It Depends, If You Do It At Home And Don’t Use Expensive Dye, I’ve Heard It’s Actually Pretty Cheap.

As a history student, the most ridiculous thing that tumblr social justice warriors ever made up is “cultural appropriation”. If you only had mild historical knowledge of any cultural exchange that took place before colonialism (the ultimate times of evil oppression besides the third Reich) you’d realize that what you consider your culture is probably just a mashup out of thousands ancient cultural aspects from many different cultures. “Culture” itself is an umbrella term for basically anything that might be associated with a certain group of people - and it is both fluid and highly subjective. Your political system has been culturally appropriated from somewhere once, and so has your educational system, your economical system, your religion and your language. If you want to get mad about cultural appropriation, how about you start with those monumental cultural appropriations before complaining about white girls wearing dreads?

A week or so ago, I was feeling nostalgic for my old Pokémon games, so I pulled out my old copy of Pokémon White, reset the game, and played through the main storyline.

Things I've noticed (spoilers for BW and BW2 follow):

Child!me was really bad at Pokémon. I basically just kept whichever Pokémon happened to be the highest level ones I had in my team, and if that meant randomly putting in a wild 'mon with a terrible moveset, so be it. I basically didn't consider type advantages at all. I'm pretty sure I wiped to Elesa like five times or so before I swapped in a ground type and manage to beat her, and the lesson I took from that was "wow, the Pokémon I added was only one level higher than the one I swapped it out for, amazing how much difference that makes!"

The "good guys'" arguments in the game are ... really bad. Like, I agree that they're correct about the empirical fact "is catching/training/battling Pokémon abusive," but there are a number of conversations that essentially go:

Team Plasma: have you considered that you're making Pokémon suffer, and that's bad? "Good" guy: I think it's important to consider different perspectives and let people make up their own mind on whether Pokémon suffering is bad! not everything is black and white!

Subtext I absolutely did not notice when I initially played through: Alder is really bad at his job! The Elite Four more or less tells you that he's abandoning his actual job duties to wander around Unova being sad that one of his Pokémon died several years ago. When N beats him, he randomly gets really upset about it and starts insulting him. No wonder by the sequels he's been replaced.

One thing I'd remembered as not being explicit until the second game was that outside of N, there are plenty of Team Plasma members who actually genuinely want to help Pokémon and were not abusive. I was remembering wrong -- this is pretty explicit in BW too.

HEY GUYS

GUESS WHAT

Ace people are queer!!!! And in the community!!!! And VALID PEOPLE

Haha I know. Currently I’m procrastinating on a memorization for school ... that’s due tomorrow.

Okay, so this is my tumblr account. I created it a few minutes ago, so there aren't any posts yet. But hi! I'm the creepy stalker knowledgeable person who posted answers to the game.

Molly hi!! congrats on tumblr. it’s a black hole of procrastination.

Okay, muggleborn headcannons are adorable. But can we take a moment to appreciate their poor parents?

Desperately trying to find a book about how to raise your kid who is all of a sudden a witch/wizard.

Trying to explain to the neighbors why your kid suddenly has an owl/toad for a pet and spends an excessive amount of time polishing that ancient broom out on the back porch.

Debating if it’s better to try and wash robes in the sink or just risk taking them to the laundromat.

Having to clean out their trunks when they get home from school because Merlin knows what the hell you will find in there.

Trying to keep any younger siblings from telling random strangers on the street that their big brother/sister is a wizard/witch.

Showing up to Diagon Alley for the first time and holy shit what the hell is all of this honey please make a friend with witch/wizard parents so they can tell us what to do.

Galleons? Knuts?

WHY IS YOUR TEXTBOOK TRYING TO ATTACK ME?!

Trying to explain to grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins why they can’t attend visitors day at the child’s new boarding school.

Having to come up with a whole new system of rules to deal with anything magical.

Standing awkwardly outside platform 9 ¾ and waiting for another wizarding family to show them what to do.

Learning that the main wizard sport, which your child is determined to participate in, involves riding around on a thin little stick a hundred or more feet in the air while moving at excessive speeds.

Getting letters from your kid after their first night demanding you come pick them up because there is no wifi and THEY SAID IF WE WENT TO THE FOURTH FLOOR WE WOULD DIE.

Seriously. Muggle Parents of Witches/Wizards are adorable. I just have this picture of them rushing out to Diagon Alley after the representative from whatever school visits them to tell them about their kid and they just buy every book they can get their hands on to figure out what the hell they’re supposed to do now.

In school we had to read Romeo and Juliet. Now, I’m not sure if you know this, but it has a man and a woman in a relationship. Like, if you want to read that sort of thing, it’s fine with me, but I frankly thing it’s outrageous to indoctrinate our children into thinking that sort of lifestyle is normal. This was a PUBLIC school too. Is that what you want your tax dollars to pay for?

omfg so today I saw a man and a woman holding hands in public, i mean i don’t have anything against heterosexuality but don’t flaunt it in front of me, think of the kids omfg

567. To make a horcrux, you have to give up one part of your body. That's why Voldemort doesn't have a nose.

re: self-inserts

I summon the demon Campbell Mark Swan. I wrote the words along the perimeter of an almost closed circle, drawn on a blank page of a notebook laying on my floor. I knew it wouldn’t actually work, but I still felt an excited anticipation as I closed the circle.

Keep reading

621. There was once a muggleborn witch who never knew that she wasn’t alone in the world. She taught herself how to control the power that sparked at her fingertips, how to bend it to her will and rearrange her life. After months, years of experimenting, she could brew luck, bottle death, conjure dreams, and conquer fear. When someone finally brought her into the fold, she became heralded as the most brilliant witch in wizarding history; Rowena Ravenclaw.

submitted by marinaseacrest