#say im too white to be brazilian

[haemosexuality]

today i got asked if i consider myself black. i have literally no fucking clue do you understand the can of worms you just tried to open

[claritys-silly-things]

It’s that time again yall

Headcanons! It’s a long one this time

Emetophobia tw

- (I think I can classify this as modern) Rip sodapop curtis you would’ve loved saying “I’m just a girl 🎀”

- Soda never liked haircuts. When he was a small feral child his long hair would get tangled a lot, but he’s tender headed as FUCK so he would scream and cry when his momma brought the brush out. Darry put sodas hair into braids sometimes just for fun and soda didn’t mind bc it kept his hair from getting tangled, and then it didn’t hurt to brush. He’s always had really soft hair and it grows super fast.

- Jealous little soda asksjks (this was about soda being jealous over pony getting attention as a baby but I don’t wanna edit the original ramble I wrote down)

- When ponyboy was born he just kind of STARED. No crying or anything just 👁️👁️. Even Darry cried when he was born. Soda cried a lot.

- Adding on, Darry and pony were pretty quiet babies. They still cried for food and stuff sometimes but not a lot. Soda was a LOUDDD crier, and a frequent one too. It was the type of crying that sounds like it hurts the baby’s throat cause they’re shrieking their head off. Also soda would cry for, like, the first year of his life if he was ever handed to his dad.

- If Johnny survived the fire and got a wheelchair, he’d be running over people’s feet. Constantly. Just because. Or bc they asked for it. Either way, the moment he gets a hang of that wheelchair it is OVER for yall. And probably before that too.

- Ponyboy gets the same. Goddamn. Thing. At EVERY restaurant. Partly because it scares him to order anything else, partly because he’s picky asf. He makes sure it’s there on the menu and has his order memorized by now. “Chicken tenders, fries, and a Pepsi please.” He’s tried to ask for other things in the past like eggs, cuz he likes those, but the moment they asked him “how would you like them done” he just stared at Darry because he didn’t know what all the different types of eggs were, and now he’s scared bc he’s taking longer, and the server is still there, so he just got sunny side up eggs and they were slimy and he wanted to go home and cry (based on a true story sadly)

- Basically pony has anxiety and probably autism (so me)

- Ponyboy likes avocado. That’s it that’s the headcanon. It’s like one of the only healthy-ish things he’ll eat.

- Soda gets suuuper nauseous really easily, and pony gets carsick on occasion. So the first time pony went to a theme park, his family was scared that he would throw up like soda. They go on a ride and he’s like “yall im fine dawg.” Soda is jealous bc pony can go on rides unaffected (soda will still go on rides anyways, he just throws up afterwards)

- Pony is the most PALE ASS BITCH you’ve ever seen. He burns soo easily. His face gets red really quickly, no matter what’s going on. The only time he gets the slightest bit darker is when he burns and tans. Two-bit has been like “you ain’t white you translucent” multiple times because in the right lighting you can see pony’s veins. It’s even worse because soda and Darry tan so wonderfully, and pony looks like he had an allergic reaction if he doesn’t reapply his sunscreen when he’s supposed to. I feel like Mrs Curtis is the reason for this, she didn’t tan. Mr Curtis did tho.

- Pony has mild (severe) ocd

- Marcia’s last name is smith she is white-Hispanic on one side and Native American on the other thank you for coming to my TED talk

- Marcia is Cuban and Native American

- Marcia’s full name is Marcia smith that’s it that’s the end

It’s funny cuz I listed these things like three times and just forgot about the other two

- Twobit is Brazilian end headcanon

- Mr Curtis had autism and Mrs Curtis had inattentive adhd

- Mr Curtis was half Mexican on his mom’s side and half Irish on his dad’s side. Mrs Curtis was full Italian-American.

- Darrys the typa guy to make pony and soda turn off a show or movie if it talks about possession or like demonic stuff/soul stealing stuff

- (Modern au) Darry will get a text from ponyboy about something, like “can I go in your room rq” and he sees it but doesn’t actually open the text message until later and like, two hours later he’ll just respond “no” and thinks it’s the funniest shit ever

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

hi! could you possibly share the intercept new report about gay men and their misogyny? i know this isn't really about br politics, and im not even sure if it is in English, but i think it is really important to be shared

I hope it's not too late 😅

-

Gay men and misogyny: no more ignoring this problem

'Don't talk about vaginas around me': for a long time, we ignored the disqualifications of women and the feminine made by gay men. No more.

"If I liked women, I would have become a gynecologist."

"The law of gravity is a crime against women."

“Funny” gay guys, usually white and showing a certain hatred towards females, are a very common social type in contemporary pop culture. The character Felix “Bicha Má” ["Evil Fag"], played by Mateus Solano, from the Brazilian soap opera “Amor à Vida” [Love For Life], is an easy example in Brazilian lands – the sentences that open this text are his. But this sharp-tongued young man who directs much of his bitterness towards women, including friends and relatives, has never only lived on screens: he is a common presence in our daily lives.

"Oh, don't mention a vagina around me, I get all messed up."

"My goodness, this singer was beautiful, but she got old and ugly."

"Get out of here, I don't even like cracks."

I can't say how many times I've heard phrases like that from fellow gay men. For a long time, these ways of disqualifying women – despite the certain discomfort felt by every person who is repeatedly the target of prejudice – were endorsed and reflected by women ourselves. Offenses dressed as “I was just joking” have largely naturalized these forms of disqualification, but the good news is that, in an environment in which feminism has gained ground, what seemed to be just a joke is now named by the right word: misogyny.

This is a delicate subject, since we are talking about people – mostly cisgender gay men – who have been and still are victims of a series of violence, whether at home, at work, on the streets. Perhaps it was precisely this that made us, cisgender or transgender women, leave the discomfort of being made fun of in the background. After all, confronting homophobia in a sexist country like Brazil is no simple task. But if this machismo affects homosexual men, what can we say about its presence in women's daily lives? And what can we also say about the homophobia directed at cis/trans homosexual and bisexual women, especially invisible and also targets of “jokes” by gay men?

“I had a very close gay friend, like a brother. We went out to parties together and often slept in the same bed, at my house or his. Several times, as if he were joking, he said that he was terrified of vaginas, that he was born through a cesarean section so he wouldn't have to go through one. He'd gesture the sign of the Cross and said ‘God forbid’, smiling,” says Adriana Conceição, 47 years old, a telemarketing operator from Recife who, like several other women, took a while to classify the guy's actions with the right word.

Game developer Renata Gomes, also 47 years old, found herself at the center of a virtual outrage after questioning a post by a gay Brazilian film critic living in the United States. In the post, he talked about missing Brazil, since people worked a lot more in the USA. Faced with the possibility of his speech being reductive and stereotypical, he began to treat Renata as “ugly”, “militant”, “frustrated”. Furthermore, several of the critic's friends entered the comments to reiterate the delegitimization of Renata's speech.

Younger people also identify the problem: aware of the issue, Curitiba university student Nicoly Grevetti, aged 24, listened to several people who circulate in LGBTQIA+ spaces about the subject and wrote a text about it. In it, she also identifies how pop and queer cultures, supposedly safer and “modern”, also present misogynistic elements.

One example is the use of the term “fishy”, constantly evoked to define drag queens who closely resemble cisgender women (that is, who have a high degree of “passability”). The expression refers to the smell that these women's vaginas supposedly have. “[Cisgender] women grow up believing that their private parts are disgusting and spend their entire lives using products to reduce their natural odors, which can lead to various diseases. Having female genitalia as something disgusting is so common for this group, that you can find countless reports of women talking about it on the internet,” she wrote. The topic was the subject of discussion in the famous series RuPaul’s Drag Race, generating academic works like this one. Cisgender drag queen Victoria Scone, a former participant in the show, also spoke on the topic.

A few months ago, I experienced a significant episode of this machismo and misogyny that had been attenuated for a long time in relation to gay men. I was in a doctor's office very close to a shopping center in the south of Recife. After the end of the consultation, the dermatologist – homosexual, white, in his late thirties, and anti-Bolsonaro in the last elections – lightly tapped my hand and said: “Okay, now you can go for a walk in the mall.”

Especially on that day, I was rushing to finish presenting a lecture that I would give the following day, online, at the University of Coimbra. Obviously, if I wanted to window shop or spend the afternoon reading celebrity magazines, it wouldn't be a problem (in fact, I love it). The point here was the doctor's obvious intention to fit me into the cliché of the futile and consumerist woman, a sexist and anachronistic way of disqualifying the female gender. Icing on the cake: while I was leaving, the gay boy warned me not to forget to take “the boss” to my next appointment. He was referring to my romantic partner.

If it's feminine, it's smaller

The misogyny present in the practices of part of this population is so evident that it goes beyond the boundaries of gender and occurs between equals: it is common to see it operating even among gay men themselves. Research I carried out in partnership with Professor Ricardo Sabóia, from the Federal University of Pernambuco, analyzed the relationship between body and celebrity on the Grindr app. I was astonished by both the hatred towards what is socially seen as feminine and the extremely high level of normativity, standardization, and even elitism. “'I'm not into effeminate guys” is a constant, as is “I'm not into fat guys”.

In this environment of extremely high value for toned biceps and abs, being masculine – and looking very masculine – is the strongest currency. Thus, men seen as “little women” are disqualified. This is what researcher Carlos Alberto de Carvalho calls “misogynistic heteronormativity”, in which the masculine and masculinities are placed as positive – on the other hand, femininities and the feminine are valued negatively. It is, therefore, an environment of hegemonic masculinity and subaltern masculinities.

The global soap opera “Terra e Paixão” [Land & Passion] currently features an illustration that refers to this scenario, with the character Kelvin (actor Diego Martins), an “effeminate” gay man in love with Ramiro (Amaury Lorenzo), the masculine man, self-declared heterosexual, who desires the other person, but still doesn't know how to deal with the situation. What diminishes the power of the first is precisely its proximity to what is considered “womanly”. But, looking at Grindr, even the desirable “brucutu” [Brazilian slang for a brute and rude man] has his limits: issues such as level of education have weight in the app used mostly by gay and bisexual men, where it is common to read “no illiterates”.

The LGBTQIA+ culture, in which rich and middle-class white homosexual men repeatedly appear to discriminate against other peers from the same community, is a central sociological issue for discussing social inequalities not only in Brazil, but throughout the world. “Queer cultural production has helped to reproduce class distinctions based on the hegemony of representations of middle-class gays”, writes Lisa Henderson in the article “I’m not/I'm not into: circulating meanings in the presentation speeches of the Grindr app”, by Rafael Grohmann. In the same text, Juan Marsiaj summarizes: “Such a strategy can lead to the acceptance of a type of gay (white, middle class), seen as a model of citizen-consumer, and a greater marginalization of all other 'debauches' who do not fit this way. In more Brazilian terms: there is a risk of accepting rich gays and further marginalizing poor queers.”

Discrimination on the part of this part of the queer community was evidenced in a historic episode in the 1970s, in super liberal New York. In June 1973, the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally took place in the city, a demonstration held in favor of the rights of the queer population – which, at that time, as we will see, in fact was basically limited to white, middle-class gay women and men.

But, among the public, was the activist Sylvia Rivera, a transvestite who in 1971 had created the Revolutionary Action of Street Transvestites, STAR. Rivera had been trying to get on stage for some time, but Jean O’Leary, a lesbian white radical feminist, acted to prevent her from participating. A sample of how, many times, cisgender homosexual/bisexual women also enact the same discrimination as homosexual/bisexual men.

When he finally managed to grab the microphone, Rivera took aim at the hundreds of mostly white gay men and women present. Her speech is a synthesis of the violence experienced by queers who are too effeminate, too poor, too black, or too latine.

“I've tried to speak out here all day for your gay brothers and sisters in jail. They write to me every damn week asking for help – and you don't do a damn thing for them. I lost my job and my apartment for gay liberation… and you guys treat me this way?” she screamed.

The anger had yet another weight and meaning: alongside another important name, the transvestite Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera went down in history as one of the first to face police repression at the New York bar Stonewall Inn, on June 28, 1969. The conflict was the trigger for a fundamental civil movement for human rights – so much so that the date ended up becoming what was then called International LGBT+ Pride Day.

The question remained: how could that engaged audience repudiate the person who, at just 18 years old, spoke out against violence that was not directed just at her? How could they recriminate someone who pulled the trigger that would benefit precisely that white homosexual population?

Rivera and Johnson, who lived in a shelter, were profoundly different from the majority of the public who would return to their comfortable homes after the demonstration. Unlike Rivera, the daughter of a Venezuelan mother and a Puerto Rican father, most had not spent nights in jail or suffered police rape. The activist died homeless, alone, without the care she should have received. Marsha P. Johnson, the decorated, made-up, smiling, super queer transvestite, was murdered and her body thrown into a river.

Thinking historically and humanly about both is a central issue in the debate on hatred of “feminine” and other diverse discriminations present among the LGBTQIA+ population. The right-wing has long opened a war against women, and the rise of red pill assholes is just one of the phenomena of this reality. It still includes names like former federal deputy Daniel Silveira, who broke the plaque with Marielle's name alongside Rodrigo Amorim. [Note from the translator: Marielle Franco was a black bisexual favela-born leftist councilwoman who was assassinated by militias.]

But, as it turns out, misogyny is not exclusive to right-wing radicals and conservatives. And if Sylvia and Marsha were on the front line to guarantee the rights of millions of people, without distinction of creeds, race, genders, and degrees of “femininity”, it is worth asking: when will cisgender gay men, mostly white and middle class, join, with emphasis and strength, debates such as the right to abortion, employment, and wages, issues of life and death for the majority of black Brazilian women? When will the majority of this same group take a stand on the thousands of rapes that mainly victimize girls and teenagers? What collectivities, after all, are we talking about? As Jorge Ben would say in the song Zumbi: I want to see. We're here.

Source, translated by the blogger.

[carlosoliveiramybeloved]

who I think supa strikas characters would vote for to cope with the fact trump won pt 2

The rest of the coaches:

Coach Edwin - I believe Brazilians learned A LOT after the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro who was basically a worse version of trump (im pretty sure they’re friends)

Also judging by his personality and the fact he has a daughter I strongly believe he’d vote blue

Coach golare (the miserable fat coach from season 1 ep 7) - he looks like a trump supporter… idk I’m not analyzing this random ass npc

Rich American coach that literally owns Las Vegas idk how to write his name - Red. I don’t think I need to elaborate

PLAYERS!!!🗣️🗣️💥💥

SHAKES - Blue

I he’d either be absolutely fissured on the election or wouldn’t gaf at all + if asked he’d try to stay neutral about it to not cause any rumors on media (wouldn’t work and he’d end up admitting he supports Kamala)

North - I can’t see him actually caring and/or showing support for any side

Big bo - at first I was thinking maybe Trump…but after all those videos I watched from middle aged white men voting for Kamala, I could just think of Bo

But if he actually voted red and was questioned about it i feel like he’d say “IM NOT RACIST. I even have black friends”

El Matador - He’s like those immigrants that got their papers and started judging other immigrants that don’t have theirs yet

like those 60%+ of Latinos that voted red like mf he doesn’t like u

This or he wouldn’t care, maybe would say Kamala/Trump out of the pressure caused by the media

Twisting Tiger - Kamala, he’s part of the few characters that have common sense

Cool Joe - BIG KAMALA SUPPORTER

Would be super open about it too

And I totally can see him dissing trump out of nowhere

On a random interview: “Yeah 34 assistances are pretty impressive…but 34 felonies is just insane”

(assistances as in football assistances and yes ik 34 is a little too exaggerated)

Block - idk u decide

Klaus - would be really lost and confused about everything

Rasta - another family man, democrat for sure

Other players

Skarra - Seriously wouldn’t care

Would insist on is “idc statement” and yell at journalists if they try to ask anything related to the election

Maybe would irritate Invincible United supporters…I just feel like most of them are republicans

Like, remember that episode where Vince contracts 3 IU fans to pretend they’re ss supporters? They look so much like republicans somehow; probably because of how aggressive they were

Diggan - Like Klaus, also clueless

Douma - Would also try to stay neutral about it, and like Skarra, would be rude to journalists if they try to pressure him into saying anything related to the election

Riano - AGAIN, like other professionals, he would try to stay neutral about it

But deep inside, he’d vote blue for sure

Miko Chen - Kamala sorry I’m too tired to elaborate

“Where is-“ Not here ❤️

[zarkishere]

Meet... Ruben Connor!

My dumb dumb stupid idiot I hate <3

(i do wanna say a lot of the things he does is based on how I play RDR, so yeah HAJKSGHKJASG)

(yapping time. this is your fault.)

HE'S SO SO DUMB I LOVE HIM I'M SO SERIOUS. GOD. HE MAKES ME SO MAD. idk if I'll ever tell the full story, buuut I'll tell a bit rn :)

He was born in Brazil to a Brazilian mother and a Mexican father, but when he was young his dad got sick and wanted to see Mexico one last time so they went all the way there...and mf died like a week after and then wtf like what are they gonna do that's crazy

ANYWAY, SCARS AND RANDOM FACTS!!

ion wanna explain where he got these, but I WILL say the arm one was kinda because of Dutch....yikers

he loves animals. Like. God. Keep him AWAY, or he WILL try to get close to the cute baby (cougar)

is into embroidery!!

he overthinks a lot and sometimes just starts eating to distract himself, so Grimshaw taught him how to do embroidery so he had somth to do with his hands other than Cut Up Random Shit or Eat

comes home soaked in blood so often he has to buy new white shirts every few days (it's a real problem, he spends so much money, god help him)

has forgotten most of his Brazilian, and it actually makes him very upset

Next, relationship charts! (THIS IS A VERY SELF-INDULGENT OC LEAVE ME ALONE)

what he thinks of others

notes!

Ruben sees Arthur, John and Tilly as siblings!

Has called Arthur and Charles dad more than once while drunk (don't mention it he gets really embarassed)

generally /pos with everyone :)

you see, Ruben is very much a yes man and is sometimes wayy too easy to trust, so for him to think negatively of you, you gotta be some fucked up bastard 😭😭

Likes referring to people by nicknames based on animals. Like, Javier is coyote, Kieran is patito (YES IM STEALING FROM MYSELF), John is Lobito (he fucking hates it), etc.

calls Dutch dad when he needs something, calls Hosea dad when he's genuinely upset

in general, Hosea is the favorite parent (to no-one's surprise)

...what? what about Javier? Oh, uhh...it's complicated. (aka, they're two men in 1899. They're never giving what they have a label they're just Something) (they are really gay tho like damn get a room)

actually really disliked Javier at first! (internalized homophobia + being forced to go with him since "they're both Mexicans") (yeah Dutch said that, and while Javier brushed it off Ruben Did Not Forget) (he got over it eventually tho)

what others think of him

notes!

most people think he's too reckless, tbh.

he is tho ngl LMOA--he'll run in with only a knife if he's all out of bullets, will accidentally throw the dynamite at his feet and panic or other bullshit like he's a bit of a bloodthirsty idiot

Micah doesn't absolutely hate him cuz he finds enjoyment in seeing the fool do fucked up shit

Charles often gives him That Look when he's doing something wrong, and he'll immediately know to stop

alright idk what else to say HJKASGHJKASGJKASG I could yap on FOREVERRRR, but you don't care so it's okay

this is YOUR FAULT for telling me I should post about my rdr2 oc okay

anyway, thank you for telling me that, it's made me happy <3

[princesssarisa]

I've finally reached the last set of tales in Heidi Ann Heiner's Cinderella Tales From Around the World. By some miracle I've managed to work my way through the entire book. The last few tales all have distinctly Cinderella-like aspects, but don't fit into any of the usual Cinderella tale categories (classic Cinderella, Donkeykin, Love Like Salt, or One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes).

*First is the Greek tale of Marietta and the Witch, Her Stepmother. This is chiefly a Snow White variant, but it begins and ends with episodes familiar from various Cinderella tales. Marietta's schoolteacher tricks her into killing her mother so she, the teacher, can marry the girl's father. Once she gets her wish, the stepmother turns against Marietta, and finally, Hansel and Gretel-style, she convinces the father to abandon his daughter in the mountains. But Marietta finds the home of forty giants, who take her in. From this point on, the story is strictly Snow White for a while, with Marietta's stepmother learning her whereabouts and giving her poisoned grapes, the giants placing her body in a gold coffin, which a prince finds, etc. But then after Marietta marries the prince, the plot follows the pattern of several Cinderella stories, as the stepmother turns her into a pigeon, but in the end the prince breaks the spell.

*Next is the tragic Austrian tale of Klein-Else (Little Else), which @countryhumansadorer38 mentioned to me not long ago. As they told me, it's a bit like a cross between Cinderella or Donkeyskin and Rumpelstiltskin... and it's actually a more detailed, literary version of another Austrian Donkeyskin tale called Cistl im Körbl (Head-Basket in Back-Basket) that I read earlier, but didn't fully summarize. The heroine is a baron's orphaned daughter, who flees from her home to escape from the enemies that killed her father, and finds work as a poultry-maid at a young baron's castle. She meets a mysterious knight, who shows her a hoary, hollow rock in which she finds beautiful gowns and money. He then leaves, saying he'll be back to see her again in seven years, and warning her not to forget his name (which he whispers to her, but we never learn). She wears her finery to church, the young baron falls in love with her, and the story plays out like a typical Donkeyskin: the baron finally learns her identity after she slips a jeweled ring into his pancakes. They marry, have children, and live in bliss for seven years. But then Klein-Else realizes that the knight will soon be back, and she's forgotten his name. Worse, she realizes that despite all her wealth as a baroness, she's done nothing to help the poor the way she once vowed she would, but only lived for pleasure with her husband. When the knight appears and she fails to remember his name, he takes her back to the hoary rock, but instead of finery, it now contains horrifying visions of suffering paupers, whom Klein-Else could have helped with her riches but ignored. Soon afterward, when her husband comes looking for her, he finds her slumped against the rock, dead.

**The similar tale of Cistl im Körbl doesn't end this way. The heroine only briefly panics over having forgotten the knight's name, but then she sees a gardener put his small head-basket (cistl) inside his larger back-basket (körbl) and she remembers that the knight's name was Cistl im Körbl. So when he appears, she greets him by name, and he smiles at her and then vanishes forever, leaving her to live happily ever after with her husband and children.

**It's very rare to find a Cinderella story with an unhappy ending, but the examples that do exist (Klein-Else, the Brazilian Dona Labismina, and the Zuñi tale of The Turkey Girl) all turn sad because the heroines forget what they owe to their magical helpers... and in Klein-Else's case, to others in need too. They all seem to be warnings for people who rise from rags to riches, so they won't forget where they came from or be ungrateful to whoever helped them to rise.

*Sodewa Bai (The Woman of Good Fortune) is an Indian tale where the only Cinderella element is the theme of a lost shoe leading the heroine to marriage. Sodewa Bai is a beautiful princess born with a gold necklace around her neck. An astrologer warns her parents never to let her take the necklace off, because it contains her soul, and if anyone else were to put it on, she would die. One day, the princess loses a slipper while playing and picking flowers outside, and it rolls down a hillside and into the jungle. There a prince finds it while hunting, and he traces it to Sodewa Bai, falls in love with her, and marries her. Unfortunately, in this polygamy-practicing country, he already has a wife from an arranged marriage, whom he doesn't love, and she becomes jealous. But Sodewa Bai is naïve, and one day she tells her about her soul necklace. The first wife has a servant woman steal it from Sodewa Bai while she sleeps, and Sodewa Bai dies, leaving the prince devastated. Like Snow White, she's too beautiful even in death to bury, so instead she's lain in an open-air tomb where visitors can see her. Yet unbeknownst to anyone, the servant woman takes off the necklace whenever she goes to bed, so at night, Sodewa Bai comes back to life. Eventually she gives birth to a son, and when the prince comes to visit the tomb again, he hears the baby crying, and soon reunites with his wife and learns what happened. He gets the necklace back, restoring Sodewa Bai to full-time life, and has his first wife and her servant imprisoned.

*The Tale of Princess Phulande is another Indian story, where the title character's wicked stepmother has a yogi turn the princess into a bird after her marriage, but she visits her rajah husband until he realizes her identity and makes the yogi undo the spell.

*The last story in this book (I can hardly believe I've reached it!) is the Louisiana Creole tale of The Talking Eggs. This isn't actually a Cinderella story as scholars define them, but a Kind and Unkind Girls story, in the vein of Toads and Diamonds or Mother Holle. These tales are close cousins to Cinderella, since they also have a heroine oppressed by her mother and sister or stepmother and stepsister, but they aren't the same. Still, many American classrooms use The Talking Eggs as an example of an African-American "Cinderella story" (including my own fifth grade class), which is why Heiner felt the need to include it in her book.

**By the way, many years ago, I remember seeing a cartoon adaptation of The Talking Eggs on TV. The setting was updated to modern-day New York City, the two main characters were children, the unkind sibling was a brother instead of a sister, and after receiving his magical punishment, he redeemed himself in the end. Does anyone else vaguely remember that cartoon?

I made it to the end! A part of me is relieved, while a part of me wishes there were more.

@ariel-seagull-wings, @adarkrainbow, @themousefromfantasyland

[damnpotatoe]

idk if any second generation immigrants feel this way but i kinda never thought of myself as "ausländer" or a foreign person until i went school where people had all those presumptions of me based of my (asian)filipino heritage, like how i should be great at school, have strict parents (which true but still, am high strung and perfectionistic. as i grew older i molded myself after the asian stereotypes (mostly of asian americans) that were thrust upon me. not saying i'm not proud of being filipino (but i my not have one drop of swiss blood but guys im swiss too) i truly am. i also noticed this occurring with my fellow peers. got one half afro brazilian classmate in 7-9th grade who was a pretty chill dude until one day he became the embodiment of the afroamerican stereotype and tried to act more like the talahons(ig roadman/eshay). he repeatedly used muslim terms despite many muslims telling him that that was disrespectful. im saddened by the fact that he felt the need to embody those stereotypes because people callef him white washed and accused him of being ashamed of being brazilian.

what i mean is stop calling immigrants white washed based of stereotypes of preconceived notions of how a person of a certain race or ethnicity should act because they are mostly incorrect anyway and very harmful

[honoratacarnage]

Hey friendo, I was hoping for some advice! The post you reblogged about neopronouns and other cultures/languages- I noticed in your tags you said to use 'latine' and not 'latinx.' Is that the generally preferred term? I've only ever seen latinx, and am a baby in learning Spanish, so I just don't have a lot of knowledge about addressing people properly outside of the m/f gendered terms/conjugations, but I want to! Pls give me some pointers, history, context, culture etc 🙏

oh heya there! so, the main issue about using the x in latinx is that it literally doesn't make sense in latin languages. it is a word that is impossible for the latine speakers to come up on their on as that "X" sound only exists in spanish or portuguese when surrounded by vogals, and would NEVER end a word, meaning that the ones that created and use the latinx term aren't even latines themselves, they are white anglo people! so when white queers use the term latinx, it almost feels like a slur, as it a term created by the other majority to label a minority in a way they don't approve!

the use of latine (and other gendered words that you see with -e) happens as both Portuguese and Spanish use -o as masculine and -a as feminine (amigo <- masculine, amiga <- feminine).

Historically, masculine terms were used to denominate ambiguity and neutrality, however with the push of the non-binary native speakers that weren't comfortable with masculine terms, new vogals began to be explored to serve as a neutral term, and -e was the easiest one use! now if you want to use neutral terms in Spanish, try switching the -a -o for -e! so it becomes (amigo <- masculine, amiga <- feminine, amigue <- neutral)

if we are talking about neopronouns... i know more about the portuguese ones, but i researched a bit bout spanish ones, so it's ok. so to start, in Brazilian Portuguese the traditional 3rd person pronouns are Ele/Dele (he/him) and Ela/Dela (she/her). When we were creating the new neutral pronoun, the other vocals were considered, however the -i in (eli/deli) sounded too much as a high pitched ele/dele, so it was scraped. Elo/Delo was better however the 'o' sound was too uncomfortable to say, so it was also scraped. In the end, the Elu/Delu was chosen as the neutral pronoun! as an example let's take the "she's my friend" sentence:

"ela é minha amiga" <- feminine

"elu é minhe amigue" <- neutral

Elu/Delu work the same way 3rd person They/Them do, and just like there's other neopronouns in english to signify neutrality like Xe/Xem, theres also other ones in portuguese like Ile/Dile, Ilu/Dilu and many more!

now talking bout spanish, i know about the equivalent to 3rd person They, which would be "Elle". El is masculine, Ella is feminine, and it appears that the native speakers combined both to create a neutral pronoun, it being Elle. let's take a sentence as an example of use " they are my friend" in Spanish become "elle es mi amigue"

therefore, if you want to be nice to your fellow latine queers and not sound like "im a white anglo speaker and i know more about your language than you", please use "Latine" instead of "Latinx"!

hope this explains some things :p

[aesteasis]

do you have any brazilian literature recommendations :))?

ooohohoho yes i do, im glad you asked >:)) grab some snackies and a water bottle, this is gonna be a long post.

most of what i've read from brazilian literature are classics and like books that are at least decades old lol (uni life go brr), so my recommendations will probably rotate around that. so lets go!

first of all, of course, i recommend Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis (black author btw!), it wouldnt be a br lit rec if i didnt mention this one at some point. this is like the ultimate classic i'd say, but im not recommending just for that. i REALLY enjoy unreliable narrators and this book is all about it. its a novel about a guy who marries his childhood love, but suspects she's cheating on him, but yk, he's a white man from the 19th century, he thinks he's always right and is privileged af and it shows in the way he tells his story, so his opinions arent that trustworthy. and the author knew very much what he was doing, and he did it on purpose.

still about Machado, i must mention his short stories. i really really enjoy grotesque and gothic literature (think the vibes of poe, lovecraft, gogol, dostoevsky, etc) and Machado nails at it. he's also translated poe's works to portuguese back in the day, so we know for certain there's some influences in there. well, i recommend Machado in genereal, my guy really knew how to criticize society with some great witty and sarcastic comments if you know where to look.

if you want more grotesque but is tired of reading stuff written by men, i recommend Julia Lopes de Almeida (who isnt as known as she should be, she was done dirty and purposefully neglected by ABL - brazilian literary non-profit society) and Lygia Fagundes Telles. both of them have some reeeal creepy stories, just the way i like it.

now, if you're into authors who dissect the human mind and master the stream of consciousness and love to relate to the thoughts of the characters of your books, i highly recommend Clarice Linspector. no one does it like her, my girl knows how to transform thoughts into a narrative and its insane, her books are really endearing to read imo.

but if you want something that will thresh the brazilian society (or well, any third world country's society i'd say) and expose every flaw about the system, racism, misogyny, colonialism and class conflict, i recommend specifically the books Vidas Secas, by Graciliano Ramos (idk if theres a translation, but the title says Dry Lives), The Slum, by Aluísio Azevedo, and The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, by Guimarães Rosa (this one is sooo hard to read in portuguese bc it uses a lot of regionalisms from a region im not from, so hard that i actually got a copy in english to read for my finals lmao. but worry not, the english translation is much easier to understand. it also has some queer themes, both gender and sexuality wise, and its a literal masterpiece).

for poetry, i highly recommend Augusto dos Anjos, a personal favourite. im not that into poetry, but Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Cecilia Meireles are very good too.

there's so much more i could recommend, but these are the ones that come to my mind rn. idk if thats what you were thinking about, and sorry i coulnt bring anything contemporary, if thats more your vibes, but i really recommend all of these, for anyone, they're really enriching to read.

[ooglywooglies]

more about character names:

michaels is called michaels because his name is technically based on my last name its the anglicized version of it, to the point you might not immediately realize the relation, i said in my last post his original first name was "alexander" but this had to change because yknow, thats my name/too close to my name

and fun fact loren is also an ex self insert, hes loris. she didnt make him for trans reasons though i think she just wanted to give michaels an obnoxious buddy and to be included in my silly fanfiction (tbh i probably suggested it but i dont remember). their names are different enough that when they started drifting there wasnt need for a change like that but more recently loren DID get a last name change, he also had an ethnicity change a long time ago bc 1) it felt stupid that he was running around using spanish all the time while not hispanic (tbh he doesnt really do that anymore though, we kind of used spanish as a meme language a lot because we were both genuinely very into spanish in middle and high school) 2) there were basically no characters of color in the story at all (theres still only 3 which is nearly half of the main cast but tww is intentionally left very white for rural middle america reasons)

so now his last name is santos and he is brazilian and argentine (hes brazilian because lori is of portuguese descent and this change was made BEFORE the last name change, im not gonna say what the last name was in case she doesnt want me to but its a portuguese last name, obviously) we mostly picked santos for the letter s and bc it had a nice ring to it, and hes always had like a blonde white mom but i think i decided to make her white latina at some point so he could have some of that hispanic background back (i think i associate argentina with blonde white women im sorry argentines who arent white and blonde if im making an incorrect assumption about argentina having a lot of white people)

[fatlarde]

this guy i know is salvadoran and clearly looks like what our stereotypical idea of a central american would look like which is 2 say.. indigenous .. but anyway his white girlfriend (1/8 brazilian and wont let u forget it) started screeching at him in front of me a few months ago bc he recounted a racist encounter he had and she was like 'ur WHITE ur WHITE PASSING ur WHITE u have SPANISH BLOOD u didnt experience racism' it was extremely strange so fucking weird and then when i defended him she started screeching at me too like i dont even know what to make of this whole thing bc she's like . extremely libbrained and says 'amplify bipoc voices <3' 'im listening im learning im Sitting my white ass down! ' type of person

[wickymicky]

idk anything about blackswan or fatou but the concept just kinda rubbed me the wrong way. rania changed their name to bp rania when a black woman joined... black pearl rania. then there's like this redebut group with a different black woman called blackswan. seems exploitative. like turning black women into a gimmick. idk.

I'm seeing people who follow them tweeting about drama and taking different sides about who is really in the wrong and idk anything about that but... i just feel like this kind of thing was destined to happen. idk... like if fatou is facing racism, that's not really surprising to me. it'd be like if there was an American pop group with all white members except for one Asian member.. and the group had a name referencing kpop or anime or dragons or dynasties. like, idk...

maybe I'm wrong but it seems like tokenization was just baked into the concept from the start. and that isn't fatou's fault, she probably just wants to have a career as a kpop idol! im very skeptical of the company who formed the group though. especially since they did the same token concept again with a different black woman. that's... odd.

and i know this drama is apparently between two members but like still idk... it would not surprise me if there were issues there and it was a hostile environment to be in

but then again, i don't know anything about them other than the things I've said here. so this is all that I'll say about it.

[chekovsphaser]

I don’t necessarily know if I have the words to express this sentiment but here we go. I don’t blame people for blanket frustration statements like “I hate men/white people/straight people”. I get it. I have said all of those things at some point or another, many of them very frequently. Frustration is frustration and it shouldn’t be on us to constantly have to play patient when people are impatient with us. But I also think that those are bad things to say and think. 

Just because a feeling is justified and understandable and valid doesn’t mean it can’t also be dysfunctional or unhelpful. 

And I know that no one cares about my opinion as a man on how “I hate men” affects me, but this is my blog so whatever. This is the one that I have the most experience with, having been on both sides of it (I have never been straight or white for instance, but I imagine the sentiments are much the same). This statement is typically one of two things, both of which are completely understandable and true. 

1. A reaction to experiencing sexism and harassment from men. 

2. A distancing from the heteronormative notion that women need to like men.

However, its effects as I perceive them are as follows 

1. Exacerbating low self-esteem in men who already struggle with it. 

2. Guilt in transitioning men. 

3. Guilt in bisexual (and I imagine heterosexual too though it is not an experience I am familiar with) men in experiencing attraction to women. 

4. Radfem recruitment of women frustrated by sexism

5. The perpetuation of the “Boys Will Be Boys” notion that men are just inherently evil and animalistic and cannot help themselves so why bother

6. Alt-right recruitment of emotionally vulnerable men

7. Women are holy and men are evil, therefore women can do no evil, putting victims of female abusers in danger and general guilt and gaslighting spirals

Now, obviously, these things are not the FAULT of the people who say things like “I hate men”. Weird fringe groups have often co-opted movements of frustration in their recruitments. People who refuse to listen will always refuse to listen. I’m not trying to be all “not all men” here, but the problem with the “Not All Men” statement is not the meaning itself, it’s the intention. The intention is to derail discussions of sexism and distance oneself from consequences of thoughts and actions. The statement itself is true, though. 

One of the first things I learned in CBT is to stop saying constantly negative blanket statements because they solidify in your head. It helps not to perpetuate them yourself but hearing them all the time also has the same effect. 

Anyway maybe we should think about who we’re actually reaching and affecting with our words and how helpful they may be. 

[eremiie]

aot nationalities / ethnicities headcanons

❥ content warnings: none

❥ notes: take all of these with a grain of salt, it’s obviously not canon but i simply know the cast on a spiritual level so smh

eren is german, carla is the german one, grisha has some german backgrounds, but carla is fluent in it— taught eren it, yada yada. however i must mention he’s a bit racially ambiguous thanks to user alert-arlert. that being said i think he needs to take an ancestry test because although it’ll come up as 90% european im dying to know what the 10% may be.... i can see him having north african roots thanks to user miekasa, as well as possible middle eastern or south american or hispanic roots too, that is carla’s doing. 

armin is a white man we all know it... but i’m gonna say german canadian because he’s simply not american that’s not him. european background; some people said swedish too so take that as you will. his grandparents know carla very good friends with carla, boom, him and eren childhood friends (to lovers)

levi definitely racially ambiguous, he’s got family from everywhere so he’s like a little tea blend. french, eastern and southern asian, greek, he needs an ancestry test and that’s okay

jean is french-german, mother has french roots and father has the german roots, as a matter of fact he probably knows bits and pieces of both languages cause i just feel like his mom was the type to put him in language / music classes of the sorts

connie is afro latino, maybe even to be more specific and go into the nationalites afro-dominican, new york raised like timb stopping in these streets okay. you can’t tell me connie wasn’t helping his uncle work the corner store & going to the salon with his mom when he was younger cause she couldn’t keep his ass home alone??

reiner, i can see being german-american or german-slovenian. braun is a german last name, and then i can see some of his family having a jewish religious background as well, just you know, a european man.

bertholdt, german-syrian, bertholdt is apparently a german name and then he just has kind of syrian features so i would give him that!

colt, hella european countries, finnish, german, maybe even austrian??? 

porco, italian-american, raised in new jersey i mean man was getting down with the family business, rollerblading in the 90s, leather jacket and all talk to him NICE.

zeke, german, norwegian, icelandic, english like at least 3% of all european countries come on, probably damn stayed in sherlock holmes house and shared that pipe with him come on now

erwin, english. i’m talking taxation without representation is bullshit, just drink the damn tea kind of english. 

niccolo is french-italian, yall thought them cooking skills was not anything fancy white?????? no but he definitely has french-italian grandparents i mean like... i don’t think he knows any french OR italian but it’s really the thought that counts okay.

marlo is lebanese!!! he actually just kind of looks lebanese to me so it just clicks!!! i don’t want any debates about this it just works too perfectly imo. he’s a bit ambiguous too so i can see some asian in his bloodline as well.

mikasa is japanese, this is canon so this isn’t up for debate, she’s wasian so she does take some european roots from her dad. i think she knows some japanese as well, probably even taught armin a few words per armin’s request

sasha is european obviously, going into the hungarian, romanian territory. but i can also see her not even knowing she has a bit percentage of argentinian or brazilian in her— so some south american. or some middle eastern like turkish as well... i’ve always connected her and hange on some level probably because of their looks so i’m adding turkish haha. but she doesn’t know too much about her background especially growing up in the countryside with more than just her family so she never learned too much about herself apart from being white

hange, racially ambiguous, to be specific turkish, iranian, north african like egyptian maybe? some european roots and maybe just maybe even some south asian background in there 

historia, english as well. i mean she probably visits some family in london or something like, she’s no better than erwin (wise words from user miekasa) and that’s a fact. i don’t make the rules.

ymir, racially ambiguous european, asian mainly eastern but both south and east asian roots, african roots to her, and definitely indigenous roots, i feel like she'd also have like one parent whos like pretty white and then the other who is racially ambiguous with more african / asian / indigenous features

hitch, like this doesn’t even really count seriously but she’s a damn valley girl, i’m talking empty starbucks cups in her car, sleeping in her skimpy dress & makeup after her college party kind of girl and it works for her and we love it. she’s american yada yada

annie i see being german, russian, roman, maybe estonian, maybe slovakian? just that kind of mix, lots of european countries, and i had to add in rome because the “hook” nose she has is known to i think originate from rome!

pieck is greek!!! why would i pass up an opportunity to give her the beautiful people of greece. she’s just so pretty and it’s too fitting. i can see her having albanian blood too, even croatian.

yelena def has russian in her, probably slavic too, numerous european countries as well, but i see her being russian because of her name.

[juyeoniemyhoney]

make you feel my love

Losing means nothing to Ishikawa when he has you.

pairing: ishikawa yuki x reader

genre: fluff, established relationship

warnings: i don’t think there’s any!

word count: 2074 words

A/N: i honestly dont know who wants to read this but im just gonna post it anyways HAHA so here all you ishikawa simps pls enjoy<3

--------

It all happens at once.

The noise— screams of all pitches and encouragements of all sorts, forming a raucous cacophony in the large gymnasium— halts almost immediately; like a vacuum has sucked it all up and the only thing that is left is an eerie stillness as everyone waits in antsy anticipation for the player to serve.

And then he is running up, throwing the ball great lengths into the air and jumping to meet it halfway, hitting the ball with such force and determination you can almost feel the impact yourself. The ball hurtles through the air and crosses the net with such speed you almost don't see it.

But the Japanese team does. Their libero, Yamamoto, crosses the court in a flash and bumps the ball up so high up it gives his teammates half a second to breathe before they are rushing to connect it, the setter, Sekita, tossing the ball higher in the air for Ishikawa to hit it.

The tall Brazilians loom over him like a curse, like bad karma, as determined as the Japanese are, but not nearly as desperate. Ishikawa does not mind them and he bravely hits the ball with as much strength as his worn out body allows him, sending every last bit of energy into this spike, hoping, praying, practically begging for it to work, for the ball to hit the other side of the court with such violence that the Brazilians would not be able to even react before it hits the floor.

The next thing you know, the ball hits the hands of the Brazilians and is spindling down towards the floor at breakneck speed. Yamamoto, Sekita and Ishikawa (when he lands), all throw themselves to the floor in a desperate bid to save it, to not let it touch the floor, to not let all their hard work be washed down into a drain. But to no avail.

The ball hits the floor with a resounding thud. The whistle blows and all at once, the Brazilian supporters leap from their seats and yell and scream and shout with unadulterated joy. Because they have won! They have won the game! And the Japanese have lost. The Japanese team and their supporters are quiet in the wake of their loss. You do not move, almost as if if you did, the bleachers would crack open, the earth beneath the gymnasium would cave in and you would be falling to the floor, through the soil and to the core of the earth.

The three men lift themselves up from the floor with the weight of defeat on their shoulders and their teammates pat their backs silently, looking solemn but trying to be as encouraging as possible. The team gathers at the end line of the court and another whistle blows, signalling both teams to bow. When Ishikawa's eyes hit the floor, so do the tears.

He cries in silent agony, somehow feeling like it is all his fault. He is the captain, he should have led them better than this. He is the ace, he should have been able to hit pass those blocks. He knew hitting hard was risky, he should have been more careful. He should have moved faster, reacted faster, gotten to the ball faster. He should have been sharper, more alert, better. He should have been better.

His teammates shed a few tears too, but not quite nearly as much as Ishikawa. It's unrelenting— his tears. It doesn't want to stop, even when Ishikawa roughly wipes at his eyes in frustration, desperately wanting the raw showing of emotion to stop. Everyone can see him cry in this moment and he hates it.

When Ishikawa and his team begin to move off the court, is when you break from your stunned daze. Quite frankly, you were shocked speechless. You knew Brazil was a tough opponent but your faith in your boys would always trump any form of doubt. You knew they could do it. You knew they would be able to do it. Until they didn't.

You do not see the tears from quite so far away, but when you do, you are ripping yourself from your seat with such great speed, the people around you jump in surprise. You do not care, you do not even really notice before you are sprinting down the stairs, leaping from each flight, ignoring the desperate calls of your best friend and the shocked expressions directed at you as you race to the exit of the court.

"Ishikawa Yuki!" you yell just in case you don't catch them in time. You know you could just call him or meet him at his house but you came as a surprise, and though you'd wish you could surprise him after his victory, you think that surprising him and being able to comfort him in his loss will mean just as much.

At the sound of your voice, his head whips around, eyes wide in shock as he desperately searches the people for your face, eyes glassy with unshed tears and vision slightly blurry. You jump off the rest of the stairs, running to him with flailing arms. And when Ishikawa sees you, you swear you see his lips pout, eyes glossing over as tears run down his face.

You grin and run to him and he drops everything, his water bottle, his towel, his jacket, everything, so that he can hold his arms open for you to run into and give him a big hug. And you do exactly that. You run straight into his arms, wrapping your arms around his torso and shoving your face into his chest, not caring at all that he is drenched in sweat (and possibly tears), not caring at all that almost the whole gymnasium full of people can see the two of you have such an intimate moment, not caring at all because Ishikawa Yuki, the love of your life, is in tears and you have to do everything in your power to stop that.

Ishikawa's arms wrap around you too, holding you so tight and dear to him, you swear the both of you stop breathing. And with you in his arms, he finally crumbles to the floor, tears spilling from his eyes and sobs escaping his throat in ugly, high-pitched hiccups. But he doesn't care, you don't care, he's safe as long as you're here.

"When did you get here? I thought you were only going to touchdown tomorrow," he whispers in between sobs, his shaking, swollen hand coming up to your hair and entangling his fingers with the strands messily. You pull away slightly and pull Ishikawa down so that your chin rests on his shoulder and he can bury his face into your neck, your hand coming up to his sweaty hair to run your fingers through the corse, tangled strands as Ishikawa continues to cry in your arms. This position is so incredibly uncomfortable. After all, Ishikawa is insanely tall and the top of your head doesn't even really reach his neck, and you're sure Ishikawa's back is going to hurt a little later but he doesn't seem to mind at all at the position change, indulging in you as he shoves his face into the crook of your neck, hot breaths that tickle your skin, coming out in pants as he struggles to control his sobs.

"I wanted to surprise you," you say with a fond smile, the hand that was idle on his back coming up to send a wave to his teammates when your eyes meet, even sending one to his coach, who just smiles bitterly at you. His teammates send you rueful smiles and thumbs-ups of approval before they make their way back to the locker rooms, leaving you and Ishikawa to continue embracing at the exit of the court.

Ishikawa lets out a tearful laugh, saying, "Well, I'm surprised alright. I was just thinking about you when you called my name. I almost thought I was seeing things.".

You laugh but do not reply, allowing a comfortable silence to take over as Ishikawa lets all his emotions out in the form of hot, regretful tears. Your hand continues to soothe him with pats and strokes to his back and your hand remains in his hair. Ishikawa's large hands fist your shirt at your waist as his tears and sweat seep into your shirt. You don't mind. Of course, if this were anyone else you would. But this is Ishikawa Yuki, and you love him more than anything else in this world.

"You played so well," you whisper after a while of silence. You can feel Ishikawa wanting to pull away from you but you do not allow him, knowing full well that he wants to pull away to argue with you, to debunk your words with his incessant humility, so you do not allow him. You do not allow him to deny himself the praise he very much deserves because he's worked hard for this, no matter the outcome, he and his teammates have worked his ass off for this, and the least you can do is praise him.

"Yuki, you played very well. Don't try and deny it," you say with a firm voice, hand on his head keeping his chin to your shoulder. At this, he finally laughs and you loosen your grip, allowing him to pull out of your embrace just enough for him to see your face.

His cheeks are tear-stained and his eyes are beginning to puff up with all his crying, red beginning to bloom at the corner of his eyes, slowly taking over the white. His smile is nothing short of breathtaking, swollen eyes and red lips curled up brilliantly, smile lines and the corners of his eyes creasing sweetly. You can't help but grin back when you see his smile, nose souring with endearment.

"You know me so well," he comments, fingers coming up to tuck strands of your hair behind your ear, fingers trailing down your jaw to your chin, tilting your face up just a little bit more. His fingers guide your head just slightly forward before he is meeting you halfway in a sweet kiss, grinning immediately after your lips meet his.

Ishikawa's eyes trace over your every feature, observing, remembering, ingraining; tracing over the curve of your eyes, the slope of your nose, the perk of your lips, the peak of your eyebrows, and the line of your jaw, fingers ghosting over each feature along with his eyes, all the while maintaining the smile on his lips.

Then, he is giving your forehead a sweet kiss before pulling out of your embrace fully, turning around to pick up the things he had dropped when you came running into his arms. He brushes off his jacket and drapes it across your shoulders, holding open the jacket for you to slip your arms into the sleeves, to which you do, before he is hooking the zip and zipping it all the way up to your chin.

In his mind, he laughs at the way you are dwarfed by his jacket. Your hands can barely be seen, only the tips of your fingers peeking out from the sleeves, and the jacket, where it usually ends at his hip, ends almost at your knees. Unconsciously, he smiles and has to physically restrain himself from pinching your cheeks.

After he zips up his jacket, he bends down to pick up his towel, draping it over his shoulder before he is bending down once again to pick up his water bottle, having set them down to help you put on his jacket. Then, without a word but with the largest, goofiest grin, he takes your hand in his and leads you out of the court and to the locker rooms in a comfortable silence, fingers intertwined with yours.

For a second there, he almost forgets that they lost the game and are not able to proceed to the quarter-finals. For a second there, he almost completely forgets about his regrets and anger and frustration. And it's all because of you. And of course, he is eternally grateful to you. After all, what on earth would he do without you? He would still be crying his ass off, that's what, though he would never admit it out loud. And it is because of this reason— though he would do it without a reason at all— that he kisses you a little longer, hugs you a little tighter, loves you a little more.

[anandasamsara]

I’ve been seeing a lotta north americans people talking shit about Encanto, specially the fact that Pepa is white, born from two light brown skinned Colombians, and well... These people dont understand a lot of things.

First, i will not explain biology bc i do not know it, but i do understand the possibilities. Second, there’s nuance in being a white latine person.

On the first point, i have two exemples. I have a friend whose mother is clearly from indigenous ascent, with perhaps a very light skin color, black straight hair and what not. The father is a black man. And my friend is very white, with very ginger, extremely curly hair - kinda like Pepa, ya know. And her younger brother is white and so blond he looks albino. And there’s no way to say “oh, so the guy is not their father, or the woman not the mother” bc they share the physical appearence of their parents perfectly 50/50. Both of them. 

Also, both my gran and my grandpa were the usual white people we see here, with black hair and a bit sunburned (which is normal in a country where the sun tries homicide every single day). My uncle looked like Bruno, if he was fat. And my aunt is so white it hurts too look at. But my dad would be a perfect middle eastern man, beard included. So you get the biology part, a bit.

And then, the nuance. I have a friend who went to a scholarship in Japan a few years ago, and she met a few americans who were part of the same group. My friend’s skin is very very white, and her hais is very very curly, and her eyes are green. For the first 3 days she was never asked where she was from, but by the time she said she was from Brazil, the americans started refering to her as a lanitna, instead of just another white person like them. 

You see, here in Brazil, and in most latine countries, being white is your skin color and the privileges it brings to you. For most people outside here, for who we call gringos, it’s like your ethnicity. For us, white-passing means that the skin is light enough to pass as white. For gringos, it’s a possibility of pertaining to an ethnicity other than the one you are born in. I myself have a hard time, and always have had if my childhood memories can be counted, thinking if im a white person or not. Because i look at my father and see a clearly mixed “race” person, despite his birth certificate declaring him white, and i look at my clearly white from german and portuguese ascent mother, and i get confused. And this confusion only exists here, as a brazilian person living in Brazil, bc outside of here, im a white-skinned latina, not a white person.

So, when people get so worked over a clearly well decided and researched choice from the production, i worry. Bc the people who get so upset arent spendind their energy trying to understand a different culture that was presented to them. They are taking something at face value, and wrongly so, making this feel like a hollow “gotcha” for when we, as latines, or asians, or easterners, or whatever “minority” claim for representation.

And like, the “fault” of Pepa Madrigal being a white, ginger person, biologically speaking, can very well be of the white colonizers that showed up in latin america and decided genocide was a good thing to do. Just because the movie is showing a true representation through a fantasy lens, doesnt mean that the history behind the real world place it’s based on doesnt carry any weight.