If this hellsite website gets shut down I will be very disappointed because this is the closest I’ve ever been to popular even though it’s like sitting at the cool table at a mental hospital

she’s presenting them to you before it’s too late

in bold countermove, PornHub announces new coffeehouse AU fanfiction category

Sometimes, a work relies on having the privileged group as certain members of the cast. Diversifying those works/roles? A terrible idea.

Lord of the Flies is a critique on the assumption rich white boys are the panicle of civilized behaviour. Rebooting it with an all-female cast misses the point.

Heathers is a story of how a clique of rich white girls run a school. Rebooting it with an all-marginalized group of Heathers misses the point.

While my list of works that are super bad ideas is short, since 1- Hollywood has only recently decided to expand their cast away from white bread (let me know if you have more!) and 2- I tend to try and forget bad examples, these ideas point to a very, very troubling trend:

Taking works whose whole point is lampooning privilege and assuming they’d work the same way if you removed the core concept.

If we actually reached parity between marginalized representation and privileged representation, those types of reboots might be safe ground to tread on. But right now marginalized people are still very much marginalized, and as a result their cultural systems are different from the privileged group.

Rich white people have a wildly different frame of reference from rich black people. A rich black person will usually have a living relative who wasn’t allowed to own a house in a certain area because of skin colour, or whose parents weren’t allowed to. Meanwhile, even a new-money white person doesn’t have the recent historical racist barriers that actively tried to prevent their upward mobility.

The two groups are going to think about money differently. While both can flaunt it for the same reasons— it’s new, and they want to show it off— the sheer amount of ex-legal baggage a black person is carrying around is something I can’t speak about, but know is there.

If you’re starting to think about tossing in a little diversity into your cast, look very hard at the social structures you’ve put in place. Are the villains relying on wealth? Social power? How about the ability to act with impunity? All of those are highly tied to privilege— the type of privilege somebody marginalized simply would not have.

It’s different if you’re doing a single-marginalized-group cast. Black Panther doesn’t suffer from having rich and power-hungry black people as villains because there’s a bunch of rich heroic black people as protagonists, to name one example. In those situations, you’re dealing with equals. The same thing would apply in a secondary world fantasy where everyone in the cast is of the same or similar ethnic groups, or if you had a group of characters who all shared the same axis of oppression in general.

It’s also different if the power structures don’t rely on privilege. All female Ghostbusters? Awesome, because Ghostbusters was primarily about stopping ghosts. The amount of black girls and women in A Wrinkle in Time? Lovely, because we need more stories where the important figures are not white.

But if you’re recreating any sort of power imbalance where one group relies on privilege, and you have multiple ethnic groups in the cast ? Take a good hard look at making too many villains marginalized, especially if they’re kingpins within the organization. Also consider what they can get away with, and if they have to use different tactics from the privileged villains; chances are, they’ll have to. 

This applies for both works set in the real world and in secondary world fantasy. Because secondary world fantasy is still read in the real world, and you can reinforce some extremely toxic ideals if you recreate real world marginalization.

Sometimes, diversity is a very bad thing. Keep that in mind when deciding what group plays what role.

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While the show has done a great job with character development, it always returns to the same reasons for the characters being the way that they are. Nobody’s entire being is the result of just one childhood trauma. All flashback sequences seem to return to the same themes, and I think it would be beneficial for the show to break out of its current mold.

Eleanor

Eleanor’s sarcastic, selfish attitude is due to parental neglect, her parents’ divorce, and just, y’know, being from Arizona in general. Flashbacks have shown the abuse inflicted from her parents and her resulting behavior; the cause and effect, respectively. All great. However, I’d love to see her relationship with Stone Cold Steve Austin (who has been a running gag) and how that may have contributed to her behavior. Or perhaps, an early formative event that caused her to be obsessed with low, celebrity culture. Eleanor’s character is the best developed of the four, but I do think the writers should explore her background a bit more.

Tahani

Like, we get it. Tahani’s elitist parents pitted Tahani against her sister Camilla, always doted on Camilla, leading to Tahani having sever self esteem issues and hoping to correct that through philanthropy. Her philanthropy is misguided, because she is doing it to seek approval. She only associates with the elite, and looks down on others. This is where her flashbacks can gain a little meat. How is she perceived by other celebrities? What was her life growing up besides being just Camilla’s counterpart? While that’s the main source of Tahani’s insecurity, there must be more.

Perhaps Tahani’s overtly performative behavior is due to her inability to form meaningful relationships. A flashback sequence could explore her isolated upbringing, social constrictions, and the effect that it had on her perception of friendship and what it means to be friends with someone.

Jason

So, Jason’s a dumb dancer from Florida who misguidedly engaged in crime. His dad is a lazy stoner. Strangely enough, the background on Jason is the most diverse in terms of flashbacks, but the writers seem to fall back on overused Florida jokes. I’d like for them to explore why Jason jumps into relationships so quickly: specifically marriage. So far, he’s been married twice (almost three, if you include the botched wedding to Tahani) and proposed marriage to a police officer. Maybe there are some maternal issues at play; did he ever know his mother? Perhaps it’s an Oedipal complex playing out in adulthood in his search for close female companionship. Idk–just spitballing here.

Chidi

While Chidi, I believe, is a bigger player in the series that Jason and Tahani, I think his background is the most underdeveloped. We see one childhood flashback where he struggles to pick teams at recess, implying that his indecision is deep rooted. And I for one don’t think his avid interest in moral philosophy began in kindergarten and is the cause of his indecision. His interest in moral philosophy is a way from him not only to justify such character, but also a way for him to search what the right answer must be. 

But why is he so indecisive? What caused him to be this way? Is it innate? Did it develop? Also who are his parents? How did growing up in Senegal affect his personality (like in the ways it defines Eleanor and Jason). When did he become interested in moral philosophy?

Exploring the characters more holistically will give the show a chance to diversify its content, improve its character development, give new plot lines, and ease the redundant jokes (of which there have been many in S3). I do think season 3 has fell short of past season, and I don’t think it’s playing up to the potential that it could have. I’ll write another post on that, as well as Eleanor’s bisexuality, and her relationship with Chidi.

so like how does fox news get away with criticizing the mainstream media as being left leaning when its literally the number 1 cable news network

random thing but i realized it might be helpful for some people so uh. theres this thingy where you can upload an image and it gives you a color palette based on it ! 

heres an example

and it also gives you the hex code values for them too its p neat !

here’s the link to the website !

no offense but why are yal so obsessed w that white lady from the x file

shes cool and she did this to us

I loved you like a suicide note, written from my heart to my mind. I wish I could just stop to write about love. I gave you too much of myself when I fell in love with you. I hope one day you choke on all your lies. It hurts in all the places I cannot touch you. Now is not a good time, mum. The thought of death writes comfort on my bones. God turned misery into a human and gave it your name. We’re poison to each other. I am tired. The only way I can explain is not to explain it at all. Why is it that everytime you say I love you it sounds more and more like farewell? I was so eager to find someone to love me back that I didn’t notice you drained me all along.

all the things I wish I hadn’t said
r.m | published in Cadence | buy me a ko-fi

i don’t mean to sound fake deep but the reason 2018 felt so long was because we’re being fed what’s trending at such a rapid rate that we literally can’t remember half of the shit that even happened anymore. “Black Panther came out in February!” Marvel releases so many movies a year that we completely forget about the last movie as soon as a new one comes out and it repeats in a vicious cycle. “Tide Pods/Ugandan Knuckles was in January!” The life span of memes have been rapidly declining for years and it’s gotten to the point where the average lifespan of a meme is about 2 weeks and then the next thing gets popular and then that lasts for 2 weeks and it just keeps going. We’re literally losing our sense of time because of our rapid consumption of media and pop culture.

what is this strange city of red lights?
of pulsating, venomous fireflies?
it ignites the horizon
a million upon a million
perhaps stars crystallite.
or a raving disco in Hell
bursting out rhythms like a Devil’s spell.
i see a face illuminated
shadows dripping into caverns and peaks
yes—it is a city fated
as One that is but demons and faes
who use forked tongues and sharp teeth to speak
beckoning with that red light
come—won’t you play?

–ingrid woode