#not the same old shit repackaged over and over

[panuccispizza]

the absolutely disgusting feeling in my stomach from scrolling through someone's profile full of AI images is insane I thought I was too autistic for that level of feeling. if you have the ability to shit out 20+ very aesthetically pleasing "watercolor inspired fantasy art" pictures in one day you're sick and twisted and I actually want you to get hit in the ankle with a scooter. I hope your water spills on you next time you go to take a drink. you're avoiding being human.

[digi-tama-in-your-pocket]

PSA virtual pet collectors, don't buy these cheap v-pets that keep popping up on Ebay

I've noticed these things popping up all over the place. The packaging is very cute, so it's tempting to check it out. But don't. You'll notice almost every single listing here is "new in box" which likely means it's not opened and untested. I don't think that's a coincidence. Likely several crates of these were discovered in a warehouse somewhere and auctioned off to "professional reseller" clowns who take advantage of hobbyists. The only thing they have going for them is that they're usually cheap ( unless the "professional reseller" is an idiot who thinks all old things are worth whatever they think they can get away with. ) and they have a cute design and shell.

I have actually gotten several of these, at first it was intentional because a V-pet discord group told me what they were, they were simply repackaged Hitorikko pets, which were going for a little bit more money than these more cute ones online. So I bought one of each... and none of them worked. Like, they power on, they make noise, the buttons work, but... nobody should be okay with screens like these.

It's easy to look at these and tell me I got a bad batch from a seller who stored them improperly.

Nope.

I thought the same thing at first, but because I wanted a working one, I actually ended up with 9 of these things from various sellers. I tried getting them from a different seller, and then some sellers included them in lots.... every. Single. One. They are all like this.

These are probably very cheaply made defective bootlegs, or they didn't pass quality control and got stowed in a warehouse, only to be auctioned off to the aforementioned e-bay circus entertainers.

If you want this pet, just buy a legit Hitorikko. It won't have a shell this cute, and the packaging has boring clipart-core animals. But they're much more likely to work than the ones with the cute pictures. Maybe it's possible to do a shell swap if you snag some of the bootlegs for cheap, but I'm not comfortable doing that. Besides, I have not seen a fish version of these bootleg pets, nor a dinosaur version of the Hitorikko. Again, look for this package if you want the programming without the shit screen ( Shit screen still entirely possible to get on legit Hitorikko. Never buy vintage pets if they're not willing to show the screen functioning. )

[time-to-write-and-suffer]

Ppl are (understandably) upset abt fae shit taking over YA/NA romance but I think getting mad at the very concept of fae and why it's popular won't really do much. Mainly because the "fae" we see in popular books are just the same flavor of guy, with minor variations based on author appeal. The "fae" are no different from the vampires back in the Twilight ripoff era (in fact they can be traced all the way back to Twilight itself), they're just using a different word for that specific flavor of Straight Romance Guy and his associated tropes, which is what you're really mad at.

Usually the main fae guy is a bigstrong man, there's some sort of mating system, potentially some gender essentialism, and everyone's a model. It's a generic but "appealing" (to mostly straight women) enough concept that it can be pretty much anything you want it to be, all while tapping into that high fantasy/"political intrigue"/enemies-to-lovers buzzword soup. I think the only reason this trope is specifically called fae and not elves is because you want to be darker and edgier, and elves have a cultural association with being more ethereal and sexless. So we have these guys, who are really just the same guy, who are really just elves who fuck, and we call it fae because it sounds more mysterious and, well, fey than elves.

(It could also be argued that fae and elves are the same guy also, but most girlies are not ready for that conversation.)

I think it's understandable that it became this way, as the concept of "fair folk" exists across different cultures and has fewer set rules compared to Tolkien/D&D elves. It has a bigger and more varied pool of inspiration for writers to take ideas from. However, instead of actually taking ideas from any folklore, a lot of the current fae shit is just repackaged vampire/werewolf stuff: these are guys who are better than you, they have superpowers, they fight and fuck like animals, and they claim your weak human body with their bites, and the ultimate upgrade is becoming one of them. It's the same old shit under a different name.

The reason it feels like an epidemic is because smaller authors are just cribbing shit from the bigger ones and using the same names for the same guys, the same tropes, the same plots. Like "oh this made me horny, so I'll just repeat it!" and this echo chamber has begun spawning its very own lore and mythology, and newer authors are assuming that this is based on real folklore and not some woman's personal wank bank, and don't bother to check because this is good and made them horny, so why change what works? Like, I've legit seen authors claim that SJM didn't invent fae mating because "it's part of the original mythology." Which, to be very clear and admirably restrained, is not the case. SJM didn't invent mating, but it's not becuse it's "original folklore." It's just the same old stuff but with a different name, and unfortunately, the fair folk and associated folklore is a lot more vague than, say, werewolves or vampires, and that's why these tropes are now becoming "canon" lore.

We've basically taken a vaguely defined existing concept, slapped its name on the old paranormal romance tropes of yore, and because there's no cultural understanding of fae the same way there was vampires, there's no "vampires don't sparkle" pushback, and we've begun adopting a few women's fetishes as the Universal Truth, and that's the part you hate. The part where it's the Same Guy again, but he's wearing a different hat.

And while I get why you'd be tired of this shit specifically (I am also tired), I think to dismiss fae in general is like dismissing vampires back when Twilight was popular. It's a type (or types, rather) of supernatural creature that has a rich history across cultures and it's a well of inspiration for writers that has been used before and will be used after. I think to blanket-dismiss the concept of fae in a book is counterproductive. You want to encourage writers to tap deeper into that well if you want that generic samey-ness to go away. What you want to dismiss are the tired tropes that are forced on otherwise interesting folklore/mythology that's open to endless different interpretations.

At the same time, I do fully understand why wouldn't want to do that, because as much as writers like to complain that readers just don't get their flavor of unique, sometimes there's just not a lot to get. It's the same fucking guy, girlies. You wrote the same guy again! To find one unique and interesting take on the fae, you have to sift through a thousand of That One Guy, and it's just not worth it.

(There are also and will always be really cool books about fae that aren't romance as well, but I'm specifically talking abt romance because it's infested with fae shit right now and I get it. I really do get it, I get both sides of the issue. I'm part of the problem, I wanna see cool fae shit with romance so I keep reading them, but it's the same guy again, so I'm writing my own, but it might be the same guy again because I'm also braindead!)

Anyway, I look forward to years from now when fae get their renaissance and we get wacky and interesting takes on them. First we had Twilight, now we get What We Do in the Shadows. First we got ACOTAR, and eventually we'll get ... ??? We'll see! We can only go up from here!

[paradoxcase]

So I did some research and tried to see if I could find any information about these phones that are supposedly being flooded with generative AI tools, or as that person put it "generative machine learning", which, lmao

They all seem to have more or less the same set of "AI features" which amount to:

Speech to text (existed long before the "generative AI" boom)

Automatic summarization (existed long before the "generative AI" boom)

Suggestions for improving the style of your text messages (already existed before the "generative AI" boom in the form of writing aids like Grammarly)

Recognition of objects in images and related image editing abilities (fairly new, but not in any way, shape or form "generative AI")

Assistants like Siri/Alexa (existed long before the "generative AI boom")

It looks like one or two phones have some capability of generating AI images for your phone background, and some deepfake image editing stuff, but this is not very common. These two features are the only thing I could find that I would actually classify as "generative AI".

I'm sure these companies probably hooked up an expensive LLM to the back of this shit that's going to consume your entire battery for breakfast so that they could say that it's using the latest technology, etc. but most of these features are not actually new. ChatGPT is not taking over your phone. Roko's Basilisk is not coming for your immortal soul. This is literally just tech companies doing what tech companies have been doing since long before anyone outside of academia had ever heard of ChatGPT: repackaging an old feature with a nod to some new piece of technology and saying: "Behold! This phone runs on <the latest tech fad>!" Like, it's a fucking running joke in tech circles that everyone claims their shit is AI when it's just "if statements". It's literally a meme. This is just one fad in a long list of fads, tumblr needs to chill the fuck out

[ceruleanwhore]

I'm getting really sick of the ways in which some people talk about consent and throw around words like 'grooming' and 'abuse' because it's starting to feel pretty insidious. What I'm talking about is this fairly recent progression with how we've gone from 'don't fuck teenagers' to 'you're not actually an adult until you're 25' along with how any (typically hetero) relationship with any semblance of a power imbalance is deemed 'grooming', with the woman being the 'victim.' It feels like people are just finding another way to infantilize women and, by pushing this narrative that we can't consent to many kinds of relationships, it starts to build back up the outdated culture of women not being able to consent at all.

Grown ass women being labeled as children just because they're under the age of 25 is bad enough, but then there's people who will talk about how age gap relationships are gross regardless how old the younger person is, so then it's also 30, 40, 50 year old women being treated like kids as well. There's also this thing where if someone just happens to look young for their age then people act like that person should never date anyone because, regardless of age, anyone who's interested in them is a pedophile. This particularly bothers me because it's typically said about women relative to men but not like twinks in the gay community or younger looking men getting with women their age, or even women who are older than them. It just feels like something that's presented in a way that's supposed to feel feminist, like the people claiming this are trying to somehow protect women when, in truth, they're just infantilizing us while ignoring men.

It gets worse as, recently, people have started to make similar points about 'power imbalances', one notable example being the Try Guys declaring that a grown ass woman couldn't possibly have consented to having a relationship with Ned because he's her boss. I think it's easy to look at isolated situations like this and feel that way but as soon as you start to think about it on a larger scale, it's so insanely stupid. If you truly believe this, then you also believe that anyone who's ever been in any sort of political office can never have a relationship with someone who hasn't, because of the power imbalance. Poor people can never marry rich, people of color can never have relationships with people of more privileged races (mainly white, but there is enough of a racial hierarchy that I can't really just say white), people can only have relationships with people who are exactly the same age, and disabled people can only have relationships with people who have the same disability/combination of disabilities.

Especially when you combine this with the rise of pro-segregation under the guise of liberalism and the recent push for people to stop having interracial relationships, it really does just feel like it's all about controlling women, especially WOC. That definitely checks out since it seems to be mainly white liberals spouting this shit and we all know there's a major issue with white liberals claiming to care so much about equality when they're actually bigoted as fuck and never bothered to actually unlearn any of that shit, so they can only repackage it to fit their aesthetic. I will also acknowledge that part of this is that women who have their own traumas want to prevent other women from going through what they did, so they say stuff like this because they genuinely believe that these strict limitations on (mainly) hetero relationships will keep them safe. However, that doesn't change the fact that this line of thinking is potentially very harmful and could send us back to 20th century rape culture. Hope enough people don't drink the Kool-Aid and this blows over soon but we'll see. Oh and yeah, don't fuck teenagers, that's still true.

[medicinemane]

Jesus fucking christ, so I just watched the original Beetlejuice (which upon rewatch I still think is a really good movie) and then I went to watch the new one cause I kinda heard it wasn't great but it was more of the same and... ok, sure I could go for that

It's not, it sucks. I'm 14 minutes in and... it's just awful

The cinematography is shit, like something about the lighting or the camera or something is wrong and so much worse than the first one. It just looks worse, and in part it's probably how crisp it is but... it just feels bad

The writing hasn't been at all good so far. Like the writing wasn't very good to start with, and then they get to the otherside and somehow it got significantly worse

To compare pretty one to one, in the first movie they look at this room of tormented souls and a janitor character comes over and says those are spirits that have been exorcised (poor bastards) and it's best to keep moving

In this one a guy randomly falls down a manhole and dies, for some reason winds up in that same hall, asks the janitor in French where to go, is begrudgingly told, the janitor mutters how he hates foreigners, goes and drinks cleaning supplies drooling them down his chin, then goes and has his floor buffer explode on a puddle

Do you get the total tonal difference?

Plus, then it goes into a Bee Gees song while this woman staples herself back together and that feels so... modern movie (and the cgi is just... awful on it... oh, it's almost like the practical effects of the original looked really good cause the lady that's sawn in half is clearly two people poking out from a couch with cleaver prop work to make it look good)

Like the original had Harry Belafonte songs and original music and that was pretty much it, and all the songs were either on the radio or being used during possessions to make people sing them

This... they just have a fucking song playing as something happens, and again... it just feels like modern schlock, the same crap repackaged with a different ip

Not to mention that the afterlife stuff feels at total odds with the way it was in the first one

Again, 14 minutes in and I dislike it enough I have to come bitch, doubtful I'll like it more later. I expected a like... 60% movie that I'd be like "well... it wasn't great but it was neat to see more Michael Keaton being a weirdo"... like the new Independence Day wasn't very good but I kinda like it anyway, I expect that

This is just bad, and Winona Ryder is doing great at recapturing her character but as an adult... but she's like... a ghost hunter scammer with an estranged kid? Way to Naruto that shit, everyone loves seeing characters they like be washed up failures, no one complains about that trope (for being lazy more than anything else)

Over time I've come to the conclusion Tim Burton sucks and slaps his name on better people's work... and I was worried seeing his name on it, but honestly the opening credits were good so I had hope

The opening credits do the same thing as the original but a new version and it worked... Danny Elfman at least didn't screw up and managed to do a new take on the old theme... it's not better or anything, but it feels like a remix that upped the stakes just a tiny bit... him and Winona Ryder are the only two who seem to understand the assignment so far (the mother made a return, but... her writing was so bad and her scene so short I can't really tell yet if she's doing just as good a job as before... she probably is)

Boo... boo, this is ass. This is worse than I ever would have thought based off what I'd heard

Expect me to really start skipping but also to complain more

(Oh, and then staple lady sucked the life out of the janitor, something we've never seen before, and he crumpled like a soda can... which looked stupid... just get Michael Keaton on screen and let him be weird, that's what I watched Birdman for, that's the only parts of Homecoming I watch... he's entertaining at being odd and that's the only thing I could see being good in this movie)

[david-talks-sw]

Just out of curiosity, who would you have chosen as the big bad of the sequel trilogy? Specifically Maul or Uber/Snoke? We know GL's ideas for Maul and I think Uber would've been similar to the Mortis Son. I feel both could've worked but I'd like to know your thoughts

Okay, so I'm saying this with the benefit of hindsight.

For me, this right here...

... is the perfect ending for Maul.

Stricken down by Obi-Wan, who cradles him like he did with Qui-Gon and Satine, the two people Maul himself took from him. So close to achieving a semblance of redemption and peace... and failing all the same, dying scared and angry.

Because part of what makes Star Wars awesome is that it repackages mythology with a more contemporary sci-fi/space opera twist.

Maul is Sisyphus. He keeps trying to roll that rock to the top of the hill and keeps failing over and over, for all eternity. It's sad, it's pitiful, but it's also deserved because of Sisyphus' crimes.

Same with Maul. He's always this close to getting it, and he never does.

George Lucas may have done something cool with him, who knows. I probably would've liked it, in 2015.

But for me, no other ending will top what we got in Rebels.

So who would I have chosen to be the big villain...?

I don't know, to be honest. I'm of the opinion that no idea is bad, it just needs to be executed properly.

Palpatine?

I already covered in this (very old) post/rant all the different ways that bringing Palpatine back from the dead could've actually worked, in TROS. And I explained here why Palpatine's return doesn't diminish Anakin's redemption all that much.

Snoke?

He could've worked too... let's just know what he is.

Before TROS came out, he was rumored to be this eldritch creature from the Unknown Regions, centuries old, that Palpatine could sense from Coruscant. He's an evil version of Bendu. Cool, I dig it.

Hell, maybe he's millennia old. Maybe when the first Sith broke away from the Jedi, it's Snoke who trained him.

Also, his philosophy is similar to the Sith's, but not quite the same.

The Sith break off from the Jedi, but that means that they also see the Dark Side as this bad drug that consumes you. The difference is that the Sith say "yes shoot up, it'll give you a high."

Snoke teaches Kylo that the Light Side is the drug, and it needs to be purged with the medicine, aka, the Dark Side. He's saying "cleanse yourself of the Light."

So what would such a character want (beyond galactic domination)? Well, he's a fanatic who genuinely believes the Empire was better for the galaxy. Or maybe it's not about that at all.

If we stick with the "evil Bendu" idea, Snoke would be this guy whose been quietly observing everything from the galaxy, never participating, only witnessing history... and he sees chaos, endless chaos. And it's all so noisy. He just wants to sleep.

Then 1,000 years ago, he sees the Republic, protected by the Jedi... maybe that'll get the job done? And it doesn't, after a millennium the Senators are corrupt and we see the same chaos as before. But then the Empire came about and Snoke witnessed order the likes of which he had never seen. Holy shit, this young whippersnapper Palpatine actually managed to do it. Snoke finally gets some shut-eye.

Then ROTJ happens and in 30 years, the same issues come about. The New Republic is slowly becoming just as corrupt as the Old one was, and it's doing so at a faster rate.

So Snoke finally gets off his ass and steps in.

Then again, "I just wanna sleep" isn't a strong enough motivation, we'd need something more that isn't cliché.

Plagueis?

This one is also cheesy as all hell, but I always liked the idea that Darth Plagueis was Snoke, or that Plagueis was the final baddie and Snoke was one of his genetic creations gone awry.

Plagueis completes the circle. He's been hinted in Revenge of the Sith. And in Legends, he’s got that ‘mad scientist’ vibe going for him, which offers a lot of potential, plus there’s the perk of leaving Anakin’s sacrifice and the Chosen One prophecy untouched. You could say he stopped being a Sith the day his apprentice betrayed him and left him for dead.

And I’d advise only making him a manipulative-type antagonist, not the boss fight. Like Zemo in Captain America: Civil War. Have Kylo be the final boss, and Plagueis is just the one who sets up the duel (and hey, let’s get nuts, maybe let’s have him have some sort of psychic battle with Maz or Leia, or even Luke, so everyone’s happy).

So yeah, that's my two cents.

[dragynkeep]

Seems like crimson-caracal is starting to get the picture. What do you think of his recent apology?

i genuinely think this is the best we're going to get because he's still grandstanding over james' efficacy as "disability rep" — while ignoring how unrealistic both yang & pietro also are as disability rep with the mechanics of their prosthetics & the able bodied writer's disregard to writing any of the side effects for yang. he's still making this about a disability issue & fictitious ableism over people "erasing pietro" as penny's dad when those types of aus have existed for years & shouldn't have to not exist now just because they finally gave her a father.

as for him saying "please don't smear the rest of the rwby fandom with this", isn't that what you do to the rwde portion, caracal? & when this is a genuine issue with the fandom at large & your instance of ableism is only the most recent in a long line, the assumption of the rwby fandom at large being majority ableist & digesting the ableism put into the original text per the writer's doing so is still accurate.

him being ableist does not discount the rest of the fandom from being ableist also. his take is nothing but the same old repackaged ableism we've seen time & time again & this apology is still garbage.

caracal, i'm going to help you here. stop hiding behind a genuine issue with bigotry when really you just hate this au being about james & humanizing him in a father daughter relationship with penny. just say you dislike the aus, you stood on a soapbox about issues that don't affect you & you fucked up. stop giving excuses. just shut up for the love of god, all you say in further defense just makes this whole thing worse. if you weren't such a piece of victim blaming shit, i'd say my dms are open as a disabled person so you could get some education on how to give a proper apology & keep your mouth shut on disabled people's business.

[theangryjikooker]

Hi! I'm gonna rant, and I hope you don't mind it. If you do, or think this is gonna cause some sort of shitstorm, do feel free to just delete my ask.

I gotta preface this by saying: I'm what people here call a "Jikook supporter". I think there's a high probability that theirs is a romantic relationship, I read a lot of their gestures as romantic, yadda yadda. So, I would fall 100% in the "supporting" definition. But I gotta say, I kinda dislike this definition because it gives people the idea that they're somehow not actually shipping something, thus having some sort of moral high ground over people who ship without thinking that the couple is actually together. I understand why the distinction is there, don't get me wrong, it's a shortcut to explain the differences in belief, but still.

People who "support" a couple are. Still. Shippers. Because shipping is being emotionally invested in a pair of people (be them fictional or not) and their interactions, and shippers and supporters alike do that. Shippers and supporters watch the same things, get the same amount of "oh that's cute" feelings, it's just their final interpretation of the relationship that differ. And it gets on my nerves when supporters somehow manage to shit on shippers based on some "moral high ground" because... What? Are shippers not gonna respect and support them? Sometimes I think the "I'm a supporter, not a shipper" (which I've seen so many times and just sounds BONKERS to my ears) is just a repackaging of the good old "shipping is gross". People are allowed to like a dynamic and think "uhuh, these two people have chemistry, are a good match, if they ever had a romantic entanglement it would be a cute one" while retaining enough sense to say "I don't think they actually are, tho".

And I'll tell you more: I've been around fandoms long enough to observe the behaviour of people who "Believe" and those who work under the assumption that shipping is something done exclusively "for fun". Unless we're talking about young fans who don't understand nettiquette, it's usually the "Believers" who end up shoving their shipping down the throats of the people they ship, because they think "oh, they will like this thing about them and their s.o.". Now, I'm not saying that this is the behaviour of jikook supporters, nor that I think everyone who thinks a couple is real is gonna do that, but in my experience, it's by far more probable the people who act up are from this side of the argument, so... I don't think supporters have the moral high ground they think they have.

And again, I'm not trying to complain about those who define themselves (even on your blog) "supporters" to make clear where they stand on the argument of whether the two of them are actually a couple, because that's fair!!! Sometimes I do it myself, when I don't want to write an essay over how or why I think jikook are a couple in real life. But sometimes I feel like people forget that whether we're supporters or not, we are first of all shippers. If it was just a passing thought of "oh yeah these two are definitely together behind the scenes" we wouldn't invest time and energy on talking about them.

Okay, rant done. As I said, feel free to delete, I just needed to get this off my chest and your blog felt the right place to do that. Have a nice day 🌺

No, I'm not going to delete this because I love this wholeheartedly. I want to shower you with stars and medals, anon.

Let’s be friends. 💜

But in all seriousness, you've managed to put into words what I can't. I do understand why the shipper vs. supporter distinction exists, but I've never understood why people think one is somehow better than the other.

And frankly, the people who place a lot of importance in that distinction aren't really those I want to know or be chummy with anyway. Many anons have expressed that they appreciate the fact that they can voice their opinions here without being verbally eviscerated when their views aren't in full alignment with the majority, and those are the people I want to support and make feel welcome. But I'm not exclusionary either as long as the narcissism is left at the proverbial front door.

I think the support I receive far outweighs the criticism I do get, so I don't actually think I'm doing anything wrong, even if I have to defend myself ad nauseum. I suspect there's a lot more dissatisfaction among shippers (casual and serious alike) than they're willing to admit.

Disclaimer: I don't think all "supporters" are bad. The ones who've made themselves known to me are very nice and lovely, and I'm sure there are more of them. But from my experience, most of the vitriol I receive do come from "supporters."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dead, broke

Of all the moving, wrenching accounts of death during the pandemic, Molly McGhee’s “America’s Dead Souls,” for The Paris Review stands out: haunting, furious and sad, an rude awakening of the status quo that denies any possibility of inaction.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/17/americas-dead-souls/

I’ve known McGhee a long time, since she worked on my book INFORMATION DOESN’T WANT TO BE FREE from McSweeneys, a professional association we renewed when she landed at Tor.

During the pandemic crisis, I’ve had two different connections to her: on the one hand, the consummate professionalism of her emails as we published my novel ATTACK SURFACE in the middle of the lockdown.

On the other hand, I knew her through her wrenching and deeply personal Twitter account of the personal tragedies she’s endured over the same period. Her Paris Review essay brings those tragedies into sharp focus and uses them to pin a huge and heretofore ill-defined feeling.

McGhee’s mother died during the crisis, but the death was the culmination of years of hardship: “[earning] less than $10,000 a year. Suffering from debilitating depression while caring for her aging parents…chronically unemployed, undermedicated, and overstressed.”

Her mother’s debts were on public display through searchable databases, and her life was haunted by both con artists and bill collectors who carpet-bombed her with calls, letters and emails.

She was too poor to fight back: her wages were garnished by the IRS “for back taxes calculated from a years-old misfiling they refused to correct.” McGhee sent her months of her salary, but it wasn’t enough.

She had no answer for her mother’s rhetorical questions, “Why are these people harassing me? What good does it do them?”

Because the answer is obvious and insufficient: “The people in power don’t care if we live or die, as long as they get paid.”

It only took two days after McGhee’s mother died for her creditors to begin harassing her for her mother’s debts. The state of Tennessee seized the house, but Wells Fargo expected her to make good on the mortgage.

The hospital where McGhee’s mother died wanted a quarter of a million dollars. McGhee, not even 26, was staring down the barrel of the weapon that had been trained on her mother, the inheritor of nothing but debt.

The debt-machine is efficient. Bill collectors found out about McGhee’s mother’s death before McGhee’s own family got word. And they’re remorseless, immune to McGhee’s ��pleading, bargaining, reasoning, denying, uploading, scanning, begging, faxing, and crying.”

McGhee compares it to Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” a surreal tale of a grifter named Chichikov who buys dead serfs’ souls to sell for profit.

It’s only surreal if you’ve never been in the debt system’s crosshairs, “where one day of lost wages can compound into houselessness.”

We live in a system of winners and losers. The winners’ winnings come from debt, shielded from the system’s cruelty by “professionalism and bureaucracy” that insulate them — and their functionaries — from “feelings of culpability, not to mention empathy or curiosity.”

Poor people have less money, but the system is firmly focused poor people, because people with money can defend themselves. When McGhee went into debt to hire a lawyer, a single letter on official letterhead instantly reduced all that debt by 90% — more than $250k, poof.

It’s expensive to be poor. Take Community Health Systems, one of the largest hospital chains in America. It sues the shit out of poor people. When those people can afford lawyers, CHS loses, because it is chasing debts it is not entitled to collect.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/18/unhealthy-balance-sheet/#health-usury

CHS itself owes $7.6 billion. It turned its first profit in 2020, thanks to hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal subsidies, and its executives pocketed millions in “performance bonuses” for a performance that consisted of getting bailed out by the public.

The Trump stimulus handed trillions to the richest people and biggest companies in America. Those companies “leveraged up” their handouts to raise trillions more and went on spending sprees, buying up struggling businesses.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

They loaded these companies up with debt, declared “divi recaps” (where you take out a loan on a company you bought on credit and put that money in your own pocket as a “special dividend”) and crashed the companies, destroying jobs and communities.

Plutes know there are three kinds of debt: workers’ debts (which must be repaid), owners’ debts (to be “restructured” away) and government debt (not debt at all, but still handy for terrifying normies with stories of “mortgaging our kids’ futures”).

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/17/disgracenote/#false-consciousness

Forty years of this approach has turned the economy into a shambling zombie, dependent on the fiction that “consumer” debts — repackaged as bonds through financialization — will be repaid, somehow.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

As an ever-larger share of the world’s wealth has shifted from the workers’ side of the balance sheet to the owners’, the ability of workers to buy things to keep businesses afloat as vehicles for debt-leveraging has only declined.

Wage-theft and stagnation, unions in retreat, monopoly, monopsony, tax-preferencing for home-owners over renters, for capital gains over wages, spiraling housing, health and education costs, worker misclassification — wages are annihilated before they’re even deposited.

With no wages left over to fund consumption, there’s only debt, and as Michael Hudson says, “Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be repaid.” CHS can comfortably carry billions in debts, but the sick people it sues for $201 have to choose between rent and medical debt.

Every loan-shark knows how this works. The chump with $500 who owes you $500 and owes the bank $500 needs an incentive to pay you ahead of the bank. To assert the primacy of your claims, you need an arm-breaker.

The digital world has given us all kinds of fantastic new arm-breakers: digital repo men who can brick your car or your phone. It’s automated the once rare practice of evictions, creating eviction mills that run with devastating efficiency.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Creating a debt-instrument — a bond grounded in the payments from other peoples’ debts — requires that you convince investors and bond-rating agencies that your arm-breaker will terrorize the debtors into paying you instead of child-support or grocery bills.

“The cruelty is the point” isn’t ideology, it’s pure description. The system — an artificial life-form constituted as immortal colony organism that uses us as gut flora — runs on competing claims to your debt, and victory consists of terrorizing you more than any rival.

The financiers who practice leveraged buyouts destroy real businesses, ruin lives and hollow out communities. They are feted as “job creators.” The workers who must borrow to close the gap they leave are “deadbeats.” Leveraged buyouts are back, baby.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

If you fret that forgiving student loans and making college free will “saddle our kids with debt,” then you’ve been suckered.

Look. Replacing a system that starts all but the richest children with unserviceable debt with one that doesn’t is liberation, not bondage.

Since Reagan, we’ve been hiking tuition, killing deductions for interest, and shielding student debt from bankruptcy.That’s how you can borrow $79k, pay $190k, still owe $236k, and have 25% taken from every paycheck AND Social Security until you die.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid. Student debts do get forgiven, but only for those highly educated, (potentially) highly productive people who can prove that they have been so thoroughly destroyed by debt that they have no future.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/20/sovkitsch/#student-debt

And as McGhee reminds us, the tragedy isn’t merely that we educate people on the pretense of betting on America’s future, but really, the principle use that the system makes of the educated is as collateral for securitized loans.

If the arm-breakers who chased her mother wanted to understand that woman’s humanity, McGhee says they should start here:

“Her humor and her rage were unmatched. In the evenings, against the setting Tennessee sun, she liked to drink red can Cokes in the garden while snuffing cigarettes out against the yard’s ant colonies. She could reckon with anyone just by looking them in the eye. Men were terrified of her, rightfully so. She was sweet. In the last week of her life, when she couldn’t understand where she was or who she was talking to, she greeted everyone the same: ‘Hi, pal. Hope you’re doing okay. When can you come pick me up?’”

Take a second. Re-read that.

[normal-horoscopes]

Seeing someone like you act shocked at the idea of "sigma males" or any other attempt to turn the alpha/beta dichotomy into something more inclusive is honestly a little bit surprising. 4chan was all over that years ago, just assumed someone who dabbles in their runoff would have been exposed by now.

OH I KNOW ABOUT THE WHOLE ALPHA/BETA THING THATS BEEN AROUND FOREVER. THEY’VE TRIED TO ADD MORE SHIT LIKE OMEGA AND GAMMA OVER THE YEARS BUT ITS ALWAYS THE SAME OLD PHRENOLOGY REPACKAGED. THE SIGMA THING WAS NEW, WHICH IS WHY I POSTED ABOUT IT.

[bigskydreaming]

Tom is already rehashing some things, like too many homages to the nineties run, Zucco's daughter plot point, Beatrice had ideas for societal reform he's taking that and giving it to Dick. It'll probably be half hearted, but it stings that Beatrice left just a few issues ago and she's already completely forgotten for the sake of DickBabs or a love triangle.

Like the thing about the nineties runs is I mean, as much flack as we give various elements of them, there’s so much from that time period that was good? Great, even! Just....myself and the writers seem to have very different opinions on what the most interesting elements of the nineties comics were, oh well.

And omgggggg I’m still so mad about Bea, and its literally Shawn Tsang all over again. The writers keep introducing new, interesting characters, investing just enough time and focus into them to have us interested in them and wanting to see more.....and then they toss them aside to go back to drawing from the same well as always.

And the thing is, this isn’t even about me not really being a Dick/Babs shipper, because honestly, I’m not enjoying the Dick/Kory stuff in what I’ve seen of Titans Academy either, and for the exact same reason:

When they create new characters like Shawn and Bea, they KNOW they’re starting from scratch and need to build interest in those characters from the ground up. So they’re forced to put their best foot forward. There’s no short cut there, if you want people to care about a brand new character you have to give them REASONS to care. You have to make those characters likable, you have to make people WANT to root for them, you have to hook them with intriguing backstories that don’t feel formulaic and new angles that don’t feel just derivative of older characters, and that’s how we got stuff like Shawn’s history as a former sidekick to a villain and now running a support group for rogues trying to turn their lives around, and Bea’s work in societal reform.

But then the second they stop having the patience to build the new characters up enough that the interest in them can actually start to reach the levels that lets older characters last and grants longevity....they just toss them aside and move on....except they never really move on, just backwards. Because the problem with so MANY superhero couples, far from just Dick and Babs or Dick and Kory, is just....how lazy it seems to make so many canon writers. They just fall back on rehashing the same old tropes and just updating popular moments that resonated with fans in the past, now just recreated with a slightly more modern twist but without ever really being anything new. 

Even with ships that I’ve never really been sold on in the past like Dick/Babs, I’ve always said, there’s usually nothing stopping me from GAINING interest in them.....its just....the writers have to GIVE ME A REASON TO. And so many of DC’s writers just aren’t even trying. They’re just moving parts around and pushing characters together in various arrangements like everyone’s just a puzzle piece that you can mix and match however you want......and then just basically expecting readers to be interested purely because of who the characters are, or because it hinges on a nice moment that they then milk the hell out of without ever expanding that into building actual STORY around these moments but rather just squeezing each one til they get everything they possibly can out of it and moving on to the next as though its all just about chasing the next soundbite...because it is! LOL.

And honestly, this problem extends far beyond just the Nightwing title or the Batfam or Taylor’s run or writing in particular.....its a company wide issue right now. In fact I would bet just about anything that its a matter of editorial edict, that even before Taylor started his run DC said okay here’s the approach we want everyone taking with their stories right now:

And that’s like.....its all about banking on nostalgia and the comfort of the familiar right now. I think Taylor is drawing all these elements straight from the 90s Nightwing comics, like Blockbuster and Dick having been a cop, etc, because these are the elements of past Nightwing stories that are so well known. Its the same reasoning behind why they put Tim back as Robin and so many of their new characters are just new spins on old faves like Punchline and Harley Quinn, and why they’re pushing all these older ships that haven’t been together in ages and why specific team lineups are reappearing....its because nostalgia is the name of the game for DC right now, and all their writers are just pulling together threads of classic stories that have stood the test of time, figuring anything that landed particularly well with fans in the past will sell with people here and now, and weaving these threads together and brushing over them with a modern social issues veneer. 

As an approach, its basically all just about repackaging previously successful story moments and elements with just enough changes or in just new enough a configuration that readers aren’t likely to complain en masse that like “hey we literally already read all this. We’ve already BOUGHT these issues. When we were kids.” Its minimizing creative risk while maximizing monetary profit. Spend as little creative capital as possible outside of anything that’s already been successful in the past and as such is a relatively proven quantity, instead of testing new material that’s an unknown and runs the risk of falling flat and thus not being profitable.

And see, I’d almost guarantee that all THAT, that whole line-wide approach to DC’s storytelling, is because the powers that be looked at the last several years of stories and how many of THEM fell flat with readers, and decided that the problem was they’d BEEN trying too much new stuff and readers just didn’t like it. Because they WERE concentrating on presenting totally new stories and building up new ideas throughout their books.....but readers have been pretty vocal for years now about being disenchanted with most of DC’s major stories. And so DC I think looked at that and came to the conclusion that okay, people just don’t want new right now, they want the familiar.

But like.....DC’s problem IMO was never that they were trying new stuff? The reason so much of their new and original storylines weren’t gaining traction or bringing in readers and kept shedding old readers had absolutely NOTHING to do with them being new and previously unseen storylines, which makes falling back on nostalgia very much a non-solution to entirely the wrong problem.

No, DC’s problem for years has been that they’ve been all about spectacle instead of story. There’s ZERO emotional pay-off to any of their biggest plot twists or character beats, and emotion is LITERALLY what people read stories for. Its all about racing to the climactic action packed finish of every storyline and then immediately resetting everyone back to square one and jumping straight into the next big story, without ever giving the events of any of their stories time or reason to MATTER to the characters.....and if they don’t matter to the characters, our proxies that we’re viewing these stories through, then why should any of it matter to us? Why should any of it linger, dig in roots, resonate with us as moments that left an impact and that we accordingly want more of?

And again, like because I’m a Dick Grayson focused blog I’ve obviously largely been focused on how much I dislike the SPECIFIC reactions or non-reactions to so many of the major beats in his stories.....but it was spread throughout their entire line.

Bruce and Selina almost got married....but why should anyone care outside of Tom King’s title when nobody else seems to, no other characters feel anything about this, and Bruce in none of his other appearances seems the same as ever without any reminder that he just almost got married but then didn’t.....and if the characters don’t ever seem to be affected by or feeling a need to revisit or reflect on recent stories, why should we bother remembering them either? 

Jason was dramatically and fucked-upily (yes its a word, I totally looked it up and everything) exiled from Gotham....and then all of that is undone in a single issue with one low-stakes awkward conversation between him and Bruce. Damian quits as Robin and goes off the map and everyone in his family is like “hey don’t we have a littler brother, I feel like we did maybe” for one panel per story arc, and that’s it. Roy’s back from the dead and everybody’s like oh hey cool instead of the kind of return we used to get like when Donna came back and everyone was like oh shit, this MATTERS, because we MISSED you....just like Dick’s death never mattered to anyone but fans of his character because much like I was just saying earlier with them not really giving me a reason TO emotionally invest in Dick and Babs’ relationship if I wasn’t already, same thing with the aftermath of Forever Evil. They didn’t give anyone else reason to emotionally invest in that as something that HAPPENED to Dick and that he was AFFECTED by....because the writers didn’t bother writing him as all that affected by it and it was just like oh he’s a spy now, all that was last year’s content, we’ve moved on, keep up.

And on and on it goes. Ric Grayson was the same problem all over again. Rinse and repeat down the line with everyone from Wally to Donna and etc etc etc.

THAT’S why DC’s stories have been falling flat. It has nothing to do with people not being interested in new ideas, characters or directions, its that’s ALL they were giving us, but it was like just reading wiki summaries of events just alongside pretty art, but no real emotional weight or substance to anything we were reading....and thus, literally nothing that we couldn’t get much the same outcome from if we just...stuck to reading wiki summaries after the stories were over, with no real need to follow along with them. For years most fans have basically just been about keeping up to date with changes in the characters’ lives, but without feeling any real need to watch those changes unfold and play out.

And so honestly I worry we’re just gonna be subjected to a company wide rehashing of old and familiar storylines, directions and character beats, but repackaged and delivered in the exact same way DC was delivering us their new stories and ideas these past years....and its basically going to have the same results, because its the same problem. They didn’t actually fix anything by switching gears, they just shuffled around the actual issue.

And DC’s just gonna be like well now wtf are we doing wrong, we were so sure this would work, everyone LOVES nostalgia right? Did we pick the wrong stories and character beats to bring back?

When really its like......it honestly doesn’t matter WHICH stories and beats they rehash, because its not about them picking the ‘right ones,’ the real keepers, the stories that everyone really WAS eager to see brought back or made new again.....

Its about like, the only reason any of those stories or beats or dynamics stood the test of time and are still familiar and well-known....is because the stories AROUND those moments and ideas gave us reason to emotionally invest in them and retain them as crucial to our view of the characters and things that would resonate and stay with us for a long time.

It was never that any of those ideas or stories were just so innately brilliant that they couldn’t help BUT linger in the overall reader consciousness...it was the fact that we CARED about what happened in those moments and stories.

*Shrugs* But I mean hey, what do I know? I’m just a dude on the internet lolol. 

[posi-pan]

I’ve taken to searching peoples blogs before I reblog/follow them to see if they’re panphobic (that’s so sad that I have to do that lmao) and a lot of the time I end up finding posts from a few years ago that are like “bisexuality/pansexual/asexuality are always left out and ignored so let’s band together and be supportive” and tons of other posts about bi/pan/ace solidarity and like, I can’t help but wonder.... what happened??? What happened over the past few years that pushed bi/pan solidarity away and left us with so much animosity and cruelty from our bi siblings (not to mention the poor treatment of ace people from everyone in the community)? What went wrong here??

I remember when I would constantly see support for pan folks and how pan was once very accepted in the community, especially from bi folks. They always helped push our acceptance! But now it’s like, more often than not, the community treats us so terribly and act like we’re invalid and disgraceful for existing and we’ve got tons of bi people claiming we’re awful and biphobic because we refuse to use an incorrect label for ourselves. I just don’t get it? Looking back at my experience once being very loving and fun and seeing all of these silly fun posts about solidarity and siblinghood between bi/pan folk (and aces too!) is just... sad. We used to have a great connection and I used to feel so welcomed and invited but now it just feels like the community rejects us all the time. So like... again... what the fuck happened?

yeah and even looking further back in history, there was more solidarity and community between these communities. i don’t know what happened or where/when it started. but a lot of “exclus” stuff can be traced back to terfs, honestly. i’ve seen posts from people saying aphobia was the first step or whatever in them becoming terfs. and how a lot of the talking points are just the same old shit repackaged. all the separatism and identity policing and gatekeeping just fucking ruined so much love that was between communities and kind of overshadows their shared history and solidarity that existed long before this “discourse” even started. it’s really sad. the community was never perfect, but it’s fucking horrendous now in terms of supporting one another.

[justjessame]

Starting Over Chapter 18

The box took both Connie and me to drag out of my parents’ room because I refused to have this “party” she mentioned in their room.  We pulled it into my bedroom and Bryn’s eyes lit up at the sight of the wrapped packages peeking out of the top of the box.  

“Don’t you dare, little girl,” her mama admonished, “these are Brooke’s presents.”  

The pout that popped onto Bryn’s face was worthy of a medal, so I asked if she’d like to help me with the burden of unwrapping my bounty.  With a squeal that probably made dogs howl a few blocks away and an addition of hand clapping, she hopped onto my bed and waited patiently for me to join her while Connie rolled her eyes at the two of us.  

“I’m pretty sure I only gave birth ONCE,” she squinted at the both of us, but her grin came back easily as she pulled out the first package and handed it to me.  “THIS one,” she tapped its ‘Happy Birthday’ wrapping paper, “is the one that’s MOST important so open it first.”  

It was kind of big, which made me curious about why it was on top.  Mom hated things to be out of sorts.  Big on bottom and angled to smaller on top, that way nothing got broken or squished.  It was heavy too.  Offering a side to Bryn, telling her to be careful of the paper, so she wouldn’t end up with a horrible cut, we worked to get rid of the paper first.  The box under it gave nothing away, since it was just plain cardboard, clearly repackaged by my parents.  

Opening it, I felt the breath leave me and my eyes started burning.  “He didn’t JUST put out feelers,” Connie offered, sitting down on my other side, while Bryn’s tiny fingers were gently touching the shiny black and silver that was waiting inside.  “There are cards inside of people who were interested in talking to you.  And he went to EVERY single store, talked to ANYONE who claimed to know anything about the best equipment, this is the best camera and accessories, Brooke.”  It was, I knew it was, because I’d coveted it during my school years, high school and college.  The electives I’d allowed myself to play with had been photography and THIS camera was the dream.  

The rest of the gifts were just as thoughtful.  Mom had bought me the things that mom’s think to buy their daughters - perfumes, pretty clothes, and the silly kitschy stuff that dads don’t always think about.  Dad kept picking up more accessories for the camera.  Tripods, flashes, he even bought me antiques - things he knew I’d find joy in.  Connie was right, my parents had known me more than I knew myself.  

We had lunch, sandwiches and chips, before we moved to the shed.  I had no idea what was waiting for me.  I mean, what could my dad possibly have left to surprise me with after all THIS?  

He had TWO things, actually.  Because Dad was nothing if not an overachiever.  Once lunch was finished, and Bryn was cleaned up and ready to go outside, I grabbed the key to the lock and we headed out.  

“Still having Demetri do the yard?”  Connie asked, taking stock of the hedges and the grass.  I nodded.  “He’s not doing too bad, but you might want him to pay more attention to that one -” she pointed to a side that I didn’t notice and sure enough it was a little off.  

“You’re such a -” I snorted, but then sobered, because I was an adult now too.  Shit, that was sobering.  Unlocking the shed, I braced myself.  The shed was actually basically a garage that my dad used as his workshop.  So I knew it would smell like wood shavings and varnish, which was a scent I associated more with him than his cologne to be honest.  

As the door opened, I was distracted by the dust motes dancing in the sunlight for a moment, but then the flashed on something shinier and my mouth dropped open.  There, in the space where a car SHOULD have always set, but usually our family car had set at the curb was a car alright.�� Just not the car I remembered, since it had been totaled by the asshole who killed my parents after a night out on the town.  

It was gorgeous, but I’d never seen it before.  “They had Joey and his brothers working on it for awhile,” Connie’s voice seemed to be coming from down a LONG tunnel.  “Your dad said you said something about liking this model -” 

I’d been thirteen.  Dad and I were out together, while Mom was having a girls’ day.  He’d taken me to a car show and I was enjoying the day with him, looking at the different cars, the oldies and the weirdly macho looking ones too.  I’d seen it from across a field and just lit up, or so he told the story that way anyway.  A ‘66 Mustang GT Convertible in candy apple red.  I’d been mesmerized and Dad had jokingly - so I’d thought - promised that he’d get me one, one day.

Well, here it was.  In the shed.  The same candy apple red, the same convertible top.  And all I really wanted?  Was my dad to be beside me to tell me that I was glowing and to laugh about it.  

It took me a few more beats to get my shit under control so I wasn’t falling completely apart.  The car was pointed out, so I could drive into the alley and onto the street and NOT into my backyard and through my damn house.  Connie had the keys, but she told me there was a set in Dad’s bedside table too.  

That wasn’t my only surprise in the shed.  My dad had actually partitioned off the side, so the car fit perfectly, his workbench was still there, but he hadn’t really been in the creative mood while I was gone - saying he’d get back to it when I came home and got my damn car out of the shed.  It was in this sectioned off part, a room of sorts, that my other present lived.  

A dark room, in case, “you want to work with the photographs ‘old school’,” Connie offered, showing me the chemicals he had stored appropriately.  “The paper is over here -” she showed me, and I was more than impressed.  “Your mom helped, she looked it all up and came in here and set it up.”  

All of this work, on the off chance I came back.  A car, and a possible future - ‘just in case’.  I looked around the room, the overhead lamp the only light since they truly understood the assignment of “dark room”.  My parents were amazing and I -  I felt like a weight was being added to my chest, like I was losing the ability to draw breath.  

“I wish they were here,” it came out a breath, but I meant it so much.  “I -”  

“I know,” Connie came over, she was holding Bryn, but that didn’t stop her from hugging me too.  “I know, Brookie.” 

[initiumseries]

I saw Yara Shahidi was cast as Tinker Bell. She is a good actress but seeing racebent characters doesn’t excite me the way it once did. One, there is a whole gallery of black characters waiting to get a chance to shine, like Storm, Vixen, John Stewart. Then Hawk Man might be played by a black man. Look, I am glad race bending gives more poc jobs but at the same time give us original black characters.

Personally, I don't see any evidence that racebending, creates "more" jobs for Black and nonBlack people. 

Let's use The Flash as an example for how that idea doesn't work: the canonically white character, was racebent to be Black. That led to, a Black detective Dad, and kinda sorta, a recurring Black character for her brother. 

Showrunner - white

Writing room - white

Director - white 

Hairstylists - white

Lighting tech, everyone else - white

So all in all, racebending Iris' character provided all of...2.5 extra jobs.

How is this different from the same tokenization of the early 2000's? Of the 90s? 

Not a damn thing is different except I'm supposed to believe white production houses are making a major sacrifice by tokening in a Black person into a predominantly white cast, as they've ALWAYS done, because ORIGINALLY that character was white. Lol okay. But that Black character is STILL white. So now this is just new Blackface, or a minstrel show, whichever you prefer, using a Black body to execute a white character. We all know how Candace was forbidden to wear natural or even curly hair, they talked abt grandma's noodles instead of, sweet potato pie or what have you. That restrictive behaviour doesn't sound, inclusive or representative. 

What about Iris, about Tinkerbell, about Hawkman is going to change now that they're using a Black body? Are alk Tinkerbell's friends gonna be Black? Is Peter Pan and that chick he hangs with finna be Black? The production crew? The directors? The writers? Are Black writers gonna be used to craft a more authentic African descended character? Is Hawkman's love interest, Hawk Woman, going to be Black? It would make the most sense since they have an African origin story but since tragic arrangements are the ONLY relationships we've been allowed to see over the last 5 years, I strongly doubt it. And if she is, she will PROBABLY be another ambiguous biracial, which makes no sense.

So really, racebending is just repackaged tokenism, with the added insult to injury of them not even bothering to think of an actual story and life for this character, just slapping the old white one on. Imo any sane, critical thinking Black person should find this new tokenization lazy and offensive. I don't want a Black fucking Hawkman. I don't need a biracial tinkerbell. 

Shit I don't even give damn about a darkskinned Storm. 

I am way, way past that now. 

In the age after Black Panther, there's absolutely no reason why I should accept anything less than original Black stories, with Black writing rooms, Black showrunners, Black directors, Black stylists and makeup/fx artists, Black animators, Black actors, telling Black stories. I want REAL representation, and THAT is what it looks like. 

Everybody Black. 

This other shit is tacky and fake. 

[romolite]

*Important FAQ*

Aka questions that pertain to what I usually post about or stuff I don’t like getting asks about but continue to get asks about regardless.

[Insert any invasive question about my ethnicity/race]

I’m Ghanaian American. My parents were born in Ghana and I was born here in the US. I’ve seen it more on twitter and tumblr, but Black Africans don’t like me because I’m American, and black Americans don’t like me because I’m African. So I’m stuck in the middle lmao. I’m what you’d consider a First-Generation African, my parents are Continental Africans, and if I have children, they will be considered Generational African Americans.

First Generation African: A black person born in the US to parents who were born in Africa

Generational African American: A black person born in the US to US-born black parent(s)

Continental African: A black person born in Africa to parents who were also born in Africa

Non is just a prefix, black people don’t have a monopoly on the term! I suppose you think nonbinary people are racist huh?

Yeah sure it wasnt coined by black people but the context it’s currently used as was predominantly used by black people. ALL people who are not black benefit from and contribute to antiblackness, even if they are marginalized themselves. That kind of dynamic doesnt exist in other contexts (unless we’re talking about transfem + transmisogyny, but that’s something you’d have to talk to someone who is transfem about. Plus they have their own word for  “non-transfem”). Using it in contexts outside of antiblackness is appropriative (Yall are annoying as fuck with the “non-aspec” “non-lesbian”(this term also has anti-bi roots btw) “non-bi” shit etc, stop it. You also can’t complain about the “replacement terms” lumping yall with oppressors when “non-x” does the exact same thing you’re so worried about. “Cis” puts cis gays with cis hets, cis disabled people with cis abled people, cis white people with cis poc, I could go on.) 

Plus we’re talking about marginalized groups here. Black people are a marginalized group. Binary people as a whole are not so the term nonbinary isn’t appropriate at all.  I dont take issue with terms like “nonamerican” or “nonwhite” because (obviously) whites + americans as a whole aren’t oppressed for being white or american.

Basically using "non-x” in contexts to talk about oppression bad, everything else good.

Follow up: If we can’t use non-[marginalized group], what can we use instead?

There are other words to describe the people you’re talking about

non-transfem- TME

non-LGBT- cishet, or people who aren’t LGBT

non-trans - cis

Black people don’t have a monopoly on the acronym nb! I’ll call myself nb if I want to!

At this point I dont really care, go on your antiblack crusade elsewhere and out of my inbox, I’m always gonna mean nonblack when I use the acronym nb. 

And yes, you’re antiblack as fuck if you think black people telling you “nb” stands for “nonblack” is the same as exclusionists claiming “aspec” is for autistic people.

Is x AAVE?

I have a tag dedicated to what is and is not aave and how harmful it is for nonblacks to use aave given its history. I know some things overlap with southern culture but others are specifically for black people. A lot of “stan twitter” language/slang is just repackaged AAVE. No, I can’t tell you how to stop using AAVE. Don’t tell me you’re going to try to stop using AAVE, I don’t want to hear it.

Why don’t you like the n-word being compared to LGBT slurs?

Race and Sexuality/Gender aren’t comparable topics because each deals with a different history of oppression. I don’t care about slur discourse that much because I don’t even use/reclaim any myself except the n-word.

I have a problem with nonblack LGBT people co-opting black culture and struggle(like they always do), especially for trivial online discourse.

And to be honest it goes deeper than slur discourse. Every other day someone is weaponizing the oppression of black trans women, or comparing “cishet aces/aros” in the LGBT community to white/nonblack people invading black spaces (you know, something that ACTUALLY takes resources away from the people who need it, see the cultural appropriation of Black African and Blac American culture in literally any nonblack community while black people get demonized for said culture), or tokenizing their black friends to get away with something blatantly racist. And that’s not even getting into how a lot of gay slang/stan culture is just repurposed AAVE/black culture.

And I’m not gonna lie, I’ve seen this more with exclusionist accounts than inclus accounts, but it’s still not excusable for inclus to do that either. We get erased as black gay/trans/queer/aspec people up until it’s time for discourse accounts to bring us up to one-up each other

Can you give me advice on x?

Most likely not, because I’m not an expert or an advice blog. I’ll try, but don't take my word for it. I’m also tme, able-bodied, not Jewish, singlet, etc, so I’m not able to accurately answer questions about transmisogyny, (physical?) ableism, antisemitism, “sycourse”, etc.

I might be able to give advice on school-related stuff since I just graduated high school, but remember that students are not a monolith, and what worked for me may not work for someone else.

Can I follow if I’m nonblack/a minor/cishet?

Nonblack and/or cishet can follow but watch your step, minors blacklist the #minors dni tag before following

Why do you hate Ao3?

*long sigh*

I don't, I have a problem with the fact that it allows racist and (frankly voyeuristic) pedophilic/abusive/incestuous content to exist on its platform. It’s a good concept overall, but the devs are complicit in allowing “underage” and “noncon/dubcon” fics on their platform.

And there's the fact that they somehow need donations every year despite exceeding their goal several times over each year?

What’s wrong with Hazbin Hotel/The Ships/Vivziepop?

[WIP, as I have to go into extensive detail about this and I currently don’t have the energy for it]

TLDR: Viv made a half-assed apology for supporting racists (one of whom did blackface [yes the mask was used to do blackface shut up] to mock black activist) and drawing gross content. Her current projects including Hazbin Hotel are full of anti-gay/trans/aspec (Angel Dust, Vaggie, Alastor), antisemetic (Mimzy), and racist (Vaggie again, that yellow cyclops character that I’ve forgotten the name of) content under the guise of humor. If you’re into that shit, whatever, just don’t follow me and don’t whine when I make posts criticizing it.

What’s wrong with Hamilton?

Aside from the fact that it’s very obviously glorifying slave owners and made people worldwide believe the founding fathers were good people, LMM, the creator, is nonblack. This isn't his story to tell at all. 

Can you tag x?

I have a list of things I usually tag because they come upon this blog a lot. I cannot do catch all tags, as I have way too many followers for that. The closest thing to that is the “ask to tag” tag when there’s something potentially triggering but I’m not sure what it is. Everything is tagged as “x tw”. If something is extremely triggering, I’ll tag it as “major tw”

Do you tag slurs?

I tag slurs I’m not able to reclaim at all (i.e., d slur, f slur, t slur) or slurs I can reclaim but are being used as a slurs. I don’t tag the n-word, as I reclaim that one. I always tag the r slur

Can I message you about something/someone?

Unless you’re a mutual, most likely no. My DMs are only open to mutuals.

Do you want to be mutuals?

I don’t usually follow back people who follow me, especially if you’re under 16 or post things I’m not interested in.

Why is it important to have byf or about?

1) So I know gross people aren’t following me. This is not up for discussion

2) So I know someone’s not speaking out of their lane, which tends to happen a lot. (i.e, someone refusing to disclose that they are tme when discussing transmisogyny, someone not having their race listed when discussing racism)

3) Some people don’t want to interact with people under 18 or over like 30 or something.

Yeah, yeah, people aren’t entitled to personal information and all that crap but I have a serious problem with people speaking on topics from a place of privilege. Not to say they can’t talk about those things, just perhaps add a disclaimer that you’re privileged when talking about these things and be open to criticism, and NOT blocking people of the said marginalized group when they tell you something you’ve said was problematic.

I also have a problem with people who are intentionally vague about their age. There’s a difference between interacting with someone who’s 20 and someone who’s 29. I don’t want to say it’s the opposite for minors but at the same time there’s a difference for saying something racist at 13 and doing so at 17, and keeping your age vague makes it harder to determine how to deal with something like that. (Not that 13-year-olds shouldn’t know better, it’s just I don’t feel whole ass callout posts and receipt blogs are necessary for someone of that age).

Also anyone under 16, I can't stop you from following, but keep your interaction limited, please. This isnt an 18+ blog but I do rb suggestive jokes from time to time

I sent you an ask and you never answered it!

It’s likely that

I never got it

You were blocked

I’ve already answered this or it’s been answered in my faq

It’s a random positivity ask (which I appreciate but not sure how to respond to those)

You were rude in your ask and I didn’t feel like answering

I forgot until it was too late, which happens when my inbox gets a lot of asks at a time.

You sent it to the wrong blog (I.e, sending asks about my ocs to this blog instead of @ochood )

Hey, the op is [insert post] is [someone on my dni]! I usually double-check myself, just to be sure.

Have you heard about [someone who is mutuals with someone I’m loosely connected with]?

Most likely, no. And unless they’re an immediate danger to someone or they’ve got my name in their mouth, I don’t care.

Do you know who [x person/group/thing] is?Most likely no. Not to sound like a hipster but I don't usually keep up to date with trends. If I do hear about something, it’s most likely from twitter or Instagram.

Why am I blocked? Check here.

Why do you continuously move mains/change URLs/update themes?

I’m inconsistent. And sometimes there are posts on my blog that I no longer stand by.

Can I tag you in posts I think I’d like?Of course!