#these are black and white generalizations obviously i have more complex opinions on most of this stuff but its like grrrrr

[broke-on-books]

I wish there was a sign I could just hold up when people realize I'm a scooby fan thats literally like "yes I hate HBO velma. No I don't want to talk about it. I also hate SDMI. Plus Zombie Island is overrated. Cool? Cool." Like ahduahshahwhw can we just speedrun through those topics already? I'm so sick of these always being the first subjects of conversation why can't we just talk about something interesting. Like the Mystery Machine let's talk about the Mystery Machine-

[explodingchantry]

I have a video essay planned for my opinions on the confused (not confusing, but confused) politics of dragon age and it will be like 7 hours long with only 3 views but it will be the best essay I'll ever write. As part of it I want to include sth interesting I've realized in my da2 replay: that of the different ways the qunari conflict and the mage conflict are written.

See, both conflicts are meant to be nuanced but actually have a pretty clear answer based on our own real life liberal ideals. For the qunari conflict, the ideal is "don't be fucking racist": characters who are openly bigoted against the qunari such as sister petrice are ridiculed by the narrative, which is obvious in the framing of all quests in which she takes part and in the dialogue and within the game itself; the enemies you fight which aid her are called "fanatics" and "mob" within the game. It is nuanced in that the qunari aren't exactly... Friendly, and they have a history of colonialism of their own, but the narrative is actually still pretty black and white. They remained peaceful for 4 years in spite of numerous provocation, until their literal most important cultural and religious artifact was refused to them which led them to violence to retrieve it. It's nuanced because it isn't "the qunari are fully innocent" but also isn't "the qunaris are cunts and the racism was warranted". The qunaris are people with flaws that deserve criticism outside of the fact that they're qunaris. The narrative is very clear that those who hate qunaris on principle are bigoted idiots.

For mages, and furthermore anders, suddenly the narrative is more muddled. You could argue it's because the situation is more complex, and in some ways you'd be right. But I was shocked upon my replay of how often anders' sanity is put in question. How even a hawke who ROMANCED HIM will call him deeply troubled to defend him, or downright call him crazy... Once again whilst defending him. The latter is admittedly partly due to purple hawke options sometimes just being.... Downright disrespectful and mean, but it remains striking. Even more so when you note how often anders' rejection of templars and the chantry are rejected by other characters, including mages themselves, whilst fenris' vitriolic hatred of ALL MAGES REGARDLESS OF BACKGROUND is only challenged by anders - who, again, gets his sanity questioned several times throughout the game, minimizing the perceived value of his opinions - and potentially hawke, sometimes, in a few dialogue options.

And don't even get me started on the whole blood magic portrayal lol.

You could attempt to say that, well, while the writers wanted the qunari conflict to have a clear answer, they didn't want it to be the case for mages. But.... Did they really? At the end of the game Orsino's stupid blood magic blob monster transformation is very obviously framed as tragic, meanwhile again Meredith's sanity is shown to have been compromised the whole time which puts every one of her previous actions into question. I'm pretty confident in my opinion that the writers likely meant the message to be "the mage/templar conflict in general isn't black and white but in this instance siding with Meredith is obviously wrong" (as a note: it is far more black and white than the narrative pretends it is and mages should be free, obviously.) this is backed up by the fact that, you know, SHE WAS THE FINAL BOSS AND WAS CORRUPTED BY RED LYRIUM.

There's a better, deeper discussion to be had regarding dissecting those two narrative threads and observing how the writers' bias affect both, I think. Because as soon as you try to say the writers write certain characters OOC or show negative bias towards a certain group, like mages, people will try to spin it as it being because the writers want to present a nuanced issue. The thing is that, yes, they are trying to do that - but they are doing it in an imbalanced, biased, and sometimes downright mean spirited way. Because I haven't even touched on how everyone refers to anders, even when they refer to him positively. There's always a but. Even deeply sympathetic characters disapprove of his activism. That sways the balance the writers apparently attempted to have. It sways it pretty fucking badly.

[genderkoolaid]

I recently listened to the Jules Gill-Peterson episode of Gender Reveal. In it, she argues that the histories of transmasc and transfem people are essentially disconnected until the 80s or so, in part because transmascs migrated to rural areas and went stealth, whereas transfems moved to cities like New York and San Francisco and formed communities. (This brief summary does not do her justice, please read the transcript or listen before responding.) What do you think of her argument? Do you have any historical records that confirm, refute, or complicate it?

So generally I agree with her. Obviously this is specifically about US history, but I agree that transmascs historically have sought isolation to stay stealth where transfems have formed a lot of communities (although thats not to say there havent also been stealth transfems in history). She does bring up transmasculinity in lesbian spaces although its very brief. I kind of wish she focused on it more because I feel like acting as though trans men who lived in stealth isolation from other queers is The transmasc historical narrative erases a lot of the complex ways transmascs lived, and lesbian spaces have always been a MAJOR part of that. Drag masculinity was one way historical transmascs could engage in transmasculinity, and also took place largely in cities & drag kings absolutely interacted with drag queens, so I don't think there wasn't any places where historical transmascs & transfems shared spaces. But she's also a transfem and it makes sense that her focus is more on transfem history & its intricacies.

Honestly I think that the idea that transmascs going stealth vs transfems finding community isn't the interesting thing here. That's whatever. What's more interesting in my opinion is the questions of

Chicken or the egg (ha): do transmascs go stealth instead of forming communities because there were no communities and therefore no awareness that others existed, or was there no community because everyone went stealth?

What is the origin of this difference between transmascs and transfems? What factors influence the difference in our histories?

Listening to modern non-western transmascs talk, I've gotten the idea that part of this comes from how women in patriarchal societies have more restrictions, and often aren't allowed to go out on their own, which limits their ability to find queer spaces and connect with other transmascs. I think there might also be something to be said about the idea that cis society may tend to react to transfems with "you should be cast out" and transmascs as "you should be fixed", but that's just an idea + it's definitely not black-and-white.

Going back to the first question, I'm inclined to believe that they lack of community/awareness came first: I think part of the reason for so many trans men going stealth is because many of them weren't aware other trans men existed, so they had a mindset of "I have to find a way to survive without being outed", whereas transfems knew other transfems existed and so their first step was "find other people like me". I imagine that's also the reason for the difference between stealth trans men and lesbian trans men: maybe people who weren't aware of lesbian spaces were more likely to go stealth, and people who were aware of lesbian spaces joined them for the same reason transfems sought out other transfems. See this quote from a Korean trans man:

"[T]here is nobody that we can really call “older generation.” In Korea FTM identification and transition only began when they learned that such a thing was possible. Before they felt like they didn’t belong in their bodies. The lack of words made it impossible for them to understand what that feeling meant. FTM trans people that are older than me, those in their 40-60s, understood their situation late. Most of them had lived their lives as lesbians until the 1990s. When the Internet started providing information, only after this began, they understood who they were and started treatment."

That's also why the transmasc community only really started after transmascs started getting widespread attention (coinciding with the rise of the Internet as well), because suddenly younger transmascs weren't either becoming butches or going stealth- they knew others existed and wanted to find them. (As a side note: I got the idea for a historical fiction story exploring the idea of some kind of "transmasc secret society", because I'm sure there was some point in history where at least a few guys found each other).

I think its important to ask these questions lest we fall into the trap of "transmascs just love their male privilege and want to preserve it and have never done anything for the trans community, unlike transfems, who are the real trans people". That ignores how transandrophobia has shaped the behavior of transmascs.

I do have another criticism: maybe she's doing this on purpose, but I feel like its extremely oversimplifying the history of how people treated crossdressing women to say that it was seen as just a cool thing. There was definitely a different attitude to the idea of women crossdressing for survival, but (and this might be kind of nit-picky but its something that gets on my nerves so humor me):

If you weren't crossdressing for survival, that was a problem. I am of the opinion that a good amount of women/"women" who would make this argument when they got caught crossdressing were doing so because "'I'm doing it to survive!" would probably get you some sympathy, but "I'm doing this cause I like it!" would get you. you know. jailed for crossdressing & labeled an invert. And there is an expectation there that, if you no longer need to do that to survive, you would stop doing it, and to insist on continuing to do that would, again, get you labeled an invert.

I just in general really really dislike hearing people say "well the patriarchy wants everyone to be a man" because No It Does Not. its similar to that post that goes "bi women are told they should be lesbians and lesbians are told they should be bi but the actual goal is for there to be no queer women at all". Cis women might be told they would be worth more if they were men, but thats another case of generalized "man" being used to erase cisness. Cis women need to be cis women (and therefore wives & mothers), thats why women/"women" are so heavily controlled. You may have cases of "father wanted a boy so he makes his daughter live as a son" but that has always been seen as abnormal or even cruel. The idea of invert women and women who crossdress as man because of their ~evil sinful desires~ is not new (One scientist estimated "that one woman in every 3,000 is the victim of this strange mania")

I think crossdressing women historically were reported on with a sense of awe partially because I think a lot of people didn't realize how easy it is to pass and so the idea of a man being secretly a woman, or vice versa, was something unbelievable (a lot of old news articles about these people I've read spent a lot of time focusing on how no one could tell and being shocked at them voting & marrying women). Also because a lot of them were only outed in death so there wasn't a living person to confront or arrest. But I think we should hesitate to take news reports that saw them as some interesting headline to mean "people thought they were cool and treated them well" (especially in situations where we only have stuff like headlines & we may not know exactly how people felt about the person). Looking through my hoard of historical trans men resources, you have stories like Augustus Baudouin, a 17 year old who was outed after being put in prison for robbery. After being placed in the women's ward, his "repugnance to appear in women's attire" was so great that he hung himself. Even if the headline called him "extraordinary", being outed ended with him dead (in a way that grimly mirrors transmasc suicide deaths today). Christine Vensettie was also arrested so he could be forced to get "treatment" for his crossdressing. Edward De Lacy Evans's story shows a bit of what "treatment" can mean (namely, medical abuse & sexual assault) and was literally put in a freak show.

This isn't to say that the violence and repulsion Western society has long held towards transfems isn't bad or anything, just that I feel like portraying the history of society's reaction to female crossdressers like this ignores a lot of complexity. Also "the patriarchy wants women to be men" is like the #1 TERF belief when it comes to trans men, so I'm always on edge whenever anyone says it or something like it because it contributes to the belief that society really is trying to influence young girls to transition. I think people, when talking about passing trans men, always focus a lot on what happens when we pass and talk far less about the consequences when we don't.

Anyways this got much longer than I initially planned lmao. In general I agree with her, she obviously knows a lot and I'm also sure this was just a snippet of her beliefs on this topic. In my opinion one of the big questions about transmasculinity to work through is that of our history, because its so easy to compare it to transfems and see how little there is in comparison. And I think, besides just wanting to know more about our history, its important to investigate this to understand more about how transandrophobia works. Erasure is one of the biggest parts of transandrophobia and exploring why our existence has been erased in the past, and how that erasure has impacted our lives, will help us fight erasure today and in the future. So I hope to see more people going past just "transmascs tended to go stealth" and examine the factors which influenced this & why, across the world, transmascs tend to be erased and isolated while transfems tend to have communities and specific terms.

[allsadnshit]

I think what a lot of people do not realize is that community and being able to live with others is for most of us completely necessary. I know there's lot of people who claim to be better off alone and I won't speak for them but even just in terms of survival and not even emotional existences, we do NEED a society and other humans to live. It's like a team sport where it really really sucks to work with people you don't like and you even sometimes have to cooperate with people you actually hate but it's not optional most of the time and we have to be willing to compromise and so many people really reject that idea. Being able to tolerate someone else I don't agree with isn't something we all do because we want to or out of the kindness of our hearts...it's about how we want the world to function and tolerance is often completely necessary.

Someone not having the same morals, ideals, or politics is not something we can completely ban or get rid of every time and even when there is separation for necessity and safety, people still need rights purely as humans. I remember growing up thinking that jail was a pretty black and white simple concept of only bad people go to jail and obviously they shouldn't be able to make decisions with the rest of the world because they are bad! And I don't think I really truly understood what it meant to strip someone of their basic human rights till I was already an adult and starting to understand the different complexities of incarceration and removing the ability to participate in society in any form and how slippery of a slope it actually is.

I think covid has brought so much of that out of people and you can really see how much people feel like other people are disposable, and I am not speaking for one side of politics either. I truly mean that on both sides, the consideration that someone else's life experiences and opinions on themselves and those they love should be treated with dignity is really lost on so many people who've felt under attack to the point that they treat everything as them vs us when most of the time that's not actually the case.

It makes me really really sad when i continuously see people treat their world views as holier, more compassionate, logically backed, and overall more "good human" than someone else, even though I know that anger is often out of defense and fear.

I can't bring myself to not care about other people or not see them as people in general and I think a lot of what I see in the media and on social media really tries to make it seem normal to disqualify life and opinions outside of our own and I do not think it's humane or a livable approach to the reality of being animals that need one another for survival.

[seriousbrat]

What I find comfortable to say is pathetic about James is his righteousness. We see that in SWM when he tries to get Snape to apologise to Lily (I get the sentiment, but you're simply not in the position to do that?), and when he meets Snape on the train and genuinely thinks wanting to be in Slytherin makes you morally inferior.

He was 16 and 11 in these instances, but as much as he grew and learned about the complexities of the world and the human psyche, his slightly childish black-and-white sense of morality was still his downfall.

We hear Lupin say Harry is a lot like James in this aspect, but I think one thing Harry has that James never quite developed to the same level is an enormous amount of empathy. Maybe it's foolish of Harry to not shoot to kill, but Harry managed to empathise with Voldemort, and I think it's safe to assume through Sirius and Remus* that James never managed to do the same with Snape.

*just considering that as adults, Sirius showed absolutely no regret, and Remus, tho he did recognise how bad their attitude towards Snape was, didn't quite recognise just how much it actually impacted Snape. So if Remus is the most enlightened end of the Marauders Moral Spectrum (not a great one altogether), and Sirius is the most clouded, I think James would sit somewhere in the middle, but probably more inclined to agree with Sirius.

Definitely, I agree!! Specifically, I think his hypocrisy about his righteousness is what's pathetic. I said this in the post about James that I linked, but a strong moral code (which James has always had) doesn't actually mean anything without true empathy and understanding towards others. Else it's all too easy to convince yourself that something does align with your moral beliefs. Particularly if those beliefs are very black and white and very rigid. We've seen this plenty of times through history and in the present day, where lack of empathy leads people to believe that X group is evil and that therefore the righteous, moral thing to do is to hurt them.

James believed that Death Eaters = Bad. That much is true enough. But in his mind this became Death Eaters = Slytherins = Bad. And specifically Death Eaters = Slytherins = Snape = Bad. Therefore, Attacking Snape = Good.

This is really just a justification for the fact that James found it validating (and fun, and easy) to pick on Snape. The Gryffindor vs Slytherin/James vs Snape/Good vs Evil dichotomy inherited from his dad was further established in his brain early doors when he met Snape on the train. Lack of empathy is common in teens, who, psychologically, tend to view the world as revolving around themselves. While I think a part of James (very small, very deep down) knew it was wrong, it was easy enough to feel justified in bullying Snape because there's a hint of truth to the worldview that Slytherins are, if not inherently evil, generally not good people. But that doesn't excuse cruelty, obviously, and I think James as a character is a good example of the fact that people who have """""correct""""" moral beliefs are still capable of cruelty.

I also think tumblr/twitter 'SJW' culture are places this is seen very clearly, when people who express opinions even slightly outside of what's considered acceptable, even if it's a simple mistake borne of ignorance, are dogpiled on and cyberbullied in the name of social justice, when in reality it would be much more productive and much kinder in many situations to just calmly engage in honest conversation. Certain spaces (echo chambers) do breed a lack of empathy, and in general people who have strong opinions but haven't the empathy to realise the world inevitably contains a wide variety of opinion, and lack the understanding to back up their own beliefs, tend to react with great hostility to anyone who doesn't share them.

Point is, you aren't automatically a good person because you have the 'right' beliefs. What matters is what you do.

Anyway I got sidetracked. But I also wanted to say that I think Lily is the opposite of James in this. She's empathetic to a fault. She has so much empathy towards Snape that she fails to see (or at least to really address) his problems and the danger he represents to her, at least until it's nearly too late. I'd say Harry is somewhere in between his parents, which is probably a good thing. Also I do think that because they were opposites in this regard, Lily and James were probably quite good for each other haha and balanced each other out, eventually growing towards a similar place somewhere between Lily's blind empathy and James's black and white morality. So he became less rigid and she became more structured (this is the new she was dramatic he was dynamic)

On the Lupin-Black Scale (lmao) I agree that at first James was more towards Sirius's end, but the way I see him, he later began to drift a little bit towards the Remus end. About Remus himself, I think he is an incredibly empathetic character. He's responsible for bringing Peter into the group. Similarly he picks up quickly on the fact that Neville needs a bit of encouragement and provides this quite subtly and quite effectively, and he also notices when Harry is distressed and helps him too. The trouble is that Remus's empathetic nature is at war with his need to be accepted, which is why he tolerates certain behaviours from his friends even knowing it's wrong. In this post about Remus from a while ago, I talked about the fact that Remus is a character full of similar contradictions, and very aware of them himself. His being a werewolf (the stark opposite of his kind, mild, thoughtful nature) is a really good metaphor for that!

[franciskirkland-deleted]

i saw you say that you’re take on spamano diverts from canon and honestly i’d love to know more about it, i feel like most spamano shippers do this and i love hearing all takes because i feel like they’re all interesting! and i love them so so much!! do you have any hc’s that you think are unpopular with the fandom?? or do you like they way spamano is represented for the most part??

Hi! Thanks so much for the ask 💕 If you're the same anon who sent the last one I'm working on it. To answer honestly, I don't interact with Spamano fanwork enough to know what is and isn't popular or accepted as fanon these days.

But I'll hesitantly say that no, I think my views on this ship differ from that of the fandom status quo, as they usually do. I don't say this for the sake of being edgy or a need to always play contrarian, but bc I have a unique perspective.

Disclaimer; long post ahead. my opinion was asked for and you're about to receive it. Everything stated is opinion and I'm not discrediting alternate headcanons.

So I'll start by saying I'm not an expert on Spain's history or characterization. I have mentioned this before but the way Himaruya chose to portray him is a bit odd to me. Then again, Hetalia nations aren't really direct representations of their government, but instead stereotypes of their people. If everyone was accurate they'd all be unsympathetic assholes.

Spain as an empire was once a ruthless colonial force, and as a nation in more recent centuries they have a history of fascist rule, violent uprising and general civil discord.

Spain as a character is a sunny, bubbly himbo after he lost his reputation as a global power. I think he has a tendency to downplay the harm he's caused in the past and manipulate others into viewing him as a shiny happy goofy airhead.

Don't get me wrong, I think Antonio is adorable. He's cute, right? Dude's main personality trait is having a GREAT ASS 🍑 and liking tomates 🍅 He loves to cook and dance and do fuck all. The Hetalia wiki describes him as a, quote, 'cheerful country bumpkin' and honestly, let's go with that for the sake of his personhood?

This is why I like human AU. I enjoy reading historical Hetalia, but writing it isn't for me. As a creative, I don't want to operate within the limits of real world events and not gonna lie I prefer writing them as people!! And that's where I exercise some divergence from canon.

So obviously there's the dynamic of boss and his underling that existed when Romano was young. We can't entirely ignore that that arc exists and is part of his character development, but when Romano grows up I don't see them that way, and there's no denying their romantic potential.

I hear, and understand the common criticisms of Spamano. I don't view them as related, and Romano is not Spain's territory anymore. To me it's fair game. Hetalia is complicated bc well... these nation-beings are hundreds of years old, therefore the case for morality in shipping isn't black and white.

Personally I don't believe any ship is 'too problematic' to exist. I'm of the opinion that we can explore just about any dynamic in fiction as long as we do it mindfully. I'm a multishipper, these characters are all so versatile.

This might sound silly to say about an anime character but my analysis of Romano's personality is more in depth. As someone of Italian descent I recognize his stereotypical traits; and feel pretty strongly about his mischaracterization.

For one, he has a small dog Napoleon complex and that's a big thing for Italian guys (more on that later)

In canon (i.e. world history and Hetalia itself) when Romano was young, Spain did spend a lot of money protecting and defending him. Now as an adult he feels guilty, like he has an obligation to him, and he doesn't want to be seen as weak, reliant or incapable ever again. I don't think he'd allow himself to be dominated, in any way, or even want to be.

Here's an unpopular opinion; he is very masculine, but I think people have a hard time comprehending what constitutes masculinity.

And I'm not saying Antonio is therefore feminine. They're both cis men to me, and switch in the bedroom, but I will admit I prefer Lovino as the generally more dominant partner - in a physical and hierarchical sense.

Ultimately I don't think they box themselves into heteronormative roles all too much. Maybe for funsies, because Lovino likes feeling needed and Antonio to me doesn't have the discipline it takes to wear the proverbial pants in the relationship.

In a comic strip, Spain proposed to Romano when same-sex marriage became legal, and he basically said yes as long as you cook for me?? They're husbands!! It's canon 😎

It's a bit hard to explain, but in my perspective, Lovino would protect and cherish Antonio like a man would his 'wife'. He's his Carino. His Tesoro. His Amorino. Toni might be taller than him, but he's always talking to him like a child - mostly affectionately, but we've seen otherwise.

One of my favourite Romano lines is from the April Fools episode, "No talking to me when you look stupid", that to me is a defining moment of their relationship 💖💖💖

So anyway, this attitude of his brings me to the topic of Maschismo. If you're not familiar with that term, it's a performative, arrogant, and fragile brand of toxic masculinity that's prevalent in men of Mediterranean and Latin American descent. Any man can be machismo but the term is associated with these cultures.

(Again I'm of Mediterranean descent, I have lived experience with this, please don't think I'm racist and if that's legitimately your takeaway you have the reading comprehension of a sea cucumber)

In machismo society, men are discouraged from showing any emotion except anger. They're expected to be strong, and are extremely affected by any implication of personal failure, or threat to their (imagined) role as top dog. When something upsets them, aggression is the default response.

Men affected by machismo are often possessive, competitive, and motivated by material success; because there's an expectation to provide for - and honor - your family. They will often talk over women, objectify or ignore them completely, like second class citizens.

Whether this was a conscious intention or not, Hima actually does a great job at displaying Romano as a machismo poster boy. He's simultaneously expressive and repressed. He's stubborn, defensive and argumentative, and if that doesn't say Italian dad to you then you're probably a WASP /hj

What the fandom might see as a little tsundere uke, I see as machismo tough guy. He's not soft, that's the thing, but he deserves space to be soft because so does everyone. Maybe Antonio does bring that out in him. But it's not easy and it's not for anyone else to see. He pretends to hate when Toni calls him cute because he doesn't allow himself to feel appreciated on that level. He actually has a deep, unspoken respect for Antonio. It's just easier to tease him.

And he actually does care. He just does it in a way that isn't instantly recognisable as caring because it's not 'gentle'. He's jealous of Feliciano because he's the 'nice' brother. He's concerned for Feli when others mistreat him. That concern and protectiveness translates into condescension and ironically, distancing.

Sorry for going so in depth on what is essentially old man land mass yaoi, if you've read this far thank you and congratulations I guess.

[satorugojjo]

I’m just gonna say it, but I think current kids younger than 15 are almost incapable of dissecting anything with critical nuance. Because there is a HUGE difference to the 15 year olds BEFORE lockdown, and after. I’ve seen Gen Z teenagers on tiktok and tumblr have the most empathic, kind, amazingly supportive and intelligent opinions in 2020 who have now grown up and are in college absolutely killing it - they’ve gone into lockdown already having developed their emotional skills and come out of it with a lot more depth and growth. But YOU guys were 12 and younger when the pandemic started, you spent YEARS of it online without interacting with a wide variety of people and learning to read between the lines as you HAVE to in order to navigate the real world and peoples speech patterns and behaviours. You grew up alone in your house behind your screen, without being able to bond with classmates or friends, and most importantly, without anyone to temper your thoughts, or have rational and calm discussions in person. Half the teens I see on tiktok and tumblr NOW are so full of hate, so quick to put down and dismiss peoples choices, so quick to troll and voice really bizarrely conservative and ignorant opinions as if they’re entitled to do so, and so anti-empowerment and anti-ENJOYMENT in general. And I’m gonna be real with you and say it’s because of lockdown. It’s not entirely your fault bc y’all are still kids.

Your literature programs would have been cut, you’re just reading for the assignment, you’re not engaging in seminars and debates and classroom exercises the way you would in class, and all the while you’re just being increasingly exposed to sensationalist media that boils down complex and nuanced topics to a black and white, yes or no, 7 second hook. And it’s made you incapable of approaching anything with logic and empathy, because you just didn’t HAVE that the way everyone else did during their formative middle school puberty years. So now the moment you have a singular negative opinion of something, it’s all encompassing. There is no give, no flex, everyone is guilty until innocent. And why wouldn’t you think that? That’s what people have been doing online during the whole pandemic, cancelling people for 1 comment taken out of context, or being so quick to say something negative first instead of positive. You got comfortable behind your screen instead of being taught the consequences of saying shit things, and now when it comes to exploring all angles to a situation like you should be taught how to the way EVERYONE is, you take it at the most basic, surface, face value.

And when it now comes to fandom spaces where you have older fans in the same space as younger fans, there’s so many more instances where something will get an inordinate and undeserved amount of hate or hype based on a very surface level of understanding. Inherently, this isn’t a good or bad thing, it’s just a thing. What IS bad is when people come under someone’s obviously thought out and nuanced opinion to be like “you’re wrong for liking this bc (insert a completely unrelated logical fallacy of a reason)”. “If you like this book that happens to be a straight romance, you’re homophobic” IT DOESNT WORK THAT WAY AND IM SICK AND TIRED OF ARGUING WITH PEOPLE WHO NEVER BOTHERED TO DEVELOP READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS EVEN AFTER FINDING OUT THEY DON’T HAVE ANY.

Please for the love of GOD I am begging you guys to learn how to analyze literature. Like in an enforced curriculum at a high school level way. Please. YOU will be better off for it, and in turn the rest of us. This isn’t the new wave of boomer-esque hate against the kids. Gen Z is the goddamn future!!! This is a very specific, very VALID gripe, about a very small subset of kids who spent their formative years chronically online. And please! I am BEGGING teachers to recognize this and help their kids out to fix this. There is already a lot of hate in this world and we don’t need a new wave of people spewing hate under the guise of pseudointellectual liberalism because they don’t know how to see any deeper. This is one of the main reasons puritanism in the younger generation is exponentially on the rise! We’ve taken away the ability for them to form a fully informed opinion, and it’s now a self serving spiral. BREAK OUT OF IT, I AM PLEADING.

[croc-odette]

[image ID: a screenshot of text that reads:

New York, 19 Nov 1993 To the Editor [New York Times]: "Excuse Me; I Must Have Missed Part of the Movie" (The Week in Review, 7 November) cites Federico Fellini as an example of a filmmaker whose style gets in the way of his storytelling and whose films, as a result, are not easily accessible to audiences. Broadening that argument, it includes other artists: Ingmar Bergman, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Bernardo Bertolucci, John Cage, Alain Resnais and Andy Warhol.

It's not the opinion I find distressing, but the underlying attitude toward artistic expression that is different, difficult or demanding. Was it necessary to publish this article only a few days after Fellini's death? I feel it's a dangerous attitude, limiting, intolerant. If this is the attitude toward Fellini, one of the old masters, and the most accessible at that, imagine what chance new foreign films and filmmakers have in this country.

It reminds me of a beer commercial that ran a while back. The commercial opened with a black and white parody of a foreign film-obviously a combination of Fellini and Bergman. Two young men are watching it, puzzled, in a video store, while a female companion seems more interested. A title comes up: "Why do foreign films have to be so foreign?" The solution is to ignore the foreign film and rent an action-adventure tape, filled with explosions, much to the chagrin of the woman.

It seems the commercial equates "negative" associations between women and foreign films: weakness, complexity, tedium. I like action-adventure films too. I also like movies that tell a story, but is the American way the only way of telling stories?

The issue here is not "film theory," but cultural diversity and openness. Diversity guarantees our cultural survival. When the world is fragmenting into groups of intolerance, ignorance and hatred, film is a powerful tool to knowledge and understanding. To our shame, your article was cited at length by the European press.

The attitude that I've been describing celebrates ignorance. It also unfortunately confirms the worst fears of European filmmakers. Is this closed-mindedness something we want to pass along to future generations?

If you accept the answer in the commercial, why not take it to its natural progression:

Why don't they make movies like ours? Why don't they tell stories as we do? Why don't they dress as we do? Why don't they eat as we do? Why don't they talk as we do? Why don't they think as we do? Why don't they worship as we do? Why don't they look like us? Ultimately, who will decide who "we" are? -Martin Scorsese

end image ID.]

Martin Scorsese, to the New York Times, after they published an article shortly after Federico Fellini passed away calling his movies- and other 'foreign' movies of the same ilk- 'hard work'

[remusinfurs]

Campuses across the nation are debating what is and isn’t free speech. CEOs and online trolls are canceling young people whose positions they consider hateful. Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian faculty are taking sides. Students are hollering at administrators to do the same.

I am a lecturer in rhetoric at San Diego State University. Our biggest problem on campuses isn’t apathy, equity or AI. It’s that we aren’t teaching kids to grapple with complex ideas.

I don’t just mean they lack the ability for analytical thinking or deep focus — though these are real and troubling issues — but that young people today do not know how to figure out what they think. They know how to summarize.

Don’t blame the kids, or even social media. Their unnuanced arguments are a flaw of our education system. But the urgency of the Israel-Hamas conflict presents an opportunity to encourage young people to understand complex issues and articulate thoughtful positions on them.

In my class, I often introduce my students to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s definition of intelligence: the ability to consider conflicting ideas and not lose your mind.

As a secular Jewish woman, I can be both broken-hearted over the 1,200 Israelis killed (and the 200-plus hostages who were being held) in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and also grieve for the more than 13,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliation. As an analytical thinker, I must concede that I cannot understand a quality of pain that would cause members of Hamas to kidnap and assault young women, or storm houses and slaughter families — just like I cannot entirely fathom how generational trauma of the Holocaust can ignite thousands of Israelis to dehumanize their neighbors, bomb innocent civilians and cut off their access to basic human needs.

After drawing on reliable sources, cross-checking media and inviting diverse perspectives, I arrived at Team Human. I want Jewish people to have a safe place to call home, but I cannot be complicit if that creates an unsafe space for others.

Embracing the complexity changes the conversation. And opens it up. Most often, however, this begins in the uncomfortable place of listening.

Obviously, we can’t allow hate speech or ignorance to proliferate on college campuses. It’s important we understand the dangers of otherness in our rhetoric. But right now, when young people have strong opinions about a global issue, we should be careful not to instill in them a fear of speaking up.

Rather, we educators need to step up. We can challenge students to understand the multidimensionality of the conversation and to learn to apply these skills to issues in their lives.

We need to help them — and the rest of society — move beyond the binary. If we set up guidelines for people to feel safe, such as agreeing that calling out the Israeli government isn’t automatically antisemitic, but saying we must rid Israel of Jews sure is hateful, we might begin to move beyond the black-and-white thinking that has poisoned domestic and international politics.

That’s not an easy task. I recently had to get past my biases and assumptions to teach one of my own students. She had written an essay — more of a rant — about why all Americans should side with Palestinians. Despite the sting of her words implying that for Palestinians to be free, Jews must leave Israel, my job was not to shut her down but to help her express her opinion clearly in a multidimensional way.

Instead of excoriating, failing or canceling her, I posed questions designed to help her think more deeply about her stance. I encouraged her to understand her biases and assumptions, add factual, peer-reviewed evidence and acknowledge the other side.

Educators can learn from our students’ passion and curiosity for the world and teach them how to digest complex global issues. What’s dangerous are the simplistic arguments — the one-dimensional ones we see all over social media that disregard years of turbulence and peace accords, or Hamas’ doctrine to end Israel, the dubious role of Britain in the post-World War II creation of Israel, the far-right leadership in Israel that citizens had been protesting for months leading up to the Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s decades-long oppression of Palestinians.

We know what happens when we begin to believe singular perspectives — we need look no further than the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Regardless of our personal perspectives, educators have to help young people understand complexities as campuses see a rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia. Even simple things, such as noting differences between a Zionist and a Jew, or Hamas and a Palestinian. Just think if we taught students about the depth of trauma for Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Muslims.

Can we hear the outrage of youth and allow it to introduce more nuance into our own beliefs? Instead of canceling young people for having opinions, let’s invite them to speak so we can listen. Conversations exposing different perspectives will be uncomfortable. But they also might move us beyond our biases before we get into one more turbulent American election cycle.

Michele Bigley is a San Diego-based educator and writer.

[cringefailantagonist]

someone will explain in depth what grey morality is and how complex it can be because it's a mixture of good and bad actions for good and bad reasons and some dumbass will come in unironically like "um actually this character did Evil™ things so he can't be morally grey. also i have the moral understanding of a catholic priest so saying that someone who did horrible things is actually a fleshed out human being goes against my boundaries. moral greyness is moral whiteness with flavor and reserved only for characters with crimes i can personally stomach" like honeyboo morally grey characters are BAD PEOPLE. THEY DO BAD THINGS. HORRIBLE THINGS EVEN.

the only reason you think being morally grey makes their crimes have less weigh is cause you have a warped understanding of what it actually is. of course interpretation may differ, especially in a media like the Dream SMP with so many P.O.V's it's always important to take the whole character into account when making an analysis. saying "from the point of view of this character, this other character is evil" is not the same as "this character is only evil period". a character's opinion is not a fact. c!Dream IS evil and morally black from c!Tommy's P.O.V because he's his victim and he has no business trying to understand the man who ruined his life. that doesn't make everything else about c!Dream any less valid or true. he HAS reasons for what he does. he DOES, in fact, do good sometimes. he's a complicated little cookie. his crimes are still crimes and obviously reprehensible and in no way excusable. understanding is not excusing!

little example of a grey character that i personally hate A LOT: garbage on fire Endeavor from Boku no Hero Academia. he's fucking awful. he's abusive, egocentric and a self pitying coward. he's also in the middle of a redemption arc and even before that, he was the second (now first because ~reasons~) most efficient hero in all of Japan, making him a very standard morally grey character. doesn't make what he did to his family any less horrible (20+ years of abuse is really hard to water down) but it also doesn't erase all the good he did as an active protector to the general public.

despite (apparent) popular belief, moral greyness is not a get off jail free card, it's just a character model. a writing tool to make your plot/characters more interesting. that's it

thanks for coming to my ted talk

[i-did]

Do you know when the racism and ableism accusations against Nora started? Because back when I was active in 2016/2017 and don't think they were a thing, or were very low-key. Was it something she said or are people just basing it off the things she wrote in the books?

From what I remember, the first time I heard the blanket statement of “Nora is racist/fetishizes gay men” blanket statement was early fall 2019 (which is so ironic for the fandom to say on so many levels lmao). There wasn’t a catalyst or anything, just she went offline 2016 and no new content was coming out and the aftg fandom is such an echo chamber that… an accidental smear campaign happened.

 Before then, I would see occasional “Nora used ableist slur” which… is funny (not that ableism isn’t serious) to me people care more about that than Seth saying the f-slur. IMO this is because with Seth, it clearly shows the character thinking it and not the author who is writing about what will be an end game mlm relationship. 

But anyways! Long story short, it's the fact that she’s an ace/aro woman who wrote a mlm book, and based off of the events in canon. There is no “Nora called me/someone else a slur” it’s “Nora wrote a book where slur(s) are used” and “the Moriyama’s are Japanese.”

Below I put my own opinion on these claims and go into more detail:

CW for discussions of: racism, ableism, mlm fetishization

Fetishization: (and mentions of sexism at the end)

To one question in the EC about her inspo for aftg she jokingly responded how she wanted to write about gay athletes. On other parts of your blog you could see she was a hockey fan and an overall sports fan (anime or otherwise) but I've seen this statement taken out of context and framed as “she's one of those BOYXBOY” shippers. Considering how… well-developed both Andrew and Neil’s relationship is, and it takes them until like the 3rd book and there is a whole complex ass plot going on around, you can see how that's just. Not really true. And considering the fandom is like… 85% women (queer women but still women) and I've gotten into a discussion with someone who is a woman and called Nora a fetishizer and was ignoring my opinions as a mlm, and I really just wanted to say “well what does that make you?” it's a very ironic high horse. She didn’t write 3 all 3 books to put Neil in lingerie pwp or crop-top fem-fatal fashion show, fandom did. 

Also, I talked to an ace/aro friend about this, and she talked to me about how AFTG spoke to her very much so as an ace/aro story. Neil is demisexual, Nora didn’t know of the word at the time of reading it, but she did get an anon asking if Neil was demi after, and she said “had to look it up, and yep, but he doesn't really think about it” (paraphrased). Obviously it would have been cool if andreil were canonly written as wlw by Nora instead, (which would have increased the amount of wlw rep and demi rep) but tbh I don’t think tumblr would have cared about it nearly as much and everyone would just call Neil a cold bitch–like people do with Nora’s other published book with a main character who's a woman. Plus they're her OC’s, not mine. 

The fact is that 50% of all LGBT+ rep in literature is mlm, mostly white mlm, and not written by mlm. I’m not going to hold her to a higher standard than everyone else, she already broke a shit ton of barriers in topics she discusses that otherwise get ignored. I’m grateful to these books for existing even if it's a mlm story written by a woman. I still will prioritize reading mlm written by mlm–and vice versa with wlw– in the way I prioritize reading stories about POC written by POC. But credit where credit is due, this is a very good story, and a very good demi story. 

Ableism:

To me, AFTG is a story about ableism and how we perceive some trauma survivors more worthy than others. Neil and the foxes using ableist language shows how people actually talk. Neil thinks shitty things about Andrew, like the others do too, and thinks he's “psycho”. The story ultimately deconstructs this idea and these perceptions of people. Wymack, someone who says the r-slur (which is still not known by the general population as a slur even in 2021 much less the early 2000s when the book was beginning to be written and what the timeline is based off of) is a character who understands Andrew better than most of the others do, and gives him the most sympathy and understanding despite using words like the m-slur and r-slur. Using these words isn't good, but it is how people talk, and this character talks. Wymack is a playful “name caller” especially when he’s mad, the foxes think Andrew is “crazy” and incapable of humanity and love because of it. They call his meds “antipsychotics” as an assumption and insult in a derogatory way, when really antipsychotics are a very helpful drug for some people who need them. Even Neil thinks these things about Andrew until he learns to care about him. All the foxes are hypocritical to am extent, as people in real life tend to be. Nora herself doesn’t use these or tweet them or something, her characters do to show aspects of their personality and opinions and how they change over time.

Racism:

As for the racism, I've seen people talk about how racial minorities being antagonists is inherently bad, which I think lacks nuance but overall isn't a harmful statement or belief. However, Nora herself said she wrote in the yakuza instead of another gang or mob because she was inspired for AFTG by sports anime, (which often queer-bait for a variety of reasons). I haven’t seen a textual analysis acknowledging the racist undertones surrounding the Moriyama’s as the few characters of color who are also major antagonists, but instead just “Nora is racist”. Wymack having shitty flame tribal tattoo’s is just… a huge 90’s thing and a part of his character design. Her having a character with bad taste in tattoo trends doesn’t mean she's racist. There is the whole how Nicky is handled thing, but that's a whole thing on it’s own. The fandom… really will write Nicky being all “ai ai muy spicy, jaja imma hit on my white–not annoying like me–boyfriend in Spanish. With my booty hole out and open for him ofc.” and as a Mexican mlm I’m like … damn alright. 

I think there is merit to the fact that she writes white as the default* and unless otherwise stated a POC a character was written with the intent to be white is another valid criticism, as well as the fact that the cast is largely white, but everything Nora is accused of I've seen the fandom do worse. That goes to the debate of, is actively writing stereotypes for POC more harmful than no representation at all? And personally I prefer the lack of established race line that lets me ignore Nora’s canon intent of characters to be white and come up with my own HC’s over the fandoms depictions of “zen monk Renee with dark past” “black best friend Matt who got over drugs but is a puppy dog” “ex stripper black Dan who dates Matt” vague tokenism. I HC many of the upperclassmen as POC and do my best to actively give thought behind it and have their own arcs that also avoids the fandom colorism spectrum of “darkest characters we HC go to the back and fandom favorites are in the front and are the lightest.” 

*I however won't criticize her harsher or more than… everyone else who still largely does this in fanfiction regarding AFTG as well as literature in general. This isn't a Nora thing, it's a societal thing, and considering the books came out in like 2014 I'm not gonna hold her to a higher standard than the rest of the world. She's just someone who wrote her personal OC’s and self-published expecting no following. I don’t know her race and I’m not gonna hold her to a higher standard than everyone else just because. 

The criticisms I've seen have always been… ironic IMO, and clearly I have a lot of thoughts on it. I think most people say those things about Nora because they heard them, and it's the woke thing to say and do and don’t critically analyze their actions or anything, but just accept them. 

[thevalleyisjolly]

Ok, I’ve rewritten this post several times because I really want this to be a productive and respectful discussion, but this is a conversation that does need to be started.  I’ve been thinking about the whole cultural appropriation story line in this season of The Unsleeping City so far, and of course I think it’s great that Cody is starting to realize why that’s wrong and that Murph is making it explicitly clear that it is wrong, but I want to reorient the conversation away from Cody now and talk about Ricky as a Japanese-American character.

Because when Zac went “Just to paint a picture for you...” during the museum fight episode, there was quite a bit of surprise from non-Asian people in the fandom that this was really a serious issue, and one that Ricky would be bothered by or speak up about.  But why wouldn’t he?  I mean, the character is Japanese-American, and so is the player.  Doesn’t it make perfect sense that he would at least be a little bothered by a white person appropriating Japanese culture?  Asian fans certainly noticed and pointed it out before that episode aired.  Ricky/Zac certainly noticed - go back through the episodes and observe how every time Cody pulled out a kunai or threw a shuriken, Ricky was cringing or facepalming with an uncomfortable laugh.  Even with seven different camera perspectives to watch at the same time, it should have been pretty clear in the fandom that this was an ongoing issue that would bother and was bothering Ricky.

And I think there are several different facets to this, but the one I want to address is how there’s a tendency in fandom to ignore or erase Ricky’s Japanese heritage.  Not literally (although there is a particular sting every time I see another Ricky fancast where the actor is of another Asian heritage than Japanese - Asian people are not interchangeable).  But especially prior to Season 2, there was a general trend in the fandom that liked to simplify Ricky’s character and overlook him as a complex player character because of traits that are very common in East Asian immigrant cultures.

Perhaps it’s because my heritage is East Asian and I’ve had more exposure to general cultural customs and behaviours among East Asian immigrants, but Zac’s portrayal of Ricky has always read as a very obvious Asian-American child of immigrants to me (and, y’know, Zac and Ricky are actually Asian-American children of immigrants).  Not expressing negative emotions out loud, not verbally articulating thoughts and feelings but expressing them through actions, deferring to other peoples’ needs first instead of expressing his own wants because it’s not about him.  With the caveat that I’m Chinese and not Japanese, these are common practices that I’ve observed in my own family, among friends and acquaintances (of various Asian heritages including but not limited to Chinese), in broader experiences with other East Asian immigrants.

(Asia is not a monolith and I’m not familiar with the immigrant cultures and experiences of people from other Asian heritages.  I specify East Asian here because that is broadly what I can speak on and because Ricky is Japanese, but other Asian people please feel free to discuss your experiences as well)

And obviously, these are not monolith traits observed at all times, I’ve definitely met plenty of East Asian immigrants who did express their emotions loudly, who used their words, who were assertive about their own needs and wants (this is not the post to be getting into different generations of immigration and the culture differences between those generations).  And it also depends on the context - from my own experience, in private within families, both emotions and words can get extremely loud (if you dare to risk the wrath of your elders by arguing with them!)  But my point is that the habits I pointed out above are still relatively common in East Asian immigrant cultures, even if not all individuals follow them at all times.

Particularly prior to Season 2, there was a common perspective in the fandom, usually couched in “uwu, I love that Zac is playing a hot dummy!!” that would go along the lines of “Ricky doesn’t have a character arc, he doesn’t get into conflicts with other people, he doesn’t say anything and is just happy to be there, he’s a shallow character who’s just a himbo.”  All of which I’d dispute, (*insert post here about Ricky as a character reclaiming Asian masculinity*), but I want to focus on how the main traits -refraining from overt emotions, remaining reserved in speech, not bringing up his own needs and wants- that were brought up and used to simplify and dismiss Ricky’s character were traits which are commonly found in East Asian immigrant communities.  The whole “remaining reserved/trying to avoid conflict” is something a lot of East Asian-American kids pick up at home because what you say or don’t say isn’t as important as what you do or don’t do.

And I mean, so much of Ricky is about doing things for people, showing his feelings through his actions, not his words.  Just because he wasn’t getting into PC conflict in Season 1, or expressing his emotions in the same ways as other PCs, doesn’t mean he was just a silent, cheerful himbo.  Which there’s nothing wrong with being a himbo, and it can be particularly empowering in Ricky’s case as an Asian man (see above linked post about Asian masculinity), but that’s not all there is to Ricky’s character!  And don’t get me wrong, I personally love that part of his ongoing character arc in Season 2 is speaking up about his feelings and expressing to other people what he wants (because there’s the “American” part of the Asian-American experience that’s not just about having Asian heritage but is also about negotiating that relationship in a place with different norms and customs).  But it doesn’t negate the “Asian” part of “Asian-American” either, which does impact and shape the way Ricky interacts with people and the world.

In hindsight, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that interest and meta in Ricky skyrocketed once he did start being more vocal and assertive in Season 2, which are common traits in many Western cultures.  And it’s not the only reason that there’s a deeper interest in Ricky now (shout out to all the Asian fans and allies who’ve been really diving into Ricky’s character this season!) and I choose to believe in good faith that it isn’t intentional or malicious (audiences do tend to gravitate more towards tangible moments of conversation and conflict rather than background acting).  But I think we as fans need to start questioning why as a whole, we really didn’t start giving deeper thought to Ricky until he began displaying more typically Western traits, because I think it’s emblematic of how, very subtly and unconsciously, we are used to privileging white “American” behaviour and ignoring or glossing over Asian (immigrant) traits.

In many ways, Ricky prior to Season 2 (and very arguably up until the museum fight), has been perceived in the general fandom as a sort of post-racial American-melting-pot character.  Fans don’t wholly ignore that he’s Japanese-American, you can’t really do that when his family name is “Matsui” and when the Season 1 finale showed that his interactions with the American Dream pretty strongly involved his parents’ immigrant experience.  But knowing intellectually that Ricky is Asian doesn’t always translate to actually perceiving him as an Asian person with all the implications and racial dynamics that entails.

An example of how this manifests: Ricky and Esther become a canon couple.  Numerous posts begin to appear (and periodically still do) that express opinions along the lines of Ricky/Esther being the only tolerable “het” couple.  Ignoring the fact that we don’t know Esther’s sexuality and we only have an offhand Ztream comment for Ricky, Ricky/Esther is a canonical interracial relationship between two non-white people, a Japanese man and a black woman.  Interracial relationships are already extremely poorly represented in media, to say nothing of interracial relationships between non-white people.   Yet we overlook the racial dynamics and only focus on the perceived queerness (or not) of the ship.

Or, for another example, taking the discussion on cultural appropriation and making it all about Cody’s flaws and character development, rather than considering how it affects Ricky as a Japanese man to see a white man disrespecting a part of his cultural heritage.

Anyways, I really urge D20 fans, especially if you’re not Asian, to start questioning and challenging how you really perceive characters, what kind of characteristics you tend to privilege and be drawn to and why, and what kind of fandom environment you shape in your interactions with the show and with other fans.  This is not to say that Ricky should be everyone’s favourite character or that you can’t dislike him, but it is important to think about why we have the preferences that we do.  I especially urge you to remember that Ricky Matsui is a Japanese-American character, that this was a deliberate choice which has been repeatedly brought up by Zac (who is a Japanese-American actor), and that you cannot and should not ignore Ricky’s heritage when you think and talk about him. 

(And if you think Ricky is being an “asshole” to Cody just for being, frankly, mildly perturbed in his direction because Cody spent most of the season so far being very offensive to Ricky’s cultural heritage, I really encourage you to think critically about your opinions and why you hold them.  And if, after thinking critically, you still don’t see why they’re wrong, please don’t let the door hit you on the way out.  Your conscious racism is not something that is welcome in this fandom, and Asian fans are not here to teach you better)

((White and non-Asian people can and should reblog this, but don’t clown around.  Productive, respectful discussion is welcome.  Asian fans are more than welcome to add their perspectives/agree/disagree, especially people with Japanese heritage))

[smokeonshadows]

We need to talk about the Bobbseys

Strap in, kids. This is going to be...a lot.

To put it bluntly, the way the Bobbseys were handled was messy, unnecessary, and probably the worst thing about an otherwise great season.

It's really disappointing because the Nancy Drew writers have already proven themselves to be not only good writers, but also socially conscious writers. They actively and publicly aim to be inclusive in their storytelling, so I think it's fair to hold them to that standard.

There was a lot of potential in the Bobbseys–they're a morally ambiguous brother-sister team of codependent twins from a rough/tragic past who sometimes lie, cheat, and steal in order to make ends meet. This is interesting, this is full of possibilities as to how they could fit in with the Drew Crew, and, most of all, this was a great opportunity to have complex representation of the south asian community that subverts popular stereotypes (model minority, traditional upbringing, perpetual foreigner, etc.). Amanda and Gil would've been great characters in their own rights...but instead they were used as nothing more than cannon fodder for an unnecessary, half-baked love square with low key racist undertones.

Problematic elements

I've already talked about the racist undertones in previous posts, but in a nutshell, Gil is portrayed as being controlling/aggressive/domineering (particularly towards Nancy and Amanda) and it's a stereotype that south asian men (and I'd say black and brown men in general) are misogynistic, aggressive, and otherwise abusive towards women. This portrayal is made even worse because he's meant to be a foil for Ace, a soft/gentle/sensitive/emotionally stable white guy who Nancy is obviously meant to be with. And for Amanda, she's also portrayed in line with the stereotype of asian women being very submissive (particularly to their male counterparts). I don't think any of this was intentional, but it's just not a good look.

This problem could've at least been somewhat alleviated if Gil and Amanda had been written as fully fleshed out characters who were going on their own journeys and were consequential to the story, but that didn't happen.

Stereotypes aside, another problematic aspect of the Bobbseys is that they both fall into the unfortunately common trope of being the character of color that the white character has a superficial relationship with and leads white character to realizing that they should actually be with this other white character who's been there all along.

Even when they have roles in the episode apart from being superficial love interests, oftentimes they don't do much aside from being useful for getting the Crew from point A to point B of a mystery.

Underdeveloped relationships

Was I the only one who found the resolution of the Nancy x Gil relationship in the season finale to be a bit abrupt?

While I appreciate that they showed how seemingly small transgressions within relationships can actually be red flags and that a situation doesn't need to escalate to full-on physical abuse in order to count as domestic violence, I found that the moment when Nancy has this realization and then breaks up with Gil lacked the emotional weight befitting that situation. I think this was the case because Nancy and Gil barely had a relationship. There was attraction and sexual tension, they hooked up a few times, but it was never shown to be a real relationship. It's not just that we didn't often see them together, but with or without him, Nancy didn't think much about Gil or what he thought of her and, more importantly wrt the breakup, we aren't shown all the ways that his treatment of her affected her sense of self or the way she operated. Nancy's relationship with Gil was inconsequential, so the stakes were low.

And yes, casual hookup situations can also turn abusive, but from a narrative standpoint, the way this particular situation was portrayed, it was given both more and less weight than it should've been given. It felt like the writers wanted the breakup to be big and impactful but they not only didn't work for that payoff, they also wanted to resolve it quickly so they could move onto more important plot points (the breakup was at the beginning episode and Nancy never mentions it or even hints at any emotional fallout from it ever again).

(Amanda was done dirty)

Actually, if anything, the big dramatic breakup should've been between Amanda and Gil. Even with her severely limited screentime, almost every time we do see Amanda, we are reminded of how close she is with Gil, how badly he treats her, how much she values his opinion, and how smothered she feels by him. And it sucks that we never actually get to see Amanda make the realization, stand up for herself, and confront Gil. All we see is Ace encouraging her to break away and then cut to her living her best life post-sibling breakup.

In the end, it's as if Amanda's pain and suffering was made to be less about her and more about Nancy/being evidence that Gil is not good for Nancy. Again, not a good look.

And Amanda and Ace's relationship is also underdeveloped compared to the impact that the writers seem to want it to have. Like, I don't understand why Ace would give her a pseudo-ultimatum ("I'll prioritize you if you prioritize me") at this stage of their relationship. Yes, they do seem to be more of a relationship than Nancy x Gil, but it always felt like they were very much in the budding romance stage. While he does talk about her when they're apart, we still rarely saw them interact with each other outside of the context of Ace needing to use Amanda's connection at the hotel or to her father or brother in order to help solve the mystery. And we don't learn more about or see a different side either character through their relationship with each other.

Poorly executed, unnecessary love triangles

The whole point of having a love triangle is to raise the emotional stakes.

It's always been my belief that if you're going to have a love triangle, you need to commit to it. That means making both legs of the triangle equally viable, developing both romantic options and both relationships equally.

As noted in the sections above, this was not the case with either love triangle, which makes the whole thing feel cheap and unsatisfying. Like I said in a previous post, I think it would've been more powerful if Nancy had two really great options, but in the end chose Ace because that’s what her heart really wants no matter how great the other guy is.

Anyone with a healthy understanding of love and relationships would choose Ace over Gil. It's no contest, no real choice, so it adds nothing to the conversation, it says nothing about Nancy or her feelings for Ace. It's inconsequential, the emotional stakes are practically nonexistent.

Literally, I feel like if you took the Bobbsey love triangles out of this season, Ace and Nancy would still end up in pretty much the same place wrt their feelings for each other. I mean, yes, the whole jealousy/green eyed epiphany thing did play a role, but the relationships with the Bobbseys featured so little and were so underdeveloped that it would be more or less the same as one of them flirting with a background character every once in a while.

And Nace still didn't end up together after all that! It's hinted that for some reason, Ace will be stringing Amanda along next season while he pines for Nancy. Which is exhausting.

This is really what we sacrificed two perfectly interesting characters of color for. I'm upset.

[mercysvigil]

On Folk Magic vs Witchcraft, the Christian East and West

One of the reasons I was drawn to practice Balkan and Eastern Christian folk magic (which I incorporate into my personal practice that I call “mystery work”), in addition to it being the tradition of my Orthodox Christian faith, was that it generally avoids some of the dichotomies that the Western magical tradition ends up getting tangled in. What follows in this piece is a loose reflection based on my experiences, knowledge of theology and limited research. Take with a grain of salt.

From my neopagan and witchy friends, I hear that there is often an emphasis in some witchy traditions on “white magic” vs “black magic”. I also hear many complaints about how this distinction is reductive, and to that I say, fair enough. Having recently skimmed Hutcheson’s “New World Witchery,” as well as a few other Blogs by Traditional witches, I’ve noticed that there is an analogous (though not identical) distinction between Christianized and Christian folk magic vs Witchcraft. The former is a use of the day to day magical practices of a culture in a form that is accommodated to the Christian default of that culture, while the latter is an initiatory tradition with an intentional rejection of Christianity that aims to reconstruct pagan magical practices. Inasmuch as my work falls into either category, it is obviously more aligned with the Christian folk magic category. However, it’s my opinion that the closer you get to Greece and the Middle East, the less useful the distinction between Christian and pagan becomes. There are two reasons for this that I can see; a cultural reason and a theological reason.

Culturally, the divide between what is Christian vs pagan gets fuzzy in Greece, much of the Balkans, and the Arab peninsula for three reasons: i. These regions received Christianity more or less simultaneously with its emergence from Palestine; ii. These cultures were of a similar milieu due to their placement in the Greco-Roman world. As such, the blending of folk customs and religion with Christian practice and theology requires less translation (though the Church Fathers did a lot of leg work to bring Christianity to the Greeks); iii. The Mediterranean and the Eastern Mediterranean in particular were a crossroads of many different religions, both ethnic and pan-ethnic, all encountering each other in a somewhat free exchange of ideas. Even after the Roman Empire was officially Christianized under Emperor Theodosius, other religions continued to make their case. The addition of Islam continued this development as well. I’m not saying that such a complex exchange didn’t happen in Western Europe, but if it did it seems to have happened in a much more ancient time.

Theologically, Eastern Christianity is more fuzzy on the divide between Christian and pagan practice for two reasons that I can see: i. Due to the political stability of the Eastern Roman Empire and the nature of church governance in the East, Christianity was always adapted more organically to the local culture. Liturgy was always in the vernacular, and each National church was allowed much more freedom to assimilate various local customs rather than to duplicate specifically Roman ones. As such, folk magic and pagan practices were not as forcefully removed, but allowed to organically blend. ii. In the medieval era, the East and the West parted ways on the idea of grace and the natural vs the supernatural. Under the influence of Abelard, Thomas Aquinas and others, the West came to the conclusion that God could be most purely understood by reason and articulated theology, and that the ineffable sacred was opposed to the secular, or at the very least separate. By contrast, the East under St Gregory Palamas and others continued to hold that God’s grace (the divine energies) were operative through all creation, and that God could be experienced directly in the body and the heart without reference to mental comprehension of doctrine. As such, while there was certainly a distinction between Christian theology and non-Christian beliefs, divine grace could be encountered in the mundane and “profane” just as easily as the hieratic and “sacred”.

For all these reasons, I tend to refer to my work as folk magic rather than witchcraft, not because of a moral distinction, but because the Christian East generally does not have the same idea of a “witch” as a pagan someone outside the Christian fold, whether intentionally blaspheming or not.

[worstloki]

please read the article 'How White Fandom is Colonizing "Character-Coding"' by Shafira Jordan and quit while you're ahead

Okay, so I read it and see the problem, and I’ll try to address all their points in order because I don’t wholly agree with the article. I know it’s a lot to read so I’ve put tldr; sections at the end of each :)

Misusing the Term Reinforces Negative Stereotypes for Marginalized People 

The article essentially argues that labeling characters which are villainous as POC-coded is bad because they’re not morally pure and doing so "reinforces the idea that people of color are naturally dangerous and not to be trusted.”

Which is fair as you don’t want all the representation to be of ‘bad’ characters, but I also don’t believe all representative characters have to be ‘good’ either as it would be equally racist to divide good/bad in such a way. Not that I would place Loki under ‘bad’ to begin with, but arguing that characters shouldn’t be labelled as POC-coded for reasons unrelated to what’s presented in the narrative or because they did bad things is :/ even if lack of good representation is a prevalent issue in current Western and influenced media. 

Ideally there should be a range of representative characters that fall into ‘good’, ‘bad’, and ‘anywhere in-between’ because variety and complexity in character types should, in theory, be treated as common practice (which can only happen with a multitude of representation!).

And a bit unrelated but... within the fictional context of Thor 1, all the Jotnar (sans Loki) are presented to the audience as ‘bad’ by default. They desperately want to get their Casket back to the point of attempting stealing it (from the ‘good’ characters), they fight the heroes and even when the gang and Thor (’good’ characters) are enjoying or going overboard with taking lives it’s inconsequential, Laufey wants to kill the opposing king (who just happens to be a ‘good’ character) and will resort to low-handed methods to do so, etc. The narrative itself is from the frame of reference of the ‘good’ and we only see warriors of Jotunheim though so we understand why it’s like this, because regardless of their race/experiences the narrative carries, even if it most definitely would be seen as racist from our real-life perspectives if the ‘monstrous’ race were presented by actual people of colour, even if it would make sense for the people on on different realms living in different environments to be different from each other, and realistic even for that to be the root of some conflict. 

tldr; not using a specific label to prevent negative presentations of the characters seems a bit strange to do when the coding would be based off the text, but with limited representation available I see why it would be done, even if I still believe minority-coding is free game to expand/interpret.

Improperly Labeling a Character as “POC-coded” Suggests the Experiences of All People of Color are the Same 

The article argues that labeling Loki as POC-coded “suggests that all people of color have the same experiences, when in reality, people of color come from different places, have different cultures, and have different traditions.” And while it’s true that the term doesn’t go into detail about which particular experiences (and these experiences can vary vastly due to diversity!) the appropriate measure would be to remove the umbrella term POC altogether as people of colour tend to also vary. But that’s also exactly why it’s an all-encompassing general term? It’s a way to denote anyone who isn’t “white” and has the associated cultural privilege that comes with the concept of white supremacy.  

And, obviously, in the fictional setting presented, the concept of white supremacy is not prodded at, but cultural supremacy is definitely one that makes recurring appearances, right next to the parts about Asgard being a realm built on imperialism with ongoing colonial practice. 

My take on this is that Loki’s narrative features a struggle with identity after finding out he’s of a different race and was being treated differently his entire life and being Jotun was presumably a part of the reasoning even if he didn’t know it. He’s basically treated as of less worth for inherently existing differently. I do believe that racism is a common-enough POC experience, but that while Loki was born with blue skin he passes/appears white which is why I don’t say that Loki is a POC, just that he has been coded/can be interpreted this way. 

There’s also the entire thing with Loki trying to fit in and prove he belongs by trying to fit the theory and be The Most Asgardian by committing genocide (which ultimately makes no difference as he’s still not the ‘acceptable’ version of Asgardian), and the denial/rejection of his birth culture in destructively lashing out towards them (which even Thor is confused by because Loki isn’t typically violent), and the fact his self worth plummets and he is passively suicidal upon finding out he’s Jotun (internalized racism? general drop in self-worth after finding out he’s adopted and has been lied to? Bit of both?), but what do I know, I’m sure none of those are, at their base, common experiences or relatable feelings for anyone or decent rep because we see such themes on-screen presented wonderfully in different lights all the time. 

tldr; every set of experiences could be different, some types of discrimination could overlap, if you limit an umbrella term to only very specific circumstances then it’s no longer an umbrella term.

Suggesting that White Characters are Meant to be Seen as People of Color Ignores the Actual Characters of Color that are Present in these Stories

I don’t agree with most of this section, but that may just be the way the arguments are put together, which I don’t blame the author for.

“ Implying that Loki is a person of color completely ignores Heimdall and Hogun, the only Black and Asian Asgardians who appear in the movie. ”

Characters such as Hogun and Heimdall which are played by actual people of colour have smaller roles in the films and any prejudice they could face for being POC in-universe isn’t made apparent, while Loki at the very least comes to the realization that something he couldn’t change (race, parentage,) was having him treated differently his whole life and had to come to terms with it. The Vanir/Aesir are also both treated similarly on-screen, and Heimdall having dark skin isn’t plot relevant, whereas Jotnar are treated as lesser consistently and are relevant through the movie (breaking into the vault, Thor and co. attack Jotunheim, Loki’s deal with Laufey, the attempted regicide (and the successful one XD), destroying jotunheim, Loki saying he’s not Thor’s brother,). 

I also see including characters as POC-coded as... more representation? In all canon-compliant interpretations of the characters Hogun being Vanir is always explicitly mentioned because it’s a fact that just is, up to the appearance and even the world-building of Vanaheim in some fanworks use particularly East Asian culture as inspiration. I have never come across a Marvel fandom Heimdall interpretation where he’s not Black... but because these characters are more minor/side-characters of course they get less attention! 

“ In Loki’s fandom, Heimdall’s name sometimes gets thrown in to suggest that it was he all along who was the real villain due to his “racism” against Loki and the rest of the Jotun. It is, of course, ironic to suggest that somehow the only Black Asgardian to appear in the movie can oppress the privileged white prince. “

I... don’t know where to start with this. But the example of theorizing given in the article wasn’t suggesting Heimdall was bad or trying to explain his actions in Thor 1 by saying he is Black... and just looking at a character’s actions shouldn’t be done less or more critically because of skin tone in my opinion. Heimdall may have been trying to do what was best and protect the realm but if the audience didn’t know that Loki was up to dodgy things then the coding would be switched around because he was trying to spy and committed treason and then tried to kill Loki. People... can hold feelings towards others... regardless of skin... and suspect them... for reasons other than skin... although I do still have questions about whether Heimdall knew Loki was Jotun or not. (Even if I personally don’t think it’d make a difference to how he’d treat Loki?)

Some Loki fans have also suggested that because Jotuns have blue skin that this alone makes him a person of color (even if the audience is only allowed to see Loki in his true Jotun form for mere seconds of screentime). This, again, shows a lack of understanding when it comes to race. It doesn’t matter what skin color the Jotuns have. 

Race can differentiate between physical and/or behavioural characteristics!! Not being blue all the time doesn’t make him any less Jotun!! He’s got internalized stuff to work through and is used to being Aesir!! At least 1 parent is Jotun so even if Loki was passing as Aesir he’s probably Jotun!! (I don’t know how magic space genetics work for sure but Loki being Jotun was an entire very important jump-starting point in Thor 1!!). It’s a fantasy text and typically things like having different coloured skin indicates a different race or is sometimes if a species has multiple then is just considered a skin colour. That’s how coding works!! The Jotnar are very specifically the only race we see in the movie with a skin-tone not within the ‘normal’ human range, which alienates them to the audience from the get-go!! They’re an “other” and on the opposite side to the ‘good’ characters.

Both Loki and his birth father, Laufey (Colm Feore), are played by white men, and it is impossible for a white man to successfully play a character of color. 

The specification of men here bothers me, but yes, you don’t get ‘white’ people to play characters of colour if it can be avoided. (And it can be avoided.)

This also connects with the previous point made that people of color come from various places. There is nothing specifically about the Jotun that could be traced to any specific person of color, and even if there were, there would be no way for white men to portray them without being disrespectful.

This is where arguments about the definition of coding and how specificity/generalizations and do/don’t come in. I know I’m subjective and lean towards the more rep the better, but while I agree ‘white’ people wouldn’t be able to respectfully play a POC I don’t think that rule should have to carry over into fantasy-based fiction. I know texts reflect on reality and reality can reflect within texts, but if contextually there is racial discrimination and there are similar ideas which resonate with the audience’s own experiences I’d say it’s coded well enough to allow that.

tldr; Thor 1′s narrative revolves mainly around Thor and Loki, of which race is kinda kinda a significant theme in Loki’s part of the story. Not so much explored with less-developed side characters such as Heimdall and Hogun, even though their actors are actual people of colour. 

How Much of this is Really Well-Intentioned?

In the fantasy space viking world Heimdall and Hogun don’t face any on-screen prejudice and their appearance is not mentioned (which is nice, for sure! good to have casual rep!) but adding on to the roles they play in the narrative the explicit fantasy-racism in the movie isn't aimed at Asian/Black characters, but towards the Humans -to a lesser extent- and the Jotnar, including Loki, who only just found out he comes under that bracket.

The article mentions how fandom space toxicity often “reaches the actors who portray the characters,“ which is true, and it’s shameful that people have to justify their roles or presences are harassed for the pettiest things like skin tone/cultural background, but I don’t see coding characters as removing the spotlight from interesting characters such as those which are actually POC, rather expressing a demand for more rep, since well-written complex characters which are diverse are often absent/minor enough in the media, and therefore can get easily brushed aside in both canon and fandom spaces.

tldr; It’s obviously not a replacement for actual representation, but, if a character is marginalized and can be interpreted as coded, even if they would only be considered so within the context of the textual landscape, I don’t see why spreading awareness through exploring the coding as a possibility for the character shouldn’t be done, even if the media is being presented by people who are ‘white’ or privileged or may not fall into the categories themselves, as long as it’s done respectfully to those it could explicitly represent.

[sylvies-chen]

Chicago PD's Characters and the Role of Reform: an Analysis (???)

Hi everyone! The finales of One Chicago aired a couple of weeks ago by now but I've been preparing this post in my head ever since PD's finale aired. I wanted to talk/write about each character's (and maybe even the writers') interpretation of police reform and how it affects the plot. This will also talk about police reform in general. Before I start, I'd just like to state that this will be a bit long and probably biased since a lot of it is influenced by my own views on reform. I'm not interested in debating people on the internet, just putting out interesting perspective on an interesting TV show. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this and feel free to add thoughts of your own— as long as they’re respectful!

Chicago PD's handling of reform in this season was far from perfect but I did enjoy a few things they did with it. We had Kevin, a POC, stand up and fight back when even the people closest to him tried to shut him down. I did have some issue with the way they reduced Kevin's entire set of beliefs/morals to something so trivial and disrespectful as a "woke card" but I think the writers chose to do that on purpose to show how blinded white people can be sometimes. It's more the characters using that term, not the writers, which I thought was a good move since in both situations— Kevin v. Voight in 8x02 and Kevin v. Adam in 8x16– they made sure it's clear that Kevin is in the right. Voight may have been frustrated and Adam may have been spiraling over losing Kim (love me some #Burzek), but Kevin was still in the right. If only we could have some more varied representation on this show! That way, Kevin wouldn’t have to be used as the emotional punching bag all the time for these white characters and their misplaced frustrations with the system (added onto their personal frustrations which fluctuate on a episode-to-episode basis).

Now, onto the view on reform because this is where it gets interesting. I'm going to go ahead and say something that might be controversial: I think the majority of conflicts in this season have come from a gross misinterpretation of the concept of reform. This is especially highlighted in the finale when we see Adam saying he should be able to change/bend/break the rules to save someone he loves. It's also shown in the case with Miller's son Darrell and how they need to break the rules to save him, the case in 8x11 that Hailey considers breaking the rules for. It could even be loosely applies to 8x06 when Jay feels the need to break the rules only slightly in order to serve proper justice for their victim's father. Proper justice, in this case for Jay, being mercy towards the father and doing what's right in Jay's mind. Notice a common theme? These characters who are against reform (I know Voight was so good most of the season but he still falls into that category because of the first and last two episodes) all have one thing in common: the way they view reform. Voight, Hailey, and Adam, somewhere along the line (in my opinion), have all come to think of reform as a social push to get police officers to adhere to the proper guidelines when in reality, that's only a small fraction of an otherwise complex concept. Reform isn't all about getting police to follow the rules-- reform in and of itself is recognizing that the rules that are set into place aren't always effective. There are rules that are discriminatory, rules that are bureaucratic nonsense, rules that disproportionately affect specific groups of people, and rules that create roadblocks to solving real problems. Hell, the original police systems in North America especially were created to persecute minorities and maintain military power over citizens. The need for reform is referencing a larger systemic issue and getting police officers to follow the most basic procedures is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't want to get too much into the principles behind reform here because I am no expert. I recognize that because I am white I benefit from these rules/systems put into place so my voice shouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but I do think the majority of the tensions in this season of Chicago PD stem from the extreme oversimplification of reform. It surprised me too when I thought about it because they've managed to explore the grey areas/more complex aspects of it, but I think the writers are intentionally making that decision which makes it really interesting.

Throughout the season, I couldn’t help but feel that these characters considered reform as the push from the public to adhere to guidelines-- as they should, obviously-- but while ignoring the more nuanced principles of reform such as asking themselves questions like: is what I'm doing truly helping the communities we've sworn to serve and protect? Are the solutions us cops in Intelligence are offering permanent solutions? Should we be rethinking our principles of justice to be less retributive and more procedural-- or even more restorative?

This is all in reference to the characters, of course, not the writers. We have Voight, Hailey, and Adam resisting reform because they don’t see value in following the rules. But reform, in its purest form, is recognizing that the rules need changing, which is why it’s so interesting to see the “opposing side” against it even though they also believe the rules aren’t helping them. So I think it's really good and interesting how the writers have written these characters as having very complex and layered discussions/arguments about reform and about justice while still doing that. Because their contempt for the rules comes from a place of wanting to carry out justice, just like Kevin and all the others who push for reform, but they’re motivated by ideals closer to retributive justice and using their position of power to exact a more personal form of justice. Because of Hailey, Adam, and Voight’s more personal and intimate views of justice, their solutions always feel short-term. For example, Voight murdering suspects, bashing in cars, etc. This is all stuff that creates a temporary fix but their passion towards justice makes them care more about the personal, emotional release that kind of justice brings than the actual, long-term change. This is especially shown in that one scene where Hailey tells Jay the story about how a clerical error made an offender walk, which she sort of views as a reason why breaking the rules should be allowed whereas Kevin would view that as a reason why the rules need changing. Again, short-term vs. long-term.

This is not to say that Hailey, Voight, and Adam are evil, obviously. They're complicated, but they're far from evil. (Well, the jury’s still out on Voight. Haha!) What this show is portraying, however, is how the ideas of reform can be fleeting and temporary and all-around fickle in the minds of these characters when they reach a certain breaking point. They're able to throw this aside because they're all white, so it doesn't affect them personally. But right off the bat in season 8 we've seen it affect Kevin professionally AND personally in every single way. Others are almost viewing it as a social trend or a push to be a rule-follower though which is why both Adam and Voight, when put under emotional distress, are so easily able to downplay Kevin's push for doing things the right way. (Even though, really, he's asking for the bare minimum here of following the rules and not killing people.) Kevin, ever the conscience of the group, doesn’t put up with it and keeps people in check which can be extremely aggravating when you’re in a very emotional state and want to let your emotions lead you on a rampage. Hence, this is the root cause of the majority of tensions between the unit— in season 8 especially.

Anyway, this is all to say that I think this season of Chicago PD has done quite a lot in terms of portraying reform and the need for systemic change while still staying true to their characters and delving into how their privelege has led to them misinterpreting reform. Which leads to the portraying of some fairly corrupt policing, but never condoning it. At the very least, they show how it's less important for these characters since they all have a breaking point where reform becomes moot whereas for a black man like Kevin, it's more firmly ingrained into him. That’s a concept that is all too common in the real world, and one I appreciated that they represented even though some things weren’t so great.