#margin rambles

[margindoodles2407]

No you know what. Right on the heels of that last post I reblogged I need to come out and say something that's been weighing on my mind recently.

So my dad and I were recently talking about the upcoming Zelda movie, and I mentioned my hope (which happens to be shared by a large majority of the fandom) that Link will be a silent role. And my dad made a joke about how, yes, he needs to be so they can have rEpReSeNtAtIoN, and this. Well, it made me really mad.

Because here's the thing. Yes. I do think disabled persons deserve to play a part in storytelling. I do think there should be stories about blind men, deaf women, amputees and paralytics and mutes and those with mental diseases and handicaps. But here's the deal. I think they should be treated like any able-bodied character-- and by that, I mean that, while their disability should be present, and talked about, and impacting the narrative, it should not be the focal point of their character.

I know it's a cliche to mention Toph Beifong at this point, but Avatar: The Last Airbender does this perfectly. Toph is blind. This is one of the first things we learn about her. It's a part of what makes her who she is. She's never miraculously healed from it. They talk about it, they joke about it, and Toph's blindness has an impact on the narrative-- but she's also treated just like any other member of the Gaang. She has a personality that exists outside of her blindness. While Toph's blindness is an inextricable part of her character, it is not the end-all be-all that her personality and story arc revolves around.

(It's not as good an example as Toph, especially because, if I'm being perfectly honest, the show loved to push him to the side and we barely saw anything substantial of him after the midpoint of S2, but this is also something I appreciated more than a little about Echo being an amputee in The Bad Batch. I wish they had talked about it more, especially because the commonality of cybernetics in science fiction media lends to the idea that cybernetics-using characters aren't actually disabled, but the fact that he was allowed to exist and just be as a perfectly capable and distinct member of CF99 while also missing three of his limbs and having cerebrospinal implants is another step in the right direction.)

TL;DR: Disabled characters should exist in media and should play impactive roles on the narrative. However, the minute their disability becomes their only purpose as a character is the minute the story they're playing in begins to suffer, because it's no longer a story, it's a propaganda piece.

[margindoodles2407]

op gets it

liking someone platonically is so embarrassing like. yeah i admire you. yeah i think about you all the time. yeah i look forward to every time i see you even if it's only for a minute. yeah it's all platonic and yeah i couldn't explain this because it'd sound romantic. fucking hell

[margindoodles2407]

crazy how all jonathan harker ever did was love his wife and then every subsequent adaptation of the story of jonathan harker loving his wife went, "hey what if jonathan harker didn't love his wife"

also crazy how all mina harker ever did was love her husband and then every subsequent adaptation of the story of mina harker loving her husband went, "hey what if mina harker didn't love her husband"

[margindoodles2407]

as a catholic. i hate everyone's obsession with so-called "catholic guilt" actually

that's called scrupulosity (or, in the common parlance, religious/moral ocd) and it's not supposed to be there. we have resources we'll help you

[shipwrecked-with-wizards]

tangents I yapped about in therapy today:

public transit and trains my beloved

how tumblr does in fact still exist and is active (I did resist the urge to tell her my boywife is a tumblr micro-celeb)

this one man I hate at my university because bad vibes and weird comments

how this other man at my work basically told me he's into older women in response to me mentioning I'm gay and I had no idea if he was joking (she did ask whether I think there's any possibility I'm autistic in response to that, thanks for asking.)

the differences between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod

my boyfriend's silly little gender

the really bad job the first person who fit me in pointe shoes did

[burriburi]

“I…”

[margindoodles2407]

I will say it once again.

You cannot be a "Christian Witch". Those two things are inherently incompatible. Christianity means relying completely on God, ceding control of your own life to His divine plan, trusting in His providence and Fatherly Love. Witchcraft means trying to manipulate both the natural and supernatural world to domineer control of what you think they should be.

You cannot serve two masters.

Thank you and goodnight.

[some-pers0n]

If I think about my indie bands post for too long I get upset with how people have turned a post that was just "Hey it's kinda fucked up how people use thinly-veiled homophobic and ableist language to insult the fanbases of bands/artists" to mean "Don't give in to peer pressure! Like all the corny stuff you want!" which, true, yeah, but that's not the original post. The post wasn't just about being made fun of for liking stuff it was also for people using autistic and queer as a direct insult to devalue the person listening to it

[margindoodles2407]

team "i do nothing in my pajamas except literally lay in my bed and go to snork mimimi land and maybe eat a snack, unless i have a hellish fever and am losing twice my weight in sweat i can wear the same pajamas multiple nights in a row"

team “i wore this yesterday but i’m going to a different place so it doesn’t matter”

[jesncin]

Musings on fandom racebends and canon characters of color

It's so fascinating how Tana Moon initially accidentally subverted the "disposable poc love interest" trope. She's propped up to be the endgame love interest that Superboy "earns" by learning to grow up and be responsible. As far as half-assed love triangles go, the one between Superboy, Roxy and Tana heavily favors Superboy being committed to Tana to the point of barely reciprocating Roxy's feelings for him. Yeah of course it's a creepy relationship -but as we've discussed before- the writer doesn't see anything wrong with their age gap. It's a fetishistic, racist and misogynistic fantasy where a teen boy can be cool enough to catch the fancy of a sexy dark skinned woman. At the end of the day, Kesel wanted you to like Tana.

But -because of his own biases- Kesel never fleshes out Tana the way Roxy and Knockout (white women btw) get to be explored. I think Kesel assumed Tana being a sexy lamp was enough to hold the interest of young boys reading. And then when Superboy needed a status quo shift that moved him away from his Hawai'i cast system to that of CADMUS, suddenly Tana just... metatexually fulfilled the disposable brown girl trope. Now Superboy has his eyes on a new quirky blonde white girl at work. Tana comes back to die, so both Superboy and the readership move on.

Looking at the way Tana is treated in fandom; how she's made disposable and barred from transformative re-imagining, how when she is included she's treated as this obstacle to overcome before Kon can enter his real, fulfilling relationships with white partners,,, it's like fandom reinforces the disposable brown girl trope inherit in the bias of canon.

And man, does it gets weird when Kon himself is re-imagined as a person of color. I've talked before about how especially in fandom spaces, it's totally fine to racebend a canonically white character if you see something in that worth exploring. I save my big boy critic pants for canon rather than going after spaces of play. BUT when a character's original solo text is inseparable from racism, I have to wonder what we're saying when we give more humanity to re-imagining a white character (who are often afforded more dimension) as POC over the existing (usually underdeveloped) POC characters.

I've seen this "people care more about racebending white characters than already existing canon poc characters" discourse before and I totally get where it's coming from. Many people are more interested in re-imagining Superman as a man of color instead of getting into a character like Steel or Icon (who have their identity more purposely written into their stories), but that doesn't mean those POC!Superman re-imaginings don't have merit either! But at the same time, a canon character like Kong Kenan fulfills the "Superman legacy character with attitude" role way better than Kon ever did, but he doesn't command the same fandom as a man of color.

I guess what I'm heading towards in this ramble is that I wish there was a balance. If you're compelled into appropriating a canonically white character to be more like you or because there's a story to tell, go for it! But I think it's important to be aware of the ways we reinforce canon's bigotry by only giving our creativity to a certain type of character. Like yes, fandom likes making Kon brown, but do they do anything to dismantle or interrogate the racism inherit in his run? Or have we fed back into the racist misogyny of canon by validating the dynamic still in place? Does Kon now just get to dump and dispose of a woman of color while being brown himself as he does it?

[arolesbianism]

Been working on some first run Chou sprites for funsies, here’s a handful of the ones I’ve done so far

[margindoodles2407]

hmm. having thoughts about how the term "christian" (i.e. translated from the greek means "little Christ") was originally a slur

[ducktracy]

I NEVER POSTED THIS WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH

ok i drew this back in September 2022 when i was doing a passive rewatch of every Porky and Daffy short in chronological order while i was working--drawn because i RRRRREEEALLY love how accepting and often enabling the early Porky is with the early Daffy’s hysteria. there's something genuinely sweet and funny about Porky just sort of chalking him up to his esoteric, silly little friend (esoteric, silly little friend is causing horrific atrocities). especially refreshing in an age where modern material seems to completely reduce Porky's tolerance for Daffy's screwiness (but a bit understandably so)

[jesncin]

can't believe karl kessel superboy writing just buried maws lois lane like that. how

imagine getting outdone by misogynist racist karl kessel like I would be so embarrassed

[margindoodles2407]

how on earth do you expect me to pick just one

“Your little brother never tells you but he loves you so” -"Colors" by Halsey

“Oh my love, my heart, don't cry/We were born to die/But for this moment, for all time/I will fight for you/I will die for you” -"Battle Cry" by The Family Crest

“But you, my brother in arms/I'd rather I lose my limbs than let you come to harm” -"The Soldiering Life" by The Decemberists

“Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me/What your sacrifice was for” -"Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" from Les Miserables (actually that whole song but i digress)

"Miss you terribly already, miss the space between your eyelids/Ehere I'd stare through awkward sentences and void through awkward silence/Miss your teeth when they chatter, when we smoked out in my garden/When we couldn't sleep for all the heat, soft talk began to harden/Miss your small hand in the palm of mine, the fact they're good at making/Miss you sitting up incessantly, and the fact you're always waking in the night" -"Small Hands" by Keaton Henson

"I am drowning. There is no sign of land/You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand" -"No Children" by The Mountain Goats

"That's it, it's split, it won't recover/Just frame the halves and call them brothers" -"Call them Brothers" by Regina Spektor

"This is a soldier's cry/And no one wants to hear it/No one wants to hear it- but I'm afraid to die" and "Oh, the weight of man/Please lift me up, please hold my hand/Oh, the ways of man/Just leave me here, just drop my hand/Oh, the wars man/Come break my heart, please lay me down/Oh, the weight of a man" -"Soldier's Song" by David Berkeley

"I long to hear your voice as I remember it/But now I have no choice but to remember it/No recordings were made/No MP3s, no AACs, no WAVs/I long to hear your voice, the timbre of your voice/I long to hear your voice as I remember it" -"I Long to Hear Your Voice, As I Remember It" by AJJ

"When everything feels like the movies, yeah you bleed just to know you're alive" -"Iris" by The Goo Goo Dolls

"Sometimes you've gotta bleed to know/That you're alive and have a soul" -"Tear in my Heart" by Twenty-One Pilots

There are so many more but this post is long enough as it is

reblog and put in the tags a lyric that absolutely cuts you. im so curious to see what makes everyone hurt

[rattusrattus3]

How have I lived these 27 years primarily using disposable lighters. I got a thing of butane gas to refill my lighters and like. WHY DIDNT I DO THIS SOONER. I keep my dead lighters in a container anyway, now I can actually reuse/refill them ????(not all of them but many!??)

My new right hand … arm. Man. silly rabbit . I love it!