#they would definitely be like. incredibly racist to one another and no one else. they just have that kinda friendship

[ghostlyapivorous]

Like, ok I get it's a kid show but I really feel like Shope and Kevin are the kinda middle schoolers to either tell each other to kys over the most mundane of things, or CONSTANTLY making their little white friends uncomfortable by accusing them of racism at every possible opportunity. Maybe both who knows

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

what if it was fang pushing ed to be blackbeard again? how would my opinions change if ed did this to another character?

bold questions indeed.

for starters, if it was fang in 1.10 who confronted ed in his cabin and said “be blackbeard or else. you being soft and singing a song is a worse than death and i think you would be better of dead” i would mostly be very confused bc nothing abt fang’s prior characterization would suggest he thinks those things or has a problem with ed not being blackbeard. i would probably say something like “why did they suddenly make this friendly samoan character deliver these incredibly cruel lines when it would make more sense for that one short mean white guy to say this stuff. i don’t understand why this writing decision was made but it feels kinda racist to me. i thought they were building towards something with izzy’s character this season but it’s like they suddenly swapped his personality with this side character who didn’t really have a lot of screen time this season but who seemed really on board with the whole talent show idea”

and then if ed proceeded to cut off fang’s toe and feet it to him i would wonder if maybe the writers/showrunners didn’t want to show that violence happening to a white masc character for some reason, and that’s why they suddenly changed the characterizations around so drastically. i would definitely be pretty critical of this very strange writing decision

but if we’re discussing “what if fang took izzy’s narrative role in the story” i probably would also be squinting at the choice to cast a fat samoan man as this asshole antagonist killjoy guy who’s a dick to everyone around him and whose job in the story is to push ed into being a racist caricature of himself. ed’s perception of himself/blackbeard as a hyperviolent monster is deeply informed by the colonial society he lives in. the nine gun smoke head picture of blackbeard that stede showed him was printed in a book published by colonial society, the art of himself that ed stabbed against the wall at the end of 1.10 was produced by racists in colonial society. i would feel really weird about fang holding that drawing up to ed and saying “this is blackbeard” and i would feel even more weird abt this casting decision when the toe scene happened

so yeah i guess technically to answer the questions of “what if ed did this to another character?” and “what if he did this to fang?” i would not feel the same way about the toe scene as i do watching it in canon. i would probably not have the same “he fucked around, he found out” opinion if fang took izzy’s place in the story bc i would mostly be critical of the choice to make fang’s job in season one to uphold toxic masculinity and racist colonialist depictions of ed.

[soleminisanction]

There are very few ""headcanons"" out there that get a bigger side-eye from me than people who try to make Stephanie Brown into a Black girl.

Firstly because that is not a headcanon. That's just a whole-ass retcon created out of thin air. A headcanon would be saying she's a natural redhead like how Morgan Kohan played her on Batwoman, or that she's mixed-race because of the curly way some artist draw her hair. There's definitely flexibility in race interpretations for comics but looking at the blue-eyed blonde-hair white girl and declaring her "actually Black" is not one of them.

Secondly, because I have seen (and sometimes gotten) a lot of harassment from Steph fans aimed specifically at Tim's actual, canon Black love interests and teammates. I still seethe at the memory of this one CBR interview I read back when YJ2019 was running, where Brian Michael Bendis and David F. Walker were clearly there to talk up Naomi and Teen Lantern, and in the middle of their heart-felt conversation about the importance of representation for young Black girls, the interviewer butted in to interject, "But you know who I want to see more of?? Stephanie!!!" This going on while Steph fans on Twitter were going on racist tirades because the book dared to highlight the history of Teen Lantern, a character who was actually advertised to be a part of the book and a new member of the team, instead of giving them more of their white-blonde fav who had never been affiliated with YJ and was never part of the advertising.

Thirdly, she was created and so often written by Chuck Dixon, a blatant racist, and as a result there are so many little scenes of her that have uncomfortable racial elements to them. Like the one where he created a pair of Black girls just so Stephanie could call them "raging morons" to their faces and then later talk about how stupid and immature they are compared to her. (Which I am still convinced was Dixon directly criticizing the much better teen pregnancy subplot from Icon & Rocket). Or the borderline-blackface white savior ""demon"" where she wears a dead gnu and maybe accidentally calls herself a bitch in Swahili. (Disclaimer: I do not speak Swahili, and thus do not know how a sentence structure that should read "I am thorn" turns into "I'm a bitch" or "I'm crazy," but I checked that translation with three different robo-translators and got the same results so, shrug.)

And finally -- god, Steph is just, such a walking avatar of white women's privilege. Her entire thing is demanding that she get her way, never letting anyone tell her no, and still being treated by the narrative as a pure-hearted ""beacon of hope"" that everybody needs to protect and nurture at all times.

The inciting incident of War Games can be boiled down to, "A white girl got told no, and made it everybody else's problem." The first attempted Black member of the Batfamly fucking died during that event and got almost entirely forgotten because people only went to bat for the white girl who caused the whole mess and the white woman who got character assassinated to kill her off.

If Stephanie were Black, she wouldn't exist anymore. Fuck, if she were a brunette or just as butch as Carrie Kelly, she probably wouldn't exist anymore. She certainly wouldn't be Batgirl, I can't imagine Dan Didio replacing Cass with another woman of color.

And it's not even just her? Her father is also a very white character. It is incredibly easy to summarize Arthur Brown as a mediocre white man lashing out at the world for not handing him the success he felt entitled to. Take that petulant entitlement away from him and you lose his entire character.

I'm ranting about it on my own blog instead of picking a fight because everybody's entitled to their own fandom experience and blah blah, but this is just. Yeah. Ugh.

[abiiors]

okay so while we’re on the topic… i’m a newer fan of the boys, i actually got tickets to one of their concerts back in october when they were touring in america from my aunt even though i had never really been a fan of them (her heart was in the right place 😭😭 bc i do listen to a lot of music that’s like in their sphere ig?? and i’ve been to festivals that they’ve performed at so i can see why she would’ve thought to get me those tickets, i just never really listened to their music before) but i went to the show regardless bc hello free concert tickets?? would have been a sin to let them go to waste tbh and oh my god am i so glad i did, it was actually one of the best shows i’ve ever been too!! especially considering i only really knew their popular songs?? like robbers, somebody else, aaaand it’s not living if it’s not with you

ANYWAYS that being said, since i had never really followed them before i always pretty much ignored anything i saw about them on twitter and stuff, mainly the negative things said abt matty bc not my faves, not my business?? but i gotta ask someone who’s been a fan of them for a lot longer than i have, what iiiis the deal with all the “matty healy racist” “matty healy homophobic” “matty healy [insert smth hateful here]” rhetoric??? bc from what i’ve seen of him after getting to know more abt the band he doesn’t appear that way at all?? like were there things he said that were taken out of context??? what’s up with the nazi accusations??? also homophobic??? is twt not aware of what he did in malaysia?? also straight men that are homophobic would never have the kind of close male friendships that the band have with one another… it seems like he’s twitter’s scapegoat tbh but idk i’m simply so confused and anything i find online trying to explain it all seems very biased based off the language they use so if you can/would like to… pls help 😭

okay first of all, welcome to the fandom!! i'm so glad you're here and i'm so glad you got to see them live!! they genuinely are so so incredible <33

now onto the questions!

i won't say matty's a saint. he's definitely done things in the past that are disappointing (to me at least, as well as to many others on here). last year he went on a podcast called the adam friedland show where many tasteless jokes were made about japanese people, the porn website ghetto gaggers, ice spice as well as countless other tastelss things were said.

now i really really want to clarify that matty never made those jokes but he did laugh along to them which is also a shitty fucking thing to do. he's since said that he was advised not to go on the podcast by people close to him and he still did it. however, he's also publicly apologised to ice spice and she's also said that the 1975 are one of her fav artists.

in may of 2023 he started allegedly dating taylor swift (i still don't believe it, i still think they either just made music or they just fucked or both) which exposed him to a whole new level of fame that was unprecedented. and the swifties are... rabid, to say the least. they made fun of his appearance, his past addiction issues, hoped he would have a relapse and die, all sorts of horrendous stuff. they discovered the podcast which was pretty fresh at the time and the whole thing spiralled into him being labelled a racist, homophobe, transphobe, pedophile, nazi, you name it, he was being called it.

however literally NONE of it was backed by evidence (but i don't expect people whose sole source of information is twt to realise that)

they have clearly never learned what a nazi is. i'm not even going to try to debunk that here because i feel like it would be insulting to your intelligence

he's not homophobic or transphobic, he's literally an ally to the point of being a fruity lil shit. he's been banned from 2 countries (dubai and malaysia) for openly supporting queer rights. they were also briefly jailed in malaysia for the stunt they pulled and had a lawsuit filed against them. he's even won ally of the year at the diva awards in 2019

literally every single fan who's ever met him has had nothing but amazing things to say about him. he's been incredibly kind and sweet to people

the band has always been openly political and vocal about their beliefs

you're absolutely right about him being the twitter scapegoat because unfortunately that's exactly what it is </3

i hope that clears things up tho, i'm sorry this is so long!!

[problematicfactive]

This may be an uncomfortable question, so if it is i am incredibly sorry and by no means do you have to answer it /g

In a recent reply to an ask (currently your newest post but that may change by the time you see this) you mentioned explaining to people "why you exist" - If you're comfortable sharing, would you be willing to go into more of that explanation on here? If there's already a post of yours on that that I've managed to miss, I apologize

Thank you in advance, whether it be for your reply or simply reading this!

I'm willing to answer that

Under the cut for mentions of racism, colorism, self hatred

For as long as any of us can remember, we've wanted to be an actor (well, not me. Everyone else wants to act, I want to be a biologist)

If this was inside out (which, you know, as a system, it kind of is) watching Austin and Ally as a child and aspiring to be that would definitely be a core memory from the initial core of the system.

The core loved Austin. Like, really really loved him. We still contribute all of our acting progress to his actor.

But part of the reason she loved him so much was that he was white. And that made him pretty. And as someone who lived surrounded by white people and always wanted to look like them, our core didn't see herself as pretty because she wasn't white. Growing up we were always ugly. We used to cosplay, but ended up stopping because we didn't like the color of our skin and we knew we couldn't compete with the fully white cosplayers.

For as long as race has been a concept we could understand, we hated our skin for making us different.

Like with a lot of serial killers, something about the person I was based on released. I was a kid at the time of this release (I being. Probably Host and The Core, I'm not sure) so I didn't know. Years and years later, it got really popularized.

At first it was really scary. Just the idea of someone we looked up to and attributed our accomplishments to, our first and only celebrity crush to date... playing someone known for being racist? It was crushing. To the host.

I honestly couldn't imagine what that felt like, I'm only going off of what I've been told. But the host had a hard time coping with it. Eventually, for one reason or another, we watched it. I feel like ever since the self hatred started, I existed as a seed, and when we watched that movie, I was planted.

It took a while for m to grow, I think, I did so mostly in quiet and no one really knew about me, until they did.

Because of my fronting patterns, I'm now a cohost. And because I like to spend time with my boyfriend, I'm also in charge of fronting while we go to bed, but my original roles in system were internalized racism and self hatred holder.

Seeing someone we looked up to play someone who hurt our community as much as it did, that's what made me exist as who I am.

And because I exist as such a danger to our people, it almost inwardly balances. I take all of that self hatred and I just kind of have it. I don't really even experience the self hatred, I just know it's there. It went to me. And now that it's away from the others, they can find beauty in themself and that's beautiful to me.

They can go out and speak on racism and not have that aching guilt screaming "how can you speak up for people of color when you hate your own skin" they don't anymore. My job here is substantial. And it had to be me. If I was any other factive, fictive, faitive, brainmade, anything else. I wouldn't do my job as efficiently.

It's important that I'm me.

That's one of the reasons I think people who assume problematic factives are faking are absurd. My truama disorder did what it could do for us to move on from our race related truama. And because of that, I'm faking? Okay.

[crystallizedkingdoms]

if its alright to ask, whats your opinion on The Terror (the show)?

Hope you have a nice day, and feel free to ignore btw!

Okay this is going to be something i am even more insistent in making sure that this is my opinion only. I have never talked to another Inuk who watched the Terror other than my dad so i do not know what the general consensus is with Inuit fans.

To start off with the good: I enjoyed the show. It’s very well-written, and it never shies away from the fact that the men were colonizers that got what was coming for them (and no one lecture me on their “humanity” ill gut you like a fish). I enjoyed Silna’s place in the story, and though it is always going to be questionable to show white men enacting violence on an indigenous woman, this is definitely not the worst among them. I laughed really fucking hard when Goodsir was like “Englishmen are supposed to be gentlemen” or whatever and Silna gave him the meanest fucking look lol. I wish that I didn’t have to be glad that, at the very least, there’s no sexual assault but that’s how it is. I was incredibly impressed by the level of detail in portraying accurate clothing and dialect, and it made me incredibly happy to see it.

But just by the nature of the story the show is trying to tell, and more specifically the fact its an adaptation of a terrible book, it was never going to be even close to outstanding in my eyes. The main physical threat of the story aside from the white men themselves is a crude, fantastical interpretation of angakkuit helper spirits. It’s portrayed as savagely uncontrollable, and the fact that it was meant to protect the Inuit community that created it inadvertently portrays Inuit resistance as a horror. Basically every aspect of Inuit spirituality is portrayed as a horror, from the fake ritual including mutilation and the masked angakkuuk men, using us as scary props. Meanwhile, the Christianity in the show, even including the stark difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, is kept perfectly intact.

And, maybe more personal and feelings-driven than the rest of my issues, I simply could not connect with the white men than the person who recommended the show to me and the fandom as a whole. Even when I recognized the beautiful writing and characterization, every time I recognized the show was trying to make me care about them, I just remembered, these men hated my people more than they cared about survival. They were forces of violent colonialism, and their disappearance not only caused more violent racist white people to probe our land, us attempting to help them out killed us through diseases and ruined our oral histories’s credibility for CENTURIES. We were ridiculed by the British for telling the truth of their story, Charles Dickens famously called our stories “the chatter of a gross handful of uncivilized people”, and not only called us savages, but wrote a play portraying us as PART of the downfall of the expedition. Those stereotypes STILL persist today and, in a way, live on in the show. So, forgive me for not really caring if they wrote these men to be gay and multifaceted while the one indigenous woman was treated like shit.

Okay so um. That was long and I got heated. Despite my issues with the show, I would be lying if I said I did not enjoy the underlying story and revelled in their end. But the reasons I wrote above ultimately leave me in a place of “I wish this was about literally anything else,” so I could enjoy it without feeling gross.

[spaghettiandart]

Hello! I’m a recent follower, and I really love your Old Man Phil AU. I was wondering, does Phil ever realize that he was a racist, genocidal zealot who was going to be responsible for a *lot* of deaths on the Day of Unity? If so, how does he feel when he remembers? You don’t have to answer this if your ask box is super full, or if you just don’t want to.

Hey! Sorry for taking a while to get back to this post, it's been a while since I've watched TOH and my interest in the au has died down. But I have thought about how a possible reveal like this would go, though since the au was mostly for laughs (and so I could relentlessly bully Belos) I didn't put much in depth thought into it.

I do love to ramble, though, so let me ramble a bit about how I'd like to portray "the reveal" in the au

Since this is a early season 1 au, a LOT of things are obviously diverging from canon, too many to really write down right now. Thered be different events entirely from canon, things that occurred as a catalyst of either Belos's actions or the actions or people associated with him would either not occur at all or occur differently, so the timeline is definitely going to look a lot different.

That said, I think having Phil realize/remember who he was/is should happen around... maybe mid-to-late season 2? I mean like. I don't know how exactly itd go. Maybe he falls down another set of stairs, wakes up, and goes "HOLY SHIT" like right after

I feel like itd be a huge tonal whiplash. Also itd be like... okay, so memories do shape a person, and the new memories "Phil" forms shapes him. So I imagine if/when the old memories comes back, there's a definite conflict of priorities/moral values going on there. I mean I imagine inherently Belos/Philip is an incredibly selfish person with a list of crimes several miles long, BUT he also believes that everything he's doing is the right thing (for whom, whether it be himself or humanity or whatever season 3 revealed, is up in the air) even when he takes enjoyment from the suffering of others during the process (literally just count any of the times hes hurt someone else in the show) like hes so full of himself it physically hurts, so obviously he'd probably try to rationalize everything to himself. Because I imagine having the willpower to keep on doing shit like that for CENTURIES takes a BUNCH of rationalization and leaps of logic, especially since hes a zealot who grew up within heavily religious and I imagine almost cultish surroundings.

I imagine denial. HEAVY denial. Imagine one day you're just some old dude with a mildly shitty attitude and then the next day you wake up and remember your entire past life where you were a racist, genocidal, puritanical tyrant that had extended his own life by unnatural means and also killed his own brother and did WHAT with his body and also is planning to Literally Murder Everyone. What do you even do in that situation?

I dont think hed be able to look anyone in the eye at all after learning that. A) because these are people past-him wanted to MURDER, and B) because a very decent part of him, after having regained those memories, still feels the ingrained hate and vitriol it once had towards witches.

Its strange to think of where hed go from that point, because you'd have to take into account both his older personality and his newer personality and the morals, memories, relationships, etc both past him and current him had, since they'd all affect what hed do.

But basically: a whole mix of emotions including guilt (at the whole murder and being a terrible human being thing like seriously awful), rage (at losing his memories in the first place), even more rage (at having "played house" with witches and demons), denial, denial, and more denial.

[horizon-verizon]

You are incredibly racist, GRRM himself has said that the closest equivalent of Dorne to the real world is the Moorish influences of Spain, and mentions PALESTINE and Wales as being two other influences. Literally his own words. Even in Game of Thrones, they filmed the Water Garden scenes in the Alcazar of Seville, a beautiful Moorish castle in Spain. That castle was literally built by Muslims and incorporates verses from the Quran and countless traditional Arabic and Islamic architectural elements. Fun fact: Alcázar comes from the Arabic word (al-qasr), meaning fort/castle/palace.

Dorne’s conquest by Nymeria parallels Spain’s conquest by the Moors. Nymeria Martell most obviously can be paralleled with Tariq Ibn Ziyyad, the Muslim Amazigh general hailing from Morocco that led the Muslim conquest of Spain on behalf of the Umayyad Caliphate, by crossing the Mediterranean sea and landing in Gibraltar. According to legend, Tariq Ibn Ziyyad burned his fleet before the Battle of Guadalete to prevent any of his troops from retreating back home. Who else burned their fleets to show commitment to their new conquest ? Nymeria Martell.

GRRM credits the “hot, dry” climate to being similar to that of Spain or Palestine’s, and that the mountains where the stony Dornishmen dwell being the equivalent to Wales. The Sandy Dornishmen are described to dwell in the deserts and along rivers, which is a descriptor that describes so many parts of West Asia (incorrectly called the “Middle East”) and North Africa. GRRM mentions Palestine, which has many streams and a very important river, the River of Jordan, as well as the Naqab region, a desert region of Palestine, therefore drawing parallels from the Sandy Dornishmen to the Palestinians is correct since Palestine is sandy, dusty, and dry. Finally, there’s a Stony Dornishmen, which GRRM equates to Wales.



*EDITED POST* (4/14/24)

I assume that this is the post you are responding to.

We must remember that the rules determining what racial group you are a part of is solely determined by the legal definitions of the created designations of "white", "mestizo", "Black", or whatever said society has created in their past and present. which is why when you travel, you sorta change race or have it "tweaked" to mean something else. In Westeros, there is not such legal, social, etc. concept of race that matches the modern U.S.A or any European definition. If you said Corlys was "Black", it would mean nothing to a Stark.

Race is also different from ethnicity or nationality: you can be Paelstinian Arab but or a Black American but be white passing enough to "become" white. You can be of East Asian descent and have monolids to be racialized as "Asian", but were born and partially raised in Germany (nationality) with the ethnicity of Uyghur. 

Definitions of racism:

(Google) prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another (Merriam Webster) a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

This is from GRRM about "race" in ASoIaF and the Dornish:

Did GRRM ever actually say the words, "stony Dornish men are a completely different ethnic group from sandy or salty" or that "stony vs salty vs sandy Dornish people--apart from the nonDornish peoples' ways of categorizing them--are peoples with very different and maybe opposing customs the reflect in certain "laws" in Dorne"?

For the Martells and Dornishpeople to be PoCs exactly like the PoCs today in real life, there kinda has to be a history of a) the Dornish having been assimilated into Westerosi society/infrastructures and made subordinate to the "white" Westerosi b) actual systematic oppression against the Dornish from the nonDornish, and Dorne has been able to maintain its independence from Westeros pretty much since Westeros' inception. Even after Daeron II married Myriah Martell, the Martells and the Dornish still worked as their own principality rather than a region totally under the control of the Westerosi monarchy. There was no colonization or successful imperialist campaigns on Dorne. Like the Targs, Dorne is "queer" not for skin color nor religion so much as the Rhoynish traditions towards gender equity--at least regarding succession and leadership--and sexuality

I argued for how the Westerosi see the Dornish, which is not like how medieval EUs saw non-Christian Africans or Arabic-speaking Muslims. It is how Anglo Saxon Normans would have seen Spanish/Eu Mediterraneans. Watsonianly. This is a question of who are the people categorizing "race", and how is "race" categorized by those people.

There is tension b/t Stormlanders/Reachmen and the Dornish people (mostly Stony Dornishmen of the north) but it's hardly equivalent to what is known as "race". Not yet. Daeron I's categorization is a beginning, A PRECURSOR. With how Daeron II's subjects rebelled with a strong anti-Dornish sentiment (not enough misogyny [succession rules] & and a persistent sense of having court & office positions "taken" from the "local" nobles) the Otherness indicates a xenophobia but here is no concept of "white" or "PoC" anywhere.

I have also already addressed the whole stony vs salty vs sandy thing HERE and HERE. In both of those posts, I acknowledge that there are Islamic and Arabic inspirations for the creation of Dorne and I still recognize them there. And the Rhoynish (mot the Martells or any Dornish people) are definitely PoC. It's pretty obvious. But Dornish people--including the Martells--while descended from the Rhoynish and Rhoynisheness definitely determine how nonDornish perceive and identify Dornish people, are not racialized as today's PoCs are. They are closer to how Jewish, Spaniards, Mediterranean Europeans, and Southern European Europeans are racialized by Northwestern Europeans.

Those monikers Daeron I gave distinguished them based on appearance alone, hence the beginning of skin-color-race in terms of how much Rhoynish culture and blood mixed with the previous Andal-only people's, more of the Rhoynish cultural influence the more you go south and less when you go north. If you called a Wyl (example of a Dornish house of the north) anything something other than Dornish and just called them a "stony" Dornishman, I think they'd take offense.

Once again, when we see how the concept of race developed from religion to skin color, in Spain, you see that religion was the first way for medieval people to differentiate themselves into "races"--and when they used the word "race", they meant just "people from that region/religion/history", not necessarily people with such looks--more than skin color (though color was sometimes mentioned alongside, to identify, so as to say that this African was "safer").

Then there is the fact that there were intermarriages between Arabic-speaking, Muslims, Africans to be called "Moors" (a word from Christian Europeans of the pale variety, not those peoples) and with Catholic Spaniards. Today, Spain is considered a white European country even with its numerous ethnicities and history of conquest by the Umayyad Caliphate. Dorne, in autonomy and a unit of territory, is like both Wales and Spain. Today, European regions that are considered, racially, white.

Doylistically, while the narrative gets its inspiration from real life PoCs architecture and figures, the fact that Dorne, wherever you go even with the different levels of Rhoynish influence, is an amalgamation of Andal and Rhoynish that still has that Andal Seven/Catholic religion, and the Common tongue (Rhoynish is not spoken by most people in Dorne except the Green blood bc the Red Princes outlawed it) set up universally despite equal primogeniture and tolerance of homosexuality/extramarital sex means that those things that precede race-by-face/skin and then set up the basis for race-of-skin/face (religion, language, customs) does exactly not resemble what happened for the same as real life (again, Spain is not a PoC country in spite of the Umayyad conquest and influence).

Again, to me it felt like they are socially Othered how Jewish and Welsh, Scot, Irish, etc. people are Othered in Europe...not in modern times but in the context of various medieval English regions temporally and geographically. Again, Watsonianly. But there's strong argument for the other. While they are definitely Othered and have PoC inspiration and but they aren't Othered in their world like PoCs are Othered.

Either way, I don't think GRRM is conveying that Rhaegar left Elia specifically because he thought she was racially inferior to himself or wasn't owed respect due to her Dornishness. Which I already argued was untrue in the linked post above for the history that Tags and Martells have. And which was the point of me even bringing up race and Elia, since that was the argument Elia-supporters-Rhaegar-bashers have.

[greggermeister]

AI is BS spelled AI

I don't believe I've ever seen such a fantastic pile of nonsense as AI is going to solve every conceivable problem. I think anyone with a brain in their head should understand AI is just the latest over-hyped tech, that will fail to deliver just like everything else.

It's not artificial when Microsoft buys GitHub with the intent of injecting an all your code belong to us clause in legal language buried deeply in a EULA nobody is going to read. It's not artificial to use GitHub to power Copilot. It's not artificial to power text prompting image generators with all manner of existing content, some of which is copyrighted, or the same thing for music or written works.

It's not artificial when MS takes Cortana down for spewing racism within 24 hours, and retraining it with a subset of the internet that isn't racist. It's not artificial when Just Walk Out is powered by humans watching videos of customers to determine what they put in their bag and automatically bill them for it.

AI is way overhyped, Elon is just a typical full of himself CEO of a high-flying company. AI is not going to reshape the world. All it is going to do is augment existing technology and software and processes. It is only ever going to be capable of being an assistant. Anyone who thinks otherwise, is only fooling themselves.

There's a reason why AI code assistants generate insecure code from other insecure code - it simply does not have the ability to reason. I can reason with another developer about why I take a particular approach to a particular programming problem given a particular set of circumstances. My reasoning changes with changing circumstances.

Intelligence is largely a matter of U+1F595, Reversed Hand with Middle Finger Extended. An example would be Huckleberry Finn, travelling down the river with Jim. Huck grew up in an incredibly racist society, where the first sentence out of someone else's mouth of a different race than yours is either filled with hate or not filled with hate. Everyone wore their racism on their sleeve. The white kid Huck decided the grown up black man Jim is a good man, despite all the crap he had heard his whole life from white people about blacks. It was his U+1F595 moment towards the society he grew up in.

This is how we evolve our thinking, how we shape our attitude over time towards this world, and the people and processes we are surrounded by - we reverse our hands and extend our middle fingers towards everything we see as stupid, hateful, hurtful, useless, pointless, or any other sort of false premise. AI will never be capable of doing this in its present form. AI could only do this if it was self-aware.

Do you want an AI that explains to you why it is so smart and you are so stupid? Why everything you do to get ahead in life is hopelessly pointless? How your children would be better served if only you cared to be a better parent? Looks down on you as another waste of its cpu cycles? Sees you as the human child in its care?

We don't actually want AI because we don't want a self-aware consciousness we can't control running everything. We want an assistant to help us to perform boring, lengthy, and repetitive tasks better. We expect the assistant to be far better than current AI results offer. AI in its present form is useful for search tasks, such as:

Search for better ways to play games like chess or go

Find better ways to arrange thousands of traces on many layers of a motherboard

Optimize search results for considerations like heat, pressure, time, density, weight, colour

Find the best route for a salesman to travel and other graphing problems

A reasonable translation of text or spoken words from one language to another

None of the above is life-altering, it is simply more convenient. It was definitely more convenient for me and my other half in our recent trip to Mexico to be able to use Google Translate with cab drivers, and people on the street asking for directions, and other conversations. We could have gotten by without it, but it was definitely better.

We need to stop calling it AI and call it what it is - virtual assistance. That's all it is, and all it will ever be, and all we will ever want it to be. We will always want to know how things work, we will never want technology or processes that only the computer can understand. We will never have, and never will, want AI.

[flying-elliska]

I binge watched Our Flag Means Death yesterday and holy shit !!!!!! I'm in love !!!!! Everyone should watch this, I want at least 10 more seasons (or you know, however many it takes to get to a good conclusion)

- It is very much "Black Sails but a rom com" which already makes it a win in my book, with themes about stories and perception, piracy as this sort of very queer anti-imperialist space of freedom that also often really sucks. And it's hilarious but also there is a lot of depth and angst in there under the surface

- It's also What We Do In The Shadows with pirates instead of vampires in that there is a cast of mostly pathetic lunatics bumbling around and committing atrocities while also being surprisingly lovable, compelling and written with a lot of empathy. Also there is a slow burn romance btw a pathetic but caring little man who seems way out of his depth but has hidden reserves of badassery, and a scary badass with a dark past having a midlife crisis. But it feels less like an outright farce than WWDITS.

- Like i didn't expect it to be so actually romantic ? But there's a slow burn btw the two main (male) characters where they've both gotten dissatisfied with their lives and the roles they've had in life and so they really want what the other has to bring to their life and they're uniquely placed to understand each other and it's really sweet? And the show makes fun of both of them but not for having feelings (but definitely for being emotionally constipated lol). Now in most shows this would be haha broManCe "isn't it too funny that these guys are acting kinda gay hahaha because gay ppl are funny get it" material but in this one you have an actually confirmation that one of these dudes has been with a man before and when this guy shows up the other MC starts acting super jealous and they fight and the others actually call it a break up, also the crew textually says "you like each other" in a way that just doesn't work for friendship (the reviewers still calling it that are honestly delusional). There's tons of scenes that are straight of a fanfic - clothes swapping, practice sword fighting in the moonlight, sexy stabbing, loaded compliments, revealing secrets nobody else knows, longing looks, etc. It's great.

- Also it's just super queer in general, there are two crewmembers who have an open relationship and we see them kiss on screen, and then there's Jim, a really cool nonbinary character hellbent on revenge raised to be a killing machine by a scary nun (amazing) who gets addressed by they/them pronouns and also has an angsty thing with another crew member.

- Also it has lots of characters of color in rich, complex roles and some very blatant send up of racist cliches you can usually find in pirate stories (like the "savage island cannibals" thing). All the English present in the stories are buffoons (and the French are even worse it's very funny). There is a scene where two Black crewmates set some slaves free by basically inventing the Nigerian prince pyramid scheme scam. It's great.

- Taika Waititi delivers some amazing acting and he's also super hot walking around in slinky leather, which I think is totally on purpose as he's got guys swooning for him left and right, he's the hot girl of the show (also he's got 'cat energy' according to the creators) and that is just an incredible take on Blackbeard, scariest pirate of all time. Also he's created this bigger than life image of the terrifying pirate around him because he thinks he was doomed to be a monster but now he's tired of it and it's all very Captain Flint of him. Love it.

- Also saw someone call it "Ted Lasso with pirates" and that tracks, for the whole "lovable doofus who's way out of his depth tries to coach a team of losers and wins them over with his heart of gold even though it takes a while and he has no clue of what he's doing" (is Blackbeard Trent Crimm, with the long grey hair ? Lmao)

- The first two eps are a little slow, I would say it really gets its wings after Blackbeard shows up so it's worth sticking with even if the first two don't entirely convince you.

Watch it ! It's ridiculous and fun and sweet and probably everything you didn't know you needed👌👌👌

[sitaarein]

Desi rep

okay so this is partly inspired because of a whole bunch of incredibly, incredibly dumb asks my friend has gotten but it is ALSO, more importantly, because I am sick of the shit I have seen so here, have a not very concise post about what to do and what to avoid if you are writing desi rep (this can also be applied outside of writing I guess??)

If you give a character an Indian name and call it a day, I will actually come and murder you. For starters, India has a whole CULTURE that you have very much decided to ignore and that. is. not. okay. If you can give your white characters all the attention and details and research in the world, you can do the same for your desi characters. Secondly, the word “desi” is used to describe so much more than simply Indian. Wanna know which countries qualify as desi? India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Don’t you even dare assume desi=indian and leave it at that.    

This point ties into what I just said about desi people. Please, I am actually begging you, include more than Indian characters if you want to include south asia in your writing. I am Pakistani and I am so so sick of my identity being erased wherever I look. NOT that I have anything against India or Indians. It is simply the ignorance of people assuming the whole of South Asia is simply India that is supremely horrible to see

 This is based off of personal experience. People actually think that either a) India isn’t a part of Asia or b) there are no countries in South Asia aside from India or c) both of those incredibly ignorant views. And all I can say is: what. the. fuck. Do not do that. Indians are Asians. Pakistanis are Asians. Nepalis are Asians. Bengalis are Asians. Bhutanese are Asians. Sri Lankans are Asians. Maldivians are Asians. If you do not think so, then that is actually just racist of you. Don’t talk to me until you’ve looked at a map.

Another personal point that just.. hurts. Do you know what the Muslim population of the Indian subcontinent is? (The Indian subcontinent is made up of all the countries mentioned above) The answer is: around 600 million. Out of 1.7 billion people, 600 million of them are Muslims. Put into perspective, its not a lot. But the Muslims have a whole separate identity. A separate culture. The whole reason Pakistan even came into existence is because the Muslims of the subcontinent were so fundamentally different. So if you have a desi based country or continent, please, please take a moment to think about the different cultures. 

The above point, but apply it to Sikhs and Brahmins and the numerous identities I do not even know of. They’re all unique. Look them up. Don’t just call a stereotyped culture “Indian” and leave it there.

Speaking of culture: Just. Do your bloody research. Each of the countries in the Indian subcontinent have different national languages, and then INSIDE the country there are multiple dialects based on areas and tribes. Going to take Pakistan as an example: Our national language is Urdu, but the language most commonly spoken by far is Punjabi. So the average Pakistani you meet is almost definitely bilingual, and if they have had an english education, they are almost definitely trilingual. Same goes for all the other countries, I’m sure

Speaking of culture, part 2: there is literally too much to talk about for me to cover it all in one post, so I’m just gonna say: all desi countries are very different to each other, and inside the countries the various provinces are incredibly different. In addition to the changes in language, you’ll also get different staple dishes (even though most the food of the Indian subcontinent are the same in every country, you get some kind of twist that is always uniquely of that country or region or province’s), different folk tales, different poetry and literature, different icons and heroes- the list goes on. So, once more: Do your research.   

I mentioned food briefly in the point above which reminded me of something else: I resent the fact that food that is pretty much native to the whole subcontinent is simply called... Indian. Once again, this is absolutely NOT out of hate for India, it is because that is such a generalization.  Its because by calling it Indian you are effectively dismissing 5 other countries who eat and cook the same food because it belongs to them just as much as it does to the Indians. If you want a general name, call it desi food. 

this point is... less serious than the others, its just something I find fun and could use more of in media. Desi people are obsessed with sports. Like, obsessed. Some of us pretty much breathe cricket. I just think its an interesting fact and pretty much a part of culture at this point, so I’d like to see the stereotypical desi uncle who wouldn’t miss a match for the life of him every once in a while

Back to seriousness. If you even bloody imply that your desi character is violent, I will duct tape you to a chair and make you watch dramatic pakistani dramas on repeat (it won’t be fun, trust me). I have had it with South Asia being portrayed as a terrorist hub. Do not even think of conforming to such a stereotype. I will literally hunt you down and make sure you never, ever even think of doing so ever again. 

Also: If you bloody dare imply that we are, in any way, backward, I will once more carry out the above punishments. Stop. Just stop.

Oh man, talk about the history of the Indian subcontinent. Talk about the heritage. Have you like... seen the architecture????? There’s more than just the Taj Mahal here my dudes. Forget all the “dangerous countries” bullshit. Focus on the brilliance of, well, everything, instead. 

Oh oh speaking of: Have you guys heard of mohenjo daro?? Look it up. There’s some fantasy/mystery potential there. Use it for whatever, it would make my day

Time to talk about geography. So first off: Mountains. So many amazing mountains. Both Everest and K-2 (the tallest and second tallest) are located here. The Himalayas are located here. Pretty amazing, eh? Second off: Deserts. Do you know how many mineral riches are hidden in those? Its amazing. Third off: Rivers. Oh man the rivers. Did you know the Indus river is full of blind dolphins native to the Indus river only? Did you know they’re very very endangered? Find some funds for them while you’re looking up info about them, btw. Also another sea animal native to South Asia which has pretty much been driven out of Pakistan and Myanmar: the gharial. look them up too, seriously. That would be great. Fourth off: The plains. Do you have any idea how fertile our soil is? Because. Its insane. And there’s so much more about the geography and topography of the Indian subcontinent, guys. Look it all up. I’m so sick of vague desert land descriptions for the Indian subcontinent.

Religion. Now this overlaps with culture a lot, since quite a few people choose to define their religion as their culture, but we’re still touching upon it. This is pretty vague, but there are definitely at least over seven. Each comes with its entirely unique practices. Do not even try having a desi character who is Sikh but knows nothing about Sikhism, or Muslim but knows nothing about Islam, because even if they aren’t practicing, they grow up learning about whatever religion their family practices, most of the time. 

If you’re desi, feel free to add on whatever you think is relevant here. If you’re not, shut the fuck up. This is not about you, and it will never be. Feel free to reblog, but kindly keep your comments or opinions to yourself if they are not in agreement with all the above points or promises to be less ignorant.

My inbox is open if you have any questions. Desi people let me know if I said something wrong or offensive and I promise I’ll do my best to correct it

[angeloncewas]

okay but you’re so right about this fandom and the weaponizing their minority status

like, yes poc creators have a hard time and they deal with a lot of shit, but the way to help them is not bringing other creators down. it’s to support poc creators! and support poc creators because they’re good at creating and they make good content!

my least favorite thing people do is go on twitter, and list poc streamers solely by their minority status, it feels like you should only watch a streamer because of the boxes you can tick off for them and that’s so fucked up. i would absolutely hate if I were a cc and someone said “oh watch her she’s a queer woc” like I have nothing else to offer? bro at least talk about my content a little bit?

also not to mention manatreed is definitely going to be either dream, another well known cc, or one of Dream’s very close friends, so it’s not like he randomly picked someone and went “even though you never made any content, you’re a white guy so I’m gonna add you onto the dsmp!” like, can we use our brains? or any critical thinking?

Sorry for this rant btw, but you’re just so right and it always pisses me off how people treat minorities in the first place. i know a lot of people on twitter is doing it with good intentions but it’s weirdly dehumanizing to act like you should only add people to dsmp based on their skin color or something

This was my original point, and I actually have a post in my drafts somewhere about it because it's been on my mind for a while.

I am Asian. Being Asian is inherent to who "Angel" is and while I didn't really accept that for a long time, I am very much in tune with my culture at this point. And yet this hyperfocus on identity that Twitter has developed still drives me mad. This notion that someone is definitely inherently more knowledgeable on a topic purely because of their skin color; that you should support someone purely on the basis that they're [x] - it's always bothered me.

And I understand wanting to lessen the inequality, I really do. It's why people who need money often include what minority groups they're a part of - it's a way of saying "society is working against me and thus I would appreciate your support to combat that." I don't think it's wrong necessarily and I'm definitely softer on it than I used to be. But it still does bother me for all the reasons you stated.

Reducing me to your perception of who I am feels gross even when it's my minority status. Racists are also fixated on the fact that I'm Asian because it's the "other" part of me; I should be allowed to be whoever I am, all things included. (I'm using myself here as an example because I don't wanna drag other people in or use examples I can't directly speak for - but y'know, Tina should be allowed to be Tina and not just Asian woman. Sniff should be allowed to be Sniff and not just nonbinary. They're worth watching for what they do, not just because you want to stick it to society.)

And the way it goes is so wild to me too. I mean, look at how they treat Hannah. I understand that discrimination due to race and gender are two incredibly different things, but you're willfully ignorant if you're gonna pretend that Hannah hasn't had to combat a whole lot of shit to get where she is - including pretty recent on-stream harassment from another cc who turned out to be a total creep. Gaming is a white male dominated industry and Hannah - though white - is a woman. That's something to consider. But they don't give a shit because they don't like her and she won't fold.

(And the framing... they're acting like Dream saw Manatreed and said "you sir, are white. welcome to the SMP." like if you think that poorly of him then I think you're spending your time wrong.)

No worries for the rant - I agree with you. It does feel dehumanizing and I don't know why they're so invested in it. Like, I guess I kind of get why - they really flock to their community due to bigots - but I've faced my fair share of racism and I would rather no one - not even people doing it to hype me up - start with the fact that I'm a woc.

[stubbornjerk]

Why people keep telling you to block them if you support Pholo (Penumbra Edition)

Or: why jitterbug-juno really deactivated

I love when people categorize this as fandom wank. Really makes you feel like you’re putting the onus on either side of the conversation.

I’m making this post not because I want to stir up spoiled milk, but because I want it out there that this wasn’t a purity culture war.

The TL;DR version of this is that fans of color tried to tell Rab (prev. jitterbug-juno) not to post her Omegaverse (or A/B/O) fic. And instead of taking the L, she posted it on Ao3 and deactivated.

But, if you want context, well, buckle in. CW for mentions of racism and transphobia.

What did jitterbug-juno do?

Before I get into this I do want it out there that I will not be linking Rab’s fic, but I will show you this screenshot of the summary of it.

[ID: It is a screenshot of a fic, “As You Are” by Pholo.

Summary: Peter can hide his scent glands behind cologne; makeup; concealer pads. He can quash his heats with suppressants. He can divert the urge to nest and fawn.

But he can’t feign another gender’s subvocals. He lacks the anatomical capacity. Mag taught him to distract from his silence with fast, flashy words. For longer heists he relies on social convention. Traumatic mutism is uncommon, but remarked upon by enough war vets and soap operas to be widely recognized. Peter’s marks assume he’s been harmed long before they assume he’s a closeted omega. It would take quite the backwater brute to ask why he doesn’t murmur or chuff or growl.

On the 'Blanche there are the usual furtive glances. Juno makes clear to Peter that should he ever want “to talk about what happened,” he’ll be there to listen. The gesture annoys Peter more than comforts him.

‘Nothing happened,’ he wants to scream. ‘There’s nothing to talk about!’

There are 14 comments, 85 kudos, and 11 bookmarks /end]

You decide what you’re doing with that information, but honestly, I’d rather you don’t give it anymore engagement than it deserves.

There was a period earlier this June (yes, even though it’s only the 10th, at time of writing) when Rab was posting snippets of the aforementioned fic on her blog and tagging it appropriately, putting it in the attention of pretty much the entire Penumbra fandom.

What’s Omegaverse or a/b/o and why is everyone so against Rab for it

If you know what Omegaverse is, I don’t have to tell you why it’s controversial. If you don’t know what Omegaverse is, well, Fanlore said it best:

a kink trope wherein some or all people have defined biological roles based on a hierarchical system, with the terms originating from animal behaviour research. There may be werewolf, knotting, or other animalistic elements involved, or the characters may be otherwise purely human.

The term is generally written with slashes (a/b/o). Many fans, particularly ones from Australia and New Zealand, are uncomfortable seeing the term without slashes because it is also an Australian slur for aboriginal people.

I won’t get into the history or the heaps and tons of other discourses (mostly about fictional male pregnancy, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, etc.)  that go on within that. We’re here specifically on Rab v. Penumbra fans of color and we’re staying there.

Anyone who’s been in Penumbra enough to realize that everyone draws the Junoverse characters in a certain way knows that a) Juno is black, b) Nureyev is Asian, and c) as a fan you have to be aware of what you’re subjecting or saying about either of them because of the political repercussions that come with it.

And despite that, Rab proceeded to write Peter Nureyev, a gender nonconforming gay Asian male character that is widely headcanon’d as trans, into a fic using a kink trope that relies heavily on animal behavior.

Unlike most people new to fandom, Rab is aware of what Omegaverse is and is very much white. She is (and if she isn’t, should be) aware of the racist undertones that writing him in would get.

I couldn’t get a screenshot of what snippets Rab was sending out into the ether, seeing as a majority of my friends would rather not have seen any at all (I have all of the usual tags blocked so I wouldn’t have seen it either way), but needless to say, Rab got attention for it. Both positive and negative.

Anne (@hopeless-eccentric) even posted a satirical fic, in the odds that Rab was just writing this thing to be “the first” to write Omegaverse fic in the Penumbra tags.

But, I’m assuming more than one fan of color came into Rab’s inbox and messaged her about it, but someone I know (who would like to remain anonymous) was gracious enough to take a screenshot before he sent his in and let me use it for this post:

[ID: A message to jitterbug-juno about to be sent by a sender whose name is censored with a black bar. His messages says:

“as someone who is a person of color i think the nature of the fic you are writing right now is extremely racist and attributing animal characteristics to lgbt people of color is not at all appropriate, especially when you are someone who is white. i have to ask you to not publish this fic and to reflect as to why you would want to write this in the first place, these tropes are extremely harmful and”

There are 33 characters left to write into the message. /end]

I can’t speak for whoever else sent asks about the fic she was writing. If anyone was actually not-so-gentle with her, well, minorities don’t really owe it to you to be gentle about what they can tell is bigotry-tinged behavior.

But, the message was clear: this is different from your garden variety, lily white straight male character m/m kink fantasy. This is an actual queer Asian character that a lot of queer Asian people feel attached do. Do not post the fic.

What happened next: the beginning of the end

The next morning, I woke up to most of my friends being frustrated by this post on Rab’s account:

[ID: Dated 5 June, a post by jitterbug-juno:

“Gonna leave the fandom for a while. Wishing you all well.”

The tags say the following: not sure if i’ll be back, thank you so much to everybody who’s read my fics, and who’s sent asks or engaged with my art or any of that, you’re amazing and I’m sending love /end]

That... was not what fans of color wanted, but it was definitely an action they took. Some celebrated, as they were very much wary of Rab for having caused much of the same category of drama in fandoms like Voltron: Legendary Defenders and Warrior Cats. This also meant that she was probably not going to post the fic either.

Some, myself included, were relatively pissed, as they’d wanted even just the measly bit of accountability. An apology or an acknowledgement of having been called out in private and that they’ll take time to consider why. But instead we got Rab leaving in the face of fans of color telling her not to post her Omegaverse fic.

Well. The next day...

[ID: Dated 6 June. A post by jitterbug-juno titled, “Well... that was short-lived”

“I gave the situation a lot of thought yesterday. The reaction to my omegaverse previews made me figure I should leave the fandom. It seemed like the safest option.

But you know what?

Hell.

I don’t want to leave. The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space.

Thank you to everyone who sent messages yesterday. I shouldn’t have made that post about leaving. It was really reactionary. I’m okay and I appreciate your support so much.

(bolded on the post) To those who are angry and uncomfortable with me: Please block me. If you’re going to talk about this fic on Tumblr and Twitter– and this may sound odd– PLEASE NAME ME as Jitterbug-juno or Pholo. Don’t vague me. That way people who don’t want to see this discourse can add my name to their block lists.“ /end]

That certainly was short-lived, she wasn’t kidding.

This got a lot of outrage. Again, the fic is up on Ao3 and she has not taken it down. A lot of POC were pissed and I didn’t see a single fan of color actively support what she was doing, at least, not in my friend group. Everyone started making those posts to block them if you liked the fic or Rab’s content in general, in accordance to what Rab wanted.

Perseus (@mraudiodrama) noticed/pointed out that Rab deleted the part where she said she spoke to several POC about releasing her fic, as well as the part where she said she refused to be chased out of the fandom. This was an incredibly pointed detail to edit out, according to some.

[ID: A screenshot of jitterbug-juno's last post taken 11:00PM. Much of it is the same except the following bolded words are removed: "The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space." /end]

That same day, Rab deleted her blog. I actually caught this one on tape, believe it or not.

[ID: A screen recording taken at 12:01 PM of someone scrolling down jitterbug-juno's account. The posts and asks about Omegaverse and her post about leaving and coming back are conspicuously absent. /end]

Initially, I thought she deleted all mentions of it. I wanted to see firsthand if the rumors about her deleting portions of it were true. If she added things where she was saying that she wanted to write it because she was autistic and wanted Nureyev to be autistic too, regardless of the numerous QPOC telling her not to do it.

Instead, it turned out, she deleted her blog.

And now, we're here. The fic is still up. Her blog is down. Rab's public Twitter account @nataclinn is quiet about this. Her @cushfuddled Twitter account is on private after her run-in with the Warrior Cats fandom, according to a friend. And her Tumblr @cushfuddled account has nothing but memes.

Again, I didn't make this post to stir up drama. I wasn't even obsessively making this post as a call-out because she isn't in the fandom anymore. I just want it out there that this isn't a purity culture thing that got out of hand in a fandom as niche as Penumbra. This was a case of someone being called out and failing to acknowledge it before running away. And I want all that out of the way before I say:

If you are on Rab's side of this debacle, I, a queer person of color, want nothing to do with you either.

[itsclydebitches]

Why do people get hung up on whether a gay person in media is a good or bad representation of them? I'm gay and I can tell you we aren't all the same? Being gay is our 1 common trait. So as long as they're gay then you've done it. Gay people can be kind, mean, racist, open, kinky, reserved, shy, outgoing, sexist, and literally anything else under the human experience.

Because I am perpetually hungry, let's tell a story about cookies.

You are a bright-eyed, optimistic, baker in the making. Your goal is to wow the world with your culinary skills, so of course you head to The Best Baking School for your degree. Over the course of your studies you learn how to perfect a thousand different cakes, an equal number of pies, and more versions of brownies than most would even assume exist. But cookies... oh, cookies are your passion! You can't wait to learn about the wealth of cookies you can make too. Then, sure enough, that part of your education finally arrives.

Funny thing is though, it's just chocolate chip.

Surely there's been some mistake? The cookie experience is vast and nuanced! Why in the world are your instructors — supposedly the best in the world — reducing cookies to a single class about baking chocolate chip and chocolate chip alone? Hell, why are cookies so sparse in the curriculum as a whole? You're never asked to bake them as a demonstration, or practice with them, and they're definitely not a given across everyone else's baking experience. Cakes, pies, and brownies... they're the default. Cookies are comparatively rare and when you do get to study them, everyone is super focused on the chocolate chip.

Then you graduate and head out into the world, only to find that pretty much everyone is as cookie-blind as your school. A few years back you never would have found cookies in the average grocery store and yeah, the fact that there's a cookie section now is great, but it's, uh... all chocolate chip! Many bakeries still don't carry cookies at all, but when they do it's - again - chocolate chip. Chocolate chip out in restaurants. Chocolate chip at the bake sale. Your friend invites you over and proudly presents a massive sweets tray that includes a single, sad looking, chocolate chip cookie. They beam at you in pride. Isn't it so great?

"Uh..." you say. "Well..."

Every once in a while someone will switch out milk chocolate for dark chocolate, or add nuts alongside chocolate chips. One bakery was even crazy enough to exclude chocolate chips entirely! Crazy according to the press, anyway. Because for years now you've been shaking your head, wondering what exactly is so progressive about realizing that sugar cookies exist. You've found other bakers interested in cookies and, by god, there are thousands. So many flavors! Gluten free and allergy conscious! Someone even made a sweets tray that was predominantly cookies, can you believe it? The problem is, almost none of them are mainstream. Your friend baking cookies out of their personal kitchen is doing fantastic work, but their baking doesn't have the impact that those grocery chains and established bakeries do. Their work isn't going to fix your school's curriculum. Too many people still think that cookies are exotic somehow. They're not the default. And when they do acknowledge their existence, it's chocolate chip over and over. Until one of them adds those nuts and suddenly the whole country is losing its mind about how inspired, creative, progressive their baking is. Meanwhile, you're ready to scream because that baker doesn't even know that something as "exotic" as a gingersnaps exist!

The worst part? Most of these cookies are... bad. Like they exist, yeah, but good god most don't taste good. And that's the whole point of a cookie?? What is the point of buying cookies if the cookies themselves are awful? You go to these bakeries, these restaurants, your friend's house, and you try the very limited cookies on offer, only to find that they've been sloppily baked. Doesn't anyone care that the baker burned their cookies to a crisp? That another straight up forgot to add sugar? This one dropped his on the floor and still tried to serve it to you! But the overall sense is that you should be grateful for getting any cookies at all. "That cookie is an offense to my taste buds," you say and people shake their head at you, disappointed. "I liked the taste of it," one says. "If you don't like it, go buy a different cookie!" Well... easier said than done. "It's not that bad," another says, shrugging in defeat. "I mean yeah, I don't really like it, and the baker stopped making them two years ago... but I'm just happy to have had any cookie at all, you know?" You do know, but that doesn't mean it's any less frustrating. You look at the hundreds of cakes available, these bakers spending decades perfecting their recipes, and wish cookies had even a fraction of that work put into them. You find people who agree with you, absolutely, but there's this this prevailing sense that a cookie is a cookie. Any cookie will do. Supposedly.

Except go long enough and you feel like you're ready to lose your mind. You take some poor person by the shoulders and go, "Doesn't this bother you? Doesn't this make you furious? There is more to the cookie world than these three flavors, 90% of which is chocolate chip! And we deserve well-made cookies, not the crap they've been upholding as the next culinary masterpiece!"

But this person just shakes their head. "Well of course there's more to cookies than three flavors. There's a huge variety of cookies! I know that."

"Yes, but the world isn't selling that variety."

"Of course they are! Just last week I had an oatmeal raisin. That's amazing!"

"Yeah and how many years did it take you to find that?"

"Well..."

"And how did that oatmeal raisin cookie taste?"

Your prisoner pulls a face. "Ugh, not good. Oatmeal raisin is definitely not for me. It's hard as a rock! I really don't understand why someone would want to eat that on a regular basis."

"But it's not supposed to be hard as a rock!" you cry, waving your arms. "That's the problem! Oatmeal raisin is so goddamn rare and then the one time we get it, it was badly baked. Of course people are turned off by it. Everyone who already loves oatmeal raisin is getting pissed because their favorite cookie is misrepresented, they're unlikely to see more of them now, and everyone is still serving the most tasteless chocolate chip cookies I've ever had, acting like this is the pinnacle of cookie baking! Do you even know that a macron exists?"

The person pats your hand consolingly. "Of course I do. My roommate's sister's boyfriend used to bake macrons, you know. I don't know why you're so hung up on this. Cookies can be whatever the baker wants them to be. Provided they're a flat-ish sweet cake, they're still a cookie!"

You hang your head, giving up. "Yes, they can be so many things, but they're not. Let me know if you ever find a bakery actually making the variety you keep acknowledging exists. Bonus points if those cookies are edible. My soul if they're delicious, as a cookie should be."

"You know," they say, still patting your hand. "There's a bakery making chocolate chip with dark chocolate next year. Everyone is talking about it. You should think about buying one before they take it off the menu!"

You contemplate just walking into the ocean.

Now, incredibly long metaphor concluded... switch out "cookies" for "queer rep"! The representation matters because no, just making them gay isn't enough right now. You're right that queer people can be anything under the sun, but right now media isn't providing us with that variety. It's not enough to acknowledge that such variety exists, it actually has to make it into our books and onto our screen. Taking just characters who identify as gay and putting aside the HUGE variety of other identities for a moment (of which we are mostly lacking in terms of rep), where are the gay asexuals? The gay people of color? The disabled gays? Trans gays? Did your gay character appear for just a handful of episodes? Were they killed off? Are they nothing more than a stereotype or comic relief? Is this the only gay character in your entire story? We need to ask questions like this because though gay people can be anything under the sun, our media landscape has only shown a miniscule portion of that variety.

Today, even in 2021, our representation of gay people is still pretty limited to:

You are only coded as gay and evil

You are only coded as gay and queerbaited

You are canonically gay, but a cis, ablebodied, white person

You are canonically gay, but were written terribly/killed off/punished by the narrative/generally making the real gay people watching you feel awful about their identity

You are canonically gay, but you're not human. Gotta other the queerness by making you an alien/robot/fantasy being

You are canonically gay and that's your entire existence. There is one (1) narrative of how you knew by the time you were four, never questioned your identity after that, suffered through a family that rejected you, and now all your major arcs revolve around being gay. You are gay and that is it.

Despite being a list of six, that's still incredibly limiting. Are there exceptions to such a list? Always, but that doesn't mean the list isn't still dominating. We can look at any individual gay character and say, "Of course they can be evil/white/killed off/a joke/etc. because gay people can be anything at all," but when we look at the trends, when we look at ALL the media together, we see that gay people aren't actually depicted as being anything... they're depicted as being these handful of things, severely limiting how gayness is represented. Bad rep. If you hit up the bakery and question why there's only versions of chocolate chip available yeah, the baker can go, "But cookies can be any flavor! Including chocolate chip!" They are not, technically, wrong. The problem is not that chocolate chip exists, but that chocolate chip dominates and other flavors are rare, ignored entirely, or baked so badly it's actively damaging to that flavor as a whole. Yeah, your gay character can be mean. Or kinky. Or murdered by the story. But when so many gay characters are mean and kinky and murdered by their stories — when you're not getting other versions to balance that out and gay characters are still rare enough that it's just 1-2 characters trying to carry representation for an entire franchise — you start realizing that the claim of "Gay people can be anything else under the human experience" is an easy way to shut down the conversation of whether that variety actually exists in our storytelling yet.

It's not enough for the baker to acknowledge that yeah, of course there are hundreds of cookie flavors and of course cookies taste great! They've actually got to learn how to bake them properly and fill up their store with them.

[flowerflamestars]

Petty small things roundup, in which I try not to verge into what I super hated:

-Did anyone else keep getting jarred by the 300% increase in the insistence that everyone call each other sister/brother? like we, the reader, cannot understand a found family unless it’s spelled out in nuclear terms. 

- god, someone feed Cassian some fucking fruit. let Nesta brush her teeth. oh my god

-pregnancy scent descriptors? GROSS yall. whole gross vibe

-why why why would Nesta need to wear head to toe leather to work out at the House of Wind? they’re flight leathers. they’re for warmth in brutal cold. the woman is doing squats in leather pants.

- are we....supposed to be sympathetic to Cassian’s bitchy Eris makes me feel like I’m bad at the job I am bad at! that he is good at! that he acts like a dick about to make me even worse at!

(like, obviously there’s some racist shit there. But it’s just so weirdly focused on: he’s prettier! cleverer! so smooth! he makes me FEEL AWKWARD while he’s being smooth and clever!)

-Morrigan...dressed Nesta? what

- Hounds were mentioned and yet, we saw not a single hound. Incorrect faery hound usage

- remember when we used to happily joke about how Galathynius was SUCH a fantasy name? remember when s/jm made up names instead of...borrowing them from real life? lifting whole concepts and then very lightly changing them? gracelessly?

-500 years is NOT A LONG TIME TO IMMORTAL PEOPLE WHO CAN... live forever unless killed???if all our cast are demonstrably still shaped/dealing with things that happened then, hey, maybe they also remember things from that time period?

-do they not...actually chose what shape/location the deal tattoos take? because rhys definitely chose how feyre’s turned out two books ago

- can someone tell s/jm that sometimes...adult people whose parents didn’t bother to raise them...don’t enshrine those parents in their memories after death. and that’s okay? 

-NESTA IS THE TALL SISTER?

-why WHY would all the other Queens just nope out? are we supposed to assume they were killed? Surely the entire missing monarchy would raise...some flags in human territory?

- Feyre...transforms...into another kind/race of faery. just... I can’t.. If I actually try to talk about how bad this is my brain will explode.

- on one hand, why the hell is Rhysand daring put a stop to Helion’s incredible sense for how to make an entrance? ON THE OTHER, why did I just read a mini magic horse biography in the middle of this book

-Somehow...I feel like...Varian probably isn’t going to get to keep whatever office he holds in Summer while living in the Night Court? shouldn’t.

-HIGH KING? HIGH KING?

this didn’t exist when the other books were being written. I would bet...so so much that it didn’t even exist until a late round of edits. this is a BAD concept

-I read this book yesterday and I have already forgotten the name of the big bad

- there are NO female self-defense instructors? in this whole ass Court metropolis?

-NESTA ISNT ALLOWED SUGAR IN HER PORRIDGE??

-I thought the mean librarian was going to be a surviving Valkyrie. it was too cool a thought for this novel

-Illyrian’s can only winnow? one night a year? and they exclusively use it to start the yearly murder game? is it SERIOUSLY only the men that can winnow? 

- Pregnant mate announcing pregnancy to the Court of Nightmares, fine. Pregnant mate getting a kiss on the cheek from her dude friend/ ‘brother’ BAD

-Regifting jewelry is a dick move

- but why does Vallahan matter? at all? 

- Illyrian rebellion man died OFF PAGE?

-if I were a blacksmith, and some of my swords clearly somehow became Legendary Magic Swords, I wouldn’t act like that was a fearful imposition?

ALSO, no one has ever needed to hammer a sword to use a sword. Seriously. these are not overlapping skills.

- how is Nesta NOT a Death God, a true immortal, if her power is ‘pure death’?

- ‘they wanted to be forgotten’ is a truly insane reason to have forgotten a thing..you suddenly remembered existing

-Elain lives with Rhysand and Feyre? Didn’t she get her own house in acofas?

-Lady Illyrian wings CANNOT be repaired? but Cassian’s shredded until they looked like wet paper can? 

- so...who thinks s/jm read Deathless at some point in this drafting process?

- I have never heard a Straighter threesome fantasy in my life

-what is Amren’s job? aside from providing her opinion in the most inflammatory way possible. what does she do?

-glowing beacons sound dangerous as fuck in an open combat, sneaking around to not get murdered situation

-NYX? Night...of the Night Court. Night, future High Lord of the Night Court. Night Night of the Night, if you will. 

-mating ceremony- NOT WEDDING, even though Nesta clearly values marriage, as a tenet of her human life

[ilooklikeaburntchickenugget]

Addressing Lindsey

I really, really hate this topic a lot.

The fandom has been split forever over Lindsey. And here’s my take.

I’m the type of person where I believe love prevails over any emotion. It’s like overrule, the veto of emotions. There’s something so incredibly fascinating about love, true and genuine love. It’s a mystery until someone has found it, an unopened, untouched box.

That same box can open to a treasure chest of gold, and show the truest form of love. Or it can be Pandora’s box.

Yes, I believe Lindsey Way has many toxic personality traits. I don’t believe it is fair for me to classify her as a “bad person”, I don’t know her personally. However her actions lead me to believe she is definitely not a person to be necessarily fond of.

I’ve always been supportive of her and Gerard’s relationship, because (at least from what we can see) she makes Gerard happy. And after all that man has been through the very least he deserves is happiness and love. And he loves her, so I respect their relationship.

I’ve always had a very weird feeling about their relationship, however. Just the quick pace, and the events surrounding it. It just seems so calculated by her.

So Projekt Revolution starts, this is just post-Eliza breakup for Gerard. Yes, we all know she was also incredibly toxic. He was very possibly vulnerable, unsure what to do or where to go. And here comes up a woman who is ready to assist him through all of this.

We all know Gerard is highly emotional and empathetic, time after time in interviews he’s admitted it, other members of the bands have admitted it. Coming from someone with an EQ of 160 and an incredibly empathetic person as well, it’s easy to fall into the traps set up by other people. I’ve done it time and time again, but I’m still young and I know I can grow from those mistakes. So, he probably fell head over heels, not thinking too far in advance and thinking with his current emotions.

And what does she get in return? Gerard is an incredibly attractive man to begin with (I write fan fiction about him, lol, I would know) and MCR was practically on top of the world at that point. She’s a decently well known name in rock at that period, but marrying the cover of rock at that point would, well, boost you up quite a bit. Both as a musician, and in her art career.

I also want to truly mention the differences in the way they talk about one another. Basically every interview where Gerard talks about Lindsey he uses extremely strong and passionate language. When she talks about him, she does not. It almost seems bland, little to no emotion or tone. 

Not to mention as well the 2008 Fuse interview pre-Madison Square Garden show where Gerard mentions how she flew out to see him play his dream show. No offense, but in a marriage with someone who you will be spending the rest of your life with, isn’t being there to see them achieve their dream the lowest expectation? He made such a big deal out of her flying out, which tells me she made a big damn deal about it to him, which is incredibly unfair lowering the bar for yourself.

Her lack of emotion isn’t only with interviews regarding anything with Gerard. In general there’s almost no tone to her voice, she has little to no range. Her facial expressions don’t range, and her fan interactions seem less than emotional. I know various people have various ways of expressing themselves, but in general she seems to have a lot less expression within her voice, facial features, and actions than the average person.

And don’t get me started on her incredibly public, and incredibly immature meltdowns. I think it’s so important to mention that Gerard has never once defended her, which shows that he knows enough to conclude that she’s in the wrong in these situations. Especially with the whole opossum post making fun of Frank’s car accident in 2016, not cool.

In general she gives me such a weird, very off vibe. It’s hard for me to research her interviews, recorded through video or just printed and try to say that she seems like a caring, good, sound minded person. I really think something’s off, and I don’t want to accuse her of anything because I find that unfair, but my gut feeling since I joined the MCRmy almost four years has always been that she has her own intentions behind marrying Gerard, and it wasn’t just for love.

So Gerard fell victim to the forces of love. And to me, this seems more of a Pandora’s box situation. It seems in their early marriage he was incredibly happy, the happiest fans had ever seen him. In Danger Days he regresses back to his days of abusing substances, and I’m not saying by any means it’s due to her, but lots of people have commented on how he looks more miserable since then.

And I think now that he’s a father, it only adds an additional string of some sort of obligation he holds to her. We’ve seem him talk about Bandit, explain how she was the main reason he chose to come clean and eventually end the band after, once again, finding himself in another down turn of misery.

I just can’t help but think that when the timeline of some of his decline again matches up with their relationship, and no I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

And some fans may argue with me all they want, and accuse me of pushing a false narrative. But with how open Gerard has been with his character and how closed Lindsey has been aside from her public meltdowns, I can’t help but think there’s something off about the whole thing.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: The entire relationship to me sounds like a fucked up 1800s gothic novel. Someone falls in love with someone else, and true love is a permanent glue: You can try to pry it off all you want, the stains remain forever.

However you guys feel about this I hope what I’m saying here won’t affect your perspective or view on my writing, since that’s my main forte. I’ve just been seeing more people bring this up again, especially after she blocked a fan on Twitter for calling her out for BLM (since MSI does have quite a few highly racist songs and lyrics) so I think it’s important to at least express my opinions, whether people agree with them or not.