Please ask me about my dragons

I have a book I’ve written, that I just haven’t posted anywhere out of fear. The leading lady is a pansexual/romantic trans girl cop, and she has a best friend in the coroner who’s an asexual sex repulsed homoromantic cis girl that really likes lizards. I would send my asexual friend the chapters to beta, because I’m not ace and I don’t want to fuck up anything.

The entire time she would mention loving their interactions (she wasn’t subtle about shipping it at all) and I, very excitedly gave her the chapter where said asexual character admitted to her father figure she was in love with the leading lady. She spent a good couple of pages freaking out about asking her out “I know she’s cool with me being asexual but what if she’s not cool dating an asexual? What if she takes it as an insult??” etc. Basic shit I thought almost all media with ace characters would cover.

Later, she calls me on skype, and is literally fucking crying. Apperently, ace media rarely considers ace people still having romantic feelings and almost never covers the difficulty, the fear, the nervousness. She said that character resonated so hard with her, it felt like she got hit in the chest and it proved to her I did care about people like her.

When I explained that I wasn’t even trying, it just felt natural to write she started bawling more and fucking begged me to keep writing especially ace/aro characters.

$7.25 x 40 hour full time work week: $290

$290 x 4 weeks per month: $1,160

That weekly check comes to, according to you, 290. Most places DO NOT pay for your half hour lunch that is required by law. So your beginning number was wrong. $7.25 x 7.5 hours a day x 5 days a week only gets you $271.88.  Most people in America get paid bi-weekly, so let’s double it to get the budget. $543.75. That’s GROSS, not NET. Out of that comes anywhere between 10% and 15% taxes depending on state so we’ll low ball it at 10%. Automatically down to $489.38 a pay check. Now health insurance. Usually anywhere from 70-100 a pay check for the cheapest plans. Again, we’ll low ball and go $70. So now we have $419.39 a paycheck. x 2  = $839. 

Eight hundred thirty nine dollars. A MONTH.

But again, you seem to think that’s fair. So let’s proceed. You say rent is $500? Okay. This person now has $339 left to buy groceries for the whole month, pay utilities, car payment, car insurance, and gas money to get to work. 

Those are the bare needs. You have to eat. You have to pay for heat, water, garbage removal, gas and or electricity because apartments do not always include things and rarely all of the above. Most cities in America do not have public transportation. Mine doesn’t despite the fact that our population is over 15,000 people, not counting a taxi. If you have a car, you have to pay that. If you have a car, legally you have to have car insurance. You have to pay that. You have to have gas in that car to get to work to make that money.

Now if you can tell me you can get all of that out of $339 you’re lying.

You are so focused on rent that you aren’t thinking about everything else people have to pay for. Rent was an example. This is a breakdown of the budget you gave me and it’s not possible to live off that in 2017 America. 

And BECAUSE this person makes over $800 a month, they probably won’t qualify for financial aid or food stamps. $800 is the line in my state where they won’t help you. No food stamps, financial aid, or government housing if you make more than $800 a month. 

Dear White People,

I know that you are excited about Black Panther. I know that all the memes that Black Tumblr and Black Twitter are creating are hilarious and wonderful, as is all media we create. After all, it’s already the best Marvel movie ever made, with the most beautiful cast, and the most perfect costumes and special effects.

That being said though… please think long and hard about how you talk about characters in this movie. T’challa is not your bae. Killmonger is not your precious son. Shuri is not your wife. Absolutely none of the characters are your children or your smol anything. Most specifically? The characters AREN’T YOURS.

The language of anti-black racism is often couched in terms of infantilization and ownership. I don’t give a shit if you’re just putting it in tags, be careful how you interact textually and mentally with black characters.

Black Panther is a movie for black people. Sure, a lot of people are going to see it, but this movie is, for many a black nerd, a lifelong dream. It’s ours, and while you get to share it, you don’t get to fucking claim it. 

The MCU fandom already turns black characters into mammys and servants and sidekicks for their white favs, and it’s bullshit. You turn black pain into plot points for your white favs. Basically you have a long history of treating black characters like shit, and I’m here to tell you to cut that shit out.

Your white favs do not belong in Wakanda. They don’t belong there in meta, in head canons, in fic. The only reason Buckwheat Barnes gets to be there is because he’s currently being used as a decorative ice sculpture for state dinners. You have literally the rest of the entire fucking MCU, go play in that sandbox and leave Wakanda alone. 

Love,

Me, and Black Fans Everywhere Who Are Tired of Your Shit

#a lot of the responses seem to be taking this as discouraging white people from seeing or enjoying black panther #but like as a white person reading ops post this says to me go see and enjoy this movie and be respectful of the characters 

#the thing about infantalizing especially cause like yeah that’s a way a lot of people including me interact with characters in general #calling them smol or precious but like from what I have read that has a whole different context when it comes to black characters #because of racism and historical contexts like op said 

#and then also just ya know not using wakanda as a playground for white people seems pretty simple to me #like ah yes let’s put all my white characters into wakanda seems too close to colonization 

#tldr op isn’t saying don’t see the movie they’re saying be responsible with how you engage with fiction

They also introduced new animals. There was a new penguin based off of Ice Climbers, a couple new dogs that were pretty much Scrappy and Scooby Doo, a white rabbit and a Dinah from alice in wonderland, and one was just bowser in fancy clothes. I think bowser might have been eligible to marry??