#very difficult to verbalize but other poc get it

[adhddarling]

auctober huge post

hello, i have decided to speed run doing the auctober thingy because i am bored and need to do something. so, let's get down to it.

STIMS omg where do i start. i fucking love stimming. my main stims i do with my hands. flapping, moving my hands in fists, doing crab claws, tippy tappy fingers, touching nice textures, doing a surfer dude hand thing and shaking my hand, etc. most of my stimming is done using my body, but i also love visual stims! i'm very picky about what visual stims i like, though.

INFO DUMPING im a pain in the arse for this. thank god for my partner who puts up with my constant info dumping. my current interests are the gnostic gospels, and ancient christian religion as a whole. my long term SpIns have been greek mythology, the victorian era and anatomy.

COLLECTIONS i collect books, stationery, and crystals! i love all of them so much. i kinda have an issue with stationery, particularly pens, because my dyspraxia makes my handwriting terrible so i much prefer to type- however, i keep buying pens i don't need!

ANIMAL FRIENDS i love dogs, when i'm not overstimulated. i prefer stuffed animals to real ones, though. cats make me happy, because of their general chill-ness, and they're much more palatable when i'm having a hard time as they require less attention and are less stimulating.

MUSIC my biggest obsession is music. i love most genres, i love all different types of music. i usually hyperfixate on a song that i then listen to for days, and then move onto a new one when the previous one stops being stimulating. the only time i don't want to listen to music is literally only when i'm having a meltdown.

STIM TOYS stim toys are awesome! i love fidget cubes and tangles, but like chewellery the most.

HYPERFOCUS god, the stuff i've got done when i'm hyperfocused. i did all of my studying for my a level exams (british exams for the last year of school before university aged 18 ish) in about a week, and i hyperfocused SO FUCKING HARD. i forgot to eat, forgot to drink, didn't sleep much, just worked. i do not endorse this behaviour, i was horribly burnt out after. however, hyperfocus can be a superpower! i've had some of my best creative ideas when i'm hyperfocusing.

DIVERSE i think it's really important that the autistic community, and more widely the neurodiverse community, is more inclusive of poc who are autistic. there's a serious problem with the whitewashing of autism, partially down to media representation and also due to misdiagnosis of autistic people of colour with other disorders.

COMFORT FOOD bread <33 chicken nuggets <33 chips <33 pasta <33 rice <33 anything plain and not overwhelming.

SELF-CARE god, self-care is difficult. i procrastinate doing self care all the time, even with basic hygiene. something that helps me is having a sticker chart for when i complete basic self-care tasks like brushing my teeth, showering, etc.

NEURODIVERGENT COMMUNITY there's a lot of problems with the nd community, but also a lot of positive aspects. i find misinformation is a big problem, especially on tiktok- like, sitting with your hand under your chin does not make you autistic (genuinely seen someone say this). however, the spreading of awareness that autism doesn't just present as a white cis straight boy with a genius level IQ and who acts 'robotic', and instead that autism presents itself in lots of different ways, especially in women and AFAB people.

SENSORY EUPHORIA woodpecker. sounds. i can't express to you, how happy this sound makes me.

ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION i use sign language when i lose speech, and also write things down. i'm privileged to not lose speech regularly, only when i'm very overwhelmed, and so i only really use these methods of alternative communication when i need to.

VERBAL STIMS i like to copy tiktok sounds, tbh, and famous vines. it's fun. i also say 'beep', buzz like a bee, and make other sounds that would not be considered neurotypical when i'm happy.

AU-DHD i have both autism and adhd, and having both makes it so that for some of my behaviours it is difficult to identify where they come from. what's helped me is learning to accept that it doesn't matter exactly what disorder causes which symptom, but instead learning how to cope with the symptom itself, if that makes sense? having autism and adhd can feel very polarising at times, with two disorders that can feel like they conflict so often, but with proper management life can get easier.

UNMASKING i'm working on this one. as a moderate support needs autistic, to some extent, i can't mask. i can't appear neurotypical all the time. even when i'm masking as hard as i can, people can still notice that there's something different. this has caused me a lot of self hatred and internalised ableism, which is something i'm working with a therapist to undo.

SENSORY PROFILE i flip-flop between being sensory seeking and sensory avoidant. depends on whether i'm under or overstimulated, tbh.

LGBTQ+ i identify as queer, and pansexual as a collective. due to being a system, my gender is all over the place, but i like xenogenders and neopronouns a lot.

ECHOLALIA i used to get in so much trouble for doing this. learning that suppressing my stims like echolalia could lead to an increased risk of burnout has led to a wakeup call for me, and has really helped me to learn to accept who i am and the way i stim.

SPECIAL INTERESTS greek mythology, ancient religion, the victorian era.

COMFORT MEDIA good omens, doctor who, marauders era harry potter (fuck jk tho)

SELF-ADVOCACY unfortunately, being autistic and afab has meant that i've had to really learn to advocate for myself while with medical professionals. it's a difficult journey, and i wish so much love and support to anyone going through the medical system.

DISABLED i identify as disabled, and also Mad. disabled isn't a bad word. there is nothing wrong with disabled people. we exist, we take up space, and we have inherent worth.

OKAY I'M DONE FOR NOW. HAVE A GOOD DAY Y'ALL.

[mediaevalmusereads]

The House in the Cerulean Sea. By TJ Klune. Tor, 2020.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Genre: fantasy, lgbtqia

Part of a Series? No

Summary: Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

***Full review below.***

Content Warnings: references to suicide and child abuse, dark humor, prejudice

Overview: This book was recommended to me by a friend, and since I was in the mood for a found family story, I picked it up. What started out as a light-hearted, almost whimsical tale about a bunch of magical children quickly became a touching story about acceptance and love. While I don't think there's anything new about the plot itself (I've read a lot of stories about magical kids at boarding schools or orphanages), the characters are so endearing that it was difficult to put this book down. So, because of the characters, the whimsical prose, and the heartfelt message about acceptance, this book gets 4.5 stars from me.

Writing: Klune's prose style is infused with whimsy in that it's playful and simple without feeling underdeveloped. The author uses humorous names such as Extremely Upper Management while having characters utter phrases such as "oh dear" and "oh bother," which lightens the tone overall. This lightened tone meant that nothing felt particularly threatening, yet Klune still invites readers to become invested in the plot and the characters' well-being and creates stakes that are not rooted in life or death situations. This makes the book perfect for those wishing to avoid more grimdark tales where death is around every corner.

Plot: The plot of this book follows Linus Baker, a 40-something year old caseworker whose job involves investigating orphanages that house magical children. Linus is selected to investigate a top secret orphanage - one led by a mysterious guardian named Arthur Parnassus - in order to determine whether or not the children are being properly cared for. Upon his arrival, Linus quickly discovers that these children are unlike any others he has known, and his by-the-book worldview is quickly challenged when he suspects Arthur of hiding a dangerous secret.

I very much enjoyed that this plot was about found family and forming bonds in the face of prejudice. Magical children in this world act as a stand-in for oppressed minorities; they are tracked by the government and are treated more or less like second class citizens, to the point where many of them endure verbal and physical assaults. While nothing too graphic happens on page, Klune doesn't necessarily censor the struggles the children face - there are references to child abuse and government oppression, and some of the children are treated as monsters rather than individuals. It's easy to see this book as a commentary on modern-day prejudices against POC and lgbt+ people, though the message against discrimination itself is not particularly revolutionary or complex. Still, it was nice to read about, and the messages about love and acceptance were more frequent and vastly outweighed the "don't be prejudiced" message.

Characters: There are quite a few characters in this book, so I'll group some of them together in order to make this review an appropriate length.

Linus, our main protagonist, was easy to like because he had a clear arc and a big heart. Linus has lived his entire life bound by rules and regulations, but after 17 years at his job, he is more alone than ever. The children at the orphanage challenge his regimented life and quickly show him his value, and I loved watching Linus find his self-confidence, accept that rules are imperfect, and make real human (or whatever) connections.

The children were likewise very endearing. Many of them had a dark sense of humor but were simultaneously scared of things like spiders and snakes, and the juxtaposition make them feel like complex beings. I also loved that all of the children had individual interests but could come together to enjoy a meal or go on an adventure together. It made them feel like their own characters while also being part of a group.

Zoe, their sprite caretaker, was fun in that she was fiercely protective and unafraid to speak her mind. I loved that she pushed and challenged Linus without crossing any lines, and I loved her devotion to both the children and Arthur, their guardian.

Speaking of Arthur, he was also easy to like because of his gentleness and care. Arthur is particularly good at advocating for the children and makes a point of teaching them to accept themselves for who they are. My only criticism is that I think Klune could have done more to develop the relationship between Arthur and Linus; as it stands, I feel like we're told that the two have feelings for one another, but I think more could have been done to show how those feelings tip from mutual respect to romantic.

TL;DR: The House in the Cerulean Sea is a delightful, heart-warming, found family story that puts acceptance at the center of its narrative. While I do think some things could have been tweaked and the overall message could have been more complex, this is a light, optimistic novel that is sure to delight lovers of queer fantasy.

[princessnijireiki]

Adria Arjona has the career she wants (Eiza Gonzalez & Ana de Armas's passovers/leftovers) on the standard textbook Light/White Latina professional track, but boy the amount of disappointing that is is... very much reflected in the quality/appearance of her love interests in those projects + the projects themselves lmfao

[amorgansgal]

Just stumbled upon your stuff and your stuff are very cool!! Can I request Arthur with a POC M!Reader? I don't see them often :(

Can be NSFW or SFW your pick :)

Aww, thank you! I went with a Chinese Male Reader, because I always wanted to have the ability to use the Chinese restaurants in Saint Denis! I've also been doing a lot of reading on Chinese migration to the US and of course, went down a rabbit hole of research, so figured I might as well use it! Hope you enjoy. I've kept it SFW, but it's quite long so there is a cut.

Warnings: Physical and verbal aggression, depiction of injury

You’d gone to America when your parents had died and you had been left in the care of an uncle and aunt. Your aunt could not stand you and seemed intent on making your life difficult each and every day.

Your father had hoped to see you become a doctor, given your intelligence and natural inclination towards the sciences. But you had been forced to work as a labourer, as a merchant’s assistant, anything that brought in some money otherwise you would not hear the end of it from your aunt.

You had no time for your studies, no time for anything, but by the end of six months, you had decided to save up a little of your money each time you were paid and to put that aside for a boat ticket to America. Anything had to be better than this and if you had to work as a labourer in the US, at least you would get to keep all your wages.

You did not tell your aunt and uncle until the morning that you left, knowing if you told them beforehand, they would insist you should not go. Your aunt yelled at you for abandoning the family and abandoning your parents, but your uncle said nothing and simply looked deeply regretful. He had wished you well.

You didn’t like the journey over, spending most of the time confined to your bunk with seasickness, but when you arrived at the dock and staggered down the plank, you smiled excitedly.

You hoped to continue your studies, maybe get a small shared room and a part time job to keep you going. For the first few months, you worked hard on improving your English and studied medical books late into the night.

But even after you could speak, read and write enough English, it’s not good enough for anyone. You try to apply for any and all positions, even as a cleaner in a hospital. But when they see you’re Chinese, you are guided out from the building.

You are forced to find what work you can, carrying heavy baskets of dirty clothes at a laundry, sweeping the street, until one day you see a sign advertising construction work on a rail line. It pays better than what you earn currently and you think it would be nice to escape the humid air and filthy streets of Saint Denis.

Perhaps you were still too naïve and optimistic for your own good! The work is back breaking, you can barely get enough time to gasp for air or take a sip of water, when the foreman is yelling at you, calling you every name under the sun and telling you you’re doing a shit job.

The pay is crap, certainly not the amount they said on the poster that it would be. When you question this, you get told that pay level was for white men. Apart from the foreman and his boss, there are no other white men, and you’re certain they’re getting paid a lot more.

The food is awful, tinned muck that rots before you can even eat it and you get told that you can’t set up traps for rabbits or anything that might make things more bearable. The tents you have to huddle in let in the rain and provide very little protection from the elements.

And then your pay starts being delayed. At first, it’s just a week, then two, then a month. Some of the men are fuming, they send home what they can to their families, they beg you to speak to the foreman as you can speak and understand English.

You’re nervous, but it’s getting too much to do all this work and get nothing for it. You approach the foreman, while he’s standing away from the camp. You hope that he’ll be more amiable to have a discussion when he’s not working and having a smoke.

You were wrong. The man explodes in anger. His fist collides with your jaw and you are sent reeling. You slip down the hill and tumble down. You try to get up, but he grabs you by your hair and pulls his fist back.

‘You’ll get paid when you’ll get paid, you damn dog! You ask again for wages and I’ll shoot the fucking lot of ya! You think it’s hard finding men like you? It’s goddamn easy!’

‘Sir, the men have families who-!’ you cry out, but the man punches you again and your lip splits. You taste blood on your tongue. He kicks and punches you in the ribs and you struggle to gasp for breath. You do your best to defend yourself, raising your arms over your face and trying to push him off, but a lack of good food, exhausting work and poor sleep has left you weak and tired.

‘HEY! LEAVE THE BOY BE, YER GODDAMN COWARD!’

You only catch a brief glance of the foreman being lifted off his feet and then hurled like he’s a sack of potatoes, against a nearby tree. The heavy thunk of his head hitting the sturdy oak echoes through the woods.

You slowly get up, though not before a large hand is under your arm and helping you to your feet. You look up at the man who apparently saved your life! He seems impossibly tall and broad wearing a brown leather jacket that barely seems to contain him. He lifts his hat momentarily and wipes away the sweat from his brow. His brow is furrowed, and for a moment you wonder if he is angry at you, but when your eyes reach his, you can see the clear concern in the sharp, blue green depths. You lower your gaze quickly.

‘You alrigh’, boy?’ he asks, and even with his rough drawl, he sounds like he cares about you.

‘I’m fine, thank you, sir.’ You look at the foreman, his eyes are unseeing, a dribble of blood runs down from the back of his head along his neck. Your heart races rapidly on seeing the dead man.

‘You… uh… you migh’ want to get out of here. ‘m sorry about… all of tha’, there’s some real bastards in the world. But gettin’ treated like tha’ just cos you asked for yer wages… didn’ seem righ’.’

It feels like the ground has fallen away from your feet. You can feel your brain swirling as though covered in a layer of fog. Where the hell can you go? What can you do?

‘You… uh… you got somewhere you can go?’ the man asks, as though reading your mind!

‘No,’ you whisper faintly, still staring at the foreman. You hear the man next to you sigh, then rub the back of his neck.

‘Welp, seein’ as I got ya into this shit, guess I might owe ya! C’mon,’ he says, gesturing for you to follow him.

‘Where are we going?’ you ask, though you find your feet obeying the man and following him through the woods.

‘There’s a gang I’m with, run with ‘em. Can give ya a place to rest up. Can you shoot?’

‘A gun?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No, but I have other skills. I wanted to be a doctor.’

‘Ahh, good,’ the man smiles and despite everything that has happened, you find yourself smiling back. ‘What’s yer name?’

You give it and he says it a couple of times, he smiles happily when you give a quick nod at his closest pronunciation.

‘’m Arthur. Arthur Morgan.’

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

Hot takes about Severus Snape are a wierdly decent glimpse into how a person with progressive values analyses things. Literally every time someone talks about Snape, it’s like this tiny window into how one-dimentionally people actually think.

Recently saw a twitter post that was a fantastic example. Here’s how it goes (paraphrasing):

Person A:“Snape is POC and Queer coded, that’s why you guy’s hate him uwu lol.”

Person B: “Actually I hate him because he was mean and abusive to children under his care uwu but go off I guess lol”

Both of these takes are designed to be dramatic and/or reactionary. They each use partial truths to paint very broad strokes. These are get-em-in-one-hit quips. This is virtue signalling, if you’ll excuse that loaded phrase. Nobody had a substantial conversation, but now everyone who sees their statement knows the high ground they took.

At least a hundred other people chimed in to add their own little quippy hot takes into play, none of which add anything significant, but clearly made everyone feel very highly of themselves.

So many layers of nuance and complex analysis is completely lost in this kind of discussion. On tumblr, you get more of this kind of bullshit, but you don’t have a word count limit, so you guys just spew endless mountains of weak overblown evidence backing up your bullshit arguments, none of which was really about engaging in a real conversation anyway.

Here’s the thing about Snape.

He is a childhood domestic abuse victim. His abuser is a muggle.

He becomes a student at a magical school that takes him away from his abuser and immediately instills in him the idea that being a part of this magical world is a badge of self-worth, empowerment, and provides safety and security - provided that he keeps in line.

There is a war is being waged in that world over his right to exist (he is a half blood).

He is a marginalized person within the context of the narrative, forced to constantly be in the same living space as the children of his own oppressors who are being groomed and recruited into a hate group militia (the pureblood slytherins). They are in turn trying to do the same to him.

He is marginalized person bullied by children who are also part of his oppressor group, but who have “more liberal” leanings and aren’t direct about why he’s being targeted (the mauraders are all purebloods, Sirius, who was the worst offender, was raised in a bigoted household, the same one that produced Bellatrix.).

He had a crush on a girl who is a muggleborn, and therefore she is considered even lesser than him and carries a stigma to those who associate with her. That girl was his only real friend. In his entire life.

For both Snape and Lily, allying themselves to a pureblood clique within their own houses would be a great way of shielding themselves from a measure of the bigotry they were probably facing. There would have been obvious pressure from those cliques to disconnect with one and other.

Every other person who associates with Snape in his adulthood carries some sort of sociopolitical or workplace (or hate cult) baggage with their association. Some of them will physically harm and/or kill him if he steps out of line. He hasn’t at any point had the right environment to heal and adjust from these childhood experiences. Even his relationship with Dumbledore is charged with constant baggage, including the purebloods who almost killed him during their bullying getting a slap on the wrist, the werewolf that almost killed him as a child being placed in an authority position over new children, etc. Dumbledore is canonically manipulative no matter his good qualities, and he has literally been manipulating Snape for years in order to cultivate a necessary asset in the war.

He is a person who is not in the stable mental state necessary to be teaching children, whom has been forced to teach children. While also playing the role of double agent against the hate group militia, the one that will literally torture you for mistakes or backtalk or just for fun. The one that will torture and kill him if he makes one wrong move.

Is the math clicking yet? From all of this, it’s not difficult to see how everything shitty about Snape was cultivated for him by his environment. Snape was not given great options. Snape made amazingly awful choices, and also some amazingly difficult, courageous ones. Snape was ultimately a human who had an extremely bad life, in which his options were incredibly grim and limited.

In fact, pretty much every point people make about how shitty Snape is as a person makes 100% logical sense as something that would emerge from how he was treated. Some if it he’s kind of right about, some of it is the inevitable reality of suffering, and some of it is part of the cycle of abuse and harm.

Even Snape’s emotional obsession with Lily makes logical sense when you have the perspective that he literally has no substantial positive experiences with other human beings that we know of, and he has an extreme, soul destroying guilt complex over her death. Calling him an Incel mysoginist nice guy projects a real-world political ideology and behavior that does not really apply to the context of what happened to him and her.

Even Snape’s specific little acts of cruelty to certain students is a reflection of his own life experiences. He identifies with Neville; more specifically, he identifies his own percieved emotional weaknesses in his childhood in Neville. There’s a very sad reason there why he feels the urge to be so harsh.

Snape very clearly hates himself, in a world where everyone else hates him, too. Imagine that, for a second. Imagine total internal and external hatred, an yearning for just a little bit of true connection. For years. Imagine then also trying to save that world, even if it’s motivated by guilt. Even if nobody ever knows you did it and you expect to die a miserable death alone.

There are more elements here to consider, including the way Rowling described his looks (there may be something in there re: ugliness and swarthy stereotyping). These are just the things that stand out the most prominently to me.

J.K. Rowling is clearly also not reliable as an imparter of moral or sociopolitical philosophies. I don’t feel that her grasp of minority experiences is a solid one, considering how she picks and chooses who is acceptable and who is a threat.

All of that said, this is a logically consistent character arc. Within the context of his narrative, Snape is a marginalized person with severe PTSD and emotional instability issues who has absolutely no room available to him for self-improvement or healing, and never really has. And yes, he’s also mean, and caustic, and verbally abusive to the students. He’s also a completey miserable, lonely person.

There are elements in his character arc that mirror real world experiences quite well. If nothing else, Rowling is enough of an emotional adult to recognise these kinds of things and portray something that feels authentic.

In my opinion, it’s not appropriate to whittle all this down by comparing him directly to the real world experiences of marginalized groups - at least if you are not a part of the group you are comparing him to. There have been many individuals who have compared his arc to their own personal experiences of marginalization, and that is valid. But generally speaking, comparing a white straight dude to people who are not that can often be pretty offensive. This is not a valuable way to discuss either subject.

Also, I believe that while it’s perfectly okay to not like Snape as a character, many of the people who act like Person B are carrying Harry’s childhood POV about Snape in their hearts well into their own adulthood. And if nothing else, Rowling was attempting to say something here about how our perspectives (should) grow and change as we emotionally mature.  She doesn’t have to be a good person herself to have expressed something true about the world in this instance, and since this story is a part of our popular culture, people have a right to feel whatever way they do about this story and it’s characters.

The complexity of this particular snapshot of fictionalized marginalization, and what it reveals about the human experience, cannot be reduced down to “he’s an abuser so he’s not worth anyone’s time/you are bad for liking him.”

And to be honest, I think that it reveals a lot about many of us in progressive spaces, particularly those of us who less marginalized but very loud about our values, that we refuse to engage with these complexities in leu of totally condemning him. Particularly because a lot of the elements I listed above are indeed reflected in real world examples of people who have experienced marginalization and thus had to deal with the resulting emotional damage, an mental illness, and behavior troubles, and bad decisions. Our inability to address the full scope of this may be a good reflection of how we are handling the complexity of real world examples.

Real people are not perfect angels in their victimhood. They are just humans who are victims, and we all have the capacity to be cruel and abusive in a world where we have been given cruelty and abuse. This is just a part of existing. If you cannot sympathise with that, or at least grasp it and aknowledge it and respect the people who are emotionally drawn to a character who refects that, then you may be telling on yourself to be honest.

To be honest, this is especially true if you hate Snape but just really, really love the Mauraduers. You have a right to those feelings, but if you are moralizing this and judging others for liking Snape, you’ve confessed to something about how you’ve mentally constructed your personal values in a way I don’t think you’ve fully grasped yet.

I have a hard time imagining a mindset where a story like Snape’s does not move one to empathy and vicarious grief, if I’m honest. I feel like some people really just cannot be bothered to imagine themselves in other people’s shoes, feeling what they feel and living like they live. I struggle to trust the social politics of people who show these kinds of colors, tbh.

But maybe that’s just me.

[nunchiimagines]

Spring Day: 1

Golden Bell

— Summary: Becoming a part time english teacher wasn’t exactly the ideal startup you had hoped for yourself when you first moved to Seoul, South Korea. Luckily, you loved working with children and you were grateful to have found a well paying job with housing included so soon after university. Amongst your class, however, are 5 boys who seem to be constantly ostracized not only by the rest of the students but also by the other teachers and staff members. Becoming attached to you fairly quickly, you’re unintentionally tasked to be their permanent caretaker during their stay at school, even staying past the hours you were needed until they were picked up safely. However, what you didn’t expect was to catch the hearts of their seven older brothers, the leaders of a notorious and well known mafia family in Korea.

— Pairing: mafia!bts x poc!curvy!part time English teacher!reader x mafia!children!txt

— Genre: fluff, angst / poly!au / mafia!au

— Status: ongoing

— Warnings: FLUFF FLUFF FLUFF, allusions to bullying (verbal and physical), ostracizing, slight flirtations

— Word Count: 4.6k

~MASTERPOST~

CHAPTERS: Next

**AUTHORS NOTE**

Hello!! I was a bit too excited and decided to go ahead and write the first chapter for Spring Day. There are a few things that may not be accurate to the school and after school systems in South Korea. I did my best to try and find as much factual information as possible but it was proving more difficult than expected. Regardless of that, I hope all my fellow MOA’s are okay with how I wrote the TXT members! I am still very new to their personalities but I tried! In addition, the characters in the story will constantly switch back and forth between English and Korean mid conversation. It’s frowned upon to speak the native language to the students in a class geared for English but it happens regardless, lol. I did it this way to show that the TXT members are still getting use to speaking English but find speaking Korean more comfortable with certain topics. I hope that makes sense!! Anyway, please enjoy and let me know what you think!

bold + italicized = person speaking Korean!

______________________________________________________________

This was the fifth time today that you noticed the way the other children had treated that particular group of boys and quite frankly you were starting to get fed up with it. When you had first taken this job you had unfairly assumed the structure of the school system based on recycled assumptions of Asia's need to hold education above all else. However, you were mistaken when the school you had joined was actually known as a Hagwon, an after school institute. Luckily, this one was a bit more laid back and much more livelier than the primary schools you’d visited. It was a private institute located in Seoul with a high rate of foreign teachers due to their being a high rate of student volume.

You were paired with a younger native teacher, Kim Bomi, who found the harsh strictness of most school systems in Korea to be a bit much for today's day and age. So the both of you made a secret agreement to try and make the learning experience more fun for the students. See, kindergarten worked a bit differently than what you were used to. The kindergarten age for Koreans is three and they will continue to study in kindergarten for the next three to four years. Though not nearly as rigorous as the primary school, the students still have much on their plate for being so young. With this knowledge, you and Bomi tended to find your classes to be a bit on the rowdy side, games and activities being a major experience in the classroom to help keep the students energized and alert. You guys always made sure you had study and learning time and kept everything appropriate and professional, but it goes without saying that the entire Hagwon kinda knew your class as the fun class.

Unfortunately, with the good comes the bad as you both were often scolded for having too much fun in a learning environment. Bomi got the brunt of the heat because “she should know better for being Korean” and you got scolded for acting “too western” with the students. You still never understood what that meant exactly but you both were always redeemed thanks to the constant praise you received from parents and students alike. Even students from other classes became jealous of your kids and, despite there being an age gap, wanted to always interact with you and Bomi. You had found that being a person of color as well as being a foreigner garnered more attention than you had originally expected. You had received many compliments on your looks from the students and staff and were a bit surprised by that seeing how you had heard many rumors of natives holding darker skin individuals on a much lower standard.

When you expressed this to Bomi, she informed you that despite such racial views being evident here, that people in Korea are changing. It’s more of the elders who still hold such views but that Korea isn’t as racist as many people claim it to be. She did make sure to mention that they could do better. Bomi continued to explain that, unlike most foreigners, you came in knowing the language, studying the culture, and always seemed to be respectful “like a natural Korean”. You found her proclamations to be somewhat amusing but did understand where she was coming from. So with that being said, you became a major talk of the school with a high reputation for being both pretty and smart for having so much knowledge of the language and the land. As grateful as you were for the compliments, you didn’t quite see why they held you on such a high pedestal and felt more self-conscious than anything else. It was odd hearing such praise when growing up you were met with the exact opposite of said gestures. You will admit, though, that it was a nice change of pace for once.

Now to get to the point, this year you were met with a fresh new batch of students for the school year and like every year you go around to do brief icebreakers. However, this time things were a bit different. You found that there were five boys in the class who were all brothers. It was an interesting predicament because they were all adopted and so very close in age. But that wasn’t the odd part. It was the fact that all the students were ostracizing them so obviously from day one. The other students seemed almost scared of these boys and you couldn’t understand why. You had witnessed them actively avoiding them, whispering to other students about them, and had to even stop outward verbal and physical attacks. Both you and Bomi were so confused and concerned that you brought it up to the higher ups. However, you found that no one really made the boys budge or open up about the matter. So to help deal with the issue during the school day, Bomi had instructed you to privately speak with the boys every so often to try and get to know them more personally, hopefully digging up the reasons behind the bullying.

You’d be lying if you said you weren’t appalled by the behavior, having dealt with the lasting effects of your own bully’s actions from back in the day. So being able to talk with the overly quiet group in hopes of opening them up a little became a personal mission of yours as the days passed. You knew the boys as Soobin, Yeonjun, Beomgyu, Taehyun, and Hueningkai. Though Yeonjun was the eldest brother, Soobin kinda held reign over the others. As stated earlier, there really wasn’t a massive age gap and they were all technically in kindergarten but just at different stages. Soobin and Beomgyu are five, Yeonjun is six, Taehyun is four, and Hueningkai is three. They were all usually quiet when you spoke to them, one to two word answers being their response most of the time. However, the more you interacted with them over the course of the week the more you succeeded, finally managing to crack a smile out of all of them.

“Hey boys, want to hear a joke?” you asked out of the blue.

Having gotten used to you but still not really saying much, the only response you received was an enthusiastic nod from Kai. You smiled at that and put on an exaggerated serious look.

“Okay, what does a vampire drink in the morning?”

The boys all stopped working on their crossword puzzle, an easy activity for kids to study up and learn new english words. They looked at each other then back at you, Soobin being the one to answer this time.

“What do they drink?” he asked curiously on behalf of the others.

“코피! (kopi)” you said excitedly, laughing at your own joke.

It was lame, you knew that. But all dad jokes are lame, right? For those who don’t understand, 코 (ko) means nose and 피 (pi) means blood. Put them together and it makes the word “nose bleed” but it sounds like the english word coffee. It’s more of a konglish joke but it was simple enough for them to understand. You actually weren’t expecting much of a response but you were pleasantly surprised when Yeonjun was the first to laugh. In fact, he felt the need to offer one of his own.

“Do you know what color a hamburger is?” he excitedly asked, completely ignoring his work now.

“Hmmm, what?” you asked, playing along.

“It’s BURGER-ndy!” he emphasized with a spreading grin.

You had to admit that was cute and began to giggle at his adorable antics. You’d never seen him so happy to share before and wanted him to continue. Luckily, your response was enough for him to go on to do just that. The other brother’s kinda looked oddly at you two lost in your own little world but found it hard not to laugh along with you guys despite the jokes being so bad.

“Ha, even Hyuka finds my jokes funny!” Yoenjun huffed in triumph.

“Hyuka?” you asked, cocking your head slightly.

“That’s what we call Hueningkai.” Soobin stated shyly.

“It’s easier that way too.” Taehyun agreed, nodding his head.

“It’s also cuter.” Beomgyu piped in quickly with a large smile.

“It really is a cute nickname. I wish I would've known sooner.” you whined with a fake pout.

“You...you can call me Hyuka too, teacher. I usually only let my brothers call me that, but you're really nice and I really like you so you can call me Hyuka if you want.” he happily explained.

Your heart almost exploded at that. How come these boys were so gosh darn cute?! You wanted to just take Hueningkai and engulf him in a giant hug, but you knew better than that and didn’t want to overstep. You were finally making progress and didn’t want to ruin that due to your emotions.

“I would be absolutely honored.” you said bowing playfully like a valet to her king.

That made the boys giggle once more, a sense of pride swelling within you for being able to do something so many people before you couldn’t.

“You know what?” Taehyun asked.

“What?” you responded back happily.

“You remind me of Taehyung-hyung and Seokjin-hyung!” he excitedly responded.

“She does, doesn't she?! The dad jokes and the funny acting!” Hueningkai agreed laughing, swinging his legs back and forth excitedly.

“Jimin-hyung and Jungkook-hyung do it too. I think they’d really like you, teacher.” Soobin added with a small smile.

You raised your brows at the sudden mentioning of names you weren’t familiar with. You know the students by now and knew for a fact they weren’t children from this classroom. You wondered if they were referring to someone else’s class or even some kids from the primary school. Hoping to get some answers, you pried a bit further.

“Oh, are these friends of yours? Classmates from a different class maybe?” you asked with a curious smile.

Hueningkai and Beomgyu giggled loudly, shaking their heads to correct your assumptions.

“Nope, those are our big brothers!” Taehyun proudly confirmed.

“We don’t really have any friends here. Our big brother’s play with us a lot though and we also have each other so it’s not so bad.” Yeonjun admitted halfheartedly, mindlessly going back to his crossword puzzle.

Your heart dropped, it being obvious that they were dealing with those circumstances here. But now you’ve become more concerned knowing that the same instances are happening at their kindergarten as well. It’s not like they were weird or mean. They were actually very sweet and endearing, that innocent playful attitude of theirs could steal away anyone's heart in a moment's notice. You wanted to be careful with how you were going to proceed with this topic, not wanting to make the boys uncomfortable in any way.

“What, with amazing dad jokes like that, you’re going to tell me you don’t have any friends?” you lightheartedly questioned.

That was enough to make Yeonjun smile but he didn’t reply, Soobin did.

“No, I think they don’t like our family.” Soobin stated while continuing to fill out the crossword puzzle.

“Have you told any of your teachers?” you asked slightly more seriously.

“We tried once. At our last school a boy pushed Beomgyu down and said that we come from a gross and mean family. That made Soobin upset and he pushed him back. When I got the teachers, Soobin got in trouble for it. Once Namjoon-hyung was told what happened, we never saw that boy again.” Yeonjun plainly said.

“I don’t really like some of the teachers. They’re mean and they ignore us.” Beomgyu admitted with an annoyed pout.

You had to admit, that sounded a bit ominous but you didn’t want to show any fear or judgment over their story. In fact, you were curious, never having been aware that the boys had transferred schools before Hueningkai and Taehyun entered. They are only children, so the details may not make much sense to them, you hope. However, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t at least a bit interested in who these older brothers of theirs were. You made note to ask Bomi about it later. Getting closer to their table, you motioned for each of the boys to pay attention to you.

“Well then, want to know something?” you asked fiddling with the spread out colored pencils on their table.

“What?” Taehyun asked.

“Yeah, what?” Hueningkai agreed with an anticipating smile.

“I think you guys would make excellent friends. Each one of you has such a special and kind heart. So all those mean kids from before are just far too silly to see how amazing you all are. If I were them, I’d do anything to be your friend.” you said as if it was fact.

They all looked at you with admiration and awe, ceasing their attention for anything else. At first you read their silence as confusion, going over what you said to make sure you didn’t use any advanced words that may have been too hard for them to understand. However, when the smile on Huneingkai appeared and then gradually spread across the rest of the boys you realized otherwise. The cute little swings of their legs, the shy smiles, the averting gazes, and the reddening cheeks; they were asking for you to squeal. Unfortunately, though, Soobin was about to say something in response but was cut off by Bomi announcing their departure for the day. That, alone, was more than enough to get the whole class rowdy and loud, excited to finally go home for the day. It was also an indication for you to help clean and pack up the students for dismissal.

About 15 minutes later, all the children were packed up and ready to be led outside. Despite it being a very common practice here in Korea to take public transportation home, parents were instructed to pick up kindergarteners. Though recently, they did introduce the yellow school bus, many kindergarteners still go by parent pick-up while primary school and up take public transportation. You were never around when the boys got picked but this time Bomi had asked you to take the kids out for dismissal. This was your ample opportunity to finally figure out who was the authority figure in their lives.

Though you anticipated this a little too much, you realized quickly that the school had practically emptied at this point and it was now you and the five boys waiting outside. At least the weather was nice for being the beginning of Spring. The boys were playing amongst themselves, entirely carefree as if this was something they were used to. Bomi must’ve noticed you waiting and approached your group. With an apologetic smile, she ushered you away so they wouldn’t hear your conversation.

“Sorry Y/n, I realized I forgot to tell you. These five sometimes get picked up later than normal. I would typically do it but I have an appointment to attend! But~ I promise you, it’d be worth it once you see who picks them up. All the teachers are gaga for their older brothers! There’s seven of them and they’re all really handsome. Maybe you can snag one of them!” she giggled.

You gave her a sheepish smile before turning back to glance at the boys. You’d be lying if you said your interest hasn’t peaked but you really weren’t as intrigued as you thought you were going to be. As thrilling as it’d be to interact with these attractive men, being in a relationship wasn’t exactly high on your to-do list. It would be nice, though, to have a shared affectionate bond with someone. They were everywhere in Korea which, more or less, made you feel a little lonely sometimes. But in the same vein, it’s not like you were in one before so it didn’t bother you as much to not have one currently. Bidding her a farewell and returning back to the boys, you were curious to see what they were doing.

When you approached them, they all happily looked at you. In fact, Hueningkai came running at you with open arms, engulfing your legs as best he could. With a loud giggle escaping his lips he looked at you with bright determined eyes.

“Teacher, can we play a game together?” he asked excitedly.

You were a bit surprised by his question but happily agreed when you witnessed the excited anticipation from the others. Bending down to reach his height and clasping Hueningkai’s hands in your own, you fondly smiled at him.

“I would love to play with you all. What would you like to do?” you asked all of them.

“Let’s play tag!” Boemgyu suggested.

“No, let's play Jegi! Hoseok-hyung always plays Jegi with us!” Yeonjun interjected.

“Wait wait, how about gonggi?” Taehyun asked.

“I want to play whatever the teacher plays!” Hueningkai stated happily.

You giggled at the increase in volume, content with seeing them cutely argue amongst themselves. However, you noticed Soobin being kinda quiet, shyly looking between both you and the boys. You locked eyes with him momentarily before coaxing him to come closer to you. He hesitated at first but obliged shortly afterwards, quickly advancing. Like with Hueningkai, you got down on your knees to be eye level with him. With a warm and inviting smile, you waited patiently for him to share his thoughts.

“Can I…show you something before we play a game. I don’t care what we play but I really want to show you something.” he shyly admitted.

“Of course Soobin. Where would you like to go?” you asked.

That made the others perk at your conversation, curiosity now controlling their own thoughts and actions. Swarming the both of you quickly, they all started to bombard each of you with questions. You quietly calmed them down before beckoning Soobin to lead the way.

“Where are we going?” Beomgyu asked, confused.

“Is it an adventure?” Hueningkai asked excitedly.

You tapped your chin with your finger a few times before forming a smile on your face. Looking down at the clueless boys you gently patted each of their heads before responding.

“It’s a special place Soobin wants to take us. So, in a way, we are going on an adventure.” you revealed with a lively grin.

A pure, untouched gleam of excitement crossed each of the inquisitive boys, large and happy smiles to match. Going up towards Soobin, they began pestering him for details, impatient on where and why they started this suddenly exciting venture. He typically would just laugh at their questions or refuse to answer them only to be met with cute pouts and high pitched whines. You had the pleasure of monitoring the whole ordeal, an ever growing soft spot the more time you spent with them.

Your small group made it to the side of the building, away from the prying eyes of any authority figures who lingered around out front but also not too far from the dismissal area. Soobin stopped in his tracks before rustling through the still naked shrubs. He walked until he was behind a tree where a small premature bush lay hidden from the initial view of onlookers. Signaling for you to follow, he showed the long spider-like branches holding onto small yellow tufts. Some looked like specks and others were beginning to bloom early, but they were definitely flowers. It was very pretty to look at even if they weren’t quite mature yet and you felt honored to have been shown this. The boys must’ve agreed because they were ecstatic to see it.

“These flowers look just like the ones that are in Namjoon-hyung’s books!” Hueningkai exclaimed.

“I think Jungkook-hyung drew a picture of these once. But these look a little different.” Beomgyu analyzed, cocking his head slightly.

“I wonder if it’s because these flowers aren’t in bloom yet.” you answered.

“Bloom? What’s that?” Hueningkai asked curiously.

“It’s when the flowers are still sleeping and need a little more time to wake up! When Seokjin-hyung and I were cooking, he said that this time of the year the flowers start to wake up from sleeping for so long. But it takes some time for certain flowers to do that.” Yeonjun proudly explained.

“That’s correct! Excellent Yeonjun. Do any of you know what kind of flower this is?” you asked happily.

“It’s a golden bell! They grow in the early spring but don’t start to bloom fully until the end of March!” Soobin answered enthusiastically.

“I think they mean...anti..ci..pa..tion..?” Taehyun said, trying to sound it out.

You smiled, praising both boys for their animated excitement in their knowledge.

“Sometimes, Yoongi-hyung would tell us interesting facts about all sorts of things! Did you know that pigs can only see the sky when they die?!” Hueningkai passionately presented.

“Uh...Oh! Wow...I..I did not know that. Your brothers seem like extremely smart and talented people.” you said trying to recover from hearing such a sad yet morbid fact.

“Why thank you. That’s very sweet coming from you.” a sudden deep and masculine voice interjected.

All of your attention was grabbed by the abrupt arrival of the new voice. When you turned to see who it belonged to, you were faced with an unexpectedly beautiful face. He was tall, much taller than you, but didn’t look to be that much older either. He had blonde parted hair and beautifully sunkissed skin. He wore all black, with the exception of his white undershirt, and sported jewelry and shades that served to complement his entire style. He was bleeding a very sensually intimidating aura yet at the same time he seemed so kind and warm. He definitely had the lean figure you see in most Korean’s but he was packing on some obvious muscle thanks to the more form fitting attire he had on.

“Jimin-hyung!” they all cheered with loud and boisterous yells.

The one named Jimin had a wide unapologetic grin plastered on his face as he dropped to his knees with opened arms.

“My babies!” he squealed back as they piled into his hold all at once.

It was enough to knock the poor man over on the grass but that didn’t cease the radiant laughter coming from them all. In fact, it only served to increase it. You couldn’t help but giggle at that, an odd sense of warmth filling your being with a delightful bliss. You may not have known the little group for long but it did feel really pleasurable being around them. Jimin must’ve noticed and observed you in awe. You really had a cute smile. Picking up the younger boys and standing back up on his own two feet, Jimin bowed at you in thanks. You admitted you were taken back by his action but returned the gesture nonetheless.

“Thank you for watching over them while you waited for us. Unfortunately, we have special circumstances that prevent us from being here on time and I know that may be a bit of a burden on you guys.” he explained somewhat remorsefully.

“Please don’t worry about it. I love spending time with the boys. Honestly, it’s no problem at all. I’m new here and after this, I have plenty of free time on my hand. So being able to spend it with the boys is no problem for me. In fact, I’m actually kind of sad we’re departing so soon.” you joyously confessed, eyeing the giggling boys.

Jimin seemed somewhat surprised by this but his shock was instantly replaced with his charming closed eye smile. Yeah, you were definitely too cute.

“You’re very kind, Ms. Y/n. Well then, I hate to rip you guys apart but it’s time to take them home.” he announced.

When Jimin wasn’t met with gleeful cheers he paused with furrowed brows. Normally, they’re more than excited to leave the Hagwon but there was a solemn look present on all their faces. Hesitantly looking between Jimin and you, Hueningkai spoke up first.

“I know we have to go home but can teacher come with us?” he asked.

“Yeah, can she? That way we can keep playing together!” Beomgyu agreed.

Now Jimin was really confused. He and the rest of the guys were well aware of the tension they have with the schools here. They’ve witnessed the harsh attitudes of the teachers and the cruel actions of the students. It was only sunshine and rainbows wrapped with fear when the teachers and parents of the bullying students would discover who exactly they were. Though it brought amusement to see them squirm in fear it also was frustrating to see the boys struggling to live a normal life because of it. So witnessing them willingly want to stay by your side was more than a bit shocking. It was intriguing. Who were you? Hoping to cease their convincing pouts, he began playing with Hueningkai’s cheeks in the process.

“Teacher can’t come with us. At least, not yet anyway.” he smuggly smirked at you.

“But, as a thank you for being so kind, how about you guys ask her to come get ice cream with us after school on Saturday?” he slyly threw out.

The boys' eyes lit up at the proposition, excitement filling their tiny bodies in anticipation for the upcoming day. Turning to look at you, they bombarded you with the same question.

“Teacher, please say yes!” Yeonjun exclaimed.

“I want to show you all the cool ice cream flavors we have!” Beomgyu agreed, jumping up and down happily.

“Yeah! Yeah! Ice cream!!!” Hueningkai yelled, mimicking Beomgyu in the process.

You couldn’t help but smile at their innocent behavior, their excitement rubbing off on you just as much. With a small giggle, you gently hushed the boys in hopes of finally getting a word in.

“I’ll tag along on one condition.” you offered.

Everyone got quiet, waiting in anticipation for what you were about to say. Even Jimin fell trap to the child-like curiosity as he observed you. You couldn’t hold back a laugh from that.

“You all have to go home today without giving Mr. Jimin any more problems and while you're home, I want all of you to bring one thing that you would like to share with me tomorrow after class lets out. It’ll be like a show and tell. It has to fit in your backpack and it has to be approved by your brothers, okay? If you can manage that, I will happily go get ice cream with you guys.” you explained purposely in English.

Each boy nodded enthusiastically at you, agreeing to your terms. Just before departing each of them gave you a giant hug, some lasting longer than others. This resulted in acts of jealousy as they came back to hug you a second time. Soobin was last to hug you, whispering something in your ear.

“Hey teacher, remember when you said you’d like to be our friend? Did you mean it?”

“Of course I mean it. I would be so happy to be your friend.” you responded, locking eyes with him.

“Then I would love to be your friend too. So would the others, they told me when we were packing up.” Soobin admitted shyly.

You hugged him tightly in response, thanking him for agreeing to be your friend. When you let go, the boys ran off to the front gates, leaving both you and Jimin to follow behind. Jimin matched your pace, glancing at you every so often as you fondly watched the boys. When you caught him staring at you, he averted his eyes and quickly cleared his throat.

“Well then Ms. Y/n, I guess it really is time to get going. Don’t forget our date this Saturday!” he said following after the boys.

“I promise I won't.” you responded back, watching them get into the nice sleek black Porsche before driving away.

______________________________________________________________

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[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Vmin Vlive Asks

From anon: saw on twitter people asking for vmin vilive again. If vmin were just friends it wouldn't be a problem streaming together, or if they hated each other as some say they would be professional enough to stream together without any problems. But since they don't, it's because it's difficult, even as a professional, because vmin is so cute with each other. just a thought.

From anon 2: It saddens me that we still haven't got a Vmin live/selfie. It really makes me wonder. Surely they can go an hour without flirting/touching/exposing themselves, right lol? Same with a selfie. V did a live with JK and JM did one with JK, last year. V uploaded a selfie of him and JK on NYE, but when it comes to Vmin we barely get crumbs. Not saying I expect it, but it raises the question of what the big deal is kinda. Worst part is antis see it as confirmation that Vmin aren't close. Makes me sad.

From anon 3: What are your thoughts on why we haven't seen Vmin selfies or vlives in a while? Same with Jikook. Nothing from them either. Do you think Jimin just isn't wanting to for some reason? Even TK uploaded a selfie on NYE and then we got Tae in a video, in a rush to get their selfie uploaded. Kinda makes me sad. Not cause T/JK uploaded a selfie, but I just wish Vmin would throw us a bone. Since we haven't seen any selfies/lives with J/k**k either, seems maybe its on Jimin's end why we aren't. Maybe?

Perhaps this is a moment where being a namjinist is quite a handy thing since we’re rather used to a lack of selcas, even if there are moments that we know (and even saw) them take some together and yet we never got to see the selca, meaning they took them merely for themselves as memory. Which kind of makes it actually much cuter, but that’s besides the point. Same goes for vlives, before the RJRJ vlive Summer 2020, we had to wait a very long time for a namjin vlive. Perhaps I’m just desensitized to this wish of a joined vlive, not that I wouldn’t want one, I very much do, but I’m used to just…not getting one, I suppose?

Admin 2 has actually written a post early on into our time on tumblr about their theories regarding the potential of a vmin vlive and how chances are we will likely not get one, at least not any time soon. Looking at anon 2’s question if they would really not be able to go an hour without flirting or touching or doing something else that could “expose” them—I’d like for us to remember their “Radio” for Japanese ARMY where they basically spent the entire time talking softly/sweetly with each other, Jimin calling the way Tae wrote words on a whiteboard “cute” (the video was deleted but this is at least the translation of this), how he wasn’t able to open a pen so he softly asked Tae do it for him, and how Jimin did this funny charade move which Tae claimed was “Jimin waking up” resulting in Jimin playfully/cutely “hitting” Tae’s chest (1:28 onward). And that’s edited content, yet it’s so sweet and full of little tender vmin moments.

Now imagine that but without editing and happening live.

Of course, Jimin and Tae are absolute professionals at their job, I don’t have any kind of doubt about it, but perhaps it’s just something they’ve decided they don’t want to do (despite Jimin’s initial “promise” of talking Tae into doing it with him, and Tae saying “okay” on the phone when asked about it). Not due to a lack of possibilities or time, not due to a lack of self-control both verbal and physical wise, but due to some completely different reason only they know. We know what literal hellscape the comments during vlives are, so imagine what kind of nightmare the comments during a vmin vlive would be…it makes me sad and furious just thinking about it. Considering the comments are already full of hate and shipping related comments and questions when they do solo vlives. Or how hateful people were when Jimin, Seokjin and Yoongi did their Just Dance vlive together in 2020, how Seokjin was basically accused of “getting in the way” of y*onm*n and far, far worse things, even though all three of them were having so much fun together.

We know how much certain people despise vmin and any (cute) interactions between Jimin and Tae that show that all their wishes or claims that “they hate each other” and “have drifted apart” are not true. Also, remember how Tae posted their ITS bed selca on weverse and was flooded with hate for it? I admit, that was in parts due to “bad timing” (or rather people being unable to stop demanding things from Bangtan without immediately turning hateful but that’s a whole different story) but in larger parts due to it going against “popular agendas”.

“Worst part is antis see it as confirmation that Vmin aren't close. Makes me sad.” If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years as ARMY, as well as vminnie and namjinist, it’s that the opinion of antis is worth less than dirt. Even dirt is more useful, tbh. They can think whatever they like, but the good thing is, their opinion and whatever they think is a “confirmation” of their agenda, it doesn’t affect the truth and the reality of Jimin’s and Tae’s bond in any kind of way. So, please, don’t let their noisiness make you sad. Literal antis are not worth our times. Not in relation to vmin and not in relation to BTS in general.

“Not cause T/JK uploaded a selfie, but I just wish Vmin would throw us a bone.” While I know what you mean, I’d like to remind you, and everyone else, that we’ve gotten a whole mountain of bones in recent weeks between RUN and other content like Winter Package. We might not have gotten any selcas or vlive, but we got so many other things, do they not count? Besides, we’ve made it five years without vmin vlive, I think we’ll be okay, no?

So, it’s okay to hope we might get a vlive from Tae and Jimin together one day, as well as a selca, if they’ve decided against it behind the scenes, we should respect and accept that. In the end, if they’ll one day do decide to do a vlive or post a selca out of the blue, imagine how happy we’d be.

Instead let us look forward with anticipation and excitement for tomorrow’s Grammy performance and hopefully their first win, even though I’ll forever be salty about the organizers putting their category in the pre-show instead of making it part of the main gala despite knowing that their category is basically the most anticipated one this year. As well as most of the categories with POC nominees being outside of the main gala. Very telling.

Then again, like that one Forbes article once said:

[viciousgracearc]

sh.adow & b.one thoughts ( contains spoilers! ) tw: racism ( this is just a thought dump and to explain why i’m not adapting the show’s racist elements in my portrayals )

disclaimer: just because i will not adapt the racist element as it appears in the show doesn’t mean i won’t acknowledge the book canon, in-universe prejudice and discrimination against the poc characters in grishaverse. 

so. the racism in shadow and bone. having watched all of the show, i now have some mixed thoughts about it. in the books, alina is assumed to be white for the most part. it is only at the end when we ( or at least i ) suspected that she is not entirely ravkan, and then the casting confirmed it. the kind of racism alina ( and mal ) faced in the show was never a factor in the books, despite rampant anti-shu and anti-fjerdan sentiment. the suli are painted as people who are displaced and mostly neglected by the ravkan government, and definitely treated with prejudice, but as far as i recall there is no specific slur directed at them either in book canon.

however, whereas alina’s ethnicity is vague in the books, it is crystal clear in the show that she is a biracial woman. i know that for biracial folk, experiences vary across the board, especially if you’re a biracial person and an immigrant or a refugee. alina is a war orphan. her mother’s country of origin is at war with her current country of residence. to an extent, i understand the level of animosity ravkans have against people who look like the threat / the enemy. people of color face racism and prejudice day in and day out, sometimes from white people, sometimes from fellow people of color. this is a grim reality with a long and studied history of racism and racial superiority creating divides between minorities and pitting them against each other.

was the racism necessary to the plot? it definitely adds layers to it. you have an orphaned girl of color in a mostly white people country. they discriminate against her and her best friend for most of her life, using slurs such as “rice-eater” and “half-breed”. but this country has a huge problem, and it turns out only this orphaned girl of color can save them from it, despite them alienating her consistently. now they need her help, now they call her a saint. this girl, who based on show-canon, feels so different and abnormal from the rest of her peers because her ethnicity is always pointed out and considered a bad thing. now she has to be a hero for a country that despises her... and not only that, now she has to do it under the tutelage of a white man. white man looks older than her; there is an obvious imbalance in their power dynamic, but he looks at her like his hope come at last and places her on a pedestal she doesn’t ask for. this same white man puts a collar around her neck and then effectively subjugates her by taking control of her power.

it... it kinda sounds bad, doesn’t it? it does. “but wait,” the volcra screeches. “via, are you fucking stupid?” it asks. “that’s not how the story ends! she overcomes!”

well, yes. but does it really make the rest of it any less insidious? alina is denied food, consistently picked on, and mocked, for being half-shu. it is prevalent in her show storyline and difficult to ignore. and thus it will be woven into everything that happens to her, and every decision that she makes will in turn, make us, the viewers, look back on it even if she herself doesn’t do so explicitly. i know the intent of including this racism element into her ( and mal’s ) story is to portray an accurate depiction of the POC experience as they maneuver white or mostly white spaces, or just spaces not catered to their specific ethnicity. but does it work? is it necessary? the irregulars, which is also a netflix show, did a great job at casting a young chinese woman in a lead role and a black man as dr. john watson without ever having to define their characters or their capabilities to move in the world by their race alone. as a half-chinese woman myself, it was empowering to watch a chinese girl able to take the lead and make bold statements and brave decisions without ever being bogged down by the limitations of her race. 

at the end of the day, it is a fantasy world. do you think if the racism isn’t there, the story’s going to be worse off than it is? personally, if they left it out, i think the story will be just fine. there are a lot of things that tie these characters together outside of their racial struggles, like... i don’t know, personality? circumstances? the need to save their country from a powerful tyrant? the struggle for survival in a constantly at-war nation? there is also the fact that this racism element they’ve introduced is inconsistent. so much directed against alina and mal because they want the viewers to sympathize with these two characters. some of it directed towards inej, another protagonist, whose story has a lot to do with how she was exploited because she is suli. but where’s the racism directed at zoya? at botkin? if there’s racism against the shu and if they call them rice-eaters, where’s the anti-fjerdan racism and what do they call fjerdans? ice-shavers? cold-dwellers? aren’t fjerdans ravka’s enemies too? but oh wait... fjerdans are white. nevermind.

speaking of zoya: in the books, especially in RoW, it was implied that she is white-passing, which is why she was never treated differently for being suli. however, show!zoya is NOT white-passing at all. she is very obviously a woman of color, and while i acknowledge that yes, poc can be racist against poc, i don’t really see zoya -- bully, mean girl, attention-starved, ambitious, ruthless zoya -- resulting to such a low blow. sujaya dasgupta herself admitted that in show canon, zoya experiences racism ( though it was never explicitly shown to us ), and consciously turns it against alina in the hopes of hurting another woman of color. don’t get me wrong, zoya is definitely a terrible person at the start of the series. she was classist and mean and she had a superiority complex, and that superiority complex comes from being a powerful grisha, something she worked hard for. she thinks alina doesn’t belong in the little palace, not because alina is shu, but because alina appears out of nowhere, is untrained but is already considered powerful / the solution to everyone’s problem, and has nabbed her old place as the darkling’s favored. the “you stink of keramzin” jab is more than enough to drive her point home and i don’t think “half-breed” is necessary at all. besides, from what it looked like, alina isn’t the only mixed-race grisha. grisha comes from all over, taking refuge in ravka because they’re the only nation that treats their grisha under acceptable conditions. so one would expect some diversity there, which zoya, having been at the little palace since age 9, would have been used to by now. i don’t really think there’s a lot of incentive for her in using a racial slur, and she’s lethal enough with words that she doesn’t need them to injure somebody. 

“via, stop barking and tell us what you’re going to adapt in your portrayal!”

okay, well. personally, i’m not interested in including the show’s racist element in any of my characters’ storyline ( alina, zoya, mal, ehri ). i acknowledge the anti-shu, anti-fjerdan, and anti-suli sentiments as they appear in book canon, but i will not use alina’s ethnicity as the basis of her “otherness” because i like the book canon explanation for that better. nor will i acknowledge that zoya called alina a half-breed, because my zoya is not white-passing zoya, and she knows infinitely better ways to inflict verbal harm than racism. zoya will also be grappling with being half-suli because she was exposed to anti-suli sentiments by her own mother as a young child. 

all my characters are of asian-adjacent ethnicities, and as an asian person myself, do you really think i am interested in reliving my traumatic racism experiences through the characters that i write in a fantasy world? with alina especially, it’s like she couldn’t breathe without someone pointing out that she’s half-shu. i think as much as it is important to show authentic poc experiences in art and media, it is also equally important to show poc solidarity, and to stop defining people by their race alone and to just let them exist as people. 

it doesn’t help that the show’s way of depicting racism is gratuitous, insulting, and feels like it’s catered more towards the white gaze than... you know, actual POC viewers? i understand people will disagree with me on this and that’s fine. this is just how i feel. given that shu-han as a nation didn’t even feature much in the books and we don’t know ANYTHING about them in a cultural context aside from the fact that their appearance is coded as east asian, the discrimination towards them really just hinges on shallow factors like how they look, what they eat ( ???? ), and how they are viewed as ravka’s enemy. it boils down to an east vs. west type of scenario ( and considering the barrage of anti-asian sentiment in our current political climate it’s... questionable at the very least ), and the racism element is not a profound expression of the poc experience but more like... a caricature version of it, once again, in my opinion.

“via, i can’t believe you used that many words trying to tell us you won’t include the racism in your portrayal.”

hey, i know. but a girl be having thoughts, a girl’s two brain cells be rubbing together, you know? this is me deep cleansing my brain by yoting my thoughts into the void. but yes, this is my take! i understand if you don’t feel the same way, but i just... i can’t feature the racist elements of the show in my blog, sorry (not really).

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[rotationalsymmetry]

I'm also extremely not comfortable with gatekeeping trauma. Sure, a lot of trauma is related to marginalization, but not all of it is.

Trauma can be caused by:

Abuse, including verbal/emotional abuse, which can be difficult to identify and/or easy to be deeply in denial about.

Neglect/abandonment

Bullying and ostracization

Invasive and/or painful medical procedures

Immigration (no, really -- people can get PTSD from moving to a very different culture.)

Being in a car crash, house fire, live shooting, or other life-threatening situation

Sexual abuse, assault, or molestation

It doesn't have to be literally growing up in a warzone, and talking as though there's a finite, limited number of sources of trauma and if you don't check off one of a very narrow list of Known Social Justice Axes of Oppression you can't possibly have been traumatized, is just wrong. It's harmful. It is harmful to people who have been traumatized, yes, including people who are marginalized but were traumatized by something not directly related to their marginalization. (Good grief, I'm queer, a lot of us...homophobia is not actually the main thing fucking up our lives, OK? It's very individual and situational, and going "you can feel traumatized because you're queer/poc/whatever, but not for any other reason"...wow.)

Moreover, not all cishet white -- or any other specific term you can cough up in a reasonable number of syllables -- kids are especially privileged. Some (cishet white) kids have been homeless, and you don't know which. Some have had the previously mentioned invasive and/or painful medical treatments, and you don't know which. You definitely don't know who's been sexually abused. Not everyone agrees on which groups of people are white (eg, hispanic, Arabic) and anyone who's going around saying that if you're white you probably haven't experience trauma seems to me relatively likely to have an overly narrow definition of POC, in addition to an overly narrow defintion of trauma. Some kids who are currently identifying as cishet are later going to realize they've been masking and/or dissociating so hard they don't even know who they are any more. It's just... don't tell other people they haven't experienced trauma. You don't know other people's lives.

And the worst part about trauma gatekeeping is the most straightforward way to combat it is...talking about your own trauma. And expecting people to cough up coherent trauma narratives on demand is cruel and horrible, and there is nothing compassionate or just or righteous about it.

[niftyfifties]

how the media handles difficult topics (the 50s vs. now)

“The New Kid in Town”: Teenage Life and What it Means to Be Adult 

The 1950s: Rebel Without a Cause

Rebel Without A Cause, the 1955 film starring James Dean, talks about being new in town and coping with this new change through rebellion. Jim, played by James Dean, is a highschool junior who’s new in town and obessed with maintaining his masculinity and honor. As I’ve said in previous posts, his toxic obsession with honor stems from his relationship with his father and is the reason why he hates being called chicken. Throughout the film, Jim’s new environment constantly questions honorable he truly is. After a knife fight in the planetarium parking lot, Buzz challenges Jim to a chickie run in the name of honor. Jim accepts the challenge, still concerned for his safety. At the chickie run, Buzz isn’t able to jump out of the car in time, and his car falls off the cliff and into the ocean. Shortly after, Jim goes home and tells his parents what happened and that he wants to go the police. However, they beg him not to. This moment is obviously portrays the parents as morally flawed, and to do the right thing, Jim tries to run to the police station to tell them, for honor. The film illustrates teenage years as a time of self-discovery and growth from a kid to an adult. In this moment, Jim is showing us that being adult is about being honorable by doing the right thing and taking responsibility for your actions, especially when the world around you is telling you not to. 

The 2000s: Mean Girls 

Mean Girls, a 2004 cult classic about the “fetch” Cady Heron, also addresses what it’s like to be the new kid in school, and what it means to be in adult. In contrast to Jim in Rebel Without A Cause, Cady copes by trying to conform to fit in with others at her new school, rather than rebel. After hatching a plan with Janis and Damian to mess with Regina, Cady becomes obsessed with becoming a part of the “girl world”. Being accepted by the Plastics was her top prioirty, even if it meant talking behind people’s backs and compromising her integrity. Through the Burn Book plot and Cady’s inability to fess up to her actions at the all junior girl meeting in the auditorium, Mean Girls also shows the importance of taking responsibility for your actions. Cady ultimatley learns the importance of being selfless, responsible, and kind to others when she admits to making the Burn Book. When Cady confesses, she doesn’t mention Gretchen, Regina, and Karen’s involvement in it. While it may seem like she’s protecting them, the film portrays this moment as a milestone for Cady. She is taking full responsibility for her actions, and refusing to put others down for her success. In the context of the movie, lifting others up and taking responsibility for others is what being an adult should be all about.

Being the Only POC in the Room: Race and Social Equality

The 1950s: No Way Out

During the early 1950s and 1960s, American filmmakers solely created two roles for black actors: the villain and the misfit.  In 1950, Sidney Poitier landed his first role in a movie as Dr. Brooks in “No Way Out”- a racially progressive film about a hospital’s only black doctor dealing with Ray Biddle, the racist brother of one of his patients. This movie challenged racial stereotypes, paved a way for more black voices in American film, and showed that African-Americans are more than the boxes society tries to put them in. In a scene where Dr. Brook treats Ray’s brother (Johnny), Poitier’s character challenges racial stereotypes of an irrationally violent and dangerous black villain by remaining calm despite Ray’s verbal and physical abuse. While trying to inspect Ray’s wound, Biddle blows smoke from his cigarette into Dr. Brooks face. However, Dr. Brook ignores Ray’s instigating actions and continues on with his work. Ray clearly expects a negative reaction based on Dr. Brook’s race. Despite this, Dr. Brook refuses to embody the vicious character that Ray expects, only giving him a stern glare in return. Later while Dr. Brooks inspects Johnny’s eyes, Ray hits him. Rather than responding to violence with violence or raising his voice, Dr. Brooks employs the handcuffs on Ray’s bed to keep Ray from disturbing Dr. Brooks during his work, continuing to challenge Ray’s and the audiences’ perspective of Dr. Brooks and black men being irrational and inhuman. Poitier’s portrayal of a black doctor who is a rational, level-headed person was practically unseen before this movie and challenged the racist image of the black villain.

The 2010s: Dear White People

Dear White People is a Netflix original that shows the lives and interactions between black and white communities in college. When it came out, it was extremely controversial, since it was describing nuanced issues in a very blunt and frankly dividing way. However, people have praised the show for its ability to show different and valid perspectives on multiple issues regarding racism (both through micro-aggressions and violence) and social justice. The main character, Sam White, hosts her own radio show and continously attacks Pastiche, a white fraternity on campus for being racist and creating a school unwelcoming to people of color. The plot of the first season focuses on Pastiche hosting a party where everyone showed in blackface and black arrest on campus. Even though many of Sam’s opinions on the show are valid, many of her black and white peers state that she can’t properly understand black issues because she’s mixed and has a white boyfriend, and her lighter skin automatically gives her an advantage. Throughout the season, as she and her friends fight back against the racism on campus, she discovers/shows the rest of the campus that others can’t make assumption about her identity nor try to define it for her just because she is mixed. 

Both No Way Out and Dear White People do a fantastic job in showing that being black means something different to everyone, and it is unfair for other people to judge someone’s black identity or try to define it.

The Beat of a Generation: Mental Health, Identity, and Navigating the World

The 1950s: On the Road

On the Road is a direct reflection of the beaten community of his generation, the lowest of the low who are looked down upon and beaten down by society. This is the generation that came to the conclusion that society sucked, and On the Road continues to show just how meaningless American life can be. After spending his time with Dean, who he admired because he mistook his craziness for orginiality, finally realizes he is insane after going to Mexico with him and having a dream about how destructive. It is in this moment that Sal Paradise realizes that he can’t spend life running and having sex forever, but should learn how to be comfortable in himself and his identity.

The 2010s: Bojack Horseman

Bojack Horseman is an edgy comedy about a self-loathing and problematic horse famous for starring in a 90s sitcom called “Horsin’ Around”. The show follows Bojack as he tries to regain his dignity and rebrand himself as a serious actor while reflecting on his damaging childhood, abandonment issues, commitment issues, depression, anxiety, and more importantly: himself. Bojack Horseman shows that anyone beaten down by society can be from anywhere. Through Bojack’s long and problematic journey to going to rehab and getting therapy, the show demonstrates that anyone can have issues of trauma, and it is important to get help. I’m not saying Bojack Horseman is necessarily a good person, but his journey to rehab shows how people who have experienced trauma can have trouble rediscovering their identity/navigating the world outside of it. On the Road also talks about what people need to do to find their identity, but the book and show make very different conclusions as to what these actions might be. In On the Road, it’s more spritual, and becoming comfortable with yourself means becoming comfortable outside of society. In Bojack Horseman, becoming comfortable in your identity and happy with yourself means taking concrete steps to get help, and leaning on your family and friends for support. Furthermore, Bojack Horseman says that everyones trauma and issues are real, while On the Road criticizes the issues of the elites.

[evilwriter37]

hey, so, I’m working on some original characters rn and I’m considering one of them being autistic (having autism? how do words work??), but I myself am not autistic. as someone who is, do you have any tips on how to write an autistic character without being offensive or stereotypical? I don’t have any friends or close family who are autistic that I can ask, and I don’t entirely trust google searches with this kind of thing

Oh, thank you for asking! I’m going to put this under a read more because it turned out quite long. Also, a term thing: allistic means non autistic person and is not an insult.

Okay, so, first thing’s first, most autistic people I’ve talked to like to be referred to as autistic rather than having autism. Person-first language just doesn’t really work because autism isn’t like, a bag we carry around with us or something. Autism shapes a lot about who we are: our personalities, our interests, sometimes what we’re good at, hence autistic person rather than person with autism.

Is your character diagnosed? That is going to have a big impact on how they view themselves. It is much more difficult for AFAB (assigned female at birth) people and poc to get an autism diagnosis than anyone else, as autism has only really ever been studied in white AMAB (assigned male at birth) people. People who are undiagnosed are probably likely to think that there’s something wrong with them and just feel inherently different from everyone else. I didn’t get diagnosed till I was 20 and I felt so different from everyone my whole life. It kind of feels like everyone else got this nifty guidebook on how to “human” and I didn’t. That doesn’t make an autistic person less human of course, but some of us do feel very alien compared to allistic people. Both an undiagnosed and a diagnosed person will find themselves questioning if they’re actually faking being autistic. Of course, they’re not, but people and society can be so invalidating that it feels that way.

You’ll have to decide if they are nonverbal, semi-verbal, or completely verbal. Nonverbal autistic people cannot verbally speak, but they can communicate in other ways. All autistic people have the ability to communicate, even if allistic people do not see it as communicating. Semi-verbal autistic people, like myself, have the ability to talk, but talking is very difficult and sometimes I go nonverbal. Either it’s because talking is taking too much energy and it’s not worth it, or it’s like my mouth and tongue are refusing to correctly follow my commands. I have yet to meet a completely verbal autistic person, but I’m sure they do exist. Means they have the same talking ability as an allistic person. A lot of autistic people who can manage to speak have gone through speech therapy, because wow, talking is hard! Other forms of communication include writing, sign language, body language, gestures, and facial expressions. Someone who is nonverbal is not someone who is lacking the ability to communicate. Some autistic people have speech impediments like stutters, lisps, and difficulties with certain words and letters. (l’s, w’s, and r’s are super difficult.)

Autism is very varied for each individual, which is why it’s a spectrum, so if you have multiple autistic characters, don’t give them all the same traits. Also, some autistic people will get along with each other, while others will find the other absolutely unbearable to be around. We don’t all fit together just because we have the same developmental disorder. And yes, that’s what autism is. Not a mental illness or a disease: developmental disorder.

Some autistic people are hyposensitive, meaning that they are less sensitive to stimuli than allistic people. This can lead to listening to music very loudly and loving bright things, just actions to receive sensation. Some autistic people are hypersensitive, meaning they don’t do well with loud and bright things. (I am hypersensitive and have sometimes described it as the world screaming at me.) Hypersensitivity can lead to sensory overload. A sensory overload lowers focus and raises irritability and upset. Overloads can lead to meltdowns or shutdowns. Some autistic people are a mix of hyposensitive or hypersensitive. Some have no sensory issues at all. A lot of us have things that we refer to as sensory hell: rain, velvet (it’s not soft, okay, don’t touch it, wtf), and other such textures. I literally screamed one time because a door knob was wet. Sticky things suck. A lot of us are touch sensitive and will get upset about certain textures. Certain things will actually hurt, like screeching noises, out of tune instruments, and the pounding of rain.

Meltdowns are an autistic person communicating that they are upset, stressed, and/or overstimulated. A meltdown should not be compared to a tantrum. Meltdowns can involve screaming, crying, rocking, arm waving, and lots of other physical behaviors. Do not restrain someone during a meltdown, as this will only make the situation worse for them. Instead, try to figure out what could be upsetting about the situation and get them to a relaxing place. People having a meltdown may repeatedly hit their head on something or do some other self harming behavior in an attempt to communicate the stress and alleviate it. It’s best to try to get them to do something else like using a stim toy.

Shutdowns are basically the opposite of meltdowns, but happen for the same reason. Someone who is having a shutdown will be unresponsive to most stimuli and attempts at communication. Again, try to get them to a relaxing place. However, do not try to get them out of the shutdown. That will only add stress. Let them come out of it on their own.

Part of autism is having issues with social things. Some of lots of issues, while others have very little. Issues can include a lack of understanding of body language, gestures, and facial expressions, issues with understanding and expressing tone, difficulty understanding jokes and sarcasm, complete tone deafness, monotonous speaking voice, lack of understanding a situation. Of course, not everyone has all of these. Make sure to mix it up with your characters. Also, a lot of things will say autistic people don’t have a sense of humor. We do. We like to make jokes, and others might not understand them sadly. We just don’t always understand an allistic sense of humor. 

Autism can also have more sensory processing disorders, like a visual or auditory processing disorder. These disorders usually involve the brain having the visual and auditory information, but not sending it to the part that is needed to translate it and make it meaningful. For instance, I have an auditory processing disorder, and I understand English very well, but when it kicks in, it’s like I completely forgot it. Spoken words just suddenly have no meaning. The same can happen to visual stimuli. It’s a coding and translation problem. It is not constant, but it occurs at random times and can last from a few seconds to a few hours. These issues are more likely to occur if an autistic person is stressed and tired. Some autistic people (myself) also have what is called prosopagnosia, or face blindness. Basically, we will not be able to recognize people by their faces, or faces are not processed at all, leaving people with a kind of blurred, featureless look, which can be very scary. (It’s one reason I hate crowds. Too many people, too many faces to process, brain says “fuck it, not gonna bother” and just leaves them all blank.) Funnily enough, I am a portrait artist, but it works because I focus on one part of the face at a time. Cartoon faces are also much easier for most autistic people, even those without face blindness, to read and recognize, as they are much more simple than a real human face.

Not all of these traits are always constant, and not every struggle is visible. Traits become more apparent when an autistic person is upset, stressed, and/or physical or mentally tired. Trying to function in a world full of allistic people takes a lot of work!

Stimming is something autistic people do for sensory satisfaction and emotional output. I flap my hands when I’m very happy or overwhelmed. I rock when I’m bored. Things like that. Not all stimming is good however. Stims can include picking at skin and nails (even to the point of bleeding), punching things, hitting oneself, and banging one’s head on something. To avoid harmful stims like this, it is best to use stim toys. There are all sorts of stim toys of all different textures and makes. There are toys to chew, fidget with, squish, throw, hit, anything that is needed really. There’s a great website that makes stim toys called stimtastic that is run by autistic people. Don’t be fooled by harmful stims though. A lot of stims are harmless and good for us. Don’t stop an autistic person from stimming and definitely don’t harass them for it. Stimming is a normal autistic thing to do.

Most autistic people will have special interests. It’ll be a fixation on something they like. It could be anything from computers to a cartoon. They will most likely know anything there is to know about it, talk about it a lot, and engage with it a lot. Special interests are not to be confused with obsessions and are good for autistic people to have. It’s our way of finding enjoyment and interacting with the world. And no, don’t believe google when it says we have limited interests. Autistic people can have a wide range of interests, but it seems like it’s limited because we focus mostly on the special interest. Special interests lead to info dumping. Info dumping can be annoying to a lot of people, and we treasure people who listen to us. It’s just talking about our special interest pretty much non stop and it feels really good to do.

Okay, that was quite long. I probably missed things because I don’t speak for everyone who is autistic, but this is what I could put together from my own experiences and reading about the experiences of others. Anyone else who is autistic, please feel free to add onto this. And anon, I thank you very much for asking and I’m sorry this took so long to do.

[fyeahocsofcolor]

Hi! I'm hoping you might be able to give me a little bit of feedback or guidance for an OC of mine? She's a fandom OC, who's a younger sister to a gang leader. She's very much part of the gang but she's also a compass to her total loose canon brother. Her brother is canonically hispanic (I can't remember where the actor is from right now) and so she is too, and I guess I'm afraid of falling into any stereotypes with that, but still want to (mostly) stick to the canon for the gang?

race stereotypes can be difficult, but definitely not impossible, to navigate, especially if they’ve been written into canon. That doesn’t mean you can’t change canon occurances that feed into that stereotype! 

Now, before we begin, I am not Latinx/Hispanic, so I cannot speak for anyone of that heritage, but this is what I could get from researching. From what I was able to glean from your description, the main stereotype you’re concerned about is the association between a Hispanic/Latinx character and a gang.  Hispanic or Latino men are more likely to be stereotyped as “unintelligent, comedic, aggressive, sexual, and unprofessional, earning them titles as ‘Latin lovers,“ buffoons, or criminals.’” [x] Hispanic and Latina women, similarly, are typically portrayed as lazy, verbally aggressive, and lacking work ethic [x]. 

Actually, there’s a wikipedia page that outlines several major stereotypes here that might be helpful to look over to see if your writing raises any red flags.

When it comes to avoiding stereotypes, you need to be careful not to let a certain characteristic be a character’s defining personality trait. PoC, especially men of color, tend to be seen as disproportionately “violent” as it is, so if your oc’s brother is a “loose cannon” it would be worth digging into that and making sure that this is not the only characteristic he has. Humans are complex beings, just as you would write a white character and give them a reasoning behind their actions, writing poc warrants the exact same thing. 

That said, I’m not sure about the exact context of the stereotypes you’re referring to, so I don’t know if I was a lot of help to you, but there are blogs out there that have been definitely helpful to me personally with regards to avoiding negative tropes when it comes to writing with poc. 

@writingwithcolor are an exceptional resource and I’ve found some pages that might be helpful to you, specifically with different tropes and stereotypes that might be connected with what you’re thinking. If not please don’t hesitate to message again and we can try to find other resources!!

Criminalization

Violent MoC

Here’s a general page filled with different tropes and stereotypes to avoid. Let us know if you need more information or if this was any help to you! And if anyone would like to add onto this, please feel free!

[gloriousxdarkness]

// @the anon in my inbox - im not gonna post because this is an RP blog and I would prefer to avoid any fandom discourse (esp fandoms i’m not a part of), but i feel you. i’ve never seen r*verdale (have no interest either lol) but i agree with you about JJ. 

i’m not a woc so i usually come at it from the angle of misogyny (comparing Elektra to similar characters like Frank/Billy/Dex), so i’m sure you and other poc see these double standards wrt race clearer than i do, but I think it’s safe to say there’s a clear difference in the way the writers wrote and the audience perceives the woc in the MCU compared the white women. wrt Elektra specifically, her characterization is comic influenced, so it’s not like her bad behavior, sexuality, or intense relationship with Matt is out of the blue (it is, however, all male written). I’ve not seen it personally but I’ve heard Colleen gets a rough reception sometimes as well.

It’s been said before, but there is an argument to be made about Season 2 being the angel (Karen) and devil (Elektra) on Matt’s shoulders. I don’t have a problem really with the writers going in that direction, bc the season to me is about Matt grappling with being unable to unify his two lives (which Elektra wants him to do, and his friends want him to abandon Daredevil). The issue I have is that Karen is written very sympathetically and adapted quite differently from the comics (so I hear), whereas despite Elektra’s extraordinarily traumatic history, she is not written sympathetically. 

Elektra comes across as villainous, when in reality, she’s the anti-heroine. Isolate her story, and it becomes one of a victim of abuse fighting against her abusers and an evil organization bent on conquering the world. But understanding her takes more time and effort than the GA is willing to put in. I think Elodie did a better job than the writers in delivering a committed and complex character, honestly, which is astounding for an actress. I shudder to think what we might have gotten without her incredible performance. 

I feel like I’m rambling a bit. People definitely weaponize abuse to critique any relationship they dislike, or even any person they dislike IRL. It’s not good when people sanitize the term to mean anything confrontational or difficult or disagreeable. It makes it hard to talk about real portrayals of abusive relationships (50 Shades, D*lena from TVD, i’m sure many others), and then for people to recognize when they are in an abusive relationships vs. a healthy one. More often than not the abusive relationships get glorified as romantic and ideal. And if you watch Matt and Elektra’s fights, they are having a conversation, coming to an understanding, speaking to each other tersely but still with respect, and moving forward. Just angrily.

tl;dr: Elektra does not abuse Matt. She doesn’t isolate him from his friends, doesn’t verbally degrade him, doesn’t financially cripple him, and most importantly, actually yields to his boundaries (abusers do not do this y’all). She leaves when he asks her to. She doesn’t ask him to compromise his beliefs. She apologizes to him for the times she’s wronged him. She didn’t even invite him over to her apartment the first night. He showed up of his own accord and continued showing up in her life. He is a grown man, his choices are on him. Their lives are crazy, but let’s be clear. Elektra is a victim of abuse. The only abuser in this scenario is Stick.

Also, on top of not being abusive, they actually have a wonderful relationship.

if anon would like to DM me please feel free. or at least let me know what bipoc means because i haven’t seen that term before. 

Edit: thanks for the info. i always read the prefix as for bisexual lmao. and ugh, Claire! I would’ve given my left arm for more Claire content on Daredevil. she just disappeared, what a waste! But yeah neither the content creators nor the audience are excused for bad behavior, totally agree. good talk. 

[aplpaca]

1, 19, 20

thanks for asking! (this ended up being hella long so thats why its kinda late)

1: Did you discover that you are autistic early or later in life? How do you think it affected you?i had an “unofficial” diagnosis when i was like 4 (unofficial bc i was “on the spectrum but didnt meet all the criteria for an official diagnosis” aka i could talk and wasnt a boy) but because it was unofficial there wasnt really anything that could be done with it, so it wasnt considered significant and i didnt think much of it.    

i didnt actually “figure it out” till towards the end of high school, and what really made me consider it was how much i related to posts by autistic people talking about traits and experiences.  and it was super “freeing” i guess cause it was like realizing that id been viewing myself wrong for most of my life? that my difficulties werent because i hadnt “nurtured” them the right way and my interests and talents werent some warped form of compensation.  like a mental shift from “im a defective version of other people” to “im a perfectly decent version of myself”. 

kinda like if youd been taking care of a “weird bush”, getting confused that it was different from the other ones, and then realized the bush was actually a cactus.  but now that you know, you can figure out how to grow a healthy cactus instead of overwatering it in the hopes it will look like a bush   

19: What, in your opinion, is the most ridiculous autism myth or stereotype?theres a lot of those but the stereotype of autism being a young white boy thing is definitely up there in terms of perpetuating inequalities like afab people and poc are diagnosed less frequently and misdiagnosed a lot more, especially when theyre not kids anymoreless institutional for this one, but a lot of non-autistic people act like theyre able to intuitively tell if someone is or isnt autistic? when their knowledge is based on one autistic person they know of, or a mix of pop culture and maybe an intro to psych class.  like “*person* cant be autistic they do *thing that isnt mutually exclusive to being autistic*” or “are you sure youre autistic cause youre not like my younger brother”  

20: How would you describe autism to someone who knows nothing about it?im not exactly sure how to answer this concisely and still give some actual background on being autistic but heres some traits (under the read-more since this is pretty long already)

social interactions

casual conversation comes a lot less naturally for you than for others (like for me it feels kinda like trying to do a card trade when youre deck is out of order or when youre taking too long trying to find the right amount of money to give the cashier)

even if youre pretty sarcastic yourself, you might have trouble recognizing when other people are doing it (maybe responding to them as if they were serious, then realizing it was sarcasm afterwards)

difficulty with timing in conversations - accidentally interrupting a lot or not knowing when to start talking in groups

takes a lot longer for you to make friends than most people, even when actively trying

might have difficulty telling peoples feelings from their facial expressions or tone of voice, may accidentally overstep boundaries as a result

language/expression differences

speaking might not come naturally as a form of expression, might be more comfortable writing or using another method, especially on more personal topics

might be more or less facially expressive than most people (”resting bitch face” or finding it really hard to hide emotions)

might go nonverbal at times (or all the time) - talking feels physically difficult and takes more energy than usual, can happen with stress or just randomly

sensory stuff

hypo or hypersensitivities - more bothered by loud noise or bright light than others, being a lot more sensitive to fabric and clothing, needing certain levels of noise to be comfortable, “picky” eating (especially related to texture), sitting normally in chairs is uncomfortable, more or less reactive to certain smells

stimming because it feels nice, helps focus, relieves stress - fidgeting, Need To Move, leg bouncing, rocking, repeating phrases/noises because they sound/feel nice, hair twirling, feeling certain textures, pressure (heavy blankets, tight clothing, etc),

sensory overload when overstimulated (often in loud/bright/crowded/etc areas), may have trouble processing all information at once, get irritated by small sounds, may get dizzy, can trigger anxiety, restless energy, trouble focusing, places others are fine with may feel very chaotic to you (eg: a mall or supermarket), symptoms lessen when away from situation

various other things

special interests - if you like something you really like it no middle ground (”obsessed or nothing”), avidly pursue more info/content relating to it, feel an intense need to talk about these interests with others, could spend hours a day on these interests without getting bored  

executive dysfunction - procrastination, difficulty planning ahead, trouble with time management, distracted easily, trouble staying on task, difficulty multi-tasking, having trouble making yourself do something even when you want to get it done

unexpected events or changes in routine (even small things and even if your schedule is not busy) are stressful, might cause you to freeze up,  can take a long time to get used to

auditory processing difficulties - “sorry can you repeat that”, comprehending what someone said when theyre halfway through repeating it, following verbal instructions is hella confusing (“i know what those words mean and i know what that sentence means but i have no clue what im supposed to be doing”)

detail oriented - needing to know specific details and reasons behind things to remember them better, noticing lots of things others dont

good at coming up with unique ideas, different thinking approach leads you to problem-solve in ways others might not

i could write more but ima stop now, i think ive prob info-dumped enough

[bloody-cute-yandere]

Who should play/write minority parts? The Sia Debacle

Acclaimed singer/songwriter Sia has released a movie called “Music” recently, and the thing is getting panned by reviewers everywhere. It currently has a score of 23 on metacritic, a 3.1/10 on IMDB, and an astounding 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Members of the autistic community have been critiquing the movie for the rampant mis-representation of what it is like to be autistic, a criticism that is only exacerbated by Sia partnering with none other than Autism Speaks for a fundraiser. It had also come to light that Sia had originally cast a non-verbal autistic young woman to play the main character Music, but Sia reported (on her now deleted Twitter account) that she had been fired for being “difficult to work with”. The main character was then played by Maddie Ziegler, who apparently cried and begged to not have to fill the role (the disturbing co-dependency of the Sia-Maddie relationship has also been brought more to light as a result of this situation). The music video Sia released as a promo for the movie is similarly offensive and mis-informed. Hopefully this movie gets thrown into the trash fully, where it belongs, and Sia learns from her multitude of mistakes as opposed to continuing on her raging temper tantrum of “No one understands me and you’re all just haters and I’m going to quit social media because of you!” On a more broad scale, however, this movie has brought to the fore a very important and nuanced discussion about who should play minority roles in film/tv shows, and who should write stories centered around those characters, and the resulting debate is complicated.

On one side, a member of said minority group would be the one most knowledgeable about the intricacies and nuances of a character that is like them. They will have the information base needed to truly bring depth to that kind of character, that a neurotypical actor would have to do tons of research for in order to even scratch the surface. A neurotypical person is more likely to stumble upon and potentially rely on stereotypes in order to portray a minority character, leading to further alienation of said group due to the spread of misinformation. The same is essentially true for writers: a writer would have to delve into hundreds of hours of research in order to accurately write a minority character accurately if they are not a part of that group, and if a writer chooses to not do so and a member of that minority group is not involved in the screening process, potentially harmful stereotypes could be further spread into pop culture resulting in greater alienation of said minority group. Another strong argument is that, it isn’t as if there AREN’T minority actors, singers or writers looking for work, so every job that a neurotypical takes could be framed as a perfect role for a neurodivergent person being stolen from them to further the neurotypical community instead.

On the other hand largely lies the argument regarding gate-keeping creative expression. Its not as though good actors DON’T perform tons of research for the parts they want to play, just like it is a mark of a good writer that they do hundreds of hours of research in order to build their world accurately and believably. Additionally, if people can only play or perform their personal experiences, that could cause a severe segregation and lack of overall representation of minority groups. Even just statistically speaking, there are far more neurotypical writers, actors, etc, than neurodivergent ones. The same is true of cis actors vs. trans actors, straight actors vs. lgbtq+ actors, etc. So, should we have a mostly white, neurotypical, straight, cis media base just because that is currently the majority in the artist/media fields? Or, should we encourage overall diverse stories, movies, tv shows no matter who is the original writer/director so that all groups of people have the chance to be represented?

Admittedly, I struggle with what the right answer could be. First and foremost, I am not really a minority. I am a cis white woman in a comfortable living situation- my only real claim to being left of normal is that I am bisexual, and I have struggled with mental health issues (ED and anxiety). So, I know damn well I barely have a right to be in this conversation and there are SO MANY OTHER people that should be heard before I am. Also, some of my struggle with it could potentially be a knee-jerk reaction because I do have stories planned where the main characters are neurodivergent and/or POC. I do intend to do as much justice to the characters and stories as I can; they’re my children, I don’t want to hurt them, and I don’t want to hurt anyone else with them. However, I do know that others are not necessarily as careful as I want to be, and I also know that, even if I am as careful as can be, I might get some shit wrong, even some major shit wrong.

Even so, I don’t feel as though telling people that they can only write their own personal experiences would be beneficial for media as a whole. I believe it would strangle overall creativity and ban some potentially informative and helpful stories from being told to the public sphere. The idea that someone should only write what they know sounds almost “separate but equal” to me, and I fear it would lead to a continuance of the already blatant lack of minorities in mainstream media since the majority of big writers and producers etc are all white people in the US. On the flip side, I also don’t believe that an actor, for example, should just be able to play whatever part they want without any regard to the background and character makeup they are trying to be (I’m looking at you, Scarlet Johansson). I believe overall that minority and neurodivergent voices should continue to be uplifted first and foremost. We have to continue to make the writer/director/actor populace more diverse, which would include first considering people who are autistic to play roles that are centered around autism, or trans actors to play trans characters, etc. I also believe that, for authors, that the screening process for books should include people with diverse backgrounds that could catch problematic caricatures before they get onto store shelves. Additionally, if a character’s appearance doesn’t matter in terms of the story that is being told, I believe that more minorities should be cast overall in those roles. I don’t know though, and like I said earlier I am not the first person that should be listened to here.

[concerningegg]

please help out a fellow brown trans poc ⁉

this is a very general look into my life story as of recently. if you can’t donate money, it’s totally cool! But, i’m hoping my story can encourage others to continue working towards their goals and not giving up on themselves.

Thank you for your time, good egg!

BIG CW:  sexual trauma, homophobia, transphobia, mentions of family, mom, step parent/dad figure, pedophile mention, child m*lestation, homelessness, abuse, manipulation, depression, self h*rm

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… Hey friends and strangers, my name is Khem, I’m 19 years old, laotian american and the only real family I have is my younger sibling who is 17. I’m a queer brown nonbinary poc and sexual abuse survivor. I was raised by a single mom who was basically my hero and feminist inspiration for independence and strength. That all drastically changed after my stepfather came into our lives 7 years ago and, i was outted by my K8 school as bisexual and was almost expelled because my best friend quickly and innocently kissed me on the lips in the hallway. I was not allowed to walk across the graduation stage and my stepfather talked about me kissing a girl in a sexualized and fetishitic “scandalous” way to his family and other family friends. He was abusive and manipulative and has ingrained his own homophobic and radical ideals on to my mom. Things got worse with time, and my home got emotionally and verbally abusive. My mom and stepfather would gaslight me when they found out I started to self harm when I was 15 and tried to explain my feelings about my mental health. At 18, I was kicked out of my mom’s home just a few days after Christmas because of my sexuality and the gender of the person I was dating during the time. My mom and step “father” stopped financially supporting my living and education and I had to drop out of UWM and was homeless for 6+ months, worrying where I should and who I should go to each night for a couch/bed to sleep in. Matters got to a point where I slept on a mattress in an ally at one point and wasn’t eating meals for days, even weeks at a time. While I was homeless, I was sexually assaulted by someone I thought I could trust and take care of me while in his presence, but instead, touched groped and kissed me while I was sleeping without my consent. I was so terrified, I let most of it happen and didn’t/couldn’t move and then got up to pretend i was about to use the bathroom. The guy pretended he was asleep when i got up and I had a panic attack. This was especially difficult because of the sexual trauma of being molested when i was 6 by a local buddhist monk. He’s never been accused or found. I’m not able to seek any help from anyone else because other adult family members have cut me off for similar reasons relating to my sexuality and gender identity. My biological father has’t been present in my life and the man that raised me who I call my dad, passed because of suicide when I was 12. I am still unable to continue my education and am now earning my own money in hopes to be financially stable enough to live on my own by next summer and hopefully go back to school. I am working now and living with a very kind neighbor that lived next to me in the former house i lived in with my mom and physically/emotionally/verbally abusive step “father”. The 70 year old neighbor I met over half a year ago is now the person I live with every day. My goal is to move out by next summer or in the next year and/or start taking classes at a community college in hopes I can get back into university. I want to work with the youth and especially our LGBT+ Youth in hopes to become a teacher one day. I’ve been harassed and insulted by teachers so many times before in my life and I’m tired of people treating young people like how i’ve been treated my whole life. I want to make a difference and help others with their lives along with my own. I appreciate any help and support and thank you for reading my story. I’m going to be okay but, a little help would mean so much to me.

paypal.me/khemtheythem