#like I'm in the mental process of checking out but since I'm not 100% disengaged yet

[princessnijireiki]

wait okay so I def have been hearing & absorbing criticism from other Latines & Latin American ppl about Encanto bc imo it was still very nice, aesthetically beautiful, and better than I was expecting from Disney, but yeah, white writers & directors & producers, obvs Lin has only written 1.5 musicals in his life and keeps remixing them for everything else he's hired for (Encanto is just surprising bc it's one of his most successful executions, I think he def detracted from & held back Moana's potential a LOT), and as soon as they announced Encanto my first thought was, "were no Colombian songwriters available?" bc besides him being under contract... VERY weird that he is the one size fits all "It Boy™️" for white Hollywood's take on Latin rep rn

which is to say: I am open to less than glowing reviews of it!

HOWEVER, I saw a FB post on my feed from somebody complaining abt not liking the story or songs, but being like, "I loved seeing representation for all my AfroLatinx friends & family, though!" and it irked the shit out of me, and I couldn't place why... girl... I just remembered lmao.

first of all, no she's not Hispanic, so yes that was irritating, idk that she has any Latino family in the first place. secondly, yes she adored Hamilton.

thirdly... THIRDLY. I tend to forget she did this because it was in fucking sane & completely out of left field. she's the one who asked me both to brainstorm a "nonappropriative way" to do a Día de Muertos taco themed birthday party for one of her now-ex friends... and no I am not Mexican... and no it did not occur to her to just serve tacos without doing an ethnic "theme" complete w Party City type decor & costumes. and also asked me to translate a list of chores for that same ex-friend's new maid into Spanish bc she hired someone who didn't speak English (likely to be exploitatively cheap!) and did not herself speak Spanish... which is an INSANE ASK OFF TOP, RIGHT. but Y'ALL. to this day she has yet to hear me ever speak Spanish in front of her!!! she has never heard ANYBODY in my family speak Spanish!!! she assumed I spoke Spanish, was fluent, was open to that crazy fucking request, and that I SPECIFICALLY would have strong vocab skills in fucking cleaning products & bullying minimum wage employees.

I've talked about that incident on here before tbh just because every time I remember it it pisses me off AND bewilders me bc she would rightfully be fucking offended if I said, "oh we're doing a costumed sushi, samurai & Shinto funeral themed party lol" or "oh you definitely know how to say 'scrub the shit out from under the rim of the toilet & wash my dirty panties on 'sanitize' mode, oh also you get one unpaid 15min break' in Japanese, right?" ...and bc she's Black this weird ass fucking behavioral issue of hers is also not sth that came up in Black cultural discussions, bc of COURSE that racism is not directed towards herself or the aspects of MY identity that WE have in common. but when your baseline interactions are not fucked up in that specific way (until they suddenly are), it feels really weird to get the "nice" liberal "progressive" version of being called a fucking wetback by someone you considered a friend.

and anyway yeah she don't like Encanto but she's claiming all the Black rep + not a peep on the Indigenous rep, political backdrop, narratives of trauma, the artistic context it functions within, etc (and to top it all off Yes: she graduated w a whole history degree, Yes: she literally used to work doing historical reenactments alongside Native reenactors + costumed conquistadors in one of the local Spanish cities, and Yes: she still has a job in the history & education field).

and yk, this is one of those things where as a post it started out about Encanto & the importance of #ownvoices creation AND intracommunity convos re: critique of our own cultural works outside of a white, colonial, and/or xenophobic gaze, plus, like... general things people do that piss me off lol. but the post is ending on this note instead:

in 2022 I need to get used to the idea of not only continuing to assert boundaries over how I'm treated going forward— because at my big age now, I would never let that shit fly again, but my whole life, I've endured a LOT of shitty one-sided friendships just because I didn't know I didn't HAVE to LET people treat me bad... and there was never any shortage of people who WOULDN'T have done that to me, but that internal weakness & vulnerability, like that lack of self respect + enforcing standards of that respect from others, both attracts people who like you not having strong boundaries, AND it mentally closes you off to being open to relationships that DON'T look that way, because you think it's normal to endure physical cruelty or being demeaned or being expected to demean YOURSELF to access or deserve love or companionship.

but I also need to get more & more accustomed to stepping on toes in a very big way in order to do it. like in a very permanent, soccer cleats to the instep kind of way. because it's EASY to do that with people you don't give a shit about. who have no power over you, or whose treatment you aren't numb to (tbh FB is mostly sth I use for family, so the fact that this is usually background noise should tell you she's not the only person I need to remove from my friends list lol) or who you aren't clinging to out of some unaddressed desperation, loneliness, or needing closure, hesitation to abandon invested time (sunk cost fallacy...) or just being too afraid to confront the fact that someone you'd never do that to treats you badly BECAUSE they think of you exactly as badly as they act.

but no matter what reason you have for not having done it sooner... it feels silly the first time you accept a small frivolous thing like a cartoon can be a catalyst... but even if the last fucking straw is something stupid, that camel's back ain't any less broken. so it's a hard life skill. but I accept that I need to put loyalty to MYSELF over unearned loyalty to others, especially if that loyalty was spat on, exploited, and abused. and that includes the process of getting comfortable with hurting people's feelings when you tell them no & walk away.

but YEAH whew it's surreal to process that the last nail in the coffin of resentment that this friendship is being buried in is a fairly mild post about a Disney cartoon, specifically because 1) I've spent a long time (on this website specifically, actually) learning how to outsmart my ADHD by verbalizing my anger in longform stream of consciousness until I remember what dots to connect, and it clicks— can't do that on Twitter, baby— and 2) because in the years I've known this person, I've done a lot of self-work on self-valuation (ironically: a narrative theme of Encanto), and that means the cartoon post SHOULD have bothered me BECAUSE not only is it a friendship I've outgrown, I am & always have been worth more than being treated like that. so now the next step is I just gotta get used to making that the other person's problem, because it's damn sure not mine.