The Deadzone

But the thing is: most of the things I say about Argentina are play fight (or directed specifically at Milei and honestly based on every argentinian I met all of them hate Milei more than I do). Does Argentina has social political issues? Obviously.

Is their history far from a perfect picture of a moral paragon? Of course. But the idea that they are uniquely racist or in some way specially awfull is just absurd. No culture is "evil" in a fancy new special way and Argentina with a huge history of opression (from colonization to imperialism to the terrible dictatorships) being considered one by countries with history as opressors (and specially as opressors of latam) seems almost a new discourse justify more opression.

The process that created the forms of racism that exist in Argentina nowdays are also incredibly similar to Brazil's and a reflection of latam's struggles with sistemic bigotry. Argentina doesn't do mass murdering of black people but it did had racist programs - just like Brazil. It's even the same pattern.

Latam has a racism problem. Wich yeah five hundred or so years ago a bunch of Europeans came here, killed natives, introduced chattel slavery and created laws, beliefs and systems that despite our progress still impacts our laws, beliefs and systems today.

"But Milei'. If all brazilians were not defined by Bolsonaro, all americans not defined by Trump, if when Tatcher was president we didn't assume all english were like her, why are we thinking all argentinians are like their very unpopular clown of a president? Milei exists because after SIX different coups and a lot of usamerican and some european interference democracy in Argentina is shaky. Most people have such a strong distrust on it that they just gave up on voting. Milei's last victory also had insane numbers of people who didn't vote. Milei is a pathetic ridiculous excuse of a man and I LOVE to mock him with my whole heart. But Argentina has made huge progresses in their laws and even if not the moment you frame a nation as needing outside interference from imperialistic countries? Fuck off.

a couple days ago i found out that a respected blog that's about how to create black characters without being racist (run by a black usamerican) jumped on the 'argentina is white' train. when replied to by people with data and sources by brown argentines and afroargentines, she responded by ignoring said sources, mentioning blanqueamiento and saying that people speaking spanish in her post was 'inaccessible':

and while it's true that we shouldn't deny the very real existence of blanqueamiento in our history, which is the main way we invisibilized our indigenous and black populations and their innumerable contributions to the foundation, culture and continued sovereignty of our country (and therefore erased them from our history books!), this blogger kept insisting on pushing bullshit numbers:

for all of her mentions of blanqueamiento, she continued ignoring a key part of it: the manipulation of the censuses by eliminating racialized categories from them. not to mention that even to this day there are racialized people who don't see themselves as such, generally as a current consequence of blanqueamiento as well (they don't know, they're not sure, etc.).

i'm not gonna get into the absolute insanity of the implication that 97% of our population has exclusive european heritage, because not only that is obviously bullshit to anyone who has ever set foot here, but there are also genetic studies that show that over half of argentina's population has amerindian heritage. but i guess we can't expect people from a country where phrenology-based race science is extremely prominent to understand that.

and when someone respectfully explained to her that she was misinformed and directed her to more info by linking some of cumbiamurguera's (who has mapuche ancestry!!) posts? this is her reply:

'welp i'm not talking about this anymore thanks for your contribution! i will proceed to completely ignore it and in fact keep talking about this but only with people who parrot what i'm saying!'

and if you had any doubt that this gringa is spouting xenophobic imperialist garbage under the guise of calling out racism:

(hmm... could it be that those white supremacist beliefs aren't held by the same people who criticize the imperial core... could it be that the prevalence of right-wing white supremacist governments and politics in latam is directly related to us interference and has been for decades... hmmmm........)

this is the reminder for all of latam that i mentioned at the beginning of the post: no matter which race they are, gringues will always be gringues FIRST. before they're black, before they're trans, before they're disabled, before they're leftist. they will speak for and over us, treat us like we're the ones we need to learn from them and do things their way because THEY know best, because manifest destiny is alive and well in their brains. how dare we speak our language in a post that's about us. how dare we assume we know our history better than they do.

you might think this is all obvious, but many of us have been over a decade in this yanqui-dominated website, speaking english and consuming their news, politics, media, etc. and not even the most antiimperialist of us is immune to absorbing that shit unknowingly. so it's always good to remember that we shouldn't try so hard to seek understanding nor approval from them. and i say this as someone who's made a wonderful friend from the usa here many years ago, but that's one person i trust to actually listen to me when i talk about argentina and latam.

people like the ones above, though? block and move on. speak your language(s). learn your history. participate in your culture. consume your own media. go outside and protest. read las venas abiertas i'm begging. resist imperialism no matter how bleak the situation is (and i'm from milei's argentina so i know about bleak lmao).

as for the racism? listen to the racialized people in your country. call out people in your life when you can. like i said before, learn your history and go out and protest. do research! exercise your critical thinking. if you can travel to other cities/provinces/states, don't just stick to tourist spots: interact with the locals and broaden your horizons. if you have kids or work with them, or simply have a chance to teach them something, take advantage of any opportunity you get to explain things their history books might not say. la campaña del desierto. la guerra de la triple alianza. domingo faustino sarmiento was a raging racist.

i know i seem like a hypocrite saying thinks like 'block and move on' and 'speak your language' when i'm making this post, but i remember how bc of this website i used to think lgbtq history = stonewall and black history = mlk, yet didn't even know who lohana berkins and maría remedios del valle were. and i know there are teens growing up here. and i'm writing this in english bc my other post was seen by lots of people in latam, not just spanish speakers. that said, lazy can't-copypaste-text-into-a-translator anglos can go fuck themselves.

if you're still reading this and you want to learn more about racialized people in argentina (from the source, not from an ignorant yank) then there are plenty of accounts you can follow. identidadmarron, negrasymarronas, lunfardatravel and afroslgbtiq.ar on instagram are good places to start. this post is long enough, so you can check out @cumbiamurguera's #afroargentines tag for tons of info and more accounts to follow.

Headcanon Skater boy Danny

I added omnitrix sticker on his board (a small gift from Ben?)

Danny mid transformation on skateboard

I'd probably be a lot more into it if Uncanny X-Men was a better book. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, but getting pulled into the X-Men's world is almost never a good thing for either Wanda or Pietro-- but I do think that post-retcon Pietro does very well in mutant resistance/solidarity settings. It feels a lot better when he has positive relationships and strong personal motives that aren't related to Magneto or the Decimation. I love the idea of him running covert ops with Rogue and Monet to take down Graymalkin, and I do think that he could do well in the Haven House setting. He has decent relationships with at least some of the characters, and I really like seeing him around kids.

Bringing in a non-mutant character with really close ties to the mutant community could be a great opportunity to talk about allyship and solidarity, and even explore Pietro's unique relationship with mutant identity and how it's changed. Unfortunately, I just haven't enjoyed Simone's writing up to this point, and I have very little faith that she will approach these aspects of the character thoughtfully or intentionally. I can easily imagine her either deliberately avoiding the topic and writing him as if he's no different from the other mutants, or lamphshading it in a particularly annoying manner. Whatever happens, I'm not looking forward to how activated the insufferable ~magnet family~ fans and mutant Maximoff truthers are going to be.

I'm not sure either Monet or Pietro is necessarily suited to leading this kind of group, but I also don't really think they need central leadership. They generally function more like a household than a team. Monet will stick out like a sore thumb, but it might be fun to see her toughing it out on the farm. I don't know if she's ever had a teacher/mentor position before, but I imagine she'll be a lot like Emma, in a good way. The idea of Pietro leading the group as a non-mutant doesn't totally sit right with me-- if nothing else, I worry that it will turn into an awkward elephant in the room that Simone fails to properly address. I also have zero interest in seeing either Pietro or Wanda in a room with Wolverine ever again.

AWFiFIEJKWISHWKSUHEJWUEHWJWIHEJWIWHSJEIUEHDJRUWHJDUFJRKWOHDKEOFINBEJJDJCKWIDHJFOWUENGKFUWHDJIFIEKWJJSOFIWJJDUFJWOJSHFJFUHEKQOWOCJUEYENAIXHHDJDIFJSJSKOCJENWJDHJOSIWJDJUQOWOJISOSIDJJIEJSMLDOSJYZHSBSVQGOAISUSGNXLPDOWJMWHSHXGHSHSGAIIAISHJISIAJSKISUSJJ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER IM GOING TO CRY IM GOING TO BE SICK SOMEONE TAKE ME OUT BACK AND SHOOT ME OH GOD OH GODDDDDDDDDDDDD

“All I know is pain and the sound of my brother’s voice…I guess you could say that’s the same thing?” “At least he can’t see me cry.” THE FACT THAT HE IS PUTTING TOMMY’S FEAR AND PANIC ON THE SAME LEVEL AS HIM ACTUALLY BURNING ALIVE THE FACT THAT EVEN NOW HE IS PRIORITIZING TOMMY BEING OKAY

Tommy running around on a broken leg…….. Tommy, a speedster, fucking up his own leg even worse just to try and save his brother even though he can see it’s not working……………

“Billy, tell me what to do!” “I don’t want you to die.” “I’m sick of always saying goodbye to you” NO ONE FUCKING TOUCH ME THIS IS THE GREATEST THING EVER OH GOD MY POOR BOY HE DOESNT WANT TO BE ALONE AGAIN HE DOESNT WANT TO LOSE HIS BROTHER

“Only makes sense he’d be with me at the end.” THE HANDHOLDING AS HE SAYS THA?????? GUYS YOU HAVE TO KILL ME OH GOD THIS IS LITERALLY EVERYTHING I EVER COULDVE DREAMED OF THIS IS THE BEST THEIR RELATIONSHIP HAS EVER BEEN IN THE HISTORY OF EVER IM SO EMOTIONAL RN

I would kill for an excuse to get Aspheera back on the show. She definitely has the clout to pull it off. I do NOT think she has the patience though. She's not really one for long term planning. She runs big time off of instant gratification. I don't think she would have a plan as complex as "collect all the source dragon icons in order to accumulate enough power to rewrite the universe in whatever form I please."

For @silverwing013

Can also be read here.

.

Jazz looked at Danny with disapproval, her arms crossed.  Danny grinned.  

“So,” he said.  “How do I look?”

“I know we don’t like Wes, Danny, and that’s completely valid, considering, but don’t you think this is going a little too far?”

Aspheera: FINALLY, the time for revenge is almost at hand!!!

Ras: Yes master, the time of your glory will SOON be at hand!

Ras: MAAASTER! I HAVE COLLECTED ANOTHER ICON!

Aspheera: YES, REVENGE, REVENGE, I WILL HAVE MY GLORIOUS REVENGE!!!

Aspheera: You ruined my revenge!

whether just within episodes, or across the larger season, it has a habbit of stupidly underthought cuts and just smashing whatever storyline wherever. And this season is perhaps the worst about it thus far. Everything feels very disconnected. I rarely ever felt like we cut for a real reason.

But on a larger scale season 4 part 1 just has nothing to do with the main plot. Our main villain for this secrion is the reheated leftovers of season 1, a character who helped start our main plot, but is now entirely disconnected with anything Ras has going on.

This comes immediately after last season whose main antagonist was thunderfang, who i have only grown to love more over time because of how cartoonishly villainous he is while simultaneously being so inept. It's marvelous. He was also a side plot entirely disconnected from anything Ras was doing who just sort of popped up for the ninja to deal with and then hasn't mattered since. He gets rehashed immediately after his usage in part one to become the villain again in part two because... I don't really know why. This after season 2 part 2 which, while beloved, I would argue also had very little going on to progress the main plot. Ras just straight up gets pretty much nothing done. The point is we have been stuck for at least 3 full parts in various reused roundabouts with barely any movement on the main plot.

And this got me thinking- maybe Dragons Rising's whole "one big interconnected plot" is holding it back a bit. Imagine if each of these parts were framed like the original series, as largely complete seasonal plots on their own which slowly build on the characters over time, and mainly tangential actions linking events together until you get to a finale season like 9 or 15. If thunderfang were a self contained villain like morro or nadakhan, he certainly wouldn't feel like such a waste of space. It wouldn't feel like such a cul de sac because there would be so little expectation for him to do anything more. Same with s4p1. Everyone getting stranded in strange realms as a standalone concept is a fun one off season, instead of just everyone getting side tracked on their way home after a very troubling event which they should realize means something bigger is going down.

Now, maybe all these pieces that are currently not related are interconnected in a larger plan, later in the show that we haven't gotten to yet, but if they are going to converge, it's going to be in the finale, which is something you could easily do in an epic final season like crystalized if you really wanted. I think if the show hadn't sold itself on its "one story" quality, we'd have the chance for each season to have it's own expectations set, for each threat to effectively have a sense of closure. Ras as a reappearing threat like Garmadon in the early days of the show would be fun. Everytime his plan shifts it would feel less like him getting set back and not knowing what he's doing, and more just "what he's up to this time".

You can organically introduce a source icon in each season somehow, maybe some we don't know are icons. Then when the finale season hits, it feels like a surprise culmination of a bunch of pieces coming together rather than where we are now with the main plot feeling like it just keeps getting pushed onto the back burner. You get the merge season, the imperium season, the cult season, the tournament season, the thunderfang season. Each of them have character arcs which roll over, and small plot things to keep things connected, but each feel like a seperate distinct adventure with an identifiable theme.

There would be no expectation to set the stakes for the next season at the end of the previous one, meaning seasons would feel more like they actually start and end. Why do we need the Sora’s parents cliffhanger? Why not let this section just end with our characters getting a win with some good wholesome vibes? Make that an inciting incident in part two like it should be. Our team would feel united and accomplished because they have identifiable victories and adventures under their belt. You can wave characters off for a season more easily like they did in the original show. Nya is helping with monastery repairs this season. Wyldfyre is on a romantic vacation with Roby in this one. No further explanation needed, and all they missed is just a one off adventure. If every season both starts and ends at a sort of satus quo, you also get a greater sense of the team dynamic (something we're struggling with). There's an illusion of downtime, that the characters have lives off screen, and that the plot isn't the whole of their life.

And then, more and more plot threads begin continuing through seasons as the show goes on, and by the time we end it feels subtly built up to rather than us spinning our wheels for like 100 episodes all the while going nowhere. End on a 2 season Ras plot like we had with Harumi, and it will hit ridiculously hard, because the switch to that continuous story is used specifically where it needs to be.