#ill post about it everyday because its so true

[aphicidi0]

walter & flynn are so sweet 16 yall DONT understand

[buttercuparry]

I am very worried that Siraj ( @siraj2024 ) may not be able to get to 30k CAD by the end of this week 

We have got only 2 days left now!!

Siraj, who is both a journalist and writer, never imagined a time in which he would be forced to plead for monetary help from strangers on the internet. This genocide, now in its 10th month, has devastated his life and forced him to turn to us, and to you. His house, which was a dream come true for his family, has been bombed by the IDF, forcing Siraj to bear witness to a decade of hard work crumbling to the ground. All this injustice comes at the hands of the illegal settler state of “Israel” and its Imperial sponsor, the USA.

Because of the manufactured famine and violence by the occupation , everyday has been a nightmare for Siraj. Food is hard to come by and what little there is- it is extremely costly. There is also no clean drinking water in Gaza Strip either and this is all the more alarming, since recently there has been discovery of  polio virus in the free flowing sewage water putting all unvaccinated children at risk of an epidemic, with gaza's medical infrastructure almost completely destroyed

The settler colony is not only bombing and administrating deadly ground invasions but, it has also created such conditions that children who by some luck  have escaped being in the line of fire,  now have every possibility of contracting deadly illnesses!

Siraj's little son is seriously ill !!

It is something Siraj has worried about for some time now, with all the illnesses the children of gaza are being exposed to today and none of the medical resources left to help. You cannot afford to get sick in gaza anymore, just as you cannot afford to get injured. This is his worst fear come to life. 

This places Siraj’s son in a deeply vulnerable situation.For the past two days Siraj has been unable to come online properly to campaign - he can’t spare time for the campaign because he must care for his child, and in these two days where Siraj has been stretched thin between obligations, and time was taken from his pleas for help, his campaign stagnated.

If you truly believe in the Palestinian cause, if you truly want them to have a life of dignity then please do not turn away the moment they stop to take a breath.  

Siraj wants to rebuild his home to escape the tent life which is proving difficult for his children! He wants to remain in Gaza. He cannot bear to think that his wife Halima has no privacy, that she has to endure even this amidst trying to survive a genocide. Does he really  have to travel 3 km everyday, no matter what to post his daily updates, for you to keep  caring? Does he have to showcase pictures of his sick children to the world to garner your sympathy? Does he have to expose his family to the racist dehumanization faced by Palestinians in real life and on this site, when he already bears the burnt of harassment from Zionists who hate him for daring to  expose the occupation in all its brutality? If it is not so then please boost and donate!

We only have 2 days to reach 30k !!

Currently at $26930 CAD. Only $40 CAD donated in the last hour. Do not fail Siraj now!

(Vetting at number 219 on Hussein and Nabulsi's list )

[melatonin-melanin]

jirai kei as a trend and the inherent ableism and racism present within it

if you've been present in any japanese fashion or vtuber spaces for the past few years, chances are you've most likely heard of jirai kei. it's gotten major media attention in japan, and inevitably its popularity has spread overseas. what is still misinterpreted about it, however, is that jirai kei is a fashion style. jirai kei is a stereotype, as well as a subculture that features fashion elements. as opposed to the fashion aspects, the focus of the subculture is mental illness, and many people use the jirai tags and labels to find those with similar struggles and interests. you can learn more about the recent history of jirai kei as a stereotype here, and the fashions associated with jirai kei here.

jirai kei as a stereotype is bad for a multitude of reasons, but there are many people who seem to think that there's nothing wrong with the trend itself. i've seen many arguments in favor of it, ranging from "if brands are using it, that must mean the term isn't that bad" to "plenty of japanese girls are using it to only refer to the fashion, and they don't actually lash out at others or self-harm." its usage by brands and everyday people are true, and that much cannot be argued. the problem comes from assuming that, because it's something widespread in japan, it can't possibly be as bad as people make it out to be. if this trend were to come from anywhere else, i'm almost certain that people would immediately question the morality of it for several reasons. this is going to be a long post, so i hope you have some time.

TW for mentions of self-harm, alcohol and drug abuse, and child sex trafficking below the cut.

a brief rundown of jirai kei's origins

to start, jirai kei's original coinage before the trend has existed since around the 90s. it was used by misogynistic men to refer to women who they believed exhibited signs of emotional instability. this was applied to completely harmless traits, and the criteria for someone being a landmine has drastically changed over the years. for example, the first common identifier was simply "a girl who looks put together." this sexist usage still extends to present times, but now it's often conflated with the current aestheticized definition of the term.

the source of the current iteration of jirai kei

the modern-day jirai kei stereotype comes almost entirely from a gang known as the toyoko kids, who reside in kabukicho. this gang contains many members ranging from ages 9 to 24 who have run away from their homes and families. they have been known for several activities, but the most publicized ones are cutting themselves in public circles, papa katsu (underage prostitution), heavily drinking, and overdosing on over-the-counter medications. majority of the gang members also wear japanese alternative fashions, with girly kei being the fashion that's most often present in the jirai kei stereotype.

where does the ableism come in?

the rise of the aesthetic trend peaked somewhere in 2020, where a "landmine makeup challenge" gained popularity online and resulted in various people attempting to mock and mimic the stereotype for clout. people would wear girly fashion, act "wild" or "crazy" on camera, and, at worst, pretend to cut their wrists or even use makeup to create fake self-harm scars. i don't believe i need to explain why faking self-harm for views is ableist. however, the ableism is also present in the supposed "lighter" aspects of the trend, particularly its sudden association with girly fashion.

during the height of jirai kei's popularity in japan, many brands had begun to sell pink x black girly coordinates, advertising them as jirai kei fashion. it's incredibly important to note that girly as a fashion has existed for several years prior, and that multiple people had already been wearing clothing that's abruptly being labeled jirai. as a result, you have all of these random people minding their business suddenly being labeled as "crazy psycho bitches" because of the clothes that they wear. as if that isn't enough, some brands went as far as to promote the more dangerous aspects of the stereotype as well. with attempts to pander to girls who are deemed "yandere" and "highly explosive," many shops, online influencers, and companies had directly and indirectly capitalized on the suffering of the toyoko kids by encouraging people to cut their wrists, manipulate their partners, binge drink, and lash out at others to engage in the "full landmine experience."

mental illness in japan is almost never taken seriously because it's seen as a personality flaw rather than something that needs treatment. the jirai kei trend only set back any progress made for mental health acknowledgement in society, as people perceived as landmines began to be harassed for wearing girly fashion. more girls were approached by men on the street trying to scout them for prostitution, and people gave away their wardrobe because "others assumed they were troublesome" for wearing it. from another perspective, the anti-recovery nature of the trend has also taken lives. some people who felt that they identified with the term had fully embraced the lifestyle that was commercialized and promoted as something "cute and fun," resulting in more people running away from home to be like the toyoko kids. these people, who have essentially been failed by the system, are simultaneously fetishized and shunned for the fact that they're struggling.

well, what about the racism?

the racism present in the jirai kei trend, from what i've seen, mainly comes from overseas communities. the perception that many people have of jirai kei tends to have its roots in orientalism. if you've ever witnessed how people tend to glorify japan in almost every context, this shouldn't be too surprising. what's concerning, however, is that much of this glorification of jirai still goes unacknowledged by the western j-fashion community.

when jirai kei gained popularity in japan's mainstream, people mistook the name of the stereotype for the name of the fashion. this mindset also translated over to western spaces without a second thought. as a result, when jirai kei as a stereotype was formally introduced to overseas j-fashion communities, some were confused and oddly adamant. it seemed like people thought, "there's no way that japan would endorse something so horrible. there has to be different explanations!" regardless of whether this idea was conscious or subconscious, it had begun what people now call "jirai discourse" in the community. many arguments were made in favor of using jirai kei to refer solely to girly fashion, as opposed to recognizing its origins and continuous usage as a derogatory term. an especially common viewpoint that's perpetuated is that jirai kei has been reclaimed or is in the process of being reclaimed, which is something that has several things wrong with it.

problems with thinking that jirai is "reclaimed, so it's fine to use"

firstly, reclamation is subjective. the assumption that the entirety of a minority group makes the unanimous decision to reclaim a term is frankly just implausible. even more popular words that are thrown around more casually nowadays are still debated in some circles on whether or not they should be used. for a term like jirai kei, something fairly recently coined and undoubtedly controversial in most contexts, the mere idea of reclamation amongst anyone would have to take a much longer time, and that's only if the stereotype starts getting taken seriously.

secondly, the only people who have the right to consider reclamation are the people who are directly affected by the usage of this term, which would be feminine-presenting native japanese people who are mentally ill. people overseas have argued in favor of reclaiming the term despite not being a part of the group that the term is actually used against. this is not something where you can take apart the criteria and suddenly claim that you're also affected by jirai kei's usage. for a comparison that may be easily understood, that's like if a nonblack woman tried to advocate for the reclamation of the "mammy" stereotype, which stereotypes and therefore only affects the perception of black women. just because both groups consist of women, that doesn't mean they have the exact same experience with the stereotype in question, even if they happen to resonate with some aspect of it. unless you've grown up in japan as someone afab and/or feminine-presenting and have struggled with mental health, it's nearly impossible to fully identify with the extent of jirai kei's harm because it's occurred in such a specific set of circumstances to a specific group of people. the only thing that should be done in this case is doing your research on the affected group, which you can do by looking into the history of the toyoko kids and some of the individual stories of the members. that way, you can at least attain a better understanding of their perspectives and connect the effects of jirai kei to their struggles.

lastly, it is not reclaiming to simply use the term for yourself. this tends to be where the idea of jirai kei being reclaimed comes from, because many japanese girls on social media use the term to refer to themselves as well. in these instances, there are typically two separate reasons: one, the person is pretending to be a landmine for clout; or two, they genuinely identify with the derogatory meaning of the term. the latter is often the case, since there's not many other ways for people in japan who are mentally ill to find groups for themselves. when it comes to reclamation, it's important to remember that it's not simply using a word that was used against a group that you're a part of. reclaiming is about actively working to change a term's meaning into a neutral or positive context for the benefit of the group. none of these girls are doing that. there's no big effort in japanese landmine spaces to move the perception of being a landmine away from things like girly kei fashion, idol fan culture, or toxic behaviors, which leads me to the final section of this post.

it is not anyone's job to push for the "reclamation" of jirai kei.

i put reclamation in quotes because, although some genuinely may not have ill intentions, many people come off as having a "white savior" mindset as opposed to actually wanting to reclaim the term in any sense (which, as mentioned before, is not the right of just anyone), and it's usually for the sake of enjoying girly fashion without feeling bad for incorrectly calling it jirai kei. one of the defenses often used to propose that being seen as a landmine can actually be a good thing is that the people who do self-harm and abuse substances are simply "bad apples" in the landmine community. if they're not treated as the dirty underside, then they're seen as things to be pitied and sympathized with, but with the quick disclaimer of "don't worry though, not all landmines are like this!"

not only is this incredibly ableist, but this assumption being made by mainly white influencers is also rooted in the historical development of racism against asian people, particularly in the united states. if you've heard of the model minority myth, one of the biggest issues with it is that it heavily generalizes asian people as being well-mannered, good-natured, and upstanding citizens. as a result, anyone who seems to fall out of this generalization is deemed an "untrustworthy foreigner" and appears as nonexistent through a romanticized lens. this exact situation can be applied to how people tend to treat the issues surrounding the jirai kei trend. the japanese girls who are faking and/or making fun of mental instability for the sake of online popularity are suddenly being glorified as these ideal representations of jirai kei to be palatable to the western world. meanwhile, the people who are considered by many to be part of the lowest rungs of society and are actually getting this term thrown at them pejoratively are treated as an afterthought and not representative of what people overseas want jirai kei to mean. it's even to the extent where native japanese people using girly kei or being uncomfortable with jirai kei are immediately assumed to be faking their ethnicity or their japanese-speaking skills, something that many foreigners have actually done in an attempt to claim authority over jirai kei's usage. since the reality of the trend is so uncomfortable to many, people think that it's best to simply disregard it or dumb down its impact when that changes nothing. what has avoiding the topic of discrimination and fetishization ever done for anyone?

the last thing i want to point out is that, even if reclamation of the term was in progress, it would not be happening the way that some seem to think it is. if the term was being reclaimed, we would not have people (both overseas and in japan) still acting like the stereotype for tons of likes, namely by taking pictures of themselves in girly kei next to cans of pink monster while sitting on the sidewalk with someone handing them money. that is an actual image i've seen, and if that doesn't tell you that there's a problem, i'm not sure what else will.

[ivylation]

Love in Chaos (Carlos Olivera x Reader)

Tws- mentions of blood

2nd post, hope you enjoy <3 ill be writing alot carlos in the future so lmk whatd you want you want to see with him !!

-----

You and Carlos both faced the dangers of Raccoon City side by side, Carlos's confident flirtatious tendencies and your quiet self created an almost movie like relationship. He would throw cringey pickup lines your way, met with bright red faces, small giggles, and occasional eye rolls at his worst lines. Amidst the chaos he never stops throwing jokes at you, he lives to see you smile, you just didn't know that.

One evening, as the setting sun painted the broken skyline in hues of orange and pink, you and Carlos found yourselves on the rooftop of an abandoned building. The air is thick with smoke and an almost calming sensation, which is rare in the chaos filled time.

Carlos, true to his nature, leaned in with an exaggerated flourish. "You know," he began, both gazes kept locked on the setting sun in front of you both. “You look really cute today” you turn to him caught off guard by the sudden compliment,  “you say that everyday” you roll your eyes, ears pink. Carlos still looking at they sky, his dark shaggy hair blowing in the soft breeze. “Thats because youre cute everyday” he shrugs and turns his head to look down at you. “Bullshit” you smile softly “im covered with mud and blood” you look down at your bruised body thats full of a mix of yours and the victims of your knife.

His gaze softens as he takes in the sight of you. "Even with the mud and blood, you manage to be the most captivating thing in this city," he says, his tone sincere. Carlos reaches over, brushing a strand of hair from your face with a gentle touch. You always assumed he was joking but something felt different this time,the look in his eyes, he was being serious. 

You gained a small crush on the large man over the weeks of being together, how could you not? He had dark eyes that seemed to only soften on you, he was funny, determined and kind and holy shit was he hot. His large arms as he held his gun to fight off the zombies that suddenly caught you off guard, his pretty skin that is coated with shine due to the fires. His large hands as they gripped your wrists to pull you out of dangers way. He was hot. Like really hot.

You never pursued the crush and pushed it out of your mind as there was a literal zombie apocalypse happening and there was no time for a silly little crush. That was hard when you see the man everyday.  

You can't help but blush at his words, a mixture of embarrassment and appreciation filling your chest. The apocalypse had left its mark on both of you, physically and emotionally, yet Carlos's unrelenting flattery remained a constant; it made you feel validated and loved even when you're at your lowest of lows.

"I mean it," he continues, his eyes tracing the contours of your face. "You're like a survivor goddess amidst all this chaos. Mud and blood included."

You chuckle, couldn't help but cringe a little  at his use of words, still a bit bashful under his gaze. "Survivor goddess, huh? I'm not sure about that."

Carlos nudges you playfully. "Oh, absolutely. You fight off zombies and still manage to look adorable. It's a rare talent."

You shake your head, smiling at his antics. "Well, if I'm a survivor goddess, you're the charming rogue who keeps distracting me with compliments."

He grins, leaning in once more, this time planting a soft kiss on your lips. "Guilty as charged," he whispers, his breath warm against your ear. You just stared at him, taken aback, your face bright red and hot. You knew there was no passing over this crush. 

 As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting a warm glow over the broken city, you couldn't help but feel a sense of warmth in your heart. In the midst of the apocalypse, amidst mud, blood, and chaos, there was an unexpected connection that transcended the grim reality--one Carlos Olivera himself created.

_____

[acanth3]

追憶＊マリオネットの糸の先 / Reminiscence＊End of the Marionette's Strings

EPISODE 13

Valkyrie Stage

Nazuna: ……!?

(Huh, the song has stopped!? Direction..? No, we didn't plan for this!)

(Our backup vocals have been interrupted! The recording of me and Mika-chan’s voices have stopped playing…the recording has disappeared!?)

(The microphone has turned off so I can only hear Oshi-san’s voice!)

(No…! Oshi-san is also surprised by the sudden intrusion and has stopped singing! Everything is going wrong!)

(Our fans are also confused, what is this!? An accident, a power outage!?)

(No! The light’s are still on! Only our recording has disappeared…?)

(I can help with the directing but I have to stay put. We just have to wait for the song to begin again!)

(Sing! All i have to do is move around a little and perform our live song! Just like back in choir!)

(It’s okay, I can sing/I can do it! I practise properly every day on the rooftop!

(But, I'm scared! My voice was packed and thrown away like in a garbage bag seen as worthless!)

(Won’t I just make Oshi-san angry again..?)

(My voice will be thrown away again right? Don’t sing without permission, I’ll get cursed at…No I will be punished.)

(If that happens, this performance will be over!)

(If such a miserable thing will come out of this, it’s better to just stay silent…?)

Mika: ~..... ♪ 

 ♪~ ♪~ ♪

Nazuna: (Mika-chan, you too…You were practising by yourself too, weren’t you?)

(Always left behind us..)

(I laughed thinking your position was too easy. You wanted to sing too! You are an idol after all, aren’t you?)

(Mika-chan is much more obsessed with Oshi-san than I am. He’s always cursed at and called a failure..)

(And still, he was with me.)

(He always laughed, worked harder, and followed me around desperately!)

(He’s so good at it! It’s a much more beautiful voice than mine! I think I would fall in love with you, you’re really an idol!)

(Mika-chan…you kept quiet and obediently followed us, didn’t you?)

(Oshi-san who’s nervous and in high spirits with a bad mouth, and me who's expressionless and unfriendly!)

(Everyday we spent together as ‘Valkyrie’...I don’t want to be stopped here!)

(His favourite Oshi-san that he loves get’s frustrated with him, and he sang, overcoming his fears of being thrown away!)

(Yea…! I don't even want it to end here! In a stage like this!)

(I also want to put on that costume for my birthday! And more costumes and more..!)

(Yes! I'll give you a birthday present! So, let’s all sing together please!)

(From now on, forever we’ll be ‘Valkyrie’..!

Nazuna:  ♪~ ♪~ ♪

Shu: (Kagehira…Nito…I see, that’s right..!)

(Aa..really, I can't believe I was a fool.)

(I thought about our failure so much, if either of us showed our weakness we would have been taken advantage of. So that’s why I…)

(It’s far too late to regret any of this now, it’s a bit hard to hear..)

(Our live performances as Valkyrie must stay perfect, and yet both of their voices..)

(Of course it’s a consequence for me, I didn’t help them practise singing and sync my voice with them. I thought I had protected them.)

(I couldn’t see their true value, through my blinded eyes.)

(My body lost its balance a little, I feel as though my body is going to shatter..)

(Because we’re just antique dolls, relics from the past..)

(I noticed it too late, even if we just get a scratch I’ll only continue to sink down further.)

(But we should at least go out until the end. Nito, Kagehira, my youth…my dear ‘Valkyrie’.)

 ♪~ ♪~ ♪

Nazuna: (We really all sang, I feel like crying to death.)

(.....Our reputation amongst the audience is tattered now.)

(We sang together over the recorded one…this was our first and last time.)

a/n cant upload nazuna and shus singing part ill post it seperately mayb

[barbatoskisser]

Happy american thanksgiving everyone

Ill go first from my pov

Im thankful for cheeseburgers and smth ultimately basic but true: my friends. Gwbiubely my friends are some of the greatest people in the world and i adore them. I wish i had the ability to doodle us all hanging out from scratch and it not look like a weird blob with limbs from my pov but i dont so i'll find a 4 person friend base image later and rb with it

Of course my friend group isnt just 4 people their essentially 5 main online peoples, including myself (on discord anyway. Archaic isnr on here all that much. And he sort of doesmt count. Ill explain in a sec, but i'll still add him to the post)

@gunterdon

@definesanity

@archaicanathema

@infer8

And myself. Or i could cheat and say @mx-kamisato

Okay so here's the whole mess with archie.

He soley to me technically doesnt count because me and him are boyfriends

...whydoesthatfeelsogiddytosayijustgotafloatyfeeling-

Ahem! Anyway

Yes we're boyfriends.

And its great hes a wonderful lad

I wish i could label all the things i love about this man but then we'll be here all day. I'll simplify it and say that he's incredibly funny (me and him share a sense of humor, thank fuck), he's always extremely kind, when he talks about his favorite things it always brings me so much joy because its just so fun to listen to, i love watching him play warframe even if i cant play it myself, i adore seeing him interact in our friend group and have fun. He brings me a lot of happiness everyday. Its not a "oh rarely i get a high from dating someone" its...every day. Every single day he makes me so thankful and happy he asked me out. He's wonderful and I couldn't ask for soneone better to be my boyfriend.

Okay thats enough being sappy from me!

Yeah i'm thabkfully to venti too but hes not counting since this is a post about /actual friends/ not fictional chars who i (half?) jokingly my husband.

Ahem. So yeah! I'm thankful to those people! Huge shoutout to them! The sillies who are in my life everyday.

Also shoutout to my mutuals in a more general sense!

@unkownknowledge , @pale-value , @avenrose , mf halve person i forgot their user. They liked and rbed s lot of my posts awhile back and j got excjted about them. I may have forgotten their user but i remember you!!

And the rest of the 20 people im mutuals with. My mutual list aint small but its too big for me to remember everyone.

Special shoutput to bones tho. Best comrade. No one forgets @nicebonescomrades i love them. Idk jf theyre pronouns are still she/her but yed. THEM

I hope they come on again someday soon. 100% thanks for existing and being my friend as long as gunter and ryuusei who have been my longest stanring friends on tumblr - actually, no, their just the most iconic. The longest standing froend on tumblr is wisti (if we count her) or artem! I met artem back on my old account and when they still were a big account under thinknoodled i think. They wrote a lot of sagau and when i still was scared shitless of them. Ah, the good old days.

Dont get me wrong they are still terrifying but in a they'd probably bite my ankles off way.

So glad i met everyone here and you all such great, wonderful people. Thank you so much for being in my life. And for the picture i promised, i'll be drawing the main 4 of agar. Soley because i dont knoe how i'd doodle infer. They're great too but i dont know if i would doodle more of their irl self or try to draw their scaley persona thing. Maybe their avatar??? I have no idea. The others i have a general idea.

Alright bye i'll see you guys later. I spent 30 minutes writing this post. Sigh.

[rachelberryy]

Santana Lopez, Gender Performativity, and the Gaze-Death Dichotomy

For @tuiyla

This is a follow-up from this essay on Santana and Bejewelled by Taylor Swift. It also probably looks the way it does because of this post that I read recently.

(I dug out my old university notes for this, because Judith Butler is a GOAT and I felt like going big brain mode)

i.

The top line of my notes on Butler’s gender performativity theory reads, “Gender may be naturalised and taken for granted, but it is still socially constructed and created through the repetition of everyday acts”. As far as I can tell, that isn’t a direct quote, so I’m going to presume it’s a paraphrased summary on my part. It’s the ideological descendant of an idea from Simone de Beauvoir, probably the most influential feminist philosopher of the twentieth century: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” (Incidentally, the idea of gender as a social construct in western feminist literature goes at least as far back as Mary Wollstonecraft. As per usual, TERFs don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.)

Okay. Let’s talk Santana.

Santana is an Afro-Latina lesbian, and a woman. All of those things are relevant in one way or another. We learn that when she was young, Santana was quite the tomboy, until she was socially conditioned into abandoning that particular persona. Given what we know of her family, I think it’s a reasonable assumption that her abuela had something to do with that. That delivers us to the version of Santana we get for the first season and a half of Glee. She’s a bitch, she’s aggressively sexual, she’s notoriously promiscuous, she’s a cheerleader - the feminine high school archetype. In other words, she’s both a stereotype of the idealised high school popular girl, and a whole bunch of things for which women are typically demonised.

Patriarchy, like all reactionary ideologies, is deeply idiosyncratic, almost by design, and creates these catch 22 situations where women cannot conform or rebel enough, it will hate you anyway, because that is its point. That is complicated by the fact that Santana is a fictional character (and one created by a team of male writers, at that), and therefore is also a construct of the male gaze without any agency of her own. This is doubly true for Santana, who starts out as a side character whose first proper story is as Puck’s ‘woman on the side’, and whose second proper story is sleeping with Finn.

The whole thing is a mess of contradictions, an ill-fitting mess of female stereotypes. Slut, bitch, queen bee (once Quinn is deposed). She’s the opposite end of the ‘fucked up ways in which patriarchy constructs female sexuality’ spectrum to Quinn. She’s also, as we later find out, completely fucking miserable. She’s acting, all the time, allowing the only emotions that slip through the cracks of her walls to express themselves as anger. It’s all, you guessed it, a performance. A version of her that didn’t exist until society forced it to. Those aspects of her - so many of them distinctly gendered - are entirely constructed, against her actual nature.

ii.

And then she quits the Cheerios, realises that she’s a lesbian, and begins to deconstruct herself. Glee is an exceptionally manic show, with so little time afforded to monologues by anyone not named Will Schuester. And yet, at the end of Sexy, Santana is given quite a lengthy one, explaining and exploring her character up to that point. (I can think of one other single moment where the pacing of Glee gives Santana specifically a second to breathe: the pause in the middle of RHI/SLY.) The promiscuity, the bitchiness, the anger at the world. The knives turned out so that they don’t cut inside. So much repressed self-loathing.

Part of the reason that sapphicism broadly and lesbianism in particular are such an affront to patriarchy is because they don’t abide by the rules of the game. In other words, it challenges the way in which patriarchy has determined that womanhood and femininity should be performed. That doesn’t mean, however, that it isn’t a performance, if only because, within Butler’s framework, performing and lying are not the same thing.

As I explained in the previous essay, Prom Queen, conceptually and functionally, is about gender roles in a lot of ways. Kurt bucks gender norms with his outfit choice, by embracing the prom queen title, and by dancing with Blaine at the end of the episode. Quinn, in her desperation to be popular, and validated, and feminine, chases the prom queen crown ruthlessly, because it’s the ultimate prize for a popular girl. Again, like the cheerleading, it’s one of the classic high school archetypes. The whole idea of prom king and queen is so aggressively gendered, obviously. It’s binary, and heteronormative, and rooted in about seventeen different forms of social hierarchy. It’s gender performance taken to the extreme.

The conclusion of Santana’s storyline in that episode is her reconciliation with Brittany, and Brittany telling her that part of why she lost was because people could tell she was hiding something. Exactly who and how many people knew about Santana’s sexuality and when they knew it is something the show can never quite seem to be able to make its mind up on (side eyes at Finn Hudson), but the conclusion in this moment seems to be that the performance has, to some degree, gone awry. Because what use is a performance if nobody believes it? In that moment, it’s Santana’s worst fears about being punished for her transgression come to life - she is performing femininity incorrectly, and therefore she is denied the title that represents patriarchy’s feminine ideal.

iii.

Santana comes out is outed early in season 3, and we finally meet the person who has probably shaped her character - and her performance - more than anybody else we hadn’t met to that point (so, basically, more than anyone but Brittany). Alma Lopez. Abuela.

With some of the crumbs we’re offered up to that point, I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to see Alma’s treatment of Santana to be emotionally abusive - and this is only doubled down upon by her reaction to Santana coming out to her. It’s pretty explicitly stated that Alma is one of the main reasons that Santana is as vicious as she is. In other words, she shaped the performance. She’s clearly a pretty big female role model in Santana’s life, which is why the rejection hurts as much as it does.

The Glee subreddit is home to a wide variety of deeply stupid opinions. That might seem slightly mean, but one can only read so many defences of Finn Hudson objectively bad actions before one becomes slightly cynical. One opinion I’ve seen bandied about on there that I usually don’t have much time for is that Alma herself is a deeply repressed lesbian, largely stemming from the fact that Alma’s main issue with Santana’s sexuality seems to be that she’s willing to live it openly. Its slight difference from the usual ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ line. I do think it’d be interesting to touch on it here, though. Santana, in many ways, learnt her performance from Alma, which is why her open embrace of her sexuality here - after so much angst and drama - is such an act of defiance, and that’s only doubled with this particular reading of Alma’s reaction.

iv.

While we’re on the subject of Santana’s family background, I’d like to talk briefly on the stereotyping of women of colour in particular, and the way that intersection plays into the idea of gender performativity. Santana’s race and ethnicity are a little ambiguous in certain ways. She refers to Mexican heritage, and Alma has a Dominican flag in her home, if I remember correctly. However, since it’s never explicitly stated otherwise, I’m going to run with the idea that Santana is Afro-Latina, like Naya herself was.

Santana, particularly in her initial presentation (read: performance), very much fits into some of the stereotypes often assigned to Latina women. She’s sexually aggressive and promiscuous. She has a ‘fiery’ personality type. (I��m not overly fond of that word, especially in this context, but I think that’s really kind of the point.) As she says herself, ‘My job here is to look hot.’ Of course, that line can be read shallowly, because I really don’t think Ryan Murphy or any of the lead Glee writers thought that deeply about these things, but most of this essay relies on Death of the Author theory and my reading far more into this story than its creators conceived. It also speaks to Santana’s lack of agency, both in and meta to the narrative itself. She also is hot but w/e

A worthy point of comparison here, I think, is Mercedes, who of all the main characters is probably denied agency the most; who is so infrequently allowed to be much more than a foil to Rachel, both by the writers and, perhaps more depressingly, by much of the fandom, particularly back in Glee’s original heyday. She is also frequently desexualised, again by both the writers and sections of the fandom. There is probably an essay to be written on the variety of reasons that Quinn (thin and white) is read as a lesbian and Mercedes (fat and black) is often read as asexual or earnest in her religious reasons for her celibacy when Quinn’s canon reasons are basically the same. I don’t think all of those reasons stem from those differences, and I definitely don’t want to criticise people for sexuality headcanons that offer them representation - because an asexual, fat, black woman would be kind of revolutionary, if indeed that was what Mercedes was. I also really don’t think I - a white person with half a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Sociology A Level taught by a person for whom I once had to define intersectionality - am the person best suited to write that essay.

Which brings us back to Santana, and the ways in which her ethnicity impact her performance of gender, especially in the first two seasons when that performance is inauthentic. Death of the Author is, again, critical here - and I’m going to talk more about that at the end - but so is Gaze theory and Santana’s multi-layered lack of agency. As with all of the people of colour on Glee, Santana’s race and ethnicity are often ignored until it’s comedically convenient. I’m not saying the jokes don’t always work - Sam’s ‘Quinn once had sex with a Latina lesbian - learned that in glee club!’ comes to mind (I think part of why that works is that it’s one of the only times that it’s explicitly shown that homophobes are often deeply racist as well) - but I think that is notable that that’s often the only time it’s ever seen as worth mentioning. Santana, though played by a woman of colour in Naya, is ultimately a construct of the white men who created her, and it is through their Gaze that she exists. She has no agency in the real world, because she’s a fictional construct, and a distinct lack of agency within the narrative as a queer woman of colour.

So how does all of this relate to gender performativity theory? Said theory might be pithily summarised thus: “Gender is something we do, not something we are.” (I promise I do have a degree, I’m not just copying buzzy phrases from the inside cover of a sociology textbook lmao.) This, then, might fairly easily be mapped onto other socially constructed categories of being. So, how does one do their gender, or race, or ethnicity, or sexuality, when one has no agency of one’s own, when one is entirely a construct of the Gaze of others? When the puppet strings of the performance are juggled and manipulated entirely by someone outside the self? Ironically enough, things become even more of a performance, in multiple ways a construct. Santana the character is constructed, in the same way Santana the person, the queer woman of colour, is. Which is, of course, why critical literary analysis is such an apropos way to explore these ideas, because everything is a constructed performance anyway. And, in this way, we see how Santana’s character is flattened, whether it’s in the vaguely afterthought-like quality to any consideration of her ethnicity, or the wholesale ignoring of her blackness, or the fact that Santana the character, as opposed to Santana the person, is herself a construct.

And then the author dies. More on that in a bit.

v.

Santana has parallels with a lot of characters. Quinn is the obvious one, which is very well-trodden ground analytically speaking - narrative foils, both craving popularity because they can’t just up and admit that they want to be loved, both very gay and very repressed, both in love with Rachel - and season 2 makes Santana’s parallels with Dave quite clear. There are also certain parallels present with Kurt, though - and it’s not just because they’re the two principal queer characters - the two token McKinley gays, as someone put it once.

The relevant mirror here is on expression. Kurt starts out as very experimental, as far as his dress-sense is concerned. It’s also fairly androgynous. “Fashion has no gender,” he tells us. Over the course of the series, however, his fashion becomes more conventionally masculine - not overly so, but certainly more so than at the beginning. In Santana, this shift is even more pronounced. The main windows we get into her fashion is late season 2 and then season 4 and 5 in New York, and while it’s not exactly like her season 2 choices were all that transgressive, they were certainly more experimental than her tight dresses from later on. Now, this isn’t me hating on this style - because girl looks good - nor is it me saying that lesbians can’t adopt a more conventionally feminine sense of style. I would hope that goes without saying. Regardless, I think there’s something worth discussing here where agency is concerned.

Because, of course, Santana isn’t a real person - a real woman and a real lesbian; she’s a construct of a team of male writers. I think the easy explanation here is that the producers got lazy, on a whole range of fronts where costuming was concerned. And that is, at least to an extent, a reasonable line of thinking. To gesture to a fairly straightforward example, after a point they just started having Rachel... mostly just dress like Lea. However, I think there’s a more interesting lens of analysis to be had here where Santana is concerned when we recall that scene where her mother informs us that she was a tomboy growing up. The three points we have, really, are that snapshot of Santana as a small child, season 2, and season 4-5. In season 4 in particular, Santana is portrayed as feeling generally directionless and unsure of herself; of where her path is headed now that she exists outside the rigid hierarchies of McKinley High. And, so, her performance of femininity is exaggerated. It’s a continuation of what the cheerleader role represented for her earlier on: burying herself in the typical female role to hide from internal conflict.

I think there’s also more to be said, at this stage, on the way we can see this in Quinn as well. In season 1, she’s the church girl: babydoll dresses, sundresses, and, of course, her Cheerio uniform - something that she uses as a wall of self defence in a similar way to Santana. In season 2, her wardrobe is largely a more mature version of that - she’s been through the ringer, and being homeless and having a child have forced her to grow up, but, as we see in her determination to be Head Cheerleader again, she’s still desperately clinging to the version of herself from Before. The biggest departure is obviously Skank!Quinn, where she briefly leans fully into a more androgynous punk look before adopting, again, a fractionally more androgynous version of her season 2 appearance, namely the addition of her blazers - which might be read as something as a symbol of male soft social power. Her story in season 3 obviously continues to bring the angst, but it’s also a period of self-actualisation. The most traditionally feminine we see her presenting after that is in her brief appearances in season 5, where it is pretty explicitly established that she’s behaving inauthentically. It’s all fairly on the nose, especially on that latter point. Obviously we can’t map that onto Santana directly, but I think it’s an interesting lens of analysis, given that, as I established at the beginning of this section, the two characters parallel each other pretty strongly in a whole smorgasbord of ways.

vi.

I’ve been dancing around the whole ‘death of the author’ bit for a while now, so let’s get into it. The post that I linked at the top of this essay describes DOTA as 'once a work is complete, what the author believes it to mean is irrelevant to critical analysis of what's in the text’, and I think that’s a reasonable definition to work with here. In other words, the fact that this essay takes Santana as a person with agency of her own, outside of her creators’ intentions, is not necessarily incompatible with my argument that we might use the fact that she’s a fictional character to explore the idea of social constructs, because the former exists outside of the latter. Santana is a construct of fiction, and the author is dead. The two lenses of analysis go hand in hand, inverted as they may seem.

I don’t think it’s too controversial a statement to say that Glee isn’t a particularly tightly written piece of fiction. (Maybe it is controversial on the subreddit. Shit’s wild over there.) Santana is no exception to that. Her character is messy and inconsistent, and the writing varies in its willingness to explore her depth. It would be trite to say that within that uncharted depth lies the DNA of a brilliant character. I also don’t think that that’s entirely accurate, because Santana Lopez is brilliant. The brilliance, which I think I’ve explored quite widely in this essay, is in the margins, in the unsaid, the unexplored. It’s in the performance. Reading between the lines, we see the carefully constructed image that Santana herself created. That is the foundation upon which the character is built. And from that, we can analyse her in myriad ways - along with the myriad ways in which she is, herself, a constructed performance, both within and outside of the narrative, constantly deconstructing and reconstructing itself.

The author is dead. Long live Lopez.

[tul1ps1]

i know this isnt my usual posts. sorry.

tw tw tw tw tw

i need to get stuff off my mind. i genuinely dont know what to do anymore. my life is falling apart day by day. and im sitting back and watching it happen. im letting it happen. im not sure what to do about it. everyday im in a constant battle with my mind. everyday i struggle to get out of bed and go to school. even though im fighting my own shit, i go to school energetic and happy. because who wants to deal with someone gloomy. i try my best to put everyone elses mood up, to be that person who you can be happy with. i never will be that friend who brings your mood down just because im feeling down. thats the type of person i am. but at the end of the day, its never enough is it? im never going to be enough for anyone or anything. that feeling of giving up is consuming me. i cant keep doing this anymore. my life is a constant cycle. i dont feel real. i havent been feeling real recently. theres times i just stop and feel faint, and everything goes back to normal. i dont know what it is. im not appreciated enough. no one checks up on me. in order to keep my friendships i have to contact first. ive gave up on that too, and of course, that friendship ends up being extremely distant. im tired of putting in so much effort for people who wont put the same energy back. yet its the complete opposite when it comes down to my family. that i stopped putting in effort a long time ago. i stopped caring how im treated or about repairing relationships. its funny how someone you live with could be so distant from you. i feel unheard. i feel like no one truly knows me. not even myself. i dont understand myself either. maybe one day i will.

the truth is, even though i put up an act, i cant do it all alone. genuinely i wish someone would reach out and check up on me. but deep down i know that will never happen. so i will continue to answer with “im okay” whenever someone does ask me if anythings wrong. because i know ill get through it. because im the type of person to keep everything to myself until it all bottles up and comes out one random night or day. i find comfort in my sadness. will i be sad for the rest of my life? will i ever find and experience true happiness without the heavy feeling in my heart. without worrying that i will find myself back in this same position? ill be okay. i know i will. being alone and picking myself up whenever i fall apart makes me stronger in a way. but in many ways im also very weak. i dont know how to handle my own problems. and i carry other peoples problems as well a my own. if i dont do it, who will? i genuinely wonder if there would be a difference if i just left. if im gone, it wouldnt really affect anyone. sure i know people would be confused because why would a energetic and happy person like me end their own life? maybe then everyone would notice what i truly was feeling. maybe all the problems and burdens ive caused would leave this world with me.

[staarry-skies]

gonna be insane abt usamamo for a second im so sorry esp to my moots who do not care about sailor moon my heart goes out to you

read more bc this is so much longer than was intended

i see a lot of the same "theyre only in love because of fate/their superhero alter egos/their past" takes A Lot (to be fair its usually directed at the 90s anime, to which i do agree n understand, however ive also seen it directed at the manga which is why im talking abt it) and i just Do Not Agree, so im gonna talk abt it in a twt thread bc im insane and twt is my outlet for my insanity. (this was originally written for twt but got too long oops.)

starting with the whole "theyre only dating because of past lives" because its the easiest to debunk, its just flat out not true. mamoru n usagi never really got the chance to officially get to together pre-past lives reveal in the manga but its pretty damn clear they were going to, probably the next time they met as civilians and swapped their different keepsakes that they have from each other.

theres also the whole "oh well their feelings are remnants of silmil" which i think takes away a lot of their agency as characters and also just isnt true and is also pretty easily disprovable, usagi likes mamoru for being there for her and supporting her when she needs it, and mamoru likes usagi for being this incredibly strong heroine but also being a normal cheery girl all at the same time.

which leads me to the next point! "they only like each other because of their alter egos", two rebuttals here, they dont exactly stop being tuxedo mask/sailor moon just because theyre out of costume that is still them but i do see why this is a popular criticism. my other thing is that its definitely not true for mamoru, whos usually the one criticized for not truly liking the Real Usagi™️ and only liking her for sailor moon (or serenity but we just went over that and funnily enough this criticism should be directed more to usagi but we'll get into that later).

for this lets go back to why mamoru loves usagi, according to earlier in this post i claimed it was because of the dichotomy between her and sailor moon, the crime fighting warrior, and usagi the happy-go-lucky school girl who always brings a smile to everyones face, thus showing that he loves /all/ of her not just one side over the other.

but me saying so isnt really enough so lets hear it from the boy in question: "its true... for a long time the crystal was the only thing i wanted... but now when i see her... angry one moment then laughing the next... the crystal? no thats not what i really want... usako youre what i want" - (crystal ep 7) so... yeah thats pretty cut and dry, oh yeah nows also a good time to mention that ill be pulling stuff from crystal too because of the nature of crystal having been more closely supervised by naoko and being a stricter manga adaptation, any scenes it adds are retroactively canon to the mangaverse (at least to me, but if youre looking for a similar line from the manga: "youre strong today sailor moon, everyday i feel like im seeing a different side to you, is there other versions of you ive yet to meet? i want to know everything, who are you really?" - (chapter 8) same idea as the crystal quote just a lot more vague lol)

also this is reflected in more than just words, its actions too, tuxedo mask is a lot more closed off towards sailor moon earlier on and its not until chapter 4 that he starts being a lot more openly caring and affectionate, and you wanna know what happens in chapter 4? he finds out sailor moon is usagi, and it doesnt take a lot of media literacy to put two and two together to figure out why that shift happens there.

now for usagi, remember when i said the whole "liking the alter-egos" criticism applies to her more but is never directed at her? well heres why, we never really see her civilian relationship with mamoru develop much on her end before the reveal, she is of course attracted to mamoru but on a way more superficial level (usagis pretty notorious for her immediate, but ultimately kinda surface level crushes on people: see rei).

she denies her crush but its pretty obvious she has one, for example when mako points out that usagis blushing after one of their interactions and asks about it and she insists pretty loudly that she "doesnt like him!" but never really explains the blush (earlier in the same scene when she sees mamoru she blushes and b-dmp! is written in the bg, keep in mind he hasnt done or said anything yet so its not embarrassment) and then theres chapter 3 where she recognizes that his profile sorta looks like tuxedo mask which she'd actively try to deny if she didnt like him like she says she does, so its pretty obvious she has a crush on mamoru.

but her relationship with tuxedo mask is what gets more development, she goes from that superficial crush she has on mamoru to liking him for deeper reasons than just: pretty guy! i.e. helping her, being there for her, and grounding her when she needs it. also in the same vein as her recognizing him in chapter 3 the reveal is her just recognizing him as tuxedo mask, which obviously she has to like mamoru quite a bit to do (even if the evidence was quite literally all around her) (in saying all of this i do think pgsm does a much better job at showing her genuinely falling for all of him but pgsm also skews more towards the 90s anime in terms of characterization so i wont be using that).

and finally "usamamo are only together/feel pressured to be together because of fate/chibiusa" short answer: no. long answer: noooooooooo. no but in all seriousness this flat out isnt true, if you'll remember the first 14 chapters of the manga are kinda. yk. dedicated to this. their fate isnt to "be together" their fate is to literally DIE if they dare attempt to be together again, they are together DESPITE fate, like i dont even know how else to put it because multiple characters comment on fate repeating itself when it comes to dooming usamamo, they werent reincarnated to be together they were reincarnated to be happy and live normal peaceful lives.

as for fate as in the future, thats pretty easily disprovable because its ALSO something the manga goes over, during the dream arc when mamorus suffering from nehelennias curse he starts feeling guilty and selfish for constantly being a burden on usagi to the point he asks her if she really does want a future with him, even saying that he feels horrible for potentially tying her down to a future she might not want, which yk would kinda not be a concern he would have if he was only with her for the creation of crystal tokyo (side note: nowhere does it say usamamo NEED to be together for crystal tokyo to exist, usagi could very well rule alone like queen serenity or with any other partner, its just that the current timeline has them together in ct) as for usagis response, mamoru falls asleep before he can hear it, but she says point blank that she can change the future if she wants. So. Yeah. dont really think i need to say much more than that on that front.

And the last part of the "fate saga", "theyre only together to have chibiusa" which is such a crazy and lowkey highkey misogynistic sentiment, but for arguments sake lets take a look at why its completely wrong, first off, again. "i can change the future as much as i want" - (chapter 40) she could have chibiusa by other means (for example the way queen serenity had serenity) but also, the reason they care so much about chibiusa is because she's a product of their love, they obviouly care about her as a person but they wouldnt just force themselves to be together just to have her and her alone (if that makes sense i have no idea how to phrase what im trying to say) in any case its a really gross thing to say because it insinuates a lot of really weird things!

if you made it through all that you deserve like a medal or something but thanks for listening to my silly little thoughts about my favorite couple right now

[rifleonthewall]

happy valentines day ❤️

i’ll start by saying that 1) i know leon is a fictional character and not a real person and 2) that im not very good at words or making sappy things like this but ill try my best. this is also under a read more because its like, a lot of nonsense.

Valentines Day marks the day i first beat re2 remake back in 2019, and when i first officially fell in love with Leon. at that time i was heavily interested in other things and i was new to selfship as a whole, so he, along with resident evil, took a backseat. so much so that at one point i even considered dropping him from my f/o list in late 2019. But i couldn’t bring myself to.

and then 2020 hit, and while i was starting to get more interested in resident evil as a franchise, creating an entire fandom blog around RE and Leon, but i still considered him a lesser f/o to the ones i was more focused on at the time, he lingered in the background but i still felt such a strong comfort and connection to him. especially because i was headcanoning him as trans, much like myself. That alone brought me more comfort than hcing any other character as trans, it felt so real and true to me.

fast forward to mid 2021 where DBD, the game i had clocked around 1k hours in at this point announces that their newest chapter is Resident Evil, specifically Leon and Jill, at this point my attraction to him had come and gone in waves, some lasting hours, days, even weeks. But when this chapter got announced I think this is what really solidified him as my “soulmate” f/o. He practically took over all my thoughts, and i began to realize how much of comfort he brought me throughout the years and throughout some of the hardest parts of the last few years, he was always there like a safety net, someone i could fall into and he’d be there to catch me time and time again.

And now nearly a year and a half since that point Leon has become the most important fictional character to me. He makes my heart feel so whole. Resident Evil as well as become such a comfort media, i care about every aspect of these game but most importantly i care so deeply about Leon. Everyday i genuinely go through every emotion under the sun when i see him, regardless if i’ve seen the photo before or not.

And i know it isn't Great Coping but, the past few months to a year have been hard alright? i’ve genuinely used him as a coping mechanism and some days, one of the few reason i’m strong enough to hold on. I thank Leon for all hes done for me and for being one of the reasons i can wake up everyday. (this is not inclusive of the very real people and friends and partner i have that keep me going everyday, but for the sake of this post)

I struggle so hard to put thoughts onto a page because he genuinely means so much to me, and when i think about that i get embarrassed, and i worry others will make fun of me for how i feel about him. But i assure you my selfship with him has been the Most thought out selfship i’ve ever created. even if it only exists in my head. Beckett is my most planned self insert, down to how he’d fit into each game in a way that never felt Too self inserty. he started as an OC after all.

I love you so much Leon, happy 4th anniversary. Thank you for everything. I hope to celebrate many more years with you as an f/o, but even if that doesn’t happen, i cherish everything you’ve done for me.

- nick/seylan/beckett (whichever you want to apply to this)

[tillinghastcorporatemedia]

Hello, Fellow white person here, and i'm gonna help y'all by pointing some big actions and small actions you can take too, sometimes you gotta figure out things for yourself and every interaction is different, but here's what helps me.

first some demographics and imagery

this is an older chart but a good one. Kinda breaks down how white supremacy has systemically been placed into out lifes without us realizing.

Now im not gonna give an 8 page essay and following ted talk, but we'll go over some things i see a lot/the most

Either/or thinking

Right to Comfort (this is a huge one)

Individualism

Defensiveness

Now before we go farther this is something i have learned and am still actively learning so at some point this post may not age the best but actual actionable stuff can help a lot of people so ill post it anyways.

Either/or Thinking: this is both kinda hard and a bit easy to do with, but you gotta block the cop in your head, and to steal a meme from the kids, gotta recognize more than one thing can be the truth/true

but this also falls into trappings such as what's right/wrong and can also tie into justice and different movements but most of us white people gotta recognize that life is so much more than black/white thinking, and life isnt even just giant grey area. this also applies to other sections of the chart but all of this is interconnected so its all gonna kinda brush up to each other.

Things you can do to kinda break this issue and pattern: work on being less reactive and knee jerk responses. Listen to more voices speak on their experiences without trying to interject or comment. Honestly a lot of us dont listen to others very well and this is a big one. SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN. no need to comment or argue or anything. Its amazing what you learn if you just listen to someone without trying to make it feel like a vent or a problem. Then take some time, mull it over in your brain, and maybe come back if you maybe need some clarification. other people dont owe you labor. together we can work on issues but if we're not listening to the voices of those who have actually experienced it then we dont have the full breadth of context needed.

Right to comfort

this honestly is the biggest one for white people. i see this all the time in my everyday life living in a lower income section of my city. We all know the feeling. you know what im talking about. we've all been that person in line. we've all had times where it's obvious everyone is looking at you because you're out of place. you're gonna have to get used to that, brush the dirt off of your shoulder, and keep going. I can see it our white faces, and everyone else sees it too. Ive seen the mood change the instant someone who is a person or color brings up race or racism. You have to stop somewhere in the city. You lock the car doors the moment you realize you're on mlk/mlk jr blvd/st/rd in whatever city you're in. you ignore someone trying to get your attention or just hustle to the car and back. there's so many situations i dont think i could list every single one but all of the white people reading this probably know exactly what im talking about.

Guess what.

that's what we did and are still doing. our right to comfortable in any space has basically made most spaces that our presence is in unsafe for anyone who doesnt look or act white. it could be the karen calling security on the kids just playing around in the park or neighborhood, the dad who sits outside and yells at people driving, etc.

it will happen to you

you will be made uncomfortable in areas or times in your life

that feeling of wanting to run away and hide in the little haven you have sitting at home somewhere isnt gonna go away

until you can actually sit and stew and deal with it in a proper way you wont be able to really get deep into anti racism work

dont try to use white guilt or any type of way you feel when you learn this information. sit with it and learn is really the only option to defeat this. our presence as white people can be dangerous to other people and you gotta realize that and work to undo that for everyone around you. normally i would be softer but this is a real big one and you cant really pussyfoot around this topic so you gotta put on the big boss pants and fucking deal with it.

individualism

this is also another one that is huge. our individualism will be what kills us. this includes the nuclear family model of america and most of patriarchal values are trying to uphold. this is also why most of you cis men feel fucking alone all the time. there is no way for any change to occur without some other external force or viewpoint to challenge or any other form of conflict. you are a single person. most non european societies were much closer and didnt have all this social bullshit men and women can only do this type of bullshit. this also applies to self sufficiency, tradfem beliefs, farmer communes, etc. you as a person cannot be legitimately part of a community or society without destroying some form of individualism in your life. this can also play into your "right for comfort" <- (like i said this shit is in almost every tenant of white supremacy) when you want to just shut out the world and not interact with anyone/anything. Isolation is also part of individualism. ill repeat it again. you cannot be part of an actually function community where everyone needs can be met and still be individualistic. Me has to become We in at least some portion or area of your life to help everyone and it will take everyone else to help you help someone. any sort of system falls apart when there is no support to the critical areas.

defensiveness

this one is apparent any time white people get critiqued. "its not about race" its probably about race and you just dont want to feel like your racist. This one is spotted a lot on social media, the moment a white person is pushed back on they will react very fast to control narrative and be reactive and push back on any and every portion they can to not be considered racist. hell it happens in most if not all white peoples arguments the moment that you hit the button to do it. Guess what white people, including me, we're gonna be racist/bigoted/etc to someone even if we did not mean it. the moment you push back on the narrative to not seem racist, you're hitting the trifecta of defense/control/right to comfort. plus you make yourself an individual away from the white community by doing/saying things like "im not racist" "i didnt mean it like that" "dont twist it into a race thing" etc. guess what. for us. we dont get to decide what is or isnt racist to someone. they do. You gotta defeat the knee jerk reaction to defend or deflect. As you can see these all kinda interact with each other like a fucked up ouroborous. with help from others and each other we can break these standards even for ourselfs and then with others to help make society more anti racist. but its gonna take a lot of work you're not gonna want to do or say. and thats gonna be something to deal with on your own fucking time and not expecting poc to do all the labor and learning. listen to different voices, read different voices, experience different cultures, whiteness is a man made concept that can be defeated but not without some form of structural upheaval in us white peoples lives, homes, and communities.

its early in the morning and the coffee isnt hitting yet so ill wrap it up here and just add a few more graphics to help further your research and path to becoming not a shitty person. but this applies to every white person reading this, yes even you. this includes me. we can't do this alone and that is what everyone is trying to fucking tell us. "whiteness" has corrupted us fundamentally and we gotta fucking do better.

white ppl think racism and imperialism just spring into existence from nothing like big bang style instead of being constantly reproduced and upheld by ... say it with me ... white ppl

[deyanirahayes]

idk man this is the only social media that i have no ties to anyone on and i just need to vent/rant/ whatever bc the unsent project only allows 100 characters and i have so many emotions that i will get lectured at if i post somewhere ppl will see it.

i am fine. not happy. not good. just fine.

i miss a life that i never had. something i have learned over the years ive been alone is how much i love to run. anytime anything in my life gets hard i do whatever i can to run away from it. ill change my name, hair, style, house, friends, ANYTHING to forget that version of myself and that time of my life. i have never had a strong sense of self, i dont know who i am or what i stand for. its funny, my mother may have been wrong about so much but she was right about that.

i have done horrible things. everyday when theres a pause in the chaos i remember. i hate it. no matter what i change, the memories remain.

ive gotten better at taking accountability. ive gotten better at just making the right decisions in the first place. what might be the easy choice is rarely ever the right answer. my brain is sick, but other people shouldnt have to suffer because of it.

i started taking my meds regularly again. its not easy and i feel empty but if thats what keeps the people i love safe then ill do it over and over again. i still remember the last message he ever sent me. he really was trying even after everything.

i catch myself missing him often. its not fair; its actually incredibly selfish. things were not good. we were awful together because of me. i wonder if we had met later on, maybe things wouldve been different.

i doubt it. he was my first true love. if it wasnt with him it wouldve been someone else. thats how i know deep down i was the issue all along.

overall im fine. there is nothing special about me. anyone on the street wouldnt give me a second glance. i no longer feel pride in being "brutally honest". ive learned thats nothing but an excuse for being mean. i just dont see the world like i used to. i am not better than anyone else. i dont need to be.

im glad that im working on being better. im just sorry it happened too late. i couldve been so much more.

nostalgia is a funny thing. i am in love with my past. maybe its because in the end ill always be more comfortable in chaos. maybe its because im scared ill forget the things ive truly loved.

i still write about him. not music. its more poetry. music is alive. everything about him is dead now. like ink on parchment.

in the end, i really want him to know he was what changed me. im glad i no longer cringe away from mirrors. im glad i dont see her in my reflection anymore. he always did feel obligated to fix what was broken. i just wish my brokenness didnt cut into him as deep as it did.

i dont love him. i dont hate him. i just want to be free of who i was when i was with him. but thats the price of destruction.

[yoonsdoll]

fireworks - lcn

content : bf!chan x gn!reader ; tooth rotting fluff... ; 0.5k words warnings : kissing !!! & small mention of reader having longish hair. - chan is very much in love w u and wants to prove it !! an : i have no idea if ill manage to make another new years post so heres dino because i miss him lots. also i literally love writing fluff i know this is like the only thing i post BUT I CANT HELP IT. i love svt fluff too much!!!

“you know y/n, i really love you.” his words were random, but random moments like these warmed your heart up the most. 

you looked up from your phone after endlessly scrolling through social media without a goal, trying to fill in the space between now and midnight, when the fireworks outside the window would signify the new year. chan was sitting with you in bed, similarly viewing social media and occasionally looking at you, absolutely smitten with the way your hair was tucked behind your ears and how your cheeks were pink from the warmth of the room. 

“hm? well… i really love you more,” you replied with that pretty grin he loved seeing, “more than you could ever imagine.”

“that’s not true, you can’t love me more…” he fell silent, thinking about a way to prove this statement to you even though he knew that you both loved each other just as much. “i love you more than words can say.”

“then show me,” he glanced at you, his own smile now growing, a sight you were used to seeing everyday. his friends always teased him about it, the way you could make him melt by just looking at him or saying something that got his heart beating that little bit faster. you thought it was the cutest thing ever though.

rather than verbally responding, he simply nodded, placing his hand on your cheek and moving his face closer to yours. if you couldn’t feel the warmth before, you could definitely feel it now. his actions felt so gentle yet clearly deliberate, you couldn’t help but notice his features softening under the bedside light.

kissing chan was something you did often, you kissed him once he came back from work, you kissed him after he got you dinner, you kissed him when you wanted to wake him up from his heavy slumber. but you rarely kissed him like this, it wasn’t often you felt your heart palpitate, echoing the rhythm of love. you suddenly felt like a teenager again, feeling his lips on yours for the first time. 

you were sure chan felt the same, the way his kiss was so effortlessly breathtaking, a seamless connection speaking volumes when your lips collided. you could feel his thumb tracing your cheek, a soft whisper of admiration of its own. 

with a tender withdrawal, you felt your breath shorten. the silence between you was anything but awkward, you both acknowledged the subtle lingering gazes that chan planted on you quietly, appreciating the way you shyly avoided eye contact.

he opened his mouth to say something, but got quickly cut off by the loud sounds of the booms and bursts of the fireworks outside, chucking instead. “happy new years baby.” he added on, taking your hand and dragging you to the window.

“happy new years, chan.” you responded quietly, following him to the window to see the jittery flashes in the sky.

if you could describe chan, you would describe him using a firework. just like one, hes really pretty, beautifully spoken and a little loud - but it adds to the charm. hes also very random, like a firework exploding in irregular patterns. and like a firework, he illuminates the darkness with colour and joy, leaving a lasting impression on everyone around him.

for the new year, you know one thing - you want chan to stay by your side. and if hes a bright, loud firework, you’ll be his fuse, his bonfire.

[kemmehhhh]

crazy week

12/19/2023

just had the craziest week. i dont know why it reached to this but anyways, so it all started last friday I think? my friend messaged me about a post from my ex crush wherein he shared post abt 'nasa nursing ang true lobe' and his friends mentioned my name on the comments but according to my friend, his friends are not sure if hes pertaining to me.

fast forward to saturday, nangaligo mi and my classmates keeps on making tupo tupo with that one classmate. well at first i thought it was just a joke because this has become like an inside joke in our friend group. but then it was revealed last saturday atung nag inom sila tas niuli na man gud ko kay simbang gabi pa na he actually like me(?) and he said hes planning on confessing to me before siya mu uli. and he did.

here comes monday. naa mi sa school for a shitty project and my friends keep on asking me weird questions which revolves on a topic of 'what if someone likes you'. i had a feeling abt something but i just let it be. they keep on teasing us even atung pag pauli. so pag uli i went to solana kay naa akong friends there. actually wala na tuh sa akong huna huna until atong pag abri jud nako sa akong messenger ni chat dayun siya. at that point murag huy naa na koy na sense nga something, ana ana pa ko ato nga what the fuck is my suspicion true? and it was indeed true accla.

nigawas mi sa akong friend para mag cr, tas pagbalik namo (ni una na ug sulod akong friend) naa siya. tas yot wa jud ko ka panagang, i thought lang na naa koy nabilin sa school but then he went straight to the point. if i remember it correctly he said this: "ill go straight to the point, I like you" and murag kana ra ang akong na remember and gihatagan ko niya ug bracelet, with my fav color which is wa ko kabalo nga kabalo siya? or maybe from sa forms. and then ni adto na dayon siya.

after that na piece na nako tanan. tas mas na clarify pud nako tanan pag chika sa kong friends last night. i really thought it was just a prank or what but damn, it was real. it feels like a fever dream. sorry for being overwhelmed, its not everyday that i get treated like this. and its like a breath of fresh air from my last experience nga manguyab dayon, this time gusto lang jud niya iingon.

actually idk what will happen after this, what now? i mean i think its not that im not ready, maybe its because im scared. who knows? its too early for me to think abt this. u know what, i really prayed last night abt this, and also last last night. i really sensed something was abt to happen and i asked guidance on what to do after. but i think He wants me to think this through muna, we have all the time in the world and if its us then kami jud. lets just see where the wind blows us.

[xtrablak674]

Clear Headedness

My second pair of leather pants has arrived (not pictured), and they actually fit! They should be taken in about two inches. But with a belt I can actually wear them right now. I have to figure out where I am going to take them since my regular tailor is MIA. But now I need to re-think some of my tops, my feeling is that I am going to need more interesting fabrics up top to go with the texture of the leather. Which is making me prioritize tops during my upcoming trip to Europe. I am also going to make my priority thrifting, with the thinking that being in foreign countries I am going to be exposed to things I wouldn't be exposed to locally. I think this is an excellent plan.

According to my scale I am 165, I am not sure if I believe the scale because the weight kept changing the six times that I weighed myself, but it stayed in the one-sixties. But yesterday I had four bowel movements and with two of them I was feeling ill until I passed my bowel. I am not sure if its my diet because it pretty much stays the same. I have been going a little hard on my favorite licorice, and I did a couple of those Chomp meat-sticks, I think I am going to abstain from licorice for the next two or three days. I am a little sad about that because one serving size is only one hundred calories. Its a processed food, but one of my lowest calorie off-menu snacks.

Something is going on with my body, I don't feel sick but I think something is disagreeing with me, and I have no appetite this morning albeit I don't usually eat until nine-thirty or so. I feel like I will be on-menu all day if I don't all-together skip some meal items. This most recent journaling exercise is really helping me to clear my mental cache everyday, which just reminds me of why I have always journaled on and off. I thought I needed a person to offload this information, but that isn't true at all. Sharing my thoughts anonymously or just posting them is better than the things floating around in my head. Ms. Kennedy my last therapist really did an excellent job in reinforcing the tools I need to keep my dysthymia under control.

[Photos by Brown Estate]

[s0lar-ch3ri]

OH BOY i have so many thoughts on hair i made so many tags for it on your post about undersea and hair

one about chip:

and one for jay:

i have A LOT of thoughts on how hair works, some i forgot to cover, in the world of riptide! for this, im gonna have to go character by character (it also will be following the idea in the post i referenced also by you lol, idk what the hell to call you so for now just fellow fan fiction? sure). as always spoilers ahead and ill try to keep my writings within the eps youve seen so far lol

update i procrastinated this long enough that youve seen them all so nvm the second part of tjhe last sentence

addition thoughts for jay: i know she removes the pin when under cover because shes going in disguise but like. i have to talk about that. she wears it while sailing on the open seas. and she also carries her sisters badge. like shes so connected to the navy, yet she chose to be a pirate. at first it felt like the pin wasnt holding any hair out the way, but like in the more recent design she has, it holds back her bangs (which must be better for her vision and aim j bet), like she can put those ties behind her. shes still connected to them, but not as much as before. i also wanna bring up jays connections to failure! she probably is seen somewhat as a failure, by her family and by herself (also friends idfk). she failed to help ava. she failed to be a true pirate at first. she failed to stick to plan and keep being a spy. shes failed several times before, and im not even talking just in battle or to save or whatever! shes failed in inventions, talking to people, lying, you name it! yet, her hair is messy and down and long, and thats because she survived it. she survived the failures and its her way of winning. her wins outnumber her failures and she knows it, so she lets it down fully because shes more proud, and more free to fuck up things that arent shit.

thoughts with gill himself: gillions hair has never really changed. one may argue nobodys really has, but thats where your wrong! when in disguise, its only really later on that gillion does shit to his hair. YEAH TYING IT UP ISNT MUCH (jay) BUT LIKE. HE JUST DIDNT TOUCH THAT SHIT. including that disguise detail though, his disguises and shit are like very similar (we do not count jort storm here, he can go kiss chip again). villian, emo gillion, killion, all of them are very similar. hes also the only one to have used hair dye btw. yeah it was for emo gillion, and i think it wad like dripping out, but he still used it. would dying your hair be like showing some representing to how baytles were won or how they fell on it? interesting on how gillion chose black...OH ALSO THE CORALS WR GOTTA TALK ABOUT THEM! im thinking about how hats would mayter to hair in this jdea, and ik gills corals arent like a hat but like. its described like a crown. would some who didnt know treat it like hes some royal fuy? idk lol, just thinking. curious on why hed change his hair then...

thoughts with edyn: following the theory, edyns hair is very short. yeah, its absolutely from gillion, but he hadnt seen her for YEARS. hair grows after tike unless you cut it yourself. i wonder if edyn just kept cutting it everyday because she was so sorrowful over that failure.

thoughts with finn: the thing with fin is he has a pretty long beard. i bet you he may have been a damn god researcher, but he must have disappointed people when he left to go above. yet, he has such long hair, and its because he didnt regret it. and maybe gillion is confused by that, but we do have to note something: finn would know more undersea culture then gillion because gillion was sheltered badly by the elders. finn also knows more oversea wise because hes been there longer. yet, comparing the two, it looks like gillion has failed so many more times then the man who willingly left home and disobeyed their religious ideals.

thoughts with chip: chips new hair has a lot of similarites to people hes met. its wild and free like jays, he has a little braid like lizzie and/or ollie, its like how he changes with eceone he meets. this is also how hes choosing his hair to look, what with the undead thing now. SPEAKING OF THAT, THE BANDANA MUST BE SO INTERESTING FOR THIS! like, chip can make his hair any length with this, so its not off the list that he wouldnt make it longer or shorter. he can change how it looks, and with this it must mean it changes around meanings. if he chooses to have it shorter, its more meaningful because hes acknowledging that he fucked the hell up. theres also how like the hat is kinda big enough to hide some of his hair so its like hiding his failures and victories, hoorayyy!!!

hope you like this soap

anyways cause i love hair headcanons and minor pieces of symbolism in things like inherited appearance--

mae (may?) ferin has brown hair, but it's very curly.

jayson ferin has the fiery orange hair that's the signature of the ferins, but it's straight.

thinking about ava ferin having the same hair as her father, because she took after him and fit the role she was meant to. became a navy captain(?) and allat

thinking about jay ferin having her father's red hair, but her mother's curls because she doesn't fit the mold of being a ferin in the way her sister did. she's a pirate, first of all-- she never becomes the navy icon she was meant to, but she still has that lingering loyalty that comes from family. she's caught between her rebellion and her love for her family and i love how her alignment isn't black-and-white.