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talkingbl · 2 years

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Popular BL opinions

Here's a running list of popular bl opinions so y'all can stop saying they're unpopular just for clout. Also, gonna include my own perspective on some of them in red.

Thai BLs are quantity over quality (or, alternatively: Thai BL sucks). Most of the time when people say this, they're also kpop stans, hype up anything Korean, Japanese, or Chinese and reek of colorism. Either way, Thailand has some of the best BLs out there. And while there is a lot of trash, you can literally say that about any other industry.

Korean BLs are the best. I have not been impressed thus far.

Trapped is the best HIStory story. lmao no.

Stop ordering ship names by top/bottom or using those labels in general.

It's bad/annoying/harmful/etc. when a one guy in the pairing is referred to as the "wife" in the relationship. On the one hand I understand this take, but on the other it just seems like a lot of folks are performative activists who want to seem 'woke' and just say shit just because it sounds good. This point is very nuanced b/c while there is a problem w/misgendering, 1) that's not your place to say something if the character in the story doesn't care, and 2) most of the time y'all just hate it b/c you don't want men to be associated w/femininity.

BLs need more LGBTQ+ representation.

We need more GLs instead of BLs. We do need more GLs but I never understand why these takes come up in unpopular BL opinion threads...

BLs should stop catering to straight women (or, alternatively: straight women who watch BLs are gross/disgusting/etc.). This is a tough topic b/c 1) I don't think all BLs cater to straight women specifically, 2) it's okay for anyone to consume any media as long as it's not harmful (could you imagine telling people they can't watch Asian dramas b/c they're not Asian??), and 3) it again comes from either internalized misogyny of LGBTQ+ women or outright misogyny from MLMs (yes, gay men can be misogynistic). At the same time anyone who fetishizes any media should definitely be called out, I just don't necessarily think this is always the case.

Most BL actors can't act.

Taiwanese BLs are underrated.

Only Philippines has good LGBTQ+ representation.

BLs should stop using actual LGBTQ+ actors as comic relief.

Fanservice is cringey/is bad/should stop.

BL producers should stop pairing the same actors together time and again. I will watch OffGun in anything they make together. I also will watch Gun in anything he does without Off. In fact, one sign of a good actor is that they can act w/the same people in different roles and still convince me that they're a new character every time. Gun can be Third, he can be Rome, he can be Black/White--him acting alongside Off in those roles only amplifies his talent for me. It's cool to see him in other roles, but I don't think he has to stop acting alongside Off if he doesn't want to.

BL producers should stop casting homophobic actors.

Non MLM people shouldn't have opinions on/need to stop consuming BL b/c it's problematic for some reason or another. This is one of the most ridiculous takes to me. I understand if people are being problematic but to categorically deny entire groups of people from consuming a certain type of media b/c they don't represent those characters is idiotic at best. Imagine if we could only watch things where we identified with every aspect of the characters' identity? Not only would all industries besides ones that represent majorities (for example Cishet white couples in the west and Cishet Chinese or Indian couples in the east) die off, but it also denies the complexities of human experience and, ironically, others the very groups we're meant to be embracing into the larger culture. It doesn't help that a lot of MLMs deny their misogyny, racism, colorism, etc. which informs their opinions on these things.

We need more LGBTQ+ BL producers.

Tharntype is bad.

2gether is overrated.

Most BL pairs hate each other. I honestly feel like most of them don't care one way or the other and do it for a check. Speaking specifically on Tay and New, I truly don't believe they actually hate each other. People who hate each other are more subtle in their beef than Tay and New. But more on that another time.

There is a distinct difference between BL and LGBTQ shows.

There needs to be less heteronormativity in BL.

Cherry Magic/ITSAY/Trapped are the god-tier BLs and nothing else touches them. Also, no.

All GMMTV BLs are bad but somehow at the same time Bad Buddy was a subversive masterpiece. GMMTV is what I like to call a mixed bag. They have My Gear and Your Gown but also produced Theory of Love. They give us absolute garbage-tier material but then turn around and produce Not Me. Besides, what other studios have consistently produced bangers? The answer is none. None of them have. Folks act like GMMTV needs to be on the 2000-2010 Pixar type beat when that is a difficult bar to reach. Also, Not Me and Theory of Love are the best GMMTV BLs.

BL shows need to stop demonizing female characters.

BL fans are toxic.

"I can't wait until [INSERT ACTOR HERE] steps out with his wife of 10 years and four healthy children!!" (or, alternatively: "let BL actors have girlfriends!") This opinion is not unpopular and never has been and also reeks of insecurity to some extent (more on this another time). We get it, you support actors as people and don't care about their sexuality/ships. You're a subversive king/queen who wants to see all the delulus weep blah, blah, blah. I 100% agree that any human being should be able to live their life and shouldn't be afraid to lose their status b/c of their relationship. I just think the people who constantly complain about this are annoying. It's a weird double-edged sword where I want actors to feel comfortable living their lives and want the immature fans to stop harassing them for it but I also want the complainers to stop putting bl fans (especially straight women fans) into one group as if everyone is harassing these actors when it seems to be a very small but unfortunately loud group.

University-set BLs are boring (or, alternatively: we need more *mature* BLs).

Let actors leave BL.

If you watch BL and enjoy the sex scenes/physical intimacy, you're toxic/homophobic/fetishizing/etc. lmao do people watch romances for anything other than this? Now this opinion would be heeded if most BLs weren't explicitly romance-based in nature and had plots outside of the romance. But most BLs don't have plot outside of the romance. And while asexual homoromantic people exist, most BLs are explicitly about homosexual romances. Like, do you say the same shit to people who watch other types of romances for the sex? Because 90% of all romances have strong sexual themes. I can't name a single one that doesn't involve or heavily feature sex. That said, fetishism is a real issue in BL. But I don't think this is the right way to frame the issue. We need to find ways to tackle fetishism without assuming that anyone who enjoys any romance for sex is automatically a fetishizer.

Brightwin don't have chemistry. They do, it's just not the chemistry you want to see. See, this is where real fetishism comes into play IMO. People think BW don't have chemistry b/c you can't imagine them having sex (b/c in these people's eyes if 2 men don't look like they wanna bone, they can't be compatible which ruins their fantasy). That said, even Brightwin's bro-chemistry isn't as natural as, say, OffTayArm's chemistry.

No ships are real. Hot take but we'll never know anyway. People who say this typically fall into a few categories (to be discussed at another time)--all of which point to some insecurity they have internally. Either way I don't really care much. I watch dramas for the shows themselves, not necessarily the actors behind them.

You're delulu/cringey if you ship pairings. I honestly do not care if people ship actors as long as they are keeping it out of the actors' faces and not allowing the fantasy to blur reality.

BL is holding Gun/BkPP back. Likewise, GMMTV is holding Singto/Tay/Gun back. This is simultaneously homophobic and incorrect. If these actors could get roles outside of BLs and they wanted to take them, they would. Also, BL is not some lesser industry where actors should aspire to "greater heights" such as straight lakorns/dramas. That's such a fucked way of looking at BL and contributes to the lack of quality BLs w/esteemed actors. As for the GMM take, it's kind of 50/50. Gun and Tay have done some amazing work under the GMMTV brand. But at the same time, it would be interesting to see what they can do in international work or even with other Thai studios.

#thai bl korean bl taiwanese bl boys love yaoi #gmmtv offgun taynew bkpp brightwin #tharntype 2gether bad buddy theory of love not me #itsay cherry magic billkin pp krit

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gray-warden · 5 years

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can u explain how butches and femmes are counterparts and not opposites? or how femmes arent like lipstick lesbians? im not trying to be argumentative im just a very confused gay girl who Wants to Understand

First of all, sorry for taking like 50 years to answer your ask! I hope you still see the answer, though femmes and butches come from the same piece of history, where they were two sides of the same coin, a sort of “ying and yang”, if you’ll forgive the cliché. it’s more of an attraction to something that’s different but also the same in some ways, someone who might balance you out in a way in their differences but still gets where you’re coming from. it’s not uncommon for femmes to have previously thought they were butches because they felt a connection to the butch/femme history and dynamic but also felt alienated from womanhood due to their lesbianism. plus, two things being seen as opposites kinda often implies that there’s something in between those things, which isn’t the case here. butch/femme isn’t a “lesbian gender binary”, and the whole “futch scale” thing isn’t how it works, it was sort of a joke that got out of hand and led to many people misunderstanding identities that are important to many people. a stone butch isn’t just a super masculine and tough butch. “soft butch” meaning “butch who isn’t super muscular and who is sensitive” ignores that those things don’t make any butch less butch in the first place.femme is just an older identity and it just kinda goes hand-in-hand with butch because they have shared origins, and originally, in the past, the typical dynamic was a butch and a femme being together or seeking each other. it’s about complementing each other by having differences that work with each other, rather than differences that clash, and by having similarities that bring deeper understanding. of course stuff has changed, butches can date other butches ofc (there’s not really a different term for “gnc lesbian who exclusively or mostly seeks other gnc women”, and butchness, while it is a specific identity and a sort of “role”, is very associated with a specific kind of appearance. plus, many butches hear some dumbass shit about butchness even among wlw, so some of us might seek other butches so we finally feel understood. or just because they find other butches hot, which, in my opinion, is very understandable lol).also, a femme doesn’t necessarily have to always be super typically feminine, there’s an association with an older type of identity or role, so many femmes these days might incorporate a few things that could be considered gender nonconforming, like not shaving, not wearing makeup, having super short hair or buying some clothing articles from the men’s section (usually not all at once i guess? idk, i’m just giving a few examples). some might not use “she/her” and might not really see themselves as part of womanhood.or they might be very traditionally feminine, as many are.of course there are lesbians who might do any of those things but aren’t femmes, but that’d be because they just aren’t drawn to the identity, don’t long for a certain type of dynamic in their life, don’t feel connected to that part of history. most lesbians just aren’t butches or femmes. it’s not a bad thing, or a deep thing, most lesbians just aren’t! it’s a subculture, and that’s for a reason.but basically, butches and femmes just have more in common than we have differences. they’re complementary identities.originally, in specific contexts where those terms came up, butches and femmes were just seen as the possible different “types” of lesbians who seeked each other for relationships, sex, companionship, understanding, etc. it was originally a thing that came from lesbian bars, frequented by working-class women. so many butches and femmes worked in the same types of places (factories, often), so they still lived in the same type of context (though many femmes were sex workers, and that’s also an important thing to know, i don’t wanna seem like i’m ignoring it, but i’m not going deep into it bc in that case what they shared was still that they were also working class). of course many butches and femmes now aren’t working class, but those are the origins of those identities, and we should never forget who came before us.of course there are lots of differences between how lesbian working class bars were a few decades ago and how butch/femme is as a subculture now. the current subculture largely relies on writings from people who were always butches and always femmes back in the day, rather than those who sort of had to make themselves fit into one of those things because that was the expectation in those bars but otherwise didn’t feel connected to a certain identity or role outside of the specific context of the bars and relationships. so the modern butch/femme thing is, first of all, a subculture, because we don’t want people who don’t really connect to being a butch or a femme to feel like they have to fit in there, because if you don’t then you just don’t and there’s obviously nothing wrong with that, that’s why it’s a subculture, most lesbians just aren’t part of it, the same way most people aren’t parts of other subcultures. and since it’s so very based on the historic records left by people who were always butches and always femmes, regardless of where they were, who they were with, etc, it’s also about a constant identity now, rather than being someone who calls themselves a butch in a context where it’s about women seeking women but otherwise doesn’t really feel a connection to the identity in my experience, many femmes get annoyed at women who say they’re femme4femme bc they say that that’s why the term “lipstick lesbian” exists in the first place, as most women who call themselves “femme4femme” usually just mean “feminine woman seeking feminine woman”, using “femme” to just mean “feminine”. so that’s why there’s often an annoyance there.i’m not saying that a femme has to /exclusively/ be into gnc women to be a femme. just that being a femme and being a feminine lesbian don’t mean the same thing, and generally, femmes in the current butch/femme subculture often have at least a preference for butches, due to a desire for a specific kind of dynamic in relationships and anything surrounding that. there’s just a specific kind of historical connection and a sort of role connected to butchness and femmeness. it’s a subculture that’s more than just about what you look like and what the people you’re into look like. “butch” gets tied to a certain kind of appearance a lot more than femme does, as it’s a kind of appearance that stands out on its own, without the person saying anything about their identity, so many femmes rely on that connection to a specific part of history and certain desires and dynamics and roles a lot when it comes to their identity as femmes.lipstick lesbian is a term that sometimes just refers to very feminine lesbians, but very often specifically to feminine lesbians who exclusively or at least mostly seek other feminine lesbians. and to my knowledge there’s not any kind of deeper connection to any older identity or culture there, it’s like “masc4masc” or something like that, it’s just a description of your personal kind of aesthetic and the kind of aesthetic you find desirable (i’m not trying to imply there’s anything wrong with that, of course! just that it’s not the same as being a femme, but of course two things not being the same doesn’t automatically mean one is better than the other, which is something i want to make clear throughout this whole huge answer to your ask).idk, i’m no expert or anything, and i’m also just not great at explaining things, i tend to ramble a bit and i sometimes express myself in a way that was clear enough for other people, and sometimes i end up talking a lot. also, there just isn’t much butch/femme history where i’m from, at least not any /recorded/ history, there aren’t always words that describe the exact same things (of course there are people like me and people who are like many femmes, though, we’ve always existed, but there’s not really much of a butch/femme type of community thing because our history and words are different, and there’s generally fairly little LGBT or specifically wlw or lesbian history recorded), so this is about what i know of butch/femme culture in the US and online (since the latter relies on the former).there are a lot of people out there who talk abt butch/femme a lot, people who have read and watched and experienced more stuff connected to that, so you could ask people like that if you need more information (you can ask me, of course, i’m just saying they’ll know more), esp when it comes to femmes, since i don’t have their specific perspective on differences between femmes vs feminine lesbians who aren’t femmes, or on the femme4femme thing, which means i’m only talking based on my understanding of what they say, rather than from personal experience as a femme, just because i’m not one. (part of the reason why it took me a while was bc i asked some people i know, one butch and one femme, both have more knowledge about this stuff than me, esp the latter, to see if there were any inaccuracies they could see or something i didnt express well)

#Anonymous #anon #ask #asks #answered

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flying-elliska · 4 years

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Movie review : the Favourite (2018)

This is very much a movie I can say that is objectively brilliant ; without being a movie I loved. The first half, in which the cousins vie for Queen Anne's affections and the associated power was just incredibly unhingedly funny in a dark way. But the second half, in which everything falls apart, dragged and the ending was incredibly depressing. It made sense ! But personally, I like to root for the characters I follow, and when it becomes too much about terrible people being terrible to each other, it becomes unpleasant to watch. It's a matter of personal taste, I guess - I don't enjoy stories that are too pessimistic about human nature.

At the same time I am very happy that this is a movie that exists, for what it does with its female characters.It's funny how it portrays three women who are arguably all horrible, all some sort of queer too, and somehow it doesn't come off as misogynistic or homophobic so much as simply deeply misanthropic. It made me think about what, exactly, makes this portrayal so interesting in terms of what good female characters are. I think a lot of stories are still stuck in this concept that to be feminist/empowering/etc their female characters have to be these parangons of likeability, competence and maturity because anything else would imply bad things about female nature. This is immensely problematic because : 1) it places undue burden on the female character to always be there for others - often men, do all the emotional work, etc...without being central to the plot because 2) it's boring and it makes for characters that, being perfect, don't need to evolve, have no real arc and therefore are sidelined ; and 3) is a stereotype and treats women as unreal projections that are not allowed to be human.

So this movie is really really not that. Right off these women are all ferocious in the expression of their flaws. Queen Anne is incredibly immature and spoiled, Sarah is domineering and downright abusive, Abigail is manipulative and will do absolutely anything in the pursuit of their goals. They all have understandable reasons for being like that, too : Anne is grieving so many dead babies and is in constant pain, Sarah is incredibly passionate about what she loves and Abigail wants to be safe. They are charismatic. They're allowed a depth and magnificence that is most often reserved for male antiheroes. I think the greatest part is how little fucks they give about anything. They are not demure or polite or hesitant or anything we have been trained to expect from women in period movies. And there is something about watching women behave badly with glee and without any guilt that is just so cathartic. It reminded me of Killing Eve in that sense, with a similar baroque, absurdist, dry sort of humor.

Of course the "women be scheming" trope is nothing new. But the way it is depicted here is ; it's not directed towards men. The power shown lies very much in the hands of the women - be it Anne's regal authority, Sarah's willpower or Abigail's charm - even though it is still a patriarchy and the men are buzzing at the edges of the plot to try and make themselves relevant. I studied political science and in the field there is this persistent fascination with the temper, charisma, "lust for power" of Great Men, whose glaring human flaws are set aside because they acted decisively in a crisis and met history or whatever the fuck ; something that is talked about in terms of dominance with sexual undertones and presented as this natural irrepressible force. It is then opposed to the feminine force, presented as passive, fertile but weak, something to be controlled and shaped like fate or history or chance or the land or the unwashed masses. So there is something incredibly significant in seeing powerful women represented like this : opportunistic, lusty, ferocious, decisive, flawed, power-mad, flamboyant. It breaks the concept that there is anything natural about each gender's approach to power. This is accentuated by the fact that the men in the movie tend to be presented in effeminate ways, wearing wigs and makeup whereas the three main characters are the one always in action, shooting guns, falling in the mud, running around, etc. (Special mention to Sarah's period-butch get up...incredible) Through their interactions there is this fascinating feeling that the power doesn't rest in one specific thing, it's morphing and situational. The cousins are not just struggling to win the queen's affection, she is also struggling constantly - with her grief, pain, loneliness. I love it when character dynamics are so shifting.

But...in the end, I have not seen enough happy and healthy portrayals of wlw relationships and intimacy to enjoy seeing women treating each other so badly. The overarching theme is that power and inequality of power just completely fucks you up, and your ability to have normal relationships which is...on point. But in terms of character arcs it just ends on a "oh this is just terrible across the board" feeling which is not my fave to end a story on. The women all let their flaws get them into this spiral of misery. Anne's choice is between someone honest who treats her like shit or someone who is sweet but also a manipulative liar ; Sarah is exiled from the things she loved most, her queen and country ; Abigail is reduced to servitude once again. The end. Resounding feeling is like woooow I'm happy that's not me. There is something about toxic relationships that kind of bores me to be honest, because there is something very previsible about it and the whole ha people are shitty thing. But I guess that's a matter of personal taste. In the end I think it's a great thing that this movie exists. I just hope we get more stories with morally ambiguous women we can root for until the end.

#the favourite #ellie watches movies #wlw movies #movie reviews

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rametarin · 5 years

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that Yaniv guy.

yeah sorry. I know, “don’t you misgender a transperson.” However, I really do stand by my stance that this person isn’t trans. They’re pretending. In bad faith. Really bad faith.

The “woman” that went around trying to make female only spa’s wax his balls is the same son of a bitch that tried to host a topless under-12 swimming event at a pool. Has video of themselves ripped from facebook roleplaying as a child. lol. There are multiple sources of them speaking sexually in private messages across misc. social media with minor girls and bringing conversations on to periods and menstruation. They are, by all accounts, predatory towards children if nothing else. PMing pre-teen girls and asking to see if they “put their period pads in correctly” and shit. Some of them even have the receipts to prove the shit.

They’re in the school of pedophilia as Sarah Butts, walking around cloaking themselves in rainbows and femininity like predatory mimics. You speak out against them? They aikido flip around and broadbrush bemoan how “the other side” (anyone that is not them) “unfairly attributes transgendered people with pedophilia.”

bitch no we’re pointing out the pedophiles unfairly associated with transgendered rights. A cis het dude doing this would’ve been made a bitch in federal prison by now.

Like.. Growing up, we probably all saw some cheesy cartoons (probably School House Rock low budget) featuring pivotal civil rights events and figures public school talks about. We got to see stuff like Rosa Parks, even though later on we know it was a staged event with a “more photogenic” person, after the original woman, Claudette Calvin, was disqualified for having a kid out of wedlock and that’d “look bad” for the movement. Rosa Parks’ story was written as the straw that broke the camel’s back and an honest flash in the pan. But she was made into a story.

It’s going to make me incredibly mad if people like Yaniv, or Anita Sarkesian, or Zoe Quinn wind up being depicted in history like some sort of barnstorming, society bucking freedom fighters, simply put there for political reasons.

and by incredibly mad I mean I’ll probably grunt, roll my eyes and watch TV or something, to clarify. But it’s information I’ll keep close to my heart.

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midnight-fox-boy · 5 years

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More About me/Views/Etc.

Hello everyone~! This post will explain more about me, my views, and anything I flnd important to add. This will be kinda long so please buckle up ;3

General Information

Age: 19

Gender: Demifluidflux trans guy

Pronouns: He/him, they/them is cool too

Sexual orientations: Gay, Demisexual

Romantic orientations: Gay, Demiromantic

Alterous Orientation: Homoalterous

Other: Polyamorous

Relationship status: Taken

I love anime, video games, drawing, singing, and just browsing the web. I like to learn new topics, and explore new ideas and sciences. I want to be a therapist someday, but if it doesn’t happen, that’s chill too. I’m polyamorous currently in a monoamorous relationship. I don’t usually participate in discourse but I do have opinions/views on different topics. I am mentally ill and prefer not to be attacked. If I do something wrong or say something offensive, I don’t mean it, or I’m simply uneducated on the topic when I thought I was. I’m happy to take polite criticsm and never mean to do harm to others. So nothing I say is ill-intended.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Views on certain discourse topics

Aspec Discourse: I believe that aromantics and asexuals are inherently LGBTQ+ and should be welcomed. However, it’s up to them if they choose to identify with LGBTQ+ or not.

Nonbinary discourse. Yes there are more than two genders. And no it doesn’t mean “Neither male or female” Nonbinary means: “Not explicitly a single binary gender” Which can mean someone can be both binary genders, one binary gender and other nonbinary genders, no binary gender, etc etc. So yes. I CAN be a guy and nonbinary.

Xenogenders: I may not be able to comprehend it 100% But I KNOW that gender is diverse and confusing and you can label your gender however you want. Just be you! You have my support.

Nonbinary Gays/Nonbinary lesbians: YES nonbinary people can be gay or lesbian. Many of them are nonbinary women or men. Meaning they identify with womanhood/manhood no matter how that is. Maybe they have a primarily woman or man gender, maybe they’re man/woman aligned. Whatever. You do not get to dictate who is gay enough or lesbian enough :)

(NO)MAPS: Are scum. Do not interact, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.If you support them then get the f**k off my blog please! I am a CSA survivor and will NOT tolerate pedophilia.

Am I a transmed/truscum? Am a tucute?: Well, no. I’m none of those. I do not believe dysphoria is required to be trans. As many studies show gender incongruence is all you need, dysphoria manifests in some trans people as a result of incongruence. Gender euphoria also exists. This is not a topic I would like to debate. However, I do believe that dysphoria or incongruence should be medicalized in SOME form in order for trans people to be able to get gender affirming treatments. (Hormones, surgeries). I would love to live in a world where those things are free regardless, however :/ (P.S. I am dysphoric)

Kink/BDSM: Well. I participate in BDSM and kink, but I do not post about it or discuss on my blog. I have spaces for that and this isn’t one of them. So no worries about running into any kinky posts on my blog. That wont happen. If it ever does, it was an accident.

Transtrenders: I DO believe that RARELY, some cis people will pretend to be trans, not necessarily as a “trend” but to gain something in return, usually online. They may use it as an excuse to chase other trans people, or to have more “power” in a trans based argument. However, when people are accused of being trenders, they are usually not, they are just not what YOU feel gender should be. And people who fear they’re trenders? Impossible. You would know if you were faking.

Self Diagnosis: I’m divided on this. You shouldn’t self diagnose many things. Like a heart condition, or cancer, or other extremes. But if you know you’re depressed all the time and can’t see a therapist, you probably have depression. If you haven’t been diagnosed with PTSD but experienced something trauamtic and show symptoms of PTSD, You probably have PTSD. If you were confirmed to likely have a certain mental illness but perhaps didn’t fit the “age requirements” for said diagnosis, you can probably take that as an unofficial diagnosis. As long as aren’t flaunting it to seem “cool” (and most don’t) and are using those self dx’s to find help resources online and such, you’re probably good.

Fujoshis: Touchy topic I know. I do not agree when this word is used in specific contexts.

1) when girls think MLM relationships are “hot/sinful/sexy/dirty” , especially IRL MLM relationships, I think that’s fetishization, much like how many cishet men view WLW relationships 2) when it’s directed as a hate word towards gay trans men. I’ve been called a fujoshi for being a gay trans guy, and many of you probably have to. It’s wrong y’all. Gay trans men are gay men. Gay nonbinary men are gay men.

Pansexual vs. Bisexual: Both are valid labels. All multisexual labels are valid. Labels are for you to feel comfortable with, and as long as you aren’t choosing one over the other due to biphobia/internilized homophobia, you’re probably good. Bisexual attracted to all genders? Valid. Pansexual with preferences? valid. Bisexual attracted to many genders? Valid. Pansexual and feeling attraction regardless of gender? Valid. Bisexual and identify the same way? Valid!

Genital preference: Another touchy topic! The sad truth is that genitals DO matter to many people. Maybe it’s from truama, or an actual repulsion to a genital set. However, it should never EVER be used to excuse transphobia. You can not want to date a trans person who is pre-op, that’s fine, your loss not theirs. However, you cannot use that genital preference to see them as lesser, or as not “real” men/women. I personally have a preference for penises, but it’s only a preference. I would still potentially date a trans guy who is pre-op or never-op, but I prefer penises. But as I’m also gay, I likely wouldn’t date a trans woman who is pre-op/no-op. Because well, she’s a woman. So to summarize, genital preferences are OK as long as you aren’t a dick about it, or transphobic. :)

Trans people and gender conformity: Alrighty. This is a favorite topic of mine. Do trans people owe gender conformity? Do nonbinary people OWE people androgyny? Nope. Cisgender people are gender-nonconforming all the time without dysphoria. We see butch cis women and Fem cis dudes all the time. So I say, why do trans men and women owe something different? While it is true that early in transition being GNC CAN cause dysphoria, that isn’t always the case. Early in transition I usually avoided feminine things and interests unless I was in the comfort of my home, but now I’m open to, and embrace my feminine and androgynous side. I’m in no way a woman, I just happen to enjoy some stereotypical feminine things. Many trans men do. As for nonbinary people, they can present however they want. Androgynous, feminine, masculine, fluid presentation, mixing it up, genderf**k, whatever. Their body, their choice. Sometimes you may be able to “tell” someone is nonbinary by looking at them, and that’s totally okay. There is no “looking nonbinary”. All looks on a nonbinary person are nonbinary.

Anti/Anti-Anti?: Honestly I’m still confused in all of that stuff. Fiction CAN and HAS affected reality. That’s not to say that you can’t enjoy certain thinsg seen as “taboo” but there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed. PEDOPHILIA. You should not write, nor consume, fiction that presents a CHILD with an ADULT. It’s true that some pedophiles will write these to bring minors in and harass them. Even then, it gives stories for those sick f**ks to read. Do you REALLY want a pedophile reading your story? I guess I’m anti-ish. You can enjoy things that are otherwise problematic as long as you don’t let it affect how you treat people in the real world. Maybe you liked reading that fictional story about kidnapping and got off to it or something weird like that, as long as you aren’t trying to kidnap anyone or shit like that, I guess you do you, keep it to yourself though.

“NB” - Nonbinary or Non-black?: I went with POC voices on this. I will no longer use “NB” to mean nonbinary on my blog. You will likely just see “nonbinary” or “enby” used by me.

Aspec, autistic spectrum or Asexual/aromantic spectrum?: I’ve seen very little evidence or claim on the side of “autistic spectrum” being the term. Many responses ive seen and sources claim it means asexual/aromantic spectrum, and has even been echoed by autistic people, a lot of them. If I see evidence suggetsing otherwise, I’m happy to change my language. I don’t want to be ableist.

Butch/Femme, lesbian terms only?: I say no. I’ve seen a lot of articles, personal accounts, and history on the use of butch and femme. And none suggest they were terms only used by lesbians. From what I can tell, this idea seemed to be spread by “radical” lesbians and TERF’s. In history, many lesbians tried to distance themselves from all men, and encouraged non-lesbian women not to associate with men. This is obviously just a small tidbit of what they did in that time. However, I personally don’t use butch or femme, and don’t really plan to.

Specifically “weird” or crazy seeming kinks/BDSM styles: All I say is, you do you. If all parties are adults and consent to it, good on you. Just, keep it to yourself or in spaces dedicated to those things. As long as you don’t get off to ACTUAL CHILDREN, or try to bone or jerk it to an animal, you’re probably okay. Also don’t do incest, that stuff is bad.

!!If there’s a discourse topic you’d like to see here, you can PM me or send me an ask. I’m happy to shed my opinions on stuff, but they will go here!!

#About Me

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lokeanwelcomingcommittee · 7 years

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I was raised catholic & I have tried it, but worshipping someone else than god has always felt like betrayal (although I don't even pray or go to church) to me. But I have always been having a pleasant feeling whenever I stumble over Loki's name, even as a young girl who did not even care about history, even less about norse mythology. Even today I still don't know much about who he is as a person(ality), to be honest, only basic mythology stuff.1

2. But for quite a while now I have the gut feeling (and my gut feeling is usually extraordinarily precise. it has, on multiple occasations, scared the shit out of me) that Loki might be the one who would truly help, guide and support me as a spiritual force in life. I feel very calm when I think about worshipping him, despite my anxiety that usually, not with him, kicks in when I think about paying attention to someone else next to “god“.

3. I have read very often that Loki is connected to change, but what else does he approve of? What does he “stand for“(bad word choice) & support? I am willing to read myself through tons of texts on him, of course, but I would truly appreciate hearing about your experience with him to get an idea if we might indeed “match“. I would also deeply appreciate it if you could direct me to a good page that deals with a Christian reconciling “god“ with another spiritual force, if you know one, granted.

Based on your description, it sounds to me like he’s trying to get you to pay attention to him, likely because he thinks that he would be a good fit for you as a deity. It is, of course, up to you whether or not you want to work with him, based on what you think you may be able to gain through that relationship.

You’re absolutely right that Loki is often associated with change. Many Lokeans also associate him with various forms of deviancy from social norms and relate to his outsider status within the main Norse pantheon, and he is often worshiped as the patron of minorities and oppressed groups, like members of the LGBTQIA+ community, PoC, spoonies and disabled devotees, women, etc.

Within that sphere, there are as many interpretations of Loki’s exact domains as there are people who work with him. I do recommend taking a look at our reading list to give you a better sense of how you feel about Loki and what you think he may be able to offer you – if anything! Keep in mind that if you don’t want to work with Loki, that’s ok. In my experience, most Pagan gods tend to be rather forgiving of rejection, and Loki is no exception.

If you do decide to work with him, there is historical precedent. When Christianity was first introduced to the far north, many polytheists were perfectly happy to adopt this new god into their pantheon as just another deity among many. (The Christians were less happy about this, and their tactic was usually to inform the Pagans that the gods they were worshiping were actually demons, and encourage them to view the Abrahamic god as the only truly divine being in the pantheon).

Similarly, through Christianity was already decently well-established in the British Isles by what we know of as the Viking era (~800-1000 C.E), most people still worshiped old gods and adhered to old traditions, but found ways to incorporate them into this broader umbrella religion called ‘Christianity.’ For example, St. Brigid, a patron saint of Ireland, is thought by many historians to actually be a Christianized version of the Celtic goddess Brighid, as the saint’s feast day is the same as the holiday most commonly associated with the goddess, and the legends, works, and customs associated with both figures are extremely similar.

It is also not unheard of for modern pagans to remain loyal to the tenets and deities of the faith they were raised in, and perceive their walking of a new spiritual path not necessarily a separation from their previous religion, but an extension of it. There are also communities of Christians who consider themselves polytheistic, preferring interpretations of the Trinity as a joint masculine/feminine/nonbinary. (These are links to sources written by members of these communities. They are not the be-all end-all of Christian Paganism and I can’t make any judgments on their factuality, but they may be a good starting point for your personal research).

Just know, above all, that you’re not alone; chances are that if Loki is calling to you, he has also called to other Christians. I hope that this answer has been a bit helpful, and at least given you a place to start.

-Mod M

Your post is kind of ambiguously worded, and I actually interpreted it more as you wanting to make a clean transition but were plagued by the fear and guilt that the whole doctrine of Hell tends to instill. So to cover all bases, I’m going to recommend what helped me the most: study the history of Christianity. I know this may seem paradoxical, but once you see how much doctrine was decided not by logic and scholarship but petty personal politics and squabbles, it’s a lot more difficult to see it as the One True Way.

Beyond that, you’ll find a lot of other posts about dealing with this issue in the recovering monotheists tag. If you are looking to leave Catholicism behind rather than make it work for you, maybe some of those suggestions will be helpful or at least allow you to feel less alone.

Either way, good luck on your spiritual journey!

- Mod E

#Anonymous

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mermaidsirennikita · 7 years

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I understand if this is a dicey question you'd rather not answer, but I wonder if you could share your thoughts on Suzannah Lipscomb? She seems to be a very controversial figure among Tudor historians, but I don't know enough about the topic to ascertain whether the criticism directed at her is valid or if it's just straight up misogyny (or a little of both).

Good question--and don't worry, this is none too dicey for me :).I have mixed feelings on Lipscomb. To get one thing out of the way, I have no doubt that some of the criticism aimed towards her is misogynistic. She's young (for the field) and traditionally attractive and female. There you go. You see the same type of shit being hurled at Lucy Worsley but tbh, Lucy has (and I don't know to what extent this is her team/the networks she works with and to what extent it's her, probably a bit of both) been cast as almost... like, one of the boys, but better? She calls out misogyny sharply, isn't afraid to be a bit crass, is approachably dorky when she needs to be, and while she's certainly pretty, I don't think she's coded to be quite as feminine as Lipscomb is onscreen.I haven't read any of Lipscomb's books yet because several of them seem to be very "the wild and crazy times of H8" which tbh is both uninspired--there's tons of shit like that already out--and unappealing to my specific interests. She does have one book out that's about art and politics in his court in terms of performance, and it looks a bit more academic so I'd love to check that out someday. I have seen her as a presenter a few times.Now, because she's a presenter and not quite as established as Lucy imo I'm not sure exactly how much control she has over her image and the content being presented, how it's presented, etc. She's certainly an accomplished curator, and I'd never say that she doesn't know her stuff, but I'm not sure if her interests are quite... what I'm here for. My big issue with her is whatever that Henry and Anne: The Lovers That Changed History bullshit was. Again, I don't know how much of that can be directly credited to her--but if I was a historian, and furthermore as a feminist, I would not want to be involved with that. It was horrid. Incredibly romanticized, presenting an over the top version of the typical "Anne Boleyn feminist queen" image, really glossing over how awful that relationship was from the beginning in favor of some romantic Lady Macbeth narrative, and just..... kind of cringe? I distinctly remember a moment in which Lipscomb marveled over Anne's Book of Hours!!!!!!!! as if she'd never come across anything like that before and... seeing as she curated an award-winning series of exhibitions at Hampton Court, I kinda doubt that was the case. I don't think that documentary did her any favors in part because she seemed reeeally melodramatic in it, the messiness of what she was talking about aside.Again, I can't say exactly how much of this is her fault, but I don't find myself particularly impressed with her partially because of the above issue, and partially because nothing she does seems particularly... special? It's not bad, necessarily, but it definitely is appealing to people who probably already know parts of the story they're reading about and just want to hear more. And I find it a bit tired.I'd have to read specific bits of criticism to say whether or not I think it's valid, but I can definitely see why she'd be critiqued by Tudor historians who really dislike fluff because she's become associated with that in part because of that bad documentary. But I can also see how they'd critique her for misogynistic reasons, and tbh I feel like part of the reason why she was picked for that doc is because she fits the sexy romantic image more than a lot of other historians. And it's a pity that she's viewed that way.

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mutualhighmaintenancemachin-blog · 5 years

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I need a fix cus I'm going down

Made the mistake of appraising myself sufficiently healthy to attend a bonfire with normal decent tax-payer type folks. Stood up too fast in my chair and blacked out completely, hit my head on concrete. When I came to i had no earthly fucking memory of having driven to the bonfire, nor could i really recall the names of the three concerned hipsters perched over my limp doughy abscessed jaundiced shit heap of a body. Told them it was a problem with blood sugar, i had forgotten to imbibe my afternoon orange juice! Translation-haven’t slept in four days, taking in roughly two hundred calories a day all in ginger ale. Meth heads opt to sustain themselves on a diet of paranoid resentment in lieu of proteins and grains. The cook gets super spun and lectures us like we’re babes about the dark leftist forces presently waging war on the masculinity of the white man-for one thing, he's convinced that jews run the porn industry and that fucking pornhub is riddled with overtures both overt and subliminal intended to brainwash white guys into identifying as weak and feminine and to associate men of color with heroism and strength. He also believes that soy causes gender dysphoria. All of these batshit crazy delusions act like stars in the broad constellation of the cooks worst dystopian fears-a workforce with no room left for traditionally male-centered leadership characteristics dominated from top-down by a host of future ladies who make their trade in creative collaboration, rather than fear and theft of other peoples ideas. Without a need for a provider, our nazi-bespectacled methamphetamine cook envisions a new sexual economy in which women will jettison their attachments to the family structure in favor of like, industrialism, i guess, and men will have no other resort but a desperate turn to cross-dressing and dick-taking and i guess maybe stitching scarves. It was at this point that i was really tempted to tell the cook something he needs to hear-if you really believe that large shadow societies are orchestrating history just cus they want to make you some dudes boyfriend, its probably cus part of you wants to be. I get that, sucking dick is a blast. if you’re terrified that you can’t compete in a post-modern job market, it might just be because you aren’t. There’s no place left for cowboys or outlaws or methcooks cus those professions only make sense in the context of an insanely violent frontier. You feel obsolete and useless because you are, but make no mistake, that hurt has nothing to do with the world everything to do with your soul being severely malnourished. I know cus mine is too! Real moral christian courage is showing up to your crucifixion with a smile on your face ready to graciously thank the romans for every nail they put through your wrist. You feel empty because your a paranoid fascist meth cook, i feel bad cus I'm a junkie. We are bad. The nazi pilots who blitzed france in two sleepless, speed-fueled nights probably felt fucking fantastic, as if they were aloft on the trade winds of history itself and their momentum across europe must have seemed like proof enough of the moral righteousness of the german cause. But then the morning comes and the meth wears off and your skin smells like piss and your back aches and you can’t stop grinding your jaw and the first wave of survivors begin to trickle out from the camps and presumably in that moment a few nazis had the epiphany-that the very same starved beaten traumatized jewish women and men and children they had aspired to extinguish from human memory were now going to tell the story of what had happened. Power loses, grace is its own kingdom, etc etc. Furthermore those german officers who managed to transition back to civilian life and start families must have experienced a very strange new parental dynamic-can you imagine a family at a dinner table and the proud head of household instructs his small son to finish his vegetables and after pausing to mull it over for a few moments his son turns to him and says Father having thought about it a great deal i don’t think ill be following your instructions-after all you were only following instructions yourself when you helped to engineer the greatest cruelty in human history! To which ostensibly the father mumbles to clear his throat and asks his wife to pass the potato salad. Not even to invoke the possibility that the Fuhrer himself Mr. Adolph Hitler probably died surrounded by a swarm of shadow people, fucking hilarious just the thought, him yelling in that distinctive manic patois of his that he’s the leader and the abeyance of his will is sacrosanct blah blah blah while the little invisible mites under his pale skin shift and swell and scratch and the shadow people dancing around his peripheral vision taunting and cajoling and ridiculing him and the absurdity of his final solution and because he didn’t know speed the way we now know speed he probably didn’t know anything about the shadow people at all from his perspective they might just as well have been the ghosts of his victims come to taunt and ridicule him in his lowest hour pointing and laughing and daring him to pull the trigger!

The same entitlement motivates the mass shooter who imagines a world full of seven billion perfect strangers as an attack on his rightful pursuit of happiness. No one will sleep with him and he can’t make sense of his place in a world built on fucking so he begins to indulge in fantasies of coercion, revenging himself on the very public space he so craved Now if our hypothetical douchebag had any pretense of self-awareness he might have looked into the possibility of adopting several dogs, and in turn coming to see his life as a story about caring unconditionally for animals. That’s a helluva life-Saint Francis got into the catholic hall of fame for doing not a whole lot more. Or perhaps he could adjust his expectations of intimacy in consideration of the countless plain-to middling-to ugly folks who are forced to come to terms with the truth early on that all of our bodies are grotesque and hideously deformed billboard advertisements for our big beautiful impossibly dense souls-come see a kernel of divine inspiration made self-aware, shimmering in the glory of creation, just two exits past the tits and chin and ankles and all the rest of our faulty parts.

Now a discerning reader(however unlikely you’d be to find one in an audience consisting of absolutely fucking nobody lol) might have already begun to detect a certain heady strain of hypocrisy in this authors conclusion. Because while I'm not much of anything the one thing i certainly am is a self-destructive drug addict. So maybe its one thing for me to make fun of the cook for his wrath-filled flu-stricken infants tantrum of a way of viewing the world, assigning to his solipsism a generation-hopping solidarity with his nazi forefathers who came before and identifying in his politics the germinal seed of fascisms future, a politics so personal and self-contained that every divorce will be debated as if it were a stand in for larger cultural decay, every morning hangover a portent of spiritual decline, the vitals of the stock market remeasured and reassessed each time someone finds on the sidewalk a loose dollar bill. Political assemblies with real largesse exclusively devoted to trolling the instagram of a nebraskan man named doug’s now ex-wife for pictures of her maui vacation with husband number two drinking mojitos on a beach with sand bleached white as bone and both of them grinning with surgical precision an opulent almost confrontational kind of public grinning Doug couldn't recall that bitch ever having felt for him and the kids off playing in the surf and well how could any concerned and conscientious citizen fail to see the basic threat to democracy that whole scene represents? Donald Trump is probably the loneliest man in the world. He’s never met another person. He spends his time wandering the halls of his head checking for reoccurrences of his own reflection, a lifetime spent pathologically re-telling the same story about how he came to be the most powerful person in the world, so that by the time he really became who he had always pretended to be, the most influential figure in the free world, he had long-since bought into his own fraud to such a great extent that even the real thing couldn’t compare. Only a selfishness and self-centeredness as grandiloquent as his could explain the mindset of the modern mass shooter and the micro-politics informing him. He confuses his head for the world and then becomes enraged when it won’t do as he wishes, cursing the rain for its cold lash against his shoulder where he’d rather there have rested warm summer glow, furious at the thought of all the people he would never meet in far-off places he would never see who never paid him any attention whatsoever. Playing peek-a-boo a little bit of cheating peer through chubby fingers arrayed like a geisha’s fan and for the first time see that objects don’t disappear without our gaze to ontologically anchor them to earth. What a hurt. Now it might be technically correct that my addiction does to my loving family what the selfishness of the mass shooter does to public space. It intrudes like an alien thing and turns the air chilly in our childhood home and it transforms the medicine cabinet into a contested territory in need of defensive fortification and now that Cassies marriage has crashed on the rocks of addiction nobody could blame her if she never allowed another addict to darken her doorstep again and there was the sight of Jan opening my trucks passenger side door and a few rigs fell out onto the floor and all the spoons in the house have one side burnt-and-bruised like a black-eye you say you got from falling down a flight of stairs despite body language that says something entirely else why is it we don’t have a single spoon in the house what ghost spends all night punching the walls full of holes

recently went to an Alanon meeting to sneak a glimpse of how the other half lives...this lady said my addiction is to loving my addict. Bawled rivers out from red raw-rubbed rubber eyes and said my addiction is to my addict Not her person or qualifier or partner but her addict. Syntax almost seeming to suggest that something about the existential plight of the addict gets her intoxicated dizzy on pain. It’s quaint though cus that sort of sentiment is for fucking rookies-guarantee you no ones crying over me like a romantic. Not anymore. My thing these days is of a distinctly more shakespearian strand of tragedy, with wittgenstein and derrida’s influences also undeniable. I’m sick now in a way where people stop crying and praying you’ll find God and change and decide instead it’d be easier to just cross the street. Schizophrenics lost in a chorus meant only just for them, apocalyptic street preachers who stand on soap boxes while reeking of shit and give voice to visions of an America not our own, an alternate dimension where european arrival at the shores of the new world stalled out somewhere halfway across the pacific ocean on a wave so tall it scraped the heavens and America grew up a nation of nomads who set their watches to the rumbling migration of herds of buffalo and not even the highest priest could dream of a more beautiful idea than that of motion, movement without cease, the only acceptable fixed still frozen property being the burial mounds where the dead went after all their motion had gone-if they could view us on the other side of the looking glass stolen away in our own personal homes they would almost certainly come to the conclusion that this place where we live is just the land of the dead, a negative photograph of everything vital and good. Who would i be to disagree though, right?

The point is anyway that some alchemical reaction of A. Mental illness and B. Amphetamine abuse has more or less stranded me in words. Verbs and nouns and adjectives and adverbs in place of sky and grass. What Fredric Jameson called the prison house of language. Where derrida’s difference goes to play for eternity, never quite meaning what it had meant to say. What shook wittgenstein speechless. The president’s rhetoric so hollow that you can almost see him suffering a kind of dementia or spiritual torpor that results from the badness of his faith. Chewing and chomping consonants and sounds till they all are made to mush and shearing syllable after syllable off the network of signification until all that’s left is one satellite pinging a distress call hello is anyone there off of its own side. It’s own side like Adam plucked Eve from his rib and said put on this dress-after they ate the fruit and God cast him/her out to walk the world alone reportedly God said have fun all alone you worthless slut. Imagine trumps final state of the union-i am very sick, i have been alone for as long as I can remember, i wish i hadn’t lied so often, i wish i had occasionally told the truth, i would trade all of it to have known just one person.

Anyways, barring that miracle of political theater, the body gets sick and dissolves while the spirit is lost in words. I’d like to die in a bathroom stall in haughville with a rig stuck in my arm and the words I'm sorry stuck at the tip of my tongue and God decides to show some compassion and makes me a deal says you were never much good to people didn’t believe in a thing but you sure could do some impressive vomiting up of nonsense words and so what ill do is your soul will dissolve and turn into ink and for the rest of eternity you’ll be a naughty joke or a half-scribbled doggerel scrawled on the wall of a piss-soaked bathroom stall in the ghetto or you could say call this number here for a good time and don’t forget to ask for large marge and nobody’d ever suspect you were trapped in there or maybe a joke like this favorite of mine about my son it goes something like Jesus Christ was a God-awful carpenter, couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. Christ was a God-awful, couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. Couldn't pull a nail. Christ was God-awful. Couldn’t nail his own couldn’t save a carpenter terrible couldn’t pull god-awful a terrible carpenter he couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. I can’t pull this nail to save my own life. It’s right there sticking out of my wrist, but for whatever reason I just can’t find the right words to pull it out he was a carpenter who couldn’t pull a nail even if his life depended on it couldn't save his own life he couldn't-

For a good time call this number 1-555-555-5555 and don’t forget to ask for-

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clitcheese · 7 years

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I looked up frostgender and I am very confused. Can you explain it?

I'm actually not sure.It became a thing in about 2014 when truscum discourse was at it's peak (your basic anti-nonbinary, only 2 genders, trans is a mental illness type bullshit that we're still seeing today), and at the same time, the otherkin community was first starting to be visible and was under attack by trolls. I remember 4chan had multiple attempts to take over the otherkin tags with gore and porn. and otherkin had to change their tags about 4 or 5 times in a few months to keep in hidingso with these both happening at once, a really effective tactic they found was to purposefully confuse the two communities. pretending that people being trans is anything like identifying as something magical. things like frostgender and dragongender and cupcakegender came up, there was a lot of troll blogs coming up saying they identify as a food item, or random household objects, or things that were only funny because they're hyper specific. one really embarrassing troll blog claimed to be a specific crumb that fell into Abraham Lincoln's beard at some point in history.and Reddit had tumblrinaction, which was really bad at the time. all the troll blogs made up by redditors would get shared on Reddit, who would then take it seriously and think, holy shit are otherkin really this embarrassing? which would inspire them to go harass otherkin and nonbinary kids on anon, and posting gore in the tags and stuff like that, and then make their own fake blogs to share on Reddit about how bad otherkin are. it was a really gross cycle. people laughing at troll blogs because they assumed all the troll blogs were authentic, it was really the definition of a circlejerkso. about frostgender specifically. i have no idea if a single real person has ever actually identified with it because it came into being at that time. i'm sure it was to make fun of other abstract genders like voidgender and spacegender, which from what i hear are still common in some nonbinary circles? someone who uses them could probably explain it better. there was a big, big pushback against specific genders, like, people were coming up with new names for their experiences and then got mocked because "only one person is this gender, so how could it possibly be real?"remember that, really every gender is abstract. they're either an abstraction built up by the patriarchy like Man and Woman or they're an abstraction you make for yourself. i think a lot of the pushback was a lot of people's anxieties that gender had to be based in something "real", even though i don't really know /why/ i'm trans and no person can really explain their gender with empirical evidence. I can't take my gender out of me and show it to everyone in the room(quick aside, even TERFs still tend to describe cis-womanhood as something vaguely sacred and holy to them, as if all women are connected by "feminine energy" or "shared girlhood", often talking about how women are the intrinsically Nurturing gender. even if they can assign vaginas to their very abstract beliefs, they're still not really evidence-based, u get me. Terfism took a lot from those old, radical feminist wiccan cults. are they still around? does anyone know?)it's important to know that, the otherkin community from what I've seen is really respectful and has never claimed to be anything like trans. also, i've only met otherkin who are also trans so far? don't ask me to explain how. but i know that, there was never any confusion as to wether otherkin is a trans thing or not until all this happened. i know a lot of trans people still treat otherkin with suspicion for a lot of things like, making trans people look "crazy" by association. all the made up genders was actually a really effective tactic and, well Otherkin is still just a huge cringe thing 3 years later and that might not end for a long time. so yeah. i really just used frostgender as shorthand for those rare, uncommon nonbinary identities that very few or no one outside trans communities would believe are real. to say that people aren't really going to trust in people's individual identities if they aren't backed up by something like 2 thousand of years of cis-sexism, for example

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redscullyrevival · 7 years

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The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: Mary Russell Rundown

Oh boy oh boy I do love a good bump and dig into Holmes canon - especially if it has the potential to ruffle male fans! @sonnetscrewdriver knows me so well.

Plot/Setting/Narrative

So what’s the live or die, sink or swim, aspect of a non-Conan Doyle Sherlock-like tale?

Surly its not Sherlock’s characterization.

A child can get Sherlock right.

Is it the mystery? Is it the logical detective steps or flights of barely believable deductive ability key to the kingdom?

Nah.

While the ride is important and a big draw most every Sherlock versed individual typically learns not to put their eggs in that widely inconsistent basket.

How about the narrative expression explaining and driving the Sherlock-like things in the story?

You friggin’ bet ya! That’s the important stuff.

And Laurie King can certainly write a Sherlock-like narrative!

Holy hell.

King is as close to emulating a Doyle style narrative I’ve ever personally read but injects it with a wonderfully feminine perspective.

And not overtly flowery and romantic lyrical male-writing-feminine but feminine in the ways important to a Sherlock-like story; in the detail observations our Mary Russell is often to share.

The cases I feel could be a bit tighter other than the Kidnapping of Jessica which was surprisingly moving and really when I started to connect to Mary.

Mary Russell

The elephant in the room, “is Mary Russell a Mary Sue?”

I don’t really care but very brief digging has resulted in learning many people do.

Personally I think the best and most important thing to know about Mary Russell and by extension her creator is that on the official website there is a downloadable PDF titled “Information for the Writer of Mary Russell Fan Fiction” and is 17 pages of free organized information for fic writers and fans.

That’s simply beautiful.

Seems to me Laurie King knows what shes fuckin’ about and what she owes in debt.

And I don’t care if Mary Russell is viewed as some sad woman power fantasy by a wider Sherlock fanbase - but I won’t necessarily argue that she isn’t that either.

Mary Russell most certainly is a Mary Sue as viewed by some people and the argument is easily kindled.

And that’s not inherently bad is it? A little frustrating as its pretty obvious female characters get labeled Mary Sue disproportionately to male ones, to the point where there is no doubt in my mind that if Mary Russell were simply Russell hardly anyone would question or doubt his ability or companionship with Sherlock.

To get to the point:

I think Mary Russell is many things and like Sherlock as a character is adaptable to many reader views and interpretations - and ultimately its the controversy and wider discussion of her that makes Russell “valuable”.

I also think a big clue into the author’s intent with the character has to do with how her gender is discussed and made pronounced in text.

If Mary Russell never questioned her abilities or strength or worth as tied to her being a female in a very (very) male narrative space both within the one presenting her as well as the history of the character(s) she is tied to then the “Mary Sue” argument would have a lot more ground to claim, but as it is I am of the opinion that Mary Russell is meant to be a bit much and slightly antagonistic to what readers understand and unquestioningly accept regarding Sherlock and Sherlock canon.

I’m also pretty certain she is meant to be just a good time as well!

Lots of humor and love in this first book and it’s easy to like Mary, it really is, and while she initially comes off a bit pious as her story goes on she becomes more honest and open with her readers.

The first person narrative is uncharacteristically Sherlock and probably what drives a lot of “Mary Sue” arguments I’d imagine (“It reeks of self-insert!”) but works well enough and allows us insights into Mary we need.

Sherlock Holmes

This is a good Sherlock.

Very much a woman’s Sherlock.

And I mean that in the nicest way possible and not a comment on the impending romance.

‘Cause it’s going to happen and I might as well come to terms with it.

I’m actually really upset how okay I am with it to be completely honest.

I’m a romantic turd and I’m a sucker for relationships rooted in trust and belief in the other’s abilities so for me the impending romance (which is more “Mary Sue!” fodder and actually probably the biggest sore spot for anti-Russell folks I bet) is a combination of irritate and excitement.

Sherlock has always been an attractive figure for a lot of people - the age old “Smart is Sexy” at work.

I am one such people.

Very much a Spock vibe with Sherlock amirte???

The aloof disengaged approach to viewing relationships and emotional response paired with the logic and brains makes those characters someone you’d reallllly enjoy seeing crack (hence how their common and intense pairing with their closest ((of happen to be male)) confidants is so deeply satisfying).

The age gaps between Mary and Holmes is intense though innit?

YIKES.

A part of me wants to wax and wane on how irritating that is but then another part of me is practical and knows I can a.) ignore it b.) can’t help BUT ignore it because Holmes has the permanent visual image of stinkin’ Jeremy Brett in my traitor mind and I’m cool with watching him snog just about anyone!

So.

Hard to get up in arms about that really.

A third part of me also doesn’t give a shit.

Why am I so certain romance will bloom?

Because this is a woman’s Sherlock and I don’t mean that then obviously romance must present its self but what I mean is that this Sherlock isn’t alien and convinced that romantic feelings are unintelligent.

Kind of hard to explain but know it comes from years and years of reading various Sherlock Holmes fan fiction from various Sherlock Holmes properties and I know a “female holmes” when I see one.

Eh, I’m not explaining this well I’m loosing steam here but yeah.

*shrugs*

I’m not being negative!

Highlighted Passages

“As both I and the century approach the beginnings of our ninth decades, I have been forced to admit that age is not always a desirable state. The physical, of course, contributes its own flavour to life, but the most vexing problem I have found is that my past, intensely real to me, has begun to fade into the mists of history in the eyes of those around me.”

So, yes, I freely admit that my Holmes is not the Holmes of Watson. To continue with the analogy, my perspective, my brush technique, my use of colour and shade, are all entirely different from his. The subject is essentially the same; it is the eyes and the hands of the artist that change.

He was, as the writers say but people seldom actually are, openmouthed.

It was none other than the long-suffering Mrs. Hudson, whom I had long considered the most underrated figure in all of Dr. Watson’s stories. Yet another example of the man’s obtuseness, this inability to know a gem unless it be set in gaudy gold.

“Youth does not inspire confidence, in life or in stories, as I found to my annoyance when I set up residence in Baker Street.”

“I suppose you know I was prepared to hate him,” I said finally. “Oh yes.” “I can see why you kept him near you. He’s so…good, somehow. Naïve, yes, and he doesn’t seem terribly bright, but when I think of all the ugliness and evil and pain he’s known… It’s polished him, hasn’t it? Purified him.” “Polished is a good image. Seeing myself reflected in Watson’s eyes was useful when contemplating a case that was giving me problems. He taught me a great deal about how humans function, what drives them. He keeps me humble, does Watson.” He caught my dubious look. “At any rate, as humble as I can be.”

Looking back, I think that the largest barrier to our association was Holmes himself, that inborn part of him that spoke the language of social customs, and particularly that portion of his makeup that saw women as some tribe of foreign and not-entirely-trustworthy exotics.

It was a mad time, and looked at objectively was probably the worst possible situation for me, but somehow the madness around me and the turmoil I carried within myself acted as counterweights, and I survived in the centre.

It was the same, but I was different, and I wondered for the first time if I was going to be able to carry it off, if I could join these two utterly disparate sides of my life.

“Thank you, Mr. Holmes, I hope—” She looked down. “If my fears are correct, I have married a traitor. If I am wrong, I am myself guilty of traitorous thoughts against my husband. There is no win here, only duty.” Holmes touched her hand and she looked up at him. He smiled with extraordinary kindness into her eyes. “Madam, there is no treachery in the truth. There may be pain, but to face honestly all possible conclusions formed by a set of facts is the noblest route possible for a human being.”

“Are you telling me the butler did it?” “I’m afraid it does happen. Shall we search the woods for the débris?”

“It is, I can even say, a new and occasionally remarkable experience to work with a person who inspires, not by vacuum, but by actual contribution.”

Somehow me Da’ had raised a drunken mob in this tiny place, had summoned thick voices in song, and was driving them down the lane with the goad of his mad fiddle—a magnificent Welsh chorus, singing Christmas carols, in English, in an infinitesimal Welsh village, on a warm August night. Suddenly nothing seemed impossible, and as if the thought had loosed the house from stasis there was movement within.

“Is it always so grey and awful at the end of a case?” He didn’t answer me for a minute, then rose abruptly and stood looking down the road towards the house with the plane trees. When he looked around at me there was a painful smile on his lips. “Not always. Just usually.” “Hence the cocaine.” “Hence, as you say, the cocaine.”

The amazed adoration in her eyes was too much. I pulled her to me so I did not have to look at it. Her hair smelt musky-sweet, like chamomile. I held her, and she began to cry, weeping oddly like a woman rather than a young child, while I rocked us both gently in silence. In a few minutes she drew a shuddering breath and stopped. “Better?” She nodded her head against my chest. I smoothed her hair. “That’s what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate.” As I suspected, that last word triggered a reaction. She drew back and looked at me, her eyes blazing. “I do hate them. Mama says I don’t, but I do. I hate them. If I had a gun I’d kill them all.” “Do you think you really would?” She thought for a moment, and her shoulders slumped. “Maybe not. But I’d want to.”

“Yes. They are hateful men, who did something horrid to you and hurt your parents. I’m glad you wouldn’t shoot them, because I shouldn’t want you to go to gaol, but you go ahead and hate them. No one should ever do what they did. They stole you and hit you and tied you up like a dog. I hate them too.” Her jaw dropped at so much raw emotion aired. “Yes, I do, and you know what I hate them for most? I hate them for taking away your happiness. You don’t trust people now, do you? Not like you did a few weeks ago. A six-year-old girl oughtn’t to be frightened of people.”

“You were brave, you were intelligent, you were patient. And as you say, it isn’t really over yet, and you’re going to have to be brave and intelligent and patient for a while longer, and wait for the anger and the fear to settle down. They will.” (And the nightmares? my mind whispered.) “Not right away, and they’ll never go away completely, but they’ll fade. Do you believe me?” “Yes. But I’m still very angry.” “Good. Be angry. It’s right to be angry when someone hurts you for no reason. But do you think you can try not to be too afraid?” “To be angry and—happy?” The incongruity obviously appealed to her. She savoured it for a moment and jumped to her feet. “I’m going to be angry and happy.”

No, I refuse to accept gallant stupidity in place of rational necessity.

“I dislike the idea of a murderer employing children,” said Holmes darkly. “It is, I agree, bad for their morals, and interferes with their sleep.”

The more I thought about it, the curiouser it became. What kind of human being would need a refuge capable of sustaining life in a siege?

“Good God, Holmes, where have you been to pick up such a stench? Down on the docks, obviously, and from your feet I should venture to say you’d been in the sewers, but what is that horrid sweet smell?” “Opium, my dear protected child.”

“The admission then caused me some shame. But, that was half a lifetime ago, and since then I have learnt, slowly, and painfully, that time and distance can prove a powerful weapon.”

The thought of telling someone, and having to see their face afterward, had always clamped my mouth down on the words, but now, to my exquisite horror and relief, I heard the words trickle from my mouth.

“I was merely going to say that I hope you realise that guilt is a poor foundation for a life, without other motivations beside it.”

#The Beekeeper’s Apprentice #year of book #fandom talks #Russell and Holmes

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raidenenthusiast · 3 years

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you already know I'm gonna ask for genshin<3

GOD BLESS ILY 💖💕 i should mention that i accidentally closed tumblr halfway through answering this, so i am literally retyping all of it. this new phone has a very like, slippery screen n i'm not used to it so i was like OH SHIT HAGDJANHDBSN

my favorite female character: SUCROSE!!! i only have very minor complaints about her design (really i just wish she was wearing some pants) n the parts of it i do like (her hair n her ears n the COLORS) are so pleasing to look at. i fly around with her bc the mondstadt wings match her really nicely n she looks so cute. her little ears.......i adore her. she has a voiceline about how she wants to use alchemy to create a fairytale utopia n it's SO sweet n i love her so much.

honorable mention hu tao, bc she's actually the only female design i personally don't complain about at all (the bar is so low though) n i LOVED her story quest. i'm also a really big fan of how she's voiced in english (bc i play in english) n also she's hilarious. i'm obsessed with her dynamic with zhongli too.

my favorite male character: strap in kids. this is gonna be a long ride. i have a top three, although it's technically more of a top four.

tied for first are childe n xiao bc i cannot choose between them. i had a really fun journey with childe; when i first started playing, my friend told me they thought he would 100% be my type n i looked at a photo of him n went "ehhhh" so i wasn't really sure at first. i also knew the um. "reputation" fans of him had within fan content n such so i was ALSO wary of that being a very frequent fandom-goer. fast forward a little bit n his banner roles around. i actually decided to pull for him for GAMEPLAY reasons initially, bc the idea of a ranged user being able to use a melee stance was literally a gamechanger for me who wasn't n still isn't very good at archers. i did start liking him reluctantly at that point, but i didn't really want to admit it (very funny looking back) n i used to make fun of him a lot bc i was in denial. NOW i have him in my party (my incredible dps my beloved) n i have finally met him in story which made me fall REALLY hard REALLY fast bc believe it or not, canon childe is NOTHING LIKE fanon childe. n that's a good thing mind u. n the rest is history, he now means everything to me. i am soft for him daily. i also rescind my previous "ehhhh" about his appearance bc he is very sexy. i am ALSO very much an advocate for how griffin voices him n i could talk about the golden house scene for literal hours; it is THE best scene in the game so far.

xiao was sort of similar, my (same) friend n i both knew i would like him bc he is VERY much my type. we were right. i was hyped up to meet him n as SOON as i did i fell so hard i fell off a cliff. it breaks my heart every day i don't have him as i wait patiently for him to rerun. playstyle wise i honestly think he's really fun, but i would probably be saving for him even if i hated how he played, bc i just love him that much. i'm also obsessed with yaksha lore in general n i think about him a lot. xiao my beloved. he also has one of my favorite (if not my favorite) designs.

diluc n zhongli are the last two, bc i can't really choose which one of them i like more, only bc they're both important for different reasons?

diluc was my FIRST favorite character. i took a single look at him n i KNEW. first character i loved, first character i really wanted, as well as the character i tried to (n failed to) REROLL FOR. over fifty times, n nothing. i have him now, but goddamn. i have a thing for characters associated with fire, n as soon as i heard about the whole darknight hero thing i was like oh my.....marriage. i was heartbroken when i played through the chunk of the story quest where they let u trial him before i had him bc i wanted him so bad. he's literally been on my team since day one. i go idle with him to hear him say nice things to me. i love him so much.

n as for zhongli, he's. also special. the definition of comfort character. "he's more than daddy to me. he's.....he's like GRANDPA" HQGDNANHD no but seriously, he walks on sceen n i just feel safe. part of it is keith being so very good at voicing him, but regardless i love him very much. he tugs at my heartstrings a lot n i think he's probably the character the causes me the most physical heartache bc i feel so bad for him.

honorable mention dain, bc who would i be if i didn't mention dain. mwah.

my favorite book/season/episode etc: i'm gonna go with quest for this one! n i think we all know what i'm gonna say; OF COURSE IT'S ZHONGLI'S STORY QUEST!! i complain a lot about how this game doesn't treat tension properly, but i have absolutely nothing to complain about in either of his quests. particularly part two really held its own for me against the entire main story, in my opinion. i know part two just came out, but i am ECSTATIC about the possibility of future parts. also the only story quest i've shed tears over (although i came pretty close on childe's n xiao's). i even THINK about a scene from that quest n my heart breaks into pieces. emotionally, zhongli owns me.

my favorite cast member: in terms of acting performance, probably keith. in general, yuri. he is one of my all time favorite voice actors n i inhale everything that he has done like fucking kirby. i'm really attached to a lot of the english cast though; laila, griffin, khoi, erika, etc.

my favorite ship: this is hard, actually. what's hilarious is that all my favorite pairings involve zhongli. i honestly, at this point, think it's a tie between zhongluc n rezhong. bc rezhong there is just so much there n so much to THINK about, but zhongluc is very comforting to me, personally, n the whole dragon n the phoenix imagery stuff sucked me in like a VACUUM. i also really like guili though; basically, if zhongli is in it, i will at least think about it (sort of, see later).

a character i'd die defending: childe no uhh. in terms of characters who NEED defending, kaeya. i am so SICK of u people not knowing how to interpret him. i'd like to add in eula here too, bc i REALLY like her, n i think some of u went a little bit haywire. in terms of characters who don't really need defending, xiao. i would die for him, actually.

a character i just can't sympathize with: ironically i don't genuinely hate any of the playable characters yet. dottore is pretty fucked up so i guess him, but also i still find him interesting hagdbanhdnan.

a character i grew to love: besides childe? ganyu! i didn't NOT like her by any means, but i was mostly indifferent, n while i WISH her story quest had a little more to it...i adore her very much.

my anti otp: besides the obvious ones, zhongchi.....LET ME EXPLAIN!! i don't HATE it, exactly. but i got so irreparably BITTER about it clogging up both childe n zhongli's individual tags, to the point where i couldn't find enough content without it, i completely lost interest. i will accept nice art of it, but i also have a massive problem with how A LOT of fans tend to over/hyperfeminize childe in relation to the ship, which feels very disingenuous to me bc childe.....isn't a feminine character, really. he's just, i dunno, skinny?? if anything, his whole fight happy shit feels more masculine to me, lmao. it just very much feels like a lot of u can't accept a pairing between two men unless u put one of them in the role of the "woman" n it very much bothers me. like, listen, i know childe is canonically a malewife n i love that about him, but it's about the intent. n i feel HORRIBLE vibes from a lot of u people. i know active fandom genshin fans have bad vibes in general, but u know what i mean. i have been to this rodeo before, n i hate it every time. also, i see a lot of very mischaracterized childe in relation to the pairing too, n to a much lesser extent zhongli, but it still exists. basically, i don't hate it, but i am bitter. n it very much feels like a lot of u are turning them into ur token fandomwide homos which NEVER ends well.

please all i ask is if ur gonna ship two men can u at least treat them both like some semblance of men i am tired

#genshin #mika.txt

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

Text

Another Set of Choices

by Dan H

Tuesday, 31 August 2010

Dan displays unusual loyalty for a Ferretbrain reviewer~

We have a bit of a tradition here at Ferretbrain. We like to encounter things, squee like crazy over them, then come back to them a little while later and decry the fact that they went shit.

A little while ago I reviewed the debut outing(s) of Choice of Games, an indie game company which manages to be completely unpretentious. I'm seriously not sure how they manage it, I suspect it involves corrective surgery. They've released two more new games since my last review, and have published several more fan-creations.

Having been burned by Popcorn, Soda … Murder? I decided to give the fan creations a miss and go straight to the official games.

These games were Choice of Romance (a multiple choice court intrigue game) and Choice of the Vampire (a multiple choice vampire game, duh).

I played through both with Kyra, and we both thought Choice of Romance was brilliant, while we found Choice of the Vampire to be rather less so.

As ever, spoilers abound!

Choice of Romance

Choice of Romance is a game of courtly intrigue set in a fantasy kingdom with a vaguely Italian feel. You play a member of a noble family, heir to some small land, some small income, and some small magical power (it's one of those “all the nobility are mages” settings).

Like most Choice of... games, it's pleasingly non gender- and non hetero- normative. You get to pick whether you play a male or female character, and whether your character is homosexual or heterosexual and much as with choice of broadsides, the norms of the setting flip to match your character's gender and orientation. Even more interestingly, unlike Choice of Broadsides, which regendered its setting to allow a female protagonist to play in the masculine-defaulting sphere of swashbuckling adventure, Choice of Romance regenders its setting to allow male protagonists to engage in the female-defaulting sphere of securing social and political advancement by making an advantageous marriage.

This last point is one of the most striking things about Choice of Romance. One of the largest but least visible manifestations of sexisim in the games industry is the way in which video games focus on the fields of endeavour traditionally dominated by men (war, sport, more war) and ignore those traditionally dominated by women. Of course this is in large part because gamers of both sexes like to blow things the hell up, but it's also because narratives focusing on women and the spheres associated with women are considered boring, so it's remarkably interesting to see a game which not only focuses on court intrigue from a feminine perspective, but gives you the option to do it with a male protagonist.

What really sold me and Kyra on this game was a scene about ten percent of the way in. We had started off fairly so-so. Okay, we're a noblewoman. Okay, we're going to court. Okay, we've defined our sexual oritentation (we were a lesbian by mutual acclamation). Then we got asked to take part in a masque. It turned out that somebody had dropped out, and we were to play the part of Virtue in a masquerade representing the triumph of Perseverence and our job was to be rescued from a tower by the hero (or rather heroine, since we had chosen the non-heteronormative setting). Hang on, we thought. This sounds a bit familiar.

Then we were told that on the night of the actual performance, the role of Perseverence would not be taken by the young lady we had rehearsed with, but by the Queen herself.

Hang on, we said, this sounds

very familiar

It was at that point we realised that we were playing a lesbian wizard Anne Boelyn.

Suddenly we realised how clever the game had been. Without telling you anything more than that you were a noblewoman (or nobleman) going to court to find an advantageous marriage, the game had put you into the shoes of one of the most famous women in English history without even realising what you were doing (and again, remember that the game gives you complete control of your gender and orientation so it's entirely possible that you could be playing Anne Boelyn as a man which feels strangely subversive). Suddenly everything started to slot into place, the brash combative queen whose sole heir was illegitimate, our ambitious uncle who kept encouraging us to cultivate the queen's affections, the poor but ardant young suitor who kept writing us poetry.

You didn't need to understand anything about the history to play the game, but if you did everything fell together into this fantastic “aha” moment which was genuinely delightful. I was even more pleased when we managed to discredit the King-Consort by playing on the queen's frustrations at his inability to provide her with an heir.

We got the crown, by the way.

Mechanically, Choice of Romance returns to the simpler style of Choice of the Dragon. You have six stats, Booksmart, Charm, Subtle, Magic, Wealth and Reputation, which are easy to track and relatively straightforward to work with. We were big on Subtlety but weak on magic, and our reputation tanked early on because we were rather above ourselves. The stripped down system made it easy to see where you were going and what you were doing, and we always felt very in control of the game.

The only real downside to Choice of Romance is that it's a “part one”. Perhaps I'm not giving the Choice of... crew enough credit, but since the company is not (last time I checked) a full time job for any of them I don't really expect them to keep to anything like a release schedule, and on a more practical note I don't quite see how they expect you to import your old game information into the sequel.

Basically what you get in the game is the first season of the Tudors. Once we'd worked out who we were (or who we were based on) we stuck to the script, as it were, fairly closely, and we had the crown by the end. Presumably the challenge from here is to avoid getting beheaded, but the game finishes before you get that far. The ending feels a little abrupt, but abrupt endings seem something of an occupational hazard with these sorts of games (I found that Broadsides had the most satisfying denoument) and I still thought that Romance was their best outing yet.

Choice of the Vampire

Interestingly I got an invitation to the beta for this one (didn't get one for Cataclysm, but I got one for this) and so I actually played it through a couple of days before release. I wasn't entirely sold, although I did go back and try a couple of different pathways, and there are some interesting differences early on.

I then asked Kyra to play through it with me. She … umm … hated it so much she made us stop halfway.

As you might remember from our Edinburgh podcasts, Kyra and I have something of a mantra for things we don't like but don't consider to be irredeemable piles of putrified bat intestines, which is “Well at least it wasn't as bad as Shafted.” Choice of the Vampire is not as bad as Popcorn, Soda … Murder, and I am willing to accept that a lot of what I thought was iffy and Kyra thought was unplayably terrible about it comes down to questions of personal preference, but here at Ferretbrain we generally like to lay out in great deatil why we think our personal preferences are right goddamn it.

Let's start with the writing. The writing in the previous three games has been simple, clear and to the point. It hasn't been remarkable prose of mind expanding beauty, but it's been sharp, witty, and got the job done. The writing in Choice of the Vampire is … well … to say it is more ambitious would be euphemistic. It's laboured, it's overwritten. It never chooses to express itself in a manner which could be considered precise, direct or succinct if it can instead employ some florid, flowery, or redundant turn of phrase which uses nine, ten or even eleven words where one or two would be entirely sufficient.

For example, when you start the game you are given a choice of potential “Makers” (or “dominuses” as they are later called). Here is how your memories of that first meeting are described:

You remember his gaze--bypassing your skin and your sex as being irrelevant--eating its way through to your soul. You know that in the world, these things are not irrelevant, and yet he judged you on some criteria which you could neither perceive nor understand... and when he was done, he spit you out again, altogether lessened by the experience.

Now again I should say that this is a question of personal preference, and some people have actually praised the writing for “creating a sense of alienation” - so perhaps the writer is doing something I just don't get, but to me that whole thing just looks clunky and inarticulate. It mixes its metaphors (“eating through” does not sit naturally alongside “spitting out” despite their shared oral component) it repeats itself, it's heavy handed. Gah.

I think Kyra gave up at about that point.

It then gets you to pick your gender, whether your dominus chose you for teh sexxorz or for some other function, and then gets to the “character creation” questions, where you explain what was unique about you that attracted the vampire's attention. You get a large number of different background options here, the exact choice varying depending on your choice of gender, dominus, and whether they wanted you for sex or assistance which is an admirable flexibility but comes at the expense of both clarity and – paradoxically – of player choice. Why, after all, should your choice to play a particular type of character be contingent on your having chosen a particular dominus? It creates the impression that the designer is more concerned with the consistency of his creation (apparently there are only three possible tasks which he feels “West” could want a woman for, for example) than with giving the player the freedom to create their own story.

One of the biggest flaws of Choice of the Vampire is what seems to be an unwillingness to let the player experience the game for themselves. The text is constantly telling you how you feel and what you think about things. When you are given a choice those choices often either feel, or turn out to be, purely cosmetic.

Worse, it puts words into your mouth, and does so with such frequency that there is always a sense of the game being played for you. For example, your behaviour towards your maker is consistently polite and subservient, there are long, non interactive scenes in which you interact with your maker in a subdued, subservient manner, acquiescing to all of his demands and calling him by his full title as he requests, with no option to challenge his authority or show him disrespect. This goes on for long enough that by the time you finally get the option to choose your own reply (“I am ever your servant” or “I have better things to do”) the defiant option simply feels inconsistent with the character that has been presented to you.

The whole thing has the difficult feel of a not-very-well-run Vampire: the Masquerade campaign. There is always a sense that player agency is limited to defining things about their character, and even then those things are treated much like character background in the stereotypical roleplaying campaign, stored on a sheet somewhere and forgotten about.

A particularly egregious example of the way the game asks you to define things about yourself, then ignores them comes when one of the other vampires asks you to describe your preferred prey (which you get to pick from a very large list, some of the options on which will be greyed out if the game deems them to be “out of character” for you) and having said “I like to feed on children because I am a sick bastard” or “I exclusively feed on animals because I am all tortured” the other vampire tells you to go and try the blood of some random french dude because it apparently has a “unique terroir”. And then you do. Despite the fact that you have just directly and explicitly described your character's feeding habits, you immediately head off to chow down on M. Hebert. Your character's preferred prey is occasionally referenced in passing and is of course dutifully recorded on your stats screen and repeated to you at the end of the game, but there are no scenes in which you actively hunt, in which you demonstrate your choice of prey through in-game actions.

While you are feeding on Monsieur Hebert, you encounter a young voodoo priestess named Clotho. The text immediately tells you that you are attracted to her. And your options for the next three choices are essentially “pursue a romantic relationship with Clotho” or “do not pursue a romantic relationship with Clotho” (you do not get the option to pursue a relationship with Herbert, any more than you got the option to stay away from him in the first place). If you do pursue a relationship with her, events seem always to pan out the same way (there is a particularly annoying sequence where you uncover a threat on her life, but if you try to rescue her it turns out that she had everything under control all along – which is all very empowering I'm sure, but I'd much rather you found a way to show me this character was strong and independent without railroading me.)

As part of your very linear introductory conversation with Clotho, she idly threatens you. At this point you get precisely two options, one being a line of typically overwritten dialogue (“You could no more harm me than a lamb could harm a lion”) and the other being to physically attack her. Not only do you get no other choice, no option to let the threat slide, no option to apologize, no option to do anything but be a dickbag or a slightly different sort of dickbag (again it feels like the writer had a very clear idea of how he wanted your relationship with Clotho to play out, and the only options he bothered to write in were options to break it off early) – not only that but if you do choose the option to physically attack her she actually takes you down. Because apparently her clothing is lighter than yours (I am not making this up), and that makes all the difference. I don't think I've ever felt less like an immortal bloodsucking fiend in my entire life. That time I couldn't open a jar of salsa, and then it exploded in my face and I got covered in chunky tomato pieces? Still made me feel more like a vampire than that part of the game.

And that was my biggest problem of all with Choice of the Vampire: It just doesn't make me feel like a vampire. Now again, this might be deliberate, the writer said in a recent post on the Choice of Games blog that:

I’m not writing this story so we can imagine ourselves as fabulously beautiful, wealthy and emotionally tortured teenagers. Rather, I’m interested in what it means to be immortal, what it means to watch the world pass you by, and what are the compromises we make to get what we want in our lives. Just as you make choices in life, so too must you make choices in the game.

(Clearly he missed the surgery)

This, once again, reminds me of nothing so much as the stuff you'd get in the GM advice section of White Wolf games. Being a vampire isn't cool. Being a vampire isn't about being powerful. Being a vampire is about serious issues to do with the torment in the human soul. Being a vampire is a curse and you shouldn't enjoy it.

By the way, here's our NPC list of awesome sexy rich fantastic people.

Playing Choice of the Vampire doesn't feel like being a vampire, it feels like reading somebody's unpublished novel about vampires. I've made three full plays-through of the game, and several incomplete plays-through to check options and I can honestly say that there is nothing in the game which allows me to explore what it means to be immortal, there is nothing that allows me to explore what compromises we must make to get on in our lives. There are, however quite a lot of fabulously beautiful, wealthy emotionally tortured teenagers (there's even a scene where your broodmate humiliates a rival by making her think he fancies her, then dissing her about it), but I'm not allowed to live in their world, because I'm just the player.

It doesn't help that the game is incredibly overambitious. It bills itself as telling a story covering two hundred years, but the actual game as released starts with the Battle of New Orleans (1815) and ends with the Siege of New Orleans (1862) meaning it only actually covers forty-seven years (about as much as Choice of Broadsides), at which rate it's going to take four full instalments just to bring it up to the modern day. And whereas Choice of Romance at least feels like a complete story (it ends with your marriage more or less) Choice of the Vampire just stops after the Civil War.

Similarly, the vast number of character backgrounds you get to choose from at the start of the game seem to lead to very little. Aside from shuffling around some of your (enormous number of) statistics, your background is rarely referenced in the game. Kyra and I tried to play as a priest, I played as a Scots-Irish washerwoman, a slave of both sexes, a free person of colour, a Germanic lady of warrior ancestry, and a French aristocrat. The game dutifully wrote down all of the details I gave it, but I always felt very much like I was playing a generic video game protagonist. The game makes quite a big deal out of race and gender but I found it made very little difference in practice. Ironically this might be because unlike the regendering in Courtesan or Broadsides, where social norms shift to fit your character which results in some genuine and observable differences in gameplay Choice of the Vampire is set in a world where perceptions of gender and race are concrete, which means whenever your character's sex and ethnicity are ignored, instead of feeling like the game has subverted your expectations, it feels like the game has just forgotten that you aren't a white man.

The romance options in particular feel strangely normative. Your relationship with Clotho consists entirely of you running around trying to save her from things and being invited to meet her family (who don't seem to care if you're a woman) while your relationship with Silas the Soldier consists of you sending him delicately perfumed letters and waiting for him to return from the war. Both relationships contain references to the fact that a homosexual relationship is unusual in the setting, but I still felt that my character was “the man” in my relationship with Clotho and “the woman” in my relationship with Silas. Similarly regardless of my character's ethnic origin, I very much felt that my attraction to Clotho (an attraction I could not choose not to have, only to act on or not act on) seemed to be based on the fact that she was mysterious and exotic, even if I had chosen to play somebody from the exact same culture.

A lot of the flaws of the game can be traced back to the necessary restraints of this overambition. Race and gender were big freaking issues in nineteenth century New Orleans, and while I respect the writer's attempt to engage with those issues, the only way to do it properly would be to write a completely different game for every character background you chose, because in that kind of setting people are going to treat a Choktaw Native completely differently to a Catholic Priest. The backgrounds are sufficiently specific, and sufficiently diverse, that they create an expectation on which the game can not deliver. If I am playing a Catholic Priest, seduced away from the church by my sadistic master then I expect faith, the church, and my struggles with my religion to be the central focus of the game. If I am playing an interpreter of the Choktaw people, I expect to interact with the Choktaw people at some point.

The game tries to do too much, and as a result winds up doing nothing. It keeps telling me that I have the option of pursuing all kinds of interesting things: seeking the truth about the origin of vampires, searching for a love that will transcend death, acquiring wealth or power, and so on and so on, but you get no option to pursue any of these goals in the game. Instead you get taken on a whistle-stop tour of forty-seven years of New Orleans history, with the primary focus being not your character's personal journey into undeath, but real historical events in nineteenth-century America, more Choice of the Civil War than Choice of the Vampire. Indeed most of the vampire segments involve no choice at all, and the game glosses over the business of hunting and feeding almost entirely. Instead it focuses the majority of its attention on questions like “does your character support the Union or the Confederacy”.

The thing is, it might get better in later instalments. The elements of the story which are sold to you as important (finding out the origin of vampires, achieving redemption, attaining wealth and power, experiencing the cruelty of an immortal existence) might be explored more fully in part two or three but the game as it currently exists is incomplete and unsatisfying. It has ambition, but lacks execution.

Conclusions

Having played all of the Choice of... crew's games thus far, my current ranking is Romance, Dragon, Broadsides, Vampire.

I can only speak personally, but I think that the games which work best are the ones which focus on telling a simple, clear story without trying to over-define or over-mechanise things. Broadsides suffers a little from having more statistics than you can easily keep track of, and Vampire suffers even worse from the same issue. There simply isn't enough space in a short multiple choice piece of IF to adequately explore all of the themes that a more ambitious game might want to explore.

So yeah, Choice of Games, still going strong. Not a big fan of their latest.Themes:

Computer Games

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Arthur B

at 09:37 on 2010-08-31ROCKIN' ARTICLE NUMBER, DUDE! /makes sign of the Horns.

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Wardog

at 09:46 on 2010-08-31AMG!

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Wardog

at 09:54 on 2010-08-31Just to expand, as Dan says I really hated Choice of the Vampire. I've played about to the halfway point three times now before giving up in frustration. It reminds me of a badly GMed Vampire: The Masquerade game. It offers you about million ways to determine the minutae of your character and then no way whatsoever for these to impact the game - other than to arbitrarily close off options.

Also you can't get any sweet sweet manlove if you're not compassionate enough - whut?!

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 11:19 on 2010-08-31Is there some way that The Choice of Romance addresses the whole lack of legitimate heir thing, or do they pass it by? Not criticize the scenario in the game, I just wondered if how they resolved it, through magic, legitimizing the illegitimate one or something?

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Wardog

at 11:40 on 2010-08-31Hehe, you should play it and see - it only takes about half an hour.

It's actually rather clever - they use light/dark magic to subsitute for gender and inheritence issues (a light mage has to inherit the throne after a dark mage), and apparently light magic makes it possible for same sex couples to have children.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 11:48 on 2010-08-31Oh yeah, I noticed the link just now. Very quick of me. It seems awesome, although I guess I won't findout until later, after I've played it through with a character that's so blatantly a dream image of myself it almost hurts. By the way, I got more of a spanish feel from the names, but I don't know.

I don't know whether I'll try the Vampire thing, I haven't really bothered with the glamour vampires after reading Anne Rice and I always preferred the more monstrous take on that, but I guess I'll try.

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Dan H

at 13:16 on 2010-08-31If you take the designer's comments at face value, he shares your preference for "monstrous" vampires.

I feel a little bit bad for laying into CotV as badly as I did, because the folks at CoG are generally very sweet and responsive. For example, they seem to have changed the way your initial meeting with Clotho is presented in response to a couple of comments on the blog from people saying they felt pushed into it. I don't think it makes a huge difference, but I think it makes *some* difference.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 13:31 on 2010-08-31I wonder if part 2 of the Choice for Romance will have continuation for the other storylines as well. For now, only the Boleyn Plot has reference to part 2.

But the game itself pulls the player very deep into the plot and even if it is rather short, you get very involved with the character. Are there more games of this kind around. As good as this one is, one starts to wonder how a game with a larger scale with even more plot affecting choices would be like. Of course it would take huge amounts of effort to create something like that, but one can dreram, I guess.

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Dan H

at 13:47 on 2010-08-31I'm not sure if there's anybody else doing exactly this choose-your-own-adventure style of game (although there's always old-fashioned gamebooks) but there's a ton of text-based games out there (Kyra knows more about IF communities than I do).

It's worth pointing out that Choice of the Vampire *is* much larger and more complex than their other games, and I think a lot of its issues come from exactly that. Check it out for yourself if you're interested, I know Kyra and I hated it, but a lot of people have responded very positively.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 14:07 on 2010-08-31I'll do that next. And judging from your review, I can guessthat the problems are the inflexibility of the plot and that the choices you make don't influence it enough. This would require a considerable amount of effort to correct, I guess.

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Dan H

at 15:00 on 2010-08-31The plot is actually more flexible than it seems, if you tack /scenes/ onto the end of the URL you can look at the source code and there's a lot of different paths you can go down.

It's just that unfortunately a lot of them are either locked off unless you manage to max out your stats or else or else require you to make decisions that the game strongly hints are bad ones.

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Jamie Johnston

at 08:34 on 2010-09-01Just finished

Choice of romance

(as far as it currently goes) and found it jolly enjoyable.

I tried it before reading on to the substance of the review, so I was taken by surprise by the way the flexibility of gender and sexuality worked itself out. Having glimpsed the big bold reference to Anne Boleyn I assumed from the outset that I was a woman, so when I was asked to choose I confirmed that, and set up a reasonably Boleynish character but with a bit more of an interest in actual romance. But when I got to the choice of sexual orientation I was a little flummoxed.

I don't think it's spoiling anything to say that the way you're asked to choose is that you're at a party and you're flirting, and the game asks you to say whether you're flirting with the girls or the boys. Well, I say to myself, I'm a woman who's aiming to work every angle to get myself advantage and if possible a bit of romance too. But, you see, I'm at this point assuming that the game-world (though not the game) would be approximately as sexist and heteronormative as the Renaissance Spain that it clearly nods at. So I felt I pretty well had to pursue the men, didn't I? And the game had carefully asked me who I was flirting with, not who I was actually interested in, so my choice was based on my character's strategy rather than her inclination.

It isn't a complaint, really, because it's such a short game that I can just play it again with a different set of choices. But if I could give it a couple of little tweaks based on that experience I might make the social mechanics of the world clearer before those choices need to be made, and also make it clearer that the flirting choice determines your actual preference and not just what you happen to be doing at the time. In fact it would be nice to be able to pursue both women and men with the same character. But in any case I'm quite intrigued to find out how the game differs if you play as a man, so I might try that next.

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Dan H

at 12:31 on 2010-09-01I actually like the fact that it's presented as a statement of action rather than intent, because it's not just about defining your character's orientation, it's about defining the entire way the world is set up. It's possible that your character is actually a heterosexual woman, but flirting with the women because all of the most powerful people at court are female.

I think it's possible that the team assume you've played /Broadsides/ and so have a general idea of how CoG sets these things up.

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Furare

at 14:20 on 2010-09-01

I wonder if part 2 of the Choice for Romance will have continuation for the other storylines as well. For now, only the Boleyn Plot has reference to part 2.

I'm pretty sure I got a reference to part 2 when I completed the game by marrying the rich merchant and becoming the queen's lover on the side. It's possible that you have to be involved with the monarch to progress to part 2, which I guess makes sense.

I actually played the "traditional" Boleyn story with a heterosexual guy, which amused me - it was fun to play at being a scheming "kept man". I think that, even if you're straight, there are a couple of references in the text to the fact that not everyone else is, which I thought was nice.

Oh, and the "run away with your impoverished lover" storyline is fun, too. I want to find out if it differs if your Booksmart skill is low; maybe you can't work out that s/he is not as smart as s/he thinks s/he is if you're not all that bright. Game basically begs to be replayed, doesn't it?

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Jamie Johnston

at 13:52 on 2010-09-02

I actually like the fact that it's presented as a statement of action rather than intent, because it's not just about defining your character's orientation, it's about defining the entire way the world is set up. It's possible that your character is actually a heterosexual woman, but flirting with the women because all of the most powerful people at court are female.

Yes, and that's kind of what I thought was happening, except that in the end I think it's fairly clear that the game doesn't accommodate any divergence between your tactical flirting targets and your personal inclinations. Once I'd told it I was flirting with the boys, my romantic options were the king, the rich boring guy, and the fun but not desperately charming libertine guy. And the libertine guy's the give-away, surely. Because he's positioned as the guy you hook up with if you want to turn your back on both power-seeking and conventional security and just have a good time. There was no libertine girl I could hook up with to just have a good time, and that's got to be because I'd told the game I was flirting with the boys at my birthday party and it took that to mean I was a raging heterosexual.

I think it's possible that the team assume you've played /Broadsides/ and so have a general idea of how CoG sets these things up.

That's quite possible, and quite possibly not a good thing if they want these games to spread beyond a core of loyal fans. But if they're only doing it for fun then I guess there's no particular reason they should mind if that doesn't happen.

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Dan H

at 14:36 on 2010-09-03

There was no libertine girl I could hook up with to just have a good time, and that's got to be because I'd told the game I was flirting with the boys at my birthday party and it took that to mean I was a raging heterosexual.

I don't think it's so much that. I think the game takes your statement that you're flirting with the boys as evidence that within the context of the game, you are interested in pursuing heterosexual relationships.

Essentially, from what I can tell, you read the "who do you flirt with" question as asking "are you flirting with the boys, implying that you are either heterosexual or homosexual and pursuing men for social advancement, or with the girls, implying that you are an overt homosexual in a patriarchal, heteronormative society."

What the game doesn't implement is the option to be gay in a heteronormative society, and I'm actually okay with that. It means that you get the option to play a gay character without it being your character's one defining feature.

I can see that the heteronormativity selection could have been more clearly flagged (again they did this better in Broadsides where they make it quite clear that if you choose to play a woman, you're not cross-dressing and running away to sea, you're living in a world where gender roles are reversed).

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Craverguy

at 11:30 on 2015-10-04I love Choice of Games. It's like it was tailor-made for people who love gaming and are broke and/or massive cheapskates. You know, people like me.

In particular, I unequivocally and enthusiastically recommend that everyone who likes choice of adventure games or sci-fi even a little bit play Choice of Robots. It is, hands down, the greatest entertainment-enjoyed-per-dollar-spent value I've gotten this year.

The plot is incredibly branching for a text-based game, and covers everything between building a multi-billion-dollar, war-winning defense contractor, to being a peace-loving bohemian who writes robot novels and dreams of building a robot capable of love, to becoming a cackling mad scientist who has a gun for an arm and leads a robot army in its conquest of Alaska. I spent hours on that sucker.

#Ferretbrain #Choice of the Vampire #Choice of Romance #Choice of Games #Dan H #Video games

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

Link

Nora Lum, a.k.a. Awkwafina — the YouTube viral sensation turned star in this year’s Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians and this week’s Saturday Night Live host — is having a very good 2018.

Her movies are doing well: Crazy Rich Asians is on track to be one of the biggest success stories of 2018; Oceans 8 has outearned all the other Oceans movies. And Awkwafina herself is being hailed as part of an immensely likable ensemble in Oceans 8, and as the breakout star of Crazy Rich Asians.

Rolling Stone called her Crazy Rich Asians performance “a singular, unforgettable take on the often-forgettable BFF part.” She’s “on the cusp of a movie star moment,” wrote Refinery 29. Newsweek declared 2018 “her year.”

“This is what Hollywood is built on,” gossip expert Elaine Lui told the Washington Post of Awkwafina’s current moment: “the moment a star arrives.”

But when Lum talks about her current star-making moment, she doesn’t seem to fully associate it with herself. That’s because she talks about Nora and Awkwafina as two different people.

She talks about leaving her office job for show business as going off “in pursuit of Awkwafina.” She switches between the first and third person when she talks about her persona. “You can put as much makeup [on me as you want] and put me in dance classes, but she’ll never be mainstream,” she told GQ, referring to herself and her persona (italics added). “It’s just not going to happen.”

“Awkwafina is someone who never grew up, who never had to bear the brunt of all the insecurities and overthinking that come with adulthood. Awkwafina is the girl I was in high school — who did not give a shit,” she explained to the Guardian in June. “Nora is neurotic and an overthinker and could never perform in front of an audience of hecklers.”

It’s a classic Norma Jean versus Marilyn Monroe split, and it’s laying some important groundwork for how Awkwafina’s career might develop.

Right now, Awkwafina is celebrated for her raunch; she’s America’s new favorite unruly woman. She’s doing the Melissa McCarthy/Tiffany Haddish maneuver, and doing it exceptionally well. She’s even got the SNL hosting gig to prove it, right on schedule: McCarthy hosted SNL for the first time six months after Bridesmaids premiered, and Haddish hosted four months after Girls Trip; Awkwafina’s outing comes four months after Ocean’s 8 and two months after Crazy Rich Asians.

That means that Awkwafina is currently on track to emulate the career path modeled by McCarthy and Haddish before her. But because she’s developed the Awkwafina/Nora split, she’s also left herself an escape route.

An unruly woman is a woman who transgresses the boundaries in which women are supposed to live their lives, and preferably one who does it gleefully, laughing all the time. She is the opposite of what we are taught a woman is supposed to be: She might be fat, or she might straightforwardly pursue sex, or she might just genuinely like herself without apology.

In her book The Unruly Woman, film scholar Kathleen Rowe names Miss Piggy — with her “overpowering” size and affection and her penchant for karate chops — one of the greatest unruly women on the American screen. The unruly woman breaks the rules of femininity, and she makes us love her for it.

When Melissa McCarthy exploded onto the screen in 2011’s Bridesmaids — stealing dogs and shitting in sinks with glee and abandon — she was breaking the rules on a new level. Bridesmaids was a whole movie about women who got to be gross and funny, and McCarthy was the grossest and funniest one of all.

GQ called her performance “the bravest, most batshit, most balls-out, and hilarious performance of the year,” and devoted an oral history to it. McCarthy “lit up the screen like a 500-watt bulb,” said Rolling Stone.

“Most of us remember the first time we realized that McCarthy was the funniest thing since really funny sliced bread,” recalled E Online five years later. “Some Bridesmaids fans cite the engagement scene when she pledges to ‘Climb that like a tree,’ others prefer the sight gag of her driving down the highway while wrangling a litter of puppies.”

McCarthy’s performance was so compelling that it effectively redirected her career. Before Bridesmaids, she was best known for being bubbly and sweet on shows Gilmore Girls and Mike and Molly; post-Bridesmaids, McCarthy would be best known for starring in a string of raunch comedies, some of them directed by Bridesmaids’s Paul Feig, and Mike and Molly would be tweaked to give McCarthy and her slapstick acumen more attention.

Six years later, Girls Trip premiered and it was Tiffany Haddish’s turn to take the Unruly Woman crown. Girls Trip, like Bridesmaids before it, was a raunchy sex comedy, and Haddish, like McCarthy before her, was the raunchiest one in the cast.

Over the course of the movie, Haddish gleefully scores absinthe, demonstrates her blowjob technique, and pees on a crowd while hanging from a zip line. The critics adored her. “It’s Haddish who brings all the hardest laughs,” opined Vanity Fair. USA Today called her “comedy gold.” “Tiffany Haddish steals the entire film,” concluded Caroline Framke for Vox.

What was shocking and exciting about these two performances was that McCarthy and Haddish were breaking all the rules of femininity — and they were doing it with incredible warmth and self-possession. (“I just love anybody who’s that comfortable in her own skin,” McCarthy confessed to GQ.) McCarthy and Haddish were utterly unruly and they loved themselves, and that made the rest of us love them too.

Moreover, they were breaking those rules in an extremely specific context. Part of what made Haddish and McCarthy’s performances so compelling is that they were playing the most unruly women in a group of women who were already pretty unruly. They were there to establish the outer limits in each movie’s Overton Window of raunch: next to McCarthy shitting in the sink, Kristen Wigg projectile vomiting doesn’t seem so bad. Jada Pinkett Smith pees onto a crowd while hanging from a zip line, too, but she does it accidentally, while whimpering with shame; when Haddish follows suit, she does it with both intention and glee.

Both Bridesmaids and Girl’s Trip are id-driven movies, and McCarthy and Haddish provide the bulk of the id. That frees up the rest of the cast to be grownups while they get to have all the fun.

As a culture, we seem to need to pick a woman every few years who is allowed to be bigger and brasher and louder and grosser than everyone around her, who is able to be unruly and who forces us to love her anyway. We want someone who is willing to break the rules, and to make the argument through the sheer force of their charisma that the rules are there to be broken. And this year, it’s Awkwafina’s turn.

[embedded content]

Awkwafina emerged into public consciousness primed to take the crown as America’s next favorite unruly woman. Her first viral hit was her YouTube rap “My Vag,” which sees her pulling a violin out of an off-camera vagina and boasting, “My vag speaks five different languages, and told your vag, ‘Go make me a sandwich.’” Her first movie role was a small part in the raunch-comedy Neighbors 2, which saw her flinging used tampons at a house.

Her big breakout movie came with Crazy Rich Asians, which doesn’t have the raunch of a Bridesmaids or a Girls Trip: it’s a conventional romantic comedy with no jokes about bodily fluids. But within the confines of a classic romcom, Awkwafina shines with her own kind of unruliness, one that’s calibrated to stand out against the film’s more traditionally comedic tone.

Critics have drawn the connection to her immediate predecessor in unruliness. Awkwafina “Tiffany Haddishes away with this film in a big old way,” said Glen Weldon on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. “You’re going to get tired of people telling you” about her.

Awkwafina is playing Peik Lin, the main character’s best friend, and it’s her blonde-wigged brashness that powers the movie through its funniest scenes. She feels like she’s in a different, slightly coarser movie than everyone else, in a good way.

Awkwafina is the id monster of this movie in the same way that McCarthy and Haddish were the id monsters of their respective breakouts, and it’s the over-the-top new money crassness of her character Peik Lin that allows Constance Wu’s Americanized Rachel Chu to feel comparatively well-behaved. Peik Lin has set the outer limit of the Overton Window of unruliness in this world.

In the sweet, mannered, Austenian universe of Crazy Rich Asians, when Peik Lin says, “Bawk, bawk, bitch,” or tiptoes through a lavish house party in designer pajamas, she’s being about as unruly as anyone could manage. She’s the only person in the whole movie who gets to say fuck.

“In a romantic comedy, you get very earnest,” director John Chu told Rolling Stone, “and you need someone who can pop it, who feels confident and different, not the same old sidekick.” That’s where brash, bold Awkwafina comes in. But it’s not where careful, considering Nora Lum comes in.

Which is not to say that Awkwafina hasn’t incorporated Nora Lum into her acting at all. “I don’t know which one I turn on for acting,” she told GQ, before suggesting that she might rely on both: “Lum is the calculating, thoughtful preparation,” the article summarizes. “Awkwafina is the chaos.” But it’s the chaotic glee of Awkwafina that’s powering her rise to movie stardom right now, and Awkwafina’s unruliness that critics are lauding.

But by separating Awkwafina from Nora, Lum has also built an alternative future for herself. She has essentially replicated the work that the unruly woman traditionally does in a comedy within her own persona: Awkwafina sets the outer limits of the Overton Window of raunch the way Peik Lin does in Crazy Rich Asians, so that beside her Nora Lum looks comparatively more conventional, the way Rachel Chu does next to Peik Lin. Awkwafina is the id monster, and Nora Lum the grownup.

And that duality gives Awkwafina the possibility for enormous freedom in her future career. She can be both the unruly woman and the ingenue, because she’s laid the groundwork for audiences to see her as both. She’s built her very own personal foil.

Original Source -> How Awkwafina rode the unruly woman trope to stardom

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years

Text

The world isn't ready to trust angry women. This book wants to change that.

In the women's final of the U.S. open, the world came face-to-face with the righteous rage of a woman on live television. What came next, however, proved that society and the media were more irked by Serena Williams' expression of anger and more interested in discussing her on-court decorum than interrogating the reasons behind the rage.

As a racist cartoon circulated, perpetuating the "angry black woman" trope, op-eds branded Williams' conduct as that of a "brat," "hysterical" and an "outburst," and people on Twitter opined that she behaved badly.

SEE ALSO: Sexism rears its ugly head at the U.S. Open

While the cartoon garnered a much-deserved backlash, and many people did come to Williams' defence after the final, there was a palpable message that lingered in the days immediately afterwards. The take-home message from the subsequent reaction to the incident was this: society doesn't trust angry women. Women aren't allowed to get angry. And, as for the reasons behind the anger, they don't want to hear it.

Days later, a book was published about the power of women's anger — a book about embracing female rage and harnessing it to affect "lasting personal and societal change." At this moment in history, when women's anger is at boiling point, this text could not be more timely. Or, more needed. Soraya Chemaly — author of Rage Becomes Her — tells Mashable the Serena Williams incident and its aftermath was a "very good example of the way stereotypes and the legacy of history play out everyday in people's lives."

The world proved it isn't ready to trust angry women.

Image: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images

"These incidents don't happen without context, and they don't happen without a history," says Chemaly, who's also director of the Women's Media Center Speech Project. "Serena Williams as a black woman is exquisitely aware of how carefully she has to constantly calibrate her displays of emotion in ways that most people — particularly white men — don’t necessarily think about."

What has become patently clear is the disparity in the way our culture looks upon displays of anger in men and women.

"In the United States, an angry white man is associated with justified rage often and with citizenship — like the angry patriot, the one who fights against the government," says Chemaly. "A black man can’t express himself that way. His anger is associated with criminality and a black woman’s anger is associated with danger."

If we examine the reasons behind Williams' outrage on court, and put ourselves in her position, many of us might conclude that we'd react in a similar manner.

Williams was accused of — and penalised for — coaching, and her ability and professional integrity were thus called into question. "When someone accuses you of cheating it is a rational and logical response to feel indignant and angry," says Chemaly.

The problem with 'feelings'

Our problem with accepting the validity of women's anger stems from our culture's aversion to the idea of "feelings," according to Chemaly.

"The whole idea of feelings is disparaged, and it's often disparaged, frankly, because it’s a feminine quality in our culture," she explained. "When [Williams] spoke after the tournament, she was clear, methodical, logical. We're not supposed to express feelings because feelings are 'illogical' but, in fact, they’re really logical and rational."

Serena Williams hugs Naomi Osaka as she cries at the presentations after the women's singles final.

Image: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images

"Over the course of her career, [Williams] has come to have to take this very reasoned and mature path to explaining to other people, which means, doing the work [for other people]," Chemaly continued.

Those who bore witness to the furore on social media can attest to the fact that men were not the sole critiques of Williams — women also censured her. Chemaly says that one thing she learned when she was writing the book was the quality in some people of being "inclined to justify the system."

"We see that in many women because admitting to the problems we face or the inequality that we live with is deeply threatening and scary, so people tend to systems-justify," says Chemaly. "They’ll say things like, 'well, men were punished the way Serena was punished too' or ‘she’s not being discriminated against in any way, it’s just she broke the rules.’" She describes this as a "systems-justifying response."

In the book, Chemaly urges people to consider their responses and ask themselves if they are systems-justifying, a response which stems from internalised misogyny. "Trust other women," she says. "We have to unlearn distrust of women and we have to unlearn the distrust of feminine qualities in our culture.

"If another woman is getting angry, rather than castigate her by a knee-jerk response, pause for a minute and think about what is leading you to do that," says Chemaly. "Why are you unwilling to consider what she’s saying? And to respect the fact that in her anger she is actually expressing knowledge?"

There's a section in Chemaly's book entitled "Trust Other Women," which tackles precisely this issue, which doesn't just impact the way people regard the anger of high-profile women like Williams, but also the women we encounter in everyday life. "When a friend tells you she is angry, do you ask why and listen? If you see a woman 'losing her shit', do you make fun of her? If a girl is 'moody,' do you ask her not about what's wrong with her but about what's happening around her?" Chemaly queries in the book.

Acknowledging the validity of women's anger doesn't need to come hand in hand with turning a blind eye to objectively bad behaviour. "That doesn't mean blind denial of egregious behaviour or ignoring the ways in which another woman might be hurtful or hateful," writes Chemaly. Recognising those distinctions allows us to demarcate righteous anger from unjustifiable bad behaviour.

Dealing with rage in the workplace

In Rage Becomes Her, Chemaly lays out a framework for angry women outlining how to channel their rage as a productive force for change. Chemaly says women's "status in the world" means that it does "require us to do more work" and women have to strategise and be "methodical" about their anger.

"If you find yourself — and I think we all have — in a situation at work where you’re being castigated for your feelings or you’re being discouraged from expressing anger, it actually takes work to determine what to do about that. And then to change it," she says.

The articulation of personal anger at work comes with a risk — one that can be mitigated by finding allies to advocate for us, and seeking out other people who're feeling the very same way. "We need to find ways to identify allies because we can’t always advocate for ourselves. We understand from social science studies and research that actually advocating for yourself creates a backlash effect very often and that you’re penalised for doing this," says Chemaly.

By saying 'this is a problem for me, but it’s actually also a problem for all of these other people and that means we have a workplace issue' then this personal anger is turned into a community that's mobilised to improve the workplace.

The "extreme alternative" to this step is, according to Chemaly, that there are places where "nothing you do is going to change things." In which case, she says, "the anger you have can be channelled into having a new job."

Call out stereotypes

If we are to affect change with our anger, we also need to change the way people interpret anger. Chemaly says that talking to children "honestly and openly" about the stereotypes that surround angry women is an important way of doing this. "I personally think that a lot of children and teenagers are much better versed in understanding what’s going on and they need to mentor up," says Chemaly. "They live in much more diverse classrooms and i think they’re having harder conversations than many of the adults they know."

As adults, we too play a part in shutting down these tropes. "Call out stereotypes about 'angry black women,' 'fiery Latinas,' and 'sad Asian girls,'" writes Chemaly in her book.

Paying close attention to the language we use when talking about people's anger is a necessary step in validating women's anger, too. "If it’s a word you would never use with, for example, Serena’s male counterpart, it’s probably really gendered," says Chemaly. "So, she’s a witch, she’s a bitch, she’s deranged, she’s hysterical, she’s emotional, she’s unhinged." By contrast, Chemaly says Williams' male counterparts have been described as "high energy, charismatic, passionate about winning" which really illuminates the double standard at play.

Image: rachel thompson

Chemaly believes anger has the power to fuel "community and joy and action," and we need to move past the perception that anger is a bad thing. "We grow up hearing so much that anger is negative and destructive, but in fact it’s the lack of acknowledgement of anger that results in poor outcomes," she says.

As a society, we need to address the way we view and talk about women when they're expressing their rage. As women, we should believe and trust women who articulate anger.

"We need to learn resistance to a fundamental lesson of misogyny: that other women are untrustworthy and deficient and that, in anger, they are dangerous," says Chemaly.

'Rage Becomes Her' is available in the U.S. from Sept. 11 and in the UK from Sept. 20

WATCH: Tennis has an equality problem. What happened with Serena Williams is a fraction of what that feels like.

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