#like i don't want to say it's racism

[fearsomeandwretchedandwrong]

It does mystify me a bit to see so much lusting after Rhys and Conn when Taika is right there being the most breathtakingly gorgeous man ever. I can't look at anyone but him. He is exquisite.

[inkskinned]

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

[bixels]

So i have a small nicpic i wanted to share with you about your interpretation of spike in the au and i want to make two things clear before i talk

1) i havent watch the series for a little while as of now so i might be misnterpreting a aspect of this chatacter that might have never been there and only apeared in fan content and personal interpretation (since that whats been keeping me on the fandom)

2) this is not a big problem about the au i matured enough to not get angry at a interpretation of a fictional charater

Now here i go

I feel spike being the same race as the rest of his familie makes him lose a part of his character that might have not been central but was still something interesting about him and is the idea of not mayhering how diferent he looked from his adoptive family (and his cominty as a whole) he was he was still seen as part of it

Again this isnt a big problem with the au as a whole its just a small nicpic that i have about the au and its not going to make me hate the au

This was just my opinion that i wanted to share and im interested to know your opinion about what i said

I understand this criticism and agree that having Simon/Spike be a different race than Thea could speak to their relationship in the original show.

My reasoning for designing them both to be African American is this. I believe Simon's adoption is enough to explore the feelings of separation and exclusion he may have with Thea and her family. The original show doesn't bring up Twilight and Spike's racial differences much because they originally didn't consider Spike to be a part of Twilight's family. As far as I know, there's no moment where someone says, "Wow! You're telling me you're related to Twilight Sparkle? But you look nothing alike!" because Spike was more so Twilights... familiar than anything.

Later episodes that explore their familial dynamic poses the conflict through Spike's adoption. There's one episode where Spike's "biological father" returns, and Spike accuses Twilight of not being his real family, which breaks her heart. There's another that delves deep into Spike's feelings of exclusion from Twilight and Shining Armor's siblinghood. Basically, in discussions of family dynamics, the show places more emphasis on Spike's identity as an adopted sibling rather than a dragon.

I really do believe a multiracial family would be good representation, but the racial dynamics would not be something I'd be interested in getting into. That's not to say I find real multiracial families problematic or uninteresting or unappealing or unimportant. I just wouldn't be interested in having to explain in-text that Simon (non-black) and Thea (black) are related over and over; it would grow tedious. It adds an extra level of writing complication and opens up racial discourse (discourse that I feel is unrelated to their relationship in the original show) that I don't want to concern myself with, especially because I have no experience in navigating such discourse.

[pseudophan]

i know i’ve sent you two asks about the phandom racism and i’m certain others have also sent you asks, will you ever address it?

i’ve been thinking about this a lot recently with everything that’s been going on in the phandom, particularly on twitter although racism is by no means a twitter exclusive phenomenon and acting like everyone on tumblr is perfect would be disingenuous. i agree i can and should be doing more, and many years ago when i was less perpetually afraid of saying something wrong i was a lot better at it, but these days i find myself avoiding anything and everything that’s at all uncomfortable because i know i SEVERELY lack the emotional maturity to deal with it if i fuck it up. none of this should be about me but i’m painfully aware that the second i feel attacked in any way, usually doesn’t mean anyone is actually attacking me, i get obnoxiously petulant and suddenly it’s ‘well SORRY that i’m not PERFECT i guess i’ll DIE’. which is fucking stupid and embarrassing and not remotely productive. and then five minutes later i come to my senses and panic cause why did i say that? i know no one is actually attacking me, there is no reason to act like this. but in the moment i don’t have that reflection, and in desperately trying to avoid getting in trouble by saying the wrong thing i think i’ve gone too far the other way by not saying anything at all and now seem like i just don’t give a fuck. how i do or don’t come across is obviously not the issue at hand here, but i know i’ve got somewhat of a platform and it’s a shame i’m not using it the way it could be used, and i really do want to improve that.

the phandom often prides itself on being an inclusive and diverse space, and while that is true on the surface we don’t get to embrace that if we can’t even make sure everyone feels safe here

(please don't take this as my attempt to address the racism, this is all just me really poorly explaining why i haven't, if that makes sense)

[mamawasatesttube]

yknow i gotta say. lex luthor can be a really fun and interesting villain, but sometimes it does just take me aback the way some people talk about him when trying to make him funny and cool, as if his biggest and most infamous shtick is not extreme, violent xenophobia.

[lord-squiggletits]

Part of why I hate this fandom's take on Autobots vs Decepticons is ppl (mainly 'con fans honestly) who can't have any nuance of the situation whatsoever and love to write plots like "oh the humans are racist and abusive towards Cybertronians so this is how Megatron is right" no actually I don't think colonialism/imperialism and racism are justified so long as you can point the finger and say "they were the aggressors first" or "their hands are no cleaner than ours bc their society sucks too" sorry. Please come up with better sociopolitical narratives in your war story.

[dollypopup]

hmmmmmm

so, let me get this straight

the polin fandom spent 2 entire years hating on marina for being ooooh so awful and sooooo terrible to colin for lying to him and would 'make him miserable' and despised her for getting in between our otp

but also in the same breath said how much they need to see him suffer and for penelope to 'make him pay' and that he needs to be screaming crying throwing up for her forgiveness and she doesn't NEED to tell him about LW, that's HER business

and now in the exact same breath are hyping up mr. monopoly man debling and saying we need to be positive about him and omg he likes penelope for who she is (he doesn't) and he's going to make colin soooo jealous and . . .loving him. . .for getting in between our otp

hmmmmmmmmmmm

[simplepotatofarmer]

i still have reservations and issues with the whole qsmp mob pack thing.

i'm glad the mob pack was removed. i'm glad the creator of the pack is open to feedback and changing things so it's not racist or offensive. i get the intention wasn't malicious or to be racist and i do think that counts for something.

however.

there's still the way it was handled. yes, it's good that the mob pack was removed but it was deeply hurtful and racist and that warrants some sort of apology. especially from FitMC. what he said and the way he interacted with the mob was disgusting and racist and he absolutely needs to speak out on it and apologize.

there's still the way wider fandom handled it. just because the intent to be harmful wasn't there doesn't mean it wasn't harmful and didn't hurt people. so it sucks when you see so many people going 'well that wasn't their intent' because intent or not, it wasn't okay and seeing the reactions made it even worse because so often racism against indigenous people is minimized and anti-blackness is a huge problem. we're seeing that right now and as someone who is ojibwe and who has been watching qsmp, it hurts.

and there's still the fact that often white and non-indigenous creators/media feel entitled to taking culture that isn't theirs and using it in ways that are thoughtless and hurtful. so yes, the creator's intent might not have been that but the fact that it got this far just shows that the pattern of using indigenous and african culture without care is alive and well and it does contribute to a lot of hurt.

if you're not indigenous or black, i really implore you to think about these things and this situation because a lot of people were hurt.

[claire-is-6ft]

one thing about tommy bracco is that he'll tweet the worst big brother opinions and then fight for his life in the replies 😭

[theodoravery]

the thing about amen and vincent that i think a lot of you still do not understand (and i'm using them specifically bc they're the ones being compared) is that 1) amen wants every single dark magician dead, and he takes pleasure in torturing them and killing them, that is a very important part of his character, and that's why the book has made it so fucking clear! amen said it himself! he is not gonna change his ways just because he and eva are in love! eva literally makes the decision to accept that part of himself, so you cannot deny it and you can't complain if you were expecting something else because the book was pretty clear from the beginning about who amen really was (and i'm not saying he doesn't have layers but those do not take away the fact that he enjoys killing and that's that) -- and 2) vincent is not like amen at all. sure, his job, and i think it even has to do with his legacy, is being a demon hunter, but he doesn't go around killing every fucking demon he comes across, he's only after the ones who don't care about his world's ways, the ones who kill humans (like mc was planning to do until he told her what would happen if she did). and sure, you can argue that both amen and vincent want to rid the world of "evil", but again, amen takes pleasure in toturing and killing people (and it's because of a personal vendetta he has, may i add), vincent does not

[thevioletcaptain]

was just making my morning cup of tea when my brain inexplicably dished up a long forgotten memory of what must be the most poorly thought out and cartoonishly offensive reality show ever produced (yes, even worse than milf island manor or whatever it’s called) and i had to google it to make sure it was actually real because frankly it seems like it should only be a wildly problematic fever dream.

but no, it was real.

it was called black. white. and it followed two real american families™ supposedly "swapping races" using hyper-realistic "makeup effects" and then going off to interact with society looking like rdj in tropic thunder and the wayans brothers in white chicks in order to "understand" racism and privilege (i mean presumably that was the point but yikes)

and this was not a show made in the 80's when you might expect some coked up executive to have thought it was a good idea, either. it was in fact made in 2006. and wikipedia is telling me that ice cube was one of the producers??

genuinely what were they thinking with this mess??????

[clfixationstation]

I just remembered the time I was a summer camp counselor and I tried to read the first Harry Potter book aloud to my campers, and I had to skip over so many fatphobic lines

Because why would I just expose these perfectly nice kids to a bunch of mean comments, played off as comedy, that they would use as ammunition against other kids and themselves? It's just plain cruel. Joanne was incredibly fucking weird for that

[bandzboy]

scooter braun has to randomly explode i'm afraid

[galactic-rhea]

I can't believe they cancelled The Acolyte JUST after I finally made fanart of it.

Como diríamos acá, los empavé 😞

[dazzle02]

Ya know, I'd be genuinely interested in what the reaction would've been if Buck had got with another male character on the show other than Eddie. Like, one that the fans already loved. Someone like Ravi or Albert. A character who people already love and were wanting more of, but ISN'T Eddie. And like, have pretty much the same exact story of Buck not really understanding why he wants this persons attention, maiming Eddie and all that. All the "controversial" moments still happen. But here, Buck is the older one. In fact, with Albert they've got about the same age gap as Buck and Tommy, only Buck is the older one. Albert was 20 when he first appeared in the show in S3 and Buck would've been 28/29ish. So it would've been a similar age difference. But we would never have them calling Buck a predator or anything. Because they're very aware that they're all adults. But it does make me wonder what the reaction would've been.

Having Buck realise he's bisexual and start dating a guy, and it's not Eddie, but it IS a character they claim to love. And there's no sign of it not lasting. No actual sign of Bvdd!e happening. All signs point towards this relationship lasting a while.

Would they start hating on this character they've always loved beforehand? Because we all know that the main reason so many of them hate Tommy is because they see him as a threat to their ship.

But like, imagine Buck and Albert for some reason started dating (which I could never actually see but I do know some people have shipped this...) and BUCK said the things that made people decide they wanted Tommy to be killed. They'd have a completely different reaction.

This is just something I was thinking about last night while I was trying to go to sleep... 🤣

[eventide-imp]

There is something viscerally exhausting about wanting to write a story and being stymied because I have to decide if I can really tell it because all of my lived experience is colored by racism and I'm tired of all black stories being about racism