「Mother, help me, there's a head attached to my neck and I'm *in* it.」
This might be my favorite
This is mine
As entertaining as the Reddit shenanigans are, I'm genuinely worried about permanently losing access to all of those old posts about very specific tech problems that it seems only Redditors know the answers to. When I Google how to fix some error on my device or a glitch in a video game, the most helpful information comes from a Reddit post from 5 years ago with like 12 upvotes. I don't want to have to rely on, like, Quora for that help from now on.
How to stan the white guy with minimal contribution to fandom's racism problem
Look, I get it. You're obsessed with the white guy. Maybe two of them together. And maybe your series has one or more main Black characters or Asian characters or a brown Latino star. You're here because of the irresistible pull of that white guy (or two), who is fascinating beyond belief. His acting is above anything anyone has ever seen. When you write about him, the words just pour out.
This is a fan-centered space so I feel confident in saying — we've all been there. I'm not going to lie and say I've never been invested in white characters. There's nothing innately wrong with liking white characters (that would be silly).
But when it comes to the characters of color in your chosen media, you have a choice.
You're unmoved by the Black major characters and find them unrelatable? Ok. If you're not able to keep that to yourself, prepare for a discussion about the empathy gap. Because we literally do not need content about your inability to relate to CoC if the intention is for it to stand as some kind of undebatable truth about the inferiority of CoC.
And then there are the deflections. At the first mention of sidelining CoC it comes like clockwork: They're poorly written! The acting is sub par! The character is just not interesting! It's got nothing to do with race!
Except when it happens over and over and over again, it does. It just does.
I can't count how many times a conversation on Reddit or the Jedi Council Forum (or anywhere, really) started out about Finn and became all about Kylo Ren five replies in. Just today I saw the same thing on Tumblr, a post about the poor treatment of Lucas from Stranger Things, and in the comments people were talking about Billy and his trauma.
If you stan the white guy(s) and don't want to be perceived as part of fandom's racism problem, do not hijack threads about CoC. Not every conversation has to center your guy. Conversations that center Black characters, and I can't stress this enough, do not take anything away from your white fave(s). Nothing at all. It's not a competition.
Stop making excuses about why you don't like the Black character. No one really cares until you start tearing them down with excuses. Don't come up with meta about how the Black hero is a villain, actually, and the white bad guy is a tortured sweet baby who represents all of the forgotten children of the world. It's not clever, it's not good or interesting meta, it's transparent empathy gap racism.
And, again, that will be discuseed. You can't believe in "maximum inclusion" and draw the line at discussing racism. Responding to racism is not breaking the fandom social contract. It's a long established part of fandom by now.
It really shouldn't bother white guy stans so much to see a Black character in a major role in genre media to the point where they feel the need to aggressively dismiss them and their fans. Not doing that, at least, should be easy. Not doing that means that maybe that fandom critical post about racism isn't about you.
It's not about white guy characters or even their inevitable popularity. It's about fan behavior toward characters and fans of color, whether it's on Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit or AO3.
Also consider this: maybe the character IS poorly written. Racism extends into writing spaces and a lot of very good writers’ rooms will tell you the corporate meddling is REAL.
…so extend to the characters of color the same grace and fix-it-ism you do to the white characters.
My main fandom right now has three Black characters and they’re all poorly utilized. One disappears for half the series, one leaves being a secret agent to be a secretary, and one is forced to play second fiddle to the main character. All three have great actors and actually interesting storylines up to a point…so we just kind of sandwich the first one back into the story, the second one has a pretty prominent fanon that says being a secretary is actually her cover and/or she left fieldwork because she could ascend higher at a desk (and then we show it), and the third one tends to get, at a bare minimum, mentions of badassery in stories she’s not a part of. (Or she’ll just get written back in.)
It’s okay to say the character is poorly written if it’s true. It’s not okay to use that as a way to dismiss them when you’ll carefully and lovingly rehabilitate all the equally-poorly-written white characters.
Well, that's the thing. Shallow white characters are lovingly treated as "blank slates" while thinly written Black characters are just considered bad.
I'm a fan of Finn from the Star Wars sequels. Love him. But he was written very poorly, especially after The Force Awakens (where he was set up as a Force sensitive character, even while there was some bait and switch that put Rey above him rather than an equal). I have criticized the shit out of that. I hate what the ST did to him. But he's still my favorite character in the trilogy. I'm disappointed, but I won't call him a bad character. He's a character whose potential as the most original character in the trilogy was dropped. Because of racism. There's a big difference between saying you hate a Black character because of the writing and acknowledging that the writing for a Black character you love became shit.
Reva in the Obi Wan series is a good example of a character where "the writing" was used as an excuse to hate a perfectly good Black character. "The writing" is absolutely used as code to safely hate on Black characters.
The reason wizards wear lots of jewelry is for self defense.
I shoot a beam at my wizard nemesis but it reflects flawlessly off of his Claire accessories clip on earrings, killing me instantly.
um . warning now that tumblr is allowing gif pfps . PLEASE dont use gifs with flashing or eyestraining colours <3 since the gifs Cannot be turned off it WILL negatively affect photosensitive people
Elrond be like: I am 4/8 human, 3/8 elf, and 1/8 angel. My mother is a bird and my father is the North Star. My twin brother was the first king of Atlantis but somehow I seem to be more famous than him. I am one of three ringbearers, the other two being the female version of Feanor and a guy who loves fireworks. My foster father is a crazy homeless guy who likes music and his whole family is dead. My many-greats grandnephew is in love with my daughter. No one can tell my sons apart. I like waterfalls and am both a glorified innkeeper and a top-notch doctor. I am the voice of reason no one listens to.
every time i see someone mention hannibal on here i assume theyre going to be talking about hannibal barca, the carthaginian general from the 2nd punic war. i have never once been correct about this but that will not stop me
Since Gandalf smokes weed and Radagast does shrooms, I have a theory that each of the wizards represents a drug. Saruman is cocaine.
I have OCD and with that comes quasi-hallucinations, and I grew up watching a ton of horror films so some of the worst of mine are the standard white skin/black hair demon girl type shit.
However, because a lot of them are based on horror film I have found comfort in doing things that “go against” horror films and being like “see? This could never happen.”
(It’s irrational. I know that. But shut up. This is how I cope.)
For example: I started hearing garbled whispering from beneath my table, so I started playing the muppets sound track. Because they would never play Movin’ Right Along when the protagonist is about to get attacked. That won’t happen. Disney, who owns the muppets, wouldn’t give them the rights.
And it fucking worked.
You have to admire her audacity, if nothing else.
Literally my favourite thing about Rogue One is that it makes the opening of New Hope so funny. Like, Vader has followed Leia from a planet he just blew up seconds ago and pursued her across the galaxy and then she’s just like: ‘I’m on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan’
Vader: You’re a rebel. I just had a fight with your entire rebel fleet and followed you here. Straight from the rebels. Of which you are a part
Leia: *dramatic gasp* rebel? Me??? I was just passing through. Diplomatically. Thought it was a five-space-ship pile-up or something going on there…
death star plans? on my alderaanian diplomatic mission? it’s more likely than you think
pitbullmabari
ok but this is like legitimate Canon Improvement because I’d always wondered why Vader was so wildly furious at the start of the movie like “rahhhhh bring me the passengers I WANT THEM ALIVE!!!!” and now I’m like
ohh yeah okay they literally JUST blew up Vader’s base, stole his sh!t, and took off while giving him the finger from the window
while giving him the finger from the window
IT GOT BETTER
It is the best thing ever because it establishes that he knows she’s a Rebel and she knows he knows she’s a Rebel and he knows she knows he knows she’s a Rebel and—here’s the kicker—every moment she stalls him is another moment Artoo has to get the plans off the ship and head for Kenobi, and so she’s standing there all “Rebellion? What Rebellion? Me? *kicks dead Stormtrooper underneath carpet* I don’t know about any plans, have you checked behind the sofa?” and making Darth Vader’s blood pressure rise, and, oh, the best part of it is that she’s his daughter so guess where she got that sass from, like every fucking dead blue Force Ghost Jedi who got killed at the birth of the Empire is whooping and cheering from the Blue Force Ghost Afterlife seeing Anakin Skywalker get inflicted with everything they had to deal with from him.
omg SHE GOT IT FROM HIM
It's wild to me how much furry art I was marinated in as a child and yet I am still not a furry. "You can be!" No, I can't. I've tried so many times. It's never taken. I'm like those cis+ people but for furries.
I bet I'd be better at art and computers if I could be a furry but I just can't.
I think that's just catfishing.
Fuck that post going around saying "you can have coffee in your story without justifying it :) you don't need to explain everything :)" I want, no, I DEMAND a fully researched ethnobotanical paper on every single food item in your work, if you don't explain to me where did potatoes come from in your fantasy setting or don't explain how the industry of coffee works over interstellar distances with full detail you are doing things wrong and I personally hate you and I hate your stupid story, fuck you
Why are your stupid little wizards and knights eating potato stew in your dumb European middle ages fantasy world. Where did they get potatoes from. Where is the center of domestication of potatoes, do you have a fantasy Andean civilization? What are the social and economic consequences of having such a calorie rich crop in cold climates. I don't care about "themes" or "enemies to lovers with found family", I didn't ask about that. Where does your idiot space captain gets their shitty coffee from. Is it imported from Earth? Are there coffee growing worlds? Is it an alien species replacement with the same name? What are the social consequences of that? Don't try to change the subject, I'll stop pointing the gun when I want, I'm trying to have a conversation here,
gold in them there tags
fun fact! did you know that you can gain extra ‘forbidden time’ by staying up late in the night? but Watch Out
What's your DIY cardinal sin mine is that I never countersink screws
Never looking at the instructions, if I can’t figure it out on my own, I wasn’t meant to do it
Dad building IKEA furniture energy
a couple years back I bought a hot glue gun. it came with *sixty* full sticks of glue
I have used all of them
When I want to hot glue things I don't use a gun. I just heat the glue stick with my propane torch :3
Some of you are living much more criminal DIY lives than I am
would have been funnier if spider wrote it. 8/10.
Is this just going to be a thing now. How do you have time to make all these spider blogs.
milkable
Ah yes cow udders. Exactly what I was thinking
Went outside my fandom bubble and saw people being cancelled for shipping two characters who tried to kill each other once damn is this the limit nowadays
Trying to kill each other is a reason to START shipping characters