#and be more aware of my own cultural identity pieces

[in-tua-deep]

Hey book side of tumblr I am looking for any book recommendations for if I wanted to do like. A multicultural/diversity book club type thing - all book recommendations welcome

Rn I have white fragility by robin diangelo, a positive view of LGBTQ by rowman and littlefield, neurotribes by silberman, and a race is a nice thing to have by janet helms

Looking for recommendations for ANY populations, and preferably multiple for each culture/identity piece to get some different perspectives and voices! Can be autobiographies, anthropological/psychological/sociological type books, or just really neat perspectives

[zahri-melitor]

Reading Digger Harkness as an Aussie: why he’s specifically written to wind me up, the undercurrents of many of his appearances, and why he’s voting No in the Voice referendum.

(Okay if you know ANYTHING about Digger and about the Voice you already knew that, but making this current-relevant!)

George “Digger” Harkness is Captain Boomerang. He’s traditionally written by DC to be specifically, deliberately annoying and disliked. Due to this he’s simultaneously quite cleverly written while also being the laziest character stereotype imaginable.

One of the things that drives me up the wall every time I read him in a book is that due to a clash of a few things in his character design, the subtext he’s evolved over time is remarkably complex, but also geared to make me despise him. Also I can’t tell how much of it is deliberate on the writer’s part.

The first thing you need to understand is that Harkness is very specifically putting on a level of Australianness for his audience (the usually American characters around him). The fascinating thing in this is that, unusually for this trope, his writers are often aware he’s doing this. The common term for this is ‘ocker’. You can notice this in the language he uses: it’s specifically peppered with ‘Australian’ words and phrases.

Now this is a pretty common thing for writers to do to demonstrate a character is Australian. It sounds like someone trying to write Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin. However, to my ear (and years of putting up with this), the way it’s done for Digger is…off. It’s not the standard terrible way it’s used in American media, but it’s equally not written naturally for how an Australian who natively speaks ocker/broad would use it. Digger’s playing it up, and he’s playing it up badly. (the closest comparison I can make than an Australian might understand is he sounds more like Russell Coight than Steve Irwin, with all that implies) He wants people to think he’s an Australian stereotype.

Heck, let’s break down his name for a demonstration of this.

Captain Boomerang: this is a very, very, loaded name. Digger’s specifically racist, and he’s racist in a very White Australia Policy sort of way. The writers are aware he’s racist. He uses a boomerang as a symbol as he’s Australian (surface level) but they’re also specifically drawn as white a lot of the time, both in his costume and in the weapons themselves. They’re not plain wood or decorated with traditional art. They’re white. He has a history of making boomerangs and promoting them in Australia for sale, as a white guy, which is uhhhh Not Great. He’s assumed a traditional piece of Australian Aboriginal weaponry and culture as his own, and he’s painted it white. He’s asserting that it’s his culture now and has stripped it of its traditional meaning. (Also his boomerangs often don’t come back, and have sharpened edges and are used wrongly). He doesn’t like Black People ™ but also uses a weapon specifically associated with an oppressed minority in his place of origin. The white supremacy attitude is very much coded in.

“Digger” as a nickname: oh the way this clashes and interacts with the fact he uses ‘Captain’ as a title! Digger as a term is a general nickname for Australian Army soldiers. It comes from the Gallipoli landings and the trenches of World War I. By using it as his nickname, Harkness is evoking a whole HOST of imagery and specifically nationalist cultural imagery surrounding Gallipoli as a ‘birthplace’ of Australian identity, something that’s been weaponised particularly by the Australian political right for the past 30 years as a national symbol. In the stories that a country tells itself about who they are, Harkness is evoking a very major one and also one that can read as quite toxic if not done carefully. (if you need a quick entry to the way the nickname makes me wince, look up ‘Cronulla Riots’. That’s the sort of person his name is evoking for me) The other problem on top of this – this is a soldier’s nickname. Harkness has never been in the Australian military (as far as I can tell). Combined with the fact he uses the title of ‘Captain’, he’s suggesting he’s got a military background that he 100% does not have. He’s a giant hypocrite. Now being part of the military in Australia reads differently to being part of the military in the USA, in how society sees it, but this is still not on. It’s not a natural nickname for an Australian to have, in his circumstances. It doesn’t even make sense as a traditional ironic nickname given by his friends. Which means he picked it himself. And for that style of nickname…choosing your own? That’s considered to be poor form and trying way too hard. (And nicknames are culturally important! For the personality Harkness is trying to present to his audience, he SHOULD have a nickname like this. My father’s is ‘Bones’, for instance. But choosing your own, and choosing one that implies traits that are not yours to display? Really really bad form)

Basically in summary, Harkness is very much coded in a lot of ways to essentially be the Australian equivalent of someone who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With that sort of view of his home country.

What is fascinating is that when Harkness interacts with other Australian characters, they do not like him, so the writers are aware that he’s been written to be this level of objectionable.

Now, some of this coding in his character has just accumulated over 60+ years as stereotypes have evolved and things have become ever more socially unacceptable. But the interesting thing here is that the writers ACKNOWLEDGE that unacceptable behaviour from Harkness.

I hate him so much. And I also want to fix his dialogue, which suffers from being written by Americans, to include a bunch more extremely country ocker sayings. He NEEDS to be saying things like “stone the flaming crows” and “fair shake of the sauce bottle” and “flat out like a lizard drinking” and “I didn’t come here to fuck spiders”. Because he’s putting it on. And these are the sort of things he’d lean in to to convey that level of “oh I’m not from around here, I am quoting Crocodile Dundee at you but you didn’t even realise” that he’s written to have.

[clonerightsagenda]

Author's notes for Sick aka I ramble about my complex Disability Feelings

When you're sick, especially given the dominance of the medical model of disability, it's easy to view your body as a separate adversary, and this scenario takes it to the extreme of completely removing yourself from your body. I've talked before on this blog about my complicated feelings on magic disability cures - I don't like them in fiction; I'd like one myself in real life - and this is me contemplating 'what if'?

I do not like being sick. It is painful, time-consuming, expensive, and frequently embarrassing. I wish it had not happened to me. But being disabled is now a major part of my identity and experience - it's probably the first label I would list when thinking about the different facets that impact my life. Being disabled has made me more aware of disability justice issues and changed the way I relate to and rely on other people. In some ways that sucks - it's progressively taken over what I eat, where I work, where I live (which I also take to the extreme in this story with ambiguously literal possession) - but in other ways, I think the disability community often has a much better worldview than mainstream America. I'm glad I've become more aware of some of those perspectives and issues. And because disability has shaped so much of my life for the past... six? years, for good and for ill, it's hard for me to conceive of what my life would be like without it. How would I think about myself? What would I do? This is my new normal, like it or not. I don't remember what it's like to make a fist painlessly.

An added wrinkle is that autoimmunity is my body Trying Its Best. I make a lot of jokes about my body trying to kill me because that's how it shakes out (please, little guys in my blood, stop eating my bones) but autoimmunity is a trauma response. My body got clobbered by so many outside poisons that it can't recognize what a real threat is anymore. It's trying to protect me and doing a terrible job. It's another place where you can look at your body as an external adversary versus a system that your mind is also a part of. But also no matter how you look at it, I am still sick.

There's also some stuff in the piece about the helplessness that comes from being sick which (surprise!) I also have mixed feelings about. Because it sucks not having control over your body! I want to be supervising that shit. But also... I don't know how common this is, but there is a weird kind of comfort in being tucked in bed with someone else taking care of me. I even find going into surgery oddly relaxing because for a while my life will be someone else's problem.

At the same time I also worry that I'm using disability as an excuse. Am I begging off attending something because I really am tired or worried about exposure/overwork or do I just not want to go?

Finally we have Aro Angst because that's always on my mind. And it's extra on my mind in the context of disability because what if I get to the point where I can't take care of myself anymore? I don't have a romantic partner to help me or to provide health insurance if I can't work. I live near my parents and have passed up job opportunities that would take me further away. Most specifically for this story, even I find myself sometimes falling into the trap of assuming the ultimate endstate of closeness/intimacy would be romantic/sexual bc of cultural conditioning. It's annoying! So the character (Dani, I named her Danielle in a reference to the Daniel/the cooler Daniel meme) is still seeking the community, care, and closeness she experienced as part of the disabled community, and the messier weirder intimacy of feeling connected to her own body, but she's struggling with interpreting that through cultural norms of amatonormativity. Sometimes 'I want to be inside you/I want you inside me' is, shockingly, not a sex thing. Hence, toxic nonhorny clone makeouts. I guess???

Side note: I've mentioned this wrt pieces I've written with aromanticism that follow a similar pattern of taking something I am at least not too consciously dramatic about and making the MC a pathetic wet cat about it. I guess they are serving the purpose of Everyman in a medieval morality play here. They are crash test dummies I am flinging at walls to count the cracks. Not great character writing but that's not what this is about rn.

[bowokshop]

Growing Up Queer in Australia - edited Benjamin Law

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘No amount of YouTube videos and queer think pieces prepared me for this moment.’ ‘The mantle of “queer migrant” compelled me to keep going – to go further.’ ‘I never “came out” to my parents. I felt I owed them no explanation.’ ‘All I heard from the pulpit were grim hints.’ ‘I became acutely aware of the parts of myself that were unpalatable to queers who grew up in the city.’ ‘My queerness was born in a hot dry land that was never ceded.’ ‘Even now, I sometimes think that I don’t know my own desire.’ Compiled by celebrated author and journalist Benjamin Law, Growing Up Queer in Australia assembles voices from across the spectrum of LGBTIQA+ identity. Spanning diverse places, eras, ethnicities and experiences, these are the stories of growing up queer in Australia.

‘For better or worse, sooner or later, life conspires to reveal you to yourself, and this is growing up.’

With contributions from David Marr, Fiona Wright, Nayuka Gorrie, Steve Dow, Holly Throsby, Sally Rugg, Tony Ayres, Nic Holas, Rebecca Shaw and many more.

I am privileged enough to have grown up with the internet, with information about queer people and queer identities so difficult to hide, such that even at a christian school, I was able to find the words to describe myself almost as soon as I recognised those parts of myself.

Even so, hearing first-person accounts of Australian queer people, like me, dealing with Australia's culture and biases, made me felt seen in a way I don't think any other medium could have.

Growing Up Queer in Australia portrayed all different aspects of queerness, from celebration and pride to rejection and heartbreak. It was a wonderful reflection of thoughts and feelings I've had, as well as those I would never have considered to be part of the queer experience.

I really appreciated the range of queer identities represented in the book; from lesbian and gay to queer, every letter of LGBTQ+ was represented. I do wish we got more stories from the '+' part of the queer community, but I am glad that Growing Up Queer does make an effort to include more than just gay and lesbian authors. I especially appreciated the range in gender identities and presentation of the authors, including both masc- and femme-presenting lesbians and their struggles, trans people who realised both early and late in life, people who had strong gendered feelings that didn't neatly fit into these boxes.

I also welcome the intersectionality present in Growing Up. As someone who is white and able-bodied, it was eye-opening to read how deep the authors' queerness was related to other marginalised parts of their identity such as disability and race. I appreciated the variety in Australian class and location represented in the book, including rural, small towns, suburban and city perspectives. It made me really happy in one story to notice where they were from and say "Hey, that's near me! That's my community!"

As Benjamin Law addresses in the wonderfully written foreword, I am very glad that the title chosen is 'Growing Up Queer in Australia.' The use of 'queer' feels very inclusive and tells me Law is not shying away from the tougher parts of queer identities in an effort to make the book more marketable.

For me personally though, trying to digest the a-spec parts of my identity has been a big part of my personal discovery, and for this reason I would loved to have seen asexual and aromantic representation. It seems from personal anecdote to make up a surprisingly large section of the lgbtq+ community, so it was a bit disappointing that with dozens of authors involved, there was not a single a-spec author.

In general, I was a little disappointed there weren't many authors from the '+' part of lgbtq+, such as a-spec, non-binary and genderfluid. There are some identities that feel marginalised even within the queer community and this book could have been a good opportunity to bring light to them. I would have especially loved to see 'contradictory' identities such as he/him lesbians.

I am still giving 5 stars because I understand when compiling and publishing a book like this, there will always be people who felt left out by it, and I can see and appreciate the effort that has gone into diversity and intersectionality in Growing Up Queer.

Growing Up Queer, through its diverse collection of stories, reaches out and says, You are not alone. There are others who have been in the same situation.

[llondonfog]

Briar Valley's Education System

"I learned all of this in middle school. Briar Valley is superior even in its educational curriculum."

I haven't been able to get this line from Sebek's Lab SR out of my head for the past day, and now you all get to hear about it.

I. The Students

Sometimes I wonder if the following is a plot hole, a 'lost in translation' effect, or if we're deliberately being fed unreliable information and Ch.7 will finally reveal the missing pieces— but how on earth is there a middle school in Briar Valley if Silver and Sebek were the only two children of their generation?

Perhaps I'm taking the terms 'middle school' and 'generation' too literally, but it doesn't make sense to me when we know that Sebek has siblings, wouldn't they have been considered the same generation as him? (The only other possible explanation I can think of is if his siblings are fae, thus potentially much older, and he was the only child from his mother/human father, but I'm not sure if that's already been disproven— someone correct me if so!)

I guess it's possible that Sebek could have been privately tutored or still attended a 'school'-like setting with a private instructor, but the real point I'm striving towards is that there was a supposed public institution for education, and Lilia deliberately did not send Silver off to attend as we know that Silver was homeschooled— why? Wouldn't he have wanted Silver to engage with children his own age, even if that was only Sebek? Which of course, raises more questions to me in particular about what is the real state of how humans are treated in Briar Valley?

II. 'Superior' Curriculum

This phrasing got a chuckle out of me especially with the current Scalding Sands event. I understand that at every opportunity, Sebek will find a way to extol the virtues of his culture and kingdom, but Briar Valley is actually so far behind in its understanding of the world around them. We know from Malleus' lines in the event and in his card that what he believes to be true about the Scalding Sands is information that is practically decades, if not centuries, old. I'll reiterate from a previous post, but it is astounding to me that Malleus is allowed to represent his country with misinformation that could make him look foolish to other nation representatives— however, that's not his fault, but a byproduct of the fact that Briar Valley is so insular despite having such tensions with their neighboring human nations. One would think that they'd be keeping tabs on what the humans are up to, but it's rather strange that they're not after such bloody history.

So, is their curriculum actually superior if it doesn't even teach the most up to date information about the current events in Twisted Wonderland? I'd hardly say yes, especially when being aware of what's going on around you, particularly for those in leadership positions, is of utmost importance. Again, I just wonder if these views of 'superiority' are ones held mostly by Sebek as he tries to navigate his identity, or are still widely held by the fae population of Briar Valley? Is that why Lilia isolated himself with Silver to educate and train him away from judgmental fae eyes?

There's just a lot of underlying tension I think that can be seen in many of the Diasomnia voice lines that make me wonder what life is truly like in Briar Valley, and if we'll ever get to see it through a human perspective.

[jewishconvertthings]

So according to Humanistic Judaism, the only requirement to be Jewish is to identity with the culture and history. I’m worried if I convert through that denomination people will see it as me taking the easy path to becoming Jewish or will think I’m trying to convert without being required to change my lifestyle or follow Jewish law. I still want to live a Jewish life and be part of the culture, I just resonate with the beliefs of Humanistic Judaism more than the other denominations

Hi anon,

I had to look this up, because I was unfamiliar with their process. Here is what I found:

Humanistic Judaism includes as a full member any person — of any heritage — who “declares himself or herself to be a Jew, and who identifies with the history, ethical values, culture, civilization, community, and fate of the Jewish people.” (IFSHJ Second Biennial Conference, Brussels in 1988.)

Humanistic Judaism welcomes individuals from other backgrounds who wish to become part of the Humanistic Jewish family and identify as a member of the Jewish people.

Humanistic Judaism uses the term “adopt” rather than “convert” because the person wishing to be Jewish is adopting both Judaism and our community, and that the community adopts those desiring to be part of the Jewish people.

As the Association of Humanistic Rabbis so beautifully and succinctly stated:

We believe:

1. That Jewish identity is primarily a cultural and ethnic identity.

2. That belief systems are too diverse among Jews to serve as criteria for membership.

3. That joining the Jewish community is a process of cultural identification.

4. That a person who seeks to embrace Jewish identity should be encouraged to do so and should be assisted in this endeavor.

5. That the cultural instruction for conversion should be left to the discretion of each rabbi, congregation, or community.

6. We are convinced that Jewish survival requires creative alternatives to traditional procedures.

—The Association of Humanistic Rabbis, adopted 1980.

The SHJ assists those who are not near an existing Humanistic Jewish congregation but want to adopt Judaism. We recommend and can provide a course of self-study. We also offer a certificate and a Hebrew name if desired. Contact SHJ Rabbi Miriam Jerris for information about the program of self-study with your complete contact information.

So look, here's the thing - if this is the route you want to go, then perhaps that is what's right for you. I have three major concerns about this process that I would encourage you to consider before deciding to go this route:

First, you need to know that the overwhelming majority of Jews will not consider you halachicly Jewish - not even (as far as I'm aware) the Reform movement. I think as long as you are very committed to klal Yisrael, identify fully as Jewish, live a Jewish life, and don't do stuff that hurts the community, most people will be okay with including you as Jewish at a social level. You would, for example, be just as welcome at my Shabbos table as anyone else. However, if I am counting people for minyan at my Conservative shul, I can't in good conscience count you. By contrast, as long as you have studied for a year with a rabbi, had a beit din, immersed in a mikvah, and (if required) had a circumcision, many Conservative rabbis and communities will still accept your Reconstructionist or Reform conversion for halachic purposes.

Second, I would be a bit worried about the quality of Jewish education you would receive as part of this process. There is a LOT to learn in order to really immerse yourself in Jewish thought, ethics, and culture, even if you don't hold by the more traditionally religious pieces of it. If you're at least able to take an Intro to Judaism course through a mainstream synagogue, JCC, or other Jewish institution, I would strongly encourage doing so, even if you ultimately stick with the Humanistic approach.

Third - and perhaps this is just my own baggage talking here, but I *do* think that what I'm about to say is articulating an unconscious but very real rule - I think you need to go into this with the idea that you can't just back out once you've done it. You need to take this as seriously as any other irreversible procedure, because conversion is a one-way road.

See the thing that gives converts - all gerim - credibility and legitimacy as Jews is that we cannot just nope out the moment the going gets tough or something else shiny catches our attention. Once you convert, you're supposed to be treated just like any other Jew, which comes with both parts privilege and responsibility. Yes, you're a full-fledged member of the community for all purposes halachic and (at least supposed to be) social. People are not supposed to remind you of your past, are not supposed to single you out for different treatment, and there is a mitzvah to welcome you. But that comes with the terrifying reality of antisemitism, and it comes with all the many responsibilities to the community that all other Jews have. If you don't know fully what you're signing up for (see #2), how can you make an informed decision? How can anyone else in the community be certain that you are taking this that seriously? Bottom line - gerim have to be ride or die once the conversion has been finalized for our own credibility and for the whole community's safety. This may be fully addressed by their requirement that you commit to sharing in the fate of the Jewish people, but it bears reiterating given how vague that statement is.

There are answers to the above concerns, but I would be remiss not to point them out to you because these are important things to be thinking about.

I wish you well on your Jewish journey, wherever that takes you from here.

[thestoryofaslut]

A Newcomer's Guide to Goncharov

Hi! If you're here (on Tumblr specifically, but on the Internet in general) then there's a pretty good chance that you're seeing info about something called Goncharov. I've done my best to learn as much as I can and I want to present it to you. This is no bullshit, this is the best explanation I have at present.

Recently, the internet has discovered a film called Goncharov.  The movie is from 1973, was directed and co-written by Martin Scorsese, and stars Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, Gene Hackman, and several others in a star studded cast, in a film about Russian mobsters in Naples, Italy.  The movie is very ahead of its time, the film has quite a bit of LGBT subtext, explores themes of cultural identity, has a recurring clock motif and a general theme of being aware of one's own mortality and 'running out of time', and also the internal conflict of choice between spending your life building your legacy versus spending your life actually living your life.  It is regarded as the greatest mafia movie ever made.

The film also, and I cannot possibly stress this enough, doesn't actually exist.

Goncharov is kind of the storytelling equivalent of a flashmob.  The entire thing started back in August when Some Guy On The Internet ordered a set of boots which were supposed to be referencing a 2008 film called Gomorrah.

He got these instead.

Naturally the internet, being what it is, was not going to simply let such a bizarrely specific error like this go untouched and forgotten. 

Fast forward to twelve days ago.  November 10th.  I don't know how or why but the internet suddenly just... descended on this non-existent film like, well, like the opposite of vultures.  Instead of feeding on a dead concept, over the last not even two whole weeks, people have created content for this thing that doesn't exist.  There are now movie posters, soundtracks, some celebrities have talked about their experiences with the film both making and watching it, whole segments of lore and story beats, there's fanfiction based on said lore, falsified IMDb pages with full cast lists...

...I can't make stuff like this up, and I'm actually a writer.  The story has been kind of decided by mass consensus, even where parts of it are contradictory or unclear enough that it's difficult to be specific.  There's a whole post detailing the 'accepted' lore somewhere out there.  Some amateur filmmakers are talking about 'creating' the 1973 cut of the film.  Half the internet has just simultaneously subscribed to this weird collective unreality in which there is a fifty year old film that nobody's ever heard of starring some of the biggest names in film history.  I cannot tell you how much this amuses the hell out of me, both as a writer and also as a Person on the Internet observing the madness from a relatively safe distance.  I honestly don't know what else to say; I don't know if I could possibly say anything more meaningful.  Thousands of people who have never met and may never meet, came together twelve days ago over a set of bootleg boots (a pair of words that continue to amuse me), and collectively created a piece of internet history so much greater than the sum of its parts.  It's insane and beautiful and absolutely one of the strangest two weeks of my entire life. :D

[dukeofriven]

When Putin invaded Ukraine I did not get an email in my inbox telling me the Homeland was in trouble and what I could do to help—Ukraine did not take it as a given that I, some 130 years removed from ancestral emigration from family line with over a century of settled citizenship in a different country, felt intrinsic kinship ties. Equally a few weeks ago when Parliament honoured a WWII Ukrainian war veteran, only to backpedal in a panic when they realized he'd served in the volunteer Ukrainian division of the Waffen-SS, nobody found me guilty by association when the discourse turned to a broader discussion of the realities of the Ukrainian alt-right.

But a couple days ago when Hamas breached the 6 billion dollar boondoggle of a border wall that imprisons Gaza, they didn't say they came to kill Israelis—a diverse group comprised of first-to-fourth generation immigrants from Europe, the Americas, and Africa; Mizrahim; Samaritans; Arabs; and Druze (among others). They just said they came to kill Jews. When Pro-Palestinian marches broke out in major cities, many had to be publicly reprimanded for their antisemitism: it wasn't a march against Israelis, it was a march against Jews. And when my rabbi sent out emails about supporting the 'Holy Land' it was to donate to an IDF Veterans charity because the IDF—the armed forces of the Middle Eastern nation-state of Israel of which I am not a citizen— have done 'so much for Jews worldwide.' I have never been to Israel. I have never had a desire to visit Israel, it being semi-arid, dry, and singularly uninviting place. Some 40 generations back the ancestors of my ancestors of my ancestors would have departed the region—perhaps after the loss of the Second Temple in the year 70, or the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132, or perhaps even further back, in one of the diasporas centuries before (over the last three thousand years most Jews have spent more time everywhere but Israel.) I am not an Israeli: not by birth, not by citizenship, not by any of the normal, standard criteria we culturally attach to immigrant status centuries upon centuries removed. But I want you to imagine if the United Kingdom got invaded tomorrow and you woke up to an e-mail asking you to support the Royal Marines because your ancestor was a charcoal burner outside of Londonium in the reign of Domitian.

I am not an Israeli, but the anti-Semites chanting in the streets and my rabbi treat me as functionally indivisible from one anyway. Consciously or unconsciously you probably do too. A Catholic might be asked to answer for the crimes of the Vatican, but a sixth generation Catholic from Boston isn't going to be asked to answer for the crimes of Spain—or Ireland, for that matter. But a 40-generation removed Jew cannot escape answering for Israel. You know, my great-grandfather lived through his Ukrainian relatives being slaughtered in a pogrom before the end of the first world war. His own Yiddish-speaking father never learned more than few words of English, had to go out of his way to have shabat and seders with the handful of other Jews who lived in Nowhere, Northern Ontario, but my great-grandfather became so afraid of his own Judaism that he threw himself into one of the stranger and more noxious Christian cults of the 19th century, one that would kill many of his children—and left it to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren to try and pick up the pieces puzzle-out why they had a last name that made Eastern Europeans frown when they heard it. He left us a diaspora within a diaspora within a diaspora, groping blind to find our way back to some kind of identity. It feels hard enough at times to accept the label of 'Jew' when you don't have a Hebrew name, when you mumble your way through a mahzor squinting at the phonetic prayers (acutely aware that you don't know the right times to sit or stand, much less bow), when your sense of lineage—your sense of tribe, of a past—ends in the burnt rubble of a synagogue on the banks of the Smotrych. It feel impossible, some days, to be a Jew simply within the framework of 'being a Jew,' whether you are practicing Judaism as a religion or go about your life with the genetic markers of ethnicity. It feels forever like there are so many ways to get it wrong, that it is all in some sense a performance that—if you fuck up even a little bit—you're diminishing Jews as effectively as any pogrom. The degree to which self-hating Jew as a term is weaponized is astounding, the degree to which 'being correctly Jewish' is a conscious act of will at times exhausting. I struggle to find my sense of place as a Jew, as a descendant of Jews, who were often hunted, slaughtered, oppressed, and extinguished. And to all this is added Israel, is added ethno-nationalism, is added the genocidal constitution of Hamas and the bombs and jet planes of the IDF. Three days ago Hamas committed mass-murder: a thousand dead, others kidnapped, children gunned down in the streets. In three days since the IDF has displaced over 230000 Gazans by bombing their homes, children blown-up in the streets. The street marchers shout 'death to Jews.' My rabbi wants me the beef-up the bombers pensions. All over a plot of land I have never visited and have no wish to see. This doesn't come to any kind of cathartic or intriguing rhetorical finale. I have no doubt it reads as nigh-incoherent. I've been writing it for hours, picking away at it, poking and prodding with an anguish I can't articulate. I sit here and write it on the knife-edge of privilege: I am not an Israeli under threat of a Hamas bullet, nor am I Gazan under threat of an IDF bomb. Yet the privilege is still a knife-edge, still a liminal state—because when we set-up for the Hanukah celebrations this winter, the police presence around us will be there for very different reasons than they were at the Santa Claus parade the week before. To be Jewish is already to live with conditional assimilation: I am not Israeli, I have no desire to be Israeli, O hold Israel and its policies against the Palestinians these past decades to be an incalculable injustice. Yet none of that matters to the white supremacist tomorrow who feels that now is the best time to kill some local Jews to preserve the purity of his ethno-state—because he's drawing on the biggest up-swell of antisemitic sentiment in a generation.

I am not an Israeli, I have no wish to be, and yet every Jew outside Israel the world over will still feel less safe tomorrow and in the days to come—because to the world at large, that doesn't matter.

[fountainpenguin]

i would just like to say. you are a godsend for someone like me who hyperfixates on fop but really wants more worldbuilding. thank u so much for existing and writing this wonderful world! i love how much care and research you put into every little thing. you've inspired me a lot and helped me work on my own fop au, and put it in a place where i'm actually happy with it. i've always been interested in your interpretation of wanda's childhood + the fairy mafia, if you feel like elaborating.

This is so incredibly nice, thank you so much <3 That means the world to me. It feels good to be back digging my hands in the FOP soil after my long hiatus. Good luck to you as well! I wish you the best in worldbuilding for your AU.

There's a lot of backstory I like in the Fairywinkle family content, and I've dropped some hints about it in Origin of the Pixies. H.P.'s family (the Whimsifinados) are long-time rivals with the Fairywinkles (both violent business families pursuing money). After one of H.P.'s ancestors, Telford, was killed by the Fairywinkles, Telford's wife fled with their son and started a new life elsewhere in the cloudlands.

The Fairywinkles built their garbage business on top of the old Whimsifinado family home just to spite them. H.P. is LIVID about that to this day and would love to get "his family's property" back, but he's reluctant to fight Dusty [Big Daddy] Fairywinkle for it and kick off another round of warfare. H.P. lurks on the sidelines, occasionally trying to snip bits and pieces away from Big Daddy or just annoy him however he can. I say this because H.P. REALLY likes messing with the Fairywinkles (and Cosmo by extension) and he'd love to get his hooks in Poof.

Wanda and Wendy [Blonda] grew up in a wealthy home with their mom and dad (Not their biological mom, though they weren't aware of it). They grew up surrounded by crime but not understanding it until they were older.

Twins are frowned upon in Fairy culture, and identical twins in particular (Fairy World doesn't exactly look fondly on lookalikes; see also, the Anti-Fairies). As the firstborn twin, Wanda is due to inherit more from the family [You'll get to see more inheritance worldbuilding in the next Knots chapter] and she was roped into being a thief from a young age.

[More under the cut]

Wendy was relatively sheltered, not spoken about so much in public since she was the undesirable second-born twin- the face-stealer, the copycat. For big social gatherings, her family would treat her with make-up and magic to "give her her own face" so she didn't look like Wanda, actually.

As she got older, Wendy was actually pressured to dress and behave as a boy, which she did for most of her childhood and young teens- we saw her a few times in Origin of the Pixies where H.P. noticed that Big Daddy seemed to have "a perfect daughter and a son who didn't seem to know what he was doing." Big Daddy has a lot of fondness for Wanda. He's her "good girl" and he has a lot of sweet pet names for her. He considers her classy, pristine, skilled, and successful while his other daughter is just running around as a "failed actress."

Throughout their youth - as per their family's request - Wanda and Wendy would use their status as identical twins to "always have an alibi." They would dress as each other (by which I mean Wendy would dress as Wanda) and they regularly swapped places so one of them could steal things from fancy parties or business meetings without being suspected. After all, Wanda was right here at dinner the whole time! Anyone who saw Wanda elsewhere must be imagining things.

Wendy did have a good relationship with their mom, by the way [Serena- we saw her in the 130 Prompt "Looking Back" where she's one of the school teachers]. Serena spent a lot of time with Wendy, helping her put on make-up disguises and such, or just spending time with her as mom and daughter.

Serena understood how much Wendy was struggling with her role, but Serena is also a Good Mob Wife who wasn't going to push back against her husband's instructions. She gave Wendy a lot of little treats growing up, like souvenirs and ice cream getaways with Mom. Unfortunately this caused a lot of tension with Wanda, leading us to that scene in "Blondas Have More Fun" where Wanda yells "Mom always liked you best."

Things were always tense for the twins, honestly. Wanda was partly blind to her firstborn twin privilege. She saw her life as having more responsibilities. Daddy's needs and expectations required her to spend a lot of time in boring meetings. She saw herself as needing to do hard work "for the family" while her sister got to play around.

A rift formed between the sisters as Wanda felt frustrated that Mom favored Wendy (giving her treats when Wanda was the hardworking sibling who always got the best grades and did all the extracurriculars) while Wendy felt like she was overlooked or mistreated by her family. Wendy couldn't even "be a girl" without criticism or requests to disguise herself. She had Mom, and sometimes that felt like the one and only thing she had, and she was defensive of her time with Mom and didn't want Wanda to take that away from her.

Wanda can play the piano and she likes writing novels, those are some things I want to highlight from her childhood. I envision Wanda as a little girl with ribbons in her hair who always wore a pretty sundress and was super polite at family parties. She fluttered around hosting tea parties for her toys, playing piano, crocheting with her mom, and doing Good Little Girl Things. She also totally played in the mud... This is Garbage Family, they did lots of Dirty Work too.

Wanda's upbringing is basically "gifted child from the upper class who is nice to others." She was that slightly popular elementary school girl who actually deserved to be popular because she was kind and fun to be around. She'd bring people cupcakes and she'd also build a treehouse with them.

Cosmo saw her from a distance sometimes, playing with her friends, but he's the grubby poor kid who would have been chased off if he got near (especially with his family in debt to the Fairywinkles). Growing up, Cosmo's experience with Wanda was that if you asked him if he knew her, he'd be like "Oh yeah, I know her." Same vibe as a kid who goes to your school but you never have any classes with them.

Wendy struggled a lot, never wanting to put in the effort to master a skill because "she'll never be as good at it as Wanda anyway." She didn't crave her parents' praise, but she did want to feel loved. She just necessarily want them to be "proud" of her but rather she envied kids from other families who seemed to have love freely given to them, and she wanted to have love given to her too. She's mediocre at a lot of things and never really found something to put her passion behind as a kid. She just kind of got pushed into doing things.

It wasn't until they were in high school that Wendy finally came out and said "I'm an identical twin and I'm proud to be me." The stealing schtick wouldn't work so well after that, and Wanda and Wendy were already starting to come to terms with the fact that they had been steered into that life and actually, maybe they DON'T want to pursue a life of crime, no thanks... Their upbringing is still threaded through them, but they don't play on the stage their Daddy does.

Anti-Cosmo runs into Wendy shortly after her coming out. In Frayed Knots, we see that Wendy has already taken on the name Blonda and is trying to become more of a bubbly "I'm going to take up space because I deserve to exist" person. She's still kind of shy, but she's in her "I deserve happiness" arc and that's what leads her to get so tangled up in Anti-Cosmo's charming, seemingly adventurous lifestyle.

Blonda's the type who looks at pirates and romanticizes them for their adventures, overlooking the crime aspect, ha ha. She does the same thing with Anti-Cosmo. Anti-Fairy migration season? You mean Fun Month-Long Road Trip With The Squad??

It was important to me that in Frayed Knots, we get to see Wanda and Blonda hanging out together. They're at boarding school and they're sisters. They care about each other, but their relationship is definitely on the rocks. Wanda still feels like she's the "smart one" who studies hard, does a lot of difficult favors for Daddy (like deliveries and paperwork), and goes unappreciated. Blonda still feels like Wanda has everything and that Wanda doesn't understand what she's been through, and/or that Wanda wants to take away her happiness. Life's rough.

[I talked more about Blonda in my "Blondas Have More Fun" analysis post HERE]

Blonda spent her childhood dressing up and playing roles, and so her acting career is very important to her as she's taking roles willingly instead of because she's forced into it. She craves that spotlight and luxury that she was denied as a childhood just for being the second-born twin. I have many feelings about Blonda and her relationship with the Fairywinkle family...

I do think Wanda is a nice person overall and it's not my intention to demonize her, but I do also think she's a little self-centered and blind to Blonda's struggles. She's a better mother than she is a sister, and she doesn't seem like she wants to try hard to fix the relationship between them (See also, the end of "Blondas Have More Fun" when Blonda is - tbh understandably - sad that her name was incorrectly called as the winner of a Zappy award and she didn't actually win, Wanda rubs it in her face in front of everyone).

I feel like Wanda would be friends with her sister if it was "easy..." she's just reluctant to look at herself and admit to some of her own harmful behaviors. She pushes responsibility for maintaining this sisterly bond on Blonda.

Wanda's the one who eloped. We know Wanda kept in contact with Big Daddy by writing letters, but she considers herself to have a poor relationship with Blonda (Not mentioning her to Timmy, possibly not even inviting her sister to her wedding or Poof's baby shower??) Wanda perceives Blonda as the troublemaker and expects Blonda to come to her pleading for forgiveness. Blonda doesn't want to because she feels like Wanda should apologize for the rift between them. It's a messy dynamic that I do think is interesting.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the Fairywinkle family! Poof's relationship with his mom's side of the family is a focus of some 130 Prompts that are waiting in my buffer queue, so you'll see more of that soon! (Looks like late September and late October according to my schedule, so I guess it'll be a bit).

I also have a fic called "Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Pixies" which is for Poof what "You'll Never Know" was for Foop. I'm really excited to share that when it's the right time in the timeline for it; Poof and the Fairywinkle family are such a loaded concept.

[jennyeliseprince]

Part 1: Self-Love

Conceptual Goal:

I endeavor to transport my audience to a surreal world of consumerism reminiscent of the early 2000s. During my formative years, I found solace in numerous magazines, which helped me learn how to be a woman, for better or worse, from puberty to adulthood.

Now that I am in my early thirties, I am interested in how these magazines operate to change their audience members social and consumerist behaviors. Over our recent break, I read the book "Reading Celebrity Gossip Magazines" by Andrea McDonnell.

The book was enlightening on how the magazines I grew up reading create a world where celebrities are our heroes, and the ultimate goal is to fit a specific type of beauty standard. The articles and images pressured us to maintain a certain weight, and criticism was present everywhere we looked. To be successful in the early 2000s, advertisements dictated that we must purchase certain products and be likable, leading to feelings of inadequacy due to unreasonable standards of prosperity, popularity, and beauty.

After finishing the book, I casually browsed through a CosmoGirl magazine from 1999. As I flipped through the pages, I noticed numerous exclamation marks to entice readers into buying something. It was as if they were throwing confetti everywhere to elicit a dopamine rush. The language techniques utilized by such magazines are intriguing yet can also be harmful.

I also saw that the magazine was trying to reach two target audiences, an innocent girlie girl type, and an edgy girl, so I tried to disrupt that by creating a product of my own. I took a baby blue girlie-girl body spray and put the text "tattoo you" on it, which was from a different advertisement with a punk girl marketing leather jackets.

I thoroughly enjoyed creating this piece for myself. I'm keen on exploring more books that discuss women's popular culture and the experience of growing up as a millennial. Creating art that both celebrates and critiques the consumerist and celebrity-driven world that I grew up in gives me a feeling of empowerment. As millennial women, we are now smarter and wiser, and it's crucial to revisit the content that shaped us, confront it, and reimagine it to better understand it.

Aesthetic Goal: I appreciate how magazines from the 2000s present us with a burst of highly saturated colors and glossy digital photography. It's fascinating how digital photography boomed during the 90s and 2000s and still influences our social-media-driven era, where we constantly love sharing content.

I aimed to create an aesthetically pleasing experience for my viewers by incorporating colors that would attract their attention and immerse them in a lively and energetic atmosphere, similar to magazines. Additionally, I utilize abstraction and various angles to allow the eyes to wander throughout the composition, inviting the viewer to fully immerse themselves in the world of the images.

Course Inspiration: My mostly pink color palette was inspired by this passage in The Secret Lives of Color: “Recently it was revealed that products for women, from clothes to bike helmets to incontinence pads, routinely cost more than products for men and boys that are practically identical. ” “The phenomenon has come to be known as the "pink tax.” - Pg 117

When I read that passage, I was at the salon getting my hair dyed. It felt like a strange coincidence to me, being there, spending money on my appearance, and reading about how companies take advantage of female consumers. I found it interesting that companies charge more for products that are marketed towards women, especially those that are colored pink. This made me realize that I need to be a smart and aware consumer. I have decided to incorporate more pink in my work as a reminder of this lesson.

[tangibletechnomancy]

The thing about AI art is, it is easier than conventional art, but it's also not. Like any other art form, it has an infinitely high skill ceiling. It is entirely possible to spend just as much time and effort on an AI-created piece as it would take to produce a visually identical conventional one; it just involves a different skill set. However, the skill floor - the minimum amount of skill required to create something a layperson will find visually appealing - is lower.

And I want to make something crystal clear: as much as I bitch about reckless and malicious use of AI art, I do not believe that taking advantage of that lowered skill floor to make something pretty inherently counts as malicious. It's the factor that enables a lot of that malice, but on its own, I wholeheartedly believe that it's not even just neutral, but a good thing - which makes it all the MORE offensive how it's abused by some really loud and obnoxious voices.

Art is possibly the #1 reason I could never be a capitalist - because art is a "phantom need"; while not as urgent of one, it IS a human need as real as food, water, and shelter. It's about communication, expression, being able to look at something and go "oh, I was here", and all kinds of other things that...sound simultaneously as fundamentally necessary as they are, but also kind of pretentious when written out, because they've been devalued for so long in most English-speaking cultures (that good ol' Catholic guilt + Protestant work ethic and frugality gospel). Most people's mental health suffers drastically without it, even if they don't realize they're seeking it out or suffering without it. Art is even good for physical health - patients have better outcomes in hospitals that don't skimp on art and aesthetics. Art therapy is a very real thing that can save or extend lives; in fact Van Gogh's body of work can be seen as the prototype for art therapy - what makes his work so impactful to so many people isn't just the visual itself, but understanding that this brought a person the tiny scraps of joy and relief he needed to stay alive just a little longer. Lack of enrichment shortens people's lifespans. Art is one of the most universally human ways of getting that enrichment.

Something that lowers the skill floor to make nice art, or makes it attainable with a different skill set, makes that accessible to more people. When we step back a moment and theoretically remove it from capitalist bullshit, that is a wholly good thing with zero caveats and if you somehow disagree on any grounds other than "but we can only do that in theory", then, to be brutally honest: I don't trust you.

Unfortunately, yes, we CAN only do that in theory, so yes, that fact...gets abused. We're seeing it. It's not theoretical. Recall that the two reasons I'm here are 1) watching people's objections cross the line from complaining about those abuses to just plain dangerous reactionary neophobic gatekeeping reminiscent of when digital illustration's "danger" to physical art media was a hot-button issue (and look back now - turns out, just like I predicted then, physical media didn't die out; physical and digital painting and illustration can coexist peacefully!), and 2) wanting to do my part to embarrass the people who maliciously use the lowered skill floor to materially harm conventional artists and see that harm as a feature, not a bug, because so many non-artists, especially those with commercial products that need art, see art as a pretentious frivolity that doesn't deserve recognition or payment. (Trust me, I'm well aware, I've been dealing with them since I was 9 or so--)

But what I'm saying is...it's disgusting that those types even have the POWER to potentially be more than an annoyance in the first place, all because art - a "phantom need", one of the earliest things that defines us as humans, something we've used to communicate since before written language, something we handed down from parent to child in the Stone Age, is wrapped up in this exploitative system of people literally living and dying by what a bunch of rich clowns think. There's always going to be a conversation about the value of art as a form of expression attached to an artist, and the value of art as a part of collective culture detached from the artist; the fact that we have to complicate it with the additional aspect of monetary value in a system that declares that if you don't produce enough monetary value you deserve to die - it's bad enough that such a system exists in the first place, and it just gets messier and uglier when you ensnare art in it.

Thing is, it's natural to want recognition for your art - it is, after all, about expression, and a lot of the time that's about seeking connection. It's not natural to be put in a position where you might not be able to feed yourself, let alone your family, if you don't either get that recognition or give up on art completely for some other abusive undervalued job, and it is certainly not natural to be surrounded by people who think this is fair and just and you don't DESERVE to be able to keep yourself alive no matter how hard you work because either you're pretentious and lazy, or you're a sellout, depending on which side of the survivability line you land on.

Making it easier for people to Make Art is not, and will never be bad. Making it profitable for the people who think that art is for either lazy do-nothings or greedy sellouts to take over artists' work, however...to put it in less-than-academic terms...ew.

[xulachics-theblackgirltake]

Being Latina

As a half Puerto Rican, I kind of wanted to touch on "The Myth of the Latin Woman" by Judith Ortiz Cofer. The first reason why this reading that we read for class stood out to me is that Judith Ortiz Cofer is of Puerto Rican descent. In this reading, she talks about the struggles that Hispanic women go through. She touches on how Latina women are portrayed in stereotyped ways in the US. She even talks about her own experience with discrimination as a Latina in the United States.

Cofer details numerous occasions in which she was misjudged or misunderstood because of her ethnicity throughout this piece. She tells the story of a young man who started singing "La Bamba" at her while she was on a bus, thinking that since she was of Latina descent, she would appreciate it. Cofer also claims that because of her race, men have objectified her and treated her like a sexual object.

Similar to her, I wouldn't say that I experience discrimination in the US because I am a Latina, but there were times when people would make small jokes because I was Hispanic. Sometimes people would even call me Mexican because I am Hispanic. It's kind of annoying at times when people are not educated about other people's cultures. Just because I'm hispanic does not automatically mean that I am Mexican. Puerto Rico is way different than Mexico; we have our own culture, food, and slang. The only thing that could be similar is that we speak Spanish and have Spanish roots. Another thing that bothered me was that people would make comments about my hair and be like, "You got good hair because I was half Puerto Rican." I didn't appreciate that because all hair is good hair, or if someone had dark skin and was Hispanic, no one would believe them because they were too dark.

I never really realized that was a problem until I read "The Myth of the Latin Woman." After reading it, though, it did make me more aware that people do create a lot of stereotypes based on a person being Hispanic. Cofer also describes how Latina women are seen as a “Hot tamale” and a “Sexual Firebrand.” That remark can lead to real-world issues such as sexual harassment and domestic violence. 

Throughout the article, she emphasizes her own independence and Latina identity. She explains, for example, how she and her friends would dress up in traditional Puerto Rican attire and dance salsa to reclaim and celebrate their culture. She also emphasizes the value of knowledge and self-awareness in breaking down cultural boundaries and confronting preconceptions. As for me, even though I am half Puerto Rican, I never grew up getting into my culture as much. The only time I would experience that was when I was around my grandmother. When I started high school, I decided I wanted to get closer to my Puerto Rican roots and started listening to more Spanish music, making Puerto Rican dishes, and attending the Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan and Newark. I even went to Puerto Rico, where my family was from. I wanted to celebrate my culture.

I enjoyed reading "The myth of the latin woman” as it shines light on the harmful impact of stereotypes and cultural misunderstandings. It opened my eyes and made me more aware of this issue.

-Tamia Williams

[nerdynatreads]

 ☆☆YouTube | Tumblr | Instagram | Storygraph ☆☆

book review || The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

video review || ARC Reading Vlog — The Haunting of Alejandra and Yours Truly

~Thanks to Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of The Haunting of Alejandra in exchange for an honest review. ~

Oh, wow, this doesn’t shy away from the heaviness this book is going to be covering as we open our meeting with Alejandra and see how much she’s struggling with everyday tasks. Her depression has become so debilitating that she has a hard time taking care of her children and her shitty husband who guilt trips her for struggling. She’s come to resent her relationship with him and is now beginning to have visions of a woman in white. I deeply want to give this woman a hug and encourage her to get help— which thank god, she does. The therapist she finds is also Mexican American and they connect over the stories of La Llorona and La Catrina, which gave some depth to both pieces of folklore I wasn’t aware of.

Prior to moving for her husband’s job, she’d been trying to reconnect with her birth mother and her culture that she wasn’t able to experience while growing up in the foster care system. I really love that she’s also trying to share the things she’s learned with her oldest daughter, Catrina, and am hopeful to see more of their relationship as Alejandra heals. The showcasing of generational trauma was exquisite. Each of the women in this family line’s perspectives felt similar and yet different enough to keep them distinct. We start with the first woman in the family line to interact with the demon. Her voice is just as somber and bitter but still stands apart from Alejandra’s. In all perspectives, though, La Llorona’s visits are so eerie and unsettling.

The plot itself is character focused as we watch Alejandra’s journey to learn more about her family line, and the troubles that have followed them, and work to heal from her own struggles so that she can save her children from suffering similar fates. I really adored the discussions around motherhood and identity in this story, the way these women took hold of their fates and made what they wanted up them. I felt just as empowered by their stories as Alejandra. The horror we see is in the visceral and gory descriptions of our character’s experiences and are amped up most when we see La Llorona, but I wanted more. There were a few moments that had me making disgusted faces, but nothing particularly memorable about the horror. I did, however, really like the final perspective and how it twisted the usual tale of La Llorona, showcasing her in a more sympathetic light.

My biggest complaint throughout this was the dialogue didn’t really seem authentic or flow naturally. Conversations feel long-winded or just unusual to how someone would speak. I also would have liked a bit more explanation of the demon in the end, it felt unresolved in the end and like a cop-out wrap-up.

4 / 5 stars

[nedlittle]

hey! I liked your piece about the twitter spreadsheet. I generally agree with your observations and conclusions but I'm additionally concerned about the internet dogpiling it's received recently—a problem in its own right. were you aware the list was by a 20 year old girl? and that she clarified she's not saying no one should read them/they should be censored; her intentions were more along the lines of awareness-raising.

obviously she's echoing the "ur fave is problematic" tumblr trends, which I agree are an offshoot of puritanism cloaked in pseudo-leftist terminology, and the reasons on her list are mostly dumb and badly-written. but she's also 1 young person doing this (on what she thought was an account with only a few hundred booktwt followers) when i think lovers of books and literature everywhere still have a lot of reckoning to do with the systemic issues in fiction. wish we could've collectively just not given her list oxygen, because now she's gone viral, doubling down, getting harassed, and locking her account, which seems worse than having a 20-year-old social justice performance phase and then just... maturing out of it like a lot of people.

so yes she's wrong, but twitter (+ the rest of the internet) has gotten so outraged about her list when often the same communities don't do enough about very real issues of racism in fiction, or transphobia in fiction, or other minorities expressing their discomfort. it seems to me like she's just become the internet's scapegoat for channeling all the frustration in the air about purity culture's resurgence towards one lone target.

[on a slight tangent, she was not wrong about rainbow rowell—her books contain suuuuuuper weird depictions of mixed-race people to the point that i, a mixed-race asian, have asked friends not to read her. it's absolutely an individual's choice if they still want to, but that doesn't mean it has my enthusiastic approval solely in the name of anti-censorship sentiment. i just think her books are weird, hurtful, and unhelpful.]

originally i was going to delete this since i didn't have the time or energy to engage since it seems like you just want to vent, but y'know what i will dignify this with a response.

1. yes i'm aware of the op's age. i saw the original tweet when it was posted and checked out her account. i would not have cross-posted the spreadsheet let alone written about it were she 14 or 16. that's punching down on a child. op is, by her own metric since her age no longer has 'teen' in it, an adult. at twenty, the vast majority of the population is either involved with higher education or working, both of which require you to move in adult spaces as an adult yourself whether you feel like one or not. op is 20, i am 25; we are on equal footing in this scenario.

2. nowhere in my piece do i say that she directly calls for censorship of books deemed problematic

3. upfront i am not criticizing her for going viral in an internet safety psa way. however, there are means of limiting who can and cannot interact with your tweets even if you have a public facing account.

3.5. the nature of creating something with the intent to 'educate and spread awareness' is that you post it hoping that other people will see it and go 'oh, i should circulate that through my circles so that my friends can also be educated and aware', and then it continues spreading. that's how the transfer of information works, it's unfortunate that it snowballed the way it did because i saw a bunch of big accounts on my timeline being rude about it

4. in my posts here and my piece i specifically obscured her identity to avoid further harassment and dogpiling

4.5. nowhere in my piece do i make any personal attacks on her character. i say her choice of criticisms are "weird", mention the typos (because if you're going to post a call out the least you can do is get people's names right), say the whole thing is well-intentioned but silly, and call her methodology "ridiculous" & critique the spreadsheet as a symptom of the larger trend of tiktok gen z anti-intellectualism

5. "the same communities don't do enough about very real issues of realism in fiction, or transphobia in fiction" this was like....one of my main arguments in the piece, that deplatforming virgina woolf or ayn rand won't do anything (well... deplatforming rand may, if we can get rid of libertarians) but authors like jkr and helen oyeyemi are still doing active harm without widespread reproach. i was glad to see that oyeyemi was even on the list and upset that the transphobia in one of her books was getting sidelined in favour of making fun of the typos. that's something i highlighted in both my piece and a subsequent reblog of the post i made about the spreadsheet.

6. the modus operandi of being like "hello i saw a [tweet/post/video/photo etc] about X, which is an example of issue Y, let's talk abt it' is not something i made up. this is no different than if we were feuding shakespeare scholars duking it out via academic journals

7. nowhere in my piece do i say that she is the only example of the issues i'm talking about. i say that it's part of a larger trend, and it is. the spreadsheet is a very visible example of discussion that i have seen on various social medias, among my own social circles, and regurgitated by published ya authors and grown-ass adults

additionally, this website has several pages dedicated to problematic authors, many of whom also appear on the spreadsheet. the website is correctly spelled, alphabetized, and cited, but also listed tacitus as a code-red problematic author which, like, tacitus's histories and the antisemitism rampant in those histories are integral to the way we study western history and historiography. he was also born in 56 CE. i think he's been cancelled and analysed plenty in 2000 years.

8. tacitus tangent aside, i would like to stress that neither this account nor my twitter, on which i also posted in response to the spreadsheet and which has less than 200 followers, are Big Accounts. there is a world of difference between a blue check journalist writing the same article, with her name and handle left in, and getting a substantial sum for it. the platform i publish most of my writing on pays 1¢ approximately every 12 views. my post popular article has been read about 2000 times and earned $12. thank you for your time goodbye

[whimsicalworldofme]

Saving Grace: Chapter Four

Grace finds a new balance in life between the high highs of getting to know Tony and Pepper, and the sometimes very low lows of helping Steve cope with being a man plucked out of time.

Content warnings: Brief mentions of sex, grief, mental illness, and death.

I still can’t believe this is my life, Grace thought happily as she sat at the kitchen counter at Tony and Pepper’s penthouse, sipping on a glass of red wine while Tony stood across from her, dicing up vegetables, rather badly, to put into a red sauce that Pepper had started on the stove.

Ever since the results of the paternity test, their little family had become a tight knit unit, with Grace having dinner with them once a week and Tony insisting on father-daughter “dates” every week too. They never missed either. Three months in, they were still going strong, though Grace’s need to keep Steve’s identity confidential, as her patient, did seem to cause Tony a bit of irritation. The protective dad instincts kicked in hard, but he had learned, under threat of pain from Pepper, to respect her professional silence.

Grace couldn’t help but feel proud of Steve’s progress in the last three months and wished she could brag about him. The nights that she went to Stark Tower, Steve had begun going to a local boxing gym. He’d taken up running in the mornings too. He had found solid footing fairly quickly in the twenty-first century. There was a lot for him to process still, but Grace had issued a challenge for him to ask people he met for recommendations on cultural things; music, movies, food trends, books and so on. He had taken to it like a fish to water, even going so far as to buy a little notebook to jot the recs down and carrying it in his pocket at all times. He never shied away from his therapy sessions, which they held three times a week and diligently sketched out his feelings, something he felt far more comfortable doing than journaling. For a man born in nineteen eighteen, internet literacy came quickly. There had been one minor mishap early on, very loud moans emanating from the speakers of Grace’s laptop, which he borrowed instead of buying his own, resulting in Steve’s face going beet red as he hastily slapped it shut and tossed it across the couch, as far away from him as possible. Grace had been making brownies at the time and witnessed the entire thing from the kitchen, nearly knocking over the bowl of batter as she doubled over in hysterical laughter, tears streaming down her face. She’d had to assure him that there was nothing wrong with watching porn if he wanted to in private, but to remember that it wasn’t a realistic portrayal of sex. Luckily, the awkwardness vanished when she explained the importance of virus protection software and Steve fell down a rabbit hole of research on who created computer viruses, how they worked, and for what purpose.

“So how is the headcase?” Her father’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts.

“Tony!”

Both she and Pepper exclaimed at the same time, chiding him for the insensitivity. Tony stopped chopping a summer squash and looked between the two women, silently mouthing “yikes” before going back to his butchering of the vegetables.

“You wouldn’t want to be called a headcase if you needed a therapist for say anxiety or depression or ptsd,” Grace shook her head. “Have a little empathy.”

“I have empathy,” Tony replied, frowning slightly. “I just lack tact,” he cracked a grin, making her roll her eyes. “But I’m remarkably self-aware, you know…for a narcissist.”

“That’s never going to get old for you, is it?” Grace laughed, taking another sip of her wine. Pepper came over to check on Tony’s progress.

“Never,” he beamed.

“What is this?” Pepper asked, waving a hand at the vegetables on the cutting board and in the bowl beside it. “Tony,” she plucked up two very uneven piece of summer squash. “Go stir,” she shooed him away from the cutting board, handing him a wooden spoon and taking the knife from him in the process. He went without complaint, giving her a quick peck on the cheek as he stepped away.

“How is your patient doing though, Grace?” Pepper asked, taking over the cutting, moving with the ease of a practiced cook.

“They’re good,” she nodded with a smile. “I anticipated being with them in-house for a year, but it may not be that long. They’re making great progress.”

“That’s wonderful,” Pepper smiled brightly. “Your work must be so transformational for your patients.”

“Do you work exclusively with female veterans?” Tony asked from the stove and Grace knew what he was getting at. She had kept Steve’s identity secret and used exclusively gender-neutral terms when referring to him as her patient in general conversation.

“No, not really,” Grace said, flashing Pepper a look before looking into her wine glass and taking a long swig.

“Wait wait wait,” Tony came back from the stove and pointed the wooden spoon at her, dripping tomato sauce on the counter. “You’ve been living with a man all this time?”

“I didn’t say that,” Grace blinked, silently challenging him, a pleasant smile on her lips.

“You’re living with a man who is a veteran with mental issues?” All air of humor from Tony had disappeared and genuine fear flashed in his usually flippant expression. “A man who is likely twice your size? At least? What happens if he gets violent? No, you’re not going back there.”

“Yes, I am,” Grace countered, sighing heavily. “Tony, I’m perfectly safe. My patient is not violent or prone to violence at all. I’ve not felt threatened once in the three months working with them and I doubt I will in the next few months. They’ll likely be fully independent before a year is up.”

“When your job here is done, will you be going back to California?” Tony asked, keeping his tone curious, but level, as though trying not to panic. Though Tony and Pepper had a home in California too, it was six hours from her place in Stanford. Going back meant no more weekly family dinners and spontaneous father-daughter dates.

“I’ve thought about it,” she admitted and watched Tony deflate a little. “But my family is here, so I don’t see a good enough reason for me to leave.”

Her father slapped a hand on the counter, before pumping his fist in the air, victorious. Unfortunately, he had used the hand holding the wooden spoon and sent sauce splattering everywhere, on himself, on Pepper, and on Grace, but none of them really seemed bothered. Pepper even laughed as she wiped the sauce off her face and carried on with the dicing.

“Sorry!”

Tony hurried over to the stove, putting the spoon on the spoon rest then grabbed a dish rag and quickly wiped up the mess before running around the counter and wrapping Grace up in a tight hug, kissing the top of her head. It felt bittersweet for Grace, leaning into her father, resting her head on his chest as he squeezed her tight. She’d had such a wonderful childhood with her adoptive parents, had never questioned whether or not they loved her. But a piece of her had always longed for this, for family dinners with her biological father, to spend time with him in the lab, tinkering, to know what it would be like to laugh with him, what kind of stories he would tell, what about her that he might recognize, what would make him proud. Now she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt over how blissful it felt.

“You should move in!” He suggested, not for the first time. “When you’re done with your patient, I mean.” He stepped back. “There’s plenty of spare rooms in here. Or if you want your own apartment, there are several on the floor beneath us.”

“I will consider it,” Grace nodded, grinning at his enthusiasm which never dimmed no matter how many times she deflected the offer.

“I hope you will,” Pepper said, glancing up as she scooped the now properly diced summer squash into a bowl to take over to the stove. “It would be nice to have another woman in the house.”

“She means another adult,” Tony smirked, strutting over to his girlfriend and wrapping an arm around her waist.

“I didn’t say that,” Pepper insisted and Tony gave her a pointed look, making her laugh. “I didn’t say that!”

“It’s ok, Ms. Potts, we all know who the responsible adult in the house is and I frankly would not have it any other way,” he winked, kissing her on the cheek.

“Go stir the sauce before it starts to burn on the bottom,” she gave him a peck on the lips before pushing him away.

The rest of the night, her father bounced around with a joyful lightness, all worries about her living with a man forgotten once he knew that she’d be living with them sooner rather than later. He kept prompting Pepper to talk about the various things they were working on at Stark Industries, specifically on the medical side and it didn’t take long for either woman to pick up on his not so subtle hinting.

“You know,” he said, spoon lingering over the half slice of cheesecake that remained on his plate after they’d finished their meal and indulged in dessert, “Pepper has done fantastic work revolutionizing Stark Industries, moving us away from weapons and into things like clean energy and medical innovation. But it is a family business. We would benefit from another Stark on the team.”

Grace froze, having just taken a bite of cheesecake, her cheek puffing out. She looked to Pepper, worried she might be insulted by Tony’s phrasing, but she was waiting expectantly too, both of them leaning forward slightly, eyes fixed on her.

No pressure there at all, she thought sarcastically, trying to quell the panic she felt. What if I’m not good enough to keep up with the other people at Stark Industries?

“What would I do there?” She asked after she managed to swallow, her cheesecake not going down as smoothly as before.

“Whatever you want,” Tony shrugged. “What do you think I did there all those years? Nothing important.”

“Tony,” Pepper groaned, shaking her head with a laugh.

“What? You know it’s true,” he huffed. “I’d lock myself in a lab and tinker. Call it research and development,” he shrugged. “You’re a Stark,” he reiterated. “You can do whatever you want there. If you want to tinker, tinker. If you want to work with Pepper to find new projects to fund, I’m sure she’d be happy to teach you that side of things.”

“I would be happy to,” Pepper agreed, more measured than Tony, glancing between father and daughter. “I could train you to find investment projects and head them up. You could take over the medical division someday if you really wanted to.”

“I guess I hadn’t considered that as a career path before,” Grace poked at the last bit of cheesecake on her plate. “I mean, I’ve been facilitating collaborative work like that with my current project at Stanford. It’s rewarding, seeing what they’re inventing. I like creating things that improve people’s lives. But I also really enjoy my work as a therapist. Maybe I could shadow you for a little while, Pepper? Once my current patient no longer needs my help full time?”

“I would love that,” Pepper brightened, sitting up a little straighter. “I’ll make sure you have standing clearance at the office, so you can come whenever.”

“Thanks,” she felt an excited nervousness akin to when she’d first walked into Stark Tower three months ago. Hard to believe I came in an absolute stranger with no plans to tell Tony who I was and now we’re here.

When the dishes were cleared away, Pepper slipped into her office to do some work while Tony and Grace went into his workshop as he eagerly showed her the modifications he was working on with the gauntlets on his Ironman suit. Grace knew robotics and mechanics well enough, and while her father regularly asked for her input during their lab time together, she was continuously in awe of his skills and knowledge. They putzed around for a while, just playing with things, until Grace realized how late it had gotten, nearly midnight.

“I wish you’d let Happy drive you home,” Tony complained for the fourth time as Pepper handed Grace a reusable tote full of boxed up leftovers from dinner. Grace slung it over her shoulder, along with her purse. “I don’t like you taking the subway this late.”

“Tony, I’m fine,” she insisted, as she did every time she left. “And I know you. If I let Happy drive me home, you’ll be staking the place out to see who my patient is. I can’t do that to them. Bye Pepper,” she gave her a hug.

“To them?” Tony pried. “Or him?”

“Goodnight,” she chuckled, seeing Pepper roll her eyes. Grace gave her father a hug and shut her eyes happily as he kissed her on the side of the head.

“Goodnight,” he grumbled, letting her go.

Grace felt like she was floating on air as she walked to the nearest subway station and the ride seemed to go by in a blink. When she got to the apartment, all the lights were off, so she moved quietly, slipping off her shoes at the door and tiptoeing to the fridge to put away her leftovers. It wasn’t until she began making her way to her bedroom that she heard the muffled sobs drift through Steve’s bedroom door.

Her heart felt as though it physically broke in two. Despite his progress, Grace suspected Steve was holding in a lot of what he was actually feeling, trying not to let on how desolate he felt. When they first moved into the apartment, he’d stayed in his room and alternated between sleeping and crying for at least a week. That had slowly abated as he opened up in their therapy sessions and Grace encouraged him to find ways to grieve his losses while also finding things to live for now.

It’s a miracle he isn’t an absolute mess twenty-four-seven, she sighed lightly and set down her purse and shoes just inside her bedroom door. When my parents died, I couldn’t function for a year. I never knew that level of agony and loneliness could exist. I can’t imagine compounding that by losing all my friends and then being shot into a world that’s so completely foreign to me that I’d have to learn pretty much everything from scratch.

Going to the closed door across the hall, she knocked lightly.

“Steve?” She called through the wood and heard the creak of him shifting in his bed. Then some sniffling.

“Yeah?” His voice cracked when he answered.

“Do you want me to come in?” She pressed her forehead and a palm against the door, feeling like she might start crying too. I hate that I can’t just take away the pain.

“Yeah,” he sniffed.

Pulling in a steadying breath, Grace opened the door and stepped into the room. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, and she doubted it would be the last. Light from the street and the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance poked through cracks in the curtains and cast a faint glow on the huddled form of a man, curled up on his side, his back to her, arms and legs wrapped around a pillow. He had figured out early on that he had no reason to feel shame in crying around her. She was a safe person for him to be vulnerable with, something Grace wondered if he’d had since he’d become a soldier.

In all her time studying the Super Soldier project, all the news reels she’d seen, the archived newspaper articles, everything made Steve Rogers out to be this mythical figure, godlike almost, a righteous warrior who stood for truth, justice and the American way, like a real life Superman. But every time Grace crawled onto his bed to sit beside him and gently rub his back while he cried, she understood how much harm that image had done, how the experiment that had allowed him to save the world had stolen the world from him.

How is he supposed to have any kind of life when he’s essentially been stripped of his humanity?

Grace had grown fiercely protective of Steve in their time together. Truthfully, she knew that this relationship, whatever it was they shared, was far more than that of a therapist and patient since he had no living friends or family. She’d known when she accepted the job that things would never be strictly professional if she truly wanted him to feel safe, to heal from his trauma. That meant holding him when he cried, being a genuine friend, being his defacto family.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She offered after a while, when the deep, body-wracking sobs had subsided, replaced with the kind of cries that came when your throat was hoarse and your eyes had nothing left to give.

“Not right now,” he croaked, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Do you want me to stay?”

He turned his head slightly and she could see only part of his face, his back still to her.

“Will you?”

“Yes,” Grace gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.

It was late, nearing two in the morning. Grace felt the weariness of the day catching up with her as she temporarily got up from the bed, just long enough to pull back the blankets and climb back in underneath them. She stayed close, knowing how important it was that he know she was there, and lightly scratched his back, her eyes drifting shut even as she did.

Everything in her being screamed at her for crossing a professional line, told her she should not be in bed with a patient, platonic or not. But she’d lived with Steve for months now and platonic physical touch had been crucial to their work, in helping him feel safe and grounded. Hugs, a friendly touch on the arm in passing or conversation, leaning on each other while watching movies on the couch.

This is exactly what I would tell his family or friends to do for him, she rationalized, nestling into the pillows to get more comfortable.

 “Hey Grace?” Steve asked in a whisper, his body shifting as he turned his head in her direction again.

“Mhmm?” She hummed.

“Thanks,” he murmured.

Chapter Three

Masterlist

Chapter Five

[19wilbuc]

Tumblr post #3 - Social Media

For my third Tumblr post I had to observe a social media account. I decided to follow James Jones, known on Instagram as "notoriouscree." James is a Native American influencer and posts often about his culture, dances, and events. Most of his more recent posts are reposts of his Tiktok videos. Some examples of his posts include "My culture is not your costume", raising awareness for missing native women, and videos of his regalia. Overall, his videos give insight to native traditions and showcase pieces of their culture. The most liked videos of his are usually his powwow dances and collaborations with other Native American influencers. Also, his posts sometimes spread awareness about not trying to destroy native culture or to not downplay the importance of certain native traditions.

In relation to other readings in this course, this Instagram influencer reminds me of the "couple in the cage." Showing the importance of native history and how they were treated is crucial to understanding James Jones' content. Exposing the wrongdoings of oppression against natives and showing hardships growing up as Native American is important for James and the indigenous community.

Native identity and culture has always been a struggle for the native community. Given the history of North America, it is easy to see why influencers speak up against assimilation and the odd fascination with native culture. James' account is a great showcase of the emotions that most natives feel or experiences that they have personally faced growing up. A huge part that James tries to hammer down, is other cultures trying to become a part of the native community. I had mentioned in my discussion post earlier that sometimes other races sometimes act and associate themselves with natives. The native community is always welcoming, for sure, but encroaching on ones' way of life as if it is your own is very disturbing.

Overall, after observing James Jones' Instagram account and from learning about native culture through my girlfriend and her family, I can see the deeper meaning behind James' account. He is spreading awareness and showcasing fascinating parts of their culture and trying to educate the mass population. Showing issues or worries they have, forgotten parts of history, and just showing native culture as diverse is the goal of his account.

Citations:

Contributor, Bay Street Bull. “How James Jones (Notorious Cree) Uses Technology to Share His Culture.” Bay Street Bull, 6 Jan. 2021, https://baystbull.com/how-james-jones-notorious-cree-uses-technology-to-pass-on-his-culture/.

Docto, Isabelle. “How Notorious Cree Is Elevating Indigenous Voices through TikTok.” Complex, Complex, 26 Jan. 2021, https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2021/01/notorious-cree-interview.

Jones, James. James Jones (@Notoriouscree) • Instagram Photos and Videos, https://www.instagram.com/notoriouscree/.