#anyways! historical context for nerds like me:

[skitskatdacat63]

“Amore et Timore” - King Fernando I “El Animoso”

[uldahstreetrat]

Im trying to take note of real world influences in XIV for some projects going forward, like languages used in areas (French names in Ishgard, Roman terms in Garlemald) or like in aesthetics I suppose (like Radz-at-han in particular reminds me of Istanbul), and I'd like to hear others' thoughts about those kinds of influences that they've noticed

(little more context on things im working on under the cut)

right now this has a lot to do with things like stamps lmao I have in fact gotten kinda into stamp collecting now and I'd like to design some for XIV areas based on similar irl counterpart countries? like regular stamps and stuff like a sort of Garlean version of US postal war savings stamps? so having irl countries to reference for stamp styles would be helpful to like figure that stuff out

and honestly all of this is just part of making a physical copy of Q'ihnn's journal more complicated than it needs to be but never let it be said that I dont have a love of unnecessarily dense world building

plus by having a list of reference countries I can also build out other kinds of like, souvenirs? in the journal from the places visited across msq - a lot of things I see people keep in journals, especially travel ones, are stuff like wrappers or other packaging, pieces of maps, receipts (that's its own rabbit hole ive gone down), ticket stubs, and other various little paper things along with photos and drawings (which are much easier to manage in comparison)

cause a lot of this shit doesnt extensively exist within the game often beyond a mention in a stray line of dialogue or two so there's advantages to having irl cultural and historical reference to make something that feels real - plus im often off in lala fantasy land in my head because im stuck at home a lot, im not exactly well traveled, so im sure its easy for me to miss especially like language use in certain areas (I didnt even notice how French Ishgardian names were until someone else made a joke about it, it just doesnt occur to me)

like some of these influences are fairly obvious, right, like Doma and Kugane being Japanese inspired and Greek influence around Sharlayan (which the Greek/Roman dichotomy that Sharlayan and Garlemald have going on is its own whole thing I could go into btw they're so similar yet different in such interesting ways) - but places like Ul'dah?? not a clue. Ala Mhigo? no idea. The Crystarium and Eulmore in the first??? oh I'd put my head through a wall trying to thing of a real world counterpart for reference

granted now having said that someone is going to point out something obvious that I just entirely missed some way or another lmao but like that's why im asking, right? anyway if you have nerd ass thoughts too just hit me up

[ineffable-rohese]

Oh hey, I've gotten a few followers/mutuals, so I guess it's time for a pinned intro post?

Demographic info (because it gives context to my words): Early 40s white fat cis queer poly pagan woman living in the wet corner of North America. My nearest and dearest are almost all trans/non-binary.

Personal (public facing): I'm an Aziraphale-coded hobbit. Like, so cozy and wholesome you might want to puke. I rewatch just the first disc of the LOTR extended edition because I love the Shire so much. I drink Earl Grey with milk and one sugar. (Or a good scotch, cause every Aziraphale needs a little bit of Crowley inside them, right Sheenie?) I read mainly historical fiction, especially anything set in (actual, not fantasy) medieval Europe and I was at one point a medieval music history nerd. I wear cozy sweaters. I love rain on ferns and April flowers. I make soup with things I've tended and harvested. I work a Wholesome AF job. I unironically hug trees. I'm deeply in love with the world.

Personal (in private): I'm deeply kinky. I'm primarily a Sensual Sadist with a significant Dominant streak. I often play as a Panther. I absolutely love consensual violence, and get great joy from hurting people who want me to hurt them. I've only really given myself permission to be that in the last year or so.

Fandoms: I fell in love with Good Omens in 2000 when a college roommate gave it to me. It was genuinely the funniest, greatest thing I had ever read, and I evangelized about it to anyone who would listen. S1 of the show immediately became a comfort show, and it got me through a time of massive loss and upheaval. I put it on when everything was too hard and I needed something that made me feel like everything was going to be OK. S2 - well we're all here still, aren't we? It dropped when I desperately needed One Good Thing for my brain to latch on to as I got through some intense pressure, and boy howdy did it lodge itself in me.

Other fandoms in roughly chronological order: Star Wars (original trilogy made me a child nerd), X-Files (first real social fandom, and intro to fanfic!), Buffy/Angel/Firefly, LOTR, Doctor Who, Torchwood (the only other show I've been driven to write fic for), Sherlock to an extent. OFMD and WWDITS are great fun, though not obsessions.

My Writing: Writing Index Here I'm really enjoying writing right now! I don't know how long this ADHD hyperfocus will last, but I'll take it while it lasts. My goal in writing is to challenge myself, create things I'd want to read, and have fun with it (for a definition of fun).

I'm also definitely working on being comfortable expressing the things I like and want and being unashamed about that. I worry too much about how my 😈 side might reflect on my 😇 side, and honestly, these shades of grey lovelies are helping me with that a lot. It's probably why I love writing Dom Aziraphale so much, because he is just so sweet and good and bright, and also a toppy BAMF who can make demons (and their Bentleys) do whatever he wants and wields a flaming sword against Satan himself.

So yeah, every time I make Aziraphale go to a dark place, and then come back again to being a ball of delight, it's helping me create a map that allows me to do the same (to a, you know, somewhat lesser and more reasonable extent). And when others read and like the things that come from the darkest corners of my brain, it makes me feel seen.

Anyway, you made it this far. Here are my cats for tax. Yes, I have one of each of the Kinds of Cats.

[breitzbachbea]

A Rec For All The Hetalia History Nerds Out Here

Hello my fellow enthusiasts of the five minute comedy anime. I actually decided I should do even more unpaid PR for my favourite BBC4 Podcast.

Anyways, if you are a fan of Hetalia and already a history nerd/would like to get into history, do I have the thing for you:

You're Dead To Me is a Podcast for "people who don't like history, people who do like history and those who forgot to learn any at school". Each episode, the host Greg Jenner (Public Historian & "Chief Nerd to the TV show Horrible Histories") sits down with a comedian and a historical expert, to deliver nearly an hour of a funny history lesson. While you can't cite a podcast for a term paper (as my Dozent pointed out again today), it is still genuine, university lecture level knowledge! And to make sure your head won't explode from all the facts or that the academics won't get lost in ivory tower vocabulary, the class clown is there to ask clever questions and make silly jokes. So it is super factual and super accessible at the same time.

Often, you will get a glimpse at how historians work & how they access the past, too! I know the Anti-Intellectualism is rampant these days, but making academia more transparent and shed light on why certain stories haven't been in the spotlight until recently due to all kinds of bigotry is a much better start than people making shit up on tiktok.

Tomorrow (June 10th), the new series starts, but you can start to listen to the podcast right now with a backlog of over 80 Episodes!

Over 80 Episodes on what, you ask? Everything!

You want to learn about Black History? You will love the episodes on The Notting Hill Carnival, Paul Robeson, the Haitian Revolution, the Harlem Renaissance & many more!

You like your royal history, full of politicking, personal drama and intrigue? We've got The Borgias, King James IV. of Scotland, Saladin and The Mughal Empire for you!

Love the ladies, past and present? Let me introduce you to Eleanor of Aquitane, Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, Josephine Baker, Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft!

Sick of hearing about Western (European) history? Sure thing, find something more to your tastes with The Asante Empire, Mansa Musa, The Tang Dynasty, Genghis Khan, Ivan The Terrible or The Ancient Babylonians.

I could make so many more categories and I'd still not cover every single episode, I am sure. You're Dead To Me is avaible online, on the BBC Sounds App, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

If you could check out the podcast & share this post/the podcast itself, it would mean a lot to me. As a history student who is currently working on getting her BA, it's immensely important for me that people learn how to recognize the past in the present. That they look around the world and see how we got here a little more clearly; that they look at remnants or depictions of the past and see its context better. If you think that sounds marvellous, if you always wanted to get into history beyond the googleable hard facts, then I invite you to start your journey here with me.

Also, the jokes are often really funny, I swear to God, there are so many bangers that live in my head rentfree.

"So I'm a Dutch-Brit?" "You're a Dutch-Brit." "So I'm Brutch -"

"I have a few silk shirts, every single one of them a mistake. I bought one of them in Italy and I don't know what I was thinking, I look flat-out divorced."

"They found 400.000 [clay] tablets, mate? That's amazing, that's more than at Glastonbury!"

[waterfall-ambience]

i will not put noli me tangere and el filibusterismo in perpetua, i will not put noli me tangere and el filibusterismo in perpetua, i will not put noli me tangere and el filibusterismo in perpetua, i will not-

rambling under the cut because i need to figure out something to finish this scene:

the reason why i bring it up at all is because i want to show what a mundane conversation between damien and avery is like when there's not really much else happening in their lives.

much of their conversations in arc 1 were mundane yes but it was like 'getting to know each other (and also letting damien heal a bit after going through the horrors)'. also i will probably need another pass at arc 1 act 2 because i think things are a little messy thematically and i start juggling quite a lot.

-> anyways i wanted that mundane friendship conversation to be about a piece of media. i think literary analysis is something the two of them would talk about (because that's exactly the type of nerds they are, and you've gotta write what you know, yknow?)

there is a precedent for including real books and pieces of media in perpetua. i did it early in arc 1 with mary shelley's frankenstein, to establish perpetua as an educated community, suggest at minerva's sense of humour, and introduce ideas like the rage towards one's creator (with a parent-child / mad science twist).

> haunted hollow (the owl house, but i can't just name drop that one because it's too recent) was mostly used to establish the kind of nerd that avery is, give damien an in-universe blorbo in the form of a zuko/hunter-alike.

>> i might go back to this in arc 3 when the gods chew damien out for not living up to their expectations and compare him to his own blorbo.

> ponyo (which has no in-universe name as of now) was also used to bring in the general theme of "it doesn't matter what you are, i still love you" to the context of damien and avery's friendship. i just needed it to work for a scene and i think it does?

so i absolutely can use real books. the question is whether i should use noli me tangere / el filibusterismo specifically:

el noli came to mind because i'm pretty into it at the moment, and it's thematically rich enough for damien to passionately talk at length about just how hard it goes.

> i'm trying to do this to show that he hasn't just been thinking about haunted hollow for the past 8 months or so, lmao. not that its unrealistic for that to happen, i just think he wouldn't. he's more the type to have a broad knowledge of a lot of different things and then excitedly draw connections between them, rather than fixate on one thing for a long time if that makes sense.

> on a meta level i want to show infodumping and passion in a positive light (avery finds it cute, etc.) because some of my family members don't really appreciate it. i feel like a freak sometimes, i really do.

BUT ANYWAY. the implications of the books

both noli me tangere and el filibusterismo are very much rooted in their socio-historical context, that being the philippines during the late spanish colonial era, and the way it portrays society and the systems in power is unfortunately evergreen. sometimes it feels like hardly anything has changed 137 years later.

in relation to perpetua, the books show a world that the characters have never experienced, whether that be past or present. damien has filipino heritage but the disconnect is apparent (so ironically it loops back around into being a pinoy diaspora experience?). its something to consider when the gods judge him for not being 'good enough representation'.

i dont know how this is going to play out because captain luna is broadly similar to ibarra, in that they're idealistic, upper class illustrado filipinos who studied abroad and had childhood sweethearts named maria-[something], neither of whom they got with in the end. with bonus queer aspects of their stories because tbh it reads like there was Something between ibarra and elias. but anyway. i dont think luna would've read noli and i dont know how he'd feel about the parallels between him and ibarra. probably not very good!

maria-isabel was named after maria clara YES, but i read noli and fili recently so everything surrounding the luna/ibarra parallels are a coincidence.

> damien will likely pick up on these parallels and that opens up an entire can of worms!! worms that i don't know what to do with! but also its an interesting book and i want more people to read it because it fucks severely.

if you have any suggestions for works that damien can be interested in (thematic relevance to greater story ideal) i would love to hear them

[quietblueriver]

Very fucked up few days over at SCOTUS.

Quick, self-indulgent queer law nerd reflection on Justice Sotomayor's powerful dissent in 303 Creative (case in which SCOTUS said a web designer can exclude queer couples from her hypothetical wedding site business because 1st Am.) because the internet is the void I can come scream into about this.

She is not pulling punches at any point. This is what she says about the argument that Smith (web designer) isn't actually refusing to serve queer people: The majority protests that Smith will gladly sell her goods and services to anyone, including same-sex couples. She just will not sell websites for same-sex weddings. Apparently, a gay or lesbian couple might buy a wedding website for their straight friends. This logic would be amusing if it were not so embarrassing. I suppose the Heart of Atlanta Motel could have argued that Black people may still rent rooms for their white friends. Smith answers that she will sell other websites for gay or lesbian clients. But then she, like Ollie McClung, who would serve Black people take-out but not table service, discriminates against LGBT people by offering them a limited menu. This is plain to see, for all who do not look the other way. (Quick context without getting super into the weeds: in Heart of Atlanta and Katzenbach v. McClung, the Court found that business owners could be forced to abide by the Civil Rights Act. They did this by holding that Congress has the right to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution and discriminatory actions interfered with interstate commerce.)

She cites almost all of the major LGBT rights cases and Loving, the case that struck down anti-miscegenation laws. She also cites Kenji Yoshino in making the argument that asking queer people to hide who they are can actively put them in danger on top of the emotional and mental harm it causes: By issuing this new license to discriminate in a case brought by a company that seeks to deny same-sex couples the full and equal enjoyment of its services, the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status. In this way, the decision itself inflicts a kind of stigmatic harm, on top of any harm caused by denials of service. . . . It reminds LGBT people of a painful feeling that they know all too well: There are some public places where they can be themselves, and some where they cannot. K. Yoshino, Covering 61–66 (2006). Ask any LGBT person, and you will learn just how often they are forced to navigate life in this way. They must ask themselves: If I reveal my identity to this co-worker, or to this shopkeeper, will they treat me the same way? If I hold the hand of my partner in this setting, will someone stare at me, harass me, or even hurt me? It is an awful way to live.

She closes with a quote from the dissent in Korematsu, the case in which SCOTUS said Japanese internment was constitutional because it was about national security. It's an incredibly disgusting and embarrassing part of legal history. Interestingly, Justice Sotomayor also brought up Korematsu in Trump v. Hawaii, the travel ban case. There, she compared the majority's logic in upholding the ban to the logic in Korematsu, which Chief Justice Roberts, the author of the majority opinion upholding the ban, really did not like. Anyway, her use of the case again is a shot at the logic of the majority but it is mostly a very clear shot at what she thinks of their position morally and about how it will be viewed historically: I fear that the symbolic damage of the Court’s opinion is done. But that does not mean that we are powerless in the face of the decision. The meaning of our Constitution is found not in any law volume, but in the spirit of the people who live under it. Every business owner in America has a choice whether to live out the values in the Constitution. Make no mistake: Invidious discrimination is not one of them.“[D]iscrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life.” Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 242 (1944) (Murphy, J., dissenting). “It is unattractive in any setting but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States.”

Basically, all of this is absolute shit but the progressive Justices are not being quiet about it and I'm very grateful for that.

[starlene]

Titanic: the Artifact Exhibition thoughts:

Let me start by saying that I have some... let's say, ethical qualms about the whole artifact exhibition thing. Obviously, they're not severe enough to prevent me from seeing the touring exhibition (and to be clear, I have seen different iterations of it in four different countries now.) But even so – I just don't think it's super cool that these historical artifacts are owned by a company who thinks Las Vegas is a proper permanent home for them. There is something very sideshow-esque about the whole thing. While it's cool that some of the artifacts tour the world for many people to see, if I got to decide, their permanent home would be in a well-established museum in a location that figures in the story of the RMS Titanic somehow. But I don't get to decide that, so whatever, I guess!

Mostly, the exhibition is both respectful and informative, but there are some little problems. The most notable one is that they haven't updated all their info plaques and their audio guide, so there are issues like two plaques right next to each other having contradictory info (say, how much the tickets cost in today's money.)

I also don't think it's, hmm, super great how you walk by the names of everybody that died – straight into a souvenir shop stand of teddy bears dressed as captains. I mean, sure, they need to make their money somehow, and I did buy a bunch of postcards and stuff myself... but apart from a handful of replica newspapers, cups and such, the shop really has the most tasteless selection of Titanic merch known to man. The only things missing are the "Titanic Swim Team 1912" shirts and the ice cube trays.

To make it clear: I'm not saying you're a horrible person if you wear a Titanic Swim Team tee or whatever (tbh, I would buy a Vasa Swim Team 1628 one in a heartbeat myself) – these days, the sinking of the Titanic is a part of popular culture just as much as it's a historical event, so it's just natural there are joke-y products around. I just think the contrast of a memorial wall for the actual victims and the captain teddies is rather gruesome.

Also, speaking of Titanic in popular culture and the public consciousness, I don't think it's super great how the exhibition strengthens certain Titanic myths that don't really have much truth to them, or are less black-and-white than the usual story goes.

They make a big deal of the Titanic (and the Titanic alone) being "unsinkable", to the point of lifting Captain Smith's "modern shipbuilding" quote¹ out of context, which of course makes guests assume he said that about the Titanic specifically. They also claim Captain Smith was about to retire after the Titanic's maiden voyage, though there isn't really any evidence to prove that. And of course, they keep mentioning how the Titanic was the largest ship ever built – which is technically true, sure, but I think it's worth mentioning that in practice, she and the Olympic were twin sisters.

I even spotted a new piece of nonsense in the exhibition that I've never heard before: they claim that Thomas Andrews was not supposed to be on the maiden voyage at all, but he had to travel in place of Lord Pirrie when he fell ill. I believe Thomas Andrews was always meant to lead the guarantee group, like he had done on previous maiden voyages, and I have never heard anything to the contrary before. But what do I know?

Props to the exhibition for not demonising J. Bruce Ismay, though! On the contrary, they mention he helped passengers board the lifeboats before leaving on the last lifeboat to be properly launched.

Anyway!! I think I have been negative enough here. I may have a lot of nitpicks, but even so, as a whole, I think the exhibition is a good introduction to the story of the Titanic, and it's interesting and touching to nerds like me, too. I like the interactive parts such as the changing soundscapes. I feel the sound design has gotten better since the last time I saw the exhibition, I especially enjoyed the soundscape near the 3rd class cabin reproduction that demostrated how you could hear the engines all the time in those cabins. The touch the iceberg thing is good and very sobering too, it really helps you to understand how hypothermia was only a matter of minutes on a night as cold as April 15th, 1912.

And of course, there are the artifacts themselves! I assume they keep most of the flashier ones in Vegas, but there were some good ones. My favourite was a golden chain with three lucky charms: a clover, a star, and a lucky pig. The lucky pig obviously didn't make it, but I do wish its owner did. I also liked the Extra Moist Cherry Toothpaste jar just because that sounds so silly. There were reproductions of that in the souvenir shop, but I couldn't justify buying one – maybe I would have if it came with some of that moist paste, but nope!

ETA: Something I found interesting was that pretty much every single artifact that was a part of the ship's decor, from dishes to lamp holders, was stamped with the White Star Line logo, even the fancy first class tableware. Was that all about boosting their brand recognition, or were they that worried about things being stolen? Or did they want to show off that everything was custom-made just for them, no off-the-shelf items from any generic manufacturer? Maybe it was a little bit of each?

I also think it's interesting to think about the weird journey the artifacts have made. Someone put them in their luggage to cross the Atlantic, they sunk along with the ship and spent about 80 years in the darkness... and then someone else came along with an underwater robot that has little hands and picked them up. The people who originally owned them could never have imagined the journey their everyday items would go on – or, if they briefly saw a vision of their trousers ending up in a glass case in a Swedish mall with some Finnish nerd staring at them, they probably thought they're just about to lose their mind.

All in all, Titanic: the Artifact Exhibition in Täby, Sweden, was a thought-provoking experience for me in many ways. I'm glad I got the chance to go.

¹ "I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that." (Said by Smith after the RMS Adriatic's maiden voyage in 1907)

[isabellehemlock]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗

Hi Sarah!  I hope you know that I saw that one reblog where you shared you dyed your hair with rainbow colors? (hopefully I'm not misremebering?) - anyways, so now I think of you with magical unicorn vibes gloriousness anytime I get a notification from you 🦄

Thank you so much for this fun ask!!  So cute, and hopefully no one minds me sharing more details about each piece I picked - only because I know I genuinely enjoy hearing about the creative process and what an author got out of it, or their essential “why’s” so I’m gonna list seven from the TOG fandom (because no joke, I calculated it, 96% of my stuff on ao3 is TOG lol), and with three bonus ones from other fandoms - because I have some 86 works listed on AO3 (though plenty are fanarts), but yeah, I just couldn’t narrow it down more than that lol.

In no particular order: 

Their souls were knit together (and he loved him as himself) 

I sort of consider this one my magnum opus of all the pre-canon JoexNicky pieces I had written before then.  It’s like each and every fic/meta/post/research piece led me to this one that I embarked on in the fall of 2021 (and even with some academic and religious studies, still spent a few extra weeks on research just to ensure I had a few key pieces in place).  I’m a history nerd at heart, what can I say lol.  The religious symbolism is thick and they fall in love slowly, so then, sprinkle in some historical contexts from Genova, Tunisia, Constantinople, and Crete, and it sort of snowballed to 88k in three months lol.  But there are definitely scenes from it that I’ve re-read several times over, because yeah, it just speaks to me on multiple levels, and I’m glad it seemed to resonate for a few others as well ❤️

Called you by name 

This was one of those pre-canon ficlets I was referring to just above, and looking back, I think this could easily be a sort of soft sequel for TSWKT (even though I wrote CYBN beforehand) - but it’s essentially an existential one-shot, stand alone of Nicky returning to his home land about two centuries after he had left it.  I projected a lot, but in the end it’s about faith but also the freedom to label your own identity.  I still look back at it fondly.

The Returning 

This is more of a drabble piece, based on a tumblr prompt, that I wrote for Nile - which is still one of my favorites.  Nile is a character I would have loved to explore more about/through/with due to me being a military brat, and my father being a wounded vet (my father had his TBI 20 years ago this August, and for all intents and purposes, died that day).  Between that, and her faith, there were actually quite a few meta posts I had wanted to write up, but I kept it personal to a few friends instead after seeing some discourse.  So, writing a canon adjacent Nile, instead of the modern au’s I had been doing up until then, and finally explore even some of that?  Yeah, deeply personal and I’m glad I had the opportunity to 🥹

Pwimo 

For personal reasons, but I still get a giggle out of it 😎

Precious Days 

I think some of my favorite pieces are the ones that I make with others (whether that’s by a prompt suggestion, plotting together, making a fic based on art, or vice versa - and I’m so grateful for people who allowed me to sort of practice with them before deep diving into fandom events lol).  Now most of my fandom collabs have been art (but also podfics??  Who am I lol) - but yeah, this was one of those giggling with a friend in DM’s over plot ideas kind, that I still look back on fondly.  I was grateful for the opportunity to write something as a birthday gift, but also have some fun trying a different trope, and looking at it from a different perspective/lens that I normally tend to write in.  It was like this fantastic experiment, dedicated as a gift, but somehow still resonated with several readers, and it’s also one of the few fics of mine that I sometimes re-read scenes from.

Promises, promises 

One of my absolute faves because I got to explore one of my favorite subjects - interfaith dialogue - through the whole team, in this modern au, which was also a bit of a rom-com <333  Some scenes and dialogues were projected from my own experiences, and discussions, and though niche as heck, also resonated with some fellow LGBTQIA+ religious readers 💒

Bonus - other fandoms: 

Miracoli

Should we call it TOG-adjacent?  Lol.  I adored writing Daan and Paolo, and the found family trope was THIQ within this FIC yo.  Plus, getting to write a teenager, and a preschooler?  And exploring those dynamics of building a family together?  Yesh, please - there are so many scenes from this one that I re-read just to bask in the serotonin because it’s probably one of the sweetest fics I’ve written, uplifting, romantic and soft 💕

Mixing It Up 

My Steddie fic!  I binged ST, resonated with Eddie Munson hard, and projected some aceness onto their potential dynamics.  I’ve received some of the sweetest “I feel seen” comments with this one, and some are saved on my phone on days when posting anxiety tells me not to bother.  Write the stories your teen self would have loved to read, because I guarantee there are others out there who it will speak to, too.

Pretty Ballads Hide Bastard Truths 

This was one that has fallen on the back burner due to other fandom events/projects but I promise it’s outlined and ready to resume come late summer.  Like, it’s on my list - I’m itching for it!  I adored Calanthe x Eist’s scenes in the first season, and I wanted to devour more of it, and with some loving encouragement I was glad to dedicate this one to Claz.  It’s still one of my favorites for the worldbuilding, and little nods to canon throughout, but just that exploration of growth, healing, and coming together over the years that has yet to leave my brain.  I’m looking forward to finishing it and allowing the story to come full circle.

Thanks again Sarah ~ looking forward to passing this one on soon 🤗

[hahahax30]

Ik you already know most of this but I still found it pretty interesting so-

Wagner you don't understand the hell you've unleashed. Scroll past if you don't want to know my very Objective™ opinion of the Spanish Habsburgs.

First off: Juana. Wagner there are no words to express to how sorry I feel for this woman. She most likely had schizophrenia btw. Ik monarchs shouldn't be worshipped because there's a 99% chance that they were severely morally-challenged people, but Juana has been done dirty. Her mother was a piece of shit (though a very interesting person in her own way), her father was a piece of shit, her husband was a piece of shit (he cheated on her multiple times and basically facilitated the ideal scenarios for the worsening of her already-frail mental state), everyone was a piece of shit to her.

AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HER SON. Ngl one of my biggest pet peeves is people calling him Charles V when they're talking about him in the context of Spain: he's not Charles V, that's his German title, his Spanish title is Carlos I. But anyways. I hate him just as much as I pity his mother. Wagner he (1) didn't know Spanish (2) didn't spend time in Spain (3) never focused on Spain. Might be controversial, but I think a King should focus on his kingdom.

Now, ✨Felipe II✨

(ik this called him Philip but Wagner he'd hate this anglosification-whatever-you-call-anglowashing of his name)

Felipe was Español™ which was a genuine upgrade from his father. I love him. Unashamedly, and not because he was Español™. This video just leaves out the best thing, hyperfixating on the Armada Invencible like my uncle. Felipe as a person was way more interesting. He's *funny*. He overworked himself because he insisted on knowing everything, and then complained that he had too much work to do! He was such a grammar nerd that he corrected spelling mistakes on the documents he was sent and then insisted they be rewritten! He didn't care about the economy (but still had to be informed of it so that he could say he'd 'read this document twice and how can I tell you I don't understand it') and busied himself deciding where to put the toilets in the palace! His annotations are the funniest thing ever!!!!!

We actually don't learn much about Felipe III. He's there ig. The only thing he did was delegate his role to his right-hand men because he did *not* want to overwork himself like his father lol.

Felipe IV is the Whore™ (I hope you remember him) and I can't believe this video didn't say that he was a sex addict with around 40 illegitimate children. And 'competent king' mis huevos. He was an Austria menor, which meant he didn't do anything. He was the king only in name since a guy called Gaspar de Guzmán Conde-Duque de Olivares (he was in the selectividad exam I think) was the actual ruler. Felipe was only whoring all around Spain. For all I know *I* and half of Spain could descend from him (the Carranzas certainly do lol).

Also I am at awe at this woman. I didn't know someone could pronounce Spanish this badly. No hate but 'hechizado' isn't a difficult word and she made it sound straight-up wrong.

Anyways, about Charles II (yk, second because Charles V was actually Charles I). His disabilities historically have been blown out of proportion to fit the French’s agenda (their king back then hated us). He had Klinefelter syndrome and many other stuff and was infertile, but he was far from the caricature this woman buys into, and Spain somewhat prospered under his reign. Honestly, this woman has made a few mistakes, particularly: Charles II didn’t make another Habsburg his successor, but Felipe/Philip of Anjou (French guy —I have mixed feelings about him because he was a dick but also very severely mentally ill and somewhat abused by his wife), who’d go on to become Felipe V after the War Of Succession, which started because the Habsburg guy felt like he had ownership over the Spanish throne even though Charles II never said that. My best bet is that the English have altered history lol, because they supported the Habsburg guy.

[skitskatdacat63]

Aforementioned Napoleonic AU! Martian !! I said it would just be a wip but then oops, I basically finished it! Ty to everyone who was interested :D

Really really proud of these I'm ngl! I rendered in a really different way than ever before and I'm very satisfied with it :D

Ramble about historical influences(basically me being a nerd about who I consider the F1 drivers of the Napoleonic era):

So I wanted to explain my thought process because I think that the specific context behind the uniforms I drew is very relevant, as I didn't just pick them on a whim.

I drew them in Hussars' uniforms(Austrian Empire = Red Bull, but like obviously not 100% accurate because the uniform colors are based off the RBR racesuits.) Hussars are, in my opinion, the F1 drivers of their time. Let me quote several things that led me to this conclusion:

"During the Napoleonic period, hussars, as in all armies, were employed as scouts, given raiding missions or despatched to harry and pursue a defeated enemy on the run. Mounted on light, nimble horses..."

"...Their flamboyant costume and their reputation for daredevil acts..."

"...developed a romanticized image of being dashing and adventurous.

Okay....so they're dashing and adventurous, riding specifically on fast, light horses, dressed in flamboyant outfits committing daredevil acts...sir that is literally an F1 driver!!! Tell me they aren't the historical predecessor to F1 drivers!!!

I have this big book of Napoleonic uniforms(yea I'm a nerd) and I was paging through it to see what uniforms I wanted to draw(I have a habit of drawing my one oc in the Napoleonic era. So when I started drawing fanart, I'm like of course I must draw them as this!) Austria's normal uniforms in this era are soooo boring compared to France's, so I was really 😒 about drawing them, but then I came across the Hussars, and then started noticing all these similarities and thought it was perfect. Also I need to mention the fact that Austria's royal cipher at the time was literally this:

IT'S "F1", IT IS LITERALLY FUCKING F1, WHAT THE HELLLLL!?!?!?!? I had like a partial mental crisis coming across this, at that point it was destiny for me to draw this

*I forgot to include actual ref images 😐, so here you go!!

*I wrote most of his around when I started this drawing, which was all the way back in April. And it's really interesting to consider now that I was basically immersed in the history of the Austrian Empire for a month. I apologize to everyone in my life who had to endure my lecture on why Hussars are the F1 drivers of their time. But god I could not hold it back when I saw some of these uniforms in person. And it was cool to pull out this drawing, even if it was just a wip, and be like "oh hey I've drawn these!!" Anyways, I digress.

Obviously the martian drawing is a direct reference to this pic from Malaysia 2010:

My thoughts on this picture:

I almost wanted to draw Seb in the Austrian Kaiser's outfit, but it is nowhere near as slay as the Hussar uniform, so Hussar uniform it is!

I have many thoughts and opinions on the lore of this au so pls ask if you're curious but it's also just a lot.

[textsfromthefifthbasement]

I finally finished MAZM: Phantom of the Opera! I’m leaving the review under the cut because it’s long and also spoilers for some elements of the game that aren’t in other Phantom adaptations.

General

First off, I loved the art style of the game. The character designs were quite adorable, and it definitely seemed like they made an effort to follow the original Leroux character designs. They had a blonde Christine and an olive-skinned, dark-haired Meg. I also thought they did a great job with Erik’s character design (though there was too much hair). The sets were beautiful. The majority of the main plot of the game does follow the Leroux book, which I really appreciated. There were some favorite moments in the book that I wish had been incorporated, such as Raoul waking up to find Erik watching him sleep (don’t judge I just find it freaking hilarious), but they incorporated so many other small scenes from the book, such as the managers trying to prevent Erik from taking his salary by using the safety pin. As a history nerd, I also really appreciated the collectible notes giving historical context to some of the discussions, including about three notes on the Paris Commune/Bloody Week. I wished the characters would have had different outfits rather than wear the same outfit the entire story. At the very least, I wished they had made a Red Death outfit for Erik during the masquerade.

I also want to point out and give a warning to anyone who has suicide ideation before they try this game. Pretty early on in the story, you play an episode in which you control Joseph Buquet after he’s dropped into Erik’s torture chamber, and eventually, you have to walk to the noose and pick it. The scene cuts right before he hangs himself. About partway through the story, when you control Christine, there’s a scene in which she has to talk Erik out of killing himself with a shard from a broken vase. At the end, when Christine and Raoul go down to Erik’s house to bury him, they found that he had committed suicide.

In all, I spent about 23 hours on the game from start to finish. I still need to go back and replay a few episodes to complete the achievements. I missed quite a few of the historical notes, and there are parts where you can make different decisions to influence what happens.

In this game, the studio added a lot of subplots that didn’t exist in the book and expanded on some canonical subplots as well. I did enjoy quite a few of these.

The Dancers

Meg, Jammes, and Sorelli are all major characters in the game, and I loved seeing them have more characterization and actual character arcs. Jammes, as a character, doesn’t change as much as the others, but she is only a child. As in the book, she is pretty frightened of ghost stories, strangers, and the Phantom, but in the game, she also loves and takes care of the stray cats living around the opera house and does turn into a bit of a spitfire when her friends are threatened by the various happenings at the opera. Sorelli has a knife and is not afraid to use it, and she comes to realize that her fear of being alone led her to stay with Philippe de Chagny in spite of the fact that he would never officially acknowledge her. Meg, in the beginning, seems afraid of her own shadow, but throughout the game, definitely comes into her own and also develops a much healthier relationship with her mother.

Union

This had to be hands-down my favorite subplot of the game. In the beginning, when Moncharmin and Richard first become the managers of the Palais Garnier, they mistreat Christine and mass fire anyone who mentions the Phantom of the Opera. When Christine goes missing for several weeks, Meg, Sorelli, and Jammes finally decide they have had enough and basically unionize the ballet dancers. There’s an entire protest, a performance in which the ballerinas refuse to perform, and they end up getting a promise from the managers to stop indiscriminately firing and mistreating people.

Christine’s Ending

GUYS. When I joked about Christine just traveling the world and performing instead I had no idea that was an actual choice you can make for her. It’s such a bittersweet ending, but I personally hope that one day she would have emotionally healed enough from her ordeal to come back to Paris and reunite with her old friends.

That being said, there were also a lot of additions/changes that I…really wasn’t a fan of.

Melek

So, for context. During Christine’s first stay at Erik’s house, she decides to do some exploring while he’s gone. While in his room, she hears a woman’s voice behind a wall and goes to investigate. She discovers a hidden door, and behind that hidden door is Melek. We find that Melek is a blind Turkish woman who had been one of Erik’s servants during his time in Constantinople. She had refused to marry him, and so he had kidnapped her and had kept her locked in that room for ten years.

Yes, I have a lot of problems with this.

I think the first thing is that when Melek was introduced is when I really realized that the game was never going to go in the direction of presenting Erik as a character who was sympathetic at times and not so much at others. The game had already painted him as a very unsympathetic character up until then through showing how he had gaslit Christine as the Angel of Music. Introducing Melek really drove that point home, which was kind of disappointing seeing as how the literal point of Leroux’s Le Fantome de l’Opera was that we should pity Erik for how he was treated because of his face.

Additionally, Melek’s character just…didn’t do anything. The more she was around, the more I wondered what the point of her character was. She does offer Christine support half of the time, and then the other half of the time is her being upset because Christine wants to change Erik rather than murder him. Ultimately, it’s my point of view that her character was not a great addition to the game and would have preferred a closer adherence to the book in that regard.

Hatim and PTSD

*sigh* This part seriously pissed me off. While Raoul and Hatim (the Daroga) are in the torture chamber, Hatim tells Raoul the story between him and Erik. We end up playing through a flashback of when Hatim discovers Erik living at the opera house ten years ago. As they discuss their past, we and Hatim quickly realize that Erik has PTSD, and mentioning the Shah of Persia is a serious trigger for him. Which, alright. That does make some sense story-wise.

And then through other flashbacks, Hatim proceeds to use this against Erik. Like he literally would trigger him purposefully as a punishment. And say that he was doing it for his own good.

Like, excuse me, but. What the fuck. What. The actual. Fuck. No. Don’t ever do that, that’s shitty.

Anyways by the end I was legitimately rooting for Erik to punt him.

Erik’s Ending

In the original Leroux novel, Erik presents Christine with a choice: turn the scorpion, and she will marry him, or turn the grasshopper, and the entire opera house will blow up. Christine chooses the scorpion, kisses him on the forehead, and he is so overwhelmed by the action that he saves Raoul’s life and lets them go together. The only promise he extracts from Christine is that she will come back and bury him when he dies, which he believes will be soon. Two weeks later, an ad runs in the newspaper that reads simply, “Erik is dead.”

Yeah. The game really went off the rails here in respect to following the Leroux book. After Christine turns the scorpion, Erik pulls Raoul into the lake and leaves him there, thinking he’ll drown or freeze to death, and then returns to force the marriage. He does eventually let Christine and Melek go, as Christine tells him that she will never love him and that she believes he is a monster, all while he is on his knees begging her just to love him a little. There is no forehead kiss. To the end, Erik writes and tells Hatim that Christine is the devil, and that she abandoned him in hell and wants her to suffer for the rest of her life knowing what she did to him. Yeah, I wish I was making that up.

There is one point where Christine tells Erik it’s not her job to save him. Which I agree with. I feel like whoever wrote the story had a misunderstanding of the ending of the book, or else thought the idea wasn’t explicitly stated enough. The forehead kiss does, in some respect, save Erik. It makes him realize how badly he’s treated everyone and yet Christine is still willing to extend kindness towards him. But it’s not Christine saving him, it’s him coming to that realization on his own. Ultimately, the game traded that idea for a way more heavy-handed “I am not here to save you, I am going to make my own decisions from here on.”

And then, in the face of all that, we’re also missing Erik changing and redeeming himself despite the fact that he’s close to death. Instead, he dies while leaving basically a suicide note to Hatim saying that Christine is the devil and he made her promise to return to bury him to hurt her. Which is so out of character if we look at the book characterization.

Like I knew I was signing up to get my heart ripped out, I just figured it was going to maybe be the brand of Christine having to choose whether or not to stay while Erik dies. And damnit, I just wanted a single forehead kiss.

Anyways, I really enjoyed the game up until the ending. I just seriously disliked the ending for the most part. If you’re more of a fan of the idea of Christine being on her own and finding her own path, that is an enjoyable option to go with. I still need to play through that episode with the marry Raoul choice and see what happens with that option though.

[wolfstar-in-color]

June Colorful column: Queering the lines, spaces and the fucking moon – A very one-sided comment on ‘Bound princes and monogamy warnings: Harry Potter, slash, and queer performance in LiveJournal communities’

Welcome everyone to the first installment of the Colourful Column! This is a monthly space where we, your Mods, try to discuss specific topics that are relevant to the Wolfstar Fandom. With a little bit of research, a pinch of personal opinion, and a dash of expert perspectives, we hope this space opens conversations, brings nuance to your perspectives, and helps as a resource for your content creation!

Today in our colorful column I’m not gonna talk about racism or representation as you probably expect (well… not directly. LOL I know, what’s even this blog theme then?) but you get to experience me, Mx. Moth, nerding about fandom, queerness and research.

Yup. As terrible as it sounds.

I’m kidding, I hope it’s not too terrible, and at least one of you finds it in their hearts to indulge me, read this, and nerd with me about, chan chan chaaaan (dramatic music in Spanish)... fandom.

So, this column is going to be different to next columns – this one is about* this article (*’about’ as in, I’m bastardizing it and taking my favorite parts from it and leaving out big chunks, like a good ol’ fanfic writer), written by Darlene Hampton, that studied how in the context of LiveJournal’s HP Slash communities, practices emerged that defied gender and sexuality norms, creating spaces to perform the female desire, questioning heteronormativity and the patriarchal culture.

This is not an idea that sounds too weird for any of us that have inhabited fannish spaces for a considerable time, isn’t it? Fandom feels extremely queer, at least for me. And when we look for the history of fandoms (you can start by browsing fanlore), fanfiction spaces have been historically described as female/non-male and queer-ish dominated (and if the AO3 census of 2013 with over 10,000 responses is anything to go by, this idea is true - 71% of respondents were not heterosexual and 94% non-male. You can check this post for a summary of the census and other stats, and the master post on AO3 with the analysis, including specific trends on M/M fans).

At the same time, there are these extended ideas that fandom spaces are mostly focused on Slash, which is actually up to debate (data here) but also this idea that it’s mostly straight women (anyone has these vague ideas about ‘horny housewives’, ‘crazy fangirls’ and ‘fujoshi’ used derogatorily? that’s what I mean), which, as proven by the previous data, is actually not true – fandoms, particularly Slash-centred fandoms, seem to be extremely queer spaces; spaces where people are exploring their identities, roles, and all in all, their desires. I’m a big data nerd, but debunking these myths is not to make the spaces ‘legitimate’ (because they still would be), but to actually understand why we vibe with fandoms, and particularly, what’s the role of Slash fandoms.

Like Wolfstar.

(My personal hypothesis, based in reading countless of opinions so ofc it’s not mine, is that Slash fandoms are a playground where people can project a less-patriarchal ideal, where social hierarchy doesn’t seem as strict since we start with two men, who are theoretically less constricted by this structure. People can explore then those constructs and hegemonic discourses without feeling the weight of misogyny. Of course, we know that in real life patriarchy permeates all our relationships, including M/M relationships, but I digress. A different, but very interesting hypothesis can be found here)

Anyways, we have established here, like the article did, that fandoms are predominantly female/non-male queer spaces. Now, the article “Bound princes and monogamy warnings” shows us the analysis from a Case Study for the community around a Drarry fanfic in LiveJournal. If you don’t know what that is, LiveJournal was a platform for personal blogs, very big in the early 2000s – in a way, similar to Tumblr, but constructed more around the personal site idea than as a social network (there are still fics there that you can go check right now so you can get an idea. See this post for example for R/S content). LJ was basically replaced by Tumblr after a massive purge of explicit content, and some issues about the archiving system, but it used to be one of the big places for fandom.

Case studies, to understand what the paper shows, are qualitative-led or mix-methods research that do not seek to generalize or properly prove something, but they are done to understand the qualities of a phenomenon in depth, in a particular context. Based on that analysis, Case studies can propose lines of research and/or build theory (as in, propose models for how complex systems work). In “Bound princes and monogamy warnings” the author, who I’m gonna call Darlene from now on since we are amongst friends, wanted to study how repeated scenarios (as in, tropes as scenarios in which we put the characters, but also the ~fandom~ in a general way as an scenario, understood as a place where fans engage in a ‘performance’ of their online/fannish personas), communitarian practices held in the collective space of fandom (like comments, public profiles, etc), and personal narratives (again, through comments, profiles, author notes, etc) articulated around the particular fic to show performances around queerness. Performance not as ‘something fake’, but as something that’s being tried (‘test trailed’ if you want), something fluid and ever-changing, defined in the same process that’s being acted.

One important idea is the one about scenarios, then. In fanworks, the scenarios are created mixing repetition (of tropes, but also the use of the characters that we already know and parts of the story that are also assumed to be known) and change, based on the personal experiences and desires of every creator. We make the characters ‘perform’ in a scenario we all know, but that somehow always ends up changing. This gets interwoven in the notion of tropes - in Slash fandoms we find some specific tropes that repeat themselves through different Slash fandoms in history (hurt/comfort for example). This tension between change and repetition in itself can be understood as ‘queering’ the original text. Slash fanfiction pushes the scripts, based in cultural dominating codes, that the original author gave us to interpret canon, to build ON them by repetition of scenes (for example, in the Wolfstar corner picking over and over again Lie low at Lupin’s), but never making them the same - playing in this sense with the script, making it lose consistency. We are making the roles, genders, any black and white possibility, deviate from the lines the author intended for us to use to read the books (*cough lines marked by cisheteronormativity and misogyny cough*). Gender roles and the gay/straight binary start to loosen up after the 10,000 hurt/comfort fic (because a MAN? taking care of another person? How scandalous!). We romanticize your friendship (or maybe friendship-cize romance?) to make a brotherly embrace a lovers’ re-encounter. This encounter moves in the margins to not be a hundred percent gay (okay yes it is pretty gay) nor completely straight, because of this tension between canon and fanon, between repetition of tropes and changes that put the characters in a same trope but in one position in this fic, in a slightly different one in other, and then another and another, until it’s symbolically this in-between.

In making Slash fanfiction, reading it, interacting with the fandom, we make oblique the lines of what’s a legitimate interpretation of the canon, the characters and tropes. It’s still oriented by new angles: there are new rules on play here - the rules of Slash tropes. But it switches from the source material, and deviates from its own rules over and over again.

And since I’m talking about turning a friend’s re-encounter into a strangled lover’s caress, I can bring how Slash fandoms not only queerify by making the characters, well, gay. Darlene uses queer theory to show how queerness in this context is the crooking, the distortion that goes beyond the mere sexual orientation. We disrupt the lines of genre; we are disrupting the intentions. Instead of writing YA, the case study is rated for adults. Instead of the single, authorial voice that claims the universe, we have multiple voices, we have collabs, we have remixes. Instead of fantasy, we write romance, drama, angst, smut. In Drarry, they are not only Straight™ in canon, but also enemies, and Drarry writes them as *le gasp* lovers. The Wolfstar fandom doesn’t do this same move, but instead of “childhood bros” we write them as former lovers or pining idiots. The argument remains then, as the lines are disrupted, re-interpreted, and lanes are switched.

The product of distorting these lines, of queering the text, is not perfect, of course. In our fancontent, culturally dominant values and subjective desires and experiences find themselves in conflict, and build their ugly babies in the process. The product, our dear Darlene tell us, is a negotiation of dissonances between these two levels – personal desire and culturally dominant values. As a performance, as a play with 20,000 iterations, each of them slightly different (because here is a mid-1800’s performance, and here race-blind 2020’s one; here’s one done in Brooklyn, another done in Cali, Colombia; one performed in the community theater and one in the Sydney opera house, to use the metaphor), the fan content will be something in the grey area of the rules of fandom and canon, between dominant, repressive-aligned discourses and other ideological subjectivation processes – subjectivation, as an ever open process of constructing ourselves as people, in relation with others, in relation with the ideas that are dominant in our time and the inevitable resistances that emerge with them.

So yes, Slash fanfiction can be “regressive and traditional” – but it’s usually built in an in-between that makes it complex and oh so interesting to live in. Authors and readers move in these margins too, writing one thing and then reading something that seems like the opposite as what they write, and going bonkers for it.

So okay, if you reached this part of the text, wow, I’m glad I was able to keep you tuned in. Still, you might be thinking, “cool, Moth, but what do I do with all of this academic titbit?” Well, dear reader, my purpose with bringing this paper to discussion is to open the question about transformative works and queering the texts. You see, we are used to seeing, every time we access AO3, those references to transformative works and whatnot. So, what I want you to question yourself is - what does it mean for fanfiction and fanworks to be transformative for you, after reading this? How do we make sense of the reiterative, tropey, dominated by stereotypes nature of fanworks, with the individual desires, individual development, personal exploration nature of them? This ‘individual’ card isn’t necessarily the panacea and ‘unquestionable’ thing we want to think, since as it was pointed, also plays with a tension between dominant discourses and political subjectivation, of ‘self-queerification’, we might say, in a process of questioning the self, but also internalizing misogyny, white supremacy, classism…

So I want to ask you, reader, what do we do with these ideas, when topics like racism and discrimination open their jaws to show us how pervasive white supremacy and other structures of domination are, how imbricated in our ‘intimate, lonely’ mind spaces they are? How do we queerify our own minds, when we have so many blind spots?

My response, although not complete, and not the only one that is possible, would go in line with the question about collectiveness and community. We can’t close our eyes and claim the transformative nature of fandom just on an individual level. We need to queerify other things in fandom too – in the sense offered here. Not only ‘make it gay’, but deviate meanings from the mainstream interpretations, analyze how we intercalate our desires with fantasy and repetition. We need to open fandom and fanworks to solidarity, we need to break the lines handed to us when it comes to thinking a reading of a text as something individual, because it’s not. Fandom has already been doing that for a long time in processes of intertextuality, of commenting and building on top of the previous tropes. We just need to keep interrogating our spaces and queering everything in our reach. Creating new spaces so people with different voices open new reads, new paths away from the reading the author offered, even from the paths fandom has been constructing.

I might be an optimistic, but I think we can do it. At least, I don’t see that many outraged cries about making a white character a person of color. But that might be me, just keeping myself safe from assholes *shrugs*.

So yeah, that’s what I have to offer for today, and I hope this gave you some pause and opportunity to reflect. Now, go and queerify your lives, colorful readers! I’ll be here waiting to read how you see your own writing, or other’s writing, changing these offered lines of production and commodity, and how you answer the questions about how these ideas might help us build a different community with time (or like, how they don’t).

Colorfully,

Moth~

[olderthannetfic]

hi hi history-non again, sorry I know it's a very

ahem wide and girthy ahem

ask, and i'm sorry for not narrowing it down farther my brain is smooth as butter and the dart board, so to speak, is. big. i feel like im throwing my dart in the ocean of 'what i don't know' and trying to spear a fish who might speak to me like the queer elder i never ha d ;lkasjd;flkas damn you small conservative town ANYWAYS

i guess okay maybe do you have any favourite figureheads? whats your fave pieces of lgbtqa+ media (like books or shows?)

thanks again and sorry for.

uh.

big.

--

Lolololol. Yes.... it’s so... big...

In the 90s, the writers of nonfiction who I found really inspirational were Susie Bright and Kate Bornstein. My Gender Workbook was a classic. I gather there’s a new edition.

I was a massive, massive nerd, so my actual favorite queer book as a 14-year-old is one that will be a bit... uh... much if you’re not feeling very intellectual. It’s Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History. This thing is a massive doorstop of a book that collects academic journal articles on third gender roles from various cultures. I was obsessed with this thing. Again, it’s academic journal articles, not popular nonfiction, so expect that level of impenetrable prose.

I was also a giant weeb, so I read a bunch of books on the history of gay sex in Japan. It’s pretty interesting how much people assume the “m/m sex = sin” shit was worldwide and how much it just was not.

In terms of fiction, I’ve always struggled to find f/f media I relate to. I really like the tv adaptations of Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet. Lots of fucked up problematicness and gorgeous visuals. Gotta love the lady with the strap-on and the gold body paint!

For other queer media, I was a big fan of Velvet Goldmine and of Pedro Almodóvar’s older films, which are full of every problematic kink you can think of. They also have a lot of het I like, like the lady being coerced into sex (that she enjoys) by the drag queen who impersonates her famous mother she has a lot of mommy issues about... except said drag queen is really an undercover police officer. Just... whut. (All the “straight” stuff in Almodóvar’s films is also bugfuck nuts and often kind of queer.)

I really, really, really loved Crash. Not the shitty one that won an oscar: the car crash perverts one full of weird UST. There’s a ton of straight sex in this too, along with every gender combo and a laundry list of upsetting kinks. It’s just every kind of weird perv thing. (”Weird art film full of sex and problematicness” is pretty much the defining feature of movies I liked as a teen. I loved Kissed, that het necrophilia movie too.)

Stage Beauty is probably my favorite film for bi vibes. It’s this meditation on identity as the English stage was changing over from having men play women to having actual actresses. It ends in f/m, but it’s definitely a very queer film.

If you want slice of life stuff, I guess you could try Dykes to Watch Out For (the comic that’s the source of the bechdel test) or the Tales of the City novel series. These will both give you a sense of what was going on in certain queer communities in the late 20thC. If you want something relatively fluffy, Maurice is a historical costume drama with a happy ending. I found it awfully slow as a college student, but it does have naked Rupert Graves (Lestrade from Sherlock), so...

----

See, this is hard to answer because I came of age and did all of my reading of that kind a long time ago. I pretty quickly moved on to fangirl media, which I have always liked a lot better than other arguably queer stuff. Back in the 90s, that meant Japanese stuff and fic. Later, I had access to more flavors of by-fujoshi-for-fujoshi media.

So my actual favorite m/m books are a bunch of “m/m romance” (i.e. American BL being sold as ebooks on amazon). If you want live action TV and fandomy vibes, you’re better off with Trapped (hot cop/mobster action!) or one of those Thai series about schoolboys or something than stuff made by cis gay men in the US.

I also came of age in an era when “queer” media was very Cis Gay Men And Sometimes Cis Lesbians with an occasional nod to bi people existing... maybe. Kate Bornstein and a few others were raising the profile of MtF transsexuals (the term in use at the time) who wanted surgery or even, gasp, maybe didn’t want bottom surgery in some cases. Anything about FtMs or nb/agender/etc. identities was practically invisible. I saw the term ‘genderqueer’ around a bit, but it was mostly in contexts that were very tryhard and unappealing to me.

(You haven’t given any details, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you’re like much of tumblr and the flavors of queerness you relate to aren’t so much the Cis Gay Men Only culture that makes up quite a bit of queer history and older queer media.)

I can tell you what I liked as a teen, but not everybody is into fucked up art films that may not have happy endings. I can try to rec things about queer culture in the 90s, but I probably don’t have great recs for way earlier or later than that... unless it’s so much earlier that I’ve researched it while writing fic of some historical canon or other. A lot of how I learned about queer culture myself was from magazines or from reading soc.bi on usenet or just from living through the 90s--not typically from books that are easy to unearth and just hand to someone now.

I tend to just not like anything in the contemporary romance or slice of life genres, regardless of gender and orientation, so while I’ve watched/read a bit more queer stuff like this, especially in the past when I had less access to queer media, it’s not a space I’m great at reccing in. And that’s unfortunate because a lot of that type of art gives you a better sense of what other queer people were like in other eras and/or it’s a safer rec than some bananas crazy BDSM film.

I was, and am, very kinky (though pretty lazy in terms of actual practice), so a lot of my reading and media interest was bound up in that also. Obviously, I was quite interested in the drawings of Tom of Finland or the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, but are you going to be into photos of some guy shoving a whip handle in his ass? I love the movie Cruising... it’s about serial killers and leather and homophobia and is every bit as potentially traumatizing as that sounds.

I feel you on the problem of finding queer elders. There isn’t really an obvious way to go about this.

[bard-llama]

Arthurian Legends in the Witcher ‘verse

Those who know me know that my first and truest love is to Arthurian Legends and everything else comes second. Like... it’s the special interest that stays while hyperfixations come and go (tho uh, been with the witcher for a WHILE now, though have changed fandoms within that). I did a study abroad in England while in college just to study Arthurian Legends. Spent my 19th bday at King Arthur’s birth place in Tintagel. Everything I know about medieval(ish) warfare and city planning and history and shit is ‘cause of King Arthur. Hell, my entire concept of leadership is informed by my version of Arthur. So yeah, I’m big into King Arthur.

Which OBVIOUSLY means I need to bring Arthur into the witcher. And because I’m a nerd, it’s gonna be very informed by reality to give it a little depth. Soooo:

Arthur of Undvik (aka Skellige is Wales now)

Okay, some folks may not know this, but the original (insofar as we can say) Arthuriain Legends come from Wales, not England. In fact, the invaders Arthur was fighting off were the Anglo-Saxons. This is really important context because the ‘original’ Arthur wasn’t a king - he was (we think) a war chieftan. It was only later when England (and later France) adopted the legends that things became more... imperialistic? Sort of? There was always an element of war, but originally, it was in the context of uniting the Bretons in order to fight off the Saxons. But when Christianity was brought in later, a lot of stuff was added and changed to align with that. Arthur became a wealthy (blonde, white) king with knights in shining armor to command. Those knights had Christian chivalric values and were noble and brave and went out searching for the holy grail and killed non-Christians, ‘cause that was the “right” thing to do. I mentioned imperialism because this is where it starts to come in - instead of uniting to fight invaders, the knights fight in holy wars (there was an obsession with placing Arthur directly in history when he’s probably actually an amalgamation of many people and originates waaaaaaayyyy before England or Christianity), and they spread their values wherever they go, because Camelot is PerfectTM and Moral (nevermind that the stories are mostly about the hollowness of some of those morals). tl;dr - the parts of the Arthurian Legends you’re probably most familiar with were additions made MUCH later by peoples who had technically stolen the legends from Wales. Those peoples were primary England and France. (Like Lancelot du Lac? Yeah, as you might be able to guess, French invention, because the tales needed more romance)

Okay, so how does this relate to the Witcher? In the Witcher world, I say that Arthur is the jarl of Undvik and is legendary in Skellige because he united the Isles to fight against invaders from the continent. To your average Skelliger, Arthur is Theirs and also he’s a warrior, not a poncy ass king.

But the legends weren’t confined to Skellige and as they spread across the continent, changes were made. Most especially, the Toussaintois people fell in love with Arthur and claimed him as their own - and gave him all those trappings of “civility” like a crown and a dazzling breastplate and knights in shining armor who live up to all the ideals of a romantic hero. 

The Knights of the Round Table

The Knights of legend actually are quite similar to the Toussaintois knights (which is not incidental). So it would absolutely make sense for Toussaintois bards and poets and storytellers to invent their own versions (think fanfiction, but on a socially acceptable scale; King Arthur IS public domain, for the record) and those would spread based on which the audience likes best. Take a couple generations and it’s easy to claim that it’s “the true story” of Arthur, not that Skelliger wild man. Plus, their version has all these awesome quests with noble knights!

What I’m saying is: there is AT LEAST one Skelliger who is ready to fight that Toussaintois twig over who owns the Arthur legend.

Anyway, this all came up because I was looking for a theme to name all of the Strays of Spalla’s dogs (of course the Duke of Dogs travels with a kennel!) and @useless-empty-brain suggested Arthurian knights. So obviously I had to make the legends canonically exist in the Witcher!

This also seems a good time to remind people that bards weren’t just musicians! They were oral storytellers and documenters of history. So these tales would probably be published, because the Witcher world seems to have a printing press (& I made Gaunter its owner) and mass produced books. But the main way people would hear about the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table would be through story and song. Each region probably has its own versions where they’ve substituted themselves in for the Skelligers or the Toussaintois, because what kid wouldn’t want to play King Arthur and pull the sword from the stone?

Holy shit, I’ve just realized that while I can play with historical versions of the legends, I can make my version the canonical Witcher one!!!! Heads up, yo, Arthur is not Christian, not straight, and actually thinks that commoners are people! (but no for real, I’m working on an original Arthurian legend novel and Arthur is trans and pan and a socialist)

Hmm, what would the impact of the continent’s own history have on the legends? Are some of the knights nonhumans? Or are most stories pretty notably anti-nonhuman? I shall have to think on this...

[tanis-drawings-2point0]

Fun fact! ages ago I had the headcanon that tim was a bit of an arquitecture nerd bc I myself am, until I was gently reminded that he only cared abt smirke’s architecture bc of what happened to danny. 

But lately I began rethinking that idea and thought “ok BUT what if someone gave him a book on the matter for like his bday or smth and you know when ppl give you books and its like ugh but you give them a chance bc it was a present from someone you like? Yeah” and someone->jon

Anyway I just think architecture is neat!! How cultural and historical context connects to it! its interesting stuff!!! And tim studied anthropology so he might find it interesting too im just saying

Bonus the front and back covers under the cut! they’re awful looking bc the thought of jon giving tim the worst looking brick of a book as an honest genuine present is hilarious to me

[ninja-muse]

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians - H.G. Parry

Full disclosure: This was a reading copy I received through work with the expectation that I would like it enough to stock it and recommend it to customers. This has absolutely happened.

In brief: The turn of the 1800s was a time of great social change: empires rising, monarchies falling, enslaved people rising up, advocates for social justice. Now imagine magic’s in the mix, but only legal if you’re an aristocrat. First of two.

Thoughts: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this was 100% a “me” book. It’s historical fantasy that sticks very close to reality, and which raises questions of ethics and morality and long-term outcomes. It has smart, optimistic characters who form strong platonic bonds with each other and spend their downtime being nerds. It’s a story about hope and empowerment and good intentions, and the magic is both glorious and unnerving. Everything’s just so and good becomes bad becomes good on a hair.

I was blown away by the historical underpinnings of this book. I only know the bare bones of the events of this era, and a handful of the names, but it’s clear that Parry’s sticking to actual timelines, actual personalities, and at least the major events like the storming of the Bastille and the Haitian Rebellion. To be able to stay that close to reality while crafting a multiple close-POV novel and rewriting history to have a key point of rebellion be legalizing lower-class magic is impressive, to say the least. And then to dramatise the events so you’re swept up in the emotions of them….

My next favourite thing was how cozy so much of this book felt. As I said, there are strong friendships between both Pitt and Wilberforce, and Robespierre and Desmoulins, and a lot of the plot is not action, not adventure, but people in sitting rooms planning for a better future while making in-jokes, or standing up in Parliament trying to push forward incremental changes. It’s gentle and drifts in unexpected directions, but there’s a lovely dark undercurrent of knowing that everyone’s going to either see their hopes dashed or succeed in the worst possible way. (That’s not really a spoiler. After all, the Reign of Terror happened.)

And that’s the third thing I liked, the way Parry steadily builds up the tension and can turn from hope, beauty, and emotional highs to despair, horror, and mental screaming in the space of a paragraph. Often for the same event from different points of view, or a fact or character being shown in new context. This is an emotional roller coaster on par with the Daevabad trilogy and I’m okay with that.

Do I have a least favourite thing? Besides how this story isn’t over and I don’t know when the next book is coming? I’m not sure. Maybe the gentle parts went on too long in a couple places. Maybe some of the scenes didn’t flow as well into each others as they might have. Small things, anyway. Things that haven’t stuck two months later.

So yeah, I really liked this book! It does everything I want in a novel—great character, world, plot, twists, writing—and it entertains while doing so. Oh, and I found myself googling the historical figures afterwards to learn more, which is not something that happens often. I’m not sure it’s going to stand the test of time, not like some fantasies I’ve read, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s excellent and more people need to read it.

To bear in mind: A good chunk of the book is devoted to the French Reign of Terror, which means a lot of people are brutally executed by a totalitarian state on the page. Another POV involves an enslaved woman on a plantation, which isn’t as graphically depicted but is still awful.

8.5/10