Hi everyone. I’m new in the forums but I am active on Instagram (@wrotebymaria), so, sorry if i make mistakes here! Anyways, let’s get into it, shall we?
I have a problem with Loco Amor and its author, Ora. First of all, I DON’T hate Ora, because I don’t know her at a personal level, nor talked to her. I was planning to do a video talking about this, but I stopped because I knew right away that I was going to receive death threats by her twelve-year-old fans. **But now idgaf, I will do it too.**I didn’t DM her for obvious reasons, she has a lot of readers and followers, I didn’t want to waste my time dming her while I can post this so people can say their opinion about this. (I got inspired by @GucciPie !!)
I’m spanish. I was born in Spain, more specifically in Barcelona. About two years ago, I was reading Episode, and I went to the drama section because I wanted to read a sad story, and I found a story called Loco Amor (by the way, syntactically is bad written, loco is an adjective and amor a sustantive, Loco is crazy but it’s an adjective for a person, not for something amor in this case). I read the description, not convinced by Alexis Reed has a sassy mouth-, anyways, what caught my attention was (FINALLY) a spaniard in Episode! I was so excited to read it. I finished the three episodes.
I was really mad.
I got so mad, that I stopped reading. When I opened an Episode account in 2018 (Two months later, more less), my explore page was full of Loco Amor screenshots. Seeing those screenshots, I decided to give it a try, I did it. The same feeling, frustrated.
I read the whole story (and reading the second one), and you wonder, Why do you read the story if you don’t like it? Because for having an opinion, you need to have previous knowledge of what you talk about. If I didn’t read the story, Ora fans would come at me and say that YoU cAn’T juDGe a boOK By It’s cOVER. I had to read the whole story now I need to explain why this story does NOT represent my country, my culture and my people.
My first problem, misrepresentation. I said in another post, that I don’t care if a person from another culture writes about other cultures IF THEY STUDY IT BEFOREHAND. I don’t mean study all of their culture since the beginning of the world, asking people from that culture their most common slangs, traditions, actions… Loco Amor it’s just… The american version (sorry people from the US) of Spain, you know, handsome people that are sexually active, overprotective criminals that everyone would take their panties off for them. NO, NO AND NO. Ora just needed to say that they are bullfighting 24/7, sleeping and eating paella. (By the way, one of her characters visited Madrid for the first time, and the first thing you do when you visit a foreign country is try their gastronomy. Well, they went to get a burger. In this case I don’t mind if they put paella!) Anyways, sorry for going off topic. As someone who lived all her life here, Ora didn’t even try to search NOTHING about my country. Her spanish characters use words like amigo that means friend, but we don’t use amigo, we actually use tío/tía, that tío/tía also means uncle/aunt, but it’s our way of talking! Again, she clearly didn’t ask a spaniard. Ricardo calls Alexis flaca, it literally means skinny, but this word is used in Caribbean countries to call women girl (example: hey girl/hola flaca), again, didn’t ask a spaniard. I repeat, Ora portrays spaniards as horny overprotective criminals that will seduce all gringos/gringas.
Second, her humor. I know, I know, humor is very personal, and dark humor is way more personal, we get it, dark humor is not for everyone. I like dark humor, but without crossing the line of what’s funny and what’s not. This story is not funny, FOR ME. Food jokes are not funny, but I guess part of the reads come from twelve year olds whose humor is based on food and Instagram humor (that we all know it is not that funny).
A part from this, she tries so hard to be funny. I partly think she knows she is not funny, so she goes to dark humor, that is what most people do. When you don’t have smart jokes, you rely on dark humor because it’s the easiest way to be funny. Episode is a platform and a community of respect. Ora, if you are seeing this, you have to understand that:
- Your audience is mostly in this age gap of twelve-fourteen years olds. If they see their favorite authors saying these jokes, they will say it too. Hey, I’m not saying EVERYONE will do it, but people that are this age gap are very innocent and manipulative. You need to understand that your audience is young, and a sixteen year old is telling you this kinda sucks.
Here you have one of the funniest jokes ever made:
Using POC’s hair as a joke is super funny, right Ora? Not like black people get opressed by their hair (yes, it happens.). You could have just put this “Shaggy Hair” or a shorter one to make the joke less offensive. But it’s not funny when you don’t use POC’s hair, right??
The infamous rape joke.(THE SCENE STARTS WITH THE PICTURE ABOVE) I’m not one of those people who constantly in a feminist argument says What if a man did this? (Because it’s off topic of what the actual argument is about). But, yes, what would happen if a male character said this Ora? I’m 100% SURE that he’s a villain. But if it’s a scene where you and you bff are being cRACkheaDS, then it’s okay? Hmmm your logic seems legit.
Here, another CrackheAD moment, you and your bff using CULTURAL CLOTHING as… a… joke…? And no, this is not a character. Thats ORA and her best friend JULZ, not a character that is doing this shit because is how the character acts. No, it’s her.
Sexist joke. Calling someone p**sy because someone is scared or being coward is sexist. You are literally shaming women. But it’s not shooking news, you slut-shame a woman in your first Loco Amor (It was a scene of the mEaN GirL making out with Alexis’s brother, Alexis calling her a slut). Again, you are only influencing kids that it’s okay to slut-shame women. Here are the sexist jokes:
Here an AWFUL grammar mistake. I understand the use of an N instead of an Ñ, because Episode doesn’t allow it. But you had it easy. Reina is the name of the baby, reina means queen, it’s a sustantive, so, femenine article. EVEN TRANSLATOR GOT IT RIGHT.
This joke that really doesn’t make sense, it just doesn’t.
Also this??? The name of the Prime Minister of Spain, Edward. Sounds more spanish than Eduardo! sarcasm Also, the flag of my country is horizontal, not vertical, you had space, it’s not an excuse. At this point I don’t know if you are doing this on purpose or seriously. Anyways…
And lastly:
Authors work to put as many people from different races as possible to represent and educate. Your story has four black characters. FOUR. In Spain we are all not white, there exist asian people, black people, latinx people, arab people, gypsy people… And the fact that your four black characters have the lightest black skintones (Mocha or Rosewood) and WHITE FEATURES, makes me think that you forced yourself putting black people, not because you felt like doing it.
Also, you won the latinx/hispanic shelf. Congratulations…? That shelf was about embracing hispanic/latinx CULTURE. Your story has no cultural aspect in it, N O T H I N G. Yeah, your characters are hispanic (Spaniards≠Latinxs, that’s why we are hispanic), but you are not. For me, you didn’t deserve it. People voted you for the reasons I told before. You took a place in the latinx shelf.
Now, I’m prepared to receive death threats!!! :DDD