#interracial expected

[africanrefugeeswelcome]

It's beautiful to see a mixed child waiting for their next mixed sibling to be born

[femrodeeeeo]

I hate when I see people make hate comments on kids that have a multi-racial background especially when they're like "so your grandma was raped?" or "are you proud that your grandma got raped".

I think they're forgetting that women only very recently gained rights and many countries still don't criminalise rape in marriage so it pisses me off that they don't classify it as rape when done by men of their own ethnicity. Reminds me that most people think of the rape of women in history as men's conquests and property being defiled rather than just an act of violence.

They're also the same people that forget that people can marry for love despite going against their community, family and everyone trying to force them to conform.

There's a lot wrong with my family but I'm happy that my relatives married for love, followed their own values and didn't have to pop out dozens of kids. Those decisions mean I've never feared arranged marriage, haven't been told to have kids(by my family at least) and have freedom while being female unlike the people making those disgusting comments.

[hanmegumi]

man i looooved watching the movie bottoms but once again the fandom disappoints and does not serve cunt (everyone cares about jeff who's the only straight white man in the movie more than about the girls who are complex queer and some of them nd)

[thegetdownrebooter]

I liked your comments on kenstewy. I ship it, but I also find so much fic makes Stewy this pathetic guy rather than someone who is a winner and driven and loaded in his own right. the only fics I have read where Stewy is a "caretaker" which makes sense, are ones where Kendall has a total mental break and loses touch with reality and gets diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. Even in that one, Stewy is ... not selfish, but not in thrall to Kendall. His own man. not sure if that makes sense. I think it is set before the series so it makes more sense too.

no, what you're saying makes perfect sense and a fic set pre canon where stewy takes care of ken because he has lost touch with reality and is probably terrified on his behalf does make sense.

Honestly the issue with "caretaker" stewy is that the fandom and the majority of kenstewy shippers don't see him as his own person with his own life and issues, and the result is him coming across as a 2-dimensional loser with no life or purpose of his own outside of being ken's therapist/support system/replacement daddy and not only is it ooc, but it's also telling that the same shippers making those fics NEVER have ken being the one taking care of stewy in return, which means they either see stewy's purpose being ken's emotional support dildo (because they always fuck in those fics) or they are admitting to thinking that only ken deserves love/caretaking in their dynamic, which is really fucked, like why are you shipping them together if you don't like stewy at all?? and why want them together if you don't see stewy as his own person???

[a-walking-fandom-reference]

obsessed with this old man i found on imdb who reviews hallmark movies and hates them all but has watched over 600 of them

[rottenlittlefink]

Ahhh like… vent in tags i guess (i said what i said :3c)

[peacenfly]

there will be little to no masc dark skin women in any of my creations. and u can quote me on that

[africanrefugeeswelcome]

And so on...

[vamptastic]

its always funny seeing non-white and/or lgbt ppl wanting to move to my hometown and all the straight white people are like "youll be fine its a live and let live kind of place just mind your business and people will mind theirs" and all the non-white and/or lgbt people going "jesus fucking christ please don't move here you WILL be hate crimed by a dude in a trucker hat and the KKK is still active"

[thirst2]

Jude: They're cis? Jude, joking: Baby, what do I always say? We have to stick to our own kind. Me: But I'm cis…? Jude: Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh Jude: …I forgor

[teambyler]

Questions to ask if ever you have Byler doubt:

Do people seriously think that a show centered on nerds and social outcasts...

... shows how awful the popular kids can be...

... villainizes anti-gay bullies...

... sides against abusers...

... supports LGBT+ people...

... has interracial romance...

... embraces being different...

... turns an expected hetero romance into a beautiful platonic friendship...

... criticizes moral panic/evangelism...

... makes the "town freak" our hero...

... shows that love can overcome hate...

... and whose characters don't want to recreate the nuclear family...

... do we really think that show will let a suffering, traumatized gay boy's love be the device for a conventional white hetero couple to be the show's "main relationship"?

Has the show even set-up Mike and El, who met through trauma and circumstance while they were children and have repeatedly lied to each other, for a lifelong commitment?

Who's actually delusional?

And who sees this show for what it is? And what it's clearly setting up?

-teambyler

(This is a companion to "How the Duffers have set Will up for a happy ending in Season 5")

[beamorgan]

Favourite Reads of the Year

I will not be ranking these, because that would hurt my heart. Buckle up folks, there are a lot of amazing books out there

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

I know, I KNOW, I'm late to the party but omg this whole series is just as good as people say!!! I know I said I wouldn't be ranking, but if I was these would be fighting for the top spot. I have already relistened to all the audiobooks. I anticipate rereading them literally every year from now on. I would die for Murderbot, which it would think is a stupid thing for a human to do when there is a SecUnit right there. [adult, scifi]

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

Sequel to last year's fav Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, this follows a bullheaded academic trying find the magical door that will let her faerie boyfriend back into his faerie kingdom. Chaos ensues in the Alps. It's fabulous, and the author's approach to using folklore is very similar to my own writing, which I love and also get imposter syndrome about. 10/10 recommend [adult, historical fantasy]

Model Home by Solomon Rivers

Would you like to be repeatedly punched in the gut? Look no further than this story of racism and child abuse in a Texas McMansion, with gorgeous prose and a genderqueer protagonist and the laundry list of content warnings you can expect with the genre. It hurt so good. [adult, contemporary gothic horror]

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

This love affair between a baseball play and a sports reporter was recced to me by the lovely @colubrina and boy was it worth the two-day binge it inspired! Romance can be very hit-or-miss for me, but this knocked it out of the park (please enjoy my pun). I didn't even have to know anything about baseball to love it! [adult, historical (1960s) romance]

The Locked Tomb Series by Tamsyn Muir

Another tumblr fav, FOR A REASON. Gideon is hilarious. Harrow is an absolute mess. Nona is BABY, my beloved. (Camilla and Palamedes have my whole entire heart). Also, the audiobook narrator is fantastic. In the words of the author, the buns are also fried chicken. [adult, sci fantasy]

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

This one is @elodieunderglass's fault. Historical buffoonery on boats. The main characters are ridiculous. The sailing jargon is incomprehensible. It's great. [adult, historical fiction]

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

This is a gorgeous memoir of an interracial adoptee trying to make contact with her birth family while pregnant with her own child. It grapples thoughtfully with reconnecting to a lost culture, the complexities of family history, and the social and legal barriers adoptees face to learning about themselves. [adult, memoir]

Death in the Spires by KJ Charles

I devour everything Charles writes, so I was EXCITED for this mystery. She made it very clear on social media "It's not a kissing book!!" (it's kinda still a kissing book). She wrote a stonking book, as usual, with an underdog protagonist revisiting the murder that happened during his toxic time at Oxford university. [adult, historical mystery]

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

My favourite literary fiction read of the year, this meditation on Iranian diaspora identity is written by a poet and you can tell. I would suck the prose up through a straw if I could. The protagonist is an addict and also quite suicidal. It was fun :) [adult, literary fiction]

She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan

and the sequel, He Who Drowned the World. I don't even know how to sell this, all I want to do is flail incoherently about how amazing it is. IT'S AMAZING. JUST READ IT. (wait I know: this satisfied the part of me that was obsessed with Mulan as a kid) [adult, historical fantasy]

A Little Trickery by Roseanna Pike

The voicey-est book I've ever read. I screenshot like every other page. It follows an orphaned girl trying to survive in Tudor England through various means, such as faking a miracle in the church where her gay best friend is priest. [adult, historical fiction]

At the End of the River Styx by Michelle Kulwiki

My friend wrote a book! It made me cry!!! They were delighted with this!!! Please give this to any teenager in your life who needs to see thoughtful representation of grief and depression and boys in love. [YA, contemporary fantasy]

[alovelyfrenchworld]

Your Neigborly Orc Part 1

Meeting an orc was not something that anyone from your village ever expected. Even with your village being the closest human civilization near the river orc territories, it was still considered strange.

Half-orcs were proof of the interracial relations, but they were rare in your part of the country. A half-orc hadn't been spotted for around 50 years. You never thought you would be one to compete with the discourse of your people.

You met your warlord lover perchance after hunting one day. THe border between the orc territory and the human territory was divided by a small river in the forest. Few ever ventured that close.

There was knowledge that other orc territories had blurred with the humans in other regions, but yours had yet to do so. The overall interactions with orcs had increased across the lands and it was becoming a small shadow in the thoughts of the human civilizations of what these interactions could mean.

Regardless of their opinions, you tried to stay near to your homestead you had established in the blissful wood. You decided a change of pace to create a space for yourself was beneficial. You lived close to the river that divided the territories as it gave you a water source, but when hunting and foraging, you tried to stay as close as possible. If one was not paying attention, it was easy to cross the borders between territories. Even in your land did the borders begin to blur.

You had begun to make a living from selling animals meats and forage herbs in your village. Living in the wood gave you access to many resources and a source for profit. Living solitarily was not as lonely as many thought.

**********

The winter was growing harsher as the weeks went by, making it all the more pertinent to stay stocked on supplies. Primarily, that meant firewood was in constant need.

After enjoying a humble breakfast and attending to your minimal, but helpful, livestock, you set out into the nearby wood to refill your kindling.

Supplied with your rucksack, simple ace, and rope for bundling, you set out for the day. The weather had killed off many of the berry bushes and herbs you often used, so meat and wood had become the primary subjects of your searches.

After finding a decent spot, you chopped away at some smaller trees that would be easier for you to carry. Carrying everything by hand was not your usual method, but your wagon was not properly equipped for travelling in the snow, so you you could only bring home what you could carry. That fateful day, you were not the only one who decided to go out deeper into the woods.

Some distance away, across the river, was a big, burly, orc chopping away at a large log. Methodically and skillfully, he was chopping the wood and bundling it together.

You were mesmerized. You had never seen an orc in person before. He fascinated you.

Having noticed your staring, you went back to chopping wood. The noise must have alerted the orc, who then took his turn to take note of you when you were looking away.

You, unknowingly being watched in return, bundled the bits of ash tree you had chopped and readied yourself to go back home.

"It won't be enough," spoke a gravelly voice.

You turned to see the orc standing closer to the river, his kindling hanging from one arm.

"I'm sorry?" you hadn't expected him to speak to you.

"A few more bits of wood will help you. It's an awfully freezing winter." He was right, but you wouldn't admit that to a stranger.

"I appreciate your input, but I can handle my own. Have a good day, sir." At that, you turned around to head back home.

Regardless of whether or not the orc was right, you wanted to be self-sufficient. You had all you could carry and that was more that what many could do, so either way, you were proud.

[legy]

i gotta tell you what ive read two hours of wholesome monster girl academia and

1. its fucking boring. but

2. its like completely uncritically set in a monstergirl residential school. the protagonist thinks about how monsters are better off at private catholic academies instead of public school. its established in the loredump at the beginning of the game that monsters were uncontacted peoples discovered via the first uses of satellite photography. they were genocided by most of human society but for whatever reason the pope declared that all are equal under the eyes of god and is stated to have allowed interspecies marriages well before it was legal. none of the monsters you get to know ever express anything regarding having a culture outside of catholicism, including one (a daywalker, the child of a human and vampire) who is actively repulsed by his vampire lineage and verbatim says that "vampires are 100% evil." crazy subtext in this thing

2.5 sorry i cannot get over that monsterfucker marriages were officiated by catholic churches, IN TEXT, before interracial or gay marriages were

3. there are many weird details that (speaking as someone who was raised catholic and went to sunday school) immediately scream that the author is either not catholic or an adult convert. which makes the choice to commit to this bit so intensely just baffling to me. like they have mass on wednesday which is (to my knowledge) exclusively a protestant practice. all the spaces you inhabit (particularly the religious ones) are not nearly as ostentatious as you would expect from a catholic church. like their chapel is more spartan than the one attached to the sunday school i went to. they wont even involve the more interesting/iconic catholic rituals like lent because its set in OCTOBER. where are my fish feast fridays.

4. the fucking vampires dont even drink blood so we dont even get the awesome lore possibility that the eucharist is filling to them because its literally the body and blood of christ

[sol-iscus]

CAN I ALSO JUST SAY

I am *so* fucking happy seeing two poc (especially a black woman love interest) in this type of media?? I have become extra attached to this show for a variety of reasons but this being the biggest one. I am aware that there is mainstream media that feature interracial relationships, but the face of so many of those relationships are white man x poc.

The acolyte was a breath of fresh air for me. I am equally obsessed with how transparent the creator of the show was with what type of relationship to expect between the main leads and didn’t tease us with something that was never going to happen.

And they’re both fine as hell

[peachhoneii]

Rio and Jefferson pulled the most wholesome “This boy did not just bring home a white girl” I’ve ever seen in a movie pertaining to an interracial romance that included a white woman/girl. Because they’re absolutely kind and respectful to Gwen, but they were not expecting a white girl. I cackled at Rio’s “I bet she doesn’t speak Spanish.” Like MA’AM.

I know a significant part of it was them learning to let Miles go and accepting he’s growing up, but another part was they genuinely didn’t expect him bringing home a white girl. That definitely caught them off guard because they didn’t see that coming at all. I love their reactions to it bc it’s similar to how my parents responded to my brother’s white gf.

“Oh, she just said my first name.” Yeah, felt that on an instinctual level. Grew up in the South, Mr. and Mrs. always came first, but this isn’t a race thing because Ganke does the same thing, which neither Rio or Jefferson appreciate. Feel this is just a generational gap sort of thing.

A tidbit about Miles. I really, really appreciate the film including his lowkey attraction to Margo Kess. Gwen and Miles are my preferred ship, but this was a nice touch where you saw Miles and Margo vibe with each other, albeit briefly. There were some sparks. In his escape, Margo hesitated when she could’ve stopped Miles and eventually turns on Miguel, realizing that while his motives may be noble, his methods are not.

There are other small, subtle nuanced concerning race and depiction of race that I genuinely respect the film for depicting so seamlessly. When Rio corrected the guidance counselor on her immigration status, “I’m from Puerto Rico. I’m from here.” But she slowly accepts the line if it means helping Miles’ succeed.

Also the contrast between Miles and 42-Miles hairstyles. That is so POIGNANT to me. Miles is such an open, caring boy and his hair reflects that bountiful spirit he has. It’s thick and open and free. 42-Miles has been damaged by the world so extensively that he’s closed off emotionally and his hair, tight, coiled braids, reflect the coldness he lives in and has become.