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triflesandparsnips · 7 months

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Lot of takes going around the internets about certain "deaths" in the ofmd season finale, so, uh-- guess it's time for me to try and lose some followers on tumblr dot com with

Some Thoughts on Why I Am Not Particularly Bothered or Concerned about Izzy's Apparent "Death"

Laying the groundwork first...

1. Narratively speaking, Izzy's been a dead man walking since the start of the season. Babe shot himself and got a rebirth-- but he still definitely intended to die. Every minute he was still around was borrowed time.

Did he have to die? Maybe not. I know I could've written a version of the show where he didn't. But then that would be my show-- not theirs. I can't know exactly what themes, bugbears, bête noires, catharsis, or artistic Vibes are driving that writers' room, and until the credits run on the finale of the third season, none of the rest of us can either.

2. Izzy spent the season being in a liminal state-- and there's nothing in the story saying that he can't continue doing that. Izzy spent the season having one foot in one space, one hoof in the other, and himself halfway through the door, a chimera of mirrored things right up to his "death": pirate and ship, hard and soft, old ways and new, etc etc. But "the gravy basket" is a weird little liminal space between life and death, a place that both Ed and Buttons have found (and returned from) before. We don't know where Izzy "is" right now-- he could be there.

(tbh, I wonder how much poor feeling we'd be having about all this if we'd gotten a final tag of a blue-washed Izzy staring down at a bowl of soup while helplessly saying "but this isn't gravy, what the fu--")

3. I think there is an unfortunate belief that "it's not real unless you see the body" is a universal -- or perhaps inarguable -- "fact" of storytelling. But it's not. It's just a bit of narrative shorthand that got popular, and now we're too ready to fall into the trap of believing the inverse is true too-- that if there is a body, then there must therefore have been a "real" death.

This season has spent quite a lot of narrative time and effort telling us that its story is using a different model, with different shorthands; specifically, that magic is real, that there is at least some kind of existence after death, and that the dead can be resurrected.

And that brings me to the meat of why I'm not particularly bothered or concerned about what, at this stage of the story, could still very well be just a minor setback--

4. This whole show, and particularly this season, is a fairy tale. It's a story that works with fairy tale logic and tropes, and it's in conversation with other fairy tales too, ones that the OFMD audience is likely to know well enough to spot their narrative beats in action. So "Pinocchio" gets mentioned a lot? Cool-- the audience applies what is commonly known of that story to this one ("a real boy", the mirror-opposite being a puppet with no nose, etc), and finds some Cool Shit. Then they're primed to keep looking for fairy tales, even unnamed ones, in case there's another little nugget of reward-dopamine for finding a connection.

So the fact that we saw a mermaid? Suddenly, I personally am noticing "Little Mermaid" motifs all over the place. That Ed was in a "sleep like death" -- after fucking around with a spinning wheel -- until his prince came to wake him? Well fuck, man, that's Blackbeard playing "Sleeping Beauty" for us all.

And bringing it all back to a "dead" Izzy Hands... when I add up a "dead" body surrounded by a bunch of laborers mourning the person who nominally kept their living space nice AND who was wanted dead by an authority figure for the crime of being the "better" version of what that figure wanted to be...

...well fuck, idk about the rest of you, but to me that all adds up to Izzy's story being Snow fucking White. Waiting for someone to come pull the bullet poisoned apple from his body so he can live again.

5. This is a second season. Of three. And Izzy Hands is the writer's favorite chewtoy, so there is lots of time, space, and incentive to bring him back. If there's a third season, we have a pile of ways he could be brought back over the course of hours of literal viewing time and possibly months of in-narrative time. That's ages.

And the solutions don't have to be difficult! For instance, we still have canonical hallucinations from Stede-- that's one route. Or fuck it, we could have Izzy's (very solid-looking) ghost be the embodiment of their being haunted by the Sea, that would work too.

And even barring all that-- his grave is right there with our heroes. The ship is out there hunting down his murderer. Even if you're happy he's dead... bad news, friend. He's all over the third season landscape. (uh oh, it's GNU Izzy Hands)

But those are just a few options that leave his body rotting but his character still alive. I happen to think we could all dream a little bigger, darlings. For instance:

A. You cannot tell me that these writers, on this show, with these actors, would not absolutely go all in on a zombie-esque hand thrusting out of the dirt mere hours after burial. Look me in the eyes and tell me Con O'Neill wouldn't pull off an entire digging-out scene only to end with himself panting beside the hole, looking around, hearing Ed and Stede being weird in their haunted hut, and wearily say, "Are you fucking kidding me."

B. Don't like zombies? Want to stay closer to the Snow White vibe AND introduce a love interest for him? One hyphenated word: body-snatcher. Gotta dig those bodies up fresh for the Definitely Historically Accurate anatomists of the time! But oh, says this New Guy, this corpse is-- wow, it's weird that they buried him with a rose and really amazing makeup and a truly extraordinary number of whittled whales, plus what's with that horsey leg grave marker, this guy must've been fucking fascinating, man, I wish I could've met him-- --at which point Izzy's hand shoots out and chokes the guy half to death and the lads come tumbling out of the house and ta da, mission accomplished, Izzy resurrected in 5 minutes or less with his horsey leg conveniently beside him and an entire season for himself and everyone else to Deal With It, amazing, fantastic, no notes from me.

C. Come to think of it, there is genuinely a non-zero chance that the crew just. Fucked up the burial. I mean... even though I was just arguing why we shouldn't see it as Law, we didn't actually see the body. We saw a grave. What did they bury him in? Was it a box? Was it some canvas? Did they definitely pick up the right one when it was time to bury him? Or did they maybe carefully make him an ahistorical safety coffin just in case a cat demon came to bother him and his corpse wanted to make a fuss about it, y'know, very common, could happen to anyone, and Frenchie just so happens to have Blackbeard's old collar bell right here--

6. Here's the bottom line, imo: The only thing that would keep Izzy really actually dead and completely removed from the story is a lack of narrative time and space-- and we have plenty of both. Stories are like Lego. If you've got enough time and you're willing to play with pieces from a whole lotta different sets, it's not hard to put the same elements together in different ways to get new, exciting configurations. It's why I'm actually rubbish at predicting exact details of stuff-- there are a lot of ways something could go, there are infinite doors out of problems the narrative seems to throw at us, and no two people will come up with the same thing because we're all different.

That, to me, is one of the big ways I personally enjoy and engage with stories. And it's why I genuinely can't be fussed about Izzy's death, not when we're only two-thirds through the story as a whole; observing someone setup and then try and execute a complicated narrative trick is my jam.

But my way of engaging with all this is by no means the best or only way. How we all interact with art, and what speaks to us, is extremely personal. If how this season and Izzy's death went just didn't work for you, that's okay. I'm sorry it wasn't the story you wanted it to be. That blows.

I just know I can't say yet that it didn't work for me. I won't know until I can take in the entire picture, just as I can't judge a finished Lego set by the one piece I step on midway through construction. I can see different ways Izzy's death/rebirth could absolutely work, but will the writer manage it? I dunno.

But I'm willing to wait and see if the stupid puppet can pull it off.

#will it be the content or the length that causes the unfollows?#WHO CAN SAY #but every day is Unfollowing Amnesty Day #farewell and be free #our flag means death #our flag means death s2 spoilers #our flag means death seasons 3 rampant speculation #izzy hands #engaging with stories #and curating your own experience #(but for real - I had to stop myself at just the few possibilities I gave for a resurrection)#(real talk if you ask me for more I can just-- come up with more)#(it's my party trick)#(for very certain kinds of very nerdy parties)

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abhorsenkatiel · 4 months

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#the locked tomb #tlt #tlt polls #tlt spoilers #g1deon #my brain always reads it as “gide-one” for some reason #and im curious if anyone else does that too #i only have like 10 followers though so if youre also curious reblogging will help a lot for getting more answers!

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chaos-and-sparkles · 6 months

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All the outrage about "chai" as Pav's ship abbreviation was fucking stupid

Ok so. I may be late to this discourse but by gods am I going to put this out there anyway bc this shit has been FRUSTRATING me for a while okay.

USING 'CHAI' AS AN ABBREVIATION FOR PAVITR IN SHIP NAMES IS NOT FUCKING PROBLEMATIC OR STEROTYPING OR WHATEVER DUMB SHIT I'VE SEEN (mostly non-Indian)PEOPLE SCREAMING ABOUT OUT HERE ON MY DASH. GO TOUCH SOME GRASS, Y'ALL, FIND BETTER PROBLEMS IF YOU'RE SO PRESSED TO BE MAD ABT SOMETHING!!

I'm Indian and I am so so sick and tired of, from what I can tell, mostly white people getting mad about Pav's ship abbreviation being chai??

No no. Go on. Find me my fellow Indians spearheading the conversation about 'chai' being a problematic name. Show me where the droves of offended desis are. And I don't mean just a few Indians agreeing with the "chai is stereotypical" thing while non-Indians lead the conversation, I mean the Indians being the majority of the conversation. Since, you know, that's how it would and should be if it's actually such an offensive deal to Indians, right? We all have social media. It's not like we're waiting to be spoken for. Surely there should be at least as many, if not more, offended Indians about the chai thing as I've seen white people on here. I'll wait.

Obviously I don't speak for all Indian people, I'm just one person, but from what I've seen and what I can tell, there don't seem to be any actual Indian people getting offended or claiming his name being 'chai' is Bad and Evil and Offensive and Stereotyping?? All I see are non-Indian people getting so damn offended on our behalf???

I loved his ship name being chai. I loved the representation. I loved the desi tadka, I remember when I exited the theater after ATSV and scoured through my social media and saw "chaipunk" and "chaiflower" and everything with chai going around. I was so fucking elated to see an ethnic word being used in the tagosphere!! It made my Indian heart so happy to see an Indian character who is so so close to my heart be represented with an Indian cultural word.

But nooooooo apparently we can't have nice things, because people just had to white knight about it. Apparently it is harmful and stereotypical to be using chai as his ship name.

Clearly, we gotta change it to golden. Or something similarly English and white-sounding and you know, inoffensive.

So, because I want to nitpick all the arguments I've heard as to why using "chai" is bad, let's go point-by-point:

It's reductive, you're describing a character by just one thing - yes well noted, that's literally what ship names are for. They are shorthand for characters to remember them by, they're supposed to be memorable one-liners to go by for them. It doesn't "reduce their whole personality to one bit" or "define them" or whatever - by that logic, is Miles' entire personality "flower", or Hobie's entire personality "punk"?? Gwen's just a "ghost" then, huh?? The whole POINT of a ship abbreviation is to be short and memorable. And chai is a whole fucking lot more memorable than "golden" or "shine" or whatever - those alternatives aren't even based in canon?? They are just purely fanon interpretations. Meanwhile chai is actually based in canon and a really memorable line from it too. I've had friends who were so confused as to who the golden abbreviation is for and then asking me how it's related to Pav when they browsed through the tags, but whenever they heard "chaipunk" and stuff they got it without me having to explain shit. Also, y'all are reading the Indian reaction to the chai-tea thing very wrong if you think we are offended by chai being a memorable bit about him - we are literally the ones most hyped about the chai-tea thing? You have no idea how loud the Indian theaters cheered at that line and how many Indian-made edits have been circulating. Again, with the caveat that I speak for my experienced social circle and not every Indian to ever exist, WE LOVE THE CHAI THING. It is a really lovable and memorable bit to us - one that has endeared his character to so many of us so quickly! So I have no idea where the idea that we're offended by the chai-tea line being memorable came from, but y'all really need to go out and talk to some desis before speaking and getting mad for us.

It's stereotypical - Oh I'm so sorry, I didn't realize an Indian character named with an Indian ethnic word about an Indian cultural drink is stereotyping, now. Just say you felt called out by the chai tea bit or got tired of how much people were talking about it or didn't like having to learn and use an ethnic word and be done with it. Now, to be completely fair, this is the point in the argument that holds the most water. I have seen a lot of fanart and fanfic in the very early days of ATSV fan content, quite far down the tag at this point, that reduced Pav's entire personality to chai, just made him the tea guy, made him so chai obsessed it was quite OOC and annoying and yes it did feel pretty stereotypical. That kind of thing is extra obvious in some NSFW arts I've seen around, that really give me the ick because that is not necessary, that is actually just weird and smells a little like fetishizing. But long story short, yes, Pav's character did tend to be reduced to chai in the early fan content. But guess what. That kind of thing happens to every side character in beloved media until more creators get their hands on them, adopt them as their blorbos, and make more developed characters and content out of them!!! Every side character that has a memorable bit gets overused in that bit until more creators get on board to flesh them out! Or have we forgotten "AND PEGGY!", "Honor", "ONIONS!!" and other miscreants? Surely those are ALSO stereotyping then, right? Also. Even if Pav's early fan content with chai was veering towards overuse and maybe stereotyping. Let's assume that's right. HOW EXACTLY WOULD THE SHIP NAME CHANGE THAT, THEN? The ship name changing wouldn't have done diddly squat about that - he was already getting more developed character in fics and in art before people pushed for his ship name to be changed to something less ethnic sounding. I should know, I was one of the people writing him even then. The tag changing wasn't going to magically change the content. The fan creators did that.

It's unrelated to him, it's stereotypical specifically in that flavour - bitch what. Did we watch the same movie. This point in particular frustrates me so much, because I remember someone on here - I don't remember who - talking about how it makes sense to use "flower" for Miles because his favourite song is Sunflower but in that same sentence saying it's ridiculous to use "chai" for Pav. What logical hoops are you jumping to get to this conclusion, my sibling of the sea? If we can use "flower" for Miles - which was literally a song he sang once, maybe twice, in the first movie, never even saying it was his favourite but just showing us he liked it - then it makes just as much sense to use "chai" for Pavitr? Pav literally says he drinks chai every day with Maya Aunty, it's linked to his life and family, and he clearly liked and thought of it as important enough to put it in his intro speech. Also, as an Indian, in my experience at least chai is a very important and yet casual cultural thing for us, that a lot of us have a connection to in our everyday lives and it makes sense for him to have it too. It's not like people are just seeing the Indian character and automatically labelling him with chai - he talks about it, he likes chai, it's not out of nowhere. Also, if we're talking about how related the abbreviation is, HOW is "golden" related??? That is even more out of nowhere??? Everyone I've asked seems to have a different justification of why golden is used. From bc he's a golden boy to golden bc of his bangles or vibes - they're all speculative and based almost entirely in fanon. Like. Chai is so much more related.

Also. Using chai? IT'S NOT A BIG FUCKING DEAL. It's just a word. It is normal to me, to us Indians, as normal as using any other word in English, or Hindi, or our regional languages. I don't see why it's such a big deal that it needs to be changed to something English. It's literally just like if you made his abbreviation "tea" - except now you've taken the desiness out of it. Congratulations.

This isn't a cause I'm going to die mad about or anything. It's just been slowly annoying and eating away at me to see so many, again from what I can tell mostly non-Indian people, being mad about chai being his ship abbreviation. It feels like a bit of a gut punch to the part of me that was so happy to see this tiny part of myself and my language and culture represented in a character I love. As my friend once said, "chaipunk sounds like a cool punk movement I'd join. goldenpunk just sounds white."

The straw that finally broke the camel's back and got me posting about it is this realization that I had:

All the hue and cry to change Pavitr's ship name from "chai" to the more 'acceptable' "golden"? It reeks an awful lot of whitewashing.

People literally got so offended about an Indian character having an Indian ship abbrev that they clamoured till it got changed to something English. It leaves a very off taste in my mouth when I think about it like this.

So yeah.

#pavitr prabhakar #spiderman atsv #chaipunk #goldenpunk #chaiflower #goldenflower #spider man: across the spider verse #atsv pavitr #across the spiderverse #pavitr my beloved #indian stuff #desi starr being mad about desi stuff #starr rambles #long post #i think?#for the record use whatever ship name you like i wont yell at you for using golden or whatever #but im so tired of the people yelling at me and others for using chai

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momentsofamberclarity · 3 months

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don't call me nonnie.

i know that not all proshipping is sexual, but it's still portraying pedophilia/incest positively

the bullet point lists were because i just wanted to separate each sentence into a different point because they were all sort off disconnected

the "they're just pixels" argument doesn't work because every single thing you see on a screen is a bunch of pixels if you zoom in, with that logic every image posted online is "just pixels", including actual csem

Fine, I won't call you that. But riddle me this, anon; why am I showing you more respect than you're showing me? Why have you told me to go fuck myself multiple times in place of having a discussion?

Here's the thing ... the only way you will find csem is if you go looking for it. You are not going to find csem on tumblr because it would break community guidelines. But fictional characters under the age of 18 do not count as csem and numerous child protection services have stated that those are just art.

Likewise, the only way you're gonna find fanfiction of 'kids being raped' as you keep putting it, is if you're trying to be a white knight and seek those writers out purposefully so that you can harass them like you're doing with me. Because most of the proshippers I know tag their stuff so that it can be found by the target audience and blacklisted by the people who don't want to see it.

And here's the thing about proshipping which I think is the biggest hurtle of the anti community. Proship doesn't mean 'I support active sexual predators hurting real living children'. 'Pedophile' as a term is meaningless at this point because everyone on the internet uses it to describe anyone they disagree with. You're better off using predator and paraphile. Predators are the dangerous people who don't give a shit about fiction because they have full-intent to harm others. But the majority of paraphiles? They're no-contact and/or fiction-only on their paraphilias, or they do consenting adult things with their consenting adult partners that are roleplaying with boundaries set in place for a reason.

I've been on the internet since before the term 'proship' even popped up. Back before that we called it Dead Dove, Don't Eat and Don't Like, Don't Look. 'Proship' as a term has the same meaning as those old ones, it's just shorthand. It means 'I support the rights of others to ship whatever they want in their own space regardless of whether or not I like or condone it because I don't know them and it does not involve me'. You don't like the content? You have a block button and you are encouraged to use it to curate your own online experience just like the artists and authors posting that content are.

The fact that you're still here means you're hearing some of what I'm saying and possibly having a hard time coming to terms with it. Believe me, I went through a period of morality crisis between my bpd and ocd telling me that fiction could affect reality and I thought that thinking bad things ( like intrusive thoughts ) made me a Bad Person. But thoughts are just thoughts.

So if you want to come off anon and actually have a conversation with me, I promise I'm not going to name-drop you. The purpose of this blog has only ever been about clearing up misconceptions about proshippers and paraphiles because I used to be uninformed about those topics myself until my partner and another super close friend explained them to me in a way that I could comprehend. And that is that thought crime doesn't exist. And fictional characters don't have autonomy and therefore cannot be abused by your thoughts, your art, your writing, etc.

But if we did away with fictional expression of paraphilias in a healthy artistic manner ( like KOSA is currently trying to do ), the world would be a more dangerous place for potential victims, because paraphiles and predators are always going to exist whether you choose to accept that or not. My own abusers never faced charges, only one of my partners' abusers is rotting in jail, and that is the reality of this fucked up world that we're living in. People with niche fetishes aren't monsters - most are even too embarrassed to talk about them. Active sexual predators online who hop into the DMs of minors to be creeps are a real world problem. And that has nothing to do with the proship community's philosophy of 'ship and let ship'.

#proship safe #paraphile safe #anti censorship #anti harassment #ambers.ask

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teencopandthesourwolf · 6 months

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WIP WEDNESDAY

tagged by the lovely @outtoshatter to take part (thanks, boo!). here's mine:

Four days prior, Derek had openly scoffed at Stiles's suggestion of him getting some hands-on experience with regards to fighting—or at the very least learning some better self defence tactics—pretty fucking cruelly in Stiles's opinion, fuck you very much.

"You. Training. With the pack." The Alpha had repeated Stiles's words back to him in shorthand in that flat, patronising way of his.

Fucking Sourwolf.

"Stiles, do you have a death wish that you haven't told me about? Actually, strike that, I'm pretty sure you're wholly incapable of keeping a single fucking thing to yourself; if you did have a death wish, the whole damned world would know about it by now," he'd snarked snidely, making unjust comment on Stiles's love affair with the English language and his unfortunate (to some—don't listen to the haters!) lack of an off switch.

Stiles had wanted to punch Derek's lights out just as much as he wished he had the balls to lean in and lick the smug look off of the arrogant werewolf's beautiful, beautiful face (seriously, curse those perfect Hale genes).

Being seventeen years old and a human member of a werewolf pack was so confusing at times.

Also, Derek clearly wasn't as clever as he thought he was because he obviously had no clue about the kinds of things Stiles was more than capable of keeping secrets about.

"You're human," the big wolfy douche had continued his onslaught by pointing out the obvious, looking Stiles up and down in what could only be described as a Highly Derogatory Fashion.

Stiles hated how hot he found it. Like, what the hell was wrong with him?

Fuck my ridiculous life.

tagging, play or nay, just before i hit the hay: @shealynn88 @sharkfish @novemberhush @greyhavenisback @blue-eyedbeta @raisesomehale @fogsy-ficrec and anybody else who wants to do the thing (i'm too tired to tag anymore) <3

#wip wednesday #wip fics #writers of fic #sterek #sterek fic #teen wolf #teen wolf fic #fic #fanfic #fanfiction #POV stiles #stiles stilinski #derek hale #tcats writes #teencopandthesourwolf

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sciderman · 2 months

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I also tried to find that Peter neurodivergent post recently and yup, vanished. But anyway, I just read your post and tags responding to that other person's ask saying they can't find it. I really really don't think you sound stupid (not that I'm a professional either).

That post hit deep for me because as someone very new to getting therapy, it reminded me of my first session (in which I said, do I have audhd or what?). My therapist told me first thing "there's a lot of overlap between these traits you're listing and trauma". I kinda sat back like 🧍she said what's more important is making sure I'm functioning, coping... That not everything needs a label unless I really want one. I went home and asked my housemate (who's currently doing their psychology masters) and she said, "yeah, both often get misdiagnosed for the other".

That kinda changed my whole perspective on everything and so reading your post brought me back to that. Hoo, emotional and stuff,,

Enough rambling though, my points are:

• Thank you for saying that, it meant a lot (I'm kinda crying haha)

• You're right about it all to my knowledge!

• I hope everything's okay with you and you're happy with what stuff will mean for you ❤️ good luck and all that!

(sorry for the essay)

bless you anon!! i'm really proud of you for taking the steps into therapy, and i really hope that it's a helpful experience in getting to understand yourself better! wishing you so, so much luck on your journey, anon!

i definitely think labels aren't for everyone - and sometimes, sometimes they can be a stifling thing. it's a fantastic thing when you need to simplify something to explain to someone else - especially fantastic when you need someone else to make considerations for you. i find i only really use labels when i need someone else to understand something about me in a simple sort of a way. so i say "bisexual" when i need to explain myself quickly, but it's a shorthand, and there's probably a much more complicated label that might fit me better - pan, maybe, but who has time or courage to explain pan to a 50-something-white-guy - certainly not i, so - for ease of understanding, i'll put myself in that box.

i think labels are fantastic when they make your life simpler - but sometimes they can do the adverse when you realise they don't fit as well as you'd thought. when you need a label to fit, and you feel that pressure to fit into it when - actually, actually, you are more complicated than that. then - then, you might realise, the label isn't for you, and you can either hunt down another or - be easy with the fact that you're a unique beast, and not everything will fit all the time. there's overlap, and every brain case is so so unerringly unique to the person.

it's like lgbt+ labels, lord knows, the kids are inventing a new one every week because there's no way to encompass everyone's unique approach to attraction. we can say "this is me, and you might feel similar" and that helps - but truly, no human is 1:1. no experience is 1:1. one of you watched cats (2019) and it irreparably altered your viewpoint on the world once you saw fuzzy idris elba dance on the screen. one of you (mercifully) didn't, and didn't sustain that trauma. you're different.

i hope any explanations you get help you move forwards, anon! but i hope you're also comfortable in the knowledge that there ain't no thing like you, 'cept you! (and i love you)

#sci speaks

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aropride · 1 year

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(using past tense because i don't see this type of art/comic around much anymore, tho im sure they still exist. using "body image" as shorthand for all the other stuff bc character limit lol. also i wanted to use a more neutral(?) word for "tucute" but i couldn't remember what we called ourselves at the time/if there was another word lmao. but y'all know what i mean)

(if at the time they were helpful but in retrospect were harmful, vote for the "negatively" option)

examples of these under the cut if you don't know what i'm talking about. warning for misgendering, transphobic, possibly dysphoria inducing caricatures of trans men.

[line break so tumblr doesn't eat the keep reading button]

(ID 1: art of a white feminine trans man. he has pink hair, is wearing makeup and a choker that says "boi," a flower in his hair, a shirt that says "kawaii," a pink skirt, and pink leggings with hearts on them. he has a large chest, a slim waist, and leg and armpit hair. he is surrounded by tumblr tags, mostly trans ones.)

(ID 2: a comic showing two white trans guys labelled "gnc trans guy" and "transtrender". the first has a short undercut with grown-out pink hair. he is wearing a pastel blue and pink shirt, grey shorts, and trans striped socks. his chest is flat and he is drawn with sharper features. the second has a slightly longer undercut and is wearing a tight pansexual pride crop top, a he/him pronoun pin, blue shorts, and rainbow socks. he has visible boobs, a slim waist, and is drawn with softer features. a list of what makes them either "really" trans or a "transtrender" according to the artist is next to each person.)

(ID 3: a comic showing two trans guys. one is titled "this is damian. damian is a trans man. he is an average looking brown man with short brown hair and facial hair. he has a sweater on and is wearing jeans. a speech bubble says "i just want to live my life like everyone else". the other person is titled "this is skye. skye wants to be a trans boy, but she's just a cis girl who needs to feel special." skye has a blue undercut and a pink clip in his hair. he is wearing a galaxy shirt and the straps of his binder are visible. he is wearing jeans. speech bubbles surrounding him read, "soft boy~," "space child! ❤️," "gender is a feeling," "you don't need to have dysphoria to be trans," "truscum don't interact," cisgender people are sooo boring!," and "I bought a binder so I'm a real trans boy!"

end image descriptions.)

#text

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instarsandcrime · 15 days

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Take out the slashes. Tumblr has a block tag system in place so for example if I didn’t want to see hazbin hotel, I would block “#hazbin hotel”… Not whatever that is with all the slashes. Same for the snz kink which I didn’t even know what that was until I looked it up. Just add “#sneeze kink” to your tags as well so people can both find or block it.

Tag everything appropriately otherwise you’ll find yourself getting blocked/reported for misusing the tag system.

If you’re worried about fandom overlap, tag characters with their fandom like this “#hazbin hotel alastor”.

Again, I understand how you feel and what you're saying, but unfortunately we've run into the same problem-- I feel as though I am tagging appropriately-- along with others in this community since that is generally how our tags work. #hazbin hotel alastor is widely used and would most likely never be blocked, and #sneeze kink or #snz kink doesn't do much better since I:

1) only really use 'snz' shorthand to hide things further, and those within the community get the message and the ones who don't usually shrug and move on. I could compromise and add 'kink' to it, but we'd end up back at the same issue as the #hazbin hotel alastor part.

2) the slashes are important so no one finds these things in the first place. People who do want to see hazbin content will most likely type in or block #hazbin hotel and have no idea what #ha//zb//in//ho//tel even is. This seems safer for people who DON'T want to see it. I apologize if I am explaining incorrectly.

Thanks for asking, though! If you feel like you'd rather not see any of it, you're free to scroll and move on. Again, I think if I took out the slashes you and others would've seen it much sooner, blocked tags or no.😅

#snz ask

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jewishvitya · 1 year

Text

CW - talking about antisemitic depictions and about the house elves and the depiction of slavery in the books.

I'm having a frustrating day with a lot of physical pain, so I'm not the best at judging currently if I should be posting all of these thoughts. It's a response to multiple arguments by rude anons that I blocked (not for being rude, for being transphobic), but the arguments themselves stay on my mind and I just. Need this out. Ignore this, it will be all over the place, I'm basically venting. Hoping it'll be the last bit of HP criticism I post.

I'll tag it for you to block, as usual.

I've been asked what I expect of Rowling, since my criticism of the goblins included the books. She already wrote the books, they're printed and they're out there. She can't just change them, criticism does nothing because she has no path to correct her mistake.

First of all, with her transphobia - as far as I'm concerned she has blood on her hands at this point. The way she emboldens transphobia endangers lives and erodes queer rights. Anyone who contributes to the current push against trans people is complicit in trans genocide - and she made herself a symbol of that movement. Even if she did a 180 on her issues with Jewish stereotypes, she wouldn't redeem herself.

But she isn't the only one who wrote a story and then realized that her story has deep issues. What does it look like, if an author doesn't want to perpetuate those?

From what I know of Tolkien (and I know nothing LOTR or anything, just heard this from other Jewish creators who discussed this issue, treat this paragraph like I'm repeating a rumor) - Tolkien did stumble on an antisemitic depiction while writing his dwarves. Then he course-corrected by creating a more complex and nuanced picture of the society in his future works. Basically, he leaned into the idea of his dwarves as a Jewish allegory and made it a better and more respectful allegory. They have wonderful cultural details, like having foreign-language names used outside of their community - and names in their own native language that they call each other. Half of my family comes from France, and my mom was born there. She had a Hebrew name and a legal French name. That's extremely common among Jews in some areas of the world.

This response is what I would have expected if an author cares about being respectful of Jewish people. Acknowledge the issue, and try to do better.

But what if the issue was brought to your attention after you completely finished your story? In that case: "Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was writing an antisemitic narrative with my depiction of this fantasy race." Support the voices criticizing your work, and apologize. Let it be an example of tropes to avoid, and encourage others to be careful of the same pitfalls.

What you don't do, is act horrified and say "Oh, how could you, I never intended to make the goblins an antisemitic allegory! Surely if I don't mean it, it can't be hurtful!"

Also, if you truly care, you don't then abuse the memory of the holocaust when you write spin-offs of your original story, including its imagery to support a bigoted villain's argument.

Marginalized people understand that not everyone knows what we do. The stereotypes and the harmful ideas that weaved themselves into popular culture are about us. We know that it's invisible to people who aren't the target, and as a result aren't forced to learn these things. To many people, it's just a trope they're used to seeing. Like villains have hooked noses - it's practically a shorthand for an evil character.

All the stories we tell are based in some measure on stories we heard. Narratives and tropes feed off each other between different pieces of media. It's easy to pull together a harmful narrative without realizing, when the tropes that make it up usually go together, and are so common they're everywhere. So we know a person who means no harm can create something really hurtful, without knowing it.

That's why we criticize media: we want you to see and be aware.

In addition to this, I've been accused multiple times of ignoring the fact that these books discuss bigotry and condemn it. I'm not ignoring it, I know they do - or they try to. But Rowling wrote a story against racism without understanding it and without interrogating it in herself. She only knew to condemn it when it's rude and violent and outright hateful. Not the foundations of it.

So, sure, say she didn't mean to write something harmful. What does she do when she learns she did? Nothing. And not just about the issue of the goblins - about everything. I detailed the problems with her depiction of lycanthropy, but she did the same thing with the house elves.

There's lore about creatures called brownies. They'll perform chores for you, but they'd rather not be seen while they do. If you try to pay them, they'll get offended. If you give them clothes, they'll leave. This is a very partial description, but you can see the inspiration here.

And then she turned them into a slave race. They're bound to their enslavers, possessing powerful magic but using it in their service, forced to punish themselves for disobedience and endure extreme abuse. Kreacher actively wishes to have his head put on display when he's too old and weak to be of use.

To show the reader the horrors of freedom for an elf, JKR turned poor Winky into a depressed drunk with no purpose in her life. Winky's story is horrifying.

Only Dobby takes care of Winky for that whole year. She never recovers during it. Then she's made to witness the interrogation of Barty Crouch Jr., which upsets her and causes her distress. As a result, she hears about Crouch's death through a toneless forced confession - and the interrogation continues around her. That same day, she watches the last member of the household she loved have his soul taken by a dementor, and then she's left alone with the body while Dumbledore argues with Fudge. Only after, he sends Madam Pomfrey to do what she can for Winky, and take her to the kitchens where Dobby will take care of her again.

And Rowling wrote all of this. Did she think this is an example that even compliant house elves suffer and get neglected, even by the sympathetic wizards? Was this a lesson that even those who don't seek freedom suffer and lack agency in this system?

No. Rowling turned it into a cautionary tale against freeing slaves. Unless they're "weird" like Dobby.

Maybe she didn't try to be racist, but this fits disturbingly well with the arguments against ending slavery in reality. That enslaved people will turn into aimless drunks. That they need to be enslaved to have purpose. That those who want freedom have something wrong with them.

And I know this was criticized. What was the response to the criticism? Nothing direct as far as I know, but after all of this - there was an article published on Pottermore to argue that Winky's story is a warning against freeing the elves. It was taken down fortunately, but after this article the arguments against freedom are no longer the opinion of characters within the world - it's a message given to us by real people.

She doubles down. Every time. People keep yelling that she had nothing to do with Hogwarts Legacy, she's not responsible for the way it builds on her original canon. Well, she seems to approve of it. It continues painting the same line with the same brush - just bolder.

She doesn't care about the racism, she doesn't care about antisemitism - she just wanted to use the nazis as her easy villains. She doesn't have the imagination for any other kind.

#hogwarts legacy #riki babbles #HP #JKR #I'm not Black so I hope I'm not overstepping #the only history my community has with slavery as far as I know is from Nazi labor camps #which are very a different thing to chattel slavery #and the latter is more similar to the situation the house elves are in

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dimonds456 · 2 years

Text

One Hell of a Dream (DLC Analysis)

!!SPOILERS!! Block the tag if you haven't!

So, in the new DLC, there is a secret boss. We don't really know anything about it, just that it has lots- and I mean LOTS- of implications. You find it by doing a randomized puzzle and then falling asleep, taking you to a dream.

We know it's a dream because A) we just fell asleep, and B) the soundtrack backs this up. The track that plays during this fight is called "One Hell of a Dream."

I want to take some time to talk about the significance of this little segment here.

Before that, though, I want to point out a few things.

- Cuphead can only face towards the Devil

- Devs and the Angel swap sides depending on which way he's facing

- The stopmotion skeleton in the background

- The night sky behind that

- The swirly clouds Cuphead is standing on

If you haven't seen this boss yet, here's a no commentary fight.

Now, on to the good stuff.

Also, as a short summary of this essay, have a meme.

K let's get into it.

So, for those of you who have watched The Cuphead Show (no S2/S1B spoilers here!), we all know how Episode 8 started. Normal day at the Cup household, Kettle's making pancakes, we're wondering if there was an upload mistake when suddenly

My friend @joyflameball and I have been going on for a while about the depth of this show, and this is the scene that really tipped us off to begin with. As Alan Seawright of CInema Therapy once said, "nightmares are a cinematic shorthand for trauma."

The same is true here. In this boss, it's heavily implied it's a dream, or more accurately, a nightmare. Just like we see in the show. However, this one takes place after we had already beaten the Devil, and have been thanked and given money for it. So, what's the deal?

Well, even if the danger is gone, that doesn't mean you forget. You remember.

Cuphead still dreams of the Devil, even if he beat good ol' Scratch's behind 7 ways to Sunday. He's scary, and Cups sold his and his brother's souls to him. That doesn't just go away.

Look at the Angel. Notice the horns, nose, eyes, and fur, plus the fact that he turns into the Devil when you look at him. The fact that he and Devs flap their wings in sync. That angel is the Devil. That's Lucifer, just from before he was booted out of Heaven.

To further solidify this, the skeleton in the background is the Devil's skeleton. Notice the long horns and wide eye sockets. The skeleton is overseeing this because that's who he really is, fuzzy exterior aside. He may look different, but he's always been the same.

Now, as a non-believer, not-a-Christian, this tells me two things.

If you look, Cuphead is still getting attacked from behind. The Angel still produces attacks, they just don't hurt you unless you look at him. So, that tells me paranoia. If Cuphead does turn around to look, then the attacks hit him. If he doesn't, then the ghost of those attacks still phase through.

It's like feeling imaginary bugs crawling on you. Nothing's there, but you feel like there is.

Before I go further, here are two lists of trauma symptoms. There's one point per list I want to draw attention to; in the first "Anxiety," and in the second, "Nightmares."

That's both of what we're seeing here.

The second thing I see here is... well. A lot.

Have the screenshot again. I'd like to draw attention to another point: Guilt.

Imagine you have a brother, or picture your sibling. You both go do something you know you shouldn't, and you decide to put the both of you in danger. Your sibling says that maybe it's time to go, but you instead make it worse and nearly get both of you killed.

Now, what would you be feeling? Your sibling didn't want to be there, and you made it worse for the both of you. Or, you knew not to go and you id anyway. Either way, you'd be feeling guilty, right?

Well, something that goes hand in hand with guilt is self-evaluation, and often, self-loathing. You suddenly feel like you don't deserve X, Y, and/or Z.

Now, back to the screenshot.

Why is Lucifer there? It would make sense for Cuphead to be dreaming about Devs, but... Lucifer? And what about the clouds and the starry sky?

Well, the night sky is up, right? Above us. What else is up?

Heaven.

Now, the clouds with the evil green glow make more sense. This is Cuphead dreaming about Heaven. Or, some equivalent.

Now, notice the spikes at the bottom. Those could be the mountainous Underworld, as it's often depicted like a cave in these kinds of cartoons. The stalagmites reach upward. I think that's what we're seeing here.

This is a battle between Heaven and Hell.

Now, apply that to Cuphead. Why would he be dreaming about this? Well, apply the guilt aspect, and suddenly this just got really sad.

Cuphead is debating whether or not he's a good person, ie. whether or not he'll go to Heaven when he dies.

That's why he can only face towards the Devil. He has to face his inner demons and destroy them on a mental level, too, in order to overcome that trauma. And even then, those scars don't just magically disappear.

This is further evidenced by the Relic.

As soon as you win that fight, the ghost nearby says this:

"Despises bravery"?

Now, this thing basically turns on Hardcore mode. You have 1 HP and all your weapons and charms switch and randomize during fights. Basically, you have to no-hit bosses while having very little control.

The relic was awoken by Cuphead beating Devs in his dream- being brave. And, if you complete boss fights with the relic, it gains more eyelashes until it turns into the Divine Relic, which basically gives you a 3rd weapons slot from what I hear.

It's the reward for facing your fears. Your trauma.

Now, wrapping this all up, I just want to commemorate the DLC and how much it adds to the world and the characters. They didn't have to put in this last bit, but they did, and now we know more about Cuphead's mental state because of it.

Also, buddy, I think you're less than 13 you should be fine lol. Isn't that a free pass? idk. (again, non-believer, not-a-Christian.)

That's all for that. Thanks for reading.

#dimond speaks #cuphead #cuphead ddwtd #cuphead dlc #cuphead dlc spoilers #cuphead spoilers #cuphead secrets #one hell of a dream #the devil #the devil (cuphead)#cuphead the delicious last course #cuphead delicious last course #the delicious last course #delicious last course #dlc spoilers

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une-sanz-pluis · 2 months

Note

What do you think about the homosexual rumors of Henry V?

I'm generally in favour of them and do my best to perpetuate them, cf. this tag on my personal blog. But, I (sometimes) try to be a ~serious history blogger so I will endeavour to give you a more considered answer.

As a ~serious history blogger, I'd say it's probably more accurate to speak about speculation of Henry V's sexuality than "homosexual rumours". To me, "rumours" implies things contemporaneously said and recorded about Henry V and, while I would argue that there are things that may allude to his being in some way queer, there is just no evidence that explicitly, irrefutably does that or evidence that raises the possibility of his queerness in a way that has to be addressed by historians, even if they end up denying the possibility of queerness or can't definitively say whether he was or wasn't queer. This doesn't mean there is no possible way Henry V could be queer, only that it's one of those things that we don't and can't know for certain.

Medieval Attitudes to Sexuality

We don't have a lot of evidence of specific individuals engaged in same-sex behaviour in medieval England and what evidence that exists is generally from when people were outed (often in a legalistic sense) or in the form of political smears. In the latter case, we have no idea of these smears had some element of truth in them. Both Edward II and Richard II, for example, were linked explicitly with sodomy by their contemporaries. While today we associate sodomy with a specific sexual act, in the Middle Ages it encompassed a whole host of sexual sins and was often invoked in non-sexual discourses to suggest something was "against nature". In the case of Edward II and Richard II, sodomy was invoked alongside a narrative that they were ruled or lead astray by their unworthy favourites - when as kings, they should have been the ones who did the "ruling". This genre of criticism has been labelled discursive sodomy. We can't and don't know whether they did or did not have a romantic and/or sexual relationship with their favourites or what "sodomy" their accusers imagined or believed they had committed but in the case of Edward II, at least, the appearance of the (untrue) narrative that he was murdered by the insertion of a red-hot poker into his anus not too long after his death heavily implies that not all of his contemporaries and near-contemporaries viewed the allegation of sodomy to be purely political or unlinked to same-sex behaviour. If you're interested in a discussion getting into the specifics of Richard II's sexuality, I'd recommend this post by @shredsandpatches

Another issue with the discussion of medieval sexuality is medieval attitudes to sexuality were very different from our own. Our modern categories of sexual orientation (e.g. heterosexuality, homosexuality etc.) did not exist in the Middle Ages - this doesn't mean that medieval people didn't experience and/or act on sexual attraction in the way these categories describe, just that they didn't have the same ways of conceptualising and categorising sexuality as we do. Some sexuality historians avoid using these terms, viewing them as what W. Mark Ormrod, when discussing Edward II, described as both anachronistic and futile:

anachronistic because medieval attitudes to sexuality were so different from our own, and futile because the nature of the evidence makes it impossible to tell what Edward actually did – let alone what he thought himself to be doing – whether and when he engaged in emotional and physical contact with women or men.

Personally, I don't have issue with using modern sexuality categories in casual settings or as a quick shorthand, but when I'm pretending to be a ~serious history blogger, I try to follow that viewpoint and use the word "queer" because it encompasses a whole range of experiencing sexuality and gender without tying it to specific and modern identities that weren't available to the people I'm discussing

We also have to be careful when discussing medieval sexualities for two more reasons. One: we understand and accept today that an individual's sexuality is determined by how they experience sexual attraction but we rarely, if ever, have access to a medieval person's inner thoughts to know how they experienced sexual attraction and can only go off sexual behaviour, where the evidence unsurprisingly skews heavily towards to relationships between men and women. We know that people can and do have sex in ways that don't "fit" with their sexual orientation for a variety of reasons - they might be closeted, experimenting, figuring out their sexuality or trying to have children - and we need to recognise that this could be the case for at least some medieval people. Two: what we today might view as sexual behaviour, such as kissing or sharing a bed, wasn't necessarily sexual to a medieval eyes, and we need to ground our conclusions in their context.

So, with that lengthy preamble but very basic introduction to medieval sexuality and its problems over, let's move onto Henry V.

Henry V's Sexualities

Discussion of Henry's sexuality have two additional problems. Firstly, Henry's reputed wild youth has often been assumed to have been both sexual and heteronormative - i.e. he had a lot of sex with a lot of women - and this isn't aided by the fact that historical Henry is often conflated with Shakespeare's wild prince Hal, whose wildness is also often generally assumed to be both sexual and heteronormative and who is often depicted as having casual sex with women*. Secondly, Henry's reputation as a great warrior king has meant that, as Katherine J. Lewis notes, his gender is often seen to have been so normative and idealised as to be invisible and in need of little scrutiny and I would argue the same is true for his sexuality (excepting revisionist takes by historians such as Ian Mortimer, who treats Henry's sexuality as monstrously other).

I know that what I'm about to write will have someone wanting to jump in and get all "BUT" and "well, actually" so three disclaimers:

It is very difficult to know for certain whether two men (or two women) actually had sex 600 years ago - and impossible if we don't have explicit evidence (which we rarely do). However, just because we lack evidence does not mean everyone was "straight". The stigma around same-sex behaviour means that we would expect a paucity of evidence, which we have. Additionally, we need to be aware of what Ruth Mazo Karras calls the "double standard of evidence" where men and women are often assumed to be lovers despite a lack of evidence, but the possibility of women and men engaging in same-sex behaviour requires explicit evidence of genital contact.

As I've already said, there is nothing that is clearly suggestive of Henry V engaging in same-sex behaviour. He was not linked explicitly with sodomy, despite the broadness of the term, and nor do we find him depicted as a king unreasonably attached to an unworthy favourite. Firstly, it is reasonable to assume that more queer people existed than what we have evidence for. Secondly, the narrative of queer kings as kings ruled by their favourites is a stereotype, born from discursive sodomy, and it is entirely possible that this allowed for queer kings who didn't (or who weren't made to) embody the tropes of discursive sodomy to go under the radar.

"But we have all these stories about Henry V's wild youth where he was having sex with loads of women and the epic romance with his wife." I will get into this more detail below but we should probably view such claims sceptically. Secondly, the evidence of "sex with lots of women" is actually very limited.

* There are a number of queer readings of Shakespeare's Hal but these are rarely leave academia to end up on stage or screen. There are three retellings of the Henriad that depict a queer Hal: My Own Private Idaho, Tessa Gratton's Lady Hotspur and Allen Bratton's Henry Henry.

Speculation

The arguments that I've seen put forward to suggest that Henry engaged in same-sex behaviour come from three different types of evidence:

Preferring the Company of Men. Henry married late and spent most of his reign on campaign and with men, away from women. His court was also lacking in women.

Sharing a bed with Scrope. Henry, Lord Scrope of Masham was known as Henry's bedfellow which means they were lovers.

Sharing a tomb with Courtenay. A story circulated that Henry's close friend, Richard Courtenay, was buried in the same tomb as him, which suggests they were lovers.

Neither of these are a smoking gun, the first two for fairly obvious reasons, and the third because Courtenay is not in the same tomb as Henry.

Preferring the Company of Men.

It is true that Henry married late but if Henry's sexuality did play any kind of role in the delay, it was in a very minor role. We know that his marriage had been considered since 1395, when John of Gaunt negotiated for his marriage to Marie, the daughter of the Duke of Brittany and when Richard II proposed he marry Michelle de Valois, daughter of Charles VI of France. We also know that he was the subject of multiple marriage negotiations in Henry IV's reign - at first with Isabelle de Valois (daughter of Charles VI, Richard II's widow), Catherine of Pomerania (sister to Erik of Pomerania, King of Norway, Denmark and Sweden), an unnamed daughter of Charles VI, Catherine de Valois, and one of the daughters of the Duke of Burgundy (I don't think a name was ever specified). These never eventuated for various political reasons. The delay in his marriage when Henry became king was likely due to seeing his marriage to a French princess as a necessary part for any long-term peace with France (regardless of how he truly envisioned the form that peace would take). I don't think we can argue that Henry's behaviour here was because of a lack of sexual interest in women, but simply because negotiations fell through and because, in the end, the marriage to Catherine was deemed a vital part of his plans with France.

It is true that Henry's court was primarily a homosocial environment but that was the way courts were "supposed" to be (Richard II, for instance, was heavily criticised for having too many women at court and for combining his household with his first queen's). It is also true that by the time Henry came to the throne, the majority of his female relatives who might be expected to play a role in his court were either dead or living overseas, having made advantageous marriage alliances arranged by Henry's father and grandfather. Ian Mortimer's assertion that Henry barred Joan of Navarre and Margaret Holland, Duchess of Clarence from his court on basis of his dislike of Joan and of Margaret's husband, is simply without foundation, and indeed they played important, visible roles in his reign, both at court and away from court, until Joan's arrest on treason charges and Margaret's widowing. Given the tendency for chroniclers to elide the presence of women, it's also possible that other women were at court but their presence went unrecorded and there are at least four who should probably be considered as influential figures in Henry's reign: Joan de Bohun, Countess of Hereford, Elizabeth of Lancaster, Countess of Huntington, Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland and Philippa de Mohun, Duchess of York.

Sharing a bed with Scrope.

As I mentioned above bed sharing was not seen as a solely sexual act and it often occurred as a gesture of trust, affection and intimacy between men. I also don't believe that chroniclers that often implied sodomy rather than explicitly naming it would casually reference the king having sex with his male best friend. In Scrope's specific case, I'm only aware of his sharing a bed with Henry as being recorded by Monstrelet, which raises the question of how a Burgundian chronicler knew they shared a bed but not one English chronicler knew about it to make mention of it. Likely, Monstrelet was invoking bed-sharing to show the intimacy of their relationship, borrowing from the English narratives that depicted Scrope as a deeply trusted friend of Henry who then callously betrayed him.

Now, there are some things to note. The first is that just because Monstrelet is the only chronicler (afaik) to reference the bed sharing does not mean that Henry and Scrope didn't share a bed (and if Scrope was as close to Henry as the chroniclers imply, there's a good chance they did). The second is that while bed-sharing was not primarily seen as sexual, it doesn't preclude the possibility that sex did occur between two members of the same sex sharing a bed. Thirdly, despite not mentioning the bed-sharing, chroniclers often invoked a highly intimate relationship between Scrope and Henry. Here's Thomas Walsingham on Scrope:

He was so highly regarded by the king that discussions on private or public matters were usually brought to an end by his verdicts. For in all his actions he showed such a restrained gravity and sanctity that the king judged that all his pronouncements should be carried out just as if they were oracles fallen from heaven. If an important embassy had to be sent to France, the king thought that Henry Scrope was the man who had the ability to perform this task.

This, to me, seems to invoke the trope of the unworthy favourite who has an unreasonable hold on the king. Perhaps Scrope was the most unworthy of the late medieval favourites: his betrayal of Henry was an actual betrayal instead of the image of a "loving knight serving his lord with his body and sword" twisted into treason by his enemies.

Sharing a tomb with Courtenay.

At some point after October 1953 when the grave of Richard Courtenay, Bishop of Norwich was rediscovered in the chapel of St Edward at Westminster Abbey, a story circulated that Courtenay's remains were found inside Henry's tomb, which led to speculation that that they had been lovers. Obviously, this doesn't prove they had sex but it is a quite unusual gesture, suggesting a great degree of intimacy. This same intimacy is apparent in the small number of double-tomb monuments commemorating two individuals of the same-sex (e.g. Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge), and Jessica Barker notes that while we don't/can't know if the couples were lovers, their joint burial and memorials do mark a "significant moment in in queer history because they present same-sex relationships as analogous to married couples". Courtenay has no memorial in the chapel, much less one that impales his arms with Henry's as is the case with Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, but Henry's gesture of sharing his tomb space with Courtenay is deeply unusual and suggests a great deal of affection and intimacy.

Unfortunately, the story just isn't true. As far as I could find, Henry's tomb has never been opened which means that Courtenay's remains can't have been discovered alongside his. There is also a fair bit about Courtenay's grave that has been made public. Westminster Abbey displays the ring they found in his grave, Lawrence Tanner records the discovery in his memoirs, and a couple of articles about St Edward's chapel published archaeological drawings of Courtenay's grave and remains that show he was buried alone and his tomb is located under the steps of the northern turret of Henry V's chantry chapel.

There is still something very telling about Courtenay's place of burial. St. Edward's chapel was, quite simply, an exclusive burial space. It was where almost every single king and queen of England between Henry III and Henry V were buried and those few burials that didn't belong to monarchs were often quite closely connected to the royal family or from an earlier period. Space was also becoming tight - Henry VI struggled to find a place for his own burial (which never eventuated due to his deposition and murder) and the lack of space was probably why Edward IV chose to be buried at Windsor (and possibly why Henry IV chose to be buried in Canterbury Cathedral). The closest, albeit imperfect, parallel to Courtenay's burial in the chapel was that of John Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury - who had been buried there on Richard II's orders, causing outrage that a man of common blood should be buried amongst kings. Courtenay was of noble descent but not of the highest echelons of society, let alone closely related to the royal family. Why then did Henry order Courtenay's burial in such a prestigious place, risking scandal and outrage?

We can say a little more about Courtenay, too. He seems to have been implicitly trusted by Henry. Walsingham's statement about Scrope, that Henry thought Scrope should head all important embassies to France? Isn't quite correct. Scrope didn't lead any of the principal embassies to Paris - Courtenay did, "perhaps," Jeremy Caton writes, "because he knew the king’s mind better than his colleagues." The Gesta Henrici Quinti, which is was written by a chaplain in Henry's household and largely believed to be part of Henry's propaganda, details the moment of Courtenay's death, "in the presence of the king who, after extreme unction, with his own hands wiped [Courtenay's] feet and closed his eyes". The closest parallel to Henry's handling of Courtenay's corpse that has survived appears to be Richard II's touching of Robert de Vere's corpse when it was returned to England for burial.

Obviously, none of this "proves" that Henry and Courtenay were lovers or that Henry experienced and engaged in same-sex behaviour. But it does suggest the possibility.

I discussed this in more detail on my personal tumblr but without pretending to be ~serious history blogger sometime ago and I keep meaning to write a serious version of that post and one specifically about the account of Henry attending to Courtenay on his deathbed.

The Wild Youth and the Wife

To begin with, sexual attraction does not always operate on a binary. People can be attracted to one gender or they can be attracted to more. Nor does sexual behaviour, as I said above, necessarily indicate how one experiences sexual attraction. So it is entirely possible that Henry could have sex with women and still be sexually attracted to men and vice versa. One does not necessarily preclude the other.

The Wife

I've already written a simply massive post detailing the evidence of his relationship with Catherine de Valois. The reality is that we don't and can't know what their relationship was like. The framing of their marriage as a romance is, simply put, a myth. It was a standard marriage for their class and situation and we should not rely on the stories that Henry fell instantly in love with Catherine upon seeing her portrait or hearing his ambassadors report on their meeting with her. These are tropes out of courtly romances and fairy tales.

If we try to determine anything about their sex life from the surviving evidence of their marriage, we run into trouble. We don't have access to their bedchamber to know when they had sex or what they felt about the sex they did have. The only explicit evidence of their sex life is that it resulted in a son. I don't say this to conclude "and therefore they only had sex the one time" - I would be very, very surprised if that's the case. The point is, however, that the marriage is not proof of Henry's "straightness".

The Wild Youth

I've also written a bit about the story of Henry's "wild youth". Two Latin lives written in the mid-to-late 1430s explicitly invoke Henry's sex life, such as the Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti (translated here by Anne Curry):

an assiduous pursuer of fun, devoted to organ instruments [an intentional double entendre] which relaxed the rein on his modesty, although under the military service of Mars, he seethed youthfully with the flames of Venus too, and tended to be open to other novelties as befitted the age of his untamed youth.

For some historians, this is proof that Henry had a lot of casual sex with women. Others cite two reports by contemporaries (Richard Courtenay himself and the Earl of Ormond) who claim that after his coronation, Henry did not have sex with women after coming to the throne as evidence that it was notable to what came before. Ian Mortimer even speculates that Henry had "an unfortunate experience [that] left him fearing women as sexual beings" that resulted in this turnaround.

However, we have no explicit evidence beyond these two Latin lives that imagined Henry "seeth[ing] youthfully with the flames of Venus" for Henry's youthful indiscretions. There is not the slightest hint of an illegitimate child, nor is there any woman we can link to Henry in a plausible sexual relationship. There are also no surviving criticisms of lecherous behaviour or that his court as Prince of Wales was a hotbed of debauchery - we find similar criticisms for the likes of Edward III, Richard II, Edward IV and Richard III, and for Henry's brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.

This, of course, doesn't prove or mean that Henry didn't have sex with women during this time. It could just be that the evidence doesn't survive. Although some medieval mistresses are incredibly famous, most are unknown - Henry's brothers had five known illegitimate children and we don't know who the mothers were for any of them. It's also possible that Henry's sexual relations with women were on a strictly casual basis, that he was unusually lucky with the highly unreliable forms of birth control or that any illegitimate children that he fathered died young enough that they left no mark on the historical record. It's also possible that if he was having sex, perhaps he wasn't having sex with women. The apparent gap between the comments on Henry’s sex life and the lack of evidence could be read suggestive of something unspeakable – a vice that medieval people considered too horrible to be named. It's also tempting to see a link between the invocation of Venus and Thomas Walsingham's complaint that Richard II's favourites were "knights of Venus rather than of Bellona", a war goddess.

It's also possible that his sex life was simply unremarkable. The comments about Henry's sex life might simply be, as has been suggested, a cover for Henry's conflicts with his father. They may have been a cover for suspicions that he harboured Lollard sympathies.

Henry's Sexualities

As I've outlined, we simply don't know how Henry experienced sexual desire and attraction to know whether he was queer or straight. I can see the possibility that he was queer, that he had romantic and/or sexual relationships with Courtenay or Scrope.

I have also wondered if he experienced little to no sexual attraction or had little interest in sex. If we take the statements that he was abstained from sex between his coronation and his marriage at face value, if we take the lack of concrete evidence for his "seething in the flames of Venus" at face value, it's possible to read him as experiencing sexual attraction in a way similar to asexuality.

My thoughts are, in short: that we don't and can't know but there is the possibility of queerness there.

Sources:

Gesta Henrici Quinti (c. 1417), eds. and trans. Frank Taylor and John S. Roskell (Oxford University Press 1975)

The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, trans. David Preest (The Boydell Press 2005)

The First English Life of Henry V, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Clarendon Press 1911)

The Chronicles of Enguerrand de Enguerrand De Monstrelet, Volume 1 of 2, trans. Thomas Johnes, 1840.

Henric Bagerius and Christine Ekholst, 'Kings and favourites: politics and sexuality in late medieval Europe', Journal of Medieval History, 43:3 (2017)

Jessica Barker, Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Sculpture (The Boydell Press 2020)

Judith M. Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (University of Pennsylvania Press 2007)

Judith M. Bennett, "Remembering Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge", The Lesbian Premodern, eds. Noreen Giffney, Michelle M. Sauer, Diane Watt (Palgrave 2011)

Jeremy Caton, “The King’s Servants”, Henry V: The Practice of Kingship, ed. G. L. Harriss (Oxford University Press 1985)

Anne Curry, Henry V: From Playboy Prince to Warrior King (Penguin Monarchs 2015)

R. G. Davies, “Courtenay, Richard” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)

Sylvia Federico, "Queer Times: Richard II in the Poems and Chronicles of Late Fourtheen-Century England", Medium Ævum, vol. 79, no. 1 (2010)

Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others (Routledge 2017)

Ruth Mazo Karras and Tom Linkenen, “John/Eleanor Rykener Revisited", Founding Feminisms in Medieval Studies: Essays in Honor of E. Jane Burns, eds. Laine E. Doggett and Daniel E. O'Sullivan, (D. S. Brewer 2016)

Katherine J. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (Routledge 2013)

Peter McNiven, "Prince Henry and the English Political Crisis of 1412:, History, vol. 65, no. 12 (1980)

Peter McNiven, Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV: The Burning of John Badby (The Boydell Press 1987)

E. Amanda McVitty, ‘False knights and true men: contesting chivalric masculinity in English treason trials, 1388–1415′, Journal of Medieval History, 40:4 (2014)

Robert Mills, Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (University of Chicago Press 2015)

Ian Mortimer, 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory (Vintage 2010)

W. Mark Ormrod, "The Sexualities of Edward II", The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, eds. Gwilym Dodd and Anthony Musson (York Medieval Press 2009)

Lawrence Tanner, Recollections of a Westminster Antiquary (John Baker 1969)

Tim Tatton-Brown, “The Pavement in the Chapel of St Edward The Confessor, Westminster Abbey”, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 153:1 (2000)

#henry v #richard courtenay bishop of norwich #henry scrope lord masham #ask #anon #sex and sexuality #god ok i'm done with this and am taking a break from responding to asks i'm aware that i've got more to answer #but i need to have a life and do stuff for me

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