#not gonna talk a lot on aave because it's not my post but I linked clonehub's post above

[lactoseintolerentswag]

Rise Characterizations

Last month I did an in-depth re-watch of rottmnt s1 to take some notes on writing the characters of rise from their perspective and such. Figured I'd share what I found, but I'm also posting this bc my docs have a nasty habit of blipping out of existence.

We'll start with Raph bc he's the oldest of course, but I'll post the others sep. bc this is gonna get long!!

Raph Character Notes

Language Habits:

Catchphrases: "like a boss", "smash"

Verbalizes his attacks such as "smash", "knuckle sandwich", "power smash jitsu", "tonfa power jitsu", "mystic punch jitsu"

Uses older song titles for surprised exclamations or in place of cursing, most notably "jumping jack flash!"

Uses aave/bae, For example: 'em instead of them, 'ey instead of they, 'cause instead of because, forgoes the g in ing words (going becomes goin')

Uses less and less grammar the more he's stressed, and his voice will come to a higher pitch

Will speak in a softer tone to his little brothers if he's concerned about hurting their feelings. Aka babying them

Mixes up both metaphors and idioms. Would be one to say how the turn tables unironically

Does say "hero" a lot, lost count, especially in phrases like "hero town"

Refers to his brothers as "boys" or "fellas"

Refers to Splinter as "pop(s)" most often

Refers to strangers he's directly talking to as "bubs" or "hoss"

Personality:

Protective of his family

Plays up the hero act/has a strong sense of duty and justice

Impatient, rushes in without a plan (pre-movie), doesn't finish books until the end, falls asleep during "boring movies"

Oblivious, doesn't read into things beyond surface level. Struggles with empathy when something is beyond his understanding, but is still very emotional

Center of responsibility for his brothers, but also has a reckless sense of fun. As long as it's him doing the stupid unsafe thing it's fine

Carries the weight, in a literal sense he piggy backs his brothers, but will also use his body as a shield from danger. Unfortunately this also means he takes his brothers a little less seriously (Mikey the most common victim), and will try and either protect them from everything or as an oldest sibling everything has go "his way"

Doesn't do well in solitude. Needs to be looking after people to feel functional, and needs to be around people to feel safe

Clumsy, "takes horrible pictures", isn't very good at hiding, he's a big guy so it probably took a lot of time to find balance

A sweet guy who still won't shy from making fun of his family. Leo tends to be the brunt of his teasing since he is the most annoying, but he will also poke Donnie on his dramatics

Likes cute things!!! Has a teddy bear collection and loves animals. It's so cool how this isn't played off as a joke and he's still just as masculine for liking pink and cutesy stuff

Likes fighting!!! Gets a lot of energy out defeating bad guys (where he directs his anger towards), the one who is shown to train the most, and also weight lifts in his spare time

Doesn't do well under pressure, here the anger comes out the most. He gets stressed when it's all on him, especially since he tends to mess up the most in these moments

Miscellaneous:

Second to unlock mystic powers

Nicknames/codenames: "raph-a-doodle" by leo, "red rover" by april, "red king" by donnie

Teddy bear names: Doctor Huggenstein, Captain Snuggles, Cheech

Stinks: fear stink, amazement stink, sneaking up on people stink, victory stink

Seems to be less afraid of rabbits and more afraid of puppets

Went on his first solo mission at 13

Cannot lift a bus, at age 15

Thought about discussing fighting style, but I'm not as familiar with that concept and I've seen a couple posts dissecting such topic. So we'll end here for now. Hope this was helpful!!! I'll post the rest of the boys later and link here

Leo is up!!

Donnie is up!!

Mikey is up!!

Splinter is up!!

April is up!!

Cassandra is up!!

#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #rottmnt #rottmnt raph #rottmnt raphael #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #character analysis #long post #fanfic #writing #critter talks

[loki-zen]

The AAVE policing thing gets much worse than you even suggest, in that there's typically no objective way of determining whether a turn of phrase was specifically invented and popularized by black people, just vibes. Insofar as the facts exist, they're only there to back up the vibes. The phenomenon is bad even in theory but the theory isn't the practice. It's racialized class policing, a kind of ass-backwards version of an archetypal middle-class 1950s busybody racist demanding her kids straighten up and act white. It is one of the most intensely racially hateful memes I have ever seen take off, a cartoonish demand for full cultural segregation.

I believe that the tense-aspect thingies I was primarily talking about have been pretty solidly and credibly linked to AAVE, although it's certainly also true that people on social media have of late made a lot of wild claims about phrasings originating in AAVE when that's certainly not uncomplicatedly/obviously true.

I've heard it claimed of phrases that, in my experience of it, just generally became popular on tumblr (a place where you don't know what race most people you casually interact with are!) and I don't know where they originated, and certainly can't falsify the claim that they're AAVE-derived (or 'invented and popularised by black people', which I would say is a slightly* different claim), but also they were just claims presented not only without evidence, but in the sort of tone that suggests asking for it is gonna get you called racist.

I have also heard it claimed of at least one word that I know to be just generally in use in certain parts of the US, but the weird relationship with geography racially-inflected dialects have means that there are also places where it's primarily said by black people. More wanking about that under the cut

Anyway, I agree. It's worryingly racebrained thinking to me to think that a Race can have like a collective copyright on something how does that even work, and it is as you say basically culturally segregationist.

I think it's often coming from a place of genuine hurt - posts about this stuff often have parts where they go into all of the horrible bullshit that has gone on in terms of devaluing the amazing cultural contributions of black americans, or repackaging and selling them with white faces attached and not giving credit. It's absurd how long it took Sister Rosetta to get in the rock and roll hall of fame. It's white supremecist bullshit that people see AAVE constructions as 'ungrammatical' and 'not proper English' when they're actually grammatically rich and incredibly useful and easy to understand once you know what they mean.

But this isn't the solution. And the people saying it is will say it's not my place to say that. To which I would respond that 'you're the wrong colour' has never been a valid rebuttal to anything and why would it start now.

(To be maximally charitable to these claims, I can sooorta see how someone living in one of the latter places might decide that if their white friend who is from here starts saying it they are more likely to be aping nearby black people than Texans or something?? but that doesn't excuse claiming point-blank "Y'all is AAVE." This also seems like a good time to note that since I've only ever heard this shit on social media I cannot fully know (a) the racial demographics of the people being dumb about this stuff - this could be crazy 'Ally' shit who knows - or (b) how much is sincere vs trolling.)

*'slightly' in this context because implicitly the people claiming things are invented and popularised by black people still mean black people from the USA. 'Invented and popularised by black people' could also be a completely different claim from 'AAVE-derived' if you were talking about, idk, reggae, or aspects of MLE.

#i realise that i haven't actually defended or supported the 'this is not the solution' stance there #but im tired so im not doing that now

[nevermindirah]

Do you have any thoughts on the use of AAVE for Nile (or lack thereof) in TOG fanfiction? I've been reading some Book of Nile fic and some writers seem to write her as a Millennial™ (using words like "fave" and "woke") but never acknowledge her Blackness in her patterns of speech. I know we don't see her use as much AAVE in the films, but I would argue she's in situations where code-switching would be valued (first in a "professional" environment in the army, then around a group of non-Black strangers).

Hi anon! I have many thoughts on this and I'm honored you asked me! But I should start by saying I'm white and any thoughts Black fans and especially Black American fans have on this that they want to share would be beyond lovely. (I'm not gonna tag anybody bc that feels rude but please add onto this post if any of y'all see this and want to!)

The main reason I personally avoid AAVE for Nile in my own fics is because I'm not Black. But Nile-centric fics by Black writers tend to avoid using much of it too, at least from what I've noticed/understood, and my guess is it's largely for the reason you mention, that she's in situations that encourage code-switching.

In movie canon Nile is highly competent at tailoring her language to each situation she finds herself in. This fantastic linguistics analysis meta shows how skillfully Nile chooses her vocabulary and grammar to meet her goals with different conversation partners in different contexts. In comics canon Nile had a bunch of different civilian jobs before joining the Marines, so she would've had experience code-switching in the ways that made sense for all those different contexts as well as the Marines and her family and high school and wherever else she spent her time before we met her. And now she's spending her time with a handful of immortals none of whom are native English speakers and a fellow Black American but one with a Queen's English UK accent whose professional experience is in the CIA where high-status code-switching is often an absolute must for success or even survival.

Fics featuring Nile are charged with extrapolating from that to how it might show up in her use of language that she's coping with a traumatic separation from her family and her career and pretty much everything she's ever known and now she needs to be able to make herself understood to people who seem to care about her and each other but are super duper in crisis, three (soon to be four) of whom predate Modern English entirely and the only one who's anywhere near her contemporary she's not supposed to talk to for a century. All of these people are telling her that pretty much any contact with any mortals poses an existential threat to her and the rest of the group. How the FUCK is she supposed to cope with that, like, generally? And would it be a more effective way for her to cope if she talked to Andy Joe and Nicky using the speech patterns that she used to use with her mom and brother, to at least retain that part of her identity even if it means having to do a lot of explaining, or would it meet her needs better to prioritize Andy Joe and Nicky understanding what she means with her words over using the particular words and grammar forms she used with her family?

I've seen several fics, both Nile-centric / BoN and otherwise, explore this a little bit in how/whether Nile uses Millennial™ speak. It's often a theme in Nile texting Booker despite the exile because of the popular headcanon that he as The Tech Guy is the only other immortal who understands memes. But Nile's much-younger-than-Booker mom probably uses Boomer and/or Gen X memes and Andy has been adapting to new communication styles for forever as evidenced by her canon high level of fluency with standard-American-accented English.

Which brings us back to people avoiding AAVE because they're not Black and they don't want to make mistakes (or they're not Black and they don't want to get yelled at for making mistakes, though I think many people overestimate how much they'll get yelled at while underestimating how much these mistakes can hurt). I can imagine some Black fans hold back from using much AAVE in fic because they don't want to share in-group stuff with white people who are likely to then adopt and ruin it, as white people so often do with Black cultural stuff. Some links about this including a great Khadija Mbowe video. I'm saying this gently, anon, because you might not know: woke, an example you cited as Millennial™ speak, is AAVE, and that's gotten erased by so many white people appropriating it and using it incorrectly online.

And also there's the part where fandom is a hobby and you never know when you're reading a fic that's the very first thing someone's ever written outside of a school assignment. This cultural considerations of language shit takes a level of effort and skill that not everybody puts into every fic, or even could if they wanted to because they haven't had time to build their skills yet. It's definitely easier for non-Black fans to project our millennial feels onto Nile than to do the layers of research and self-reflection it requires to depict what Blackness might mean to Nile, and it's not surprising that often people sharing their hobby creations on the internet have gone the easier route. There's not even necessarily shame in doing what's easier. It's just frustrating and often hurtful when structural white supremacy means that 3-dimensional Black characters are rare in media and thoughtful explorations of them in fandom are seen by the majority of fans as not-easy to make and therefore Nile Freeman, the main character in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood, has the least fic and meta and art made about her of our 5 main immortals.

I've been active in different fandoms off and on for twenty years and I barely managed to write 5,000 words about Sam Wilson across multiple different fics in the 7 years since I fell in love with him. There's an alchemy to which characters we connect with, and on top of that which characters we connect with in a way that causes us to create stuff about them. Something about Nile Freeman finally tipped me over the edge from a voracious reader to a voracious writer. It's not for me to judge which characters speak to other individuals to the level of creating content about them, but I do think it's important for us to notice, and then work to fight, the pattern where across this fandom as a whole Nile gets way less content, and way less depth in so much of the content that's in theory about her, than any of these other characters.

Anyway, back to language. My two long fics feature Nile with several Black friends — Copley and OCs and cameos from other media — but all of those characters except Alec Hardison from Leverage aren't American. It's very possible I'm guilty of stereotyping Black British speech patterns in I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore. I watched hours and hours of Black haircare YouTube videos in the research for that fic and I modeled my OCs' speech patterns on what I heard from some of those YouTubers as well as what I've heard people like John Boyega and Idris Elba saying in interviews, but the thing about doing your best is you still might fuck up.

I'm slowly making progress on my WIP where Nile and Sam Wilson are cousins, and what ways of talking with a family member might be authentic for Nile is a major question I need to figure out. For that, I'm largely modeling my writing choices on how I hear my Black friends and colleagues talking to each other. I haven't overheard colleagues talking in an office in a long-ass time, but back when that was a thing, I remember seeing a ton of nuance in the different ways many of my Black colleagues would talk to each other. Different people have different personalities! And backgrounds! And priorities! A few jobs ago my department was about 1/3 Black and we worked closely with Obama administration staff many of whom were Black and there was SO MUCH VARIETY in how Black people talked to each other, about work and workplace-appropriate personal stuff, where I and other white coworkers could hear. There are a few work friends in particular who I have in my head when I'm trying to imagine how Sam and Nile might talk to each other. From the outside looking in, God DAMN is shit complicated, intellectually and interpersonally and spiritually, for Black people who are devoting their professional lives to public service in the United States.

One more aspect of this that I have big thoughts on but I need to take extra care in talking about is the idea of acknowledging Nile's Blackness in her patterns of speech. There's no one right way to be Black, and Nile's a fictional character created by a white dude but there are plenty of real-life Black Americans who don't use much or even any AAVE, for reasons that are complicated because of white supremacy. (Highly highly recommend this video by Shanspeare on the harms of the Oreo stereotype.)

Something that's not the same but has enough similarity that I think it's worth talking about is my personal experience with authenticity and American Jewish speech patterns. My Jewish family members don't talk like they're in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and I've known lots of people who do talk that way (or the millennial version of it), some of whom have questioned my Jewishness because I don't talk that way. That hurts me. Sometimes when another Jew tells me some shit like "I've never heard a Jew say y'all'd've," I can respond with "well now you have asshole, bless your Yankee-ass heart," because the myth of Dixie is a racist lie but I will totally call white Northerners Yankees when they're being shitty to me for being Southern, and this particular Jew fucking revels in using "bless your heart" with maximum polite aggression, especially with said Yankees. But sometimes I don't have it in me to say anything and it just quietly hurts having an important part of me disbelieved by someone who shares that important part of me. The sting isn't quite the same when non-Jews disbelieve or discount my Jewishness, but that hurts too.

Who counts as authentically Jewish is a messy in-group conversation and it doesn't really make sense to explain it all here. Who counts as authentically Jewish is a matter of legal status for immigration, citizenship, and civil rights in Israel, and it's my number 2 reason after horrific treatment of Palestinians that I'm antizionist. But outside that extremely high-stakes legal situation, it can just feel really shitty to not be recognized as One Of Us, especially by your own people.

It can also feel really shitty to be The Only One of Your Kind in a group, even if that group is an immortal chosen family who all loves each other dearly. Sometimes especially in a situation like that where you know those people love you but there are certain things they don't get about you and will never quite be able to. I'm definitely projecting at least a little bit of my "lonely Jew who will be alone again for yet another Jewish holiday" stuff onto Nile when at the end of I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore she's thinking about being the only Black immortal and moving away from the community she'd built with a mostly-Black group of mortals in that fic. Maybe that tracks, or maybe that's fucked up of me.

Basically, this got very long but it's complicated, writing about experiences that aren't your own takes skill which in turn takes time and practice to build, writing about experiences not your own that our society maligns can cause a lot of harm if done badly, it can also cause a lot of harm when a large enough portion of a fandom just decides to nope out of something that's difficult and risky because then there's just not much content about a character who deserves just a shit ton of loving and nuanced content, people are individuals and two people who come from the exact same cultural context might show that influence in all kinds of different ways, identity is complicated, language is complicated, writing is hard, and empathy and humility and doing our best aren't a guarantee of avoiding harm but they do go a long way in helping people create thoughtful content about a character as awesome and powerful and kind and messy and scared and curious and WORTHY as Nile Freeman.

#nile freeman #linguistics #TOG POC Love Fest #nileweek2021 #tog meta #tog #long post #mine #antiblackness #jewish things #hi i'm an antizionist jew no i don't really want to talk about it

[youtuberswithalex]

hold on i found all of my old Christian music and im emotional, the nostalgia, so im just gonna do a react post--

first song was Hope is Coming by Nate Deezy and oh boy. oh boy. i met the dude and knowing how he talks and listening to his music. oh boy, he was kind of mimicking AAVE and it’s. not great to listen to now. the song is a bop music wise but. yikes

Overcomer by Mandisa. I used to BOP to this song and you know what? I still do. I saw her in concert and she was AMAZING

The The Earth Is Yours came on, which already was one of my favorites, and it was the cover by Gungor (or their original? I can’t remember) and I almost started crying because. Gungor’s music always made me feel really close to God, like He was my best friend. and now I kind of feel like I’ve lost a friend in stopping being Christian, and though I know I can still pray and stuff while still not being Like That, it just... hurts too much because it was so weaponized against me. I miss relying on Him for everything though.

Pause to get lunch

Good Morning by Mandisa and TobyMac. Hearing “top of the morning to ya” set off a visceral reaction to high five the air. also hearing them interact at the end is adorable

COME ALIVE BY CROWDER OHHH IT’S A BOP!!! 

YOUR LOVE!!! 

IS A LEMONADE

call me out by gungor?!?! how could i have forgotten this one!!!!! OH MY GOD AND I JUST REALIZED??? HOW RELEVANT THIS IS????? IF YOU TAKE OUT THE CHRISTIAN STUFF THIS IS STILL HOW I FEEL?????? CALL ME OUT WHEN I DO THINGS WRONG PLEASE

could i......... do a sanders sides animatic to this

WHITE MAN BY THE MICHAEL GUNGOR BAND. THE SAME BAND BUT A DIFFERENT NAME. THIS SONG NEEDS TO BE PLAYED TO EVERY CHRISTIAN WHITE SUPREMECIST. GOD IS NOT A MAN. GOD IS NOT A WHITE MAN. GOD IS NOT A WHITE MAN SITTING ON A CLOUD. GOD IS LOVE AND HE LOVES EVERYONE.

i just copied and pasted a link to the song on facebook jfkdlsjf pray for me (no pun intented)

Beautiful Day by Jamie Grace... I’m pretty sure I first heard this song on Veggietales? or maybe i freaked out when I saw it on Veggietales bc I already loved this song lmao. But it is still... you guessed it... a bop

i also just realized how much more diverse my music was back then versus now... out of the four artists I’ve listened to, half (if not 3 of them? i don’t remember what Gungor looks like) are POC. bruh current alex, I know all you listen to now is the RWBY soundtrack, but like. Diversify my dude

OHH HEAVEN BY GUNGOR??? THE CHILLEST CHRISTIAN SONG I ADORED

YOU ARE!!!!!!!!! CROWDER AGAIN

oh my god. oh my god jesus freak by newsboys. this song is fucking WILD to see in concert. the drummer goes up on a platform that goes sideways and starts SPINNING. while he’s going H A R D. also this song totally matches up with what i listen to now, style wise??

oh my god im getting dizzy from jamming to this one

R E S T A R T WE’RE GETTING ALL THE NEWSBOYS JAMS SUDDENLY

if anyone’s wondering what im doing as i listen to these, i’m currently checking out these artists’ twitters to see if they’re like... White Supremacist christians. Michael Gungor has made me happiest by blatantly retweeting and talking about the BLM protests, along with a tweet stating firmly that he accepts LGBTQ+ people. I knew I could trust this guy. I followed him. Crowder didn’t have anything blatantly for or against but he did make one post about not hating people using that one Dr Suess book, so like. he can slide for now but im not following him

DO LIFE BIIIIG!!!! JAMIE GRACE!!!!! THIS WAS THE ONE ON VEGGIETALES... WAS IT??? IT WAS AT THE END OF THE STAR TREK KNOCK OFF, I THINK???

OH BABY, FISHERS OF MEN BY NEWSBOYS

GO-O-O-O, GO-O-O-O-O

please be my strength by Gugnor? I don’t remember thohhhhh my heart i remember now

i used to harmonize to this all the time. it was one of the first ones i did that with :(

Steal My Show!! it’s pretty alright still. TobyMac didn’t really Get Me Worshipping like he did with a lot of other people, but I respect him at least-- wait let me check his twitter

alright i can respect him, he’s alright

Ah. Oceans by Hillsong United, AKA the song that every church-goer in 2015 hated because everyone played it every week. good reason to-- it’s really good still. are people still sick of it?? I remember holding my hands up to this a few times. and harmonizing many more

.......but oh man is it long. i do remember that now. eight minutes.......... why....... i definitely cried my eyes out and calmed down at conference one time during the length of this song

just realized that Jesus is a Friend of Mine isn’t on this playlist. Wow, Alex. Wow. What a waste of a Christian playlist.

THAT’S HOW YOU CHANGE THE WORLD

it’s so unfair that so many Christian artist put out That Kind of christian music, while Newsboys just. stole all of the talent. like come on guys spread it a bit. not EVERY song has to be a bop, you know /j

Speak Life by tobyMac. i... think im gonna skip this one jfkdlsj im just so not in the mood for this. He is definitely that That Kind of Christian Music style

LORD YOU ARE GOOD AND YOUR MERCY ENDURES FOREVERRR OH HOW WE JAMMED TO THIS AT CONFERENCEoh god it’s a live version and you can hear the Presbyterian Clap in the crowd

OH MY GOD MUSCLE MEMORY JUST BROUGHT BACK THE DANCE THAT WE HAD AT CONFERENCE OH MY GOD I COMPLETELY FOR GOT ABOUT THIS

i wish it brought back more than just the bridge before the chorus lmfao

alright skipping the rest of this because oh boy is it repetitive

STRONGER BY MANDISAAAA i forgot about this one omg. i loved this one, it used to be my Uplifting Song

Got another tobyMac and just skipped it jfkdsl

OH GOD’S NOT DEAD BY NEWSBOYS the movie was a lot of christians-are-oppressed propaganda but the song is pretty good still, i catch myself singing it sometimes still tbh

TRADING MY SORROWS?!?!?!?!? TRADING MY SHAME???!!!!! LAYING THEM DOWN FOR THE JOY OF THE LORD?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? A BOOOOP

this was another one we had a dance for!!!! i remember this one more bc it was so much easier lmfao

HAPPY DAY!!!!!! THIS WAS MY FAVORITE ONE TO SING AT THE BIG MORNING AND EVENING MEETINGS AT CONFERENCE!!!!!! but this version is so slooooow but i couldn’t find any other version

....You Have Me. The song I always said that, when I die and go to Heaven, I’m going to find God and dance with Them to this song. Maybe, if They’re up there, we still will. This song gave me so much comfort in a time when I felt so alone.

I hope They aren’t mad at me for abandoning them. I hope They understand why I stopped going to church and listening to my parents about Them. That I remember who They truly are supposed to be, and that it’s not Them I left, but the church, and I struggled to disconnect the two. If They’re real... I hope they know that. And I hope They aren’t upset with me. I hope They know I’m sorry.

Fuck. I’m crying.

They DO still me. They DO still have my heart. But it’s the people that pretend to know Them that ruined me. I need to find a way to sever the connection. I want my best friend back. I miss Them. I miss being able to talk to Them about things and trust that They’ll take care of things and take care of *me* because They love me, no matter what my parents say, and They know who I am and They don’t love me despite that, but because of it.

THAT’S what I was taught. THAT’S the God I worshipped. Not the fake one the White Supremacists have taken hold of and ruined. The God that gave up Their only son to prove to us that They love us.

I don’t understand a lot about religion anymore. But I miss Them. I miss that comfort and love.

Fuck. Maybe that’s a good place to end this. If you made it this far, congrats! Thanks for coming on this journey with me. It was a long one. You’ve seen a piece of my heart that I’ll probably stamp back into the closet within a couple of hours lol

#long post #alex communicates #religion tw #abuse mention #caps #there's a lot of caps here jfdklsj

[seventeenisgay]

heyo do you have receipts of edward avila being antiblack? im not denying it but I’m talking abt how he’s trash w my friend & she’s asking for proof of problematic-ness besides the kyla thing n I can’t rlly find anything w a google search lol 😅😅

In an old video he said the n-word. After getting shit for it, he deleted the video. He also replied to a fan’s comment about it on IG and said “um actually I have black friends so”. Can’t link it to you BUT … If you want general shit-talking, I’m ready to go in.

First off, everyone and their mama want to mention how he can’t match his foundation, but why don’t we mention how he advocates skin whitening? How he mentioned preferring lighter shin is “just a preference”? It’s okay to say the n-word and use AAVE, so long as he’s not dark skinned, right? And it’s okay, because he has black friends!

Why don’t we talk about how he thinks he’s a creative trendsetter, but is really a one trick pony who uses one eye shadow shade and will talk about “YES QUEEN! SLAY!” If he wasn’t a “sassy gay”, none of you would’ve cared about his channel to begin with.

Let’s mention the fact that he posts a 20 minute video detailing why Kyla, a 15 year old girl, should lose weight. (Not gonna get too into it, because the subject has been covered already by a lot of people.)

Let’s talk about him and his crusty ass lips talking shit about people being “triggered”, when his ass can’t stop making ranting videos, snaps, and Instagram stories whenever someone says something “mean” to him. How he’ll direct his followers to the profile of whoever said the comment, knowing his fans will attack them.

My favorite thing is how he thinks he knows so much about KPOP now that he supposedly has friends in the industry. He talks like he knows all about Korea, but is speaking Beginner Korean at best and sounding like a Koreaboo at worst (which is most of the time).

Oh, and let’s not forget how he sexualizes Wonho on a platform with over 500k subscribers in Korea. Especially if he DOES have an “in” to the industry, how can he think this is okay? No one’s ever heard of someone treating a MOC as simply a sex object, it’s so original.

And of course how he puts out songs with his auto-tuned to hell, lame attempt singing and forces us to watch his horrible excuse for body rolls, but it’s Kyla’s fault for being bigger, right? Oh, but because he’s a pretty asian boy his 13 year old fans will let it slide.

He’ll say “Aoora and I aren’t dating, stop saying that”, but will like comments on his videos insinuating that they are. He purposefully says sexual things about Aoora to feed into the fetishization of mlm to please his disgusting Koreeabo audience.

But, to end it all off, here’s my favorite image of the night:

#I couldn't say some of the stuff I wanted! #because some of y'all would've cried that I was being too mean #but if I see him on the street he better square up #I'm tired #Anonymous #edward avila

[jvhdb]

i'm very emotional about scots and i don't even speak it. i'd love to talk about it with you any time

YAY

i’m no linguist but i know i have strong emotions about how my opinions were formed based on english opinions of my country. i think, had the english not interfered, we would be perfectly fine with how we speak, and scots would be seen as less of an embarrassing/funny language to speak on a regular basis and more of an ‘actual’ language. i always use the anecdote that, when i was in primary school giving a presentation, i once said “wah-uhr” instead of “wotter” for “water” (bad description, but think of it as saying ‘otter’ without the T sound and replacing the O with the same A you’d say in the word ‘attic’? it’d sound something like ‘ah-uhr’), and my teacher told me i sounded ridiculous and to stop talking slang, and refused to let me continue until i did say ‘wotter’. why was that? in hindsight it’s so ridiculous, because it’s the same word. on top of that, it was a school in a poor area in the east end of glasgow, why was a teacher telling me to speak english in a majority scots area? i never understood. same thing happened when i DID pronounce the T, but pronounced the A wrong, pronouncing ‘water’ in the same way you’d pronounce ‘batter’.

it was really jarring for 8 year old me, who came from an east-end household where everyone spoke purely scots, in an east-end street where all my neighbours spoke purely scots, and went to an east-end school that spoke english because scots made me sound wrong. i thought it sounded perfectly fine, and the bottom line was i could speak english just fine too! I just chose not to because... why should i? it was not the majority language. why would i speak english in a conversation when the person i was talking to was speaking scots? maybe not as stark a difference, but it would be like speaking german to a friend who is responding to you in french. you’d look like a fool and maybe even a bit of a dickhead. the only people that spoke purely english in my school were teachers who grew up learning english was the prime language and scots was slang, everyone else around me spoke scots. english was the minority language, yet scots was seen as the inferior language.

i don’t have much of a cohesive discussion of it because my only real thoughts are “can i say this? does it sound like slang?” and “god i hope some clown doesnt chat at me about what language is this and is this even english or whatever”

i guess the bottom line is it does sound kinda funny to people who don’t speak it, but i find that’s usually because, like me, they were taught that scots = slang english, so when they hear words like ‘dinnae’ and ‘honnae’ they immediately compare them to ‘didn’t’ and ‘haven’t’, because scots kinda... uses the same rules as english, just with different words. there’s even a bias against scots in places that shouldn’t have it. my dad recently made fun of my purely scots speaking neighbour for saying ‘honnae’ instead of ‘haven’t’, when he, on a constant basis, says ‘aye’ and ‘dinnae’ and ‘huvnae’. he said ‘honnae’ isn’t a real english word. of course it’s not! it’s a scots word! if we all just stopped comparing a non-english language to english...

throughout my life i’ve been told i sound like a ned, like a wee hairy, like an idiot, for speaking my first language, and i used to agree and speak as “proper” as i could, but i guess somewhere down the line i stopped caring. i can speak english when it’s necessary. i type mainly in english because i know that’s what people understand, but i also find that typing in scots brings about some amount of fucking clowns, like i said above, who insist on asking what language i’m speaking, or saying ‘what does this say?’ or some clever remark that was never funny to begin with. no really, it’s not fucking funny, you’re really not funny.

and i suppose some of my frustration comes from that too. most of the scottish twitter boom involves a lot of scots, and i think, mostly, people just find it funny because it’s written ‘funny’. a lot of the stuff posted isn’t... that funny. and most of them posted are just english people trying to cash in on a language they make fun of on a constant basis. similar to when white people make fun of people who say ‘bae’ then say things like ‘on fleek’ -- of course there’s a big disparity between scots and aave and the appropriation of the two, but for examples sake, that’s how it is. anyway, most of the comments being made in the tweets are as simple as ‘the weather is bad, it’s raining’, but because it’s written funny, people take it as something hilarious. not the comment itself, but the ‘backwards’ and Obviously-Not-English way it’s written. scots itself is a joke, and it’s tiring, especially because i speak scots much more comfortably than i speak english, but the worry that some smart-arse is gonna jump in and turn my text post popular by insulting and laughing at me and my language forces me to keep to english. sometimes i consider making a blog where i can comfortably speak scots just to avoid people like that.

not to mention, and maybe this is just a personal preference, but the sound of myself and other scottish people speaking english makes my skin crawl! the scottish accent is not meant for primarily english speech, at least not to me. it sounds so forced and cringey. maybe some people find it sexy, but usually when they say ‘ah scottish accents are so sexy...’ they link to, like, scottish tv presenters who need to specifically speak English to reach a bigger audience, and you can always tell those people don’t speak english primarily and are trying their absolute best to sound “sophisticated” for television. 

anyway. i really don’t mind scottish people who speak english primarily, because as i’ve complained about, there’s a large stigma against us who don’t speak english primarily, and some people just feel more comfortable speaking english! but i don’t, i never have, i get embarrassed by my english pronunciations, and i’m tired of being told that’s wrong of me and makes me less of a person. i live in scotland, i’ll speak scots until someone needs me to speak english, because i don’t see why i should have to make things awkward for myself because some english brat thought my language was too ugly for them.

i can’t remember where i was going with this, but my point is, i’m tired of how people treat scotland as a whole, and the language aspect is just one source of severe frustration that i can at least rebel against with certainty.

#long post #iiiit noooo liiiiike the anti-scots... ANGRY... rudy no english #autisticpadfoot #curious Nerds

[snarktheater]

Could you not say qu**r so often, please? Or at least tag it? Alternatives could be SGA or trans (depending on which part you're referring to) or LGBT? It's uncomfortable to quite a lot of people if it's used as an umbrella term too. Thank you

While I’m not interested in delving into that discourse on this blog…well, I guess it was gonna happen sooner or later. 

So just to be clear, before I say anything else, let me preface this post by saying that I’m going to state my position on this, but I will not admit any further discussion on the subject on this blog. You’re free to talk to me @talysalankil​ if you feel like having further discussion, but this blog isn’t the right place to do so. Also I’m going to use links from my personal blog because it’s just easier. But frankly if you want better sources on the subject, they’re out there.

Warning for massive wall of text. I tried to structure it, but there you go.

“Queer” has been reclaimed for decades. Many people who are much more knowledgeable than myself have pointed out that it’s been used at least as long as LGBT as an umbrella term (and that it was reclaimed before SGA was even invented), and it has the benefit of being inclusionary. The fact that is a historical slur cannot and should not be ignored, but the thing is, there is literally not a single word in use to refer to people who aren’t cis and straight that hasn’t been used as a slur at one point or another. Fuck’s sake, people still use “gay” today as a derogatory term, even when discussing things that have nothing to do with sexuality.

Meanwhile, SGA is an acronym that takes its root from conversion therapy (yes, really; SGA discoursers have claimed otherwise but survivors of conversion therapy attest to it), so I’m pretty sure it is equally trigger or even more triggering that queer to people.

SGL (same-gender loving) is a less historically charged acronym that I feel less strongly about for that reason, but it also comes from AAVE and I feel like there’s an element of cultural appropriation for me to use it as a white person, just like I wouldn’t use two-spirits because it’s a native american term. 

But that’s not my only issue with either acronym. See, the issue I have with SGA/SGL are multiple, and I’m going to put a cut here because this is getting out of hand:

It is an inherently binarist concept. Meaning, it either excludes nonbinary people entirely, since for many of them, the concept of “same gender” is compeltely irrelevant; or it partially erases nonbinary identities by grouping them together as “male-aligned” or “female-aligned”, i.e. implying they’re “basically a man” or “basically a woman”. Which, even if that is something some nonbinary people do identify with, is not something anyone should be entitled to force on people. Plus, you know, I guess people who aren’t on the male/female spectrum or agender people don’t exist at all and/or don’t belong in the community according to those people?

Bisexuality and polysexuality does not necessarily include “SGA”, even for cis male/female people. Implying that a bi person is straight if they experience attraction for the opposite binary gender and for nonbinary people is, once again, erasing those nonbinary people’s identities.

Because of these two points, the concept of SGA is inherently transphobic, since you cannot use it without assuming people’s gender.

This also adds a shade of exclusion of intersex people, whose status with regards to the community has always been complicated. Some intersex people don’t want to be included, some do. But “SGA and trans” doesn’t leave room for those who do, but don’t identify as trans (and those people exist), to join the community, even though they deserve a place.

Bisexual and polysexual people are constantly erased, and reducing their right to belong to the community as their attraction to their own gender is harmful rhetoric even for those who do experience that attraction (such as myself). It is the kind of thinking that leads to saying they’re “basically gay and using bisexual to ease into it” or that they’re “basically straight and just experimenting/lying” (the latter is particularly directed at women, especially if they are in a committed relationship with men, while the former is particularly directed at men, including myself). I am not “basically gay” and I don’t want to use an umbrella term for my community that reduces me to that in all but name.

More biphobia: it assumes that there’s such a thing as “straight passing privilege” and that anyone who’s not presently dating someone from their own gender is benefitting from that. That line of thought literally started off as biphobic rhetoric. Oh, and, you know, “straight passing privilege” is just being in the closet. Kind of like how TERFS say that trans women experience male privilege instead of being trans women in the closet. Apparently the closet only applies to you if you’re gay.

The unifying experience of the community is not homophobia. I mean, the fact that you have to use “SGA and/or trans” should be proof enough that you’re already adding trans people as an afterthought. But beyond that, biphobia is a different beast from homophobia, as is transphobia, as is aphobia. They stem from a similar form of societal bigotry, and there is intersection (a bi person dating someone of the same gender will probably experience similar issues as a gay couple, corrective rape which lesbians and ace people are both targeted by), but there are also differences of specificities (I already mentioned bi erasure; ace/aro people are targeted for being “mentally ill”; and I don’t think I have to explain the specificities of transphobia in a world where “bathroom bills” is a phrase that exists)

As others have pointed out, the phrasing makes it sound like the community started with “SGA people” and then was gracious enough to include trans people, which is historical revisionism.

The queer label offers grey areas for people who need time to figure out their own identity or just cannot place their identity on the existing, mainstream labels. SGA does the exact opposite of that by forcing people to place themselves on one side or another of a pretty ill-defined line.

Even if it weren’t for any of these points, the term has now been claimed as the rallying cry for exclusionary LGBT+ people, particularly to target ace and aro people. And by that I mean it started of as that, but let’s pretend it was already around and was claimed by those people.  Well, I will not stand for that, just like I’m not standing by TERF rhetorics. Interestingly enough, “queer is a slur” only emerged as discourse at the same time (and usually from the same people) who tried to enforce that exclusion.

LGBT+ aphobes have time and again shown that they were recycling biphobic and transphobic rhetorics (as I’ve shown myself earlier in this list), and in many cases, have proven to be the same people who used biphobic and transphobic rhetorics a few years ago, and that they haven’t given up on those views, merely grown more careful about where and how they advertise them.

If you want more I suggest you run a search for “SGA” on my main blog. It’ll be a lot of the same idea as what I just summarized here, just with more details.

So…yeah. If anything, I do not want to be included under the SGA umbrella, even though I am a bisexual man who so far has only ever dated other men. Well, one other man, but my dating history is kind of irrelevant anyway. Point is, I’m not using that umbrella. And I have every right to reclaim queer since…well, I just said I’m a bi man, which I’m pretty sure that should be enough.

I don’t have as many issues with LGBT, but at the same time, the acronym has also been pushed as “it’s LGBT and only LGBT therefore anyone who’s not lesbian, gay, bi or trans doesn’t belong” by the same people, enough that it feels sour in my mouth. I still use it liberally, although I try to use LGBT+ or other variations, such as LGBTQ, LGBTQIA, LGBTQIA+, LGBTQIAP+, etc, but ultimately, queer is just easier and has the benefit of being more inclusive than any of the above.

I understand that it’ll make some people uncomfortable, but until someone comes up with a word that makes no one uncomfortable (which, again, does not exist yet—the closest we got was MOGAI, but that one was targeted by a smear campaign from, you guessed it, exclusionists who didn’t like that it included ace/aro or trans people and now people can’t use it without starting a similar debate as this), I’m gonna have to settle for one, and I’ll pick the one that makes me the most comfortable, because I am a member of this community too and I have the right to do that. Just like you have the right to use SGA and it’ll make me uncomfortable, but I won’t come to your blog sending you an anon message asking you to stop, because I understand that no umbrella exists that satisfies everyone at the moment, and I have more pressing issues to deal with.

If that’s an issue, feel free to unfollow or whatever else it is you feel like doing. But I will not budge on this.

#queer discourse #sga discourse #ace discourse #lgbt issues #queer issues #st: other posts #Anonymous #ask