#INCEST incest in it. but the dynamic is still undoubtedly weird

[c0rpseductor]

ive had my bagel. coffee is brewing. it is time for me to be mean to jean webster about daddy long legs.

the first thing you should know is that daddy long legs is a book blithely unconcerned with its text, let alone its subtext. i think saying it has any subtext is also really generous and magnanimous of me, because it's certainly all in there by fucking accident. this novel doesn't have time to think. it's too busy being twee.

i liked judy at the beginning. generally i still like the idea of her, but reading daddy long legs is like reading a toothache, and you begin to resent her a little on principle, privately, in a dark mean corner of your heart. i rather suspect the beginning chapters are more organic because jean webster had not quite yet discovered that she'd struck "from the mouths of babes" gold* with this character, and once she figured that out there was no turning back. (it's worth noting that not only is this fucking grating, but most of this bizarre infantilization happens once judy is well past 18.)

the part that sticks with me is this. everything endearing, everything clever, everything judy about judy is what we're shown at the beginning of the novel -- her irreverent humor, her justified disdain for authority figures who don't earn the respect they demand, her stubbornness and mischief, her own idiosyncratic way of thinking and her hand in little private rebellions. this is why (retch) jevis takes any interest in her to begin with. it's really worth noting that, beyond her humor, this is all treated as immaturity to be corrected, especially if it would lead her to question jervis/mr. long legs.

there was the shadow of something good in it, for certain. having jervis' manipulations be so readily fucking apparent to the reader but not judy (who was perfectly oblivious) makes her read as kind of a blithe idiot, really not in keeping with her portrayal as otherwise fairly intelligent, but i think it was at least in part an error in craft since webster locked herself into an epistolary format and that strikes me as like, a very difficult format in which to pull off this particular twist. in part, too, i think any intelligence she grants judy has to be harshly reigned in, because judy is a young woman, and, well, this novel is kind of glaringly misogynist

and like, okay, i should give some slack where it's due, it was 1912. at the same time, though, it's kind of inescapable -- if anything the whole premise is built on it. the first winking reference to Silly Vapid Girls And Their Sartorial Fixations was sarcastic and funny, more a jab at what judy imagined jervis' misogynist thought process must be than anything else, but the continued winking references were less sarcastic and accordingly not very funny at all. again, a lot of her personality traits Mellow Out in a way that directly suggests they ought to be corrected, and i think this is one of the primary expressions of the novel's implicit misogyny: if judy continues to be willful and independent she can't marry and serve a husband, so she needs to learn humility, is more or less the thesis behind this transformation. it's kind of fucked when you consider how deep her self-esteem issues run; granted, she grows out of them once she begins to live a more independent life, but a kinder novel wouldn't have punished her for exercising this newfound confidence and agency when her prospective stalker-husband didn't much like it.

in that regard ive been thinking all morning (well, i just got up, it's morning for me) about a particular letter where judy is lamenting the trouble in writing her novel. with a bit of distance and a good night's sleep it strikes me as very unintentional and very telling Hand Of The Author; judy complains to mr. long-legs that she cannot make her heroine behave as she wants her to. i think this is kind of a twofold telling on oneself moment. on the one hand, it comes directly after a spat over judy disobeying mr. long-legs about where she ought to summer -- given his sort of shadowy manipulations and insistence on controlling her behavior, he's certainly having this issue, and webster may have meant this bit intentionally. i think it's also a problem webster, perhaps, was having -- given this girl who has every reason in the world to want to make her own decisions rather than have them handed down by a stranger, how can i possibly frame her as in the wrong and convince her to obey her love interest slash idealized father figure? the answer the text so helpfully supplies is Because He Is A Man

there's really this undercurrent beyond the "haha look at her she's such a fun liberated ragamuffin!" bent that essentially puts forward that she's allowed to be this way, temporarily, because it is silly. it's such a clever little joke for her to mention wanting the vote! the humor in her implying she might be a valuable citizen is of course that women are barred from civic participation due to their Silliness! she has got such funny ideas! isn't it so hilarious that she has any political thoughts at all? heehee! oh, judy! i found this insufferable

closing out, there's a passage where she mentions that she's found out jervis is a socialist. she thinks she might agree, but she'd like to investigate a little more to make a decision on what type of socialism she finds most compelling. in the end, she says this:

Hooray! I ’m a Fabian. That ’s a Socialist who ’s willing to wait. We don’t want the social revolution to come to-morrow morning; it would be too upsetting. We want it to come very gradually in the distant future, when we shall all be prepared and able to sustain the shock.

i think that is the thesis of this novel more than anything else. perhaps one day women might be given the latitude of independent thought and expression, and not need to revere their husbands as godlike father-authorities. but not here, in 1912, in this novel.

[gascon-en-exil]

For how long FE has been sexually weird?

FE4 is the most notorious for its incest and dates all the way back to 1996, but you can arguably see some of the setup for this persistent series quirk even in the games that precede it. On a very benign level there was something subversive in 1990 about a hero rescuing a princess and then seeing her marry another man for political reasons - and then have the sequel be based around a war begun because that same princess still has the hots for a third man (who in the interim got amnesia and got a girlfriend on another continent) and her husband got jealous. 

Mario or Zelda this very much wasn’t, and while that’s nothing compared to Lachesis archetypes and villainous inbred matchmaking and everything else that would follow you could say that it set a precedent showing that this series wasn’t afraid to go to some unconventional places with its romantic/sexual dynamics. But hey, on a less controversially positive note FE is undoubtedly Nintendo’s gayest IP now very likely because of that kind of approach.

[the-cryptographer]

miranova23 (@kaiba-fangirl​​) replied to your photo:

Hey no prob! On mobile rn (& should be doing hw <.<) but as far as the ~controversial~ ships, I know they can still be aged-up or the ship name used for just any other kind of relationSHIP. Heck, most of the characters are canonically underage, and there's even the reveal of Seth & Atemu being cousins, buuut it's Ancient Egypt, & does that mean their reincarnated spirits count as cousins??? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ btw finally wrote out a long-time-coming brothershipping post. we seem to be on the same page though 👍 As far as ettushipping i don't really have anything else rn i guess... but I'll keep u in mind =)

It took me a minute to realise you were referring to locketshipping aka tabloidshipping aka incesty Mokuba/Seto. For some reason, probably just wishful thinking, I thought at first maybe you meant battleshipping (Jou/Seto/Yuugi) or buddyshipping (Honda/Jou)...

I made the statements I did without really contextualising them within the context of the ygo fandom. It didn’t occur to me you were referring to a distaste for the fandom presence of certain ships or the way they’re presented. So... sorry I got kind of weird on you in the tags.

below the cut is tl;dr about controversial stuff and incest and sibling abuse

re: tags. I know people in fandom use the term ‘pedophilia’ as a catch all for... whatever they view as having the potential of including child sexual abuse. I personally think maintaining the distinction between pedophilic and ephebophilic attraction patterns (which people may or may not act on), and acts of child sexual abuse (for which attraction may or may not be a factor) is important. But really I knew what you meant when you said what you said, so I realised I was being pretty nitpicky. But also, even more generally, I think people should be free to write about controversial and potentially disturbing topics, so long as they realise what they’re doing and include proper tags/warning.

re: scandalship. Usually when I’m talking about incest ships I’m not talking about cousins. Not that cousin incest isn’t technically incest, but it’s allowed in most of the world today including some US states. And it doesn’t have the same kind of relational baggage as parent or sibling incest. The bigger part of what makes things incest in my mind is the person having been closely involved in the other person’s formative childhood development in capacity as a parent or sibling, and it almost without exception coincides with abuse. Malik/Rishid is an incest ship in my mind because Rishid was undoubtedly a brother to Malik during his upbringing. (Isis/Rishid is harder for me to make a call on because we see less of their relationship. It’s not clear whether they were raised together in an intimate proximity, or whether they really relate as siblings. So, depending on what headcanons you’re working with, I think both incestuous and non-incestuous interpretations of a romantic relationship between them could be valid.)

But, in terms of what you were talking about in your post here - I haven’t run into a lot of Mokuba/Seto personally - not enough to view it as some sort of fandom problem. But admittedly I haven’t gone looking for fics specifically featuring the two of them, so maybe that’s why. I know I’ve seen someone else also complain about the abundance of Mokuba/Seto in the search for gen fic, and I also had a similar experience pretty recently, so presumably it is a common fandom experience. I was searching through doujinshi on pixiv and opened something that I assumed to be Kaibros gen but was not. I had actually long since thought the internet has massively desensitised me to everything, but I actually shuddered irl. This isn’t to condemn the artist - admittedly I think everybody should label/tag things like that but I assume they did and I was the one that went around clicking links without taking the time to read the Japanese. But from a perspective of what I found disturbing was the kind of ease that you described in your post - that kind of moves between something I’d consider part of a very close and caring and acceptable sibling relationship, to something unacceptable that immediately undermines the validity of Seto and Mokuba hugging or sharing a bed in a nonsexual context, but also tries to capatalise on and continue off of the ‘cute’ vibes set up by what could have once been reasonably interpreted as a platonically intimate gesture, instead of a symptom of abuse.

(Yeah, for the record, I don’t think it’s abnormal for siblings to be physically affectionate to a degree. A lot of siblings aren’t as close as you and your brother, even siblings with more or less amiable relationships, but I agree it’s odd and unfair to assume that you guys can’t or shouldn’t be platonically affectionate. Otoh, though, I feel like it’s not always easy to spot a family resemblance, so I get how people may be confused. And also just wanna throw out there that sibling sexual abuse is more common than anybody wants to admit, and there’s a critical lack of attention towards the issue compared to rarer types of child sexual abuse, so it’s unfortunately possible that people are projecting their own unhealthy histories and dynamics onto you.)

But, hmm, there was another case I had where I ran into (appropriately warned for) Mokuba/Seto that I think handled the topic pretty delicately. It was about a Seto that had a plethora of sexual desires (including feelings for Mokuba) that he felt unequipped to find an outlet for - partly because of the ferocity with which he isolates himself and pushes away human contact. It was an unsettling story - but what made it palatable for me was the way both the narrative and Seto himself were keenly aware of how inappropriate acting on such desires would be. Seto’s guilt-ridden, convinced of his own monstrosity, and desperate to escape to VR (or wherever he can go to not deal with anything even remotely like an emotion). Seto immediately understands this attraction poses a threat and threatens to topple every way in which he’s tried to protect Mokuba. And Mokuba’s increasingly worried for his brother, and too naive to really understand exactly what the big deal is - even when Seto crosses the line and kisses him (and immediately pushes Mokuba away and runs off and curls up into a ball of self-loathing). And, when VR proves to be an insufficient method of escaping his own humanity, Mokuba finally convinces Seto to reach out to Yuugi, and Seto agrees because - even thought the last thing he wants to do is reach out to anyone - he cares more about remaining a good brother to Mokuba than maintaining the comfort of his own emotional isolation. So it becomes a reassertion of how much Seto values Mokuba as a brother and puts him first, rather than an expression of sexual violence.

I’m not saying this story is something for everyone (it’s not. it made me uncomfortable at times. and the solace that it was meant to make me uncomfortable was enough to soothe me, but I realise that’s not enough for everyone.) It also doesn’t blend with my personal headcanons, tbh, and it’s not something I would be interested in writing about with regards to Seto and Mokuba. But as a reader and letting the author take the reins, I enjoyed the fic, and I see the merit in it exploring the concepts it did. Far more than I see the merit in exploring Seto and Mokuba in the context of ‘aw, cute they’re hugging. now they’re kissing. uwu’ But, idk, I’m also not the arbitrator of what fiction has merit or isn’t too irredeemably creepy for anyone other than myself.

idk, like I said, I haven’t run into much Mokuba/Seto during my (mostly relatively recent) run of the fandom. Maybe it’s a bigger issue than I envisioned. And, well, I can’t stop people from creating fanart of Kaiba and Mokuba cuddling with whatever understanding they have of the circumstances behind the scene. But- yeah. I don’t support locket-/tabloid-/brother- shipping them in that manner. I’ve heard a lot of people just say ‘Kaibros’ to refer to Seto & Mokuba as a unit. But I don’t know if there’s a consensus on what people use as a tag for gen Seto & Mokuba things *shrugs*

(And, um, just more generally regarding the Kaiba brothers - I think they can be pretty unhealthily codependent, but no more than I’d expect two brothers having been through foster care and alone against the world to be. I don’t mean to undermine how important and loving and their relationship with one another has been, and how much it has been a saving grace for them.)

Anyhow, sorry for this upsetting tl;dr but- Thank you again! And, lol, yes! Keep me in mind for all things ettushipping related! And polarship and pupship and rivalship and battleship and 5000 other things tbh, lol.

[williamfernie13-blog]

Memorial To A Mother

Terms can certainly not absolutely describe exactly what an excellent person my mommy is actually but still I have actually tried to suggest of her in this particular poem. A mama is actually the truest good friend our team possess, when trials, hefty and quick, strike our company; when trouble takes the place of wealth; when close friends that express joy with our team in our sun, desert anna-healthy-blog.info us when difficulties thicken around our company, still will certainly she cling to our team, as well as effort through her kind principles and advises to dissipate the clouds from darkness, as well as create unity to go back to our hearts" is a famous quote by Washington Irving and also appropriately expresses a mama's vast and infinite love for her child or even kids. Given that Mary might certainly not have actually ended up being the Fiend's mama in a typically physiological method, but nonetheless his actual mom, she undoubtedly became his mommy emotionally; an individual he might personally connect to, as well as not simply a metaphor like Mommy Zion. I recognized that not just was I indifferent concerning being actually a mommy-- I hesitated of that. Questions I really did not even recognize I possessed about my ability to moms and dad happened decanting of me along with the strength from a sudden summer season rain. In truth, knowing our parents as people may be actually inconceivable offered the electrical power of the parent/child dynamic which comes into location at the moment of very first breathing spell, specifically with the mother; she who has held us below her cardiovascular system for nine months and whose physical body takes our company to birth. For pregnancy treatment and prenatal examinations: This is actually the only spot where the legislation varies in between the dads, if the biological father is actually gotten married to, separated or separated, he will certainly be made it possible for FMLA leave for dealing with the pregnant mom as well as for visiting facilities for antenatal evaluations. Based upon the expertise from viewing my Mom fade out of cancer, I understood my survival skills will embed in. You need to get out of your comfort area and also end up being the backbone of durability that your parent's regularly were actually to you. The revelation of the prominence of Oliver's mother over his lifestyle as well as because she has been actually directing him all her life and is even now after her fatality determining her, is understood via his consistent remembrance of his mommy with all his option makings in his lifestyle though this is never ever discussed straight in the account. My Mother is 94 as well as today she slept while eating a strawberry burst coming from Sonic - this was uncharacteristic.though her short term moment essentially trial and error for a long times, she is alert and has never fallen asleep in the day while I'm exploring her (she is being maintained in a retirement home) ... and also never ever while consuming gelato - which she consumed without being actually encouraged to do therefore. I enjoyed her sleeping as well as saw weird faces and also she always kept opening her mouth. If you manage to allow this simple fact, after that you are going to inevitably release those jealous feelings since asking your spouse to dismiss his mama or even inquiring your relative to offer your partner as well as your loved ones extra liberty can be a tough obstacle and might also be actually inconceivable to achieve. Kids are less likely to feel taken advantage of and/or to mention sexual abuse, specifically mother-son incest, because they either view the misuse as one thing beneficial (mother passion) or they believe that it is either consensual or even they are responsible.