#ANYWAY the point is that this controversy affects them first and foremost so listening to jewish people is the most important thing here

[floralovebot]

Ive seen a lot of ppl say that Musa was whitewashed by the Fate: Winx saga, but while I agree an east asian actress should have been chosen, the actress Elisha Applebaum is jewish. From what Ive read, its controversial whether jewish ppl inherently count as poc or not so im not sure if I would call it "whitewashing"

Well, I'm not sure I'm the best person to talk to about this considering I'm not Jewish?

But from what I do know, this is an extremely controversial topic (like you said) that really doesn't have any one answer. There are Jewish people who fully consider themselves to be white (and Jewish of course but like... white too), and there are Jewish people who consider themselves to be poc. I think it's important to remember that a lot of the "Jewish people aren't poc if they aren't black/asian/dark-skinned/etc" comes from antisemitism or anti-zionism. A lot of poc in the west specifically say this because of antisemitism so a lot of the arguments for it are... not great to say the least.

In regard to Elisha specifically, she's ethnically Jewish so I think you could argue that it doesn't count as whitewashing, but that's really up to Jewish people to discuss. It's obviously still wrong for her to have been cast as Musa, that's not up for discussion, but whether she considers herself white, whether Jewish people consider her white, whether non-Jewish people (goyim?) consider her white and how much of that response is linked to internal antisemitism is all very personal and case by case. I'm not sure if there's a specific term for when people sort of... race or ethnicity change a character of color to a different but still not white race so like...?

But anyway, again there is no One specific answer because there's so much discussion and outright arguing over it. A lot of Jewish people do consider themselves to be poc and often West Asian/Middle Eastern (depending on who you ask) but there are a lot of arguments among themselves as well. This discussion really should be left up to them!

It's funny you mention this because I was actually discussing this with a Jewish mutual years ago! Here are some really interesting articles (written by Jewish people (as far as I'm aware)) that I found really helpful at the time: one, two, three, and four. There were others but I can't find them now :(

(There's also the matter of people converting to Judaism which is a similar but ultimately very different conversation so I do want to clarify that I'm specifically referring to ethnically Jewish people.)

[princessofgayskull]

Hi sunflower, what's your thoughts on T Swift's Betty being a catradora song???

Me, taking a break from spop to focus on my mental health and setting better boundaries:

Me, reading this ask:

This ask woke me up from like a deep, sleeping beauty type slumber, not joking. I don’t get asked to talk about Taylor Swift often, despite being a fan of hers since I was nine years old (I’m 22 now *wink*) and we are about to find out why. But I pride myself on taking any fiction piece of media I interact with and connecting it somehow to Taylor Swift. I can do so to varying degrees of success (usually depends on the ships and romance of the world) but there are so many songs of Taylor’s that have just fit Catradora so well for me, both in and out of canon. 

Some of my favorite examples: out of the woods (AND IT KEPT ME UP AT NIGHT WHEN NOELLE SAID THIS WAS HER TAYLOR SWIFT SONG FOR CATRADORA LIKE GAH CASUAL TS LISTENERS WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND) bad blood, lwymd, don’t blame, dancing with our hands tied, the archer, breathe, you’re not sorry, the way I loved you, forever & always, should’ve said no, safe & sound- I could go on.

But I won’t because I wanna stay on topic and talk about betty. Now I have a number of songs from the folklore/evermore series that are for me catradora songs (we’ll get to that in a minute) but this one is… challenging. Because I could be like “yes, because [insert casual reason here]” or “no, because [insert casual reason here]” but I can’t because Taylor feeds her children well and there’s several aspects of this song I feel like should be considered.

This biggest one to be considered, for me, is the love triangle aspect. Folklore features at length the betty/james/Augustine love triangle, each of them having one main song on the album from their POV. Betty's is cardigan, augustine’s is august, and james’ is betty. (also I’m going to throw out the gender component for a second; I know taylor says that Betty is about a guy’s apology and I totally vibe with her reasons why she wanted to write a song about a boy apologizing BECAUSE HOW GREAT WOULD THAT BE?) The love triangle makes the application of Catradora iffy at best. Because it’s like, who would be who? I am going to go out on a limb and assume that you’re seeing Catra as James? I think that personality wise, Adora as Betty and Catra as James is not a stone’s throw away from fitting actually really well. Adora’s canon journey is one of coming to realize “I know what I want and I know that it’s okay to want it” and a big part of Catra’s arc is her being like “Well shit… there goes my plans. Kind of feeling like a dumbass rn” especially in s4/s5. 

(That s4/s5 distinction is important; I’ll show why in a second) 

But for me, there’s no augustine. Or one that’s obvious anyway. I never imagined that either Catra or Adora dated or even had any inclinations with anyone else during the five season run- that’s just my personal opinion, people are completely welcome to feel free to disagree. I don’t think Catra acted even out of distraction with Scorpia or DT, and I think Adora was so focused on being She Ra that when she wasn’t thinking about failing/abandoning Catra when she alloted time to do so, she was thinking about the crushing weight of her responsibilities. So you know, not that much time to get back out there. So I rule out what causes James to apologize in the first place- cheating.

Side note about James cheating- I’m pretty sure Taylor confirmed this, in the long pond studio sessions doc, when she’s telling Jack Antonoff (MY BOY JACK) and Aaron Dessner ( GRAMMY AWARD WINNING KING) that James “was a fool!” And James did sleep with Augustine as confirmed in august, but cardigan makes it seem like he was definitely dating Betty before the summer. Maybe Taylor took inspiration from friends and they “were on break.” I also believe that the kiss in the Heart is the first kiss, that Catra and Adora were never ‘together’ together before Adora found the sword and defected (again, that’s just an opinion, but Adora just looks so wonderfully gobsmacked), so…

We can rule out cheating, and I think we can accomplish this and still reserve the essential meaning of the song of “I did something wrong, I see that now, I apologize for doing it, and I still love you” by widening the lens of what the “did something wrong” was (or “did something bad” you know *wink*). In that wider lens really you could fit either Catra or Adora into the song, but I’m still going to assume Catra is the James in this scenario based on how much of her redemption arc is formed around her refusal to say sorry and then eventually doing so. Of course there is no standing your porchlight but rather standing while wrestling a bunch of murderous clones…. Hmm….

But there are some stupid friends! I wholeheartedly believe Catra is James because of the dissing of Betty’s friends. That’s what Catra does to Bow, Glimmer and the rebellion et al., for most of the show and by the end of s4 she has no friends for Adora to even mock (terrible and cruel of me, I know, but it’s true). Also I know people are like “he called her friends stupid and then expected betty to take him back?” but I scream sing the line “WILL YOU KISS ME ON THE PORCH IN FRONT OF ALL YOUR STUPID FRIENDS?” every time. It brings me serotonin. 

Along those lines we can ask “Who’s Inez?” in this situation. When I think gossip no one from the show really comes to mind, well, expect for Double Trouble. But Double Trouble doesn’t ever speak to Adora about Catra. This happens vice-versa, and in Betty, James reveals that Inez told Betty he cheated on her. 

I want to say something controversial… Glimmer comes to mind when I think “who’s the Inez?” And this is based off of two things: 1) Inez’s closeness to Betty, and 2) Inez drags James out to dry, rightfully so. And when I think of that I think of Glimmer screaming “Do one good thing in your life!” directly in Catra’s face. James gives Inez a bad wrap in Betty. Not cool James. 

Of course there’s the pivotal, “would you tell me to go fuck myself?/ or lead me to the garden?” To me this a fun way of showing there’s vulnerability to what James is doing, so automatically I’m led to is the scene where Catra asks Adora to stay, or each time in s5 when Catra risks, basically an identity crisis to let Adora in how she really feels, but there’s always the potential that Adora could spurn her by not returning her feelings or rejecting her outright. 

I think the best argument that can be made for “is betty a catradora song” can really be encapsulated by the lyric(s): “the worst thing that I ever did is what I did to you” and “the only thing I wanna do is make it up to you.” That is what about the song SCREAMS Catra to me. And yeah, it could be argued that Adora hurt Catra pretty brutally (Shadow Weaver makes that point EVEN THOUGH SHE HAD NO RIGHT TO) that she messed up by abandoning Catra- but Adora feels guilt for... literally breathing. Adora is the quintessential embodiment of “pick your battles, no that’s too many battles, put some back,” but Catra picked one battle first and foremost (yes, she had a few others but this was the one) and that was Adora. Everything that motivated her was surrounded around a narrative of surpassing Adora for a multitude of reasons, and because of that she pretty much hurts Adora every chance she gets after Promise. Adora is really Catra’s first casualty, it makes sense that she has to be her first apology. And I think that after being vibed checked back to back by DT and Glimmer and realizing “oh hey fuck, I’m still in love with her” and then almost dying just to not die because Adora saves her, I think much of Catra’s motivation shifts to “how to do I get Adora to want to stay?” 

That’s my logic for how Betty could be a catradora song in canon. Now not all of my Taylor associations are with canon catradora, many of them do belong to uws catradora, because it’s a lot easier to apply the more modern details of Taylor’s songs to a modern au. The song Breathe is big that way. (it’s in Upper West Side, it’s the song Adora listens to and cries to after that first ride, I just never mentioned that it was taylor because my conditioned reaction to bringing up taylor is to have my head bit off with someone’s semi incorrect and slightly sexist opinion that I never, ever ask for) And this ask got me thinking about what it would look like if I applied not Catradora to Betty, but Betty to Catradora. What would it look like if Catra skateboarded and wore black lipstick, Adora wore a cardigan and they had homeroom together until Catra really messed up? What would it look like if they were seventeen when they admitted their feelings for each other instead of 21? What would it look like if they spent a summer fighting but dreaming of each other? What would their love story look like if Catra and Adora were in that town where Taylor envisioned this “same event that affected three people in different ways?”

I think it’d look something like this. 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31141973/chapters/76952048

what do you guys think?

quick but INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT thank you to @gimme-tea-bitch for helping me with this, being my beta, and listening to me talk about folklore/evermore.

[ruffoverthinksthings]

I headcannon that China is more of a cultural influence as it's the only Asian country. They make anime, Chinese Dramas are very popular, and the food is well-known. Fashion is extremely unique as you see a lot of young people trying to look like their favorite C-Pop star (but some fashion trends make the elders raise eyebrows). Music is a special blend of C-pop, J-pop, and K-pop. (I want Lonnie and other girls to dance/sing/listen to the Chinese version of Miss A's I Don't Need A Man).

Hooboy, this is going to be a while, just like the Xiongnu and Youask!

Anyway,some historical parallels and details to establish here first andforemost:

Ibelieve that Mulan takes place during the 15th Century,with some obvious anachronistic elements and historical and regionalinaccuracies, such as the fact that the Xiongnu were actuallyabsorbed into Chinese culture by this point, the invention of thefireworks that feature so prominently in the movie itself, anddetails like the voice actors using the wrong accent when pronouncing“Fa” as they are explicitly in the northern regions.

Inour timeline and our China, this century was a time of greatexploration and expansion of trade deals with foreign countries,along with a fascination in exotic treasures and animals (such asgiraffes) during the former half of the period, with an isolationistperiod and an economic decline in the other half.

It’sreally interesting as it fits really well with the sort of attitudethat you would expect a country to have BGU to even been amenable tothe negotiations and extensive preparations for joining Auradon, andthe resulting reaction when the country doesn’t prove nearly asstable and perfect as it was advertised to be.

Tocompletely and thoroughly discuss all the effects Auradon’s fusionhad on the Chinese people would be a BOOK, not a long tumblr post, soI’m just going to stick with your ask and focus specifically on theculture.

Sowithout further ado, 

“Culture in China, Before and After the GreatUniting”:

Tosay that the fusion and the introduction of many foreign, andsometimes temporally advanced, ideals, cultures, andinformation shook China to its very core is an understatement.

Inits own home realm, it was already a mecca for arts and culture,which is why they have indeed become the center for all Asiancultures because of foreign artists, dignitaries, merchants, andex-patriots from countries like Japan, Vietnam, and India, and someEuropean countries like that of Spain and Portugal.

AGU,it became an even bigger focus due to the vastness of its population,the massive growth and spread of wealth to the common man as career,commerce, and education opportunities abounded, and of course, thealready existing and thriving diversity within its own regions.

Thoughthe list of arts, trends, and cultural changes that exploded from theGreat Uniting are VERY, VERY, VERY NUMEROUS, you can verygenerally classify them into two movements:

Oneis the “Mulan” Movement (named after the famous War Hero, LiMulan, nee Fa), featuring themes, philosophies, and attitudesinvolving rebellion, breaking of age-old traditions, challenging thegender and/or societal roles (they were often intertwined, as womengot more freedoms and economic influence), liberal and democraticvalues originating mostly from London and its stores of knowledge,and an emphasis on personal realization and following through onindividual passions no matter what—being “true to your heart,”as it was popularly phrased.

Thoughthe movement was seen as a very valuable period of experimentation,exploration, and empowerment of many of the working class,minorities, and those that never would have stood a chance atpursuing their crafts BGU, it was heavily criticized for what manyaccused as “irreverence for irreverence’s sake,” the cheapeningand blasphemy of sacred traditions and elements of their society suchas the Emperor, the corruption of culture, and an unhealthy affectionand love for foreigners’ culture over that of their own, the lastmostly being attributed to majority of the new artists of this perioddrawing extremely heavy inspiration from the other states, if theyhadn’t copied it outright as is the case with covers and wholestyles like Coronian lute arrangements.

Itdidn’t help that it happened beside and sometimes instigated a HUGEamount of conflict, societal disruption, and even violent run-inswith the law, as many of the performers and fans oftentimes heldtheir events in remote locations in the mountains or seedy (forAuradon’s standards) underground venues, there was quite a lot ofworking class children who tried for stardom and ended up crashingand burning when they got roped up in drugs, too much partying, andthe fickle tastes of the masses, plus a LOT of the people whoidolized Mulan were also incredibly passionate, but WAY more violentand lacking in self control.

Thesecond is was simply known as “China’s Conservationist Period”where majority of the culture-and-future-shocked citizens retreatedback to what was familiar and established in the face of drastic andtoo rapid societal change, and what they sometimes believed was anattack on themselves and everything they held dear, an attempt toerase their very history and what makes them Chinese, to adopt thecultures and attitudes of foreigners and completely become them.

Thisxenophobic attitude was very apparent with critics and punditsreferring to many foreign acts and faces of culture as “invaders,”especially the controversial ones like the “Sex, Drugs, and Rock‘n’ Roll” idols from London.

Itenjoyed its own period of success independent of the Mulan Movement,owing to the fact that there were also plenty of foreigners whowanted to see this brand new culture and were already familiar, orsick of, the twists, new elements, and foreign Chinese artists wereintegrating into their works (“foreign” and “alien” are allrelative, after all).

Thetwo movements began to wane as societal and political tensionssettled, people at large adapted to the brand new reality they had,and gradually became more open to the change and less hostile tointegrating foreign ideals.

Theartists themselves also realized just how incredibly fleeting anddifficult it was to keep an audience’s attention in thishyper-accelerated and connected world, what with its increasinglyshort attention spans and the constant spotlight on both theirpersonal and professional lives, having to keep up a good front andappearance at all times.

Athird and very important factor was that the teenagers of thatgeneration became the “old farts” they were criticizing yearsearlier, and found themselves unable to keep up, or have legitimateinterest in the latest trends and developments, as they no longerrelated to the themes.

Happilymarried individuals rather found they don’t want to hear about thelascivious exploits of a guitarist who swears she will never getattached to any one girl.

Still,they didn’t want to abandon culture, music, and their craftsaltogether, which led to the “New Horizon” movement, generallyfeaturing fusions of traditional and modern instruments and styles,modern techniques for classic arts such as legends being told throughadvanced holograms than puppets, and the integration of “pagodas”and vibrant, Royal Palace style gardens in modern, mostly concreteand glass buildings.

Independentof periods and movements, and focusing on specific styles of cultureand arts:

Theaterand live performances experienced a massive surge given that there’ssuddenly so many avenues for performers to perform in for cheaper andwith less barrier to entry, it’s much more easy to organizethemselves logistically, and they have a willing crowd that can paythrough all manner of means, and “patrons” are not exclusivelylimited to rich merchants and the ruling class.

Recordeddramas also experienced the same popularity due to the demand and theease with which they could be produced and profit, though obviouslythey have their own market, with some overlap to the former.

Literatureexploded now that self-publication and distribution wassuddenly available, and you better believe that fanfiction bloomed assoon as people got wind of it. As with Sturgeon’s Law, though, mostof it was EXTREMELY bad, especially when you consider culturaldifferences and people only getting the appeal of certain memes,jokes, and themes VERY superficially.

Animationwise, I wouldn’t call what China produces “anime,” since Idefine anime as “animation originating from Japan,” though I canunderstand with how foreign countries produce shows clearly inspiredby and mimicking many of the distinct styles and elements from iconicanime shows, you would come to describe South East Asian animation ora certain style originating from there as “anime.”

(IfI missed any specific form of art you’d like, such as that ofpainting, it’s because this is already a lot of work as is, andthey can be answered in a later ask when I’ve had time to rest.)

Backto Movements, some common themes in these works, from both the Mulanand the Conservationist:

Rebellion,evil emperors, and impossible threats being conquered by herofigures, who are frequently outcasts, eccentrics, and vilified bysociety at large until they prove that their strangeness is whatallows them to become great.

Fantasiesinvolving being trapped in heavily restrictive and unimaginativedystopias, and breaking away the metaphorical and sometimesfigurative chains that keep the populations in line, and a sense ofoptimism and idealism despite the uncertainty and chaos that awaitstheir victory.

Loveletters to the Chinese Imperial System, with Emperors often beingcast as Divine Forces of Good, or heavenly beings locked in battlewith Evil, and needing the assistance of the protagonists to bringpeace back to the land.

Idealistic,oftentimes inaccurate, and heavily romanticized accounts of theirhistory, such as that of their legendary heroes being reborn inmodern times to revive the lost traditions and ideals, benevolentfeudal lords fighting back to the invading barbarian hordes and theirradical, dangerous new ideas and ways, oftentimes by discovering orpreserving the artefacts and culture bequeathed onto them, frequentlygiven some form of personification like benevolent spirits (inspiredby Shintoism), or even the souls of their beloved ancestorsthemselves.

Ontofood: you bet your ass the food is popular!

Iactually imagine that Mulan’s China becomes a love-letter to“Cooking Master Boy” (and still is, to this day, complete withsecret techniques, mystical glows of deliciousness, and flyingingredients from the sheer speed and force of chopping) due to howimportant the culinary arts is to their culture, and how they wereall too eager to share it with the rest of the world, both to make aliving, and to make a name for themselves in the world.

Withthe Silk Trade being one of their most enduring legacies and highestpriorities, yes, fashion did explode with China, now that they had amassive audience that are constantly hungering for new designs,incredible ease with which orders could be fulfilled and shipped allover Auradon, and the creative bloom as everyone was constantlyrubbing elbows with foreign influences, citizens, dignitaries,culture, now that physical travel was easier than ever, and massmedia really got a foothold.

(Ona side note, if you thought the current congestion and traffic inmodern day China is bad, Auradon’s unexpected automotive boom wasleagues worse, whichincidentally caused a gigantic boom in services and companiesspecializing in streaming media on the go.)

Yes,China has a massive influence with their music, especially due to themany different styles and regional differences in their country, andhow easily they could experience, sample, mix, distribute, and moreimportantly, profit from them.

Auradondidn’t have as much problem with illegal pirating and downloadingas we do, and as I’ve said earlier, the recent interest in fusionof the old and the new has lead to such songs and styles like you’vementioned.

DidI miss anything or did not expound as much as you’d like, If so, Iapologize, and please ask again, I’ll get to it when I have theenergy and interest once more.