The American Society of Magical Negroes.

What I expected? A satirical comedy, with humor similar to Abbot Elementary, making fun of the magical negro trope in film and television. Jordan and Key would have been perfect for this. There are so many ways they could have gone with this to subvert the idea of the magical negro.

What I got? A movie that reinforces (and even seems to glorify) every single trope. The jokes don’t even land like jokes. Again, it sounds like it’s actually encouraging the behavior. The main character just goes along with being some white boy’s negro fairy god brother. “Oh white people get really dangerous when they’re angry, so we have to make sure we keep them happy and comfortable. ” The fuck?? Like do you hear the message they tryna send?! Oh no don’t fight for your right as a human being, just keep your oppressor happy and you’ll be fine 👍🏽

And the ONLY thing that makes him not want to do it anymore? Not for his dignity. Not cause he realizes he shouldn’t have to move through the world like that, cause his happiness and comfortability matters too. Not cause…you know, racism. No, the only thing? The love of a white girl. Of course the love of a white girl will make him compete with this white man. The love of a white girl will make him no longer want to be the magical negro. The love of a white girl will make him realize he matters too. White savior. Check. On top of all that, the “society” is pretty much all brown skin complexions, but the main character is a light skin biracial boy? 🧐 come oooooooon!

Who the fuck yall make this movie for? Cause it wasn’t us. And I’m disappointed in all the black actors who subjected themselves to being in this trash, because some of them I actually do like, including the lead. Loved him in detective pikachu. And of course, David Alan Greir is an underrated legend. So I’m pissed.

In fact, I just looked up the director and writer of the movie:

You know who he remind me of?

Sunken place ass nigga.

This probably his life story. 😒

im shaking

I know this is a ninjago blog, I'm sorry I tagged this as ninjago, but I need people to see this urgently

I gathered this based on info I've read, so please correct me if I'm wrong about something

palestine has been completely cut from internet and cellular communications, theres a slaughter happening, bombs are being sent down every second we speak, a fucking genocide that has been going on for years and years and is on it's tipping point

theyre wiping off gazans in the dark

they not only bombed and fucking genociding palestine, they have bombed lebanon. people in Arish in egypt, about 80 km away from gaza, see the fucking bombs from there

and in egypt, israel sent a bomb in Taba and a hospital was hit, 6 were injured. and a projectfile in Nuweiba was sent aswell and it almost hit a powerstation

im a fucking egyptian and im shaking. im scared we and other countries might be next.

my dad was literally planning to go to sinai with me and our family, but now it's literally not safe

what people dont understand is that this is not war, this is a genocide in palestine. genocides. people are being killed in the dark. every right is being removed from these innocents. israel is bombing palestine, bombing us, and bombing other middle eastern countries

fuck israel and may they be sent to the deepest depths of hell, may they face the same massacres innocent palestinies are facing, free palestine

from the land to the sea, palestine will be free 🇵🇸

تحيا فلسطين، تحيا اخواتنا الفلسطينيين ❤️🇵🇸

So TL;DR The Remake Trilogy is Sephiroth's attempt at a "fixit" fic where he ends up ruling the universe and -oh what's this- Cloud is here too.

Just calling it right now. We'll see in 5+ years while we wait for the last entry in the series.

Reading through the codex entries from Trespasser and it’s just baffling that there’s an entire section of that DLC that declares in big fat fuckin letters “FEN’HAREL WAS ACTUALLY THE GOOD GUY THIS WHOLE TIME Y’ALL BEEN LIED TO” and yet we still have people trying to argue that Solas = Bad because fantasy propaganda just works way to well I guess.

Every bad take I have ever seen regarding Solas basically hinges on ‘well he is the Dreadwolf, afterall’ despite the game canonically and pretty definitively refuting the Dalish Legends of Fen’Harel as inaccurate.

It’s just…so painfully ironic that the fandom continues to try and force Solas into bad guy pants when the whole crux of his character is that he’s only ever tried to help people and has been unfairly maligned in the eyes of history.

Never mind that the character we’ve spent the game interacting with has shown nothing but empathy and compassion, even for people who have been cruel to him.

Never mind that the only way to get Solas to regard your Inquisitor with any amount of hostility is to be constantly and unreasonably cruel to him and everyone else around you for the entirety of the game.

Never mind that he has never once run from his mistakes and actively throws himself into danger to try and make up for them. It’s been THOUSANDS of years and he is still out there trying to fight for positive change to make the world a better and more compassionate place and will keep trying until it literally kills him.

Why is any of that a bad thing???

I wish the Lost Colonies' cultures and biological quirkw had been delved deeper, especially how they would viciously clash with modern Cybertron, both pre- and post-War.

I mean, I think it's really interesting juxtaposition between the deep scars of Functionism versus the other worlds' sources of prejudice and discrimination. Camien devotion and deification of Solus versus a Cybertron with no femmes with Megatron's and Optimus' cult of personality as well as atheism and agnosticism, especially among their respective inner circles. Cybertron's complete desolation and Eukaris' lush and lively greenery. The meritocracy of racing-obsessed Velocitron. Prion had minicons with multiple alts, and Devisiun yielded split-spark twins. The people of Carcer are those of wardens living in a prison.

Do the Camiens think of their Titan's homeworld as cold and lonely? Would they think of those from Cybertron suffering from disorders from the lack of close, intimate connections and no true community?

Velocritron descended from the scientists of Navitas, and they utilized the scorching heat to derive alternative sources of fuel. Do they scorn the deprived worlds for not searching for solutions?

How do the Eukarians view the others that cyberformed their planets? Do they see Cybertron and the others as sterile and lifeless; their civility is a cheap, hollow mimicry that hides their teeth and claws?

The Carcerians developed an austere culture that prioritized keeping their Titan on complete lockdown to the point sacrificing themselves to achieve that goal. How do they view Caminus' offering to dismantle himself so his own children can thrive in such a harsh environment?

How do diplomacy and common courtesy differ from each planet? The language and food? The behaviors? The relations with nearby neighbors, both mechanical and organic?

Blackmail NDKSKSKSK

I’ll say it- those 150 dollar collector dolls are fucking ugly 💀

and the thing is that dick *did* need tim's emotional support and help during the beginning of the batman reborn era because dick's life was also falling apart and they did need to help each other badly and tim leaving him to fix everything and handle the city and damian by himself *was* mean and a bit selfish, but also if tim had stayed to do this, there would have been no real chance for good independent growth for himself (in-universe and narratively speaking) and staying to help dick manage the city would have also meant deprioritizing his own wants and continuing to push down his own grief to do what's best for the greater good and ignoring both his suspicions and what he felt he needed to do at the time (search for bruce, prove himself right, have a breakdown around the world as he figured out his place in it) to focus instead on prioritizing what was currently best for current batman/dick's sake. which is just. kind of a continuation of what he's done/tried to do since he showed up in alpod. (would therapy probably have been a healthier option to move past this? well, yes, but unhealthy coping mechanisms or gtfo frankly) (anyways despite the fact he left to ostensibly find bruce, which is still batman related, leaving is still what allowed tim to get into situations that made him solidify himself as the person he wanted to be moving forth into adulthood + get to the point where he is still helping batman but also is starting to prioritize himself over prioritizing batman's needs so leaving was the objectively correct decision for himself)

anyways, they were both doing the equivalent of putting on their own oxygen masks first here instead of prioritizing what the other felt they needed at the time. and that's okay. they're both allowed to be a bit selfish at this point.

oh they are going to HELL

Hot take but the aggressive hardline separation of asexual and aromantic is actually EXTREMELY harmful to a lot of ace/aro people.

Angry rant under the cut

It's one to thing to go: "okay yes sometimes they go together but it's important to remember that for some people they can be different things and you can be one and not the other"

And go: "These are TOTALLY DIFFERENT 100 always separate there is no intersection EVER and if you DARE to be both then you have to piecemeal your identity to not uwu invalidate others(we do not care that we are invalidating you though lol) Don't you DARE ever experience them together you are CONFLATING"

It's like yall just want asexual to = alloromantic only and aromantic to = allosexual only.

You don't give a shit about aroaces, aces who aren't alloromantic but don't ID as aromantic or aros who aren't allosexual but don't ID as asexual.

The aspec community despises us. We get talked down to demanded to split our identities apart for your comfort. We can't exist in certain spaces because our presence there is a personal affront to allo-aspecs. Shout out to the alloaros that bitch about those disgusting aroaces just clogging up the aromantic tag ☺. Shout out to the alloaces who can still love and aren't totally heartless monsters 🥺.

Don't talk about ace shit in the aro tags, Don't talk about aro shit in the ace tags...what's that you're both? And can't neatly separate them and it brings you comfort to be able to discuss your whole orientation? SHUT THE FVCK UP YOU CONFLATING IGNORANT SHIT HEAD.

If you want to be in the aromantic community you have to leave your ace-ness at the door same for asexual community and disregarding your aromantism.

A personal example was an Aspec discord server I was in that had two media recs channels one for sex repulsed people and the other for romance repulsed. Now the issue came is that they didn't acknowledge someone could be both i.e both sex & romance repulsed/just looking for media that had neither sexual nor romantic content, what this lead too is that the romance free media channel was filled with graphic hookup erotica or sexually explicit songs and the sex free channel was just fade to black romance books 🙃...wonderful.

Or when polls/forms will ask you to pick your orientation but only things listed are het,gay,bi/pan yes even the ones made by aspecs, and what they actually mean is use the one that correlates to your romantic/sexual attraction...so fvck aroaces and non sam aces & aros?

And don't get me started on how you treat non sam aces & aros. You at least tolerate the self IDing aroaces, because they have the "curtesy" of separating themselves from the real proper aces & aros.(let's not question how many aroaces would prefer to just ID as just asexual or just aromantic but are forced into aroace identity because that would be "conflating" and they don't want to deal with the harassment).

"UwU don't say asexual when you actually mean aromantic" Some bitches don't use to SAM fvck off with allo-splaining my own sexuality to me.

It would be so much easier and save a lot of pain if yall just went : "asexual for some means no sexual attraction and it says nothing of your romantic attraction AND some people use it to mean no attraction generally". And "aromantic for some means no romantic attraction and it says nothing of your sexual attraction AND some people use it to mean no attraction generally" and "for some they are separated but others not so much as there isn't always a strict separation. Just be chill about it don't accuse people of being ignorant or conflating they know their identities better than you". But no ya chose violent aphobia instead.

But ultimately nobody cares because this shit is only harming the undesirable aces/aros the ones who are harmful stereotypes the ones that make you "look bad".

I know deep in my heart there are a lot of alloaces & alloaros that who would be happy if aroaces & non sam aces/aros didn't exist, there I said it. How can I not come to that conclusion when at every turn they shit on us. They talk about how the worst thing in the world is to be mistaken for one of us. That our representation is actively harmful.

A last parting spicy take it's either "asexulity and aromantism are full identities on their own and aren't modifiers" OR "actually neither asexual nor aromantic can stand on their own they need to be paired with another orientation and they actually are just modifiers" you can't have it both ways. 🤭

emory scott opinion: she would kin rin sohma so hard. their trauma, the ways they deal with it— both are very similar, except rin is a lot darker and has more exacerbated trauma, and her love interest is THE MAN like he ran, he did it all, he tried his best and fought for his girl in the best ways. unlike will, who i mean, he was okay, but my man haru is in a different league. but god, look me in the eyes and tell me these clips don't give emory vibes.

Jumping up and down in the air after I saw the new tommyinnit video I support this man's call out era

once again reminded why i don’t associate VAs with the characters they play…

I finished the first season of the live action ATLA, and I have to say my reaction is… mixed.

I went into it determined to have an open mind, and there was definitely a good chunk that I enjoyed! For one thing, I love what they did with both Suki and Yue, taking advantage of the longer episode lengths to give them both lives and motivations beyond just “pretty girl that Sokka crushes on” (Suki obviously gets more depth in the og show during seasons 2 & 3, but Yue has always struck me as a rather one-dimensional character).

The best (if traumatizing) choice was to actually show the Fire Nation attack on the airbenders. Doing so gave a real emotional heft to Aang being displaced a hundred years with the weight of failing to prevent a past genocide, and the pressure of having to stop another without any idea how. Not only that, but it did a great job of indicating, right at the start of the show, that this was an adaptation indenting to transform what was fundamentally a kids’ show with complex themes into an adult series with the ability to really expand on that depth and complexity.

…and then it didn’t.

Oh, the show pokes at the repercussions of Iroh having waged a long and deadly siege agains Ba Sing Se, and it does a decent job at deepening the fuckery that is Zuko’s backstory. But so much of the more ambiguous or complex parts of the original have been flattened in this adaptation—and not in ways that can be explained by the compressed narrative. Instead, it feels like the sanitized story and characters are a direct result of a purity culture that demands all things black and white, never shades of gray.

Let’s look at Zuko, the villain-turned-hero with an iconic but bumpy redemption arc in the original series. Part of what makes Zuko’s story so goddamn compelling in the original is that he begins as a true villain, who does some horrible things and is led astray more often than not by his explosive temper; and yet his horrifying backstory and desperation for a loving family that never actually existed compel us to view him with some sympathy, even as he acts against our protagonists.

Yet in the adaptation, Zuko is consistently painted in a softer, kinder light than he was in the original. He has no hand in burning down the village on Kyoshi Island; he hears Aang out and even seems to consider Aang’s offer of friendship rather than immediately lashing out after the Blue Spirit reveal; he is notably more respectful to Iroh and loses his temper much less frequently and violently.

Even the change of Zuko fighting back against Ozai in the agni kai can be construed as him recognizing that Ozai is the bad guy, especially when it means that in order for his exile to make sense he has to defy his father again after he’s already been burned.

This is a pattern that is repeated with nearly all of the characters with any degree of ambiguity. Pakku is depicted as kind of a decent person who’s just being held back by his deference to tradition, rather than being pretty much an asshole regardless of whether he’s following tradition or not. Hahn is a nice guy who is in love with Yue but accepts her decision not to marry him, instead of a dick that sees her as a trophy and is more than happy to marry her despite her disinterest.

Sokka is a huge victim of this flattening of flaws. His early-show misogyny is entirely absent, making his stumbling with Suki a little odd and ungrounded, and his dismissal of Katara’s skills even more so. The narrative doesn’t allow him to be anywhere close to as boneheaded and stubborn as he is in the original—this version of Sokka would never angrily slash through the swamp despite the warning signs, or blatantly lie to Won Shi Ton and then even more blatantly steal from him.

Sokka isn’t even allowed the most understandable tactical mistake from the original show: using the air ship in the fight at the Northern Air Temple, and inadvertently delivering the Fire Nation’s greatest asset. That honor is given to a generalized “spies” that are distanced even from Sai himself.

If the heroes aren’t allowed to have flaws, the villains are even worse off, without anything that might make them sympathetic. Jet, who in the original sits in a similar in-between place as Zuko, is pushed firmly on the side of villain over the course of his two-episode arc. Instead of Jet fighting dirty against Fire Nation colonists who are nevertheless civilians, he bombs buildings in Omashu; it’s easier to denounce him when he’s hurting Earth Kingdom civilians with his tactics, rather than people who may or may not be complicit in the war. He’s even labeled a terrorist, an easy buzzword for a largely usamerican audience to point to and say “ah yes, that’s a bad guy.”

The main villains— Ozai, Zhao, and even the brief scene of Sozin— are ironically even more cartoonishly evil than in the animated show. Ozai and Sozin both declare their evil plans— out loud, with villainous aplomb— to use one major military movement as a distraction for another, even bigger movement. (Sozin’s plan at least made sense, in that the distraction was “leaked” intelligence rather than an actual deployment of troops. How the hell did Ozai have enough troops and a decent supply line to attack both the Northern Water Tribe and Omashu at the same time? And it’s not like the distraction actually served any purpose, since it’s explicitly stated several times that the separate nations don’t send aid to each other anymore.)

Ozai’s treatment of Zuko is even more abusive than in the original, especially with the aforementioned change where Zuko actually does fight back as ordered. His choice to burn Zuko and then later banish him then must be explained by Zuko showing compassion, a much more typically “evil” motivation than the more complex (though no less abusive) notion of Zuko dishonoring himself.

Zhao gets an even worse character lobotomy, which is impressive given that his original character is pretty unabashedly villainous. But rather than a devious, powerful, and ambitious commander looming over everything Zuko or Team Avatar does, this version of Zhao is cartoonishly incompetent. (It doesn’t help that the only thing I’ve seen Ken Leung in is Person of Interest, where he plays a similarly buffoonish character constantly in need of rescue. When held up against Jason Isaacs’ mesmerizing but intimidating voice in the original, there’s no comparison.)

Zhao is no longer a respected military leader but a backwoods commander who barely passed the exam to become an officer; his rise through the ranks isn’t due to military successes or a commanding presence but because Azula finds him easy to manipulate; cutting Jeong Jeong means that we don’t see Aang get the better of Zhao by playing on his temper and lack of control; even discovering the secret of the moon and ocean spirits seems more like blundering luck than actual determination and intelligence. You can’t take Zhao seriously as a threat in this adaptation, even when he’s killing the moon spirit and destroying the balance of the world— he’s a nuisance at best, with Azula as the real looming danger.

Disliking Zhao’s character changes might just come down to a matter of taste, of course. I’m always going to be more interested in intelligent, competent characters, whether they are heroes or villains. But it forms part of this pattern of flattening characters and plots and arcs, and brings me back to the fundamental question that kept hitting me over the head while watching the series.

Why?

Why make an adaptation? This is a question that comes up whenever an adaptation of anything is made: what does the adaptation bring to the table that the original did not? Often the answer to this question is money, but there’s usually an attempt to point to a different answer, if only to distract from the greed.

Sometimes the answer is simple— a translation, for example, is an adaptation made to reach a wider audience. Sometimes the answer is more complicated— changing Lord of the Rings from books to movies, as another example, took advantage of the music, acting, and visuals to pack more emotional punch than the books did.

I would argue, as I began to at the start of this post, that the benefit of adapting ATLA from an animated kids show to a live action series is the bucking of those “kids show” limitations. ATLA deals with a lot of serious, heavy topics that don’t get fully explored because they are too complicated and intense to be greenlit in a network show aimed at 10 year olds. In addition, ATLA (and particularly Legend of Korra after it) faced an uphill battle to portray some more sticky topics such as queerness, in part due to the time period when they were produced.

A live action show produced by Netflix seems to bypass all those hurdles, allowing for a darker and more socially progressive show than what the original was able to accomplish. But despite showing onscreen the destruction of the Air Nomads, the adaptation of ATLA seems more sanitized than the original, playing to the lowest common denominator in a way that the original never did, despite the latter being a kids show and the former ostensibly being for adults.

I came away from the new series with a bad taste in my mouth, even with some things that I really enjoyed, and I think this is the crux of why. The adaptation didn’t update the original; it stripped it of anything that might be deemed problematic and replaced it with a black and white worldview that is, in fact, antithetical to the themes of the original show.

After all, the creators seem to have reasoned, who would root for Zuko’s redemption if he actually needed redemption in the first place?

ok fine im a bit pissy

I did not spend HOURS of EVERY DAY this week, most often WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT

doing things for certain types of encampment that I CANT TALK ABT ON SOCIAL MEDIA ON RISK OF SELF-INCRIMINATION

to be palestine-guilted over MEMEING ABOUT MISHA COLLINS

I did not WORK MYSELF TO EXHAUSTION

face *REDACTED* and *REDACTED*

to be told that my HAPPY LITTLE FANDOM POSTING on a site with NO FINANICAL OR ALGORITHMIC SIGNIFICANCE TO CELEBRITIES somehow undoes alllll of that.

is this a good post? no. does it apply to a lot of ppl? prolly not. could I lose followers/moots for this? yeah.

but its what I'm feeling rn.

my doctor was sooooo fucking worthless and unhelpful im going to masturbate and i hope it fucking kills me