what if gaster in a future chapter calls out the audience for speculating so much about him. the guy canonically has some amount of access to Real Life Social Media. like i started this mostly as a joke but there are definitely some real metanarrative opportunities for a character with recklessly curious impulses, and possibly a fragile sense of self, having nearly limitless access to streams of debate over whether or not he’s a bastard. rude to talk about someone who’s listening etc
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democrats are going to be in for a surprise if they think the 80% of democratic voters who want a ceasefire are going to vote for a white house that called them repugnant and disgraceful for wanting children to stop being killed
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i've been thinking a lot about the word "representation" and what it means and how it's changed over the last few years, particularly when it comes to the writing/publishing landscape but also in movies and tv shows… and i really don't like it anymore. to be clear, of course i think it's important to have diversity in your work, i'm not saying i hate the concept of representation. but i do really dislike the way it's used now, and i really just hate the word itself
in a broader sense it's just become a marketing tool. i'm not impressed by any publisher or author who just describes their book by listing all of the minorities/identities the characters represent as if that should be enough. it feels very gross, very exploitative and disingenuous. it also really bothers me because it's always marginalized identities- which i understand Why, but it feels very othering to me (and again. Very exploitative as an advertisement). you would never list out "cishet able-bodied white man" as a character description to pat yourself on the back over. so why do it to everyone else? why insinuate that one is the "default" and the other one is "special"? (and when i say this i'm mainly talking about advertisements/marketing. i understand why people would specify about characters in descriptions with the plot, but i don't like to see an ad that's just "this book has gay people!" with nothing else)
which then leads me to my other point, which is that a lot of people treat "representation" as if it's "too hard." like "oh i don't know enough to write about that, i don't have that experience, etc" which is a fair way to feel! however… it's weird that people only say this about writing trans characters or characters of color. i'm writing a story right now with a character who is really into motorcycles. i personally do not know that much about motorcycles, so i researched what parts are what & what different kinds of models there are & what basic bike care looks like. i guarantee Most people will have to google something at some point in their writing process. so what's the problem? it also, again, feels very othering when authors treat certain groups of people as "impossible" to write, "too hard" to understand. they are just.. people. you write them as a person. and then you figure out the rest later.
and i think part of the refusal or fear to write something outside of your experience is because of the way representation is treated as So Special. these characters are So Special that they aren't allowed to be anything other than "representation." they're Not allowed to be characters with complex emotions and interesting motivations, they have to just be Trans or Gay or Disabled or whatever. they're not allowed to be people. which means, at the end of the day, we loop right back around to where we were at the start….
there is bad representation. there are depictions of certain marginalized people that are harmful and that are damaging, i'm not trying to minimize that or argue against it at all, in fact we should all be mindful of that while writing and reading. but i also think it's possible to swing too far in the opposite direction as well and put certain groups of people on a pedestal and not allow them to do anything at all but be Perfect Representation, if that makes sense.
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This month is Black History Month so I want to give a shout-out to all the Black mspec lesbians! Queer history wouldn't be what it is without black people, and the whitewashing of queerness is so disgusting when black queer people have been a huge part of our community and led many of the fights for our rights! And it's even more unfortunate when your own community, the lesbian community, turns on you and uses the terms (nonman and nonwoman) that were used to degender you and other black people as a way to prove your identities are not "real" or "valid." Black bi lesbians, Black pan lesbians, Black poly lesbians, Black omni lesbians, Black abro lesbians, and all Black lunians, you're amazing. You matter so much to this community. We wouldn't be the same without you.
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one aspect that always fascinates me about the witch cult is how much they are used-to-be humans-but-now-not-really-are. they were just people who sometimes were good in the way people are and sometimes were bad in the way people are. and then their lifes had been altered by powers so fundamentally that they just. lost touch with any humanity that they had. how do you comprehend being a hundreds years old? how do you comprehend being able to kill a human as simply as a mosquito? how do you comprehend being beyond time, beyond aging, beyond life and death, beyond your own body, beyond your own memories? it's a horror scenario accepted willingly, horror where instead of running from monster you shake its hand and convince yourself that that's all you ever wanted, because the alternative? the alternative is the existence so miserable you'd rather die than go back. the existence that may ask you to take responsibility for your actions, navigate your own life, change who you are as a person.
they cannot do that. they never could do that. they live for years and years, having powers to do literally anything and yet led by instructions in the book, further and further conservating in the state they were from a start, the moment they took a deal.
doomed from the beginning. never having a chance to escape. never wanting to escape, instead allowing your humanity to slowly seep away as a price for not bearing the weight of that it means to be human. damn.
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i have too many thoughts on the deleted jackienat scene for a girl who's supposed to be enjoying her birthday lol. i think at the root of it all, it's highly likely that when the actresses breathed life into the characters, and scenes got improvised, some things just stopped making sense for characters to do. including good things, like with jackie's 'i love you' to shauna! and i think this is the case for natalie looking at jackie with hatred before leaving her out in the cold. maybe at one point in her early stages of characterization it made sense, but clearly the people on the show didn't think that way anymore at some point, hence the cut. also ngl people taking this deleted scene, which for all we know didn't even make it into the final script, as some sort of 'gotchu' for jackienat enjoyers ( romantic or otherwise ) is weird as hell to me. like, it was removed for a reason.
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