it is hard to explain without sounding vain or stupid - but the more attractive others find you, the more you're allowed to do. the easier your life is.
i have been on both sides of this. i am queer and cuban. i grew up poor. for a long time i didn't know "how" to dress - and i still don't. i make my sister pick out any important outfits. i have adhd in spades: i was never "cool and quiet", i was the weird kid who didn't understand how "normal" people behave. i was bullied so hard that the "social outcasts" wouldn't even talk to me.
i got my teeth straightened. i cut my hair and learned how to style it. i got into makeup. it didn't matter, at first, if i actually liked what i was doing - it mattered how people responded to it. like a magic trick; the right dress and winged eyeliner and suddenly i was no longer too weird for all of it. i could wear the ugly pokemon shirt and it was just "ironic" or a "cute interest."
when i am seen as pretty, people listen. they laugh at my jokes. they allow me to be weird and a little spacey. i can trust that if i need something, people will generally help me. privilege suddenly rushes in: pretty does buy things. pretty people get treated more gently.
i am the same ugly little girl, is the thing. still odd. still not-quite-fitting-in. still scrambling. still angry and afraid and full of bad things. of course it became my obsession. of course i stopped eating. i had seen, in real time, the exact way it could change my life - simply always be perfect, and things can be easy. people will "overlook" all the other things. i used to have panic attacks at the idea others would see me without makeup - what would they think? even for a simple friend hangout, i'd spend a few hours getting ready. after all, it seemed so obvious to me: these people liked me because i was pretty.
i worry about how much i'm being a bad activist: i understand that "pretty" is determined by white, het, cis, able-bodied hegemonies. if i was really an ally, wouldn't i rally against all of this? recently there's been a "clean girl" trend which copies latinx aesthetics: dark slicked-back hair, hoop earrings. i almost never wear my hair like that; i can hear the middle school guidance counsellor advising me that i might fare better if i toned it down on the culture.
the problem is that i can take pretty on and off. that i have seen how different my life is on a day where i try and a day where i don't. i told my therapist i want to believe the difference is confidence, but it's not. and when you have seen it, you can't unsee it. it lives inside your brain. it rots there; taunting. i get rewarded for following the rules. i am punished for breaking them. end of story.
pretty people can get what they want. pretty people can feel confident without others asking where they got their nerve from. pretty people can be weird and different. pretty people get to have emotions; it's different when they get aggressive, it's pretty when they cry with frustration.
of course people care about this. of course it has crawled into you. of course you want to be seen as attractive. it's not vanity: it's self-preservation.
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if jake isn’t firestar’s father, is tallstar still just as obsessed and parental with firestar?
imo, the funniest headcanon in warriors is that jake isn’t firestar’s father but tallstar is such a pining idiot he looks at any orange cat and sees his former crush. if he was alive to see all the fire spawn he would absolutely lose it.
noooOOOO I know everyone likes that but (quickly pauses to check ur pronouns, sees no pronouns listed) FRIEND i don't like that retcon at all, not even a tiny little bit
In TPB, Tallstar doesn't softball Fireheart until he's proven himself as someone very different from a standard Clan cat... even after he goes to fetch him from exile, he's standing firm that WindClan cannot forever be in ThunderClan's 'debt'. He even repays ThunderClan's "kindness" by attacking them over not executing a blinded Brokentail.
He ISN'T obsessed with Fireheart, he barely even speaks particularly nicely about him until Fireheart goes against Bluestar's DIRECT orders to stop war with WindClan, trying to rally ThunderClan for peace and broker a peace deal. I think it's actually a very good, touching development that Fireheart's actions end up causing peace with WindClan in a way previously unseen by Forest Four.
What sucks most about TPB is how they pivot, in the end, to say "status quo good" when the whole arc before that is a testament to how Bluestar and her protege Fireheart challenge that idea. Dethroning Brokenstar, fetching WindClan, feeding RiverClan which Blue only slaps Fire on the wrist for...
But it makes it a better story that Tallstar was always going to have a good opinion of Fireheart because he looks like a gay lover he had in his 20s???
I feel like it makes TPB worse and makes the WindClan Rebellion pathetic
Why couldn't it actually be that Tallstar truly wanted peace, but misjudged Onewhisker because he barely knew him? Why are we stripping away the tragedy that is Tallstar making a hasty, naive decision in the hopes of a better world, only to plunge his Clan into even more chaos? Not realizing that friendship is only easy when it's not under pressure, forgetting to consider how insidious Clan culture can be, and what sorts of horrors he was about to shackle Onewhisker to?
Why do we have to turn this into Tallstar trying to giving his ex-lover's son a political freebie, because they're both gingers? I don't like it at all. I don't like Pining Idiot Tallstar. I like it most as a naive choice which, up in heaven and far away, he now deeply regrets.
Thinking about it, you could say that BB!Tallstar's theme is naivety. Naive to think that he always understands the rules, and that he can 'have his cake and eat it too.'
He couldn't bring his son Fly to the Clan and expect him to stay innocent. He couldn't end the Shadow/Wind War while claiming the Mouthermouth Moorland. He couldn't wait until the last minute to change his deputy and expect the new leader to be what he wanted.
ANYWAY YEAH lmao sorry, got carried away. TLDR no. I know it's a popular headcanon and I don't knock on folks who like it, but it's not my cuppa tea. I very intentionally am retconning the retcons. Retconception if you will
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Does Tim come back before Dick shows up or after bc in my head it's like.
Tim: hi sorry guys i was in Hawaii. im alive tho
Dick, three knives in hand: do you want to kill Tony Zucco with me.
Tim: Sure. Who the hell are you?
I only have a very hazy timeline in my head but I think they get Dick when tim is still actively JJ- and then he disappears. So all Dick really knows about him is that he was loved and then...SOMETHING happened but he's 9. He's just a baby. They don't tell him the details. Then next thing he knows he's 10 and Tim is back?? And he's gonna go kill zucco for real this time.
I do think Tim would just immediately ride or die for this little circus boy. Dick is charming and fun and also has a very clear and focused direct rage and Tim can work with that. That's very easy to understand.
Whether or not he Damian and Tim DO kill Zucco I'm up in the air about but I think they'd give it a shot.
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there was one guy in a forum long ago who asked me about Posadism because I'm Argentine and I didn't know how to tell him I had never heard of it before the internet and I was not 100% convinced it's not some sort of fake or prank
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