#white people treat us like we're aliens

[jesncin]

The Potential of Asian Lois Lane: An extra addition

A bonus addition to my Asian Lois essay. I know Lois Chaudhari isn't technically a Lois since the premise of the comic she's from is where the Superman mythos is fictional and the characters in it happen to be named Clark/Lois etc. But since she's a Lois stand in and romantic partner to the Clark Kent of that story, I figured she deserves an honorable mention at least.

Here's where I position her in my Spectrum of Asian Lois Lane chart. And I'd like to talk about her!

Compared to American Alien, this Lois is actually specific and textually Indian in Superman: Secret Identity. Unlike American Alien Lois (that never specified what kind of Asian Lois was), she can't be replaced as a white woman because the text acknowledges her Indian identity (her name, lines of dialogue like this, etc.) hence she's not interchangeable with whiteness. So this take has that going for it.

Where Lois Chaudhari still falls behind Girl Taking Over (and what it shares in common with American Alien) is yet again a sense of missed opportunities narratively.

In Superman: Secret Identity, a man named Clark Kent from Picketsville suddenly has Superman's powers. After years of being made fun of for his namesake, he suddenly is what everyone has been making fun of him for- and as he lives through life he slowly understands why fictional!Superman is the way he is. It's a great story but where it misses the mark for me is its failure to recognize Superman as an immigrant. Secret Identity's Clark isn't an alien immigrant, or a human immigrant, and is instead ostracized because of his name. Government baddies want to do experiments on him so he has to hide from them too. But then he meets city girl Lois Chaudhari, and they connect because people keep teasing them for their names and Lois knows what it's like to keep secrets because she,,, committed a crime as a teen once.

"I guess we're both dangerous felons, then. Public menaces."

Being hunted by the government and being experimented on isn't really the same as being caught shoplifting.

It works well enough as a connection but to me is a huge missed opportunity to have an Indian American relate to your Superman stand-in as an immigrant. To connect on a deeper level other than "people make fun of us for sharing names with fictional characters". Later in the story, Clark and Lois have twin daughters who are visibly Indian. They too, have Superman's powers. While we're treated extensively to the narrative showing us why Clark would hide his powers from the government wishing to seek harm on him, we never get to see what Clark's daughters have to deal with on top of being visibly non-white.

Superman as an alien immigrant is an anecdote in this story. Because after all, that's not what a white American man from Picketsville would find relatable about him, is it? I have the same thing to say about Secret Identity that I did with American Alien: "Clark isn’t the only American Alien in American Alien, if you catch my drift."

I think this story is the perfect encapsulation of the limits of a white writer. One of my hottest takes on Superman is that the best and most holistic take on his character doesn't exist in the white imagination. Take a look once more at the Spectrum of Asian Lois Lanes chart that I made. All save for Girl Taking Over were headed by white men (MAWS may have Asian directors and writers on their team but ultimately its pitch and main ideas are the brain child of Jake Wyatt, a white man).

People have taken issue with me saying this and assume that I mean white people can't write a good Superman story, and no. That's not what I'm saying. I like Superman: Secret Identity. I even like American Alien. But it's been 80 years of predominantly white writers of all backgrounds getting the chance to write Superman- and already multiple attempts at an Asian Lois- and yet it took until Gene Yang (and artists Gurihiru) with Smashes the Klan and Sarah Kuhn (and artist Arielle Jovellanos) with Girl Taking Over that I felt Superman's themes as an immigrant finally took center stage and weren't just a mention or anecdote.

In no way do I want to imply that getting writers of color or Asian writers specifically will mean you'll be guaranteed a great Superman story. I'm against promoting the idea that diverse talent is infallible or tokenizing and essentializing them in such a way. What I am saying is that the best and most holistic story on Superman as an alien immigrant isn't even a goal in the white imagination. Immigrant Superman doesn't live in that mind. He doesn't pay rent there. He doesn't stop by to visit. And no, Superman creators Shuster and Siegel wouldn't have written that story either. Superman may have been the "Champion of the Oppressed" from another planet under their pen, but he would never have related to or have had immigrant solidarity with America's perpetual foreigners the way Smashes the Klan portrayed him as having. Superman's creators were too busy writing Slam Bradley to be able to write that kind of Superman.

The appeal of these cape characters for me, is the process of adaptation. Seeing them be handed off to someone else with different life experience. Seeing them bring a whole new perspective that surpasses even the creator's intentions on their character. That's what makes these characters rich and worthy of constant revisits. I just think that people of different backgrounds should be able to get as many chances as white men have with writing Superman and his cast of characters.

[david-talks-sw]

"If it's amazing, they'll know."

When talking about "George Lucas' vision" and the original six Star Wars films, there's one thing to bear in mind and that's Lucas' style of filmmaking.

These are movies for kids, designed to emulate the Saturday matinee serial format from the '30s, à la Flash Gordon. You see this most of all in the dialog. But something else you notice is George Lucas' filmmaking style, particularly in how he films and edits.

Take Darth Vader's introduction, for example.

Look at the composition: Vader stands tall, in contrast to the - as the script puts it - "fascist white armored suits of the Imperial stormtroopers". They're all in white, he's all in black, he's bigger badder, emerging from a cloud of smoke. What an entrance.

But if you think about it, it's just a single full shot. Very basic.

Compare this to Kenobi, wherein Vader is treated like a monster out of a horror movie. First, you glimpse his shadow, people reacting...

... then ominous bits and pieces like his boots or his lightsaber...

... and finally Vader himself, in all his terrifying glory.

That's a modern way of shooting it and it admittedly makes ol' Darth seem that much more imposing and absolutely badass.

But Lucas comes from a background of editing, experimental filmmaking and used to work as a documentary cameraman.

So what he did is just put the camera down and have Vader walk in. It's a faster yet differently-efficient way to introduce the character. It's more about dynamic pacing and visuals.

And that is Lucas' style. In his words:

"The way these films were put together, they're shot very much like a documentary film and the action of stage, and then I shoot around it. I don't stage for the camera. And as a result, there are a lot of things that happen pretty much by accident. It lends an aura of authenticity to everything." - Star Wars - Episode I: Podracing Featurette, 1999

Another example: the introduction of General Grievous.

A door opens revealing his ugly mug and he walks in. Boom.

But in Star Wars Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, you find that - as envisioned by the storyboard artists - our introduction to Grievous would've been very different.

"We wanted to have the introduction to Grievous be a series of really close shots that would be a series of details: his creepy foot, his creepy hand...

... his scary alien eyes...

... but George brought up an interesting point. He didn't want the film to concentrate on one design detail or one element— but rather let the world be there and let the viewer find those things without necessarily having it shoved in their face." - Derek Thompson, SW Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, 2013

"George nixed the idea, saying: 'I don't want something to be special because of how it's filmed, but because of what it is. Just put the camera on it and let it play out in front of the audience. If it's amazing, they'll know.'" - Iain McCaig, SW Storyboards: The Prequel Trilogy, 2013

That's it in a nutshell. "If it's amazing, they'll know."

The above storyboards look awesome and seeing Grievous be introduced that way would be great... but it wouldn't be Lucas' Star Wars. It would be some other director taking a crack at it.

And this way of shooting can be weird, even boring, at times. I mean compare Mace leading his troops into battle...

... to Aragorn leading his, in Return of the King.

The latter is so much more emotionally impactful. For a number of reasons (eg: Aragorn is a deuteragonist, Mace is a secondary character with less development), but one of them is that the moment is just shot in a way that's more interesting.

First we have an angle on Aragorn as he smiles and charges. Then the rest of the other characters as they react and follow suit, then the troops do the same.

With Mace it's, uh, *checks notes* he flourishes his saber and charges, the clones follow. Hell, for half a second we're looking at just an empty screen.

But y'know what the shot does look like?

It looks like something out of a WW1 documentary.

It's that authenticity he was mentioning further up.

At the end of the day, you can call it campy or bad... it's Lucas' style. It's cinema. There's a logic to it.

"To me, the script is just a sketchbook, just a list of notes, and, sometimes, I prefer the documentary feel of free flow, so I let my instincts tell me where to go. I like to create cinematically; I don't like to have a plan. I like to have a rough idea of what I'm going to do-certain themes, certain issues I'm going to deal with-and then I try to do so." - The Making of Revenge of The Sith, page 116, 2005

He doesn't try to make a character look particularly badass with camera angles or make the shot too choreographed, he just goes with the flow, and makes the deliberate choice to shoot it that way, because for better or for worse... it's his movie.

So yeah, just a tidbit I thought would be interesting.

Edit:

@schilkeman added this very interesting point in the replies:

"He doesn’t stage for the camera, but he does compose for the camera. The documentary style, while somewhat detached, requires the filling of the screen with motion and light. The way things move through frame seem very important to him. These are things his films excel at."

[ladyloveandjustice]

so idk something that kind of bothers the "we must save men from the alt right pipeline" because "we're hating for their immutable traits"

why

why specifically are men the ones who we need to always do this for.

I think it would sound ridic to say this about terfs. Terfs are turning to terfism because they don't feel welcome, we need to be gentler and more loving and more of a community and they'll see the light. Terfs as a class are so oppressed by an unloving society :(

Or hey imagine saying this about white women. You don't have to imagine it it's been done and its bad. I think we've all agreed that posting a manifesto on how white women should be treated nicer by POC and its leftism's job to save white women from going conservative always sucks.

So why is it up to women now. Why is it up to us.

I agree leftism needs to be a more welcoming place that doesn't crucify people for mistakes, or react with hostility to questions. I personally want that. But it's weird to frame this as something we need to do for (mostly white) men specifically, but like, not like conservative white women, conservative woc, conservative trans women??? There's a lot out there.

I dunno. it rubs me to frame the message of this. I don't want to actively go around saving white men and boys from themselves/other white men, I've been asked to do that all my life.

I don't think we should be hostile, I'm not a person that would ever say kill all men (tbh even ignoring the fact there are marginalized men...language like that in general...kill all (enemy) has always been uncomfortable for me. Some people can change) I don't react to them with hostility, you know, men are just fine as long as they're fine with me. I'm happy to have them as allies, happy to get behind trans men, gay men, men of color when they need help.

But I do know some women just give a dni because they're traumatized. And idk, maybe they deserve to be treated gently. Maybe everyone does.

I think leftists need to be kinder and more welcoming sure. I think we need to focus on change and banding together But framing the convo around saving men. That men are special and alienated and we're specifically failing them somehow. It doesn't sit well.

I do thing putting stuff into a binary of good or evil and just kind of reinventing conservatism in that way is a huge probem,...I don't know...Can't we just be nicer and in-fight less for the sake of being welcoming in general? For everyone? Can't we come together and be more accepting of people because a community is stronger together? Can't we have unity and nuance because of that?

I don't want to do it to save men from their own decisions, I don't feel inclined to engage with hostile guys, I just want to be nice and open and we all have less of a feeling people might turn against you over any little thing.

[chainmail-butch]

A Speech For the Colonist.

It is my opinion that communist movements within the US fail because they refuse to address decolonization.

It is my further opinion that the contradiction between colonizer and colonized supercedes the contradiction of class. The Native American Nations are colonized, Black people are colonized, Hispanic people are colonized. Colonization is the key to white supremacy and white supremacy is the key to class within the United States and Canada.

If you talk to most white communists about decolonization within the United States you'll get things like, "Well, decolonization will come with the revolution because we'll give the people the autonomy and resources they need to care for their communities." This is the exact same rhetoric that alienated black revolutionaries from the American Communist Party in the 60s. "Under communism every worker will have what he needs and be able to give according to his means, so we don't need to worry about race."

Comrade, we do. We do need to worry about race. We cannot simply wish a reality away because in our minds Everyone Will Be White in a communist society.

We need to acknowledge the fact that every single White Person within the United States, and the rest of the Americas for that matter, is a colonist. Our institutions are colonial. Our industry is colonial. Our cities are colonial. Our infrastructure is colonial. Our lawns are colonial. Every single aspect of our lives has its roots in colonization.

We still plunder the earth like we're sending silver and timber back to England and Spain.

By pretending that we are not colonists we make it impossible to address the ways in which we colonize. By ignoring the ways in which we colonize we fail to address the ways in which we are imperialist. By failing to address our imperialism we fail address capitalism.

We are colonists. Pretending that this isn't the case doesn't make it any less reality.

You'll acknowledge the fact that we live on stolen land but would you hand Seattle back to the Duwamish? Would you cede Delaware back to the Lenape? Would you take up arms, and then lay them down to a nation of people that are unlike you? Would you take up arms and lay them down again for a nation of people that you might not agree with politically? Have you confronted your fear that they would treat you just like we treat them?

For that matter, how have you addressed your conception of Black Nationalism? Any white communist will tell you that Nationalism as a concept is counter-revolutionary but how do you address the fact that there is an entire race of people who were ripped from their homes and forced to colonize another land? The solution certainly isn't Liberia, which is itself a colonial exercise.

How do you address the fact that any black person will tell you that a nation created for and by black americans would be a pretty good deal in their book? How do address the fact that our colonial nation isn't their nation and they know it? What do you do? Do you call them reactionary? Do you tell them that their desire for a home of their own is because we orphaned their ancestors and that they need to get over it?

Comrade, these are the questions you need to answer. You need to listen to the people we have colonized and you need to really observe our material conditions.

We live with the unique situation that, as a result of a vicious and often ignored genocide, the colonizers are the majority ethnic group within the colonized land. White people make up 57% of this country. And unlike other colonized regions, there's no France for us to return to. There's no England, there's no Belgium, there's no Netherlands, there's no Spain. The working class white is stuck here. It's up to us to address our own reality and to understand that, ultimately, no way and no how can we be the face of revolution within the united states.

No white led communist movement will prosper because, even now, we still have too much to lose. Our people will never start the fight as we are now. Understand that.

[kick-a-long]

your post from a few days ago about the defeatist logic of antisemitism raises another point:

as you said jews are a concrete target. i would also add that we are the easiest target. there's only .2% of us and we are seen as inherently alien by everyone (most ppl have never met a jew so we're sooo unrelatable and mysterious to them) which leads to antisemitism being ignored/labelled unimportant.

because antisemitism is seen as unimportant and gets easily dismissed this leads to an interlocking of all other bigotries with antisemitism being the odd one out. leftists can care about racism because it's something everyone faces and the same applies for homophobia (which is seen as universal), islamophobia (there are hundreds of millions of muslims and it's viewed as a form of racism) and the list goes on. but antisemitism is labelled and viewed as a jew only problem. so why must anyone else care? its the easiest thing in the world not to. for the longest time i saw non jews pair antisemitism with every other form of bigotry as if trying to make it relatable so people can view it as a real problem.

these are really important and good points. as you said, the problem of "antisemitism always needs a chaperone" is both that antisemitism is not treated as important as there are so few jews and it's treated as trodden ground. "not important" if it's on it's own, but also that antisemitic attitudes never travel alone either. it's always the structural underpinnings of violent extremism and the hatred of any other group and it needs to be addressed as THE issue behind the escalation to violence. jews are seen as both an easy target but also a worthy (aka powerful) one that makes an extremist look like they are going up against something much bigger than they are.

that jews are rich and powerful is also widely accepted as true even by centrists.

the end of discussion, dissent, and figuring out how to improve obvious problems in society, and the beginning of random mass violence is antisemitism. people need to recognize that it's where the violence is coming from. you don't need jews around to have antisemitism. not only that, but you don't need to be jewish to catch a bullet because of antisemitic theories that say violence is the only way to defeat (((the jew))) as imagined in antisemitic conspiracy theory.

look into any mass shooting, terrorist attack: black, white, brown, blue, red, purple, green... you will find antisemitism tying it all together and demanding blood, soil, and death.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Pjo fans insist they don't see Percy Jackson as autistic but the proof is in the blue pudding in how they treat him that they know he's audhd and not allistic adhd

They make fun of him for his (special) interests because he's super into 'kiddy/silly' things and pretend he's into ones he's never even mentioned(The Little Mermaid,Nemo,etc)while ignoring his actual tastes,they call stupid 'affectionatelly' when he's expressed verbally AND in his narration so many times it's upsetting and that it's something he's resigned himself to eternally happening to him rather than growing to like it,they turn his younger loved ones into his 'babysitters' when HE'S the one constantly looking out for younger people on eldest sibling/pseudo-dad instinct,they treat his lack of social skills as a moral failing even though nobody ever fucking taught him how to mask so now he literally can't and the peer abuse,parental abuse,parental abandoment AND grooming into a child soldier for his entire teenage years did NOT help,they insist he's a stereotypically masculine cis man despite countless instances of misandry and discomfort in male roles and gender neutral at BEST gender presentation and several moments that heavily indicate he wants femininity and maybe even womanhood and they invalidate his autism as even a posibility with the excuse he has adhd,as if they aren't a super common combo platter and autistics/audhd people aren't misdiagnosed-on purpose at a number of not uncommon times!!!-as adhd is seen as more 'normal' than autism

Of course Perseo 'Percy' Isadore Jackson is autistic!!He's the personification of black audhd and the abuse and alienation that comes with it!He's also the paragon of how cool black audhd people are and our cycle breaking and reclamation of our traits we were forced to think means there's something 'wrong' with us but you whatever the greek equivalent to weaboo is geeks won't let him be cool,BECAUSE he's audhd and you think every autistic person is 'supposed' to 'accept' we're losers so you can't get uncomfy🥺 when confronted with the fact autism IS a spectrum,not as a joke but as a reality,but you don't wanna say that so you deny he's autistic to not feel bad even though what you're doing IS bad!!!!!Like objectively,Percy is a role model for neurodivergent kids to show them they're not what their tormenters say they are and that they can grow up to be the adults they needed to save them when we were younger when everyone just choose to hurt us!Percy is NOT allistic,he's the most autistic character of the entire american media 2000s-2010s era and if you insist he's not,just call him a r*tard instead.It would be less ableist than this embarrassing disaster you oldheads who harrassed a lil black girl,for existing as something other than a blonde unnatural eye colors white girl,have been pulling since what is going to be 20 years in not too long.What if i killed 'Pjo fandom elders' who want the gender ambigious autistic afropunk anarchist to sell out for their premordial booktok ships with hammers

[retconsatlightspeed]

Here's how I'd fix Skeleton Crew

see my previous post for my general problems with the series

Give it a full 10-12 episodes. Disney has more money than god, they can spare some.

This is a kid's adventure movie, so why do the kids want to go back home from moment 1? The reason that the binary sunset is one of the iconic images of starwars is that it expresses Luke's (and the audience's) deepseated longing to go somewhere they've never seen before, which SURPRISE: is why we're watching a scifantasy story full of weird and wondrous vistas and alien critters. Either have these kids desperately want to leave At Attin and want to turn around later, or have them stranded deep in a part of unknown space and make getting back difficult. Then you drop them on a series of weird, wondrous worlds chock full of starwars magic (stuff from old movie genres with a scifantasy twist, practical effects, marketable iconography, and the occasional callback) and have them grow in response to adversity. It's adventure writing 101

Lets say that after their first hyperspace jaunt, the kids get stuck on some planet and are having fun, but then get picked up by pirates who have their outlaw port station in orbit.

Have Jod be actually a good guy at the start. We the audience know he's not what he claims to be, but he's charming and legitimately protective of the kids. Let him build a unique relationship with each of them that helps further both their characters: He's building a mentor bond with Wim, he's encouraging Fern's independance, He's recognizing KB's talent, and he's helping Neel to be brave.

This directly interfaces with why the kids want to go on an adventure in the first place: Wim is convinced there's something more to life than the suburbian drugery he was promised, Fern was stifled by constraints and rules, KB was coddled because of her disability. Neel should be our only character who WANTS to go back at the start because he's scared and wants the saftey blanket, but over time learns to come out of his shell and enjoy the wonders of the cosmos. The parts are there in the series already, they just need to be highlighted.

That gets us into Jod's arc. "Pirate with an unfortunate conscience" is a good starting point, but the show bungles his character by saying HEY THIS GUY IS UNTRUSTWORTHY every episode preventing us from ever getting close enough to give his betrayal weight. Instead lets try this: Jod is a goodguy forced to be a badguy, his hero's journey got cut short when his mentor got killed in front of him,...and he bumped around the galaxy taking worse and worse jobs until he ends up a bountyhunter who ends up crossing the wrong crimelord. He gets declared an outlaw, falls in with the pirates, and tries to be a good captian until his "bluster past your inability to be cruel" schtic gets sniffed out by his crew. What he sees in the kids is a chance for redemption, to be the goodguy his mentor wanted him to be, even if he has to tell a LOT of white lies to make them like him.

Jod helps get their vessel ship-shape while taking them out on adventures/field trips where we build up character relationships. Fern gets a semi-dangerous planet where she can cut loose, but learns the value of being a leader ( something something, if you're a captian you look out for your crew). Neel's outings are focused on getting home, but he gets to see some cool stuff that says the rest of the galaxy isn't so bad. Wim gets to visit the ancient Jedi temple of his dreams and we can have a sad meditation on what it means to follow the force in a galaxy without the order. Jod can also have some feelings about this. KB's adventure is sidetracked by her augs malfunctioning, and after the kids are overly protective we get a lesson about not treating people with disabilities as lesser.

Ready for the twist? Jod doesn't betray the kids, he genuinely wants to get them home and be a hero for once in his life. Instead as we keep doing the field trips, we keep running into situations that tempt Jod into going back to his scoundrel/pirate past, but he abstains... until he has to break out the merciless survivor persona to protect them. The kids are HORRIFIED, seeing all the time they've spent together as manipulation. They call him a villain and leave him on whatever plannet they're on as they make the last sprint towards home. That's right: the kids betray HIM

Heartbroken, Jod does a heel turn. The universe has been trying to cut out his heart since day 1 and the kids just went and twisted the knife. If he's not going to get to play the hero then he'll just have to play the villain, he calls the pirates and tells them about the treasure.

The end is mostly the same, except Jod just wants to do a rehash of his previous "Pretend to be scary to get the loot but don't hurt anyone" plan, while the pirates want to take the treasury planet for themselves and force the inhabitants to be their slaves. Queue Jod and the kids forced to reconcile to save their home but fundamentally change it at the same time.

The quietly authoritarian suburbia mystery is actually pretty great and just needs the slightest change: Rather than destroying the overseer, the pirates reprogram it. Forcing the population to work under Orwellian surveillance for an absent republic isn't THAT different than forcing them to toil for a bunch of exploitative marauders. The great work can continue, now there's just someone closer by beneifiting from it. Latestage capitalist decline from global markets to techno-feudalism anyone?

In the end, no one gets what they want, and they're all the better for it. Jod can't be the hero because he has to come clean about his past. The kids get to go home, but they've brought the danger and wonder of the galaxy back with them. Now all of At Attin is looking up at the stars, wondering what adventure will come their way.

SM-33 is there, he's my perfect little 9ft robo-skeleton-pirate-son and I will not hear a word spoken against him.

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[erose-this-name]

what it means to be human

The common correct definition of the word "human" (according to science anyway) is HOMO

No, not like, gay, (unfortunately). I mean any member of the Homo genus. Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis etc.

Yes, the Neanderthals were human. There used to be many humans. We, the Sapiens, are just the last remaining human species.

But we don't remember a time when this was not the case. So we often conflate "humanity" with "species" with "sapience" with "personhood". (even though just calling ourselves human is the common usage and was also the scientific usage until a century or so ago, but still)

So what is and what isn't human?

This is an issue in my own writing (which is why I wrote this post). Since it's a speculative evolution project, I use the scientific meaning of human, which is to say only ever as a collective term for all the humans. There are many species of human which are people, there are humans and species of humans which are no longer people, and there are people that are not human.

All monsters are inhuman, that is a given regardless of how inhumane they are. Though I feel like "subhuman" has no accurate applications, though. "Human" should not mean superiority.

Unless the monster has human origins like a werewolf or humanimal, etc, in which case they would still be human. But they may no longer be people if they are emotionless, mindless, not self aware.

I don't know if a "soul" is required for personhood, certainly not for humanity. Mindless zombies may be reanimated with a soul, therefore have a soul, but that doesn't make them a person. Vampires usually do not have souls, but surely are still people.

Anything evolutionarily descendant from anything once called a human is still a human, even if they no longer resemble one. Kinda like how all birds are dinosaurs.

I don't know if Pinnochio can become a real human, taxonomy can only be inherited by birth and Pinnochio was not born. But I can say that becoming a real boy can not change the fact that he was already a person. In fact, he was always a real boy as well. Gender and sex and humanity and personhood are of course separate.

Likewise, I'm not sure if human minds uploaded to mechanical or didgital bodies like the All Tomorrows Gravitals or in SOMA cease to be human or not, though I lean towards them losing humanity but not personhood. But most 40k Necrons do lose both personhood and Necrontyr-ity (they weren't humans to begin with but aliens) as they are made into mindless machines. But cyborgs retain humanity if they retain any human flesh.

Elves/Dwarves/Halflings could possibly be humans, depending on if they have some kind of shared origins with us.

Hence why I don't like calling the "Human" """Race""" in fantasy settings "Human", especially if the "humans" in that setting are Just White People™ because then we're normalizing the idea that only Europeans are Humans and that only Humans are people and the obvious logical conclusion to that.

An intelligent self-aware robot capable of all the emotions we have like GLaDOS, AM, etc is not a human, of course not, but it is a person. Not being human makes them no less deserving of life or rights. But, because they are not human, we will surely treat them like objects when they are made. And they may feel the need to act accordingly.

Bottlenose dolphins, which scientists have found to also be sapient, and self-aware, and quite intelligent, and can use tools, even have their own languages and cultures must surely also be people.

But, because dolphins are not human, we have decided they are just animals and their lives and quality of life are worth much less than ours. We can strip their oceans of all value leaving only pollution, deafen and blind them with ship motors, and even kill them without consequence. We don't even have the decency to call what we've done to dolphin pods "peace keeping", let alone war. But it's "crimes against humanity", not "crimes against people".

Say what you will about dolphins, accounts of them raping each other and abusing pufferfish are well known, so they aren't always nice people. But neither are we. Dolphins are also known to save drowning humans and fight off sharks to protect their pods. Doesn't that only prove they also have the same free will we do? Why is it that when we finally acknowledge their humanless personhood, so close to ours, we feel hate and disgust?

If/when we find intelligent aliens, will we do all this again?

And if the aliens or elder gods or whatever it is find us, will they have the same issue? Will they consider Humans underserving of life and land just because we aren't Alien? Will we deserve it?

[seriousfic]

Furiosa And Its Response: A FAQ

Q: What’s Furiosa about?

A: Ironically, for all the claims prequel Fury Road wasn’t ‘about’ Max, Furiosa isn’t entirely about Furiosa. The first hour or so features Furiosa as a child, kidnapped from the Green Place (an idyllic oasis whose people live in peace and abundance, zealously protected against the post-apocalyptic depredations of outsiders) and then becoming the prisoner of Dementius. Dementius is sort of the villain protagonist of the movie’s first half while Furiosa is on the sidelines.

He seems like the last gasp of the savage warlords like Toecutter and Lord Humongus that we saw in the Mel Gibson Maxes. He is entirely about increasing the size of his horde while taking and consuming any resources he can find. He comes into conflict with Immortan Joe (the villain from the ‘sequel,’ Fury Road), who is more of the iron fist in the velvet glove, and one of the interesting points of this movie is how Joe seems like a reasonable administrator in contrast to Dementius. He’s an awful person, obviously, but at least he keeps the trains running on time.

Furiosa grows to adulthood caught in-between Dementius and Joe’s feud, eventually moving to escape and return to the Green Place.

Q: Is it as good as Fury Road?

A: Not quite. It has a new cinematography look that tends to give things a plasticky CGI sheen, like Attack of the Clones or something. I know that they did a lot of the effects practically and that Fury Road used a lot of CGI itself, but yo, what's the point if it looks fake?

Also, towards the end, Dementus gets into this "we're not so different, you and I" deal with Furiosa that feels like a reach, considering he hasn't seemed to be motivated by revenge at all throughout the story, just bog-standard ambition and lust for power, so trying to make him a dark mirror to Furiosa now seems like a strain for profundity.

Q: Is it woke?

A: I’d say not unless your definition of woke is so expansive that it’s basically meaningless. The themes of the movie are too universal to belong to any one political movement.

-Rapists, tyrants, and warlords are bad.

-In a radioactive wasteland, it’s good to live in a self-sufficient oasis.

-Good people try to avoid violence when possible and want to live in peace.

It does have a female protagonist, but so do Aliens, Terminator, Kill Bill, and a buttload of Michelle Yeoh movies. If you say that you’re fine with female protagonists, just not with poorly written ones, then I don’t see how that’d be a problem here.

In fact, it’s stated that the reason Furiosa is so badass is because a straight white man, Imperator Jack, saw her core toughness and mentored her. He’s not at all a simp and is treated as a paragon of masculinity—reasonable, respectful, self-controlled, and hypercompetent. He and Furiosa are in an implicitly romantic relationship.

That’s right. Furiosa is so cool because a boy fell in love with her and taught her everything she knows.

Other men help out Furiosa on her quest and some women are enthusiastically villainous. In that respect, it’s even less ‘feminist’ than Fury Road was.

Q: Okay, how’s it doing at the box office?

A: Not well.

Q: Why is that?

A: Opinions vary. Some say it’s because, despite the movie’s quality, it’s getting caught up in a backlash against ‘gender-swapped reboots’.

Q: Is it?

A: Possibly. I should note it isn’t meant as a ‘passing the torch’ ‘legacy’ ‘rebootquel’, just as a spin-off. The next movie that director George Miller wants to do is a prequel to Fury Road focusing on Mad Max, entitled The Wasteland. So this movie is more like if, between Batman movies, they made a movie about Catwoman going on a solo adventure.

Q: It can’t be doing poorly because it has a female protagonist, the most successful movie last year was Barbie!

A: You’re telling me female audiences showed up for a wacky comedy with a big showstopping musical number, but not for a gritty action movie focusing on death and revenge, despite both having female leads? It’s almost like girls like girly movies while men like manly movies (most of Furiosa’s audience is male—and I wonder how much bigger it would be if they’d advertised Imperator Jack’s presence instead of keeping it a secret).

Q: All movies are doing poorly this year!

A: Godzilla X Kong did well, as did Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Dune 2, The Beekeeper…

Q: It’s been a long time since Fury Road came out, people forgot about it!

A: It was a long time after Beyond Thunderdome that Fury Road came out.

Q: Well, people are only going to the theaters for big event movies!

A: Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy in an epic action movie follow-up to Fury Road isn’t a big event? Look, I’m not saying these aren’t factors, but I remember seeing a movie before this came out and overhearing an elderly couple looking at a poster for Furiosa and muttering, in a disgruntled fashion, words to the effect of “Oh, great, they made Mad Max a girl.” I think it’s very possible that Hollywood has killed the market for female-led action movies by making people think they’ll get a deliberately assaultive product every time they try their luck.

Q: But aren’t woke people turning consuming politicalized product into a secular religion?

A: Umm… maybe? I think most people who are fans of anything get pissed off when quality work goes ignored while slop (reality TV, Michael Bay movies, Call of Duty games, comics about Batman) get hugely appreciated. Everybody should probably not take the box office so seriously, since the important thing is that we have a fun movie to enjoy, even though it is frustrating that we could’ve had a whole trilogy of Rocketeer movies if just a few more people had bought tickets. Jennifer Connolly, in her prime, playing a thinly veiled Bettie Page!!!

Q: Then you think I should see it?

A: Yes. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, obviously, but if you like action movies or prior installments in the franchise, it’s hard for me to believe that you won’t get your money’s worth here.

Q: Does it have good disability representation?

A: Uh. I guess? It’s in the context of people having birth defects owing to radioactive fallout from nuclear war, but sure. Why not?

[azuremallone]

Why it is that people need to pressure women to meet their sense of beauty is beyond me.

This isn't just me taking a defense for Kate Beckinsale. This is me getting angry that she's forced to respond to jackasses who want her to meet their ideals. She's a person. A Human who, whatever issues there are, has needs and troubles of their own to contend with. Suffice it that she has to explain an illness and personal tragedies she'd rather keep than share; There's always a contingent of assholes and bitches just itching to shit on someone without any consideration whatsoever to their personal well being, and disguise it in a maligned sense of "trying to help."

I can look like anything or anyone I want. I'm fortunate to be a shapeshifter. Yet that too has a price. It's uncomfortable and sometimes it makes me bitchy because I'm uncomfortable. Sometimes, I don't even want to go outside because I'd rather lounge in my true form watching TV shows and movies that no critics liked. And therein, when I go outside, I choose to take on a form that's appealing to other Humans.

I don't choose to look like anyone in particular or specifically, but I do take bits and pieces of other people's appearances that I like and incorporate them into the visage I see myself as in looking like one of you. I can't hide every little bit of me being an alien, but damnit if I have to still carry a sense of "normal" beauty to simply hide amongst you and avoid people looking too closely.

No one notices the average on the short-side height pretty girl who looks way too youthful to stare at for too long lest one get looked at as being a creeper. No one wants to gaze too long at me because I intentionally look like I could be a model just to make people feel nervous but also acknowledge my presence. And it's hard work.

I can't fathom how hard it is for women who can't shapeshift. They are who they are, flaws included. A bad skin day or a medical condition that flares up and suddenly you've got everyone's attention because you look different, unappealing, or gaunt. Heaven forbid that there's evidence you've been in the hospital because OH NO! You're there for some self-induced reason!

Decide to cut your hair short and people who love it longer make comments. Let it grow and people who love it short make comments. Gain a little weight and you're fat. Lose a little weight and you're anorexic. Too pale, too dark, looking tired, looking wired? On and on and on...

If I really thought that Humans wouldn't run screaming from me and could accept my true form, my lovely prismatic bluish-white scales, Azure colored dragon-like eyes, and my rippling musculature down to the tip of my dagger-shaped tail, I'd step outside and roar at the top of my lungs. But no, I can't, because you don't. Some fucking chode will pop their fucking head out of the basement, scratching their fucking neckbeard and comment how I'm poor CGI because I don't have the right size of tits for a proper furry, look stringy and could use a burger while wearing some better done makeup.

For fucks sake, treat people of any walk of life like any other person you know for once. Doesn't matter if they're rich, poor, famous, infamous, Human or alien, vampire or werewolf, politically aligned with you or not: No one is your enemy unless you make them one. Shut the fuck up or be kind and honestly compassionate.

"Oh, Ms. Beckinsale, I'm hoping you're well and wish you improved health. If you're willing to share, we would like to understand what's troubling you. We're all here for you if you need our support. We enjoy your work, so do be well soon!"

How fucking hard is that?

No, you get, "Your cheekbones are showing, eat something."

[rei-ismyname]

From The Ashes: X-Men #5 Review

Spoilers, obviously.

A Journey to the Centre of the Mind Issue

Mambo number 5 is about as close to a bottle episode as it gets in comics, so the main question is 'does it succeed at that?' Cyclops appears briefly at the beginning and end, but he's not a main character per se. The focus is on Kwannon/Psylocke and Quentin Quire - two characters with little, if any history.

Let's assume this white lady is Kwannon, GRRR

It's nice to see Kwannon and Greycrow are still together, though he used to be a lot more attractive. I'm not talking about the weight he's gained, that's great. His facial structure is off - he looks like Kraven the Hunter. I don't think the art style is doing him any favours. They're having the same conversation they've always had so the Kwannon focus is off to a boring start. There's nothing here we haven't heard before, and she's not talking like a real person. Very writerly, like someone who's read the script and is telling us their blunt themes. Trauma stays with you and repeats itself over and over, but unless you're going laser focused on the subject you want to give us something new.

Okay that's pretty funny

Aside from that threat and Quentin saying 'kicks', nothing new here either. 20 pages is a very limited amount of space - I don't think this is the issue for using three of them to set up a smash cut joke. I'll come back to this intro. This mission is the reason these two weren't available last issue. A psychic rescue of Ben Liu, the dude they rescued in #2 and argued with Agent Lundqvist over in #3. He's in a coma and Cyclops tells them not to take their arguing into his head.

There's the 'aliens' he was projecting in #2, and Quentin thinks something is off. Kwannon is right, people usually use sign language and projection during psychic rescues/surgery. He disagrees, of course. The imagery is interesting, but again I feel like we're not learning anything new. I'd expect act 2 here to be more dense - it's a hyperfocused issue but the content is light so far.

Yes, he was experimented on. See what I mean? The art is showing the most blatant 'torturous experimentation by humans' imagery possible - is the most interesting dialogue possible to have them plainly state that? Or to have Kwannon just say she can't see something? This type of mission is an archetype at this point, so we've seen it done well before. Not just in comics either, this is a cartoon/sci-fi staple. People understand the premise, especially if you're economical in setting it up. I think it's a miscalculation to treat the new readers they're trying to hook like they need their hands held. Anyway, there's an entity of some sort - a psychic jack-in-the-box who looks and talks a lot like Cassandra Nova.

Except it straight up tells them who did the experimenting. Great security system lol, or maybe one that assumes they won't be able to tell anyone. 3K sound like overly elaborate dumbasses.

It goes straight for the jugular trauma. Quentin's fear of abandonment name checking his parents (who he accidentally killed, are we retconning that or is this his adopted parents? Probably the latter.) Also Wolverine and Phoebe, which are nice to see acknowledged as important relationships. And of course Sabertooth, who beheaded him and carried it round in a jar, using him as a tool to hurt his friends. It's both very effective and stuff he's mostly dealt with already. Maybe that's why it doesn't stop him for long. No mention of Idie, his oldest friend who's not very impressed with him? No mention of his guilt from X-Force war crimes or the hundreds of times he died? No mention of Krakoa, the loss every mutant should be feeling? Of course not.

Kwannon sees John Greycrow telling her she's wrong and killing himself, and that's it. She has wayyyy more hectic trauma than this so maybe it's fear or insecurity. Either way it feels very small - I love Greycrow and them together but she's a lot more than the relationship. She had a daughter who died, she was bodyjacked for decades, she's been terrorised by Sinister. This feels more like Greycrow's issues than hers. If this is followed up with them being super codependent then fine, it's worth the page space. Right now it feels like Quentin is the main character and Kwannon is a paper cutout. 'I can't' are words I'd expect from Quentin, but Kwannon keeps saying them this issue. If you're not doing it properly, maybe leave her outside as the anchor or something? Focus on Quentin so we get a deeper look under his hood, setup his arc for this run. Psylocke has a solo book coming after all, plenty of time to get to know her again.

Also, is that how Black Bug rooms work? The usage feels odd to me but I'm being hypercritical here. Weigh in if you know.

Quentin hears a psychic gunshot and snaps out of it. That was easy! Cassandra Nova must be losing her touch. I guess it's not the real her anyway, just an echo. Maybe she's not up to her old tricks and letting them know the name of the enemy was intentional. I doubt it, but we'll see. They use Quentin's Omega power and Psylocke's finesse on a psychic fastball special. His echoing of her threat to him as support is a serviceable callback, but it foregrounds Quentin again. Simultaneously too much and not enough, though at least it justifies her presence on this mission.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Is it just me or is that a shitload of blood on the ground? This is the last page, directly following the one I showed above it. Here's what we learned

- Benny Boy is awake.

- 3K are responsible for the adult X-Gene activations.

- On baseline humans, which might recontextualise a thing or two.

- Cassandra Nova is involved.

So a bunch of dipshits dug up an old villain for the fourth time and borrowed a scheme from the Ultimate Universe. Why? How? It'd be good to get Beast or Scott's reaction to that, but there's no room. There wasn't even enough room to show how Kwannon learnt this, but it's a pretty reasonable deduction. My earlier question was 'does it succeed at being a psychic rescue issue?' Just barely. It checks all the boxes but left a lot on the shelf. It took too long to get to act 1 for Kwannon beats that weren't worth it IMO. Yeah I want to know about her but having too broad a focus meant we arguably learnt more about Greycrow than her. We learnt nothing new about Quentin. The psychic rescue was setup last issue, I think starting in media res would have freed up 5-6 pages to put some meat on those bones.

X-Men comics have a long standing tension between new and established readers. 'Every comic is somebody's first' is admirable, but the patience of established readership is finite. I don't think it succeeds well at either, to be frank, and it feels like that tension is a factor. I think at some point you just have to tell the best story possible, otherwise we're left asking 'who is this for?' That's capitalism for you, always chasing growth often at the expense of creativity.

Also, KWANNON LOOKS FUCKING WHITE. She's Japanese. Do better, FFS.

I don't really vibe with numerical ratings, so I'll just say that X-Men issue 5 is totally skippable. The information will be mentioned again and the journey wasn't executed very well. What a shame. The art is okay, consistent with every other issue of this title, except for the whitewashing. It's got a lot of choices I don't love but I suspect they come from editorial (Quent and Cyclops' ages etc.) Thanks for reading.

[scullysflannel]

I really do think having to watch the Doctor host a happy little backyard dinner party hammered home how uninterested I am in emotional stability on Doctor Who. Donna is my favorite companion and the Tenth Doctor era was the peak of my obsession, but the idea that this should mean I want to see them “happy forever” is so boring as a tv fan and so insidious in the context of this specific show, which has been built on the inevitability of change for 60 years. the thing about Doctor Who is that it’s optimistic and aimed at children and endless and therefore full of loss. it has to be both. and not to be presumptuous, because I understand that Russell T. Davies is grieving his husband, but in the long run I would think anyone who’s grieving will get more out of watching the Doctor carry on and find new people to care about than they will out of watching a fantasy where the Doctor regresses to an old face and magically gets a second chance with a friend he once lost.

in the language of the show, this happiness isn’t just narratively cheap but also kind of terrifying. this is the kind of thing we see in dream sequences that are killing the characters slowly. watching the show do it for real (unless we're really in for a surprise) is unnerving. it also asks us to forget something fundamental about Tennant’s Doctor: that no matter how human he seemed, he wasn’t. the tragedy that energizes his story is that he’s so close to the life he thinks he wants and he can’t have it. and it’s a two-way tragedy, for both him and his companion, because at different points they both believe the lie he’s telling himself (that he’s basically human), only to be hit with the reminder that he’s still so alien. he wants to not have to watch his friends grow old and die without him. he doesn’t want a mortgage.

what makes Tennant’s Doctor interesting is that his humanity also comes with a god complex: cruelty, pettiness, callousness, cluelessness, ego. he loves Rose, but he likes the idea of settling down with her more because it’s unattainable. and Donna — she was going to travel with him forever! he took her away from a boring life. it’s nice that she’s happy with the life she has now, even if it undercuts the tragedy that made her original ending so visceral, but I think making her so settled that she even domesticates the Doctor is overcompensating. it’s sanding down that tension again — that great tension between romanticizing everyday things like getting a taxi home and romanticizing running away from a life that makes you feel unimportant. again, the show has to be both. all the best dynamics in Doctor Who, at least new Who, are the ones that treat traveling with the Doctor as a kind of addiction; you have to feel the intoxication of it in order for the pain to hit.

on that note, I don’t get the suggestion that Donna could have given up her metacrisis energy this whole time and that Tennant’s Doctor just doesn’t understand that because he’s male presenting. Donna is the one who didn’t give it up 15 years ago. if she always could have given up that power, then the only explanation for why she didn’t is that she couldn’t bear to go back to being “ordinary,” and of course the Tenth Doctor, who can't let anything go (“I don’t want to go”), would never think to let it go either. it’s about personality. the idea that it all comes down to the Doctor’s current gender presentation is a bleak vision of regeneration, where everything one regeneration experiences, in terms of how their body affects their privilege, is immediately forgotten once they change. Fourteen isn’t exactly Ten, but bringing back Tennant as the Doctor and treating him like Ten (who moved through the world with the privilege of a white man) meant that the show didn’t really get to explore the aftermath of the Doctor presenting as a woman. am I meant to believe that their experience taught them nothing? rude to Jodie! and does that imply that everything Ncuti’s Doctor is about to experience isn’t going to affect how future Doctors understand race at all? isn’t that sad?

all this in an episode that doesn’t even mention Martha! the show’s first Black companion is now the only Tenth Doctor companion who doesn’t get her own personal Doctor, and they can’t even say her name. it’s been said on here before, but this isn’t about whether Martha would “want” her own Doctor (he’s her friend! I think she’d want to see him, although as this post puts it, she’d “rehome him within a week”). she’s a fictional character. it’s worth asking why Martha Jones was written in such a way that when she gets ignored, people will rise up to defend it as a sign of her independence. 

and it's unfair that Ncuti didn't get the normal regeneration sequence. even his TARDIS is a duplicate. the bi-generation feels like it leaves the door open for people to treat Ncuti’s Doctor as less legitimate. granted, those people would probably take any excuse, so you can't write for them. but as fun as it was to see the two Doctors team up (they should kiss), and as much as Ncuti is serving already, he shouldn't have had to share the spotlight. at minimum the bi-generation should have resolved by the end of the episode. now David Tennant is just looming out there until who knows when. also, the thing about sending Fourteen off to “deal with his trauma” is that it implies that Fifteen already did that, and I don't want that. the Doctor has to be haunted. what is Doctor Who about if not running from your past at warp speed? yeah, Ncuti’s Doctor should be at the club, but regeneration always gives the Doctor enough of a fresh start to have fun for a few episodes before the horrors hit; I don’t think he needed to be fully healed before hitting the club. 

when Jodie’s era kicked off we spent every week waiting for her to snap. full disclosure, I haven’t seen the Flux season, which apparently put her through it, but I don’t think her Doctor was ever allowed access to the full range of personality flaws that other Doctors have, which was unfair to her and also less fun to watch. I don’t want to see that happen to Ncuti’s Doctor; he deserves to be burdened, prideful, angry, rude, whatever. we can’t let the Doctor fall victim to the therapy-speak epidemic on television. he should get to be alien, and I want to see him snap.

[snekdood]

anyways

@sprinkledsalt

I literally showed up in two, you make plenty of other posts like this I dont engage with in this way. I dont believe generalizations are helpful and only alienate the people you're generalizing. if you wanna reach men, dont treat them all like they're the same guy and just as likely to do some shit as the kind of guys you're talking about. You dont have to make posts that say "not all men", but you also dont have to expect men to want to engage w something if they feel like they're being grouped in with the type of men you're talking about. You brought up the shooter statistics, so I wanted to start there since thats where you wanted to start.

We can talk about all the horrible things that (usually cis white) men do, but at the end of the day, are we attacking men as like a group or should we be attacking an ideology instead? because it often seems like people are just saying men as a whole are irredeemable trash and not giving any real options for how things could even change to begin with. endlessly critiquing isnt useful when theres not action to take.

I have no outrage towards you at all. The only reason I commented on this post is bc ik for a fact you specifically reblogged it bc of my tags on your other post. I wasn't gonna make a big deal out of it just wanted to share my like one sentence thought in the tags and otherwise had 0 issues with your post. But you reblogged this and if theres anything I hate more than anything its people who cant just be direct, so I decided to make it direct. The only outrage I have rn in regards to you is how you like to do shit indirectly.

If I felt like a person of color was trying to reach people but kept acting like white people were the bane of reality, then yeah, I might say something. if they're just making a personal post, then im not gonna say anything. your other post seemed like something you wanted shared.

and of course you have no answers. so why bring it up? I never said it was your responsibility, but if you ever wanna toss some fuckin ideas in the ring instead of endlessly critiquing like I said we're all ears over here.

[quite-right-too]

Prompt: “ Time. It’s the only thing you can never get back.”

Time. It's the only thing you can never get back.

His head pounded as the Doctor gripped his hair, face pinched in immense pain as golden tendrils in his consciousness were pulled taut. His body was hunched over itself, barely able to stay sitting up, as he sat on the couch next to Rose.

She tried to help him the best she could, but they only knew so much about how the human-Time Lord metacrisis had affected him. This was not something either of them could have expected.

The white hot pained zipped through him, painful memories from the Time Lord Doctor pushing through not only space and time, but dimensions as well.

Once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they died. They all died.

He couldn't breathe. His lungs weren't able to pull in oxygen fast enough as he fought the spasming in his diaphragm. He began to tear at his shirt, hands shaking as he struggled to remove the constricting article of clothing from his body. Buttons flew to the floor as he finally succeeded in getting the scratchy fabric off his chest.

The Laws of Time are mine, and they will obey me!

"Oh my god, Doctor!"

Rose's words echoed through his head, yet still sounded so far away.

We're fighting time itself. And I'm going to win! 

"Rose-" he rasped, hand blindly reaching for hers. "Rose I-"

Her hand grabbed his, squeezing with all her might.

"It's gonna be okay. It'll be okay. You're going to be okay, Doctor."

 I'm the winner. That's who I am. The Time Lord Victorious. 

He coughed, blood spitting out onto the floor. "Rose, I can't breathe."

His single, human heart began to race. His chest was burning and he felt like his ribcage was being split in two. This wasn't a simple human illness or injury.

This was much more sinister than that.

I could do so much more. So much more!

"Pete, please. Somethin's wrong with the Doctor. He can't breathe. There's blood and-"

He could barely register the panic in Rose's voice as he tried to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. Sticky, red blood smeared along his hand as he began trying desperately to run whatever diagnostics he could run. Human body or not, he still had a Time Lord brain and he intended to use it.

But this is what I get. My reward. And it's not fair!

An ambulance pulled up to their flat, rushing in as the Doctor fell to the floor. Paramedics quickly attached all kinds of leads to him as they loaded him onto the gurney. He was wracked with a fit of coughs, his eyes began to frantically search for Rose, unfocused and afraid.

She had never seen him so human.

2005. Tell you what. I bet you're going to have a really great year. 

Arriving at the hospital, doctors from Torchwood were the first to meet them in the ambulance bay. Reminders of the Doctor's alien existence ran through her head. 'Was this the cause of all this,' she wondered.

"The readings are abnormal, we need to get him to a CT now." The doctors treating her Doctor were plentiful as they did their best to calculate exactly what was happening.

The universe will sing you to your sleep.

"Wait," he groaned, his voice strained from coughing. Rose gripped his hand when he fumbled by the edge of the bed. "Rose, he's-" More bloody coughs. "He's regenerating. I think I'm..." He trailed off as monitors began beeping rapidly.

"No, please!" Rose screamed, refusing to move from his side. "Doctor, please! Don't go!"

This song is ending, but the story never ends.

"My head." The Doctor sobbed as his heart beat impossibly fast, nearly mimicking his previous double heartbeat. "It's killing me."

"I love you," Rose cried as his consciousness began to fade. "Please, Doctor, I love you."

Weakly, he turned his head to look at her. "Rose Tyler-"

The sentence ended there. His face relaxed, pupils blown wide. Official cause of death would be a sudden brain aneurysm. Rose Tyler knew that the real cause was in another universe with another face.

And she was alone again.

I don't want to go. 

Time. It's the only thing you can never get back.

Send me a sentence prompt and I’ll write you a TenRose ficlet!

[thebitchkingofangmar]

Back in the beginning of May of 2024 I took a masterclass on Tolkien's mythopoeia. It was given by a Tolkien scholar, translator and consultant for adaptation projects on Tolkien's work. The focus of the workshop was the study the creation of the Fantastical Myth in Tolkien as a source of knowledge. Mythopoeisis as an epidemiologic act of literary creation. I ate it up.

However, there's one thing that the lecturer said that comes back to me every now and then which mildly enrages me whenever I remember it. He said he was always taken aback by Tolkien's popularity in places that shared nothing of Tolkien's irl culture or worldview. That is to say, outside of England and Europe. He was amazed how Tolkien was read and related with too. Naturally, the man was white and European himself.

This is why it annoys me so much: do white Tolkien scholars think other places in the world do not have a countryside? That the Hobbits could only be envisioned by someone who was deeply tied to the English countryside? When I think of hard labouring people who love their land around them and eat six meals a day I don't think about Hobbits first, I don't think about the English countryside, I think about my own. That there is no such thing as an universal culture doesn't mean there are plenty of common places that different cultures have arrived to in vastly different ways. I agree that there is no other like Tolkien, in the sense that he was able to do what he did, and his work has the value that is has, because of the specific material circumstances surrounding him. His way of engaging with the world and engaging with it through Fantastical Creation is not unique to him, but in the western literary canon he is the precursor of it in a way his moderns imitators (not people inspired by him! imitators!) cannot carry that tradition forward. But even the extremely specific circumstances that made Tolkien Tolkien, are not unique to him. Sometimes, it seems to me like white Tolkien scholars and white Tolkien fans think that because of his cultural commonality with him there are no other places who also draw to the feeling of eucatharsis of hope, the wish for the dawn to come, the last stands for the sake of what is right in the wake of your world being destroyed, alien powers that seem all powerful, older than you, bigger than you, destroying your land and your culture and the bonds between your people.

How is surprising to any of them that Tolkien is read in China, in Latin America? In Africa, by indigenous people, by mixed people, by people of colour* and then related to? How are people surprised we're still able to see ourselves in Tolkien's mythopoeia despite all their tries to kick us out, or their frankly offensive surprise that we relate to it? Sure, Fangorn would not exist without Tolkien's fascination with trees, nature and the English woods. I come from the same place as Valdivian Temperate Forests and the Altiplanic Andes with their majestic condors. I do not need to think about eagles in the UK to imagine Manwë's. I do not need to think about English woods to think about the forests of middle earth. Yavanna grows corn like both mesoamerican peoples and the Incas** and I'm supposed to not see myself there? These are just a couple of examples from my own background, but I know every Tolkien fan/enthusiast/scholar of colour will be able to easily draw their own. We see them in the fandom all the time.

Tolkien was neither your conservative uncle nor a secret progressive. He was a guy, with a non-cohesive belief system like most of us have, who explicitly said and left in writing to stop treating his work as allegoric auto-biography because it was not. This is my opinion, but his letters shouldn't be used to pick apart 'the true meaning' of his work in the way they are sometimes***. People should stop focusing on the 'mythology for England' letter, taking it grossly out of context, and start reading his essays on the fantastical, philology and literary epistemology of myths because they are FAR more relevant to understanding him than his personal thoughts. Also (and I will word it rudely) for a bunch of crackers so stuck in 'honouring' his legacy, which truly just means defending your own white fragility and selfishness, they are the first ones to do exactly what Tolkien himself asked people to not do with his work.

Of course, the lecturer wasn't one of said crackers. Aside from this and another opinion he expressed that is not relevant to this post, the man was a delight. This was one of the highlights of my 2024, even. Still, he carried the accident of his birth and the accident of the culture he carried as a white European like a naive threshold to his own amazement, rather than using it to open himself to what these other cultures could bring to the table in this specific matter.

The world is vaster than our pre-conceived ideas. It doesn't matter if Tolkien meant to write brown people into his work or not, because more often than not, he wasn't the one making it about race, even if some obviously racist ideas which are products of his time he could not get past. If universal to these people means homogenous, means 'same' as in identical, then that is their problem. Not one of Tolkien's work, not one of its fans/enthusiasts/scholars of colour.

*I am using the same demographic examples he used. **Using 'Inca' instead of the multiple denominations for the Tahuantinsuyu and its different ethnicities bc its simpler. ***Not talking about the literary criticism (discipline) done by scholars of colour regardless of whether I agree with it or no. Do whatever you want besties.