I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Mixed people face racism. Erasing another brown person’s brownness and struggle just because it might be different from the one you face is racism. You’re enabling white supremacy when you do it, and it’s bullshit.
Choosing to see whiteness over a mixed person’s black, native, asian, islander, aboriginal, etc. features, culture, and heritage when the white culture they navigate and the white people who make the rules and enforce the consequences of non-whiteness certainly don’t see mixed people that way, just because you’ve arbitrarily and racistly decided that you’re somehow “more brown” than they are is disgusting, especially when it extends to people who are brown in a different way than you. You are in face responsible for being conscious of other oppressed races, we all are. White people aren’t color blind, you nimrods. They don’t see white just because you don’t know what a Native woman looks like when you’re too busy thinking of your own struggle.
Whiteness as a social construct in America is viewed as a “purity” standard of not being viewed as a “savage” or “lesser” for your race, or embracing your culture and the social constructs therein. When it comes to appearances, white people see every drop of “not white,” even when they don’t know what to call it. I don’t just get racism for races I actually am when people have forgotten what my race looks like to the point of mistaking me for being middle-eastern and even asian either.
This is disappointing y’all. I’m so sick of cross-color racism and ignorance. I know I’ve done my part to contribute in my life, but seriously… could we not, and within the lanes could we seriously not be trying to act like mixed people aren’t part of our races when the oppressor absolutely has their mind made up about where everyone fits, and how everyone gets treated?
Stop assuming people’s life experiences on the basis of how *YOU* think they look. This goes for everyone. Everyone, for every reason. Stop assuming people’s life experiences on the basis of what *YOU* think their story looks like, and for fucks sake stop weaponizing the oppression you face as a crutch against other people whether you think they’re the oppressor or not.
A separate struggle from race is still a struggle. It’s racist when you try to use comparisions to race struggles to justify your own, and it’s just as racist to use your race struggle as a way to say that transness isn’t a real struggle just because you see someone’s transness as a choice to be who they are, while your race as defined and treated in a social construct as white people’s choice to try to make you less than human for not being white. I don’t get treated like a white woman. My mother was white. She got that luxury. I don’t, and I don’t get the luxury of not having to put up with the violent douchebags that people who aren’t trans don’t have to put up with either.
I’m glad I don’t face the struggles that come with *your* race, but to use those as a weapon against someone who faces different racial struggles AND your transphobic cis bullshit for being trans on top of it, like… could you not? It’s really transphobic and racist at the same time.
BTW if you call a native woman, for example, me, a “heathen” or a “devil worshiper” like it’s a bad thing for her choice of religion, I don’t care what it is, this is America for fucks sake, when it was white people who shoved Christianity down our throats and did everything they could to erase our gods in the first place, I will personally smack you, I don’t care who you are.
By all means, call me a heathen or a devil-worshipper like it’s a good thing, and this is just a me thing, don’t extend it to other people, but if you say it like it’s a bad thing, I absolutely will smack your fragile ass.
you know what’s really unfortunate to me? people who say they “hate symbolism” in books because it “doesn’t actually mean anything.”
Yoo, if this is you, you just had someone explain it to you wrong, because symbolism is the tits, man.
Yeah, your curtains aren’t blue because a morose event is about to happen in a character’s life. Yeah, the sun didn’t set because a character is feeling hopeless, nor does it rise because they’re ready for a new day.
But the thing is, that’s not the cool part of symbolism. That’s the part that you learn in high school because it’s easy to bullshit a paper about and easier to bullshit a short essay about on standardized tests (fuck standardized testing as a whole tbh, but that’s not this rant.)
But that stuff, the shit about the curtains and the sun and the crows flying by–that stuff helps the setting support the mood, and sure, that’s okay. But it’s nowhere near exciting, and you definitely can’t extrapolate much out of it.
COOL symbolism is things like a mug that’s stained brown on the inside. Why? Because now we know we’ve got a character filling that mug up with cup after cup of coffee so frequently they don’t wash it out.
It’s things like severely chipped manicured nails, because that’s a character who cares about their appearance enough to get manicures but clearly either hasn’t had the resources to do them lately, or has had some kind of event prevent them from it, or has used her hands for something she clearly wasn’t expecting to do.
I don’t care what art is on the wall (though it can be foreshadowing which can be neat), but a wall covered in art says something way different about a character than a plain white wall with nail-holes where pictures used to be.
Symbolism is lame when it’s shit like “the curtains were blue like her mood” because that’s not how life is and that’s not how people are and what the fuck, are you buying new curtains every time you have a mood change??
But don’t give up on symbolism entirely, because it can be SO cool when it’s used well.
@shiveringsickies EXACTLY and i hate to be a salty boi but it comes back to my point about standardized tests.
Because on a standardized test, they can only show you a brief snippit of a scene, which is not enough time to form opinions about characters and their patterns (arguably), so instead they just show you how to see blue curtains in the background and say “this story will probably be sad.”
But that’s the shit writers DO write accidentally. That’s the shit we DIDN’T intend for you to interpret.
We wanted you to see the mug and the manicure and the holes in his shoes and the frown lines on her face.
One of the most powerful scenes of symbolism I’ve EVER seen is this, from the first episode of Breaking Bad:
THIS. Tells you everything. It breaks your heart. It’s
Shit, this got even more powerful with that breaking bad screencap. I totally thought symbolism was lame af, but it turns out that this is actually, like, one of my favorite things about storytelling- all the subtle details that maybe you don’t catch at first, but they work to put together the puzzle of who these people are and why their stories matter. I always saw symbolism- the way that grade school defined it -as something that detracted from the reality of a story and cheapened the author’s message and the experiences of the characters, but it’s pretty much the opposite. I mean, how you’ve explained it, this seems like something that relies on the non-spoken aspects of human communication; because people want to understand each other, but they don’t always want to say exactly what they mean or feel, so sometimes you have to look at how they move and look and all the small details to understand who they are and what they want.
this seems like something that relies on the non-spoken aspects of human communication; because people want to understand each other, but they don’t always want to say exactly what they mean or feel
Fact: I was, in high school and even early college, an I hate symbolism person. Later, I realized that I just hated having boring and unrelatable stories presented to me as the epitome of literature with exactly one correct interpretation.
So much to all of this.
A lot of symbolism also, I feel, is in what the author chooses to include. For home decor options, just look at The Yellow Wallpaper, for which… yeah. Yeah that yellow wallpaper is symbolic of a whole host of things and provides a physical example (aka syyyyymbooool) of the protagonist’s mental deterioration.
“When I was a child, girls would never wear trousers. But then women’s lib came along and they started to wear them all the time. So I figured, if women are allowed to wear trousers, men should be allowed to wear skirts. That’s liberation too, right? So I started with a kilt and realised I quite liked it. After that I tried other skirts. I now I wear them regularly. Not all the time mind you – just whenever I feel like it.
People sometimes tease me and ask why I am wearing a woman’s skirt. But look at me. I am quite clearly a man. So this is not a woman’s skirt. It’s MY skirt. It’s a man’s skirt.”
It’s like the world is at that critical moment in utopian/dystopian novels where humanity can either go interstellar or post-apocalyptic…except we’re further down the Fallout path than the Star Wars path.
Stress can affect health; we already know that. However, each one of us in our own unique way reacts to stress differently, depending on cognition and personality, and both of these can affect our health. So how do cognitive factors and personality differences affect the experience of stress? We look at the different types of each and their effects.
Breaking it down
As a refresher, stress is the body’s reaction to any kind of demand. It may be good (eustress), or a vast majority of the time, bad (distress). Cognitive factors are characteristics of an individual determining his/her ability to process and learn information. Examples include…
Guys, we should seriously start an awarness for Carapace to get some love and recognition. Lately most of the toys and merchandise are only about the three heroes and not him. Heck, even Hawk Moth got a Burger King toy (which makes it creepy in a way). SPREAD THE LOVE FOR CARAPACE!!!!!!! 🐢🐢🐢🐢💚💚💚💚
Welcome to Chaos 