#didn't know double standards were a thing when it came to representation....

[maerhiya]

in regards to the constant dismissal of his aroace identity, i hate it when alastor 'fans' say and use the excuse: "he's fictional, he won't get offended."

like, you're right, but it can and will offend us.

when you see yourself being represented on screen, of course you'd feel enthusiastic about it — representation allows individuals to see themselves reflected in the media they consume, validating their identities and experiences. but when so many people take that representation and decide to disregard and discard it, it is so fucking frustrating. we finally have another character to be part of the tiny amount of representation we have, but then people don't even care about how much it means to us? like yeah, alastor won't get offended because he's not real, but it frustrates and annoys us. do you realize that it's also technically invalidating the aroace community? that you're invalidating our feelings? imagine feeling like you're finally being seen because your orientation is finally being represented in media, and people just decide to blatantly ignore, discard, and invalidate it.

media has such a powerful influence on real life, representation being a prevalent factor of it. there are numerous posts that dictate how people went to watch a movie/show or read a book just because a character depicts their identity in it — obviously, being represented is an incredibly uplifting and validating experience.

which is why seeing an aroace character in a popular show is so meaningful to us because we live in a world where romance and sex are literally everywhere and prioritized above all else. (and it's pretty obvious that alastor's on the repulsed end of the spectrum, but even if he wasn't, at least make an effort to acknowledge his sexuality instead of continuing to portray him as allo; aroace folks can be in relationships but it's not going to be the same thing with allos' experiences.)

any and every representation matters, but why does that seem to stop at people under the aroace spectrum? like y'all can't even let us appreciate the scraps of representation we have. we barely have any, so are we really that dramatic for being upset at how people easily disregard and dismiss our identities that are being depicted on screen just like that? is it truly wrong of us to want to defend and maintain the little representation we have?

#like imagine if i asked you ab your fav character and then i said i hated them and proceeded to insult them #wouldn't that irritate you even just a bit and maybe even come to their defense? #like why would you be offended when they're not even real lmaoo #they're fictional and won't get offended but if you love that character then YOU might feel offended and maybe even defend them #ok now take that situation and put it into this context #except it's much more meaningful bc it's about representation #just a random thought #i'm not against shipping him or finding him attractive (bc same LMAO) or the fanart btw #i just hate it when people use bs excuses to justify their obvious dismissal & indifference towards aro/ace rep #like at least acknowledge his identity :(( #sorry for the long ass rant and if some parts don't make sense i'm not in the best mood rn lol #and i've been wanting to get this off my chest for a while #didn't know double standards were a thing when it came to representation.... #but here we are #alastor #aroace alastor #aroace #asexual #aromantic #asexuality #aromanticism #arospec #aspec #alastor hazbin hotel #aromantic alastor #asexual alastor #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel alastor #aroacespec #queer

[ganymede-apathy]

Listen, Heartstopper has been my primary focus for the past few days (literally rewatched it so many times I've lost count) and it has given me a LOT to think about, and I desperately want all of my thoughts out there because this show is an absolute MASTERPIECE. So I'm just going to make a list of things I find make the show deserving of highest praise, but also generally try to avoid topics that I find have been talked about in abundance, unless it's a topic that absolutely needs repeating.

∙ Heartstopper season 1 has introduced a new age of purely romantic queer representation, with a lack of over-the-top tragedy (season 2 would be a different story, however). Due to a lot of queer representation in the past often being overly sexualized and/or fetishized, much of queer youth was influenced in some way that the community has had a large issue with hook-up culture. A lot of queer people grew up without proper representation but hopefully now that Heartstopper has begun to set a standard for LGBTQ+ representation, younger generations will have what many of us got too late.

∙ The cast is genuinely some of the most dedicated actors I have ever seen. They are all attached to the story and know and understand their characters so well. They are so aware of the impact they have made with this show and they all want to continue doing so. The world has many amazing and talented actors but the Heartstopper cast takes the cake. They have all done such amazing jobs, and there are no other actors that could truly play these characters as well as they have. Additionally, almost all of the actors came straight from the pages of the graphic novels. That's actually so cool to me that each character had their perfect actors.

∙ This show proves how absolutely important it is to have the creator of the original story involved. Many adaptations fail in this regard, but Alice Oseman's direct hand in the creation of this show has created a flawless transition from paper to live action. She created these characters through her own mind, and her experiences. Nobody could have done it better. And Alice also has always been so in touch/in sync with her audience, as well. We just need to take a moment to applaud Alice.

∙ Something that's been brought up a few times, but genuinely is such an important factor. Not only is the cast actually young enough to properly portray teenagers (Kit Connor and Joe Locke were both still in school while filming this show), but (I might get heat for this but it's true, in my perspective) most of the cast do not fit with the mainstream beauty standards/expectations, and yet they are all such beautiful people. Beauty standards have always been so heavily enforced in media, and I think this show breaks this cycle. Everyone is a different kind of beautiful and this is going to go a LONG way, I hope.

∙ Let's talk about generally how much effort was put into making this diverse cast of characters all have their own stories and obstacles, and yet still make the representation flawless. Viewer interpretation is also so incredibly welcomed. We all can find ourselves relating to one character or another. Some of us have no idea how hard it can be to achieve something like this and make it flawless. Many, many writers/artists struggle with this. Yet, they did it. There's so much character development for each character. And more to come in the future.

∙ Perhaps not the best praise to this show, but still very important in my eyes. The series is such a double-edged sword. It fulfills everything many of us didn't get when we were younger, but we also grieve the lack. In the show, when Nick says "I wish I'd met you when I was younger," to Charlie, that's how many of us feel about this show. So much of my life there was a lack and it's fulfilled now, and that's great, but now there's this void. The show made me think about how much of my life I spent lost. It portrays confidence in who you are but I didn't have that growing up. I always felt like I wasn't seen. I wasn't alone, sure. I had surrounded myself with many people who made the journey bearable, but to the world I was on the sidelines. The show came too late, but I am so glad I endured so I could experience it.

Honorable mentions/short praises:

∙ Guys, Disney is aware that Pirates of the Caribbean has been many people's bi awakening. And they let Heartstopper use the scene with Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom to PORTRAY THAT. I just think that's so funny and interesting.

∙ The amount of talent these actors had to actually make you feel everything they felt. Every single emotional moment in this show has grabbed me by my throat and made me feel everything. This show has made me feel more emotion than I have in YEARS. That is absolutely phenomenal.

#heartstopper #alice oseman #netflix #nobody is going to read all of this #but i needed to put my thoughts out there #girl help i am sleep deprived and emotionally all over the place

[qvincvnx]

don't reblog this because im still articulating my thoughts and am basically just thinking out loud

this is the last thing i have to say about this really but i do think it's disingenuous and bad-faith to compare what i would characterize as significant missteps within a good faith attempt to later refusals to listen leading to active and/or malicious bigotry. like, while the goblins are fucked up, im not going to say that some lady writing fantasy and leaning on fairly standard tropes for the genre is doing anything THAT much worse than tolkien making his dwarfs semitic and gold-greedy, especially when she fully did also give harry a jewish classmate. like, it's not GREAT, but it's not intrinsic proof that she was always going to turn out evil or that her books are beyond redemption or whatever. they definitely got worse over time - but also before all the books came out people didn't KNOW what was going to be in them (obviously) but like. im not sure exactly how to express this. i guess my point is, the books were kind of milquetoast representation; it was a good faith but profoundly insufficient attempt. it's easy to point back to OBVIOUS missteps now that we've seen her double down to make further mistakes in sequel and bonus content, and radicalize, but frankly if she hadn't turned out to be a TERF attempting to leverage her social capital for bigotry, i genuinely doubt that so much attention would be paid to her earlier missteps.

it's just like. people are trying to find clues that could justify her later turning, and certainly i can find some; frankly, i find her fat phobia significantly more galling and revealing of a sort of fundamental biological essentialism than, for example, the goblins. like. there are issues of antisemitism in hp, it's just that i really genuinely don't think it's the goblins. certainly before DH (which i only read once, on release day, did not enjoy, and have never returned to). i have way more issues with hermetic / alchemic magic as history, cooption of actual history and historic antisemites as culture heroes while erasing jewish history, similarly: holocaust narratives with no jewish characters, and representations of various human characters who fall into antisemitic tropes as proof of their supposed evil. but people aren't interested in doing any sort of deeper analysis of ... issues in HP other than "a fantasy author ineffectually used clumsy metaphors for social issues" which like. welcome to reading fantasy. she is not outstandingly terrible with respect to that! the thing that makes her terrible is NOT that she did a bunch of stuff that is bad but not exceptional, the thing that makes her terrible is that she unilaterally refused to learn or apologize, and then on top of that went and became a terf.

was only talking about antisemitism in this post bc that's what's relevant to me and because it makes me sooo frustrated to see the goblins trotted out as convenient proof that hp was always irredeemable when what it's guilty of is "clumsy genre fiction metaphors" and not "virulent bigotry". i just think it's genuinely irresponsible (and frankly not a little insulting!) to conflate the two.

similarly i guess there's a LOT of latent / internalized (?) sexism in hp, which does not get discussed in fandom contexts, even though it was the thing i DID notice when i was reading these as a little kid with no awareness of like... stuff like this in books. which is so weird to me! because you'd think it would be as relevant to her understanding of hashtag what feminism is as anything else is.

and just to be clear im saying this as someone who hasn't spent money on hp stuff since i would guess 2008 and who has been reading multiple fan fictions since before '08 that have at this point been running for longer than jkr spent publishing the original series. i am not interested in pottermore, any bonus content, or future works, like at all, and haven't paid any attention to them beyond knowing they're not really anything id be interested in in the first place and then later hearing secondhand how like stupid and racist and terrible they were and having absolutely no interest in pursuing it further.

again don't reblog this im just thinking

#it's just so insane to me that people will fully sit down like she is inherently and immutably evil at all points in her personal timeline #the books are just books. they're NOT perfect and have many issues but that is definitely not what people are doing here #they are JUST books. #they're literally just books. they are not a mechanism for hate speech.

[salarta]

What do you value most about comic book characters and do you think the characters go far beyond being powerful or not? Specifically talking about mutants and the omega classification.

I don't really understand the question too well, so my answer may not be what you were looking for.

I'm not really a comic book fan. I'm a Polaris fan, and Polaris just happens to be a comic book character. I found out about Lorna back before Gifted though; I randomly stumbled on her wikia entry one day and what I saw of her in it drew my interest.

Also before Lorna, I didn't care much about anything Marvel. Closest I came to caring pre-Lorna was watching X-Men Evolution, and seeing the first Iron Man movie. Nothing Marvel made caught my fancy much before her.

I'm reasonably sure that if I never found out about Lorna, my interest would've been limited to the MCU films, and I would've gradually lost interest in them from getting annoyed about MCU being so dominant and pervasive. I say that based on how I originally didn't want anything to do with the Wolverine and the X-Men cartoon cause Wolverine coming before X-Men annoyed me, but I eventually watched (and enjoyed) the cartoon because I wanted to see Lorna in it.

Of everything comic book wise, I'd have to say DC characters were much more dominant for me and were my go-to perception of comic books pre-Lorna. Batman and Superman were everywhere. Because of that, my general concept of comic book characters is one of representational ideals. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, they're all icons that stand for something more than a person in a costume. The heroism of those characters was quite inspiring. And that's where the very, very limited interest in X-Men Evolution showed up too: in what mutantdom and their struggles represented.

And from that topic, I have to say what drew me to Lorna most was what she represents as a survivor, both from overcoming all the shit she's been through and specifically her experience of Genosha and how she grew afterward. With Batman, you have a bad thing that happened to him, you have what he decided to do because of it, but all you really have is going from point A to point B. With Lorna, you have a journey. And her journey isn't over. In fact, it's only barely begun, because Marvel's avoided it for so many decades.

About powerful or not. I may not understand what you mean but I'll try.

I do think there's something deeper to these character (or at least, there could be) than just "Are they Omega." Just because you have a sledgehammer doesn't mean you know how to use it, or that you can find clever uses for it not typically expected. In the realm of proper writing, I think it's entirely possible for a character who's weak to beat an Omega character under the right circumstances. I also think that a character isn't inherently a "better character" just because they're Omega. All characters have value and potential. It's just a matter of a writer recognizing it and tapping into it the right way. You can have a character better than every Omega out there and they don't even have any powers, in the hands of good writing.

In the past, though, I've raised complaints about Lorna not being considered Omega while Magneto is. That doesn't come from a place of "My fave can beat up your fave" or "Only Omega characters matter." For me, it comes from a place of Marvel displaying double standards against Lorna, and being concerned about that undermining Lorna's options.

Past comics from Marvel have stated that Lorna either has the potential to surpass Magneto, is at the time his equal, or (albeit at a time when Magneto was weakened) had already surpassed him. The rules for what counts as Omega don't say there can be only one, or that only the one with the most experience or seniority gets the title, or even that it goes to whoever's had the most impressive feat. The rules put forth for Omega right now essentially mean that if Magneto's Omega, then Lorna should be too, based on past comics. Her not being considered Omega, to me, indicates a lack of respect for Lorna where they think she doesn't "deserve" to be Omega due to people at the company thinking she's a bad character. It's not the title that's at issue. It's what not having that title means. It means underestimating her worth, and artificially limiting her potential for stories based on faulty perceptions of her. I wouldn't mind Lorna not being Omega if the definition for Omega were different.

I haven't spoken much on the Omega stuff lately for a couple reasons. One, because she's getting treated better by Marvel lately. I particularly liked her treatment in Devil's Reign this week. Two, because frankly, I've been going through a lot of shit this past half year. Just. A lot. I'm still going through some of it right now. A lot of my energy has been directed toward resolving that shit. Otherwise I think I'd be posting a lot more than I have been on Lorna matters.

If I didn't really answer what you were hoping for, please send a new ask to give me a better idea. Bout to watch an episode of Goosebumps and go to bed.

[today-only-happens-once]

I don't think my ethnicity should really matter here, but; My parents are immigrants and have been victims of british genocide. My brother died because of the generational trauma that came from that, of a curable disease. My mom's grandparents, My dad's parents, all of them have died because of improper care by british genocide. I have multiple other poc friends that I've asked about it, and they don't have a single issue. If a character works better for a headcanon of another race I don't get why there's a double standard, because I'm not //erasing// those races, I'm just moving them to other canon charas because they work better for the content I'm making. I didn't mean to be passive aggressive this is just how I type. I just find it kinda wierd how that apparently makes me a bad person. It's good to really think about how race and racism is seen outside of what happens in america, because racism isn't just a white against black thing, you can even see that with caste systems.

All right. Look.

When I said I was assuming you were white, all I meant was that I was choosing an explanation of the situation with the assumption that we were both coming from a place of privilege. That is why I mentioned it, and tried to be transparent about my assumption. I also acknowledged that I couldn’t know for sure as a means of expressing that I already knew such an assumption may be incorrect. I am sorry for your losses and the ways that you have been hurt by british colonialism and genocide. 

Your POC friends don’t have an issue with it? Okay. I know of some people that do care about it. It should come as no surprise that people of color are not a monolith of opinions--even when it comes to race and representation issues. 

“I know you’re going to block me because oh no different opinion” is inflammatory rhetoric, intentional or not. Though it perhaps should have clued me in to the idea that you were perhaps looking for an argument more than you were looking for a sincere misunderstanding to be clarified. 

I agree with you that racism does not begin and end in America. Not by a long shot. Though... it should be noted that Sanders Sides? Is a show written by Americans, shot and produced in America, and features American actors. So putting it in its cultural/historical context means putting it in an American context. 

At the end of the day, I can’t force you to agree with me. I’ve explained the situation as best I know how. I encourage you to do some research and continue reaching out to different people if you have a genuine interest in understanding the situation and nuances involved further. I can’t force you to make your art a certain way. I can just try to explain elements of artistic expression that I think are important. 

Its up to you whether or not you want to listen. 

#whitewashing #genocide mention #british genocide