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star-anise · 3 years

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Ok, I'll bite. What *is* the difference between Bridgerton and Jane Austen in relationship to their skirts?

Oh! Not in their costuming, just in their general *waves hands* everything. It's a comment I see a lot about Bridgerton: "Well, it's not much like Austen, is it?"

That's because there are 200 years of literary history between the two, and they have not been empty!

This ended up being 1.5k words, but when I put stuff under a readmore, people don't actually read it and then just yell at me because of a misread of the 1/10th of the post they did read. Press j to skip or get ready to do a lot of scrolling (It takes four generous flicks to get past on my iPhone).

First I'll say my perspective on this is hugely shaped by Sherwood Smith, who has done a lot of research on silver fork novels and the way the Regency has been remembered in the romance genre.

The Regency and Napoleonic eras stretch from basically the 1790s to 1820, and after that, it was hard to ignore the amount of social change happening in Britain and Europe. The real watershed moment is the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where 60,000 working-class people protesting for political change were attacked by a militia. The issues of poverty, class, industrialization, and social change are inescapable, and we end up with things like the 1832 Reform Act and 1834 Poor Law.

This is why later novelists, like Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell, are so concerned with the experiences of the urban poor. Gaskell's North and South has been accurately described as "Pride and Prejudice for socialists."

So almost as soon as it ended, people started to look back and mythologize the Regency as a halcyon era, back when rich people could just live their rich lives and fret about "only" having three hundred pounds a year to live on. Back when London society was the domain of hereditary landowners, when you weren't constantly meeting with jumped-up industrialists and colonials.

Jane Austen is kind of perfect for this because she comes at the very end of the long eighteenth century, and her novels show hints of the tremors that are about to completely reshape England, but still comfortably sit in the old world. ("The Musgroves, like their houses, were in a state of alteration, perhaps of improvement. The father and mother were in the old English style, and the young people in the new. Mr and Mrs Musgrove were a very good sort of people; friendly and hospitable, not much educated, and not at all elegant. Their children had more modern minds and manners.")

Sherwood Smith covers the writers who birthed the Silver Fork genre in detail, but there's one name that stands out in its history more than any other: Georgette Heyer.

Georgette Heyer basically single-handedly established the Regency Romance as we know it today. Between 1935 and 1972, she published 26 novels set in a meticulously researched version of London of the late 18th and early 19th century. She took Silver Fork settings and characters and turned them into a highly recognizable set of tropes, conventions, and types. (As Sherwood points out, her fictional Regency England isn't actually very similar to the period as it really happened; it's like Arthurian Camelot, a mythical confection with a dash of truth for zest.)

Regency Romance is an escapist genre in which a happy, prosperous married life is an attainable prize that will solve everything for you. Georgette Heyer's novels are bright, sparkling, delightful romps through a beautiful and exotic world. Her female characters have spirit and vivacity, and are allowed to have flaws and make mistakes without being puritanically punished for them. Her romances have real unique sparks to them. She's able to write a formula over and over without it becoming dull.

And.... well. The essay that introduced me to Heyer still, in my opinion, says it best:

Here's the thing about Georgette Heyer: she hates you. Or, okay, she doesn't hate you, exactly. It's just that unless you are white, English, and upper class (and hale, and hearty, and straight, and and and), she thinks you are a lesser being. [...W]ith Heyer, I knew where I stood: somewhere way below the bottom rung of humanity. Along with everyone else in the world except Prince William and four of his friends from Eton, which really took away the sting. But my point is: if you are not that white British upper-class person of good stock and hearty bluffness and a large country estate, the only question for you is which book will contain a grimly bigoted caricature of you featuring every single stereotyped trait ever associated with your particular group. (You have to decide for yourself if really wonderful female characters and great writing are worth the rest of it.)

So Heyer created the genre, but she exacerbated the flaw that was always at the heart of fiction about the Regency, was that its appeal was not having to deal with the inherent rot of the British aristocracy. I think part of why it's such a popular genre in North America specifically is that we often don't know much British history, so we can focus more on the perfume and less on the dank odor it's hiding.

And like, escapism is not a bad thing. Romance writers as a community have sat down and said: We are an escapist genre. The Romance Writers of America, one of the biggest author associations out there, back when they were good, have foundationally said: "Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." A strong part of the community argue that publishing in the genre is a "contract" between author and reader: If it's marketed as a romance book, there's a Happily Ever After. If there's no Happily Ever After, it's not romance.

It's important for people to be able to take a break from the stresses of their lives and do things that are enjoyable. But the big question the romance genre in particular has to deal with is, who should be allowed to escape? Is it really "escapist" if only white, straight, upper class, able-bodied thin cis people get to escape into it? In historical romance, this is especially an issue for POC and LGBTQ+ people. It's taken a lot of work, in a genre dominated by the Georgette Heyers of the world, to try to hew out the space for optimistic romances for people of colour or LGBTQ+ people. These are minority groups that deal with a literally damaging amount of stress in real lives; they are in especial need of sources of comfort, refuge, community, and encouragement. For brief introductions to the issue, I can give you Talia Hibbert on race, and KJ Charles on LGBTQ+ issues.

Up until the 1990s, the romance genre evolved slowly. It did evolve; Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan's Beyond Heaving Bosoms charts the demise of the "bodice-ripper" genre as it became more acceptable for women to have and enjoy sex. The historical romance genre became more accommodating to non-aristocratic heroines, or ones that weren't thin or conventionally pretty. The first Bridgerton book, The Duke and I, was published in 2000, and has that kind of vibe: Its characters are all white but not all of them are aristocrats, its heroines are frequently not conventionally beautiful and occasionally plump, and its cultivation to modern sensibility is reflected in its titles, which reference popular media of today.

This is just my impression, but I think that while traditional mainstream publishing was beginning to diversify in the 1990s, the Internet was what really made diverse romance take off. Readers, reviewers, and authors could talk more freely on the internet, which allowed books to become unlikely successes even if their publishers didn't promote them very much. Then e-publishing meant that authors could market directly to their readers without the filter of a publishing house, and things exploded. Indie ebooks proved that there was a huge untapped market.

One of my favourite books, Zen Cho's Sorcerer to the Crown, is an example of what historical romance is like today; it's a direct callback and reclamation of Georgette Heyer, with a dash of "Fuck you and all your prejudices" on top of it. It fearlessly weaves magic into a classic Heyer plot, maintaining the essential structure while putting power into the hands of people of colour and non-Western cultures, enjoying the delights of London society while pointing out and dodging around the rot. It doesn't erase the ugliness, but imagines a Britain that is made better because its poor, its immigrants, its people of colour, and the foreign countries it interacts with have more power to make their voices heard and to enforce their wills. Another book I've loved that does the same thing is Courtney Milan's The Duke Who Didn't.

So then... Bridgerton the TV show is trying to take a book series with a very middle-of-the-road approach to diversity, differing from Heyer but not really critiquing her, and giving it a facelift to bring it up to date.

So to be honest, although it's set in the same time period as Austen, it's not in the least her literary successor. It's infinitely more "about" the past 30 years of conversation and art in the romance genre than it is about books written 200 years ago.

#staranise original #regency romance #bridgerton #long post

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renardtrickster · 4 years

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In the wake of SuperStraight, I think it's time to say, once again, that everyone but me is an idiot.

Being attracted to people, attraction, genital preference, is kind of complicated, and everyone likes grinding it down into the simplest, most nuanceless stuff in existence. It's either "genital preference is transphobic" or "there's no possibility of someone being transphobic for not wanting to date/fuck a trans person". Consider the following, print it out, roll it into a tube, and bap other people over the head with it.

If you're a straight dude, and you're walking down the street, and you see a woman, and you think she's hot, and then you boogie down with her, and then discover that she's packing heat, and then you are no longer attracted to her, or don't want to have sex with or date her, that is not transphobic. Nobody is asking you to start liking meat. The people saying this are a minority of a minority, people with no platform and no clout whatsoever, and reactionaries love over-representing them because it furthers the narrative of trans people as predators, forcing innocent cis people to have sex with them, even though no self-respecting person of any stripe genuinely wants to engage in coitus with people who are disgusted by them or want them dead (weird-ass fetishes nonwithstanding).

If you're a straight dude, and you do all the above, but upon finding out that she's got equipment, and you still wanna bang, then that is not only completely fine, but you are still 100% straight. You are attracted exclusively to women, this is a woman, nothing else matters. Your heterosexuality is in safe hands. If someone says that you're actually gay or bi because of this, they are stupid and transphobic.

If you are averse to the idea of dating a trans person because of some thing you find unattractive about their appearance, personality, or other attribute (or their gender, not sex, clashes with your orientation), that is fine and not transphobic. I've seen someone say they wouldn't want to marry a trans woman because they want to have kids. Trans women actually can have kids, because uterus transplants or womb implants are a thing (and technology is always moving forward so more trans girls are going to be able to have kids in the future), but I assume they didn't know. Either way, sort of valid from the perspective of not knowing that womb transplants exist.

HOWEVER, it is important that you recognize that not all trans girls have penises. Bottom surgery is a thing. There are trans girls out there with coochies and 0% dick. And this brings me into my second point. The part where I offend the people who were currently on board with this post. If you are the straight man in this situation, and you discovered that the lady you like is trans, but has had bottom surgery, and there's otherwise nothing that would be a dealbreaker, but you're put off by her being trans specifically. Like, otherwise 10/10 woman but the idea of her being trans puts you off, this is worthy of a sit down and introspection. Become The Thinker. There may be some unconscious bias or other weird hang-up you have, and it is possibly transphobic in origin. You are still not obligated to fucc, because nobody is entitled to being banged, but I am saying that there is a fair amount of room to question your motive here.

If you are the straight man in this above situation, and you're put off because you think her being born a man means she is still a man, or you don't think trans women are women, or any other take of a similar caliber, then you are in fact transphobic. My point about you not being obligated to bang still stands (and to be honest she probably doesn’t want your D at this point and you don’t deserve carnal access to someone you don’t respect). But you are transphobic, and trying to evade by using the "entitled to sex” argument makes you a weasel. And all the Super Straight people out there, as well as Super Gays and Super Lesbians and I don’t know if they exist but I’m covering my bases so Super Bisexuals, are composed almost entirely of weasels and transphobes.

Please apply this argument gender-reversed or to race as you please.

Also if you genuinely believe in Super Straight or its validity as an identity, the only possible thing you can do to further signify your lack of intelligence is identifying as it.

#oh no renardie is posting #infoxicated #superstraight #super straight #genital preference

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into-the-afterlife · 3 years

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Why I Ship Johnny/Female V Part 3: V, and You, and Me

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

I’ve spent a lot of time in this essay series so far focusing on one half of the pairing. Johnny is fascinating, but he’s only one half of the dynamic. So what about V is interesting? Why does she stand out as a character, in the context of this pairing?

Across different ships, I’ve noticed a consistent pattern. There tends to be one character that the fandom focuses in on to thirst over and one that the fandom imagines themselves being. In this ship, the thirst-character tends to be Johnny, while the self-insert character tends to be V. And that’s not surprising, considering that V is essentially our self-insert into the world of Cyberpunk 2077. It’s also worth noting that people who engage in shipping and transformative fandom tend to be predominantly AFAB, myself included, and it makes sense that when writing sexual stories we’d want a self-insert who has our anatomy.

But fans being AFAB doesn’t usually impact what ships are popular. Shipping is infamously dominated by M/M couples who are, ninety percent of the time, cis. Usually, that impulse to self-insert results in an exaggeration of top-bottom dynamics rather than genderswaps or increased focus on M/F couples.

And the thing about V is, she isn’t just a self-insert. In fandoms focused on open-world RPGs, there tends to be some focus on the player character. However, that focus tends to be limited to the Tumblr-ish, transformative end of fandom. One of my other favourite video game fandoms is The Elder Scrolls. There, people avidly draw and discuss their versions of the protagonists on Tumblr and AO3. But on Reddit and Facebook meme pages, the focus is much more on the other characters, the lore, the worldbuilding.

In this fandom, though? I’ve seen more Vs on Reddit than I have on Tumblr. On Reddit, you’re bombarded with beautiful screenshots of V after V. On Tumblr, there’s tons of new names for V, lovingly thought out backstories and more. And when I see V being shipped with Johnny, V is almost always depicted as female, despite there being an option for a male V and despite the norms of shipping favouring a male V.

So it’s clear that female V inspires more affection than most RPG protagonists. Part of that is to do with Cherami Leigh’s voice acting that I covered in Part 1. But I also think there’s a lot in V’s writing that influences things this way.

CD Projekt Red’s writers are known for focusing on character and plot over worldbuilding in their writing. There’s no, ‘I used to be an adventurer like you...’ in their games, no blank-slate hero or awkward, generic background dialogue. Instead, their other protagonist, Geralt, reacts to chasing after goats and weird children and ancient beings as his own person. The world he inhabits is similarly richly drawn, with even the most bland of background guards discussing gimps and birthdays.

There’s also no black-and-white morality. Even in The Witcher games, their fantasy series, the morality leans much closer to Game of Thrones than The Lord of the Rings. This means that their characters are always three-dimensional. Their first true RPG is actually Cyberpunk 2077. Oh, sure, they’ve done games with rich worlds and lots of sidequests, with skill-trees and moral options, but they’ve always had an authored character, with his own slants and biases. Even when Geralt picks the moral option, he’s likely to be cynical about it, and he always leans towards being a grizzled libertarian who’s Done With This Shit at heart.

Despite their provision of a relatively blank-slate character in this game, this influence lingers on in Cyberpunk 2077. One of the big critiques of the game at launch was that the much-hyped lifepath system felt clunky and didn’t have much of an influence on later gameplay. It’s true that the backstory sacrifices some smoothness of plot and introduction to the world.

But what it gets rid of in those aspects, it makes up for in characterisation. No matter what path you choose, V is never an anonymous prisoner, a mysterious courier or a long-forgotten colonist. She has a clearly defined context, and real roots in the world around her. Even after you move past the prologue, V has the network of people around her you’d expect for someone already embedded in the world. After you’re shot, you don’t just go to some random ripperdoc; you go to Vik, her regular ripperdoc and friend. You don’t get the tarot sidequest from reading an anonymous shard; you get it from Misty. Jackie dating Misty suggests that he introduced V to Misty and Vik. V getting to know them through Jackie feels natural, and just like the kinds of close communal networks that spring up in large cities. Meanwhile, the unique dialogue options for each lifepath keep reminding you that V had a life before you met her.

And that’s true even for the other dialogue options. Here’s a minor, early-game set of dialogue choices from Cyberpunk 2077:

And here’s a similarly minor, early-game set of dialogue choices from a recent RPG that shares a lot of tonal and thematic similarities with Cyberpunk – The Outer Worlds:

Notice the difference in attitudes allowed by each set of dialogue options. The player character of The Outer Worlds has the opportunity to respond compassionately, snarkily or lie for their own advantage. Deception is specifically highlighted and controlled by a skill tree, and each dialogue choice has its own tone and flavour. Meanwhile, all of V’s dialogue choices can be interpreted as some kind of attempt at deception. They’re also all written in the same voice. While The Outer Worlds offers matter-of-fact kindness, brevity and colourful imagery, V’s dialogue choices all share sentence fragments, spunkiness, bluntness and emotional volatility. No matter what choices you make, V’s attitude and voice always stays the same.

The way dialogue choices are controlled is also worth examining. There seem to be more choices on the surface in Cyberpunk, but a full half of them are controlled by skill trees. Level V up differently to this YouTuber, and they may not even be available. The skills themselves also betray a lack of choice here. While speech is split into five different skills in The Outer Worlds, and the skill used here is directly named ‘Lie’, in Cyberpunk 2077 the skills are simply named ‘Reflexes’ and ‘Cool’. That’s partially due to differences in RPG mechanics, which is beyond the scope of this essay. But look at the names themselves. While The Outer Worlds singles out deception, and bluntly names it for what it is, Cyberpunk 2077 frames quick thinking and bluffing as simply part of the reactions and social attitudes required to survive in Night City. Even the very names of the game mechanics are coloured by V’s attitudes.

While V’s status as an independent character is coloured by CD Projekt Red’s previous experience, it’s definitely not an accident. They had an entire trailer dedicated to answering the question of who V is. For the question of whether V keeps her own personality to be compelling, V has to have a personality in the first place. And in the Temperance ending, the emotional impact of seeing V as an NPC in cyberspace, as well as the final, long shot of V’s face on the bus, depends on you having built up a relationship with her as a separate character. She’s a fascinating mix of self-insert and defined character, and purely from a writing perspective, breaks a lot of new ground for RPG protagonists.

But back to the subject at hand: shipping. She’s just self-insert enough for you to imagine yourself as part of a heightened reality, as someone blisteringly witty, quick-thinking and intelligent. And feeling competent and confident, whether in the real world or in-game, brings you back into your body and makes you feel confident enough to pursue what brings you pleasure. But V’s also just enough of her own person that you can care for her and want her to be happy. That combination of affection and wish fulfilment is what the best ships are made of.

Another huge part of V’s popularity in the Cyberpunk fandom comes from the way gender, or the lack of it, interacts with her characterisation. Of course, you can make her look and dress however you want; that’s one of the beautiful things about RPG protagonists. But her lines and interactions with other characters, thanks to them having to be voiced by male V as well, are refreshingly gender-neutral. To understand this further, let’s take a look at some concrete examples.

Cyberpunk 2077, particularly during the prologue and Act 1, takes a lot of inspiration from Grand Theft Auto. Fast cars, exciting crimes, the obligatory strippers and prostitutes; they’re all there.

These kinds of gritty, sexualised game worlds have attracted criticism from feminist media analysts for normalising violence against women and normalising extreme violence as the default and desirable way of responding to the world. What I think about these takes would take its own essay to get into. But the part of these critiques I do agree with is this. By having protagonists in these worlds always be hypermasculine cis male protagonists, and by having victims of crimes and sexualised characters always be cis women, these worlds repeatedly and unnecessarily sideline anyone who’s not a cis man from imagining themselves having power and agency.

However, where Cyberpunk 2077 differentiates itself from other examples of these game worlds is its lack of gendered differentiation for its protagonist. Ninety-nine percent of the time throughout the game, male and female V voice exactly the same lines. This means that if you choose to play as female V, female V is characterised exactly the same way as male V.

Let’s take a look at some concrete examples of this. The biggest is V’s relationship with Jackie. It’s rarely that you see a male-female friendship that stays as platonic as this one does in media, and I welcome it. The quest called ‘The Ripperdoc’ demonstrates this, in the conversation when Jackie and V drive to see Vik:

Jackie [with relish]: ...I got a date - me and Misty.

V: You don’t say...

Jackie [confidentially]: She’s soooo sweet. Really gets me, y’know?

Jackie describes his relationship with Misty in respectful terms, and isn’t afraid to detail the emotional aspects of his and Misty’s connection. But he doesn’t hold back on the macho bragging either. In these lines, and especially in the pleased, suggestive tone of the first line, it’s clear he’s proud to be the kind of guy who could date someone like Misty. The presence of both of these attitudes together shows that Jackie both trusts V and considers V a part of his traditional-masculinity-valuing world. It’s less ‘not like other girls’ and more ‘not like other mercs’.

Similarly, while V’s first interactions with Johnny do draw from highly gendered relationship dynamics, the actual content of V’s responses undercut any feminising this would give her. Here’s one exchange from ‘Playing For Time’:

Johnny: The fuck kinda joytoy are you supposed to be?

V: Fuckin’ ghost off!

Johnny calls V a whore. Before and after, he physically hurts her in ways that, in my opinion, have a highly sexual undertone. But the crucial bit is how V responds here. She neither responds in a helpless, damsel-in-distress sort of way, nor in a defiant, sassy heroine way, where she might take the gendered insults and own them or prove them wrong via physical prowess. In fact, she doesn’t react to the gendered aspect of Johnny’s comment at all. Where a game with a Strong Female Character (TM) would use gendered jabs to refocus attention on said character, Cyberpunk blows them off to focus on the reality of this particular character’s situation.

Outside of V’s closest relationships, this gender neutrality can also be seen in the wider world of Night City. Dexter DeShawn is one of the most tropey, Grand Theft Auto-esque characters you meet in the game. As such, he’s one of the best barometers for how gender interacts with the ‘usual’ state of the world. And how does he react to a female V?

The answer is, not at all. He addresses her as ‘Ms V’, but that comes across as less about her and more about him being high up enough in the world that he can afford affectations. Her gender simply isn’t relevant. While this is increasingly common in pop culture, it’s still rare in worldbuilding like this, where gender is all too frequently used as a lens through which to explore violent, chaotic worlds. In a type of world and tone where gender roles are traditionally emphasised , V slips past those roles and is allowed to exist beyond them.

But why does gender neutrality make V more appealing to ship? To answer that fully, it needs to be combined with my next point.

V is also compelling to ship because her characterisation gives a safe platform from which to imagine her being vulnerable. What I mean by that is this. The main aspect of V’s characterisation in canon is her status as a merc. How you experience her life, through gameplay and through the situations she gets into, is through her skills at hacking, sneaking and killing. You don’t just witness her competence, daring and toughness; you share in it.

When writing fiction that focuses on romantic relationships, one of the toughest balances to get right is that of competency and vulnerability. Any good romantic arc involves watching a character’s barriers come down, seeing how they react to the other person when they lay aside their protective pretences. But this can’t happen too soon, or too much, for either the protagonist or the love interest. Competency and assuredness are huge parts of what makes someone attractive, and they’re also huge parts of feeling like you can come out and play, sexually speaking. Even for the biggest submissive on the planet, the submission has to be a deliberate choice to be hot.

Taken together, V’s canonical characterisation and the possibilities and conventions of fandom provide the perfect balance of those two qualities. Canon makes it clear that V is capable and strong. When you or I imagine our Vs with Johnny, that buildup of ‘competence capital’ makes it feel safe enough to imagine V vulnerable.

And that safety is vital when shipping any character with a character like Johnny. This is where the gender neutrality I talked about earlier comes into play. Imagining V vulnerable feels safe. So does imagining V in a dynamic with a guy who’s a tropey bad boy. Because V is written in such a gender-neutral way, it lets the player enjoy all the deliciously dangerous aspects of her relationship with Johnny without the distractions that may come from feeling disempowered. It also refreshes all the clichés of Dangerous Guys, making their impact feel fresh and new again. Her ability to walk the line between wish fulfilment and independent characterisation inspires simultaneous identification with her, affection for her and boosts in confidence for the player.

This is why she’s compelling to ship. Johnny brings in the familiar emotional arcs of classic tropes, while V makes them new. So what happens when you put these two characters together? Just what about the way they bounce off each other has inspired the majority of fic and art in this fandom?

That’s what I’ll talk about next time.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3]

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slavicafire · 4 years

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hi zmija I have a little bit of balkan pagan homosexual superstar problems 😖 i come from a place that does have very many thinly veiled pagan celebrations and traditions but they are very..... gendery, like about childbirth and het marriage and pregnancy. almost indivorcable from the practice. until this point I thought that was the christian influence but after doing more research the unadulterated paganism and thracian influence may be even worse 🤢 like women not being able to do certain 1/2

2/2 things while menstruating and a HUGE emphasis on womens ability to give birth and mens ability to like... have a penis, specific roles for each gender and just general heterosexual eternal sorrow that I have no use for and frankly its a little bit rejecting. ik that this culture is more afraid of me than I am of it ! but its sad when ill be reading direct sources and it says "only women can do x ritual because ... (conveniently never specifies)" Do you have any advice? Tsym

///

ah, we do all relate to your pain, we truly do. especially those of us who are gay and gnc and in love with the old traditions.

this will be long as I am in the mood to ramble and passionate about the subject. in short: the only tradition that matters is the one that changes with its people and continues to benefit them. take what you adore from the old ways and make it sevenfold gayer.

there are two very important things to remember before we go deeper into this: the first one is that we will never have a full picture of these old traditions, especially Slavic ones. there are too few sources, they’re biased, many were lost to time, many were warped by Christianity or simply by those who told the stories from generations to generations. we will never have the accounts of non-heteronormative/non-cis people of the past and how they viewed the traditions - or how they celebrated them.

the second thing is that the norm.... has quite often been the norm for a long time. and while it’s not exactly justifiable, we need to remember that fertility - and thus, heterosexual relations, cisnormativity, all that jazz - used to be crucial for survival. or at least to some degree. I’ve talked about it more here. And while yes, to us now it seems... redundant if not hurtful, we must sort of make peace with the fact that this norm has been around for a long time and there have always been strict assholes ruling over cultures and religions - assholes who, to refer to the first point as well, often controlled which parts of traditions were kept and which ones were allowed to be talked about.

so, we will never truly uncover how these traditions looked, especially for non-normative people - and we have to remember that the pagan traditions were often kept up in similar normative ways as Christian ones. and they changed throughout the centuries as well, and we get only very specific and limited accounts, all things considered.

and all that being said, I can finally go to my main point:

the only tradition that matters is the one that brings its people together. the only tradition that matters is the one who brings good to its people. the only tradition that matters is the one that’s alive and changing along with its people.

this means that we should do our best to adapt these traditions to how we see the world: as in, for us gay/gnc/non-cis/LGBT+ people (forgive the awkward terminology) it is crucial to take what we adore from these rituals and customs and tailor them to our own love and our modern sensibilities.

it will, of course, make heaps of assholes mad - but it does not matter. we are not affecting, retroactively, the ways of our ancestors - we are not “tainting” the traditions they cherished and have no control over now as some Mega assholes would like to claim. these assholes make the strangest mental error ever: they assume “ancestors” are a limited and specified group (they aren’t, they’re thousands of people spanning across centuries, great people and total scum alike, not unified in the ways they saw the world) and that tradition is a stable, set, and written in stone set of things... which it absolutely is not. it has always changed, we know that. what was tradition to one of old Slavs would not be traditional for their father, or their great-grandchild, or some random Slavic fella three villages over. tradition is not a monolith.

this culture is yours. it belongs to you - you grew from it and it grows from you. you have a right to it and that means that you have the right to make it as gay and non-normative as you want. you can freely ignore the outdated and no longer beneficial bits and adjust the rest to fit. this is the only way to help the tradition survive, really, other than on the yellowing pages of some books. you have all the right to wince at the outdated bits, too.

for example: we are definitely not doomed to die as a village if I don’t have a babe this spring. so I will take the fertility and apply it only to land, or change it to mean creation and fruitfulness in other regards (art, for example!)

or, as a person defying gender norms - no matter when they became the norm and who enforced them - I will take part in the celebrations in the role of the man and not the woman. I will woo instead of being wooed, I will perform traditional rites reserved for, what used to be, the archetype of Man. I will be the protector and the warrior, and I will fully cut it from the ideas of sex or gender. I will respect, fully, those who choose to fit into the past ideas - but I will encourage them to rethink some of the customs and allow themselves more freedom.

if someone is fully put off by the bodily and sexual aspects of the traditions, they have all the right to just... ignore them. change them to mean something else or just abandon them completely. while body and sex are important and good, for many of us they are rather reminders of shackles and enforcement of the norms - so rarely can we see the sex as non-heteronormative and the bodies as gender-nonconforming or trans. therefore, the tradition flows and changes with us, and we can take from it what we want.

whenever I go against the norm in my celebration, whenever I transgress the borders of what would be deemed “traditional,” I think of all those before who wished they could do it but they had no chance. for all the boys who wanted to wear dresses and flower wreaths and be wooed. for all the women who had to endure putting on male clothes and living with male names and roles. for all those who wanted to defy this norm but couldn’t.

some other related posts by yours truly: uniting cultural/regional/national identity with being LGBT+ ; some Kupala related sappy non-normative rambling.

#Anonymous

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thelovelyghostwriter · 3 years

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How many responses have you gotten so far, if I may ask?

Hello, thank you for your question. I open the Q&A if you guys want updates on the survey or any problems I'm facing.

Currently, there's 380 responses in total. [It was actually 362 last night, don’t know where I got the boost overnight, perhaps that Kurapika post]

tThere's actually 84 questions in total, but I coded it in such a way that certain questions don't appear when you indicated an option. For example, if you indicated that you are not up to date with the manga (indicating that you have read the post-Election arc AND read till Chapter 390), the questions regarding the Succession arc theories and predictions will not appear. This is why the manga readers' survey is actually longer.

Currently, 149 respondents indicated that they had read up to date, and therefore, they indicated

Another example is the shippings part. For example, if you indicated you don't ship anything, you won't see the list of ships. If you only indicated that you ship, let's say, het ships, you will only see the het ships. This is to make it easier for people to do the survey. The key is for others to not answer unnecessary questions.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to talk about certain issues/explanations that I need to address.

The reason why I'm always emphasising the goal of 385 responses and above (400 is a good number) because based on calculations. I checked on MAL and that there are over 1.2 million who have watched HxH. The "population" in this case is the total number of people who have watched/read the series. Since some people do not have MAL, the actual population number is higher (currently, we do not know what is this exact number).

At 5% margin of error and 95% confidence level*, the ideal sample size is 385 in populations above 100K, and it doesn't change after 100K.

*I do not really know how to explain this, but don't worry too much about it.

Alright, so I'm at 380, do I still need more than 5 people?

Yes, I need more people. Why? I have three concerns:

1) I said this before, but I need more men/boys to do the survey.

As mentioned, I did not put demographic questions because my country is strict with asking people for personal data. While this survey is casual, I do not want to encounter future complications. However, I can roughly guess the gender composition of respondents because of certain questions and the way the survey was distributed.

Firstly, this survey blew up mostly on Tumblr and there’s a lot of mixed statistics. This says that 47% are female in 2021 and this other article says 72% of women use Tumblr in 2014. Anyway, most of my online (majority from Tumblr) are women and they had actively helped me sent it out to other women who likes the show as well. This same thing happened to my friends in real life.

Actually, this is one of the biggest limitations of this survey - convenient sampling, which is giving the survey to only people that we know. Our friends who may have similar views/interest will get to do the survey, but people that we are not friends with who may have a different view/interest does not get to do the survey. Their thoughts/opinions are not recorded.

Secondly, there are certain questions that makes it easy to guess for me if the respondent is a woman/man.

For example, the “which character do you simp for” question.

“nil” means they don’t simp for anyone by the way. Also, note that this is just the word cloud diagram. I will chart them manually in bar charts later on.

Usually, when someone indicates a lot of male characters, they are normally women/girls. The ones who indicated Killua Zoldyck and Gon are usually young girls. Of course, I’m not saying men won’t indicate they simp for a male character or something, but yea know, common sense a bit here. The likelihood of someone placing Chrollo being a woman/girl is higher than the respondent being a man. That also same goes for the shipping questions.

The survey is posted on Reddit that consisted of 83.1% males in the HxH area, according to the 1K survey that they had. This helped me boost more people (and possibly guys who do survey). However, I think only about 20 to 30 people did it (based on the boost I got after the Reddit thread was posted). I also had help from a large hxh IG account that had slightly more guy followers to give me a shoutout. I also went to reach out to some accounts whom I know the admin are guys.

I still need a bit more help though, because currently the survey results... I’m sensing that there are more women/girls who did it from the way the results are turning out.

Why is this important?

It’s simple. I cannot just release the results that had an uneven ratio of the gender of the respondents and claim that this is the hxh fandom. It won’t be representative of the hxh fandom population as a whole when there are many cis-men who actually had watched/read the show, and absolutely loved it. I think it’s important to hear people’s opinions, be it men, women, young, old.

Currently, I’m trying to attract more men to do the survey by designing my hxh analyses posts from Tumblr and transporting them to IG, because I realise they like these kind of posts and they get to see my bio profile (with the survey link) + post about the hxh survey. I also get to befriend some of them in the process (and also because I have long been wanting to post my hxh analyses on IG, but it’s just a hassle to make it into pretty poster designs). So win-win.

Of course, anyone is welcomed to do the survey. I just need help with “balancing” it out, so please help me by sending it to your bros, guy friends, boyfriends, fathers etc. Or if you know any social media platforms where most guys dominate, then yeah please send them. Or if you’re a guy, then yea go ahead and try the survey.

2) While the responses are 380 in total, the number of people who have read up to date is 149.

Okay, I’m not saying I need to get people who had read up to date to be 385 as well. Realistically, not sure if I can do it. However, most of the questions pertaining the Succession arc are the most interesting ones and it takes a large chunk of them.

So yes, it will be great to have more people to do the survey especially if they had read the manga so that we can have more respondents in those questions.

3) The 385 response calculation is only assuming 5% confidence level and 5% margin of error.

I don’t exactly know how to explain this, but I will try to quote for the margin of error:

“Company X surveys customers and finds that 50 percent of the respondents say its customer service is “very good.” The confidence level is cited as 95 percent plus or minus 3 percent margin of error. This information means that if the survey were conducted 100 times, the percentage who say service is “very good” will range between 47 and 53 percent most (95 percent) of the time.”

So if you put it in HxH context, with 95% confidence level, and 5% margin of error, it goes like this:

50% of respondents indicated that Bisky is their favourite HxH girl (this one is only one option). If this survey was conducted 100 times, the % of people who indicated Bisky as their favourite girl would be from 45% to 55%.

But if I actually key in 3% margin of error, the sample size goes up to 1056.

I’m willing to open the survey for 1.5 more weeks. Three reasons:

A) I will wait for more responses of course!

B) I am currently busy with my part-time student research assistant job during summer break till this week, and they are rushing to finish up the research paper. Therefore, it’ll be nice to just wait while I do my work.

C) I am planning to write up the theories that I had included in the survey. This means having a lot of time finding the links/threads to the theories and reading them, making sense of it. I plan to post it and also merge that in my report.

I’m closing the survey in 1.5 weeks because I need time to do up the charts and report by mid-August because I’m afraid I might be busy once the semester starts and I won’t have anytime to do this mini fun project.

Another thing I want to address:

Most of the time, certain options I created is based on technical reasons. The other reason is by mistake.

For mistakes, I went to fix them if someone highlights a mistake.

Now, for the technical reason. I did not appreciate this response in the NOTP section that says:

The reason why I listed out almost all ships in Hunterpedia, including the ones with a large age gap and the incest ones is simple - because it helps me chart easier when I put them into options. It also decreases the chances of nonsense answers like this one. It also places less fatigue on people doing the survey. Text boxes are only meant if the options aren’t clear or “others, please state” so that I can include people’s opinons.

The reason why I didn’t do that for the NOTP section is that I was unable to do a certain specific coding. That’s why it ended up as a text box. It’s also based on the assumption that if something is really your NOTP, you’d know and remember it.

Why do people online goes straight to trying to prove they are morally superior and whatnot, assuming that I listed the options because of my morality. You do not know me personally. It is based solely on technical reasons.

This is why I used this disclaimer:

Which part of this is not clear. You can leave, just like what I said in the beginning. Another thing is not following instructions and being rude about it.

I had also instructed clearly to list out the NOTP combinations. I even noted it clearly. Some people put “any incest/pedo ships”, which happened more than five times. What’s more, one response contained “don’t tell me what to do”.

Yes, I get it, you don’t like these type. But what you’re doing is making me guess everything, which is unproductive. If you don’t like certain ships that are common but a “taboo” like “HisoGon”, “Killumi”, then say that. If you say it generally, I’m just going to assume the ones on the Hunterpedia list.

Another thing is the “any toxic ships”. This is very vague. Often, some so-called “wholesome” common ships in hxh are toxic. Mind you, Killugon is also a toxic ship (let’s not be blind to the CA arc please, this pairing is unbalanced), yet almost everyone perceives it as wholesome. Most characters in hxh are toxic in their own ways, and for sure their canon dynamics if they are in a relationship are likely more toxic than what is often portrayed in the headcanon way. I am wondering what to do with this, I might put it as invalid or “no”.

This is why my instructions are to list them. I had already edited the question twice to make it even clearer yet there’s people who defy them. I’m not just doing the instructions out of fun or make people’s life harder. Those are instructions.

I do not understand why certain people have to feel offended/be rude at an anonymous survey.

I can understand if people don’t follow instructions because you might missed it out and I can help to chart it for you. It’s totally okay, everyone makes mistakes, but I do not appreciate the extra unsolicited comments about me because it implies that you have read them, you just chose not to follow it.

If you think there’s a better way to do it, then DM me. I will explain to you why I had done it so, or I might even change it based on your suggestion. For example, someone actually told me to add certain options and I did it. Another person suggested to add the non-romantic dynamics and I love that, though I think it’s a little too late to add that. Maybe in the next survey.

If you do not like the instructions, kindly exit the survey. Nobody is forcing you to do it. It won’t record your response if the survey is incomplete for one hour.

#hxh #hunterxhunter #gon freecss #kurapika #leorio #killua #killua zoldyck #kurapika kurta #leorio paladiknight

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popentertainmentmusic · 3 years

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MARY J. BLIGE’S MY LIFE (2021)

Featuring Mary J. Blige, Sean Combs, Taraji P. Henson, Alicia Keys, Tyler Perry, Method Man, Nas, Andre Harrell, Big Bub, Chucky Thompson, Anita Baker, LaTonya Blige-DaCosta and Jeff Redd.

Directed by Vanessa Roth.

Distributed by Amazon Studios. 82 minutes. Rated R.

This documentary pretty much specifically focuses on Blige’s second album release, My Life, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2019, leading to a very abbreviated tour. According to Blige herself and several of her collaborators and fans, My Life was her darkest, most personal album and perhaps her defining moment as an artist, both popularly and artistically.

Perhaps, but that may be tossing the net too closely. Although the film also discusses her growing up and discovery and her hit debut album, it barely touches upon much of her career after 1994-1995 – except for showing some performances from a couple of 25th anniversary My Life concerts. It mostly ignores the 11 albums she has released since then, any of her later hit singles, or even her increasingly busy side hustle as an actress.

I’m just wondering if focusing on My Life almost exclusively is the best idea for a documentary. Yes, I get that it was during a very dramatic and fraught time of her life – with drug, alcohol and relationship problems and battling with depression – and it was also a time when she had not quite come to terms with her fame, nor did she feel worthy of it. It was arguably also the album where Blige found her musical voice – she had less power and less input in the recording of her smash debut album.

My Life should definitely be a good chunk of a documentary. However, unless you are very familiar with the album, focusing on it so completely takes away some of the film’s interest. While I’m not the world’s biggest fan, I know several of Mary J. Blige’s songs, and only two of them in this film were familiar to me – and one of those, “Real Love,” was actually from her previous album What’s the 411? Okay, I knew three songs here if you count a live cover of “Caught Up in the Rapture” which she performs as a duet with that song’s original vocalist, Anita Baker.

However, this documentary is meant for the hardcore fans – not the casual ones like me. Several are interviewed during the running time, and Blige takes more than one opportunity to profess her love for the fans. This is a love letter for the people who have supported her, and what is wrong with that?

Nothing, but it does keep the proceedings from digging too deep into the subject as well. This is sort of a fan club celebration. Yes, Blige does share some dark moments in her past, such as her abusive relationship at the time of the recording with then-popular singer Cedric “K-Ci” Hailey of Jodeci (and later K-Ci & JoJo).

While she does open up – somewhat – about what happened, the film purposefully skirts its way around most of the hard details. Also, the film takes it as a given that K-Ci was the bad guy here – and he probably was – but everyone who discusses it here blames him entirely. K-Ci himself, or anyone who may have a different explanation, is not invited to give his side of the story. Which I guess is somewhat expected – it’s her movie, not his – but it still seems like you’re only hearing from one side.

At one point in the documentary, when watching an uncomfortable interview clip of herself circa the album, acknowledges she is very protective of her younger self.

As is everybody else. Sean “Diddy” Combs gushes about his protegee. Rapper and co-writer Big Bub states that they were making history. The late music exec Andre Harrell (who suddenly died last year not long after doing interviews for the documentary – the doc is dedicated to him) expounds upon her talent and her unique soul and funkiness.

And, yes, what Blige achieved did change music for black artists – particularly women. She helped to introduce ghetto chic to a staid music world which tended to try to sand the rough edges and the ethnicity from African American divas. She was not quite as alone in this pursuit as the film claims, though, just off the top of my head I can remember TLC doing similar things at about the same time. However, all props to Mary, she was able to change the direction of music, which is no small feat.

My Life shows Mary J. Blige to be a fascinating and complicated artist. I just wish it dug a little deeper into her career and her complications.

Jay S. Jacobs

#Mary J. Blige #2021 #Music Video Review #Mary J. Blige's My Life #Jay S. Jacobs

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just-a-space-duck · 4 years

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Multi-Spec Orientation Identities

Now, I know a lot has already been said on the nuances and variety of multi-spec orientations, especially here on Tumblr. But I’ve had these ideas floating around in my head for a while now and have now decided to take a stab at writing them down both as a writing exercise and to throw my own perspective into the ring. Now, onto the essay.

There are a multitude of terms out there describing attraction to multiple genders. Bisexual/romantic, pansexual/romantic, and polysexual/romantic, often shortened to bi, pan, and ply respectively, are the most common ones. Other terms exist out there as well, such as omnisexual/romantic and abrosexual/romantic. Others, while not explicit on the number of genders one is attracted, can be and have been used as labels for individuals attracted to multiple genders. Altogether, these terms fall under the umbrella term multisexual/romantic. Synonyms include multi-spectrum, often shortened to multi-spec, and multiple gender attraction, shortened to MGA. I’ll be using the term multi-spec here.

Note that being attracted to multiple gender is not the same as desiring or being in multiple romantic relationships simultaneously. Being in and/or desiring to be in multiple simultaneous relationships is called polyamory. Polyamorous individuals can be any orientation and multi-spec individuals are not inherently polyamorous.

The distinctions between the terms I’ll be discussing here can be fuzzy. And that’s okay. Words are not fixed, perfectly distinct vessels of meaning. Definitions can change and vary for many reasons. Why someone uses a particular term or does not use another comes down to their own understanding of these terms and which connotations they want to give off.

With all that out of the way, let’s start off with bisexual/romantic, as it is the most common of the multi-spec terms. Its broad usage has made it the most complex of the multi-spec terms, with a multitude of definitions and connotations tied to it.

One of the most common definitions of bi is attraction only the binary genders, men and women. Of all the definitions, this one has the most discourse surrounding it. One common discussion point is if bi always does or should mean just attraction to the binary genders. I don’t know enough about the history of the term bi to make any statements on its older usage, but at least nowadays, bi is so broad in usage, that it can mean attraction to any type and number of genders greater than one. Language is fluid and evolves, so even though bi still holds onto it’s binary-only connotations, it can mean more than that.

Now, there are some bi individuals who define their orientation as attraction to only the binary genders. This brings up another common discussion point: is it inherently enbyphobic to do so? I’m a cisgender person, so please take my stance with a grain of salt. I don’t think it’s any more enbyphobic for a person to only be attracted to binary gender individuals than it is misogynistic for someone to only be attracted to men. That being said, I do think that everyone should view nonbinary genders as real, valid, and potentially attractive to someone, even if they themselves find that they are not attracted to nonbinary people. Not everyone who describes their orientation as “attraction to men and women” does. They might be attracted to nonbinary people, but not consider their genders real or might be repulsed by nonbinary people out of prejudice rather than just being inherently not attracted to them. In other words, what’s important is one’s attitude towards nonbinary identities and not their actual attraction or lack thereof to them.

Another super common definition of bi is attraction to all genders. Sometimes this is regardless of gender, with gender impacting attraction, or sometimes with attraction bring stronger or more common with certain genders. Sometimes this definition is worded as attraction to two sets of genders: one’s own and all others, connecting it to the typical definition of the prefix bi-. This definition of attraction to two sets of genders is also sometimes used to refer not to all genders, but just some. This can be two groups of genders, such as all neutral and femme genders, or two specific genders, such as agender and female.

Very rarely, bi is defined as attraction to multiple, but not all, genders. The broadest definition of bi is just attraction to more than one gender. It’s fairly common for many multi-spec individuals who use other orientation labels to use bi as well due to its notoriety and variety of definitions. In many cases, bi is used a catch all for all multi-spec identities and terms, with the variation bi+, being a synonym for multi-spec.

Then there’s pansexual/romantic, the most common term after bisexual/romantic. It was coined as a counterpart to bi. Unlike bi, which without further specification, is not explicit on how many or which genders one is attracted to, pan is explicitly attraction to all genders. Sometimes pan is further defined as attraction regardless of gender or that gender plays no role in one’s attraction to a person. The main dictator of a pan person’s attraction to another person may be something else like gender presentation or personality. Note that these determiners of attraction are not exclusive to pan people or mutually exclusive with other determiners.

Sometimes pan is also described as attraction to all genders, cis and trans, and “Hearts, Not Parts”, an almost slogan for pansexuality/romantism. There is so controversy surrounding these definitions as they can imply that all other orientations are inherently transphobic or only concerned with an individual’s physical body.

Then there’s polysexual/romantic, usually abbreviated to ply instead of poly to prevent confusion with polyamory/amorous. This term was coined to fill in the “gaps” between bisexual/romantic and pansexual/romantic. While pan means attraction to all genders and bi still holds onto the connotation of attraction to only the binary genders or any two genders, ply usually means attraction to two or more genders, but not all. Ply is usually used to emphasize that at least one of the genders an individual is attracted to is nonbinary.

Occasionally, ply is defined as attraction to three of more but not all genders, to distinguish it from the “attraction to only two genders” definition of bi. Even more rarely, ply is used to mean attraction to all genders with attraction being stronger or more likely with some genders over others, a counterpart to the “attraction regardless of or equally to all genders” definitions of pan. Sometimes ply is used an umbrella term for all multi-spec identities.

There are many more multi-spec and multi-spec adjacent terms out there. As extensive as the collection of terms I’ll be further looking at is, it still only scratches the surface of terms that exist out there.

Frequently added on as the fourth main multi-spec term is omnisexual/romantic. In terms of scope, omnisexual/romantic is identical to pansexual/romantic, meaning attraction to all genders. In fact, sometimes the two are treated as perfect synonyms. More often when omni is used, it is distinguished from pan, with pan being defined as attraction regardless of gender and omni as gender impacting attraction. Some omni individuals might be more attracted to some genders than others. For others, gender does play a part in attraction without there being any leanings towards specific genders, such as only being attracted to masculinity in women or desiring different types of physical contact with different genders.

Then there’s abrosexual/romantic meaning that the genders one has the potential to be attracted to changes over time. This is not the same thing as being attracted to different people at different times or changing one’s standards for who they find attractive. The key word here is potential. For example, an abro individual might be only be able to experience attraction to men one day, only nonbinary people the next day, and then both men and nonbinary people the day after that. Think of it like the orientation version of genderfluid.

Similarly, the suffix -flux is sometimes used, usually in place of -sexual/-romantic, to indicate that the genders one has the potential to be attracted to at any point in time, change, such as panflux. Occasionally -fluid is used in the same manner, but more often -fluid refers to gender.

Ceratosexual/romantic is a term for nonbinary people who are only attracted to other nonbinary people. I’ve placed it here, as without further specification, cerato encompasses all nonbinary genders. Diamoric is similar, as it can refer to nonbinary people attracted nonbinary people, similar to the female/femme specific term sapphic. However, it does not specify if said individual is attracted to other genders and can be used to refer to relationships including at least one nonbinary person rather than an orientation.

Then there’s homoflexible and heteroflexible. These terms mean that an individual’s orientation leans predominantly towards homosexual/romantic or heterosexual/romantic respectively, but they are either open to relationships with other genders or experience weak and/or occasional attraction to other genders.

Penultisexual/romantic is an extremely rare and newly coined term, but I bring it up because of its very unique and interesting definition. Penutli is attraction to all genders other than one’s own, distinct from hetero in that it is explicitly inclusive of nonbinary genders. From all the mentions of penulti I’ve come across, it’s unclear if it includes genders similar to one’s own (e.g. would a penulti demigirl be attracted to other binary and nonbinary women?), though I would rule that this would be up to the individual.

Some, even rarer terms, get even more specific on the types of genders one is attracted to, such as the galactian orientations, themselves an offshoot of the galactian genders.

Some terms do not specify the number or types of genders one is attracted to. While I wouldn’t consider these to be multi-spec terms because of that, they can indicate attraction to multiple genders.

The most widely used of these terms are the asexual and aromantic spectrum terms. Rather than describing the genders one is attracted to, they describe the intensity, frequency, and/or conditions of attraction. For some a-spec individuals, gender has little to nothing to do with their attraction to a person. For others, it does. Some a-spec individuals may further specify their orientation with other terms, such as polysexual aromantic or demisexual lesbian.

Some other terms define attraction by features other than gender that dictate attraction. The most common of these terms are the ones describing attraction based on gender presentation. Prefixes such as androgyne- fem- and masc- are sometimes used as orientation labels.

Extremely broad terms may be used by individuals of various genders and orientations, including multi-spec people. One of these terms is gay. While at its strictest definition, gay refers just to binary gender men who are only attracted to binary gender men, the term is so broad in usage that it’s been used to refer to anyone who experiences attraction in any way other than “binary gender person who is only attracted to the other binary gender”.

Queer is also a super common term used by not just multi-spec individuals, but individuals of any LGBT+ identity. While reasons for usage of the label queer vary, some common ones include: wanting to describe multiple identities, an individual still figuring out their identity, not wanting to use a more specific label, or wanting to highlight a shared identity, experience, and community.

Of course, individuals can use multiple terms to describe multiple identities or to describe the same identity, often for different contexts. Take me for example. I’m sexually attracted to binary and nonbinary men and women as well nonbinary individuals whose genders are close to male and/or female. Romantically, I am attracted to all genders, with gender impacting how I experience that attraction. As of right now, I identify most specifically as mercuric bisexual omniromantic. However, I’ll usually only use this specific set of labels for myself or with close friends. With close family, I am simply bi or gay, in public LGBT+ spaces I go by bi and queer, and I’ll go by either gay or not state a label at all in most other situations.

There are a variety of labels out there describing attraction to multiple genders. This essay was just scratching the surface. Hope this was able to help anyone who was confused on these terms or needed a resource for their own self-discovery.

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terfslying · 5 years

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Extremist Traits & TERFs

The traits are taken from (here), which is a list of extremist traits by Laird Wilcox. Most examples are from interactions with people on this blog, because I’ve got to limit myself to something.

Character Assassination

“Extremists often attack the character of an opponent rather than deal with the facts or issues raised. They will question motives, qualifications, past associations, alleged values, personality, looks, mental health, and so on as a diversion from the issues under consideration”

TERF Examples: Character attacks on Susie Green, of Mermaids UK, to attempt to imply that her motive for Mermaids UK is to force her own child to transition. & Claiming Mermaids UK was a significant part of forcing a young UK child to be trans, when in fact he was being abused by his mother and Mermaids UK only ever were contacted by phone by the mother, and were not otherwise involved in any way.

Name-Calling and Labelling

“Extremists are quick to resort to epithets (racist, subversive, pervert, hate monger, nut, crackpot, […] and so on) to label and condemn opponents in order to divert attention from their arguments and to discourage others from hearing them out. These epithets don’t have to be proved to be effective; the mere fact they have been said is often enough”

TERF Examples: "pedophile apologist”, “infertile, fat white loser”, “rapist” (all directed at me!)

Irresponsible Sweeping Generalisations

“Extremists tend to make sweeping claims or judgements on little or no evidence, and they have a tendency to confuse similarity with sameness […] they assume that because two (or more) things, events, or persons are alike in some respects, they must be alike in most respects.”

TERF Examples: “trans women are just men”; use of crimes by cis men to attempt to demonstrate trans criminality

Inadequate Proof For Assertions

“Extremists tend to be very fuzzy about what constitutes proofs, and they also tend to get caught up in logical fallacies […] they tend to project wished-for conclusions and to exaggerate the significance of information that confirms their beliefs while derogating or ignoring information that contradicts them.”

TERF Examples: “This research is reliable because I agree with it, and I don’t care that the authors have deliberately published politically motivated anti-gay propaganda studies before”

Advocacy of Double Standards

“Extremists generally tend to judge themselves or their interest groups in terms of their intentions, which they tend to view very generously, and others by their acts, which they tend to view very critically. They would like you accept their assertions on faith, but they demand proof of yours. They tend to engage in special pleading on behalf of themselves or their interests, usually because of some alleged special status, past circumstances, or present disadvantage.”

TERF Example: Refusal to criticise WoLF + Julia Beck’s association with the Heritage Foundation due to presumed good intentions

Tendency to View Their Opponents and Critics As Essentially Evil

“To the extremist, opponents hold opposing positions because they are bad people […] not merely because they simply disagree, see the matter differently, have competing interests, or are perhaps even mistaken.”

TERF Example: I deserve to “rot in hell” because I don’t agree with TERFs

Manichaean Worldview

“Extremists have a tendency to see the world in terms of absolutes of good and evil, for them or against them, with no middle ground or intermediate positions. All issues are ultimately moral issues of right and wrong, with the ‘right’ position coinciding with their interests.”

TERF Example: Willingness to use and spread sources from the alt-right with no regard for the source, since if it coincides with their interest, it’s ‘right’

Advocacy Of Censorship or Repression of Their Opponents or Critics

“They may include a very active campaign to keep opponents from media access [… or] actually lobby for legislation against speaking, writing, teaching, or instructive ‘subversive’ or forbidden information or opinions.”

TERF Example: Pressure to isolate young trans teens from media access

Tend to Identify Themselves In Terms Of Who Their Enemies Are

“[E]xtremists may become emotionally bound to their opponents, who are often competing extremists themselves. Because they tend to view their enemies as evil and powerful, they tend, perhaps subconsciously, to emulate them, adopting to same tactics to a certain degree.”

TERF Example: "TRA’s”, “libfems”, “transcult”; emulating anti-feminist tactics by joining groups like Hands Across The Aisle to directly partner with anti-abortion, anti-feminist conservatives and divide-and-conquer

Tendency towards argument by intimidation

“Extremists tend to frame their arguments in such a way as to intimidate others into accepting their premises and conclusions. […] They use a lot of moralising, pontificating, and tend to be very judgemental. This shrill, harsh rhetorical style allows them to keep their opponents and critics on the defensive, cuts off troublesome lines of argument, and allows them to define the perimeters of debate.”

TERF Example: Using the words “trans women” and “literal pedophiles and rapists” interchangeably in arguments

Use of Slogans, Buzzwords, and Thought-Stopping Cliches

“For many extremists, shortcuts in thinking and in reasoning matters out seem to be necessary in order to avoid or evade awareness of troublesome facts and compelling counter-arguments. Extremists generally behave in ways that reinforce their prejudices and alter their own consciousness in a manner that bolsters their false confidence and sense of self-righteousness.”

TERF Examples: “Peak trans”, “autogynephiles”, the bathroom & prison rapist tropes, to discredit trans women; “handmaids” and “libfems” to discredit cis women who disagree with them

Assumption of Moral or Other Superiority over Others

“Most obvious would be claims of general racial or ethnic superiority […] Less obvious are claims of ennoblement because of alleged victimhood,”

TERF Examples: Expanding real victimisation of women to include historically inaccurate concepts, such as ‘witch hunts were methods of controlling women’s knowledge’ to increase superiority; complete disownment of any moral responsibility for violence perpetrated or encouraged by TERFs

Doomsday Thinking

“Extremists often predict dire or catastrophic consequences from a situation or from failure to follow a specific course, and they tend to exhibit a kind of ‘crisis-mindedness’. It can be a Communist takeover, a Nazi revival, nuclear war, earthquakes (… etc. …) Whatever it is, it’s just around the corner unless we follow their program and listen to the special insight and wisdom, to which only the truly enlightened have access.”

TERF Example: Fair Play For Women’s unrealistic theory that if Gender Recognition Certificates were easier to get, women’s prisons would be flooded with trans sex offenders instantly.

Belief that it’s okay to do bad things in service of a good cause

“Extremists may deliberately lie, distort, misquote, slander, defame, or libel their opponents or critics, engage in censorship or repression, or undertake violence in “special cases”.”

TERF Example: Wetmeadow ‘distorting’ my post on the cotton ceiling to imply that I was saying same-sex attraction is a mental illness, to discredit me.

Emphasis on Emotional Response (and less on logical analysis and reasoning)

“Extremist have an unspoken reverence for propaganda, which they may call ‘education’ or ‘consciousness-raising’. Symbolism plays an exaggerated role in their thinking and they tend to think imprecisely and metamorphically.”

TERF Example: ‘consciousness-raising’ has a long history in extreme radfem spaces; in recent online spaces it’s more often called ‘peak trans’.

Hypersensitivity and Vigilance

“Extremists perceive hostile innuendo in even casual comments; imagine rejection and antagonism concealed in honest disagreement and dissent; […] Although few extremists are clinically paranoid, many of them adopt a paranoid style with its attendant hostility and distrust.”

TERF Example: Exposinglesphob’s entire blog

Problems Tolerating Ambiguity and Uncertainty

“[T]he ideologies and belief systems to which extremists tend to attach themselves often represent grasping for certainty in an uncertain world, or an attempt to achieve absolute security in an environment that is naturally unpredictable […] Extremists exhibit a kind of risk-aversiveness that compels them to engage in controlling and manipulative behaviour, both on a personal level and in a political context.”

TERF Example: “What do you mean, someone’s gender or sex might be ambiguous?? Woman is a biological term for adult human females, it’s simple”

Inclination towards “GroupThink”

“‘Groupthink’ involves a tendency to conform to group norms and to preserve solidarity and concurrence at the expense of distorting members’ observations of facts, conflicting evidence, and disquieting observations [… Extremists may] only talk with one another, read material that reflects their own views, and can be almost phobic about the ‘propaganda’ of the ‘other side’. The result is a deterioration in reality-testing, rationality, and moral judgement.”

TERF Example: Any source I give is bad, even if they’re genuinely trying to say that wikipedia is ‘good research’.

Tendency to Personalise Hostility

“Extremists often wish for the personal bad fortune of their ‘enemies’ and celebrate when it occurs.”

TERF Example: The fact that pretty much every person who isn’t a TERF and who discourses has been told to kill themselves.

Extremists often feel that the system is no good unless they win

“If public opinion turns against them, it was because of ‘brainwashing’. If their followers become disillusioned, it’s because of ‘sabotage’.”

TERF Example: Ex-terfs like myself either are just too dumb to understand radical feminism, or we never even existed in the first place.

#long post #the longest of posts #terfs n fascists #terfs behaving badly tag #tag for sources

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b0x · 5 years

Text

😔 some Thoughts on the Trans Experience under the cut that i wanna vent out bc of some posts ive seen around that just kinda didnt sit right with me i guess

every time someone on here is like “trans men cannot experience eldest/only daughter trauma bc they are men and are therefore experiencing transphobic trauma” it’s like... man, gender is way too complex to be so cut & dry about a topic like this. many trans men grew up experiencing the traumas of being a daughter And being a trans man daughter, both pre-transition and post. saying that isn’t saying “trans men are actually women because they experienced this women’s trauma” it’s just recognising that many traumas overlap, regardless of gender. i know it comes from a supportive place, validating us as real men, but that should include validating our unique experiences too.

i hope this makes sense, but a trans-man-daughter is still 100% a man, still 100% a son, but is very different to and does not have the same experience as a trans-man-son. and a trans-man-daughter doesn’t mean “a trans man raised as a daughter because they didn’t know they were trans at the time”, or “a trans man raised as a daughter by a homophobic parent even after coming out and already knowing they are trans”. no, a trans-man-daughter can still also be a trans man raised as a son with 100% support, because a parent’s trauma can still pass on regardless of the circumstance, because a trans person’s relationship with themselves and their own gender and body and mind is so unique and one-of-a-kind that we were practically designed to overlap the many gendered concepts that so many gatekeep as a sense of empowerment.

and it sucks making our own posts/experience sometimes, because they never feel like “our own”? because they all come from traumas and bigotry that have already been boxed and labelled and sorted into sections, and to be someone who has bits and pieces from all those different boxes/sections? a trans person can, for example, experience misogyny one year and then transmisogyny the next and that doesnt make the misogyny the prior year “actually transmisogyny”, it was still misogyny that was experienced, even if it’s later relabeled as “transmisogyny”. if anything that just makes it TWO kinds of misogyny experienced instead of just one. it’s terribly confusing. and trust me, for every cis person confused by a trans concept, i can almost guarantee you it’s just as confusing for the trans person themselves. and this isn’t also me saying that ohh trans people have it worse because we experience Double the bigotry and trauma - no absolutely not. i just think it’s important for people to realise that there are people who will experience both misogyny And transmisogyny and that in itself creates its own new kind of bigotry/trauma experienced, if that makes sense?

of course, i don’t speak for every single trans man, but it’s a very specific kind of transphobia a lot of us experience that ties in directly with eldest/only daughter trauma, and why we relate to and connect with posts like that, even when they’re aimed specifically at those who identify primarily as women.

and on top of all that, i see quite a few of the same trans man “supporters” who say “trans men can’t experience daughter’s traumas because they’re men” do complete 180s and say that trans women can’t experience eldest/only daughter trauma bc their transphobia doesn’t correlate with “womanhood” at the source, because trauma that sons/men/male at birth experience is different to the trauma that daughters/women/female at birth experience, which is.. horrifically and bewilderingly transmisogynistic, transphobic, alienating, and just.. Shocking. shocking that these two points can be somehow made in the same breath together without any of them realising what they’re saying.

it’s like.. this weird group of people who are somehow both the opposite of and exactly the same as terfs? theyre more like... tirfs - trans Inclusionary radical feminists - the people who treat trans men like a substitute for the “effeminate cis gay best friend”, the one’s who will validate your masculinity but not entirely consider you a 100% guy, latching onto that “biological fact” of trans men being “female at birth” and therefore considering you more of a “sister” than a “brother”, regardless of them knowing and understanding that you are a man. i guess its kind of very similar to the transphobes who make awful comments that nonbinary people are just closeted lesbians/gays?

anyway, yes, many traumas are gendered due to binaries designated by society and a misogynistic and men-restricting patriarchy (and many other factors that all play parts in this whole big system such as religion and the upper class), but traumas are traumas, and honestly shouldn’t be gendered, because they all overlap regardless, and can be experienced by anyone if the exact circumstances are met. that and every single trans experience is so unique and so so complex because gender in itself is an extremely unique and complex concept that it just cannot in any way be monitored or labelled into strict rules and laws and binaries.

every time i see a post on here about womanhood and daughter traumas and cis women’s misogynistic experiences and hell even a lot of lesbian traumas/experiences, i find myself completely and entirely relating to many of them every single time even though i am 100% a trans guy, and half grew up as a son. and i guess it’s just kind of weird but not so weird because sure while some days it just feels like im not calling myself a true trans guy, most days its just me validating and relating to an experience that i had that was unique to me and doesnt necessarily mean that im a woman because of it

because womanhood and manhood are temperaments, traits we are either born with or without, traits that are ever-changing and developing as we evolve generation by generation. anyone can pick up or be born with parts of womanhood and/or manhood. like that’s what makes all of us so unique, not a single one of us are alike in any way shape or form because of that. the combinations are always unlimited. so it’s just dumb seeing stuff like that gatekeeped. you cant Own an Experience like thats... what the hell is going on. every time its always the same thing, everyone’s always tryna play god in some way, be it mastering themselves, their own emotions and life, or controlling others, dictating what they think how certain things should be etc

it’s like that one post that’s like everything would be so much simpler if everyone was bi and nothing was gendered ghadjgdkgj

idk.. just.. to gender conceptual things like gender and traits and personalities and traumas is just so... unhelpful and unopen to change and not fluid whatsoever as theyre supposed to be. i dont wanna be all “nothing is real” abt it all but labels and binaries and decided systems and set laws are literally the reason, since the beginning of time, for wars and bigotry and oppression and poverty and the whole shebang. bc Someone decided one day that being a woman means this this and that, and being trans means that and this and that, and those meanings will be the basis we will rewrite occasionally and maybe add to, instead of completely scrapping our whole outdated initial ideas about it bla bla bla.

im just tired gender is weird and stupid why are we arguing why are we so protective like just have a convo man rule with curiosity not adamancy and you’ll be sooo much happier trust me

#feel free to reblog or chat abt idk

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dkettchen · 5 years

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BLACK MIRROR S5E1 “STRIKING VIPERS” E X P L A I N E D

-with the help of gender and game theory-

Y’all asked for it so here we go

Some things before we start: -If you were watching the episode looking for gay/trans shit, and got disappointed, I’m sorry but I can’t help you because that’s just not what the episode was about and that is ok. It explored some aspects of queer experience, and the limbo between queer and cis-straight experience, that isn’t usually addressed in such an honest and indepth way, which I think is just as important as trans or gay rep. -I will focus my analysis on the core theme of what certain academics writing about androgyny call the “moment of transgression” so in this case the question of ‘what is Karl/Roxette’s deal & what does that mean for Danny/Lance’s feelings toward and interactions with them?’. -CW: transphobia, homophobia, toxic masculinity, (rpg) uncanny valley stuff, you get it, you know what subjects we’ll be talking about here.

Now!

I’d like to start by pointing out the title “Striking Vipers” to get the phallus talk out of the way right off the bat x’D: It’s a very blatant penis metaphor, and Vipers specifically are venomous, so represent toxic masculinity. The image of them striking signals danger. The repetition of phallic symbols represents the threat of castration (see medusa turning them bois to stone & the heroic masculinity of the mirror shielded boi who managed to defeat her), which to phallocentric masculinity is the scawiest thing there is (losing the phallus = losing manhood = death?? I guess??). Striking Vipers means that toxic masculinity, by nature, is a threat to itself. (I could talk for hours about the exact warped logic of phallocentricity but Imma spare y’all cause I don’t think it’s relevant for this, I’d even go as far as saying this episode was anti-phallic (which I use here as a more inclusive word for “feminist”, as the episode’s core is about two guys, but still focused on them experiencing and embracing feminine power and freeing themselves from phallocentricity(/patriarchy)’s grasp, just like “what men want” was preoccupied with the toxic masculinity of its female protagonist)) That sets up the kind of horror the episode will be about, the male fear of castration, of loss of identity, of having to face the fact that traditional masculinity is toxic even to the people who conform to it. 10/10 title choice.

Next up: the core question of what label to put on Karl and Danny’s VR interactions (‘Fellas, is it gay to fuck ur best friend in a lady body in VR?’). Which leads to the first question which is: what gender is Karl when he’s playing as Roxette? An essentialist might say: ‘Well he’s a man irl so he’s still a man even if he plays with a female avatar. Danny’s attraction to him is either him being trapped or just plain old gay.’ But I don’t think that’s the case. It’s not a trap scenario (have some videos on traps and how they’re not real actually: (x.), (x.)), because both people involved know the exact parameters of the situation. Danny knows this is Karl in Roxette’s body, there’s nothing hidden, no misunderstanding to be had here. I also don’t think it’s gay because if it was this would’ve happened irl or with two male avatars, but it only happened once one of them was in a female avatar, that was the change that made it happen. It’s not a fetishising phallic/trans women scenario either, because it’s the opposite, it’s a man’s mind in a woman’s body. There’s no doubt about Karl being a man irl, a queer man sure, but definetely a man. He’s just too into -womanhood while playing her for me to say he’s still male when he’s in that form, like Karl as Roxette isn’t a trans guy as a man’s mind in a female body usually would be (like f.e. Ranma 1/2), I also don’t think Karl as Roxette is an androgyne/non-binary/third term either, because again, he’s embracing her womanhood and the role that comes with it, to the extreme that is hetero PiV sex, too much. I’d argue what we see is the closest to the liberation and euphoria described by other queer men when doing drag, she’s just a more extreme version of drag, of crossplaying, making the fantasy real, wearing not only the clothes of a woman but the body too. Roxette as Karl’s avatar is an alter ego, who is female, so -on the risk of sounding like the biggest performativist since Judith Butler- Karl as Roxette presents as female, so, for all intents and purposes, is female in that moment, regardless of his irl persona maintaining his male gender outside of that.

But that wasn’t what we wanted to know, was it. Because even if, in the moment that Karl plays Roxette, we can say that person is female, that doesn’t eliminate the fact that Karl, outside of that, isn’t and that he’s still the one playing her. It’s the notion of how the player/actor/performer and avatar/character/persona aren’t the same thing and can have different relationships with someone in real life vs in the game, and how that can be confusing to think about because there is no clear line between the two, something that is called “bleed” in ludology(/game studies, from lat. ludus: game or school; referring to the gladiator schools in like the colosseum), despite their relationships being fundamentally different (in this case friendship irl vs passionate love in game). Take TAZ as an example: The McElroys are related, but in playing a trpg, the DM, usually Griffin, takes up the mantle of all NPCs in the game world, including love interests. Griffin played Julia, Kravitz, and Danny (different Danny lol), but he’s talking to his brother, except he isn’t, is he, cause it’s not Griffin talking and it’s not his brother responding, it’s two characters interacting. A similar uncanny valley can be found in actor/character bleed: Take Ludi and Pom (the actors for Lance and Roxette) in this one: like 80% of their screentime was spent making out or having fake sex. These actors aren’t dating (as far as I’m aware lol), this is their job, to fake love each other on screen, imagine having to do that with a coworker you feel nothing for. It’s the characters that feel something and you have to play that feeling (which is so meta at that point, they’re playing characters that are avatars being played by characters in the show). Also, talking of role-playing, can we appreciate the scene of Danny & Theo at the bar where they’re role-playing and she’s like that was hot and he’s like mental note bae’s into role-playing, because DAMN that foreshadowing of the erotic potential of roleplay as a concept.

But it’s not role-playing really either with Danny and Karl, is it? They’re playing in avatars other than themselves but they’re not fully a different person. They still very much feel the same just in a different form. Their emotions are real even though they might only apply to part of their experience, the in-game part. Yet they obviously take them seriously and personal and get influenced by them outside the game. Maybe the question is what is and is not role-playing? Where does the bleed start and end, and do we even need to know the answer to those questions? They answer those questions for themselves in the end by testing out their feelings irl to see if they track or not, fully ready for both possibilities (which 10/10 character development love it). They want clarity. It’s about the emotional limbo fantasy brings with it. It’s the same question “Are traps gay” is about. (Not the “Is it ok to feel attracted to androgynous ppl” one necessarily, but) “Does feeling attracted to the fantasy mean you feel attracted to the “real” thing underneath?” Are the feelings for the fantasy alone or also for the reality? Are they only applicable to the latter and does that change something about what you thought you knew about yourself? It’s a question about the fringe edges of limited/monosexuality and the very fabric of reality.

Let’s return to Karl to look at his experience as Roxette. We’ve established that she is female, but what is Karl while playing her? In the spirit of queer drag as liberating, it’s almost like he’s taking a break from being Karl when playing as her. Drag, crossplay, or this extreme version of it, functions as a break from the toxicity and limitations of traditional gender roles (so in this case traditional masculinity). It is freeing, though what does it free? Some genderless spirit inhabiting each person? But then how do you explain the firm gender identity lots of people, including for all we know Karl, experience in everyday life? As a trans person I know that there is SOMETHING to gender on some level that can create gender dysphoria (social and/or physical) for people when put in a body they don’t identify with. As a drag performer, trpg enthousiast, and notorious crossplayer, I know that taking a break from that reality and being somebody else can be relieving, a break from your own problems. So what is that part of us that translates into fantasy? I feel like this goes into transhumanist territory which I don’t know enough about to even attempt to provide an answer. I think what it comes down to in terms of gender theory is, this is a situation at the height of where performativism is true and relevant. There is a relativity to the nature of reality and gender itself. Whatever base essence there is that causes gender dysphoria at a mismatch between outside and inside, doesn’t apply here. Both notions (of essential and performative gender) are real and have an impact on people but neither is always the case and neither is never the case. They’re not mutually exclusive.

So, seeing as it seems impossible to pinpoint what gender Karl/Roxette qualifies as (other than all and/or none), let’s look at the nature of Danny/Lance and Karl/Roxette’s interactions and feelings toward those interactions and each other to try and contextualise what label(s) they might fit under. The desire on Danny’s side when faced with Roxette’s form shows itself in a way he’d never feel toward Karl. That visual change, and the social changes it brings with it (in gender role), makes it so extreme, because it pairs the parts of his friend he appreciates and enjoys (personality and whatever deeper connection a close friendship brings with it), with a form that is attractive to him. That change translates to Karl too. In playing with this new form that has a different role and a different effect on someone he’s known for so long, he flows into that, melts into this new persona and lives it up! The way they interact in game isn’t gay. It is very much reflecting how straight attraction and female sexuality works. On one hand it’s based in undeniable difference (hetero = different), and on the other hand Karl/Roxette’s enjoyment thereof is based in being desirable, in having that power of seduction just by existing, that notion of feminine power and the freedom that comes with it. It’s not autogynephilia, that would imply he gets off on the idea of himself as a woman, which is not the case, he gets off on being desired as a woman, which is what female sexuality is about (source: ContraPoints’ Autogynephilia video (which I recommend, it’s very good))

Still whenever Karl tries to get Danny to keep having VR sex with him/Roxette, he talks about her in 3rd person, like a persona. In saying “it’s just like porn” he poses something that is very much a different activity (acting out the porn by -doin’ it-) as a homosocially (social as opposed to sexual/romantic) acceptable one (watching porn together which I’ve been told is a thing). He attempts to differentiate himself from his female persona and enjoyment there-of (by objectifying her, like a porn actress to be watched rather than identified with), himself and Danny from the queerness (in enjoying femininity and in Danny being down with basically fucking a drag-queen) and to retreat back into heteronormative traditional masculinity, away from the scawy unknown of exploring your sexuality. His internalised homo- and transphobia makes him suppose that Danny, as a supposed straight guy, will only respond to the safety of assured non-queerness, which, honestly, I don’t think is the case with him. Karl supposes his cancelling on him and not wanting to do it anymore is out of the fear for his sexual identity or whatever, but from what I can tell, while Danny also seems to be rather confused about what it all means, the reasons he cancels their nightly sessions, and rejects Karl/Roxette, are always about not wanting his marriage to fall apart. He quite clearly prefers hot VR sex to hanging out with his wife, and cancels out of duty to her rather than fear. Even the first time they kiss, Karl is the one to freak out first. Danny seems much calmer about the attraction part of the situation, to the point of in the end being the one to take initiative and make them try it out irl to put an end to the confusion.

The episode hits hard because it takes the way men play video games and brings it to its logical conclusion. Video games are mens safe-space, and they do play with that playful flirty banter. The show takes that and makes it real, including taking it to its extreme conclusion that is -doin’ it-. It infiltrates the male safe space by taking normalised behaviour, and taking it so far that it puts traditional masculinity and heteronormative attraction in question, the very thing the safe space was supposed to protect them from. That’s why it’s existentially horrifying for the main characters (and viewers that identify with them) and qualifies as a black mirror episode even without having a homo-/trans-/biphobic ending (like other media that put traditional masculinity in question usually do, not to mention all the horror based in queer-coding)

Hope y’all enjoyed this journey into a bit of mind-bending game and gender theory! Pls don’t expect me to do this like ever again bc I need to go work on my actual essay rip x’D

#long post #Black Mirror #BM: Striking Vipers #games studies #gender studies

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alltheworldsinmyhead · 6 years

Photo

two hearts, two pairs of dark eyes

In new, post-war and communist Poland, two lost people find against all odds - and become a part of each other's symphonies.

ff.net/ao3/ the referenced song

AN:

I will try to keep those notes minimal, but there are some things I need to address. First of all - this is an au to Zimna Wojna ( Cold War), a Polish 2018 movie directed by Paweł Pawlikowski - currently nominated for 3 Oscars! You don't require any knowledge of the source material to understand this story, however, i heavily encourage you to watch this movie if you have a chance. It will break your heart in the most beautiful way. Second of all - this fic is set during 40s and 50s in Poland, when this country was under the communist government. That means, among other things, censorship of art and public propaganda. Keep that in mind. Again, you don't need any knowledge about Polish People's Republic ( so socialist Poland) to understand this fic - at least I tried my best not to write anything too specific.

This story is dedicated to my wonderful, dear friend Julianna - honey, I cannot thank you enough for being the best beta ever <3 Love you for suggesting this idea to me!

Dwa serduszka, cztery oczy

Ojojoj

Co płakały we dnie, w nocy

Ojojoj

Czarne oczka, co płaczecie

Że się spotkać nie możecie

Oj oj joj

Two hearts and two pairs of dark eyes

Oh my my

Which has cried all day and night

Oh my my

Dark eyes, why are you still crying

That you cannot meet another

Oh my my

PART ONE: poland

1948

The rumors spread through villages faster than newspapers, or radio, or horses. People gossip on the fields, on the markets, during weddings and funerals and in-between picking apples and potatoes. They speak, in various versions and forms of the same story, about people from Warsaw traveling through the region, stopping here and there – asking people to sing and dance, recording everything on some strange machine with spinning wheels on top of it-

(later Bellamy learns that this machine is called a recorder, that there are two tapes wrapped around each of the wheels and that one's voice sounds so very different if it's captured like that – but for now he's ankles' deep in cold mud, his hands digging in soil in fruitless attempt to find just one more carrot. And for now, he doesn't care about any of this, not at all.)

- And that they are looking for pretty country girls with clean altos and young country boys with strong legs who can jump higher than the others and hoist a girl up above their heads during dancing. The kids that want out of the village, the mud and the potatoes, lured by the promises of big cities and clean beds.

But these are all rumors and they travel fast, faster than the strange visitors from Warsaw. Their car eventually comes, almost forgotten and definitely unexpected, and Bellamy is away, helping with harvest in the neighboring village.

When he comes home, he finds Octavia sitting on the threshold; her hair is in two neat braids tied with her best ribbons, her cheeks are pink from excitement and her eyes are shining when she grabs his hand;

"Bell." She gasps, voice trembling, feverish. "Bell, you won't believe what has just happened."

Bellamy doesn't even remember not singing.

His mother used to sing all the time, even when she was sick and dying; even when her voice became quieter and quieter, barely above whisper and cough fits frequently interrupting her song. She was singing while sewing and while cooking and while trying to calm a fussing Octavia. And Bellamy singed along her, with his boyish, high-pitch alto. He would go to the field with others and sing with them harvest songs that helped them keep the rhythm, against cold rain and scorching sun, that urged you to push on when your back was killing you and your hands were giving up. Songs tied their little rural community better than anything else, linked them together into one sweating, working, singing organism. Every season of the year and every occasion passed with a fitting melody, with words that everybody knew and movements which have been imprinted in their minds since the birth.

Bellamy could tell the whole history of his family like this. As his voice was getting deeper and deeper, dropping in octaves seeming every month, as his mother's voice was becoming weaker and weaker, the third voice was joining their symphony more and more often. Octavia was loud since the very beginning; loud and bold, crisp clean as the ringing of a church's bell. And although she was a good enough singer – not that Bellamy was even an expert in the field of music – she loved dancing way more, tapping her little feet on the ground, spinning on the blooming fields and happiest, when she could dance in circles along with other girls during weddings and festivals.

The older she would get, the more evident it became; her body never losing its childlike flexibility, but becoming graceful, agile. Dark hair waving and flowing around her face, dress swooshing around her calves, never tired, never satisfied. Bellamy could see it, the way boys at the village were looking at her, and every time he caught somebody red-handed at staring at his baby sister, this violent anger would overcome his body; because the older she got the more evident it became that she did not belong here. She was too good, too bright. She deserved something better than those hungry boys. She deserved to be dancing on the stages, to receive standing ovation and bouquets of red roses.

Bellamy desperately didn't want her to just stay in the same place where she was so unfairly born, in mud and poverty, with her hands stained with dirt and eyes aching from sewing in the dimmed light of a candle. Dying in childbirth or from pox or flu or hunger or war. Raped in the forest or behind a barn and left with a growing belly and disgust in their neighbors' eyes.

His little sister was too good for it. Too bright.

But what could he do? How could he get her out of this? How could he buy her a golden future without any money or any connections and or perspectives?

The opportunity fell from the sky like the rain; arrived to a village while he was away, in a car and with a recorder that captured O's voice for forever.

And so, when Octavia grabs his hands in hers and asks him, so hopeful and so desperate, to come with her to the audition, he can do nothing but quietly say yes, not daring to believe somebody could've been listening to his silent prayers all along and finally answered them.

The first thing he notices is that the girl sitting behind a table cannot be older than him, which is really strange. There is an older woman be her side and a man standing in the corner of the room with recorder placed on the chair by his side, but the girl whose gaze meet his eyes when they enter can't be more than eighteen years old, or even less.

With her baby blue eyes and straw blonde hair braided tightly, she would look just like any other pretty country girl he has ever seen, if it wasn't for her hands. They rest atop a pile of papers and they are so white and smooth and unspoiled by any work that it's almost shocking. Long, almond-shaped nails with no dirt underneath them. White skin, no blemishes, or callouses.

Lady's hands.

Beside him, Octavia tries to curtsy, clumsy for the first time ever; she sways a little and he has to steady her by grabbing her elbow. Lady's eyebrows shoot up but she doesn't comment; instead, she nods as for hello and asks them about their names.

The song that they prepared – they, because O begged him, begged him desperately while tugging on his sleeves and making puppy eyes, not to leave her alone, she didn't want to come in alone – is a love ballad, a sad one (of course. All their love ballads are sad; there are no happy endings here). Usually, probably two women would sing it, not a mixed-sex duet, but who cares about it anyway.

Bellamy takes a deep breath, grips O's sweaty hand tighter and clears his head. It's not the first time he sings his song and he's not nervous about his voice, but he doesn't want to drown Octavia's. He wants his baritone to be a setting, a deep, dark background for O's silver bells.

Jo za wodom, ty za wodom

Jakoz jo ci gembe podom

[Me overseas, you overseas

How will I kiss you?]

After they stop singing, nobody speaks for a moment. The silence rings in his ears before the older women notes something on the paper in front of her, nods to the men in the corner and tells them "Thank you", dismissing them with a wave of her hand. But as they're turning away, a voice echoes:

"Wait!"

The blond girl stands up, papers scattering on the table with her sudden movement. She looks straight into his eyes, more bashfully than any other woman before, her blue eyes piercing through his as the narrow ray of light.

"You have the same surname. Are you her husband or a brother?" she asks, surprisingly lowly for a girl her age.

Bellamy bristles at the question automatically, but supposes it is understandable; they are not as similar to one another that she could know it for sure without asking.

"I'm her older brother, miss." He says. Octavia eyes him warily as if she was asking him to not say anything inappropriate.

The blonde nods.

"I understand. Comrade Blake, do you know how to dance? We only had a chance to see your sister."

The older woman is still sitting down. She looks up at the girl with such a pointed amazement, that Bellamy can almost see question marks popping above her head.

"He can." Octavia jumps in, before he can even open his mouth. " And he's strong, he can lift a girl up and everything. And he knows all of the steps, just as I told you-"

"Do you?" the blonde interrupts Octavia's babble; she's still staring at Bellamy as he can feel this stare as a physical touch. Shivers run up and down his spine.

"I do know how to dance, miss."

She nods slowly and sits down; collects papers together in a neat pile with one smooth gesture and leans to the left to scribble something on the same page that the older woman previously marked.

"Thank you, you two. And please, call me Clarke."

"Clarke, we have enough boys. I think he's too old-"

"Mom, you allowed me to take part in the audition, you asked me to be here, so why don't you respect my decisions?"

"I'm just saying this girl is enough, we don't need both of them. And his voice's not even that clean, you heard how he butchered this high E."

"He just sang it a little differently, mom! He had more emotion in his voice than any other man we auditioned and you know it, I just-"

"Girls!"

Her father's voice is low, calm. He never has to raise it to silence them down; Clarke thinks it's his gift, one of the many he possesses. The recorder makes a squeaking sound when he turns it off and takes a few steps to stand beside the table.

Her mother huffs, clearly annoyed.

"He's going to be trouble, Jake."

"Maybe." Her father nods, scratching the back of his head and staring at the list that Abby made so far. Gina Martinez. Finn Collins. Monty Green. Harper McIntyre. Kyle Wick.

Octavia Blake. Bellamy Blake.

"But-" Clarke is about to start to argue again, but Jake rises his hand up and playfully bobs her on the nose, silencing her.

"I get what you mean, Clarke. There's something in him, definitely. The way he moves… I think we can work with that. And he seems strong, strong enough to hop around stage for hours. Plus-" he taps on the table, a small smile dancing on his lips. "His voice would complement yours nicely, darling. I have a good feeling about this."

And so, Bellamy Blake stays on the list and moves in for better and worse.

Into her life, into her house, and into her heart.

The world in which they live is unforgiving, black-and-white, right-and-wrong, and whatever is this thing between them, it has no chances to last whatsoever.

Clarke's not teaching dancing, but she comes to the rehearsals still; stands in the corner of the room, tucked in between two white-colored walls and blending in. It's easy to overlook her, or at least, it was easy at the beginning, but then he caught the way she was watching him, eyeing him from her secluded spot.

She has the prettiest eyes he has ever seen – a lace of dark, tangled lashes, piercing blue remind him of a winter sky when it's clear. Those kinds of winter eyes should be cold, but aren't. They are so meltingly hot that he boils alive in his calf-length boots and a long-sleeved shirt.

And again, it is difficult, at the beginning, to get used to singing lessons. Clarke is eighteen; she is just a kid for fuck's sake. Some of her pupils are older than her; some cannot bear the thought of listening to a girl. But Clarke commands respect in every movement, ever word.

Bellamy watches her as she's positioned behind a piano and pressing different keys, giving them instruction with clear, assured voice. She hears even a tiniest false note, can tear one down if this certain one is not working hard enough and she does it all by herself, without bringing her parents in. She's fair in what she does and she knows how to do it well. And she carries herself with such a pride, such certainty, that Bellamy is constantly torn between hating her for that (entitled suka, grown round and pretty on milk and honey when they were starving and now acting like a goddamn princess an insistent voice in his head keeps on repeating) and respecting her for her expertise. Entitled or not, she works twice as hard as the rest of them and definitely not everyone could do her job as well as she does.

So that's how it begins; this feeling blooms in him slowly, like a seed turning into a bud of sympathy and respect and then sprouting leaves of interest and fascination and finally, brilliant red petals appear.

Desire.

She sits behind the piano, instead of standing like usually. Her hair is braided in one long plait, but saying it's sloppy would be kind of generous. The strands keep on falling into her eyes all the time and she swats them away, irritation lines forming on her forehead.

"One more time, louder! Murphy, stay in tune or I'll kick you out, you're messing up the whole chorus. "

"Yes, ma'am." Murmurs Murphy besides Bellamy. He's always all defiance; hands deep in his pockets, smug grin on his face as if he didn't care for anyone or anything besides his own interest.

But Bellamy knows Murphy's story, how this uptown-born guy got kicked in the dirt and smeared with it so thoroughly that he himself has forgotten he used to be clean once upon a time. Although Clarke is probably not familiar with this story – why would she – she has good-enough instincts not to chew the guy off too much. Well, until today.

Some random fly is buzzing loudly around Bellamy's head, bumping into the walls while trying to find an escape route from the hot, humid classroom. Everyone is tired and sweating and distracted. And Clarke keeps on pressing the keys of the piano harder and harder, as if she wanted to break it. Her left hand travels up to her face every few seconds to brush hair from her face. Lips pursed and face sun-kissed, her eyes squinted because of all the sunlight getting from the outside – she is so darn pretty.

He wonders about the mole above her lips. He wonders how would it feel like to touch her hair.

"Bellamy!"

The piano falls silent. People stop singing. Clarke is staring right into his eyes, despite the sun.

"Do you maybe have anything better to do?"

The words get out of his mouth quicker than he can think them over.

"Hmmm… maybe you, Princess?"

His voice always drops down a few octaves in this song and it rings in his words. He sounds sultry, almost. Clarke's eyebrows shot up as her eyes widen a bit in shock. Somewhere at the back of his mind he registers as the group takes a collective breath.

It's so quiet. The only sound that echoes in the classroom (hot and humid and hot, so hot) is the buzzing of the fly.

Slowly, Clarke stands up and makes her way towards him. Her steps are soft, catlike; she looks so graceful in this moment that he could mistake her for Octavia.

She raises her hand up and his eyes involuntary squint as he lowers his head in a defensive manner, but she doesn't strike his face. Her hand collides with his biceps with the loud slap, that is followed by the Harper's gasp. As he raises his sight, he meets Clarke's; he wishes he could decipher her stone-like expression. The only tips are in her eyes; without sunrays spilling in between them, they seem shockingly tired and a little bit wild. As if she was a brink of self-control.

Her mouth curves into a sweet smile as she raises her hand once again, palms-up. There is something black and goo-y covering her skin.

"You had a fly on your arm, comrade." She singsongs. The tension drops so dramatically that it should punch a hole through the floor. Somebody giggles. Jasper and Monty get a little blue from suppressing laughter for too long.

Clare lets out a breath with loud whizz and taps her leg on the floor two times.

"Go, all of you. You're free for today, see you tomorrow."

Before Bellamy can move though to join the rest of the group, she lightly catches his wrist and tugs on it, to keep him in place.

"You stay." She says, avoiding his gaze and staring at the door instead, following the kids with her eyes until they are all gone. Then, she gently pushes the doors and waits for the soft click of the lock.

She turns to face him.

He continues to stare right into her stormy eyes, watching as they catch light and sparkle. A second, a heartbeat; the corners of her lips rise up slowly.

She lets out a deep sigh.

"What am I supposed to do with you, comrade Blake?"

A silence; a heartbeat. And again, his lips move on their own will, the words fall from them like stones; heavy on the no-man land between them. He crosses the borderline boldly, in a surge of strange bravery that stuns even him.

"Whatever the hell you want"

A chuckle escapes from her lips. He watches her, eyebrows up and eyes wide, as she doubles in half and laughs out loud. Soon enough, he is grinning – a strange scene if anyone was to see it. Clarke, standing in full sunlight, a braid undone, tears streaming down her cheeks and bubbling with the most earnest laughter. Him, half-cast in shadow; watching her with shining eyes and heart beating fast, as if he was dancing.

Music is a luxury that Clarke always had an abundance of; even her earliest memories always come with a soundtrack. Her mother's Tchaikovsky, as she was spinning pas the deux in the exercise room. Her father's Chopin, his fingers dancing in the air above his piano's keys.

Those were her good mornings and lullabies; those sounds of her parents' passions echoing on the corridors of her childhood come.

And of course, as a child, she wanted to belong there too, either in the world full of swishing tutu-s and aching feet or in the one full of beautiful ballrooms and evening gowns. A concert pianist, a primaballerina – endless possibilities ahead of her. She was born bright and rich and pretty, straight at the top of the new elite in the brand-new, independent Poland. She couldn't start better -

- Until she could.

The war came and stripped everything from gold and glory, turning her world of everyday into a world of dreams only. There was no more dignity in her mother's dancing or in her father's playing – it was an act in front of Nazis, their art enslaved, no longer allowed to flow freely as they wished. And as the terror around them reigned, as the tension rose to unbearable scale, one summer day Abby Griffin didn't appear in the theater and Jake Griffin canceled all of the concerts.

And paying in their family heirloom, they fled from Warsaw under the disguise of night, a day before Uprising started and turned their city into ruins bathed in blood and guts of those who had guts to fight.

But by then, Clarke had long ago abandoned all of the dreams of ballerinas and concert pianists. This simply wasn't in store for her and it was becoming the more evident the older she was growing. With her hourglass figure and full breasts she felt like an ugly alien among swan-like wisps of girls in her mother's classes. And her fingers would not listen to them, would not move as quickly and skillfully across keys like her father's, no matter how long she practiced and how hard she tried. It was the same with everything – with a flute and with a violin and with a trumpet. She had an absolute hearing that enabled her to catch even a smallest mistake and an absolute inability to eliminate them.

She was decent enough at everything – at ballet, at ballroom dancing, at piano. Not terrible, but just decent and nothing hurt her more than that.

But with years passing and a big dose of determination, she has found her own lane – in a place where neither of her parents felt strong enough to cast their shadows.

Her father used to say that her voice feels like a thunder; it's low and unexpected and electrifying to the listener. That it's so strange to hear it coming from a little blonde girl. But she grew into it, grew into a woman with chest large enough to take deeper and deeper breaths, reach higher and lower notes, easily guiding it through melodies.

She felt more confident singing than doing anything else and she was good at it, so good and so sure, that when her parents told her about their idea and allowed her a spot on the teachers' board, she agreed without any hesitation.

Some of those boys and girls were just a little younger than her and some were even older. But she was growing up with music echoing in her bones and she was not letting them intimidate her into the submission.

In most cases, she turns out to be right. Singing lessons are long and exhausting and after an hour or so of repeating the same note over and over again, even the most steel-willed bend out of the sheer physical limitations. All - all but Bellamy.

Or, comrade Blake, she supposes she should call him that. But how, why, if his name is so beautiful, so elegant, so out-of-his world and yet fitting him perfectly?

Because Bellamy Blake is beautiful and out of her world – both the gone and the imaginary ones – and when he is standing firmly with his calloused hands laced behind his back, head held high and singing… Oh, she could listen to him for hours. Her mother was right; he isn't the finest technician. But he can somehow play on the strings of listener's heart; make them feel exactly what he wanted. He can make you weep and laugh and clap along, all subconsciously and effortless. He understands the emotions in the melodies far better than any other singer she has ever listened to. And she never manages to tire him out, not even when group lessons blend into individual lessons and those transform into nightly meetings in the empty ballet room…

Bellamy hoisting her up with his strong arms and keeping her up seemingly forever, her back against mirrors and bare leaving bruises on her lower back when he is fucking her with the same passion with which he dances and sings and does everything else. Fucking her until they are both covered in sweat from head to toe, until she is more aching and exhausted than any ballet lessons in her youth left her.

And even then, in the dead of the night, when she is trembling in his arms like a leaf on the wind, he has enough energy to kiss her brow, to sing Ukrainian lullabies in her ear if she asks him to.

It's exhilarating, it's addictive and undefined, this thing between them, and she often wonders if he does it only to ensure his sister's place in the Academy and in the team. If so, it's unnecessary and baseless. Octavia Blake is a diamond in the rough. Clarke knows all of the moves by heart and their names in English and French and Polish, the technique and history, and it doesn't mean a thing, all her knowledge and expertise. Octavia knows none of it and still she does it better than Clarke could in her wildest dreams. Her body is all perfect angles and graceful poses, going through the hardest choreography like a hurricane and making it look so, so easy.

It's hard not to be envious, while looking at Octavia dancing. She's a nice singer, an unusual one with her voice a bit lower on the scale than other girls, but she is an unmatched dancer and Clarke knows that Abby has to sometimes try very hard not to praise the girl during every class.

So Bellamy doesn't have to worry about Octavia. Nor does he have to worry about himself, not with his voice and with how he hops across the ballroom, kicking his legs high and clapping his hand so loudly that the sound echoes through the whole building.

Yes, both Blakes are simply something.

So why is he doing what he's doing? Runs through Clarkes mind on repeat, as Bellamy presses kisses along her jawline, as he cradles her head in his hands and tenderly raises her chin up so he could reach her neck better. Why is he with me now? Why?

But she doesn't rush to find the answer to this question. Days are a blurry of hard work, of the noise made out of feet stomping on the floor and different melodies tangling together, clashing in her ears.

Nights that she spends with Bellamy in the practice room, when they have sex or talk or just sit beside each other smoking in silence and watching the stars through the skylight window – nights are the rewards. They are what pushes her forward.

1949

Their first gig – the one, for which they were preparing for almost a year, polishing choreography and repeating every note until it ringed with perfect clarity – was in old Wola district of Warsaw, in a cinema-theatre called Syrena.

It's a strange, hollow feeling to drive through the streets she once walked and don't recognize a thing. To enter into a building so similar to the ones where she used to watch movies with Pola Negri with her friends and other ballerinas. The sensation is straight out of the dream and it must show somehow on her face, because Clarke catches Bellamy eyeing her less than discretely, worry lines appearing on his forehead. And so she shakes her head (I'm fine, I'm fine) and loses herself in the flurry of activity on the backstage.

Boys are stomping heavily on the wooden floors, trying out their new shoes and girls are tying ribbons on each other's braids, and Jake is running around with score pages in his hands, and Abby is giving the last advice to the dancers, and Clarke is so torn between trying to help the others out and focusing on her own performance, that she somehow ends up alone in the quiet spot just next to the entrance to the stage. Which is empty, bare except for the white banner with red, simple letter: "Dancing and singing group "Mazurek". The audience, on the other hand, is full; Clarke can see it in the corner of her eye, all of the PZPR1 high officials with wives and a couple of parts of former artistic circle of Warsaw.

She plays with the fringed edges of her shawl; just like her skirt, it's made out of a heavy, floral patterned material which makes her feel warm and sweaty. The red ribbon around her braid irritates her. She's afraid Roma will slip again and that the audience will hear. She just really, really wants to get it over with and go home to her little room with her piano and her students.

"Jittering much, Princess?" Bellamy appears seeming out of nowhere; he is already wearing his costume and his boots make squeaking sound on the polished floor as he moves closer to rest against the wall next to her. Their arms are almost touching, maybe a centimeter all two between them.

"Remind me again, why are you performing instead of, you now, giving advice and watching your students perform, like a good teacher?"

Clarke has to snore at that. Well, he's right. This is a folk group, very, very strict folk group and very authentic. Folk music. Folk outfits. Village boys and girls who already knew the source material and felt it in the way she could never duplicate. But –

"The audience would take to us better if there's a familiar face on the stage" she shrugs. "Some of them probably know me, or at the very least probably heard about my parents. It's good publicity, you know?"

He nods, but his face is obscured in the dimed light. And it's all truth, what she just said, but… it's not really why she agreed to perform.

So she takes a deep breath, fixes her eyes on the floor and lets it out:

"And I wanted to sing with you."

Because she did – she does want that. Ever since she first heard him during the audition and even before her father pointed it out, she has been yearning to sing with him. Lessons are not enough. Rehearsals are not enough. It's not real, until she is standing on the stage with him beside her and hearing their voices entwine into one.

He is quiet for a moment, contemplative. Then, he slowly reaches for her hand and takes it in his gently, his fingers curling around hers and making her all warm and melting inside.

"Good. I want to sing with you too, Clarke." He says and when she looks up at him, he has the most brilliant smile painted across his face.

Two hearts and two pairs of eyes

Oh my my

Which has cried all day and night

Oh my my

Dark eyes why are you still crying

That you cannot meet another

Oh my my

My mom has it me forbidden

Oh my my

To love that sweet boy I'm seeing

Oh my my

Elders have love and they keep it

Don't let youngers ever see it

Oh my my

When the boy is so nice and lean

Oh my my

And who would resist against him

Oh my my

Out of stone my heart would be

For me not to love oh so him

Oh my my

My mother has me forbidden

Oh my my

To love that sweet boy I'm seeing

Oh my my

And I caught the boy, all weeping

I will love him till I'm breathing

I will love him, till I'm breathing

Oh my my

Dwa serduszka cztery oczy łojojoj

Co płakały we dnie w nocy łojojoj

Czarne oczka co płaczecie, że się spotkać nie możecie

Że się spotkać nie możecie, łojojoj

Mnie matula zakazała łojojoj

Żebym chłopca nie kochała łojojoj

Starzy o miłości mają, młodym kochać zabraniają

Młodym kochać zabraniają łojojoj

Kiedy chłopiec Boże miły łojojoj

I któż by miał tyle siły łojojoj

Kamienne by serce było, żeby chłopca nie lubiło

Żeby chłopca nie lubiło łojojoj

Mnie matula zakazała łojojoj

Żebym chłopca nie kochała łojojoj

A ja chłopca hac! Za szyję, będę kochać póki żyję

Będę kochać póki żyję łojojoj

They sing a ballad of the forbidden love, holding hands and frozen still in a pose, with the choir behind their backs and the lights blinding them so that the only thing they see are blooming pools of color, pulsating underneath their lids when they blink.

They sing with hearts on their sleeves, out for everyone to see – the song so sorrowful, their voices so desperate, the sentiment so true.

After the curtains drop down and the sound of clapping and whistling bursts in the room like fireworks, Bellamy's big, warm hand finds Clarke's. As his fingers curl around hers, the realization hits her with a force strong enough to be felt like a physical sensation; a slap across her face, her stomach dropping, and her hand sweating in his.

The lights illuminate his profile as they re-enter the stage to bow; she watches as he silently fights with himself so as not to smile, the corners of his lips are twitching and there are stars shining in his brown eyes.

She cares for him so, so much.

The night is dark and thick as soup, obscuring the world behind the train's windows and so, everyone quickly falls asleep, the whole group drunk on alcohol and success and exhausted by the day's excitement. Clarke watches them in silence, trying to imprint their faces in her memory. How did they become so dear to her? When did it happen?

A year of existing in close proximity – sleeping and eating and working together – has linked them so tightly, so much tighter than she deemed possible before her parents started the group. Those kids went through all her defense lines, even the most stubborn and irritating ones and now it's hard for her to look at them and not feel tenderness blooming in her heart. For their talent and dedication and honesty. And for watching them sweaty and covered in blisters and marching on, against all odds.

Knowing where they came from and watching them tonight, all glorious and victorious, with glasses of champagne in their hands and laughing, she couldn't help but feel so proud of them. And this feeling followed her to the train, to this silent compartment, to watching their faces and think about who they are and who they're going to become.

Their sleeping positions could as well be the illustration of their feelings; those deeply hidden and those clear as a day. Murphy, always a lone wolf, fell asleep with his face tilted towards Emori, as if he was watching her. Monty and Jasper snore in unison, leaning on each other's backs and holding hands with Harper and Maya respectively. Raven is curled on the couch like a cat, her head on Gina's lap, Kyle and Shaw on both her sides, Finn as far away from her as possible. Monroe and Fox, tangled with one another, hands and legs entwined.

And Octavia, regal and beautiful, sleeping soundly in her brother's arms.

Bellamy is awake though; he is also watching the others, looking at their faces, as if he was checking if they're okay, if they're all here. Dad of the group, always, less because of his age and more because of his character. Clarke's always wondering, would he be the same if he didn't raise Octavia? Because the fact that he raised her is apparent without any explanation. She thinks about their history way too often and never dares to ask.

Maybe there'll be some time for it too. Maybe they'll have time for everything they want.

Their eyes meet and she nods slowly two times, watching as his mouth curves into a smile at her familiar gesture.

When she leaves the compartment, he follows her.

Two clicks of her heels on the wooden floor; click, click.

Two taps of his hand on her shoulder as he's passing her by on the corridor; tap, tap.

Two claps of her hands as she's counting the rhythm; clap, clap.

Two hearts and two pairs of dark eyes, oh my my,

"C'mon, baby, come for me." He whispers against her skin, biting in the junction between her neck and shoulder and leaving wet, red marks all over her clavicle. His words match the rhythm of his thrusts. "C'mon Clarke, come, come for me."

He seated her on this tiny metal sink so that he wouldn't have to keep her up all the time and could have both hands free; it is not the most comfortable position she's ever been in and the tap is digging in her lower back painfully, but who fucking cares honestly.

His fingers skim skillfully between her folds and massage her clit oh so softly that she wishes, hopes, prays she could just stay in this moment forever – Bellamy fucking her in the tiny bathroom on the train back from Warsaw, her legs wrapped around his waist, his hands everywhere on her, the air hot and damp from all their heavy panting.

It's heavenly, it's holy; he's kissing up and down her chest, his hand still buried between her legs and she wonders, briefly, how is it possible for him to fuck her so hard that she'll be sore all over tomorrow and still speak to her so gently, coaxing this orgasm out of her with both passion and patience.

And she envies him, she wishes she could have his control, because at this point she can do nothing but sag in his arms, head thrown back against the wall and biting on her lip until it starts to bleed. She wants to open her eyes but she can't, she's just so tense that every muscle in her body seems to turn into concrete and every nerve in her brain is ablaze. It's so good that almost unbearable.

Bellamy kisses her cheek, his mouth warm and soft against her skin. He knows her so well, has learned all of the steps of their dance by heart without her noticing.

"C'mon, my love."

The release attacks her almost aggressively; it's like a wave, droving her under and washing her brain in the sea of whiteness. She's sure she must've blacked out for a moment, because when she comes down from her high, he's finished too.

"I loved singing with you." She says quietly after a few minutes, when she regains some control over her voice. He's leaning his full body weight on her, resting his head on her bare breasts as she's caressing his hair. She still has her trembling legs locked around him; he still has his arms loosely wrapped around her. And to be honest, they are too warm, too weary and too sticky with everything to stay like this for much longer, but she's not going to be the first one to break contact. "I really did."

The lone light bulb hanging on the cable from the ceiling flickers once, twice and dies, leaving them in darkness. She cannot see him anymore, but she still feels him, every twitch of his muscles, every sweep of his lashes against her skin, the steady beating of his heart and his quiet, deep breaths.

He doesn't answer, but her over-stimulated body shivers, when he starts to trace circles on the bruised area above her ass. The silence falls and stays between them, unbroken; and it tells her everything she wanted to know.

1952

Everything perfect.

Their feet aligned, their voices in harmony, chins up and smiles on. Every gesture of her father clean and crisp, the conductors' baton swishing in the air. The audience enchanted. Not a step or a note missed.

Everything perfect, except for the song, which isn't telling a story of love lost or hardships of life, but of camaraderie and friendship between nations, unified under one sign.

Except for the portrait of the Stalin with this good-uncle-smile on his face but huge and intimidating. Casting long shadow over the whole group as if he was God on the altar.

Except for the party officials nodding their heads in apprehension, satisfied like cats fattened on goldfish and canaries.

She wants to puke, whenever she hears it. Whenever she bows, she feels her spine straining, about to break.

Is that how it feels, to be a songbird locked in a cage, allowed to sing only to the melody of running water and radio?

It's late August and even though he hasn't seen his family farm in close to four years now, something in him is still weirded out by the perspective of napping by the riverbank instead of working.

He can't even remember the last time he had new blisters forming on his hands; this new life traded his aching arms and back for the throat scraped-raw and feet so tender after practice that it's hard to walk on them. Not that his complaining, of course. He wouldn't even dare to; he would willingly sing night and day just to see Octavia as happy as she is now. He would, with the greatest pleasure, peel the skin off the soles of his feet for just one afternoon like today – laying on the blanket in the sun, grass smelling sweet and Clarke's head pillowed on his tight.

And he got more than just one, way, way more.

She let her hair loose today and they spill around her face like liquid light. The breeze plays with the blonde strands and gauze material of her dress, making her shiver in her slumber. She makes a lovely picture like this, straight out of impressionists' paintings. Clarke asleep is so much easier to read than awake, every emotion written across her face in lines and grimaces. Right now, she seems fairly content and Bellamy briefly wonders what she's dreaming about.

Just two days ago, they were in Prague. They were in Prague, going through the notes and movements almost automatically because – this is the best part – traveling through the communist block countries to perform is almost an everyday occurrence for them now. And he finds it both shocking and exhilarating how easily they all got used to it, even him. How fast this became new normalcy – nights spent in trains and days spend in theaters, or days spend on rehearsing and nights spend with Clarke.

Clarke, Clarke, Clarke, Clarke.

She has somehow become new normalcy for him too.

The taste of her and the smell of her and her voice joining his in this impossible harmony. Putting his hands on her waist and spinning her around, kissing the smiles and tears off her face, braiding her hair in a coronet.

He loves her in a way that's both grounded in firm reality – she's here, she wants him, she's there for him – and straight out of the dreams and old wives' tales. Because she's not like him.

Her small hands are still smooth and perfect, unspoiled. And Bellamy wonders all the time – does it still matter?

He gently caresses the bridge of her nose and so her lips curve in a smile. She opens her eyes slowly, lazily, eyelids fluttering delicately before they expose this striking sea of blue.

"Hello." He whispers, even though they are alone.

His mom used to say that ripe grain sings and dances on the wind. And he gets it now; it's like the entire field was an ocean around them, waves golden and brown instead of green. Stalks swaying on the breeze, up and down, up and down.

Clarke takes his hand and presses it to her cheek. Her face is so small that he could fit it in his palm; his fingers reach almost to the crown of her head, his wrist is pressed to her pulse point.

"Run away with me, Bellamy." She says sweetly, oh, so sweetly that her words seem to be dripping with honey. "Please, run away with me."

"This was my parents' dream, not mine." Clarke's thinking to herself as she's standing on the border between two worlds, still in East Berlin and burning through the second pack of cigarettes. "They will do just as fine without me."

And there's an undeniable truth in that; a Mazurek is her parents' second beloved child that surpassed all of their wildest hopes and prayers. She can see it as clear as a day. Her mother, softening with time as the kids worm their way into her heart just as they wormed into Clarke's. Her father, eyes shining with pride as he turns to the audience to take a bow after a performance. Their hushed voices after dark, talking about future and grand plans of international turnees and making themselves a name abroad.

But this doesn't mean Octavia or Raven or Miller can replace Clarke in their hearts.

It doesn't make her leaving any way less cowardly.

She's pacing, her boots already soaked through by the wet snow. January in Berlin is nasty, with biting cold and streets painted strikingly white. The cigarettes don't bring her any warmth and, as she tries to wrap the scarf tighter around her face, she wishes with all that's inside her, for it to be summer again.

Summer, with the buzzing of honey bees and the chirping of birds and Octavia's loud, clear voice calling her from the river:

"Clarke! Clarke, come swim with us!"

Summer with pale faces of the group she is now abandoning turning brown, like an expensive sugar.

Summer with violent storms, passing quick as a flash and leaving only clear sky and the smell of kerosene in the air.

Summer with Bellamy's kisses and her group, her friend's laughter echoing in her ears even now.

She throws the cigarette bud on the pavement and stomps on it with the heel of her shoe; thin ice sheet gives in under the force and spider-web of tiny cracks appears when clean, untouched surface once was.

The shorter and longer arms of her watch meet on twelve.

Somewhere in this city, there is a ballroom next to the opera house, where her mother and father make polite small talk and click champagne glasses with German politicians. Where the girls from the group twirl on the dance floor with the swish of the skirts and the boys try to guess what kind of expensive alcohol is in their glasses.

And Bellamy is there too, of course, he is. She was beyond stupid to ever believe he will come with her.

The summer's long gone and the winter's here. Bellamy is in the ballroom, his hawk's eye set on watching Octavia as she dances around the room from one partner to another, eyes shiny, step light and sure.

And Clarke wipes her face with a glove, lifts her suitcase from the pavement and crosses the border.

In the end, his hands are still calloused and hers are still smooth.

In the end, his mother took his hand and with her dying breath uttered "your sister, your responsibility".

In the end, the world is big and bright, but all that he wants can be contained on one field of swishing grass.

These are all just the lame excuses; he knows that.

But, as he takes another sip from his champagne glass, there is sureness in him, heavy and cold like a river stone – he would only hold her back.

#bellarke #bellarke fanfiction #the 100 #the 100 fanfiction #zimna wojna #cold war #cold war au #bellarke au

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lids-flutter-open · 6 years

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Content warning: some spoilers, reference to author’s weird obsession with young trans girls’ genitalia and to sexual assault committed against main character

Basic boring and bad things about this book include:

⁃ all dialogue scenes are long and bland; there is no banter that is funny

⁃ The same points are hammered on again and again for hundreds of pages : again, Lily’s dad thinks hormone blockers are too expensive and she should be a boy. Again, Dunkin is afraid of his mental health issues. Again, Lily is called a slur and is upset. Again, Dunkin wishes he were braver than he is. There isn’t a lot of dynamic action.

⁃ Lily gets deadnamed in the cover flap of the book and in the family tree in the front of the book

⁃ Parents are one dimensional, either harmful or benevolent

⁃ Tween children never have violent or angry thoughts unless they are bullies, and politely respect adult rules

⁃ There isn’t any payoff to Lily standing up for what she believes in re: her tree, not even solidarity from other activists, sending kids the message that it is meaningless to protest things that are wrong

⁃ Dare, Lily’s best friend, is one dimensional and never emerges as an independent character, which sucks more because Dare is black . Dare only acts as an emotional support for Lily. Her own motivations and passions never fully emerge. She uses spurts of AAVE once in a while but her lived experiences as a black kid in south Florida do not come up.

⁃ Something that annoys me all the time in melodramatic kids’ books like this is where characters say something and then repeat the same thing with more emphasis on a separate line in a punchier way, such as : “(line break)I don’t say anything. (Line break) I never say anything.” This happens what seems like once every two to four pages. It disrupts the flow of the narrative

⁃ Kids lack agency and their resolutions come from adults changing their behavior , which doesn’t leave young readers much to go on in dealing with similar struggles

Aside from all that :

There are many things about this book that do more harm than good in terms of impact to the groups the book is supposed to advocate for. These can be roughly sorted into Trans Stuff and Mental Health stuff. First, let me get into the trans stuff.

First , technically speaking: a thirteen year old seeking hormone blockers will typically need to suffer through several quite arduous conversations with parents and psychologists and psychiatrists before accessing them. With the dawn of informed consent practices, this has changed a little, but the questions that Lily’s kind psychologist ask her barely touch the basics of what trans kids typically are asked to talk about in therapy. Additionally, we never see Lily or her parents learning any more details about her hormone blockers at the endocrinologist—essential details, such as the fact that their effects are reversible, that their side effects aren’t known to be substantially negative , that there aren’t yet many studies on their long term use. Even if Lily didn’t understand all that info, as a trans kid she would absorb at least a little of it. Additionally, I feel like her parents would talk to her more about their understanding of what trans people are or go through, with articles about detransition, etc —and Lily would counter with her own knowledge. The absence of any of this simplifies trans experience down far beyond even the most basic Oprah special and makes accessing hormones and blockers seem both easier and less involved /reflective a process than it actually is.

Another really major issue I have with this novel about an eighth grader is that Gephart seems obsessed with Lily’s body and specifically her genitalia. I cannot even count how many times the word “penis” appears in this book in reference to Lily, in what is otherwise quite a G rated book. Cis adults often fixate constantly on trans kids and their bodies and genitals and fertility in a way I find really creepy, and Gephart has continued this trend with an exuberance that makes me want to keep all young trans girls faaaar away from her. The fact that she has Lily undergo a demeaning public sexual assault from bullies in her class in a way that doesn’t at all serve the plot underscores how much Gephart is obsessed with young trans women’s bodies. While Dunkin also has issues with puberty, experiencing insecurity about his height and weight and hairiness, his sexual privacy is respected and we get no hint he even has sexual organs at all—I assume the cis characters in Gephart’s other stories get the same treatment. Meanwhile, we hear over and over again about Lily’s pubic hair, genitals, and fears concerning what will happen to them if she doesn’t get on puberty blockers. It is her main personal arc (seeing as the save-the-tree arc doesn’t start until a good 100+ pages into the text). While real young trans girls have a number of fears and passions having to do with school, hobbies, friends, etc , lily is almost completely absorbed by the author’s fetish for her body. She talks constantly about her “stupid boy chest”, her narrow hips, and a range of other body parts she hates and wants to alter. In a cis girl puberty book, this would lead to a conclusion where Lily realizes she maybe looks kinda cool as is, in the liminal state that is adolescence, but not here. Which brings me to another point —most trans kids never go on hormone blockers. They’re really expensive ! Parents who support their kids can’t necessarily afford this care, and many trans kids also come out after their first puberty. This book communicates, via Lily’s attitude and her mom’s attitude and everyone’s panic about Lily’s body, that non-puberty-blocked trans kids will have transitioned “too late” and be forever marred by hair, height, bone structure, etc. This perspective is a really ugly cis-normative one. It is based in the idea that trans people and especially trans women must look as much like cis people as possible, must know their intent from childhood, and must commit themselves to expressing hatred of their bodies and (violent) intent to alter them into something more socially pretty and socially acceptable.

What really makes trans kids safe is acceptance and support and emotional connections regardless of appearance and hormone desire/hormone access. Hormone blockers are Not bad, and I support kids getting them, but neither are they universal or necessary to live as a happy trans person.

Lily never experiences anyone telling her that in this book, and doesn’t meet trans women older than her who have had different experiences with transition trajectory who could advocate for her while also clarifying that Lily’s path isn’t the only one. This book is a cis mom’s vision of perfect medical transition —syrupy and gender-conforming and girlie and with a stamp of medical approval that ignores and disdains the experiences of trans kids and adults unable or unwilling to access early medical transition. It’s unnecessary and directly harmful. Trans people usually experience dysphoria, but many of us learn through practice and community that the ways we are special and unique are beautiful, that our medically altered adult bodies are cool, and that we don’t need to obsessively conceal our differences in order to be gorgeous and lovable. Gephart is determined to undermine such efforts, which sucks for cis readers too. I think we should all realize by now that standards of bodily appearance that oppress trans people also oppress gender nonconforming cis women and girls and nonconforming boys (at one point lily thinks : “I am not a fag, I am a girl!” What does that say to gay boys and butch girls?)

Second : mental health stuff.

Just as Gephart wishes to do away with the complicated other-ness of being trans, she also skips over the factual realities of being a young teenager with bipolar disorder. For one, diagnosis of bipolar in a thirteen year old is pretty rare. Having bipolar that young is also usually traumatic, in addition to being precipitated by stressful events—such as a death. Dunkin’s freakouts are understandable, but the narrative treats them as a major problem without explaining why and treats Dunkin’s bipolar as a frightening and slowly encroaching monster rather than a set of symptoms rising out of genetic predisposition plus life circumstances and maladaptive coping mechanisms. It dehumanizes him to treat his bipolar like this. Dunkin naturally resists the heavy level of control exerted over him by doctors —scenes of him skipping medications out of a sense that they hold him back are among the most realistic in the book. Similarly, the lack of communication and punitive attitude of doctors is also something many teens encounter when seeking care for mental health issues. These things could be addressed in text by Dunkin having a conversation with his mom and seeking a psych that makes him feel more comfortable or working on his own level of trust in her and her affirmations of what reality is. But they don’t talk. Gephart would rather teens blithely submit to treatment from doctors who call them the wrong name and be adequately sedated for the comfort of the adults around them —even though many antipsychotics and mood stabilizers don’t work well or work long term for large portions of the population and can cause negative side effects, and finding the right drugs requires hearing feedback from patients and often several trials of different drugs plus behavioral therapy etc.

A major issue for me is that Dunkin’s father —a man who also has bipolar—is cast as almost wholly incompetent and crazy and Bad with a capital B as a parent. Likewise, Dunkin’s mental illness is treated like a dark mystery for most of the book, and its slow reveal becomes an exhibitionist sort of revelry in how crazy he is acting —which isn’t how books about bipolar teens should treat this issue. Mental illness being the bogeyman makes people more afraid to get diagnoses or deal with symptoms and makes it easier for people to deny that there is a problem if they have less extreme symptoms.

While bipolar and other illnesses can ruin lives and cause families to hurt, it sucks that Gephart chooses to frame mentally ill adults as both totally irresponsible and totally doomed with no nuance and frames the medical industrial complex as a stern but ultimately benevolent force in Dunkin’s life that protects him from himself. Psychiatrists can help people access needed care, but just like Dunkin’s psych, they can also alienate and scare people. Especially for teens, psych facilities can cause trauma on their own, especially for kids of color or kids dealing with other issues like grief. They are sometimes the least of all evils, but Gephart treats doctors like saviors. Kids growing up with bipolar need to know adults who struggle with the same symptoms and to practice self reflection and engagement with communities of mutual advocacy and need to understand the various factors that can exacerbate symptoms and interrupt their lives. They don’t need to be told to shut up and take the pills doctors give them and to trust people in high places. They get that from other people.

Basically, Gephart has stuck her nose into two issues that do need representation but which she doesn’t adequately understand, and the result is patronizing hogwash in book form . Skip !

#book reviews #books #lily and dunkin #lgbt #trans #ya literature

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irigoddess · 6 years

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Incomplete Kyuzo/Phatrong Masterpost

Apparently this post didn’t work once I changed URLs so... yeah. Here you go.

Kyuzoni biology:

The Kyuzo are an omnivorous reptilian species; while they are reptilian, they are warm blooded and do not lay eggs. They evolved this way because of the sometimes violent weather on Phatrong. It turned out that the weather was not suitable for eggs - thus they evolved to give birth…even if the process is awkward and painful.

Kyuzo skin is rough, but not scaly like Trandoshans. Skin colors can range anywhere from green, to yellow, to blue and in between. However, those who are purely yellow or blue have a common pigmentation disorder. Their health is not negatively affected because of this, although people might treat them differently depending on where they live.

All Phatrongi Kyuzo are born with honeycomb eyes, that can be any color. Their eyes tend to glow in the dark, and they can see in the dark better than most humanoids. (I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure where that one writer was going with when he said most Kyuzo had poor eye sight. I tend to ignore it.)

Other than having slightly wider hips, cis females are very similar to cis males. They do not have breasts or any noticeable secondary sex traits. While cis males tend to be a bit taller and wider framed, its not uncommon for cis females to have those traits, and vice versa. Intersex Kyuzo are common. Gender is very fluid among the Kyuzo, as parents tend to raise their children without a defined gender; when the child is of age, they get to decided what their gender is. Thus, being trans or nonbinary is prevalent.

The Kyuzo can be up to 7′6″ tall, with most falling in the 6′ to 6′6″ range. They tend to be a little larger than humans, body wise, but are considerably more agile.

The weakest part of the Kyuzo is their lungs; if there is too much moisture in the air, they can easily contract pneumonia. Too much oxygen in the air and they’ll suffocate. Thus the reason they wear masks off planet. (Those who were involved with making Constable Zuvio also said that they wear bandages over their mouths but I’m still trying to figure out…..how that works exactly…)

Kyuzo, beyond that, are an incredibly hearty species that can live upward of three hundred years. After reaching sexual maturity at around young adulthood, their aging slows down. Whatever kills them before old age is usually attributed to their lungs or more physical means. They can contract other diseases, but they are usually nonfatal. Usually.

They have an amazing amount of stamina and can run at speeds that are hard for most humanoids to attain. They, unfortunately, have high pain tolerances and a hard time receiving fatigue messages to the brain, and this generally spells out problems. Kyuzos have been known to run themselves to death - literally. It’s not uncommon for families to find the bodies of missing members hundreds of miles away from where they were last seen. They have to make a very conscious effort to stop, or they won’t.

Kyuzo are much stronger than humanoids, and can jump higher. Most outsiders confuse them as force sensitives for this reason. Though Kyuzo are commonly Force-sensitive, they fight tooth and nail to keep their kids from the Jedi.

Culture:

Clothing:

Most feminine presenting Kyuzo wear headwraps/headdresses. Other than displaying wealth and covering cold heads, there isn’t much of a reason that they wear the headdresses. It’s not required, but most feminine presenting people wear them because they grew up seeing other feminine presenting people wearing them. If one is wealthy, their headdresses will tend to be large and elaborate; it’s not uncommon for one to wear a headdress that is pounds upon pounds of metals, jewels, and cloth. Poorer feminine presenting people generally just wear cloth, or nothing at all.

Kyuzoni clothing is colorful and flowy; people wear very similar clothing, no matter what gender they are. Dresses and skirts are very common, and people will generally go topless. While most colors are okay to use, there are certain colors that are not used in everyday clothing, such as purple, light blue, gold, and white; the Kyuzo place sacred meaning in some colors, so they are only supposed to be used for special events.

Phatrong’s army/police force wear loose, non-restricting clothing with a leather-like armor covering their chests. Their family’s crest is painted upon the armor, in case that the warrior is killed in action. Their clothing is trimmed in gold, which represents bravery and wisdom.

Light blue cloth, specifically headwraps or shirts, signify that a wedding is approaching. Purple is a wedding color, as it signifies prosperity and commitment; wedding clothes are trimmed with silver. White is only used for funerals or births, as it signifies both death and the innocence of new life.

Music/Art:

Music on Phatrong generally revolves around stringed instruments and percussion instruments; they don’t generally listen to music for leisure. Music is only played at festivals, and generally tells the stories of ancient heroes and gods. The Kyuzo also create dances to these story-songs, to make things more dramatic.

Art varies around Phatrong. By the oceans, it’s mostly glass-work like beads and giant stained glass windows. Those Kyuzo that live by the rivers create pottery. Richer families will paint large murals that will cover the walls of their homes. These murals tell tales of their gods, but more often than not they are used almost like photographs that capture small moments in the lives of the family. Jewelry making is also common.

Religion:

The Kyuzo believe in a polytheistic system; the most prominent goddess is Vohaoya (Vo-ha-oy-ah), the mother of the gods and creator of worlds. She represents women, fertility, life, and nature; she is described as having a mostly Kyuzoni appearance, with three eyes and four arms. Often, she is shown in art or statues sitting cross-legged, cradling Phatrong in her lap; her arms are either pointing toward the sky, or she is making gestures with her hands. Her bottom arms are often portrayed as laying flat against her legs with palms upturned - this relays openness. Her left top arm is often resting on the planet, which portrays her protective nature. And her right top arm is often pointed upward, her pointer finger curling in toward her palm while the rest of her fingers are outstretched; this is a symbol of love for the Kyuzo. Her statues are mostly made out of gold, but are painted with the likeness of galaxies; some people swear that the stars shift in the right light.

Other more minor deities include Ixpi, the goddess of peace, and her brother Echting, the god of war. Because the Kyuzo like to believe that they are a peaceful race, Echting is often described as a villain. Ixpi is described as a small, rainbow-colored being that floats rather than walks; besides being the goddess of peace, she is also a patron of happiness, sunrise, and the LGBT community on Phatrong. Echting is also the god of destruction, mayhem, and storms; he is often described as a fiery being too bright to look at. He is surrounded by lightning and is easily angered.

The Kyuzo have many other gods, but they are not nearly as important as the three mentioned above.

Legend has it that Vohaoya created the Warriors of old to protect the gods from those that wished to harm them. They were created from the rich soil, and they were considered divine beings. In the modern era of Phatrong, it is still considered one of the highest honors to be a Warrior.

General cultural headcanons:

The Kyuzo tend to live in large villages or the few small cities around the planet; those who are born into the more obscure villages often never leave the villages.

Villages are generally comprised of thousands of people, all of which are extended family members. Separate families can have more than twenty-five members, all living in one house. Villagers take turns tending to the communal farm, which produces most of their food and fibers for clothing; to supplement the farm, they also forage, hunt, and fish.

Village born Kyuzo are very secluded, only working with neighboring villages to marry off their children. Because of their seclusion, they are the more suspicious and less educated than their city counterparts. Knowledge is passed down through the generations as those born in the villages don’t have access to teachers. At most, they know Kyuzoni and basic math: they are instead taught more practical skills, like sewing, cooking, cleaning, and animal husbandry.

There are two ‘real’ cities on Phatrong, Shutalo and Shouji; Shutalo (Shoo-tah-loh) is the capital city, to the north. Shouji (Show-zhee) is a large industrial city in the southern hemisphere. Any outside trade is limited to these two areas.

Kyuzo that live in the city tend to have smaller families, with about six members at the most. The Kyuzo in the cities have actual jobs, but they don’t make money; they are given items of use instead. (Think of bartering, almost. If they work at a textile store, they are given cloth, which can then be traded for food, etc.) Villages that have produced too much food or are in need of other items will sell food to the city folk.

City Kyuzo have better access to education, although it’s still not the best in the galaxy. Most city Kyuzo learn things like writing, higher levels of math, and an objective look on the planet’s history. Kyuzo that wish to learn beyond that must travel off planet.

It’s extremely difficult for Kyuzos to speak Basic, just because Kyuzoni and Basic are so different. It can take years and years just to get the verbal language down, and that doesn’t count how long it takes for them to learn to read Aurebesh. If the Kyuzo do manage to figure out how to speak Basic, they have thick accents that are often hard to understand, thus making them vulnerable to mockery.

Politics on Phatrong are strange as the government actually doesn’t do much. The senate, located in Shutalo, is a group of Kyuzo (and a few Kataline) from various villages and cities that are there to set basic laws so that they can have a seat in the Council of Neutral Systems. Really, the various villages will set their own rules, and as long as it doesn’t interfere with the senate, they’re generally alright with it. (A law would include: Murder is punishable by death. But their definition of murder is loose and up to interpretation.)

Kyuzo children (generally young men but it’s not limited to males) learn to fight from the moment they can understand. The Kyuzo, although a generally ‘peaceful’ race, train their children to become a quasi-army/police force. The most promising fighters are then shipped off to various academies around Phatrong to train with masters to hone their skills. Many children, as a result of poor quality of life at the academies and dangerous fighting practices, end up dying. It is rare that the academies are punished. The children that make it then must complete a three-year stint as an active warrior; those who passed but are not necessarily promising are sent to protect sacred temples. Those who show a certain level of finesse can continue to climb the ranks until they are high-ranking military officials. They act more like a police force than a military, but they have the training just in case.

Kyuzo children are often promised to each other at birth; throughout their childhoods, they get to meet and connect with their betrothed. They generally marry at eighteen, with a week-long festival preceding it. Wives are considered sacred embodiments of the Goddess Vohaoya, and are limited to bearing five children; superstition says that having too many children will thin out the wife’s existence. Daughters are vitally important to carry on their mother’s bloodline.

Because Kyuzo value large family, a husband will take a wetzandi as well; a wetzandi, or birth maid, is a younger woman who births the rest of a man’s children. A wetzandi is someone who is generally caught bedding out of wedlock, or has committed some other small crime against the goddesses. Unfortunately, they are not valued by most, and are treated as little more than breeding stock.

#kyuzo #star wars #swtcw #aliens #meta #i will likely edit this some more another night but i'm too tired now #enjoy

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