Tag: ask

I know you’re mainly a star wars blog but I wanted to know what you think of Nagini being a korean woman?? I don’t want to rain on her actor’s parade but the whole thing doesn’t look good imo

I fucking hate it. There are so many layers of fuckery here it’s hard to unpack, but just confining myself to the casting:

  • Nagini is a Sanskrit name and yet she is played by a Korean woman. Not that casting an Indian woman would have made this shitshow any more palatable, but the idea that Asian identities are largely interchangeable? The levels of racist ignorance wow.
  • Yet again, the face of “Asia” is the palest East Asians. We already have a problem with Asia, the largest continent in the world and a hugely diverse one, being thought of as mostly Northeast Asia, with other groups regularly erased. Nice way to make this explicit. Again, not that casting a Desi woman would have made it better because this whole idea is so fucked from the start, but it is an extra shit cherry on top.
  • The exotic Asian slave woman who in this case is literally dehumanized, just gahhhhh no.
  • I don’t blame Claudia Kim for taking the role, actors of color often have to make the choice between shitty jobs and no jobs at all. This may well have been one of her better offers for all we know. I do blame Rowling for masterminding this total shitshow.

Have you ever hit a boring scene in your WIP that? not even? boring? It should actually be? an exciting development? You just? don’t feel like writing that scene? ever? Because I have

I hung onto this ask for like a week because I was living it lol, having been stuck on a scene myself and ashamed of it. I think I see a way out though, so I’m better able to talk about it now.

When I get stuck on a scene it’s generally because there’s some resistance or difficulty. If the scene is truly pointless and uninteresting it should be cut, but I can get stuck on even an interesting and crucial scene–sometimes because it is so interesting and crucial and I don’t want to get it wrong. Sometimes the nature of the block is emotional; I stalled on a fic for months because a major character was going to die in the upcoming chapter. When I finally did write it I was a crying mess and frequently got up from the keyboard to pace furiously around the house, comforting myself. (This was a character I had partly modeled on my husband, too. I have a bad habit of painfully and graphically killing characters I base on him.)

Sometimes a block is mental, as in I’m not clear what should happen in a scene and that makes me resistant to writing it. This happens to me a lot with battles involving a large number of people, I’ve found, and it contributed to my block in the above example too. I am currently blocked for over a week in one such scene where there are three factions and at least five different agendas involved. While I haven’t made progress in writing it, I did write out in my notes how some of the characters might respond and how the story might go. The scene feels less daunting now as a result.

From my experience, in sum, it’s helpful to work out what exactly the block is and then find a way to break it down. Making it more specific is the first step.

Jesus, that blog must have been an ordeal to deal with. Suspect that they’ll block you?

She’s already blocked me and then STILL INTERACTED WITH ME lmaoooo. Srsly, she left me a note on a different post that I can’t see in full or respond to because of the block. Whether the block came before or after the reply is immaterial, since she already expressed a wish not to speak to me anymore–but that’s only when I can talk back, evidently. If she genuinely considers me a harassing bully or someone she otherwise wants to avoid she has no reason to purposefully interact with my blog.

I’ve seen this happen to @diversehighfantasy when anti antis blocked her then purposefully got in her notes so she couldn’t reply. One of them, thesovereignempress, outright lied about blocking her. It’s almost an honor, really, that I’m considered worthy of this dishonest treatment. Of course I haven’t done a fraction of what dhf has done in the discourse, nor have I gotten a fraction of the shit, but once I bring up racism in fandom I’m considered a threat/harasser/in league with harassers and deserving of these disingenuous tactics. Convenient, really.

Also it’s really rich that korrasera goes on and on about cognitive flaws in authoritarian personalities but is unwilling to confront any of her own biases. She is a deeply dishonest and at this point slightly scary person, since she has repeatedly demonstrated that she is willing to rewrite reality to whatever will suit her frame. I suggest people block her, though I’m going to leave her unblocked for now to see what else she gets up to.

The alt-right is scary. I once engaged someone making antisemetic comments on a conservative page (at one point he even said something to the effect of the Holocaust being a good idea) and when I confronted him he said he was Jewish and his ancestors were Jewish so basically he knew better than anyone that Jews were scum and the world would be better off without them and I was like YIKES

So either seriously self-hating Jewish person or a faker? Either way, holy shit.

Again, I know I don’t speak for all Christians, but neither does that anon, so whatever. I always saw the passages in Proverbs describing Wisdom as both a woman and with God at the creation to mean God is Wisdom, and the idea of God is sometimes described as male, sometimes female, but is ultimately beyond chromosomes and gender, and human writers applied the pronouns. Plus, the Holy Spirit bears similarity to bat kol, or the Daughter of the Voice, and the first Christians were Jewish. (Moth)

Hmm, can’t comment on similarities to the bat kol or the first Christians being Jewish, since I’m not versed in that history. Were the early Jewish followers of Jesus actually Christians in the modern sense or did they consider themselves a new sect of Judaism? Idk. Christianity definitely owes its existence to Judaism, but there’s been a lot of drift in both faiths since the days of Jesus the Nazarene.

As for the rest, yeah, I think it’s totally valid to read God as masculine and feminine at various times, or transcending gender altogether. Gnosticism, for instance, definitely saw Sophia (Wisdom) as a feminine aspect of God.

Anyone who believes God is male because men are higher than women does not understand the nature of God, or patriarchies as they should be. A patriarchy should not be a system where the husband/father is king. Rather, the patriarch is a president, an executive power equal to his wife. Family decisions must be made together, which is why trusting each other’s judgement is vital to marriage. God is simply the patriarch of the universe, and because He is perfect, He is a perfect one.

Yeah, because only the male is perfect lmao. Also the Bible repeatedly calls God the king and lord, not an equal or executive, so you’re not even making sense here.