"Oh You Had A Plague? Come Back To Us When You Had A World War, Brand New Unconventional Weapons, And

success baby turned 18 today

happy birthday to one of the founding fathers

What's interesting to me about Jod and his relationship with the kids by the end of the series is that it's so in-between.

It's not "actually I've come to care for these kids and I will give up my plan to protect them" but it's also not just that he's evil and doesn't care about them.

He does betray them and he does a lot of harm. He threatens them and their families and their home in a very genuine and traumatic way. He brings destruction and danger down on their home. He does not make the turn to help them or side with them against the other pirates. He stays on his course, stays a bad guy.

But at the same time, as much as he threatens them (in the pirate horde, in the ship and on At Attin) and their family, he doesn't actually hurt them. (in fact I think the only ones we see him actually physically hurt are 1. SM-33. 2. The werewolf pirate guy 3. the supervisor droid). And I don't know that the threats are empty, but he's certainly very reluctant to actually enact that violence, and his plan might not have fallen through if he had been more willing to hurt them. He's not willing to stop for the sake of the kids, but he'd much rather get through his plan without harming them. And when he KB is falling and he thinks she probably died there is real fear and regret in his face. He didn't want that.

All of this is an outpouring of his misguided worldview. Because again, Jod isn't a villain who can't recognize right and wrong. He knows what Good is, he's seen it. But his problem is despair so he believes that Good is not worth it, and is not powerful enough to make a difference. And because of that he becomes the manifestation of the cruel place he believes the world to be. The good in him is THERE but its not strong enough to really change him, but it's because his despair doesn't believe it can be. And so he becomes the very thing that made him-- he watched his mentor/parental figure killed in front of him, and he stands there threatening to do the same thing to Wim and Fern.

But he doesn't, because he isn't quite the villain that the Empire represents. Even though the difference doesn't come from him actively making a choice for Good, it does come from there being Good still in him, even just in the form of hesitation. Good is still powerful even when he's denying it. And then little ember in him is not what saves the day--that's the kids and their families and the New Republic. But it is there and it does mean that even though he stays a villain there is that moment of Wim calling out to him, there is still that spark of hope that Jod can be saved one day too.

Of all things in the episode today, I did not expect to see a birth.

Also TRINITY SANTOS - love that she speaks Tagalog

God he’s looking extra adorable this season

requested by anonymous

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.                            

Polished Malachite Stalactite - Copper Crescent, Congo

the six types of friends within found family tropes (according to me)

I came up with this in bed at 2 am... enjoy(?)

the gay one

the “I know this plan is gonna turn out bad but i’m still gonna go through with it”

the “if i don’t have a sip of alcohol in five minutes i’m gonna kill myself” 

the “i swear guys THEY'RE the one...”

the “i have underlying mommy/daddy issues and i need to see someone about it”

the “how can i scam my way out of this” 

(these can overlap)

SAM CLAFLIN And ÀSTRID BERGÈS-FRISBEY As PHILIP SWIFT And SYRENA PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES

She just annoyed by Salem’s Seven

I’m back with some unfinished stuff, but I wonder, will it be for long👀

God bless the sickos over at the AO3 for providing the absolute most conceptually bizarre yet extremely compelling fiction for free.