#and they had responded that some are white and some are poc and they considered themselves white

[floralovebot]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Alright, so there's been a lot of chatter about some of the most common racist takes in the fandom lately, and I know most people aren't engaging in good faith but I'm gonna spell some things out anyway. Here's a handy-dandy White Fan's Intro to Racist Fanon 101

Why is it racist to depict Ed as uncontrollably violent?

Because he's not actually depicted that way in the show. OFMD goes out of its way to depict Ed's relationship with violence as complex and intensely traumatic for him. Because he has so many hangups around violence, Ed is one of the least violent characters in a show full of violent characters. He is always shown giving people many chances before they're able to push him into reacting with violence.

Even if you think you're just doing a character study on a guy who is really very complex and nuanced, please take the time to consider if you're assigning more weight to Ed's violent actions than those of other characters or assuming he's worse than he actually is (for example, Ed never physically hurt the crew during his kraken spiral, just Izzy. His crime was being a shitty boss, not going on mindlessly violent rampages).

What do other common fanon depictions of Ed that are racist look like?

The biggest ones are depicting Ed as untidy/messy, as illiterate, and as needing a white man (most often Izzy) to clean up after him. I hope I shouldn't have to spell out why these are racist, but please keep an eye out for them in the fanon you consume so you can be critical of how you respond when they pop up.

Are you saying that all Izzy fans are racist?

Liking a character is morally neutral. Insisting that the viewpoint of an antagonistic character is the lens through which the show should be understood, though, especially when that antagonistic character's whole deal in the first season of the show was trying to control the behavior of the brown lead so he could gain power for himself, however...

Just please consider - why do you find Izzy's tears more deserving of sympathy and compassion than Ed's?

But my hot take/fic/meta doesn't say anything about Ed's skin color!

It doesn't have to. Most of the racist takes/fic/meta out there don't mention Ed's skin color explicitly. Racism doesn't just look like saying "this character is a brown man so he's bad." Everyone who grows up in a racist society (that's everyone on the planet, btw, you included) has biases to unlearn, and those biases impact how you interact with the world around you, including with the media you consume.

The thing is, OFMD isn't a subtle show. It's very consistent with telling us who Ed is, how he responds to situations, and why he behaves the way he does. If you find it easier to throw all that aside in favor of believing what a white antagonistic character tells you about him, then you should really take a bit to examine that.

And here's the most important thing to keep in mind:

This is not about you.

Trust me, it has to be pretty damn bad for fans of color to call out racism in fandom. Every time we do, we know we're gonna harrassment and just some truly awful shit in our inboxes. But you, random white fan who Did A Racism? No one is out to get you. No one thinks you're an awful person for including a racist trope in your stuff, we just wish you'd examine it so we can make this fandom a better place for everyone.

I have had amazing discussions with white fans who saw my posts on fandom racism and wanted a sensitivity read or a check so they could fix an instance where they uncritically included a racist trope. But most people who make similar mistakes will just double down and insist they didn't do anything wrong, and that makes fandom a worse place for all of us.

Fans of color deserve to feel safe and included in this fandom, and we're just tired of feeling like we have to beg to get some circles to see poc as people. You can do your part by being critical of these tropes and your reactions to them when they pop up.

[reel-fear]

Bendy And The Power Of Representation

So those graphic novel pages huh? Seems I posted my cover post at just the right time because literally minutes after I was informed the preview pages came out and uh. This is Buddy and Norman!

Oh dear... I'll put the full graphic novel pages down below but I have so much to say on how awful this is it'll need several posts. However, right now I want to mostly talk about representation and briefly touch on why it's so damn important + inform others about the current shit Mike and Meatly are saying about the books n such.

Now note: All the things I'm saying below are based on my personal experience, maybe some people don't care about seeing the representation of their identities in the media they consume. Maybe some will think I'm merely being dramatic and I might be but I'm not lying when I say I personally believe being represented and seen in the media you consume can be one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.

Look I'm not here to argue with people who think that Norman in particular was never meant to be a person of color, I would argue he is very coded but the points I'm making here are not about how Norman particularly had to be black. The point I want to make is the lack of diversity in our cast in general and how Norman's design has heavily dwindled it considering most people [including myself] rightfully assumed he was at least one of three black characters in our cast. Not according to this though and looking at the the rest of the pages our chances of seeing any kind of decent diverse character designs dwindle more.

So firstly... Buddy a character who has been said to experience discrimination for being Jewish, lacks any kind of ethnic features at all. That's... Cool but yeah I think this shows a rather grim future for the character designs as a whole.

Also, Norman... As I mentioned he was largely assumed to be black due to his southern dialect, his voice, and other factors. But nope, he's a generic white guy. With... Gross looking hair tbh...

Sadly this is not the first time the topic of poor representation has come up concerning Bendy either.

[note how he disregarded the other mentioned minorities and specifically cites LGBTQ+ characters]

This sucks as a response but sadly considering Mike's recent behavior it seems to fall in line with the Bendy team's general lack of care towards representing anyone who isn't straight and white.

So how did Mike respond to all of this? Well...

TDLR - "Who cares if the Graphic Novel we're selling to our fans for full price sucks, we now no longer consider the books canon."

This is horrible, I know Mike and Meatly are only really in this for the money, the fact BATIM is in the state that it is proved that, but they really couldn't have been less obvious about it?

So basically when it benefited them, AKA when it meant people would have to buy the books to understand important lore like Boris' identity... [the character you spend all of chapter 4 trying to rescue] They were considered canon... At least the author sure thought so.

Hell even in the tweet Meatly made here he doesn't say the books aren't canon, he just says they're not needed to understand Bendy's world. Now Mike is using that as a shield instead of doing the right thing and saying "You're right, the poc in our fanbase deserve better we'll have it fixed right away!" Like most reasonable people would considering how his studio has literally been accused of bigotry, poor rep, and general lack of diversity before. Why risk making more people avoid this franchise?

Also just... Imagine how insulting it would be to be an author who helps flesh out so much of this world and gives its characters depth like NONE of the games have managed to do, filling in plot holes, creating a timeline for events, etc... Then because they couldn't bother to change the graphic novel for ur story to be better they instead throw out all ur writing and declare it non-canon.

If I were her to put it bluntly I'd feel insulted and horrible. Why make her do all the work of making sure her works align with the timeline and game's canon if they're not part of it?

I can't speak for her obviously but Meatly and Mike know of her account, so speaking out against this could very much risk her being fired or at least not allowed to work on Bendy anymore... So I would take all her tweets on this situation with a grain of salt. She very much is not in a position where she could be honest if she was against this.

So with all that history now, the question I'm sure many are wondering is... Why does this even matter? Who cares how diverse the characters are when it doesn't affect the story?

Well for one thing, if you think like that consider having more empathy for your fellow human beings but also it does affect the story. One of DCTL's themes is about the bigotry of the period it is set in.

Now the Bendy team has managed to make the discussion of this book centering around their bigotry which is ironic in a way I almost find funny... Though this entire thing is just a bit too hurtful and upsetting to find any humor in, at least for me...

But another thing is representation can bring people such joy when it's done with care. It really shouldn't be understated how far it can go to make people feel more comfortable in their own sense of self to have a franchise choose to represent them and their experiences. I know this from personal experience.

Now if you've been following me for a while, you know I'm a big fan of Transformers. I no longer engage with it much due to baggage from the fandom's awful treatment of me, but before I left I remember being able to witness the release of Transformers: Earthspark first few episodes.

These introduced the Maltos the family who meets the Transformers and serve as our protagonists and guess what?

It's a family of Filipinos!

Now look I'm not Filipino, but I am half Mexican and I have a lot of love for that part of me. So seeing the representation of any Spanish culture in this franchise I loved made me so happy! I remember just watching the first episode I was happily telling my partner how fun it was to see people like me and my family in a world I love!!

But it didn't end with the Maltos in fact... There was another character who spoke to me, their name was Nightshade. Their pronouns are They/Them and they spoke about it on the show! Not just mentioning it and moving on but actually sitting down to speak about their experiences...

This clip in particular really turned them into an absolute favorite among fans and well... I'll let you see it for yourself.

This scene... Fills me with a joy I cannot describe. It is the creators of a franchise I love telling me they see people like me and find the stories of people like me important enough to include in this series. There really is nothing like being able to say there are Non-Binary characters in a franchise I have so much love for. I was far from the only one too.

This is amazing, this is wonderful, this clip and character were moving to so so many people and...

This is a joy the Bendy creators have no interest in giving their audience. They don't care how you feel as a queer and/or black person, which... Hurts...

I... Discovered I was trans while in the Bendy community... It was where I learned the word Non-Binary and started using it for myself. To me Bendy will always have that connection... But the devs themselves seem to hate the idea of being forced to actually represent that in their games... And I still haven't really gotten over that pain or betrayal if I'm being honest.

So...

With Norman now being portrayed as white here, we are down to two black characters. Thomas [who Meatly has claimed is white in the past] based on a vague conversation with Sammy in DCTL they could easily ignore... And Jacob.... A book exclusive character which according to Mike means he is non-canon.

If we don't count Thomas' vague talk with Sammy about disrespect as confirmation he's black [which the devs don't seem to think so] then we have one black character in all of Bendy... And he recently got retconned into non-existence. Great.

Look... The Bendy fanbase has always been full of wonderfully diverse designs for the staff and even more diverse people creating them. Bendy's fandom was built with the work of queer people from all kinds of places.

If the Bendy team continues to show how little they care for anyone who isn't straight or white... I wonder who they are counting on to buy this book or in general financially support their franchise?

I know right now, I am furious, I am hurt and I most certainly don't feel like buying a book that's currently just a massive fuck you to the fans and I hope I've expressed why I feel this way in an easy-to-understand way here...

Either way, I will not be forgetting this anytime soon and I hope the fanbase does the same. Maybe just maybe, if there's enough backlash to this series of horrible decisions they'll learn better.

Right now, it's kinda of our only hope for a better future, and if you know any poc who are into Bendy right now... Maybe consider making sure they're feeling okay.

I know from experience how much this sort of thing hurts, to have the creators of a world you love straight up tell you they don't intend to fix the fact no one in their stories represents your identity or life...

What I'm trying to say is...

This is a really low point for Bendy and its fans... Even more for the poc who have to witness such ignorant and careless attitudes from Mike and Meatly towards their feelings.

Please don't forget them when you discuss these tweets or this situation. That's exactly what Mike and Meatly want right now.

For them to be unrepresented and therefore... Unheard.

[adickaboutspoons]

@bogeymangrandy I’m sorry - I know it’s prolly bad Tumblr etiquette to address a reply in a whole new post, but this is kind of too big an answer to address in the space a reply offers.

So the weird, shitty unchecked racist stuff isn’t JUST contained to episode 5. In episode 3, Izzy says Ed “was a wild dog, and we dealt with him like one.” It’s to set up the “doggy heaven” line, which is doing some heavy lifting in terms of conveying to Izzy exactly how much Ed trusted and confided in Stede, but referring to a MOC as a dog, especially a wild one, is still fucking gross, and, worse, it’s only part of a pattern of racist sentiments. In episode 6, Izzy tells Ed “I thought you were Roach” - that old “they all look alike to me” chestnut. Thanks, I fucking loathe it.

But episode 5 is particularly packed with troublingly racist bullshit, and carries with it connotations for the wider season.

The most straight-forward is when Stede tells Izzy that Blackbeard “credited you with a lot of his skills,” and then “you taught him everything he knows.” If it’s meant to be read as true, it’s attributing all the talent, skill, and brilliance of a MOC to some white dude. But even if it’s meant to be read as Stede flattering Izzy to get what he wants out of him (which I think it is - the whole thing with the fog in season 1 episode 4 kind of hinges on Ed having knowledge and skills that Izzy does not), it’s still not great because it means Stede thinks stroking some mediocre white guy’s ego is worth more than Ed’s reputation, which means he learned nothing from the tavern scene in season 1 episode 10 where he similarly disparages Ed’s reputation for the gratification of his white compatriots.

Similarly, consider him shouting “those fucking barbarians!” after the mostly POC (and Pete) crew rip his red coat, and compare to “You savages!” in season 1 episode 2 when Stede thinks the indigenous people who have captured him have roasted Wellington and Hornberry on a spit. But at least in season 1 Stede gets rightfully called out for being a racist. Season 2 has yet to push back.

Then, there’s the portrayal of retributive justice (the idea that, for justice to be served, a transgressor has to be punished). We start the episode with Ed in his penitence onesie and cat bell. And there is that whole Biblical connotation of sackcloth as an expression of humility, but it also calls to mind the ill-fitted and low-quality material of prison uniforms, with the cat bell as a low-tech ankle monitor, uncomfortably tight and alerting everyone to his position at all times. I’ve seen his non-pology framed as a corporate “apology” and I do think that’s mostly what they’re going for here, but there’s also an element of the preformative penitence that prisoners are forced to undergo during parole hearings. This is Ed being punished for his Kraken-era transgressions.

Now compare to how Izzy, a white dude, has been offered rehabilitative justice this season - never had to grovel, never had to debase himself, never even had to offer a single word of apology for any of the dire shit he inflicted on the crew in season 1, but was nonetheless given the unconditional support and resources he needed to transform into essentially a completely different person. 

It’s not just the races of the people upon whom these different modes of justice are being implemented that is significant - it’s also the races of the aggrieved parties in how they respond to the “justice” imparted by the retributive model, because we also see two direct, individual applications of retributive justice in the episode; Ed offering Lucius to push him overboard, and Fang describing how he brutalized Ed’s body after Jim knocked him unconscious. With Lucius, we see that he experiences a momentary thrill of vengeance, but almost immediately it flares out, and he’s still just as traumatized as before, and perhaps even more obsessed with Ed. Clearly, for him, a white dude, this primitive, Hamurabian form of justice does not give him closure. With Fang, a MOC, it’s the exact opposite - Ed terrorized him, he beat Ed up, and now they’re sweet.

In isolation, this wouldn’t read as implying that white people are more “civilized” and “evolved” than POC - except all the other POC that Kraken!Ed tormented are also seemingly fine now. Jim and Archie are immediately laughing and joking about torture after the non-pology, and Frenchie is debuting a new fancy cat flag and pointing out that “at least he’s wearing the sack” when Lucius starts freaking out about Blackbeard being back. There’s also a running through-line across several episodes about the supremacy of white, colonial values and civility, but I’ll get back to that in just a moment.

Because now we have to talk about the matter of the curse. Because, again, we’re seeing a break-down across racial lines. Team Curse is Jim, Archie, Olu, Frenchie, Roach, and token white guy Pete (the Swede having abandoned the crew for his new paramore, Buttons having transmogrified, Lucius busy being traumatized elsewhere, and Wee John just MIA). Team “Curses aren’t real” is Izzy and Stede. So this isn’t like season 1 where everyone is just kinda hilariously science illiterate and superstitious (like with the “not a mermaid” conversation) - instead, we’ve got a group of superstitious POC vs. the rational, enlightened White Dudes. And the White Dudes are unequivocally correct. Peanuts ARE a serious allergen (and a legume, not a bean). Yeast is what causes bread to rise, not fairies. Ergo curses AREN’T real, and the crew are being irrational. So when Stede relents at the end and agrees to give up his suit, it’s not him conceding that there is validity to his POC crew’s worldview - it’s a white dude condescending to the poor, simple-minded, uncivilized folk even though he’s for sure in the right. Isn’t that just SO magnanimous of him? Isn’t it awfully white of him?

And given that the White view is the Right view in episode 5, we have to start interrogating the other places where that idea shows up. In episode 1, we hear a white priest bloviating about how "The natural condition of humanity is base and vile. It is the obligation of people of standing, such as yourselves, to elevate the common human rabble through the sacred transaction of matrimony.” Normally (and at the time when I first watched it) I would clock this as CRITICAL of the tendency of predominantly white cultures to be self-congratulatory of how THEIR ceremonies are so much more CIVILIZED than those of the savage  - as though they invented the concepts of commitment and monogamy, and as though those concepts are inherently better than the alternatives. But then we have Ed, a MOC, issuing an objection - not to the specific union, but to the concept of a nice, white wedding in general, followed by a raid that Jim later comments on: “Is it just me or was the wedding thing a bit over the line?”

And, consider, in season 1 episode 3, Jim drops this line on Olu when he points out that Jim killed one of Jackie’s husbands: “We live in a state of nature.” So the “natural condition” is intrinsically tied up with that hyper-violent pirate lifestyle, and if even one of the practitioners thereof is clocking it as “a bit over the line” - does it not follow that the bloviating priest was RIGHT? That the white man sure DOES have that burden to take up, doesn’t he?

Which is exactly what Ricky is proposing in his little speech in episode 6: "It's up to us fine gentlemen to stand up against this modern piracy and stay vigilant". And we KNOW that Ricky is full of shit. We KNOW that he’s backing up his racist agenda with a self-serving, revisionist narrative. But maybe it would be better if he also didn’t, maybe, have a point? I guess what I’m saying is that I really miss the days when a racist got a knife through the hand or their ship burned down and it was something to be celebrated, and that I’m not loving the idea this season that maybe the racists are kind of in the right.

[youremyheaven]

Omg I saw your moon dominance post and I have to share something 😭

I have a friend whom I went to the same school as, we still talk sometimes but not as much.

She has always been quite a charismatic person, and is a relatively small built, conventionally attractive blonde white girl. Needless to say she is considered quite “soft and feminine” - I only mention race because racism would naturally prevent her being perceived that way.

I like her, she’s very diplomatic and intelligent but MY GOD the manipulative tendencies she had growing up😭😭😭

It’s been a couple years since I was regularly in close proximity to her so I can’t remember that many examples of her lying (also because it was a such a common occurance), however I remember it getting to the point where she herself would awkwardly joke about it.

What I *do* however remember quite distinctly the way she’d occasionally have these “tantrums” after I gave her any mild criticism.

For example, one time we were all having lunch together as a group and she made a mean spirited comment on someone else who was nearby. I pointed out that is was a pretty mean thing to say, not in a particularly accusatory tone, and she quite literally started shouting at me saying “WELL THATS QUITE BIG OF YOU TO SAY BC YOU TOLD ME [insert minor joke about manipulative Snapchat fboys that therefore was nothing to do with her] AND IT REALLY UPSET ME [insert sob story about having a disabled brother] etc etc”

She also had a similar public outrage at me after I asked her if she brought her present in for the Secret Santa, and she responded by kicking me in the shins and going on a tangent about how her life is really stressful and how I only worry about “school and sleep” 💀

However the interesting part that I vaguely covered at the beginning is that she had mastered the whole sweet innocent teenage facade. She had people, primarily older men in authority, entirely wrapped around her finger. She developed this oddly close relationship relationship with one of our teachers, which never got inappropriate, but he would direct like 80% of his energy to helping her over other students (who were equally if not more needing of help). Similarly her therapist literally UNRETIRED to help her personally 😭 I can think of so many examples of authority figures literally bending over backwards to be of service to her.

(She also attracted a kind of unreal level of male attention that was way above the average)

To finally conclude:

She is a hasta sun, moon and ketu with PBP ascendant. Her birthtime isn’t exact but I feel as though PBP is more likely than UBP.

There was also an incident of her sleeping with a teacher in his 20s when she was 17 😬 obviously it’s on him, but it’s interesting to consider that she has Jupiter in the 9H in Chitra (mars) - aswell as a mercury chitra which sits in her 4 planet 8H stellium.

Sorry for this extremely lengthy ask😭 it’s more of an info dump than an ask but I hope it served as an interesting example of moon dominance (+ a little bit of mars influence) in women

bestie never apologise for spilling tea 😂i love reading what ya'll have to say, otherwise i feel like im talking to a wall. and i feel you about this moon bestie of yours, im glad you're out of that toxic friendship!!

a few years ago i had a toxic moon dominant bestie who like you said lied so much and manipulated things so much, its hard for me to even make a list of the shit she did lol, yk how a lot of poc parents will whip their kids or yell at them or something and afterwards act extra nice bc they feel guilty?? I've noticed that Moon dominant people are like that to some extent. my "friend" would say the nastiest most vile derogatory things about me TO ME and then when i responded with radio silence she'd be all 🥺🥺im so worried about you, have you eaten? have you done all the assignments?? here's mine, you can refer to it🥺🥺,, like i was always sooo confused by her but then i started seeing thru her bullshit, how she's only being nice cause she feels guilty lol,, she had a tendency to criticize other people A LOT like your friend and honestly its tiring to listen to that shit, so i think i started saying nice things in return like "oh but xyz is so sweet, she's always so thoughtful" and then she'd say some shit "its so crazy you'd say that because i felt like xyz and abc always hated you" like classic manipulation lmao, like she hates those ppl and if i say one nice thing about them, then she'll try to convince me that those people hate me so that i can be on her side in bitching about them lmfao.

Moon dominant people are soooo insecure its sad,, they feel the need to be so rude and nasty af to others to mask their own insecurities. Obviously I'm only talking about unhealthy Moon influence, im sure there are nice ppl out there as well.

u guys pls feel free to dump any gossip/tea u have in my inbox, i love reading this stuff!!

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

the way you’re handling this is sad. Quackity is not only ignoring Dream but some of the people on his own SMP who also reached out with concerns. Dream has been nothing but mature, concerned and empathic throughout this entire situation and your response is to call him pathetic?

Quackity ignoring a friend that he’d been very close with before is concerning in itself and I personally find his silence to be very worrying. It isn’t right to just. go after dream for no reason when compared to Quackity i’d say he’s handled this drama with a good amount of maturity and concern for someone he considers a friend.

And bringing up dsmp lore in comparison to this rubs me the wrong way. Dream admits that he’s been being stalked, harassed and threatened because of *minecraft server drama* and your response is to compare it to c!dream knowing.. c!tommy didn’t want to be his friend?

i’m just overall a little bit appalled how you can possibly respond to the situation like this when it is Quackity who has been the one handling this poorly by putting off an issue and allowing his fanbase to harass and attack other creators.

“Dream has been mature” he’s been constantly going on about how omg quackity hates me when he didn’t have any communication with quackity about it. that’s not mature. that’s the fucking opposite of mature. that’s petty high school mean girl shit.

cutting off someone who got nudes of fans at the Very least and potentially groomed minors is Normal Actually. why would you wanna say a tearful goodbye to a sex pest. Plus, the thread indicates that other people struggled with getting into contact with quackity meaning he was probably fucking busy and had a life and not focusing on Twitter drama!!! how tf is he meant to know about drama and shit if he's spending most of his time working on his server.

quackity has done Literally Nothing, yet you blame him and see him as the aggressor. everything quackity does he gets judged a million times harder than any white creator. when quackity doesn’t engage with a situation at all, that he has no reason to because hes clearly uninterested and has busy work of his own, he’s at fault for the harassment his community sends, but when dream quote retweets someone and makes fun of them for petty shit it’s all uwu he can’t control his fans! when dream buys a trump flag it’s swept under the rug, when quackity downloads a popular mod that has racist mobs in it (which is bad and I’m not trying to downplay it but it’s nowhere near as intentional as buying a literal trump flag) hes irredeemable even when he removes it. and it’s so obvious that you’re doing this because he's a person of colour. maybe not consciously, but you’re condemning him for doing shit dream has done that you defend. do I think quackity is perfect? no, of course not. but it’s weird to condemn a poc for things you let his white peers slide on.

and there’s like 0 indication that the threats involved anything to do with the usmp. dream himself doesn’t even provide any evidence or proof they’re related. a lot of people really hate dream. from racist kiwi farmers who hate that he’s openly nd to people who don’t like misogynistic creeps. we have no indication which one of those groups tried to harm or stalk dream and his family, and assuming it was Quackity's fanbase with zero shown evidence or even ancedotes is fucking weird. it’s weird to put that into a statement about how your friend fell out with you- it’s implying they’re somehow related when they’re not. even if they were, there was literally no way quackity could have known and it’s wild to bring it up in a post about him ghosting you. it’s guilt trippy and weird. no one should trivialise or accept what happened to dream, but you shouldn’t try and tie it into private friend drama if you’re not gonna provide any proof of it being relevant.

[dragynkeep]

rwde.

so i made a post asking people to take part in a “rwde census” if they considered themselves part of the community or were critical of rwby. this was in order to combat a common criticism by the main fanatics that rwde is solely made up of “cisgender heterosexual ablebodied white men” who hate the show’s apparently wide swathe of diverse representation. at 85 responses, results are in.

this one i will probably redo again at a later date, as many respondents reported to me they were confused or clicked multiple while marking down they were mixed race  —  so they would put mixed race, then white + another race as applicable  —  so the 50.5% is not entirely accurate to the claim of “solely white” rwde posters being racist in regards to the show.

with that in mind, this shows us that more than half of rwde are poc & in line with that in the “thoughts” section of the form, think that rwby has let them down in terms of how they represent race, racial trauma, oppression + more.

the bisexuals win again —

this also just entirely blows the claim that the rwde community “hate queer people” out of the water. the rwde fandom is in fact majority queer, a whopping 91.5% of us are queer in some way with a third of that being bisexuals; which falls in line with how critical some of us are in regards to the main rep of the show. the “bisexual” main who has never been confirmed, only alluded to by voice actors & was in fact described as both straight & a lesbian by her own va.

gender is also not even close to being a majority “cis men” like fanatics claim, while ignoring the actual creators of rwby i suppose. 19.2% were cis men, with a majority being cis women & nonbinary running a close third.

so the claims of people hating the show because they hate “girl power” falls flat in the face of a majority of us being women or femme aligned in some way. especially considering the show’s treatment of these women & how a majority of their storylines revolve around the men.

disability became a hot topic in the fandom majorly in regards to two characters  —  yang xiao long & james ironwood. especially in regards to the treatment of both of their disabilities, yang’s being all but ignored except for ship bait & ableist disregard to her prosthetic, while james was outright demonized & painted as an unfeeling monster for his.

as we can see, only a quarter of those in rwde have no disability. meanwhile the rest have been violently talked over, threatened, harassed, sent death threats & ableist remarks all the while for daring to criticise a storyline that effected them personally.

~

overall the further responses at the end of the form was the most enlightening part. most had begun watching this show & loving it, but then becoming more & more disheartened as the show began to show more & more harmful moments. i would definitely encourage going to the forms & reading those for more of an insight to those in rwde who, despite claims otherwise, do not actually hate the show just to hate it. or because they hate poc, queers, or disabled people.

i hope this was a bit more illuminating for those who constantly hear this rhetoric against the rwde community; especially in the height of rooster teeth / crwby once again being called out for their repeated abuses of power & controversies.

[erithel]

This is no way meant to be a hate ask and look i want to like the idea of canon klance and i want to like canon Keith but lbr if the writers had made klance or any keith ship canon they would have done it in worst way possible with the ship being only meant to benefit Keith while simultaneously being detrimental to the love interest. Cause fact is that Keith was writers pet, the top priority, the self insert, they destroyed all the characterization and agency and roles of other characters for the plot and story and then destroyed said plot and story to make Keith super cool hero character.

I keep seeing posts like how canon wouldnt suck if (insert Keith ship) had been canon and i am like, canon sucked because they priortized a lbr white coded able bodied character over canonical characters of colour who were reduced to torture porn, hate sinks, and comic relief. Canon sucked because the characters who were established as important parts of the story were reduced to side characters and plot devices so that Keith could shine brighter. And a canon Keith ship would not have helped any character other than Keith, and if anything would have reduced the other character as an eye candy comforter.

Again this is not meant to be a hate ask. It is just been frustrating to be in this fandom especially as a darker skinned woc to watch this show and fandom still treat characters of colour as woke points while using them to prop up Keith

I have debated over responding to this message, mainly because there are some things in here that could potentially cause drama on my page if I even respond to them in any way.

However, there are some points in here worth addressing, so...

First and foremost, I am going to say that I can see your intention is not to make this a hate ask. However, it does come across that way to some degree. The main reason being that you are making valid points about the other characters, but you are doing it by pushing Keith's character down - and that is the stuff I don't really like to see, here.

I'm not trying to invalidate your view on things, because I realize your point was literally this, just the other way around. I'm just saying for the sake of my own page, I've had a lot of asks in a similar vein and it's not really something I'm interested in discussing in asks.

Of course everyone can like and dislike whichever characters they choose, but I do like to keep things as fair and equal as possible across the board. So, I am always open to discussions and opinions on why a character or another deserved more and better, but only if they do not come at the expense of another character.

And with this, specifically - I just don't see this version of Keith you are referring to, so there's not even much I can add to that part of your ask.

To the other parts, however, this very much illustrates the need to having diversity in the creation process of shows and movies.

Unfortunately, a lot of studios and execs and whoever greenlights these things still rely on the "token" aspect when it comes to diversity.

As your ask proves, it doesn't do any good just to simply have characters of color, for example, if they are reduced to stereotypes or insignificant parts.

This is where the actual diversity should come in - because it needs to happen behind the scenes for there to be a change that will actually mean something.

In my opinion, experience is so much more important than any title or rank or connection. It is important to actually include and receive input from creators who understand a situation on its basest level.

I consider myself to be a very empathetic person who tries my best to understand human nature and emotions. But I, as a white person, will never have the same experience as you, a person of color. It's literally and physically impossible.

But that's the whole point.

Because if a book were to be written about the actual experiences of growing up as a poc, there are insights and stories you, anon, could offer than I could only take a wild guess at. And vice versa.

I'm not saying that creators should only create based on their own personal life and experiences. But it is important for larger projects such as shows that want to include a diverse cast to actually employ people who understand what it is like.

Because it's not enough to just throw a darker skinned character in a show and say "Hey look at us we did it. Diversity! Woohoo!"

And it is just bad storytelling all around if any character in any given situation is only there for the purpose of the "main character" (or any other character).

Because what really makes a story interesting is the diversity that can come from the different experiences and opinions of the various characters - how they can clash and converge and change and grow.

The final thing I will add is that in my mind, Keith is Asian and Galran, so...mixed. I understand a lot of trouble could have been avoided if the showrunners had just confirmed this was the case while the show was airing, but, well...we can't change the past.

It was, in the most technical sense, confirmed here, but I do understand that most people will view that as too little too late, and that's understandable.

[b-a-pigeon]

Well... okay.

As a general rule, I do not participate in Author Drama. I shared that tweet earlier because I post fairly often about the whiteness and racism of (queer) writing spaces and felt it was pertinent, not because I care to weigh in on interpersonal conflict between two people I do not know.

That said: I feel weird about how DN approached me after my post, and I want to speak to that. [Cut for length]

I frankly did not realize that they followed me on here and would have soft blocked them had I known; I had no intention of them seeing that post on their own dash, and it's fully my bad that they did. But anyway... DN sent me a message immediately after I posted the screenshot encouraging me to seek out the evidence and draw my own conclusions about their conflict with Freydís. I said I'd hear them out, because I really do have zero context beyond Rainbow Crate's statement.

In response, DN sent a series of screenshots of their own Discord messages relaying the situation to someone else with no further evidence or explanation. These messages included a lot of detailed and personal information on their mental health; some obviously minimizing language, eg referring to gossiping about Freydís in a professional author's Discord server as "being a silly bean"; and several personal insults to Freydis, including calling them immature and pathetic.

They further characterized a message from Freydís's publicist as both "threatening" and "insulting." Freydís has publicly shared (in this thread) what I assume to be this email as well as other correspondence, and I personally consider that a gross exaggeration. Compare this description to the actual text of the email:

Again, I'm not trying to weigh in on who's right and who's wrong; I still feel as though I'm lacking context here. I think there is something to be said about the fact that Freydís has a publicist to navigate this situation while DN is responding personally. Rainbow Crate has corroborated Freydís's claims of "inappropriate behavior," at least, and it does seem true that DN has continued to talk shit about Freydís through their professional accounts months after they ceased communication and blocked each other. Beyond that, I cannot say.

What I will say is that I find the way DN approached me highly unprofessional & inappropriate. Asking for context is not an invitation to trauma dump about your mental health or to say ugly things about someone who you have beef with who I don't even know, including mischaracterizing a very professional email as insulting and threatening while doing the "I'm just a smol innocent bean" routine wrt your own behavior.

White people self-victimizing/infantilizing while painting POC with whom they are in conflict as overly aggressive and cruel is one of many ways that white people make professional & social spaces hostile to people of color. This has happened to me before, and it fucking hurts seeing people you know, trust, and work with uncritically buy into the narrative of you as violent aggressor just because a white person's feelings were hurt, regardless of the truth. It's very easy for me to spot this pattern of behavior and I have zero patience for it.

I post this not as a call-out or call to action for anyone to boycott or cut ties with DN; Freydís themself seems more interested in getting DN to just stop posting about them than affecting their career. I just wanted to share this information for the benefit of anyone who cares and also as a shining example of what not to do in my DMs. Okay, thanks.

[moxley]

Hey no offense!! But there is an issue with hcing a racial oppressor who is canonically such, as a part of a marginalized group he would oppress irl. Cullen is a creep to the fem mages in dao, going as far as imagining the individual who he was made to watch over (reminds me of that nazi/jewish person in concentration camp fanfic) as the whole desire demon tricking him *again* Cullen is uh... well he is apart of a group that can be considered by some as comparative to nazi-ism, white superiority... the police.... etc Hcing him as such is a bit... obtuse when he is in fact someone who is a horrible person towards these racial groups and never apologizes with both his writing and character blaming it on addiction.

as a poc myself, I understand taking characters and hcing them as ur race is really important! But in this case it seems exceptionally... well it sounds chronically online, but it's a bit shitty

theres a difference between a noncanon trans character who isnt transphobic being hced as trans, and a character being hced as a race he would be prejudiced against (even the characters coded in game as such he's racist against. but thats also racist writing)

i do see you’re well meaning and normal in sending this ask so i hope you take my reply in kind but i’m no good at this, i try to respond formally and courteously and i understand it kinda makes me sound like a cunt tbh … anyway i want to preface the point of my post which was about literacy around media terminology and not about the ethics or lack thereof around headcanons

so… yeah! you’re right. nothing you’ve said is wrong per se, cullen sucks. and you are completely right that it’s not a great thing to do, that it’s weird and just, whatever, in principle i agree with you and have never thought otherwise

but there’s two important caveats to this

first is that, whatever anyone thinks about that - including you and me - cullen was and remains a very beloved video game guy. i don’t get it, but whatever floats your boat, there’s a tonne of characters i love that are outright intentionally written as evil, which cullen is not. the narrative of dragon age is not intended for you to hate cullen, although your individual character or you may well do. i assume this person probably loved cullen. that doesn’t make it inherently okay, though, so bear with me

i _personally_ don’t believe it’s up to me, to comment on the ethics of an individual person making up headcanons about an individual character that reflects their marginalisation. if a muslim person (and i can’t comment the Facts because i haven’t seen the source info, but apparently the person in question was muslim) wants to headcanon their favourite blorbo as muslim, i’m simply not going to tell them not to do it.

this goes for anyone’s headcanon of a similar nature, which is not in fact about if the character is bad or good or predetermined by ethics. i just don’t believe in telling people that they can’t picture a character a certain way, most especially when that way aligns with their own life. to follow along with your example, if a trans person wanted to headcanon a transphobic (or otherwise real-life type of horrible) character as trans, it’s just not really in my purview to stop them. i’m also trans! and it’s unpleasant or even outright feels bad, but it doesn’t do any lasting harm, because it’s one persons headcanon, it doesn’t form part of the text, and for my own joy i could also block that person.

it’s genuinely fine to disagree with this, but this is the way i choose to operate online, which is that some idiot with a bad headcanon in some corner of the internet is pretty easy to ignore. again, not disputing the headcanon is bad. i’m just not going to argue with the person who had it.

(happy to clarify any meaning in this post cus i wrote it on mobile)

[mystxmomo]

Luckily for us both, I LOVE long CC rambles AND hearing myself speak.

I'll start with the second paragraph, because I have a bigger talking point for the first that I think requires leading into it with discussion of the second. While I fully agree that idv has flaws and issues even above and beyond cultural differences from western sensibilities, I don’t think western media escapes that either. We may notice it less, or notice it differently, because it’s not being filtered through the magnifier of cultural differences, but it’s still there; sometimes it’s even more insidious. Think about how many times Wizards of the Coast has had to change something because of how wildly offensive it is to native cultures - really, think about how often it's pointed out that some fantasy game has species with REALLY BAD racial coding in western media in general. (But all that said, this is not one vs the other, its shitty that both have these problems and pointing one out doesn’t excuse the other.)

The thing I always try to point out and ask when these conversations arise is - how much do you as a (presumably, American, though that in itself is a very American thing to assume, lmao) know about /China's/ current socio-political environment? How much Do YOU know about what they consider to be offensive, about their political movements, the public reaction to their political movements, or anything about the modern issues outside of "CSS bad" (which, a lot of China agrees with). Do you even know the Chinese presidents name? How much do you expect a chinese company to know about western culture, in return. And you can make a lot of arguments ie: the extent about their resources. But then you have to think back to the first point I made. Bad implementation of their research isn't an issue unique to this company.

Sometimes, the criticisms of the game are VERY real and very serious. Stuff like the the white washing of their POC characters and the costuming of other cultures shouldn't escape criticism, and they have responded to backlash of these things by changing it. But sometimes, it is Very American Sensibilities clashing with foreign cultural standards. As an example. People criticizing Dance in the Snow for "sexualizing chinese culture." You know. People criticizing the chinese company. For sexualizing chinese cultural clothing. (they're allowed to do that. I cannot stress enough how much a chinese company is allowed to market it's own clothing as sexually as it wants) Or, a more subtle and less ridiculous one. Did you know that China has a HUGE issue with physiognomy? It's not my place to talk about at length, because again. I'm white, and the extent to which I CAN talk about it is through second hand research (which I recommend doing your own of) and machine translated weibo discussions. The impression I get with what I HAVE seen is that Phillipe is a criticism of a very real current cultural issue that we as Westerners wouldn't be privy to, and so when his character came out people REALLY focused in on his racism from the perspective of how it historically effected black people in america, and now how it's VERY CURRENTLY effecting the larger Chinese working class.

And. Thats the thing, right? This trend with a lot of younger political types, where they think that to be allowed to like something with these flaws, they have to be hyper critical about EVERYTHING about it. There's this desire for easy snap judgements, and an unwillingness to dissect and engage outside of that snap judgement. And thats really not how engaging with media critically /works./ And this isn't JUST something strictly found in idv, nor just how in people consume media. There's something a lot of modern activists talk about, where they feel guilt and burnout engaging with a world they know is built on moral wrongness. How do you justify buying a new pair of shoes when you know they were likely made by underpaid factory workers? How do you come to terms with putting gas in your car knowing it's another cog in a larger, harder machine working to further pollute the earth. And maybe it feels a little ridiculous to compare your FUN VIDEO GAME to these moral questions, but at the end of the day, it's not just about IDV. How do you engage with any video-game, knowing that the people behind it are burnt out and underpaid? How do you watch movies, knowing that the companies behind them screw their workers out of their residuals and healthcare. And the thing is. I don't actually have an answer for this, either! These are questions people much smarter and much more involved in activism spaces have been asking since long before I've been alive. Sometimes, the most you can do is sit back and acknowledge the flaws of the thing you love, and sometimes those flaws will be a deal breaker for people and sometimes they won't. The most I can personally do is encourage people to not burn themselves sitting on that guilt by talking more about the aspects of the media they love, and try and encourage them to focus more on what makes it worth staying in the game and with the community despite it's flaws.

All of this is to say. Lmao. Man. I've thought about this just as much as you have, and I do get it. I think with all of that established, what I wish for more then anything was that people DID focus more on what they like about the game and stopped putting it through this lens of "The game and characters as in canon is inferior to what I can do with them"

Like I've joked about that before - But I don't actually think I'm a better writer than IDV. The image of IDV in my head isn't inherently superior to what IDV has going on. I think they have something incredibly interesting and unique going on with their setting and characters. I think the way they play into their victorian setting is FASCINATING, I think the way they handle their veteran characters is some of the best I've seen in any media. And like - I'll admit that I'm prone to being overly critical about Certain Writing choices, but at the end of the say I'm able to acknowledge that the reason for that is that I do love the aspects of the game I do. And I wish we didn't have to hide it behind this performance of "Ugh, FUCK this game" to appreciate what about the characters and story we do like, yknow?

The gacha element… yeah thats more insidious, and something even I personally still have trouble getting around when recommending it to people. I find loot box systems to be an overall nasty aspect of the modern gaming industry - Unlike a lot of the stuff regarding it's writing and presentation, I think the gambling aspect of the game can be very PROACTIVELY dangerous to people, and I feel bad knowing that people could have a very real issue with it. But thats the other unfortunate thing. It IS an unavoidable aspect of the modern gaming industry. If a game has online elements, it PROBABLY has some kind of lootbox system. And there's no like. I don't think that one is something that needs dissected like everything else - I think we need stronger laws for videogames including gaming in its core game. But thats neither here note there, and I don't think IDV is uniquely evil for including it. It's just something to warn people about when introducing them to the game.

[delusion-of-negation]

You don't need to respond if you don't wanna, or if you think this is too personal, since I'm just looking for varied opinions. As another disabled person, I've seen an uptick in people claiming ableist behaviour, and talking points are rooted in racism and white supremacy/anti-Poc mentality. Some claiming ableism is a direct result of other issues. Some mutuals have also claimed disability is NEVER its own issue. I'd like to know if sentiment is more isolated, or has become more common. Thanks.

people have their own bugbears - some people want the system ultimately to boil down to one The Man, be he capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, or something else, maybe not as the one simple sole reason, but as the core, as the worst, as the rot that could free us of other rot if purged. ableism is a spanner in every single one of those theories - right down to "bigotry is hating an individual for how they were born" types of sentiment. however, ableism is a severe systemic issue that isn't just capitalism, and definitely isn't just patriarchy or white supremacy. japan's heavy culture of work is ableist, for example. the people claiming every issue is just rooted in their bugbear don't understand how these things work, they don't understand intersectionality, and they're usually pretty new activists who are throwing themselves into a specific issue and connecting dots that don't connect, because they're hyperfixating on their new calling in life, it's something a person needs to grow past if they want to actually help however. because if you don't, you're simply another manifestation of the blindspot society has to our problems, another person saying at best that we don't know what's best for us and at worst that our problems don't exist. I've seen people claim that activism for the issues faced by disabled people is detracting from real issues, it would be racist/sexist/capitalist to not center their bugbear. the problem is that the whole point of intersectionality is to explain interlocking webs of systems, and no one person is equipped to comprehend and contend with the entire web, we do need to be able to have our own bugbears, one issue we can focus on and a different person can be trusted to focus on another, or else we'll overwork ourselves to the point of uselessness. the problem I'm pointing at isn't someone caring more about poc issues than an increase in the cost of living without disability benefits similarly increasing, the problem is people who say that you can't do that around disability issues, that you're actually wrong and it's all an obvious distraction from them, that you have to say "of course x group would be more affected..." whenever you mention the way you're unable to afford food, and I've even seen people say such things to people they didn't know were of x group. the system is multifaceted but we're individuals, so we need to work together apart, we need to work apart together. so yes, I've seen this shit, however it's not more common, it's more visible - when I was an activist in my teens irl, when I was still well enough to protest, it wasn't uncommon to meet young people like myself with those bugbears, heck sometimes older people who had got so fixated saying "have you considered homophobia isn't just capitalism?" literally set them on a rant, and from what I know from activists older than me who I'd talk to, things were like that forever. what manifestation you see of it online is the vocal people who make contentious or incorrect statements being blasted out by shitty algorithms that prey on outrage. it's not an isolated problem, it's definitely one activists have noticed forever, but the way it goes absolutely viral every time and the confirmation bias and closed subcultures formed by people who reinforce obsession with the bugbear of their choosing, that's definitely new and problematic because it's massively hindering the ability to work side by side. mutuals of yours are likely uncritically reblogging posts because nobody wants to be the person who adds "maybe the black guy saying this is just racism is wrong" if someone says ableism isn't actually real and is just white supremacy, with far more words to obfuscate that and confuse what it's saying, especially when it's going to result in a dogpile, and people saying you just don't get what's really being said, emperor's new clothes style. nobody is comfortable telling the emperor he's simply a naked ableist tbf.

[xtruss]

How Major University Discriminated Against White And Asian Candidates

— January 04, 2024 | Newsweek | Sean O'Driscoll

The University of Washington Campus on March 6, 2020, in Seattle, Washington. The university has taken action against anti-white and anti-Asian discrimination in the psychology department (Karen Ducey/Getty Images)

The University of Washington has revealed that "An Internal Whistleblower" exposed discrimination against white and Asian job candidates in its Psychology Faculty.

An internal report found that a third-placed job applicant, who was Black, was given a tenure-track assistant professor job last April, above white and Asian candidates who were ranked higher in the selection process.

Other violations included excluding white staff from meetings with job candidates, deleting a passage from a hiring report to hide discrimination, and discussing ways to "think our way around" a Supreme Court ruling that barred affirmative action in colleges.

A UW spokeswoman told Newsweek on Thursday that the case was exposed when "the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, responding to an internal whistleblower, requested an internal review of this process by what was then called UCIRO (University Complaints, Investigation and Resolution Office) and is now the Civil Rights Investigation Office."

The psychology faculty has been barred from hiring tenured staff for two years as a result.

The UW report found that when five finalists for a tenure-track assistant professor position were selected in January 2023, they were due to be interviewed by the Women Faculty and Faculty of Color groups.

The report also said a member of the Faculty of Color did not want any white women at the meeting and complained that the interviews were "awkward" when there was a white candidate. The names of everyone involved are redacted from the UW report.

"As a person who has been on both sides of the table for these meetings, I have really appreciated them," the person wrote in an email. "Buuut, when the candidate is White, it is just awkward. The last meeting was uncomfortable, and I would go as far as burdensome for me. Can we change the policy to not do these going forward with White faculty?"

In 1998, Washington state passed a referendum banning race-based hiring in universities, which appears to have been ignored by the psychology department.

The report suggests that faculty members tried to hide the extent to which race was considered, including in the hiring report.

"I advise deleting the statement below as it shows that URM [underrepresented minority] applications were singled out and evaluated differently than non-URM applications (which is not allowed as [name redacted] noted)," one email read, according to the report.

An unnamed person wrote in another email, in March, that they were inclined to hold Faculty of Color meetings just for candidates of color.

This person also wanted some way around the then-pending 2023 case of Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race as a basis for college admission. The case was taken by a group of Asian-American students who had unsuccessfully applied to Harvard.

"My inclination is to hold these meetings only for POC [People of Color] candidates. I'm also mindful that our Provost is now getting anxious about anything that's directed to only some identity groups (i.e., they are getting worried about fallout from the pending Supreme Court affirmative action rulings)," this person wrote in an email.

"My read is that they'll get fearful of litigation and overcorrect into colorblindness. Maybe our committee can preemptively think our way around this type of future directive," the faculty member wrote.

The university's public record office had planned to release staff emails on December 14 to John Sailer, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning National Association of Scholars, an organization which campaigns against race-based admissions and hiring policies in universities.

In an email seen by Newsweek, the public records office informed Sailer that the requested records won't be released in full until April 26, 2024.

The UW spokeswoman told Newsweek on Thursday that "Mr. Sailer's first public records request on this was submitted on April 5, 2023.

"These requests are processed on a first-in, first-out basis and some are more complicated than others; his request was quite comprehensive, requiring significant review and redaction considerations, and as a result, it is still in progress. Mr. Sailer also has seven active records requests and these, again, are being processed on a first-in, first-out basis."

The university announced on its website that the psychology department is now "barred from conducting searches for tenured and tenure-track faculty positions" for at least two years, "subject to review by the Provost's Office."

It also said the department will "undergo a comprehensive review and revision of its hiring processes," and all department members "will receive training on how to conduct searches consistent with law and policy."

"The University is taking personnel action to address individual actions," the statement added. "These proceedings are confidential."

A substantial number of redacted emails are included in the university's report, which was released on October 31 and is published on its website.

Sailer told Newsweek the UW report "shows universities — professors and administrators alike — discriminate with a total sense of impunity. It's an egregious example, notable for how much is in writing, but it really is just one more example."

"This kind of discrimination in the name of "equity" is commonplace, even when blatantly illegal. And that's instructive in light of Students For Fair Admissions," he said.

"UW insists that its investigation had nothing to do with my public records request. I'm not so sure about that. After all, until its investigation, administrators from the university promoted the psychology department's hiring framework, which the university has now deemed to be in violation of its non-discrimination policy. That's a big reversal," he said.

On its website, UW's psychology department lists its first mission as promoting social equity "by investigating biased attitudes, inequities, and disparities... by redesigning organizational practice" and "by solving social justice issues."

— Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland 🇮🇪. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. He has covered human rights and extremism extensively. Sean joined Newsweek in 2023 and previously worked for The Guardian, The New York Times, BBC, Vice and others from the Middle East. He specialized in human rights issues in the Arabian Gulf and conducted a three-month investigation into labor rights abuses for The New York Times. He was previously based in New York for 10 years. He is a graduate of Dublin City University and is a qualified New York attorney and Irish solicitor.

[papirouge]

That article is idiotic but it's also stupid to claim that Nazis have only targeted poc. Ask a Pole about their opinion on nazism lol

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/victims-of-the-nazi-era-nazi-racial-ideology

(You might need to copy-paste the link if you wanna read the full thing)

"But, Hitler warned, the German “Aryan” race was threatened by dissolution from within and without. The internal threat lurked in intermarriages between “Aryan” Germans and members of inherently inferior races: Jews, Roma, Africans, and Slavs. The offspring of these marriages were said to dilute the superior characteristics reflected in German blood, thus weakening the race in its struggle against other races for survival."

"The interwar German state further weakened the German “Aryan” race by tolerating procreation among people whom the Nazis considered genetically degenerate and a harmful influence on the hygiene of the race as a whole: people with physical and mental disabilities, habitual or career criminals, and persons who compulsively engaged in socially “deviant behavior” as the Nazis perceived it, including homeless people, allegedly promiscuous women, people unable to hold a job, or alcoholics, among others."

"If Germany did not act decisively against the Jews both at home and abroad, Hitler claimed, hordes of subhuman, uncivilized Slavs and Asiatics that the Jews could mobilize would sweep away the “Aryan” German race."

Essentially, if you were a Slav you would be a target. You'd also be a target if you were disabled, gay, jobless, homeless, and a myriad of other things, regardless of 'race.' I put race in quotes bc Hitler used race, ethnicity, and nationality interchangeably. That's why he put the Nordic people on a pedestal while hating Slavs although both groups are white. I also wonder how you respond to people who have experience with communism when they smear it

Who ever said the Nazi only targeted poc? Europe was still mostly white in the mid 20th centuries so most nazi victims (beside jews) were white. Could you guys stop bringing up elementary school level information and act like it was a groundbreaking knowledge? 😭 Yeah : beside jews, gay, disabled, homeless/society dropouts, and even communists were targetted by Nazis. Yeah slavics were considered below the Germanic Aryan. We been knew. Doesn't rebuke the fact that extra European poc were still considered subhumans for just existing, waaay below slavic people. And I think Slavic people themselves know it by the fact they have no issue having nazi heroes (hi Ukraine!) and that eastern Europe is a nest of Nazi wannabe (there's no wonder many western European nationalists/nazi migrate out there). You don't see that nazi friendly dynamic in very nationalist non White countries, interesting isn't it? Meanwhile Communism had an outstanding capability to penetrate many countries accrosss the globe. Why? Because unlike nazism, it's not race based.

I respond to people with bad experience to communist to get over it lmao Communism is dead for a couple years and sometimes those twats were born way aftee it collapsed. This shit screams persecution Olympics. Those people can't claim struggle over oppression that are still well and alive (homophobia, racism, etc.) so they'll bring the story of their great grand father who died bc of Communism. Sad. But at some point you guys need to understand that you can't bear the trauma of your ancestors. I'm from Congo and who know, maybe some of my ancestors got their hand chopped because of that demon King Leopold II just bc they didn't pick enough rubber. But if I do, I'm actually a silly woke activist trying to shame to innocent whites who for the most part never owned slaves. So why can't you guys keep that same energy for communism and stop complaining about it when the people who were responsible of those crimes were only a handful of people.

The Bible is sooo right to tell us to not look back into genealogy bc many of us would go crazy at how much our ancestors suffered at the hands of psychopaths. And yet here we are alive. And that's all that matters.

[vvh0adie]

can i just say that any writing done for free on the internet is not up for professional publishing critique

my thing is: unless i go on your blog and see the content you reblog/make pertains to some nasty heinous shit

(incest/race play/pedophilia/beastiality; meaning this is who you are as a legit person and you actively promote it in positivity)

then i go check your masterlist and its sewn into the fabric of your fics, imma side eye you, report, and block.

but lets be honest i would hope ppl just report/block during the first scroll cuz i don’t know why we’d want those type of people on tumblr anyway. tho we’re not here to discuss that further and definitely not another time. if you know you’re into the shit i listed above FOR REAL, get the fuck off my blog and play in traffic.

but if someone writes something you don’t like or if you think their writing isn’t up to gramatical/literary standard, don’t get in the fucking comments or asks to tell us that. we do this shit for fun. this isn’t fucking goodreads.

ALSO DONT REBLOG FICS YOU DIDNT ENJOY AND RATE THEM AND LEAVE BAD REVIEWS IN THE FUCKING POST. WE CAN SEE THAT SHIT!!! THIS GOES FOR TUMBLR, AO3, AND ANYWHERE ELSE THAT HOST NON-PROFIT FICTION WORKS.

(and no kofi and patreon don’t count as profit, if an author explicitly tells you that you will have access to their wips and early access to fanfiction that will eventually go onto tumblr or ao3. you already knew to expect some hobbyists writing. and you need to know from reading the already free content on their blog, that you like their writing well enough to invest in it. it doesn’t make sense to pay for something you KNEW you already hated. if it just so happens that you’re author sets a standard above what you consider fanfiction writing and it feels more professional, then lucky you…… it’s still not up for critique. that’s just means someone took their craft “serious enough”)

i also see you bitches who put ACTUAL FICS INTO GOODREADS! HAVE YOU LOST YO DAMN MIND CUZ LEMME HELP YOU FIND IT QUICKER THAN MOSES PARTED THE SEA!

when people come to your fic recs, they are most likely not looking for bad fics AT ALL, they’re hoping you’ve done your due diligence in curating a collection of fics you deem amazing so they DONT have to sift thru “bad” fics. you making more work for yourself and other readers.

but some of y’all love to be negative and get wet from twiddling your thumbs on this keyboard to spew unnecessary or productive “criticism”. unless we asks or have a link to a feedback box/google forms, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

social platforms besides goodreads are not here to help reader experience. goodreads is the place to leave reviews for BOOK YOU EITHER PAYED FOR OR THE AUTHOR HAS PROFESSIONALLY PUBLISHED FOR WIDER CONSUMPTION.

i love goodreads too and criticism of books I FIND AT BARNES AND NOBLES😁… because i’m able to avoid things like bad grammar, bad literary skills, poc and queer trauma porn, and other shit i don’t wanna be exposed to.

what i do think is valid, is asking a fic writer to tag properly. i’ve read shit and been blindsided cuz “dead dove” tags weren’t added. i’ve even asked and they’ve made it a point to belittle me. i thought it was a good fic in terms of plot but i wanted to be able to blacklist those words for if they wrote more content. but they completely turned me off due to how they responded so i just never wanted to read more of their work.

i didn’t harass them because frankly it had content i didn’t like (not anything that would make me question their overall morality, unless you count the not tagging, but that’s a bit much). instead i just blocked them and moved on.

there have been times where the grammar in a fic was really bad, the formatting of a fic had huge gaps that made reading difficult, or they didn’t put a cut on their fic. i didn’t contact them, i just blocked them.

so for the love of baby jesus, just block. only when you feel that something DETRIMENTAL is being posted like WHITE SUPREMACIST MANIFESTO or SOCIALLY TABOO type shit is being PROMOTED (they need to actually believe in this shit) in someone’s writing and has built a following of like-minded people, then really the troops so we can deal with it.

but bad grammar or that yandere fics with non-con in is not something to be harassing people over.

(some folks writing language is not their first so they’re learning thru writing or they’re a native speaker who still messes up/has a disability and just because some likes to write/read dark fics doesn’t mean they advocate such acts. plus while it may not be the healthiest, it’s some people’s coping mechanisms and i can’t blame them cuz a good therapist is hard to find and even harder to pay for —at least in the US)

so go read shit you actually like. and if you just so feeeeel it in yo spirit to rate some fics and leave bad reviews download Calibre Library and have at it. it is only seen by you and on your computer. so make that your lil hate diary or whateva🙄

anyway duces. i just had to say a lil sumn cuz i saw one of y’all attacking the homies. i love my moots and i miss the ones that left becuz of the bullshit💜💜💜

also if anyone thinks i left something out or wants to correct something feel free to tag me or reblog💖

[whcrror]

PART II / DEBUNKING COPYING CLAIMS AGAINST NOVA: SIDE BY SIDE BIO COMPARISON. (might have to be three parts due to photo limit).

to preface this, we reached out to Djaq to see if she wanted to engage, and give us Gaea's bio. not to mention, whether Djaq was open to addressing the information we have gained.

we have tried asking the relevant question that should have been asked a long time ago: are Temperance and Gaea even similar?

Djaq has always claimed that if she has an issue, she would always voice it and respond to genuine inquiries. Djaq also stated that she has nothing to hide. however, we were blocked after making the inquiries mentioned above.

the inquiries you are about to see were never answered publicly by Djaq, unless directly stated otherwise.

let's start from the beginning.

in our research for the post we have made before (part i), we had noticed that she had changed her face claim for her oc Aramis. This change was from Keanu Reeves to Idris Elba. now, to prefix this - doing this is totally okay. It is 100 percent okay to change a white face-claim to a POC face-claim, as representation is important. again, if everything is done respectfully - which in Djaq's case, it was - then all power to that decision. especially if you're a POC man who is fed-up with the lack of representation in the RPC, and wish to diversify their dashboards. (same with any underrepresented community).

however, where the problem does arise, is the blatant references Djaq has made to the changing of Temperance's face-claim. Djaq has also now claimed that she has an issue with Nova having changed her face claim. Nova had changed her face-claim (july 22nd 2019, a year after Gaea's existence/see reference in part i) from Jenna Coleman (a white face-claim) to Beyonce Knowles-Carter (a black face-claim). again, nothing wrong with that. although as we've said, Djaq has claimed to have an issue with this. i'll get to this in a moment.

-

with that out of the way: with this particular emphasis in mind, once I had seen that Aramis had been changed from Keanu to Idris -- I reached out to Djaq politely to hear her side of the story. she said this:

note, this ask was answered publicly: let us go through this a bit: however we won't be harping on this too much, as we went over the reason why Nova changed her face-claim to Beyonce in part i of this post. this should now be cleared up: at least if you care to listen to either side of the story. however, again, we have no problem with Djaq or Nova doing this. we just wanted to hear Djaq's side of the story regarding the issue present, and the emphasis on that particular fact. a fact which seems pretty irrelevant to the story (other than the fc change in general. the constant phrasing of white to black, Jenna to Bey: the specification never sat right with us). we also addressed the 'big deal about their fc's being too similar' in the part i post, below this one. what we do feel the need to address here is the idea that smut writing ticked up, after she made the change. now, i suppose the expectation would be that we would not do our research on this. regardless of the easy explanation that sometimes people simply wish to write smut more often once they become more confident in their smut writing: Temperance has always been a relatively smutty character, as we've noted going through old blogs (all links to previous blogs included in pt. i to peruse for yourself, if you don't believe us) with head-canons running from one face-claim to the next. we will post some examples, but won't go too hard on it, since this is a pretty silly thing anyway. especially considering that Djaq shouldn't have been able to tell a significant difference. especially if Djaq hadn't been keeping up with her.

not sure if this is enough for Djaq to remove this from her DNI/posts. However Djaq is always free to peruse Nova's blogs for more insight. anyway, this lead us to wish to inquire about what we've personally been wondering about, and waiting for. waiting for what we would argue, is a very long time. this is considering that it's been years since the callouts have begun coming out, from Djaq's side. no matter what the different claims over the years have been, (made by Djaq): the establishing claim that ties the entire basis of Djaq's arguments together, is the alleged fact of the obvious similarities between the two characters. the similarities between Temperance, and Gaea. our thoughts above on the situation will be made more clear in the ask we've tried to send. this ask will be included below. this ask was NOT answered publicly. we thought it was important to send the ask, as we feel like no real research has been put into this topic and everything has been word of mouth. where is the side-by-side comparison of bios? wouldn't this prove or disprove everything once and for all? we think it should, so why would Djaq not give that information if Djaq has evidence she hasn't posted about the alleged copying? see below: first, we asked politely if she had the screenshots of the biographies she could post, so that we could see whether the characters in question were at all similar. we got a response, however in private. here is the screenshot:

an odd thing considering Djaq has claimed to have nothing to hide. However, Djaq also claims to have evidence. Nova has never called Djaq a fetishizer as we know of - again, links provided for your perusing pleasure in part i, as well as the claims we mention in this paragraph. please reference this, if you're confused. anyway, now we need to clear up the obvious issue with all of this. please note, we did not receive ANY type of response to this ask, posted below:

we asked Djaq if she would be willing to go on record with the response to the above ask, and the one we received a private answer to. we gave Djaq two hours or so to respond, before sending this:

we tried to go about this as politely as possible, and definitely understand and will own up to the faults of the behavior displayed by us. however, we did want to give Djaq the opportunity to clear the record herself. we will not embellish to speak badly about Djaq, as this is not what we want to do. we don't know Djaq personally, and have no personal issues with Djaq. However, as we said we thought this was a VERY important point, and it was unfair to keep this out of the narrative when it seems like such an easy thing to prove or deny. shortly after sending this ask, we were blocked from this account by Djaq. this leads us to this post, where we will post the two bios of Temperance and Gaea below. (we will also be posting another version of temp's stats where the main verse changes from Temperance being a doctor to a baker, as well as a link to the google doc) The first bio of Temperance's is from before the face-claim change, and before the 'drama' began. The second bio is after Temperance's face was changed from Jenna to Beyonce. The third bio, is Gaea's. The bio for Gaea is taken from the blog unecrth. the link below contains the biography.

we won't say much about the bios as you can gather as an adult human being, whether the characters are as similar as everyone has thus-far been lead to believe. Jenna Coleman bio of Nova's:

Beyonce bio of Nova's:

main verse / link to google doc (Temperance/Nova) (we ran out of image space so reference as you wish)

again, you can do with this information what you want. we advocate asking us any questions and we'll try our best to answer them with the knowledge we have.

the last thing i'd like to mention is in reference to part i, as we'd like to make it clear that we do know of one single post of Nova's addressing the drama over the years, which can be found here: https://www.tumblr.com/khalaesi/722030543652388864/i-am-here-to-write-my-barbies-and-to-just-have?source=share

Djaq has directly addressed this post: https://www.tumblr.com/thewhorrcrs/724061589272133632/im-going-to-take-a-moment-to-address-something?source=share

nova's statement on this post:

'i really wrote this cause i'm tired. but it wasn't really directly at her either. i don't mention her and frankly wasn't vaguing. i was just venting, is what i was doing. i even put it under a read more because no one who didn't want to read it, would have. just airing out my thoughts, really for the first time publicly. i try to keep my following very separate from hers. i knew there was a possibility she could see it since she legitimately said she would be keeping an eye on me. but there are more serious issues on tumblr than just two people who enjoy an artist using the same faceclaim. that's what all that at the bottom was about. i've spent years bettering myself, and have tried to change for the better, so i was just finally tired because after years, even after a whole two year hiatus, nothing changed.'

other than that, you will not find one negative word about Djaq on a blog of Nova's. again, you can find the links to Nova's blogs in part i. we hope this helps broaden the story and thank you for reading. have a lovely day!

@whorrcr