#is a white supremacy thing!!

[adiodont]

ref for the summer-fall-spring outfits for the kids (and their base skin tones and all that)

i’m working on a larger project right now, (“announcement” coming tomorrow)

so if things are slowing down for a bit that’s why! (but i’ll try my best to have something out weekly for you guys)

[whetstonefires]

Hey you said something about the my hero academia creator being unhinged about sexism, do you mind explaining?

I tried to write like, a thorough explanation of this and it just got longer and longer and longer and I have not touched this series in actual years and yet I've still got all these receipts a;lkjk;lfasd.

So rather than trying to build the whole massive case, here's a pared-down version. It's normal to have sexism in media, and shounen manga especially. Everyone does it. The level and mode and intentionality and so forth all vary, but of course it's there.

What's not normal is to have lots of varied and interesting female characters with discernible inner lives, and on-page discussion of how sexism is systemic and unjust and holds them back in specific ways, and then also deliberately make consistent sexist writing decisions even where they don't arise naturally from the flow of the narrative.

Horikoshi is actively interested in gender and sexism, he's aware of them in a way you rarely see outside of the context of, you know, fighting sexism. He is hung up on the thorny issue of what women are worth and deserve and how power and respect ties into it. He genuinely wants, I think, to have Good Female Characters, and not be (seen as) A Sexist Guy!

But. He doesn't actually want to fight sexism. He displays a lot of woman-oriented anxieties, and one of the many churning paddlewheels in his head seems to be that he knows intellectually that morally sexism is bad, but emotionally he really feels like it ought to probably be at least partly correct.

There are so many things I could cite, and maybe I'll get into some of them later, but the crowning item that highlights how the pattern is 1) at least partly conscious and deliberate and 2) about Horikoshi's own weird hangups rather than simply cynical market play, is Mineta Minoru.

The writer has stated Mineta is his favorite character. Mineta is also designed to be hated--that is, he is a particularly elaborate instantiation of a character archetype normally deployed to soak up audience contempt and (by being gross and shameless and unattractive and 'unthreatening') make it possible to include a range of sexual gratification elements into the narrative that would compromise the main characters' reputations as heroic and deserving, if they were the actors.

Good Guys don't grope girls' tits and run away snickering in triumph, after all. Non-losers don't focus intense effort around successfully stealing someone's panties. Nice Girls don't let themselves be seen half-dressed. And so forth. You need an underwear gremlin for that. So, in anime and manga, longstanding though declining tradition of including such a gremlin, for authorial deniability.

Horikoshi definitely uses him straight for this purpose, looping in Kaminari as needed to make a bit work. And yet he has Feelings about the archetype itself.

The passages dedicated to the vindication of Mineta, then, and the author's statements about him, let us understand that Horikoshi identifies with the figure of the underwear gremlin. He understands the underwear gremlin as a defining exemplar of male sexuality, at least if you are not hot, and finds the attached contempt and hostility to be a dehumanizing attack on all uh.

Incels, basically.

It's not fair to write Mineta off just because he's unattractive and horny (and commits sexual harassment). Doesn't he have a mind? Doesn't he have dreams? Doesn't he have human potential?

So what's going on with Horikoshi and gender, as far as I can figure out, is that he knows damn well that women are people and are treated unjustly by sexist society, but however.

He also understands the institutions of sexism as something protecting him and people like him from life being nebulously yet definitively Worse, and therefore wants to see them upheld.

So you get this really bizarre handling of gender where obviously women's rights good and women cool, women can be Strong, and the compulsory sexualization imposed by the industry isn't them or the author, and so forth.

But also it's very important that in the world he controls, women never win anything important or Count too much, and that jokes at their expense that disrupt the internal logic of their characters are always fair game, that women asked about sexism on TV will promptly get into catfights amongst themselves, and they are understood always in terms of their sexual and romantic interests and value, and sexual assertiveness and failures to perform femininity well enough are used to code them as dangerous and irrational, and that the sexy costumes are requisite and will never be subverted or rebelled against--at most they might be circumnavigated via leaning into cute appeal.

And that Yaoyorozu Momo, who converts her body fat into physical objects, is being frivolous when she wants to use money to buy things instead (rather than as sensibly moderating her Quirk use) and is never encouraged to eat as much as possible at every opportunity to put on weight and even shown being embarrassed by hunger (even though Quirk overuse gives symptoms that suggest she's been stripping the lipids out of her cell walls or nervous system to keep fighting) and always, no matter how many Things she has made, has huge big round boobies.

[odinsblog]

Mark Hamill: “I firmly stand with Darth Vader and the Empire.”

Jennifer Lawrence: “I firmly stand with President Snow and the Capitol.”

[1eos]

since I've not seen usamerican used to be antiblack (at least as far as I'm aware!) I'm wondering if there's any way to spot it. or I guess wondering how to tell the difference between people using it "normally" and people using it to target black Americans. I'm VERY ready to believe people are doing that, I just have very little exposure to the term and I'm not from the States so I'm mostly trying to make sure it's something I can keep an eye out for and call out/block users if I encounter it

that's a good question. i wish i could find a post to illustrate it in action but usually usamerican is being used as a front for antiblackness when the person in question is complaining abt the visibility of issues. for example. let's say there's an awful tragedy involving police killing someone in france. well the person will say something like 'god ik usamericans won't reblog this bc they only care abt THEIR issues. they don't support anyone else theyre so selfish and oppress all of us' and its like ok. we're talking abt police brutality. which group of americans in the us are affected by that? black americans. so implying that black ppl only care abt themselves while conflating black americans being victims of imperialism (being killed in the streets) with being oppressors just bc they were forcibly brought into a imperialist nation

basically when you see someone complain abt usamericans in a sociopolitical context give it a once over that theyre not trying to blame black americans and other racial minorities in america for things they are victims of themselves. if its a funny post abt how usamericans will drive 4 hrs and think thats nothing? no problem. saying usamericans need to shut up and stop whining abt how bad their country is bc they ruined other places is a cause for concern bc the ppl who are complaining in america.....are victims OF america as well (and in terms of blackness would have a lesser quality of life ANYWHERE bc of, you know, antiblackness)

[uncanny-tranny]

I'm actually so done with people (including "allies") using trans* men in order to attack trans* women. There is no trans liberation without all of us.

"Oh, you don't see trans men doing [x], but you see trans women doing it!" Actually, that just tells me that you intentionally leave trans* men out of this specific bias against trans people. It tells me everything about your attitude about trans* men and trans* women.

[demigod-of-the-agni]

A little special something for something even more special. Hint: it's about love and fears and birthdays and new beginnings

(@/marvel hire me <3)

[sanyu-thewitch05]

Me watching the LGBT community who almost never rarely gives black women and girls, asexuals, or aromantics genuine respect, pretend we’re all friends and have always treated us right the minute it’s June 1st and want to use black women(mainly darkskinned) and girls as their little poster girl:

[hussyknee]

cant put my finger on it, but Taylor Swift feels like walking racial microaggression

[lesbianchemicalplant]

Sooner or later, however, the colonized intellectual realizes that the existence of a nation is not proved by culture, but in the people's struggle against the forces of occupation. No colonialism draws its justification from the fact that the territories it occupies are culturally nonexistent. Colonialism will never be put to shame by exhibiting unknown cultural treasures under its nose. The colonized intellectual, at the very moment when he undertakes a work of art, fails to realize he is using techniques and a language borrowed from the occupier. He is content to cloak these instruments in a style that is meant to be national but which is strangely reminiscent of exoticism. The colonized intellectual who returns to his people through works of art behaves in fact like a foreigner. Sometimes he will not hesitate to use the local dialects to demonstrate his desire to be as close to the people as possible, but the ideas he expresses, the preoccupations that haunt him are in no way related to the daily lot of the men and women of his country. The culture with which the intellectual is preoccupied is very often nothing but an inventory of particularisms. Seeking to cling close to the people, he clings merely to a visible veneer. This veneer, however, is merely a reflection of a dense, subterranean life in perpetual renewal. This reification, which seems all too obvious and characteristic of the people, is in fact but the inert, already invalidated outcome of the many, and not always coherent, adaptations of a more fundamental substance beset with radical changes. Instead of seeking out this substance, the intellectual lets himself be mesmerized by these mummified fragments which, now consolidated, signify, on the contrary, negation, obsolescence, and fabrication. [...] Seeking to stick to tradition or reviving neglected traditions is not only going against history, but against one's people. When a people support an armed or even political struggle against a merciless colonialism, tradition changes meaning. What was a technique of passive resistance may, in this phase, be radically doomed. Traditions in an underdeveloped country undergoing armed struggle are fundamentally unstable and crisscrossed by centrifugal forces. This is why the intellectual often risks being out of step. The peoples who have waged the struggle are increasingly impermeable to demagoguery, and by seeking to follow them too closely, the intellectual turns out to be nothing better than a vulgar opportunist, even behind the times.

In the field of visual arts, for example, the colonized creator who at all costs wants to create a work of art of national significance confines himself to stereotyping details. These artists, despite having been immersed in modern techniques and influenced by the major contemporary trends in painting and architecture, turn their backs on foreign culture, challenge it, and, setting out in search of the true national culture, they give preference to what they think to be the abiding features of national art. But these creators forget that modes of thought, diet, modern techniques of communication, language, and dress have dialectically reorganized the mind of the people and that the abiding features that acted as safeguards during the colonial period are in the process of undergoing enormous radical transformations.

This creator, who decides to portray national truth, turns, paradoxically enough, to the past, and so looks at what is irrelevant to the present. What he aims for in his inner intentionality is the detritus of social thought, external appearances, relics, and knowledge frozen in time. The colonized intellectual, however, who strives for cultural authenticity, must recognize that national truth is first and foremost the national reality. He must press on until he reaches that place of bubbling trepidation from which knowledge will emerge.

[...] The colonized intellectual is responsible not to his national culture, but to the nation as a whole, whose culture is, after all, but one aspect. The colonized intellectual should not be concerned with choosing how or where he decides to wage the national struggle. To fight for national culture first of all means fighting for the liberation of the nation, the tangible matrix from which culture can grow. One cannot divorce the combat for culture from the people's struggle for liberation. For example, all the men and women fighting French colonialism in Algeria with their bare hands are no strangers to the national culture of Algeria. The Algerian national culture takes form and shape during the fight, in prison, facing the guillotine, and in the capture and destruction of the French military positions. We should not therefore be content to delve into the people's past to find concrete examples to counter colonialism's endeavors to distort and depreciate. We must work and struggle in step with the people so as to shape the future and prepare the ground where vigorous shoots are already sprouting. National culture is no folklore where an abstract populism is convinced it has uncovered the popular truth. It is not some congealed mass of noble gestures, in other words less and less connected with the reality of the people. National culture is the collective thought process of a people to describe, justify, and extol the actions whereby they have joined forces and remained strong. National culture in the under developed countries, therefore, must lie at the very heart of the liberation struggle these countries are waging. The African intellectuals who are still fighting in the name of “Negro-African” culture and who continue to organize conferences dedicated to the unity of that culture should realize that they can do little more than compare coins and sarcophagi.

[...] The awakening national consciousness has had a somewhat similar effect in the sphere of ceramics and pottery. Formalism is abandoned. Jugs, jars, and trays are reshaped, at first only slightly and then quite radically. Colors, once restricted in number, governed by laws of traditional harmony, flood back, reflecting the effects of the revolutionary upsurge. Certain ochers, certain blues that were apparently banned for eternity in a given cultural context, emerge unscathed. Likewise, the taboo of representing the human face, typical of certain clearly defined regions according to sociologists, is suddenly lifted. The metropolitan anthropologists and experts are quick to note these changes and denounce them all, referring rather to a codified artistic style and culture developing in tune with the colonial situation. The colonialist experts do not recognize these new forms and rush to the rescue of indigenous traditions. It is the colonialists who become the defenders of indigenous style. A memorable example, and one that takes on particular significance because it does not quite involve a colonial reality, was the reaction of white jazz fans when after the Second World War new styles such as bebop established themselves. For them jazz could only be the broken, desperate yearning of an old “Negro,” five whiskeys under his belt, bemoaning h is own misfortune and the racism of the whites. As soon as he understands himself and apprehends the world differently, as soon as he elicits a glimmer of hope and forces the racist world to retreat, it is obvious he will blow his horn to his heart's content and his husky voice will ring out loud and clear. The new jazz styles are not only born out of economic competition. They are one of the definite consequences of the inevitable, though gradual, defeat of the Southern universe in the USA. And it is not unrealistic to think that in fifty years or so the type of jazz lament hiccuped by a poor, miserable “Negro” will be defended by only those whites believing in a frozen image of a certain type of relationship and a certain form of negritude.

[…] We believe the conscious, organized struggle undertaken by a colonized people in order to restore national sovereignty constitutes the greatest cultural manifestation that exists. It is not solely the success of the struggle that consequently validates and energizes culture; culture does not go into hibernation during the conflict. The development and internal progression of the actual struggle expand the number of directions in which culture can go and hint at new possibilities. The liberation struggle does not restore to national culture its former values and configurations. This struggle, which aims at a fundamental redistribution of relations between men, cannot leave intact either the form or substance of the people's culture. After the struggle is over, there is not only the demise of colonialism, but also the demise of the colonized.

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, “On National Culture” (1961)

[neechees]

Settler colonialism is legit one of the most evil things to exist and I think it's the root of many of the world's problems today.

[sourstiless]

like i genuinely think the world will heal when people stop pretending that not shipping zutara is about morality

[cdfreak]

im not saying anything new here theres probably a million like proper well written essays about this out there but the deep intense self-centeredness white people (especially american white people) carry is innnnnsane. everything has to be about Me everything has to somehow relate back to how it would affect Me and how Eye am the victim here. we claim self defense when committing violence against people of color, hold an iron grip on positions of power culturally and politically, are made uncomfortable when shown movies that arent about us. even when engaging with discussions about racism it has to be about us and our guilt. you see it all the time in white queer circles, we find out about harmful homophobic or transphobic legislation in the global south and dont spare a thought for our brothers and sisters living there - the conversation becomes instead about us and how this could hypothetically affect our lives. See a homeless man suffering, think instead about how it makes us uncomfortable or scared instead of feeling for him and what he is going through. im kind of just rambling but this pattern pops up literally everywhere once you start noticing it and its very very eye opening to see how white supremacy rewards and reinforces these behaviors in us and how in turn we reinforce white supremacy in day to day life

[lordartsy]

Octokuber, day 3 - Secondary Rider

always at Mach speed~

Out of all the secondaries I could've picked, I ended up going with Gou because honestly? You don't just walk back an introductory episode like that. Oh, you're just gonna do back flips all over the main character, overshadow him in his own damn show, set up an entire stage with pyrotechnics for your first transformation, and you're just NOT gonna be my favorite character? I don't care how many stupid stunts he pulled in the later episodes, he had me at "Let's~ Henshin!"

[uncanny-tranny]

If I'm honest, the whole "love in every stitch" saying for fiber artists does not apply to me, like. I'm trying to get this fucking hook into stubborn yarn and I'll be stabbing it like it owed me money. Is that love because I hope not 😭💀

[your-subby-creature]

hello im a decently new sub how can i make sure my dom partner is enjoying our time together too?

First of all: I'm not the font of all knowledge and I can really only give my perspective based on what I personally do. Every Dom, sub, and dynamic is unique and everyone needs different things to feel fulfilled.

In my opinion, it really all comes down to communication and understanding the dynamic you're engaging in. You NEED to communicate with your Dom, this is utterly non-negotiable. Check in with them during and after scenes, ask them what they enjoy, talk about what makes a scene good for them and how they like to feel. Your Dom is a PERSON FIRST, not a character, not a role, a complex human person who doesn't inherently want all the same things you do. If you want to engage in a given kink and think that just because someone is a Dom that they inherently want to take that control? You're just as bad as Doms that presume subs want to give everything that they want. Full stop. If you can't have these kinds of conversations, you're not ready to be responsible and accountable for your own wants, desires, and actions, and thus aren't ready to be participating in kink dynamics.

This gets me to my second point: you HAVE to understand what a kink relationship really is. In a very real sense, kink is a game of pretend that has real-world emotional and physical consequences. There is NEVER a point in a scene, no matter what kind, where it stops being an interaction between consenting human adults with personhood and power. Let me repeat that more specifically: subs, there is never a time where you are not responsible for yourself and your actions. Your Dom is ALWAYS just another person, and any power they have over you is negotiated and consented to by BOTH parties, and can be changed at any time. You do not get to make another person entirely responsible for you; that is not how life works. In the D/s relationships we negotiate and consent to, we need to understand the realities that underlie our fictions and fantasies, otherwise we risk believing in them.

Believing in these fantasies without the backing of reality is what leads to many of the harmful situations we discuss in our community. It leads to us forgetting that both Doms and subs are people, and not kink dispensers to fulfill our fantasies. It leads to us treating each other poorly and shallowly, without regard for the human life on the other side. It leads to us making assumptions about what people "should" like or do, rather than what our partner(s) actually enjoy. It leads to a severe lack of critical thought about the dynamics, kinks, and roles we engage in, letting broader issues (like this one) fester and harm people.

I've been on my soapbox for a while, so I'll chill. TLDR: Your Dom is a person, and you must communicate and think through your interactions.

-your Creature

[iravaid]

Drew the BBEG from the zombie apocalypse ttrpg I'm in, she named herself Eve and she is doing very well for herself, all things considered. Ignore the cult, cannibalism, christian fundamentalism, branding, torture, murder, and weaponising the infected (god forbid women do anything). And don't worry about Dismas. They're doing great 🙏