#do i really care: also no. as long as its not whitewashing.

[nexility-sims]

what's something you'd like to see more of on royal simblr?

the timing of this was brilliant, actually, because i had been thinking for several days that i would like to make some sort of entirely uncalled for, roughly edited psa post about What I Think Royal Simblr Needs To Prioritize More :^) anyway, you also touched on this in your own answer, so it’s an echo of that too :^) it's very long, but i had a lot to say about the topic i've chosen. i should also preface by saying that it's not meant as a blanket negative statement or even an objective prescription; it's just based on my own observation and anecdotal experience.

in short, royal simblr needs more cultural diversity !

there are two big reasons why i feel this way: one, the entire premise is suspect because it so easily verges into uncritically reproducing and whitewashing an awful institution; and two, cultural diversity is actually more engaging and interesting than a community that feels monocultural (esp when said culture is a hegemonic colonial product whose dominance is based on plunder, oppression, and destruction of both entire peoples and the planet itself).

personally, i want to be part of a community where folks are 1) actively curious about the wider world and its cultures and 2) comfortable incorporating their own cultures in their stories. it’s true that the bias is perhaps partly because many royalty references in the real world may not have great english sources for a predominantly english-speaking community to use. but, i don’t think that’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. i am absolutely not a person who likes to consciously write myself into my stories, to be clear. that being said, i do ask myself, “what experiences or knowledge do i have that deserve representation?” we write our stories for ourselves but, frankly, i would venture many of us have internalized messages that make us devalue our own backgrounds or doubt others will be interested in content outside of the often white, often western mainstream. in my experience, the royal simblr community places high value on researching and replicating the norms of contemporary western european royalty—particularly the british royal family. the truth is that same care and respect could be put into other histories and perspectives, if the motivation existed to do so.

so, another approach, beyond drawing on your own experiences, is doing the research to respectfully depict or be inspired by a culture that isn't your own. the onus for representation cannot be squarely on the most marginalized of us, even if we'd likely produce the best version of it. if i had chosen to write a story about a fake british royal family, i'd have felt guilty about not writing a story full of brown people from the americas; that representation wouldn't really exist if i wasn't making it for myself. consequently, culture shifts require everyone to do their part, whether as creators, collaborators, or readers. i'd also venture that most of us appreciate when outsiders believe our cultures are valuable and beautiful—when they want to know or experience our clothing, food, and music in ways that are not fetishizing, exploitative, or appropriating. that's part of why tumblr is filled with guides and tutorials to writing characters from all walks of life, from ethnicity to disability to gender; the resources exist, and people want to see them used. it doesn't even have to be your entire story ! individual characters or plot lines can give good representation if you make that a priority.

in my own story, i've blended the two approaches. i think about my own, my family's, and my friends' experiences of indigeneity in what's currently the united states; i've also blended it with my interests in iberian and latin american histories, especially indigenous mexico, among other elements closer to u.s. history. my story isn't a direct replica of any real world place or people, but the culture is based on imagination, research, and feedback. if someone has a critique or feels offended for whatever reason, i want to be humble enough to accept it and make changes. one of the amazing things about this corner of tumblr is that our community loves to help others. learning in public—experimenting, sharing parts of yourself, being creative—is never easy, but it's easier to do when you're part of a community that offers grace and encouragement. my opinion is also that people are more willing to share their expertise and welcome your work if you demonstrate, not just good intentions, but that you've done your homework to the best of your ability.

i want to be clear, too: there's a place for storytelling as conscious critique of the institution, and there are storytellers in this community whose cultures happen to be the ones that are overrepresented. this isn't an indictment of the good stories and good fun people are having. i'm just taking this as an opportunity to offer constructive criticism and give people the encouragement or permission to try something different. why not use your creativity to incorporate other sources of inspiration—or to imagine a different and better world, even?

at the end of the day, everyone can do whatever they want with their hobbies. we can't all be doing social justice on simblr dot com and, frankly, probably shouldn't be ! it is nonetheless true that some of us don't get to enjoy our hobbies uncritically. we can't log onto tumblr and scroll through sims stories and be blissfully unaware of the politics of representation. "royalty" doesn't just connote pretty tiaras and fancy titles for all of us. people who are marginalized in the real world are part of this community. its representation signals to us how welcome we and the stories we have to tell really are.

most or all of us are imagining our countries to be part of the same fictional world. it's just my personal opinion, but i don’t think that world should be mostly fake europe plus specifically the settler colonial parts of fake non-europe. my challenge to everyone would be to think about whether your story could or should meaningfully contribute to a fuller, more realistic representation of the world we've created as a collective within this community.

[artemis-entreri]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but can you please post links to your review of Lolth's Warrior? I love your reviews and can't find your Lolth's Warrior one. Thanks!

[[ Greetings!

Not a dumb question at all! ^_^ The reason that you can't find it is because it doesn't exist. XD In fact, I still haven't read the book yet, and I don't know when/if I will. I'm thinking that this is a good thing, as apparently even among the most diehard Drizzt fans there have been some very negative reactions to Lolth's Warrior, more so than ever.

If you follow me, you've probably noticed a significant drop in my activity. I've been greatly enjoying investing my time in other things, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while now but my brain wouldn't stop being hung up over these characters. It's no secret that I've been tired of Salvatore's BS for a long time, but I was too invested in the characters to be able to move on.

I think what finally helped me flip the switch is WotC investing a shitload of money to make Drizzt products, especially with whitewashed Artemis even though it's 2023. With the context of them also giving the excuse that they couldn't pay the other creatives who worked on their setting at market standard rates in the past along with their actions with the OGL earlier in the year, well, suffice to say that while I haven't respected Salvatore for a long time I did respect WotC, however after everything that happened this year, that has changed. I'm not sure how much WotC execs are responsible for the recent mass lay-offs, which in itself is really bad, but the fact that Mike Mearls was finally let go doesn't really help WotC's case for me because it only serves as a reminder of how Mearls wasn't fired earlier for assisting his sex abuser friend (he was instead quietly shuffled to the video games division for a while). When Mearls returned to the D&D division, about half a dozen female D&D staffers quit at the same time. This says to me that WotC cares more about a male sex abuser supporter than they do about all those female members of their staff, and it makes me question whether they care about women and oppressed groups in general. I've really started to question how much hypocrisy is present in their making a huge show of being LGBT+ inclusive; recent D&D products do indeed include a lot of LGBT+ representation, but how much of that is due to Jeremy Crawford having to fight to get it in there each time? How could WotC continue to march in Pride parades with pomp and circumstance while allowing the Mearls incident to have transpired?

When the OGL snafu happened, a friend made the comment that WotC may have had its ups and downs in the past but overall was generally viewed in a positive light by many, but that the OGL fiasco has probably bankrupted them from a "good will" perspective for a while. This is basically where I'm at with the company now. I still care a great deal about Ed Greenwood and the authors who penned the works that led me to fall in love with the world so hard, and while I still play D&D and care about FR, I'm at a point where I feel like WotC has demonstrated a clear lack of regard for their own Drizzt franchise, so much so that they don't even bother to get basic facts about one of its primary characters correct. As such, what's the point in me continuing to care? While I also don't care about how WotC feels about me as an individual fan, I've long been distasteful of how dismissive they are of their most dedicated fans, the ones who have spent hundreds of thousands of unpaid hours curating the (in)consistencies of their universe that they themselves can't be bothered to maintain. I can understand the reasons for WotC actively instructing their creatives to not use the FR Wiki, but it's painfully obvious that those creatives including Salvatore still use it to keep their facts straight because there is no comparable official resource for them internally with the company itself. Furthermore, the stuff that WotC is continuing to do suggest that they have no intention to change that, quite the opposite in fact. It was quite eyebrow-raising when WotC compared their D&D franchise to the Marvel universe, because what makes the Marvel universe so compelling and successful is the very self-consistency that WotC is trying to do away with in D&D. A big part of the reason why Marvel movies are loved is because it's the same characters that recur, and you never know if a character from a different movie will show up in the movie you're currently watching, but it's always a delight when they do. And, of course, it's so epic when all of those storylines across many different movies all come together and culminate in truly astounding ways. Despite the usage of an infinite multiverse in Marvel, there's this big sense of consistency, which is what makes the franchise so impressive and compelling. Marvel's world is everything that D&D's is not, at least in D&D's current iteration. Even though many different stories across a shared world is part of the draw of FR for me, I don't need D&D to be like Marvel, however because WotC made that comparison of the current D&D world to the Marvel world, I can't help but feel like WotC is more talk than action. I'm not at all saying that D&D isn't a quality product, it's just for me the shine of WotC is no longer there.

I think the biggest indicator for me that I was ready to shift my focus was my lukewarm reception of Baldur's Gate 3. It is everything that I hoped for and more for a current generation Forgotten Realms/D&D video game, and yet I was just ok about it. Here is FINALLY something that I spent so many years dreaming about, getting more and more hungry for it following the flops of Sword Coast Legends and the Dark Alliance reboot, but when it finally happened, I was just ok about it. It's a fantastic game and 110% deserving of its awards and its huge fan acclamation, and yet I was just ok about it. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the game, but I can't see myself playing it again.

I'm still happy to help and support the people in this fandom, be it by answering lore questions, suggesting novels to read, pointing the way to resources, or with more serious matters. I don't know how much new content I'll make though, I've got a bunch of WIPs in terms of art and writing, as well as miscellaneous drafts containing information about the world, but I don't know if I'll ever feel like finishing them/polishing them up to post. It's very freeing to no longer feel compelled to read each new Drizzt book because the drop in quality with each new installment has really been immense, and I'm a lot happier not spending those hours consuming really badly-written media. I do feel bad for no longer providing for those who want to know what's happening in the newer books but don't feel like reading them and who want to know a non-sycophantic summary of them, but hey, maybe someone will step up and fill in the summaries for the books. I'm not really sure why none of the diehard Drizzt/Salvatore super fans have undertaken the task since Hero. Wikis are editable by anyone, but the Wiki staff do try to make sure that everything is objective and factual.

If you're trying to find my old stuff, I'm sorry that my tags are kind of all over the place, I never got around to organizing them better. 😅 I *think* I've reblogged all of my LoD art to my otp-jartemis sideblog, but now that I look at it I see that's probably not the case. If you like my art though and want to continue seeing it even if it's not in this fandom, it'll be on my non-fandom specific blog: sno4wy.tumblr.com

This isn't goodbye, as I'll still be here now and then, I just won't be as invested, which is honestly a really great feeling. :> ]]

[solarpunkcast]

i’ve got issues with perfectionism due to my ✨many neurodivergencies✨, which makes being a leftist tricky sometimes, because my brain is telling me that if i’m not the best at infosec in the world, i am a failure. do you know any quotes or anything that might be a nice thing to fall back on when being a leftist is tiring? like a “if the situation was hopeless they wouldn’t need propaganda” sorta deal?

okay well the first thing is that whether you're a leftist or not, whether you ignore it or not, capitalism is an ongoing class war. so this is as much of a state of becoming/being as it is learning; what that means is your awareness is as much of an asset as your knowledge is. like most things in life, there is not an endpoint--so you cannot frame this as a goal to cross off or even a checklist to follow. it is a part of you that you will carry around. because at its core, your leftism needs to come from kindness, empathy, and love. there is no justice without these things. there will be no true liberation without these things.

“if the situation was hopeless they wouldn’t need propaganda” is like the tip of that idea: while true, it ignores the underlying fact that that Propaganda requires billions on billions of dollars to even function. Every. Single Year. There is quite literally no limit to the amount of money that capitalists would spend on anticommunist and revisionist propaganda in order to stop us from agitating against them. Nothing they wouldn't do to prevent actual, lasting change from happening.

In a way, that's fucking pathetic! How shitty of an existence that must be. They even understand how precarious their position is... we don't really see coverage about this, but the aristocrats and capitalists have admitted they're scared--especially about a climate collapse that would unequivocally destroy their power structures for good. They've lived with this fear, passed it down through the generations even. How fucking pathetic is that? To curse your entire ancestry with this fear because you refuse to share? Reductive maybe, but down at the core that's what it really is right? An absolute refusal to commune with the rest of us human beings, to the detriment of our lives and everything else on this planet. That and their arbitrary system that tells themselves they're superior and special.

Living under it is fucking terrifying though, which is why leftists, revolutionaries, and other radicals have always come together through the arts and oratory, as well as celebrations of community, culture, and shared history.

There is no comprehensive list I could give you on quotes or speeches to read, nor music to listen to. I've been digging around for a couple hours now and I'm not even sure what examples to provide. There is a ton, like truly a TON of stuff out there to help. My suggestion would be to dig into your country's history of leftists, its revolutionary speeches and music, its folk music, its art and agitprop first. Then save those and come back to them whenever you need them.

If you live in the US, this would be figures like Angela Davis, Ursula K Le Guin, Eugene Debs, James Baldwin, Pete Seeger, Bill Haywood, Fred Hampton, the IWW, Murray Bookchin, David Graeber, Cesar Chavez...

Learn about the historical figures who had their leftism whitewashed like Martin Luther King Jr, Helen Keller, Harry Belafonte, Paul Robeson, Jane Fonda, Albert Einstein...

Cultivating a love for humanity as a whole instead of fostering misanthrophy is also a big thing to help combat exhaustion and burnout. I have a #humans are good actually tag that I use to help with this myself. Even reading up on anthropology can help! Cases like Shanidar I teaches us that community support and care is what helped us survive, not the individualism that capitalism preaches.

This has already been pretty long so I'll leave you with my two favorite quotes on this subject, from Angela Davis and Ursula K Le Guin respectively:

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”

"You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere."

[wishing-stones]

Do you think think that the boys would have a favorite human holiday?

I would pay good money to see their first reaction to Halloween lmao

Killer loves Halloween on principal. Good opportunity to stir up some chaos and violence and cover it up as "spooky fun." He can also run around and get as much chocolate as he likes, tease people, scare people, and occasionally put assholes in their place if they're picking on innocent kids for their candy. Dust enjoys the holiday season in general. The spirit of community, cozy nights by the fire with a warm, comforting drink, the lights... all kind of remind him of simpler bygone times. Axe likes any holiday that gives him an excuse to cook a bunch of food. Monsters likely have an equivalent of Thanksgiving without the whitewashed baloney that's likely some celebration of unity. More than likely a 'monsters got to the surface' holiday, but he doesn't care as long as he cooks. (by the same stroke, he likes the holiday season/Gyftmas, and Easter, too.) Cross likes Independence Day. Monsters have their own, his world even had one in its last timeline, and it reminds him that he's fought hard for his own independence. He also likes fireworks. I'm omitting Baggs from this because I really haven't the foggiest idea. He's too involved in his research and science to really notice holidays, I think. Maybe New Years? Nightmare likes Halloween, too. He gets to be all spooky and dramatic and get little jumpscare snacks whenever he wants. Sure, people are having fun, but there's also a lot of easy fear to prey on. He can also be pretty open and have others think he's wearing a costume while directly interacting with people. It does his dramatic heart good.

Dream loves Gyftmas. It's such a happy holiday and gives him a good reason to celebrate and show his love for his friends and family. Humans are pretty happy around the holiday season, too, so he just kind of relishes in it and goes ham. Ink is a fan of Easter for the sake of painting eggs and having egg hunts. He can even hide them from himself, wait a few hours, and go look because he's totally forgotten where they are. Plus, it's just good clean fun. Blue likes St. Patrick's Day because... it's such a human holiday, and it's just fun. An excuse to playfully poke at other people for not wearing green, for some frankly pretty awesome food, and to get absolutely plastered with your friends? Sign him up, it sounds like a blast.

Error likes Cinco De Mayo because Undernovella has a routine special for it.

Everyone is largely amused at Halloween, and aren't scandalized at all by skeleton decorations. Everyone knows that humans are descended from skeletons, after all. ...Or they know that humans have skeletons supporting their insides, so they view skeletons as a scary reminder of their mortality, and that is fun for them to play with (read: Nightmare et al)

[navree]

Lowkey hate race swapping sometimes. Now hear me out!

I don't mind when people race swap chatacters I just hate it when changing their race would totally change the entire story or have a lot of implications to the story.

I don't mind when fictional charcater race are changed but I hate it when they change a characters race who are suppose to be a certain race for a reason. When they chnage those types of characters a lot of time it changes the narrative of the story and their actions.

Same with historical show or documentaries. If this real life figure was another than they were we would have completely different story on our hands. Like please open a history book.

Listen, when it comes to fictional characters "racebending" means nothing to me unless it's whitewashing (Titans casting a white actor to play Dick Grayson and the MCU casting a white actress to play Wanda Maximoff when they are both literally canonically Romani both ethnically and culturally is my villain origin story) because fiction is fiction, and honestly you can tweak a story to make a character's journey adapt to the new inclusion of them being a member of a minority class so long as you're talented enough. Most writers aren't, and that's why a lot of "oh we made X character a POC in this adaptation" moves tend to ring hollow, but it is possible.

But I have a genuine bone to pick when it's about history.

For one, it's just such a lazy move. "Oh we made Bess of Hardwick Chinese!" fantastic but you do know that Chinese people existed in the late 16th century right? Like, China was a country with a lot of people in it and a thriving culture and way of life and plenty of influential people living there. Why aren't we telling stories about a Chinese woman living in that time period, it's not like that period of Chinese history was dull or as if no one ever mattered or nothing ever happened there. Like, for God's sake, it's just a way of showing that you aren't actually interested in learning about other parts of the world, or decentering Western history, specifically European history, as the only history worth learning about, you just want brownie points for being diverse without actually putting in the work to learn about the vibrant world that existed outside of Europe for the vast majority of human history, aka doing anything to actually explore different non-Western narratives and how the world moved outside of the European bubble.

For two, like you said, a lot of the time "racebending" doesn't really include attempts to accommodate how the history would change. Bridgerton is a wish fulfillment fantasy show so I don't often care about how it deals with history (even tho I do think the Charlotte was black theory is complete bunk and I refuse to engage with people who think it's real) but its whole "and now England is desegregated" thing falls very flat when you remember how involved England was in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, how reliant it was on slave labor, how invested it was in capturing and buying and selling slaves, including the royals. It puts a lot of onus on characters that they've made POC without doing any of the work, and oftentimes deals in a lot of harmful stereotypes. This was seen most egregiously in the 2021 Anne Boleyn show that cast Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne. @duchessofferia discussed this much better than I will, but relying on the same old lazy tropes that have defined Anne Boleyn with a black woman playing her turned into genuinely harmful racial representation. Having Anne be sexually aggressive and domineering and harsh in her mannerisms, especially when compared to Jane Seymour, isn't new, but having a black woman be looming over a small white woman and being sexually aggressive with her feeds into harmful stereotypes about black women and their femininity, and by having George Boleyn also be black, painting him as a sexual deviant and adding a plot where he abandons his responsibilities as a father turns him into the "absent black baby daddy" trope that still does a lot of harm to black men today. Not to mention, changing George Boleyn's race but keeping the rumor about Jane Boleyn lying on the stand to incriminate him turns a "wife turns against her husband for unknown reasons" story into a "white woman accuses a black man of sexual inpropriety that his society would frown on for the purpose of getting him executed by the state" story, which has a long and incredibly dark history in the United States (it's basically the Scottsboro Boys but Renaissance now). I mean, it's basically my primary issue with Hamilton, that the show really wants to capitalize on the whole "America then as told by America now" thing without delving into what it means to have literal slaveowners portrayed by black men and to have the character of Thomas fucking Jefferson call Sally Hemmings by a pet name in that show without any introspection into the fact that she wasn't his girlfriend but, you know, a woman he full on owned and repeatedly raped. It's all surface level and generally causes a lot more problems by refusing to alter the history to deal with these new changes, because it's history and you can't really alter it without creating a host of problems.

With Cleopatra specifically, I mentioned it before but the Ptolemies were total fuckups and literal colonizers in and of themselves, and turning them from a Macedonian dynasty into actual people of color for some kind of narrative (like there aren't any other important women of color in history, or even that time period) while not attempting to even examine the history of that dynasty and that queen in particular doesn't sit right. Like, congratulations, you've now created a story where a woman of color's most important contributions in life were her relationships with white men who held significantly more power than her and over her country, and fucked up to such a degree that her country wouldn't even be considered its own country until the 1950s. How absolutely groundbreaking. Next you're gonna tell me it's subversive to paint Livia Drusilla as a scheming, conniving bitch who manipulated everyone around her, instead of a sexist and tired trope that exists only to demonize one of the few women of actual importance in Augustan Rome because she was half a decade older than her husband and was able to keep her own power after he died. It's not just a lack of intellectual curiosity or good storytelling, but a fundamental misunderstanding of why people want to see stories about people of color, and how Hollywood itself thinks so little of their audience that they think we'll be content with a simple coat of "hey this person's a minority now!" paint over a subject without any attempt to really look into things or understand why the world works the way it does or how these people shaped their lives or the lives of those around them, never mind the new messages you're sending now with these changes.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. There's a lot that can fuck up with historical representation in media, and representation of people of color in media in general can always be so incredibly fucked that giving people anything is oftentimes a win in and of itself. But I honestly think that focusing on the same Euro-centric stories and just switching around Pantone skin swatches to do the bare minimum is lazy and insulting. You want me to care about historical stories about people of color? Great, give me historical stories about actual people of color. Let me hear more about ethnic Egyptians, about their lives and their culture and how they influenced history, not ahistorical trash that causes more trouble than its worth and certainly isn't doing anything new or interesting with the subject.

[myrddin-wylt]

me learning more about post-independence Argentine history like

"The country that has been most ‘successful’ in white-washing its population, history and culture is Argentina."

https://afropunk.com/2018/07/argentinas-black-population-has-been-systematically-erased-removed-in-whitewashing-effort/

Oh. Um.

I was not expecting anything like that; like that's a pretty significant claim, so let's see if they have the evidence to back it up. (I've included the link further on.)

"[b]y the late 1700s nearly 50 percent of the population in the interior of the country was black, and between 30 and 40 percent of the population of Buenos Aires was black or mulatto. [...] By 1895, there were reportedly so few blacks left in Argentina that the government did not even bother registering African-descended people in the national census."

what the fuck? what the fuck? what the fuck???

Slavery was officially abolished in 1813, but the practice remained in place until about 1853. Ironically, at about this time, the black population of Argentina began to plunge."

Well that's an ominous way to start.

"It has been alleged that the president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, sought to wipe out blacks from the country in a policy of covert genocide through extremely repressive policies (including possibly the forced recruitment of Africans into the army and by forcing blacks to remain in neighborhoods where disease would decimate them in the absence of adequate health care).

Tellingly, Sarmiento wrote in his diary in 1848: “In the United States… 4 million are black, and within 20 years will be 8 [million]…. What is [to be] done with such blacks, hated by the white race? Slavery is a parasite that the vegetation of English colonization has left attached to leafy tree of freedom.”

Jesus CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK?? WHAT THE FUCK???

On a broader scale, the “elimination” of blacks from the country’s history and consciousness reflected the long-cherished desire of successive Argentine governments to imagine the country as an “all-white” extension of Western Europe in Latin America.

“There is a silence about the participation of Afro-Argentines in the history and building of Argentina, a silence about the enslavement and poverty,” said Paula Brufman, an Argentine law student and researcher, according to Planete Afrique.

“The denial and disdain for the Afro community shows the racism of an elite that sees Africans as undeveloped and uncivilized.”

https://www.ibtimes.com/blackout-how-argentina-eliminated-africans-its-history-conscience-1289381

(Including this one too because it quotes the first one and expands on some details.)

https://www.theroot.com/true-or-false-there-are-no-black-people-in-argentina-1790876367

Okay... that's pretty fucking bad, but that's also just three, non-scholarly sources, and they use each other as sources. let's see what else we can find. Let's look specifically for scholarly sources this time. Here, this one is helpful enough to give us its citation style so let's start with that.

Delrio, Walter; Lenton, Diana; Musante, Marcelo; and Nagy, Marino (2010) "Discussing Indigenous Genocide in Argentina: Past, Present, and Consequences of Argentinean State Policies toward Native Peoples," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 5: Iss. 2: Article 3. Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol5/iss2/3/

Okay I really wish I had a subscription to this journal because it looks like a fucking treasure trove on the topic not just regarding Argentina but elsewhere. for now though, we can make do with just this article.

For a long time the historiographical and anthropological narrative in Argentina contributed to a double assumption that is nowadays strongly grounded in citizens’ common sense. On the one hand, the extinction of Indigenous peoples is vaguely dated to a period from the Spanish conquest to the military campaigns known as the ‘‘conquest of the desert’’; on the other hand, such extinction is simultaneously interpreted as a ‘‘natural’’ process in universal history. Argentine state policies were thus naturalized. It is frequently assumed that this set of natural processes might have left only individual ‘‘descendants,’’ in place of political entities. There- fore, modern Argentine society would be the outcome of a European ‘‘melting pot’’ in which the Indigenous component is absent. We postulate that physical elimination, concentration practices, deportation, enslavement, identity cleansing of children, and cultural destruction constitute mechanisms of homogenization that add up to conceptualizing policies toward Indigenous peoples in Argentina as genocide. Ethnic politics following the military campaigns were based on the assumption of the near-‘‘extinction’’ of those peoples. Federal and provincial governments constructed their policies on the basis of considering Indigenous peoples as ‘‘survivors,’’ ‘‘the final remains of an ending culture,’’ ‘‘the few left,’’ and so on, omitting to name the causes of that supposed extinction. Our focus in this article is on current cultural policies that announce intercultural, plurality, and diversity goals while at the same time aiming to limit the margins of Indian political autonomy. We propose that this genocidal project is linked inextricably to the constitution and organization of the Argentine national state.

.......... so I'm speechless but oh God there's MORE THERE'S SO MUCH MORE

The government of Argentina denies any wrongdoing in the 19th Century "Conquest of the Desert" and Selk'nam Genocide. Additionally, Mapuche tribes still face legal and cultural discrimination. Many government officials still deny or dispute the "Dirty War," where an estimated 30,000 leftists were "disappeared."

https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/argentina

Court: Argentine State Bears 'Responsibility' for 1924 Indigenous Massacre

An Argentine court on Thursday found the state responsible for the massacre of more than 400 indigenous people almost a century ago and ordered remedial measures. In July 1924, Argentine police and settlers mowed down hundreds of indigenous people protesting inhumane living and working conditions on cotton plantations in the northern region of Chaco.

https://www.voanews.com/a/court-argentine-state-bears-responsibility-for-1924-indigenous-massacre-/6582098.html

Okay I'm. Going to shut the book on this for now because holy fucking shit.

[fandomshatewomen]

So, I have a novel recommendation. 👀

It’s The Grimrose Girls series by Laura Pohl. It’s very similar to Pretty Little Liars in that it’s about a group of girls who investigate on the death of their friend and are targeted by something ominous that they can’t seem to escape, except that there’s magic and supernatural! The protagonists are all reimagined fairytale characters who study at a boarding school in a castle!

It takes a bit long before something truly mind-blowing happens but let me tell you that once it happens, it gets more and more intense! I’ve only read Book 1 but I’m definitely going to buy Book 2!

In terms of representation, I would say it’s great! Two of the main protagonists are POC! And one of them is a half- Black, half-Native Hawaiian girl with dark brown skin and curly hair, who is casually described as « fat » and it’s so refreshing to see this word being used as simple adjective and not something negative! And she’s not reduced to her fatness! She has a whole, complex, likeable, sweet personality, a sense of fashion and she’s not the « funny » one in the group! She’s also not insecure about her weight and literally nobody cares about it! It’s stated that the only reason why she feels like a she’s a bit of an outsider is because it’s a private school for rich people and also because she’s one of the few Black and students but I liked that there’s no arc or something where she has to deal with racism. The students are only intrigued by her because she’s the « new » girl. Also I love how it’s casually stated that she has a Hawaiian accent!

All of the protagonists are LGBT+! Amongst them, there are two Lesbians and one asexual character! And there’s a trans girl as a love interest! She doesn’t have to deal with transphobia and everybody respects her! It’s even implied that she’s quite popular for being pretty and flirting with many boys! And when she came out, the school quickly changed her name on her papers and she at some point that the school is supportive of trans rights! Her character was very mysterious and intriguing! I can’t wait to find out more about the way her story goes (especially considering which fairytale character she is)!!

I absolutely love this idea of a story that is set in a remote place in Europe with a very medieval vibe where you’d expect to see mostly racist and conservative people but there’s actually people of the global majority and LGBT people living peacefully because while that place is still grounded in reality, it still exists in its own bubble, unaffected by the outside world and its oppressive ideologies and stuff! It’s kind of like Storybrooke from Once Upon a Time (the series is described as a mix of OUAT and PLL, by the way).

I’m really hoping that someday, we will get a TV show based on this series (and that they will cast everybody right because people keep whitewashing Nani, the Hawaiian character, even though she’s literally described word-for-word as Black and dark-brown-skinned multiple times in the book and I’m pretty sure that the people who do that are the same ones that are the first to scream « Make your own characters! » whenever a POC is playing a role that is often white by default)

.

[pertinax--loculos]

So, I accidentally re-read Absent That Night yesterday (which is a whole post unto itself, which I'll probably get around to tomorrow), but I thought in honour of its almost-Second-Birthday, I'd pick some choice lines to share. ^_^

This, obviously, continues under the cut, because dude, it got long. Ten excerpts of varying length, for your perusal. ^_^

1.

Latrell managed one final, almost-genuine smile before he turned away. It evaporated almost immediately, his mind racing ahead, the day stretching out in front of him, formless, pointless. He was going to have to think of something to take up his time. Something that hopefully wouldn’t frustrate him as much as most of this morning had. He’d think of something. He just had to be careful he didn’t end up at a bar. [scene break] Latrell ended up at a bar.

2.

"So here's a fun question," Latrell said, leaning back in his chair. Albie looked up at him from where she was comparing two photos on the desk beside her monitor. Her expression was wary. Latrell tapped his pen rapidly against the edge of the desk. "Why didn't [Nox] carve his signature into her?" Albie pulled a face. "Seriously?" "Yeah, seriously." Latrell sat forward again, holding her gaze. "How much is that book worth? Nearly a million? But who could put a price on a human life? Isn't that the most valuable thing in that room?"

3.

Latrell was two and a half blocks from the relative comfort of Ronan’s apartment when a car screeched to a halt at the curb in front of him and Eliza Laurie toppled out. He almost resisted the urge to groan, and then didn’t bother. Laurie’s grin amped up the wattage by about a thousand percent when she heard it. “Agent Latrell,” she called as she click-clacked up the sidewalk to him. “Spare a moment?” Her lipstick today was the colour of arterial blood. Latrell tried to keep walking, but that only allowed her to invade his personal space that much quicker.

4.

What was decidedly not normal was the huge whitewashed domes rising out of the earth directly ahead of the car. There were five of them, varying in size; the smallest maybe twenty feet across, the largest easily more than fifty. They rose out of the ground like humps, three or so feet high at their apex, their edges invisible beyond the scraggly grass and detritus that had collected around them. The bitumen upon which the car was parked extended all the way to the domes, part of the same infrastructure, and Latrell had the insane impression that they were literally stopped in a long-dead parking lot. He was still blinking. It still wasn't helping. "It's an aquarium," Nox said, inexplicably.

5. [deleted scene]

“You good, sunshine?” Nox said, stepping around Latrell to get to the kettle. Latrell really needed to nip that fucking nickname in the bud. He said, “Yeah. Just thinking. Going over what we know.” Nox arched an eyebrow, though his gaze stayed fixed on the water he poured into his mug. His voice lifted a little, carrying to the rest of the room. “You can share with the class, y’know. We don’t bite.” “I do,” Gault called. Nox rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t stop the quirk at the corner of his mouth. “Well, Mark does. But only in certain contexts.”

6.

“What about your Phone Friends?” Latrell managed to keep the wry twist to a minimum. Nox waved a hand. Broad and expansive, far less carefully controlled than usual. Said, "I am unconvinced of the malleability of the people who live in my phone." "How charmingly enigmatic." Latrell didn't bother to modulate the wryness this time. "I am. I also have a proposal." "Ominous." "Look at you, hitting all my major personality traits!" Even in profile, Latrell could see the crinkle at the corner of his mouth, the parting of his lips, the fine lines fanning from his eyes. Nox took a long swallow from his coffee, continued, "We need more people."

7.

“There’s something else I have to tell you.” Albie shot him a quick glance. “Oh?” Latrell pulled his glasses off, pinched a forefinger and thumb across his eyes. “It’s… complicated, alright? And I’ll go into more detail when we get there. Just figured I shouldn’t spring it on you right after you’ve just met our favourite felon.” “Your favourite felon, maybe,” Albie said. The teasing note didn’t quite conceal the apprehension, the disapproval apparent in the downturn of her mouth. She compensated by adding, “I’m yet to form an opinion.”

8.

He didn’t hesitate when he reached the glowing green exit sign. Pushed out the door and emerged into the night. It was cooler still out here. Brighter, too, the moon nearly full, hovering just above the tips of the buildings. The emergency exit opened onto a square of bitumen, bordered on all sides by buildings with their backs turned. Nobody wanted a view of a spit of blacktop. Alleys cut paths between them, leading to… places. Somewhere else. Anywhere else. Nox leant against Ralph’s hood, ankles crossed. He flipped the keys once around his finger as Latrell let the door fall shut behind him. “Where to, sunshine?” he said, voice low, just loud enough to carry across the distance between them.

9.

“Oh no no no, this will not do at all! This is awful! Do you people not have charters against this sort of thing? This is simply inhumane!” Latrell blinked rapidly. His glasses were askew, almost as much as his body, crumpled on the cold hard cot. His limbs screamed as he straightened them, which did nothing for his too-fast breathing or the too-hard slam of his pulse, but at least served to bring him more firmly into the present, into the real and the now. He removed his glasses, wiped savagely at his eyes, replaced them. Surveyed the room in front of him with more mental acuity than the first pass. Wondered if he was still dreaming. Cassandra Nightingale stood in the centre of the room, her back to him. She towered over whoever she was facing, but then she towered over everyone. Filled every space she entered, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, regardless of their relative size. Her dress was different to the one she’d worn at the fundraiser, though would have fit in just as well; layers upon layers of different peach materials, lace and silk and something decidedly poofy, terminating at her ankles in order to show off her terrifyingly high stiletto heels. She shook a finger in the face of whoever she was talking to. Even with her back turned, Latrell had seen the gesture enough to place it. “This is unacceptable! Can you people not see that? Is this some form of passive torture you are trying to inflict upon innocent people? Do I need to remind you that the foundation of our justice system is innocent until proven guilty?”

10.

The thick heavy ball broke free, rising up Latrell’s throat even as he tried to grab it and swallow it back down. [Redacted]’s laugh followed the strangled choked broken sob into the echoing stillness of the room. “Naw, don’t be like that.” [Their] voice was cutting, mocking, coming from every corner and every flat surface of the space. Latrell realised his eyes were still shut. Reluctantly pried them open. For what good it would do him. If [Redaced] didn’t want him to, he’d never see the final blow coming. “What do you say, Latrell? Should we explore more of this old aquarium? I’ll give you a sixty second headstart if you wanna make a run for it.” Beat. A laugh, loud, malicious. “Don’t think you’ll get very far with that amount of time, though. Not on that knee. Let’s say two minutes. What do you think?” “I think,” said a second voice from nowhere and everywhere, “That you talk too fucking much.”

[butwhatifidothis]

Ngl, I think "Claude that kills" is not inherently in and of itself uninteresting or bad. It is kinda basic as a "shocking character twist," but I could in some ways buy Claude being forced to "make hard decisions like these" in times where his foe absolutely refuses to back down and it being more prominent in Hopes - the guy might've offered mercy to Eddie, but she refuses and dies (by Byleth's hand, but still), and kills both the Death Knight and Hubert (plus Ladislava and Randolph) without really pausing.

...but they just... don't explore anything of that idea to make it work in Hopes. He's forced to kill Shahid when Shahid makes it clear he won't stop until he's dead, then... he aligns with Eddie (and while he pays lip service to not trusting her, he then proceeds to parrot her words and become Ede-lite...), callously abandons an ally to die just to make a fight easier (and then this is used to make him learn the lesson that he should totally trust and help Eddie in the future), and enflames a border conflict (which *should* really be a point he'd hesitate over, but naaaah...) just to make his invasion easier...

Like, I could buy a "Claude becomes more willing to kill to protect those he cares about," its a tad lame but sure, but... there's just nothing to explain why he would just become a much worse person in ways that don't make sense to his character. Or, put another way, "morally ambiguous Claude" is fine... But that character SHOULD still be Claude, not "Eddie but worse because we really whitewashed her this game."

Well, there's also to keep in mind that at least with Hubert, upon receiving his letter Claude does lament on being unable to talk with him due to Hubert's stubbornness, after admitting that Hubert might have been a better man than he gave him credit for due to said letter. And however much sense it makes for him to care this much about a classmate he barely knew, he did still get saddened over having to outright kill Edelgard. He was willing to kill them, but only because they were unwilling to compromise and they were so committed to inflicting violence - if he had it his way it would've never come to this.

But, yeah, I do see what you mean otherwise lmao - I didn't mean to say that there's no instance at all where Claude becoming more willing to kill is a bad thing. It's somewhat predictable, but it is one way to get a new experience from Claude for the player to appreciate. But here, it's just all over the place.

It's bad for Claude to sacrifice people who barely a week ago were trying to murder him and his friends and his people so that his own people get out a battle safely. He's throwing away lives, he's no better than nobles who see mercs as disposable, he's broken the GD's trust in him! Invading Faerghus? Bringing in Sreng? Those innocent lives that Claude actually threw away? That's fine - doesn't have to get chewed out for that! People might can mumble about being uncomfy about it in camp, but no more criticisms to Claude's face - not bad enough for that, unlike with Randolph which was obviously worse! /s

It's, like, backwards pretty much. I say that the Randolph Sacrifice is more about him breaking the GD's trust in him than it is about the sacrificing thing even though the scene is mostly about Claude being wrong to sacrifice lives... because that's the lesson that makes more sense to take from it in the long run. It's makes no sense for "sacrificing lives in needless conflict" to be the main cause for concern and upset from the GD regarding Claude's actions, when he goes on to sacrifice way more lives in way more pointless conflicts and they barely give a shit about it. The Sreng shit is fuckin' laughably and infinitely more serious than letting Randolph die, and yet they do not care nearly as much about the former as they do the latter.

And, like, the supposed catalyst for this change in Claude's demeanor is killing Shahid. The guy who was trying to violently conquer Fodlan and was trying to kill Claude in order to do so. So, like... instead of Claude going after Edelgard with this newfound violence - you know, the person who is trying to violently conquer Fodlan and tried to kill him in order to do so - instead he... goes after the Kingdom and Church. Almost completely ignoring the Empire, save for the one thing he does against it... which is the one thing he is actually criticized for doing in his route.

So instead of Claude continuing the fight he had with Edelgard - that fight he was doing pretty damn well in before he Becomes Violence - Claude just mindlessly believes her when she says that Church Bad and focuses all of his giga violence onto it. Isn't it convenient for Edelgard, that Claude had this drastic change in character that pretty much exclusively benefits her? Even with her behaving exactly like the supposed catalyst for Claude's violence, nothing happens to her save for a few generals dying - she even gets her ass saved from the hot water she threw herself in by Claude despite him being more inclined to violent/callous methods of winning now and despite her death allowing for Leicester (and Fodlan) getting peace, lucky lucky!

It's just, like, so obvious that Claude was written to service Edelgard? Like, very, very obvious. Damn near everything he does in GW's Part 2 does nothing to help him and everything to help Edelgard. This isn't a story about how Claude gradually grows more violent before becoming a better version of himself - like I said, he just becomes violent, stays violent, and stagnates completely. This is just the writers making it to where Edelgard can get what she wants at the expense of a group of characters they clearly did not care for

[catcze]

sorry if this is controversial but i want to know, does the racism and orientalism that hyv is doing bother you at all catte? personally its a really heavy thing with me, and i dont like... hearing about positive responses(? i do not know another term) sorry if this is uncomfortable to answer.

Discussion of leaks, racism and orientalism utc !!

Aight aight, I'm gonna try to make this as concise as possible because this is important as hell, and also to bring awareness to the ppl who follow me who might not be aware of the issue. 

It definitely does bother me–– what hyv is doing, generalizing and whitewashing a whole bunch of cultures and ethnicities present in the middle east is not okay. We've been knew that hyv is racist and orientalist, given their track record with the lack of poc characters despite long-time feedback and (from what I've heard) the stereotypical orientalist content in ToT. Although people were genuinely hoping that maybe everyone's negative expectations would be proven wrong and that more poc & culturally-accurate characters would be introduced in Sumeru, the leaks were a huge letdown. It was disappointing, but overall not super surprising.

Literally, if you look at the leaks, an absurd number of the characters are light-skinned. Their archon, who is typically viewed as the figurehead of the country, is a pale girl in a white dress. Nilou, Dori, and Dehya's designs are blatantly orientalist, almost to the point that you'd think their main reference for design had been Aladdin or smthn. Whatever, back to the point. Fact of the matter is that this company is perpetuating a harmful stereotype with these character designs, and they are inaccurately representing a very real group of people. And as it was pointed out on twt, this lack of representation feels all the more disrespectful considering all the care and attention given to Yun Jin's design, too.

Point is, the racism and orientalism is definitely present in Sumeru, and although I'm crossing my fingers that for once the complaints will be listened to and a change will be made, I'm not getting my hopes up. Disliking praise for the designs is a totally legit thing to feel, with all of this going around, and its a totally understandable thing to get upset about. 

[doctorofmagic]

@cannibal-wings​ said:

I like to imagine Victor's arm is around Stephen, even if that's not what's going on.

wdym you like to imagine it? Is it NOT what’s happening? wooiewoiioai I mean, maybe not, but Victor’s arm is UNDER the Cloak of Levitation, which definitely means he’s propping Stephen’s back at the very least 😌

@digicom-online​  said:

The preview is here: https://www.comicsxf.com/2022/07/21/meet-the-sorcerer-supremes-hot-mom-in-our-exclusive-preview-of-strange-4/

I am amused to note that Clea has followed up on her comment in issue #1 and enchanted a suit of armor to act as doorman. ;)

I just saw the preview but I noticed the same thing about the armor haha. I’m gonna post it in a jiffy along with the solicitations!

@mattmurderock​ said:

i’ve been thinking the exact same thing about his interviews. same page besties 👯‍♀️

It’s what every screenwriter keeps saying. “Show, don’t tell.” Waldron can’t do the basics :S glad we're on the same page about this, sometimes I’m afraid I’m being too critical :S

@couldntbedamned​ said:

Honestly my hopes of the MCU doing  characters like Victor Von Doom or Magneto justice are on the ground and I'm sure it'll find a way to dig itself down to hell. Jewish and/or Romani rep is basically non-existent and Victor's Romani heritage is every bit as informative of his character as being a Jewish Holocaust survivor is to Magneto.

I’m with you, sadly. They did the absolute minimum to Marc’s heritage and barely explored his relationship with his father, which is fundamental to Marc’s character till this very day. Wanda and Pietro are atrocities as well, and I can’t remember if they addressed Magneto’s heritage in some of the “new” X-Men movies at some point (because really, I only watched those once so I’m not sure but I also remember a flashback with Erik in a concentration camp but my memory is really foggy about it, sorry). Anyways, this is pathetic all the same because this is PRECISELY what drives Magneto as a character, not a minor detail.

I also wrote a full thread on Victor because, just like Magneto, being part of a persecuted minority is the driving force that shaped these characters.

I’m trying my best to spread awareness but the constant racism, especially when you address the whitewashing in F4 fancasts, is exhausting.

I can’t deal with another Wanda situation, for real. The never-ending racism by Olsen stans is overwhelming and it pains me to see that the MCU is about to commit the same mistake with a fave of mine. I’m so done, I’m really dropping my excitement as a viewer (and thank the Vishanti I’ve never been a fan of the live actions oof)

PS: I’m also gonna leave this thread on Wanda to keep spreading awareness.

@prettywitchiusaka​ said:

Can't say I blame you. My hope is that Ben will pull rank and demand a different writer for the next film. Because while I like Multiverse, I do have issues with it and feel like Waldron should probably be kept away from anything DS related.

I wish I had hope that would happen, but I’m always scared since they only care about money, not quality ;-;

@strangeprincex​ said:

I mean, Waldron’s already been pulled off Loki for Star Wars (which…🙄), so I hope that means he’s off Marvel projects going forward. But I’m feeling the same level of exhaustion with Marvel and its fandom. I’m here for Strange, Loki and not much else.

Omg, really? That’s good news, and as long as Waldron just writes a random tv show for SW not realated to Mandalorian or Andor, I don’t mind it haha. But hopefully another one comes for DS3.

[talkingbl]

The Good and Bad of KinnPorsche

SPOILER WARNING. TW: date rape, dubcon.

The Good -

The setting/trope. We love a mafia story. And while I'm not a fan of bodyguard romances, this one is interesting because the bodyguard (who is equally as strong and chiseled as the man he's meant to protect) is coded as a bottom.

Bible, Bible, Bible. And a bit of Apo. These two had moments of brilliance. Save for Bible's English dialogue, I found him the most captivating in emotional scenes. Apo did a great job making Porsche a multifaceted character. Porsche is neither masc nor femme, he's neither overly serious nor silly. For the most part, he exists in the middle of every spectrum, dipping more into one side or the other depending upon the circumstances.

The twist. I may be in the minority here but I thought the reveal of Porsche’s mother being alive was the best move the story could make. It had begun to stagnate toward the middle and needed some drama to wake it up, which this reveal did. I also think it adds a layer of intrigue to KinnPorsche and KimChay because we now know that Kinn and Kim's grandparents adopted Porsche and Chay's mother who is still alive despite what we thought. This begs the question: how will Porsche and Chay deal with the news going forward?

The visuals. It is so refreshing to see a cast of people who all have their own look, and with lead characters who have a more tanned skin tone. Thailand is quick to whitewash the fuck out of people (especially lead characters), which is sad because the actors are perfect the way they naturally look. I mean, Apo is probably the most conventionally attractive ML in a Thai BL and rather than trying to imitate the Kpop-overly-made-up, whitewashed aesthetic, he just looks like himself. This is not to shit on naturally lighter people, just to say that it's important to show people of all skin tones, facial features, etc., receiving love.

The NC scenes. Mile and Apo create very passionate (albeit not very realistic) sex scenes that go beyond what we typically see in BL. Porsche gets a handjob in the middle of an argument. Kinn gets his dick sucked, unprovoked. Pete gets his ass ate ON CAMERA. And so much more sprinkled in to give the relationships a more realistic feel. Most BLs will do one NC scene (if that) and it'll be half-assed extreme close ups of cheek-sucking, ab caressing, and neck pecking. KinnPorsche showed thrust action, it showed different positions, it showed different types of sex (gay couples don't always do anal!) and sexual situations (handjobs, playing with the dick, etc. lmao). You can't deny that the story actually tried, the actors actually gave, and the direction was not timid.

Porsche's...interesting responses to Kinn's insults. Kinn all but calls Porsche a slut multiple times and Porsche never reacts the way one thinks he would given his character. Seems like he gets more into the moment when Kinn says those things. I'd be interested to see them explore this side of Porsche more in S2.

The Bad -

The inconsistent tone. This was by far the worst part of the show for me. In one scene Vegas savagely tortures Pete in a makeshift dungeon far away from civilization. In the very next scene Porsche is passing gas in Kinn's face (which...if you know me, you know I can't stand toilet humor). Almost none of the mafia stuff seemed that dire because it was always played for laughs in the end, typically at Porsche's expense. It really took me out of the show.

The unfocused/nonsensical plot. There were several moments in the show where I was like..."and what did that do?" Like the entire Tawan plot line (especially the beginning of it where we think Tawan is dead/is a ghost) was the most unnecessary addition to an already long story I've ever had the displeasure of watching. We could've done the jealousy plot without bringing Tawan back from the "dead" only to kill him off in the end anyway. Even for its little effect on KimChay...I mean, we saw how much Kim cared about Chay, we didn't need Chay kidnapped to see it. We also didn't need the 10 seconds of Chay rebelling nor did we need VegasTawan... That went NOWHERE and I'm just left feeling like my time has been wasted. Also, why was Kim stalking Porsche and Chay? Can someone enlighten me because if they ever said why, I surely missed it.

Outside of VegasPete, how do any of the relationships happen? Like, I get VegasPete because Pete felt bad for Vegas and sought to comfort him and Vegas confided in him. I also get Chay's admiration of Kim. Teenagers have crushes all the time based solely on looks/parasocial relationships. What I barely get however is Kim's interest in Chay. Sure, he's flattered by Chay's crush and wants to protect him but throughout the story it just seems like Kim is into Chay because Chay is into him. He never voices any real reason for falling for Chay and, again, we never really find out Kim's motive for stalking Chay and Porsche earlier on in the series. But what I really don't understand is KinnPorsche. It seems like Kinn just looks at Porsche and is in love, which, sure. But Porsche? Porsche has 0 reason to actually like Kinn and actually has more reason to dislike him due to the situations Kinn has put him in. He has even less reason to trust Kinn given that Kinn took Tawan's word over his. No matter how the story tried to explain this away, it was still weirdly out of character and dumb as hell for Kinn to imprison Porsche and not trust him. It doesn't help that before the Tawan plot, Kinn NEVER shows that he is an untrusting person. There's not even a single hint of it. If a person is that distrustful of everyone, surely they'd show it at some point? And the killing part is that this distrustful nature never comes up again. Almost like it was just for the sake of a not very well thought out plot point... But I digress. I just don't understand why these two grown men actually fell in love (though it's clear as day that they work well together).

Kinn as a concept. How has this man managed to survive up until now? His fighting prowess is woefully inconsistent, he thinks with his emotions, I have yet to see him make any money moves, and he just all around seems like a lovesick puppy waiting for his bodyguard to acknowledge him rather than the ruthless mafioso he's billed as. Simply put, Kinn doesn't act the way one in his position and with his backstory, should/probably would act.

VegasPorsche. Sigh...this relationship was heavily baited and it made no sense. Honestly, Vegas's character in general isn't very well executed. Vegas's character traits are great (inferiority complex, depression, trauma, etc.). Vegas's actions, however, are just not very well-written. Most of his plot lines feel half way done. Like the whole Tawan thing and then making him a rapist for like 2 seconds, I don't get it. This all feeds into VegasPorsche. KinnPorsche writers thought I forgot about the early scene where Vegas tries to date rape Porsche. Surprise, bitch! I remember!! It is so odd (and honestly a testament to bad writing) that it was never reconciled. Vegas was never actually caught and punished for it, and all-in-all it just seemed like fodder for, what was at the point, an episodic drama. It shows lack of planning on the writer's part to not resolve that and then immediately have Kinn do something similar to Porsche (but play it as romantic). Sad part is that I wouldn’t be so critical of it if it actually made sense in the story (I don't get bothered by violence when it makes sense). But it doesn't. We see Vegas around the main family and Porsche so many times after that moment and yet it never comes up again. Porsche just goes on trusting Vegas like nothing ever happened. It's just plain bad writing to show the proverbial gun and never have someone shoot it.

[uncledrifter]

hi there! i saw your post about eris morn and i've been meaning to do some fanart of her recently but i really don't want to fall under that trap of white-washing her, and this is a genuine question but what ethnicity do you see eris as? i want to make sure i get it right

okay wait I'm going to stop you there.

I think something must have gotten lost here because I really don't think that there is a "right" ethnicity to draw eris morn as. Her origins have been left intentionally ambiguous by Bungie, something that they have done with many other guardians as well. Whether or not this is a good move in terms of storytelling and representation is a conversation that I don't feel well equipped to have, so forgive me if I gloss over that aspect of this.

Its not uncommon for people to see a character that looks like them and then make content for that character which is informed by their own culture. This is one of the really cool things about fandom - getting to see different interpretations of a character from new perspectives and learning about other people's cultures through their art and headcanons is a GOOD thing*.

*(as long as the race of a character does not matter to their story, and you are not taking away representation from another group. Which in regards to Eris Morn and most Destiny 2 characters, I think is the case.)

However I am a white person and I do not have that kind of attachment to the character, so the idea of sitting here pondering Eris Morn's race based of off nothing much other than her physical features makes me feel kinda gross. So I'm not going to do that. I also don't think it matters in this context - whitewashing in fandom has its roots in colorism, which affects people regardless of race or culture.

Lots of people have spoken about colorism in fandom before me and done a very good job of it. I'll provide some links to further reading at the end of this.

Anyway, what I'll do is share some tips that I use myself.

Don't use gifs and other people's images as references. Its very common for both official promo art and fanworks to be doctored in some way. Many of the images being passed around of a character might look like the 'original' but in reality, the image has probably been lightened or filtered already. Whenever you can, collect your own resources straight from in-game screenshots. Youtube videos of cutscenes also work - these are usually not color-corrected.

Don't hide behind limited palettes and bright lighting. This isn't to say that you shouldn't use bright/weird colors in your art, but do be aware of how people's skin actually absorbs light and let that inform your colorwork. The light from Eris Morn's orb is not going to completely wash out her skin, not everyone turns pastel when you put them under a lamp. Luckily most of this falls down to basic color theory, so you can kill two birds with one stone here and get better at art AND avoid whitewashing characters.

Don't give them plastic surgery. Its natural for artists, especially beginner artists, to draw people based on their personal aesthetics of what they find attractive. But you really need to be careful and make sure that your aesthetic preferences don't start overwriting a character's unique features. For example, giving a character a smaller button nose because you don't like the way their naturally big nose looks is… well its racist. look within and work thru some biases if that's where you're at.

Colordrop responsibly. Yes absolutely grab colors from screenshots and other resources, but do be aware of context. Pay attention to the range of midtones, highlights, and shadowed areas on the face. You don't want to pull the lightest skin tone on an image and pick just that one for your canvas - start with a mid range and go from there. Also mind the lighting of the image - if you're drawing eris morn in a dark, creepy hive cave, you don't want to reference that shot of her on Mars, that has the absolute harshest lighting in the game.

But anyway as long as you don't draw her literally pastel, you'll be leagues above the other artworks out there.

Okay here's the links I promised under the cut:

[realhankmccoy]

Q: Hank so they treat the establishment better than you

A: they treat it way better. They pay it taxes. They call it the land of the free and the home of the brave, even though the thing is entirely hidebound by a Constution and incarcerates every black and every male, one of the most incarcerating nations on earth they anoint the crown of ‘free’ to — pathetic, isn’t it kids, what toddlers will call free in their whitewashed toddler naivité — and they call this nation of cowards too cowardly to even elect one woman President ‘brave’ a nation that’s so terrified that it’s endlessly obsessed with its southern border and building a wall down there — this to them is ‘bravery’ this constant fear — they say ‘I’m sorry officer’ — they submit to their bosses they submit to Nazis —

to me? They ain’t sorry for shit

I’m not free to them

I’m not brave to them

I’m not straight enough for them

I’m not worth $20 to em

I’m not worth a Merry Christmas to them

they say Merry Christmas America

they say happy birthday America on the 4th of July

they’re quite capable of being nice to Nazis and rednecks who kill deer all day, they do it merrily

they have a ‘value’ system based on selfishness

they have a ‘value’ system based on heteronormativity

All their ‘values’ are pretty much factory-installed, give ‘em enough rope and they’ll cuck themselves for empire — they’re not about to run off and do a smidge of anything original or truly deviate from their empire’s plan for them.

They literally cheer on other people gaining weight or losing their hair - this makes them feel good, cheering for other people to die or lose their looks —

meanwhile I’m the fixation of their hatred — I’m the one they smear in their ‘songs’ and their ‘writing’ because I think their behavior and mindset is disgusting and awful.

being selfish babies with no code of conduct befitting grown men and women, theyre infuriated that some gay person could find their behavior remiss.

their empire factory settings tell them to give their money to the powerful and to buying toys for themselves

and to fight me, and indeed even use their toys as tools to fight me. They literally spend money on toys the empire sells and use these toys in their battles against me —

not realizing they themselves are also a tool and a toy to the system they uphold against me, the faggot.

I’m not worth it to them other than what they can do to try to be me and try to compete against me which makes me like them a lot less, for I don’t like competitive assholes and people-xeroxing assholes

and I have no respect for these assholes, theyre really just spoiled brats with hearts full of competitive hate installed by an empire who turned them into mindless zombie tools who spew out endless amounts of idiotic shit

they don’t have the curiosity to wonder about who they might have been if they had created themselves to be somebody who cares rather than passively exist and only care about themselves —

the empathy gap is why they care so much about their own feelings and what they want

and not a whit about my feelings or what I want.

they’ll give Trump and Peterson a substantial chunk of what those guys want

but won’t give me what I want, not a smidge of it

why would they give a faggot what a faggot wants? They’re nuclear and massively pampered by the established order, they give other people what they want but never me

much like the US government long gave white Americans what it wanted but never many other groups

they are takers, they are tools of the establishment

they are as unwilling to admit error and express regret to me as a plantation master or southern-fried white is unwilling to do so to a black or a queer

they are Confederates in so many ways, being slavish to government but wanting their own special privilege flag of whiter-than-the-whole in which to defy the government while simultaneously binding themselves to and submitting themselves to government

they’re mad that I’m not as Confederate as them

they think if I were more Confederate it would improve me

they think I’m way out of line

they think I’m not even worth a steak or a sorry once in my lifetime

they will go to their graves wriggling their fingers for their government and for people Hetero while denying me a steak or a sorry even as they turn 52, 53, 71, 72, 73

while making sure to treat humans who are far bigger shitpiles than me to gifts and hugs and sorry and nice things

they truly don’t think they have an issue with gays tho

of course they don’t just like those Bud Light boycotters don’t think so

all they ask is to have some gay not step on their toes by wanting to be treated like humans get treated

nope they just go on and on with their cold and heartless and braindead insistence that the wrongdoer is me

which is one of the many lies in the core of the lies these assholes are living

It’s a lie that proves what a weakling and a fool they are, so they will never let go of the lie

they will never let go of their fundamentally phony lie ‘hank the problem was you, you screwed up’

which they truly believe and truly feel just as deeply as Marie Antoinette felt the peasants screwed up and just as deeply as Elon Musk feels that the entire media and Bob Iger screwed up

of course they feel it, they were always spoiled by the parents to the point where they only feel for themselves and believe their own lies

just like stupid people always do, for both things are stupidity as well as rotten behavior

and it feels good for them to open their mouths or key up their fingers and flood the zone with shit

they don’t have a more fully robust set of emotions in which making others feel good feels good for them — think Scrooge and how good it felt for him to stick it to others chasing that coin

and while it might not specifically be coin they’re chasing

you can trust that they’re not chasing niceness or generosity or any such thing

what they’re chasing is something far more selfish and embarrassing for them to speak of

which is why they usually don’t confess what they actually want and lay it out there — because it sounds embarrassing for them to say ‘I wish I were famous’ or ‘I wish I were powerful’ or ‘I wish I were rich’ or ‘I wish I were talented’ or ‘I wish I had a body like a Hemsworth’ or ‘I wish I could sleep with who I want’

but that’s what drives these idiots

It’s always shallow shit like that

they definitely do not care about me and they want to harm me, play pranks on me, do like toddler trolling and toddler mindfucks — all this crap that was instilled in them by the established order they were raised in

and they’re too weak to break away from it and chart their own course in defiance of it.

[earthphoenixstories]

Hoo boi. This is. This is gonna be a thing.

Some of you might or might not know that I am biracial. I’m both white European and Black West Indian (Guyana forever)

I was raised by my white mum and her white family.

I was taught in schools that had almost all white teachers. From Pre school to Secondary School (High School) I only had 2 non white teachers. One was black and the other was Indian. They were lovely and great at their jobs. But they were outnumbered by their white counterparts.

The schools relied on local white parents to volunteer on occasion and yes, the local law enforcement were also white.

While I had contact with my Black grandparents by the time I was born they had left England for America. They are now 85 and 93 years old and still living in America! I don’t know how they do it, it’s incredible.

I say all this, because I felt my entire childhood and now adulthood adrift from Blackness. My mum wasn’t equipped to teach me about my black heritage and my dad wasn’t around. My grandparents when I got to see them, naturally wanted to spend time having fun with their grandchild than teaching about racism.

On top of all of that, I’m white passing. I’m the darkest person in the room around my white family and the lightest person around the Black side of the fam. I’ve never experienced the same level of racism as they have. It’s unlikely I ever will.

Over the last decade or so, I’ve come to understand just how problematic my upbringing was. White family members - including my own mum threw around racial slurs as though they were talking about the weather. The only word not used by them was the N word. Everything else? Completely on the table.

Unlearning and healing from the casual racism that was an everyday part of my childhood is wild. It is at times rage inducing and heart breaking.

What makes it utterly worse is the fact that Black history was not being taught when I was at school. History in the mid 90’s and early 00’s was completely whitewashed and England’s history scrubbed clean of any wrong doing.

For example: Slavery

“America has a long history of slavery,” my history teacher once said. “In England we abolished slavery way before the Americans did and even then they had a war over it.”

This was said earnestly by a white history teacher in my final years at school.

“Did we take part in slavery?” A student may ask.

“Of course not, we abolished it.”

How do you abolish something you have no part in? That was never explained and trying to ask that would land you in detention.

Furthermore History classes would teach a very strange version of American history.

“A group of disgruntled English people travelled to the New World where they befriended the local population and founded what is today known as America. From there the Americans and the British had a minor disagreement and America declared its independence. Let’s now talk about cowboys and the American West.”

Aah the American West. A beloved topic in history class and if anyone had questions they could be answered with “you’ll learn more by watching John Wayne films.”

The American Civil War? Glossed over as “fighting over slavery” with no deeper look into it. No dates, no notable battles, nothing.

It’s no lie when I say I’ve learned more since living school than I ever did in school. And that’s horrifying.

All this to say, right now I’m listening to a book called ‘The N Word: Who should say it, who shouldn’t and why’ by Jabari Asim.

Really it’s a history of that word and how it was used to justify slavery and anti Blackness. It both makes me wish I could punch dead people and cry at the hurt Black people were forced to endure.

It should go without saying that slavery was vile and disgusting and those who took part where disgusting pieces of trash.

This book is bringing out the feels. It’s teaching me things I never knew and oh your god. It’s heart wrenching.

If you care about unlearning racism then you need to read this book and others like it. You really do.

I think more than anything else, this book is ending my relationship with Christianity. The amount of times the Bible is used to justify anti Blackness is astounding.

There’s a question that lives deep in my soul. It’s a question I’ve asked both my parents at one time or another.

“Where am I from?”

Parents of biracial children - please do your health and teach your children their cultures. Teach them things their schools aren’t or won’t. Answer questions honestly.

Most importantly - do the work to unlearn racism and raise your kids in a home where racism isn’t the norm.

One day I’m going to do a 23&me test to find out my exact racial background. My heart won’t be happy until I do. It’s the only way to finally put that question to rest.

History should not be whitewashed. Don’t allow them to hide the truth. Fight for actual history to be taught.

Don’t repeat mistakes of the past and for goodness sake - never say the N word if you’re pro Black.