Boy Am I Tired

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Please Support the Blue Beetle movie!!

Not to be Dramatic™ but this movie is a huge deal for the Hispanic community, especially Mexicans. The Blue Beetle/Jaime Reyes movie has the potential to be the Hispanic communities Black Panther. 

It was recently reported that the movie is in production, you can read about it here basically, this is the first superhero movie headlining a Hispanic. Not only that but Jaime Reyes and his family are amazing and we have the potential to have a wonderful Mexican-American family being shown on the big screen. I know we won’t get a movie that includes everything in his comic run but, the Blue Beetle series did a wonderful job of showing his family and him. There was one issue where they literally showed his extended family and how amazing they all are (BB Vol 8 #26) and can you imagine having people everywhere see a Mexican family reunion as it is? Normal and common. 

Jaime Reyes is exactly the kind of representation we need. Hispanic men would benefit so much from seeing him framed as this all powerful superhero because guess what? Jaime Reyes is such a vulnerable young man, he’s shown crying in the very first issue of Blue Beetle

And again in the second issue when he’s offered clothes, food and help from a random stranger.

Like??? Do you all know how big of an impact it’ll be on young Hispanic boys (and boys in general) to see a superhero openly crying when he’s in danger or when he’s offered help? Jaime Reyes is a huge crybaby momma’s boy and it’s a truly wonderful thing that he’s so open with his emotions. Not only that but he has a minor case of PTSD when he returns to Earth after the Justice League left him behind in space (long story). He takes his family out to the desert where he crash landed and tells them the story of what happened and he literally has flashbacks before having a small break down. And you know what? Nobody mocks him for it, in fact his family runs to his side to comfort him, like? Jaime Reyes is the perfect representation if they do this right.

Do you know how powerful this scene is going to be if they decide to include it in the movie? Khaji Da/The Scarab that gives Jaime his powers was an alien device created to destroy or enslave entire planets. Just one super soldier (Jaime Reyes) is enough to destroy entire planets. Jaime Reyes has the potential to decimate the entire Justice League if he wanted to, the scarab has limitless weapons and limitless power but he still chooses to be such a kind and giving person. Even after gaining such incredible power, his deepest and strongest desire isn’t power, it’s literally to become a dentist. Jaime Reyes, who has a weapon attached to his back that could take down Superman himself…. wants to be a dentist.

I cannot say this enough but, Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle has the potential to be so good for the Hispanic community. In the last issue of Blue Beetle he thought he was going to die but his final thought wasn’t “I’m going to die” it was “I’m loved”

He of course, didn’t die, just broke every bone in his body.

I could literally keep adding amazing and funny and genuinely sweet panels of Jaime with his family and friends but I’d end up just screen capping every single panel. Jaime Reyes is a Mexican-American teenage boy who openly cries when people are nice to him, he has PTSD, he throws up in front of Batman, he’s a wonderful and kind boyfriend to Traci 13. He fights and teases but loves his baby sister, he openly expresses his love and appreciation for not only his mother but also his father. Batman gives him a boat load of money and what does Jaime do? Use it to buy his father’s car garage back. Jaime Reyes is an oblivious dork who once threatened to drop a villain from a couple hundred feet in the air before promptly saying “Kidding, please don’t tell my mom.” he’s also such a kind hearted person who cried because he couldn’t rescue everybody during a villain attack. Jaime Reyes, his family, his friends and his story have such a high potential to be such good representation for the Hispanic community and I genuinely hope they do his character and story justice. 

I’m going to be hyping up this movie the entire way, because Jaime Reyes is my favorite superhero of all time, he made me feel proud to be Hispanic and his comic run brought me so much joy and laughter. I would highly recommend everybody read his comic run from 2006 and I want everybody to get as excited for this movie as I and others have gotten already. I’ve already cried several times upon realizing that we’re really getting a superhero movie where the main character is a Hispanic. So I really hope everybody can come together to support this Hispanic superhero headlined movie like we did with Black Panther. 

What to do now that Halo’s come out as nonbinary:

A guide by a genderfluid person for the writers of YJ

1. Have at least one character ask about pronouns. She can still go by she/her. Plenty of nb people, including me, use those pronouns, but the talk needs to happen somewhere.

2. Brion needs to ask Violet if it’s okay he still call her “girlfriend”. He doesn’t need to redefine his sexuality. We don’t need this to be about him. But deciding between girlfriend, boyfriend, enbyfriend, datemate, partner, or something else is a small thing that would go a long way to actually show she’s nonbinary.

3. You know how the show has multiple times had M’gann and Conner yell “we’re not human!” Let Halo have that same energy when she’s called a girl.

4. Happy Harbor High School GSA. Just mention it once.

It’s come to our attention that there’s a message stream going round about certain girls of the school.

Romani Tropes 101: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing a Romani Character

Although I strongly discourage non-Roma from writing Romani characters that involve any sort cultural or linguistic association, I am in no way opposed to authors writing characters that happen to be Roma.. as long as said authors don’t rely on tropes and stereotypes.

We will start with some obvious and common ones:

Magic | Mysticism This one is pretty obvious. Romani people have long been stereotyped as having some sort of magical or mystical abilities. In reality, though, we are just ordinary people. What’s important to remember, however, is that this stereotype has played a pretty big role in the oppression we’ve faced, which stems from a fear-mongering campaign led largely by the Catholic Church.

How does this impact writing Romani characters: if you are considering a Romani character that has some sort of magical ability you need to ask yourself some questions before continuing writing. 1. Is magic or mysticism necessary to the plot? 2. Is your Romani character the only one with magical abilities? 3. Is magic or mysticism used to augment the “Gypsy-ness” of your character? 4. Are you treating magical or mystical abilities as cultural or ethnic phenomenon?

If you answered yes to anything other than the first question, you need to stop and reevaluate your character. If your writing involves anything listed in numbers 2-4 then you are relying on stereotypes and perhaps you should not include a Romani character at all.

Fortune-Telling | Palmistry | Tarot Cards Yes, many Roma do these things, but they are also common in many other cultures. This is a really common stereotype. If you’re not Roma then I would avoid any having your Romani character perform any sort of fortune-telling. We’re not going to go through any evaluation questions for this topic because it pretty obviously relies heavily racist stereotypes.

Maybe you want to touch on those stereotypes in your writing, though. That’s a good idea! So, using the topic of fortune-telling is okay when you’re doing it in a way to combat stereotypes.

For example, your Romani character could be asked to do some form of fortune-telling and respond with some history or an explanation as to why it’s a stereotype. There are ways to actually combat stereotypes about Roma by using the stereotype itself. Just be super careful to not demean or accidentally reinforce the stereotype.

Belly-dancing This is a big misconception about Romani people! We don’t belly-dance in the traditional sense. We have a type of dance that uses similar hip motions, and some Roma in the Balkans and Turkey do perform belly-dance. However, belly-dancing comes from MENA [Middle Eastern / North African] cultures and is not actually Romani. It also plays into the hyper-sexualization of Romani women, but we will touch on that next.

Keep reading

As a Muslim fan, I am disgusted

A while ago I made a post about why I was disappointed in how they handled Halo’s character in regards to her being a motherbox in the skin of a dead Muslim girl. At the end of that post, I said that I was still happy to have a prominent hijab-wearing character on screen.

I take that back.

At this point, I wish that they didn’t make her wear hijab at all or have the backstory of being a Muslim refugee. They should have left Halo as some basic Becky if they were going to pull this shit. Don’t bait us with Muslim rep.

The handling of Halo’s character has gone from tactless to inconsiderate to blatantly and unforgivably disrespectful. I had long lost the excitement of having proper Muslim hijabi representation, but I still had a thread of hope. My sister used to joke about how much she looked like me and said I should cosplay her. My brother was really hurt by the whole motherbox situation but, desperate like me for representation, convinced himself that Gabrielle was still inside Halo. I mean she was still wearing her hijab, right? 

The fact that they knew this was going to be her storyline and still had her wear hijab makes me want to vomit. It’s insulting and downright deplorable.

The hijab is not a prop. It is a symbol of dedication to God, a symbol of self-empowerment, a symbol of pride in your faith and being a part of something bigger than yourself. It means so much to me and many other Muslim girls out there and had no place being wrapped around the hair of someone who is “not Muslim”. This amount of painfully superficial “diversity/representation” is straight-up mind-boggling. Like how can you be this disrespectful???

It’s literally a slap in the face. Like oh you thought you were getting representation? Haha sike bitch! Watch this ‘hijabi’ say she’s not Muslim while she drinks alcohol and kisses a girl even though she has a boyfriend. Haha isn’t this such a progressive show?

Fuck the writers and fuck anyone who thinks the outrage over what happened is over-dramatic or unwarranted.

As a Muslim viewer, this shit hurt. It hurt so much that my siblings have been asking to watch the new episode but I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it with them because I don’t want it to break their hearts.