I Am A Dragon

Green heron (Butorides virescens)

I get in theory why people complain about het ships or whatever, I get wanting to watch queer media I really do, but I guess where y’all lose me is like. I saw some asshole on a post about Sinners complaining it was “hetslop”—this person was specifically doing so while also claiming Remmick was a queer character and thus they were justified in caring more about him than the Black protagonists. which is a whole other disgusting can of worms that has been well addressed by others at this point. but even in the absence of that part of the argument, like, no, i actually don’t think that a hunger for queer stories is an especially good excuse to deride and dismiss a piece of landmark Black filmmaking, especially as a non-Black person. I have a post that’s been going around encouraging folks to engage with more Native stories and characters, and I had someone come onto that post saying in the tags that they’d need these stories to be queer in order to care. and I just think that, you know, sucks! like obviously as a queer Native I also want to see more of those stories too. but idk how else to put it other than to say that Black people and people of color shouldn’t have to be like you in order for you to care about our narratives and experiences. and I think some of y’all are using this disdain for heterosexuality as a cover for your unexamined racial biases. it’s not okay to be racist to people just because those people happen to be straight, and you continue to be white before you are queer.

on an even more basic level than that, also, I simply just think some of y’all NEED to learn how to interact with media and storytelling without ships and fandom in mind. like if not being able to write fic about two men kissing is genuinely going to be a dealbreaker for you I think that’s actually something you need to work on within yourself because at that point I think you’re no longer really interacting with art and themes and narrative so much as just kind of playing with toys. which is, like, fine I guess. have fun. but it wouldn’t kill you to disengage from that from time to time. especially if would allow you to actually appreciate rich and deeply moving cultural stories from communities of color that you desperately need to learn how to see as human

I think for a lot of people “I am completely helpless and powerless” and “I am completely powerful and in control” are both basically comforting fantasies because most of us live our lives in an in between place where we have enough agency to be responsible for our actions but not enough agency to have true control over our lives and the tension between power and powerlessness in the day to day is psychologically wearing and exhausting

I’m reading this book about the changing arctic and the author stayed with the Nunamiut people of inland alaska for a while and talked to this high school kid who was like “ugh I hate going to school in the spring I wish I was hunting caribou” and I thought that was charming. you often hear about people who are devoted to preserving their traditional culture and knowledge but it’s rare to hear about someone who’s invested in the old ways out of pure teenage selfishness. school is lame and hunting caribou is awesome

is anyone else annoyed that "ai" encompasses both chatgpt and tools we train to do repetitive tedious work for us. and by the ripple effect of articles like "scientists develop ai to detect cancer early" that make people argue for the merit of chatgpt or become anti-medicine. and by the general state of the world and society

yk guys I think a lot of ppl when arguing against the death penalty go for a like "people don't deserve death, etc" view and I get why ppl argue for that I rly do! but it doesn't matter. I don't trust the government to do it, I don't trust them to decide who should die, I don't trust them to determine who is mentally competent, I don't trust them to not be bigoted and discriminatory in their practices, I don't trust them to have the right people, I don't trust them to execute it in a humanitarian way. and I've had discussions with ppl who otherwise have similar viewpoints to me in many ways but can think of people they think deserve to die, and I think if abolishing the death penalty is like, a super important cause to u the same way it is to me, the argument u use shouldn't be "well these people deserve to live" (although in some cases I think yeah the death penalty is done to people who totally don't "deserve it") because that's so subjective, it should be "do you trust the government to do it?" like, do you trust the people who cant even fill potholes on your road to determine who should and should not live

''what if you regret it'' then you will expirience regret - a normal and unavoidable part of the human expirience.