So I Saw This Trend Like 84 Yrs Ago (yes I’m That Late)

stryfewood week day 6: memorial

My favourite genre of gay people is "They didn't have bdsm sex onscreen but, bdsm elements are always lurking in the corner and haunting the narrative through thinly veiled visual metaphorical implication."

Your Meta has Meta

a response to the “canon did it first” excuse for racism

Whenever someone points out that certain metas/fics/headcanons have racist implications, the overwhelming response tends to be that it can’t actually be the product of racial bias—because it’s just “canon.” After all, if a character really is cruel, petty, or abusive in the source material, how can Fandom be held responsible for writing them in character?

On the surface, this can seem like a perfectly good argument—except that it completely sidesteps the actual implications.

Consider, for example, the following interpretations (all from real metas):

Finn from Star Wars is a predator—he’s obsessed with Rey.

Scott from Teen Wolf is a rapist—he attacked Derek.

MJ from the MCU is a fake MJ who should be replaced—her hair colour is wrong & she’s mean.

Iris from The Flash is a b*tch who should be killed off—she’s useless & whiny.

Each of these statements could be explored at length for the bad faith readings that they are, but for the purposes of this meta, let’s assume they are all correct.

What would be the implications of that?

If Finn, the first Black character with a leading role in a Star Wars film, is a sexual predator towards a white woman—a trope that has a horrific, racist history—why then is the meta using that discovery to explain why the white fave is superior, instead of a furious exposé on Disney’s racist depiction of a Black man?

If Scott, one of the few heroic Latino leads on US television, is a rapist and secretly the villain—when only 3% of all leading roles go to Latino men, as opposed to 22% of all Latino roles being related to crime—why then is the meta using that to elevate three white male faves, instead of calling MTV out for its bait and switch? Why is it not righteously angry at yet another racist depiction of a Latino character?

If Michelle, a mixed Black woman in the role of the most iconic superhero love interest of all time, is just a fake MJ and not the “real” love interest—when Black women are already relegated to less than 4% of all speaking roles in film, never mind the rarity of playing a romantic lead—why then is the meta focused on getting a “real” (white) MJ to take over her position, instead of pushing Disney to make her status as MJ as explicit as possible?

If Iris, one of the few Black women in a lead role on network television, is a b*tch who’s useless and whiny—when Black women are consistently over disciplined for being seen as louder/more disruptive than their peers—why does the meta choose to solve this by murdering Iris, instead of petitioning the writing staff to stop leaning into racist tropes?

This is only a sampling of popular metas—and only a few of the endgame conclusions that have to result—but the point is that the racism is not a bug; it’s a feature. If they were actually true, it would make the source material so reprehensible as to make supporting it unconscionable—but that’s not what they’re used for. Instead, time and time again, they’re just used to push the COC out of their own narratives.

If a meta wants to claim it cannot be racist because it’s simply restating what canon did, then it must consider whether or not that makes canon also racist. And if it does—what does it want to say about that? Is the meta going to continue that racist pattern? Call out the creators for their stereotyping? Create additional metas and fics to attempt to address the revealed problem?

And denying that—if none of those options seem tenable—then maybe the correct response is to question whether the original meta was all that accurate to begin with.

stryfewood week day 1: accidental meeting

Trigun Stampede | s01e09

Meryl amongst the flora.

SouHaru Week | Day 7: Competition & Olympics

/aggressively ignores kyo*ni’s treatment of these boys so their rivalry can thrive/

Pre-menstrual depression is always depicted as like "He He! I had a box of icecream bars and cried while watching the Titanic!" But in reality, it's more like, "I'm standing the edge of an abyss. There is nothing good inside of me, I'm filled with rage and desperation."

It's crazy that being told how to deal with that is never a part of anyone's menstrual sex education.

i get annoyed when white people on this site act like tumblr is completely fine if you just 'avoid discourse', when discourse can literally mean calling out all the casual racism around you like its never 'peaceful' here for people of colour. Acting like tumblr is some special site where you can just get away from all the drama of other social media sites sure is a privilege i would like to have.

'Just curate your content!' doesnt work when its basically all the content thats the problem.