicate any one white person in their role of perpetuating structural racism, lest they character-assassinate me.

“So I’m no longer talking to white people about race. I don’t have a huge amount of power to change the way the world works, but I can set boundaries. I can halt the entitlement they feel towards me and I’ll start that by stopping the conversation. The balance is too far swung in their favour. Their intent is often not to listen or learn, but to exert their power, to prove me wrong, to emotionally drain me, and to rebalance the status quo. I’m not talking to white people about race unless I absolutely have to. If there’s something like a media or conference appearance that means that someone might hear what I’m saying and feel less alone, then I’ll participate. But I’m no longer dealing with people who don’t want to hear it, wish to ridicule it and, frankly, don’t deserve it.”

After I pressed publish, the blogpost took on a life of its own. Years later, I still meet new people, in different countries and different situations, who tell me that they have read it. In 2014, as the post was being linked to all over the internet, I braced myself for the usual slew of racist comments. But the response was so markedly different that it surprised me.

I was three years old when the black student Stephen Lawrence was murdered, and I was 22 when two of his killers were convicted and jailed. Stephen’s mother Doreen Lawrence’s struggle for justice stretched out alongside the timeline of my childhood. Reports of the case were some of the only TV news bulletins I remember absorbing as a child. A vicious racist attack, a black boy stabbed and bleeding to death, a mother desperate for justice. His death haunted me. I began to lose faith in the system.

I used to have a feeling, a vague sense of security in the back of my mind, that if I returned home one day to find my belongings ransacked and my valuables gone, I could call the police and they would help me. But if this case taught me anything, it was that there are occasions when the police cannot be trusted to act fairly.

On the evening of 22 April 1993, 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence left his uncle’s house in Plumstead, south-east London, with his friend Duwayne Brooks. As the two friends waited at a bus stop, Lawrence started crossing the road to see if the bus was coming. He didn’t make it to the other side. He was confronted by a gang of young white men around his age, who surrounded him as they approached. Lawrence was set upon, and stabbed repeatedly. Brooks fled, and Lawrence followed, running more than 100 metres before collapsing. He bled to death on the road.

A day after Lawrence’s death, a letter listing the names of the people who turned out to be the top suspects in the case was left in a telephone box near the bus stop. In the following months, that letter led to surveillance and arrests. Two people were charged. But by the end of July 1993, all the charges against them had been dropped. The Metropolitan police had concluded that evidence from Brooks, the only witness to the crime, was not reliable.

Four years later, an inquest delivered a verdict of unlawful killing in an “unprovoked racist attack”. After an official representation to the Police Complaints Authority from Lawrence’s parents, the Kent police force was tasked with launching an investigation into the Met’s conduct, in March 1997. The result, nine months later, would find “significant weaknesses, omissions and lost opportunities” in the way the Met dealt with the investigation of Stephen Lawrence’s death.

In July 1997, Jack Straw, who was then home secretary, announced that there would be a judicial inquiry into Lawrence’s death and the subsequent Met investigation. It was to be chaired by the high court judge Sir William Macpherson.

The Macpherson report was published in February 1999. It concluded that the investigation into the death of Stephen Lawrence “was marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers”. This institutional racism, the report explained, is “the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”

Most importantly, the report described institutional racism as a form of collective behaviour, a workplace culture supported by a structural status quo, and a consensus often excused and ignored by authorities. Among its many recommendations, the report suggested that the police force boost its black representation, and that all officers be trained in racism awareness and cultural diversity.

Kent police’s deputy chief constable Bob Ayling spoke to the BBC’s Newsnight programme that month, calling the Met’s original investigation into Lawrence’s death “seriously flawed”. Another key witness had come forward, Ayling revealed, but his testimony had been dismissed. Three phone calls had been made to the police by a woman who was believed to be close to one of the suspects, but her statements were not adequately followed up.

A review of forensic evidence eventually led to a new trial of those suspected of murdering Stephen Lawrence. On 4 January 2012, 19 years after Lawrence’s death, two out of the five suspected men were finally found guilty and sentenced for his murder. When Gary Dobson and David Norris killed Lawrence, they were teenagers. By the time they were jailed, they were adult men, in their mid- to late 30s. While Stephen Lawrence’s life ended at 18, theirs had continued, unhindered, in part aided by the police.

Both men received life sentences. When passing the sentence, Mr Justice Treacy described the crime as a “murder which scarred the conscience of the nation”. It was a monumental day for Britain, and long overdue. Many were left wondering how the police had failed so catastrophically, and why justice took so long to come.

For so long, the bar of racism has been set by the activity of white nationalists. Extremists are always roundly condemned by the big three political parties. The reactionary white pride sentiment, so often positioned in opposition to social progress, has never really gone away. It manifests in groups such as the National Front, the British National party and the English Defence League. Their political activity, whether it is storming down busy city streets in hoodies and balaclavas, or suited up and feigning respectability at their political conferences, has real-life consequences for people who are not white.

If all racism was as easy to spot and denounce as white extremism is, the task of the anti-racist would be simple. People feel that if a racist attack has not occurred, or the word “nigger” has not been uttered, an action can’t be racist. If a black person hasn’t been abused or spat at in the street, it’s not racist. But racism thrives in places where those in charge do not align themselves with white extremist politics. The problem must run deeper.

We tell ourselves that good people can’t be racist. We seem to think that true racism only exists in the hearts of evil people. We tell ourselves that racism is about moral values, when instead it is about the survival strategy of systemic power. When a large proportion of the population votes for politicians and political efforts that explicitly use racism as a campaigning tool, we tell ourselves that such huge sections of the electorate simply cannot be racist, as that would render them heartless monsters. But this isn’t about good and bad people.

The covert nature of structural racism is difficult to hold to account. It slips out of your hands. You can’t spot it as easily as a St George’s flag and a bare belly at an English Defence League march. It’s much more respectable than that.

I choose to use the word “structural” rather than “institutional” because I think it is built into spaces much broader than our more traditional institutions. Thinking of the big picture helps you see the structures. Structural racism is dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of people with the same biases joining together to make up one organisation, and acting accordingly. Structural racism is an impenetrably white workplace culture set by those people, where anyone who falls outside the culture must conform or face failure. “Structural” is often the only way to describe what goes unnoticed – the silently raised eyebrows, the implicit biases, snap judgments made on assumptions of competency.

In the same year I decided to no longer talk to white people about race, the British social attitudes survey recorded a significant increase in the number of people who were happy to admit their own racism. The sharpest rise, according to a Guardian report, was among “white, professional men between the ages of 35 and 64, highly educated and earning a lot of money”.

This is what structural racism looks like. It is not just about personal prejudice, but the collective effects of bias. It is the kind of racism that has the power to drastically affect people’s life chances. These highly educated, high-earning white men are very likely to be in positions that influence others’ lives – teaching, prosecuting, examining college applicants and hiring staff. They are almost certainly the kind of people who set workplace cultures.

They are unlikely to boast about their politics with colleagues or acquaintances because of the social stigma attached to holding racist views. Their racism is covert. It doesn’t reveal itself in spitting at strangers in the street. Instead, it lies in an apologetic smile while telling a non-white employee that they didn’t get the promotion. It manifests itself in a CV tossed in the bin because the applicant has a foreign-sounding name. Racism is woven into the fabric of our world. This demands a collective redefinition of what it means to be racist and what we must do to end it.

There is much evidence to show that your life chances are impeded if you are black in Britain. Between 2010-11, the Department for Education found that a black schoolboy in England was three times more likely to be permanently excluded from school, compared to the whole school population. Black school leavers were less likely to be accepted into a high-ranking Russell Group university than their white counterparts. In 2009, a study by the Department for Work and Pensions found that applications for jobs to a number of prospective employers were not treated equally: applicants with white-sounding names were called to interview far more often than those with African- or Asian-sounding names. Despite this, many insist that any attempt to level the playing field is special treatment.

Instead of being seen as a solution to a systemic problem, positive discrimination is frequently singled out as one of the signs of “political correctness gone mad”. Quotas introduced to balance unequal representation are usually bitterly contested. The method works a little bit like this: senior people in an organisation realise their workplace doesn’t reflect the reality of the world they live in (either because of internal or external pressure), so they implement recruitment strategies to redress the balance. Quotas have been suggested in many sectors, from politics to sport and theatre, and they are always followed by a backlash.

In 2002, the National Football League introduced measures to address the lack of black managers in American football. Named after the NFL’s diversity committee chair Dan Rooney – who died in April this year – the Rooney rule worked through a rather mild method of opening up opportunities for people of colour. When a senior coaching or operations position became available, teams were required to interview at least one black or minority ethnic person for the job. This was a shortlist requirement only. Teams were under no obligation to hire that person. The rule wasn’t a quota. Neither was it enforcing an all-black shortlist, or a rigid percentage target. Instead, it was a “softly-softly” attempt to rebalance the scales. The Rooney rule was implemented a year after it was introduced. A decade after the rule’s implementation, evidence showed that it was working. In those years, 12 new black coaches had been hired across the US, and 17 teams had been led by either a black or Latino coach, some even in quick succession. The general consensus was that the sport’s bosses had begun to see candidates that they wouldn’t have previously considered.

Around the time of the rule’s 10th birthday, its success in the US led to the idea being floated in British football. For some football bosses, it was a good way to finally leave the sport’s racist past behind, a way to heal the wounds caused by monkey noises and bananas thrown at black players. Greg Dyke, then chairman of the Football Association, confirmed to the BBC in 2014 that the FA’s inclusion advisory board was considering instituting some version of the rule. In British football, as of 2015, the statistics were pitiful. Despite black and minority ethnic players accounting for 25% of those in both divisions, there was only one black manager in the Premier League, and just six black managers in the English Football League. There were no black managers in Scotland’s top four divisions, and just one in the Premier League in Wales.

Still, the thought of implementing the Rooney rule in British football sent the nation into a spin. Karl Oyston, the chairman of Blackpool FC, called it “tokenism” and “an absolute insult”. Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, introduced plans to develop a pool of black top-flight coaches instead, and called the Rooney rule unnecessary. The way it was spoken about, you would have thought that the FA was asking club owners to walk into their local supermarket and offer their highest-level jobs to the first black person they saw in the vegetable aisle. In 2016, the English Football League put forward proposals to make implementation of the Rooney rule mandatory. The Premier League chose not to entertain the idea – even on a voluntary basis.

Around the same time as Britain was debating the Rooney rule, a similar debate was taking place in the country’s boardrooms. Research in 2014 by an executive recruitment company found that more than half of FTSE 100 companies didn’t have a single person of colour at board level. In response, the then business secretary, Vince Cable, announced an optimistic plan to ensure that in just five years 20% of FTSE 100 directors would be from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

In 2015, a London School of Economics report called for gender quotas in all senior public and private positions. When a survey in the same year showed that less than 20% of senior managers in the City of London were female, women in the financial sector began calling for quotas to tackle the problem. Similarly, in a 2013 survey, more than half of women working in construction – many of whom were employed by companies in which women accounted for just 10% of the workforce – supported the idea of quotas.

But when it comes to race, the language is much less definitive. Instead of quotas – the progress of which can be easily statistically measured – the solutions posed are vague. In 2015, the head of Ofsted suggested that a programme of positive discrimination be applied to teaching recruitment, stressing that the ethnic mix of teachers in a given school should reflect that of its pupils. When he was head of the Greater Manchester police, Sir Peter Fahy called for a change in equality legislation so that police constabularies could use positive discrimination when hiring black police officers – he was sure to let it be known that it wasn’t about “targets”. The problem is that when there are no hard targets for programmes of positive discrimination, they will always run the risk of looking like they’re doing something without achieving much at all.

Positive discrimination initiatives are often vehemently opposed. Whenever I am invited to speak in panel discussions about race and representation, issues of meritocracy and quotas tend to be high on the audiences’ agenda. The main questions asked are: do quotas mean that women and people of colour are receiving special treatment denied to others, and shouldn’t we just judge candidates on merit alone? The prevailing view is that majority-white leaders in any industry have got there through sheer hard work alone.

At the core of such opposition is the belief that positive discrimination just isn’t fair – that whiteness isn’t, in and of itself, a leg-up in the world. But, if it isn’t, how do you explain the glut of middle-aged white men clogging the upper echelons of most professions? We do not live in a meritocracy, and to pretend that simple hard work is enough to elevate everyone to success is an exercise in wilful ignorance.

Opposing positive discrimination based on the fear of not getting the right people for the right jobs inadvertently reveals what you think talent looks like, the kind of person you think it resides within. If the current system worked correctly and hiring practices were genuinely successful, our workplaces would appear very different from how they do now.

There was once a time when even I thought that efforts to increase black representation were suspicious. I didn’t understand why there was a need for them. I could never understand why, when I was growing up, my mum told me to work twice as hard as my white counterparts. As far as I was concerned, we were all the same. When she forwarded me an application form for a diversity scheme at a national newspaper while I was at university, I felt angry, indignant and ashamed. At first I resisted applying for it at all. I felt that if I was going to compete with my white peers, I wanted to do it on a level playing field. After some cajoling on her part, though, I applied, got through to the interview stage, and eventually landed the internship.

At the time, internship schemes looking for black and minority ethnic participants seemed unfair to me, but once I got through the door, I realised why they were necessary: any black people I saw were far more likely to be doing the catering or cleaning than setting the news agenda.

Structural racism is about how Britain’s relationship with race infects and distorts equal opportunity. I think that we, as a nation, placate ourselves with the concept of meritocracy, and by insisting that we just don’t see race. This makes us feel progressive. But to claim not to see race is to demand compulsory assimilation. Colour-blindness does not accept the existence of structural racism or a history of white racial dominance. Indulging the myth that we are all equal denies the economic, political and social legacy of a British society that has historically been organised by race.

My blackness has been politicised against my will, because racism has given it meaning. This is a situation I didn’t choose, but I don’t want it wilfully ignored in an effort to instil some sort of precarious, false harmony. And, though many are happy to console themselves with a doctrine of colour-blindness, the huge differences in life chances between white and non-white people prove that while it may be preached by our institutions, it is not being practised.

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Colour-blindness is used to silence talk about structural racism while we continue to fool ourselves with the lie of meritocracy. In 2014, I interviewed the black feminist academic Dr Kimberlé Crenshaw, who elaborated on the politics of colourblindness. “It’s this idea that, to eliminate race, you have to eliminate all discourse, including efforts to acknowledge racial structures and hierarchies and address them,” she said. “It’s those cosmopolitan-thinking, 21st-century, ‘not trying to carry the burdens of the past and you shouldn’t either’ [people].

“There are people who consider themselves left, progressive and very critical, who have convinced themselves that the only way to get beyond race is to stop talking about race. By taking this stance, they align themselves with the post-racial liberals and self-styled colour-blind conservatives.”

Colour-blindness is a childish, stunted analysis of racism. It starts and ends at “discriminating against a person because of the colour of their skin is bad”, without any accounting for the ways structural power works in these exchanges. This definition of racism is often used to silence people of colour when we attempt to articulate the racism we face. When we point this out, we are accused of being racist against white people, and the avoidance of accountability continues.

The reality is that, in material terms, we are nowhere near equal. This state of play is violently unjust. The difference that people of colour are all vaguely aware of from childhood is not benign. It is fraught with racism, racist stereotyping and, for women, racialised misogyny.

It is nigh-on impossible for children of colour to educate ourselves out of racist stereotyping, though if we accumulate enough individual wealth, we can pretend that we are no longer affected by it.

Not seeing race does little to dismantle racist structures or improve the lives of people of colour. In order to do so, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is affected by negative stereotyping of theirs, and on whom power and privilege is bestowed – not just because of their race, but also their class and gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the system.

Main image by Ben the Illustrator

This is an edited extract from Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, published by Bloomsbury Circus on 1 June.

• Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

#race issues #race #racism #white people

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kitemist · 8 years ago

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switched at birth season 5 episode 10 / series finale thoughts with spoilers

live reactions included.

Overall, I’m almost sobbing like the rest. Goodbye to this show I both hate and learned to love. <3

To be honest, even though I have been shitting on this show since I live reacted every episode of season 5, and some ever since I first saw it on netflix, it was in fact the first show that I bothered to binge a lot on, besides some 1 season anime, I am actually partially unprepared for this. Like, some parts have been nice actually. You got deaf representation(I am aware that it’s not the best, but it’s better than Hush), going into difficult subjects like rape, alcoholism, addiction, death, and trauma, and aside from all the romance, some drama that does in fact make sense and engages the audience into it.The writers may have no idea how deaf people actually work in real life, but the characters feel real aside from that. The camera people may have no consideration for some of the signing scenes, but they have great composition and lighting use other times. The music? Even though that’s not for the deaf audience, it is very engaging and the songs are always great choices. It’s a well made show, with lots of leaks, but it was well constructed.

My own personal experience with the deaf community, with those two sign language classes, seeing a deaf rapper(probably Sean Forbes) in person, going to a deaf convention and everyone still liked my hat and I bought a print from a deaf artist, was amazing. ASL class was instantly my favorite and I made new friends, and picked up new skills. I need to pick up again for sure, I still have the textbooks. It was very unique, and something you can never get from the hearing community. Some things you just DON’T REALIZE are extremely audio centric until you mute everything.

I’ve already been partially flooded with some spoilers thanks to the official twitter. Even though this is the finale, just like any other episode, it needs to chill. It retweets literally everything in their hashtag.

A shot of Daniel Durant? I hope you ALL are coming here. Well, not 100% everyone, but Vanessa Marano did say that a lot of other actors who weren’t working did come that shooting day, and even her sister (who sang an alternate theme song for Miraculous) came along too.

5 years ago? You’re IMMEDIATELY cutting so some things from season 1? That sure can get the flow going.

Wow, Mom and Regina were sure bitches to each other. Regina being overly modest.

And back to the present without any other transition card.

Yeah, Mom confirms that they were bitches to each other.

This finale was directed by Lea Thompson, who is Mom. She also directed the episode where Alie came along. She is a good director, I’ll give her that. Somewhat.

So is Regina going back to Eric? Fuck.

Of course it would be the Alie pictures, because Emmett couldn’t control composition when it was himself being in front of the camera.

And Dad ruins all the fun. Such as that electric bill.

So Travis is going out again.

Yeah, that disaster which YOU thought of, and FORCE KISSED her, Travis.

Seeing this next shot of Daphne and Iris irritates me, because Daphne claims that Chris took the biggest fall for this cause, giving up the game and getting arrested. But Iris almost died and that was enough to get some big shots to move their asses. Iris gets that award. Not Cocky Chris.

Mingo continues to jump onto race to race. I still think he’s a racist. And an ass. He deserves NOTHING. Maybe you SHOULDN’T have a girlfriend. You shouldn’t have ANYTHING!

Good job coming up front about it.

And now the only conversation you two can have now is about your relationships away from each other.

It’s been what, months or something, and you still are calling her RED. God DAMMIT.

Yeah, how crazy would that be that an ATHLETIC TRAINER and a DOCTOR are going to be together, specifically you two?!

Toby has absolutely nothing aside from music. So Dad is bashing Bay for not having a backup plan for not getting into college that one time, and for not paying her bills, but lets Toby off the hook when he flies off to fuckin ICELAND and getting married, even though the first one tore him apart and the second one, although making less sense than the last one, is having difficulties since they are in the situation of taking care of a child which they have no idea how to do, and learning is hard. And not only that, Toby completely ditched college!!!

“Don’t you worry Eeyore. We’ll find your tail.” <3

Okay, Luca wants to hop onto the ride. From twitter, I know Regina just feels so inclined to tell him because she loves both of them, doesn’t she?!

“Let’s do it.” After thinking about your intense makeout session!?

“Tattooing has a long history of saying ‘screw you’ to society.” This show has never said anything truer and it’s about TATTOOS. You’d expect it to be about, i don’t know, DEAF PEOPLE?

If Bay tattoos a celebrity, then she’ll explode much like badass tattoo lady. Is that the case?

Daphne has a CART but looks to his lips the majority of this scene.

6 week paid internship. The only possibilities are Mingo and Daphne because this show.

THIS IS LITERALLY YOUR FIRST CONVERSATION, MELODY AND REGINA, THIS ENTIRE SEASON!!!

Melody is right. Which Regina isn’t doing because she’s just as if not more impulsive than her daughters.

And first time we’ve seen Melody’s boyfriend. in...forever. And he does not interpret for Regina. Or, doesn’t know to.

Yeah, thanks to neuroplasticity, you excel at all 3. Magically. Along with your magical lipreading.

You don’t like making art with other people, only OF other people. To be fair, that is in fact what photography is. Making art out of other people and other things.

Both of you are lone wolves. Emmett is...well, self-centered but not arrogant or egocentric. Bay is impulsive and can be violent. So you both have to be. But you both are magically compatible because reasons.

Yeah, you need a change. Actually, a lot of these characters can use a change. You’ve been sitting in the same city for 5 years, after all.

You’re gonna mirror this line from 4 seasons ago, from the promo. Also, 5 years ago, you were just as good at acting, Marano.

A second test...?

JOHN KNEW TOO?! THEN WHY--WHAT--WHAT THE FUCK

WHY

Yeah, you read lips TOO WELL.

Well fuck you too

Okay you have masks and it’s pretty audio centric. But you didn’t consider anything else to her face. Is mingo only going to get the job only because he can hear? He SUCKS at school, focusing, pushes his own body too much to care about anyone else’s, and he’s a horrible person!!

First conversation between Daphne and Emmett ever since..season 3? No idea. But it felt longer than just last season.

There’s the neck tattoo. And from this, I guess her disease is magically cured.

Also, how is Emmett taking pictures? You’ll have to crank your ISO so high all your photos would be a sandbox!

Is Dad purposely trying to avoid this conversation? That just confirms it.

Dad is so awkward right now trying to get around this.

And now Travis and Melody. Well, I guess her birthday doesn’t count because it turned out violent.

NATALIE!!! I MISSED YOU

Daniel Durant got kicked out because he was gay, huh?

Yeap.

Awww, season 1 moments. Gold old wilke who cared about making out more than anything else.

UM..THANKS NOELLE?

THANK YOU INDEED

You mean you WERE in love with someone else. Luca was your boy toy until he unexpectedly came back!

Luca is bashing her for being unloyal to him, while he was lying so many damn times because reasons. Shut the fuck up Luca, no one deserves you anyway.

Hi Mom? ;v;

Yelling in her face because this is what all hearing people do when they have no idea how to deal with deaf people.

Thanks mom ;w;

This is how to be patient with someone with down syndrome huh...hmm.

Kara sort of did this to me, but not in a condescending sort of way. It was a way to quiet me down at Phoenix. Thank you, Kara.

Well, you and Mom did NOT try hard at all. Because Art thief’s big shot dad was too much for you to handle after ONE conversation.

After landing in something she finally wants to do, Travis wants to drag her along because..reasons. and it was Travis's own choice to go to china, not hers.

Well, that’s a stereotype breaker. Down syndrome people can have down syndrome caretakers. Toby’s really nice about that.

First conversation between Daphne and her mom since the racist outfit.

And John couldn’t stand it. Great. He can’t stand ANYTHING!

Yeah, women are tough. Just not you, Regina, partially. Kathryn took no shit at all, while you didn’t let anything good happen to you because you victimized yourself.

Every relationship is different, even in this show. But all of them, in this show, are crap.

What else are you expecting, Mom? You’re quite the digger.

;n; thanks dad.

Bay. What are you doing with this mirrored line.

Come with them, Daniel. It’s a much safer place.

Aw, Toby and Lily. Dorks.

Bay has grown up so much here and I am proud. ;v;

YEAH. THAT FUCKING ACT.

YEAH, FUCK THAT GUY

Will!!! ;v;

wait WHAT

okay...this was the path that grandma wanted angelo to take.

this should have happened SO LONG AGO

yup. hey, daniel. :3

WHAT? PASSING ON GALLAUDET? FOR HIM? ;W;

</3 ;n;

LUCKY YOU BECAUSE THIS IS HOW THAT SHOW WORKS.

Well, You ARE a jerk, no matter what you seem, mingo.

You two are the dumbest.

no you do not.

well. not like daphne had anyone else.

hey, what a spot to meet up at. seems so familiar.

“he was my first love.” i didn’t like this ship, but ;v;

aww, a montage.

OH FUCK THIS, REALLY

Well. Looks like you can be the first good ex’s. In the history of switched at birth. What a nice ending scene for them. See you around.

So many scrapbook pictures...

Hey dad, what do you want.

well, thanks dad.

Regina’s leaving, yup.

Is bay the most shaken up? ;w;

</3 DON’T DO THIS TO ME.

If we never met..well..i would both love it and not like it.

THANKS, PERSISTENT VANESSA MARANO, FOR ALWAYS FINDING YOUR BIRTH PARENTS.

DAD </3

I THINK THE ACTORS ARE ALL CRYING IN REAL LIFE FOR THIS? </3

SHUT UP BAY ;v;

JUST EAT ALREADY--

OKAY, THE COMET.

Let’s all go out now.

Heh. the iconic shot.

We’re all here now.

What a beautiful shot.

</3

Holy SHIT. I didn’t get all the answers I wanted, but this was enough loose ends tied up for me. What a beautiful ending. I couldn’t have asked for a better one even with these loose ends. All our characters are happy, and we can leave off with a good note. Thanks, Switched at Birth. I will and won’t miss you.

I’ll give you 9.4/10.

#switched at birth #switched at birth spoilers #switched at birth finale #switched at birth final episode #whiteOnslaught rambles

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