witch of space

I have answered a few asks about TADC because I know how important transfem Jax has been to a lot of people, and I don’t want to take that away from anyone, but I am very critical of the use of the song “Isn’t She Lovely?” being reclaimed as a coming out scene, when the original song was written by a Black man about the birth of his Black daughter. Keeping in mind the racism from some of the voice actors, and the lukewarm apology from the creator, it is very insidious to me to take a Black-specific song and reclaim it as something else. It very much feels like “taking Black art without caring about the bodies that made it.”

#and frankly… #the fact that it wasn’t an intentionally malice decision IS racism in itself #because even though the song is by a Black singer his thoughts and emotions he put into the lyrics were not taken into consideration #people don’t *usually* just write music just to write it. music is emotionally charged. hence using music in such a big scene #… but they DID NOT CONSIDER him or his daughter because they are Black

why you gotta be like that kirb

some of them do superpower hobbies on the weekend, but a good portion of them are just "eh. my body could technically do it but this is not fun for me?" like it's literally just excercise. why spend your free time training for a marathon when you could be crafting

I think an experience I had at a book club recently exemplifies the problems faced by today's romance novelists. One month we read a historical romance novel from 2021 that was fairly typical of 2010s historical romance in terms of gender/sexual politics. The heroine has sexual experience, her own money, and a group of female friends who are supportive but have their own stuff going on. The hero is a decent hunky guy whose worst fault in the relationship is emotional avoidance due to a Big Secret. There are background lesbians and the protagonists are chill about it. The sex is enthusiastically consented to. Most of the book club had a very "meh" response to it, mainly due to reasons that didn't have much to due with said politics (like not finding the relationship very interesting or thinking there weren't enough sex scenes), but, crucially, some people zeroed right in on two moments that could be considered in bad taste. The first one: the hero admires the heroine's silhouette while she's changing behind a screen and talking with him. The second one: the hero tries to curb his sexy thoughts about the heroine by getting her a glass of warm milk, reasoning that this is a very unsexy thing to do because it's the sort of thing you would do for a sick child. I personally thought the first thing was a total non-issue in context (he's looking towards her because they're talking, she knows he's there and how shadows work) and the second was kind of a silly, overdone joke but not creepy or offensive. But the people who took issue with it were genuine in their disapproval, even citing our current climate of misogyny as why it rubbed them the wrong way.