One Big Dysfunctional Family

kids have abusive families like Harry and live in poverty like Ron, they live in poverty as part of specific systems designed to keep them keep them there like Katniss, they live in situations that ask way too much of them like Aang and Harry and all of them.

My little sister’s graduating class had a lot of dead parents. There were all kinds of reasons, drug overdose and sudden illness and motorcycle accident and long battle with illness and ’….ehhh probably heart disease? they didn’t do a real autopsy…’. For the long battle with an illness category, Sarah’s mother got cancer not long after giving birth to her much younger sister. Not only did Sarah have to watch her mother slowly lose that battle over the last years of Sarah’s childhood but she had to basically raise that baby because her father was busy trying work and care for their mother. Sarah didn’t have to save the world but you don’t think it didn’t feel like it some times?

It’s like JKR has said, kids don’t hear these stories and suddenly realize monsters are real. They already know. These stories tell you monsters can be defeated. That you can survive. That it might get worse some times but you can win. And yeah it would be nice if in the real world kids never had to do it themselves but that’s just not true.

Harry Potter didn’t make me feel like it was fair or reasonable for teens to save the world, it made me feel less alone in my struggles. Reading about kids fighting the world made me feel like I could make it through too. One of the reasons these stories are so popular is that they give you hope, they give you characters to fight along side during the dark and hard moments in your own life–whether that’s imagining your math test as a Hungarian Horntail you have to get past, or struggling to leave your own abusive family like Harry having to go back to the Dursleys every year, or watching violence and drugs take your friends like the Battle of Hogwarts killed so many.

People weep and moan for well written representation in film and I’m like “Power Rangers 2017 gave you a team with only one white member, a questioning queer girl, and an autistic hero that doesn’t have ‘magical autism’. He was just autistic and was just like, “Oh, I am autistic, so I’m not going to pick up on your sarcasm.”

They didn’t make autism into a superpower or some life ending tragedy, they had a character with autism who had that inform his character. Billy wasn’t ashamed of this. He was bullied and bad at social cues but the only shame he ever felt was guilt over his reaction to his dad’s death which makes perfect fucking sense.

Trini was in a questioning, confused state and her sexuality is just there and causing her some difficulty. Not because she might be gay, but because she is not sure and doesn’t know how to express this to her family.

Zack was the ultimate subversion of the model minority bullshit people assign to Asians and Asian characters. He was a tactless thrill junkie processing his own hardships.

Kimberly had a nuanced narrative regarding bullying. She was a VERY grey character who legitimately did something awful.

And Jason’s story is basically the ultimate disection of toxic masculinity.

Saban was even hinting that Tommy was going to be a girl in the planned sequel. WE MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN A FEMALE URBAN NATIVE GREEN RANGER. ANYONE who knows Power Rangers can tell you how huge that would be. Tommy was the fan favorite and one of the most interesting characters. Yeah, we might have gotten a superhero film with a female Urban Native lead.

And y'all just dismissed this movie and made Krispy Kreme jokes. Newsflash: the movie was making Krispy Kreme jokes that were better than your Krispy Kreme jokes. If you honestly think “Krispy Kreme… it is a magical place” was supposed to be taken seriously, you are lame and boring and probably like Air Supply.

And gaaaah! Do you know how bad this movie SHOULD have been? Take this from a girl who draped her room in Pink Ranger shit for two years: Power Rangers is pretty fucking dumb. I love it, but nuance, pathos, and realism WERE NEVER CARDS IN THIS FRANCHISE’S DECK. Then this fucking movie, which I went into expecting a lazy, stupid, nostalgia bait had like… real characters, and conflict, and a script written on empathy. People actually worked their ass off to not only make a good movie, but one that was genuinely diverse and respectful and EMPATHETIC.

The movie bombed and y'all wrote it off despite it being one of the most diverse, heartfelt, and nonstereotypical films in recent memory.

I love me ~

In fact, it is outright illegal to try and collect those debts from a person who didn’t cosign the loan and isn’t executing the will.

My great-grandmother had her identity stolen before she died at the age of 93, and thousands of charges were racked up on credit cards in her name. After she passed away, they called my mother to try and collect. My mom laughed at them, and told them: “She’s dead, good luck collecting.” The credit card asked my mother, “Don’t you want to clear your grandmother’s debts? Don’t you want to clear her good name?” My mom laughed at them again. “No,” she said. “Because a 90 year old wasn’t watching porn with those credit cards, and her name is fine. Don’t give credit cards to old women likely to pass away soon. This is on you.”

If a loved one of yours dies and bill collectors (credit cards, loans, etc etc) start calling you off the hook and request that you pay off their debts, tell them in no uncertain terms to go fuck themselves.

The reason being is that the moment you give them a single penny, that debt is now on YOU because you’ve now agreed to pay it off.

Legitimate *pro bono legal services* don’t exist without a good reason. In a few of the exmormon groups I’m in you’ll see regular posts saying stuff like “Look what my lawyer sent me today!” with a pic of their resignation confirmation letter from the church.

You know. Just stuff that a normal average church that is definitely not actually a cult would do. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“It’s crack.” “It doesn’t stand a chance.” “It sucks.” “It has 0 hints.” “Its rival ship is better.” “The rival ship is so obvious, it has so many hints, they are together all the time.”

Do I need a reason to ship a couple? 

Why do I ship it? Because I like it.

Simple.

It’s about TASTE!

Have you heard of it? It differs. From person to person.