#when like okay i understand we are not a monolith and to some yes a white man playing a latino isnt the worst thing ever

[scintillyyy]

i know we talk about fanon sometimes like it's a monolith, but actually i have an argument that the fanon(tm) is actually a little more diverse than we think sometimes and i say this because i have categorized and subtyped the various different kinds.

so to start, we have two broad categories: category 1//pre-ethiopia fanon and category 2//post-ethiopia fanon. pre-ethiopia canon is by and large much more simple and straightforward. post-ethiopia is where we start to see more variety and different subtypes.

tim:

pre-ethiopia: probably skipped two grades. bad parents jack and janet simultaneously care immensely about both tim taking over the company one day and also don't care at all about ensuring their son actually survives until adulthood to do so. survival of the fittest, baby, you're a failure of an heir if you can't use the stove independently by age 4. free space of "criminal neglect" being mentioned at some point. camera stalker to the point where he has batman's patrol routes memorized. jason is definitely his idol.

post-ethiopia: subtype (a)//robin: bad parents jack and janet remain (even though janet should have died years ago), leaving tim all alone in the cold drake manor. this 15 year old, rather than reveling in this independence allowing him more freedom to do robin without having to worry about his parents, is immensely sad about this state of affairs. bruce probably hates him for not being jason. jason hates him until he realizes that tim is "just a kid" who has "bad parents" and needs to be saved. physical abuse from his dad highly likely. most likely jason is his idol, but there may be some mention about how much he loves dick. subtype (b)//red robin: addicted to coffee, hasn't slept in weeks. everyone in the batfamily simultaneously hates him and depends on him to keep the entire operation running without any thanks or recognition. nobody loves him, definitely thinks he's not part of the family. they will have to prostrate themselves when they realize the damage they've done to him. subtype (c)//the jerk: a far rarer type of fanon, but still fanon all the same. this subtype is the anti-tim fanon, a backlash fanon, where basically all of tim's bad traits are amplified to the point where he is borderline sociopathic, doesn't really have any sympathy or care for anyone else, and is so super judgemental and snotty to the point that yes, he is no longer recognizable as tim drake and this is officially a fanon. and not that tim doesn't ever show bad traits in canon (he is flawed, like all of them), but really. he does care about other people immensely. he cares about gotham immensely. they all do. even if chuck dixon used him for heavy-handed conservative messages in the 90s, these aren't, like, enduring character traits. most likely to be seen if we're trying to promote another batboy who is getting woobified.

jason:

pre-ethiopia: the only panels that matter are "robin gives me magic" and anything that implies a love of school/good grades. no negative traits, if we give him any negative traits then we are feeding into the idea that he was a "bad" robin just like dc tries to do. so, so focused on the victims and downtrodden of gotham (probably more than dick ever did) which is why tim admires him so much. he is Of The City. immediately zeros in on tim as a victim of terrible parents. ever kind and understanding and sympathetic. a true champion of the people. calls bruce dad, hyphenated his last name. calls dick "dickhead" as a term of loving endearment and dick is seemingly okay with this.

post-ethiopia: subtype (a)//red hood: lazarus pit madness, baby. not at fault for anything he did, it was all the pit. once the anger fades, he realizes that he has turned into the monster who killed him and he feels great shame for this, has to make amends (most likely to tim, for titans tower). subtype (b)//sadboy jason: woobified jason is just sad :( his dad didn't love him, his brother didn't love him, they replaced him. he just wants to go home, desperately. the batfamily must make amends for not grieving him well enough/let him know how much they love and miss him and then he can go home. highly likely was damian's beloved brother in the league and considered talia his mom.

dick:

pre-ethiopia: only eats cereal. comes home every weekend to do his laundry (u know what, good on u dick. i too went home a lot of weekends after i moved out so i wouldn't have to pay for coin laundry at my apartment complex. it's called being smart and strategic.) and hang out with his dad, bruce, and little brother, jason. also has a hyphenated last name. a little dim. always happy. all about the hugs.

post-ethiopia: subtype (a)//nightwing: is allowed to be a good brother to tim, but will never be tim's favorite. feels immensely guilty about how terribly he treated jason as robin, must make amends for this. very bland personality. subtype (b)//post-dickbats: devil incarnate. plays favorites with his brothers and has room in his heart to only love two (neither of which are tim), that is until he realizes how badly he has treated tim and feels immensely bad and guilty that he's ignored tim for so long and then is finally able to redeem himself. probably threatened tim with arkham and told everyone tim was nuts. subtype (c)//dick actually gets to be woobified for once: on rare occasion, dick gets to be the one who gets constantly downtrodden and used by his siblings even if this isn't actually really super in character for them. like i said, super rare. usually seen so that dick can lose his temper at his siblings who are being immature jerks for no reason. cathartic if you're tired of dick being beat down by the writers at dc, but still fanon imo because you have to rely on someone (usually tim) acting more out of character and far more immature towards dick than normal canon and more fanon-y relationship dynamics (such as tim & damian constantly fighting and really hating each other) to get to this point. ....will kind of infantilize an adult man in his mid-twenties.

damian:

pre-ethiopia: actually gets two subtypes!! subtype (a)//doesn't exist: damian who? subtype (b)//young child: we bring him in as a 3 year old, and he's basically a totally different character. probably only meaningful character trait is total adoration for his older brothers.

post-ethiopia: subtype (a)//meanest child in the world: hates tim, is actively trying to murder him constantly and make sure that tim knows he is not a wayne/not welcome in the family. revels in having successfully stolen all of dick's love and attention. no character growth and all the adults just let him be mean without addressing the behavior, everything gets handwaved because of how he was brought up, but it's clear he knows right from wrong and is specifically choosing to do wrong. subtype (b)//he's just a 10 year old, so we have to treat him like *checks notes* a 5 year old: actually incapable of knowing right from wrong because of his upbringing, and he can't be at fault or responsible for any of his behavior because he's only 10 years old, and 10 year olds are too young to know any better when they've grown up in the league, despite extensive education on all subjects growing up likely including philosophy and morality. likely to be the woobified and infantilized one here. needs to be treated like a 3 year old with kid gloves because he's just a kid, after all. when he realizes he is "bad", he is very depressed and sad. often has no knowledge of the outside world, must be taught by his ever patient and loving brothers.

#did i miss any you think??? #obligatory i don't actually hate fanon you do you idc #this is a lighthearted post okay!!! tim and jason are the biggest fanon offenders but there's room for dick and damian too dw #anyways *i* think it's helpful to contextualize what category/subtype when discussing fanon #has this been done before??? my greatest apologies if it has

[pinkanonwrites]

(part 2. now featuring me rambling about a Modern Triguns hc i have)

okay so im Native American and i do think, in my hc (not yours. wanna reiterate that i am saying this for Fun Conversation and not to convince you of shit), i really like the idea of Vash and Knives being either surrounded by Indigenous American influence (people who are non-Indigenous can live on our reservations, maybe Rem is Indigenous and is cross-racially fostering them, i dunno) or Vash and Knives are white-passing Indigenous Americans themselves (i say "white-passing" bc i know their creator is Japanese but also Vash and Knives are pale-skinned, blue-eyed, blond boys so im assuming they are white? but some Japanese people could be mixed, that's true. i dont know enough about Trigun to know ethnicity canon/fanon, i just know "ah!!! they might be blond and blue-eyed, but i see Me in them!" so. headcanon. anyway)

and i say that bc a huge part of a pan-Indigenous culture (not that we are a monolith to generalize, theres so many fucking tribes and specific tribal cultures, but you get what i mean) is focused on the enviroment and our interconnectedness to it, ontop of our history of being genocided against up until the last Indian Residential School closed down in 2007 and we had our right to practice our culture given to us in 1978 (so 1978 is actually when American achieved religious-freedom) and now we are facing various Indigenous protective laws being disbanded in the U.S.-- it's easy for any marginalized group, esp ethnicities, to see relatability in the Plants. like, the Americas were founded with the blood of Black and Indigenous people. but also many other cultures have faced similar experiences. so i do think its easy to project any marginalized culture that has suffered onto Plants. its just also cool to be like "yo, my culture is very much based on protecting and understanding the enviroment, and this fictional group is called PLANTS? hell yeah, easy projection" but like. we arent the only culture that does that. so i dont think Indigenous Americans are special any form of projecting ourselves with Plants/Trigun. i just also AM Indigenous American and also AM projecting. so. im biased

and i am, in fact, doubly biased bc my Indigenous American father was a BIG fan of westerns, something Knives loves. my dad loved them bc He Is Very Old (im talking "my dad was 60, close to 70 when i was born" old. my mother is his second wife and they met when she was 40. so i was "wow thats late to have a baby, but not SUPER dangerous") and, though things have gotten slightly better since he was my age but uh.. the reason why he liked old westerns so much was because that WAS the only place where he could see people like him on-screen. even tho they died half the time. and were often racist. highly recommend the documentary "Reel Injun" if you would like a summary on how Indigenous people have been depicted on film, it is very funny for a documentary lmao but anyway, yes, this does also mean my dad was a Twilight fan. he watches those movies all the time (even tho they are ALSO racist against us, but its still really funny to say my dad is a Twi-hard lmao). and my dad wasnt alone in being like that, a LOT of Indigenous people my age (mid-20s) grew up with old western movies and whatnot bc it was the only representation we had for a long time, even moreso for any generation older than us. i can still hear "John Wayne's Teeth Hey-a, Hey-Hey-a" a'la the 90s movie, Smoke Signals, being chanted in my mind lmao

so Knives' lil "bang, bang" and how much he loved old west content made me feel especially seen lmao so i like the idea of him and Vash either being raised in an Indigenous culture by Indigenous people or being Indigenous themselves and being raised by Indigenous people. it brings me joy ♡ especially the latter, bc, tho im not blond and blue-eyed, i am white-passing. people assume i am white until i "out" myself (im also queer, i label myself as Two-Spirited actually, so i am using the verbage "out" knowingly lmao). i grew up hating my pale skin and my monolingual tongue, because that meant i looked like a colonizer and spoke the colonizer's langauge (and i, unfortunately, dont have the kind of brain that absorbs second languages well. at all. damn you auditory processing disorder lmao rip). i wanted to look more like my Indigenous relatives, and less like my white mother who married into our culture. and i see Knives' hatred of Plants' oppressors, and with the modern au and my hc of Indigentity and my personal history of struggling with self-hatred, and i see reflections of myself in him

and like. Knives' desire to kill all humans isnt translatable in a contemporary context, really. i dunno what job i would want my hc of him to have. you could argue he would be on the side of the extremeists in protesting, But Equating A Genocidal Character To A Contemporary Protestor feels.. bad lmao thats an understatement. but like. yeah, i do hc my personal modern au Knives to be a Land Back protestor, and i think Vash would agree actually. but im biased bc i support that movement too lmao i think the fact that Knives is so untranslatable to a modern context in all his variety adds to the tragedy of the Trigun/Trimax/Trigun Stampede/what-have-you narrative. i think modern au Knives might be antagonistic and a nag (or i could empathize with seeing him as modern cult-leader, tho thats irrelevant to this conversation. just bc i can empathize with it, doesnt mean i would ever create content of it or have it as my hc. cults are serious stuff people shouldnt trivialize and i dont have any experience with them, but if people want to vent out their feelings about cults using a modern Knives au?? i can understand that, im using him to project and vent too afterall lmao) to his brother, maybe be estranged, but overall i think the rift between them would be easier to breach than in the canon

i just find modern au Knives to, at least have the capacity to be, more sympathetic than his canon counterparts in all their variancies. he's fun to stretch around and play with lol

anyway, thanks for making a space where i felt welcomed to talk about Trigun modern hcs with you. i cant wait to see what you make. and, again, this was NOT an endorsement for you to follow me at all in this hc, i completely get (1) people have their own hcs of what Knives and Vash's ethnicities may be in a contemporary world and (2) that other people's modern au stories might not even feature disclosing an ethnicity. i just loved your excitement and wanted to spend part 1 engaging with you with your possible hcs, and part 2 sharing mine. i hope i worded all of this in a way that makes sense. thank you again ♡

Ooh, I really love your hcs! I'm always a little hesitant to do any in-depth headcanoning about the intricacies of racial minorities because I'm a very white person myself (a quarter Korean technically, but a blue-eyed blondie nonetheless), so it's really cool to read in-depth and interesting takes from people who obviously have a better scope on the ins and outs than I would!

I agree that Knives's genocidal nature isn't really easy to translate to a modern era. He's a tough guy to nail down! In my head at least, he's more of a nihilistic environmentalist while Vash is an optimistic one. I see him working in a very white-coat, laboratory, scientific field when it comes to conservation, he just strikes me as a scientist type. Him and Vash don't always see eye to eye on everything, and oftentimes he thinks he has to protect Vash because his brother is far too forgiving to the world, no matter how cruel it's been to him. But Vash doesn't want to be coddled either, he's not naive. He's making a conscious effort every day to choose to see the good in the world around them, and for one reason or another Nai just can't wrap his head around that.

He still loves his westerns though, I'm definitely keeping that. Nai was glued to Vash's stream when he was playing through Red Dead Redemption 2, no matter how much he says he doesn't care for video games.

I really liked reading your headcanons too, so thanks for reaching out! If you ever end up wanting to write anything longform that takes place in your modern AU, be sure to link it to me!

#pink chat #anon #asks #streamer au #vash the stampede #millions knives

[fortheloveofsnorkacks]

Hm, I should probably backpedal and say that I don’t think Harry Potter has a grand unified magic system or the bestest worldbuilding ever. I just don’t think people criticize the right parts of it?

Like, in worldbuilding, hands down the worst flaws in HP are geography and history, and social systems. Geography is probably the worst because it borders on xenophobia and is rather offensive, but as mentioned earlier today, it’s also patently silly that “a forest in Albania” attracts so, so many convenient plot points when there’s a whole lot of forest in Albania. HP feels like it’s set in a fantasy Britain that’s actually an island halfway across the Atlantic, except for mentions of going on holiday abroad of course (those always jar me a little bit as someone from the US). It’s isolated, there’s practically no foreign influence unless it’s sinister plot dressing, and any time foreigners enter in, there’s just laughably exaggerated stereotypes. Ah yes, the three countries, Britain, France, and Eurasia.

History falls apart the minute you get close to it because it just accepts so many modern things as ancient (basic things, like heritable surnames) and is about as accurate as Kevin Costner’s accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. But usually history more than a century prior is often just set dressing, so I’ll let it slide, with a caveat that I imagine there’s room for a lot of colonial grievances with the historical monolith, but I lack the expertise to put my finger on it.

Social systems are weak generally because the only careers we’re informed of are teacher, government employee, shop owner, private bank security, or biologist. This is mostly okay if you don’t pick at it, but also unravels under scrutiny, and the fact that we don’t have any picture of wider wizarding society except for government employees is limiting. Similar criticisms can be made about muggle cultural influence, or the total lack thereof.

But when it comes to magic, it really, really doesn’t bother me that any plot magic you want can reasonably be contrived, as long as it’s useful and quirky enough. This is a world where half the spells are puns on british household products. It’s like getting mad at willy wonka for not telling us how the machines that make magic candy work. (it’s the colonialism you’ve gotta look out for there). I literally do not care that there’s a luck potion when it’s described as incredibly difficult to make and dangerous to get wrong, and also dangerous to overconsume.

There are other things that do bother me because they affect the plot and how I relate to the characters, chiefmost among which is the fact that “dark magic” is some huge bogeyman with apparent moral implications and we have absolutely no implication about what makes “dark magic” any different from regular magic. We are repeatedly asked to judge or reject characters because they use this “dark magic,” yet we have absolutely no justification why love potions are a “haha funny drug...okay maaaaybe it’s slightly rape-y but what are you going to do about it?” and the imperius curse is legal grounds to have your soul eaten. Here’s where the worldbuilding fails, because if we had any idea how the in-world magic people conceptualize different types of magic, we could understand why they, in particular, view the unforgivable curses with such dread but see nothing inherently wrong with other methods that produce the same result. Instead, we’re asked to accept that “dark magic” is bad and every other plot-necessary magic is fine.

Or to return to potions, Veritaserum bothers me a lot more that Felix Felicis because regardless of how rare it’s supposed to be or how difficult it’s supposed to be to make, it’s used too much in OotP to justify the rarity excuse, and now it really does matter why it’s not used when there’s wartime kangaroo courts and martial law is enacted and the police are allowed to use deadly force. Pensieves are a similar case: they’re kind of woo-woo mystical, but we’re not told of any great skill it takes to operate them, or even given any explanation at all for their existence, and given how difficult it is to convincingly tamper with them and how picture-perfect they are, all of a sudden it does matter why pensieves are not used in wizard court. I can ignore off-handed mentions of werewolves prior to PoA because there is a very obvious Doylist explanation there (the werewolf plot hadn’t been invented), but I’m little less forgiving of Slughorn bringing a vampire to his party because we’ve already been exposed to a bunch of “part human” magical issues in all three of the prior books, but now we’re supposed to just ignore this vampire brought as someone’s “guest” that everyone’s nervous around and uncritically gawks at?

So when it comes down to it, my primary issue with HP worldbuilding is not the magic (shocker—I don’t really care about hard magic systems). It’s the fact that the social structures are not sufficiently explained to justify what happened. It’s a pet peeve of mine that people use ‘worldbuilding’ to mean ‘magic systems’ and ignore what the sociologists would study. If the wizarding world is supposed to be cowering under Voldemort, except the entire adult wizarding world works in an office or at Hogwarts and wizards abroad literally do not care enough to do or say anything, and the last book is supposed to be about how bad Voldemort’s takeover is, that’s a major failing. After the Weasley wedding there’s literally nothing other than Hogwarts and the Ministry to show how bad things are getting. Oh, and the bus driver, can’t forget him. And the hospital. There’s just the one, though. (Who knows where fabric comes from? Or the food? How on earth is the wizarding world big enough to justify the size of the Ministry of Magic given how few students are at Hogwarts?)

We get all these hints about laws relegating magical beings on the fringes of society, and they’re used as set dressing! When you take a boarding school novel but you don’t flesh out any of the outside world except for the government and you set the last book outside of school, you end up with The Great Camping Trip! That’s the real weakness to me when it comes to HP worldbuilding. It’s a series that tries to be about society, but it really only duplicates the dynamics of a boarding school.

#wizarding world

[nebulouscoffee]

Sorry to correct you but. Samosa is an indian dish not Kenyan

Hello anon! LOL okay I never expected to get into Samosa Discourse on my Star Trek blog but I happen to love food and history and the history of food so here we go😂

You are correct that samosas are not native to Kenya- and yes, India is by far the country most associated with samosas in the popular imagination (for good reason, samosas are pretty much omnipresent throughout India!) But while samosas are not originally from Kenya, that doesn't mean (imo at least) that they cannot be counted as part of Kenyan cuisine. (Which I didn't even necessarily do in that post, but I understand your position so I'll elaborate on those terms!)

Kenya is a multi-ethic country made up of several African peoples and migrant communities, including Kenyan Asians. Now, the history of South Asians living in/trading with East Africa goes back centuries, but there was also this huge (and deeply colonial) boom in the Asian population during the late 1800s-early 1900s when the British sent tens of thousands of indentured Indian labourers to Kenya to build the Uganda railway. (There is a LOT more history I could get into re the British East Africa Protectorate and the complicated social dynamics between African & Asian communities at the time, but that's not really relevant to samosas so I'll spare you.)

Anyway, modern day Kenya still has a considerable South Asian population, and as such (again not getting into the more complicated social dynamics here), Kenyan cuisine has a lot of Indian (and Arab) influences. But beyond that- Swahili culture(s) and cuisine(s) evolved over centuries of interaction between the various (predominantly Bantu) peoples of East Africa and traders from West, Central & South Asia (who brought in- among other things- their own spices), so cultural intermingling has always been a staple of the East African coast (which is geographically SO close to Asia!) If you were to walk around some of the bigger, more Asian diaspora-heavy cities of Kenya, like Mombasa or Nairobi, you'd find plenty of chicken/fish-based coconut curries & stews that strongly resemble Indian ones- as well as rice-based dishes like pilau & biriyani, rotis, chapatis, bhajias (called 'bajjis' in certain parts of India), kheemas, kebabs- and yes, samosas. Or sambusas, as they're often called in Kenya.

And what's more- the samosa (originally 'samsa' iirc) likely originated in Central Asia in the first place! It still goes by other names in West Asia and North Africa too; as do several other dishes-in-common. In fact, kuku paka (a dish I mentioned in the post that prompted this ask) is a Kenyan chicken curry with distinct Indian & Arabic influences. So if samosas can qualify as Indian cuisine (which, they undoubtedly do), imo they can qualify as a part of Kenyan cuisine too! Anyway I'm truly sorry I let this ask get SO far away from me lmao, I guess I've always felt a bit alienated by this growing tendency in Asian & African communities to sort of rigidly and unquestioningly (even proudly) uphold colonial divides when our cultures are actually so sprawling and ancient? Like sure, we are not monoliths, and it is important that people learn that- but also, so many political borders across both continents didn't even exist as they are today even a hundred years ago. It's so cool how much there is in common! Food, like so many other aspects of culture, is often migratory and full of varied influences, and that's just so deeply human and beautiful and fascinating to me

#nebulouscoffee on tumblr: come for the trekposting stay for the samosa lore apparently? lol #apologies to anyone who actually read all this rambly nonsense wish I could give you a sambusa/samosa as a reward #also anon I know you meant well and TRULY no hard feelings so pls don't take this the wrong way but. this ask made me giggle #I don't know if you're indian or just a concerned (white) citizen but speculating actually cheered me up on a Trying night so thank you! #in either case: you needn't worry!! I'm not out here on a mission to spread samosa misinformation on my star trek blog peace and loveee #(in all seriousness I'm very sorry if this reply came off as condescending or dismissive I promise it wasn't at all meant that way) #((might delete later btw just putting that out there))

[kewpiiie]

The way the internet jumps between “kids are smart and deserve smart media” to “if you show kids this they will grow up thinking it’s okay because kids are impressionable” the second media has something you don’t like in it, as if we don’t start teaching media literacy in grade school. The reality is that much like adults kids are not a monolith, some people see slasher films at a young age and are fine, some grow up with a fear of gore, the same way some kids watch a show like degrassi and understand cheating is bad and is being used for conflict, vs a kid who doesn’t and normalizes it. You don’t suddenly start processing moral situations, subtext, and context differently when you wake up on your 18th birthday.

You grow and change and see things differently as you grow and change. I started watching bojack horseman when I was 13, I very much understood the concepts in it, the show ended in my 20s, do I relate to the adult themes more because of life experiences? Yes, but in terms of understanding context and morality, there wasn’t a massive jump because some teenagers already have a pretty good handle on media literacy and sympathy, and some don’t. It’s not the job of every single media creator to make sure everyone in their audience is up to speed on media comprehension, this is quite literally why me have rating systems, and warnings that come with that rating system. Allow kids to grow and understand their own interpretation of media, or they won’t have that skill as adults.

[dantexxorihara]

I have many thoughts going on right now so things might seem all over the place. But it's very amusing how quick cancel culture really is. People love to feel special and loved until you're not. Tbh I only know John Mulaney through screen shots and memes. but the fact people can turn on people over words is insane to me. In which I'm convinced most of the people who are upset probably never even paid to watch a full set of his or even chris rocks for that matter. lol but we are told the world is hard and difficult. but then become overly sensitive directly making it more difficult to exist in.

Really shows that no one here really actually cares about anything. with how quick you guys can shift on supporting content. but I mean it's tumblr so of course lmao

We really have to get to the point of understanding that for a vast amount of people life is an act, it's a show. it's not about being genuine. it's all about how long to you pretend to be a good person or pretend you like something. Until you get what you want or whenever something actually care about is on the line. But if it doesn't concern you it's funny or unimportant right? We go from "The world doesn't own you anything" to "My feelings matter and yours don't"

The kind of society we live in some people can speak and other can't. Are we a Monolith? People say this kind of rhetoric is harmful and shouldn't be tolerable. And we wonder why we need a government. You guys want to police and gatekeep human understanding. Let people decide what is harmful speech. No wonder critical thinking is dead. Why can't people listen to something and be like hmmm this isn't for me and move on. but you have to destroy people lives? huh

All forms of entertainment doesn't have to pander to what you deem is funny or appropriate. That's the best part of capitalism (if you can believe their are good parts) if you don't like something don't engage it don't purchase it, don't consume it. Let people take in all information and decide if they deem it toxic or not we are our own people, fake news, clout and social outrage aside.

and this coming from someone who don't listen to comedy or comedians and it's okay to let people tell jokes that aren't funny and are basely and possibly untrue. and yes say "Well when they joke about you as a person then come talk" yes people tell me about people joking about a black men i never heard any jokes about them. lol I'm not supporting anyone or condoning anything. it's time to cancel cancel culture

#dante speaks #5am thoughts #ranting #john mulaney #dave chappelle #chris rock

[asphodellic]

loss is such a strange thing.

i spent a lot of my teenage years and my adulthood wishing my mom would just disappear. she'd yell at me or cuss me out or call me fat or tell me i was nothing, and i just wished she would be gone. i thought about how much happier and better my life would be without her.

i remember my first year of college, i got really sick. the flu was going around because of all the new germs, and everyone in my freshman dorm got hit hard. i remember walking to work in a fog, and i remember my boss asking me if i was okay and saying yes. then i remember her giving me a task, and i couldn't understand what she was saying because i was so out of it. so she sent me to the health center, and i had a 103 fever. it was going down, so they sent me back to my dorm. i called my mom to tell her i had the flu, and she told me it was my fault because i didn't wash my hands enough. my roommate's mom sent her a big care package. my friend's mom came to the school to bring him stuff. i just dealt with it on my own until i was better.

that's been my whole life, pretty much. dealing with stuff on my own until it got better. i was never coddled or doted on. i had food and shelter and stuff for school, and that was supposed to be good enough. i got hit and screamed at, and no matter how good i did in school or how low under the radar i tried to stay, it was never good enough.

it got worse when she got sick. then it was death threats and constant screaming, and when i got out of her house, it felt so good to be able to ignore her. to not return her calls. to tell my dad no when he asked if i wanted to talk to her. it felt like i finally had some control over things.

but there was a part of me that always wanted things to get better. that would hope that maybe one day she'd become the mother i always wanted. the one i saw glimpses of sometimes when we would have rare good days together. when we'd sit on my parents' bed and watch pretty woman or ghost or whatever romantic 80s/90s movie was on tbs that sunday night. those nights were like getting a glimpse of what it could be like.

it never lasted, though. monday would come, and it would be right back to the yelling and name calling.

i wanted her gone for so long. and now she is.

i didn't feel that much when i found out she was dying. i was shocked, i guess, because she always seemed like a monolith. like something that was unshakeable. i cried a little at the memorial, when my brother spoke because it felt more real then. i cried when song lyrics reminded me of her.

tonight, i wanted to watch pretty woman because it's always been a comfort movie for me, and this week has been pretty rough. these last several months have been pretty rough. and i guess i didn't realize how much of that movie is wound up in feelings about my mom now. i didn't realize how much it was going to make me think about her.

i cried through the last hour or so of it, just missing her. missing the good times. missing that little glimmer of hope that maybe one day things would be okay. they never really were okay, and now i guess they never will be.

#nobody should read this really #i just have a lot on my mind and in my heart and i needed to get it out #it's hard for me to talk about it #and no one in my family really gets it #sometimes i feel like everyone knew a different version of her than i did #and it feels kind of isolating #people can sympathize but they'll never really understand how conflicted i feel and have felt since november #i feel like if i'd spoken at the memorial it would have been something like this #which wouldn't have been acceptable for a lot of reasons so it's good that i didn't #but i guess i just needed to have it out of me in some way #grief #abuse cw #death cw

[ganymedesclock]

These are questions I've had for some while and it's hard to find someone who'll answer with grace. This mostly relates to disabilities (mental or physical) in fiction.

1) What makes a portrayal of a disability that's harming the character in question ableist?

2) Is there a way to write a disabled villain in a way that isn't ableist?

In the circles I've been in, the common conceptions are you can't use a character's disability as a plot point or showcase it being a hindrance in some manner. heaven forbid you make your villain disabled in some capacity, that's a freaking death sentence to a creative's image. I understand historically villains were the only characters given disabilities, but (and this is my personal experience) I've not seen as many disabled villains nowadays, heck, I see more disabled heroes in media nowadays.

Sorry if this comes off as abrasive, I'd really like to be informed for future media consumption and my own creative endeavors.

Okay so the first thing I'm going to say is that while it IS a good idea to talk to disabled people and get their feedback, disabled people are not a monolith and they aren't going to all have the same take on how this goes.

My personal take is biased in favor that I'm a neurodivergent person (ADHD and autism) who has no real experience with physical disabilities, so I won't speak for physically disabled people- heck, I won't even speak for every neurotype. Like I say, people aren't a monolith.

For myself and my own writing of disabled characters, here's a couple of concepts I stick by:

Research is your friend

Think about broad conventions of ableism

Be mindful of cast composition

1. Research is your friend

Yeah this is the thing everybody says, so here's the main bases I try to cover:

What's the story on this character's disability?

Less in terms of 'tragic angst' and more, what kind of condition this is- because a congenital amputee (that is to say, someone who was born without a limb) will have a different relationship to said limb absence than someone who lost their limb years ago to someone who lost their limb yesterday. How did people in their life respond to it, and how did they respond to it? These responses are not "natural" and will not be the same to every person with every worldview. This can also be a great environment to do worldbuilding in! Think about the movie (and the tv series) How To Train Your Dragon. The vikings in that setting don't have access to modern medicine, and they're, well, literally fighting dragons and other vikings. The instance of disability is high, and the medical terminology to talk about said disabilities is fairly lackluster- but in a context where you need every man you possibly can to avoid the winter, the mindset is going to be not necessarily very correct, but egalitarian. You live in a village of twenty people and know a guy who took a nasty blow to the head and hasn't quite been the same ever since? "Traumatic Brain Injury" is probably not going to be on your lips, but you're also probably going to just make whatever peace you need to and figure out how to accommodate Old Byron for his occasional inability to find the right word, stammers and trembles. In this example, there are several relevant pieces of information- what the character's disability is (aphasia), how they got it (brain injury), and the culture and climate around it (every man has to work, and we can't make more men or throw them away very easily, so, how can we make sure this person can work even if we don't know what's wrong with them)

And that dovetails into:

What's the real history, and modern understandings, of this?

This is where "knowing the story" helps a lot. To keep positing our hypothetical viking with a brain injury, I can look into brain injuries, what affects their extent and prognosis, and maybe even beliefs about this from the time period and setting I'm thinking of (because people have had brains, and brain injuries, the entire time!) Sure, if the setting is fantastical, I have wiggle room, but looking at inspirations might give me a guide post.

Having a name for your disorder also lets you look for posts made by specific people who live with the condition talking about their lives. This is super, super important for conditions stereotyped as really scary, like schizophrenia or narcissistic personality disorder. Even if you already know "schizophrenic people are real and normal" it's still a good thing to wake yourself up and connect with others.

2. Think about broad conventions of ableism

It CAN seem very daunting or intimidating to stay ahead of every single possible condition that could affect someone's body and mind and the specific stereotypes to avoid- there's a lot under the vast umbrella of human experience and we're learning more all the time! A good hallmark is, ableism has a few broad tendencies, and when you see those tendencies rear their head, in your own thinking or in accounts you read by others, it's good to put your skeptical glasses on and look closer. Here's a few that I tend to watch out for:

Failing the “heartwarming dog” test

This was a piece of sage wisdom that passed my eyeballs, became accepted as sage wisdom, and my brain magnificently failed to recall where I saw it. Basically, if you could replace your disabled character with a lovable pet who might need a procedure to save them, and it wouldn’t change the plot, that’s something to look into.

Disability activists speak often about infantilization, and this is a big thing of what they mean- a lot of casual ableism considers disabled people as basically belonging to, or being a burden onto, the able-bodied and neurotypical. This doesn’t necessarily even need to have an able neurotypical in the picture- a personal experience I had that was extremely hurtful was at a point in high school, I decided to do some research on autism for a school project. As an autistic teenager looking up resources online, I was very upset to realize that every single resource I accessed at the time presumed it was talking to a neurotypical parent about their helpless autistic child. I was looking for resources to myself, yet made to feel like I was the subject in a conversation.

Likewise, many wheelchair users have relayed the experience of, when they, in their chair, are in an environment accompanied by someone else who isn’t using a chair, strangers would speak to the standing person exclusively, avoiding addressing the chair user. 

It’s important to always remind yourself that at no point do disabled people stop being people. Yes, even people who have facial deformities; yes, even people who need help using the bathroom; yes, even people who drool; yes, even people whose conditions impact their ability to communicate, yes, even people with cognitive disabilities. They are people, they deserve dignity, and they are not “a child trapped in a 27-year-old body”- a disabled adult is still an adult. All of the “trying to learn the right rules” in the world won’t save you if you keep an underlying fear of non-normative bodies and minds.

This also has a modest overlap between disability and sexuality in particular. I am an autistic grayromantic ace. Absolutely none of my choices or inclinations about sex are because I’m too naive or innocent or childlike to comprehend the notion- disabled people have as diverse a relationship with sexuality as any other. That underlying fear- as mentioned before- can prevent many people from imagining that, say, a wheelchair user might enjoy sex and have experience with it. Make sure all of your disabled characters have full internal worlds.

Poor sickly little Tiffany and the Red Right Hand

A big part of fictional ableism is that it separates the disabled into two categories. Anybody who’s used TVTropes would recognize the latter term I used here. But to keep it brief:

Poor, sickly little Tiffany is cute. Vulnerable. How her disability affects her life is that it constantly creates a pall of suffering that she lives beneath. After all, having a non-normative mind or body must be an endless cavalcade of suffering and tragedy, right? People who are disabled clearly spend their every waking moment affected by, and upset, that they aren’t normal!

The answer is... No, actually. Cut the sad violin; even people who have chronic pain who are literally experiencing pain a lot more than the rest of us are still fully capable of living complex lives and being happy. If nothing else, it would be literally boring to feel nothing but awful, and people with major depression or other problems still, also, have complicated experiences. And yes, some of it’s not great. You don’t have to present every disability as disingenuously a joy to have. But make a point that they own these things. It is a very different feeling to have a concerned father looking through the window at his angel-faced daughter rocking sadly in her wheelchair while she stares longingly out the window, compared to a character waking up at midnight because they have to go do something and frustratedly hauling their body out of their bed into their chair to get going.

Poor Sickly Little Tiffany (PSLT, if you will) virtually always are young, and they virtually always are bound to the problems listed under ‘failing the heartwarming dog’ test. Yes, disabled kids exist, but the point I’m making here is that in the duality of the most widely accepted disabled characters, PSLT embodies the nadir of the Victim, who is so pure, so saintly, so gracious, that it can only be a cruel quirk of fate that she’s suffering. After all, it’s not as if disabled people have the same dignity that any neurotypical and able-bodied person has, where they can be an asshole and still expect other people to not seriously attack their quality of life- it’s a “service” for the neurotypical and able-bodied to “humor” them.

(this is a bad way to think. Either human lives matter or they don’t. There is no “wretched half-experience” here- if you wouldn’t bodily grab and yank around a person standing on their own feet, you have no business grabbing another person’s wheelchair)

On the opposite end- and relevant to your question- is the Red Right Hand. The Red Right Hand does not have PSLT’s innocence or “purity”- is the opposite extreme. The Red Right Hand is virtually always visually deformed, and framed as threatening for their visual deformity. To pick on a movie I like a fair amount, think about how in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the title character is described- “Strong. Fast. Had a metal arm.” That’s a subtle example, but, think about how that metal arm is menacing. Sure, it’s a high tech weapon in a superhero genre- but who has the metal arm? The Winter Soldier, who is, while a tormented figure that ultimately becomes more heroic- scary. Aggressive. Out for blood.

The man who walks at midnight with a Red Right Hand is a signal to us that his character is foul because of the twisting of his body. A good person, we are led to believe, would not be so- or a good person would be ashamed of their deformity and work to hide it. The Red Right Hand is not merely “an evil disabled person”- they are a disabled person whose disability is depicted as symptomatic of their evil, twisted nature, and when you pair this trope with PSLT, it sends a message: “stay in your place, disabled people. Be sad, be consumable, and let us push you around and decide what to do with you. If you get uppity, if you have ideas, if you stand up to us, then the thing that made you a helpless little victim will suddenly make you a horrible monster, and justify us handling you with inhumanity.”

As someone who is a BIG fan of eldritch horror and many forms of unsettling “wrongness” it is extremely important to watch out for the Red Right Hand. Be careful how you talk about Villainous Disability- there is no connection between disability and morality. People will be good, bad, or simply just people entirely separate from their status of ability or disability. It’s just as ableist to depict every disabled person as an innocent good soul as it is to exclusively deal in grim and ghastly monsters.

Don’t justify disabilities and don’t destroy them.

Superpowers are cool. Characters can and IMO should have superpowers, as long as you’re writing a genre when they’re there.

BUT.

It’s important to remember that there is no justification for disabilities, because they don’t need one. Disability is simply a feature characters have. You do not need to go “they’re blind, BUT they can see the future”

This is admittedly shaky, and people can argue either way; the Blind Seer is a very pronounced mythological figure and an interesting philosophical point about what truly matters in the world. There’s a reason it exists as a conceit. But if every blind character is blind in a way that completely negates that disability or makes it meaningless- this sucks. People have been blind since the dawn of time. And people will always accommodate their disabilities in different ways. Even if the technology exists to fix some forms of blindness, there are people who will have “fixable” blindness and refuse to treat it. There will be individuals born blind who have no meaningful desire to modify this. And there are some people whose condition will be inoperable even if it “shouldn’t” be.

You don’t need to make your disabled characters excessively cool, or give them a means by which the audience can totally forget they’re disabled. Again, this is a place where strong worldbuilding is your buddy- a handwave of “x technology fixed all disabilities”, in my opinion, will never come off good. If, instead, however, you throw out a careless detail that the cool girl the main character is chatting up in a cyberpunk bar has an obvious spinal modification, and feature other characters with prosthetics and without- I will like your work a lot, actually. Even if you’re handing out a fictional “cure”- show the seams. Make it have drawbacks and pros and cons. A great example of this is in the series Full Metal Alchemist- the main character has two prosthetic limbs, and not only do these limbs come with problems, some mundane (he has phantom limb pains, and has to deal with outgrowing his prostheses or damaging them in combat) some more fantastical (these artificial limbs are connected to his nerves to function fluidly- which means that they get surgically installed with no anesthesia and hurt like fuck plugging in- and they require master engineering to stay in shape). We explicitly see a scene of the experts responsible for said limbs talking to a man who uses an ordinary prosthetic leg, despite the advantages of an automail limb, because these drawbacks are daunting to him and he is happier with a simple prosthetic leg.

Even in mundane accommodations you didn’t make up- no two wheelchair users use their chair the exact same way, and there’s a huge diversity of chairs. Someone might be legally blind but still navigate confidently on their own; they might use a guide dog, or they might use a cane. They might even change their needs from situation to situation!

Disability accommodations are part of life

This ties in heavily to the previous point, but seriously! Don’t just look up one model of cane and superimpose it with no modifications onto your character- think about what their lifestyle is, and what kind of person they are!

Also medication is not the devil. Yes, medical abuse is real and tragic and the medication is not magic fairy dust that solves all problems either. But also, it’s straight ableism to act like anybody needing pills for any reason is a scary edgy plot twist. 

(and addiction is a disease. Please be careful, and moreover be compassionate, if you’re writing a character who’s an addict)

3. Be mindful of cast composition

This, to me, is a big tip about disability writing and it’s also super easy to implement!

Just make sure your cast has a lot of meaningful disabled characters in it!

Have you done all the work you can to try and dodge the Red Right Hand but you’re still worried your disabled villain is a bad look? They sure won’t look like a commentary on disability if three other people in the cast are disabled and don’t have the same outlook or role! Worried that you’re PSLT-ing your main character’s disabled child? Maybe the disability is hereditary and they got it from the main character!

The more disabled characters you have, the more it will challenge you to think about what their individual relationship is with the world and the less you’ll rely on hackneyed tropes. At least, ideally.

-

Ultimately, there’s no perfect silver bullet of diversity writing that will prevent a work from EVER being ableist, but I hope this helped, at least!

#disability #writing ruminations #readmore

[sistervirtue]

okay so im seeing people get anons about this and its coming up in friend groups so i think now's actually a pretty good time to tackle the idea of religious (specifically cultic) abuse in media and how we as an audience interact with it

TLDR: dehumanization and sexualization of cult victims furthers the misunderstanding that cults "don't exist now", and RA survivors would feel much safer in fandom spaces if people acknowledged and analyzed the harmful portrayals of cults in media.

cw: discussions of cults, abuse, and sexual assault

also, if you have questions, please shoot me an ask or dm (off anon preferably, though)

let me start this with a disclaimer that i dont think every media that features ra is inherently bad. i think thats a bit harsh and as an ra survivor ive come to terms with the fact that there are going to be depictions of it in ways that maybe dont give it the respect it deserves, and trying to "what about [x]" everything will only lead people to talking in circles with themselves. what i want to address here is how you, as a consumer, respond to and parse out what cultic abuse means in any particular portrayal of it.

*also please don't harass people about their RAS status, like, if you see someone enjoying something with a less than stellar portrayal of cults, don't send them asks or dms like "well are YOU a cult survivor?" reducing the consumption of media to a yes or no game based on identity-- especially an identity that comes as the result of explicit pain and spiritual violation is not only derivative but also degrading to survivors and the people you're grilling. all we want is for people to think carefully about what they spread and portray, and how they think about those situations.

so, i think the first thing to tackle is...what is a cult? This is something that's surprisingly hard to define, especially in fictional settings with fictional cults. For example, (and pardon the use of this example, I don't feel like hunting for others), My Hero Academia has an organization in it that I would say fits the criteria for being a cult, but by and large isn't considered one by fans because it's not explicitly called a cult. (Although numerous cult jokes have been made about it). It also has an organization that IS explicitly referred to as a cult.

So, when you're dealing with how to process what is and is not a cult-- and how to make your presence safe for RA survivors, you have to be able to sift through more than just "did the narrative tell me this is a cult?"

There's a few different models people use; one of the most popular being the BITE model-- but I should clarify that the BITE model is really tailored towards religious and strictly hierarchal cults, but can be applied to other kinds of cults.

(and yes, there are cults other than religious/spiritual ones. corporate cults and wellness cults have been on the rise, and it's good to keep that in mind both when engaging with media and also in the real world.)

However, I'm a religious cult survivor, so a lot of my experience is strictly irt this, so please take what I say with a grain of salt, and know that I don't speak for every cult survivor, every religious cult survivor, or every religious abuse survivor. I am One Guy on the internet.

When it comes to media, I have a few questions I run through in order to figure out if something is A Cult.

1) Fringe Ideas. This one is one of those that most people know-- and often incorrectly use to attribute cult status to other things. However, it is worth mentioning, that you don't become a cult by following mainstream ideologies. BUT. BUT. not every group with weird ideas is a cult! Some groups are just weird and are fine being weird. It's a rectangles and squares situation. All cults have fringe ideas and behaviors, not all fringe ideas and behaviors belong to cults.

2) Hierarchies. Cults always have people in power, at least in my experience. There have been ideas thrown around about "completely decentralized cults"-- but to be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about that concept, and I don't know enough about it personally to say whether or not it's legitimate. If you have any sources, hmu.

BUT. Most cults have a power structure. You're going to have leaders, usually with a handful at the verrrrry tippy top, whose word is law. This can be associated with things like religious ideas (channelling god) or being "a genius", like in corporate cults.

3) Control. I cannot stress this enough; cults are all about control. How you think, feel, behave-- they discourage critical thought, encourage snitching on each other, buddy-group behavior; the BITE model explicitly lists these models of control.

4) Us V Them. Cults will give all those that oppose them or simply don't believe them a bad name. They're uneducated, they're evil-- it varies cult to cult, but you'll see them turning the non believers into a homogenous, frightening group. They want to discourage looking outwards, and they want to viciously isolate members.

Other things of note are extremism, talks of enlightenment, harsh punishments, the cult eating large portions of the member's finances, etc.

However, this post is largely to address FICTIONAL cults. and the unfortunate fact of the matter is that fictional cults are rarely fleshed out in a way that can be held one to one to a model, and, more often, don't even afford the victims of a cult humanity.

and this is one of THE biggest issues you find in cult portrayals. the leader is usually a charismatic, or perhaps menacing, figure, one that usually our protagonists-- who are rarely cult victims, they are typically outsiders (not inherently bad, mind you)-- faces personally, with the hoardes of mindless zombies forming one giant hurdle.

Naturally, this can be...hurtful. There's nuance to who is and is not a victim in a cult (although my rule of thumb is to look at what abuses that person specifically exerts over others-- and you can be both a victim and perpetrator of abuse. to treat them exclusively is lacking all nuance), but the people are the bottom, even if they joined willingly, are people who were preyed upon. Not only that, but many media cults forget that people can be born into cults, and never really had a choice to begin with. To treat these people like they are mindless-- or that they deserve the suffering they are in because they are there-- completely erases all nuance, humanity, and understanding to the cult survivior struggle. Not only that, but it continues to sensationalize and deify cult leaders, which is doing their job for them, really.

The second biggest issue is the romanticization and sexualization of cults, religious abuse, and cultic abuse.

(yes...this is a thing.)

The use of cults as a way to make a character edgy or tragic is one thing, but there's something sinister about using it to project a certain sexual behavior onto that character-- whether it be as the subjugator or subjugated. Sexual abuse is rampent in cults, and ritualistic sexual abuse is used to justify it. To sexualize the idea of a cult(ist) raping and abusing someone is...beyond offensive to anyone who has been in a cult where their sexual safety and autonomy has been compromised. Or, in some cases, the cultist is so naive and sheltered they can be easily coerced and taken advantage of due to their brainwashing.

This is...bad? This is bad. To ignore the fact that these depictions are just as harmful as any other romanticization of abuse is to ignore the real suffering of cult victims.

Really, the larger problem is that people don't really think cults exist, not really. They're all things of the past, or things that exist solely in fiction-- when in reality, every day cults form and continue to grow. If you've ever met a mormon, you've met a cultist. The moment you begin to process and parce the fact that this isn't as bizarre and unusual and fictional as it seems, you take the steps to respecting people who have been in that situation and become better at detecting cults, cult recruitment, and are able to more clearly assess what you take in.

Once again, there's so many bad portrayal of cults that it would be...stupid to call for an immediate disowning of anything with it in it. I personally have come to terms with the idea that I will have gripes about these portrayals in most cases, but rarely do I see people other than fellow RA or cult survivors discussing these portrayals. I'm hoping people can become more aware and willing to discuss cults in a serious and analytical context and criticize how they're portrayed in the things they love.

And once again, cult survivors are NOT a monolith. If a cult survivor expresses they are uncomfortable with something I said here that I'm not, or vice versa, listen to the people who actively surround you and whom you care about.

#nyc knacks #cults #ive been sitting on this for a while but it came up on the dash and i took the opportunity to talk abt it #bc i feel very passionately abt it #ok 2 rb

[maxwell-grant]

One last one for the moment; top five superheroes who definitely AREN'T Pulp Heroes, but could be with a little tweaking?

Oof, that's a hard one. It's a hard one because, again, there ultimately isn't that much separation between the two to the point there's enough of a hard line in there to work with, but I guess the cat's out of the bag now that I've staked claims on there being differences between them.

Okay so, not counting superheroes who are deliberately modeled after actual pulp heroes, so no Tom Strong or Night Raven here. I'm sticking mainly with comic book superheroes (barring one oddball exception) since the medium separation is important), who I think could become pulp heroes with some tweaking.

5: Captain America

Sort of cheating because I already covered it here, but I definitely have to include Captain America in here, especially in the stories they actively go for a "pulp" vibe as well as the earliest ones.

Fun fact about Marvel: As Timely, they actually began life as pulp publishers. Not just pulp publishers, but specializing in some of the sleaziest, ghastliest magazines of the era, and you can bet this carried over to their superheroes. Where as DC's superheroes took inspiration from the big pulp heroes such as The Shadow and Doc Savage, Timely's superheroes seemed instead much more inspired by Weird Tales stories and Poverty Row horror films, and even in the 60s, Marvel never really abandoned their horror roots, the trick was just using them as a baseline to create superheroes. In DC, the world's first contact with superheroes begins with the world looking in wonder at a friendly strongman. In Marvel, it began with the world looking in panicked horror at a flaming monster rampaging through the streets desperately trying to not burn everything it touches. It should come to little surprise then that the majority of characters I'm including in this list are Marvel characters.

People think Captain America's first comics largely consisted of him fighting Nazis left and right, but they were actually much more often based around him encountering monsters and creatures of horror, like the above panel where it looks like Cap's staring down the beginning of Berserk's Eclipse (RIP Miura).

The early Captain America comics pretty much consisted of Kirby dipping his toe into the monster comics he'd make in the 50s which would later bleed into the 60s Marvel entourage. They even tried repackaging Captain America into a horror anthology in the 50s titled "Captain America's Weird Tales", just imagine how different the character would be today if that somehow stuck.

Imagine a world where Steve Rogers never became leader of The Avengers, never got to become the shining beacon of heroism of an entire universe, and instead, when he was unfrosted, he woke up to find a world running rampant with crawling nightmares and Nazi tyranny, and he has no idea what's become of his former sidekick. That definitely sounds like the start of a promising pulp adventure.

4: Namor

Another Timely creation. In Namor's case, he didn't so much encounter horrors from beyond imagination, as much as HE was the terrifying thing beyond us ready to rampage upon mankind, whose first on-screen act consists of the calculated slaughter of a ship full of innocents. The first true villain protagonist of comic books. Not just an anti-hero, a villain intent on wiping out the human race.

And not just a cardboard supervillain, but the beautiful prince of a race of ugly fish monsters, a momma's boy who's doing what he thinks is right by warring with surface dwellers. While Namor's become largely defined by his gargantuan arrogance, here, he's almost childlike, despite being much more brutal and villainous here, spurred on by the whims of his mother, who even acknowledges that Namor had no real reason to kill the divers but did so anyway, and now encourages him to genocide. His mom even tells him "Go now, to the land of white people!", and the very last panel of the story even states he's on a "crusade against white men".

The massacre of explorers at the hands of something beyond their understanding. A monster born of an interracial coupling. A race of fish monsters with bulging eyes, antagonistic towards humanity but are shown to have positive traits just the same. A dash of racism. There is no mistaking The Sub-Mariner's pulp horror influence.

A non-white superhuman warrior born from a Lovecraftian horror story, who gradually moves away from his villainous crusade into becoming more of an anti-hero, never truly putting aside his hatred for humanity, remaining a temperamental, unpredictable outcast, with a strong, palpable undercurrent of anger in his stories. I could very easily buy Namor as having crawled out of a Weird Tales story and I can't think of other superheroes whose origins are as steeped deeply in pulp horror.

3: Doctor Fate

Technically we already have a pulp hero version of Doctor Fate in Doc Fate, and I'll get to him separately, but even besides him, the earliest Doctor Fate stories in particular feel very much like he's a character steeped in the worlds of pulp and pulp horror who decided to put on a superhero costume and show up in comic.

He's got a similar set-up to The Shadow, from the pulp Shadow in the sense that he's a mysterious, eerie crimefighter who dwells as a presence more often than an active character and who kills criminals without remorse, always watching and waiting for the right time to strike as a a wrathful old-testament force of vengeance, and from the radio Shadow due to him using superpowers to fight crime while being accompanied by a smart, fierce love interest.

Originally, Fate was not a sorcerer, but instead a scientist who discovered a way to manipulate atomic structure, of his and other things, thus making it appear that he can do magic (although we never see his face, and he's implied to be thousands of years old, before they settled on the Nabu origin). And going back to Lovecraft, a lot of it appears in the earliest Fate stories. Fate was given powers not by a sorcerer, but an alien worshipped as a god. He barely encounters traditional monsters, but instead contends with hidden races, zombie slaves, abandoned alien monoliths, and half man and half fish creatures. Fate may have actually been the very first pastiche of Lovecraft in pop culture.

And of course we can't forget the gloriousness of Doc Fate pulling an Indiana Jones on us.

2: Wolverine

I don't even think you'd have to tweak Wolverine at all. You'd just have to get him out of the costume and Avengers/X-Men associations (although the X-Men have a substantial background in pulp sci-fi stories like Slan and Odd John, so they aren't really at odds here), maybe tone down his powers a bit and, that's it. Logan's already the kind of character who has such a varied sandbox history, whose powers can lead to so many different scenarios, that it's not a stretch at all to picture Wolverine in the usual pulp hero scenarios.

You can have half-naked Wolverine running around in the jungle with animals Tarzan-style, take him to Savage Land if you wanna throw dinosaurs in there. He's already Marvel's foremost "wandering samurai/cowboy" character which was one of the stock and trade types of the pulps. Western? Done. Samurai? Done. Wuxia? Just put him in China and add a couple extra fantasy elements. Wanna make a sword and sorcery story with him? He already comes with a bunch of knives and savagery and ability to survive grisly injuries. Horror? The MCU is crawling with them, or alternatively, tell a story from the perspective of someone who's being hunted down by Wolverine. Wanna tell a detective/noir/post-apocalypse story? Logan's right there.

Wanna have him crossover with pulp heroes? He's lived through the 1800s and 1900s and traveled all over the world, you could feasibly have him meet up with just about any of them. Logan may actually be the purest example of your question, because he's very much not a Pulp Hero, and yet, he definitely feels like a character who could have been one, at just about any point in the history of pulp magazines. He's perfect for it.

1: Wario

WAAA-okay, look, bear with me for a second here, I'm not just picking Wario because I love oddball choices and he's one of my favorite characters, I got some logic to this.

Okay so, the first question here: is Mario a superhero? While I'm usually adverse to calling characters prominent outside of comic books superheroes (hence why I'm definitely not interested in debating whether Harry Potter or Goku or Link or Frodo are superheroes), I do think it's a pretty shut case that, yes, Mario is a superhero. Superheroes don't just come in the form of skintight crimefighters, right from the start comic books have had varied types of superheroes appearing in comics and comic strips. For example, the "funny animal" superheroes are a type older than superhero comics, and they were arguably not only the most successful type of superhero of the 40s-50s era, but arguably defined trends dominating nonfunny animal superheroes, traits that predated or influenced Captain Marvel as well as Otto Binder's reshaping of Superman that defined much of superhero convention as we know it. It's part of why the question of "Is Sonic a superhero" has a very clear Yes as an answer.

So upon establishing that, yes, funny cartoon characters can be and are superheroes too, is Mario one? Well, I'd say yes. He's got an iconic uniform, he's got superpowers, he goes on fantastical adventures, he is both a nebulously general do-gooder as well as having a clear mission as protector of the Mushroom Kingdom. His adventures span multiple storytelling formats, he's got catchphrases, he even dresses up in Superman's colors and has a Super prefix iconically associated with him. Not a superhero the way we usually think of, but a superhero nonetheless.

And Wario? Well, putting aside Wario-Man who's more of a running gag than anything, Wario does just about everything Mario does. He's got all the traits that define Mario as a superhero short of a Super prefix and the selfless mission (which isn't exactly a rule). He goes around and gets into crazy adventures, he picks up items, beats bad guys, conquers the odds, and gets some kind of prize for it. He's got Mario's physical traits, and Mario's costume, and just about the same name short of a single letter. The caveat being, of course, that he's Wario, and so everything Mario is or does has to be exaggerated to gross extreme.

Mario is paunchy and strong, Wario's round and built like a powerlifter. Mario's got a friendly face and a fluffy mustache, Wario's got a massive horrible grin and jagged razors for a stache. Mario is a bit of an overeater, Wario can and will eat anything in front of him. Mario gets around with acrobatics and magic power-ups, Wario brute forces his way through everything and just rolls with whatever injuries he picks up along the way.

Mario gets fire powers by consuming magic flowers. Wario sets himself on fire and barrels around destroying everything in his path. Mario harnesses the elements or abilities of beings around him to clear obstacles and solve puzzles, Wario gets turned into a zombie, a vampire or a drunk to get the same things done. Mario befriends and rides dinosaurs who raised him from infancy, Wario piledrives dinosaurs and then uses their bodies to beat up more dinosaurs. Mario pals around with fellow heroes, princesses and friendly fantasy creatures, Wario pals around with aliens, witches, mad scientists, cab drivers, and lanky weirdos. Mario always ends his adventures joyfully leaping to the next one, Wario usually ends up either cackling in a pile of treasure or completely broke.

Mario races through plains to rescue princesses, Wario invades pyramids to hunt for treasure. Mario jumps through planets with baby stars guiding his path, Wario crashes into the Amazon jungle and fistfights the devil. You can see where I'm going with this.

If you were to take one of Nintendo's heroes to make them into pulp heroes, Wario, specifically the Wario Land Wario, may be the only one who really could do it, because in essence, he's the videogame equivalent of Professor Challenger. He's Bluto moonlighting as Indiana Jones, the weird brute adventurer for weird brute adventures where everything's off limits and you can trust our intrepid hero, who really shouldn't be a hero on all accounts, to deliver us a good time, give or take a couple deaths, scams, shams and oh-damns to complete said mad treasure hunts.

#replies tag #not pulp heroes #comic books #dr fate #wolverine #captain america #namor #wario

[just-dreaming-marvel]

Out Of Time ~ 106

MASTERLIST

< previous chapter

Word Count: 3,350ish

Summary: Y/N gets a call. (Yep, that’s it.)

Summer came and went. Tony and Y/N spent every second that they could together. And when they weren’t together it was because Pepper had forced Tony into meetings and Y/N was at the new facility training.

Talks of having children never came up again, but that’s also because Y/N was doing everything in her power to avoid it.

Before they knew it, it was October. Y/N and Tony were currently laying in bed after another round of sex. They were both shocked when FRIDAY interrupted their peace with an announcement.

“Excuse me, Boss,” the AI started, “but someone’s trying to reach you using the private line.”

“The private line?” Tony repeated.

“Only one person uses the private line,” Y/N stated. “After six months, now is when he decides to call? Not impressed.”

“Ignore it, FRIDAY.”

“I have tried,” FRIDAY said. “But it had been ringing off the hook for the past hour.” 

Y/N groaned, burying her face into Tony’s neck. “Just answer it,” she said quietly.

“Y/N? You there?” Coulson’s voice filled the room.

“She’s here,” Tony replied. “Have you decided to finally call and apologize?”

“I have bigger issues right now.”

“Really, Phil?” Y/N questioned. “Like what?”

“Simmons is missing.”

~~~

Coulson went on to explain that Simmons disappeared about 6 months ago, after looking into the rock, the monolith, that was on Gonzalez’ ship. Fitz had been trying his best to find a way to reach her, but nothing. Coulson decided that he needed Y/N’s help on this one, to at least bring Fitz back to reality. That Simmons may never be coming back.

Y/N and Tony quickly dressed. Tony ordered for all the information to be sent to him so that he could also work on it. He gave her a kiss goodbye before she went through a portal to Coulson’s office in the base. 

There Phil also explained what had and was happening the Inhumans. Jiaying had killed Gonzalez, trying to start a war. Cal was forced to kill Jiaying in front of Skye, who was now going by Daisy. The crystals had fallen into the ocean and were absorbed by the fish. Causing people to start unlocking there Inhuman DNA without the risk of others dying.

“I do want to apologize,” Coulson finished off his briefing. “You didn’t deserve any of how you were treated. I’m so sorry.”

“Where is everyone?” Y/N asked.

“Skye—Daisy,  I mean, Mack, and Hunter are on an extraction mission right now. An Inhuman after terrigensis.”

“Do they know you’re bringing me in?”

“Not yet. Thought it might be a welcome surprise for them.” Coulson checked his watch. “I’m actually running late to meet them. You wanna come with me or stay here?” Coulson began leaving his office.

“You said you were just bringing me in to help Fitz.”

“Yeah, well, I have a new plane. You wanna see it?”

~~~

Y/N was in awe off the new plane, Zephyr One. It was definitely more suited to the team’s needs than the Bus was. Coulson told Y/N to stay hidden while he went to talk to Daisy. She couldn’t help but follow them.

“How’s he doing?” Coulson asked, speaking of the man in the containment module.

“Okay,” Daisy answered. “For now.” 

“Third incident already this month, but at least we were able to get our hands on this one.”

“The rate of new cases is increasing.”

“We knew it would after the initial reports.”

“A new inhuman could emerge anywhere, without having any idea what’s happened.”

“Only in the continental US so far. Plus, this new aircraft can stay in the air much longer than the old plane. Days, really, so rapid response anywhere is—“

“You love your new toy, don’t you?”

“I ver much love my new toy. But even with the mind-boggling range of this puppy—“

“Inhumans are still disappearing.”

“This is the first one in a while we’ve been able to secure.”

“Well, it’s no mystery who’s taking them. That black-ops group was there before us.”

“I know.”

“Again. Whoever they are. How many do you think they’ve taken?”

“We know of at least five sightings. Five individuals who vanished before we could get to them. But the real mystery is, who’s running that group?” Coulson and Daisy walked over to the monitors.

“Not if you did your part. How did it feel to join the paparazzi, Phil?”

“I think I might have missed my calling. I have every body, every piece of software, tasked with identifying that woman.” He pointed to the woman on the monitor. “So we can figure out where she’s taking inhuman and what exactly she plans to do with them.”

“Sounds like you need me for more than just hutting down Simmons and calming Fitz then,” Y/N stated as she walked up behind them.

“Y/N?” Daisy gasped with surprise. “How— why—“ She ran up to hug her. “I’ve missed you.”

Y/N welcomed the hug. “I’ve missed you, too.” She pulled back to get a look at her friend. “Well you sure have changed. Chopped your hair off and are going by a different name? Sure sounds like I missed a lot.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I called her in,” Coulson responded. “To help Fitz.”

“Anyone else know you’re here yet?”

“No,” Y/N replied. “Not yet anyway.”

~~~

Everyone was surprised to see Y/N back. But no one risked questioning it, not wanting to get on her or Coulson’s bad sides. She followed Hunter and Coulson to his office, waiting for instructions.

“They’re not HYDRA,” Hunter stated. “You know, I’ve been digging, and my street sources tell me HYDRA’s gone silent. Eerily silent.”

“Really?’ Y/N questioned.

“Yes, but—“

“Yeah, the HYDRA finances we track are static,” Coulson interrupted. “No money’s changing hands.” 

They entered his office, where Mack was waiting for them with pictures of the woman they were tracking up on the monitor.

“And by the looks of the hardware these gung-ho nutters are using,” Hunter added, “they’re well-funded.”

“So if this woman’s not HYDRA, what is she?” Coulson asked.

“Everything else,” Mack answered. “I mean, look at this.” He motioned to the monitor. “Two years CIA.”

“Is that MI6?” Hunter wondered.

“She really gets around,” Y/N muttered, reading off the monitor as well.

“Yeah,” Mack continued, “under which time, she was consulting with the CDC, apparently.”

“All under different aliases,” Coulson stated.

“Oh, I like her,” Hunter commented.

“Me too,” Y/N added with a smirk.

“Yeah, but how are you supposed to track down someone like this?” Mack asked. “We can’t look everywhere.”

“If we can trace that hardware,” Coulson said, pointing to the gun Hunter had brought in, “that could give us a place to start. Take that down to Bobbi in the lab.” Coulson moved over to an open briefcase underneath a red axe. “Have the team analyze it.”

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” Hunter quickly refused. “No, no, I’m— I’m…. Not going anywhere near Bobbi.”

“Really?” Y/N questioned. “Again?”

“Fine,” Coulson conceded. “Y/N and I will take it to her. Wouldn’t want you to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable.” Suddenly, Coulson twisted off his left hand.

“Hold up! What is that? And when did it happen?” Y/N pointed at Coulson’s fake hand. “You lost your hand?!”

“Did I forget to mention that?”

“Uh, yeah.” 

“I know that’s sarcasm,” Hunter continued with his rambling. “And I’m choosing to accept your thoughtfulness at face value.”

“Mack, you should head downstairs,” Coulson ordered. “Assist Skye with intake.”

“Daisy,” the other three corrected.

“Daisy. Damn it. Hard for us to get used to, huh?”

“Mm… no.” / “No, just you.” / “I just found out and I seem to be doing okay.”

“Okay. So, what do we know about this Jose Gutierrez?”

“He goes by Joey,” Mack answered. “Construction foreman, motorcycle enthusiast.”

“Appears to be able to liquefy certain metals spontaneously at a distance of up to 3 meters.”

“Good thing I kept Tony home then,” Y/N commented.

“Yeah,” Mack agreed. “And understandably, that development has scared the living crap out of him.”

~~~

Mack headed down to help Skye while Y/N and Coulson made their way to the lab. As they entered, the base shook.

“New readings on the monolith?” Coulson asked Bobbi.

“Nope,” she responded. “That was Daisy firing a warning shot.” She turned to see Y/N standing next to Coulson. “Good to have you back, Y/N.”

“I’m not back,” Y/N responded. “Just visiting.”

“Anyway, there’s been no new readings, no new anything on the monolith in months. Fitz even stopped sending automated probes into that room. No one’s stepped foot in there since… Simmons was swallowed up by it.” 

Coulson was staring at the monitor, showing the fed of Daisy and Mack with Joey. “This was fish oil again?” He asked.

“What can I say? We pulled the product off shelves, but we can’t track down every bottle sold. The good news, if you want to call it that, is the deadly metallic elements sank to the bottom.” Bobbi led them to another part of the lab. “So the chemical contaminating the sea life isn’t deadly to humans just game-changing for inhumans. The bad news—“

“It’s not just in the fish oil. Where else could it have spread?”

“Other sea life. With ocean currents, it’s dispersed into the ecosystem.”

“I need to know how wide a range we’re talking.”

“Fitz and I have the team working on a computer simulation.”

“That biology degree’s finally coming in handy, huh?”

“Leaving me stuck staring at screens in here for all eternity.”

“I get it. Rehab’s a bitch. At least you’re not hoping your knee will grow back.”

They had stopped in front of a few scientists working and a glass box with a hand clutching a crystal in it.

“Is that—“ Y/N started. “Is that your hand?”

“Yep,” Coulson answered.

“Sorry,” Bobbi said. “I’m just frustrated. The simulation’s taking a while.”

“Have Fitz look into this, too.” Coulson handed her the gun from earlier. “If we can figure out where it came from—“

“We could narrow the search on the mystery girl.”

“I’m sure she’d prefer mystery woman. Oh, and by the way, where is he? Y/N’s been brought in to help him.”

“Fitz?”

“He requested yesterday to do some research at SHIELD archives, but I haven’t seen him all day.”

“All call him in. He’s chasing down on last lead on the monolith.”

“I’m guessing he’s had a lot of last leads,” Y/N said.

“Yes.”

“Call him in. Tell him I’m here. If you need to, put me on the phone.”

~~~

Daisy, Coulson, Mack, and Y/N were all in the common area, watching their new inhuman, Joey, on the monitor.

“He’s going nuts,” Daisy said. “Joey’s have a tough time. The change is hard enough physically. But emotionally, it’s a whole other thing. I tried talking him down, but I blew it in here. And Mack is not exactly coming off as a teddy bear.”

“You just told the guy I’m a teddy bear,” Mack defended.

“And then you told him the best case scenario was his head blown off.”

“Yeah.”

“I need help, and there’s one person who’s better at that than anyone.”

“Lincoln?” Coulson guessed. “You really want to go there again?” Coulson headed out of the room, the others following.

“He could help with intake. Plus, he understands the physical change. He’s a doctor, whereas we don’t even know what medical treatments to give.”

“Daisy’s got a point,” Y/N agreed.

“Last time you tried to sell him on it, he wasn’t exactly buying,” Coulson said.

“I’d like to try again,” Daisy said.

“Mack, what’s your take?” The paused in the middle of the hallway.

“I voiced my feelings about letting Lincoln roam free,” Mack responded. “I’d gladly drag him in here where he can’t hurt anyone. But if Daisy can talk him in… he might actually do some good.”

“Both of you go. Requisition a flight team and a quinjet.”

“You wanna come?” Daisy asked Y/N.

“I’ll pass on this one since I’m technically here for something else,” Y/N answered, throwing a glare Coulson’s way. “But that plan doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Now I’m wondering if this was all a ploy to get me back on the team.”

“Hey, Coulson,” Bobbi called from the lab. “Got her.” Y/N and Coulson followed Bobbi into the lab. They stopped in front of a screen with the woman pictured on it. “Weapon is a DARPA prototype. We tapped surveillance at multiple DARPA facilities, got a hit. The DC branch office. She visits every few days.” 

“A routine,” Coulson said. “Tell me there’s a window where we can get to her.”

“It’s a small one. Every night she visits, she leaves at approximately 9:00 pm, with a small security detail. They’re all three dropped at the metro station on 12th. Half an hour later, her escorts buy her a coffee on the walk to the platform. But she boards the 9:35 train alone. Sits in the middle, drinks her coffee, and answers e-mails. It’s the only time she’s alone all day.”

“You’re going in to talk to her aren’t you?” Y/N questioned. “Phil, where the hell is Fitz? And why the hell am I here?” 

“To help Fitz,” Coulson answered.

“Yeah, then where is he?” Suddenly, Y/N could feel Bobbi’s mind.

“Shit,” Bobbi thought, “Fitz is causing some real trouble. If only he would have stayed back like I told him to.”

“I don’t know where he is,” Coulson replied. “If I did, then you’d be helping him.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Y/N said. “It appears that I’m a little tired. While you are off meeting the woman, I think I’ll stay behind, rest and search for Fitz.”

Coulson was put off by the quick change in Y/N. “Okay… you do that. Let me know how it goes.” Coulson walked way and Y/N spun around to face Bobbi.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bobbi responded.

“Cut the crap, Bobbi. Have you forgotten that I can read minds? Where is Fitz?”

“He found a lead in Morocco,” she whispered. “I’ve been covering for him.”

“Is he safe?”

“Lost contact a few hours ago.” 

“Damn it, Fitz. Give me his number. I’m tracking him down.”

“Y/N, I think that—“

“I was literally pulled out of my bed to come here. And I was really enjoying retirement. So, you either willingly give me his number or I force it from you.”

~~~

Unfortunately, for Y/N, she had never been to Morocco. So she wasn’t able to create a teleport to get to Fitz. She was working on a tablet in the common area, when the team turned on the tv. President Mathew Ellis was on it, doing a press conference from the White House.

“Good evening,” Ellis greeted. “I’m here tonight to address growing concerns among out citizens of the threats we face that are not of this world. I don’t need to remind people of the catastrophes in New York, London, and, most recently, Sokovia. Tragedies that seem to be growing in number and scale. And the organization we had in place to protect us, SHIELD, brought airships raining down in our nation’s capital.”

“Every day, new dangers present themselves,” Ellis continued, “filling our peaceful streets with chaos. By executive order, I have created a special task force to neutralize these alien threats on our soil. The Advanced Threat Containment Unit, or ATCU, will be given full license to act with whatever authority is necessary. The laws of nature have changed. And until the laws of man change to reflect that, we must do what we feel is right.”

“I’ve never liked Ellis,” Y/N muttered. 

Her tablet finally showed Fitz’ flight. He was coming back. And so she’d wait. Coulson found her that night, waiting alone in the lab and joined her. Neither of them said anything. Suddenly, Fitz came through the doors, tearing off his suit coat as he worked on the small object in his hands. Rolling up his sleeves, Fitz turned and noticed the other two. They slowly come closer to Fitz.

“We’ve been waiting for a while,” Coulson said.

“Had to be done,�� Fitz responded. “It’s my last shot.”

“What’s supposed to be in there?” Y/N asked, looking at the object on his desk.

“The answer.”

“You’ve thought you’ve had the answers before,” Coulson said. “I think you’ve considered every possible answer… except the obvious one.”

“That’s why you brought Y/N here, isn’t it?” Fitz continued to work as he questioned them. “To change my mind?”

“I’m only here to help,” Y/N stated.

“You thought Simmons was trapped inside the monolith, but every instrument scan showed the stone was solid all the way through,” Coulson explained. “After hearing about the Pym Technologies disaster, you even thought she’d been reduced to a microscopic level. But no evidence supported that. And now… 

“And now I think—I know—it’s a black hole,” Fitz said, frustrated. “It’s dark matter made solid. It can warp space-time. It— look, regardless— okay?” He picked up the object he’d been working on. “This is gonna tell us exactly what that monolith is. So…” 

Fitz slammed it down on the desk, breaking it open. Coulson and Y/N shared a worried look. Fitz took out an old, rolled up piece of paper.

“Should we scan it?” Coulson suggested. “See if the computer can decipher what the—“

“It’s Hebrew,” Fitz answered, not looking up from the paper. “It’s just one word.”

“What does it mean?” Y/N asked, stepping closer to look at it.

“Death.”

“Fitz,” Coulson carefully called, “I’m gonna make the trip to Sheffield. Jemma’s family to deserves to know that she’s MIA.”

“Ohh,” Fitz scoffed, getting emotional.

“They need to be able to move on. And so do we. You have shown so much heart, never giving up on Simmons, and I will always, always respect you for it. But look around. We need you. We need that big brain of yours and that heart here. Okay? I miss her, too. I’m having a hard time accepting it. All of it. I-I’m on my third hand. But nothing feels normal because nothing will feel normal. Y/N went into retirement, and I know she’s mad I brought her back. May took off on vacation and never came back. So I lost my right hands, too. We have got to accept it, to say goodbye. We need to say goodbye.”

“Jemma would want us to do that, Fitz,” Y/N quietly added, her voice filled with emotion. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

Coulson walked away but Y/N stayed back to watch Fitz. He was clearly struggling with this. He paused at the door on his way out of the lab before quickly going in the direction of where the monolith was being stored. Y/N rushed to follow him.

“Fitz!” She called. “What are you doing?”

He grabbed a gun off the wall and marched towards the room. Fitz tore the caution tape away and broke into the room.

“Fitz! Stop!”

Fitz shot at the container, successfully breaking through the lock and straps.

“Fitz!” Y/N rushed up to him, standing in front of him. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing. But it’s not smart. Just think about it for a second!”

Fitz shoved her aside, causing her to fall to the ground, and quickly opened the door to the monolith. He stepped inside it.

“Do something,” he ordered the rock.

Y/N couldn’t do anything but watch. She knew and completely understood how bad he was hurting. It was the same when Bucky fell.

“Do something!” He shouted, breathing heavily. “Do something!” He screamed. “Do something!”

next chapter >

For those who didn’t know, on the series masterlist there is a section that contains the one shots and answered asks for the series. One shot requests and questions are always welcome for this series.

NOTES: from now on the taglist when be added by a reblog. I will reblog it using my second account, @just-dreaming-marvel-2​. Just so that my main page doesn’t get too cluttered.

If you want to be added to the tag list, please dm me or send in an ask.

#tony stark x reader #Phil Coulson x Reader #agents of shield x reader #the avengers x reader #avengers x reader #aos x reader #agents of shield #Avengers #The Avengers #tony stark imagine #marvel imagine #tony stark #marvel

[lokiondisneyplus]

Loki is the latest Marvel Studios TV series in the long-running franchise and it’s currently ongoing with five episodes so far available to stream on Disney+ Hotstar Malaysia. For previous breakdowns of Loki episodes, check out Episode 1 here, Episode 2 here, Episode 3 here, Episode 4 here and Episode 5 here.

If you want a non-spoiler guide to Loki, you can head on over here.

Courtesy of Disney+ Hotstar Malaysia, we were lucky enough to be the only Malaysian media to participate in a roundtable interview with Loki Costume Designer Christine Wada and Loki Production Designer Kasra Farahani.

This interview with Loki Production Designer Kasra Farahani has been edited for clarity.

Keep in mind that we’ll be discussing some elements from all five episodes of Loki so far, so there will be spoilers below:

Q: You’ve previously worked on Black Panther and other MCU movies. How different was the experience of working on a TV set instead of a movie’s? Were there limitations?

Yes, I’ve worked on several Marvel projects. For me, this is the most fun one, maybe because I’m in a different position than I was on the other ones. But also, just because this project is unique in a couple of ways.

Number one; it’s literally in its own timeline from the rest of the MCU. It’s separate from the stories we’ve all enjoyed and seen in the MCU so far. The other thing that this one has that’s really great is the amount of visual and narrative variety. We have this kind of base in the TVA that we spend a lot of time in but also we have all these exciting different places in the world that the story takes us to. These were great worlds to design and to imagine.

In our case, there was no difference. The thing about the Marvel series is that it’s pretty much like Marvel movies; in terms of their creative ambition, in terms of the way they’re scheduled, the fact that we have one director.

There was not much about it (Loki) that resembled an episodic project, except for the fact that it was six hours of content that we were trying to make, so it’s a very long project.

In terms of resources, I didn’t ever feel that we were unduly stretched. Always, when you get a creative brief like this, there’s always a period at the beginning of every project where you’re reconciling the creative brief and the resources that you have. That has been the case for every project that I’ve ever worked on regardless of the size. There’s this beginning phase where that’s the case and oftentimes, it’s in that process where you come up with some very great creative solutions that are a direct result of some of the limitations, actually.

Yeah, I wouldn’t say that we had some extraordinary limitations in this case (for Loki), but that’s generally true for all projects, in my experience.

Q: What were you inspired by when making designing the sets of the TVA with its retro-futuristic and anachronistic aesthetics?

In the source material, the TVA had a lot of different things going on, but one of the strong themes also was this armada of desks, which is kind of typical of a post-war era bureaucracy look. There was a grain of that in the source material but a lot of it also came from the show’s creator and writer, Michael Waldron, who described in the original document I read before interviewing for this job.

He described the TVA as a kind of mix of Mad Men meets Blade Runner. Part of these two strong visual references for us. On top of that, me and director Kate Herron, even before we met and spoken to each other, were inspired by Terry Gilliam’s Brazil also as a strong influence because of the anachronisms that that story had and also because of the clear presence of this strong monolithic bureaucracy, which is something that we have in the TVA also.

For the TVA, we were looking a lot at wanting to create a world that had a paradoxical feeling, being an imposing monolithic architectural space that has brutalist elements in them and had almost Soviet modernist elements to them. The colour palette and the materials and the whimsical patterning were much more like American style modernism.

The result was hopefully when you’re in an environment like this, you don’t know whether to feel terrified or invited. Hopefully, it creates that feeling in both the characters and the audience; this kind of cognitive dissonance in not knowing whether they can trust the TVA or not. That’s the narrative objective.

The writers came up with these ideas and the idea with that was to kind of create the bubble gum wrapper in the Renaissance era (Loki Episode 2) and the futuristic shovel in the early 20th-century farm field (Loki Episode 1). These ideas were placed there to create a trail of clues for the TVA to follow before they have clarity on Sylvie’s identity. But for the anachronisms generally, that was something we tried to do throughout the TVA to have all kinds of strange things from different timelines and different worlds popping up in terms of props, like the Infinity Stones in the mail cart and stuff like that.

Q: What was it like working with Tom Hiddleston, who is a producer on Loki?

It was very exciting to have this opportunity to take the character and his storyline in a different direction. It became all the more exciting when I read the scripts and I saw the type of journey they were going to take the character on.

Tom is a professor of Loki, basically. After all, ten years or so of playing the character; he knows it better than anybody and he has an in-depth understanding of the character and his backstory; the character’s family relationships and he was really helpful in giving a little talk to all the department heads about the background of his character, which was very informative.

Q: Recently, Loki series director Kate Herron said that 90 percent of production sets were physical. Does this include the world of The Void, and can you tell us more about how you brought it to life?

That’s true. That was what was unique about this show, because of my own design approach, and my goal in creating this large monolithic brutalist environment, I felt strongly that the sets needed to be built kinda wholly and that they needed to have the ceilings in-tact. This was also supported by Loki cinematographer Autumn, in that the way of her own style of photography is very wide and low-angled photography, which is why for both of our creative goals, it made a lot of sense to build these sets like completed and 360-degree environments.

For the TVA, that was almost always the case, with the exception of when you saw outside a window. With the Void (in Loki Episode 5), a lot of that was built practically as well. What I can tell you is that we build a large piece of this landscape on a soundstage, which was about 150 feet by 200 feet of undulating wilderness terrain. In that, we would bring in these different scenery elements on different days to make it feel like different places within the Void.

For example, one day there was the bus stop terrain where we meet Loki. One day it was the giant head. One day it was the drive-in movie theatre where we find Sylvie. All of these things were brought in and we shot there over the course of seven days. The terrain was designed in such a way that depending on what angle you shot, it felt like a very different place. Backgrounds were put in during post-production in visual effects. The Loki palace, where the Loki variants kind of hang out, the bowling alley, all of that was also a 360-degree built set as well.

Q: What was the most challenging set of the entire Loki series that you had to work on?

We had a lot of very ambitious sets but I think the city of Sharoo at the end of Loki Episode 3: Lamentis was a very technical set. The goal was to create this virtual one-in, that appears as a single shot. This was a very involved and elaborate process of choreography, basically.

All the different departments were involved to make this happen because as we watch the sequence, we see tons of actors running around, there are explosions happening, the camera’s panning up to see the planet above crumbling and asteroids pelting the surface.

There was a lot of planning that went through at the very beginning. We brought the paper models of this to Autumn, our cinematographer and creative director, to use to plan some of their shots. One day, we had some more information that fed back to the art department where we developed more involved and elaborate drawings and models which again, fed back to them. In this way, we had kind of an iterative conversation to arrive at what the design was.

So, as we start to build the set, many of the department heads came to visit and check the progress. We rehearsed what the shot was going to be, so we could exactly fine-tune the set to meet the needs of this shot and see where the edits needed to be. In order to do this, we needed to adjust the exact width of the roads or move a piece of scenery here and then figure out exactly, okay, there’s going to be an explosion coming out of the ground here and another explosion coming out of the building here and this is when the camera looks up to the sky and sees the planet explode. This is where the window breaks and this is where the guy jumps out and grabs him and there’s a fight.

There are many, many people involved; Monique Garderton, our stunt coordinator, Kate Herron, the director, and also the special effects team, and of course, visual effects, deeply involved, and Richard Graves, who is kind of our AD (Assistant Director), the circus leader of all of it, organizing everybody to kind of work on this thing altogether. It’s the sort of thing that involves so many different departments that it can only really be discovered when working in a big group together.

I would say that was maybe the most challenging technically because there were so many logistical parameters and so many moving parts.

Q: What are your thoughts on diversity in the production of the creative industry?

I think that it is critically important. As somebody who is myself an immigrant, I was born in Iran and my family moved here when I was quite young. I’m super happy to see the direction that the industry is going in. I think Marvel has been particularly excellent in providing leadership in this way and I honestly have to give a lot of credit to Kate Herron, our director.

Almost more than any other project I’ve been on, she prioritised inclusivity and diversity. I mean, lots of people, don’t get me wrong, it’s on every project and on everyone’s mind, but I think Kate went above and beyond because it’s so fundamental to her worldview and she’s such a sensitive soul in this way. One of the many ways in that it was such a joy to work with Kate and I’m very proud of the many different ethnicities we’re representing, and how many women we’ve had. In our art department, we had close to fifty men and women.

It’s important and leads to better creative results that are more fully realized and more representative of what the fans really want.

#Kasra Farahani #production design #Loki #interview

[sage-nebula]

My problem with the “let the adults handle things" is that the protagonist and Hop are just okay with that and actually listen? kids aren't like that?? In every other story with children and main characters they get told stuff like that but still don't listen anyways and actually works and save the day. But the real reason is that it was probably the original plan but the game got rushed and had to scrap it and cut corners

This might come as a shock, but kids are people, and therefore aren’t a monolith. “Kids don’t listen and wouldn’t be okay with that” isn’t a statement that can be made with 100% accuracy because just like all adults are different, all kids are different. Some kids will stomp their feet and throw tantrums when they’re told no. Others will accept it. It depends on the individual child, as well as the circumstances involved.

As for these specific children and circumstances:

The primary time that Leon and Sonia say “let the adults handle this,” Hop wasn’t actually present. He shows up after the cutscene has already unfolded. Even if he had been, Hop hero worships Leon. He wants to surpass Leon because surpassing him means being just like him. He’s crushed after battling Bede not because he lost, but rather because Bede tells him that he’s making Leon look bad. Hop apologizes to Leon the next time he sees him. What all this means is that if Leon tells Hop to do something, Hop is 99.9% likely to do it. If Leon says, “Stay back and let me handle this,” Hop will. This is evidenced by how, even though Hop runs past Raihan and others to get to Leon in the climax of the story, he at first hangs back and lets Leon handle Eternatus, confidently telling the player that Leon can do it. It’s only when Leon fails and is injured that Hop steps up to battle Eternatus alongside the player, Zacian, and Zamazenta. So yes, it makes perfect sense that Hop would listen to Leon because Hop hangs on Leon’s every word and has since he was very small. He trusts and believes in his brother implicitly and, even after deciding to cheer for the player in the Championship match, later confides that he didn’t really think the player was capable of defeating Leon.

As for the player, they have no personality outside of what you give them. For me, I’ve been playing Pokémon games since 1998. I’m absolutely beyond tired of having to save everyone’s asses because the PokéWorld can’t go two years without facing another crisis. I don’t want to be the hero anymore. I don’t want to be the Champion anymore. I was exhausted at having to be the Champion in Alola. This isn’t a job that appeals to me, it’s not one that I want. So if Leon and Sonia say, “Go continue your adventure, we’ll handle this,” my response is, “Thank fucking god” because that means I can fuck back off into the wilderness and continue exploring. I don’t want it to be my job to clean up whatever bullshit mess Chairman Rose or any other villain has caused. I am here to explore lands I’ve never seen before, to catch and train and play with monsters, and battle alongside them in battles I choose to participate in, too. That’s all I want to do. Any other bullshit is just a giant pain in the ass that pulls me away from what I’d rather be doing. And since I feel that way, the player character in my games feels that way, too. After all, when I play, the player character isn’t actually a kid. She’s actually an adult in the body of a kid. But she’ll pretend to be a kid if it means someone else picks up the slack and saves the world for once (even if she ends up having to do it anyway, sigh). She deserves a damn break.

All of that said:

In every other story with children and main characters they get told stuff like that but still don't listen anyways and actually works and save the day.

That’s exactly why it’s refreshing that this wasn’t the case in Sword & Shield. I mean, yeah, the player had to intervene anyway because that’s just how video games work, but it was nice that for once in this series’ history the adults actually tried to do something. The only other time this has happened was in Black & White, wherein the Gym Leaders and Alder stepped up to make a stand against Team Plasma. Otherwise, the adults are 100% useless in every single game, even the ones where the villain is threatening genocide, and as an adult myself, I really hate that. Sure, kids need stories where people their age are being heroes, absolutely. But when adults don’t even try, and instead happily leave everything on the shoulders of a child, I get aggravated. It shouldn’t be up to actual children to save the world, and it was so refreshing to see a Pokémon game where that was recognized, and where the Champion himself was seriously injured trying to make sure that didn’t happen.

Lastly:

But the real reason is that it was probably the original plan but the game got rushed and had to scrap it and cut corners

Yes, Sword & Shield had a limited development time that led to some things getting cut (such as the National Dex, tragedy though that is), just as every game since Gen VI has. However, I can confidently say that this is not one of them because of the characters involved.

Sonia has, in my opinion, one of the richest characterizations and most realistic stories out of almost any other Pokémon characters from the games. At the start of the game, she’s in her twenties and has no idea what she’s doing with her life. She’s retired from battling after dropping out of the Gym Challenge in her youth, but she dropped out of the Gym Challenge because she lacked the confidence to face the obstacles it presented, not because she wanted to do something else. The fact is, Sonia doesn’t really know what she wants to do. We know that she went to school at one point (her fake assistant in the post-game mentions that Sonia does have a doctorate), but she doesn’t have any actual research she’s working on. Instead, she’s a self-appointed assistant for her grandmother, even if what she does is mostly just meander around the lab . . . reading or organizing materials, I guess.

But after her grandmother gives her a kick in the pants and tells her to go find something she wants to do, she manages to do just that. She finds something that ignites her curiosity and her passion, something that makes a difference in her life at the very least, and possibly the lives of everyone in Galar. She finds her confidence, her drive, and her purpose. At the end of the game she’s the new regional professor, more sure of herself and her place in the world. And as someone who only just very recently left my 20s, I can say that Sonia’s story in this regard is very, very Millennial. Most twenty-somethings have no idea what they’re doing with their lives. And while they probably won’t figure it out as quickly as Sonia did (I’m still working on it myself), her struggles are very relatable and real. It’s clear that a lot of thought went into her character and her writing. Game Freak gave her a lot of love.

With all of that said though, Sonia being hyper-aware that she is an adult while Hop and the protagonist are kids is something that is present from the very beginning. She brings it up when you first reach the wild area, for instance. She makes it known that she has more experience and that she is therefore watching out for you and for Hop (particularly since Leon frets over Hop, as Sonia also points out). Sonia telling the protagonist to just keep enjoying the Gym Challenge while she looks into things is 100% in character for her. It’s characterization present from the start.

And the same goes for Leon. Leon, who became Champion at age 10, and therefore has had to shoulder the burden of being Galar’s Champion for over a decade, knows exactly what it is to have too much responsibility at too young an age. Sonia notes that Leon “practically raised [Hop]” (which is odd given they have a mom and at least one grandparent, but nonetheless), and also that he worries about him constantly. I believe Raihan says something along the same lines. And we see this from Leon as well, with him questioning you about what was going on with Hop when he runs into you in Hammerlocke after Hop’s battle against Bede, and then talking about how he’s going to seek Hop out to talk to him again. Leon doesn’t want Hop to so much as feel bad, much less be in actual danger, even setting aside the fact that Leon feels greatly responsible for the safety and happiness of everyone in the Galar region and therefore feels that it is his responsibility as Champion to face any threat to any of that head on. (Which, it is his responsibility as Champion to face threats to the region, but Leon takes it too far in that he feels he’s responsible for everyone’s happiness as well, which in turn contributes to how unhappy he actually is being Champion). So considering the fact that Leon is very protective of Hop and feels strongly that it is his duty as Champion to deal with any burden Galar faces, it is 100% in character for him to wave you off with a smile as well. That’s not a “we cut this corner because of time,” this is a, “We understand the character we’ve created and we’re staying true to him.”

So, to summarize: I disagree with everything you said. Goodnight. 

#pokemon #professor sonia #champion leon #meta #Anonymous

[oss-crime]

Chapter 5-Escape of the Witch Salmhofer; Scene 8

Original Sin Story: Crime, pages 202-209

Ever since Gammon’s revolt, an uneasy political situation had carried on in the Twelve Royal Capitals.

The members of the senate were comprised of the heads of the twelve families that ruled over each town—that had been the standard procedure. But Gammon had decided to repeal this and dismiss each of the present members, starting with his father.

However, this caused great deal of backlash. Fearing it would reignite the fires of conflict anew, Gammon established a meeting with the twelve families, and ultimately decided to make the sons of each family into the new senate members.

Due to this, the new senate wound up being comprised largely of young people in their twenties.

Gammon made public that the queen had been in a brainwashed state by Miroku for many years.

“From now on I vow to return to the proper governmental system with the queen at its core.”

Gammon’s decree had relieved the people.

On the other hand, around this point much of the populace had also learned of the queen’s prophecy that foretold the world’s destruction.

As anxieties about this matter began to spread, the new senate headed by Gammon decided to revive Project “Ma”—

.

“—And I’m the one who has been ordered to take responsibility for it…Me, Seth Twiright.”

They were in a room in the Royal Research Institute.

Seth had explained all this to Meta, who was herself seated in a chair.

Outside the room she could hear several people walking about. They were all researchers that Seth had newly hired on, but their true identity was that of the government’s information bureau.

In other words, they were guards there to keep Meta from escaping.

“…So then, when these children are born—” Meta patted her belly, which had grown larger. “You’re saying I’ll become the next queen?”

But Seth sadly shook his head at her question.

“The details of the second Project ‘Ma’ are slightly altered from the previous one…The ‘mother of the gods’ will be able to achieve a sizable reward and commensurate status—but the position of queen will still be performed by Alice Merry-Go-Round.”

“…So the ‘mother of the gods’…only exists to give birth to the ‘Twins of God’.”

“If we didn’t have it that way, the senate would never have given permission for you, a non-virgin, to be fertilized with the ‘Seed of God’, yes?”

But Meta had qualified as an “Ma” candidate back in the first project as well. When she asked Seth about that, he explained with a shrug of his shoulders, “Back then the government still hadn’t obtained any conclusive proof of your and Pale’s relationship.”

“That’s surprisingly sloppy of the government.”

“It’s an issue of them not having a sense of the impending crisis. There’s still a few decades before the time of the destruction—the ‘Gear of Twilight’. For most people, it’s the many issues that are more immediately in front of them that take priority.”

“…”

“But that’s not so for Gammon. He has met with the queen personally—and most likely came into contact with the ‘truth’. Though I don’t know the specific contents of it. At any rate, he has privately become quite desperate to stop the world’s destruction. To the point where he is no longer concerned with keeping up appearances.”

So then…that was the reason why he was seeking an “Ma” candidate that was magically strong, regardless of whether or not they were a criminal.

Meta had already had a “Seed of God” implanted in her stomach by Seth.

She had become pregnant soon after, and started to live hidden away from the world in the royal research institute.

The people most likely had not been made aware of the fact that it was Meta who bore the “Twins of God”.  If it got out that the “Witch of Merrigod” were the “Mother of the Gods”, there’s no way there wouldn’t be an uproar about it.

In all likelihood, once the “Twins of God” were born that fact would be made public by Gammon, and they would be accepted into the populace with great celebration.

But Meta herself—

I’ll be forced to change my name and live as someone else…I suppose that would be preferable. There’s always a chance they’ll kill me to shut me up.

As far as society was concerned, Meta had already been executed in Lighwatch temple.

At the very least, the current government wasn’t a monolith. She could determine that from how Seth had gone out of his way to pull off such a trick to save her (though she didn’t know if it was something he had done on his own or if Gammon had ordered him to). If Yegor had been in on it, there wouldn’t have been any need to fake her death like that.

Though Seth had promised Meta’s safety, there was no guarantee that others would feel similarly.

And Meta didn’t even trust Seth to start with.

The reason why she was still cooperating with him regardless—

“…Hey. Is Pale okay? I wanna see him.”

She had posed this question to Seth several times before.

Each time she did he would dodge the question—

But today was different.

“Relax. I’m a man of my word.”

“Then—”

“Just like you, Pale Noel was executed publicly. But—”

“—He’s actually still alive. …Did you use the same methods as with me?”

“No. I examined him while in prison as a doctor, and…it seemed that Pale’s body had developed some defects. –He can’t maintain his own body without absorbing magical energy from other people.”

Meta had known that already.

But where was he going with this?

“Couldn’t you just…do something about that when he got out of prison?”

“That wouldn’t work. It was my estimation that as he was, Pale wouldn’t have much longer to live. …So I figured this was a good time to have him swap bodies.”

“I…don’t understand what you mean.”

“In that case—I should probably have you see for yourself.” Seth clapped his hands. “Enter.”

On cue the door opened, and a boy entered the room.

“Who’s this kid?” Meta asked.

The one to answer was not Seth, but the boy himself.

“Long time no see, Meta…It’s me, Pale.”

“…Wha?”

Obviously, the Pale that Meta knew wasn’t a boy like this, but an adult man.

But…now that she looked at him properly, his features did seem to resemble Pale’s somewhat.

“Er…So you mean…”

“You must be confused. But—it’s okay. I’ll take this opportunity to explain it all to you.” Pale turned to Seth. “I assume you don’t mind…Brother.”

Seth nodded wordlessly.

Once he’d seen that, Pale turned back to Meta.

“I—am a ‘ghoul child’.”

“…Ghoul child?”

“An artificial human created inside a beaker. My body and personality were all constructed by Seth.”

“You…expect me to believe such a crazy story?”

Pale pointed to Meta’s belly as she drew in her shoulders.

“It’s sort of like—the twins inside your stomach. The only difference is that their mother is a human woman instead of a glass vessel…that’s all it is.”

“…”

Certainly…on the point that they weren’t created by natural intercourse between a man and woman but rather an experiment of Seth’s—

They were the same.

Pale leaned against the wall, and continued his explanation.

“For some time now, Horus—or rather, Seth—has been performing research into the artificial construction of life to make the ‘Next Queen Project’ a reality. The construction of ‘ghoul children’…like myself…could be called a subspecies, or variant, of that.”

“…”

Meta silently listened to him speak, her hands resting on her expanded belly.

This boy’s way of speaking was the same as Pale’s that she knew so well.

“—Though it hasn’t been as simple as all that. Ever since I became an adult, I came to be afflicted with a problem of magical energy…Though that was better than the alternative. The ‘ghoul child’ made after me was just kept in storage as an empty shell, without a personality.”

Pale said that the body he was currently using was recycled from that “empty shell” that had been kept in storage.

“It took quite a bit of time to get my spirit affixed to this body…So we weren’t able to meet like this until now.”

“…You…knew all of this before?”

“Yeah. That’s why I…once ordered you to kill my brother. I had thought—that if I could get rid of the original of me, “Seth”, then I would become the “real” one.”

“Pale…My beloved Pale…My poor Pale…”

Meta stood and walked over to Pale, crouching down and embracing her love.

“…”

Pale looked over at Seth, his short arms around Meta’s back.

“Brother—Could you let me speak to Meta alone for a little bit?”

“…Ah, very well. I’m not so boorish as to get in the way of a lover’s meeting.”

Seth nodded and left the room, humming to himself.

.

--For a short while, the two of them continued to hold each other without a word.

Eventually, Pale whispered to Meta, “Meta…Let’s run away.”

“…!?”

“I can survive like this. There’s…no need for you to do as Seth says.”

“But—”

Meta looked down.

She was looking at her own belly, where her twins resided.

Pale nodded in understanding.

“—That’s right. It’ll be hard to escape with your body heavy with child. When you’re stable after the birth, I’ll…create a diversion. You’ll have to be patient until then.”

“…Alright, I understand.”

“Apocalypse is on the brink of destruction. But as long as we’re together…we can start over again.” Pale pulled away from Meta. “I’ll have to be going home soon.”

“…Where are you living now?”

“Seth’s house. Publicly, I’m his nephew.”

When Pale opened the door, Seth was waiting there to greet him.

“Are you done talking? Then let’s get going.”

Thus prompted, Pale left with Seth.

It almost seemed to Meta as though his limbs were bound with a thin string tied to Seth’s finger.  

<<prev------directory------next>>

[gatheringbones]

Denise Kulp, “On Working with My Brothers: Why a Lesbian Does AIDS Work.” Off Our Backs, vol. 18, no. 8, 1988, pp. 22–22:

["A few weeks ago, on my day off, I got up early, jumped in the car, drove to another part of the city, and went to a demonstration. A little while later, I grabbed the hand of a man who has been my best friend in the world for twelve years, and the hand of a woman who has become a close friend over the last several months, and ran out into the street. Six people went with us. We sat, holding hands and chanting, for over three hours. And then we were arrested. It was my first act of civil disobedience. I was arrested for demonstrating about AIDS.

It seems strange that it's taken me so long to be arrested. I've spent twelve years being politically active, and there have been many actions and issues about which I've felt strongly enough to consider CD, but I've always decided it was inconvenient. But when the idea of committing this CD arose, I decided immediately. I planned ahead to take the day off. I made financial arrangements. I made sure at least one other woman would get arrested with me (and there were four of us, finally). And then I did it. 

I come to my work as an AIDS activist full of anger, and with a long-held commitment to change. Recently I had a disagreement with a gay man who said that action born of anger was ineffective, while action born of love was positive. My position is that people I love are dying, and that makes me angry. I am making my anger powerful by turning it into action, to change the way things are. And the people I love are dying. At least part of my definition of feminism is that I love women. And AIDS is killing women. Especially it is killing black women. And it is killing prostitutes, who are being blamed for spreading AIDS into the heterosexual community when in fact they are more likely to get it than to pass it on. 

But I came to AIDS work through my concern for gay men. I have never called myself a separatist, and the major reason for that is because I love gay men. Part of the reason I love them is because so many of them were kind to me when I was coming out. I've always felt a kinship with gay men, an understanding; and I've always responded to a certain joy in life which many of the men I've known have shared. But the primary reason for my love of gay men is the very significant relationship I've had with Tim. We have been each other's closest friend since we were seventeen. We give each other emotional support; we hold each other; we cry; we laugh, a lot. We want to have a child together. The thought of Tim dying, of anything happening to him, terrifies me. And so the threat of AIDS, originally, was brought home to me in a very personal way. But it didn't stay personal. It expanded to the whole community of gay men. And then, of course, it expanded past that. 

For the most part, I work on AIDS with gay men and lesbians. I share ideas, energy, and politics with gay men, and I have not had conversations with other friends about my work, but I've heard what they've said. (I am much happier when my friends talk to me). There seems to be a concern that women, feminists, lesbians especially, are going to forget about doing "our" own work and give most of our energy to gay men. There seems, further, to be some concern that in the focus on AIDS, lesbian issues and concerns are going to be waylaid, forgotten, buried. There seems, in fact, to be anger and resentment about this, and a belief that when it turns out that when lesbians are up against a wall, gay men will just walk away and forget all about us. They've never really been concerned with our issues anyway, right? What makes us (lesbians who work on AIDS issues) think gay men will change? 

Okay. Fine. I never said that all gay men are non-sexist and perfect (although I do think Tim is perfect). I never said that I expected all relationships between gay men and lesbians to change over night. But I will say other things.

First off, why do we say that gay men never cared about our issues? We seem to be thinking of gay men as a monolith (which is almost as bad as thinking of them generically, as I have, above). There have always been some gay men who have understood and supported our issues, as there have also been gay men who have totally different politics, as there have always been Lesbians who don't agree with "our" politics. (Now who's the monolith?) (And besides, don't you believe there are lesbian anti-abortion Reagan supporters?) But, more importantly, when have we asked gay men to support our issues? Almost every political group I've been a member of has been women only. We haven't wanted men involved. We've wanted to develop our own sense of power, our own way of doing politics. Men, if they like, can do child care at women only events. But we want our own space. There are all things I support.  But we can't really expect gay men to understand lesbian issues unless we take the time to explain, and to ask for their support. We haven't done that.

There is an assumption that because some lesbians are working on AIDS issues with gay men that we are giving all our energy, emotional, political energy only to gay men. This isn't true. Women are dying. WOMEN ARE DYING. When I do political work, I think of the gay men I know who have died, the men I know now who have AIDS, of the friends of my friends. But I also think of the seventeen year old black prostitute who died blind, who was the buddy of a friend of mine. I remember that there are recorded cases of lesbian-to-lesbian transmission. I know who's dying. And I know that it's because of who was dying first that so little government money has been spent on this disease, that it has taken so long for people to be concerned. Public hysteria didn't start when faggots were dying; it started out when we found out AIDS passes through blood, and that straight men can die too. And when faggots started dying, it was other faggots, and some lesbians, and some straight women who took care of them. I feel fine about giving my energy to those faggots. I'm just mad it took me so damn long.

Will those gay men stand up for me when lesbians are against the wall? Yes. I am trusting them. I look at these men I'm working with, and I see a facilitator who actually tries to facilitate, men who support an anti-sexist, anti-racist statement as soon as it's suggested, men who want to be told when they do or say something sexist, men who choose a lesbian as a spokesperson when they go to trial, men who actually listen to the lesbians they're working with because maybe these women have some more political experience than they do. Yes, I am trusting these men.

I look at the lesbian and gay movement as it has developed over the last twenty years, and I see it as dichotomized. There is the mainstream lesbian and gay movement— Democrats and Republicans, task forces, advocates, defense funds, and campaign funds— and I see it as a meeting place where lesbians and gay men come together, but as a place where mostly men are involved. More men have traditionally been invested in that game. But right-on radical lesbians have played that game, too. (Heavens, I even dated one!) (Wait! I think I was one!) It's one way of doing things, and it gets things done— anti-discrimination laws, for example, at least sometimes, at least some places.

And then there's "our" movement, the lesbian-feminist one. We're national, certainly, but more grass-roots, or even closer to the ground/land. And we have always been more radical. We have a different culture, a different vision, an analysis. In college I did a big paper on the gay rights movement, and I remember feeling so superior when I realized that lesbians have a theory (tons of them, actually) and gay men don't. Historically, lesbians and gay men have looked at the world separately and differently. We haven't tried to engage them in our struggle, and they haven't a clue about how to engage us in theirs. But a lot of things are changing that, and AIDS is one of them. If we can keep down the barriers that some of us are breaking through, maybe, when the immediate crisis is over, we can work together, carefully, to a new place.

Like I said, I'm trusting the gay men.”]

#denise kulp #AIDS #lesbian literature #history stuff #pride month #ACT UP #cw slurs #terra preta