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okay so I finished Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet Jacobs, and here are my takeaways, because it was AMAZING and I can't believe all US students aren't required to read it in school:

shows how slavery actually worked in nuanced ways i'd never thought much about

example: Jacobs's grandmother would work making goods like crackers and preserves after she was done with her work day (so imagine boiling jars at like 3 a.m.) so that she could sell them in the local market

through this her grandmother actually earned enough money, over many years, to buy herself and earn her freedom

BUT her "mistress" needed to borrow money from her. :)))) Yeah. Seriously. And never paid her back, and there was obviously no legal recourse for your "owner" stealing your life's savings, so all those years of laboring to buy her freedom were just ****ing wasted. like.

But also! Her grandmother met a lot of white women by selling them her homemade goods, and she cultivated so much good will in the community that she was able to essentially peer pressure the family that "owned" her into freeing her when she was elderly (because otherwise her so-called owners' white neighbors would have judged them for being total assholes, which they were)

She was free and lived in her own home, but she had to watch her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all continue to be enslaved. She tried to buy her family but their "owners" wouldn't allow it.

Enslaved people celebrated Christmas. they feasted, and men went around caroling as a way to ask white people in the community for money.

But Christmas made enslaved people incredibly anxious because New Years was a common time for them to be sold, so mothers giving their children homemade dolls on Christmas might, in just a few days' time, be separated from their children forever

over and over again, families were deliberately ripped apart in just the one community that Harriet Jacobs lived in. so many parents kept from their children. just insane to think of that happening everywhere across the slave states for almost 200 years

Harriet Jacobs was kept from marrying a free Black man she loved because her "owner" wouldn't let her

Jacobs also shows numerous ways slavery made white people powerless

for example: a white politician had some kind of relationship with her outside of marriage, obviously very questionably consensual (she didn't hate him but couldn't have safely said no), and she had 2 children by him--but he wasn't her "master," so her "master" was allowed to legally "own" his children, even though he was an influential and wealthy man and tried for years to buy his children's freedom

she also gives examples of white men raping Black women and, when the Black women gave birth to children who resembled their "masters," the wives of those "masters" would be devastated--like, their husbands were (from their POV) cheating on them, committing violent sexual acts in their own house, and the wives couldn't do anything about it (except take out their anger on the enslaved women who were already rape victims)

just to emphasize: rape was LEGALLY INCENTIVIZED BY US LAW LESS THAN 200 YEARS AGO. It was a legal decision that made children slaves like their mothers were, meaning that a slaveowner who was a serial rapist would "own" more "property" and be better off financially than a man who would not commit rape.

also so many examples of white people promising to free the enslaved but then dying too soon, or marrying a spouse who wouldn't allow it, or going bankrupt and deciding to sell the enslaved person as a last resort instead

A lot of white people who seemed to feel that they would make morally better decisions if not for the fact that they were suffering financially and needed the enslaved to give them some kind of net worth; reminds me of people who buy Shein and other slave-made products because they just "can"t" afford fairly traded stuff

but also there were white people who helped Harriet Jacobs, including a ship captain whose brother was a slavetrader, but he himself felt slavery was wrong, so he agreed to sail Harriet to a free state; later, her white employer did everything she could to help Harriet when Harriet was being hunted by her "owner"

^so clearly the excuse that "people were just racist back then" doesn't hold any water; there were plenty of folks who found it just as insane and wrongminded as we do now

Harriet Jacobs making it to the "free" north and being surprised that she wasn't legally entitled to sit first-class on the train. Again: segregation wasn't this natural thing that seemed normal to people in the 1800s. it was weird and fucked up and it felt weird and fucked up!

Also how valued literacy skills were for the enslaved! Just one example: Harriet Jacobs at one point needed to trick the "slaveowner" who was hunting her into thinking she was in New York, and she used an NYC newspaper to research the names of streets and avenues so that she could send him a letter from a fake New York address

I don't wanna give away the book, because even though it's an autobiography, it has a strangely thrilling plot. But these were some of the points that made a big impression on me.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl also inspired the first novel written by a Black American woman, Frances Harper, who penned Iola Leroy. And Iola Leroy, in turn, helped inspire books by writers like Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Harriet Jacob is also credited in Colson Whitehead's acknowledgments page for informing the plot of The Underground Railroad. so this book is a pivotal work in the US literary canon and, again, it's weird that we don't all read it as a matter of course.

(also P.S. it's free on project gutenberg and i personally read it [also free] on the app Serial Reader)

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recently learned that the "UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF LOVE" sample from jet set radio future is legendary Black activist Kwame Ture denouncing the apartheid state of israel

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I prefer a dynamic Sonic that grows and changes through the years while maintaining his core values.

I get that others prefer static Sonic, but the die hard mentality so many have I just don’t fuck with.

Dynamic Sonic means as much to me as static Sonic seems to mean to others, and the constant violent shutting down of any attempts to grow or change the character, whether from Japanese writers or American ones, as sacrilege, is extremely disheartening.

Idk if there’s anything to be done about it. I just wanted to speak my piece.

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Crying about “platonic male friendships” being forgotten while having almost every male lead randomly lust after Nadja or The Guide will never not infuriate me. My blood is fucking boiling, I’m so serious.

It was queerbait, actually (A repository)

(It's almost three am but I am fuming, I've been collecting these for a while, my evidence, I WILL write a detailed post about this in a few days but I wanted to leave this here in case anyone else wanted to see how fucking deep this goes)

HYPOTESIS: Nandermo is textbook queerbaiting, not in spite the characters being queer but BECAUSE of it. The ship was used deliberately by the writers, the actors and the marketing in order to bring lgbt viewership to the show with NO intention on ever delivering on their promise.

Also the show presented itself as queer, marketed itself as queer and went to win GLAAD awards two years in a row then proceded to have no m/m or f/f couples for SIX seasons. Their queer rep were just jokes.

WHAT'S QUEERBAITING:

(I hate that I have to use wikipedia and dictionary.com but the actual articles about it are behind paywalls and I am poor)

Okay on to WWDITS

Let's talk marketing:

These are from season 3, 4, 5 and 6

Season five:

The show is over, it had six seasons, where were my m/m or f/f couples? Because I sure as hell didn't see one apart from the one episode with Freddie, that's it, that's all we got. Apart from that it was just jokes.

---

But that's not about nandermo, you say, it's just about queerness, then what about this: FUCKING HEAVY HANDED NANDERMO MARKETING FOR YEARS:

OR THIS:

How about what the show's socials were posting, this is from season 3 or 4

Now let's see what the writers were saying (this is before season 5):

The infamous that's his boss moment came from this:

But before that we had:

This is Harvey in 2022:

Here's Harvey today:

And here's Kayvan in 2022

Here's Kayvan last year:

And today:

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Still infuriated by Harvey and Kayvan’s comments. You already HAVE the perfect NORMALIZATION of platonic male RELATIONSHIPS in SEAN & LAZLO!!!!!

And I don’t believe this faux ass concern in the first place when you have zero words about abnormalizing m/f friendships by randomly having Nandor & Monster horny for the guide!!!!! Or any words for all the sex all male leads had with Nadja over the past 6 seasons!

And most fans aren’t even ASKING for sex!!!

WHY IS ANY SEMBLANCE OF QUEER LOVE ALWAYS FRAMED AS PERVERTED AND AS SULLYING THE DEEP BONDS OF PLATONIC FRIENDSHIPS WHILE M/F COUPLE GET TO HAVE MATCHING OUTFITS AND SING SONGS TO EACH OTHER AND OPENLY DECLARE THEIR MUTUAL LOVE AND YES, EVEN HAVE SEX, WITHOUT ANYONE SAYING IT CORRUPTS WHAT COULD’VE BEEN A DEEP AND POWERFUL PLATONIC FRIENDSHIP???!!!! Queer people stay losing, ISTG.

It was queerbait, actually (A repository)

(It's almost three am but I am fuming, I've been collecting these for a while, my evidence, I WILL write a detailed post about this in a few days but I wanted to leave this here in case anyone else wanted to see how fucking deep this goes)

HYPOTESIS: Nandermo is textbook queerbaiting, not in spite the characters being queer but BECAUSE of it. The ship was used deliberately by the writers, the actors and the marketing in order to bring lgbt viewership to the show with NO intention on ever delivering on their promise.

Also the show presented itself as queer, marketed itself as queer and went to win GLAAD awards two years in a row then proceded to have no m/m or f/f couples for SIX seasons. Their queer rep were just jokes.

WHAT'S QUEERBAITING:

(I hate that I have to use wikipedia and dictionary.com but the actual articles about it are behind paywalls and I am poor)

Okay on to WWDITS

Let's talk marketing:

These are from season 3, 4, 5 and 6

Season five:

The show is over, it had six seasons, where were my m/m or f/f couples? Because I sure as hell didn't see one apart from the one episode with Freddie, that's it, that's all we got. Apart from that it was just jokes.

---

But that's not about nandermo, you say, it's just about queerness, then what about this: FUCKING HEAVY HANDED NANDERMO MARKETING FOR YEARS:

OR THIS:

How about what the show's socials were posting, this is from season 3 or 4

Now let's see what the writers were saying (this is before season 5):

The infamous that's his boss moment came from this:

But before that we had:

This is Harvey in 2022:

Here's Harvey today:

And here's Kayvan in 2022

Here's Kayvan last year:

And today:

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Something else that’s extremely infuriating is the actors themselves justifying it with that same ole homophobic “people are forgetting two men can just be friends” shit. “It’s important to depict close platonic male bonds,” or whatever.

LIKE, SEAN AND LAZLO ARE ALREADY PERFECT “PLATONIC MALE FRIEND” REPRESENTATION, AND ARE BELOVED BY THE FANDOM FOR BEING JUST THAT! PEOPLE ASK FOR 1, JUST 1 FUCKING QUEER RELATIONSHIP IN THIS “QUEER” SHOW AND YOU ACT LIKE IT’S A GODDAMN PLAGUE?! I’M ABOUT TO LOSE MY DAMN MIND, ISTG!!!

on the wwdits ending and queerbaiting:

a lot of yall didn't live through the 90s and 2000s when off camera non-sexual not-shown-only-implied queer relationships in media were all we got. we held onto every last crumb and watched the creators deny any gay intent (because of network censorship etc.) and we just accepted it.

I do NOT want to go back to that. WWDITS brought us back to that.

the creators intentionally hit every textbook romantic beat with nandermo and teased it for years and then turned around and essentially said the fans were sick perverts for wanting them to kiss on screen when they literally showed lazlo giving bodyswapped nadja doll/colin robinson who lazlo was a father figure for backshots but noooo nandermo is too kinky because it's his boss??

don't act like it's out of character because nandor is shown to be forward with his affections towards women and sexual with men, and has spent his whole character arc searching for a wife. guillermo has spent his whole character arc coming back to his love for nandor again and again in new ways.

yes their love is pure and transcendent and whatever but showing them kiss or fuck doesn't sully that!! it deepens and confirms it!! sex is not impure!!

yes nandermo is canon, it's confirmed in the finale in the implications and stolen glances. but that is NOT ENOUGH for me. it's a cop-out.

saying "these two are kissing but only when the cameras are off" does a disservice to gay fans who remember the time when that's all we had.

if you're going to market your media as queer you have to ACTUALLY SHOW THE QUEERNESS ON SCREEN.

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I’m actually a little astonished at how badly people are missing the point in the notes

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Ohh, so I was looking at my storage and found these! I originally shared them on twitter before yeeting the platform. Anyway, feel free to use! Art memes for your oc :D

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I’ve been seein’ people debate this whole “is Sonic a hero?” thing and I’ve been seeing all the arguments and the endless back and forth points being made about lyrics and dialogue and interviews and all this when I suddenly remembered:

So like, what are we even talking about?

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This is completely emotion based and 0% reasonable, but I wish people who want Batman to kill or to have killed in the past would just leave him alone. I know that he’s a fictional character, but it’s just more and more upsetting to me that he can’t just exist and not want to kill without so many people feeling it’s their duty to “fix” that. I hate it.

And I don’t use that word lightly, HATE.

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Can I say, “Every Sonic game takes place in specialized pocket universes completely separate from each other with their own lore and their own versions of the Sonic characters,” is WAY more complicated than: “The games are in chronological order and sometimes there are plot-holes.” ?

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Listen, I get it, “fight scene that’s more gay than gay sex,” and all that.

But I sometimes worry that if the gayness in any of this media was actually taken beyond metaphor, and two queer characters actually made love, or hell, even just openly LIKED each other, that the people constantly talking about the “gay” fight scenes would recoil in disgust, or even feel it was boring compared to the “never fully confirmed” type of stuff.

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A very significant amount of “villain had a point”’s I see are legit just the vaguest “current society bad” stances humanly possible, that for some reason unbeknownst to me get majorly projected onto by every ideology under the sun.

Leftists, even far leftists, will see a villain hit the “current society bad” line and immediately assume it’s meant to represent their ideology specifically, and all the innocent killing is just propaganda to make them look bad.

And the funny thing? Far right conservatives see the exact same villain and think the exact same thing. Curious that.

If a villains point can be boiled down to “current society bad,” then they don’t have a point. “Current society bad” is the foundation every political movement outside of center is built on. AND SOMETIMES EVEN WITHIN CENTER.

Even hating “the elites” isn’t exclusively leftists.

Who gets defined as the problem (or as the elites), and what the proposed solution is is where the difference lies.

And dare I say, there are a lot more ideologically alt-right villains than people recognize.

Hot take here, maybe. I think going “villain had a point” and ending there is maybe the worst and most boring form of media literacy; Especially as it often feeds into a media illiteracy of people latching onto “well the villain had a point so they’re the real hero” simplicity.

Once you’ve decided “villain has a point!”, explore it! Does their point actually hold water or is it nice lipservice? How does the narrative treat it? Does the villain seem to actually hold and push the viewpoint or does it seem hypocritical/unsupported by their other actions? If it isn’t supported, does the subtext feel purposeful or like it is just a weak “Authors wanted someone to say this and then slapped it on their villain without making the villain fit it?” How does it compare and contrast with the protagonist(s)’s viewpoint(s)? If they contrast too heavily, does the protagonist at least still track as a reasonable viewpoint?

And is it actually an example of “Villain shouting reasonable praxis before shooting an innocent so the hero can uphold modern society with no changes” or does it still change the hero?

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Tips for writing those gala scenes, from someone who goes to them occasionally:

Generally you unbutton and re-button a suit coat when you sit down and stand up.

You’re supposed to hold wine or champagne glasses by the stem to avoid warming up the liquid inside. A character out of their depth might hold the glass around the sides instead.

When rich/important people forget your name and they’re drunk, they usually just tell you that they don’t remember or completely skip over any opportunity to use your name so they don’t look silly.

A good way to indicate you don’t want to shake someone’s hand at an event is to hold a drink in your right hand (and if you’re a woman, a purse in the other so you definitely can’t shift the glass to another hand and then shake)

Americans who still kiss cheeks as a welcome generally don’t press lips to cheeks, it’s more of a touch of cheek to cheek or even a hover (these days, mostly to avoid smudging a woman’s makeup)

The distinctions between dress codes (black tie, cocktail, etc) are very intricate but obvious to those who know how to look. If you wear a short skirt to a black tie event for example, people would clock that instantly even if the dress itself was very formal. Same thing goes for certain articles of men’s clothing.

Open bars / cash bars at events usually carry limited options. They’re meant to serve lots of people very quickly, so nobody is getting a cosmo or a Manhattan etc.

Members of the press generally aren’t allowed to freely circulate at nicer galas/events without a very good reason. When they do, they need to identify themselves before talking with someone.

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This goes for other character’s who are against killing too. Aang, Sonic The Hedgehog, Steven Universe, Superman, etc.

And I don’t want hear some “well actually if you take these 3 instances over multiple decades out of context than the character actually loves killing, it’s basically their favorite thing” type shit. Go fuck yourself. You know damn well whatever you could bring up was either retconned or legit completely unintentional.

I don’t know if I can take it anymore. If I hear one more “Batman should just kill Joker” debate I’m gonna flip. Can’t he just… not want to? Can’t he just be personally dislike killing and not have to endlessly justify it? Does it really need to be more complicated than that?

Do we really have to keep going over the same trolley-problems and moral inquiries over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again day-in day-out ad infinitum? Like leave my man alone!

Y’all have other characters who align perfectly with your personal moral beliefs, why you gotta try and change the ones who don’t? Like god DAMN IT. I get it already! “It’d be for the greater good!” “All Joker’s murders are on Batman!” “He’ll just escape again!” “What, so grievous bodily harm is okay but not murder?!”

SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!

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I don’t know if I can take it anymore. If I hear one more “Batman should just kill Joker” debate I’m gonna flip. Can’t he just… not want to? Can’t he just personally dislike killing and not have to endlessly justify it? Does it really need to be more complicated than that?

Do we really have to keep going over the same trolley-problems and moral inquiries over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again day-in day-out ad infinitum? Like leave my man alone!

Y’all have other characters who align perfectly with your personal moral beliefs, why you gotta try and change the ones who don’t? Like god DAMN IT. I get it already! “It’d be for the greater good!” “All Joker’s murders are on Batman!” “He’ll just escape again!” “What, so grievous bodily harm is okay but not murder?!”

SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!

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i wish i could articulate my frustration with the knuckles series/scu's handling of knuckles' heritage. i just hope that people recognized that stupid 'joke' where wade couldn't pronounce pachacamac's name as the anti-Indigenous racism it was