#All I Can Do is Speak Truth

[kimdokja-real]

Fuck I Fell Asleep and Forgot to Put the Links to the INfo in the Prev Post

Here

Sources:

Yeah Pocket Watch.

Btw think this suits Kim Dokja

O living God! You broke the tomb in glory Death could not hold the one who authored life! His radiant light has shattered through our darkness And in our hearts, his risen life now shines

He Died so many times

Upon a life I did not live Upon a death I did not die— Another’s life, Another’s death I stake my whole eternity.

Where will your eternity be spent? Will it be spent in the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness? I trust every reader of this article will be there “living happily ever after!”

He Created Heaven, A Happy Ending for Everyone But Himself.

[tenvishund]

F I S S I O N - Why the hell do you hurt yourself for this?

[bookshelfdreams]

do it. gimme the Izzy straight-coded meta 👀

I feel like I need to preface this by saying that Actually, Izzy Is Straightcoded would be the inflammatory clickbait title I'd give this if it were written to draw traffic & ad revenue to my shitty website. So don't take that term too seriously.

There has been a lot of ink spilled about Izzy thinking he's in a story where one can only be subtextually queer. Some even by yours truly, but the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. What would be the purpose of queercoding Izzy?

In general, villains* aren't queercoded to show that men being attracted to other men is bad. It's often the outcome; but it's not why the trope exists. It exists because cishet people tend to be (and are encouraged to be) profoundly uncomfortable with gender nonconformity, and so, making a character gnc becomes a quick and easy way to make him appear twisted and untrustworthy. If he** can't even obey the fundamental rules of his own gender (rules that are inherent and unchangeable!) what other rules does he disobey?

Or: If a man is insufficiently masculine, he can't be trusted to have morals. The villain isn't gnc because that's an evil trait to have; rather, the gender nonconformity is a symptom of his evilness. Being evil is what enables him to embrace his feminine side, and embracing his feminine side is what others him and marks him as a villain.

This only really works when he's contrasted with a hero (or heroine) who is Doing Gender Correctly. The villain is foul to highlight how good the hero is. The Hero will be honest and straightforward, brave, physically powerful; the Queercoded Villain treacherous, cowardly, and physically weak. The hero is a Proper Man, a Good Person. The villain an Improper Man, and therefore, a Bad Person.

Of course ofmd fundamentally rejects this. The shorthand wouldn't work, because ofmd simply doesn't think effeminacy is creepy. It's uninterested in moralizing self-expression; it just lets people be how they are. There's a wide range of expressions of masculinity on this show, and none of it is inherently bad. People are allowed to be hypermasculine, flamboyant, and anything inbetween, can express their gender in whatever manner they want, and it's all fine - as long as they are authentic about it. Be however you are, but be yourself, and this is what Izzy fails at. The repression marks him as a villain. The strict adherence to what he thinks a Real Man Pirate ought to be like. He's very preoccupied with enforcing a traditional (and toxic) masculinity on himself and others. It's no coincidence the characters he antagonizes the most - Stede and Lucius - are also the most effeminate ones. And I know, I know anglophones have a much more casual relationship to twat and cunt, those don't nearly feel as uncomfortable for y'all as they do for me, so I don't want to assign too much significance here, but he is the only character who constantly uses this kind of language, and also the one who uses the most gender&sexuality based slurs (as far as I remember).

All of this while being clearly, obviously queer himself! I do not feel like I need to explain this; his flustered reaction when Lucius asks him if he's ever been sketched speaks for itself. The fact that he meets Stede and immediately slices his shirt off of him, speaks for itself. And so on.

Izzy isn't straightcoded in the sense that the story wants us to believe he's exclusively attracted to women. Much like a queercoded villain doesn't need to be shown to be attracted to men (and can even be shown to be attracted exclusively to women!) to still be queercoded. He's straightcoded in the sense that he's a stand-in for restrictive and toxic gender roles that society enforces on people. He buys into the idea that there's a way of Doing Gender Wrong, and this is presented as a tragic character flaw. Something he has to overcome to be able to do the thing that actually marks a hero in this show: express himself authentically.

Part of why I found his death so moving is because it enables him to set right the toxicity he spread. His rehabilitation arc was about himself; about finally allowing himself to be, accepting love, accepting community. His death was about taking responsibility. About fully recognizing the hurt he caused. Looking death in the face enables him to finally abandon the last shreds of that toxicity, to apologize and be granted forgiveness. In the end, he was not beyond saving, and the harm he has done will be healed.

*Izzy is introduced as an antagonist to both Stede and the central romance of this romcom. I'm not gonna debate this; if you disagree, fine, but you clearly have such a fundamentally wrong different view of the show that it's pointless for us to try and convince each other.

**of course Queercoded Female Villains exist s well, but they are a whole different can of worms and less relevant to this discussion

[captainspiggbo]

[mayhemspreadingguy]

Today I woke up and chose silliness!

(yes, the mood of my posts is all over the place but this is what you signed up for, it's literally in the name x'D)

This is another contribution to the silly rabbit au (by @cuubism ) featuring @magnusbae 's Dream in a hoodie.

[shima-draws]

What the FUCK Furina’s backstory is so fucking sad??? The absolute TORTURE she’s been through. Shit dude,

[trainingdummyrabbit]

maybe we'll try again next time.

[thottybrucewayne]

Not a single youtube review of Eve's Bayou I've seen was able to do justice to Cisley's situation, imma have to make the damn video myself.

[tequiilasunriise]

Okay SURE we all agree that Enid is queer-coded as FUCK with her rainbow nails and lesbian flag of a sweater, but I really wanna talk about her usage of ‘howdy’ more:

Enid Sinclair is someone canonically from California- my state, actually- and like…. NO ONE here who is straight uses motherfucken ‘howdy’ as a casual greeting. No one. You know how there’s this thing where if a person uses the word ‘y’all’ all the time and they’re not Cowboyishly Southern™️ then chances are they’re a fruit? Like, I use y’all every single day and I am a raging Californian through and through. I also love hot moms and dads. Sure, I am willing to concede that not EVERY non-Southerner who uses y’all is queer, but with the countless other queer people I know who do the same as I do… well.

Yes, correlation does not automatically equate to causation, however, there ARE enough people in this particular category that can give the claim I’m tryna make statistic significance. By extension of the y’all to fruit pipeline, ‘howdy’ is even MORE Cowboyishly Southern™️ than ‘y’all’ and Miss Sinclair is just spouting it right off the bat with her whole chest no hesitation as she joyfully greets Wednesday. Therefore, Enid is queer-coded as FUCK because when was the last time you EVER saw some Californian girlie casually use howdy unironically like this?

(Did I just try to use modern cultural linguistic patterns to try and justify a fictional character’s lesbianism? I mean YEAH in my defense I am delusional Wenclair trash but sshhhhh my science is still sound.)

[good-beans]

Who was gonna tell me that Yonah FUCKS !!!!!!!!!

I finally sat down to watch it and sudddenly realized why it made people so upset with Kotoko -- it's "get the audience's ass" pt 2 (part one being Baptism of Fire)

What an Incredible, Precise, Scathing commentary on the public's view of punishment. On how we treat "justice" in the news when it's two parties we don't know. On how hypocritical we want justice but don't want our actions to have any consequences -- we want it to be done but we don't want it to be our fault. She makes a HUGE point about people ignoring mental stress and only feeling bad when people are physically suffering. Before getting attached, people did want the prisoners to get hurt and feel remorse. In real life people are constantly wishing pain onto wrongdoers so they change their ways.

She's making excellent points, as well as the voice drama overall emphasizing the fact that it's the right thing to do to get attached. She's 100% correct, but by framing her as a villain, Yamanaka encourages the audience that we should care about people. We should find out about everyone's lives and get attached before making judgements about them. This project remains about human understanding and love and I am amazed.

And from a character perspective, I just loved her view of the situation! I was worried from the bits of the vd people were posting that she was just going to be painted as a flat, villainous character, but she's so so deep. I love a character who will get their hands dirty to make a better world for the innocent characters they care about. And her speech when hugging Es really revealed how much that burden weighs on her. She isn't violent for fun. She doesn't enjoy it. But her heart is so broken by a world of injustice, she will take on this painful responsibility since she has the power to and others don't.

[bottombaron]

all im saying is that Laszlo loudly declares himself the King of Bottoms and then immediately takes Guillermo under his wing

[found--family]

they couldn't let cesar and jesse return bc they would've taken one look at dean and cas interacting and known they had it bad for each other

[agnesmontague]

.

[layzeal]

i do have a lot of Thoughts (tm) about that "did mxy really harrass jgy" poll buy it'd take me gathering some other pieces of text from the ones presented including the cn text, but also remind everyone that there isn't one single true to rumorous statements like these since they are 1. entirely fictional 2. written with the intention to be uncertain and convoluted, with the "true" answer being "what do you think?"

[itspileofgoodthings]

So sorry if this is bothering you but so curious as well... why do you hate Guts?

Thanks for your time ❤

you’re not bothering me!

I think the simplest way to answer this is with one of Olivia’s own lyrics from pretty isn’t pretty when she sings “none of it matters and none of it ends” because. That is kind of her whole ethos about how life works. She believes that! And so her work, to me, is profoundly cynical and self-absorbed because it can’t point to anything bigger (none of it matters) so it revolves purely around her own feelings. It won’t ever situate itself in a wider picture. And I love whining in a song tbh. I love when an artist captures those uglier emotions —the discontent, the restlessness, the irritation, the blandness and staleness of it all and the railing against it—because those are all part of the human experience. I am continually shocked—it is shoCKING—by how many negative emotions I can and do experience over and over again. But it is thankfully against the backdrop of reality. My bad moods are something that can be so unpleasant to feel and so ugly to witness—I wrestle with how ugly and small my suffering is—but there is a way in which, all discourse about the validity of any and all of my feelings accounted for, those aren’t real. Just symptoms of my suffering and sometimes my convalescence (lol, love a symptom of convalescence) but reality is still always so much realer. It’s always ready to break in a million times a day; the beauty and sturdiness of reality, the texture of existence, as Flannery O’Connor once said, is always there and with enough time (and with patience and help and love) I can get back to contact with it. Not just the state of my own mind full of bitterness and worry and pain, endlessly stewing in its own unhappiness.

I am not good at that, it takes a lot to get me there. But I guess my point is—to circle back—Olivia’s music doesn’t try and doesn’t want to. Its scope is so narrow, every song no matter how pleasing at first eventually sours (lololololol) because it’s JUST rooted in her own experience, generally her own suffering. And there’s no sharpness or cleverness in the world (she can be both sharp and clever!) that can hide that lack of range. So you hear a song once—for me, it was brutal—-and you’re like YEAH. I recognize this kind of whininess because I’ve felt it before. There is something true to it! But the more she writes the more you watch her do it over and over again (sonically, too, she loves to speak-talk and tbh they’re just sub-par remixes of brutal) the more you start to be like “oh, is that it? We’re not going anywhere with this? There’s no turn or catharsis or bridge or anything that lifts us out of this even for a second?” and it’s just —blegh.

And the thing is there doesn’t even have to be, like, some triumphant girlboss victory where she feels better. I’m not saying her songs are bad because they’re sad and depressing. It’s that they establish no outside contact with reality. They are, for all her clever little film-noir references or whatever, only ever self-referential. And that gets old so fast no matter who is talking.

[everymadara]

Chapter 625