they/them
Don't expect anything specific from me, I have one blog and it all goes in the kitchen sink
Autistic, ocd, white, ace, gay(ish)
Astronomy Major/Researcher
Aprendiendo español como segunda lengua
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I do want to be clear: my posts have specifically been about Cinderella Boy, but lack of/poor representation for poc is a huge problem across webtoon and the media landscape in general. I specifically called out Cinderella Boy because I really enjoy it and have been thinking about it a lot given that we’re almost to the season two finale, but this problem goes way beyond a single webcomic. Yet by discussing a single webcomic, we can start to understand the problem as a whole. I’d say I’m sorry to anyone white who felt offended, but honestly I’m not—if your first reaction to someone pointing out racism is to get defensive, then you have work to do.
If you are truly interested in making the world a more equitable place—which includes making it so poc have a proper and respectful place in mainstream stories—then I recommend you follow the blog @/creatingblackcharacters. If you don’t actually care, then don’t bother. I have learned so, so much from this blog. In particular, the book club is an excellent way to educate oneself, so I recommend reading all of the past books (White Fragility, White Tears/Brown Scars, Mediocre, and currently, Medical Apartheid) as well as following along when we start our next book in August(?), Beloved by Toni Morrison (and reading the book So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo for good measure)—a task I myself am still working on, because learning is never finished.
I am saying all of this simply because it is the right thing to do. And I’m not trying to say the work that we all—including me—need to do will be easy. In fact, like me, you will probably also feel really uncomfortable, upset, and guilty. And you have to just sit in those feelings and feel them without saying anything, and it won’t be fun, but it’s the only way you’ll learn to put them aside, listen to the needs of poc without making it about you, and focus on how to actually effect change in the world. And one of the small ways you can begin to help is to point out implicit racism, however slight it may seem to you in your privileged eyes, and have discussions like the one we’ve been having. I’m not a perfect ally, I’ve certainly fucked up in the past and I’m sure I’ve fucked up in some way without realizing during this situation. The only thing we can do is try to better every day.
Because our discussion has centered around webtoon, I want to end this post by uplifting six webtoons that do feature people of color as main characters, which are
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people on here who have been on 10-15+ years like myself...i don't know how they claim that there were never any Black bloggers on here, or that it was always such a white website. trudy gradientlair was on here. thisiswhiteprivilege was on here. there was a feminist citation project sara ahmed was involved in on here. there was someone on here whose username was wretchedoftheearth and that was how i learned who fanon was when i was 12, by googling those words. tumblr was the only place i knew i could go to get accurate & compassionate info about what happened to trayvon martin, when everyone around me irl was rabidly racist. the amount of reportage and scholarship that happened on here before the first big wave of bans was so huge and so much has been lost. where were you when it was happening??? why weren't you paying attention??
it's cause they never engaged with non white bloggers so they never noticed them disappearing. they got the tumblr they wanted, and those of us who aren't liberal/conservative fandom bloggers were robbed of our black and brown friends, and worst of all black and brown bloggers were robbed of a dpace that once was a legitimate vector for talking about black issues. at least some members of staff know what they are doing, it's like the war on drugs in this website the way they crush black people on this website.
I literally published an essay several years ago about how a lot of people stole the intellectual work that Black feminist bloggers on here published regularly to build this website and its reputation as we know it. White people love them some revisionist history.
The reason Tumblr became the bastion of intellectual discourse that it was known for--the reason the term "social justice warrior" even EXISTS as a derogatory descriptor--is because of the work of the Black bloggers who migrated to this site from 2009-2014 from LJ and Jezebel's forums. Myself included.
I notice White users on tumblr are also MUCH less likely to reblog posts they'd otherwise agree with, but the post is a racialized person expressing anger about racism from white tumblr users. They're more likely to reblog the post if the post is less specific about who is doing the racism or if the language seems to "coddle" them more or express sympathy to them
maybe i am swinging a bat at a hornet's nest here but i also genuinely want to learn and be better so im willing to risk the pushback if it means i can improve.
every now and then i scroll across a post from a racialize person that essentially amounts to "white people i hate you. i hate all of you. die in a ditch."
i am not making up a strawman here to beat down. because a) i have come across posts that say this practically word for word and, more importantly, b) i agree with the sentiment. it is a very, very understandable anger. to quote malcom x,
“When all of my ancestors are snake-bitten, and I’m snake-bitten, and I warn my children to avoid snakes, what does that snake sound like accusing me of hate-teaching?”
anger at your oppressors, even anger at those who may have not oppressed you directly but inadvertently wield privilege to aid those who do, is justified and righteous.
but at the same time, a post that's only an expression of that anger sometimes feels a little too personal to broadcast. it feels as though i wasn't really meant to see it. and i don't want to just reblog a stranger's expression of distress for all of (majority white) tumblr to see because that might endanger their online presence or worse.
and there's also the issue of tone deafness. for someone to go "man i hate white people" only for a white guy to come in and say the online equivalent of "yeah same lmao" without having anything to add just feels. really disingenuous? like i'm not in a position to truly empathize as i'm not racialized, so i'd rather be able to give advice. but i can't really do that either as, again, i'm not racialized and any advice i give should be sourced from those who are. there's nothing i can really say that would add to the conversation so i'd rather not say anything at all.
(this obv doesn't apply when it's appended with "white people can rb" or something along those lines because then that implies the poster wants their post to be seen by white people en masse, vent or otherwise.)
at one point i did rb one of these vent posts thinking it would help but i got dm'ed with the advisement that it's common courtesy not to and i took it down. i've been iffy about reblogging those kinds of posts since. but meanwhile when a post says "i fucking hate you. here's what you can do about it." that carries the implication that it's more than just a raw expression of anger. there's an invitation and advisement for action. that i will rb because it carries a clear purpose outside the outlet of emotions. it doesn't feel like i've just stumbled upon someone's personal journal, but more like they want to be seen and heard. if it doesn't really have an overarching goal in mind other than venting than i don't fully get why i should reblog it. it sounds antithetical to a lot of what i've learned so far. i wouldn't reblog my friend going through it. so why should i reblog a stranger doing the same?
(i'm probably just misunderstanding the point of the post now that im rereading this. i wish i could definitively prove to you this is being asked in good faith and i'm not trying to sealion a debate or fish for reassurance or whatever, but all i have to offer in that respect is my word. i swear on my honor i'm just asking for clarification here so i can better understand.)
Starting off by saying a beloved mutual helped to overall explain the thesis of my post pretty well to the reblogger here so all is well, I'm just reblogging this here because said post by mutual would make it extra long lol. I'm just reiterating here as a supplementary.
This post is also on the same wavelength on what I was saying. I'll also reiterate the specific examples I gave in the notes and replies. There's a lot of (White, especially) users on tumblr who are reluctant to reblog posts that directly call out racism in general, but are even more reluctant when the post is directly mentioning racism BY White tumblr users (as in, racist actions by White users & the post is made by nonwhite users) or specific examples of it. More specifically like my post says, I'm talking about essentially tone policing. If someone is visibly, vocally angry about the racism they're talking about on the post, White tumblr users will avoid it. But if the wording says something to the effect of like "I know White people aren't trying to be racist when they do x" etc, then the post will be more popular. In my example in the notes, I was talking about racism within cottagecore many times, and I've noticed that even though I have multiple posts that boil down to the same thesis, the ones where my wording is (rightfully, justifiably) angrier are more ignored and have less notes than ones where I'm not. And like my mutual said as well, posts about White tumblr user's racism that are less direct in their wording will be more popular because White people will think "well this can't possibly be about me!". It's the same kind of idea.
Neutral toned posts will tend to be perceived within the "angry" category and usually will be ignored even if again, the wording and tone is neutral. And finally, posts that are expressing the same idea as posts by nonwhite people but are said by OTHER White people will be given much much more attention regardless of how they are worded. In my example within the replies, I talk about something that happened maybe a few months to a year ago where a White Ukrainian user was essentially making posts talking about racism towards Native Americans that would ALWAYS get VERY popular, more popular than other posts that said the same thing created by Native Americans. So White tumblr users were more happy to reblog the post talking about Native American racism if the post was made by a White person who is unaffected by it.
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I hc that Vaggi can read Alastor way better than she shows it. Of course not perfectly, but she understands his need to be seen strong and his hatred to being pitied, and refusal to accept help, because she was like that, but she learned to be more open and that it's ok to rely on other people.
And she cares about him. In her own way. She would be upset if he died, she now finds out that seeing him very obviously in pain is harder than she thought it could be.
And now she can relate to him even more, and she wants to help him and ease the struggle she's familiar with on a personal level.
Anyway i need more Vaggi and Alastor interactions, PLEASE. not like in a ship whay, but like coworkers/friends stuff.
I notice White users on tumblr are also MUCH less likely to reblog posts they'd otherwise agree with, but the post is a racialized person expressing anger about racism from white tumblr users. They're more likely to reblog the post if the post is less specific about who is doing the racism or if the language seems to "coddle" them more or express sympathy to them
“I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.” – Gordon Parks
I think the issue is that people are describing this as a bad TV season, but it's really much deeper than that. The final season of Sherlock was a bad season, the final season of Game of Thrones was a bad season. TVL / IWTV 3 is anti-Black. It is misogynistic. It has an open and glaring disdain for its Black and brown characters, and chose to be virulently anti-Black in a time of increased anti-Blackness. You are watching the corpse/ghost of a Black girl hurl racist garbage in a time where Black people are regularly being called slurs for simply existing. You are watching a Black man be branded... BRANDED! You are watching the whitewashing and babying of an unquestionably racist white man who beat his Black partner / helped lynch (yes, lynch, not stone) his Black daughter. You are seeing this done at the expense of a brown man.
Keep in mind, the characters are not making independent choices, you are not watching a documentary —you are watching the deliberate choices of an all white writers' room and a white show runner in a period of time where seventeen Black people have been lynched this year. In a time where countless Black people have been murdered in cold blood in June and July 2026 alone. This shit doesn't exist in a vacuum and pretending it does only adds more insult to injury. There is no turning your brain off in the midst of a slow genocide of Black people in america.
"Stop scrolling and please help me spread the word, because if I've landed on your page you're most likely either a black woman or someone who cares about black women and the simple phrase I'm about to share could help save a black woman's life.
Doctors are to black women what police officers are to black men. That may seem controversial but I believe it to be true and I speak from personal experience.
If you've seen this TikTok you know that a 2016 study showed that 50% of medical students and residents thought that black people couldn't feel pain the same as white people.
And we learned from this video that because of a 1999 study, to this day, there's a black correction factor for the creatinin levels in black people's kidneys, meaning we're less likely to recieve a kidney transplant if needed.
So if you go to a doctor, feel you aren't getting proper treatment or they refuse the treatment you've requested, say to them the following:
I will need you to document on record that you are refusing the treatment (or medicine) I've requested, and the reason you are doing so."
This works. I have used it in other situations. If medical staff have to document and take responsibility and be on the hook legally for doing shady shit they behave much differently.
If you weren’t already going to spread this advice because black women are at risk, then spread it because it’s applicable to everyone else as well, including you reading this.
But particularly women, and especially black women.
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So many amazing Black women put so much work into the math and engineering behind rocket science as we know it today, and humanity might never have reached the stars without them.
You can make a movie with where the only white character is a man named Ray Cism whose one line of his 16 seconds of screen time is “I seriously hate women and minorities.” and you’ll find fifty bajillion reader x Ray Cism fanfics and renaissance style drawings of him with a halo of golden light
Just a reminder that Saudi Arabia is responsible for one of the world's largest and most severe man made humanitarian emergencies. Their blockade of Yemen, which prevents food, water, medicine, and fuel from entering the country has caused a significant death toll. Emphasis here on man made as these were preventable.
Yemen relies on most of its food and medicine via imports and this blockade (land, sea, and air) has created an environment where 80% of Yemen relies on aid for survival. It's lead to so many people, mostly children, dying of starvation.
The rate of child malnutrition in Yemen is among the highest in the world with 2.3 million children under 5 requiring treatment for acute malnutrition. At one point a child died of starvation every 75 seconds.
Nolan’s Odyssey thoughts. I brought in a notebook and filled 9.5 pages of scribbled thoughts throughout the three hours I was suffering. I hated this movie and I really tried to go into it with an open mind as much as possible and damn it really sucks. This movie really put the no in nostos.
(obviously spoilers ahead)
Random big thoughts
This movie felt like it was made for high school English teachers to show but then 95% of the way through making it, they were like actually nevermind and added in some f-bombs and a few (like 2-3 nonsexual nudity) shots of asses to solve the problem.
Odysseus hates the gods and at times barely believes in them, but also refuses to push back against anything that could be seen as a prophecy. It’s so fucking weird because it’s equivalent to a modern atheist being like “Christianity is dumb and probably a crock of bullshit, also don’t lie because it’s a sin and God will be mad”.
I wrote this down verbatim, “An Odysseus that hesitates about returning to Ithaca is like the sun hesitating to rise” and I do believe I cooked with that. Same is true with a Penelope that doubts Odysseus and a Telemachus that doesn’t need a father, which this movie has.
Here’s the thing, up until Odysseus lands in Ithaca, the movie is fine. It isn’t good, it isn’t horrific, it’s a little cringe and a little irritating for me as an enjoyer of the Odyssey, but it wasn’t bad. If I turned off my brain from know-it-all Greek mythology enjoyer Asha to action movie enjoyer Asha, I think I could have had a decent time. However, it all falls apart when Odysseus returns home, any ounce of characterization is crushed to bits and it just sucks and makes no sense. Reminder, I honestly enjoyed the Troy: Fall of a City miniseries so accuracy is not always my hill to die on but god, I would like the hill to at least be in eyesight.
Random little thoughts (in no order)
UGLYYYYYYY ass costumes like I knew they were bad but it’s such an eyesore. There was not a single outfit that I was like “that looks nice”.
This is one of the first movies I’ve ever seen where I wanted MORE gore and MORE things that made me sick to my stomach. Like, show me Odysseus’s men starving, show me blood spraying down when men are taken by Scylla, show me more soldiers drowning.
They massacred the characterization of every woman (fork found in kitchen, Nolan can’t write women, but still)
There’s a lot of things in this film that changing from poem to movie was pointless. My most memorable example of this being that Eumaeus is visually impaired, Eumaeus also at one point says Odysseus was like a son to him. These aren’t huge deals and don’t affect the plot but to those amongst us who enjoy the Odyssey, it’s just annoying.
Iphigenia is sacrificed by Agamemnon before Odysseus leaves Ithaca?????????
There’s a lot of time and plot spent centered on Argos (yeah the dog).
Odysseus only has 3 ships the whole film, holyyyyy budget cuts.
On Calypso’s island, Odysseus forgets everything because she keeps drugging him with lotus flowers. He doesn’t remember how he got to her island, doesn’t remember his family or Ithaca until she like… weans him off and he starts to remember that. He basically feels none of the time pass.
Half of Helen’s face is physically scarred from the Trojan War, it’s implied that Menelaus mutilated her. There’s a disgusting line where Menelaus says, “this is the face that launched a thousand ships, although now it would maybe be five-hundred.” GROSS
The Laestrygonians look like cybermen and no I will not elaborate.
There is a scene where Athena’s temple is destroyed in Troy and it’s implied that whatever happens to the temple, happens to the god. (like a soldier wacks off Athena’s statue’s head, it switches to a scene of Athena being held down and nearly decapitated) It’s a neat idea but in a movie where the gods are ridiculed by the main character, it just doesn’t work.
No Achilles or Anticleia in the underworld SIGHHH
No Nestor or Peisistratus SIGGGGGHHHHHH they hate to see yappers represented.
Telemachus and Odysseus’s reunion is so ass, like there’s no bout of emotional resonance at all, they’re two worlds apart.
Telemachus sucks as a character Tom Holland you are British how did you make Telemachus so fucking American. No one talk to me about Telemachus he sucked so fucking bad in this movie.
No wedding bed anything insane and might I add fucking crazy. Again, this is classic Odyssey stuff.
At the end of the movie, Odysseus and Penelope travel west(?) and leave Telemachus as king of Ithaca, to honor the fallen soldiers. This is the Greek mythology equivalent of retired American couples moving to Florida I think.
The Cyclops
The cyclops doesn’t speak to Odysseus (the men don’t even know it’s a sentient being until after they stab it in the eye) which means we get no “Nobody” scene which is already a travesty because I fear that’s classic Odysseus. And I do feel like the cyclops being more of a monster ruins the whole point of it being about breaking xenia. If Polyphemus is just an unnamed monster, what makes him any different from Scylla or Charybdis???
Small thing to be pissy about but to get past the cyclops they tied hay to their back instead of hanging from the bellies of the sheep.
We also get no scene of hubris from Odysseus, again this is classic Odysseus.
The Suitors
Antinous called beggar Odysseus a “platelicker” and then after a few times I swear on my life he said “platelicka” it was insane and I wish I was joking
This movie creates a lot of Antinous lore that I think is fairly unnecessary since Antinous already had lore (Eupiethes’s pirate background) but let me explain the Antinous lore to the best of my memory.
So Odysseus holds a lottery for his army. A young Antinous and a younger Sinon draw lots and Antinous draws the lot that indicates he will fight. Sinon, maybe 13 years old, swaps their lots because he wants to go to war with Odysseus. Antinous (probably 16-18 years old) tries to protest but Odysseus won’t let them change back. Antinous interprets this as “Odysseus knew he might not come back and wanted me to be in charge of Ithaca”.
Penelope is in the hall right before Odysseus starts killing, inaccurate but why I mention this here is because she doesn’t let Melantho come with the women to safety. She leaves her in the hall to die in the slaughter. Now if you know me you know I am an Melantho ENJOYER and so I hate to see my girl done badly (maybe the Melantho shit will be it’s own rant).
Antinous x Melantho I CALLED THAT THEY WOULD DO THAT A YEAR AGO
In the end, Odysseus doesn’t kill all the suitors (although he does kill Antinous). Insane because to make things right in Ithaca Odysseus HAS to kill the suitors. It’s the reason that he kills the 12 disloyal maids in the poem because if they live, they represent his own failures blah blah blah whatever I hate it here.
The gods (or lack of)
Athena is the only god with form we see and I’m going to be real honest with you, I didn’t have the brain power to try to figure out what was going on with her.
Zeus does destroy the ship after the sun god’s cows thing and let me just say if you can’t handle flashing lights this is not ur film because the lightning goes CRAZY and not in a good interesting way but in a “my retinas are burned out” way.
No Hermes and no Aeolus sorry my plot scaffolding kings.
“Asha, did you like anything in this movie?”
Probably surprising but yes. When Odysseus’s men are turned to pigs by Circe, she has to physically mold them from man to pigs so she like… rips their hair out and pulls their ears and pushes up their noses until they turn to pigs which was so fucking fascinating to me. I hated the Circe scenes with her and Odysseus but goddamn Nolan you cooked with that body horror. Like, if the ending of this movie wasn’t hot garbage I would recommend it for that scene alone.
I also thought the scenes pre-Trojan war in Ithaca were cute, newlywed OdyPen and Odysseus being like a father figure to the younger men of Ithaca (maybe 2 mins of screen time altogether, not much to write home about but I enjoyed the scraps we got).
Soundtrack was good occasionally
That’s all I wanna write about for now. Who wants to start a GoFundMe for Homer to get a gun and a time machine to kill Nolan?
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I am hoping that this is some sort of exaggeration or oversimplification because this is just blatant erasure of a major element of Greek culture and replaced by a more Christian version and I want to bang my head into a wall. That’s not what xenia is, and you just erased a major part of the Odyssey.
My late father was the one who taught me to be cynical about advertising, for all that putting up ads was literally his whole job. He taught me from a very young age that advertising is expensive, and they tack that cost onto the price. That if something is heavily advertised, you can count on the fact that there's an identical product out there, usually even manufactured in the same factory, that's cheaper because they don't spend all that money on advertising.
A German friend walked me through Lidl, turning over items to show the factories where the items were manufactured and what expensive brands they correspond to, we did taste tests on some of the more pricey food things later and they were the same product. learning about food manufacturing was a hobby for her.
European glasses and sunglasses are made in the same Italian factories that make the luxury ones, they have the same quality control and warranty. You are paying €100 for a logo.
Some things cost more because they are actually made with better quality materials and where the workers are properly compensated, others are the same product as the off brand version with the brand name markup. It takes a lifetime to learn the intricacies which is why consumer advocacy associations and legal protection by (truly) independent agencies is crucial.
