forwards ever, backwards never

the reason why i think so many alloromantic people outright refuse the idea of "aromantic subtext" being a legitimate thing is that people view aromanticism as inherently shallow. to a lot of queer fandomites, "aromantic" is what they make the side character they don't really care about, so they don't have to bother coming up with actual analysis of their interpersonal relationships. it sucks, because aromantic narratives in fiction, intentional or otherwise, are worth exploring, analysing, and appreciating.

hello locked tomblr, I have a question: I've seen several people say that judith deuteros is canonically black, is there something I've missed that indicates that? tamsyn muir's out-of-book character descriptions aren't strictly canon but she's said she imagines both judith and marta as tongan. I know there's a history of melanesians, aboriginal australians, and torres strait islanders being referred to as black, does that also sometimes apply to tongans and could that by why?

Hello! I’m a New Zealander and short answer: no, I’ve never heard Tongans (or any other Polynesian groups) referring to themselves as black. I think Judith being ‘canonically’ black is a misconception arising from what you mentioned in the tags, i.e. that she’s described as having dark skin and wearing her hair in braids. I get why that’s the first image that comes to mind for an US American reader and of course people can headcanon Judith as black based on those characteristics, but it does irritate me a little when people assert it as a canon fact.

Well THAT went places I wasn't expecting.

"Racialised" is much better than PoC but I've been leaning a lot on the concept of racial markedness. Because that allows us to make statements like "the name Jamal is racially marked in USA". Rather than saying something like "Jamal is a PoC name", a nonsense statement, saying it's racially marked in USA allows us to contrast with societies like Albania or the Arab countries where the name Jamal is ordinary, thus unmarked.

It's a concept I've kind of imported from linguistic analysis; saying a speech pattern is more or less marked does not really allow us to avoid the subject of who's doing the marking. A statement like "womens' speech is more marked in Lakota" necessitates that we understand that it's the Lakota who are marking womens' speech. A foreigner can't tell the difference and probably doesn't understand why it would thus be weird to see a man using speech patterns associated with women, in the same way an Albanian wouldn't understand why USA people would think Jamal is a Black name.

I love ace ppl bc they’re like you know you don’t have to right. And it’s true. you dontttttt have to

admittedly, i am a little obsessed with like 65% of the tags on this post so far basically saying "my parents didn't pre-screen things but they [describes behavior that DEFINITELY qualifies as pre-screening]". i kinda hope maybe this post and others like it wake some people up to the fact that yes, even YOUR parents were controlling what perspectives and ideas you were and were not being allowed to access.

sometimes you will see a joke circulate within a fandom and at first it's all fun and games but then the slow and terrible realization starts to seep in that this will become in fact a widely-accepted way to read a specific situation between characters that were subject of said joke and there is nothing you can do about it but to watch the horrors unfold in real time