black nonbinary femme, she/her tme, poly, bisexual, hellenic pagan, old as balls. multifandom, mostly vidya games, 99% ffxiv. in this house we stan house fortemps.
Asks are off again because people cannot behave, and I am not going through burner harassment again because of cowardly shitstains who don’t know what a back button is.
it is evident that the general tumblr populous has written off most historically black art forms near entirely. this applies to music, film, art history, etc. rather, the art engaged with and popularized in tumblr spheres is that of “good representation” which usually takes the form of idk, a black side character on your tv show whose personality is a huge nothingburger, but is appealing because they are not “problematic.”
i think alot of this comes down to people’s inability to make judgement calls for themself about what is ethical and what is right. this can be seen in conversations about kink when people say “anything as long as it’s legal,” sorry but, that is an incredibly bad faith and spineless read. the law should not decide your morals, you should, because anything can be criminalized, and your distinction of a perverse harmful action versus an acceptable one hinges upon your ability to make a decision about what you think is right.
when white allegedly woke users don’t engage with black art, what i see is this: a person who does not know how to engage with art in a critical way that is decided by what they think–because this art causes them to confront what they think. often, when white and engaging with black art, you will be confronted by your own racist presumptions, your own back-of-mind urges, and that is the most important part. everyone is racist, because we undeniably live under white supremacy and are thus subject to racist propaganda near constantly (insert sydney sweeney jeans ad).
i really do think some white tumblr users are afraid of engaging with content made outside of their culture because they could be “appropriating” or having “incorrect thoughts” about race. this thought police bullshit will only coddle your racism. you need to undo it yourself by engaging with black people and black art. nobody else will for you, you will not one day be cured, you are the only one who can dismantle your own racism. you cannot avoid your racism by pretending race does not exist (i.e. by [consciously or unconsciously] not engaging with the works of black people). that is the titular thing, really: do you really want to stay racist? you could be listening to tha carter ii, like
You are a racist person
I should’ve put this in the initial post, but I need to say now that Even if rap WAS all about getting money and bitches and having a fat ass, it still wouldn’t be inherently bad or lesser art. Conscious hiphop is not the only rap music with merit in fact, many of y'all in the notes saying ‘just find rap you like, which will be conscious hiphop because it’s actually deep’ are giving these racist bad faith arguments merit by saying “not allll rap is like that!!! there’s also good rap!” it’s just so weird, gangsta rap and club music ARE indicative of a lot of the genre, and a lot of the rap that’s talked down about on here for its supposed misogyny and capital fetishism is actually fucking phenomenal. black music is not exclusively good when it’s got a deep message and is totally metatextual / self referential. No offense but, sometimes music is for fun. Lol. And you simply don’t understand
Here is another longform lore post on my Realms, this one on Tav!Gisèle’s very unusual drow noble house. The usual disclaimers re: my bg3 work apply: that this video game is simply one small part of larger Realmslore that I have been crafting for 20+ years though the original BioWare BG trilogy and its sister FR CRPGs, tabletop campaigns, and fic. In particular, this loredoc heavily references events from the War of the Spider Queen and serves as a Fix It for many aspects of it, in accordance with the Menzoberranzan I’ve worked on for the better part of 30 years.
(cw: incest mention, of the royal cousin marrying sort.)
Here is another longform lore post on my Realms, this one on Tav!Gisèle’s very unusual drow noble house. The usual disclaimers re: my bg3 work apply: that this video game is simply one small part of larger Realmslore that I have been crafting for 20+ years though the original BioWare BG trilogy and its sister FR CRPGs, tabletop campaigns, and fic. In particular, this loredoc heavily references events from the War of the Spider Queen and serves as a Fix It for many aspects of it, in accordance with the Menzoberranzan I’ve worked on for the better part of 30 years.
(cw: incest mention, of the royal cousin marrying sort.)
sometimes i see folks reblogging writing advice and i just have this reflex ‘oh god no, don’t internalise that please.’
and obviously everyone should do what they want! but there’s this idea that if someone writes something out on tumblr in an original post it must somehow be legitimised writing advice, and like, no. not always.
the most recent one was 'make sure every scene moves the story forward, even quiet scenes.’ that’s good writing in some ways, but it also contradicts a lot of writing from cultures that aren’t ours, as well as writing that reflects on concepts of ma (found in a lot of Studio Ghibli movies that arguably led to some of the most still and beautiful moments), and in general just getting away from the idea that we need to 'go go go’ even when things are still or quiet or peaceful.
every scene can matter without every scene needing to 'push the story forward.’ granted, not every writer can write that successfully, but that’s the point of practicing writing. of course you could be a pedant too and say every scene is functioning and pushing the story forward somehow.
but there are scenes that evoke ma that you could remove that wouldn’t really change the message of the story or the characters in the story. there are scenes that evoke gentleness that you could remove and keep narrative, character arcs, and plot in the story.
i don’t know, i think the best writing advice i’ve ever been given is to never follow writing advice that says there’s only one way of doing things, especially if the cost is other ways of doing things that are also perfectly valid and even really important in certain cultures. if someone says 'don’t ever do this thing in writing’ they’re probably wrong and still learning a lot themselves.
proscriptive writing advice kind of sucks. even stuff i think writers shouldn’t do, they can still do it. and if i’m going to say why i think they shouldn’t do it, i’ll at least have a damned good reason why, so that when they decide to ignore me, they know what they’re potentially risking and/or simply know their target audience isn’t mine.
ALT
