your friends & partners will actually love it if you enforce your boundaries b/c then they will never again need to guess if they're ever making you uncomfortable & don't know. healthy living tip :)
probably anger/being upset is one of the most negatively viewed emotions and like for a good reason ofc cause its an Icky feeling but also what people tend to forget is that. its still a human emotion. like please allow people to feel that way and don't try to immediately be the problem solver especially if its out of your control. no one asked you to be the mediator
Obviously there are many things to dislike about adulthood but as someone who grew up in an abusive household for whom adulthood offered the only chance at an escape, it's incredibly important to me that i romanticize adulthood whenever possible because i know there are kids and teenagers like me out there who are seeing nothing but complaints about rent and taxes and the loneliness of living on your own and i know they're going to internalize all of that and assume it means that adulthood won't offer them the freedom and safety they've been dreaming of. So while i never want to minimize the difficulties of being an adult, i also want to highlight how incredibly nice it can be to finally have ownership of your life and your body and your time and money and food and everything else in a way that you never had before. You can choose when you wake up! You can choose what you have for breakfast! You can choose when to go to sleep or if you want to (inadvisably) stay up all night watching tv in the living room! In the living room! You can choose what to watch! These are little things, but they are worth taking pleasure in, and they are worth looking forward to.
this anime’s refusal to engage with the technicalities of its own premise is SO inspiring. we don’t have time to focus on whatever plot hole physics we used to get here, we have an undead pop band to run
your friends & partners will actually love it if you enforce your boundaries b/c then they will never again need to guess if they're ever making you uncomfortable & don't know. healthy living tip :)
the commodification of friendship is the most annoying thing to come out of the internet in ages. like actually i love to break this to you but you're supposed to help your friends move even if it's hard work. or stay up with them when they're sad even if you're gonna lose sleep. you're supposed to listen to their fears and sorrows even if it means your own mind takes on a little bit of that weight. that's how you know that you care. they will drive you to the airport and then you will make them soup when they're sick. you're supposed to make small sacrifices for them and they are supposed to do that for you. and there's actually gonna be rough patches for both of you where the balance will be uneven and you will still be friends and it will not be unhealthy and they will not be abusive. life is not meant to be an endless prioritization of our own comfort if it was we would literally never get anywhere ever. jesus.
I'm probably gonna word this a little weirdly but taking a character of color and changing their race isn't cool ever, even if they're still Not White. If I take Aisha and make her South Asian instead of black, that's not adding representation, it's erasing black representation.
If I take Musa and make her anything but Asian, that's not representation for someone else, it's erasure. Same thing for Flora, Nabu, and every other character of color in winx.
I understand that some of the characters are more ambiguous than others - I'm not mad that a child would see Flora as asian or Nabu as a black man - but if you're an adult? Fully aware of their intentional coding? And Still deciding to change their races? Like?? Please have some self awareness. We already have to fight hard for representation. You don't get to take it away.
There being two movies now in the Benoit Blanc world, and both movies sharing some recognizable tropes and archetypes to build its flavor, there’s a specific type of character that I’m struck by, particularly as a white woman, in both Knives Out and Glass Onion:
The Sympathetic White Woman.
In KO it’s Meg. In GO it’s Whiskey. They both bond with the (WOC, very important to emphasize) protagonist by being less crappy to her than the rest of the cast, and both signal to the audience that they’re trustworthy as far as the protagonist goes. They tell the protagonist that they’re on her side. They try to be supportive. They’re sympathetic to the audience.
Then comes the moment when the Sympathetic White Woman’s security is threatened.
For Meg, it’s her mom telling her she has to drop out of school if they don’t get the inheritance money. For Whiskey, it’s Duke dying. In both cases, the protagonist reaches out—Marta tells Meg she won’t let that happen, she’ll support Meg with whatever money she needs; Helen tries to soothe a hysteric Whiskey by telling her she doesn’t need Duke and he deserved what he got (not realizing Duke is dead, of course). It’s a slightly different moment in each movie, but the basic framework is the same: the woman of color protagonist reaches back to the Sympathetic White Woman, and notably, reaches DOWN, offering the support the Sympathetic White Woman offered earlier.
Only…the Sympathetic White Woman was never intending to be the one the protagonist had to reach down to. So she snaps. Meg tells her family about Marta’s mother and they use it to threaten her. Whiskey latches onto the belief that Helen killed Duke and tries to kill her with a spear gun in what she thinks is self-defense. The Sympathetic White Woman Heel-Turn.
Meg and Whiskey both also sort of try to make amends after their Heel-Turn moments, but…the trust is already broken. The protagonist knows better now. The Sympathetic White Woman is not to be trusted.
Why this sticks out to me personally is the very obvious callout that feminists of color have been making about white feminists for literal decades: that white feminism lacks any true support or compassion for non-white people, that it’s empty promises of support and when the chips are down, white feminism upholds whiteness over feminism in an act to protect itself. And whiteness…is a damn difficult thing to even see when you’re white and raised in an overwhelmingly white community, let alone begin to pick apart and unlearn. It’s reactionary, how Meg and Whiskey turn on Marta and Helen to protect themselves.
It would make Meg incredibly vulnerable to support Marta fully, the way she promised to back when she thought she had the resources for it, but Marta is that vulnerable every day just existing as a Latina woman in America. Whiskey’s Heel-Turn moment is a little more immediate trauma based, but when looking for someone to blame, she doesn’t hesitate to blame Andi (Helen), scrapping together the few pieces of information she has—Andi hates all of the Disruptors, Andi got screwed over by them, Andi fought with Duke just minutes before he died, Andi was in their shared room tearing it apart when Whiskey came in distraught. She’s looking for an outlet. There’s Helen red-handed and in view. Boom. Whiskey grabs the spear gun instead of talking it out with the person she admitted just hours ago to feeling sympathy for.
Growing up white and steeped in whiteness causes defensive reactions when that whiteness is brought up, or, god forbid, challenged. It’s a knee-jerk thing for people who haven’t begun to deconstruct it for themselves; even for people who have, to see just how far and deep in American society that reaches is troubling. Humbling. Enraging. The Sympathetic White Woman archetype is, to me, a warning to not let whiteness overrule sense and morals. To be smart about it. And, crucially, to check myself for condescension, especially when interacting with non-white folks in any capacity.
(Also why the presence of Benoit Blanc is so important. He is also sympathetic, he also offers his own support, but crucially, he just uses his whiteness to clear a path for the WOC protagonist to take her place and do what she needs to do. He doesn’t speak over her, he doesn’t turn on her, he just listens, and presents the truth for her to do with it what she will. Or, in one case, hands her highly volatile crystal hydrogen for when she’s really ready to tear the Murderer’s crap down.)
if i ever come off a little weird and you wonder if theres something wrong with me there is theres actually so many things wrong with me but im doing such a good job being normal. so you should actually be proud of me you should smile and be like wow youre doing such a good job and then be on your merry way
And I know that it takes time, so I’ll make time @deadliestnat - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
blakekathryn
izzy806
stormborns
theartofmadeline
2087
germansingergirl
