#so y’all gonna have to deal with my weird taste is fictional characters again lol

[candyheartedchy]

I find it funny that even though I had an crush (and use to self ship) with Grim from TGAOBAM, I also remembered having a HUGE DAMN crush on Billy’s dad when I was younger too.

[bitchsexuality]

@animaliae

ok first off i’m sorry i took so long to reply!! i’ve been busy in the most tedious way possible so my brain’s not exactly my best friend right now. second off: THANK U SO MUCH these were so fun to answer!!

i’m putting all of these in the same post because i started talking and i could not Shut The Up, and i think one atrociously long post is better than four long posts when it comes to like, scrollability. scrollpastability? scroll-Something. and putting it under a readmore too for the same reasons

SO, from top to bottom:

weirdest character idea for D-N-D:

it’s an idea i’ve already had because i can’t come up with anything right now dksjfgbd, but

once i made a druid for a D//N/D-based CRPG who only cast spells when they gave him something edible (in theory ofc, the game didn’t let me eat my summoned bears... thankfully...), so i ended up with nothing but goodberries and several animal summoning spells. then i proceeded to cheat my way through the game, which defeated the point sdfgsd, but it was still fun concept-wise

also made me spend too much time wondering if the entangle spell’s vines could be eaten. i mean you can’t eat the WHOLE thing but maybe you could like, munch on it a little, or try to slurp it up like a noodle. it wouldn’t be tasty, it wouldn’t be easy, and it most definitely would not be healthy, but it’s like. the principle of the thing 

if ur asking yourself WHY i did that… well there aren’t THAT many D/ND-based CRPGS out there and i’d already played that one —several times, in fact— so i wanted to try something different :0

i mean it’s not THAT weird tbh, but he’s the only OC i can think of right now that soooooort of fits? and my brain is like, a tundra of creativity at the moment. a deep tar pool that absorbs all inspiration and drags it, kicking and screaming, to its viscous doom. well you get the idea. or i hope you do because i sure fucking don’t

ideal ending for one of my characters:

hmmmm for like, original fiction characters i more or less have all their endings planned out? most of them ARE ideal because i am fully in control of their destinies and i am also a softhearted lidle bich who prefers stories with relatively uplifting/happy endings. or tbh even the ones that aren’t technically happy are still ideal in terms of character arcs, development, etc

(i might be giving myself way too much credit there though skdjgbdksjfg)

and —though this is super unlikely and mostly just me deceiving myself at this point— i do want to publish what i’m working on rn, so talking about endings would be a spoiler for something that does not exist and probably never will outside of my idiot fool head. so i’m gonna talk about an old OC that i’m not doing anything with anymore!

her name was elina and her entire deal was that she came from a family of very powerful witches who owned a, uh, i guess you could call it an archive? or a library?? idk, it was just an ABSURDLY large collection of magic-related books, and it pretty much contained all known arcane knowledge (though come think of it, “all known arcane knowledge” can’t have been THAT much because the archive was just one room. a huge fucking monster of a room yeah but like. still just One)

so anyway, her family members were very dutiful + responsible when it came to the archivelibraryroom thing, but they were also too traditional for her tastes? like they didn’t bother practicing/using magic, or experimenting, or looking for anything outside of books; they only cared about written things, and even then they did nothing but get the Very Important Books, put them in the archivelibraryroom and forget about them completely

then elina ran into a group of other magic-users who were investigating a weird phenomenon in her hometown, and she asked her family about it, but they essentially were like “oh if it doesn’t affect the books we don’t care lol anyway it’s your turn to clean the archivelibrary now”

but yeah i’m sure y’all can tell where this is going kjdfgbd elina was the typical YA protag in that she was super rebellious, so she turned her back on her family and left her house to help the group of inconveniently yet stereotypically teenage magic-users, made friends, learned about magic, blah blah blah

the issue is that i never gave that story an ending? like the closest thing to it was a vague “uhhhh elina goes back home to find the archivelibrary is burning down and pulls some kind of mysterious water magic out of her ass to save it; then her family apologizes, they begin to respect her and she stays with them to keep caring for the archivelibrary, But With A Progressive Twist”

the issue was that after writing around two chapters i realized i didn’t actually Have a plot, so i didn’t know what story that ending would be... ending... and since i couldn’t think of anything + i wasn’t THAT attached to the characters anyway i just gave up on it

but now that i’m thinking of it again, just for the sake of ending the Story That Never Was, i feel like making her earn the respect of her family just because she saved the books + proved she actually cares about that too is, idk, shallow? out of character? 

because she believed that her family’s fixation on history + Neatly Documented stuff was holding them back and making things worse for everyone. she left her home behind because her ideals re.: magic —that it should grow and change to fit the context + people’s needs, and not the other way around— were so strong

OOF THIS IS GETTING SO FUCKING LONG KSDJGB i’m just gonna stop here and say: elina’s new ideal ending is pretty much that while she ends up in friendly terms with her family —because, in spite of their fundamental disagreements, they never hurt her— she doesn’t go back home and chooses to travel around the world instead, helping people in whichever way possible and freely sharing her knowledge with anyone who’s willing to listen and, at the same time, learning from them

i mean, the concept’s not too original ksjdbg just something i thought of super quick, and that’s just a half-assed attempt at closure for an OC i made when i was like… 9

headcanons about my favs:

ok this one’s hard because i’m not into any like… fandom things right now? i haven’t found anything that rly interests me or that i could see myself being passionate about, which sucks because i do kinda miss being into stuff with Established Content :( 

so i’ve been focusing on my OCs + original stories and such. and i’m not sure if OC headcanons count as headcanons because i control canon so technically everything i come up with IS canon. then again it’s headcanon too because it’s a canon from my head because that’s where ideas come from. okay wait i’m not making any cents here x 

but uhh knowing me i might think of something right after publishing this, so if that happens i’ll come back and edit this post :0

also just saying but if any of y’all know of something i could get into then lmk, i’m open to suggestions! preferably free stuff though... i’m beset by capitalisms

a favorite scene that i loved:

i can’t remember any in particular right now, either from my #content or somebody else’s SDFKJGBDF god my mind 😔 well i mean i’m gonna be a little bit full of meself and say that i’ve written things that i really like, especially imagery-wise, but i Also want to publish those someday… like i’ve also written original/OC-related stuff that i don’t plan on publishing, but i’m not THAT proud of them tbh :/

i was —emphasis on was— trying to write a short story about jasna (one of my D-N/D OCs, a cleric of oghma) that never really went anywhere, but i did post a snippet on my OC blog, and that’s what i hate the least out of all my recent attempts at writing? so i’m just gonna put it here again ig sdfgs (not actually linking to the OC blog post because it’s kind of a mess rn, i need to fix the theme + clean it up a bit)

if you got this far and read all of this nonsensical verbal monster: i love u with all my heart and i would legitimately die for u.

[skamofcolor]

I know you probably don't do discourse, but even after all the backlash with the whitewashing of sana and erasing mahdi, skam italia now had the even counterpart say the n-word in one of the clips 😬😬😬

Oh boooooooooooy lol. 

My response became extremely long so I’m gonna put it under a Read More:

Okay, so I when I first heard this happened after the SkamIt clip dropped, I was thinking about doing a post on this here, but ultimately decided against it. I did post a bit about how ludicrous the situation was on my personal blog, though, lol. But since we’ve gotten an ask on it, and it’s been a few days so I’ve had time to collect my personal thoughts more, here’s a long post about the entire situation.

Context, for anyone who doesn’t know yet: In one of SkamIt’s latest clips (the og equivalent would be that scene in S3 where Isak and Even hang out, listen to rap, make food, smoke weed, etc. and then Isak discovers Even has a girlfriend) Italian!Even - Niccolò - says the n-word. 

I actually did watch this scene to get a full idea of it, so here’s how the framing of it happens: Martino (Italian!Isak) and Niccolò are talking about music. Niccolò is like, “one of my fave artists is Earl Sweatshirt, let’s put some of his music on.” So he gets up to do that, and then goes back to the couch. They’re both holding these weird puppets that Niccolò owns, and Niccolò is like, “let’s play fight with the puppets.” As the opening line of the song comes on, he says something like, “let’s go, my n*gga.”

So this caused a bit of a fandom blow-up. Where on one side, there’s folks who aren’t horrible are rightfully mad that this show had a white boy said the n-word. And then… there are stans who have been using every excuse under the sun to defend it, including: this is Italian culture, this word has a different meaning everywhere except for English speaking countries, Americans have no right to be mad because this isn’t for them, and it’s only a word, who cares. The showrunner also put out a… charming… defense to the whole thing, which although it’s since been deleted off of Instagram, a kind Tumblr user has translated. 

So this all being put out there, here are my personal thoughts on the matter: to be honest, I’m annoyed that Niccolò said it but that’s not my big issue. My big issue is that I hate the framing and consequent defense of it. Here’s what I mean by that:

1) Yes, white Europeans, the n-word, in all it’s forms, is a racial slur. No, it doesn’t fucking matter if it “means something different” in your country. And no - you can’t fucking say it.  

First of all, I’m gonna have to call bullshit on it “meaning something different.” 

A lot of the defense I’ve seen has been people claiming that it’s “U.S.-centric” to be mad that Niccolò said the n-word. And my response to that is… And So???? Lol?????

Look. The word comes from a U.S.-context. So you cannot have it both ways. You can’t talk about this word and claim in “means something different” in your country and then not want to talk about the ROOTS of it. If this word doesn’t come from your culture, then why are you so quick to defend it as part of your culture? 

Furthermore, Italy is not free of systemic antiblackness. When Italy (as well as every other country in the world) has a derogatory term for Black people, has a history of colonization in African nations, and has seen an increase of violence and murder of Black people in this year alone? Y’all can’t pretend like just because this word is in English that it’s meaningless in a country full of racism, xenophobia, and antiblackness. 

And if you’re trying to claim that Italian teenagers are using it willy nilly because they don’t know what it means… I just… I literally can’t believe that. I just can’t believe in this day and age that folks, even outside of the U.S., do not know what the word means or where it comes from. But what I do believe is that folks do know what it means, and yet don’t care. They appropriate it for themselves because everyone loves Black culture while simultaneously hating Black people. And that’s facts. 

In a globalized world where specifically Black American culture is commodified and distributed like candy, you’d have to be living under a rock to not understand the violence behind this word. And if you are living under a rock… you never would’ve heard it in the first place. 

(In case you are one of those living-under-a-rock people, there are a thousand and one articles on why it’s okay for Black people to say the n-word and why non-Black people shouldn’t. Here’s just one of those videos in case you didn’t know. The fact of the matter is, it’s not just a word. It’s violence. And regardless of if Black people wanna use it or not, that’s NOT up to anyone who’s not Black to decide.) 

2) We have to remember that this is a FICTIONAL television show. And that every single thing that the characters do/say was CREATED by an actual human.

Okay, but fine.

Let’s go with the defense that white teenagers all over Italy are using a racial slur casually cause no one knows the violent context behind the n-word and it’s all in good fun (Sounds fake, but okay). 

So Niccolò says it because that makes it realistic, and SkamIt is going for realism. Okay. Then the big issue of this isn’t that he said it; it’s the framing of it that it’s a-okay that he’s said it that’s my issue.

Because this all has to do with the SHOWRUNNERS, who are grown ass people, knowing the context and meaning of the n-word. Because as adults creating media for young people, I damn sure will be holding them responsible for what their characters say and do. And honestly? If non-Black teenagers in Italy are really running around saying the n-word with nary a care in the world, then it’s your duty as the adult to show why that’s wrong.

 Including someone doing/saying racist things isn’t inherently bad, because I agree. It is realistic. But never showing a resolution to it or calling it out within the framing of your show just lets your audience know that A) you don’t care about People of Color and/or B) you don’t think the oppression we face is a big deal. And both, when you’re making a show for young people, is dangerous. 

Because it perpetuates the idea that racism is okay or it’s not as bad, particularly when it’s done in a casual, “not intending to cause harm” kind of way. Racism isn’t always direct intentional malice; it can include anything that perpetuates the normalization of systemic oppression. Which was the big issue with how Julie portrayed Vilde’s racism all throughout og Skam but that’s another rant.  

It would be one thing if Niccolò said it and Martino recoiled a bit or was like “bro, wtf?” But he doesn’t do any of that. Niccolò says it and then the two play with their puppets. And that’s the thing - I personally feel, that as a showrunner, if you’re going to depict the normalization of racial slurs (which you inherently do, when you have someone casually saying the n-word) then it’s your DUTY to frame it as bad. Because it is bad. Regardless of how “realistic” it is, it’s still racist as fuck. Again, especially because of the rise in xenophobia, racism, and specifically antiblackness in Italy. 

But that brings us to Ludovico’s ridiculous statement, because it’s obvious that he doesn’t agree that using the n-word was at most racist as shit and at the very least, in bad taste. And his statement, altogether, shows a very basic lack of critical thinking and comprehension as to why what happened was not okay. 

3) Ludovico’s reasoning for having Niccolò say the n-word, quite frankly, is bullshit and the most cringey white person thing I have ever read in my life, ever. 

And I think by breaking down his… non-apology… this addresses a lot of the bullshit defenses that SkamIt’s stans have been throwing at folks, too. 

“What is happening? Niccolò listens to American rap. He listens to Earl Sweatshirt. A black rapper. People who are criticising me, do they even know who this artist is? How does he look like? Do they know his father was a  South African activist and politician? Do they know his lyrics and his thoughts? Do they know that in those lyrics he always talks about the black community’s condition? And when he does that, he uses that word, that word you’re all worrying about. Niccolò, who loves Earl, is singing one of his songs, like anyone would do with a song they like.

Oh, my God.

First of all, it’s… ironic for him to pull up Earl Sweatshirt’s lineage and his music in order to defend this white boy saying the n-word. Because not only was his father a Black South African activist who was raised during apartheid and then was exiled to the U.S., his mother is a Black law professor who specializes in critical race theory! This man… is really trying to say that someone who had these parents would celebrate a white boy… using a racial slur… let’s use some critical thinking… 

Second of all, and I can’t believe I have to say this, a Black person reclaiming the n-word and using it conversationally or in their music is not the same as a non-Black person using it. If you’re not part of a marginalized group, you do not have a say in the conversation over using slurs within that group. 

Earl deciding to use the n-word, particularly in order to talk about “the Black community’s condition,” has meaning. It has power, it’s reclaiming a tool of oppression. A white Italian - who a lot of people are claiming don’t know anything about the origins of the word and thus the plight of Black Americans - using it is, at best meaningless and at worse intentionally racist. Ludivico wrote Niccolò as a character who just loves Earl Sweatshirt so much. But he wrote him as a character that loves him just on the surface - just enough to think it’s okay to use this racial slur and to “understand” the message of violence against Black people but not enough to not use a derogatory word that is actual violence against his favorite artist. Sure. 

Third of all, to me, it really didn’t seem like Niccolò was singing along to anything. He literally just says the line and then stops talking as him and Martino do their puppet fight. But that might be another argument, one that… is quite pointless. Because it would have cost him (Ludivico writing him) nothing to not say that line. To skip the n-word, to play a different song, to do literally anything else in that context. But it was, apparently, so central to Italian culture and so important for Niccolò to use this word that it had to be included. Alright.  

Are we really trying to attack Skam Italia for something like this? Do you really think we’re racist or insensitive? After all we’re doing? After all the work we do every day so we can bring values and themes that - for now, in Italy - have always been touched in such a superficial way?

“After all we’re doing”

Ludivico, what exactly are you doing for Black people and other People of Color? 

Like… he really fixed his wretched fingers and typed this out as if he literally had not made the choice to A) cast a white Non-Muslim woman to play literally one of the most iconic Muslim WoC in media history B) erase one of the few Black characters because “he didn’t have a large role,” instead of, you know, CREATING a larger role, as is his right, as a SHOWRUNNER WITH CREATIVE POWER, and casting a host of white boys instead C) has probably whitewashed their version of the Balloon Squad as well. Because yah - I’ve seen enough GIFsets of the “Martino watching a video of Niccolò playing piano” to see that there’s a bunch of white boys in the background laughing and joking with him. And it’s true; you can’t tell someone’s ethnicity by how they look. But the evidence so far is pretty damning. 

This is all to say that this a show… that has consistently refused to work with People of Color across the board. Not only in hiring actors, but it’s obviously not hiring non-white crew members and refusing to engage with fans of color. His constant excuses about why PoC cannot be involved make zero sense. He acts as though these characters are sentient beings that he has no control over instead of fictionalized people, wherein he and the other showrunners have the power to cast whoever they want, make them say whatever they want, and make them do whatever they want. 

And it’s obvious that him and his stans are the ones who are interacting with this entire situation is a superficial way. People who are calling it out, from what I’ve seen, are saying hey, this isn’t cool. Maybe we should have a nuanced dialogue for why this white Italian shouldn’t be saying the n-word. While he and his stans are crying white tears and saying this is our culture! Shut up if you don’t understand it!

In Salvini’s Italy, do you think that the main problem is a boy who loves American rap and sings a song with a word that people don’t like? Amazing.

This sarcastic deflection, I think, is exactly part of the problem. No one is saying that this is the end all and be all of racism in Italy. But using a word that is inextricably linked to physical, emotional, and spiritual violence is a part of the problem. It’s not “just a word”; it’s dehumanization. And that dehumanization of white people using it against Black people is exactly what has lead to issues in “Salvini’s Italy.”

The lyrics from American rap songs are full of inappropriate words. Shouldn’t we use them? The characters can sing them, but should they stop before that word? 

That’s… no one is saying not to use Black music lmao. But literally exactly what people are asking for is to not have non-Black people saying the n-word. If you’re not Black DON’T SAY IT. Why is that so hard.

These attacks don’t hurt black people, because they are smart enough to be able to appreciate the fact that we’re giving space to a rapper who’s really good and pretty capable of talking about their condition. 

The absolute condescension of this, honestly, makes me think that he has never interacted with a Black person in his life. Ever. And I’m not even trying to be funny. 

Look. I’m not claiming to speak for all Black people, especially in a globalized world. Our diaspora is huge and complex due to our histories of enslavement, colonization, imperialism, and violence. I’m sure there are Black people who literally don’t care about white people singing/saying the n-word. I’m sure that the decontextualization of it makes a lot of folks think it’s no big deal. And that’s fine. But again - that’s an intracommunity issue.

To have this white Italian proclaim to speak for Black people - not only here but also in proclaiming to know what Earl Sweatshirt is and isn’t okay with - is another form of dehumanization. Because it’s a catch-22. If we’re “smart enough” to not be mad at this racial slur being used, then what does it mean for those of us who are mad? That we’re unintelligent? That we’re not focused enough on the “right issues”? Once again, the lack of critical thinking is astounding. As if folks can’t understand that this is a big deal along with other forms of violence that are being enacted. 

But having this white boy say the n-word has nothing to do with “giving space” to Earl Sweatshirt or his art. It honestly just feels like a self-insert fantasy. It feels like a moment wherein these white people, once again, feel like they have claim to Black culture and language without having to reap any of the repercussions of that culture. And now once they’ve been called out, they want to be defensive. They don’t actually care about our communities or struggle. Idk how many ways I can say it but a marginalized person speaking truth to power and reclaiming a word is not the same as an oppressor using our language. 

They hurt me. You don’t know how much.

Ahhhhhh, the icing on top of this shit cake. 

Because this is the real root if it, isn’t it? Ludivico doesn’t like that he’s been called out. He doesn’t like that people are angry and that they have something to say about his racism. He doesn’t know how to just take the L and admit that he’s done something that’s messed up and has hurt people. Because in his mind, this is a personal attack. 

This is… this is Vilde dropping out of the bus because everyone “hates her” after her obnoxiously racist and Islamophobic “Muslim gangster world” monologue. But the funny sad thing is, this is a grown man. This isn’t a fictionalized teenager who doesn’t know how to confront her own prejudice. This is the root of why I’m so annoyed; because once again, we have a white person centering their own feelings over the heart of the issue. 

I’m sure I have more to say, lmao, but I am getting tired. 

TLDR; IMO, Niccolò saying the n-word with no repercussions was bad and Ludivico’s obnoxious “explanation” only made it worse. 

- mod Jennifer