#like idk i don't want to defend them especially since i'm white but. projecting a western perspective on them is unfair

[poetka]

Why is it such a shitstorm of a day today... so fucking draining and none of it has anything to do with me personally

#polish influencers turning out to be pieces of shit abusers and/or groomers #and the colourism drama with shinee... which i don't thing is as bad as people make it out to be but whatever i don't want to talk about it #except to say that as someone from a homogenous (white) country currently living in western europe i really see a difference in awareness #about a lot of issues but especially in terms of racism compared to my friends back home #and koreans saying something colorist to another korean doesn't mean they hate black people and have malicious intent 😭 #you just don't see it if you're not interacting with poc every day. i have leftist friends back home who's unknowingly said worse stuff #alas they are grown men aware of their international audience so maybe some thinking (and editing) can be expected. still disappointed #like idk i don't want to defend them especially since i'm white but. projecting a western perspective on them is unfair #and i've actually been thinking about this a lot in the past few month like how conversations we're having about social issues have really #shifted and are focusing on the american reality even though it's not really relevant to us in a lot of ways #and i'm finding myself clicking out of video essays after 10 mins because i realise it's a waste of time and i need to look for local voices #like this is both in terms of serious matters and even stuff like streamers stealing views away from content creators. which is a non-issue #in poland because streams are not popular enough to decrease the original video's view count in any significant way #and we have many other problems that i want to hear about. alcohol abuse among young people is such a big problem in ireland #i don't need to listen to americans talk about their red cups or w/e. and i shouldn't. if i actually want to understand the issue here

[heterokatedison]

Look I'm absolutely not trying to hate or anything and really agree with your post about more representation in shows but something I don't quite understand is when I'm part of both the wayhaught and kadena fandom but am constantly being told I need to watch The Bold Type bc of its wlw poc rep which I totally agree with but I feel like a lot of the wayhaught fandom already watches The Bold Type, a lot of people I follow were wayhaught blogs and are now kadena blogs

ok so I accidentally wrote a super long winded response to this and it’s like four thirty in the morning so it probably doesn’t even make sense and I’m sorry and you definitely don’t need to feel obligated to read it all but first I want to say that you phrased this message really nicely and I appreciate it and everything else is under the break

there definitely is a big overlap which is great, but I wasn’t trying to say “every person who likes [x show] needs to be watching [y show] too” because I think people should watch what they’re interested in and not sacrifice their time/money/mental health to make other people happy but also because in the grand scheme of things the views from tumblr alone aren’t likely to save a show from cancellation. I just meant that our community as a whole should be examining how we interact with rep/shows with rep if that makes sense??? particularly when it comes to how willingly/quickly we’ll watch something. some people (but obviously not all) will drop everything and marathon a couple seasons of show to get to white gay content (which I understand, because I’ve done that too) and then pressure everyone else to do the same regardless of whether or not they’re interested in it, but, when presented with lgbt characters of color, respond with “idk it’s not really my thing” “I’ll watch it at some point” “it’s not explicit enough” (all real things things I’ve seen said about the bold type, one day at a time, and the get down, respectively). so these stories already aren’t being as highly prioritized, but then we’ll also demand more from them at the same time.

with the exception of sk*m I watch(ed) all the shows I listed in the post, so in a matter of the past few weeks I’ve seen the wayhaught cheating storyline (understandably) get a lot of negative feedback but most of it has been to the effect of “I don’t like the normalization of cheating/how tropey it is” rather than anger directed to the characters themselves, whereas with kadena there seems to be a lot of people calling it bad representation specifically because adena hadn’t broken up with coco before kissing kat (even though she admitted to it and broke up with her the next day) and demonizing adena especially, despite nikohl’s tweet suggesting that coco was potentially dangerous. I mean I’m super against cheating but I can understand both of those situations to some extent, but there are still other people holding kat and adena to a higher standard of what constitutes “good representation,” which is unfair, particularly when wlwoc are rarer to see.

another example is how people reacted to lexa’s death on the h*ndred vs poussey’s death on oitnb. and when I say this I’m honestly not trying to diminish how bad or painful the lexa situation was for people because it was absolutely disgusting and unacceptable (especially when you take the baiting and interactions with fans into account) and people had a right to react the way they did. and they took their righteous anger and turned it into a global movement, and charitable actions, and giant billboards calling the cw out, which is beyond incredible. but then just a couple months later, oitnb killed poussey, a black lesbian, and people were less angry with that than they were about being spoiled for the show. an all white group of writers chose to kill off a black lesbian in a way that deliberately paralleled the real life murder of eric garner in some hamfisted attempt at social commentary, after months of discussing the psychological toll of the byg trope, not even a week after a massive homophobic hate crime that primarily affected poc, and not only were people largely unbothered by it, they were actively DEFENDING IT because “it sent a message.” except people who don’t care about real police brutality aren’t going to care about fictional police brutality, and even if they did, representation shouldn’t be sacrificed to teach oppressors a lesson.

and then after lexa was killed how many of us followed alycia to fear the walking dead??? (I did) we’re willing to watch a show that perpetuated the byg trope spun off of a show that perpetuated the byg trope (and I’m not even going to get into the way women and poc are disproportionately killed off in that franchise) because we like this actress who played a lesbian in a different show. and that’s not an isolated incident: wlw flocked to supergirl during season 2 for gay content, accidentally discovered katie mcgrath in the process, and suddenly the merlin fandom saw a revival four years after its series finale. but we knew at least a couple months in advance that laverne cox would be playing a trans character on doubt, and people didn’t turn up in huge numbers to watch it, and it got canned after two episodes. TWO. cbs yanked it off the air and didn’t even burn off the rest of the season until six months later. and I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t a great show (I mostly watched it at first because I like laverne cox, but it did improve over the course of the season imo), but cancelling it after two episodes is outrageous. there was no outrage from tumblr, though. even now if you check the tags there’s like two or three posts about it. and a trans woc in a main role on network television was so important!!! and laverne deserved so much better!!!

personally I blame a lack of support from the network more than anything: cbs didn’t promote doubt like it should have and axed it before it could find an audience. netflix didn’t promote the get down like it should have and released it at bad times. and like I said earlier, views from tumblr most likely won’t save a show in the long run. eyewitness and in the flesh prove that. but at least with them there were real genuine efforts to extend/revive them. it’s been three years since itf was cancelled and people are STILL petitioning to bring it back. and we showed that tumblr campaigns actually CAN have an impact: that’s why sense8 is getting a two-hour finale!!! between that and the “lgbt fans deserve better” project our community has shown that we’re relentless and stubborn and dedicated when we want to be. but the fact that we don’t always want to be is really sad.