Carnation Insant Butch ☕

In the chaos and uncertainty around us, there is still so much love and hope.

A few weeks ago, a local international student nervously approached me and asked if I could photograph his wedding reception. We barely know each other — so much so that the only real thing he knew about me was that a) I was a graphic designer and b) he had seen me hold a camera. And the only thing I knew about him was that he came from overseas to study engineering in the U.S.

He explained that his friend (and expected photographer) couldn't make the trip. I sympathized and told him I had a similar situation with my wedding, but then he said something that made my stomach churn.

Almost all his family and friends overseas can't make it. So can't the bride's, as she's studying abroad as well. With the warmest smile, he says while he wishes his family could be there to celebrate, he's so lucky to have great friends who are helping them put on a small reception.

I told him I had it covered and I wouldn't accept payment. Photos like this will be invaluable over time, and I wanted to pay it forward as the volunteer photographer at my own wedding did.

The wedding was this weekend. I cried during it.

His fellow engineering students became wedding planners. A church opened its doors free of charge. Families of local students caught wind of the event and handled the food, learning cultural dishes from the bride and groom's home countries. A mom group banded together to make table centerpieces. A recently married couple donated their leftover decorations. There were almost one hundred guests. Most of us didn't know each other.

It was the most beautiful wedding I've ever seen. Not just because the bride and groom were so deeply in love with one another, but because strangers saw an opportunity to be kind. In a community where hate of anything 'foreign' seems to fester, a bunch of people saw two lovebirds separated from their families, stepped in, and said, "how can we celebrate love today?"

This is an interesting take and good food for thought. I'm going to disagree with this on two levels: my own personal definition of Mary Sue and the application to the writing in BG3.

someone on reddit explained 😭

The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.

And I am not going to mince words here:

A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.

That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.

"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.

If I say "I am uncomfortable with fandom's tendency to write trans men as feminine and submissive" I do not mean "I think every person who writes feminine submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I don't even mean "any cis-person who writes feminine or submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I mean "I would like writers to seriously think about why this is so common, why they write that, and if it fairly and genuinely engages with what it means to be a trans man, or if they just think it's hot when submissive people have vaginas and didn't want to write omegaverse of m/f".

Similarly, when people say "fandom is systemically less interested in black characters, less willing to give flat black characters rich fanon than flat white characters, and less interested in black characters in ships", the response is not to explain why you, personally, just happen to like popular white guy in that fanon. Your job is to look at yourself and ask if you tend to "just happen to be more interested" in the popular white guy across fandoms, be honest, and start unpacking that. Sometimes it's easier to love the flat character who's already getting 10,000 fics with headcanons and art and meta.

If somebody says "I wish there were more gluten free options at the potluck. I hate always showing up and not finding anything I can eat*", they are not asking you to throw your cake in the trash and weep. They do not want to hear your long speech about how actually this is your grandmother's recipe, and you've tried it with rice flour actually, but it just didn't work. You think about what you can do, and you listen to how they feel.

An Alberta court has temporarily frozen up to $8.5 million in assets held by one of the province’s most recognizable separatist leaders. Justice Michael Marion granted an interim injunction last week preventing Jeffrey Rath and his law firm from transferring the assets until a Wednesday hearing. It’s part of an ongoing legal battle between the Tallcree First Nation and Rath, the First Nation’s former lawyer, over control of a multimillion-dollar trust fund established in 2017. Chief Rupert Meneen alleges in a legal brief that Rath misappropriated approximately $6.4 million from the trust in excessive and improper fees.

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