#**wait I hate the quote being used in this specific context. Outside of this it makes my head hurt a bit
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Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part 1 of 3
Disclaimers and trigger warnings:
1. These fairytales are European, although there’s often overlap in themes globally. I know European fairytales better, which is essentially the reason I’m not going to branch out too far. I opted to also stick to Western movies so as not to narrow things down, but also in particular “waves hand towards all of Ghibli” amongst many others. There’s a reason the guys in Ghibli are so gender.
2. TW for discussions of rape culture and rape fantasies
EDIT: FUCK I’M A GOBLIN CHILD! FORGOT TO PUT A MASSIVE MASSIVE THANK YOU TO @mimsyaf WHO HAS BEEN THE NICEST, KINDEST EDITOR ON THESE THOUGHTS AND CONTRIBUTED SO MUCH TO THEM AND GENERALLY IS A WONDERFUL PERSON!
Part 2
Part 3
1. Introduction
I recently wrote a little thing, which was about Daniel as a fairytale protagonist – specifically one that goes through some of the kinds of transformations that are often associated with female protagonists of fairytales.
I used quotes from Red Riding Hood, Labyrinth, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Dracula, which, as an aside – the overlap between fairytales, horror, and fantasy and the ways each of those genres delve into very deep, basic questions of humanity and the world is something that will always make me feral. I will be generally sticking with fairytales though. Also I am very excited about some of those Labyrinth concepts going around!
I’m going to use “feminine” and “masculine” in both gendered (as in relating specifically to people) and non-gendered (as in relating to codes) ways throughout this, depending on context.
To be binary for a moment, because sample-sizes of other genders are low, women are usually able to fall into either feminine or masculine arcs, although sometimes the masculine-coded woman can become a “not like the other girls” stereotype and the feminine-coded woman a shallow cliché – in both cases they’re also under more scrutiny and judgement, so it’s always worth asking “is this character not working for me because of the writing or because I have ingrained biases? (Both?)”
Men don’t often get feminine-coded arcs. Because. Probably a mix of biases and bigotry. But there are some that seem to have slipped beneath the shuttered fence of “Sufficient Narrative Testosterone,” and Daniel LaRusso is one of them.
2. Some Dude Comparisons (Men Doing Manly Action-Hero Things like being trans symbolism and loving your girlfriend… seriously those things are hella manly, I wish we saw more of that onscreen…)
a. Neo
Much like Neo The Matrix, whose journey is filled with transgender subtext and specifically and repeatedly references Alice In Wonderland, Daniel doesn’t go through quite the kind of hero's journey usually associated with Yer Standard Male Hero, especially the type found in the 80s/90s.
Neo is my favourite comparison, because of the purposefulness of his journey as a trans narrative and the use of Alice. But I’m sure there are other non-traditional male heroes out there (but are they trans tho? Please tell me, I want trans action heroes).
Neo “passes” as a socially acceptable man, but online goes by a different name - the name he prefers to be known by - feels like there’s something inherently wrong about the world around him and his body’s place in that society, and then gets taken down the rabbit hole (with his consent, although without really “knowing” what he’s consenting to) to discover that it’s the world that’s wrong - not him. And by accessing this truth he can literally make his body do and become whatever he wants it to.
Yay. (The message of the Matrix is actually that trans people can fly).
Neo is – kind of like Daniel – a strange character for Very Cis Straight Guys to imprint on. He spends most of the first movie unsure about what’s going on, out of his depth, and often getting beaten up. He is compared to Alice several times and at the end he dies. He loses. He has to be woken up with true love’s kiss, in a fun little Sleeping Beauty/Snow White twist. Yes, after that he can fly, but before that he’s getting dead-named and hate-crimed by The Most Obvious Stand-In For Normativity, Agent Smith, and being carried by people far more physically capable than he is (people who also fall outside of normative existence).
Trinity and Neo in The Matrix. The fact that a lot of the time neither of them is gendered is something. Literally brought to life by true love’s kiss.
I’m not about to argue that Daniel LaRusso is purposefully written along these same thought processes, so much as the luck of the way he was written, cast, directed, acted, and costumed all came together in the right way. And this is even more obvious when compared to That Other Underdog Fite Movie That Was By The Same Director as Karate Kid.
b. Rocky
The interesting thing about Rocky is that he is (despite being a male action icon) also not written as a Traditionally Masculine person. Large portions of Rocky – and subsequent Rocky films – are his fear and insecurity about fighting vs his inability to apply his skills to another piece of work and wanting to do right by his girlfriend (and future wife), Adrian. The fighting is most often pushed onto him against his will.
Much like in Karate Kid there is barely any fighting in Rocky I. Most of it is dedicated to how much Rocky loves Adrian and the two of them getting together. The fight is – again like in Karate Kid – a necessary violence, rather than a glorified one (within the plot, obviously watching any movie like this is also partly about the badassness of some element of the violence – whether stamina or the crane kick, it’s all about not backing down against a more powerful opponent).
Rocky is played by Sylvester Stallone. He’s tough, he’s already a fighter (albeit in the movie not a great one yet), he’s taking the fight for cash – so although he’s also soft-spoken and sweet, you’re aware of the fact that he’s got those traits that’d make a male audience go “Hell Yeah, A Man,” or whatever it is a male audience does watching movies like that… cis straight men imprinting on oiled muscle men sure is a strange phenomenon, why do you wanna watch a boxing match? So you can watch toned guys groaning and grappling with each other? Because you want to feel like A Man by allowing yourself to touch the skin of other men?
Apollo and Rocky in Rocky III. This sequence also includes prolonged shots of their crotches as they run. Sylvester Stallone directed this. This was intentional. Bros.
Daniel LaRusso is not built like that. But that doesn’t really have to matter. Being smallish and probably more likely to be described as “pretty” than handsome, and not having a toxic masculine bone in his body does not a feminine archetype make. It just makes a compelling (and pretty) underdog.
c. Daniel
So where does the main difference really lie? Between Rocky and Daniel? Well, Rocky has the plot in his hands – Daniel, largely, does not. Rocky is acting. Daniel is reacting or being pushed into situations by others. Just like our boy Neo. Just like Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Snow White – just like some of the women in some contemporary(ish) fairytale films like Buttercup (Princess Bride), Dorothy (Wizard of Oz), or Sarah (Labyrinth).
This isn’t a necessary negative about stories about girls and women, so much as looking at what it is girls and women in fairytales have/don’t have, what they want, and how they’re going to get it. It’s about power (lack of), sexuality (repressed, then liberated), men, and crossing some taboo lines. It’s also about queerness.
3. The Karate Kid Part One: Leaving Home
Daniel LaRusso is a poor, skinny, shortish kid (played by a skinny, shortish twenty-two-year old) who doesn’t fit in after having been taken away from the home he was familiar with against his will. Not every male protagonist in a fairytale leaves of his own will, and not every female protagonist leaves under duress – Red Riding Hood, for example, seems perfectly happy to enter the forest. However generally a hero is “striking out to make his fortune,” and generally a heroine is fleeing or making a bargain or being married off or waiting for help to arrive. She is often stuck (and even Red Riding Hood requires saving at some point).
Daniel then encounters a beautiful, lovely girl on the beach, puts on a red hoodie (red is significant), is beaten up by a large, attractive bully, loses what little clout he may have had with his new friends, and generally has a mostly miserable time until he befriends and is saved by Mr Miyagi. To do a little Cinderella comparison: Miyagi is the fairy godmother who pushes Daniel to go to the ball in disguise as well, and that disguise falls to pieces as he’s running away.
Then Daniel asks for help, Miyagi gets him enrolled in a Karate Tournament, and starts teaching him. Daniel wins the tournament and gets the girl, the end.
While Daniel has chutzpah and is a wonderful character, none of the big events are initiated by him, except for the initial going to the forest/beach (and within all of these events Daniel absolutely makes choices – I’m not saying he’s passive): Lucille takes them to California, Miyagi pushes him to go to the dance, Miyagi again decides to enroll him in the tournament and trains him, and only because Kreese doesn’t allow for any other option, Ali is the one who more often than not approaches Daniel, and even their first encounter is pushed by Daniel’s friends.
Daniel really is at a dance/ball in disguise and receives a flower from a girl who recognises him through said disguise, it’s unbearable! It’s adorable! I get it Ali, I fucking get it!
Daniel’s main journey within this – apart from not getting killed by karate thugs (love u Johnny <3) and kissing Ali – is to learn from Miyagi. He’s not necessarily a full-on feminine fairytale archetype at this point, although there are fun things to pull out of it, mainly in the context of later films and Cobra Kai: the subtext of karate and how that builds throughout all the stories, the red clothes, the themes of obsession, his being targeted by boys whose masculinity is more than a little bit toxic and based on shame… more on all that coming up.
He doesn’t technically get a home until they build him a room at Miyagi’s place, but he definitely leaves the woods at the end of this one, trophy lifted in the air after being handed to him by a tearful Johnny and all.
And then they made a sequel.
4. The Karate Kid Part Two: Not Out Of The Woods Yet
Daniel’s won the competition, Kreese chokes out Johnny for daring to lose and cry, more life-lessons are given (for man without forgiveness in heart…) and Daniel and Ali break-up off-screen, confirming that TKK1 was not really about the girl after all, which, despite Daniel and Kumiko having wonderful chemistry, is also an ongoing theme. Daniel enters the screen in The Most Baby-Blue Outfit seen since Tiana’s dress in Princess and the Frog? Or that dress in Enchanted? Maybe Cinderella’s (technically silver, but later depicted as blue)?
(Sidenote: At everyone who says Sam ought to wear a callback to that suit, you are correct and sexy).
Surprise, Miyagi’s building him a room.
Double-surprise, Miyagi needs to go to Okinawa.
Triple surprise, Daniel reveals he’s going with him, because he’s his son dammit.
The Karate Kid Part Two is maybe the least Daniel-LaRusso-Feminine-Fairytale-Protagonist of the three, because it’s not really his movie. Daniel runs around with Kumiko (aka the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen), continues to be The Best Non-Toxic Boy a middle-aged Okinawan karate master could ask for, lands himself another Built Karate Rival (twice is just a coincidence, right? Right?), and eventually doesn’t die while wearing red again – twice: When Chozen almost strangles him to death at the Miyagi dojo and then during the final fight. The Saving Of The Girl (both the little girl in the storm and Kumiko) actually puts him in a more traditional masculine space than the previous movie did, even if the main theme of the film is about compassion and kindness and by the end, once more the boy whose masculinity is built on rockhard abs and matchsticks is on his knees. Daniel just has that power over big boys. It’s called kick/punch them in the face hard enough that they see stars.
There’s an aside to be made here about how much Daniel really is an observer in other peoples stories in this, although he is the factor that sends both Chozen and Kumiko into completely different directions in life (Chozen and Kumiko main characters when?) Anyway he comes out of it presumably okay, despite being almost killed. Maybe a few therapy sessions and he’ll get over it. Too bad Terry Silver is lurking around the corner…
5. The Karate Kid Part Three: The Big Bad Wolf
Alright people have written Words about the third movie. It’s fascinating. It’s odd. It’s eye-straining. It’s like olives – you’re either fully onboard the madness or it’s too off-putting for you (or you’re like. Eh, don’t see what all the fuss is about either way...). It’s basically a non-consensual secret BDSM relationship between a guy in his thirties (played by a Very Tall twenty-seven year old Thomas Ian Griffith) and a 17/18 year old (played by a shorter twenty-eight year old Ralph Macchio).
Also recently we got more information on Mr. Griffith’s input on the uh… vibes of the film. Apparently it wasn’t just The Sweetness of Ralph Macchio’s face, the screenplay (whatever that amounted to in the first place – release the script!), the soundtrack, the direction to not tone it down under any circumstances, the fact that Macchio categorically refused to play a romance between himself and an actress who was sixteen, no: it was also TIG coming up with fun ways to torture Daniel’s character and suggesting these to the director. Clearly everyone has fun hurting Mr Macchio (including Mr Macchio).
The point is that aaallll of that amounts to that Intense Homoerotic Dubiously-Consented-To D/s subtext that haunts the movie and gives a lot of fun stuff to play with. It’s also a film that – if we’re analysing Daniel along feminine-coded fairytale lines recontextualises his role in this universe.
The Fairytale goes topsy-turvy. Through the looking glass. Enter Big Bad Wolf stage right. Karate is a metaphor for Daniel’s bisexual awakening.
“Oh, when will an attractive man touch me in ways that aren’t about hurting me?” he asks after two movies of being hurt by boys with rippling muscles. “Why do men continue to notice me only to hit me? Do you think wearing red is making me too noticeable? Anyway, Mr Silver looked really good in his gi today.”
Daniel’s diary must be a trip.
#daniel larusso#the karate kid#cobra kai#ck#johnny lawrence#cobra kai meta#my writing#part one of three#some comparisons to matrix and rocky because I love to talk about those#terry silver
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When I found out about Milgram it's inevitable that I got into it, since I love Deco*27's music so much. However as a fair warning, the entire project deals with extremely heavy themes since every character is a killer in some way or another. So if you are uncomfortable with content involving themes such as abuse, suicide, death, stalking, violence, abortion, and animal death, please do not look into this project or read any further.
I'd add a read more but I still don't know how from mobile lmao.
Just wanted to share my thoughts on each prisoner so far
Haurka: I am choosing to agree with the theory that he had some sort of learning disability and that he lashed out in jealousy because people didn't understand him or his needs. I also currently prefer the twin brother theory over the younger self theory, because if he was so miserable at the time why would his past self look so happy? While I don't believe mental disabilities excuse someone from being held responsible for their actions, I do believe that he was too young at the time and not given the right tools and help to learn to cope. Instead he falsely learned lashing out was the only way to be taken seriously. He shows extreme remorse for how he behaved and seems to be triggered by anything that reminds him of his past (his dislike of young children and animals in particular). I want to forgive him so that he can get the help he desperately needs.
Yuno: Abortions are not murder. It's extremely easy for me to forgive her. Especially since it's heavily implied that her clients refused to use protection even when asked. She probably didn't have a way to get access to birth control without bringing her controversial career in compensated dating to light, either.
Futa: honestly I got into Milgram so late that I haven't put much personal thought into Futa because quite honestly: I don't like him and I feel like he represents a huge part of what's wrong with cancel culture. He fancies himself a hero, thinking that he's fighting for what's right. It's pretty clear to me though that he's taking his so called 'villains' out of context and condemning them for things he doesn't have a full picture on. I think i'd be able to understand the story better if I could read the screen on his phone, but I do not know japanese and rely heavily on fan translations for content outside of the provided lyric translations. It's clear he didn't actually want anyone dead, since the monsters in his fantasies are just KOed... Up until the last one, where the literal blood on his hands shakes him out of the fantasy. I see a lot of people saying he bullied and doxxed someone until they committed suicide. I'm still glad he was voted unforgiven for this round though.
Mu: I don't... Fully understand Mu's story. I understand she was bullied and harassed by people who pretended to be her friend initially, which is something I can absolutely sympathize with. I also understand that she was just being used for her wealth rather than seen as a real friend. What I don't understand is why she targeted the specific girl she did for her 'escape'. The popular theory is that she had a crush on the girl, got outed as being not straight, and the entire school including her friends started relentlessly bullying her even physically for it. The other girl seems to just straight up avoid and ignore her, which is why I understand the point of being pressured nearly to suicide and exploding but I don't understand why she attacked the specific person she did. I think my opinion of her can go either way the more information we get.
Shidou: I'm following the harvested organs from his patients to try and save his lover theory. Honestly even with the vague imagery there's so little wiggle room for doubt in this one. I don't think he should be forgiven, but he also wants to die because he already saw his lover die which he is quoted as thinking to be a fate worse than death. For all the lives he's ruined, I almost want to say he deserves that torture... At least, that's how I'm dealing with the idea that he was already voted forgiven by the time I got here.
Mahiru: I!!! Hate!!! Her!!! Overly clingy and controlling of her lover who she stalked while trying to emulate romance novels to force into a relationship with her. Heavily implied to have driven him to suicide via emotional abuse and guilt tripping him back to her every time he tried to break up with her. I'm so glad she was already voted unforgiven by the time I got here. I actually had to take a break and step back after the weight of her song hit me because it reminded me of so many people I've had the misfortune of having in my life in the past.
Kazui: so far my first one that I have an original theory on instead of following one someone else came up with! I just posted my full thoughts on the video about an hour ago. But basically, I feel like his wife divorced him and wanted to stay friends but he wanted to get back together. It escalated until they had an argument that resulted in her falling or being pushed to her death. Seems to view himself as the protagonist in his own romantic tragedy. My opinion on him was swinging wildly until I came up with this theory and now I am leaning heavily towards unforgiven because it is the similar selfish pushiness as mahiru minus the manipulation.
Amane: most of her imagery flew over my head until I read some comments and theories. I support the 'grew up in a religious cult that literally tortured her if she didn't follow the rules' theory. I'm voting to forgive her because just like Haruka, I think she's too young to truly be held responsible, especially when it's currently unclear to me what actually happened. I think what she needs isn't punishment, but to be taken away from the cult and rehabilitated.
Mikoto: until we have more info I'm as confused as he is : )
Kotoko: seems to be pretty upfront about what's going on. I'm currently assuming that she fancies herself some kind of vigilante or holds a very strong personal grudge of some sort. Obv waiting for more info.
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troubleshooting: common quandaries and thots to overcome
It's no surprise that people whose major hobby involves writing, the internet, and fandom are often people who carry a lot of anxiety and tension around with them. For many of us, writing is something we do to escape, relax, unwind, and flex creative muscles we might not get to use at work or school. I get it.
For many of us, however, it also seems like forum rp is a stressor, a cause of great anxiety and insecurity. We've all seen or known people who go through a major rp-related crisis.
Sometimes, these crises are truly major - catastrophic falling-outs and permanently damaging rumor mills and etc etc. But a lot of the time? Well. It's not that it's "in your head," because obviously what you are feeling is very valid. But I think sometimes the way we think of internet spaces fuels dysfunctional thinking.
This isn't quite a tutorial; it's more in the vein of my tough love re: writer's block. I'm going to talk through some common scenarios, anxieties, and other issues I see in the rp community, and offer my (fully unsolicited) thoughts and advice. As always, your mileage may vary, but I'm trying!
Topics covered, because this one is a LONGBOI:
Insecurity & thread reactions
Insecurity & completionism/ Being Liked
Jealousy (especially ship-related)
The server is not therapy.
So here's the thing about the internet: for better or worse, it's for everyone.
On the far end of the spectrum, this means that the internet is a great incubator for toxic garbage. See: right-wing radicals, etc. But for most of us, this means that there is room on the internet for weird little me and my weird little hobby. You can find a community to talk about virtually any interest. You, for example, found the rp community.
So here's the thing about the internet: for better or worse, it's for everyone. This means that while you can find a community to talk about virtually any interest, you are never going to find a community that is completely without flaws.
There will always be people who annoy you, rub you the wrong way, or who you think are mean-spirited and negative. There will always be someone you don't get along with. There will always be people who disagree with you.
I have been in servers where members come to me time and time again to complain about other members, as though I am going to boot someone for wanting to talk about x just because they, personally, are sick of hearing about x. I am not going to tell someone to change their personality because someone else, personally, finds it annoying.
Offline, you wouldn't tell your manager at Starbucks to fire Susie because you don't like talking to her. You would simply not talk to her outside of a professional context. You would simply not take your break at the same time as her. You would simply not make small talk with her when the store is quiet and would instead, like, read the liner notes on whatever CD is at the register. (Does Starbucks still sell CDs?)
There will always be people in your community who you do not like and whose logic does not make sense to you. If they are not doing anything genuinely abusive, they have as much right to be in your community as you do. There is, in fact, likely someone in your community who finds you somewhat annoying. C'est la vie.
A community is not an environment custom-curated to your exact specifications. It is a community. You are not entitled to it being perfect. You are entitled to a space free from harassment and bigotry. If the space is free from harassment and bigotry and you cannot enjoy the space because someone else in it is existing harmlessly in a way that you dislike or find irritating, you have the option to leave the community. Discord server links are not a binding contract!
This is all to say: I think a lot of us expect far more of our online communities than is fair. Remember that every single person in your server is an individual human being with an interior life as rich as your own, and a list of neuroses possibly as extensive. None of them, yourself included, are perfect.
Oh, speaking of that list of neuroses! Let's tackle it, babe.
Your neuroses are not anyone else's problem.
It is on you to work through and overcome your anxieties and insecurities.
It is kind of other people to accommodate your growth, or to modify their behavior so as not to trigger your anxieties and insecurities. They are by no means required to do so.
Note: they do need to respect your triggers, if you have them and list them.
So here we go: troubleshooting frequent freak-outs. Buckle up!!!
Insecurity & thread reactions (or lack thereof)
Some people experience a lot of anxiety and insecurity around how their writing partners react to their threads. This might surface in the form of feeling unappreciated/disliked if the thread partner doesn't drop an emoji react on the link in your server's tag channel, or in feeling like no one likes your writing because they aren't swooning over it in #affirmations/ #thread-shoutouts/ #quotables/ etc.
You are serving as both texters in this meme.
So... you don't actually know what's going on with your thread partner at any given moment, you know? Personally, here are some possible scenarios with me as your thread partner:
You tag me and I put a passage from your post in #thread-shoutouts: I am at my desk, on my computer, not engaged in active DM conversation with anyone, and your post either made me cackle or it made me emo
You tag me and I DM you to gush about it: there's a lot happening in the server right now/ I don't want to derail a public conversation
You tag me and I react with an emoji: I am at date night with my girlfriend and she is in the bathroom. I have had time to read your post. I probably haven't put it in my tracker and will try and remember later, when I find it in one of 100 tabs open on Safari on my phone.
You tag me and I don't react at all: I am swamped with work and read your post in between emails. Instead of taking a second to react I immediately jumped into my tracker to log your reply, and now I am back to emails.
You'll notice none of these rationales are: "I don't react at all because I dislike you as a human." "I actively chose to quote Susie in #thread-shoutouts and not you because I want to hurt you." "I don't DM you about our thread because I hate our thread."
It doesn't have to be that deep! Stop hurting yourself. Let yourself assume the kindest option. After all, don't you want people to assume the best of you, too?
If your thread partners know you value emoji reacts or thread shoutouts, it is kind of them to do them. But it isn't inherently unkind for them not to, either. You're better off trying to kick that need for public validation.
Overview for addressing thread reaction insecurity:
If your server has a thread shoutout/quotables/etc channel, mute it. Don't look at it. Stop giving yourself something to fixate on.
When you are worried that someone hates a thread because they aren't giving emoji reacts, instead of building a narrative in your head that may or may not be true - communicate! "What beats do you want us to make sure we hit in this thread?" is a good introductory question to see if a thread is doing something for either or both of you, and gives your partner a chance to say something if they do want it to go in a different direction and would be more excited.
If someone is continuing to write with you, regardless of whether they post an emoji, it is probably because they enjoy writing with you!
Be deliberate about your thread premises! In my experience, threads done "just because" without a specific purpose (e.g. building chemistry between ship partners, introducing a subplot about a cursed hairbrush, kidnapping a house elf) are the first to lose steam and lose interest. It's entirely possible that someone likes you, likes writing with you, and simply doesn't prioritize this thread above their others because there's nothing meaningful to prioritize!
Keep your eyes on your own paper and stop reading so much into what other people do or don't do. It's probably not that deep!
Insecurity & completionism/ Being Liked
You would not be the first person to exacerbate their own problems because of a sense of duty to the spirit of completionism. Here's the thing, friend:
You do not need to write with every member.
You do not need to plot with every character.
You do not need to be in every subplot.
You do not need to have a character in every member group.
People fall into this trap thinking that if they can be everything to everyone, it will make them popular/important/beloved/a truly included member of the site.
But quantity is not the same as quality. You might have a thread with every character onsite but if half those threads are under a "they're on the same bus" premise, then yeah, people aren't going to want to keep up with that thread, and it's going to contribute to your thread reaction anxiety!
Write characters you are excited about. But more importantly: write plots you are excited about. Write threads you are excited about. You can be friends with people in your server without writing with them! You are better off writing a smaller number of really well-plotted, juicy plots that everyone involved feels heavily invested in than in writing a lot of watery threads for the sake of writing with every single person. It's hard to believe, but many people would rather NOT have a thread and wait until there's a juicy reason to than write a thread that doesn't have any development relevance simply for the sake of it.
If you're finding that it's hard to find juicy or plot-driven reasons to thread with many people, that might be a hint to write different types of characters. While yes, people exist who are very self-contained and isolated, the purpose of rp isn't to be a direct mirror of real life. It's to have fun while writing with other people. If your character is not fun to write with other people, they are probably not a good fit for an rp setting.
RP is not a popularity contest. This is not high school. No one is voting for prom queen. Be kind and be open to ideas and collaboration and people will like you. People will enjoy writing with you! People might even go out of their way to write with you. And they will be writing things that matter to both of you. That's winning, dude.
You might be tempted to pinpoint a "popular group" in the server and fix your sights on becoming one of them. This is also a failing proposition: often the "popular group" you might first identify is incorrect, and you are mistaking "exclusivity" for "importance." Sometimes sites have a small, tight-knit group with intricate inter-group plots and a very visibly closed-off dynamic. Since that dynamic mirrors the popular girls you were raised watching in teen movies, I can understand why you would assume that these people are the most important people to befriend on a site. They're not. They're cliquey and exclusive, and trying to get them to make room for you when they have intentionally and performatively set themselves aside from many other members is like... lmao, dude, it's not going to work.
Not only that, but the fact that these people are hard to pin down? It's not a selling point! The most beloved members on any site are not the ones who make you beg for a scrap of their attention. The most beloved members are the people who are friendly and kind. THAT is who you want to Get In with.
Overview for addressing completionism tendencies and "what if I'm Left Out" woes:
This is not a popularity contest, and you are a grown up. Focus on having fun and enjoying writing. That is not something you can do if your first priority is Getting In with the people you think are a site's "Popular Crowd."
You do not need to be everything to everyone. You cannot be everything to everyone.
In fact, everyone will appreciate you more if you do less and you do it well.
Focus on the positive. Who cares if Susie and Sally won't write with you? Sarah and Sam love writing with you! Yes, it would make sense for Susie to plot with you because your characters work together - but again, this is a hobby, not real life, and if you and Susie don't vibe, your characters don't need to interact! Why write with people who make you feel insecure? Trick question; there's NO reason to!
I understand the drive to be well-liked. Trust! I, too, desperately want to be well-liked. You'll have better luck if you don't try so hard. Be yourself and make friends with people who genuinely like you. Stop worrying about what the site's yearbook will look like. There isn't going to be a fucking yearbook.
Jealousy (especially ship-related)
Do you ever find yourself feeling a spike of anxiety or resentment when one of your favorite writing partners writes with someone else?
This reaction is especially common where ships are concerned: when one partner writes AU ships with their character, or has a plot with their character's previous partners before their OTP, etc.
It's a bit territorial, and it's not a good look, friends!
Your writing partners get to write with other people. How much they enjoy writing with other people has nothing to do with how much they enjoy writing with you. How much they write with other people has nothing to do with you. What they write has nothing to do with you. It's not all about you!
It truly doesn't matter how anxious you feel when your writing partners write with other people. They are entitled to write with whoever they want! What makes you nervous about them writing with other people?
In a forum rp environment, the best way to secure fulfilling, satisfying character arcs for your character is to plot with multiple others. That includes you, on both fronts: your writing partner needs you for their character's development as much as you need them! They aren't going to just stop writing with you arbitrarily.
If they do stop writing with you, there is probably a reason! Are they still on the site? Are they still writing? Are they going through something in real life that might impact their muse? There could be a hundred reasons why they are writing more with Susie now than they were with you, and they could be anything from "Susie is out of town this week so I want to give her a lot of replies to come home to" to "a ladder fell on my head and I am recovering from a concussion" to, possibly, "your territorial behavior makes me uncomfortable, and I would rather write with people who do not make me feel bad about writing with other people."
This behavior is especially weird in a ship context, and is something worth unpacking. When you write ships, do you resent/get anxious about your ship partner writing AU ship threads? About their character having previous partners? About their character having crushes that they do not act on?
An AU ship is an alternate universe specifically because it is not real. Susie and Sally shacking up in a space AU has no bearing over whether or not Susie and Marco end up together as finals.
Just like human beings have romantic history, it makes sense for characters to have romantic history, and these plots give your writing partner an opportunity to write plots that they might not get with you. For example, your writing partner might want to write a breakup plot with weird friendship tensions, which might not be a relevant vibe for Susie and Marco. But your partner can explore that with Marco and Sally. Again: it's not all about you, and your writing partner gets to write what they want, and you do, too.
Sometimes I think we can trace the territorial side of ship-oriented plotting to toxic monogamy culture, as described here. Particularly relevant are the below:
the idea that you should meet your partner’s every need, and if you don’t, you’re either inadequate or they’re too needy
the idea that commitment is synonymous with exclusivity
the idea that your insecurities are always your partner’s responsibility to tip-toe around and never your responsibility to work on
the idea that your value to a partner is directly proportional to the amount of time and energy they spend on you, and it is in zero-sum competition with everything else they value in life
Your writing partner is not cheating on your ship by giving their character other ships. If it feels that way to you, you are getting too emotionally invested, and you should probably back off of ship-oriented plotting for a while to unpack why you are feeling this way.
That said, of course be clear about boundaries. This applies both to M-rated content and to parameters of plotting. For example, you might tell your partner that you are not interested in a plot whose core conflict is "will they or won't they." You want to write these characters with the longevity of their relationship never in doubt. You might not want a plot where one character is cheating on the other. You might want these characters to be monogamous. That's fair! It's not fair for you to expect your writing partner to limit the plots they do that do not actually involve your character to avoid triggering your insecurities.
Overview for dealing with jealousy:
It's not all about you! Your writing partners deserve to have a good time as much as you deserve to have a good time. They can enjoy writing with you AND writing with someone else.
Be very clear with your boundaries. If there are plots between your character and another character that you cannot write, let your partner know before they accidentally step in a minefield.
Be willing to step away from ships. There are plenty of plots that do not involve ships. If ships make you a jealous and anxious mess, you should stop writing ships and work on that journey. It is more important to be a good writing partner than it is to write romantic ships.
Writing is such a personal thing, and we all of course connect very deeply to our characters - it only makes sense that we be invested in their outcomes! But if your gut reaction is one of jealousy, this is something that you need to work on, not something your writing partners should need to tiptoe around.
The server is not therapy.
Because rp is an online hobby, it can be easy to forget that every person you interact with in the server or forum is also a whole ass person on the other side of the screen. Which is to say, your rp friends do not exist to be your emotional support.
Of course they can be supportive - some of my closest friends are people I have met through rp! But online as in real life, you need to remember that everyone is always going through something. You are never the only person in the world who needs support, and you need to be thoughtful in how you engage with your friends here.
Do you listen when they share their problems, or do you immediately change the subject to talk more about your own? Do they not share their problems at all - is this a one-sided close friendship? Are the majority of your DMs to them seeking comfort, advice, affirmation, validation?
If you need a text-based counseling service, BetterHelp can connect you with a therapist. A therapist is a person whose job is to listen and ask nothing from you for their own personal emotional needs.
Your friends - online as in real life - are not therapists. They will not always have the bandwidth to help you. They will not always feel comfortable helping you. The internet breeds a sense of intimacy, the idea that regular chat conversation makes for a deep knowledge of another person. And of course this is sometimes the case! But in many cases, the person you are asking for psychoanalysis in the DMs on Discord doesn't actually know you very well. And if you have been relying on them for emotional support, you might be wearing them out.
Overview for not treating your rp friends like therapists:
Be thoughtful. If you have something heavy you want to talk about, first ask if they have the bandwidth. For example: "Hi Susie! Do you have the energy to give me some advice on x work issue?"
Listen. If your friend wants to talk about their issues, stop thinking about how you can relate and it sounds just like that time you... and just LISTEN. If you want to offer advice, keep it about them. If you don't know how to help, commiserate. "That's rough, buddy."
Self-check. Look at your chat history as though it's between your friend and someone you've never met. What do you think of this person? Are they a good listener? Do they reciprocate the support they get from your friend? Do they remember things your friend tells them about their own life? Or is this a one-sided conversation? If you're realizing that you're leaning too much on this friend, give them some space. If you're realizing you've gone way overboard leaning on this friend, maybe apologize and promise to be more conscientious going forward.
Be considerate. Remember that every person you know from the internet is so much more than what you've seen - I don't mean that in a "all internet users are creeps" way, I mean that in a "even if you've chatted in a server with some every day for six months, you still don't actually know them super well." Think of other people you've spent Some Time with. Think of your lab partner in 8th grade bio. You shared a desk with them for an hour a day five days a week for two thirds of the year. How much of your life did you share with them?
This tutorial got LONG - sorry, friends! Lots to talk about. I'm always happy to give Real TalksTM like this one. Feel free to drop into my askbox if you have a topic you'd like me to cover. I'm full of thoughts and feelings, and it would give me great joy for y'all to ask for them for once.
I hope this is helpful, and wish all y'all the best. Happy writing!
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Been having a weird/off week. But you know what’s made it better?
Spending some more time in Midvale with Supergirl Ep. 6x06, “Prom Again!”
Spoilers!
So! Last week was the fun shenanigans/set-up, THIS WEEK we get the emotional pay-offs and oooooh. So good. So good.
Historically, Supergirl kinda struggles to stick its landing when it comes to paying off its set-ups, but I think this episode is really solid in that regard.
And thus, we begin! With the forest showdown! And I love it. Love every part of it. Love Kara flying in and freeing Nia and Brainy with her heat vision, love that one of Kenny and Kara’s go-to plays is called ‘Speed Racer’, love Brainy’s whole, ‘my buddy’s gonna BLAST YA if you don’t cooperate’ and Kara just. Threatens the bad guys from the shrubbery.
She’s supposed to be scary and intimidating with the heat vision eyes but dagnabbit...it’s just kind of cute.
Last week I completely forgot to mention how much I love that Kenny and Kara have go-to plays WITH NAMES. (NERDY names at that!) And also that Alex is so exasperated by it.
JUST YOU WAIT, KIDDO.
Fast forward to the Fortress and everyone’s happy! The day is saved! The timeline is restored! Alex apologizes for being a bit of a grouch!
*cough* understatement *cough*
And Brainy doesn’t get the fist bump, d’awwwww. XD
Nia has a lovely chat with Kara wherein SHE is the elder hero who inspires the youths. Nice. NICE.
And THEN, the first of some good Danvers Sisters scenes...we’ll call this one ‘the mini-van chat.’
Kara apologizing about the ‘Zookeeper fight-y thing’ and the GLASSES FIDGET.
Shout out to the writers, who were ON-POINT with the dialogue for both parts, and shout out to the young actresses as well. It’s...honestly uncanny, how well they nailed playing Kara and Alex.
(I mean, we knew this already, of course, but GOSH. What a wonderful showcase. So, so glad, that we got such a large Midvale story in the final season.)
Right, so, another dialogue highlight from the mini-van chat (but like, not in a silly way. More in a, ‘oh wow that’s very sweet’ way) Alex, to Kara about her choice: ‘It’s the right one because you made it.’
THESE KIDS.
Then we go to Nia and Brainy on the Legion Cruiser!
Nia’s outfit? Outstanding. Brainy’s mask? Admittedly a little distracting because it didn’t look like it was fitting quite right.
But A+ song choice for their dance, show.
(Really, A+ song choices across the board. You can tell they were absolutely LOVING getting in all those needle drops.)
And then we discover--ALL IS NOT WELL! THE TIMELINE IS STILL BROKEN!
Cat Grant has released the aliens! And she has been captured! And yet she remains heckin’ fearless!
Love that she calls Mitch ‘Mr. Blue Sky.’
It took me a while to warm up to this ‘new’ version of Cat Grant but this episode really gave her some fun stuff to do and yep, I dig it. Great stuff.
Meanwhile, back at the prom...
I'm taking this moment to applaud the Supergirl folks for their very nice workarounds for ‘crowded’ locations this season thus far. The episodes have never felt like, overtly obvious in terms of Covid protocol impacts (I mean there are a few scenes here and there where you’re like, ‘oh, yeah, this is set up in this specific way to probably account for some production changes) but I’ve never felt that the episodes are losing anything, you know?
Case in point! Two episodes, set in a crowded high school! But most of the stuff takes place before/between classes, or outside!
(Specifically enjoyed all the outdoor stuff and natural lighting. It’s not quite the same as that LA sunshine, but. Still nice.)
Anyways, in “Prom Again!” the action/discussions are set in the hallways/classrooms outside of the actual Prom. Inobtrusive! Makes sense for the story! Doesn’t compromise!
Gold stars for everyone.
Kara and Kenny are BOTH unrelentingly cheesy--Kara even says as much--and it’s wonderful.
‘Hey Stargazer.’ Kara, you smooth operator you.
Shout out to Kenny’s bowtie, it’s great.
...Shout out to Kenny in general.
(Like, Will is great, but he’s got a lot to live up to, now.)
So FURTHER PROOF THAT THE TIMELINE IS BUSTED: Kara is going to stay in Midvale!
:O
Me, knowing full well that Kara has to go to National City, but also being...just a liiiiittle bit team Kenny:
And then...THE METEOR!
That Kara just. Body-slams.
It reminded me of another Danvers, who also body-slams some space stuff:
But UNLIKE Kara’s cross-company cousin, this particular move does not end well!
Because there’s KRYPTONITE! And also, a CLOAKED SPACESHIP, BLOCKING THE FALLING METEOR DEBRIS! And, you know, ALIEN HUNTERS THREATENING HIGH SCHOOLERS! And Kenny SACRIFICES HIMSELF FOR KARA!
(Well, okay. It’s tonight but you get the idea.)
Poor, sweet Kenny. Who feels WAY out of his depth as he’s imprisoned alongside Cat on the alien ship...but it does bring us one of her patented ‘tough love pep talks.’ Wherein she calls Kenny brilliant.
And also, Kendall.
Never change, Cat. Never change.
Also, “Go, go.”
Okay, some more rapid fire specifics that I enjoyed so that this list doesn’t get...too? Long? ...No promises.
Smol Kara squaring her shoulders in that classic Kara Super Pose!
Alex being able to pick a lock!
Kara using the reflected sunlight from the moon to heal!
‘That’s an 80% failure rate’ ‘Oh yes it’s terrible.’
The scene where the police have Kara, and Alex comes rushing out all, ‘that’s my sister!’ and Kara’s gonna just RISK EVERYTHING to fix this?
100/10, excellent, love to see that Danvers Sisters angst in the Worst Timeline. Also? Alex’s desperate little headshake, silently pleading for Kara to NOT DO THE THING???? Devastating. In the best way.
‘The world will know that name...Keira.’
No Plutonian Landshark sightings!?!? Not even a graphic on a computer screen? FOR SHAME!
(Personally, I’m imaging that they look like Jeff, pictured below.)
Kara stowing away on the Cruiser, and her very cute, ‘Don’t be mad!’
Her entire speech about her future--She’s just seventeen! She doesn’t have her driver’s license yet! Eliza’s only let her do the laundry once! She’s not even sure she can make rice!
(Eliza, I love you, but for Pete’s sake, let your kid do her own laundry.)
Brainy and Kara trying to play it cool upon being discovered by Kenny and Alex!
Their story involving an excess of formal wear!
Nia inspiring Cat to start CatCo, and telling her she’s CAT FREAKIN’ GRANT!
“If you say Lois Lane I will expire.”
Wait, did I mention the lucid dreaming power yet? ...Nia’s lucid dreaming power!
The entirety of Kara and Kenny’s talk in the gym!
Kara in the Worst Timeline tell Alex, ‘you don’t have to shout’. And then in the Fixed Timeline: ‘inside voice please.’
And she quotes Monty Python that lil GOOBER.
THE WHOLE EPISODE(S) was a GOSHDARN DELIGHT, I TELL YA. (Did I say that last week? I might’ve said that last week, but I don’t care.)
And now, some slightly more in-depth, overall thoughts:
So, How ‘Bout Them Danvers: Not surprisingly, the girls end up in, if not the exact same place as the end of “Midvale”, then pretty darn close. I’m trying to avoid, like. All of fandom, these days, but unfortunately, the bad takes are numerous, and often untagged. So I did see a bunch of people insisting that Kenny living ‘ruined the Danvers’ relationship’ and that the show is ‘taking away everything that makes Kara Kara’
To which I say:
In the broadest terms, what needs to happen by episode’s end to match up with “Midvale”, and prep the kiddos for the stuff that happens in the Pilot - Kara needs to put the aspirations of super-ing on the backburner, and Alex needs to like. Not hate Kara, but also be committed to helping Kara keep her secret, you know...secret.
All of these things are set up. I repeat: All. Of. Them.
And Kenny didn’t have to die!
(I will admit, I chuckled that they so blatantly teased an untimely demise for him...because I know it will annoy select corners of fandom.
Muhahahahaha.)
But anyways, back to those key ingredients for making a ‘Danvers Sisters in the same emotional place they were in @ Midvale’s end’ soup: Alex deals with that simmering resentment. Seeing Kara handle herself well in a super-ing context gives her that little, ‘hey, this isn’t so bad!’ outlook.
BUT INTERESTINGLY, in the Fixed Timeline, Alex and Kara don’t have that chat in the supply room, where Alex is like. ‘You CANNOT reveal your powers, BAD THINGS will happen if you do.’
That is saved for the Pilot!*
MEANWHILE. The Kara ingredients! She puts super-ing on hold.
Her chat with Kenny functions as a replacement for her chat with J’onn-as-Not!Alura, in the sense that it’s here that she reveals that she didn’t choose to come to Midvale, she didn’t choose these powers.
(...I can already sense fandom using those lines to prove their end-of-series theories and like. Ugh. Ugh.)
But anyways. It’s also here that we get shades of Pilot!Kara, what with the season one conflict of being Super vs. being normal.
It’s ALL THE SAME STUFF.
Fandom needs to like. Chill.
And their (fake) concern for Kara’s characterization is entirely misplaced, because this was a really wonderful showcase for Kara in particular.
Like. The first episode was really Nia’s time to shine, and we still got solid Brainy and Nia action in this episode!
But man. That good Kara content.
THE CONTENT I CRAVE!
So speaking of good Kara content in particular, I LOVED Kara’s prom dress. It's got both a SKIRT. AND PANTS!
Amazing.
I know nothing of fashion, but it was very cute, very girly, and okay. Though I hate the comic, the one thing I actually liked about Future State is Kara’s costume. This was similar!
(Thank goodness it looked nothing like the prom dress from Rebirth. That...was a bit of a train wreck.)
(Look, not all comic artists are great clothes designers, it’s just how it is.)
We see the empowerment theme come up with Kara inspiring Kenny; he describes her as ‘an amazing light in a world of darkness’ and tells her that, ‘you changed me, Kara Zor-El.’
We love to see it.
They also agree that stargazing and Monty Python make for the perfect prom these absolute NERDS I love them.
*Quick wibbly-wobbly, timey-whimey note WRT making this episode ‘fit’ with the Pilot: I’m not saying that it 100% does. There’s already the change with the Kryptonite, and the added info/awareness of the DEO.
Those little changes, though, don’t really impact the overall arc of Kara and Alex, the way the emotional stuff might.
Thus! The ‘Pilot’ of Earth Prime, and in fact, the ENTIRETY of the show’s run thus far most likely involved little differences throughout, but the emotional core is very close, if not the exact same.
BUT EITHER WAY, it doesn’t matter, because our Kara and Alex are still our Kara and Alex thanks to the multiple sets of memories!
(So all of fandom’s freaking out is for naught. As it almost always is.)
I bring this up because, again, as much as I talk about setting stuff up for where we find Kara six years from now--this Kara is a little different! She comes across as more confident, something Izabela Vidovic mentioned in an interview, when discussing her approach to playing Kara this time around.
And now, Alex: Admittedly, she gets less focus as like, a solo-entity in these episodes--she really is there to serve the more Kara-centric plot. Personally, it didn’t bother me too much because outside of these flashback episodes, Alex has had some solid development and screen time, so. It balances out.
And the scenes we did get with those 2? Solid. Top tier. There was even a couch scene! Like, technically. Because there was a couch in the supply room. XD
Spotlight on Kenny: fandom kinda loves to insist that all the men on Supergirl are trash, because, ya know. 'Feminism’ or whatever. It’s ships, it’s always ships. But, in fact! The dudes on Supergirl? Are actually wonderful! And Kenny is another example of a guy who isn’t afraid to be emotionally vulnerable, who 1000% supports Kara, but is also like. His own person.
GOOD JOB, SHOW. GOOD JOB.
Brainy too, had some really nice stuff in terms of dealing with his emotions!
And it’s Brainy who gives us our closing line, as Nia asks him how he’s feeling now that they’ve accomplished their mission:
“Hopeful.”
NOICE.
In conclusion! “Prom Night” and “Prom Again!” were EXCELLENT! They had heart! They had stakes! They had the promised time-travel do-over alluded to in the titles! Outstanding performances from the entire cast! Tthe ‘young’ versions of characters in particular! And I WILL be watching these episodes on repeat throughout the three-month hiatus! XD
But before the Super Friends take their break: NEXT WEEK! The Quest for Kara Concludes!!!
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thoughts on loki ep 3: lamentis
under cut for your convenience
my first thought when i saw C-20 at the beginning was the Framework...i might be a bit too obsessed with an aos/Loki crossover...
C-20 was sorta able to find out something was wrong. from what Sylvie said, that's pretty impressive.
i wonder if Sylvie uses magic similar to Wanda's. like if Wanda just uses it on a bigger scale. the mind illusions thing checks out. and i saw on youtube that another patron looks like Evan Peters, so maybe they're connected? but most likely they just hired a dude that happens to look like Evan Peters.
going back to that, the glitch in C-20's illusion was like the glitches in WandaVision
if this really is similar to Wanda in canon, that means Sylvie and other Lokis might be nexus beings (y'know, the very thing i shout about in tags because i want)
Okay, so Sylvie tried to enchant a minuteman, which means she must have assumed the TVA operates on the same physics as the timeline. So neither Lokis thought magic could possibly be impeded.
good action sequence with Sylvie and minutemen and Sylvie and Loki
dudes...Renslayer can't fight. she literally did a horrible job.
Sylvie really thought the TVA valued Loki and that they really wanted/needed him to stop her. so she threatened to kill him, just for Renslayer to give the go ahead. shows how little the TVA cares and it echoes Odin.
Lamentis 1 sounded cool because that is a very sci-fi-ey name. It means the star the planet orbits is called Lamentis and the planet is the closest planet. That's how we name lots of planets outside the solar system. so i appreciated that.
okay, lamentis is literally just the bi flag. but still lots of purple so i will claim it as ace as well.
teleportation! and actual magic! yay!
okay, are they setting up a Loki/Sylvie romance? the way they framed the two when Sylvie tried to enchant Loki was how it's often done with kisses
Sylvie said with strong minds she has to do what she did to C-20 to enchant them, but she couldn't even do that with Loki. Which shows how powerful Loki is and how powerful the mind stone is.
i will die for more of Loki and Sylvie being chaotic together
Sylvie she said is an alias. Does this mean she is genderfluid but is female more often than male? i'm told some genderfluids are one gender more than the other, and i've considered Hiddleston's Loki to be predominantly male. Could Sylvie be the other way around? & born Loki but haven't changed her name? or have different names for different genders? and doesn't want to be called Loki when she's female because that's not her name as a woman?
literally i can't tell if they're setting up romance or sibling stuff.
i never thought i'd hear the word "savvy" from Loki. but, hey, if Jack Sparrow can say it, i'll allow it.
the effects for the gun that woman used look similar to Daisy Johnson's quakes. for a second i hoped for an aos crossover, but then i remembered that marvel hates it's non-Disney+ series.
i like the differences between Loki and Sylvie. Loki is less confrontational and more likely to mischief his way when Sylvie is more likely to rip the bandaid off and get it over with, if that makes sense. i think that Sylvie might just be so tired from living on the run, only going to apocalypses that she just wants to get it over with.
love is a serious theme throughout this episode. again, are they setting up a Loki/Sylvie romance? or will it be platonic or familial or something else?
Loki is very clearly not okay with the fact that so many people are being left to die, and i'm here for it
so the whole thing to get on the train i think is setting those two up to be a good duo. between illusions and enchantments, they can do a lot. and Loki was able to get them part of the way, and Sylvie the rest. i think it could be foreshadowing both of them needing to use their skills to work together.
never have your back to a door, i guess
Sylvie's reaction to Loki saying he wasn't told he was adopted. man, she was worried. she knows that that is messed up and i think she feels bad for Loki. she's probably imagining how her life would be different if she didn't know she was adopted.
sounds like Odin and Frigga weren't the adopters of Sylvie. Maybe the Lushtons? i don't know anything about them, just that Lushton is Sylvie's last name in the comics. so, yay for her for not having trash parents. unless they were, then sorry for Sylvie. at least they told her she was adopted. but if the Lushtons adopted her, how did they fall across a frost giant? especially the daughter of Laufey?
i've seen suggestions that the post man Sylvie is with could be Stan Lee since a couple cameos were of him as a post man. Maybe a younger post man, but he has less of a lifespan (if he is actually human in universe. i still like to think of him as the One Above All who just really likes to see the drama of things) than Sylvie, so she could be with him for a long time. maybe that's why Stan is always cameoing. he's just trying different things to try to find his love. and maybe he has a longer lifespan (he was in First Avenger) but not as long as Sylvie's so she still was there for most his life but he's dying soon. I actually like this headcanon a lot, i think it's sweet.
YAS BISEXUAL LOKI YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HAPPY I AM! but i'm also scared my parents will find out. they're anti-queer. my siblings saw it, & they aren't supportive either but they operate on an "ignore it" policy, so they don't really care as long as it isn't a big deal.
also it is heavily hinted Sylvie is bi as well.
yes, i will continue to headcanon Loki as greyromantic and asexual. deal with it. i will change my language from panromantic to biromantic since the director specifically said he was bi.
also, it sounded like the director might be bi as well. good for her, taking a character she saw as bi and literally making it canon.
i knew Tom could sing, he was on Broadway. but i had never heard him sing i don't think. he has a good voice. petition to make a musical with Loki. watch the episode "Duet" of The Flash. i want something similar to that. can Sophia sing? throw her in too if she can!
translation of the norwegian suggests romance between Loki and Sylvie
was i expecting an "ANOTHER" reference? no. am i glad we got it? yeah, that was a nice touch.
turns out "full" means drunk in Norwegian according to a youtuber? but don't quote that. Loki says he's full, not drunk at one point.
what were they serving on that train? Thor couldn't get drunk on Earth. heck, Steve couldn't. so it must've been a heck of a drink they were serving
ok, the dagger metaphor i actually really liked. could be a shakespeare reference?
the fireworks thing with Frigga was cute
okay, i don't like Frigga much, but this has confirmed that Frigga was, maybe possibly, better than Odin. Frigga at least believed in Loki. but then her betrayal was so much worse.
wait, i just realized. Loki gets a fight scene on a train. a superhero genre staple is a fight on a moving vehicle (bonus if it's a train). yay! Loki hasn't had this trope yet in any of his appearances. off screen before Infinity War, and i don't count his attempt to murder Thanos on the Statesman. but we can add that to his list of superhero tropes.
i feel like the TVA needs to make stronger tempads...
okay, Loki threw the dagger horribly because he was drunk, right?they aren't saying he has horrible aim, are they?
falling out of a moving vehicle is also a superhero trope...at least it went better for them than it did Bucky
i relate to Sylvie screaming in the middle of nowhere
Loki being gentle with Sylvie and letting her talk to him. gosh. i love it. was not expecting to see Loki from my fics make an appearance.
Sylvie explained the enchantment to Loki, which i think was a poor decision for her.
she said C-20's mind was hard to navigate to her original memories. maybe the TVA does something to the TVA agents that join them. maybe if Loki proved useful, they'd do it to Loki.
or maybe variants lose memory over time. Sylvie says something about her memory being like blips of a dream, but I don't remember the context. maybe over time variants lose their memories and only retain a few things. Sylvie is well down that process, Loki has had hardly any change, and those working for the TVA only have a few things to remind them.
Mobius absolutely was a jet ski enthusiast in the '90's when he was arrested, and he loved Josta.
Casey liked Boku juice, a sign he was from the '90's.
whoever makes the uniforms is from whatever period that style of suit was popular ('80's?).
if anyone isn't a variant, it's Renslayer. she knows more than she should, i'm sure of it.
C-20 likes margaritas now, i'm sure of it.
Mobius has an interesting relationship with Renslayer. I wasn't sure if it was romantic or what. Maybe Renslayer looks like his lover from the '90's so he is flirty with her because of the faint memories he has.
Loki immediately catches on to the TVA agents not knowing they're variants. they think the Time Keepers created them. he knows that, Sylvie didn't. this immediately tells Loki that the Time Keepers are messed up.
possible redemptions for Mobius? B-15? C-20? when they find out they're variants?
so does C-20 know now? she kept saying "it was real" when Mobius found her in Roxxcart. maybe she had dreams of her life before, and Sylvie showed her that they were real?
the whole scene in the city was wild. so much color, lights, people, action, it was wild
Loki being protective of Sylvie, helping her up and wrapping his arm around her, i'm here for it.
loved the bit where Loki used telekinesis to stop the tower from falling on them.
there was a bit where Loki and Sylvie fought & their moves mirrored each other and gosh that was a nice touch.
Loki's reaction to the Ark's destruction. standing there in defeat while Sylvie walks away. wow. Tom. you are amazing.
and what the heck why did the episode end there?
can't wait for the next episode
more of TVA being evil being shown, loving it.
really, is Loki/Sylvie a thing? i have a hard time seeing romance some times, so let me know.
can we please get a Kang tease?
great lighting & cinematography. beautiful. lovely. also good action. shout out to the stunt doubles since they don't get enough credit.
okay let Loki & Sylvie be friends (or lovers, i'm fine with that) and let them burn the TVA down together.
aaaaaaaaaaa how are we half way through?
also, have the TVA fixed all the messed up timelines yet?
oh wait i gotta talk about this. the minutemen don't remember their names. i doubt Mobius's name was Mobius Mobius Mobius. Casey is probably not his real name. The Clone Wars fan in me was already screaming, but now it is even more.
#loki (2021)#loki (2021) spoilers#loki (2021) review#loki laufeyson#tva loki#sylvie laufeysdottir#mobius m mobius#ravonna renslayer#hunter c-20#hunter b 15
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Princess, part 10
[This story is a prequel, set several years before The Fall of Doc Future, when Flicker is 16. Links to some of my other work are here. Updates were theoretically biweekly–more realistically, I’m going to try to get the next one out by early July.]
Previous: Part 9
Flicker was going to lose pieces of self. She could put memory summaries in the Database, but that wasn't enough. She could only permanently store her emotional context in her squishy human brain, which was offline. This constricted connections between memory, place, and time. Her older memories should be intact. When the isotope exchanges were complete and she could finally restart everything and heal, everything should still be there. But that didn't help now; anything old that she didn't already have loaded into her speed mind was inaccessible, and any new context would be ephemeral--gone after her next proper sleep.
And that 'should'... wasn't a would. Itchy spots in her speed mind hinted at losses on the boundary, reflexes and habits needed for her squishy and speed halves to work together that she might have to relearn. Her speech synchronization problems might return, or her chronic self-interrupting. Old sensory issues might come back, too.
Those losses might extend to memory access. Which was a little scary. Moments perfectly preserved in a box did her no good if she forgot where she put the box. Perhaps because the original link to the first box was now in a junk box labeled 'Misc' on a shelf somewhere.
But that was life when she wasn't technically alive, with a heart that couldn't beat, lungs that couldn't breathe, and a whole reconstituted flesh body locked down in suspended chemical animation while the isotope exchanger worked. Force fields helped protect everything else from her still-considerable radioactivity. She probably wouldn't remember exactly how the half-pain, half-itching from her speed body felt, or how her claustrophobia was combining with sensory deprivation to make everything more unpleasant. The best she could do was to take notes for the Database, which she could finally talk to again. Slowly.
Doc had rigged up inductors to transmit visual signals that her speed mind could sense. They could give her low res video if she slowed down to near human speed, but for anything faster she was limited to text. She was already used to virtual typing, and there were more inductors to pick that up. The biggest problem was lag--if she typed too fast, she had to wait and watch characters slowly appear to catch typos. She was watching slowly updating video stills of Doc as a background while they talked by text.
It was way better than nothing.
"... too many versions of the 'alien invasion' story out," sent Doc. "It wasn't worth trying to correct them. The Volunteer kept his press brief honest but short and vague--he mentioned non-hostile non-humans who were injured but would recover, he just didn't say they were whales--and then flew off before anyone could ask him any more questions."
"Okay," sent Flicker. "Can we go back a bit? No immediate crisis is good. But I'm still missing a lot. It's making my mind itch. More. It's itching for other reasons, too, but this you can help fix."
"No problem. What first?"
"What was the bit with Breakpoint? He wasn't trying to warn you or me?"
"No. I got a notification just as you started your final run. The warning was for Journeyman, he listened, and the danger passed."
"More details, please? Did you forward the warning?"
"I didn't need to; Journeyman was standing beside him. That was one of the precautions I arranged before you left, and they were quite willing to help. Journeyman had his own detection setup coordinated with the Database, and they had the attack triangulated in a fraction of a second. And then Breakpoint got the danger sense spike, just before Journeyman wanted to port, which delayed them for a second."
"A trap?"
"Possibly. But I think a potential time loop was more likely."
"Caused by what?"
"I don't know."
"Surely you have a theory?"
"Lots. Theories are easy, distinguishing them is harder," sent Doc. "Too many parameters we don't know. But your trap did confirm the attack was based on some kind of foreknowledge--the timing was far too precise for any other explanation to make sense. Perhaps Journeyman and Breakpoint would have caught the attacker, triggering a loop. Or killed it, with the same result. Or they did get caught in a loop and broke out."
"How would that even work?"
"Several possible ways. Time loop theories are hard to falsify. But after it was safe, they ported in and swept the arrival location for clues. The attacker apparently came from and returned to the Topaz Realm, a common intermediate stop for interdimensional travelers who wish to evade pursuit or tracking. The two of them declined to pursue further, and returned unhurt, though rather drained from the double port. Journeyman went to ground quote 'somewhere safe' unquote, and Breakpoint is with Jumping Spider. I'm sure we'll get additional details later, but the attacker was almost certainly an extradimensional being who portaled in specifically to try to assassinate you, with implications of harm to the entire planet."
"And got away. Whee."
"An overt repeat attempt seems unlikely. This was a clear worldwide threat, in a way Hermes was not, and now there is a specific event to track from. The compatible world probability background has shifted by quite a bit. There are a wide variety of entities with extraordinary perceptions and abilities that are now aware of the attacker and united in the desire for Earth to keep existing, if little else. The Database has been getting messages from all over the world. Hideki told me he already had to gently dissuade a group of young Japanese superhumans from charging off on an interdimensional mission of vengeance. They vividly recall your help during the quake, and feel inclined to track down whoever tried to kill you given the slightest opportunity. I was also asked to convey their wishes for your speedy recovery."
"That's..."
Some emotional thing. But Flicker didn't have a working human brain to feel it, and her emulator wasn't up to the task.
"...nice."
She sent a note to the Database to relay a socially safe thank you. Her mind still itched.
"Okay," she sent. "Thanks for the summary. Now... I have a problem. Your UI works--I can talk to you and the Database. And if the exchanger were going to be done in a couple of hours, that would be enough. But it's going to take longer. I can tolerate the physical part--but I'm not so sure about the psychological. Sensory dep, and I have to keep shifting what I'm doing to maintain concentration. I've been recording the more organized parts of my raw impressions and alerts into the Database. But it's as tedious as hand-typing an endless stream of hex codes. That's making my attention wander. I've lost my spot a couple of times already and had to pattern match to find it again. I hate to complain, but is there anything better you can manage?"
A pause, and the background picture updated to show Doc with his hands clasped in front of his face, looking somber. Then he started typing again.
"I've been fabbing something that may help. I'll let you know when it's ready."
The rhythm of the isotope exchanger changed slightly, the ion beams stopped, and the discomfort eased a little. A message from the Database appeared:
"First pass complete, left leg."
"Well," sent Doc. "Ready to start lowering the tritium load in the bone marrow of your other leg?"
"Yes. But it doesn't really matter," she sent back. "It's the next thing. We need to get as much as we can done while I keep my chemistry clamped down or I don't get a livable body back."
"Yes. We may be able to speed up later. But at least it's working."
"Yeah..."
*****
Tedious hours passed. Then there was a pause and shift, while radiation-hardened robots installed a new set of inductors for her head, along with an elaborate set of shielding, wiring and cooling pipes. Flicker took an all too brief run around Doc's test range. Even though she was still blind and deaf, the flow of air and the sudden bright crispness of her mass sense made it a welcome break. But she made a little of that air radioactive--she was still giving off too many neutrons--so it would have been indulgence to stay outside the force fields for more than a millisecond or two.
Then tests and adjustments. Fiddly and annoying, but Doc was determined not to set off an immune reaction from Flicker's high speed nervous system, and DASI concurred with the need for caution.
Another shift... And a world turned on.
A better interface, through a virtual body representation. Audio, distorted but functional. Video. And faster text and data when Flicker sped up. The grinding background of confinement, restlessness and inability to fully relax was still there. As was the discomfort from the isotope exchanger. But her sensory deprivation was greatly reduced. It worked.
There was one rather jarring issue.
"I feel this sense of cosmic dread," she said. "Like I'm on the edge of a precipice to dimensions I can't even see, and might at any moment slip and lose my connection to sanity, or drag anything and everything I care about into the abyss."
"Good," said Doc. "Sounds like your alarm systems are appropriately compatible." The wide video window showing his image floated in front of her. The darkness around the edges was still flecked with the writhing static of closed-eye hallucinations, but they were less intrusive.
"Good? It's not exactly--" She blinked and suddenly everything was gone, then the old interface returned--text and a fixed picture. And the static everywhere else. She sped up.
"DASI?" she sent. "What happened?"
"You blinked for too long, and the interface interpreted it as a user shutdown request. I can adjust that, but the safety shutdown thresholds are necessarily quite stringent. One moment."
Another blink and Doc was back, eyebrow raised. Half a second had passed.
"--fun," she finished.
"Fun was not a design goal," said Doc. "This is a high performance multi-sense cybernetic interface. It's not remotely safe. The basic sensory relays I started you with were already as high-bandwidth as I could manage safely. But they weren't enough. I don't know how to make a full cybernetic interface that's comfortable but not psychologically addictive. I keep the controller in the vaults for a reason. I fabbed spare inductors. They'll probably break frequently. And shut down for other reasons. Don't get attached to the interface. I wouldn't even consider using it if your biological brain was functional. I put together a list of other ways it's dangerous. It's just not as dangerous as risking sensory deprivation for what might be days."
"Okay. But if you think the alarm system for my high speed mind is compatible with a cybernetic interface... Don't I already have one?"
Doc looked down, then back up. "Possibly. But you'll want to be careful how you conceptualize that. Because right now, if your body has a cybernetic interface, you might be that interface. So it's not a good time to shift your self image."
"Yeah, yeah, because my flesh body is dead," said Flicker. "I get it. My internal conceptualization has been pretty consistent. Messed up, but consistent. It's like a meat demon with a little metal bug on the forehead. High speed mind is the bug. And only the demon is dead. The bug is mostly worried about staying sane and connected. And I've got the connected part now, but sane requires something to do. I can't move while the exchanger is working, can't put things in long-term memory, and my emotion emulation is bad, so my options are limited."
Doc put a hand on his chin and looked back at her image in the video window. "Could definitely be worse. You'll want to test the interface at speed. DASI will keep monitoring. Perhaps we can tune down the doom response a bit. And Armadillo will be here in a little while. She's rather better at cheering people up than I am. I'm sure she'll be happy to talk about whatever you want."
"Might help a little. But I'm not sure talking will be enough. Sec."
Flicker sped up. The interface speed lagged noticeably and the temperature of the inductors rose. The temperature in her brain would have gone up too, if she hadn't already been entropy dumping to get rid of the heat from radioactive decay and the isotope exchanger. She skimmed the hazard list. Doc hadn't been exaggerating. And the full interface would not be able to keep up with her mind if she sped up all the way. The problem was cooling, which was the usual problem that stopped Doc after he'd solved everything else.
So. Use restraint. Don't push it all the way to the limit, and it would break less frequently. She adjusted some preferences with DASI's help, so the interface would gradually degrade to monochrome text and virtual typing input at higher speeds. That would give her fast responsiveness as well as the increased sensory feedback she needed when she slowed back down. A few tests verified it worked.
At DASI's suggestion, she tried taking notes at speed with the better interface as a direct substitute for long term memory. A slower and more structured version of the memory dumps she did before sleeping when her memory was overleveraged and she couldn't stuff everything into squishy brain in time. With the memory dumps, she could put keys into her squishy brain to connect by reference--but not with everything locked down.
More tests. The notes were accurate on rereading, though seemed kind of passive-aggressively gloomy. Upon reflection, she decided that was accurate as well.
What to do? The data from Speedtest was recorded. Talking was... talk. Little point in reading or trying to learn. Introspection could become a problem fast--her mood was already pretty dark. But she couldn't get renewal from physical rest, so she was going to slowly go squirrelly from lack of sleep and contact with squishy brain. And she already felt the kind of frustrated dissatisfaction that she usually handled by going on patrol. Then she might still end up frustrated, but at least she'd saved lives. Now she couldn't even do that.
She wasn't helpless. She still had a net connection, her database node, and assorted bots, both physical and virtual. But what was safe to try? She slowed back down.
"Interface works," she said. "But the doom abyss is getting old real fast."
Doc was studying his own display intently. He tapped out something on his keyboard then looked up. "How's that?"
The tension eased somewhat. "Better," she said. "Less cosmic dread, more dangerous machinery in operation alert. I can live with that. But I could really use something to do."
He shook his head ruefully. "I understand. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing. But you have a very good chance of surviving your bit of existential roulette if you can manage to keep yourself together and stationary long enough for the exchanger to do its work."
She frowned. "Is that what you call the kind of trap I set? I thought you said we're safe now."
"No, I said further direct attacks were unlikely. Whether that's because they wouldn't succeed or aren't necessary is still open. We can't be reasonably certain until the next time you sleep, then wake up functional and something approximating sane."
"That's disturbing."
"Yes. But what's done is done."
"So you don't think trying it was a good idea?"
"I'm reserving judgement. And if you were going to try, the Moon was a better place than Earth. You minimized direct collateral damage. However..." A crooked grin. "Now probably isn't the best time for critical analysis. Survival and data recording were the right priorities once you made it back. We can hash out details later."
"Yeah, but it does give me something to focus on, which I need. I think that finally getting to go fast was so wonderful, so freeing, that I got overconfident."
Doc studied her image for a moment. "Based on my preliminary analysis of the Database summaries, I think you may be underestimating another effect. I can explain, if you think it will help."
"Well, yeah."
"When you left the earth's atmosphere, you were hit with mental changes and a flood of alarms and activations on top of your acrophobia. Which you coped with very well. I think your caution, careful safety compartmentalization, and lockdown checking were absolutely correct and optimal reactions. Having a previously unknown part of your mind wake up and suggest you mess with Planck's constant locally? That would have terrified me. But you handled it."
Doc waved a hand. "That was a way more drastic reaction than I expected, and means I need to rework a lot of my theories. Anyway, you took care of everything, and landed safely. You jumped to the Moon. Your landing message sounded like you were euphoric."
"I was."
"And your fear went away. You had mass again, the alarms stopped, and you were finally getting to run Speedtest. Of course you were feeling great. And I made a mistake. Before you started your final run, I suggested you go as fast as you felt safe. I didn't include a stronger warning because I didn't want to interfere with your joy. But I knew. I know that feeling, it's Now I Am Invincible, it's incredibly dangerous for a superhero, and I knew the way you usually keep it in check is your care for all the people and other living things on Earth, and there was nothing living on the Moon except you."
He looked down. "I should have warned you. I didn't. I'm sorry."
"Doc, no," said Flicker. "I'd have done it anyway. Nobody died. I got the data. And whoever or whatever that was, we needed to know about them, and now we do. I'm going to keep going."
She bared her teeth. "Even when I can't move for a while."
Doc kept looking down for a moment, then wiped his eyes and looked back up. "Yeah. On that note, it's time to move the exchanger focus again, and Armadillo is here. Shall I invite her in?"
"Sure. And thank you for--" She waved the hand of her virtual body. "This, and the list of reasons why it's dangerous. Both. They both help."
The crooked smile was back. "I do what I can manage."
Next: Part 11
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Idk if I understood your tags correctly but these iconic vines were memes in itself or not? And they reached other communities when they were used as reactions or they were slightly altered to fit the purpose but everyone knew the original one. And that's what tiktok is lacking imo there are the dancing and lip syncs which are rarely good imo and then original content often has vine energy but imo they drown in the others also ppl like to hate tiktok
yes! so vine videos became stand alone jokes and were funny based on being their own content outside of the vine platform. like being put on twitter or facebook and they were still funny without any other context surrounding that video.
tiktok on the other hand has viral sounds that outside of knowing the origin isn’t as funny and doesn’t necessarily translate to being funny across entire populations. The lack of knowledge in understanding the original video is why there aren’t stand alone viral tiktok videos. like i quote the “AM I WRONG?! YOU’RE GONNA LOOK AT ME AND TELL ME THAT I’M WRONG?!” sound all the time because the SOUND is unrelated to the video being funny. you can take that sound and put it into any other scenario that relates to the individual making their own video based on the original sound in the original video. like the idea behind creating original content that is relatable to the creator and lip syncing that sound to create a meme of the original sound.
for example the meme of the couple walking to create stock images that went viral is the same as an original sound being created on tiktok.
this picture went viral after people started using it as template to create relatable content to them and their surrounding communities.
the image now has new meaning but has a shared connection of understanding to the original content.
but if i were to say “oh my god they were roommates!” that alone is a reference to a specific viral moment that is harder to separate from the original content. the roommates video was so funny because every aspect of that video came together so perfectly that you couldn’t recreate it in a meme format thus create a viral moment that could be shared across all social media and transcend platform bias.
it’s the same reason we haven’t seen Doja Cat reach the same A-list celeb status as cardi or nicki. the sounds and clips from her songs have literally been the catalyst to her incredible success but she has yet to produce a top 40 radio hit and anyone outside of a very small corner on the internet has no idea who she is. doja cat is tiktok and billie eilish is vine.
and people hated on vine before the content started to become viral
honestly i love tiktok it’s algorithm is like no other i’ve ever seen in pushing content to it’s viewers. it’s not just lipsyncs and viral dances but at the end of the day can their content and content creators become icons? we’ll have to wait and see.
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I just realized it’s Fandom First Friday and the topic is meta!
For months, I’ve been slowly working my way through How To Be Gay by David Halperin, which talks about drag queens and how certain aspects of gay male culture appropriate from women to empower gay men. (Halperin uses the word ‘appropriate’ extensively, not necessarily in a negative context.) He brought up some points I thought were highly relevant for thinking about slash.
Last February, I went to Escapade and chatted with a bunch of acafans. To my total lack of surprise, they too love Halperin’s book and had the same reaction I did. I thought when I finish the book, I’ll write up some meta. But I got busy, and it’s a long, dense book. So then in August, I went to the final Vividcon. There, I ran into Francesca Coppa and mentioned this idea. Her response? “Oh, I just wrote a journal article about that.”
…
AHAHAHAHA! Oh god, we are the same person.
(NB: We are not actually the same person.We just have similar first names, similar fandoms, and similar flists back on LJ, have done similar fandom history oral history projects, go to the same cons, and have both been on the OTW board. Laura Hale once went so far as to “out” me as her. And now we like the same academic books too. Heh.)
So, obviously, now I have to write meta about this, and Fandom First Friday is the perfect time to take a stab at it. I have so much more to say and I want to go back through How to be Gay and pull out many more amazing quotes, but better to write something than wait for perfection.
What I found the most interesting about Halperin’s analysis was that he points out that women may find these funhouse mirror versions of femaleness upsetting, and those feelings are completely understandable and valid, but they don’t make drag any less empowering or significant for gay men. He neither thinks that we need to get rid of drag nor that women should stop having those reactions.
He also talks about how subtext is often more appealing than text: when he first started teaching his college course ‘How to be Gay’, on which the book is based, he assumed that students would connect more with literal representation of their identities. That’s the narrative we push: now that we have literal X on TV or in a Broadway show, we don’t need subtextual old Y anymore! Instead, many of his students loved things like The Golden Girls and failed to connect with current gay representation.
It’s a long book, but what many of his ideas boil down to is that a Broadway show that is massively subtextually queer allows the viewer to identify with any of the characters or with all of them simultaneously or with the situation in general. It’s highly fluid. Gay representation often means a couple of specific gay characters with a rigid identity. Emotionally, that can be harder to connect to.
Sometimes, allegory gets closer to one’s own internal experiences than literal depiction does.
Coppa’s article (book chapter?) is about exactly that. It’s titled: Slash/Drag: Appropriation and Visibility in the Age of Hamilton. She uses Halperin’s book but extends the idea further. I particularly liked her example of how female fans use Bucky to tell stories that are essentially (and often literally) about rape. His story is about a loss of bodily autonomy and about having one’s boundaries violated in a way that is familiar to female fans, but he’s a male action hero, so those stories don’t have the same visceral ick factor as writing about literal rape of literal women.
Partly, that’s due to how society treats men vs. women, but it’s also about which fans are writing these stories and which fans are the target audience of them. Just as a cis gay man appropriating Joan Crawford to talk about his experience of gayness isn’t really for or about women, most slash fanfic about Bucky being victimized isn’t really for or about cis gay men.
It was on the dancefloor at Vividcon that I realized that, as a woman, I have this unconscious feeling like I am appropriating gay men’s culture when I’m into Joan Crawford and other over-the-top female performers. It’s ridiculous! How can I be appropriating a female celebrity from gay men? But it’s an experience I share with lots of other women. Telling women we have no right to things is the bedrock of our culture.
That feature film Slash, which featured a bunch of cis male slash writers was inspired partly by the male director going on Reddit and finding a bunch of gay guys saying that slash squicks them. He felt that he was being progressive by erasing women.
On Tumblr, the fujocourse gets reblogged not just by toxic pits of misogynist, delusional bullshit like thewoesofyaoi, but also by seemingly reasonable fans. Hell, I’m pretty sure I used to suffer from this problem myself: I remember a time when I felt like I, as a bisexual woman, liked slash better, differently, and more correctly than straight women did.
I no longer feel this way.
There are lots of reasons for caring about slash, some of which are just about the pretty, some of which are more about gender, and some of which are more about sexual orientation, but after seeing decades of arguments about who is allowed to like slash, I have come to the conclusion that none of them are valid. All of them are “Not like the other girls!” and hating on femaleness. Some of the fans who do this are female and some are not, but it all boils down to not feeling like women have a right to a voice.
And then there’s Halperin calmly asserting gay men’s right to self-expression!
It struck me like a bolt of lightning because it was so self-assured. He never doubts that there’s something valid and important about giving gay men space to explore their own emotional landscapes. Literal representation is important, sure, but so is the ability to make art that speaks to your insides, not just your outside, and that sometimes means allegorical, subtextual art played out in bodies unlike your own.
“Fetishization” a la Tumblr often means writing stories with explicit sex or liking ships because they’re hot. Sometimes, it means writing kinks that are seen as dark or unusual. Frankly, this sort of fujocourse boils down to thinking that sex and desire are dirty and that m/m sex is the dirtiest of all. I do write some ~dark~ kinks in my fic because, for one thing, I’m a kinky person in real life, and for another, I often use fic to explore the experience of having dark thoughts and wondering what that says about me.
A lot of slash writers are exploring feelings of victimization. Another big chunk of us explore things like rape fantasies from the bottom: maybe we have and maybe we haven’t experienced assault in real life, but for all of us, having that kind of rape fantasy brings up questions of whether we’re asking for it, whether it’s okay to be into that kind of thing, whether it means something. Another chunk of us are exploring a different kind of “bad” thoughts: feelings of aggression, violence, dominance. In my own work, I’m interested in sadists and how they come to terms with their desires, but I think slash is also often a way to explore any sort of violent, dark feeling, not just rape fantasies from the top. Society tells us women aren’t allowed to have dark thoughts–hell, that we’re not capable of impulses that dark. Sometimes, it’s easier to write even a relatively banal action story about a male action hero because he, in canon, is allowed to have the feelings and impulses that interest the writer.
The fujocourse is all about saying that women aren’t allowed to have dark impulses ever. That we’re not allowed to be horny. That we’re not allowed to enjoy art for the sake of an orgasm. When we depict people not precisely like ourselves, we’re overstepping. When we make art for our own pleasure instead of devoting our lives to service, we are toxic and bad. Any time. Every time.
It’s just another round of saying that women’s pleasure is not valid and women’s personal space should not be respected. No hobbies for you: only motherhood.
And yet that’s not actually what most slash fans think. I was heartened to read Lucy Neville’s Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: Women and Gay Male Pornography and Erotica. A friend read it recently and was trying to guess which quotes were from me. I have to admit, I was playing that game too! I honestly couldn’t tell, until I looked at demographic info, that some could not have been mine. They sounded so familiar. On Tumblr, I tend to wade into meta discussions, so I see a lot of loud, divisive views. I especially see a lot of views that, over time, make me start to wonder if I’m a crazy outlier. Intellectually, I know that this is all down to bad curation of my dash and a love of browsing the meta tags. I didn’t realize how much it had crept up on me unconsciously–how much I had started to feel like I had to justify and explain the most basic and common experiences of being a slash fan.
What was interesting about Neville’s book is how alike many of the women sounded. Now, no one book represents everybody, and she makes no claims to have figured out the exact size or demographic breakdown of fandom. Her focus is on women who like m/m material, whether slash or porno movies or anything else. At the same time, though, she surveyed heaps of women, and the responses were amazingly similar. Nearly every quote in that book strikes a chord with me. Nearly all of them, with a few minor variations, could be something I’ve written. Gay, straight, bi, asexual: we all had many of the same things to say about slash and what it means to us.
So, some brief, and more digestible thoughts:
Slash is “overrepresented” in meta and scholarly literature because people still ask us to justify ourselves constantly.
People ask us to justify ourselves because they assume that “good representation” is literal representation.
There are key emotional, psychological aspects of our experiences that are often better expressed allegorically, whether we’re gay men doing drag or women writing slash or any other sort of artist.
Here are some choice quotes from Coppa. (I will restrain myself and not just try to quote the entire thing. Heh.)
“There are endless transmedia adaptations of characters like Sherlock Holmes or Batman, so it is clearly not appropriation that’s the issue: it is the appropriation by the other—by women, in this case.
One could argue then that it is our awareness of this appropriative doubleness—of the familiar characters acting in an unfamiliar script, of the female storyteller animating the male characters— that boots slash out of “literature,” with its illusions of psychological coherence (see Edwards’s Chapter 3 in this volume), and puts it instead into the category of performance, itself so often associated with the fake, the female, the forged, the queer. My argument in this chapter is that it might be useful to compare slash to other forms of appropriative performance; drag comes powerfully to mind and, more recently, the musical Hamilton. These are forms where it’s important to see the bothness, the overlaid and blurred realities: male body/Liza Minnelli; person of color/George Washington.”
“In his book How to Be Gay, David Halperin (2012) discusses the ongoing centrality of certain female characters to the gay male cultural experience and takes as his project an explanation of why gay men choose those particular avatars and what they make of them. Halperin argues that gay men use these female characters to articulate a gay male subjectivity which precedes and may in important ways be separate from a gay male sexual identity (or to put it another way, a boy may love show tunes before he loves men, or without ever loving men). The gay male appropriation of and perfor- mance of femininity effectively mirror—in the sense both of “reflect” and “reverse”—slash fiction’s preoccupations with and appropriations of certain (often hyper‐performatively) male characters in service of a female sensibility; in both cases, appropriation becomes a way of saying something that could not otherwise easily be said.”
“A character like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne speaks, obviously, to boys who are getting mixed messages about what successful manhood looks like in the twenty‐first century—it was hard enough in the old days to be Charles Atlas, but today you have to be Charles Atlas and Steve Jobs at the same time, which is a problem of time commitment just for a start. But these characters speak to women, too: differently. The doubled nature of the paired male characters taken up by slash fandom—these aliens, these costumed heroes, these men wearing man suits, men in male drag—make them appealing sites of identification for women, or proxy identities, to use Halperin’s (2012) term; that is, they provide “a metaphor, an image, a role” (185). They are sites of complex feeling.
But what these characters are metaphors for, what they make us feel, is not simple, singular, or easily reducible. Halperin takes hundreds of pages even to begin to excavate the complicated web of meanings around Joan Crawford; I am not going to be able to unpack any of these iconic male characters in a few paragraphs, and it is also the nature of fandom to build multiple and contradictory meanings around fan favorites (and to get into heated arguments over them).”
[In Halperin’s class] “Works that allowed gay men to be invisible were preferred to those where they were explicitly represented. “Non‐gay cultural forms offer gay men a way of escaping from their particular, personal queerness into total, global queerness,” Halperin (2012) writes. “In the place of an identity, they promise a world” (112). I would argue that slash offers something similar—that queer female space, as well as the ability to escape the outline of the identity that you are forced to carry every day—and that for gay men and slash fans both, the suggestion that you would restrict your identification to those characters with whom you share an identity feels limiting.”
“Visibility is a trap,” Phelan (2003) concludes, referencing Lacan (1978) (93): “it summons surveillance and the law, it provokes voyeurism, fetishism, the colonialist/imperial appetite for possession”—and fans on the ground know this and talk about it in very nearly this language. Again, this is not to say that fans—or gay men, for that matter—do not want or deserve good representations: female fandom, slash fandom included, championed Mad Max: Fury Road, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, and the new, gender‐swapped Ghostbusters, all of which have multiple and complex female characters. Rather, I am arguing that representation does not substitute for the pleasure or power of invisibility; for, as even the most famously visible actors say, “But what I really want is to direct.”
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okay, y’all, i’ve gotta back on my tl;dr bullshit soapbox about something:
so, the other day, i was just mindlessly scrolling through my corporate & capitalist hellscape facebook™️ (i.e. LinkedIn) and came across this totally trite mostly bullshit meme that was shared by some corporate executive search man (whose name i decided to crop out bc eh):
so i obviously agree with the last three points on this list, bc god yes my life would’ve been a bit better if I didn’t get all my dialogue about mental health only from teen mags and horrible portrayals in teen tv shows (and also this hellsite). and hell yeah everyone, and I mean EVERYONE needs to learn that failure is okay many situations (like failing a class in uni or school) bc everyone fails at something sometimes. and dealing with failure is HARD. and time management is something that I’m pretty sure everyone lies to fuckin hell about on their resume, bc lots of people really suck at it, myself included. so yeah. that needs to be taught. and i also agree with the “how to manage your health” point. bc thats becoming ever more prevalent and important with career burn out etc.
but entrepreneurship? people management? conflict resolution? creativity? how to manage money? public speaking? like y’all. three of those ARE taught/learned in school, who the fuck wrote this meme?
for anyone who actually paid attention in maths class, (which is probably very few people outside of the top performing classes), there WAS A WHOLE FUCKING UNIT that focuses on financial maths (in australia anyway). I ignored this unit as well as maths in general at school, bc I generally hated maths and was convinced that I was somehow never going to get a job. but i remember the gist of the overall topic and its subtopics. one subtopic teaches you how to calculate your wages in various contexts (overtime, double-time and a half, holiday payments, im pretty sure maternity leave pay was jammed in somewhere? idk if other countries would have double time & a 1/2 like australia though). another subtopic teaches you how to calculate interest on bank loans and credit rates on credit cards. a third subtopic teaches you how to calculate savings (obvs in terms of discounts in shops)....im sure there was a bit about budgeting in there somewhere? im pretty sure there were some questions were about tax payments somewhere as a subtopic enrichment exercise? but you get my gist. are these not money management skills? in some sense? like if i could find one of my old maths textbooks or old maths books i’d give an example of a question, to make my point stronger. but the problem, like i said before, is that a load of people (myself included) just zone out in maths in high school and stop trying with it. they forget what they’ve learnt, and just remember how much they hated algebra and how they’ll never use it again. maths was one hell of a fucking strong bitch, guys. but maybe i’m wrong.
creativity? excuse me? have people forgotten about art classes? drama classes? english classes? music classes? need i go on? okay don’t get me wrong, most of these classes did focus a lot on memorising quotes or facts about people (artists/writers/poets/composers/dramatists etc) or specific periods/movements in art or theatre or literature for example.... but the amazing sculptures/paintings etc people created in art for their final projects in year 12, or even in year 10 were works of their imagination. the scripts people write in drama or maybe english (if you had a fun teacher who did a screenwriting unit, for example) are creative asf. especially in year 12 when they do their major projects, where they may produce a monologue or a short movie, and then there’s a group piece. drama students might even make their own costumes for these performances. LIKE AIN’T THAT A LOT OF CREATIVITY RIGHT THERE Y’ALL????? and english. lowly old english. THEY HAVE A WHOLE FUCKING TOPIC ON CREATIVE WRITING FOR FUCKS SAKE. the original music people might create for their final projects too in year 12? does that not count as creativity? like yes, i know a lot of these things do still have to meet bs assessment criteria (especially in catholic schools, where the main things are you don’t offend the catholic education office and jesus/god lmao) to be considered worthy of a mark for your year 12 exams. but FUCK. HOW THE FUCK AREN’T ANY OF THESE SUBJECTS COUNTED TOWARDS BEING CREATIVE???????? like fuck your corporate creative ideation or w/e bullshit, Callum. drama and english even lend themselves to improvisation in some instances, like public speaking, which is examined further, below.
next, we move on to public speaking. this shit is basically taught from the first goddamn day of “show & tell” in kindy/kindergarten, and this fucker has the gall to say that it’s not fucking taught in schools? someone call in miley cyrus/hannah montana to throw the fuck down in this motherfucking hoedown BC THIS STUPID-ASS MEME-FUCKER HAS NERVE. i hated public speaking. absolutely hated it. even though it was ironically one of the places i ended up excelling in in english classes. even when i fucked up in my english speeches with like “oh, fuck.... said nelson mandela, i’ve seem to’ve lost my palm card. wait, shit! there it is... excuse me while i pull it out of my ass. whoops, sorry miss” *bats eyes and finger guns at my year 9 english teacher who has her head in her hands and is done with my shit, while the class laughs at my gaffe* i’d still end up with like 73% or like 26/30. it was baffling. but for people who weren’t the class clown/smart alec like i was from years 7-10 (and like i actually wasn’t once i moved schools).... public speaking is like the leading cause of anxiety, right? like by the time i got to doing speeches/presentations at uni i was having panic attacks... the thought of presenting to my classes made me fucking sick with fear and anxiety. nearly every subject i did at uni (even when i tried to avoid subs with public speaking assessments) and throughout school had some type of presentation/speech whatever you want to call it project/activity in it. even fucking SPORT/PDHPE at school and even philosophy at uni. and these fuckers are saying its not taught in schools. FUCK OFF. like yeah, i get that they actually mean it in the professional sense.... where people can give the sappy bs motivational speeches or an insightful ted-talk worthy 20-minute presentation... or a great sales pitch. but like??? save that for mike “my dad phoned in to EY and i have a job waiting for me after uni” mcfuck in a business major or law degree? or for clubs like toastmasters? fuck.
ok enough of the skills we learn in school. let’s move onto the businesslike-sounding ones of “people management”, “conflict management” and fucking “entrepreneurship”. like. what the fuck? okay in some sense people management and conflict management could potentially be used in managing friendships and relationships in your personal life. but like. i can feel the business underpinnings and i dont like it lmao. like why do you want fully functioning adults straight out of school, franklin? and there’s extra credit conflict management subjects at uni??? or at least my home uni had it... and i never did them bc they were intensive courses during summer break lol. but the one that pissed me off the most was entrepreneurship. LIKE ARE KIDS NOT FUCKING ALLOWED TO BE KIDS NOW????? well apparently: “NO! YOU MUST ALWAYS THINK OF MONEY MAKING WAYS TO BE RICH! YOU MUST BE ENTREPRENEURIAL!!!!!! YOU MUST GENERATE BUSINESS IDEAS FROM THE TIME YOU CAN FUCKIN’ WALK!!!!! AND SPEAK!!! CHILDHOOD AND BEING A TEENAGER DON’T EXIST WORKER BEE!!!! CAPITALISM FOR ALL!!!! WORKER BEES!!! CAPITALISM IS YOUR FRIEND!!! OWN A BUSINESS BY THE TIME YOU’RE 8 YEARS OLD!” like it’s insidious asf. and it doesn’t acknowledge that most entrepreneurs are already privileged people anyway, who usually have some type of money to start off their venture (or that’s what it feels like anyway). and yeah throw all the “THIS BOY IS AN ENTREPRENEUR AT 18!!! 18!!!???? BY STARTING HIS OWN BUSINESS AT 12!!!! WHAT A CHAMP! 😁🙃” clickbait news stories at me, but i don’t fucking care. the concept and perceived over-importance and almost preaching mindset of entrepreneurship is slowly becoming insidious and toxic asf. call me paranoid. but that’s what it feels like.
but with those last three topics, i want to make a point that school curriculum’s (in australia at least, and probably worldwide) are so jam-packed already with sport (which is pointless and shitty), geography (ok how to read maps is important, but i never bothered to learned to do it properly), history, science, english etc etc etc..... that like.... where the actual fuck are the gonna jam the above bs (people management”, “conflict management” and entrepreneurship) into the curriculum???? and also teachers are already over-worked enough as it is, they don’t need another load of shitty subjects pushed onto them. and they sure asf don’t earn enough (especially in the states) to have this bs pushed into their subject schedules either. keep them at uni, where they should be. or just in the workplace/in the general public where they belong. and if people suggest that you could probably push these subjects into the year 11/12 business studies programs or elective commerce courses in years 9/10, save your goddamn breath. like i remember looking at business studies hsc papers in years 11/12 to see what they did.... and it was pretty chock-a-block anyway. and my experience of my year 9 commerce was horrible, to say the least. let kids be kids, for fucks sake. they shouldn’t have to be fully functioning adults in the workplace, by the end of high school, for fucks sake. AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS NOT AN ESSENTIAL SKILL????!!!! FUCK OFF WITH THAT SHIT, WILHELM.
anyway. that’s my rant over about how i hate how corporate people are trying to be #relatablewiththeyouth🙃 with their shitty versions of “10 things i wish we learned in school” memes.... and failing.... without realising that this is why millennials are suspicious and cynical about meme usage by corporate people/corporations.
#life#about me#shut up ilona#ranty mcrantrant#ilona rants about shit#warning: a too long didnt read/tl;dr post#for lazy tumblr peeps who never read long posts is ahead#BEWARE!!!’#and strap in for the ride#but yeah tl:dr ahead#learn to read long form posts you fucks#it was in my replies#so read my tags y’all
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Soulless Riffing: Brainless Ch. 7 + 8
I got a supernatural action/romance book series as a gift that’s just riddled with stuff that I hate….and as a steampunk Victorian London action romance story filled with werewolves and vampires…it’s yeah gonna be easy to poke fun at.
I just want to say, it’s totally cool if you like this story or ones like it! It’s certainly a better caliber than a lot of what I make fun of…however…I can’t help but want to make fun of it.
Over here for the 1st chapter, 2nd chapter, 3rd chapter, 4th chapter, 5th chapter, and 6th chapter.
7 is a short one so I’m doubling up. SO FUCK IT HERE GOES!
We have another page and a half of our dip-shit leads making out before they decide they can’t get carried away. Of course, just as they’re gathering themselves the good professor and Ivy (inexplicably) show up. The prof whispers urgent BUR news to Maccon. So Maccon rushes off to deal with it, with the promise that he’s going to send someone to replace Lyall on guard duty cause he looks 8 levels of exhausted. Immediately after that Alexia begins to grill Lyall on what the BUR business could possibly be, since she’s on that case too.
HAHA JUST KIDDING!
She instead grills Lyall on werewolf courting rituals.
Gotta say Prof. Lyall is a fucking saint, cause even if I was highly energized I would have no patience to continuously consul a 26 year old woman going, “Okay he just told to me, to my face that he likes me…BUT DOES HE LIKE ME!?”
He basically tells her that women are supposed to make the moves in werewolf culture and that he does in fact like her. But thankfully Prof. Lyall is relieved of babysitting duties by a polite, meathead-looking dude who goes by Mr. Haverbink. When the girls head into another room, Ivy turns to Alexia and says,
“Ah, for the countryside, what scenery there abides…,”
Alexia congratulates her on saying something wicked. And like huh??? There’s no mention of where Haverbink is from. I tried looking up that quote, in case there was some context I’m missing but it only brings me back to this book. I think she’s trying to say that Mr.Haverbink is hunky? Or the opposite? Oh well! THIS IS DEFINITELY A WELL-WRITTEN BOOK!
Say something Nice Faps:
During this chapter’s making-out Alexia takes charge and bites the hell out of Maccon’s neck while he squirms in ecstasy. I hate these two, but I love sexually aggressive women and enthusiastically submissive men.
Also biting is hot, I am here for that.
I’m headcanoning Ivy’s perplexing quote as her being horny for musclemen, and Alexia celebrating that horniness. I’m so glad Ivy isn’t framed as some pathetic outcast that Alexia keeps around to make herself feel better.
Chapter 8
This chapter starts with Alexia’s clones I MEAN AWFUL FAMILY showing up and bragging about the expensive clothing they just bought. Her step-father shrugs exasperated at this, for he is a cucked man holding the purses of the women whom he serves.
Sorry author I can’t hear your implicit judgment about how terrible ~passive~ men are over the sound of MacDougall squealing in delight as I crop the hell out of that sweet tushy.
Alexia judges the hell out of her family for buying expensive clothes, while wearing a forest green carriage dress with gold filigree buttons down the front, and an elegant new broad-brimmed straw hat.
You can’t make yourself sound like one of the ~good ones~ when you roll your eyes at your family for buying expensive clothing on a whim considering you have an extensive wardrobe and you never had to work to pay for any of it. So tutting at your sisters for THE SAME FUCKING SHIT YOU DO is such dog shit.
GO TO HELL!
Also Alexia makes a bitchy comment about how her mother dresses younger than she should, which causes her mother to punish her and storm off. But for her sisters to respond (when momma is out of sight), “Ya u right, what an awful woman for dressing how she wants. Haha way to own her!” Like, this is supposed to be fun for us? Literally the only bad things you can claim her mother has actually done in the text so far is make some benign judgmental statements about vampires and scientists. Which like, is better than a daughter telling her mother, to her face, that she can’t wear pretty clothes anymore because she’s old and hideous.
I cannot wait for the triumphant scene where Alexia calls her family judgmental. I may even take MacDougall’s cock out of my mouth long enough to gasp in feigned surprise.
This author puts a lot of effort into making her male villains, villainous but almost 0 into making the female baddies detestable. I honestly think she’s just banking on a self-misogynistic crowd reading and she’s not fucking wrong.
But after this she heads to bed. She is awakened by a fight outside where her new vampire guards are battling that zombie thing. Eventually the REAL instead of SUPERNATURAL police show up. (Why are there separate ones? EH) and the zombie thing runs off. But lord, they describe the police as having a gun that shoots silver bullets for werewolves, that’s all well and good, but they also have one for vampires that shoots wooden stakes, and just wow. It’s hard for me to imagine something lamer than a Springfield that spews splinters. Maybe a sap/blackjack but instead of lead balls it’s full of garlic cloves? SHEESH!
YOU DO REALIZE that silver is supposed to hurt vampires too right?
Anyway the zombie makes its escape. Alexia sleeps in the next morning to find that Lord Maccon has been waiting for her for an hour but refused to have her woken up. Which like? Okay?
She goes in and Lord Maccon calls her family, “fibberty jibbitus.”
YES this manly werewolf hunk called her family fucking FIBBERTY JIBBITUS! HAHA KILL ME! But like, of course he thinks her family is shit cause we’re supposed to assume a protag’s family is bad hardy har har.
He talks about how the BUR headquarters were burgled and that they know for sure they’re targeting Alexia specifically. I mean that literally happened last night, this isn’t new information but okay fine. Neither he nor his pack can protect her tonight because they’re on lockdown for the full moon. Do you know what else the full moon means? Maccon be horny. They over describe it and use this wonderful line,
“his mind possessed all the clarity of pea soup full of ham-hock-sized chunks of need, “
This is the same problem E.L James has. She tries to write like cutesy, dumb horny lines for funsies...but they’re so beyond dumb it makes it sound as if it’s somebody discovering they have gentiles for the 1st time. You’d think readers who are self-aware enough to seek out horny material....would maybe be okay with characters who have been horny more than once?
Alexia asks him if he likes her, this time he says he does in much more round-about and awkward way with such brilliant lines of (word for word)
“it very difficult to imagine not, not disliking you on a regular and intimate basis for a very long time to come.”
They get in a bit of a spat over who should apologize for that dinner where they ignored each other like petulant brats but forget they’re fighting to MAKE OUT SOME MORE.
Alexia is sure he doesn’t want to marry her but she is way down to ride that dog dick so she asks him if he wants to be her Mistress. Apparently she doesn’t know what a male lover is called….Maybe just LOVER YOU TWIT?
Lord Maccon exclaims angrily at this and that makes her family BURST IN!
OH NO!? HOW WILL ALL THESE CHILDREN HANDLE THIS VERY BENIGN SITUATION!?
Say something Nice Faps:
PLOT happened this chapter!...Sorta?
The action scene was overall described well.
Alexia was close to saying, “Yo dawg, wanna be my bitch?”
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Wait, I've been reading your posts on Macron (I'm not really well-versed in the nuances of French politics, so I may be getting something wrong here) but it seems you're saying that he's acting like a dictator, refusing to cede power, using the army to maintain his control... but when that scottish blogger cybersmith said it, you said that was wrong. Is Macron a tyrant or not? (also, I hope yor okay, some people have been hurt)
Yeah huh what “that scottish blogger” actually said, and I quote:
Does it not alarm you that Macron has announced his intention to rule your homeland and countrymen in perpetuity as an eternal dictator, even going so far as to proclaim himself a manifestation of divinity? Or do you still find this preferable to the possibility of a (humanely implemented) regime change carried out by concerned neighbour-states?
and
I did warn you about Macron. Now he has openly declared his intention to rule France as an immortal god-king.
and
He… Literally compared himself to a pagan sky-father. I’m not being a conspiracy theorist. He makes no secret of it now that he has won the election.
and
As a French person, would you be in favour of a New Reconquista to rescue the lands of Europe from Illuminati-Backed Jihadism? I am planning to ask my MP to bring this up on the House Of Commons (because of the upcoming GE in the UK) but it occurs to me that such an endeavour would necessarily start in France, and I hadn't discussed this with any French People. Do you think foreign intervention -from the Occidental nations that yet remain free- will be necessary to unseat the vile Satrap Macron?
and, from an unanswered ask because I HAVE FUCKING LIMITS.
When I pointed out that your country would be better of under a monarch, or with externally-imposed regime change, you scoffed at me. Now the aspiring god-king is readying his merciless troops to slaughter your countrymen, cementing his iron rule with a mortar of blood and tears. I was correct, from the very beginning.
I mean I don’t want to sound mean, anon, but there is a difference between "Macron & his gvt are flirting with authoritarianism by exploiting the weakness of the Vth Republics institutions and of representative democracy because he’s fucked, with on one side a population that doesn’t want his reforms and on the other the private interests that helped him get where he is (+the actually hard-to-avoid obligations that come with being part of the EU)" and "immortal god-king” bullshit.
I bolded the important parts. Look, what Macron & co are doing is gaming the system, so to speak (see first bolded part), and not to establish some kind of dictatorship headed by an immortal god-king or whatever, but because overall the french are chauvinists attached to their conception of social and economic justice who have been noping in the face of unchecked neoliberalism, and that’s no good for das kapital. Macron’s doing exactly what’s been done by many others -- he went from banking to public service, and he probably intends to go back to banking, and the point of his public stint isn’t politics or even ruling or power, it’s to enact reforms benefitting his class and open the door wide to that unchecked neoliberalism the general public doesn’t like much. His plans for Europe are in the continuity of this.
But the thing is, Macron didn’t really do anything our previous gvts. didn’t do (beyond not bothering to hide his class disdain, which certainly helped to get people against him. most politicians at least have the sense to use lube before fucking us over, but his party is amazingly shitty on that end), he’s just... accelerated the cadence. And sure he got where he is and did what he’s been doing not without some very illegal shit, but mostly because systemically the conditions were already there for him or someone like him -- there’s this old joke that everyone here knows and that says it all: we don’t have a president, we have a king.
Now don’t get me wrong, what’s going on here is shitty, and I’m afraid because it’s far from over, but we still have quiiite a way to go before dictatorship (we do have counterpowers, even the Senate got in on it), and I hate to admit it but if Macron’s refusing to step down of like, his own initiative, there is no ongoing procedure or motion or whatever that would obligate him to. As to the army, that shit is scary af but again, there’s a nuance to make -- although I’m really fucking scared that they might end up firing on people during protests and the communication around their deployment at the last protest was abysmal, the gvt. doesn’t want them to fire. I’m afraid it will happen not in the sense that they will be ordered to fire, I’m not quite there yet, but in the sense that the Sentinelle (the concerned unit) are not trained for crowd control. The gvt. also doesn’t want to use them outside of the specific context of GJ protests (and yknow, their actual duties). The Sentinelle people are an anti-terrorism brigade, and calling them specifically is part of the ongoing effort to depict GJ as... well, terrorists, or at the very least definitely dangerous.
It was also a gambit. They’re still hoping they’ll find THE thing to keep the GJ home, and the fact that they’re down to waving the threat of the army around (and again, I Worry, but that’s what putting the Sentinelle specifically where the GJ are not supposed to protest amounts to, abysmal communication notwithstanding) when people are already aware protesting might kill them (because it happened!!), among other ugly consequences is scary af, yes, but it’s also a sign that the gvt.’s options to maintain itself have dwindled something crazy. You call the army when you’re losing control, not when you have it.
Because again, our man Manu is kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, he’s got the GJ and little popular support, and an actual politician would have to factor that. But on the other hand, that boy owes. He owes to those who helped put him where he is to defend their interests and who keep helping him so that he keeps doing exactly that. He can’t give the GJ what they want without losing that support, he can’t leave without losing that support, and without it he’s just plain fucked.
So basically we’re in a complicated situation! The specters of full-blown authoritarianism, plutocratic dictatorship, and who knows what other horrors loom on the horizon. But so do others, like the specter of our victory, and now that we’ve seen it...
The thing is that we’ve won a huge battle already, because Macron was supposed to deliver a success story. He was supposed to reform the unreformable! To maintain the oh so practical ‘populism’ (ie. the far right and the left -- it’s not quite the same here as in the US, but we’re seeing a similar displacement of meaning wrt. the left, the far left and the ‘center’) vs ‘liberalism’ (ie. unchecked neoliberalism basically) pseudo-opposition, in which one is the only solution to the other, the only alternative! He was supposed to be the youthful, energic face of progressism, a Mozart of finance who would deliver where traditional politicians couldn’t. He was supposed to unite ze french beyond political and social divides (and he kinda did do that, ironically enough), and a bunch of shit besides.
We fucked that up, and we fucked it up good. Most of the merit is his, though -- he got us to the current situation. He got us to people asking for his head (metaphorically), but more than that, he got us to realize what’s become a slogan: fin du monde, fin du mois, même combat -- end of the world, end of the month, same fight, and he got us talking about the relative merits of participative and representative democracy and how our institutions should work and for whom because collective intelligence is actually a thing and we realized he is a symptom and it’s the root we need to go after. Not that no one knew it before, but the trajectory from protests against an oil tax to the protests we have now, that’s a victory unto itself.
Anyway, I forgot the point somewhere, but overall, going from the symbolic “jupiterian presidency” WHICH IS WHAT TCS WAS REFERRING TO FFS to the painfully literal “Macron has announced his intention to rule your homeland and countrymen in perpetuity as an eternal dictator, even going so far as to proclaim himself a manifestation of divinity“ etc etc is still a really bad take (and I’m not Going There but “New Reconquista” is not an innocuous term). Reality is weird and shitty enough as it is, thanks.
#this has been A Rant#also in case it needs saying#i did post links to a few articles here and i retweet a bunch of them#but my politics venting posts are exactly that#venting#not the news#french things#partying like it's 1789#anon#ask
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About Internet Arguments
Tumblr callout culture is toxic as we’ve all established at this point, but work is slow so I’m gonna talk about something I’ve been mulling over since yesterday.
I’d recommend going into my Otherkin tag if you wanna see the whole thing, but frankly it’s a lot of reading and I don’t expect anyone to strain themselves over an incredibly stupid issue.
Essentially though, I made some claims about how I felt about the Otherkin community. I never said I expected anyone to change their beliefs or even take their time to respond to me. I’m nothing important in these people’s lives; I’m just making a post of my thoughts on my blog.
A few folks tagged this girl who they said was mature, happy to answer questions, and well known within the Otherkin tumblr community.
One thing I noticed about this girl, before speaking to her, was that she listed herself as the “Undisputed Monarch of Otherkin Discourse” on her blog. That really told me all I needed to know about her, and her responses on my post and attitude towards me only cemented both the points I was making about the community as well furthering my own thoughts about how tumblr goes about disagreements.
Discourse is essentially a competition on here; whoever can yell the loudest wins? I honestly don’t remember the last time I was genuinely involved in any sort of discourse in this site- I’ve been here since I was 18 and I’m in a lot of marginalized communities; ranging from mental illnesses, to my gender, to my sexuality. It was maybe a year or two ago, when I was really protective of the asexual community and wanting to tear aphobes apart. But what I learned from those experiences is that nobody wants to listen, everyone wants to insert their opinions and be dramatic, and above all, it’s a show.
It’s about who can use the most popular buzzwords and who can make the cleverest line, and who can get the most notes. I grew out of that shit real fast because I learned there was a much healthier and effective way to go about disagreements.
Now obviously this doesn’t apply to the more harmful issues. Racism, sexism, and violent bigotry. It’s not a black and white issue at all.
But if people don’t like something about your identity just....let them. If ALL they’re doing is yelling into the void but still being respectful to that group they’re not a fan of, why do you need to stress yourself arguing with them?
The more time you spend outside of the internet (tumblr specifically) the more you learn that a lot of people aren’t going to understand nor agree with your world views. People in the workplace, people you meet waiting in line for a movie, people on the street. And that’s okay. No one will agree with 100% of what what you believe in and if they aren’t violent, that’s okay.
This girl- Miss. Monarch, you could tell she spends a LOT of time online which isn’t inherently a bad thing. When I’m not at work or out with my friends I’m pretty much filling the gaps with video games. I get that some people use the internet at their home.
But you can tell she made her identity about it. Arguing with me was VERY important to her because she needed to solidify this identity she made for herself. And unfortunately it’s not really up to par with how folks see her. Her main source of arguing was to quote things I said out of context, quote responses I made that weren’t directed at her, throw in buzzwords that often had no relevance in the actual argument, and attempt to pull receipts on an insulting post I reblogged in 2014 (completely skipping over a positive post I reblogged the next year).
She also was very quick to accuse all of my stories and claims as lying. One thing I said was that because I KNEW my feelings on the community weren’t kind, I went out of my way to research them over a time period of 3 years. I wanted to understand the concept of Otherkin as well as it’s community better. I also shared some posts I’ve seen that I found distasteful as well as stories Otherkin have told me that I found disturbing. This girl was very quick to accuse me of lying because according to her, if I had been in the community for as little as nine months I wouldn’t hold the same opinions. Despite her words if she had done a LITTLE bit of research in an attempt to understand my side of the story, she’d see that I reblogged an Otherkin positive post as early as 2015 when I sort of began to attempt to change my point of view. I’ve never been someone who hates blindly, I always do my research.
It was really the typical tumblr argument pattern and it was pretty predictable. I think I might’ve responded to her twice and both times I told her to block me- the first time she absolutely raged and resorted to name calling and all that fun stuff. It’s understandable I guess- by not engaging I insulted her identity.
I told her to block me again and while she didn’t respond, I can see in the notes that she’s keeping tabs on that post and reblogging whenever someone else responses, coincidentally leaving out my own responses that are calm and respectful.
I’m bringing all this up because she’s considered to be some sort of face of her community- it was only two people that mentioned her but I do think she has a rather large following based on the notes the post got; and it concerns me that she’s what people consider good discourse to look like.
I mean- all she really did was prove exactly what I said I disliked about the community. And I’m a larger picture, it’s what I dislike about tumblr as a whole.
People on this website need to just. Calm down and look at their own words objectively when arguing, and listen to the other side. Reading doesn’t equal listening you know?
#tumblr#callout culture#dhdjdjf i wont put this in the otherkin tags this time#that was actuallt p rude of me ngl#long post
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I'm gonna go reread all your fanfics starting with Jammed. I'll report back later ✌ - the anon with too much time on their hands
I CAN’T BELIEVE U REALLY DID THAT wow drink some water stay hydrated buddy~
Asks 2-23 from ur adventure below the cut, and i think tumblr ate some but that does not shock me.
2) Goddamn it Loins, I didn't even get the E.L James reference until I reread the first quarter of Jammed, goddamn it I didn't even know who E.L James was until now and I'm completely shook this is why I reread things ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (2/?)
o yeah Kim Taehyung’s novel absolutely KILLED the ‘bored with my marriage wine moms’ demographic
3) 😏😏😏✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (3/?)
4) "author, sex god, part-time bee keeper" is my new Tinder description✌-The Anon with too much time on their hands
SHIT THAT’S SO GOOD THOUGH, i’d swipe right, hard right.
5) Yoooo, I can't believe that Jammed was your first BTS fanfiction, Loins. It was so good, and it was better the second time around! Okay, on to Reprise. I can't wait to weep at fuck'o'clock in the AM like the first time ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (5/?)
Ahhh thank u man! U know what I get really insecure about Jammed sometimes and I want to go back and change it, but it is what it is. And it got me publishing again! Which was the important thing. It felt so good to publish.
6) Yoooo the notes on the first chapter of Reprise thooo. Damn, first time noticing that ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (6/?)
Oh me being a creepy child? Yeah I walked around the house calling “mommy, MOMMY” and mom was like ‘what’ and i was like ‘no, my REAL mommy,’ the proceeded to describe the death of my former family! i, for one, am surprised and grateful she did not ditch me on a deserted mountaintop.
7) And people say smut can't be soft...but also...😏😏😏 ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (8/?)
aww u know what... i’m gonna have to write some soft stuff in the future... i haven’t gone super soft n sweet since then and i think i should.
8) Yep, I'm getting emotions now. Thanks Loins, I needed those back. ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (10/?)
9) Okay but, my shuffle starting playing 'How to Save A Life' by The Fray the MINUTE I got to reading the last Scene in Reprise™, and I'm feeling quite attacked, tbh ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (11/?)
oommgmgmgmgmgmgmmggmg
10) Is it too soon to bring up the "Oh look, I've been impaled" meme? ✌ - The Anon with too much time on their hands (12/?)
YES IT CERTAINLY actually no u know what go for it, impaling is such a specific means of death u gotta take the shot when u have it.
11) Okay, that's Reprise done. I've successfully got through it without crying this time, cause my family's asleep. Time to get into Inc. Don't worry since Inc. is really long, I won't bother you as much. I think you kinda hate me right now, spamming your already full inbox ✌ - The Anon with too much time on their hands (13/?)
I WAS REALLY ENJOYING GETTING THESE THO as i was like getting ready for work then throughout the day, it was so nice ilu
12) I will, and forever always believe, that Inc. is, and forever will be, one of THE most quotable fanfictions of our generation. Thank you and good day ✌ - The Anon with too much time on their hands (14/?)
OKAY that means a lot, my family is SO big on quoting movies like that’s our sense of humor. In fact my sister has quoted inc. to me and then been like... hey what’s that from - cuz sometime we have so may references that we literally cant remember the origin- and i was like..... inc.
13) Me: *Reads the story of Murderers birth* Me "Wow, you could make a religion out of this" ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (15/?)
vmin at least made a HOLIDAY of it, that you can believe.
14) Yoongi: "The only plant that's ever had the misfortune of being mine died long before it ever had a chance to tell it's tale of woe" Me: Wow, that sounds like somebody else I know...*looks into the camera like on the Office* ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (16/?)
....ok SURE fine whatever inc. yoongi is 87% me
15) Maybe Hazelnut will be our always? ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (17/?)
akdjlkjglkjhl
16) "I was very drunk, the photos where on Jimin's phone-..." Wait, wHaT!? See y'all, this👏is👏why👏re👏reading👏is👏 important 👏, I didn't even notice that the first time I read Inc., fucking hell. ✌ - The Anon with too much time on their hands (18/?)
o yeah o yeah i was planting those vmin seeds for YEARs
17) "Jin steps gingerly over Namjoon, who is face down on the floor, moaning miserably into an abandoned microphone" This scene is the main reason I wish that could draw good fanart ✌ - The Anon with too much time on their hands (19/?)
i almost think that bad fanart of this scene would be better
18) You know how there's a shirt floating around that has the entire script to the Bee Movie on the back? I want that, but instead of the Bee Movie, I just want the entire Inc. fanfiction. ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (20/?)
as long as “assplay” the 17 times i use it is in a slightly bigger font than EVERything else
19) Wow. A lot of shit went down in 2012. And we getting to the angsty, metaphorical shit, cause what else are you gonna get from a Minverse™ fanfiction? ✌ - The Anon with too much time on their hands (22/?)
i think i used 2012 as a reference year for crazy shit in paint too and i’m thinking about my 2012 and i’m like o yep. that’s why
20) Ah yes, the time when Loins decided to write a Christmas chapter in the dead of summertime. I ain't judging, anything for the story's sake ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands
CHRISTMAS is not a time of YEAR but a feeling in your HEArT, and also a great plot device
21) The first appearance Leash!Tae in Loins' ao3 fanfics. Honestly, what an amazing experience to read this again. I'm honored. ✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (23/?)
leash!tae was a lifechanging event in my real life and i’m just i’m so glad to insert it into my writing at any and every chance.
22) How dare you write some emotional-ass smut. Also I'm gonna stop sending these in after 30 so that I don't get your inbox so full 😗😙 I'm sure it's probably more than that cause I'm bad at tracking numbers, and I hope I got Anon on all of em.✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands (26/30)
‘nasty but emotional.’ MY new tinder bio
23) Can I just tell you something Loins? I'm a bit tipsy now, so don't judge, but you are so genuinely talented, it's sickening. Like, you talk about how your not that good at writing, but you could probably out write half of the people that's been on the NY Times Best Seller List. And you have such a good personality to top it off. I gotta stop sending asks now, sorry to end so suddenly, just know that I really appreciate what you're doing. 💓💓✌- The Anon with too much time on their hands
aw my dude... ur gonna make me emo but the good kind the just too many good and grateful emotions kind of emo.... that really means a lot man, idk if i’ll ever pursue writing outside of a fic context, but it make me feel SO nice to think even for a second that i could. anyway!! thank u for making my day, this was such a nice little distraction on an otherwise dull and shit day, and thank u for being so sweet n supportive n i really appreciate you!!!!
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What's up with sense8? I haven't seen it myself, but I thought it was supposed to have decent lgbt representation?
that’s what everyone thinks until you look at it deeper.
like, ya know how someone can say something and you agree with it based on the assumption that the speaker is a decent human being, but then you find out more about their politics and realize what they said had a deeper meaning you didn’t know that makes it actually really, really awful?
what I’m about to tell you about this show is just like that.
the biggest, most awful thing about the series, that is one of those ‘you wouldn’t know it without outside info’ things, is that the authors have a serious gay conversion fetish, and this show is literally that fetish played out on the big screen, where they can make money off it and normalize it in the minds of the masses.
now, for those of us who haven’t watched the show and aren’t familiar with it’s content/plot, the very basic premise is that 8 people become psychically linked (becoming the “sens8″), and basically become part of one giant poly relationship complete with physical and psychic orgies.
seems innocent enough, but once you know more about it, both in the show and outside of it, that becomes really sinister.
if you go to the creators’ fb pages and go back to before the show started, you’ll find both of them, along with other crew members, are obsessed with poly gay conversion.
if you’re not familiar with this particular fetish (first of all, consider yourself lucky, and turn back now if you want to maintain your blissful ignorance), it’s basically getting gay people into a poly m/f relationship (usually a bi person and a het person, for example, a lesbian dating a bi woman who also has a boyfriend), and very slowly, over time “turning” the gay member to make them bi. this is done through the same tactics that cults use (which you can see a lil run down here in a more familiar context if you’re unfamiliar with that) but the ones pertaining to this particular situation look more like shaming gay member for not being more affectionate with the other partner (ie, the bi woman chastizing the lesbian for not wanting to be affectionate with her boyfriend), or the other partner joining sex without permission, ex: the bi woman and lesbian having sex and the man coming in and joining on multiple occasions, only touching the bi woman at first but then going further, all while ignoring and shaming any protests from the lesbian.
it’s defended as “exploring sexual fluidity”, but if the fact that it’s only aimed at making gay people feel m/f attraction isn’t enough of a tip off, that’s literally the new term for conversion therapy (which, for the sake of not going off on a tangent, I will explain in detail with sources at the bottom of this post*)
now, you may be thinking that this sounds awful, but confused as to how this relates to the show. if you haven’t heard, the creators themselves stated when asked about mid-way through season one, once the connection happens and everyone is connected, they feel each other’s feelings, and therefor everyone is now pan.
that’s right, the two gay characters now feel m/f attraction, and are shown enjoying m/f sex (physical btw, not just ‘someone else I’m linked to is having sex while I’m having sex therefor it’s like we’re all having sex with each other at the same time’, no, actual physical m/f sex). in fact, not just enjoying it, but loving it. which is identical to the creators’ fetish. the only difference is it happened instantaneously rather than having to wait for the brainwashing to take affect, making it seem a lot obviously homophobic.
now, you may be thinking that that’s ok, cause there’s straight people that are now pan! that must even it out, right?
no, it doesn’t, cause there’s still a lil problem with that. I mean, it’s still literally gay conversion, making gay people not gay anymore, and nothing can ever even that out, but the straight characters aren’t actually changed. for all intense and purposes, they stay straight. we never see them express same-sex attraction, and they only ever have m/f sex, while the previously gay characters are shown having m/f sex and loving it multiple times. that’s not a coincidence or an accident.
and also, that excuse is even more bullshit when you notice, even though it was said that they’re “all feeling each other’s feelings” their sexuality seems to be the only part they each feel. you have men and women connected, including a trans woman, yet none of them are now nonbinary, nor do any of them ever feel the trans woman’s dysphoria or gain any dysphoria of their own (nor does being connected to men lessen or worsen the trans woman’s dysphoria). this whole “feeling each other’s feelings” ONLY applies to sexuality, and only actually affects the gay people, whom remember, the creators love “fixing”.
and that’s just the main plot of the show! there’s also two gay men who are outside the sens8, who are constantly harassed by a woman who is completely obsessed with gay men.
now, this type of woman does exist irl, they’re known as “f*ghags” in the west and “fujoshi” (meaning “dirty girl”) in the east. they’re basically woman who are the female equivalent of straight men who think lesbians exist for their pleasure. they consume as much gay porn as they can, and harass actual gay men, because through their consumption of us (gay people) in fiction, they’ve forgotten that we’re actual people and do not, in fact, exist for their pleasure.
and that’s literally all she does. she consumes them like they’re her fave anime ship. she literally watches them having sex, and takes pictures of them without their knowledge or consent (most likely for her to squeal over later, since at the time she was too busy masturbating to them), and when confronted about this, when it’s shown how terrified one of the men is to be outed should that physical and undeniable proof fall in the wrong hands, he’s attacked and chastized by the other gay man, his own partner, for not considering the straight fetishist’s feelings, who’s upset that he doesn’t completely love how much she fetishizes them.
literally their only real part in the plot is for the narrative to shame gay men for not loving and embracing how straight female fetishists treat them, through things that are straight up straight people bullshit. (that whole ‘why won’t you come out of the closet, are you ashamed of me???’ thing is complete hetty bullshit, as is a gay man not only being ok with a straight girl treating them like this, but chastising his own partner for not being ok with it. that shit, just straight up does not happen)
and this is literally just the first season stuff, as I refused to learn any more about the show. this tbh, is beyond enough for me to know the show is 100% shit, but fyi, there’s also a fuck ton of racism I haven’t even touched.
you can say on the surface, it has representation/is diverse, and while that’s true, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s actually more regressive than a show with a 100% straight white cast. and just cause the creators are part of the community doesn’t make them exempt from bigotry.
another even better example if you’re still confused as to how that can be, a black gay man is the head writer for the Dear White People TV series, who’s goal with the show was to challenge how black gay men are viewed and portrayed in the media, and he wrote a “lesbian” teacher having an affair with her male student and denying it by continuing to claim she’s a lesbian (can’t have an affair with a male, student or otherwise, if you’re a lesbian) while he makes comments to his classmates about how she “isn’t a lesbian when she’s with [him]”, rolling lesbianism not being real and lesbians being pedophiles/predators all into one awful caracature of a character.
just cause he’s a gay man doesn’t mean he can’t be homophobic, and perpetuate specifically lesbophobic stereotypes.
just like how just because the creators of sens8 are trans and made a show full of diverse characters doesn’t mean they can’t be homophobic and racist. just like how just cause a show is diverse doesn’t mean it can’t be the mouthpiece for bigotry. bigotry doesn’t only come from the completely privileged in shows that only have token minority characters.
and that goes for everyone. I see far too often “I can’t be homophobic, I’m [insert non-straight sexuality here]” and it’s bullshit. you can be part of the community and be wildly homophobic. my byf page is full of links to both straight people and other LGBT people who could not hate lesbians more if they tried. hell, I’d be willing to bet my list of links is more diverse than the show.
so I hope that this has helped you and anyone else understand just how awful this show is by itself, and just how much of a blessing it is that it’s been canceled.
now, *conversion therapists have “realized” that the word “conversion therapy” has a “negative connotation” and so they’ve basically re-branded themselves, and moved the goal posts. “conversion therapy” is now known as “SAFE-T”, meaning “Sexual Attraction Fluidity Exploration (in) Therapy”, which, in their own words:
“The [term sexual fluidity exploration] accuratelyconveys that the therapist is not being coercive but merely assisting individuals in a client-centeredexamination of their sexual attractions.” […] “[it] does not imply that categorical change is the goal […] nor does it imply that change which is less thancategorical in nature cannot be meaningful and satisfying to clients” […] “Scientifically, the fluidity of sexual orientation (and, for our purposes, especially same-sexattractions) for many women and men is now beyond question” (here misquoting quoting Lisa Diamond, even though her actual study proved the opposite, that lesbian sexuality is in fact, not fluid)
what this means, for those who may be confused, is basically, they no longer want to make a gay person straight, instead they aim to make us bi, as it’s easier to convince someone through grooming and brainwashing that they have an attraction they actually don’t, in addition to the one they actually have, rather than completely erasing one and replacing it with another.
which is exactly what the creators are obsessed with, as are tons of other content creators. there’s been an increase in straight and bi authors creating stories that specifically revolve around a lesbian learning of her “sexual fluidity” and finding a man she just can’t resist, while the authors insist that it can’t be conversion therapy because they made the lesbian go from gay to bi/gay with an exception instead of gay to straight.
so yea, when I say this series is wildly homophobic on a level deeper than most people realize, I really, really mean it.
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Let’s talk about language.
I believe that most people already know how powerful language can be, especially anyone who has had derogatory slurs used against them. Equally so, this is likely something that can be attested to by anyone who occupies a non-normative identify and knows what it is like to discover the words that can name that identity. And yet, I feel that sometimes we don’t quite acknowledge the full impact of subtle uses of language. In his essay “Feminism and The Principles of Poststructuralism,” Chris Weedon identifies language as “the place where actual and possible forms of social organization and their likely social and political consequences are defined and contested,” going on to say that “far from reflecting an already given social reality, [language] constitutes social reality for us.” [1] In other words, language is more than a collection of words used to convey simple ideas or meaning, it is a complex system used to locate subjects in existing social discourses and power structures. The right word (or, for that matter, the wrong word) does more than name a person’s identity, it turns them in to a subject and coercively perpetuates discourse on their body.
Consider, for a moment, the difference between calling a person a gay man and calling the same person a fag. While at the very surface level these two signifiers may in fact mean the same thing in that they both signify a man who experiences sexual attraction to other men, no one could reasonable argue that both words have the same effect or convey the same meaning. Gay positions the subject within discourses of self-identification and civil rights movements, while fag positions the same subject within discourses laden with heteronormativity, hate speech, and violence. The latter is, in fact, an act of symbolic violence in and of itself. This, of course, is a rather obvious example, but, despite that, I believe it serves as a working example of how the choice between two different words can have significant social and political impact.
I discuss all of this so as to make it perfectly clear how important I find my main point. For various reasons, I have recently found myself reading a variety of pieces of scholarship which in some way recount or discuss the events of the Stonewall Riots, and I have noticed something in the language these authors use that is worth examining. In Theatre & Sexuality, Jill Dolan identifies the participants of the riots as “gay men, some of the bars lesbian clientele, and drag queens (men dressed overtly as women, wearing make-up and clothing that let them perform feminitity)[emphasis added].”[2] In “Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth,” Armstrong and Crage do not give explicit labels to the actual participants of the riots outside of the fact that they were patrons of the bar, but they do list “queens” as one of the primary clientele groups.[3] Che Gossett, et al., however, quote James Credle in their essay “Reclaiming Our Lineage” as saying the riots were led by transvestites.[4] But, in their essay “The FIERCE Fight for Power and the Preservation of Public Space in the West Village,” Rickke Mananzala identifies “Stonewall veteran” Sylvia Rivera as transgender.[5] Four different accounts of the same event and we have three different words: drag queen, transvestite, and transgender. Which one should we use? Which one is correct?
Of course, if there was an easy answer, I wouldn’t be writing this.
The already complicated issue becomes even more complex when one looks at these words in the context of the discourses present at the time of the Stonewall riots. While the words may have entirely separate meanings here in 2017, in the late 60’s and 70’s, even in to the 80’s, the words had significantly less distinction between them. This is especially true for transvestite and transgender, evidenced by the fact that the T in S.T.A.R., an activist group founded by Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera (who, regardless of how we label their identity, we know were involved in the riots), initially stood for transvestite and later changed to transgender. So it is very possible that the individuals involved in the Stonewall riots may in fact have identified as drag queens or transvestites, but that their understanding of their identity was more in line with what we now would call transgender.
With this in mind, we have to recognize that updating the language runs the risk of erasing their identity and their agency. To make the argument that we should label their identity with language that is consistent with our modern understanding of identities, one must tackle with what I believe is the moral conundrum of whether or not we have the right to press upon them a subjectivity they did not claim. To keep the original language, however, runs the risk of erasing the place of transgender individuals in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Although, this may not stand as an argument one wishes to make as it may quickly lead to the undesirable and unproductive debate of who has done more for whom. Hence, I offer a more palatable, and, I think, more important, argument in favor of using more modern language to speak about the past.
The three terms in question, drag queen, transvestite, and transgender, may have been closely related at one time, but that is no longer the case. In the modern lexicon, drag queen and transvestite remain closely linked, both connoting a person wearing clothing that is socially prescribed for another gender while still identifying with and as their culturally assigned gender, with the main divergence in meaning being the emphasis on spectacle and performance that comes with drag queen. Transgender, however, specifically connotes that an individual’s gender is different than that which was assigned to them by culture, with great amounts of trans rights advocacy being centered on having the gender identity of transgender individuals socially recognized. Here we may return to my earlier discussion of the words ‘gay’ and ‘fag.’
The issue here is less obvious as, unlike in my previous example, none of the three terms in question here are, in and of themselves, a derogatory term or slur. However, to call a transgender woman a transvestite or a drag queen is analogous to calling a gay man a fag. It is to deny her agency and her gender identity, placing her in the subject position of a male impersonating a woman and perpetuate a discourse that has been and continues to be a source of both symbolic and physical violence against transgender individuals. Indeed, calling a transgender individual a transvestite or drag queen is, in and of itself, an act of symbolic violence. I would argue that this is no less true when speaking historically than when speaking of the present.
I argue that any individual who seeks to write of the events at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 or, for that matter, any aspect of LGBTQ+, and especially transgender, history should understand that most modern readers will understand the language used within the context of modern discourse and will take that understanding into the wider world with them. Thusly, the writer should appropriately engage the subject matter within that very same modern discourse. To do otherwise is to aid in the perpetuation of ideologies that interpellate transgender individuals as being essentially their socially assigned gender and merely impersonating or performing the gender with which they identify. This, I argue, is yet again an act of symbolic violence against an already marginalized community.
To call this revisionist history may be a valid a critique. But identities, language, and discourse are not static, and neither should our understanding of the past be static. The events and the people involved may not change, but the way we understand those events, the way we interpret them and the way we allow them to influence our understanding of the present, does change. In closing, I quote Stuart Hall:
Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialized past, [identities] are subject to the continuous play of history, culture and power. Far from being grounded in a mere “recovery” of the past, which is waiting to be found and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the difference ways in which we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, narratives of the past.[6]
[1] Weedon, Chris. (2009). Feminism & The Principles of Poststructuralism. In J. Storey (Ed.), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader (pp. 320-21). New York, NY: Routledge.
[2] Dolan, Jill. (2010). Theater and Sexuality. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillian.
[3] Armstrong, E.A., & Crage, S.M. (2006). Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth. American Sociological Review, 71, 724-51.
[4] Gossett, C, Gossett, R., & Lewis, R.J. (2011-21). Reclaiming Our Lineage: Organized Queer, Gender Non-Conforming, and Transgender Resistance to Police Violence. S&F Online, 10(1). Retrieved from http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer-agenda/reclaiming-our-lineage-organized-queer-gender-nonconforming-and-transgender-resistance-to-police-violence/
[5] Mananzala, R. (2011-12). The FIERCE Fight for Power and the Preservation of Public Space in the West Village. S&F Online, 10(1). Retrieved from http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer-agenda/the-fierce-fight-for-power-and-the-preservation-of-public-space-in-the-west-village/
[6] Munoz, Jose Esteban. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press.
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@ my baby kinkster anon who’s out there and wanted a primer:
I haven’t forgotten you, but I am in a Mood(tm) and brooding over some relevant still sore wounds, so I haven’t written up your primer yet, and I certainly haven’t finished the personal experiences question you asked.
but I stumbled across this in my bookmarks today: vintage kink from ‘97.
I don’t agree with everything it says, and I, personally, hate the word “slave” in a bdsm context and I just don’t/won’t use it. I prefer sub, or subby, etc etc.
and there are different types of dominance and submission, blah blah. However, let’s pull from that link:
Just as slaves need to obey, we need to follow rules and to push ourselves to live up to some ideal. i think every (voluntary) slave wants to be “the perfect slave” in some sense, and we need — as much as we need air and water — someone to hold out that ideal before us and challenge us to live up to it, even knowing that we’ll never actually achieve it.
Kink/BDSM is prone, even more than most things, to the No True Scotsman fallacy. If something isn’t perfectly in line with a kinkster’s views, it’s often labeled as not REALLY kink. “No REAL submissive would do[ xyz].” “No TRUE dom would think [abc].”
But to me, since a lot of the dom/sub stuff (as opposed to the sadist/masochist stuff) is headgame
For me, the distinction between a submissive and a bottom, or a dom and a top, is something like the quote above, something about underlying motivation. If you just wanna be tied up and spanked, that’s cool and all, but that could just mean you want to get attention. Which is totally fine! Most humans with sex drives want attention! I WANT ATTENTION (at specific times in specific ways from specific people)! But that’s not the same as wanting to serve, I don’t think. Likewise, anyone can perform the act of giving orders (which technically we call a “service top” now or whatever, i guess?) but, to me, a dom is a person who enjoys the act of giving direction in and of itself.
Pulling from the link again:
Ideally, what slaves need — whether they’re aware of wanting it or not! — is clear direction, firm goals, consistent rules, unambiguous orders. And it takes a Master with great presence of mind, intelligence, self-control, and self-understanding to provide that kind of environment.
I take the view that being a dom is a tremendous responsibility, and ideally, a dom should be better than average at several interpersonal skills and across the board intelligent and self aware. Active listening and introspection are the dom’s greatest tools, much as I might enjoy my leather flogger.
(Artisanal Kink Gear Idea: laser engraved swirly pattern or otherwise pretty leather floggers. $$$$. You’re welcome, etsy. Send me a fancy viper’s tongue in thanks.)
But I also have a great urge to nurture things in general, outside of any kink space, and until recently I didn’t really get how those meshed. I have a (switch/subby) friend who discusses the Nurturing Dom concept with me, both from his personal experience and in theory, and like, my main takeaway from it is that you can both be a sadist and want to nurture; shit is complicated. And I appreciate that reassurance every day.
My point is that for a lifestyle kind of dom/sub dynamic: creating a framework is critical. A good dom must have a plan. Should the sub know every detail of the plan immediately? I’m a big fan of transparency, but there is also an element of trust, no? And if you’re open and honest and negotiating along the way, which you should be...maybe some of the long term goals needn’t be explicit. Or maybe that makes me a bad dom, who knows?
So I don’t think that being a dom is necessarily a hard on for power as it’s often discussed. Direction, yes. But few people really want to be a tyrant, and like, you can be a dom with a reverse humiliation kink who tells the sub nice things until they are squirming with it, or you can make the sub repeat that they are beautiful, etc, until, say, they cry.
Mind you, that last one happened to a friend, not to me, personally, but: fuckin’ goals, man. Tears AND positive affirmations? Pain for Good(tm)? bonertown. And that’s probably everything you need to know about me as a dom. Turn ons: TEARS and POSITIVE PERSONAL GROWTH.
This is also, I feel, part of why many doms have daily tasks for their subs, particularly ones like keeping a journal, or giving the dom a summary of their day and feelings, no matter how unremarkable the day was. Journal keeping tasks are quite common. Ideally, you get to monitor how your sub is doing emotionally/logistically, you get a sense of the current state of the relationship, and armed with this cutting edge intel, you can make better (and therefore sexier) decisions. The dom also gets the satisfaction of being obeyed, and the sub gets the satisfaction of Doing the Thing and fulfilling needs (their own and the dom’s).
And of course, praise helps, generally speaking. If you don’t enjoy being told you’re a good boy/girl/darling, what is the point? You are wasting my time and your own.
And I hate having my time wasted. Who doesn’t?
All of that said, it’s ultimately a lot like any other relationship. If you, as a dom, are trying hard to anticipate your sub’s needs and moods and act accordingly, if you are putting effort into a highly personalized process, if you are trying to create situations and tasks are are fulfilling for your sub, and your sub nods their head and acts like they’re into it, and then they never fucking do any of it, or they do it twice and then never again: problem.
You can reassess and talk and try again.
But if your sub freaks the fuck out when you gently ask for the thing, or why they haven’t done the thing, or if you can expect the thing to happen at all: shit is fucked.
If your sub will not discuss with you why they didn’t do the thing, or why they didn’t want to do the thing, nor are they willing to discuss whether or not they wanted to do the thing at all in the first place: shit is fucked.
Without information, you can’t adjust. Nothing can evolve in a good direction without communication.
And even sexy things, like punishment? You can’t punish someone who doesn’t participate in the paradigm, and you can’t design a paradigm for someone who isn’t honest about their wants/needs/etc. Again: everyone hates having their time wasted, myself very much included.
Wait, let me back up. Let me fix that.
All of that said, it’s ultimately a lot like any other relationship: everyone has to be participating. Everyone has to be honest and open. Or else there really isn’t a point, and no progress is going to be made ever except by accident. Regardless of kink, no one wants to feel like they are the only person putting effort into the relationship.
But as a dom, specifically, I will say: there is nothing more irritating than designing a scenario to someone’s specifications and then having them not participate, while claiming that they are going to participate. No one likes to feel disrespected, but I do think, as a dom, there is a little knife edge there that guts you a little deeper: disobedience of a kind that you are powerless to address. Powerlessness in general.
And this is SUCH A BAD POST to be the first one for you, baby kinkster! I am so sorry! This is all some nuanced long term shit, and like, you don’t even know if you want to bother with this whole thing yet! I am sorry!
So let’s slot this under personal experiences, maybe? I do have half a primer with written definitions somewhere. That should be better.
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