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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

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1900s futurism

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

I'm profoundly skeptical of the idea that the future can be predicted, and doubly skeptical that sf writers are any kind of prophet. The former grotesque fatalism (if the future can be predicted, then what we do doesn't matter); the latter is tragicomic hubris.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

That said, few people have been more consistently useful in understanding and anticipating (and yes, building) the future than my friend and colleague Karl Schroeder, whom I've known since I was 16 years old. Karl was the first person I heard say the world "internet." Also: "fractal," "World Wide Web," "ftp," and numerous other touchstones of the future just over the horizon.

Karl is, in fact, a futurist ("foresight consultant") who approaches the work with the same shrewd insight, wild imagination and humility that he brings to his fiction. In a new essay written with both his futurist and sf writer hats on, he nails down the toxic shadow cast by the 20th century sf, or, as he calls it, "The Science Fiction of the 1900s":

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/the-science-fiction-of-the-1900s

Karl starts by describing the odd "double vision" of the future of the 1900s. On the one hand, many of us (myself included) were convinced that nuclear armageddon was inevitable. Unlike the unhinged architects of the nuclear arms-race, realists understood that a nuclear war would effectively end the future. As Einstein put it, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

But the flipside of that certainty that the future would end with the first nuclear strike was the belief that if we could just somehow walk the tightrope over the chasm of nuclear holocaust, we'd emerge in a future worth looking forward to: "a new era of peace and prosperity for all."

Contrast that with the existential dread of today's polycrisis: environmental collapse and political decay up to and including fascism. These aren't the binary proposition of nuclear annihilation vs Utopia – rather, they're a continuum of worse-and-better outcomes of every description. As Karl writes: "It’s not that simple. Our future now is an exhausting spectrum of scenarios, each with its own promise, and its own problems."

For Karl, we have entered a new epoch, but we've dragged in the long-expired way of imagining (and hence creating and navigating) the future with us. What makes this a new epoch? For Karl, it's the kind of future on our horizon. He cites Charles C Mann’s 1491, a superb history of the Americas before Columbus:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107178/1491-second-edition-by-charles-c-mann/9781400032051/readers-guide/

1491 radically reframes "the patchwork of propaganda and inference" that makes up the received narrative of the so-called "New World." It describes a land of flourishing cities, art, science and culture "in the Americas while Rome was just getting its act together." Contact with colonizing Europeans was a disaster for First Nations people, who call this period "The Invasion." It was an epochal break.

Futurism is an inextricably historical discipline. The willingness of some settler-colonialists states to consider this epochal break forces us to reframe our literal place in history, the story of the land under our feet. At its best, this futuro-historical work can begin the long work of reconciliation, as with the Canadian government's promise of $23b in reparations for the First Nations people who were kidnapped as children and sent to murderous "residential schools" before, during and after the Sixties Scoop.

The sf of the 1900s is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was. It's a literature that was steered by open fascists like John W Campbell, who explicitly saw the literature as a means of inculcating a societal narrative of the triumph of white, corporate technocracy over all other forms of government:

https://locusmag.com/2019/11/cory-doctorow-jeannette-ng-was-right-john-w-campbell-was-a-fascist/

Karl isn't the first sf writer to try to overturn this orthodoxy – indeed, it was continuously challenged by radicals within the field, as with the New Wave, personified by the likes of Samuel Delany and Judith Merril (who both mentored and introduced Karl and me):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/13/better-to-have-loved/#neofuturians

The cyberpunks took a good hard run at it, too. For plenty of writers (including me), Bruce Sterling and William Gibson's 1981 story "The Gernsback Continuum" was a wake-up call:

http://writing2.richmond.edu/jessid/eng216/gernsback.pdf

Not for nothing, William Gibson has long insisted that his 1984 classic Neuromancer should be read as utopian: after all, it depicts a future in which the inevitable nuclear war only reduces a few cities to radioactive ash, sparing the rest of the planet.

Bruce Sterling once paid me the supreme compliment of describing a 2003 story I wrote about the ways that algorithms will enshittify self-driving cars as "making everybody else in the business look like they live in a dark basement growing on the mulch from old STAR TREK scripts":

https://craphound.com/stories/2005/10/12/human-readable/

Schroeder – along with today's new radical sf writer cohort – wants to fashion a fictional futurism that is fit for this world and its crisis: "in our modern technological society, science fiction tells us what to spend our time and money on." The fact that our mediocre billionaires are mired in the sf of the 1900s means that we're getting some decidedly old-fashioned futures.

For Karl, Musk is a poster-child for this profoundly conservative, backwards-looking vision: "He’s fighting the intellectual battles of the last century, a 1900s hero dropped into the 2000s with an unlimited budget to reshape the future to fit the era he’s from." Musk's obsessions – "Space flight. Settling Mars. Cyberpunk-style brain-computer interfaces. Artificial Intelligence. Self-driving electric cars. Humanoid robots." – are 1900s science fiction.

Ironically, much of this fiction labels itself "hard sf," despite the fact that interstellar travel is utter fantasy – as is mass-scale, near-term interplanetary civilization:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

Karl wants "a future for the 2000s." He points to some efforts to make this happen, like Neal Stephenson's Hieroglyph anthology, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/hieroglyph-ed-finnkathryn-cramer

The "Hieroglyph" is Stephenson's shorthand for a recognizable, tangible, meme-able gizmo or other touchstone for a 2000s-era vision of the future – a replacement for jetpacks and flying cars. Karl's story for the anthology, "Degrees of Freedom," focuses on an abstraction (governance: "the single most important thing humanity can focus its creative energies on right now"), and by Karl's own admission, it's not quite the hieroglyph Stephenson was looking for.

But Karl did come up with a hieroglyph in a later work, the "deodands" of 2019's Stealing Worlds – a software agent "that believes it is some natural system, such as a river or forest, and acts in its own self-interest, that being the preservation and thriving of that natural system":

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/18/karl-schroeders-stealing-worlds-visionary-science-fiction-of-a-way-through-the-climate-and-inequality-crises/

(My own contribution to Hieroglyph was very gadget heavy – "The Man Who Sold the Moon," about autonomous lunar 3D printers. It won the Sturgeon Award):

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon/

I've been impressed with Karl since the day I met him in 1987. There's no one whose thoughts on the future I'm more interested in hearing. I don't think that's a coincidence, either: Karl is an autodidact who was raised by a Mennonite TV repairman – the first TV repair shop in the Canadian prairies. If you want to understand the future, try being raised by someone who takes that kind of deliberate approach to which technology to adopt, and how.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

#pluralistic #science fiction #futurism #the future #reactionaries #tescreal #retrofuturism #scientifiction #karl schroeder #1491 #genocide

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strangestcase · 1 year

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For the people that are going to do Dracula Daily this year:

One of the subplots that Dracula covers, and arguably the most important subplot, is one centered around a psychiatric patient confined to an asylum- it touches upon the way he sees the world, his relationship with his doctor, and how he relates to and perceives the villain VS the heroes, since for most of the plot he believes the villain to be good and strives to serve him.

Both the patient and the doctor characters (who are part of the main cast and very important to moving the plot foward in their own ways!) are portrayed as sympathetic victims to the main villain and mostly on the side of good, but in different ways, and, of course, the way they are written is informed by the beliefs of the time.

I won't spoil anything too important about it, just warn you that this subplot depicts Victorian Era ableism, which is... pretty extreme, and forms of medical abuse (specifically, psychiatric abuse) that still exist today!

This plotline involves:

-depictions of hallucinations, delusions, and irrational thinking

-medical malpractice: delusions being encouraged, patients being dehumanized, prolonged use of dangerous restraints

-unsanitary behavior (eating live animals)

-ableist attitudes from most of the hero characters

(other Dracula fans pls tell me if I've missed something)

What do I make of this? you ask. Well...

Do not excuse medical abuse, even if it's fictional. The doctor character is, for all his medical malpractice, depicted as a complex person that has some likeable traits and he undergoes a pretty sad arc relating to loss and trauma, like most of the heroes of this novel. This doesn't make him any less of an abuser, nor makes his patient any less of a victim!

Refrain from using ableist language or rethoric. The patient character, being written for a very old horror book, is often depicted as "unsettling" and his strange behavior is sometimes played for horror. This 1) doesn't make his situation any less deplorable 2) doesn't make him any less sympethetic and most importantly 3) doesnt give you a free pass to treat him as a scary horror monster. He's a victim of both the real monster of this story and the system he lives in.

Listen to psychotic fans. Research the history of Victorian asylums. Understand the historical context. Look at this subplot from a holistic perspective instead of treating it as a horror story within a horror story (although, it is a horror story, but not for the reasons some think it is!). Just don't be a dick to disabled people.

If any part of this subplot triggers or squicks you, you are not obligated to read it, just be aware that it exists and that it is important to avoid perpetuating ableist stereotypes, be they present in the original text or not. (Hell, you are not obligated to read any part of the book if you don't want to do so. Dracula Daily is supposed to be fun. Analyzing literature is supposed to be fun. Enjoying literature is supposed to be fun!)

For the love of God, don't get angry if some fans dislike the doctor character for what he's done and take the patients' side. This was an issue during the last Dracula Daily run. He's literally the victim in this relationship. I'm not saying you can't like or dislike either character but I have to reiterate: do not erase either character's contribution to the plot, do not demonize the patient character for being mentally ill in an "ugly" way and beliveing the villain is good, and don't woobiefy the doctor character because he said a funny thing once. Both are complex adult human beings so don't expect them to be caricatures.

Do not be afraid to call out ableist behavior from other fans, but also be careful to not overstep or talk over disabled fans, especially psychotic fans.

During the Dracula Daily run, some blogs will warn about the entries in which this subplot takes place, and what triggers apply for each one of them. If you need those warnings, don't be afraid to reach out for them!

Happy reading!

#dracula daily #dracula #dracula daily 2023

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ifishouldvanish · 4 months

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Some Olrox Analysis & Headcanons

Have you seen this man? Now you have! 🥰

I have a lot of thoughts about Olrox Castlevania Nocturne and I'm dumping them here.

DISCLAIMER: We know so little about Olrox's past and I am but a humble stan looking at an expressionist painting and projecting my own deranged nonsense onto it. I'm fully prepared for 90% of this to get jossed in season 2, but for now I'm just letting the worms in my brain wiggle and send me beautiful visions of what could be 🥹

1. Olrox Was a Commoner and Does Not Respect Hierarchies

I've seen people point to his manner of speech and dress as evidence that he must come from a privileged background, but I think he displays too much contempt for the wealthy/nobility to have been one himself. I think these things are just symbols of power he has learned to use to his advantage.

Of course, there's everyone's favorite quote: "I prefer my blood blue." But he also demonstrates virtually no respect for authority or symbols/institutions of power in general:

He refuses the escort sent by the marquis when he arrives in France and insists on staying at the inn because he likes to "keep his ear to the ground". He would rather be around 'the people' than accept anything from the wealthy.

When Drolta is reminiscing about her glory days as a priestess, there's really not any nostalgia or sentimentality when he interrupts and says "and now those temples are half-buried in dust."

For as good as he is at presenting himself as a Gentleman of Status, he cannot bring himself to even pretend to enjoy himself at Erzsebet's lil debutante ball at the chateau.

When Erzsebet insists she is a goddess, his response is "Of course you are, sweetie 🙂"

His whole speech to Mizrak in the morning-after scene is basically a deconstruction of what power means, and how it is only a perceived vs tangible thing, a temporary position vs an immutable one:

"There are petty demon princelings you can haggle with and cheat. There are demon charlatans whose faces you can laugh in, spit in. There are demons who once were gods... And those who still are."

Foucault? In MY anime adaptation of a vampire video game?? It's more likely than u think 🤔

(continued under the cut bc this got long as hell)

2. Olrox was an Adult when Cortés Arrived

(I don't have a relevant screenshot for this point, so here's Olrox being pretty for no reason)

I've seen it float around some places that if we adhere to historical timelines to a 'T', it would make most sense for him to have been a child, but I'm of the opinion that it's more useful to take what the text itself gives us and fill the gaps with bits and pieces of the actual history where it's convenient. At the end of the day, this is a work of fiction/fantasy. So what does the text tell us?

He lived a long time as human and vampire

As of 1783, he'd been a vampire for approximately 250 years

Now, if we want to take this 250 figure literally, that would put the year of his turning at 1533. But I think we can give ourselves +/-15 years leeway because 250 is just the kind of rounded, even number one would use in natural speech in place of "267" or some shit like that. It's just how believable dialogue is written. So what lies in this +/-15 year window? The invasion by the Spanish, 1519-1521.

Now, he tells Mizrak: "Long ago, when I was still human, I watched men wade ashore from ships..."

I think this is another case of how important dialogue is. Because if he was a boy at the time, this line would likely have been written as "Long ago, when I was just a boy..." or something like "One of my earliest memories is of..." instead. "Still human" implies not only was he a human, but that he had been human for quite some time already. That the events he's describing fall in the stretch of time leading up to "still human" no longer being true.

tl;dr: the Spanish arrival and him becoming a vampire happened within a few years of each other, and if turned vampires stop aging, then he would have had to have been an adult at the time.

3. Olrox Became A Vampire Willingly

I assume that vampirism is something that was introduced to the Mexica by the Spanish in the same way it was introduced to Haiti by the French, in Annette's case.

However, rather than vampires creating spawn left and right, the persistent lore (in the show at least) is that to be turned is to be accepted into the sort of elite in-group of vampire society. (Carmilla questioning why Lisa was never turned, the Count never turning slaves, etc). Vampires feed on humans, they don't view them as potential spawn to have in thrall or whatever.

The Spanish weren't going around giving natives The Bite, because vampirism is power. So what I think, is that Olrox recognized that power, and decided to take it for himself. Rather than being the passive 'recipient' of the 'gift' of vampirism, he pried it from some Spanish vampire's cold, undead hands. (i.e., he drank their blood)

Do I have any proof of this? No. It's just what the worms in my brain are telling me 🤷 But!!

Do I think it would be a sexy little inversion of the way Erzsebet drank a god's blood to obtain her power? Yes.

Do I think it would be thematically very appropriate for a morally grey character who seems to have a very... Interesting relationship with power (individual power vs institutional powers, the subverting of power, the weaponization of symbols of power, etc)?? Oh absolutely fuck yes!!1!

[sickos.jpg]

4. Olrox Was a Priest, But Not Like That.

Priesthood in the Mexica empire was largely dominated by the nobility, whose children would be sent to the calmecec to learn how to read and write, speak the noble dialect, perform rituals, etc. But if the circumstances were right, the children of commoners could also get in!

Olrox says he's never been much of a believer, but he's highly intelligent and incredibly good at reading people. Even if he was never a man of faith, the priesthood was still a powerful institution where one could climb the ranks and earn influence over the nobility. No doubt someone as sharp and charismatic as Olrox would be able to take advantage of the opportunity to get a good education and maybe try to undermine the system from within/play a bit of political games while he was at it.

Also... Olrox's weapon of choice is the dagger. Obviously a dagger is an appropriate weapon for a character who's kind of rogue-ish, but also consider: Aztec warriors used a lot of weapons in combat: clubs, spears, arrows, axes—but an obsidian dagger? That's something that would have been used by a priest during rituals.

5. Olrox is a Bitch™ Who Knows Just What to Say to Get Under People's Skin

A common myth is that the Mexica welcomed Cortés at first because they thought he was Quetzalcoatl. But this is a misreading of the way Mexica social conventions/the noble dialect worked, which was kinda ~passive aggressive in a way, such that the more loftily and overly politely you spoke with someone, the more you were actually telling them to go eat shit and die. I think Olrox's dialogue demonstrates this beautifully in the scene where he meets Erzsebet:

"Taker of Souls, Vampire Lioness, She Who Mauls, The Messiah of--" / "Yes, charmed to meet you 😒"

"Her magnificence has heard much about you." / "Flattered. For a god to have heard of me. 🥱"

"I am a goddess!" / "...Of course 🙂"

His words are receptive, respectful, docile, even... but his tone and delivery are completely the opposite. Compare this with the way he speaks with Richter and (in later interactions) Mizrak—which is more informal, open, confrontational. He's more direct with them because he actually respects them.

As far as reading and getting under people's skin with pinpoint precision, I present the following interactions:

When he catches the marquis' severed head in the catacombs, he reads him (and potentially also Drolta) like a book: "This one? He was just an opportunist, following the messiah because she's powerful. But there are those who love her [looks to Drolta]. So I'm told."

When Drolta gives him a verbal slap on the wrist for feeding on the wealthy, he says "mY Ap0LoGiEs, I didn't realize how invested you are in keeping the mortals happy." - To which Drolta goes on to grumble about how their alliance with some of the mortals disgusts her.

When Erzsebet is waxing poetic about how everyone will see her beauty and worship her, he has the balls to—without missing a beat—say "PaRd0n mEe, but you mean to do this through an alliance with a man who will never worship you? 🫢" right to her fcuuckin face mgod I love him so much (this is the point where she whips out the big guns and yells "I am a goddess!!" while threateningly flashing her orb of darkness btw. Like she did NOT like that)

6. Olrox Has an 'Eye for an Eye' View of Justice

A prevalent theme in Aztec religion is the idea that like... ain't nothin' in this world for free. Sacrifices to the gods weren't symbolic gestures of devotion, but an act of paying the gods back for providing humanity with the means to survive.

The idea that everything has a price pervades the dialogue he has with Mizrak in the morning-after scene:

"What was the cost? Who pays it? Just him? Or all of you? Will you? Which demon will claim his price when all this is done?"

And it's also present in the very first scene where we are introduced to Olrox:

"You see, your mama took someone from me I loved, just as much as you loved her. So, she had to die."

What's interesting about this scene is also how... calm he is the whole time—before the fight, after the fight. Yes, he's motivated by the murder of the man he loved, but he brings zero of that passion to this confrontation. It's just an execution, something inevitable that must be done.

That he's fine with confronting a terrified Richter immediately afterwards to explain what just happened (and is completely unapologetic about it) is also telling. It suggests that Olrox views this kind of thing as just 'the way of the world'—a hard truth that Richter will be better off for having learned sooner rather than later.

I think this also helps explain why, years later, Olrox seems to treat Richter with a little more.... Familiarity than we might consider appropriate. He approaches Richter in the catacombs like he's just an old acquaintance, as though Richter should have no reason to be terrified of him. When Drolta mentions the incident later, he seems kind of lightly amused by it. Then, when he drops off the book, he's visibly/audibly frustrated that Richter starts gearing up for a fight. To Olrox, the whole "killed your mom" thing is water under the bridge, nothing personal.

7. Olrox is a Vampire of Prominence in The New World

Obviously, he has to be kind of a big deal to give a Belmont a run for their money. But let's go deeper into the IMPLICATIONS!!

"In 250 years, do you know how many vampire hunters have promised to slice me in two?"

"Her magnificence has heard much about you."

"You will be her guide into America."

He's enough of a big deal that countless hunters have promised to kill him. Enough of a big deal that Erzsebet has not only heard of him, but sees him as a valuable ally who knows enough about America to guide her as she builds her empire across it.

Olrox wasn't just a powerful vampire who got entangled with the politics of colonial Massachusetts and happened to cross paths with a Belmont. He's presumably had a hand in matters across the continent. Erzsebet refers to the colonists as "American upstarts" but for her, this is a conflict between humans vs vampires. The American colonists aren't allies or even rivals to her—because they're not vampires. They're just more pesky humans to be dealt with. (Also??? 'Protestant Vampires' as a concept is just hilarious to me, I'm so sorry)

So.

What the worms in my brain are telling me is—And this is Big!! This is a Steaming Hot Take!!!

(...seriously, tin foil hat tier headcanon incoming)

Olrox has established a network of indigenous vampires who are resisting the colonial threat. He's been turning them (or at least select individuals who are into it), and thereby redistributing the power he took from the Spanish colonizers to wield against the British colonizers.

(Look I have 0.01% faith in this actually being canon or anything. I just think it would be cool as fuck.)

Anyway.

Thanks for coming 2 my Ted talk or whatever. 😘

#Olrox #castlevania #castlevania nocturne

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journeytothewestresearch · 7 months

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JTTWR Story Idea Directory

I was influenced by @digitalagepulao's recent post to list my own collection of story ideas.

These are set in the Buddo-Daoist disc world system of the original novel.

1) The Origin of Sun Wukong

This provides three fictional origins for the Monkey King based on my past research. He is ...

The spiritual offspring of supreme ape immortals who have served as teachers of countless mortal and divine beings, the later including the Buddha and Master Subodhi. The couple rebels against the heavenly hierarchy for failing to keep an ancient promise.

The offspring of an ancient evil who intentionally bred him to destroy the gods.

A former hot-tempered, Vajra warrior-like Bodhisattva who is exiled from paradise for killing a being who seemingly offended the Buddha. He is punished to ten lifetimes as a figure of great strength who is continually bested and forced by circumstances to protect something or someone weaker than him.

Each origin has pros and cons.

2) Immortal Warriors and Shaolin Monks

Master Subodhi's mountain is the training ground for an immortal monastic army similar to Shaolin. Monkey gains combat experience as a monk soldier.

3) The REAL Reason Subodhi Expels Sun Wukong

Sun's much, much older spiritual brothers and sisters attack him out of jealousy for quickly climbing the ranks of the immortal monastic army. Forced to defend his position, Monkey's anger drives him to take on a monstrous, 100,000-foot-tall cosmic form to defeat his opponents. Subodhi fears Sun's limitless potential and great anger will lead him down the path of villainy, so he uses the pine tree incident as an excuse to expel him.

4) The Reason for Sun Wukong's Rebellion

Subodhi warns Monkey to protect himself when mastering the "Multitude of Terrestrial Killers" (i.e. the 72 changes) because said deities are considered baleful stellar gods who bring bad luck and disease. But the Terrestrial Killers exploit a chink in his spiritual armor and feed him small suggestions that have compounding effects on his personality, making him increasingly egotistical and combative. This eventually leads to his rebellion against heaven.

These are set on our Earth.

1) Sun Wukong vs Heracles/Hercules

Heracles, the Buddha's protector, is called in place of Erlang to end Monkey's rebellion. After the latter attains Buddhahood at the end of the journey, the Tathagata asks the son of Zeus to escort Sun through the Greek world system.

See the 07-08-22 update (refer also to section 3 for background info):

2) A Realistic Retelling of Journey to the West

The story follows the itinerary of the historical monk Xuanzang, and the various episodes from the original novel take place both on the way to and coming back from India. The disciples are acquired during the initial journey; however, their order is reversed—Sha, Zhu, and then Sun.

The past punishments of the disciples are still the same. But Monkey's history is changed because Taoism didn't exist in ancient India. Instead of becoming an immortal, he is a Hindo-Buddhist rishi who rebels against heaven.

See updates here and here.

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writingquestionsanswered · 15 days

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Any tips on how to write a historical fiction? Like working out the historical placement, economy and the political state of the country, the situation of royalty etc. Love your blog!

Historical Fiction vs Other Historical Subgenres

I wonder if you're meaning to ask about writing "historical fantasy" or "alternate history" rather than historical fiction. Here's why...

Historical fiction is set in a real place, in a real, recognizable time in our history. For example, Melissa de la Cruz's Alex & Eliza follows the lives and marriage of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler, real U.S. historical figures who were featured in the recently popular musical, Hamilton. If you want to write historical fiction, fleshing out your setting's economy, political state, situation of royalty, etc. is a matter of researching your setting in that particular time. My post Researching an Historical Topic has some pointers that should help with that kind of research.

Historical fantasy can be one of two things: typically, historical fantasy refers to stories set in a real place and time in our history, but with the incorporation of fantastical elements, such as in Marie Lu's The Kingdom of Back which is set in 18th-century Europe and follows Mozart's older sister, who gets involved with a stranger from a magical realm who promises to make her musical dreams come true. Historical fantasy can also be set in a fictional place that heavily resembles a real historical time and place and incorporates magic, but since the emphasis is as much on the historical feel of the story as on the fantastical elements, it's historical fantasy rather than just fantasy. Here, too, fleshing out your setting will come down to doing research, then making your own decisions about how to plausibly differentiate your imaginary setting. You may find it easier to do this after you've fleshed out your plot and understand the needs of your story.

Alternate history imagines a historical place and time in our world but with a major difference, like what if the Titanic sailed through a time portal into 1970s New York. Or, what life in 1920s Los Angeles would have been like if the U.S. had lost the Revolutionary War and the king and queen had come to visit some of their American Dukes and Duchesses. Fleshing out an alternate history setting will require research of the real time and location as well as some educated brainstorming about how things would be different.

Fantasy stories are sometimes set in settings or worlds loosely or somewhat heavily based on our own. In Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse, Ravka is loosely based on early 1800s Russia, and in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, Westeros is loosely based on early-medieval Britain. However, because the emphasis is more on the fantastical elements than the historical similarities, these stories are straight up fantasy rather than historical fantasy. Much as with the other examples, here fleshing out your setting requires research of your inspiration setting as well as brainstorming to determine what you want to change.

Let me know if you have questions about whichever specific one you want to write!

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I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

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thefiresofpompeii · 3 months

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i love you houses that confound and mislead. i love you the doctor falling into an inevitable trap despite jack’s forewarnings because she was always going to give the lone cyberman what he wanted, the story could never have transpired any other way. i love you unhinged threatening thirteen so full of compassion for a single historical figure that she risks the future fate of history itself to save his life — that’s the most doctor-y decision she’s ever made, short term kindness over long term heroic sweeping gestures no matter where that leads, no matter who it sacrifices (and it’s morally questionable in the utilitarianism vs personal feelings way; similar to some of twelve’s moral dilemmas, not in the shallow ass “guns are bad so we’ll just suffocate these spiders to death” way). i love you hyperbolic-but-accurate portrayals of the geneva squad authors and co. i love you the implied possibility of ghosts being real. i love you thirteen asserting her authority and committing a sneaky little telepathic time lord atrocity (showing percy shelley his death which incidentally gives a fictional explanation to his real-life obsession with death by drowning, which eventually led to his death by drowning. i digress) — something she hasn’t been given the opportunity to do before. i love you cybermen-as-the-inspiration-for-frankenstein. i love you “she was the universe”. i love you claire clairmont standing up for herself and realising what a manipulative prick byron was to her. i love you the haunting of villa diodati

#the haunting of villa diodati #waded through all of s11 and thank god i did because this series has some GEMS (tesla; fugitive #spyfall; and this)#dw #doctor who #jamie catches up #jamie.txt #thirteenth doctor #thirteen #jodie whittaker #mary shelley #frankenstein #jack harkness

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justgottafinishthischapter · 1 year

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Writing Worlds: Homosexuality in Historical Settings

As someone who loves period romances and craves romantic relationships between queer men, it’s very alluring to write queer romances set against the backdrop of historical settings and time periods. But, due to the treatment of homosexuality for a lot of our world’s history, it can make it tricky to know the best way to handle this topic. Consider this to be a sister post to go along with my Writing Romance: Courting post. The two go hand-in-hand.

ESCAPISM VS REALISM

The first hurdle is to decide whether your story is an escapist fantasy or favors realism. In an escapist historical queer romance, the queerness is simply not an issue. The prince can flat out tell his parents to arrange his marriage to male suitors, and the only real reaction is his mother immediately listing off good matches for him. The conflict has nothing to do with the fact that the relationship is between two same-sex characters, and would work just as well for a heterosexual romance story. With an escapist fantasy, you can show the Count of Yorkshire navigating the hardships of courting by having multiple young men vying for his hand, or the whirlwind romance as he catches the eye of the Duke of Orleans. And this romance can be just as open and public as any straight relationship. This option would fall under Historical Romanticism, the term used for when historical settings are made to be more idyllic and favorable than they likely were in real life. The only media where this approach tends to show up often is Fantasy, in worlds where homophobia simply never really existed. The Elder Scrolls is one such setting where male gods are married to one another, other gods change genders and pronouns as they like, and your player character is free to romance anyone of any gender as well as adopt without anyone making biggotted remarks.

On the other hand, Realism in a Historical Queer Romance is going to come prepackaged with a lot of tension and angst, as it’s automatically a forbidden romance. Because homophobia is a real issue that real queer people deal with, having queer characters deal with these issues can help your queer audience feel seen as these fictional characters can relate to their own life experiences. It’s also just more historically accurate to have queer lovers needing to tiptoe around behind people’s backs and hoping they don’t get caught. However, due to this prejudice, it’s also very easy for such settings and stories to come off as depressing, and can perpetuate unpleasant tropes in queer media, such as Bury Your Gays, Unhappily Ever After, and downer Nomance endings. Because their relationship isn’t “appropriate” for public eyes, it makes it hard for the couple to have a truly happy ending. For someone who’s tired of dealing with homophobia in their own life, or it just being present in almost all queer media, it can be tedious for those who want an escape to enjoy two guys smooching while looking dapper in period costumes.

Homosexuality and Religion

As a medieval historian, I actually did a full research paper on homosexuality in the middle ages as a part of my final for one of my medieval history classes. I still have the paper saved, so let me share an abridged version. Pagan cultures might have had some issues with homosexuality, such as the Norse favoring the “tops” over the “bottoms”, a sentiment shared by both the Greeks and Romans. However compared to later eras of history, these Pre-Christian cultures had little problems with same-sex relationships. Every Greek God but Ares, Hephaestus, and Hades had at least 1 male lover, Emperor Hadrian had his boy-toy Antinous deified after he drowned in the Nile, and the Sacred Band of Thebes was made up entirely of same-sex lovers. The idea that homosexuality was wrong only emerged with Christianity. Just... not as soon as you’d think. Christianity became a wide-spread faith across Europe around about 300 AD, mostly spread by Constantine’s deathbed conversion to Christianity. However, it would not be until the 12th century that homosexuality as a sin would emerge. This shift first started during what is known as the Medieval Renaissance when Christian theologians like St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome altered the theological discourse on sin and virtue. Prior to the Medieval Renaissance, the mindset was that simply being Christian and accepting Christ as one’s savior was all it took to get into Heaven. After the Medieval Renaissance, the focus shifted to individual sin and the worthiness of the individual soul. They came to view Earth as sort of a testing grounds or waiting room, and any temporary Earthly pleasure was a wicked temptation sent by Satan to lead men astray. How you did on the test impacted whether you passed or failed. One thing that was declared a sin was fornication without the prospect of procreation. And this went for everyone. Any sexual act that would not result in childbirth was a sin, because you were doing it for the pleasure, not for the purposes of making a baby. Furthermore, any position except Missionary was also sinful, again in an attempt to limit pleasure. Since cis-gendered homosexuals cannot procreate, any homosexual acts were universally labeled as a sin by happenstance. Later in 1179, Peter Comestor proposed to the Third Lateran Council a link between the biblical condemnation of sodomy with explicitly condemning homosexuals, and not just anal fornication as a whole, even stating that clerks found guilty of this act should be removed from office, and laymen should be excommunicated from the church. It is Peter Comestor and his stance on homosexuality that truly caused homosexuality to be labeled as a sin on principal, and is why so many modern Christians still believe homosexual relationships are sinful by nature. However, it’s worth pointing out that the time from when Christianity was a widespread faith in Europe (approx. 300 AD) to the Third Lateran Council (1179) is a span of 879 years. As of this point in 2023, the time between Comestor’s condemnation of homosexuality and the present is only 844 years. Meaning that Christianity has a longer history of tolerating homosexuality than it has condemning it. I say all of this because in any setting where Christianity is not a part of the worldbuilding, there is no reason to have homophobia, unless you replace Christianity with a similarly homophobic fictional religion, as George RR Martin does with the Faith of the Seven in A Song of Ice and Fire. As for Judaism and Islam, I’m at a loss there. My studies didn’t really lead me to those topics, and I can’t offer much insight there.

Handwaving Escapist Diversity

Let’s be real, we can’t even cast People of Color in fantasy stories without racists crapping their pants, so unfortunately, we’re going to face similar problems having queer couples openly courting each other in a historical setting. But, there are a few ways around this where we can have our cake and eat it too without the homophobes being able to hide behind “historic accuracy” as a reason to have a problem with queer romances in historical periods. It’s all about the genre. Let’s look at some of the genres we can use.

Historical Fiction: This is the base form. Any period piece is going to be historical fiction. However, Historical Fiction comes in a wide array. Historical Romanticism is the lighter approach, simply putting make-up on the era to make it more palatable and appealing. Think of Bridgerton where the dresses are shaped historically and the characters behave historically, but the Queen is a woman of color, and the dress materials are far more colorful and bright than they would have been at the time. It’s still the Regency era, just with a bit of rouge. On the other hand, there’s Alternate History. Historical settings where a major deviation has occurred in the timeline. Whether the Roman Empire never fell, the British crushed the American Revolution and took over the entire world, Christianity never caught on and the Roman Pantheon is the most widespread belief system, or the industrial revolution exploded even harder, resulting in a more Steampunk vibe. A major upheaval has altered the face of history, and your queer romance is set in an utterly changed world with a different timeline.

Steampunk: As I just touched on, your world can be more technologically advanced, however, Steampunk can also be a genre for completely fictional worlds, giving you a great way to have a story set in an era with an 1880s - 1910s aesthetic, but easily exist as it own world with its own history and values where homosexual relationships aren’t a problem. Steampunk is also the most optimistic and aesthetically oriented of the science-fiction -Punk genres, compared to the much bleaker and more cynical outlooks of Cyberpunk, Diesel Punk, and Gothic Punk.

Gaslamp Fantasy: Basically, Steampunk but with fantastical elements. It keeps that late Victorian - Edwardian aesthetic, but adds magic, faeries, dragons, vampires, etc. Now, Steampunk leans more Sci-fi, while Gaslamp Fantasy is more well.... Fantasy, so Gaslamp Fantasy does tend to lose some of the technological aspects of Steampunk, but it can also overlap with Magitech, a subgenre where machinery is powered and propelled by magical energy. So, you can very well have a Steampunk Gaslamp Fantasy where all of the steam and gears and machinery is powered by magic. It’ still Steampunk, so long as that train is powered by shoveling magic energy crystals into the furnace, instead of coal. Howl’s Moving Castle is a good example of how the two can coexist. There are normal trains as we see in Sophie’s town, but we also see Howl’s castle which can move because of Calcipher, a fire demon that needs to constantly eat a fuel source of one kind or another. The world is full of witches, magic, and curses, but there’s also muskets, trains, airplanes, zeppelins, and a castle that spews steam and smoke as it wanders the countryside.

Paranormal Romance: Especially common with Vampires, but the fallout of Twilight and Alpha/Beta/Omegas in pop culture has also led to a rising interest in Werewolf stories, and a recent trend has also swept Faeries into the pop culture spotlight as well. All three offer stories where one or both of your characters is an immortal (or very long-lived) individual. Perhaps their world is homophobic now, but when they met and fell in love, it was perfectly acceptable. Perhaps being alive for 800 years piqued the main character’s curiosity and they decided to give it a try. The long history of homosexuals being demonized has led to a large percentage of queer people identifying with the monsters and villains of media, causing them to see themselves in the hated monsters, demons, and vampires that threaten the heterosexual heroes of old.

Historical Fantasy: For everything else that’s not within that Victorian-Edwardian window, Historical Fantasy has you covered. From Cyclopes and Sirens in Ancient Greece to Dragons and Goblins in Medieval France, or a mermaid ending up in an Americana freak show, this pretty much covers ever kind of fantasy romance in a historical setting that’s not covered by Paranormal Romance or Gaslamp Fantasy.

Renaissance Punk: It’s like Steampunk, but the world’s technology resembles the contraptions of Leonardo Da Vinci, as opposed to the clockwork, gears, and steam aesthetic plastered onto the turn of the 20th century that Steampunk offers. Also called Da Vinci Punk.

Space Punk: If you’re wanting to lean more Sci-fi, you can do Space Punk. Think Treasure Planet, though I could also call that Sail Punk. It has a very Victorian clothing and technological aesthetic, but then space is full of a breathable Ethereum, and even Doctor Doppler’s “space suit” looks closer to an old-timey diver’s suit. But the ship has solar sails, the mast charges up with a power source that propels the ship into space, lockets project holograms of still photographs, cybernetic prosthetics are technologically advanced, and aliens are a common sight, even for the poorest commoner.

Same-Sex Courting for Escapist Romance

I touched on this in my Writing Romance: Courting post, but I’ll cover it again because it’s especially applicable here. The rules of courting in the 1800s relied heavily on gender roles. So, how does one make sense of courting rules when the couple are the same sex? The basic rule of thumb is that whoever is higher in status is the one to be chased, while the one of lower class does the chasing. If a Duke is looking for a husband, does the Duke chase Viscounts or do Viscounts chase the Duke? Always, the Viscounts chase the Duke. A Duke is a valuable husband, a prize catch those Viscounts would want to have. What if the romance is between two men of equal class? Two Dukes falling in love? The one who would take the more passive role is likely to be whichever is higher in the line of succession. During the courting phase, an elligible queer bachelor is likely to recieve many gentlemen callers. They would come to the bachelor’s house where his family could keep an eye on him, and judge his prospects. They would bring gifts and trinkets, and sit in the tea room, sewing room, drawing room, or whatever room is used to entertain guests. Gentlemen callers would then talk with the bachelor, recite poetry, play the piano, or whatever else they could to impress the bachelor and his family. Again, as I said before, the one being visited by gentlemen callers is whoever is higher up in the chain of nobility. The Duke’s family is going to scrutinize every gentleman who calls on their son, while the Baron’s family is going to urge him to call on every queer man who outranks him. The other thing to keep in mind is inheritance. The first-born son inherits everything, so a second-born son or third-born son will get nothing from his father, or best case scenario, he will get a small fraction of the family fortune from his father or older brother. In order for these younger sons to stay in the lifestyle they were raised in, they will have to marry someone who is coming into his fortune. In a setting where women can inherit her father’s entire estate, a lesbian would function the exact same as a gay man. Ergo, any queer romantic lead who is not inheriting his father’s full estate must seek a first-born son who will inherit his father’s estate. Meanwhile, if your protagonist is a first-born son, he is far more likely to be chased by the younger sons of distinguished families. Finally, when it comes to the social season and courting at dances, queer nobles would likely wear something to distinguish themselves from the heterosexual nobles at the party. Something to let the other guests know their preference in dance partner. That way, gentlemen know not to ask the Baroness of Agincourt to dance, but that the Duke of Orleans is all too eager to receive male attention.

Lavender Marriages in Realist Romances

A lavender marriage is when a queer person marries someone of the opposite sex to disguise their homosexual dalliances, such as Renly Baratheon marrying Margaery Tyrell, or Laenor Valyrian marrying Rhaenyra Targaryen. In these instances, the woman knew her husband was queer and was willing to work with him to keep the secret. However, sometimes the wife wouldn’t know, and the husband was keeping his sexuality a secret from everybody. However, it was usually hard for a noble to keep his dalliances completely hidden from the court, as in both of these cases, both Renly and Laenor were well-known around court to be fanciful of male attention. Everyone typically knows the wedding is a sham, but tend to turn a blind eye to it regardless. I know I’ve been using male examples this whole post, but this does also work with lesbian romances. I believe the term is still lavender marriage with a lesbian, but I could be mistaken.

Actual Homosexuality in Historical Time Periods

Scholars debate the exact nature of their relationship, but in Arthurian Myth, King Galehaut is conquering his way across Arthur’s Kingdom when he challenges Arthur to a duel for the throne of Camelot. However, upon seeing Sir Lancelot, Galehaut offers to concede to Arthur if he’ll introduce him to Lancelot. From then on, Galehaut and Lancelot became Very Close Special Guy Friends, and it’s suspected that the pair might be lovers, or at least that Galehaut is in love with Lancelot.

Leonardo Da Vinci was involved with one of his male models, Pietri Bandielli, who Da Vinci used as a model for Jesus. Which also means, If you pray to the white version of Jesus with the little beard and long brown hair, congratulations! You’re worshiping a gay Italian male model that used to have sex with Leonardo Da Vinci.

Hans Christian Andersen fell in love with the son of his financier, Edvard Collins. But, when Collins became engaged and later married to Henriette Tybjerg, a heartbroken Andersen wrote the story of The Little Mermaid as an allegory for his unrequited love. Collins was the handsome prince who didn’t return the mermaid’s feelings, Henriette was the Temple Girl who stole the mermaid’s love, and Andersen himself was the mermaid, unable to verbalize her true feelings, and suffering great pain just to be near the one she loves.

It’s mostly speculation, but it’s believed that Richard I of England had a clandestine homosexual relationship with Phillip II of France. The majority of evidence comes from one particular courtier’s writings who described them as eating from the same dish and not being separated by their beds at night. However, it’s hard to say if this is evidence of a homosexual relationship, or just the flowery prose writing of the time describing a very close bromance.

Edward II of England had little interest in war. Hoping to toughen up his son, Edward’s father assigned a squire to Edward that excelled in tournaments, Piers Gaveston. However, this backfired spectacularly, as Edward fell in love with Piers. Gaveston flaunted his sway over the king, being so bold as to wear royal purple and the queen’s jewelry during Edward’s coronation. Gaveston was hunted down and beheaded by a group of barons, and Edward himself was killed with a red-hot poker shoved up his backside.

King James I of England was a well-known bisexual, even having a secret passageway linking his bedchambers with that of George Villiers. James’ male lovers experienced royal favoritism and protection, as James absolved one male lover for poisoning a political rival, and twice protecting Villiers from impeachment for incompetency. Following James’ death, Villiers was struck through by a sword.

Anne Lister was a noblewoman who often dressed in masculine clothing and kept a coded diary which recounted her many and varied lesbian affairs over her lifetime. Lister even earned the nickname Gentleman Jack, and is often regarded as the First Modern Lesbian.

Pirate ships were one of the few places where gay marriage was legitimate. Pirate captains could perform marriage ceremonies, and marriages between male crewmates was not uncommon, even having rules about sharing property and distrubution of goods among crew members with a married couple on-board. As well as the distribution of property following the death of a same-sex spouse.

While we know that brothels and prostitution has existed since Ancient Greece, in the 1700s, it was possible to find a Molly House. A house which featured male prostitutes who catered to male clients.

Women were not believed to have sex drives, so when two women loved each other, they were often called “bosom buddies”, and two women living together without a man in the house was called a Boston Marriage.

In the medieval era, it was believed that a woman’s womb was naturally cold and had to be kept warm with regular activity. If the woman was unmarried, the womb was to be kept warm by hand. But since using her own hands would be sinful, it often fell to the woman’s female servants to do the deed.

Men and women often existed in entirely disconnected social spheres. For a man, he would go to work where he would only work with men, after work he would go to a local bar or club that was exclusively for gentlemen, and following dinner, he would often retire to a private room in his home or another man’s home to sit, smoke, and talk with his male colleagues. Even within a single house, men would retire to the gentlemen’s lounge to smoke, while women would depart to the sewing room, tea room, or drawing room to have afternoon tea with the other ladies. As men would spend their entire days solely in the company of men, and the same for women, many men and women only spent time together in public spaces, during meals, and when going to bed. Even then, it was not uncommon to see households where the man and woman had separate bedchambers, and the woman would only sleep in the man’s bedroom when he desired sexual congress. Even the Palace of Versailles had separate chambers for the king and queen. This gave queer couples plenty of time to sneak around without anyone being the wiser.

This to Keep in Mind

One of the biggest issues behind the AIDS epidemic was the promiscuous nature of gay lovers in the 1970s. Because gay men had to be discreet, they would often have anonymous relations in public spaces like bathhouses and bars. This combination of unsafe sex practices and anonymous lovers caused STDs to run rampant through the community, and allowed the AIDS epidemic to have a devastating impact on the queer community.

In Victorian great houses, the footmen were effectively the “face” of the manor’s servants, so height and attractiveness was favored when hiring them. As such, footmen make for excellent romantic interests in a historical time period, since they’re required to be attractive to be hired.

The mafia has a long history of working with and supporting the LGBT community. In the 1920s, nightclubs in the black districts of Harlem would host drag balls, these events being known as Harlem Nights. The mafia helped these groups to meet without police interference for a kickback fee. Even the Stonewall Inn had Mafia protection. In a world where homosexuality is still seen as a sin, think about what groups are willing to turn a blind eye in the interest of profit.

Homosexuals were among those rounded up the Nazi Party during the Holocaust. Just as Jews were forced to wear the Star of David on their clothes, so too were homosexuals marked with a pink triangle. The Nazi Party also destroyed research on gender and sexuality, which destroyed a lot of evidence that had been gathered of queer existence up to that point in time. Today, the Pink Triangle is among the reclaimed symbols used by the queer community.

Queer people found ways to signal to one another. At different points in time, the visual cues have included wearing green ties, having a red carnation in their lapels, and in the 1970s, a bandana in the back pocket was a common way of indicating someone was a homosexual, and the color would even further indicate what they were looking for. Many modern slang words even started out as gay code words so that gay people could talk in public without drawing attention to themselves. Codes like “buns” for butt are still in use today, but got their start as codewords to keep gay conversations undercover.

While we often remember the Red Scare of the 1950s, we often don’t mention that there was also a Lavender Scare at the same time, which hunted down homosexuals just as the Red Scare hunted for communists. It was the belief that homosexuals would be more likely to undermine American policies or spread information to enemy nations, and thus had to be kept down.

Rich men often kept “actresses”, paying for apartments for them, paying for their food, drink, fun, costumes, and whatever else. If they really were an actress or otherwise a struggling entertainer, it was not unheard of for the wealthy benefactor to pay to get the actress roles, pay for tutors and lessons, or even buying them an entire theater. It’s not so hard to believe that a wealthy gentleman could keep a male model, actor, or artist in good stead, especially because artists in particular flourished in periods where rich people would sponsor and commission artists to paint for them. And this can work for either type of story, as a husband or wife would be equally annoyed to learn that the Duke of Orleans is keeping a young actor on the south side.

Gif Sourcing:

1. Bridgerton (2020 - present) 2. Game of Thrones (2011-2019) 3. Mary, Queen of Scots (2018) 4. Downton Abbey (2010-2015) 5. Victoria (2016) 6. Cloud Atlas (2012) 7. A Place to Call Home (2013-2018) 8. Mary Shelley (2017) 9. Brokeback Mountain (2005)

#historical fiction #writing romance #gay romance #historical romance #period piece #period drama #courting #courtship #gay history #gay historical fiction #gay victorian #gay period piece #gay period drama #queer romance #queer history #gay love story

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pretty-weird-ideas · 9 months

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Trauma Porn vs Representing Black Struggle in IWTV

TW: Domestic Violence (Focus) Rape (mentioned 1x)

Spoilers for the IWTV AMC Series

I think a lot of the distraught or incredibly positive reactions to Episode 5 of IWTV’s ending from black fans is because of the noticeable lack of genuine representation of black IPV let alone black queer people facing IPV at all. So not only was the scene without a trigger warning and absolutely out of nowhere (with of course the obvious foreshadowing and Lestat’s abusive behavior setting it up) but it was something that has barely been done for mainstream genre TV.

So as a black fan, seeing violence towards black people (trauma porn) is certainly not new to me... but seeing black queer people’s stories focus on IPV is something that I haven’t seen. It leaves me incredibly conflicted in ways that cannot be transcribed.

Genre TV, media in general, and even reality has an obsession with whitewashing (pun unintended) IPV towards black people unless it’s specifically meant to degrade us and utilize racist stereotypes. Rarely ever does IPV towards queer black people get spoken about in real life, let alone in fiction. So for a story to just be for real for a hot minute about that topic is both disturbing and jaw dropping.

I oscillate between “I can’t believe they would ever put this on TV” and “I’m so glad that they made this a plotline because nobody talks about this,”. IPV perpetrated by white people towards their black partners especially from a historical context is not talked about. And it certainly is not the focus of period pieces or literature as often as it should be.

This is even being taken away from us TODAY in history books; centuries of rape and domestic violence from the slave trade to Jim Crow is being censored RIGHT NOW. This is not isolated behavior.

And to see white IWTV fans sidestep this entirely back during the final stretch of season one to complain that having Lestat (who canonically abused Louis in other ways) assault Louis somehow ruined LESTAT’S character and THEIR SHIP. While completely sidestepping what themes they were intending and got across (you know like genuine media literacy) and the onscreen brutalization that happened without warning is disgusting.

Being able to cherry pick quotes and argue about whether or not slapping is “DV” is not only gross but it’s just not media literacy. That’s literacy... like good job bestie you can read! But it’s certainly doesn’t mean you have the range or comprehension to understand the intended themes of Episode 5 at all. And until white people begin to understand the nuances of being a black person being abused by a white person who holds power over you, it’s going to continue being out of reach.

It’s one thing to dislike it’s inclusion, because I also agree. But I’ve noticed that The Great Lestat Discourse TM has become the discussion rather than the perspective of how white supremacy aided in perpetuating domestic violence and the choice to show gory and unflinching physical abuse without a trigger warning.

White fans being disingenuous and asking Louis to fade into the background until Lestat (the white character) becomes the focus for TVL. While constantly mocking and ignoring the concept of IPV towards black people makes the point for me as to why this was an interesting and purposeful direction to head in. IPV is so ignored that when IWTV includes it, fans went out of their way to argue whether or not their favorite white boy would DARE TO DO THIS, and not why the writers did this and what they were attempting to say. IPV and queer victims of abuse are so ignored that after this happened people started making posts talking about APOLOGIZING TO A FICTIONAL LESTAT for writers “slandering” him! Discussions about abuse in interracial relationships during Jim Crow are so far ignored that people started to publicly doubt that actual domestic violence in interracial relationships existed at all! So badly that the writers had to come out and say that they wouldn’t make Louis “not the victim” when recontextualizing episode 5.

#interview with the vampire #iwtv #amc iwtv #TW:abuse #TW:Rape

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historia-vitae-magistras · 10 months

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Do you have any fic about the difference between how Matt is to Alfred vs Jack/Zee? That feels untapped.

Four cunts and a Kiwi walk into a trench.... Please note this is a work of historical fiction based roughly on the Kaiserschlacht of 1918, Germany's last offensive. It is not a textbook. The interactions here cannot possibly begin to represent the real motions of history. The depictions of war and empire are fictional. Everyone's a piece of shit in this, but they are fictional pieces of shit. The existing author's views do not align with that of the fictional characters or any other message you think you're gleaning from this. Everyone in the following piece is fictional and over the age of 18. Do not get your morality from fanfic. No one is happy, no one is having a good time. They are individual, fictional characters and they are miserable. If I haven't made them miserable enough its because my wrist is busted in two places and I'm not in the fucking mood. Flanders March 1918

Matt’s slicker is draped over the tent pegs, a crude shelter against the elements beating down on them. Between Matt shoved in tightly to his left and Zee wedged into his right, and the blankets still tucked in tight all around them, Jack is as warm as he’s been since he stepped foot on this bloody continent. He shifts, something uncomfortable against his back.

He mumbles something and tells Matt to roll over, but Zee says something about Matt fucking off if he was going to be an insomniac. But Zee is to his right, and Jack is on his back. She can’t possibly feel anything. He disregards it, rolls back asleep, and snuggles in tighter against her back.

There’s a rush of cold air, Matt yelling at him to get up! To get the fuck up! There’s the crack of steel on a skull. He knows the sound has driven his own shovel into enough Turkish and German heads by now to know it, as well as he knows the sound of his own voice. Matt’s grunting gets louder. Jack is on his feet, pulling Zee up with him. He may as well have not opened his eyes. It’s so fucking dark.

He snatches Zee close, and she screams at him, working something over in her hands.

“Get down,” He hisses at her.

He’s too late. She’s lit the flare. In the dark, formless under the clothes and blankets, she might have not been noticed, but in the sick light of the flare, green as gas, there’s no mistaking her form, a girl’s form even in the trousers of the men’s field uniform, permitted this near the front with the medical officers. They were supposed to be safe here, three trenches back. There’s a joyful German noise and then the swell of bodies. Not a trench raid, not a squad. This is a counter-offensive. Matt throws one into another’s bayonet, and Jack breaks another German’s neck without thinking. The world is lit in green light reflecting from the gore.

He kills three men in seconds, Matt even more. But they’re replaced. This is no trench raid. It is a punch right through the line, a blow puncturing right through the armour of the front line. Jack takes up one of the rifles, but it won’t fire. He swings it into another man’s face. Where the fuck is his gun? Where the fuck is Matt’s?

“Zee! Go!” Matt bellows. Jack spun and watched his sister’s face. There’s German blood there, splattered across her jaw and cheeks, her hand red, a knife that is not hers dripping.

“Go!” Jack says and bodily shoves her back at the ladder. “Find Dad!”

Her eyes flash with the knowledge that this is the only way to avoid the worst, but also full of loathing. She hates him, and maybe Matt, for making her go.

“Go with her,” Matt tells him. Gripping him by the sleeve and shoving him as hard as he can. “Go!”

“Matt!”

“Go!”

He’s got a German rifle to his shoulder and is already flipping back the lever and aiming. He looked up, and he was horrific in this light, face sharp, eyes narrow, lip curled back. But a flash of Matt, of peacetime. “I can slip away if they capture me. You can’t! Go!”

“He’s right!” Zee whispered. “Come on!”

“No!” Jack wrenched his arm free of Matt. They’re surrounded by his soldiers. Australians are to their left and their right flanks, awake now and fighting. Their souls come to his awareness like stars as the sun sets. Pinpricks of light he can’t leave. Too much is happening. “No! Stop!”

“Jack, Go!” Matt’s firing, and something is screaming in the distance. Five bullets, then four. “I’m right behind you.” Four bullets left, more screaming. The trenches around them are coming alive. He won’t leave them. He can’t.

But Zee’s got him by the arm and is dragging him with her.

“You know what happens if we stay!” Zee whispered. Three bullets become two. Hoarse shouts. She gripped him by the face, her own grey with terror, but her brown eyes set with certainty. She has all of Dad’s decisiveness. “What happens if I stay,”

And just like that, she’s straightened his thoughts. He won’t let Germans have her, and she won’t leave him here. So they go. They have to go.

“Okay,” He exhales his panic and shakes his entire body. “Okay.”

Matt has fired twice more. He’s out of bullets, and more are coming, more are coming now. His sister tugged him back. He snatched up his sidearm, forgotten on the floor in the mêlée.

“Be quick and be safe!” Matt tells them. It’s a benediction as hoarse as his prayers are when he thinks there is no one around to hear him. They’re just as futile, too. The time their slaughter brought them is at a standstill, and Matthew’s bullets are gone.

“Find Alfred!” Matt screams over his shoulder as if he’s on another German. The last thing Jack sees of him is the full horrific brutality of his Matt in hand to hand. The filth of his fight. Matt was a brutal bastard. He thrust his fingers into an enemy’s face, finding eyeballs for leverage and twisting heads, viscous as a wolf just before spring. Matthew gives Germans a fight the way he gave their father before Jack was born, and that’s before his fingers close around the pine of his favourite axe. Jack turns, hearing Zee say his name. Their artillery is waking now. He can hear the guns open up. They have to go.

Zee was just ahead of him, running headlong into the dark. It’s wrong. Leaving his men. But she’s ahead of him. It’s the way the world works. Zee sailed into a new day ahead of him on their spinning planet. He follows. A German must have crawled past Matt. Jack shoots.

Zee jumped, startled, and for a fucking moment, he thought his wee Kiwi-bird of a sister, flightless and round, was going to sprout wings and fly straight home to New Zealand. But she’s repeating his name, and he’s staring into the dark, eyes swimming with the gun flash, wondering if hell is a different sort of red from home, with all its bright baked clay. Zee took his hand, her bloodied fingers around his, and looked at him. He grabbed her and hauled her along, forcing her to keep up with him despite their height, as he has their entire lives, from the moment she toddled into existence and he was taller.

He can trace her in the dark as she zigzags through the bullets and is lit by the odd shell in the sky as they escape into the night. He never lets go of her, making her steps longer when her weight hasn’t completely shifted. She is not alone. He is not alone.

They slip into the night, into chaos, into darkness, and further back into the line. Jack trips when a floodlight opens on them, temporarily blind as Zee hauls him to his feet. Everywhere, everything is chaos. Horns honking on trucks they only see when their lanterns appear from nowhere upon soldiers firing up the ignitions, officers and enlisted men shouting. American rifles being broken out from their boxes, sleeping soldiers on rest, still dreaming as they take distributed weapons. The trenches give way to tents, and tents give way to the depots. Still, Zee pulls him along.

“Where—” Jack asked, panting. “Where the fuck are we going, Zee?”

“Alfred!” She huffed, breathless, like that was obvious. But he had wanted father first and figured she would, too.

“Why?”

“Father will prioritize defending the front line.”

“So?”

“So— Alfred understands defense in depth. Give up the first line easily, then they pay for driving in deep, using the salients for killing zones. The more warning he has, the more of his and ours that man those salients, the more of theirs will die.”

He swallowed. He hated it when she sounded like Dad.

“Like Ypres before Matt took the high ground. Guns on three sides,”

“Exactly,” Zee replied. She had picked up a lantern at some point, and as she raised it, her eyes, always more brown than green, glinted for a moment with father’s thrilled, satisfied cunning. “We make them pay.”

They stumble through the night, guided by the sensations of a nation so like and unlike them. They are flavours of the night jars that encircle the Pacific. They fly; they’re so much larger than their father. Matt, cold and clinging to the top of the world, his back against Alfred, with even more people. Then, Jack was warm and all alone in the Pacific in his early years. But the Tasman Sea is Zee’s hand on his elbow. He loves her so much, and he hates his father, and he hates Matt for making them go and both of them for being right and for being practical. He collapsed into the early morning grass off the road, nearly taking Zee down with him. Soldiers yelled, and more traffic roared in his ears.

“Jack?” Zee tugged him to a stop. “Jack, mate. Hey.”

He couldn’t quite seem to get his breath, and he barely avoided puking all over her as he sprawled to the side and vomited what felt like everything he’d ever eaten since stepping foot in France.

Zee made a sympathetic sort of sound, and he felt her arms around her. It’s his soldiers behind them now. He can feel hers a little, too, on the flanks and Father’s, but his own are fighting, and he is running, and he has killed again. Again. And not for the last time. What’s his count? Can he add those to his count? Matt does. Zee counts hers against the lives she saved, and now she cradles his head, gently taking him by the jaw to make him look at her. Her eyes are hers now, and it’s not her father’s words in her mouth, not his will or his brutal practicality.

“Jack,” she said, and he squeezed her, clamping his arms around her smaller body like he had when he was little, and she was all he had of home in frigid England. “Jack, Christ.”

“I’m sorry,” He said but didn’t let go. She squirmed, not escaping but looking up at him. “I’m sorry,”

“Look at me,” she said, and he finally lifted his eyes to her. “Thirty-six thousand.”

“What?”

“That’s how many you evacuated from ANZAC cove. You. Not father, not me. You and your generals planned and executed that. Your balance is still positive, do you understand me?”

“Kiwi-bird,” He said because he was trying to argue, because she could read his mind sometimes, and he didn’t want her to, not now. He wanted to get up and move again and pretend he’d thrown up his sins with his stomach’s contents. “Don’t.”

“Thirty-six thousand.” She said again.

“Those weren’t directly... that kind of number is different from the ones you put back together on the table, Zee. It’s not the same. It’s not the same and it’s blood and it’s so much blood.”

“Look at me!” She said, this time harsh and sharp. “We do these things together, right? That’s what we said. My balance is your balance. You watch my back, I cover your arse.”

“Where the fuck was that cover when I got shot in the bum at Lone Pine, eh?” Jack shot back out of spite. But then she snorted so hard he thought she might puke, too.

“It’s not my fault it’s so bloody big!” She said. “You got the birthing hips, mate.”

“You are such an arsehole.” He countered, giving his side a rub where it most certainly did not round out into berthing hips. Then he was serious. “You mean it?”

“Heart and soul, dick.” She offered him a hand up, and he let her swing him to his feet. “Your balance is my balance.”

“Except at the commissary.” Jack huffed, unsure why that was the thought that popped into his head. “They won’t let me buy oranges anymore.”

“Correct. I trust you with my life and my immortal soul, but not the money.”

They push through the busy roads of new refugees and even more soldiers towards the pull of their father and the pull of whatever Alfred is, still half a stranger. It takes Zee pulling a “Do you know who my father is?” to some Oxbridge-educated fuck she might have rubbed elbows with in her school years to get them through the guard and into the command tent, and a damn good thing she did or Jack was ready to take out British soldiers like he had German. Arthur and Alfred are together, already half aware, and Father looks relieved, openly so. Not a good sign. Alfred looks bewildered. Less empire than boy startled out of bed. Because he still tends to sleep in one of those, even now. Because he is precious and held in reserve. Zee explains what happened and what needs to happen next. Jack fills in details as they go. His soldiers are the brunt just at that moment, and his heart is banging away in his chest when Alfred rolls around on him, full of piss. Looming because he does have two inches and an empire on Jack.

“You LEFT him?” He demanded, one fist gripping Jack’s collar. “You left Matt? What the fuck is wrong with you!”

“He can get away!” Zee said, trying to wedge herself in between, struggling as much with their father’s grasp as Jack was with Alfred’s. “Matt’s been doing this for years. He’ll be fine! We had bigger things to worry about!”

“Get the fuck off me!” Jack could do nothing about Alfred’s hold. His struggle was useless.

“Like what!” Alfred practically shouted. “What’s more important than making sure Matt gets home in one piece?”

“Like the entire western front, you dumb cunt!” Zee shoves her face up at Alfred’s, willing to argue even if she is a foot shorter.

“Enough!” Arthur slammed his hands down on the map-laden table and tugged Zee away, shoving one arm between Alfred’s chest and Jack’s, curling so he was in front of her. But he couldn’t break the grip Alfred had on Jack’s collar. “Get your hands off your brother, boy!”

“Fuck you!” That was all Alfred had to say to Arthur. Zee was tugging her arm back from their father and freeing herself.

“You left him there!” Alfred rounded on Jack again, closing the distance he already commanded with the grip on his collar.

“You always do this!” Alfred tossed back at Arthur. “You always leave him to do your dirty work. No one watching Matt’s back because why would anyone watch his back! Why would anyone give a shit except about how much killing you need done! Why should anyone watch his back?”

“I was!” Jack was on his toes, the angle of Alfred’s fist the only thing keeping him from using his jacket as a hangman’s rope. He didn’t care. “I was here, watching his back while you were home turning a fucking profit! We were here when it was all for nothing! You only showed up for what? For what? To take credit? Aunt Bridgie always said you were brave, that you were brilliant. She forgot to mention what a bastard you are!

“You shut your mouth. I’m not the one who just abandonded Mattie.”

“Ah, my dear boy, but you did that first.”

One sentence. One sentence, and that’s all it took. Father looked unbothered. Alfred’s hand dropped like he’d been slapped. Jack fell back, and Zee was there, throwing off Dad’s grip and under his arm in a moment. The room was silent. Jack breathed hard. He would have probably swayed if Zee wasn’t so close, half shielding her body from Alfred, half shielding his sanity from the shouting.

“Want another first?” Alfred wasn’t facing them now. This was an argument older than both of them, conducted in shouts muffled from the other end of the house. “I took his head off his shoulders at Yorktown. I shot our dear lord father’s jaw from his fucking skull and his skull from his shoulders and the lobsterbacks surrendered. And then they left. And when the gutters overflowed, you were born.”

Zee’s hand tightened on his, squeezing, squeezing like when the hospital ship she’d been on went down, torpedoed by that kraut bastard, and he’d dragged her corpse off a beach, and the only sign of life she could give him was the vice of her hand on his. I love you. It’s not true. I love you. It’s not true. I love you. It’s not true.

Arthur exhaled a laugh. “Goodness, I read you lot too much Shakespeare. Such a flare for drama, children.”

Alfred’s face twisted. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Who’s us?” Zee countered. Jack wanted to throw up again. “What’s wrong with you? You two are the kraut fuckers, not us!” Father looked almost as shocked as Alfred. “Matt wouldn’t even be out there if someone hadn’t made mess! And it wasn’t us!”

The conversation had meandered, shot right from under them, from under Matt. Fuck.

“All right!” Dad intervened like he’d had the same thought. Hard and sharp like the furious fifties that marked the sea voyage home when Jack was small, he cut through the tension. “As flattered as your brother would be to see you defending what little of his honour he hasn’t left in a brothel, I rather think we should get to the task of finding him first, no? And perhaps, if you lot can manage more than one task at a time with the single wit I seem to have left you to inherit, we could perhaps even turn back what looks to be an entire German offensive that’s just caught us with our cocks out.” He paused and glanced at Zee. “Barring you, dear girl.”

Jack snorted so hard they almost toppled over. Alfred sighed like a martyr. A sigh to make him sound like Matt, if there ever was one, and leaned over the table. “Where’d you put your favourite knife this time, you old bastard?”

“Excuse you,” A note of laughter in a gravelly voice, still half-ruined by gas. “I am Father’s best knife. Only the finest for when the Krauts come for dinner, eh Dad?”

It was a pile-on, everyone rushing to get an arm around him. If Zee was his rock, the rest of them needed fucking mortar to stick together. Jack nearly elbowed Dad in the face as Arthur tried to look at a particularly large blood stain oozing from Matt’s shoulder but had to settle for turning his cheek and looking him in the eye a moment before he and Zee nearly got bowled over entirely by Alfred rocketing through. He practically picked Matt up.

“Let me down, for Christ’s sake.” Matt laughed. “I’ve got Gilbert brains on my shirt, bud, fuck.” But Alfred would do nothing but grip him and shake his head. He might have muttered idiot. Jack didn’t hear. Matt was looking over the Yank’s overly broad shoulders, nodding at them both with a wan sort of smile that said as much of pride as it did blood loss. Zee’s hand was on his shoulder, and he glanced at her.

“You want me to slip some arsenic his coffee?” Zee whispered, not doing half as good a job suppressing her grin as she thought she was. “They burn it so bad. It could be proper strong. Nice and quick like the cholera.” Her sense of humour was morbid like that, even if he wasn’t entirely sure it was humour.

“Naw,” Jack drawled. “Reckon I’d’ve taken it some kind of personal too if someone had left you out for the Krauts.”

He got an affectionate punch in the kidneys and a squeeze for his trouble.

“There’s nothing about you that came from a gutter.” She said, drawn tight to his shoulder. “Not a bloody thing.”

#the ask box || probis pateo #my writing || cacoethes scribendi #jack || a land of summer skies #zee || ahakoa he iti he pounamu #alfred || o beautiful for spacious skies #arthur || stone set in the silver sea

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saturniandevil · 4 months

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2024 Important Dates

AKA my notes on The Astrology Forecast's 2024 Year Ahead Forecast, hosted by Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock. After the overview and January forecast, I'll put the rest of the year under a readmore. Overall, this year heralds technological innovations, and is a stepping stone into bigger developments in 2025 and 2026.

Overview

This year would be dramatic on its own, but with bigger shifts ahead in this decade, serves as a preview for even more dramatic changes in 2025 and 2026.

Pluto in Aquarius We only got about 6 weeks of Pluto in Aquarius in 2023, but this is will it where be for most of 2024 and the next 20 years. We're also getting the last of Uranus in Taurus (7-year transit) and Neptune in Pisces (14-year stay). These outer planets are wrapping up while Pluto starts something new.

Austin predicts Pluto in Aquarius will be a relief to those of us who've been suffering from Pluto in Capricorn. Historically, Chris traces the development of gunpowder, its refinement and transmission from China to Europe with Pluto in Aquarius. Warfare changed with these developments, particularly the strategies of siege. We should expect to see new technologies & applications in warfare now, particularly anti-drone weapons and uses of AI. Near-future science fiction stories from 20 years ago will look incredibly familiar, especially the "cyberpunk dystopia" and man-machine interfaces changing significantly. The first paper shop was set up in Baghdad in 793 under Pluto in Aquarius, and this technology spread around the world under different Pluto in Aquarius periods, with wide-ranging effects on mass communication. Technological espionage is also a theme of this placement--think AI uses, and the US trying to compete with Chinese microchips. This will also form an opposition to natal Pluto for baby boomers (1940s-60s), a transit that rarely occurs within a human lifetime. We'll see the culmination of this generation's power in the world, where figures like Biden or Trump or their contemporaries may have one last bid for power before they have to hand it to someone younger.

Chris actually used AI to help summarize his notes on this transit. With Pluto representing transformation and control, and Aquarius indicating the innovator and the rebel, some general themes are:

Major shifts in how technology shapes society, both empowering people and destructively.

Information warfare and control, especially among governments. Monopolies and censorship attempts will increase.*

Technological leaps. Breakthroughs from both internal research and external sources like cultural exchange or encounters with "that which is foreign/alien."

Science vs ethics: moral dilemmas, tension between curiosity & caution

Globalization on edge: the interconnected world may face challenges, but the exchange of information is crucial to progress. World trade and supply chains spanning the globe will change as countries shift certain sectors to more local production.

*history note: Pluto was in Aquarius during the Renaissance & Scientific Revolution, and the Church tried to censor this new information because it posed a threat to Papal power. Monarchs took state power from the church under Pluto in Aquarius, and the French Revolution under this placement showed the bourgeoisie really challenging the nobility under this placement. Most of the US constitution was written under Pluto in Aquarius--in fact the last Pluto in Aquarius period was during the late 18th century, so prepare for those paradigm shifts & revolutions to shift and revolt once again. New developments in physics and cosmology around dark matter and string theory, increased uses of AI, and new space probes may all prove to shake our ideas of where we stand with the rest of the universe.

Saturn conjunct Neptune Saturn prefers structure & the real world, while Neptune is a realm of imagination and illusions. In 2016 these planets squared each other and the political sound byte "fake news" was important. We no longer trust sound and video in addition to images, especially with advances in AI. Previous Saturn-Neptune contacts include the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the HUAC/McCarthy era in the USA. We'll be asking ourselves, "is this real?" We'll need to balance skepticism with imagination.

Another Saturn-Neptune in Pisces theme is pervasive feelings of despair and collective sorrow over water-related disasters, such as tsunamis or the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The first Saturn-Neptune conjunction of the 20th century was 1916-1919: disillusionment, skepticism, muddy trench warfare and chemical weapons. More positively, empathy, compassion, and service can come from those who fight for a better world despite hardships. However, Neptune will conjoin Saturn in Aries as well, which will have a much less compassionate flavor. This upcoming Pisces conjunction occurs right as Neptune is leaving the sign--which Piscean developments will get the Saturn stamp of approval and last beyond this decade? Neptune in Pisces has brought us an increased interest in the occult matters and psychedelics, ranging from tarot and astrology to modern cults to therapeutic uses of hallucinogens. Some of the skepticism we see will be the result of having been burned by Pisces Neptune events. Another related topic is augmented reality displays--Austin predicts that since it's been around for so long, if it doesn't take during Neptune & Saturn in Pisces, it probably won't take at all.

Jupiter conjunct Uranus in Taurus This conjunction goes exact in April. In the material sign of Taurus, what sudden developments (Uranus) is Jupiter enabling? In one such application, AI technologies can help advance the field of materials science by designing new compounds & predicting their uses. There are a lot of technological developments bottlenecked by a single limitation, such as limited battery capacity, which if resolved would prompt an explosion of impressive new technologies. Quantum developments, Heisenberg's additions, different political revolutions, the sexual revolution & the Moon landing were under Jupiter-Uranus alignments, as were some of the earliest biology works in the Renaissance era. April will breakthroughs getting supported and confirmed. These come about every 13 years: in 2010 in Aries, 1990s in Aquarius. In 1941 we saw scientific breakthroughs as well, though Saturn's presence fittingly brought a much darker tone. Which house is Taurus in your chart? This transit can bring sudden insight & broaden your horizons in this area (A/N: timing techniques like progressions, Hellenistic profections, and zodiacal release can help you determine if Taurus will be especially "activated" for you around this time).

On the flipside, take care not to indulge in excessive naivete, uncritical embrace of rule-breaking in the name of progress, or getting caught up in fleeting euphoria. Once Uranus leaves, what will stay? What gets truly confirmed by Jupiter? Austin predicts major developments in cryptocurrency, which was not invented under Uranus in Taurus but did rise to prominence under this transit. Taurus also tells us to appreciate the material comforts, and this conjunction may show us a new approach to appreciating these things (like an AI snuggy that helps you sleep!). The potato chip and chocolate-chip cookie were also invented during Uranus in Taurus. More niche items have become more widely available (lab-grown meat, perhaps?), though food and energies has also become disproportionately more expensive/volatile during this transit. Taurus also signifies nature, botany, and ecology--we may see major developments in response to climate change. This is the last year of Uranus in Taurus--perhaps the cottagecore trend will have its last blows. Uranus in Gemini (A/N: 2025) will have us going back into the mainframe...(organic computers?)

Jupiter in Gemini This transit will be about a year long. Immediately upon entry to this sign Jupiter will trine Pluto, and later in the year he'll square Saturn. This will be a big shift, not just by sign, but because Jupiter goes from cooperating with Saturn to fighting him. Light-footed, fast, clever Gemini Jupiter clashes with deep, slow, heavy Pisces Saturn. Their sextile in January/February indicates the economy will likely seem to move in a good direction as the year begins, but the leviathan in the deep will stop us short.

Notable figures born under Jupiter in Gemini & Saturn in Pisces include Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, bringing us new communications systems. Bell developed the telephone partially as part of efforts to help his mother and other deaf people, while Edison himself had major hearing issues and focused on visual phenomena. However, we have ethics questions too: Bell had issues patenting the telephone as the same day as another inventor--who got there first? (A/N: many of Edison's patents were invented by others with property rights surrendered to him.) Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails also has these placements, and he's gone from applying electronic music in rock to films in recent decades. Also born under Pisces Saturn & Gemini Jupiter: Moby, Björk, Alfred Pulitzer (known for pioneering both human interest stories and sensationalism).

Other Jupiter in Gemini keywords: speaking many languages, verbosity, versatility & adptability, self-education, many short experiments, and having a knack for or good luck in new machines. However, Jupiter is considered in exile/detriment in Gemini: this light sign may interfere with Jupiter's desire for deeper understanding. The first decan of Gemini is ruled by Jupiter, and the bound of Jupiter is early in the sign as well, (and Jupiter is a triplicity ruler for Gemini!) so we can actually have quite a strong Jupiter in the beginning of this transit. Pluto in Aquarius trines Jupiter at the start of this transit, and Jupiter will gladly go to work for Pluto's agenda. Expect major technology & information related developments in April-May. This also foreshadows Uranus's entry into Gemini, where he'll trine Pluto thrice.

During this time, all the planets in Gemini are also combust (so close to the Sun we can't see them, figuratively getting burned), so beware of burnout. Another Jupiter in Gemini native is Lana Wachowski (one of the creators of The Matrix). Her coming out story also inspired many, and Jupiter in Gemini is a good place for variety in gender expression. Unfortunately, concepts from her movie were also coopted by right-wingers ("redpilled"). Also under this placement is JK Rowling, initially known for writing increasingly verbose fantasy books, though in recent years has focused her resources on stopping the advancement of trans rights. Jupiter in Gemini is fast, but not always ethical.

Eclipses

In April we'll have an eclipse that's visible over much of the United States from Texas to Maine, occurring on an election year. In the Indian dasha system, the US entered a Rahu (North Node)-ruled time period 8 years ago, making it especially sensitive to eclipses. There won't be another total eclipse visible in the US until 2045, marking momentous changes. This is also a continuation of the Libra/Aries eclipse story, most recently from the Libra eclipse in October. In both our personal lives and world events we'll see a turning point in the spring. The eclipses this year are in March-April, and September-October (remember, eclipses always come in twos--one lunar, one solar!). The March/April eclipses will be especially chaotic with Mars-Saturn and Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions affecting the equinox. The fall eclipses will begin shifting towards the Pisces/Virgo axis, and the major renewals will shift focus from one area of our lives to another (check which house(s) contain these signs for you).

Comets 2024 will have two comets that may be visible to the naked eye--both during eclipses! The Pons-Brooks comet will be visible in April around the time of the Aries eclipse (and Jupiter-Uranus & Mars-Saturn conjunctions). This indicates a very important time in world history. The comet, which may become visible as the sky darkens, will pass right by the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. Chris's ancient sources say whether a comet is a good or bad omen depends on its color, brightness, and visibility once it gets here, but he's hopeful its contact with Jupiter-Uranus will be helpful to us. Austin points out it'll be difficult to distinguish the comet's specific effects from everything else going on at that time. The second comet visits us in October, right before eclipses and the US presidential election. "Hopefully we won't get the Game of Thrones Season 2/War of Five Kings comet," says Austin. Chris is going to publish an episode soon analyzing both ancient sources & doing his own historical research on comets, which have connections to wars, regime changes, and religious or political leaders being born.

Mars Austin points out that there will be consistent stelliums in the first half of the year (visible around the eclipses) before returning to more regular dispersal. Mars is also going to make volatile contacts to outer planets as well, really bringing military connotations, mostly earlier in the year and then picking up again at the end of the year with an opposition to Pluto & a retrograde. In fact, Mars enters Leo, the sign of his upcoming retrograde, 2 days before the US presidential election.

US history & election: Mars goes retrograde in the same sign every 79 years, shifting by about 4 degrees every time. Mars did this same retrograde back in the late 1700s when US states were ratifying the Constitution (Pluto was in Aquarius then like it will be in '24, and some other transits are the same as well). The next recurrence was during the passing of the 14th amendment after the Civil War, an amendment forbidding anyone who led an insurrection from entering office. Most recently Mars retrograded in this cycle in 1945-6, during the end of WW2 and stationing just before the birth of a certain controversial recent president. This upcoming Mars retrograde will occur in the same part of the zodiac as these other events.

Chris usually shies away from predicting election results outright because he considers himself too invested to be objective, but he gives us a rundown. Like 2016 this election occurs under a Saturn-Neptune conjunction, foreshadowing the us of AI in political propaganda. If it does end up being Biden vs Trump, Chris says as of now there are indicators for either side winning. For the past 30 years, every presidential election winner has had an eclipse in one of his angular houses (1/4/7/10) shortly before winning. The Aries/Libra eclipses don't fall in angular houses for either, but the Pisces eclipse in September occurs in Biden's 4th house, and the 10th of his running mate Kamala. In Trump's favor is zodiacal releasing: he's starting a 19-year peak period releasing from spirit (career/aspirations) in 2025 just after the election. (This is one of the things that threw Chris off in the 2016 election, since a president elected for 2 consecutive terms then wouldn't be in office anymore in 2025.) This peak period activates the sign of Leo for him, the first house, and contains his natal Mars, bringing fighting and difficulty to the foreground. (A/N: Mars is also entering Leo around the time of the election, so whether he wins or not, we'll be seeing a lot of him.) That's a basic overview, and Chris will discuss other factors as the year progresses. Austin points out we have a perfect Mars-Pluto opposition the day before the election, and Mars stations in Leo right as the electors meet to officially vote. This election is heavily tied to the Mars retrograde, which continues until a few months into 2025. Pluto will take Mars's significations to bigger extremes as well as hidden power plays. Taking place January 20th at noon, Inauguration Day always takes place at the beginning of Aquarius season with the Sun in the 10th house, but Pluto's going to conjoin the Sun as well this year, which Chris predicts will start a new era of American history. Two of the debates fall on eclipse days, and Chris predicts these will have a dramatic effect on the election. Regardless of specific candidates, we know the US is entering a crucial phase of its history with Uranus entering Gemini (same placement as the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and entering WW2). Austin wonders if the Saturn-Neptune conjunction will delay the rise of historic leadership, as his research so far proved inconclusive.

Month-by-month

January

Mercury stations direct immediately, helping us start things off definitively. Mars in Capricorn colors most of the month. He's very strong & effective in this sign, further supported by a trine from Jupiter in Taurus. With Venus and Mercury copresent Mars in Capricorn, we have an opportunity to practice living how we'd like to before things get crazy. The clichés of "starting your the year off right" are worth following this time around. A Jupiter-Saturn sextile in the first six weeks of the year further supports our efforts to get organized. Take advantage of Jupiter in Taurus to make the growth and expansion you seek permanent. We'll need a set pattern to weather the upcoming storms.

Chris and Leisa's auspicious election for the month is on January 12th, 2023 at 8AM local time with Aquarius rising. This means the Ascendant ruler Saturn receives a helpful sextile from Jupiter (orb of 5 degrees).

After a conjunction with the Sun and the light's ingress into Aquarius, Pluto re-enters that same sign on the 20th, anchoring what's most interesting about February. Chris points out it's exactly one year from the US presidential inauguration and will be an interesting omen.

February

February has a pileup of planets in Aquarius. From the 5th to the 16th, Mercury, Mars, and Venus all conjoin Pluto. This rapid succession of initial conjunctions will start to show us what this new Pluto era will look like for each of the faster planets. We go from having 4-5 planets in Capricorn to having 4-5 in Aquarius through this first half of the year. What does overwhelming weight in these signs look like for you? The Mars-Pluto conjunction on the 14th will be pretty dramatic. This connotes the use of excessive force, and generally will likely show us what kinds of dangers to expect from Pluto in Aquarius. The Venus-Mars conjunction at nearby degrees will connote future relationship patterns.

March

This month marks the beginning of eclipse season as well as a pileup of planets in Pisces. After the equinox, we have an eclipse, making the spring very dramatic. Mars sneaks up to a conjunction with Saturn, who rules the April Libra eclipse, and all the while Mercury is retrograde. We have multiple indicators of major world events here, which Chris compares to early 2020. And if that wasn't enough, we've got a comet! The lunar eclipse in Libra heralds back to its sister eclipse in early October.

April

The Mars-Saturn conjunction will punctuate difficulties of Saturn's transit--the last Mars-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius aligned with the intensifying lockdowns in March-April of 2020. This time the conjunction is in a water sign, so think naval warfare or threats from aquatic creatures. January was a good time to plan; this is not. We'll be adapting to rapid changes and doing what needs to be done. The Aries eclipse will be visible over much of the US, bringing major developments to the nation. Once we get out of eclipse season, we'll have to deal with the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction going exact on the 19th. Chris hopes that this will divide the month in half, from chaotic early on to more hopeful in the second half, especially as Mercury stations direct. Austin is less optimistic, as we'll have Jupiter, Uranus, and Venus all in Taurus. At the end of the month, Mars enters Aries and joins Rahu there, igniting the very point that was just activated by a total eclipse. Regardless, the pace of technology and communications will explode during this month and May.

May

Once Jupiter enters Gemini, lots of other planets follow him to that sign. This has strong implications for the advancements for communications. Austin says the Taurus developments in the early month indicate financial developments before the technological ones. All the planets in Taurus are looking to its ruler Venus for support, but she's combust (close to the Sun & invisible), so we'll feel something missing from our material comforts.

June

The Jupiter-Pluto trine is twofold: Jupiter expands Pluto's Aquarian pursuits, while Pluto exponentially magnifies Jupiter's expansion of communications in Gemini. We get a Sun-Venus cazimi in Gemini, resetting her cycle, with Mercury a few weeks after. Some of the Jupiter-Uranus discoveries and inventions may not be visible until later, as the Gemini planets themselves are invisible & passing through the Sun during these few months. There's a spaceship with recreational implications set to be launched next spring, fitting with the expansion of leisure that Jupiter in Taurus connotes. Mars entering Taurus on the 9th will mellow out for awhile after such intense movements. Saturn's retrograde station in Pisces brings him as close to Neptune as he's gonna get this year.

July

Saturn & Neptune stationing in Pisces blur the lines between what's real and what's not, what's true and what's false... An exlposive, unexpected Mars-Uranus conjunction occurs on the 15th. Furthermore, it's on top of the star Algol, a very ugly configuration that has historically coincided with devastating warfare and weapons. This isn't the tone for all of Mars in Taurus, but it's something to try and steer around if possible. Mars in Gemini brings us to August.

August

Mercury stations retrograde on the 5th, backtracking through both Virgo and Leo. This year Mercury retrogrades occur mainly in fire signs:

Mars in Gemini puts him in contact with Jupiter right as the benefic is squaring Saturn in Pisces; the smaller planet will likely exacerbate these issues. Excessive heat and speed clash against excessive cold and slowness. This is a real slowdown for Jupiter's fun and social trip through Gemini. Mercury stations direct by the end of the month, taking us into September.

September

By this point the planets have stopped moving in a giant pack, spacing out the energies a little. Pluto retrogrades back into Capricorn for the very last time this month; when he enters Aquarius at the end of this year he'll stay there for the next 20 years. Uranus gets as late into Taurus as he's gonna get this year before stationing retrograde as well, trining Pluto within 2 degrees of exactness. Chris charts these planetary contacts over the past few decades:

Uranus conjunct Pluto in the late 1960s saw major social changes as well as the first computer mouse. A sextile in the mid-1990s heralded the emergence of the Internet as we know it. In the early 2010s, smartphones became more and more ubiquitous, and now we're entering the next phase of new widely used technologies. The 2010s also saw revolutionary movements like the Arab Spring, and similar political developments will be foreshadowed around this time.

Mars enters Cancer, the sign where he'll retrograde. It's not very comfortable, but we'll have to get used to it all the same. Notable degrees are the retrograde beginning at 6Leo10 and ending at 17Cancer01:

We also get the first hit of the Pisces eclipse series this month. Though its companion eclipse is back in Libra, the September eclipse is foreshadowing for 2025-6.

October

The height of election season in the US coincides with the height of eclipse season celestially. We'll likely see prominent figures suddenly sink to the bottom or rise to the top around this time--jumping way ahead or falling way behind. Mars enters the shadow of his upcoming retrograde days after the eclipse. It's already hard to see clearly, and the eclipse supercharges all this. The Libra eclipse on the 2nd is the final of its series, wrapping up whatever was initiated in October 2023 (i.e. a new chapter in certain Middle Eastern conflicts). The first lunation free of an eclipse provides no relief, with the Full Moon tightly squaring Mars (♋) and Pluto (♑). This forms a difficult cardinal grand cross with the Sun, Moon, Mars and Pluto. Power plays, manipulation and intrigue abound.

November

Mars enters Leo, the sign of its retrograde, on the 3rd. Although he's in his pre-retrograde shadow period earlier, this ingress will bring it dramatically forward. He opposes Pluto, who's been stationing since mid-October, bringing paranoia, power struggles/plays, obsession & confrontation, and hidden motives or manipulation from behind the scenes. In opposite signs we'll see tension in opposite approaches to things, such as direct power versus hidden agendas, excessive force and even extermination. Mars only needs to win the battle, but Pluto blows things out of proportion. His station on December 6th is notable. The last Mars retrograde in Cancer was in 2007-2008, so look to this time in your life for an idea of what will happen. We can also look to the Mars retrograde in Leo 15 years ago (12/20/2009-3/10/2010). (This retrograde is mostly in Cancer, but stations in Leo). 2 days after Mars enters Leo is election day in the US (Nov. 5th), shining a light on all the controversies.

Venus is way ahead of everyone in Capricorn, while Pluto reenters Aquarius for good (the next 20 years). Mercury also stations retrograde at the end of the month, bringing us to December.

December

Mars stations retrograde right after Mercury's own halfway point through the retrograde, bringing miscommunications into Martial clashes, conflicts, and severing/separation. It's during the height of his retrograde that Mars is at his closest to Earth and is at his brightest for the longest (basically all night every night).

Mars retrograde shows us that no battle plan survives first contact. Excessive heat or conflict will linger for much longer than you expect. Mercury stations direct under a Full Moon on the 15th, and Jupiter squares Saturn exactly on the 24th. Our questions about growth versus boundaries will come back into focus. Meanwhile the rest of Mars retrograde awaits us in 2025, continuing a smoldering conflict into the next year.

#astrology #transits #2024 #forecast #the astrology podcast #pluto in aquarius #saturn conjunct neptune #aries eclipse #libra eclipse #pisces eclipse #mars in leo #mars retrograde #mercury retrograde #mundane astrology

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douqi7s · 4 months

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Baihe novels I read in 2023, in order of when I read them:

Miss Forensics by Jiu Nuan Chun Shen. Contemporary thriller featuring a push-pull romance between a forensic pathologist and a police detective. Big action scenes, big emotional set-pieces, big emotions.

Distance by Mi Nao Nao. Contemporary romance billed as 'woman who has broken a thousand hearts vs woman who has never lost her heart'. I found it underwritten and lacking in structure, but lots of people seem to like it.

The Collapsing Palace by Ming Ye. Historical palace harem novel. A wilful noblewoman marries her cousin, the crown prince, so she can get close to his mother/her aunt the empress, whom she's been crushing on since forever. And she's not even the most toxic / messed up main character in this novel.

Life is Like a Dream by Qing Xiang. A short novel set in the Yue opera scene during the Republican Era. Small-scale, elegantly understated, makes highly effective of use of the author's detailed knowledge of opera and the opera scene.

Suffocation by Hua Qiong Ran. One of those 'toxic lesbians' contemporary thrillers, featuring the protagonist being repeatedly stalked and imprisoned by her own wife. Amped up the depravity too quickly to be wholly effective.

Zebra Crossing by Yi Bai Shou. Early baihe novel featuring a romance between a CEO and police detective, a mixture of thriller and romance. Strong beginning with appealing characters, somewhat let down by meandering middle and end and odd approach to extras.

She Belongs to Me by Da Ying. An uncomplicated contemporary romance between two femme professional women who are excellent communicators. Does make effective use of several k-drama style romantic set-pieces.

Bo Zhou by Ruo Hua Ci Shu. Time loop contemporary romance in which the protagonist tries to safe her girlfriend's life again and again. Overall competently plotted, well-paced and genuinely suspenseful.

The Tribulation of the Peach Runaway Blossom by Ning Yuan. A solid xianxia/xuanhuan novel with a big cast of complex female characters, competent world-building and assured prose. Somewhat falls down on the main romance (though the secondary romances make up for that a little), which was at once the lynchpin of the plot and not particularly present on the page.

The Abandoned by Mu Feng Qing Nian. Three words: sapphic xianxia shizunfuckery. Horny unhinged lesbians, plot twists on top of plot twists, and much violence.

Her Mountain, Her Sea by Fu Hua. A contemporary high school romance. Very solid, competent slice-of-life for the most part. The leads are well-characterised and their growing relationship is deftly handled, especially in the early stages.

The Creator's Grace by Ning Yuan. A near future sci-fi thriller. 12/10, no notes (though the sci-fi element is subordinate to the romance and thriller elements).

Minister Xie by Ruo Hua Ci Shu. This historical novel is The Goblin Emperor meets Sha Po Lang. Teenage emperor Liu Zao does her best to turn her prime minister Xie Yi (who is 14 years older) into her wife.

Snow on Her Pillow by Liu Yuan Chang Ning. Historical fiction featuring a romance between Princess Jieyou and her devoted attendant Feng Liao (described as the first official female diplomat in Chinese history). Competently and compellingly written; manages the Feat of treating Central Asian characters (of which there are many) as regular, undemonised people.

Spring on the River by Da Ying. This xuanhuan novel features supernatural women behaving very very badly, weird structure and pacing, and a rather hapless main character who frequently reminded me of a protagonist in a shoujo reverse harem novel.

Listen, God by Xian Yu Bu Chi Cai. A contemporary time loop thriller featuring a romance between a scriptwriter and an up-and-coming actress. Mostly carefully and cleverly plotted (though starts to unravel in the last 20%), though the relationship development between the leads left me cold.

A Taste of You by Si Bai Ba Shi Si. A contemporary romance between a talented chef and a CEO. A grounded, realist novel told through a charmingly wry first-person POV (bar a sharp swerve into melodrama in the last 10%), deeply embedded in the local lesbian scene.

Snow in the Spring Courtyard by Liu Yuan Chang Ning. This wuxia novel had good relationship development, a compelling love interest, and excellent pacing, and is likely to appeal to readers for those reasons. For me personally, it was let down by an extraordinarily bleak view of the jianghu which I don't think the author was fully aware of.

I Think About You Day and Night by Yu Shuang. In this contemporary romance, a CEO rescues a penniless girl from an abusive household, and k-drama-style shenanigans ensue. There's terminal illness, birth secrets, an incest scare (dw they're not actually related), and corporate machinations. The author's commitment to these tropes and their emotional stakes makes this an enjoyably dramatic read.

Cover Her Face by Qing Tang Shuan Xiang Cai. A mostly breezy, mostly fluffy, and unexpectedly sexy historical romance plus a dash of wuxia, with likable main characters.

Waiting for You by Min Ran. A contemporary showbiz romance, basically an exes-to-reunited-lovers story courtesy of a handy rebirth and time rewind. Another one for the 'attractive femme couple resolves their relationship problems through Better Communication' folder.

Climbing High by Po Po Po. In this historical court intrigue novel, aspiring scholar Fang Jian sells herself into indentured servitude to court official Gao Yunqu in exchange for the latter's promise to help her free her parents from unjust imprisonment. Published on PO18, so allowed to be sexually explicit in ways JJWXC and Changpei novels can't be, and the author makes full use of this (though I found the sex scenes between the tertiary couples stronger than those between the main couple, for the most part). Very strong political writing, a great cast of complex female characters.

#baihe #chinese gl #wlw

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