#i love being black but it's true now

[letters-to-rosie]

🚿Where do your best ideas seem to strike?

I think I get a lot of ideas when I'm thinking about something else--like I'm trying to work through a problem in my head and then all of a sudden I consider writing it. the shower is certainly a place, but so is in bed, on the commute, etc. all inconvenient for writing things down 😆

recently, just last night actually, I had a big idea some in while I was pondering how a lot of TV couples are interracial, more than in real life (in the US anyway), and that makes it look more common than it is. which is of course not bad, but since I'm writing timebomb and I was watching that video I was thinking, those two are kinda wild because in terms of the US they're interracial, but with the way Zaunites are racialized in the show, they're not in the actual setting. makes you think about how race is not real lol (and thank goodness it isn't!). social constructions are interesting. makes me think of Stuart Hall, "Race Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance," where he talks about paying close attention to how oppression plays out in a particular setting

send me asks! status update: folks are almost here. i WISH y'all could all come eat this mac & cheese I did a great job lol

[sciderman]

How do you feel about the increase in really weird NSFW ads on here (advertising panels that look like sexual encounters, and AI art apps that pride themselves on porn) but will take down NSFW posts from their users, even if it isn't technically sexual.

i hate all social media and it's consistent prioritising the advertisers over the users and the internet simply was a better place before capitalism sunk its hooks into it

[the-holy-ghosted]

sighs pitifully. i have GOT to get weirder on main about things nobody fucking cares about

[tyrefire]

i can say definitively the interview with the vampire has shown the intricacies of being a black queer man (the multiple hats line, keeping up a hypermasculine performance even to your family) in such a way that I honestly havent seen since Moonlight and P Valley

[vulpinesaint]

aro people are so fucking cool and great and awesome. you're so strong, every single one of you. i love you so much for waking up every day and contending with the idea that we need love to live, whether you do it by fighting for the idea that you experience love in other ways or fighting for the idea that you don't experience love at all or however else you push back against that system. it can be so hard to be told by society that you're never going to have something that's supposed to be fulfilling above all else but by god you're getting through it and you're doing it amazingly. you're revolutionary and so strong and whatever societal aspects tell you that you're unloveable are lying because i love you (and if that means nothing to you, that's perfectly fine. you're fantastic just the way you are.)

[bumblingbabooshka]

'Parturition' is so brave for being the yaoi ship trope episode of Voyager. "Neelix and Tom Paris had a physical.....fight." Also continuing Tom's beautiful habit of loving both infidelity and child abandonment with all his heart. Also, wonderful out of context quote: "I had no right to push that pasta in your lap."

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Okay no joke, I generally forgot the Ever After High doll diaries confirmed the next Blue Fairy was basically fucking dead and at the end of her diary, Farrah flies off to find Cedar, determined to help her in the late Blue Fairy's place.

[saintchaser]

yesterday i was thinking about peter pettigrew and his betrayal / joining the death eaters. of course, in times of war and with death looming above one's head, one will definitely do mistakes and possibly join a side that doesn't align with their views. i have multiple theories about why peter might have joined the death eaters, though.

i'll preface this by saying that i do believe that peter was a marauder. however, and i say this reflected by what other people in the series have said about him, he was always the "less" of the marauders. less attractive, less smart, less ambitious, and that might have given him an inferiority complex that could have gotten the best of him at some points, and that could play a part in everything.

1. the need to prove himself

my first theory would be that. that, the fact that he wanted to prove himself and show that he can carry something as big as both being the potters' secret keeper, but he also wanted to prove the fact that he was just as good as the rest of his mates were.

we have been told that voldemort promised his followers certain things in order to lure them in, to play his game; power, fame, glory.

peter wanted glory. he wanted people to realize that he was no less than remus, james, and sirius, and he might have taken it too far.

2. the secret keeper

a bit of background on this: shortly after harry's birthday, when lily sent the letter to sirius, the potters were already in hiding. it is also known that peter had become the secret keeper of the potters one week before their death. (i don't remember who said that and they referred it to sirius, but said person didn't know about the secret keeper change).

timewise, that means that sirius had also been a secret keeper at some point, and something made him decide to switch (it would have been too obvious for him to be both; godfather and secret keeper. he would have become a target instantly.), and so he asked peter to be the secret keeper, which he agreed to. now, the question is; how or why did peter tell voldemort the potters' location? this theory splits in two:

a) we knew that, during the war, the unforgiveable curses have been used on people. there is a possibility, although i doubt that, that peter had told voldemort about the potters' location while under the imperius curse.

b) he has told him everything willingly, which kind of links to the first theory, if you pay attention.

3. under the imperius all along

my third theory, which is, just as the other imperius-linked point, pretty unlikely, but still. the same way that voldemort and his followers had used the imperius curse, in the second wizarding war, on a (useless) member of the muggle ministry, they could have done the same with wizards.

peter was a part of the order. that in itself means that he knew more about the potters and the situation they were on than voldemort had. (before he had found out about the prophecy) he might have used peter to both join the death eaters and tell him the location of the potters. for all we know, he could have been under the imperius curse, cast by voldemort, all along.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

D’Vaughn and Kris Plan A Wedding

Romance about two lesbians on a reality tv show where they have to pretend they’re engaged and plan a wedding in 6 weeks

one is a butch influencer, and one using the show to come out to her family

[butchfeygela]

blah blah blah society sees the dykes as aggressive bc of capitalism assigns masculinity as working class character. .what ever. sure, can we say that without making it sound like an indictment of masculine working class butches?,

or like maybe can we talk about historical reality of butch as a working class identity bc of how butchness did (and still does) relegate us to the fringes and thts effect on employment.

like i legitimately saw someone in the notes talking abt how this is why we need more love and representation for bougie butches like deep throat my fucking boot.

[bo0zey]

i’m a plague to everyone’s life i ever come in contact with

[wibble-wobbegong]

WHAG THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN THERE WERE ST MTG CARDS

[planet4546b]

listen to me. listen. the guardians nightmare is the black garden

[4giorno]

yeah no wtf. valk rlly came to save music AGAIN

[septembersghost]

fwiw I would read your essay on the Memphis album ☺

😭 thank you honey, it's worth a lot

[monsterblogging]

"I know JK Rowing is a terrible person but her books are so good-"

You sure about that?

I mean, just for a start, have you taken a good look at her fantasy creatures lately? A whole bunch of them are straight-up based on malicious and dehumanizing stereotypes about actual people.

Remember the werewolves? And being a werewolf was made into a kind of metaphor for having AIDS?

And you know how AIDS was first associated with gay men? And how conservatives back in the day were claiming gay men were preying on children in order to convert them to gayness?

Remember how Fenrir Greyback preyed on children in particular? Yeah, she put that subtext in there. She was an adult in the 90's. She knew damn well what she was doing.

Remember the house elves? Remember how most of them loved to serve and needed to have a home and a master or else they just wouldn't know what to do with themselves?

Did you know that's literally what slavers in the American South said about the Black people they kept enslaved? Go look up the happy slave myth.

Do I even need to get into the goblins and the antisemitic tropes they're based on? No, folkloric goblins were not gold-hoarding bankers waiting for their chance to stab humanity in the back.

"But the characters are so good!"

Are you kidding me?

Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional, including Harry. Her idea of making a morally complicated character is giving a tragic past to a bully. Numerous characters are little more than stereotypes. (Looking at Fleur right now.) Literally anybody, including you, can easily make dozens of characters just as good, if not better. (It doesn't exactly take a lot of character designing skill to go, "hey, actually, having a sad backstory doesn't make it okay to bully children" or "hey, maybe I should not base a character on the first stereotype that pops into my head.")

"But the rest of the worldbuilding!"

Sorry, but her worldbuilding is just as basic as her characters. Magical castles and secret passages are stock tropes. Magical people who keep their true nature secret from humanity is the premise of pretty much every White Wolf TTRPG. Most of her fantasy creatures are just common European fairy tale and folklore creatures with shitty stereotypes projected onto them.

I'm not saying "basic worldbuilding bad." I'm saying, you could do just as good, if not better, with minimal effort.

Also there's her magical bioessentialism, where only Harry's abusive blood relatives could provide him with supernatural protection from Voldemort. Rowling thus effectively declared that non-biological family isn't quite real family, and that abusive biofamily can give you some essential thing that a loving, supportive family that isn't related to you just can't.

The Hogwarts houses are one of the most insidious elements of her worldbuilding. The idea of being sorted gives you a little dopamine hit because wow now you have a li'l niche where you belong!

But the actual function of the houses and sorting system and the House Cup is teaching children to see each other as rivals, and ensure that the most toxic views of the upper class get passed on to every new batch of kids sorted into Slytherin.

Hogwarts effectively prepares children for a dystopia where magic serves to distract its citizens from how nightmarishly awful it is. Economic inequality is so bad that people like Arthur and Molly Weasley can barely afford to put their kids through school, casual sadism is just an accepted norm in everyday society, and non-humans are second class citizens. Rowling sorta acts like she thinks this is a bad thing with certain lines she gave to Dumbledore, but in the end, her special boy protagonist becomes an auror; IE, a defender of the status quo. So.

If you've never seen it, Lily Simpson's video goes into even more detail on how the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is actually incredibly fucked up, and how it betrays small-minded attitudes on Rowling's part. There's no separating the art from this artist, because Rowling's rotten values pour out of nearly every page.

Yes, there are many things in Harry Potter that evoke feelings and inspire people, but there's absolutely nothing in it that this series has a monopoly on. You can find those same experiences in much, much better media.