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Like, I'm so confused by this response. The point of fandom is to take characters and delve deeper into them, put them in new situations, change a couple facets of them and see how they can still be the characters you love in new but still identifiable and enjoyable ways. Like...what have you been reading lol? And finding representation for marginalized groups is EXTREMELY difficult, finding positinve representation is damn near impossible sometimes. And that's a rather obnoxious standpoint you've got there. You like the characters of whatever fandoms you're thinking abou just find, they satisfy you're desires for a character so anyone that wants to add on to those characters to make them closer to what they'd like to see needs to go away? That's the feeling you've given me with your post.

And creating your own work? Wow. Leaving aside the fact that many marginalized groups that do create their own works end up getting blasted by the more mainstream, very few people have the time or resources to create their own representation. Think about a show like Sherlock. You're saying you want autistic people to create another version of Sherlock who's autistic, hire talented actors, get it approved and aired, amass a following of fans to write about it and.....then make sure those fans don't stray from the image of Sherlock that they've created?

Fandom is great because diverse people can take characters they love and make them into characters they love more and therein promote the original work and keep those people's pockets lined enough to keep creating. To say that anyone should have to restrict what they write on the basis of your idea (or yes even the creator's idea of canon) is ridiculous and undermines the entire idea of fandom. You do realize your narrow viewpoint would wipe out 99% of fanfic/fanart/faneverything right?

Like, Johnlock? Headcanon; Virgin Sherlock? Headcanon, not actually verified anywhere, Draco's leather pants!? Like what would fandom be without headcanon, without people taking the characters and reinterpreting them. Most of tumblr would be boring as shit.

"Grabbing onto already good characters and saying untrue things about them", girl please. Shall we put a disclaimer in front of every post about a headcanon?

No canon characters were harmed in the making of this post

Damn, this post makes me mad. I hate how you started it too, "kinda pathetic". Well shit, no one asked you. It's not pathetic, it's an actual persons feelings being expressed, being opened up to that you just shat on.

So how about you take a fucking seat.

autism problem #514

When there’s so few good representations of autistic people in media, you have to headcanon characters to get it.

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THIS!

In the last few days, there have been 3 major terrorist attacks that have gone hugely unreported by mainstream media: 

June 28th - Ataturk Airport Attack, Turkey - 45 dead, 238 injured

July 2nd - Dhaka Cafe Attack, Bangladesh - 22 dead, 40 injured

July 3rd - Baghdad Shopping Mall Attack, Iraq - 130 dead (the death toll so far), over 160 injured 

All in Muslim-majority countries. All during the Holy Month of Ramadan. And all committed by ISIS. 

And yet people still have the audacity to claim that “all Muslims are terrorists”, or paint those in the West as terrorism’s biggest victims. 

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15 things JK Rowling could include to treat Native people and culture respectfully:

1.       Don’t make the centerpiece of the story about a boarding school. If you’re white you probably don’t know this but, boarding schools were used to genocide Natives for centuries.

2.       Bother to do some research on the cultures you’re trying to write about. Natives are not simple. They are complex and deep. In some ways much more so than the European colonizers.

3.       Natives had the most advanced and sophisticated government structures in the world at the time. International war laws, reverse hierarchical federalized democracies, independent economic entities, the clan systems, the most expansive road and trade networks in the world, the list goes on just do some reading.

4.       Don’t diminish or dismiss the natives as backward or simple in the fiction either. JKR decided that natives don’t use wands for magic and stuff because they don’t do specific or focused magic, that’s racist nonsense.

5.       Natives would do some wild shit like Onondaga fire magic or Aztec surgical stuff. There were Mixtec oracles and mystics who cut the flesh from their face and replaced it with gems, that shit is metal.

6.       The wand thing could be replaced with turquoise gem totems, or obsidian magic knives or some shit like that. Taking the tools away from them is dehumanizing imagery.

7.       Don’t mess around with pipes or anything like that. You’re white JKR, you’re white.

8.       If you have a character run away into the woods in Massachusetts, she is gonna run right into Native cities. Don’t pretend that America is this open uninhabited nature reserve. That wasn’t true and it is racist.

9.       Don’t pretend that American societies are going to be as backward and prejudiced as other places. Most American languages didn’t have gendered pronouns. American cultures did not have the institutional patriarchal bullshit or homophobia. We would probably be pretty accepting of people that could do magic.

10.   There should be magical clans… that sounds dope.

11.   There should be magical schools already and there could be a really cool plot about protecting them from the Spanish and the English.

12.   They should not be schools as much as campus communities, workshops instead of classes. The predecessors to the Cherokee would create communities and give them a purpose, which was a practice common throughout North America. There would be a half-dozen schools the size of massive cities centered around dope pyramids like Cahokia.

13.   Magic using medicine men would come to villages to teach the citizens that couldn’t leave or something like that.

14.   Instead of skinwalkers which are too specific and appropriationy, try something like the Witiko, which is about cannibalism and evil deeds freezing your heart or something (fluctuates according to region). Could very easily be related to evil magic users.

15.   The basic thing I think is to do some research and maybe ask some natives before you try shit like this.

To be clear for some white people who think I’m being sensitive or something. First off, fuck you, the second thing is JK Rowling is trying to make a shit ton of money with this. And she will so she should at least not contribute to the immolation and genocide of Native peoples at the same time.

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I'm going to need this person to summarize every piece of classical literature for me because that makes me wanna read this book all over again

You mentioned Pride and Prejudice in your post about classic novels, and I was wondering about a) your opinion of Mr. Darcy in general and b) your opinion of Darcy and Elizabeth as a couple.

Don’tlet my mocking tone in that post fool you. I adore Mr. Darcy with all my heart,I merely object to the way he’s popularly associated with the image of this perfect, brooding hunk,when really he’s just a socially awkward loser.

Okay,okay, so our first introduction to Darcy is at a ball, where he:

Doesn’t dance

Can’t make small talk

Is generally rude and embarrassing

Stands awkwardly in the corner the whole night

Decides he might fancy this one girl, so heinsults her.

Loudly.

Where anyone could overhear.

Including the girl.

Gets roundly insulted to his face by said girl, and hisreaction is ‘…damn.’

Later on, he gets to know this girl a bit better. He warms up to her, and starts to act a little less like a standoffish jackass.

Thencomes the infamous ball where the entire Bennet family, except for Jane andLizzie, embarrass themselves. He convinces Bingley not to marry Jane because itwould degrade him.

MONTHSpass, and Lizzie meets Mr. Darcy again. She finds out that he separated Jane andBingley and she is SIMMERING with resentment. Darcy, on the other hand, (whomust have been pining over her and doodling ‘Mrs Elizabeth Darcy’ in hisnotebooks all this time) decides this is the perfect time to propose marriage.He BURSTS into her house, completely unannounced, ignores her chilly reception,then makes awkward small talk and wanders around in agitation. Finally, heconfesses that he loves her, against his better judgment, and insults her and herentire family before standing back, quite pleased with himself and convinced that she’s going to accepthim.

Butshe doesn’t.

Shelets him have it. She tells him how much she loathes him and exactly why. He isstunned. Mortified. No one has ever spoken to him like this. He’s quite used togetting everything he wants, and this just shakes him to his core. He stands therefor a while with a face like a slapped arse, then, unable to defend himself, he slinks away with a haughty goodbye and goes off to wallow in shame and resentment.

Andthen.

THEN.

Thenext day Lizzie is walking around the grounds and Mr. Darcy finds her. Has hetaken this time to compose himself so he might talk to her and explain himselfbetter?

No.

Hewrote a letter. He wrote a fucking letter. He probably spent all nightagonising and poring over this thing. Then he skulked around the grounds ALLMORNING in the hope of finding her. His exact words: “I have been walkingin the grove some time in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me the honour ofreading that letter?”

Andhe shoves it in her hand.

Thenhe runs.

RUNS.

(Darcyyou fucking walnut.)

Lizziereads the letter, and of course it’s beautiful and eloquent and it sayseverything he’s too socially inept to say to her face. It radically alters her opinion of him.

In response to her criticisms, Darcyreally does make an effort to changehis manners. He was never a bad guy – it’s obvious how much he loves his friendsand his baby sister, and Lizzie too, he just tends to be rude and haughty and socially awkward,something that’s understandable considering his station.

Lizziemeets him at Pemberley and he introduces her to his sister (which,over-protective big brother alert, is the biggest compliment he can give) andseeing how he treats her makes Lizzie just a tiny bit weak in the knees. JUST ALITTLE. NOT THAT SHE WANTS TO MARRY HIM OR ANYTHING HAHA wow his house is big.

THENHE’S EVEN A GENTLEMAN TO HER AUNT AND UNCLE AND MAYBE JUST MAYBE SHE MIGHTTHINK HE’S A BIT HANDSOME???? JUST A LITTLE?????

Then she hears her sister Lydia has run away with the renegade Mr. Wickham.

Mr.Darcy be like

NOTON MY WATCH. NO SIR.

Hecomes to the rescue, finds Lydia and Wickham, and persuades them to marry with ahefty sum of money, thus rescuing the Bennets from disgrace. But. BUT.

HEDOES ALL THIS WITHOUT TELLING HER. OR THE REST OF HER FAMILY.

HERAUNT AND UNCLE TELL HER, MUCH LATER, THAT DARCY DID IT ALL AT GREAT PERSONALEXPENSE.

AndLizzie’s just like ‘oh no.’

(Because every girl’s a slut for a gentlemanwho treats her and her family with respect.)

BUTTHAT’S NOT ALL.

OHNO, THAT IS NOT ALL.

BINGLEYCOMES BACK. MAH BOY BINGLEY COMES RIDING INTO TOWN TO SWEEP JANE OFF HER FEET.

Gee,I wonder who could have been behind that? I wonder who could possibly havepersuaded Bingley that Jane truly did love him, and that her family was notbeneath his station after all? WHO COULD POSSIBLY HAVE DONE THAT????

Bythis point Lizzie’s a hive of conflicting desires and emotions. That’s whenLady Catherine de Bourgh comes into her house, unannounced, and tells her notto marry Mr. Darcy.

Howdoes Lizzie respond? Miss “From the very beginning – from the firstmoment, I may almost say – of my acquaintance with you, your manners,impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and yourselfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that groundworkof disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immoveable adislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the lastman in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry” ?

Shesays, ‘WOW. FUCK YOU LADY. YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO. HE’S A GENTLEMAN AND IAM A GENTLEMAN’S DAUGHTER. WE ARE EQUALS. I’LL MARRY WHOMEVER I PLEASE. NOW GETTHE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE.’

(Oooooh, girl, you got it bad.)

After this, Darcy shows up and starts talking to Lizzie. And it KILLS me, because obviouslyhe’d given up on ever winning her hand. He did all those things for her notbecause he wanted her to like him, but just because he loved her. He was upsetwhen he found out her uncle had told her about what he did for Lydia andWickham. UPSET. And while Lady Catherine had raged about how inferiorLizzie’s family was, just as Darcy once had, now Darcy says that he respectsand loves them. He says Lady Catherine spoke to him of their encounter, and it filledhim with hope that maybe she didn’t think he was an insufferable jackassanymore. ONLY when he receives this encouragement does he renew his proposal,and even then he adds, “one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”

IMEAN???? Just LOOK at this precious sunflower, dumb and stuttering and full of “awkwardnessand anxiety,” so fucking in love with this girl that he was willing to give hispersonality a complete overhaul and re-evaluate all his life choices, notbecause he thought it would make her like him, but JUST BECAUSE he loved her. And if she had refused him a second time, he would never have bothered her again.THAT is how you gentleman.

Thename of the novel says it all – Pride and Prejudice. He’s proud and haughty,she’s prejudiced and rooted in her negative first impressions. These are thethings they have to overcome, this is how they have to grow and evolve. Heneeds to lay aside his pride, she her prejudice, and only then can they betogether.

Becausethey are perfect for each other. Absolutely,unequivocally. And when Jane Austen says they live happily ever after, Ibelieve her.

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this is my favorite video of all time bar none

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Kmsl

please just read the whole thing

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Just a quick reminder:

Selfishness is putting the wants of yourself over the needs of others.

Self respect is putting the needs of yourself over the wants of others.

One is disregarding others, one is taking care of yourself.

The difference between the two is the difference between being a friend and a doormat.

Taking care of yourself does not make you a bad person.

I repeat:

Taking care of yourself does not make you a bad person.

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Let me just send this to everyone real quick, lol

Where was the outrage then?

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Fanfiction appreciation post    1 | 2

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that last one lmao

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Reblog if you have mourned the death of a fictional character.

If you do not reblog this, you are in fact lying.

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Alright, so I just watched the scene in PS where Hagrid is telling Harry about Voldemort and doesn’t want to say the name. Harry is like, “Maybe if you wrote it down?” and Hagrid is like, “Nah, can’t spell it.”

And that reminded me of how it’s basically canon (I headcanon it anyway) that nobody pronounces Voldemort’s name the way Voldemort (and J.K. Rowling) intended - with the T being silent. Bc it’s French, right? And so it’s kind of a joke in fandom that nobody says Voldemort’s chosen name right and it drives the Dark Lord absolutely nuts or whatever. So what if people not being able to spell Voldemort is actually pretty common in the Wizarding World?

Like, what if, when Voldemort first started to go public, the newspapers kept on spelling his name wrong? Like sometimes it’s Volldemort and sometimes it’s Voldemore because no one at the Daily Prophet or any other publication is actually sure. Anyway, who the hell cares if they have a typo or two? (Voldemort. Voldemort cares. A lot.)

Maybe Imogen Thorpe in Fashion writes an article commenting on the Knights of Walpulgis’ choice of robes at the Minister’s New Year’s Ball and decides that she’ll just write it as Voldimorte. And Wilbur Hicks in Financial Reports is the worst with getting names right and just writes Volbimort in the hopes the editor will catch it, but Intern Beatrice Fowler is a muggleborn Hufflepuff in the middle of getting her university degree, so she’s just like, “Huh, weird name, right?” and Intern Travis Collins who hasn’t slept in five days just shrugs at her.  And Hester Whittle in Political Reports is hard of hearing and this isn’t a name from the Sacred Twenty-Eight, so she scribbles down Vuldimmori and wonders what those damn frogs think they’re doing trying to get involved in British politics - foreign bastards wouldn’t have dared back in her day.

And imagine, even during both wars, people are still getting it wrong. Diagon Alley has graffiti on the shop walls that says DOWN WITH BARON VOLLDINORT! The Ministry of Magic under Death Eater occupation has a room full of anti-Voldemort fliers where the name continuously switches between Voledeemorte and Vouldiomrt and, oh god, Wuldimorr. “It’s foreign,” Fred explains very seriously to Kingsley as George and Lee turn them out by the hundreds and Remus is basically crying with laughter into a table.

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omg i thought i was the only one that happened to!

do you have those memories that are really cringey and you never speak of and something triggers the memory and you want to fucking wash your brain out with bleach

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Am I the only one thinking that the US of A(ssholes) is going backwards? Trap laws have made abortion almost impossible in many states. Police brutality against people of color is getting more and more prominant. Islamaphobe is getting crazier each day, and it all seems to be echoing past events, when asian people were put in concentration camps (and how fucked up is it that I barely remember hearing about that in history class-like, actually i'm not even sure if that was in a class or just me stumbling onto a history channel special) And stories I heard from my old family members about civil rights movements seem like they're being recreated today. Like, what the actual fuck. Is a prominant black leader gonna have to be assassinated again? And all these people going, that was in the past. Really? How are you so oblivious to your own lives? I watched a clip of some old video where a woman asked a crowd of white people to raise their hands if they'd want to be black. No one did. So obviously they were aware that it's not a position of advantage or power. I wonder what people would say today?

Like, I'd really like it if some high profile white people got make-up artists do make them look legitimately like black people and middle-eastern and hispanic and asian. And then dress in clothing associated with those groups, and go about their everyday lives. See how quickly shit goes down.

I feel like somebody would get their ass beat. And I would not feel sorry for them.

I want someone to give a 12 year old white boy a makeover to look black, and give him a toy gun and have him play in a park. I want to see if the police will drive up to him and shoot him and then describe him in the police report as looking at least 20 years old.

It's not nice to think these thoughts. But it would give me some satisfaction to have the people who don't believe race plays a factor have to live the lives of poc for a while.

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All of this!

When I was nine, possibly ten, an author came to our school to talk about writing. His name was Hugh Scott, and I doubt he’s known outside of Scotland. And even then I haven’t seen him on many shelves in recent years in Scotland either. But he wrote wonderfully creepy children’s stories, where the supernatural was scary, but it was the mundane that was truly terrifying. At least to little ten year old me. It was Scooby Doo meets Paranormal Activity with a bonny braw Scottish-ness to it that I’d never experienced before.

I remember him as a gangling man with a wiry beard that made him look older than he probably was, and he carried a leather bag filled with paper. He had a pen too that was shaped like a carrot, and he used it to scribble down notes between answering our (frankly disinterested) questions. We had no idea who he was you see, no one had made an effort to introduce us to his books. We were simply told one morning, ‘class 1b, there is an author here to talk to you about writing’, and this you see was our introduction to creative writing. We’d surpassed finger painting and macaroni collages. It was time to attempt Words That Were Untrue.

You could tell from the look on Mrs M’s face she thought it was a waste of time. I remember her sitting off to one side marking papers while this tall man sat down on our ridiculously short chairs, and tried to talk to us about what it meant to tell a story. She wasn’t big on telling stories, Mrs M. She was also one of the teachers who used to take my books away from me because they were “too complicated” for me, despite the fact that I was reading them with both interest and ease. When dad found out he hit the roof. It’s the one and only time he ever showed up to the school when it wasn’t parents night or the school play. After that she just left me alone, but she made it clear to my parents that she resented the fact that a ten year old used words like ‘ubiquitous’ in their essays. Presumably because she had to look it up.

Anyway, Mr Scott, was doing his best to talk to us while Mrs M made scoffing noises from her corner every so often, and you could just tell he was deflating faster than a bouncy castle at a knife sharpening party, so when he asked if any of us had any further questions and no one put their hand up I felt awful. I knew this was not only insulting but also humiliating, even if we were only little children. So I did the only thing I could think of, put my hand up and said “Why do you write?”

I’d always read about characters blinking owlishly, but I’d never actually seen it before. But that’s what he did, peering down at me from behind his wire rim spectacles and dragging tired fingers through his curly beard. I don’t think he expected anyone to ask why he wrote stories. What he wrote about, and where he got his ideas from maybe, and certainly why he wrote about ghosts and other creepy things, but probably not why do you write. And I think he thought perhaps he could have got away with “because it’s fun, and learning is fun, right kids?!”, but part of me will always remember the way the world shifted ever so slightly as it does when something important is about to happen, and this tall streak of a man looked down at me, narrowed his eyes in an assessing manner and said, “Because people told me not to, and words are important.”

I nodded, very seriously in the way children do, and knew this to be a truth. In my limited experience at that point, I knew certain people (with a sidelong glance to Mrs M who was in turn looking at me as though she’d just known it’d be me that type of question) didn’t like fiction. At least certain types of fiction. I knew for instance that Mrs M liked to read Pride and Prejudice on her lunch break but only because it was sensible fiction, about people that could conceivably be real. The idea that one could not relate to a character simply because they had pointy ears or a jet pack had never occurred to me, and the fact that it’s now twenty years later and people are still arguing about the validity of genre fiction is beyond me, but right there in that little moment, I knew something important had just transpired, with my teacher glaring at me, and this man who told stories to live beginning to smile. After that the audience turned into a two person conversation, with gradually more and more of my classmates joining in because suddenly it was fun. Mrs M was pissed and this bedraggled looking man who might have been Santa after some serious dieting, was starting to enjoy himself. As it turned out we had all of his books in our tiny corner library, and in the words of my friend Andrew “hey there’s a giant spider fighting a ghost on this cover! neat!” and the presentation devolved into chaos as we all began reading different books at once and asking questions about each one. “Does she live?”— “What about the talking trees” —“is the ghost evil?” —“can I go to the bathroom, Miss?” —“Wow neat, more spiders!”

After that we were supposed to sit down, quietly (glare glare) and write a short story to show what we had learned from listening to Mr Scott. I wont pretend I wrote anything remotely good, I was ten and all I could come up with was a story about a magic carrot that made you see words in the dark, but Mr Scott seemed to like it. In fact he seemed to like all of them, probably because they were done with such vibrant enthusiasm in defiance of the people who didn’t want us to.

The following year, when I’d moved into Mrs H’s class—the kind of woman that didn’t take away books from children who loved to read and let them write nonsense in the back of their journals provided they got all their work done—a letter arrived to the school, carefully wedged between several copies of a book which was unheard of at the time, by a new author known as J.K. Rowling. Mrs H remarked that it was strange that an author would send copies of books that weren’t even his to a school, but I knew why he’d done it. I knew before Mrs H even read the letter.

Because words are important. Words are magical. They’re powerful. And that power ought to be shared. There’s no petty rivalry between story tellers, although there’s plenty who try to insinuate it. There’s plenty who try to say some words are more valuable than others, that somehow their meaning is more important because of when it was written and by whom. Those are the same people who laud Shakespeare from the heavens but refuse to acknowledge that the quote “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them“ is a dick joke.

And although Mr Scott seems to have faded from public literary consumption, I still think about him. I think about his stories, I think about how he recommended another author and sent copies of her books because he knew our school was a puritan shithole that fought against the Wrong Type of Wordes and would never buy them into the library otherwise. But mostly I think about how he looked at a ten year old like an equal and told her words and important, and people will try to keep you from writing them—so write them anyway.

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Lol!

RICHONNE IS CANON BITCHES

IT FUCKING HAPPENED! I’M LEGIT CRYING!!