Captain Sea Witch

My life of magick and the open ocean, attempting to pretend to be a sane, ordinary person. Volva, future captain, bi, kinda gender fluidy idek just call me whatever.

[muslimyennefer]

how do i properly articulate that the problem isn’t people shipping two white men once it’s about the TREND of people shipping two white men (or women) instead of the canon interracial & or poc/poc ship and defending it with the same identical arguments for why they just don’t vibe with it or don’t like it or whatever. 

like if you look back at the ships you tend to gravitate towards, the dynamics and the past fandoms you’ve been in, do you consistently shun the characters of color in favor of white characters and ships? have you considered that maybe there might be some implicit bias there?? 

like frequently with storylines and ship dynamics ppl would go crazy for if they were transplanted onto white characters ppl will call it boring just because it involves one or more characters of color. or they’ll find some petty reason to dislike the character/ship and pin it all on that. or even worse they’ll straight up steal it and give it to their white fave like?? 

the problem is you’re gonna have to make an effort if you find you don’t like characters of color/their ships like genuinely make an effort to seek out those you might enjoy and boost them because when it’s immediately obvious who fandom will choose as their next fanon white character to ship with the (white) main character there’s a real fucking problem lol.

[yourwakingnightmares]

The problem with this is…

People ship folks for all kinds of reasons. Telling people that what they personally find attractive, or what gets their motor going, is wrong, is pointless.

Just ask the crowd of folks who have been trying to convince folks for years that we should all be attracted to overweight people, or short people.

Now, some people like short, overweight people (thank god, or I’d still be single). But our brains are hardwired to find certain things attractive. It’s why people have kinks that are embarrassing; you think most foot fetish people want to have a foot fetish? You think they wouldn’t love it if they could just turn off the part of their brain that is sexually attracted to feet?

Beyond the physical… What I’ve noticed, in my almost fifteen years of fandom? (God, now I feel like an old loser). That people ship things they want. They ship the shy, quiet character with the bad character who’s just misunderstood, because they’re one of those two characters. They ship the character that they identify with the most with the character they wish they had.

Telling people that these things are wrong is no different than kink-shaming people for having kinks you find odd, or disagree with. It’s no different than telling them that no, you shouldn’t want that character like you to get what you wish you had.

I’ve never once heard someone say, “I ship these two, because I’m against interracial couples.” I’ve never once heard anyone say, “Sure, it’s a fine pairing, but I refuse to get on that ship because they’re interracial.”

Because ships? Ships are deeply personal; hell, for a lot of us, we’re not even sure why we ship certain folks together. It goes back to that whole ‘our brains are weird’ thing. Or the fact that we don’t want to view ourselves as that character that we subconsciously identify with.

But trying to tell people that what they ship is wrong, because they’re subconsciously racist, is so over the top as to be laughable. Particularly when you’re posting it here, on Tumblr, which is about one of the most progressive blogging sites ever.

[muslimyennefer]

I genuinely do not know where to start with this.

Which characters you personally find attractive, relate to and project on is absolutely influenced by racism. It isn’t pointless to call that out, and I find it in poor taste for you to liken my anger at racist shipping trends in fandom to kinkshaming.

I am allowed to be angry at seeing the same dull excuses as to why this all white ship just has more chemistry, or why the white side character with ten minutes screentime is just so much better than the lead(s) of color, or why it’s not racist to have a preference for (white) characters and ship dynamics.

I am allowed to call bullshit when those same people go on to cut the character(s) of color out of canon, or copy paste their whole identity or storyline onto the white character(s).

It’s so transparent that it IS about race, and I am not going to tolerate ‘it’s just a preference’ or ‘I can’t help it’ as an excuse. 

This isn’t about people not liking a certain ship or character for harmless reasons. I’m not forcing anyone to like a character just because they happen to be a person of color. I am trying to get people to take ten seconds to question if their dislike of a character/ship might be motivated by race. If you’re in a lot of fandoms where there are ships with main characters of color and you find yourself mostly disliking or not caring about them as much as the whites only option, you should consider implicit bias as a factor. If you can’t connect with characters of color that is a problem and you need to fix it!

I have heard plenty of people say they won’t ship something because it’s interracial, or involves a person of color. I have seen people say vile, horrendous things about characters and ships of color. I have personally left fandoms because of racism, and I’ve seen plenty of other fans of color (particularly Black fans) leave fandoms because of racist fans and harassment. 

Nowhere in this post do I say that you cannot keep shipping white people together. I’m saying fandom as a collective has a racism problem, particularly wrt shipping, that needs fixing. I don’t care if ppls feelings are hurt when I say that fandom is racist and has always been racist. 

Countless discussions have been and are being held about it! Racefail happened! If you’ve been in fandom for fifteen years, you might have caught some of it! You should be aware that fandom racism exists and extends to shipping at this point. 

I don’t care to be told that I am exaggerating when I am speaking up about my specific experiences and observations as a black fan. I resent the implication that I’m blowing things out of proportion when Tumblr is just as racist and antiblack as any other website. 

I really do not care to be told that pointing out subconscious racism in shipping trends (not every single individual crackers only ship) is ‘so over the top as to be laughable’ either. 

[dunroamins]

@muslimyennefer thank you for writing this!

Your feelings are so absolutely valid, and it’s so necessary for us white fandom folks to see, and listen to what POC in the fandom have to say. I’ve learned a huge amount from everyone’s posts.

I’ve always been an anti-racist, but talking to @limerental about me holding Yen to higher moral standards than other characters (re: the assault scene in Bottled Appetites) was a total eye-opener about the implicit pass I was giving the white ones.

It’s a sickening feeling to realise there’s so much to learn, and to know that I’ve been doing something wrong, but…we as white people? We’ve got to. We’ve got to ask ourselves the awkward questions, the hard things, the stuff that makes us cry when we find out how bad things are for other people.

Because it’s not about us and our tears-it’s about centring folk who know way more about this than us.

[anya-chalotra]

THE WITCHER: AN ALIGNMENT CHART Tumblr’s Banned Words Edition (x)

[astaerion]

the witcher + text posts [4/?] jaskier edition

[bro-ccooliebra]

Sorry not sorry

[emma-ofnormandy]

[crowley-anthony]

(insp)

[astaerion]

the witcher + text posts [1/?]

[poisonousquinzel]

hey!! y'all! can we talk about how we're getting an explicitly Romantic Harlivy comic that's been written by a black, queer, autistic woman?? Like we've been begging for years for DC to let them to be written by an LGBT person and now we're getting exactly that and I'm not seeing anyone talk about it

this is her!!! ❤️ She's the one who's writing the Eat, Bang, Kill Tour comic

and she's been vocal on her Twitter and in interviews about the issue with ableist language in comics and how that won't be an issue in this one

Y'all should go show her some love 🥺❤️ homophobes have been flooding her mentions being bitchy about her "making them homosexuals" 🤡

[hopeful-trekkie-deactivated2022]

James T. Kirk:

-Graduated in the top 4% of his year -was bullied by jocks -Is a history nerd -was so much of a teacher’s pet that he cheated on an exam and was commended for it -Was referred to as “a stack of books with legs”

Jean-Luc Picard:

-Spent all his free time drinking in pubs and playing billiards -broke more hearts than he can remember -started a bar fight that ended up in him being stabbed in the heart -likes to explore dangerous ruins of ancient civilizations for fun -wouldn’t even have become a starship captain if he wasn’t this much of a hothead

And yet people still manage to get it backwards???

[kalinara]

I think it’s a problem of First Officer, really.

Jim Kirk seems like a wild man because he’s standing next to calm, logical Spock.*  

Meanwhile, Picard seems stately and dignified because he’s standing next to Will “Any alien physiology is bangable if you just put some thought into it” Riker*.  

* Of course THEN, we get to the next layer, which is that Spock is the dude who told the Vulcan Science Academy to fuck itself, while Riker plays the trombone.

The Federation is a confusing place.

[cvrc11]

It’s definitely also a casting thing, to be fair. Shatner got a SCRIPT that said “play a giant gay nerd” but he played him like a jock fuckboy, and Stewart’s script said “play a jock fuckboy” and he played him like a giant gay nerd. Both of these were inspired decisions and I love them for making them. 

[lytefoot]

It’s age, too. We see Picard after he’s grown out of his nonsense. In the first episode, he has a talk with Riker like, “Hey, just so you know? I hired you because you got written up for calling out your last captain when he was being a dumbass. I consider calling me out when I’m being a dumbass to be an important part of your job.”

Meanwhile, Kirk is young and apparently hot (if you’re into that sort of thing) and all the alien ladies, through no fault of his own, want to bang him 100% of the time–this isn’t a thing he does on purpose and indeed is something he’s often horrified and baffled by.

[elidyce]

I personally like that every Starfleet Officer ever seen has ‘Shenanigans’ as one layer of their personality, all that varies is how far down it is and what prompts it. 

[thornsilver]

Well, Star Trek is canonically a society where you don’t have to work as a Federation citizen. (They are post cash, or something.) No one *has to* go into space for dangerous adventures. All those people have self-selected in StarFleet. It obv requires a certain level of shenanigans in your psych makeup.

[starryoak]

Yeah, people just forget that a lot. Nobody has to do work in the Federation to live, and in fact, by TNG era, the holodeck has been invented, so you could just spend your time in there if you don’t feel like your life is fulfilling. People in Starfleet are the kind of people who want to go out there and explore in the real world. The people for whom it’s not enough to be in fake danger, that they need to feel real danger. So by necessity that’s, uh, going to give you people who are a little daring and out there.

[lux-astralis]

a few reminders because i’m tired and angry

fandom is a hobby, not a form of activism

adult women aren’t inherently creepy for being in fandom and having hobbies apart from raising babies and doing taxes

the vast majority of people pushing back against the worrying trend of instigating harassment over fictional characters and relationships aren’t incest supporters or pedophiles, actually

liking a m/f ship doesn’t make someone a dirty heterosexual invading your space

preferring gay ships doesn’t make you ‘’woke’’ and good

no one owes you a disclaimer that they are a good person who recognizes that their favorite fictional villain’s actions are evil and that they don’t condone those actions irl

liking a fictional villain is in no way comparable to advocating abuse/murder/genocide/etc and you’re a fucking idiot if you believe that

just because a woman is attracted to a fictional villain doesn’t mean she’s promoting toxic relationships or going to end up in a toxic relationship. assuming women can’t tell fiction and reality apart stinks of internalized misogyny 

some rando’s a/b/o fanfics have none of the level of influence that popular tv shows and movies spreading propaganda have

no one owes you a detailed description of their traumas and mental health problems

abusive relationships are not the same as enemies to lovers ships

y’all need to chill the fuck out over people, relationships, actions and events that don’t actually exist and learn how to enjoy and discuss them like normal people

fandom is a hobby, not a form of activism

feel free to add more

[thefaultinourforcebond]

SYLKI NATION HOW ARE WE FEELING

[deanhoney-deactivated20220819]

what she says: i’m fine

what she means: the words “christmas tree” are used in the hobbit, and since we know that bilbo is the author of the hobbit, hobbits must have christmas which means there must be a middle earth jesus. but hobbits seem to be the only ones who have the concept of christmas which means it was probably a hobbit jesus. but frodo says in return of the king that no hobbit has ever intentionally harmed another hobbit so who crucified hobbit jesus?? were there other hobbit incarnations of religious figures?? was there hobbit moses?? did jrr tolkien even think about this at all??

[maramahan]

Wait wait I might actually have an answer

Tolkien wrote The Hobbit like waaaay before he even dreamed up the idea for Lord of the Rings, so when he DID dream up LotR, he had a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t make sense. Like plotholes galore

Like for example in the first version Gollum was a pretty nice dude who lost the riddle contest graciously and gave Bilbo the ring as a legit present and was very helpful and it was super nice and polite and absolutely nobody tried to eat anyone because this is a story for kids and that’s very rude

But that doesn’t work with LotR, so Tolkien went back and re-released an updated version of The Hobbit with all the lore changes and stuff to fix everything that didn’t work

This is the version we know and love today

BUT rather than pretend the early version never existed, Tolkien went and worked the retcon into the lore

If you pay attention in Fellowship, there’s a bit where Gandalf is telling Frodo about the ring and he mentions how Bilbo wasn’t entirely honest about the manner in which it was found

To us modern readers, this doesn’t make a ton of sense, so mostly we just breeze by it–but actually that line is referencing the first version of The Hobbit

The pre-retcon version of the Hobbit is canonically Bilbo’s original book. The original version with Nice Gollum is canonically a lie Bilbo told to legitimize his claim to the ring and absolve him of the guilt he feels for his rather shady behavior

Then the post-retcon version is an in-universe edited edition someone went and released later to straighten out Bilbo’s lies

So it’s 100% plausible that the in-universe editor who fixed up Bilbo’s Red Book and translated it from whatever language Hobbits speak was a human who knew about Christmas Trees and tossed the detail in to make human readers feel more at home, because that’s the kind of thing that sometimes happens when you have a translator editor person dressing up a story for an audience that doesn’t know the exact cultural context in which the original story was written

Tolkien was a medieval scholar and medieval stories are rife with that sort of thing, so like… yeah

There’s a good chance it maybe did cross his mind

[scripturient-manipulator]

@old-gods-and-chill LOOK AT THIS THAT’S SO COOL

[wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva]

Not only all that, but Tolkien was also working within a frame narrative that he wasn’t the real author, but a translator of older manuscripts; so, in-universe, the published The Hobbit isn’t actually Bilbo’s book, but rather Tolkien’s copy of an older copy of an older copy of an older copy of Bilbo’s book. So when errors and anachronisms came up, he would leave them there instead of fixing them, and he may have even put some in intentionally; what we’re supposed to get from the “Christmas tree” bit is that the first scribe to translate the book from Westroni to English couldn’t come up with an accurate analogue for whatever hobbits do at midwinter.

[anarcho-tolkienist-deactivated2]

Yes. Another example of tolkien doing this is him using, for instance, Old High Gothic to represent Rohirric - not because the people of Rohan actually spoke that language, but because Old High Gothic had the same relationship with English that Rohirric had with Westron (Which is the Common Language spoken in the West of Middle-Earth). There’s tons of that stuff in the book.

[anarcho-tolkienist-deactivated2]

Like, Merry and Pippin’s real names (In Westron) are Kalimac Brandagamba and Razanur Tûk, respectively (to pick just one example of this). Tolkien changed their names in English to names which would give us English-speakers the same kind of feeling as those names would to a Westron-speaker. Lord of the Rings is so much deeper than most readers realise.

[jumpingjacktrash]

tolkein’s entire oevre is just one epic in-joke with the oxford linguistics department imo

[bookhobbit]

#i thought it was old english representing rohirric but i have read lotr one (1) time so

No that’s right! The basic point still stands and is neat but a lot of Rohirric names are translated as Old English, like Theodred and Eorl and so on. Another interesting thing is that he sometimes modernized them to modern English because, apparently, those names were intelligible to Westron speakers, either because Gondorians knew them or because the Hobbits recognized them from their dialects (they once lived near the Rohirrim and borrowed a bunch of words, including their name for themselves). Here’s a good link about it from Tolkien Gateway, it’s SUPER cool. 

Also if I correctly recall (it’s been a while so I might not) there was a draft of TTT where Tolkien intended for Theoden to greet Our Heroes in Old English. This was in The Treason of Isengard and I have a very distinct memory of reading it at about fifteen and being completely floored and baffled by the fact that he just…wrote an entire speech in Old English for Theoden to say. Like, can you even believe. I absolutely love how much flavor and care he put into the languages in LOTR.

[vardasvapors]

#other than in respect of certain blind spots #the answer to ‘did tolkien even think about this’ #is almost always ‘the man spent twenty years overthinking it' #and it’s either a moving philosophical reflection or a dumb joke he put in to annoy cs lewis (via @simaethae)

[tigerterror]

Are we sure the Christmas Tree reference wasn’t also to annoy CS Lewis?

[flootzavut]

I was gonna say, why not both 😂

[whatevermonkey]

I know a lot of people are gonna disagree with me and that’s fine. Butttttt I don’t think Loki and Sylvie are romantic. People are freaking out about it and getting so mad but it seems platonic to me? Especially if they are going the whole “Loki loving himself/finally having someone who understands him” route. Idk Loki touched her shoulders and y’all freaked. I’m withholding my judgement till the last ep. Also….news flash, men and women are able to be in close relationships and even *gasp* touch without it being romantic. I wouldn’t even care but the amount of hate and vitriol in the fandom for something that hasn’t even been confirmed in show is kinda pissing me off. IT’S JUST A SHOW. Please calm down. If you don’t like it that’s fine but attacking others in the fandom and the showrunners isn’t it.

Also even it they do turn out to be romantic, life will go on??? It’s not that deep y’all. You don’t have to like it. It’s 1000% valid if you don’t. But pls lets practice kindness in the fandom and let each faction exist in peace. At the end of the day it really is just a show.

[whatevermonkey]

Reblogging this for an addition. I’ve been seeing people start shipping President Loki and Loki together and not getting any blowback at all. Yet Sylvie/Loki is getting bombarded with hate. Don’t get me wrong, ship and let ship. I’m just begging for some fandom self awareness cause tbh it’s more than a little misogynistic

[bro-ccooliebra]

Rock 'n' Roll never dies!

[threephasebird]

It’s time again! I’m excited to join the Dear Hearts Summer Drive once more and teamed up with @troven to perform “Elsa’s Welly Boots”, an original mashup of four The Amazing Devil songs.

The Dear Hearts Drive is a charity fundraising event for Refugee Women Connect, a UK-based organization which helps and supports women who are seeking asylum. The event will take place as a YouTube premiere and features a diverse and creative line-up with art, poetry, music, dry ice experiments, and much more. Check out @dearheartsdrive on Instagram for more information! (all links in the reblog)

[threephasebird]

About RWC | Twitter | Instagram

Fundraiser on the RWC Website

Dear Heart’s Drive on YouTube

DHD Twitter | DHD Instagram

[weird-fictions]

thank you for your service, tom

[high-functioning-lokipath]

BLESS 😍😍😍😍

[redlipstickresurrected]

Cinnamon Bear, Bryan Davies - Here is the bedroom we finished for our rescued shelter cat (Wyatt) this weekend. He actually goes in to nap and watch birds on YouTube :). Fame hasn’t gone to Wyatt’s head, even after he got an article by Stephen Messenger @dodo !