Askyridersdomain - UnTiTlEd

I want to take a moment to talk about Trini. Yes, everyone has talked about this and I’m sure that whether or not you care about the Power Rangers reboot, you’ve heard about how the Yellow Ranger is a lesbian. I want to talk about why exactly this is significant, and why how it’s handled is so important.

Power Rangers, as a franchise, has had a history with the LGBT community from the very beginning, but not in a good way. David Yost, who played Billy in Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, is gay. Not only is he gay, but he ended up leaving the series due to constant harassment and homophobic bullying from the crew of the show. He walked off the set of Power Rangers Zeo and never looked back. The way they wrote his character out of the show? By having Billy fall in love with a woman offscreen. They offered him a part in a later series, but he understandably turned the offer down.

Despite the franchise’s focus on diversity, they’ve never had an explicitly queer ranger, or even supporting character. They’ve certainly hinted at it in a few cases, the most overt case being Vita Rocca in Power Rangers Mystic Force. She was butch, had a two part story about being the slave of a vampire queen, and enthusiastically agreed that said vampire queen is hot at the end of the season, but none of that was actual confirmation. It was just a little bit of winking and nodding when the moral guardians weren’t looking.

But then this movie came out. And we got to see Trini, the first ever Yellow Power Ranger, come out. Contrary to what you may have seen in fanart and fanfiction, Trini isn’t smooth with other girls, she isn’t openly gay, and she isn’t in a canon relationship with the Pink Ranger. I love those pieces of fanwork as much as the next person, but the movie itself provides a different picture of Trini’s relationship with her own sexuality.

Like I said before, for decades Power Rangers has never done more than playfully hint at a queer character. That changed with one scene. All five of the heroes, sitting around a campfire and talking about their personal issues. That scene is the first time the subject of sexuality has ever been openly discussed in Power Rangers.

It’s a scene where Trini, who has been reserved and has tried to isolate herself up until now, admitting that she likes how often her family moves around, because that way her parents never get a chance to ask her about her relationships. Zack, who up until this scene had been relentless in flirting with Trini and hitting on her, no matter how often he was pushed away and rejected, jokingly asks if she has boyfriend troubles. When he picks up the sarcasm in her response, it clicks for him, and for the audience. If you pay attention, Zack never once hits on Trini after that. He understands, and he treats Trini as nothing more than a friend from that point on.

“Girlfriend troubles?” Is the first time I can ever remember the concept of someone being gay being brought up in a superhero movie. Despite gay and bisexual characters being in films before (Iceman, Mystique, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, Wonder Woman, etc.) their sexualities were ignored and pushed to the side, where viewers wouldn’t see them. But with Power Rangers, Saban finally tried to make up for their past treatment of LGBT people. It’s Billy, now played by RJ Cyler, who tells Trini that her friends will accept her no matter what.

And Trini? She admits that she’s never told anyone about her sexuality before. She’s never openly said that she likes other girls. She tears up when she talks about it, about how terrified she is of coming out to her family. How she doesn’t even know how to tell them what’s going on. And with the overwhelming, sickening trend in film and television of murdering lesbian and bisexual characters, Power Rangers ends with a scene of all the Rangers hanging out in detention. The last shot we see of Trini? Smiling at her friends and playing with a pen. Alive. Happy. Healthy. Knowing that her friends are aware she likes girls, and knowing that they’ll always be there for her.

This movie is the first time that lesbian and bisexual women have been able to see themselves as superheroes on the big screen. It’s the focus of Trini’s character arc, finding acceptance among her new friends. So often, LGBT teens end up in a position where they don’t know how to talk about what they’re feeling. They feel trapped and alone, and this movie went and told them that they won’t be. They’ll find people who love and cherish them. There’s a hero who is like them, and who is struggling with her identity just like they are.

I’m not afraid to admit that I cried when Trini came out. I’m sure I wasn’t the only woman who teared up at finally, finally being able to see herself in a superhero. It feels so powerful, and so wonderful.

two cups water one cup rice

makes a treat that's very nice

rice for me and rice for you

rice to eat with bowl of stew

Brother just asked 'what is something you can crush'

Dad: hopes

Me: peasants

Dad: dreams

Me: weaklings

Dad: Orange

Me: armies

Brother: ...I meant something physical, like nuts or ice.

Dad: sorry then son, can't help you there.

Paralympics PSA!!!

If you watched the Olympics and loved it then you should 100% watch the Paralympics because it's just as great and in some cases the sports are even more insane than the Olympics (looking at you Wheelchair Rugby, affectionately also known as Murder Ball).

This year the Paralympics will be available to watch in over 160 countries on the Paralympic Games YouTube channel for the first time ever. And on the Paralympics website there's a full list of the official broadcasters for each country.

Root for your athletes, of pick a random country and root for them, the most important thing is ensuring that disability sport gets the showcase it deserves

So, there's a dirty little secret in indie publishing a lot of people won't tell you, and if you aren't aware of it, self-publishing feels even scarier than it actually is.

There's a subset of self-published indie authors who write a ludicrous number of books a year, we're talking double digit releases of full novels, and these folks make a lot of money telling you how you can do the same thing. A lot of them feature in breathless puff pieces about how "competitive" self-publishing is as an industry now.

A lot of these authors aren't being completely honest with you, though. They'll give you secrets for time management and plotting and outlining and marketing and what have you. But the way they're able to write, edit, and publish 10+ books a year, by and large, is that they're hiring ghostwriters.

They're using upwork or fiverr to find people to outline, draft, edit, and market their books. Most of them, presumably, do write some of their own stuff! But many "prolific" indie writers are absolutely using ghostwriters to speed up their process, get higher Amazon best-seller ratings, and, bluntly, make more money faster.

When you see some godawful puff piece floating around about how some indie writer is thinking about having to start using AI to "stay competitive in self-publishing", the part the journalist isn't telling you is that the 'indie writer' in question is planning to use AI instead of paying some guy on Upwork to do the drafting.

If you are writing your books the old fashioned way and are trying to build a readerbase who cares about your work, you don't need to use AI to 'stay competitive', because you're not competing with these people. You're playing an entirely different game.

why you should watch dead boy detectives on netflix

You are the Moon