#**nicgri

::heavy, world-weary sigh:: I was really hoping I could just sort of slip that into my blog without anyone actually noticing it. 

Pushy, sneaky, awful, great, earnest, pushy, sneaky friends changed my mind.  I’m not even going to pretend that it was anything that Nick actually did or didn’t do, although his not being racist on Halloween for a change (as far as I saw any posts about?) helped.  But it was 100% Lucy and Zee just liking him and posting him all the time and tricking me into writing fic about him, which is pretty much a surefire way to get me to like someone.  And I never disliked him NEARLY as much as people apparently think I do/did?  Everything in fandom gets so blown out of proportion.  I call out Louis and Harry and Perrie, too, and people don’t ques—oh, wait, never mind; there are at least a few people who are ridiculous/stupid enough to think I dislike Louis, too. Everyone writes almost a million words a year-ish about someone they dislike! \o/

Just because I wasn’t in Nick fandom doesn’t mean I hated him, I just didn’t care at all.  I don’t care about MOST of the people peripherally related to 1D (like 5SOS, which I’m not even sure how many members the band has, or Andy, or 99% of the Primrose Hill gang, or Sophia, or anyone in their crew except Lou Teasdale/Lux/Caroline Watson/her baby whose name I don’t even know but I like boy band travelin’ babies as a general principle).  But I always thought Nick was funny and charming, when he wasn’t being problematic, and that’s still basically what I think.  I’m just working on being less stubborn.

I also have liked/been slightly more neutral-positive than neutral/neutral-negative on Nick for a long time now, I just avoid posting him because the majority of 1D people who follow me are, as far as I can tell, more Harry/Louis-ish than Nick-ish and I don’t want to alienate the few people who follow me because they like what I post and how I post about it.  Whether it’s warranted or not (it’s not), Nick is a contentious figure in 1D fandom and since I’ve never posted much of him, I just… don’t.  IDK.  Fandom makes a bigger deal of people changing their minds about stuff than fucking FOX News does during campaign trails.  I don’t like rocking the boat.

As far as that goes, the only thing I actually hated, and still hate, in regards to Nick is the way that people on ALL sides of the Harry shipping debate treat each other and the fangirling/fanworks produced by other ships.  (Also, as I’ve said before: I have been reading Harry/Nick and Louis/Nick fics since basically the beginning of them ever being posted.  They are really, really good fics and Nick is a very good fic character, which is like 90% of what makes me like him more as a real person.)  But I mean, the nastiness of shipping politics is also why I have not posted Harry/Louis stuff since MYEYNL, basically, and have only just started writing it again.  1D fandom, in general, got Very Very Unfun And Unlikable for a long time and I, whether rightly or wrongly, saw the prevalence of Nick fandom as both a cause and an effect of that and it made me sour for a long time.  But I’m working on being mellower. 

Blackface

That's it, that's the list right now.  Nick's photos are not funny.  They're unbelievably racist, ignorant, insensitive, appropriating, racist, racist, disappointing, and -- something else.  Racist.

That's it.  That's all they are.

And on top of how racist his Halloween costume was, basically he's super shitty and he should be called out for it, so don't bother messaging me about "taking a joke," because a) he's not making a joke, jokes are funny, and b) no, he did not learn one iota from the last time he pulled this shit and he works in a place of huge privilege and position of influence and he needs to stop being a racist fuck.

It actually IS offensive to dress as a priest. It’s offensive to dress as any sort of religious official or religious symbol outside of an actual ritual purpose within that religion.  It’s offensive to be “Sexy Amish” for Halloween, too, or to dress as “Muslims” or to be calaveras or wear Plains headdresses or whatever.  It’s all offensive.  And he said “African witch doctor,” so he’s insulting Africa.