one time i got blocked bc i called the main male protag of a manga a mary sue. good times.

Origami Around
Cosmic Funnies

Janaina Medeiros
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
No title available
Keni
Mike Driver

@theartofmadeline
NASA
Monterey Bay Aquarium
we're not kids anymore.
Show & Tell
i don't do bad sauce passes

#extradirty

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
ojovivo
No title available
Claire Keane
Game of Thrones Daily
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States

seen from New Zealand
seen from United States

seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from United States

seen from Germany
seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom

seen from China
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Switzerland

seen from Singapore

seen from United Kingdom

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Germany

seen from Russia
@dognamnedhandy
one time i got blocked bc i called the main male protag of a manga a mary sue. good times.
the thing about people who are like “i don’t like tolkien that much, fantasy should move on and be better” is that i AGREE that fantasy has all the wrong holdovers from lotr. but when you ask those people what contemporary fantasy they think is better, they’ll say shit like name of the wind or game of thrones, and i do not relate to that…..at all?? or even, like, brandon sanderson, whose books i REALLY like. but if you’re still naming mostly white straight male authors, what is it about tolkien you wanted to leave behind exactly???
If y’all’s “moving on from Tolkien” is still centered in reading fantasy written by cishet white men, y’all are missing out.
Martha Wells, Books of the Raksura. Shapeshifting gargoyle-dragon-lizard people in a matriarchal society. About finding a new home and a new family. Really evocative world building that hints at much older civilizations in a luxuriant setting.
NK Jemisin, The Broken Earth series. Post-apocalyptic setting. People of color actively dismantling systems of oppression. People of color being justifiably angry at what has been done. People of color being powerful. A black woman as the main character and multiple queer characters. She won THREE Best Novel Hugos for this series.
NK Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy. An empire has imprisoned and enslaved multiple gods, and is using them to further their oppressive systems. The mixed race female protagonist helps them find liberation. Some polyamory and non-binary themes.
Aliette de Bodard, Dominion of the Fallen series. “Dark Gothic fantasies set in a ruined turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war.” Fallen angels, Asian dragons, Viet culture, and queer PoC in positions of power. Her website has lots of free fiction as well. Special mention to The Tea Master and the Detective, a Sherlock Holmes retelling where Sherlock is a WoC and Watson is a sentient spaceship.
Fran Wilde, The Bone Cycle. Beautiful worldbuilding, tradition, (mis)information, climate change. This series is so gorgeous I have deliberately not finished reading it yet, because I am saving the last few chapters of the final book for when I’m going through a rough patch and need something lovely to escape into.
Amal El-Mohtar, Seasons of Glass and Iron. Fairy tale heroines going “nah, fuck this nonsense, we’re making our own story”. Amal mostly writes poetry and short fiction, and all of it is beautifully lyrical. Her words are so beautiful they make me angry.
Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky. It blends several genres in one, and honestly you are better off reading it than reading any summary I could make about it.
And so many, many, many more in the fantasy/sci-fi/horror genres. Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher, Alyssa Wong, Ken Liu, Rebecca Roanhorse, Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant, Daniel José Older, RF Kuang, Nnedi Okorafor, Jeannette Ng, Ann Leckie, Ted Chiang, Mary Robinette Kowal, Ruthanna Emrys, Louise Erdrich, Elizabeth Bear, Saladin Ahmed, Nisi Shawl…
If you can’t afford them, that’s okay, you have options:
Make sure to check them out at your local library.
Don’t want to go to the library, or don’t have a means to do so regularly? Ebooks! Overdrive/Libby is your friend–you just need to get a library card and then you can borrow ebooks through their ever-growing database. You can even recommend books to them–authors will get a sale if the library buys the book! They also have a growing audiobook supply, and you can recommend those to your library as well.
Libby has a phone app that is perfectly functional, so if you don’t have a dedicated e-reader but own a smartphone, you can get your books that way too.
Do you prefer short fiction? So many of these authors have stuff available online, be it on their website or on zines. A brief search will supply you with more fiction by non-white-dudes than you know what to do with.
tl;dr:
Read diverse authors.
Diane Duane, Lois McMaster Bujold, Doris Egan, Ann Downer, Pamela Dean, Emma Bull…
Reblogging so that I can remember some of these names next time my to-be-read pile is winnowed down to a point where I can get new books from bookstore or library (oh, who am I kidding, reblogging so I can get some more books and who cares that I already have piles to read…)
(x)
well it took me about 2 seconds to reblog this
HOLY FUCK
????????????
power song
Oh what??
This is awesome???? Hello????
presented without commentary or apology
Why OP
slam that fucking unmute button
Ask and you shall receive. xx Original post here Backing track here
Reblogging again, here are the transcribed lyrics!
Chorus
Jolene (×4)
I’m begging of you please don’t take my man
Jolene (x4)
Please don’t take him just because you can
Verse One
Your beauty is beyond compare
With flaming locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin
And eyes of emerald green
For years our town’s been terrorised
By the beast who takes disguise
In the shell
That calls itself Jolene
Our sleep disturbed by quaking breath
Eyes closed against the threat of death
That lies behind
The teeth of that Jolene
The closer that you get to her
The more those edges seem to blur
To something that
Cannot be called Jolene
Chorus
Verse Two
Your teeth are sharp, your mouth agape
Your claws rend flesh, there’s no escape
From judgement of
The Eldritch One, Jolene
But I’ve seen beyond that auburn hair
My eyes have met your vacant stare
But I’ve been told
I’m hard to scare, Jolene
Chorus but it’s:
Jolene (x4)
I’m begging of you please don’t take my man
Jolene (x4)
I’ll end this story just how it began
I’ll take your teeth if you try to take my man
End.
(edited from op’s corrections)
I still think Moana deserved an Oscar for this part
To me, the moral of Moana is that only women can help other women heal from male violence.
The movie starts with the idea that the male god who wronged Te Fiti must be the one to heal her. This seems to make a certain sort of intuitive sense in that I think we all believe that if you do something wrong you should try to make it right. But how does he try to right it? Through more violence. Of course that failed.
It was only when another woman, Moana, saw past the “demon of earth and fire” that the traumatized Te Fiti had become (what a good metaphor for trauma, right?) and met her with love instead of violence that she was able to heal. Note that they do the forehead press before Moana restores the heart, while Te Fiti is still Te Kā. Moana doesn’t wait for her beautiful island goddess to appear in all her green splendor before greeting and treating her as someone deserving of love.
Moana is only able to restore the heart because Te Kā reveals her vulnerability and allows Moana to touch her there. Maui and his male violence could only ever have resulted in more ruin.
@i-want-cheese
This is a touching anaylisis but it’s extremely racist as not only have you completely ignored the whole point of Maui’s character, but have managed to incriminate a man of color on a tumblr wide scale.
First of all, Maui’s character does not represent male violence—it represent human greed. Maui did not take the heart because he is a man, and Te-Fiti is a woman. He took it because the humans asked him to. The humans asked Maui to do everything for them, not caring how greedy or selfish their requests were and in the end it was Maui who suffered for it. Maui is supposed to show the flaw of humanity.
This has nothing to do with sexism, it has everything to do with the fact that Maui gave and gave to the humans who could never stop being greedy. Moana giving the heart back wasn’t supposed to be her “making up” for the male violence that Maui represents. It was her making up for the greed she and her people represent. It was touching however because yes it was an important moment between two women, but you missed the point and you’ve come off racist and very disrespectful to a culture at that.
Yes, Moana is an empowering movie for women, especially women of color. But the last thing this is about is Maui being an abuser/rapist or whatever. That is not the point of Maui’s character.
And to assume so is racist. You are a white woman completely dehumanizing a man of color and ruining his image because of how you see him. And other white girls here on tumblr have happily picked up that image and interpretation and rolled with it. Maui’s character is now seen as an abuser or as someone who is violently because of white girls here on tumblr—which it doesn’t surprise me. (an in a historical context this is even MORE racist because white women would always make Maui’s people out to be savages and abusers etc., simply because of the color of their skin and their culture so yea, this is bad).
You can see the morality of the movie however you want, but do not be disrespectful toward a character and in this case a culture.
@i-want-cheese Please don’t write this off as another “butthurt comment” or “male guilt”, because this is really messed up. I see how you’re brushing off some other people’s comments and I honestly hope that you don’t see mine the same way because this is an issue I think you need to face/realize. You are being racist and brushing it off isn’t going to change that. the
@visibilityofcolor THANK YOU FOR THIS. As a Polynesian woman, reading that post and other replies painting Maui and even Tui as aggressive and violent men had me feeling some type of way, especially since White people have always regarded Polynesian men in such a manner.
I’ve thought about replying because I’m tired of seeing these kind of “Moana is a feminist movie” posts collect hundreds of notes despite the fact that these posts always conveniently fail to mention Pasifika people, but it always stressed me out, so thank you.
As an aside, Maui taking Te Fiti’s heart and Moana restoring it was symbolic of environmental preservation. Because the people who inspired Moana–Pasifika people, not just Polynesian–are always affected first when the environment is threatened. Our way of life is greatly influenced by the ocean and we believe that if you take care of the ocean, she will take care of you.
You’re very welcome.
This is insight for me as well (as I wasn’t aware that the movie also came fro the culture of the Pasifika people), and does give a very important perspective. I do agree with you, this movie is about environmental restoration, not some white fem bullshit.
I tried over and over again to explain to I-want-cheese about how she was being racist, but she responded by blocking me and other poc who called her out (even other polynesian people). People to this day are still trying to explain that she is being racist and culturally insensitive but she ignores us.
I’ve made a few posts about this, hoping that people realize how problematic it is to agree with i-want-cheese. Explaining to her racist white ass that this was problematic was like explaining to a bird. She wouldn’t listen and neither would have of her racist friends.
Sorry you’ve had to see this on your dash every so often, but I’m glad my portion of the post is starting to get around. (reblogged to the wrong blog at first lols)
dang reblogging this as a correction for the very first reblog. this why feminist analysis always needs to be intersectional
My heart just cried
the portrayal of Maui is super important here, the disney crew put a LOT of effort into getting him right because he IS a crucial figure to an entire culture- basically a cross between a central religious figure and superman so handling him poorly would be catastrophically disrespectful there are basically only two parts of Mauis legend that they flub- they only tell half of the story of when he was abandoned as a baby, and they skip over that stealing the heart of Te-Fiti so he could give it to humanity was the legend in which he dies yes, canonically Maui dies in his quest to give gifts to humanity, its an important element of why Maui is such a profound character, not just ‘man who hurt someone’ strawman it gets worse when you discover the OTHER legend they fudged, the story of his birth, reinforces this. Mauis mother had several (Hawaiians only say three, new zealand says five) sons, all named Maui, so when she had ANOTHER son she named him Maui as well, but then cast him into the sea for there was no way she could support another son. the gods did not save Maui, as Moana says, instead they return him to his mother and say she must give him a chance. to which his mother states that for her to take care of him this infant must remove the roof from her house by throwing spears at it. that is the story of Maui the skillful, abandoned as an infant and then immediately told that he must PROVE his worth, after which all he ever does is prove his worth
his brothers mocked him for being a poor fisherman, he crafts a fishook from a jawbone and proceeds to raise new islands from the sea the sky is so low the trees bend, maui raises it for everyone, then fills the new sky with wind
the sun flies so quickly there is not enough time in the day to do the labors for everyone, maui has to lay traps for each of the suns many feet, chase after it as it was slowed, and then threaten to chop its legs off if it would not slow down
he then due to the complaints of the now longer dark night creates the moon and is upset his creation will not please humanity for it does not make sufficient light, then shows it to the sun so that it may learn how to be bright maui was credited with having invented as gifts for humanity the outrigger canoe, stone tools, and seaworthy boats that had no mast or sails. he was credited with inventing tattoos as a gift to dogs, however humanity is still not content so maui descends to the land of the dead to ask the secret of creating fire from the grandmother, who kept it hidden in her fingernails. he dropped the fingernail in the water as he tried to return to the land of the living, came back for another, dropped it as well, and went through all ten fingers and toenails untill he had to then interrogate birds the grandmother had shared the secret with to tell him how
a monstrous eel tried to put the moves on his wife, and again maui had to prove his worth to reclaim her by breaking the monster eel’s spine, shoving him into the ground to create the first coconut tree, the single most useful thing for polynesian life, as a gift to humanity yet again Maui, as a mythological figure, did nothing but give from the day he was born. he gave humans tools, land, fire, boats, light, the wind, everything except life itself and he even tried to give them that- and it killed him, he was bitten in two a crucial part of Maui as a legend is that he failed, its literally part of the point, also that he was driven to prove himself endlessly to the (during his life) ungrateful. do not try and drag Maui, its disrespectful on a level i cant express thank the man, you asshole Moana succeeded where he failed, for she saw that she did not have to prove herself. the whole movie up untill then she was trying to put on a brave face (there was literally a cut song ‘warrior face’ where maui teaches her Haka), shout her courage, announce to the world at large that she WILL do the thing and fix the world and be the hero, just like Maui
its easy to miss, she stopped trying to prove who she was to anyone, there was nobody she needed to prove herself TO she just WAS herself, and that brought her peace
Oh man…this is why it’s so important to hear the perspectives of the peoples actually represented. When I was reading through this, the first part seemed to make a lot of sense on the surface, but I could *never* have imagined how racist that perspective was. It makes so much more sense now. Thank you to the folks in this thread who were willing to take the time to share their perspective so that oblivious folks like me could do a little more to chip away at our own internalized racism.
(Also the story of Maui is heckin’ sad, gosh :( )
we joke about procrastination but nothing is worse than the nauseating feeling of having every intention of doing something but physically not being capable of doing it and then feeling like you want to throw up because the deadline is just getting closer and closer.
well, personal shit and internships...
... Dudes and dudettes and dunotdecided and dunonconfomers.
Let me vent. Let me think out loud. No one on this hell site reads anything anyway.
being pregnant sounds terrible and i am not interested
do u ever like feel so absurdly reluctant to do things. like it ain’t even procrastination or laziness anymore u just physically and mentally can’t bring yourself to do anything. u really, really just wanna binge watch youtube until your mind numbs completely or lie on the floor and stare into the abyss. and it’s not like u don’t have “motivation” or anything or even that u don’t want to do it, it’s just. u can’t. idk how ppl just. Do Things. get up and go at it. i have to have an entire existential crisis and like, watch a goddamn motivational film or something first before i do the smallest thing. and it’s june for fuck’s sake.
This is great 🙌🏾
thinkin about my two hundred different embarrassing and completely self-indulgent daydream universes that i’ve actually taken time out of my day to create content for and have never shared with anyone bc they’re that embarrassing but not being able to stop bc they’re one of the few things that bring me genuine joy
PS4/ XBOX 1/ PC or Mass Effect Andromeda Game Copies Giveaway
Win a Console of your Choice or ME Andromeda. Sign up for it. None of us have money anyway.
Mass Effect Andromeda Giveaway
well, AO3 and “Blurb Blocker”...
... Blurb Blocker is a a Browser Extension, or rather a script with which you can block tags on AO3. So basically something like Tumblr Savior or the X-Kit Black List for AO3.
You can find it here: https://openuserjs.org/scripts/sarken/Blurb_Blocker
“This script will hide AO3 work blurbs that contain one or more of the words or phrases you specify. The blacklisted terms can appear anywhere in a blurb: title, author, tags, summary...
The script is currently set to hide work blurbs that contain the terms "explicit" or "mature." You can remove these terms and add as many as you like by editing the part of the script that reads var blackList = new Array('explicit', 'mature'); You can whitelist terms as well.
This will show blurbs containing the specified terms even if the blurbs also contain a blacklisted term. That can be changed in the the part that reads var whiteList = new Array('general audiences'); If there are no terms you want whitelisted, use var whiteList = new Array(); ”
You’ll need to understand JavaScript a tiny bit, but’s just putting tags into Arrays.
This thing has made my AO3 experience so much more enjoyable, so I wanted to share it.
well, Fuck...
...Capitalize it.
well, now I remember....
.... what Yuzus purple/ lilac Number reminded me of.
The Purple Suit King Endymion from Sailor Moon wore in the future...
I mean, that’s mostly just my brain trying to make connections between things I already know, to make sense of things, but I found it amusing.