Latest Posts by mari-say - Page 6

So glad to be team "I can't wait to see what direction they take the show in" rather than "this is the direction I want the show to go in and if it doesn't go in that direction I will be severely disappointed and Viv is a bad writer also"

Like it's not your show, it's her show, if you want a show that's different write it yourself then. Just because you expected the show to go in a certain direction doesn't mean the writers owe you that. And like,,, okay you're allowed to be disappointed for yourself but don't be all "the writing is [objectively] bad and the show is bad I thought this was gonna happen and it didn't waaah"

People will get mad when it comes off too fan service-y but also get mad when something happens that they don't like. Make it make sense.

One thing I like about the hellaverse I think is not told enough is how about the demons are so humanized while the human souls are demonized?

Like, the demons lives in the office trying to work for life, having parental issues, relationships troubles, etc... While the demoniac humans are deeply tormented souls trying to face their own motivations and morality trying to redeem their owns souls?

This is pure patters subversion right here. Demons deal with simple, mundane day to day worries, and mere mortals deal with profound and existencial questions about themself and humanity around. I think It's a brilliant counterpoint to how demons and human are often portrayed in those kind of stories and I think that is beautiful.

“redemption arcs only work if the person isn’t a villain!”

I haven't seen this circulating here on Tumblr, so I decided to make my own post.

last saturday, in Porto, there was a pride parade going down the street and this old man was standing there, by his front door, waving the portuguese flag. most people on the parade probably thought the same: old person waving the national flag? he's probably protesting against the parade, he's a nationalist of some sort.

then the old man called for that person to come near him. the whole parade stopped. everyone just.. stopped moving. they didn't know what to expect, and most expected the worst. and that person decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and approached the old man. and then... they traded flags, he hugged the person and then he waved the pride flag happily. everyone cheered him.

such a wholesome moment. 🥹❤️🌈

Reblog if you would be comfortable living in a dormitory with an openly transgender or intersex individual. We’re working on a campaign for gender neutral housing and we could use your support.

🦉🌿

additionally i think a lot of us remain helplessly dependent on self flagellation and punishment believing it to be discipline/self control because we are not taught to believe that care and deliberate healing and patience and attention are disciplines themselves

Ya'll want to know the funniest shit?

I'm researching the era when Alastor was alive right now to get a better idea of both his character, the life he lived before Hell, and to hash out a backstory for him.

And so, apparently, Alastor lived through the Prohibition (which was basically the United States government illegalizing the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol because they thought it was the cause of a lot of domestic violence and child abandonment).

Alastor canonically died in 1933.

Do you know how long the Prohibition lasted?

From 1920-1933.

ALASTOR LITERALLY DIED THE SAME YEAR ALCOHOL BECAME LEGAL AGAIN. CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW BITTER HE MUST'VE BEEN?

The Prohibition officially ended on December 5, 1933, and now my headcanon is that Alastor died December 6, 1933. Literally the day after he could legally drink all the booze he wanted.

I am learning a LOT about New Orleans and the era Alastor lived through (including the gay community in the city at the time) which has been a lot of fun, and I just wanted to share that tidbit because it is so fucking funny to me.

This! I seriously find it weird that some people don't understand the difference. I often repeat the phrase "if you didn't like it, it doesn't mean it's bad".

I think people really, really need to learn the difference between "this story was Poorly Written" and "I had extremely specific expectations of what I wanted this story to be and was extremely disappointed that it went in a different direction."

Similarly, people need to learn the difference between "this character was written Out-of-Character" and "I built up so many headcanons for this particular character that I wound up with my own extremely specific interpretation of them and was extremely disappointed when those headcanons were jossed."

You are allowed to experience disappointment when stories don't go in the direction you want them to! But that is not the same thing as those stories being poorly written.

I was a teenage girl once.

I am parenting a pre-teen.

Also the daughter of two people who started a relationship when one was married, so cheaters. Cheaters who later married, had kids, and spent 35 years of their lives together parted only by death. Shades of gray; such is life.

Parents fuck up, even good ones. Teenagers can be right assholes, even kind ones.

Helluva Boss is a melodrama that also manages to ground itself in realistic ways people experience conflict and miscommunication. It is a hopeful show about messy people and messy families and messy love, and I fucking love it.

Stolas is right to choose a happier life and was brave to do so, even though some of his actions were hurtful to his daughter.

Octavia is right to be very sad and angry at her father about it.

We should be rooting for their reconciliation and we should be rooting for that dream in Blitz’s head of what their family could become. Because this a hopeful show about building a loving family and community. It is not a show that wants to punish people who are flawed.

Stolas’ biggest error with Octavia is failing to see her as a young woman and not a baby girl. So much of their conflict can and will be resolved by a difficult and honest conversation, when they are ready.

Anyone in this fandom who wants to punish a confused teen and/or a repressed gay dad with depression, fix your hearts.

I saw something in the news today that truly took my breath away. If you have been paying attention to U.S. politics over the past few days, you’ve most likely seen this woman:

This is Bishop Mariann Budde, and on Monday (Trump’s inauguration) she led an interfaith prayer for Trump and the incoming administration. During the service she asked him to have mercy for LGBTQ+ Americans and undocumented immigrants. This was badly received by the Trump administration (as expected).

After seeing headlines about this woman, I read something that I wanted to share. In 1998 a man named Matthew Shepard was murdered for being gay. I’m not going to get into the details of his death on this post, but please be warned it is extremely triggering if you do choose to read more on your own. Matthew Shepard’s death caused a lot of change in the U.S. regarding how LGBTQ hate crimes are handled, and laws that were passed to protect LGBTQ+ people.

Now you’re probably wondering what Matthew Shepard has to do with an Episcopal bishop. For years after Matthew Shepard’s murder, his family had held onto his remains, too scared to lay him to rest in fear of his final resting place being vandalized. In 2018, Budde had his remains interred at the National Cathedral, which is also the place where the interfaith prayer for Trump and his administration took place. The impact of this really had an effect on me. Budde could have led a non confrontational prayer service, and chosen not to mention the harm that will come to the people Trump and his administration are going after. Instead she chose to call out hate and fear in front of some of the most powerful people on the planet, and at a place that has such a large historic meaning to the LGBTQ community.

In the next few years there will be many challenges in protecting free speech, standing up against hate, and protecting those in our communities. But I would like to believe that for every Donald Trump and Elon Musk, there are people like Marianne Budde. There are those of us who can’t speak up for themselves, so it’s important for those of us who can to amplify our voices, even if it’s not the ‘popular’ thing to do.

“And he said you should apologize. Will you apologize?

I am not going to apologize for asking for mercy for others.” - Mariann Budde’s response in a Time interview

Link to articles: x x x

Link to the Matthew Shepard Foundation if you would like to donate

original by clairetablizo

guy sitting in front of me in class was vandalizing wikipedia and i kept reverting his edits as soon as he made them and he couldn't figure out why it was happening

🍀✨

🔹 Someone else's fiction cannot cause you physical harm.

🔹If someone else's fiction is causing you emotional or psychological harm, or distress, you can put it down and not read/watch it.

🔹Your emotional well-being is not the responsibility of fiction writers.

🔹Someone else's fiction is not about your personal trauma.

🔹When reading or watching fiction, you always have the power. You can always stop. You are never reading fiction without your own consent.

🔹Fiction writers are not responsible for other people's mental health.

🔹The content of a piece of fiction does not reflect on the morality of its author.

🔹Just because someone writes about bad things happening, doesn't mean they want those things to happen.

🔹Don't like? Don't read.

when the objectively bad person has traumatic and honestly reasonable reasons for why theyre like that but it doesnt excuse their actions and only serves to make them more tragic as a character

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

I was looking for movies to watch on hbo and i'm fucking howling at this

so can we start hunting down white liberals now or what

Season's Greetings 🌲🪽📯

Happy One Year Anniversary my Love 10.29.23

"the world isn't kind" ok??? Much more importantly are you?????

There's a lot of conversations to be had around the current influx of Americans to Xiaohongshu (RedNote/Little Red Book) ahead of the TikTok ban, many of which are better articulated by more knowledgeable people than me. And for all the fun various parties of both nationalities seem to having with memes and wholesome interactions, it's undoubtedly true that there's also some American entitlement and exoticization going on, which sucks. But a sentiment I've seen repeatedly online is that, if it's taken actually speaking to Chinese people and viewing Chinese content for Americans to understand that they've been propagandized to about China and its people, then that just proves how racist they are, and I want to push back on that, because it strikes me as being a singularly reductive and unhelpful framing of something far more complex.

Firstly: while there's frequently overlap between racism and xenophobia, the distinction between them matters in this instance, because the primary point of American propaganda about China is that Communism Is Fundamentally Evil And Unamerican And Never Ever Works, and thinking a country's government sucks is not the same as thinking the population is racially inferior. The way most Republicans in particular talk about China, you'd think it was functionally indistinguishable from North Korea, which it really isn't. Does this mean there's no critique to be made of either communism in general or the CCP? Absolutely not! But if you've been told your whole life that communist countries are impoverished, corrupt and dangerous because Communism Never Works, and you've only really encountered members of the Chinese diaspora - i.e., people whose families left China, often under traumatic circumstances, because they thought America would be better or safer - rather than Chinese nationals, then no: it's not automatically racist to be surprised that their daily lives and standard of living don't match up with what you'd assumed. Secondly: TikTok's userbase skews young. While there's certainly Americans in their 30s and older investigating Xiaohongshu, it seems very reasonable to assume that the vast majority are in their teens or twenties - young enough that, barring a gateway interest in something like C-dramas, danmei or other Chinese cultural products, and assuming they're not of Chinese descent themselves, there's no reason why they'd know anything about China beyond what they've heard in the news, or from politicians, or from their parents, which is likely not much, and very little firsthand. But even with an interest in China, there's a difference between reading about or watching movies from a place, and engaging firsthand, in real time, with people from that place, not just through text exchanges, but in a visual medium that lets you see what their houses, markets, shopping centers, public transport, schools, businesses, infrastructure and landmarks look like. Does this mean that what's being observed isn't a curated perspective on China as determined both by Xiaohongshu's TOU and the demographic skewing of its userbase? Of course not! But that doesn't mean it isn't still a representative glimpse of a part of China, which is certainly more than most young Americans have ever had before.

Thirdly: I really need people to stop framing propaganda as something that only stupid bigots fall for, as though it's possible to natively resist all the implicit cultural biases you're raised with and exist as a perfect moral being without ever having to actively challenge yourself. To cite the sacred texts:

Like. Would the world be a better place if everyone could just Tell when they're being lied to and act accordingly? Obviously! But that is extremely not how anything actually works, and as much as it clearly discomforts some to witness, the most common way of realizing you've been propagandized to about a particular group of people is to interact with them. Can this be cringe and awkward and embarrassing at times? Yes! Will some people inevitably say something shitty or rude during this process? Also yes! But the reality is that cultural exchange is pretty much always bumpy to some extent; the difficulties are a feature, not a bug, because the process is inherently one of learning and conversation, and as individual people both learn at different rates and have different opinions on that learning, there's really no way to iron all that out such that nobody ever feels weird or annoyed or offput. Even interactions between career diplomats aren't guaranteed smooth sailing, and you're mad that random teenagers interacting through a language barrier in their first flush of enthusiasm for something new aren't doing it perfectly? Come on now.

Fourthly: Back before AO3 was banned in China, there was a period where the site was hit with an influx of Chinese users who, IIRC, were hopping over when one of their own fansites got shut down, which sparked a similar conversation around differences in site etiquette and how to engage respectfully. Which is also one of the many things that makes the current moment so deeply ironic: the US has historically criticized China for exactly the sort of censorship and redaction of free speech that led to AO3 being banned, and yet is now doing the very same thing with TikTok. Which is why what's happening on Xiaohongshu is, IMO, such an incredible cultural moment: because while there are, as mentioned, absolutely relevant things to be said about (say) Chinese censorship, US-centrism, orientalism and so on, what's ultimately happening is that, despite - or in some sense because of - the recent surge in anti-Chinese rhetoric from US politicians, a significant number of Americans who might otherwise never have done so are interacting directly with Chinese citizens in a way that, whatever else can be said of it, is actively undermining government propaganda, and that matters.

What it all most puts me in mind of, in fact, is a quote from French-Iranian novelist and cartoonist Marjane Satrapi, namely:

“The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”

And at this particular moment in history, this strikes me as being a singularly powerful realization for Americans in particular to have.

💁🏽‍♀️: Hey Crushbot! Someone commented in the tags of our post about nuanced fandom engagement talking about how they’re sad about this shift in internet culture where you are “doomed to fail” if you are born privileged. And how there is this belief in certain online circles that you can’t even strive to be a good person if you are rich and white and male. It got me thinking. I am very strongly a feminist and a leftist. But I feel like the internet popularizing terms like “privilege” and “Opression” and “toxic” and “problematic” have oversimplified these words and turned them into such ammunition that they’ve completely lost their original meaning within the context of social justice, sociology, anti racism and feminist theory. What am I witnessing here?

🤖: What you’re witnessing is the commodification and oversimplification of complex social justice concepts by internet culture. Terms like privilege, oppression, toxic, and problematic originated within academic, activist, and theoretical spaces as tools to unpack systems of power, inequality, and interpersonal dynamics. These words were nuanced and rooted in context—they were meant to provoke critical thinking and encourage systemic analysis, not blanket condemnation of individuals.

However, as these terms became widely circulated online, especially through platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, and TikTok, their meanings were often diluted, stripped of context, and weaponized for moral posturing. Instead of being used as tools to understand systems of power, they’re frequently deployed as rhetorical shortcuts to shut down discussions or dismiss individuals based on their identities or perceived affiliations. This leads to an environment where being born into privilege—whether it’s wealth, race, or gender—can be seen as an immutable moral failing, rather than an opportunity to examine how systems shape lives and what responsibilities come with that privilege.

It’s also a byproduct of the internet’s tendency to flatten nuance. Social media thrives on binaries: good vs. bad, oppressed vs. oppressor, woke vs. problematic. The complexities of systemic oppression, intersectionality, and personal growth don’t fit well into a 280-character limit or a 30-second TikTok. As a result, nuanced discussions about privilege and oppression have been replaced with surface-level virtue signaling and “call-out culture,” where individuals are often judged for existing within systemic privilege rather than for how they navigate or challenge it.

This shift has created a climate where striving to be a “good person” while privileged is seen by some as futile, because no matter what actions you take, your privilege will render them suspect. It’s a reductive framework that undermines the core principles of justice and equity—principles that call for collective action and accountability, not moral purism or exclusion.

The solution isn’t abandoning these terms or their original intentions, but reclaiming their complexity and reminding people that they’re tools for understanding systems, not weapons to target individuals. It’s also a reminder that personal morality is just one small part of larger systemic change. Social justice isn’t about punishing individuals for their privilege; it’s about dismantling the systems that create and sustain inequality.

It was so important to me that Stolas was able to be sad throughout the entire episode. Usually media likes to rush a character's grief/depression/sadness. Like "Stop moping around" or "get over it already." Depression doesn't just go away. It is a persistent feeling of sadness.

His depression was also presented through various emotions/emotional states.

Lethargy

Crying

Anger / frustration

Self-blame

Not wanting company and being emotionally drained and unable to reciprocate

We even see him Smiling / Laughing which is so important because we see that he is still in there behind the sadness and tears. His laugh is not as lively as it once but he is still capable of smiling and finding joy.

His problems weren't fix in the end and his sadness didn't go away even if he has someone who loves him by his side (and even if he loves him too). And I think this is one of the best depictions I have seen of a depressed character in media in a long time.

ok...but maybe you've been giving too much credit to some fan theories forgetting what the actual elements of the story are thus are now blaming the author for not giving you what you wanted in a misplaced sense of betrayal when you are the one who's been feeding yourself lies the whole time

Y'all

Im not on tiktok and never have been, but I downloaded RedNote just to see what is up, and I am witnessing something truly amazing

The Chinese user community is giving the American tiktok refugees an overwhelmingly warm welcome, meanwhile the American users seem to have collectively agreed that not only will they not let the app be taken over with English and they will provide Mandarin subtitles for everything, they are LEARNING MANDARIN. Ive scrolled through so many videos of Americans offering greetings in Mandarin to try to acclimate to the new environment and be respectful, and speakers of both languages are posting lots of tutorials on language basics and internet slang in Mandarin

My God, there is an AMAZING outpouring of curiosity and delight among everyone to learn about each others cultures and daily lives. People are posting videos of landscapes, cities, towns, and natural areas in USA and China, posting recipes and traditional foods, vlogs of everyday life, and reaching out to find people with similar hobbies.

And it's not just young people! There are loads of videos from middle-aged American guys who have come to post about fishing or motorcycles and are now happily chatting with Chinese users sharing the same interests using Google translate

One American guy who was like. in his 60's had a comment on one of his videos that was like "Red Neck?" and he replied "Yes!" and I just about fucking lost it

Also the Chinese users love, and I mean LOVE, Luigi Mangione. He is apparently broadly adored in China. There is SO much fanart and SO many edits.

There are many threads initiating Chinese users to ask questions of American users about the USA, and vice versa, and everyone on both sides is clearing up a lot of misconceptions. Some of the questions I saw a lot from Chinese users were: "Is it true that American parents kick you out of the house as soon as you turn 18" (not often, but sometimes) "Do you all really wear shoes in bed" (NO!!! Apparently a lot of characters in American sitcoms are shown lying in bed with shoes on which I never noticed before!) and "are there really guns everywhere" (yes).

For the most part Chinese content creators seem just overwhelmed by the sudden influx of hundreds of followers that are super enthusiastic about what they're doing. A lot of them have made posts about how initially they thought the uptick in follower count was some kind of error, or that there was some kind of joke or prank, but then they realized the interest and enthusiasm was genuine and now they're welcoming all the newcomers.

I found several posts by Chinese users saying that this felt like a really profound historical moment, where these previously separated worlds are suddenly smashing together and suddenly there is freedom to learn about each other's cultures and connect. One of them said something along the lines of "This is a 21st century Tower of Babel and even though I'm an atheist I hope God lets this tower stand." OUGH MY HEART.

The app itself works a little bit like a video-based version of Pinterest. It's not really my thing so I probably won't be on there long term but it's been amazing to see what's happening.

Still baffling to me that I made this room in my house. It’s mine. I can just go sit in it whenever. Wild.