I feel like when I say ‘relatable’ what I really mean is ‘resonant.’ I don’t want characters who I feel are like me, I want characters who have emotions so strong I can feel them through the page.
I think this is important because a lot of us forget the power of stories to make us feel things about characters who are not like us, who have experienced things that we never will. The purpose of listening to someone else's story should not necessarily be identification, but understanding.
I Can Eat Glass was a linguistic project documented on the early Web by then-Harvard student Ethan Mollick. The objective was to provide speakers with translations of the phrase "I can eat glass, it does not hurt me" from a wide variety of languages; the phrase was chosen because of its unorthodox nature. Mollick's original page disappeared in or about June 2004.
As Mollick explained, visitors to a foreign country have "an irresistible urge" to say something in that language, and whatever they say (a cited example being along the lines of "Where is the bathroom?") usually marks them as tourists immediately. Saying "I can eat glass, it does not hurt me", however, ensures that the speaker "will be viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect".
hey netizens! i'm not sure how many people are aware, but youtube's been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can't be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate
BUT, if you're a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard to get rid of it!
youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false) youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0) youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, []) youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)
reblog to help keep the internet less annoying and to tell corporations that try shit like this to go fuck themselves <3
Where do I copy-paste these to? "My filters"? "My Rules"?
'my filters'! if you look closely you'll notice the format is different between the two pages. the (website)(##)(additional text) format goes in filters
- Did it hurt when you fell out of heaven?
- No. But falling for you did.
hey. don’t cry. crush two cloves of garlic into a pot with a dollop of olive oil and stir until golden then add one can of crushed tomatoes a bit of balsamic vinegar half a tablespoon of brown sugar half a cup of grated parmesan cheese and stir for a few minutes adding a handful of fresh spinach until wilted and mix in pasta of your choice ok?
PEACE AND LOVE!!!!!!!!
There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people.
A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.
Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.
Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.
That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.
I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?
It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.
And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.
the “i am from russia” was a warning
I asked a taxi driver in Bucharest to take the quickest route to the airport. 10 minutes later we’re doing 120kph the wrong way done the street car tracks when another taxi tried to pass us and dude just floors it. Never spoke a word, smoked 9 cigarettes over the 30 minute ride, never took off his sunglasses and blasting opera all the way. I look at it as paying 15€ plús tip to lose all fear of death.
the “i am from russia” was both a warning and a promise, and one that would weirdly put me at ease about the situation.
how could you leave this in the tags
I don’t mean to be rude; but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this, does anyone have any examples?
If we broaden it outside of television...I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I can't help but think of every band that's ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.
In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they want--and think they deserve--the time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.
They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they don't want us. And they don't really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audience's demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.
And like any other spoiled brat, they will break their toys before they share them.
It goes all the way to the top for kids shows. Toy sales will crash a show. Makes sense, but if those toys are gendered for boys instead of the female viewers, they won't usually switch up the marketing and move them to the girl aisle. They cancel the show outright.
Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesn't perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasn't a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.
And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didn't necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.
#WhereIsRey (initial)
#WhereIsRey (ongoing)
You're all sitting on the hot take of the decade tbh
And yet when they fond out that boys were watching MLP:FIM in droves, they had NO PROBLEM with it.
#SONS OF ANARCHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!#LITERALLY SONS OF ANARCHY IS THE BIGGEST EXAMPLE OF THIS LIKE EVER#kurt sutter wrote that show for MEN and ended up with an overwhelmingly female audience#because he's actually a good writer and knows how to develop characters well and wrote excellent female characters#but once he realized that his audience was almost entirely women he literally took it out on tara and gemma in the show#but like tara specifically#he resented her character for being a huge draw for female viewers so he tore her development to shreds and killed her#in the most brutal gut wrenching way possible#kurt sutter you will pay for your crimes#i actually wrote a manifesto about this on one of my old blogs i should try to find it sldkjsldfjsdljf#long post (via@m-oonknight)
OMG YES. I LOVED Sons of Anarchy, especially the women and then I got to season 6 and it was like - everything was just tossed in the trash? And like, why did Sutter hate that Tara drew tons of attention? That should have been a good thing! He should have been like "Hey folks, this girl's getting us more viewers, let's put her in more scenes!" It just doesn't make sense to me. MEN don't make sense to me.
The 100 too. I'll never forget how Jason Rothenberg would attacked female fans on Twitter and mock them in interviews, and then post links to male fan discussions on Reddit to praise and thank them. In his goodbye letter to the show he SPECIFICALLY thanked Reddit and it was so disgusting.
Star Trek from TNG on was also a boy’s club, even though the TOS fans were mostly women. Women, in fact, who literally created modern fandom with their zines. But after TNG it was all, “Women don’t understand Star Trek, only smart men hur dur.”
The Stargate franchise. They had a very large female audience — to the point that things like tampons were being advertised during Stargate Atlantis — but when they started their third show, the producers explicitly told the largely female fandom that they wanted a male audience for it.
They didn’t get their male audience but unsurprisingly the women who’d been watching decided to drop the franchise after being told they weren’t wanted.
That last Stargate show literally had the lowest ratings among female viewers of all the shows on the network at the time.
Oh and after telling the fan base the new show wasn't for us and that they didn't want us to watch, guess who the producers blamed for the show getting cancelled? The fan base of the other Stargate shows.
Vash who only used his left arm as a shield and not like a normal hand finally feeling something inherently softer for the first time in a long while like another hand holding and kissing it.
(He couldn't really feel it but it's there; a little peculiar, maybe ticklish too, but nice nonetheless.)
Oh this one is also good, happy pride
Major Trimax Spoilers Ahoy:
Man. Man.
You ever think about how Vash just wanted something so badly. He wanted to be with Wolfwood so badly. Even though hunting down his brother has been his sole, major motivation to get going most of the manga, he found Wolfwood in that church. Vash came just for him.
He fell into step beside Wolfwood, so close that they don’t need words. He admitted, if only to himself, that he wanted to spend all the tomorrows he could get from Wolfwood. He wanted. He wanted.
He wanted so much that, as they sat on that damned couch, Vash prayed. For the very first and last time, he chose to pray to a god he wished for, but didn’t have faith in. A god that his priest inspired in him. Anything and anyone who would help him, help them. Just one more tomorrow, even. Anything. Please.
And, you know, here we are again, aren’t we? In another universe but with the same men, and with the same gods. And we all know what’s coming. It’s consumed them every single other time, a fixed point that we can’t escape. But the gods of this universe are still there. They’ve seen Vash beg, they’ve seen Vash plead, they’ve seen Vash mourn.
Do they care enough to listen? Do they care enough to spare them? Do they care enough to let them have their tomorrows?
Which makes this so much more funny sad… funad…
Because he loves you, buddy… That’s the answer.
something i wish i'd see more in trigun fanarts is people having vash speak their native/non-english languages completely unprompted, ive seen folks have him speak french, which he canonically knows, but i really do believe he's a polyglot. mostly because of that one time in the desert when he saw the samurai and wanted to greet him in japanese but struggled to remember how to even say hello.
my headcanon is that rem had them learn as many languages as possible but with the big fall and so many people dying, which i think is what led english to became No man's land main (or even only?) language, means that vash (and knives!) both got horribly out of practice and are various sort of rusty in every others languages.
what im saying if there's any pun or joke you've been dying to write but just doesn't work in english vash (and knives!!) are right there!
the possibilities are endless
That's it. I get why I feel Vash killing Legato hits harder in the manga than it does in the 98's anime.
When Vash pulls the trigger he doesn't just break his vow of non-killing to his mother but he also has to accept the death of Rem and Wolfwood at the same time.
When he kills Legato, it's the moment he let them go.
Yes! But also! To me it was interesting to think about how he ultimately justified that choice (as well as all his choices throughout the story).
The story of Trigun is just Vash being forced into the trolley problem time and time again, and him trying to cheat his way out of it every time. Sometimes, it works, and everyone is saved. Sometimes, it's disastrous, and many innocent people die because Vash was unwilling to kill one person.
How does he justify this to himself? It's something he clearly struggles with throughout the story. And while yes, part of it is his belief that killing someone is wrong no matter what, I think it's less about that and more about Rem. Rem died to save every person on that planet. How could he kill someone his own mother died to save? That's why there's several moments throughout the manga that Vash seems perfectly willing to kill Knives. Not only was he not saved by Rem's sacrifice, he's the one who killed her. If it was only about "killing is always wrong", Vash wouldn't be so ready to kill his brother.
Cut to the final showdown with Legato. Vash knows that if he doesn't kill Legato, Livio will die, full stop. I genuinely believe that if it was anyone else's life in danger in that moment, Vash wouldn't have done it. If it was anyone else, it's the same choice he's made hundreds of times before. So what's so special about Livio?
Wolfwood died to save Livio, exactly how Rem died to save all the humans. The only difference is that Livio is only one man. The second Livio is killed, Wolfwood's entire sacrifice was in vain, whereas there's still a whole planet of people who will keep on living even if one man has to die.
And so while yes, Vash kills someone for the first time in that moment, he's keeping to essentially the same promise. Just this time to honor Wolfwood's sacrifice instead of Rem's. That's his justification, just like how he's justified choices in the past that ultimately led to people's death, even if he didn't pull the trigger.
And it still breaks him, of course. He still hates what he's done. But in the same way he's suffered before to protect Rem's memory, he chose to suffer to protect Wolfwood's memory as well.
Bro…
Oh, he did trade his life. I see....
Ooh, does no one ever talk about the fact that Wolfwood is Knives’ proxy? Look, Vash and Wolfwood only met because of Knives? Everything they find in each other and are to each and become because of each other? It’s all because of Knives? And Knives doesn’t know and probably could not even fathom how he could be responsible? Knives fucked them both up and sent them both into the great wide world, Vash ran from Knives and Knives sent Wolfwood running after Vash. Vash, Knives’ little brother, the one who needs to be protected, the one who walks astray from Knives, Wolfwood, the big brother, the protector, the babysitter, the one who is supposed to lead Vash back on the path to his brother. And Knives truly had no idea what he was doing? He has this man handcrafted and sent to Vash and of course Vash regards Wolfwood as a gift rather than a curse. Vash and Knives are two parts of one whole and Knives sends Vash a cheap copy of one of those parts and it does everything Knives has been aiming to do better than Knives himself? It is lover, brother, friend, protector, betrayer, priest, partner to Vash. It is everything Knives wants to be to Vash and should have been. And it’s human. Vash kills because of Wolfwood, he overrides the things Rem taught him because of Wolfwood. He does what Knives has well-nigh been begging Vash to do for over a century because of Wolfwood. Fellas, is your unintentional simulacrum something you should be so jealous of you should be bleeding from the eyes and mouth but you don’t even know you should be jealous because you’ve never spared a thought to just what the fuck you did? And Vash? Vash loves this punisher, this monster, this assassin, this Judas Knives sent him. This man is Knives’ thing, but yet he’s not, this man is just like Knives but yet he is very much not, this man is here because of Knives but yet he is not? This man is not human but yes he is? He’s human and Vash can love in him all the things he hates in his brother because he is human? Wolfwood is a big brother, he’s a protector, he’s a pessimist to Vash’s doomed optimism, he’s by Vash’s side and will never leave, he’s back to back with Vash and Vash is whole again, he’s Knives in a funhouse glass darkly and of course Vash clings to him. Wolfwood is Knives’ quintessential token of his love and devotion and neither he or Vash or Wolfwood knows. Knives gave Vash his paradise after all, he gave Vash his world for just the two of them, he gave Vash the thing that made Vash want a paradise, and a world apart. He gave him Nicholas D. Wolfwood. If Knives ever understood that he’d fucking chew glass.
Ooh, does no one ever talk about the fact that Wolfwood is Knives’ proxy? Look, Vash and Wolfwood only met because of Knives? Everything they find in each other and are to each and become because of each other? It’s all because of Knives? And Knives doesn’t know and probably could not even fathom how he could be responsible? Knives fucked them both up and sent them both into the great wide world, Vash ran from Knives and Knives sent Wolfwood running after Vash. Vash, Knives’ little brother, the one who needs to be protected, the one who walks astray from Knives, Wolfwood, the big brother, the protector, the babysitter, the one who is supposed to lead Vash back on the path to his brother. And Knives truly had no idea what he was doing? He has this man handcrafted and sent to Vash and of course Vash regards Wolfwood as a gift rather than a curse. Vash and Knives are two parts of one whole and Knives sends Vash a cheap copy of one of those parts and it does everything Knives has been aiming to do better than Knives himself? It is lover, brother, friend, protector, betrayer, priest, partner to Vash. It is everything Knives wants to be to Vash and should have been. And it’s human. Vash kills because of Wolfwood, he overrides the things Rem taught him because of Wolfwood. He does what Knives has well-nigh been begging Vash to do for over a century because of Wolfwood. Fellas, is your unintentional simulacrum something you should be so jealous of you should be bleeding from the eyes and mouth but you don’t even know you should be jealous because you’ve never spared a thought to just what the fuck you did? And Vash? Vash loves this punisher, this monster, this assassin, this Judas Knives sent him. This man is Knives’ thing, but yet he’s not, this man is just like Knives but yet he is very much not, this man is here because of Knives but yet he is not? This man is not human but yes he is? He’s human and Vash can love in him all the things he hates in his brother because he is human? Wolfwood is a big brother, he’s a protector, he’s a pessimist to Vash’s doomed optimism, he’s by Vash’s side and will never leave, he’s back to back with Vash and Vash is whole again, he’s Knives in a funhouse glass darkly and of course Vash clings to him. Wolfwood is Knives’ quintessential token of his love and devotion and neither he or Vash or Wolfwood knows. Knives gave Vash his paradise after all, he gave Vash his world for just the two of them, he gave Vash the thing that made Vash want a paradise, and a world apart. He gave him Nicholas D. Wolfwood. If Knives ever understood that he’d fucking chew glass.
