#without also commercialising it

[thewomanwithmissingfingers]

Locate one artist and you will find ten critics lurking about in the bushes nearby. Your videos are thoughtful and your opinions both very genuinely and interestingly presented. It actually sets them apart from many of the rather bland and overly sanitized sorts that make up much of the niche.

But, One is encouraged to look for constructive criticism. Perhaps ask your critics to read something worth analysis and make a video doing an analysis to show you how to "correctly" go about it? I mean surly someone expert enough to feel the need to attack and belittle your artistic expression must simply be more seasoned in the art and trying to help? I mean, humanity is so lovely I doubt anyone would be saying negative things just to be a twat eh?

yes humanity indeed is very lovely and meaningful and true… i feel these judgements come from a place of not having created such themselves, so that the act itself appears much easier and more diluted than it is.

but thank you, i’m really not an expert myself in exposing my self and my thoughts to the public and don’t ask for criticism for that fact. i don’t try to appeal to all possible viewers, otherwise i would have taken up a position on ‘booktok.’

but it’s raining & cold outside & i feel sad

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Hi Ixi!

I know this doesn't directly concern Good Omens, but it's really important. Instagram/Meta has sneakily started auto-opting people in to surrendering all their data for generative AI training two weeks back. I don't have any reach, so I thought I'd try to send an ask to you in order to warn as many people as possible. Everyone who still has content (new or old) on Meta services would be affected by this, I think. Whether a profile is private or not does not matter - the only content they say they aren't touching yet is DMs.

The only options are to either force them to delete all your data and close the accounts, or opting out. Opting out is made to be deliberately annoying and may not even be available everywhere.

If it is, here's a short guide to do so: You should be able to find a message from Meta in your notifications saying something to the effect of 'we will feed you to our AI models'. Click on it, then click on 'right to object' in the text. Fill out the form. I don't think it really matters what one writes - in most places, they are required by law to honour the objection. It might help to have something to copy, so I freestyled this and it worked: "I object to my data being used to train generative AI in accordance with all applicable data protection laws. This is a gross invasion of privacy. I do not consent to my likeness being commercialised by you. You have no right to use this data as AI training data without my consent."

If the email with the verification OTP (one-time-password) doesn't arrive, switch off browser protection, try a different browser or a different email address. Gmail worked for me. The request is linked to the currently-logged-in Insta account, so the address used isn't relevant. If all goes well, you will receive an email at the OTP email address a few seconds later saying you've been opted out. That's it!

I hope you'll see this and that it can help people out, especially considering the sizeable artist community here on Tumblr.

Thank you!

-- Fuchurial

Hiya! :) Yeah. :( Also if mail didn't come for you :):

objection insta link

objection facebook link

[kutputli]

Louis the "Pimp": A Rebuke and Rebuttal

OK, IWTV fandom, I have been made aware that some (many) of you are genuinely not aware of some of the anti sex work implications of your statements around Louis and pimping, so -

First of all, some ground level assumptions: I am assuming we are all pro sex workers here. Which means that we all believe in the right for adults to consent to commercial sexualised labour, and to demand ethical working conditions just like any other worker. Sex work is work etc.

Now, that stance can and must coexist with the acknowledgement that sex work has both historically and currently been coerced from marginalised communities. In my part of the world, hereditary caste based sexual enslavement is an on-going atrocity, and similarly, in the United States Black enslaved people was disproportionatey victims of commercialised sexual abuse. (This is RELEVENT to Armand and Louis so it behoves everyone to inform themselves about these realities.)

What I'm saying now comes from the scholarship and testimonies of sex workers themselves, who have always been at the forefront of advocating for themselves as communities and unions. You can and should read through the publications of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects to ground yourself in these perspectives.

The idea that its ok to be a sex worker, but that a client or a pimp or a brothel owner deserves contempt, shaming or derison is an old one, associated with the dichotomy of pitable fallen women vs dispicable emasculated men (emasculated because of the patriarchal shame of a) paying for sex and b) living off of a woman's labour). This has manifested in what is known as the Nordic model (or, hypocritically, the Equality Model) of Prostitution, where sex workers themselves are deemed nominally free to practise their trade, but clients and third parties (pimps, managers, brothel owners) are criminalised. There is unambiguous peer-reviewed data showing the failure of this approach to protecting sex workers from harm, and almost every sex worker union has denounced it.

So now let's talk about this cultural and legal contempt and criminalisation of the third party, and specifically, the pimp figure. Unlike the brothel owner, the pimp is more often from a similar class and identity as the sex worker, often sharing the same living and working spaces. Pimps are often sex workers allies and collegeaues. They provide an interface between the client and the sex worker that can help screen them for safety and security, and the remove the additional burden of soliciting and marketing from the sex worker's labour.

And because it is important to talk about specifics, a pimp in marginalised communities of sex workers is often a brother, a father, or a lover to the sex worker who faces the same casteism, racism and classism that she does. He is often the father of the sex worker's child. In India, for example, even though prostitution itself is not criminal, any adult male living with a prostitute is assumed to be guilty of being a pimp unless he can prove otherwise, and can face imprisonment of up to 2 years with a fine. One of the demands of unionised sex workers, including those in India, has been to decriminalised pimping along with sex work, not just because pimps make it safer and easier for sex workers to get clients without having to actively solicit, but also because such criminalisation actively harms family units.

Of course, there are pimps who can be abusive and exploitative. This is true of any professional relationship, and this is also true of people in romantic and sexual relationships (like marriage). But to deem a pimp inherently as an abuser carries a lot of anti sex work and racist and classist baggage with it.

Why racist (and classist and casteist etc)? Because the men with capital were (and are) not often pimps. They are landlords and investors, who ran brothels and saloons and massage parlours and dance bars and other sites where sexual labour was commercialised. To denigrate a man for being a pimp as somehow worse than being the owner of a sweatshop or farm is a way of jeering at the men who have not been able to buy themselves the luxury of distance from the exploitation they profit from. And the men of capital were and are, overwhelmingly, those from the dominant identity (White. Savarna. etc.)

So NOW, with all that necessary context in mind, let's talk about Louis and what it means when fandom firstly calls him a pimp, and then second sneers at him for his perceived behavior as one.

You know who first calls Louis a pimp?

Daniel Molloy, a white man being the brash, confrontational journalist that he has the luxury of being.

Louis accurately describes his profession managing and operating a diversified portfolio of entireprises. This translates to investing his family's sizeable trust into real estate (he owns 8 out of 24 buildings on Liberty Street) and running establishments that make money from selling liquor, organised gambling and sex work. Just as not many Black men would have been in a position of power to make a profit from a sugar plantation as Louis' great grandfather did, not many Black men would have had the capital (and the business acumen) to own and operate a series of businesses that included sex work. Infact we see him collecting his profits from a white man who was closer to the pimp role - Finn.

Reducing this to calling him a pimp is the first of many racist microaggressions we will watch Daniel make. As someone who indulged in some kind of sex work himself, one might say some of Daniel's hostility is self-loathing. Nonetheless, there is a racialised element in his contempt towards both Louis and Armand that, I would theorise, comes from the distinction made between a white, educated man choosing to recreationally whore himself for drugs, and a Black man who earned a living from other people's sex work, or a Brown man who is perceived as a rent boy.

We then get to the idea of denigrating Louis' pimp-like behavior. First of all, let's look at Louis as the employer and manager of sex workers. Everything we have seen about him shows him to be courteous, considerate, and professional. His guilt at the entire situation of how sex work operates aside (and we can agree that it must have been exploitative and even abusive in general, and that he was complicit in such a system, as any capitalist is) - MOST importantly, we never see Louis doing the thing that patriarchy really resents a pimp for - sampling the goods for free. We never see him use his power over the sex workers he employs to get favours.

In fact he makes it clear that he visits Miss Lily precisely because she is part of a different establishment, and that both of them being Black in a majority white situation places them on a more equal footing. Watching Louis with Miss Lily, both is how he is with her sexually as well as socially, gives you the clearest evidence of how he behaves around sex workers he is having a relationship with. (Contrast that to Lestat, who buys her time and body as an act of one-upmanship with no concern for her preference, and then who kills her out of jealousy.)

So - Was Louis a pimp? No. Was Louis an abusive pimp? Also No.

Then why does the fandom continue to deploy this term in relationship to him?

It's racism, your honour. (The answer is almost always racism.)

To unpack this, lets jump forward from the 1910s where, again I remind you - very very few Black men in the United States were in any position to operate as fashionable brother owners with wealth to spare.

We now move to the 1980s, when one (but not the only!) sub-genre of rap was evolving - gangsta rap. In this sub-genre, Black musical artists like Too Short and Ice T were creating and more pertinently making accessible to white America, the signifier of the Black pimp figure. This drew from 1960s Black culture-making around West Coast pimps like Iceberg Slim, but also from an older storytelling tradition that linked the figure of the pimp with the archetype of the trickster. I'm not going to cite the wealth of literature you can find that theorises this, (nor defensively provide the mass of nuanced critique that Black feminists have offered) because the limited point I wish to make is -

When white America began enjoying (and appropriating) rap and hip-hop culture, one of the tropes it started perpetuating with the shallowest of understanding of its origins, was that of the specifically Black pimp. A figure who displayed wealth, but without (white-signifying) class, who was sexually active in a racialised hypermasculine way, but both a threat to women and contemptibly a leech off them.

THIS is the pimp archetype that is being evoked when fandom talks about Louis's 'pimp'ness.

It is racist. It is ahistorical and canonically unfactual.

It is also needlessly contemptuous of the sex workers (labourers and third parties alike) who are part of the community here on tumblr, so often praised as one of the spaces that is friendly to them.

Maybe think about all of that the next time you choose to use the word 'pimp'.

[jennyandvastraflint]

Would love to hear more about your thoughts on the commercialisation of fandom!!

Ooooh, boy you've opened a can of worms. I took a Fan Studies course at uni for a module bc I could choose it, and I did a lot of research into this specific topic... I hope it's okay that I'm just putting in some of my slides and then summarising underneath each!

Now, fandom in, for instance, fan fiction spaces, works on the basis of a Gift Economy in which gifts rather than money are exchanged. However, these gifts aren't just meant for one person, but for many, and even when you for instance do an artwork or a fanfic for someone, other people can still ALSO read it. These gifts can (but don't have to) be responded to with another gift, be it a comment on a fic, or a fic in return. Now, I could go into much more detail here, but I recommend checking out for instance this text by Trisha Turk on the TWC for some more in-depth stuff about this. (I'll list all the sources I used in the presentation in the end btw!) The gist of it is that fandom is a very complex system in which the reciprocation of gifts - and therefore labour - is distributed across the community.

(more under the cut)

HOWEVER capitalism, as always, comes along and tries to ruin things for profit.

Fandoms continue to form because of the unrestricted movement and no one dictating what is well, "really" canon and what isn't. I'm sure you've witnessed some fans in more recent years refusing to ship things that "won't become canon anyway", positioning the canonicity of a ship or a scenario higher than... well, their own critical reflection and interpretation OF the media and their own creative endeavours. At the end of the day, canon for me personally is something to draw on, negotiate with, or reject if it's stupid, while more recent fandoms I've seen sometimes go about their engagement with fandom as a sort of... worshipping of canon almost, and where being noticed by the creators is sort of the ultimate goal.

Now, this is of course connected to corporations realising that hey, actually people engaging with our media and creating something about it bring in numbers, and with them being able to make a profit off of views on social media, they seek to drive certain forms of engagement with the content. However, they are of course seeking to police HOW you engage with things, and don't you dare stray from their vision too much. This, of course, harms especially marginalised communities who propose alternative readings of media, who subvert the show itself and who transform it into something else, adding themselves into the work and into a world where, by design, they were invisible. It's also an attempt to undermine fan activism and grassroots organising by fans (if you wanna hear more about fan activism shoot me another ask and I will ramble <3 edit: link to post about fan activism) by keeping them in line with a sterilised version of fandom. In this sterilised and controlled version, the forms most often encouraged are things like video edits (but don't be too out there, that's bad too) that can be consumed like content by fandom... They like video edits, sterilised fanart, and things that are easily consumed and bring numbers, but "don't you dare write that nasty Spirk fanfiction where they have sex in the captain's chair! Ewww, yuck yuck!"

Rather than having a fandom driven by community, you have one driven by consumption, and that has become increasingly clear in the past few years, with readers on fan fiction asking "When next chapter?", pressuring artists, writers, etc. for more 'content' for them to consume without a) participating in the Gift Economy fandom is built upon and b) realising that these fan works are gifts to the community in the first place, and not content... These are, by the way, often the same fans who will cheer on AI because now they can finally read a story they wanted someone to continue :D Instead of using their own fucking brain, they're asking a bot trained on scraping works to produce them some bad, surface level jumble of words just so they can consume, consume, endlessly consume without ever having to think.

A few years ago (well in like, the late 2000s), a site called FanLib wanted to profit off of the resale of fanfiction, but were quickly shut down. Their mistake was that they mistook the community of fandom for a commodity to exploit for their own commercial interests. I'm not sure you've seen it, but Wattpad has sent authors emails asking them to update their fics frequently because it would appease the algorithm (see Tumblr Post about this here), which leads me to my next little point!

Algorithms! If you have ever done fan edits and posted them on sites like TikTok, Instagram, etc., you'll have noticed that... unless you post regularly and frequently (like. one edit a day at least), the algorithm will NOT push your video at all and it will be buried. Algorithms are based on how well a post performs not in terms of actual community that is built, but of course on numbers. Wattpad also functions on an algorithmic principle, which is why you have some........ individuals coming to AO3 and complaining about the supposed algorithm, spamming their work and reposting it, yadda yadda. Basically, these fans are so used to being spoonfed by an algorithm by now, they are confused when they are actually left on their own and are supposed to learn some basic fandom rules. It's honestly frightening to see fandom not only be reduced to this surface level interaction and to number-based algorithmic systems, but also to the trend-hopping TikTokification of fandom.

A study done by Booth and Dare-Edwards published in 2021 that focused on school age children basically came to the following conclusions... Children still connect "fan" with the same stereotypes of obsessive and unruly individuals that were plaguing us thirty years ago. A whole bunch of children think fandom is a thing of the past and that it peaked in the early 2000s - and while fandom of course is different now and has changed with the spread of the internet, fandom very much still is A Thing. Further, children connected fandom and being a fan mostly with buying merchandise and collecting, and also with plain consuming content, echoing "neo-liberal associations of ‘emotion’ with ‘buying power’, but at the same time, seemed to pathologize those who practice fandom (as they see it) ‘too much’" (Booth and Dare-Edwards 230). The text concludes that while there has been an explosion of media and you are becoming more multi-facetted in what you are a fan of, lilypad hopping and essentially abandoning fandoms after a brief period of surface level engagement and consuming content is increasingly becoming more common. From my own experience, this is for instance the case with shows like Willow (2022), Good Omens(ish), etc. Pretty much anything more recent doesn't have as stable a fanbase and if you enter the fandom a month too late it's already fizzing out. It's really fucked up, honestly.

Right, after that long tangent about this, I want to bring up ancillary models, which is an attempt by capitalist companies to market the previously unwanted Gift Economy of fandom as something new and desirable, but something they are in control of.

Ancillary Content Models try to lure fans in with "free" Behind-the-Scenes content. The guise they have stolen from fandom of acting like a Gift Economy of saying "here, this is for all our dedicated fans <3 Consume :D" is used to downplay the commercial infrastructure these Content Models (honestly it's already in the name). The "gifted" content is more concerned with getting loads of people to individually consume as much of it as possible to create an alternative revenue on for instance social media through views, clicks, likes, etc. They're essentially trying to commercialise our viewing time and keep us engaged with that additional content as much as possible. Rather than having a community that comes together to share their ideas and stories around a metaphorical campfire, Ancillary Content Models want each person alone to sit and stare at the stuff they put out as much as possible, always placidly clicking "like" and demanding more. They also want to cultivate an "official" fan community (aka the ones most dedicated to consuming additional content) that they can monitor and control, and they don't encourage anything that's too... out there, too subversive, too queer, etc. Coined "re-gifting economy" by Suzanne Scott, capitalism with these Ancillary Content Models has warped the Gift Economy fandom functions on into a model that equates consumption with community, and which wants to profit off of fans' engagement and their free labour of making viral TikTok edits that adhere to the sterilised version of what a fan "should be". The example I used in my presentation for this is from The Dragon Prince, which, while I do love the show, has been pushing such Ancillary Content Models. They also have a Discord (which is regulated and monitored) as their "official fan community" place, and not only are the rules pretty strict, but it also just... doesn't feel like a community but just like a bunch of people wanting more content gathered in one place :/

Now, to conclude this, capitalism sucks and is trying to ruin fandom communities in order to replace them with something they can make some more money of, and rather than having a critical fanbase that questions things, they want one that endlessly consumes the "free" content they churn out. Stay active in fandom, remember we're a Gift Economy, learn the fandom rules, and keep hating capitalism <3

Fan Work: Labor, Worth and participation in Fandom's gift economy by Trisha Turk

Now, the sources I have used for this...

Repackaging fan culture: The regifting economy of ancillary content models by Suzanne Scott

Stanfill, Mel. “The Fan Fiction Gold Rush, Generational Turnover, and the Battle for Fandom’s Soul.” The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, edited by Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott, New York, 2017, pp. 77-79.

"No one's a fan of anything anymore, this isn't 2002.": Surveying 7–17-year-olds on being a fan and contemplating the future of fandom. by Paul Booth and Helena Louise Dare-Edwards

[theflintwarlock]

I met someone yesterday who was selling fancy grimoires and dipping ink pens and she said to me "you can't have a grimoire without the right stationary" and I know she was trying to sell me a product but I wanted to talk about it because this is something I see echoed in other aspects of the Witchcraft community:

The idea that Witchcraft has to have a certain level of aesthetic value in order to be valid. This is often also tied into capitalism and buying witchy products, but it can also be something as simple as using a fancy notebook rather than a regular or home-made one for your grimoire/book of shadows.

This is Bullshit.

You can practice Witchcraft without spending any money, by using the products you already own and making and growing what you need. Recycled jars are not inherently less magical than pretty jars with corks you buy in a metaphysical shop. A grimoire in a regular ass notebook is not less magical than one in a leather bound book written in oak gawl ink. A crystal you bought is not necessarily better than a crystal you found at the beach or a river. A spell bag sewn yourself from fabric scraps is not less magical than a spell bag you bought for that purpose. In fact I'd argue in the latter case that sewing it yourself is far better than buying things you have little connection to.

It is important that we de-commercialise our practice, to show working class, disabled and disadvantaged baby witches that Witchcraft is not something you buy. It is something you practice.

[tozettastone]

I'm casting an AU where the Akatsuki work in an office together.

Nagato and Konan comprise 51% ownership together. Nagato is CEO, Konan's COO so you know who does most of the work. They're not actually married but everyone thinks they are. They just trauma bonded after the tragic loss of the guy they were both dating. Konan talked him out of naming himself 'PAIN' but he does have a giant tattoo about it.

Kakuzu is the director of corporate affairs. He's a control freak about it.

Deidara and Sasori are the two man marketing department. Deidara doesn't believe in strategic vision; Sasori loses his mind when he has to alter his plans. It's going... not great. Together they are absolutely amazing at crisis management though. And Deidara loves crisis management.

Itachi is the head of legal. He used his family's money to get the fanciest law degree on the planet but had a falling out with them after his entry to the bar about the allegedly unethical source of their wealth. He still works for Akatsuki, which isn't exactly a nonprofit.

Kisame is Itachi's common law partner who is a... private contractor, who is employed on an ad-hoc basis by Akatsuki for specific professional services. He mostly takes gym selfies and sends them to Itachi to get him through each bonkers day. But some days, he charges tens of thousands to go to work for 3 hours. He's good at his job.

Orochimaru used to be the head of R&D but now he's left the company and has embroiled them in a litigious tangle about intellectual property in the commercialisation of his research. Itachi's predecessor was ousted ("ousted") over the hole in his contract, and now they're trying really hard to patch it up. It's not going great.

Hidan is the receptionist. If you canvas businesses to try to sell to them, or if you show up without an appointment, Hidan is there to take very, very good care of you. He's also carrying on with Kakuzu ("boyfriend," would be pushing it) but it's not really affecting his enthusiasm for his work.

Obito/Tobi: intern and general dogsbody, but he's also a 9% shareholder. He does not really need to work here. He's choosing this.

Zetsu shows up once a week to water the office plants. They're mostly lilies.

What, you might ask, does this company actually do? Well. Akatsuki has... a variety of interests. Waste management. Wealth management. Risk mitigation. You know. This and that.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“The overwhelming majority of women sign up to surrogacy because of poverty, and financial coercion is not a choice. The surrogacy industry is simply the reproductive brothel.

But what about those women that do genuinely offer their womb for use by an infertile couple or individual, an altruistic rather than commercial surrogacy? What right do I or any feminist have to say that she should not be allowed or able to do that? As with prostitution, I would never tell women that they don’t have a right to do what they wish with their bodies, but I do feel I have not just a right but an imperative to name and deter those who create the demand for surrogacy. Yes, a minority of women do enter into a surrogacy arrangement without being coerced by either poverty or an exploiter. But such women are, like the happy hooker, atypical. Laws and policy are not made for the tiny minority, and laws also send out a messages to wider society. The choice argument applied to surrogacy is a neoliberal one, in that those supporting the practice look only at the individuals who benefit directly from it, as opposed to the effect that commercialisation of women’s wombs has on wider society generally and women’s status specifically.”

- Julie Bindel, Feminism for Women

[chasingshadowsblog]

"I've seen suffering in the darkness. Yet I have seen beauty thrive in the most fragile of places." - History, Culture and Identity in Cartoon Saloon's Irish Mythology Trilogy

Written accounts of Irish history and culture only begin to appear from the 5th century onwards and what came before we are left to piece together from archaeological remains whose meanings and motivations we can only guess at. What is clear, though, is that during that broad stretch of time between the Early Mesolithic and Late Iron Age, a distinctly Irish identity had been established and cultivated through by the craftsmen, artists, hunters, foragers, farmers and warriors that populated the country through their housing, weaponry, metalworks and stone monuments. The development of the Christian church throughout the Early Medieval period brought its own beauty to the art and architecture of the country, but also adapted its culture to suit the needs of an integrating religion and sites and ceremonies of pagan worship were amalgamated into the Christian calendar. Following this were Viking raids, Anglo-Norman settlement, English conquest, plantation, oppression, rebellion, famine and civil war. From the Early Medieval period to the present day Ireland has experienced an almost constant shift in leadership and identity with little time in between for the dust to settle. Culturally, a "Celtic Revival" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries sought to re-invigorate the arts and history of Celtic Ireland (a broad, problematic concept in itself) as an expression of nationalism and to bolster a distinctly Irish artistic and literary identity. All of this is to say that wading through Ireland's history of social upheaval, religious and political conflict, and loss and confusion of identity is no mean feat. To take those threads and conjure up original stories for modern audiences, embracing the suffering and celebrating the beauty, is impressive. To do it three times is witchcraft.

In their films depicting Irish history, culture and mythology, animation studio Cartoon Saloon have approached their stories with a respect for the past, both fact and fiction. By evoking the artwork, legends and real history of Ireland's past and combining it with their own fresh, unique visual style, Cartoon Saloon brings some much needed authenticity and vibrancy to the depiction of Ireland in mainstream culture. Absent are the twee figures of backwards island folk or the commercialised idolatry of a St. Patrick's Day parade. What we get instead is something more personal, recognisable on the surface to every child and adult who learned about Fionn, the Fianna and fairy circles in primary school and with nuggets of information and visual cues for explorers of Ireland's broader history.

"I can't tell you which parts of this story are true and which parts are shrouded by the mists." - The Secret of Kells and the line between history and mythology

Set roughly in the 9th century AD The Secret of Kells is the earliest depiction of Irish culture in the trilogy. This period saw the introduction of Christianity and the eventual integration of the religion among the native Irish, a relatively smooth transition when compared to later events as noted by historian Jo Kerrigan: "And so the people of Ireland combined the new ways with the old…not bothering too much that the names had changed." Although the main character, Brendan, comes from a Christian monastery and carries those beliefs, The Secret of Kells does well to capture this balance between a new religion and old beliefs with the inclusion of Aisling and Crom Cruach, and without dismissing them as a childish or archaic. "Pagans. Crom worshippers. It is with the strength of our walls that they will come to trust the strength of our faith." The threat of Viking raids is what spurs Abbot Ceallach's desire to build a wall around his monastery, but, underlying his actions is another aspect of a monk's work - converting the natives. In The Secret of Kells the abbot's wall not only protects them from invaders but cuts them off from the forest beyond - the domain of shape-shifters, wild animals and pagan temples, a world that Brendan can only glimpse through a crack in the wall. A staple of the entire trilogy is this depiction of wilderness in some form and its association with Ireland's symbolic wilderness and pagan ancestry. When Brendan enters the forest for the first time it is dark and frightening until Aisling, an ethereal Sídhe figure who can shape-shift into a wolf, shows him how to navigate it. Brendan's fear is eliminated and Aisling quickly becomes his friend, each amused and fascinated by the other.

Hidden throughout Brendan's trek in the forest are old, moss covered ogham stones and stone circles, allusions to native practices, but deeper in, the colour palette changes from bright greens and natural browns to a wash of dark greys and black when Brendan stumbles across a temple to Crom Cruach (a deity who, in Irish mythology, is eventually destroyed by St. Patrick). Aisling tries to warn him away, "It is the cave of the Dark One," but Brendan dismisses her worries, "The abbot says that's all pagan nonsense, there's no such thing as Crom Cruach." At the sounding of the deity's name, black tendrils emit from the cave and pull on Aisling as she stops them reaching Brendan. Later, Brendan returns to the cave to steal Crom's eye - a magnifying crystal that will help Brendan and Brother Aidan with their illumination. In a beautifully animated sequence Brendan battles Crom Cruach in his cave by trapping him in a chalk circle and stealing his eye. Crom Cruach is depicted as a never-ending snake (in a geometric pattern reminscent of both pre-Christian art and the knotwork of Christian manuscripts) possibly in reference to the 'snakes' (demons) banished from Ireland by St. Patrick. What's most fascinating about this sequence is that Brendan experiences it at all. Although the experience is supernatural it is never implied as anything other than real. Brendan is a committed monk in training who will spend his life in service to the monastery and creating the Book of Kells; even after meeting Aisling and battling Crom Cruach he never questions his faith or his elders and when he returns to the monastery with the eye no one disputes the story of how he came by it, "You entered one of the Dark One's caves?" At this time, at the edge of a growing monastery and with a direct reference to the abbot's desire to convert the natives, there is still space for pagan ideas to exist. Whenever Brendan is punished by Abbot Ceallach it is for disobedience not a lack of faith. Similarly, Aisling using Pangur Bán's spirit to free Brendan has an effect on the real world. There's an argument to be made that this is a film and anything can happen, but for problems to be solved by magic, the way Aisling frees Brendan, firm world-building rules must be established; in this world, 9th century Ireland, spaces exist in which otherworldly figures reside and actions beyond the mortal realm occur and these spaces exist alongside this film's version of civilisation, the monastery.

"I have lived through all the ages, through the eyes of salmon, deer and wolf." As an animated feature, there is a lot the film can tell us through visuals alone, and The Secret of Kells does a wonderful job capturing an Ireland in transition. The prologue opens with a close-up image of the Eye of Crom with abstract shapes swimming around it, followed by a glimpse of Aisling hiding in a tree as she narrates over these images in an eery whisper. Following these we see a salmon, deer and wolf, three animals important to Irish mythology, identity and history; the salmon, related to The Salmon of Knowledge, represents mythology, the deer is the national animal of Ireland, and wolves (in the world of Cartoon Saloon) represent its wildernes and history (the elimination of the wolf population became more active in Ireland during times of English occupancy, a theme that is explored more deeply in Wolfwalkers). Even the waves crashing around Iona as Brother Aidan escapes morph into wolves, futhering their symbolism as something wild and dangerous, yet they are never associated with the Viking raiders; the wilderness is as equally affected by change as the people are. The monastery is littered with Iron Age motifs existing alongside Early Christian imagery. Spiral motifs occur in trees and plants, in the ropes that bind the wall's scaffolding together, and circular, semi-circular and zig-zag shapes continue to appear with knot-work patterns and religious figures - even the snowflakes during the raid are strands of knot-work. The monastery itself is accurate to the period with its round tower, beehive shaped structures (called clochán) and the town growing around it, while outside its walls Brendan crosses a stone circle. We even see a game of hurling, the ultimate unifying bridge between pagan and modern Ireland. The walls of the abbot's cell are covered in his own drawings of plans for the monastery's construction. These are exquisitely detailed and clearly a plan for the future but drawn in a style that cannot escape the past; zig-zags, spirals, circles, semi-circles, dots, triangles, sun and star motifs and something that looks like an alignment chart. The style is evocative of the insular La Tène that preceded the arrival of the monks in Ireland; a combination of abstract and geometric, seemingly random, but clearly symbolising something greater.

"You must bring the book to the people." In their last interaction as children Aisling helps Brendan recover the pages of his manuscript as he flees the Vikings. In this gesture Aisling aids Brendan on his religious journey - during the montage later on she even guides him home. Faith never comes between these two, their relationship is one of mutual curiosity and sharing their differences. In Irish mythology, female figures (particularly shape-shifting ones) are often symbolic of Ireland itself and to have the support of these figures is, for kings and heroes, a mark of validation. At this time, these two worlds still live alongside each other and Aisling is allowed to support Brendan's work as a monk while maintaining her own natural way of life. Although Brendan's final journey home shows the spread of Christianity across the country we get one final image of Aisling, changed to her human form in a flash of lightning, that shows us she hasn't disappeared just yet. Brendan, now an adult, returns to Kells and although Abbot Ceallach is old and sick, the monastery stands strong and Brendan brings with him the completed Book of Kells, ready to continue the abbot's work.

"This wild land must be civilised" - Wolfwalkers and the taming of Ireland

Set in 1650, Wolfwalkers occurs roughly 800 years after The Secret of Kells and presents a vastly different universe. The monks' Christianisation of the natives was a far more gentle affair and one founded in a desire to educate people. Ireland under the Lord Ruler (a stand-in for Oliver Cromwell) is a world of service, punishment and fear. By chopping down trees and employing hunters to cull the wolf population the Lord Ruler is attempting to 'tame' the countryside and, most importantly, the people themselves. References to "the old king" and "revolt in the south" place us, historically and politically, in the Cromwellian Conquest, when Cromwell was sent to Ireland to quell uprisings against the newly established English Commonwealth. Heavy stuff and this is a simplification of a period of major conflict in Ireland but Wolfwalkers impresses on us the feeling of living under the thumb of an active oppressor on a much smaller, more personal scale. The Lord Ruler wants the people of Kilkenny afraid and complacent so that they support his efforts to cull the wolves and cut down their forests. Although the wolves pose no threat to the city, people have been made to fear them, resilting in the loss of their connection to the forest outside the town walls. Any reference to a world ouside of the current mode of conduct is cause for immediate punishment and suppression. Even Bill and Robyn, loyal English citizens, are punished. When one of the woodcutters talks of "pagan nonsense" he is confined to the stocks and Robyn is forced to work as a maid in the castle when she does the same. When Bill fails to cull the wolf population (and control his own daughter) he is stripped of his rank as hunter and forced into the role of soldier, robbed of the little freedom he had.

"This once wild creature is now tamed, obedient, a mere faithful servant." Although this line is spoken in reference to Moll, held captive in a cage in her wolf form, it is the human characters who suffer the most from this ideology - even the nameless background characters are confined to the walls of the city. What comes to mind when hearing this line is Robyn in her maid's uniform, once lively and imaginative, now returning home with lines under her eyes after a long day of hard, monotonous work, and Bill, shackled at the neck and forced to march behind the Lord Ruler's horse ("we must do what the Lord Ruler commands"). Although Moll is held captive too, it is in the form of a humongous wolf; she is locked away in the Long Hall for fear of the danger she represents because the Lord Ruler is aware of how poweful she is and so he must keep her locked up to show the people of Kilkenny just how much control he can wield, quelling any potential notions of power they might have held in themselves. In the case of Moll, Robyn and Bill, each time they are held captive by the Lord Ruler their captured bodies submit to the wolf form to escape: Moll uses its strength to break free of her chains, Robyn leaves behind her human body to launch an attack against the soldiers with the rest of the pack, and Bill, who had no idea what being bitten by Moll would do to him, submits to a primal instinct within him to protect his daughter and attacks the Lord Ruler. The Wolfwalkers are able to draw on this power but the people left behind in Kilkenny have no such escape.

"What cannot be tamed, must be destroyed." The ending of Wolfwalkers is bittersweet. Robyn, Médb and their parents are safe after defeating the Lord Ruler and his soldiers and ride off, not quite into the sunset, but onto horizons new. "All is well," Bill and Robyn tell each other and the family appear content, but, before now, leaving the forest was not on the agenda; leaving the forest meant retreating from a threat, as Moll desperately wanted Médb to do, and this is still the case. Médb wanted to save the forest, but, after everything that's happened, the family are no longer safe on the borders of the town. Robyn, Médb, Bill and Moll all save each other but they can't save their home and their retreat from Kilkenny is just that - a retreat. The Lord Ruler may have been killed but that doesn't mean the end of his conquest. Historically, this period saw Ireland amalgamated into the Commonwealth and Irish Catholic landowners ousted by English colonists, as well as a high level of deforestation and the elimination of the wolf population. By having the family leave their home, together and with a bright sky and grassy hills ahead of them, Wolfwalkers' coda balances the narrative conventions of a story by giving the viewers their satisfying ending without sanistising the history it's based on.

"Remember me in your stories and in your songs" - Song of the Sea and loss:

If Wolfwalkers is the taming of Ireland then Song of the Sea is Ireland tamed. Set roughly in the 1980s it is the closest depiction of a modern Ireland in Cartoon Saloon's ouevre. In contrast to The Secret of Kells and Wolfwalkers, which represented Ireland's native identity in the forest, here it takes the form of (drumroll) the sea, but while those other films depicted the battle between the wilderness and civilisation Song of the Sea depicts its defeat. The last of the Sídhe live in hiding in a rath disguised as the centre of a roundabout and use a sewage system to get around. In their diminshed forms, Lug, Mossy and Spud also resemble more closely what we might think of as 'fairies' in Ireland today, not the imposing figures of mischief and chaos the Sídhe really are in mythology. Still, Lug, Spud and Mossy wear torcs, brooches and earrings of gold and strewn about their home are ogham stones and hurls; in a nice marriage of modern and ancient tradition, they play the bodhrán, fiddle and banjo, singing a version of the Irish language song 'Dúlamán'. Only in this one pocket in the middle of the city do different aspects of traditional Irish culture survive.

All throughout Song of the Sea we see iconography of modern Ireland. Conor drinks a pint of Guinness (unlabelled but unmistakable), the front of the pub he sits in is decorated in proto-typical Irish pub fashion. On the wall in Granny's house sits proudly a picture of Jesus with the Sacred Heart lamp as she warbles along to the classic Irish children's song, 'Báidín Fheilimí'. Ben and Saoirse take refuge in a shrine to a holy well with a rag tree outside that is bursting with religious iconography as well as a toy sheep. Symbols that are as much a part of the national identity as those pre-historic and mythological ones. There are also references to the assimilation of pop culture outside of Ireland in a Lyle's Golden Syrup tin, the Rolling Stones poster on Conor's old bedroom door and Ben's 3-D glasses and cape, an emulation of a superhero costume. These images are, ultimately, harmless but have overtaken their native counterparts. Although we see statues of the Sídhe in the background, these are not shrines but detritus, and they lie forgotten, covered in plants and moss, in the company of bags of rubbish and old televisions. The diminishing of one era of Ireland's history to make way for a newer more powerful and modern identity is just one kind of loss that is portrayed in Song of the Sea, but each character experiences their own version throughout. The loss of Bronach that has affected Ben and Conor; the potential loss of Saoirse as she grows sicker; the loss of Mac Lir that drove Macha to such despair she literally bottled her emotions and those of others until they turned to stone. All of this comes to a climax at the end of the film when these tragedies are laid bare. As in Wolfwalkers the greater connotations of this theme are presented on a smaller scale: Ben and Conor's pain by the loss of Bronach.

Ben and Conor are representative of the human world and so suffer her absence more visibly than Saoirse who approaches her mother's world with curiosity and ease. In contrast, Ben, although he misses Bronach, rejects the sea (her home and symbolic identity) and his sister, a physical as well as spiritual reminder of what's been taken away from him. He turns his back on his past as much as he mourns its loss. We see it less obviously in Conor who wallows in his own memories and grief and tunes out Ben's references to his mother "It's as though I've been asleep all these years. I'm so sorry." Ben's grief is more expressive compared to the inwardly focused Conor and even towards the end of the film when Ben is trying to help Saoirse, Conor brushes over his insistence that only her selkie coat can save her. It's only when Saoirse is finally wearing the coat and wakes up from her sickness that he finally engages with Ben on the subject of Bronach, "She's a selkie, isn't she? Like Mam." "Yeah." (Which looks like a weak conversation written down but it's the happy smile on his face and the emotion in his voice that give the single word weight). "Please don't take her from us." During the film's final sequence, when Saoirse sings her song and wakens the sleeping Sídhe, Bronach returns but only to take Saoirse away. With tears in her eyes she begins to lead Saoirse along until Ben and Conor stop her, not forcefully but pleadingly, "she's all we have." All they have is Saoirse, all they have is a thread connecting them to Bronach's world and their memories of her.

"All of my kind must leave tonight…" As the Sídhe are wakened by Saoirse's song we watch them rise joyfully to form a glowing processional in the sky as they make the journey across the sea to their home. This scene is so beautifully animated and so filled with a sense of magic and wonder that we are charmed into believing this is a good thing. The Sídhe are returned to their noble forms and going to their home "across the sea"; they fill the sky with a warm, mystical light, but they are taking that light and their magic with them. As Bronach quotes in the film's prologue, "Come away, o human child, to the waters and the wild, with a fairy, hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand." This is a world that can no longer bear the force of two identities. Unlike The Secret of Kells where Brendan and Aisling were allowed to live alongside each other without compromising their beliefs or ways of living, Bronach, a spiritual being, is forced to leave, while Ben and Conor have no choice but to stay and Saoirse, who walks both worlds, is made to choose between them. Although this is a happy ending it is still being depicted on a personal level. On a grander scale, the country has lost something that isn't coming back and this is depicted as a relief for the ones leaving it behind. On the other hand, Saoirse's decision to remain shows that, in small pockets of the country, the magic remains.

It is fitting that Song of the Sea, as a representation of modern Ireland, draws on loss; Ireland has been experiencing loss on a grand scale for centuries. Although the march of progress is mostly positive, in some cases it has altered our respect and interest in the past. Today there is a nihilism attached to Irish heritage; the spirituality that is associated with airy fairy hippies dancing naked in a moonlit field; the language that is almost universally despised by every secondary student forced to grapple with the Tuiseal Ginideach; its disappearing and continually exploited ecological landscapes; traditions and tales that grow more twee and archaic with every tourist bus that passes by; the preservation of archaeological sites in frequent battle with the progress of industry. In the interest of leaving behind the worst of our past we are at risk of losing the best. The writer Manchán Mangan suggests that this desire to forget lies in the pain we feel when we consider our history. Some, like Conor, try to push all reference to this pain out of their lives, others, like Ben, divert their pain into misplaced anger. Mangan cites the Famine as a source of generational pain and its effect today on our use of the language, but really it can be attached to many events and periods of time, "English was the future; Irish would only bring suffering and death." This is a sentiment that carries through to this day; despite encouragement from schools, local councils and the government, Irish remains a least favourite subject for most people who dismiss it as unuseful for success in the wider world. By proxy, anything to do with the notion of "Irish", the language, history and culture, is old-fashioned (suffering and death) while success and the future lie outside of the country. Mangan goes on to suggest that only by confronting the pain of our past can we unlock an ability in ourselves to engage more fully with our identity, "We might stop blaming our failure to learn on teachers, or the education system, or Government policy, and realise that we have no difficulty learning any other subject…" Ben and Conor are given the opportunity to say goodbye to Bronach before she leaves, allowing them to carry on with their memories of her and the last strand of their connection to her as represented by Saoirse. More and more people today are looking to Ireland's past, ecology and language for whatever it is they need or want to find. It isn't necessary to convert to paganism and live on the shores of the Connemara coastline to achieve this connection, but actively disengaging from your past can only hurt more than it can help. In their respective stories Brendan does not compromise his beliefs but still builds a friendship with Aisling, while Robyn and Bill integrate fully into Médb and Moll's world. There is no right way to engage with this side of our history and identity, but in contrast to Ben and Conor, Brendan and Robyn have balanced and fulfilling relationships with their native counterparts - the threats to their world come from outside sources. Ben and Conor were stuck in their pain over Bronach's loss and it is only after getting to see her one last time that helped them to move on and heal. Conor tells Bronach that he still loves her, he will carry his love and memories of her forever; Ben lets Saoirse into his life and is able to move past his grief and fears of the sea. Here, the threat of loss and destruction in modern Ireland comes from within, and can only be treated by engaging with the past - its rich heritage and tragic history - and moving on with all of the wisdom and experience it provides.

[no-passaran]

can you explain the post about catalan self-hatred

Centuries of occupation and being told we are useless, ignorant, and cringy and thus for our own good we should abandon our culture, language, accent, identity, everything that shows what our culture is (or was, if they succeed) except for very few isolated items that can be folklorized (isolated from our very alive culture, which give them sense, and shown as a curiosity or a relic of an old gone past, or simply as one isolated "fun" addition to Spanish culture, which didn't originate it and which doesn't understand it) and monetized to be sold as Spanish (see: Madrid restaurants selling something they call "paella" and which is really an "arròs de mar" but they have re-made it to suit the taste of tourists and that they will advertise with Spanish flags and sevillana drawings and commercialise as "typical Spanish", completely separating it from its roots and without even knowing what the word "paella" means, so that tourists can consume it without even knowing what culture it's from and what language that word is in), hearing how cringy we Catalans are vs how cool we would look like if we became fully Spanish (and fully Spanish means abandoning Catalanity), all of these happening for generations and permeating literature, TV, popular jokes, pop culture, laws, even church leaders speaking it in mass) etc. well, it does end up affecting you.

Generation after generation of this means that we have a very deeply rooted self-hatred. And it's so normalized that we don't even realise it. Self-hatred is a term used in sociolinguistics that means precisely that, having interiorized the bigotry against your own group. In our case, it means Catalan people who are Catalanophobic, often without realising it, or thinking that it's justified because it would be ridiculous to think otherwise. For example, when Catalans say that it's true that our existence is useless and it's a shame that we were born in Catalonia and that Catalan is still alive because everything would be easier if we spoke only Spanish, which they see as a superior and international language, or say that we shouldn't have Catalan written in public where tourists can see it. As you can see, this is very connected with imperialism. All of us are Catalanophobic. I don't think there is even one Catalan person who is not Catalanophobic, because we are raised in a deeply Catalanophobic legal, political, and social system. The difference relies on how aware of it are we and how much we are willing to rethink it. For most people, they're not willing to rethink it because they believe it's right, and that it would be nonsensical to imagine that we are equal to Spanish speakers or deserve the same rights.

That post was a screenshot I took of a comment on Instagram. It's a video of some Catalan people talking and joking around, everything very innocent and nice, and someone left this comment (in Catalan) saying "why do you speak in such a strong Catalan accent? It makes my blood boil, and I am Catalan, so imagine..." (implying that "if it bothers me, a Catalan, that you are so visibly Catalan, imagine how much it must bother someone who isn't Catalan. Thus you should correct it").

This is something that I have been told countless times in my life. In high school, my best friend always used to make fun of me when I said something in Spanish because I have a strong Catalan accent. She would repeat my words after me exaggerating the accent to make it ridiculous and laughable, and would laugh at how bad it is and how "rural" it makes me sound (note: I am not from a rural accent nor speak an accent of Catalan from a rural area, it's that having a Catalan accent in Spanish is seen as being uneducated and "from the provinces"). The thing is tho: she had the same accent. She does not speak any better than me. She also had told me many times about how much she dislikes going to visit her dad's family in southern Spain because the whole town laughs at her for having a Catalan accent and that some kids have insulted her for being from Catalonia, and even her dad (born and raised in that town of southern Spain but who has been living in Catalonia for decades) gets made fun of and receives hate speech for being Catalan now. But so many people always look for someone else, someone who is more visibly Catalan for whatever reason, and give them the same bigotry that they have received. As if that will redeem them somehow, or distract from their own "faults"— and I'm not using the word "fault" just because, that's what we feel but don't say out loud, except when someone slips like that Valencian politician who started a speech by apologizing in case she "slips and says a word in Valencian" because "sadly it's my mother tongue, I have this defect". (note: Valencian and Catalan are two names for the same language). Some people on the internet complained because she said the quiet part out loud, but how many of those people don't act like that in their everyday lives, simply refusing to state it so clearly that that's how they see it?

It's to be expected to get these comments from Spanish people. When I was 15, I was part of a programme for students and we had to go to Madrid for a meeting of all the students in the state of Spain who were being given this scholarship, and I was the only Catalan and the rest of teens spent most of the time making fun of me and my accent. But what I remember the most is that one of them was nice to me, and he talked to me having normal conversations (the others only said bigoted things against Catalonia and against Barça team and tried to get me to talk about bullfighting, knowing that it's illegal in Catalonia, to make me feel excluded), but even this nice boy at one point said out of the blue "you really can't hide that you're Catalan!". It would be nice to answer "so? Why do I have to hide it?" but the thing is that I had tried my best, not to hide it 100% maybe, but to not make it easy to see. For example, when we introduced ourselves, everyone said our name and where we're from, I was aware that I should say Barcelona (even though I'm not from the city itself) instead of Catalonia. After that, I tried taking some online lessons I found on YouTube on how to have a Castilian accent, but I never managed. It would be useless anyway, just a few years later I was on Erasmus and when I introduced myself to the other students (I had literally only said "hello my name is Elna") the two Spanish students laughed and one of them said while laughing "that's a very Catalan name, like very very very Catalan, isn't it?", like it was a funny joke.

So yeah, it's whatever to get it from Spanish people and Spanish-speakers in Catalonia (I mean, to be fair, it's not whatever when it means you can get a harsher sentence for the same trial if you spoke Catalan in the court, that you might get arrested or mistreated by the police if you spoke to them in Catalan, that you can get kicked out of the doctor's office for speaking in Catalan, etc and believe me I have had my share of discrimination from doctors for this very reason) but it is so much more insidious when it comes from ourselves. And it's painted not as bigotry but as "common sense" or just "not being cringy". I'm tired of my existence being considered cringe! I'm tired that if I speak about what happens to us it's seen as cringe and "distracting from things that are actually important" (because we are useless to the world!)! Or if I say more autochthonous expressions that don't have a direct translation to Spanish to get told I'm like a grandma and I'm cringe! I'm even tired of the well meaning ones, some time ago a friend's Spanish-speaker friend heard me talk to another friend and said "aw that's cute, you speak Catalan, it's like you're grandmas". Or that children will get bullied for celebrating the Castanyada instead of Halloween because it's cringe. I love the Castanyada and I will say it now, I spent my whole high school years pretending like I don't celebrate it. I do! I eat panellets that my aunt makes, and sometimes I make them too, and I go with my family friends in front of the fireplace, and we roast chestnuts and we sing Marrameu torra castanyes, and we like it! And I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. And if that means everyone laughs at me and says I'm cringe and elderly, then so be it. I spent long enough hiding from my own people. I am so so so so tired.

I heard this sentence once: "what Franco couldn't manage to finish, we will do it ourselves". They couldn't eliminate us with violent force, but the long route of psychological war makes us be our own enemies and our own executioner. As has already happened so much more in the part of Catalonia under French rule, and all other nations still nowadays under French rule.

Here's what I did and helped me very much. Every time I have a Catalanophobic thought or I think as myself as lesser than for something related to being Catalan, I imagine a tiny Franco inside my head and I shoot him. This makes me take a moment to pay attention to what I had thought and that I don't want it, and do better in the future. Being conscious is the only way to learn self-respect.

[nanowrimo]

How to Avoid Token Representation

What's the difference between token representation and authentic representation? NaNo Participant Nayantara discusses token representation and how to avoid doing it in your own writing! The smart Asian character. The sassy Black character. The Gay Best Friend.

Too many stories written today that supposedly have “diverse” casts fall prey to “token representation”: a symbolic effort towards inclusion that gives the appearance of equality, without actually exploring diverse narratives.

Recently in the publishing industry, readers have been calling for more representation within their novels, whether it is the LGBTQ+ community, racially and ethnically diverse readers, people with disabilities, or other marginalised groups of people, and many authors have responded with this easy-way-out tokenism — leaving readers unsatisfied and indignant.

So, what exactly is the difference between token diversity and real representation?

Essentially, tokenism includes a character that checks boxes titled “diversity” in face and name, but does not acknowledge their lived experience.

For example, Cho Chang in the Harry Potter series and Lane Kim in Gilmore Girlsare reduced to harmful stereotypes of their characters (both their names and characteristics) without acknowledging the diverse experiences that East Asian people have. Their Asianness becomes their entire character, yet at the same time, that same Asianness is entirely misunderstood.

In contrast, the recent Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once stars East Asian characters whose lives are affected by their race and background. However, they are fully fleshed out characters regardless of it.

As actor, Anna Leong Brophy, said in an interview, she enjoys it when her “Asianness complements a role, but is not the full role.” Real representation acknowledges how someone’s lived experience as a person of colour, queer person, woman, or member of another marginalised community affects their life — but they have genuine feelings, thoughts, and characteristics far beyond simply their race or identity.

The terms “Black dude dies first” and “Bury your gays” are also commonly associated with token representation. Quite self-explanatory, they are tropes in which the cast’s “diverse” characters are killed early, to save the writer from having to explore or acknowledge their experiences.

Not only is this lazy writing that erases diverse narratives, it also creates the subconscious belief that marginalised groups of people have no place in these stories or in commercialised publishing in general. Everyone deserves representation, whether or not the cis-het (cisgender-heterosexual) white reader can relate to the character’s specific cultural experience.

What counts as good representation, then?

Good representation involves any story that includes a diverse cast and follows each of their story lines fully, allowing them to be well-rounded characters that contain depth and get adequate development.

My personal favourite example of this is Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows duology, where her cast of six main characters includes Black and Brown people, bisexual and gay people, people from different countries and religions, and people recovering from trauma — all of whom have their own, carefully constructed character arcs that acknowledge their identity, but also give them substance and characteristics far beyond that.

However, this is not to say every story has to be as international — The Poppy War trilogy by R.F. Kuang has a solely East Asian coded cast due to its setting. But even within this, her characters are from different ethnic, religious, and social backgrounds, and each have their own, carefully-constructed character arc extending far beyond their identity on paper.

As you begin writing for Camp NaNoWriMo, ask yourself the following three questions:

Is my cast truly representing the diverse types of people who exist in this world (either real or imagined)?

Are each of these characters individuals beyond simply their ethnicity, sexuality, gender, disability, etc?

Do each of these characters have a fully fleshed out character arc?

You don’t have to be an author from a marginalised or minority background to write characters with diverse experiences. Just make sure to approach each character with empathy and respect, and devote adequate time to research (or to world building, if you’re a fantasy author!)

Good luck, and I know that you are going to absolutely smash your writing goals next month!

Nayantara is an 18 year old student, green tea connoisseur, bookworm, Spotify-playlist-maker, dancer, and writer hoping to study economics and political science at university next year — and hopefully find some time to work on her many unfinished novels in the meantime! Follow her on Instagram @ moonlitsunflowerbooks.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

[ilminnestrone]

Apple Juice and suspension of disbelief

I have seen a single user's theory on the Banora White Juice issue parroted as canon an unimaginable number of times, and frankly, I find it rather problematic that we as a fandom need exegetes to interface with a fantasy work that, rich as it is in symbolism, is a story that does not need to undergo constant autopsies in order to be appreciated. Despite its dieselpunk elements, Final Fantasy VII is a fantasy story, and I believe that when the fantasy fandom begins to lose its suspension of disbelief, we are faced with a human tragedy.

We can easily believe the story of a telepathic alien virus and an army recruiting thirteen-year-olds, soldiers injected with sentient oil, and the birth of three human-alien mummy hybrids about a year after its discovery without a trial period. And yet we decide a kid juicing fantasy fruit is just too much: something doesn't add up, we need to investigate further.

Most fandom exegetes stress the importance of engaging with the source material before coming up with headcanons that have nothing to do with the authorial intent, and I mostly agree.

So here’s the source material: Genesis won a National Agricultural Award for inventing Banora White Juice. That’s canon. Nomura said it. Nowhere in Crisis Core is it mentioned that Genesis revolutionised the food industry as a whole. He did not invent the concept of juicing apples or a revolutionary method of preserving them (because that's something I can't suspend my disbelief on, a supertechnological capitalist society where the large distribuition doesn't have a reliable preservation method). He simply invented Banora White Juice. He created something that was a commercial success, which is pretty impressive for a kid around 12.

That’s a basic Occam’s razor -a philosophical principle that basically states “the simplest explanation is usually the best one”; more in depth, when presented with different hypotheses, one should prefer the hypothesis that requires the fewest assumptions. In this case (again, a fantasy world case) we don’t need a single hypothesis: we are presented with a fact. A fact way easier to accept than magical crystals that make you summon deities or disappearing temples.

But if you really need an explanation, here’s your occam-razored explanation.

Banora was a puppet town created by Shinra; it wasn’t more real than nuclear test sites, or the Truman Show set: they just needed a controlled environment to observe their test subjects. Every single resident was a Shinra person, that’s why Genesis killed them all, and that’s why it wasn’t a Nibelheim situation.

It was also the only place on Gaia where Banora Whites grow. No one ever lived there before Project G. Probably nobody cared about Banora Whites before the Rhapsodos family started their business. So yeah, no one has ever sold them and shipped them to the continent, and no one ever processed them. And no one ever juiced them.

Apple plants from seed take around 4-6 years to bear fruit. They probably started by selling them as they were, because they turned out a pretty colour and it was a good marketing strategy. So yeah, nobody ever thought about juicing a completely new and probably overpriced (real life purple apples, Black Diamonds, cost 7-20$ for a single apple) cultivar because nobody ever grew Banora Whites before Genesis was born.

What else do we know? That the Rhapsodos were a rich family, with enough funds and means of production to process and commercialise a common product on a much larger scale than your average farmer (thank you @rottenpumpkin13 for the suggestion). And that Genesis is smart and good with words, so he probably came up with a great marketing strategy that made Banora White Juice an unprecedented commercial success for a simple fruit juice. Worthy of an award.

Last but not least. Gaia’s Banora Whites are not the exact equivalent of Earth’s apples: they grow with a bent trunk, they have a white bark, they taste like berries and they ripen at random times during the year: in the end, they are a fantasy fruit inspired by apples that symbolise the tree of the knowledge of good and evil fruit, a fruit that is commonly represented as an apple but that’s never explicitly named in the book of Genesis. So it’s perfectly plausible that apple juice was a common thing by the time Genesis won his awards, but not dumbapple juice.

Fun fact In Italy a lot of Valtellina and Trentino producers sell unpasteurised apple juice anyway: it’s sold in vacuum-sealed boxes with a tap that prevents oxygen from getting inside. It has a 2 year expiration date and once opened can be safely consumed for two months.

[sitp-recs]

🗓️ Weekly rereads

I’m still not reading as much as I want to but I’m pushing myself to keep posting these as a way to keep track of my (re)reading schedule, and also hoping to highlight some underrated bite-sized treats in case you haven’t come across these yet. Following part 1, I will keep these recs short and sweet as I understand that long lists can get overwhelming. Here are the five fics I’ve revisited last week - what about you guys? Feel free to jump in and add yours!

Without Sunshine by @sweet-s0rr0w (T, 1k) - Drarry

The fall of the Wizarding World begins on a Tuesday morning. As Draco says, the timing's dreadful.

Lights Down Low by @skeptiquewrites (T, 4k)

“Will we ever learn? We’ve been here before.” Recording the Hallows' fifth album with Draco brings up the past in a way Harry’s never expected.

Flatmates by @unmistakablyoatmeal (E, 5.5k) - Drarry + Romione

Hermione is just as bossy inside the bedroom as she is out of it. The reason Draco knows this is because Harry's walls are too thin.

With a Look by earlybloomingparentheses (E, 5k) - Deamus + Ginny

Now, twenty years old and done with boys and looking forward very much to putting her hand down some lucky girl’s shirt later this evening, Ginny looks at Dean Thomas’s gold-painted fingernails and feels heat pool between her legs. Fuck, she thinks, and flushes, annoyed, ashamed, and then Seamus Finnegan comes up behind Dean and kisses him deep on the mouth, and Ginny’s heart starts to pound.

flashback, warm nights by warmfoothills (M, 13k) - Drarry

“What’s killing me is that I actually quite fucking like Christmas, festival-for-a-personally-irrelevant-religion-turned-commercialised-garbage-holiday though it may be, and now I’m stuck in the perpetual almost-there of it all with an idiot who gets himself cut up every time no matter how differently I try and do things!” “Killing you?” Potter asks. “I thought I was the one who’s about to get my torso sliced into?”

[fakeshibe]

the internet is so overtly hostile to kids and young people. commercialisation and profit margins killed off the places younger kids were safe and welcome to be in, creeps and those seeking to goad people towards extremism took over those spaces designated for teens.

There is no safe place. Every time i see a 14 year old on twitter, I see them being told to get off the platform. It’s not safe, it’s not for you. And that’s entirely correct, twitter is not a safe place for a 14 year old, but where is? Tumblr? not really. Club penguin? it’s dead. Community forums? not really a thing anymore. Discord? not without that teen being very aware of their safety and how to look after themselves, at which point they may as well have stuck to twitter.

Like it or not, it’s the job of every single one of us to make a space that is safe for teens. Doesn’t mean you have to be kid friendly, just means you need to take reasonable precautions that your not-kid-friendly content stays in your space, that they can’t accidentally come across it. Content warnings, censoring/spoilering posts, possibly avoiding the main tags for a thing if that topic is child friendly and your art is not. stuff like that. Like if young people are likely to search for stuff like lego, maybe don’t put your nsfw bionicle ship art into the general lego tag, stuff like that.

It’s your job to keep an eye out for your fellow humans. If you see a young person they you know displaying signs that they’re possibly being harassed/groomed/generally made uncomfortable/not doing well, make sure they have a safe person to speak to. You don’t have to be that safe person, you just need to make sure there’s someone who can listen to them.

If you see a kid doing something they really shouldn’t be, it’s on you to explain why they shouldn’t be doing that. Don’t berate them, don’t attack them for it. Explain, help them to understand why that’s concerning to you. We all know internet safety classes in schools are pretty rubbish, usually super outdated. I did a child safety course like two years ago that still included tips on building a safe myspace page. School isn’t going to teach kids about the immediate issues on todays internet, it’s on the community around them to guide them and look out for them.

Also playground humour is fine, just be aware when you’re joining in to not take it too far or make it weird. And bear in mind that even just by virtue of being a couple of years older than whatever young person you’re talking to, there’s a power imbalance in that conversation. Don’t encourage playground humour to the point of making it an entirely inappropriate topic. Your the one guiding this conversation, steer it in the right direction.

And if you see someone being weird towards any minor, wether you know them or not, call that shit out. Let it be known that someone is keeping an eye out, let that kid know that they’re welcome and they’re looked out for. Let that creep know that people see them, and people are very, very aware of what they’re doing. Make them feel unwelcome, run them out of your spaces, spread awareness of risky people. Keep your spaces safe.

This is all especially as important as IRL spaces become more hostile to potentially vulnerable young people. Queer teens especially are going to be looking for community and safety online more and more frequently. Make sure that the places they find will be a respite from the real world, not just a different set of threats to navigate.

Make sure young people feel safe on the internet, and make sure that those looking to take advantage of their presence, don’t.

Why am i writing all this? I’ve seen too many posts about people’s experiences as a young person online, and i talked to my brother the other day about him and his friend’s experiences and it’s terrifying that there’s really nowhere for young people to go. Also i’ve realised that i’m not doing enough to be part of the solution. so this is part of that, im gonna be far, far more aware of the issue and doing more to try and help.

[gay-ppl-real]

I'm Gonna Dump a Bunch of Welcome Home Thought Nonsense Here

Because I am so normal about the latest update and usually I theorise with a friend but rn I'm anxious I'm annoying them for some reason asldjfnasdlf

Considering the update from the "Mental Health theme" standpoint,

what we've seen both Eddie and Wally experience is very dissociation coded. With Wally, he was having spaceouts whenever he was around people but they were conversing without him/talking over his head. Idk as a speech impaired person that really really sprung out to me - I think the feeling of being excluded in the interaction COULD (big could) be related to whatever is going on with him. In Eddie's case, he just spent the entire day increasingly freaking out about not being useful, nobody needing him to do his job, only to come to the party and actually find out that they DIDN'T need him - they did his job for him. It was intended as a kind gesture, but Eddie is starting to come off as someone who 'needs to be needed', who's eager to please, will do anything and everything people ask of him (even to his detriment) in the name of doing a good job and being acknowledged. For someone like that, the takeaway might be "they don't need me and I don't have value", and yeah, that'd be hella distressing and, if you happen to have dissociative tendencies, potentially triggering of an episode. Also, they both seem distressed by the idea of people not interacting with them/having to be alone or alone with their thoughts. What am getting at is mayhaps their respective spacing moments are related to their individual struggles/social trauma.

Orr maybe that's barking completely up the wrong tree.

ALTERNATIVELY!!

From the "Home actin kinda sus" (Home is an antagonistic entity or connected to one) standpoint,

Home was ofc specifically called attention to in Eddie's episode, with that shot of its eye gradually becoming redder. I saw someone on Reddit observe that the "single pea on a plate" thing might be symbolic of the circle of houses with Home/the pit underneath it in the centre (full credit to u/Luz-y-Luna over there for that) and given Eddie had his Moment when faced with the dish in his hand, it supports the idea that he "woke up/remembered" or realised something was very wrong at that moment.

I have other thoughts about the "Media and commercialisation" standpoint but they're tied into thoughts about the Hallowe'en update since I'm also only catching up on that now, so I'll, idk, do them in a separate post or smth ig

[onewomancitadel]

This is bordering on psychoanalysis but I don't think Tumblr's meme of cannibalism-as-metaphor-for-love/sex isn't because of a pretentious pseudo-intellectual trend catching on since it sounds cool, instead I would propose it is emblematic of an increasing shift of the erotic away from the sexual. I think it's telling despite more ostensible ease around the topic of sex than before, the erotic and the pornographic are becoming abstracted from each other, to the point that for something to be passionate it cannot be sexual.

I also think the taboo here of cannibalism is interesting, because it is a classic racist stereotype of colonialism (hence its shorthand for barbarism in fiction often being a racist shorthand) but it is also one of desperation (I read about the siege of Leningrad as a teenager and I think about it, often, often) - it's this strange intersection of lots of cultural ideas about the way people are supposed to eat and die.

But the divorce of the erotic from the sexual doesn't just emerge in the context of commercialised, objectified pornography, it is also a way to often navigate sexual taboo, e.g. this is why violence in film/television can stand in as metaphor for sex or flirting (foreplay); a cigarette can be phallic and suggest fellatio; and so on and so forth. In this case I would say that is the 'in-joke', whereas I would dispute that the divorce of the erotic and the sexual is much more serious and impressed upon the individual psychologically.

Consumption as a metaphor for love is not groundbreaking. In fact I would then further dispute that this is exactly why cannibalism has inserted itself so successfully - because there is that cultural bank to draw on. It is taboo (like the erotic), it is metaphor (the sexual act is abstracted, the 'in and out' is mechanical and divorced from libido, in the sense of intimacy and sexual desire but also the desire to live/love), it draws on eating (eat/sex is the vitality of life), it's bloody (body fluids, semen/vaginal fluids), it's got all the parts to make it facsimile of sex, tip-toeing around the shame of sex and the abstraction of sex. You would think that the latter can't really be related to the former, but that's untrue - they are precisely related. Pornography is titillating, commercialised, and objectifying because it is taboo, and exists solely to document the act divorced of every other human element - sexuality, emotion, empathy, belief, libido. (That is to say, the issues surrounding pornography in its cultural reception reproduce themselves). This is why I think sex scenes are more successful in television or film (a simulation of the act, 95% of the time) or erotica in writing (a different topic I've written about before) - or should be - because it is put back in context.

This is what people mean about the divorce between the erotic and the pornographic, and I don't think I have really seen it articulated this way. This is why you have the trend of 'cannibalism-as-love/sex' even though you wouldn't catch them dead thinking about the taboo of menstrual sex (bloody sex???) as I've seen some posts suggest they ought to. Fermenting in this trend is the shame of sex, the desire for the erotic, the abstraction of sex in the pornographic, and the lust for intimacy, the projection of taboo. It is trying to be as intimate as possible (the consumption of a human being inside you - oneness) without the weight of sex.

Is this a value judgement on the memetic transmission of cannibalism-for-love? It's more of an observation really, and I think these types of interactions/projections are more telling about deeper beliefs than I think they are individually 'wrong'. Many people want sex. Many people want love and to be loved. It is the reproduction of existence, not just literally, but in the sense of empathetic community bonds. Many people want to be able to talk about the sexual and the erotic together, navigating cultural taboo. Many people find stories about these ideas interesting, and being able to navigate sex through facsimile this way can be really rewarding.

You can say 'I want this person inside me' and it doesn't mean that you are an objectified thing, or that you aren't yourself anymore, or that you don't belong to anybody but yourself. It's freeing that way, and that's why I think it's worth talking about. Because objectification is dehumanisation, and putting the human back in sex - even if it's that literal consumption - is meaningful.

[dear-indies]

Hi, do you mind explaining what is wrong with mid size, and what exactly is straight size? I wouldn't say I am on the plus size, but I do have a belly and would use the old fashioned term "plump" to describe myself, but I thought mid size was ok. Thank you for your help, and also, Happy Birthday!

Look at the use, or rather total avoidance, of the word “fat” from the descriptor. Fat is a word that has been used to belittle, degrade and shame larger bodies, and the reclamation of the word by fat people is a powerful tool in growing the fat acceptance and liberation movements. Using a label like mid-size which sidesteps the word “fat” entirely is watering down a concept that has been fought with literal blood, sweat and tears for decades. It’s a way for people to label themselves as different from skinny bodies, but also avoid labelling themselves as fat in any way, which they still consider a “negative” tag. There is still size discrimination in society: fat people don’t receive the same level of care that thin people do in the medical industry, and are denied jobs because of the way they look, to give just two examples. The goal of body inclusion movements is to remove the stigma associated with how someone looks (like assumptions about health, intelligence, or happiness). Because popularising a term like mid-size only puts the spotlight on people unlikely to face those struggles, it doesn’t help break down those barriers for bigger bodies. And that’s without even beginning to address to compounded discrimination faced by BIPOC, gender nonconforming and disabled people who are also fat – is far worse,

In 2020, I released a book called Fattily Ever After, a book focused on centering the perspectives and life experiences of larger sized fat Black women and women of colour in a climate where the voices of larger fat people were being drowned out and further marginalised in favour of more ‘acceptable’ curvy bodies, ie, mid-sized bodies. In the book, I explain in great detail the beginnings of the current wave of the body positivity community, and why its existence is incredibly important for the most marginalised bodies among us. The movement was created as a safe space for larger fat women (and more notably, women of colour) to be able to share our life sexperiences, heal and trade perspectives on how we navigate our lives in a world full of rampant fatphobia. It was a community filled with women who had experienced and had been exposed to; systemic fatphobia, abuse, harassment, fat-shaming, fetishisation, dehumanisation and humiliating treatment due to the shapes of their bodies. The commercialisation of the movement brought forward the visibility of smaller-sized curve models such as Iskra Lawrence, Ashley Graham and the like, and while it was great to see models bigger than a size 8 on the catwalk, in lookbooks and online, there was a clear problem; mid-sized models were being touted as plus size. Women whose bodies featured small waists, big bums, big breasts, small waists, flat-ish tummies and high cheekbones were suddenly being prioritised by the media and brands over the marginalised bodies who had helped create the movement. Advertisers intentionally began to water down fat acceptance to make it more palpable to mainstream audiences – leaving fat people out of its realm altogether.

"I understand there’s a need to want to be able to find other folks who share a similar experience because of what your body type or size is, but there is already language that exists to talk about the fatness of your body in ways that are linked to fat liberation." The language they refer to is the fatness spectrum, with terms such as 'small fat' (size 18 and lower), 'mid fat' (20-24), 'superfat' (26-32) and 'infinifat' (34 and higher). Each of these terms was created to address the type of lived experience you have based on your body size.  Many have criticised the midsize movement for purposefully distancing itself from the words 'small fat' — words that would, in all likelihood, encapsulate the same bodily experience. For these critics, 'midsize' is inherently fatphobic. "When someone says 'midsize', all I hear from them is that they’re trying their best to distance themselves from fatness," concludes @gaydoodlebear. 

and then the fategories: