Has anyone read any – positive or negative – takes on āRosaā by black fans or black writers? Iād be interested in reading posts or articles (or seeing twitter threads or youtube videos) that arenāt just white people telling each other that the episode was great.
I thought it was a great episode, much more detailed and historically accurate than I expected. I do wish it had mentioned Claudette Colvinās part of the story, as the one who ignighted the bus boycott with her previous, less peaceful, arrest and conviction.
Iāve read a lot of white criticism of the episode on Reddit and Twitter over the last couple days, and while many posts say they donāt like being spoon fed a story, an equal amount missed major points that shouldnāt have needed to have been even more spelled out. For example, Rosa was clearly portrayed as an activist in the inner circle of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr wasnāt at her house randomly because all Black people know each other ā they were meeting.
And yet I keep seeing people complaining that Rosa was āmisrepresentedā because she was in reality an activist. Or that she was āchosenā as the face of the movement, as if she was a puppet and not an active participant herself. (Which really goes to show how nonblack people will twist information in order to put it in a bad light ā a lot of people seem to think that because she was an activist, the whole thing was faked. Thatās misrepresentation).
Another pain point Iāve seen is the time traveling villain, whose name I donāt even remember. Scruffy white guy sent back in time to stop the bus boycott. His motivation? Racism. So why are so many complaining he had no motivation? And why is racism considered a āboringā trait for a sci-fi villain? Especially since when I post about racism in media and fandom, people act like itās the most over the top suggestion (because racism is something only Evil People do)? Thereās nothing worse when someone thinks theyāre being called racist, but when a mass murdering villain is openly racist, thatās not a good reason to be a villain.
I wonāt even get into the people who wanted to āunderstandā the white space villain better. Or the ones who call him a dumb villain because heās from the far future, and obviously racism wouldnāt be a thing in his time (or maybe racism is something that isnāt exclusive to the US in the ā50s? Maybe itās not just going to go away by itself over time?). Like, no stopping and thinking about the implications, just, no, thereās no racism in whatever future world this villain we just met came from.
Which, of course, goes hand in hand with complaints that Ryan and Yazās talk about the racism theyāve experienced in the present day UK was unnecessary and āheavy handed.ā It was absolutely necessary for a British show exploring an American civil rights event to do that.
Anyway. Episode was great. A lot of the reactions, not so much.
Tag: text
Make no mistake. Trans people, especially trans women, are the canary in the coal mine. If the United States government manages to pass legislation making it essentially illegal to be trans again, mark my words it WILL continue on up to sending us right back into McCarthyism and the ākill or imprison anything you disagree with or dislikeā policies of the 1950s (not that that hasnāt already been happening under the radar, but itās going to be More).
There really are people out there who are acting like suggesting genetic testing to āconfirm the identityā of a group of people isnāt a wildly dangerous thing for a government to start doing. This is not a door that should be opened.
weāre not the canary. People already died in this mine, itās unsafe, but those in charge keep sending us in. This government has already illegally incarcerated innocent people, made false arrests and annulled citizenship based on ethnicity, stolen children from loving parents and given them to white, straight, cisgender christians. This government has enacted and encouraged policies around identification, citizenship, proof of being who you say you are and a citizen of where you live, that are only enforced when the people enforcing them decide they donāt like your skin tone, religion, politics. This government has made every effort possible to ensure that the physically and mentally disabled and chronically ill citizens will die faster while also forcing us to thicken the wallets of those who want us gone. This government is doing its damnedest to erode religious protections except for Good Old Fashioned American Christianity, which is being granted privileges and special rights to discriminate against people who donāt fit its narrow view of morality. This government is making the richest people richer, and convincing the poorest people that itās good for them by turning them against their best allies.
trans people, especially trans women, are not the canary. Weāre not a distraction, either, in spite of what some other people are saying. We are yet another in a long list of groups threatened by an administration that pushes fascist policy after fascist policy. And if weāre going to be a metaphor, we shouldĀ be the last straw.
bisexual women romantically and sexually love women. bisexual women love women not because of proximity to anyone else or because theyāre trying to imitate, please, or fool anyone. bisexual women love women so much and so vastly and so infinitely and so differently and so immensely and that wonāt change no matter how much anyone desperately wants to deny our love for women.Ā
that goddamn video of the girl complaining she doesnāt look her age while rolling the paint roller on her face is a great example of how people make fun of autistic traits even if they donāt have the language or knowledge to even pick someone out as autistic. like it has 1 million notes and every is shit like āi donāt even know why i find this funnyā like itās literally someone stimming and talking exactly the way i talk,, maybe thatās why itās fucking hilarious hey
someone once messaged me to let me know that Hannibal and Willās age gap was problematic and I was just sitting there likeā¦. Reallyā¦. thatās your first and most pressing issue with Hannigram, Really
theyāre cannibals, susan
cool peple be being transed gender
the hubris of man, bro
our eternal folly, dude
7 things you can do instead of writing your novel
1. HAVE AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS
Nothing brightens up your day like stopping in the middle of your daily routine to contemplate lifeās mysteries and the pointlessness of your own existence. The universe poses many impossible questions and itās imperative that you answer these questions instead of writing. Why do you even exist? Where did you come from? Where are you going? Where did you come from, Cotton-Eye Joe?
2. BINGE-WATCH TWENTY SHOWS ON NETFLIX
Itās okay. Itās āresearchā. How else can you justify sitting through WWII In Colour until 2 in the morning? Or better yet, pick a show with a million seasons. Preferably one from the 90s. FRIENDS, The X-Files, & Buffy are all good choices. Be sure to cry copiously during the season finales and give yourself a week long break from writing to recover emotionally.
3. START A BLOG
Why write your story when you can write about writing your story? Complaining on the internet to complete strangers about your creative failures is an age-old tradition. Even Hemingway did it! Give out crappy writing advice, rant about your charactersā personal lives, or just whine about your day job and hope your boss never finds your blog.
4. TWEAK YOUR OUTLINE
This novel is going to be perfect, goddammit! And you canāt get perfection from an imperfect outline. Sure, itās been months since you last looked at the thing but now is the perfect time to tweak all the scenes and create meticulous interviews for every single tertiary character mentioned in your book. Even if you consider yourself a stubborn pantser, you wonāt be able to resist the temptation of creating multi-page detailed outlines youāll probably never use again!
Tweak your outline until itās absolutely perfect. Tweak your outline until your story morphs into something totally unrecognizable and you find the real story hiding within. And if youāve ever felt like your novel is missing something special, now is the time to add that convoluted subplot involving half-baked conspiracy theories, Trumpās duck fluff, and your high school English teacher who gave you an C-. Thatāll show Mr. Stuart, that uncultured troglodyte!
5. CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!
Letās be real: you really canāt write your novel until the house is spotless. That pile of dishes youāve left neglected in the sink arenāt going to clean themselves! And letās not forget vacuuming, dusting, cleaning out the fridge, and scrubbing the spaces between your keyboard with a very small, very tiny, broomstick.
6. OPEN SEVENTEEN NEW TABS
Youāre a multitasker. Why stare blankly at your word document for an hour when you can open a billion new tabs and browse the interwebs for the rest of the day? Here, Iāll even get you started:
- Tab 1: Youtube cat videos on autoplay (for the ambience)
- Tab 2: Pinterest for all your story inspiration pins!
- Tab 3: That one Wikipedia article for āresearchā
- Tabs 4-10: TVTropes pages for āreferenceā
- Tab 11: Spotify playlist (for the right atmosphere)
- Tab 12: Facebook page of the person youāre stalking
- Tab 13: Google search result for āHow long does it take for a body to decompose and Iām asking for a book Iām writing please donāt arrest me FBI agent monitoring my computerā
- Tab 14-16: Three separate Tumblr dashboards for inexplicable reasons
- Tab 17: Blog article that advises you to stop wasting time on the internet and get back to writing Ā
7. BECOME AN ALCOHOLIC
Even Hemingway did it!
My score:6 out of 7.
problematic tropes are only problematic due to their prevalence, not bad in and of themselves; they are bad on a statistical level.
this complicates the discourse significantly as it means any individual application of a terrible trope is not very terrible at all, a subtlety that is hard to express and which most people donāt seem to get.
bold talk for a post that doesnāt even pass the bechdel test
is young dumb & full of cum referring to someone who does the cumming or someone who gets cummed in?
šš§ (archive) 