Let’s play a game. Type the following words into your tags box, then post the first automatic tag that comes up. you, also, what, when, why, how, look, because, never
Normal show:
“Save the cheerleader… save the world”
Sense8:
“Save the genius transgender hacktivist girl who has the hottest girlfriend on the show… save the world.”
Normal Show:
Gay Boyfriend: “If you don’t get that skanky champagne soaked slut outta here I’m gonna throw a BITCH FIT! ”
Sense8:
Gay boyfriend: “…Eh, you know I never say no to bubbly.”
Normal Show:
Characters that suck.
Sense8:
SUN.
Normal Show:
*stereotypical portrayal of an Indian father who puts traditions or religion above the happiness of his children*
Sense8:
*An Indian father who cares about nothing but his daughter’s happiness*
*Another Indian father who finds no value in tradition or religion*
Normal show:
Gay guys.
Sense8:
GAY GUYS FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS.
No offense but “fifteen” is one of Taylor Swift’s most important songs bc it addressed what it’s actually like to be a 15-year-old girl and looking back on it from an older perspective without being condescending and lets young girls know we’ve all been there and we’ve all survived and it makes me mad that the media ever singled out the line “Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind” as a bad example for young girls because not once did they ever address that line in context and how at 15 getting your heart broken literally does feel like the end of the world and how the line literally right before it was “back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday but I realized some bigger dreams of mine” and I know the media has become a lot nicer towards Taylor but I’m still pissed about all those years they held that one line in fifteen against her and tbh I trust no one bc of it.
My choir director loved to tell this story where she was in Italy singing in an Italian opera, and totally forgot the words, knowing that a horribly mean critic was watching. She just spewed a bunch of random Italian, and at one point ordered a pizza in Italian. The critic commented on her beautiful diction and connection to the text.
That is the most amazing diction substitution I’ve ever heard.
Still, [Junot] Diaz admits that writing in a woman’s voice comes with certain risks. “The one thing about being a dude and writing from a female perspective is that the baseline is, you suck,” he told me. “The baseline is it takes so long for you to work those atrophied muscles—for you to get on parity with what women’s representations of men are. For me, I always want to do better. I wish I had another 10 years to work those muscles so that I can write better women characters. I wring my hands because I know that as a dude, my privilege, my long-term deficiencies work against me in writing women, no matter how hard I try and how talented I am.”
For one of the most lauded writers of his generation to say he needs another decade of practice to write better women is no small thing. But Diaz told me that he’s often appalled by the portrayals of women in celebrated novels.
“I know from my long experience of reading,” he said, “that the women characters that dudes [write] make no fucking sense for the most part. Not only do they make no sense, they’re introduced just for sexual function.”
He gave a high-profile example, though he wouldn’t name names.
“There’s a book that came out recently from a writer I admire enormously. A woman character gets introduced. I said, ‘I promise you, this girl is just here to throw herself at the dude, even though the dude has done nothing, nothing, to merit or warrant a woman throwing herself at him.’ And lo and behold. This brilliant young American writer, that everybody sort of considers the god of American writing, turns around and does exactly that. When I asked my female friends, we all had a little gathering, and I was chatting. I was like, ‘Have you heard of a woman doing this?’ They’re like, ‘Are you fucking nuts?’”
On the other hand, Diaz said, “I think the average woman writes men just exceptionally well.” He cited Anne Enright, Maile Meloy, and Jesmyn Ward as examples of younger writers who write great male characters—and pointed to two of his idols, Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison, as timeless masters. But he also detects an across-the-board improvement even in woman-penned books that are less than high-brow, especially in Young Adult fiction. “Look how well the boys are rendered in The Hunger Games,” he said.
