#and I think sometimes it’s really hard when you grow up in the south Asian & Muslim community where people settle down in their early 20’s

[blessthishouse]

Today in therapy I was talking to my counselor about how I wish I wasn’t so attached to the idea of finding a romantic partner in a way that ends up causing me harm. There are some people who are so comfortable with not being in a romantic relationship and that it brings them a sense of security. She advised that it’s okay to admit that I’m in a place right now in my life where I need that sense of deep connection and people are interdependent beings. Being able to admit that was like having a big weight lifted off my chest. It also had a reverse effect, it made me feel like I could be more comfortable being single as long as I know my romantic relationships mean a lot to me, I want them to intentional, loving & balanced

[botanyshitposts]

ok INCREDIBLY old content originally meant for this blog but in 2018 when i was just a wee lad with a little spinner propeller hat and big rainbow lollipop i went to a carnivorous plant convention in california and met a bunch of people who breed/collect/study these guys. one person was this collector who was slowly working on leaving the hobby or at least no longer growing plants, and he had a bunch of carnivorous plant related files he was charging like 50 cents for or something, and so i came into possession of these, which are examples of the kind of paperwork you have to have done to legally ship/trade endangered species of both plants and animals. functionally very boring paperwork, but something i found like, incredibly fascinating. i blacked out the personal id of the person and then immediately forgot to ever upload them, lmao.

these plants were bred and raised in a greenhouse and sold abroad, not taken from the wild, but because the species are endangered and often protected in their native countries (most of these are nepenthes, asian pitcher plants, a huge family spread throughout oceania and southeast asia), there's a lot more documentation that needs to be done regardless of their origin, both on the end of the seller and on the end of the buyer.

the rabbit hole on carnivorous plant trade is deep and kind of wild. there's plenty of common, non-threatened, greenhouse-grown pitcher plants on the market that people buy all the time, even non-collectors, but there's a whole debate to be had on if it's morally okay to be collecting the more endangered/rare of these plants in the first place. the big argument for breeding is that breeding them in captivity means there's more supply that's not poached from the wild, meaning poachers have less of an incentive to take the risk of taking adult plants from their habitats; from what i've heard, sometimes countries will issue permits for breeders to collect some wild seeds just to create a non-wild breeding pool to drive down the price. predictably, however, you also get people who are very much willing to pay a lot of money to get as rare of a plant as possible.

anyone familiar with the allure valuable plants have had over people throughout history can imagine the rest, but here's an article about a guy who started buying poached plants to enrich his private nepenthes collection, who then got busted by a fish and wildlife service agent embedded in his carvirorous plant circle. the plants this guy was buying were being sold to him without any CITES paperwork or declarations like the ones above; it was literally just a guy in indonesia taking rare plants from the woods around where he lived, selling them over facebook marketplace and ebay, and mailing them overseas as an undeclared 'gift' to get around customs. frighteningly small steps to take on all sides, to be honest.

(also, fun fact: another example of carnivorous plants that get poached are wild venus fly traps, which are only native to north and south carolina in the US. from what i understand it's a mix of people who genuinely did not know it's a native species and people who really are just going out into the woods and digging up plants to sell online. sometimes poaching is closer to home than you'd think!)

anyway. wild and interesting times in the land of plants recovered from a hard drive lmao

[kimyoonmiauthor]

I thought it might be fun to list "Best cultures for", imo, BTW, doesn't include SK in most cases.

So using my Anthro degree for something. This is Academic interest. I'm only giving the loose reasons why. I'm not particularly promoting fetishization here. I'm saying, do the research into this specific culture for this specific cultural aspect. rather than blind worship.

Agriculture

Of the three major regions, (West Asia, Southern China-ish, Meso America/Northern South America) hands down, The Americas.

I mean, if you look at the genetics and origin of the potato, that itself is super impressive. Through domestication alone, they managed to make the potato grow in all environments, AND changed the amount of genes the potato has. !@#$ What? Really? And then you have things like Amaranth, corn, squash, beans of different kinds, quinoa, tomatoes which is related to nightshade, which is used more than eggplant worldwide, and Sweet Potatoes which they gave to Polynesians. Also single handedly through the Potato and Sweet Potato saved China, Korea, Ireland, and several other places from famine, thus also helping to end the slavery cycle in Korea, China and Japan. I mean... who are you going to rank the highest in that case?

Second place ranking I have to give to Western Asia. Daaaaamn, you have wheat, oats, barley, sheep, goats, cows, horses (supposedly), pigs. That's pretty impressive.

Third place Southern China—rice production, most of the world's commercial flowers, soybeans, a lot of the fruits including citrus. You also get honey.

Honorable mention to South Asia for Chickens. (Indonesia and India specifically)

Despite this, apples are my favorite fruit. lol I need to eat a Courtland apple please. I can eat them by the bushel.

Sea navigation

Hands down, Polynesians, beats the pants off of everyone else by a nautical league. When you can feel sea currents with your hands, be able to get your people first to the South Pacific from China, and then navigate ALLLLL the way to the Americas and beat Europeans, Yes, definitely they get the crown several times over. I mean... think hard about it. When you memorize stick charts, casually and then don't have them at sea and sometimes your tattoos are only brief reminders, FLOORED.

Make Europeans in the same time period look terrible.

House design

I'm looking at passive solar, specifically rather than aesthetics. For me, this is kinda toss up. Indigenous peoples rocked it pretty hard, especially in the South West US into Mexico region. They were exceptionally good at regulating air flow. But Koreans invented underfloor heating. And Chinese figured out Feng Shui which is just Passive solar+ a bunch of other stuff that's practical. (Such as your bathroom shouldn't be above your kitchen). But I have to admit I also admire some of the Indian Passive solar efforts (subcontinent). This one is hard to decide. But if you're researching, I'd look there.

Gender

My favorite to point to is Bugis people of Indonesia. 5 different genders. Freaking awesome. Of course it's a bit disciplined these days by the government, but it's worth investigating.

As I wrote before East Asian gender systems of the past were often more fluid and flexible and still are compared to European ideologues.

Clothing?

No one has impressed me that much, tbh. It's a pick and choose. I can choose the most impractical, but not the one that wins my heart for inventiveness.

Crakows, though, crack me up every single last time. Especially for the Phallic nature and that they were associated with men. But that's on the impractical list. That's also why I submitted it for review on History Hit's fashion list. I haven't gotten over it since I first saw it, I think it was on a Dan Snow documentary about British kings. I mean look at them and resist laughing your butt off.

Religion

I personally think that real Voudoun is much cooler than what's in the movies, which is really racist 98% of the time. It is a Synchronized religion, and it is Christian-based in some ways, but c'mon, look it up and be impressed.

BTW, I really dislike the conflation of zombies with Voudou, granted as an outsider, since it belongs to Bokor and is a warning against *becoming a slave* not about white people trying to shoot zombies with grey and darker faces because OMG, slave uprising psychology.

Zonbis, are cooler than zombies since it's about overcoming and resisting masters, rather than about masters mass killing their slaves, which is what the later meaning seems to say. Ad Zombie movies are at their best when they symbolically get the original concept and meaning. So like becoming a work drone.

^^ I still have a soft spot for Muism as a Korean, but ya know, Korean. I lean towards liking shamanism, probably because of the historical acceptance of LGBTQIA and disability.

Shamanism is also appealing in some ways because often shamanism says that if everything in your life is going wrong, then that might be a sign of powers or spirits calling to you, rather than saying in the old Christian ideology that you've sinned deeply, so you need to repent.

But this is usually not what people are asking about when they are thinking about religions. They usually want the polytheistic, Jade Emperor, Greek, Roman, Egyptians, Norse route. Or Monotheism. Kinda dull, really. Where are the other types in fiction. I mean, Druids?

Give me some totemism for once.

Government System

Look up Wigan Council. I might also be biased towards it because of Gaya, but it's a way to play with things and also allow for more LGBTQIA royalty. Royalty without autocracy?

Inventions?

Hands down, no doubt, Islamic Empire. I mean, when you have Automatons without electricity, you're winning without question. When your people are inventing surgery, calculating the size of the Earth, allowing women to read, learn and write, inventing the lens, which is the cornerstone of so many inventions, and you got Europe's Bacon by inventing the Scientific Method first, historical crush does't cut it. I mean, when you can calculate a pointed arch, do geometric mosaics with mathematical principles, I am floored beyond reason.

Conclusion

This isn't to say I'm not impressed by specific things from other cultures as well, but this is broad strokes. Vedanta Hinduism, for me, is impressive from India. And I really like the practicality of Hanbok. (Why hanbok over hanfu is a long, long post) And I've raved over kimchi before multiple, multiple times, more than you know (quora... I think I have the most answers and I also answer with the food science of Kimchi down to the bacteria.) BTW, dumplings are damned clever.

What are your favorite culture for specific things from those cultures? Would you choose different cultures for each of these things? If so, why? What impressive things have I missed that have floored you?

[kidnamedbird]

Hello all!

It's me, Kid Named Bird from Team Kid Named Bird. For clarification, I'm actually named after the team, not the other way around. I'm the lead translator and dialogue letterer for Beyblade X, or at least I was. I am heartbroken to announce our indefinite hiatus from the BeyX manga; if we do get back to it, we'd finish off all the year one content (up to the likely incoming subtitle/branding change) and all of the extras that go with it. This would leave us with a finite amount of work for us to do and a nice archival version of the beginnings of X.

To explain why we're ending our release, I'd like to say it's not because we don't want to. We'd love to continue on this project because we all really adore this manga. It's hard not to grow fond of something you've poured so much time into. I never really even planned on forming the team to translate the manga until the first chapter was about to come out. I had translated the prologue chapter as a fun side-project — I learned how to letter and translate because of it! So once some of my veteran scanlator friends and some brave newbies hopped on the project with me, I felt like we could actually take a bite out of this massive undertaking. A 36-72 page manga every month for a team of mostly employed/student volunteers is insane, especially when you consider the amount of redraws we had to do on this specific work. There were so many text overlays we had to draw over or speedlines (blech!!) we had to clean up, and usually tens of pages of them. Sometimes we had to do the work of a weekly manga series translation to get our stuff out depending on the amount of pages we did. After a while, that took a toll on our team. We can only do so many 50 pagers in a row before it completely consumes all of our free time outside of our full time work or education. I knew that as soon as we got behind by one chapter, we'd not be able to catch back up. It would just cause us too much grief and stress. I didn't want to do that to my team of unpaid volunteers, so I made the choice to throw in the towel. We were doing pretty professional work for free, and we got burnt out. We all had entire lives outside of BeyX, and I wanted my team to live them. It wasn't a decision I made lightly, or without reason. The official release is coming out soon, and if you don't mind the dub names, the previews looked pretty good! They seem to be Singapore/South East Asian exclusive for now, but I'm sure someone will snag the scans for them. Also, the anime, for the first time in Bey history, is almost exactly the same plot-wise! Previous series manga and anime have diverged wisely, but as the manga and anime have an overlapping writing staff this time, the stories hit almost all the same beats. If anything, I think the anime takes the manga's story and gives it far more breathing room and better pacing. The extra character-focus episodes have done wonders to help develop the cast further and make Bird's journey of perseverance all the more compelling. You will still get to experience the story of X in different ways, but maybe without us. If we had the time, energy, and ability to sustain our bodies, we'd still be working on this manga, I promise you that. The kind words we have gotten from our readers have meant the world to me (I tear up at them sometimes!). I hope that one day, we can return to finish off the first year of BeyX content. If we don't, then oops! Every member of our team has other projects we work on, so you can find us there. I can't tell you what those projects are for our privacy and safety, but we do them! For now, this is Team Kid Named Bird spinning out.

3! 2! 1! Let it rip with us next time, whenever that may be! Thank you so much for supporting us!

[aromanticannibal]

mha characters physical headcanons (does that even make sense idk im french). this is in absolutely no order im just popping these up as I go

shouto is blind on his burnt side, the good ol headcanon. his eyes is a very dull blue

shinsou has a scar across his face from forster parents putting muzzles on him

bakugou is hard of hearing

aizawa has a single tattoo and it's a cat sleeping on a cloud

mic has a shit ton of tattoos including but not limited to : a matching tattoo of a cat meowing on a cloud, a lot of clouds, aizawa's goggles and capture weapon, music notes and partitions of his favorite songs, his own hero name, etc

midnight is tall as shit, shes taller than aizawa. mic is only 1cm taller than her but she wears heels all the time so she's still taller. she loves to tease people about it

I know it's just a funky thing horikoshi does to his characters sometimes but shinsou is actually one of the only people in the show to have white pupils. people's eyes mimic his pupils when shinsou brainwashes them.

aizawas hair is really thick and curly, but he takes terrible care of it.

on the topic of aizawas hair, sometimes it floats a bit when he's flustered, surprised, angry, excited etc

shinsou's hair just does that. it stands on its own and it's terrible and shinsou used to hate it but he comforts himself thinking it kinda looks like aizawas.

midoriya and mina are blasian i am right

mina has vitiligo

kaminari has a bunch of lighting shaped scars. also he's south asian and brown skinned because I said so

this is literally just how I edit hori's sketches now lmao (cough cough @lunejump)

iidas legs are fucking covered in scars and he refuses to say how he for them

ochako's cheeks are naturally really pink.

ochako's has chubby muscle dad bod vibe kinda. she'll beat the shit out of you anyway. she's also super small and wears discreet platform shoes sometimes

tsuyu's skin is just straight up green. I really just want her to be more frog like lmao. she got frog eyes too. toad skin in places with the little bumps and shit. also she's autistic I KNOW I SAID PHYSICAL HEADCANONS BUT SHH

dabi desperately needs glasses. he also has terrible dry eye because of the whole no tear duct situation, so in general he just doesn't see shit. he pays a lot fo attention to noise because of that.

dabi's hair is very fluffy and thick naturally, but dying it (+yknow the burning) made it really damaged (its why it's spikier than when he was young)

toga has a bunch of vampire features, notably : glowing eyes, pointy ears, the good ol' fangs, naturally sharp nails, pale ass skin from being sensible to sunlight, etc. she really likes garlic tho dont get her wrong

toga also got tattoos at some point, not a lot tho cuz she started only a bit after joining the league. she has : a lot of hearts, a bat, couple of knifes, "stainy <3" (she did this one by herself so it's a bit wobbly). she wants to get tattoos that ressemble her friends from the league, especially for twice, magne, dabi and shiggy.

mic has piercings. obviously. he has nipple piercings (listen im just a man), a nose ring (he doesn't wear it when doing hero work), a bunch of ear piercings, and an eyebrow one.

when they were in high school, mic got aizawa to get snake bites. aizawa stopped wearing them somewhere in his 20s so they closed back, and mic is constantly trying to get him to get them redone.

midnight prolly has matching nipple piercings with mic honestly they'd do that

shigaraki's hair is surprisingly soft because kurogiri makes him take care of it. when kurogiri gets arrested, his hair starts to get more tangled because no one brushes it anymore.

fuyumi, rei and dabi have the same hair type (wavy, thick fluffy hair)

shinsou stays pretty skinny no matter how much he muscles up. he has a fast metabolism and struggles to take on weight

aizawa is so fucking hairy its terrible

mic's mustache is like that because it's the only thing he manages to grow

mic's hair is like the opposite of aizawa's. it's straight and stringy, and its pretty damaged despite mic's efforts to take care of it because of all the hair gel

bakugou has heavy acne on his face and back, which is why he takes very good care of his skin. he doesn't really care if people think it's ugly, he just doesnt want it to hurt like a bitch

hagakure is really pale because the sun technically never really touches her skin. her eyes and hair are a weird pale color for a similar reason. not like anyone sees it much though.

MOMO IS TRANS MOMO IS TRANS I AM RIGHT. she was able to transition early on thanks to her parents acceptance and money.

momo is a bit chubby and taller than most of the boys in the class. she's never shy about eating a lot, especially since its what makes her quirk work, and she tends to get really hungry after using it a lot.

jirou often gets overwhelmed because of how much she can hear. think of dolores from encanto she can hear a lot.

her earjacks are really sensible too, but she doesn't really have anything to protect them.

jirou's irises are a very bright red.

hatsume is blasian, she has pink dreads

her arms are pretty muscly from working a lot on heavy stuff. she also has a lot of different scars on her hands and some on her face from her lack of care for safety

concerning shouto, the carpet does match the drapes. he isn't that hairy tho.

shouto has a couple of burn and frostbite scars on his arms from training too much. the burn ones are older, since he didn't use his flames for a long time.

shinsou is the type of pale thats so pale you can kinda see veins under the skin. he calls himself a corpse pretty often. it's also why his eyebags are so visible.

mirko is probably albino tbh (this is 100% inspired by that one edit)

while bakugou's palms are always super hot and sweaty, midoriya's are very cold for no reason.

midoriya bites his nails and the skin around them, often 'til it bleeds, so his fingers are. in a state (im just calling myself out at this point lmao)

mic has heterochromia and is hard of hearing

all might's eyes weren't blue before he got ofa. I like to think ofa modifies the user's appearance a bit, notably with the eyes. all might's eyes changed so luch because he went from no quirk to mastering ofa.

midoriya's eyes are very green naturally but when he uses ofa a lot, there's a blue tint as well (think the overhaul fight)

kirishima's hair must be so fucking damaged man. his hair is naturally black but he dyes it a very bright color, so he probably needs to bleach it a lot. it's probably permanent dye too since he wants to keep it like that, and he probably dyes his roots often too. plus the hair gel. he probably went through the elastic hair pain

bakugou's eyes are an orangey red, while kirishima's are blood red.

similar to all might and midoriya, aoyama's eyes became that bright sparkly blue when he got gifted his quirk. they're probably kinda glittery looking. his eyes were probably brown originally

kendo has stretch marks and some scars on her hands from them changing size so often. it doesn't really hurt tho.

shinsou probably had braces at some point

kaminari has a tooth gap

sero is part latino. he has brown eyes also.

sero's skin gets sticky sometimes. he hates it because people think he's dirty. It's really just a side effect of his quirk.

because I'm trypophobic I refuse to think sero has holes in his elbows. his tape is probably a sort of extension of his skin, and the weird shape in his elbows are here to help produce the thing.

denki has an eyebrow piercing

shinsou's eyes glow slightly when he's using his quirk, but it's not that noticeable.

aizawa's eyes glow yellow (like in the manga because I love yellow). otherwise his irises are completely black. it's unnerving

aizawa actually isnt that silent when he speaks, unless he's trying to. he has a big voice.

mic is actually very silent when he wants to because he's used to controlling the volume of his voice. also, he's very good at doing weird shit with his voice.

similarly, shinsou is very good at mimicking voices and sounds. he struggles a bit with high voices because his voice is naturally deep, but he's good at imitating birds and cats. he can purr also because I said so.

im losing inspiration unfortunately. feel free to share ur headcanons in the tags or in reblogs (even if they go against mine it's fine lmao). have a good day

[majorbaby]

very very long rant

when i first left tumblr after the porn ban, the sjw stuff was starting to plateau, but you still had big bloggers ironically calling themselves misandrists in bio. I say ironically because unlike an open misogynist, an open misandrist cannot amass vast structural power, they instead will remain on the fringes of society. before they can even be shunned in the mainstream or the elite, they're being shunned by their own peers.

at that time, there was a lot of popular blogs run by (sometimes allegedly) racialized people or "poc-run spaces" like thisisnot[country] and blogs specifically dedicated to pointing out cultural appropriation. i personally contributed to the reclaimthebindi which in retrospect seemed inspired by blackout selfie day (not to be confused with thr subsequent 'blackout' posts associated with BLM - that was later), altho idk to what extent the south asian diasporic community (of which i am a part of) actually paid homage to the black blogger/s responsible for blackout day.

now many of those blogs are defunct or have been scrubbed from level-one searches of tumblr, and their history has not been well documented. it's hard to understand what the climate was unless you were there because not many secondary sources, like the one you're reading right now i suppose, exist. or they weren't well-circulated. this one won't be, i'm turning off reblogs i think.

this is, in my opinion, in contrast to other major trends in internet culture that inform offline social justice movements. that's your gxmxrgxte (so well-ingrained in my memory that it still upsets me enough to censor today), metoo and the annual around ao3's right to host any and all content with very limited few exceptions.

reclaimthebindi is still up, so are a few of the thisisnot blogs, but you can't really tell that they were all interconnected, a part of the same zeitgeist. i have a few theories as to why, and which one you pick depends on how generous you are when imagining the people who ran these blogs. some of them for sure were run by bored college students seeking an outlet. some of them were denied recognition by their offline peers because of racism, so it felt good to find a space where they could actually amass social capital on the basis of the very thing that disadvantaged them in every other space. some were concerned with punitive justice, others with restorative justice. some just posted black and brown bodies so that those images would exist on the internet somewhere. some were run by racefacing white people who also felt like outcasts offline, and saw a quick and easy way to be embraced elsewhere. it's possible that some people did it for a combination of these reasons.

whatever benefits there may have been, it wasn't enough to keep the momentum going. very few put out 'retirement' statements, most just stopped posting and were eventually purged. tbh, i see the draw in airing your grievances all in one place, but it's exhausting, and eventually your supporters grow tired of the negativity, and you grow tired of the negativity too. that's why i think it's usually better to stick to posting and sharing the stuff you love, not the stuff you hate, or at least, find a balance. though their presence is much, much smaller, creator networks for women, lgtbq, and racialized people have sprung up, and so have spaces where people post and repost art that engages with class, race, gender etc.

but it still feels like racialized people have a much quieter voice on tumblr. i have to rely on stumbling upon them naturally, which is next to impossible, especially if you're on tumblr for a small to medium sized fandom, which i think most fandoms are these days. your supermassive fandoms - doctor who, sherlock, kpop, harry potter, the mcu, also no longer dominate the site. i would still say tumblr is the big fandom site, but a lower user count means that the internet's fandom site is smaller than before.

so, less users in general, and any existing minority shrinks. and if we're talking racialized people who are lgtbq, that's an even smaller minority.

this in my opinion has contributed in a major way to the backlash against feminism, the idea that "terfs ruined feminism" with the subtle suggestion that feminism has perhaps failed, or was never really good to begin with, and a laser focus on terfs as the ones responsible as though the mainstream, patriarchal, cis-heteronormative bloc had absolutely nothing to do with it. or the ludicrous idea that terfs are the mainstream, patriarchal cis-heteronormative bloc. two things can be bad, that doesn't mean they're the same thing.

anyway! a big part of the original tumblr feminist movement was not just the "poc run blog" but in the "woc run blog". "poc" was absorbed into BIPOC, and "woc" is a legacy term. your woc were regularly venting about how being a woman of colour means choosing between your race and your gender, putting up with the misogyny of the racialized men in your life who you show up for constantly but who throw you under the bus when the white man asks them how high to jump. now there's white lgbtq bloggers all over the place asking whether you "include black and brown men when you said you say men are trash?" (yes, i absolutely am) and if you ask that question to a room full of white people, they're all going to keep their mouths shut because they don't want to appear racist.

well, white men do not have a monopoly on misogyny. misogyny levied at racialized women by racialized men is a huge intra-community barrier to trying to organize against racism and white supremacy. it is extremely upsetting to see white people suggest that racialized women, lgbtq people and children are not oppressed by the racialized men in their own communities. that we are not survivors of domestic abuse, sexual abuse or that we do not endure oppression under patriarchy in the home, workplace and in society inflicted upon us by our own kin, which compounds upon what we already absorb from white people.

and they can go on doing so on here because many racialized women have shut up and gone away. even running blogs aimed around celebrating themselves has become a service to white consumers that they've done thanklessly for years. just to hear that actually, they have no right to say "men are trash" because what if the brown man that abused them or their mom or their aunties overhears and gets his feelings hurt. didn't we discern the difference between hurt feelings and systemic oppression almost fifteen years ago on tumblr dot com?

like, sure, maybe we should adjust "women only spaces" to be "spaces for women and trans people" but we can do that and not pretend that we have absolutely no idea why women live in fear of men, or that a reasonable amount of fear is completely unwarranted.

man it is one thing to come back here to find all the, admittedly, sometimes kind of annoying sjw blogs around race gone, and another to see a resurgence of popular MRA talking points. but i see how that's happened. racialized women are done talking about this, and who can blame them. white women, and i wish i only meant cis women, get slapped with 'terf' the second they open their mouths, so they are also done talking about this.

if you managed to read all of this please be a little careful when reblogging posts that are critical of feminism. yes, there are a few bad-faith actors within feminism, but feminists in general are a minority group, even if it doesn't feel that way on tumblr. think about it, how long has it been since you saw someone with 'feminist' in bio? is it a good thing to keep facilitating this growing resentment against feminism? has feminism done nothing for us? should we toss it out with the bathwater?

[clover-46]

David as a professor (ignoring the complications of this)

David who is a strict teacher, but everyone adores his class. (I could see him being a history professor) David leaning against his desk as he talks through the early periods of South Asian culture. Him knowing a headache is coming every time his best friend and teacher aide interrupts his lecture to slide in a joke.

David who believes that he should dress seriously if he wants people to listen, so he walks in each day with a freshly iron black dress shirt with matching dress pants. The sleeves get rolled up somewhere in the middle of the day and by the end a couple buttons are undone because he's really not a fan of formal attire. But if his students are really lucky, he might pair it with a form hugging vest. 🤤

David who fidgets with a ruler when he talks and he doesn't really notice what it does to his students as he taps it against his palm.

David wearing a simple string bracelet that a long forgotten friend made for him when he was a kid. Sometimes he wonders what happened to Caleb... Cal... Something along those lines.

David who looks sternly at anyone who starts to speak over him and gives a curt nod when they shut the fuck up.

Except this one student. They only grin at him before continuing their conversation.

Angel who doesn't even need to take the class to get their degree this year, they just heard the professor was hot and wanted to see if the rumors were true. And wowza they definitely were! They can already feel their nerves firing on all cylinders as David enters and puts his stuff down on the desk at the front and calls out a "Alright can we get this over with?" to get everyone's attention.

They love his fuck around and find out energy. And they've always been one to push the limits.

At first it's purposefully getting on his nerves, enjoying the way he clenches his jaw and forces himself to calm down. Then they start asking him for help on their essays (which is also because they actually do need help. Who knew history was so complicated. The American public schooling system didn't prepare them for this. This isn't just learning about the revolutionary war every year.)

David who is actually patient when Angel doesn't understand something. But Angel doesn't know how to handle that so they keep trying to flirt.

"No wedding band, huh Mr Shaw?"

"Don't forget to add commas. Punctuation saves lives and all."

"I don't have a wedding band either. Want to fix that?"

"wikipedia isn't a reliable source and you need to cite what reputable source you do have in the proper format."

Yeah... It's not working so well. But at least their grades are improving. It'd be nicer if their grades improved the way that the spicy films always showed though. They were pretty sure his desk was the perfect height to be on top or under. Or ben-

David who is proud of Angel and how far theyve come, although their pickup lines are getting any better.

"Professor Shaw, my phone is broken or something. I think it's missing a critical component..."

"if you say what I think you're about to say...

"it needs your number."

"oh God."

But the cheesy lines are beginning to grow on him. He finds himself looking forward to the conversations at the end of his class, or in the hallways, or his office, or those couple of times they both ended up at the same restaurant, store, and park. He wondering if it's an accident as much as Angel claims it is

And he thinks he would call Angel a friend.

Angel who finally graduated with their degree and immediately runs to find David to show it off. David who is proud of them because he knows how hard they tried. But hes also curious.

"why did you take my class? Was it for the credit?" He asks as Angel shoved a shot into his hand before downing their own.

"nope. I heard you were hot"

- 🙊

hello, 🙊 anon i see we’re back to our regular scheduled ficlets!!

“ignoring the complications with this” HAHAHAHHA

THIS certainly makes for nice imagery 🤤🤤

…. ☹️☹️☹️☹️

ANGEL IS SO SMOOOTH i aspire to be like them someday

i’m certainly not one to like student/professor tropes but it’s david thicc ass shaw and your writing is one of my favorites so i did enjoy this 🥰🥰

@messenger-of-stupidity

[aro-comics]

Growth (Part 2)

Growth, Part 2/3 – ITS REALLY NOT THAT HARD!! 😭😭 Lol sorry but the last panel is absolutely me when I think about amatonormativity as a whole, it’s really silly the more you think about it and I can’t believe that it’s so deeply engrained in most of the world. 

I think I should mention I don’t have any specific narratives to reference for the tropes described in this comic, as much as I would like to, as I started panelling this a year ago and past me GOOFED and didn’t leave many notes on what examples she was specifically think of. Again, feel free to let me know any examples you can think of in the comments or via DM! I’ll pin them if they’re in the comments and I might make a follow up Tumblr post listing examples 😊

Also, while I was researching this general topic I did go through TV Tropes “The Singles” (as a character type? Category) page, and I found something very interesting. There’s a literally a section describing the tropes that “explain” why a character was not in a romantic relationship … and literally they have ever “Excuse” for why a character might be single except for. Maybe literally they’re aromantic 😭 The closest is “Allergic to Love” (which like, relatable. But also not inherently an orientation).

Just like …. OH MY GOD. People sometimes try to act like we’re being dramatic about leting people know being Aromantic is possible but STRAIGHT UP. IN POPULAR CULTURE (and often OUR WHOLE LIVES BEFORE WE DISCOVER THE TERM, AND ACCEPT OUR IDENTITES) THE IDEA OF BEING AROMANTIC IS JUST NON-EXISTENT, WRITTEN AROUND WITH EVERY OTHER POSSIBLE “EXCUSE” OR “EXPLANATION” Because apparently the idea that someone could just not feel romantic attraction is too much for this world 😫

I don’t have too much else to say, other than I hope you’re all holding up okay and taking care of yourselves.

Image Description:

Slide 1: Celia holds her hand up to her chin, contemplating. “The whole idea of growth being tied to romance is reflected in other tropes too –”

Slide 2: A split panel is illustrated. A south asian girl is shown crying as she types on her phone. She mutters to herself “Ugh, I’m SO done with dating. I’m putting myself first for once.”

On the other side of the panel, she is shown to have gone through a *transformation* (a la early 2000s makeover), and bumping into her destined love interest.      

“The character’s efforts to “work on themselves” and “get away from romance”, are ironically what lead them to finding their “happy ending”.

Slide 3: Alternatively, a character finally accepting that they are happy single is seen as a “stepping stone” to being “ready” for a relationship.

In this scene, a brunette wearing a yellow shirt and dark skirt proclaims “I can be happy as a single woman”. In the background a spotlight flicks on as her “right” love interest appears. “Achievement unlocked: True Love interest” is overlaid in a font reminiscent of classic video games.

Slide 4: Celia speaks to the viewer. “Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong about either of these stories. It’s amazing if someone who gave up on love due to frustration, not a lack of desire, finds it again through pure fate and luck.”

Slide 5: Celia gestures now as she tries to explain, “But the problem is that these moments are framed as more of a “gotcha”, where this idea of pursuing growth purely for oneself, or holding any disdain of a romantic relationship in this process, is inherently wrong. In the end, even growing for yourself is really about growing for a romantic relationship.”

Slide 6: Celia rubs her hands through her hair in frustration. “Like … not everything is about being in a relationship! It’s not that hard.”

[newtonsheffield]

MOLLY! Does good girls Anthony ever see Kate in traditional dress maybe for a holiday like Holi? Or maybe a party? Cause I think GG Anthony would be MESMERIZED?!

Oh Anthony is *obsessed* with this. He's obsessed. Like, LOOK AT MY BEAUTIFUL GIRLFRIEND IS SHE NOT THE PRETTIEST!!!!

As always I am not an expert on South Asian culture (ya girl is white AF) and I do get nervous sometimes discussing Kate's culture because I am sensitive to the fact that I 1) may be accidentally insensitive which is never my intention and 2) May be perpetuating harmful stereotypes however inadvertently. So as always if I need correcting, hit me up!

May I also just say I spent 45 minutes staring at pictures for this. White People, why are we so bland at weddings?????My word. Anyway, here's Anthony, attending his first event for Kate's family.

Anthony was stressed. That was an understatement, actually. Anthony thought his stomach was going to shrivel up and die from nerves.

"Mum, are you sure I look okay?" He said for the millionth time, standing in front of the mirror, the grey suit stark against his skin.

His mother hummed, "You look very handsome, Anthony. I promise, Kate's going to like it."

Anthony sighed at her unhelpfulness, fiddling with the blue of his tie. "What if this isn't the right colour blue? And I look stupid! Or like... I don't know, what if she's decided she doesn't want me to come with her. Her grandma's gonna be there."

Panic had been rising steadily in his chest for weeks, ever since Kate had said, very casually,

"My cousin is getting married next month."

Anthony had smiled at the thought of it, "Cool, that'll be nice, You'll get to dress up pretty, and dance. You'll have to send me a picture."

Kate bit her lip, "Actually, you were invited... if you want to come, you obviously don't have to, but my grandmother wants to meet you, and um... I want you to come as well."

Anthony's mouth had fallen open in surprise, his heart pounding, unable to formulate a response to the fact she wanted him to be part of her family in a more intimate way.

"You don't have to dome. Forget I said anything." Kate said quickly, misreading his silence completely.

Anthony had shaken his head a little desperately, "If you want me to come. There's no way I'm not coming, Princess." And her smile had been so beautiful.

He'd asked her, specifically, what colour her dress would be, because he wanted to match and she'd smiled,

"It's blue and gold. You can wear either."

And it had suddenly occurred to him in a way it hadn't before. "This is a Hindu wedding."

Kate had looked a little bemused "Yeeesss." She'd drawn out the word as though it were obvious, and he supposed, yes it fucking was obvious.

But Anthony had panicked, "I don't really... know a lot about your culture, are you sure you want me to come? I don't want to embarrass you."

"Anthony do you want to come?" Kate's head was tilted curiously, a genuine question.

Anthony nodded, maybe a little too vehemently. "Yeah, I want to meet your family."

Kate smiled, kissing his cheek, "Then that's all you need to know. The rest I'll teach you."

So now here he was, standing in his bedroom with his Mum fussing around him, in the first suit he'd work since his father's funeral. And even more nervous.

"You think Kate is going to see that your tie doesn't match her clothes perfectly and ask you not to come?" His mother said a little exasperatedly.

Anthony scowled, "Well When you say it like that, it doesn't sound great."

"Exactly." His mother said marching from the room, "Come on now, or you're going to be late."

The whole way to the Sharmas Anthony thought he might vomit. Nerves nipping at his stomach even as he stood at the door, too afraid to knock. The door swung open anyway.

"Anthony sweetheart, what are you doing out here?" Mrs. Sharma had obviously spotted him, loitering on the curb.

"Oh um... I was tying my shoelace." She gave him an astute look, a little hum.

"Don't you look handsome? Kate's in the living room."

Anthony nodded, finally, bringing himself to look at her, and when he did he couldn't help but smile.

"Mrs. Sharma, you look amazing." Green and gold silk seemed to spin around Kate's step mum, cascading like a waterfall, Anthony suddenly felt very underdressed in his three piece suit as Mr Sharma walked down stairs, in green to match his wife.

“You’re very sweet, but wait until you see Katie.” Anthony had a sudden jolt. He didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to him that she’d be in traditional dress, she hadn’t said, but he supposed it must have seemed obvious to her, and he’d been too stupid to ask.

“Anthony, you look very smart.”

“Thank you sir, I wasn’t um, sure… Kate said this would be okay?” He was resisting the urge to sprint from the room, suddenly desperate to get away before Kate’s entire family judged him wanting. The crown tattoo wrapped around his left forearm burning.

Mr Sharma clapped his hand on Anthony’s shoulder, wheeling him towards the living room. “You look great, Son. Be careful, all the Aunties will be trying to steal you for their girls.”

And then Anthony stopped dead, even as Kate’s father tried to tug him forward. Because the Kate that was standing in the living room, pinning some decoration into her sister’s hair was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, blue and gold silk and organza woven together in a skirt, that floated and swished in the air around her, her skin glowing golden in the light, a corset style top he doubted was strictly traditional tight against her, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. And his tie was the wrong fucking colour.

“You are so beautiful.” The words were out before he could stop them, causing Kate’s head to shoot up a slow smile stretching across her face.

“You don’t look so bad either.” Anthony felt a little smug, suddenly as she walked towards him, her lips brushing his cheek, but Anthony was still fixated on the fabric all around her. Even as he was bundled into the car, he couldn’t stop staring, barely even looked at the bride, barely looked at anything until he was tugged up to stand in front of a group of women that included Mrs. Sharma, Kate’s hand tight in his.

“Who is that handsome man, Katharine?” The oldest woman said narrowing her eyes at him.

Anthony felt his cheeks grow warm as Kate smiled, a Tamil word Anthony didn’t quite catch falling from her lips before “Aunties, this is Anthony.”

For a horrifying moment everyone stared at him, their eyes raking over him, Mrs Sharma smiling encouragingly.

“It’s lovely to meet you all, you all look so beautiful today.” God he sounded stupid, panic was rising in his chest, even as Kate’s hand gripped his tightly.

And one by one they all smiled, the oldest woman, Kate’s grandmother, patting his cheek. “Katie, what a polite boy, and so handsome. Now tell me young man, what are your plans for the future?”

“Kate rolled her eyes, “Anthony’s going to be a mechanic.”

Anthony nodded as her Grandmother nodded approvingly, “Not afraid of hard work either, excellent young man.”

Anthony relaxed ever so slightly.

“They like you too much already, Son.” Mr Sharma hummed as they watched Kate and Edwina twirling around the floor. “No getting out of it now.”

“I don’t think I’d ever want to Sir.” He couldn’t help himself.

Mr Sharma clapped him on the shoulder, “Good Lad, now, this is your queue.” And he pushed him out onto the dance floor next to Kate.

[comedicreliefonlyworkswhenfunny]

I am against the "Americanization" of fandoms.

What this applies to

Holding non American characters (and sometimes even fans) to an American moral standard. This includes

Refusing to take into account that, first things first, America is NOT the target audience, so certain tropes that would or would not pass in the west are different in Japan.

Like seriously, quite a few of the jokes are just not going to pass or hit, because they require background information that is not universal.

Assuming all American experience is standard. (This could mean watering down just how much pressure is placed on Japanese youth irl by saying that sort of thing is universal (while it is, to a degree, Japanese suicide rates are pretty fucking high because of how fast paced and work heavy some of their loads tend to be), and it's really annoying and rude when someone is trying to speak out about how heavy and harsh the standards are placed on them to succeed just for some American whose mom occasionally yells at them to do their homework dropping by to say "it's like that everywhere")

Demonizing (or wubbifying) a character using American morals, including and up to harassing fans over their interpretations or gatekeeping whether or not a character "should" get development (while you shouldn't do that fucking period, it's rude and annoying- this is specifically for the people who use American standards without acknowledging the cultural gap between them and, you know, the fucking target audience) ((Like seriously, saying "It's different in Japan" is not the end all be all excusing someone's actions, but sometimes the author didn't immediately think that maybe (insert vaguely universal thing) was that bad or that heavy of a topic before they put it into their media. If you don't want to see things like that? Pick a different series and stop harassing the fans))

Getting mad at or making fun of Japan's attempts to satirize their own culture. (A good example is Ace Attorney! To most of us, it's just a funny laugh can you imagine if courts were actually like that- guess what? Japan's are! (Not that America's are actually that much better, they just look good on paper))

Making America/American issues the center of your fan spaces

(Usually without sharing or bringing light to the issues that other countries are going through)

Your

Experiences

Are

Not

Univseral!

Seriously, very few things across America, even, are universal. Texas things the hundreds are nothing while Minnesota's like "oh it's only thirty degrees below zero"- so for fucks sake, stop assuming that all other countries work in ways similar to America.

It's good and important to share Ameican issues with your American followers, but guess what? America isn't the only country out there, and it's certainly not the only one going through bullshit. Don't pull shit like "why's no one reblogging this?" or "why should I care about what's happening in (X country)?"

Don't assume everyone lives in America.

Stop assuming everyone lives in America.

America is not and has never been the target audience for anime, and it's certainly not the only country outside of Japan that enjoys it.

Like I said above, sometimes Japan attempts to satirize its own culture. We can't tell what is and isn't meant as satire, because it's not our culture.

Social media activism can be tiring and maybe you don't have the energy to focus on things that are out of your control, but, if someone tells you about the shit they're going through, don't bring American politics up.

For the neurodivergent crowd out there thinking, "But why?" it's because a lot of social media, especially, is very heavily Americanized- sometimes to the point where people assume that everyone is American. Not to mention, it's disheartening. I'm sorry to say, but you're not actually relating to the conversation, you're often diverting the focus away from the topic at hand. Even if you mean well, America is heavily pedestaled and talked about frequently, and people from other countries are tired of America taking precedent over their own issues.

Don't divert non-American issues into American ones. Seriously. It's not your place. Please just support the original issue or move on.

Racist Bullshit

This especially goes for islanders and South Asian characters, as well as poc characters (because, yes, Japan DOES have black people)

Making "funny" racist headcanons. Not fucking cool.

Changing the canon interpretation of an explicit character of color in order to fit racist stereotypes.

Whitewashing or color draining characters. Different artistic skill sets can be hard, yes, but are you seriously going to look at someone and say "I don't feel like accurately portraying you or people that look like you, because it's difficult for me." If someone tries to correct you on your cultural depiction of a character and/or their life style, don't be an ass. (If possible, it would be nice for those that do the corrections to be polite as well, but it does get really frustrating).

Seriously, no offense guys, but, if you want to persue art, you're going to need to learn to depict different body types, skin colors, and/or ethnic features.

On that note, purposefully, willingly, or consistently inaccurately portraying people or characters of color (especially if someone in the fandom has "called you out" or specifically told you that what you're doing comes across as racist and you continue to do it). If you need help or suck at looking things up, there are references for you! Ask your followers if they have tutorials on poc (issue that you're having), whether it be bodily portrayal, facial proportions, or coloring and shading. Art is so much more fun when you can depict a wider variety, and guess what? Before you drew the same skinny, basic, white character over and over, you couldn't even draw that!

Attempting or claiming to DEPECT CULTURAL ACCURACY within a work or meta, while being completely fucking wrong. ESPECIALLY and specifically if someone calls you out, and you refuse to fix, correct, or change anything.

*little side note that the discussion revolving art is a very multilayered conversation, and it has quite a few technical potholes, which I'll bring up again farther into this post.

Fucking history

Stop demonizing or for absolute fucks sake wubbifying Japanese history because UwU Japan ♡0♡ or bringing up shit like "you know they sided with Nazis, right?" It's good to recognize poor past decisions, but literally it's not your country keep your nose out of it. And? A lot of decisions made by countries were not made by their general peoples. Even those that were, often involved heavy propaganda that made them think what they were doing was right.

Seriously, it's not your country, not your history. Unless you have some sort of higher education (but honestly even then a lot of those contain heavy bias), just don't butt in.

^^^ this also goes to all countries that are NOT Japan (specifically when people from non American countries talk about their history while in fandoms and someone wants to Amerisplain to them why "well, actually-"). When we said, "question your sources," we didn't mean "question the people who know better than you, while blindly accepting the (more than likely biased) education you were given in the past."

What this does NOT include:

Fanfiction

FANfiction

FanFICTION

FANFICTION.

Seriously, fanfiction is literally UNPAID WORK from RANDOM FANS- a lot of which who are or have started as kids. ((No, I'm not trying to excuse racist depictions of people just because they're free, please see above where I talk about learning to grow a skill and how it's possible tone bad and get good, on top of the fact that some inaccuracies are not just willful ignorance))

"Looking it up" doesn't work

"Looking it up" almost never works

Please, for fucks sake, you know that most all online search engines are heavily biased, right? Not to mention, not everything is universal across the entirety of Japan. You want to look up how the school system works in Hokkaido? Well it's different from the ones in Osaka!

Most fanfiction is meant to be an idealized version of the world. Homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, and racism are very prevalent and heavy topics that some fan authors would prefer to avoid. (Keep in mind, this is also used by some people in those minorities often because thinking about how relevant those kinds of things are is to them every day).

A lot of shit that happens in writing is purely because it's an ideal setting. I've seen a few arguments recently about how fan authors portray Japanese schools wrong- listen, I can't tell you how many random school systems I have pulled from my ass purely because (I need them to interact at these points, in these ways). Sometimes the only compliment I can think of is 'I like your shirt' or sometimes I need character A to realize that character B likes the same thing as they do, so I might ignore the fact that most all Japanese schools require uniforms, so that I can put my character in a shirt that will get someone else's attention.

Sometimes it's difficult to find information on different types of systems, and sometimes when you DO know those things, they directly rule out a plot point that needs to happen (like back on the topic of schools (from what I've seen/heard/read- which guess what? Despite being from multiple sources, might still be inaccurate!) Japanese schools don't have mandatory elective classes (outside of like gym and most of them usually learn English or another language- I've seen stuff about art classes? But the information across the board varies.), but, if I need my character to walk in and see someone completely in their element, I'm probably not going to try and gun for accuracy or make up a million and two reasons as to why this (non elective) person would possibly need something from (elective teacher) after school of all things.)

Some experiences ARE universal- or at least overlap American and Japanese norms! Like friends going to fast food places after school doesn't /sound Japanese/ or whatever, but it's not like a horrible inaccuracy to say that your characters ate at McDonald's because they were hungry. Especially when you consider that the Japanese idolization of American "culture" is also a thing.

Also I saw someone complaining about how, in December, a lot of (usually westerners) write Christmas fics! Well, not only are quite a few of those often gift fics, with it being the season if giving and all, but Japanese people do celebrate Christmas! Not as "the birth of Christ," but rather as a popularized holiday about gift giving (also pst: America isn't the only place that celebrates Christmas)

But, on that note, sometimes things like Holidays are "willfully ignorant" of what actually happens (I've made this point several times, but (also this does by no means excuse actual racism)), because, again: plot convenience! Hey what IF they celebrated Halloween by Trick or Treating? What if Easter was a thing and they got to watch their kids or younger siblings crawl around on the ground looking for tiny plastic eggs?

Fanfiction authors can put in hours of work for one or two thousand words- let alone ten thousand words, fifty thousand words, a hundred thousand words. And all of these are free. There is absolutely no (legal) way to make money off of their fanworks, but they spent hours, days, weeks, months- sometimes even years- writing. It is so unnecessary to EXPECT or REQUIRE them to spend even more hours looking up shit that, no offense, almost no one is going to notice. No one is going go care that all of my combini prices are accurate or that I wrote a fic with a Japanese map of a train station that I had to backwards search three times to find an English version that I could read.

Not everyone has the attention span or ability to spend hours of research before writing a single word. Neurodivergent people are literally a thing yall. Instead of producing the perfectly pretty accurate version of Japan that people want to happen, what ACTUALLY happens is that the writer reads and reads and reads and either never finds the information they need or they lose the motivation to write.

^^^ (This does NOT apply to indigenous or native peoples, like Pacific Islanders or tribes that exist in real life. Please make sure that you portray tribal minorities accurately. If you can't find the information you need (assuming that the content of the series is not specifically about a tribe), please just make one up (and for fucks sake, recognize that a lot of what you've been taught about tribal practices, such as shit like human sacrifices or godly worship, is actually just propaganda.)

Not to mention, it often puts a wall in front of readers who would then need to pull up their OWN information (that may or may not be biased) just in order to interact with the fic ((okay, this one has a little bit of arguability when it comes to things like measurements and currency, because Americans don't know what a meter is and no one else knows what a foot is- either way, one of yall is going to have to look up measurements if they want to get a better understanding of the fic)). However, a lot of Americans who do write using 'feet, Fahrenheit, dollars,' also write for their American followers or friends (which really could go both ways).

On a less easily arguable side, most fic readers aren't going to open up a new tab just to search everything that the author has written (re the whole deep topics, not everyone wants to read about those sorts of things, either). Not only are you making it more difficult on the writer, but you're also making it more difficult for the reader who's now wondering why you decided to add in Grandma's Katsudon recipe, and whether or not the details you have added are accurate.

Some series, themselves, ignore Japanese norms! Piercings, hair dye, and incorrectly wearing ones uniform are frowns upon in Japanese schools- sometimes up to inflicting punishment on those students because of it. However, some anime characters still have naturally or dyed blond hair some of them still have piercings or wear their uniforms wrong. Some series aren't set specifically in Japan, but rather in a vague based-off-real-life Japan that's just slightly different (like Haikyuu and all of its different prefectures). Sometimes they're based on real places, but real places that have gone through major changes (like the Hero Academia series with its quirks and shit).

Fandom is not a full time job. Please stop treating it like it is one. Most people in fandoms have to engage in other things like school or work that most definitely take precident over frantically Googling the cultural implications of dying your hair pink in Japan.

Art is also meant to be a creative freedom and is almost always a hobby, so there are a few cracks that tend to spark debate. Like I said, it is still a hobby, something that's meant to be fun (on this note!)

If trying new things and expanding your portfolio is genuinely making you upset, it's okay to take a break from it. You're not going to get it right on the first try and please, please to everyone out there critiquing artists' works, please take this into account before you post things.

I'm sorry to say, but, while it gets frustrating to see the same things done wrong over and over again, some people are genuinely trying. If it matters enough for you to point out, please offer solutions or resources that would possibly help the artist do better (honestly this could be said about a lot of online activism). I get that they should "want" to do better (and maybe they don't and your annoyance towards them is completely justified- again, as I said, if this becomes a repeated offense and they don't listen to or care about the people trying to help them, yeah you can be a bitch if it helps you feel better- just please don't assume that everyone is willfully ignorant of how hurtful/upsetting/annoying a certain way of portraying things is), but also WANTING to do better and ACTUALLY doing better are two different things.

Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing was inaccurate. Maybe they didn't have the right tutorials. Maybe they tried to look it up, but that failed them. Either way, to some- especially neurodivergent artists- just being told that their work is bad or racist or awful isn't going to make them want to search for better resources in order to be more accurate, it's just going to make them give up.

Also! In fic and in writing, no one is going to get it right on the first try. Especially at the stage where we creators ARE merely in fan spaces is a great time to "fuck around and find out", before we bring our willfully or accidentally racist shit into monetized media. Absolutely hold your fan creators to higher standards, but literally fan work has so little actual impact on popular media (and this goes for just about every debate about fan spaces), and constructive criticism as well as routine practice can mean worlds for representation in future media. NOT allowing for mistakes in micro spaces like fandoms is how you get genuinely harmful or just... bad... portrayals of minorities in popularized media that DOES have an impact on the greater public. OR you get a bunch of creators who are too afraid to walk out of their own little bubbles, because what if they get it wrong and everyone turns against them. It's better to just "stick with what they know" (hobbies are something that you are meant to get better at, even if that is a slow road- for all of my writers and artists out there, it does take time, but you will get it. To everyone else, please do speak up about things that are wrong, but don't make it all about what's wrong and please don't be rude. It's frustrating on both ends, so, if you can, please try not to escalate the situation more.)

Anyways, I'm tired of everyone holding fictional characters to American Puritanical standards, but I'm also tired of seeing every "stop Americanizing fandom" somehow loop into fanfiction and how all authors who don't make their fics as accurate as possible are actually just racist and perpetuating or enabling America's take over of the world or some shit.

Fan interpretation of published media is different than fan creation of mon monetized media. Americans dominating or monopolizing spaces meant for all fans (especially in a fandom that was never meant for them to begin with) is annoying and can be harmful sometimes. Americans writing out their own personal experience using random fictional characters (more often than not) isn't.

[bellarosethefangirl]

hello! may I have JJBA matchup?

I'm reserved person who opens up with people slowly I can be pretty awkward at first but eventually I become witty, funny, kind, and chatty I can't really say no to helping people I'm very passionate about the things I love such as writing and reading I also like to make others comfortable and I'm extremely amicable to the point I can't really confront others it gives me a lot of anxiety but I believe in direct communication and honesty I'm optimistic hopeful cheerful and friendly when I'm happy but I'm prone to mood swings that make me a bit mean and irritable (I try my best to control it) I really like intellectual conversations or just talking about similar topics of interest for fun

I'm 5'0 chubby and of south Asian descent with mid length curly hair and I'm 24

my zodiac sign is Pieces and my MBTI is INFP, I'm also bi and I don't being paired with any gender and my pronouns are she/they (I'd only like to be paired with any canonically adult character)

My most ideal dates are at home date, classic dinners, shopping, cafes, museums, picnic, or movies.

During dates I love to dress up with makeup and cute dresses and hold my partner's hand or link arms. Either we chat or enjoy a comfortable silence. In a relationship I like to be a team with my partner and I like to feel myself grow and help them grow. I love mutual support in my relationships.

I am extremely physically affectionate with those that I'm close to but I'm not clingy and like my own space. Physical affection happens to be a love language of mine.

My hobbies are reading and writing and anything to do with stories. If I'm not reading a story, I'm thinking about it.

Lastly, I've a younger brother who I love deeply since I'm the one who wanted a younger sibling. I love buying little gifts for him sharing things with him and making sure he's growing well. He actually got me into JJBA and I love that sometimes we have the same tastes. Thank you 💜

Anime Matchups 💘

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

This one took me quite a bit to think of a matchup as there is so many characters but I finally made a decision. I hope you like the matchup and I think it’s sweet you got a good relationship with your brother. JJBA is so amazing I’m glad you didn’t miss out on it thanks to him.

Erina Pendleton

You and erina are bound to have true romance. One, many others would dream of having. She admires everything about your person and would treat you so well. She’s a loving woman with a lot to give her partner.

She’s a lady who is also reserved at first as well but after a while you both opened up a bit.

Your awkwardness is admirable to her. She likes your wit, intellect, and humor. She doesn’t mind your chattiness since she likes listening to what you have to say.

She respects your pronouns and will refer to you as both.

You not being able to say no to helping others will be one of the things she loves most about you. She will aid in helping you out on your work load in whatever it may be.

She can tell by the way you talk about your writing and reading how passionate you are about it. She’ll like you reading to her and telling her all about what you read or write.

She understands conflict is hard for others. She will be comforting and give you advice about it. She hopes she can be helpful to you in those moments. One should always express their feelings in those moments as it could lead to other problems.

Communication and honesty is what Erina wants from a relationship. She loves all your traits especially your optimism. She believes hope and happiness are important.

She can handle your mood swings. Her motherly side comes out when you have them. Your irritation is understandable and she’d give you space if you really need it. She will try to calm you down though.

Your wit is one of the reasons she loves you so she’ll like intellectual conversations.

She adores your curly hair and would love to brush it for you or help with it if she’s allowed to. She’ll often compliment your curls or touch them when she looks into your eyes. She thinks your height is cute.

Erina is absolutely interested in the same dates as you! She loves shopping, dinners, cafés, and the movies. She has often been to museums in her childhood so she’d love visiting one as a date with you. Picnics are her favorite she likes preparing food and holding the basket. Home dates are very much enjoyable for her since she’s so domestic. During dates she loves learning more about you. She’s excited during dates and gives you eyes full of admiration.

She’ll love your sense of fashion and how well you dress up for your dates with her. She’ll compliment your makeup and ask for tips. She might ask you to do her makeup sometime since she admires how well you do yours. She does neutral makeup so she wouldn’t mind changing it up to match with you.

You two will be doing a lot of shopping together. She’d like to get matching outfits or a pair of lovely earrings. For you she’d pick out a necklace.

She will always link her arm with yours. She doesn’t mind holding your hand. She’ll probably blush about it in the beginning.

Once again she’s pretty domestic so she can enjoy comfortable silence. She does like chatting with you though.

Trust me when I say Erina will help you grow. She’s extremely supportive. You’ll learn much from her as well. I assure you she’ll stand at your side always. She’s very loyal.

She loves affection but she’ll be flustered. She’s bashful and will return affection to the best of her ability. She respects your boundaries.

She thinks your relationship with your brother is such a lovely sight to see. She really loves this caring side of you. It makes her think how lucky she is having you at her side. She will be sure to include your brother in a couple things so she can get to know him.

Your zodiac is Pisces while Erina’s is Cancer. You’re both incredibly compatible. It’s a true love connection.

You both have such a loving and romantic dynamic. You both have a great understanding of each other and will have such a wonderful time together. No matter what you’re both doing it will be enjoyable.

[gopeachllama]

My hopes for the VA tv show

So i got into vampire academy when i was in like grade 8/9 i think? So i would have been in my early teens. It's a book series that is very near-perfect to me, and it is very dear to my heart bc it's been with me for so long. That being said, i will be the first one to admit that there is a serious lack of diverse representation. Like i said before, i got into it almost ten years ago, and back then, even as a poc growing up as a minority, i was aware of this however it wasn't much of an issue for me mainly becuase it wasn't a issue for the people (the non-pocs) around me. Now that va is being developed into a tv series, i think this would be the perfect opportunity to change some things up to include more diverse characters. I've seen that there's already qutie a few people on here dicussing the sexualities of the characters, and they're really great. But this conversation is about race-bending. For anyone that wants to contribute to this post, i'm all up for kind and careful dicussions, it's not my intention to offend anyone, and i'm not trashing the series or it's creator.

Also the points about diversity and race in particular shouldn't be dimissed just because it's a fantasy/paranormal genre. Yes it is a fantasy/paranormal series but it is set in the real modern world, where issues like race and prejudice are relavent! You can't just ignore it. Also im sure that a lot of va stan are like me, in that they got into it at a very young age and now are older and also find these issue important to them, whether they are a poc or not.

Just a warning there will be a lot of spoilers (also random spiderman homecoming spoilers) in this post, so for anyone that hasn't read the books proceed with caution.

So firstly, i want to talk about the characters that won't be changed. Dimitri will obviously be russian. I like the idea that the royal families originating from european countries, so alot of the royals in this series lissa, adrian, victor etc. i think should stay white. It reflects a lot of the real world issues about how the people in 'higher class' western societies are mainly white. this is more personal but i have this weird headcannon that christian is like half-southeast asian (i say south-east asian bc i am also, and i would love more representation of my race (s/o to any of my sri lankan book stans if y'all even exist on here!!)) In the later books there is a focus on the prejudice regarding his relationship with lissa. this is due to the fact that his family is shun from the other royal bc of his parents willingly turning. It was a good plot point, but there was somthing about taking the real world prejudice of interracial relationship and using here between two white characters and framing it as something else that just rubs me off the wrong way (again, i never had these feelings as i was reading it for the first time, it was only until i got older that issues like race a representations became more important to me). This way, they can keep still keep the bit about christian's parents and race-bending christian would have any affect on the overall story. Rose (my baby) she could be made fully persian but if they stick with her being biracial, then i hope when it comes to casting that they find someone that has more persian physical features rather than someone with more eurocentric features.

Now for the main characters I think should be race-bent are eddie, jill and sydeny should be black. For eddie, i first thought that mason should be race-bent but then this would be a major problem in the second book because of the harmful sterotype about black people always being the first (major character) to die (i am STILL taumatised over mason's death and its going to destroy me all over again when i see it with my own two eyes).

Sydney, as far as i know, there's nothing in the books that make is pivitol for her to be white. And while is important to be diverse with race, it's important to be diverse with black characters in itself. Sydney has always been such an interesting character to me. she's analytical and methodical, she's book smart, and she's almost the complete opposite of rose, but doesn't make her any less a compelling character. So much in books, movies and tv shows, black females characters are mainly potrayed as strong, hardass, take-no-prisoners (sometimes even hyper-sexualised) type personalities. So rarely do we see them as with characteristic like sydeny's, so i think it would be really great to show this. Also her relationship with adrian has a lot of the same points with i said about christian's relationship with lissa regarding prejudice.

With Jill, i noticed that in the books, Mead sort of goes out for her way to describe her physical appearance, so that when later it is revealed that she is lissa's half sister, the readers are able to think "oh yeah of course they look really similar" and so it doesn't seem like a telenovella style outrageous plot twist. But for this i want to quickly talk about how in spiderman homecoming, peter's love interest who is black, is revealed to be the daughter of the villan who is white. For me, it was amazing reveal and something i was not expecting at all, but at the same time, its wasn't hard for me to believe because of course birracial people exist. I think it would be really cool to do the same thing here with Jill. It a great way to subvert people's expectations and wouldn't make the plot twist any less unreasonable. Aslo from what i can remember there are no black vampires?? for some reason? that was always kinda weird to me. Also with the three of these character's being black, they can still maintain the storyline of them passing off as siblings when they're in hiding, that is if they ever adapt the bloodlines storyline too.

Whether or not these characters, or any of the characters, will be race-bent, it won't change my experince with the book series. Like I said at the start, vampire academy will always be THAT series for me. The world-building is simple and easy to follow but the plot and characters are so compelling. But this upcoming tv adaptions would be a good oppotuny to address the very few things i (and a lot of other diverse readers) have with it.

[smallcrystals]

TRANS MAN TIMBER PLSSSSS I NEED THIS SERATONIN

AND SERATONIN YOU WILL GET

so for some context for this headcanon: timber is afab, his family is from south asian descent, and his parents died when he was around ten

and this is LONG so buckle up !!!

timber was brought up knowing the general idea of a boy and a girl but he didn't really understand why he had to stick to one if he didn't feel like it. his parents tended to avoid the topic of gender and sexuality as a whole so he didn't have much to go by. he confined his thoughts of feeling more like a guy with gloriosa and she made sure he didn't face any queer discrimination from anyone to keep him safe

after their parents died, timber was kind of free to consume more diverse content since he had no one else to tell him not to, so he was pretty accepting of being gay and trans at a young age, reading books he asked gloriosa to get for him

he had to grow up fast so he ended up reading a lot of young adult at 12-13 (since there was more likely gonna be gay/trans ppl in those compared to books for his age)

despite not having a lot of trans rep, he had the internet due to his homeschooling. he was able to research a lot more abt being trans so he'd be more educated and helpful towards them (he sometimes brushed off the feeling of relating too hard to trans men, thinking he was just a really hardcore tomboy)

he realised he found himself attracted to girls and had various crushes but bc of the fact he felt like a boy, he mixed that up with attraction to boys (which he always 'had' since he thought he was a cishet girl at one point). but he still found boys cute and wanted to kiss them so :]

timber liked helping out at the camp a lot with wood and stuff since their dad at the time was the only "man" in the house. his dad didn't think anything of it and was just glad someone could help him out for once, so that continued on after they passed

timber preferred keeping his hair short since it got annoying bc of the curls. he kept it shoulder length until after his parents passed, then he asked gloriosa to cut it even shorter to the hairstyle he has now. my boy cried when he looked at himself in the mirror

it was around 14 where he realised he may be a boy and not a girl when his body started developing. he never got any bottom dysphoria so periods were never a massive thing for him (he just found them annoying) but he didn't like having boobs 😭

gloriosa managed to get T for him as a surprise one day and timber. like. SOBBED

she helps him take it when necessary until he got the hang of it himself and it just very helpful :(

timber noticed how much stronger he was getting after a few weeks on T and he got so excited. he was already strong beforehand so man just got stronger

he binds until he can get surgery which he gets at 18 (so yes in loe he is binding :>)

but it's actually rlly annoying bc man develops double d cups and is like . WHEN CAN I GET RID OF THESE THEY SUCK so he ends up only binding during camp sessions and doesn't when there aren't any campers at everfree

present day timber when someone comments rudely abt why he got top surgery and not bottom: LISTEN I JUST DIDN'T WANT FEMALE DOUBLE D BOOBS ON MY BODY IS THAT SO BAD???

he realised he liked people regardless of gender so he ids as pan! he's never really found a label for himself until he realised he's trans (he's known pre-loe)

he comes out to twilight after she tells him she's bi, so he comes out as pan and trans (a lot more nervous abt the trans bit but she's completely supportive abt it!!)

twilight gladfully reminds timber to take his hormones bc man forgets sometimes 😔 makes a timetable and everything and timber is just..... head in hands

this is my friend maisa's hc but i had to put it in here bc it's so cute:

timber is. so funny when ppl ask him invasive questions like it's none of your business !!!!

"whoa dude youre stronger than me and i'm the real man here" "oh what if i break your real man nose and kick you in the real man nuts then what"

timber gets top surgery done and it goes well!! since he's got a lot of muscle, he wanted his chest to fit that and it looks great in his opinion, he's very happy !!!

timber still likes wearing skirts occasionally and he pulls them off so well. he and flash went skirt shopping once

he lets rarity put make up on him at a time and he occasionally decks up

ppl ask him why he still wears feminine stuff and short answer is "i look better in it than you :)" but rlly, it doesn't give him dysphoria! timber doesn't personally associate his sex with his gender and doesn't feel like he needs to present the way society expects him too. he just does what he does to feel comfortable and doesn't give a shit what anyone else thinks!

timber goes to rarity to get some of his ethnic clothes styled in a little more feminine way (backless salwar for example) and just gets super giddy when he wears it

mehndi (henna) is typically for girls so he wore it as a child during eid and stuff but he didn't stop as he transitioned and always goes to gloriosa to get it done bc she does it really nicely

gloriosa tells him whenever he feels down that she's very proud of him and how far he's come and she'll always be there for him no matter what :(

timber's T ends up messing w his period so sometimes it does come, sometimes it doesn't and it's absolute hell. it used to be regular before but then. 😔 he doesn't get that bad of cramps anymore tho 😎

timber shaves! being south asian, he was bound to get a lot of body hair anyway but being on T just made it. Worse. he shaves frequently and just prefers it that way for himself!

even after timbertwi break up, twi still keeps reminding him to take his T. they're still very close friends!

flash walks in to timber taking his T one day and gets concerned bc he doesn't know so he's like . "timbie what r u doing....." and timber isn't comfortable yet telling him so he says he knows what he's doing and he's not comfortable telling flash yet. flash respects him and leaves the room until timber's done

timber ends up telling him sometime soon (like a few weeks) n flash is like "OHHH you were taking your testosterone, i'm so dumb", timber says "never stopped being dumb" and flash tackles timber

timber's pretty confident in himself after a while. that's where his ego shit comes from, he tries to hype himself up despite not beliveing it or having doubts but he does eventually and he's rlly proud of himself :}

I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABT HEIGHT but timber gained tall genes from his family so he was already pretty tall before he started taking T!! he's taller than flash and he teases amab flash all the time for it hehe

and that's all so far !!! hope you got the seretonin you wanted!!

[watchmegetobsessed]

I just have a lot of pressure on my chest and I just need to rent a little bit but you don’t have to share this…

I was always a chubby kid but I never really cared about it. And by chubby I dont mean like extra overweight I was just wearing clothes a size or two bigger than I was supposed to when I was 7-8 years old. When I turned 10-11, a lot of people where telling me that I lost a lot of weight. Which was true but I still wasn’t skinny I was just average weight for my height and age back then. Some people (the irrelevant ones) would still tell me that I needed to loose a little more weight. I then got my period when I was 11 and usually when girls get their periods, we gain a little bit of weight And I just kept gaining it. But I was gaining fat in my abdomen/tummy area the most. Like not gonna lie sometimes I look pregnant. Now here’s the thing, i was born in Canada and my parents are from Bangladesh, and if there’s one thing you need to know is that South Asians are VERY VERY VERY judgemental. Specially towards girls. So my mom has been body shaming me since I was 13 basically. (I’m 19 now) These are some of the things she says to me: “look how pretty she looks in that dress, you can never look that pretty the way that you’ve been gaining weight” “no guy is going to marry a fat girl like you” “look at your cousin, she’s beautiful she’s smart, gorgeous… don’t you wanna be pretty like her” “baby you HAVE TO loose weight or else there’s no way a guy is gonna fall in love with you” “people like to see slim fit girls not the one like you” “you’re intelligent, respectful but yore just not skinny enough that’s the only problem really everything else is fine” these are just a few of what I have to hear every single day. I don’t/never have eaten that much…I just don’t get hungry. It’s not that I’ve been skipping meals or anything like that but I just don’t get hungry. I’ve also been exercising a lot for about 2-3 years now and I’m still not getting the results that I want. So ik this whole post is a bit personal but y’all don’t know who I am so it’s cool 😆 but my periods are irregular so I have to take pills to have my periods every month and control my acne. Now I’ve been on the pill for about 4 years now and it was just a few days ago that I found out that I had PCOS. (Polycystic ovary syndrome) and one of the symptoms/side effects is that it’s harder to loose weight and also that you gain the more weight in the abdomen area. There isn’t really a cure you just have live with it. So all of this to just say that you shouldn’t judge someone’s body just because you think they’re fat. You never know what’s going on in their lives so you should just focus on your health instead of others. Idk if it’s long and not coney I just tried to put a lot of details some that might be unnecessary but this is my story.

Btw, my mom is still blaming me for being fat and having PCOS. She’s saying that I should try even more to loose weight now. How do I tell her that no matter how hard I try it might take the rest of my life to be able to loose weight?

Again I’m sorry that this is super long and not harry related.

oh hun, i felt everyword you wrote bc i went through a very similar experience growing up!! i was overweight almost my whole life too and literally the same way you wrote, mostly on my tummy. i was never bullied in school, not even one bad comment from my school mates but i got all the shit at home. my parents and my brother loved to call me nicknames that they found funny but they were extremely upsetting to me, like "fatty" or "big tummy" and stuff like that and they made me feel so bad and i couldn't speak up for myself, i was very shy in middle school and i didn't say a word just kept it all inside. they always commented on whenever i was eating and not even when i ate a lot but when i just literally had dinner or something, i felt uncomfortable eating with them present and i still avoid eating with my dad at 25... there was one comment that's still stuck with me, my mom was making this hungarian meetball thingies one time and i took one just to taste it and my dad commented on me eating again of course and i got mad so i said "yeah, maybe i should just stop eating at all" and he replied with "yes that could be asolution" and i still hear him say that to me to this day whenever i feel guilty for eating. 3 years ago i had a health situation too and i lost a lot of weight very fast and it's very likely that my condition affected my weight too and how i couldn't get rid of fat for a long time and i think seeing me go through that made them realize how badly they treated this topic all my life, they don't comment on my weight anymore but the ones they made in the past will def stay with me for the rest of my life.

i wish i could give you advise about how to deal with it, but im still figuring it out myself, it made me very hurt that i had to be hospitalized and lose weight in a very short time to make them realize that there could be so much more going on that they don't know about... i wish you strength and the only thing i can tell you is that you have the right to stand up for yourself and tell them how you feel and if they still choose to bully you, then no one will blame you if you choose to distance yourself from them. your mental health is just as important as your physical!!

[jungxk]

// rant

i'm jus so heartbroken rn i've been crying for the past hour i jus need to put my feelings out there, i hope it's ok w you.

my mum wakes up today and jus starts berating me bc i didnt put washed dishes into the cabinets & the kitchen looked messy for her. i'm supposed to do it bc there's nothing else i actually do but yesterday i had woken up in the evening nd they called me to pray straight away so i totally forgot about it (coupled w the fact that i dont like doing it either cuz there's always sm dishes nd it's such a hassle). she jus started scolding me senseless nd im someone who doesnt get mad easily, even if i do i tend to stay quiet bc i dont like conflict & angry emotions are ugly. but i couldnt stop it today? she kept calling me selfish nd she's been calling me that the past few days as well bc i never help out w chores or anything. she's always asking me "what do u do for this family" or "what do u do in this house" every single time nd ofc i cant say shit bc i dont. i'm doing uni online nd it's really not that easy but bc i dont talk to my family like at all, they think i'm all good. the other day i pissed them off nd my parents straight up said "why do we need to pay for ur uni ure not doing anything anyway" & i jus... i didnt even know if i even deserve to feel sad over it. they were asking me what i wanna do after uni as if im not just in my first year & when i said im not sure they got so mad and my mum purposely said "just marry her off" to push my buttons into giving them an answer. they keep saying i'm pushing them into being the worst and saying the worst to me but how is that fair? they're parents? adults? i'm jus 20 & i can control my emotions? but today really jus pushed me she got so mad at me for the littlest things nd i jus exploded. I asked her why she's mad and she's like cuz of the kitchen bla bla bla nd it got so frustrating i told her it's not my problem nd i jus wont ever eat again since all the unwashed dishes piling is my fault. nd then she got mad at me for that and scolded me. I hate being touched but mostly i hate being hit. imagine getting hit at 20 years old bc my mother is too emotionally unstable that she cant take a few seconds by herself to calm her anger down. I hate it. nd bc i said it's not my problem she came nd told me "yea it won't be ur problem when i die too! i'll make sure when i do, u never come see me." jus... what kind of parent says that? i'm so careful w what i say & i slip sometimes bc i'm human but how can a mother say that? she doesnt know anything about me. she doesn't know i dont like being hit, she doesnt know i dont like it when ppl act impulsively on emotions. sometimes i feel like i really am the problem nd that i'm really selfish. spending shit ton of money to get me to study, maybe i am selfish. i dont mind it. i know myself well enough to hate things about myself. but to have parents who barely know me as a person rather than a daughter, getting this much mad at me for smthn so simple jus makes me so sad. bc i was doing the task when she asked. she does things like this then wonders why i cant ever talk to her. entire family thinks i'm immature bc i behave exactly how they treat me. 20 years. I never ask for much. but it's starting to feel like asking to study in the uk was my greatest downfall. it feels like i dont deserve this. every day i'm itching to get away, to live alone bc they've made me feel like i can never work well in groups. it's always somehow my fault as if they havent been invalidating me nd my feelings since birth.

nd i can never tell them all these bc i'm never confident in them. i'm never confident in whether i would be accepted nd comforted without ridicule or scolding. my brother & father tell me it's like that, that jus bc i may get a scolding shouldn't stop me from being open. but what kind of stupidity is that? my mother who makes me feel like the world is ending when i accidentally break smthn, that it wasn't an accident but rather it's me nd that i jus cant do a good job— where is the comfort i can ever find coming to her w a problem?

nd bc of that we're not close. bc of that she's closer to my cousins & everyone else really. they've never concerned themselves to talking about family issues w me but when i dont know, they shame me, saying i never bother to ask— how would i know when to ask? should they be telling me when there's smthn going on?

this makes the concept of family so repelling for me. there is inherently no reason to ever have a child that isnt selfish or self fulfilling. what they do as parents is to make them feel as important nd respected as they expect from the child. but it's never like that w south asians. emotions dont exist if ure the child nd apparently getting mad is a norm nd shouldn't stop u from being emotional w someone.

at times i tell myself that i should pay back every penny my parents spent on me. bc sometimes it feels like it's being used to make me act or feel a certain way. i dont wanna feel this way. theyre my parents, i know theyre good people. but i'm so hurt by the things going on nd the things from the past. my mother invalidates me sm. she more or less kinda blamed me for feeling useless and depressed last year. my brother was telling her to go easy on me nd she got so mad & frustrated bc she didnt know what she was doing wrong. "if she feels so useless why doesnt she do anything about it?" like that was such a golden chance for her to have comforted me nd i couldve opened up? but she ruined it nd hurt me again.

last year i lived w her alone nd my dad was in our home country. I was having some troubles w him gone but i dont call or text bc... it always felt like a drag. it never felt like a conversation nd the only time it did was when i complained to him about my mum. so much shit happened between my mum and i & this person advised me to jus write some of my feelings to her. so i wrote her a long letter nd i included saying how not having my dad was hard on me too. flash forward im in my home country & w my dad. i know nobody here bc i didnt grow up here. i'm doing online uni & basically have to stay indoors cuz of covid. she brings that letter up when she was to berate me nd it jus feels so uncomfortable for me? like ok my actions dont line up but i wrote that cuz i was looking for comfort nd understanding. if i knew it was going to be held against me, i would not have done it? "u said it was so hard for u without him, so what do u even do for him here now?"— what can i do? i'm just 20 nd the situation im in is not normal? i'm grateful to be w my dad again but what can i do? &it always freaking comes down to house chores. i try my best. when our maid doesnt come i do my best w my tasks. i know it's not enough but i jus... i dont even know. ig that part of me is selfish nd lazy.

it's so suffocating here. all my feelings are bottled up nd im so scared what that would do to me in the future. but at least i know i'm too selfish to ever spend the rest of my life w someone.

sorry for the long rant. i hope this didnt ruin ur mood or anything i jus need an outlet nd ur blog jus feels so comforting nd welcoming. thank u for listening to me nd my feelings. God bless u really kssjdjsj

i’m rlly sorry this is happening to you bby. idk what race u are but this sounds so much like that asian mentality where emotions are black and white and comfort in any way is out of the question. ur still rlly young tho so ur relationship with ur parents has room to improve i promise. i think it’s rlly important for u to move out whenever u can tho bc that’s what rlly improves the relationship. having said this i do think the way your mum talks to u/treats u is emotionally and mentally abusive so whether you want to uphold that tie with her in the future is ur choice i just rlly hope u get somewhere safe and away from ur family soon x

[jamaisjoons]

so much to digest here,,,,,, so much to think about,,,, so much that I literally don’t care about because it’s the classic white victimisation complex,,,,,,,

anyway for the above anons:

1) the entire post is satire there’s literally no reason to get so angry about it. like if you’re offended over something that is so clearly a joke,,,, i really don’t even know what to say but sadly I’m not going to apologise for it. because. it is. a joke. the fact that I used ‘disgostin’ instead of ‘disgusting’ and the fact that I used the emojis only highlights the fact that it is, in fact, a joke. also re: body shame. I literally wrote an entire tag ‘no shame to pink nipples’ and ‘in all seriousness there’s nothing wrong with pink nipples and you’ve no reason to be insecure’ but you’ve clearly chosen to ignore that to fuel and justify ur own misplaced anger so I’m sorry if I can’t bring myself to give a shit 💖

2) 😐 I can’t believe I had to read that entire second asks with my whole two eyes. yeah I’m mad at the lack of representation of dark nipples literally never said I wasn’t. and also fuck you lmfao it’s not just lack of representation. it’s the fact that whenever people describe or draw nipples (sometimes even on POC which I’m not even going to get into) the default is pink or a similar light af shade. do you have any idea how damaging it is to constantly read about ‘petite blush pink nipples’ or ‘pretty pink nipples’ or anything of the sort when you can’t relate. do you have any idea how hard it is growing up because all the representation around you in any form of media romanticises and beautifies white features? no. you don’t. and you never will. and you see how angry and hurt you get over one. joke. about pink nipples being disgusting? now imagine being a poc and going through that all your fucking life. except it’s not a joke and it’s your reality.

3) y’all will sit here and call a woc a bully just because I reblog one. joke. and make a few. clearly satirical. comments that are. negative. about your fucking pink ass nipples and yet y’all will be blind to every other fucking atrocity in the world acting as if I’m the worst person alive. no one in the history of ever has called y’all’s pink nipples ugly seriously. in fact, they’re constantly lorded as beautiful and the ideal. so keep your fucking white victimisation to yourself. I literally don’t care about it and nor will I ever care about it. not when poc spend their entire lives fucking feeling ashamed by their own bodies just because they’re poc and don’t have ur white-romanticised-features.

some of y’all really need to take a long hard look at yourselves and confront the racism you express because this may not project as blatant racism but it’s still fucking racism in the form of microaggressions. you would think that in this generation and with everything we’ve seen this year that you would actually educate yourselves. but clearly. some of y’all have chosen to stick your pasty faces in the ground and pretend you’re not the problem or that the problem doesn’t exist.

to these two anons:

to the anon on the left: I’m sorry you feel that way but I can guarantee you no one in the history of ever actually thinks your white-features are disgusting. I can guarantee you the the percentage of people who think your classically white features are beautiful to the ones who don’t is incredibly skewed to the former. you talk about how you wish POC features are praised without saying yours are disgusting. how do you think East Asians feels when people make fun of their eyes. how do you think south Asians feels when people say things like ‘wow you’re so pretty for a ____’. how do you think black people feel when their told their hair is unprofessional or gross or whatever? and those are only to name a few examples. like I’m sorry you wish people would stop calling your features disgusting (which I can gurantee you again is most likely a joke) but when the entire world typically shows that whites people are the standard of beauty. how do you think poc feel.

to the anon of the right: it probably doesn’t feel good to see it. but it also doesn’t feel good to grow up in a society and a world where the standard beauty are white-centric features. the shape and size of your boobs have nothing to do with POC and like with the top anon I can assure you no one will ever even bat an eyelid if they ever saw your pink nipples because that is literally what is considered normal. you’re 18+ (you better be if you’re on my blog) and only now considering that people may not like your pink nipples and you’re only now potentially starting to be insecure about it. it’s nothing compared to all the poc who grow up with that insecurity. it’s nothing compared to the poc who literally go their entire lives feeling ashamed and insecure and hating their bodies.

anyway this is so so so much more effort than I was gonna give to this post but also I’m pretty much done with all I wanna say. any more about it will just be blocked and deleted 💖