???

I also think there's a little bit of a disservice done when we look at marginalized creators - especially creators who are doubly marginalized - and call them brave for like. Creating someone with any type of facet or depth of character. Yes, they're going to get a disproportionate amount of shit for it, but they'll also get that no matter what. It's a bit othering.

(It also reminds me of the game 'is this a depiction of race/class/colonialism that we would never get on network TV or a plot from Deep Space Nine', in that people deem stories that deal with oppression as impossible to tell, ignoring evidence to the contrary)

In any case, I'm so glad she decided to play Thaisha because this is my shit. I love thinking about moms who have other priorities outside of motherhood but also don't reject being a mother outright, and what that means for the family. It's a delicious conflict! I love it in Veth, I love imagining what it would have meant for Vilya and Constance - to have had to leave their children behind for a greater cause, only to find out, decades later, that their children have inherited that cause. And I love thinking about the fallout with the Temults, even though that one has a whole other cult dimensionality to it. It's a delicious conflict that doesn't require anyone to be stupid or evil, just human (or half elf or firbolg). (more under the cut)

I often hear a discourse where Celine in K-pop Demon Hunters, Alma in Encanto and Ming in Turning Red are seen as vilains. They’re the ones who restricted the younger generation, hurt them, and are ultimately responsible for their pain, trauma and self-doubt. They’re framed as the real villains of the story. But I’d like to differ.

These are stories of intergenerational trauma. They are women who survived, repressed, and tried to protect their families the only way they knew how: through control, perfectionism, and emotional suppression.

And yet, when the next generation begins to reclaim joy, freedom, softness — they become the obstacle. Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re scarred. Their minds cling to survival strategies, unable to recognize that the environment has changed.

Alma is still stuck fleeing the colonizers.

Ming is still afraid of her true self.

Celine believes that fear and mistakes must be hidden.

It’s not about hating these characters. It’s about how unprocessed trauma twists love into control. How survival, unexamined, turns into rigidity. These women were never given space to process their own pain and they project it onto their daughters and granddaughters.

And here’s something we rarely say enough: intergenerational trauma can create toxic patterns but that doesn’t always mean there was abuse or conscious harm. Even when their love becomes suffocating or controlling, these women are not necessarily “abusive parents.” They are daughters of silence, fear, and sacrifice. And they were never taught another way. It’s important to make that distinction, especially in a world that often pushes a binary, punitive reading of family dynamics.

They’re the product of a generation that was told to endure. But endurance without healing becomes its own kind of violence.

What’s powerful in these stories is that they don’t end in vengeance. They end in confrontation and transformation. The confrontation is necessary: the younger generation refuses the silence. Refuses the shame. Refuses to carry a burden that wasn’t theirs to begin with.

The house is destroyed in Encanto.

Mei accepts her full self.

So does Rumi.

And in the best cases, this confrontation allows the elder to soften too. Alma opens up. Ming listens. And I’m hoping in the sequel, Celine will open too.

Maybe that’s also why these stories speak so deeply to POC audiences. These aren’t stories about cutting ties. They’re stories about how hard it is to transform them, to protect ancestral bonds while refusing to perpetuate inherited pain. In many racialized families, collectivity, loyalty, and intergenerational duty are sacred... even when they come at the cost of personal boundaries.

And sometimes, Western individualist frameworks read these tensions as dysfunction or villainy. But for us, they’re just the difficult truth of growing up and trying to do better.

These women aren’t villains. That would be too easy. They embody the fragile, necessary work of bringing change without breaking the thread. These stories are about refusing to inherit their pain without reflection. Because love, without accountability, is not enough.

These stories show us that each generation has something to learn from the next. And the new generation must also break free from the chains they inherited while preserving what is meaningfull.

But it’s not just their story.

One day, we’ll be the older generation.

And we’ll need to be humble enough to learn from the ones after us.

So don’t be a fool.

We may be Mei, Rumi, or Mirabel today.

But tomorrow, we could be Ming, Celine, or Alma.

And when that time comes, we’ll realize how hard it is to unlearn what once kept us safe.

So let’s have compassion for all these characters.

Because these stories show us not just how the cycle of generations works, but how it can make us better, stronger, and more connected... if we’re all willing to go through the change.

∘₊✧──────✧──────✧₊∘

If you’re curious, I’ve written more on K-pop Demon Hunters:

A post on the mental health themes woven through the songs — right here.

A breakdown of Celine-Rumi in comparaison to Gothel–Rapunzel dynamic — here.

An analysis about Rumi, Jinu, and the danger of sinking together — here.

I used to prep, wash dishes, and cook at mellow mushroom. I had chronic pain that wasn't NEARLY as bad as it is today, but it was still very debilitating. I told my employer "i cannot stand more than 4 to 6 hours. I CANNOT do shifts longer than this due to my illness." And even though i made my boundaries VERY clear, everyday i worked it was 8 hours at the least and 10 or 12 at the most. I would go up to my manager and say "look i really need to leave, my shift is over, my chronic pain is killing me." And he'd say "we really need to here, you HAVE to push through." And so i did, and after one, ONE month of that job my crps got incredibly worse to the point where i could no longer walk my dog around the block which was .5 miles. I quit, and that was FOUR years ago, and ever since that day I HAVE BEEN BEDRIDDEN AND HAVE TO USE A WHEELCHAIR. It is my biggest regret in life.

My best friend who has seen my whole journey has recently developed undiagnosed chronic pain, and she is in the EXACT same scenario i was 4 years ago. Busting her ass at a pizza place with extreme pain that hurts her so much she tells me "im in so much pain i don't even feel like a person." She doesn't feel LUCID. And her manager and coworkers are saying the same thing "if you don't help us you will let us down, we'll be in the shit."

don't do this. don't use genAI. even if your professors give you permission. even if they ask for it or suggest it. if they do anything short of directly requiring it (and I weep, because I've already seen assignments that require it) don't touch that crap. if they do require it, stick it to them. be as maliciously compliant as possible. be a nightmare.

I know it might sound easier right now -- just plug in your assignment and get the answers. you don't care about this class anyway, it's not for your major, you don't see the value of the assignment.

but for your own sake, for the sake of your education and mind, and for the sake of the future world we want to have: learn the stuff. you are not as stupid as the corporate bizzaro kings who want to rule the world think you are, so don't give them reasons to believe it.

and odds are good genAI is gonna give you corrupted info anyway -- more and moreso as the machines cannibalize themselves.

Oops, I never uploaded this one to Tumblr (which I only realized when someone else did, but then was kind enough to tag me, thank you)!

So it's BOTH.

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/tupperware-brands-files-chapter-11-bankruptcy-2024-09-18/

A lot of articles tend to point towards a lack of "relevance" but ultimately that's not what is happening.

One of Tupperware's biggest hurdles is availability, not demand. They previously relied on independent sellers, down to individual independent sellers, like the Tupperware Parties of yore (people, usually women seeking financial independence from the 50s onward, would hold events to sell Tupperware to other suburban women -- similar to Avon). 2022 was the first year Tupperware could be found in places like Target. At All. Their exclusivity and middle(wo)men decreased their reach as the parties became less and less of a thing.

The next issue for Tupperware is in manufacturing. It only has a single US plant (which it now closed) and struggled post-(early)covid to pay for rising costs of plastic and transportation of materials.

THEN Tupperware got fucked by investors trying to make bank first on their success and then also on their failure as they got swept into "meme stock" betting, where inexperienced traders gamble on stock around jokes/irony.

So ultimately, Tupperware has failed to get with the times as it has always relied on suburban lady sales while countless imitation products hit shelves in places where working class people shop for cheaper and sometimes comparable products, the cost to make a good product went up and as Tupperware struggled, investors and gamblers who are addicted to Line Going Up cashed in on betting on their failure rather than success, and because Tupperware is so synonymous with plastic food storage, IP gremlins are more than delighted to crash and burn a company to get it on the cheap and turn it around to make the numbers go back up again.

Rather than a "oh the woe of durability" story, or lament that a product is not used anymore, this is an excellent microcosm of the vulturistic nature of capitalism.

Let’s

Get

Bitchin’

They want to blame us, because then it’s our faults and they can feel good about themselves for ‘doing everything right’. That’s it.

Diabetes can’t ‘just happen’ because then it could happen to anyone. The same with every other illness and disability. If it can ‘just happen’ then this perfectly ‘healthy’, skinny person could do everything ‘right’ and still one day develop diabetes or other illnesses. They can’t handle that, so they pick at every little possible thing that a fat/ill/disabled person has ever done until they find that thing you supposedly did ‘wrong’ to cause this thing that they so desperately don’t want to happen to them.

And this goes for everyone, including doctors and other medical professionals because they have been taught this same thing. That there must be a reason this thing happened to a person, and it’s easier if it was their fault. To look for that thing the patient must have done wrong, because then you have the ‘answer’ and the blame. And then you, the medical professional, are not culpable for any misstatements, misunderstandings, misdiagnosis, that you have done or will do.

I'm just as fat as I was then, but my A1C is absolutely fine because I have been on hormonal birth control for so long it's gotten balanced out.