for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal
before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"
and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"
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one thing that really interests me is the idea of singing as an act of radical defiance and acceptance. You have the examples in media (ie the hanging tree in thg), but I've also read of the nuns in Nagasaki who, while lying in unimaginable pain in the atomic wreckage, died singing. I just read of three men who died in a concentration camp in WWII singing the Canticle of the Sun by St Francis of Assisi. You see it in the Magnificat (although perhaps not technically singing), and you see in it Of Gods and Men. I know these are mostly religious examples, but it's something that stuck with me because beauty, in being inherently dignified, can also be inherently defiant
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I think it's incredibly important to remind folks on testosterone or folks who want to reverse patterned baldness about their options, but man, does it sometimes suck wondering how much of our insecurities about our hair stem from backwards beliefs that to strive towards beauty is not only preferable but "makes you good."
As someone with a rather masculinized body pre-medical transition, patterned baldness has always seemed neutral. Hair is incredibly important (hell, much of my own energy is spent on my hair because I like it), but the pressure to have hair, to have hair the "right way" is something that I absolutely loathe.
I'm not here to judge people who don't want patterned hair loss or baldness, I'm here to say that those traits will never make you lesser. Not only is it neutral, but it is also just as worthy and beautiful.
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just musing about how niko was one of edwin's biggest unconditional supporters and gentle guides in his self-discovery of his sexuality, and i think it's so interesting that we still never saw edwin confide in her overtly about his feelings for/attraction to charles, though he easily could have at any time.
before the cat king ever shapeshifts into monty or charles to tempt edwin to realization, niko's there to tell edwin that it's okay for two boys to like each other, to let him know it's okay if he noticed monty when they first met, or if he enjoyed the idea of monty liking him; and she plainly tells him that he's completely allowed to want explicit things with another boy.
they talk about edwin's feelings and desires multiple times - he admits to her he's never kissed anyone, and even that the idea of kissing has become appealing to him. she asks him, does he want to kiss monty? does he want to kiss the cat king? but she never asks him directly, does he want to kiss charles? charles is the elephant in the room of that conversation, so to speak; the only other boy they know, the one she knows edwin is actually closer with than anyone else.
but she doesn't ask edwin about charles.
i think it's actually one way niko shows her love and care for edwin, her perceptive understanding of his boundaries, and her respect for his comfort, that she never pushes him to open up to her about this most vulnerable and newly-developing aspect of his truth—that his feelings are for charles—who is already the most important person in his life, and thus so much more life-alteringly consequential to him. even though she hasn't known edwin a long time she seems to grasp that he needs both the push and the personal space to come to his deepest realizations, even as she opens the door for him to come to them.
(i did consider for a split-second that maybe she never realizes it's charles that edwin's in love with, but i vetoed that thought immediately because... edwin just seems too deeply unsubtle for that to ring true. monty can see he's been passed over for charles. the cat king knows it immediately and asks about their 'special friendship,' and not just because he can literally read edwin's desires. crystal is going through amnesia and an identity crisis, and she still clocks that edwin and charles are like a married couple. so it only makes sense that niko can see it as well.)
plus, niko's got excellent reading comprehension, by her own admission; and she and edwin bond over both being great, astute detectives—getting to the bottom of a case is a love they share. and so i just think it's neat that between niko and edwin, the conversation about charles seems to remain deliberately unspoken even when it could easily become overt.
instead she speaks to edwin about charles in metaphors. she starts their conversation about physical intimacy and romance specifically with drawing edwin's attention to the red and blue starfish. "isn't it romantic? they're in love." they proceed to talk about monty, and about the cat king, but i doubt either she or edwin could fail to notice the color symbolism there. and when edwin tries to get scientific about it, she reminds him, "luckily, love requires no logic." and finally she gives him the red sea glass, for courage. courage to help him come to terms with what—and whom—he really wants, whoever it could be.
and in the end... edwin tells niko, "i did actually tell the boy i like that i like him." this is directly after niko tells edwin she's sorry monty turned out to be an evil spy crow and she and edwin commiserate about how things with monty didn't work out for him. and obviously, it was never the cat king edwin really liked. so, just like that, through process of elimination, edwin can only be talking about charles. and even then, they never say his name. they never have to.
i just think there's something awfully soft about how edwin's feelings for charles are first so deeply ingrained and natural to him as to be something he had to be woken to rather than something that happened to him suddenly. then once he was awake to what he felt and wanted, there's something i find lovely about the deep bond niko has with him, that she understands and honors his need to speak around his feelings for charles while holding space for him to still share them with her in his way. something about how charles is so deeply loved that it is easily understood, that he is there in the conversation without his name ever needing to be spoken.
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I bet the topic of gender and sexuality in this universe is super interesting. Extra-canon stuff points out that the long-lived races have an effect on what’s seen as attractive by short-lived races. The beauty standards of humans leans towards feminine androgyny, because elf gender presentation is very ambiguous. While on the other hand, half-foots on average see dwarves as the beauty standard. Oh, the in-universe discourse surrounding this would be so compelling!
Here's the extra about beauty standards!
Speaking of which, while going back through ryoko kui's blog I realized there's a last bit I haven't seen translated? I attempted to translate it with my poor jp, the help of google and by going by how this first part was translated. But there's these kanji I cant understand at all! Ryoko Kui's handwriting is my worst enemy
Here's what I got so far
So besides Elf beauty standards tallmen also have their own specific tastes! Makes sense considering they're such a wild spread race. If anyone knows what the elf is saying please help
Edit: thanks to iamluminia in the replies! Aparently the elf is saying "邪魔", maybe they think this conversation is a bother?
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just thinking about logan who hasn't been touched for decades and doesn't know how to do it non-violently anymore... he's basically a hissing kitty mess, and wade ends up being the only one who can deal with it thanks to his healing factor and his inability to keep his hands off handsome old men, so eventually logan just... rolls with it? and turns out he's not only surprisingly okay with that, but also into it So Much, just imagine him completely obliterated at the fact that he enjoys touching wade. holding his hand. GODDAMN CARESSING HIM.
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