#and by extension it's also a sexism thing and even a homophobia thing if you wanna view it that way too | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

austin-chr-2-0 · 1 month

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Can we all just, as a group, collectively stop pretending that the Chucky series is actually a good show?

I promise it isn’t. It’s nothing short than a literal fetish bait that you see on TikTok. I’ll admit, Don’s show was enjoyable in S1. This is no hate or coming after anyone, I’m simply stating what I see.

Not only is the plot more confusing than my gender identity, there’s clear racism in the show. Am I the only one who finds it so hilarious that Don nearly killed off almost every POC character? And only kept the one that was apart of the “main couple” thing Don is doing that’s equivalent to the foolishness they did in Highschool Musical? One of my good friends did a whole blog on it, their name is Mys and I’ll link it.

And not to mention how Don literally admitted to Jake being a self insert. Let me repeat that for those in the back — HE ADMITTED JAKE IS A SELF INSERT. Meaning that the only reason Devon is alive because he’s an extension of DON’S SELF INSERT. Don literally said that his experiences with Jake are “similar” like sir, just admit it already. And don’t get me started on the poor writing here.

Dambala and Christianity? This isn’t paganism bro, and Dambala is technically voodoo and hoodoo, and those different religions have Catholic and Christian roots and similar tools. Also, I don’t mean to point out the elephant in the room but Chucky and Tiffany are white. Hoodoo and Voodoo and the practice of Dambala is a closed practice specifically for who?? African people. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. How come nobody fucking points out how Alyvina, Lexy’s actor, gets sexualized left and right?

And so does Devon’s actor. And I would like everyone to realize that Devon and Lexy’s actors, BJ and Alyvina are technically MINORS. Zachary is an ADULT. So imagine how it must look being a minor making out with a full ass grown adult. That is CRAZY.

And I know what everyone is going to say; “Well there’s consenting so it doesn’t matter” and “Well the show had better representation, I’d like to see you do better” and worst of all “What did you expect the show to be 💀 It’s TV-14, meaning that it’s gonna be swearing, sex talk, gore” and I know what the Don apologists are probably thinking; that I’m just randomly coming after a show but it’s far from it, if you took the time to read this editorial.

And let me break it down before everyone gets to typing and removing. I’m not saying it should be all cupcakes and rainbows. I’m saying these characters should have more characterization. Devon’s confession being deleted was the worst “fuck you” decision ever. We could’ve had a chance for Devon to get characterized and show some vulnerability.

But no. Of course not.

And instead of taking a season to focus on Devon, we have a random YT character — Grant. Again, nothing for Devon. As an African American gay individual, I resided with Devon a lot and I was so confused on how he rarely has characterization. We don’t even get to see him have a grieving process!

I believe, no, I KNOW Don is using something that was introduced in Scandal, a tv show — this method is called dog whistle media/politics. It’s basically racism, sexism, homophobia, all that good stuff in a language so coded that it only affects the person they’re targeting. Like a dog whistle.

So when Don kills off POC characters, sexualizes children, doesn’t let Devon be emotional or vulnerable, IMMEDIATELY jumped into sex in S3, trust that POC and lgbtq people and creepy mfs on Reddit know EXACTLY what Don is doing. It’s a fine line between made for mature audiences and made for creepy audiences. Like the Wren situation on TikTok.

The only reason you all defend this show is because it stimulates you, in a weird, arousal kind of stimulation way or the simple fact it’s all the representation you all really have, and you shouldn’t settle for less.

For people who get stimulated by this show; It’s gross. You’re gross. Receive therapy.

In conclusion, the Chucky series by Don Mancini is not a good show. It is a cash cow, and a lengthened fetish post on TikTok. Do what you want, but I will tell you, if you enjoy that show, it’s not just because of the representation. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

#devon evans #jake wheeler #chucky #chucky series #chucky 2021 #austintalks

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sixpossumsinaclownsuit · 23 days

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Remember kiddos, polygamy and polyamory was only demonized for four core reasons:

Tw: homophobia, sexism, religious commentary, political commentary, oppression

1.) America wanted more taxes

Part of the legal institutionalization of marriage is that there is tax benefits for the individual parties when they get married, and financial ties/power is attorney between married people. It becomes messy when these ties extend to multiple people/marriages and the I*RS wants they tax money, and America would rather just make an entire way of life illegal than make laws and systems that accommodate people. See point #4 for more on that

2.) Puritan culture (aka thinly veiled sexism)

Puritan culture relies heavily on systems of control that villainize sex and women (that's a whole other conversation but I won't digress), and lots of marriages/polygamous marriages having sex with each other is obviously bad bad bad!! Hard to control!! Save the defenseless women from their pimp husbands! Orgies, the devil's work! And...

3.) Homophobia

Good god, women being in marriages together! Married to a man, but what if these women end up by being married to each other by extension! And having sex with each other! And what if a woman marries more than one man! Would these men become inferior to their wives? Would one of these husbands be less dominant than another? Would the men function in these complex marriages like a woman?! Disgusting! That's gay (derogatory!) Would these husbands be having sex with each other? But that's gay and gay is bad! Sex is bad! God, purge these sinners of their Sodomy!

(Surprise surprise, homophobia has very little to do with actual gay people and has everything to do with puritan culture, control, sexism and the demonization of sex, and points two and three are actually the same thing)

4.) Christian nationalism

Polygamy and nonmonogamy is normalized and integrated with several non-Christian and alternative Christian cultures going back thousands of years, like Islam, Mormonism, feudal Japanese/samurai cultures, Hinduism, several Native American cultures, etc... even in the Bible in Judeo-Christian history and biblical era cultures nonmonogamy was normalized. Banning nonmonogamy in America is banning the right to engage in non-christian religious rite and practice. It's only something criminal to post-puritan Christians and those beliefs becoming law, regardless of other religious beliefs and practices also existing in America, is the unseparation of church and state.

So before you tell a polyamorous person "oh that's cheating with permission" or "I could NEVER do that," or "I love my partner too much to do that/cheat like that," remember that these are the institutions and the propaganda you're upholding with your judgement. Supporting/ being kind about polyamory is religious tolerance, and biting your thumb at the I*RS.

Tl:dr, the dissolution of separating of church and state, puritan culture and the sexism/homophobia associated with puritan culture is why nonmonogamy is demonized and why polygamy is illegal in America.

Tone indication/post intention: satirical and exaggerated tones criticizing longstanding institutions of oppression with the intent to explain why judging, hating or criticizing nonmonogamous practices is oppressive and a result of propaganda. This post is not intended to persuade people who practice monogamy to practice nonmonogamy instead or to demonize monogamy. It is intended to advocate for breaking the stigma around nonmonogamy.

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marcfrenchie · 1 year

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DO YOU WANT TO READ MOON KNIGHT?

are you a show fan who's learned about how terrible the MCU did moon knight and you want to check out the comics? did you see him in a teamup book and want to know more about him? are you just looking for more comic recs? are you just interested in the character? then you're in the right place!

okay, to begin, i want to say that this is a character that has had a... varying history. there are no moon knight comics you can enjoy without extensive criticism. critisizing the things that you enjoy is good and gives you a better understanding of the work. please do not idolize any of these comics and please work to be kind to the many minorities (jewish people and systems, primarily, but classism, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia are all explored throughout MK's publishing history) that these comics represent. anyway.

MOON KNIGHT 1980 -

tws - doylist racism (racist villainous charactictures, mostly. a lot of this), ableism (outdated terminology for systemhood, occasional slurs), and sexism. extensive discussion of anti-semitism, specifically neo-nazism, in issues 37 and 38.

what happens - moon knight 1980 is a 38 issue comic book centering on the ex-mercenary and now hero moon knight. almost entirely episodic but there are occasionally multi-issue stories.

moon knight, in the day, is the millionare socialite steven grant, and, at night, the hero moon knight- moon knight also "uses" jake lockley as an informant. marc spector was the mercenary moon knight ran away from. doug moench was NOT intending to write a system at this point- steven and marcs relationship is meant to represent one mans struggle with guilt- but its really really easy to gel this with their current situation of being alters in a system and also some of the specifics of their whole thing make me fucking insane. jake is also there and i love him even if he isnt really a major part of the moral conflict

please dont read all 38 issues- attatched is a list of my personal ratings. everything later calls back to this so its best practice to read it first but its very much a slog if you arent already attatched to this character so make your own choice

nothing from 1980 to 2014 is particularly good (you can read it if you want but i havent) but knowing what happened is pretty important to understanding the later modern runs so a runthrough. throughout the 90s mk continued in the 80s status quo but in 2006 he 1. cut off bushmans (remember that guy from 1980?) face 2. was given a tendency for violence and and 3. became significantly more tense with marlene and frenchie. by 2014 they had completely fallen out. thats all we can continue with the recs now

[Image ID: A list of Moon Knight 1980 issues colored based on their quality. Issues 4, 7-11, 15, 17-20, and 28 are marked as "not good." Issue 27 is marked as "not good makes me insane though." Issues 3, 5, 6, 13, 16, 21, 34, and 35 are marked as "fun." Issues 2, 12, 14, 22 to 26, and 29 to 33, are marked as "good writing." 37 and 38 are marked as "genuinely essential." 1 and 36 are not marked. 29 is denoted as "slightly weird about his DID" and issues 6, 21, and 22, are denoted as "racist." End ID.]

WHAT HAPPENS IN BETWEEN -

MOON KNIGHT 2014 -

tws - graphic violence. do not buy the book new, warren ellis is an awful person. brief (doylist) ableism.

what happens in it - the first six issues are the warren ellis/declan shalvey run, which is what im reccomending. read the rest if you want, its mediocre but i like it

moon knight 2014 is 6 episodic issues centering on a now alone marc spector. steven and jake only show up twice, both lineless appearances in the back of panels. most of the issues are significantly more violent, dark, callbacks to old 1980 issues. most of the run is silent violence from marc but all of the stories are really good and the art is breathtaking.

MOON KNIGHT 2016 -

tws - unreality. mental hospitals. both doylist and watsonian ableism.

what happens - i am reccomending the lemire/smallwood + co run, the 15 issues before the numbers shoot up. i have not read the bemis run.

moon knight 2016 is 15 issues situated in a hallucinatory version of NYC, following moon knight as he struggles against khonshu's attempts to possess him. the thing is a lot of things in 2016 piss me off so i cant exactly sing its praises but its super important to modern moon knight so just. slog through it. highly reccomend reading after 1980 because it refrences A Lot.

MOON KNIGHT 2021 -

tws - violence, discussion of anti-semitism in issue 5.

what happens - i am reccomending the first 16 issues. the annual sort of triggered a falling off for the series and so i have not read after #16. read the later issues at your own risk

moon knight 2021 follows moon knight as he opens the midnight mission, gains multiple new side characters, and reckons with the consequences of the age of khonshu (an event in jason aarons avengers which is explained fine in 2021 so you dont have to read it). most of the series is typical action juxtaposed with MK's SHEILD-ordered therapy sessions. issues 14 and 15 are possibly the first time jake and steven have been written well since 1980. unfortunately, the annual is deeply xenophobic (villianizing the only romanian hero in marvel) and i have stopped reading the series due to this. the first 16 issues are really good though

MOON KNIGHT BLACK WHITE AND BLOOD -

tws - violence.

what happens - mkbwb is 4 issues consisting of 12 noncanon moon knight stories, as is typical for bwb series. most of them are pretty good and fun and also really pretty.

OTHER MOON KNIGHT STUFF -

- ms. marvel and moon knight

- devils reign: moon knight - tw violence, prisons

- west coast avengers 1985, issues 25-41

- hulk 1978 issues 11-20 (not #16), b stories.

- moon knight 2006 issue 3 - for frenchies coming out scene, which is good. not anything else

- heroes for hire 2011 - hes only in a few issues but im not saying which ones because i want you to read the whole thing. because its good

- defenders 1972 issues 47-51 - its Very 70s but its cute and i like it :)

- werewolf by night 32 and 33 - his first appearance!

ENDING THOUGHTS - please god listen to and make a point to be kind to systems and jewish people when you talk about MK.

#moon knight #marc spector #jake lockley #steven grant #marvel comics #comic reading list #marvel

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booasaur · 1 year

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You have me more than intrigued me. Do you know if anyone is posting Della Street scenes from Perry Mason? I gave up on HBO awhile ago but I may have to reup if this one proves engrossing enough. How procedural is the show on the whole? I love a good period mystery.

I couldn't find any scenes, of Della herself or of the ship(s). It's especially hard to find stuff about just the HBO series when the original was so iconic.

The show as a whole is....the first season started off as the most stereotypical cliched version of modern reboots as you could find, a dark, grim slow origin story where the thing the character is known for only happens near the end.

I'm not sure how much you know about the original series, well, we'll put aside the books, but the actual first show started airing all the way back in the '50s and it was really popular, and Della Street was a badass even then The show ended a few years later but was so popular, the same actors came back for a series of TV movies that basically acted liked more episodes, all the way from 1985 to 1995. So I guess the modern era isn't the only one doing these reboots. :P

But anyway, the original show was more of a classic procedural, each ep would have Perry, a defense lawyer, defending a client and figuring out a way to prove their innocence and get them off. The new HBO series has had one case a season so far, and there's no real guarantee that Perry'll be able to successfully defend their case, the tone is more cynical.

It is a pure mystery per season, though, as much as it may look like it's more a character introspection. It's a lot more realistic in terms of racism, sexism, and of course, with the changing of Della to a lesbian, homophobia. Perry himself is suffering PTSD after the war, he starts off as a private investigator so we see how it comes to happen that he becomes a lawyer.

Della's too main a character to do all her individual scenes, but I'd actually uploaded some of these short scenes for my friend (who then went back to watch the whole show herself) but maybe this will give you a good idea of what the show's about:

Season 1

1x01 - Della's first appearance: https://streamable.com/idap23

1x03 - This is when I first started to really like Della: https://streamable.com/pys6gf

1x03 - Again, being so awesome, I literally made a clip of this back when this first aired and made my friend watch, who forgot about the show again till this season: https://streamable.com/ezhcsu

1x04 - The first time we find out Della's into women, with her gf Hazel: https://streamable.com/uvzwpx

1x05 - Another sweet scene with Hazel: https://streamable.com/qi83ft

1x07 - Della with her friend Hamilton: https://streamable.com/dm6ezq

I didn't do every scene where Hazel was mentioned or appeared, though there's not much more.

And now in season 2:

2x01 - Della first sees Anita: https://streamable.com/yyttvi

2x01 - An extension of the scene above: https://streamable.com/lli2b1

2x01 - Della gives Anita a call: https://streamable.com/6b2enu

2x02 - Anita takes Della to a boxing match: https://streamable.com/7jm5mt

These last clips are the ones I used to make gifs from so they're not necessarily the full scenes. There are also obviously so many more scenes of Della in all, so if this does pique your interest, I'd go ahead and just watch the whole show, at least from season 2 onward. It's gotta be available to watch in places you don't have to pay. >_>

2x03 - Anita visits Della at the office: https://streamable.com/rl6870

2x04 - Della's still upset about their previous client's suicide, she meets up wiith Anita and they go on a trip: https://streamable.com/siiaw4

2x04 - Della waking up https://streamable.com/vws9kw

2x05 - Anita and Della's scenes this ep https://streamable.com/brv422

2x06 - A bit of Anita and a lot more Della individually, just figured it'd add more depth:

- Part 1: https://streamable.com/nur5ht

- Part 2: https://streamable.com/4h6m7p

2x07 - No Anita this week, but we did get a scene with Ham https://streamable.com/2x3xvv

2x08 - Not much Anita this week either, but a lot of good scenes of Della

- Part 1: https://streamable.com/csgm23

- Part 2: https://streamable.com/tu8h33

#replies #femslash related stuff #sent on 20230316 #Anonymous #5 #perry mason hbo #anita x della #I couldn't work it in anywhere above but juliet rylance's voice is SO gorgeous #that's like half the della appeal right there #in addition to her being a cool badass kind smart gorgeous lesbian :o #della street #how to watch della street hbo

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fandomfluffandfuck · 4 months

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the way you’re so onboard with alba just shows that you’re most likely a white person who doesn’t care about nazism and racism. y’know, cuz those things don’t affect you, right?

btw your “angel” posted her own nudes on ig for everyone, including chris’ underage nieces, to see. glad to know that’s who you’re supporting.

check your privilege please

related to this

Normally, I don't engage in stuff like this for a variety of reasons... anon critique and/or hate tends to be motivated purely to solicit a reaction, yet there's only a small chance the person that sent this will actually ever see (or read, for that matter) my response, I'm not a gossip blog, nor am I the place people come for hard-hitting discussions on issues like racism, antisemitism, homophobia/transphobia, sexism, misogyny, ableism, or any of the other awful human-made categories of hate that plague us. I'm a fantasy blog--hence the fact that I do fictional as well as real person ships. But, I do occasionally post stuff about the real lives of the people that I include in this fantasy blog--that's what the tag "real life real people" is. It's for others to filter if they want. That's why I tag those kinds of posts in such a way. (Alba is also always tagged, filter that way, too, if you like). I occasionally post that kind of stuff because sometimes, it's fun to post about the real lives of these people I have a parasocial relationship to. And its fun to have somewhere for people to express their excitement of/for those people. Personally, I'm much more partial to allowing excitement than negativity. It's my space, I do curate it extensively.

That being said, yes, I'm white. I'm a man, and I'm mostly straight-passing unless I deliberately out myself to others. I have a lot of privileges. I won't and don't deny that.

Nor will I deny that I haven't done really any research on Alba--the tags for her and Chris these days are nearly always full of hate or extensive theories when I check them, so... I avoid them. It's my peragotive to mostly stay out of the tags, though. I know that. I don't know Alba. For that fact, I don't know Chris. All I have to go off of is appearances. I do hope they're happy. They're just people. I also hope she's not still saying the awful, harmful things she has in the past--leaning to your side, and assuming that there are receipts. I hope she's listening and learning.

As far as posting her nudes to her Instagram--she's a grown woman. It's her body, her account, and the internet has always had places that are unsafe for children. She doesn't control who follows her, and she's famous. Many people follow her. I don't assume she wanted children to stumble across those photos. And if they did, that truly sucks. Children being unwantedly exposed to sexual content is not to be taken lightly. I can see how damaging that might be (God knows I've had a shit ton of experiences like that myself, from my younger years with even less protections on social media) even while holding the overarching opinion that bodies are bodies and nudity shouldn't be so sexualized as it is in our puritanical society. Although, yes, of course, nude photos intended to be sexually charged are much different to bodies being bodies.

While I'm very unsure that you will see this, let alone read it, I will conclude this post saying that this is as much as I want to post about this: I understand the underlying frustration you have, and I hear you. I do. I could--I can do much more to be a better ally as a white man to dismantling racist systems and holding racist people accountable. I am always trying, truly. However, for the purpose of this blog, I don't want to engage further.

Thank you.

#asks #real life real people #chris evans #alba baptista

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a-random-whovian7 · 1 year

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OK, kind of a long, unprovoked, incoherent ramble here, but I'm kind of sick about how gatekeepy this fandom has become in regards to RTD and Tennant. It seems that in some circles it's become the fashionable new thing to dunk on Ten's era as 'overrated' and 'not as good as you think', which is honestly kind of embarrassing given how it makes the fanbase look.

I understand that some of these criticisms are a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the horrible deal that Jodie had in her era, where the BBC leant excessively into nostalgia for 10's era in order to cover up the shortcomings of the material. That I completely understand, and had a bit of a rant about on this post here:

but that was mostly aimed at the BBC, as RTD and Tennant didn't properly come into the picture until 2021. I also get that there are some people concerned that RTD will just be leaning into nostalgia, although it looks like S14 will genuinely be a fresh new start that uses the returning faces of the 60th as a launching pad for new ideas and stories.

The point I'm trying to make though is that to immediately start dunking on an era and trying to discredit everything about it before it has even began is the exact same mistake that gave the Whittaker era such an uphill struggle before it began. By getting all gatekeepy and wanting to immediately rail against the new RTD era before it even begins, we risk looking like the same stuck-up, cult-like fanbase and thus dragging the fandom and the show as an extension down in people's eyes. Whilst thankfully we haven't seen a repeat of the blatant sexism/homophobia that plagued the casting announcement of Whittaker (and we'd better not), we are seeing the same 'fussy watcher' attitude that was adopted by sections of the fanbase, only this time they're trying to weaponise the past in a slightly different manner.

As I want to reiterate, I completely get some of the concerns driving this. Was the RTD era perfect? No, it wasn't. RTD is my favourite showrunner, but even then I'm not going to deny the existence of the Absorbaloff or blindly believe that everything will be brilliant. But you'd be pretty hard pressed to find an era of the show that is perfect. The fact is that this era was insanely popular, and arguably still is, as Tennant returning has already generated more public interest in the show than it has enjoyed since 2019, and gatekeeping and trying to push away people on the grounds of our petty attempts to keep the fanbase niche or trying to prove that one Doctor is better than the other might result in us pushing away the next generation of fans. We'd also be doing Ncuti a disservice, as we'd be shooting his era in the leg by doing that too, despite all the promising developments and news from S14's production.

So yeah. Hope I've made my point ok enough, I'm running on nothing but sugar and nervous energy. Basically

except not really, please be concerned for the show and be critical, but stop trying to drag down past eras or future seasons before they come out.

Anyway, rant over. Bye. *drops mic and passes out*

#doctor who #rtd2 #doctor who 60th anniversary #doctor who series 14 #13th doctor #10th doctor #david tennant #jodie whittaker #15th doctor #ncuti gatwa #rtd #rtd era #regeneration

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neechees · 2 years

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What’s your thoughts on arcane so far? You tend to have good takes on media, so I’m intrigued on what you think of it :0

I wanna say that overall I like it, but there are some things I wish they did differently or weren't afraid of portraying. I'll put this in short form because I feel like that's what will be good for my brain to categorize. I just finished it so I'm still disgesting everything and a second rewatch could probably help refine my opinions, but I'll put what I have so far (also note that I don't play league of Legends so I can't compare it to its game lore or whether or not its better, so I'll be treating Arcane as a standalone series just for this)

Things I appreciated, liked, and thought the series did well:

The animation and art style is gorgeous. I love the spurts of color throughout. I see a lot of references to art and art history, particularly with a LOT of inspiration from Art Nouveau. I feel like the Art Nouveau thing could specifically be intended since Art Nouveau takes inspiration in nature & plants, & one of the themes in Arcane is classicism & how the lower classes have less or little to no access to fresh air/clean water. Art Nouveau used architecture to both mimic nature AND depict it, & in Arcane the people of Zaun have to literally create greenhouses just to get fresh air, and you see the Art Nouveau architecture in Zaun, too. Their access to nature is mostly through Art Nouveau architecture mimicking nature, or self created through greenhouses. By extension, Topside (while still having references to Art Nouveau) seems more influenced by Art Deco, which had emphasis on modernity and luxury.

Classicism. I like the theme of classicism within this series because I feel like it portrays it very well, particularly with showing us the living conditions that the lower classes have to survive in, and how pollution is affecting them first, foremost, and the worst. Also explains why Silco was such a successful crimelord with Shimmer, since the shimmer can be used as medicine to treat illness and injury.

Characters. I think they did the characters really well, and explained their motivations, and their stories intertwining in a complex, yet not overly complicated or cumbersome way. Also a lot of really touching & profound relationships between the characters

Racism and sexism (at least between humans) don't really seem to be a thing in the Arcane world, which in a few ways, is really nice. The female characters are just as complex as the men, there didn't really seem to be any gender roles or prejudice between characters on the basis of "race" or skintone because of the existence of institutional racism.

On top of that, homophobia seems to not really be a thing here either, which is great. I heard that when Vi asks Caitlin if she prefers "men or women", she didn't outright say any specific sexuality because the writers said that it's so normalized, that this society doesn't even HAVE a word for it. I like that. I hope they're more explicit with gay relationships in the next season, and adding trans charas featured in the plot would be awesome

The Jinx vs Ekko fight. That gets its own point on this list because it was visually stunning, the music was killer, and it told a really tragic story with rich history between these two characters in about 2 minutes

The music

The eye motif that keeps popping up

Things that I didn't like, thought could have been done better, or wished they did differently:

Racism/colorism & classicism. I know I said I thought they did the classicism well as well as the fact that there's no racism (IN universe) in Arcane, but at the same time I feel like real world prejudice (irl) of the writers or designers or whoever else was involved leaks through. What I mean is stuff like how 3 of the more violent & less feminine female characters aren't White & are dark skinned (with the only other dark skinned female character is Mel), Mel is probably the most beautiful & most feminine female character & is a dark skinned Black woman but she's also manipulative at times (which I think is worth mentioning, even if it IS a character flaw, since Black women, especially dark skinned women, are often shown as controlling), you have like 3 Asian characters who are rich cops with one being VERY corrupt and working for a crime lord (on top of brutalizing the lower class), Sky is fridged because of a White guy's fault. A lot of the cops, upperclass main characters aren't White, and a lot of the poorer characters are. This is awkward because racism is VERY connected to classicism in real life, especially when talking about environmental racism, so this is almost sort of coming off as a "reverse racism" thing to me, which I don't think was intended, but still. I think in the very least they should have had more lower class characters of color to balance out this issue, but we only have Ekko (whom I love, Ekko is wonderful), Finn (who isn't a main character, doesn't appear much, & works for Silco), & Sevika, who again, is kind of a villian & violent & a foil for Vi, a White woman

On the classicism side, Silco is one of the main "villians" as someone who's trying to take down the oppressive state but he's also cool with killing children & torture & kidnapping, the narrative treats revolutionaries and those who try to fight oppression with violence (because their oppressors are being violent themselves) as if that's the "wrong" way to get freedom, most of the more morally grey characters are poor, the lower classes are frequently shown being violent with each other while the narrative was ALSO trying very hard to humanize the cops & upperclass people so we'd sympathize with them. I think they were trying to do a broken windows theory here, or trying to imply that classicism is inherently violent and creates violence, but I feel like it wasn't very effective or done properly & should have focused less on trying to make us like the rich characters so much, because this way it makes it seem like the poor are just naturally predisposed to violence, that the rich actually DO care about the poor most of the time if it were not for ignorance rather than because of their own classicism/belief of superiority & the dehumanization of poor people, & that most cops are just good guys "following the orders" of whoever is leading them rather than the whole system being wrong & most cops being corrupt or happily complacent. There's ways that they did or tried to show this, but like I said in a previous post, they should have pushed it over the edge.

Ableism... I don't like that Silco, Sevika, and that scientist dude are all kinda demonized & villians, but they're also disabled and/or disfigured in some way. Viktor faces this too, in a way. And again, they're all lower class.

The plot is very picky & convenient with who it wants to kill off & at what time, & plot armor is a fickle bitch. Somehow that little blonde bitch who was jacked up on shimmer was able to survive a direct blast from the hex crystals, but 2 people who had a door & a wall between them & the crystal didn't. Vander, who is MUCH bigger and had WAY more shimmer in his body, was also somehow not able to survive. Vi gets stabbed AND falls from a big height doesn't immediately die. Sevika gets beat up a bunch AND put in front of an explosion and survives multiple times.

I don't want to say I think her "villian origin story" is "weak" (although I don't like using that for her, necessarily), but I think it could have been a bit... stronger. Like Powder says "Vi isn't my sister anymore" & into the arms of a guy who killed her Father & was trying to kill her siblings because Vi went to sit in the corner & she thinks Vi "left" her?? Like kid... you SAW her go over there and sit down, you literally could have followed her over there. Vi was shitty for hitting her little sister & letting her cry by herself in the rain & an idiot for not booking it out of there WITH her when the cops were still looking for them, but I think it could have been more effective if they'd shown Vi get seperated from Powder FIRST, Powder be alone for a while thinking Vi left without her, and Silco progressively manipulating Powder before then her turning to be with him as a replacement Father out of desperation, because to me this just seemed too quick of a character decision for Powder to go from "I'm going to help kill this guy" to "you're my dad now" because of one argument with her sister in the span of like 10 minutes

This is a really minor one but, costumes. I wish the characters had bigger wardrobes & more clothes between all of them, but instead for the most part they all generally wear the same clothing or recolord of the same basic clothing throughout. Alternatively they could have also shown the richer characters with a lot of clothing, and the poor characters wearing the same tattered outfits to further demonstrate class disparity

So that's my thoughts on Arcane... I give it a solid 7/10 at least

#arcane spoilers #arcane #long post

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hongism · 2 years

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i just want you to know. that mists of celeste has been rotting my brain so hard i physically cannot stop thinking abt it like. the way you got my adhd ass hyperfixating on a Fanfic 😭😭😭 my poor bestie had to endure me rambling about it for a week straight as i read it. n now that im up to date part of me wants to go back and reread it now that i'll be able to pick up all the foreshadowing and details i mightve missed the first time in full. honestly still reeling from realising woosang knew mc as kids and still remember it and wooyo was the one who left the blood trail specifically for san to find like my mind is BLOWN. im usually pretty good at predicting plot twists but i never could've possibly saw that one coming till you started hand feeding us the hints. my god you are a mad genius.

anyway i have some questions!!! if you don't mind indulging me. im curious as to what technology is like in the moc universe like usually given the expanse of space travel across multiple galaxies and classes with different powers n such, you'd think they'd have some sort of phone/computer/internet system right?? i mean obviously we got the comms but it seems like that's just for calls and whatever can fit on the tiny screen of a wristband. this part really jumped out at me when mc was talking abt doing dishes but also when she was asking nightingale (or was it hongjoong?) to be able to at least communicate w soojin in the whorehouse somehow. like maybe they're just not allowed personal tech in the whorehouse that'd make sense but like mc also talks abt how there's nothing to do on the ship but spar n chat n play cards n read and im just here like... yall don't got video games?? HDJSHKF like surely if you can have the fastest spaceship in the galaxy yall can have a vr headset or something like. where is the enrichment in this enclosure. this is obviously not like a criticism im just curious and wondering if there's more to it or if it was just kinda like. tryna keep the feel of a good ol pirate au, but space.

my other question was what this universe thinks abt queerness. like is it just a normal thing that no one bats an eye at in comparison to het relationships or does homophobia exist somewhere. if it does, is it different from planet to planet or galaxy to galaxy or is there a general overarching theme like how in our society being cishet is still the "norm" even tho diff countries have varying degrees of acceptance. cause there's been some clear sexism at the start towards mc being a woman, so that implies that bigoted prejudice does exist, but to what extent?

if you can't tell im just. a really big fan of worldbuilding 🤪 feel free to ramble extensively i will read it all 👁👄👁 or don't if u can't be assed that's fine too LOL

YOU’RE TOO KIND PLS!!! im sorry for rotting your brain 😩 i understand the hyperfixation troubles far too well i put my bestie through the ringer when i get my grubby lil gremlin hands on fic ! honestly my fave bits are seeing people go back and be hit with that ‘oh!’ realization of all the pieces falling into place and making sense it’s so so rewarding as a writer and im so glad to see it every time 🤧 and im THRILLED that i was able to catch you by surprise with the plot twists <3

ofc i don’t mind indulging you, i always always ADORE answering questions and talking about the worldbuilding bc worldbuilding is my most favorite part about creating fics!!!

it’s hard to really describe the technology in moc well bc on one hand we have this futuristic reality and universe but there are lots of modern technologies that we have irl that moc doesn’t contain like cellphones. however, things are different from planet to planet. certain planets are more advanced in terms of technology, i think i’ve touched on it a bit but aurum is the most advanced system, and kebos is sorta this futuristic version of ancient rome so it doesn’t have the same kind of technology that eros and aera have. as far as the planets that the crew has visited, there have been only a few that they have really explored in depth so to speak. like where we’re at currently in the story, on garrifax, they’re in a very rural countryside almost so there’s not a ton of technology there. given that there are many planets and systems spread across this universe, some parts are obviously going to be more technologically advanced than others.

there aren’t really ‘cellphones’ or smartphones like we would have but the wristbands go in place of that. what a lot of the scenery and environment is meant to emulate is a sort of call back to past history and things of the past, or a clinging to this old tradition even if it’s not the more forward-thinking type of technology. in that sense, i would say that moc’s universe is certainly not the typical cyberpunk feeling bc in cyberpunk there tends to be this huge emphasis on tech and that’s the driving force behind a lot of the universes in cyberpunk spaces. moc is set in a futuristic space universe but i wanted to play with this idea of a futuristic space au that isn’t supposed focused on these incredible technologies, and rather focus on the people in it and how they make the universe what it is. rather than having this super advanced internet-spaceship system, they have a comms system. but also they’re pirates, criminals, fugitives of the law - if they get too advanced with an internet system, they could be tracked just like criminals in the real world. the idea that ‘big brother is always watching’ is very much present in the universe of moc, and so that’s sort of a subconscious awareness type of thing rather than something i feel i need to go into lots of detail about.

for me personally when i think about the story and when i’m constructing the story, the idea of there being things like video games or vr headsets doesn’t feel like it necessarily fits with the idea and tone of the setting that’s already been constructed, and that was never something i thought i wanted to include from the very beginning of the idea. and that was a conscious decision just because from the start, i’ve wanted the story to be set in this fantastical universe of course but the plot and the characters are meant to be the focal point, and i didn’t feel a need to add all this fictional advanced technology into the mix on top of that. for things like dishwashers, yes those exist in the universe, but that was more of a personal experience thing - there are times where i was dishes by hand bc they can’t go in the washer or bc i feel like washing by hand so i wouldn’t put too much thought into those sorts of utilities!

as for queerness, i would say that aspect is a lot like the world we live in. in some places, it’s far more tolerated but in others it’s severely judged and looked down upon. in the scope of the main characters we have in our crew - i want the crew to feel like a safe space for not only the main character and the other crew members but also to the reader. they are a safe place and they offer understanding and warmth and comfort that’s completely separate from the parts of the universe that aren’t that accepting or understanding. it’s been addressed in the plot before with yeosang and wooyoung in particular, that they could never have been together even if wooyoung weren’t a slave because of gender and because of yeosang’s position as a prince. in the monarchies, there is very much that traditional old-school ancient mindset of a Cishet Male King and Cishet Female Queen. varying degrees of acceptance is the best way to put it, as with sexism, but again, i would say that the sexism is more heavily emphasized on the planets where we see clear regimens and almost archaic governments so to speak.

i will say that we will see a lot more characters come into play, and we will see journeys with the characters we already know, and as it’s a story that’s very character based, those are aspects i love to focus on and so we’ll be getting into more of that and seeing things unfold and manifest over the course of the story as we’ve barely scratched the surface regarding the entirety of the universe and what it holds!

i hope this all makes sense and is more than just my ramblings bc my god did i ramble!

#mists of celeste #moc: spoilers

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nicanario · 3 years

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this post is a product of its time

tw: discussion of racism, homophobia, misogyny and a short mention of sexual abuse.

ok, this is basically gonna be a very long rambling post about my not fully developed thoughts on the justification many people give to bigotry when talking about the past: "it was a product of its time"

it would be fair to say, with me being a raging SJW socialist scumbag, that I don't think this is a very good argument and is most of the time actually an excuse to not think about the problems inherent to our society, historical or not, and, by extension, the problems with ourselves. but I do think that sometimes, just sometimes, this can be a valid point, or at least one that raises some interesting questions.

I'm going to cite examples from several pieces of media, but fear not, I'll try to make this as accesible as I can.

so, let's take Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) as our first case study. this show has, correctly, been called progressive by everyone except for clueless people who don't know much about Star Trek's history, Star Trek's crew, Star Trek's cast, or, frankly, Star Trek. because if you ignore the clear, sometimes in-your-face political history and present of the franchise, I don't think you know much about it at all. I do think you can call yourself a fan if you like it, you may have watched every single episode for all I know. but lots of mental gymnastics are needed to ignore the political progressiveness Star Trek has had since its very beginning.

episodes like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield are obviously anti-racist, at least in their intention. but the episode in question really is "a product of its time," and at the very end fails to uphold its ideals. the episode ends with the two aliens (who are LITERALLY. BLACK ON ONE SIDE. AND WHITE ON THE OTHER. BUT IN THE OPPOSITE SIDES.) fighting each other on their devastated planet, and the crew is like, "oh yeah if they both would give up on their hatred that they both share both of them equally" when it has been firmly established that one is the oppressor and the other one is the oppressed.

and that's a lot of Star Trek, not just TOS. even Discovery, one of the most recent series, has done Bury Your Gays (and Trans) TWICE (though both times literally rectified it, which is cool). there are episodes of the franchise that are overtly racist, or misogynistic, etc. TOS is lauded, mostly justifiably, as very progressive, especially for the standards of the time. they put a woman of colour as one of the senior staff, for fuck's sake. of course, when you analyse that same character, as with most of their intentions at being progressive, you'll see that she was relegated and sometimes even outright mistreated when she had the potential to be much more. but, at that time, it was a lot.

I had a friend (emphasis on "had") who, after I told him about TOS's both progressiveness and constant misogyny, told me something like "imagine feminists trying to complain about a show from the 60s." so, with unearned spite, he was, in some way, trying to make the argument that it was a product of its time.

you could say Star Trek, all of Star Trek, is "a product of its time" in the sense that it's not always perfect. uh, yes, I would agree. but that doesn't mean people have to accept it. well, I mean, the show is kinda over, you have to accept it's that way. but you don't have to accept that it's not wrong just because it was a product of its time.

H. P. Lovecraft, as another example, was a greatly influential writer whose works still shape a lot of people's ideas to this day. I have only ever read like one of his stories, so don't expect me to have an opinion on his works. but I can have an opinion on what I know about him as a person (he did have a life outside his writing, after all). and, yeah, he was a huge asshole. if you want to know more in depth about the subject, please watch Hbomberguy's video on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8u8wZ0WvxI

but basically, he was incredibly racist & homophobic. some people might even say, "he was a product of his time." well, there are two possible rebuttals to that. the surface level one, and the one that examines why that argument is wrong to the core.

The Surface Level Response to "it was a product of its time": um, no it wasn't. Lovecraft was more racist than a lot of people even in his time. he wasn't just a guy who carried the racist beliefs of his society like everyone else, he was a reactionary who actively thought and discussed how racist he was, and how right he was for being that way. but that's only applicable to Lovecraft. one can't argue the same for Star Trek: TOS, because TOS did try to be more progressive and more anti-racist than the rest of its society. that leads us to the next response.

The Response that Actually Deals with the Fact that No Matter How Progressive You're Trying to Be, Your Failings Can Still be Criticized: the thing is, trying to excuse Lovecraft's or Star Trek's bigotry because they were "products of their times" misses the fact that racism is still wrong, and some people knew that in those times as well. people from these times weren't all naive or stupid or whatever. they had the capacity for rational thinking. they could stop and think, "hey, maybe what we're doing is wrong." and the fact is, some people did. not perfectly, not to our standars, but they did. everyone could have stopped and think. but most of them didn't, and we can criticize them for it. racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. HURT PEOPLE. horribly. massively.

also, even if you agree with the "it's a product of its time" argument, some people aren't criticising people's or work's bigotry: they're explaining why they don't want to experience it.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is a 1977 Doctor Who serial, and it's one of the show's more racist stories. almost all the villains are Chinese, every single Chinese person is a villain. there's yellowface, slurs, stereotypes, the Doctor speaking nonsense words instead of actual Chinese, and a general belittling of Chinese culture.

note that I'm neither Chinese nor of Chinese descent. I have been searching for hours for a few posts I've read a while ago (some by people who are of Asian descent) about this episode and I can't find them. sorry.

suffice it to say, even though I love Jago & Litefoot (the audio series and the characters), it's not an acceptable episode at all. but it's also important to remark that, because of it, some people aren't going to want to watch it. sometimes, people aren't saying "the episode shouldn't be this way," which causes others to answer that it was "a product of its time." sometimes, people are just saying, "this is an episode that attacks real people. I don't want to see it. I don't care if it was common in that era to be racist, i don't want to experience it."

however, there is an interesting point to the "it's a product of its time" argument. after all, everything is influenced by its society, for better or worse. and we can't change it anymore. TOS sometimes didn't quite understand the political themes it wanted to explore. Lovecraft was a horrible bigot. Talons was racist towards Chinese folks. and that's that. I don't think we should change the episodes/stories or anything. edit them in any way. that would be, in a sense, changing history. and we wouldn't learn anything from it, about how we can do better.

I think there are two solutions to this:

1. warnings before starting the text: this was done with The Talons of Weng-Chiang. on Britbox, where you can watch Classic Who, this serial has a content warning before the start. that's good.

2. the removal as a whole of the text from some places: I think before applying this one, there should be a lot of thought put into each case. I don't think removing a whole serial of Doctor Who or Lovecraft's stories from anything would be, well, fair. especially on tv episodes a lot more people worked on those, not just the writers and the directors. Lovecraft's writing influenced thousands. we shouldn't erase them or anything. but sometimes, for some cases, we should.

those in the US might seen a Confederate statue being taken down. that is, in a way, a form of removal of a piece of history.

but that is a good removal. statues glorify. one sees a statue and probably thinks "this was a person worthy of admiration." they should be taken down, maybe even with a permanent mark of why this was done (a plaque that reads "a statue of X was here, but he didn't deserve it because of Y" could be put in place of the statues, for example).

another example is the removal from DVDs of the short episode A Fix with Sontarans, a Sixth Doctor minisode that featured Jimmy Savile, a presenter who was later found out to be sexually abusing children.

the removal of that minisode is good, actually. it's not a full episode (it's not even Doctor Who). some might say that's "erasing history" but, like, you can still find it online or information about it if you want. this minisode deserves removal from DVDs and Blu-Rays and whatever more than content warnings. it's not an important part of the show and it prominently features a horrible person who did horrible things during that time.

so, after all that, I have explained why I don't like the "it's a product of its time" argument. it is an interesting point that deserves to be examined, but it's not very good.

I have had this in Drafts for so long I've probably forgot some of the points I was going to make, but eh, what can you do? hope you enjoyed reading this.

bye

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foodbytesback · 4 years

Text

The Rise and Fall of Bon Appetit

Sometimes life comes at you fast. Sometimes, that means stories in the food industry break in such rapid succession that you have no time to blink in between. Sometimes, it means someone found out about something racist you did a few years ago. What happens when it’s both? Ask the fine folks at Bon Appetit.

In recent years, Bon Appetit made a name for itself, rising from the ashes of dying print media, through its Youtube channel featuring a diverse cast of personalities. But over the course of this past week, many of the publication’s executives have been found to foster a toxic workplace culture, rife with racism, sexism and homophobia.

Before I get too deep (because this is going to be a long one), I feel the need to point out that while this story’s breaking happened to coincide with Black Lives Matter protests across the country and gained traction from people’s outrage towards inequality, the events that have unfolded should not be blamed on “cancel culture,” “political correctness run amok” or any other reactionary dismissal of critical thinking. Adam Rapoport didn’t lose his job because Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter came to be because of the damage that many in positions of power like Rapoport have done in both mainstream media and society as a whole.

[Also, yes, there are going to be a lot of links to Instagram posts that have been screenshotted and uploaded to Twitter. Clearly the real takeaway from this debacle is that I need to get an Instagram account. Also also, thanks to Tumblr’s new rules about offsite links, you’ll have to go to my main site for the full receipts.]

Preamble

Shortly after the killing of George Floyd, Adam Rapoport, Editor-in-Chief at Bon Appetit, wrote an editorial highlighting some of the coverage they’ve given to black chefs. Many criticized this as being superficial and performative, with others saying that BA has, on numerous occasions, shut down articles relating to black culture for not being “trendy” enough or otherwise was discriminatory towards black employees. (Also, the repeated use of “uprisings” instead of “protests” seems a little suspicious.)

An article from Eater criticized the role BA played in the appropriating and whitewashing of many cultures’ ingredients and cuisines (gochujang, Aleppo pepper, and sumac seem to be some of BA’s favorite ingredients) that had become prevalent in food media in recent years.

While it’s a fairly minor offense in comparison, it may also be worth bringing up the time Rapoport accidentally called Priya Krishna “Sohla,” the name of his other Indian employee.

Monday, June 8th

Food writer Tammie Teclemariam posted a screencap of an Instagram post made by Rapoport’s wife, which depicted the two of them donning Puerto Rican stereotypes as Halloween costumes, brownface and all.

Many were quick to declare their outrage and demand that Rapoport either resign or be fired. Meanwhile, Sohla El-Waylly, one of the leading stars of the Youtube channel, was one of the first BA employees to speak up, and disclosed that this kind of behavior was just the tip of the iceberg. She said that BIPOC workers have been paid disproportionately for their work, including not being paid a per-video commission that the white stars of the Youtube channel receive.

Molly Baz, one of the aforementioned white stars, announced that she would no longer make videos for BA until all of El-Waylly’s demands were met. One by one, their white coworkers chimed in in agreement.

Former staff photographer Alex Lau also wrote an extensive tweet thread about his experiences at BA, including how he had futilely tried to fix the system from within.

By the end of Monday, Adam Rapoport had resigned from his position as Editor-in-Chief.

Tuesday, June 9th

Since Rapoport’s official resignation did little to fix many of the systemic problems in place at BA, many began to turn their attention to other senior members of the staff.

Some came for Andrew Knowlton, the Restaurant Editor, for behaviors such as gaslighting an employee for trying to bring up racist practices in the offices.

Others called out Matthew Duckor, a VP at Conde Nast and BA’s former “Head of Video” (Did a 3 year old come up with that job title?), for a series of old racist and homophobic tweets. He tried to apologize by saying that he was young and didn’t know any better at the time, but many were quick to point out that he was, at the youngest, 20, aka for all intents and purposes An Adult when he wrote those tweets.

Tammie Teclemariam returned to ask current and former BA employees to DM her information about Duckor that they didn’t want to go public with themselves, ranging from his hand in the aforementioned pay disparity to making inappropriate comments towards women.

Teclemariam also did even more social media muckraking and found that Drinks Editor Alex Delany had once decorated a cake to look like a Confederate flag, while others found things like a Vine where he says the f-slur and some questionable comments about women on this Tumblr. He later deleted his Tumblr and Twitter, and issued a cookie-cutter apology on his Instagram.

She also vague-tweeted that Brad Leone, one of the most beloved stars of the Youtube channel, is “possibly not a great guy,” but later added, “don’t fret.” At that point, some began to accuse her of just trying to stir the pot.

Ultimately, Matt Hunziker, director and camera operator for Leone’s show, reported that the higher ups were ignoring the situation regarding the pay disparity, and that they were not “learning and growing.”

Wednesday, June 10th

By this point, journalists were able to do more thorough investigations and put together exposés that were more than a blurb about an accusation followed by a nut graph.

Business Insider published an article where they interviewed 14 current and former BIPOC employees of Bon Appetit. In addition to information already discussed above, it also described events such as an incident where several BIPOC staffers were told they weren’t allowed the test kitchen. (Carla Lalli Music, the Food Director at the time, would later defend her stance in the affair on Twitter.) Ryan Walker-Hartshorn, a black woman who served as Rapoport’s personal assistant, recalled that she would often spend her day doing menial tasks like polishing her boss’s golf clubs or trying to teach his wife how to use Google Calendar. In another incident, Knolton called Rick Martinez a “one trick pony” for only developing Mexican recipes, which is what he was being forced to do so BA could tout “diversity” bonus points. Martinez would also say that the magazine under Rapoport’s tenure “went from old and irrelevant and white-washed content to young and trendy white-washed content." (Martinez would also upload a more graphic description of the treatment he received to his Instagram that same day.) Later that day, Business Insider would also report that Duckor had left the company.

Vice would liken Rapoport to Michael Scott from The Office, but noted that that kind of bumbling, endearingly insensitive bad boss archetype isn’t as charming in the real world where real employees are being affected. Parallels were also drawn between the Youtube channel and The Office itself, stating that the “quirky workplace” facade put on in the videos helped hide the more sinister practices that lurked beneath the surface, and that the notion that they were “one big family” often pressured BIPOC into doing more than their fair share for the greater good.

Jezebel showed email transcripts where Rapoport argued the semantics of having his costume be called “brownface” when he wasn’t wearing makeup, and had to be explained to, like a child, that the term refers to the racist caricature and not the literal act of putting brown makeup on one’s face. What a douche.

Bon Appetit published an official apology on their site, a whole two days after the controversy began. Many believed that their empty promises of “learning from their mistakes” were a day late and a dollar short.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, former BA writer Alyse Whitney said that senior editor Andy Baraghani had, on several occasions, used his influence to undermine her efforts. Whether this had to do with racism, sexism, or just Andy being petty is up for debate, but still constitutes as unprofessional behavior to say the least.

Thursday, June 11th

As interest in the story seemed to wane for many in the industry, Claire Saffitz, arguably the face of the Youtube channel, released another statement on her Instagram. She said that her relative silence was due to taking time to find the right words, and that the same-old promises to “learn and grow” that most had been giving felt empty and performative. Unlike many of her white coworkers, she directly apologized for being complicit in the toxic environment and for not using her status to try to leverage even pay for her BIPOC coworkers.

Another BA Youtube personality, Amiel Stanek, also released a statement in response to BA’s official press release, where he demanded Conde Nast to stop avoiding action by setting vague timelines for changes or making excuses for not giving BIPOC workers raises like “the money just isn’t there.”

Associate editor Christina Chaey also opened up about her experiences with being pushed into more and more videos to “diversify” them- all without compensation.

Friday, June 12th

The biggest scandal of the day was that, as Teclemariam predicted, Brad Leone is possibly not a great guy. A leaked screenshot of an Instagram DM showed him making callous, almost Trump-y comments regarding El-Waylly’s demand for better pay. He also allegedly said that if Delany were to be fired (as of that day he had been sent on leave), he would quit.

Saturday, June 13th

The New York Times published an article suggesting that the issues prevalent in BA’s management may go all the way to the top of Conde Nast. Highlights include Chief Executive Roger Lynch chastising the whistleblowers within the company for raising their concerns in such a public manner and an account of an incident where he gave his black assistant a guidebook on how to speak “proper” English.

The Sporkful released a special episode of their podcast containing interviews with several current and former BA BIPOC workers. Nikita Richardson divulged that after she was laid off, a story she had already done all the leg work for was picked up and credited to Amanda Shapiro, a white staff writer who is now acting Editor-in-Chief in lieu of Rapoport. Sohla El-Waylly confirmed that the self-congratulatory editorial Rapoport wrote in the wake of George Floyd’s death was the real beginning of the end, and that the racist photo was just the final straw. She also described a company-wide Zoom meeting held after the photo began to be spread around where Rapoport issued a half-hearted apology, and began talking about how he would “fix the brand” before El-Waylly demanded he resigned. Furthermore, she revealed that after her Instagram posts began circulating rapidly, Duckor had offered her a new contract with increased pay, but she is refusing to sign it until all BIPOC have received similar compensation. She also said that she had a hand in the wishy-washy statement that BA had published on Wednesday, and said that it originally had taken much firmer stances on the issues but their PR office made them tone it down. Also, she commented that Leone, for the most part, just seemed like she “genuinely think[s] [that he] just found out racism is real.” Ultimately, she was glad that the story was getting as much coverage as it was, since it made her feel that her voice was finally being heard.

Sunday, June 14th

Baraghani released a statement on Instagram apologizing for his behavior, saying that trying to achieve his personal goals in BA’s toxic, competitive environment made him lose sight of solidarity with his fellow BIPOC.

While that may seem like the end of the story for now, it’s important to note that, even with the resignation of two executives, nothing has truly been done to fix the systemic problems at hand.

#bon appetit #adam rapoport #matt duckor #alex delany #sohla el waylly #molly baz #carla lalli music #andy baraghani #brad leone #clair saffitz #amiel stanek #tw racism #tw homophobia #tw sexism

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vkelleyart · 4 years

Text

For well-meaning white American friends/followers struggling to understand black anger.

Disclaimer: I’d like to begin by saying that this message should not in any way be interpreted as implying that all looting/violence has been committed by protesters, especially since criminal gangs, anarchists, and white power groups have been caught coopting violent protest with the intent to undermine the struggle for racial justice. Nor is it meant to diminish the tragic effect that looting/violent protest has had on the very marginalized communities that need the most help. It is simply a window into a perspective you might not have considered or explored, which I offer in hopes of cultivating empathy.

It may make you uncomfortable to read this. Please bear with me.

Systemic racism is a term you want to get familiar with. It's larger and more insidious than black people being killed and brutalized by law enforcement, which should give you an idea of just how big a beast we're dealing with. Now, this is important: We ALL are immersed in systemic racism every day of our lives and, especially if you are white, you will not be able to see the ways in which you benefit from the oppression of black people.

I can feel your tension from here––the voice within saying “not me.” This is not what you wanted to hear. You're not a racist, you think to yourself. You have friends of color. Maybe family, too. You'd never intentionally harm a black or brown individual on the basis of their skin color.

You're a good person. I'm not here to argue that particular point.

That said, please integrate this concept. If you are white, you are benefiting from systemic racism, which hurts black and brown people. It is sewn into the fabric of our culture. It's entrenched in everything you take for granted, from your property to your education to your access to healthcare and food. Moreover, systemic racism is specifically constructed to protect you from being able to see its effect on your life and the lives of people of color.

In other words, you have a blind spot, by default. It's not your fault you have it. You were born into this culture made to shelter you from its evils.

It also doesn’t invalidate any trials or injustices you have experienced as a result of any other marginalized facets of your identity, since discrimination can also happen due to class, ability, gender, orientation, etc. But it does mean that your skin color doesn’t compound your risk of being killed/brutalized/imprisoned within a definitively racialized justice system.

Now that you know this, it's imperative that you realize you are not an authority on the experiences of people of color. You have not lived it. You do not know. To pass judgment on the despair of black people is to reinstate and protect white dominance. Which is a definitively racist thing to do, even if you’re not aware of it.

Follow me here.

One way systemic racism oppresses people of color is by codifying the law in such a way that literally prevents people of color from overcoming their own oppression. By extension, law enforcement historically has functioned as the arm of white supremacy, enforcing laws that by and large serve to protect white dominance and insulate white culture from its own racial self-awareness.

Consider the ways police once functioned to enforce Jim Crow laws and segregation. These patterns didn't just erase with legislation. After the Civil Rights movement, bigoted lawmakers buried inequality deeper into the law, coated it in sanitized legalese, and assigned punishments designed to disproportionately imprison black bodies compared to whites.

This is the legal system that police enforce regardless of whether the officers themselves are white or black. That alone would be enough to indict law enforcement for their hand in perpetuating systemic racism, but it's clearly worse than that. "Bad apples" abound, with FBI investigations revealing the infiltration of KKK and other white supremacist organizations into police forces across the United States. There is very little leadership when it comes to finding these bad apples, prosecuting them, and preventing their existence in the first place.

Now try to understand that the problem is bigger than bad apples who will brutalize black individuals and execute them without a trial. You need only compare how meek entire swaths of police officers were in the presence of armed white men spitting in their faces demanding the end of the COVID lockdowns to the ferocious way they tear gassed and pelted with rubber bullets the black lives protesters who were on their knees.

When you lack ancestral wealth, when you are born into a world that resists your right to agency, independence, access and dignity in every single possible way, and then makes it impossible for you to stand up for your right to all those things, these are the conditions that spawn violence.

Looters who say this is about more than George Floyd are correct. It's not just about George Floyd. It's about forced subjugation in all ways, shapes and forms, being denied the right to exist in public, being denied access to wealth, prosperity, healthcare, etc.

It's about knowing, hundreds of years post-slavery, that your body still does not belong to you. To walk with a target on your back. Every. Single. Day. To struggle to protect your children from a world that does not value their promise.

In the comfort of your home, try now to imagine the despair. The hopelessness. The abject terror. The anger over trauma that began in your childhood but keeps happening over and over and over again and therefore can never heal.

White people can never fully understand because it is not our lived experience––it's theirs.

When you are white, you are safe, seen, protected, and included in a legal system built to insulate you at the *direct expense* of black individuals. That's why all this sounds so radical. Only people of color have insight into this reality, but instead of listening, we keep telling them to stop interrupting our lives with their desperation to be seen.

How many of you have either said or heard someone say these things? Each one reinstates white dominance:

"How could he kneel during the national anthem? That's so disrespectful!"

"How dare they stop traffic and make me late for work!"

"Listen to that thuggish language! If they want equality so badly, they should rethink the way they talk to us!"

Now is the time to silence your judgment. You have no right. You have no clue. People of color do not owe you their patience, their kindness, their time, or their obedience. You've taken from them your whole life and yes, you were unaware, but you were complicit.

What you can do (which will have the long term effect of mitigating violence) is amplify their voices. Support their businesses. Post their bail. Vote them into office. Use your protection, your privilege, your voice to demand change like YOU are the one in the crosshairs. Nothing will change without good white people owning the struggle for equality, and in a racialized world, we cannot expect the courtesy of being asked nicely.

ETA: This barely scratches the surface, I know. There is so much more to say regarding how racism overlaps with homophobia, ablism, sexism, transphobia, to oppress and endanger black lives. Wherever you reside on the spectrum of privilege, I just hope this provides an inroad to further introspection before you share a critical meme or pass a sweeping judgment on the anger of your POC neighbors. <3

#op-ed #black lives matter #long post #tw: racism

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absynthe--minded · 3 years

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Generally I have some diverging hcs concerning LaCE but assuming it's just like Tolkien stated: how does sex ed work in a society where sex=marriage? Or in other words: US american style abstinence only sex ed and teen elves accidentally marrying each other left and right lmao. (like yes because of that it's to be assumed that parents would have 'the talk' with their children pretty early on to avoid exactly that from happening but the thought is just too funny for me)

So while that mental image is funny (I’m picturing some poor harried Tirion High teacher now), it’s not quite how I picture sex ed working for elves. I’m so so sorry because I get the feeling this was meant to be a shitpost and instead you’re getting a long and meandering series of thoughts.

(tw: brief discussions of sexual abuse below the cut)

There are a lot of different ways to read LaCE, but here’s mine, to sort of set a baseline for how I interpret things (I’m also drawing from other drafts and published material here):

The existence of the marriage bond is the foundation of elvish marriage. Ceremonies, formalities, social perception - none of that truly matters, unlike with humans. If two elves have a marriage-bond, and therefore have either had sex or taken steps to form that intimate bond other than having sex, they’re married, and that’s that.

Elves not only aren’t human, we have zero indication that they experience sexual arousal or desire in the same way humans do. They genuinely do seem to mate for life, so to speak, and the first person that they feel any long term serious attraction for is The One For Them. We see zero canonical evidence of sexual promiscuity, and it’s not because we’re told that socially it’s forbidden - it’s as if it hasn’t occurred to them to be promiscuous in the first place.

There’s also zero evidence that elves see sex as something that’s inherently taboo or dangerous. Sex = marriage, and except in three cases (Celegorm, Eöl, Maeglin) across several thousand years, we don’t have any sexual predators or sexual abuse to contend with as a serious threat. Not only that, but there’s no wrong way to have sex except as an act of violence. Elves have no organized religion and their societal taboos stem from doing harm to others or threatening harm, not from failing to adhere to a strict series of codes of conduct. As a result, the idea of sex as something that’s inherently more “adult” and must be kept behind a locked door for fear that it’s abused or misused probably doesn’t exist for them except as an extension of “don’t hurt other people”.

I don’t think we have any evidence in-canon of homophobia, transphobia, aphobia, arophobia, or any kind of exclusion or philosophy regarding the “right” way to have sex or form lasting relationships. At no point are we told that any elf is expected to marry or to procreate, and the existence of elves who remain single for millennia is not unusual enough to be remarked upon in the text. We also see zero textual proof that elves have prohibitions against same-sex marriage. (Tolkien can be presumed to intend for us to perceive elvish marriage as heterosexual, but he never said this on the page or in any of his commentary or letters, so we don’t have to include that as a default.)

There’s also no explicit proof of gendered power dynamics as a societal norm in any elvish culture. Again, we can perhaps presume Tolkien was implying these things, but to my eyes he comes across more as someone who’s attempting to describe an egalitarian society but doesn’t have the words or the framework to do so because he himself is sexist and not examining this sexism.

With that out of the way -

What can we assume about the sex ed of a culture that isn’t human, that doesn’t experience sexuality as humans do, that has zero institutional prejudice against different ways of doing relationships or marriage or sex, that has zero on-page sexism or gendered power dynamics, that has zero evidence of sexual abuse or violence as a chronic and serious social ill and a strict taboo against even the threat of harm to someone else?

Well, first off, I don’t think that formal sex education is something that really exists. You’d learn about it from your parents, or grandparents, or other relatives and trusted adults, and they’d have no reason to hide things or cut corners. Questions would presumably be answered as they come, starting with simple age-appropriate answers to things like “where do babies come from?” and “how do they get made?” and progressing as you aged. You’d probably have the opportunity as an adolescent elf to ask questions of all kinds of people about their marriages or single lives. You’d also learn as you were growing up that not everyone gets married, and not everyone wants to have sex, and not everyone experiences romantic love, and that two néri or two níssi might marry in the same way that a nér and a nís do, and all of these are normal ways to live.

And as to the mechanics of sex - yeah, it probably would be relatively early in adolescence that you’d find out about how it works, because that way you’d be empowered to make the right decisions going forward about love and marriage. I’m picturing anatomical models, drawn charts, maybe an elvish version of the ever-present “condom on a cucumber” explanation (even though prophylaxis and contraceptives are unnecessary as elves can’t get STIs and only have kids if they want to, I can’t resist the analogy). Also whatever talk you got as a young elf would include things like “use lubricant” and other queer-friendly education that most US schools are averse to including in their curricula, and there wouldn’t be any shame in hunting down someone to give a better answer to a question if (for example) your parents were straight and you were gay and wanted to better understand how that would differ from heterosexual PIV intercourse.

Ultimately I think the goal of any talks you got or questions you had answered would be to prepare you to make safe, autonomous decisions about your body and your potential marriage (including the right to say no to anything for any reason, and the knowledge that “no” will be respected by your family), empower you so that you felt confident those decisions were the right ones, and tell you that you had a safe social framework to turn to in the event of some kind of confusion or uncertainty. You’d be given all the tools you needed and all the necessary knowledge beforehand, and that would enable you to make whatever calls were right for you.

So, basically, the opposite of US abstinence-only ed? which. good.

#tolkien #absynthe’s meta #the great lace debate

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torturedpoetemotions · 3 years

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Hey! First of all, your spn meta is. Everything. You’re a goddess for putting all that into words. Second, can you elaborate on why I should read On The Road the original scroll? Why is it more queer? And is the book itself really worth it? The book has always interested me, but I have lived a widly different life from white men who live in a country that is safe enough to go driving through. So even though I am queer I always feared this book would be a waste of my time because I wouldn’t be able to relate to it at all at best, and at worst I would just feel annoyed at the sexism and the very US centric experience. (If you reply can you please tag me in it? Tumblr sucks and won’t notify me otherwise. Also, no pressure to reply if you don’t want to! You just have such a great perspective that I thought it was worth asking you this :) Thanks so much!)

@noo0ooooooo

Thank you so much! Though I do wanna say I don’t know about my meta being Everything. As several people have correctly pointed out, my meta tends to look at SPN through a limited and specific lens. There's a lot that I don't cover/am not educated about re: the show's problems and contradictions outside of the queer/gender studies readings. But I do appreciate the kind words a lot! Full disclosure I’ve had a rough couple of weeks, and this message made me smile.

As to your questions... (under a cut because this got long)

Is On The Road worth it? Should I read it?

Based on your message, I’m going to go with a tentative “probably not.” A lot of people will probably disagree with me on that, and some might even be infuriated at me for saying it. But for me, I’m never going to say anyone should read something just because a lot of other people have read it, especially something mediocre lauded as genius because some sad white dude wrote it nearly a century ago. That being said, it really depends on what you want to get out of reading it.

If you want an engaging read with an interesting story, dynamic and well-written characters you can relate to, and carefully crafted themes? Not worth it. It’s a messy book written very quickly by a guy who was high most of the time he was writing it. It definitely displays lots of period-typical misogyny, sexism, homophobia (internalized and not), and racism. It’s barely edited for things like pacing, cohesiveness, punctuation, paragraph breaks, i.e. things that would make it more readable. And it doesn’t really have any unifying plot, themes, or structure (so...kind of like Supernatural). It’s an example of stream of consciousness writing, sure, but arguably the most over-hyped example of it.

If you just want to know more of what people are talking about when they reference it in regards to SPN (or any other media), I’d say it’s still probably not worth it. You can read a synopsis and some choice quotes and get the idea, IMO.

If you want to know more about the Beat Generation, queer life in the U.S. in the 1940s-1950s, or the U.S. during that time period in general, it might be worth it then, as part of a larger reading list. Then again, I can probably recommend better reads to get you that information (and I will if asked!).

Now...if you want to write extensive meta-analysis involving On The Road, or if you want to be able to honestly say you’ve read On The Road...then sure, it’s probably worth it in that case.

In the interest of transparency, for someone who’s written multiple posts and metas about this dratted book at this point, I don’t actually like it that much. I find its connections to SPN intriguing and I find the stories and people behind the book interesting, but all in all I’ve enjoyed reading essays and such about On The Road more than I ever enjoyed the book itself.

Why should I read the original scroll version?

If you’ve decided that you’re going to read On The Road anyway, for whatever reason, I highly recommend reading the original scroll version because it’s relatively uncensored compared to the first published version.

On The Road was first published in 1957, and as a result most of sexual content, including the characters’ queer relationships and expressions of queer love and desire, has been removed. There are a few allusions and some subtext remaining, but it’s little enough that a 1950s audience (and 1950s decency laws) could let it pass.

This is the version Eric Kripke would have grown up reading and being enamored with, and thus the one that inspired SPN as the mess that it is, because the original scroll wasn’t published and made widely available until SPN had already been airing for a couple of years (though god, they still had so much time to fix it, why didn’t they ever fix it???).

The original scroll is the uncensored, or at least less censored version Kerouac is supposed to have finished in 1951. It retains the real names of the people it’s about (so censored-version main character Dean Moriarty is Neal Cassady, Carlo Marx is Allen Ginsberg, the narrator Sal Paradise is Jack Kerouac himself, Marylou and Camille are Louanne and Carolyn, respectively, etc.), and it retains a somewhat more truthful view on Cassady’s character and relationships, one more in line with his own writings in letters to Ginsberg and others throughout his life.

I’m a big fan of things not being censored in general, especially when the thing being censored is the existence of queer people living our lives and loving each other, so that’s why I prefer and highly recommend the original 1951 version over the more censored 1957 version. I’ll go ahead and say, I think the writing is better in several places too.

Why is that version more queer?

Neal Cassady was a real guy, and he had romantic and sexual relationships with both men and women. Though he didn’t take either label for himself of course, in today’s terms we would probably say he was either bisexual or pansexual. In the censored version of On The Road, Kerouac emphasizes (some might say over-emphasizes) Cassady’s magnetic personality and popularity and sexual exploits with women. Meanwhile, he describes Cassady’s relationship with Allen Ginsberg in platonic terms. I can’t detail every single instance of this for you without making this post into a novella, but I can give you two pretty glaring ones:

One of the more famous passages from the novel describes the beginning of the relationship between Cassady and Ginsberg, and Kerouac’s feelings of being left out but happy to observe the two of them together. In the censored version, this scene ends with Kerouac listening to Cassady and Ginsberg having a lively conversation. In the original scroll, it ends with Kerouac pretending to sleep as he listens to the two of them having sex across the room.

Much later in the story, there’s a scene where Ginsberg describes Cassady’s social schedule to Kerouac. In the censored version, this is framed as a buddy mourning what little time he gets to spend with his friend due to his friend’s amorous pursuit of two young women, and ends with Ginsberg noting that both women love Cassady. In the original scroll, this is framed as a lover mourning how little time Cassady has for him because he has two other lovers, and ends with Ginsberg telling Kerouac how both he and the two women love Neal Cassady’s, and I’m quoting here, “big cock.”

So...yeah.

TL;DR: On The Road is rambly and hard to get through and I don’t think you need to do it unless you want to, but if you’re going to do it anyway you might as well get the less censored version that doesn’t erase the queerness of its main characters. The things that make the original scroll more queer could fill a whole other essay but one major example is Kerouac leaving in the main character’s sexual attraction to and relationships with men.

I hope that fully answers your questions! Thanks again for the lovely compliment!

#ask box #noo0ooooooo #on the road

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delta-roseblr · 3 years

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Hi Delta, I'm addicted to your fics since After the Wars. I don't remember if you already answered this: Naomi and John has other siblings? Like one who actually followed their parents beliefs?

Hello!

Thank you so much :) I’m glad I could bring you some entertainment!

So I have never answered this question and it is a QUESTION- I’m honestly not sure right now. A little peek behind the curtain and into my crazy writer mind- it is a question I have been asking myself for a while now (at least in a way).

I have been playing around with a few scenarios in my head where Naomi and John’s parents would try to get in contact with them (Maybe one, maybe both- I kind of feel that it would have to be their mother being ill because I think that would be the only thing that would make them even consider returning to their childhood home). This contact would result in some assembly of the Solace clan (and potentially Nico and Felix as extensions of the family) going back to Naomi and John’s childhood home and, ya know, drama ensues. As I’ve played with this idea I’ve considered there being a third Solace sibling because to me a sibling showing up would be able to get to the door to actually tell them their mother was ill where if it were their father I think that they would both slam the door in his face before he got out a word (I also have a hard to imagining their father reaching out for any reason ‘cause he is a dick).

When I have played with this idea, I almost always imagine them having another sister- I don’t have a good reason that I can explain to justify that, but to me it makes the most sense. In my head she is always just the opposite of Naomi and John in like every way- She would be a Sunday school teaching, stay-at-home mom- Married former football star now generic middle-aged guy (but he’s the deacon of the church). She is way too involved in the PTA and town gossip, and she has completely internalized all the toxic “religious”* believe from her family. Pretty much sane people would want to slap her five minutes after meeting her. I also usually picture her as either the oldest or between Naomi and John in age.

So it is definitely a possibility but I’m not ready to say with certainty one way or another- Probably not the answer you were looking for but I hoped you still enjoyed it :)

*While not personally religious, I do not believe ANY religion is inherently toxic or bad. That said, there are groups and/or individuals within probably every religion that use misinterpretation/straight-up lies about tenets of their religion to justify their racism, homophobia, and sexism and that IS toxic.

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savrenim · 4 years

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Hey mx savrenim its me again and I'm wondering: how you maintain tension in a story with characters with future vision? Especially in a story with no guaranteed future, where seers can ensure the best possible future for themselves

oooooh v v good question, once more under the cut

so there are a lot lot LOT of ways to do this that all depend on the tone that you want your story to go for, and Imma reference a few pieces of media that do this in various ways, but this is pretty much a subset of the question “how do you maintain tension in your story when your character is very overpowered”

1. Just very realistically explore that “in theory able to do things perfectly” and “in practice able to do things perfectly” are very very different things. Another Faust by Daniel Nayeri had pretty much someone with Seer-like capabilities (namely, the ability to loop back I thiiiink as far as they wanted in time?) that they could use to make sure they always said the right thing, got the right answers on tests, etc etc, and it just.... didn’t work out for them perfectly. Because perfect knowledge didn’t fix everything. If you know how every single play is going to work idk in a baseball game, that gives you an edge, but it doesn’t actually mean you win the game unless you are good enough at baseball to hit that ball and run those bases

In that case, the more effective the Seer wants to be, the more they have to actually train the skills that they care about, so that they can carry out the actions physically that lead to their ideal future. And building physical skills is hard and takes work and practice, and anything you have to work to get better at to reach a goal is the starting point of tension.

Also to continue the sports metaphor, having perfect knowledge of a baseball game and even being the best player in the world doesn’t guarantee you a win because you cannot play every single position, there are other people on the team who are going to be doing actions that at most can have secondhand versions of your knowledge. Trying to manage the human aspect leads to human error. So maybe there is tension because the Seer aggressively self-isolates so that Other People Will Not Fail Them and tension comes from interacting with other people they have extreme trust issues. Maybe the tension comes from them playing puppetmaster and trying to figure out which people they are willing to sacrifice for their goals, which people will fail them and which people they can and should hold onto, and from nobody really trusting them because everyone is well aware that the puppetmaster is willing to make sacrifices.

And finally -- just knowing the future doesn’t mean you can fix it. I don’t know about you, but even if I had perfect foreknowledge of the future, I would not be truly happy just personally thriving as idk rich and a famous mathematician and physicist and married to my fiance and maybe the books that I want to be published published and enough money to give to all my friends too and maybe can we have warp drives I want to go to space and inventing some solid if not immortality-tech then life-extension tech would be cool -- which, like, is everything I could personally wish for from life and more -- but in the world that we have? like, climate change SUCKS. fascism SUCKS. racism SUCKS. sexism and homophobia and poverty and class wars disguised as generational wars and all of the existing structures that reinforce all of these things SUCK. and even personally having perfect foreknowledge of the future enough to either start with or build up a bunch of political power and money, to try to change any of that would mean going against incredibly entrenched institutions that I honestly have no idea how effective one person could be at changing. Like if B*zos suddenly decided “wait let’s save the world and make a socialist utopia” do you actually think he would succeed? or even get very far? even applying every single resource he commands? or would he just.... lose a lot of his money and power trying to do that and then someone else becomes the richest person in the world who does want to maintain the system. because a lot of that power are things that do not exist, like stocks, it’s imaginary money that the moment you stop playing the game you get kicked out of the game and maybe you can make tiny changes but the game itself doesn’t stop

so baaaasically consider making your Seer a radical anarchist or at least someone who cares about tackling large-scale problems that one individual will never be able to solve, to play the “well if a very powerful individual had a single-minded focus on trying to fight these things could we at least get further than every single powerful person wanting to screw us over or just not caring?” game -- that creates tension because global problems can only be solved by global and communal actions, and one individual, no matter how perfectly they can see the future, cannot do that on their own

2. “Psychic powers don’t make you popular.” This is my obligatory “I just rewatched Mob Psycho 100 and am obsessed with it seriously consider watching it if you haven’t.” I know I keep bringing up MP100 but hear me out my favorite media is where the main character is stupidly overpowered so I don’t have to be stressed at all consuming it and MP100 maybe is the most touching but also well thought out and interestingly plotted version of that I’ve ever seen But the basic premise of Mob Psycho 100 is that the main character, Mob, is a middle schooler with the most powerful psychic abilities in the world. The tension comes from: (1) Mob is not in total control over his powers and feels really really bad when he loses control and for example uses his powers against another person even in self-defense because that’s a Rule he made for himself that he really doesn’t want to cross ever. Which with a Seer, maybe you have a Seer that Cares Deeply About Other People’s Privacy, or who Cares Deeply About Having Real Relationships That They Do Not Manipulate, or who Cares Deeply About Their Achievements Being Their Own and so they don’t use their powers in everyday life out of moral considerations, except sometimes gods in stressful situations you just want everything to be okay so the tension of “do I fix this right now or is this crossing a line” drives your story. (2) because Mob isn’t using his powers in everyday life, while he is having these giant badass psychic battles with ghosts and evil psychics as a part-time job after school and yeah yeah you know he’s going to win, the tension and growth in the story comes from the gains that he is making in his personal life of, like, “oh he made a friend!!!!! oh he stood up for himself even though that’s really hard for him and he set a boundary!!!! oh he’s working really really hard towards his goal of being better at running!!!!! oh look he’s grown so much at episode 1 he didn’t talk to anyone his own age or have anything to do and now he’s doing things for himself!!!” Having your Seer take the ethics of not using seeing into the future to manipulate the people around them really really seriously, working very hard at tiny life things and then being a complete fucking badass that is putting down world-threatening threats as hobby that they kind of don’t view as that important in defining them as a person or defining their accomplishments or how they feel about themselves means that it doesn’t matter how overpowered they are in terms of their abilities, your audience will care and be invested in the tiny life accomplishments that they are working so hard to do on their own, and will be proud of their personal growth.

3. Blind Spots. Exactly what it sounds like, can your Seer really see everything? Perfectly? And if they do see everything do they know the exact effect that acting differently will cause? Or are they limited visions -- they only come at certain times, they only are about very specific things, the Seer cannot control when they happen, etc. The more specific and limited your visions are, the harder they have to actually work to figure out how to interpret them and best play the cards that they have, so maybe finding that perfect happy life isn’t actually all that easy.

Alternatively, your Seer can only see the natural future, what would happen if they do not change their actions. If they change their actions, they can’t re-glimpse the new version, so it’s up to their best guess as to whether or not their plans to make things better will actually make things better. You can create a shit-ton of tension there if only because Plans Never Go Perfectly. Honestly at this point you’re just writing a slightly different version of those “MC is a Super Genius” books that instead of them making good plans because they are a Super Genius, it is good plans because they can see the future, I stand by childhood me that the first three Artemis Fowl books are great and honestly I’m pretty sure the plot wouldn’t really change too much if you added “Artemis can see what future would happen if he didn’t take any actions to interfere” and it would just be another interesting trait that was a part of his planning process.

And even if your Seer can see re-glimpse the new version, they are human. They have only a finite amount of time, and a finite amount of brain space. You don’t need to make the rules of Seer powers be that “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” They can miss things by not thinking something is important and looking in a different direction. You can build up tension around they can only look into the future, not the past, they missed something, and now they don’t know what they missed and what to target to fix it. Or play the finite amount of time bit very hard: if they see the effects of deciding one particular course of action, it takes [x] time for the vision to complete, then they need to try to see the effects of one other particular course of action, and they can only effectively run a handful of simulations -- or even hundreds or thousands, but the answer is still a finite number of dear gods is nature chaotic / the butterfly effect is built into every single physics equation that there is that describes the world -- so tension comes from even if they can check that a plan is good, they still have to come up with a plan to change the future, and can only come up with so many plans in the time that they have.

4. Existential Crisis. You made Seer powers “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” idk I would find life terribly boring and have an existential crisis over that probably? of am I even human? does anything I do matter? does anyone else exist, really, since I can see and control every aspect of their lives? am I a god? how do I relate to anyone? how do I care about anything?

In this setup, your main character would not be the Seer, it would be a person or group of people who are either trying to Save The World or Accomplish Something Important or even Accomplish Something Selfish who spend the story trying to befriend the Seer and get their help goddamnit because the moment the Seer is on their side, they win. and then the tension comes from the Seer keeps refusing but is ~slowly opening their heart~, jaded older mentor figure adopts tiny adorable hopeful child is the found family JAM and then your main character finally decides they aren’t getting the help and goes off and does the incredibly dangerous thing alone and the Seer realizes too late that oh nooo my tiny son is in danger and at just the last moment decides fuck it and leaps back into the game to try to help and save them and oh both the glorious drama and all the best tropes all of them seriously if you write this book ping me I’ll read it I’m a sucker for jaded old loner adopts Naive Hopeful Hero Who Is Going To Save The World Even If It Kills Them and jaded old loner just spends the entire time going “oh no. oh no tiny child. oh gods I’m coming out of retirement aren’t I. tiny child please. please have you considered just being chill so that I don’t have to come out of retirement” and then just. the SATISFACTION. when they come in at just the right moment and the tension leading up to it when you didn’t know if they were going to or not. it’s poetry.

This can also pretty easily be done without the Seer having godlike powers, just pretty strong powers-- have them have made their life perfect, found it empty, and fallen into a depressive fugue then use the above plot for the same effect.

5. Make Them Your Villain. The final way of dealing with making tension and having an overpowered character is, uh..... it’s only no tension when your protagonist doesn’t need to struggle to reach their goals. if the antagonist is walking down easy street that only makes things all the more stressful because how do you beat that? and that is all of the tension in your book: figuring it out.

a subgenre of this is Seer v Seer: the best possible future for one Seer is not necessarily the best possible future for another Seer, so if you have multiple Seers, Seers clashing against other Seers that have the same powers which means their powers aren’t necessarily an advantage is a shit-ton of tension. That is.... pretty much the plot of trash novel? So I’d rather not go into detail about how I personally am doing it, but anytime people who have the same abilities fight, they’re on equal ground, you don’t know who is going to win, so boom, tension.

6. Seers are illegal/ kidnapped by the government the moment they are discovered to work for the government only/ targeted for kidnapping by all sorts of powerful groups, so your Seers need to aggressively hide their powers and the more they use them to make their life perfect, the more in danger they are; even if they can use their abilities to avoid ever being captured, they will be on the run their entire lives if they get found out.

#writing advice #there are also a shit ton of combinations of these that you can do #like 2 combines with 4 very easily -- an extremely powerful seer doesnt want to use their powers it crosses a line #vs people trying to convince them to (which also happens in mp100 a bunch)#the latter half of 1 and 5 go together well -- changing global power systems and creating more equality is hard because some Seers benefit #from the existing systems and so don't want them to change #check out gay murder elf bachelorette book 2 of wolves and ravens for a combo of 5 and 3 #it's in my writing tab #and these are just the first six things that came to mind there are so many you can do #there's the typical curse of cassandra bit of 'a perfect seer but no one believes them so getting people to listen is hard #there can even be quasi silly modern versions of that like 'seer visions are not evidence for court so your PI/lawyer Seer needs to figure #out ways to leverage their visions into things that are publicly acceptable proof for what they want'#or scientists who can't just present results bc they saw the results are correct who need to reverse engineer how to get there #.......actually that's just a physicist who am I kidding #anyways yeah that's my advice I guess #I find it really really amusing that I am apparently the seer expert like this is just a plot device that I think is cool #the answers above are just kind of what I'd do

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