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disruptivevoib · 2 months

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hi! ive listened to some of chonny jash's songs but did not realize that there was really a story? Or i vaguely knew but didn't have the time/energy to get into it and with the release of the bidding animation ive realized theres like a bajillion awesome animations and art and i want to get into cccc but have no clue how. also why does soul have a trident.

OH man!

The story of CCCC has an overall seeming narrative, but much of it's smaller points are interpretive due to Jash himself leaving it up to fans of the album. But! Overall it kind of goes like:

-Jash or, what most people call Whole, splits as due to mental dissonance and waning mental health. (Time Machine Reprise).

- Whole fades into Soul (End of TMR into Dream) and from there its Mucka Blucka as a sort of introductory song. The recap for a story you have or haven't heard yet.

- (The entire album is a time loop! Which is a big metaphor for the cycles of mental health and illness people go through.)

- From there its the section called "Cacophony" which starts off with Soul, but eventually it turns to Heart and Mind + their fighting and inability to see or listen to one another or their points of view. Of course, as Logic and Emotion, they both have valid ideas or opinions, but believe themselves so contradictory that the other must be evil or out to get them.

- Heart attempts to shoot Mind, as referred to in Ruler of Everything. Literal or Metaphorical as you take this, it is seemingly symbolic for an attempt at one's own life if not self sabotage. If not then both.

- The rest up until Soul Eclectic is sort of just the Mind and Heart fighting and their own personal views each on the situation.

- Soul in The Soul Eclectic reaches his breaking point. Threatening to kill them all (A more direct attempt at suicide)

- Mind and Heart in the subsequent songs decide to get their shit together.

- (Two Wuv) Soul realizes that not only can they be happier now but that trying to force themselves to conform to society's ideas of mental health or belief or love is just plainly unbeneficial. Sort of a song about unapologetically being yourself.

- Welcome To Tally Hall is a tribute to Tally Hall themselves more than anything.

- This transfers into Concord soon after! Concord is Whole or Jash by himself, though many of the songs seem to carry themes from Cacophony in them. Self sabotage, disagreement, importance placed on the wrong thing, the idea that no one person is better off than another. It concludes with Taken for a Ride. Which is also sort of CJ's epic "im burnt out as hell" song towards the end. But exaggerated to my knowledge for lyrical shenanigans.

That is CCCC as neutrally told as best as possible. I highly recommend forming your own ideas on it, but I'd be happy to also discuss more in depth my opinion on each song should you or anyone else express interest!

Getting into the Trident: The fandom took the metaphor of "Tridential Sovreignty" and "This trident he formed (found? Lyrics.) is both weapon and motive" and said "Soul's got a trident" to which Jash responded with "Absolutely yes he does now" Same with the crown most people put Mind in, and that is referenced in the "Trident, Crown and Blindfold" line.

Soul really did get noose imagery, a trident and a mask. All Heart n Mind got were a blindfold and crown. Lmao

Though Heart is also commonly drawn with wings. Which is semi-canonical according to album covers. I choose to ignore them because I don't particularly have an attachment to the idea!

Getting into the fandom itself, I can recommend looking around for the Chonny Jash Fan Server (CJFS) Discord link. But it can be extremely intimidating and even I just stick to discussion and one other thread channel. (Sides from my au channels which pop up every once a month or so).

Important note is that only Tally Hall covers have to do with HMS. Any of Jash's other music (of which I highly recommend, always) is unrelated. There is also a fan QnA somewhere that was done like a year ago now which has some neat answers in it.

I, again, am happy to go into my interpretations of HMS and the music as a whole but skdmsm saved you the reading hopefully should that be undesired!

#chonnys charming chaos compendium #asks #voidthoughts #i def reccomend looking at analysis of the album too! calamarispider has good ones but idrm if kai ever put them here or if it kept them on #twitter only #i have my own but its been taking me too long so lol maybe people asking would help motivate me OSNFJSNS

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kyouka-supremacy · 3 months

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Dazai?

Eheh Dazai

Favorite thing about them: I really like how as a character he was able to deeply touch so many people!! Seeing so many people finding relief in being able to relate to and emphasize with the character makes me happy.

Least favorite thing about them: I mean, his personality? I don't like how his many flaws are written to be interpreted as strong points / good traits for his character to the point no flaw is actually a flaw, it makes the reading experience very frustrating for me.

Favorite line:

brOTP: Mmmmhh, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about Dazai. Soukoku, probably. The Buraiha trio makes me emotional a little. Souheki, but in a very passive-aggressive, over-competitive, one-sided rivality, can't-stand-each-other way. Dazai and Kyouka. Dazai and Atsushi too I suppose, though I prefer them romantically. I think he makes for a lot of interesting dynamics with virtually all the characters, but none compells me in particular tbh.

OTP: Odazai is plain canon to me, idk what to tell you. I think they make for a beautiful, tragic love story. Get you a man who is willing to change the path of his whole life for another man just like that, nobody does it like them (actually, wait, I can think of another man... ). Although I always distantly liked them, dazatsu has grown on me like, an INSANE amount in the last few months. I'm not sure what happened. I think it was an unfortunate (lol) coincidence of growing a little fonder of Dazai and just wanting to give more space and agenda to Atsushi. Like to me a lot of what dazatsu is really is about giving Atsushi more agency and autonomy and independence and overall just respecting him as a complex, full fleshed out character. I don't see ANY kind of power imbalance in it I keep finding people talk about. Dazai pushes Atsushi to be better every day, and Atsushi does exactly the same for Dazai. Atsushi admires and respects Dazai, and Dazai admires and respects Atsushi equally. I really don't know why the ship isn't more popular and instead just gets discarded most of the time tbh. I feel like everyone should sit down a second and actually give Atsushi the dignity to choose for himself. And fyozai!!! The investment in this ship mostly goes on waves for me but despite that I firmly believe that they really make for an engaging and interesting dynamic to be interpreted romantically. The epitome of “You're both just enabling each other's mental illnesses. You're both perfect for each other. Never change. Just never involve anybody else in what you've got going on.”

nOTP: Nothing comes to my mind.

Random headcanon: Not canon related, but in modern aus I feel like he'd be one to always end up working at ceo roles and he would HATE it. He fires himself and starts working at some cheap frozen yogurt place and one month later he'll find himself as the ceo of the most important oil company of the country AGAIN without him even realizing it / despite his active efforts to avoid that. And he HATES IT. He fires himself again but the loop only repeats forever. He's just that kind of person for whom all doors open automatically.

Unpopular opinion: ............ I could be here forever. I regretfully fail to relate to a lot of characterization / readings of the character I've seen the fandom give him. I really don't want to dwell on this so I'll just mention something mostly unrelated to his characterization: I wholly can't share the take of him being physically built like??? At all??? Which got REALLY popular a few months ago. Dude feels like he never lifted a finger his whole life, I really don't know where the idea comes from???? And I personally don't take his manga visual portrayal as a telling factor for this; pretty much all the characters have the same body type, it's impossible for me to base the buff Dazai assumption on how he's drawn in the manga. Just one thing about his chracter though stop making him matchmaker for ss/kk he really isn't stop don't do it please

Song i associate with them: HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE associating him with my favourite vocaloid song ever but. Meltdown by iroha is a very Dazai song. So many other songs though... Parade of Liars by ryo. Abstract Nonsense by Neru. God-ish by Pinocchio-P. So on and so forth.

Favorite picture of them:

Favourite panel from the manga:

Favourite illustration:

Favourite illustration in the anime art style:

Favourite Mayoi card:

Send me a character?

#Thank you for asking!! <33 #osamu dazai #bsd #mine #people asks me stuff #I hate how for all the other characters so far I had to go over all their panels/lines while with Dazai I already knew exactly what to pick

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turanga4 · 2 years

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It's ALMOST a Meta-Thing: Real Stuff Vs. Angst

Hey hello I actually wrote This Thing a few months ago for a writing competition I was part of at the time, and a recent conversation on a different Discord put me in mind of it. Deep Thoughts after the cut on how one might approach writing about difficult or traumatic topics, shared with full understanding that I am not myself an authority and put out there as an invitation for others to chime in also. These are only my thoughts: they are by no means the only or most valid thoughts available.

Much beta love and thought partnership credit to one EveSaintYves, who is an unfailingly insightful and emotionally generous human as well as a phenomenal writer, and also please to check out the ACTUAL metas referenced in this, by one ashes-and-hackles (raised).

Real Stuff Vs Angst: Thoughts On The Writing of Difficult Topics

The Harry Potter universe is rich, complicated, and ripe for creative interpretation. A primary theme of the series is the struggle between darkness and light, and fanfiction explores the entire spectrum in between. Many of us are drawn to the darker elements of the Harry Potter canon, but we may not always think about the impact those elements may have on members of the fandom community. Child neglect, for example, is a brutal reality for some characters in the world of Harry Potter, but it is also a thing that real people–including makers and consumers of fanworks–have experienced.

I believe there is tremendous value, creative and therapeutic, in engaging with difficult topics, like abuse, mental illness, and self-harm. And I believe there are things a writer can consider that will help them do right by the complexity and difficulty of the topics being raised.

A story that I have always wanted to tell, for myself and for others, is the story of people engaging with trauma and developing resilience. When I write and share pieces where my characters are struggling and suffering, I sometimes wonder about whether it is appropriate for me to do this–whether I’m using this pain in the service of something that ought to be served, or just playing with a thing that is really not a toy.

A gifted writer shared with me a context that frames things for me. She spoke of the difference between “real stuff” and “angst”--that people turn out “angst” when their intention is to craft something sad and dark that provokes strong emotions, but it’s done without a full and careful understanding of either the character or the audience: the alternative to that is engaging, fully, with real stuff. Which means that, when writing about hard things, one really reflects on their own purpose for writing, considers deeply and specifically how the character and those around the character would be impacted by the trauma, and is mindful of how their work may land with audience members who have personal connections. I don’t pretend to get it right every time, but this framework is so helpful that I want others, also, to have it.

Tips I use for myself:

Do your research. Don’t just imagine yourself having an experience you haven’t truly had. Learn about it, in detail. How does PTSD manifest, down to even the little specifics of what a dissociative episode feels like? What are the actual common trauma responses of a child who has been deliberately harmed? What are some real narratives about suicide, from the perspectives of both those who attempt it and those left behind? There are good resources, even, exploring trauma within the Harry Potter books: one that comes immediately to my mind that I used, in writing Accidental Magic, is the reflection composed by a tumblr poster, ashes and hackles (raised): Tumblr with links The lodestar I follow is, I need to both do right by this character and do right by this experience, and to do that well, I need to really calibrate my understanding of both.

Have a trusted beta reader that you can be real with, who has a clear invitation to be real with you. I ask mine questions like, “Is this too much? What feeling are you left with? Is this a piece I should just write for myself, or let out into the world?” And I listen very carefully, because I’m being given a real gift.

Look through two lenses: kindness, and agency. It’s important to me to approach a character with empathy, akin to what I’d call on if engaging with the person in the real world. I also want to create, in my fictitious universe, small bits of kindness that the character can access. And agency means that the character, even the most complicated and traumatized character, needs, in my opinion, to be given the dignity of choice, some kind of power, somewhere–not just used as a passive object for pity, saving, what have you.

Be aware that the thing you are holding is a thing that has real weight for members of your audience. When you write about abuse, mental illness, food insecurity, transphobia, domestic violence, and the like… this can be your creative space. But it is someone else’s lived experience. I have written a piece that will never go past my beta, because my beta was brave enough to tell me, I know this was not your intent, but this particular way you approached this particular hotspot topic did not feel good to me, personally, and this is why. Similarly, as you consider ratings and trigger warnings, it’s important to be aware that, even if you do not put the graphic details in there, you may be eliciting those actual remembered details in people who have those connections with your topic.

Hard stuff is real stuff, and, when approached with sensitivity and conscious awareness, I believe it can be written about in ways that support healing as well as create impactful experiences for your readers. What kind of experience do you wish to create?

#harry potter fan fiction #writer’s craft #ymmv

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demonxlove · 3 years

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【character analysis ― douma】

✎ just wanna start this by saying this is sort of both an analysis but also my own personal portrayal on douma’s character based on what we see from canon, so it definitely has a lot of my own opinions on it. & and it also sort of shows how i plan to write him if/when i get requests for him. you don’t have to agree with any of my thoughts but ya know i wanted to share them since douma is my fave character!

✘ warnings before you read: cults, mental illnesses, mentions of death and trauma, especially childhood trauma (that partially stems from neglect) - also not so much a warning but this is very long and obviously contains manga spoilers.

⇢ let’s be completely honest here, douma is an extremely complex character. and while we know a lot about him, at the same time, it’s almost like we know barely anything. we don’t really know an extreme amount of what goes through his head, but it’s kind of just assumed he’s a completely emotionless character, usually stated to be a psychopath because of this.

⇢ i really, really urge anyone labeling a character with a mental illness to do research on it before even considering to use the term, i should mention. and it’s very important to mention mental illnesses are very different to how they effect each person. but from what i understand, both psychopaths and sociopaths (just in case that term gets thrown around too) feel emotions, just very differently to how someone not suffering from the mental illness does. now since i don’t have either illness i’m not gonna say douma is either one, as i personally don’t feel comfortable diagnosing characters with mental illnesses i don’t have or haven’t very clearly been stated they have in canon, but it’s very important to have a very clear understanding of those illnesses if you’re gonna say douma is one.

⇢ but regardless of how you see douma mental illness wise, i personally think he does have emotions, they’re just obviously not as clear as others due to his upbringing. and we do see he has emotions as a kid, shown very clearly by him crying due to everything these grown adults were piling on to him.

⇢ he’s very obviously upset. and why wouldn’t he be? to hear such things from adults day in and day out as a child, being expected to be the one to solve their problems? it’s stressful. it eventually leads up to what we see of his parents death. he’s not upset. he doesn’t really feel any sadness for the two. but that can be explained.

⇢ his parents never acted as parents to him. from the moment of his birth douma was just an object for them to create this cult. i don’t really know what they wanted from it: money? fame? who knows. but it doesn’t really matter. douma was just something for them to use in order to gain what they wanted. even if they did genuinely believe he was a special child, their actions sure didn’t show that. and while douma said that he felt sad they believed he was special, douma was a child. his parents had no reason to show their genuine intentions to him, so we’ll never really know what they thought. but as i said, they didn’t seem to care much how messed up he became as long their cult was in place. douma never had a chance to live a normal childhood, he was placed on a high pedestal from birth and never got to be child. never got to really understand things he should understand. he couldn’t understand actual genuine love from his parents or if he actually loved him. sure, he could feel things such as happiness and love and all of that, but if he did feel it, how could you ever expect him to know? he was in such a constant horrible state, how would he ever know how positive emotions even felt?

⇢ to go back to his parents deaths for a second, even if he didn’t feel anything, it didn’t mean it didn’t cause him any suffering. he was a child, that sort of thing you don’t come out from without trauma. especially since he saw it happened with own eyes. and that probably significantly worsened his already poor mental state. but that also means he was raised from that moment by the cult, and his chance of every coming out okay was straight up zero. let’s be real, the only reason douma has any sort of hold over the cult is because he is their object of worship. they didn’t treat him like a child or even a human being. he was nothing more than someone for them to worship and believe in that they would be blessed. of course, it’s a cult, so most of these people are victims much like douma himself, but the fact there had to be people at the top that were raising him and used him to accomplish their own goals. to use his influence as they saw fit.

⇢ and it was never ending cycle, he never got out of it. all he did was learn to keep the cycle going since he couldn’t simply just leave. and maybe there were moments where he thought himself to be happy due to having so many people worship him, but it wasn’t true happiness.

⇢ maybe the first bit of happiness he got was from being a demon and getting to interact with other demons? unclear since it’s not like we really saw it. but it was different. it was a small crack in the cycle. but those demons all ended up hating him due to his attitude, that despite no one liking he still kept up. why? why didn’t he just act in a way to make others like him?

⇢ maybe it’s a reach, but to me personally, it’s a mixture of how he desired to be - carefree without any troubles - mixed with how he imagined a child to act. like i said, he had basically no childhood, and it’s not uncommon for those who never get to experience a proper childhood to act more childlike later on to my understanding. he even uses terms like “bully” to describe people much like a child would.

⇢ however, this brings me to what i truly believe was one of the few happy times in douma’s life: kotoha.

⇢ i don’t think he realized it himself, because why would he? but he cared for a lot more than one would believe capable for him. i’m not sure if i would call it romantic or purely platonic, but kotoha was genuinely important to him. i mean, what purpose would he ever have to say he didn’t plan to hurt her? he wanted to keep that small bit of happiness in his life, maybe in somewhere deep in his heart he even believed they could be their own happy little family to break this never ending tragic cycle he went through.

⇢ but he lost that happiness. she grew scared of him and basically hated him in his eyes upon finding out the truth. and the cycle of tragedy continued once again.

⇢ and to really come to my last point: we’ve seen douma mad.

⇢ and i suppose some could write this scene off as him continuing to be emotionless, but it doesn’t explain the way it’s drawn. the shading on his face that is usually used to show anger. or why he would ever really care about what kanao said in the first place if it was actually true and it didn’t hurt him in some way. the reality is douma does many things that can’t be explained for someone who supposedly has no emotions. and a lot of these details about his character are more subtle, so maybe they mean nothing at all at the end of the day, but in my personal opinion this is how i interpret them.

✎ but that’s really how i see douma, another demon with an extremely tragic story, but one that doesn’t come to light just how tragic until you think more on it. and that is how i do plan to portray him when writing for him personally! maybe i’ll do this more for other characters at some point, but he was the one i wanted to talk about the most since i just have so many thoughts on douma.

#demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #douma #kny #kny douma #doma #kny doma #demon slayer douma #demon slayer doma #character analysis #demon slayer spoilers #kny spoilers

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frankendeers · 5 years

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Kylux and the Queer Literary Tradition

So, I have seen a lot of people talk about Kylux in terms of queer fetishisation or even labelling it a “crack ship”.

The discourse has somehow made Kylux out to be this straight-girl fantasy where two men are simply shipped because they are white and handsome. Such an unfavourable interpretation completely takes away from many Kyluxers being queer and/or poc themselves as well as shaming straight people for seeing queer potential where it’s not canonically stated to be. Since the comic came out, there has been much elation because it finally “confirms” some of the things that appeal to Kyluxers, therefore justifying the ship. I don’t think, however, that Kylux has ever been anything but rather conventional in its queer subtext. Kylux falls in line with a long tradition of homoerotic aggression between two men. I will try to put this into words as eloquently as I can.

First, let’s talk about how Kylo Ren/Ben Solo and Armitage Hux are queer coded on their own before moving on to their relationship.

Armitage Hux is almost comically queer coded. The act of feminising a villain to subtly convey to the audience that he is gay and therefore “morally reprehensible” has been a practice since the Hays code era (in some respects even before that -as the Victorian Age marks the beginning of our modern understanding of gender and subsequently, its subversion). He is seen to be physically weak, petty, moving and snarling and “bitching” in a way society would stereotypically ascribe to women.

His British Accent, at least from an American point of view, already marks his sexuality as ambiguous. This is not helped by the fact that he speaks in an abnormally posh way, alienating himself from the common people.Hereby, the movies draw a well-established line between decadence/queer and pragmatic/heteronormative.

In the “Aftermath” trilogy Brendol Hux states his son to be “weak willed” and “thin as a slip of paper and just as useless”, robbing him of his masculinity – no matter how ridiculous of an endeavour this is when talking about a four-year old boy. Hux is very early on criticised for not fitting into a socially expected form of manhood. This is especially evident when one compares him to his resistance rival, Poe Dameron. Now, Dameron has his own set of queer coding, but he is shown to be what is commonly viewed as “acceptably queer”. He is masculine, trained and proactive. When he ridicules Hux at the beginning of The Last Jedi, there is this juxtaposition of the helpless, feminine villain and the dashing, superior male hero. Hux is supposed to be judged as vain and arrogant while Poe takes risks and although reckless, is somehow to be admired. Further, Hux is constantly abused. He is thrown into walls letting out high pitched screams, runs away in the face of danger (as seen in the recent comic) and is pushed around by his own subordinates. His strength lies in being cunning and calculated, not stereotypically masculine virtues.

Hux’s destructive powers, his monstrosity so to speak, also follow a long-standing tradition of queer villainization. Harry Benshoff’s The Monster and The Homosexual articulates this as follows:

“[...] repressed by society, these socio-political and psychosexual Others are displaced (as in a nightmare) onto monstrous signifiers, in which form they return to wreak havoc […]” (Benshoff 65).

And what other, than a socio-political Other, is Armitage Hux - the Starkiller?

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, too, is touched by the mark of queerness. It is no coincidence that despite his raw power and muscular physique, Kylo Ren has not been adopted by hegemonic masculinity in the same way Han Solo has, for example. When the logical is traditionally seen as masculine, the realms of pure and unfiltered emotionality is feminine. And Kylo Ren is unrestrained in his vulnerability, his tears, his pain – People make fun of the dramatic ways he gives words to his feelings precisely because it is regarded as weak, as whiny, as “womanly”. His long curly hair, full lips and dress-like costume only strengthens this impression. Kylo Ren is an amalgam of masculine aggression and feminine expressiveness. Some of his outbursts even remind of the pseudo-illness of hysteria. The gendered lines are blurred and unclear in Kylo Ren, diffusing any efforts to appease the binary. Benshoff describes this as a form of queer existence which does not only constitute itself in opposition to what is considered normal but “ultimately opposed the binary definitions and prescriptions of a patriarchal heterosexism” (Benshoff 63).

Both are not easily categorised. They are patched up by multiple, gendered signifyers. Kylo Ren’s masculine body in contrast to his femininized fashion. Hux’s slender body with his stiff and masculinised military get-up. Hux’s toxic tendency to avoid showing his emotions while also being shown as weak, womanly, cowardly. Kylo Ren is an excellent warrior, yet simultaneously being prone to emotional outbursts. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s famous work Monster Theory (Seven Theses) elaborates upon this further, while acknowledging that queer figures are most commonly depicted as the monstrous Other:

“The refusal to participate in the classificatory “order of things” is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration.” (Cohen 6).

Nonetheless, many queer people feel empowered by these figures. Lee Edelman theorises in his polemic No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive about the nature of queerness as a force of cultural resistance. According to Edelman, the queer must always refuse societal expectations of a perpetual future and embrace the death drive instead. In this sense, queerness stands in direct opposition to futurity as it negates any meaning in sexual reproduction and marriage (cp. Edelman 13). When Hux destroys planets, when Kylo Ren proposes to burn it all down “The Empire, your Parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi”, they are not merely killing the past. They are also negating the worth of categories that make up future and present alike. They are resisting the heteronormative values of production.

Now that we have the puzzle pieces that illustrate how Hux and Kylo are queer figures in on themselves, it might be interesting to examine how they work together.

In her text “Epistemology of the Closet”, Eve Sedgwick talks about a common gothic trope where two men are caught in a feud full of mutual hatred. In this case, both men are mirror images of one another, making them especially vulnerable to the other’s advances: "[…] a male hero is in a close, usually murderous relation to another male figure, in some respects his 'double', to whom he seems to be mentally transparent."

Kylo and Hux are very clearly mirrors of one another. Aside from the gendered oppositions I have already illustrated, they are each other’s double in every sense of the word. Born on opposite ends of an age-old war. Both caught in complicated relationship with their fathers whom both have killed out of opposite motivations (loving them too much vs. hating them with a passion). They represent the opposite ends in the binaries for logic vs. spirituality, restraint vs. wildness, control vs. sensuality, technology vs. nature etc.

This shot from The Last Jedi shows both of them mirroring each other visually, henceforth strengthening this impression.

They are "mentally transparent" to each other, because they are different sides of the same coin which Snoke tossed around to his whims. Even their aggression takes on erotic forms. It is hard to deny the homoerotic implications in choking another men to make him submit, forcing him onto his knees. The breaching of personal spaces and looming over each other, the obsessive need to prove one’s own worth to the male other with which one is engaged in a homosocial bond:

“The projective mutual accusation of two mirror-image men, drawn together in a bond that renders desire indistinguishable from prédation, is the typifying gesture of paranoid knowledge.” (Sedgwick 100).

And through all of this, I have not even talked about the collaborative potential between the two of them. Their instinct to protect one another despite insiting the opposite. How both of them could overcome their trauma by engaging with the other, who suffered so similarly under family obligation and Snoke’s abuse.

Works Cited:

Benshoff, Harry: “The Monster and the Homosexual.” In: Harry Benshoff (ed. and introd.)/Sean Griffin (ed. and introd.): Queer Cinema, the Film Reader. New York: Routledge 2004. Pp. 63-74.

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)." Jeffrey Jerome (ed. and preface) Cohen: Monster Theory: Reading Culture (1996): 3-25.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. ,2004. Print.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick. Epistemology Of the Closet. Berkeley, Calif. :University of California Press, 2008.

#Kylux #Armitage Hux #Kylo Ren #Ben Solo #General Hux #Hux #Benarmie #Kylux meta #sw #sw meta #sw analysis #tfa #tlj #long post #long text #hux comic #huxlo

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sommersupergirl · 5 years

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Supergirl and Queerbaiting

Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor are endgame. At least, that’s what the majority of fans of these two believe. Supporters of Kara and Lena, aka Supercorp, have been arguing for them to get together since season 2, but the writers seem to insist that they are just friends, even as they continue to write scenes that mirror other popular tv show couples. This results in queerbaiting.

Queerbaiting, a media tactic that hints at a queer relationship to attract LGBT viewers, has become a rising issue in the past 10 years, with shows like Supernatural, Sherlock, Teen Wolf, Once Upon a Time, The 100, and Rizzoli & Isles contributing to the problem [x]. Afierra from Hypable wrote an article on the issue of queerbaiting within Supergirl, illustrating how the queerbaiting on Supergirl is so strong that even non-LGBT fans can pick up on it.

I want to illustrate how queerbaiting negatively impacts the LGBT fan community. Based on a majority of fan comments found on Tumblr, many fans are ecstatic about the idea of Kara and Lena’s relationship developing into a romantic one [x]. The reason so many fans are fairly positive about the progression of Supercorp’s relationship is that a show previously accused of queerbaiting, The Legend of Korra, revealed in the series finale that the two characters that were used for the “queerbaiting” actually ended up together [x]. This gives many fans of Kara and Lena hope that the two will get together romantically someday on the show.

Comparing Lena and Kara’s relationship to other canon couples from other TV shows demonstrates how the show writers of Supergirl have continued to ‘string along’ the LGBT fans, resulting in fans being extremely displeased and let down. Additionally, with mental health issues being a higher risk for LGBT youth, it is important to look at the negative effects of queerbaiting as it may exacerbate the already alarming state of mental health of LGBT fans.

Evidence of Queerbaiting within Supergirl

Since the introduction of Lena Luthor at the beginning of season 2, “fans of their “relationship” began to emerge, mostly due to the natural chemistry between the two actresses” [x]. There are countless gifs of the flirtatious nature of their relationship. Another gif illustrates how Kara made the same face when James Olsen spoke, whom she was interested in romantically, as when Lena Luthor spoke to her, resulting in hope that Lena will become a love interest for Kara [x].

However, Supergirl is now on its fifth season, and there is no evidence - besides the hope from fans - that Kara and Lena will get together romantically. However, there is speculation that Supercorp will happen as within the Arrowverse shows the main characters have their one and only since the first few seasons of the show - Oliver met Felicity in season one, Iris has been on the show since day one, and Sara met Ava in the third season of Legends and their relationship is still going strong. Besides Lena, her sister, and her father figure, there is no other character that has been on the show for very long; in fact, most of the cast for the fifth season was introduced last season. Additionally, Kara and Lena are portrayed in typical superhero tropes that parallel other shows like Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and even from past shows that depict Superman and Lois Lane [x].

The biggest parallels that fans of Supercorp make is with Superman and Lois Lane, like Kara hovering outside Lena’s window [x]. Another parallel was drawn between Supergirl and The Legend of Korra, where both Kara and Korra are incredibly powerful beings who have an intense love of food, and Asami and Lena are both brilliant women who have an engineering background and have strayed from their families’ beliefs [x]. Asami and Lena have done whatever they could to protect Korra/Kara, and have both inherited their families’ companies, becoming the CEO [x]. Not to mention that both Korra and Asami dated the same man, Mako, at different points during the show, while Kara and Lena both dated the same man, James, at different points during the show. This gives fans of Supercorp hope that Kara and Lena’s relationship will develop into a romantic one, as Supergirl and The Legend of Korra are both very similar shows and Korra and Asami from Legend of Korra ended up together in the end.

All of this - the parallels between other couples from other shows as well as romantically inclined scenes between Kara and Lena - have given fans a base for their belief that the show writers of Supergirl are actively queerbaiting, in which they purposely make the scenes between Kara and Lena somewhat romantic in order to draw in an LGBT audience. At this point, the queerbaiting has become so strong “it’s no longer just Kara and Lena fans who are interpreting their interactions as amorous. People who are completely indifferent to the pair or don’t even watch the show are recognizing what’s happening” [x].

For over three years, Supercorp fans have been queerbaited by the show writers of Supergirl, and this constant queerbaiting affects the LGBT fans because there isn’t a belief that “it’s just a matter of time” but that they must hold dear and take whatever scraps they are given. The fans want and hope that Supercorp will happen, but there isn’t any fan that is 100% sure that Kara and Lena will end up together like fans of heterosexual couples. This lack of certainty that LGBT fans exhibit is based on the history of LGBT portrayal within the media. The lack of portrayal of LGBT fans in the past, as well as a history of queerbaiting from a multitude of popular shows, results in LGBT fans’ low confidence in seeing themselves represented on screen.

Research that Supports the Negative Effects of Queerbaiting

LGBT fans have only just begun to see a spark of more LGBT centered shows and movies within the past few years, but there are also many shows which have queerbaited their LGBT audience. For instance, The 100, while giving its audience a lesbian “relationship” between Clarke and Lexa, \they had a total of two romantic scenes in which Lexa was killed off the show right after the last romantic scene of the two. A majority of the fans were outraged due to the Bury Your Gays (BYG) trope, where a character who is revealed to have a queer identity is then shortly killed off the show because the “BYG trope punishes these characters by erasing them from the narrative entirely if the depiction indeed goes beyond subtext to include acknowledged queer identity” [x]. Both queerbaiting and the BYG trope is harmful to the LGBT fan community as fans see themselves in these characters, and when those characters are pushed into an opposite-sex relationship or their sexuality is limited to subtext, it implies to the LGBT fan community that their sexuality should never be acted on and they should always remain hidden. More than 70% of LGBT youth have reported “feeling sad or helpless for at least two weeks in the past year” [x], and with popular media utilizing queerbaiting within their shows, it doesn’t help the already despondent LGBT youth. Therefore, “both queerbaiting and BYG… punish queer audiences by the suggestion (or even promise) of quality LGBTQ representation, only to have their hopes dashed” [x].

In season five of Supergirl, the queerbaiting has reached a whole new level in that the fans don’t even need to reach to find hidden implications of a romantic nature between Kara and Lena. But throughout these Supercorp scenes, there are always reaffirming their friendship status. By the writers reaffirming Kara and Lena’s relationship as “just friends” and then at the same time playing into the romantic tropes between Kara and Lena, it gives the LGBT fan less confidence to believe that they will get to see the happily ever after they crave because, in the past, many relationships they believed had the potential to be something more was written off as “just friends” or the characters that were confirmed queer were then killed off. This implies to the LGBT fan community that having a happy ending isn’t for queer characters and therefore, not for their queer audience either.

The LGBT youth fan community is already struggling with mental illness and a sense of identity due to having to hide their true selves or be unable to acknowledge it because of still prevalent homophobia, so many will turn to media as a distraction or even as a way to gain hope for their own future. But when so many shows are debased to queerbaiting, the hope these fans have for their future becomes further diminished with lack of representation, and will negatively affect the LGBT fan audience to believe that nothing will come out of their hopes and beliefs of two characters getting together romantically.

Conclusion

From the analysis of the evidence above, it’s becoming more obvious that the Supergirl writers are actively queerbaiting their audience to the point that LGBT fans aren’t the only ones noticing it. As discussed previously, queerbaiting negatively affects LGBT youth as it diminishes their hope for a better future, further outcasts them within society, and lowers their self-confidence. Therefore, with a popular show that is so clearly queerbaiting its audience, it further drives the previous negative points of this issue because it's now seen by all types of audience members that the LGBT fans aren’t worth the happy ending they seek within popular media.

Producers and writers of popular media need to understand the detrimental effects of queerbaiting the LGBT fan community. Therefore, more action will be taken by fans if they feel that Supergirl has wronged them in the lack of representation between Kara and Lena.

Therefore, the writers of Supergirl need to either stop blatantly queerbaiting their audience or allow for Kara and Lena’s relationship to develop into what many fans have already vied for: Supercorp. If the writers continue to walk the path they’re currently on, fans will become outraged and the ratings of their show will come down. So, for the benefit of Supergirl, the fans’ happiness and mental stability, stop with Supercorp and queerbaiting.

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bellamygateoldblog · 5 years

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Blog Summary Tag Game

Find your fandom kru and help them find you. Answer the following and include the tag #the100blog in your answer, then tag some of the blogs you follow.

created by @johnmurphysreddit tagged by @blodreina-noumou !

1. What are your primary topics?

My blog is pretty much divided 70/30 between t100 & skam italia (i do tend to follow more t100 blogs!) Sometimes there’s the odd post of other shows I watch/have watched.

Most of my posts are spacekru, but i reblog lots of pretty gifs/edits of anything from the show because they are beautiful and creators put lots of work into them! I’ll probably also be posting about Octavia, too, throughout s6 because i’m particularly interested in her arc.

I’m not the most eloquent writer, but i do write & reblog a fair amount of meta, some of which are very lengthy, and i understand it could be frustrating if this doesn’t interest you, so I always try to tag them as “#meta<3″ so you can filter them if you wish. (note: my blog is disorganised atm, i’m still pretty new & only just getting the hang of it lol but my newer posts are tagged properly).

2. What tags should a visitor check?

#meta<3 is where i store meta about the show, it isn’t necessarily all my own, but i do comment on quite a bit!

#anti clarke griffin is where all of my Clarke posts go, even ones that I don’t necessarily class as negative, because i think my general feelings about her character give off a negative impression regardless.

I tag with full names (e.g, #bellamy blake) and i do this with any other show besides t100 that i spontaneously reblog, too (such as #deadly class).

3. What do you love about The 100?

I love the dynamics between a lot of the characters, and i tend to focus on them a lot! There are plenty of instances where there are personality clashes, and where they’re forced to challenge one another. The dynamics also give pretty good indications of who are best suited as units or teams, and who can be percieved as being outliers to the rest.

I like that pretty much every character is presented as grey, it makes it more enjoyable to analyse them, their motivations, and their strengths and weaknesses. It’s possible to view a scene from multiple different perspectives and understand where each of the characters stand during that point in time, even when we don’t necessarily agree with them. I love the redemption arcs of both Bellamy and Murphy, I was always taken with their journey’s of seeking atonement, reflecting on their morals and place in the world, and growing as people as a direct result of their actions and the consiquences of them.

I like to be surprised; I can be a fan of major character death if it’s executed properly (no pun intended), and if this end point is consistent with the rest of their arc. I like when the trajectory of a character’s story changes suddenly, such as when Murphy went along with Jaha to the city of light, and then later regrouped with the rest of the mains, but as a member, rather than an outsider. Another example of this, just to be clearer, was Luna’s refusal to take the flame despite all the suspence and mystery surrounding her character, and i like that they didn’t result to compromising who she was in order to drive the plot!

I’m drawn to post-apocalypse/dystopian future style shows and movies for the new and exciting challenges they pose compared to the here-and-now. These types of shows are a great way of exploring ideas that wouldn’t otherwise be appropriate, such as corrupted morals, the difficulty of survival, and taking extreme measures in the face of danger. LOVE fight scenes, especially involving combat weapons, and the thrill the comes with them; they’re much more entertaining than guns.

I love some superficial drama in the midst of all the chaos, usually relationship and friendship conflicts. I feel it just brings so many more layers to the narrative, and makes the world it exists in seem bigger and deeper, while also serving to make the show more engaging by giving us something we can relate to better, no matter how silly it seems within the context of the show. This way, it doesn’t feel too plot-orientated and gives the viewer a breather from the darker aspects of the show. I think t100 did this better in the earlier seasons, especially with Octavia and Bellamy, as the dynamic conflicts that came later on all seem to be plot-related in one way or another.

I love the whole idea of finding your place in a world that works hard to suppress you.

My favourite characters are spacekru + Octavia & Diyoza (both bad bitches which i truely cannot resist). Deceased favourites: Luna, Jasper + Finn (I like the peaceful damaged ones okay)

I don’t focus too much on ships, but i have a strong preference for Becho!

4. What do you hate/what frustrates you about The 100?

Hypocrisy and double standards that exist within the narrative, and especially within the fandom. A lot of the time this is concerning Clarke.

The fandom climate in general! explicit and implicit hostility directed towards people who disagree with popular opinion, people unable to distinguish between actor and character, people opting to attack rather than discuss, people viewing the entire show through ‘shipper goggles’ and ignoring key elements of the narrative in favour of creating their own canon (people who ignore and twist past the point of it just being individual interpretation).

The wasted potential of Jasper & Finn as insights into the harmful affects and futility of war, and the puncture it makes on a person’s psyche. As much as these deaths had me shaken to my core, I could never quite get past the blatant killing-off of two of the more explictly mentally ill characters. Rather than a recovery storyline, the only solution to their struggles was death, and i’ve always felt like the writers had so much potential to address PTSD and depression more directly, through them. I think it could’ve made for an interesting storyline, and it would’ve given the writers more personalities, dynamics, and challenges to play with.

The belittlement/mocking of peaceful characters, which in a way expressed that hating violence and war made you weak and not to be taken seriously (Lincoln & Luna specifically, but also s5 Monty and s1 Finn).

Additionally, the lack of world-building. We were only given minor glimpses into the past of some characters, we didn’t get to see details on how the ark evolved, or how the present culture was formed from it’s history. We see the same approach with the grounders; we learn that every clan is different, but then we barely see how they are different. The small appearance of mutated animals and then no future mentions is another confusing point. I know most of this is simply due to time restraints, but there came a point where we didn’t learn any more than was necessary to advance the plot, and it just made the world and conflicts in it seem smaller.

Characters I dislike include Clarke, Kane & Abby (both equally as frustrating and eye-roll inducing).

5. Is this exclusively a The 100 blog?

No, but i usually only use one other main tag (skam italia) which can be filtered!

6. What else should people know?

I love engagement with my posts! You don’t need to be reluctant to add your own thoughts. Conversation is welcome as long as it is kind and respectful!

I usually don’t speak too openly about this, but I have depression, which means I sometimes go M.I.A and sometimes i’m here most of my time to keep myself busy. It varies! so if I fail to reply to anything, it may be because i don’t have the energy to just yet, but it isn’t personal!

I talk a lot in my tags, sometimes commenting on the post when i’m trying to avoid hijacking, and sometimes talking bs and tagging Bellamy “big sexy”

I have a lot of unpopular opinions in this fandom, i’m well aware of it lol but i don’t appreciate hateful anons (which i have had in the past, and they aren’t pleasant!) I prefer to keep anon turned on because some people are just more comfortable interacting that way, and that’s fine! but don’t take it being turned on as an invitation to attack me.

I don’t follow many people, but here are some people who’s blogs I love, who i tag to do this if they want to (though i know this kind of thing isn’t for everyone!)

@bound-by-stardust @fleimkepakosskairipa @awkwardnarwhall93 @fleimkepajohnmurphy @ringabellamy @spacekru-defense @skaiengineers @alrightsnaps @bunker-boyfriends

Sorry if you were already tagged!!

#the100blog #thank you for tagging me!!#finally found time to write this #and it was fun

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so-shiny-so-chrome · 5 years

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Witness: Weirdness_Unlimited

Creator name (AO3): Weirdness_Unlimited

Creator name (Tumblr): Burn-your-face-upon-the-chrome

Link to creator works: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weirdness_Unlimited/works

Q: Why the Mad Max Fandom?

A: In the Mad Max universe, anything that is completely absurd and outrageous is represented as the norm. Leather fetish gear? Oh, that's just the security guard uniform at Bartertown. Those guys over there are wearing black and white face paint? No, you're not at an ICP concert, those are War Boys, also run. Whoa, there are acrobats being flung through the air on poles attached to moving vehicles! No worries, that's just any Tuesday in Gas Town. I love this fandom because pretty much any nonsense my skull meat can come up with, as long as the mechanics of it work, I can throw it into my fics and not a single person will bat an eye. As a matter of fact, the weirder, the better.

Q: What do you think are some defining aspects of your work? Do you have a style? Recurrent themes?

A: Life is gross, humans do gross things, and the environment around you could not care less about any of your moral dilemmas. I suppose you can say my style is a lack of it. I like things straight forward and I know this characteristic often weakens any aesthetic appeal to my writing. “To Love Reptiles” reads from Slit's perspective the same way a radio manual does but with a lot more cursing. I try not to make it too complicated to digest. I'd like for people to be able to fill in any blanks with their own interpretation of the situation and then move on to the next.

Themes though, I go heavy on themes. The main theme is interpersonal relationships, coping with failure within them, and personal growth. Other themes include coping with mental illness, codependency, hunger, greed, warfare, trauma, etc.

Q: Which of your works was the most fun to create? The most difficult? Which is your most popular? Most successful? Your favourite overall?

A: The most fun work of my own, by far, has been “To Love Reptiles.” It has also been the most popular, most successful, and my most favourite. The most difficult has been an original work with no working title. I can't give away much about this original piece but it has to do with local myths and survival in the wilderness. I quit working on the rough manuscript when my grandmother passed away several years ago. I'll be picking it up again soon. It may turn up on AO3 in the next three or four years.

Q: How do you like your wasteland? Gritty? Hopeful? Campy? Soft? Why?/

A: Gritty but hopeful, I think. The wasteland is nasty but humans need hope, right?

Q: Walk us through your creative process from idea to finished product. What's your prefered environment for creating? How do you get through rough patches?

A: Alright, so that's an interesting question with a pretty messy answer but I'll try to make it brisk. Step 1: I start with a summary of the story as a whole with a point A (the beginning) and a point B (the end). Step 2: I break that summary down and and fill it out with events that can ferry the characters from the start of the story to the finish on a drawn timeline to keep things in chronological order. I also have note cards. I break this down further into named chapters. This can take a while. Step 3: I summarize each of those chapters to figure out if this story needs more than one installment. It depends out how the series of events land and how many minor arcs are included with the main arc/objective. Sprinkle some drama in there, scrap some unnecessary things, narrow an installment down to thirty (30) chapters at maximum. Step 4: I summarize individual scenes within the chapters and hack out important dialog. This takes weeks. There's typically between four and ten scenes per chapter. Also more note cards. Step 5: I try to flesh out one scene per day. (key word: Try)

I get the most writing done in the morning over coffee and before work. I usually sit at the breakfast table with my phone and spit out about 500-ish words before my husband wakes up. I'll write intermittently throughout the day. Lately I haven't been writing much because of holiday junk and winter being kind of a bummer.

If I'm in a rough patch, I can break though it by sitting in a room with no internet access and forcing myself to scratch out a scene or two in a notepad. Usually these notepad scribbles are so awful that they get torn out and chucked in the waste bin but the next day I'm keen to do the job right.

Q: What (if any) music do you listen to for help getting those creative juices flowing?

A: Ambient sound, white noise, or nothing. I do listen to music and there's a lot of songs I associate with stories, fics, characters. Tove Lo is a big one for Dune. Most of the time I find that music with lyrics or a high tempo is distracting if I'm in the act of writing something but it can be a source of inspiration separately.

Q: How do you keep track of all the details as you're writing? How do you keep details consistent in your works? How do you fact-check your writing?

A: I have a little memo pad with numbered facts that do not change at any point through the story. These are kinda the cardinal rules. I can't tell you the rules because they contain spoilers. After the “RULES” there are miscellaneous details that I'd like to remember in case they come up later. Things like birthmarks, scar placement, mannerisms, things I've hinted at without exposition that will need to be revealed later.

I fact check by googling stuff and falling down research holes for several hours until I forget what I was doing. EVENTUALLY I'll come back to writing and realize that's why there are things in my search history that probably have me on some kind of government watch list.

Q: What motivates your writing?

A: My motivation. Real talk? For AAL it's to get to a particular scene in the planned third installment. Scene thirteen in chapter seven. I know that answers exactly nothing and is weirdly specific but... yes. Other works of mine, I'm motivated by the idea that some of my ideas might entertain someone out there, even if it's just one someone then I've succeeded.

Q: What is your biggest challenge as a creator?

A: Time management. I have a lot of hobbies and finding time for individual projects is... Hard. I made a boredom jar that lets me pick an unfinished task/project/piece at random to do whenever I'm bored so that I can stop myself from starting anything new when my apartment is already full of unfinished junk.

Q: How have you grown as a creator through your participation in the Mad Max Fandom? How has your work changed? Have you learned anything about yourself?

A: Yes. My organizational skills have improved by miles and my attention span is better focused. Grammatically my work has undergone general improvement.

Learned anything about myself? Hmm, I learned that my opinion of what is canon and what makes good fan fiction are two completely different things. If you ask me anything specific about the Mad Max franchise you will probably get both opinions. As an example: Does Maxosa make for good fan fiction? Heck Yeah! Will canon Max Rockatansky or Furiosa ever be mentally and emotionally healed enough to actually be in a relationship? Probably not and that's okay. I can happily read Max and Furi getting cuddly and domestic and enjoy the heck out of another writer's interpretation of these two overcoming the hurdles of their respective traumas. I can do this knowing full well that Max and Furiosa probably never canonically saw each other again after the closing scene of Fury Road. I'm okay with this because that's the magic of fandom and why I love it.

Q: Which character do you relate to the most, and how does that affect your approach to that character? Is someone else your favourite to portray? How has your understanding of these characters grown through portraying them?

A: I relate to Max the most, and I think the reason I haven't yet published anything written from his perspective is because he'd be the most difficult to write without touching on my own fears and inadequacies too much. Max is not interested in being involved with the dramas of anyone else's life. He's already seen too much turmoil and had a hand in it too many times to actively seek people and their inherent problems, however, when presented with zero alternative he'll do what needs to be done and suffer though forming new attachments to very mortal people who may drop dead at any minute. He isn't comfortable with the process of forming attachments and he'd rather avoid it. He doesn't want another ghost. At least that's my interpretation of him.

Slit, remarkably, is my favorite to write for in spite of the fact that I don't relate to him in any way and my interpretation of his portrayal in the film is, simply put, a blunt edged euphemism for abusive relationships. He's just... a guilty pleasure to examine and write. I blame my fondness on the stunning character design and Josh Helman's energy on screen. The character says and does ridiculous things and it's just hilarious to watch Slit dig his own grave and humiliate himself. Case and point: I've got his boot! My understanding of Slit has grown through writing about him. He's probably (canonically) deeply insecure and his way of thinking very toxic and self focused. There's gotta be trauma there (I took massive creative license in that area) and a whole host of personal issues that explain his behavior, but will never excuse it. Does that make good fan fiction??? Parts of it do, the rest has to be that very human ability to grow and improve, although I don't think he'd have that opportunity in canon or accept any form of assistance... If he'd lived.

Q: Do you ever self-insert, even accidentally?

A: I think you kind of have to self-insert to a point. Writing tends to involve exaggerating your own experiences and the imagined interactions in your own head in order to make the experiences of the characters relatable. I'd rather not examine every individual facet of the issue but yes, I think Dune is an unintentional self-insert to cope with health problems before I was consciously aware of what I was coping with and since that realization, lately, she's a lot harder to write.

Q: Do you have any favourite relationships to portray? What interests you about them?Honestly? Close platonic friendship. Emotional intimacy is interesting. I draw a lot of inspiration for friendship in fiction from Mulder and Scully in early seasons of The X-files.

Q: How does your work for the fandom change how you look at the source material?

A: I see more minor details and the context of silent interactions. Some of these details are unsettling, some of them are so subtle and subliminal that they're easily missed when you watch the films, especially Fury Road. Oddly enough, I'm a lot more- Ah whats the word? Not quite critical of but unnerved by my own observations of Capable's relationship with Nux. I'm not sure why. It could be that I'm misinterpreting the actress's tone or George Miller vision/direction, but I watch the movie now and find that the way Capable looks at and talks about Nux so intensely makes me uneasy. The previous is just an example among many that I've spat out so far, it's not important.

Q: Do you prefer to create in one defined chronology or do your works stand alone? Why or why not?

A: Everything I write within the Mad Max fandom with the exception of collaborative works will probably be linked together and consistent with one another because that means less to remember and fewer mix-ups.

Q: To break or not to break canon? Why?

A: If you have to, break it. I'll read it. I like my fandom unlimited, baby. In my own works I try to keep with canon somewhat but I resurrect a lot of characters who almost certainly died because if I didn't, it would really only leave seven (I think) named characters with dialog who did not die in Fury Road. (The surviving women of the Many Mothers weren't named.)

Q: Share some headcanons:

A: 1) Max has intestinal parasites. He ate a live (two headed) lizard in the first thirty seconds of Fury Road. You really really really should not do that.

2) Furiosa didn't want to kill Ace. She could have just blown his head off instead of punching him in the face with a pistol. She didn't shoot him.

3) Ace did not go under the wheels. Foxy Grandpa lives.

4) Miss Giddy is also alive somewhere

5) Actually, most people in the wasteland probably have intestinal parasites.

Q: If you work with OCs walk us through your process for creating them. Who are some of your favourites?

A: My original characters tend to create themselves. I don't know how they do it, they kinda just decide for themselves for better or worse what they'll look like and how they'll behave. Dune was an accident and the “About a Lizard” series wasn't supposed to happen at all. It was supposed to be a one-shot word dump of what Slit's final moments might have looked like. Slit was supposed to die in a fleeting but intense two seconds of delusions about Valkyries and Valhalla... And then be eaten by a scavenger cannibal. The whole thing kind of just happened on the fly. Ardith, Phil/Crank, Featherknife, Bones, and the kids were also accidental. I had no idea where I was going with the encounter with Crow Fishermen. They just popped into existence of their own will and the rest is history. The only original characters that have been planned and designed well beforehand have been villains. This probably says something about me as a writer though I'm not sure what.

Q: When creating a new character for the AAL series, how do you approach their first interactions with your main characters?

A: The first thing I ask is “What does this scene need” and sometimes it needs a new character for villainy or friendly acquaintance reasons or for a skill-set the main characters do not posses. New characters have a habit of changing a chapter or making it much longer than intended. First interactions with Slit probably won't surprise anyone. He phases through distrust to dislike to begrudged cooperation and from there he's either on his way back to dislike or entering the tolerance phase. Beyond the tolerance phase is... The Complicated Zone. The Complicated Zone is where Nux and Dune are situated. Dune has two basic instincts with people: Should I shoot you? Or should I befriend you? Bizarrely, being friendly is the weirder option in the wastes. Shooting is almost always a consideration if she's taken by surprise.

Q: If you create original works, how do those compare to your fan works?

A: My original works are probably darker and deal more with modern problems. I turn to fan fiction for fun and to indirectly work through things.

Q: Who are some works by other creators inside and outside of the fandom that have influenced your work?

A: A lot of the fandom, too many names to name but one stands out and I can't remember their name or the title of their work. It was about Ace growing up and there was a dingo and a young Miss Giddy. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please help. I've been looking for this fic for ages.

Q: Is there a specific author(s) that inspired your work when you began writing TLR?

A: I don't think any specific author inspired me while I began TLR but The Dark Half by Stephen King is one of my favorites and I recall re-reading it shortly before getting deep into fan writing. I may even have unconsciously plagiarized a few lines off that book. In my latest attempt to re-read that novel I'm feeling like there's a lot of Thad Beaumont in my portrayal of Slit.

Q: What advice can you give someone who is struggling to make their own works more interesting, compelling, cohesive, etc.?

A: Don't be afraid to write things that are too soft or too dark or too this or too that. Sometimes readers crave that stuff that makes us feel warm and safe and sometimes we're also here for things that make us wonder how the @!#$% the characters will ever recover or IF they will ever recover. The real world is full of all sorts of feelings, situations, serendipitous coincidences. Take us down whatever funky road you got! You're the driver, you decide. Your fic is your world. Write WILD things sometimes because it's fun.

Q: Have you visited or do you plan to visit Australia, Wasteland Weekend, or other Mad Max place?

A: I would love to take a trip to Australia one day to paint scenery in oils but that predates my time in MM fandom. I really want to go to Wasteland Weekend in the next two years but finances, necessities, costumes, etc need to be sorted out first.

Q: Tell us about a current WIP or planned project.

A: Well, I'm buying up model car kits to make little Mad Max cars for nerd purposes.

Thank you @burn-your-face-upon-the-chrome

#mad max fanfic #Mad Max Fandom Creator Spotlight #Mad Max Fandom Spotlight #fury road fanfic #fanfic author spotlight #fury road fandom #mad max fandom #weirdness unlimited

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femslashrevolution · 7 years

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I Am Femslash by SETI-fan

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

I was very surprised and touched to find out I’d been suggested as a femslash writer by readers to contribute something for this celebration, especially since I came out so late in the game, relatively. So, I decided that might be a topic worth discussing in itself: the role of femslash in my long journey to discovering who I was.

I read and see so many stories about lgbt+ individuals coming out in their teens or early twenties and knowing early on they were “different”. My situation wasn’t nearly so straightforward. I didn’t figure out how I identified until I was nearly thirty, and even then it still took some self-analysis to piece out what I wanted. This process was made a lot more complex than it should have been thanks to one particular speed bump:

My physical sex drive didn’t kick in until I was about twenty-eight. Nothing is medically wrong with me as far as I can tell, I just always was a late-bloomer, physically, socially, and apparently in this respect too. Don’t get me wrong, I had crushes in high school, but they were of a very PG-13 variety. I thought kissing could be fun and longed to hold hands and have sweet dates like I saw in the movies and TV shows, but when it came to the idea of sex? Ugh. I actually remember crying as a pre-teen when my mom gave me The Talk and explained that’s what happened. I had never had anything bad happen, it’s just like some part of me already noped out of that from day one.

(In retrospect, I’m very grateful I didn’t end up with any of the guys I crushed on in high school. Younger me…didn’t have the best taste and liked the idea of rehabilitating a “bad” guy with a good heart. Yes. I was that cliché. Thank you, life, for saving me from myself.)

Anyway, so in high school I wasn’t ready and in undergrad I was so preoccupied with school, work, and family drama at home that relationships weren’t a priority I thought much about. By grad school, I finally started feeling ready to give dating a bit more priority, but the old road block was still there.

Sex still didn’t sound remotely appealing. In fact, in many ways, it sounded repulsive.

I started thinking that I just hadn’t found the right person. I figured if the emotional side was there, then the physical side probably follow. If I really loved the guy, maybe that made the rest happen more naturally, or at the very least maybe I could at the very least tolerate sex if I didn’t end up enjoying it particularly. After all, I definitely found some guys handsome and had great emotional connections and blushing feelings with some. Maybe that could develop into more. The few unsatisfying dates and unrequited crushes I had didn’t get me any closer to wanting to explore that option, though.

Now, as this internal debate had been going on, my mom came out as a lesbian and I started acknowledging that option as being out there. I knew I had aesthetic appreciation for both men and women, I knew I tended to pay more attention to female characters in fandom than male ones and didn’t tend to go crazy over the actors everybody else did, but without the physical desire to reinforce things, I couldn’t tell where the line was drawn between just interest and attraction. But I quietly opened my mind to the possibility maybe I was a little bit bi, or at least okay with the idea that whoever I fell in love with could be in any gender’s body. I started getting flirted with by girls at conventions, and was flattered and intrigued, but nowhere near ready to take that step and actually make a non-straight move.

So how does all of this tie in with femslash? Because it was ultimately fandom that led me to a better understanding of what I wanted.

While I had kind of jokingly enjoyed a few slash ships in the past, the first one I actually seriously shipped was Princess Bubblegum and Marceline on Adventure Time. It started the same way I had with past non-canon slash pairings, “man you can find interpretations of scenes to make any pairing work with a bit of creativity”, but then the show actually was going there and it worked for these characters and I was in. The fandom was gifted with talented writers and artists who took the little hints and allusions the show slipped past network regulations and built gorgeous backstories and complex relationships for these two.

Unlike many people in fandom, I avoided smutfic in general. (See again my feelings of revulsion about sex.) But when writers I knew and enjoyed included scenes like that in their Bubbline fics, I stopped skimming past them and decided to go with it because their storytelling overall was so good. And then I started reading purely smut stories by writers I liked. And a little voice in my mind started saying, “So that’s what everyone’s been talking about all this time.” Suddenly, instead of thinking “don’t want to do that, ugh, maybe could tolerate that”, I was thinking “I’d try that, that sounds cool, ooh I want to try that…”

I’d never wanted to try anything before.

Around twenty-eight years old, the physical side of attraction finally kicked in, likely helped along by the coaxing in these stories, and to my great surprise, it only kicked in for girls (and a range of nonbinary situations that are more case-by-case since I dig androgyny too, but I’m going to oversimplify a bit here before this becomes an even bigger essay since the focus is femslash). I’ve tried reading straight erotica and felt the same lack of appeal. I can still find guys handsome and imagine kissing or cuddling with them and enjoying emotional relationships, but when it comes to going any farther than that, I recoil.

But suddenly it was like I was given permission to let in the feelings that, when I think back over my younger life, were honestly there all along, just muted and unrecognized. Heteronormativity, yes, but made harder by the lack of a sex drive too. The signs were there, I just didn’t have the libido to reinforce what I was thinking and give it that full meaning. Femslash let me tentatively explore that world before I was ready to take the first steps toward actually asking out or accepting an invitation from a woman in real life. Baby steps into allowing myself to feel those things.

And then the new Ghostbusters and Holtzmann hit me like a ton of bricks and I’ve pretty much just leapt off the cliff at this point, cheering all the way down. (Huge appreciation and apology to my best friend who’s had to put up with me turning into a teenager at thirty-one and tolerated my fangirling patiently. I’m leveling out some, I promise.)

Femslash opened that door in a way no other erotic fics or content ever had before. It’s stories about female sexuality written by women, for women. It was a perspective I hadn’t encountered before (especially since I wasn’t going to talk with my mom about her own personal experiences that way and the only other gay people I knew were men). It included women my own age talking about coming out later and discovering yourself and negotiating female-female relationships. And there are so many writers using it as a way to expose young and/or inexperienced readers to important concepts on healthy relationships, like navigating when mental illnesses affect one or both partners. Or how to communicate through emotional times and express your needs without shutting down and distancing from each other. Or even just the safe ways to explore kinks and how to provide aftercare and discuss boundaries and consent. God, the inclusion in some of these stories of how communication and consent don’t take a thing away from the passion and sensuality of the moment is incredible and should be part of every young person’s education on how to be a good sexual partner. I know not every fic is written to be realistic and healthy, nor should they be, but it’s so nice to see people using the medium to provide healthy role models as well, not just pornographic fantasy.

So yeah, I’m still at the beginning of my journey into embracing this new development and find someone to have a real-world relationship with, but the door is open now and I’m finally comfortable exploring those interests and I feel like I’m not going into this world completely blind and naïve. And I finally want to pursue a relationship like that instead of vaguely dreading it and hoping things work out okay. I don’t have to settle. I know I can find happiness and experience a physical relationship to its fullest. Femslash did that for me. I’m sure it’s done that for a lot of other young women. Hopefully most didn’t have to wait as long as I did to find that peace with who they were and what they wanted in life.

About the author:

I’m a biology teacher, writer, and artist who first experienced fandom as a 12-year-old obsessed with Star Wars and joined the internet fandom at 15, back at the turn of the millennium. I’ve been writing fics (under this same screenname) ever since and think I’m finally starting to get decent at it.

http://seti-fan.tumblr.com http://archiveofourown.org/users/SETI_fan/ https://www.fanfiction.net/u/2430050/SETI-fan

#seti fan #I Am Femslash #Femslash February #Femslash February 2017 #Type: Meta #submission

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