nivuulky - Nivuulky
Nivuulky

I'm a guy and a young adult [18↑] I request that you ask (and credit) if you want to use my content somehow. Don't repost / Use for AI. Keep in mind that I switch interests frequently. Apologies if I take a while to respond or finish something.

235 posts

Latest Posts by nivuulky - Page 6

5 months ago

So you aren't unincluded.

So You Aren't Unincluded.

Oo, not the best, but I send it regardless.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Noooo I love it!! I love Venti so much and your take on him is really cute :D tysm for this!


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5 months ago

So you aren't unincluded, either.

So You Aren't Unincluded, Either.

MAYAAAAA MAYA FEY MAYA IT’S MAYA OMFG MAYAAAA


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5 months ago

I drew something for everyone else so I had to do one for you.

I Drew Something For Everyone Else So I Had To Do One For You.

YIPPPEEEEE oh my god...... they are goign to be crushed......... waow.. I am so happi...... poor creature doesn't even realize he's about to be tormented sooooo bad........ I love it... shakes you shakes you shakes yoy /aff


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5 months ago

Hello lm hamdi ,I humbly ask for your support by reblogging this post on your account to help me and my family. As newcomers to Tumblr and GoFundMe, we are in desperate need of your kindness and support. 🙏🇵🇸🍉😔Please donate 🙏🏼Let's reach the goal as soon as possible .

Donate to Help me build a new future for my family., organized by Hamdi Ali
gofundme.com
Hello , my name is Hamdi and I am a father of 4 children I am from Palestine, spe… Hamdi Ali needs your support for Help me build a new fut

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5 months ago

Hello my friends! 👋💓

The situation in Gaza is worsening day by day, and my family is still struggling in very tough conditions. 😔💔

I only have $223 left to reach the $9000 goal, and I hope to achieve it today. 🇵🇸😢

I sincerely thank everyone who has supported and stood by us during this time. 💗🍉

https://gofund.me/abbc2759

Donate to Rebuilding Hope: A Gaza Family in Need of Your Help, organized by Maged Gaza
gofundme.com
We Need Your Help to Build a New Life After Escaping the War in Gaza. … Maged Gaza needs your support for Rebuilding Hope: A Gaza Family in

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5 months ago
Merry Christmas ⛄🎁
🎅🎁 "Merry Christmas! May your holiday season be as wonderful as you are, full of peace, love, and endless blessings. 🎄⛄"
🎄✨ "Wishing you a Merry Christmas filled with love, laughter, and joy! May this festive season bring happiness to your heart and home. ⛄🎁"
🤟☺️🎁
Merry Christmas ⛄🎄
Spread Love This Christmas
Help a Family this Christmas
Make a Difference
https://gofund.me/9d285810

Art By @momenalmdhoun

Merry Christmas! Our dreams may be simple, but they are filled with hope and love. With your support, we can keep these warm moments alive and continue our story.

Merry Christmas, and together, we make a difference.

🎄✨Donate If You Can🎅🎁

and be part of the hope!

Campaign Verified (verified, #174) !


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5 months ago

niv it’s your birthday :3 i hope it is a happy one !!! and i hope you get lots of birthday cheesecake as much as you want ^_^

Thank you! We're going to get Japanese food, actually.


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5 months ago

Happy birthday!! Have a wonderful day 💖

Thanks, 64! :)


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5 months ago

Hello my friend, I am Youssef from northern Gaza, I hope you will help me contribute, to protect my family and my sick child as soon as possible🙏🏽 Please, my son is sick and wants to be treated as soon as possible 🙏🏽 🇵🇸

110kr=10$ , 330kr=30$ , 550kr=50$

Vetted by @el-shab-hussein

Vetted by @gazavetters My number is #87

Donate to Help Youssef and his family escape the occupation, organized by Osam Lolo
gofundme.com
‏Imagine that you lose everything you have in the blink of an eye, you che… Osam Lolo needs your support for Help Youssef and his family esc

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5 months ago

Please, please, look at my donation campaign and help me. I have newborn children and my son Ahmed needs treatment. He is a heart patient and suffers from two holes in the heart. He needs help and treatment. We do not have money and we are stuck in Egypt because of the Gaza war. My wife and I lost my jobs and there is no source of income. I would like you to help. To care for my children and provide the necessary treatment for my child Ahmed, please donate even a little thing to save my child’s life

Donate to Donate to Save My Innocent Children, organized by sharif Al Amoudi
gofundme.com
Hello , I am (Shareef Alamoudi), I am from Gaza married and have twins children H… sharif Al Amoudi needs your support for Donate to Save My

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5 months ago

Yooooooop happy birthday!!!!! Hope you have a great day, you really deserve it :D

Ahh, thank you, Lyre!!


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5 months ago

BIRTHDAY 🎉🎉🎉🎉

HAPPY BIRTHDAYYYY 🎉‼️🎉‼️🎉‼️

Thank you, anon!!!!! :D


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5 months ago

I want to see theories and headcanons and analyses that include mental disorders that I see less fan content about so much more. I want to see ASPD, NPD, non-DID dissociative disorders, any non-cluster B personality disorders, learning disabilities, and so much more. All analysis posts are fun, but I simply get so excited when I see these.

Anyways, please send me your thoughts on characters even if I don't know them!


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5 months ago

Happy New Year, From GAZA 🌨️ ❄️

Happy New Year, From GAZA 🌨️ ❄️

Hello 👋, My name is Momen Al Madhoun / I am a digital artist / a devoted husband / a father of two children " Ezzdeen & Amir " I live in Gaza City in the heart of the Genocide, working tirelessly to amplify my voice to the world through my artwork. I walk long distances to access electricity and internet, creating under harsh conditions to ensure my voice reaches the Tumblr community through my art. I hope you support me to continue surviving and ensure the safety of my family. Thank you for your time. Stay safe 🙏

Gofundme Campaign Link


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5 months ago

Komaeda gets brave and decides maybe he can lean in for a kiss... only for Hinata to not understand, and Komaeda is just stiffly leaning forward with his eyes closed and his lips pursed with an incredibly awkward expression for 5 minutes as Hinata stares at him.


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5 months ago

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion*, and it might help. *(KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.


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5 months ago
SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).
SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).
SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.


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5 months ago

I know I've said this a hundred times but if you're worried about palestinian fundraisers being scams at least consider donating to MSF. It's a highly reputable organization which has broken its long-standing neutrality to denounce Israel in front of the UN. Here's all the aid MSF is providing to Gazans (documentation available in multiple languages).


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5 months ago

Please support this campaign for Gaza's children and elderly! It's spearheaded by a father in Gaza who works hard on distributing aid within his camp. Getting a supply of diapers is especially critical because they're costing $65-$75 per pack and so parents are resorting to makeshift cloth diapers that are giving their babies rashes.

Please Support This Campaign For Gaza's Children And Elderly! It's Spearheaded By A Father In Gaza Who

(Ignore the end of the video where I tell people to comment, that's for algorithmic platforms, here you can just reblog)


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5 months ago

Imagine waking each morning to a world turned to ruin, with nowhere to go and nothing to hold onto. Vetted by: 1) gazavetters my number verified on the list is ( #89 ) 2) a-shade-of-blue Here or Here 3) 90-ghost Here or Here 4) dlxxv-vetted-donations Here

Dear Friend,

My name is Ghazi Al Amoudi, and I’m reaching out to you from a place of profound despair. My family and I are trapped in Gaza, engulfed in the unrelenting turmoil of war. We’ve lost everything—our home, our safety, and the life we once knew 💔. Now, we find ourselves huddled in a fragile tent, exposed to the harsh elements, enduring hunger, thirst, and the fear that shadows us every day 💨💦. Imagine waking each morning to a world turned to ruin, with nowhere to go and nothing to hold onto.

With a heart burdened by sorrow yet clinging to hope, I am pleading for your help 😢. Every gesture of support—whether a donation, a share, or a kind word—moves us one step closer to finding safety and solace in this nightmare. Our home, once filled with warmth and love, is now just a memory beneath the rubble 💔. We are left with only fear and uncertainty, struggling to survive each day, hoping for a compassionate hand to help us stand once more 😔.

Please, if you can find it in your heart, help us find a safe place to rest, a meal to eat, and a chance to rebuild our shattered lives 😭🙏. Even the smallest kindness can light up our darkest hours, giving us the strength to hope for a new beginning 🥺❤️.

Here is my campaign link: https://gofund.me/8a2c70d7. If donating isn’t possible, sharing our story may help us reach someone who can. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your kindness and support 🙏❤️.

With deep gratitude, Ghazi Al Amoudi

25% of my long-term goal

2,528€ out of 10,000€

Donations are protected by GOFUNDME

Donate to From War and Tents to Safety: Help Us Evacuate Gaza, organized by Ghazi Alamoudi
gofundme.com
The bombs keep falling. Each day, my family and I wake up in Gaza t… Ghazi Alamoudi needs your support for From War and Tents to Safety: Hel

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5 months ago

There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people. 

A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.

Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.    

Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast  – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.                          

That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?

It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.      

And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.                            


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5 months ago

Hey so fun new scam just dropped! I got a call earlier today from someone spoofing the local police department's desk number, asking me if there was a reason I'd missed my jury summons this morning.

Friends, I had not received a jury summons for this month. Which I told him, at which point his previously clear diction suddenly turned into a rapid mumble, only becoming clear for scary words like 'federal' and then asking to confirm my address, at which point I hung up and decided to call the police department later.

When I called the police department the desk officer sounded so tired y'all. All I had to say was "Hey I got a call earlier saying I missed jury duty this morning?" and she immediately sighed and told me that yes it was a scam that was going around and thanked me for calling to confirm.

So this is your periodic reminder that law enforcement agencies will not call you to tell you that you're in trouble. If you need to pay a fine of some sort they will mail you a physical invoice. Anyone calling you saying they're from the police or any other law enforcement organization (up to the CIA and yes I have heard of scammers attempting to impersonate CIA agents over the phone) who then tries to get financial information from you over the phone is a scammer.

I know I actually bang on about this a weird amount, but it is my fervent hope that the information will stick in peoples' brains if they get randomly selected for the adrenaline spike lottery. Scammers use scary words to get you to panic in order to shut down your critical thinking, and if even one person's brain spits out "Tumblr user waterhobbit said the cops/CIA/federal marshalls don't call about this shit" before their bank account routing number is in the hands of assholes I will consider it a job well done.


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5 months ago

Do not really know what to say. A year ago we were making posts about how Gaza was being bombed through Christmas- how the oldest Christian community was being bombed- how the birth place of Jesus was being destroyed and his people murdered. A year later, it is going to be Christmas again soon, and the bombings have not stopped. But the news, and the attention seems to have died down considerably. It feels terrible and scary.


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5 months ago

Normalize seeing someone's lack of effort as their lack of interest in you regardless of what they tell you. Giving you all of the right words, but none of the right actions is called manipulation. If a person wants to be with you, they prove it. Period.


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5 months ago

stop letting miserable people on the internet convince you that you must have a concrete, well-constructed opinion on everything that has ever existed.


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5 months ago

‏I am mohammed Ayyad, I am 17 years old, high school student, I have 7 brothers, including 4 girls and 3 boys and my mother.

‏Since the beginning of the war, my family and I have been displaced 4 times, each time more severe than the other.

‏The first is from Gaza City to Khan Yunis, and the second is from Khan Yunis to the shores of Bahr Khan Yunis, then to the city of Rafah, and then to an area called Al Qarara .

‏My house was completely destroyed , everything is under the rubble my childhood, my memories, my books, and my ambition and Many relatives and friends were killed and life was completely destroyed.

‏ so l please you to help me and help my family collect donations to evacuation the war zone, get out of Gaza safely, and complete my school studies, via my donation link.

‏‎

Donate to I want to buy water and medicine for my young children becau, organized by Nasser  Ayyad
gofundme.com
‏I am mohammed Ayyad, I am 17 years old, high sch… Nasser Ayyad needs your support for I want to buy water and medicine for my

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5 months ago
This Doesn’t Make Sense And Is Like 98% Projection But Shhhh.

this doesn’t make sense and is like 98% projection but shhhh.

(pls fullview tumblr chewed this up, reblogs + tags appreciated i love seeing everyone's funny lil thoughts on my poasts :] )


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