#Sylvia for example

[masquenoire]

Okay, so maybe not a rogue. How about a vigilante? Would you fuck any of them if you'd been given the chance?

He lets out a harsh laugh upon hearing that question. “Like the Bat? Not a chance in hell and besides, the stick he’s got rammed up there is way too tightly lodged for anybody to extract. All those pretty ladies fawning over him and still he’s alone. Or not, who can tell? I’m not a fan of Batman either way and would be happier if he were out of my way for good.” Roman hummed, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as he went over the list. “Who else? Oh yeah, Catwoman. She sure ain’t a vigilante even though the idea seems to take her fancy from time to time. She needs to find a position and stick with it instead of playing these little games of hers. Superman? Wonder Woman? Like hell I’m getting involved with those superpowered freaks and besides, I’m not interested in going anywhere outside of this city. Same goes for any vigilantes stationed outside Gotham, unless they come calling instead.” The smirk that spreads across his face suggests he’s not entirely against the idea, his eyes darting knowingly towards the nearby window that was currently unlocked. “Now I shouldn’t have to be saying this, but I wouldn’t touch any of the birds with a bargepole... might swat them like I did to that one Robin, heh.” Now that had been a good time, offing one of Batman’s precious little soldiers. As far as Roman was concerned, he was doing the vigilante a favour by making more room in the nest - not that the caped crusader ever seemed to have any trouble finding little underlings to take under his wing. "I despise Nightwing, and can we even call Red Hood a vigilante at this point? That prick’s stealing my business and flooding the streets with more drugs than I can supply. Bastard’s stealing my thunder!“ Roman snarled, slamming his fist on the table. No, there were few vigilantes he’d fuck. Most of them were more trouble than they were worth.

#anonymous #;; asks #Thank you for this dear nonny! #Actually there are a couple of vigilantes he WOULD fuck #And to me it's wildly funny because it's a fair bit higher than other rogues/villains #I'm hesitant to call out any specific partners but Matt's one he has fucked #Roman doesn't kiss and tell though #I've yet to get around to writing more but a few writers have shown interest and we've discussed #Sylvia for example #Except that little bird is one whose feathers he won't be plucking haha

[turnleft]

do you ever think about how in journey’s end donna thought she had nothing else to live for, but in the star beast she had something (someone) to die for

#like!!!! in JE she chose death because there was truly no reason for her to live #(ofc the doctor did not let her die and he wiped her mind against her wishes to die as the doctordonna) #and then in the star beast she chose death because of rose. because of shaun. because of sylvia and wilf and all of london #ofc tsb isn’t the first case of donna agreeing to risk her life/sacrifice herself for someone else #she jumped in front of ten when the racnoss empress ordered to shoot him #‘never mind us’ in fires of pompeii #the suicide in turn left (and she didn’t even know the doctor in that universe and still gave her own life for him) #ANYWAYS back to my point #the difference between her choosing death because her old life is so depressing vs her in TSB choosing death bc her old life needs saving #you can say she was pretty much suicidal in JE #and fifteen years later she got her own family. a husband. a daughter that she loves more than anything. a mother who actually appreciates- #-her. #maybe i’m connecting random dots but i think it’s a beautiful example of why you should always keep going. things WILL get better. #my posts #donna noble

[ariel-s-awesome]

I love when smart, reasonable, responsible characters get the chance to act reckless and unhinged.

#wander over yonder #woy #sylvia zbornak #woy sylvia #commander peepers #woy peepers #two prime examples #sylvia as the timebomb and peepers in the prisoner are two prime moments #actual original content

[sylviareviar]

📱 : How full is your character’s Pokedex?

When Sylvia first began her journey, she had a normal Pokedex like any other Pokemon Trainer. Since the first-ever digital Pokedex was created in the Kanto, Sylvia and her siblings were handed imports from that region, all save for Lucas, who was given a modified version handmade by Professor Rowan. Since Lucas aimed to be a Pokemon Professor--and potentially Professor Rowan's successor--he was given favorable treatment as well as special assignments to complete over the course of their adventure through Sinnoh (keep in mind, Sylvia began her journey at relatively the same time as Ash did).

Over time, Sylvia began using her Pokedex more and more, as she got more curious about Pokemon, and practically absorbed information about them like a sponge, to the point that her basic model Pokedex became almost obsolete halfway through her adventure through Sinnoh. She requested a version similar to Lucas's, which allowed for more functions, such as journaling, creating new entries, taking photos, and reading TMs. Using that, she was able to document information she learned by observing Pokemon in the wild, even without catching a vast majority of them.

Since Sylvia's Pokedex is an unusual model from that point forward, constantly getting updated and upgraded, she often ended up maxing out the data storage on it and sending it to her personal computer to filter through the personal and professional mess later. Though it's not "full" in the same way other Trainers' Pokedexes are, Sylvia's is by far one of the fullest Pokedexes in the entire Pokemon world simply because of how much she records on a daily basis. A lot of the time, she doesn't even feel like using her Pokedex, though, so roughly only half of what she learns is digitally saved, while the other half is scrawled into hundreds of notebooks stacked and collecting dust at home. Her bedroom in Sandgem Town may as well be a pastel library of personal information and Pokemon data collections.

#🌸 ~ pokemon verse ~ 🌸 #🌸 ~ memes ~ 🌸 #🌸 ~ musings and headcanons ~ 🌸 #i really do mean it when i say sylvia may as well be a walking pokedex herself #she doesn't remember the numbers like their exact sizes/stats and stuff #but she remembers little things about their behavior and diet #just as an example

[godza]

the orv webcomic is weird to me bc even though thats what i was introduced to the story from thats not what kdj looks like in my head at all. at some point my vision of him deviated from wooby anime adjacent boy like he is in the comic. i often imagine book characters wildly different from what i should, and its quite hard to align what they actually look like with my idea.

#t #for example sylvia evanail just looks like millie parfait but less moe

[shojoboy]

i forgot there even was amovie about the torture + death of Sylvia Likens until now cuz im reading Elliott Page's memoir and like. what on earth possessed someone to make a movie out of that, really. why would anyone want to watch that.

#i dont want to necessarily pass the judgement that it's Wrong to make a movie about a tragedy like this but #idk. personally not only does it seem unbearable to watch but im uncomfortable w the very idea of dramaticizing it #like is that entertrainment? is that art? a girl suffered as bad as anyone could ever suffer and now u wanna see that reenacted? #and according to Elliott they toned it down from reality too. like what happened to her was worse than what could b shown in theaters #and what ur supposed to watch that? feel like ''wow that was horrible'' but from a safe distance so it's not quite real. #so u can be titillated by the knowledge of how evil people can be. #the thing is that her story is WORTH sharing but it's because its yet another example #of how little rights children have had historically. and how abuse of children has been accepted in a hierarchical society. #but like you could do a documentary abt it. without reenacting her misery. #sorry im bring ing up discourse abt a movie made in 2007 lmao but god even thinking abt Sylvia is unbearable to me #just reading the wikipedia page years ago was a horror i cant forget. #-_-

[yumeka-sxf]

Japanese Linguistic Observations in Spy x Family - part 1

This is a post series I've been planning for a while and I've finally had the time to complete part 1! 😃 I may have mentioned here before that I got my B.A. in Japanese/East Asian Studies, and even though I'm not fluent, I know the linguistics of the language fairly well. So I thought it would be fun to examine the interesting aspects of the Japanese version of the SxF manga that aren't reflected in the English translation. It might also be an informative experience for those who don't know any Japanese to learn a bit about the language through SxF! I'll try not to get too technical with the linguistics and keep my explanations at a beginner's level.

-----

Part 1 - Twilight's "honne and tatemae"

One of the main themes in SxF is how many of the characters have secrets they want to hide, so they act a certain way in front of others in order to mask their true selves. Japanese has a word for this phenomena called 本音と建前 ("honne and tatemae").

I remember learning about the concept of "honne and tatemae" during my Japanese college studies – a quick google search will yield a lot of publications on the topic and its relation to Japanese culture in particular. While the idea of hiding one's true intentions behind a fake facade can exist anywhere and is not something unique to Japan, it is enough of an occurrence in Japanese culture that there are specific words for it. The Wiki article has a basic but good definition of honne and tatemae, to quote:

A person's honne may be contrary to what is expected by society or what is required according to one's position and circumstances, and they are often kept hidden, except with one's closest friends. Tatemae is what is expected by society and required according to one's position and circumstances, and these may or may not match one's honne. In many cases, tatemae leads to outright telling of lies in order to avoid exposing the true inward feelings.

Sounds very much like the characters in SxF, doesn't it? Twilight especially, because unlike other characters like Yor and Anya, who simply have secrets they need to keep but don't create fake personas for themselves, Twilight does – the cheerful, friendly Loid Forger is a different person from the cold, calculating Twilight after all. Also unlike Yor and Anya, who speak the same way consistently no matter who they're talking to, Twilight uses different speech levels depending on which persona he's using and who he's talking to.

There are many different levels of speech in Japanese, ranging from super formal to totally crude. These speech levels are distinguished mostly by the pronouns the speaker chooses to use for themselves and who they're speaking to, as well as how they choose to conjugate the words they use. For example, 座ってください (suwatte kudasai), 座って (suwatte,) and 座れ (suware) all mean "sit," as in, telling someone to sit down. But the tone being conveyed is different: the first one is polite, the second one is casual, and the last one could be seen as rude if you're not using it with a close friend/family member.

As Twilight, he uses casual speech with the masculine and less polite pronoun 俺 or オレ (ore). This is the speech he uses when talking to a fellow spy like Fiona, and for his own inner thoughts.

As Loid Forger, he uses the polite 敬語 (keigo) speech, which is basically comprised of using the -ます (-masu) conjugation for verbs and the "to be" verb です (desu). He also uses the pronoun ボク or 僕 (boku), which is the standard male pronoun and more polite than "ore." He uses keigo to address pretty much everyone who doesn't know his true identity. When talking to a higher-up like Sylvia, he'll still use "ore" but will use polite speech instead of casual speech.

Anya is an exception to this: with her, he uses his most casual speech, the same as he uses with Franky.

I discussed a bit about this in part 24 of my Twiyor analysis posts, but this could be because Anya is a little kid, so he doesn't feel the need to put on any airs with her (same with Bond, whom he also uses casual speech with).

An interesting side note is that, as a child, Twilight used the pronoun "boku" but then changed to "ore" as soon as he became an adult/soldier.

Another aspect of keigo, besides using the more polite forms of pronouns and verb conjugations, is putting the honorific さん (san) after people's names. Twilight does this all the time with Yor, as she does with him. However, he switches to casual speech and drops the "san" part in her name when addressing her in front of people who (supposedly) believe they're a real married couple, such as Yuri and Fiona – because it would be weird for a real couple who have been married for a year to address each other in such a formal way, especially the husband. In the below panel when Fiona visits them, he's calling her "Yor" instead of "Yor-san" and using casual speech instead of keigo.

Oddly in these situations, while he uses just "Yor" when addressing her directly, he still calls her "Yor-san" when talking about her. During Yuri's first visit for example, he calls her "Yor-san" when telling Yuri how much Anya loves her (talking to someone about her) but then calls her just "Yor" a few moments later when telling her that he'll clean up the spill (talking to her directly). It's strange to me that he wouldn't just consistently use "Yor" whether he's talking to her or about her in these situations...I'm honestly not sure if he does this intentionally or if he just slips up since he's so used to using "Yor-san" in her presence.

*UPDATE* Thank you to @dentedintheworld-blog for enlightening me with the below reply about this!

"In Japanese, when speaking to your spouse's family about your spouse, you address her/him by attaching "san" her/his name out of respect for her/his family. This is also to show her/his family that you respect your spouse. That's why Loid calls Yor with san when he talks about how much he loves Yor to Yuri."

That definitely makes sense for why Twilight switches between "Yor" and "Yor-san" in these situations.

Regardless, this is why the scene in chapter 86 is so significant – when Yor isn't present, there's no reason for him to refer to her as "Yor-san," especially in front of a fellow spy like Fiona who knows he (supposedly) shouldn't have any feelings for her. Yet, even after he just called Yuri by his full name "Yuri Briar" a moment before, he doesn't do the same for Yor and continues to call her "Yor-san" here, much to Fiona's dismay.

In the same chapter, it's also significant that he uses "ore" when addressing Yor directly in his thoughts. Even though he's not speaking out loud, I believe this is the first time he's speaking directly "to" her as Twilight and/or his true self and not as Loid Forger.

But despite all this, I think that both Loid Forger and Twilight are tatemae…they're both masks to hide the person he truly is. The person who fondly talked about his mother to Yor on the park bench, the person who genuinely expressed gratitude for her sacrifice when leaving the resort island, the person who refused to kill Yuri in a life-or-death struggle because he knew it would hurt her…that's his actual honne. But of course, the ongoing conflict of the series is that he has yet to realize this. He won't even show his honne to his closest friend, Franky. Seems like it mostly comes out in dribs and drabs during his interactions with Yor...no surprise there, lol. The man is certainly a work in progress. When he finally starts letting his "honne" show, I'm curious what form of speech he'll adopt.

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Continue to Part 2 ->

#spy x family #sxf #spy family #spyxfamily #loid forger #twiyor #sxf spoilers #sxf manga #sxf manga spoilers #sxf analysis

[bellshazes]

dreaming up a syllabus for an imaginary course on metanarratives about gameplay, which i think would go something like:

unit 1: who do you think you are i am - auto-documentary & games

Vlogs and the Hyperreal, Folding Ideas

The Slow Death of Let's Play Videos, Meraki (to ~10:00)

World Record Progression: Mike Tyson, Summoning Salt

ROBLOX_OOF.mp3, hbomberguy

Life as a Bokoblin: A Zelda Nature Documentary, Monster Maze

optional: Braindump on the History of Let's Plays, slowbeef

unit 2: what like it's hard? - intro to challenge narratives

Chapter 26: Games as Narrative Play: Two Structures for Narrative Play, Rules of Play

A different kind of challenge run: Minimalist 100% (BOTW), Wolf Link

Surviving 100 Days on Just Dirt, Mogswamp

Can You Beat DARK SOULS III with Only Firebombs, the Backlogs

Is it Possible to Beat Super Mario 3D World while permanently crouching?, Ceave Gaming

The Pacifist Challenge - Beating Hollow Knight Without Collecting Soul [CHALLENGE] - Sample

optional: How to 100% Snowpeak Ruins in under 15 minutes, bewildebeest

unit 3: nelly you don't understand, i AM the narrative - form and function

The Future of Writing about Games, Jacob Geller

Can You Beat GRIME Without Weapons?, the Backlogs

Mushroom Kingdom Championships, Ceave Gaming

My Life as a Barber in Hitman 2, MinMax (Leo Vader)

MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom's Most Terrifying Mod, PowerPak

optional: Mega Microvideos, Matthewmatosis

the theme and structure is mostly intended to introduce at least one critical or historically contextual work followed by examples of the type of narrative in question.

in unit 1, this is the idea of "How do people talk about their own experiences in the context of YouTube and playing video games?" across three rather different kinds of documentaries. unit 2 is intended to take that lens of who is telling what tale and dial in on challenge running, where i first noticed the way some videos turn the story of overcoming a challenge into its own narrative that is distinct from but related to the narrative events of the game itself. unit 3 circles back to the bigger picture with a variety of examples that, to me, are maximally metanarrative, the emergent story of the player-narrator now functionally replacing the game's embedded narrative.

bonus unit: broken narratives

Glitch & the Grotesque at the MLA, Sylvia Korman

Watching time loop movies to escape my time loop, Leo Vader

The Stanley Parable, Dark Souls, and Intended Play, Folding Ideas

Breaking Madden, Jon Bois

The TRUTH about the Pizzaplex in FNAF: Security Breach, AstralSpiff

this one is highly underdeveloped, but i'd love to work out something more robust building on randomizer challenges that produce intentionally bizarre, semi-ironic "lore," and bois-esque endeavors to break games so hard the story itself crumbles. but that's really out of scope so i'm just including the links to things i couldn't bear to get rid of. more rambling abt the challenge runs I chose under the cut.

Challenge runs represent one of the most obvious places to start, due to being extremely plentiful and having a hook that makes a "here's how I did X thing in Y video game" format almost unavoidable. Minimalist 100% is an underrated and sweet straightforward example that I mostly include as a baseline for reporting-out style narrative; here are the facts, here's what happened, this is the thing that it is. Mogswamp's 100 Days on Just Dirt is similar in style, but the physical measuring of days is a delightful and, more importantly, external narrative device.

Now oriented, we get a taste of Ceave Gaming's narrative approach to Mario challenges with the no-crouching run, and while we still aren't at the degree of player-characters being constructed for the narrative's sake, the spirited belief in crouching sets the stage for other rhetoric in more extreme cases we'll see later.

The Backlogs' entire body of work qualifies here, but GRIME is the strongest inspiration for putting this list together. I include the DS3 firebombs run because what was initially a factual description of how his wife's use of firebombs inspired him to play differently in the original DS1 firebombs run has developed into full-blown multi-game narrative arc with the Firebomb Goddess (his wife, who also voices the character) compelling his in-game character to achieve his destined quest. Grime takes that even further,

In-Game Documentaries

I include Life as a Bokoblin mostly as a contrast to My Life as a Barber - there is a level of fictionalization and roleplay involved in the Zelda in-game documentary that highlights exactly what I want to single out when I am talking about metanarrative, the story about a story.

#peter posts #mc meta #<- close enough #also i will add some context for the rest of the docus too since the summoning salt is on here for a VERY SPECIFIC REASON

[allthecanadianpolitics]

In the 1970s, some gay community leaders turned their backs on the “less respectable” (read: trans, gender-weird, drag-performing, poor, racialized and/or flaming) members of their community in a cynical ploy to gain acceptance and power for themselves—at the expense of their more marginalized peers. There’s no better example than when, in 1973, the New York Pride Committee tried to bar trailblazing trans women of colour Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera from participating in the Pride parade because they were giving the organization “a bad name.” This decision by the local Pride committee exemplified a broader trend where some gay activists sought to push out more marginalized community members to win respectability and influence.  Flash forward 50 years and history is repeating itself in Canadian politics. As anti-LGBTQ2S+ hate rises across Canada, with even CSIS sounding the alarm, and trans lives being used as a political punching bag by far-right groups, Melissa Lantsman and Eric Duncan, the two (and only two) openly gay Conservative MPs, and other Conservative MPs who’ve called themselves our allies, are turning their backs on LGBTQ2S+ rights.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news #lgbtq2ia+ #lgbt issues #transphobia #conservatism

[thecartoonrambler]

Sylvia is a Fantastic character

Oh Sylvia!

Ever since i wrote about Wander and why hes such an important character, i wanted to write about Sylvia. But life got in the way a little..

Sylvia is such an amazing character.

Craig could have easily made her male, or made her a "typical female character" who presents in hyperfeminine ways and whatever (nothing wrong with femininity as long as it isnt forced or compulsory). But she's not, shes her own character, she's masculine, she's a bounty hunter, she's strong, she's powerful, she keeps her silly friend in check, she's serious, logical, diligent. Competitive. She's sassy, she doesn't let others boss her around. Its SO refreshing. Its SO refreshing to just HAVE a female character that FEELS like a character rather than simply "the Female".

Funny how a kids show about space can do a better job at that than even Marvel movies, huh?Its almost sad that when talking about her, the fact that she's female and that shes written like a proper character is actually refreshing. It should be the case for ALL shows, no exceptions.

Maybe she can serve as an example for new writers and show runners what to do RIGHT.

but enough about her gender!

I ADORE her dynamics between herself and other characters. I love the parallels between Her and Commander peepers in chasing around their emotional and impulsive friend/boss trying to keep them from doing silly things, yet also being complete opposites due to Her being the Bigger one in her dynamic with Wander, whereas peepers is the smaller one to Lord hater. I think its really cool!

I think episodes like "the Timebomb" or "the Family Reunion" are fantastic at deepening our understanding of Sylvia too.

She was brought up in a very rough and tough environment, feeling like she was never enough and had to compete with her older brothers at all times, fighting with feelings of not being good enough for her mother and how these feelings have caused her to be hyper competitive in instances of competition, where her feelings of little self worth are brough up if she's not "good enough", getting blinded by rage and loosing sense of what she should prioritise (which for a character that is typically so focused on logic and effectiveness is really striking. (I also ABSOLUTELY love the episode the Timebomb cause it shows how well Sylvia and Wander's friendship works?? Like the way he's able to calm her down and make sure she doesn't go crazy, similarly to how she's there for him from going crazy in episodes like "the Box") its just so sweet amd i love it smI love Sylvia so much.

When ppl say we want strong female characters WE MEAN SYLVIA!!! A WELL ROUNDED, AWESOME WELL WRITTEN CHARACTER THAT IS AN INSPIRATION!! THAT HAS FLAWS AND FEELINGS AND FEELS LIKE A REAL CHARACTER!!!! AHHH!!!! i love her :,3

ALSO! her design! I love it! I didn't mention it yet. But i really like that

1. She's larger than Wander!

2. Her snout is so cute idk 🥺

3. I love that she's not skinny?? Like shes got muscle she's got fat, she's got speed!!?

4. I like that she has dinosaur and horse elements idk i think its cool She's just cool Idk i love her

#cartoon reviews #woy #woy sylvia #Sylvia #Sylvia the thbornak #Thabornak #woy txt #save woy #woy wander #woy peepers #commander peepers #lord hater

[sunandmoonseisai]

"Yeah. And 𝘐'𝘮 real!"

I think about this episode a lot because it really encapsulate wander's core flaw. Wander is a very obsessive person. He has a very tunnel vision and when he has an idea in his head, it overshadow everything else. In this episode, wander is so engrossed in his own imagination that it's like everything around him dissappear, including Sylvia.

He even goes so far as turning Sylvia into a literal puppet in his head.

This finally hit a breaking point for Sylvia who call him out for being so self-centered. Now, I need to point that we don't know if wander had any partners before Sylvia. What I mean is that wander isn't intentionally selfish. He's just not used to consider how his actions affect others. But now, he has Sylvia. And his actions affect her because they're life-partners.

If it wasn't for Sylvia, wander would probably spend eternity in this endless void, losing his sanity and sense of reality in the process. Instead, he chooses Sylvia over his thirst for discovery, allowing them to escape.

There's another example of wander disregarding Sylvia for the sake of his obsession. In "the tourist", wander become so hyperfixated on one-upping another traveler that he drag poor Sylvia all accross the galaxy. Sylvia eventually had enough but wander still end up going back to her, once again choosing her over his obsession.

I think this is an example of Sylvia positively influencing wander. Now, I don't need to explain how wander is a good influence for Sylvia because it's so obvious. Just by looking at them, you know that he bring out her more caring and sensitive side. But Sylvia's influence on wander is more subtle. Just by existing in his life, she keeps him aware of his surroundings. She keeps him aware of his own well-being because what affect him affect her as well. She's the one thing that can bring him out of his tunnel vision. In other words, 𝘚𝘺𝘭𝘷𝘪𝘢 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺.

And I don't know how to end this aside that there's a distinctive lack of wander/Sylvia meta so I'm here to fix that. These two bring the best out of each other, they're so different but complete each other so well and their relationship is much deeper and more interesting than the fandom give them credit for. I had troubles organizing my thoughts so I hope it makes sense. I hope this post will generate some discussion.

#wander over yonder #woy wander #woy sylvia #character analysis #meta #wander and Sylvia #long post #random thoughts #text post #gif warning

[coochiequeens]

This is why we still need Women’s History Month.

By Martha Gill

What was life like for women in medieval times? “Awful” is the vague if definite answer that tends to spring to mind – but this is an assumption, and authors have been tackling it with new vigour.

The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society by Eleanor Janega, and The Wife of Bath: A Biography by Marion Turner both contend that women were not only bawdier but busier than we thought: they were brewers, blacksmiths, court poets, teachers, merchants, and master craftsmen, and they owned land too. A woman’s dowry, Janega writes, was often accompanied with firm instructions that property stay with her, regardless of what her husband wanted.

This feels like a new discovery. It isn’t, of course. Chaucer depicted many such cheerfully domineering women. The vellum letter-books of the City of London, in which the doings of the capital from 1275 to 1509 were scribbled, detail female barbers, apothecaries, armourers, shipwrights and tailors as a matter of course. While it is true that aristocratic women were considered drastically inferior to their male equivalents – traded as property and kept as ornaments – women of the lower orders lived, relatively, in a sort of rough and ready empowerment.

It was the Renaissance that vastly rolled back the rights of women. As economic power shifted, the emerging middle classes began aping their betters. They confined their women to the home, putting them at the financial mercy of men. Female religious power also dwindled. In the 13th century seeing visions and hearing voices might get a woman sainted; a hundred years later she’d more likely be burned at the stake.

“When it comes to the history of gender relations, storytellers portray women as more oppressed than they actually were”

Why does this feel like new information? Much of what we think we know about medieval times was invented by the Victorians, who had an artistic obsession with the period, and through poetry and endless retellings of the myth of King Arthur managed somehow to permanently infuse their own sexual politics into it. (Victorian women were in many respects more socially repressed than their 12th-century forebears.)

But modern storytellers are also guilty of sexist revisionism. We endlessly retread the lives of oppressed noblewomen, and ignore their secretly empowered lower-order sisters. Where poorer women are mentioned, glancingly, they are pitied as prostitutes or rape victims. Even writers who seem desperate for a “feminist take” on the period tend to ignore the angle staring them right in the face. In her 2022 cinematic romp, Catherine called Birdy, for example, Lena Dunham puts Sylvia Pankhurst-esque speeches into the mouth of her 13th-century protagonist, while portraying her impending marriage – at 14 – as normal for the period. (In fact the average 13th-century woman got married somewhere between the ages of 22 and 25.)

But we cling tight to these ideas. It is often those who push back against them who get accused of “historical revisionism”. This applies particularly to the fantasy genre, which aside from the odd preternaturally “feisty” female character, tends to portray the period as, well, a misogynistic fantasy. The Game of Thrones author George RR Martin once defended the TV series’ burlesque maltreatment of women on the grounds of realism. “I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was like.” Oddly enough, this didn’t apply to female body hair (or the dragons).

This is interesting. Most of our historical biases tend to run in the other direction: we assume the past was like the present. But when it comes to the history of gender relations, the opposite is true: storytellers insist on portraying women as more oppressed than they actually were.

“The history of gender relations might be more accurately painted as a tug of war between the sexes”

The casual reader of history is left with the dim impression that between the Palaeolithic era and the 19th century women suffered a sort of dark age of oppression. This is assumed to have ended some time around the invention of the lightbulb, when the idea of “gender equality” sprang into our heads and right-thinking societies set about “discovering” female competencies: women – astonishingly – could do 

things men could do!

In fact the history of gender relations might be more accurately painted as a tug of war between the sexes, with women sometimes gaining and sometimes losing power – and the stronger sex opportunistically seizing control whenever it had the means.

In Minoan Crete, for example, women had similar rights and freedoms to men, taking equal part in hunting, competitions, and celebrations.

But that era ushered in one of the most patriarchal societies the planet has ever known – classical Greece, where women had no political rights and were considered “minors”.

Or take hunter-gatherer societies, the source of endless cod-evolutionary theories about female inferiority. The discovery of female skeletons with hunting paraphernalia has disproved the idea that men only hunted and women only gathered – and more recently anthropologists have challenged the idea that men had higher status too: women, studies contend, had equal sway over group decisions.

This general bias has had two unfortunate consequences. One is to impress upon us the idea that inequality is “natural”. The other is to give us a certain complacency about our own age: that feminist progress is an inevitable consequence of passing time. “She was ahead of her time,” we say, when a woman seems unusually empowered. Not necessarily.

Two years ago, remember, sprang up one of the most vicious patriarchies in history – women were removed from their schools and places of work and battoned into homes and hijabs. And last year in the US many women lost one of their fundamental rights: abortion. (Turns out it was pro-lifers, not feminists, who were ahead of their time there.)

Both these events were greeted with shock from liberal quarters: how could women’s rights be going backwards? But that only shows we should brush up on our history. Another look at medieval women is as good a place to start as any.

 Martha Gill is a political journalist and former lobby correspondent

#Women’s History #books for women #The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society #Eleanor Janega #The Wife of Bath: A Biography #Marion Turner

[gatheringbones]

queer forms of magic from queer lit:

queer psychopompery. the queer people who performed the role of death doula for people with AIDS and/or other terminal diseases throughout our history.

queer transformative magic— the magic of seeming and appearing and subverting. too many examples to list.

queer escape magic. the stonewall butch who escaped the cop car while handcuffed and sent the watching crowd berserk with protective fury. sylvia rivera throwing herself out of a moving car to escape a bad trick. the butch who stole a nurse’s uniform and escaped the asylum in upstate new york before they could start her electroshock treatments. the butch from the persistent desire who beat all her charges for what she did to that new orleans cop.

queer samizdat magic. the transfer and cultivation of forbidden materials and histories from one oppressive period to another. the lesbians who walled themselves up in living archives. the transfemme historians uncovering long forgotten riots and uprisings. the gay utopians hand writing notebook after notebook of revolutionary poetry. diaries and scraps from the beloved dead being collected and pored over in temperature controlled rooms with gloved hands.

queer proxy magic through objects— leather, boots, high heels, dildos, packers, ties, etc. Leathermen inheriting and caring for the armor and skins of their fallen brothers. House mothers passing down dresses and accessories to their found children. the gay man who crumbled and dropped the eucharist to the ground during the catholic church action.

queer riot magic. kettles broken through in the knick of time. cop provocateurs being identified and ignored and expelled. ashes and teeth and bone chips of the beloved dead sailing through the white house fence and landing on the pristine lawn. groups of queer protesters sitting down en masse as the police horses are kicked into charging.

#terra preta

[archipithecus]

Friends at the Table is a podcast focused on critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, fun interaction between good friends, and asking "what if X was Y? what if W could do Z?"

anyways here's a non-comprehensive selection of some times FatT asked good hypotheticals

(spoilers for Autumn in Heiron, Marielda, Winter in Heiron, COUNTER/Weight, Twilight Mirage, Sangfielle, and some Bluff City i think) (i know Spring, Partizan, and Palisade must also have good "what if X was Y?" but i'm still catching up) (this got way long so i'm putting it behind a readmore) (shoutout to Search at the Table at https://curiosity.cat-girl.gay/ for letting me do this) (also to Transcripts at the Table for writing this all down in the first place)

KEITH: What if I was a snow...hawk… ART: What if you're like, a Dr. Seuss animal? KEITH: Yeah! What if I was a star-bellied sneetch?

KEITH: (laughing) What if the bird was a can opener!

AUSTIN (as Zaktrak): It's like, what if a, what if a factory or train or a windmill could read a book?

AUSTIN (CONT.): And then he, he looks up, he actually has like a very… his build is kind of like, angular and… not thin in terms of like, weak? But he has a sort of… androgynous character about him, in terms of his like, what you would think of as like his body structure. And… very beautiful blue eyes. He’s sort of like, what if David Bowie was super black.

AUSTIN: And that's kind of like, the picture you get of her, is like, What if Fero was like, 30% less hyperactive? Still way more hyperactive than everybody else in-- the world? (laughter) but like, just a little more in tune, with the world.

AUSTIN: What if fire was matte?

ART: What if a—what if a 90s after school special needed some graffiti

AUSTIN: Yeah. He asks you, um... watching what unfolds, and there's, there's, it's--and this is the fuckin' nerdiest thing I'm ever gonna say; it's like what if A-ha's Take On Me was an AMV? Was an anime music video?

AUSTIN: Ali’s character, how did she describe her character, “what if Han Solo used to be Beyonce?”

AUSTIN: It’s like, what if the American government was just another American company?

AUSTIN: It’s like what if holograms did gifs, basically?

ART: You how like Han Solo’s always talking to the Millenium Falcon, but what if the Millenium Falcon-- AUSTIN: Could talk back? ART: Had a chance of, yeah, of deciding he was angry.

SYLVIA: For example. Like just p - yeah, what if they have psychic assassins there. Oh! What if this planet’s an alien? What if this planet is a psychic assassin? Which is a great sentence I just said.

AUSTIN: Yeah, I should note that this is also like "What if the Super Bowl was attended by high fashion models?", right?

AUSTIN: We don’t get a lot of elderly non-binary people. And so Saint Auger is like, what if someone you knew from Portland was 82?

AUSTIN: It’s almost like, what if a crown could be a dunce cap?

AUSTIN: It's like- what if there was a really enterprising twelve year old, who like, [laughs] made a physiology- uh, person- a physiology like, model, but with dirt and rocks and sticks. Also there's no face, the face is also just one of this solid black rock plates.

AUSTIN: And again, there’s just light streaming in through—I think this room is mostly, like, does not have a huge window, but it does have little eyelet windows at the top of the, towards the ceiling, that run horizontally along the room, and just like, bright—it’s almost like, what if colour could be shadow? Do you know what I mean? Like, what if instead of it being that a shadow crosses your face, it is this prismatic glow that moves across the group of you as this thing crawls around this space station.

AUSTIN: It’s like white and blue, there are stars, it- you know, I think that the- it’s, it looks like the way you might imagine like, what if the UN had spaceships?

AUSTIN: What if you mixed your- your selfhood, with the notion of wings. Or the notion of flight. Not just flying. That’s where we’re going.

AUSTIN: This giant battleship that’s like ‘what if a millipede instead of legs had guns and what if it was all around it’?

AUSTIN: This thing is like the size of like a major city. This thing is like, what if Manhattan was a battleship. And instead of buildings it had guns. Except now they’re made of weird black glass.

AUSTIN: The first time he showed up I described him as what if Canderous Ordo decided to have a robot body one day? And slowly began to replace it.

AUSTIN: There’s a little— Yes, it’s like what if a cow— what if Christian Slater was playing a cowboy from New Jersey, and also was Canderous Ordo. And also he eats through his hands.

AUSTIN: There is just this like… I think it’s just metal unfolding across space. Like, at some point Volition just kind of spat out a, a, almost, it looks like a cloud of ink but instead of ink, it’s metal. And it’s just unfolding indefinitely in space like a huge— like what if Akira, what if at the end of Akira when Tetsuo turns into a weird flesh monster? It was that but various types of metal, just like bubbling all over the place throughout space, and I don’t know how you deal with that! But suddenly in the middle of the Mirage there is just this, this ink splatter, this, this gaseous, you know, spread of metal.

AUSTIN: And it’s like — again, it’s like a pistol — it’s like what if a pistol was also like a curved sword, like almost like a scimitar or something?

JANINE: What if we do a live show, but the only live show we ever do is at Bakucon?

ART: Um, let me tell you, this is a nice coat, you guys. Um, I think it’s sort of like what if… What if a leather duster jacket was like an ephemeral idea.

AUSTIN: It’s like … I think the way I described it was, what if there was a Companion Cube that could have its corners pulled apart and in the middle is a weird glowing sphere?

AUSTIN: He has this dope, like, “What if the Millenium Falcon was a deep V?” Instead of just that little bit at the top, it goes really deep down. Or like, “What if Pacman was really long?” You know what I mean?

AUSTIN: Okay. You find him like, rolled under the bottom of his, uhh, or like on a, it’s not rolled under, he’s on like a little, like cart that has a pneumatic lift, or it’s like, it’s like a, it’s like a robot that walks around. It has like- it’s like a Boston Dynamics- like what if a Boston Dynamics, like four-legged robot was also a thing you laid on top of? Like one of those carts that goes underneath a car, to repair it. You know what I’m talking about?

AUSTIN (as Morning’s Observation): [exhales thoughtfully] Like what if milk was a solid.

AUSTIN: But it still has that ribbony-quality? [chuckles] It still has the sound of fabric rubbing on fabric? But is definitely amplified a great deal, probably? And also, we know it’s sharp, so there’s probably some… sharpness to it? You know… there’s probably, like… what if a ribbon could be a sword you pull out of a sheath?

AUSTIN: And also, Saint Sommer is a big lion man. Saint Sommer is, like… Skein. And is a big… a big… like, a big lion man. Not like Lion-o from Thundercats. Like… what if Scar could… had a big human body? Was, like… What if Scar was cut?

KEITH: And it sort of like, snap! Like, that, it's like… when we were talking about what the sound it makes, I was picturing… what if folding a blanket sounded like sheet metal?

AUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know I think it’s like, I think this is very much like, what if the Venom symbiote was made of thread, right?

AUSTIN: So maybe it's like a- like imagine, what if a mop could just mop by itself.

AUSTIN: I won’t talk more about that stuff, but you already saw the big picture of “what if Connecticut was a space ocean,” so, you have at least some context there.

AUSTIN: It’s huge. It’s the size of a continent, right? It’s “What if South America was a big circle?” It’s “What if Europe and Eurasia was a big circle?”, constantly cast on this planet. And, you know, from space it kind of looks—not flat necessarily, right, because it’s a curved planet, it’s a sphere, or spherical, but, you know, it’s flat.

AUSTIN: It’s like what if Texas stood up.

AUSTIN (as Morning’s Observation): “What if cars brought things to you instead of bringing you to things?”

AUSTIN: It’s just like a very bright, colorful—like, what if Steven Universe did the Sailors of the Ark? What if that team did it? It’s very good.

AUSTIN: It’s like what if it’s a can opener that does that. Like a living can opener like. Grrrngaaah! I’m going fucking open holes in things! Grrngaah!

AUSTIN: Imagine that they're almost- in my mind they're like what if a martini shaker was a piston.

AUSTIN: It's like what if you could package a sunset, y'know? Into like a cube

AUSTIN: I can't believe we started this recording by looking at pies [KEITH and DRE laugh] that make me hurt and ended with ‘what if all foods could be jelly juice?’.

AUSTIN: I saw a big buffalo picture and I was like what if that was a person, that looks cool.

ART: But what if some of these skeletons are like, sick of this shit?

AUSTIN: I think I pitched this show as like: what if Ghost in the Shell but-but magic and witches instead of cyborgs and stuff?

JACK: So, out come this nascent organization who we’re calling Shapeknights. Who are -- I think the easiest way to say it is “cowboys for trains?” They are, like -- what if instead of the cowboy riding alongside the train on his horse, he was corralling the train? Or he was trying to understand the train, or was trying to --

ALI: I think Marn, herself is a little bit more like—like what if a capybara was a siamese cat?

KEITH: Yeah. So, I wholeheartedly recommend this movie, but if not, if you don't know what I'm talking about with the goggles, at least look at that. ‘Cause it's a good image. It's sort of like, what if you had a jeweler's loupe that had a jeweler's loupe that had a jeweler's loupe?

ART: It’s like, what if the antagonist won the Mummy movie right, this is what happens-

KEITH: What if instead of one, big, beautiful hat I have two small, beautiful hats?

KEITH: Like what if they made headphones just for being cool at a party?

KEITH: What if you make pizza by opening the box? That it was an empty box until you opened it.

AUSTIN: What if insects were made of teeth?

JACK: She’s the fuckin’ person of the train. She’s like what if a train could output a person.

KEITH: What if the train was a nice train?

ART: What if a Madame Tussauds came to life?

AUSTIN: What if fire could be a ghost?

AUSTIN: Looking through this here, sounds like what you wrote here was “What if a dolphin was like a velociraptor?”

AUSTIN: They’re hitched. Yeah, they've been hitched. Three of them have been hitched. And I said horse, but I want you to imagine is what if…what if a shrimp were a horse?

JACK: You sort of just like rise up the slope. It's a bit like what if a train was an escalator.

AUSTIN: What if Beyonce was Poison Ivy?

AUSTIN: All my cards on the table, Millennium Black is like what if Blade stopped being a vampire hunter and started being a casino owner.

AUSTIN: He's sort of like what if Alex Jones wasn't terrible

#friends at the table

[sylviareviar]

Duel Academy - @tophatz

Just as she was about to simply pass the student by, of course she had to be stopped in the hallway for the fifth time that day. Are you Sylvia Reviar? The one with Synchro Monsters? Are you the delinquent girl with pink hair and rainbow monsters? Are you the girl who talks to herself and rides on a motorcycle with glass ornaments attached to it?

For the record, those were approved by the Security Bureau in her time. It wasn't her fault she accidentally jumped into an old era. She knew Yusei had done it before, but getting back was in itself a difficult affair. How did he manage to do it? All her attempts to call for the Crimson Dragon fell on deaf ears so far.

She'd never gone to a school before. She saw movies and shows, and heard rumors about what schools were like. But when KaibaCorp sponsored her enrollment in Duel Academy, she hadn't expected their prestigious school to be built right next to an active volcano, for one thing, and for another, to be surrounded by dangerous uninhabited forests. Not to mention the dorm system was broken as hell, and the uniforms were absolute garbage. Not the Ra or Slifer ones, though-- those blazers seemed at least somewhat normal. No, what irked her the most was Obelisk, as well as the blatant hierarchy in what should've been an all-inclusive school. All in all, the whole island was atrocious, and she was getting sick of running laps around it and its students.

She took a deep breath and did her best to remain patient and amiable. Chances like this didn't come often, after all. Who knew the times of Old Domino City would have so much information to offer her? Egyptian Gods, Kings of Games, the history of Duel Monsters itself... The development of Synchro Monsters seemed to be a relatively new thing, since Zero Reverse must've occurred fifty years later at the very least, if the technological advances were anything to go by.

She'd garnered enough attention as it was. She ought to sate the student's curiosity and leave as quickly as she could. She was starting to get tired.

"...who's asking?"

Dammit. That's not the right response. Had Yusei rubbed off on her?

#🌸 ~ in character ~ 🌸 #🌸 ~ Bastion Misawa (tophatz) ~ 🌸 #🌸 ~ Yu-Gi-Oh! verse ~ 🌸 #🌸 ~ Back in Time (GX verse) ~ 🌸 #basically if anyone's curious this is a verse where sylvia's 5d's verse character #accidentally traveled back in time via crimson dragon #ended up in duel academy as a result #pretty simple stuff #also sylvia being snippy by accident because her leading example was someone who was cautious over everything he did and said #is honestly so amazing to me tbh #like she gets nervous so she stalls and when she does that she falls back on habits yusei taught her and comes across as standoffish #she also has this blank stare sometimes lmaooo

[tare-anime]

I notice that Endo always slips in subtle hints of sxf world building whenever he make an Eden kids focused chapter.

In the latest chapter 88, he slips in rumours:

We have a "King Willy the second" and "Queen of enemy nation".

It makes me think that there might be kingdoms in the land of Ostania, or in adjacent lands nearby Ostania. Perhaps this kingdoms already gone, or maybe there're still exist?

This really brings back a theory regarding Anya as the descendants of an extinc kingdom, due to her hair color, and her ability to speak "ancient language"

Even though, the "ancient language" can also means Anya overhears the lab scientist listing all terminologies in latin words.

Another example.

Back then, at chp. 42, he slips in

Pastry of knowledge. With a big picture of Apple. An Appe of knowledge. In Eden Academy.

Apple. Knowledge. Eden.

A reference to bible, in which someone in Eden might know a forbidden information, in corelation with Handler Sylvia's teaching to Twilight: knowledge is a very dangerous weapon.

A fact that there is a space race in the sxf world

Or a fact that Mr. Green knows a secret code for Ostanian people who deflect to the West

So as much as I really enjoy chapters where Endo shows us kids acting like kids (with all their dramatic antics); which emphazise Twilight and Yor's resolution to stay in the shadow in order to maintain peace so that these kids can always enjoy their time being kids; I will always squints my eyes for these clues. 🤣🤣

I love Endo and his way of storytelling.

#spy x family #anya forger #damian desmond #eden academy #world building #hints #sxf details #sxf background details #sxf theory #rambles