#So absolutely a moment in the history of male homosexuality and not something to just go 'ew ew bad evil ewwie' about but also | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

moki-dokie · 6 months

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been seeing some stuff on blue eye samurai and big yikes to nearly everyone pushing extremely western ideals onto these characters.

this is early edo period. 1600s. the japan you know now did not exist yet.

yall. please. there was NO concept of sexuality in pre-modern japan. that came with both the influx of christianity and western influence very very late in history. like, mid-1800s. (yes, there was christianity pre-1800s but it was not a widespread idea yet and wouldn't be until about the 1800s since, y'know, missionaries were routinely murdered before then)

"so and so is either bi and hasn't figured it out yet or..." no. that isn't how it worked then. nobody gave a shit what was between your legs. anyone could be attracted to anyone else. it was a little more common for male homosexual relationships to be between an adult and younger male - like many other places around the world - but two adult men could bang and love each other just as easily. relationships between women were quite common - especially since so many men were often away at war. there's tons of pornographic prints from the time depicting all manner of fun queer relationships. sex itself had absolutely no moral assignment to it. good sex was good health. it didn't matter who with. (well, social class/caste mattered more than anything else tbh but that didn't stop upper and lower class from fucking.) that isn't to say people didn't have preferences. of course they did. that is human nature. preferences arose more from physical appearance, caste, and circumstances with gender being about the last thing one would look for in a partner - romantic, casual, or otherwise. the only role in sex where gender actually mattered was for procreation.

there would be no queer awakening moment, no sudden switch flipped, no stigma to have internal conflicts about because it simply did not exist as a concept whatsoever. you were either attracted to a person or you weren't, it was that simple. gender played no role when it came to sex and sexual attraction. the japanese were lightyears ahead of western cultures in this particular area - like most cultures were before christianity came in and ruined everything with its backwards morals and strict good/evil dichotomy.

yall have got to realize queer rep will not and should not always adhere by modern western standards. there was no straight, gay, bi, or anything else of the sort. the closest they ever got was referring to roles during sex - as in who is giving and who is receiving.

i know this is mostly a made up story but it is still set within a very specific time period and culture, which should be honored and respected by not making it fit into our box. tons of research went into making this show historically accurate (albeit with some discrepancies but tbh they aren't really that huge) right down to the calligraphy writing. please please please don't whitewash the culture from these characters.

i say this mainly because without this knowledge, so many of you are going to build these characters up on a foundation they aren't meant to be on and then you'll rage about queerbaiting and bad queer rep if it isn't somehow super explicitly stated, if it doesn't match your very modern, very western ideal of what queer looks like. don't try to force this plot and narrative and characters into something they canonically and historically aren't. headcanons are a thing, AUs are a thing, fanfiction is a thing - leave your western thinking for those and let these characters simply exist as they should otherwise. this is one of those times where the queerness really does not need to be examined at all beyond what we get.

i know it can be hard to wrap your head around - sexuality is such a huge part of our identity in the western world and has slowly started to spread amongst other parts of the world in importance. but just keep in mind with these particular characters, that concept would be so very alien to them.

#blue eye samurai #i'm gonna bite people if i see complaints about queer anything in this show

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tiger-moran · 4 months

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Between trying to work out what really happened to Adair in this story and something I wrote in my Moriarty and Moran essay, and the Midsomer Murders episode Blood Wedding being on yesterday I am seriously thinking about what did Adair really get himself involved in because I don't think it was just him being unlucky enough to partner himself with a card cheat who also happens to be Moriarty's right hand man.

I still don't think (for various reasons that I'm not going into here) that it is conclusively proven that Moran killed Adair, it's a possibility but there are multiple other possibilities too and I think maybe... Holmes is not corrupt or any great lover of the upper classes but he may be a little naïve? Maybe because of his own history and his brother being connected with the government, maybe he is a bit too inclined towards believing some of the English upper classes are better people than they actually are (and also at that moment in time especially way too inclined to think the worst of Moran without examining the evidence too closely).

And I still do think Watson is a bit too trusting maybe, and perhaps too generous also, in assuming that Adair is this great easy-going guy who can do no wrong simply because his family and upper class mates all say so, as if any of them would willingly, publicly admit anything bad about him. Sorry but they absolutely would not do that, if they knew something dodgy about him they would close ranks.

From my essay:

"When [Moriarty and Moran] so defy the law and what is considered 'normal' in other ways and seem to live by their own rules, there is a strong possibility that they may both be queer. As such, they might also be acquainted with other queer people, likely other queer men in particular. Though it seems unlikely, due to Holmes's attitudes towards them both (which is far more respectful and even jovial at times than compared with his attitude to master blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton) that the pair ever actively blackmailed anyone over their sexuality, were they backed into a corner they might still have been willing to use information they had collected in order to protect themselves. There is the possibility therefore that the authorities might have found it very convenient to let Moriarty as well as Moran 'slip the net' and disappear to another country for a while rather than be put in the dock in England for fear of what either or both might reveal were they forced to have to defend themselves in court. It would perhaps also be convenient for them if a certain amateur detective with a 'bee in his bonnet' about the Professor ended up pushing him over a waterfall. And then there is the matter of why Moran, who Holmes insists will hang for the Adair murder (Empty) is still alive twenty years later in His Last Bow. Although there are other possibilities (such as the evidence not being anywhere near as damning as Holmes seemed to think), did Moran actually use information he and Moriarty had accumulated about the homosexual proclivities of various high-status men to ensure he was never prosecuted for Adair's murder? And one does still tend to wonder why exactly Adair, a young aristocratic man who seemed to do little besides hang about in male-only clubs and had recently broken off his engagement, was really associated with Moran anyway."

"There is even the possibility that Moran and Moriarty had nothing to do with Adair's murder and Moran was just a convenient scapegoat for it – how do we really know after all that Adair was simply the “easy-going young aristocrat” that Watson (who never knew him) makes out?"

And the reason that episode of Midsomer Murders made me think more about this is because the murderer and his friends in that are aristocrats who basically think because they're 'the old families' who own most of the land and wealth etc etc they can do whatever they like, including committing murder, and they don't have to answer to anybody for that. And I mean, I think they're nonsense but still some of the best known/most popular theories about the Jack the Ripper murders are that 'Jack' was an aristocratic man and/or the murders were some sort of cover up to protect someone in/connected to the monarchy. There are always these ideas that people who are born high up in society think they are better than everyone else and they can do whatever they like and very often they will get away with that too even if their actions do get exposed.

And it's not outside the realms of plausibility that this idea of being able to do whatever they like extends even to killing one of their own i.e. another aristocrat and that therefore Adair was killed to cover something up and that something was a romantic/sexual relationship with some other man from the aristocracy, and even possibly that someone could have exploited Moran's history and connection with Moriarty to try to frame him because he was such an obvious suspect, and probably because he's not really one of them anyway (since he's likely of Irish descent, he was in the Indian army not the actual British army and he got made to retire from the army; he's not exactly, you know, pukka) likely not realising that there's absolutely no way Moran was ever going to actually be hanged for this or even found guilty, not only because the evidence didn't hold up but because Moran, and probably Moriarty too, still knows things and still has acquaintances in high places too.

(I don't know what to do with this thought though, I have really not got the energy to figure this out and expand on it properly so I think probably who killed Adair in this story in particular may well remain a mystery)

#Sebastian Moran #James Moriarty #Ronald Adair #Sherlock Holmes #Dr John Watson

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thickenmyblood · 3 years

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hey maca :)) I have sth that I’d love to hear your input on! (wall of text incoming so beware- I’m absolutely not mad if you don’t want to answer lmao). Basically it’s about how you portray women in your works and to what extent you see that portrayal mirrored in the canon books. I have noticed that a lot of writers tend to go a traditional route with for example daughters not being heirs like you also mentioned in an answer for a wtsioa ask on here. Considering the cultures Vere and Akielos are based on that’s obviously very logical and a lot of authors (including you) make it work fantastically! Yet personally I never got the vibe of Vere and Akielos being as patriarchal in canon, mostly because the Information we get is kind of confusing. On one hand damen is a walking manosphere (and. all of Akielos in general as well) without any prominent female figures in his life but on the other hand damen only ever speaks appreciatively of for example the female vaskian warriors. Both countries seem to ban women from the army yet Damen also refers to a warrior queen. The regent is a total misogynist but with the wording Laurent uses it almost seems like that is more the exception and not the general rule of veretian court life. Both countries also have ties to Vask, an exclusive matriarchy and Akielos is said to be similar to Patras which Pacat has stated is also partly a strong matriarchy due to vaskian occupations in the past. I could go on for a lot longer but I guess that damens overall positive attitude towards women and especially stereotypically spoken masculine women is what sticks out the most to me. It just seems kind of misplaced in a world that supposedly is as sexist as the original cultures from our world. Which is why I’d say both countries do have gender roles but are overall a lot more egalitarian than their respective real world og cultures. But that’s only my take and I’d love to hear more on what others think about the portrayal of women in canon and how they chose to portray it in fanfiction. Love you and your new work, hope you’re doing well❤️

HELLO!!! Thank you for asking me interesting stuff :, ) you always have the best questions and my sad little inbox is open to you any time, friend. I divided this into parts, so:

My portrayal of women: I need to work on this a lot lmao. I’m not proud of any female character I have ever written for this fandom, and I’m also not proud to say I struggle horribly when it comes to writing female OCs, especially if the story is not about a female character that is a literal projection of me. Or Bella Swan (yes, Twilight literally shaped my sad little brain and the way I write and consume fiction).

Authors writing female characters in a “traditional” way (for fantasy settings): I can’t speak for other authors but I definitely think, in my case, that using the “it’s a patriarchal society, women have no rights, women can’t be heirs, etc.” blueprint is a matter of being lazy. It’s quick, and easy, and it’s been done before so we all know how it works and a) it’s unlikely that you’ll mess it up (in the plot hole kind of way) and b) it’s obvious that most readers know how the usual system works and so you don’t have to spend paragraphs or even chapters explaining it to them. I am very lazy when it comes to world-building for fics. Why? Because when I’m writing fanfiction I don’t give two shits about the world, I just care about the characters doing Things and having Feelings. The moment you start to question these issues (a society where women can join the army, where they can be heirs, where maybe they can have multiple husbands, etc.) a billion issues arise because it’s not the “usual way” and so you’ll have to deal with “unusual problems”. See: plot holes, info-dumping, etc.

Vere and Akielos in canon: I think the books get very, very confusing at times when it comes to gender roles in that specific world. They also get very confusing about how royalty works, in my opinion. So:

Damen never mentions female influences in his life, not even nannies or wetnurses or anything. He mentions past queens and his mother, but even then… It’s always struck me as “what the actual fuck” that we get no information on Egeria. In TSP, he doesn’t even read as curious to me, especially when I think of that line that goes something like “oh, well, he’d never asked how tall she was”.

Then you have Jokaste, who is highborn and also… perhaps trained in politics? It’s unclear to me if she’s ever been directly involved in meetings or been an active member of the Council or even been allowed to study these issues. Clearly, she’s smart and capable and cunning, but like… how? Did she have private tutors? Is she a self-made woman? Like, what’s up with that? Are women allowed to engage in public politics? Are they allowed to be kyroi?

IMO, Damen complimenting the female warriors in Vask has to do with how appreciative he is of war-related stuff. Like, he thinks people with his own qualities are neat. We see this time and time again in the books—having honor, being brave, respecting one’s family, protecting those who need protecting… He compliments these things when he sees them in others, especially in Laurent. Obviously one of the big changes in Damen as a character is that he goes from being daddy’s boy to being like “well, actually… maybe war isn’t always the answer, and maybe war isn’t always honorable”. The Vaskian warriors prove themselves worthy of praise in a “manly” way, if that makes sense. (In the same way, Laurent proves himself in the Okton, not so much to Damen but to other Akielons). So, in essence, War > Any issues he may have about women doing Stuff.

Don’t judge me for this but I can’t remember the Regent talking about women. Do you have any quotes about that? I feel like Book 1 is super rich when it comes to world-building stuff and yet it’s the book I remember the least. I know he obviously has a preference for boys and not girls, but I don’t recall him having interactions with Vannes or ladies at court? I’M SORRY I’M SO STUPID but I don’t own the book so I can’t exactly word search my way out of this one, and so instead of saying stupid stuff, I’m asking anyone reading this (lol, you and my mom probably) to please tell me what canon says on this issue.

Ties to Vask: Er, yeah, I mean… They’re clearly not at war with Vask and have some sort of economic deal (there are Vaskian pets in Arles? Which makes me wonder if they, like, buy them from Vask? Or if the pets are Vaskian and turn into pets in Vere? Slaves are not like pets so I don’t know?), BUT just because they have deals with this kingdom/are on good terms with the ruler does not mean they necessarily approve? Like, maybe they’re like “yeah, it’s weird they give women so much power, but also I need that silk/leather/WHATEVER, so I’ll shut up about that”.

“Akielos is said to be similar to Patras which Pacat has stated is also partly a strong matriarchy due to Vaskian occupations in the past.” Is this in the books or is this something she said in an interview/post-releasing the trilogy? I know in the books there’s a quote that Akielos and Patras are similar because they both have slaves, but other than that I can’t quite remember anything about Patras? Like, I don’t recall Pacat giving us extensive and thorough world-building on either nation, at all. Once again, I am asking you for more explanations on this because I literally don’t remember.

4. My opinion and a Stupidity Disclaimer: As I’ve said above, there’s a lot of stuff I don’t remember and so I’m not trying to preach to anyone reading this or even saying that I hold the truth about… anything. I’m answering questions as I see fit and asking more questions when I run out of answers.

I believe world-building is not one of Captive Prince’s strong points. I will not elaborate on this because this is already long enough but there is simply, in my opinion, not enough material to reach any solid conclusions when it comes to world-building questions such as the role of women in Vere and Akielos, how compulsory homosexuality affects the development of highborn men and women in Vere, exactly what makes Akielos’ view on women different from Vere’s (if there’s any difference at all), the history of gender roles in this world and how it’s evolved up until canon, how Lamen can solve the heir issue without recurring to, once again, “the usual stuff” (concubines, bastards, marriage to women, etc.). It’s clear from what I’ve read that Pacat has come a long way as a writer and that her new trilogy has a lot more in-depth explanations to world-building questions, but this is not the case with CP, and so I’m afraid my answer to most of this is “I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone can know for sure”.

Lastly, I think I struggle a lot with understanding the role of women in this universe because I simply did not see enough women doing stuff, so I don’t know what’s permitted, what’s unacceptable, what’s illegal, what is straight-up execution worthy, etc. This is not me complaining about the lack of female characters in CP, at all, which I know is contradictory to stuff I’ve said in the past (I answered a couple asks a year ago about how I’d wished we’d gotten Vannes’ POV or Jokaste’s POV in the short stories). I’ve changed my mind, and so I think Pacat is entitled to write whatever she wants, just like I’m entitled to talk shit about KR with any living soul who will listen lmao.

To end this on a spicy note, I think sometimes we consume the wrong media and then complain because it doesn’t have what we wanted. If you’re looking for a trilogy with strong, fleshed-out female characters, Captive Prince is not for you. If you’re looking for a trilogy on female struggles and, I don’t know, defying… the male gaze… Captive Prince is not for you. There are plenty of books out there that focus exclusively on female characters, featuring sapphic relationships, and dealing with gender issues. WHICH IS NOT TO SAY WE SHOULDN’T BE HAVING THESE DISCUSSIONS. This is not about this particular question, but more about a lot of posts I’ve seen floating around… complaining about Pacat’s writing and the themes she didn’t explore.

If anyone has made it this far, thank you for reading, and know this is NOT me telling you what to think. This post is an open question that anyone can engage with, although I hope people will engage with this directly and on this platform, instead of… taking it somewhere else where I sadly can’t engage back! Unlike what happened with our awesome fat Laurent discussion, I will be replying to any questions I get on this (Note: I did not reply to most of those questions because a long time had passed and they were sort of repetitive).

#caramellaurent #captive prince #i'm using the main tag because i think... maybe someone has answers?#also lol melli i see what u did here... u're distracting me from writing for the bang #i see how it is #discourse #is this discourse tho?#it's just me asking stuff #discourse (questioned)

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unrestedjade · 3 years

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Baseless Ferengi headcanons no one asked for and that get increasingly queer-navel-gazing and self indulgent because the horrible space goblins have consumed my brain:

- Mobile ears, because if hearing is so well developed and important to them they should be able to aim those big stupid radar dishes. Also because then they can emote with them and that's cute. THE AESTHETIC IS PARAMOUNT.

- Since they canonically sharpen their teeth with chew sticks and sharpeners, their teeth must grow continuously. So I submit: subcultures that let certain teeth grow out as a fashion/political statement. Ferengi punks and anarchists with 5" tusks. Ferengi with all their teeth filed flat (mom and dad HATE it).

- Corollary to the above, most of their teeth are crooked. At the least, they don't share our fetish for straight teeth. What if their teeth are deciduous, and there's no point in trying to force them into perfect alignment, since they'll just fall out and get replaced? So like, sharks but their teeth can also grow longer with no limit. WHAT HAST EVOLUTION WROUGHT ON FERENGINAR :V

- Parents nagging their kids to sharpen their teeth "or they'll grow up into your brain and you'll die :)"

- Personal space? Don't know her.

Okay I need a cut because there's too many now. WHOLE SOCIETY OF GAY HOMOPHOBIC UNCLES AND AUNTS GO I HAVE A PROBLEM

- I can't remember who on here put forth the idea of them having retractable claws but Yes. :3

- Pushing back against the worst canon episode a bit but: relative ear size being the only obvious sexually dimorphic trait, and even that having enough of a gray area that the only way to be 100% sure you're talking to a male or female Ferengi is if you do a blood test. Unless they're intersex! *shrug emoji*

- This is why they're so fanatical about gender conformity and their Victorian "separate spheres" attitude to men and women's roles. Capitalist patriarchy is fragile! And as artificial to Ferengi as it ever was to Humans! (self-indulgenceeeee about gender shiiiiit)

- You know how with domesticated rabbits, the rabbit getting groomed and paid attention to is the boss? Yeah. Go ahead and paint your bestie's nails, just don't be surprised if she cops a little bit of an attitude with you from then on.

- Their fight/flight/freeze/fawn instincts skew heavily toward the last three, and what a lot of other species read as annoying sucking up is the Ferengi in question feeling anxious and unsafe. Especially if they don't feel integrated into the group. Even being at the bottom of the pecking order is better than not being in the flock at all.

- If they DO opt for fight, it's ugly and typically their last resort. Bites or scratches will get infected without intervention-- microbes that their immune system can handle could cause big trouble for aliens. You might wanna check for full or partial teeth that break off and get lodged in the wound, too.

- Too many of these are tooth related but I don't care. :B More teeth stuff: you know what else has teeth that grow constantly? Puffer fish. Likewise, Ferengi can chew up mollusk shells as easy as potato chips, and they need the minerals for their teeth. (Imagine grandpa Sisko offering Nog a crayfish for the first time and watching as he just...pops the whole damn thing in his mouth and crunches away...)

- Their staple foods seem to be grubs and other arthropods, high in protein and fat. I've unilaterally decided their cuisine also involves a lot of edible fungi, ferns, plant shoots and seeds. Gotta get those vitamins. Overall flavor profile leaning toward umami, vegetal, and fresh herbs, and pretty mild (or "delicate" if you wanna be snooty about it, which a Ferengi probably would let's be real).

- Not much sugary food. I'm basing this solely on Quark's aversion to root beer as "cloying". Which could definitely just be his personal preference, but most of the people I hear hating on root beer cite the actual sassafras/sarsaparilla flavor (saying it tastes like medicine) not the sweetness. Nog might be the weirdo outlier for being able to enjoy it.

- Their home planet isn't bright and sunny, so their eyes are better at discerning shades of gray in low light conditions, with relatively weak color vision. Which could explain why they dress Like That.

- Conversely, human music has a reputation for stinking on ice because a lot of it is juuuuust lightly dissonant or out of tune because we can't pick up flaws that small. Ferengi can, and it drives them up the *wall*.

- Music? So many different kinds. Traditionally, maybe lots of percussion and winds, and water as a common component of many instruments to alter pitch or tone. Polyphony out the ass. Some of the modern stuff is an impenetrable wall of sound if you're not a species with a lot of brain real estate devoted to processing sounds. Pick out one melody to follow at a time.

- Yes, back to teeth again I'm sorry. It's a sickness. At some point in their history, pre-chewing food was just something you did for your baby or great grandma as a matter of necessity. Possibly your baby gets an important boost to their immune system and gut biome from your spit. At some point takes on a more formal intimacy aspect and gradually drifted from something all adults and older kids do to something only women do. Your husband and older kids have perfectly functional teeth, but you love them, right? =_= (Think old memes about husbands being useless in the kitchen if little wifey isn't there to cook, but even more ridiculous. Ishka was right about everything but especially this. Thank you for making your family chew their own food, Ishka. Not all heroes wear capes. Or anything!)

- How did they get started on the whole men: clothed vs women: unclothed nonsense? My equally stupid idea: men just get cold easier. Those huge ears dissipate a ton of body heat. Cue Ferengi cliches like "jeez, we could be standing on the surface of the sun and my husband would put on another layer." At some point, again, this got codified and pushed to ridiculous extremes in the name of controlling women and keeping everyone in their assigned box, to the point that women just have to shiver if they really are too cold and men have to pass out from heat stroke if the alternative is going shirtless, because That Would Be Inappropriate.

- Marriages default to five years, but they're also the only avenue for women to have their own household or any stability. Plus their religion places no emphasis on purity save for pure adherence to the free market and the RoA. So, curveball to the rest of their patriarchal bullshit: female virginity isn't a concern in the least. Bring it up and they'll rightly side-eye you.

- Family law is absolutely bonkers and lawyers that specialize in it make BANK. I feel like custody would default to the father usually but oh wait, the maternal grandfather has a legal stake in this, too, and your next father-in-law is asking HOW many kids are you dragging into my daughter's house, etc etc. Growing up with a full sibling is way rarer than growing up with half or stepsiblings, since it usually takes both men and women two or three tries to find someone they vibe with. (Not love, unless you're super cringe.)

- A misogynistic society is a homophobic society. Imo those flavors of shittiness just come in pairs. Homosexual behaviors are fine within certain parameters (aka "always have sex with the boss") but not on your own terms. To add spice, bisexuality is their most common mode (because I'm bi and these are my hcs for my fics I'm not writing, so there), but capitalism demands fresh grist for the mill so you better get het-married and pop out some kids you lowly peons. You have a choice so make the proper one. :)

- Corollary to the above, that doesn't keep all kinds of illicit "we're just friends with quid-pro-quo benefits for realsies" affairs of every stripe and every gender from going on everywhere. Many Ferengi have a lightbulb moment somewhere in early adulthood when they figure out their dad's business partner or the "auntie" who visited their mom every month had a little more going on.

- Plus there's way more gender non-conformity and varying degrees of trans-ing than the powers that be have a handle on. Pel isn't unique, even if most would have to somehow make it out into space to be able to thrive.

Damn a lot of these are just my personal bugbears plus THE GILDED AGE BUT WITH HAIRLESS SPACE RODENTS ain't they

- Women can't earn profit, okay. But lending or "lending" things to each other isn't commerce, riiiiiiight? To be assigned female is to master navigating a vast, dizzying barter/gift economy. Smart boys and men leverage this, too, and there are splinter sects that view this as the purest expression of the Great Material Continuum.

- Of course plenty of women make profit anyway, and just do their bast to dodge the FCA. The tough thing about insisting on using latinum as currency is that cash can be so hard to track, you know?

- Because of the RoA, guys are discouraged from doing favors or giving gifts without setting clear expectation of getting some return on investment. This can twist into an expression of friendship (and of course women do it too), and the ledger will keep cycling between debit and credit among friends for decades. A common mistake aliens make is to tell them recompense isn't needed without explaining why, or return their favor or present with something that zeroes out the debt. The Ferengi will assume you want to break off the friendship. (I cribbed this from dim memories of an African studies course I took in 2007 and whose textbook I know I still have but I can't frigging find it...)

- Flirting, they do a lot of it for a lot of reasons. Roddenberry made it clear that they're just straight up pretty horny, but there's no reason it can't pull double duty for building alliances with other people, smoothing over feuds or disagreements, or cementing friendships. Ferengi who are ace and/or sex-repulsed are possibly viewed similar to the way we'd view someone who's "not a hugger/not big on touching" and if they flirt just don't get offended if it doesn't go any further; aro Ferengi don't garner much comment aside from an occasional "wow how badass, never falling in love with anyone."

- where to even start on making sense of the Blessed Exchequer??? Like seriously, what is this literal prosperity gospel insanity, I need to force myself to re-read Rand and like, some Milton Friedman for this shit. Help.

- fuck I'm probably going to actually do that, RIP me...

#ds9 #star trek #meta #ferengi #i love them Too Much help #reliving my brief libertarian phase from high school from the opposite direction #my heart wants to make them simultaneously as queer and as repressed as possible #i didn't even make it to the goddamned blessed exchequer my head is too full #i will find beauty in this vulgarity if it kills me #this is too long #why did i spend my time this way

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neongreengummiebears · 3 years

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Thoughts on BakuDeku

I’ve been lurking in the MHA fandom for a while now, just kind of silently watching, and I have a few observations that I would like to make. Just perspectives that I would like to put out into the universe. I am on the older side of this website, much less this fandom and so I am no stranger to fandom culture. And when I say old? I mean like I was an active participant on ff.net circa 2005 so like, I’m sure some of you are older but I’m getting up there. My point? I’ve seen things.

As far as fandoms go in general, the MHA is far from the most toxic that I’ve seen but there does seem to be a few points of contention and per usual it comes back to shipping. This is nothing new but lets speak a little on BakuDeku as a ship. I warn you now, it’s not always going to be things you want to hear, but I encourage you to read to the end anyway.

Horikoshi has fully admitted to having been a huge Naruto fan and it’s pretty easy to see the influence in his work. On that note, it’s pretty safe to say that the Midoriya/Bakugo relationship can be compared to the Naruto/Sasuke relationship. You can see other parallels (All Might = Iruka, Aizawa = Kakashi, etc...) but for the sake of argument let’s focus solely on Midoriya/Bakugo. Personally, I tend to prefer MHA to Naruto overall, as I just like the characters better and as such I like Bakugo a lot more than Sasuke. Horikoshi has taken more time to humanize Bakugo, and while he started off being a total dick, he’s also a dumb fuck teenage boy and he’s had a lot of character growth over the last 29 volumes.

In the Naruto fandom, much like in the MHA fandom, there were loads of fans who shipped Naruto and Sasuke romantically. If we are judging the probability of Midoriya and Bakugo becoming a cannon couple, it stands to reason that we can examine the author’s influences and infer that, no, they probably won’t. For one thing, homosexuality is still considered a controversial topic in Japan like in America, and even if the author wanted to make it romantic he would probably receive a good amount of push-back from publishers.

Now I don’t want you to read this and think that I am at all against it. I’m not. And forever ago when I was reading Naruto I occasionally wondered what would happen if an author published a Shounen manga, got millions invested, and then SURPRISE it was a M/M romance all along. I think it would be fun but I can’t say that I am realistically convinced that it will happen. But that isn’t really the point of this post.

My point, is that this fandom, like many others (And this website in general???) needs to learn the difference between actual queer baiting and a ship that just...doesn’t happen? And I’ve seen all the arguments, about how they clearly love each other and how their bond is so deep and how if either of the characters had this kind of relationship with a female character it would ABSOLUTELY be romantic. And I hear your points, but if I may provide a few of my own:

1. There are many different ways to love in the world and they don’t all have to involve romance and kissing and sex. Do you love your family? Do you have friends that you would die for? These are relationships that people have and their just as valid in fiction as in real life.

2. Yes, if they were opposite genders than it probably would be the central romance of the mange, but that isn’t proof of queer baiting so much as a general failure to accurately represent opposite gender friendships in media. There should be male and female friendships that are just as strong while remaining platonic so this is a failure but not the failure you thing it is. (If anyone likes Kdramas, Suspicious Partner is an excellent one that has not only a great romantic subplot but also some WONDERFUL platonic M/F friendships and it’s just beautiful) (That being said I also recommend the Taiwanese drama HIStory 3: Trapped for a wonderful M/M romance since if you’re reading this post that’s probably something you’re into)

I think that a lot of the problems come from the fact that good romantic relationships do build similarly to friendships. You get a lot of bonding moments, the characters getting to know each other better and coming to care for one another and since media tends to focus predominantly on romantic relationships it’s easy to just get into the mindset that like, all bonding moments are leading somewhere. And in a way they are: to friendship. And then sometimes that friendship leads to romance and sometimes it doesn’t but what I’m saying is that the two look very similar. You SHOULD be friends with your romantic partner, and I think that that is why it’s so easy to ship these sort of couples. Especially when they do have an especially deep bond like these two have.

As far as BakuDeku as a couple in general, yeah, I ship it. I’ve read my fair share of fanfiction and if it did happen I would be psyched. I didn’t always like Bakugo (He’s just doing THE MOST at all times) but I grew to love him and if he continues to grow in the direction that he has been I wouldn’t personally have any problems with it. They have an interesting dynamic that incorporates some of my favorite tropes and I think it would be cool if the manga went there. But if they don’t? That’s also fine.

There have been several ACTUAL examples of queer baiting in media that I can point to such as the Japanese ads for Sherlock (I didn’t necessarily find the show itself to be queerbaiting but the Japanese ads for the new seasons hardcore did) and while I tried hard to defend Supernatural (WAY too much of the fandom shipped actual brothers together for me to believe that they understood the value of any sort of platonic relationship) they kind of blew that out of the water with whatever the fuck happened in that last season.

I don’t see that happening here and while I know a lot of you are set for your ship to become cannon I just want you to maybe manage your expectations. Because in my experience, when it gets built up this big, if it DOESN’T happen the next thing fans do is start ranting about queer-baiting and insulting the series and the team and I don’t want to see that because it isn’t fair to any of them. I’ve seen it happen in other fandoms and it gets real ugly real fast.

Alternatively, if anyone has watched the reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power you will know that the creators played their cards super close to their chest, doing their best to properly develop the homosexual relationships they wanted while keeping it subtle enough that they could prevent themselves from being cancelled before the last season aired. Then they went all in and made their homosexual ships cannon in the final season because at that point the whole show was out wtf was going to happen? They’d get cancelled? It was already over. So if you would like a serving of hope to cling to, that is a thing that happened. I just wouldn’t necessarily bet on it.

That being said, I fully support your right to ship anything you want. And if by some chance it does become cannon? More power to you. I’d be psyched. Horikoshis assistants ship the hell out of it and he clearly doesn’t mind so there is a point in your favor. But if it doesn’t? A lack of romance doesn’t invalidate the depth of their feelings for one another. Platonic love is still love and it’s still a powerful driving force in the story. Their relationship is still compelling even if there isn’t ever a kiss, or a confession. And hey, that’s what fanfiction is for.

Remember kids: Please ship responsibly.

#my hero academia #Boku no hero #boku no hero academia #BNH #MHA #Midoriya #Izuku #Izuku Midoriya #Bakugo #katsuki #Bakugo katsuki #Bakudeku #BKDK #bakugo/midoriya

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macgregorhoughton · 3 years

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I would absolutely love to hear some of your headcanons/ hopes for Jungle Cruise if that something you'd be up for sharing?

Oh absolutely!! (under the cut bc this will be a lot)

Since learning about the Society of Explorers and Adventurers I hope there will be a reference or even a full on introduction in the movie. The timeline is a little off cause if I'm not mistaken they only come in for the jungle cruise ride in the 30s but it'd be cool since the society is much older than that anyway. In general I hope there will be a LOT of references to the ride, and I think we will probably get a whole sequence that is a partial recreation of the ride with Frank's tour (like we can see in the trailer that has the backside of water joke). But I just know the references will exceed anything I am capable of catching lol.

There's a running joke in African Queen about Bogart's character mainly drinking gin and Helpburn's character wanting tea (which tastes awful bc the equipment on the boat is so old) and I want them to reference that joke with McGregor bc I think it would be so funny of him to ask for tea and Frank to just be like you do know you're on a boat in the jungle right, why would I have tea

I hope that McGregor gets a killer character development. I know they all will but Frank's and Lily's are gonna be very formulaic (sth we see in all romantic action comedies). I hope McGregor will start out as very uptight and posh and out of place in the jungle and esp after coming out will gain real confidence and learn to enjoy himself and gets to feel like part of a real family with Lily and Frank.

Proxima!! I want her to become Frank's pet. I want her to be introduced in the boathouse scene where she attacks them and I want her to somehow follow them on the boat (most likely sent by an antagonist, most likely Nilo) and there she just kinda becomes their pet. I just wanna see the Rock pet a leopard like it's a normal cat. And I want McGregor to be very wary of her until she eventually grows on him too.

I hope they'll address the whole Native issue that they recently tackled on the ride itself (about 60 years too late). Dwayne Johnson himself is Native, and there is already a joke in the trailer that the Natives attacking the boat during his tour are just actors but I want them to really lean into how awful the steteotypes are and the colonial history responsible for them.

And on that note, Edgar Ramirez' character looks very.. spanish conquistador in the movie so I'm excited to see the whole potential immortality/reanimation thing and that kinda seems like an opportunity to address colonisation.

I wanna see a real sibling relationship for Lily and McGregor and I realllyyy hope there will be a scene where Lily needs the kind of support and stability from her brother, that she gets to have her own moment of introspection and doubt. I'm such a sucker for optimistic characters getting to a point where they lose hope and Emily Blunt would KILL a moment like that. And like I said before, a small flashback for them but I think that's unlikely.

There's already bits in the trailer so I'm excited to see Lily be a character that gets to be funny in a physical comedy sense. Female characters rarely get treated equal on details like that, they don't get to be funny themselves, they always have to be sexually appealing in the most gross and superficial way so you rarely see female characters getting to just be funny in the way male characters are and it looks like she really gets to do that which I'm so excited to see.

I also talked abt this a little before but I think the coming out scene will either directly state or imply that McGregor is accompanying Lily bc the tree is supposed to cure everything and his family wants to cure his homosexuality. I think it would be incredibly powerful if they do that bc 1) this is still a thing families subject their gay kids to today so highly relevant for many people to see and 2) the movie will need an "oh fuck this is heavy" moment bc all the action comedies have one and this could possibly be it. And the movie getting to the point where they say "there's nothing to cure, you're perfectly fine the way you are" about sexuality would be very relevant and beautiful and I would bawl my eyes out

Also while already on the topic of the tree I already know the movie will have more than problematic and ableist messages coming with that. It's a shame how ableism is still so widely accepted and dismissed and no "universal cure" story has ever not been hugely problematic on that note.

I think that is all the major things I can think of rn. I've mentioned a few things on this blog before like the kinda chemistry I hope to see and such. I know I'm almost setting up the movie to fail with all these expectations but I actually think I'm gonna love it no matter what.

#I kinda don't wanna main tag this but I might tag it eventually #just for organisations sake #ask #anonymous #anon I need a name for you bc ily and you actually engaging with me abt the jungle cruise means the world to me #I also already have sequel wishes but I think I'll wait until after I watched the first movie to share those

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jeans-ong-ong · 4 years

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Non-binarism in Tales of Arcadia

I have to say the truth - I have some very conflicted feelings about the depiction of the characters Skrael and Bellroc in the series Tales of Arcadia: Wizards.

Bellroc is on the right and Skrael on the left in the image.

Their design is awesome; skulls on the head are a fixation of mine, and those eyes on the shoulder straps of Bellroc? Absolutely fantastic. Their voices are both very interesting and refreshing in a somewhat incredibly cis-heteronormative show, so that was immediately a great joy for me to see. From the wiki, it also seems like they both use they/them pronouns, and belong to Primordial Magic (which reminds me of the sacred narrative of deviation from binary gender type, what is different is somehow also closer to spirituality). I’m also going to add that I loved their scenes, and one of the funniest moments in the entire saga for me was the interaction between Steve and Skrael* - they were enjoyable.

However, I’m a little concerned about the fact that these are the only characters that depict non-heteronormativity and they are probably the most powerful enemies.

Rewind In the cast we have two male wizards: Merlin and Hisirdoux, both positive characters; three female witches (one is technically a demigod): Claire, the positive character, Morgana and Nari, both started out as enemies but changed their mind during the story; two non-binary demigods: Skrael and Bellroc, both negative. This show has a history of having enemy characters turn to the good side in the last minute, but I doubt it will happen to them.

Is it that bad? No, I’m definitely not going to accuse the writers of transphobia, it’s actually interesting to see super cool and powerful non binary entities once in a while. However it is a bit tasteless for them to be only enemies - especially if we add the fact that one of the characters of the Zeron Brotherhood, Omega, referred as brother, had a female voice actor and I read that (positively) as a non binarish thing (even if we should take in consideration alien gender identity, gender presentation, roles and biology to judge this properly, but that’s something that wasn’t explored in the show).

Now, apparently, to look for an image of this character, I found out that the wiki defines Zeron Omega as female, and the brother term is used only as symbolism, which confuses me, but that’s okay. In conclusion: I wish I had more material to come to a conclusion! This saga is almost over, and I wish it was a little bit queerer; the point of this show are not relationships and i get that, however identity is a central theme, so umh - yeah I’ll write my own things someday and yadda yadda. I always find it annoying when people accuse creators of transphobia for such little things, so i won’t do that. I just think it’s important to remember that in the history of literature, talking about homosexuality was only permitted if the character was a negative one, or if they did not end up in a good place in life. I believe this narrative habit became an habitus, and we still find traces of it in current media and literature. I don’t have the time and energy to look up some sources on this type of phenomenon, but I definitely will someday, and maybe I’ll write more in depth about it. *Actually, about Skrael and Steve’s interactions, there’s something further to be said: as fun as they were, they did remind me slightly of the tropes about sadistic gay men and gay panic, especially when Skrael caresses Steve’s face before preparing to kill him. It’s very slight, but it’s there. Thanks for reading, cheers!

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amandaklwrites · 3 years

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TV Series Review: Miss Scarlet and the Duke (2019)

Genre: Historical Fiction/Murder Mystery/British Period Drama

Rating: 10/10

TV Show Review:

I. LOVE. THIS SHOW.

Pretty much this review will be me talking about everything I love this series, just a warning. I hope you love it too, so you can enjoy my blabbering and gushing!

I will do this review a bit differently, since it’s still relatively new, especially here in the US. I’ll talk about my general thoughts, and then I’ll do a “keep reading” when it goes down into spoilers for each episode.

So, here, for the spoiler-free part of my review:

Let me start out by saying that these characters make the whole damn show. Yes, the mysteries are great and all, but it’s the characters in this series, for me, that drives the whole thing. Eliza Scarlet is a masterful main character, and I love everything about her—from her determination, her willingness to fight the crowd to be what she wants, how she’s willing to admit some issues, that she still relies so heavily on her father after he passed away. Her humor is so incredible, and I think she’s just someone I wish I could be. Her feistiness is so wonderful. And then our Inspector Detective William “the Duke” Wellington is… one of my favorite leading men, fictional of course. I like that he’s overprotective of her (sometimes, to funny extents), that he does his job well and follows a lot of the right paths, that he doesn’t seem surprised by much of anything, and that he’s willing to fight even when he’s falling apart at the seams. And their relationship! They are so clearly in love with each other (probably have since that “chaste kiss” when they were teens…), they bicker like a married couple, and though they annoy the living hell out of each other, they would die for one another. I like that their relationship isn’t perfect and they take note of that in the show, but it feels real. It’s one of the most real relationships I have ever seen.

Moses and Rupert are such important characters and I LOVE their relationship with Eliza, their friendships that seem so different, but they just fit. I can’t go much into detail about either of them, or it will spoil entire plotlines of mysteries, but I will say that I love what the story does with their characters, how it gives them breaths of their own, that they become some of the most dynamic characters in the show with so much to them and that take a life of their own. That they feel real and important and interesting, and I love the representation. That’s all I’ll say about them in the spoiler-free review.

Now, the mysteries, were incredible. They kept me guessing through every episode, and I would have some feelings about things/people, but I wasn’t sure how it would get there. At times, I thought of the truth, but figured that they were going to trick me with it (my grandpa always told me that I have a brain for a detective, if I had some training, so that’s fun!). But still, they were so innovative and different from other mysteries that I had experienced. And I liked that each episode felt a bit different—we had a taste of ghost story feeling, even an intense thriller. They were really, really good mysteries, to me at least. And I do love me some mysteries.

Okay, so the costumes, sets and music. MY GOD. It was all SO BEAUTIFUL! Eliza’s clothes were magnificent and they had POCKETS!!! William was way too sexy in those clothes (can we bring those back??? We can leave out the discrimination that came with the time period, but let’s bring back the clothes at least!). Everyone had gorgeous clothes. And the sets were beautiful—those dirty, Victorian, coal covered streets… I loved it! (My mom says she’s not sure why I’m so in love with the dark atmosphere of the Victorian era, but I am!). The MUSIC. Can they just upload a damn soundtrack already? I need to listen to this music all the time! It sounds different and cool and I’m just so in love with it.

THE HUMOR! My god, I had never seen a murder mystery show set in another time that does humor so well. I love how they travel between scenes to make it funnier, the lines they say to one another. It makes me feel like these actors absolutely had a blast filming this show. They were so on point, and some of the funny scenes made me laugh harder than any comedy movie I’ve seen.

As you can see, I’m obsessed with this show altogether. I love it, and I want to watch it over and over. The vibe, the love stories, the characters, every. single. thing. is my jam. I know they’re planning a second season and I cannot wait for it. Ugh. My god. It’s wonderful.

So here ends my spoiler-free review. After this, I’m going to talk spoilers. So if you have seen the show and/or want to read the spoiler-y thoughts, please click on the “keep reading.” If not, see you around after your watch the show! It’s well worth it!

Let me start out by explaining more of my thoughts on the relationship between William and Eliza, because I worried that some of what I had said would give away possibly too much. So here’s that part:

The (hilarious) way that William mutters “oh jesus” whenever he finds Eliza waiting in his office, or the fact that Eliza calls herself his wife (or in one instance, something worse, but to save herself) to get what she wants also feels like a sly to personally agitate him. How that he would toss her into jail/into court when she went against things he said she shouldn’t do (though he released her/got her out at some point) never got old and even funnier to me each time. I told my mom, she was like a toddler—he couldn’t keep her in sight, so he had to lock her out. But I liked that she still argued with him despite it. Their back and forth was perfect.

I will say here, that I have seen people’s comments online how they wish that William was more on board with Eliza’s detective dreams and support her 100% much earlier on. And I get that, that he can seem like an ass at times. But honestly, I think he feels more realistic that he’s a little harder about it in the beginning. Trust me, I love this show and the way they play with characters and storylines, and that they are so forward (I mean, Eliza is so forward-thinking and modern, it’s amazing), but to me, if they made EVERYONE, i.e. William especially, it wouldn’t ground me into the time very well. I like that it was more gradual for him, to fully support her. And actually, I think for a man in the Victorian Era, with his position, he supported her as much as he could. Though he fought her on it at times, he eventually gave up trying to stop her. And I do think, in some respect, he was trying to protect her, because he does care for her. He was a man of his time, in his position, and he is changing. Can we at least give him that? Because, in all throughout history, it took a while for things to change. And it was men like William that started to understand, that started to recognize that, that helped make it happen. Plus, Eliza didn’t let him pull shit all the time, and she did fight him on it.

Now, I’m going to comment on each individual episode with my thoughts. I’ve never done this before so yay! Here it goes!

EPISODE ONE: Inheritance

I knew the weird uncle wasn’t the girl’s uncle. I didn’t expect that it was her husband (I should’ve!! We knew he was a cheat and a conartist!!), but I knew it wasn’t her rich uncle. I knew from the moment he came on screen—I remember thinking, this guy looks too young around his eyes. His beard and mustache look fake. So, I was right to an extent.

I can’t be the only one who was horrified to discover what the police did to women who worked as prostitutes or in dance halls—they could be arrested and searched for venereal disease? Seriously??? For men who were so obsessed with wanting their wives to “stay safe” and “be protected,” they sure were fine with flipping the case when it came to women that they would also gladly pay to sleep with? Why don’t they check the male clients who are PAYING for this industry. It was appalling and horrendous, and it made my skin literally crawl as they tried tying Eliza down to the chair.

On the note of that scene, Eliza calling herself William’s favorite whore to save herself is literally one of the funniest (though, darkly) things—especially in the next scene, when you see the two of them sitting in his office in silence and William is mortified, annoyed, and I think amused at the same time.

I loved how Eliza tricked that bastard husband—she set him up, AND she gave him laudanum to make him pass out? This woman knows what’s up!

Instantly from this first episode, I knew I loved this show and these characters. Eliza shows her charm and wit and humor and smarts. She’s skilled and I love her personality so much. Though I can see how she could be aggravating to others. William absolutely adores her. Rupert annoyed me a bit at the beginning, but by the end—when he asked Eliza to not marry him, I knew I would like him. And Moses! A Jamaican man brings in the race question of this dark, old world, but I love that he likes Eliza and finds her interesting. He’s terrifying, but I think he’s a good, decent man, he’s only trapped in this world because no one will let him be anything else. But he’s such a rich, interesting character.

EPISODE TWO: The Woman in Red

This episode brings in the reality of homosexuality in this world. That it has always been there (damn those bastards who think otherwise), but it has been hidden away. That men and women have to fear for their lives, and also marry people they do not want because they want to not be noticed. I loved finding out Rupert was gay—my mom called that one!—and the friendship he develops with Eliza. That he trusts her to tell a secret that could literally have him killed and ruined. And that Eliza doesn’t even blink, that she’s willing to keep his secret to the grave, and I cried when she basically told him that. It’s quite beautiful that Eliza even seemed to be grateful that he trusted her enough to give her that secret.

Which was used in interesting juxtaposition to the gay man, accused of murdering his lover, and his wife. I understand the woman’s hurt, that she loved this man and it turned out he didn’t love her in the same way. But that didn’t mean her willingness to let him die for a crime he didn’t commit was at all good or called for. With Eliza talking her down, to prove that the woman’s husband was innocent, I think proved that though she was hurt beyond reason, she did love that man who was her husband and didn’t want to see her die. It’s really a hard situation, especially during that time, when people were constantly shoved down their throats that homosexuality was bad. Not that I’m giving her a “it’s okay,” but I can understand the pain and confusion she went through. Especially because she pulled through.

Through this whole episode, we thought it was the wife that had murdered the lover (the other man). I was surprised to find out that he had killed himself, cut his own throat (which I had heard wasn’t possible to do—but my grandpa, who had worked as a detective, told me that is a myth people talk about, that it’s really easy to cut your own throat). That was a shock, and it made me so sad. That he was dying because he was unhappy, because he hated what he was, because of damn society telling him so. I actually started crying, because as someone who is bisexual, I would be condemned in this time during for openly being with men and women, though I couldn’t even compare to people who are gay or lesbian, because the situation is not the same. But I could connect, I could understand. And I hated knowing the pain all those people were in, that a man had killed himself because of what he was, and that another man had to live with that. It truly breaks your heart.

William’s response to finding out the dead man was gay was interesting. I thought his comment “in my line of work, nothing surprises you” funny, but also telling. He didn’t act disgusted, he didn’t mistreat the husband when they questioned him afterward. The show didn’t directly say his thoughts on homosexuality, but I got the vibe that he was “whatever” about it. Like he knew it was there, and he wasn’t condemning it publicly. That gives him credit, in my book.

Another great episode that got deep and beautiful.

EPISODE THREE: Deeds Not Words

Is this show just obsessed with getting right down to modern issues that were also faced in this time, but not as strongly discussed? Because I’m all for it! This episode was all about the suffrage movement. But I liked the take they did on it.

Yes, they spoke out about the treatment of women. That men, white men, controlled this whole world. But I also thought it was interesting that they made this main suffragette not the greatest person. It made everything complicated. Like, everything she said to Eliza made sense, and I found myself cheering with her. But she shot a man in cold blood, she was willing to bomb a whole building of men—even though it seems justified because of what their club represents.

I think this episode was discussing the balance. That there can be change, but when you attack the people who you are trying to change, it may not work in your favor. At least, that was the vibe I got. Not to stoop to their levels, to become just as horrible as them. Her ideas and words were great, but her actions were a bit… skeptical.

Eliza and William’s response were interesting as well. Eliza felt a passion for the cause, William thought it a bit extreme. But, to me, by the end of the episode, they had a common understanding, they had reached a comfortable middle. I think, this show was showing that was how change came. People seeing eye to eye, and then it spreading from there. Of course, William has faults, but I think he’s truly trying. Especially with each episode. And the more Eliza and he grow.

EPISODE FOUR: Memento Mori

We got our ghost episode! I wasn’t even expecting it, it was incredible! A ghostly image of a dead wife that had killed herself reappearing in photos? How wild and cool is that idea!

I didn’t know that the Victorians had a thing where they took photos of their dead loved ones, looking like they were alive (y’all, the Victorians were obsessed with death…), but it’s an interesting concept. Maybe even sweet. I get what they were trying to do, even if it did seem morbid. How I feel about it is, if it brings you peace, then go for it (as long as it’s nothing disturbing or harming anyone).

The twist was one I had a hint of but hadn’t expected the whole thing. I knew the daughter had something to do with it (how disturbed is this poor girl??), but I hadn’t expected that the mother had planned this before she killed herself because she knew the woman and her husband were already having an affair. It was interesting and a creepy twist, but I was all for it.

Still, I loved how we had moments of eeriness and the haunting feeling in the house when Eliza stayed over. I felt scared and freaked, and most people that know me know that I do not like horror. But this was the perfect eeriness, which I do love.

That scene from this episode where William screams at the poor telegram young man to give them the message or he’ll break everyone bone in his body and then being like “are you crying?” was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe. I mean, it’s terrible, but the way it was done was hilarious and amazing.

EPISODE FIVE: Cell 99

This episode was… dark. I liked that it was set in an abandoned prison, and my god, was it creepy as hell. I loved all the shots of William walking through gave me the chills.

This one felt like a thriller to me. How it was filmed, set up, how everything went down. Except for the hilarious scene when they are both so annoyed with each other (Eliza and William, that is) that they both scream in frustration is brilliant. But otherwise, it took a dark tone that made me feel like something was watching my back. Especially as that big, scary guy came walking down the stairs when William and Eliza were trapped, ready to kill them both. I was nearly screaming at the tv in utter horror.

My mom had called it—and I had a feeling—that Eliza’s father had been murdered, not just drinking himself to death and found in the gutter. And there’s a gang now? How interesting!

The masked man was strange, as well as the forger locked away. But he was shot and killed, and it confused me.

I have a strange confession to make: that whole time with William in his dress shirt (without the coat), with his arm covered in blood, was weirdly…. Hot? Please don’t ask me explain. I have weird things to me. But I think it was also hot that though he was hurt and bleeding, he was gearing up to fight that big, scary man to protect himself and Eliza. I like that kind of shit, so much.

This episode was twisted, and it left me with more questions than anything.

EPISODE SIX: The Case of Henry Scarlet

My mom knew William’s boss was in with the gang! I liked that they actually explored the reality of corruptness in the police force (my grandpa had personal experiences himself, and that was why he left), and they laid it all bare. Despite the things that we are learning in this present day, it’s always been there. Which is horrifying and disturbing. That these police who are supposed to protect us are willing to delve into the corrupt world to bring themselves more power and money. Because that’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it? Powerful men wanting more and more.

I liked that William was okay with the truth unfolding, and not fighting it, trying to prove innocence for his boss. To me, it made me feel like that he knew something was up with that man (just beyond not liking him). For his character, it made me think that he was one of those people that was actually good and good at his job, trying to do the right thing. Even if he got distracted and didn’t give Eliza credit where it was due, and fought some things, he was trying to do what he thought was right. He didn’t kill anyone, he didn’t go after anyone specifically. Though him and Moses had some standoffs because he wasn’t sure about the other man, he gave him some thanks and shook his hand. Which is huge for that time period.

I did suspect William’s buddy. I always felt like something was happening with him, and that he would be the perfect bad guy because he knew what was going on at all times. And it was proven right! Though it wasn’t any less terrible, William having to realize that his close friend at Scotland Yard as the bad, bad guy who killed their boss when things were turning ugly.

But Moses to the rescue! I loved that he swooped in, teaming up with Eliza, and taking the guy out! I love Moses so much, he’s one of my other favorites.

And their ending, with a promise of dinner, of love on the horizon was exactly what I needed.

Lasting thoughts:

Besides all the amazing storylines and characters they brought in, besides Eliza and William’s chemistry and relationship, to me, this felt like a story about a daughter and her father. We see flashbacks of Eliza as a child with her father, how he taught her his detective work, when that wasn’t something men did typically in that time, and how she would still talk to him after he had died. That though she had chosen this profession for herself, it was also some way to connect to her father. Something they had shared when she was motherless and only had him, and he gave her these skills and talents, helped her hone in on them. And once he had passed, she fought like hell to keep it, but make it her own. I liked that their relationship wasn’t perfect, but they loved the hell out of each other. She was a grown woman, who believed in herself, but she still turned to him—a ghost, a memory, or whatnot—when she felt at the bottom.

This series is incredible, perfect and just all around so masterful in so many different ways. I knew from the moment I heard about it that I would love it. And it turns out I was right, but even more than I had expected.

Now, I think it’s time for a rewatch.

#miss scarlet and the duke #eliza scarlet #william wellington #i love this damn show #tv series review

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wandsandrings · 3 years

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KACE PETERSON (really outdated)

[template made by @hogwartsmysterystory]

IDENTITY

Name: Kace “Kay” Peterson

Gender: Male

Age: 17 (current) / 28 (MA)

Birth Date: 6th September 1972

Species: Human

Blood Status: Half-Blood

Sexuality: Homosexual / Homoromantic

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (HM) / Neutral Good (MA)

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Nationality: Scottish

Residence: East Linton, Scotland (HM) / Hogsmeade, Scotland (MA)

THE MAGE

1st Wand: Kind and encouraging. A reliable partner. Naiive but loyal.

> Acacia

> 12″

> Swishy

> Unicorn Hair Core

2nd Wand: Unyielding to all but it’s caster. Aged with each threat it overcame. A wise wand.

> Blackthorn

> 11″

> Rigid

> Unicorn Hair Core

Animagus: Pomeranian

Misc Magical Abilities: Seer

Boggart Form: Jacob (Years 1-5) / Rakepick (Years 5-7), “The Monster” (Years 7+)

Riddikulus Form: Jacob in mom’s dress / Dancing Rakepick / Dolphin

Amortentia (scent): Heather and fresh-fallen rain

Amortentia (smells): Ink, Fresh Sawn Lumber, Parchment (Rowan Khanna), Mince Pie and Haggis

Patronus: Dog (previously), Aardvark (current)

Patronus Memory: Himself and Rowan stargazing at the farm / His first kiss

Mirror of Erised: Himself, his brother and his friends happy together (HM) / An older, carefree, happy Maple (MA)

Specialized/Favourite Spells:

Lumos: It holds a special place in his heart by lighting up what he could not see.

Diffindo: His go-to attacking spell.

Accio: Useful for fetching things out of his reach. It’s pretty useful when you’re this short.

APPEARANCE

> Left: HPHM ; Right: HPMA

Faceclaim: N/A

Voiceclaim: TBA

Game Appearance:

Height: 5′2

Weight: 140lbs

Physique: Stocky

Eye Colour: Blue

Hair Colour: Ruby

Skin Tone: Tan

Body Modifications: N/A

Scarring:

> Left forearm; a gash from fighting with the ice knight

> Torso; a large gash after being whipped by “the monster”’s tail.

> Right arm; burnt by the vault dragon

> Abdomen; hit with a spell while fighting Rakepick

> Chest; hit with a spell while fighting the assassin

> Left shoulder; hit with a spell while fighting Rakepick (again)

> Right thigh; splotches of a potion turning into an acidic disaster

Inventory:

> Kace’s Wand

> Horned Serpent Tooth Necklace

> Friendship Ring (Wedding Ring in MA)

ALLEGIANCES

Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff

Affiliations/Organizations:

> Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

> Order Of The Pheonix

Professions:

> Curse Breaker (1984 - 1991)

> Three Broomsticks Server + Cook (1991 - 2000)

> D.A.D.A Teacher (2000 - )

HOGWARTS INFORMATION

Class Proficiencies:

Astronomy: A Charms: O DADA: O Flying: E Herbology: A History of Magic: A Potions: A Transfiguration: E

Electives:

COMC: E

Muggle Studies: O

Quidditch: N/A

Extra Curricular: N/A

RELATIONSHIPS

Brother: Jacob Peterson

> 5 years older than Kace

> Hufflepuff

> Legilimen

> Roderic Ivory’s most recent (and last) re-incarnation

> Jacob is impulsive but strong-willed, never one to give up even at the toughest of times. He is also very protective of his younger brother, Kace.

> After the Cursed Vaults are locked away, he briefly leaves to work as a curse-breaker overseas. Jacob returns for the second wizarding war to fight alongside his brother, and after he briefly becomes D.A.D.A teacher before he goes back overseas and the position is given to his brother.

Father: Hunter Peterson

> Muggleborn

> Scottish

> 49 years old by 1991

> Ravenclaw

> A cunning, intelligent but serious man. When his eldest son went missing, Hunter tried to make sure his youngest would not go down the same path. This meant sometimes closely monitoring Kace to make sure he wouldn’t run away or try to hide anything from him like Jacob. When Hunter learns that Kace was also involved in the vaults, he was both outraged and afraid for his youngest son. However, he ends up supporting Kace when he sees how much of a capable wizard his son is.

Mother: Margot Peterson

> Half-blood

> American

> 48

> Used to be in Horned Serpent before becoming an exchange student at Hogwarts, where she was placed in Ravenclaw.

> A witty but devoted and careful mother. Once she found out Jacob had ran away, Margot was crushed, and doted on Kace to be careful, but also uncover the secrets and his brother’s whereabouts once and for all.

Love Interest: Rowan Khanna

> Kay started crushing on Rowan in year 2. Rowan started crushing on Kace at sometime in year 5.

> They confess to one another in year 6 when Rowan wakes up from his coma. However, both of them acknowledged they shouldn’t start a relationship at that moment.

> They actually get together after Kace slays the vault monster, and have stayed together since.

> Kay proposed to Rowan in 1996, but they never got to have an official wedding.

> They adopt Maple at the end of the second wizarding war in 1998. They both try their best to give him guidance and make him happy. They become a very content and close family.

Adoptive Son: Maple Peterson Khanna

> Kay and Rowan adopted Maple in 1998 after the war.

> They are pretty close and Kay has bought gifts for him from the Muggle world in the past, such as his treasured game boy and Walkman, and even let Maple keep Crumpet as the family pet.

> Kay is somewhat obsessed with making sure Maple doesn’t go down the same road of obsession, self-sacrifice and trauma that he went through as a Hogwarts student. Because of this, he imposes some pretty standard rules, but also some weirder, very specific rules that Maple would purposely have to go out of his way to break (which he wouldn’t). He’s also more hesitant to tell Maple off when he gets into trouble because he believes Maple should have fun, which he barely got to do as a student. It’s up to Rowan to make sure that Maple actually follows the rules. Thankfully, Maple is an easy kid.

Best Friends:

> Talbott Winger

> Chiara Lobosca

> Tulip Karasu

Rival:

>Merula Snyde

Enemy:

> Patricia Rakepick

> R

Dormmates:

> Rowan Khanna

> Diego Caplan

Pets:

> Bumpsy is an orange tabby cat Kay adopted in 1984 when he was just a kitten.

> Crumpet is a spotted cream and brown crup. Maple found her in 1995 as a stray wandering around Hogsmeade, and the family decided to adopt her.

Closest Canon Friends:

> Rowan Khanna

> Talbott Winger

> Chiara Lobosca

> Tulip Karasu

> Bill Weasley

Closest MC Friends:

> Candy Vigiere ( @immagrosscandy )

> Paula Vigiere ( @immagrosscandy )

> Robert Flores ( @gayandvibin )

> Ryan Altman ( @young-avenger )

> Sarahi Silvers ( @dat-silvers-girl )

> Cato Reese ( @catohphm )

> Flavio Ceccere ( @sirfluffig )

> Luna ( @aaaaaagayghost )

Scarlet Bianchi ( @immagrosscandy )

BACKGROUND/HISTORY

PERSONALITY

> Devoted

Kay is very loyal and committed to what he does or those who have gained his trust and respect. He is not one to abandon others without great reason, and he is not known to give up on his goals and his journey, no matter who or what tries to stop him.

> Perceptive

Kay has a skill to be able to read someone or a situation. For his own safety, he’s memorised the social cues of those he’s around with, and he can usually tell if something is wrong with someone. He is also able to tell if his surroundings are safe or not.

> Questioning

Kay is both curious and cautious. He’s grown rather doubtful over the years, and asks questions and spies on others. This is because he’s trying to make up for all the times he’s been lied to and used by making sure nobody is able to do this again to him. Whilst this can be good in ensuring his safety, it sometimes comes across as outright suspicious and, at worst, paranoid.

> Serious

Kay, over the years, has become a more serious person through his experiences. He doesn’t leave a lot of time for fun, which is the total opposite of how he was just two years ago. He thinks being serious is good; that nothing will be able to escape past his radar. However, this can have consequences on his social life, as he barely laughs or lets himself have some real fun with his friends... even if he wants to.

> Volatile

Kay can be emotionally charged and get riled up over some small things. He might be completely calm one moment, and then act defensive and hostile the next. Over the time, his patience has worn into almost nothing, and he finds it hard to control his emotions. After he gets engaged to Rowan, he tries to curb his emotional outbursts, and has success in doing so.

> Obsessive

Kay is stubborn to the point of outright obsession at times. His obsession with the vaults, his brother and R was so controlling over his life he didn’t give himself time to be a real Hogwarts student until it was far too late. He never got to join any clubs, never took any extracurricular activities, and, even though he probably had skill for it, never even got to try Quidditch once. It was only when he was an adult did he realise just how damaging this was for him, and he wants to make absolutely sure that Maple does not go down the same path of obsession.

MISC

> He recognises words and sentences from very old or dead languages, or important places where his past lives have been before. However, remembering these places or words causes a ‘De ja vu’ effect and leaves him feeling very disoriented and confused afterwards.

> Kay has a very Scottish accent, more specifically an Edinburgh accent.

> He’s got really bad penmanship. Because of this, he often writes in capital letters to help both himself and others understand his writing.

> He is surprisingly knowledgeable in Muggle items. For example, his family own a television, and in Magic Awakened, he is shown to have knowledge in video game consoles and CDs enough to buy them for Maple and be able to enchant them so they always work around magic. This is most likely because he grew up in a very Muggle town and had Muggle friends, and his father is also a Muggleborn wizard.

#kay peterson #hphm #hogwarts mystery #harry potter hogwarts mystery #hphm mc #laambs art

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party-of-rpg-muses · 3 years

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A Look At Stuff You Probably Never Heard Of: Seton Academy

Another day, another entry in this series. I’ve mentioned my love of mythology and biology, but I also had an interest in animals. In fact, I’ve loved animals ever since I was a kid. Today, we’ll be taking a look at... Seton Academy: Join the Pack!

Seton Academy: Join the Pack, usually just referred to as “Seton Academy” is a romantic comedy manga created by Bungo Yamashita and ran from May 2016 to May 2021. It later received an anime adaptation, being animated by Studio Gokumi.

The series follows a human high school student named Jin Mazama, who has just been enrolled in Seton Academy, a school populated completely by animals. However, Jin absolutely despises animals and wants nothing to do with them (and yet, he’s highly knowledgeable about various animals). But within his first day, he meets a Hokkaido Wolf girl named Ranka Ōkami, who essentially forces him to join her pack, wanting a pack full of multiple species. He also meets a human girl named Hitomi Hino (whom he becomes immediately infatuated with). Together, all three form a cooking club (partially because Jin and Hitomi like cooking, but also because they can’t eat what’s normally provided by the school cafeteria). Along the way, more animals join.

In this world, male animals look like anthropomorphic versions of their respective species while females are more human-like, but with the ears and/or tails (and hair) of their species. Also, the staff are comprised of dinosaurs, with the headmaster being an Anomalocaris, one of the first apex predators in history which dominated the Cambrian Era.

Other characters in the series include a koala named Yukari, who joins because she’s tired of always eating eucalyptus leaves and wants to find something she ate when she was little (baby koalas eat their mother’s poop to gain the bacteria needed to digest eucalyptus leaves). A three-toed sloth named Miyubi who wants to make friends (there’s also a recurring gag where just about anything causes her to die for a few moments). A celebrity panda named Mei Mei. And a housecat named Kurumi, who’s more of a ghost member, coming and going as she pleases.

And yet again, it’s time for the Final Recommendation: Never Let Go Of It||Get It||Hold Onto It||Try It||Consider It||Stay Away From It

Given the premise, many people compare this series to My Gym Partner’s a Monkey; both are about a human attending a school full of animals and just trying to deal with life with said animals. However, Jin isn’t there by accident and the series isn’t focused on jokes about butts. If anything, it may be more apt to compare this show to something like Cells at Work, as the series gives a lot of information about various animals, even making jokes about them.

For example, there’s an urban legend about koalas having a grip strength of 1 ton, so Yukari has an incredibly strong grip, capable of crushing a pumpkin with one hand with little effort. And as mentioned previously, Jin is highly intelligent about animals and in the first episode, he points out that zebras are more closely related to donkeys than horses, given their temperament towards humans, their size, and their tails. But there is some information that is incorrect, such as the existence of alpha and omega wolves. And in one episode, Miyubi is struggling with swimming, but real world sloths are actually really good swimmers and move faster in water than on land or in trees.

Such information even extends to character development and personalities; such as Yena, the female Spotted Hyena, who think she’s a male hyena because she’s so aggressive and has a penis. In truth, female spotted hyenas are far more aggressive than males due to having higher testosterone and they’re known for having a pseudo-penis, which looks like a real penis, but functions more like a vagina and hyenas can give birth through it.

I also want to mention that there are some ecchi moments within the series, but they’re very few and far between. One example being when Jin revealed that zebras are more closely related to donkeys by revealing a character’s tail. He did so by picking up the girl in question (she’s the one who claims zebras are horses) and lifting her skirt to show off her tail. And the Student Council President, Miki, is a Naked Mole Rat, who prefers to just wear her underwear and she (and her male Naked Mole Rat followers) are greatly uncomfortable when wearing clothes.

I stated at the beginning that I love animals and I absolutely adore this show, but the ecchi moments might not be for you, even if they’re so very few and far between.

I also couldn’t figure out where to put these, so I’ll just put them here.

There’s also a group of characters from Darwin Academy who form Team EX. They’re all comprised of animals that have gone extinct, mostly thanks to humans. Man Koorimoto the Wooly Mammoth (and the leader), Washima Komandorsk the Stellar Sea Cow, Babari Atlas the Barbary Lion (which actually aren’t extinct), Ando Andrew the Andrewsarchus (though it’s believed they went extinct because of tectonic changes affecting the layout of its habitat), Yangyang the Chinese River Dolphin, and Anne Anetani the Neanderthal (though she softens her stance on humans when learning modern humans have about 2% Neanderthal DNA). As an interesting note, all their eyes have dulled colors, showing that they’re extinct.

And finally, because this may cause some confusion, female hyenas prefer the company of other females, only meeting with males for mating purposes, which would most likely explain her interest in Hitomi. And near the end, a male giraffe has romantic interests in Jin (and also shown having a one-night stand with another male giraffe). In real life, while there is homosexual sex amongst male giraffes, it is actually a form of domination towards a weaker male, as after a fight, the winner will mount the loser. About 90% of the sex a giraffe has is homosexual.

Well, this got really long. Sorry about all that. But I’ll see you all next month. I got a few ideas for what to talk about then. See you then!

#Seton Academy #seton academy: join the pack!#A Look At Stuff You Probably Never Heard Of #outofexp

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no-gays-in-russia · 3 years

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Someone Has To Die: Review

TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of suicide, murder, homophobia.

SPOILER ALERT: major spoilers for all three episodes of Someone Has To Die.

Introduction: Someone Has To Die (”Alguien Tiene Que Morir”) is a Spanish/Mexican miniseries of three 50 minutes long episodes set in the 50s which follows the story of Gabino, a young man who has just come back to Spain after living in Mexico with his mother’s family for 10 years. With him he brings his friend Lazaro, a Mexican ballet dancer. Soon, rumours start spreading that Lazaro and Gabino are in a relationship, fueled by Lazaro’s profession (everyone believes that a male ballet dancer must necessarily be gay) and by the intimacy between the two of them. However, Lazaro is straight and actually attracted to Gabino’s mom, Mina (spoiler: it’s mutual), while Gabino is in fact gay and has feelings of romantic nature towards Lazaro, despite them not being reciprocated. Although they are fake, those rumours keep growing, with the help of Cayetana, the girl that Gabino is supposed to marry and sister of Alonso. Alonso is an old friend of Gabino and it’s made clear throughout the show that before the latter left for Mexico something of homoerotic nature happened between the two of them, although it is never specified exactly what; long story short, Gabino is the only one to know that Alonso is also gay and let me tell you, homeboy has a shit ton of internalised homophobia. When the rumours reach their maximum height, Mina tries to help Lazaro and Gabino run away to Paris, but Gabino’s father, who works at a prison, finds out and, advised by his mother, gets Gabino arrested, while Lazaro is able to escape. Mina and Lazaro are then found having sex in the woods and that’s when chaos ensues- Gabino’s father wants to kill Mina and Lazaro, he tells Gabino to do so, Gabino refuses and points his shotgun at his father, his father points his gun at Gabino, then Alonso kills Gabino’s father, Gabino’s grandma kills Alonso and then Lazaro and finally Gabino kills his grandma. And that’s how the show ends. Another important element of the plot is that, while everyone believes Gabino’s grandpa died in a hunting accident, he was actually murdered by Gabino’s grandma, and young Gabino witnessed it (this is a big part of the reason why he was sent to Mexico shortly after); there’s also a subplot involving the family’s maid, quite significant because it leads to Gabino’s dad finding out the truth about his father’s death, but I don’t want to go into too much detail so I’ll stop here.

General opinion: after watching the masterpiece that is Young Royals (I will make a post on it soon), this struck me as a pretty average show; not bad, but not exceptional either (there are some great elements, but they are an exception). The acting is realistic but stiff, the characters are mostly unidimensional and sometimes unlikeable when they shouldn’t be, and the ending sort of leaves you thinking: what’s the point? The show as a whole is not meaningless at all (quite thoughtful and sensible at times, actually), but that’s what the ending feels like- everybody’s dead, now what? What does that mean? How was that significant to the plot? I liked Alonso killing Gabino’s father, because it shows that after all he cared for Gabino and was willing to help him, and I also liked Gabino killing his grandma, showing his strength and proving everyone who described him as fragile wrong, but I feel like Alonso and/or Lazaro should have been kept alive.

The characters: now, the characters are the most important thing in a tv show for me; if everything’s good but I hate the characters I cannot keep watching it, if everything’s horrible but I hate the characters I will keep watching it. The fact that I got through the entire show proves that they are not terrible, but I didn’t love them either. I will now analyse all of the main characters one by one, starting from Gabino. About Gabino, I noticed a discrepancy between the way he is described by other characters and the way he appears through his own actions and words. The adjectives that are most used to describe Gabino in the show are “dreamer” and “fragile”. Now, I’m not saying Gabino is not a dreamer, but since the other characters stress this aspect so much I would have expected his behaviour and words to demonstrate that much more than they actually did. And speaking of fragile, to me Gabino seemed the absolute opposite- I actually perceived him as an incredibly strong character. Throughout the entirety of the show he went through Hell so many times (got rejected by the man he loves, got beat up by Alonso, got put into jail by his own father, witnessed half of his family and closest friends dying in front of him) and he never gave up. He always responded with strength, murdering his grandma, not committing suicide when Alonso advised him to. However, this discrepancy might be caused by the fact that it had been 10 years since any of the other characters had last seen Gabino (although if I’m not mistaken Lazaro too describes him as a dreamer), so they might describe what they remember him as without realizing how much he’s changed throughout the years. But I still felt like in his case the show did too much telling and not enough showing. But now, let’s move onto the other character involved in the rumours: Lazaro. With Lazaro, I have a different issue: I felt as though he was supposed to be a likeable character, but I ended up really disliking him. At first we see him as a bit naive, a very good friend to Gabino, extremely passionate about dancing, a dreamer more so than Gabino (he repeatedly voices his fantasies about visiting Paris and getting to dance at the Opèra); but in the end, he proves himself as being selfish and unfaithful, as he literally has sex with Mina while Gabino is in prison. Your best friend has just been arrested and your first thought is to fuck his mom? And let’s not forget that Lazaro knew that Gabino loved him, so he knew this would hurt him even more. And when Cayetana pretends to offer to him to leave for Paris with her, he agrees- again, proving how little he cares about Gabino being in prison. He has some very good moments as well, including one of my two favourite scenes in the show, but my overall opinion on him is not positive. Now let’s talk about the three characters that we were actually supposed to perceive as negative: Cayetana, Gabino’s grandma Ampara and Gabino’s dad Gregorio. Cayetana’s sole personality trait is that of being evil- there doesn’t even seem to be a motivation behind her actions, she just does it because she is an a-hole. That’s pretty much the same with Ampara, with the small exception that she justifies her actions by saying it’s all for her family (hard to say whether she actually believes her own words or not). But in the end, both characters fail at being fascinating, meaningful villains: they’re plain and unidimensional. The case is a bit different for Gregorio: he’s overall a despicable character, but further traits are added so that he is not just a plain villain- he is a bad person, and that makes a big difference. In particular, I love that they make him a conflicted character, portraying the contrast between the pain he causes Gabino and the pain he himself feels realising how much he’s hurting his son. However, in my opinion, the best, most interesting and most lovable characters in the show are Alonso and Mina. Alonso may be interpreted as a negative character himself, but he sort of redeems himself towards the end. He does some very good things (killing Gregorio to protect Gabino, Mina and Lazaro), some very bad things (kidnapping Gabino and Lazaro, hurting Lazaro’s leg, beating Gabino almost to death) and some things that weren’t exactly good but which he did with good intentions (repeatedly advising Gabino to leave Spain forever, bringing him a gun while he’s in prison and advising him to kill himself). I think the only mistake they did was making him hurt Gabino and Lazaro in such a way, because they wanted him to be a redeemable and likeable character but honestly that was almost unforgivable. But at the same time I can see that Alonso’s violence on Gabino was the result of him taking his feelings towards Gabino (probably some feelings of romantic nature and jealousy towards his supposed relationship with Lazaro) and transforming them into something that he felt to be more acceptable and more manageable, and on top of that it was the manifestation of his disgust, fear, anger, frustration for his own homosexuality. All in all, Alonso is a very complex and conflicted character, sometimes submissive and others extremely corageous, good and bad, selfless and selfish. But if perfection was almost reached with Alonso, we move even closer to the perfect character with Mina- I want to slap her and hug her at the same time, and that’s what I love. Even more than Alonso, she is an incredibly complex character. I think she’s the main character more so than Gabino- so many interesting clues about her personality and her personal history are continously thrown around and you just want to know more and more about her. From her clearly feeling inadequate and different because she’s Mexican and leaving in Spain to her love story with Lazaro (who is Mexican like her- something to note), to the contrast between her desire to help others and her fragility which often makes it impossible, Mina is a well explored, multi-dimentional, lovable and despicable character.

My favourite scenes: finally, I want to discuss two scenes that I thought to be absolutely brilliant (if the entire show had been like those two scenes I would have considered it a masterpiece). The first takes place when Gabino and Lazaro are back home after Alonso’s attack; Lazaro is mending Gabino’s wounds, when the latter stops him and tells him he’s sorry for getting him involved. Lazaro replies he’s not done anything wrong, but Gabino states: <<I love you, and that’s the problem.>> Lazaro says: <<I love you too.>> and Gabino: <<But not in the same way.>> And that’s when Lazaro says the most beautiful line in the show: <<But I love you still, and that could never be wrong.>> That line equates platonic and romantic love, stating that despite them being two different kinds of love they are still exactly the same thing: love. So just like no one would ever say Lazaro is wrong for loving Gabino platonically, at the same time Lazaro states that no one could ever say Gabino is wrong for loving him romantically, because that’s exactly the same thing: love. And love is never wrong. The second scene takes place after Mina and Lazaro have been found together in the woods close to the club and Gregorio gets Gabino out of prison to take him there with him. Gabino is alone in his father’s car, Alonso sees him and goes to sit in the car with him. Alonso tells Gabino about how terrible he feels having to lie every day about who he really is, and then asks him to describe what it is like having sex with a man. Gabino tries to resist, but after Alonso begs him he gives in and recounts the first time he had sex with a man. Alonso is profoundly moved by his story and visibly tries to contain his emotions, but he fails, as tears start streaming down his face; then, once Gabino is done talking, he grabs the gun he’d given him in prison and tries to shoot himself. Gabino is able to stop him and Alonso breaks down crying, hugging Gabino while the latter promises him that they’re always going to be there for one another. Such a touching moment.

#gay #tvshow #netflix #review #i love gay shit #give me the gay shit

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rudjedet · 4 years

Note

According to Wikipedia, the Egyptian language had a word for a third gender or sex, often translated as "eunuch" but perhaps referring more often to nonbinary or intersex people. Do you know more about gender variance in pharaonic Egypt?

Full disclosure before I answer this: gender studies with regards to ancient Egypt are not my specialty, and I’m unlikely to do all the nuances proper justice.

First, about the word sxt.y (plural: sxt.yw), which is the word you’re referring to that allegedly refers to a third gender or sex but which is translated as “eunuch”. It is not conclusive, per the knowledge we have now, that this is a separate gender/sex category. It’s mostly translated as “eunuch” because it comes close to a word for castrate, sxt. But that translation in itself is debatable.

@thatlittleegyptologist said the following about the word sx.ty in this ask:

Sekhti is the word that has a possible translation of ‘eunuch’ but it’s absolutely far from certain. We only say ‘eunuch(?)’ because it has a similar writing to ‘sxt’ ‘castrated’, of which there is only one attestation meaning it’s a hapax legomenon (only existence of the word). There are several other verbs written as sxt including: to run, to turn back, to destroy, to grasp, to weave, and a bird trap.

There are only 4 attestations of the word in the Egyptian corpus. Three refer to it as ‘sage’ or ‘sorcerer’ and one refers to it as ‘castration(?)’ meaning it has an uncertain translation. The text that does this is the hapax legomenon one I mentioned previously.

It has no depictions in art, and doesn’t exist as a term until the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, as Eunuchs themselves were not a thing in Ancient Egypt until this period. Therefore we cannot say that this is a separate ‘gender’ in Ancient Egypt, because before the Ptolemies this concept of sxti doesn’t exist. The Ancient Egyptians themselves did not have them so we cannot place them within their gender roles.

However, if you want to read more about eunuchs in Ptolemaic and Roman times I would suggest looking at Greek and Roman Eunuchs and their function in society, as they will tell you far more about how they were seen in gender terms than looking at anything from Ancient Egypt.

As far as gender variance goes, this is tricky because the ancient Egyptian gender division is different from ours, and also subject to change throughout the millennia that span Egyptian dynastic history. Not only that, it’s nigh impossible to transpose Western modern gender terms (such as nonbinary) onto an ancient non-Western culture because there is a disconnect between how they saw the world and the way we do.

But it wasn’t as simple as “Egyptians only knew the male and female sex/gender” either. At least in the realm of the divine, something akin to intersexuality may’ve been known. Sometimes Nut, a goddess, is portrayed with a phallus to indicate power; or Neith is said to be part man, part woman. But at the moment we do not have conclusive evidence (i.e. textual or pictorial) to show that there were mortal people who considered themselves outside the known Egyptian gender binary.

This might be because the Egyptian societal ideals were very strict (and we do know that not everyone held as rigidly to the ideals of society and religion), and they were therefore never mentioned in text or on reliefs because it was simply not done. But it might also be because there weren’t any people who (had the tools to) consider themselves outside of that gender binary. Without unequivocal evidence, it will always be some degree of inconclusive.

I will probably regret bringing up Hatshepsut again, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t use her example to explain why exactly it is so difficult to transpose our modern definition of what constitutes evidence of “this individual is transgender/nonbinary” onto the Egyptian record.In our modern society, the use of pronouns is a fair indication of whether someone is cis or trans. In ancient Egypt, since the Egyptian languages itself are gendered and thus sometimes, the use of masculine or feminine markers specifically was a matter of grammar, not so much.

The people who know only (the bare essentials) about Hatshepsut will say that she was transgender, or at least nonbinary, because she used “male pronouns” to refer to herself. However, she did also use female pronouns and markers, and almost all other female kings that we know about did the exact same thing. Sobekneferu and Taweret also referred to themselves with a mix of male and female markers and epithets. And because we know that certain Egyptian words (such as “king”) only take male markers no matter the sex of the person using it, it’s far more likely that we’re dealing with a grammar issue rather than three genderqueer queens.

However, that doesn’t mean none of the three could have been genderqueer, we just don’t have the tools to definitively say they were. The best indication of gender we have, in modern and ancient times alike, is the individual’s own words. In case of Hatshepsut, Sobekneferu, and Taweret, we know that they referred to themselves with feminine markers wherever and whenever they could. That’s something you absolutely can’t ignore when you try to argue the gender-identification of any of these women (and I use “women” here as the term to refer to the ancient Egyptian gender identity. I have never used nor will I ever use the term “cis” to describe any of them. They were women. Not cisgendered women, since cis, too, is a modern gender identity and thus equally difficult to use when describing an Egyptian individual).

I wouldn’t argue that the Egyptians didn’t have gender variance beyond the man/woman binary that we see in e.g. art and literature, but it is hard to pinpoint the exact nature of the variance, if any, considering they didn’t think about these things the way we do now, as well as their long history.

Deborah Sweeney, who we’ve cited many times before, wrote a really excellent paper on sex and gender in ancient Egypt. She talks about these matters with more nuance than I can, so I absolutely recommend reading the paper, which is only 16 pages long. And if you’re interested in certain topics she covers, check out her references/bibliography. But for most laypeople, Sweeney’s article will cover the majority of Egyptian sex & gender in enough detail.

Here are some highlights from the article in case people want a quick laydown:

The Egyptians considered the world a place of dualities. The two halves of any given concept weren’t divided eternally however; instead, they reconciled them. The best example is the king incorporating both aspects of Horus and Seth into his rule, even if Seth was chaotic and too raucous to be of any use on his own. This seems to apply to their views of gender as well.

In Egyptian art, representation of gender is very strict, e.g. men are portrayed with darker skin than women and women only take half a step forward or even stand with both feet together, and the art almost never deviates from these conventions. In real life, this division didn’t always seem to be as strict. Take for example New Kingdom female entrepeneurs; women who either made a name for themselves or took over their husband’s trade after his incapacitation or death.

“Masculinity” as a concept in ancient Egypt differed even between social groups. A scribe would have had to meet other standards of masculinity than a soldier or a farmer would. There also seems to be a divide between elite masculinity and masculinity for the lower social classes. Still masculinity mightn’t have been expressed the same way by everyone, even within the same social grouping.

Women were in the text corpus often juxtaposed against men, i.e. it was their relation with the men in their lives that was highlighted, and very little is known about interpersonal relationships between women. We obviously know more about royal women, but their experiences aren’t at all indicative of general female experience in ancient Egypt.

The Egyptians didn’t categorize people based on sexual preference (i.e. “this is a homosexual scribe”, “that market lady is bisexual”). While same-sex relationships weren’t the social norm and were usually depicted as an abberation and/or an insult, there’s strong evidence in favour of same-sex couples/relationships in real life.

For any further in-depth questions, I’d refer to @thewanderingarchaeologist, whose PHD research is on this very topic.

Please consider donating to my ko-fi if you enjoyed this rather incomplete explanation!

#Egyptology #gender identity #ancient egypt #anon asks

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natsunoomoi · 3 years

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Holy crap. So like with the previous post I was thinking about Fushigi Yuugi again and kind of checking up on what was up with Byakko Senki cuz I haven’t checked on it in awhile and it looks like it’s on hiatus right now and she’s working more on Arata Kangatari, which is cool cuz I thought she finished that, but I guess not and she just took a break to like finish Genbu and do Byakko or something.

But also I was scrolling through her Twitter to find that she is really into this Chinese movie “Legend of Luo Xiaohei” and so I was checking that out cuz so ironic that Japanese mangaka that got her big break writing manga about an ancient China setting is interested in a Chinese movie. So just looking through her Twitter thread and apparently she found out about Luo Xiaohei from watching a CM while watching Modao Zushi. LMAO It’s amazing, but this situation just feels like an ouroboros eating itself because I have a high suspicion that her work on Fushigi Yuugi imported into China back in the 90s was probably a huge influence on Chinese creators and artists to write their own stories about their culture and helped to popularize the xianxia and wuxia novel movements in more modern times. On top of that MXTX said she was inspired by a D. Gray-man fanfic and while she mentioned that title specifically, I think in the periphery Fushigi Yuugi itself and more recently Arata were probably an influence too. Growing up a number of my Chinese friends also said they got into anime overall because of Fushigi Yuugi because it was an anime and work from Japan about their culture and arguably done pretty damn well.

In terms of the danmei movement as well, I’m pretty sure Fushigi Yuugi was included in what started the movement as the movement was influenced by Japanese BL that came in via Taiwan, and the beginning of Fushigi Yuugi had the whole thing between Nuriko and Hotohori even though that kind of went nowhere, Nuriko dies to everyone’s depression (I have several friends who refuse to watch the rest of the series after Nuriko dies because it’s not the same), and that whole ship goes off a weird deep end with Hotohori marrying a woman that looks like Nuriko. Also, the exact reasons for Nuriko being in the harem and all that. There was a whole lot of shipping in the 90s from Fushigi Yuugi and it was one of the first series that had a male cast that was almost entirely ikemen and I think the actual first reverse harem. A number of shows probably simultaneously popularized the female gaze in mainstream anime, but Fushigi Yuugi was definitely one of them. Like literally one or two years before there was a lot of manly men and guy’s guys kind of anime characters, but beautiful ikemen, no, not really. In 2021, there are some things about the series that are a bit problematic, but it’s influence on the world is pretty significant. It was one of the first shows I’d seen that had any kind of reference to homosexuality or transgender in it and although it’s not necessarily portrayed well, the fact that it was there and that Nuriko was such a beloved character it started a conversation and helped us to get to a time where the topics she represents can be more discussed. I’m actually not even sure what pronouns would be appropriate for Nuriko because of her reasons for what she did and in Japanese the pronoun problem is actually really easy to get around because you just don’t have a subject or speaking in 3rd person is totally normal. But still, without her the minds of thousands or even millions of fans around the world would not have been opened as early to LGBT topics. Her existence, even problematic as it might be, allowed people to consider and love a character of a different sexual orientation or gender identity than their own and just open their minds to just not being a homophobic, biphobic (cuz relationship with Miaka?), or transphobic piece of shit.

Then also Genbu Kaiden and Uruki’s powers. Yeah.... I mean, also kind of with the earlier discussion, the idea of dual cultivation I don’t recall even being brought up much before in most media, but such ideas were also banned and repressed in China at a certain point. Documentation shows it was more of an ancient practice that suddenly became known about again. The book I was talking about that has it more explicitly written is banned in China has its only original surviving copy in the Japanese National Library as it was one of the books brought to Japan by scholars escaping persecution in China and bringing with them books to escape one of the many episodes of mass book burning. According to my Chinese lit professor who had us read an English translation of that book as a part of our curriculum anyway. Supposedly the translator of said book had to go to Japan to read the original in order to write the translation. There’s apparently a number of ancient Chinese texts like that because book burnings were a thing at different points in Chinese history, so if you are a scholar of Chinese lit if you want a complete picture of your field for some texts you do actually have to come to Japan to do your research. But yeah, that power mentioned in that very book Watase-sensei gave to Soi, and also the story of Fushigi Yuugi takes place in that very library that contains that ancient copy of a banned and would have been lost to the world book. If you’re asking why a “dirty” book would be something a scholar would grab to save, ancient lit scholars do regard it as a rather well-written piece of literature even though the content of it is basically taboo.

But also the Fushigi Yuugi Suzaku Ibun game is a hot mess when it comes to this same issue because if you romance Nuriko you can save her from death and my friend Hikari said she wasn’t sure if she was happy about fucking with the universe like that. (I’m not either.) Nuriko’s death was such a huge impact on the story and everything. Also, notably, most of the Suzaku Shichiseishi died, but Nuriko had the LONGEST tribute. Like Chiriko and Mitsukake’s was like a tag on of a few minutes. Hotohori’s was too even, but it was addressed more in the later manga chapters the publisher pressured her to write and in the OVA series afterward.

Also, like Fushigi Yuugi other than the Neverending Story was one of the original sucked into a book holy shit how do I survive stories. Idk if SVSSS is influenced by it in that way, but it’s fair to draw the parallels because of the similar theme. It’s just canonically Taiitsu Shinjin is not behind the the system in the book and in a number of ways Shen Yuan is more competent than Miaka. Miaka gets a lot of shit though and when I re-watched FY a second time I actually found the gripes people generally have about it make up only a small part of the series. People just talk it up so much that it seems like a huge thing when it’s not. Plus the technical canon is only the original TV series because that’s where Watase wanted to end the story and that is an emotional rollercoaster that makes you cry so good. But like there’s some other kinds of parallels as well like how toward the end and like the last two episodes you hate Nakago up until the exact moment you find out why he’s an absolute asshole, and characters straight up criticizing him about how he’s an asshole the whole damn series just gives the same kind of feels that SY gave criticizing the original throughout SVSSS. Can’t say for sure, but Fushigi Yuugi has a lot of clout in a general sense.

But yeah, Watase-sensei said that she was really surprised by the animation quality of Chinese animation these days and she thought Japanese anime was going down in comparison. Same, yo. Same. But still, her work was probably a huge contributor to the movement that allowed MDZS to exist because her art is damn beautiful, Chinese influenced, and she had one of the first works in Asia to like bring the subject of LGBT issues into the mainstream after years of oppression from mostly Western influence because in pre-modern Asia no one gave a shit before and there’s a significant amount of classical novels that address some form of LGBT issues at least in Japanese lit and like even academic documentation that notes Confucius saying that doing it with a guy was better than with a woman. And the author of the work that probably was very influential to BL back in the 90s watches MDZS. She noted that there wasn’t any in the actual anime, which is true, but I think she helped that series to exist and she watches the anime so it’s kind of exciting.

I hope it influences her to go finish Byakko, but OMG I want her to finish Arata too because I like Arata. I should try to find time to read more of it because the anime is too short and the wiki descriptions of what’s happening are so damn confusing and incomplete.

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adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction · 4 years

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Practicalities of Censorship

Every so often I see a thread cross my dashboard arguing about censorship with relation to AO3 - in particular people claiming that AO3 is bad because it allows basically any story regardless of content, that people are bad for supporting it, or that AO3 should implement some method by which problematic fics get taken down. These complaints are usually met with explanations around the history or AO3, why it was implemented the way it was, and why thinking that AO3 is fine the way it is does not equal being a pedophile. I want to tackle this from another angle - practicality.

Let's assume for the sake of this post that the people making these arguments are correct and that there are some things which shouldn't be allowed on AO3 (or an an alternative fic platform set up to be a better version of AO3 without all the bad stuff - I'll mostly be taking about "fixing" AO3 in this post but the same problems would apply to setting up a new and "safer" fic site). There are a lot of arguments against censorship to do with quality of works produced and whether this results is less good art when people are scared to produce things that might get banned, or whether there is artistic merit to works that display despicable actions. Let's just imagine for the moment that the whole argument is settled and the "let's purify AO3 for the sake of the children" crowd are correct. What would need to happen next? This isn't something I've seen addressed in these posts.

There are a lot of problems with censorship. Skipping over the ethical discussion of whether censorship is good or bad and in what circumstances it should be accepted, let's focus on two practical aspects: deciding what should and shouldn't be banned, and how you would implement such a ban. Let's start with problem one: where do you draw the line?

Let's assume we have some scale of rating from absolutely sickeningly awful deserving of destruction to perfectly clean and innocent with not the slightest thing wrong with it. Somewhere between these two endpoints is a line and everything to one side of it is bad and should be banned/blocked/deleted from AO3, etc. Everything on the other side of the line is fine and should be left available for people to read. Some things may seem easy to define. Fic A is incest porn, where a child is graphically raped in a way that's cleanly meant to titillate rather than horrify and the abuse is glorified and justified in text, and it's full of poor writing, spelling and grammar mistakes, and has no artistic merit as a work (how you judge artistic merit would need a few thousand words to explore as a subject on its own right). Let's stick that on the bad side of the line since that's the sort of thing that people on Tumblr are crying out to be banned. Fic B is a fluff fic where a character makes another character soup because they're feeling ill and they watch movies together. Nothing remotely sexual, just two adult characters being sweet to each other. So we'll put that on the good side of the line, right?

But the problem comes in deciding where that dividing line should be and what should be done about the things that sit close to the line. You could come up with some simple rules. Let's say, "Everything involving underage incest is on the bad side of the line." Seems straight-forward. But what if you have a story dealing with someone's recovery from incest and CSA? The story has a character who was abused in the past and the narrative deals with them getting therapy and overcoming their trauma. None of the abuse is shown in the text of the story, it all happens off-screen as it were, and the story sends a message that incest and CSA are bad but offers hope to former victims. Surely that story would belong on the good side of the line? So maybe we amend the rule to, "Everything involving graphic incest is on the bad side of the line." That would let us keep the story about overcoming the trauma on the good side but block anything that uses incest as porn. But is consenting incest between grown adults treated the same as abusive incest?

And what if you get a story that's more about the trauma but that has a handful of flashbacks about the rape that would count as graphic. These flashbacks are meant to be horrifying not sexually exciting. Would that be okay? Is it the intent of the scene that matters? But in that case, what happens if the author writes a scene that's intended to be horrifying but a reader interprets it as arousing? Would it be okay if the author includes a disclaimer in the notes saying that this is a terrible thing and shouldn't be done in real life? Is it the intensity of the scenes shown directly in the story? In which case, where do you draw the line between something described explicitly and something merely eluded to? Is it the precise terms used? Which terms? Or how many times those terms are use? Is a subtle allusion to an event okay? In which case, what happens with a slightly less subtle allusion?

The stories that are far away from the line are easy to place, but the ones close to it become a challenge. Any attempt to define straight-forward rules starts to fall apart quickly and you get to the point where you have to argue on a case-by-case basis for each story, which would involve a massive amount of time invested to check each of these stories and decide whether or not they're allowed. Once again the practicalities of "how would you enforce something like this?" rear their ugly head but that's a question we'll address later.

We also have the problem that where I might draw the line between the bad and the good might be different from where you would draw the line, and would be different from where someone else would draw the line. Let's go back to Fic B as described above, our perfectly innocent fluff story. I might think that's perfectly acceptable, but if those two characters are both the same gender, there will be some homophobic people who will say that it's wrong and corrupting innocents because it sends the message that homosexual relationships are good. Or even if the characters are different genders, some highly religious people might think it sends a bad message if those characters are unmarried and living together in a relationship, even if nothing explicit happens within the story. Or what if the characters are married but it's an interracial marriage? A KKK member might say that sends a bad message. Different people have a different idea of what counts as bad content.

In the real world, there have been cases of books that address racism being banned because they use the n word. Harry Potter has been banned by religious groups. According to the website www.banned-books.org.uk a sweet children's book about two penguins hatching an egg was banned by a lot of schools and libraries in the US because the two penguins are both male - even though this story was actually based on a true story. The book Black Beauty, about the experiences of a horse, was banned during the Apartheid in South Africa simply for including the word "black" in the title. If you look at that site, a lot of books have been banned for a lot of different reasons and a lot of good literature has ended up caught up in the censorship usually because religious groups objected to in on moral grounds.

You could say "don't let the bigots and racists be in charge of the censorship," but historically, when censorship has come into play in the past, the people who tend to end up the worst for it are minorities. LGBTQ+ groups and people of colour tend to get censored more than straight, white men. Stories about their experiences often deal with problematic issues and therefore they get banned. The groups that generally end up making decisions about what is and isn't okay tend to be the groups that have the most power to begin with, and the end result is silencing of minority voices. This is one reason I'm very wary of anything to do with censorship, because the people who usually end up the worse for it are those who most need their voices heard.

But let's imagine all of these problems are magically overcome and we come up with a perfectly clear set of rules about what counts as good and bad fic and the dividing line is agreed by good, rational people who aren't remotely bigoted and who are able to define the criteria for what should be banned in a way that will only ever block the harmful stuff.

We still have to deal with the practicalities of enforcement we set aside earlier. We've built our perfect set of rules to define good and bad fics and now we want to put them into practice to ban any of the awful stuff. How would you go about doing it?

We could try and get machine filters to do censorship by looking for keywords and particular tags or using more complex algorithms to judge what a piece of content is about, but this ends up with chaos like Tumblr auto-flagging a lot of perfectly clean content, or YouTube blocking videos that just happened to be by/about LGBTQ+ people. Any software based implementation would struggle because someone talking about a thing as a problem contains the same words as someone glorifying that thing, and machines tend not to be great at picking up tone. You would get a massive amount of errors with things being falsely flagged as bad and things being falsely let through despite breaking the rules.

And people would be sneaky. Someone wanting to include their graphic story wouldn't tag it as for over 18s because tagging something as for over 18s would get it banned, so they would tag it as something else. The terms "lemon" and "lime" used to describe fics by older members of fandoms started from exactly this sort of thing. Websites decided to not allow adult content so people continued to post adult content but they used the citrus scale for tagging it so people would still be able to find it. Which works when people know the terms to look for or avoid, but which doesn't work for people not in the know. Is a "lemon" or a "lime" fic more explicit? Do you know what a fic being tagged as "grapefruit" would mean? By their nature, these tags are coded, which is not great for clarity.

Any sort of system that just blanket bans key words or tags would result in people just not using those keywords and tags but posting the stuff anyway. It would actually make the situation worse because there would still be incest porn and the like, only now it wouldn't be tagged. As it stands on AO3, people use the tagging system very well and people who don't want to see the incest porn can do things like exclude that tag from searches, or just not open fics they see that have the tag. If there were rules in place to not allow anything with that tag, then people would stop using the tag, which would actually mean more people would see incest porn they didn't want to because it would no longer be tagged properly, or it would be tagged using code words which only mean something to the inside group. It would be much harder to avoid the things you don't like.

So let's say we don't let a computer decide what's breaking the rules. Let's say there is a system by which readers can flag a fic as being inappropriate to get it banned. Human beings get to decide, but what's the threshold? Does a thing get banned as soon as someone reports it? Or does it need to be flagged by multiple people to be banned? In which case fics written in tiny fandoms might slip through the cracks because not enough people are reading it to them flag it. This is also open for exploitation. Someone who takes a dislike to a particular person might encourage others to flag their fics as inappropriate, regardless of whether or not they are. Someone might create fake accounts or log in anonymously over proxies to spam a fic with flags.

And even if no one acts maliciously to abuse the system, not everyone will be careful about checking the precise and perfect rules defined to mark the difference between acceptable and unacceptable work. People will flag things incorrectly, based on their own viewpoints of what should or shouldn't be allowed, which we've already said is a problem because everyone will draw the line in different places based on their own beliefs.

So what's the alternative to a community-driven method for managing content? You could have specific people whose job it is to go through content and decide whether it adheres to the rules. Maybe a computer system or community flagging could funnel fics into a review channel where human beings check every one carefully. These people would understand the rules and be certain to always judge fics accurately according to the magically perfect rules defined earlier, which are guaranteed to only ever block bad fics but never block a good fic.

So problem solved, right? We have our perfect rules perfectly implemented.

Except where humans are employed to check whether content is acceptable or not, it involves a large number of people checking through basically the worst content out there. Some social networking sites do this sort of thing now and it can be hugely traumatising for people who do that work. It's not good for them mentally to have to be exposed over and over to the worst content being put up online. There tends to be a high turnover in those jobs because they burn out fast, and that's where people are being paid for this stuff.

A site like AO3 relies on volunteers so it would require a large number of people to volunteer to look at the darkest most gruesome content and decide if it breaks the rules or not. Either you have people who hate those sort of fics doing this out of a sense of duty to maintain the purity of the content, in which case they will probably struggle with having to read a load of stuff they really, really don't enjoy. Or you will have people volunteer because they really like those fics and this is the way for them to read them. And that probably defeats the point of doing this, because it means that the people who would be seeking out those stories anyway would be the ones reading them to see if they break the rules.

There are a lot of problems with censorship, both ethically and practically. Even if you are fully on the side of censorship from a moral standpoint, you have to address the practical concerns if you want to propose an implementation.

As it stands, I think the current system works. There is stuff on AO3 that I would not in a million years want to read, but I don't have to. AO3 is brilliant for its tagging system and I can look at the tags and nope past fics that are full of my personal squicks or that I think endorse something terrible. Readers can exclude tags they want nothing to do with or just not click on ones that include elements you dislike. You can curate your own experience, which actually works with the whole idea of everyone drawing a line in a different place. You and I will have different stories we want to avoid, and we can both choose to avoid them based on author's tagging for them, rather than some other person decreeing what is acceptable for either of us to see.

If you still think that AO3 should be blocking or banning certain content, have a think about how this would work in reality. Because when ideas like that are implemented in the real world, all manner of problems happen.

I think the fact that this post is still a couple of thousand words long with me skipping over several parts of the debate is a sign that this is not a simple problem that can be easily fixed.

#censorship #long post

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