#mestiza life

[priestessofthepoeticprophesy]

I've finally found my genetic people 🥲

The Huichol or Wixárika, modern day descendants of the Aztecs. I don't know for certain but they are likely the indigenous group which comprises 1/5 of my genetic profile.

Strangely enough, I've been dressing like them style wise all along.

#aztec #huichol #wixárika #mexico #mexican #indigenous #native pride #genetics #DNA #colorful style #self #blog post #mestiza #mestiza life

[sephirajo]

I am still fucking baffled when I have a large chunk of this blog dedicated to Mexica things with tags for that, Mexican things, indigenous things and the like going back ages with cultural thoughts and commentary and suddenly when I disagreed with someone I was I was only Mexica to win a stupid internet fight with people who can't keep their diets to themselves.

I will never not be baffled by this.

#this mom rambles #personal #my life as a mestiza

[dia-oro]

i feel a emotion difficult to understand or define after a Spanish friend tell me we should’ve ‘grateful ‘ to be colonized by colon and that if no for it there’s no wait we had modernity… I try to no be offended and tell her very polity that well, progress is good i Know but that don’t erased all the wrong think they did, torture and rape is something to be never diminished even in story… she ‘you Latino Americans are really full of yourselves, uh’ I- I cannot even describe what I feel at it.

#spain #latino america #i feel very diminished my feelings after the professor laugh at me and a peruana friend and just point a golden Ángels at a church and #He tell us that the gold they take from the natives in Latino America and- I feel mad and annoyed #Do he think is funny? Because we didn’t think so #Struggles at art story in college #Story of art #Struggles at life in another country #Being mestiza in a country that look with disgust a colonizers portraits is see bad my bad

[rafeny]

Can I Tell You ... about my collaboration with Mestiza New York.

We all know that feeling you have when you meet someone and you just know you’re going to get along. That’s exactly how I felt when I met Alessandra years ago. We have a shared heritage and it’s something we are very proud of. We just get each other.

"I am so thrilled for the opportunity to collaborate with Rafe Totenco, whom I’ve long admired since my early days in New York, when I dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. I first got to meet him back in 2016 at a Christmas party thrown by a mutual friend, and he doesn’t know this but I felt like I was meeting a huge celebrity! Ever since starting Mestiza I always knew I wanted to partner with him in some way, especially since we are both so closely tied to our Filipino heritage and always reference it in our collections. This collaboration has truly been a full circle moment for me, because getting the opportunity to partner with a fellow Filipino designer who paved the way is such an honor." - Alessandra Perez-Rubio

I admire how their clothing continuously reference Alessandra’s Filipino heritage akin to what I do when I design my handbags. Alessandra had approached me last year about doing a collaboration and it was an immediate yes for me. From start to finish, collaborating with them was so harmonious and stress-free. I’m thrilled that the clutches compliment their clothes perfectly.

“This was a match made in heaven, a tropical heaven.” - Rafe Totengco

#Mestiza New York #Rafe New York #Rafe clutch #Rafe Totengco #hand embroidered clutch #hand embroidery #Blue and White #Chinoiserie #Lemons #Palm Beach Style #summer clutch #summer style #Spring style #Spring fashion #floral embroidered clutch #floral embroidery #florals for spring #when life gives you lemons #Alessandra Perez Rubio

[ghelgheli]

The epoch of hysteria between 1656 and 1658 found its catalyst in the spontaneous, detailed testimony of someone who I solely re-member here with her chosen name, la Estanpa. Once a linda niña (pretty girl), the now seventy-year-old mestiza found herself apprehended by court magistrates for suspected sodomy in 1656. After initially denying the accusations, an elderly and fatigued Estanpa relented, admitting to having dressed ‘like a woman’ since she was seven and committed the nefarious sin for ‘more than forty years’. Encapsulated within her testimony and larger trial are glimmers of an underground trans feminine world in seventeenth-century Mexico City, of which Estanpa served as a pillar. Coinciding with Catholic feast days, Estanpa and her friends organised parties at changing secret locations, ranging from the secluded countryside to individuals’ homes in the neighbourhoods of San Juan de la Penitencia or San Pablo. Facilitated by trans feminine hostesses, these lively parties consisted of illicit dancing, singing, drinking chocolate and of course inevitable quarrelling over guapos (what they affectionately called the men who loved them), with whom they would eventually retire into rooms for sex. For elders like Estanpa, these parties were also an opportunity to recall ‘the deeds and the conquests of their far-away youth, their lost beauty, and old-time pleasures’.In each other’s company, this cohort referred to one another as niñas (girls), each taking on feminine names following the same convention as ‘la Estanpa’, a title said to have originated from a ‘very graceful lady’. What is certain is that the trans feminine figure held a distinct and explicitly threatening place in the Spanish colonial imaginary. Within underground Mexican subculture, these individuals shared myriad cultural signifiers – in naming practices, celebration of holidays and their habitation in the same neighbourhoods and sometimes homes – that suggest they also established deep-rooted community networks. Perhaps most importantly, despite coordinated and unrelenting legal suppression, trans feminine people would continue to exist and resist across colonial New Spain.

Jamey Jesperson, Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: Re-membering Trans Feminine Life and Death in New Spain, 1604–1821 [doi]

#reading #gender

[gatheringbones]

[“It can be difficult for people raised as girls to express rage when we’ve been taught from very early on that it is in our best interest to suppress our anger. It is culturally acceptable for women to be sad, not angry. In one study on gender, anger, and the workplace, the participants conferred higher status to sad female employees than to angry ones. For men the opposite was true. Men, particularly white men, are rewarded and forgiven for their anger, while women are penalized and blamed.

Ceci, the mestiza paralegal, now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, five-year-old son, and twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter. She described herself using the exact language of a woman who was taught by the culture not to value or express her anger: “I’m a people pleaser. I don’t rock the boat. I go along with everything, do what people tell me.” This is the path of being a good girl, a good woman, and eventually a good mother. Lifelong gendered learning teaches people raised to be women to push down anger and any feelings in the “sub-anger” ballpark, such as annoyance, irritation, and frustration. I imagine this emotional push-down like the carnival game whack-a-mole. Each time an uncomfortable or unpleasant anger-related feeling pops up—whack!—women automatically bang it with a big-headed mallet, sending it back beneath the surface.

Like the rage itself, this game of anger whack-a-mole is an international phenomenon for women. In Korea, there is a culture-related anger syndrome called hwa-byung. It translates literally to “illness of fire” and mostly affects working-class middle-aged housewives, who have chronically suppressed anger stemming from strict gender roles, gender-based inequality, and patriarchal family structures. In traditional Latin American folk medicine, it is believed that holding onto certain emotions can cause physical illness. In Northeast Brazil, the term engolir sapos translates to “swallowing frogs,” and is mostly used by women to refer to the suppression of anger and irritation, and the pressure to tolerate unfair treatment without complaint.

Cheryl, the Black civil rights lawyer who internalizes her mom rage, is practiced at playing whack-a-mole with her anger: “I’m good at repressing things. So, a little problem, I repress it, and it gets packed on top of all the other things that make me mad, until there’s no way to untangle it. It’s just this huge tangle of anger that I’m trying to disassociate from all the time.” In our present-day culture of busy, intensive motherhood, stuffing down unpleasant emotions can be a matter of practicality. Minutes are a precious resource, and airing every frustration is a time expense that modern mothers cannot afford. Emails must be sent, dinner needs to get into bellies, and bodies need to snuggle under covers. But the perceived time-saver of the Emotional Whack-a-Mole phase is a mirage. Every time a mom suppresses her angry feelings, as she’s been taught to do her entire life, she is pushing them onto an ever-growing pile of anger inside her. Eventually, the pile will topple.”]

minna dubin, from mom rage: the everyday crisis of modern motherhood, 2023

#minna dubin #bi literature #gender stuff #currently reading #brainspace

[mcufandomhatespeopleofcolor]

Okay, this is gonna sound like a real dumb ask, but I just sorta need the sanity check on this. I've got a friend who hated the Marvels but thinks the Barbie movie was the best feminist movie ever made. Am I being an ass by being COMPLETELY squicked out by these reactions??? Because it just feels super hinky and Not Good? As far as opinions go. Like...I don't know, it feels wrong. Also, she loved Black Panther but said that the women in it weren't given good characterization and idk writing this out made me realize I probably need to drop this person from my life.

Would that make me an ass? (I'm asking the mods here because I feel like, as someone who's white, I am WAY outta my depth on my analysis of this situation but I could be right that her preferences feel/are lowkey racist.)

So ok first of all I'm not black and I do have lightskinned privilege (mestiza latina). I say that because I invite my co mod who is Black to weigh in on this and all our Black followers to weigh in too.

One thing that you could do is maybe start updating any social media this friend is on with stuff about racialized misogyny/misogynoir. Specifically like this video that I made with the help of a Black friend.

I personally don't know if you have the energy to watch Black Panther 2 with her but like I get saying that the women in the first Black Panther were underwritten (by white feminism standards at least I personally loved them all and I particularly enjoyed that T'challa respected all the women in his life).

Like ok I haven't seen Barbie but honestly it really pissed me off that it seems to have been trying to fill like quotas for diversity instead of making a genuine effort to center woc. Like ok there's this post on tumblr with screencaps of life size (which was a disney movie about a doll that comes to life to help her owner) and the point is that Tyra Banks starred as the doll. It was made in 2000 and like honestly??? Why is it that we couldn't have had someone like Ella Balinska as Barbie?

She's tall she's statuesque and she totally deserves a shot at a hit movie. (also ngl she reminds me of Tyra Banks in Life Size).

Anyways I'm getting off topic...

Basically what I'm trying to say is that yes cutting off this so called friend is an option. but you can't just get rid of her without trying to show her the error of her ways. if you don't try to teach her how she's wrong she might never learn how to unpack her privilege and become an ally she'll become one of those Karens that calls the cops on Black people for simply existing in her presence!

Like I know this is asking a lot but consider for once what it's like to see white people give up on their racist friends and family and not even try to teach them how to do better??? if you want to know how to be an ally this is how you do it!!! you put the work in to teach your friend to be a better person.

mod ali

#barbie #barbie 2023 #the barbie movie #black panther #misogynoir #racialized misogyny #white feminism

[kairiscorner]

spider noir in a noli au

i can imagine him at the first chapter (yun ba yun) of noli where they were shit talking the native filipinos and noir just chimes in saying, "well you know, the people here are probably only uneducated because... you won't give them an education? hence, you lot (the colonizers) are backwards for not providing them with the necessary graces these lovely people need to live. you're blaming them for your own lack of a mind."

he'd see you as a PERSON and not as a SLAVE. especially if you were a poor indio forced into slavery for a big mestizo/mestiza, HE'D WORK, FIGHT, AND BUY YOUR WAY OUT OF SERVITUDE FOR THEM BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU AND HATES SEEING YOU CHAINED DOWN TO THIS KIND OF LIFE.

he'd be so close to basilio and crispin, and when crispin crispun down the stairs... he was never the same : ( he felt super bad for sisa and was so regretful that he couldn't get those boys out of there any quicker.

i think the guardia civil and higher ups there would've hated him LMAO, but he doesn't care, he's gonna fight his way out of this, keep you safe, and marry you one day.

he wants half-filipino kids, he knows they'd have the cutest eyes and the prettiest complexion to him

HE'D TAKE YOU OUT ON A BOAT RIDE AT NIGHT AND UNDER THE LIGHT OF THE STARS AND THE MOON, AS THE CRICKETS SING AND AS THE ALITAPTAP SURROUND YOU GUYS, HE'D SING OLD LOVE SONGS HE LEARNED IN TAGALOG WITH YOUUUU

he refuses to speak spanish and only talks to in tagalog.

HE BURNS COPIES OF TANDANG BASIO MACUNAT BECAUSE HE KNOWS IT'S BULLSHIT

when you two are riding a kalesa, he holds on to you tightly because he doesn't want you to get hurt when the roads get bumpy, and bc it's an excuse to get close to you :)

HE DOESN'T HATE THE TULISANES TBH, he gets why they're the way they are, but he will not hesitate to FUCK THEM UP IF THEY SO MUCH AS TOUCH A SINGLE STRAND OF HAIR ON YOUR HEAD

he has expressed wanting to marry you and love you for the rest of his life so many times, and how eager he is to wait for your answer, be it a yes or a no, be it today, tonight, tomorrow, or until he's old--just never leave him without telling him a yes or no.

"aking minamahal... hindi ko masasabi sayo ang lahat ng pagmamahal na nararamdaman ko para sayo. ngunit, kung papayagan mo ako, mamahalin kita panghabangbuhay. hihintayin kita para sayong sagot, kahit ibibigay mo ngayong araw, ngayong gabi, bukas o hanggang ako'y matanda na... ikaw parin ang mamahalin ko't hihintayin ko. huwag mo lang akong iwanan ng hindi mo pa akong sinasagot; kahit 'oo' o 'hindi' ang iyong sagot... ikaw parin ang tanging minamahal at mamahalin ko."

a/n: I CAN'T HE'S SO RIZAL CODED

tags !! @thecoolerdor @binibinileonara @connors-cumslurper @luvstarrstruck @maxoloqy @k4tsu3

#spider noir #spider noir x filipino reader #spider noir x reader #spider noir x you #spider noir x y/n #atsv x filipino reader #atsv imagines #atsv x reader

[highpriestessarchives]

Expectations: In Which Diverse Stories Have Extra Criteria

CW: mentions of racism, brutality, colonization, more of a vent post than anything informative

As much as I don’t like it, I feel as though the best way to start this off is to provide context on my own background. I’ll get to why I don’t like it in a moment, so bear with me. I’m a first generation born Filipino American. My parents are from Tarlac (and a DNA test shows that we also have lineage traced back to Northern and Western Philippines as well some Central & Eastern and Southern China), and they raised us in a semi-traditional Filipino fashion. They didn’t teach us the language in fear of us being made fun of by other Americans, but we did grow up eating the food, respecting our elders, and practicing Filipino Catholic traditions that my parents grew up with in their homeland.

Needless to say, the remarks that followed me into my adult life have pulled my resonance with my heritage in every which way. To other Filipinos and other Asians, I looked part white, and they would ask for pictures of my parents for “proof” that I wasn’t. True story: I remember one of my college friends grabbing my phone and showing her friends in an “I told you so” manner, as if my race was some mystery for them to crack. It wasn’t. I fully told them from the start that I’m Filipino. My Titas would tell me that I looked “mestiza,” and how many young girls in the Philippines would want to look the way I do, and I didn’t know how to explain to them that I started hating how pale I am because of how other Asians would assume my race because of it.

At the same time, my non-Asian counterparts (yes, majority of the people who made these comments were white) would assume that I was some hodge-podge of all Asian cultures. I remember my high school teacher showing us a Vietnamese medicine commercial (this was a class on medical malpractice, and, if I remember correctly, she wanted to show us how medicine is advertised internationally), and she walked into class saying, “The only one who might understand this clip is Rory.” She’d used my deadname at the time, but you get the idea. Jaw-dropped, I had to say, “I don’t speak Vietnamese. I’m not Vietnamese.”

I know, what does this have to do with writing? We’ll get there; don’t worry.

Around 2018, the term “decolonization” entered my realm of awareness. I would see other children of immigrants from all over the world dive into their heritage and continue their ancestors’ practices. Thinking that this would be a genuine way to connect with my roots (I had, and still have, a complicated relationship with the Catholic Church, so I was excited to hear about other Filipino faiths), I began doing my research. At the time, I had a sizable following on TikTok, and I would post entertainment-only sort of videos regarding my spirituality and craft, and I even had to put out a video explaining why I didn’t go into more detail with the Filipino aspects of it. I wasn’t as learned with it as I am now, and I was afraid of the criticism and backlash others would have towards it. In hindsight, I really shouldn’t have given a sh*t, but the internet, as we all know, is cruel.

See, I use my writing as a way to connect with myself and other people, mainly. Yes, I have a story to tell, but a majority of my purpose is to discover and process my own emotions and findings. I use what I observed in society and how I grew up as well as what I learned from my own research. I won’t go into detail of the racism Asian Americans face nor the brutality we have endured over the years; frankly, if you are not already aware of it, Google is free.

Still, my work seemed to be followed by one main criticism: this isn’t yours to tell.

There were a myriad of reasons behind it. I wasn’t born in the Philippines, I’m white-passing, I wasn’t raised with anitismo, other marginalized groups have it “exponentially” worse, etc. I’d be lying if I said this didn’t affect my writing. I froze. I grappled with what I was “allowed” to tell based on all of these criteria. I’d pull up article after article of what I learned in hopes to justify the reasons for including certain aspects in my work; but because of my own upbringing, it never seemed to be enough. What’s worse, a portion of these criticisms completely dismissed the aspects of racism that Asian Americans have spoken up about time and time again (once again, because other’s have it worse or because there just wasn’t enough awareness about it for it to be “valid.”)

Imagine that. We read of thousands of iterations of medieval fantasies from white authors, thousands of European fae romances, thousands of Greek mythological retellings, and treat it as the default. There is no question of whether the author is Greek or Gaelic enough or if their ancestors played a huge role during the medieval era. Hell, my first published work was based on Greek and Celtic mythology, and no one talked about my race then, whether it was about how white I look or how I'm not white at all.

But gods help us if a minority doesn’t fit the ultimate minority model while telling their stories. To be honest, this was why I started disliking the need to talk about my background; it has begun to feel as though it is more to provide credentials rather than to satiate genuine curiosity from other people.

Yes, I do recognize that I wasn’t born in the Philippines and that I was raised Catholic, but I’ve come to terms with how I feel like that is okay.

First of all, if we want to hear from more diverse writers, we cannot keep projecting this “model minority” expectation towards them. Otherwise, it will discourage other diaspora writers, such as myself, from connecting and relaying their heritage in fear of not being “[insert marginalized group here] enough,” whatever that even means at this point.

Secondly, our history is full of movement, whether it was by our own will, such as my parents’ decision to come to America, or if it was forced upon us by our oppressors. As such, those raised outside of their homeland only further enriches our culture, not dilutes it.

To filter the perspectives of or to project your own biases towards diaspora writers is to promote the narratives of the colonizers. We are valid, and our stories should be, too.

#writingcommunity #writing #writers of tumblr #writers on tumblr #writers #writeblr #writers and poets #writerscommunity #writing life #poc author #diverse reads #diverse books #filipino #filipina #poc writer #creative writing #writer #writerslife #writer stuff #novel writing #on writing #writing community #authorlife #authors of tumblr #author #author life #author blog #author speaks #diverse authors #authors of color

[thesorcerersapprentice]

22.01.2024

BI-WEEKLY ACHIEVEMENTS:

Worldbuilding: For the past two weeks, I've been grappling with an issue in my worldbuilding that has been paralyzing all progress on the novel. To put it briefly, while I want the novel to address neo-colonialism, I don't want to locate the story in a region that resembles the location of neo-colonial powers in our real world, aka. the global north. This for two reasons: first, because I want to use the novel to highlight and celebrate the flora and fauna of my own home region, Colombia; and second, because I want to get away from the idea that the default setting for epic fantasy is a UK-inspired region á la Game of Thrones. However, setting a neo-colonial superpower in a region that closely resembles one that has suffered immensely from colonialism and neo-colonialism in our own world comes with its own issues. After all, isn't it a form of literary colonialism to elevate the region's aesthetics but obliterate the culture? But, then, what's the alternative? For a long time, I assumed I only had three options: either solve the issue by setting the entire story in regions that resemble the standard fantasy default and bypass the problem entirely, abandon the colonialism theme, or keep the global north/global south aesthetic divide we experience in real life, thus maintaining the global north inspired region as the superpower and the global south inspired region as the oppressed. All three options are, in my very humble opinion, a disappointment and fail to do justice to the story. That said, I think I may have discovered a possible fourth option that allows me to keep the superpower region resembling Colombia. Namely, I'm thinking that instead of basing the distinction in climate/geography on the different hemispheres (and sticking too close to our world), I can base them instead on the different altitudes of Colombia. There is a historical precedent for having the 2500-meter-above-sea-level mark be the colonial centre of operations, which would allow me to keep the Cloud Forest biome as the main setting and somewhat side-step the unfairness of it all (I hope?). It's also possible to create a racial distinction between the inhabitants of the different altitudes if, let's say, the 2500-meter altitude region has been conquered, the native people eradicated and replaced by the new arrivals. This would make them physically distinct from the inhabitants of the rest of the regions (á la US; for the below regions, maybe the colonizers took a more "Spanish Empire" route and mixed). Furthermore, if this same region then gains independence and establishes itself as a new superpower, oppressing the regions below, we also have neo-colonialism (also á la US). Maybe that can work?

Decided on Altaluna's Appearance: I couldn't really settle this until I'd settled on the updated worldbuilding (namely, decided the geography, the races, ethnicities, etc.). Since race plays a hand in galvanizing hostilities against Altaluna in the second and third acts, I needed to be certain that her appearance would satisfy the criteria of 'mestiza' within this universe.

Researched Colonialism: I read two books on the subject, Edward W. Said's Representations of the Intellectual and Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire. I also picked up a third book, You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, a reimagining of the meeting between the conquistador Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma in the city of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) where the tables are turned. My aim with Enrigue's book is to learn from what other people are doing with colonization in fiction today, especially as it pertains to South and Central America. I'm always up for recommendations if anyone has any!

Updated Writeblr Graphics: I was supposed to have this done by January 1st but I really didn't like the theme I'd come up with, so I remade everything to the tune of the new(ish) setting. Hope you like it!

REMINDERS

Answer pending asks. I am, as always, behind. My apologies to everyone who hasn't received a reply yet. I promise I'm working on it.

Publish Altaluna's profile... please? (I'm begging you, finish and publish it!)

Complete a full summary of at least one aspect of the reviewed worldbuilding (could be geography, history, whatever). Ideally, two.

In memory of my dear friend, Nicolás, who died two years ago last week. I miss you.

TAG LIST: (ask to be + or - ) @the-finch-address @fearofahumanplanet @winterninja-fr  @avrablake @outpost51 @d3mon-ology @hippiewrites @threeking @lexiklecksi @achilleanmafia

#progress update #biweekly progress update #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writers of tumblr #writeblr community #writing community #writerblr #writblr #WIP: THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE #WIP: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

[cartelheir]

— 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐎 𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐄𝐓.

name: patricia carosella.

name meaning: patricia is a name of latin origin that means noble or patrician.

alias/es:  pat. in the runaway verse, she goes by the fake name sofia borbón, but not in other verses.

ethnicity: mexican / mestiza.

one picture / icon you like best of your character:

i love this picture because it's just The essence of pat. the outfit, the jewelry, the surroundings, the way she's looking at you like you're dirt under her shoe, everything. this is how she looks like 99% of the time.

three h/cs you never told anyone:

pat has maids coming to her home daily, and as a result she does literally zero chores. she hates cleaning with a passion. over time she's gotten used to have at least one maid around all the time, so she doesn't care about things such as having an incredibly personal conversation on the phone with a friend while they might be listening. it's like they're not even there.

due to her history, pat cares a lot about sexual assault victims as well as the femicide victims in mexico. she donates a lot of money to charities that try to find the missing women, or ones that fight against human trafficking. she's aware that a lot of the men she works with in the cartel participate in it, and it's one of the things she'd like to change if she was in charge of things.

pat and her family attended church weekly when she was a child, but she was never too much of a believer. she just liked singing at choir and hanging out with the other kids, but even when she was really young she remembers thinking :/ idk if this god guy actually exists. despite her skepticism, there was also a part of pat who feared god WAS real and he'd punish her for doubting him. she was convinced he would make her choke to death on the sacramental bread. she avoided eating it for months.

three things your character likes doing in their free time: 

music. she can play piano and guitar, and she also has a very nice singing voice and a hell of a lot of stage presence, if she would ever get on a stage again. her parents used to say she was gonna be a bigger star than selena quintanilla, but well, life got in the way.

going out to dance. or to just have drinks with friends.

shopping. like any toxic rich person, pat thinks she's entitled to spend her money on whatever the fuck she wants, and she often splurges on useless luxury items.

people your character likes / loves:

ángel salazar is a npc i probably won't bring over to the rpc so he won't be part of her storyline, but i had to mention him because in my original writing for pat, he's very important to her. for those who remember the román days, that's not him, but his story is slightly inspired on him.

luisa ríos, her mom. they don't get along most of the time and pat has more than enough reasons to hate her, but she can't stop caring.

martina carosella; pat's aunt, javier's younger sister. they're besties.

santiago guzmán, pat's bodyguard and chauffeur. wherever she is, he's usually around. she's not sure if she'd consider him a friend, but she trusts him. in very vulnerable, drunken nights, she might've vented about one personal thing or two to him.

two things your character regrets:

getting involved with césar. she tries to forgive herself for it, because she was just a child who didn't know any better, but she often thinks about how different her life would've turned out if she'd never met him.

not reclaiming pristine airlines earlier. she was reasonably scared of the cartel doing another attempt on her life. but to think that she was broke for all those years when it was her right to inherit the company? those are years of her life that she wasted being poor.

one phobia your character has:

dogs. she was attacked by one as a child. the bigger they are, the worse her fear is, but tbh she's a little scared of the small cutesy ones too. they can smell her fear.

tagged : stolen from the dash. tagging: @artmadc, @sleazygoing, @lcvnderhazed, @parieur, @wellfell / @r4bidog, @flmed, @embodies, @vitalphenomena, @dogtccth, as usual i encourage everyone else to steal this from me

#𝐡𝐜 . ❛ el estudio del carácter. ❜

[ladygangsters]

NAME : Patricia Carosella.

NICKNAME : Pat. Can't think of any others that wouldn't piss her off.

GENDER : Female.

STAR SIGN : Aries.

HEIGHT : 5'2.

ORIENTATION : straight.... or is she 👀

NATIONALITY/ETHNICITY : Mexican / Latina mestiza.

FAVOURITE FRUIT : Passion fruit.

FAVOURITE SEASON : Summer.

FAVOURITE FLOWER : Classic red roses, or marigolds.

FAVOURITE SCENT : Amber.

COFFEE, TEA, or HOT CHOCOLATE : Coffee.

AVERAGE HOURS OF SLEEP : Around 5, specially if work has been hectic. If she's having a good week and doing good emotionally, she might finally get her 8 hours.

DOGS or CATS : Cats all the way.

DREAM TRIP : Sulani, aka Hawaii or some other real life beach paradise.

NUMBER OF BLANKETS : Ideally 1, 3 in the colder months.

RANDOM FACT : The 4th of July is Patricia's favorite, as she affectionately calls it, gringo holiday. The food is good, there's always booze, fireworks are gorgeous, what's not to like? She doesn't actually care much about the history behind it, but she's here to party whenever the day comes by.

tagged by: @citylighten my beloved 💗 tagging: YOU 🫵

#i'm recycling this pat pic which i might also turn into an icon lmao #ch: patricia carosella

[rollercoasterwords]

omg hi, hello, it’s me again (anon from the non fandom rec ask)

I’d absolutely love to hear the nonfiction recs you alluded to as well.

Already added all the last books to my reading list, thank you so so much 😖🙏

omg hi hello yay this is so exciting for me okay here are some nonfiction recommendations!!! most of these are pretty accessible even if u aren't super familiar with reading theory + i've noted the ones that are a little more dense or might require some more background knowledge before jumping in:

The Invention of Heterosexuality by Jonathan Ned Katz. Literally what the title says - Katz traces the historical invention of the word "heterosexuality" along with how its meaning has changed over time, bringing into focus just how recent our modern social constructions of sexuality are. You can also find a condensed article version if you don't want to read an entire book--same title and everything.

Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice by Joseph Fischel. I just finished this book recently and loved it, but it's not something I would recommend engaging with if you don't already have some like...groundwork for engaging with feminist and queer theory. Like it is very much not a beginner text but the work it's doing is so so important in addressing a lot of the issues with our post #MeToo cultural rhetoric and politics when it comes to discussing rape culture and sexual violence.

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. Personally I simply think everyone should read some Lorde at some point in their lives.

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa. Because I also think everyone should read some Anzaldúa at some point in their lives.

Women, Race & Class by Angela Davis. Another essential feminist text.

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis. Highly highly highly recommend for anyone wanting to learn more about prison abolition (specifically within a U.S. context).

The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale. This goes hand in hand with the Angela Davis listed above and is a pretty straightforward breakdown of why police are unnecessary and some possibilities of what a society without them (or defunding them) could look like (again, within a U.S. context).

+ some bonus recs that are a little more niche:

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag. This book dives into the ethics of like...trauma + photography but honestly a lot of the points Sontag makes feel very relevant beyond that context considering the world we live in where pretty much everything gets uploaded online.

No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive by Lee Edelman. This is perhaps the single most influential work of theory i've come across in my life on just like...a personal level. Like Edelman's theory of reproductive futurity is burned forever in my brain and fundamentally altered my worldview. That being said this book is NOT FUN to read and it is incredibly dense. I had to return to it many times and discuss it at length with the professor who was teaching it to me before I finally started to grasp it, and then it was literally like my eyes had been opened and could never be shut again. so! i feel compelled to include it in any nonfiction recommendation list, but i definitely recommend going in with some groundwork already laid when it comes to ur engagement with queer theory.

Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clover. Simply a quintessential text for anyone interested in feminism + horror, which i very much am.

Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead ed. by Shaka McGlotten and Steve Jones. This book is soooo fucking fun i absolutely love zombie theory. some of the essays are denser than others so it's probably best to go in once you already have some background engaging w queer + feminist theory. my favorite chapters were "Take, Eat, These Are My Brains: Queer Zombie Jesus"; "A Love Worth Un-Undying For: Neoliberalism and Queered Sexuality in Warm Bodies"; and "Re-Animating the Social Order: Zombies and Queer Failure".

+ my current nonfiction read:

Texts after Terror: Rape, Sexual Violence, and the Hebrew Bible by Rhiannon Graybill. Look even if you've never touched the bible in your life my favorite thing about this book is the way Graybill questions our frameworks for discussing sexual violence and proposes new ones that better account for the gray area that is so often (and so problematically) scrubbed out by the cultural emphasis on consent. This text engages with the Fischel book I mentioned above, it's just that Graybill's trying to add more nuance into our discussions of rape culture specifically in her area of expertise, which happens to be the Hebrew bible. This is another one where I'd recommend some groundwork in feminist and queer theory before jumping in though :)

#i simply love reading and learning and thinking about topics!!!! #book recs

[reasoningdaily]

On a recent episode of Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, Dominican-Puerto Rican reality TV star Erica Mena screamed “You monkey, you blue monkey” to Jamaican dancehall singer, songwriter, and actor Spice. The animalized anti-Black slur never seems too far from the lips of racially ambiguous, mestiza, mixed-race, and other non-Black Latinas who find success ironically because of Black women. Many people of alleged color use their proximity to Blackness as a ruse to gain success while harboring anti-Black values. 

This isn’t the first time we have seen non-Black Latinas, who may claim Afro-Latinidad at convenience, call dark-skinned unambiguously Black women an anti-Black slur in a public forum. It’s a signature and age-old move. In 2015, Mena herself reportedly called club promoters “Black monkeys” after not showing up to a scheduled nightclub appearance. Similarly, in 2019, self-professed Afro-Latina Evelyn Lozada did something similar to her Basketball Wives castmate, athlete Ogom “OG” Chijindu, using a monkey GIF to describe her on Instagram and repeatedly referring negatively to her looks.

In many of these public displays of anti-Blackness, the conflict is centered on a Black man “picking” the unambiguously Black woman over the so-called “exotic” non-Black woman. These are common tactics that I and many other unambiguous Black women have experienced at the hands of non-Black Latinas, including mestizas and light-skinned, racially ambiguous, self-proclaimed Afro-Latinas. And many of these non-Black Latinas use the categorization of Afrolatinidad as a get-out-of-jail card when they co-opt Blackness.

“

"Many people of alleged color use their proximity to Blackness as a ruse to gain success while fostering anti-Black values. "

dash harris

”

In 2019,Love and Hip Hop cast member Cyn Santana appeared on Angela Yee's Lip Service podcast controversially saying she prefers Black men and Black men prefer Latina women. “Y’all can keep the Puerto Rican men. I’m good,” she said, assuming she was referring to non-Black Puerto Rican men. She added: “I do Black guys all day. Black men cater to us Spanish [sic: Latina] girls especially.” When Yee suggested she would “get in trouble with the Black girls,” Santana, a mestiza of mixed Dominican and Salvadoran descent, said, “I didn’t mean it like that, but Black girls gonna take it personal and be like, uh-uh,” inserting just enough mockery to ensure the audience that her worldview is steeped in anti-Black tropes. 

Even more to that point of wide-spread misogynoir stereotyping, Santana later apologized on the talk show The Real, saying she “irresponsibly repeated something that I heard my entire life.” I believe her. I've long seen and heard this messaging in Latine communities. The truth Santana pointed to cannot be glossed over. These women date and procreate with Black men and, in turn, raise Black children, as Mena is doing, and I wonder how they treat those children through their lens of depreciating Blackness. One way is by treating them as a shield to claim they are not anti-Black.

“

"In many of these public displays of anti-Blackness, the conflict is centered on a Black man “picking” the unambiguously Black woman over the so-called “exotic” non-Black woman."

dash harris

”

This is tied to the misogynoir phenomena of Black men who put non-Black women on pedestals, prizing, pursuing, and “preferring” non-Black Latinas and white women and even defending them when they do dehumanize Black women in public media forums. This “preference” cannot be divorced from its anti-Black power dynamics and its cishetero white-centering patriarchy that Black men, among people in general, have been indoctrinated under and in turn perpetuate and harm Black women with. Black women seem to be where their targets intersect and lock in as their punching bag. 

Mena’s chagrin, and subsequent table-flipping that caused the melee, was because Safaree, a rapper and Mena’s ex-husband and father to her children, “chose” to care more about a woman who indeed is not his wife nor his children’s mother. But what really got Mena to reveal herself was that it was a dark-skinned Black woman, someone who in her eyes was undeserving of the adoration and worship she, a non-Black woman, is entitled to, so she had been taught. This subverted social order infraction could not go by Mena without a slur to bring Black women back to the intended subalterned place. She wanted the guarantee of preference that she was promised.

“

"Non-Black women like her have been promised their whole lives that they deserve love and respect, withheld from Black women and over Black women in favor of women who look like her."

dash harris

”

It is a privileged position where Mena is most comfortable because she believes in the zero-sum game of anti-Black hierarchy. This hierarchy keeps her lights on. Mena’s social currency rides in her non-Blackness and her proximity to whiteness relative to Black women. Non-Black women like her have been promised their whole lives that they deserve love and respect, withheld from Black women and over Black women in favor of women who look like her. She clamors for and is enabled by the male gaze and, furthermore, is emboldened and protected by Black men who seek refuge from their own internalized anti-Blackness in the arms of women “with less baggage and attitude” than “the Black girls.” But, as the routine racialized aggressions these women create show, even this is a myth. Together, the bond of Black men who “prefer” non-Black women and non-Black women who revel this preference replicates white pathology and notions that Black women should remain subjugated under them both. 

So many non-Black Latinas, including mestizas, mixed-race, and racially ambiguous women, have launched and sustained their careers from Black media and specifically because of Black women, like Mona Scott-Young, the creator of the Love and Hip-Hop franchise, and Shaunie O’Neal, creator of Basketball Wives. Black media gives them access into Black spaces by their “POC” proximity for them to inevitably expose their anti-Blackness, because you can only hide your ideologies for so long. Now many are calling for Mena to finally be fired from the TV series. 

“

"Unambiguously Black women, whether Latina or not, are racialized as Black wherever we go and do not have the escape-hatch of racial ambiguity that other non-Black Afro-Latinas do."

dash harris

”

Recently, reality TV star Joseline Hernandez called out her College Hill classmate Amber Rose for building her career from Black media but “catering to white people.” Hernandez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, identifies as a Black woman and not Afro-Latina, a distinction that seems to be even more necessary with each passing day. Unambiguously Black women, whether Latina or not, are racialized as Black wherever we go and do not have the escape-hatch of racial ambiguity that other non-Black Afro-Latinas do. 

Hemispherically, Black women are the butts of “jokes” for non-Black, mixed-race, bi-racial, and racially ambiguous women. In 2016, Geisha Montes de Oca (who was 2008's Miss World Dominican Republic) mocked Black Dominican singer Amara La Negra on a popular variety show by wearing an Afro wig, butt pads, and blackface. In 2013, Black Brazilian actor Nayara Justino was dethroned from her title of Miss Globaleza carnival queen in favor of a light-skinned bi-racial woman after public outcry of Justino being “too Black.” She was also subjected to violent anti-Black attacks online that negatively impacted her health.

These viral reality TV moments unveil how anti-Blackness and misogyny are like a rite of passage for many non-Black Latinas. And these are only the recorded examples. As Santana noted on The Real, oftentimes, these are the messages non-Black Latinas were raised with and didn’t question or resist because they benefited from them. She noted that when she made her own viral anti-Black comments she was in her early 20s and that now, “27 with a son,” she knows better. But does age and motherhood disentangle anti-Blackness from someone’s core? It does not. Mena and Lozado are proof-positive it does not, because it takes a process of birthing yourself anew to address and eradicate this structural ill.

#Dear Erica Mena #You Can’t Co-Opt Black Culture & Hate Black Women #anti blackness #white washing #latinex lies #white privilege #white skin convenience

[pretentiousneurodivergentvampire]

"I will have my serpent's tongue--my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence." -Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Some context: Anzaldúa's chapter, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue," discusses her experiences with language (Chicana Spanish) and how it contributed to an awakening of class/group consciousness within her. Reinforcement of a patriarchal hierarchy through gendered grammar (Chicano/Latino as the masculine default); internalization of perceived "inferiority" of particular Spanish dialects breeding animosity amongst Spanish speakers; and censure of differing Spanish dialects in academia. Anzaldúa found empowerment in a cultural identity through language that has been historically marginalized.

I love this quote. As soon as I read it, I knew that I had to write about it, and how I might apply it to my own experiences. I've recently been having a bit of an identity crisis. I lack community. There are online spaces that I frequent, but they don't fulfill me. I suppose an online space can never truly bring the fulfillment I desire. I seek in-person community. Community of queer, trans, neurodivergent folks. I've yet to find one local to me that I feel safe and comfortable in.

In thinking about this, I remembered how isolated I've always been from my ethnic culture. My mother never taught my siblings and me Spanish, believing that we wouldn't need it in America. We never spent much time around her mother and her side of the family growing up (for justifiable reasons unrelated to culture). We never visited the Dominican Republic, instead opting to take the more "American" vacations on the rare occasions that we had one.

At 25 years old, I feel more disconnected from my Dominican heritage than ever. I don't blame my mother for this. I don't blame anyone, really. But it makes me think about what I may have been missing for most of my life. It doesn't help that I've inherited light skin from my father's side, making me feel like I have less of a right to call myself Dominican in comparison to my siblings. I have the benefit of passing as white, never failing to surprise others when I reveal that most of my family is Black. Part of me enjoys the series of expressions that cross their faces in the span of a second. Part of me feels sorrow, knowing that they'll look at me differently because they now know I'm mixed.

I take back what I said about not blaming anyone. I blame myself. I could learn more. I want to learn more. I will learn more. And maybe one day, I will feel like I can take pride in my heritage. Maybe I'm being unkind to myself, internalizing the inferiority Anzaldúa referred to, albeit not in the exact same way. All this to say, I haven't found my serpent's tongue yet. But I want to. My serpent's tongue will be queer. It will be trans. It will be feminine (my own femininity). It will be neurodivergent. It will be not just a political identity of my intersectional identities, but a personal identity, one that I can detach from an idea of "the personal is political." My serpent's tongue will incorporate all of the things that make me who I am. And I will use it to empower others.

#journal #feminism #intersectionality #neurodivergent #gender studies #trans #writing #queer writers

[emails-i-cant-send]

Hi I'm Este/Asterion, I have two names since I am genderfluid if you were wondering. I'd love to be your friend so why don't you come lay with be in the grass while the sun is shining upon us? I don't care what song that we play, or mess that we make just company now.

"We rot, thinkin' lots about nothing... - I'm bisexual and not cis perhaps genderfluid - I'm a Hispanic mestiza, I'm proud of my culture - I'm diagnosed with adhd - I love to draw and make edits and layouts - I love music so much - I'm a Taurus - My favorite color is lavender - I might be aro spec idk ...Yeah, I could spend a lifetime, Sitting here talkin"

"I became such a strange shape, such a strange shape From trying to fit in... - Pinterest - Instagram - Spotify

...and now I'm just a jigsaw"

"Only got 12 hours in L.A., no time to waste, We'll sneak up to the fire escape and wait for the rain, And most days, dear, you drive me insane...

I have many interests some of those being The hunger Games,Owl House, Dragon School, pjo, hoO, toa, mcga, Six, SAO, mean girls the musical and movie, Beetlejuice the musical and movie, Heathers the musical since I haven't got the chance to watch the movie, a lot of musicals! 36 questions, heartstopper, the MCU, and there is probably more but my mind is blank. I also really love Greek mythology.

... playin' your games, Why don't we both push past the pain, so we can say, We felt it meet me in the middle of midnight"

"In the middle of the night when I'm in this dream....

My blorbos are: Alex Fierro, Hunter/The Golden Guard, Nico Di Angelo, Hazel Levesque, Emira Blight, Amity Blight, Regina George, Lydia deetz, Peter Parker, kirito.oh. and @austinwehaveaproblem Those are all I can think of right now

...It's like a million little stars spelling out your name"

"That's my fucking best friend, best friend That's my fucking lifeline, that's my ride or die, likе...

OK FIRST OF ALL shoutout to my favorite person in the whole entire world @posionshade secondly shoutout to some of my greatest friends on here <;3 @orhideintheclosets @austinwehaveaproblem @trlalsofapollo @bianca-di-stangelo @chaoticsunshines @loverrrrrr @tay-tayhasmyheart @italian-wall-lizard @aqueerembrace

...that's my fucking hate you, but you know that that's a damn lie"

"Parla, la gente purtroppo parla Non sa di che cazzo parla.....

This is kinda my dni, anyway dni if you're racist, homophobic, biphobic, panphobic, transphobic, ableist, think taylor swift can do no wrong,pro autism speak, people who don't believe adhd is a disability, t*rfs, r*dfems, like the dsmp or are a precico shipper, like ol*via r*drigo (<- unless I followed you first) sabrina carpenter anti or josua bassett anti. Other than that you are welcome on my blog!

....Tu portami dove sto a galla Che qui mi manca I'aria"

"This is not music, this is life...

My favorite singers and bands are, Taylor swift, måneskin, Sabrina Carpenter, Avril Lavigne, fall out boy, Joshua bassett, Conan gray and halsey! I am a strong believer the pop and rock are the best genres ever! I am always open to new music suggestions so feel free to send me an ask!

...this is what I live for"

At last, as the sun went down you seemed to understand that is was time for me to go.

"You'll come back?" you say

"Always" I promised "The sun always comes back"

"We are friends now" I say "Call on me I will be there for you"

#Intro post #Tagging my fandoms so people can find me: #Taylor swift #Conan gray #Sabrina carpenter #The hunger games #Percy jackson #Pjo #Hoo #Toa #Riordanverse #Mcu #Alex fierro #Mcga #The owl house #Toh #Emira Blight #Hunter #Regina George #Mean girls #Beetlejuice #Beatleguese #Lydia deetz #Måneskin #Halsey #Avril lavigne #Fall out boy #Joshua bassett #Nico di Angelo #hazel levesque