#but at least contrapoints understands romance

[cto10121]

Finished watching that long-ass but well-done Contrapoints video on Twilight and it wasn’t clownish!!! It was literate!!! For once!!! Still, I have des Notes(tm):

Not sophisticated people like Contrapoints mixing up movie and book canon willy-nilly. 😑 Some of her analysis and argument, then, is greatly weakened by this, especially when she mentions Bella’s nightmare in Breaking Dawn (very different film vs. movie). Make it clear which one you’re talking about, sis!!!

By that token, her claim that the Port Angeles scene and the James fight in the ballet studio are examples of disavowal is not held up by the books. The would-be rapists are not described in any way, much less erotically; the focus is on Edward’s rescue and his fury. James is not even described as typically beautiful, actually average, and his framing is that of a typical villain

Re: Disavowal theory, Contrapoints misses the fact that Bella is a parentified teen of working class parents. There is even an in-canon explanation re: Midnight Sun as to why she doesn’t like birthdays (spoiler: her mother just dngaf). So Bella’s distaste for attention and parties and money is not an affectation or maidenly disavowal. It is a character weakness stemming from neglect. Her character arc is to accept her worth and to move away from disavowal and play-acting modesty, embracing her true self

She greatly undersells how much Twilight subverts typical gender roles and conventions. It’s Bella who wants vampirism, Bella who wants sex from Edward, Bella who comes up with plans and solutions, Bella who saved Edward. It’s Bella whose mind can’t be penetrated or manipulated, who develops an interest in motorcycles and loves her truck. Vampire Bella may be fully realized in her autonomy both physically and socially, but Human Bella did well with what she could do and worked hard to reach her goals (vampirism, sex with Edward). She was only physically weak.

Twilight also subverts the B&B/predator-prey dynamic just as much as it eroticizes it. Bella and Edward personality-wise are much more alike than different (there is definitely several shades of Romeo and Juliet there), so their physical inequality ends up being yet another obstacle to their romance rather than an inherent part of their dynamic. A big chunk of the reason why Bella wants to be a vampire so badly is because she knows it’s the only way to truly be with Edward, that this man-of-steel-woman-of-tissue situation cannot continue. The end of series sees Bella and Edward as explicit equals

Also, also, from the way the vampires are written in Twilight, becoming a vampire can be interpreted as very much an escape from patriarchal life. No need to cook or clean, male vampires can’t get you pregnant, and even if a male vampire threatens you, you have your own power to fend them off. Sex-based discrimination is impossible in the vampiric world. Only individual cases of misogyny can exist. So there’s that

For that token, there were and are hundreds of romance novels and erotica that do—or try to do—the same thing as Twilight. Before Twilight there was the Vampire Diaries and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And yet, while highly popular, none of these were as great a phenomenon as Twilight. Unfortunately, Contrapoints doesn’t really delve into what makes Twilight different from the world of romance and erotica, only why it was a success

A+ meta on how romance novels work. It’s a little no duh, but she explains it so well and eloquently

The toxic radfem/political lesbianism theory section explains the pearl-clutching around Twilight and Fifty Shades and misunderstandings about Twilight but did we really need a whole section on toxic radfem theory???? Otoh, I agree that bad intellectual ideas are super entertaining

Pamela discourse!!! Yeah, I learned all about that in my Development of the Novel course, it’s all good ☕️. But I disagree slightly with Contrapoints in that Twilight is not following that tradition. Bella does have virtue and purity signifiers; in many ways she falls under the Beautiful Maiden(tm) trope. But once again, Meyer gives it a twist in that Bella is portrayed as a modern agnostic girl who wants Edward’s D—preferably without marriage. And the narrative essentially cheers her on. Pamela would never

That Kristen Stewart interview where she says she didn’t feel like she was playing a character made me die inside and wonder if she has read the books. Contrapoints implicitly agreeing with her that Bella is a placeholder character made me die inside and wonder if she has truly read the books

Not Contrapoints actually agreeing with St. Augustine, that African-intellectual-turned-religious-dumbass 😑 Yeah, no, I do not agree that lust is inherently perverted. For one thing, what is “perversion” and what is “normal”? Spoiler alert: It basically all comes down to cultural and religious bias. It’s true that the sex act involves crossing boundaries and penetration of some form, but that in and of itself not inherently violent. You can hurt yourself exercising; doesn’t mean it’s something horribly violent!!! So yeah, there’s my fuck-St-Augustine rant for the day

#twilight #twilight meta #much food for thought #but at least contrapoints understands romance #and she makes tons of good points #contrapoints

[minetteskvareninova]

Anyway, in light of ContraPoints' essay, I promised to continue my slow, steady Chłopi brainrot, so here it is:

My thesis is that you can absolutely read The Peasants, specifically the central pairing of Jagna and Antek, in light of the DHSM, it's just that it comes out of the other end as a pretty brutal deconstruction, which I don't think Reymont had intended.

Consider Jagna. She's your typical feminine protagonist, beautiful, virtuous and madly in love. The object of her desires? Goddamned Antoni Boryna. Antoni Boryna is, of course, very conventionally attractive, I daresay the most attractive man in the movie (although the competition is stiff, see Maciej and the organist's son, whatever the fuck his name is). He's also kind of unhinged. Antek is the kind of person who mostly acts on instinct with little regard to morality. He's nice to Jagna at the start, because he likes Jagna; he defends Hanka from his father's abuse, because nobody mistreats Hanka but him, and also fuck his dad; he leaves his dad's household and stubbornly refuses to submit to his authority despite the difficult situation it puts him in, because fuck his dad (sensing a pattern here?); he tries to kill his father, because fuck his dad, only to chicken out at the last second and realize, hey, maybe I don't hate my old man THAT much? These two are an Oedipal nightmare, is what I'm saying.

More than that, when I say that he acts on instinct, his instincts are... How would I put this... Stereotypically masculine in a very toxic way. He's very angry, bad-tempered, doesn't express tenderness that much - mostly because there isn't a whole lot of it things or people in this world that he genuinely likes. As far as I can tell, he kinda likes Hanka at the start (or at least the way old Boryna treats her is too much even for an A-grade asshole like Antek Boryna; there's also the fact that it's part of the ongoing power struggle between Antek and his old man, but that's neither here nor there) and really likes Jagna, and that's about it. His main motivation in life is to get one over his old man, which I almost sympathize with, since his old man is somehow even worse person than him. But don't get it twisted, Antek is a very, very bad dude. Some might even call him... A bad boy.

That's right, I am going there! Antek is in many ways very similar to the typical "bad boy" love interest found in romance novels. Toxic masculinity? Anger issues? Desperate need to dominate? Freaking daddy issues??? Yeah, baby, he's an alphahole all right. The only thing he's missing is, perhaps, an elevated social position, but even then - his dad is supposed to be the richest man in the village, and in the second half, his old man dies, presumably leaving Antek most of his property.

Anyway, Jagna starts out having feelings for Antek, which are in context kind of understandable. I mean, he is hot and she's one of the few people he treats with any tenderness; 18-year old girlies have fallen in love for less. The situation these two lovebirds find themselves in is of course very difficult. Jagna is coerced into becoming the trophy wife of Antek's shitty dad, while Antek is still married to Hanka and still mad at his dad for other reasons. But aside from being start-crossed lovers, there's another tiny problem with their relationship: Jagna, though young and in love, isn't stupid, and increasingly realizes that Antek, as mentioned above, is absolutely unhinged. Add to this the fact that Jagna kinda feels bad for poor Hanka, and it's kinda understandable why their relationship turns sour. So Jagna just... Dumps Antek. For which he rapes her and lets the villagers do the ending scene to her.

And here's where we get to the DHSM of it all. A lesser deconstruction might go for the "see, you can't in fact change him" angle, but like... Here? The thought of Antek ever changing never even crosses anyone's mind, least of all Jagna's. If she fell in love with Antek despite him being, as mentioned above, unhinged, it's because she clearly didn't know him that well and didn't recognize the full extent of his assholery. An understandable, if unfortunate mistake to make. Anyway, if the common DHSM dynamic is a woman elevating herself by worshipping or in some way (like morally) elevating an already exceptional man, it clearly doesn't work here. Jagna cannot adore Antek once she gets to know him, cannot abide by his assholery (she's too smart and proud for that), not can she change him into any kind of admirable person, and that thought doesn't even seem to cross her mind. Jagna cannot elevate Antek in any way.

But he can, and does, drag her to the mud.

That is the other side of the coin, the objectification and degradation of the woman, isn't it? And, well, since Antek cannot be elevated in Jagna's mind above her moral concerns, nor in real life by becoming a better person... Well then. To abide with the DHSM, Jagna has to be humiliated instead. First morally by sleeping with the married man, then, when she refuses to participate in this "sin" anymore, physically trough the rape and the ending scene.

And that's the unintentional genius of The Peasants - it reveals, in its full ugliness, the degradation side of DHSM by subtracting the elevation side completely. Antek was never worth the pain he put Jagna trough and that she was put trough for the relationship with him. But of course, is any man ever? There's a reason why Jagna never actually seems to consider a relationship with any other man, outside of maybe her ex Maciej, who, while not as terrible as Antek, still does some pretty shitty things, namely lying about sleeping with her (unwittingly contributing to her downfall). It's not that Jagna just happened to find a bad man. The whole system is clearly broken.

Of course, "the system" here clearly isn't meant to be just DHSM, as much as I focused on this aspect of it in this post, but patriarchy in general - for the writers of the movie if not Reymont (because I haven't read the book, so I can't speak on it, sorry). But to make a full feminist analysis of The Peasants is kind of outside of the scope of this tumblr essay, so.

#the peasants #the peasants 2023 #chłopi #chłopi 2023 #contrapoints #twilight

[wandringaesthetic]

I've been looking for a way to express/explain a thought lately, which is that "straightness is not even heterosexuality"

Contrapoints latest video (on Twilight, but mostly about sexual fantasy) describes what she calls "Default Heteronormative SadoMasochism" (DHSM), i.e., the Ur-paradigm of masculine/feminine, top/bottom, dom/sub, extending on to active/passive, giving/receiving, pursuer/pursued, lover/beloved etc etc etc.

Now, of course no one Really falls purely on one side or the other of this paradigm. A person that did would be a broken person, not least of all because some of these pairs have internal disagreement within themselves. Natalie quotes (someone , I don't remember who): "The masochist says 'hurt me,' the sadist replies: 'No.'") These are all ROLES that one might flow in and out of. They are not static characteristics of people.

But BOY do people try to force them to be. Which leads to disappointment among the sexes, both with themselves and with their allegedly opposite partner. A real person cannot be all these things 24/7 simultaneously. So maybe one tries to fulfill the unfulfillable, contradictory part of one's desires with romance novels or porn while actually kind of despising both one's partner and one's self when they fail to live up to the thing that isn't even really the thing they wanted to begin with.

So what is straightness, actually? Unthinking adherence to The Norm? Worship of The Dichotomy above one's actual desires. Perceiving The Norm above even one's own lived experience. This goes way beyond gender and sexuality, folks.

I realize I am about one sentence away from yelling "Wake up, sheeple!" And I try to be empathetic and not a person who calls the majority of other people NPCs and Portal Entities, but.

Why am *I* not straight? I ask myself. Just because, being bi and gender ambivalent meant that I *couldn't* comfortably adhere to the norm? It seems like it's uncomfortable for everyone. I would have been too tall, too smart, too independent at the very least to comfortably fit all of my assigned roles, even if I weren't Too Gay. I don't understand how anyone doesn't encounter enough turbulence to knock them out of this (passive, masochistic) way of thinking.

I mean I guess it's because they.... don't. Think about it even enough to personally accept it as their own? That if nothing forces them, They just take what's been handed to them and never look for anything else out of fear. The dichotomy is scary but the unknown is worse?

Real love requires transcendence!

Anyway, as Natalie and me both conclude, we've already solved all this

I would say all this Dichotomy is a flaw of Western Civilization, but I don't think being comfortable with fluidity is exactly easy in Eastern Civilization either (source: I have watched a lot of anime). It may be a little more thinkable, though.

Anyway, I feel like I've perceived a big truth of the world, but also it's like.... Yeah! No shit!

#personal

[menalez]

https://youtu.be/FFOIb_2TIKA

I'm very frustrated, I want to kick this man into the next tomorrow. He misses the point so fucking bad and as a vampire lore lover, I could counter all his sad little arguments. Fuck off man, sincerely, lesbians.

PS: The intro is so good imo, wtf is he talking about?

I don't blame u if u won't be able to finish the video, but I say give it a go, it's insane.

first of all how tf did u find a contrapoints wannabe??? truly no originality whatsoever, even the setup is very similar? down to the fucking glass of wine

i was not willing to watch almost 40 minutes of someone who isn’t a lesbian or at least female talk about a story about female romance. at the same time good points were made. but also some bad ones were made too “there’s no consequences to her not having human blood!” except for her being unable to control herself and attacking even the woman she has a crush on which is literally mentioned at least twice in the beginning of the video?? the point about noah the closeted guy being killed as “punishment”… idk i didn’t see it that way at all but i guess i can understand the conclusion. the stuff about there being no gnc lesbians and no girls that look like bruno mars and plot inconsistencies are all good points. saying vampire diaries is about a fear relating to men’s sexualities felt like a reach to me. it’s also untrue that the vampire story they chose wasn’t fresh. this vampire lineage storyline they came up with was original, before this ive only ever seen vampires as in they get turned into vampires, not that there’s original vampires that can reproduce and grow up and their puberty triggers their vampire urges etc? that bit was interesting to me and i so badly wanted to know more of that lore!!

but like..overall the critiques are understandable. im interested in hearing u countering them tho 👀 bc im more than open to disagreeing w this person

this was a good advertisement for true blood tho.

#absolutely hate the fact that this person is using misogynistic slurs in their name tho