#or. y’know. poc who understandably don’t like you

[nielution]

Everything about this song is incredible. The constant ragging on Limp Bizkit and other whiny white boy acts, the “you’d better watch out because I’m gonna say fuck” breakdown, the fact that it was released on 9/11, and maybe most hilariously, the fact that most people my age know the melody but not the original lyrics because they’ve only heard the William Shatner cover with altered lyrics for the 2006 animated movie Over The Hedge.

[eowynstwin]

hi madi :)) gotta say—i dig your “controversial” opinions. yeah, fanfic is fanfic. it doesn’t have to be realistic. but, i value “realism” in fanfic. (lol literary realism in fanfic). so, lemme say it like this—i read fan fictions that have complex, multi-faceted characters. (that’s why you’re one of the writers i follow <3). the modern warfare reboots give complex characters, and i think they try to show diversity. so, there’s a lot that fanfic writers can do with cod: mw. if you wanna write/read about ghost blowin’ backs out and droppin’ cash on his sugar baby … do it. whatevs. (characterization is in the eye of the beholder). but, don’t write off gaz as a golden retriever boyfriend. don’t do my man like that. (kidding … of course. but, seriously, kyle “you wanna translate that from bullshit to english?” garrick is a pithy, wisecracking, and calculated sonovabitch who can hold his own alongside john muthafuckin’ price). anywayzzz, all of this is a roundabout way of sayin’: 1) fictional (and nonfictional) militaries are fascinating institutions (and seeming that the world is highly-militarized—i think—it’s important to understand militaries), 2) in the spirit of gender equity, “men” are human beings that shouldn’t only be fetishized, and 3) more love for poc characters please. i feel like, at least, two of those things i shouldn’t have to say in 2023. i’ll let you decide which two. y’know what i do when i see fanfic that’s not my taste … scroll right-the-fuck past. crazy. i know. thanks for sharing your audacious headcanons. mwah, mwah! :)

I mean, no comment man, you’re right on all counts.

[momowho34]

Here are some jewish myths you might still believe!!!!

(Pls read and reblog I’m tired of people echoing shit like this)

Jesus was not a rabbi. He lived a hundred years before rabbinic judaism even started to develop. Please stop saying this as if it lends him credence in our religion, because no. It doesn’t.

Yeah, Jesus was jewish, but he also rejected mainstream Judaism and hated it. Stop pretending he means anything to us. Idk if you guys have even read your own books, Matthew is like 60% about how the Pharisees are bad and wrong and evil for sticking to the traditions that have kept them alive for 100s of years. It’s also, y’know, historically inaccurate to the actual behavior of the Pharisees in that time period. Seriously man he is not ours and means nothing to us, keep your Jesus and stop trying to shoehorn him into judaism.

Our god is not yours “minus the Jesus.” In trinity terms; divide the Holy Spirit by the Father and then subtract the Son and that is a bare bones grasp of what god appears as for Jews.

Jews are not white as a whole. Are there white Jews? Yes. Are there jews who are literally every other skin tone? Also yes!! We are all over the place. India, numerous Middle Eastern countries, Morocco, Spain, and a lot more I can’t be bothered to list. You are actively hurting poc jews by pretending that all jews are European, holy shit stop doing that please!!! Most white jewish people are Ashkenazi, which is just one type of judaism.

Actually, the historical relationship between Jews and Muslims is a lot more complicated then you think it is. Sometimes we got along, sometimes we didn’t. Some would argue that Jews were treated better by Islamic caliphates in the Middle Ages then they were by Christian kingdoms. Stop trying to pretend we are and have always been “arch nemeses” or some fucking bullshit (that would be the Amalekites for us, actually, and not the Muslims) Also we’re honestly more similar to them when it comes to traditions then christians so like take that into account thanks

Hey guys listen to Romani when they talk about the Holocaust too!!!!! Please, they have a different experience/perspective and deserve to have their voices heard. Don’t pretend they don’t exist and that it didn’t effect them because uh.... it did. To a degree that I don’t think I can properly explain. Do not overlook them and then pretend it’s just because ur a “jewish ally” or whatever the fuck.

Stop pretending that we’re the same as Christianity. We aren’t. Stop stop stop holy shit stop. That’s not how any of this works at all. Christianity is so so so different, it takes like a handful of jewish beliefs and runs with them. Christianity is its own thing and so is Judaism, stoppp.

Not all Jews are zionists. some are explicitly anti-zionists. Not all zionists are anti-Semitic, but some of them are. Basically, jews aren’t inherently zionists and anti-Zionism isn’t inherently antisemitic. That being said, some people do use anti-Zionism as a cover for their anti-semitism. Watch out for those people, they’re not that hard to spot. That’s all I’m going to say about that, don’t want to start on this issue because it isn’t what this list is about.

Jews never actually lived by the literal laws of the Torah. We did not stone people. There is no archeological evidence of that and actually more evidence pointing to the opposite. jewish communities actually held capital punishment as being inherently immoral and was very very very rarely used in some communities. Understand that. Don’t ever say shit like “but the Jews used to live by the Bible too, and they stoned gay people!!!” No. No we didn’t. Ever. Nobody did that in ancient times.

Guess what, jews are not rich or greedy! what the fuck are you talking about??? Quit it please. This stereotype has literally been used since the Middle Ages to alienate Jews as a more privileged “other” that deserve their prosecution. Stop stop please stop, please!!!!! People actually believe this shit and commit hate crimes, stop, even as a sarcastic joke.

The Old Testament is not the same as the Torah/Tanakh. It’s just not? For one thing, the Old Testament is a translation of a cut down version of a translation of a different modified version, so no. Not the same. Also the books are ordered differently and the sections are mixed up.

God does not abandon the Jews in the Tanakh or the Old Testament for that matter. It’s like... sort of implicated to happen between the two testaments in Christianity. The Old Testament basically structured the books non-chronologically so that the last one would be Malachi because his prophecies are supposed to echo Jesus. We end the Tanakh on Nehemiah, and there is no “New Testament” for us because there’s only one and it ends at the end of the story.

Antisemitism is definitely still a thing. I don’t know who the fuck told you about this one? The Jews got treated like shit after the holocaust, and some of the few survivors 70 years later got reparations so now everybody’s acting like antisemitism doesn’t exist. It does. It really, really fucking does. Please listen to us.

Holocaust denial isn’t “a fringe conspiracy theory,” it’s genuinely awful and dangerous and hurts real people. I’m serious about this one, holocaust denial (and any genocide denial for that matter, whether it’s talking about the Armenian genocide or Holdomer or any others) is legit dangerous. Pay attention to it and have 0% tolerance for that shit

You are allowed to be invited to a jewish event if you’re not jewish! We literally do not care. Respectfully participating in traditions if you’re invited to is fine! The issue is when people take a jewish tradition and twist it into something for them. That’s a no-no, but getting invited to a seder/bar mitzvah/bris is fine. just show respect to traditions you see, even if you don’t entirely understand them. Do that and you’ll be fine.

Jews are a ridiculously diverse group of people with a lot of different beliefs! We all have vastly different ideas of fucking everything from god to the purpose of pomegranates (not a joke). Accept that we think differently form eachother and aren’t a monolith please

These are all the ones I could think of lol, jewish friends add more if you can think of some. Ok and encouraged to reblog for everyone.

[evanescentjasmine]

I’m going to talk about a little pet peeve of mine with regard to portrayal of poc in fic, TMA specifically since that’s what I mostly read and write for. 

I suppose I should first start by saying that, of course, poc are not a monolith, and I’m certain there are other poc who have many different views on this issue. And also this post is in no way meant to demonise, shame, or otherwise discourage people from writing poc in fic if they’re doing something differently. This is just a thing I’ve been noodling on for a while and have had several interesting conversations with friends about, and now that I think I’ve figured out why I have this pet peeve, I figured I’d gather my thoughts into a post.

As a result of the fact we have no canonical racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds for our main TMA cast, we’ve ended up with many diverse headcanons, and it’s absolutely lovely to see. I’m all for more diversity and I’m always delighted to see people’s headcanons. 

However, what often happens is I’ll be reading a fic and plodding along in a character’s PoV and get mention of their skin colour. And nothing else. I find this, personally, extremely jarring. In a short one-shot it makes sense, because you’re usually touching on one scenario and then dipping out. Likewise if the fic is in a different setting, is cracky, or is told from someone else’s PoV, that’s all fine. But if I’m reading a serious long-fic close in the poc’s head and...nothing? That’s just bizarre to me.

Your heritage, culture, religion, and background, all of those affect how you view the world, and how the world views you in return. How people treat you, how you carry yourself, what you’re conscious of, all of that shifts. And the weird thing is that many writers are aware of this when it comes to characters being ace or trans or neurodivergent—and I’m genuinely pleased by that, don’t get me wrong. Nothing has made my ace self happier than the casual aceness in TMA fics that often resonates so well with my experience. But just as gender, orientation, and neurodivergence change how a character interacts with their world, so do race, ethnicity, and religion. 

As a child, I spent a couple of years in England while my mother was getting her degree. Though I started using Arabic less and less, my mother still spoke to me almost exclusively in Arabic at home. We still ate romy cheese and molokhia and the right kind of rice, though we missed out on other things. She managed to get an Egyptian channel on TV somehow, which means I still grew up with different cultural touchstones and make pop-culture references that I can’t share with my non-Arabic-speaking friends. She also became friends with just about every Egyptian in her university, so for those years I had a bevy of unrelated Uncles and Aunties from cities all over Egypt, banding together to go on outings or celebrate our holidays.

As an adult who sometimes travels abroad solo, and as a fair-skinned Arab who’s fluent in English, usually in a Western country the most I’ll get is puzzled people trying to parse my accent and convinced someone in my family came from somewhere. When they hear my name, though, that shifts. I get things like surprise, passive-aggressive digs at my home region, weird questions, insistence I don’t look Egyptian (which, what does that even mean?) or the ever-popular, ever-irritating: Oh, your English is so good!

At airports, with my Egyptian passport, it’s less benign. I am very commonly taken aside for extra security, all of which I expect and am prepared for, and which always confuses foreign friends who insisted beforehand that surely they wouldn’t pull me aside. Unspoken is the fact I, y’know, don’t look like what they imagine a terrorist would. But I’m Arab and that’s how it goes, despite my, er, more “Western” leaning presentation. 

This would be an entirely different story if I were hijabi, or had darker skin, or a more pronounced accent. I am aware I’m absolutely awash with privilege. Likewise, it would be different if I had a non-Arab name and passport. 

So it’s slightly baffling to me as to why a Jon who is Pakistani or Indian or Arab and/or Black British would go through life the exact same way a white British character would. 

Now, I understand that race and ethnicity can be very fraught, and that many writers don’t want to step on toes or get things wrong or feel it isn’t their place to explore these things, and certainly I don’t think it’s a person’s place to explore The Struggles of X Background unless they also share said background. I’m not saying a fic should portray racism and microaggressions either (and if they do, please take care and tag them appropriately), but that past experiences of them would affect a character. A fic doesn’t have to be about the Arab Experience With Racism (™) to mention that, say, an Arab Jon headed to the airport in S3 for his world tour would have been very conscious to be as put together as he could, given the circumstances, and have all his things in order. 

And there’s so much more to us besides. What stories did your character grow up with? What language was spoken at home? Do they also speak it? If not, how do they feel about that? What are their comfort foods? Their family traditions? The things they do without thinking? The obscure pop-culture opinions they can’t even begin to explain? (Ask me about the crossover between Egyptian political comedy and cosmic horror sometime…)

I’m not saying you’ll always get it right. Hell, I’m not saying I always get it right either. I’m sure someone can read one of my fics and be like, “nope, this isn’t true to me!” And that’s okay. The important thing, for me, is trying.

Because here’s the thing. 

I want you to imagine reading a fic where I, a born and raised Egyptian, wrote white characters in, say, a suburb in the US as though they shared my personal experiences. It’s a multi-generational household, people of the same gender greet with a kiss on each cheek, lunch is the main meal, adults only move out when they get married, every older person they meet is Auntie or Uncle, every bathroom has a bidet, there’s a backdrop of Muslim assumptions and views of morality, and the characters discuss their Eid plans because, well, everyone celebrates Eid, obviously.

Weird, right? 

So why is this normal the other way around? 

Have you ever stopped to wonder why white (and often, especially American) experiences are considered the default? The universal inoffensive base on which the rest is built? 

Yes, I understand that writers are trying to be inoffensive and respectful of other backgrounds. But actually, I find the usual method of having the only difference be their skin colour or features pretty reductive. We’re more than just a paint job or a sprinkle of flavour to add on top of the default. Many of us have fundamentally different life experiences and ignoring this contributes to that assumption of your experience being universal. 

Yes, fic is supposed to be for fun and maybe you don’t want to have to think about all this, and I get that completely. I have all the respect in the world for writers who tag their TMA fics as an American AU, or who don’t mention anyone’s races. I get it. But when you have characters without a canonical race and you give them one, you’re making a decision, and I want you to think about it. 

Yes, this is a lot of research, but the internet is full of people talking about themselves and their experiences. Read their articles, read their blogs, read their twitter threads, watch their videos, see what they have to say and use it as a jumping-off point. I’m really fond of the Writing With Color blog, so if you’re not sure where to start I’d recommend giving them a look. 

Because writers outside of the Anglosphere already do this research in order to write in most fandoms. Writers of colour already put themselves in your shoes to write white characters. And frankly, given the amount of care that many white writers put into researching Britishisms, I don’t see why this can’t extend to other cultural differences as well.

[homunculusalphonse]

// anti c*tradora, fandom discourse/drama, mentions of abuse

I reblogged a response to this shitty post but for some reason I can’t see my reblog on my dash (OP probably blocked me or whatever) so yeah, I shall get on this. Sorry for getting involved in drama lmao but anyway.

[ID: a tumblr post showing the (in)famous C*tradora Kiss. The description reads:

POV: your ship is so powerful it has people mad about it ONE WHOLE YEAR after the show ended

The post is tagged #anti catradora. /End ID]

Dude. C//A stans are so hilariously awful. They’re not fucking oppressed for liking their ship, and yet they go in the tags that ARE NOT FOR THEM and they are such immature assholes about it.

The anti C//A tag isn’t made of incels and dudebros. No, the anti tag is a safe place for many fans because C//A is actually triggering to a lot of abuse victims/survivors. Say what you want about C//A, but it STILL has a history of abuse throughout the show that shouldn’t be ignored. People have the right to be angry and frustrated that the community romanticizes abuse so often and get away with it.

But no, the stans yell “YOU’RE RACIST AND HOMOPHOBIC FOR NOT LIKING MY SHIP!!!” and say we’re the ones being immature when they go after the fucking anti tags to be shitheads about it.

Like, do you stans understand why there’s an anti tag that’s far away from your reach? Because your fandom is fucking garbage. Because your fandom sexualizes and fetishizes abuse and possessiveness. Your fandom harasses anyone who doesn’t like your goddamn ship for more than good reasons. Your fandom doesn’t fucking care about victims of abuse - which may I remind you, most of which ARE POC and LGBT+.

So y’know, go enjoy your ship like you were doing just now? Stop persecuting people because they don’t like C//A? Why is that so fucking hard?? Grow the fuck up.

[miyamiwu]

This was just supposed to be a short response, but I ended up writing a Part 2 of the meta entirely jdhgfhjsdgfhjs

@sgdlr-asdfghjkl I’ve also thought about where her parents have been this whole time. But even if her parents do add depth, the depth still doesn’t come from her…

I feel it's just a common thing to throw in a female character into a main trio of the show

You are so right about that. But I personally think it’s just so the cast won’t be all-male. For “diversity,” so to speak. It’s why managers in shounen sports anime tend to be female. All the players are already male, so just make the manager female y’know?

I honestly don't have much feelings about her. She's a badass and it's just funny to simp for her. But like you said she may as well be a supporting character ><

Totally understandable. But let me thrown in @always-a-joyful-note’s tags here coz it’s related: (formatted to make it easier to read)

This reminds me of the time people were talking about female leads in romances having not much personality but a lot of great goals but throwing it off for the ML. Except for this show, its Qiao Ling having a LOT of personality but it getting…pushed around by the plot. I don’t know how to explain it ’cause like she does not become less herself for Plot Reasons.... but it is like herself is created to be a construct of the plot? (In orvish terms, she is a character who has no will except that of the author’s) So anyway....you cannot hate Qiao Ling because she remains very much herself. Like, I think the writers don’t exactly sacrifice her personality for the plot. Its what you said, Lizzie....she is given no goals or story of her own. In essence, she is a personality but not a character, which means you can love her character but not really be invested in it because its not being used to build something out of her? Honestly, I’d love it if this meant something plot significant. That Qiao Ling is the orchestrator of everything and is just there to make sure things go the way she wants, which could ‘explain’ why she didn’t ask questions about LG’s and CXS’ job or do much beyond just helping the boys survive…and also make her outburst about trust be about her needing to keep control of everything…especially cxs. I put ‘explain’ in quotes because that sort of explanation isn’t really needed and i also feel like it’d be a disservice to her anyway. Probably still makes her revolve around the boys but at least she’d be taking an active role in sustaining a goal or something. Anyway, Qiao Ling deserves to be used as a protagonist if she is marketed as a protagonist

I bolded the part that I totally agree with because YES, that’s exactly what Qiao Ling is. I’ve always thought of her as a character that’s constructed solely to have a Strong, Independent, Woman type of character in the show, but story-wise, does not serve any real purpose. It’s like how white Western shows would insert POC/queer characters just for the sake of it but then fail to actually properly represent them.

There’s nothing wrong with Qiao Ling’s character in itself. It’s just that the writers were so caught up in checking off a Nice Character Trope to Have in their list that they didn’t think whether such character is even necessary. I mean, seriously, the story can still go on even with Qiao Ling...

Cheng Xiaoshi can still get adopted by the neighbors, and they can just justify it as the neighbors wanting to have a child of their own coz they don’t have any. Cheng Xiaoshi having only Lu Guang as his friend would also strengthen their bond???

If they needed a friend of ShiGuang that Li Tianchen can possess at the end of s1, it can be Xu Shanshan or even Xiao Li. (While writing this, I realized Xiao Li getting possessed would be so much more interesting because he’s the Police Guy, the one who’s supposed to be on their side. What’s ShiGuang gonna do if even he can’t be trusted?)

As for that scene where Qiao Ling talks to Li Tianxi and plays all Big Sister… it could just be a different scene entirely. Idk, maybe it could just be Cheng Xiaoshi talking about his “brotherly” relationship with Lu Guang.

Anyways, none of the important roles Qiao Ling has played so far needs to be fulfilled by Qiao Ling herself. She is replaceable.

ShiGuang is also pretty much capable of doing their Dives without Qiao Ling, which is why I don’t think anything would change even if Qiao Ling does get to play a role in the whole diving thing, as implied in the s2 ED. At most, ShiGuang just gets a third-wheel.

On What Qiao Ling’s Role Could Be

@animegoil-vnc once pointed out how in s1e1, Lu Guang openly used his powers in front of Qiao Ling, making us think she knew what’s up:

But later, the writers made her ignorant of it. This shows how they really didn’t plan her character through 😩

But to say there was no planning for her at all would be unfair, though. In s1, Qiao Ling being the Big Bad Boss at the end definitely seemed planned (although it’s not really her, but yeah).

I remember watching the final episode of S1 and being blown away because this girl, who hasn’t played much role so far yet still occupies a lot of time in the OP and ED, actually does have a Big role. There was this big italicized Oh moment, you know?

But then it just stopped there...

It would’ve been fun if QL really was the villain. It also reshapes how we view the dynamic between her and ShiGuang. But since they didn’t go that route, then I can only hope, like @always-a-joyful-note:

Honestly, I’d love it if this meant something plot significant. That Qiao Ling is the orchestrator of everything and is just there to make sure things go the way she wants

Because if you think about it, despite Qiao Ling’s lack of any real purpose, she has played other Interesting roles like:

S1E7, when past!QL and past!XSS cross paths with future!CXS:

(Xu Shanshan alone could’ve done the job, but the focus is on Qiao Ling here)

And isn’t it sus how, when Xu Shanshan was so ready to run after Cheng Xiaoshi and ask for answers, Qiao Ling instead readily makes excuses for it?

Then, in the Chibi shorts:

And in the final ep of s2:

Oh… and from that image above, I’m reminded of how, in Overthink, we are first shown Qiao Ling the moment the lyrics go “You should really stop thinking ‘bout it…”

also this:

These three shots + the lyrics can be indicative of them

“I know I have no power to solve these problems of mine…” with Lu Guang facing away from us… Is it alluding to how Lu Guang has dived many times to keep Cheng Xiaoshi alive but still fails at some point?

“Why ya mind overclouded” with Cheng Xiaoshi looking to the side while holding a twins-lens reflex camera (@omnipotent-omnicube wrote an amazing meta about this camera)

But then there’s Qiao Ling with the lyrics “I stopped thinking in the limbo of time” and yet she’s looking straight at us while holding a camera

Throughout the show, Qiao Ling has always looked away. And yet here, she isn’t...

You know, if Qiao Ling ended up being an Observer or Orchestrator, then that would be so mind-blowing… It would also explain her passiveness so far.

Right now, we’re so caught up on Lu Guang Knowing Too Much Coz He’s From the Future. So if Qiao Ling turns out to be even above that, it’ll be just… Wow.

Unpopular opinion: There is no Link Click “trio.” It’s just the ShiGuang Duo + Qiao Ling

Now, before the Qiao Ling fans come after me, I just want to make it clear that I do not hate Qiao Ling. She’s a queen, and I love her. What I do hate, however, is the writers’ neglect of her character.

Warning: This will contain major Link Click season 1 and 2 spoilers.

Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang, and Qiao Ling have been marketed as the main trio right from the OPs and EDs all the way to the different official artworks and PVs. But despite this, Qiao Ling has never been portrayed like a protagonist in the story itself. Her value has always been tied to some other character, and what’s sadder is that even as a supporting character, she’s still being neglected by the writers.

Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang both have something in themselves that push the story forward. Cheng Xiaoshi’s recklessness in s1 is what gives tension to the dives and what leads to the overarching plot related to Emma. His planning in s2 also keeps the plot going. On the other hand, Lu Guang acts as the voice of reason, grounding the fantasy aspect of the show. His hypocrisy revealed in s2 also reshapes how we view the entire story.

But what about Qiao Ling?

Throughout most of season 1, she’s been kept in the dark about ShiGuang’s powers, which in turn excludes her from a big part of the story. In s1, it was only during the kidnapping arc that we see a bit more about her, but the focus wasn’t on her at all but on some random extra. And at the last episode when she finally gets to be in on the whole eye power thing, Li Tianchen possesses her, overshadowing Qiao Ling entirely and redirecting our attention and interest to him. (Extra: In season 1, between Qiao Ling and Emma, would you dare say Qiao Ling is the protagonist? I bet you won’t.)

Then in s2, despite Qiao Ling’s extra screen time and more involvement in the plot, the neglect of her character is even more palpable. She got possessed by a murderer, nearly killed her friend, and even tried to stab her own brother, but even after all these, we barely get to see how she had to process everything.

It’s really no surprise many people loved this scene:

This, for me, is the one time, the ONE time Qiao Ling is portrayed as a character on equal grounds with Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang. If Link Click were a sports anime, this would be the scene where she discards her role as the female manager over a bunch of male athletes and expresses her desire to become a player as well.

But unfortunately, after this episode, Qiao Ling is once again pushed to the sidelines. She’s a player now, yes, but a player who’s just being pushed along the game. She may take the initiative in some things (like talking to Li Tianxi), but even then, the things she do are all still just to help her friends. You know, like a supporting character. None of what she’s doing is for herself alone. (If any Blue Lock fans are reading this, Qiao Ling has no “ego,” so to speak.)

Qiao Ling has no goals of her own, and this is how the writers failed her.

All the other major characters have their own goals. Heck, even the antagonists are more like protagonists than Qiao Ling.

Cheng Xiaoshi wants to find his parents. And he also just wants to help the people he meets in dives

Lu Guang selfishly broke the rules of time travel just to keep one man alive and will do it again if he must

Li Tianxi betrays her brother and Qian Jin just to find a way home

Li Tianchen approaches ShiGuang and later kidnaps Cheng Xiaoshi because he also wants to go home

And Liu Xiao wants to, I don’t know, change the rules of time and space entirely?

God, writing that last bullet makes me realize that even Liu Xiao, who only showed up in the last episode of season 2, has more weight in the story than Qiao Ling. This is ridiculous.

Seriously, what is Qiao Ling even here for??? Play big sister???

Just market her as a supporting character. It’s fine. She’s still badass.

I also don’t have much hopes over how she will be in season 3 because of how season 2 ended. Qiao Ling seeing Lu Guang’s memories means her worth in s3 will inevitably be tied to this secret. It’s the s1 ending all over again. At the end of s1, her worth was tied to the mysterious Red Eyes. At the end of s2, it’s tied to Lu Guang.

If the Link Click writers are gonna keep pushing her as a protagonist, then they better start treating her like one!

It’s not enough to just give Qiao Ling a goal, by the way (although it is very important too). She must also become a player who has the power to control how the game goes. If she ends up inheriting Li Tianxi’s powers, as many theories have said, then may the drama around her not be focused on how she may leak Lu Guang’s secret at any time.

I don’t know what she could do with her powers, but I think it would be very interesting if she ends up opposing Lu Guang.

Lu Guang wants to keep Cheng Xiaoshi alive, but...

...he’s no longer alive. The Cheng Xiaoshi we see is just a glimpse of the past...

What if… as Qiao Ling sees more of Lu Guang’s memories, she sees more of the real Cheng Xiaoshi and suddenly… wants to let go… wants to move on?

The fandom have talked a lot about how ShiGuang may react once the secret is out. But what about how Qiao Ling would react to it over time as she realizes those memories weren’t just her overthinking things?

In season 1, she couldn’t bear to face that kid’s father for years, and at the end of s2, she couldn’t bear to confront Lu Guang… In s3, how long can she bear looking at her dead brother?

The chances of her “giving up” Cheng Xiaoshi and returning to the original timeline is slim, though. I’m just giving an example of how she can be more like a protagonist.

Anyways, I’ll end here… I still have so many thoughts, but I can’t figure out how to organize them. This has also been in my drafts for over two weeks and I just want to post it already!

[writerthreads]

WRITING ASIAN CHARACTERS— ADRESSING STEREOTYPES

@writerthreads on Instagram

In light of the current events, I’ve decided to make this post to help some people out. I understand that some writers want to include POC in their stories, which is a great thing! However, the problem is, they’re not sure how to properly represent them. As an Asian, hopefully I’ll be able to help writers with Asian characters in their stories.

Do note, however, that I don’t represent the entire Asian community, especially because there are so many Asians in the world. This will be an insight to my thoughts and tips I can give you if you’re writing about an Asian character/settings. I’m also not saying that you as a person are uneducated. I’m very aware that there are lots of educated people in the world.

First, Asia is a big ass continent. I’ll put a list of some countries:

South-Eastern countries: Indonesia, Phillippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, etc..

Southern Asia: mainly India and a section of southern China

East Asia: China (Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou), Japan, Mongolia, Taiwan, North and South Korea, Russian Far East

North Asia: a section of Russia, a section of China, (Beijing, Harbin, etc), Mongolia

Western Asia: a section of the Middle East (Armenia, Oman, Saudi Arabia)

From what I’ve personally been seeing, Southeast and Eastern Asian countries are a bit underrepresented! I’d encourage you to develop an Asian character who isn’t Chinese.

Each Asian country has their own culture and practises! We might have the same practises as other countries in terms of food and manners, thanks to historical events, but if you want to write a scene that include festivals or something as simple as table manners, it’s best to do specific research on them. For example, we don’t all bow. But we do take off our shoes when we go into the house in China. Since Asia’s so big, I can’t cover every tradition in each post, so make sure you research your particular country/city to some extent. You don’t need to write a thesis on it, just enough to educate yourself, and make sure you’re giving us an accurate portrayal.

*something about Chinese food: I’ve never eaten from American Chinese takeaways. Y’know, the ones in square cardboard boxes? Those don’t exist in (at least, from what I know) Asian countries, nor do fortune cookies. Totally fine if the setting’s in the US.

Next, let’s talk appearances, because that’s been frequently stereotyped. I’m sure most of it comes from the media. I mean, it’s getting a bit better now, but in WWII, American posters included Japanese soldiers whom were drawn so that they looked like rats, and had the stereotypical Asian eye shape. Basically, they were degrading the Japanese, which, (I’m saying this very strictly) in a time of war, is understandable. But things like this happened before and after the war. In the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Holly’s neighbour is a Japanese man.

The film’s portrayal of him is similar to the posters— he was made to seem very conservative, and had those stereotypical Asian features. I won’t go into too much detail, but you’ll definitely notice it if you watch the movie. In older movies, Asian characters are also portrayed as gangsters, kung-fu masters, or, uh, submissive prostitutes.

You can call me a snowflake if you want, for, I don’t know, finding everything offensive, but when it’s been happening for years and years, it’s definitely a problem we have to address.

All I’m saying is, don’t base us off of stereotypes, like dark skin, small eyes, or buck teeth. Sure, they might’ve come from an ounce of truth, but the portrayals are highly exaggerated, and mostly incorrect. People from the Middle East generally have pretty big eyes, and some even have blonde hair or light-coloured eyes!

I do believe that because there’s the stereotype that all Asians look the same, and the fact that China is the “only country in Asia”, non-Chinese Asians have been attacked, which isn’t just. Attacking people isn’t right, either, especially when the person probably hasn’t seen you in their entire life.

This is the big tip I’m giving you: treat Asian characters as you would any other character. We’re still humans. However, don’t entirely take away our cultural identity. You can definitely talk about our culture and our practises. In fact, I would personally love it, even if it’s just the little things!

Regarding our personality, hello, not every Asian is a genius at STEM subjects, nor is every Asian obedient to their “aggressive” parents 24/7. For example, my parents are pretty chill. However, I do understand where that thought comes from: in China, exams are really important for students, and if I’m not wrong, it’s the same for Korea and Japan. We’re not all quite kids with bangs. My friend’s pretty loud, and she’s always shouting in public buses, which earns her a glare from other people. Again, treat Asian characters like any other character...give them their own personalities, their own quirks, weaknesses, etc.!

Most Asians have English and native names if they live in an English-speaking country. You could definitely create a native name and English name for them. Your character might prefer being called their native name, or their English name. If you’re worried about giving them the wrong name, you could search up “common *insert country name* names”, or ask a friend who’s from the same country to make it up for you. Just don’t give them a name like “Ching Chong”, that’s offensive.

I totally understand if you’re worried about offending people, especially if you really want a character with stereotypical features. I personally think that you’ll have to be mindful with your tone, because that can really change how the reader perceives your description. But if the features become a common occurrence, then it just becomes a stereotype again.

Some Asians might find some things offensive, while others don’t. If I were you, I’d use general descriptive words if I was describing eyes, like these:

Hooded

Deep set

Prominent

Bulging

Thin

Wide

Small

Puffy

Also, please know that if you find yourself guilty of thinking about these stereotypes, I’m not saying that you’re a bad person! It’s great that you’re willing to read this post and learn more. :)

If you have any more questions, ask an Asian! Or to be more specific, ask someone from the country, someone familiar with the practises! Sometimes, that beats researching on Google.

[reidyoulikeabook]

okay i’m sending this here bc ur semi-popular in the cm fandom and I have a question that’s been plaguing me. has anyone else noticed how many people describe morgan as ‘aggressive’ and ‘scary’ for shit hotch does too???? like hotch fucking beat a man to death and no one calls him scary and intimidating but as soon as morgan idk yells at a fucking murderer he’s scary ??? idk maybe i’m crazy but like am I alone in this though. bc idk it just seems weird to me.

i absolutely 100% agree with you here!! it seems to be very common thing that morgan is overlooked and heavily critiqued for his actions/perceived ‘aggressiveness’ while rossi doesn't get any critique for nelsons sparrow man/the replicator, and hotch doesn't catch the same heat when he’s aggressive (completely understand your point about foyet, and i think that’s a whole other issue in itself y’know?)

morgan is picked at on a level that most of the other men on the show aren’t, and his positive traits are hugely overlooked (he is one of the people who has incredibly distinct relationships & dynamics with every single person - garcia, spencer, and emily in particular.) he is kind, and sensitive, and strong, and a lot of other traits that get attributed to hotch (which is fine, but canonically he is not any of these things to the same extent that morgan is.)

he is probably the most (as well as spencer and maybe jj) sensitive person in handling victims. he deserves a lot more credit than he gets and it absolutely is a problem when people are choosing to focus on specific occasions when he may have been 'aggressive' (they ALL are at times, spencer included in the later deasons) and completely ignoring the other 99% of occasions when he has acted with nothing but compassion, is problematic to say the least.

i’m white, and i don’t want to centre my opinions or speak over any POC so if anybody has anything they want to say about this/has a post where they’ve discussed this then i’m more than happy to reblog that/pop a link to it on here.

[lilquill]

On Representation, Diversity, and “have characters of color just don’t write about the experience of being a person of color”

Alright. I’m gonna piss a bunch of people off and also confuse a bunch of well-intentioned white people because I don’t think that you can write about a character of color without talking about the experience of being a person of color of a certain culture.

Seriously. There’s so many conversations celebrating how people have narratives where it “doesn’t matter” that one of their characters is a person of color and that their characters’ identity as a person of color “doesn’t affect the storyline” or whatever.

I’m going to cut right to the chase here: as a reader and storyteller of color, I’m not a fan of narratives where race doesn’t affect the story.

My race and culture and ethnicity ABSOLUTELY impact the way I perceive the world around me! For instance, many South Asian families bond with lively debates and discussions and lovingly roasting their family members. The way that I develop positive relationships, often with a solid dose of conflict and loudness and argument, is therefore fundamentally different from the way a white person would develop relationships; in fact, many white people are intimidated by how loud South Asians like myself are. We’re dramatic and loud and love jokes with wordplay! That’s just how it is and it means I form bonds with people differently.

I also have different values. White people are often more individualistic in culture, with more weird distant formal bonds with their parents (shit like referring to their parents by first name or, on the other end of the spectrum, calling their dads “sir”???) as opposed to the more comfortable and closer bond I have with my parents, where my family is all up in my shit literally all the time LMAO.

Literally white families are SO DISTANT to the point where white people consider practices like co-sleeping with your young child, something very common in South Asian families, to be child abuse?? Like, as if keeping your baby in a crib in another room where they’re not close to you and it’s harder to hear them isn’t dangerous but apparently suffocating a child while sleeping (which is very rare especially since co-sleeping is a practice that has gone on for MILLENNIA) is the bigger threat here??

White kids might perceive that as invasive or a violation of their privacy; I don’t perceive it that way because of the way South Asian families are structured. There’s a stronger emphasis on closeness with family. Of course, there are situations of kids being estranged or difficult family relationships or child abuse in South Asian families as well, but family is more valued in my culture.

The plants I put in my garden are different because of my identity; flowers like bela (Arabian jasmine) and bougainvillea and roses and gladiolus and marigolds and such things are what I’m fond of because of biases based on what my parents and grandparents like. I even once grew nenua (a type of squash). (I’m gonna get my hands on a raat ki rani soon I hope!!) And, of course, not every South Asian is partial to these flowers, but there’s definitely a cultural aspect as to why I personally like them!

The colors and patterns I gravitate towards are also different! I’m not a big fan of western “neutrals” and I find bright colors more appealing, especially because hey, those vibrant shades look better on brown skin! And GUESS WHAT, part of why the western world gravitates towards neutral colors in formalwear is because of colonialism and a disdain for the vibrant colors and dyes that colonized countries used. I love wearing jhumka earrings and statement necklaces and bright, vibrant jewelry as well. Now, obviously, this isn’t the case with every South Asian, but there is certainly some level of impact on these choices from my culture and upbringing.

Hell, even the food I eat is different! I drink chai in the evenings. I gravitate towards spicier dishes and better seasoning. I don’t eat meat other than fish/seafood and chicken and occasionally turkey because of cultural stuff, though ofc lots of South Asians are vegetarian and on the flip side lots of South Asians DO eat red meat and stuff.

And this isn’t even universal to ALL South Asians by any means, because my parents are specifically Hindu and from northeastern India and I’ve grown up in California! And there’s so many other details I could go into but for the sake of not writing a twelve-page essay I’m stopping here. 

Basically, my point is, I don’t want representation where race “doesn’t matter” to the story. Race impacts so many aspects of my life and how I perceive and interact with the world around me.

It’s ridiculous to me how so much “representation” is basically just starting with a default of a white character, making her brown, avoiding the stereotypes, and that’s....it. It doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel authentic to take away cultural impacts on your characters. People start with white western archetypes and tropes and try to mold them to fit characters of color, instead of starting off with an authentic character of color, and it really, really shows.

Especially because Tumblr and writeblr are such white spaces, and also because culture is usually picked up from the environment as opposed to online, the conversations centered around “representation” are always about “don’t do x stereotypes” as opposed to how to actually learn about other cultures and actually....write a character of color. So many of y’all only know how to NOT write a character of color as opposed to how to ACTUALLY write a character of color.

I see so many lists of tropes and things to not include in stories, and not enough things about values and family structures and food and fashion and ways of developing relationships and all that fun stuff that will shape who you are as a person.

And some of y’all don’t even TRY to, I dunno, engage with the culture of your character of color to actually write them. For instance, if you’re writing a South Asian character, go explore South Asian cinema! Go make South Asian friends who can tell you little details about their lives as they, y’know, exist and are your friend! In general, explore the movies and literature and music and dance types and food and drink and whatnot of the culture your character is from! Form relationships with people of those cultures; it’s the internet! I know this is a super white space but there’s PLENTY of poc on here! Make an effort, not just to avoid harmful stereotypes, but to write a character of color whose identity actually MATTERS.

When I’m reading escapist fantasy/sci-fi/romcom/etc. literature where characters aren’t being hurt by racism, I don’t want a story where RACE doesn’t exist, I want a story where RACISM doesn’t exist. I want cultural understanding, empathy, and compassion!

I don’t want a role a white character would play just switched out with a character of color.

For instance, in the movie To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lara Jean’s identity as East Asian is reflected in her fashion choices; book author Jenny Han lent inspiration for this. The Yakult drinks she likes, inspired by Korean tastebuds, plays a role in the story, too. These are details that don’t necessarily heavily impact the plot; it’s a fake-dating high school romcom. But they make a more real, fleshed-out character. They’re little details, little in-jokes and references, showing that the character’s race and culture actually MATTER to the story.

There’s a part in Pacific Rim where Raleigh Beckett, a white man, is frustrated with Mako Mori, a Japanese woman, for not going against the wishes of her father figure, Pentecost. When he tells her she doesn’t have to obey him, she responds, “It’s not obedience, Mr. Beckett. It’s respect.” This depicts her cultural understanding of family and respect; her relationships and her responses to things are impacted by her culture.

This is what I’m talking about! In order to write an actual character of color, you MUST write about their experiences to a certain extent. Of course, don’t make your characters of a certain culture a monolith in terms of personalities and responses and all that, but understand how they may be similarly impacted by their identities.

Now, don’t write a whole damn novel about a character coming to terms with their racial identity and coping with racism, but you absolutely MUST holistically incorporate their identity into your narrative.

Otherwise, it’s not actually representation. It’s you essentially writing a racebent white character. It’s you using a white default and trying to adapt it to totally different experiences.

[monaownsmyass]

A Rant about Chapter 11 (From a Zoey Stan)

Disclaimer: I talk about the racism in this chapter which might be triggering for some. I’m also not black and don’t intend on talking over black people so if anything I say comes across that way, I apologise in advance and pls feel free to correct me.

PB

Ever since day one, Zoey was treated like crap. We barely had any other interactions with her besides talking about Kingsley and her give us clothes. Zoey, despite being a confirmed LI, didn’t even have her own diamond scene until chapter 10, much later than when even Poppy, who’s not an LI, got a diamond scene.

But this is the breaking point. How tf are you gonna sideline a confirmed LI and then insert her into the bigger picture only to embarrass her, destroy her reputation, make her a laughing stock and make her publicly humiliated and not call it mistreatment??? To top it off, she’s also a black wlw. How anyone can victim blame Zoey here is beyond me.

For the benefit of the doubt, at first I thought PB was just clueless about what they did and didn’t realise it (it comes across that way in multiple books) but then, then they go ahead and put this in...

So you’re telling me, you’re fucking telling me that they knew how racist this sounded and still fucking went along with it??? If they were gonna make a subplot about how she got racially profiled, fine, good job, you know what the sad reality is like for black people. But to get publicly humiliated and embarrassed for it? That’s fucking RACIST! Idk how you’re gonna justify this when it’s clearly unjustifiable. I bet PB added that dialogue to show how woke they are but congrats, somehow you managed to do the complete opposite.

Poppy

Now let’s talk about Poppy. PB honestly never ceases to amaze me. They took a very complex character with depth and a lot of potential and just chucked all of that out of the window. It’s beyond salvageable at this point. And to make matters worse? The way PB wrote Poppy in that animal shelter scene (where we see a more vulnerable side to her) seems to be hinting at a redemption arc for her. I would’ve been all for it if this hadn’t happen. After this, there’s no way to save her character, I’m sorry but I can’t see it.

Going into detail now, I just wanna say, what. the. actual. fuck. I don’t even know where to start. Actually, I do, let’s take a look at how sad and pathetic this sounds:

Regardless of race, this shit is beyond messed up. But the fact that PB actually acknowledges it was about her race (as shown earlier), makes it baffling. I genuinely don’t understand how they didn’t see this as a problem. The way Poppy went after Zoey for absolutely no reason whatsoever makes it obvious that this is no longer a self-defence mechanism she uses for coping, this is cruelty.

And then we have the whole calling Zoey a ‘human sacrifice’. They do not only mention this once but MULTIPLE times. Poppy even labelled her folder as it. This made me the most upset. Getting a little historically literal here, actual human sacrifices were normally slaves, outcasts and criminals. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory why this was very wrong.

Zetas and Alphas

What a bunch of self-entitled, self-absorbed, low-life pricks that put others down to make themselves feel better.

So public humiliation wasn’t enough for poor Zoey apparently. She now has to endure tomatoes and wine thrown at her. Y’know how this entire scene reads and comes across as? A criminal getting stoned for their crimes. She was a young girl who was pressured into shoplifting by her peers and she was the only one that got caught cuz of her race. Need I say more? I will, that’s fucking RACIST!

Mc

MC is a little complicated for me. In my playthrough, I chose the good girl route and so my MC wasn’t as harsh as I’d assume the bad girl MC would be. I’m not excusing what she did because it was still wrong of her. She should’ve immediately gone to save Zoey. I’m just upset in a book called Choices, we couldn’t even choose between exposing Poppy’s credit cards and saving Zoey.

We’re always given the least important choices and we’re always asking for PB to give us choices that actually matter. This would’ve been the perfect opportunity. I’m playing as black!MC and even though I chose the good girl route, it still felt really... off. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be if players were playing the bad girl route with a PoC character especially if they’re playing as black!MC.

Zoey

Zoey. Poor Zoey deserves so much better. Fuck Poppy and the Zetas and even MC. The image of Zoey covered in tomatoes was so heart-breaking. MC’s convo with her... ugh.

If PB did anything right, it was making Zoey mad. She was right to be angry at MC (regardless if we took the good or bad girl route) and leave the posse. MC doesn’t deserve her. And to people saying Zoey should have known, it doesn’t matter! People are literally throwing things and publicly humiliating her so no it doesn’t matter if she should’ve known better. They shouldn’t have done that!!

I’m so fed up with PB sidelining and mistreating her and most female LIs and it’s even more disappointing that this is still happening after PB released their statement saying they’ll improve.

Idk how they messed up this badly after everything that’s happened, after all of our complaints and suggestions on how to improve. I just want to see Zoey thrive after this, with or without MC. It’s the least PB could do for her.

[bisluthq]

Ah but of course a gay girl is only projecting when she thinks someone is straight. The only ones who have kracked the kode ab gay relationships are straight people like ttb.

Well I’m not gay enough for anon because I’m 1) not a gold star 2) still have bad comphet 3) have like some minimal range lol. And like that’s fine y’know like those are reasons to be like “I don’t vibe with this content and I don’t find it representative” but idk how you then find Taylor Swift of all people interesting/representative and anon can say they don’t but like if you’re deep enough in Swiftdom/Gaylordom to like think Kaylor were together in 2019 you clearly do.

I went on a few dates with this very mouthy girl once - the one who asked me if I dated a POC before and I got awkward because GENUINELY NO RIGHT ANSWER BUT ALSO FAIR - and I brought up Taylor as an artist I like and she was like “ew that’s so straight of u” and I was like “you say this but there’s a whole conspiracy” and I explained TTB who has been of interest to me since like late 2017 on/off and she was like “lmao only straight people could think that white lady’s gay” and like I disagree with her especially from the vantage point of doing the research right and running the blog like nah she has some range and she’s done and said some sus shit but that still makes sense to me as an opinion lol.

And being like “everyone else is too stupid to understand Taylor is clearly a lesbian” does… not make sense to me because the lady loves dudes with dicks.

[khaotic-kitsunes]

I wanna know why you only ever write for female readers? Ones that blush a lot too? POC don't blush and you should know better the way you write erases lgbtq and POC

You know, I really didn’t know how to respond to this at first. I mean, I was angry, sure. Upset that this might be what people thought of my writing...but that was this morning, when I first saw the message.

I took the whole day off writing to cool myself off, didn’t wanna reply thoughtlessly and land myself in shit. I tend to get worked up really easily, something I’m working on actually. Self-improvement and whatnot.

And let me tell you, after an entire fucking day thinking about how I should respond without cursing you out, because maybe. Just MAYBE you were trying to do some kind of good deed? I dunno, don’t really care either.

Also, just gonna chuck it under a “keep reading” because this gets LONG. I have some opinions I’d like the sender of this anon to read but I’d hate to clog up people’s dash.

Now, to get on with my answer because hell, I suppose I should address the question. When I started a blog called Kinky Academia a couple years ago now, way back before I left, I had someone say something similar to you regarding the whole “POC don’t blush” and now I can confidently claim: bullshit.

Absolute fucking bullshit.

I actually remember a lot of the advice I was given way back then because it had genuinely upset me that I wasn’t writing correctly when mentioning the whole blushing ordeal. It’s something that I enjoy adding in my scenarios because people blush for MANY different reasons. Anger, embarrassment and the obvious reason, attraction.

So, taking in a lot of the advice that was sent to me through that blog, I immediately cast out the way I wrote people blushing. There was no more “your cheeks turned a crimson red” or pink, or whatever the fuck I wrote back then.

Instead, I write things along the lines of “your face heated up” or “You could feel your cheeks burning with embarrassment”

Shit. Like. That.

To include people no matter what colour they are, mostly because I don’t give a crap what colour skin you have. Unless it’s sunburn...cause, y’know, sunburn sucks and I’d hate to accidentally touch someone with sunburn. I live in Australia, sunburn sucks fucking arse!

Anyway, moving on with my point. Which was that everyone can blush you absolute twat. Might not be as noticeable but most people can feel when their faces heat up, because humans are amazing and can feel temperatures and shit like that. Cool, right?

So that’s gonna put a screeching holt to the whole “POC don’t blush” bullshit you were spouting.

Now, as for why I write for female readers? Because it makes me comfortable. That okay with you?

I would like to clarify that though because it almost sounds really bad and I don’t mean it in a bad way. I don’t care if you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community, it’s not my business who you fall in love with or how you identify. Okay? If you wanna fall in love with someone, by all means do so. Find that special someone and love them with everything you have, be happy!

When I say it makes me comfortable to write for female readers, I mean that as a female, it’s easier for me to write for female characters. When I’m writing, the words I write? The scenes I describe? I can picture it all in my head, plays like a movie usually.

It’s impossible for me to write for a trans person because I don’t know how they feel things, what would trigger them, the methods they go through for their um process? I hope that’s the right word...oh, no, transition sorry! The methods that they go through for their transition.

I have absolutely zero fucking clue about all that and while I could go to members of the LGBTQ+ community and ask them about it so that I know, so that I could write it. I don’t feel right doing that. 

Life is a bitch, it’s hard and it can be painful and it is absolutely none of my business what a person has done to get where they are currently. So yeah, rather than run around asking people about their personal business and life experiences, I stick to what I feel comfortable writing.

I write female reader scenarios that generally end up getting dicked down some way or another. I even do my best not to specify eye colour, hair length, what size the reader is (though I’m always happy to write for any kind of body type if it’s specified. No hate, I’m a big girl.)

Basically what I’m trying to say is that you can either enjoy my writing or hate it...and if you hate it, then you should really just move on to another blog rather than come hassle me about shit that I don’t think you fully grasp.

Because if you did fully understand what you said to me, I don’t think you would have sent it. It was crude, misinformed and frankly, not something I deserved to have sent to me? All I do is write scenarios and post about my collections, nothing terrible. I’m not spouting off hate for these communities, I’m not causing anyone any trouble; I’m just having some fun on Tumblr and AO3.

I would appreciate it if you backed the fuck off.

🥃 AO3 🥃

Cheeky Kitsune 🦊💋

[the-queer-look]

Queer Uber Fund

Name: Gloria Demillo Age: 25 Location: Melbourne Occupation: Digital Copywriter/Poet Sexual Orientation: Pansexual Gender: Non-Binary

I used to really care about how I presented, especially in the workplace because I work in both a corporate environment, and in art spaces, people expect you to look a certain way if your gender is a certain way. Sometimes I think people expect me to be more masc, which I find strange in art spaces, I said I was Non-Binary, not that I was masc y’know? People will send me audition callouts for acting with “identifies as trans-masc” on them which is always weird. Honestly I just wear what I feel comfortable in, or for the weather, which is a statement in and of itself. Before I realised I was non-binary it was very performative – I really did dress for other people, or how they perceive me, or how I want them to perceive me. But now I just don’t care, as long as they perceive me as hot.

I’ve always had a feeling about not being straight, but I’ve never had the language for it because I grew up in a very conservative christian church. It was like “gay is bad” but all of the language around it was centred on men, with nothing to say about women being with women, or both. Like… what’s the grey area there? I was raised and socialised as a woman so… was this only a male centric sin? I started to have a language for it at uni, which helped because I found ways to discuss something I’d always felt, but didn’t know how to explain. When I look back at my childhood and how I expressed myself it just… makes sense. I had this favourite shirt, just a really dark shirt with a lion on it, and I’d always wear it with these little pink shoes with pom poms on it, and that aesthetic of really daggy clothes with really nice shoes is really the modern queer aesthetic.

It was mid 2019 when I realised I was non-binary and then I came out in October of that year, but there was such a long process. I was thinking about gender in uni, and then when I was experimenting more with how I presented myself and letting go of a lot of the ways in which I was socialised to behave. Being socialised as a woman was really violent for me – I don’t know how else to describe it – I had a lot of expectations put on me about my body, and how I should act, and how I should be in relationships, and when I was dealing with all of that gender stuff, it was very freeing to no longer have to live up to this arbitrary standard that was forced upon me. It was also much easier for me to talk about it because I was surrounded by so many lovely trans and non-binary friends, but of course talking to my cis friends about it was very… ugh...

I think when I found the language for my sexuality not much changed in the way I presented myself, it wasn’t until I found the language to express my gender as non-binary that there was a change in the way I thought about myself and how I was being perceived my relationship with my body. I really felt it, It was such a different transformation, I was so genuinely happier in my body, and stopped caring about how other people perceived me, and whether or not my presentation made sense to other people. I’ve stopped wearing clothes that are really tight. I don’t know why, but everything I had before coming out about being non-binary was very tight, very fitted, and now everything is very loose and flowy. It isn’t that I don’t like my body, I love my body, but now mostly what I wear is loose and billowy and doesn’t hug me so tightly.

To me the term Queer encompasses a description of my gender and sexuality that isn’t just one thing because its such a broad label. The way it was introduced to me was like a very radical and subversive way to refer to ones gender and sexuality, and I love that it’s been reclaimed by the community as a whole, though I completely understand those parts of the community that are uncomfortable with the term being used at all due to the way it was used in derogatory ways for so long, especially when used by persons outside the community. I’m sure that there’s going to be a generation coming up that will have no negative associations with that word, in the same way that I have younger queer friends that refer to each other using the F slur as a term of endearment, when I wouldn’t use it with most people.

I’ve always had a lot of queer friends, but I don’t think I started going to a lot of queer specific parties until the last three or for years. Queer events too, drag shows, musicians, poets and artists and other queer specific events. It hit a point where I just didn’t want to go to another straight club. They don’t feel safe, and I cannot just sit there and listen to another Ed Sheeran or Drake song when I want to dance y’know? I’m not a huge fan of the fact that queer events always focus around a party or something, I just want a quiet queer event like a queer book club or something. I’m going to join a queer climbing club or something, just be more involved.

I love being around other queer people, but there’s also a lot of racists around. Just because the event is queer does not mean the event is safe. You’d think that we would have dealt with intersectionality by now. Genderqueer people are more aware because we live on the margins of society and have for like… ever. But I find it really frustrating when people create queer events that aren’t accessible – people with different sensory needs, comfortable for people of colour, accessible for people with physical difficulties etc. I remember the first time I went to a queer club event with a quiet room and I lost my mind, like I wanna be at the club for six hours, but I want to sit down and have a break with just a little noise for a while y’know? It was so beautiful and safe.

K: What challenges do you see still facing the queer community today? Gloria: Racism

There are so many things, being trans-non-binary and a POC I get to see it all but like. People within the community that just straight up hate trans people? The phobia is coming from inside the house! Unlearn that shit queers! Some people in the community get rights? Like they can get married, get recognised, and then they turn around and say “us? we’re the good gays” shut the fuck up. Yeah, internalised phobias within the community? We need to unlearn that as a group, that’s a group effort.

Racism, ablism etc, we need to get rid of those because intersectionality is a thing. I also think that there’s so many laws that are trying to literally kill people in the community so like… I don’t know if we need to crowd fund some community lawyers or something, but we need to get some protections from these people who are out here doing their most to keep us down. I also think that cishet people really need to do better, even the ones that say they’re all about allyship will say that they’re on your side and then take you right to a straight club and like hey, what’re we doing here? I think cishet people don’t understand that there are certain spaces that, for non cishet people, are just inherently unsafe y’know? There isn’t any thought as to how their queer friends are safe going somewhere, or how they’re presenting is safe. When cishet people come into spaces that are meant for queer people yeah it’s just a party and a grand old time, but queer people don’t have that same privilege or concept of space y’know? At a straight club I could just disappear because some homophobe clocks me as queer and has a problem and what would y’all do about that? Cishet people walk around like life is this RPG that they’ve unlocked all parts of, and are free to go anywhere, and just don’t realise that there are places that they perceive as totally safe that are completely unsafe for any queer person to be in. We can’t even go to certain countries? We can’t live in certain suburbs of Sydney! People get bashed in fucking Newtown for being gay. Cishet people, especially if you say you’re an ally, or go into our spaces to have fun, why don’t you take a few seconds to think about the safety of your queer friends? Why don’t you pay for our Ubers and shit, make sure we get home? don’t just text me “are you home safe?” be about it!

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[feifiefofum]

big pharma conspiracies and my problem with a lot of it

look, i have beef with a lot of the conservative ‘big pharma’ is out to kill us narrative is very simple- you lot are over aggrandizing these selfish, money pinching pricks.

‘they’re out to kill us’, ‘they wanna track us’, ‘they wanna sterilize us’. like, okay, that last one’s been done- but with the vaccine they rolled that out to white people first, so, i dunno, makes targeted sterilization a bit harder.

especially, when, y’know, the one’s administering this stuff, poking needles in arms are often poc of all across the color palette, so, kinda hard to keep it a secret when the head of the department is gonna have to tell their staff, ‘hey, this batch for your people only, this batch for the whites’. like, that shit would be clocked on social media in a snap. someone, somewhere is gonna drop the goss. in the age of twitter and social media, how you gonna keep all that under wraps.

which leads up to my next point- where’s the profit in all this? look, i know and understand that the rich assholes want to keep themselves as the only ones rolling in the lap of luxury. but what part of killing the peasants (us) keeps their prosperity machine rolling?

keep it simple, people. the bottom line is usually the bottom line with profit margins and everything. if you can’t rule of acquisition up in this here joint, you don’t have much of a baseline.

you do remember when this started getting serious for us, right? when the masses became too scared to go into work, grinding the profit machine to a screeching halt? that’s when it all got very serious for the higher ups. not the bodies piled up in refrigerated trucks outside of hospitals, not when hospitals got overcrowded- none of that mattered to them.

there’s a saying that one shouldn’t ascribe malice where incompetence or ignorance would suffice. for capitalists, don’t ascribe malice where greed would suffice.

capitalists are motivated by one thing, and one thing only- money. and as much as they lie to us about how much we’re worth (fractions of pennies of hundreds of dollars) they understand perfectly that nothing gets done without the working class getting back to work.

look at all the large corporations- they’ll do the absolute minimum to get back to money-churning. all of them have or had mask mandates, work from home, vaccine requirements, and covid testing.

did they fucking drag their feet? hell yeah they did! and why did they do it? because greed!

did they eventually mandate masks, tests, and vaccines? hell yeah they did? why? because greed! it was more expensive to replace personnel when they’re dropping like flies.

the concern with big pharma is not that they’re out to kill us- it’s that they’re out to charge us through the nose for basic life saving medicines that should cost only a pittance. insulin is the go to example. the guy who made and patented it didn’t want insulin, an easy to manufacture and cheap to make medicine to cost the people an arm and a leg to acquire.

you wanna know who fucked that dream up?

big pharma.

they’re the ones constantly rebranding the same molecules with one or two tweaks so they could re-patent and then charge consumers a king’s ransom to acquire their modified insulin.

is this evil? hell yeah! but are they outright just out to kill us? no. the goal is to get rich quick. the side effect is that people die.

look, i’m not trying to defend big pharma here, but you lot are making them out to be some dark lord out to conquer the world when that’s absolutely not the case here.

the evil is so mundane, even the xtians got it right, it’s greed baby!

frankly, i get it- it’s hard to believe that these monsters aren’t malicious, they’re just callous in their evil. we have to ascribe some line of reasoning, some hatred to make sense of this indifferent cruelty. but that’s just it- such callousness is borne impersonally, when you don’t consider the unwashed masses as human, when you treat certain lives (the poor) as insignificant, you find that indifference has a higher body count than actual hate.

there’s a reason why in the nuremberg trials that so many of the rank and file were all just ‘we were following orders’. like yeah, some of them hated, but most, the majority just didn’t care.

[freevoidman]

Tell us more things you have issue with in rwby and maybe some things you'd change.

Oh god, there’s plenty.

General World Structure/Building

- Please, for the love of god, outline what the government systems are. This isn’t a minor nitpick--knowing how the world works is, y’know, important. It would make the stakes of Volume 7 so much better if I fucking knew just how important a seat on the council is. The WoR tries to outline it better but 1) they sucked at explaining it even then and I still can’t understand it and 2) the WoR’s are considered semi-non-canon due to how much of the information in it is ret-conned, so I genuinely can’t tell what is still relevant or not.

- Please clarify how passive semblances work because if you’re going to have three important characters have them (so far it’s Qrow, Ironwood, and Maria who have somewhat “passive” semblances confirmed at least out of the show) we really need to know the rules behind them.

- Narrow down Dust Types and further clarify what does what holy shit. On the wiki, there are three(!!!) different types of dust that have to do with fire! Ice, “Steam,” and Water dust are considered separate, despite the fact they all deal with water, just in different forms of matter--why aren’t they the same and water dust covers all of it, and more experienced dust users be able to manipulate the state of matter? This makes things so much less complicated and narrows things down.

Rewrite parts of Jaune and Sun’s background

- Look it’s ridiculous that neither of these idiots know how the world works and I’m still salty about it. 

- Sun doesn’t know the history of the past 100-or-so years about Faunus and why Menagerie is the way it is (which??? why would he not??? He seriously should’ve known more than he did upon arriving there with Blake). I know it’s bc he’s supposed to be the audience explainer but gdi there are ways to do it without making your character look like a massive idiot.

- Jaune doesn’t know about Hunters (who are basically celebrities??? there is a semi-annual tournament broadcasted across the whole world how does he not know at least some famous names) or Aura which, based on the very shitty worldbuilding in RWBY, would be the real-world equivalent of not knowing how blood works and that’s honestly ridiculous.

- Basically I just want to make it so these two don’t look as dumb as they are bc their roles as Audience Inserts/Exposition Catalysts sacrifice any intelligence they have by making them dumb as hell.

Yang’s PTSD

- My god. My fucking god. 

- Either don’t do it or do proper research on how PTSD affects people and that their symptoms involve more than “having their hand shake” and have her “conquer” said PTSD by having her pass on a fight by getting her arm detached, thus putting her at a severe disadvantage when going to fight basically two demigods.

- Fuck’s sake she just casually detaches her arm when arm-wrestling Nora! She laughs about it! Someone with PTSD shouldn’t be laughing over basically what created the PTSD I am still so salty about this.

The entire racism subplot with the White Fang

- So... okay, I’m never going to FULLY understand the problems with the WF, mostly because my experiences as a white person don’t give me the same insight as someone who is a POC. However, I know it’s written poorly, and I listen to fan who are POC, this entire plotline NEEDS to be rewritten, preferably with actual research and POC writers contributing it it. As for what I find annoying or what I would change...

Why is it that the only person of the main cast who gives a fuck about racism Blake? I mean, yeah, it’s obviously because she’s a Faunus, but Yang doesn’t have any indication she cares beyond beating up Adam, Weiss only cares about reclaiming her family’s honor (which, yes, ties into faunus racism, but the way it’s portrayed seems to show she cares more about one-upping Jaques than actually improving things for Faunus, both as a whole and those personally afflicted by the SDC’s actions), and Ruby doesn’t seem to care at all. Make more than one main character care about equality, and make them care about it before they learn about the Gods, whose ultimatum is “the world must be united, or else everything will die.” If that is the motivator for 7/8 of the cast finally giving a fuck about racism instead of, y’know, actual racial injustices and oppression, you’ve fucked up.

I’m not a fan of terrorism either but, when you say “look at faunus-on-faunus crime, we’re just as bad as the terrorists for letting this happen, let’s make a small army out of never-before-trained Faunus to defend the humans of the second-most-racist-country and prove them wrong” it’s... just a dumb plan? I’m honestly partially convinced that the reason why so many people joined in was bc Illia said “I’ll do it” and the Menagerie citizens simultaneously got FOMO, holy shit.

Please do not reduce the power-hungry leader of the civil-rights-turned-terrorist organization to a whiny incel yandere. If you’re going to do that, you have to give more than a character short (which not everyone is going to see--that shit should’ve been in the main show) to ‘flesh out’ his character and make me think this is a logical leap.

Seriously Adam needed to be developed more before this to make this character arc 1) progress logically and 2) make me give a single fuck about him, his affect on Blake and Yang, and his death. You cannot rely on out-of-show material (like the character shorts, comics, and director commentary) to build character.

srsly why the fuck is Weiss never involved in White Fang stuff outside of telling Blake “I deeply regret what my father did :(” like make her fucking proactive outside of going “my dad is an abusive piece of shit and I hate him, and he’s also a racist so I hate him for that too I guess”??? have her go to the election party w/ Robin who appears to be pro-Faunus, actively condemn Jacques and give support to Robin, instead of going to a fucking movie with Oscar and Jaune of all people??? make her actually give a shit about civil rights instead of having her whine about feeling bad my fucking god.

[tothedarkdarkseas]

D'you feel like Gorillaz has become more gentrified? Like, they've really reversed a lot of the character design from Phase 1 imo. I can sort of see where "soft boy Stu" is coming from; looking at Humility versus Tomorrow Comes Today, there has been a huge departure of character. Same with Noodle (who is showing more cleavage than any other phase) and Murdoc (who seems to take himself MUCH less seriously). What do you think?

Hi anon! This has been tough for me to answer because there’s such a tension in the fandom right now, and as ever, I’m sort of the most useless type of person who falls a bit in the middle. I’m just doing a bit of stream of consciousness here, so I’m sorry if it’s ever unclear!

To start, I want to clarify that I do understand what you mean by “gentrification” in a more colloquial media setting like this, and I don’t want to seem pedantic, or like I’m picking on you or disagreeing-- but for me, “gentrified” is not really the word I would use to describe Gorillaz. Again, that isn’t me try to point to the dictionary and contest the meaning on paper, words evolve with us as our usage of them evolves, and in this context I’d infer it as meaning the project is being made more profitable for white and upper-class voices at the chief cost of devaluing marginalized people. Now, I know we’re talking about the characters here, but... Gorillaz is always a bit weird to talk about because it’s such a multi-faceted project, and I do have some regretful feelings that the work of hundreds of people often goes dismissed in the full scale of the “is Gorillaz bad actually” conversation. I do apologize if it seems like I’m willfully misconstruing the question to push the subject, I promise that isn’t my intent and I’ll get back on topic-- it’s just something I’d like to express some appreciation over while we’re discussing the good and bad of the project. There aren’t many bands in existence, and none on their level of mainstream fame in the English-language market, who bring this many POC artists to the forefront, heavily featuring not just superstar crossover collaborators but smaller indie or unknown artists performing on a larger stage without being asked to compromise the culture in their music. The fact that Song Machine has three non-English languages featured on different tracks, including Xhosa, is pretty cool and not something you often stumble across. That doesn’t mean the band, real or fictional, is perfect by any stretch-- but I’ve never gotten the sense that the collaborators are being used by Gorillaz or asked to follow only what they’re told, but that the band backs the collaborators in making the music they bring to them.

I recognize that’s not entirely on topic for this question, but it’s sort of aimed at the broader conversations happening right now I guess. Like, we’ve all been seeing a lot of strong feelings about the band by now, haven’t we? So er, y’know, hot on the heels of this album, I just wanted to ramble about my opinion on the band’s side of it, and whether Gorillaz as a band has lost what makes them special. As far as the music goes, no, I don’t personally feel that way, so I’m still pretty jazzed on this album.

As for whether the characters have been moving in reverse or stagnating-- I’d have to agree, yes, I look at soft boy Stu and it feels pandering. That isn’t necessarily to discount that anything of value has come from Gorillaz since then, they’re just... rather inconsistent. Truthfully, it’s difficult to speak to because I do have to take into account that my vision of the characters isn’t really entirely in-line with canon, even the older canon, but is much less so with the newer stuff. I can’t say there aren’t moments that have frustrated me, between art or interviews-- and it’s the things I know earn me ire to express because it is a selfish want, it’s the cute stuff people like that I often don’t, and so I have to step back and assess what is an objectively (or as close to objective as we’ll get) disagreeable direction, and what simply doesn’t gel with what I want the characters to be. I think it’s very often the latter, but of course there’s part of me-- as there is with near everyone in the fandom-- who thinks that something I really dislike is inarguably not as compelling. On the flipside, there have been bits scattered here and there that did gel with my ideas of the characters (this refers primarily to Stu and Murdoc) that seemed completely reviled and rejected when they happened. Er, so the wishy-washy thing I’m getting at is: yes, Gorillaz is surely different. In particular Stu is written and drawn quite differently, to the extent that there is a completely fractured image in the fandom of what “in character” means for him, and I’m not always happy with everything we get. I’ve had to just “distance” myself from canon-- which, to be quite honest, even though this is a popular mindset with shippers I don’t actually say it with much pride. I do have a sense of embarrassment at how it sounds for me to say it “doesn’t matter” if it’s in-character when I guess I’ve wished that I was... I don’t know, doing some kind of good and thoughtful thing for the character and his potential, rather than just writing him as an OC, which is what it increasingly looks like I’m doing. (Hell, it increasingly is what I’m doing, and I don’t love to feel that way but in the effort of honesty I do recognize it.) For Murdoc, I don’t personally mind his presentation nearly as much, though I can see how he’s leaning more cartoony by the day. While there were some missed opportunities for better Debunked sessions, better interviews, or better videos, I haven’t been totally wrong-footed by him either. At worst, the jokes we’ve gotten from him have felt a bit toothless, and at best I’ve also felt like there were some winners in there. I’d be glad to simply ignore the “plot” around the portals, but even when engaging with it, I can see the idea behind having Murdoc aimlessly chase them-- maybe for profit, maybe for control, maybe just because they exist around him and it is his core driving need to take and to have. That isn’t to say it’s handled as well as it could be, but I sort of just... look past it to be frank with you, haha. It hasn’t been spoiling me on Murdoc, I suppose. That’s just my own feeling, though.

I’m staying optimistic that the almanac will have some funny Murdoc bits, but I’m more nervous about Stu’s parts of it. I have hopes and fingers crossed, but I also have a lot of fear based on the direction Stu’s gone in for a while now. Yes, it does bum me out quite a lot, I admit. Hope springs eternal, though, and I do still perhaps foolishly believe that Jamie and the writers have a bit more love for mumbling, zombie-faced, “a bit thick” laddish Stu than they do for the soft boy and they might make some efforts to give us something. Touch wood.

If I’m being honest though, despite taking issue with a lot of choices I haven’t lost my love of Gorillaz as a project partly because I sort of think we’ve had rose-tinted glasses toward previous phases, and there is some extent of editorializing that goes on about the band’s history. I think Gorillaz’s plot writing now is pretty bad, but I also think Gorillaz’s plot writing has always been pretty bad. I think it rides on the characters like it has always ridden on the characters, and it is uneven in that respect because it has always been uneven. I think these statements-- that it is worse now, and that it is not actually a steep decline-- both feel true for me, but I can’t say how true they feel for you! And that’s alright! Just my two cents. It’d be a lie to say I’m thrilled with everything over the past two years or so, but it’d also only be hurting myself to lean into the frustration and force myself to become more upset if I have the ability to compartmentalize and make my peace.