there's something about the way people talk about john gaius (incl the way the author writes him) that is like. so absent of any connection to te ao māori that it's really discomforting. like even in posts that acknowledge him as not being white, they still talk about him like a white, american leftist guy in a way that makes it clear people just AREN'T perceiving him as a māori man from aotearoa.
and it's just really serves to hammer home how powerful and pervasive whiteness and american hegemony is. because TLT is probably the single most Kiwi series in years to explode on the global stage, and all the things i find fraught about it as a pākehā woman reading a series by a pākehā author are illegible to a greater fandom of americans discoursing about whether or not memes are a valid way of portraying queer love.
idk the part of my brain that lights up every time i see a capital Z printed somewhere because of the New Zealand Mentioned??? instinct will always be proud of these books and muir. but i find myself caught in this midpoint of excitement and validation over my culture finding a place on the global stage, frustration at how kiwi humour and means of conveying emotion is misinterpreted or declared facile by an international audience, frustrated also by how that international audience runs the characters in this book through a filter of american whiteness before it bothers to interpret them, and ESPECIALLY frustrated by how muir has done a pretty middling job of portraying te ao māori and the māoriness of her characters, but tht conversation doesn't circulate in the same way* because a big part of the audience doesn't even realise the conversation is there to be had.
which is not to say that muir has done a huge glaring racism that non-kiwis haven't noticed or anything, but rather that there are very definitely things that she has done well, things that she has done poorly, things that she didn't think about in the first book that she has tacked on or expanded upon in the later books, that are all worthy of discussion and critique that can't happen when the popular posts that float past my dash are about how this indigenous man is 'guy who won't shut up about having gone to oxford'
*to be clear here, i'm not saying these conversations have never happened, just that in terms of like, ambient posts that float round my very dykey dash, the discussions and meta that circulate on this the lesbian social media, are overwhelmingly stripped of any connection to aotearoa in general, let alone te ao māori in specific. and because of the nature of american internet hegemony this just,,,isn't noticed, because how does a fish know it's in the ocean u know? i have seen discussions along these lines come up, and it's there if i specifically go looking for it, but it's not present in the bulk of tlt content that has its own circulatory life and i jut find that grim and a part of why the fandom is difficult to engage with.
“It could be that the loss of her children drove the Queen deeper into her darker desires...but, I don’t believe she was fighting against them that hard before that particular tragedy. No monster does.” (Patreon)
Bonus:
Hmm, wonder what he could cover those holes with :3c
“no American has experienced the true ramifications of climate change yet” and you go to their bio and they were born after 2005 . yep that makes sense
“like, I get that you think I’d get along really well with your family, but I really don’t feel safe going to a new place.”
“ yeah, but my parents place is not-safe I know, you know? Sometimes the danger you’re familiar with is easier.”
” look, I’m sure your family is safe and not threatening, but everywhere feels unsafe to me. If the one place where I am supposed to be safe is not, how could I possibly feel safe anywhere else?”
“ I get that you want me safe. I get it. I’m just… I’m just scared.” sniffle
naruto crack au where kakashi manages to successfully drill the "never abandon your comrades" thing into team seven's heads
so when sasuke deserts naruto and sakura immediately desert with him. like he gets to the village gates and they're just waiting for him bags packed like "what took u so long we doing this or what"
he tries to get them to go back bc of course he does. "no you losers this is about me i'm going to kill my brother. also i'll have to kill my best friend for the super sharingan and you two are like the only people i talk to". but they do not listen. teamwork sasuke we will defeat your brother (OUR brother #communism) with the power of teamwork. just like kakashi-sensei said
suddenly orochimaru has to deal with three horrible little goblins with an even more codependent relationship than his old team