#just a bit more subtle

[freckledjoes]

Knew that looked familiar.

[hinamie]

10 years later

[ominouspuff]

Fwoom (intimidatingly)

[aethersea]

I do think Blazing Saddles handled its one depiction of native americans very poorly, and the full extent of its representation of chinese workers on the railroad is they were literally just there. not even one single speaking line. unclear if this is worse or better than the redface.

it's fucking phenomenal at lampooning antiblack racism though. extremely blatant, extremely funny satire, which is constantly and loudly saying "racism is the philosophy of the terminally stupid at best and morally depraved at worst, and we should all be pointing and laughing at them 24/7"

plus the main character is a heroic black man who has to navigate a whole lot of bullshit but is constantly smirking at the extraordinarily stupid racists and inviting the audience into the joke. the one heroic white character is a guy who was suicidally depressed until he met the protagonist and they just instantly became buds, and he's firmly in a supporting role the whole time and happy to be there. the protagonist saves the day with the help of his black friends from the railroad, and uses the position of power he was given to uplift not only those friends, but all the railroad workers of other minorities too, in an explicit show of solidarity.

anyone saying "Blazing Saddles is racist" had better be talking about its treatment of non-black minorities. it had better not be such superficial takes as "oh but they say the n-word all the time" or "they have nazis and the kkk in there!" because goddamn if that's the full extent of your critique I very seriously suggest you read up on media analysis. there is too much going over your head, you need to learn to recognize satire.

[aroaceleovaldez]

the dynamic of demigods thinking which other demigod is the most powerful is always amusing to me because. like, we know the big 3 kids are all the most powerful. That's just a fact of their universe. And then we know nearly every character views Percy as the strongest demigod, and most people are very rightfully intimidated by him.

and you look at the powers of the Big 3 kids and there's Percy, but then you realize Nico is just kind of objectively more powerful than him but simply chooses to hang out in Percy's shadow like he's Percy's scary dog privileges. Like, the two of them are pretty equally capable of causing multiple different apocalypses. Nico just also has like four different instakill powers and it's not like he doesn't use them. He very much uses them! Not infrequently, even! And they don't seem to take a significant amount of energy from him! And other demigods are pretty intimidated by both of them! But Nico makes a conscious point to keep his cards close to his chest and not let on exactly how dangerous and scary he can be if he wants to. People are already scared enough of him without knowing anything about him and he doesn't like that. Percy doesn't think about that nearly as much, and so usually just goes in guns blazing and that's part of why he's considered a wildcard. And then Nico himself puts Percy on a pedestal, so those who do know more about Nico's abilities then presume Nico knows something they don't about Percy that implies Percy is even stronger than him.

And even on a meta level Nico's narrative role requires him to be functionally more powerful than Percy, because he very often serves the purpose of getting Percy out of situations he can't handle on his own. That's just part of his function as a character! But also narratively he can't overshadow Percy so he just takes a backseat of his own accord and that's very amusing to me.

[pencilofawesomeness]

So, I've been reading a lot of Ghost King AUs recently and... my hand slipped.

[layaart]

I made a repeating pattern inspired by this is how you lose the time war. alt colourways to come!

[rustedleopard]

Part of the reason why I defend Ceroba so much is that I initially didn't like her character. Her personality is pretty big from what we saw of her with her quips with Starlo in the Wild East, so when she joined up with Clover in my Pacifist playthrough, I was expecting... more from her. Instead she stuck to the sidelines for the fights (understandable since it would've been dumb to take fighting away from the player) and almost all she would talk about was her husband and his accomplishments and meanwhile she was just a housewife. Then I found out that she injected her daughter with an experimental serum and was like "Oh, she just straight up sucks :/" I felt shafted, cheated out of an interesting character because it felt like there was more to her and then she was just your standard-fare housewife who loves and supports her husband and daughter.

But then on a subsequent playthrough, I started paying attention to what she was saying more and thinking about her and I realized "Holy shit, that's the point!!" Ceroba is a character who placed so much blind faith in her husband that she let it cloud her judgement. That's why she injected her daughter with chemicals. She saw her husband as this flawless, larger-than-life character and that's why she let herself recede into his shadow. She wasn't the supportive housewife by choice; that's what she had to become in their relationship so Chujin could continue being the altruistic hero of the Underground. She couldn't have hobbies and be her own person if she was taking care of Kanako and making sure the family had money and food on the table, meanwhile her husband is doing fuck all to contribute. I felt cheated because life cheated her out of the chance to be her own character. It all makes sense now! Ceroba Ketsukane, I love you forever and I'm sorry that there are people out there that don't get you.

[firethekitty]

i don’t understand when people say tristamp vash is “missing” his anger. like were you guys not paying attention to his multiple screaming matches with wolfwood or knocking wolfwood onto his ass or when he straight up violently chokes a dude out.

even just in this gif you can see how he needs to take a moment and bury his anger to respond to wolfwood calmly

(gifs by @/typhoonstrikes!)

just because his anger isn’t always loud and explosive does NOT mean it doesn’t exist

[starrysharks]

i am the cattt just chillin outt but in the night she's all i think aboutttt

[lambmotifz]

sam can control dean emotionally by pleading & using submissive puppy dog eyes while dean has physical control over sam. you understand

[wavebiders]

ok letting Vex and Percy hook up before the ressurection confession is a weird choice but I am actually so here for it

[skitskatdacat63]

Forced against my will to post these(thanks @flopnandoalonso and @schumigrace ...) , but please enjoy gifs of: Fernando at the spa (PLEASE DON'T BLOCK ME)

[yellowocaballero]

Omg hi Ms. Yellow Caballero big fan of your work <3 For real though, I'm really excited that your sharing the Weekenders, it was a joy to read and I'm bongocat-ing now that others also get the privilege to read it as well.

Referencing your tags, would you please elaborate of ableism in fandom and, like you said, how fandom treats characters with unpalatable disabilities?

Hi Ms. Bud Lite I'm a big fan of you <3

TL;DR A fear of writing characters of highly marginalized identities shields you from criticism and discomfort, but it's actively stigmatizing to people of these identities and as a writer you really need to get over yourself and write The Icky People.

I guess I'll come out swinging on this one and say that fandom doesn't like severe mental illness. (As a note, when I say severe mental illness (SMI) I mean illnesses such as psychotic disorders, bipolar disorder, substance use disorders, personality disorders, etc)

Obviously, nobody likes people w/SMI. It's just insanely egregious in fandom to me, since fanfic writers absolutely love writing characters or HC characters with depression, anxiety, or a specific variety of PTSD That Isn't Scary. People actively reject any character HCs for a SMI. When people write a character with SMI, they nicely downplay it, ignore it, substitute it for a disorder they like better, or rewrite it. It's completely untolerated, in both headcanons and in fanfiction, and every time I bring it up I always get the most interesting reasons why somebody couldn't possibly acknowledge a character's SMI in their writing. I've heard all of these:

"I don't know enough about the disorder to write it accurately." Do research.

"I'm not X, so I can't really depict it." You probably aren't a cis white man, but you depict those guys just fine.

"It feels insulting to the character." There is no shame in having a SMI.

"I can't understand what it's like, so it's better to be cautious and avoid giving characters stigmatized identities." There are LOTS of experiences that you'll never understand because you've never had them - you just don't want to write anything you're uncomfortable with. People with SMI make you uncomfortable, and you don't want to write anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, or think of a comfort character in an uncomfortable way. SMIs are marginalized differently than solely depression/anxiety/The Nice PTSD, and by refusing to write them you're actively contributing to the stigma.

I think (?) I've spoken in the past about how I believe that the rigorous external and internal policing of writing people of marginalized identities is actively harmful towards efforts to increase diversity of experience and background in fiction. A lot of fanfiction writers are just terrified to write people who they can't directly relate with, because they're worried 'they'll get it wrong' and be Big Cancelled. I think this is negative enough when it prevents people from going outside of their comfort zone, but on a macro level I think this results in people refusing to write characters of marginalized identities as all. It's an insidious thought process, and it's reflected in people's unwillingness to diversity their writing or acknowledge canon diversity.

'Well, I don't understand what it's like to be Black, so I don't want to write Black people'. 'I want to project on this character, so I only want to write them with mental illnesses and identities I have'. 'If I write a marginalized character incorrectly people will yell at me, so I won't write a marginalized character who's marginalized differently than me at all'. Can you imagine writing a lesbian character with a boyfriend because 'you feel uncomfortable writing lesbian experiences'? It's blatantly homophobic. But people do that with disability and race/ethnicity ALL THE TIME.

People with SMI notice that you feel uncomfortable with them. It's obvious. They notice when a character has a SMI + anxiety, and you only write their anxiety. They notice when a character displays symptoms of a SMI in canon, but you write it out. And POC notice when the characters of color are written out. I know we all like to project on the blorbos and relate to them, and in the joys of your own head do whatever, but as a writer if you only stick to identities you're comfortable with you are actively being a worse writer. Which to me is the REAL sin lmfao.

[w1f1n1ghtm4r3]

doing my silly little costume design things

(you should also totally go provide your input on the rest of the lineup for this fake event too)

[fr3ckl3z]

So I've been watching supernatural...