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#and the idea behind the trope is like. taking a racist trope and going the opposite way with it
mcyt · 10 months
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i think there needs to be more nuance around discussions about anti indigenous issues in fandoms (and in general) because the thing is that like. it feels really centric around a homogenous idea of natives vs the fact that there are literally hundreds of tribes and not everything is the same in those tribes. like we go on and on about how we can't say certain names of creatures because it's a bad thing in native american culture.
and the first half is true, but these creatures don't exist in all tribes! they don't exist in mine! there's some commonalities across natives but the things that might be sacred or valued in one tribe aren't in others.
like the whole ear feather thing is like. i can agree that no you shouldn't be depicting characters with eagle feathers behind their ears or with war headdresses. those are definitely sacred this is a fairly widespread thing amongst native american tribes even though my tribe didn't start wearing headdresses until after we were already forced into reservations. but like, i can't even really apply this idea to feathers from other birds. we don't even have a word for a bunch of birds like parrots in my tribes language. they aren't particularly culturally significant to us at all.
and i cannot find any info on feathers besides those belonging to golden and bald eagles being any more special than being considered a gift and it being rude if you don't display it on yourself or in your house in some way. and that article didn't even have a source or anything.
like literally as far as i can tell its a really bad thing to wear a headdress if you aren't native. and it's really not good to wear eagle feathers behind your ears. but nowhere outside of a google doc by warriors fans (and i take conversations about natives in wc fandom with a grain of salt because i see more about the feathers than i do about like. the entire really racist white saviour trope arc) and some people on tumblr or twitter do i find anything that applies this to Every feather ever
i just think we need to be like. more specific than just This is bad to All natives. because i can't really fully believe people care about indigenous issues if we can't even get past the habit of talking about this as if natives are one singular group and we're using warrior posts as sources. do you get me
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vivithefolle · 1 year
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Hello! I just wanted to pop by and say I’m sorry for spamming your blog with likes and reblogs the last couple days. I just was desperately looking for Ron content I hadn’t seen before and kinda fell in love with your blog (I also found you on Quora and love your answers there also)! I’d keep going back even further than I made it (sorry if that’s creepy) if I didn’t keep losing my spot and having to scroll all the way back to where I was (stupid phone). I want to be as bold as you are when it comes to defending Ron. He’s my hyperfixation and the way you passionately defend him is amazing. You take no shit and don’t let anyone make you feel bad for loving Ron. I love your fight back attitude because you’re right - Ron fans have spent decades fighting for our lives in this godforsaken fandom. Anyways, thank you for inspiring me to be loud and proud about defending Ron. It’s becoming a hobby of mine.
Don't be sorry! I'm glad you enjoyed my blog! Do keep in mind though that I've been... needlessly aggressive in the past, over sometimes misunderstandings. I can be much too angry, so... be careful. I tend to forget that behind the messages, there's another human being... ... a human being that's also a Ron-bashing asshole, yes, but a human being nonetheless.
Anyway yeah!! It's exhausting how much casual Ron-hate is still tossed around, and how even Romione shippers will call shitty toxic tropes "cute :)". Yeah sure, maybe Hermione saying "oh Ron you're MY idiot :)" was cute once. But when you've seen over a thousand fics where Hermione calls Ron "MY idiot :)" while Ron gets cruxified the SECOND he's upset at her, yeah that's not being a Ron fan, that's just being a Mary Suemione simp.
I should really finish my fanfictions, show an example of what kind of content I wish Romione could be. Enough of the bootlicking for Hermione, enough excuses for her, enough of thinking that her academic results are somehow proof of her being on another level of being. I hate that kind of thinking. People really have no idea what school does to kids, do they?
Other folks have talked about it before, and it's true, that a lot of Ron-hate is steeped in social issues. Classism, elitism, sexism, ableism, puritanical Calvinist bullshit from the USA's finest """Christians""". The notion of Ron being "useless" and how that means he shouldn't be friends with Harry and Hermione... like, my guy, you know that's the way Voldemort thinks right?
It's kind of astonishing how badly this fandom misses the point of the whole series (it's not like Rowling was being subtle about it!!), but then these are the idiots that worship Draco Malfoy and claim he was redeemed when his last action pre-Epilogue was to claim he was on the Death Eater's side. If that's the role model these folks want then no wonder they can't appreciate Ron: Ron actually recognized when he fucked up and actually apologized and tried to do better, while Draco was saying racial slurs and showed no remorse aside from that time he cried about how murdering people is hard. Of course the fandom of folks who believe that Harry should forgive Malfoy when Malfoy never apologized would assume that Ron is a bad guy: can you believe that Ron shows remorse? Remorse is for weak people. Only cool people don't have remorse, because that means they have nothing to regret. That's how it works right?
Anyway. The HP fandom sucks, it's a cesspool of bigoted jerks that like to pretend they're really progressive but are just a mirror of their much-loathed author whom they still worship through Hermione dearest. Rowling's books teach us that it's okay to impose your ideas onto the "lesser" peoples because it's for their own good, that a few performative words about how you think everyone is equal is enough to have you branded "tolerant" even your other behaviour is the polar opposite (see how Hermione will chide Ron for being "racist" towards giants when he points out that they're violent... only to be a quivering terrified mess in front of Grawp, yeah, I can smell the tolerance from here), and OF COURSE, that girly girls are dumb sluts here to steal yo man. Oh and also that the man is always to blame, and if he's feeling hurt by something, it's invalid unless he's an orphan.
This fandom sucks, but that's the only place where there's a tiny chance to find actually decent Ron content. Woe.
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aureutr · 2 years
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I'm not going to bother posting in the tag because the people who need to hear it either already have me blocked or aren't willing to listen. People don't like introspection and considering that they might be mistaken. I'm taking a Tumblr break after this, though I doubt I'll get a response that isn't moving goalposts or more of the same arguments verbatim.
Here we go.
"Dark" Dinluke tropes aren't inherently racist and a lot of the nonsense that's being posted is performative allyship at best and blatant bullying at worst. Or both.
Like, I get it to a degree. The world sucks right now and so many of us feel powerless. As though nothing we can do matters. So it's tempting to go after a target you can actually reach. Like fanfic authors. This is not new or unique to Dinluke. This happens constantly in fandom. Hell, ask the Reylos.
Someone will make a bunch of posts about something they don't like. Except it's not enough to dislike it, they have to have Morally Pure reasons why it's Bad and Evil. It's racist or it's abusive or whatever else.
In Dinluke's case what I can tell is it boils down to A) Pedro Pascal is a POC and B) noncon and general dark fics are always making the POC the bad guy.
Pedro is a white Latino. I've spoken to a few Latine/Latinx people about this because when the first accusations came down my reaction was "oh no, am I unknowingly promoting something racist?" because that's what you should do when confronted with something new. Dig into it and ask people who are actually affected by the issue, if they are willing to lend their time to help you grow.
The overwhelming answer was "What? No. What are they talking about?" While a handful of people cannot speak for an entire demographic, I think they speak louder than the "allies" going on about "racist" tropes.
Plus it's pretty gross to twist someone's actual racial and ethnic identity for your own ends.
As for the second point...the "aggressor" in dark content is.......typically the fandom designated top.
That's it. It happens over and over across dozens of fandoms. You don't have to enjoy any of that content (which is actually tagged really well because the authors want their audience to be able to find it) but it doesn't mean there's some racist conspiracy behind it.
For me, personally, I like BDSM. And in fiction, it can be fascinating or freeing to push past boundaries that are critically important in real life.
Because it's not real. It's fictional. I understand that people who don't share my interests are not always willing or capable of separating the concept of real world rape from fictional noncon, but it sure is tiring to see all the time.
I also love Star Wars, not just Dinluke. And alternate character interpretations. There's so much room to go "ok let's assume X, then what happens??" That's what I love about fanfiction. Hell, my Dinluke week fic is a further exploration on "if Din was Force sensitive when Death Watch saved him and Maul 'adopted' him, then what?"
I love the "then what?" and am not interested in being stuffed into a box because people can't handle the idea of things outside their comfort zone existing. There is no grand conspiracy to trick you into reading stuff.
You're allowed to dislike something. You don't have to make up reasons why it's racist. You aren't solving a real problem. You're just bullying real, breathing people.
I am so disappointed in the number of people I had respect for who only needed the smallest excuse and an "acceptable target" to turn nasty.
Anyway, I'm sure this will be read with reasonable minds and definitely not picked apart looking for a tiny phrase that can be twisted into more bullying.
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roseworth · 10 months
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Do you think DC can ever fix its dragon lady issue? if so, what will it take?
before i say anything i want to say that i am white so im definitely not the authority on this subject in any way but ill still answer this to the best of my ability <3
i dont think i would go as far as to say it can NEVER fix its dragon lady issue, its entirely possible to leave racist tropes behind so it seems wrong to say that they can never change
however. the problem is that said tropes are so baked into the characters that it would definitely be hard to fix the issue. there are characters like jade that are almost the exact definition of the dragon lady stereotype, and characters like talia who used to not be a dragon lady but then her most well known arcs made her into one. there have been plenty of books that give the characters depth, and while giving a character good arcs doesnt erase racism, it still gives them something to be other than an object ig? but even then the characters are constantly changed on a dime when one writer decides not to look into their actual past and just decides to do whatever so any development they get is constantly backtracked. talia's mischaracterization is so intrinsically tied to damians backstory that its hard to do anything about it without going back in time and beating morrison to death before they can pick up a pen
so idk. i dont think its possible to fix racism with character consistency but it certainly wouldnt hurt to just let asian women have development that isnt constantly changed for the writers needs. even the characters that were just created to be a stereotype were later changed and had more nuance in more stories but it doesnt automatically fix everything. honestly i have no idea what could be done to make it better other than writers/editorial/etc just need to be aware of the stereotypes/biases in the stories they write and. not do that.
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apollo41writes · 2 years
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Goodnight prompt 14/∞
Fandom: Star Wars Rebels Ship: Alexsandr Kallus/Garazeb Orrelios AUs/Tropes: Circus AU, Hate sex Prompt: For years the Cirque du Fanthôme struggled to get by, but Hera was a good manager and they still somehow managed to keep the business afloat. The pandemic hit them hard and they are unable to pay back the loan for the new trucks they had to buy when the old ones broke down. When the bank sends a repo man to take away their stuff, Garazeb doesn't expect him to be as attractive as he's cruel.
Extra details: I just like the idea of the Spectres being part of a circus. Just makes sense with them being always on the move. It's not one of those circus that have animals, even if I think Ezra would be a great tamer, one of those that truly love taking care of the animals as well and that don't use punishment to train them. (But I also know that it's somewhat of a controversial issue, so let's just keep the animals out of this one.)
Anyway, Kallus as the cruel repo man makes just as much sense. I imagine him as this man in a fancy suit, that believes every stereotype about people that work in a circus and isn't scared to express his point of view.
Which is why Zeb does his best to prove him wrong, and he's definitely the most vocal about how taking away their trucks is basically forcing them to close down because they wouldn't be able to keep the business going.
Don't know exactly how they end up having hate sex, but I know that Kallus would absolutely feel ashamed of it right after. I imagine him saying mean things to Zeb just to prove that he's better than him because of his stable job and his "normal" life, whatever that means.
And Zeb being hurt by it, but hiding it behind something just as mean that proves he doesn't really care if Kallus sees him as lesser than "normal" people. He's a weirdo? Fine with him! At least he's interesting and not just a robot that follows whatever order he gets from a cold corporation.
This kind of leaves space for Kallus to have his redemption arc and just doing his best to help the Spectres keeping the bank at bay. Like, maybe "forgetting" that the circus is gonna move to the next city at the start of the next week so when the bank actually sends for someone to pick up the truck there's nobody left behind. Which would mean he gets fired, but hey, it's worth it to see the satisfied expression on Zeb's face, right?
Basically, from a trope as shallow as hate sex, my brain built up this whole concept of exploring the social construct of "normalcy" and the perception of "different" still based on very old and very racist stereotypes. And so much more as well, because apparently my brain is unable to keep thing simple and light.
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edwinas · 2 years
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You're right about the part where Anthony still got the end focus of the dinner instead of Mary or her family, that part shifted the scene away from them so outside of the writing of it, it could come off as him 'saving' their family when really he just caused further problems for them.
I honestly wish we got even just one scene with Kate and Mary after that dinner though because I do feel like Kate really didn't know the full truth about why Mary and her parents were estranged until now. So much of the nuance behind her decision and Mary and Edwina's reactions gets lost within the writing because now, people keep saying that both were "ungrateful" to Kate when really they were shocked and hurt. Mary's line about Kate "keeping so much from her" was definitely tied back to her making that deal with the Sheffields, and it sucks that only Kate and Edwina's conversation afterward was put in because it had to do with the engagement but not Mary and Kate, who have their own dynamic. Mary in general suffers from a lack of proper development and focus because I guess the writers couldn't work around the fact that Kate had to be a parental figure to Edwina? Which makes no sense because Anthony is sort of one to his own siblings, but you still see Violet take care of the younger siblings at least. They could've easily included her more in Edwina's scenes and have her just BE more with Kate.
Yep, the way that dinner was framed with Anthony playing the white knight and playing such a BIG part was a racist trope. And it encroached on some much needed Mary characterisation. What better time for us to get to know her than through her relationship (or lack of) with her parents??? And her life was so interesting and unusual? How many young women from the ton have moved countries??
So I totally agree with Mary not being developed! As you said, Mary being involved in her daughters' lives now doesn't change the fact that Kate raised Edwina. We can still get Edwina looking to Kate and Kate continuing to be involved in Edwina's matchmaking. I still have no idea what the show was going for with Mary. She either had great scenes or was a background character with no lines. No in-between.
YES WE NEEDED MARY AND KATE TALKING AFTER THE DINNER. The Sheffield dinner was important for Mary too: she reconnected with her parents after 20+ years. We should have seen more about Mary and what led her to leave the ton. I don't think it was simply her "running away." The situation must have been so untenable that Mary thought the only choice she had was to leave for India with her young children. A Mary-Kate chat would have been a chance to shed light on Mary's past, that Kate didn't know/remember. For Kate and the audience to understand Mary better.
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maxellminidisc · 2 years
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I find it very interesting how y'all keep reducing peoples problem with the tiktokfication of publishing to people complaining about 1) bad quality novels that have always existed, 2) people being too online, or 3) literally just exaggeration.
First of all, most of the people I see acknowledging this issue have been, overwhelming, authors of color who are seeing how this platform is further exacerbating the constant elevation of the mediocrity of white creators who are not JUST bad writers but writers who are literally having their hands held to even create something in the first place. And not only that, but having to see these very people talk about it like its something to be proud of; to flaunt this kind of mediocrity. That's incredibly frustrating and infuriating as a creator of color to see this be blatantly thrown in your face when publishing will give any excuse except a blatantly racist one to reject you now a days. So, I think that's a pretty fucking legitimate concern to be expressing ones opinion about.
Secondly, some people talking about this arent even ON tik tok (myself included) but can literally see the effect this is having on the books they're being advertised or recommended, especially even the FURTHER deterioration of the writing and especially ideas, that is going into these things. Even people like me, who've been avid readers of the genres the tiktokification is centralized around, specifically romance heavy genres, can see there is ABSOLUTELY a difference in how these things are being written. Yes, romance shlock is a tried and true market, but I could at least read schlock that was legitimately entertaining and respected me as a reader who's a grown fucking person. Shlock that at least had out of the box ideas no matter how batshit despite failure in execution but exhibited a sense of SOME kind of writing experience or consideration for writing as a craft behind it, instead of like 4 fan fiction tropes taped and held together by writing equivalent to 3 pieces of chewed up gum and absolutely bizare sense of infantilism towards its readers.
Plus you guys can go on and on about being too online but like creators no matter how small, LITERALLY have to be online and in these spaces because an unfortunate reality of being a creator in this hellscape is that most of your revenue and building of a community of people who like your work IS ONLINE. Of course, not all of us agree with the means one has to take to get any kind of traction the likes of booktokers in writing or other art circles online, but its inevitable thing to have to be aware of. Like it's sad to fucking say, but a lot of making an art your career has always been networking, and being online is a reality and branch of that.
Not to mention it's not an exaggeration to bemoan the constant feeling so many of us are having in this day and age with the state of art across mediums and the effects capitalism is having on them. Perhaps it's silly to you to focus on "low brow" genres but like isnt it telling that even "low brow" genres are also feeling the effect? Like low brow art doesnt exempt it from having a kind of soul put into it as well from its creators. What does it say that even the literary equivalent of eating a bag of potato chips feels soulless or dispassionate? Potato chips feel comforting and indulgent, this new shit feels like eating cardboard....
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ladyknightskye · 2 years
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Seventeen Years Late and Two Dollars Short - 1x10-1x15
Time to catch up on my opinions about a show that was filmed eighteen years ago.
1X10 "Asylum"
Damn Sam’s angry.
RECAP
Sam and Dean end up investigating an insane asylum that is haunted by the ghosts of the inmates and the psycho psychiatrist who experimented on them. The psychiatrist ghost ramps up people’s anger to the point that they’re homicidal. 
THOUGHTS
Figures that this would be the closest the Winchesters get to therapy. 
Also, not surprised that Sam is the one whose anger is used against him. He’s been pretty pissy the entire time honestly. 
Oof, Dean. Good going on the bait and switch, but knowing that Sam is angry with him enough to kill even if under the influence of a ghost . . . Damn. My poor sweet blorbo. 
1x11 "Scarecrow"
That text is comically huge.
RECAP
After a call from their dad, Sam decides to go off on his own. Dean ends up investigating a Norse fertility god alone, and botching it pretty spectacularly. 
THOUGHTS
Ah, now we’re dragging Norse myths into it. I guess I should say that at least we’re equal opportunity appropriative around here.  HUMAN SACRIFICES DON’T WORK THAT WAY.
I liked that the brothers ended up getting a breather from one another, especially after the whole Asylum thing where Sam is more or less forced to face his issues with Dean. Because as much as I love him, Dean does end up being pretty controlling and dismissive of Sam, and Sam is well within his right to point out the bullshit. 
And Sam continues to grow on me. I admit, my issues with Sam were hella personal at first, but I really am starting to warm up to him in this episode. 
1x12 "Faith"
Don’t fear the reaper, just the Christian fundamentalist wife. 
RECAP
After his heart is damaged on a hunt, Dean is given only a few weeks to live. Sam takes him to a faith healer, who actually manages to heal Dean completely. Suspicious, Dean figures out that the faith healer is not doing this all by himself. Turns out that the preacher’s wife is using a Reaper to steal the lives of people she deems immoral and using that to heal the faithful. 
THOUGHTS
That is not how electricity works?
So, this interpretation of Reapers is a playing around with folklore thing that I can actually get behind. It’s not appropriative because the underlying idea is general enough and as far as I know there aren’t any faiths that were being fucked around with.  And admittedly, I do like the plot for the monster of the week. I mean, let’s be real the idea of an extreme Christian fundamentalist killing the “immoral” to heal the “faithful” . . . . Yeah that tracks. 
1x13 "Route 666"
Oof.
RECAP
Oof.
THOUGHTS
Racist truck. Like, really. 
Look, the story behind it is actually not terrible, but everything else about it comes off as disingenuous and the Winchesters saving the day ends up feeling like the White Savior trope. I did like the character of Cassie, and would not have been angry to see her return. 
1x14 "Nightmare"
Yikes.
RECAP
Sam has a premonition that a man is about to commit suicide. Turns out, the culprit is his abused son who ends up having psychic powers like Sam. 
THOUGHTS
SAM. SWEET BABY DON’T BLAME YOURSELF. 
DEAN. Mr. Big Brother instinct. Lord love you.
Although, I’m not sure how I feel about Max the new Special Child committing suicide in the end. I am not a huge fan of Death Equals Redemption or “Too Broken to Live” tropes. Granted, I know that the writers didn’t want to spend any time developing Max beyond this episode, but it would have been nice and somewhat hopeful to see him basically getting the help he needs at the end. 
1x15 "The Benders"
Okay, SCAB, but sexy Winchester boys as cops!
RECAP
The boys head to Minnesota to investigate a strange disappearance, until Sam ends up disappearing too. Turns out, the monster this time is a human family of crazy psychos who like to hunt the most dangerous game. 
THOUGHTS
Look there’s Dean being good with kids.
So, I’m always down for a good “humans are the real monsters” storyline, but the “inbred hicks” cliches made me sigh. Hard. 
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mechawolfie · 3 years
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why is it that in every date sim/visual novel i’ve come across that even dares to let you romance a black person it’s just. the same black guy. like he’s always smart, rich, and “articulate”. and they all wear sweater vests. like i feel like i should be offended
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androgynousblackbox · 2 years
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What do you think about the controversy around Pepa being lighter than her concept art?
Look, usually I want to listen to accusing side when it comes to whitewashing because that is a real problem that comes from an inherently racist idea that dark skinned people are inferior. Most of the time I can see the point people are trying to make and how it's harmful, reason why I will be against it. We should, in fact, try to avoid representations that are demonstrably harmful for minority groups and give a chance for those groups to feel seen too. But on this case in particular? Yeah, no, I don't see the reasoning. Like, if you tell me that the entire Madrigal family was lighter and Pepa was meant to be the only visibly darker character but then Disney decided "nah, let's make her lighter too so she goes along with the rest", then I would be 100% behind the people saying that is fucked up, because it would be. But what harm is actually doing that Pepa is the ONLY lighter skin member of the entire family? Arguably the ONLY lighter skin character on the entire movie that has any relevance at all? Even Agustín has a little bit more of color than her. She is not the protagonist of the story, she is a secondary character at the best of times. She is not given an unfair amount of screen time compared with the rest of the family. People just point at the concept art and go "see, see?? Disney whitewashed Pepa!" without bothering to take into account that the movie is already FULL with POC everywhere, from very dark like Félix and Antonio to lighter ones like Bruno and Luisa. And that without even counting the townsfolk, who also come in a full range of colors everywhere. Like yeah, on the most literal sense of the world possible, they did whitewashed her, but what is the impact of this? Why do we need to dennounce it? What harm do we try to prevent by doing this? Especially when you consider that both Antonio and Bruno are WAY lighter on their concept art than how they end up being in the movie, so on Antonio's case there was blackwashing even. Nobody seems able to explain WHY is bad on any way, they just throw the word whitewashing and that is it, doing this is bad, so it must be bad on every circunstance possible. It sounds to me like the people who insist that EVERY story where a queer person dies is instantly a Bury Your Gays, no matter if the story is full of other queer people who manage to live happily ever after, which goes directly against the reason why the trope is bad, no matter if literally hundreads of other characters died already left and right all over the story and no matter if literally no one survived. No, a queer person died and that is bad and no, we are not going to even bother explain how because we don't fucking know either. The people doing this probably have the best intentions at heart, but it just feels so limiting and just plain unnecesary. I personally? I like that they included someone like her. Not only because she literally reminds me to my own tía who is just as dramatic as her, not only because she is the first latina character on mainstream media (outside of Latam shows) whose skin tone is exactly as mine, but because it feels true to Latine families to have that much range of colors. The Madrigals feel close to us because they are so different among each other. People who complain about not all of them having a samey tone or anyone looking different than the rest has never put a foot on any country of Latam, less than anything Colombia, and it shows. I also think that Pepa serves as a good reminder that 1. genetics are weird and when you have a demographic as diverse as latines, they are bound to be weirder than that. Most latines are mixed as fuck. It's extremely rare to find a latine that is 100% anything. And 2. not all POC need to look the same. She is not my favourite character, that titles goes to Luisa, Dolores and Camilo, but I appreciate her for what she is and I appreciate what the team behind the movie were going for by designing the characters as they did. Having said that, I do hope they use that concept art for something else because that lady was pretty
too.
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So, Elia being a completely passive, politically inactive wallflower is better than her trying to fulfill the prophecy ??? Sorry but what part she had to play in the whole Lyanna affair, or other aspect of Rhaegar's plans, is up for speculation.
Ooooooohhhhmyyyyygoddddd leave me aloneeee. Stop coming to me with your stupid misogynistic takes about Elia y’all don’t care about her and it’s plain for everyone to see so stop pretending and leave Elia fans alone.
“Elia being a completely passive politically inactive wallflower?”
Why is she that to you anon? Because she was TW: r*ped? Because she was held hostage by her husband and father in law? Because she had poor health? Because her husband publicly humiliated her for a little girl? And used them both for children?
You know damn well no Elia fan or Martell fan has ever called her any of things you have, you know who I have heard call her those things Rhaelyas because if she isn’t being desired by your favorite naked mole rat like Lyanna she doesn’t matter.
Elia fans love to imagine politically astute Elia sending her Dornish retinue away because she sensed things were going awry with Rhaegar and Aerys’s combined madness because she wanted to protect her people. We imagine an active Elia trying to figure out how she’s going to protect her children, strategizing and hoping and finally knowing that at the very least she can get Aegon out because Rhaenys is going to be safe. We imagine her relationship with her uncle, with Doran with Oberyn, with Ashara, Rhaella etc. We imagine her ability to maneuver and have her own court. Etc.
Sorry but being a footstool for Rhaegar and Lyanna isn’t what I want to imagine for her. Sorry but masterminding her own demise and being guilty for her own brutal death and the death of her children and her people isn’t what I want to imagine for her so you can feel better about your pedophilic ship. I don’t imagine her as a stupid idiot who can’t understand the political and dangerous position she was in because of Rhaegar. I don’t imagine her creeping on a teen girl so her husband can abuse her to have a prophecy baby. I also don’t think that George is going to tell us all that thousands dying and being brutalized including Elia and her children was or ever will be justified because of Rhaegar.
You’re free to imagine whatever nonsense Disneyland bullshit your little Rhaelya brain can come up with there’s always three options with y’all evil monstrous Elia who was hurting poor baby Rhaegar thus leaving him no choice or smiling footstool Elia who is simply happy to worship at Rhaegar and Lyanna’s feet or y’all’s favorite the Elia is “every Dornish racist sexual trope in ASOIAF”. Y’all have been doing it for years now so stop pretending you care about Elia we all know you don’t and stop hiding behind “ I want a politically astute Elia” because if that was the case y’all would be big supporters of the idea that Young Griff might be real but you’re not because you don’t give a shit you just hate being reminded that she existed in the storyline and George didn’t write you the self insert cw bullshit you wanted.
Stop worrying about Elia fans, stop worrying about what we think and stop concerning yourself with us. Go be happy in your corner of the fandom. You’ll be so much happier if you do.
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theowlspeaks · 3 years
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i can’t deal with the tumblr fandom anymore. it’s comes to a point where zks of color are begging for white fans to listen to us or any of our criticisms and they are either flat out saying no or just casting our opinions aside as meaningless “fandom discourse.” the lengths some accounts will go to in order to defend their kinks… when that same respect isn’t afforded to other fandom matters at all. all we asked for is that rape should be explicitly condemned by a fandom event, and apparently that was too much to ask for. and to call us swerfs and radfems over it??? when radfems are notoriously racist and target ppl of color?? i genuinely cannot comprehend the logic behind this.
so many creators of color have already left the fandom and i don’t want to at all (in fact, i’m making a point not to bc i don’t want the ao3 tag to be overrun by capture fics and weirdos), but white fans certainly aren’t aiming to help us stay here either
It is genuinely disgusting to watch. I have noticed this fandom become so much less diverse since I joined a few months ago, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. I'm so glad you're staying here even if it's difficult, it's nice to know there are still good people around.
My DMs are even more heartbreaking. I've had so many people talk about their experiences in fandom and how hurt these issues make them feel, but they feel too afraid to speak out about it. They are being actively intimidated into silence because of white people labelling them as swerfs if they try to express that tropes like woc enduring r*pe and falling in love with the r*pist are harmful.
Nobody is asking you to stop writing nsfw. Nobody is even asking you to stop writing about dark subject matter! All people are asking you is to be respectful with how you handle those issues and for you to fucking listen when people point out the racist tropes there.
Why is it that these people are so eager to listen when it's another ship bashing on zutara using racist ideas, but suddenly they don't care when their own racist behavior is called into question?
You don't get to hide behind woc in the fandom if you ignore them when they express their concerns to you
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lazaefair · 3 years
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Sequence of events the way I perceived/remember them. I’m doing my best to be as honest as possible and to minimize self-defensiveness, but I’m only human. Trying anyway:
I join All & More.
Within the first few days, I either bring up something about fandom racism, or challenge something someone said that I felt played into cultural biases regarding Marwan/Joe and the conversation turns to fandom racism. I don’t remember which happened first.
Either way, over the next weeks, between other conversations I get into several arguments/discussions about fandom racism with a few different people, including goldheartedsky. One person blocks me, which is how I learn about Discord blocking, and I block them back.
Goldheartedsky in particular keeps making remarks that show a clear bias against Joe/Marwan on the same spectrum as the biases that other Top Joe Stans have demonstrated in the previous months. She’s by no means the only one, as there is a mix of Top Joe Stans, neutral (I thought at the time) parties, and then me and Ven. But goldheartedsky and I get into it a few times with varying degrees of civility. She demonstrates that she relies heavily on strawman fallacies, red herrings, disingenuous mischaracterizations, and outright lying as tactics.
At some point I realize that she has blocked me (I can’t tag her or add reactions to her posts) so I block her back, as everything she had been posting had been upsetting me anyway.
After that, I started blocking people who got to roughly the same threshold as she did - attempting to preserve my fandom experience and give my stress levels a break.
By the time the conversation in question happens, I’ve blocked a handful of people, and basically just ignore the “blocked messages” bars that replace their posts and act like they’re not there. This is what happens during The Conversation - there is at least one blocked person, maybe more, but I don’t know because they are blocked and all Discord shows you is “3 blocked messages” or however many messages have been replaced.
I also unfortunately was lackadaisical about tagging the people I was actually responding to, which would have muddied the flow of the conversation for anyone else who didn’t have the exact same people blocked that I did.
I never clicked on the “blocked messages” bars, the channel has since been deleted, and I haven’t looked at the screenshots being spread around, so I still have no idea what any of the blocked people said in that conversation.
As for the substance of the conversation - this isn’t an excuse for myself, but I was talking about the ethics of the presented issue the way I usually talk in ethics discussions, like a puzzle to be solved. I realize now that I should have...not done that. To the people I was actually talking to, I am genuinely sorry for the pain I caused by not being empathetic enough to the human/emotional side of the issue.
Some hours after the conversation peters out, a person I hadn’t blocked - but who was in the same loose friend group as the people I had blocked - comes into the channel and says that what I had said wasn’t appropriate.
I reach out to Ven to get a second opinion about it. She agrees, which is when I realize I fucked up.
While I am talking to Ven, one of the not-blocked people whom I’d actually been responding to in the conversation - who is Jewish - comes back in and basically clarifies what I’d intended to say on my behalf. (I did not ask them to do this, and I am grateful to them for doing it.)
Edit: I am aware that this person has just publicly disavowed their defense of me. I’m leaving in what I originally wrote, since I’m laying out the sequence of events and their post was part of the reason why I handled the situation the way I did at the time.
Ven advises me, and I agree, to leave it there, because this person has kindly already said what I would have said - and also because I reckoned that nothing I could have said would have actually satisfied the person who called me out, as they’d demonstrated consistent hostility toward me in all our interactions prior to this.
So I leave it there, the channel moves on, and I figure that’s that.
Fandom racism conversations continue, with multiple arguments happening in which the contingent of Top Joe Stans, including goldheartedsky, continue to deliberately use rude, insulting language and various fallacies in response to my and others’ requests to reconsider contributing to racist tropes about Marwan/Joe. In an argument about the content gap between types of stories and art produced between Joe and Nicky, one of them says outright that there is no content gap, citing the survey done by tog-resources in July.
I’d already been considering conducting a full survey of Joe/Nicky fic, but this spurs me on to actually do it. Ven and I start surveying, and publish our results in late February.
I won’t rehash that entire round of discourse here, but this is when the screenshots from A&M first appear and various people receive anons accusing me of being a TERF and antisemitic, etc. One of the anons contains enough circumstantial information for me to figure out that goldheartedsky is behind it, or at least part of it. This is my first indication that goldheartedsky was one of the blocked people in that conversation.
I decide to stay silent about the accusations because that seems like the high road to take, and because it feels like addressing them at all would lend credence to them.
The people throwing accusations around had either blocked me, or I had blocked them, so any words that I said about them wouldn’t have been taken in good faith anyway, especially after it got to bakedapplesauce.
Bakedapplesauce, who blocked me after receiving one of the longer anons, never contacted me to get my side of the story.
A while later, a third party contacts me to try to bring me and goldheartedsky together in a conversation to clear the air. I didn’t initiate this, but agreed to do it only if the third party acts as a go-between, 1) partly because I had just started a new job and was busy IRL so I didn’t think I could manage a conversation in real-time, but primarily 2) because then if screenshots of the conversation ever appeared in public, there could be no question as to who had done it. Goldheartedsky refuses this precaution, so I call it off.
So, that’s my side of the story. I don’t have screenshots because screenshots can be altered and taken out of context, and also because I just don’t do that shit. I regret that it’s gotten to this point, but since the February round of discourse, it always felt like there was no way for me to address the accusations without coming off as defensive or dismissive.
Also, until this round of discourse in June, no one had approached me about it in sincere concern. I’m only writing this post at all because this shit has now been splattered onto other people, including Jewish people who have to watch their generational pain be used as a shield and a derailing tactic to deflect from challenges to malicious, conscious racism. These anons only crop up when fandom tries to address racism, and only using hostile “gotcha” phrasing that makes clear they’re not actually concerned about antisemitism, they’re just trying to deflect. Well, they can try.
That being said, I do acknowledge and recognize that in that particular conversation, I was thoughtlessly callous about something that is gravely painful, and I should have known better. As I’ve said many times before, no one gets to declare by fiat that they’re “not a racist” because that’s not how cultural conditioning or implicit bias works, and it’s the same for antisemitism. I’m sincerely sorry for that and have been trying/will continue to try to do better.
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nexyra · 3 years
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Okay so This is just a way to let out some frustration so I can put it out there and stop mulling on it bc I'm bad at this sort of stuff - Feel free to ignore it
I'm putting this under Read More; if your fav past-time is to call anyone who likes Ironwood's character or was disappointed by his V8 turn to villainy a stupid bootlicker who "should have seen the signs he was always a tyrant !!" please don't interact with this post. You're ultimately free to think what you want but honestly I see enough of that in the main tag when left alone, I don't need it on my blog it doesn't make me feel good.
Anyone else... well you can read if you're interested but you don't have to either. Feel free to respectfully disagree though, I'm not that bullheaded that I can't partake in a friendly argument =) I'll just be listing some things about Ironwood's reading by the FNDM who get old or draining as someone who doesn't like the V8-characterization they went with
Can people please stop just... copy/pasting real world issues on a world/characters that have nothing to do with them or a completely different context ?
Like,, I genuinely try to educate myself on real-world issues. I know I'm rather privileged so I try to listen and hear out people who speak out about the issues they live through day by day. I know why the "ACAB" moniker exists. I understand the problem that lies within the american police system (and likely other countries as well). I see why the army, on our blue planet, is criticized & its many failings. Etc, the list can go on...
But I'm sorry to say, Remnant isn't OUR Earth. Their Army's primary job is to fight actual evil soulless monsters, not people. The Ace Opps or Huntsmen are not an organization directly inherited from slave-hunting groups. James Ironwood isn't the US army general bombing Middle East. Clover Ebi isn't the racist cop you want in prison. So WHY are they treated as such by so many people ? Stories are not a 1-1 where you can take everything you know and just apply it to a completely different world.
Has Atlas been presented as a country that suffers from racism & classism ? Certainly. Has it be shown this way ? That's already more debatable since the only racist arguments we got were in Mantle (which is the city we're supposed to be rooting for so that's a weird choice but eh it's whatever). Are the characters, as persons, shown to evoke these issues in a way that deserve our scorn ? Not really.
Is Ironwood depicted as particularly racist for example ? I wouldn't say so seeing as one (or more considering Tortuga) of his Ace-Opps are Faunus & it seems perfectly accepted; and he hates Jacques Schnee's guts. So why does he get to shoulder all of our real-world issues as if he was responsible for them, in a context where (pre V8) his army had most likely never killed anything else than Grimm and was shown to elicit very positive reactions from most of the population (V3) ? (In direct contrast to the polarization that the US army might evoke for example.)
You can totally hate Ironwood because of the feelings he evoke, the trope he stems from or the parallels to be made. That doesn't mean however, that he IS truly guilty of every one of OUR world issues (pre-V8)
Just because classism is prevalent in Atlas society does not make Ironwood the figurehead & leader of this issue.
Is classism an issue in Atlas ? Yes. That's been made clear because of Mantle's state as well as Jacques Schnee entire existence & even Cinder's backstory. Does that mean every single one of Ironwood's decisions reeks of classism ? NO
Trust me, as someone who found Ironwood's V8 characterization not... well-executed & too much; there's nothing more annoying than being assaulted by posts about his fall going "it was so obvious !! look at -" only for them to then list reasons in a really biased way or even headcannons based on (again) irl problems. An exemple...
Reasons his turn was good that I see thrown around : "Ironwood left Mantle behind because he only wanted to save the rich. He's a selfish coward & an asshole !"
What we were actually given : "Ironwood suffers from PTSD, and faced with Salem's imminent arrival, he tried to save what he was CERTAIN to be able to protect aka the flying city and all the people on it including Mantle evacuees. There is absolutely no text backing the idea that he wanted to leave with Atlas because it's rich. We could even suppose that he would have left with the 'poor' Mantle if it was the flying city and rich people were hanging safely on the ground. There is indeed an issue with Atlas & Mantle disparity, but Ironwood isn't directly responsible for it."
Does that make his decision to leave Mantle behind a morally right one ? That's of course NOT what I'm saying. The situation is still very ambiguous. But the classism theme has NO place here.
"Ironwood leads Atlas & Mantle. As such, he inherently holds responsability for the issues plaguing it." THIS is an acceptable reading according to me. I would probably argue that even if Ironwood's the only Atlas leader we're shown; he actually only oversees the military & academy (where we haven't ever seen classism issues), so putting Atlas' classism issues on him still doesn't sound fair to me. However the idea & argument is sound.
Acknowledging only how his actions look/the tyrannical surface reading and not the reasonnable justifications or glimpses we were given (pre-V7) of Ironwood being more than his trope
I'll probably stop after this one, but the last thing that is both tiring & annoying after too much of it; is seeing people boil down all of Ironwood's character to the most basic summary, inherently written to paint him in a bad line. And then saying that everything led up to his downfall by using these watered-down versions of the show's events to justify it. Or worse (imo), saying that people who are not satisfied with his V8 characterization that THEY don't understand how good a character he is and don't really appreciate him.... All the while only ever highlighting his characters flaws. Please stop this.
"Ironwood brought an army to the peace Olympics why are you surprised he turned out this way ?" ==> Ironwood brought an army to a country where the civilians visibly have no issue with said-army, to protect a peaceful event that he KNOWS to be targeted by foes. It's definitely overzealous & his conviction that threats should be dealt with by blunt force IS one of his flaws; but pretending that he did it for fun or because he's a tyran is just as misplaced.
"Ironwood said he'd shoot Qrow if he were one of his men why are you surprised he shot Oscar ?" ==> Do I really need to flip through every joke in this show and consider it as absolute truth & proof that the character would enact these words if given the occasion; even when we're shown with certainty that they actually don't mean it ? (IW hugging Qrow to welcome him, refusing to attack Qrow when he's certain Qrow IS attacking him...)
"Ironwood has his military all over Mantle, there's a curfew, all of this is tyrannical why are you surprised he's also down for genocide" ==> Damn, it sure is criminal to have Mantle defended from the litteral monsters roaming inside & out, and to make sure with a curfew that the people are not at risk during the night. I wonder if any recent events could make us reconsider our stance on how evil a enforced curfew is. Mhmmm maybe a pandemic ? Nah I must be imagining things. For real though, at what point did Tyrian's framing/lies (IW has his soldiers all over Mantle because of politics/he's a tyran who refuses opposition) became the truth of the situation for the FDNM too ? Again Mantle's situations SUCK, and that's a problem in itself. Making up problematic reasoning for the situation is dishonest though.
To end this, I'll just make clear. I do not condone any of Ironwood's actions post-V7. I don't think he had to be the big hero of the Atlas arc. Nor that he was without faults. I merely think that he'd have been a better antagonist than villain. And that it'd have been nice to keep the ambiguity/morally greyness that surrounds him; the knowledge that he's TRYING hard to do what's best for everyone; that he has good intentions. That he cares about individuals too to a lesser degree, and that he had people who cared about him as a person.
For short... Ironwood as an antagonist with understandable issues, flaws & failures; making questionable choices but with good intentions ? Hell yeah. Ironwood as a villain, more irredeemable than Hazel, willing to kill people for NO reason or even wipe out a city ? I'm not convinced.
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lsobelevans · 3 years
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Horror tropes? In my Roswell, New mexico? It’s more likely than you think!
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In this essay I will...
...be mentioning a few horror/thriller movies and while nothing explicitly gory or scary will be shown in this post, those movies definitely contain scenes and themes that can be disturbing/scary/triggering, do your researches if you’ve got doubts!
...be focusing on the Maria and Alex road-trip, from the moment the car breaks down to the last scene with Travis’ twin. I’m probably going to be led to briefly mention the other scenes that are intertwined with this arc (the echo date and the Planet 7 Kyle and Isobel scene, as well as the marlex car drive when I feel like it is relevant). 
...be approaching specific themes that are used in the scenes that compose this little arc and also more general ones like sound, editing, cinematography and color. 
... be reaching a lot. I do not think everything I will be mentioning is 100% thought-out and voluntary (although you never know). But I’m a firm believer that in filmmaking, yes even inside a CW show, the symbolism comes through subconsciously. So like, maybe they didn’t mean to use corn field as a mark for transition, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that this symbolism works with the story they’re telling and for the journey the characters are in that moment. Additionally, lighting, decor and costumes are always a choice, just like the camera doesn’t position itself randomly, someone’s behind and thinking of the composition of shots that, even if it’s in a basic way, has meaning.
... be starting chronologically but I’ll also make jumps backward and forward, grasping on themes when they come up. Ok, then, let’s dive in! 
This episode references and uses a lot of the iconic mechanisms of the horror movie genre. Alex and Maria’s comfortable road trip atmosphere, open hearted conversation in the car, breaks at the same time as the car itself breaks. The camera, steady so far, the shots following a well known pattern of shot/counter-shot, becomes more unpredictable and shakier and suddenly we’re out of the car, and bam, large shot. 
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From the moment they’re out of the car, you won’t be able to see the horizon. Maria and Alex are stuck in a corn field, and they’re stuck in the frame. 
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Then poof, Travis appears out of nowhere, accompanied with a pang of music, frightening us and them. Well, more exactly, it cuts on a shot that we’ve seen before without Travis, now with Travis, which gives us the appearing out of nowhere effect. 
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Alex says it best.
Well now they’re stuck with a strange guy with an axe, and in a corn field 😬
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Hey, have you seen he’s got an axe??? or do you need a close-up???
Okay, this scene ends there. So, let’s take a break and talk about cornfields. There’s many examples of horror movies making use of a field of corn as a location, famously Children of the Corn (1984), Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1995) Signs (2002), that last one also involving, you guessed it, aliens. 
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Screenshots from the Signs trailer.
Corn fields are strongly associated with rurality, especially rural America. More largely, they can represent renewal, fertility or abundance. In the contrary, they can be seen as a very ominous location due to their immensity, a labyrinth in which you can’t see very far away and from which you’ll have trouble coming out. 
Although I’m pretty sure Maria’s chase in the cornfield is more of a reference to The Shining (1980) it reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies Tom à la ferme (2013), in which Tom is basically held hostage in rural Canada. The corn field chase is a turning point, the last of Tom's attempts to escape. 
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Cornfields apparently also often imply scarecrows, which are inherently scary in my opinion but we’ll talk about it more later. 
The next scene takes place inside of Travis' cabin. 
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The lighting here is pretty low, the light coming from a few small sources, creating a lot of shadows. The main color is a greenish/yellow which can be associated with nature and earth, rurality, dirty, suffocating. If we look at it, the color scheme of the entire road trip is very much following this pattern of browns/yellows/greens because of the cornfield and the color of the characters costumes (the exception being Maria’s truck which is a bright red). In opposition, the scenes that are intertwined are either blue and orange for Max and Liz or a lot of pink/blues/purples for Isobel and Kyle in planet 7 (bi bi bi).
The cabin is messy, supposedly reflecting the state of the owner’s mind. We get a nice close-up on meat + a knife and all of the creepy skins on the walls. Also, it’s noticeable that from this moment on, the camera is shakier, we experience different angles too. 
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We are given many visual clues that something is wrong. 
I’m gonna pass on the sound of the sound of the cow parodying a werewolf + the vampire diaries inside joke. 
Btw, if the fact that Travis names his cows -- that he skins for a living -- like human women isn’t enough for you to think mmmm. we are in danger. Well, don’t worry. The cw spells it out for you!!
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We know Alex! We got contextual clues!
Right after this, Alex and Maria make another direct reference to being in a horror movie situation. 
ALEX: This is why I don’t like horror films. The gay guy always dies first.
MARIA: ???? 
ALEX: Or... second. Okay, that’s fair. That look, that’s fair. 
I think this bit is interesting, because not only does it denounce an horror movie cliché (the black person of the cast dies first, the queer person is second) but also in this situation I believe it can be see as kind of a callout on the fandom’s behavior that i’m not gonna spell out for you but yeah. Fellow queer people, don’t forget you’re not the only one who is sometimes badly/unfairly represented. 
Moving on. In the next scene, Alex is searching the cabin for clues, and we are also given some about Travis. 
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Either he has a twin brother or he’s got a framed picture of himself on his wall. Oh, and he’s military.
Then Travis startles Alex and plays a little bit of banjo, which is a good excuse to stop and talk about music. The show uses a lot of diegetic music aka music that is present in the universe of the story, that the characters can also hear. It justify the use of said music and it ties the audio with the picture.
The banjo already is heard at the very beginning of the arc during a cut from the planet 7 scene to the road trip scene. We get a few notes that indicate a change of scenery and that helps smooth up the transition, and I’m pretty sure it was also supposed to be diegetic music coming from Maria’s radio. The banjo, like the corn field, is super linked with rurality and rural America (again!)
Another reference of the banjo in horror/thriller would be Deliverance (1972).
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I can’t not think of this movie when I hear banjo unfortunately. 
The way Travis plays, aggressively bad, and while singing I Think We’re Alone Now, is supposed to make you think about that scene in The Umbrella Academy be quite unsettling, another point for isolation horror. 
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So sweet of Travis to attack Alex with a guitar, and then a smol knife, and not with the axe <3. 
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Then we’ve got a traveling zoom-in (or equivalent I’m not sure it isn’t a steady-cam here but the effect is the same) on Maria. This kind of effect can feel a little bit over-the-top and dramatic, in a old genre movie kind of way. It is usually used to bring the audience in, make it feel like you’re evolving in the same universe as the characters (here you’re walking toward Maria). In a scene where you should feel scared, it can be a mean to make you feel more engaged, as well as underlining Maria’s expression, her fear. In my opinion, this is also a way to tell you that from now on, Maria is the main character of this arc, the one that you will be following after the commercial break (that occurs right after) and making it more suspenseful. 
The scene after the break is the start of the corn-field chase. Travis steps out of the cabin, the cuts are faster, many close-shots, some even out of focus, that accelerate the rhythm, and a long fade-in of a new song: a modern, electronic song (Kim Petra’s Close You Eyes) completely in opposition with the acoustic banjo and with the atmosphere of the scene, which makes it strange and makes you think oh, what a weird choice! (at least it did for me lol). The lyrics, however, go very well with the scene. 
I feel it coming on You've got nowhere to run There's no way you'll make it out alive
Yep. 
We find out right after that the music is in fact diegetic but for Isobel and Kyle, it’s another use of music to ease a transition between 2 scenes that are different in every possible way. 
Now, the corn-field chase. As I mentioned before, I believe it’s a direct reference to The Shining’s ending chase scene where Jack Torrance chases his son Danny through a vegetal labyrinth with an axe. 
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From the shots to the lighting (from behind or on the side, making the characters look like silhouettes) both scenes are very similar. Also, Travis is styled like Jack Nicholson ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh look, Michael’s here to save the day!
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Oh well, guess not. 
Yeah, in this scene, and like we’ve been shown before, Maria is going to be the one that saves everyone. The racist cliché of the black character dying first in a horror movie is reversed, Maria is the last one standing. The scarecrow (that looked conveniently a lot like Maria) is supposed to play in favor of the bad guy, it’s a scary element, creating confusion and unease, but here the character decides to basically take it into her own hands and bend the rules. This character says i’m not that archetype, and she’s going to be using the horror movie tools against itself. 
Lastly, the final horror movie recurring theme that I’m going to talk about is the twin/the double. 
Yes, twins is a spooky tool used in horror movie because their similarities make them unsettling, uncanny. 
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There’s also the idea that if one were to replace the other, you wouldn’t be able to tell. The impostor is a very scary concept that Roswell has also dealt with before. 
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I can’t be the only one that has been traumatized by that halloween special of the Simpsons where Bart has an evil twin... 
It’s the last twist of the arc, there is a bad!Travis and a good!Travis. The bad one kept the other locked-up somewhere and had taken his place. 
It’s particularly interesting for Roswell that has a history with twins/doppelgänger, and that since the original show. It is a clear instance of in-world foreshadowing here! (howdy)
My conclusion about all this is that the people who worked on 2x06 had a great time building the episode and it shows, while also making it enjoyable to watch and yeah, we love to see it! 
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swanlake1998 · 3 years
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Article: The Black Ballet Celeb Taking On Racism in Dance
Date: June 21, 2021
By: Mary Scott Manning
With a raft of Instagram followers and a modeling contract, the Washington Ballet’s Nardia Boodoo is as close as it gets to a pop celeb in the rarefied world of ballet. Now she’s trying to make that world more fair.
A ballerina, by definition, does not speak—at least not with words. The body is her language, and she spends her life mastering its vocabulary, usually at others’ direction: a casting list on the wall, a choreographer’s instructions, a critic’s review. For dancers of color, this fact has been doubly true.
But last year, after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, and organizations across the professional spectrum were called out by people of color for furthering systemic racism, the overwhelmingly white world of ballet wasn’t spared. One of the most influential voices in that conversation was a dancer with the Washington Ballet, 27-year-old Nardia Boodoo.
You may have seen her onstage, one of the company’s five Black dancers, or in the pages of Marie Claire—she’s a model repped by Wilhelmina who has starred in campaigns for Tory Burch, Chanel Beauty, and Nike. She began dancing only 13 years ago, but Boodoo, whose roots are Indo-Trinidadian, has soared into the pantheon of ballet celebrities, the object of teen worship and the subject of fan art (plus at least one look-alike doll).
What was never visible was the racism she endured on the way up. “Despite the fact that I work hard in rehearsal, throw myself into my art form and perform on international stages,” as she put it on Instagram on May 31, 2020, “when I return home”—to Bethesda—”I’m still most likely to be questioned and harassed for walking my dog late at night in an affluent area…that I reside in.”
This month, Boodoo appears in one of the Washington Ballet’s latest productions, choreographed by the renowned Black dancer Silas Farely. Yet some of her most important recent work has occurred behind the scenes over the past year as she pushed the company to own ballet’s history of prejudice and its responsibility to change. “She’s just been a really, really important voice in helping us to galvanize and discuss all very important issues,” says Julie Kent, the company’s artistic director, issues that “haven’t really been addressed previously, and not just at the Washington Ballet but in ballet as an art form.”
When Boodoo started training at 14, Misty Copeland was making history as American Ballet Theatre’s first Black soloist in two decades, following trailblazing Black ballerinas such as Lauren Anderson and Raven Wilkinson. Boodoo’s peers at the Baltimore School for the Arts, meanwhile, were majority-African American, a “strong base,” she says, for a young artist of color. Boodoo earned a scholarship to Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, then landed a coveted sport in the Washington Ballet’s studio company while still a teenager.
Leaving home, though, occasioned her first experiences with racial bias in ballet. “I’ve had someone who holds power say to me, ‘Well, because you stick out so much in the corps, you have to work so much harder, because everyone’s going to be looking at you,'” she says. “That’s not my fault that you only have one Black girl in the corps.”
It was the classic conundrum of a second generation. She wasn’t the one who broke down the door. But she still had to contend with an environment that was less than welcoming. And the pressure to fit a stereotype needled her. Virtually every professional Black dancer feels it: having to straighten curly hair, receiving costumes with mesh that doesn’t match their skin tone, wearing the pink tights that make light-skinned dancers look lithe but appear to chop inches off those with darker complexions. Sometimes Boodoo’s colleagues would make hurtful comments. “Stupid things,” she recalls, “like ‘Your hair smells like Black-girl hair.'”
Rachael Parini, a friend and the only other Black dancer when Boodoo joined the company, remembers when they were asked to wear white powder in Giselle, a tradition in the ballet but a loaded proposition for Black performers. At a rehearsal, the stager hollered over the loudspeaker: “Rachael and Nardia, why are you blue?” The powder apparently had turned their brown skin another hue under the cool stage lights.
Parini describes her friend as a force—”not one to back down from a fight.” But back then, the women endured the routine microaggression quietly. For all its glamour, a ballet company is a workplace like any other, governed by hierarchies and unwritten social codes. With one big difference: There’s usually no formal human-resources department. “You sort of get this vibe that this is how it is,” says Boodoo. “The more subservient you are…the better and the more instruction you’ll receive…the further your career will go on.”
After starting to model, Boodoo met a photographer who was perplexed by her acquiescence. He described how the New York dancers he knew were much more assertive. It was a revelation: Boodoo’s confidence and following grew. She became an apprentice at the Pennsylvania Ballet, then returned to DC, becoming a full company member in 2019.
By the time the country was protesting for racial justice and dancers of color began organizing over Zoom, she was ready to speak out. “To all the dancers that don’t feel supported by their companies,” she posted to Instagram on June 1, 2020, “I think it’s time to make some changes and to hold them accountable.” Andrea Long-Naidu, a former New York ballet star and a past teacher of Boodoo’s, looked on with pride: “When I had her at Dance Theatre of Harlem, she wasn’t aware of her powers yet.”
Seeing her staff in pain after George Floyd’s Killing, Kent convened an all-company Zoom. Voice cracking, Boodoo recounted her experiences, explaining that the bias often presented itself as overtly as it did implicitly: The problem wasn’t simply getting passed over for a role but also being told her face looked “too ethnic” for the part.
Kent, who is white, listened on the other side of the screen, distinctly aware of the vulnerability on display among her dancers. A former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, she performed on global stages and had a part in the beloved 2000 movie Center Stage. “I have a unique role and responsibility in order to move [the art form] forward,” she says, “and allow for the kind of career and love that I had to be possible for as many people as possible.”
Kent inherited one of the country’s most diverse companies from her predecessor, Septime Webre, who had recruited worldwide and electrified the institution’s cultural cachet. She had added 16 dancers to the corps, almost half of whom identify as BIPOC—and now they were hurting. There’s also the matter of competition. The Ballet has to compete with bigger acts imported by the Kennedy Center. In some ways, its relevance hinges on broadening ballet’s historically older, white audience with admirers whose woke-ness won’t tolerate notions of “diversity” that predate Black Lives Matter—or that feel performative.
Kent formed a working group with members from every department to tackle issues of inclusion and equity, and an outside consultant has been guiding their monthly meetings and homework. Boodoo, who represents the performers along with Oscar Sanchez, a Cuban dancer, had expected pushback. But her fan base and platform—a social-media audience that, at nearly 50,000 on Instagram, is within striking distance of some top New York ballerinas’—would have been tough for the company to ignore.
As wider discussions started, though, it became clear that white privilege was a new concept to some. Boodoo was dismayed that some colleagues were unfamiliar with certain civil-rights leaders, so she helped organize a remote study of the book The New Jim Crow. To prod management, she and fellow colleagues of color met privately to hash out ideas for the company at large. It’s been exhausting to divide her energy between institutional matters and the rigors of performing: “You want to just focus on your art form, you just want to focus on being beautiful, being a strong dancer, and contributing to the task at hand.”
Partly because of Covid limits on gatherings and partly because they had to start with building a shared vocabulary, the working group’s progress has felt slow. But they’re in the process of finalizing recommendations to address the places where inequity creeps in. Money, donors, time, and institutional commitment, meanwhile, all could limit their progress. The group, for instance, envisions a Nutcracker free of racist tropes—in particular, the traditional Arabian and Chinese dances, which play up offensive cultural stereotypes. But ticket sales help fund the annual budget. Will the public support changes to the beloved show? Can the company handle that financial risk?
The stakes—Black dancers continually being overlooked or leaving ballet—feel higher now that the work has begun. Still, Boodoo says she feels hopeful that the company will evolve. “She’ll be someone,” says Long-Naidu, “that’ll go down in the history books of Black ballerinas.” An artist who championed a new act for the ballet, or at least one who tried.
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