Yup

Nothing's ever simple anymore. I'm constantly trying to work it out. Who to love or hate… who to trust. It's just like the more I know, the more confused I get. I believe that's called growing up. I'd like to stop, then. Okay? I know the feeling.

happy new years everyone

(click for better quality)

i Hate how entitled adults can feel over a child’s hair!

it started when i was young myself, i wanted a mohawk, but my dad didn’t approve of that look on a “girl”, and insisted i’d regret such a bold cut. at 16 i was finally given full autonomy over my own head.

but then i have a son and everyone around us is trying to keep his hair short. when we finally moved out just me my partner and him, i told him he doesn’t need to get any haircuts he doesn’t want.

so he starts growing it out, it’s still short but coming on mid-length. his teacher makes a point to tell me it’s getting long as if i don’t have eyes. i hear her walking out with him one day talking to him about haircuts, as if to coax him into one. eventually i get child services called on me for ‘forcing a transgender lifestyle’ over what i can only assume is from a combination of me drawing cute ponies on his valentine box and letting him go to school in a ponytail.

he kept it short for awhile after but told me he wanted to grow it out again, so i let him of course. he comes home one day after getting a haircut at his grandpa’s and tells me he didn’t Want the haircut.

i ask why he got it then and learned he was bribed with a promise of a surprise IF he cut his hair.

but This One Lady from church decided that leaving my hair messy and curly was child abuse and threatened to call social services on my family every damn time she saw me until one day she was the designated kid watcher and ho boy my momma tells me i came out with tears in my eyes and greasy slicked down hair and that’s where she ends the story because i think my mother beat her ass but yeah.

Some reasons, not exhaustive:

Parents tightly controlling this shit is damaging and super often indicative of sexism or queerphobia they will begin imposing or are already imposing on the child.

Early form of indoctrination into boys vs. girls behavior; it begins super young when the child is very malleable. Sets the stage for strict gender roles.

A parent who does not respect their child’s autonomy over something as trivial as their hair is absolutely not going to defend their child from other assaults on their autonomy, unless those assaults are property crimes that challenge or might lead their child to challenge their ownership of the child’s body.

It’s disgusting.

It also goes for life partners. Controlling someone’s appearance either directly, or indirectly through repeated “hints” and shit-talking people who don’t meet their standards is at the very least toxic, and sometimes it is downright abusive. There’s a reason “woman cuts her hair in a way that she knows you don’t like” is seen as a “warning sign” that your wife might “leave you.” The hold is breaking. I did it, progressively, as things spiraled down. It wasn’t rebellion. It was reclamation. (Also me realizing that I really didn’t like having long hair. This is way better.

They’re also disciplined in the interim too - The hair is used as a reason why they can’t do things the children-being-boyed do: Can’t go in the sea, your hair will get tangled and it’ll be cold on your back all day. Can’t play in the bushes, your hair will be a mess. Can’t lie down on the grass or do tumbles, your hair…

I think part of the reason why it felt like nothing happened this season is because Ellie's Seattle days are kinda not that full compared to Abby's.

Say what you will about the writing and the changes and whatnot, but I think the changes they made to the story for the show gave a lot of substance to Ellie's POV.

And I'm not saying that she does nothing, because of course she does stuff! But Ellie doesn't have the same relationship with the WLF and the Seraphites as Abby does, she only has interpersonal drama with three people while in Seattle, one of which you don't see until the last 15 minutes. We don't have years of backstory and history to catch up on.

With Ellie, a lot of her POV is focused on how she spirals. It's on her mental state, her grief, how she handles the events of Seattle. I think the show did that amazingly.

It's also only half of the story. There's still so much to see and learn.

Ellie is still in action hero mode, "no biggie, just a scratch" and immediately goes to find shelter. Meanwhile, Dina is going through all five stages of grief at the same time, because in her mind, not only is Ellie going to die. She is going to die while she was too much of a coward to admit her own feelings.

She thought she'd have enough time, and now that time is ripped away from her. She even begs Ellie not to make this harder than it already is, because she probably expects Ellie's final words before she has to shoot her that she loves her. Because Dina knows. She admits later on she totally knew about Ellie's feelings and it would hurt too fucking much to hear that confession and then immediately after having to shoot her.

Dina is in a tragic gay play, where she admitted her feelings too late for the girl she likes and – given how her mother's dismissal affected her so much – now probably will never be brave enough to embrace her bisexuality. Because Ellie was the one that made her feel brave.

If you’re being hateful about Bella Ramsey and/or Kaitlyn Dever, you’re a piece of shit and a fucking deplorable human being who should go fuck themselves.

So far in the last few weeks alone, I’ve seen:

People claiming Bella is terribly cast, claiming they cannot act, and wanting them to be recast by someone like Cailee Spaeny

People saying Bella is “too ugly” to play Ellie, that the Ellie played by Bella is too ugly to date Dina (aka: “Dina is too hot for her”), people saying Ellie looks like she has Down Syndrome

Way too many people are comfortable with using the r slur to describe Bella and the version of Ellie they’re playing. “She looks r*tarded”, “she acts r*tarded”

^ following the news that Bella is autistic, a lot of people were saying things like “of course she is” “makes sense” etc.

People editing pictures of Bella as Ellie to make their forehead bigger, eyes further apart, chin bigger etc. to reiterate how “ugly” they are

Already Kaitlyn Dever is getting hateful comments on her social media, people saying they hope she dies for killing Joel etc. (did we learn NOTHING from when it happened to Laura Bailey?!?)

This is coming from both game fans and show fans as far as I know. I understand having opinions if you’re genuinely a fan who wants to see their favourite games adapted well, but that doesn’t give you the right to make such horrific comments about the actors.

I’m speaking as someone who loves the games and yes, I do have my own criticisms about the show just as I do with the game - but the level of hatred for Bella in particular is disgusting.

For one thing, people’s horrible comments about Bella have been going on since S1 when they were playing a 14 year old - far too many people were mad show!Ellie wasn’t “hot enough”…why do you want a 14 year old character to be hot?!? Why are you openly admitting to wanting to jack off to a teenager??? That’s so fucked up and worrying, seek help if you’re someone saying shit like that. “Bella doesn’t look old enough” - they are 21 playing a 19 year old, they are literally age appropriate for the role - you’re just mad it’s not a woman in her late 20s you can sexualize and salivate over.

It’s just infuriating to see how much vitriol Bella especially is getting - Pedro doesn’t look 100% like Joel, Gabriel Luna doesn’t look like Tommy, Kaitlyn doesn’t look like Abby, Isabela Merced doesn’t actually look like Dina, most of the cast doesn’t look anything like their game counterparts quite frankly… but for some reason it’s Bella who’s getting all of the hatred.