ashesandhackles - Tumblr blog

ashesandhackles · 14 days

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everyday i see clueless westerners (especially white people) reblog thinly veiled hindutva propaganda which they wouldn't know cause they know absolutely nothing about what goes on in india. so here are some signs that that the tumblr user you're interacting with is a hindu nationalist:

they either do not acknowledge casteism or claim that caste is a western construct. my personal favourite however is dismissing anyone bringing up caste discrimination by saying that the indian constitution outlaws untouchability. they may also bring up the fact that the prime minister belongs to an other backwards class (obc) so clearly india has moved on from caste and hindutva isn't only for the upper castes. they possess a shallow understanding of caste

harping on about "islamic colonisation" : no, the mughals did not colonise india. when you point this out, they will immediately assume that you think muslim invaders were innocent beings who did nothing wrong, which is very much not what anyone is claiming here

while we're on the topic of "islamic colonisation" they will also refer to the demolishing of muslim sites of heritage and worship and then building hindu temples over them as "decolonisation" (cough cough ram mandir) the hindu right also goes around pretending that they're indigenous to india. this is false

along a similar vein, they will dismiss islamophobia by bringing up instances of hindu oppression in countries like pakistan and bangladesh. it is true that hindus are persecuted in these two countries, however they are used to fuel their oppression complex, that their upper caste hindu self is under attack in india of all places (think a white christian in the united states). you should be in solidarity with minorities everywhere. it is neither transactional or conditional (note: they will never bring up sri lanka. persecution of hindus exists only when the oppressors are muslim)

claiming that hindu nationalism and hindutva are not the same because hindutva means "hindu-ness". that is only the literal translation of the term. like it or not, they're the same thing

they support the indian military occupation of kashmir. they will call it an integral part of kashmir, one reason which will be "hinduism is indigenous to kashmir." they will also bring up the last maharaja of kashmir signing the instrument of accession as further proof, as if the consent of the people was taken

they're zionists. do i even need to explain this. hindutva is just zionism for hindus

they refer to buddhism and jainism (sikhism too sometimes) as branches of hinduism rather than separate, distinct religions

they condemn any resistance to the indian govt as a burden or terrorism) (like calling the farmers who are currently protesting a hindrance or terrorists. funny how sikhs are the same as hindus when they support hindu causes but terrorists when they resist oppression...)

they call you a pseudo liberal or a fake leftist. i'm telling you, they don't know jackshit. they can't even tell the difference between a liberal and a leftist and call US unread lmao. bonus points if they call you a liberandu or a sickular 💀

they call india "bharat" when they talk in english. there are in fact multiple indian languages that call india bharat or bharatam, but if they say bharat while talking in english, that is absolutely a hindu nationalist no questions asked

please do your due diligence. read up on hindutva. hindu nationalists have already started making gains in the united states, thanks to rich upper caste nris. do not fall for propaganda

#my favourite is that they call everyone leftists #ma'am thats a liberal

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ashesandhackles · 15 days

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On Lily & James Potter

As I started to delve deeper into the HP fandom, the characters that frustrated me the most were James and Lily Potter. They appeared in reflections, in memories, in photographs and letters, and as shadow of souls, but they were never complete. And although we saw glimpses of the different pieces of them, there was no easy way, using strictly canon information, to bridge the gaps—something that was particularly notable with James (just take a look at any discourse surrounding whether or not he “changed”).

But I soon came to appreciate the maddening inability to see Lily and James in full, as it forces us to appreciate Harry’s tragedy. Harry didn't get the chance to get to know his parents, all the different facets of them, and so we as the reader don't get to either. Accepting the uncertainty surrounding their characters and sitting in our discomfort about that forces us to empathize, even in a relatively small way, with Harry's loss.

I lost a parent when I was young, and I can relate to Harry’s mess of memories, praise, and criticism about his father to wade through and try to make sense of. It's like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces and no box; each piece you get is vital, but there's no sense of where it fits overall. There’s an overwhelming sense of frustration, of unfairness, that accompanies being unable to piece together a coherent picture of a loved one... not only who your loved one was, but also who they could have become if they only had more time. But at the end of the day, those jigsaw pieces make up all the context and complexity you get.

So when it comes to James and Lily, my approach is this: I don’t discard or discount any of the pieces of information that we have, but I fight the urge to try to reconcile them all. I let them exist with lots of blank spaces and question marks, never getting too attached to any fandom interpretations or headcanons that attempt to flesh them out. For someone who likes to dig deep into characterization, it’s a tendency I have to try to fight… but it is beautifully and heartbreakingly reflective of life, and I really value that.

#hp thoughts #james potter #lily potter #lily evans #i genuinely think this is the intention of the canon books #harry cant fully know #everytime i see people talk about their lack of character development #i am like #they are ghosts #thats the point

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ashesandhackles · 15 days

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This artwork of mine is absolutely one of my fav pieces I've ever done and also my very first art for BtVS

I was listening to "Iris" Goo Goo Dolls on repeat. I mean it took an effort not to cry in the process

#spike btvs #spuffy fanart #spuffy #buffy summers #'you glow'

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ashesandhackles · 16 days

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Poor Things and Born Sexy Yesterday

(spoilers for Poor Things)

I stumbled on a discussion on whether Bella Baxter from the movie Poor Things (2023) is a representation of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope coined by video essayist Pop Culture Detective, who defines it as a mostly fantasy and sci-fi adjacent trope of a regular human man falling in love with a beautiful, otherworldly woman who, through some plot quirk or another, has no knowledge of social norms and no sexual or romantic past. Even though he is brutally average, he is able to win her love simply because he is the first (human) man she connects with and thus everything that's basic about him is impressive to her. Some examples of the trope given by Pop Culture Detective in his video essay are Leeloo from Fifth Element (the physically grown yet mentally child-like alien creature who falls in love with a taxi driver in a wifebeater) and Madison from Splash (a clothes-aversive mermaid who thinks that Tom Hanks is the most enchanting man in the world). I love Pop Culture Detective's work, and the Born Sexy Yesterday video essay was a cultural reset in my personal history. I saw the video when it premiered six years ago, but it has never fully left my mind, so of course I immediately thought of it when I saw Poor Things a couple of weeks ago. The movie certainly touches on the same themes that the Born Sexy Yesterday is made of. However, I think that the movie is an intentional subversion and a satire of the trope rather than a sincere execution of it.

The main character of the movie Bella Baxter starts out as a grotesquely literal version of the trope, as she is literally a newborn in the shape of a conventionally attractive woman who is being actively shielded from the influence of the outside world. She has the brain of a baby salvaged from the fresh corpse of a deceased pregnant woman, planted inside the skull of the reanimated body of the aforementioned woman as an experiment done by the unorthodox doctor Godwin Baxter. He keeps her locked inside his house and controls every aspect of her life, so when he invites the young doctor Max McCandles to join his research, McCandles is served what is essentially the perfect Born Sexy Yesterday experience: an exclusive access to a beautiful and naive young woman who is in a prime position of being groomed into whatever her keepers wish her to become.

Or so they would think.

A sincere Born Sexy Yesterday would be fully fascinated by this power dynamic and probably leave her here to be romanced by McCandles for the rest of the film. The audience would be expected to assume McCandles's perspective and indulge in the fantasy of falling in love with the untainted woman who has neither the life experience nor the critical thinking skills needed to question him.

But, fortunately, the movie doesn't remain here. After the first act, the movie switches its point of view from McCandles to Bella and starts putting her experiences to the forefront. She starts developing interests that absolutely do not align with the wants and needs of the men around her, and she begins to learn things that clash with the essence of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope. Soon, she has grown into a headstrong, independent, sexually experienced, intellectually curious woman who had zero interest in entertaining the whims of men and who intends to live fully for herself and herself alone: an absolute antithesis of the clueless and subservient blank slate the trope would require her to be. My reading of the film is that it's an intentional satire and an autopsy of the BSY trope and the gender politics that gave birth to it. It criticizes the men who entertain fantasies like it by making them look like absolute losers, urging us to ponder on what the hell is wrong with these creeps who see nothing wrong with drooling over a woman who is mentally a toddler instead of their intellectual equal.

The movie also reads as a critique of how women are socialized into a patriarchy. Godwin treats Bella just like a possession of his. Her body and her life are completely under his control from the moment she is "born" (another act in which neither Bella nor the woman she was born from had any say in), which isn't dissimilar to how a lot of fathers view their daughters. He wishes to keep her under constant supervision until the end of her life, until she protests and gets him to change his mind. When he asks McCandles to marry her, the two men treat the proposed marriage as a contract between the two of them rather than as a contract between McCandles and Bella herself. Again, this isn't too different to what marriage between men and women has meant throughout history.

McCandles is romantically interested in Bella even though he is fully aware of the fact that she is mentally a child. He seems to be looking forward to starting a sexual relationship with her after they are wed, as if the seal of marriage would make the intellectual disparity between them any less iffy. This bears resemblance to the way men in the real world prey on young girls with little to no sexual experience and whose brains are not fully developed because they're easier to control than grown women. I don't think that McCandles's hypocrisy is lost on the film. He agrees to marry Bella almost in the same breath as expressing his desire to keep her safe from other men, as if his desire to bed a person who is intellectually at the level of a five-year-old was any better than theirs.

When Bella chooses to leave Godwin's house to explore the world, the two men immediately replace her with a new experiment, showing that they were never truly interested in her as a person. They wanted the eternal baby, the thing that they can cage and control, and not the person who can think and learn and disagree with them. This exemplifies how disposable women are when they no longer serve their limited purpose in a patriarchy, and how replaceable people are when they are primarily viewed as bodies to be used. (Sidenote: I do think that Godwin and McCandles eventually learn to appreciate Bella for the person she is and that they both grow to be better people by the end of the film, but I still attest that these two are total creeps at least by this point of the movie.)

And then there's the supreme loser of the movie: the sleazy lawyer Wedderburn, who slithers into Bella's life and convinces her to run away with him. He is the darkest example of the kind of person who is drawn to inexperienced women like the ones represented in BSY movies - a predator who finds pleasure in the prospect of getting to corrupt and consume an innocent. He intends to take advantage of Bella and abandon her once he's gotten his fill only to find himself choking on his prey, who turns out not to be the malleable, naive creature he thought her to be.

This is the point where I think the movie goes from simply critiquing the BSY trope and everything it represents to successfully subverting it. The characters who embody the BSY trope don't really evolve. The movies they appear in are not really interested in their inner worlds and individual experiences beyond whatever serves the interests of the male protagonists. These characters are projections of male fantasies, so there really isn't a way for them to exist without centering men. This is not the case with Bella, who quickly grows into her own woman who is only tangentially interested in the men around her.

The bright side of Bella's condition is that she isn't just unaware of the ways of the world, but that she's also unaffected by the years of patriarchal conditioning that most normal women are burdened with. She literally has no shame, no internalized misogyny, no history of crushing blows to her sense of self-worth, and no looming knowledge of societal norms society. She has skipped the part in life where she is constantly bombarded with demands to make herself smaller and more palatable, to hate herself, to think of her body and the way it finds pleasure as something disgusting and abnormal, to treat other women as competition, and to think of herself as so much less important than men that she must pursue their validation beyond all else. Because of this blessed defect, she is free in a very rare way.

Wedderburn absolutely cannot handle that. When Bella first gets to know him, he paints a flattering picture of himself as a proud social deviant who gleefully eschews the rules of polite society. However, when faced with the actually deviant Bella, who flatly refuses to obey and center him, Wedderburn is revealed to be a phony. He is not a genuine libertine. He does not want to live in a truly free world with a free spirit like Bella, because he is a pathetic, insecure little man who only likes women in scenarios where the power balance is stacked against them. In my opinion, this is a direct shot fired at the BSY trope and its average enjoyers: if your ideal woman is someone who is many steps behind you in terms of mental capacity and experience, you are quite pitiful and would not stand a chance in an equal playing field.

It's hilarious how Wedderburn loses his mind when Bella starts exhibiting the kind of behavior he himself has proudly displayed earlier in the film: having multiple sexual partners, keeping sex and feelings separate, not falling in love with him or treating him like he's special, dropping him once she's had enough of him, and generally living life in an unconventional way. Again, the movie is pointing out the hypocrisy in men who fetishize inexperienced women while bragging about their own sexual conquests.

The part in the movie where Bella becomes a sex worker delivers the final blow to whatever is left of the BSY trope in her story, because the trope relies on sexual exclusivity and the fetishization of virginity. By having many partners and gaining lots of sexual experience out of her own free will, Bella stops fitting the ideal of the untouched woman who can be deflowered and exclusively possessed by the male protagonist. Also, through the conversations between Bella and the other sex workers, the movie finds another way to address the politics behind certain men's sexual fantasies of women - such as pointing out that some men enjoy sex with women more the less the women themselves enjoy it. It's a stray observation that the movie doesn't get deep into, but it has its place in the tapestry of the general theme of what desire reveals about people.

Finally, there's Alfie, who gives Bella (and us) an idea of the kind of life Bella's "mother" lived - as well as the kind of life Bella herself might be living had she grown up the normal way. It seems hellish. She'd be living under the tyranny of her awful husband, under a constant threat of violence, under absolute bodily control. Alfie wants to impregnate her against her will and to mutilate her genitals to deprive her of pleasure, and there's nothing that she could do about it because he is her husband and thus legally allowed to lord over her. She sees a terrifying glimpse of the role even privileged women like her have in this world: objects who exist solely for the pleasure of the men who own them. I would venture to say that the same description lies in the underbelly of the BSY trope.

I am happy that the movie doesn't take its sweet time to revel in the horror of this part of the story like so many other movies that address the oppression of women do. Instead, Bella stays with Alfie just enough time to say a hard and a well-informed no to his bullshit before getting on her merry way.

I think Poor Things is such a great example of taking a trope and exploring its implications in a way that goes beyond just pointing it out or parodying it by simply repeating it.

#poor things #bella baxter #yorgos lanthimos #born sexy yesterday

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ashesandhackles · 16 days

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Bella Baxter

#poor things #poor things art #bella baxter #bella baxter fanart

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ashesandhackles · 16 days

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What makes Poor Things so ultimately triumphant for me is the way that Bella Baxter is, despite it all, her own creation. She came into the world in an experiment that violated the autonomy of both Victoria before her and Bella herself, but she steps beyond the parameters of the experiment and into the world, to learn from it. The intentions of men may be to possess her or use her or take joy in despoiling her vulnerability, but their intentions do not determine her experiences. She decides. She explores. She looks at a world full of sorrow that could render her helpless and chooses instead to do what she can about it and then sleep easy at night. She listens to the call of her curiosity before all else, her happiness second, her compassion third. The family that she makes for herself in the end is unconventional, but it's ultimately hers and allows her to flourish as a doctor with an experimental nature and a heart of patinaed silver.

And I don't think it could be that particular kind of triumphant if the movie wasn't so fucked up.

#poor things #poor things 2023 #bella baxter

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ashesandhackles · 16 days

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eyyy uru!

already answered this here.

not from US asks.

#asks

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ashesandhackles · 16 days

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Hey! I'm a new potterhead. Found your blog while browsing Tumblr and loving every post! But the ending of DH is still muffled for me. I don't quite get how Harry survived in forest and how Voldemort died because of just expelliarmus?

hello, thank you anon and i apologise for being so late with this!

so ending of DH is a bit convoluted, but stay with me:

Harry survives because Voldemort took his blood

...and thereby, Voldemort accidentally strengthens Lily's protection spell on Harry. Which means Harry cannot die as long as the power of Lily's sacrifice - now running in Voldemort's body - is functional.

As explained here:

“Precisely!” said Dumbledore. “He took your blood and rebuilt his living body with it! Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily’s protection inside both of you! He tethered you to life while he lives!”

There is also the added fact of Harry being the master of the elder wand- which is why the wand won't work properly against Harry.

This is why Voldemort's Killing curse against Harry rebounds on himself, while Harry takes the possession of the wand with an Experlliarmus.

I hope this answers your question?

#asks

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ashesandhackles · 16 days

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Thanks for the tag! 💗

1. Harry Potter - from Harry Potter

2. Buffy Summers - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

3. Shigure Sohma - Fruits Basket

4. Sango - Inu Yasha

5. Uruki - Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden

6. Inej Ghafa - Six of Cross duology

7. Spike Spiegel - Cowboy Bebop

8. Nana O - Nana

9. Wanda Maximoff - MCU

10. Camille Preaker - Sharp Objects

Ten characters, ten fandoms

Tagged by @coffeefrenchandhistory

Name your top 10 characters in 10 fandoms, then tag 10 others to play.

1. Sirius Black - Harry Potter

2. Marissa Cooper- The OC

3. Rowan Mayfair- the Mayfair witches

4. Buffy Summers- Buffy the Vampire slayer

5. Sally Owens- Practical Magic

6. Cher- Clueless

7. Paige Matthews- Charmed

8. Sansa Stark- ASOIAF

9. Zelda Spellman- Sabrina

10. Vilanelle- Killing Eve

Tagging: @ashesandhackles @blitheringmcgonagall @puppyduckster @mariekavanagh @freezedive @celestemagnoliathewriter @merlinsbudgiesmugglers and anyone else who wants to play

#cant believe this was sitting in my drafts #forever #sorry for doing this late

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ashesandhackles · 16 days

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I am in love with your answers for the Non US ask game. Like Tumblr, fandom is also majorly US centric. Have Desi Harry fics and meta stereotypes got something right about your your country? Are there fics you like that get something about your country right?

oh anon, this is a can of worms! So I like desi Harry as an idea (and lot of the art!) - in fact, there are some parts of Prisoner of Azkaban dialogue that almost reads as if Harry is POC. I am referring to this bit:

A few years later, she had turned up at Christmas with a computerized robot for Dudley and a box of dog biscuits for Harry.

You mustn’t blame yourself for the way the boy’s turned out, Vernon,” she said over lunch on the third day. “If there’s something rotten on the inside, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

Harry tried to concentrate on his food, but his hands shook and his face was starting to burn with anger. Remember the form, he told himself. Think about Hogsmeade. Don’t say anything. Don’t rise — Aunt Marge reached for her glass of wine.

“It’s one of the basic rules of breeding,” she said. “You see it all the time with dogs. If there’s something wrong with the bitch, there’ll be something wrong with the pup — ”

of course, the untidiness of Harry's hair etc also feels charged in that context.

It was common to see colonial establishments say, "no dogs, no Indians" in colonial India. So I remember feeling this while reading POA and opening chapters of OOTP - otherwise Harry is of course written as default white protagonist.

However, I haven't found a desi Harry fic I liked? I am open to be recced those of course - it is just a matter of finding the right fic for myself. I just find lot of fics in the Never Have I Ever (I don't like that show) vein of Indian identity in a foreign land and I simply want to ask question and push back on that way of interpreting Harry's family:

For example, Christianity is a minority religion in India: but why can't Harry be from a Christian family? As opposed to having to explain away the anglicised names (which you can do great things with as a story). You can still have Harry celebrating Diwali (if that is what you want from a story and that is seemingly what everyone wants from a desi Harry story) even if he is Christian! Because we all celebrate the big festivals!

I have some issues with caste blindness, which is a vibe I do get with hcs that I am not going to expound here. @sleepstxtic has helped me parse through some of the feelings about that. (in that vein, I like her work and would rec this specifically: Will you send me to Hogwarts?)

This is just me, of course. I have very strong feelings that there is only one kind of Indian identity (there isn't, but prevalence of only kind of Indian identity in desi Harry hcs/theories/metas makes it look there is only one way to be Indian). My realy problem is that I find lot of stories don't engage with how I personally engage with my own Indian identity as a lower caste, South Indian woman. Also, I have traveled within India a LOT. I just want more ways to see interpret Harry as desi because there is a lot of ways to be desi?

I have, however, found stories on Parvati and Padma that I have liked - @broomsticks has recced many of them on @harrypocter server. (nirmal was amazing and it really captured mumbai very well)

#asks

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