kill me slow with all your love

the image of the voodoo doll as a magic doll you stab to hurt people actually comes from a practice by english pagan witches of making poppets. the poppet would be made in the shape of someone you hate and filled with their hair and then stabbed with big needles repeatedly. and the poppets got conflated with voodoo dolls later on.

voodoo dolls were actually a way of keeping records when black people were prevented from reading or writing. a voodoo priest who would serve as a communities doctor would make a doll that looks like the patient, and stick a pin in it where the patient was experiencing symptoms, this would let the doctor keep track of who was having what issues. for example if a patient has a headache, the voodoo priest puts a pin in the dolls head. the priest gives the patient a treatment, when the patient comes back the priest knows which doll is theirs because it looks like them, and they know they're dealing with a headache because the doll has a pin in it's head. when the symptoms resolve the pin is removed, until then the doctor has a reminder that this is an ongoing issue for a specific patient.

I wrote this because when I saw it this post had a TL;DW that conflated the information about poppets and the information about voodoo dolls, creating new and original misinformation about voodoo dolls that comes from confusing them with poppets so like don't reblog that one maybe.

also someone else in the chain included this freeze frame so you can read it

They shot in the illegally occupied Western Sahara as reported by Middle East Eye (thanks to @fuckyeahdavidandyonatan for bringing that up)

They dumped their props into a protected area of the Italian sea after shooting (thanks to @godslop for finding the article in English)

Zendaya wearing looted 3000 years old Iranian earrings for the premiere of the movie + having her stylist fly on a private jet just to get her a dress for the premiere in London

No Greek actors in a movie about Greek heritage

While people mentioned that Anne Hathaway was flown in to the set every day, apparently it was not on a private jet but on a helicopter that was being used anyway to fly in equipment.

None of these things are new in Hollywood or exclusive to the Odyssey, its director or its actors, but I do think we as audience should start holding Hollywood accountable when it disrespects our culture, heritage, environment, especially when it's movies that are this big and have a huge budged that would allow for more conscious choices.

The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.

And I am not going to mince words here:

A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.

That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.

"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.

If I say "I am uncomfortable with fandom's tendency to write trans men as feminine and submissive" I do not mean "I think every person who writes feminine submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I don't even mean "any cis-person who writes feminine or submissive trans men should be chased with pitchforks". I mean "I would like writers to seriously think about why this is so common, why they write that, and if it fairly and genuinely engages with what it means to be a trans man, or if they just think it's hot when submissive people have vaginas and didn't want to write omegaverse of m/f".

Similarly, when people say "fandom is systemically less interested in black characters, less willing to give flat black characters rich fanon than flat white characters, and less interested in black characters in ships", the response is not to explain why you, personally, just happen to like popular white guy in that fanon. Your job is to look at yourself and ask if you tend to "just happen to be more interested" in the popular white guy across fandoms, be honest, and start unpacking that. Sometimes it's easier to love the flat character who's already getting 10,000 fics with headcanons and art and meta.

If somebody says "I wish there were more gluten free options at the potluck. I hate always showing up and not finding anything I can eat*", they are not asking you to throw your cake in the trash and weep. They do not want to hear your long speech about how actually this is your grandmother's recipe, and you've tried it with rice flour actually, but it just didn't work. You think about what you can do, and you listen to how they feel.