#the racist undertones … girl

[endlesslyhyperfixating]

Every time people try to pretend there’s no existence of racial bias in the way Sydcarmy is dismissed, an angel loses their wings.

You know what’s exhausting? Watching people bend over backward to insist that there are no racist or misogynoir undertones to the way Sydcarmy gets dismissed as a valid ship—let’s just be real for a second.

I understand people who don't ship it or believe in the ship because they prefer to take the show at face value, focus on different dynamics, or interpret relationships in other ways. However, the people who deny any validity to believing their relationship is more than meets the eye? That needs to be addressed.

People will swear up and down that their issue isn’t with Sydney, that they love her, and that they "just think Carmy should go to therapy first"—but then in the same breath, you'll catch them romanticizing the hell out of his dynamic with Claire, a relationship that was unhealthy, regressive, and rooted in avoidance rather than growth. @yannaryartside covers the very strong existence of the Oedipus complex and the fulfillment of Carmy’s mommy issues through Claire’s behavior and manipulation in their relationship, and I agree wholeheartedly.

Let’s talk about the “Carmen needs therapy before a girlfriend” argument. Let’s be real—Carmy needed therapy when he was with Claire too, but nobody seemed to mind that. In fact, everyone around him—Richie, the Faks, even the audience—enabled this idea of Claire as a “good” thing for him, as if she wasn’t feeding into his worst tendencies. And the most infuriating part? Claire was, in fact, manipulative. (Again, covered by @yannaryartside .)

She didn’t do it in an overt, villainous way but used **soft, socially acceptable manipulation**—the kind that gets ignored when it’s coming from a conventionally attractive, non-threatening, quirky white woman.

Claire’s Manipulation: The Softness of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

People like to act like Claire was just a character who wasn’t well-written or worth the time for analysis, but that was the entire point of her: to feel underwhelming, to feel forced into place. In many ways this is true of course, she's under/not well-written in ways, and people think she was simply there, offering Carmy what she believed (and convinced him to believe) was love, when in reality, she inserted herself into his life in a way that preyed on his vulnerabilities and pre-existing issues.

And before anyone jumps in with "she didn’t do anything wrong!"—let’s actually look at how she operated.

- She sought him out when he wasn’t in a good place.

She made it a point to go out of her way to get his real number after being given a fake one. If course she uses that classic manipulative play it off as a joke move when she threatens him but not the best way to start. I know it's been said before, but can we imagine if the roles were reversed? Would we not think that creepy?

- She made it about her when he was struggling.

When Carmy tried to set a boundary, Claire framed it as him pulling away from her, rather than him dealing with his own issues. She encouraged his avoidance, gave him an easy escape from his problems, and then was surprised—and (validly) hurt—when reality came crashing down. Even when Carmy was harsh in breaking up with her, he was speaking from a place of truth for himself. To be with her, when he was so damaged and not really in a space of genuinely liking her, was bullshit.

- She used nostalgia as a tool.

Claire’s entire presence in Carmy’s life was based on a past version of him that no longer existed. Just as Carmy didn’t really see Claire, but rather a projected version of her shaped by his family (and a little bit of Sydney), Claire didn’t love him—she loved the idea of Carmy she had from childhood. And she expected him to fit back into that mold, to regress into a state where he could blow off work to hang out with her and forget his partnership with Sydney, someone he's meant to work with and has a responsibility to be with. That’s not love. That’s entitlement to a person’s growth—or lack thereof.

And yet, people ignore all this because Claire fits their idea of what a love interest should look like to them. She’s non-threatening, familiar, digestible. They don’t question why she feels right, - white - while Sydney—who actually challenges Carmy, who understands him in ways Claire never could—gets written off as “not romantic.”

Claire, for "clarity" or "peace" (ugh)—is simple. She's the painted picture of a woman who puts others before herself, the quirky manic pixie dream girl inching too close to the camera, sneaking her way into his life. People argue it feels like the same effect Sydney has on Carmy, but it's not the same at all. Claire is easy. For Carmy. He can fuck up, regress, and stay stagnant, and she’ll applaud him for it. "Never ever, ever apologize."

Sydney is the opposite. She calls him on his shit, and she sees him for who he really is. Sydney is the real peace for him (how many times do we need to bring up that damn panic attack, the table scene, and strange currencies? Thank you, @chefkids ).

Phew...

Moving on,

The Hypocrisy of the “Carmy Needs Therapy First" Argument

Back to the “Carmy needs therapy before a relationship” excuse—because wow, is that just selective. People only seem to apply it when Sydney is involved, not when Claire is around. It’s the most transparent double standard imaginable. I’ve seen one too many “I ship Carmy with therapy” memes, and I need to talk about it.😾.

When Carmy was with Claire, he was a mess—but people loved to romanticize it, acting like she was his “breath of fresh air,” even when she was just another distraction. Even he fell for it, tricking himself into believing the false sense of security she contrived for him.

When these people talk about Carmy and Sydney, suddenly it’s “he needs to work on himself first” as if the mere suggestion of them together is too high-stakes to even consider. It’s always “God forbid we have well-written female-male relationships without it being romantic.”

So we prefer shitty romantic relationships between the quirked-up white woman and our white male main character rather than the chemistry, character plot, and dynamic between Syd and Carm? Okay.

It’s not about Carmy’s emotional availability for these people. It’s about who people *want* to see him be available for, and it's not Sydney.

Why Do People Feel So Pressed About Sydcarmy, Anyways?

If Sydney were white—let’s be honest—this wouldn’t even be a conversation. The dynamic is already there. The intimacy, the trust, the undeniable chemistry. Their relationship fits the mold of that slow-burn, work-obsessed partners-to-lovers trope better than any other ship that actually makes it to canon.

But instead, people act like EVEN speculating about it is ridiculous, like the idea of Carmy feeling something deeper for Sydney is somehow beyond the realm of possibility. They’ll call it “forced,” “delusional,” or “just not where the story is going”—as if every single element of storytelling isn’t deliberately crafted to suggest something simmering under the surface. Whether platonic or romantic, it's there. It’s genuine soulmate energy.

They pretend their dismissal of this ship has nothing to do with race, but race is an integral part of the ship because Sydney is a black woman.

It's almost like erasure in itself when they deny it's importance, as if there isn’t a long history of Black women in media being sidelined, desexualized, and treated as expendable when it comes to romance. Sydney isn’t “just a coworker.” She’s not “just his business partner.” She is one of the most important people in his career—and even his life—whether people want to admit it or not.

So yeah, maybe people need to interrogate *why* they can believe in Claire—a character who offered Carmy nothing but regression—but not Sydney, who actually represents something real.

Because if the reason is "Carmy's growth," you're bullshitting.

---

Tags

@fairestbeard @chefkids @thoughtfulchaos773 @yannaryartside

[marzipanandminutiae]

would you have any reading suggestions to learn more about the earrings are evil era??? I've never heard of that aspect of fashion history and I am curious

Oh man, it was wild

you saw the first stirrings of it in the 1890s, when you started to get (mostly white and middle-to-upper-class) proto-feminists arguing that ear piercing was barbaric- keep an eye on the racist undertones there; they will come up again-and forcing women to suffer for fashion. I cannot emphasize enough that, until that point, ear piercing had been pretty much normal for this race/class/gender group. For centuries. You see criticism of the practice here and there, but nothing that really stuck.

The objections slowly increased until roughly the mid-1920s, when everything reached a tipping point and pierced ears became largely taboo for most white Americans and Brits of northern/western European descent. If that sounds HIGHLY specific, it is- communities from southern and sometimes eastern Europe retained cultural practices of ear piercing, to the point where it was often used as a point against them by mainstream society. It was also associated with Latino people, Black people, and the Romani, which. Yeah. I don't need to tell you how that went down.

It also developed associations with sexual immorality and/or backwards thinking. One newspaper letter I read came from a teen girl in the 1940s, wondering why she shouldn't pierce her ears if her very respectable grandmother had piercings. The response was something like "well, they did all sorts of things in the Bad Old Days that we shouldn't do now." True in many ways, or course, but...piercing your ears? That's the hill culture decided to die on as far as antiquated behavior that we should leave behind? Apparently yes.

Earrings themselves never went out of style, which led to the birth of clip-ons and screwbacks. Ironic that the "don't surfer for fashion" crowd was so eager to embrace screwing tiny vices onto your ears, but there we are. My own mother (born 1953) remembers her mother (born 1926) always taking off her screwback earrings immediately after getting home from a party, literally in the foyer of their house the second the door shut. There had been adaptations for unpierced ears before- Little Women, published in 1868, describes Meg March hanging earrings from a flesh-colored silk ribbon tied around the base of her ear -but they'd never caught on like this before.

However, the pendulum was soon to swing back. After just 40 years of Piercing Panic, in the 1960s, girls began piercing their ears again in droves. As piercing moved from the slumber party or summer camp back to the professional jewelers whose families had been early professional piercers in the 19th century- and to befuddled doctors who had no idea what they were doing yet still received piercing requests -cultural commentators had no idea what to make of it. Some decried the new trend while most took an air of bemused neutrality. My personal favorite article expressed surprise that "Space Age misses" were adopting these "Victorian traditions."

(In 1965, my grandmother took Mom to the anesthesiologist down the street who was offering to pierce his young daughter's friends gratis, and got it done. My grandfather had strongly disapproved of the idea, but in the end it took him a week to notice the new earrings.)

As to sources...honestly, I've just gone to Google Books, specified a time frame, and typed in "ear piercing," "pierced ears," "pierce ears," etc. Tons of primary sources at your fingertips, though I'm not always great about documenting or saving what I find. There's not much written about it formally, I've found- no books or scholarly studies. It may just be too close in history to attract much academic attention, though I find it fascinating.

This little blip where something that's been normal for most of western history suddenly became taboo for a hot second.

Also my ear piercings just turned 20 five days ago, commemorating the date that I was taken with much ceremony to Piercing Pagoda (and that horrible gun; it's a wonder I didn't get keloids) to get me out from underfoot while the Thanksgiving feast was being made. Grandma got hers pierced on the same day, at age 78. Happy Birthday, Marzi's ear piercings!

[bonnibelleangelica]

An Australian PSA for Americans

I’m scared, people. Its come to my attention that some of you have no idea what Australia is like at all and genuinely believe we live in desert mud huts, cooking cans over a fire. So, here are some fun facts to give you a better understanding of Australia since I don’t want you thinking I’m an uneducated mud child.

1) Almost no one lives in the deserts. 90% of our populations live on the coasts (not just the east coast) in full blown, million-people cities. Imagine an American city, but everyone has a weird accent. Wifi, electricity, tiktok, teenage girls, techbros and even a few hundred Macdonald’s.

2) Kangaroos are like deer. They’re everywhere outside the cities, they don’t bother anyone and they eat grass in fields. Often times, we hit them with our cars. Possums climb our fences at night, foxes eat our chickens and magpies occasionally swoop us, though I’ve only experienced it twice.

3) It’s hot, but not that hot. We have green lawns and lakes, forests and rain storms, and in the summer, most people will only have to deal with temps of 30-35 degrees (85-95f). We dont generally get snow, but we get floods all the time.

4) Our politicians are racist too. We have a left and a right but our elections aren’t the game show yours seems to be. We also legally have to vote and everyone hates it.

5) Universal health care is cool. Sometimes emergency rooms are a little shit and our medicare doesn’t cover stuff perfectly, but as someone with multiple health problems, it’s not a health crisis by any means. Private cover is available anyway, so if you want to, u can pay for better shit.

6) Bali is our national holiday location. Everyone has been or will go at some point, its only a few hours away and everything is cheap as hell. Otherwise, bouncing between the coasts or from city to country and visa versa is the way to go.

7) A lot of Australians hate America. Some of it is fair, some of it isnt, but i thought you should know since apparently some people think everyone loves America. In my experience, the bias goes the other way.

8) Our version of rednecks are bogans. Flannel, cigarettes, beer bellies and questionable political correctness, we’ve got it all.

9) We also have a racist, problematic history of genocide and segregation. In my mothers life time, we used to steal aboriginal kids to force them to act white and “breed away the black.” Australia day (our 4th of July) is very controversial because its on the day the first real colonisation started. And at this point, a lot of people see celebrating it as support of the problematic undertones it represents. Australia flags are a relatively rare sight.

10) Lightning round! We have religion, but it isn’t really brought up very often. There are a few churches in every town, but thats it. We also don’t say the pledge of allegiance, or sing the national anthem unless its a special memorial day. Gun control has been in place for decades and most people are fine with that. And lastly, our car accident death rate is a third of America’s (adjusted for population) so maybe get on that.

If you knew all of this, thank god! I hope this is completely useless. If you didn’t know one of these, that’s fair. Maybe go follow some Australia creators and remember, there’s rich snobs and bigots in every corner of the globe.

[genericpuff]

What’s your current thoughts on what we’ve seen of Eleanor’s Deathbed?

IDK, there isn't enough of it so far to even make any sort of judgment, and whatever judgments I do have to make are largely rooted in Rachel's past work because... well, because we've seen this project at least twice before in the past already.

Like so far the only strong opinion I can make about it is "same shit different day". It's kind of like a fusion of Lore Olympus and The Doctor Foxglove Show, because evidently she's only been able to write and draw the same character dynamic and romance plotline for the past decade. All we've seen is the art and it's honestly fine, I think at the very least it's a great sign that the corporate Webtoons burnout is finally starting to lift and she's creating art that doesn't look like that anymore. I can at least acknowledge that as a refreshing improvement.

That said, it's still a far cry away from the stuff she used to create back in the day (in the Foxglove era) and above all else, the art at this point doesn't really matter to me, it's her writing that's always been her weakest skill and evidently one that hasn't improved at all over the years, both on account of her apparent refusal to learn but also what seems to be an incredibly limited perspective that's influenced the severely problematic undertones of her work and its messaging.

The reason these issues were so apparent in LO was because it was the first time she ever had to complete a story (and also the fact that she and WT's alike marketed LO as something it wasn't - a "feminist retelling" that was trying to "help people"). It's why LO was so enjoyable for many of us in the beginning, just for it to fall apart by the end of S2 which made us even more aware of the cracks that were always there from the very first episode, we just didn't notice them or were more forgiving of them because the story was still "setting up" and Rachel clearly "had something planned". That feeling of betrayal and frustration that's shared among everyone within the antiLO community largely started with the creeping and eventually explosive realization that Rachel did not in fact have anything planned to resolve all the questions and loose ends she had created, she was writing by the seat of her pants the whole time and she had finally flat on her face... but with the added arrogance of blaming the "haters" for pulling the seat out from under her.

Credit where credit's due, she's always been pretty good at coming up with fascinating premises and concepts, both of which are present in her pre-LO stories like The Doctor Foxglove Show and Woman King. But they never lasted long enough for us to see how they would have played out from start to finish, and so all we have to judge them by are their foundations, not the completed house.

We were able to judge LO by those metrics, though, and the way it turned out in the end proved that having a good idea doesn't automatically make for good writing.

Maybe Eleanor's Deathbed will improve upon those problems, but considering most of what I've seen so far of the 'writing' through her mini comics, eh, just looks like it's gonna be more of the same "uwu cinnamon bun girl who's casually racist / classist" x "creepy death man who's competitively racist / classist" shtick. And at the end of the day, when so many of her writing issues are rooted in - as mentioned above - her limited perspective of real world problems and over-inflated ego, I have zero reason to believe that ED isn't just gonna be LO with a new coat of paint, with all the same amateur writing, poorly developed characters, self-indulgent soapboxing, poorly disguised trauma dumping, and problematic messaging disguised as "feminism".

When I said a while back that I wasn't interested in following Rachel's work post-LO, I meant it. At the end of the day, what made me fall in love with LO originally was LO, not Rachel herself. My interest in her work died with LO, only extending to the stuff she did before as a sort of morbid fascination with where it might have all gone wrong. And I think the simplest - and most disappointing - conclusion I've ever come to is, "Rachel has always been like this, the downfall of LO just made us look."

The characters, art style, etc. of ED so far are just not compelling to me in the way LO once was, they're not even compelling to me in the way that Foxglove was in hindsight once I knew of its existence (because at least looking back at those pieces, all I could do is wonder how the beauty of those pieces was lost).

If I do ever read ED in the future - assuming it ever even materializes beyond her social media doodles - I want it to be because I'm genuinely interested in her future work, not because I entitle myself to haunting her like a ghost. I'm already surely haunting her enough as it is by not letting her live down LO, but at least I actually liked LO at one point (and still kinda do, if you count my love-hate relationship with it LMAO). I'm not at all interested in Eleanor's Deathbed on account of what I've already experienced of Rachel's work through LO (and through our deep-diving of her pre-LO career) and because, like I said, what I've seen so far is just not really all that compelling. So I just really don't have any reason to invest my time or care into it.

She, like anyone else, has the right to try and move forward from the tire fire that was LO, even if that tire fire is still worth pointing out and discussing in many ways. Maybe Eleanor's Deathbed will succeed upon LO in ways that it failed. Maybe it won't. I'm not compelled to follow along and find out. I'd rather just cut my losses.

Plus if I really want this woman to fade into obscurity the way I think she deserves, well, the only thing I can reliably do to manifest that reality is to not pay her future work any attention whatsoever LMAO Such an individual effort doesn't mean she'll just suddenly disappear, she's clearly got a support network now through Inklore and Webtoons to keep force-feeding her relevance down people's throats, but hey, we all have our own gardens, and I don't have to keep planting her in mine. The carnation that was LO still thrives on, and I care for it through Rekindled and the odd analysis post / rant about LO whenever I happen to think of something new worth discussing. But whatever Eleanor's Deathbed is or will become, it's just not something I want in my garden.

[woman-of-many-fandoms]

My Vulcan/Spock/other head canons and general thoughts:

Vulcans:

With Vulcans being stronger, their utensils are heavier and harder for humans of average strength to use

They have more children than the average human couple but spaced out due to longer life spans and wanting to fully devote themselves to their kids. The emphasis is on properly raising the kids you have. They are considered better parents then human.

Their bond with their babies allows them to know what the baby need before they can speak 

Since they age slower, they are also youths for longer.  An 18-year-old Vulcan is not the same maturity wise as an 18-year-old human. Spock ages like a human

A parent with poorly raised / poorly educated child is judged. Sarek takes this personally.

They have a green tint in the same area humans have a pink tint (corners of eyes, finger beds, tongue, ect) Those with white skin are have a green-ish undertone.

When in space, they can’t have a fully human diet (even without the meat) or they will get iron poisoning, or end up with extremely low copper levels 

While female humans have the hardest time biologically, it the males in Vulcan society. The males are the only ones who go through pon farr. The women don’t have periods.

After the kids are paired up, they generally don’t meet again or ‘date’ until it’s pon farr time. I was not feeling the whole ‘engagement ritual’ with T’pring’s parents

During adolescents before they can fully control their emotion they do act out and have crushes. This is expected to be controlled by their 40s.

Vulcan / non Vulcan hybrid are not fertile unless the other pairing is Romulan 

Vulcans have green lips but it’s their style to wear red

Make up and fancy hair dos are considered meditative

Vulcans have larger ships so they have private spaces to meditate 

Spock:

Spock’s family is basically aristocracy but with content drama that upsets the status quo. I agree with the post that said if Amanda married a random Vulcan farmer they wouldn’t care but she married Sarek.

This is also why Spock Pon Farr was considered scandalous and most people on Vulcan know what happened.

Spock’s a designer baby

Sarek and Amanda tried several times for a child before having success with Spock

Sarek is not a bad dad but doesn’t understand his child and pushes him in ways that are not supportive

Sarek and Spock are both girl dads

TOS Spock never had romantic relationships prior to TOS, he also didn’t have friends on Pikes enterprise 

AOS Spock got with Uhura because T’pring’s family rejected Spock due to Vulcans becoming even more racist after Nero and Spock decided to woo the first woman who seemed interested

The Vulcans in AOS would not match with Spock after Nero because they would want to rebuild the population so even if Spock could have kids, he’d ‘taint’ the bloodline

Spock’s home is one of the oldest in the city and made of stone. Not the Boston style house we saw in DIS

SNW Spock was more emotional rather than less after become human because Vulcans  have an area of the brain they use to control emotions, the Cthia. Spock’s is under developed so he struggles but when it was gone as a human he didn’t know how to function 

Saavik is Spock’s non blood related daughter. She is half Romulan. She doesn’t exist in AOS. She was the traitor. She was never pregnant with spocks or davids kid.

Spock knew how to play the lyre from childhood. Not from being given the instrument from M’banga

TOS Spock was not born in a cave and imminently insulted by Sarek. That was Sybok influencing the narrative 

Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet

TOS and SNW Spock have a parental authority kink due to Sarek’s lack of praise and affection.

TOS Spock is more emotional then SNW and AOS. It’s all the sass

Sarek was more strict on Spock after what happened with Sybok

AOS Sarek re marries a Vulcan woman and Spock has a bunch of full Vulcan siblings 

AOS Spock ad Uhura tried to have child though medical intervention but the child was never viable. After the 3rd failed attempt they broke up

Other:

Starfleet is military. Kirk in errand of Mercy “I’m a soldier not a diplomat’

In the future people can decided how long they want to be married for. Ie, 1, 5, 10, or forever years

I will be forever mad that the actor who played Picards son was not chosen to play kirk in SNW instead of Wesley. He was up for the role.

Both kirks cheated on the Kobayashi Maru in the same way but TOS Kirk was such a suck up/teacher’s pet they let him slide

All kirks went to Tarsus

All Kirks would have a hard time dealing with someone with an eating disorder, whether it be binge eating, bulimia or anorexia

AOS SNW and TOS are different timelines

The AOS versions would not get along with the SNW or TOS counterparts

After 09 trek there was a 1-2 year time gap where the rest of the crew finished up their studies and Kirk got practical experience. He was made captain soon after as a moral booster to make the fleet look better after losing Vulcan. Spock prime also pushed for Kirk to be captain. 

AOS McCoy went to Starfleet academy, TOS McCoy did not

TOS McCoy raised is daughter mostly to adulthood. AOS had to leave her as a young child

AOS kirk falls first but Spock falls harder (just barley)

In TOS it’s bottom Spock, in AOS it’s bottom kirk. And with what little info I have I’m learning towards SNW Spock being bottom

McCoy went to Dolly Parton high school

AOS Kirk still got Carol pregnant. He considered leaving so his son would have a dad but something happened and both carol and david died not long after

[sukibenders]

I was a Cait and CaitVi fan during s1, but now? Oh, it's such a struggle but more so for how fans won't let either be criticized without taking it as a personal attack (some are even being racist towards other Arcane fans and Ekko's VA over it, but then playing victim and acting like the fandom is no longer a safe space for them). Like, I enjoyed Caitlyn's character in s1 (even though she read as very rich girl rebelling against her parents for a bit) and liked CaitVi's dynamic, even though it needed more work especially in regards to Cait's classicism, something in which I hoped s2 would address. It did not, because now we have Cait taking her mother's intent of helping the undercity breathe and using it to poison them without hesitation. A place in which Vi calls home, something in which you would think would make her [Cait] hesitant but then she goes off and calls them "animals" but refers to Vi as "one of the good ones". Oh, the undertones of that. And it becomes even more sickly with, aside from how quickly Cait became a cop and roped Vi into it (though, I also don't vibe with Vi for still being a part of gassing Zaun either), ignoring how enforcers literally killed her parents in front of her, how Vi views herself as the dirt beneath Cait's nails. Like that's not something sweet or even cute to say, that's deeply concerning especially coming from someone who practically lost everyone they cared about. A lot of people have said that most of Vi's character was pushed aside, and I agree, but also how a lot of her trauma was too because what do you mean, after hearing that her sister has suicidal ideations and runs off to fulfill them she [Vi]....goes and has sex with her cop/dictator girlfriend in said sister's cell, even though she has trauma from being in prison? To me, personally especially following the CaitVi breakup, Vi isn't really used to softness or not having to be tough and, in s1, it felt like Cait opened the doorway for that. Then s2 comes and it just takes away from it, even if their sex scene was a bit playful the context around it kind of overshadows it to me. I wanted better, softer for Vi than having it take place in her sister's cell, along with Cait apologizing or making attempts to bring back trust into their relationship. Like, was it really that hard for the writers to have it take place in a bedroom, perhaps even focusing more on softness and pleasure toward Vi instead? Like s2 really did a number on these two and their relationship.

[cerastes]

So ig my question is why don’t the Chinese or Japanese markets care much ab this?

I’m going to answer this from perhaps a different angle than expected, prefacing this with “completely generalizing is easy and stupid” so we’re not going to be doing that.

Now, without you knowing, you’ve probably seen a hundred Things You Should Have Cared About, like caricatures or vilification of Korean people in Japanese media, without realizing you were looking at that. Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, I hear, has plenty of that “hidden” in some of its jokes (I share this anecdotally as I have not read that, only heard of this). Some years ago, think about how a lot of tension existed because of Attack on Titan’s imperialist/nationalist undertones that the average Westerner couldn’t immediately grasp. Yuuki Yuuna Is A Hero was a fun watch for me right up until its nationalist undertones, well, overtones registered to me as entirely intentional and sincere.

But if it doesn’t register as an issue to you, why would you see it as an issue? It can very well BE an issue, you just don’t even consider it could be one because you lack cultural background or, well, “cultural fucks” to give, let’s call it. It’s invisible ink, right in front of you, but you don’t see it.

So, flip it around. There’s racist Chinese/Japanese people, there’s progressive CN/JP people, there’s people that don’t really care either way or see it as an issue the same way Uncle Cleetus from the U.S. may or may not be aware of Chinese violence against natives, even if he is aware and cares about U.S. violence against natives.

It can always just be an issue of “that is so very distant to me that I can’t really put Caring Power on it given all the things closest to me that I have to put Caring Power into”.

It’s not about whether these things matter or not — I think they do matter — but inevitably the majority of people think more locally in terms of cultural fucks to give, so, they just don’t really care either way if they have more darker skinned characters or not, I’d say for the majority of people over there.

And, in the context of gacha, they are selling desirable designs, and what’s considered desirable by that demographic, going by their market studies and other such data, is probably light skinned anime girls, thus, that’s what most gacha characters are going to be, with anything straying from that being tangibly a risk. Because these games are made by corporations, not entities that ever claimed to be trying to be progressive.

If Chinese players wanted more variety of Chinese Character in, say, Call of Duty, with dialects and other local cues, John Call Of Duty probably would not give a shit, nor would the majority of Call of Duty players in the West, even those that can be perfectly progressive. It’s like that.

[yaboywillyshakes]

tfw someone gets a historical fact wrong in a fanfiction but it's about something you care about, so you end up making tag yourself memes for two days as if that's gonna solve it

[image IDs under the cut]

First Image: A "Tag Yourself" meme on a white background. It is titled "Tag Yourself: Butte, Montana Edition." Underneath the title are three rows of three pictures. Starting from left to right, the first picture is a white and black restaurant logo for Pork Chop John's which includes a pig's head wearing a crown. Above the logo is written "Mr. Pork Chop John." Below the logo are the bullet points: "best with miracle whip," "really loves bread," and "branding? who's that." In the middle top position, there is a black & white picture of a white man in a newspaper clipping from 1918. He is wearing a dark suit & there is no background to the picture. It is titled "Local Hero Manus Dugan." Beneath the picture are the bullet points: "hard to photograph," "puts others before themselves," and "error: location not found." The picture on the right of the top row is of a mineshaft headframe silhouetted against the sky. It is titled "Mineshaft Headframe," and beneath it are the bullet points: "looks great in profile," "was useful once," and "named something cool." The leftmost picture in the middle row is of a snow goose. It is titled "Arsenic-Filled Snow Goose," and is followed by these bullet points: "bad at choosing housing," "dead inside," and "always travels with the squad." The middle picture is a logo for a casino called "Lucky Lil's." The logo is multiple shades of purple and white, and contains the name of the casino and a drawing of a saloon girl with blonde hair." The image is titled "Lucky Lil," and the bullet points below are: "always has the good liquor," "house always way too dark," and "cleavage causes lesbian awakenings." The picture on the right of the middle row is of a huge, solid white statue of the Virgin Mary perched on a mountain top; it has similar vibes to the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Buenos Aires. This image is titled "Our Lady of the Rockies," and is followed by the bullet points: "really over it all," "fond of helicopters," and "doesn't understand the separation of church and state." The picture on the left hand side of the bottom row is another casino logo; it is a white woman with brown hair wearing cowgirl attire encircled by a horseshoe over orange block letters that read "Montana Lil's." The logo is titled "Montana Lil," and the bullet points beneath it are: "trying too hard to be country," "never pays your money back," and "mafia connections?." The middle picture on the bottom row is of a hand pie on white plate. The pie is split down the middle and contains meat chunks, carrots and potatoes. It is labelled "Traditional Cornish Pasty." Beneath the pasty are the bullet points: "full of good things," "forgets to wash hands," and "easy to get along with." The picture on the bottom right of the meme is a black and white picture of a white man looking directly into the camera. He is wearing a medium toned suit and a fedora worn at an angle, and has a bit of a lopsided scowl. The picture is titled "IWW Organizer Frank Little," and is followed by the points: "has the charisma," "likely to die under mysterious circumstances," and "really over capitalism."

Second Image: A "Tag Yourself" meme on a white background. It is titled "Tag Yourself: Helena, Montana Edition." Underneath the title are three rows of three pictures. Starting from left to right, the first picture is of some teenagers dressed in cowboy attire climbing makeshift gallows on a parade float. Above the picture is written "Vigilante Day Parade." Below the logo are the bullet points: "likes the cheap beer," "celebrates local history," and "racist undertones." In the middle top position, there is a color photo of a gothic style cathedral with two steeples, made of tan limestone with a red tile roof. An airplane emoji has been pasted between the steeples. It is titled "Catholic Aerial Stunt." Beneath the picture are the bullet points: "needs to lay off the whiskey," "incredible eye hand coordination," and "no respect for architecture." The picture on the right of the top row is a black and white mugshot of a white woman in mid-to-late middle age. She has a tired expression, a somewhat jowely face, and dark curly hair styled in a 1950s bob. She is holding a signboard that reads: "Lewis and Clark County Sheriff 2715 1-18-57." The mugshot is titled "Big Dorothy," and beneath it are the bullet points: "ungovernable," "pillar of the community," and "cool aunt but bad mom vibes." The leftmost picture in the middle row is of an abandoned strip mall. It is titled "Signs of Urban Decay," and is followed by these bullet points: "vaguely morose," "likes a good burrito," and "doesn't understand landscaping." The middle picture is a black and white photo of a man dressed head to toe in mid century firefighter's gear. The image is titled "Smoke Jumper," and the bullet points below are: "sick threads," "cares about the laws of thermodynamics," and "chased by the reaper." On the right of the middle row is a picture of a whitetail buck at night taken with the flash on. The buck walking past what appears to be a wall of a building in a residential area. This image is titled "Urban Outlaw," and is followed by the bullet points: "has beef with every dog," "wanted by law enforcement," and "hates the paperboy." The picture on the left hand side of the bottom row is of a theatre building made of a red stone. It has three arches over the front door, a triangular roof & a large, round strained glass window over the door. A bedsheet ghost has been poorly photoshopped onto the stairs leading to the door. The image is titled "Grandstreet Theatre Ghost," and the bullet points beneath it are: "constantly misplacing objects," "loves a balcony scene," and "good with kids." The middle picture on the bottom row is a landscape photo of a mountain that vaguely looks like a man laying on his back. It is labelled "Sleeping Giant." Beneath the Sleeping Giant are the bullet points: "#naplyfe," "really photographs well," and "loves a lake day." The picture on the bottom right of the meme is a color photo of a wooden tower structure with four legs and a circular lookout room at the top. The picture is titled "Guardian of the Gulch," and is followed by the points: "the tall friend," "helpful & perceptive," and "has a love/hate relationship with fire."

[orange-ghost]

My hottest take on disability media is that this film (as much as it deserved a good 90% of it's backlash; my GOD it was ableist, harmful, horribly written, horribly paced, and clearly not well thought-out) ...would NOT have been as poorly received had the titular character had low-support needs as opposed to high.

I'm serious. I saw that some of y'all's knee-jerk reactions were "AUTISTIC PEOPLE DON'T ACT LIKE THAT!" and "BUT I'M NOT LIKE THAT!" and... I mean? Yeah? She's one girl, she obviously can't represent the whole spectrum.

But I'm sick of this lateral ableism, "I'm-not-like-other-girls"-esque attitude some of us Autistics have towards the others. We learn to look down upon those who can't take care of themselves or get by in the world like we can; the ones who can't mask; the ones who are sometimes dealt the most abuse in life because they'll never have the privilege of being able to verbally speak up against it or live without a caretaker. Because what often happens is:

Autistic people who need a lot more support than we do wind up becoming allistics' Default Setting™️ idea of Autism.

Autistic people who are very different (usually more independent, sharper intellect and maybe inclined towards more mature[?] interests) then come into those allistic people's lives.

The allistics then begin to infantalize them the same way they infantalize the Default Setting™️ Autistic people around them, then refuse to listen when asked/begged to stop; denial of autonomy.

Instead of directing the VERY warranted disgust, anger and resentment towards the ableist allistic people doing this to us, we direct it towards the initial victims of this treatment; who, frankly, ALSO don't deserve to be treated like literal babies or burdens like that in the first place!

Instead of trying to find solidarity? In-fighting ensues.

I don't know, that's always irked me and it's been in my brain for like four years. Because think about how much we learned in a short period of time around the movie's release. The woman...

Forced a 14-year-old Allistic child to imitate a disabled person when she didn't want to;

TAUGHT her to do so via forcing her to watch meltdown videos filmed & posted by Autistic kids' parents (likely without the child's consent);

Dissed Autistic actresses online for no fucking reason, really.

Named a movie after a disabled child character who's treated more like a prop and isn't even centered in the film's story (and lowkey repeated the pattern twice, if you guys remember Felix's storyline. He was just shoved into this for like... sadness points?)

Teams up with the "most popular" Autism organization even though it has been VERY accessible and public knowledge for years that they've earned a pretty negative reputation for themselves.

Portrays unnecessary prone restraint as a GOOD thing.

...And has MULTIPLE instances of questionably racist undertones. Including within the first 5 seconds of the film.

And yet, some of y'all's priority was the fact that "I'm not like that! I'm FUNCTIONAL!"

...Yeah. Yikes.

Something tells me that Music would've gotten significantly less backlash had Maddie been made to portray somebody who could consistently speak verbally, stimmed in more subtle ways, and didn't have so many meltdowns.

We feel so much shame & discomfort at just sharing a diagnosis with somebody more disabled than ourselves that we will reject it (and them) the moment it happens, without a second thought. Because the thought of being treated by abled society as even more disabled than we are already terrifies us. Because we KNOW that disabled people as a whole are not treated well.

Hell, clearly Sia internalized something like that as well because she wound up being diagnosed as Autistic herself, and she WROTE the damn thing!

Yeah, I've... got a couple of words for all this. 😬

Assimilation. Trauma. Internalized ableism, even. Let's unpack that in 2025, please!

[doesthendnlive]

I'm so tired. Sorry for bad grammar or mistakes.

TW for rape/pedophilia/slavery/domestic violence/violence against Indigenous women and girls specifically

It makes me so angry we Sacagawea and "Pocahontas" are known our figure head Native "Women". If you want to go a litter further the fact that "La Malinche" is idolized as well in the same way. But we don't learn about their actual lives.

Why are public schools obessed with these pedophilic relationships between Native girls and old gross ass white males as "The country coming together" or a "unity between 'Indians' and whites'" or "the creation of our mestizo race" or whatever else.

Sacagewa was only 12 when her "husband" bought her, and 16 when he impregnated her. I didn't learn this until I looked it up and searched for it myself.

"Charbonneau was also known for his short temper with his wives. On August 14, 1805, Charbonneau struck Sacagawea during a domestic argument, and was told to stop by Clark. This one incident has led to Charbonneau's reputation as a "wife beater," although it was the only time during the expedition that this type of behavior was noted. Coupled with the rape incident described above, however, Charbonneau seems to have been a sometimes violent person with little regard for women Native girls . His consistent record of marrying Native girls under age 16 also makes one wonder about a possible need to exhibit power over women Native girls

Charbonneau is known to have had a total of five wives, all young Native American women girls whom he married when they were sixteen years old or younger. He may have had more wives who have been lost to the record, however. His last known wife, an Assiniboine girl, was 14 when she married him in 1837; he was more than 70 years old."

Matoaka was even younger if I remember right, the bastardization of her real life story and the fetishization of her story and Native women and girls beause apparently we're all from her people. The fact the "Pocahontas" even exists, the disregard for her actual story and scraping details out to make it more palatable.

Despite the fact the she didn't get to have palatable, she had to endure violence, forced removal, rape, and forced impregnation by her rapist(s). She didn't get to have that comfort or safety but everyone else gets to when 'learning' about her.

"La Malinche" or "Malintzin" (we literally don't know her birth name) was around 11-16 years of age when she ended up on the hands of Spaniards

What makes it worse in regards of "Malintzin" is that Hispanic Males fetishize the "Mestizo race" and the rape of Indigenous women and girls especially to create this race.

They only claim their Indigenous decent when it benefits them, while they are still actively anti Indigenous themselves and hate actual indigenous peoples/communities.

Argentina specifically, it's called chineo, criollo males are known for targeting Indigenous women and girls to rape/gangrape them. It's a old colonial practice that still happens to this day.

Im just so angry that our figure Indigenous "women" are just these little girls adultified into these grown women just to make people less uncomfortable with the power dynamic imbalance and pedophilic relationships and colonialism and colonization in general

Racist white males (Spanish, English, French, whatever flavour of white idc) love this idea of conquering Indigenous women and raping them. I heard way too many gross comments from old white males with rapey undertones to them about them being white and me being a Indigenous girl.

Or even them mocking the sexual violence we face, one of my ex white male friends mocked me for being abused when we got into a argument not related to it at all he also was more and more racist to me as time went on.

In both of the Americas Indigenous people, but especially Indigenous Women and girls aren't safe. It's scary how much violence is forced onto us and how these figure head "Women" are watered down into comfortability for the general public.

The violence we face is pretty much the same in the Americas, and its scary to know we are stuck in places that hate us despite being on our lands in the first place.

all of this but THIS PART ESPECIALLY:

[sincerelyyadere]

Predatory marriage review [no spoilers] 8/10

Royal, Lovenemies to Lovers, King x Princess, Brute x Sophisticated, Poc, Polar opposites, Beauty x The beast, Switch, nsfw, tbc, crazy sex scenes, Political, medieval, mental health, Ying Yang, Mates, Size difference, the man is built like a wardrobe while the girl is built like a kid dying of starvation, breaking gender norms

TW: CnC, suicidal themes, incest, child abuse, eating disorders, family trauma, slavery, racism

Plot: ★★★★☆

Storytelling: ★★★★☆

Characters: ★★★★☆

I actually had two takes on this manhwa, since i read the first two or something chapters around a year ago - it was all over the internet, and you know i can't say no to a good yandere shit.

Well, i gave up after two episodes, since it seemed dissapointing at first. It was using tropes i automatically hate, which is Giant ML x snowflake MC, and weird power imbalance.

OH BOI WAS I WRONG.

I lately forced myself to reread since i promised myself some time ago i'll read first 10 episodes of the comic i'm reviewing, no matter how shitty it seems in hopes it'll get better. Well, in this case it DEFINETELLY PAYED OFF.

What bothered me in the first few episodes was quickly resolved, or maybe i just got distracted because of how pretty the art was and how the plot moved on.

This manhwa is not that surprising, it doesn't have nerve-wracking plot twists, but it'll get you to kick your feet in the air just like you'd reading a book with enemies having to sleep in one bed. It's not that surprising, but - gods - it still has me squealing every time.

I just love how the characters were build. MC, who seems to be a snowflake (both physically and mentally) is a really strong person, who manages to live another day despite the hardships of her life, and the royal connotations she's been put in. Her character was not flat as i expected, and i love how she and ML fill the emptiness in one another.

ML on the other hand, who seems to be a brute, really has a softness in him he can show to MC, and actually respects her will and her decisions, even if he sometimes wants to go against them.

Although when i'm reading a manhwa with political themes i usually scroll the "boring" parts (aka let's skip to the good part) even i can see that this arc was written well, and one thing logically led to another, which i really value cause this way we didn't get many plot holes.

The writing of the villains also makes sense, and although it's visible most of their actions come purely from their character, at least i could enjoy the character writing and appreciate it.

Also: WE GOT A BEAUTIFUL DEPICTION OF POC CHARACTERS!!!!! HALF OF THE CAST ARE POC.

Some things that annoyed me in the manhwa were connected with some weird choices made between the main characters, which i feel like were not explained well enough. But that's on the storytelling, not the characters' writing i feel, so i didn't take away a star for that.

Also some "plot-twists" or arcs were so predictable or cliche it made me go "Ugh...". Another thing is characters had a weird vendetta against Gypsies? Which was weird? They did explain it later in the manhwa, but the connotations to the IRL Romanian people are a bit uncanny and lowkey racist to me but okay. Like, couldn't you just call them something else? Idk. Some arcs also have some pretencious undertones, that make the MC appear as annoyingly good, which is not really realistic, and bothered me a bit.

But all in all, I really recommend this to people who want some (a lot) of spice and hard fucking, while also get some soft and lovey-dovey moments with a plot that doesn't evolve only around the main characters.

[nightcolorz]

i genuinely don't get why yall don't understand that some people don't like a character who's violently antiblack and directed a lynching. some people think lestat is not as bad because while he's also racist, his involvement in the trial was murkier and they heavily implied that lestat was there against his will. + at this point in the story lestat is more remorseful while armand tried to manipulate louis even when daniel exposed him. also just so you know lestat in the show is 34, not 37 lmfao

I thought u were talking about Santiago bcus he’s the racist guy who orchestrated the trial for like the first half of this and I was like why is this guy sending me this ask I don’t ever talk about Santiago nor do I even like him and then I realized that u were hallucinating a version of iwtv I didn’t see, so like, alrighty. There r so many reasons to hate Armand he’s like the most fucked up character in the series and bro chose “violent anti blackness” bcus apparently “Lestat is less racist than him” ?? Ur extremely stupid and I’m laughing.

I am trying to figure out how to argue with this but it’s kind of like arguing with someone who’s hallucinating a giant dragon. Like how can I prove the dragon is not there in a way that would make any sense to you, you are clearly past the point of no return here.

Right, Lestat, the explicitly racist white character who is constantly racist on screen, is less racist and bad then Armand, the brown former slave, because Armand took part in a fantastical vampire murder that was orchestrated by another explicitly racist white character for the stated reason that he was afraid to betray the institution he was forced into hundreds of years ago, because Lestat “was implied to feel bad” or smth. So true. Ur so right, clearly Armand, who didn’t even write the script for the trial, nor decide it’s aesthetic components, and only participated in it because he was going to be ripped to shreds by his coven if he didn’t, actually decided that he wanted the trial to be like a lynching, bcus Armand is extremely familiar with 19th century anti black violence in colonial America, a period he definitely experienced, and he made it like that on purpose bcus he hates black people so much, and he also decided to implement that racism onto the white girl who’s being tortured on stage too, cuz she’s also black to him, I don’t know. Armand may be an equal opportunity violent killer and torturer who shows literally no preference for who he violently kills and attacks, but he definitely hates black people, cuz the one girl he let die that one time at the hands of his theater coworkers was black, so he’s like, violently racist.

When I noticed the lynching allusions in the trial I assumed it was a thematic undertone meant to aesthetically highlight how traumatic this was for Louis, a character who actually has a connection to lynchings and would have narrative reason to frame the events in a way that mirrored one, and not like, meant to convey that Armand is anti black and is trying to recreate a lynching cuz he loves those things. That is an extremely literal and extremely stupid, unfounded way to view that. If anything, it would be implying that the theater is full of racists, which I think aligns more with the actual episode. Believe it or not, shows often have aesthetic allusions that aren’t meant to be extremely literal representations of what is actually happening.

The idea that Armand is anti black bcus he chose to not stop the vampire execution enacted per the vampire laws that he has been forcefully indebted to for over 200 years to persevere his safety in favor of preserving the life of someone he has known for a relatively short amount of time is insane. Like sure, he’s a horrible person, but I think u are vastly misinterpreting his motivations. Armand has been the victim of more racial trauma then literally every single iwtv character, he was an actual slave who was actually tortured and assaulted bcus he was brown. He was victimized since he was a little kid, he literally has never experienced a life at this point that is not survival of the fittest. His decision to fawn instead of fight in the face of the trial was not a reflection of “violent anti blackness”, and the assumption that it was is so incredibly dull and stupid. Also the complete removal of responsibility from the canonically white and racist characters like Santiago and lestat is insane. Trying to frame me as being tone death against racism while insisting that Armand (brown) is actually the racist one and not Santiago or lestat (white) is hilarious. I like Lestat but I don’t like Armand for doing the same things lestat has done bcus!! I’m anti racism!!! 🥰🥰-real anon logic. Like give me a break. If u actually cared at all about the racial themes of iwtv u would recognize that Armand is someone who has been so victimized and abused by racial oppression that he considers it normal and unable to be dismantled, and so refuses to fight against it to survive. He is not the oppressor, you dick head. Like yeah totally, the canonical former child slave is the racial oppressor here, ur so right. If that was meant to be the case, if Armand was actually written as being the primary perpetrator of racism who oppressors the others, that would be some dickhead writing.

Anyways, I actually don’t mind at all nor care if anyone hates Armand. My little post ur referring to was me lightheartedly complaining to my Armand-loving followers that I keep seeing Armand hate advertised to me on my social media and I don’t like having it shown to me, cuz I like him. That’s what I do instead of going into the inboxes or comments of the people I disagree with, bcus I’m mature, btw anon. But u can hate on Armand in ur corner of the internet all u like, it’s literally not that serious. I don’t care if u hate Armand cuz of the trial either, he does bad stuff, like yeah, sure, fair enough. He’s an anti hero in a vampire book series + show, it’s all fun and games here. The only reason I care is bcus why are u bringing it to me, known armand fan. Keep it to urself. Get out of my inbox, stupid troll. And also I’m never getting over Armand’s “violent anti blackness” like please get a life, holy shit.

In conclusion This take is literally insane and u need to actually watch iwtv or talk to a person who doesn’t know what tumblr is so that u can be saved from the actual six stages of hell internet brain rot that ur trapped in, bcus if u took one single step outside of ur rotting cave u would find out that nothing you have ever thought or said has ever made any sense to any normal person.

also 🤓☝️ just so you know! I said Lestat was 37 bcus Sam Reid is 37 in real life, and I thought it was a funny overstatement to describe Lestat as being Sam Reid’s real age. I know he’s fucking 34, but thank you so much for correcting me. You’re so smart. Also! 🤓☝️ if u are going to send me obnoxious anons, say “you” and not “y’all” I am one goddamn person, address me, not the fandom as a whole. We are having a conversation if you come into my inbox, I’m not your puppet-y vessel to vent ur moronic frustrations through. Anyways, die

[atelierlili]

This is the second time, this annoying asshole has come to crying/complaining about the skintone of MY Katniss. When it happened the first time, I gave the user the benefit of doubt as Katniss skin tone is only mentioned in the book and in the movies she's portrayed by the pale Jennifer Lawerence. But since this topic crop it's ugly head around again, it's coming off as very racist and woefully unwelcomed, @bethaniagia.

I want to preface this incase someone wants to twist my words, I have nothing against black people and I don't wish to offend anyone when I say my Katniss isn't black. I don't portray her the way I do with the intent to characterize her a person of black descent. Aside from being part Seam and Merchant, Katniss is racially ambiguous. The only canon thing we know from the books is that she has darker skin than those of the merchant class and sliver eyes. Therefore it's within my right to portray her however the fuck I want to portray her. And I portray her as someone as Seam descent.

Now i'm going to gush over MY Katniss because I love her exactly the way she is and no one will convince me otherwise to change her. I love her dark skin, the rich warm hue that's reminiscent of the woods and the forests she loves so dearly. I love how it makes her silver eyes pop and how it makes her favourite colour, green, shimmer off her skin. I love giving her a reddish, warm undertone, indicative of her inner fire. She's our girl on fire, after all.

I love how her darker skin tone is visual indicator off the very real class divide that exists within District 12 and how her relationship with Peeta and her mother and father, display that class CAN be crossed and genuine love can be find despite it all. Katniss holds her identity of Seam close to her. The movies cut it out, like it does many things, but that doesn't mean its no less important, no less meaningful. So if I wish to portray this class divide through her skin tone, I can and I will.

Anyway, @bethaniagia, I just want to say your behaviour is very not cool and its, quite plainly, shitty community/fandom etiquette and behaviour. I take time out of my day to share and create my silly drawings of Miss Katniss Everdeen kissing her boyfriend. If you don't like it, block and turn the other cheek. This kind of attitude KILLS engagement and fun in any community. It can cripple the the motivation to share work with the fandom. I don't give a shit. I do what I want. But I KNOW there are writers and artists that keep thier work to themselves because they're worried about blacklash from people like you.

Now, I don't expect you to give it nor do I expect you to read to the end of this post, but I'd like an apology, otherwise, I'll be blocking you at the end of the week. I'd like to keep this up long enough for you to read it. :)

[survivalove]

I hate to do this but someone reblogged one of my posts and I scrolled down their tl, hoping to mutual, and saw this mess:

Do people actually somehow watch the show and not see every single moment where Katara blushes or plays with her hair around Aang, gets shy at the thought of kissing Aang, is clearly attracted to him in Book 3, gets jealous of any girl that’s also attracted to him.

Or Aang comforting Katara several times: hugging her in the Serpent’s Pass and validating her feelings to the point she cried, comforting her when Jet died and getting the whole group to hug her, telling her how she inspires people and gives them hope, literally tells her she’s a hero??

Aang and Katara literally having several disagreements, Aang’s perception of Katara changing over the three seasons, him agreeing with every single idea she had to flat out rejecting her advice, then wrongly blowing up at her after zuko and the rest were flat out racist to him?? Aang telling her to confront the man that killed her mother after she rejected his advice??

Mind you Katara can barely tell Aang likes her back until season 3 and clearly shows feelings for him way before he starts initiating romantic acts with her after TWO seasons of her touching, kissing him on the cheek and hugging him unprompted 💀 not to mention “forces non-romantic feelings on her” when she is the one that said he was her family after a week of knowing him?? what does that even meannnnn

And I’m supposed to believe that these people actually watched the show, paying attention to… KATARA?

On top of that, to say (not pictured) the only person to ever comfort her was the guy that attacked her several times 💀 and he didn’t even do anything??? used Sokka’s trauma to come up with a plan he didn’t even agree with (nor did he ask him, like you can ask him to retell the most horrible moment of his life, but you can’t ask him if taking his sister to confront the man is a good idea? you can’t even ask him if he wants to go??? that is literally the most horrible writing i’ve ever seen but i digress). on top of that doing it for the most obvious ulterior motive of getting her to forgive him. standing there while she bloodbended and almost killed a man, not knowing she just swore off doing the former weeks ago because all he knows her to be is hostile until that moment. He doesn’t know Katara to be someone that expresses love and kindness until she forgives him but apparently this is how you comfort someone over every single moment of Aang comforting her that I listed above. okayyyyy

Just to contrast for contrast’s sake, Aang:

1. offers to take Katara to the North Pole with zero ulterior motive,

2. gets her mother’s necklace back with zero ulterior move,

3. helps her destroy a factory with zero ulterior motive…

4. helps her get Haru back, stands up for her to Pakku, calls her Sifu when she complains, comes back to save her home and gives himself up, comes back to save her in ba sing se and I’m sure a million things I’m missing, all with literally zero ulterior motives at all.

Meanwhile antagonist does one nice thing for female mc with shady undertones that might as well be overtones and now he’s allegedly better than her friend who helps her several times for no reason other than the fact that its something she wants.

Like am I supposed to believe that these people actually like Katara or are media literate at all? I feel like I’m going insane 😭

[ppppxseur]

characters that i believe are black

what are my qualifications you may ask? i'm black. thats it those are my qualifications

also if i see a single comment about "blackwashing" i will lose my SHIT, i swear to god

also theres no fandom order for this so good luck trying to figure out what's coming next

MINA ASHIDO (MY HERO ACADEMIA)

she breakdances, she's spunky, she's energetic. she's deffo one of those black girls who wears cookie monster pajama pants to school and adopts shy kids cuz she doesn't have that type of shame

like... need i make myself clear enough?

also she definitely has some sort of vitiligo

IZUKU MIDORIYA (MY HERO ACADEMIA)

i mean... he has no father. horikoshi practically screamed in my face that this kid is black as fuck.

he deffo cant cook tho, which i like to think is something that bakugou teases him relentlessly for

also this boy is tenderheaded as fuck and cries when mina does his hair

LUCINDA (APHMAU MCD/MYSTREET)

LOOK AT HER. look me in the eyes and tell me RIGHT now that that is not an albino black woman

you cant, im simply correct on everything

god i miss my girl. lucinda you deserve the world and you deserve all of the screentime and i cannot believe that bitch aaron SNATCHED the screentime that was rightfully yours

THE STRILONDES (HOMESTUCK)

"but do you mean all of-" YES. ALL OF THEM. they are all black and they are all jewish hussie told me so himself, argue with the GODDAMN wall.

ARADIA / DAMARA MEGIDO (HOMESTUCK)

my favorite weird girl <3

"but the megidos are asi-" WHY ARE YOU IN MY HOUSE. SHUT UP.

first of all the fact that damara's typing quirk was just Straight Up Japanese (and not even GOOD japanese either) is NOT the best fucking look if you want to potray another race. but also people can be biracial that is a thing and i hc the megidos as being blasian.

there is everyone happy? good now lets keep going

NEPETA / MEULIN LEIJON (HOMESTUCK)

(my second favorite weird girl)

(my THIRD favorite weird girl)

i dunno. theyre my faves. i love them. therefore they are black. i feel like i dont need much explanation other than that

KARKAT / KANKRI VANTAS (HOMESTUCK)

ugh. the thing that sucks about ones with family (or... i guess in the trolls case, the closest thing of "family" you can get) is that you have to make them all the same race or otherwise you have to explain the weird shit

kankri is lightskinned and uses his white passing privilege for evil.

also before you even THINK about trying to pass off white vantas: LOOK at their fucking storyline. just LOOK at it.

(before i move on from homestuck, i just wanna mention a quick side note: i didnt include gamzee or kurloz for one Very Obvious reason and thats the fact that, just like damara and her incredibly broken and bad Japanese as hussie's horrendous attempts to include other races in homestuck, i simply believe that the notion of all purple bloods being naturally incredibly violent is Not A Good Look. especially adding in that the only reason why gamzee is pacified is because he's doing the troll equivalent of hard drugs. and you can make an argument because... well.. what about kurloz? and to that my response would be WHAT ABOUT HIM? because i dont remember dick diddly and SQUAT about him and i dont really care.

so yeah i didnt include the makaras because while i do believe they are black i dont believe theyre the best representation because the only reason why people think that is because of the incredibly racist undertones of it)

ANYWAY i'm doing ONE more because this thread is already so goddamn long

POPPY AND VIVA (TROLLS)

the silliest girls possibly in the entire universe. i think they're black and hispanic mixed (im thinking maybe dominican or cuban)

ANYWAY! end of this long ass fucking thread. i cant believe my first fucking post on this account was this monster of a thread

anyway, follow me if you like any of these fandoms ig

[menacingpolkamusic]

Now, if three girls enter a house and only two leave, who is to blame? And if both girls tell a different story, but you read online that you have to BELIEVE WOMEN, what do you? Do you decide one is a woman and one isn’t, so you can believe one of them but not the other? Do you take the side of the woman who is most like you? Or the most intersectional one? But one is rich, and white, and trans, and the other is rich, and Asian, and a lesbian, and cis (?), and fuck, who wins here? In the end it’s so hard to choose where your sympathies settle. So, you go online and find an ‘intersectionality score calculator’ on the internet. You use it to try to work out who is more oppressed. According to the calculator, Alice has an intersectionality score of 44, making her more privileged than 32% of others. Who these others are is unclear. Ila, meanwhile, has a score of 64. This should mean that you sympathise more with her, but you have seen inside her head, you know the way she thinks. You wonder where Hannah would score. She comes out with a score of 25. But despite this, she never left the House, whilst the others did leave; whilst they went back to their lives, she stayed there collecting dust. And anyway, you can’t trust the numbers anyway. Numbers have been known to lie. Numbers have been known to show bias, statistics often have racist undertones, for example. So, there’s just two girls leaving a house and maybe you don’t have to take a side, maybe you can empathise with them both and hope they get the therapy and help they need and can learn to forgive one another. No. You can’t do that. Are you a fucking idiot? Are you that fucking stupid that you genuinely think you can do that and that something like that is possible?

- Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless