Odysseus Absolutely Does Present A Threat To Penelope If He Perceives Her As At All Unfaithful, And I

odysseus absolutely does present a threat to penelope if he perceives her as at all unfaithful, and i feel the unfairness of this, and i think people tend to undersell how much tension at least potentially exists between odysseus and penelope. but i'm also like. his reaction, all speculation aside, his actual reaction in the odyssey to her flirting with the suitors is delight, because he immediately ascertains that she is running a con. sorry that they're so in-sync in spite of the forces that try to drive a wedge between them, including their own misgiving hearts. sorry that they invented homophrosyne ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

let's be evil with Mama

for the redditors coming here, this is how we spread news of important events in the world, with a Destiel meme

HEATHERS (1988) dir. Michael Lehmann

what do you think about digital blackface as in white people frequently or even exclusively using reaction gifs showing black people that would fit the extreme/over the top behaviour stereotype and thus serving as hyperbole for white people to put on like a costume to extend their personalities online?

(There’s a short thing that I wrote on this already here)

Something I’ve been thinking about in the past few days and since that Teen Vogue essay brought the conversation to the fore, is that this conversation has been happening for a long time on the Internet in different forms. Perhaps we haven’t been able to succinctly name the problem as “digital blackface,” but even then I see the problem as deeper than a practice, which is perhaps why after all the critical energy black people have expended explaining the nuances of the problem to non-black readers (for years!), behaviors generally remain unchanged.

But it’s not only about behavior. My feeling is that, as useful as the term “digital blackface” is, it may also prevent us from getting deeper into the structuring antiblackness of which “digital blackface” is evidence. This requires a deeper meditation about what it would mean for non-black people to be creative on the Internet if they did not have access to the likenesses, mannerisms and vernaculars of black people. It’s as deep as the very definition of what it means to be funny on the Internet… white (and non-black) people need to ask themselves why blackness is at the heart of the production of comedic affects/vibes on the Internet. I would say we, but black people mostly already know what the deal is and have known since the era of vaudeville. While I’m not really interested in leaning on the Internet as a liberatory space or technology, it at least provides us/y’all ample space, possibility and instruments to explore this question in creative ways. To recycle an afro-pessimist phrase, that would risk the undoing the world (of Internet comedy); perhaps the fun would evaporate if New York, Cookie Lyon or Beyoncé were no longer at your finger tips. What would then be required would be to prioritize a different sort of logic that is not parasitic on blackness.

I don’t think that the recommendation that a non-black person think critically about their manipulation and circulation of blackness will be independently sufficient, but I see it as a necessary beginning.