as a white fan I'm sure there's someone who could say this better, but whatever your views on rpf I think it warrants being discussed how ray is characterized in fanfiction. this isn't about the ethics of rpf existing in the first place, this is specifically about fandom racism and how its reflected in fanfiction. whether you like it or not, rpf not going anywhere, and as long as its here its important to discuss the implications of how different people are written about

the way ray, and especially his hair, is described often downright boarders on caricature. this was more of a problem in the earlier days of bandom, but racism is still present in more recent fanfiction. in my experience, it just takes on a more insidious form. sure, there's far fewer descriptions comparing his hair to an afro or treating him like some kind of lovable idiot left to follow his white bandmates around like a puppy, but he's still often only in the fic to support narratives that only centre around his white bandmates. in and out of itself this isn't necessarily a problem, but when ray is consistently under characterized as a side character and underrepresented as a main character, it begins to paint a picture of how this fandom sees him.

rpf isn't reality, but it is based on it. the way people write about celebrities is directly based on their perceptions of them, and is both indicative and influential to the general fandom culture. reading the way ray is described in some of these fics is uncomfortable enough as a white fan. I cant imagine what its like for a fan of colour, especially if they happen to share the features that are being made fun of.

all I ask of white fanfic readers and writers is to use your critical thinking skills and above all be compassionate. to any people of colour in the fandom, feel free to correct me, add on, or share your experiences

💥

💥 How do you feel about criticism?

I mean...

Okay but jokes aside, I do have thoughts about criticism and fanfic!

Personally, I love criticism. Criticism is not the only way to learn, but it's definitely one of the best and fastest ways to get better. Feedback is awesome and should be encouraged!

But there's the caveat that we're talking about fanfic, and fanfic is primarily a labor of love. People do this shit for fun, and sometimes people forget that.

There's also a difference between criticism and critique, and I feel tumblr is super bad at nuance and understanding the difference. Criticism is aimed at the author, it's made with the expectation the author will see it. You're engaging the author in a conversation because you have opinions about their work and you want them to know it. Whether the opinions are positive or negative doesn't really change the fact you're actively trying to get a reaction from the writer. Critique is aimed at the work. Critique is not necessarily aimed at the writer, nor should it expect a direct response from the writer. Critique is an exercise on the reader's part to contextualize and analyze the work and it's component parts and what its effects are.

The way I look at it is like this:

"The way this fic handles death makes me sad" is criticism, "the way this fic portrays romance is a good example of the recent trend of coffeeshop AUs" is critique.

I think the difference is valid because sometimes you want to say something about a fic in its context, but it's not a comment on the work itself or for the writer to interact with, and yet people insist on throwing it at the writer anyway.

There's a very contested point of view that insists because a work is put out in the open it's free game for criticism and critique, and I don't entirely disagree. If you put your work out there, it's out of your hands and people will interpret and find meaning in it in ways you can't control. If you can't make peace with that, the only option you have is to not publish at all.

But the people who tend to go hard on that stance tend to be the people who like to abuse the concept of criticism to be abusive towards writers under the guise of criticism. So I'm also perpetually resisting the urge to remind people they're hissing and frothing over fanfic, and in the large scale of things, fanfic doesn't matter.

On the other other end of the spectrum, you have critiques about the way fanfic in specific, and on a broader sense, fan culture as a whole, reproduces systemic oppressive structures that other and ostracize fans that aren't white or cis or straight. And those critiques are super valid and important should not be just ignored or demonized as people trying to "censor" fandom. Because it's not about censoring bigotry, and that's what tends to make people frothy. It's not that you're not allowed to write bigotry in your stories. It's that writing bigotry in your stories should ideally be a choice, not an unexplored, unquestioned reflection of your biases.

Fans of color have been particularly loud in explaining how aggressively racist fandom can be, when it comes to pointing out "hey, all those slave AUs you keep churning out are super racist" and people immediately going "this is right wing propaganda trying to silence us all!" Like, critique is a great tool to start conversations about the kind of art we're making, because if fanfic wants to be considered art and people want to keep insisting they're "Hugo winners" because they post in AO3, you kinda have to be open to the idea that critique is part of that legitimized existence. You can't have it both ways: you can't claim fanfic is a niche hobby people do for fun, and also insist that it's a bastion of representation to make up for media censorship.

Mostly I just wish people could take these discussions in good faith.

Me, personally? I try to approach criticism and critique in good faith. But I'm not here to be anyone's punching bag and when people are clearly just in it to be abusive or insist on making me responsible for their choices? (Ie, I clicked on the link and it said there was porn and there was porn in your fic and now I'm traumatized, HOW DARE!) Yeah, no. Fuck that. That's what the block button is for.

4.3 Multimodal Redesign

image: 2022 Max Löffler, illustration for Bandcamp Daily

Introduction: 

An overarching theme for my unit projects is how white people in tech have historically neglected accurate elements of a racialized society. For my multimodal redesign, I’d like to take my most recent unit project, “How Are Tech Companies Responsible for Racist AI?” and expand on how data that is discriminatory or unrepresentative of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color creates inaccurate algorithms. I chose this topic because it is honestly astounding to me that the public, that is, the average internet user, is made to be unaware of how algorithms are not simply objective. First, there is a piece by Megan Garcia that I’ve chosen as one of my scholarly sources. It’s titled “Racist in the Machine: The Disturbing Implications of Algorithmic Bias,” and it tells the story of a Twitter bot designed by Microsoft named Tay. Tay went from a happy helper to a “racist Holocaust denier” in the span of twenty-four hours. With Garcia’s piece, I will analyze how AI is tested in isolated, controlled environments that rely on a select few coder’s biases. Then, I’ll expand on what exactly this does, its consequences, and possible solutions. The next scholarly source I’m adding is a piece by James Zou and Londa Schiebinger titled “AI can be sexist and racist — it’s time to make it fair.” The work analyzes ImageNet, a large visual database designed for visual object recognition software research. ImageNet receives 45% of its data from the United States alone, which Zou and Schiebinger argue is under representative of the world at large.

image: The ArchAndroid, album by Janelle Monáe

Literature Review: 

“Race After Technology” is a book by Ruha Benjamin that focuses specifically on internet-based technologies according to the “New Jim Code.” Such technologies include the modern creation and usage of facial recognition software, predictive crime algorithms, and even soap dispensers. Benjamin analyzes the tech, claiming it's hastily fastened and is less of a marker of societal progression and more of an irresponsibly coded software. Benjamin has specifically talked about the MIT scientists who have avoided programming aspects of gender, class, and race in an attempt to create robots without bias. 

Olga Akselrod, writer of “How Artificial Intelligence Can Deepen Racial and Economic Inequities,” talks about how AI is touted as a “smart economic investment for the future.” But she asks for who? The author continues with several instances of how AI has caused discriminatory harm, including housing discrimination, lack of representation in data, and racial profiling in job screenings. 

“What Really Happened When Google Ousted Timnit Gebru” is an article written by Tom Simonite that describes the work culture of non-white ethicists who research the effects of tech. The article examines a back-and-forth between Gebru and a Google executive. 

Gerrit De Vynck and Will Oremus, authors of “As AI Booms, Tech Firms Are Laying Off Their Ethicists,” write about Twitch streamers who claim the platform has a racial bias. Next, they discuss various social platforms that have cut their ethics and social teams. 

“Pause Giant AI Experiments” is an open letter from the Future of Life Institute. It calls for all AI labs to stop the production of AI systems exceeding the capability of GPT-4. It also calls for at least six months of training for such systems. The AI systems in question are defined as “human-competitive” in intelligence. The open letter claims that such systems can pose “profound risks to society and humanity.” 

“Racist in the Machine” is an essay by Megan Garcia that challenges unconscious and institutional biases that fly under the radar of companies and governments. She discusses “distorted data,” “cybersecurity,” and “crowd-level” monitoring. 

James Zou and Londa Schiebinger, writers of “AI Can Be Sexist and Racist— It’s Time to Make it Fair,” call for the importance of recognizing sources of bias and de-bias training. 

image: Debra Yepa-Pappan Live Long & Prosper, Spock was a Half Breed, 2008

Discussion: 

White coders, who are over-representative of implicit bias, exist in conditions that only compound the racism found therein. Black, Indigenous, and People of color are, therefore, underrepresented not only in terms of accurate data but of literal population in tech companies. Coders at an individual level and companies alike need to understand that colorblind ideology is inevitably complacent with racism. 

For starters, Nikon is programmed to see Asian eyes as always blinking, sending an alert to its user (Zou and Schiebinger). Microsoft and Twitter don’t see the point in continuing ethical research of AI (Vynck and Oremus). Google buries unsavory research on its social and ethical ramifications (Simonite). There aren’t enough Black, Indigenous, and People of Color employed by tech companies (Akselrod). Twitter bot Tay, a Microsoft algorithm, started out as a playful, childlike newbie of Earth, only to utter outlandish statements like “[feminists] should all die and burn in hell” (Garcia). Garcia suggests the reason why this bot took in ideologies of racism, bigotry, and xenophobia is that it's isolated in creation. It has zero experience with the spectrum of humans that roam this Earth. What’s worse is how these isolated and controlled environments perform. 

MIT's data scientists work hard to construct robots without gender, class, or race (Benjamin). 

Quote: While the robots indeed were “servants” and “workers,” MIT scientists referred to them as “friends and children, addressing them in “class-avoidant” terms (42). Programmers decided not to input the varying histories of racism, transphobia, and misogyny that made them uncomfortable. Benjamin states this colorblind, class-blind, and gender-blind approach merely serves as “another avenue for coding inequity” (42). 

While this kind of care for Black, Indigenous, and People of color is often described as covert, I argue that it is most often worse than undisguised modes of racism. It becomes almost impossible to name and stop discriminatory AI when it matches human intelligence on a mass scale. There is comfort in being on top. Receiving the daily privileges that make life as a white person so bearable determines why it is difficult for white coders to recognize white power. It’s easier to leave these histories out. It’s easier not to have to examine why we don’t feel the need to include dark-skinned people in image data software. 

image: Cover detail of Grace Dillon, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (University of Arizona Press, 2012). Art by Beth Dillon.

Conclusion: 

Akselrod says, “The tech industry’s lack of representation of people who understand and can work to address the potential harms of these technologies only exacerbates [racist AIs]” (1). Because we live in a racialized society, one with histories of slavery and colonization, there is an unconscious bias inherently in the minds of white people. There is no way for us to have accurate histories and representations of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color without involving them in mass quantities in the process of AI development. That’s the very first step that needs to be taken. Relinquishment of the white leader. 

image: “Time Traveller,” 2018, by Kongkee/ Image: Courtesy of the artist and Penguin Lab. © 2018 the artist.

Bibliography

Akselrod, Olga. “How Artificial Intelligence Can Deepen Racial and Economic Inequities: ACLU.” American Civil Liberties Union,https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/how-artificial-intelligence-can-deepen-racial-and-economic-inequities. 

Benjamin, Ruha. Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Polity Press, 2019. 

Garcia, Megan. “Racist in the Machine: The Disturbing Implications of Algorithmic Bias.” Duke University Press, Duke University Press, 1 Dec. 2016, https://read.dukeupress.edu/world-policy-journal/article-abstract/33/4/111/30942/Racist-in-the-MachineThe-Disturbing-Implications. 

“Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter.” Future of Life Institute, 21 Apr. 2023, https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/. 

Simonite, Tom. “What Really Happened When Google Ousted Timnit Gebru.” Wired, Conde Nast, 8 June 2021, https://www.wired.com/story/google-timnit-gebru-ai-what-really-happened/. 

Vynck, Gerrit  De, and Will Oremus. “As AI Booms, Tech Firms Are Laying off Their Ethicists.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 3 Apr. 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/30/tech-companies-cut-ai-ethics/. 

Zou, James, and Londa Schiebinger. “AI Can Be Sexist and Racist - It's Time to Make It Fair.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 18 July 2018, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05707-8. 

Here Are Some Fat Positive Activists, Educators, Therapists, and Artists to Know!

First and foremost, the pioneer of organized fat activism:

• Bill Fabrey (he/him)

Bill Fabrey, a self-proclaimed fat admirer, founded NAAFA (the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) in 1969 after gaining an understanding of the day-to-day oppression and discrimination faced by his wife, Joyce. Fabrey founded the organization in hopes to raise awareness of weight stigma, criticize biased studies, and increase overall acceptance and accessibility to fat Americans. He is considered one of the pioneers of the fat liberation movement, and is heavily involved to this day.

• Judy Freespirit, Sara Fishman, Lynn McAfee, Ariana Manow, & Gudrun Fonfa (she/her for each)

(Members of The Fat Underground, 1979)

Fat, radical, feminist members of NAAFA! Their agenda was much more aggressive than NAAFA’s, and eventually they broke off and formed their own group called The Fat Underground, which acted as a catalyst in the creation and mobilization of the fat liberation movement. Based in LA in the 1970s, the Fat Underground did not fight to change discriminatory laws but rather discriminatory thoughts and practices in different aspects of society, which included those of doctors and other health professionals who perpetuated the unhealthy habits encouraged by diet culture. In 1973, Judy Freespirit and Alderbaran published the “Fat Liberation Manifesto” which establishes that fat people are entitled to what they were denied on a daily basis: “human respect and recognition.” The other objectives then outline the commercial exploitation of fat bodies by both corporations and scientific institutions. (x) I will go into more detail about the Fat Underground in my next post, “The History of Fat Activism!”

• Dr. Lindo Bacon (they/them), PhD

(no photo)

Creator of the concept of HAES (Health At Every Size).

Dr. Bacon is best known for their paradigm-shifting research and advocacy upending the weight discourse. They have mined their deep academic proficiency, wide-ranging clinical expertise and own personal experience to write two best-selling books, Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight, and the co-authored Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, or Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight. Both are credited with transforming the weight discourse and inspiring a hopeful new course for the fat liberation movement. Dr. Bacon holds their PhD in physiology, as well as graduate degrees in psychology and exercise metabolism. Dr. Bacon formerly taught at City College of San Francisco, in the Health Education, Psychology, Women’s Studies, and Biology Departments. A professor and researcher, for almost two decades Dr. Bacon has taught courses in social justice, health, weight and nutrition; they have also conducted federally funded studies on health and weight and published in top scientific journals. Their research has been supported by grants from the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health. A truly great pioneer in medical health research! 

https://lindobacon.com/ | HAES | IG

• Aubrey Gordon, a.k.a. Your Fat Friend (she/her)

(no photo)

Aubrey Gordon writes about the social realities of life as a very fat person, previously publishing anonymously as Your Fat Friend. She is the author of What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Lit Hub, Vox, Gay Mag, and has been covered in outlets around the world. She also hosts the podcast Maintenance Phase, in which she and cohost Michael Hobbes debunk and decode wellness and weight loss trends. Her articles are incredibly heartfelt and enlightening. You can read all of them at www.yourfatfriend.com !!

@ yrfatfriend on IG & Twitter

• Sabrina Strings (she/her), PhD

Sabrina Strings is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine and the author of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, which exposes fatphobia’s roots in anti-blackness. Strings contributed an opinion story to The New York Times titled “It’s Not Obesity. It’s Slavery.” With Lindo Bacon (creator of HAES), she coauthored “The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity,” published in Scientific American. Strings has a BA in psychology and an MA and PHd in sociology. This book is #1 on my to-read list!!

https://www.sabrinastrings.com

• Hannah Fuhlendorf (she/her), MA LPCC NCC

Hannah is a highly educated and experienced counselor whose work focuses on self acceptance, eliminating the effects of internalized oppression, and practicing through a HAES lens. She is a fat liberationist who puts out educational videos daily. Hannah is also married to a healthcare professional, and the two of them are working toward making the medical field more accessible to fat people in their local community, and offering education on how to be fat allies. I really admire Hannah and the work that she does!

@ hannahtalksbodies on IG and TikTok

• Tracy Cox (she/her)

Tracy is an award-winning performer and artist, who co-created the web series “Angry Fat People” with Matthew Anchel, which takes a pop culture approach on serious issues faced by fat performers. She has been interviewed by the New York Times on fat politics and accessibility, and currently has a huge following on IG where she unpacks fat performance, fashion, and politics. You may know her as the creator of the ‘fat vanity’ trend on TikTok!

@ sparklejams on IG & TikTok

• Da’Shaun L. Harrison (they/them) 

Da’Shaun is a non-binary abolitionist, community organizer, and writer. They are currently a managing editor and columnist at Wear Your Voice Magazine. They travel throughout the United States and abroad to speak at conferences, colleges, and lead workshops focused on Blackness, queerness, gender, class, religion, (dis)abilities, fatness, and the intersection at which they all meet. Da’Shaun is the author of the book Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, which is expected to be published in July 2021. They have an incredibly enlightening social media presence as well!!

@ dashaunlh on IG and Twitter

• Lauren Buchness (she/her)

Lauren Buchness is one of my favorite artists. She’s a contemporary artist and fat activist based in Tucson, Arizona. By combining painting & performance, she aims to question Western standards of beauty and create conversations that alter preconceived notions about the fat body. Go check out her gorgeous work!!

@ ladybuchness on IG and TikTok

If you’re interested in learning about diet culture and intuitive eating, check out

Shana Minei Spence (she/her), MS RDN CDN

Shana is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist who opposes food restriction and encourages intuitive eating! She spreads food positive daily messages on her platform. She used to work in fashion, but she left after being dissatisfied with the industry and went back to school to become involved in food policy and public health. She offers counseling on a HAES approach. I have much respect for Shana!

@ thenutritiontea on IG

And right here on tumblr (who was my personal introduction to fat lib) -

@ bigfatscience !!!

An anonymous fat liberationist. They share so many great resources, diving head-first into the scientific research of weight and health, they’ve found that the relation between the two is extremely complex. They tackle the biases of  research in a system that profits off of fatphobia, and they offer a fat positive perspective based on scientific studies. Their blog serves as an easily accessible resource for fat folx and fat activists who want to learn about fat positive science to support their own personal interests/activism. Thank you for your work, bigfatscience!! (if you have questions for them, you will have a greater chance of getting a response with anon off!) 

• Sonalee Rashatwar (she/they), LCSW MEd

Sonalee is an award-winning clinical social worker, sex therapist, and grassroots organizer. They’re a superfat queer bisexual non-binary therapist and co-owner of Radical Therapy Center. Sonalee is specialized in treating sexual trauma, internalized fatphobia, immigrant kid guilt, and South Asian family systems, while offering fat positive sexual healthcare. Go, Sonalee!!

@ thefatsextherapist on IG

• Fat Rose (org)

Fat Rose organizes fat people, building a more radical fat liberation movement in strong relationship with other social movements, such as anti-fascism, anti-ableism, and anti-racism. Check them out on Facebook!

fatrose.org

Honorable IG mentions: (Some anti diet culture specific blogs in here, as well)

@fatangryblackgirl  @msgigggles @thefatphobiaslayer @bodyimagewithbri @saucyewest @fatpositivetherapy @fatlippodcast @chairbreaker 

BOOKS

And here’s an amazing list of fat-positive book recommendations from HannahTalksBodies!

Science & Health:

Health at Every Size by Lindo Bacon PhD

Body Respect by Lindo Bacon PhD and Lucy Aphramor PhD, RD

Secrets from the Eating Lab by Traci Mann PhD

Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison MPH, RD

Fat Liberation:

Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings PhD

Fat Activism by Dr. Charlotte Cooper

Fat Politics by J. Eric Oliver

The Fat Studies Reader by Esther Rothblum (Editor) and Sondra Solovay (Editor)

Fat Shame by Amy Erdman Farrell

Self Acceptance:

The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

Things No One will Tell Fat Girls by Jes Baker

Eating in the Light of the Moon by Anita Johnson PhD

Happy Fat by Sofie Hagan

You have the Right to Remain Fat by Virgie Tovar

Thanks for reading! Please feel free to share this list of resources!

Image descriptions below.

1. [ID: A black and white photo of Bill Fabrey, a straight-sized, balding white man with thick black glasses wearing a suit and tie, standing at a poduim in front of a sign that reads, “NAAFA”. Beside the image is another photo of Fabrey, from his left side.]

2. [ID: A black and white photo of seven fat, female and gender non-conforming members of The Fat Underground, performing a recital.]

3. [ID: The cover of Sabrina Strings’ book, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. On the cover is an illustration of four upper-class white people in fancy colonial period clothing showing shock and disgust at a Black woman’s exposed body. Beside the book cover is a photo of Sabrina Strings, a straight-sized Black woman with dark brown curly hair wearing a blouse.]

4. [ID: Hannah Fulhendorf, a fat, white woman with straight hair dyed blue, wearing a black tank top and holding her shoulder while smiling brightly and looking into the camera.]

5. [ID: An artistic picture of Tracy Cox, a fat, white woman with long, straight brown hair, laying topless on a bed of flowers. There are flower petals placed strategically in her hair on her skin, and along her lower eyelid. Beside that image, is an image of the album cover for Angry Fat People, picturing two angry faces made out of white paper against a grey background. In the top left corner, black, bolded text that reads “AFP” and “FAT LIBERATION”.]

6. [ID: Da’Shaun L. Harrison, a fat, non-binary Black person with a beard, glasses, and long dreadlocks, wearing a shirt that reads, “TO BE VISIBLY QUEER IS TO CHOOSE YOUR HAPPINESS OVER YOUR SAFETY. -DA’SHAUN HARRISON” against a natural backdrop of autumn leaves.]

7. [ID: A watercolor painting by Lauren Buchness of a white and tattooed fat body, hands caressing abstract rolls of fat with wild blueberries and grapefruit between folds. Beside it is another Buchness watercolor painting of Black hands with long sharp nails, caressing the midsection of a fat Black body, with purple crystals growing out of the skin.]

8. [ID: Shana Minei Spence, a straight-sized, Black woman smiling with bright pink lipstick and her long wavy hair pulled back, wearing a floral pattern shirt and jean shorts. She is holding small marquee that reads, “BE CAREFUL OF WELLNESS COMPANIES THAT SAY THEY’RE PROMOTING HEALTH YET ARE STILL ONLY TRYING TO GET YOUR BODY SMALLER” and a heart symbol.]

9. [ID: Sonalee Rashatwar, a superfat, South Asian non-binary person with short black hair, wearing a long floral dress, standing in front of large glowing text that reads, “BIG GIRL ENERGY” against a coarse-textured wall.]

10. [ID: A circular logo with a red fist in the center, with text surrounding it that reads, “FATTIES AGAINST FASCISM” with roses separating the word “RESIST”. Beside it is another image, of eleven fat and superfat activists, standing and sitting on mobility scooters, holding fists and middle fingers in the air, wearing T-shirts and holding banners that both read, “FATTIES AGAINST FASCISM”. In front of the group is a large cardboard sign that spells the acronym “F.A.B.” which stands for “Fat Antifascist Brigade”.]

Why all the white guys in whump?

I got Inspired by a post asking that question, and here we are. Warning: long post ahead.

I think it’s due to a combination of factors, as things frequently are.

The preference for / prevalence of white male characters in fandom is well-known and has been examined pretty thoroughly by people already.

What’s worth noting for discussing this tendency in whump in particular is that the ‘whump fandom’ itself is not a ‘fandom’ in the traditional sense of being made of fans of one single source narrative (or source setting, like a particular comics fandom, or the Star Wars extended universe) with pre-existing characters. Although subsets of traditional fandoms certainly exist within the larger whump fandom, a lot of whump is based on original, ‘fan’-created characters.

So, given the tendency of ‘traditional’ fandoms to create stories disproportionately centered on white male characters due to the source material itself being centered on white male characters (and giving more narrative weight to them, characterizing them better, etc), if we say hypothetically that the whump fandom is split say 50/50 between ‘traditional’ fandom works and original whump works, you’d expect to see a higher number of works focused on white men than the demographics of the ‘traditional’ fandom’s source work would predict, but not as extreme of a divergence between the source material & the fanworks as the one you’d see if whump fandom were 100% based on popular media.

However, that doesn’t quite seem to be the case. Whump stories and art remain focused on overwhelmingly male and frequently white characters, which means that the tendency of the fandom to create stories disproportionately centered on white male characters cannot be ONLY explained by the source material itself being centered on white male characters (and giving more narrative weight to them, characterizing them better, etc).

And, having established the fact that whump writers & artists presumably have MORE control over the design of their characters than writers & artists in ‘traditional’ fandoms, we have to wonder why the proportions remain biased towards men, & white men in particular.

—

The race thing is pretty simple in my opinion. Mostly, it’s just another extension of the fanbase’s tendency to reflect the (predominantly US-American, on tumblr) culture it exists in, which means that, in a white-centric culture, people make artworks featuring white people.

There’s also the issue of artists being hesitant to write works that dwell heavily on violence towards people of color due to the (US-American) history of people of color being violently mistreated. I’ve actually seen a couple of posts arguing that white people SHOULDN’T write whump of nonwhite characters (particularly Black characters) because of the history of actual violence against Black bodies being used as entertainment, which means that fictional violence against Black people, written by white people, for a (presumed) white audience, still feels exploitative and demeaning.

I'm not going to get into all my thoughts on this discussion here but suffice to say that there's probably an impact on the demographics of whump works from authors of color who simply... don't want to see violence against people of color, even non-explicitly-racialized violence, and then another impact from white authors who choose not to write non-white characters either due to the reasons stated above, or simply due to their personal discomfort with how to go about writing non-white characters in a genre that is heavily focused on interpersonal violence.

Interestingly enough, there’s also a decent proportion of Japanese manga & anime being used as source material for whump, and manga-styled original works being created. The particular relationship between US-American and Japanese pop culture could take up a whole essay just by itself so I’ll just say, there’s a long history of US-Japanese cultural exchange which means that this tendency is also not all that surprising.

—

GENDER though. If someone had the time and the energy they could make a fucking CAREER out of examining gender in whump, gender dynamics in whump, and why there seems to be a fandom-wide preference for male whumpees that cannot be fully explained by the emphasis on male characters in the source text.

I have several different theories about factors which impact gender preference in whump, and anyone who has other theories (or disagrees with mine) is free to jump in and add on.

THEORY 1: AUTHOR GENDER AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.
 Fandom in general is predominantly female, although these days it might be more accurate to say that fandom is predominantly composed of cis women and trans people of all genders. However, pretty much everyone who isn't a cis man has had to contend with the specter of gendered violence in their real personal life. Thus, if we posit whump (and fandom more generally) as a sort of escapist setup, it's not hard to see why whump authors & artists might willfully eschew writing female whumpees (especially in the case of inflicted whump), because (as in the discussion of people of color in whump above), even violence towards women that is explicitly non-gender-based may still hit too close to home for people whose lives have been saturated with the awareness of gender-based violence.

THEORY 2: SICK OF SEXY SUFFERING.
 Something of an addendum to theory 1, it's worth noting that depictions of female suffering in popular media are extremely gendered (in that they specifically reflect real-life gender-based violence, and that said real-life violence is almost exclusively referenced in relation to female characters) and frequently sexualized as well. There's only so many times you can see female characters having their clothes Strategically Ripped while they're held captive, being sexually menaced (overtly or implicitly) to demonstrate How Evil the villain is, or just getting outright sexually assaulted for the Drama of it all before it gets exhausting, especially when the narratives typically either brush any consequences under the rug, or dwell on them in a way that feels more voyeuristic and gratuitous than realistic and meaningful. All this may result in authors who, given the chance to write their own depictions of suffering, may decide simply to remove the possibility of gendered violence by removing the female gender.

THEORY 3: AUTHOR ATTRACTION. 
I'll admit that this one is more a matter of conjecture, as I haven't seen any good demographic breakdowns of attraction in general fandom or whump fandom. That said, my own experience talking to fellow whump fans does indicate that attraction to the characters (whether whumpers, or whumpees) is part of the draw of whump for some people. This one partially ties into theory 1 as well, in that people who are attracted to multiple genders may not derive the same enjoyment out of seeing a female character in a whumpy situation as they might seeing a male character in that situation, simply because of the experience of gendered violence in their lives.

THEORY 4: ACCEPTABLE TARGETS.
 The female history of fandom means that there's been a lot more discussion of the impacts of depicting pain & suffering (especially female suffering) for personal amusement. Thus, in some ways, you could say that there is a mild taboo on putting female characters through suffering if you can't "justify" it as meaningful to the narrative, not just titillating, which whump fandom rarely tries or requires anyone to do. This fan-cultural 'rule' may impact whump writers' and artists' decisions in choosing the gender of their characters.

THEORY 5: AN ALTERNATIVE TO MAINSTREAM MASCULINITY.
 Whump fandom may like whumping men because by and large, mainstream/pop culture doesn't let men be vulnerable, doesn't let them cry, doesn't let them have long-term health issues due to constantly getting beat up even when they really SHOULD, doesn't let them have mental health issues period. Female characters, as discussed in theory 2, get to ("get to") go through suffering and be affected by it (however poorly written those effects are), but typically, male characters' suffering is treated as a temporary problem, minimized, and sublimated into anger if at all possible. (For an example, see: every scene in a movie where something terrible happens and the male lead character screams instead of crying). So, as nature abhors a vacuum, whump fandom "over-produces" whump of men so as to fill in that gap in content.

THEORY 6: AMPLIFIED BIAS.
 While it's true that whump fandom doesn't have a source text, it's also true that whump fans frequently find their way into the fandom via other 'traditional' fandoms, and continue participating in 'traditional' fandoms as part of their whump fandom activity. Bias begets bias; fandom as a whole has a massive problem with focusing on white male characters, and fans who are used to the bias towards certain types of characters in derivative works absolutely reproduce that bias in their own original whump works.

—

I honestly think that there is greater bias in the whump fandom than anyone would like to admit. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems as though whump fans avoid introspection and discussion of the issue by bringing up the points I talked about in my previous theories, particularly discomfort with depictions of female suffering for amusement.

However, I think that, as artists, we owe it to ourselves and one another to engage in at least a small amount of self-interrogation over our preferences, and see what unconscious or unacknowledged biases we possess. It's a little absurd to argue that depictions of women as whumpees are universally too distressing to even discuss when a male character in the exact same position would be fine and even gratifying to the person making that argument; while obviously, people have a right to their own boundaries, those boundaries should not be used to shut down discussion of any topics, even sensitive ones.

Furthermore, engaging in personal reflection allows artists to make more deliberate (and meaningful) art. For people whose goal is simply to have fun, that may not seem all that appealing, but having greater understanding of one's own preferences can be very helpful towards deciding what works to create, what to focus on when creating, and what works to seek out.

—

GENDER ADDENDUM: NONBINARY CHARACTERS, NONBINARY AUTHORS. 
Of course, this whole discussion so far has been exclusively based on a male-female binary, which is reductive. (I will note, though, that many binary people do effectively sort all nonbinary people they know of into 'female-aligned' and 'male-aligned' categories and then proceed to treat the nonbinary people and characters they have categorized a 'female-aligned' the same way as they treat people & characters who are actually female, and ditto for 'male-aligned'. That tendency is very frustrating for me, as a nonbinary person whose gender has NOTHING to do with any part of the binary, and reveals that even 'progressive' fandom culture has quite a ways to go in its understanding of gender.)

Anyways, nonbinary characters in whump are still VERY rare and typically written by nonbinary authors. (I have no clue whether nonbinary whump fans have, as a demographic group, different gender preferences than binary fans, but I'd be interested in seeing that data.)

As noted above with female characters, it's similarly difficult to have a discussion about representation and treatment of nonbinary characters in whump fandom, and frankly in fandom in general. Frequently, people regard attempts to open discussions on difficult topics as a call for conflict. This defensive stance once again reveals the distaste for requests of meaningful self-examination that is so frequent in fandom spaces, and online more generally.

—

TL;DR: Whump is not immune to the same gender & racial biases that are prevalent in fandom and (US-American) culture. If you enjoy whump: ask yourself why you dislike the things you dislike— the answer may surprise you. If you create whump: ask yourself whose stories you tell, and what stories you refuse to tell— then ask yourself why.

how do i ignore all the misogyny in the witcher books? they're much better than the netflix show storywise but there is so much gross stuff compared to what i usually read/watch

hi!! thank you for the ask, this is a very important topic to address, though i believe you are asking the wrong question. the matter is not how to ignore the misogyny in the witcher and other pieces of media, but rather how to confront it and face it head-on.

i don’t believe in making excuses for the media i consume when it has “problematic elements” to it. this isn’t meant to be taken as an excuse to “consume anything you like,” because i would not engage with something insidious in its nature (such as media that revolves around and is based upon harmful stereotypes or insensitive jokes and cannot exist without this, some examples of this are infamous things that i’ve seen discussed on this site like captive prince, cmbyn, and hazbin hotel). instead this is about when a piece of media is good overall in nature (the witcher has many anti-war, anti-violence, anti-imperialist themes and messages relating to family, childhood, friendship, and love) but has elements that are the results of the author’s personal biases.

i think before i address how to deal with the misogyny, i’ll actually define what misogyny exists within the witcher books, to be more specific about what we are talking about, and also to do the work of addressing the misogyny in the books:

how the women in the witcher are treated as characters and how they are depicted by the author.

there are a few good points in this subject. characters such as yennefer and ciri are very strong characters who receive a lot of development over the course of the series, and are main characters that are integral to the plot. they demonstrate both strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices. they have depth and are not one-dimensional characters, especially as they become more and more complex over the course of the series.

blatant sexualization of women when it’s inappropriate or irrelevant, descriptions of female characters’ looks or bodies that male characters would not have received.

bizzare standards for what is beautiful for a woman, including body descriptions (“triss’s waist measured 22”) and extreme focus on youth and the age cusp of around 15 to 18 as being the most attractive for a woman (stated in-universe, even though this could be excused as being what is normal in the 1200s, keep in mind that this is the author’s decision to impliment this standard into their society). 

descriptions and scenarios of extreme violence towards woman that are gratuitous in nature and do not add to the story or have any relevance. (geralt being paralyzed with his knee during the stampede at the refugee camp in bof is NOT on the same level as yennefer being extremely tortured at stygga or ciri meeting “forest gramps” in lotl). some of this violence towards women is related to the male antagonists being misogynistic (such as leo bonhart) but a lot of it is just pure filler and is not necessary for the story.

majority of female characters do not get the depth they deserve, and some are pretty one-dimensional. the sorceresses are a good example of this, as the majority of them are shallow and manipulative. female characters are also just generally not given as much “page time” as male characters, for example compare how much depth and backstory regis and cahir receive to how much milva and angouleme receive. regis’ backstory is entirely irrelevant to the main plot but it’s extremely long, and angouleme’s backstory is more relevant to the main plot (she was born of cintrian nobility) yet it is extremely short. (one could make the argument that this is an effect of their characters because regis talks a lot and angouleme is still processing her trauma, but more could have been given to angouleme even if she is not extremely talkative).

the only canon lesbians in the witcher are not good people and are manipulative in nature, and the only canon f/f relationship (ciri/mistle) is representative of a turmultous, vicious time of violence, and is based upon sexual assault.

the gender non-conforming female characters who ARE good people,never have their gnc-ness treated with any depth, and it is insinuated that they are heterosexual.

male protagonists such as geralt and dandelion are both misogynistic at various times in the books, especially in the short stories. this is unlike when male antagonists are misogynistic, because it is represented as something wrong and is intended to characterize them as vile people. instead, geralt and dandelion say or do misogynistic things and it is treated like a joke or something normal, and not a flaw or something repulsive.

how to confront all of this?

the first step is to address it, just as the above list does, and discuss things that stood out to you and are definitively wrong, that the author should not have put in the story because it is useless and only serves to further misogyny in the real world. it would be a grave mistake to think of these things as “fine” and continue to view the witcher books as some kinds of perfect scripture. so many people feel that just because they enjoy something, they are not allowed to critique it and discuss parts of it that are uncomfortable or plain wrong. 

to continue with this point, i think it is important to put the witcher into context as a fantasy series written in the 1990s by a white man who did not (to my knowledge) intend this series for such a broad audience and franchise that it has become. this is not an excuse for sapkowski at all, but rather i think it’s important to understand the origins of the witcher and how it came to be in the first place. this wasn’t a series made to be inclusive and diverse, it wasn’t intended to be “for us” in the first place. 

i do not believe that there is MEANT to be any “positive representation” in the witcher because i don’t believe it is something that sapkowski was actively considering when he wrote the books. just because there isn’t good representation in the books does not mean they and everything related to them are not worth your time, but if you are someone desperately searching for good positive representation or someone who NEEDS to see representation of someone like them in every piece of media they consume, i don’t think the witcher books are necessarily a good place to start. this isn’t meant to deter you from reading or interacting with the books/book canon, but rather a fair warning about what the intentions of the books are. 

i don’t think the books are a groundshaking work of art that are meant to inspire concepts such as diversity, rather it is a very specific work that in its true nature is an argument of a critique of popular fantasy tropes with additional commentary on themes of violence and family. so this is basically meant to say ‘understand what you are getting into.’

how to move on?

the main question which i answer is “is the root of this thing (a piece of media/a character/etc) something that revolves around the bad part, or was the bad part just thrown in there and is incongruent with the rest of the thing?”

the biggest example i think of tackling the misogyny in the witcher and still managing to enjoy it is with dandelion (lol). i think it’s every day that i have to reconcile with the fact that i genuinely enjoy dandelion as a character and hold a conversation with myself about which parts from canon i enjoy and which parts i don’t. his character at its core is not a bad person, he is meant to be an inversion of the trope of the slovenly and lecherous comic relief, and sapkowski succeeds in turning the trope on its head. dandelion is very loyal and committed, he demonstrates his worth in the narrative and doesn’t act with pure selfishness and greed. he is an inversion of all of the negative traits of his trope, but sapkowski also wrote in, like, a literal rape joke for him to say in the bounds of reason. how do you get over that? personally, i just go back to “is this congruent with the rest of the character or not,” and my answer at least for dandelion is no. the rape joke in the bounds of reason seemed entirely out of place to me, it doesn’t fit in with the rest of his character.

similarly, why does geralt sleep with girls who are barely 18 within the events of the witcher? how do you get over that? well, i don’t believe that’s congruent to the rest of his character, the POINT of his character, which is to protect young girls. 

so i go back on my word of what i begun this answer with, and i tell you that i indeed DO ignore some parts about the witcher. but it is not a blind ignorance, an ignorance in which i do not consider the effects and i pretend like they do not exist at all. it’s a choice which i make and a process of logical steps that i follow, an understanding and an agreement i come to with myself and the media i interact with. i acknowledge the context surrounding the creation of the media, i acknowledge the effects that these elements had on their readers and how they relate to the real world, and how i know that these things are objectively wrong. i understand why they exist in the canon, and why i feel justified for choosing to take them out of what i regard as part of my experience.

it’s tempting to proclaim “canon is dead and we have killed the author,” but understand how the author’s personal experiences and biases have influenced the media that they created and which you now consume. you can’t take the personal biases completely out of the writing of the witcher and you have to acknowledge that they still exist in the text. even if you make up your own headcanons, it is still imperative to consider the issues that originate in canon.

what does this look like?

complaining to your friends who also like the witcher / on social media that you hate these parts of the books and explain why you hate them and why they are unnecessary

thinking about why these parts were written in and the context surrounding them

making your own rewrites / headcanons around these parts (ex: my idea for the rewrite of a little sacrifice)

making your own headcanons to establish what was not (ex: my headcanons for angouleme’s trauma and how it affects her in the present, headcanons about how the hansa becomes a family)

tldr: acknowledge why these elements exist in canon. choose to follow a process that will allow you to salvage the parts which speak to you while still understanding that these elements exist in canon and will never disappear. continue to like the canon without the parts that you understand are rotten.

edit: also the netflix show has some pretty misogynistic parts to it as well, yennefer and ciri have way less agency as characters than they do in the books. geralt literally coerces yennefer into sex in twn and treats her with absolutely no respect, and ran from fathering ciri solely because he was a dick. obviously this isn’t the point of the ask, but i think it’s important to acknowledge that twn has misogynistic elements as well and not pretend like just because twn was led in 2020 by a wealthy white woman that it’s progressive in any way.

You're generally thought of to have really good characterization of Loki in this fandom (I'd say that's what you're known for???), so I was wondering if you could give some tips on how to write Loki? And maybe some general tips on writing imagines/x readers?

Hi there anon! First, thank you very much for such a high compliment. I think any fanfiction author would agree when I say being told we get our muse’s characterization correct is one of the highest compliments we can be given, so THANK YOU! 

I would be happy to give you some advice, but keep in mind, this is just my interpretation of Loki. You, and any other author, are allowed to take creative control and do with his character what you will. This is just what works for me!

For Imagines/X Reader Fics

This is my third imagines blog, so I have been doing x readers for a long time. If you’re looking to expand your following, I would start out doing preferences. This is when you take a group of people from the same piece of media (in Marvel, a good example would be the whole team of The Avengers) and basically write a little drabble for each of them in one post. This will allow you to use multiple character tags, which means your posts are more likely to circulate. From there, you can totally branch off and have an emphasis on one character, or create a whole new sideblog for one character that people from your already-established following can find. I used this method twice and it worked really well- it also lets people see you can write for different types of characters, which is always a plus.

Tags! Use as many tags as you can, because that’s how people find your work. Make sure to use some with your muse’s first name, and some with their first and last. For imagines specifically, I would always make sure you have “(name) x reader”, “(name) x you”, and “(name) imagine”, because those are what people usually search for.

Avoid physical descriptions. “Reader” is just that: the reader. Not everyone has blue eyes, not everyone has long hair, not everyone is white, etc. etc. If you really want to write a character with specific physical traits, then you should develop an OC. It rips your readers out of your fics when they’re described in a way that doesn’t fit them, and can also really harm their confidence- the only descriptions of someone’s appearance I’ve ever seen in x readers are features that are considered conventionally attractive, so it’s important to be mindful of any implicit biases you may have.

...You also have to keep the reader as a character somewhat neutral, because they are supposed to be whoever is consuming your fic. If you’re going to give them character traits, justify them with your story. You want your reader to be trained in hand-to-hand combat? They took martial arts as a kid. You want your reader to be the smartest in their field? Give them a backstory that made them that way. It’s personality traits you have to look out for, because if someone’s personality doesn’t match with “y/n’s”, that person isn’t going to be able to read your works. 

Speaking of y/n, I would suggest not using it at all. I’ve recently stopped using it due to my own experience and feedback from my followers. Most people don’t see y/n and replace it with their name, it just becomes a reminder they’re reading something. Your goal is to immerse your readers in your fics, and I’ve found this often has the opposite effect. There are a lot of ways to avoid y/n, such as pet names (darling, baby, love) or creative phrasing (”your name passed over his lips, whispered softly like he had never heard it before”). It can be a challenge, but writing always is!

If possible, keep your reader gender neutral. This sounds a lot harder than it is. Especially in the Loki fandom, there are a lot more male readers than you think, and there are people who don’t conform to either gender. Not assigning pronouns makes your reading more accessible (which also means more exposure!!!) and also allows everyone to find a place in fandom. The only times it becomes a problem is when other characters are talking about the reader behind their back, or when writing smut. In my case, I do my best avoid the first option and, until I find a solution, I do use gender and everything associated with it in smut. However, if none of these appeal to you, you can also copy and paste your fics to have different pronouns. 

Strategically place that “keep reading”, it’s a good way to get readers hooked!

For Loki’s Character

In my opinion, Loki is all about a balance of vulnerability. We all love to see him be loving and open and intimately intwined with someone, but it would take a lot of time to get there with him. For that reason, if you’re wanting to write that side of the Trickster, I would make your fic an established relationship or slow burn. If that doesn’t sound like something you want to do, a lot of faults in writing can be forgiven if you call them out yourself. Does something feel too random? Say it was sudden or unexpected. This shifts blame from you and actually becomes a characterization choice: now, instead of you possibly misinterpreting Loki’s character, he and the reader have so much chemistry with each other they’re acting differently than they normally would. 

Loki (and Thor’s) way of speaking is a HUGE factor of any fics with him. Loki has a different colloquial than we do, and thanks to Tom Hiddleston’s really sexy voice, it’s something closely associated with the character. So, we have to walk a line of Loki’s words being formal, but not being out of touch. He was able to assimilate easily (that’s part of the reason he was such a threat in Avengers), and is super clever and picks up on a lot of things. Therefore, Loki is more likely to address Tony as “Stark” rather than “Man of Iron”, and I think it’s fair to say he knows the name “Coulson” doesn’t refer to the SHIELD agent’s lineage (he’s probably not going to call him “Son of Coul”). But phrasing is also a part of this. I try to avoid contractions coming out of his mouth, so “you are” instead of “you’re”, “he is” instead of “he’s”, etc. etc. 

Loki also isn’t going to say things we normally would: As humans, we tend to exclaim “Oh my god!” or something along those lines. But Loki was brought being told he was a god, so that isn’t going to be in his vocabulary. It’s little things like this I keep an eye on when I’m writing for him.

A good way to accomplish Loki’s speech is just... adding words the modern world has deemed unnecessary. A recent example of mine is in one of my fics, Loki is asking the reader what a group of characters want from her. Originally, I had him saying “What do they want?”, and while editing, I changed it to “What is it that they want?.” It’s subtle, but when this is how most of the Loki’s sentences are structured, it calls back to the Loki we saw in earlier Thor films (regardless of your opinion on Ragnarak, the Shakespearean-esque language is gone by the film) and creates a simulation of sorts that makes your reader feel more in tune with your story. Not to keep using this word, but it’s a technique that immerses your reader.

Make sure your style matches Loki! I have a very dramatic and articulate style, lots commas, lots of (carefully placed) repetition, and paragraph breaks. This works for Loki because he’s such an emotional and complex character, and my style compliments and emphasizes that. 

Readers respond well to your style correlating with your character: Compare my fics Aftermath or Wounds to A Mortal Occurance. Aftermath and Wounds are written in the style I described above, and are approaching 500 and 400 notes respectively; whereas I tried a more domestic and conversational style in A Mortal Occurance, which has yet to reach even 150 notes. While there’s definitely something to be said about people subscribing to you for one specific form of writing, it would be impossible for me to deny one style is not only more true to me, but more true and realistic to Loki. Think of if I wrote in my style for Ant-Man or Sam Wilson. It wouldn’t really work because their characters aren’t as high-stakes as Loki.

I hope this all helps! Remember this is just my opinion and is what has worked for me. You’re free to take all this to heart or completely reject it. I’m honored you came to me in the first place <3

Final Reflection - Commonplace Book

Ryan Hlubb

For my final reflection, I had to think about what has stuck with me the most in this class. I think that overall, the themes we’ve discussed and we've heard so many stories of women all over the world and the hardship and struggle they go through on a daily basis. I wanted to be able to do them justice, one thing that has especially stuck with me has been the impact of social media and the danger of a single story. I grouped these two together because I felt like they could go hand and hand with each other. I know from my perspective everyone faces the danger of a single story in some capacity. Some might face it when they are children and they get told on a sibling or friend, unable to defend themselves, a parent might only hear one side of the story. I know that this may seem like completely off topic from women and their struggles and dangers of a single story, but this relates it to most people, and with that, we all have a common understanding of the danger of a single story. By this “shared” experience we are able to put ourselves in these women's shoes that we read and listened to.

           The first thing that comes to mind when talking about the danger of a single story is the TED Talk with Chimamanda Adichie. When listening to her speak right off the bat, you can tell she has power, authority, and a story in the way she speaks. This couldn’t be closer to the truth, initially, I liked the idea of being able to annotate a TED talk and be able to discuss certain topics with other classmates. This was great, but it was interesting to see how people had perspectives differing from my own. Adichie talks about how growing up she was writing on her own, but they were all very similar to the books she had read. The characters were “White and blue-eyed, they played in snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out.” When she first said this is was honestly a wake-up call for me, it left me with thoughts that I didn’t think about ever in my life. For me all of these books were normal, I had grown up with them, but they are all the same. The books of my childhood had lacked diversity. They were all white characters and doing the same things over and over. For Adichie, she had a very different life living in Nigeria, she said “We didn’t have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to.” For me this struck me, I understand that there are bigger things in the world and this is as some people would call it, a “smaller” issue, but for me it really had my mind running; does this happen everywhere? Was it only because she grew up on a college campus? Did she even have and other books besides typical British and American books? These were just some quick thoughts that I had while I was going through the TED talk and wanted to bring up in the discussions. This can be related to a single story because for Adichie because she had only been exposed to one side of the single-story when talking about children’s books and how they act. Later on in her life, she experienced the danger of a single story again with her college roommate. She went to university in the US at 19, and she had an American roommate. Adichie found herself shocked by her roommate’s perspective of her and how her roommate had fallen into the danger of a single story. In her TED talk she discussed her roommate, “My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my “tribal music,” and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey.” Whenever I read this it leaves me in shock. I never know what to say about how her roommate acted. Her actions personally would’ve been different from mine but the ideas are still similar. I know that Nigeria is not people all dancing to tribal music, but they are as much of an educated and advanced people as we are. There is nothing they can do that we can do. It was fairly surprising to me that so much of our culture has been influenced in Nigeria and how the US has a one-way policy when it comes to entertainment. By that I mean things like Music, TV shows, and movies tend to get shown to other places around the world and influence other cultures, but there’s really no music, TV shows, or movies that we get to see or hear that’s from South Africa, Nigeria, India, China, etc. It seems like our culture and influence only goes one way. I feel like in that sense it places all of us on one side of a single story, and in that the entire US is similar to living on one side of the story from the rest of the world. Whereas other countries might be more fluid and influenced by each other in a mutual relationship, rather than us almost having a parasitic type of relationship. I think that this danger of a single story has so many impacts on our lives daily, but also can have an impact on so many other people. I’m lucky enough to have some friends that live in Europe (UK and Italy). They have always had a certain perspective of Americans as loud, obnoxious, and fat. This may be true for some people, but when they meet someone that juxtaposes that notion, they too can realize that they are living on one side of a single story. The effects of the single-story have happened to people all over the world and will continue to do so, but I do that that in some capacity we could bring an overall awareness to what it is and educate people on what they are thinking about.

           In my perspective, I think that the dangers of a single story can be tied together with the impact of social media and the biases that this creates. Throughout the semester I think a lot of topics we’ve discussed and learned about have been related or could be related to the dangers that social media has on us as my specific generation and on us as a whole country. I know it’s a very touchy subject these days but all the things going around the media about COVID, and how it is making a comeback with the delta variant or its not. Hearing “both” sides to an argument (in reality just hearing how two opposing sides spin a single story) but I digress. Things like this have changed the course of media and how we receive information. It’s a great way to show how one sides peoples thought processes are and how we all get the same thread of information, just spun a few different ways. This isn’t so much a new thing, but it’s been happening for years, the whole way down to Watergate, the founding fathers, or the founding of some religions. There is no guarantee that we can hear a truly unbiased both sides to a story. For me, does this mean that we will forever be living in a single story? Or can we break what seems like a never-ending cycle?

           As I start to wrap up my reflection, I’m left with something in my head and a quote that I really love. It’s by Sisonke Msimang, she said that “If a story moves you, act on it”. This quote, those 8 words, have had such an impact on me for this semester. When reading about all these different struggles and hardships these women have faced all over the world, and the oppression that had been forced on them, whether it be political, religious, or social oppression they all have a story to them. Looking at all the different things we’ve learned, it’s made me want to find ways to act on it. These stories have been so moving to hear about and so life-changing that I will never be able to look through my old lens again. These stories have played an instrumental role in me and will continue to do so for the rest of my education and life. The dangers of a single story and how this has been pushed through the media are something deep-rooted within each other and deep within our culture, therefore we must find the cause and change in order to eliminate and acknowledge the dangers of a single story.

The Slim Difference between Propaganda and Persuasion

Persuasion and propaganda may seem similar, but though it’s very slim, they have their differences. 

Both concepts have a similar goal-- they want to mold or change someone’s choices, decisions, thoughts, and ideas about a specific subject. How they are performed are where the differences lie. 

As Paul Martin Lester states in the textbook, persuasion is a form of communication made to influence the audience’s choices. Writing persuasion is similar to visual persuasion, both are to appeal to a certain audience about a specific topic. Aristotle confirmed that there were three main types: logos, ethos, and pathos. Logos refers to the logistics of the argument. Ethos is referring to the author's credibility. And pathos refers to the emotional appeal that is given to arguments (Lester). I feel that pathos is used quite frequently in the visual aspects of persuasion. 

Additionally, there are other principles attached to persuasion-- such as reciprocity, scarcity, authority, commitment, consensus, and likability. 

Reciprocity: This type refers to how when people do us favors, we feel obligated to return them.

Scarcity: There is a value in scarce material rather than an abundance of it. 

Authority: Same as ethos, people are attracted to authoritative made resources.  

Commitment: Things that have been done in the past are most likely going to continue. 

Consensus: People follow with what is popular. 

Likeability: When people see someone they like say something, they will most likely end up following it as well(Wylie). For example, someone’s favorite celebrity advertising Coca-Cola will probably buy many packs of the drink. 

But, that could also be used as an argument that any kind of media advertisements are essentially propaganda. Propaganda is a way for an idea to get the attention of a larger audience. However, although the art may be appealing, it tends to lack factual information (Lester). Back to the Coca-Cola celebrity advertisement example, how can we be exactly sure that the famous person’s favorite drink is a crisp, ice-cold cup of Coke? We can’t. However, when the ad is produced, corporations make sure that the celebrity is only seen with the product they advertised in order to persuade the public even more. This is because persuasion only works when it has factual evidence. So, if the product is seen consistently by the celebrity, people will be convinced that it is their legitimate favorite product.

An example of celebrity endorsement advertising is the popular Kpop group BTS X Samsung. With celebrity endorsements, they use the appeal of likable people to up the sales of their product. The band is seen using the product casually as well through selfies and their livestreams. This kind of persuading promotion is effective as the unit shipments went up about 30 million from quarter two to three in 2020 (O'Dea and 25)-- BTS announced their collaboration with Samsung on March 10, 2020. 

However, persuasion is a lot more than celebrity endorsements. As I have mentioned before, pathos, the emotional appeal of persuasion, can be seen a lot through visual advertisements. For instance, this advertisement about poverty showcases a person laying on a bench with a small amount of old, dirty clothes. Under the depressing photo were the words ‘Poverty’s Real’ in red, bold letters as well as ‘what are YOU doing to help?’. The emphasis on the ‘YOU’ is to influence the on-looker about what they are doing to contribute. This is a major example of pathos in advertising persuasion. 

Another example is the ad for donating to Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. They used a picture of a little girl with a black and white dramatic filter over her to indicate the seriousness of the situation. The text above the girl goes ‘Madelyn is fighting cancer.’ The word ‘cancer’ is in a different color and moved slightly to put emphasis on it. A little kid battling cancer could make anyone’s heart ache, which is exactly what they were going for with the ad. Above the words ‘Donate Now’ was the company’s name to show where one could donate. Pathos is extremely apparent when working with visual images because of how it impacts or influences an individual’s feelings about a specific topic. 

As mentioned previously, propaganda is a way to persuade the unknowing audience without any real factual information with it. Another way to explain the difference between propaganda and persuasion is that propaganda is a one-way conversation while persuasion is two-way(Jenkins). Persuasion sparks a conversation in which a person can decide whether or not it’s something that will provoke or influence them to buy or participate in something. On the other hand, propaganda is just a straightforward depiction of an opinion or event of a biased artist/writer. 

A great example of propaganda are political cartoons. They are full of propaganda techniques that are eye catching and hard to look away from. 

Take for example this propaganda poster against communism. The poster dramatically showcases what would happen if America were to fall under communism. It shows what appears to be soldiers fighting citizens as the American flag is burning in a wild fire in the back. The words at the top ‘IS THIS TOMORROW’ are in bold, black font. At the bottom there are words that say ‘America under communism!’ indicating what the picture is depicting. This is a fear tactic that propaganda sometimes deploys. Will America actually go up in flames if it were to go under communism? Most likely not. But, this is an example of how propaganda creates content that isn’t necessarily true to provoke and dupe the public. This poster will certainly create panic over the “threat” of communism.

One last example that I wanted to use that showcases the differences between propaganda and persuasion is a political cartoon of Rockefeller's company Standard Oil. The poster depicts Standard Oil as an octopus whose tentacles are latched onto the buildings of the capitol, congress, and the white house. The tentacles can also be seen attached to trading ships and wealthy businessmen. The purpose of this cartoon was to dramatize the issue of monopolies such as Standard Oil having major control over society and the economy.

As you can see, although propaganda and persuasion both want to influence a general public, how they go about it has major differences. Propaganda’s purpose is to propagate a larger audience with a major biased influence. Persuasion works hard to persuade the public through major emotional, authoritative, and logistic appeals. Persuasion wants to be factual while also convincing. They want you to buy a product, donate, contribute, but for reasonable reasons. Propaganda wants you to change and challenge your entire opinion about something whether the depiction is accurate or not; it doesn’t matter to them because they believe their depiction is right.

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References 

Lester, Paul Martin. Visual Communication: Images with Messages . Sixth ed., Michael Rosenberg, 2014.

O'Dea, Published by S., and Nov 25. Samsung Smartphone Sales 2020. 25 Nov. 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/299144/samsung-smartphone-shipments-worldwide/. 

Jenkins, Ryan. The Thin Line between Propaganda and Persuasion. 2013. 

Wylie, Phil. “6 Principles of Persuasion 1).” SlideShare, 6 Mar. 2009, www.slideshare.net/jahroy13/the-power-of-persuasion/40-6_principles_of_persuasion_1. 

tbh i get queer fans being mad/sad about kavinsky being killed off in that yeah, bury your guys can always be upsetting no matter the character. but it's weird to me when people go the 'he didn't DESERVE it blah blah' route because like, that has nothing to do with the trope. like i agree with queer characters always getting killed off being exhausting, but i don't get people going hard for this particular character lmao

hmm i… sort of agree. i guess i can understand fans being sad about kavinsky being killed off if they empathise with him, even though personally i just… can’t imagine relating to a character like that. but i honestly, genuinely don’t believe he’s an example of Bury Your Gays. it would be BYG if kavinsky was the only queer rep in the books, or even he killed himself specifically for being gay… which, no matter what people argue, he didn’t. but rather than give my opinion on it, i’m gonna take this chance to go through the trope systematically and explain why the shoe doesn’t fit. it’s meta time!

Why Kavinsky Dying is Not “Bury Your Gays”

[All quotes are taken directly from TvTropes, though the emphasis is mine.]

The Bury Your Gays trope in media, including all its variants, is a homophobic cliché. It is the presentation of deaths of LGBT characters where these characters are nominally able to be viewed as more expendable than their heteronormative counterparts. In this way, the death is treated as exceptional in its circumstances. In aggregate, queer characters are more likely to die than straight characters. Indeed, it may be because they seem to have less purpose compared to straight characters, or that the supposed natural conclusion of their story is an early death.

Kavinsky is never viewed as “more expendable than his heteronormative counterparts”. If you see Kavinsky as simply Ronan’s foil, then the reasoning doesn’t apply, because Ronan is gay himself, so he can’t be a “heteronormative counterpart”. However, Kavinsky apologists like to latch on to Gansey’s “We matter” quote to prove Kavinsky is treated as unimportant – but that’s a fallacy for several reasons. First, you’re taking Gansey to speak for the author, or for objective truth, when Gansey is one of the most unreliable narrators in the book, and his world view is extremely biased. Secondly, Gansey isn’t Kavinsky’s counterpart. Kavinsky is an antagonist, so you have to look at what happens to the other antagonists – his actual heteronormative counterparts. And, well: they pretty much ALL get killed off. Not just that, but they often get killed off in a way that does not have the emotional/narrative impact implied in Kavinsky’s death. By that reckoning, he gets the better shake. Additionally, we get 4 heteronormative villains killed off - Whelk, Neeve, Colin, and Piper. So in the series, queer characters are not more likely to die than straight characters (even among the protagonists, Gansey and Noah are the ones who “die”, where Ronan and Adam do not).

The reasons for this trope have evolved somewhat over the years. For a good while, it was because the Depraved Homosexual trope and its ilk pretty much limited portrayals of explicitly gay characters to villainous characters, or at least characters who weren’t given much respect by the narrative. This, conversely, meant that most of them would either die or be punished by the end. 

This is not applicable to TRC, as portrayals of explicitly queer characters are not limited to villainous characters; Adam and Ronan are both explicitly queer and they are treated with huge amounts of respect by the narrative. So Kavinsky isn’t being killed for being the odd one out/the Token Evil Queer; plus, there are other reasons why he doesn’t fit the Depraved Homosexual trope (while sexual molestation is a part of this trope, TVTropes encourages you to “think of whether he’d be any different if he wasn’t gay” – and Kavinsky wouldn’t. Not only because DHs are usually extremely camp while Kavinsky’s mannerisms aren’t particularly queer-coded, but also because he is not shown to have any more respect for women than he does for men, and his abuse would look the same if he was straight).

However, as sensitivity to gay people became more mainstream, this evolved into a sort of Rule-Abiding Rebel “love the sinner, hate the sin” attitude. You could have sympathetic queer characters, but they would still usually be “punished” for their queerness in some way so as to not anger more homophobic audiences, similar to how one might write a sympathetic drug addict but still show their addiction in a poor light. 

Again: Neither Ronan nor Adam – the two sympathetic queer characters – are punished for being queer, hence subverting this form of the trope.

This then transitioned into the Too Good for This Sinful Earth narrative, where stories would tackle the subject of homophobia and then depict LGBT characters as suffering victims who die tragic deaths from an uncaring world. The AIDS crisis also contributed to this narrative, as the Tragic AIDS Story became its own archetype, popularized by films like Philadelphia. 

Okay, this is DEFINITELY not Kavinsky’s case. Kavinsky’s death isn’t specifically connected to being gay (e.g.: a hate crime or an STD), and he’s never depicted as some innocent suffering victim. As for the “uncaring world”… eh. Kavinsky may not have a valid support system, but that’s just as much by choice as by chance - and when Ronan extends a helping hand and tries to save him, Kavinsky rejects it. Too Good For This Sinful Earth is definitely not in play. 

The only trope that kind of fits the bill is Gayngst-Induced Suicide… but only on the surface. As TVTrope puts it, Gayngst-Induced Suicide is “when LGBT characters are Driven to Suicide because of their sexuality, either because of internalized homophobia (hating themselves) or experiencing a miserable life because of their “deviant” gender or sexuality: having to hide who they are, not finding a stable relationship, homophobia from other parties, etc.”. Kavinsky certainly has quite a bit of internalized homophobia, but he is absolutely not experiencing a miserable life because of his sexuality – i.e. he’s not being bullied or taunted or subejcted to hate crimes. He doesn’t have to hide who he is: his parents are effectively out of the picture, his cronies worship him, and he constantly makes gay jokes to Ronan and Gansey. As for “not finding a stable relationship”… well that’s not exactly the problem, is it. He’s not looking for a stable relationship – he’s pursuing Ronan specifically, obsessively, through stalking and abuse. So even this trope is not applicable. 

And then there are the cases of But Not Too Gay or the Bait-and-Switch Lesbians, where creators manage to get the romance going but quickly avoid showing it in detail by killing off one of the relevant characters. 

Once again this is not the case with Kavinsky, as 1) there was no romance going between him and Ronan, and 2) he is not killed off before the nature of his obsession with Ronan is revealed – he gets the chance to both admit (sort of) he wants Ronan, and to confront Ronan about his sexuality, to which Ronan admits that yes, he is gay, but he is not interested in Kavinsky. So, there is no But Not Too Gay nor any Bait-and-Switch here. 

Also known as Dead Lesbian Syndrome, though that name has largely fallen out of use post-2015 and the media riots about overuse of the trope. And, as this public outcry restated, the problem isn’t merely that gay characters are killed off: the problem is the tendency that gay characters are killed off in a story full of mostly straight characters, or when the characters are killed off because they are gay.

This is a very good definition of the trope and why it doesn’t apply to Kavinsky: he’s not killed off because he’s gay, and he’s not killed off in a story full of mostly straight characters; TRC is definitely not overwhelmingly diverse, but 2 of the 4 protagonists are queer, giving us a solid 50% ratio (I’m not counting Noah because his “character” status is vague, and I’m not counting Henry because he came in so late, and also because his sexuality is the matter of much speculation).

For a comparison that will make it even clearer: take a show like Supernatural. Supernatural’s range of characters is almost entirely presented as straight white cis men (as of canon – despite much of the fandom’s hopes and speculation). They’ve had problems with diversity in general, with a lot of black characters dying immediately, and a lot of women getting fridged for plot advancement or male angst (a different problematic trope altogether). Now, apart from minor inconsequential cameos, Supernatural had ONE recurring gay character: Charlie Bradbury. And they killed her off for no discernible reason other than plot advancement and male angst, in a context that had elements of Too Good For This Sinful Earth (Charlie being a fan-favourite, ~pure cinnamon roll~, being killed by actual nazis, who historically targeted gay people). See, THAT was Bury Your Gays, AND Dead Lesbian Syndrome, AND Fridging…

However, sometimes gay characters die in fiction because, well, sometimes people die. There are many Anyone Can Die stories: barring explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight deaths in these, it’s not odd that the gay characters are dying. The occasional death of one in a Cast Full of Gay is unlikely to be notable, either.

…But that is not the case with TRC. As I’ve said above, there are no explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight villain deaths. Kavinsky’s death is not Bury Your Gays; it’s Anyone Can Die – even a protagonist’s foil who has magic powers and is present for most of the book.

Believe me, I would not be cavalier about this. As you rightly said, queer characters always getting killed off is exhausting, and as a bi woman myself, I am deeply affected by instances of Bury Your Gays. When Supernatural killed off Charlie, I wrote a novel-length fix-it fic and basically stopped watching the show – a show I had been following, flaws and all, for 10 years. I don’t take it lightly. But Kavinsky’s death isn’t Bury Your Gays, nor is it homophobia. Sometimes, a character death is just a character death.

TLDR: Republicans believe themselves to be infallible and cannot be convinced otherwise

Republicans think America is perfect and always has been, while simultaneously believing that America is DOOMED and ON THE EDGE OF COLLAPSE at all times and want to bring us back to the Before Times™ when men were men and women were household appliances and minorities were someone else’s problem.  If you bring up a genuine critique of American culture or history they throw a pissbaby shit fit and start spewing nationalist platitudes, “America: Like It or Leave It!”  All their complaints stem from their perceived self-importance being eroded; they don’t like to realize that other people with differing opinions exist and should have their voices heard.  If a “brown” or a “black” or a “red” or a “yellow” is allowed to speak, that just means there’s one less space for a “white.”  All their complaints come from a slippery slope argument that if we don’t model our society after their specific cherrypicked interpretation of The Bible then we will degenerate into amoral savagery.

They say being gay is an abomination and allowing it will damn our children to hell; what they really think is that it’s gross and they don’t want to see things they think are gross.  There’s literally no good argument against marriage equality besides “I don’t personally like it.”  America is not a theocracy, so the belief system of Christianity should not be construed as the law of the land.  This stems from their belief that the Bible is infallible, “because the Bible says so.”  They don’t know and don’t want to know about the history behind it, nor the very contentious political landscapes at the times the books were written, nor the personal biases of the very human authors.  If the Bible is a literal textbook, then why?  What makes it so special?  By whose authority were its contents collated and designated THE Good Book?  If the Bible is literal, why not the works of Homer, or the Epic of Gilgamesh?  Just because the Bible says the Bible is right doesn’t make it so.  For the record, I am a Christian, and I think the Bible is just an old book.  I’m a Christian in that I follow the teachings of Christ, which can be summed up as “DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE.”  I live by that, and All the ChrINOs (Christians in Name Only) need to learn it.  Jesus would be ashamed of what he saw today.

They say that abortion is baby murder, on par with ritual human sacrifice and Satan worship. They don’t understand biology, they have a Sunday School understanding of philosophy, and live in a world so black and white that they can’t even imagine a reason someone would have an abortion besides that they’re a terrible person; a woman who would have an abortion is unfit to be a mother in their eyes because they see abortion as equivalent to smothering a baby with a pillow because you don’t want to take care of it anymore.  “He or she is alive, he or she has a heart beat!”  Well, at this point is is just a blob of tissue, not a living person; a heart beat alone does not make something alive or dead.  Your life comes from your brain, not your heart.  If someone is alive the moment their heart starts, then they must be dead the moment is stops, so CPR is necromancy.  A person isn’t considered dead until their brain is dead, so if they wanted to argue that life begins at brain activity they would have a stronger argument, though still weak because brain activity is not personhood either.  Patients in permanent vegetative states on life support may have some brain activity, but they are effectively dead.  There is no way a judge, appointed by senators elected by the people of the United States, can prove that not only do souls exist but that they are created the second a sperm fertilizes an egg.  If “souls” exist, they aren’t so much created as built up over time as we gain new experienced and our brains develop.  What we are is electricity in a ball of meat jelly in our skulls, and that comes to being at a point after which abortions are already banned.  Conservatives also just want to control women; Roe v. Wade isn’t explicitly about the right to an abortion, it is about the right to body autonomy.  Do women have the right to control their own bodies, or do they defer that right to their fathers and husbands?  Are women people or property?  Can a man make decisions on a woman’s behalf?  “You must forgive my daughter; as a simple minded woman she’s fallen into a stupor of female hysteria.  We’ll have the family doctor bring out the smelling salts and leaches.”

They say that certain vices are crimes against God, but only when some people do it.  Divorce is a sin because marriage is sacred, except when a conservative does it, then it’s totally justified because of such and such explanation.  Tattoos are the mark of the beast, worn by degenerates and lesbians, except when a conservative does it, then it’s just art and harmless self expression.  Marijuana is a gateway drug and we need to lock away its addicts and throw away the key, unless a conservative does it, then it’s just recreational, no big deal, we don’t want to ruin the [white] boy’s future because of it.  A black person who does cocaine is a criminal, a white person who does cocaine is a public figure (you’d be surprised how many actors and politicians regularly use coke; they have to have high energy 24/7 in case there are any cameras, so they need uppers to keep themselves presentable).  This all springs from the fundamental conservative philosophy of “it’s okay when WE do it, but not when YOU do it.”  That’s the long and short of it.  The in-group is allowed to do things, but the out-group isn’t.  It’s the Us vs Them mentality taken to the logical extreme; WE are people, THEY are monsters.  WE are allowed to have faults, THEY have to stay in line and follow all the rules.  OUR lives matter, THEIR lives are lesser.  When you strip away the showy bits and get down to the core of their beliefs, everything stems from their desire to hurt anyone who isn’t them.  They want power, they want to be special, they want the Good Guys™ to always prevail over the Bad Guys™, and they want to be the ones to decide who is good and who is bad.  Their opinions are the only ones that matter, everyone else is wrong because they’re not them.  Now, it’s not like you could solve every problem by opening up your mind to new opinions; there are some issues that are indeed black and white with objectively right and wrong answers, but they live in a world where they are incapable of being wrong.  They see personal growth as a betrayal of the self, that admitting a fault is terrible, that apologizing and learning from a mistake is traitorous.  No, they have to double down on every single one of their beliefs to re-instill it in their minds.  They can never doubt themselves, because God will punish them forever if they ever have doubt.  They can’t ask questions or look at things from other perspectives because that would be an admission that their perspectives are fallible.  They are afraid of changing their minds so much that they refuse to even listen when someone explains their opinions because they don’t want to have their minds co-opted by Satan’s LIES!  If they hear something convincing, it’s all over, their entire world collapses, everything they believe is a lie, they lose, they go to hell forever, The End.

That is the dichotomy under which Republicans live their lives.  Nothing matters but what they believe.  They don’t believe what they believe for logical reasons, so no amount of logic will ever make them not believe it.  They’re making up their own rules to win.  You’re playing Rock-Paper-Scissors and they throw Nuclear Bomb, which defeats all three, so you lose.  You say that’s not fair, they say tough.  You throw Nuclear Bomb, and they say they have a bomb proof shield, so the bomb doesn’t hurt them but kills you, so you lose.  You can’t even beat them at their own game because they’ve been playing it longer, and they cry foul when you stoop to their level, suddenly saying that you need to be the bigger person, walking right up to the line of admitting that what they do is wrong but not quite getting there, simply reverting to the complaint that you shouldn’t be allowed to do it.  “I can, but YOU can’t.”  That’s why it infuriates me when nobody ever calls out a Republican for their hypocrisy.  They do something, a Democrat does that exact same thing, they cry foul, but nobody ever says “well, you didn’t have a problem when you did it,” they just try to excuse their own actions rather than demand justification for theirs.  Democrats are always on the defensive, they always look like they’re losing even when they’re winning, so the Republicans can use that to build their base and rally together for the occasional victory (Democrats won 7 of the last 8 presidential elections; the last Republican to legitimately win the presidency was George H.W. Bush in 1988).

I don’t know how you’d even begin to fight someone who is this far down the rabbit hole of self denial.

Democrats self-reflect, Republicans self-deflect.

Democrats are progressive, Republicans are regressive.

Now I’m sure there are no Republicans reading this, but if there are they’ll make themselves known and “totally refute” everything I’ve said with some paper thin argument that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but they don’t care because it stands up to them.  They only need to show one example of a Democrat failing to write off the entire party; they only need to show one black Republicans to deny the existence of racism; one gay Republican denies homophobia; one women denies sexism.  They are the party of tokenism.

They will point out the mote of dust in your eye and ignore the plank in their own.

Debate me, I have nothing better to do with my time, I’m a dirty libtard cuckflake soyboy beta with a case full of participation trophies and handouts paid for by other people’s tax dollars (funny, they think handouts are for degenerates, except when they get them.  Inheritance?  Privilege?  Never heard of them!)

Blog Post #2 Media Assessment of Juvenile Justice

Idaho Strives to Improve Juvenile Mental Health with Effective New Screening Tool: Web MAYSI-2(No Party affiliation) https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/idaho-strives-to-improve-juvenile-mental-health-with-effective-new-screening-tool-web-maysi-2-301146144.html

Media Assessment of Juvenile Justice

SACAP 

SUBJECT what is the main point the source is trying to convey? What is the central message of the document?     

New Technology is coming out that will challenge the way we are currently dealing with mental health for youthful offenders. This technology will assess the patient giving a full write up and list of necessities of how to deal with the patient. 

AUTHOR who authored the source? Google search the author if needed. What are their credentials? What social, economic, or political affiliations does the author have which may have an impact on their argument or objectivity?

The article was provided by Orbis Partners and posted on PRNewswire, Orbis was also one of the companies in affiliation with the creation of the Web MAYSI-2. PRNewswire has no affiliation with any political party

CONTEXT where and when was the source produced? How might this affect the meaning of the source?

Thankfully this article was released on October 6th, 2020 (Current Year) which gives it more legitimacy rather than having no news on it for a span over a year. 

AUDIENCE who published the source and for whom was the source created? How might this affect the reliability and objectivity of the source? 

It was great that the media site that posted it was in collaboration with Orbis which was one of the partners behind the Web MAYSI-2 so there was no room for error when describing what the machine does and what advice it can give for institutionalized minors. 

PERSPECTIVE is the text objective (neutral or fair point of view) or is it subjective (biased or one-sided)? If the article is objective, identify the competing perspectives presented in the article. Which perspective do you agree with and why? If the article is subjective, identify the author’s claim.  Do you agree or disagree and why?

The article is very objective in the way that it is not a learning source and it is affiliated with the manufacturing industry, and is not related to any political party

SIGNIFICANCE what is the evidence used to support the author’s claim or competing perspectives; what verifiable facts are presented?

Nationally, 70% of incarcerated minors have mental health conditions which is a very hard balance to keep up with, with the growing population of minors in prison. But with this new machine we will be able to see what each individually specific patient needs according to the diagnosis previously given by a physician and then screened for needs by the Web MAYSI-2

California Just Passed Common-Sense Criminal Justice Reforms. Really.

https://thedispatch.com/p/california-just-passed-common-sense

SUBJECT what is the main point the source is trying to convey? What is the central message of the document?     

A recent bill being passed in California signed by Gov. Gavin Newsome, allowing minors on probation to have their time reduced, meaning that someone on probation for 2 years now would only have to do 1.  The message being portrayed in the article is very right leaning and outright mocks the democcratic party in the first paragraph AUTHOR who authored the source? Google search the author if needed. What are their credentials? What social, economic, or political affiliations does the author have which may have an impact on their argument or objectivity?

Brad Polumbo who is a Libretarian-Conservative, a journalist at the Washington Examiner. Even his tone in the article is very obvious that he is opinionated, and passes judgement quite obviously! CONTEXT where and when was the source produced? How might this affect the meaning of the source?

The source is quite new being published on October 7th, this only confirms the legitimacy of the article that it is true and not just fake news. AUDIENCE who published the source and for whom was the source created? How might this affect the reliability and objectivity of the source? 

This article was published by “The Dispatch” which even their logo is bordered with Red and White stripes. And I could not find the exact origin of business but how the tone came off in the piece appeared that this was not a resident of California PERSPECTIVE is the text objective (neutral or fair point of view) or is it subjective (biased or one-sided)? If the article is objective, identify the competing perspectives presented in the article. Which perspective do you agree with and why? If the article is subjective, identify the author’s claim.  Do you agree or disagree and why?

The article is very subjective and focuses on the economic side of Juvenile Detention, rather than looking for ways to prevent the incarceration rate from going any higher. SIGNIFICANCE what is the evidence used to support the author’s claim or competing perspectives; what verifiable facts are presented?

Mainly only economic facts and insinuating that were being too lenient to minors with records and wants stricter regulations and processes for how to deal with them. 

 “fundamentally about restoring liberty to individuals, getting government out of their lives, and helping people earn redemption and a second chance.”

Crime, Punishment, and the Decline of Liberal Optimism

https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=77198

SUBJECT what is the main point the source is trying to convey? What is the central message of the document?     

 Unlike the previous article, this one shows a lot more of an understanding perspective and includes that racial tension and poverty are key reasons to why the incarceration rate is high

AUTHOR who authored the source? Google search the author if needed. What are their credentials? What social, economic, or political affiliations does the author have which may have an impact on their argument or objectivity?

The article is written by R.Bayer who believes in Liberalism. Nothing past a first Innital was given but was posted to a reliable website. 

CONTEXT where and when was the source produced? How might this affect the meaning of the source?

This article was written in the United States in 1981, and although it's almost 40 years old it does lack some current information but is still very informative when trying to figure out or argue about the reasons behind high incarceration rates within minors.

AUDIENCE who published the source and for whom was the source created? How might this affect the reliability and objectivity of the source? 

The article was published by the National Criminal Justice Reference System and is liberal leaning however very open and informative rather than throwing insults at other parties 

PERSPECTIVE is the text objective (neutral or fair point of view) or is it subjective (biased or one-sided)? If the article is objective, identify the competing perspectives presented in the article. Which perspective do you agree with and why? If the article is subjective, identify the author’s claim.  Do you agree or disagree and why?

This article is very Objective and strictly looks at the social reasons created by us of why those that are less fortunate can go to prison at a much higher chance than someone that comes from money

SIGNIFICANCE what is the evidence used to support the author’s claim or competing perspectives; what verifiable facts are presented?

Refer to other articles and studies to further its points and arguments about reform and the chance of catching it at an early age rather than focusing on the social economic side of it. 

3) What are the similarities and differences between these three accounts of your issue?

Besides the first article it is a very personal and intense argument going on throughout each separate one of these arguments and it shows what parties like to focus on, whether that be the economic side of it or the humanistic side of it.

4) Finally, which source do you identify with most and why?

Definitely the last article about the decline of liberal optimism focused on the points of origin within convicted minors rather than giving harsher sentences and trying to fix the problems rather than keep them from continuing.

Let's Talk About Alcest... and Agalloch... and Behemoth… and Racism

A couple months ago, I wrote an article about Alcest and their second single, "Sapphire", ahead of the release of their latest album, "Spiritual Instinct".  It was building off a previous post I had written about the use of space in metal music.

I never published it.

Nor did I publish my year end list because—spoiler—I list “Spiritual Instinct” on it. 

I've been struggling with how to square the circle that is my love of the Alcest's music with the thorny problem that is Niege's history performing in the racist band, Peste Noire, and the ties he appears to maintain to racist black metal and national socialist black metal (NSBM).  It didn't feel right publishing that article when I knew the history of the band but hadn't yet addressed it. 

To that same end, it doesn't feel right discussing black metal on a public platform without addressing some of the ethics of consuming the genre.

This is my attempt to do that.

For the uninitiated, Niege (née Stéphane Paut), is the musical mastermind of Alcest, one of the premier blackgaze bands in metal music today.  They are the genre's quieter, more contemplative yin to Deafheaven's cacophonous yang.  Alcest frequently use spacy and atmospheric effects, midrange tempos, and ephemeral vocals in their music, and contrast these with more typical black metal musical tropes like blast beats and shrieked vocals to create dynamic, haunting, intense, and beautiful songs.  Lyrically, Alcest is a vehicle for Niege to transcribe and memorialize visions that he had as a child of a distant, far off fairy realm.  As an act, Alcest are distinctly focused on bringing this artistic vision to fruition, and from what I've seen, I have to say they are pretty much laser focused on that task.  Niege has also been hugely influential to the development of the blackgaze genre as a whole and has participated in other successful backgaze acts, such as Les Discrets, as well as collaborated with Lantlos and Deafheaven.

However, Niege and the other members of Alcest have very troublesome histories and connections to Europe's white supremacist music scene.  Niege was previously a member of the French anarcho-racist band, Peste Noire, for 8 years before being fired.  During that time he performed on an album titled "Aryan Supremacy" and even holds writing credits on one of the band's songs off of their album, "Folkfuck Folie".  More troubling, the band members that make up Alcest's studio and live bands have similar resumes, and a number of them did time in Peste Noire.

As the black metal music scene has rightfully come under increased scrutiny for its racist associations, Niege's time in Peste Noire has similarly found itself under the microscope.  In a 2011 statement, Niege specifically addressed criticisms around his past in Peste Noire:

"I never was involved in any way with any political, racist or xenophobic ideologies. I was just a musician in Peste Noire, most of the time session musician, I never took part of the lyrics or philisophy [sic] of the band. At the "Aryan Supremacy" period I was 15 years old and I didn't think about the consequence of recording some music with that band, it always was just musical participation for me. Alcest has NOTHING to do with any hate-based philosophy like racism and as a person I am absolutely NOT into nazism, racism and such ideologies." [emphasis Niege's]

In an interview with Avantgarde Metal in 2011, Neige said about his time in Peste Noire:

"Oh, that was a long time ago now… Don’t even ask me about the concept behind it, it is very complex. It was basically the exact opposite of Alcest: love for evil, but in a real way. In any case, I was only a guest on his project as I played drums for him, but I did/do not share his views at all."

Finally, an article on stereoboard.com dated October 2019 quotes Niege as saying:

With hindsight, Neige dubs this tenure as one of his biggest regrets. Peste Noire are less well-known for their music than for their far-right views and racist imagery, which Alcest have since publicly disowned. “I was never into the ideas of the band,” Neige clarifies. “I was naive enough to think that just being a musician in a band like that didn’t mean anything. But, that really does mean something, and that was my mistake. I was a teenager when I joined, but it’s still a big regret that I have.”

Alcest is at the absolute pinnacle of their career.  They recently signed to Nuclear Blast, have a new album that has earned a number of year-end honors, and have honed a distinctive sound that is very much genre-defining; but in the face of all the accolades, Niege's explanations of his time in Peste Noire are still problematic.

Why does he still associate with other musicians from Peste Noire?

Why doesn't he specifically denounce Peste Noire or it's broader racist project?

If he was just a session or "guest" musician, how does he account for his writing credit?

If the timeline that Niege paints holds up, he was 23 when he was fired, certainly old enough to know better about Peste Noire's project and intentions.  Why did he spend 8 years in the band if he didn't ascribe to its philosophies?  Why didn't he leave Peste Noire voluntarily?  Why did he have to be fired?

Neige may indeed have very rational answers to any and all of these questions, and, to give Niege some credit, his statements are far more direct than similar statements from other artists that have found themselves in the crosshairs of concerned fans.  It's also probably worth noting that in comparing this statement to those from unabashedly racist artists, who fully make use of the opportunity to spout their atrocious beliefs on a public platform, Niege does the exact opposite by distancing himself from hate-driven ideology and publicly declaring his regrets. But even still, it's hard to simply dismiss Neige's time in Peste Noir, and his participation in spreading that band's racist philosophies will forever be a stain on Alcest.

--

After the release of The Faceless', "In Becoming A Ghost", I had a conversation with my wife around whether it would be moral to stream or buy the album.   Shorlty after the album's release, Michael Keene's drug addiction struggles came to light and were pasted all over the metal music press.  While I firmly believe that artists should receive financial benefits when others enjoy their creative output, I also believe that educated consumers should absolutely question how that material support is going to be used by the artist. I don't want to fuel Michael Keene's addictions.  I didn't buy the album.  I streamed it once.  I haven't listened to it since.  I probably won't see The Faceless perform again until I'm sure that Keene has cleaned up. Maybe he has, I haven't followed him that closely to know for sure.

I'm in similar straights with Alcest.  And Behemoth. And Agalloch.  And black metal more generally.

In the case of Behemoth, Nergal's disgusting position on an apparent sexual assault, his murky ties to the NSBM scene, and his continued defiance in the face of such disgusting behavior and views makes my decision about supporting Behemoth a no-brainer: I'm not going to spend my money on their albums anymore, I won't see them live, I won't buy their merch, and I'm not going to promote the band's output on any of my platforms.  I was wrong to do so in the past.  I know better now.  I'm not doing it any more.

But Agalloch was trickier: John Haughm stuck his foot in it when he made disgusting anti-Semitic comments in a facebook post.  However, the former members of the band quickly denounced him for it (as did his bandmates in Pilloran).  I'll certainly listen to the now defunct Khorada and whatever projects the non-racist members of the band move on to.  And, hey, Haughm apologized, so there's that.

But there are still some serious questions about Alcest that need to be wrestled with, especially because of Neige's ongoing relationships with musicians also "previously" connected to white supremacy.  Which begs the question: is it ethical to support or promote the artistic output of a band that on the face of it appears non-controversial, but when the views of the actual artists are themselves questionable?

Roland Barthes, in "The Death of the Author", once wrote:

“The modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no other time than that of the utterance, and every text is eternally written here and now.”

I have some issues with Barthes.  As I see it, a text is inherently subject to the influences and views of the author.  The creative force that is ultimately responsible for the artwork itself is inherently subject to the whims of the artist, and it is forever tied to the creator. However, artistic output can be siloed such that the created art can simultaneously stand separate from the completed whole that makes up the artist.  That is to say that while the artist as a person can be complicated or even problematic, the work that is created is an offshoot that is not necessarily subject to the full scope of experiences or biases of its creator. This siloing of the art from the artist means that a project can exist as an entity that can be examined on its own merits, when appropriate, rather than only within the framework of the creator.

Agalloch as a project was concerned with nature, death, the seasons, and nihilism. While John Haughm has been proven to have some despicable views, his collaboration with the other members of the band resulted in an output that seems fully divorced from his views on race. It feels wrong to punish the other members of Agalloch for Haughm's views, especially after they so thoroughly denounced him for it.

In the case of Alcest, I have found zero evidence that the band represents a racist project.  Its lyrics are decidedly apolitical, ephemeral, and esoteric.  They are an exercise in poetic worldbuilding and a sort of musical sleep diary for Niege's childhood dreams and visions. In contrast, Peste Noire is an unabashedly political and racist project that is a direct extension of its creator's views and philosophies.  Peste Noire's vision and project is to enable a world underpinned by racial supremacy, structural deconstruction, and personal elitism. There's a damned big difference between Alcest and Peste Noire and how their respective creators utilize the bands as thought vehicles, even though personnel have been shared between the two bands.

So, what to do about Alcest?  I'm certainly not going to be person that goes out and says: absolutely you should go out and buy their records.  The past associations of Niege and his compatriots means that Alcest will forever have an asterisk next to its name, and every consumer of their music should certainly take time to consider the ethical ramifications of supporting the band.

Niege asserts that Alcest is not rooted in hate-based ideologies.  Over the course of numerous albums, this has proven true over and over again.  At a certain point, you have to judge someone for their current actions while informed by their past.  Niege will have to continue to reckon with his time in Peste Noire and his current choice of musicians.  But Alcest as a vision has fully matched his assertion: there is no evidence that I can find that Alcest is itself a racist project.  I remain open to being swayed to the contrary, but at this point in time, the evidence simply does not exist.

I also believe we need to reward to people when they perform actions that are themselves moral and correct.  I reject that we should condemn a person in perpetuity while they still retain the ability to seek forgiveness.  I enjoy Alcest's music; I appreciate that it's apolitical; I want Niege to continue to make music that fits the vision he has laid out for Alcest; and I want to tie Niege's successes and the success of his compatriots to a benign project like Alcest. 

As a consumer, the only real way that I can have an impact on someone like Niege is through my wallet.  Capital becomes a vehicle for my opinions and my voice.  Boycott is one way to do it; providing material support is another.  Had I not known about Niege's history in Peste Noire, I would have had no idea that Alcest had this adjacency to hate.  And that's kind of the point: because that connection is so opaque and so irrelevant to Alcest's music output, it actually makes some ethical sense to materially support Alcest as a project.  It is the equivalent of rewarding my dog with a treat when he sits on command even though he used to gnaw on my socks as a puppy.

Above all else, though, we also have to have room to allow people the space to regret, feel contrition, and atone for their past actions.  Niege's statements seem clear: he regrets his time in Peste Noire, and he's worked hard to keep Alcest as distant as possible from Peste Noire's agenda.  If Alcest continues on as it is--a veritable sleep diary--and Niege and crew continue to distance themselves from their previous associations with white supremacy, then I think that it is moral to continue to buy Alcest's music, as it is to listen to Agalloch, and for similar reasons. 

There are still numerous bands in the black metal genre that have instead doubled down on their racism when confronted by fans, instead blaming PC culture and Antifa when really they are the ones that need to look in the mirror.  It is unfortunate that as consumers we need to research the bands we listen to so thoroughly.  But in our world of extreme information sharing, we do have to tools to do so, and indeed we should.  After all, it is the fans that truly hold the power to encourage and denounce such despicable bands, if through no other means than our wallets.

 \m/

Quarantine Life: A Reading List

Here is a booklist for 4th of July that we White people need to read instead of just blindly celebrating 4th of July. Special thanks to Bookstgram Represent for additional resources on bookstore and additional readings. They’ve answered so many questions and helped me make sure that this list focuses on Black writers. Only one book on this list has a white author but it came as a suggestion from a group I was in from a Black teacher so it is included. This isn’t a complete list but over the last few weeks these are what I’ve started my readings with. So, let’s get started.

This post does contain affiliate links to Bookshop.org

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad

This eye-opening book challenges you to do the essential work of unpacking your biases, and helps white people take action and dismantle the privilege within themselves so that you can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.

Diversify by June Sarpong

Putting the spotlight on groups who are often marginalised in our society, including women, ethnic minorities, those living with disabilities, and the LGBTQ+ community, Diversify uncovers the hidden cost of exclusion and shows how a new approach to how we learn, live and do business can solve some of the most stubborn challenges we face.

With unshakeable case studies, brand-new research from Oxford University, and six revolutionary steps to help you overcome unconscious bias, this book will help you become part of a better society.

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness: Austin Channing Brown

Austin Channing Brown's first encounter with a racialized America came at age 7, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools, organizations, and churches, Austin writes, "I had to learn what it means to love blackness," a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America's racial divide as a writer, speaker and expert who helps organizations practice genuine inclusion.In a time when nearly all institutions (schools, churches, universities, businesses) claim to value "diversity" in their mission statements, I'm Still Here is a powerful account of how and why our actions so often fall short of our words. Austin writes in breathtaking detail about her journey to self-worth and the pitfalls that kill our attempts at racial justice, in stories that bear witness to the complexity of America's social fabric--from Black Cleveland neighborhoods to private schools in the middle-class suburbs, from prison walls to the boardrooms at majority-white organizations.

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris

In a work that Lisa Delpit calls "imperative reading," Monique W. Morris (Black Stats, Too Beautiful for Words) chronicles the experiences of Black girls across the country whose intricate lives are misunderstood, highly judged--by teachers, administrators, and the justice system--and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. Called "compelling" and "thought-provoking" by Kirkus Reviews, Pushout exposes a world of confined potential and supports the rising movement to challenge the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures.

Called a book "for everyone who cares about children" by the Washington Post, Morris's illumination of these critical issues is "timely and important" (Booklist) at a moment when Black girls are the fastest growing population in the juvenile justice system. Praised by voices as wide-ranging as Gloria Steinem and Roland Martin, and highlighted for the audiences of Elle and Jet right alongside those of EdWeek and the Leonard Lopate Show, Pushout is a book that "will stay with you long after you turn the final page" (Bookish).

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen

Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important--and successful--history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times.

For this new edition, Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems, and calls out academic historians for abandoning the concept of truth in a misguided effort to be "objective."

What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an extremely convincing plea for truth in education." In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should--and could--be taught to American students.

*Specifically the chapters regarding slavery. This was a suggestion from a Black womxn in my Womxn for Tri for Justice. She said that Chapter’s 5 & 6 should start as required reading about slavery and then reading the whole book. The edition pictured above does not include the new preface. 

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave-owning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave-owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.

(based on your previous ask) do you mind if I ask how you feel about lok? is there a general consensus if it's good or bad? youre really insightful and just wanted to know if there were any major issues you had with it

yeah sure, i’ll do my best. if you want a quick answer to your question, here is a link to some of my other korra posts where i say pretty much the same thing as i do here, just in fewer words. cause this post will be mostly an unhappy summary of my experience watching the show. this post will contain spoilers, and disclaimer, i am a really biased, disappointed asshole, so i’ll just admit that now. 

short answer: i liked the concept of lok more than the product we got. a lot of that is because you had a physically buff brown wlw protagonist written mostly by cishet white men and, as you can imagine, it wasn’t handled great. when i think of lok now i tend to fluctuate between bittersweet nostalgia and quiet, simmering rage.

if you don’t care about the show summary, skip at the middle paragraph break down to my tldr.

so for those who don’t know, LOK was really my first “big” fandom on tumblr. when it was announced, a bunch of ATLA purists were already hating on it because 1) brown woman, 2) it was unrealistic to go from ATLA’s technology to streampunk in 70 years, and 3) it wasn’t ATLA, basically. it was my first big interest that i got to participate in as it was airing, and i was really excited about it. i defended it, i wrote meta, i liveblogged, i wrote tons of fic and spammed theories/wants before the damn show even had a release date. all that is to say, i was Invested, and i believed in it before i even saw it. people called me a bnf, i’m not sure if that’s true, but i did gain a lot my followers in my first few years on tumblr by posting korra stuff. a lot of them – hello – i think are still around today (i’m not certain how all the video games hasn’t scared them off yet)

i should say at this point that my opinion of LOK the show has been really wrapped up in the ugly stain left by the fanbase. korra the character has been the subject of tons of racist, misogynistic criticism since the moment we saw her back; when she showed up on screen as a proud young woman who fought with authority and stood up for herself, that was the nail in the coffin for her reputation. i agreed that she had a bit of growing up to do, because ATLA/LOK have always been stories about coming of age and maturing, but i disagreed strongly with this notion that she deserved to be “humbled,” which is what a lot of fans were looking for.

the overall consensus on if it’s “good” depends on who you ask. most people agree that ATLA is better overall: it was better plotted because it benefited from more writers in the room and more episodes to flesh out the world. opinions on LOK specifically range based a lot on their opinions of the K/orra/sami pairing, if they were involved in or what side they were on in any of the fandom wank, and also just complete random chance.

i’ll go more in depth into my ‘history’ with the show below, but i just wanted to mention that all the while the show was airing, korra was being hit with waves of criticism by so-called fans for basically being a confident brown woman who were calling for her to learn her place, respect her elders, etc. another common theme was fandom’s brilliant fucking idea that asami, a light-skinned feminine non-bending woman who was more polite and reserved than korra, would’ve made a better avatar. because you know why. (korra was often described as brutal, rough, unsophisticated, next to pretty, perfect asami. and asami is a fine character, to be clear, but that’s what she was – fine. nothing really stands out about her, which is a fault of the writing, because she had a lot of potential too.) so anyway all of this did sour my mood toward engaging with other fans outside my friend circle.

–

it was around maybe the middle of book 1 that i realized the writing for the show was simpler than what i was expecting – not that it was childish, which it was (because it was written for children, i understood that), but i felt like the plot meandered and the twists came out of nowhere. it felt like they were making it up as they were going, and it opened threads it didn’t answer. one of the biggest threads was the equalist revolution, which was a very sensitive topic that got jettisoned when the leader was revealed to be a fraud, and that devalued the entire movement in an instant. really disappointing, because i was looking forward to seeing that addressed. for a lot of people, this was a dealbreaker, and they started walking. i stuck with it, but loosely.

book 2 aired, focusing on the spiritual world and some really cool history. it still suffered a lot from awkward b-plots and loose threads it didn’t know how to tackle. korra lost her memory and then regained it 2 episodes later with no consequences, mako flip-flopped between korra and asami because bryke don’t know how to write teenage romances without making it a love triangle, and at some point bolin kissed a girl against her will and they didnt acknowledge that at all? i honestly don’t remember. anyway at the end of book 2, even though korra saves the day and prevents the world from descending into darkness for ten thousand years, due to events beyond her control, korra loses the spiritual connection that ties her to all of the previous avatars – aang, roku, kyoshi, wan, everyone. and people hit the fucking ceiling. “korra’s not a real avatar if she lost her connection to the old ones! that’s the entire point of the cycle! this show is bullshit, it’s not canon anymore!” (the entire point that finale demonstrated that korra’s power alone was enough to save the world and she didn’t need anyone else. but people found that ~unrealistic~ i guess). as you can imagine, being a fan of LOK is starting to get a little tiring by now.

books 3-4 is where the korra haters got to love the show again, because they were both straight-up torture porn. after everything she did saving the world, this is the arc where korra got beat down, tortured, dragged into the dirt, swallowed and spat back out. book 3 is a lot of people’s favorites because it was the first book that felt fully plotted out before it was put on air, which is why i enjoyed it too. but for me it was difficult to see a girl, whose identity revolved around being the avatar after being raised and sheltered to think it was all she was good for, effectively abandon her life and even her name by the beginning of book 4 because the events of book 3 were that traumatizing for her. somehow this was character development. we were encouraged to stick with it because we hoped korra would find herself again. and she did, sorta.

but it makes me furious that people who had quit in books 1-2 came back during 3 because they heard these books were better – aka book 3, the book that featured korra the least, and books 3-4 in which korra got her ass handed to her in some of the hardest fights vs some of the cruelest villains of the series. (nevermind that the book 3 villains suffer from the anime villain curse: they quickly went from “cool character design” to “wait, how does this rando group of villains show up with powers literally no one in the universe has ever heard before?” – questions no one ever answers)

anyway book 4 is a mish-mash of… i’m not sure. i’ve rewatched all the books but i don’t know if i’ll ever touch this one again. the culturally appropriating airbender wannabe, zaheer (a complete rando who somehow masters airbending enough to fly, which was a huge middle finger to airbending masters aang and tenzin for no reason) a guy who literally tortured korra one season before and put her in a wheelchair, is the one who the writers send korra to for her spiritual awakening that lets her save the day. not tenzin or jinora, her spiritual teachers with whom she has positive, healthy relationships – they send her back to her abuser who terrifies and degrades her a bit more before deciding to help. this was a pattern: the writers made both korra and asami face their abusers (in asami’s case, her father) for catharsis instead of gaining peace over their trauma another, healthier way because…. i’m not sure why. there is no reason why. and then there’s the guilt tripping nonsense of asami feeling as if she had to forgive her father, who tried to kill her, because he said he was sorry and sacrificed himself for her in the finale. it’s angst galore, if you like that kind of thing, which i normally do, except this is less angst and more just the writers trying to hammer in torture porn, grimdark, and poor attempts at morally gray nonsense into their finale season.

anyway at the end of her journey, korra, our buff brown woc, learns that she had to suffer to learn how to be compassionate and relate to her enemy. i’m not exaggerating, she literally says that. which is lovely.

–

tldr: i wasted a lot of emotional time and energy into this show and was extremely disappointed when some of the ending’s notes were “you had to suffer to become a better person” and “forgive your abusers/villains because aren’t we all the same in the end?”

but also on a strictly narrative level, LOK also bit off way more than it could chew both emotionally and thematically. it had an amazing premise, but it was not committed to

utilizing the steampunk genre to its best potential in the bending world (after the creativity in the rest of the worldbuilding, the LOK series finale was literally fighting a giant robot – seriously?)

giving its hero the respect and character arc she deserved. and i don’t say that because i think korra had no growing up to do in b1, she did, but she didn’t deserve for it to happen like that.

so basically i realized that a lot of the writers that made ATLA great weren’t brought back for LOK, and it showed. i realized that the LOK writers, when they listened to fans, were listening to the fans that whined the loudest, or (more likely, since they plan seasons years before we see them) they thought from the beginning that it was a good idea for korra to go through years’ worth of pain just to be spat out a humbler, “better” person

the reason i told you all that about me defending LOK in the beginning is because i need you to understand that i believed in LOK longer than i probably should’ve. i wanted it to be everything i was expecting in a diverse children’s show with an unorthodox female protaganist. but just because they had a brown wlw heroine doesn’t mean that they deserved to be praised for it when they treated her like garbage.

and korra and asami walk into a beam of light together in the last second of the show and i’m supposed to applaud the writers for their bravery or something