#also like yes some of it very much does come from purity culture and shit like that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

meta-shadowsong · 3 years

Text

On Redemption Arcs in Fiction

This...roughly 9000-word essay was inspired by a post I saw on Tumblr a while back, talking about conflating ‘redemption arc’ with ‘we like this character now,’ and how that’s a relatively new development and misses one of the points of redemption in stories. I’m sort of…using that as a springboard to talk about redemption arcs in general, and how forgiveness and/or likeability can be a factor, or not. Because--look, if you know anything about me and my tastes you know I eat this shit for breakfast, lol. I have a Thing for double agents and defectors, for characters whose allegiances shift over the narrative for one reason or another.

Anyway. Uh. Basically, I think that post was essentially right, that not all redemption arcs have to (or should!) end in forgiveness for the character’s prior misdeeds, or a character becoming likeable, and how likeable and forgivable aren’t necessarily equivalent. And also I think that…like…if a character has no prior misdeeds they don’t need redemption? And everyone has different limits on what’s forgivable and what’s not, and while some limits for some people are automatic dealbreakers, others might be situational/depend on mitigating factors (which can include how likeable the character in question is). I think this is at least part of the reason discussions of redemption arcs and redeemed/redeemable characters get so heated.

Also, purity culture backlash is a factor, which the post in question talks about a little bit, and the general philosophy in certain quarters of ‘if I like this it must be Good both in the aesthetic sense and the moral sense’ and its flipside ‘if I dislike this it must be Bad both in the aesthetic sense and the moral sense’ with the idea that likes/dislikes have to be Justifiable beyond just…a matter of taste? Which, like. Yes, sometimes, there’s a thing that has value (or lacks value) for moral reasons, that absolutely exists. But not everything does, and not all morality in stories is or necessarily should be clear-cut and obvious. There’s a place for that (even if it’s generally not my personal cup of tea), but expecting all stories to fall into that is…ehhhh, it feels like a Not Good Thing to me.

…anyway. There was going to be an actual Topic to this ramble, and that Topic was redemption in narratives. As I said, this is a very long essay with examples from several different fandoms (most prominently, AtLA, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica), so. Uh. Brace yourselves, I guess?

I think it’s helpful to, first of all, to recognize that this is a Very Broad Umbrella that covers a pretty extensive range of character arcs and storylines.

First, the Hero In Waiting archetype, exemplified by Zuko in AtLA – this character is eventually On Our Side and Becomes Our Friend/Someone We Like, and it’s clear from very early on that that’s where their arc is headed. I’ve also referred to this as Character Transparently Being Set Up For Redemption but that’s less pithy, lol. This type of arc generally has to be planned from the outset in order to have the right payoff; the seeds of Likeability have to be sown from pretty much day one (which they are with Zuko), at least for the audience, even if the Heroes don’t necessarily see it until much later. I love this type of arc. I like stories where people come together and unite, I like redemption arcs that end in forgiveness. I like it when the pressures on the main characters’ interpersonal relationships are mostly external rather than infighting (I Hate the obligatory arc in like Every Team-Based Show where the team is fighting itself/each other because Dramatic Misunderstandings). This one scratches a very specific itch, but it has to be constructed in a very specific way and it is not the only or even necessarily the best or most compelling type.

Second, the One Good Deed archetype. This generally tends to result in Redemption Equals Death; it works best when, at the eleventh hour, a previously villainous character comes up to a line they won’t cross and refuses and makes a better choice. Think of Vader in Star Wars, or that one servant in King Lear who tries to stop what happens to Gloucester. One shining moment after a lifetime of evil may not bring forgiveness, but when it’s done well--whether it’s set up gradually, with the slow reveal of the potential for the character in question to have made different choices along the way (Vader) or whether it comes out of nowhere because Even Evil Has Standards (like the servant)--it provides a huge emotional payoff. I love moments like this. I don’t like caricatures of moustache-twirling villainy, and One Good Deed redemption provides some relief from that. The idea that no matter how awful or blood-soaked a person might be, there’s that little glimmer inside them. Somewhere. That’s a pretty powerful thing to consider. It doesn’t undo the terrible things they’ve done, nor does it mean they shouldn’t face consequences for them (assuming they survive), nor does it mean they should be posthumously forgiven, which is an individual choice on the part of both in-universe observers and the audience, I think. And, obviously, there’s a point where you can’t keep hoping and digging for that bright spot because you have to act on the circumstances facing you, but the fact that it’s there. That means something. And, when acted on, it can be hugely cathartic (and can also keep the Hero’s hands relatively clean, but let’s put a pin in that for now.)

Third, the Enemy Of My Enemy archetype. Basically, a villain who unites with the heroes against a greater threat, and, in so doing, the dynamics of the relationship with said villain shift.

This is another umbrella one, lol.

Type A – Villain works with heroes and then just sort of…gets absorbed and saunters vaguely upward. As they form positive connections with their new (theoretically temporarily) allies, they gradually become a friend. I love this one a lot. Look, I grew up on DBZ and got extremely attached to Vegeta and Bulma for a reason, lol. I mean, he’s not the only one who went through this pattern but he was the one who made the strongest impression on me, so.

Type B – Not So Different revelations which put Villain’s prior actions into a different context and enable everyone to Find Some Common Ground. They may or may not stick around as a long-term ally; this may overlap with the One Good Deed type, but it’s a bit longer-range and also less likely to result in Redemption Equals Death. Villain may come back later, either as an antagonist again but with a twist, or as an ally, and that initial connection may build into something long-term.

Type C – What my roommate affectionately calls the Weird Uncle trope. It’s not so much that new relationships or revelations soften Villain (at least not to the other characters, though they might have that effect on the audience), as there are some things you just can’t go through together without Bonding. Villain is probably just as much of an asshole as before, but now he’s our asshole. Examples of this would be Barbossa in PotC, Root in Person of Interest, arguably Bo-Katan in Star Wars. When this works, it’s delightful, but it also. Uh. It’s a fine line to walk, especially when questions of Forgiving and/or Forgetting prior misdeeds once past the momentary necessity of the initial teamup. It definitely helps if, prior to the shift, villain has a lot of Engaging and/or Likeable qualities (similar to the Hero In Waiting type, although they don’t go nearly as far). Another possible factor here is that, as the word gets More Complicated (and possibly the Heroes get a little muddier), this person seems Less Evil by comparison. While that can play into any Enemy Of My Enemy subtype, it’s particularly relevant with Type C.

Fourth, the Make Them Work For It archetype. This is sort of…some of the Discourse™ related to Redemption Equals Death goes to ‘one good dead doesn’t really mean that much in the grand scheme of things so is this person really redeemed or did they just escape the consequences of their actions.’ So, this is sort of an extension of that One Good Deed type, may also overlap with Type B or Type C of the Enemy Of My Enemy. Basically, a similar setup--Villain finds the line they won’t cross, but rather than One Grand Gesture, they put their money where their mouth is and actively work on a more long-term basis to atone for their past misdeeds. I have a lot of fondness for this type – like I said, I have a Thing for double agents and defectors, and most of them fall into this category (…or its inverse, technically, but that is not the subject of this essay, haha). And then there’s also a huge range within this category, in terms of how much impact their change of heart has on their personality/actual relationships with the heroes. Like, I would put both Kallus from SW: Rebels and Snape from HP in this category, but they have very different paths from the moment they choose to defect (more on this later). But it’s still the same general pattern--Villain comes to a point where they realize that there is a line they cannot cross/they are on the wrong side, and offer an alliance to one or more heroes, but the Work they do to make up for prior misdeeds is shown and that, rather than the moment of choice, is the point of their storyline/focus of the character arc. Much like the Weird Uncle, characters in this category can be Discourse Magnets, because have they done enough, etc.

Fifth, the Face Of The Enemy archetype. This one…both is and is not a redemption arc? It tends to overlap with the Enemy Of My Enemy, but this is a character who did not have a personal relationship with the good guys prior to their Teeth Clenched Teamwork moment, so I feel like it deserves a separate category. This is one that shows up in War Stories, with clearly defined Sides. Essentially, the heroes meet a member of the designated villain group and find common ground, usually in response to a greater threat, whether a common enemy or a natural disaster/other Circumstances that are not the fault of either party. I feel like this tends to happen a lot in media relating to World War One; but a more typical/recent Fandomy example would potentially be Todd from Stargate Atlantis, maybe Mina and Lux Bonteri from SW: Clone Wars. A lot of arcs featuring these characters tend to cast War Itself as the True Villain of the story. Because they haven’t caused any direct personal harm to the heroes other than happening to be on the other side of the war, the question of Forgiveness is both more and less complicated. In some ways, rather than having an individual redemption arc, this character exists to humanize/“redeem,” in a way, the Enemy in general.

And now, a few related tropes that I’m not really counting, but I’ll lay out just for the sake of completion:

First, there’s sort of a combination of Hero In Waiting and Face Of The Enemy, where a character we’re introduced to as technically on the villain’s side immediately hits their breaking point and acts heroically, without having any prior contact with the heroes; this also tends to be their introduction to the audience; often they’re the protagonist, or one of a team of protagonists. This type is not included in the main list because they’re…not really redeemed? They didn’t do anything that requires redemption? Finn from Star Wars is the primary example of this. He is not a redeemed villain because he was never a villain in the first place, except under the barest of technicalities.

A second related trope I’m excluding is a Chaotic Neutral Occasional Ally Occasional Enemy. While there’s some overlap, particularly with the Enemy Of My Enemy archetype, this character is generally on a third side unrelated to the core conflict of the story and serves an entirely different narrative purpose. Think Hondo from Star Wars.

I’m also not going to talk about characters who are introduced after having gone through a redemption arc--i.e., characters who have an established and discussed backstory of working with/for the Bad Guys but have since had a change of heart. See Iroh in AtLA. While there’s a lot of interesting points to be made about the role characters like this serve in the narrative (and how they’re discussed in fandom), in the interests of simplicity and having specific textual events and details to cite when I do go into detail about my examples, I’m sticking to characters who undergo these arcs within the main body of the story.

There are probably more types, and obviously some of these overlap and there are characters who tick off more than one of these boxes, but as a general outline, many if not most characters who go through Redemption Arcs fall under these five archetypes (and the subtypes for the Enemy Of My Enemy). Which I’m going to lay out in a neat list because that was a Lot Of Text and I’ll be referencing things more probably, lol:

Hero In Waiting – this character is intended from the beginning to become a hero, even if they start off on the wrong side; they are generally likeable and sympathetic, and working with the bad guys for Understandable Reasons until they choose to do otherwise.

One Good Deed – generally overlapping with Redemption Equals Death; this character finds a line they will not cross and stands their ground/stands up to the Big Bad; usually a secondary villain or Mook.

Enemy Of My Enemy – this character forms a temporary alliance with the heroes out of necessity, and the storyline goes from there.

Type A – character forms Positive Relationships and chooses to stay with their new friends/allies who turned out to be less temporary than originally planned.

Type B – character doesn’t really form Relationships or stick around, but finds common ground with the heroes and may or may not be an ally again in the future.

Type C – character doesn’t necessarily grow or change but becomes Part Of The Group by virtue of ‘yeah they’re an asshole but they’re our asshole, and look what we went through together, that means at least as much as our prior conflicts.’

Make Them Work For It – related to One Good Deed in that the character finds a line they will not cross, but the point of their arc is not the change of heart, it’s what they do after.

Face Of The Enemy – this character was not an individual villain, but is a part of the Villain Group, usually in war stories; tends to overlap with Enemy Of My Enemy but without a prior personal connection to the Heroes.

So, when we look at these five archetypes, and the question of likeability and/or forgiveness comes up, it varies a lot. Hero In Waiting generally requires it; One Good Deed does not; Enemy Of My Enemy varies, depending on the subtype as well as some other narrative factors I’ll get into in a minute, so we’ll put a pin in this; ditto for Make Him Work For It; Face Of The Enemy tends to work better if the humanizing individual is likeable.

Which leads to the next question, which is--what is the purpose of the arc? Why are we redeeming (or attempting to redeem) this character? What does it do for/contribute to the story and/or overall themes of the work? How does the genre and/or target audience of the work impact the choice?

Because all of these arcs can have valuable impact in terms of storytelling, but in very different ways.

Like, let’s zero in on the One Good Deed archetype again. There’s what I talked about earlier, in terms of the emotional impact of this kind of moment when done well, and that’s certainly a factor. But in terms of a more purely practical application...I mentioned earlier how this archetype can help keep the hero’s/heroes’ hands clean. This tends to be more of an issue in media where the target audience is mainly kids.

Essentially, the story is set up with a Good vs. Evil plotline; the creators have built up the Main Villain and need to Deal With Him Somehow and by Deal With we mean Defeat/Render No Longer A Threat. The Good Guys get to win. And sometimes, the Power of Friendship™ might make the Main Villain undergo a redemption arc/change of heart of their own, but some MVs just. Do Not Allow For This, it wouldn’t be credible even in the most hopeful stories with the most Pollyanna of heroes in play.

Unfortunately, having the Hero actually kill MV is. Uh. Well. Problematic. Look, we don’t want to, like, give kids the impression that Murder Is Okay If Your Victim Is Evil™ Enough. That. Uh. That just seems like it’ll go Very Bad Very Quickly.

There are a lot of ways around this problem. For example: in AtLA, Aang takes a different kind of third option in stripping Ozai of his abilities (which is its own Discourse Magnet lol, but not the subject of this essay); Disney Villain Death (i.e., where the villain’s own villainous actions lead to them falling to their death or a similar essentially accidental death) is a Trope for this reason; but a third possibility is--have one of the villain’s underlings take care of the problem. The Hero doesn’t kill anyone, someone who is already evil does what may be Necessary, but isn’t something we want to reinforce as Good/Ideal Behavior.

Now, this isn’t always a redemption arc (speaking of Disney villains, Scar’s death is not at all framed as providing any redemptive value to the hyena trio), but it can be. Again, we look at Vader’s moment in ROTJ. Our Hero, Luke, has already explicitly rejected the idea of murder, however justified, but the Emperor does still need to die for this victory of Good over Evil to be complete. Vader is able to handle that problem, even as it costs him his own life.

So that’s one factor--how certain types of redemption arcs can be Useful Tools to get around a target audience/message/genre problem--and it’s something that doesn’t require likeability at all.

For another, we can take a closer look at the Enemy Of My Enemy archetype, and what I mentioned about the tone of the work playing into how likeable the character is. And ‘tone’ is a little harder to pin down than, say, target audience or genre (in some cases). And, while the lighter in tone a work is, the more likely it is for the redeemed character to be likeable/forgivable/forgiven, that’s not a hard and fast rule. In a story that’s overall fairly dark in tone, it might be in keeping with the general craptasticness of the world for our New Ally to still kind of suck--or their redemption/Heel Face Turn/journey to becoming a Better Person may be one of the few bright spots in an otherwise gloomy landscape.

The same goes for the Make Them Work For It trope. I mentioned above that I would put both Kallus and Snape in this category, because the focus of their arc is not the moment of defection (which isn’t even shown on-screen for Kallus, though a part of me holds out hope that that might be a plotline in a future season of Andor, lol), but their choices and actions after switching sides. I think these two are particularly interesting to compare and contrast. The works have a similar target audience and some overlapping themes; the characters in question are both double agents/their defection is not immediately known to the heroes and not necessarily trusted for a long time. Their defections even (arguably) have similar roots, in that someone on the other side who they have a personal connection to/some kind of emotional kinship with puts things into Perspective for them.

But holy crap are the actual arcs different.

Look, I grew up on HP, and in all honesty, Snape was probably a formative experience in terms of my attachment to double agents and defectors. I admit that. But he is not a good person, and he never really becomes one. Whether or not he is likeable is a matter of personal preference/reading/taste, but he isn’t (necessarily) set up or intended to be. And that’s sort of a throughline within the overall HP story in general, which I’ve written about before. There’s a line in GoF, ‘The world isn’t divided into good people and Death Eaters;’ which in the broader context of the work tends to boil down to ‘just because someone’s not working with the Big Bad, that doesn’t mean they’re on your side; and just because they’re on your side, it doesn’t mean they’re a Good Person.’ With regard to Snape specifically, while there are a few lines he won’t cross and things that genuinely affect him beyond ‘this is the life and duty I’ve chosen’ (there’s one scene in CoS that stands out to me in particular; the way his reactions are described when the teachers are discussing Ginny being taken into the Chamber), it doesn’t really show through except in extreme moments. Most of the time, he’s a petty asshole at best.

Kallus, on the other hand, even in scenes where he’s focused on maintaining his cover, tries to stick to his new principles/ethics wherever he can, as far as he can, without jeopardizing his mission. See his first scene in S3, where he raises the question of excessive force/civilian casualties in a meeting with his superiors. Is he still kind of a jerk sometimes? Sure, he’s got a stick up his ass the size of Jupiter and a sarcastic streak a mile wide, but he still earns at minimum the respect and appreciation of his new allies, even if between his prior history and slightly grating personality he doesn’t necessarily become close friends with any of them except Zeb--but the fact that he generally does in fic is plausible in a way that it really isn’t for Snape.

(And, I mean, fanfic is fanfic, plausibility/canon compliance isn’t always the goal, but you get what I mean, right?)

Because, like, whether or not Kallus actually does make it to Likeable or A Good Person is still very much a personal decision for the viewer. But when the narrative casts him in that light, and gives him and Zeb a happy ending together, it doesn’t feel as disjointed as Harry honoring Snape by naming a child after him.

Sort of related to that last point, and because this is related to the One Good Deed archetype and that’s often tied to Redemption Equals Death--Snape’s death fits both his personal storyline and the overall narrative; partly in him doing what he’s been doing all along, for good or ill, as the guardian of key intelligence that will change the game; there’s probably also something about the sacrifice of his entire generation over the course of the two wars, but I’m no longer invested enough in this fandom to try and tease that essay out.

In contrast, while Kallus dying wouldn’t necessarily be out of place in his character arc in and of itself, his survival (and happy ending, with Zeb, as opposed to being imprisoned or something for his acts prior to his defection) is more tonally consistent with what is, in general, a much more optimistic story. Also, it would feel like a…distraction is not the right word, but in the context of Kanan and Ezra’s respective sacrifices, Kallus dying would not fit. And the other point where his death could have fit his character arc--at the end of season three, when he’s exposed--would, again, conflict with the overall tone of both that episode and the series as a whole.

In both cases, how that relates to the character’s likeability/whether or not he’s Done Enough to be Redeemed is still, at least in part, a personal decision on the part of the viewer, but the writing and story structure are way more ambiguous in Snape’s case, and generally pointing towards ‘yes’ in Kallus’ case. And this is down to some of those factors I mentioned before--the tone of the story, the broader themes of the work and how the redemption arc plays into them, etc.

At this point, I want to tangent off and go into some more detail about another pair of examples, this time from the same story. And that story would be the bastion of Moral Complexity that is the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Before we go any further, there are a lot of content/trigger warnings for this series; the relevant ones here are genocide, intimate partner abuse, and dubcon.

There are...many, many characters I could talk about who are relevant to this essay. For redemption arcs, for…uh…anti-redemption arcs(?) where former heroes slide into villainy, for characters who vacillate a lot over the course of the series, for likeable and/or nuanced villains, for heroes who are reprehensible (or at least do reprehensible things)…

But in the interests of having some clear comparisons and possibly getting to an actual Point somewhere along the line, I’m going to focus in on Gaius Baltar and Caprica-Six.

(First, a disclaimer: these two and their relationship are, if not my favorite parts of the series, certainly up there; my biases on this subject will probably color my arguments here.)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the series (since it is...yeesh, the finale aired more than ten years ago now???), the general premise is that there are two groups* of sentient beings in this universe: humans and Cylons. Humans are, well, humans. Cylons were initially created by humans as robots with advanced AI, intended to be soldiers/servants/etc. Predictably, the Cylons rebelled, there was a war which ended in an armistice, the Cylons choosing to retreat away from human space (the twelve colonies of Kobol) to find their own homeworld.

Forty-some years later, they return and launch a devastating nuclear attack on the Colonial (human) worlds. Of the prior population of roughly 50 billion, about 50,000 survive, and flee the Colonies, looking for Earth for religious/mythological reasons that are a key driving factor in the series but not super important to this essay. The Cylons pursue, and the plot is driven both by that conflict and by internal conflicts within the surviving human population (and, later, some internal conflicts among the Cylons; like I said, bastion of moral complexity).

Caprica is a Cylon; her mission was to infiltrate the colonies, and gain access to their defense mainframe to enable the attack. Baltar is a human scientist, and the man she seduces and uses to gain that access. Her mission was a success, he granted her the access she needed, and then came the genocide.

I do want to note here that, up until the attack, there was no way to know Caprica was a Cylon--the last the humans had seen them, they were Very Obviously Robots, rather than the nearly-indistinguishable humanlike versions. The models that fall into this category (called ‘skinjobs’ by humans fighting them) are a new thing*. This series is I believe the Trope Namer for ‘They Look Like Us Now.’

This obviously doesn’t change the fact that what Baltar did was absolutely wrong and a breach of trust and he is responsible for the consequences of his choices, but he didn’t know Caprica was a Cylon until she told him, after the bombs started falling; based on his other choices/behavior/etc., if he’d known the stakes she was playing for, while he probably wouldn’t have turned her in or anything, he almost certainly would not have helped her, no matter how hard he’d fallen for her. (As compared to, say, Anakin Skywalker, who knew full well the damage he was doing and decided his love was worth it.)

And Baltar had fallen for Caprica in a big way. He is stupid in love with this woman and, as is often the case in such storylines, she got caught in her own honey trap and fell just as deeply in love with him.

By the end of the series, after going through A Lot of shit both together and separately, Gaius and Caprica are reunited and survive to build a new life together. Each of them goes through a Redemption Arc, primarily rooted in Make Them Work For It. Each of them is also haunted by a ghost/angel/demon/?????? that only they can see, and that takes the shape/face of the other, though doesn’t necessarily act the same. Head!Six and Head!Baltar serve as major catalysts for their development/arcs along the way.

Also, despite Baltar being a selfish prick and Caprica being pretty mission-oriented (while she has a Mission, anyway, self-imposed or otherwise), throughout the series, they both show moments of profound compassion that stand out against that general background; children in particular bring out the best in Baltar, and I’ll get into Caprica’s arc in a minute. Now, there’s a huge element of out-of-sight-out-of-mind in Baltar’s mental math, whereas Caprica is better able to take a broader view, but he still…there’s a moment, in season four, where he in all seriousness offers his life in exchange for someone else’s. And that is a huge moment for him, both in terms of where his mental state is at in that moment and his general…like…he’s a coward; he almost always takes the easy path, the one that will preserve his own safety/position. He doesn’t like hurting other people or want to hurt other people (at least on an individual/immediate level; like I said, out-of-sight-out-of-mind is a Problem for him for most of the series) and if at all possible he avoids it (i.e., there’s a bit in the miniseries, with the old woman and the lottery for getting onto Boomer’s Raptor to escape the Colonies, where he probably could have gotten away with lying and switching their tickets and leaving her to a pretty awful death to save his own skin, and he doesn’t even try). But there’s a huge difference between that and volunteering himself/stepping into the line of fire, rather than already being there and stepping back to allow someone else a chance, too. Takes him awhile to get there, but he does. Like I said with the One Good Deed types, there’s a spark there.

They also both…like, both of them also commit one-on-one murders, so to speak, over the course of the series. Caprica’s introductory scene actually involves one (that I will Not go into detail about because it’s Upsetting); Baltar’s first murder comes early in season two. What’s interesting about these deaths is that, in both cases, the murder is motivated by a sort of kindness? (Although tinged with desperation in Baltar’s case.) But, like. Caprica kills her victim to spare them the horror of dying in the attack she knows is coming; it’s an act of mercy. Baltar shoots someone who has a gun on someone else’s head, and is trying to force her into what would essentially be a suicide mission after she froze (and, yes, there’s an element of self-preservation there too because Cally wasn’t the only person Crashdown was putting at risk, just the one who had the actual gun in her face; but still, some part of his mental math was ‘keep this girl from getting shot’).

So, that’s where they start, and how their respective redemption arcs are rooted in a very similar place. But, as with Kallus and Snape, despite those similarities (in this case, the very act they need to redeem themselves for), the way those arcs play out is very different.

In short, Caprica’s arc is much smoother than Baltar’s.

And before I get into the actual meat of the arcs themselves, I want to take a step back and talk about some reasons as to why that is, from a writing/storytelling perspective, because I think there are a couple different possibilities.

First, just in terms of narrative structure as a whole.

Baltar is a main character. His arc, by nature of him being more in focus and also Rule of Drama, is going to be more complicated.

Caprica, although she is the (physical) Six with the most development and screentime, is still more or less a supporting character. After the miniseries, she doesn’t appear until the end of season two, and while she’s around pretty consistently after that, she’s not a focal point in the same way he is.

Second, we go back to the ‘what is the Narrative Point of this arc’ question.

Caprica’s primary role in the story is to regret the attack and her part in it, and serve as a catalyst for a peace and reconciliation movement among her people. In that, she sort of crosses over into the Face Of The Enemy archetype (in that she, along with Athena, and, in slightly different ways, Gina and Boomer, serves as a way to, for lack of a better word, humanize the Cylons). There’s also some Symbolic stuff with the Head!People and the Opera House mixed in, but even including those factors I would argue that her main role is still to bring the Cylons to a point of reconciliation.

Baltar’s story, on the other hand, pretty much is his redemption arc; one major aspect of his role in the overall narrative is about regret and shame and forgiveness and what you have to do to earn it. Among other things, some of which are Symbolic (Head!People and Opera House, etc.) and some of which are Literal, but most of which are not relevant to this essay and are in fact essays of their own.

And third, there’s something…visceral and emotional and horrifying about the idea of a traitor, even an unwitting one, as opposed to an outside enemy agent, even an infiltrator. Especially when the scale of the destruction is just...unfathomable. And that almost certainly plays into how these arcs play out.

So, to jump back to the overall Theme of this essay which I swear existed at some point...where does forgiveness come into this? Where does likeability come into this? Because Caprica is definitely more likeable than Baltar. And some of that, again, comes down to the narrative structure of their arcs.

There’s not actually a whole lot established about Caprica’s personality during the miniseries--there’s the mercy kill, there’s her relationship with Baltar, there’s her confession about what she did. There were any number of ways to build on that, when bringing her back into the story, depending on what role they want her to play.

And so, given the arc she does have, from the moment Caprica reappears, in order for us to buy into what she’s doing, to buy into her as a Good Guy Now, she has to be likeable. We have to emphasize the sweeter parts of her personality, show why she regrets what she did and wants better for her people, and for humanity, too. Show the softness underneath what we saw in the miniseries, and show it right away, in ways the audience can’t ignore. And also, put a lot of focus in her first episode of the series proper on her reactions to how her role in the attack is discussed. Both by her fellow Cylons (who view her as a Hero), and by Head!Baltar (who repeatedly reminds her of the cost of her actions).

I do also have to point out that, once she makes her decision/Heel Face Turn, she sticks to it. Her choices are, while not always the correct ones (all too often they are very wrong), definitely well-intentioned and her thought process behind them is documented as such. She doesn’t backslide much if at all, she is consistently a voice for peace and mercy and reconciliation, even when her initial ally in that cause starts to have second thoughts. ((ETA: having rewatched the first half of season 3 since writing this essay; this isn’t 100% accurate--after the attempt at reconciliation predictably goes Very Very Bad, she does waver a bit, but she’s still pretty clearly and consistently positioned as wanting some kind of peaceful ending rather than pursuing continued violence/war with humanity. Even when she’s in a position to think that they might have to resume hostilities--that they have been attacked with a bioweapon--everything about the situation clearly upsets her and she does not want any of this.))

That being said, after Downloaded, that part of her history (i.e., her role in the attack) is…not ignored, exactly, but it doesn’t really get discussed or focused on as much, to the best of my recollection (I admittedly haven’t done a full rewatch yet; I’m not allowed to until I finish a fic project for another fandom, haha). She does get some backlash later, but it’s more related to her Being A Cylon in general, rather than anything she herself as an individual specifically did (again, as far as I remember). Basically, IIRC, it’s as if the narrative, having established and taken as a point of fact that She Is Going To Be Redeemed/We Like Her Now, quietly de-emphasizes the fact that she, knowingly and deliberately, used a man she claimed (and came) to love to slaughter billions of people.

(And I emphasize both the personal betrayal and the genocide for a reason, but I’ll get to that in a minute.)

And then you have Baltar. While he does immediately and genuinely regret what he did, a lot of his focus, especially at first, is self-preservation. Both emotionally and legally/physically. He’s a selfish bastard and a lot of his character development comes from learning how not to be. And he backslides, frequently. And his role in the attack, while not always exactly focal, is always in the background and a Constant Presence around him, in a way that Caprica’s isn’t. Even if the full truth about what he did mostly remains secret from the rest of the cast, he (and the audience) is never allowed to forget. And so his guilt, his shame, and his frantic denial/blame-shifting to avoid confronting what he did drive a significant chunk of his choices, especially during the first two seasons (there’s some other Stuff that happens later).

Also, I mentioned Head!Baltar pointedly snarking Caprica earlier; Head!Six uses…different tactics with Baltar. Like, slamming his face into a mirror different. She has a great line at one point; “Just remember I have your heart--and I can rip it out of your chest if I need to.” That...pretty much sums up their relationship right there, which just makes the moments where she’s affectionate and almost kind super unsettling.

And, okay, some of that might be a reflection of his subconscious desire to be punished for what he did, even if he can’t face it head-on. It’s also pretty telling that, the few times he does directly address it, even at almost the end of the series, it’s pretty clear that he hasn’t forgiven himself.

But it’s still. It’s a Thing.

So, that’s where things stand in terms of their roles in the attack on the Colonies. To reiterate: she knew what she was doing and acted with intent, he had no idea what she was and facilitated the destruction of his people by accident/because he did not think it through; the ways they respond to their guilt are…well, Caprica’s are a lot neater/more palatable/more likeable than Baltar’s, but that at least in part reflects their respective roles in the story.

But now let’s talk about their personal relationship because. Hoo boy. Are there Essays I could write about these two.

(Again, I want to reiterate that I love them and I want them to be happy; when they get their happy ending in the series, it feels earned and it fits where they stand at that point. …actually, if we ignore the coda, I would argue that pretty most of the endings we see in Daybreak fit the applicable characters and their story arcs with a couple of exceptions, but that’s another essay for another day.)

Anyway. Back on topic.

A lot of their initial relationship was based on a lie, Caprica’s lie as to who she was and what she was doing. But still, they were together for close to two years, and they did fall in love. And then the way she used him and broke him is…I mean, it’s obviously a small thing next to the actual genocide, but it’s not nothing, either.

And then they reunite, a little less than two years later. Baltar is now President of the Colonies (in what was a spectacularly bad decision on everyone’s part, including his); Caprica’s faction has won out in terms of internal Cylon politics (at least for the moment); the Cylons come to a planet where the human survivors have settled (New Caprica), ostensibly to attempt a reconciliation and alliance.

This. Uh. Does not go well. For anyone involved.

Baltar surrenders, and spends the next four months as basically a puppet for the Cylon regime, which very quickly devolves into a brutal occupation; he’s arguably a prisoner in all but name, with the polite fiction that he’s a free man/head of an independent government; even as he and Caprica attempt to pick up the pieces of their personal romantic relationship.

Which then leads to the…Situation with D’Anna. After New Caprica, he’s a more literal prisoner on a Cylon Basestar, and he ends up...he basically survives being tortured by D’Anna (another Cylon), by having mind-sex with Head!Six and in so doing kind of accidentally seducing D’Anna (it……it actually does kind of make sense in context? It’s all kinds of fucked-up but it does make sense. Kind of).

Initially, the three of them have a sort of poly/triad relationship, but for various Arc Plot/etc. reasons, Baltar starts gravitating towards D’Anna and sort of…doesn’t exactly dump Caprica, but does pull away from her pretty definitively and abruptly.

(NB: D’Anna is far from the first other woman he’s slept with, either while they were together before the attack or during the years they were separated. Can’t really talk about the pitfalls in their personal relationship without talking about Baltar being…uh…let’s just say it would be easier to list the women he doesn’t sleep with. He likes sex, he seems to be good at it, and he certainly has it with any woman who’s interested. To put things in perspective, I made a Cylon pairing mix ages ago (i.e., a playlist with a song for every canonical pairing that involved at least one Cylon, except for three that the person I made it for specifically requested I leave out for squick reasons) and this dude, who might I remind you is not a Cylon, was the individual who appeared most frequently on it. The man is a slut, there’s no way around it. But he also never claims not to be? And it’s also unclear whether or not their pre-Fall relationship was supposed to be Exclusive, especially when there is sort of a line drawn between Casual Sex and Love/a Relationship, though Head!Six is technically the one to draw it. Besides, D’Anna is the only other lover/rival Caprica actually seems to care about (apart from a later dig about not wanting to join his harem, but I’ll get to that in a bit), probably because she’s the only one who really came between them.)

Anyway. Part of what he’s doing here, with D’Anna, is a) trying to survive and/or b) find some sort of meaning and/or stability in his life (again, the Arc Plot and what he and D’Anna are doing there is a major factor in their relationship), and it’s not like…it’s kind of hard for me, personally, to judge his choices with regard to his relationship with D’Anna in and of itself, just because of the context (he’s her prisoner, the initial seduction was to get her to stop torturing him, etc.). But at the same time, he does handle the situation in his typical selfish, thoughtless fashion and in pretty much the most hurtful way possible, as far as Caprica is concerned. I also can’t really judge her for being hurt and pissed at him for how things went down.

And then the two of them end up getting captured by the human fleet, which leads to the whole bit where Caprica almost ends up agreeing to be a witness for the prosecution in his treason trial, but is talked out of it because some part of her does still love him, even if she’s Not Happy with him right now (Interestingly, Head!Baltar is still hanging around, which might or might not indicate something about her deeper feelings). (Also, I should note that the trial is not actually related to the initial attack; this is all about stuff on New Caprica during the occupation, which is its own special kind of fucked-up and…honestly, this entire debate about likeability vs. forgiveness vs. redemption is one of the focuses of the trial arc, and while I’m not actually going to go into further detail right now, it’s actually part of why I chose to talk about these two for this essay, because it is in fact the reason he gets acquitted--because he’s being transparently used as a scapegoat because he’s Not Super Likeable while other people who have done things at least as bad as what he’s currently being accused of have been forgiven out of necessity. The full text of the speech in question is kind of amazing**).

Anyway, after the trial arc, Caprica ends up involved with someone else for a while (while Baltar sort of accidentally acquires a cult/founds a religion/sleeps with a handful of other women …okay that last one wasn’t accidental “I don’t understand did you trip?” /obligatory West Wing joke). Anyway, uh, Caprica’s new relationship ends when her new partner’s wife returns after being presumed dead for a couple years and he goes back to her, along with some associated Hardcore Cylon Drama.

At that point, and there’s no way around it, Baltar fucks up royally, in that has terrible timing and basically tries to immediately get back together with her now that he’s out of prison and she’s single again and she turns him down (this is where the harem comment comes in). In part because the way he goes about it was extremely insensitive, in part because…well, she hasn’t had much/any contact with him for the last like year or more (though she’s certainly heard about what he’s up to; he’s a Known Figure and people Talk About Him and also he just sort of...keeps doing things that draw attention, some of which is Head!Six’s fault and some of which is on him), and given that his character arc is So Much Messier than hers, she assumes he’s still nowhere near the point where she’s at on that journey and she Can’t Deal With him until he is. She needs/wants more from him than she thinks he’s capable of giving her at this point. And she’s…both wrong and not wrong about where he stands, so to speak; he’s closer than she thinks but still has some processing/choices to make before he’s Solid.

But then he volunteers to join the Final Battle as a foot soldier, essentially--and he does it at the last minute, with no witnesses, rather than when the public call for volunteers goes out--and they have a Moment while they’re getting into position and waiting for things to start, and over the course of...like...fifteen seconds of dialogue, realize they’re now finally on the same page for the first time, like, ever; they share a kiss and…after that, I don’t think they appear separately for the entire last two episodes of the series? …no, wait, there’s that one bit with him and Adama and Cottle and I forget who else there’s like five people there after they land, I don’t think she’s there for that. But other than that, they’re basically inseparable until they walk off together, having reached the end of their arcs as maybe still not good people, but at least people who earned their peace and happiness and ending with their soulmate in the end.

...you know, I’m not normally into Soulmate AUs, but I actually kind of think in the context of BSG, especially with multiple Cylon copies, it could be Interesting??? …uh, anyway, tangent aside

Anyway, now that I’ve summarized everything, here’s what sticks out to me, through all this personal Drama between the two of them:

It’s very similar to their arcs with regard to atonement for their roles in the destruction of the Colonies. Meaning, there’s a huge emphasis on how Baltar has to earn forgiveness; and any wrongs Caprica commits are quietly de-emphasized.

Like. Don’t get me wrong. Baltar is kind of a shitty boyfriend, even allowing for some of the extreme external circumstances shaping their relationship (especially during Season 3). (Although I would argue that he’s not actually the shittiest boyfriend on the show but that’s another essay for another time, lol.) And Caprica absolutely does need to forgive him for the ways he hurt her, and he does need to do some serious work on himself to get to a point where she can. I am not in any way trying to deny that.

But also--she doesn’t exactly have the moral high ground here. She manipulated him into destroying his entire civilization (no, she didn’t force his hand, and yes, while he didn’t know her actual reason, he did know that at least part of why she had approached him was to gain access to the defense mainframe, but she did put him in that position while claiming to love him and that’s…not an easy thing to get past); when their relationship picked up on New Caprica, she was the only person he could turn to for any kind of positive contact (and he was also kind of a prisoner); he was a somewhat more literal prisoner for six months while their relationship briefly lapsed and then resumed (with the addition of the whole D’Anna situation)…

Honestly? The question of whether or not he can/should forgive her for the ways she hurt him is not an invalid one. And yet it never really comes up. For all the denial and blame-shifting and mental gymnastics he does to avoid confronting his own guilt (and this dude is like the reigning champion Olympic gold medalist in mental gymnastics lol), he never once blames her? The one person he arguably could shift blame to? He tries to find ways to justify his actions/deny his responsibility by pinning it on the Universe or God or whatever (”nobody blames the flood”), but never on her.

Some of it is probably like…the enormity of what happened. How can you blame one single person for all of that destruction? Big problems need big answers, and the Universe or God is maybe big enough to wrap around that tragedy.

Some of it is actually down to personality, I think. Because, while Baltar absolutely does get pissed at people, and will definitely make snap decisions out of Spite and then stick to them when he cools off rather than swallowing his pride and backing down (which explains...like...75% of career in politics lol), he doesn’t…really hold grudges or stay mad? Not at anyone, no matter how much cause they give him. For example, even when he reconnects with D’Anna a year or so after everything went down, there’s no trace of resentment or lingering hard feelings on his part. (Like I said a while back, both he and Caprica have their moments, and his ability to forgive a lot is one of his better traits.)

And, you know, some of it is because she does have a faster/smoother journey in terms of working on herself than he does, so there’s never really a time where he’s in a position where he can hold out and wait for her to earn his forgiveness, because what could she do that she hasn’t already done? Especially given where he’s sitting at any given moment. (The exception being their first reunion, where he can’t ask that of her for other/unrelated reasons.)

Some of it is also the way her crimes are inextricably bound up with his; in order to condemn her he’d have to face up to his role in it; and he can’t do that. He’s too deep in his denial.

Some of it also probably goes back to Head!Six, and the way his relationship with her works. Her combination of dominating and abusing him and breaking him down, along with building up his ego as an Instrument of God; he loves her and he’s terrified of her and she doesn’t really leave him room in his head to blame the woman whose face she borrowed to manipulate him in her turn.

And a lot of it is just…he loves her. Despite everything she’s done, he loves her. My personal belief/headcanon/what have you is that him forgiving her goes without saying. In order to blame her, he’d have to stop loving her, and that’s something he can’t do. Even in the moments where he gets past his own denial and can face what actually happened. What they did.

After all of that, I don’t know that I have any kind of intelligent Conclusion to make here, because I think both of their journeys are fulfilling and, like I said, I think they earned their happy ending together, in the end. Other than that…well, here’s an Example of how these types of narrative tools can actually be used, and in fact the same redemption archetype, starting forward from the same (or at least a very similar) point, can be used in very different ways. And while likeability/forgiveness is certainly a factor in what happens, it’s definitely not the only thing in play, or even necessarily the most important.

So, now that we’ve looked at different types of redemption arcs, and gone into some depth with a couple of relevant examples--where does that leave us, with this question of redemption and likeability and forgiveness, and how they relate to one another?

Again, I have to say...I don’t know, lol. It’s a complicated question, and a lot of it is personal taste and personal ethics. And, to a point, what the creators are trying to do or say/how the character/storyline is framed. ...and also how successful the creators/writers are at pulling it off; can’t leave out the fact that some of these (especially Hero In Waiting), if badly written, can backfire hard.

But if we look at the different kinds of redemption arcs, and the characters who embody them, in different contexts and different media, reducing it down to ‘a redemption arc is only Real/Effective if it goes All The Way into a Hero In Waiting type’ is…closing off a lot of story possibilities. And ignoring the narrative value in a more uneven arc, or even in an otherwise Evil person having one shining moment where they do the right thing.

It’s true, that it’s easier to forgive someone and declare them Redeemed if they’re likeable. If they’re set up from the beginning as a Hero In Waiting; or if they’re one of the lighter/softer/more optimistic variants of an Enemy Of My Enemy/Face Of The Enemy/even Make Them Work For It. But these three concepts--forgiveness, likeability, redemption--while related, are not synonyms. You don’t need all three to have a successful, compelling arc where someone makes better choices and turns to the light.

Even if it’s just one choice. Even if it’s just for one moment. That’s still a story worth telling.

*This is, of course, Ignoring some later Reveals and some of the wacky mythology surrounding the Head!People for the sake of ‘this essay is really frakking long already and most of that isn’t super relevant to the topic at hand’

**For reference, the quote: “Did the defendant make mistakes? Sure, he did. Serious mistakes. But did he actually commit any crimes? Did he commit treason? No. I mean, it was an impossible situation. When the Cylons arrived, what could he possibly do? What could anyone have done? I mean, ask yourself, what would you have done? What would you have done? If he had refused to surrender, the Cylons would’ve probably nuked the planet right then and there. So did he appear to cooperate with the Cylons? Sure. So did hundreds of others. What’s the difference between him and them? The President issued a blanket pardon. They were all forgiven. No questions asked. Colonel Tigh. Colonel Tigh used suicide bombers, killed dozens of people. Forgiven. Lieutenant Agathon and Chief Tyrol. They murdered an officer on the Pegasus. Forgiven. The Admiral? The Admiral instituted a military coup d’etat against the President. Forgiven. And me? Well, where do I begin? I shot down a civilian passenger ship, the Olympic Carrier. Over a thousand people on board. Forgiven. I raised my weapon to a superior officer, committed an act of mutiny. Forgiven. And then on the very day when Baltar surrendered to those Cylons, I, as Commander of Pegasus, jumped away. I left everyone on that planet alone, undefended, for months! I even tried to persuade the Admiral never to return. To abandon you all there for good. If I’d had my way, nobody would’ve made it off that planet. I’m the coward. I’m the traitor. I’m forgiven. I’d say we’re very forgiving of mistakes. We make our own laws now, our own justice. We’ve been pretty creative at finding ways to let people off the hook for everything from theft to murder. And we’ve had to be. Because…because we’re not a civilization anymore. We are a gang. And we’re on the run. And we have to fight to survive. We have to break rules. We have to bend laws. We have to improvise. But not this time, no. Not for Gaius Baltar. No. You, you have to die. You have to die, because…well, because we don’t like you very much. Because you’re arrogant. Because you’re weak. Because you’re a coward. And we the mob, we want to throw you out the airlock because you didn’t stand up to the Cylons, and get yourself killed in the process. That’s justice now. You should’ve been killed back on New Caprica, but since you had the temerity to live, we’re gonna execute you now. That’s justice! […] This case…this case is built on emotion, on anger, bitterness, vengeance. But most of all, it is built on shame. It’s about the shame of what we did to ourselves back on that planet. And it’s about the guilt of those of us who ran away. Who ran away. And we are trying to dump all that guilt and all that shame onto one man, and then flush him out the airlock and hope that that just gets rid of it all. So that we can live with ourselves. But that won’t work. That won’t work. That’s not justice. Not to me. Not to me.”

#fandom #star wars #battlestar galactica #harry potter #originally posted february 2022

18 notes · View notes

kolachess · 4 years

Text

DMBJ 2010 Nangongling Interview Translated

I’ve finally (poorly) translated the infamous Nangongling interview with Nanpai Sanshu (aka Xu Lei, author of DMBJ)!

This is where that famous quote, ‘My lifetime, in exchange for you a decade of innocence and purity’ comes from. More on that here.

Interview Context: First off, in case you don’t already know, NPSS started DMBJ off as a fanfiction. And more on that here. Hence, his style of engagement with fans will be much more direct and why he’s very... knowing of the fandom world. And why the interview does not hesitate to ask about pingxie.

This interview seems to have been conducted somewhere on the internet in 2010 or nearing it. Although I couldn’t find more confirmation on its ‘authenticity’ so to speak, I also haven’t seen anything to the contrary that this might be made up. (Chinese internet is a strange, strange place...)

Here’s the version I’m basing this off of.

Translation Context:

Ok first, I’m a native Chinese speaker, but grew up in the US and not fluent in reading / writing. I am not at all familiar with a lot of idioms, let alone internet slang and pop culture references (of which there are a lot in this interiew), so there will be a lot of guessing. Anyone who knows better, free free to point it out.

Text Legend:

Parenthesis indicate actions / reactions. E.g. (smiles awkwardly)

[TN: ...] are my notes

[??? some words ???] indicate major uncertainty in translations

== or =w= and such symbols are emojis from the interviewer

Original text sometimes had random forward slashes in between what seems should be one word / term. My guess is it might be to skirt censorship?

Names Context:

They use a lot of different ways to refer to the various characters and NPSS

The interviewer calls NPSS ‘Your Majesty’ or ‘Sanshu’ a lot. But Sanshu can also refer to Wu Sanxing... so it gets confusing a bit.

Zhang Qiling can be anything from Menyouping to Pingzi to Lao Meng to Meng... just... anytime there’s ‘Meng’ or ‘Ping’ or ‘Zhang’ it’s safe to assume they’re referring to ZQL.

Wu Xie is often just Wu Xie or Tianzhen

Nangongling is the name of the interviewer

Interviewer:

Interviewer: Your Majesty, come interview. After this, we’ve got to sleep.

NPSS: OK. Let’s go. Be gentle.

Interviewer: Oh Your Majesty, you’re so shy.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: If we may ask Sanshu, is DMBJ ultimately a tragic or happy ending?

NPSS: For some, a tragedy. For some, a regular drama. For some, a comedy. For some, an absurdity.

Interviewer: That’s no different from not answering! ==

NPSS: But that’s the correct answer.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: What’s the relationship between Tianzhen and ‘It’? Your Majesty, care to give a spoiler? ==

NPSS: No relationship. [TN: ‘No relationship’ and ‘No problem’ are the same phrase, hence the subsequent answer.]

Interviewer: Then go ahead and tell us. =w=

NPSS: No relationship.

Interviewer: … No relationship?

NPSS: Yup. No relationship.

Interviewer: … ==

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: If we may ask Sanshu about the plan for DMBJ, when might you finish it?

NPSS: 2010.

NPSS: The problem is…

Interviewer: What?

NPSS: There is an unexpected situation.

Interviewer: Don’t give us cliffhanger sentences. Just tell us. ==

NPSS: Maybe [??? Something about being possessed ???]. I might work on it till 2050.

Interviewer: Hey!

NPSS: It’s great.

Interviewer: Might as well make it a Gundam series. [TN: Gundam is referring to the Japanese anime series. I guess they’re making a joke about how he should turn it into a never ending universe / entire franchise.]

NPSS: Conan never grows up. Wu Xie will never get old either. [TN: Conan is referring to Detective Conan, another Japanese anime series.]

NPSS: Even when you all become old, Wu Xie in the book will still be pursuing the answer to all the mysteries.

Interviewer: And if it’s with Lao Meng forever mutually loving and caring, then we have no objections.

NPSS: Fifty years, Golden Wedding [TN: Think he’s referring to Golden Wedding as the 50th anniversary].

Interviewer: Yes, yes. Don’t know if there will be a son. (Tea) (Silence) [TN: I guess the actions indicate ‘sipping tea awkwardly in silence’]

Interviewer: Alright, His Majesty has become shy. Let’s continue onto the next question.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: If we may ask what the Menyouping’s ending will be? Will he find his memories? Continue to live on? Your Majesty can’t because of Classmate 370 [TN: Rumors are this is NPSS’s classmate? Potential prototype for ZQL? See ref.] once scorned your [??? finger ???], you end up holding a grudge?

NPSS: Whether or not you can ‘fujoshi’ for 50 years is uncertain. [TN: Word is ‘fu’, which literal = ‘rotten’; but refers to fujoshi. AKA he’s questioning how long they’ll ship pingxie for.]

Interviewer: No worries. In the future, there will appear a lot of Li Yinhe grannies. [TN: Seems to refer to this LGBTQ activist.]

NPSS: Hands / feet have not fallen off, OK? [TN: I’m not sure what this is referring to lol. Maybe some play on the rotten nature of fujoshi.]

Interviewer: Hands / feet… the whole body?

NPSS: The meaning of ‘entirely not fallen off’ is ‘entirely not fallen off’. [TN: Idk I’m lost...]

Interviewer: … ==

Interviewer: Your Majesty, your resentment for 370 is too deep…

NPSS: Menyouping’s ending will definitely surprise you all. It’s definitely not something that can be conceptually considered at all.

Interviewer: Could it be that he really will be mutually loving and caring with Tianzhen? == It’s not in concept…

NPSS: Hn. That’s a nice thought. [TN: Tone reads a little like ‘ha, as if’.]

NPSS: Like, turn him into a woman or something. Or is it Wu Xie who turns into a woman?

NPSS: “Actually, I’m a flat-chested Mary Sue.” [TN: Lol, yes. They refer to Mary Sue omg.]

Interviewer: … hey now… == Speaking of Mary Sues, after Yun Cai is it Xiu Xiu? Your Majesty, you wouldn’t gift Yun Cai to Lao Meng, and Xiu Xiu to Wu Xie, right? ==

NPSS: Maybe I’ll write Lily stories. [TN: I think Lily stories refers to femslash / stories between two females.]

NPSS: Don’t underestimate my pervertedness.

Interviewer: I’ve never underestimated it… (serious)

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: If we may ask what Sanshu’s current weight is? Are you losing weight? Hahahah (Hands akimbo)

NPSS: Now it’s probably a little less than 200 jin. [TN: ~220 pounds.] I’m always in the middle of losing weight, but fat really likes me.

Interviewer: Your Majesty, you should continue to make effort to cosplay Pangzi.

NPSS: I think I will exceed Pangzi’s category soon, cosplay a huge monster instead.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: When will the DMBJ movie be released? Who will play Pingzi? To be honest, I don't want to watch. ==

NPSS: Probably around 2015. I don’t know. Hope it’s not [??? black people ???]. [TN: Yeah that’s what it says, but idk if it’s a reference to type of personalities or it actually is referring to skin color. Wouldn’t surprise me if it were a racist remark. China, sigh.]

Interviewer: Could it be there really will be a movie?

NPSS: Probably.

Interviewer: In America?

NPSS: I can’t say I understand / know Hollywood’s situation.

Interviewer: So it’s America… (Tears running) Too tragic!

NPSS: Hei Xiaoge [TN: Lol I think he’s saying a black young lad] is also not bad.

Interviewer: No! No! No!

NPSS: A-ning has already been designated the female lead by a foreign scriptwriter.

Interviewer: Oooh ~~~ We don’t want to see ghosts ~~~ [TN: Idk what this expression is…]

NPSS: Little D might be able to accept. [TN: Idk who Little D is… might just be a slang way of writing ‘little brother’, in which case, I still don’t know if that’s referring to himself or someone else.]

Interviewer: I guess he will squeak along with me. [TN: Again… I’m lost.] Nope cannot anymore. Next question.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Will there be romance?

NPSS: [??? Eloquent love ???] will have porn scenes.

Interviewer: … who and who?

NPSS: Not sure yet. One party should not be human.

Interviewer: Heavy tastes, Your Majesty.

NPSS: Tentacles.

Interviewer: …… Your Majesty, are you playing some XXOO games recently? [TN: I’m just gonna assume some hentai shit here.]

NPSS: Nope. Haven’t played in a long time. Got any good suggestions?

Interviewer: [??? The imperial doctor has ghost glasses ???] [TN: Guess it’s the title?] Try it (rubs hands).

NPSS: I’m currently still holding out strong.

Interviewer: Gee… what a pity.

NPSS: You can train your boyfriend.

Interviewer: He’s already very calm.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Pingzi is so good to Wu Xie, any particular reason? I mean deep underlying reason? For example, knowing the truth about Wu Xie’s life / existence or something. Or being entrusted by Wu Xie’s family or something. Or he thinks he’s brought Wu Xie harm and wants to redeem himself or something.

NPSS: Just doesn’t want to disturb.

Interviewer: Huh? What?

NPSS: Don’t want to disturb.

Interviewer: Disturb what?

NPSS: Tianzhen Wu Xie [TN: Remember, this means ‘innocent, naive, and pure’]. The prompt is very deep now. [TN: Sounds like he’s saying he’s given a deep hint now.]

Interviewer: Oh (Actually someone who doesn’t really understand). [TN: GLAD I’M NOT ALONE! IT’S NOT A TRANSLATION ISSUE!]

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Are there new Lunar New Year Celebratory Extras this year? [TN: NPSS writes occasional extras, and often will publish on special occasions like Lunar New Year.]

NPSS: 2010’s publishing work was too heavy. Can’t celebrate. I even wrote the outline already.

Interviewer: That’s such a pity. What about Tibetan Sea Flower. I’m still waiting for the lama that has JQ with Lao Meng. [TN: They use the term JQ here… seems like slang for something like bromance.]

NPSS: Ah little living Buddha… probably can’t write. [TN: Yeah idk what that really means…] Due to religious issues, living Buddha’s chrysanthemum is very sensitive. Huge crawling creatures will come and bombard. [TN: IDK BUT CHRYSANTHEMUMS ARE OFTEN EUPHEMISMS FOR THE ANUS AND GAY BUTT SEX SO IDK.]

Interviewer: Hey… ==

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Qinling Sacred Tree arc was too mysterious. Will Sanshu later be connected to the Sacred Tree? If so, how will you do it? I think DMBJ is not as thrilling / exciting as before. Can you still return to that previous style?

NPSS: There are no plans at present to connect Qinling. I need to settle Meng first. The core of what’s being written is his business. The excitement of DMBJ is not found in the novel but in the heart of the reader. The reader will upgrade / improve while reading.

Interviewer: Is that so… (Eats late night food) [TN: Idk what this expression means.]

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Will you still publish new books and dig new plot holes? == Besides this official vest of Nanpai Sanshu, do you have anything else? Like diving party? == [TN: Yeah idk what that means…]

NPSS: Doesn’t returning to the original style of writing offer you some thrilling / excitement? Your heart has already upgraded, it’s just that the novel is still like that.

Interviewer: Heart! ==||| [TN: Yes, this is another face lol]

NPSS: There’s still some more. Like Nangongling. [TN: Name of the interviewer, but I have no idea what this means.]

Interviewer: The watch drags me underwater. [TN: I got nothing *shrugs*.]

NPSS: Actually are we answering our own questions?

Interviewer: Haha, fun right?

NPSS: Indeed. Could it be a split personality? Never thought my hidden personality is a Fujoshi. Tragedy.

Interviewer: Hey I didn’t say my hidden personality was a perverted uncle yet. (Two bored idiots stare in silence for a few seconds)

Interviewer: Enough. Next.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Pingzi’s age… is it ‘uncle’ or ‘grandpa’? Anyway, I know it’s not ‘brother’. [TN: They’re referring to which generation basically.]

NPSS: Taizu Grandfather [TN: Basically hella old… great-great-great-great-great-grandfather?]

Interviewer: Wow… paleontology relic?

NPSS: Age must be in the triple digits.

Interviewer: Old monster! I like it! Just afraid that next to Tianzhen, he seems younger (talking to self)

NPSS: Tianzhen is even older. Quadruple digits.

Interviewer: Really is younger? ==

NPSS: They all end up in the museum display.

Interviewer: Does it cost anything to visit? Museums are now free / open to visit.

NPSS: After hour events charge fees. There are special programs, but the TV station will not allow them to be broadcasted.

Interviewer: Strip tease / dancing?

NPSS: No. It’s the old monster [TN: Probably referring to ZQL] performing Xiangsheng [TN: Some Chinese duo comedy schtick]. Xie Ling [TN: I think this is Wu Xie + Zhang Qiling?] social / not-famous Xiangsheng actors.

Interviewer: Looks like it will be Two-Person Turn Opera [TN: Idk if there is an English term for this… but another type of skit it seems.]

NPSS: Wear the dancing shoes. [TN: I think it’s just this?]

Interviewer: … It’s so cold… Your Majesty…

NPSS: Zhang Wenling, Wu Wenxie [TN: Lol I guess this would be their comedy stage names. It’s extra / intentionally stupid because all he did was insert ‘wen’ which means ‘literature’.]

Interviewer: Enough… Don’t worry about this anymore. I’m gonna move onto the next question.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Is Wu Xie the most tragic character in the entire novel? Is it inevitable that, between him and Pingzi, one of them will have to die in the end?

NPSS: Wu Xie’s fate as the most tragic is a set tragedy, but Lao Zhang doesn’t have it easy either.

Interviewer: And then?

NPSS: Delayed the inevitable tragedy.

Interviewer: And then they encountered tragedy together?

NPSS: Using [his] own lifetime to exchange you another decade of innocence and purity.

Interviewer: … (wailing) (too stunned) Lao Meng [??? became the Virgin Mary???] (smashes wall)

NPSS: I also want to get a cult.

Interviewer: Does Lao Meng really not have a crush on Tianzhen? It can’t continue like this. DMBJ is still a serious / proper drama after all.

NPSS: Nah. It’s serious / proper.

Interviewer: But what you said is crooked.

NPSS: Alright. Then let’s put it this way.

Interviewer: How?

NPSS: Comrade Zhang Qiling sacrificed his own time to save and prevent the disillusionment of a youth who was about to go astray. [TN: Yeah… not too sure about the implications of this.]

Interviewer: …. Your Majesty, you [??? use soulmates ???] [TN: I’m really not sure about this… context and definitions I found seems to indicate it’s a soulmate like thing, but also used kind of queerbaity?]

NPSS: I’ve been working real closely with soulmate recently.

Interviewer: We can tell. Next question. Best leave some room for free thought.

NPSS: It’d be fine if you just don’t post it.

Interviewer: This is iron proof of JQ! [TN: Again, some internet slang for bromance / malexmale CPs or something.]

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Are all the incomprehensible things that happened so far man-made? Or will it be explained by the supernatural?

NPSS: There’s nothing incomprehensible.

Interviewer: Probably in reference to Qinling.

NPSS: Oh. Doesn’t that count as a spoiler?

Interviewer: … then let’s skip again. Actually, I thought you already forgot about Qinling.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: What is Pangzi’s little secret?

NPSS: Xiao Pang’s [TN: Little Fat’s] tragic past.

Interviewer: What… Pangzi is also quite tragic.

NPSS: Probably a ‘fought with his best friend over a woman and was hurt very badly’ kind of relationship. Pangzi had a very simple but tragic love.

Interviewer: Sad…. == You really can’t tell…

NPSS: A woman he promised to take care of for a lifetime and a brother he can’t help but save.

Interviewer: Pangzi has sublimed (victory fist] [TN: I assume ‘sublime’, which literally means converting from solid directly to gas, is just representative of a massive promotion or rise into awesomeness.]

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: I’m always thinking of Ershu’s mysterious air. Does he know a lot of things that others don’t? I also want to know what Wu Xie’s dad does.

NPSS: [??? Location scouting ???]

Interviewer: Ershu?

NPSS: He knows some.

Interviewer: Then what about his dad.

NPSS: Location scouting. Totally innocent. Just like Jesus’s old man.

Interviewer: What kind analogy is that… == Next.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Hey Sanshu, on Dec 9, 2009 at 02:58 in the morning I dreamt of you. Did you dream of me? …. == Your Majesty, your fans [TN: Yeah idk.]

NPSS: That night I seem to have pulled an all-nighter. I wouldn’t mind dreaming again tonight.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Will Pingzi eventually return to being a normal human? Live on from the age of 18? Has he had a lover / children before? Yun Cai? Is Pangzi the boss or the person coming to supervise the boss (Tianzhen)?

Interviewer: Lao Meng… I’ve long since been speechless towards him. By the way, was he always this kind of stone in the latrine? [TN: I guess a saying about how he’s stuffy and expressionless per usual.]

NPSS: No. It used to be really bad.

Interviewer: …How bad…

NPSS: Like a Tibetan horse. [TN: Lol this is the literal translation but when I Googled it, Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho came up and hahaha I guess it kind of makes sense as an analogy?]

Interviewer: Your Majesty, your definition of really bad is Kurama’s level huh…= =|| So he wasn’t born latrine stone… [TN: Ok, so background on Kurama - an infamous fox demon thief escaped into the body of a newborn child because his spirit was weakened after being hunted, and so he cohabits the body with this boy… I’m not entirely sure of the reference jousting here.]

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: What happens to Pangzi in the end?

NPSS: Dies of old age.

Interviewer: How mundane!

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: We want to know when DMBJ 7 will be finished?

NPSS: 3/15-20 complete.

Interviewer: (Recommends to everyone not to believe… ==)

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Sanshu, will someone die at the end of DMBJ? (Alright I only care about MengMeng and Tianzhen and believe Pangzi will definitely not be killed off). Also, just how many volumes will there be?

Interviewer: How many die, I also want to know. [TN: Lol they also use the counter word not for humans, but… something else?].

NPSS: There will be someone half-dead. Because it’s a grave-robbing novel, dying completely will never happen. A-ning died and still comes around often, right? [TN: Lol I’m not entirely sure what this is in reference to… first part he’s making a joke that people can become zombies, but second part… I don’t really recall A-ning coming back? Unless he means in mentions? Then again I’m still making my way through the novels.] Just that you go from hero to villain. I still haven’t decided how many to kill off. Anyways for the last volume, with the exception of Wu Xie, [??? anyone can be killed ???].

Interviewer: …Just kill everyone why don’t you; it’s easier. (self-destruct) ==

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: May we ask Sanshu, will Pingzi have emotional drama in the future?

NPSS: No. No time / effort for that, and communication skills are limited.

Interviewer: Ahaha….

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Normally, will Sanshu come check out our Tieba? [TN: Kind of like Chinese reddit I believe?] Do you know the Warm Fox? [TN: I did a quick search, seems like a big fandom name that interprets a lot of the DMBJ stuff.]

NPSS: Don’t know.

Interviewer: As expected…

NPSS: It’s your husband?

Interviewer: Hey don’t involve me in everything. (Flips table)

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Just out of personal interest… I really want to know if Xie Lianhuan likes Wenjin?

NPSS: Uh, yes. Very much so.

Interviewer: Then what about Wu Sanxing?

NPSS: Also likes her.

Interviewer: So it turns out to be a crime of passion… (awakened)

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Is Yun Cai just an inconsequential character? Those Huo family Forbidden Ladies won’t have some sort of emotional development with Pingxie, right? [TN: It does say Huo family Forbidden Ladies… I guess they might be referring to Huo Xiu Xiu, but not sure why there’s multiple. Also, recall that the Forbidden Lady is that tomb creature.]

NPSS: Huo family really did become Forbidden Lady professional household [TN: Maybe like a ‘firm’?]. Yun Cai’s ending is also quite tragic.

Interviewer: Indeed. If transmigrating, don’t transmigrate into DMBJ. [TN: Transmigrate is the common c-drama trope where someone in modern times / average suddenly wakes up in the body of some one in the past or something.] Female beings all have no good outcome.

NPSS: If you’ve already died once, then there’s no need to be afraid.

Interviewer: Oh yeah, will that pink-shirt show face again? (Xlaugh) [TN: Idk this expression, but I think pink-shirt is referring to Xiaohua.]

NPSS: Yes. [??? Young Lord of Solutions ???] Grave-Robbing Prince.

Interviewer: Ahhhhh~~great~~~ >///<~~ The Old Nine Gates [??? Admirals ???], right? … Then Xiao Hei [TN: Hei Xiazi / Hei Yanjing] also has a role?

NPSS: Yup.

Interviewer: The descendants of the Old Nine Gates [??? Admirals ???] are nine golden men? =w=

NPSS: One isn’t. 8 men. 1 woman.

Interviewer: The female is Huo family Forbidden Lady, right?

NPSS: Yup. Counting her.

Interviewer: So that means Tianzhen still has 7 in his harem… Damn, catching up to Cracked Pot’s bunch of shiny guardians. [TN: Idk what that is in reference to.]

NPSS: Cracked Pot? What’s that? [TN: Yay I’m not the only one!]

Interviewer: Cough Cough. Your Majesty, you don’t need to know.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Will Sanshu come to Nanning for an autograph session?

NPSS: Nanning? Need a Nanning bookstore to invite me.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: If we may ask Lao San [TN: Still referring to NPSS], from Wu Xie’s (or Pangzi’s) perspective, where does Menyouping stand? Just a ‘person who stands on our side’? [TN: Refers to when ZQL told them he was a person on their side.]

NPSS: Now it should be like a son’s role / part.

Interviewer: What? Son? ==

NPSS: A very promising son.

Interviewer: Is Wu Xie having the ‘My son has grown up’ old mother mentality?

NPSS: Not really. More like, my son has bad memory or something.

Interviewer: Wu Xie he is indeed [??? person wife ???] [TN: Uh... term used was 人\妻 which when Googled had the first link to pornhub lol. But I think the slang used is actually this.]

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: In Sanshu’s day to day, how often does you use code words? Or is it scrunching your feet and thinking on it for a month or two before coming up with something? [TN: I think they’re referring to Sanshu as in NPSS and not Wu Sanxing Sanshu?]

NPSS: It’s usually simultaneously [??? buckling ???] and eating and typing.

Interviewer: Does it taste good?

NPSS: Often get stomachaches.

Interviewer: …Very toxic huh…

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: Can you fill the bit plothole of Sanshu’s storytelling? Your Majesty, do you have any filled pits? == (Hides face)

NPSS: I promised my father I would fill them before he turns 70.

NPSS: [??? New Year’s Eve pieces ???]

Interviewer: How old is his esteemed Majesty’s father?

NPSS: 60.

Interviewer: …. (speechless)

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: What kind of person is Wu Xie’s mother?

NPSS: Wu Xie’s mother is probably a strong / great woman.

Interviewer: I think so too.

NPSS: Beautiful but strict and fierce, which is why Dad is rather pathetic / a good-for-nothing.

Interviewer: Queens are great. Queens usually marry good-for-nothings. [TN: The ‘queen’ here is literally ‘female king’, so more implies a female ruler.] ==

Interviewer: In the end, did Wu Xie inherit his dad’s genes?

NPSS: Wu Xie also has a very dark personality.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

NPSS: I’m nearly at my limit…

Interviewer: Same here… (sleepy)

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Interviewer: If we may ask Sanshu, if excluding psychological factors, in terms of human nature, do you think Pingxie is suitable?

NPSS: I think, the two of them together. Neither can earn money. Parents on both side would not agree.

Interviewer: Can it not be one steals and the other sells stolen goods?

NPSS: At the very least, Wu Xie needs to get admitted to a civil service position. [TN: These are stable job positions lol]

Interviewer: Looks like Lao Meng eats soft rice! [TN: A saying that refers to men who lives off of women lol. Basically that the woman supports the man instead of the expected vice versa.]

NPSS: And also will need to buy a house in Hangzhou.

Interviewer: … Too realistic… == [TN: Lol no joke this is exactly how couples get ‘permission’ to marry each other by the families… Hangzhou housing prices are not cheap either. I was born there and visit often… those prices have gone uuuuuuup.]

(And the two are dozing off)

NPSS: Let’s end it. I can’t hold on anymore.

Interviewer: Ok…

(The physically / mentally exhausted two rolled off to sleep, interview unfinished… ==)

~ End Interview

Whew that was a long ride. NPSS is such a troll lol... 😅I don’t know nearly enough Chinese slang / internet speak to parse this properly, but the general gist is there.

#dmbj #daomubiji #daomu biji #pingxie #interview #translation #the lost tomb #the lost tomb reboot #zhang qiling #wu xie #wang pangzi #ultimate note

50 notes · View notes

ts1989fanatic · 4 years

Text

Taylor Swift, Britney Spears and the media cycle that demands pain from our pop stars

Emma Clifton 08:30, Feb 16 2021

Britney Spears was robbed of her public image during the height of her fame. Taylor Swift was robbed of her music during the height of hers.

Why does our pop culture system seem so intent on punishing the very women who keep it afloat. Emma Clifton looks at a decade in young singers – and the variously terrible ways they get treated while in the public eye.

There was a theory floated on the podcast You’re Wrong About that ‘fame is abuse’ and you’d be hard pressed not to agree if you were one of the many people who saw the recent New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears, and realised just how badly we as a society treated Britney Spears before, during, and after her rise to fame.

The paparazzi, the media, the comedians – and then the fans and look-i-loos who continued to buy all the magazines that ran headlines about what a train-wreck she was, when really she was just someone in her early twenties, trying to raise two children while being one of the most famous – and hounded – people on the planet.

The documentary discussed at length how we as a pop-culture obsessed society love to build up a talented, attractive young woman and then buy popcorn in preparation of when we can gleefully watch them tumble from grace.

(And it’s not just pop stars, of course; the resplendent rise and then the racist fall of Meghan Markle’s position in public opinion is one of the most recent examples we have of when good headlines go bad.)

When I was working at Creme magazine, between 2009 and 2012, our pages were over-flowing with talented young pop singers: Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, The Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Rihanna, One Direction, Justin Bieber.

When you look back on the decade that has passed by since, time has not been kind to any of these people.

Either the showbiz demon took something from each of them – or they had to completely disappear from sight for years at a time in order to survive. Sometimes both.

There have been eating disorders, drug overdoses, rehab stints, broken marriages, abusive relationships, chronic illnesses. These kids – and they were kids – were so young when they started, they’re already on their fourth or fifth reinventions.

Most of them haven’t hit 30 yet.

And when you’re a female pop star, so many of these reinventions revolve around your sexuality.

Heck, when I was at Creme, Demi, Selena and Miley were part of the ‘purity ring’ club, where they all gushed about staying away from sex until marriage while their stylists dressed them in the tightest clothes possible.

The message from the marketing teams behind each of them was very clear: Sell sex, but don’t ever enjoy it.

This is the same battle Britney faced a decade previously – look like a Lolita, but make sure you never have sex with your long-term boyfriend because then you’ll be expected to cry about the shame of it on national television.

This was also the time of paparazzi trying to take up-skirt photos (exactly what it sounds like) of female actresses as soon as they turned 18; 18 – the age where you can legally have sex in America – was a big deal in pop culture.

There was a countdown for when the Olsen Twins turned 18. When Lindsay Lohan turned 18, Rolling Stone ran a breast-focused cover shoot with the headline: ‘Hot, ready and LEGAL’. And it was just fine! Totally accepted. These girls, they were always up for it, right?

And then we get to Taylor Swift.

Taylor is re-releasing Love Story, the song that made her famous, the song that I first heard in the shower (yes, I had a shower radio) when I was 20 and immediately started crying, because it hit me square in the middle of my pop culture diagram: love songs and references to Romeo and Juliet.

It’s from her second album, Fearless, which she wrote when she was aged 16-18 and which won her four Grammys, including Album of the Year. It’s also an album that no longer belongs to her and she can no longer perform, due to some millionaire f...wittery committed by her former manager. But we’ll get to that.

From 2008 onwards, Taylor became a big deal for her music and then, like it always does for women, her love life became the centre drama.

She never talked about a purity ring (thank God) and she sung pretty openly about sex from her third album onwards (Sparks Fly, an iconic song), plus she had the audacity to date a bunch of boys and look happy while doing so. Naturally, her punishment awaited.

To this day, she is still ridiculed about lyrics she wrote in her first couple of albums… songs she wrote herself when she was literally a teenager.

If I had had written an album when I was a teenager, it would have been about my crush who caught the bus, Kevin from The Backstreet Boys, worrying about my thighs, and, I don’t know, my cystic acne.

I’m just saying – we let powerful men get away with s... they pulled when they were young with the old line ‘boys will be boys! They were just kids!’; it just never seems that generosity is never extended to young women and their far more harmless explorations of teenage sexuality.

Because she had yet to have a public mental health crisis or rehab stint, it was clear that Taylor was never going to be the architect of her own media downfall.

Luckily, one was invented for her. After a long-lasting stoush with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, where absolutely no-one (including Taylor) came out looking good, Taylor suddenly because persona non grata in pop culture and the long-awaited comeuppance began.

And so, she disappeared – in a way that celebrities can do these days. (As a side note, can you imagine how different Britney Spears’ life might have been if she had been allowed to disappear for a couple of years?)

It was only when she released her documentary Miss Americana on Netflix that the public got what it had been craving the whole time – the dark side of Taylor Swift’s fame.

An eating disorder, a sexual assault that she ended up being sued for and, then, the poisoned cherry on top, losing the rights to all her past music thanks to her old manager.

Finally, our hunger for bad news had been satisfied. We had seen her scars and so we could allow her back into the spotlight again.

It’s been interesting watching the roll-out of new music from so many of these female artists during a pandemic: Selena, Demi, Miley, Ariana Grande are among the singers who have eschewed the normal long roll-out of publicity in order to release their own music, without much of the media fanfare that typically accompanies it.

Taylor herself released two albums, without any of the (slightly inane) games she normally includes in the lead-up. You can’t help but wonder that – stripped of their endless touring, performances and appearances, these female artists have found some freedom in being able to just get back to the actual work.

If a pop star releases an album in the middle of a pandemic and no-one is around to give a shit about any of the outfits she’s wearing, does it still count? Turns out, yes.

Following the betrayal of Britney, Taylor, Miley et al by the media, you can see the slow change to have total ownership of their voice these artists have taken.

Social media can be a devil for many reasons but it has overtaken journalists and publicists as the middle man when it comes to how these women get portrayed to the public. Beyoncé has been instrumental in this – it was she who first released an album overnight back in 2013; a move that came without warning and changed the entire industry forever.

She who stopped giving interviews almost entirely, choosing to use her own platforms to get her message and music across. As a result, she’s never been more powerful and she’s never been more private.

As an explicit ‘F... you’ to the powers-that-be who bought her music from under her, Taylor has announced she will be re-recording all of her old albums.

Stories about millionaires against millionaires rarely draw sympathy from a reader but it does highlight how little actually belongs to the artist at the end of the day.

They can have limited control over their image, their public appearances, their private life, their work and their songs. And these are the success stories – these are the people whose names we know.

You have to hope that anyone young and female entering the music business has their eyes very wide open as to just what can go wrong – and what can go wrong even when everything goes right.

The first album Taylor is re-releasing is Fearless, the album that is the most chock-a-block with fairy-tale imagery and glittery optimism.

She’s promised that the songs will be new interpretations on the old originals and that seems only fair.

You can’t help but think that those fairy-tale songs are going to sound a whole lot different being sung by a 31-year-old who’s been through the public wringer then they were as a wide-eyed 16-year-old, on the cusp of making her dreams come true.

41 notes · View notes

rpbetter · 4 years

Text

Hey there, check out this pinned post first!

Thanks for visiting Roleplay Better, where I believe that you can fucking do better! That kind of language, however, is why it is important for you to read this post before proceeding.

This blog and its posts are meant for an adult RPing audience; be over legal, adult age in the USA, 18+. Do not interact by submitting, asking, reblogging, commenting, or liking unless you are over eighteen years of age. By interacting with RPB or me, Vespertine, you are assumed to be following this rule. If you are breaking this rule, you will be blocked.

I have that rule because this blog can/will/does address topics inappropriate for a younger audience. Those can include, but are not limited to:

not safe for work - violence, injury, sexual language, smut, substance use

“dark topics” and themes like violence, unhealthy relationships, mental illness, trauma, graphic injury, dubious consent, substance use, and so forth addressed realistically

foul, sexual, and otherwise “Adult” language

unpopular opinions and approaches about writing, RP, fandoms

“negativity” since literally anything can be, and my whole point here isn’t about holding back; it is likely that, at some point, in some post or another, a shoe will fit you-you need to be mature enough to handle that without taking it as a personal attack on you

images and links that may contain things inappropriate for a younger audience

this blog is founded upon the idea that fiction has reflections in reality, but that fiction does not utterly equate to reality. You should write with realism, your characters should be people in their own right, and you should absolutely be addressing many popular topics responsibly, which is to say realistically. I do not support or otherwise condone purity culture, so while realism is a big deal here, fiction = reality arguments are a no

seriously, you have no idea how fucking salty I am! I try to be fair, reasonable, and mellow with everyone, but it can and does come out.

This blog tags for common, major triggers, but it is not for those easily triggered or particularly sensitive. By proceeding, you take responsibility for yourself...like a mature adult. I expect you to utilize blacklist, unfollow, and block. Tag format is simple, it is literally just the word in most cases, with “cw” and “tw” added to particularly common things. Example, a post containing a breakdown of forms of dubcon will be tagged #dubcon #dubious consent. If that was specifically of a sexual nature, since tumblr is unfriendly to using Not Safe For Work now, I will be using #notsafe for sexual topics. In the event that this needs to change, it will be posted about, the previous tag left intact, so that you may update your blacklist.

You are always welcome to send me an ask or private message requesting a particular trigger be tagged for you. I try to check blogs I see following, especially if I follow back, so that I can tag what you require. However, I’m a person, I’m an ND, ill, busy person though, I do make mistakes!

If you find yourself desirous of telling me to tag in a hateful way, don’t. You will not be responded to with an apology and kindness. Do not be rude, it’s uncalled for when informing someone of a problem or making a request.

I will run the blog largely on a queue, and will not be following many people back. This is not personal! I just like to try to provide content at many different times, have a life elsewhere, and I am so happy that you love your fandom, but it might not be something I’ve enough interest in to have on my dash.

Don’t tumblr message me. Use the inbox or submit.

Due to recent events, I am changing this rule. It’s hard for me to receive messages unexpectedly, and I hate to imply that I’ll be able to get to these quicker because it isn’t the truth. Quicker, better responses come from the inbox. However, there have been too many incidents lately in which people needed to speak privately and had to make that a request. If you’re having a problem and need to vent, request sensitive advice, etc.? It’s alright, go ahead and drop me a PM, y’all. I’ll get back to you as soon as I am able. Please, do not be angry with me if I respond to inbox things or my queue is running! You’re important to me, I just might not have the requisite social cognition and energy you deserve at that time.

Aggressive inbox messages will be responded to in kind. I don’t care if you are on anon or not, if you haven’t an ounce of polite communication skills, I won’t have them either. This is not a “we don’t publish anon hate” blog.

I highly encourage asks and submissions on any and all RP topics, and it’s perfectly alright to be salty as fuck in them, you can totally vent here, but don’t take out your frustration on me or be demanding of me. I am always happy to help with information, advice, or just a response to your venting-it’s important to know someone is listening. However, it may take me a few days to a week to get to you, be patient.

If you are going to vent, leave out usernames. This isn’t a callout or burnbook blog. It’s fine to state characters and fandoms, but if this becomes a problem, it’ll have to change. I don’t want this becoming a salt blog for one or two fandoms I very likely can’t even stand. Practice the fine art of alluding to things, its good experience for your writing! Besides, RPC problems are RPC problems, I promise. It might feel like it’s just your fandom, but there is something relatable in all corners.

I will not overly police comments. Keep the slurs and shit out of it, though. If there is an issue going on pertaining to a serious instance of hate speech, or behavior I, personally, deem as too inappropriate and/or immature to be taking place on my post, I will step in. Otherwise, I expect everyone to be adults in the comments and reblogs too. If you want to argue with each other, that’s your business. If you want to argue with me, I’m not sorry in advance.

Addition to the above: this is not a blog in which it will be tolerated that commentators or those submitting with the URLS are targeted for callouts, shaming, or other instances of bullying. No, I cannot make those people stop bothering you by blocking them, but the least I can do is address that by shutting down their access to this blog and it’s posts by blocking on the URLs I have for them. And I will. Fuck that “we can’t be responsible for” shit. It’s my blog, it’s my content I’m putting out there, I’m not going to just ignore shit like what went down over on COAR, thanks. Not. Cool.

This is definitely not a place for:

people who think giving muses labels, including top/bottom “dynamics,” is a good substitute for character traits, personality, and development

those with no reading comprehension skills

folks dependent upon aesthetics and aesthetics-based purple prose as filler for actual writing

anti-original character/just wants to fuck a FC or canon character club, get the fuck out immediately

y’all who see writing as an obstacle to getting down to action, be that smut, drama, or fight scenes...it’s literally a writing hobby

politics, any manner of phobe or ism, violent/non-inclusive feminists, purity/rpc/fandom/content police of any manner, and exactly any manner of racism, sexism, or religious intolerance - I give not a shit if it’s popular to hate the straights, for example, I neither believe in nor tolerate reactionary classifying of any group as blanket-statement evil

people who are going to tack onto my posts shit like, “it’s okay, OP, you can say x character.” Trust me, if I were talking about one character, I fucking would name drop them, don’t bring me into your fandom drama, I doubt I know or want to know who that anime guy is who looks like 12 other anime guys to me.

About Vespertine

You can call me that, Vespertine. I’d rather you didn’t go with Vesper, but as it is unfortunately so likely to happen, I won’t feed you to the dogs over it either. RPB Mun is also acceptable.

I’m alright with either she/her or he/him, they/them is also fine. Apparently, that was big enough clue-in for the poor reading comp crowd, so while I feel it is not of importance, I’m nonbinary, yes.

Late 30′s, chronically ill but still working adult with neurodivergence. I’m both busy and Busy, and always sick. This limits my brain power and ability to be here. I have an active RP blog that I won’t be sharing to keep responsible distance. That is always going to be my priority, it is my primary hobby.

Please, don’t tumblr message me totally random things if we don’t have that kind of relationship! I’m too ill and busy, and it really fucks my nerves to have a bunch of messages/have to suddenly interact socially with people. Don’t do it. Use my inbox, use the submit, comment on posts. I cannot do random messages of “hey” and so forth.

I only do written RP, don’t expect me to understand much of anything from tabletop. I’ve RPed for the last 23 years consistently, on every platform from AOL chats to forums to messengers and here. I also don’t do RP in discord, so I’m sorry, but I can’t advise you much on anything with a word count, except to stop it for serious RP. Other than that, I promise you that I’ve seen the trends, the drama, the fandoms. I can give a lot of advice and perspective on a wide range of topics, situations, and characters! When I don’t have a clue at all, I’ll try to do enough research to give you an answer.

Do I come off as a horrible, strict asshole? I do! I’m not going to say that I am just a shy bean who is more scared of you than you are me. I’m not. I’m honestly feral, but have common decency, compassion, and sense. All of which are lacking in the general RPC. So, if you can inbox/common/otherwise interact with anyone else on this site, you can totally handle me!

Honesty and openness are policies.

And in the spirit of that, I repeat; you can fucking do better, tumblr RPC!

#pinned post #tumblr rpc #rph #rp help #rp advice #rpbetter

9 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 4 years

Note

I was hoping you would be able to help me form a response when my family says they're sick of hearing of systemic racism and white privilege because THEY have had to work for everything and believe nothing got handed to them (true in the way they're thinking, but you know what I mean).

Welp. First, I applaud you for taking the initiative to engage in difficult conversations with your family, since the only way embedded racist ideas are going to get confronted in white society is if racist white people hear it from their friends and family. They are going to cheerily ignore protestors, academics, newsreaders, popular culture, and certainly politicians who say anything to the contrary, but it’s harder to ignore and brush aside when it’s coming from people who are directly within your own family group. They can still then ignore it, but at least you’re trying to do something that is not at all fun but which is deeply necessary, and good for you.

First, there are a few things for you to consider. Is this a case where they actually don’t know the difference, but are willing to learn, or is this essentially sealioning (where they act like they don’t know the difference, but they absolutely do, and put the emotional labor on you to extensively define and explain and educate while never intending to change their stances on anything). If it’s the former, then there is some point in engaging in dialogue with them. If it’s the latter, it’s a giant emotional trap that you are within your rights not to engage with until they signal that they’re willing to engage productively. You don’t have to educate someone who is categorically unwilling to be educated (especially when it’s often deliberate ignorance). As people like to say, Google is free, and it’s their responsibility to take the first steps to change. You can continue to talk with them, but yes, that is contingent on them actually standing a chance of listening to you and not just you wearing yourself out on something that they don’t want to actually hear (because it threatens them and makes them feel Personally Wrong, and white people don’t like that).

There have been various books written on why it’s so hard to talk to white people about racism, which you may be interested in checking out, not least the book "Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Renni Eddo-Lodge. Ibram X. Kendi has also written “How to Be An Antiracist,” one of the bestselling books of this summer, either of which would be useful either in shaping your own arguments or (if they’re receptive) giving to your family. Once again, this is contingent on them signalling that they’re actually willing to listen, and not just to make you do pointless emotional labor. These books are probably available from your public library (though there’s probably a waitlist) or in other easily available formats.

Next, it’s a basic tenet of an anti-racist education that white people have never had to do this kind of reckoning, and thus get whiny, defensive, guilt-tripping, and “it’s not about ME I’m a GOOD PERSON” when it comes up. This also rests on the damaging and deeply intertwined effects of racism and classism, which has to be understood if you’re going to talk about it. One of the greatest tricks that racist capitalism ever pulled is convincing poor white people that they had more in common with their filthy rich white masters (people whose way of life will never in a thousand years be anything like each other’s) simply because they shared the inherent racial “purity” of being white. There have been political studies written on how poor/undereducated/working class white people have become such a reliably Republican constituency, because they have been successfully manipulated to believe that the white overlords are their “people” and they will constantly vote against their own economic, social, and cultural interests in favor of enriching amoral white demagogues who beat the populist xenophobic drum. Then they blame black and brown people for society’s ills and for the reason that they stay poor, rather than the rampaging oligarchs awarding themselves massive tax breaks and billion-dollar bailouts and refusing to extend unemployment benefits in case people “make too much money” from not working, just to name the most recent example. They are so poisoned on populist politics and white supremacy, which assures them that they’re better than anyone else by virtue of being white, that they actively attack politicians and policy platforms and other social welfare initiatives that would materially improve their own lives as “un-American.” This is maddening and sometimes baffling, but it’s how it works. Whiteness trumps all, currently literally thanks to the Orange Fuhrer. Problems in life are the fault of the Other.

This isn’t to say that poor white people are “dumb” and just unable to realize it, because they’re caught in a system that has done this literally from the start of America. In the early 17th century, indentured laborers and slaves in the American colonies were in fact more likely to be white. (The word “slave” comes from “Slav,” since that was the predominant ethnicity of slaves in medieval Europe; i.e. white eastern Europeans.) But even despite the fact that they were unpaid laborers, they were still white and thus recognized as human by their white masters, and thus when slave ships began arriving, it was easier for everybody to simply outright demonize and dehumanize the black African slaves. The poor white indentured servants got to feel better than the black slaves simply for the fact of their whiteness. Their lives obviously sucked, but their whiteness was in fact a mitigating factor in the suckiness that it involved once it was easier to use “animalistic” black people. And we wonder why America can’t ever confront its racist history properly. As Kendi calls it in his other book, it is stamped from the beginning.

As it has been put before, white people can and often do have difficult lives, because late-stage capitalism devours its workers no matter what color they are, but their whiteness isn’t a factor in why their lives are difficult. They will never encounter racial prejudice, race-based hate crime, discrimination for housing, education, employment, bank loans, daily microaggressions and identity erasure, constantly racist tropes in the media, politicians fingering them as everything wrong with America/the world, casual prejudices or assumptions even from close friends, assumed criminality based just on their race -- etc etc. The list goes on and on. Just because you have a hardscrabble economic background does not mean that your life has been made harder by your race -- because if you’re white, it hasn’t. (And as noted, poor white people have consistently voted for megalomaniac white men who don’t give a shit about them but promise them that everything is fine or should be better for them because of their whiteness, and then blame minorities for being the source of their problems.)

I honestly wonder if racism would still be such a problem in America if we had a remotely more equitable economic system, because when you’re well off and have your basic needs consistently met and don’t need to worry that you’re one paycheck away from disaster, it’s harder to constantly be paranoid that your differently colored neighbors are stealing everything from you and the cause of all society’s ills. The historian Patrick Hyder Patterson wrote a very interesting book on material culture in Yugoslavia in the 20th century, where he basically argued that despite the spectacular collapse of the federation into the Yugoslavian wars of the 90s, things didn’t really go to hell until after the economy crashed following Josip Broz Tito’s death in 1980. While there were obviously ethnic fault lines and conflicts between Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Albanians, etc, when there wasn’t any money and any jobs and everyone thought everyone else was to blame, THAT is when the whole thing blew up into a genocidal civil war clusterfuck. Food for thought.

This is why people talk about economic justice and racial justice as going hand in hand. When there is a scarcity of resources and no social safety net, people are obviously more inclined to look for scapegoats and to blame someone for taking their entitlement (while still somehow refusing to blame the billionaires and corporate oligarch who are ACTUALLY stealing from them). They indeed actively resist any attempts to make their own lives better as being “socialist” or “un-American” and take pride in the fact that there’s absolutely jacksquat nothing (until of course, something like the coronavirus pandemic hits and it’s revealed just how many of us were always one missed paycheck away from disaster). Then when they need government assistance (while disdaining the government as tyrannical the rest of the time, unless it’s Trump’s actively tyrannical lot, but hey, we don’t have time to unpack all that) it’s still shameful and something they shouldn’t be using, instead of their basic entitlement to a decent life.

This country is poisoned on a lot of toxic beliefs, but this is one of the deepest-running one, and which will always get in the way of poor white people dealing with racism: their lives suck, but they have ALWAYS been told that despite that, they’re still better just for being white, which is their consolation prize for supporting white populists who actively rob them, and they haven’t even always consciously registered that. They just feel that if they’re “fine,” even if they’re not fine, then black people are just malcontents and criminals who can’t hack it. In 2016, there was a lot of ink spilled over how poor white people felt a sense of economic grievance and being left behind, which was why they voted for Trump, but... Trump was never going to do a damn thing about that??? He doesn’t actually do anything for his supporters except feed them his jingoistic Orange Nazi stump speeches. They voted for Trump to feel vindicated, not to actually improve their lives, and it’s damn clear by now that not only has he NOT improved their lives, he has no desire to do so. He just wants them to cheer for him and feed his ego, not fix any problems.

Basically, racism and capitalism and the American political system intersect in multiple deeply toxic ways to do precisely what you’re talking about; producing poor white people who feel that they shouldn’t be included in the reckoning with racism because if THEY worked hard and they don’t live in a mansion, somehow racism is fake and black people should just shut up and get a job etc etc. This is because poor white people have been systematically conditioned to support white supremacy at the direct expense of their own economic and social interests; it’s terrible, but that’s how it functions. They will never in a million years have anything in common with the (white) ruling class, but they still instinctively identify with them rather than people in their own deprived economic class who are different races or colors or religions. That is how white supremacy has supported the hyper-inequality of the industrial age, and vice verse, and it is one of capitalism’s best functions for survival, so it’s in the interests of the overlords to maintain it. Stop the workers from recognizing pan-racial solidarity based on economic grievance, and compete with each other and blame each other rather than the overarching system, easy!

Anyway. Once again, this is long. But in short, the attitudes your family are exemplifying are a direct result of both racism and classism as they have been deliberately cultivated in the American social and political system, and the interlocking causes and symptoms of both have to be recognized (and acknowledged) before they can get to dealing with that. I don’t know how that will go, and I don’t have an easy shortcut. But I’m glad you’re trying. Good luck.

#politics for ts #history of racism #long post #anonymous #ask

35 notes · View notes

nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 4 years

Text

Title: The Remains of the Day

Author: Virginia Woolf

Rating: 2/5 stars

This is the second Woolf book I've read in the last month or so, and it seems like there's been a marked decline in quality in her work.

I started reading this because I wanted more detail about Woolf's poetry. I also started reading it because it was one of the first Woolf books I had ever heard mentioned, which confused the hell out of me for a little while. I'm not sure what I expected.

I was so disappointed by the ending. The concept of this story -- a depressed, alcoholic protagonist falling in with a group of shady, corrupt characters -- is nothing if not well-executed. The whole thing is well-written, and it's a character study of an ambiguous character (which is always a plus in my books, and is a thing I'd never have gotten to see from any of her other novels). The interesting conflict comes from the question of how much of Woolf's pathetic emptiness Woolfork -- a character which at first seems to be meant to be comically pathetic, but whose concept is actually very sophisticated and complex -- can tolerate. Woolfork is a pretty messed-up character, although he does get more "weird" in a number of places, and he has a lot of psychopathy-adjacent traits. In other words, his version of psychopathy is about the same as a lot of psychopathy-adjacent people, rather than something closer to the sort of raw-souls-of-the-disgusting stuff that characterizes, say, a character like John the Savage. On the other hand, this makes him feel worse in the end, and is part of what makes him so interesting -- the idea that, even if he isn't pure, he's still contented.

Problem is, the story proceeds, in the manner of an awkward romantic comedy, in which the main character Beebo (yeah that's the whole thing) finally falls in love with a girl who is too pure. The purity-types in question are the Virgin Mary, the Ass (not in a sexual sense, just in terms of its association with sacred virgins), the Child Jesus, and, of course, the Virgin Mary, who Beebo declares he will not fall in love with because he's just a pudgy (??? why is the word "pudgy" being used? does this refer to a disease? are these both euphemisms for the same disease? is Beebo's personal Fat Chance Bucket literally the "pudgy one"? I just don't know) and who is clearly meant to be ugly and grotesque, and was involved with the "lowdown" and "hug" (??? what is a "hug"?) types in ways that are mostly meant to be funny and endearing.

But this is "sympathetic" psychopathy, which is not the point. The psychopathy is just a means for a character who is "pudgy" and "ugly" and "retired," and who seems to have his own distinct style and personality (boring? yes). The characters are flat and uninteresting. The reader is supposed to identify with Beebo's struggle against his complexes and desires and desires to be a pretty guy (in ways that are due to psychopathy, no doubt). And, of course, his own personal complexes and desires are constantly being flaunted and played upon (in fact they're part of the plot!). Beebo is a mess. The reader is encouraged to cheer on Beebo's bad behavior as heroic, self-sacrificial heroism.

But what the fuck, hoooooly shit. What the fuck. This is just pathetic. Just pathetic. It's fucking Zoolander. All these references to high culture -- and Beebo as a middle-aged East Coast WASP pop star -- feel like a big, cheap shot, and they make me want to buy a copy of In The Loop just so I could burn it and stuff the pages between the covers and read it. It's a bad, trying to be a bad play. (And while I'm talking about bad playing fields, Michael Jackson also reads as a sort of cheap attempt at being a bad pop idol. Which is why he's so beloved by cranks. Because he's supposed to be a caricature of a bad person. [Okay, so he also reads as a comedic caricature of a bad person. But comedy isn't enough on its own to hang a plot on! You also gotta have some basic humanity, if you're going to do the whole sense-of-human-interaction thing, which all the characters here seem to be lacking, and which is explicitly what's wrong with them.])

(I'm not sure I've ever encountered so many characters as the ones in In The Loop, in all of my time reading. And yet I still don't know who the characters are. I dunno. I've been guessing for days.)

If I'm trying to be rude here, I am, and should stop trying, because I don't think this is the right place to be being rude. But of course, if you're reading this and you think I might be rude, you could just block this post and tell me to read this https://plonkpilot.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/the-loop/

4 notes · View notes

callioope · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on His Dark Materials “Malice” (S2, episode 6)

Also just a warning, despite the fact that I have forgotten much of what actually happens in the books, I have read them (at least three times) so there’s a chance I could spoil things for someone who has only read the show, even if you’re caught up on the show

Okay so right now, I’m most interested in (in order):

Will & Lyra’s story (obviously)

Dr. Mary Malone’s story

Lee & Will’s dad

Mrs. Coulter’s schemes

TBH I’m less interested in the witches--

ANGELS! ANGELS! HAH okay. I take that back. I am VERY interested in the ANGELS. Are we gonna get our angel lovers? Pleeeeease I want the angel lovers.

Yeahhh :( will’s hand being worse, I do remember that. ouchies. poor will </3

the Cittàgazze kids are SO creepy and feral which definitely checks out with my memory of the books. yikes.

ooh. Serafina. hm. was it really that easy? i feel like it could no thave been that easy in the books. u don’t know how much it’s bothering me that some things happen and i’m like ... “DID that happen tho” and i can’t remember. but then sometimes it’s like oh YEAH and the thrill of remembering something i forgot is fun. so i’m really torn bc i want to reread the books but also i don’t. i feel like i do vaguely remember serafina popping up and rescuing them at some point? so maybe. idk.

also it makes sense that the witches would be able to heal will’s hand.

wonder how the previous knife bearer cured his wound. would have been helpful if he’d provided some guidance on that.

oh my GOD mary you gotta get out of Cittàgazze asap but you don’t even knooooowwwww

i love mary i love her so much i’m so excited for her journey

lyra so worried about will....!!!

OHHHH that subtle wings graphic above mary.... the angels!!! yes of course!!! they are protecting her!!!

lyra forcing will to stop and rest, that was a good scene.

“can i have a hug” oh my god these poor children. these poor poor children.

okay so like. the adults left. why did. why did the kids not go with them?

Mary: come with me i’ll bring you to your adults!

i do love how every time i question something the show is like “yep we got that”

since i first read these books almost..... almost.... twenty fucking years ago holy SHIT.... i have always wanted a red panda daemon and now at least i get to watch lyra have one!!!

surely mrs coulter must recognize that these adults look just like the children that became ghosts she experimented on? Yeah, yeah she does seem to. “we can learn from this” her evil knows no bounds

the whole idea, with the magisterium trying to prevent original sin, sorta reminds me of purity culture, juuuust saying

um WHOA excuse you serafina but you’re all like “we can’t tell lyra about her role in the prophecy” but u can tell will? that seems counter-intuitive.

it’s sorta weird, how bad i feel for mrs coulter’s daemon? like in the books i just remember him being like, super intimidating and cruel. but i feel like the show has given us more insight into her relationship with her daemon and it’s terrifying how she treats it. i do, also, kinda think that they stretch the bounds of believability -- with how far she was able to separate from him when she went to visit mary in the last episode. and now she’s like, facing down the spectres. and don’t get me wrong mrs coulter is truly someone not to be triflied with but her power is her cunning and her manipulation, not whatever this is with the spectres avoiding her. it’s sorta like -- she was already POWERFUL, it’s underestimating how powerful and scary she really was with the capabilities that she already had, to give her this supernatural power.

do you think they even TRIED not to make the spectres look like dementors? honestly i just keep thinking of the dementors when i see them.

“I couldn’t trust anyone” “until you met me?” “yeah”

“I suppress myself” *growl and droopy face from the golden monkey*

“you think me your equal” HA she is out of your league. they did not get together in the books right? right??

oh yep. yep there it is. did she poison the wine then? there really is just no limit to what she is capable of.

also for the record, don’t remember ANY of this magic stuff with will’s dad. i thought he was called a shaman but it was just bc he knew things/had a better understanding of things given that he was from will’s world/had knowledge of the multiple worlds and stuff. i don’t remember him having actual magic.

ANYWAYS.

only one episode left.

#his dark materials #the subtle knife

7 notes · View notes

deathbled · 4 years

Note

💍 + averey & lenalee o vo

@lunaetis / wedding meme send me 💍 + A SHIP and i’ll tell you—

where they get married

it takes place in a beautiful garden near where they first met; averey was surprisingly stubborn about that because, in his words, “where they met is where his life started” and honestly lenalee probably won’t say no to that logic (plus he probably used the puppy dog eyes, he’s not above that)

when they get married ( ie what time of day, what month and season etc. )

it’s late spring, early evening some day in mid-april, to be exact, where the trees bloom & the flowers slowly come out of their slumber. it wasn’t planned like that, per-se, but things happen and sometimes the most beautiful things take place at unexpected times.

what traditions they include ( do they get married under a chuppah and crush a glass, garter toss, ‘something borrowed, something blue,’ etc. )

i’m honestly unsure about this because i feel like while they probably would include some traditions it wouldn’t be as big a deal as for other people; maybe they both drink wine from goblets tied together with red string or, and he’s only doing it very lowkey because he’s embarrassed but where averey is from there’s the tradition of carving wooden spoons for your loved one and decorating them with things like key insignia ( to signify they have the key to your heart ) so maybe that plays a part? i’m honestly stumped with this one otherwise because i can promise you even after looking up wedding traditions i have absolutely no idea about wedding traditions :’)

or there’s the whole “testing the groom” thing kamui might’ve been involved with planning

what their wedding cake looks like

it is either incredibly cute or absolutely extravagant and even now i’m not sure if it’s a 50/50 decision vote like most things are with them or if they just play rock-paper-scissors to settle which one to go for. though if avereys “boss” gets to have a say it’s literally the most over-the-top cake and i’m screaming and laughing over this one

….who smashes cake into whose face

i want to say lenalee smashes cake into avereys cake but honestly i’m 100% convinced averey accidentally smashes cake into his own face in a moment of inattentiveness.

who proposed to who first

OKAY SO. THERE’S TWO SCENARIOS I CAN SEE.

they both did at the same time actually because it was kind of a “you know if i could i’d marry you right now” -”i’m not stopping you” situation that ended with “so we’re getting married?” but in like, during a picnic or something and it sounds a lot less cute than it was because trust me it was cute and wholesome. either that or one of them prepared to propose to the other, the other found the ring and then proposed first in a classic uno reverse card move.

or it was averey but only because he asked lenalee if it was okay and she was just so confused and like “yeS?” and then it happened and turns out this dumb nerd had everything prepared already but was just nervous so it’s not even a surprise but he’d rather ask if it’s okay for him to ask then ask at a wrong time

who walks down the aisle and who waits at the altar ( or neither )

i want to say it’s the classic thing but i’m so sure averey insisted the walk down the aisle together just because he hates the traditional view most cultures have on the bride being “given away” into another mans care so he just was as stubborn as a mule about walking with her

what their wedding dresses / suits / other look like

can i say wildcard for this one because i actually have no idea. i thought about it for thirty minutes now and i literally have no clue other than given that avereys birthplace doesn’t even really do weddings he’d just stress so much about what to wear he’d probably be annoying a little bit before he just kinda settles on “i’m going to ask the fanciest people i know but at the same time i am ready to cry how to fashion....”

what their wedding colour scheme is and what sort of decor they have

it’s definitely a more red & gold theme; the decor is perhaps one of the most traditional things & once again i am not sure what else to say other than they kept it classy but also very eye-catching??? idk

what flowers are in the bouquet ( if applicable. bonus: what do the flowers mean? )

okay so to start off it’s not in the bouquet but averey has a sprig of thyme in his pocket for “good luck”, there’s probably red peonys in there, perhaps some pink roses, DEFINITELY at least one white carnation, and a pink hydrangea.

the red peonys stand for love, passion, honor and respect. the pink roses symbolize gratitude, grace & joy, white carnations symbolize purity, good luck & in wedding contexts pure love. pink hydrangeas symbolize heartfelt emotion. i’m not a florist, trust me.

what their vows are ( eg poetry, traditional, improvised etc. )

they’re actually improvised! i’d get the feeling at least one of the two had vows prepared but instead went spontaneous as soon as it came to saying them out loud. actually, i can see that happening with both of them i don’t know why.

if anyone’s late to the wedding

surprisingly enough, no. nobody would dare be late. they know better than that :)

who’s in the bridal parties / groomsmen / other

oh god here comes my absolute lack of knowledge with d. gray man characters AND the fact averey has literally like 2 people he hangs out with on the regular but i think in the bridal party there’d definitely be miranda? maybe kanda because i can see him refusing to be a groomsmen but they insisted he’d be involved. if this is a verse where the princess averey was serving is healthy & they finally get to be friends without one of them constantly under the threat of death then definitely her too!!

as for groomsmen there’s probably allen, lavi, a very grumpy kamui and one of the rookie knights from avereys training.

and yes i hope it shows i have no idea how weddings are??? structured???

what their bridal party / groomsmen / other are wearing

the bridal party wears a pastel shade of pink just because they def ain’t gonna wear white or red dresses and anything else would legit just clash with the color theme.

the groomsmen all wear a simple suit because honestly all of them made suggestions and it would’ve turned into a disaster because they’re tastes are so vastly different so eventually both lenalee and averey just were like “how about,,, we keep it,,,, simple,,,”

who gives speeches at the reception ( bonus: what do they say? recount a sweet memory or two between them? tell an embarrassing story? )

well i mean, honestly? i think they both give small welcoming speeches until the others get a turn and then it’s just kamui going, allen giving a speech, avereys rookie friend whom i decided is now called lynell and uhh, a few others probably want to have a god but honestly therE’S NO TIME......

who catches the bouquet( s )

i mean i want to say a serious answer but just for shits and giggles i’m gonna say kanda.

what their wedding photos are like ( are they sweet, with the couple holding hands or kissing or ~gazing into each others eyes~? are they silly, with a snapshot of the ‘cake-smash’ moment? or are they artistic, with one of them facing the sunset or holding their bouquets? )

okay so most of them are sweet and absolutely the cutest pictures ever but there’s definitely a picture of averey accidentally cake-smashing himself so....

what sort of food they have at the reception

it’s an 8 course banquet and honestly i don’t even know what exactly it’d entail i just know they went all out and if i dwell on this ask any longer i’ll be hungry i’m so sorry i just can’t do food asks past midnight i’ll turn into a gremlin

who cries first during the ceremony

can averey cry first if he’s been crying this whole time?

how wild their reception gets ( who dances the best, who gets drunk first, etc. )

it’s a tame kind of wild; there’s a dance off and definitely some drunken shenanigans but nobody goes absolutely crazy

what their rings are like

FINALLY MY FAVORITE THING I KNOW THINGS ABOUT. averey made them himself and he’s super proud and yes it took literal months but look at them,, he tried to keep them simple but elegant so they don’t get in the way of work, too. i’m crying.

what sort of favours they have ( heart shaped sparklers, mini champagne bottles, personalised candy etc. )

uH,,, UHHHHHHHHHHHH, personalised candy probably but also most definitely mini champagne bottles if just because it fit with the theme or something---

where they go for their honeymoon

they actually travel for a while! they couldn’t decide where exactly to go so instead they just decided to pick the places they wanted to see the most and then travel there for a bit

something memorable that happens during the party / ceremony ( do they run out of ice and someone goes to get it in full formal wear on foot, does anyone fall asleep in the middle of the party, etc. )

averey not only accidentally cake smashes himself he also manages to accidentally use the cake leftovers on his hand like hairgel because he was careless and ran said hand through his hair

THEY DID manage to get it out for the most part though so it’s all good---

who officiates the ceremony

can i pick wildcard again because other than the classic “a priest” i don’t actually have anything in mind other than perhaps the bishop that took averey under his wing to help him with his curse a short time before averey and lenalee met??

what song their first dance is to

OKAY SO I THOUGHT ABOUT THIS ONE SUPER LONG but i honestly think it’d be to “for the dancing & the dreaming” if just because it’s super cute and also they’d probably sing along thank you for coming to my ted talk

who gives who away as they walk down the aisle

i mean given that they walk the aisle down together i don’t think anyone gives anyone away but if it came down to it you already know the answer

#lunaetis #you can tell how tired i got because i literally ended up writing the last five questions or so while I WAS DEAD #anyways i hate this but i tRIED #i know NOTHING. NADA. ZIP. about weddings #FJDFLKGJKDFFGJDKFDG the truth come out i live under a rock #bUT YEAH I TRIED TO MAKE IT WHOLESOME AND CUTE OK #but yeah the cake smash thing def happened because averey was so nervous he just kind of accidentally did that:tm:#* ALL OF THIS SORROW WON’T FIT IN MY CHEST ( reply )

2 notes · View notes

tonyglowheart · 4 years

Note

This entire thing is a rant, feel free to ignore it, but I saw your post about how destiel fans can’t win in this context, and yeah. So have some rambles.

I’ve been thinking about the fact we (current spn/destiel fans) can’t win all night... I’ve seen so many people talking about how homophobic it is - and while I would very much like to argue, as every point I’ve seen made by a non-spn fan has been wrong so far, if I did everyone inside the fandom would agree and everyone outside would either call me straight or pity me for believing it’s okay.

(Cas wasn’t even sent to hell lmao. He was sent to angel death (the empty), a place he has escaped in the past. Other points, like that meta about spn has been predicting exactly this for months, that Dean ended up sobbing on the floor because he was so upset, like that death means next to nothing on spn, like that there is two episodes left, etc etc. you feel me right? I just don’t want to post wank to other spn blogs atm, we’re getting enough frustration as it is, no need to add to it.

It’s also worth pointing out that the bar is very, very low. Spn is a prominent TV show - not a Netflix show, or indie, or whatever - and it just said “main character in gay love saved the world”. [insert gif of ghostfacers dude saying that gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day here]

I just saw someone saying that spn having Naomi try to brainwash Cas out of loving dean makes spn homophobic (it is a conversion therapy parallel). My first response to that is that Naomi was the villain lmao? I guess we can’t write villains doing anything homophobic because having villains do homophobic things makes, uh - checks notes - villains look homophobic, and clearly we can’t have that.

There certainly are legitimate things to criticise spn about, but this isn’t it lol.

Also now some people are unironically trying to cancel Jensen because “his acting was homophobic, and so he’s clearly homophobic”, nevermind that he’s an actor and his character struggles with understanding his emotions (which I think he played excellently, myself. That scene had a very Dean delayed emotional response), nevermind the support he’s given to us queers in the past. Like. Idek man.

We would have been laughed at if we got no destiel, too.

It would have been worse, had the writers pulled a dumbledore. At this point I also trust the writers not to pull a GoT - they have explicitly criticised that ending in spn’s canon.

Spn’s writers did that by making the main villain of this season, Chuck / God, say GoT had a good ending. To reiterate a previous point I had: villains do bad things because they’re bad. And the bad things they do make them bad. For the people out there not still following, if someone does something in a story and it makes them a villain, that is explicitly telling you the story (and probably the writers) thinks that thing is bad. In this case, Chuck likes to write things for him, and we the audience have been shown and told that is bad.

Apparently thinking a gay confession is good in 2020 makes me straight. Seems unlikely, but whatever. Sorry for the length, I guess I went overboard, I’ve been holding it in lol. Anyway, DESTIEL IS CANON 💚💙 hope you have a good night

Helloo supernatural anon I hope you are living your best life right now. Yeah I’m like..... skeptical and leery myself but having lived through some absolute garbage discourse that is general purity wank, as well as the C/QL greater fandom here and on Twitter I find myself... much more wanting to question the “general wisdom” of things esp in terms of negativity, bc a lot of the time I find.... it’s wrong? Like so wrong. Or at least presents such an incomplete picture of the whole situation and also presents it in such a removed context that words that have meaning and are operationalized in a certain way for a reason, no longer have meaningful usage.

Anyway I don’t... know too much about the specifics of Spn but someone I follow is into it and talks a lot about the Gnostic stuff and that all was very fascinating to me, and I also have been grappling a lot with cultural Christianity bc of cmedia and the way ppl just *clenches fist* unthinkingly or uncritically slap some Christian norms on it and call it a day 😩 help I’m Tired. My thing here being... I actually got tired of the uncritical “superhell”s at some pt bc I am, in fact, incredibly exhausted with cultural Christianity, and because it does seem like, even possibly(?) without the Gnostic stuff it’s different from a “hell” or other Protestant-derived afterlife concept, and also yeah that it wasn’t seeded out of nowhere, it was set up to happen, which then... lends credence to the idea that whatever the current era of Spn is doing, the current showrunners are doing it with purpose.

And idk I just... refuse to believe the concept that ALL of the fans of Spn - esp the ones who have been following it still, or got back into it and are following it currently, are acting under delusion or are fooling themselves into liking it or thinking it’s good or whatever. I personally find that kinda infantilizing and patronizing and playing into issues of dismissing things women and/or other marginalized identities like.

Plus I find the concept that (from what I think I’ve been seeing Spn fans say) that the current era of the show is quite actively grappling with itself, its past, its legacy. to be very interesting and compelling; it hearkens back to like an old lore kind of feeling, of a thing that has grown into a nigh undefeatable monster and realizing that, also realizing that the only way to defeat itself is through grappling with its own nature and transforming and transmuting itself into something else. I personally find that more plausible and compelling than “Supernatural has been actively and continuously queerbaiting for 15 homophobic homophobic years., so right now we’re all very sorry for you because this maybe is no longer queerbaiting but it’s still homophobic and it can never be anything different ever.” I’ve been sort of tangentially aware of Spn thru the years and didn’t we agree, around the time of that in-universe play about Spn and with the lil Destiel shoutout, that Spn has come a ways as far as coming to terms with its fandom and working to treat its fans better? Why the sudden regression into “oh no, Supernatural is and forever will be homophobic and a hate crime”? 🤔

The rest under a cut bc the ask is already long and then my rambling will get longer-

But yeah I mean..... I get that the legacy of Supernatural has been certifiably Rough, but I think people also forget how different of a time 2005 was? Hell, how different of a time 2015 was, even, prior to, say, Obergefell v. Hodges. Now I’m not saying that to blanket-excuse Supernatural, but like, you look at mainstream shows from the era and... there’s a lot of shit lmao. The fact that Supernatural has existed this long seems to me like.... maybe we CAN look at how it’s developed through the years vs just insisting it is what it was 15, 10, hell, 5 years ago. Especially since, to my knowledge, there’s been showrunner changes? Which seems to me like it would... affect things? I mean honestly, I remember back when I got into Spn for a hot second because of Castiel, I remember watching panel, Q&A, etc vids thru the years, and like... I thought we agreed that... it was the fans who were going a bit far pushing the shipping question like literally ALL the time to the actors, who are not in control of the show and.... like at the time.... that could have had personal implications for them? And yes homophobia bad, and people can still be allies despite that, but again like.... I do feel like - from what I’ve seen - that these guys were NOT ready to deal with a lot of that but they’ve (okay Jensen I’m talking about Jensen here) genuinely grown and learned? Also how many years ago was the essay autograph thing that people keep trotting out, like what year was it in and what year of spn was it, and what were the prevailing opinions on LGBT issues and bisexuality then.

I’ve been seeing some murmurings of identity politicsing surrounding ppl who enjoy Supernatural, and I’m sorry that that’s happening to you, it really fucking sucks and it’s also the dumbest way to “make” or “win” an argument because it shouldn’t ever be a final determiner, just factors to consider when considering what life experiences might have informed someone else’s PoV and views as well as maybe how you can better communicate with them. Instead of it being a “weapon” or “tool” to either dismiss someone or de facto validate an argument.

Also yeah I get it that you don’t want to send discourse to spn blogs bc I imagine you guys ARE actively grappling with all the bs rn and it’s a lot. Even just from like, the stuff I see around, I’m like tired of it. I’m genuinely having more fun with ppl who are having a good time with Supernatural than the ppl who are hating on it, even in this sort of backhanded “oh we’re not clowning YOU we’re clowning the writers and showrunners who think you should be satisfied with this,” when... yeah? the people who HAVE been watching the show and therefore... know what’s up.. DO seem to be? And all this based on *fake gasp* context. And that’s where the backhandedness becomes kind of poisonous to me, because it implies that it IS bad, and that you SHOULDN’T be satisfied, but poor little you are but don’t worry, we’re not making fun of YOU for liking garbage, you’re just the hapless victim who is consuming the garbage bc... idk, whatever reasons ppl are coming up with ig.

idk man it’s 2020. Fandom isn’t activism, performative or otherwise, it’s okay to let people enjoy things even if you think they’re “objectively” bad, and like... I don’t know if people can call something bad when they’re not even working with the whole context and instead are dealing with rumor and reputation.

#supernatural cw #I tag this for ppl who I know want nothing to do with spn rn and are blacklisting and so it doesn't end up in main tag #Anonymous #asks answered #long post

5 notes · View notes

nyelung · 5 years

Text

How to write asexual characters

Ok, first of, this will include at least some personal experience because I am an ace and I live with a fellow ace in a non-sexual partnership.

Some general words: Being ace does not define us and neither should it define the character you are writing. It's just a part of our life and, unless I come into contact with annoying people it defines my life about as much as the choice of my clothes or the cut of my hair. Meaning: I barely think about it most of the time unless being ace or something sexual is the topic of the current talk or thing I read or the media I consume.

Asexualtiy includes a whole big spectrum so there's lots of free space to form your character. I guess most prevalent is the picture of the sex repulsed, "irgh, make it go away" kind of ace. There's a lot of others, too. Some are sex repulsed and the bare thought of sex makes them ill. Some are sex repulsed but have no trouble thinking about others having sex or consuming porn. Some just don't want to have sex with other people but do have a libido and therefore tend to masturbate. Some are ace but have sex with other people because they got an allosexual (that means a person who is "default" sexwise) partner or are curious or want the connection but do not much care about sex otherwise. Some only have sex with people they are also romantically interested in (careful, though, sometimes these people label themselves as ace, sometimes they label themselves as demi, sometimes as something different. it's a personal preference and should be respected).

What I mean to say by this is: you can go very, very wild. I'd say the most common denominator for ace people is that we don't experience the same sexual attraction that allo people experience. For me it's the "looking at someone and wanting sex with them" for example. I still think it's something of a myth but apparently it actually happens. Others do get some sexual attraction but rarely if ever only sexual attraction like "I'd bang him/her/them but that's everything about him/her/them that I'm interested in".

Other example: Most sex scenes in movies turn me off really, really bad so that I often skip the scene or drop the movie altogether.

So, how to depict an ace person in literature?

Just as you would when writing a PoC character or a trans character or a gay character: let us have more of a personality than that one trait of being PoC/trans/gay/ace. Let your ace character have hobbies, likes and dislikes, a job, children, pets, a certain flair of clothes or home decoration, favourite games and movies and books. Let your ace character have allergies, talents, interests and so on.

Yes, being ace and wanting a child is not mutually exclusive.

Yes, an ace can be mentally ill and there might be a causal relation for your ace but it doesn't have to be. An ace does not need to be traumatized or "broken" to be ace. We just are.

- Short addendum to that: There are aces who have had bad experiences with sex mostly because they thought they had to like it. So, especially as an allo writer you might want to keep this in mind but not necessarily write it out because a) it's rarely important to the story and b) it's very easy to slip into the broken and traumatized stereotype. -

Yes, an ace can be nonbinary as well as be an ace. An ace can also happily identify as every other gender. Though I'd guess it's easier for StraightTM people to read if you don't make it too complicated.

Apart from that, your ace character will have lived through ace experiences and they are a part of what makes your ace character ace. They just shouldn't be their only defining characteristic. There is, however, NOT a universal ace experience since we come from different cultures, backgrounds, are different persons and live on a wide spectrum. Just like there is not a universal PoC experience etc.

I think a common experience and so far have not met an ace person who didn't have this experience is the "oh"-moment. That moment when funnily enough it all falls into place and you go "oh." and then go "I think I'm ace". (Though there are also questioning people and that's fine and sometimes the "oh" is more of an "huh, I guess?")

That oh-Moment can happen in a multitude of ways but usually the internet or friends helped along. You read something about what being ace feels like and realize that that's your experience. Or you talk to a friend who is ace and explains it and you go silent and are "oh."

Some aces figure it out very early, some very late. Some figure it out on their own and lack the language to give words to their experience, others come into contact with the community early.

Another experience that is quite common as an ace and a sad one is the feeling of being broken or wrong or faulty. The society most of us or maybe even all of us live in is very focussed on finding a partner and then procreating with said partner and so on. Not every ace grew up in the nuclear family model but as far as I know it's usually expected for people to find a partner and settle down and have kids. Many aces know that those expectations are placed on them and feel broken or wrong or faulty because they can't fill those expectations in the way they are "supposed" to be filled.

A lot of aces also live in a closet in the way other queer people often do. Aces who come out of the closet often face similar or sometimes verbatim the same alienation other queer people do. There's people telling us we're sick. There's people who say we just haven't met the right one yet. There's people who are really intrusive and ask about "but have you tried this and that yet" or "but have you gone to the doctor yet?" There's the relatives that go all "but don't you want to have children? but if you adopt they won't be your own". There's a general not-understanding from allos and so on.

But there's also people who are genuinely interested and then you suddenly want to explain how life feels for you but how do you find the words for something that is so different? When I talk to allos, I often realize that I look at the world in a completely different way. I'm not even sure how to properly put it into words. One part of it is probably the looking at people and ... not experiencing any urge to fuck any of them? Let's just say that the game of "fuck, marry, kill" usually ended with three kills on my part. Like, imagine the most sexy person you can come up with? I don't know. Imagine them naked in your bed or wherever. Imagine them also being a great person overall. I'd ask them to put on clothes. I'm more interested in a bag of chips or a really great pizza or cuddling with the kitties than in having sex with that person.

Aces in an ace community are just like gays in a gay community and so on. We share similar experiences and can relate to each other in a way. We are also not all friends and have differing opinions.

Not every ace person is a saint (and being ace and having no sex is different than being abstinent for example because one is just personal preference while the other is a not doing of something one would like to do). We are also not sinners or freaks. We are just people and people come in every way.

Being ace doesn't necessarily mean being a) a virgin b) innocent or c) childish. So if you write an adult ace character, please write them as mature as you would write an adult allo character. Me being childish, for example, has nothing to do with my sexuality and much more to do with a fuck you to a society that thinks I should not enjoy certain things because I'm an adult and then indulging myself with writing fairytales and watching cartoons.

Ace people don't speak different from allo people. About the only different thing in our speech is an abundance of jokes about being ace, for example "I'm too ace for this shit" wrt bullshit romance-sex plots, "I ACED that test" and so on. I know a lot of people who love really, really stupid puns on being ace but that might just be my friend bubble and less a general thing. (So that one guide about how ace people do not use "sexual" swear words? er.... everyone says fuck. really. and some aces, like me, can get really creative in swearing and sexual stuff happens to come with that, too.)

Though aces often feel broken or faulty, as an author you should not, really should not, depict us that way. So, before there's misunderstandings. In writing you got the character voice and the author voice. So even though the character may think of themselves as broken, you as the author should use a different phrasing and words and so on, to show that it's only the character's point of view and not your own. Yes, I know, that requires a reader to have critical thinking and the current purity cultists do seem to have trouble actually thinking properly but that's not all people.

Asexuality is not something that needs to be cured. We aren't sick. If a person is happy with being an ace, then, really, you shouldn't force them to be sexually active. Same goes for your character. There are aces who want to have sex and get medical help to experience some libido and that's okay but it should come from the person/character and not from their surroundings. As an author, think about the message you're sending when you establish a character as ace and then "cure" them of their aceness and also let them have a "happy ending" with their one true love and live sexually happily fulfilled. It happens for people but for a lot of us this hypothetical plotline goes straight back into the thing of "you just haven't met the right one yet". So maybe, if you write an ace and I'd love to see more aces in literature, do it differently. Let the ace realize that their current surroundings are not exactly ideal and have them either change the way their surroundings think or change surroundings altogether. Have the other people change themselves. Just do not make the ace's character arc about becoming sexually available to the true love or similar shit. If you do, you better write it very, very well because otherwise it would just erase our identity in the same way psychological guidelines still classify being ace as a sickness and not a valid identity.

Aces are not immune to sirens. We like to joke about that but sirens sing about what you desire most and not about having sex with you, so if there's sirens offering me unlimited, high-speed internet, I'd jump ship so fast, Odysseuss wouldn't have time to facepalm.

From what I experienced, aces like to flock together. It's just very relaxing to not worry about "does [other person] interpret this thing as wanting to be sexual?". With ace friends it's very easy to slip into a "I do not and will never want to have sex with you but a bit of cuddling and a massage would be fun". Also, fellow aces get stupid ace puns faster. And with fellow aces it's easier to shit on unnecessary romance-subplots and wonder why the fuck everyone thinks about being fucked by this or that actor even though they are aesthetically pleasing.

Oh, maybe it's an ace thing, maybe it's just a socially awkward thing, maybe a combination, but during my time in school, there was a phase where all the girls would find one or the other young teacher attractive. I never got that. Neither did other aces I know.

I think, that's about all I can think of for now? Basically, if you write ace characters, write them just like other characters in a way that allows every character to have their own experiences and voice. And, you know, we got a community, so you can always ask us. There's blogs dedicated to being ace, to our experiences and voices and also to our jokes.

#writing #reference #asexuality #long post

6 notes · View notes

themiscyra1983 · 5 years

Text

The Elephant In The Room

Let me preface all this by saying I do not have time for assholes. If you come at me with insults and contempt, I will block you.

The other day on Twitter I said the Harry Potter books aren’t good. I said this to a friend but I guess some people just keep an eye out for whatever Harry Potter shit pops up on Twitter and/or the algorithm just likes to spit in people’s eyes because hoooo boy people saw and lost their minds. I blocked two people over it because they decided to be assholes, and had a somewhat terse conversation with someone who was more politely insistent before going, finally, “I’m glad you find joy in something I no longer care for” and putting an end to the conversation.

It’s no particular secret that I��m in the fandom, and prior to J.K. Rowling going full, ‘no plausible deniability here’ transphobe, I’d bought my share of official merch. Frankly I should have stopped that sooner, but it took getting figuratively slapped in the face multiple times before I finally admitted Rowling’s ignorance carried a distinct air of willfulness and malice. Anyway I still HAVE the stuff I bought before, the Ravenclaw crap, the wands I was collecting (no more of that, I fear, though I’d hoped to pick up Tonks and Ginny’s wands at least before I brought an end to it), the Ravenclaw goblet I was gifted from a friend who bought it before JKR passed the plausibly just clueless horizon. There is still much in the world that I love, but much of that love comes now from the creations of others, and I cannot in good conscience spend money in ways that directly benefit Rowling’s financial empire.

And the Harry Potter books are not, in my view, good books. I’ve felt that for a while now. I’ll go a step further: I think they’re dangerous stories to tell children; I think I would be uncomfortable reading them to any children I might have. They are not stories that should be viewed without a critical eye. I loved them as a teenager. I’ve grown more uncomfortable with them - and, as with Twilight, far more comfortable with how critically thinking fans have transformed the work - as time has passed.

This actually has very little to do with the fact that, well...Rowling is not the best writer. Listen. I’m a Power Rangers fan. I’ve watched every incarnation of Star Trek, and every single movie. I have no problem with trashy fiction. You will find me rooting around in the garbage with the finest raccoons. But that is part of it, yes; there are flaws in the craft of it, and I don’t feel that, inherently, we needn’t judge children’s fiction by adult standards. I would argue that the very BEST children’s fiction is also excellent by adult standards. But this is the least of my concerns.

Here are my actual concerns.

Rowling wants credit for declaring Dumbledore gay after the fact, for saying Hogwarts is a safe space for all students in ways not reinforced (and in fact actively contradicted) by the text, for cheering the fan-created same-sex marriage of Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan, but she doesn’t want to take the creative risks that go along with that. When she had the opportunity, with the Fantastic Beasts movies, to make that subtext text, she and her cronies outright declined it. At every opportunity she has shied away from actually putting her high-minded ideas to the page. This is a cowardly choice at best.

Further, Dumbledore’s only canonical love interest (and it is not clear whether the love was requited) was a pretty fascist with whom he fell in, politically, for a time. I get it, we’ve all had crushes on terrible people. But this is literally his one and only love, requited or not, and after he defeats Grindelwald he is left to pine away for the remainder of his days. The one gay love story in the books - if you tilt your head, and squint, and accept Rowling’s word for it - is a tragic one that leaves one man in prison and another celibate and alone and, increasingly, a manipulative bastard who upholds the status quo.

There’s nothing wrong with a tragic love story. I’ve enjoyed quite a few. But when this - THIS - is what you hold up as a triumph of representation, in the absence of ANYTHING else...no. No cookies for you.

Let’s also talk about how I don’t feel Rowling wrote Dumbledore or approaches him with a critical eye. There is NO excuse for leaving a child in an abusive home. No, fuck your blood wards. You’re telling me that Albus Dumbledore - ALBUS DUMBLEDORE - could not devise protections better than leaving Harry with abusive relatives who despised him and everything he stood for? Then, too, when Dumbledore did intervene in Harry’s life, he did so with full knowledge that he was setting Harry up to be a sacrificial lamb, AND WITH THIS SPECIFIC END IN MIND. None of this is acceptable. Dumbledore is a fucking manipulative, abusive bastard who uses people and throws them away, and the fact that it WORKED OUT for Harry does not absolve him of his crimes.

Moving on, and bear in mind I’m still getting my steam up on this whole rant: Seamus Finnegan. Seamus Finnegan is the one canonically, obviously Irish character in the books, named quite stereotypically, but more importantly, in the books and movies, is shown to be interested in (a) liquor and (b) making things explode. He’s REALLY GOOD at making things explode. Do I need to explain why it’s problematic for the one Irish character to blow things up all the time? He also does this in defense of UK wizardry’s status quo, so, you know, even if you were all IRISH FREEDOM FIGHTER YEAH, I assure you he is not that guy.

There is an entire species of sapient magical creatures who exist solely to serve witches and wizards. Hogwarts is run on slave labor and most of the finest wizard families hold slaves. But it’s all right! Only one of them has ever, in the context of the books, wished to be emancipated, and everyone else views Dobby as a weirdo for wishing to be free, and paid for his labor. Dobby, incidentally, later lays down his life for the wizarding savior who tricked his master into freeing him. The only other emancipated house elf we see in the books, Winky, spends her time in a state of drunken depression, rendering her useless and scarcely capable even of caring for herself. She wished to remain enslaved, do you see, and was helpless without the benevolent guidance of her master.

There’s fan work that has tried to address this by exploring a mystically symbiotic relationship between house elves and wizards and witches, and yes, yes, J.K. Rowling is drawing on European folklore here, but let’s not give her credit, okay?

Goblins. Goblins! Goblins have a long history of being antisemitic stereotypes to begin with (hence why I have seen multiple Jews on Tumblr push back HARD on ‘goblincore’), but J.K. Rowling just...right. They’re short, ugly, have hooked noses, generally look like antisemitic cartoon figures. They are locked out of power but control all the wizarding world’s banking, and do so in very usurious ways, for example charging wizards to hold their money, etc. Now this might be an interesting commentary on how Jews have historically been oppressed and forced into fields that goyim felt themselves too ‘pure’ to work in, were it not for the fact that Rowling’s fantasy Jews LITERALLY AREN’T HUMAN, and more, ARE ACTUALLY GREEDY, CONNIVING, AND WILLING TO BETRAY YOU AGAINST THEIR OWN SELF-INTEREST FOR PERSONAL GAIN. FUCKING GOBLINS, MAN.

Then there’s the travesty of Magic in North America, which disrespected the intelligence of Native Americans (none of them figured out you could point a stick at something to make the magic go until white people showed up to help, apparently, but don’t worry, they’re really CLOSE TO NATURE and GOOD AT NATURAL MAGIC), disrespected the beliefs of specific peoples (no, skinwalkers aren’t just misunderstood shapechanging wizards and witches smeared by the greedy and ignorant, you’re whitesplaining actual mythology to the people who hold it sacred), made the ONE wizarding school in America white with an appropriated Native veneer, and generally just...Did Not Get America. As bad as the UK Wizarding World is, Rowling demonstrated complete IGNORANCE regarding the long history of what we now call North America, ignorance of even modern American culture (there’s a reason why American fans particularly tend to ignore the idea that wizardry is locked down tight behind a wall of secrecy here), ignorance and disrespect toward Native populations, and an unwillingness to do the research necessary to do this shit right.

There’s more. There’s blood purity, and gender politics, and Severus Snape’s portrayal, and all kinds of shit that grates, and I’m just tired.

Writers make mistakes. it happens. But Rowling does not recognize her mistakes. She does not seek to make amends. She just barrels on with her shitty opinions, regardless of who she hurts.

it is at the point where I am no longer even willing to thank her for graciously allowing us to play in her sandbox. We don’t need her blessing; the OTW has done far more for fanfic than she has. And it is, indeed, beginning to grate on me that people constantly try to apply Harry Potter metaphors to real life and real politics. As my friend Doc often says, find another book.

I love butterbeer (or at least the knockoffs available outside the Universal parks), I still read fanfic sometimes, I still like to play with ideas like the Harry Potter movies as performed by Muppets, with Dan Radcliffe as Snape and Tom Felton as Lucius. I’m glad the movies brought us a generation of actors, mentored by performers like Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith and so many others, who have gone on to bigger and better things. Much of my merch is packed away, but I still hold on to some of it because it has new meaning for me in light of fanwork, or because (in the case of my Ravenclaw hat and scarf) it’s warm, winters here are cold, I don’t want to buy new shit, leave me alone.

I am accustomed to seeing fans turn trash into treasure. I’ve tried to do it myself. But I feel, quite strongly, that the original text in this case is trash. it is radioactive, stinky trash. You won’t persuade me otherwise, and I’m done apologizing for it. If Rowling wants me to respect her and her work again, she’ll have to earn it, but I’m very trans and she low-key hates my kind, so even if I weren’t a random reader I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

And I really, really need to emphasize to you all that it is okay if people don’t like a given work of fiction. It is okay if people HATE that piece of fiction. You don’t need to change the minds of everyone around you. You absolutely will not succeed in doing so. Please, I’m begging you, make peace with that - and please, I’m begging you, even if you like something, try to consider it critically.

5 notes · View notes

sophygurl · 5 years

Note

Hi! I was just browsing through my activity and noticed that after I responded to your ask about ships a while back, you reblogged and shared your thoughts about Spuffy. I'm so glad you were able to read my opinions and understand them, even if you didn't agree with them. I just wanted to stop by and ask what your thoughts and feelings are on Spuffy? I'd love to hear your perspective :)

Oh wooooow, you have no idea how happy you just made me! I feel like I talk about spuffy quite a lot but without ever really saying much of anything because inside of me it’s just a lot of (!!!!!>?>>?!!?!>fjhghhf?!?!?!?!!?) YKWM? Like feels central exploding all over the place and it’s really difficult for me to put into coherent words.

But I’ve also been wanting and meaning to write some serious spuffy meta and kinda dissect what it all means to me personally, as a survivor, for some time now. And like. Especially with all of this purity culture stuff coming to a head, it feels like a good time to take the time to try and do it because, yea, shit not only doesn’t have to be pure to be helpful - but sometimes the darker stuff IS the Most helpful.

And I really did appreciate your perspective about the relationship because you talked about the ways in which it did and didn’t work for you without ever shaming anyone for the way it does work for them? And I wish we could all do that more.

So thank you so much for sending me this ask, and asking for my perspective because sometimes all it takes for me to finally settle down and write something I wanna write anyways is to be asked by someone else to do it!

This is absolutely gonna get long so have a read more cut.

For context, let me start by saying that I didn’t watch Buffy when it first aired - it was, mmm, I wanna say about 10-11 years ago when I decided to try it out. And while I was watching it, I was also in the midst of doing some heavy duty therapy work on my PTSD stemming from childhood sexual abuse and then some further traumas in my young adulthood that happened because of poor processing of said abuse. I’m not gonna get into details about my personal traumas except for some specific ways in which they relate to the lens in which I watched and processed the relationship between Buffy and Spike. BUT, due to that lens, there very well may be triggery content in this post.

My experience watching Buffy, in general, started out with me being really unsure what the draw was in season 1 and then slowly getting more involved in the characters and relationships and mythos as the series developed into a more mature and nuanced show. I was really hooked by season five, and season six is my favorite, with seven a close second.

I liked Buffy, the character, okay in the beginning but it wasn’t until she started really going through and processing her traumas that I started to personally connect to her. So season six was like, my jam. She was raw and stripped down to the nerve, and cycling between like outright rage to pure numbness and just lashing out trying desperately to feel and to make sense of her experiences and I was like - yea, Buffy, same, Same. And then in season seven she starts really contextualizing her trauma and using the pain of it to give herself more power and then sharing that power with others and it was just … fuck, I can’t even begin to tell you what that meant to me. In that last episode, I felt her handing me back my OWN power - like I FELT it - it really … anyway. We’ll get there.

And then there was Spike, who I loved right away. I love me some snarky villains. I love me the bad boy who has hidden depths inside of him. I love the villain who doesn’t … really fit the mold of the other villains in-verse. I love the villain who doesn’t mind working with the heroes if it fits his agenda. Basically, Spike was fictional catnip for me right out of the gate.

I adored Spike and Drusilla together for a lot of reasons, but for Spike to develop beyond just Big Bad, he had to fall out of her orbit, so I was okay with that ending.

On the other hand, I was never into Buffy and Angel. Watching the series as an adult, it just felt creepy to me how this old vampire basically stalked a very innocent-seeming to me teen Buffy. Their romance reminded me of girls I knew who fell for older guys when I was in high school where the older guy seemed sort of dangerous and mysterious and I get the draw from Her perspective - but not necessarily his? I don’t know, I just personally never really bought them being truly in love - they were sort of practice relationships for one another? Her as a young teenager, and him as someone just starting to re-learn humanity. I never Disliked them together… I just never shipped it. The idea of them being one another’s One True Love’s was just sorta meh to me.

So when Spike started having his crush on Buffy? I was so ready for that. Because it was so silly at first, right? It was not serious. It was creepy and weird and wrong. But in a way that appealed to me.

How do I explain? I guess, it had to do with all of the reasons that Spike was Not Like All The Other Villains/Vampires. Angel was always different but ONLY because he was cursed with a soul. It was a thing done TO him and when he reverted back to Angelus he was literally a whole different person and did not have any desire to turn back into Angel. When he was Angel, he was all brooding and guilt-ridden and terrified of his other self.

But Spike was always different just because he was different. This didn’t mean he had a soul or a capacity for love or the ability to be a Good Guy. It just meant he worked a little differently than the other vampires. I truly think he loved and was devoted to Dru. I don’t think she was capable of returning that love in the same way.

So, anyway, Spike is back and he’s split with Dru because Dru could just … tell … something was off and Spike was wanting to deny that but then suddenly - crush! Not love, not attraction, not lust, not desire - a freaking schoolboy crush.

But of course it was creepy because hello - soulless vampire who has never had a healthy relationship of any kind in his LIFE. But he starts doing these odd things, like wanting to comfort Buffy when he sees that she’s upset and being willing to take care of Dawn when no one else was available and HE doesn’t get it either, but somehow he’s becoming a slightly more decent person because of this weirdass crush?

IDK, that’s appealing.

And let me clarify. It’s not appealing to me because I see myself in the Good Girl who can make a Bad Boy into a better person. That is never what’s appealed to be about these types of relationships.

In large part because of my abuse, I see different layers of myself in each character.

I went through a large portion of my life pretending very hard to be a Good Girl and then when I finally came out of denial about the abuse realized that was because inside I felt like a very Bad Girl and then as I pursued more recovery realized it’s all a lot more complex than that but really I’ve been more of a Decent Person who felt like a Bad Person trying really hard to be a Good Person. I hope that makes sense.

But the point is. I see myself in both the Good and the Bad characters in these sorts of push-pull love-hate dynamic relationships.

And what I love about spuffy, specifically, is that they’re both … both. Eventually. I’m getting ahead of myself. But yes, Spike suddenly wanting to be decent here and there because of his weird developing feelings for Buffy appealed to me - and especially to part of me that feels Bad. I’m Spike in this scenario, not Buffy.

But I’m also Buffy, being really grossed by this Bad Person’s interest in me. When Buffy throws her money at Spike and says he’s not good enough for her - that’s me hating myself and saying I’m not good enough. But it’s also, strangely, me taking a stand and saying I’m worth better than the ways in which I was treated.

Gods, this whole abuse recovery dichotomy can be so confusing to explain because like. I never abused anyone. But the ugliness I feel inside of myself has to do with what happened to me, and also with what I know people in my family have done to others. So there’s this idea of Badness there. And the idea of there being forgiveness and redemption for that Badness is very very appealing.

And at the same time? There’s this beauty inside of myself that I always thought I was faking but that it turns out - is fucking real and precious and important. And standing up for that broken beautiful part of myself and saying no to being used and abused again is so powerful.

So in that scene? I’m the ugliness in Spike being hated by Buffy but I’m ALSO the powerful beauty in Buffy standing up for herself.

You can maybe see how this all gets even more tangled up the further we go, yea?

So Spike gets chipped and becomes a part of the team - all the while simultaneously reminding them that he’s still a Bad Guy AND slowly becoming a slightly better person because of his interactions with them and his feelings for Buffy. He’s not even close to redeemed, okay, he’s still a villain. He’s just a more and more intriguing villain, an anti-villain, even, eventually.

And then season six. And Buffy comes back. And she’s broken and raw and needing something that her friends cannot give her. She is needing to connect to the darkness inside of herself, and who is waiting there for her?

And so yea, okay, hatesex is very appealing to me just inandofitself. It’s like double the passion and it’s animalistic and there’s something so sexy and gratifying about two people just using one another with equal force, yk?

And Spike and Buffy are physically matched perfectly. She can take all her anger and pain and rage out on him without permanently damaging him. And she’s NEVER been able to let loose like that before. Her first time with Angel was a more tender and sweet moment and then - welp - turns out they can’t do the do. And otherwise she’s been with humans who she’s had to hold back with. There was zero holding back with Spike.

So from Buffy’s perspective, there’s this amazing relief and release and yea, even, empowerment in being able to just freely let herself go in this way.

From Spike’s point of view, it was about more. And here is where I feel for him because, at this point he’s still not really capable of love in the way we talk about it as being something from a soul. He’s chipped but not soul’d. He has strong feelings for Buffy that no vampire (besides cursed-soul Angel) should be able to have. But it’s not … quite … love. It’s passion and it’s care and it’s wanting and it’s even becoming something like friendship. But it’s not love, much as he thinks it is.

But he does Think it is. And he’s thinking it’s the same for her, but she just can’t admit it, yet. The hatesex to him … is just … sex. And he fully believes he’s winning her over. And so her constant rejection of him as a fully human person with a soul and feelings guts him - even as he’s still trying to convince himself that he does love her and she does somehow secretly love him back.

The fact that she keeps using him physically, and also keeps coming to him for emotional support, supports this belief and keeps him from understanding the reality of the situation.

Now, I think I mentioned than when I was watching this for the first time I was in heavy duty therapy mode yea? Well, there was another even heavier duty therapy mode a good tenish years prior when I had first admitted to the abuse I experienced and got really good and fucked up and made some bad personal decisions and here is where some of that comes to play because I saw myself in this scenario - again from both sides.

I am Buffy learning to enjoy the pleasures of my body and sexuality for the first time but also making really bad decisions about who to share that with because I am still so new to processing my trauma.

I am also Spike - longing for something more and better and being told (by myself) that I was not good enough, that I was bad, that I was not a full human person who deserved good things or good relationships.

(There, there, pastme - it does get better)

Back to first-time-Buffy-watching me. And I am enjoying the HECK out of the spuffy sex and I am feeling for poor pining Spike and feeling for Buffy who is hating herself for what she’s doing and also shipping them like WHOA because there is so much about their dynamic that is just sexy and fun and FEELS everywhere.

But I knew Seeing Red was coming, because I did have a few things spoiled for me just by existing in the world for years without having watched the show yet myself. I really didn’t wanna watch it, or the rest of season six. So I got into a spiral of just watching the earlier parts of the season over and over - specifically the musical and through the 3 episodes of heavy spuffy sex. I did a LOT of processing during this time and then eventually girded myself to watch what I knew was coming.

And Seeing Red is awful. Traumatic. Triggering. Terrible. But also, like, gods, did it make sense for where these two characters were at this point in time? I didn’t feel like it was contrived or somehow put in just for the heck of it. It made sense in the narrative. Spike legitimately just did not get it. He did not realize he was attempting rape until … finally … he did.

And the horror of that, the horror of realizing that he almost did that to the ONE person in the world that he has ever cared that much about? Broke him. Sent him off on a magical quest to get his fucking soul back.

No one did that. Even Angel was Cursed with his soul, right? No vampire ever wanted to get their soul back - even had enough non-ensouled feelings to have the ability to want such a thing. Not to mention going through the trials of actually getting it back.

Season seven Spike is such a different beast. He’s messed up from the soul-thing, but I honestly believe Most of his messed-up-ness came from what The First was doing to/through him. Because … gods, okay.

When Spike goes through the flashbacks and recognizes what his trigger is? (Like the show legit uses PTSD terminology here - it was a Trigger) He processes his Own old traumas and he is able to tell Robin basically - fuck it, I know who I am. I know I did terrible things without my soul, but I can’t and won’t beat myself up for that (for example the way Angel does) because it wasn’t entirely my fault and all I can control now is who I am now and what I do now.

Now THAT spoke to me as a trauma survivor. Stop hanging on to all of this so-called badness inside, forgive yourself, and move on. WOW. Fucking powerful.

And what he DOES choose to do is to be there for Buffy in any way she will allow him to.

Ensouled Spike is no longer creeping around her or making weird assumptions about her or trying to Get something From her. Ensouled Spike defends her when others attack. Ensouled Spike holds her all night when she needs it and gives her pep talks and asks what he can do to help and accepts when he can’t help and just stands there quietly willing to do battle With her.

I just … phew… that makes me emotional.

Because, again, I look back at some of those dysfunctional relationships I got into in my early 20′s and like. None of those fuckers would have done anything like that.

And my attraction to the Fictional Bad Boy with a Hidden Heart of Gold was never about expecting any of them to. I was with them, unconsciously or even some cases consciously, on purpose to punish myself or to work out past traumas with or just to Feel Something. I never expected or even necessarily wanted deep love from them.

So, here’s the thing. None of those fuckers would have done anything like that for me. Nor I them.

So Spike slowly gaining his redemption through his willingness to become a better person because of his love of Buffy? Fucking spoke to me.

And Buffy slowly accepting the darker parts of herself through her willingness to let Spike into her orbit because of her feelings for him? Fucking yes.

And when she hands him the - shit it’s been a long time - that medallion meant for a champion? And he doesn’t think he’s worthy, but she says she knows he is. Fuck!!! That is ME accepting ME, okay? All of myself, the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the messed up and the slowly healing. All of it.

And when he sacrifices himself in the end??? When that’s how she’s finally able to defeat The First? All that power sharing with all of the other women was *chefkiss* but it also took Spike. Spike who stormed on the scene in season two with snark and a twisted sense of love and no desire to ever be a hero? That Spike!? Sacrificing himself and STILL NOT BELIEVING BUFFY LOVES HIM.

Because by then, let’s be clear, she did. Maybe not the same way he loved her, but she did love him. And he doesn’t believe it, can’t believe himself worthy of that love. But he sacrifices himself ANYway?

THAT Spike? Is no longer asking anything in return. He gives all of himself and won’t even accept her statement of love in return. “No, you don’t. But thanks for saying it anyway.” Just AUGJH?!? You know???

That was me … redeeming me … for me….

So anyway.

I just want to add that AS I WAS WRITING THIS OUT, I got another ask in my inbox stating “People who like problematic or villainous characters are apologist for shitty people and should rethink their life because they’re shitty people.”

And this is the exact WRONG time to come for me like this because I just poured out my entire traumatized abuse surviving soul into the internet to explain why watching a problematic villain evolve and learn to do better helped ME to contextualize and process my fucking trauma. So fuck you. People who write anonymous hate without knowing the full story are being shitty and should rethink their actions because they’re shitting on actual REAL LIFE COMPLEX INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE.

The end.

77 notes · View notes