#International Narratives

[spider-xan]

Regarding Mina's description of Dracula and why it's problematic, a good starting point would be to read the Wikipedia article for physiognomy, which is the outdated pseudoscience of face reading that is unfortunately rooted in racism, antisemitism, ableism, etc., and was very popular during the Victorian era as a way to judge moral character based on facial features.

So when Mina says 'His face was not a good face', she is not just saying that Dracula is ugly (though concepts of ugliness and beauty are not value-neutral either), but that she can tell that he is evil based on his facial features; note that one of the facial features she singles out is a 'beaky nose', which comes from Cesare Lombroso's idea that among other traits, hawk-like noses are a marker of criminality on the basis of criminals being evolutionary throwbacks who are less evolved than non-criminals; many of these allegedly 'criminal' and 'degenerate' facial features are obviously racialized and not associated with Gentile whiteness, but in opposition to it.

Stoker was definitely interested in physiognomy and uses it as a narrative device to show how certain heroic characters are intelligent, perceptive, and educated on the latest (pseudo)sciences (the modernity theme again) - namely Mina and Van Helsing, but also Jonathan to a lesser degree; we will definitely see this idea come up several more times, including explicit references to Lombroso himself.

It is also important to remember that linking physical appearance and morality still happens today - think about how many people say they can tell someone is a bad person bc they're ugly or that 'People get the face they deserve' where good people age gracefully and bad people age poorly, even though aging has nothing to do with personal character.

[runawaymarbles]

"lots of lesbians formerly ID'd as ace because of internalized homophobia and men watching lesbian porn." well. ok. some of us just started Zoloft as teenagers.

[houseswife]

find it sooo funny that foreman is cuddy now and chase is house because although cuddy was an enabler she at least had some semblance of what you’re meant to do as a doctor. so she could hold up the facade a tiny bit. chase is gonna walk in like “I need approval to amputate this guy’s perfectly working legs and then re-attach them using dental floss. without anaesthesia btw. and we’re gonna hypnotise his medical proxy to get consent. we think he has a mild mint allergy and I need the answer” and foreman isn’t even gonna look up from his paperwork before responding “k lol”

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

SO. TO KICK OFF THE WEEK OF SPECULATION BEFORE THE UPDATE DROPS.

last night i had a bit of a Revelation. literally. i borderline woke up in a cold sweat with this realization. the way i lunged for my laptop to scream at friends... ough. lets get into it

so. i do believe I've made a couple of theory posts about Barnaby not being quite as receptive to his and Wally's "forced" best friendship as Wally - since the show wrote them to be friends instead of it happening naturally. i thought it might be a point of tension for Barn. i thought a lot.

YES SO I'M TOSSING (almost) ALL OF THAT OUT THE WINDOW!

the bios state Barnaby as Wally's best friend multiple times over. it had to be regularly reinforced. their colors were chosen to mark them as friends.

but Barnaby - presumably - can't see the bios, he wouldn't know the scripts. the friendship would be natural from his perspective. how would he know otherwise? even if the relationship started out synthetic, i don't doubt that it became genuine. in the context of their world and perceptions, realistically speaking Barnaby probably wouldn't sense anything wrong.

the reminders to be best friends weren't for Barnaby.

they were for Wally.

i'm starting to suspect that Wally is Barnaby's best friend, but Barnaby isn't Wally's. i think that Wally's "best friend" is Home - or at least Wally has a closer connection to them / Home is more important to Wally than anyone else is.

i remember reading this livestream trivia (from theneighborhoodwatch's doc, if you haven't their resources yet what are you even doing?):

and i assumed it was for Barnaby's side of the relationship. but it's not, is it? it's Wally's? and it makes too much fucking Sense! it fits! i can see it perfectly! i can feel things slotting together in my mind due to this shift in perspective, and i'm scared

Barnaby probably thinks the relationship is natural, just like how he thinks he's a real person in a real world. Wally probably knows that the relationship is a role, just like how he knows he's a puppet in a false reality.

that leaves me wondering how much of it is genuine on Wally's side. i don't doubt that they really are friends, but how deep does that connection go? in the interview, Wally sounded excited/proud about having a best friend, but how much came from a place of feeling, and how much came from a place of Fulfilling The Role? how much of it is performative? how much of it is a mask?

i've been seeing everything differently. Barnaby poses for Wally the most because he has good balance and is good at staying still, not because of favoritism or because he's Wally's best friend. in the 14 (15 including the hidden halloween) audios, Barnaby consistently seeks out Wally and checks in on him. Wally seems more casual about their relationship than Barnaby is.

i'm worried that Wally values Home & You/Us over Barnaby. that Barnaby is second or third place in Wally's heart. that Wally means more to Barnaby than he means to Wally. after all, only one of them needed their relationship to be reinforced on a seemingly regular basis.

i'm confident that Wally cares about / loves Barnaby, but the question is how much? to what extent?

[evevoli]

sitting here full on weeping on a friday afternoon because oh my god it's just all about grief in the owl house isn't it. all of it. it's all about the love that's left behind and who we choose to become with it.

i just. god. jesus fucking christ it's about how the world quite literally starts and would end in the loss of a father; it's about how the world was created by the titan leaving his son behind. it's about how the world nearly ended by caleb dying before meeting the child he was expecting. it's about how the world was saved by the last gift luz's father left her. it's about how we have the choice to move forward in spite of the loss or stay trapped behind, to accept and open your heart to new love or to deny and twist their memory into something grotesque. it's about how nothing within the plot of the owl house would even exist had three men not died, had three fathers not been forced to leave their children behind. are you listening look me in the eyes.

i'm a wreck in here like. in the end isn't it all about love. isn't it all about loss. in the end aren't they one in the same. i need to lie down

[quatregats]

Something I've been thinking about is how Patrick O'Brian manages so skillfully to write characters whose actions contradict their beliefs, which I think is honestly a big part of why his characters feel so real. Mostly with Stephen and Jack—e.g., and perhaps most notably, Stephen has notably leftist sympathies (honestly I have no idea how to characterize his politics in period terms) who nonetheless becomes very comfortable with his rise to the landed gentry, while Jack is a card-carrying Tory who much of the time sympathizes far more with working class sailors and farmers than with the upper classes—but I'm sure he does it to a lesser degree with some of his minor characters (James Dillon, while perhaps not precisely minor, comes to mind), and I love that he's able to do that, especially the way in which he embeds it in the narrative. We see how they're all unreliable narrators of themselves; we understand how they want to be seen and how that does and doesn't coincide with the reality, but most importantly, this isn't presented as something reprehensible, just as a part of their own humanity. They are not their expectations for themselves, but they don't need to be those expectations to be beloved.

[twocubes]

you know what i'm fine with people going back and psychologically diagnosing historical figures

yes, they're doing it based on very limited data, but, i've never met a psychologist who diagnosed me with even close to as much data as there is available on most historical figures

[blorb-el]

we shall be free; we shall find peace chapter 7! it is 7.2k and i had to add a few additional warnings for suicidal ideation so mind the warnings. Clark Does Not Like Answering Questions: The Chapter.

[metanarrates]

yoo joonghyuk's ⬛⬛ being obscured to the reader is the same as this to me btw

it's a liberation from the story itself that is SO absolute that even the audience can't perceive it anymore. the character has to exist outside of the text simply because the text itself is too confining for the character

[kaibacorpintern]

i feel like isono can be generally perceived as hyper-competent serious assistant man (and I've written him like that) but the TRUTH about isono is that kaiba said the island's gonna blow up and isono was like "...No one told me ???" and then there's that moment in DOMA when Kaiba throws the little tablet and Isono scrambles to catch it like EEP?! which makes me think Kaiba DIDN'T hand-pick an ex-military man with an MBA to be his forward-thinking, ever-prepared attaché, as has been my beloved headcanon, but instead Isono is just some reasonably qualified average man who took a job that turned out to be way fucking crazier than expected. his job is herding two (2) feral cats and those feral cats are seto and mokuba kaiba and they have billions of dollars and no sense of restraint. Kaiba's like "hmm..... TODAY I don't feel like working. I'm going to the dimension where dragons are real. ISONO!! FETCH MY QUANTUM SWORD!!!" and isono's like "I'm sorry sir. your WHAT?" And mokuba's like, "the quantum sword obviously 🙄 it's on his bathroom counter it's plugged in it's charging" and so isono trots upstairs to fetch seto-sama's quantum sword (??), which is charging in his bathroom (????). weird job but they pay fantastic. And yet, still not enough.

[tennessoui]

Anakitty in January!!!

anakitty (the silliness of this ficlet astounds me)!!! :

The doors slide open at the slightest flick of a switch. His face is set into a fierce scowl—after all, the Halls of Healing are on the opposite side of the Temple and there’s no good reason for this sort of ruckus here—before he relaxes in surprise at the sight of nothing in front of him. There’s a heartwrenching cry at his ankles. When he looks down, all he sees is a blur of gold streaking through his open legs. “What—” he turns automatically back into his quarters to follow the intruder, who seems to have no intention of slowing down. The gold streak leaps from the floor to the table to the kitchenette counter and then back again, making insistent, loud noises the entire time. After a moment of exhausted confusion, Obi-Wan’s eyes trying to track the frantic motions and still somehow several seconds behind, he throws out his hand and catches the creature mid-leap with improper yet grossly necessary use of the Force. It’s a cat. Not a loth-cat, not an aloran cat. Just a cat, with one nicked ear folded down and a tiny slash across its tiny brow. And oh, it’s down a leg, right front paw missing, though the lack of limb is almost completely covered up by the amount of golden hair it has on its chest and body.  “Oh, hello there,” Obi-Wan says automatically as the cat looks at him pitifully. It lets out a hearbtreaking mrow and bats frantically at the air around it as if requesting to be let down. Obi-Wan isn’t sure that’s a wise idea though he admires the cat’s conviction.

“Who is your owner?” he asks the cat, who lets out an angry yowl in return, ears flicking back to show its displeasure. “Ah, I do apologize. I am sure you have no owner. Do you have a trusted companion then? One that perhaps feeds you? Cleans up after you make a mess?” At the mention of food, the cat’s ears perk up and it quiets down, tilting its head to look at Obi-Wan, eyes suddenly very large. Its paw bats the air in front of Obi-Wan’s face once more, in a gesture that accidentally seems to convey That’s you. Oh dear.

[heretherebedork]

Hi, my entire heart is just getting tugged constantly by Top who is so in the closet and so struggling and just doing his best to not get hurt by having a giant crush on his supposedly super hetero friend when invites himself over and into your bed constantly.

Poor Top is so, so lost for this man and he knows he is... I love him so much.

Always love a good motorcycle hug. Very important.

The face of a boy who is out to his mother but not to the friend he has a crush on who is about to spend the night and a mother who knows this and is deeply amused.

I love them so much. I love both of them so much. I cannot. Even. Just look at them. Boys! These boys.

Top has it so bad for him. Have we made that clear yet? So bad for him. Beloved boy. He is so soft for him and so in love and Grey is just a baby as well and I love them both so much. And then the cuddles in the bed and remembering their drunk cuddles as well? adorable.

I am absolutely doomed to the narrative by these two.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Harry Kim saying Naomi is lucky to be born on Voyager and that he would have given "anything" to have her life when he was a kid...

[popomerrygamz]

Sorry for the Homestuck 2 hot take, but I really like James Roach’s new direction for the project. You can really feel the joy behind it, makes it feel fun again.

[averlym]

miracle elixir, mortality fixer (insp)

[staticrevelations]

fascinated by the way fhjy is setting up all this academic pressure and focusing on internal conflict and the minutiae of high school life and especially how that is reflected in the world like with Gorgug not being able to multiclass cuz of how he rages and Kristen's god seemingly being a reflection of her follower's primary emotional state and the prospect of a rival adventuring group