#she has conflicts about it but ultimately that's what she defaults to

[journey-to-the-attic]

there's such a difference my own internal reaction to thinking 'ik's just some kid' and 'zhaoxi's just some guy' that i kinda gotta type it out sgdhsj

like. with ik it means so much. she's just some kid, she's perfectly ordinary, but she's been through so much that she doesn't deserve. she's just some kid but somehow she changes these demons' lives in such a short time because she is ik and ik is kind. most of all she DESERVES to just be SOME KID who can live care freely and just have fun

but then with zhaoxi it's just that. he is just some guy and thats all there is to it dhgdhd

also i do love zhaoxi of the dad in the devildom ah but i would like to hit jtta zhaoxi with a broom for neglecting his daughter, like king i know you kinda had not a lot of choice if you wanted to earn enough money to live but COME ON

and they are both just humans in the end, but they are also so so special (to me at least)

but i think you put it really well, anon! ik is just some kid who really does deserve to actually BE just a kid, whereas zhaoxi’s kind of like a more boring tom from tom and jerry

#answering asks #anon asks #zhaoxi may be the mc of his au but ik is the Main Character of jtta #and there's a pretty big difference between the two #you know that spongebob meme that's like #'I FUCKING LOVE OVERLY KIND PROTAGONISTS' #'I WANT TO SEE OTHER CHARACTERS GROW THROUGH WATCHING THEIR ACTIONS’ #that basically sums up ik #like she does end up in her situations by chance a lot of the time but once she's in them she deliberately chooses kindness #she has conflicts about it but ultimately that's what she defaults to #and of course it comes back to bite her in the latest arc but that's where we get the SPICE of her overall development #in zhaoxi's case though he really does just stumble through his year by accident #he does nothing on purpose and is scared of everything #but through otome game logic the others are so inexplicably attracted to him that he unintentionally becomes a force for good in their lives

[genericaces]

I always got the impression Illyria was a he/him in their original god king form but defaulted to she/her when taking Fred as a vessel. In general though I don’t think pronouns actually matter to Illyria. I think he/him was assigned by followers and she/her is assigned by ats crew.

Valid! Canon doesn't dive too deeply into it, so I think a lot of it is up for interpretation. AFAIK all we get in canon is that Knox and Drogyn refer to Illyria (the original god-king) with it pronouns (as do the ATS crew), and it's only when it's in Fred's body that the crew start using she/her. Which is to say that I think that you're correct that it's other people projecting a gender onto it and struggling to disentangle Illyria from Fred.

But also! What I've always found interesting is that Knox (basically the only character on the show with an emotional connection to the original Illyria) entwines a... crush? For lack of a better word? on Fred with his worship of Illyria, and I can't make up my mind, personal headcanon-wise, if he's just projecting or if there's historical precedent for this. Like, what's the thought process behind, "yeah sure I'll resurrect my epic god-king (gender neutral) in the body of my beautiful co-worker"? Also there's this adolescent crush/obsession vibe when he says:

And when I first saw this, I thought this was going to lead into a parable about how some dudes will 'worship' women and make them into god-like figures in their heads, but in doing so, also infantilize them and want to control them? Like I legit thought this was going to evolve into an "I Was Made to Love You" type lesson about objectifying women, where Knox both worships Illyria and feels "owed" for resurrecting her, and when he throws a tantrum about her not being appropriate grateful, she kills him. And this would mirror the condescension that Fred experiences throughout the show -- that ultimately what kills Fred is Knox putting her up on this pedestal as a "perfect woman" rather than seeing her as a complete person:

Like, Knox says this to Wesley just before Wes pulls his gun on him, and I thought this would be about Wes being forced to confront the ways in which HE could also flatten Fred into a symbol of goodness and not see her as a whole person at times. Which would then mimic the ways that nearly every member of the Angel crew harbors feelings of guilt over what happened to Fred.

(Alternatively in my AU where Wes gets Illyria'd, I think it's ultimately about Wes CHOOSING to die in Fred's place, against her wishes, in a way that's heroic/tragic but also intertwined with the complicated feelings Fred has about being patronized by the others and being perceived as the one who needs to 'protecting.' Like, how do you grapple with that grief alongside that resentment? *Wesley voice* "I think I hate her a little for that." But this is getting way off topic.)

ANYWAYS. Obviously none of that happened, so maybe I'm reading subtext where there isn't any or I just missed something. This is all a long way of saying that much of Illyria's arc feels very gendered in my interpretation, not just in the god-king-beyond-human-comprehension way but in the conflict surrounding it. To get back to your ask, I do agree that Illyria doesn't care about pronouns. I do think it's funny in the Wes!Illyria AU if the only person who DOES care is Fred, who's out there pulling (in the most well-intentioned way) the "its pronouns are she/her" move

#i receive: 1 ask #you receive: a vague answer and 7 paragraphs about something marginally related #hope this doesn't come across as anti wes by the way. it's not meant to be #i just think these are underexplored facets of their relationship i would've liked to have seen developed #ask #wes!illyria #fred burkle #angel the series

[raayllum]

I honestly can't imagine Rayla not dooming the world for Callum if the situation required it. She literally called going to dark places an "act of love."

I mean, there's a few things:

The opinions of anyone working on the show (cast, crew, etc.) are not gospel and not the default, nor do they need to be treated as the be all end all. You can disagree and that's more than gouda

People will give misleading answers and/or answers that are true in the moment (i.e. would S5 Rayla doom the world for him? Maybe not. Would S6 Rayla after some development? If the answer's yes, that's gotta stay under wraps) to avoid potential spoilers

I was actually honestly pretty surprised 1) someone asked such a direct question and 2) even more surprised that it got directly answered, since it feels like it could skirt into spoilery territory potentially for next season given the possession plot line. (I was personally gunning for a "what do you think Rayla and Claudia would think of Callum's S5 dark magic use, if they knew?")

I will admit Paula's response was, admittedly, what I've leaned to for Rayla as a whole in terms of that World vs Loved One binary. One of the things that makes Ezran and Rayla interesting to me was the uncertainty of "would they risk [insert thing here] for their immediate circle of loved ones" routinely being a "I don't know." Not that they necessarily 100% wouldn't, but just that I was genuinely 50-50 split on whether they would, or leaned towards No or Yes but could see the other way being plausible too. That uncertainty paired with the certainty I had that Callum would, and that contrast, has always been one of my favourite things about the Trio as a unit and Rayllum as a duo. It's one of the reasons that Heart vs Duty conflict for Rayla as a character has always been so compelling to me and why 4x07's introduction of the "You have to kill me" conflict was so (and is) exciting!!

But I digress.

I don't think that Rayla's letter is the best example of what I think you're trying to illustrate (I'll raise something I think that is perhaps more indicative in a moment) purely because the whole reason Rayla ultimately left was to protect the world. I've talked about this before in my "Priorities in Through the Moon" meta from ages ago, but Rayla does not go into the portal because she's primarily concerned about finding her parents. Callum researches the portal and helps recreate it and his whole side of things because he wants to help her with her parents, even being the one who brings them up when they resolve to go ahead. Rayla's concerned primarily with Viren, stating her reason for going into the portal even after finding out it requires facing water:

"Listen, Callum. Soren was worried about Viren too. Worried that we never found his body. We need to know what happened to Viren. He's a threat to the whole world! This might be the only way to be sure he's actually gone."

This is in line with how Rayla operates and references her parents in her letter to Callum, given her goodbye exchange for her parents:

Rayla: Surprised you even noticed, considering you've got more important things to do. Lain: Nothing is more important than our favourite child. Rayla: I'm your only child, and you're still leaving me behind for the Dragonguard. Tiadrin: We have to leave, Rayla. For you and for all the other Moonshadow children as well [...] This is our duty that we're doing for Xadia. For you. Someday, I hope you see that.

Just as trust and love are not necessarily synonyms to her, duty and love are not necessarily exclusives. Her parents left out of love for her and for the world, even if that meant prioritizing the world over her in the immediacy of their choice. Rayla leaves to go kill Viren out of a similar mutual desire to protect Callum, yes, but that's mostly there in the fact she left alone and didn't want him to stop her. Not necessarily that she went to hunt down Viren in and of itself, but that she went by herself ("I was trying to protect him. I knew I had to be strong alone"). Protecting the world - and a Viren-less world being one Callum would be safer in by proxy - was worth blowing up her relationships to her.

Going to dark places wasn't what she was doing just to protect Callum - that played a part, too, but her primary goal was to hunt down Viren (going to said dark place) alone and by leaving Callum behind, hence the "Stay safe, and stay in the light. Don't look for me, and don't follow me" - a sacrifice she was making on her own so that Callum wouldn't have to, but still for a collective cause that she deemed meaningful: "I have to make sure Viren never hurts anyone ever again." (Which is also why she goes after Viren again in 4x09, tbh)

That doesn't mean leaving in TTM wasn't also an errorful, self-destructive choice to leave (see like every other TTM meta I've written) but that the goals she could conceptualize was to protect the world, full stop. Anything else along the way (getting closure with her parents, protecting Callum) were extra stops and bonuses to help her have the courage to go through with it, maybe.

This is also in line with how we see Rayla treat other scenarios where it's a choice between individuals / individual relationships vs the potential to help or harm the greater good

Prioritizing the world / new mission of stopping the assassination mission > her relationship with Runaan ("This is a miracle, a chance for peace!") in 1x03

Being willing to and convincing Callum to let Ezran search for the egg under the ice in 1x06

"Then it's time to go. War's coming like the world's never seen, unless we get the wee dragon home to his mom" (2x01)

"Callum, I know you trust them, but by the time we know the truth, it'll be too late. Do you understand? We'll lose everything" (2x03)

"So please, allow him to pass into Xadia and help bring the Dragon Prince home. Because I don't think I can do it without him" (3x01)

Do I even need to specify 3x09? Or TTM?

"I hate it too, but we have to keep moving [...] We can't save everyone, Soren. There's too much at stake. I'm leaving, and you better be right behind me" (4x05)

"If I threw the coins in the lava, would it release their spirits? Or would they just be trapped in some of eternal burning agony? Let's trade. You let him go, and I'll give you the coins." "I'm not making a deal with you!" (4x09)

"I love you, and I haven't forgotten about you. But I can't help you yet. Because right now, the world needs me. Callum and Ezran need. There's a great evil trying to return to Xadia, and we have to stop it, at any cost" (5x01)

"It hurts me to know they're trapped like this. It's agonizing. But I know our mission comes first. The world is in danger, and you can trust me to stay focused" (5x04)

This is, arguably, the strongest core trait she has in common with Viren, just for the record, especially in arc 1. He's very greater good centric as well, just with the push of his own ego and thirst for power + he only considers humanity's concerns, whereas Rayla has minimal pride and arguably not enough ego, and she wants to improve situations for everybody on a collective scale post-1x02 onwards.

The exceptions to this consistent behaviour is largely 2x07 and 3x08, which I've talked about more in my Dragon Quartet meta (from Dec 2019 good god??). These are arguably two of the times, in addition to TTM in some ways, where Rayla is operating the most out of her emotional core ("My allegiance is to my heart" —Tales of Xadia) and what feels 'right' on that level. For better or for worse.

"That dragon was defenceless, and I just left there." / "So I have to stay, and defend the Dragon Queen."

I say Rayla is at her most emotional largely because in each scenario she's abandoning the mission of keeping Zym safe (and thereby her own identified "world's best hope" for peace) in favour of protecting a different individual dragon. This seems to go completely against the "mission first" if indeed, like in 1x03, Rayla can abandon one mission she's devoted herself to in favour of another one just like that [snaps fingers]. If she cares about the world first, why prioritize these individuals, neither of whom she particularly knows or personally cares about? BH also spells this out for us, since it's likewise a mirror to her offering to go up into the tower with Callum to defend Harrow even though the egg should technically be her first priority:

But to Runaan and those like your parents, love is rooted in all families, all creatures. Souls like that feel called to protect everyone as fiercely as those they hold close.

In 2x07, Rayla is at her best, if least logical, whereas in 3x08 she is at worst (until arguably S4) and likewise her least logical ("I know you feel guilty, but you're not thinking straight"). In each scenario the boys stand a Much better chance of survival and of accomplishing their mission with her from just an objective point of view (they don't know Xadia's terrain at that point and circa 2x07, neither could really be combatants in a fight since Callum didn't have a weapon or primal magic). We could slap an easy "you're being a dumbass and dooming the world" label on it and be done with it. But not only does Rayla think the boys are fully capable of completing their mission without her ("I believe in you") but 'the world' as a stake never enters her mind.

Instead, Rayla looks at each as an individual last stand where the only neck on the chopping block is ('rightfully') hers. Whether she's right or not to do so regardless of how she frames it is debatable (I personally view it as understandable, admirable, but more than a little short sighted or guilt ridden considering The Stakes), but that very much seems to be the thought process.

She's not risking the world, in her mind. All she's risking is herself.

And that's perfectly acceptable to her as a trade off. It always has been. It's one of the perfect kind of microcosms of the cognitive dissonance she lives under, where why should she care about herself when there's bigger fish to fry ("Don't worry about my hand; the egg is all that matters now") ignoring the fact that 1) she can & arguably should let herself care about two things at once and 2) she's going to be much less effective as a team member / dual wielder if she's recovering from a messy at best recent amputation.

This path of "Rayla works to save Callum because she doesn't care about what happens to herself" is admittedly probably the option I leaned towards most when it comes to Rayla in S6, even if I do wonder how it might be streamlined time / arc wise cause it does elongate her arc further. Either way, this is the route that lets her not kill Callum, working free him instead while also being able to justify trying to free him to herself, because she's not conceptualizing the Big Picture. She's narrowing it down to him and her and deciding if one of them has to get hurt in order for him to be freed, it's gonna be her.

It's not the Character Development route as I call it, but it sure is consistent.

TLDR; While I still lean towards Rayla having an ultimately positive impact (i.e. breaking Callum free from potential brainwashing) in s6, it would not surprise me at all if from her perspective it is framed as a self-sacrificial move on her end > a big picture risk to the world, even if that's how Callum may see it.

More thoughts on Rayla + the possession plotline in S6 here, here, and here.

#thanks for asking #anonymous #tdp rayla #i need you to kill me #my heart for xadia #analysis series #analysis #christ this got long #it's like. rayla's act of love is also filtered through callum's request to murder him as well #whereas viren lost sight of his love for the individual or the collective #and callum prioritizes the collective until it's his two ppl on the line #none of them are perfect avenues (altho viren's is defs the worst) but c&r are all coming from Valid Places

[themattress]

Fire Emblem Observation

Rhea, leader of the Church of Serios.

Edelgard, leader of the Adrestrian Empire.

Dimitri, leader of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus.

Claude, leader of the Leicester Alliance.

They're all different, but they share one very unique thing in common.

They all add up to one Prince Lotor.

Seriously, I know @ultraericthered made the comparison with Edelgard before, but when you think about it, it's all of them! Rhea is over a thousand years old and believes that unlocking the secret to some great power is the key to ensuring everlasting peace is her conflict-prone setting. Edelgard is a white-haired imperialist who arrogantly thinks she alone has what it takes to change things for the better and will use almost every trick in the book to do so regardless of morality (and is also a huge nerd deep down). Dimitri is a charming, eloquent, handsome prince who has been through some serious trauma and then ultimately snaps, becoming a feral, murderous beast of a man yelling about how he will kill the white-haired girl he once loved. And Claude is a deceptive schemer whose default is not really opening up and trusting others with his ambitions and secrets, and in Three Hopes can become outright devious in the pursuit of the greater good he desires. And the fan discourse surrounding all of these characters often shuns nuance for black-and-white thinking! It's fucking Prince Lotor!

#Fire Emblem #Three Houses #Voltron #Voltron: Legendary Defender #Rhea #Edelgard #Dimitri #Claude #Prince Lotor #Analysis #Comparison #Truthbomb #This has been a PSA

[soleminisanction]

How much of Stephanie’s flaws do you think is character flaws and how much is sexist writing? Because while some stuff I’ve heard about her seemed like red flag, but I’m also wary of pointing them out because there’s so much sexism in DC Comics and I don’t wanna fall victim to sexist takes. Do you have any clarity on that conundrum?

That is, I think, a much more complicated question than you'd intended it to be. Let me narrow this down to just one flaw to show you what I mean:

In Steph's original appearance (Detective Comics #647-649), her one real "character flaw" is anger. It's what drives her to move against her father, sure, but it's also what nearly leads her to murdering him, it drives the conflict between her and Batman & Robin, and it's the reason Bruce describes her as being, quote, "on no one's team but her own."

When she's made a supporting cast member in Robin, however, the anger is still there, but it's no longer treated as a character flaw... partially because Chuck Dixon has a tendency to write angry characters as a default. Instead of being something that gets her into trouble, it's treated as a trait that makes her a "spitfire" full of "righteous anger," by which I mean Dixon used her as a mouthpiece to scream insults at anyone with an opinion he didn't like and had her beat up men that "deserved it," both with the assumption that readers will agree with her, because the narrative is on her side and portrays her as being in the right.

This is largely how Steph's anger is handled for the rest of her characterization, when the exception of one storyline written by Jon Lewis, who framed it more as a thing to get Steph sympathy -- it gets her into trouble at one point, sure, but is otherwise written with an undercurrent of, "this poor girl, the world has been so very mean to her, don't you just want to comfort her?"

The thing is, that treatment of her violent anger as something righteous and okay, where she's always in the right and the people she hurts always Deserve It? You can argue that that's a form of sexist writing, because there are scenes where she behaves abusively and it's not treated as abuse or even a bad thing, because she's a girl and women's abuse is not taken seriously. You even see this in how she's treated by the audience -- she's got basically the same anger issues as Jack Drake, and yet while interpreting Jack as a abusive is widely accepted by certain parts of the fandom, the same is not true of Steph.

Other people would argue that portraying her as angry at all is inherently sexist (and I don't agree with this, but I have heard people make this argument, stupid as it is) because it makes her look like a "shrew" or a "woman scorned" or otherwise plays into negative stereotypes of women's emotions.

Which then leads the modern version of her, colored by and primarily based on her portrayal in Batgirl (2009) by Brian Q. Miller, where Steph just, doesn't have anger issues, at all, or at least so the narrative would claim. She gets fired up in a fight, sure, but ~she doesn't have a mean bone in her body~ and is always so ~smiley~ and ~happy~ and just a ~sweet widdle polyanna~ who only wants to do ~the right thing.~

But see, that, ditching the anger issues entirely? That's also sexist! Women should be allowed to be angry and still have the potential to be treated as heroes! Getting rid of it because you can't think of how to make a woman with anger issues into a likable and compelling character is sexist! Especially because it takes away her initial motivation and doesn't replace it with anything.

And that's just kind of how it is for all of the traits you could call her character flaws. The only ones we can say for sure are deliberate are those that wind up contributing to the plot, and even then, they very well might have some sexist writing wrapped up in them.

It's really not a simple black or white situation. But like I mentioned in one of my other posts, I ultimately think that the best way to address both deliberate character flaws and sexist writing is to work them into the plot and make them matter, resolve and explore them somehow, rather than trying to toss them away and pretend they never happened. That option is just as sexist as any other, and it's also unsatisfying and lazy. There's a long history of comics that proves people can do better.

#dc comics asks #stephanie brown critical #apologies if this one is rambly I had trouble getting my thoughts together

[fantasyinvader]

I've been thinking about Edelgard's supposed depth according to the creators, the fact she's meant to both be a cute girl and a brutal dictator in-line with the series past villains.

I feel there is something here. Like, which way is the gap moe supposed to go? Are we supposed to see her as this conqueror only to see she's the cute girl, or is the cute girl the surface and the conqueror what lies underneath? Considering how the game treats the Flame Emperor being unmasked as this major reveal, I'd say it's the latter of the two. We are meant to be taken in by the cute girl lord, especially since Dimitri and Claude are initially assessed as having a hidden darkness and having a fake smile initially. Not to mention Rhea. It would make sense why the devs expected most people to pick the BE's as their route, since Edelgard is not only presented more favorably (though she does drop her views on the other nations if praised after the prologue, a hint of where her character is going) and she's a cute girl that will draw in male players.

The we consider the route split and it's various symbolism. Byleth defaults to Silver Snow, symbolized by the game's own take of Buddhism's banner of victory. The devs even pointed out the importance of Byleth's flag, saying that it was the true Fire Emblem of the game to them symbolizing people coming together to fight for you because they believe in you. This would mean that the player walks the path of Nirvana/Enlightenment, the path of the righteous if you interpret the Safflower/Crimson Flower route as being a path of thorns. Safflower would mean that the game uses attraction to try and ensnare the player into going down this route, with the player being the one to ultimately decide to join her or not. Edelgard is presented as both a temptress, tying into the story behind the banner of victory, as a false messiah considering her signature weapon bears the Crest of Maurice aka the Beast. It's said to be the representing the animal path in the Japanese, the opposite of Enlightenment, while the path of thorns reading would make it out to be a sinful where Byleth was lazy.

Byleth is supposed to fight Edelgard, no matter how painful it might be for them or the player. It's the central conflict the game was designed around, especially it's main musical theme Edge of Dawn. it depicts how Edelgard and Byleth's relationship plays out, Edelgard hoping Byleth will choose to walk beside her only to lie to them and end up as enemies. The music doesn't play in the Flower route, but it's also baked into Apex of the World, Edelgard's final boss theme that also plays in Azure Moon. The musical choices of Engage would also suggest the heroic Emblem Byleth is from the Silver Snow route through the pieces that make up Trial of the Academy, with the other routes being relegated to a DLC Emblem with the three lords.

i also feel that the game questions if the player is turning a blind eye if they join Edelgard. The first part of the game establishes the Flame Emperor as someone helping TWSITD with their acts in order to reap the rewards before being unmasked, with TWSITD saying they're doing these things for her benefit. The idea of the path of the beast would suggest Byleth/the player sides with Edelgard out of ignorance but when the Japanese script has Edelgard being called out by Dimitri for ignoring shit, something she admits to doing in Hopes, it really looks like the game is questioning if the player is doing the same thing.

Seriously, if Edelgard is told to her face that the people who experimented on her did so in order to create a weapon against the Goddess and her children by the person who did the experiments and killed her siblings, saying the nobility did it in order to make a strong emperor to rule over Fodlan after they stopped her father's attempts to centralize power and took it for themselves, that makes her look beyond stupid if she isn't intentionally ignoring the truth.

Really makes the case that Edelgard is initially meant to be seen as the cute girl, with the tyrant being her depth. It's not meant to be a case of "and actually, you discover she's a real sweetheart if you join her." No, Flower is meant to be a route where you didn't do the right thing and moved to stop Edelgard, instead ignoring everything to join her. You ignore who Edelgard actually is, instead focusing on her waifu-status, as well as the reality of what you are really doing.

No wonder the Korean fanbase said "she tricked me" back when it was revealed she was the most hated character there.

[pink-strawberry-kissess]

So, while I do think a lot of the criticism of Remake Ada is in bad faith, I do think there is something to be said about how the design of the character does not match the personality they gave her.

They clearly want to portray Ada as someone who puts up a cold, professional front with a heart hidden underneath but the outfit they gave her still screams Femme Fatale and is in some ways even less appropriate than her original outfit. The animated direction doesn't help either with quite a few shots of her ass. Not that any of this is remotely the fault of Lily Gao who clearly knows what type of character she is supposed to be voicing.

Basically, the writing and acting for Ada aren't the issue, the design and visual direction are the issues.

i really took some time to think of an answer because i know this is not sent in bad faith

i think i can agree on the basis of (this outfit is still not practical) but when have her outfits been super practical? you could even argue that her re6 top has JUST WAY TOO MUCH OPENAGE.

i could see it being, her personality is meant to be colder, so why is she dressing like that? but at the same time, ada has always had this innate girlness that i think male audiences sometimes doesn't understand. like the inherent.. girlness of dressing for yourself. her outfit isn't inherently sexy. i can see her dressing like that, entirely for herself. and it aligns with most of her outfits in a sense.

it can be hard from a male perspective to see a sexually provocative woman and be unable to detach their own sexual desire for said woman. i think a good way to maybe understand is how woman do not inherently dress for men, and i've never seen ada dressing for a man in this sense. (sure, you can argue that a male developer dressed her) but in this narrative, i can see her dressing for herself.

i respectfully disagree with you on the basis of, ada dresses like this, because ada WANTS to dress like this. she's always worn heels, so no argument there. she's still covered nearly head to toe. i think i just need a bit more substantiation on this idea, because i think i have to respectfully disagree.

i can understand in some ways, but ultimately i don't think her outfit conflicts with her personality. let alone her sexualization with the direction of her scenes. she doesn't do anything overtly sexual, and even the bed scene could be interpreted as a nervous response to avoid more confrontation from wesker. her response to wesker is a way to not show that she's weak or afraid of him, her "flirtatious" response she defaults to because she's already been shown to be incompetent. she's "flirting" to remain in control of the situation.

in regards to her outfit again, she's always been a feminine but stylish person. i don't see how her outfit doesn't fit or doesn't scream her.

one could argue- well ada's outfit is skin tight, so is leon's top? she still shows no skin at all so i think i have a hard time really sexualizing her outfit that much to the point where it feels out of place.

i know this isn't sent in bad faith, but i just can not see it

thank you for the discourse tho! made me think a bit

#ask heart #heart answers #cbros5 #ada wong #aeon #leon x ada #leon s kennedy #leon kennedy #re4r #re4r separate ways #separate ways #separate ways remake

[mickmundy]

thread of some of my scout hcs, thoughts on his personality and little miscellaneous tidbits!

starting off strong by saying that i think he's very emotionally intelligent. knows when his loved ones are upset and will set about doing whatever he can to cheer them up. he defaults to trying to make you laugh since that's what he thinks he's best at, though!

cant always offer the Sagely Advice that one might get from spy, but he'll tell you whats on his mind and what he thinks of the situation. won't mince words; if he disagrees with you, he'll tell you Directly... but Gently. "Uhhh, dunno if i agree with that. think of it this way.."

maybe the last person you'd think to have a heart to heart with, but he might surprise you! he's a good listener and while he prefers to do things while talking (throwing a ball against a wall, pacing, etc), you've got 150% of his attention if the subject matter is serious!

competitive, but more likely to let others win than he is to Rub It In when He wins. battlefield smacktalk to the enemy is one thing, but Some People (not naming names) are VERY sore losers (sniper) so scout's content to botch a few billiards shots if it means that his friend is having fun! :)

cries. only when hes alone! feels like he has to have a good cry now and then to get everything out and to "emotionally reset". doesn't think crying is Girly/Weak or w/e, but he still doesn't like doing it around others. "okay, needed that. shake it off, scout, you're all good!"

VERY scrappy. resourceful through street smarts/intuition as opposed to technical know-how. tenacious and a total wildcard! that said, he won't be argumentative for no reason; he'll listen to any orders that engie or solly put down, but not without giving his input, asked for or not!

part of being a good scrapper is knowing when to fight and when to take a walk. when scout's truly mad, he prefers being alone, drawing or going on a run to get his thoughts clear. not afraid to ask for help and is always ready to "repay" friends for their kindnesses towards him.

growing up, he never wanted to trouble his mom with anything. scout was always the reliable one (although a complete hellion), often putting his own priorities to the side for his mom. places a lot of weight on his own shoulders to be good, or better, for her, and to be a son she can be proud of!

cannot drive. engineer has tried to teach him, sniper has tried, spy has tried, heavy has tried... but he just can't do it LOL. crashes into something every time and is always like CRAP!! SORRYSORRYSORRYSORRYSORRY!! it's not a big deal, though. plenty of the mercs enjoy driving after all!

he was always taught to share, even though he kind of hates it! always hated being forced to share with his brothers as a kid. in his adult life, he doesn't Mind, but he prefers being able to choose when he does share. if he's splitting something with you, its a BIG deal!!

easily hands out apologies and doesn't like long-standing conflict. "lets just hash this crap out and move on already!" good at putting you on ice, but only if he needs time to think or gather his thoughts. the longest grudge he'd ever held was against his Absent Father...... spy! but their relationship begins to get better after the events of the comics. i could sincerely write a whole thread on Just their dynamics together!

ultimately i think scout hated His Absent Father for so long because it was just "Easier" to. but now that spy is There and Trying, well, scout can't really Hate Him. theres still a lot of "repairing" to do, and they aren't the Perfect Father And Son, but scout appreciates spy's effort and the sincerity of his explanation (once he hears it from spy and not tom jones)!

will always value the truth over lies. he'd rather you tell him something Horrible if it was the truth than sugarcoat it with a lie. i think spy wanted to give scout what he wanted when he was dying (being comforted by his "dad"), but in retrospect when scout learns the truth, he wished spy would have just been honest with him, even if it did suck to know that his dad was someone like spy and not actually tom jones. regardless, he understood that spy just wanted to give scout what he thought scout wanted, but understands/respects scout's wishes going forward and promises to be a little more honest :) this is when they can really start repairing and Building on their relationship as father and son, in the ways that work for both spy and scout!

i don't think Dad Issues is the only facet of scout's personality nor do i think it even Dominates a lot of his thoughts BUT i just happen to have a lot of thoughts on it lmao

i don't think any of the other mercs Baby him (he's literally a Grown Man and imo being babied would piss him off), and i don't think any of them think he is "inferior" or "childish". i think all of the mercs are at least a little immature!

However i will say that i think a very interesting dynamic between scout and sniper is their views on their fathers and how it shaped them as people. while "jealousy" sounds a bit dramatic, i think they Lightly Envy one another; wouldn't ever take it out on each other but if they think about it for too long they kind of get Bummed Out. scout loves his family but sometimes wishes he'd been an only child with a Mom and a Dad that were around all the time. he doesnt know the Extent of snipers Complicated Feelings about his own family!

sniper loves his family too but sometimes thinks about how even though his own father was Present in his life, he'd been Very Hard on him and Basically rejected him. sniper was present while spy was comforting Dying Scout and took notice of how spy treated scout the way that he thought scout would want, disregarding his own feelings. sniper's dad, on the other hand, only told him he was proud of him after he'd technically died... ouch!

and No i Don't Think sniper wants spy to be his dad nor does he see/want to see spy as a/his own father figure in any capacity lol. i think this is just something that crosses both sniper and scout's minds every now and then and they're like "Huh. Wish I Had What He'd Had!"

i don't see scout struggling with internalized homphobia or anything like that, either. i think his mom, like scout (and spy!), says what they mean and mean what they say and when scout's mom says "i love you no matter what", she means it! scout never gives that kind of stuff a second thought; if he brings a Fella home for the holidays, it doesn't matter! scout's mom is still going to show his Date Of Choice all of the most embarrassing photos of scout she can find! x)

holds his liquor well; he came from a big cathoIic family after all! x) gets a little more Snarky and a little more Hostile if he gets Truly Drunk, but doesn't like to make himself go that far Often. he can always brawl with the mercs when he's sober! prefers to have some beers with demo, engie and sniper and play darts or billiards with them. doesn't like mixed drinks. freakin gross!

will break your balls over anything and everything (like spy and scout's mom!). you tripped on the field? hell tease you for a week! nothing ever mean-spirited and not about anything that he thinks would Upset you! if you ask him to stop, he will, and he'll apologize and mean it!

#dutchfoolery #mercthreads #<- if u wanna see my other Merc Thoughts go here.. hehe #dutchiehcs #tf2 #scout

[babacontainsmultitudes]

Swiftli? Grant/Marco? Mercedes/Carol? Autumn Oak/Linda Stampler? (spreading my own propaganda <3)

For the ship ask thing :)

Also sorry that it’s kinda a lot lmao

Hiya!!! Hehe very interesting choices, love this, let's get to it!

Swiftli: COMFORT SHIP ALERT!!!

So, okay, the thing about this ship is that it's not my default ship for Linc or even necessarily Taylor? But that's not to say I'm conflicted, no, I really like these two together!

*Romantically* I think it kinda took me a while to feel the appeal of this ship? But then like... One night on a whim I found myself making a really silly playlist for them and... That made me understand it? At least what it is for me. This and, @raemeh (iirc) made a post about their first kiss being a surprisingly good one and- gee idk that made me go 😳 as well hahaha.

And yeah! Like I said this is absolutely a comfort ship for me, they're very silly and cute together, love to rotate them around in my head, might even write them at some point who knows!

Marco/Grant: OUGH THE CUTIE PATOOTIES OH MY GOSH I'M PUTTING THEM TOGETHER IN A LITTLE JAR AND SHAKING THEM AROUND AND THEN UH GIVING THEM SOME PRIVACY EHEHEH

At the start of S2 I think it's fair to say that of all the kiddads I was probably most curious to see what kind of person Grant ultimately got with, I suppose probably because relationship troubles are such a big thing for him in S1! And I just want the best for him honestly ahaaa

😫 And I wasn't disappointed! Marco is so sweet and they're so cute together and eghhsibgosesg-

Er, despite this I'd actually like to see some angst/conflict between them? Grant has a lot of explaining to do tbh, and I sorta don't want everything he's hid and lied about to go without consequences from Marco... But of course I'd want them to work everything out in the end! I think that would make me love them even more tbh.

In general I really just want more of these two in canon! They need to kiss... Otherwise, y'know in general I have a good chunk of ships for Grant but... Ultimately so long as Marco exists in the same universe, I tend to imagine them getting together in the long run.

Mercedes/Carol: Oooh interesting! Not a ship I've thought too much about tbh, but I could get behind it! I think my main hang-up if anything is that usually when I imagine ships with either Henry or Mercedes, either one of them doesn't exist in that universe or they never met, or it's a poly thing! In this case, I'd probably like this best if Hen and Mercedes have an open-relationship sorta deal (I mean they sorta canonically do?) and these two get involved with each other within that context. 🤔 Could also get behind a 4-way poly scenario with Darryl as well, but that's not a necessity by any means!

:0 I like the idea of Carol getting to experiment and maybe learning more about her sexuality and the like the way Darryl sort of got to in S1, and Mercedes would be a lovely person to see that happen with! Yeah, they'd be cute together I think!

Autumn/Linda (Ron's mom!): I'm so fascinated by this ship??? Also love that we've just established Linda's name haha good for her good for her.

You'll have to tell me more about how you see this ship before I come to any concrete feelings about it tbh! Still, I like the premise I mean, I guess they'd actually have a bunch going for them? On its own I love the idea of the omega daddies being divorced af and their exes getting together haha it's what they deserve. But yeah they could genuinely be quite good for each other! I imagine Linda must be pretty good at dealing with people with anger issues, she'd probably have the patience to be there for Autumn in a way that matters and help her work through some things. And Autumn is an underrated catch tbh haha- :o also a very powerful druid who could possibly help Linda with her chronic illness??? The fact that she had a bit of a thing for Ron also makes her getting with his mom pretty funny to me.

Yeah idk, like I said I'm fascinated, feel free to ramble about them!!!

OKAY hehe, thanks for the ask!!!! 💜

#good choices good choices #dndads #this was an interesting one to go through for sure #dungeons and daddies #swiftli #taylor swift dndads #taylor swift #lincoln li wilson #grant wilson #marco li #carol wilson #autumn oak #autumn #linda stampler #grant x marco #mercedes oak garcia #mercedes x carol #autumn x linda #rarepair #ask game

[smerzbeliever]

i always dread the pronoun circle not bc i Don't Do Pronouns but like i kinda don't. like i "use" "he/him" bc that's what has been designated me by la socièté on account of having short hair and a devastatingly large cock but like i don't Want you to do that like i'm not gonna get dysphoric over it also if you're a gay guy PLEASE call me she i get such a kick of out that. but then if i say "any pronouns" that also gives the implication that there's something else dysphoric and conflict-riddled afoot which there isn't. like what's the option for i don't fucking care and do the default but in a woke enlightened way not a right wing jordan peterson way. basically i don't want to have to gender myself publicly to a group of new people every time i start a new class like i'm glad it makes some people more comfortable but it makes me really uncomfortable. i don't want you thinking about my gender identity as it relates to my sex organs like you can try to divorce the secondary trappings of gender from sex but ultimately "what are your pronouns" is asking "in an ideal world do you wish you were born with a penis or a vagina" like it is an invasive question especially when it's in front of a big group and being asked by the establishment

#remove gendered pronouns from language period but i don't feel like having to make that point on the first day of Orchestration II

[nina-vonnegut]

Talking to my bff about mayans/soa and it got me thinking about Gemma.

Before all of this gets away from me I want to say that this isn't me even entertaining the idea of intention on Kurt Sutters or anyone else's mind. This also isn't me turning the narrative around and making soa out to be some feminism show. It's not. It's really not. It's a macho sausage fest. But this post goes out to the girlies.

So. Gemma. Queen Bee. HBIC. She is the soa enforcer when it comes to women in the show and around the club. She calls women sluts, whores, etc. and far worse stuff. Sometimes her dialog could be spoken by a dude on the show and I wouldn't even blink, esp. when it comes to degrading women.

And by all accounts she won that way. She is the ultimate old lady, highest ranking woman present at all times, even when she is not the wife of the clubs prez. She is playing the patriachys game, she is one of the boys; she is winning. People either hate her for behaving like that/or judge her far harsher than the dudes or are in love with her; kinda affirm her actions and try to immitate her cause they are "bad bitches" too.

Screw intention on Sutters part but is she winning? Truly? She is the one woman who suffers the most gendered crimes, most often on the show. And she is the one woman who would be a good addition at the clubs table cause she cares about the club and isn't afraid to kill people over it. And still never gets to be one of the brothers.

Gemma is someone who "gets the life" and protects it, for that she is rewarded. But rewarded as a woman. She is still "just" an old lady even if the is thee old lady. And she gets punished as a woman when she missteps. Just like the other not old ladies, the ones she looks down on.

Even before Clay/Gemma conflict on screen she tells Tara that it's not the first beating/smack that she took. It's implied that either John and/or Clay hit her. While Tara is shocked, Gemma is more "that's the life" about it. Both her husband's cheat/ed on her regularly, and while it happens on runs, she is supposed to be fine with it. And pushes that narrative. The conflict only arises cause the girl shows up. Gemma is raped and beaten when the club has enemies and is instructed to deliver a message. She is later beaten by her husband on screen, when she tries to argue with him earlier that the club doesn't do drugs he grabs her by the throat and tells her that she doesn't tell him what the club does. Conveniently forgetting that he uses her as a battering ram to tell everyone else what the club does and quiet liked her cheer-speeches in the earlier seasons. As long as she is "in line" she apparently can tell what the club does/stands for.

Later her son pimps her out, literally, to that husband who beat her viciously, her son knows this, cause he needs information from him and she is supposed to honey trap him into sharing. Much later, after she admittedly kills his wife, that same son shoots her from behind and kills her. She is shown to give him permission cause that's "who they are". She is the most driving force behind the "outlaw life" in the show. Should have patched her in and given her an outlet for all the ideas.

And as much as she is the hbic she gets sex crimed every season at least once! As much as she plays the game and shits on other women she gets punished just like them. Let that sink in for a sec before you break your neck posting "Gemma was right etc." and immitate her too much by "putting bitches in their place". Remember how Gemma was put in her place by the dudes whose rules she followed to a T.

Tara, most behatedest, who hated the life/style and the club and even at her most "gemmafication" didn't enforce the boys club rules as much, doesn't get "put in her place" the same way. She doesn't stand for and accept some default behaviors. Again, the show isn't feminist tm and Tara does her fair share of fighting women too, but she does punish and hold Jax responsible for misstepping, cheating as much. She isn't beaten by a man ever, she isn't raped, she isn't pimped. Her most horrific physical injury/handicap/illness is completely "sexless". In fact she pretends to have a miscarriage and blames it on Gemma and because Gemma behaves the way she does Jax believes she caused it.

So while I think hating Gemma is understandable, she did *all this*, one cannot ignore that she also got "got" every season. And while I think it's cool that Gemma brought confidence and a certain attitude to women and their self perception I don't think one should ignore how her hating other women and playing by the boys rules, enforcing them on other women, didn't help much in the end when it came to domestic violence and such.

#klukvatalk #putting this in the tags in case someone wants to chat. interested in all the opinions. agreeing or disagreeing #gemma teller #soa #gemma teller morrow #sons of anarchy

[grace-of-gotham]

STUDY: Grace Williams

—    basics.

▸     is your muse tall/short/average? Short-ish. 5ft4'

▸     are they okay with their height? She quite likes it actually.

▸     what’s their hair like? Blonde and wavy. If she tried the curly-girl method it might end up curlier, but she doesn't usually bother.

▸     do they spend a lot of time on their hair/grooming? Depends on the situation. She has it up and out of the way for work, but when she's going out for the night she takes care to curl or straighten it.

▸     does your muse care about their appearance/what others think? She does, for a few reasons. She is building up her reputation as a reliable health care professional so she wants to be presentable. But also, coming from Crime Alley, she is often judged prematurely and she's eager to prove her worth and to prove others wrong. Really, she cares too much, though she's aware it's a problem.

—    preferences.

▸   indoors or outdoors?     indoors ▸    rain or sunshine?     sunshine ▸    forest or beach?     beach (she has bad hayfeaver) ▸    precious metals or gems?     gems ▸    flowers or perfumes?     flowers ▸    personality or appearance?     personality ▸    being alone or being in a crowd?     in a crowd▸    order or anarchy?     order ▸    painful truths or white lies?     painful truths ▸    science or magic?     science ▸    peace or conflict?     peace ▸    night or day?     night▸    dusk or dawn?     dawn ▸    warmth or cold?     cold▸    many acquaintances or a few close friends?     a few close friends ▸    reading or playing a game?    playing a game

—    questionnaire.

▸     what are some of your muse’s bad habits? Pushing people away due to a fear of abandonment, smoking, forgetting to eat when she's preoccupied, biting her nails.

▸     has your muse lost anyone close to them? how has it affected them? Not in the typical sense. Her dad let her and her mom when she was 9, by choice. It's had a lasting impression on Grace's ideas of relationships and how she trusts people. [Verse dependent] Her mother has a chronic illness and in some threads she may have passed away. Grace has spent a considerable part of her childhood and teenage years caring for her so she not only grieves for her mother but for herself. It's a complex issue.

▸     what are some fond memories your muse has? Ice skating at the public rink in Gotham National park with her mom as a kid. Her mom teaching her how to crochet. Graduating high school and being accepted into medical school.

▸     is it easy for your muse to kill? No. Not at all. If she ever has to in a life or death situation she will be traumatised.

▸     is your muse capable of trusting someone with their life? Yes. Though she is friendly as a default, to fully trust someone would take some time, but once they get past the barriers she's put up she'd trust them with everything she has, even if it scares her.

▸     what’s your muse like when they’re in love? Hopeless and loyal. If she's in, she's all in, and she'll fight for it tooth and nail. Her main love language is physical touch though she'll ultimately do what she can to work out what her partner needs.

Tagged by: @oftomorrow​ Thank you!

Tagging: @jp-todd-rp @unconventional-weapons (lex!) @whxlmedwing (aiden/shun) @fromxbeginningxtoxend @hotdadharper @oswald-pengu1n-cobblepot @gothams-black-rabbit @gothams-white-knight and anyone else who fancies it!

#tag games #about grace

[soulventure91]

3, 4, and 5 for kassi? 👀

sunshine meets some edgy queries |

3. What is your OC's fatal flaw? Are they aware of this flaw? Kassi has a few, but I think the big kicker is her big mouth combined with mostly-innocent and trusting outlook. Once she starts talking, especially when she reckons the person she's talking to is someone she can trust, her focus is completely locked on whatever thoughts happen to be in her head. This can lead to, and doesn't exclude, accidentally insulting the listener; discussing her necromantic powers and outlook thereof; and being led into a trap or imprisonment because of whatever she's talking about. Overall she means well but Kassi's propensity to chatter can, has, and will get her regularly into trouble she doesn't necessarily have the ability to handle.

4. When scared, does your OC fight, flee, freeze or fawn? Obvious enemy? Fight, for sure - even if they outweigh her (which is. Pretty much by default yes), Kassi won't back down from a fight. That being said, if she's caught by surprise - say, surrounded by guards for running her mouth - Kassi will shift rapidly into fawn. She doesn't want to scrap with normal people, so if Kassi can manage talking her way out of people problems she'll just run her mouth even faster. I've discovered in some chardev work that her persuasion style is to just. Wend her way around a topic and ultimately get a question of her own answered all without providing any information she might know.

5. How far is your OC willing to go to get what they want? Mm. Per a bit of 4 above, Kassi avoids directly going toe-to-toe with normal people if she can. She can stare down demons and hellspawn like nothin', and putting down undead she can handle in her sleep. But something about facing down living mortals, even if they mean her ill, Kassi has a hard time engaging in conflict. So putting her in a choice between saving innocent lives and her goal? Unless she's confident others can protect those lives and she doesn't need to fret over that loss of life, Kassi is always going to pick protecting life. It's the bedrock of her beliefs and despite her abilities so clearly and easily making her a target for the living Kassi won't compromise it for anything. That's the epitome of the balance she strives to protect.

#i adore kassi so much T_T looks ne is actually ng/cg #mc: kassiani tjedis #thankies for asking!! :D

[unmeiha-arc]

✿ [>>;; i know it was posted a long time ago but i'm sending the pre-established relations one anyway, feel free to ignore alsdkjfslf]

send me a  ✿  and i’ll fill out the template below. bold for things i could definitely see or want, italics for things i could see or am unsure of and striked out for things i don’t want or cannot see.

FRIENDSHIP.     childhood friends  /  work buddies or coworkers  /  family friends  /  friends with benefits  /  smoking buddies  /  adventure buddies  /  fake friends  /  recently friends  /  party buddies  /  friendship of need  /  dying friendship  /  circumstantial friendship  /  partners in crime  /  old friendship  /[your muse] is the good influence  /[your muse] is the bad influence  /[my muse] is the good influence  /[my muse] is the bad influence  /  opposites attract  /  ride or die  /  frenemies  /  roommates or flatmates  /  penpals  /  exes to friends  /  enemies to friends  /  other

ROMANCE.*     childhood sweethearts  /[your muse is mines] childhood crush  /[my muse is yours] childhood crush  /  exes  /  exes to lovers  /  forbidden lovers  /  highschool sweethearts  /  secret relationship  /  opposites attract  /  long distance  /  unrequited [from your muses side]/  unrequited [from my muses side]/  unrequited [from both sides]/  skinny love  /  friends to lovers  /  enemies to lovers  /  spurious relationship  /  power couple  /  newly entered  /  soulmates [ metaphorical ]/  soulmates  [ literal ]/  awkward  /  turning toxic  /  toxic love  /  cheating [on your muse]/  cheating [with your muse]/  other 

FAMILIAL.     siblings [half]/  siblings [step]/[my muse] is an older sibling figure to your younger sibling figure  /[my muse] is a younger sibling figure to your older sibling figure muse  /[my muse] is a parental figure to yours  /[my muse] is a child figure to your muse  /  guardian figure  /  legal guardian  /  adoptive child  /  foster child  /[your muse] is taken under mines wing  /[my muse] is taken under yours wing  /  found family

ANTAGONISTIC.*     dangerous to each other  /  dangerous to others  /  unpredictable  /  rivals  /  petty  /  developing into sexual or romantic tension  /  based off family matters  /  based of off circumstance  /  based of professional matters  /  based off misunderstanding or lies  /  conflict of ideology  /  betrayal  /  hero - villain dynamic  /  enemies  /  fight club  /  friends turned enemies  /  lovers turned enemies  /  exes turned enemies  /  other

* heavy discussion and/or plotting required

i tend to default to co-wol interactions because i don't have a non-wol verse, so that's what i've kept in mind while answering this!!

honestly, i think iriste and koharu would really get along well. both are incredibly empathetic and while it might take a little bit for them to get past each others' defenses, ultimately would be very good support for the other. a prime example of this is: where iriste isn't especially temperamental, koharu can be, and in that sense i think iriste could be very good for helping to keep her in check. both have similar dispositions, so i think they'd also find a nice quiet solace in each others' company in whatever capacity that may be

potential bonding moments outside of having a shared occupation:

growing up in garlean-occupied doma meant that much of her culture was outlawed and, as a result, koharu is very attached to it. for this reason alone, she would be very excited to share it with iriste as soon as koharu realizes how receptive to learning about it she is.

koharu is... not great at cooking — not bad per se, just not great — but she excels when it comes to making sweets. she knows enough about cooking to get by and isn't especially picky so she never felt the need to really develop the skill, but her sweet tooth demands more of her. she has priorities, okay? the point here is that iriste can teach her to be Better™.

additionally, both have a bit of experience with alchemy, and can trade tips and recipes. koharu tends to make her own potions and certain oils needed for weapon/armor care, but she's also surprisingly vain and would love to learn about the fragrances iriste makes.

#ahkmourn #I DEFINITELY HAD TO DIG FOR THIS I LOST THE MEME

[tortoisesshells]

For the Uncommon questions for OCs: 12, 35, 43, and B (if you’re willing)

12. How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?

Fantasize about bitching about it, and then ignore it until something distracts her long enough to forget about it.

35. How do they treat the things their friends come to them excited about? Are they supportive?

I don't think Nellie Treat is really most people's first port of call when something cool or exciting happens, but she tries to love what the people around her love, even when she doesn't get it.

In the case of not getting it, she'll at least try to figure it out for herself, on her own time and terms, which I do think can read as coolness or disinterest to people who don't know her well (and even to those who do know her well, at times!) - she's concerned with not appearing foolish or uneducated or like she's making demands of people, asking them to explain themselves.

43. If someone asked them to explain their sexuality, how would they do so?

Serviceable. Vaguely puzzling by comparison to her observations of other people's varied sexual orientations, but not ultimately getting too much in the way of things.

B) What inspired you to create them?

There's a post that occasionally makes the rounds along the lines of Jimothy "is an Austen hero in a theme park ride movie" and I had notes about it - for me, the appeal of the character is that he does do quite a lot wrong, moral compass is pretty well shaky, but sure, I can work with (quoting P&P) him having been "given good principles*, but left to follow them in pride and conceit." as one particular manifestation of his larger character flaws.

In that vein, Elinor Coggeshall Treat came out of a vaguely Austen-heroine-shaped space in the narrative. Nellie owes no small amount of her original DNA to Elinor Dashwood (responsible older sibling to a younger sister, Mary/Marianne, emotionally locked-down, relentlessly practical, I even stole borrowed the name!), and especially in the first part of Customs, there's a lot of parlor drama (probably too much, for 1730s Boston, but ludicrous AU of a Disney Theme Park Ride Movie, I'm allowed to play a little fast and loose at times) & it's Nellie's ability to navigate it that counts towards her narrative survival. Still, she's not really that much of an Austen heroine - she's older, more established & isn't looking to (re)marry unless personally inclined to do so; she's also running a smuggling operation for reasons which include "greater profits" "it (the Molasses Act) isn't even good law" and "fuck this guy". Obviously the latter reason she comes to have some. uh. conflicted feelings about.

*: I don't actually think his principles are that good, but for the sake of argument, here: a person who has the ability to be good and even shows glimmers of it at times, but has so thoroughly twisted up (I would say entwined but people will throw things at me) his sense of self in his office that he will almost always default to what he believes he ought to do as the King's man, or what he is outright ordered to do even if he appears to personally disagree with it.

Uncommon Questions for OCs

#thank you kind friend!! #ask meme #polkaknox talks #customs and duties

[jimejarcia]

My highlights on Jane Ward's - The Tragedy of Heterosexuality (2020) because it was easier exporting it here than to my drive

(Sexual Cultures) Jane Ward - The Tragedy of Heterosexuality-NYU Press (2020) - (PDF) (Resaltar: 191; Nota: 1)

───────────────

▪ 36 (she has a ref for that lol)

▪ many straight men find themselves

with women they don’t actually want to talk to; both parties learn to fake

interest in the name of relationship success

▪ many straight men find themselves

with women they don’t actually want to talk to; both parties learn to fake

interest in the name of relationship success.

▪ sense of what it

means to keep on living and looking forward to being in the world

▪ It is possible for straight men to like women so much, so deeply, that

they actually really like women. Straight men could be so unstoppably

heterosexual that they crave hearing women’s voices, thirst for women’s

leadership, ache to know women’s full humanity, and thrill at women’s

freedom. This is how lesbian feminists lust for women. I do not despair

about the tragedy of heterosexuality, because another way is possible

▪ Najmabadi argues that as the

new concept of heterosexuality began to circulate in the nineteenth cen-

tury,3 Iranians resisted one of its defining principles— that men should

feel love for, and desire companionship with, women. This idea was

a “hard sell,” Najmabadi explains, not only because it conflicted with

long- standing beliefs about women’s subordination and degraded status

(how could men love their inferiors?)

▪ Romantic marriage— and the

forging of bonds between white men and women— was offered to white

couples as a white- supremacist strategy during the early Jim Crow era

and later offered to African Americans as a central pathway to member-

ship in American “normality.”13

▪ aggressively marketed heterosexual love to Americans, campaigned to

make it appear more appealing than homosocial intimacies, and devel-

oped myriad techniques to both normalize and unravel the misogyny

paradox. As they did this, they built both an industry and a culture out

of the contradictions of straightness

▪ the Eugenics Publishing Company

▪ quo of the time: men and women commonly wished harm on each

other, found each other disgusting, and were made utterly miserable by

marriage.

▪ Taking this conflict (i.e., women’s desire for

sexual pleasure and men’s lack of interest in providing it) as a starting

point,

▪ hygiene products marketed to white

women to promote gender and racial purity,

▪ husbands’ rape of their wives appeared to be

the wedding- night default and that this formative sexual assault stood

to ruin marriages from their outset

▪ African American physicians and social reformers declared it a

social and political right

▪ Marriage

▪ marriage to be reconceptualized as a freedom, rather than an

economic obligation or necessity

▪ African American reformers focused on

the ways Black sexual respectability was best achieved through Black

women’s freedom of choice

▪ For Maher, the gap between the fantasy and

the lived experience of heterosexuality (or the reality of married life and

parenting after the wedding day and baby’s birth) left women disap-

pointed and wanting more, a craving that was soothed by watching the

fantasy reenacted on screen over and over again

▪ Despite her sharp analysis of misogyny, Forward,

like Norwood, ultimately placed responsibility for change in individual

women’s hands. Women needed to stop normalizing men’s abuse, set

limits on what they would tolerate, and learn to assert their own needs

▪ One of the great

paradoxes of the heterosexual- repair industry is that this unrecipro-

cated care of husbands is, at least according to Maushart, the reason that

straight women initiate 75 percent of all divorces, but it is also relent-

lessly presented (albeit in ever- new forms of self- help) as the “solution”

to women’s misery.

▪ To the extent that women do need to ask some-

thing of men, they learned that they should do so with patient guidance

and a hefty dose of gratitude.

▪ Disguised

as a form of pop- feminist self- help, He’s Just Not into You reinforced the

notion of a simple gender binary wherein straight women desperately

grasp for men and straight men plod along with no logic, agency, or

emotional depth whatsoever.

▪ But it is

worth noting that the heterosexual- repair industry takes many forms,

several of which emerged or expanded in the late- capitalist period.

The global sex- and romance- tourism industry, for instance, now tar-

gets both women and men, capitalizing on the broad range of reasons

that straight people have become disillusioned with heterosexual court-

ship.75 Homosocial online communities have also proliferated, offering

spaces where straight men, in particular, can vent their frustrations with

heterosexual relationships.

▪ New Age self- actualization seminars and Christian megaevents are

also popular spaces for heterosexual repair, merging long- standing

bioessentialist arguments about gender difference— or masculine and

feminine “energies” and “destinies”— with the project of personal trans-

formation.77

▪ the very gender binarism and misogyny

that produce heterosexual misery are also the interventions proffered to

consumers to remedy it

▪ find out fairly quickly that I am not one of the

women they are interested in seducing. A thirty- eight- year- old feminist,

I am far too old, too serious. Perfect. I am just a fly on the wall

▪ In other words, straight men are finally bur-

dened with some of the labor of making heterosexual desire functional,

though they come to this work, as did their early twentieth- century

counterparts who resisted loving women, with fear and ambivalence

▪ strategies used by dating and seduction coaches are composed of

old, new, and repurposed attempts to reconcile heterosexual desire with

misogyny; intimacy with “faking”; feminism with the science of gender

difference; and seemingly private problems with neoliberal interventions

(self- actualization seminars, personal coaching, and other financial in-

vestments in personal and relational improvement

▪ Their industry is

also a transnational and imperialist one; as American and European

coaches offer seduction bootcamps around the globe, they name and

then “solve” the heterosexual disappointments and desires of men in the

global South.

▪ stunning example of the misogyny paradox, pickup artists built

their success on helping other men resolve the tension between straight

men’s socialization, on the one hand, and straight women’s reality, on the

other. They spoke directly to men’s sense of a lost heterosexual birthright

and an unfulfilled media- fueled expectation that men, no matter how

average in personality or appearance, would have access to a reason-

able amount of uncomplicated sex with women they find attractive.3 The

filmmaker Sut Jhally calls this the “male dreamworld,” a fantasy world

in which young, beautiful women are presented to boys and men as an

entitlement,4 and the feminist writer Laura Kipnis, too, has noted the

perplexing disparity between powerful, straight, white men’s inflated

sense of their own appeal and their over- the- top requirements of the

women they desire (Kipnis describes men like Harvey Weinstein and

Donald Trump as “bulbous, jowly men; fat men who told women they

needed to lose weight; ugly men drawn to industries organized around

female appearance”).5 But as pickup artists knew, many men reached the

pinnacle of heterosexual misery when their dreamworld could no long

integrate real women. In reality, the women these men encountered had

grown tired of men’s sense of entitlement, their scripted flirtations, their

braggadocio, and their aggressive and self- centered approach to sex.

▪ ,6 one

of the immediately observable features of the trainings is the likability of

many of the men who circulate within them, a feeling that stems largely

from their vulnerability and mutual care once inside the protected space

of the seminar.

▪ It

seems like . . . the mood of an infertility group for women

▪ How old are you?’ you say, ‘Old enough to be your father.

And it’s past your bedtime!”

▪ Coaches also gave extensive

attention to what they called “inner game” by replacing men’s defeatist

psychology with a willingness to get “blown out,” or rejected by numer-

ous women, without being psychologically annihilated by it

▪ This “fail harder”

ethos comes directly from corporate, sales- driven motivational frame-

works, which, as the sociologist Rachel O’Neill argues in her outstanding

study of London- based seduction bootcamps, makes seduction less of a

game than it is a form of work, in which men become sexual entrepre-

neurs who approach sex in terms of long- term investment and increased

▪ the coaches at Love Systems, al-

though the negging technique has a bad reputation, some mild and play-

ful negs, used sparingly, are proven to work because they do the opposite

of what women expect. Instead of fawning over women and showering

them with false compliments, men can neg women to show that they are

confident enough not to beg for attention

▪ that men and women want fundamentally different things out

of heterosexuality, and as a result, their attraction and relationships are

fraught with conflict and misunderstanding

▪ hetero-

sexuality works best when men and women learn to say and do things

that they don’t actually want to say or do

▪ hetero-

sexuality works best when men and women learn to say and do things

that they don’t actually want to say or do, for the sake of heterosexual-

ity— to express interest, gratitude, and connection, whether they feel it

or not. In the heterosexual- repair industry, this is not about manipula-

tion; it is about learning an advanced relationship skill.

▪ For one thing, no one likes the idea that sexuality

is scripted and formulaic, even when it is

▪ centuries- long heteropatriarchal campaign about the unique

and mystical nature of romance itself (a campaign that has long served

as an ideological cover for women’s oppression at the hands of men who

claimed to love them

▪ It not only builds on a

century of popular and scientific theorizing about purportedly natural

gender differences and the trouble they cause well- intentioned straight

people, but it also upholds the value of individual self- actualization

(i.e., taking dramatic steps to know yourself and get what you want,

right now) and embraces neoliberal mantras once reserved for cor-

porate motivational posters, applying them to heterosexual sex (“Fail

harder!” “Embrace a mastery mind- set!” “Show her your leadership!

▪ .e.

▪ seduc-

tion coaches worked from the premise that most men, in their natural

state, are not what straight women want. And most women, in their

natural state, are not what men want

▪ Their work

illuminates that straight culture exists in a very conflicted relationship

to what I have elsewhere called “gender labor,”20 the intimate work that

must be done to make both heterosexual attraction and the gender bi-

nary appear natural

▪ On the one hand, gender labor smooths out the

contradictions, but on the other hand, the very act of doing this labor

exposes heterosexuality as a high- maintenance, nonautomatic project

▪ how to be less boring and

weird,

▪ what men receive in return for their enrollment

fee is an entire weekend reflecting on what women actually want from

men and from heterosexual sex itself.

▪ what actually happens

once trainees and the women they have seduced transition from public

to private space, where sex is believed by many men to be a foregone

conclusion. But the curriculum does ask men to actively disavow ag-

gressive masculinity, to exercise empathy, and to spend more time than

they’ve ever spent thinking about the rigged conditions under which

straight women must negotiate sex with men.

▪ which they

call “kino”

▪ For coaches to draw so heavily on scientific and corporate lingo—

kinesthesiological data, best practices, strategy, leadership, and so on—

may seem unsexy, but coaches believe that these are “male languages”

that resonate powerfully with their clientele

▪ Rachel O’Neill expresses a similar concern that this view of

women having a strong but socially repressed sex drive causes seduc-

tion trainees to paradoxically believe that challenging a woman’s “last

minute resistance” is a means of honoring women’s sexual impulses.23

In the seduction industry, acknowledging women as sexual agents

does little to intervene in long- standing claims that women say no

when they actually mean yes

▪ straight women who do not want to have sex with a given

man but consent to his sexual requests because doing so yields other

things that straight women want (safety, making nice, getting it over

with, money, straight privilege, etc.)?

▪ Here was evidence of the power and resilience of narra-

tives that repackage men’s deficiencies as enticing challenges for women

▪ wheels of sexual access or to continue receiving women’s emotional

labor, this makes no intervention into men’s profound sense of en-

titlement to women’s bodies and women’s love, nor does it pose any

challenge to men’s unrelenting attachment to their own masculinity

as the core of their identity, the foundation of their goodness, the basis

on which they connect with other men, and the primary contribution

they think they’re making to the world.

▪ classes, suggesting to straight male

students that if for no other reason, they should at least embrace fem-

inism because doing so will result in better heterosexuality— more

authentic relationships with women and better sex based on women’s

enthusiastic interest, rather than women’s placating and ambivalent

consent. But I don’t feel good about this approach; I want men to be

feminists because they value women’s humanity, because they identify

with women, and because they see that the gender binary is a histori-

cal, political- economic, and cultural invention that has caused no end

of suffering for women and also for themselves. When men extend

empathy and subjectivity to women out of self- interest, to grease the

▪ A SICK AND BORING LIFE

Queer People Diagnose the Tragedy

I’m going on record here to notify every heterosexual male and

female that every lesbian and every homosexual is all too aware

of the problems of heterosexuals since they permeate every as-

pect of our social, political, economic, and cultural lives. . . . I

think all of us are authorities on the heterosexual problem.

— Jill Johnston

Once you’re on this track, you’re pretty much a lesbian and you

think like a lesbian and you live with lesbians and your commu-

nity is lesbians, and the heterosexual world is foreign.

— Gloria anzaldúa

▪ As I have written about elsewhere, method-

ological critiques are also frequently used as a deflection strategy when

readers feel implicated or threatened by new and/or critical ideas

▪ as

▪ “I often reflect on Edith Massie’s [sic] quote in John Waters’s Female Trou-

ble: ‘the world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life.’ Probably the

most obvious part is the inability for many straight couples to be honest

with each other about their additional attractions. . . . I think this is sad

and sews mistrust.” (queer Latinx male)

▪ Back in chapter 1, I quoted from the fabulously over- the- top character

Aunt Ida, played by Edith Massey in John Waters’s 1974 cult film Female

Trouble, who scolds her straight- identified nephew about being a het-

erosexual: “Queers are just better. I’d be so proud of you as a fag. . . . I’d

never have to worry. . . . The world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring

life.” So too does one of the respondents above quote Aunt Ida’s wise

words; we both hark back to a dark and utterly bizarre film from 1974 to

find corroboration for something that remains true to our present expe-

rience and yet is rarely acknowledged. Indeed, “boring” was the most

frequently repeated descriptive term used by my queer interlocutors to

describe straight people and/or straight culture. Things that bore us are

not just uninteresting but often also often tedious, repetitive, unorigi-

nal, mechanical, and sometimes mind numbing. To bore something is

also to make a hole in it, to hollow something out; hence, sometimes

being bored feels like being completely empty. Significantly, Valerie

Solanas began SCUM Manifesto, her 1967 wild feminist screed against

the patriarchy, by reminding readers that oppression and boredom are

interconnected: “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and

no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to

civic- minded, responsible, thrill- seeking females only to overthrow the

government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation

and destroy the male sex.”14

▪ boring

▪ Things that bore us are

not just uninteresting but often also often tedious, repetitive, unorigi-

nal, mechanical, and sometimes mind numbing. To bore something is

also to make a hole in it, to hollow something out; hence, sometimes

being bored feels like being completely empty

▪ To bore something is

also to make a hole in it, to hollow something out; hence, sometimes

being bored feels like being completely empty. Significantly, Valerie

Solanas began SCUM Manifesto, her 1967 wild feminist screed against

the patriarchy, by reminding readers that oppression and boredom are

interconnected: “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and

no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to

civic- minded, responsible, thrill- seeking females only to overthrow the

government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation

and destroy the male sex.”14

▪ oppression and boredom are

interconnected

▪ straight, or normcore, fetish

objects

▪ It’s Sad How Much Women and Men Dislike Each Other

▪ There is a lot of shit

talking about unsatisfied wives and midlife crisis feels

▪ From a queer point of view, one of the defining features of straight cul-

ture is complaint. Straight women complain about men they date or

marry with such gusto that queer people are left shaking our heads and

thinking, “My god, why, why, why does this woman stay with some-

one she finds this pathetic?” In The Female Complaint, Lauren Berlant

demonstrates that complaint was cultivated in women through the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to create a singular and

normative “women’s culture” organized around the premise that het-

eroromantic love is what women want most and what they will seek at

all costs, even when it fails them and causes them great pain.23 Prod-

ucts marketed to women— cosmetics, romantic films and literature,

self- help programs— manufactured sentimental belonging in “shared

womanness” by celebrating women’s ability to survive their disappoint-

ing and failed relationships, and this survival became a defining feature

of women’s empowerment. For Berlant, the female complaint also keeps

individual women tethered to their own somewhat- unique expressions

of normative heterofemininity: “[Women’s culture] flourishes by circu-

lating as an already felt need, a sense of emotional continuity among

women who identify with the expectation that, as women, they will

manage personal life and lubricate emotional worlds. This commod-

ity world, and the ideology of normative, generic- but- unique femininity

trains women to expect to be recognizable by other members of this

intimate public, even if they reject or feel ambivalent about its domi-

nant terms.”24 By the twenty- first century, complaints about men, or the

collective recognition that “men are trash” (see the ubiquitous Twitter

hashtag), has become the endlessly meme- ified and T- shirt- emblazoned

slogan for empowered straight ladies. As Berlant explains, this ostensibly

▪ rity and respectability are measured by what one has given up in order

to keep the family system going, an ethos that is challenged by the pres-

ence of a queer child, for instance, who insists on “being who they are.”

▪ universal women’s culture is marketed as one that spans race and class

hierarchies among women, attempting to hail all American women

into its membership. Indeed, to the extent that art and music by Black

women has been embraced by mainstream white feminism, it has often

taken the form of the sassy, resilient Black woman trope described by

Melissa Harris- Perry in Sister Citizen.25 Black women, already cast in the

white imagination as strong, aggressive, and hyperheterosexual, come to

represent the possibility that all straight women can survive bad men, a

hurdle that is arguably a heteroromantic rite of passage (with an anthem

by Gloria Gaynor).

▪ Straight culture’s orientation toward heteroromantic sacrifice is also in-

fluenced by socioeconomic class. Respect for sacrifice— or sucking it up

and surviving life’s miseries— is one of the hallmarks of white working-

class culture, for instance, wherein striving for personal happiness carries

less value than does adherence to familial norms and traditions

▪ Matu-

▪ Queerness— to the extent that it emphasizes authenticity in one’s sexual

relationships and fulfillment of personal desires— is an affront to the cele-

bration of heteroromantic hardship. As Robin Podolsky has noted, “What

links homophobia and heterosexism to the reification of sacrifice . . . is the

specter of regret. Queers are hated and envied because we are suspected of

having gotten away with something, of not anteing up to our share of the

misery that every other decent adult has surrendered to.

▪ For many lesbian daughters of working- class straight women, opting

out of heterosexuality exposes the possibility of another life path, beg-

ging the question for mothers, “If my daughter didn’t have to do this,

did I?” Heterosexuality is compulsory for middle- class women, too, but

more likely to be represented as a gift, a promise of happiness, to be

contrasted with the ostensibly “miserable” life of the lesbian. The lesbian

feminist theorist Sara Ahmed has offered a sustained critique of the role

of queer abjection in the production of heteroromantic fantasies. In Liv-

ing a Feminist Life, she notes that “it is as if queers, by doing what they

want, expose the unhappiness of having to sacrifice personal desires . . .

for the happiness of others.”28 In the Promise of Happiness, Ahmed ar-

gues, “Heterosexual love becomes about the possibility of a happy end-

ing; about what life is aimed toward, as being what gives life direction

or purpose, or as what drives a story.”29 Marked by sacrifice, misery, and

failure along the way, the journey toward heterosexual happiness (to be

found with the elusive “good man”) remains the journey.

▪ hate men. They don’t have to have sex with them!”34

▪ I don’t know why people think lesbians

▪ Roberson acknowledges that she learned as a young girl that, in

straight culture, “flirting” is synonymous with opposite- sex “meanness.”

▪ The dislike, dissatisfaction, complaint, and witnessing by others is

part of the heteroromantic ritual, albeit one that queer people find both

tragic and mind- boggling

▪ exoticized same- sex curiosity guised as repulsion

▪ perceptual dissatisfaction with

‘self’ masked as bourgeois self improvement

▪ Straight men in particular are odd and uncomfortable to be around for

me. Those insecure in their masculinity very often police mine

▪ manifests as gaslighting, invalidating my anxieties and ‘softer’ emotions.

And their constant performances of ‘toughness’ is just very exhausting.”

▪ their inability to feel emotions that aren’t anger

▪ But the thing about heterosexual misery that makes it irreduc-

ible to basic human foible is that straight relationships are rigged from

the start. Straight culture, unlike queer culture, naturalizes and often

glorifies men’s failures and women’s suffering, hailing girls and women

into heterofemininity through a collective performance of resilience

▪ The preoccupation with my repro-

ductive plans (I am child- free by choice and that’s more than some can

comprehend).”

▪ straight people

are held to their own puritanical inhibitions with regards to sex, night life,

and overall interactions with the broader public. . . . I find most mainstream

straight people to be sad, repressed, and oblivious

▪ It

feels like your whole life path is scripted in straight culture. . . . I think I

would feel so hopeless and sad and bored and unexcited and trapped. . . .

It seems like straight culture grooms you to be a better tool of capitalism

by accepting ways of living that are boring and exhausting without ques-

tion.

▪ limited imagina-

tion.

▪ Straight culture, I dunno. I don’t think they really have a culture outside

of the conformity and curious closets, like kink, mistresses, love children,

secret abortions, etc

▪ Their obsession with romantic love? I feel like queer people are more

open to intimate friendships and since we often choose our family units,

our friendships mean more

▪ caretaking can we get with one another, what names can we give to these

new forms of relating, and what rules do we need to put in place to make

sure we enact them safely, sanely, and consensually?

▪ caretaking can we get with one another, what names can we give to these

new forms of relating, and what rules do we need to put in place to make

sure we enact them safely, sanely, and consensually? While the topic at

hand is straight culture, we need to acknowledge this

▪ They tend to have a limited imagination for formations of sexual and

romantic relationships and base their own relationships on ownership

▪ myopic and constrained

▪ unable

to see or understand all of the potentially liberatory sexual and gender

options available to them.

▪ our love of elaborate sexual and

gender typologies

▪ the guiding sexual ethos

of queer feminist life was to ask, How intimate, creative, debauched, and

▪ sexual orientation/preference is based in

this culture solely on the gender of one’s partner of choice,” despite the

fact that many other creative possibilities could be equally or more sig-

nificant

▪ sexual orientation/preference is based in

this culture solely on the gender of one’s partner of choice,” despite the

fact that

▪ Ultimately, your relationship can be as flexible, idiosyn-

cratic, and unpredictable as your libido. . . . Being not- straight taught me

that the old rules don’t work.

▪ the impetus

for many of queer culture’s best insights is the desire not to reproduce

the failed practices of straight culture.

▪ bian feminists for the concept of ethical nonmonogamy, the existence

of feminist porn, the bold notion that people can remain friends and

family with ex- lovers, the emphasis on consent and care within kink

practices, and the radical idea that women can strap on dildos and pen-

etrate people, including their boyfriends and husbands. It is no wonder,

then, that queer people feel sad about, and sometimes exhausted by, the

“limited imagination” characteristic of straight culture. What straight

people don’t know does hurt them, and queer people often find them-

selves launching a rescue effort

▪ What straight

people don’t know does hurt them, and queer people often find them-

selves launching a rescue effort.

▪ What straight

people don’t know does hurt them, and queer people often find them-

selves launching a rescue effort

▪ “The

straight mind cannot conceive of a culture, a society where heterosexu-

ality would not order not only all human relationships but also its very

production of concepts and all the processes which escape conscious-

ness, as well

▪ straight culture can feel decades behind the curve (i.e., straight

people are constantly “discovering” things, like conscious uncoupling

or androgyny or 50 Shades of Grey– style kink, et cetera, that dykes and

fags spearheaded years ago).

▪ We can thank lesbian feminists for

the spate of well- lit, shame- free, and education- oriented sex shops (like

Good Vibrations and Toys in Babeland) where average straight couples

can now buy sex toys without feeling like deviants.

▪ find that straight people have everyday rituals that require the partici-

pation of all people engaged around them. . . . I find there’s a lot of con-

versation that leads to comparing amassed goods around the household

that are coded in various ways. Questions about the latest home gadget,

decorative accent pieces. I think to myself, why is this important? These

conversations tend to evolve into who has ‘better stuff

▪ No one will ever convince

me that it is normal or healthy to celebrate the biological genitalia of an

unborn baby. That’s weird

▪ punk trans partner

▪ The point here is that I spent those first sev-

eral years in my job witnessing, celebrating, and participating in straight

rituals without any of my colleagues even noticing the emotional labor

this required.

▪ I have been to a couple of

queer weddings that I found alienating and boring

▪ Drag- queen performances and dyke psychosexual dramas

are other queer traditions I enjoyed when I was younger but now find so

predictable that I can hardly bear them.

▪ These issues aside, the above comments from my respondents point

to the fact that straight rituals are oppressive on a far greater order of

magnitude, because of not only their disturbing content (e.g., throwing a

party to announce the shape of an unborn baby’s genitals) but also their

compulsory force. Heteronormativity is not a neutral cultural forma-

tion organized around a natural, freely occurring sexual preference but

an obligatory system structuring many of

▪ straight rituals are oppressive on a far greater order of

magnitude, because of not only their disturbing content

▪ their

compulsory force.

▪ Heteronormativity is not a neutral cultural forma-

tion organized around a natural, freely occurring sexual preference but

an obligatory system structuring many of the world’s societies, a system

“that has had to be imposed, managed, organized, propagandized and

maintained by force

▪ straight rituals

feel like they “require the participation of all [people] engaged around

them,” including queer people.

▪ Heteronormative rituals shape how we understand the difference be-

tween youth and adulthood, success and failure, loneliness and connect-

edness. In straight culture, if women don’t get married and have children

and figure out how to stay attractive and keep their man, a cascade of

tragic temporal consequences ensues: the clock is ticking, the window is

closing, youthful beauty is fading, expensive interventions are needed. By

contrast,

▪ No breeders!

▪ No breeders

▪ ing to discover that we both felt that way, but at the time, neither of us

was quite sure what it was that was so straight. Later I pieced together

all of the straight rituals I observed that night, which had combined to

create an intense experience of hetero immersion: women complain-

ing about their husbands, middle- aged couples chatting about how the

school fund- raiser was their big night out that year, men making bad

jokes to which women responded with halfhearted laughter, women in

the bathroom trading information about diet and exercise, donors to

the school being referred to by their shared last name (“let’s all thank

the Petersons for their generous gift!”), the presence of many men I had

never seen before because this is the only school event they show up for,

“his” and “her” silent auction items, and more examples I can’t recall. My

partner and I, a genderqueer butch and a femme dyke, were welcome at

the event, but the event was not for us.

▪ But straight culture is so hegemonic, so overdetermining, that it is

often challenging to imagine how to have certain experiences in queer

ways or without the imposition of heteronormative meaning

▪ discourses of heterosexuality oppress us in the sense that they prevent

us from speaking unless we speak in their terms

▪ truth was that I did not share their perceptions of infant behavior and

that I planned to parent differently than they had, to parent queerly.

Sometimes I tried to explain what this meant to me, but I was often met

with expressions of defensiveness or bafflement.

▪ an environment to feel straight

▪ unbelievably inappropri-

ate.”

▪ queer victories and take them as

their own (love wins!),

▪ love wins!

▪ Sometimes

I feel enraged, often, I feel unsurprised and protect myself before I even

know I am doing that.”

▪ utterly oblivi-

ous to the effect of their presence.

▪ media representations

of gay men as possessing special skills that they are just waiting to share

with straight people

▪ even well-

intentioned gestures of alliance can feel, to queer people, like further

subjection to the straight gaze.

▪ these are platitudes that obscure

queer complexities: Love is not exactly the point of queer liberation. Not

all queer people want

▪ these are platitudes that obscure

queer complexities

▪ Love is not exactly the point of queer liberation. Not

all queer people want to be beautiful or brave. Telling us we’re beautiful

is telling us something we already know. Why do you think we care what

you think to begin with? And the list of internal objections goes on.

These kinds of statements— perhaps akin

▪ . They’ll ‘spice things up’

by using fuzzy handcuffs and think that it’s wild

▪ the concept of someone being ruled out of partner

status because of what their genitals are just is absurd to my mind

▪ Another troubling feature of straight culture’s relationship to sex is

its obsession with gendered body parts

▪ how the orifice feels about itself: what it wants,

what it can do, what it can enjoy. For many humans, the capacity to

take something very large into one’s body is extremely pleasurable

▪ of

course, straight people are not reducible to straight culture. Many

straight people relate to their heterosexuality in dazzlingly feminist

and queer ways. Many straight people, including straight men, are

lovable, vulnerable humans. And many straight people have queer

futures ahead of them, like I once had. I love the person quoted above,

▪ What does it mean that

“queering heterosexuality” is often offered as the best route forward

for straight people to achieve some degree of gender and sexual jus-

tice? Is it possible that heterosexuality, qua heterosexuality, can rescue

itself from its own tragic condition?

▪ the most direct path toward the subversion

of straight culture is for straight people to be more honest about their

perverse desires and gender- bending curiosities (think about all those

straight men waiting for Halloween, their one socially sanctioned op-

portunity to dress in drag

▪ think about all those

straight men waiting for Halloween, their one socially sanctioned op-

portunity to dress in drag).

▪ think about all those

straight men waiting for Halloween, their one socially sanctioned op-

portunity to dress in drag).

▪ ing one’s own capacity for joy and pleasure

▪ as well as in the encounter

between people who can share that self- knowing pleasure with one an-

other. Lorde explained that one of patriarchy’s tools is to deny women

this power, to offer it to us in only superficial forms “in order to exercise

it in the service of men.”6

▪ The formation of modern heteromasculinity is marked by

erotic competition among men for women’s bodies, public conquest of

women’s bodies as a spectacle for other men, and the construction of

sex itself as an act of men’s collective force or manipulation, women’s

collective gift or sacrifice, and a cultural encounter in which men’s plea-

sure is the driving impulse, the inevitable focal point

▪ queer-

ness is defined as practices of gender and sexual nonnormativity

▪ For Lorde, “the erotic” is a kind of power that arises from know

▪ In evoking “deep heterosexuality,” I borrow from the queer femi-

nist artist Allyson Mitchell, whose project “Deep Lez” weaves together

the old and the new, the most useful theories and practices from the

rich archive of lesbian feminist herstory with contemporary intersec-

tional, transfeminist politics. Deep Lez allows us to mine what is lib-

eratory about the practice of women loving women, without dismissing

this herstory outright for its essentialism, false universalism, or other

limitations.8

▪ Straight men do not need to be queered; they need to learn to like

women.

▪ identification and

deep mutual regard, rather than oppositeness and hierarchy

▪ how to identify with

someone and fuck them at the same time (i.e., how to desire women

humanely). I offer these gifts to straight men.

▪ Deep het-

erosexuality draws on lesbian feminist insights about the nexus of desire

and identification in order to help release straight people from the binds

of a sexual orientation characterized by attraction to people one dis-

likes.9 Deep heterosexuality accesses the erotic as a site of identification,

mutual recognition, and joy, and when this happens, as Audre Lorde

explains, “we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffer-

ing and self- negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like

their only alternative in our society.”10

▪ how to identify with

someone and fuck them at the same time

▪ taking responsibility for one’s desire and

articulating what it accomplishes in the broader context of one’s life,

▪ straight women and men were to develop a list of rea-

sons that they have named themselves “straight,” what would be

▪ heterosexu-

ality as a cultivated desire of which they are agent, rather than victim or

passive recipient.

▪ This kind of reframe is, I believe, especially crucial for straight men,

who have been encouraged to relate to their desire for women as so

physiological as to be outside of their control and so compartmentalized

as to enable the disconnect between wanting women and liking them.

This very narrow and conditional way that men have learned to desire

women is arguably a fraction of what that desire could entail, making

heteromasculinity a strikingly feeble and impotent mode of attraction

to women compared with what is possible for dykes and other women-

desiring queers. As the Radicalesbians articulated it, women who desire

other women provide their counterparts not only with sex but also with

“personhood,” “a revolutionary force,” “freedom,” “mirroring,” “solidar-

ity,” “emotional support,” “the melting of barriers,” and “real- ness.”12

▪ Figure 5.1. Heterosexuality is tragic. (From Parks and Recreation)

▪ What do you like

about men?”— I am struck by how often they look like deer caught in

headlights

▪ that inter-

venes in the oft- cited notion that women care more about emotional

connection than they do about sex

▪ the work at hand is to cultivate some kind of agen-

tic relationship to the fact that they have not chosen queerness

▪ A basic premise of straight culture is the idea that gendered bodies,

especially women’s bodies, require purification and modification to be

desirable— shaving, perfuming, toning, refining, shrinking, enlarging, and

antiaging. But in queer spaces, it is often precisely the hairy, sweaty, dirty,

smelly, or unkempt gendered body that is most beloved. I recall the first

time I entered a gay men’s sex shop, in the 1990s in the Castro district of

San Francisco, and encountered a barrel full of lightly stained and dingy-

looking “used jock straps” for sale. It was my introduction to the fact that

there were people in the world who desired men’s bodies so much that

they wanted deep, intimate, and seemingly unconditional contact with

them— even and especially the parts of men’s bodies that straight women

seemed to want to avoid. Most straight women I knew, no doubt due

to their socialization as girls and women, appreciated men’s bodies for

their sexual functionality but not as a site of objectification that they were

excited to dive into and explore— to smell, taste, or penetrate.16 Similarly,

I have been to dozens of dyke strip shows, burlesque shows, drag- king

shows, and sex shows in which women’s armpit hair and leg hair and facial

hair or their body fat or their genderqueer bodies have been precisely the

objects of the audience’s collective lust. Fat bodies and hairy bodies are

also staples of queer dyke porn, not relegated to a fetish category. In other

words, queer desire is marked by a lustful appreciation for even those

parts of men’s and women’s bodies that have been degraded by straight

culture. Like a food adventurer who delights in those parts of the animal

or plant deemed undesirable by the narrowing of mainstream tastes, queer

people’s desire for the full animal has been less constrained. Recognizing

this suggests that gay men may have a deeper or more comprehensive

appreciation for men’s bodies than do straight women, just as lesbians’ lust

for women is arguably more expansive and forgiving than straight men’s.

▪ A

▪ merging of ob-

jectifying desire, on the one hand, and a feminist, subjectifying respect for

those who are desired, on the other

▪ Lesbian feminist ethics dictated that to lust after

women, to want to fuck women— even casually or nonmonogamously or

raunchily— was inseparable from being identified with women as a whole

and with the project of wanting women’s freedom

▪ to have genuine regard for women logically meant not

attempting to own them in marriage or otherwise block their intimacy

with friends and comrades or inhibit their capacity to live engaged and

meaningful lives

▪ meant recognizing that while straight

men claimed to love women, in fact their energies flowed toward men—

toward admiring men, seeking men’s approval, forging bonds with men,

and so on. Heterosexuality, lesbian feminists recognized, was an oppres-

sively homosocial— and often homoerotic— institution that romanticized

men and women’s alienation from each other.

▪ Radical hetero-

sexuality, according to Wolf, had roughly six goals: (1) straight women

needed to be financially independent and/or have the skills necessary to

leave an abusive relationship; (2) legal marriage needed to be abolished

in favor of something akin to (then illegal) gay and lesbian commit-

ment rituals and “chosen family”; (3) straight men needed to disavow

patriarchal privilege; (4) straight women needed to disavow the privi-

leges associated with femininity; (5) radical heterosexuals needed to re-

sist their “gender imprinting,” or their erotic investment in traditional

gender roles; and, relatedly, (6) feminists needed to forgive one another

for their attachments to the gender binary given that gender roles are

such a ubiquitous and powerful part of erotic life

▪ But I believe this

convergence could occur in heterosexual sex, wherein straight men

might have the capacity to feel such enthusiastic and irrepressible desire

for women that their energies flow in the direction of women. Straight

men could be so deeply heterosexual, so drawn to women, as to be

“woman identified,” to see themselves mirrored in the faces, bodies, and

lives of women.

▪ gender differences are sexy— in queer

relationships, too— but in straight culture these differences are almost

always taken to be essential, unchangeable, and of great consequence.

They are imagined to be so significant as to produce inevitable cross-

cultural misunderstandings and tense encounters, battles even, between

people from two different planets. They are believed to cultivate the at-

traction of “opposites” and to inhibit identification and sameness

▪ The stone butch is

often defined by what she did not want to do— she did not wish to be

penetrated or even to be sexually touched in some cases

▪ stone butch symbolizes the

possibility of erotic generosity and woman identification

▪ bio- dildo

▪ sive lust for women can be found in lesbian feminist memoirs, in which

body fat, cancer scars, power exchange, disability, aging, radical activ-

ism, self- love, years of sexual experience deemed “slutty” in the straight

world, and various forms of embodied “ridiculousness” are all fodder for

lesbian feminist arousal

▪ The best women lov-

ers have the scars, the hunger, the weight, the teeth, and the political

and sexual experience that allows them to know and harness their erotic

will. Through Lorde’s desiring gaze, physical features that are often cast

as deeroticizing imperfections in the straight world are remade into

sites of pleasure

▪ men’s lust for women is triggered

by women’s actual temperaments, bodies, and experiences. Men’s sense

of being sexually orientated toward women must signal, as it does for

most lesbians, an acute interest and investment in women’s lives and ac-

complishments because, within deep heterosexuality, attraction is mea-

sly and half- baked if it is not a synthesis of lust and humanization. From

this viewpoint, the hyperstraight man possesses an unstoppable interest

not only in women’s bodies but also in women’s collective freedom. To

be into women, one must be for women. To be an authentically straight

man, or a deep heterosexual— and not a pseudoheterosexual who uses

women to impress men— one must be a feminist.

It Can Get Better

The discourse surrounding queer

▪ queer sensa-

tions of freedom that result from having escaped not homophobia but

heterosexual misery

▪ we cannot underestimate the capacity of neoliberal projects,

like the self- help movement, to repackage and monetize feminist ideas,

reducing them to matters of self- interest and economic exchange

▪ And to Kat and Yarrow, my anchors: thank you for valuing queer and

feminist ways of life as much as I do. I love you both so much.

▪ Outlaws: A Memoir of Love and Revolution

(Tallahassee, FL: Spinsters Ink, 2011).

25. Cherríe Moraga, “The Slow Dance,” in Loving in the War Years (Boston: South

End, 1983), 26.

26. Tovia Smith, “This Chef Says He’s Faced His #MeToo Offenses. Now He Wants a

Second Chance,” National Public Radio, October 7, 2019, www.npr.org; Lucia

Graves, “How Famous Men Toppled by #MeToo Plot Their Comeback,” The

Guardian, May 27, 2018, www.theguardian

▪ Wypijewski

▪ this way, the seduction industry sells straight men the opportunity to participate in a global homosociality, in which access to sex with white women becomes the foundation of cross- racial and cross- national solidarity and “love” among men. As if taken right from the pages of Eve Sedgwick’s analysis of what she famously termed the “erotic triangle,” wherein sex with women serves to strengthen the bonds of men

▪ Yeah, I mean, you were the typical brown guy that wanted to come to America to get the hotter chicks!”

▪ Hochschild finds the answer in a complex mix of rural whites’ gratitude for their industrial jobs, their Christian belief that God will ultimately restore any human damage done to the Earth and to their own bodies, and their belief that the government cannot be trusted to help them.

▪ Under feminist scrutiny, seduction coaches tamped down their focus on conquering women and instead amplified their focus on healing men. But this approach, too, takes its cues right from the old mythopoetic men’s movement of the 1980s and 1990s, which sought to help men rediscover their lost masculinity through spiritual healing with other men and with a strong dose of antifeminist woman- blaming thrown in for good measure

▪ apparently, one of the most effective strategies for getting straight men on board with profeminist, antirape messages is giving them space to celebrate their masculinity in the same breath. From a queer perspective, this is one of the more discouraging elements of the heterosexual tragedy: when straight men move toward feminism, they almost always do so in ways that prop up the gender binary that causes their problems in the first place! Straight men’s feminism— when anchored in gender- essentialist ideas about “real manhood”— also relies on the emotional labor of straight women who are compelled to celebrate and reward men for putting their “masculine energy” or “male strength” to a nonviolent use

▪ where men are] having fun with the women but they are not masculine with the women. 

▪ , the romance lies not in the relationships men have with women— which are described in more transactional terms (the win/win)— but in the relationships they have with one another.