Pieces Of Media To Watch To Educate Yourself On Palestine’s Long History Of Suffering From The Zionist

fatima aamer bilal, from we were put on this earth desperate, hungry and willing.

[text id: you get nervous when someone holds your hand, you wonder if they can feel the rot.]

#Perhaps we are always hurtling our body towards

the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love

from the speeding passage of time, and so maybe,

like the dog obedient at my heels, we can walk together

peacefully, at least until the next truck comes.

the thing i think a lot of people don’t realize about rick and morty is that the question isn’t “does rick care about morty?” - it’s very obvious he does - it’s “does rick care enough about morty to change?”

More Lily

I want Lily Evans to be nuanced and dynamic in fanon writing because the fanon literally only ever depicts Lily as a beacon of heavenly light but she’s not, she’s a deeply flawed person capable of expressing negative traits and cruelty towards others and yeah, of being an asshole. I want her to be shown as an asshole sometimes because it never happens. And I want to see her having doubts in her relationship with James because it’s not the One True Pairing of the century; I want to see her have doubts and concerns about motherhood, about her friends, James’s friends, her sister, the people she left behind, I want to watch her justify the shitty things she’s done to herself and her family and friends, I want to see Lily’s morals warp and change, I want to watch her be painfully human and flawed, I want to see how her schooling changed the wild, colorful child she was, I want Lily to ruminate on whether she did the right thing and not know the answer but assure herself otherwise. 

I want the parts of her the canon either hinted at or never explored. We only hear about Lily from (99%) people who loved her, or were infatuated with her, or saw her as an angelic figure, or had only heard of her, with the possible exception of her sister. I want mundane Lily facts that have to do with HER, not her and James, because she is not half of a set that needs him to be complete or interesting. I want child Snape to keep coming back to her because she was a fascinating kid, or because she was a normal kid but literally all he had, or because she was a fascinating kid who grew into a shallow teen but she was literally all he had. I want to watch the subtle (honestly kinda insidious) house system change her behavior. I want to know about her relationship with her parents and Petunia, the places the relationships were strained, the silent dinners, where lines were crossed– It can’t all be one-sided antagonism on Petunia’s part. 

I don’t want anti-Lily or Lily bashing. 

But 

I want an actual examination and dissection of her character that has the room for her to be vivacious and loving and warm and compassionate, AND the kind of person who makes the sexual assault of her closest friend about her own hurt feelings. 

Really kind of boils down to that. That she’s been shown to have the capacity to be both of these people at once, but fanon only cares about one half or the other. Nah. She’s both. 

The Gendered Gaze in the Superhero Genre

Whenever media objectification of women is brought up (eg. “sexualization of female bodies is because our culture is centered around the male gaze”), some people like to counter with “but what about all the male shirtless scenes in Marvel movies?” The point being made is really that women can’t complain about our bodies being sexualized in media because so are men’s! Another argument is “well, women have been sexualized in media for so long, so let’s sexualize the men, too! Equality!” Additionally, many filmmakers/actors/fans like to justify said male shirtless scenes with “Here’s some eye candy for the ladies!”

But here’s the thing. Sexualization of male bodies in film and comics doesn’t actually cater to the female gaze.

Hyper-sexualization of both women and men in comics increased drastically in the late 80s and defined the 90s, especially with the rise of artists like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld.

You look at this and think “Hot women for straight men to look at and hot guys for straight women to look at. Sounds equal.” Except, female comic readership declined significantly in the 90s (mostly because of the increasing female objectification). Comics were being distributed to direct-market shops, which were largely male-dominated spaces. Even characters who were historically feminist and targeted at girls were being drawn by artists (Mike Deodato Jr.) who openly referred to their art as “porn Wonder Woman,” and were now being targeted at straight men. As far as the creators were concerned, their readers were predominantly male. Male comic creators were completely uninterested in catering to women. Their hyper-muscular male characters were targeted at men as power fantasies, and that’s really all there is to it.

These portrayals? Plenty of straight women appreciate it, sure, but this is still the male gaze. Male directors might convince themselves that it’s “a little something for the ladies,” but it’s not. It’s continuing a male-targeted trend of the genre.

I’ve watched the Superman movies (1970s to now) with several female friends, and my overwhelming observation has been that they are far more affected by Christopher Reeve’s sweetness and adorable awkwardness than they are by Henry Cavill’s muscles.

As a longtime member of internet fandom, I’ve also noticed a major trend in fanart drawn by women and queer people that actually minimizes the muscle definition of male superheroes, frequently accentuating their body fat and generally making them look very soft and squishy instead of bulging veins and eight-packs.

When women routinely prefer character depth to physical attractiveness; sweetness to big muscles; fuller bodies to tightly muscled ones; hand touches to shirtless scenes; it becomes clear that the “we’re doing this for the ladies 😉” argument has little ground to stand on. It’s not about equality. It’s not about pleasing women. It’s about male power and toxic masculinity.

So actually no, directors have no excuse for dehydrating Henry Cavill and Chris Hemsworth to the point of hospitalization so they can “look like a superhero” and give the ladies some eye candy.

Hop Nguyen by Eponine Huang

in berlin rn (when am i not)…….more berliner remus hcs? saw a variant of him on the u bahn the other day

ok good because ive been thinking about him 🫶 i have an ask somewhere in the drafts about modern au but

the things that our beautifully grumpy modern!remus would constantly bitch about (the general grime, the attitude, the like? random abandoned street furniture?) would be exactly the type of shit that little straßenratte remus would make a home out of in the 60/70s

his family is bavarian yes he was separated by the wall as a preteen etc etc but this matters bc i think he's like..... a massive poser?

you have to imagine this tiny farmboy drowning in a stolen men's xxl leather bomber very defensively trying to blend in at S036 and being so angry about it too

and he is hitting the schnauze EMBARRASSINGLY hard for the first year okay. he is producing the most aggressive "ICK" known to man

i get emotional thinking about the logistics of a little werewolf adopted by muggle teenage squatters & punks. they shove sozialistische deutsche studentenbund zines in his hands and spike his hair and he clomps around in hand-me-down boots three sizes too big

and yeah remus is a werewolf but i can't think of anyone more willing to deal with that than a codependent gaggle of self-proclaimed junkies who nurse friends through seizures and know all the abandoned factories to lock him up in?

and if he drags himself back to the squat needing stitches... he's not the only one? and maybe its unhealthy but they just ruffle his hair and laugh and call it lebenskunst and show him how to put cigarettes out on his own forearms without flinching and drag him to show after show after show after show after

and yes he still always feels like an Outsider

but maybe its only after a couple years of Hogwarts when he's 17 and less feral and his ribcage doesn't stick out anymore and he's taking sirius to the cheap schöneberg flat he's renting with galleons (that he earned!!) (!!!!!)

he looks around and sees it through somebody else's eyes for the first time and thinks that as shabby as it was he was never actually on the outskirts of his own life here? he was living it?

#hes joining the war on autism on the side of autism

how to end an argument

james potter was a leash child

the thing i think a lot of people don’t realize about rick and morty is that the question isn’t “does rick care about morty?” - it’s very obvious he does - it’s “does rick care enough about morty to change?”