love island should introduce a "scheming eunuch" islander who is like a smart and completely asexual islander exempt from being kicked off or being made to participate in any challenges and they're just there to provide advice and be a sort of sounding board for the other islanders when they need a disinterested party to talk things through with. but the scheming eunuch has secret goals unbeknownst to anyone e.g. a cash prize for talking a certain couple into breaking up etc.
We need a big chart where we rank all tumblr users most impactful developmental trauma and illnesses of the mind so we can use it to determine who has senior authority when arguing about anime characters
Come to think of it, it really is insane that my entire country is burning alive and literally no one in the rest of the world cares. Thousands of Indians are dying every day from the heat, it's 45+ degrees in multiple areas, the government couldn't give two fucks, we're getting severe warnings and red alerts, and not a soul outside of South Asia is speaking about it because why would you ever care about brown people
USA folks, that is a consistent temperature range hitting 113°. Death Valley temperatures. In Banda, it hovered between 116°-118° (47°-48° C) for a week straight.
This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:
Someone from the communist wing of DSA just won a Democratic congressional primary in NYC. Congratulations to Representative-elect Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is set to be easily the furthest-left member of Congress next year
DSA has added congressional seats in Pennsylvania and New York during this year’s Democratic primaries so far, and they’re looking likely to pick up another in Colorado next week
okay i know we normally do this with more pop-focused festivals but i wanna see how many metalheads are on this site: how many groups do you recognize?
much has been said already about the supreme court case and trans rights but today i'm thinking extra hard about trans kids who have been sent into the psych system for any reason, who have to bear the lack of autonomy innate to it but the extra sting of being denied the right to your name and your gender in sex-segregated facilities, by transphobic staff, etc.
i'm thinking extra hard about how we've ended up where we are, with trans kids at the center of so much hatred, because children are not seen as people with interiority or an ability to narrate their own experiences. we've decided it's alright to lock children up for horrible diagnoses that psychs throw around like they're nothing, to strip their autonomy completely and force them through humiliation, invasions of privacy, and endless torment by "professionals" whose power over every waking moment of their lives has no end. these things cannot be separated.
i'm thinking today of every trans child in a wilderness camp, in a residential treatment facility, in psych wards and PHP/IOP programs, especially those whose transness has been tied to unwellness. fuck the psych industry and the troubled teen industry and transphobia forever
unfortunately i can't join the carol sturka defenders no matter how much i hate fandom misogyny bc the plot relies on her being a benignly racist & self-centered american and that really nukes any goodwill i could hold for her. #mytruth
to be clear since this is making the rounds: she has to be an absolute loser in no way that can be pinned on her gender. no "i'm just a girl tee-hee" stuff. straight up just a loser (nondenominational)
I decided to sit down and concentrate and properly write the list of rules that qualify a character for this role.
FIRST LAW: This character must be a woman.
SECOND LAW: This character must be a loser, but not in a way that can be pinned on her gender. Misogynistic response from the audience does not disqualify the character.
THIRD LAW: If the audience does not enjoy this character, then it becomes impossible to enjoy the show/film/book/game altogether. It is not possible to ignore this character, for better or for worse.
FOURTH LAW: The character must make bad decisions, and not just be a victim of poor circumstances outside of her control. The character can also be a victim of poor circumstances outside of her control, but it has to be primarily her personal choices that deem her a loser.
Mel Medarda (Arcane) vs. Basira Hussain (The Magnus Archives)
Mel Medarda
Basira Hussain
Voting ended onJun 23
Basira Hussain painted by Feifei Wang
Propaganda below the cut:
Basira Hussain:
She's treated as a hyper competent one who's carrying the braincell and a cheerleader for the m/m pairing or a meanie who blames the main man character for everything for no reason
She's such a complex character with so many different relationships to the other characters and potential with characters she didn't meet or know well. Also if her and Daisy were men their whole deal would overshadow the m/m pairings by a landslide.
Mel Medarda:
Reduced to an obstacle to Jayvik. Her character background and nuances are ignored in favor of making her an evil Jezebel who seduced Jayce to turn him against Viktor/the undercity; she’s always getting put in the cuck chair, and even positive depictions of her in fic have her playing Jayvik therapist or yaoi fangirl instead of developing her as a character in her own right. Often excluded from group official art & fan art.
As a character, she has so much interesting canon material to work with that people just ignore. She was raised to inherit a war-loving empire but believed she was discarded as a child for being too soft. She overcame a cold and traumatic childhood to be a champion for peace. There are still traces of this upbringing in her - she’s a strategist who wants the best for the whole, which sometimes means making decisions that come across as ruthless for the individual, but she’s always been just as willing to sacrifice herself for the cause. She’s flawed and has her own blind spots but always tries to operate in good faith. Criminally underutilized in canon and in fan works lol
Because of her interactions with Jay, much of the fandom only saw her as a malignant and hostile obstacle to the Jay/Viktor pairing, using words like 'temptress' and implying a romantic relationship between Jay and Mel is automatically inferior to one between Jay and Viktor. Definitely misogynoir, because the fandom would not have been this hostile to her if she wasn't black.
Mel is a complicated, morally gray character. Initially characterized as a ruthless and cunning politician, but who is torn between being merciful and stopping at nothing to prevent more suffering. Her emotional arc involved getting out of her parent's constricting grasp and living according to her own desires.
Where do I start. Constantly villainized for actions that fully make sense for her character. Ignored in her main relationship in order to ship her boyfriend with a skinny white guy. Sooooo much unchecked fandom misogynoir. The WRITERS don't even know what to do with her, they like never fully nailed down her motivations and just let her Happen. Like. It's YOUR show!! WRITE your characters!!
Smartest woman in the room. Powerful mage. INCREDIBLY tragic figure forced to continue the cycle of conquering and bloodshed. Knows what she wants and how she's going to get it, and sees that plan through. Figures out how to deal with an entire mage cult on her own, outsmarting the leader. I love her. She didn't do half the shit the fandom is mad at her for doing but she would have been fully within her right to do so.
Mel is hated by racist fujoshis for daring to "get in the way" of a non canon gay ship. One of the animators mentioned something about how he pictured the sex scene between Mel and her boyfriend being unimportant compared to Mel's boyfriend's concern for his white bestie. Fujoshis rejoiced, only going to show that they view her as a disposable Black girlfriend character/thats what they want for her. They write fanfiction where she's been killed, too.
Mel is the most interesting character in the show by far. She has a nuanced and complicated relationship with her mother, and its already rare to see this with a mother/daughter relationship let alone between 2 Black women, and its the most heartfelt relationship in the whole show. Mel was abandoned by her mother for being "too soft" and made her own way in the world of politics. She is manipulative, to a degree, but she always means well and its easy to see that she has so much heartfelt emotion in her that she holds back. She stands up for her lame ass boyfriend despite him not deserving her, and she gets cool magic powers in the second season that she uses to save everyone. She is also always dressed impeccably and is inarguably the most beautiful character in the whole show.
Oh, boy. Hoo. There's a lot of fandom misogyny but it is mostly from JayVik fans. I am a fan of the ship myself, but to insinuate that Mel is in the way, and is no good, and that she should leave Jayce alone, or that she manipulated him? Sigh… I am Viktor himself (an IRL/DA. That's not important, I just have to mention incase I get some weird looks).
She wasn't in the way at all. You can ship what you wish without constantly finding ways to hate on Mel and insist that she was being a user and a manipulator.
She is a goddess of the Arcane. She's made of pure magic and she looks it. She's golden, glowing and gorgeous. She is politically strong, and got away from her mother's bad influence to make a name and a life for herself. She commands the attention of a room and makes sure not only to be powerful but to be nurturing. She's kind, and whilst she might have been raised as a wolf, she knows when a good leader must be soft, too.
Tamala is the ex of a popular male character. She states that she broke the relationship off because he wanted something serious and she was just looking for a fling. They both say mean things about each other (nothing crazy. Just regular ex stuff). She is accused of grooming the male character even though he initiated the relationship. She’s called a pedophile even though he was an adult when they met. She’s called toxic and “trailer trash Tammy”. She is called gross and dirty because she flirts with the player character (even though another male character who flirts with the character is considered a fandom favorite).
Tamala is the victim of a government sanctioned cult she was drafted into as a child and she escaped and actively works against them. She’s a powerful magic user in a world where that’s illegal and regularly uses those talents to help other characters (especially an orphaned child). She’s clever and knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it. She’s deep and doesn’t seek validation from anyone because she knows her worth. Plus she’s hot as hell.
Max:
Ignored in favour of male protagonists despite having one of the most interesting arc. Being stripped of nuances in analysis. Being reduced to a girlboss who "climbed the social ladder" which isn't inaccurate, but her characters and her motivation are way more complex. She is not that much hated on Tumblr anymore (she was back then when it aired), in fact I think she is now one if not the most loved female character in this fandom, but she is often mischaracterized or ignored in favour of others characters, because her story doesn't interwine at all with the one of Flint (main character and a gay man) especially on Reddit. Which is a pity because she is probably the most rich and complete character after Flint himself. Ah! Both her love interests through the show are white women who are bisexual or went through comphet before meeting her, and before had been in relationship with two of the men who are fandom favourite. So Max, an openly gay black woman, got accused in the early days of fandom of manipulating these women, especially the second one, Anne Bonny, with whom she had a very depht and loving ans touching relationship, and "stealing" them from "theirs men" who were beloved by the fandom. Icks. Today, the fact that (in a show like Black Sails that is a lot about queerness) Max is the only character who is openly gay and proud and doesn't hides this fact from others (nor when she is a poor prostitute, nor when she is the de facto queen of the island) is not discussed enough in analysis of the queer themes of the show. The fact that she was being born into slavery by an enslaved mother who was raped and from what we know she had probably a very difficult and traumatic childhood is also not taken into consideration when analyzing Max's motivations and (sometimes, to our eyes, surprising) survival strategies. It is almost taboo even now in fandom to admit that another beloved character, who also had a past and trauma of enslavement in childhood but is a white (?) man with more structural power than Max, was if not completely at least partially responsable of enabling her punitive beating and gang rape in season one.
She is a complex character who start the show as mostly victimized by both the structure of colonialism and racism (due to being a black woman and poor) and the "anarchists" pirates who are fighting or will fight against this power structures (due to being a prostitute who dared to try to find something better for herself instead of being happy with her life, and a victim of gang rape.) She got her heart broken by the previous local girlboss, a rich girl with too much ambitions and daddy issues to prioritize Max and their relationship over power; and from that moment Max starts doing everything in her agency to gain the same amount of power her ex had in order to both protect herself and use it better.
She eventually ends up being one of the most powerful and richest woman of the Island, and obviously this is a journey that bring her to do some shady choices to mantain this power (like siding with the Governon sent by the British Empire, and with her ex who is now sleeping with him and helping him gain power on the island) but she always tries to do something positive for the people she protects with the power and the influence that she now has. She is deep down motivated by a genuine and desperate need to not be powerless again, and she seeks money and influence because she has learned that as a black gay woman born in slavery they are the only things that will shield her from harm.
But in the end, when her dead ex's rich grandmother will offer her a propose in which Max could mantain her power and even gain more by marrying a rich white man she doesn't even know, she refuses for the sake of mending thing with her lover (obviously a woman) and to not give a husband control over her self, her life and her fortune. In this way Max renounce to her only chance of being accepted and recoignized by the ruling class (something she has deep down always wanted, since she discovered that she was the illegittimate daughter of a white slave-owner and she was denied the comfort and privileges given to her white half-sister because of her mother's status and enslavement) to mantain her own coherence and integrity. She has done so many thing that others will label as sketchy or social climbing, but trapping herself in a marriage for the sake of appareance and power and say goodbye to her chance of love is something she won't do. This is why I think she is a really admirable sapphic character.
90-ghost has done so much for the people of Palestine. He is trying to get the rest of his family out of there while the war rages on, so to show your support, please donate to his sister's and brother's respective Paypals!
Help support Samar Saed Kamel Saed by donating or sharing with your friends.
Go to paypal.me/bushrabo and type in the amount. Since it’s PayPal, it's easy and secure. Don’t have a PayPal account? No worries.
@gazavetters Vetted List lists Ahmed and his family at #740.
Happy (belated) 32nd birthday, Ahmed. I hope you know how much you've done to help the Palestinian people. I might not have any money, but I shall always do my best to spread your hard work and the words of others.
it's sad that the poll tourney trend ended three years ago because a) i liked being so invested in absolute nonsense and b) i really want to do a "favorite victims of fandom misogyny" or "favorite hated female character" tournament. i'm just really in the mood to see people passionately defend unfairly maligned women (fictional) in my notes. would anyone be into this? i might try to do it anyway, but also it's kind of a bummer to run a poll where only like three people are participating.
okay, this post got like ten notes, that's enough for me to at least give it a try. if i actually decide to go forward with this, i'll probably post the submission form again when i create a victims of fandom misogyny tournament sideblog (also if anyone has a better name idea than that mouthful, please suggest it!) but in the meantime, let's start submissions here. here are some rules:
no real people (obviously there are lots of real life women who are victims of fandom misogyny, but i feel like having those women compete in a poll against each other and also against fictional characters would be kind of disrespectful to the actual real life shit they were put through)
no men!!!! idc if he's like a woman to you, this tournament isn't for him!!!!
obviously, misogyny does not have to be the only factor here, it just has to be one of the factors. if racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc. are also part of the problem, do not hesitate to bring that up in your submission! it's highly relevant! the last thing i want is a tournament consisting of only cis straight white women, especially because so many of the hated/mistreated women of fandom are also marginalized in other ways that the fandom hates them for.
idk if this is a rule exactly, but just to clarify, this tournament is about which one of these characters is your favorite. it is emphatically not about trying to quantify which character is the biggest victim of fandom misogyny. that seems like an utterly exhausting and pointless thing to argue about, please don't subject me to that. i just want to see people defend their favorite overly maligned or mistreated girlies in my notes, i cannot stress this enough
characters don't have to be overtly hated to be victims of fandom misogyny. they can also be perpetually ignored in favor of men, or constantly characterized as the wise mom friend who the fandom has apparently decided has no desires or goals or needs besides being a sounding board for their favorite white boy, etc.
there's no time limit on this thing. even if the hatred/fandom mistreatment has died down and the character in question has been re-examined since, if there was ever a period in which they were subjected to fandom misogyny en masse, they count.
that said, don't choose characters who are generally universally beloved and always have been but you saw one person shit on them one time in a misogynistic way and got annoyed. i hate when that happens too, but it's does have to be a trend, not just one annoying guy, even if the guy in question is really annoying.
Queer unity has been trying as hard as possible to downplay any possible transfem issue. Pay gap adding up to thousands a year? Not a big deal. V coding? Never mention it. Trans women are much more likely to be sent to an early grave than their male counterparts? Stop bringing that up. Trans people collaborating with kiwifarms? Just internet drama.
You know what IS an important issue? Getting called a fucking birthday boy. They get all hands on deck about it. They will write VERY long posts about how important it is you not use it, and that anyone who does must be punished as severely as possible
There's only one explanation. The lives of trans women are so worthless to them, so fucking disposable, that a trans man getting invalidated is actually more important to them. That's how these people, who demand we view them as family and allies, who think we should be ready to die for them, view us.
I know people who treat house flies with more respect than that.
forever reminded of this fucking yt reply i got in a thread abt transmisogyny, this kinda attitude is so common. even when you do bring up shit that disproportionately or exclusively affects transfems the response is "what abt me" or downplaying it
"Damn, v-coding sounds terrible... I hope they don't do that to trans men, too!"
Because obviously it's *bad* when it happens to trans women, but oh dear god, THINK OF THE TRANS MEN that this might hypothetically happen to in a different situation!!
I'm going to fucking cry. Trans women are so unvalued, these people look at the reality that trans women have to wake up to every single day, and they respond with "yeah, it's terrible when the sex slave gets raped. That must really hurt! But god, imagine if a HUMAN was raped instead? HORROR!"