#salty rant

I have seen the casting pics of most of the HP cast and I am in love!

The golden trio kids are ADORABLE! To hell with the people dunking on the Hermione girl. Yes, she's not pasty white but her skin tone is fine. She's white passing and her skin is not too dark to be a distraction. There are white people who have tanner skin tones so I don't mind. She's cute 🥰.

The Draco looks perfect! I think he has the face for a good Draco sneer lol. I wish he was a bit younger - I think Tom was also older - but oh well.

And the teachers look good.

Everything looks great....

Except Snape!!!!!

Man I am so pissed! HBO literally has the perfect cast but of course these assholes have to have their race swap somewhere! Like these demons will catch fire of a main cast if an English book is all white!

And it's bad enough that Snape is black. Nope. Snape has to look like some kind of drug lord with black dreads. Of course, the teacher Harry immediately distrusts is the ghetto black teacher. Way to play to stereotypes!

When are people going to realize that these race swaps are thinly veiled acts of racism???

There are already black characters in Harry Potter. Cool characters like Blaise and Kingsley. We have the chance to do other minor characters justice like Cho and the Indian twin sisters.

But no, it's easier to make Snape black and call it a day.

also as a disclaimer (before anyone pops off at me about “ableism”): i am diagnosed autistic (L2/MSN) and also adhd (so: audhd), and my dad is not diagnosed, but i strongly suspect he is also audhd. so it comes into play here for both of us.

anyway, tonight he comes home and brings me an iced capp (bless, but i also paid for it), and he immediately launches into baseball (again). the blue jays, playoff standings, player stats, the whole stream-of-consciousness rundown he falls into like clockwork. i listen all the time, and i don’t normally mind. he’s undiagnosed autistic, and sports are one of his clearest special interests (hockey and baseball, mainly), and i understand how grounding those patterns and stats can be.

and i’m fine with it so long as this behaviour is reciprocal (to an extent). like, if you are going to talk at me, i’d like to be able to talk about my special interests too, even if they bore you, but i won’t lie that the dynamic wears me down because he can talk for 40-60 uninterrupted minutes, looping from one topic to the next but all the while also lowkey demanding i pay attention (just like, prompting me). and then, at the end of it (almost like a reflex) he’ll finally remember that he’s like, “supposed” to ask me something too. but the key here is he doesn’t care about the answer at all.

and that’s exactly what happened tonight. AGAIN.

after his entire monologue about the blue jays, he suddenly turns and goes, “so… how’s that game you’ve been playing? that strange one?” and so i started to talk about it and he completely stopped paying attention and began talking over me and i wanted to scream. and i’m tired of how he always had a vague, clumsy attempt to show he’s paying attention—but it was so clear he hadn’t been listening earlier, or paying attention at all immediately after asking. he never engages. he never replies. and he’ll even go as far to go “i’m watchjng the game” when i’m mid-explanation, but i’m still supposed to answer like it’s a real question—like it matters to him. otherwise i’m the bitch if i tell him i don’t want to talk about it.

and what makes me feel like i’m about to unravel is that he can do this (space out, change topics, only ask about my stuff out of obligation) and it’s fine—socially, emotionally, relationally, it’s fine. and literally no one faults him for it. there’s always a rationale. he’s “in his own head.” he “meant well.” but i don’t get that leeway. ever.

i’m diagnosed autistic, and still, i have to read the room perfectly. i have to stay regulated. i have to mirror back the interest, maintain the right tone, stay soft enough to not seem annoyed, stay expressive enough to not seem cold. i have to perform warmth even when i feel invisible. and if i don’t, if i sound distant or checked out or fed up, i know exactly what i’ll be labeled. i’ll be difficult. i’ll be rude. i’ll be “uninterested.”

he gets praised for 10%, and i’m expected to run at 110% just to meet the bare minimum.

and it’s not just frustrating—it’s demoralizing. it makes me feel like a placeholder. like my presence only matters as it reflects something back to him. i am there to nod, to echo, to affirm. but when it’s my turn, the room goes hollow. the attention dissipates. and when i call it out or even just feel it too loudly, i’m the one seen as selfish. when in reality, i’m just starved for reciprocity from them. i’m just tired of being polite about the fact that my inner world gets treated like background noise while his gets treated like the main broadcast.

and then to top it off i lose (temporarily) my phone charger (the good one) and am having a mini meltdown while trying not to have a big one because it’s 2:15am (ish) (when that happened) and he’s getting irritated with me and telling me to calm down, and that only serves to make me more angry on top of all of this shit, and i was already annoyed with him to begin with, and so then we searched for another but found it in the end (after settling initially on the extra he and i found), and i just want to rip my hair out of my head lmao.

and don’t even fkn get me started on talking about hacks or tdwp/tdwp2. i’ve had several mean (downright nasty) comments from both parents about my “obsession” with either—for simply talking about them briefly.

Every day I want to quit my job. I want to walk out of here at lunch and never return.

I'm tired of working for people who are reactionary. Who fly off the handle and THEN finally come around when they cool off and someone tells them they were wrong.

I'm tired of a boss who doesn't stand up for her people. Who says, "no, she did it the correct way, we dont need to do it your way, which is incorrect." A boss who can't be straightforward and communicate to save her life, but who will then turn around and say, "You're not getting it" like I'm the stupid one. And follows it up with "you sound frustrated" when I snap and say yes I do get it.

I'm tired of getting treated differently from my male coworker. None of my other bosses treated me any differently, but this new one does.

I'm tired of her acting like she has a technical Outlook problem when she just doesn't get technology and never reads her email.

I'm tired of her gaslighting all 3 of us by saying, "I can't believe you didn't do XYZ when I wrote it on the agenda" and we look at the agenda later only to see the task is nowhere to be found.

I'm tired of my last name being spelled incorrectly even though you're my boss and my name appears twice in the email you copied me on.

If my husband and I didn't rely so heavily on the health insurance that I get thru my job, I would have left by now.

Like my last boss used to drive me crazy sometimes, but she was so much better than this.

Cass throwing a fight because Babs asked her to keep a low profile is absolutely laughable. In Batgirls (2000) - which mind you, isn't a hard read, it's less than 100 issues and all available on DC's own app, she gives 0 fucks about her secret identity and it takes her realizing she wouldn't be able to live with Babs to actually care about it being a secret (she literally broke into the CIA without her mask on). That she went back for her stuff makes sense, but she would have just clocked the guys in the first place.

Cass being "the gloomy one" - they literally looked at her aesthetic and assigned her one personality trait. Like oh come on. Read 3 comics with her character and you'd know that's not what she's like. She's stilted and awkward in this, whereas in her solo she's fluid and does what she thinks makes sense in the moment.

Similarly Steph being the "happy" one. Look, Dixon be damned, at least he gave her some amount of depth in Robin. Steph is not just cheery all the time, she's had legitimately traumatic things happen to her. She had to give up a child for adoption. Her father abused her. She had a close call with being sexually assaulted by her piano teacher as a child. She has a temper. This Steph has no mode other than happy. Even in her Batgirl series where she was noticeably more cheery, she still had moments of disappointment, worried about things, and felt more human than this

"We barely slept" skejendb in what world is Cass waking up early like come on.

Steph just being there to be Cass's hype man and constantly being cheery feels so wrong. Like yes is the old stuff she was always impressed by Cass's abilities, but there was always the underlying comparison of skill level between the two. It wasn't just "Oh wowwie cass, you're so cool!!!" It was "Cass can do this. And I can't" because Cass was testing her, making her try too, and it genuinely came from a place of her loving Steph and not wanting to see her getting hurt (once the two got to know each other).

Fundamental misunderstanding that the Batgirl mantle means "girl", as in "not an adult". Like... really? Barbara in Batgirl: Year One had graduated college, and iirc was serving in Congress when she was Batgirl before. It says in the first issue of Cass run that she's 17. Steph is in college when she's Batgirl. I would let the 13-14 comment slide because it's not actually a part of the comic but it's so blatantly obvious they're supposed to be children in this run. And Cass and Steph are not children. In fact even in Rebirth Detective Comics, Steph at the end along with Tim went on a roadtrip where they had implied (lied) to Bruce they were going to go start their freshman year. Iirc they slept together. And now Tim's like 20 and Steph is 14? Holy age gap Batman editorial!

Steph worrying so much about Babs approval. Like since when? The girl who got stone walled and cut off from the Batfamily because she didn't meet Bruce's ridiculous standards, and started patrolling during the day without backup because she wanted to be a hero cares about doing things Barbara's way? Someone who they haven't even established a relationship with? Like no offense DC, but Steph's interacted with Babs not all that frequently, I for a second don't think she's going to give too many shits about Babs approval

Steph comes off as a complete amateur who's never done any of this stuff before. Way to erase character development DC and repeat her shitty writing that was eventually used as an excuse to kill her off! Can you hear me clapping! Wonderful job! And while I'm here this is about batgirls, but fuck you seeley for calling Steph the failure as robin, because if you'd actually read those comics you'd notice how BRUCE NEVER GAVE HER A REAL SHOT. Because you're pretty much hit over the head with the "he's only using her to get Tim back subtext"

Going to Babs instead of doing something themselves is very ooc for both Steph and Cass as established in prev points. In what case would Barbara workaholic Gordon dismiss them like that either. "Go to bed you're delirious?" From the character that used to have surveillance cameras on the joker she constantly used to watch? Yeah laughable.

Barbara used a cane on (1) page and they put her bed atop a flight of stairs and the apartment is four stories up (implied in the beginning they had to walk up them sooo no elevator). It doesn't feel like they put much thought into how that would work out, or care about returning her to a wheel chair anytime soon with all those stairs everywhere. She treats Steph and Cass like her children when we've had 0 build up for a relationship with either of them. She fell asleep at her desk (Barbara sleeping is laughable).

I've seen comics treat Babs worse but I've never seen Cass or Steph this infantized. Congrats Batgirls writers, I hope selling out to fandom 1-D characters gets you good sales, and you had to do no work researching the characters so it's a double win! Thanks for ruining characters I like. It's literally not even hard to read either of there Batgirl series, congrats on tripping over the bar that was below the ground.

Edit: @fancyfade pointed out it was one of Steph's dad friends that assaulted her, which then led into being upset with her piano teacher latter (if i was writing batgirls, you better bet I'd have reread that issue)

That entire chapter is so stupid. It goes on to congratulate Zoya and Nikolai for "keeping Grisha safe" for about 2 seconds even though the Grisha are more vulnerable than before 🤦🏽‍♀️

"Zoya has been fighting for years to keep Grisha safe" oh you mean like the two years since the Darkling's death? in which she's accomplished absolutely nothing while the Fjerdans use parem to create Grisha slaves and the Shu kidnap them for secret government programs?? 😂☠️

"she has rebuild the Second Army from the tatters you left behind" bITCH HE INVENTED THE SECOND ARMY and she wouldn't have had to rebuild shit if you hadn't selfishly run away asdjkfhskjdfh

"Nikolai has unified the First and Second Armies in a way never seen in Ravka's history" uM the reason they were separate was because Grisha were never accepted but now we're going to congratulate a spoiled muggle prince for solving Grisha racism overnight??? Pfft ok

"And what about the innovations of Genya Safin and David Kostyk" as if that wouldn't have happened under the Darkling's watch 🤦🏽‍♀️ and also y'all were literally thinking of creating a doomsday device as a deterrent so it's not the woke take you think it is LOL

Riverdale should have been a Disney show. There I said it. I'll admit the first season was fine Great even. Self-contained with an intriguing mystery and you waited at the edge of your seat for what will happen next. But then... Part of the problem for me is because I've read the original comics since I was a girl. I still do get some from my mom, and the way they have changed the characters just bug me.Betty used to be the girl next door, always hopeful, smart, trying to figure out the mystery. And it was perfect that she was a reporter because Betty was always someone who valued honesty so her being the roving reporter was perfect. And her taking pills for anxiety or some sort of disorder was also a nice take because she does take on so much, and tries so hard to help and be good and nice and perfect. All the stress. Archie was also great in the first season. A bit horny, but he means well, and he truly is an average American boy so his big trouble of choosing between music and football. He's a klutz and sometimes his plans go sideways but he means well, he's all for family and Riverdale and school spirit. None of this whole Red Hood/semi mafia/wrestling nonsense. I actually really liked their take on Veronica, she still a bit materialistic and thinks she can depend on her wealth to get her out of trouble but I do like their take on trying to be enterneauripal and working to act less high class society girl as she was used to. 

Jughead, I'm conflicted with. Because he's good I guess as a brooding, investigative journalist he's good. It fits the setting of the show. But I do have a soft spot for him as the sane man to Archie. Going about his business, surprisingly philosophical. And you can't forget the most important attribute to him. His love of food! I miss that. Like the one scene in season 1, I forget what exactly but basically he ordered burgers and when Cole Sprouse just protectively held the burger to him...such a nice touch. That sort of guy I can see as a DCOM. The genius ditz I guess it's called. But he's not dumb. He just prefers napping to being awake. 

Now the others...omg.I have a bone to pick when it comes to the other characters in Riverdale. Josie and the Pussycats-- they are such lively musicians who solve crimes, sometimes in space. ABsolutely wasted here. Melody barely had any lines. And they didn't have Alex or Alexandra Cabot which was such a shame. I know, I know they're in the new Katy Keene show but having them be step-siblings who used to date is wrong and weird and bad and no! Stop having the twins in these shows with vaguly incesteous feelings. It's weird!