#it's all about her being a black woman

[cantsayidont]

Maybe the children in cages and the U.S.-funded genocide and the ongoing plague and the censorship campaign and propping Sen. Dianne Feinstein up like a reanimated corpse à la Spinrad's "World War Last" have made me more than usually cynical about the Democrats, but I can't help feeling that Kamala Harris inheriting Biden's place on the ticket is a clear indicator that they are expecting to lose (as their staffers have apparently been saying for weeks), and they've ordered her to take one for the team because they would never run her under any other circumstances.

As a Californian, I am as contemptuous as anyone of Harris and her awful record, but I suspect that's beside the point. I don't think the DNC regards her as a viable candidate — if they did, they would have put her forward much more prominently long before this — and I have a hard time picturing them running any Black woman in a presidential race they thought they could win.

[sunfortune]

CHERYL DUNYE WORKED ON BRIDGERTON??????? this is crazy. kanthony has the lesbian gaze fr <— hasn’t watched bridgerton

worked on it? she directed the gazebo scene. we literally have FINGERS IN HIS MOUTH bc of HER!! i owe her everything !!!

[unraveling-plot]

Been thinking a lot about how I love Seven x Thirteen yet they're basically a two-for-one combo of two tropes I hate ("incompetent man x competent woman" and "competent woman x even more competent man who upstages her")

And I think part of it is that it is both of those at the same time so it PEMDASes, but I think it's also that it's like

Thirteen: this man's very existence is challenging my worldview. He was a brutal killer but still he has friends who love him and he chooses simple joy. I must kill him or I'll fail my master and I have no one other than my master. But this guy keeps trying to help and protect me and keeps forgiving me. Not having the resolve to kill him is breaking apart my sense of self. I've only ever killed to survive but he makes me want to fight to protect. Could I be valued beyond my usefulness?

Seven: whoa pretty lady :D sick sword moves. Wanna go to the beach?

[hussyknee]

There are people in 2024 sincerely saying "don't bring up politics on the first date". No you're right, we should hand out questionnaires beforehand asking things like "Is abortion murder?" "Has trans rights gone too far?" "Should poor people just die?" and "Is Zionism bad?". No point wasting a perfectly good date if you're going to block them on all your socials and off the face of the earth at the end of it. "But it's so nuanced!" Goodbye.

[yuridovewing]

i understand the frustration with “i made this gay pairing cis x trans so they can still have biological babies” with no thought to other methods and how ppl assume thats the case when it comes to mothpool aus where mothwing is also the mother of the three, but also…. idk i kinda dont give a shit if someone wants to do that and i dont really think its inherently transphobic as long as its handled with care and respect.

what really concerns me about this debate is how some people are adamant that you cannot portray trans people having biological children in media or youre being disrespectful. and im gonna say as a nonbinary person who doesnt want children for themself- thats kinda fucking weird? like i understand that for some people, theyre trans themselves and theyre speaking from a place of dysphoria, and i absolutely get that, which is why i think the topic should be handled with nuance and diversity in trans characters, but like…. guys. pregnant trans men exist irl. trans women get people pregnant irl. trans ppl’s ability and right to parent and have biological children are being debated irl. we get denied the opportunity to adopt as well.

in a climate like this, are we SURE we want the stance on rewrites and headcanons in the silly cat books to be “if you portray trans characters having children, especially with a gay couple, youre a transphobic freak no matter what!” does it really matter? especially if its being done by a trans person handling the topic with nuance who has a lot of trans characters with varying perspectives?

obviously yes, remember that thats not the only way certain gay couples can have kids, remember that not every trans person is fully comfortable with it and keep that in mind, remember that surrogacy and adoption are also perfectly valid ways to give fan babies- but remember that there are OPTIONS. not that you need to condemn the idea of transgender parents in the first place unless they fit the very specific criteria of “proper transgender representation” and anything that dares deviate from that is proof the op is a transphobic monster (bonus points if theyre a trans creator bc i mostly see trans people getting shit for this and it kinda pisses me off. although idm if cis people do it either as long as theyre handling it with respect)

[quillkiller]

Petunia literally abused Harry bro 💀 and pointing that out doesn’t mean we’re downplaying her grief or bc she’s a woman

yall are gonna freak out when you realise that abusers are also human

[sleepynegress]

Love this interview... I have been semi-checking in on Zawe's journey since before certain stans were feeling some kinda way about her recent familial additions. I do for certain Black actors/creators especially, who seem to be moving in interesting ways in entertainment/film media...

-A remnant from a period when I used to go to screenings and blog about films (and was published a few times in a major national newspaper)... So, I knew of Zawe through the grapevine of her mentorship, i.e. she is the reason why Rege Jean Page of Bridgerton fame got to work in U.S. markets, as she sponsored him. And she is known, as one of those "good eggs" who will be accessible and help/advise especially young actors of color. ...But, I have some other stuff to say. This isn't about proving that she's an amazing human being. It's about a certain brand of misogynoir that some of these people far beneath her in self-knowledge, self-love, and just plain grown-ass-woman-personhood...keep letting fly in what they *think* are compliments, but actually are just trite microaggressions. Saying things like "as long she makes [T-blank H-blank] happy then she's alright" as if he's the centered human and her attachment renders her worthy somehow. Babies, as long as SHE'S happy. Yall. He's marrying up.

WAY UP and the fact that he knows this? Actually elevates him. She's been there.

She tells a story in the above interview that reminds me of Uzo Aduba's anecdote about her name , - of an incident when she was called to an early job (at 6!) and someone there said she wasn't pretty because of her gap and her Ugandan mother took her on past this person and into the room, ANYWAY.

... She learned a specific self-knowledge and self-love, that is necessary in very white western spaces that constantly pressures a narrow sense of worthiness and beauty, especially from Black women, something a lot of these small-minded stans don't even have a notion of seeing beyond. Zawe is biracial, and her features, aside from her skin tone are very African. So while she benefits from colorism, featurism is something I've seen those bigoted stans, pick on as well. She knows those features are what makes her beautiful and knew that, w/o and before her partner saw that too. And people who aren't blind narrow-minded ignoramuses can *also* see that. This is why I assert the fact of featurism needing to be in the conversation of light/dark privilege conversations. Lips, nose, gap, and even the set of her eyes are ethnic beauty markers within quite a few spaces in the Black African diaspora... My mom was an absolute stunner because of her gap.

Even the old school white model Lauren Hutton got there because of her gap. Uzo Aduba, who I have already mentioned has a deeper skintone and has similarly large round striking eyes, gap, and a non-pinched-nose *rightly* played Glinda in NBC's production of The Wiz a few years back, with Dorothy saying she's so beautiful *because* of those features, not despite them as a very narrow white-washed gaze would wrongly assert.

And while we're here that includes sizes and shapes too. I'm saying your boy is enjoying all that plush. A lot of yall need to read or reread Maya Angelou's Phenomenal Woman, for comprehension.

Anyway... All this to say I know Zawe is and will be fine regardless.

P.S. Maya Angelou *also* had height, and gap and was very much known for her beauty/magnetism as a woman when she was alive. :

[gxlden-angels]

I don't know if it's the religious trauma or the dead mom trauma but the conservative christian insistence on not teaching children about their bodies in school and insistence that this knowledge should be private in all circumstances with no exceptions should be seen as suspicious at best and criminally malicious at worst

[seaweedstarshine]

Sometimes I think of Amy Pond, who grew up being called mad by those who wielded the word as a tool of exclusion and shame —

Amy Pond, who though forced into the hands of four psychiatrists, still clung to that which they called madness until those systems which elevate psychosocial conformity above humanity stripped it from her —

Amy Pond, whose imaginary friend reappeared for a single hour after twelve years and reignited that faith before disappearing for two more years —

Amy Pond, who spent those those two years under the same implicit threat ingrained in her through psychiatric violence, and thus began to believe the man who stopped the invasion was “just a madman with a box,” only for him to agree, and to also call her “mad, impossible Amy Pond,” reframing madness as non-negative for the first time in her life —

Amy Pond, who ignored the disembodied voice of her imaginary friend even as she ran away with him for real, who still lived each day with the traumatic internalization of deviancy dictated upon her by the psychiatric-industrial complex that shaped her from childhood —

Amy Pond, who wouldn't acknowledge the Doctor's voice, such that it took an Angel in her eye that was literally killing her to ensure she couldn't reality check herself —

Amy Pond, who stood before a room which muttered about “the psychiatrists we brought her to,” and though afraid, escaped their rigid parameters of acceptable existence.

[agirlinthegalaxy]

It's been rolling around in my brain the last few days for some reason, but I still hate the family backstory reveals for Sophie and Eliot. I've seen some of the meta for it, but quite frankly, it still makes no sense. If it had been something actually thought of and intentional in the original, I think it could have been so fascinating. I mean, Sophie's willing abandonment of Astrid to contrast with Nate's loss of Sam or Eliot's adoption in contrast with Hardison's and Parker's? Could have been excellent! But they came out of nowhere in Redemption and don't work with these characters.

Sophie was still actively using the fucking alias that she met Astrid under! She met with someone from her past on the show! Like. Quite frankly, that one is unequivocally bullshit that they made up and threw in and pretended could fit with the established canon. (And I'm sorry, but the idea of Sophie abandoning Astrid and never telling Nate about her just... So much of Nate's trauma was rooted in the loss of Sam, and I think that introducing this element after he's gone and unable to respond to it taints Sophie and Nate's relationship in a way bc I'm not exactly sure how Nate would've responded to learning about this but I think that it's something he'd have needed to know. I don't know how to fully express my thoughts on that but yeah.)

As for Eliot, I don't like the adoption aspect literally at all. The way that he would interact with his family and the memory of his family would be different, and I think that it's flat out ridiculous to think that he'd have never mentioned it to the team in the original show, especially when dealing with the kid cases. (I also dislike the biracial adoption as its own element because if Eliot was actually raised by Black parents in the... idk what 80s/90s? That just. doesn't feel congruent with how they write Eliot interacting with PoC, not necessarily in a bad way, but babe, he's written like a white southern man raised in a specific kind of culture that does not jell with that. It also makes Eliot look... really bad that he was apparently raised with the knowledge of how fucked up the military was and his parents' history and made the choices that he did.) Like the show may not have explicitly stated it but the implication of that relationship was vastly fucking different throughout the original show.

Just. These were not backstories that were congruent with their depiction and characters in the original show, and they're also just moves that I don't particularly like or find interesting directions for those characters. There's also something to be said about how it was apparently unacceptable for a woman to not have kids or someone not reconciling with their biological family when that was something that the original show handled a lot better. Out of all the directions to take Sophie and Eliot's stories, that's just not really one that I think was a good idea.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

re: s5 episodes 6 and 7

going into watching the x files, one of the very few things i knew about, because i had consulted my best friend wikipedia, was the emily plotline. i knew it was coming, so in a way it felt inevitable, and my reaction to finally reaching it was approached from the in-universe knowledge that this was how it would be from the start.

but now that i read the notes on my liveblog post, i think about how i would have interpreted the episode if i had not known that fact, or had i been a contemporary viewer. i think i would have also felt frustrated that they decided to give the female lead a baby over two episodes and then kill her off and act like nothing happened. i think i would be frustrated with that, especially when i have other, existing complaints about the way women are treated in this show. how once again the plotline, from its very core, revolves around removal of scully's reproductive agency. and i think that rings even more true nowadays.

it's interesting to imagine my reaction had i not known it was coming. because the foreshadowing was there, what with the abduction plotline and the clones and the earlier babies in tubes and hybridizations and blah blah blah. but i guess i would have thought (or hoped) it was handled in a different fashion.

we'll never really know what my first thoughts would have been had i not known what was eventually going to happen, but hearing your thoughts from seeing it is making me ponder.

[literaryspinster]

Having a Black woman character wear a scarf or bonnet to bed is such a bare minimum ass example of positive rep. Sure it's appreciated, but if you're going to fail in almost every other aspect of her character then please don't pat yourself on the back for something that takes zero effort.

[can-i-get-a-yippee]

There’s an alternate universe where the 911 writers didn’t murder Shannon, and she, Buck, and Eddie get to have a similar dynamic to Micheal, Bobby, and Athena

[mesothulass]

look im rogers #1 hater ok he gives me the creeps

that being said. "you have enemies here. then let them be my enemies as well. any and all of them. and let them come." SIR????? hottest thing he's said or done this entire time

[niobiumao3]

.

[bohemian-nights]

One of the(many) things that bugs me about this fandom when it comes to Nettles is how even mentioning her relationship with Daemon is considered “reducing” her role to just being that of his "love interest.” This idea is ridiculous to me because it’s promoting the same thing that they accuse Nettles x Daemon shippers of(aka stripping down her characterization).

Yes, Nettles is her own independent character with her own story that ends and begins outside of Daemon, but he is a part of her story.

Her relationship with him is just as important as being an orphan bastard (non-Valyrian) girl from Driftmark, the only dragonrider of Sheepstealer(and probably the last dragonrider for 200 years), or a fire witch to the Burned Men. All those aspects make Nettles Nettles. She is more than one thing and romantic love doesn’t detract from it. It only adds another layer to her characterization.