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73chn1c0l0rr3v3l · 5 months

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if you're willing to share, i'd love to hear your thoughts on adoption/found family/people being weird about it. the way things ended up in that episode felt kind of off to me and i'm still trying to put my finger on why.

I'm writing this with a headache, so please forgive if it is a bit meandering.

I'm also going to state up front I am not talking about the adoption industry & all of the shitty stuff involved in that - I'm talking about my own experiences as an adoptee.

First things first: people are Weird about adoption. There's this assumption that people are default genetically related to their family unless stated otherwise, there's the assumption that people will want to be connected to their blood family, there's this assumption that biological family is always the best answer. I think a lot of people have a lot of default assumptions about what family IS & what it means, & they get uncomfortable if you question them.

There are 2 adoption narratives - either your adopted family is horrible & you find your biological family & stuff is Better, or you leave your horrible biological family to get adopted into a family that is Better. There's nothing for "i won't ever have access to the biological family, & I don't entirely relate to my adopted family either," or "my biological family loves me but I can't be in their lives because our values are too different but I don't actually like my adopted family but they're who I grew up with" or even the very succinct "they both suck, okay?" There's a huge variety of experience, & I feel like a lot of the nuance gets lost on people who don't relate for whatever reason.

It's one reason the Timeless Child resonated with me so hard? Because yeah, sometimes you don't know who you might have been & you mourn it, but you can't be anyone but the society that raised you. On a more personal level... well, Tecteun very intensely reminded me of my mother, & I was rewatching Flux (including That part) the night she died & uh... certain parts of that sure were familiar.

It's really frustrating as someone who is currently sorting through some VERY complicated family feelings - my mother (my actual mother, the mother who raised me) died in September. My father - the man I grew up with - died in 2012. I haven't heard from most of my family since then - I didn't hear from most of my family when my mother was dying, which happened over months. I haven't heard from my father's family in more than a decade at this point. They were not there when I was suffering as a kid, they were not there when I needed support as a teenager, they were not there when I was coming into myself as a young adult. Family to me isn't a thing that you WANT, because what's the point of it? I understand it's a different thing for other people, but these things are never one size fits all, & I resent them being treated as such.

If you came up to me & said "you can travel with the Doctor through time & space & you get a SPACE DAD or a SPACE MOM" I would run very fast in the other direction. I've got parents. Depending on how you look at it, I've got more than the usual set that most folks have. I don't want a replacement or an additional parent - I want to grieve the ones I have, untangle the feelings I've got about them. I want people in my life who care about me, who I care about - friends, lovers, mentors, partners, & all those other relationships that you don't have names for. I like it when things don't slot into place neatly.

Which leads me to my issues with found family as a trope. My main issue with it is that it treats the whole thing as very... one size fits all. That everyone *wants* to be part of a family with a mom & a dad & a grandmother & kids. Versus wanting to be in a polycule, wanting to be in a friend group, wanting to be part of a community. I feel like with the ending of the Giggle, it was slotting the Doctor (& Mel) in the parts of a traditional family - they're the aunt & the uncle now! Not blood related, but still having a designated Place. Which possibly ties in to people being weird about adoption, since merely being Not Blood Related somehow makes it different.

I am, admittedly, also allergic to labels. My only label irt my sexuality is queer, I do not have a gender, I have stepped off the various spectrums & am just... me. What I like about the Doctor & their relationships is that most of the time they're in that same grey area? Is the Doctor Sarah Jane's lover? Her best friend? Her avuncular old uncle figure? Her mentor? They all apply to varying degrees, but they're all also valid, & I love that.

I could also talk about my SPECIFIC issues with how it was done in the giggle, but most of that comes down to taste, & we all know that varies from person to person to a much greater degree.

I am also not telling off people who do like found family & those dynamics- I'm really glad there's so much space for so many interpretations! I'm really glad there are so many different enjoyments to be had!

... I'm not sure if all of this entirely made sense, but thank you for letting me ramble a bit.

#doctor who #i didn't realize i had so much to say #spoilers #thanks nonnie

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storytime-reviews · 1 year

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Never Ever Getting Back Together Book Review

Eighteen-year-old Maya dumped her cheating ex-boyfriend Jordy two years ago. So, when she receives a call to participate in Second Chance Romance - a reality show in which the now-famous Jordy re-dates his ex-girlfriends - she isn't interested . . . until she realizes she can use this opportunity to exact her revenge. If she can make it to the final spot on the show, she can reject Jordy in front of the nation, and publicly break his heart. Maya's fellow contestants include Skye, the beautiful, charismatic girl Jordy cheated on Maya with. But as she spends more time with Jordy and Skye, Maya is torn. Is there more than friendship between her and Skye? As the season finale approaches, can Maya execute her plan, or will she go off-script?

Rating: ★★★★

I absolutely loved this premise and just had to buy it. It’s exactly the kind of drama I always want to happen when I watch The Bachelor, and a much less intense version of what I love in UnREAL. Most of the way through, Never Ever Getting Back Together is an incredibly engaging read, absolutely full of drama and interesting characters. I also love that it’s full of both rage and humour, and Gonzales navigates the combination perfectly.

This book wouldn’t work if the reader doesn’t feel connected to both of the main characters, Maya and Skye; luckily Gonzales makes it work through the use of different character perspectives. However, as much as I loved Maya immediately, initially I found Skye to be incredibly annoying and frustrating. Perhaps this was due to the fact that Maya’s perspective is more prominent towards the beginning, and Skye has already been manipulated into disbelieving her. But as the storyline continues, I came to like Skye as well...just not as much as Maya. Near the novel’s end, I also found Skye start to become more irritating again based on some of her choices and comments she makes to Maya. But again, maybe it’s because I felt more connected to Maya and her path of revenge and refusal to let anything, or anyone, get in her way.

Jordy is absolutely the perfect villain – you cannot help but hate him and enjoy the ride as his life and the facade he has created begins to fall apart because of the ways in which he has treated these women. He’s completely misogynistic and emotionally abusive, and gaslights all of the women as he tries to influence them. It’s evident from the beginning that he is playing all of them, but when the women start to realise he’s been saying the same things to all of them the story really starts to heat up. I love when a narrative focuses on women uniting together against a man who has treated them all badly and they take him down together, and Never Ever Getting Back Together ticks all those boxes.

Always my favourite aspects of these kinds of books are the friendships that develop between women when they realise they are not each other’s enemies just because a man has been manipulating them to believe that. The cherry on top is of course the relationship that develops between Maya and Skye, particularly due to the two of them being heavily pitted against each other from the beginning.

However, as much as I enjoyed the journey, the ending just didn’t quite hit the right spot for me. I guess I just wanted a bit more drama, and whilst the viral campaign at the very end fixed it a little, I guess it just didn’t quite deliver on my expectations.

Warnings: cheating, emotional abuse, sexism & misogyny

#booklr #never ever getting back together #sophie gonzales #tbrbusterchallenge2023 #bookbanditchallenge #reading #books #book review

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littlethingwithfeathers · 9 months

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For the writers ask: 4 and 7, please?

Where do you find inspiration for new ideas? Oh god everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. I'm serious. There is no one specific place, or even like... something I do to search for ideas. There's just a sort of garden that I go pull things out of or dig surprises out of because I'm just always consuming new things. Not just #media but like... art, poetry, articles... whatever. I firmly believe that part of a healthy brain diet for a writer of any stripe, fic or otherwise, is just... ideas. From everywhere. All kinds of things from all kinds of places, points of view, and kinds of media. Because at least for me, it's absolutely NEVER just one place. Especially for my most complex fics. It's never just the source material. It's a bunch of ideas that suddenly connect like little neurons and make this rich web of MORE IDEAS! I'll give a couple examples... My Chernobyl fic "Intercalation" came from a few places. I have always had a soft spot for triptychs of characters... So that was my draw, especially since at the end of the show they were separated. Then around the same time, I was playing the game "Cultist Simulator" which is this weird little card-based game about building a cult, assimilating a bunch of power and knowledge, and using a rite to ascend to divinity. My favorite rite is "The Rite Intercalate" which basically mimics a cataclysm where the sun was riven into pieces... so you basically assemble a bunch of power sources, and then light them on fire to launch yourself by brute force into the divine. AND MEANWHILE... I'm geeking out about this show to my friend who is a nuclear physicist (Hi @cactusowl) and he's teaching me about a lot of the concepts in the show and I'm finding all these neat narrative symbolism moments in all the science... so I ended up with this really neat narrative that had a lot of depth and detail and symbolism. Ionization... splitting atoms... dying stars... All because I was pulling from a bunch of disparate sources. I could have never come up with all that on my own. The other example that leaps to mind is my fic "Girl in the Garden." from my Steve/Nat/Bucky MCU fic series. Obviously, I was VERY highly motivated by Endgame, but I also found myself thinking of a lot of ideas that felt similar to Natasha's decision. Hamilton was still riding high on the zeitgeist, so the line/lyric "Legacy, what is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see." was ringing in my head. And that in turn led me down the "garden" line of thinking... Lots of garden metaphors out there with all sorts of symbolism and nuance. I pulled from a lot of places including old poetry that I read in college. A lot of that plot was directly led by the poetry and lyrics at the start of those chapters, especially the music of S J Tucker, who also made an appearance in other fics in that series. (Highly recommend her btw) So... yeah. Everywhere. Inspiration and ideas come from everywhere, and unexpected places most often. I think for any artist, but especially for writers, it's highly beneficial to hoard little bits of inspiration. Anything that makes you feel something, strikes you as important, or just makes your brain feel fizzy, save it. You'll find a use for it at some point. You'll use it as the flint on the tinder of another idea and you'll end up with a bonfire on your hands. How do you choose which POV to write from?

It usually just happens rather than being a conscious choice. But I gravitate to the character with the most inner turmoil, or who has a big decision to make, because that's what is interesting to me usually. Sometimes in longer fics, I like to bounce to a secondary point of view at some point just to give some grounding and reality to the other character... to either show that they're missing something, or assuming wrongly, etc. But usually... it's just a matter of what's interesting to me about the story and who has the most interesting arc about it. Thank you so much for the questions lovely! I'm always down to blather about my writing. <3

#fanfic #writing #fanfic asks #writing advice

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mister-brightside · 2 years

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I finally, FINALLY finished season one of the sandman tv series and speaking as a fan of the comics I loved it so much. my long and winding thoughts (with minor spoilers) under the cut.

it was really refreshing to have so much trust in the creators. by the last few episodes I’d be like, I can’t wait for them to get to this scene, and then the scene happened, and it would be so good and so spicy.

for ages literally every comics fan (myself included) was saying that a good and faithful adaptation would be impossible. I was actually fully prepared to pass over the tv series cause there was no way they could pull it off, right? thank god some reviewer on reddit changed my mind, because I’m so delighted to be proven wrong for once. it’s honestly crazy impressive how well they took all these disjointed narratives and somehow made them tonally consistent but still kept the edges. I thought maybe they’d skip the more out of line stories, like the one with the cats or the massacre in the diner, but they really went there. in fact I reread some of the comics after the episodes and I was really surprised to find that they lifted quite a bit of dialogue word for word.

(I love how hob gadling’s story was basically retold verbatim EXCEPT they went out of their way to make the breakup a million times more angsty)

there were so many throwbacks and visual references to the comics which were really lovely and never felt forced. and speaking of visuals, the show is as good as you’re gonna get for a production this size. I was worried it was gonna be a CGI mess and, well, it does veer on that edge at times, but most of the cinematography and effects are truly gorgeous and in the end it’s the actors who keep me connected to the heart of the story.

when I first saw photos of morpheus I was like what the hell? they’re just making him look like Some Guy? but my god tom sturridge knocks it out of the park. he’s absolutely perfect. he sold me immediately. someone else said that when he’s imprisoned in the glass cage he moves almost like a creature and they’re dead on. he does a spectacular job of convincing me he’s not human.

so in the end I think the decision to humanise morpheus’s appearance was absolutely the right one. I always found his character in the comics to be a bit distant because yeah, at times he can be arrogant and self-righteous and somewhat terrifying since he’s so unreadable. and that doesn’t change in the transition to the screen but having tom as he is (with those sad, sad, pathetic, emo eyes) softens his edges a little, you know? he makes you feel for him a bit more.

and I’ve said this before but it’s like. I never really pictured a specific voice when reading the comics, but all of morpheus’s dialogue comes in these special black speech bubbles so you know he’s Different. and as soon as tom’s voiceover began in episode one it felt Right. almost like it had been buried in my subconscious for all these years. insane.

(I kind of want to watch more of tom’s roles but I literally can’t imagine him as anyone other than dream of the endless, like I’m afraid to even google him because it would probably break my brain to see him behaving like a normal human person)

the rest of the cast is fantastic as well. the highlights for me: gwendoline christie as lucifer – chef’s kiss. kirby baptiste-howell as death – for real though, if I met her when I died, I wouldn’t feel too bad about it. david thewlis adds a layer of nuance to john dee that somehow makes him quite sympathetic despite the complete lunacy. vanesu samunyai is very cute and likeable as rose and I hope the show sticks around long enough for her to make her return. likewise, lily travers is really sweet as barbie and I think she’d be a really good lead if her storyline ever comes around.

okay, time for the nitpicking. I do wish they’d cast someone older as lucien, he always had this exhausted ‘no one helps me in this house’ vibe that I just don’t get from vivienne acheampong. and I think boyd holbrook needed to be a little more maniacal as the corinthian. oh well, it’s not like we can have everything. and both actors do a great job as they are so I’m not gonna whine too much.

(if this was 2014 tumblr I probably would be seeing extremely, uh, controversial takes on the corinthian but I haven’t come across any yet thank god)

I’m really hoping the show gets more seasons because it’s doing a wonderful job of bringing all the stories to life. I hope enough casual viewers stick around because I know the lack of narrative structure will throw a lot of people off. in the comics, some characters turn up once and never again, some wander in and out, others leave the story only to show up again several volumes later. some stories last for only a chapter and others go on for ages. and the genre swings from urban fantasy to historical fiction to horror to straight up batshit insanity and everything in between.

but in the end that’s what makes the sandman one of my favourite comics ever. every time I read it I feel like I’ve experienced a big fever dream. and like a dream it promptly fades until I literally forget why I love it so much. then I reread it again and I’m like, oh yeah, that’s why.

so I don’t know how to say it better than this: the show FEELS like the sandman. and that’s all I can ask for.

#if you read the whole thing I salute you <3 #the sandman #personal

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nothorses · 3 years

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Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

#transgender #transphobia #trans #transmisogyny #radical feminism #radfem #feminism #transandrophobia #terfs #tirfs #gender critical #nothorses #cult mention #long post

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unhealthyfanobsession · 3 years

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I teased this in a previous post and people asked me to expand so...here’s my controversial take that Rhysand and Nesta are actually parallel characters in many ways and that they both hate each other so much because they ultimately hate themselves.

Alright ladies and gentleman, anti’s and stans, buckle your fucking seatbelts or hope off the roller coaster here because I’m about to learn you a thing or two about the most divisive characters in the ACOTAR world.

Starting out very broadly- both characters are introduced as sort of confusing villains (Rhys is “evil” but he’s also helping Feyre. Nesta is an “awful sister”, but she also is protective of Elain and tells Feyre essentially to go and be happy), both have faced significant trauma and grapple with self-loathing and feelings of not being good enough, and both ultimately find redemption and healing with their mates who love them. They also both currently exist in a strange parallel coming out of ACOSF where Rhys is supposedly “chosen by the Cauldron” and Nesta is “blessed by the Mother”- the two sacred entities of Prythian.

Intrigued? More specifics and text analysis under the cut

Mommy (and Daddy) Issues:

Both characters were basically raised by their mother’s alone and then lost them at a young age and that had a deep impact on them. Rhysand had a far more positive experience of being raised by his mother HOWEVER I would argue that it was still “grooming” of a type since she took him away to train in Illyria specifically so that he wouldn’t be influenced by his father.

Rhys’ mother did this out of love and Nesta’s mother groomed her out of a social climbing agenda, but it had the same effect- they both lost the parent who was their primary caregiver at a young age and they were both not close with their father’s because of their mother’s actions (again this was a good thing for Rhys, not as much for Nesta).

Parents Death: Rhys and Nesta both blame themselves for one of their parent’s death and are deeply affected by feeling like they failed someone important to them.

Rhys thinks that he is responsible for his mother and sister’s death because he gave Tamlin info

Rhys even says after this “It should have been me.”

Nesta feels that she was unable to save her father and she hates herself for it.

Rocky sibling relationship and Separation:

Rhysand and Cassian are obviously a lot further along in their sibling journey, but it’s stated that he and Cassian HATED each other and fought constantly essentially until Azriel arrived and then they decided to be “allies”.

Nesta and Feyre are also at each others throats but seem to put their differences aside in order to not upset Elain. (Even when Feyre first goes back to the human lands Nesta says NOPE NO FAE! But as soon as Elain asks her to do as Feyre says she agrees) and then Nesta states in ACOSF that she and Feyre were brought together by Elain to be allies in the war.

Rhysand and Cassian obviously grew into true brothers despite their adversarial, insulting, bitter beginning... and Nesta and Feyre after ACOSF have done the same. Obviously there’s still a lot of work to be done in that relationship, but the parallel stands (and is just strengthened by the fact that in both cases it’s the character with more power in the relationship- Nesta for being the oldest and Rhys for being the one whose family took Cassian in is then mated to the opposite sibling!)

Both have a parent who essentially separated them from their ‘siblings’ for their own benefit. Nesta’s mom isolated her as a child so that she could groom her and tell her how to maneuver her sisters when the time was right while Rhys’ father- afraid of his, Cassian, and Azriel’s combined power- separated them for 7 years through the first war to ensure they wouldn’t ally against him. Nesta was also separated from Feyre by Tamlin and tried to go to the wall to get her back but couldn’t get through- which is very reminiscent to me of the scene at the beginning of ACOWAR from the first war where Rhys is searching desperately but without hope for Cassian.

Shared Trauma and Learning to be “Evil” to protect their family:

both characters are sexual assault survivors who spend a chunk of their book (I’m counting ACOMAF as essentially Rhys’ book since that’s when we learn more about him as a character) grappling with that, coming to terms with it, and moving forward with a general attitude of “Never Again.” I would also argue that even their abusers are parallels as Rhysand was only ‘with’ Amarantha because he was trying to protect his family and Nesta was only ‘with’ Tomas because she thought his family might be able to take in and feed Elain (she says in ACOSF that she would give him whatever he wanted- her body meant nothing to her and Elain meant everything, which is essentially Rhys’ UTM mindset). In addition, both characters are able to escape their abusers out of love for Feyre. Rhys does so when Amarantha is about to kill Feyre, and Nesta does so because she realizes that Tomas would never go to the wall with her to save Feyre.

Beyond this, both characters express that it is the lack of control over their own lives that truly haunts them. Rhys when he felt like he had no choice but to be Amarantha’s puppet and Nesta with a lot of her life, but especially when she is forced into the cauldron. Both of these are things that make them feel like failures for not protecting others. Rhys is haunted that he couldn’t protect Feyre under the mountain and Nesta is haunted that she couldn’t protect Elain from the cauldron.

This leads both characters to have a terrifying power-surge nightmare brought on by their trauma (Rhys from Amarantha; Nesta from the Cauldron) that terrifies those around them and can only be stopped by their mate.

In addition to this, they both have a “persona” that they put on and sometimes feel like they can’t shake off, a face that they made to protect themselves and their family. Rhys with his “Court of Nightmares” persona that he uses UTM, in the Hewn City, and with the other High Lords until the war. Part of his growth is letting people see beyond that ‘most powerful high lord of darkness’ mask.

For Nesta this is expressed by her “wolves” that she uses to put up a wall between her and the people who mocked her and her family, and especially Elain. And her learning to open up with Cassian and her found family was really important for her growth

HOWEVER, they both also keep that persona. Rhys has his mask polished for when anyone might threaten the people he loves and so does Nesta. Neither of them truly gave up that side of themselves, the darkness, they simply learned to stop it from consuming them.

They also both LIKE doing this to their enemies. Rhys likes to toy with his enemies and torture those who would harm his family or betray him and so does Nesta- she revels in cutting down anyone who insults Elain and says in ACOSF that she’s felt the urge to do the same for Cassian. They both wield words like weapons and use their intelligence to ensure they are always one quip ahead of their enemies. Something that both Feyre and Cassian admire in their mates and try to emulate to a degree.

(Bonus points for the fact that in both cases their families did not ASK to be protected/sacrificed for.)

Found family and sacrifice:

Rhys calls Cassian and Azriel his “brothers” after becoming close while training and they conquer the blood rite together. Nesta calls Emerie and Gwyn her “sisters” after becoming close while training and they conquer the blood rite together. Rhys sacrifices himself to Amarantha in order to protect Cassian and Azriel (and Velaris). Nesta sacrifices herself to hold the path of Enalius to protect Emerie and Gwyn. There’s also a line in ACOMAF and a parallel line in ACOSF essentially about Nesta being willing to do anything- including “whore” herself- to protect Elain, and in order to protect his brother’s that’s exactly what Rhys did- “whore” himself to Amarantha.

Both are ‘saved by’ and feel not good enough for their mate:

I hesitate to use the word “saved by” because ultimately both characters have more agency than that, HOWEVER, both characters rely on their mate to a degree to pull them out of a very dark time and place. Feyre helps Rhys remember who he is and forgive himself for under the mountain and he even specifically calls her his “salvation.”

I don’t think I need to even say the Nesta part here, all of ACOSF is essentially Cassian helping Nesta climb out of a dark period so that they can heal together.

(Both also start connecting with their mates on a “just sex” situation.)

Both characters think that because of the things they’ve done and the darkness inside of them that they don’t deserve the people they have been mated to.

Obviously there are many differences, but the characters are similar in a lot of ways and what I think this really highlights is just how true that line is in ACOSF about Nesta being a wolf that was never allowed to learn how to be a wolf. Meanwhile Rhys is 500 years older and has always had power and agency of some kind even at his lowest point. Nesta didn’t have that power and wasn’t allowed to really unleash herself so she armed herself with a steel exterior to make up for that lack of power and control. Which is very similar to what Rhysand did when he felt he didn’t have power under the mountain- put on a cold face, not let anyone in, and act cruel in order to get through it.

Overall it’s an interesting character study because in a lot of ways these are very similar characters, but there is such a MASSIVE divide among the fandom of liking and hating one or both of them. Ultimately, I do think that a lot of the hate Nesta gets is because she’s a woman and female characters simply aren’t allowed to have the same flaws as male ones- which is kind of Nesta’s whole life story. BUT I think that Rhysand actually gets unintentionally screwed over by the narrative in one big way. Becuase my final paralell is that I think a lot of people came around on Nesta when they saw in her perspective that she knows she has problems and how much she was struggling… and I also think that Rhysand is so hated by those who dislike him because of Feyre’s ‘he can do no wrong’ perspective. I think if we saw more of Rhysand internally struggling and knowing that he made the wrong call sometimes and second guessing himself he’d be a lot more likeable character. We know he’s capable of this because when Cassian calls him out on the training roof for always thinking the worst of Nesta he just says “you’re right. I’m sorry” and he even *kinda* admits some wrong when he’s so shocked by how deep Nesta’s trauma is. Feyre and the rest of the IC constantly exalting Rhys as perfect when he so clearly isn’t and in fact has a lot of the same “flaws” as Nesta is probably the most frustrating thing about the character, which ultimately I think is kind of unfair because we know from his few perspectives that he doesn’t see himself that way.

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eijispumpkin · 3 years

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On Allegory, Imperfection, and Inadvertent Subversion: A small essay about Akimi Yoshida’s Banana Fish and Salinger’s “A Perfect Day For Bananafish”.

In the story of Banana Fish, Yoshida references Salinger’s short story “A Perfect Day For Bananafish” (which henceforth shall be addressed as “Perfect Day” simply for ease of reading) several different ways, both in-universe and out. It is exceedingly evident that the character of Ash Lynx is heavily based on Seymour Glass, and one might surmise that Banana Fish is an allegorical retelling of “Perfect Day”, especially given that in the original story, Ash Lynx dies of what is arguably a “passive suicide” – that is, when faced with an injury that isn’t immediately fatal, he chooses to bleed out rather than seek help, which when framed as a suicide, parallels the much more violent and sudden suicide of Seymour Glass.

However, this surface-level allegorical reading ignores a very important variable in the story of Banana Fish, namely the counterpart to Ash’s Seymour: Eiji’s Sybil. While Ash and Seymour share many similarities (both are traumatized, troubled geniuses with partly-Irish roots who grew up in New York City), the similarities between Eiji and Sybil are very few. Eiji does symbolize a world of innocence to contrast with Ash’s world of horrors, but unlike Sybil, Eiji is an adult with agency of his own, and though he retains some of Sybil’s childlike innocence and is able to connect deeply with Ash as a result of it, Eiji’s agency and decisions ultimately change the narrative and its meaning.

That is to say, by introducing Eiji as an imperfect Sybil, one who has agency and can actually provide Ash with understanding and support of the kind that Seymour never got from Muriel or others around him (and which Sybil, being three years old, was in no way equipped to provide), Banana Fish directly subverts “Perfect Day”’s original message of cynicism in the face of a material world unconcerned with the horror of lost innocence and its resulting isolation.

To understand what this means, it’s important to first understand the meaning and context of “Perfect Day” and the circumstances in which it was written. “Perfect Day” is a story written first and foremost as a critique of American materialism in the wake of WWII; Salinger echoes the concerns of the Lost Generation before him, in a way, by really driving home the alienation from modern adult life felt by those who were exposed to the horrors and traumas of the battlefields in wartorn Europe, only to return home and find a culture completely removed from it all. Seymour Glass is a stand-in for Salinger himself—Kenneth Slawenski, in his 2010 biography of Salinger, notes that on returning from the European theater, Salinger “found it impossible to fit into a society that ignored the truth that he now knew.”

If that sounds familiar, good, because it should! This is precisely the motif of “Perfect Day” (as well as some of Salinger’s other work featuring members of the Glass family, such as Seymour’s younger brother Buddy, which, as an aside, is a name that might stick out to Banana Fish fans. Whether this is an intentional reference or a coincidence, I can’t say for certain, but given the depth of other references within this allegory, I’m inclined to think it’s intentional).

As a quick summary for those who may need a refresher, “Perfect Day” is a story about a deeply traumatized man who feels isolated from the rest of society because of the weight of the horrors he has been exposed to. Muriel Glass, Seymour’s wife, is the epitome of this: she represents the materialistic culture that Seymour feels so alienated from, always talking about brand-name things and luxuries and upward mobility. Seymour rejects her company in favor of playing the piano for children and spending time on the beach, where he tells three-year-old Sybil Carpenter a story about bananafish, fish that gorge themselves on bananas in holes under the sea until they’re too fat to escape the entrances to these little banana dens, and then they die. Instead of dismissing this story as something bizarre, Sybil claims she sees a bananafish in the water, which endears her to Seymour, until she leaves, at which point he returns to his hotel room and shoots himself in the head.

In “Perfect Day”, this interaction (between Sybil and Seymour) is the center of a set of dualities. Sybil represents the state of childlike innocence that Seymour longs to return to, and because of her innocence, she can “understand” him in ways that the material adults like her mother or Muriel do not. Seymour’s isolation is a product of his society and the lack of support and understanding for traumatized veterans returning from war, and it shows in the way that adults his age cannot connect with him, and he cannot connect with them. This disconnect between worlds is what eventually results in Seymour’s suicide—he can fit neither in the world in which he wishes to be, nor in the one in which he must reside, and it ends in his death.

The question is, then, how does this relate to Banana Fish?

As mentioned previously, Ash Lynx is a very clear parallel to Seymour Glass. He’s a young man faced with immeasurable trauma from which he believes he can never recover, and there is a clear motif of duality in his entire character arc: his world (one of violence and trauma) versus the “normal” world (where innocent people who have “regular” lives may reside). Like Seymour, Ash feels trapped in a world he can’t escape, knowing “the truth” that he knows, about the horrors that people are capable of.

It follows, then, that Eiji Okumura is a parallel to Sybil Carpenter, who represents childlike innocence and a world that Ash longs to be part of but can’t reach. And to an extent, this is true: Eiji is sheltered and innocent, comparing real-life to TV shows and being completely unexposed to kidnappings, drugs, guns, and violence. However, there is a sharp contrast between Eiji and Sybil, one that fundamentally changes the relationship between Eiji and Ash and makes it radically different from that between Sybil and Seymour:

Eiji is an adult, and as such, he has agency of his own.

Unlike Sybil with Seymour, Eiji can make his own choices and face Ash as an equal. Where Sybil is a child who runs back to her mother after playing with Seymour at the beach, Eiji actively and consistently chooses to stay with Ash, over and over. He even explicitly tells Ash “you are not alone”, which is a huge and direct contrast to the message of inevitable, devastating isolation from “Perfect Day”. Whereas Sybil’s innocence serves as a reminder to Seymour of what he’s lost and cannot regain, Eiji’s innocence is a beacon of comfort and companionship to Ash. Eiji is someone with whom Ash can relax and be playful like a boy his own age, as noted by Max and Ibe watching them interact.

This communication and connection are present between Sybil and Seymour, but in a very different way. Seymour prefers to play make-believe and tell silly stories to kids, because he went from being a wide-eyed innocent to being traumatized and longing for a place to belong, and Sybil as a child represents what he wishes he had, while the adults around him (most notably Muriel, his wife) are a world he doesn’t understand that feels false.

This is not the dichotomy of worlds that Ash faces. Ash faces a world of trauma and suffering that he sees himself as trapped in, and a world of peace and security that he thinks is beyond his reach. Where Seymour yearns for a return to innocence, Ash yearns to escape his pain, and the combination of this subtle difference with the effect of Eiji’s agency and the narrative structure of Banana Fish results in a subversion of the themes in “Perfect Day”.

Banana Fish is a long-form narrative, while “Perfect Day” is a short story. Part of the inherent structure of a long-form narrative is character growth and development, which for obvious reasons is much less prominent in short stories. As a result, Eiji’s impact on Ash is clearly visible over the course of the narrative, and it becomes impossible to declare that Ash is firmly rooted in the world he sees himself as trapped in. By the end of the story, even Ash wavers on this assertion; although he ultimately succumbs to suicide, a narrative choice that been criticized ever since its publication, in the moments leading up to his stabbing, he does believe that Eiji is right, or at least right enough that he wants to see him one last time (this is ambiguous and open to interpretation, of course).

Why did this narrative choice spark so much controversy and outcry from fans? Not every story that ends in tragedy is criticized as poorly written for it; examples range from Shakespearean tragedies to “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, a film in which the entire cast dies in the climax. Yet just about all fans agree that it fit the narrative. Clearly, then, it is possible to craft a story that ends in death and tragedy but still feels well-written. What makes Banana Fish different?

I would argue that the answer lies in this imperfect allegory. By creating a Sybil-esque character that can interact with the Seymour-esque character as equals, can stay with him, and can listen to him and support him through his grief and pain, Akimi Yoshida inadvertently turned “Perfect Day”’s message on its head. The tragedy of “Perfect Day” is Seymour’s isolation. By giving Ash a warm, compassionate relationship in which he is assured over and over that he is not alone, Yoshida upturns this entirely.

Ash is led to believe in this dichotomy mostly by his isolation. He believes that since Eiji is in mortal danger as a result of being special to him, he needs to send Eiji to safety, i.e. somewhere far from him and far from the reach of those who would hurt them both. This isn’t a miscommunication issue or anything of the sort; this is Ash being afraid for Eiji’s life; Eiji isn’t averse to returning to Japan itself. Eiji is averse to returning to Japan without Ash, as he mentions when he talks about how Ash could be a model, and tells him about kami. In establishing this as a consistent tenet of Eiji’s character, Yoshida ensures that Ash is not isolated in the same way that Seymour was.

In addition, Eiji can move freely between both worlds set up in Ash’s perceived dichotomy, a motif made explicitly clear when Eiji leaps the wall to freedom and light at the beginning, leaving Ash (and Skipper) behind in captivity in the dark. Despite this escape from the world of violence and crime, Eiji returns of his own volition and stays with Ash, experiences his own fair share of horrific traumas, and still leaves in the end to return to his world. This makes it clear that the dichotomy is less stark than Ash is led to believe, unlike the repeated validation of his isolation that Seymour receives, and is another reason that the ending of “Perfect Day” is inconsistent with the ending of Banana Fish

A quick sidebar: Banana Fish has no real Muriel, but if pressed, I would posit that the closest parallel to Muriel that exists is Blanca, whose main purpose in the narrative seems to be to reinforce to Ash that he can’t escape the world he feels trapped in and longs to leave. But where in “Perfect Day” Muriel symbolized the materialism of American society after WWII, Blanca has no real established reason to be so invested in keeping Ash down, and in conjunction with the fact that despite his own traumas, he can retire peacefully to the Caribbean, his role in the story falls to pieces entirely. Where Muriel represented a lifestyle that Seymour fundamentally could not reach, thereby reinforcing his isolation, Blanca is supposed to parallel Ash to a degree, but his words to Ash do not match his actions whatsoever.

Therefore, if anything, Blanca’s assertions serve only to strike a contrast with Eiji’s (and Max’s, to an extent, since Max and Eiji both agree that Ash can escape this and they want him to heal). Moreover, Blanca’s relationship with Ash is that of a mentor and a student, a relationship that is shown to be fundamentally unhealthy, given that Blanca willingly worked for Ash’s abuser, a mafia don who he knew trafficked children. Some argue that Blanca was blackmailed into this service, but given that Blanca chose to betray Golzine at the end and work with Ash with seemingly no real provocation or change in his relationship with Golzine, this supposition seems flawed. Blanca’s assertions about Ash and his ability to forge bonds and leave his world the way Eiji does, and indeed the way Blanca himself does, are simply incorrect, and the narrative itself provides us all the tools we need to realize that Blanca is wrong, even without the extended context of a parallel to Muriel Glass.

Returning to the main issue at hand, i.e. that of the imperfect allegorical connections between Sybil and Eiji, and the dichotomy between worlds that Ash perceives, it’s clear that in creating a positive, nurturing relationship between Ash and Eiji rather than a one-off encounter, Yoshida inadvertently created a story about connections rather than isolation. Ash’s attempts to keep Eiji safe from harm by sending him home are countered by Eiji’s assertion that he only wants to go to Japan if Ash comes with him, which is a kind of selfless devotion that reaches through Ash’s isolation until he decides that he won’t try and separate himself from Eiji anymore, which is a massive blow to the dichotomy of his supposed two worlds. This is the narrative acknowledging that both worlds can coexist.

Not only this, but also Eiji, who has his own trauma—he’s kidnapped several times, shot at, drugged, sexually assaulted, attacked with a knife by a drugged friend, exposed to several deaths, shot at people in fights himself, and ultimately nearly killed by a gunshot wound—despite all of this, Eiji is still allowed to exist in the world of peace and regularity. Eiji’s innocence is sharply tempered by traumatic experiences, and he can still walk between worlds. If Eiji, Max, Ibe, Jessica, Sing, Cain, and Blanca can all experience traumas, why is Ash the only one who cannot escape? Is there some kind of magical bar of “too much” trauma, like an event horizon on a black hole?

Obviously, no.

So it comes to this: Essentially, the reason that the ending is so controversial, and why I personally believe that the open ending of the anime is an improvement to the original story, is that the allegory between Banana Fish and “Perfect Day” falls apart because of Eiji’s agency. Ash wants to protect Eiji, and to protect Eiji’s innocence and light, because he feels that it’s beyond his own reach, but Eiji forges a bond with him that is rooted in mutual respect and care, and in doing so, undoes the devastating, painful isolation that led to Seymour’s suicide. This is why Ash’s death can feel so hollow—it doesn’t follow the pattern of “Perfect Day”; after the entire story is about Ash’s bonds and those who love him unconditionally, it feels almost like a shock-value plot twist tacked on, rather than a tragic inevitability.

I don’t believe that Yoshida intended Banana Fish to be a subversion of “Perfect Day”. I believe she meant it as a one-to-one allegory, and this is why she kept the ending as Ash choosing death. However, due to the changes in themes because of the characters and their relationships, Ash is not isolated in the profound way Seymour was, and his death is therefore not nearly as impactful.

#this is 2600 words i am so fucking sorry but also im not sorry im just verbose #banana fish #banana fish meta #asheiji #ash lynx #eiji okumura

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thepapergirlandthespiegelman · 3 years

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Castlevania Season 4: I’m not mad, just disappointed

Season 4 is poorly written fanfiction, which is...better than a lot of things could be, I guess.

Spoilers below the cut.

Content warning: trauma, sexual assault, psychological manipulation

The Gods Have Had a Change of Heart

Or, “Season 3 Blocked and Ignored”

Season 3 felt like the fabric of the universe had been twisted just to inflict additional pain. Season 4 overcompensates in the other direction; trauma evaporates, and good things happen for no other reason than to make our favorite characters happy.

The Season 3 finale left two characters in particular totally devastated: Alucard and Hector. Alucard is violently betrayed in a horrifying sexual assault by the first two people he’s spoken to since Trevor and Sypha left. He ends up killing them in self-defense and puts their bodies on stakes outside the castle, alluding to his father’s habit of doing so and potentially hinting at a turn toward evil. Hector is seduced by Lenore and then enslaved using a magic ring.

Yet at the start of Season 4, it’s as if these things never happened. Alucard is troubled, but not totally devastated, certainly not evil. Taka and Sumi are referenced in exactly one conversation with new character, Greta, in which she says the rather tactless throwaway line, “I had a boyfriend and girlfriend at the same time once. But they never tried to kill me.” Hector is nominally imprisoned, but immediately seems highly agentic, perhaps even more so than before. He studies, lays traps, and makes secret plans with other people. Furthermore, his relationship with Lenore is completely transformed. From falling to his knees in abject horror and despair at being enslaved, he suddenly switches to light banter, in what is apparently a basically okay, mutually enjoyed romantic/sexual relationship. Manipulative, selfish Lenore is now a sympathetic character struggling to reconcile her own role and feelings with Carmilla’s plans.

The events of season 3 happened, remaining canon in the most basic, literal sense. But the emotional weight attached to them has disappeared into thin air.

Not gonna lie, I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw that Alucard and Hector were okay. I’m soft-hearted! I don’t like seeing characters I like suffer! I mean, conflict is important, and I can deal with (or even enjoy in a certain sense) seeing characters suffer if it makes sense and serves a narrative purpose. But as far as I can tell, the season 3 finale was nothing more than lurid, meaningless violence. I probably wouldn’t have continued watching the show if it devolved into nothing more than finding novel ways to torture the characters.

Still, it doesn’t feel quite right to pretend like nothing happened either. Or, really, not that nothing happened, but that those things didn’t matter, didn’t hurt, didn’t leave lasting scars. That’s...almost kind of worse.

But, I thought, I can sort of forgive this sudden shift in the stars, given that there may have been some sort of change in creative direction relating to Ellis’ decreased involvement with the show.* Plus, season 3 was insanity. It’s not like it was full of great writing choices, so if we quietly ignore some of them, maybe that’s for the best.

*I only later learned that Netflix actually chose to continue with Ellis’ season 4 scripts. It is not lost on me that maybe Ellis doesn’t know how to write about the lasting effects of traumatic sexual experiences or how power dynamics can make a sexual relationship problematic because he doesn’t understand that those things exist.

Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening

Pretty Pictures, Not Much Else

Unfortunately, the disconnect between seasons 3 and 4 isn’t the only problem with this season. Although I felt that season 4 was a bit less boring than season 3 (I particularly enjoyed some of the earlier episodes of season 4), it suffers from the same basic problems of Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening.

None of the characters experience any significant development, let alone any sort of coherent arc. Sypha has changed slightly, becoming more rough and jaded. I did really like the scene where she talks about becoming the kind of person who says “shit.” I think it really speaks to how entering into a relationship with someone means taking on aspects of their lifestyle, and how that can change you in ways that you can’t predict and therefore can’t exactly “agree” to. Sometimes those changes are good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re neutral, and sometimes it’s difficult to know. But you have to accept that you’re sacrificing some aspects of the person that you could have been if you chose to live completely independently, or with someone else.

Trevor really hasn’t changed since season 1 when he first decided to take up the mantle of hero again. Likewise with Alucard. Hector and Lenore change, as previously noted, but that change is sudden, jarring, and occurs completely off screen in between seasons 3 and 4. Carmilla dies as exactly as she lived: bitter, angry, and violent. Saint Germain just kind of...gets fucked over in a nonsensical subplot, which is its own whole can of worms.

We also get several new characters in season 4, none of whom have developed personalities or motives, nor do they develop any of those things over the course of the season: Greta, Zamfir, Varney, Ratko.

And nobody. Does. Anything.

Trevor and Sypha spend the entire season trying to explore and aid Targoviste, which comes to absolutely nothing. They’re unable to help anyone, Zamfir dies, and they end up just jumping through a magic portal to the actually relevant subplot in the finale. Carmilla literally does little more than draw maps until she’s ultimately killed. Hector plays a minor role in Saint Germain’s extraction of Dracula from Hell; otherwise, he and Lenore basically just exchange banter. Saint Germain does sort of do some stuff? But it’s often unclear how he’s made his connections, who the people who are helping him are, or what exactly he’s doing in terms of his magic beyond “whatever it takes to get back to his lover.”

Sure, there are fight scenes, but they feel meaningless. There’s no context, no stakes. There’s also a LOT of dialogue, and it is. Not well written. Exposition is embarrassingly clumsy at times, and the philosophical musings are cliche at best, muddled and confusing at worst. There’s just not all that much going on.

That is, except for Isaac. But more on him in a second.

What Kind of Show Is This?

When the plot line adapted from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse ended with season 2, the show struggled to establish a new identity.

Despite nominally dealing with themes like whether humanity is inherently good or evil and how to cope with wrongdoing and loss, seasons 1 and 2 ultimately boiled down to a pretty generic action-adventure/fantasy plot with found family/power of friendship elements. Main characters Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard don’t really wrestle with big philosophical questions or suffer any major defeats. They know that they have to take down Dracula for the good of the world, and they work together as a team to do it, with a little character development relating to their various backstories sprinkled in.

Then season 3 happened, and things got weird. The trio is broken up for what feels like a pretty trivial reason—Alucard has to protect the castle and Belmont hold, I guess? And the result of that decision is that the dynamics for the three main characters are completely unbalanced.

Ellis openly admits that he basically went feral with the writing of season 3, and it shows. The messaging in seasons 1 and 2 was cliche, but consistent. The message of season 3? Anyone’s guess.

Season 4 reversed the darkening of tone from season 3, but shares its inability to pick a story and tell it.

Isaac is the Main Character

Always has been.

While I can’t say that his character or arc are perfect, I can say that he actually has a character and an arc. He starts off motivated by his fierce loyalty to Dracula, then has to struggle to find his purpose once Dracula is gone. He goes from subservient to agentic. He goes from fully endorsing the genocide of humanity and not caring about his own life to seeing some worth in humans and genuinely wanting to live. He has an interesting moment that deepens our understanding of what night creatures are, while also serving as an exploration of the meaning of one’s fundamental nature. Most importantly, these changes happen naturally over the course of the show. They never feel forced or out of the blue, and while I feel like even more could have been done with Isaac’s character, there’s a lot to appreciate about what is there.

If there’s any thread holding Castlevania as a single, coherent work together, it’s Isaac. Not only is his character the best executed and the most coherent over the course of the show, his character explores themes that are larger than himself and relevant to the show as a whole, like those mentioned earlier: misanthropy versus a belief in the value of humanity; the ability to go beyond one’s “nature” or initial circumstances; and how to respond to being wronged or losing something important to you. Exploring the individual lives of characters is great, but really good writing usually requires going beyond that to reflect on broader questions and ideas. Isaac is the only character here that serves that larger purpose.

Sorry...I Just Don’t Buy It

The season 4 finale is crazy, although in a different way from season 3′s.

Varney being Death makes no sense on several different levels. I’m not going to spend a lot of time picking that particular plot twist apart, but I will talk about why I think it doesn’t work at the largest scale, and how I think season 4 might have been done better.

Last minute twists with zero foreshadowing are rarely a good idea, and this is no exception. Why introduce this “Death” entity at the last minute to be the most important battle of the season? The finale of the entire show, even? Besides the lack of logic or emotional buildup, this robs the show of the opportunity to make use of the antagonists that it already has. Since Dracula died, Carmilla has been the obvious choice for a new big bad. Why hasn’t she done more?

Season 4 feels crowded with characters and plot lines that amount to nothing. Why not bring some of these characters together? If Carmilla is the main antagonist, how come she never meets any of the protagonists (except Hector, who is a pretty minor player in this ecosystem) or even affects them in any way?

Season 4 feels like maybe it was trying to make something out of season 3 and the model that it presented, but it ultimately fails to do so. The writers throw the trio back together at the end anyway, so why not have them rejoin sooner and work together? Maybe Sypha and Trevor’s past experience with Saint Germain could have helped Alucard and Greta piece together what he was plotting sooner, rather than all four of them being completely blindsided by it in the penultimate episode. (Sypha and Trevor know that someone is trying to resurrect Dracula, but they fail to find out any actual detail about the plans, despite their supposed attempts.) Have characters actually do stuff, figure stuff out, advance the plot!

Likewise, maybe Carmilla becomes aware of Saint Germain’s scheming, sees it as a threat, and tries to take him down. Maybe she tries to get involved and somehow use alchemy or the Infinite Corridor to her own benefit. What does it look like when power-hungry Carmilla, who wants to rule the world, finds out there’s an entire multiverse out there? That could easily set her up to be a foil to Saint Germain, causing him to realize that what he’s doing is wrong.

What actually ended up happening in the show feels disjointed and often empty. In particular, most of the events that happen in the last two episodes just don’t really work for me. I didn’t like Trevor suddenly sacrificing himself to this random, new, super powerful enemy, or how the gems and dagger that he found just happened to be the perfect weapon to kill this new enemy, or how he inexplicably returns from the dead.

This kind of thing is what I mean when I say that this season feels like fanfiction. Trevor comes back from the dead for no discernible reason other than that it would really suck if he died. Greta as a character seems to literally only exist to be Alucard’s girlfriend and support him so that he doesn’t have to continue to be alone and potentially turn evil. Alucard’s trauma from Taka and Sumi and Hector’s trauma from Lenore are both conveniently erased. Even Dracula and Lisa are resurrected somehow and get their happy ending. And it’s like, I guess I prefer deus ex machina to the opposite (Does that have a name? When everything is going well but then something terrible happens for no reason other than to make things worse for the characters?), but they’re both bad writing.

God. This isn’t even getting into what happened with the Council of Sisters. And I don’t even really like those characters, but that doesn’t mean I want to see their characters handled poorly.

I’m not sorry that I watched until the end, but I can’t in good faith recommend the show as a whole. If you’ve yet to watch Castlevania, just stop at the end of season 2. While there are some shining moments in seasons 3 and 4 (4 more than 3), it’s just really not worth it.

#review #thoughts #television #animation #adult animation #video game adaptation #fantasy #Netflix #Netflix Original #Castlevania #storytelling #writing #characters #plot #character development #vampires #Isaac (Castlevania)

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knifetoxgunfight · 3 years

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Catching Up

Word Count: 1228 Requested: No Summary: Bucky discovers Tik Tok. Genre: Fluff Pairing: Sambucky (Sam Wilson x Bucky Barnes) Warnings: None

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Bucky walked into their shared apartment, a new phone in his hand. He seemed perplexed, confused by the small device. He had learned many ins and outs of modern technology in Wakanda, but the internet still confused him. The device was so small, yet could do more than most computers he had ever used. The internet wasn’t even a thought yet in the 40s. He couldn’t quite grasp what it was, why it was so popular, and how to use it. He hadn’t noticed that he was still standing in the doorway, swiping through a particular app he was trying to understand until Sam walked up to him. Sam hadn’t said anything for a moment, crossing his arms over his chest in hopes Bucky would notice him before he spoke. Much to his dismay, Bucky was too enthralled in the small device to pay any mind to Sam. He wasn’t intentionally ignoring the other, he was just incredibly focused. It spoke to his comfort around his lover; He was comfortable enough in their shared apartment to let his guard down and get distracted. Bucky didn’t feel the need to know everything around him all the time here. Sam finally spoke up.

“Bucky? What are you….oh. Need some help, old man?” Sam was just teasing. Cell phones were confusing to people who lived their whole lives in the modern-day, he was astonished Bucky managed to understand half of the things he did. Bucky was so open to new concepts, learning new information, and adapting his behavior. He had such an open mind to learn, something most people in the modern-day lacked. Sam was constantly proud of his boyfriend, but a little teasing was inevitable.

“Shut up, Sam. I’ve got it,” Bucky huffed, resistant to Sam’s help. He wanted to figure it out on his own. He felt like he had something to prove. He belonged here, he just wanted to feel like he did. He felt he belonged here, in this apartment, but in the outside world, he felt so out of time. Everything moved so fast and he barely was able to catch up. He constantly felt that every time he got close, there was something new to learn. Before Bucky had a chance to react, Sam reached forward, snatching the phone from Bucky’s hand.

“Sam stop-”

“Twitter huh? Seems like you got it pretty figured out here. You’re verified.”

“That’s not what I was trying to figure out. Shuri mentioned something about this like tik tok and I wanted to figure it out. I was gonna ask Twitter for help.” He was embarrassed. Bucky thought he sounded like an idiot, not knowing what any of these things were. Young people talked about it all the time, that and a long-gone app called Vine. He hated being around teens because they were barely a fraction of his age and so much more advanced than he was. Teenagers made him feel so far behind. At least around teenagers, he was supposed to feel out of place, but with Sam? He just wanted to be on the same level or at least close.

“I’m impressed. You didn’t have to ask Twitter, I know how tik tok works. C’mere let me show you.” Bucky grumbled. He wanted to do it himself, yet he couldn’t resist the excitement in Sam’s voice. Sam was always so eager to help Bucky, but Bucky felt bad asking for help. These were things any person born of modern times just knew. If Sam had been with anyone else, he wouldn’t have to offer help. Bucky wanted to at least pretend they had a normal relationship.“Okay so you see this plus sign at the bottom of the screen, you tap here to make a video…” They spent hours teaching Bucky the ins and outs of tik tok. They made Bucky an account and posted a few videos. For every one video they posted, they made about 100 drafts of other things. They posted some on Sam’s account, some on Bucky’s. Viewers loved Bucky and loved their relationship. They quickly became a tik tok power couple. Bucky was verified rather quickly and eventually found his niche. Most of the cute couple videos were usually on Sam’s account, but Bucky had other plans.

People asked a lot of questions, most often about his involvement in history and what the Winter Soldier had done. He didn’t mind, having moved past that part of his life and made it pretty far into his recovery. Some things were a little much, but he just didn’t answer those ones, and Sam taught him how to block people. Oftentimes Sam would reply to those comments, letting them know Bucky wasn’t comfortable answering those kinds of questions. Bucky answered a lot of questions...though most of them were fictitious stories. Nobody could tell him he was wrong, they weren’t there. Not all of his stories were falsified, so nobody really knew what was true and what wasn’t. He told adventures he never went on, changed details to make stories more entertaining, and even added some embarrassment to his friends that weren’t true. Even Sam had trouble deciphering the falsified stories from the real ones. Once, specifically after watching a tik tok Bucky had made detailing a false story about pre-serum Steve, Sam went up to Bucky. He was almost tricked into thinking it was real, but it sounded too good to be true. It was far too funny.

“Did he really do that?” Bucky paused before answering, breakout out into a fit of laughter. Sam wasn’t sure why he was laughing, it was a genuine question.

“No, idiot. I made it up, you should know I do this by now.”

The real fun came when people started asking Bucky about times he wasn’t even alive for. He was born in 1917, though doesn’t really remember much before the war. It was over 100 years ago, it wasn’t his fault. He invented this elaborate narrative, that Hydra had invented time travel and made him gather intel from times before. It was a rather complex story, one that felt almost too detailed to be false. Nobody could tell if he was serious or not. Bucky loved it, he had the whole world at his fingertips, and they all loved him.

Sam's tik tok was a whole different dynamic. He forced Bucky into all the couple challenges and trends, a few failing miserably and ending hilariously. Bucky acted as if he hated it, though, in reality, he found it adorable and endearing. Sam used it to document their lives, and answer questions, both about the world and their relationship. It was unexpected how many questions people had about their relationship. Some were highly inappropriate, but they answered them without answering, making jokes along the way. Really, it was just a lighthearted way to connect with people who loved them, and for them to share their love with the world. Most people were so very accepting and supportive, and the few who weren’t were just a laugh for the couple. Truly, it was perfect. They had their fair share of haters, especially people who were angry that Captain America was in a gay relationship, especially with an ex-Hydra assassin, but they brushed it off. For every one person who hated them, there were 10 more that loved them. And that was enough.

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lilydalexf · 3 years

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Audrey Roget

Audrey Roget has 10 fics at Gossamer, with some different ones at AO3, fanfiction.net, and her website. You might know her from her very good fics or as part of Musea, a collective that all wrote fic and posted X-Files fic recs. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her stories here before, including Three Times Dana Scully Didn’t Go to San Diego for Christmas and The Shirt. Big thanks to Audrey for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)? A little, yes. Not so much by folks who were around in those days. I sometimes go hunting for beloved stories from the early years, both those I read and loved, and those I never got around to. I am always delighted to hear that later generations of fans have stumbled across my stuff, especially since I haven’t posted anything new in a number of years. It’s fantastic that both years-long fans and new ones are out there continuing to rec fic from all eras, and to maintain archives for fans yet-to-be born. What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general? It may sound corny, but the main thing I think of, and the thing that has ultimately been most valuable and lasting, has been the friendships. The feeling of having found a tribe – not just of TXF fans, but of other people who could be as enthusiastically engaged as I was (if not more so) with fictional stories and characters – was mind-blowing. Since I was a kid, I had often mulled over the books/movies/TV I loved and speculated internally about what happened off the page or off-screen, or created new stories for characters in my head. But, except for an elementary school phase where I and my two BFFs regularly played Charlie’s Angels, I hadn’t engaged in that kind of gleeful immersion in a fictional world with others until TXF fandom. My involvement in fandom followed pretty quickly from getting hooked on the show, so for me, it’s all one big ball of experiences. Even as my interest in/involvement in fandom has waxed and waned over the years, I’ve been lucky to remain friends with wonderful people who I originally connected with as fellow fans.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)? What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

My initial entrée to the fandom was through fanfiction. I didn’t get interested in the show until mid-season 5. Around the same time, I read an article in a zine called Might (co-founded by Dave Eggers) about this thing called fanfiction that people would write and publish online. At first I thought it was satire or a joke – the fic cited involved Wilma Flintstone and a polished sabre tooth, as I recall – but then realized this was an actual thing. So I figured that a show then at the peak of pop culture must have fanfiction, and I went looking. Early on, I scrolled atxc on a daily basis and downloaded stories. But I didn’t engage in discussions about the show on Usenet, since I only knew how to access it with my Earthlink email client, and I didn’t want to post using my real name.

Later, I set up a pseud address with Yahoo and subscribed to a couple of email fanfic/discussion lists, and stayed subscribed to those for years. There was also a period in there somewhere – of maybe only a year or so, when I think about it – when I’d often nerd out into the wee hours with other fans via IM chat groups. That was around the time the small writers’ collective Musea was founded, and we were active for several years after the show’s initial run. In the early aughts, I followed many authors to LiveJournal and eventually set up my own account and stayed involved in fandom that way, until it mostly dispersed as well. What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? In a word: Chemistry. I had casually watched a couple of episodes during the first four seasons, but I’m not a huge sci-fi/horror fan at heart, and the story lines didn’t immediately grab me. But I happened to tune into The Red and the Black in 1998, and BOOM. For the first time, the intense layers of emotion and attraction between Mulder and Scully really struck me – and then of course, upon further viewing, I realized it was unmissable, an essential element in the fabric of the show. As a wise woman once said, a switch had been flicked. Mulder and Scully’s magnetism was like nothing I’d ever seen, and though I eventually came to appreciate the storytelling, humor, production values, and other components that made the series so successful, watching those characters interact has always been what kept me coming back. Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files? I was part of a list-serv discussion group for The West Wing for a while, which was a fun melding of character and plot analysis with political discussion. Later, I got into the House, MD fandom, again mostly as a fanfic reader/writer. I was finding that other fandoms, unlike TXF, were more dispersed, the networks of people structured more loosely, if at all. There were fanfic and discussion communities on LiveJournal, and fanfiction.net was the other main hub for posting and reading, but if there was anything centralized like Gossamer, Ephemeral, or the Haven, I never found it. Within all those fan communities, as in TXF, there were partisans for various characters and pairings, and flame wars erupted over plot developments that outraged this faction or that. One main difference was that those other shows had larger, ensemble casts and more varied subplots. So on one hand, there was more opportunity to explore back stories and multiple perspectives. In House MD in particular, there were several entrenched rival shipper camps, which were about equally grounded in canon, rather than TXF’s central ship. I was less into TWW fic, but my impression was that readers were less militant about their pairing preferences than TXF or House fans. Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I was deeply fascinated by Greg House for several years. (And the love-hate chemistry between him and Lisa Cuddy was a strong draw for me.) House MD came early in a wave of TV shows centered on anti-heroes, and Hugh Laurie brought amazing complexity and thoughtfulness to the character.

Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (The Americans) are a lethal pair of antiheroes. The inherent moral conflict of a sympathetic narrative from their POVs, and the global political conflict they embody was TV catnip for me. The internal struggles at the hearts of those characters were so exquisitely written and performed, they completely fascinate me.

The West Wing felt so much like a show created specifically for me. I’m especially fond of story arcs and scenes that centered on CJ Cregg, Charlie Young, and Josh Lyman. Though I loved Martin Sheen’s human portrayal of Jed Bartlet, the fact that he was the President always made him a little untouchable in my mind. But CJ, Charlie, and Josh were basically hard-working functionaries who were ambitious and idealistic and funny and flawed, and they spoke to me. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully? Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I do continue to think about Mulder and Scully and watch episodes somewhat often. I’ll sometimes run a favorite episode as background when I want something comforting on. I read TXF fic pretty regularly, which can inspire me to go back and watch a particular episode or story arc I haven’t thought about in years. Just recently, I started listening to The X-Files Diaries podcast (@XFDPodcast, @admiralty-xfd), and that’s a fun dive into the characters, and how other fans react to and interpret episodes.

Every once in a while, a TV show or movie – and more particularly, the characters – will grab my attention and make me curious about how fanfic writers have interpreted the original material. Random example, I saw Singin’ in the Rain for the first time in a theatre a couple of years ago, and the chemistry of the three leads sent me to AO3 as soon as I got home. I also loved the first season of Mercy Street and found some well-done stories in that fandom. I usually peruse the Yuletide gifts every year and have been amazed by the sheer variety, creativity and cheekiness of the output. There are a bunch of other shows I’ve followed faithfully, and sought out fanfic – Broadchurch, The Killing, Agents of SHIELD, Elementary, The Good Wife. Although I’ve found some well-written stuff in those fandoms, I’ve rarely gotten the same charge from them as reading TXF fic. Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

syntax6 (@syntax6) – Universal Invariants/Laws of Motion. I’d also shout out to syn’s Hunter fics, too – well worth reading even for those who have never seen or particularly loved the show itself.

JET – I re-read Small Lives Awake every year around Thanksgiving time. Other annual holiday re-reads: Revely’s The Dreaming Sea and Jordan’s Through the Fire (both set at Halloween).

Amal Nahurriyeh’s Casey universe – the rare post-col fic that felt hopeful, made extra intriguing by a kick-ass original character. [Lilydale note: the series starts with Machines of Freedom and has lots of additional fics and snippets.]

Prufrock’s Love – Finding Rokovoko was genuinely terrifying and tender.

melforbes (@melforbes) – Seaglass Blue is a recent favorite, lyrical and bittersweet.

These are just a few (apologies to those that didn’t come to mind immediately). Fortunately for readers, there’s an astonishing number of authors who have written in TXF fandom whom you can depend on for a good yarn, insightful character study, and/or ingenious “fixes” where 1013 went awry.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Probably the two set in my own (former) backyard of Southern California: Enivrez-vous and Ravenous. I’d first read the Baudelaire poem that was the source of the former’s title back in university days, so I was tickled to be able to use a few lines as an epigraph. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online? It’s not out of the realm possibility. I’d meant for “Three Times Dana Scully Didn’t Go to San Diego for Christmas” to be followed up with “And One Time She Did.” In fact, the idea for that never-finished story was what inspired “Three Times” in the first place. I have a couple of scenes sketched out and – unusually for me – even know exactly how to end it. Every year, November rolls around, and I think I should finish and post it…maybe in 2021?

Where do you get ideas for stories? Sometimes it’s from my environment. “Enivrez-vous” and “Ravenous” describe places that I’m fond of, that made me want to place Mulder and Scully there. “What Not to Wear” has that element too – I set it in Memphis as a tribute to a great trip there with a sister Musean. But WNTW was also inspired by a kink challenge in a years-ago LiveJournal thread, so sometimes ideas come from fandom discussions or even other fanfics. In the House MD fandom, a fic by another writer made me want to continue the story, and the author kindly allowed an authorized sequel. What's the story behind your pen name? I wanted my pseudonym to sound like it could be a real person’s name – or at least, maybe like a romance writer’s pen name – rather than an online handle. I also wanted to use a slightly obscure fictional character, to amuse anyone in the know. I had long had a bit of an obsession with Whit Stillman’s 1990s film trilogy, which started with Metropolitan; the 3rd installment, Last Days of Disco, came out the same year I started down the TXF rabbit hole: 1998. The central heroine of Metropolitan – who is mentioned in or makes a cameo in the other two – is Audrey Rouget, a lover of Austen and, eventually, a book editor. I altered the spelling of the last name as a nod to every writer’s companion, Roget’s Thesaurus. Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions? I have a few close friends – from outside TXF fandom – who know that I’ve written fanfic. I don’t know if they know my pseud; if they do, or if they’ve ready any of the fic, they haven’t said so to me. They are fannish sorts themselves, but not really TXF fans. A smattering of other friends and family members know or could intuit that I’ve been a fangrl on some level for years. My boss, whom I’ve known for about 3 years, recently mentioned off-handedly that she was really obsessed with TXF “back in the day,” and I am DYING to know if she got involved in fandom, but don’t think I’ll ever work up the courage to ask.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now? Most of the X-Files stuff continues to be generously and steadfastly archived by Forte at The Basement Office. The House MD stories and some TXF things are at fanfiction.net; same for AO3. If ever post anything new, it will probably go to TBO and AO3. I really ought to get it all together in one place, one of these days…

(Posted by Lilydale on April 6, 2021)

#old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #audrey roget

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woman-loving · 3 years

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I’ve been reading some articles about lesbian identities in Indonesia, from the late 80s to the 00s, and wanted to share some quotes that highlighted a couple trends that I’ve also noticed in reading about butch/femme communities in other countries.

1) There are different expectations about sexual distinctiveness and marriage to men are attached to butch and femme identities. There is a greater expectation that femmes will marry men, and femmes more often do marry men, though some butches do as well. Marriages to men seem to be for convenience or in name only, and women may continue to have female lovers.

2) Distinctions are made between real/pure/positive lesbians (butches) and other lesbians (femmes) who are “potentially normal.” This shows the flexibility of lesbian identity, where they can be gradations and contradictions in what it means to be a lesbian (e.g. a woman being a lesbian but not a “real lesbian"). The category has cores and peripheries, rather than everyone being equally lesbian or else completely outside of it.

3) There are disagreements between members, which cross butch/femme lines, about the meanings of these identities and whose lesbianism or community involvement should be taken seriously. The first passage describes femmes as engaging in a “more active appropriation of lesbianism as a core element of their subjectivity.” The boundaries of lesbianism can potentially expand or contract as people struggle to define it.

4) People don’t always meet the community expectations attached to their identity.

I think these passages help complicate the picture of what lesbian identities can look like, and some of these same tensions and debates are common features of lesbian identity in many different cultures. I also think these issues--the (differential) weight given to relationships with men, the notion of positive versus negative lesbians, and the active appropriation of lesbianism by peripheral members--are relevant to bisexual interest, since these questions also shape bi women’s engagement in lesbianism/lesbian communities. (And we can say that without claiming that any particular women in these narratives are “really bisexual.”)

Anyway, without further ado... (this first one picks up right in the middle of a passage because I couldn’t get the previous page on the google preview :T)

From “Desiring Bodies or Defiant Cultures: Butch-Femme Lesbians in Jakarta and Lima,” by Saskia E. Wieringa, in Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices Across Cultures, eds. Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa, 1999:

“[...]negative lesbians. We are positive lesbians. We are pure, 100% lesbian. With them you can never know. Before you know it, they are seeing a man again, and we are given the good-bye.”

Father Abraham, who had entered during her last words, took over. “Let me explain. … Take Koes. Again and again her girlfriends leave her. Soon she’ll be old and lonely. Who will help her then? For these girls it is just an adventure, while for butches like Koes it is their whole life.”“Yes, well, Abraham, … my experience is limited, of course, but it seems to me that the femmes flee the same problems that make life so hard for the butches. So they’d rather support each other.”

“In any case,” Sigit added, ‘they have become active now, that’s why they’re here, isn’t that so?” And she looked questioningly at the three dolls behind the typing machine, Roekmi and my neighbour. The most brazen femme had been nodding in a mocking manner while Sigit and I were talking.

“So we’re only supposed to be wives? We’re not suited for something serious, are we? Maybe we should set up a wives’ organization, Dharma Wanita,[23] the Dharma Wanita PERLESIN? Just like all those other organizations of the wives of civil servants and lawyers?” …

“Come on, Ari,” Sigit insisted, “why don’t you just ask them? You could at least ask them whether they want to join?” Ari found it extremely hard. Helplessly she looked at the other butches.

“Do you really mean that i should ask whether our wives would like to join / our / organization?” One of the butches nodded.

“Ok, fine.” She directed herself to the dolls.

“Well, what do you want? Do you want to join us? But in that case you shouldn’t just say yes, then you should also be involved with your whole heart.”

“You never asked that of the others,” the brazen femme pointed out, “but yes, I will definitely dedicate myself to the organization.” Roekmi and the two femmes at her side also nodded. (Wieringa 1987:89-91)

The above example is indicative of the social marginalization of the b/f community. it also captures in it one of its moments of transformation. The defiance of the femmes of the code that prescribes the division of butches and femmes into “positive” and “negative” lesbians respectively indicates a more active appropriation of lesbianism as a core element of their subjectivity. At the same time it illustrates the hegemony of the dominant heterosexual culture with its gendered principles of organization.

Yet, however much the butches conformed to male gender behavior they didn’t define themselves as male; their relation to their bodies was rather ambiguous. at times they defined themselves as a third sex, which is nonfemale[…]. [...] [Butches’] call for organization was not linked to a feminist protest against rigid gender norms. Rather they felt that nature had played a trick on them and they they had to devise ways to confront the dangers to which this situation gave rise. Jakarta’s b/f lesbians when I met them in the early eighties were not in the least interested in feminism. In fact, the butches among them were more concerned with the case of a friend of them who was undergoing a sex change operation. They clearly considered it an option, but none of them decided to follow this example. When I asked them why, all of them mentioned the health risks involved and the costs. None of them stated that they rather preferred their own bodies. Their bodies, although the source of sexual pleasure and as such the object of constant attention, didn’t make it any too easy for them to get the satisfaction they sought or, at least, to attract the partners they desired.

From "Let Them Take Ecstasy: Class and Jakarta Lesbians," by Alison J. Murray, in Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Transgender Practices Across Cultures, eds. Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa, 1999:

Covert lesbian activities are thus an adaptation to the ideological context, where the distinction between hidden and exposed sexual behavior allows for fluidity in sexual relations (“everyone could be said to be bisexual” according to Oetomo 1995) as long as the primary presentation is heterosexual/monogamous. It is not lesbian activity that has been imported from the West, but the word lesbi used to label the Western concept of individual identity based on a fixed sexuality. I have not found that Indonesian women like to use the label to describe themselves, since it is connected to unpleasant stereotypes and the pathological view of deviance derived from Freudian psychology (cf Foucault 1978).

The concept of butch-femme also has a different meaning in Indonesia from the current Western use which implies a subversion of norms and playful use of roles and styles (cf Nestle 1992). In Indonesia (and other parts of Southeast Asia, such as the Philippines, Thailand’s tom-and-dee: Chetame 1995) the roles are quite strictly, or restrictively, defined and are related to popular, pseudo-psychological explanations of the “real” lesbian. In the simple terms of popular magazines, the butch (sentul) is more than 50% lesbian, or incurably lesbi, while the femme (kantil) is less than 50% lesbian, or potentially normal. Blackwood’s (1994) description of her secretive relationship with a butch-identified woman in Sumatra brings up some cross-cultural differences and difficulties that they experienced and could not speak about publicly. The Sumatran woman adopted masculine signifies and would not be touched sexually herself; she wanted to be called “pa” by Blackwood, who she expected to behave as a “good wife.” Meanwhile, Blackwood’s own beliefs, as well as her higher status due to class and ethnicity, made it hard to take on the passive female role.

I want to emphasize here that behavior needs to be conceptually separated from identity, as both are contextually specific and constrained by opportunity. It is common for young women socialized into a rigid heterosexual regime, in Asia or the West, to experience their sexual feelings in terms of gender confusion: “If I am attracted to women, then I must be a man trapped in a woman’s body.” Women are not socialized to seek out a sexual partner (of any kind), or to be sexual at all, so an internal “feeling” may never be expressed unless there are role models or opportunities available. If the butch-femme stereotype, as presented in the Indonesian popular media, is the only image of lesbians available outside the metropolis (e.g., in Sumatra), then this may affect how women express their feelings. However, urban lower-class lesbians engage in a range of styles and practices: some use butch style consciously to earn peer respect, while others reject the butch as out-dated. The stereotype of all lower-class lesbians whether following butch-femme roles or conforming to one subcultural pattern is far from the case and reflects the media and elite’s lack of real knowledge about street life. […]

The imagery of sickness creates powerful stigmatization and internalized homophobia: women may refer to themselves as sakit (sick). An ex-lover of mine in Jakarta is quite happy to state a preference for women while at the same time expressing disgust at the word lesbi and at the sight of a butch dyke; however, I have generally found that the stigma around lesbian labels and symbols is not translated into discrimination against individuals based on their sexual activities. I have been surprised to discover how many women in Jakarta will either admit to having sex with women or to being interested in it, but again, this is only rarely accompanied by an open lesbian (or bisexual) identity. I have found it hard to avoid the word “lesbian” to refer to female-to-female sexual relations, but it should not be taken to imply a permanent self-identity. It is very important to try and understand the social contexts of behavior, in order to avoid drawing conclusions based on inappropriate Western notions of lesbian identity, community, or “queer” culture.

From “Beyond the ‘Closet’: The Voices of Lesbian Women in Yogyakarta,” by Tracy L Wright Webster, 2004:

Most importantly a supportive community group of lesbian, bisexual and transgender women is essential, given that these sexualities are thrust together in Sektor 15. Potentially, a group comprised of women from each of these categories, that is lesbian, bisexual or transgender, may prove problematic to say the least, given that the needs and issues of each group are different. Clearly the informal communities already in existence in Yogya are indicators of this. Any formal or organized groupings would certainly benefit by modeling on current, though informal organisations. In the lesbian network, transgendered women (those who wish to become men or who consider themselves male) are not affiliated, however many ‘femme’ identified women who have been and intend to be involved in heterosexual relationships in the future, are among the group in partnership with their ‘butch’ pacar (Indo: girlfriend/boyfiend/lover).

Organisations of women questioning sexuality have existed in Yogya in the past. A butch identified respondent said she was involved in the formation of a lesbian, bisexual and transgender network in collaboration with another Indonesian woman, who also identified as butch, 20 years her senior. The group was called Opo (Javanese:what) or Opo We (Jav:whatever), the name highlighting that any issue could be discussed or entered into within the group. Members were an amalgam of both of the women’s friends and acquaintances. The underlying philosophy of the group was that “regardless of a woman’s life experience, marriage, children…it is her basic human right to live as a lesbian if she has the sexual inclination”. The elder founding member of this group, now 46, married a man and had a child. She now lives with her husband (in name only), child and female partner in the same home. Although this arrangement according to the interviewee “is rare… because the husband is there, she is spared the questions from the neighbours”. Here I must add that it is common in Java for lesbians to marry to fulfill their social role as mothers, and then to separate from their husbands to live their lives in partnership with a woman. This trend however is more common among the ‘femme’ group.

From "(Re)articulations: gender and same-sex subjectivities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia," by Tracy Wright Webster, in Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Issue 18, Oct 2008:

Lesbi subjectivities Since gender, for the most part, determines sexuality in Java, sexuality and gender cannot be analysed as discrete categories.[64] For all of the self-identified butchi participants, lesbi was the term used to describe their sexuality. This is contrary to the findings of two key researchers of female same-sex sexuality in Indonesia. Alison Murray's research in Jakarta in the 1980s suggests that females of same-sex attraction did not like the term 'lesbian'[65] due to its connection with 'unpleasant stereotypes' and deviant pathologies.[66] In 1995, Gayatri found that media representations depicting lesbi as males trapped in female bodies encouraged same-sex attracted women to seek new, contemporary descriptors.[67] The participants in this research, however, embraced the term lesbi as an all-encompassing descriptor of female same-sex attraction and as Boellstorff has noted in 2000, Indonesian lesbi tend to see themselves as part of a wider international lesbian network.[68]

The term lesbi has been used in Indonesia since the 1980s, although not commonly or consistently. Lines, les, lesbian, lesbo, lesbong and L, among others, are also used. Female same-sex/lesbi subjectivities in Yogya are not strongly associated with political motivations and the subversion of heteropatriarchy as they were among the Western lesbian feminists of the 1960s. By the time most of the participants in this research were born, the term lesbi had already become infused in Indonesian discourses of sexuality among the urban elite (though with negative connotations in most cases), and has since become commonly used both by females of same-sex attraction to describe themselves, and by others. Most learnt from peers at school and through reading Indonesian magazines.

However, public use of the term lesbi and expression of lesbi subjectivity has its risks. Murray's research on middle to upper class lesbians suggests that females identifying as lesbi have more to lose than lower class lesbi in terms of social position and the power invested in that class positioning. This is particularly in relation to their position in the family.[69] Conversely, her work also shows that lower class lesbi 'have the freedom to play without closing off their options.'[70] As Aji suggests, young females, particularly of the priyayi class may not be in a position to resist the social stigma attached to lesbianism and the possible consequences of rejection or abuse. Yusi faced this reality despite the fact that s/he had not declared herself lesbi. Hir gendered subjectivity meant that s/he did not conform to stereotypical feminine ideals and desires.

With so much at stake, many lesbi remain invisible. Heteronormative and feminine gendered expectations for females in part explain why lesbians may indeed be the 'least known population group in Indonesia.'[71] Collusion in invisibility can be seen here as a protective strategy. The lesbi community or keluarga (family) is what Murray refers to as a 'strategic community' of the lesbian subculture.[72] The strategic nature of the community lies in its sense of protection: the community provides a safe haven for disclosure. Invisibility, however, also arises through the factors I mentioned earlier: the normative feminine representations of femme, their tendency to express lesbi subjectivity only while in partnership with a butchi, and their tendency to marry. Invisibility, as a form of discretion, however, may also be chosen.

Gender complementary butchi/femme subjectivities [...] Due to the apparently fixed nature of butchi identities and subjectivities and their reluctance to sleep with males, they are seen as 'true lesbians,'[79] lesbian sejati, an image perpetuated through the media.[80] Similar to the butchi/femme communities in Jakarta, in Yogya, butchi are identified by their strict codes of dress and behaviour which include short hair, sometimes slicked back with gel, collared button up shirts and trousers bought in menswear stores, large-faced watches and bold rings. Butchi characteristically walk with a swagger and smoke in public places. In her research in the 1980s, Wieringa noticed that within lesbi communities in Jakarta the strict 'surveillance and socialisation 'may have contributed to the fixed nature of butchi identities.[81] In Yogya, this is particularly evident in the socialisation of younger lesbi by senior lesbi (a theme I explore elsewhere in my current research).

The participants held individual perspectives on butchness. Aji's butchness is premised on hir masculine gender subjectivity and desire for a partner of complementary gender. Yusi expresses hir butchness differently and relates it to dominance in the relationship and in sex play. The participants who told of the sexual roles within the relationship emphasised their active butchi roles during sex. As Wieringa suggests, this does not necessarily imply femme passivity as femme 'stress their erotic power over their butches.'[82] It does, however, indicate one way in which the butchi I interviewed articulate their sexual agency.

Femme subjectivities, on the other hand, are generally conceived of as transient. As many of the interviews illustrate, femme are expected by their butchi partners to marry and have children: butchi see them as bisexual. In public, and indeed if they marry, they are seen as heterosexual, though their heterosexual practice may not be exclusive. In the 1980s, Wieringa observed that femme 'dressed in an exaggerated fashion, in dresses with ribbons and frills...always wore make up and high heels.'[83] In the new millennium, the femme I met were also fashion savvy though not in an exaggerated sense. Generally they wore hip-hugging, breast-accentuating tight gear, had long hair and wore lipstick and low-heeled pumps. Their feminine representations were stereotypical: it was through association with butchi with in the lesbi community that femme subjectivities become visible.

#what is a lesbian #butch femme #indonesia #lgbtq #wlw #lgbtq history

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themoonlily · 3 years

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Hi! I found your stories on a ficrec list for Eomer/Lothiriel and WOW!!! MUCH LOVE!!!!! I can't wait to read more wonderful stories from you! Can I ask what got you into this pairing, and what draws you to them? Also: any headcannons about them? (Physical/personality/hobbies/etc.)

Hi there! I am so glad to hear you like my stories. :)

I would say that I got to Éothiriel thanks to Éomer. I can't say I fell in love with him straightaway - I was your typical Aragorn fangirl back in the day (mind you, he’s still one of my favourite characters in the legendarium). I had always enjoyed the bits with Rohan in particular, and the more I watched the films, the more I liked Éomer, and once I had read the books a couple of times, I realised there was so much more to this guy. I loved his integrity, his unashamed passion, his loyalty and devotion to his family and friends, and how he strives to do better and learn.

His arc in the books is such a fascinating one. He starts out as a scion of one of the leading families of Rohan (and is a son of a princess, no less), but is orphaned along with his sister at an early age, and then raised by the King himself. What kind of a trauma did that loss leave him with, and how did it affect his relationship with his sister? Were his teenage years very difficult thanks to this? At the time of the events of LOTR, he’s a fairly young man - among the youngest of the entire cast - and yet he has this hugely important duty as the Third Marshal of the Mark. He’s passionate but also ready to put himself and his own needs aside in order to do what’s right. The whole House of Eorl dynamics are just so fascinating, even though a lot of it happens outside the actual narrative of LOTR. What are his relationships with his uncle, his cousin, and his sister? How does this partnership with Théodred grow (to the point of Saruman seeing these two as the chief obstacle of the easy conquest of Rohan)? What does it feel like to watch his beloved uncle fall under the influence of ill-intended counsels (not to mention the threat of Wormtongue against Éowyn)? Éomer is portrayed as a fairly temperamental guy, so I can only imagine the fury he must feel at the situation.

But then Théodred dies, the noose tightens around everybody’s throats, and one may just imagine the desperation and dread he must feel at this point. He’s still figthing and trying to do the right thing, even if that may now mean treason. But he’s still friendly to Aragorn and co. when they meet, recognising them as an opportunity to help Rohan almost immediately.

He’s so loyal to his family that even after he’s been disgraced and humiliated by Wormtongue by the proxy of Théoden, he still knows where the true malice is coming from, and is ready to fight again for his uncle the moment he’s released. And he slips straight back to being the King’s lieutenant without even blinking his eyes.

There’s also how Éomer becomes king. I’m fascinated with what it would feel like to him. I mean, he’s been second in line to the throne his whole life, so he probably always realised there’s a chance he’ll be king one day. But the circumstances he comes to the throne - the near ruin of his country, the tragic and violent death of his cousin he might have been able to prevent if not for Wormtongue, the brief time he has with his restored uncle, and then the whole mess of the War of the Ring... all that must feel pretty surreal for him. And, of course, the Battle of Pelennor’s fields, and his scenes in it... wow. Him nearly losing his mind over thinking his sister (and whole family) is dead, charging like a madman over the field, composing some pretty amazing poetry in the spur of the moment, and then just laughing in sheer defiance against what seems like imminent death. What a dude.

And then there are so many other interesting aspects: how he must have felt over those long years (was he unhappy? was he lonely?), what he expected his life to be versus what it turned out to be, and what it did to him to watch his family leave one by one. I could go on, but then we would be here whole day.

So, enter Lothíriel. Of course I was eager to know what happens to Éomer after the war is over, and fortunately, Tolkien had an answer ready - although he could really have told us more about them! Not that in canon there is anything to imply it was a love marriage, but personally, I don’t think that a man with a disposition like Éomer would submit to a loveless or faithless marriage (or that he’d risk his relationship with Imrahil by being faithless). I just can’t see it happening. Also I just want him to be happy, and find someone who brightens up his days, someone who won’t leave him. It’s nice to imagine him having a new start with her.

Sadly, of her personality I can’t say anything that would be indicated by canon, but if we imagine her being anything like her father, then she might be a proud, strong and brave woman. Well, she would probably have to be courageous to leave her homeland for marriage (another reason I think it was a love union, because I want her to be happy, too)! I like to imagine her finding some unexpected, unimagined freedom in Rohan, perhaps even fulfilment of ambition in her role as a queen. Also, maybe with her background and if she had access to some kind of education, she’d be uniquely qualified to helping Éomer to rule and counseling him. Perhaps she even feels some personal pride over the fact that together, they are starting a new dynasty (or a new line) to rule in Rohan. Also, having a fairly big family, I think she would be well equipped to show him the love he has missed most of his life.

I recall at some point reading the appendix about the House of Eorl, and that Éomer married Imrahil’s daughter, Lothíriel, and thinking yes, this makes sense. It’s just the sense I gleaned from the interactions and circumstances of the story. Of course Éomer would have strong feelings for Imrahil, since he was the one who saw that Éowyn was still alive and hastened her delivery to safety. Being a man of strong emotions, I think Éomer would hold Imrahil and his entire family in high regard thanks to this. Maybe it’s even a ground from which some attachment did grow between him and Lothíriel. Also, Rohirrim are a culture based on horses, and apparently the Princes of Dol Amroth also maintain a cavalry (the Swan Knights who, with Imrahil, took part in the Battle of Pelennor fields). So I see there definitely being a lot of points of connection!

Of course, it also fits the socio-political frame we are left with at the end of the story: the new unity among the Free Peoples, the task of rebuilding after the war, and this new blooming of the friendship between Rohan and Gondor. On a purely logical level, it is reasonable that he’d marry the daughter of a powerful house like Imrahil’s. But for my purely headcanonish “aesthetic” (if that’s even the right word) reasons I do like the contrast these two make: their different cultures (and all that they entail from songs and poetry to foods and habits), their union as the union of earth and sea, his gold to her silver, the warrior and the lady... also this is purely headcanon/tropes but I definitely think of them as tol/smol and embodying the pair where A is the reason B began to smile again. (Tol/smol is at least half canon because Éomer is apparently as tall as Aragorn, like 6 feet 6 if I recall right. Since he’s also a professional warrior, he’s probably built like it too.)

So, yeah - I guess that’s already a lot of reasons for why I love this pair! There’s just so much potential there, so many avenues to pursue, and so much food for imagination. If you’re interested in more of my headcanons, you could try searching the tag “Éothiriel” in my blog - I’ve got plenty of posts about them!

Thanks for the ask, and sorry for this answer being so long! I rather got carried away and Éomer deserves every bit of the love he gets, and so does Lothíriel.

#Éomer #Eomer #Lothíriel #Lothiriel #Éothiriel #eomer x lothiriel

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romanceboys · 4 years

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(interview) w korea september issue 2020 — reptile

1. i was surprised to learn that this is your 13th year since debut. within a company, the years almost reflect the experience of a vice department head. that’s right. though there are things i’m seeing for the first time at this point, i think there’s a lot that has remained the same. shall i tell you something funny? early in the year, i transformed into my debut appearance from when i was 16 with a bowl haircut and had my picture taken. i put it up on instagram and as i watched my fans briefly mistake it for an old picture, i thought to myself ‘well at least my face hasn’t aged much yet.’ haha. 2. today, i get to meet one of the personalities i’ve been very curious about personally. how should i put it, you seem like a person who possesses a perfect narrative. oh my, thank you. 3. maturing steadily after debuting with shinee in middle school, you broke away from your image as the group’s youngest and instead donned the clothes of a solo musician. all 5 of your solo albums have been recorded as hits. now you are a member of superm that has gone global. even a narrative within a coming-of-age novel could not be as sturdy as this. when i look back on my life, i find it quite fascinating. i entered the company at the age of 13, and this year i turned 28. i’ve lived half of my life as a singer, i realise this when i think ‘i’ve run along the same path for a long time’. i think... i’ve been very greedy. it was through this greed that i was able to debut in a team called shinee, and consequently receive solo plans. once, producer lee sooman told me to bring him a recording of any pop song. wondering ‘what’s going on?’ i prepared for it and submitted, and soon after my solo album was released. thinking back, it must’ve been a test. i felt a sense of accomplishment in these things. that too very deeply, of course luck was on my side too. 4. a methodical company like sm couldn’t have proposed a solo career so lightly. there were a couple of tell-tale signs as far as i could tell. my singing parts were little during debut. after all taemin had the image of the one in charge of dancing. then my parts started to increase gradually, this could’ve been one of the signs. back in the day i used to stay back in the practice room till dawn. the employees working late would see me and the word probably went around. they must have felt sorry for me. a skinny boy practising by himself till dawn (laughs). 5. were you the type to stay back later than the rest in the practice room? i would go to the practice room as soon as we wrapped up our schedule. i’d practice till sunrise then return to the dorm and prepare for the next schedule immediately, i spent a long time doing this. 6. it was at the time of ‘sherlock’ in 2012 that your stage presence started to shine in shinee’s stages. thereafter, it seemed that you enjoyed your time on stage thoroughly. when did you begin to realise that only you were in command of your own stage? there were a couple of times... sherlock was one of them. sherlock was an album that came out when i was 20, right after becoming an adult, it was then my attitude towards performance changed. in those days i challenged myself to ‘not to do what was expected/fixed.’ usually our gestures at certain sections of the song are fixed beforehand, from sherlock onwards however i tried my hand at different things without reserve. it was my way of approaching the audience with sincerity, and my way of improving in the future. back then i would notice variations (in my performance) everyday when i monitored myself. 7. frankly, isn’t it difficult for someone to have made such a prominent leap? i think it might have been because of the long hiatus before sherlock. i was able to prepare well so my growth was likely more obvious when i stood on stage after a long time. how should i put it, my members were very stimulating for me. since the hyungs aren’t ordinary people (laughs). this is something i’m confident about, even if you say that most of the shinee members are main vocalists, none of us is inferior to the other, everyone is so talented. with these thoughts verbatim ‘i must survive in here,’ ‘i need to finish what i started,’ i practiced. i couldn’t not have made the leap with such stimulation and not to mention my greedy nature (laughs). spending time together with the members made me realise that we started to resemble each other in some aspects, thanks to them i was able to broaden my perspective and become aware of my undiscovered talents. 8. the prologue single ‘2 kids’ of your third album ‘never gonna dance again’ released in august. as i was listening to the song, i suddenly became curious about the lyricist and looked them up. my impression was that the language of the lyrics was raw and honest. the lyricist turned out to be you. my intention was to include everyday, colloquial speech. i’ve written poetic and abstract lyrics before, but while working on ‘2 kids’ i wanted the listeners to easily grasp the emotions at once. since i’ve released many songs like ‘danger’ with vivid concepts and sensual performances, i expected there to be some distance between me and the public. i found that i shouldn’t stray too far. in any case, i’m a pop singer. i thought to myself let’s meet the public halfway, and the result was the lyrics for ‘2 kids.’ it’s the brightest of all my title tracks (laughs). 9. i find two interesting points here. first, you are completely aware of your identity as a pop singer, second, to do that you work hard to keep close to the public. of course there are times when it doesn’t work out (laughs). for instance, when we’re deciding on the title track for a shinee album, my opinions always diverge from the members’. after listening to our fourth album title track ‘view,’ i said ‘no way, it can never be this!’ (laughs). what i’m after is, how shall i put it... there is a side to me that wants to experience things profoundly. for example, if i were to express love, instead of depicting it one-dimensionally, i’d prefer to do it maniacally. i like taking it one step further to appear twisted. 10. that’s amusing. it’s probably because i’ve seen your easy-going appearance on tv a lot, i would have never guessed for you to approach things ‘deeply’. profound people tend to be like that. ‘multi’ people are able to do several things at once, i can’t do that. i have to dig into things deeply at a time. that’s why when my members and i receive the same schedule notice, i’m the only one who always forgets it (laughs). 11. oho, this makes me curious about your taste in pop culture. i really like the british drama <black mirror>. i get hooked on the unusual. like mind-boggling things? i used to watch movies that weren’t popular because such movies are less likely to repeat contents that have already been consumed. but then i slowly began to enjoy light films as well. these days i leave a movie running in the background while i do other things. back when i would look for an independent film or thriller of my liking, i’d get extremely exhausted after watching it. they require so much focus that they sap my energy. 12. we were talking about lyrics but somehow ended up here (laughs). if you were given the opportunity to write lyrics again, what kind of story do you want the lyrics to convey? i like philosophical lyrics. for instance, a song called ‘soldier’ from my solo album deals with religious content, it varies from time to time of course but well if i were to write again... i think about this a lot these days. i want to change myself, i want to shake off my image uptil now and be reborn again. 13. why is that? i want a colour that is more concentrated and unique. as if i'm debuting again, i want to show something completely new that i had not before. 14. but aren’t your comebacks always novel? a musician like you who does diverse and experimental concepts is rare. is that so? sure the concepts are always new but... these days i think about how i want to change myself as a person from the very inside. instead of putting a facade on display, i have a thirst for wanting to show a more humane, genuine appearance. all humans experience moments of weakness and dysfunction. i think these moments definitely hold some beauty in them. the moment a person breaks down. it’s the only way one can get up and overcome difficulties again, i believe showing these sides of me, all of me, unabashedly is a path i need to walk as an artist now. 15. honestly, i’m excited for your third album because i heard this album reflects your ideas the most. what aspects of the production were different this time? firstly, i personally cast and liaised with the music video director. i thought it was important to work with the director one-on-one by keeping mediators to a minimum. through several meetings we mulled over every single thing like concept, outfit, hair and makeup. i offered my opinions too: ‘because i’m thinking of leaving a connecting link in the prologue, since there are two albums that would release following ‘2 kids,’ i want to drop certain keywords in the music video.’ fans usually call this a ‘bait’ (laughs). 16. the choreography stood out the most in the ‘2 kids’ music video. you weren’t simply moving to the rhythm, rather weren’t you moving your body guided by emotions? actually there were barely any plans to include dancing scenes. but i thought you never know so i quickly prepared a choreography the day before i left for paris. initially, i had a ‘dramatised’ (borrowing elements from drama) choreography in mind, but the director was expecting something modern. in the end, we expressed it well with a choreography that the director and i came up with after finding the perfect common ground. 17. personally i think a dramatised choreography would have been quite alright because ‘2 kids’ is a universal love song. i told the director i wanted to look miserable and pathetic through and through, like falling into a bottomless pit, wrecked, to be found waking up in the middle of the street, that would do too. why did i want to be that wrecked? i don’t know. there’s just a lot that exists within me. and i might have wanted to express that.... 18. with your first solo mini album <ace> you proved your grit as a solo musician to the public, and i believe your second album <move> reified your colour. i think taemin is a musician who doesn’t need to prove himself anymore. having reached this status, you’re releasing your next album <never gonna dance again>. did you ever think that this album could be it? rather, i hope that this album can be my ‘turning point.’ just as how it was during sherlock, i hope this time it changes my identity completely, as an individual and as a performer. people might like this album or find it mediocre, but i try not to care about these things now. 19. were you the type to stress over feedback? yes. because there are many people who are uncomfortable with change. but then i realised we’d never be able to free ourselves from within if we continued to be tied down. so now i’m trying to notice these things less. 20. have you ever had this thought? that looking back, the experimental has always revolved around you. as i said before, i think there is a lot of something within me (laughs). people have recognized that, there’s a lot i want to do. there is a greed for wanting to be different from others. it’s not that i want to ‘appear’ different but truly be different. 21. do you think there is an aspect of you that others can’t follow? i can’t seem to figure it out. i’m looking for it. however, my satisfaction level with myself tends to be low. and it’s something that has been guiding me till now. 22. what helps you recharge the most? i like lower-body bathing so much (laughs). as soon as i get into the bath, i automatically end up going ‘euu’ ‘aah.’ i soak my body completely, light up a scented candle, then let my body warm up like this. 23. while watching your vlog-like youtube content taem-log, i wondered ‘does he have an affinity for household goods?’ since the camera often captured your surroundings, i noticed pretty glasses and a colourful coffee machine adorning your cupboard. not at all. my mother did all of that (laughs). she’d say ‘this would suit taemin~’ then set it up prettily for display on the shelves. sometimes i do think i’d like to furnish my house with antiques if i were to move in the future. this is a bit funny but i find the houses in old horror movies so pretty. 24. i saw a bottle of moët & chandon in your refrigerator, is champagne your regular choice of alcohol? i rarely drink. i usually receive gifted alcohol quite a lot, it all goes to my father (laughs). my mother brought the moët & chandon and left it in there. i asked her to leave a pretty bottle in there at least for decoration purposes, so she probably brought it just for that? (laughs). 25. what kind of a person is 28-year-old taemin? i sort of want to set things ablaze. i want to put up a spectacular finale of the opening act. 26. how do you want to be remembered as a musician? as a great person. i say this knowing it sounds a bit grandiose but it’s my mission. 27. i can see it. the bigger you become the larger the impact you can have on society. i will become that person. so that many people can hear the message i want to convey.

translated by romanceboys — take out with full credit (source)

#shinee #taemin #p:taemin #w korea magazine september issue 2020 #interview #translations #e:never gonna dance again #enjoy!

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filmmakerdreamst · 3 years

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How Xena: Warrior Princess Allowed Me To Accept Myself

I was living in a city all alone and these two characters showed me that it was ok for two women to love each other.

In order to understand the following story, there’s something you need to know about me. I have always loved fiction. From the age of about 5 to 11, I loved books more than I loved people. I was a shy child who found it easier to emotionally engage with fictional worlds than the real one around me.

See, fictional worlds are created for your brain’s enjoyment. Their rules make sense. Events happen for a reason. The narrator tells you why characters behave the way they do, allowing you to empathize with them on a deep emotional level. Easy to understand, easy to identify with, easy to love.

But real people are complicated. The real world is complicated. And things are seldom laid out nicely in a coherent narrative format for you. Real things are much harder to love.

This emotional disengagement continued from the age of 11 onwards, although it was no longer as pronounced. My habit of retreating into fiction would fade during good times and come back in force during difficult or stressful periods. During the stressful periods of college, the rise of Netflix allowed me to become certifiably obsessed with my favorite TV shows. And naturally, I joined Tumblr in order to more easily fangirl with people who shared my interests.

Only for some peculiar reason that I didn’t care to examine, my interests were slowly gravitating towards girl-girl couples. Soon I was shipping, reblogging, and reading fanfiction almost exclusively about female couples. But I, who had always considered myself straight despite lacking interest in the boys around me, didn’t think this meant that I was gay. I probably just found female couples more emotionally satisfying. I was friends with mostly women, I was a woman myself, so it was natural that I just understood them better. Yeah, that was probably it.

Fast-forward to nine months ago. I was living in Boston and incredibly depressed about it. My job and my boss were making my life miserable and I had very few people to socialize with. I was making the rough transition from the constant socialization of college to the isolating pressure of a city where I had few connections. My days and nights were some of the loneliest I had ever experienced. I looked for something, anything, to lift the heart-crushing emotional silence.

My solution was the same one I always chose when I was dissatisfied with the real world; obsession with a new TV show. And thanks to my femslash-focused tumblr community, I knew just what my next feel-good show was going to be.

My tumblr friends had told me this: Xena: Warrior Princess is an action-fantasy show that enjoys a cult status, much like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (which I watched and loved). The two shows were made in the same mid-to-late 90's era, with similar bad special effects and endearing campiness. But XWP is much… MUCH… more gay.

That was about all I knew about the show going in. And amazingly, that was all I needed to know to be excited about watching it. You’d think that fact would have told me something about myself, but no. The mental walls of denial were years in the building and needed more force than that to be shattered.

For anyone unfamiliar with the show’s premise, Xena: Warrior Princess is about the title character and her quest for redemption. You see, Xena did some bad things in her previous life on another show (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys). In her storied career as a warlord, she committed such petty crimes as genocide, the slaughter of innocents, that kind of thing. But now she has seen the light and wants to atone for her crimes. Except she can never undo the terrible things she did. All Xena can do now is help people on a day-to-day basis and hope that it’s enough for someone to show her mercy.

Which is already fantastic from a character standpoint. But there is a secret mirror to Xena’s journey that is not reflected in the show’s title, and that is Gabrielle and her character arc.

Oh! Gabrielle! When I met her in the very first episode, I loved her straightaway. She is a feisty, naive, talkative small-town girl who accompanies Xena on all her adventures. Her character quickly assumes paramount importance in the narrative. Gabrielle is Xena’s only friend. She comes to know her better than anyone else and love her for who she is, all the while believing Xena can reach redemption. Yet Gabrielle is not just a support system for Xena; she goes on her own heroic journey. The two character arcs intertwine and co-develop in a way I have never seen in any show before or since.

As each episode rolled by and their relationship grew in complexity, I found myself more and more engrossed. And I came to realize: this was something I wanted. The day I accepted my own desire was the day I accepted myself. What could be more strangling than denying the existence of your own feelings? Yet I had been doing this to myself for years — cutting off the possibility of being attracted to other women — without even realizing.

Before beginning the show, I thought the fandom had read in between the lines to construct a romantic relationship between the two characters, the same way as femslash shippers do in all other TV shows. Except not this time. This one is mind-blowingly different.

Not only does the narrative place utmost importance on the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle, but the actresses bring such multi-dimensional love to their parts. When I saw Lucy Lawless (Xena) and Renee O’Connor (Gabrielle) interact, I could so easily believe that these two women loved each other beyond friendship. Xena and Gabrielle display every kind of love you can think of. They protect and sacrifice for each other. They tease and flirt. They cuddle and console. They have inside jokes with each other. They dance sexily. They play pranks and drive each other crazy. They sweetly kiss. They come back from the dead together. They bathe together. They raise each other’s children. They meet in alternate timelines and fall in love all over again.

I could have left my mental walls of denial in place. I could have said to myself “oh yes, I want this. But with a guy.” But no. Lawless and O’Connor’s incredibly attractive faces and bodies broke down the door of my mental closet. Precisely because they were fictional, I felt safe to admit my attraction to them. One of the key mental blocks I had always had towards accepting any attraction towards other women was the thought that I was being creepy. That since they could not possibly feel the same way about me, it was wrong to feel the way I did. But in my mind, that barrier didn’t exist with fictional characters. They couldn’t feel anything for me. Therefore, it was fine to feel whatever I want about them.

The walls cracked. The water came rushing in. Oh my god. I am attracted to other women. Like, every day of my life. Those flickers in my stomach when I talk to an attractive female coworker suddenly make a whole lot of sense now. I now saw my historical awkwardness when talking to beautiful girls, which I always dismissed as “me being weird”, for what it was. All those short-term girl crushes on older girls throughout high school. How was I so sure they were platonic? That heart-aching infatuation I had with my best friend that lasted for years? Yeah, add that to the ‘definitely gay’ list.

Since then I’ve realized that my feelings are valid regardless of what others feel for me. Just because feelings are unrequited doesn’t mean they aren’t real. That’s what Xena and Gabrielle taught me. Their fictional example was the final blow to my rapidly-crumbling resistance to the idea of homosexuality.

In our culture today, so many forms of media reinforce heteronormativity. How many commercials have you seen that assume attraction between a man and a woman? How many billboards tell women that they need to look sexy for the men in their lives? How many times has a movie ended with the guy getting the girl? It’s the combined action of a thousand small rocks shifting to make a cultural avalanche. You can’t move against it. All you can do is stand still and try to maintain your footing against the current, to maintain your identity in the face of a world where you and people like you are often swept away by the mainstream.

Xena: Warrior Princess is one of those rare stories that dares to go against the grain. It celebrates a romantic relationship between two women as the most natural thing in the world. And in doing so, it provides a mirror for me and people like me to recognize themselves in. There we are. Look at us fly.

This story isn’t over yet. I still have a lot of work to do to accept myself, but thanks to Xena and Gabrielle I’ve taken one huge step towards living the open life I want to live. I moved on from that horrible job and lonely city, but in the end I’m grateful. Grateful that circumstances pushed me to the depths of loneliness necessary to bring down the prison I had built in my own mind.

- How Xena: Warrior Princess Allowed Me To Accept Myself by Lyra Hall

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tgsofu · 2 years

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I don’t often watch live-action TV shows and when I do, I rarely finish them. But The Squid Game is a beautiful exception to that rule with its thrilling, engaging story and wonderful characters! Read more for my full-length review of the show.

CONTENT: ★★★★☆

The story of Squid Game delves deep into human nature and the problematic aspects of a capitalistic society. I think this meta commentary is brilliantly communicated through the story without relying too much on symbolism or expecting the audience to read too much between the lines to catch a drift of it. A huge relief for a low-RAM mind such as mine!

The universe itself is a real-world setting, but the isolated environment in which majority of the events take place make it feel like a dimension of its own, governed by its own vicious rules. There are obvious similarities between Squid Game and reality TV shows such as Big Brother and Survivor, all of which utilize the same concept of voluntary imprisonment within a staged game that turns your physical and emotional struggles into amusement. The very backbone of this show seems to be built on blatant nods to these kinds of IRL reality TV shows, and even us as the consumers of this particular piece of media are not spared from its quirky criticism as we come to recognize ourselves in the cruel audience depicted in Squid Game. I have just brutally been called out for being part of the wealthy, those with enough money to afford a Netflix subscription (or privileged enough to leech off of their parents'), choosing to entertain theirselves with yet another grotesque battle royale story that forces them to self-reflect on their own guilty pleasures.

The characters each come with their own set of flaws and strengths. Each fare from specific circumstances that drive them to risk their lives for the big prize at the end. Going in, I saw some people list the cast as one of the show's less appealing aspects, especially in contrast to the similar Alice in Borderland. However, for me personally, these characters felt both very varied and very real which had me become emotionally invested in their arcs and remain interested in them from start to finish! These personalities were often good people caught in a desperate cycle of debt that drove them to act on greedy and selfish impulses.

That being said, the way these different parties functioned within the narrative made it feel like several independent stories were taking place instead of one coherent whole. Albeit it is realistic for people to form intimate groups and alliances with little meaningful interaction to those outside of it, I was left hoping for more connection between some of the most prominent characters and story threads.

EXECUTION: ★★★★★

The pacing and narrative structure were excellent, perhaps even my favorite aspect of the whole package! The screen time dedicated to the moments outside of the massacre at the heart of the show taught me to care for these sacrificial lambs and their circumstances by giving me time to view and process the motivations behind their actions. The plot didn’t rush ahead with these narratively significant moments, yet it never felt slow or boring; the next horrible experience would always be looming in the horizon, threatening the wellbeing of the participants we have come to adore despite full well knowing what fate has in store for their poor souls. The plot keeps feeding us small bits of intrigue and mystery to help pave way for future seasons and to lure us right back in to find answers to our burning questions once the next one finally arrives.

VISUALS: ★★★★☆

For a live action show, I found this show visually engaging. The realistic, grey palettes of the real world were contrasted by the colorful kiddy bright ones found on the guards are players’ clothes, and later as the choice of color of Gi-hun's dyed hair. Such popping bright colors were loaded with emotion and meaning as they seemed to intentionally break the monotony of the mundane world with their connections to games, fun and escapism. Furthermore, the scenes were filmed with psychologically clever choices and relied a lot on angles and pacing that helped enhance the emotional weight of many significant moments. Alas, to have earned a 5-star rating from me in this aspect, it would still have needed something more to help it really stand out from the sea of similar live action shows, to travel another extra mile to create a sense of identity that would help us identify the show beyond its choice of colors and costume designs.

INGENUITY: ★★★★☆

From Hunger Games to Truman Show, from Danganronpa to Saw, the core idea of this show is obviously nothing new. The vague line between entertainment and inhumane bloodlust has been explored in media time and time again, as is the case for the general meta level discourse about ethics and our relationship with the media we consume. Still, as a theme it is one I will probably never get tired of and I don’t feel like it takes anything away from the Squid Game’s own well-established ingenuity and depth. The show takes its own original approach to these issues and adds a new layer to the discussion started through different media at different points in time, while linking it to other prominent modern-day issues such as money, debt, and addiction. I know I enjoy it, but if you are sick and tired of seeing these themes explored in your daily doses of cynical escapism, you may find it an issue here.

Also yes, I drew Gi-hun as a squid kid. I KNOW I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE TO HAVE BEEN COMPELLED TO CREATE THIS CROSSOVER!!

#Squid game #Review #show reviews #doodled bs #gi hun #Splatoon #splatoon

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