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kirain · 4 months

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what do you think of this post about Gale? I saw it today and idk how to feel about it. h t t p s : // www. tumblr. com / galahadwilder / 741497332636467200

I couldn't disagree with it more, to be honest.

First of all, and I can't stress this enough, Mystra doesn't care about her followers. She cares about the state of the Weave and nothing more. If her followers don't worship her, if they're not useful to her, if they don't serve her purpose, they mean nothing to her. After she abandoned Gale, she had no interest in him until she realised she could use him to stop the Absolute—and she only wanted to stop the Absolute because it threatened the Weave. In general, Mystra doesn't care what people use magic for either, be it the most admirable heroics or the most depraved insanity you can imagine.

Case and point: Lorroakan. He is an arrogant wizard, far worse than Gale could ever hope to be, who uses magic for pure evil. When he beat Rolan, he undoubtedly used magic to do it. Do you think Mystra cared? Nope. You can help that nutjob achieve his goals, kill a demigod, turn him immortal, and give him free reign to abuse magic any way he wishes, but do you think Mystra cares? Nope. She doesn't. She doesn't care about people unless they benefit her. In fact, all three iterations of Mystra have a vast history of grooming, flat out 🍇, and the forced impregnation of unsuspecting mortal women. Despite being neutral good, Mystra is and has always been extremely vain, selfish, jealous, and problematic.

With that in mind, I'd like to break this post down piece by piece. Also, please be aware that when I use the word "you", I don't mean you specifically, anon. I'm more so addressing anyone who might be reading.

PS: Please no one harass this person's post. Their opinion is their own, and it's very respectful. At the end of the day, we're just talking about a video game.

Mystra didn't tell Gale not to juggle the torches. She didn't even tell him it was a torch. She let him go on believing it was a part of her missing Weave. Had she told him the truth, he would've stayed away. That's why he's so shocked in Act 3, when she finally reveals it's the Karsite Weave. He had no idea, and she likely never intended to tell him. She didn't before he went off in search of it, and she didn't the entire time he was locked away in his tower, scared and suffering. I can't for the life of me figure out why she wouldn't warn him, but I can only assume it's because she expected absolute obedience, or because she was getting bored of him and wanted him to mess up.

Whatever her reasons, she didn't tell Gale to leave the orb alone because he was "worthy" already. He clearly wasn't in her eyes, because he wanted her to see him as an equal. He wanted her to share her knowledge with him, which is perfectly fair in a healthy relationship. If you're dating a god and they treat you like a worshipper—that's all you are to them. A worshipper. A plaything. You're beneath them. You're unworthy. She told Gale to leave the orb alone because she wanted him to be complacent. She wanted to keep him in servitude. That's what she wants from all of her followers, though it's even worse when it's her lover.

In almost every story where a mortal loves a god, the mortal is either ascended into the heavens or the god gives up their divinity. And this isn't even specific to gods, but also vampires, werewolves, elves, and so on. Arwen, for example, gives up her immortality to be with Aragorn. Bella becomes a vampire to be with Edward. Hercules gives up his divinity to be with Meg. Elisa Esposito becomes aquatic to be with the creature. These are common tropes because it makes the couples equal.

Mystra contradicts herself by saying Gale was "always worthy", because her actions don't reflect it. He was a worthy distraction from her job, sure, but not worthy enough for her to treat him like an equal. So in order to prove it to her, to prove his love and devotion, he went after the one thing he knew she wanted—her missing Weave. Yes, she told him not to, and I agree he should've respected that, but this is on par with a woman telling her husband not to buy a bracelet she really, really wants because it's too expensive. If your husband worked extra hours and saved up enough to buy you that bracelet, would you divorce him?

Gale was completely unaware of the danger. He basically thought he was getting Mystra a bracelet. Had she taken the time to explain it to him, the whole catastrophe could have been avoided. He was just a hopeless romantic who wanted to surprise his girlfriend and prove he belonged at her side. The same girlfriend who very well could have made him her equal and shared her knowledge, but chose not to. Why? Because she's selfish. She didn't want an equal, she wanted a servant. We know this because, if you romance and ascend Gale, he will ascend you alongside him and give you your own domain! Mystra had the power to do this, or at least the ability to slowly ease him into it, but she refused. No matter how much he pleaded and proved his devotion to her, she refused.

Mystra did not save Gale when the orb embedded itself in his chest. He survived only because it fed on his gifts. He says as much, and so does she when you go to see her at the Temple. That's why, when we first meet him, he admits he used to be better at magic. He was once exceedingly powerful, but the orb basically knocked him down to level one. Mystra was perfectly happy to let him scramble to find items to absorb, knowing that he would inevitably run out and erupt. When we give him his third item in Act 1, the orb is becoming quenchless, and he knows his time is nigh. Mystra has nothing to do with satiating the orb until Act 2 and 3, and only because he becomes her wild card.

Gale: Mystra will consider forgiveness?

Elminster: She will consider ... what she considers to be forgiveness.

Even Elminster, her most faithful Chosen, knows her "forgiveness" isn't really forgiveness. It's an ultimatum. Do this for me and be welcomed into my hall, or die and literally go to hell. Why would Mystra make this offer? Well, because why else would Gale agree to kill himself only to end up in the Wall of the Faithless? How would that motivate him? Mystra didn't make this offer out of the kindness of her heart, she made it because she was desperate. Had the opportunity never presented itself, she would've let him die and suffer for all eternity, and possibly take hundreds of innocent people with him in the blast. She. Doesn't. Care. 🤷‍♀️

Now, one could argue Gale was asking for too much, but I'm going to have to call bullshit on that. First of all, Mystra showed him things no mortal has ever seen. It's only fair he'd want to share her world and learn as much as possible. Imagine if the Doctor from Doctor Who picked up some random people and took them on breathtaking adventures, but the audience got mad at them for wanting to see as much as they could. Amy, Clara, Rose, etc.—none of them could live a normal life after meeting him, and they wanted to learn as much about the universe as possible. But everyone loves those characters. They don't get mad. There's even several episodes where the companions call the Doctor out for not treating them as equals, and he admits he's wrong for doing that and adjusts his way of thinking.

I would argue that the only real divide between Mystra and Shar/Vlaakith is that Mystra doesn't inflict physical pain ... most of the time. That's it. Vlaakith and Shar only care about themselves and the effectiveness of their followers, but the exact same applies to Mystra. She is the Weave, and she only cares about the Weave; therefore, she only cares about herself. She had ample opportunity to help Gale or tell him the truth, but she didn't until it was convenient for her. The gods of D&D are basically the Greek Pantheon gods—a bunch of assholes toying with mortals, regardless of their alignment. The odd one is decent, but most are only out for themselves and their rule. Now, I will concur that Mystra is hardly the worst deity (in fact, she's unfortunately one of the better ones), but she's still not great and Gale is her victim.

To get a little controversial, I think the writers made a mistake. I know what they were going for, but I think they lost it along the way. At first, I was ready to stand with everyone and admit he belonged in the quintessential "overreaching wizard full of hubris" category, but upon researching the lore, getting to know Gale better, and doing several different playthroughs, I've come to vehemently disagree. First of all, before 5E (the current D&D edition), becoming a god was the ultimate goal for a lot of players, and that was perfectly acceptable, with many DMs providing celestial paths to make it possible. Moreover, many of the current gods were once human themselves, including Mystra!

Second, it's only hubris if you fail. Gale can ascend. He can succeed. Although it's not the canon outcome I would choose for him, he is right about the crown. He does his research and figures out how to reforge it. And he doesn't seek godhood to be worshipped, he seeks it to either free himself (and all mortals) from Mystra's chains, or for her to acknowledge and love him as an equal. His arrogance stems from insecurity; an insecurity Mystra herself planted and cultivated, and in the end he's not really arrogant atfter all. Does him wanting to be Mystra's equal make him selfish? Well, I suppose that depends on how you answer these questions:

Is your partner equal to you? If you don't think so, why are you leading them on? Why wouldn't you take steps to help them become your equal? Why are you holding them back instead of propping them up? If they show interest in your life, in your world, in the things you can do, why would you keep it to yourself, especially when you have the time and resources to share it?

Just some ambrosia for thought. 😉

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #bg3 tav #mystra #all my homies hate mystra

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wc-confessions · 4 months

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re: WC misogyny

This is solely to get my thoughts out abt this bc I’m probably not gonna be able to articulate this to the best of my ability but I feel like it’s incredibly important to say that these books are pretty damn misogynistic and so was the fanbase for the longest time.

Not saying that to be "throwing the word around without knowing what the word means", because misogyny is defined as a dislike/contempt against women. This can also absolutely be an unconscious bias (which is primarily what I see anyway!) I've seen far more people dismiss these characters while holding up male ones that do similar/worse things (i.e. Thistleclaw primarily but a lot of the MV characters to an extent)

The reason why discussion about sexism usually ends up against cats like Mapleshade, Squirrelflight, Frecklewish, and Nightcloud is primarily due to how the universe of the books is written to chastise these characters while their male counterparts go thru barely half of the shit thrown onto the girls.

Mapleshade gets her kids and herself exiled for breaking the code while Appledusk literally gets a slap on the wrist for breaking the same code she did? The Riverclan leader just tells him "well, you'll not do it again so you don't need to be punished" while Mapleshade doesn't even get to bury her kits. Even if she's the Warrior Cats evil woman that's still really fucked up!? And this goes to Frecklewish as well, who does not watch them drown oh my god. The flood that kills Maple's kits is incredibly loud--saying Freckle would have been able to do anything else OTHER than watch dismisses the fact going to the flooded stones was an idea doomed to fail (of which Mapleshade has a lot of in MV specifically.)

Frecklewish absolutely ended up in the Dark Forest over Oakstar or Ravenwing (who both condemned the kittens to their fate instead of?? idk punishing Maple and not the kits who didn't even know they were half clan?) because of the way the fandom perceived her at the time. Freckle's a lot like Squirrelflight where fandom opinion only recently shifted to people defending those characters--she's pretty awful for calling the same kits she doted on half-clan creatures! But I don't think she deserved to go to cat hell forever when the cat who actually caused those kittens to end up dead (and every other cat in MV!) ends up in Starclan without even so much of a trial.

Speaking of trials--Squirrelflight and Leafpool literally end up almost being sent to CAT HELL for following Starclan's orders. Leafpool ends up having forbidden kits but Starclan goes "it's okay!" until it isn't. Brambleclaw almost being involved in Firestar's fox trap murder never gets mentioned or brought up while both of the girls are questioned about if they even belong in Starclan because they "broke the code and lied"?? There's a pretty damn big bias towards the toms for doing bad/worse actions but Bramble never went to Starclan and had his ticket for heaven almost revoked. Oakstar didn't get put in the Dark Forest because he exiled 3 innocent kits.

I think it's important to note the fandom has a lot of say over how characters like these get interpreted (which is why Nightcloud ended up being hated a lot despite the fact Crowfeather is just. actually abusive to Breezepelt.) That's why I brought up unconscious biases, because I think generally a lot of WC content creators tend to stick to presenting the stories in a more radical/black and white way.

I think the discussion really should be that the books and the stories ARE pretty misogynistic but unconsciously so? A lot of the story beats I mentioned weren't written by just one person, and the Erins have different opinions on these cats than the fans do. That's not me stating an opinion, that's just me saying recognizing that it's very male-oriented IS an issue these books have.

Anyways this got way too wordy, Ashfur is one of my favorite villains so I don't even know why I typed all of this up /j.

#confession #long post #mapleshade #frecklewish #squirrelflight #leafpool

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xbomboi · 2 months

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misc. bribelle thoughts

prefacing this by saying bribelle is my favorite ship. actually might be one of my favorite all time ships considering whenever i catch 11:11 i make a tweet on my priv twitter saying “11:11 bribelle and rarijack” because i’m insane.

anywho…

i think it’s a lot easier to justify saying faybelle potentially has feelings for briar in a canon context because even aside from her diary, her behavior in epic winter can most definitely be read with flirtatious undertones, especially after witnessing the dream sequence

but i’m always trying to justify things to myself in accordance to canon without feeling ooc, because i’m the type of creative who would rather write my own original thing than make alterations to a pre-existing work. that’s just me.

and briar is trickier to do so with. in the show alone, she only actually verbally responds to faybelle once and it’s a line that also adds exposition. “but it’s forbidden!” girl come on throw faybelle a bone at least…

by epic winter, i’d say briar could potentially have had surface level attraction to faybelle, but it isn’t until having that dream and probably especially post-epic winter when she’d get time to actually reflect on it that she’d start to develop palpable feelings for her.

i’ve kinda noticed something about briar: she likes attention. i guess she’s kinda like faybelle in that respect.

briar grew up with neglectful parents. fill in the blanks. why wouldn’t she want attention when she lacks it properly from the two most important people in her life?

along this line of thinking, briar especially values explicit displays of affection, particularly from a potential romantic partner.

so, regrettably, let’s look at her relationship with hopper.

i.e. briar’s behavior in the webisode “Here Comes Cupid.”

when she first confronts hopper about his unconventional advances, she’s disinterested and borderline repulsed.

but after hearing him profess his love via the recording, she’s taken aback and actually grows endeared.

until this BAFOON fumbles the bag and does some really creepy shit by leaning into her personal space and calling her hot. understandably, this miffs briar and she once again loses interest.

(side note, too many people ignore how blatantly creepy hopper is to women, ESPECIALLY briar. he needs to be held accountable, not rewarded by getting the girl.)

even then, despite not necessarily returning his affections, she’s somewhat comfortable in the status quo that he devotes his attention to her. which is exactly why i think in bunny’s diary (bunny is wrong btw she doesn’t know a damn thing so idk why the one wiki that’s not the official wiki list hopper as briars crush when the source is bunny’s word like fuck all) bunny mentions observing briar appearing disappointed when ginger asks hopper to the dance and he accepts.

to briar, it’s like she’s losing one of the few things she’s familiar with, the few constants in her life. in this case, her only plausible option who she’d have reason to believe would accept. and we all know how briar is about losing things.

briar sorta settles into this state of fondness towards hopper’s affections, despite them being unrequited. because at least he gives a damn about her.

faybelle—at least, outside of her diary and up until epic winter—might as well be any villain; faybelle just wants to cause chaos for the sake of ruining somebody’s day. and i don’t think briar likes it that way.

i’d assume around the time of faybelle’s introduction to the series, briar’s stance would be one of upset towards faybelle, believing she doesn’t take their story as seriously as she(briar) does. that her role in sleeping beauty isn’t as important to her as being evil in general.

i have half the mind to say that this could potentially be read from briar’s behavior in faybelle’s diary.

first off, that underlining wasn’t added; the underlines are in the official print. meaning briar is putting emphasis on those words specifically. sure it’s a lesson to faybelle about not being an asshole, but also it reflects on briar in a way. like it could be her saying, “you’re supposed to be my villain, but you act like i’m no different to you than anyone else.”

now, this next part is obviously a surface-level gag about faybelle making a malicious act seem so thrilling, but if we close our eyes and pretend that we’re in a different world called I.D.G.A.F. dimension, we can now analyze this in a different light.

briar’s confused by faybelle’s verbal expression of almost-affection. it doesn’t help that she’s most definitely barely awake. but i’m willing to say her confusion is partially born out of actually having heard faybelle say such a thing. it’s gotta be surprising and hard to believe in that moment, because briar has every reason to think otherwise.

in the show, like i said, faybelle just does whatever the fuck. open a sweat shop? sure why not. assist her peer’s mom in attempting to turn the entire world into her own dictatorship? count her in. make a deal with the mafia? just a regular tuesday. but god forbid she focus on being the one to make the sleeping happen in sleeping beauty.

i think that irks briar. or at least make her generally act indifferent when faybelle comes waltzing around to do god knows what; if she won’t care, why should briar, right?

then there’s epic winter. or, as i like to call it in bribelle terms, “they finally fucking interacted”

when briar explains faybelle’s inclusion of herself to crystal, she simply says it’s her thing and cites the sleeping beauty story. like “hey crystal this is my villain btw, trust.”

later when briar’s yapping about the story, some may say it’s counterproductive in relation to briar’s arc that ashlynn brings up the miserable part of it only for briar to talk fondly of it, but i know briar personally, and have been filled in as to what the truth is.

briar dropped that attitude because faybelle was there. she started talking up the story, almost as a cue to faybelle, like “hey remember how you’re like a big part of my life’s purpose???”

faybelle butts in about it. and briar doesn’t get the chance to respond, but i think she was almost expecting faybelle NOT to gaf, so her doing so threw her off just a little. maybe she expected to hear something like “who cares?” instead.

then of course when they get to the castle briar’s little act is dropped and her deep fear of the sleeping beauty destiny is once again present. and of fucking COURSE that’s when faybelle decides to CARE ABOUT THEIR STORY.

listen to me, LISTEN. briar looks at faybelle BEFORE faybelle actually says “no, there’s another room far more important to our story. isn’t there, briar?” she looks at her BEFORE she actually talks. she was looking to see if she’d react, then when faybelle does speak she looks away, then she bumps her to get her attention so briar has to fight the adhd and lock in.

and faybelle just keeps instigating which honestly kinda takes briar out of her typical sulking over her destiny mood and more of like ‘what is your game here exactly’ mindset.

there’s so much to that look briar gives her. so many emotions in there.

after this they go up and faybelle taunts some more only for briar to almost actually prick her finger yada yada. and like i said, it’s a lot easier to understand faybelle’s pov. it’s very clear she doesn’t actually wanna go through with cursing briar, teasing and all. she makes as much obvious by her reaction alone when briar gets too close.

but once briar’s fine she’s like ‘yeah, okay, back to normal,’ meanwhile briar is kinda just done because faybelle is acting a fool. but she never shoves faybelle off of her unlike she did when hopper intruded on her boundaries huh briar why is that what’s that about briar still, briar has yet to have any indication from faybelle about how she actually feels in regards to their story and her role in it. or how it pertains to their relationship with each other. rather, faybelle doesn’t take it seriously much to briar’s chagrin.

then the dream sequence happens.

to me, this is the turning point.

it’s a stupid music video for an insert song, but goddamnit it confirmed darabella and even hunter got to be there with ashlynn so i’ll die standing on business.

this is what briar’s been waiting for from faybelle. that frenemy status is something i think briar wants to figure out which one to see faybelle as, depending on how she really wants to proceed with the story. and i’d say faybelle surprises her; hell, she even shows her a side of her rarely seen.

like with hopper, an outward display of affection such as this is something briar is drawn to. faybelle’s display towards briar in the dream sequence is something briar would be endeared by, as she goes out of her way to prevent her from experiencing the very thing she’s been dreading for so long. that’s gotta fit briar’s love language.

side note, i think it’s very very interesting to note that faybelle is the one to swoop in and save briar in this case, without any other characters present to show a significance in the ending of the story. i say this because hunter gets to be in ashlynn’s sequence and the bears are in blondie’s, despite none of them being in the tower asleep. all this is to say, if briar really did have feelings for hopper or really was gonna end up with him or some guy, they’d be there, right? but nope, just faybelle. I Understand.

after that we don’t really see them interact at all again, but there’s the general disdain for faybelle’s actions as a shared sentiment amongst the others. either way, by the end she shows remorse and seemingly ends on good terms with everyone, meaning i don’t see why briar wouldn’t be left thinking about the dream, seeing her in a whole new light. honestly briar would probably be kinda intrigued by the idea of the bad girl having a soft side for her. briar and i actually spoke about this the other day.

either way, this is briar learning that despite the general ignorance faybelle portrayed, she actually does care about her.

faybelle demonstrating, proving to briar that she is capable of showing affection and actually does care for her is what i think is enough for briar to begin to start falling. (which is kinda reflected in how i approached their relationship in fable fest.)

because briar knows there might actually be something there.

or maybe it’s a kid’s cartoon and one girl mean other one nice, idk.

#guess how many mental illnesses i have #2 digit number #that’s an exaggeration #point still stands #i cry when i think about bribelle #eah #ever after high #briar beauty #faybelle thorn #bribelle #briar x faybelle #briar and faybelle #ramble #duncontent #i’m half asleep so i pray i hope i don’t wake up going “who let me post this!”

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 11 days

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medialog march 2k24

yes it's june don't @ me

watched

dune 2 - a gorgeously executed commitment to a story i literally cannot imagine being emotionally invested in and find very silly. i had a great time seeing this in IMAX but was puzzled by how reverentially silent our audience was towards a movie that had me giggling from the opening title (he who controls the flow of spice controls all... hee!) and laughing out loud every time christopher walken appeared. i said this on letterboxd and it's still true: timmy & zendaya are in a muppet babies version of their own movie whenever they appear but it's basically fine. in a just world rebecca ferguson would be julia roberts in the 90s levels famous by now.

killers of the flower moon - i hate leonardo dicaprio so much i can't really figure out how i feel about the rest of this movie because i spent the whole time thinking about how much he sucks and can't act

anatomy of a fall - i went into this pretty agnostic about the oscar race and came out thinking it was super embarrassing for everyone involved that this wasn't going to sweep everything it was nominated for, although i think screenplay was probably the ideal trophy for it to take home. this movie combines two of my obsessions, one long-standing (the inherent brokenness of the way we talk about women's art & women who make art) and one more recent (the lies of forensic "science" as presented in the courtroom), and it also manages to capture something specific and maybe inarticulable about being a child forced into contact with the court system (family, not criminal, in my case, but either way: no one gets to be a judge because they're good with kids lmao), and it's also about an off-putting bisexual woman writer... i mean. i was truly never not going to love it! i have seen some people say that the prosecution seemed cartoonishly evil and like idk about the situation in france but my brief obsession with wrongful conviction longreads a few years back has led me to believe truly nothing about it was over the top by the standards of americans convinced they've got a murderer on display. relatedly, if you watched this movie and thought it was genuinely trying to cast doubt on the question of her culpability, you have true crime brain poisoning and should seek help immediately. what this really is about, IMO, and what unites the women & art strand & the true crime brain poisoning strand, is how badly people want other people's lives to "cohere" according to their own pre-existing expectations and assumptions about what "anyone" or any good person would do in a given situation, and the ways people have responded to this movie have really emphasized how unwilling people are to waver on this. (i found myself thinking about it again peeking in on some reddit threads about the rachel aviv article about the lucy letby case that were filled with comments that amounted to, "americans just tuning in don't have critical information, such as: she acted so weird!!!! only a murderer would act weird!!!!!!!")

love lies bleeding - this shit rocked!!!!!! what a fun fucked up tense horny time; i found myself truly on the edge of my seat, like physically leaning forward in suspense. i was a kristen stewart skeptic walking into this having only seen her in spencer, which i thought was pretty bad and she was terrible in, but this movie singlehandedly explained to me why she is a movie star and also convinced me she's hot. i can't believe the kids today can just go to a normal theater on a tuesday night and see kristen stewart suck on some buff lady's toe. like what a time to be alive for real

the godfather - this didn't quite click with me personally the way some other belated canonical classics have (citizen kane, lawrence of arabia, casablanca are the three that come to mind), partly because i always struggle to parse mob narratives and was pretty lost on much of the actual plot, but it's very beautiful to look at and has many great performances

the godfather part ii - i liked this one better than the first one mostly because it gets more explicit about the gender of it all, especially in the fight between keaton & pacino, which was my favorite scene in either one, and also because of the closing flashback, which is the kind of shameless manipulation i unabashedly support

problemista - we saw a screening of an unfinished cut of this AGES ago and i fell in love with it and have been dying to see it for real and was so happy to do so!!! the movie has a fairy-tale gloss but a genuine steel and some real anger at its heart and the way it combines those two elements was extremely effective for me. i really really love that this is a story about an economically struggling el salvadarian immigrant struggling with the byzantine immigration process who comes to feel genuine kinship with a total nightmare of an entitled white american woman not because she learns or grows or softens but because he recognizes in her a hardness rooted in her commitment to her desires that ultimately he sees as a mirror to his own and something to admire. there's something about how staunchly it refuses common assumptions about who can or cannot understand or empathize with whom that i found so bracing. but also it's really fucking funny! i am so excited for whatever julio torres does next.

slap shot - i had never heard of this movie and kind of still can't believe that it exists and is like kind of famous apparently? and that paul newman did it? it's a story about a bunch of hockey losers but really it's just a satire about gender with the kind of ending that is astonishing in how it first shocks and then settles in as absolutely the only way it could have gone. like the movie is funny and weird if sometimes unpleasantly committed to a certain veracity about the language used by a bunch of idiot hockey goons in the 80s but the climactic sequence is a 100/10, all-timer hall of fame no notes movie magic moment.

god respects us when we wok, but loves us when we dance - 20ish minute documentary about one of the first love-ins and you know what? the hippies made some points and we all lose when we shrink ourselves to the demands of the god of cringe

read

sofia samatar, tender - samatar had vaguely been on my radar for years because her poem "girl hours" came across my dashboard ages ago and has made me cry like six separate times. tender, a collection of 20 short stories ranging from the very short to a proper novella, exploded my brain open in the best way possible (and also made me cry), such that i feel inadequate to the task of describing what makes it so awesome. she's so obviously fucking smart and so inventive with form and such a great stylist, adopting convincingly a wide range of styles but always feeling somehow distinctly like herself, and her imagination is so rich, that even the stories i didn't love were still a huge pleasure to read. these are stories that are engaging with history and playing with myth always in the service of wrestling with the question of what does it feel like to be alive, often specifically what does it feel like to be alive in the shadow or in the face of calamity and horror, with an insistent recognition of the fact that human beings react to calamity - they make choices, they tell themselves stories, they go deep into themselves to try to get at the truth. like she just Gets It. it's also a really well-sequenced collection in that it feels like her themes build on each other without repeating themselves, and in that as i went on i could tell that my response to certain stories was deepened by what i had read before. like, the first story that truly knocked me out was "walkdog," but i think i would not have been as disarmed by that story's youthful narrator if it hadn't come right after the learned tone of "ogres of east africa" (and both stories, i am only now realizing, are stories told in marginalia, essentially). my favorite story was the novella, "fallow," which is about a space colony of mennonites, and the final paragraph of which i will be thinking about for probably the entire rest of my life.

zadie smith, intimations - this is a collection of not-quite-essays released during the first months of the pandemic as a fundraiser and intended to serve not as a statement but as basically a set of personal snapshots from that time; it reminded me that zadie smith is reliably one of my favorite voices to let into my head. i would read her talking about literally anything.

kelly link, get in trouble - i honestly went into this book very excited having meant to read link for years on the recommendation of many people i know who love her but unfortunately i hated it! the prose was so clunky i could not get into the vibe at all. i almost don't want to say other things i didn't like because i disliked the prose so much that other things could have been good and i probably still wouldn't have been into it... but either way i didn't like other things either! it was like all the dumb bullshit of bad genre fiction combined with the emotionally withholding distance passing for sophistication of bad literary fiction (written with the banality of bad commercial fiction). the book felt very dark and unpleasant and cynical but not in a way that lent itself to like insight about or reflection of the way the real world merits this kind of description... just sort of off-putting for the sake of it. "edgy" one might say. not an actual character or believable relationship at ny point to be found. i did not at any point care about anything that was happening, even to be like "oh that's cool" or "oh that's fucked up." the hype around her is really rooted in her amazing imagination but her imagination is like quite literally not that amazing... i feel like multiple reviews or profiles of her i've read have alluded to the story in this volume where a teenage girl goes to a hotel that is harboring a dentist convention and also a superhero convention like WOW ISN'T SHE WACKY? but like none of the stuff about superheroes (in that or in the other EVEN MORE BORING superhero story) is nearly as weird as the shit that goes on in actual superhero comics... which btw also have absolutely engaged with the question "what if superheroes but also the normal world." like i don't even read superhero comics and i know this. anyway. the stories i disliked the least were probably the one about the demon lover, which was like a francesca lia block rip-off but more self-consciously jaded, and the one about the rich kids and the pyramids, which actually almost managed to be an interesting story about how growing up rich ruins your brain, but unfortunately was still badly written and also had this super fucked up chronology for as far as i could tell no reason at all and also did this dumb little typographical thing where names were always circled, which felt very cutesy. the best thing i can say about this book is really that usually when i find a book this boring it is very slow going for me (hello current book club book i have been reading for more than a month) but this one went down pretty easily.

isaac butler & dan kois, the world only spins forward: the ascent of angels in america - butler & kois expand their oral history, initially written for slate, to more than 400 pages, and i would have happily read 400 more. obviously on some level i just love this play and love to read people talking about it, so i am not impartial here, but for what it's worth i did think this book was very well done in terms of how it organized a mammoth amount of information and in terms of how it edited & arranged its quotes to highlight recurring themes and interesting frissons. the oral history format is well suited to the historical elements of this particular play (the sections that most directly touch on the outbreak of AIDS are devastating to read even if you're familiar with the history) and is also well suited a work of theatrical history, given that a play is a living thing and each production is its own work of art (more true of angels than of most plays, given kushner's famous eternal dissatisfaction with perestroika; i learned from this volume that the most recent major revival DID have an updated script published, meaning at some point i will have to buy a third copy of a play i already own two editions of). it's clearly a work of deep love for the play that also gives space to critical voices (including, at times, kushner's - i was struck by his comment that after reading an essay by toni morrison on a related topic, he reflected that he would have thought differently about making belize a nurse), and, like the play that it's about, explores big ideas while being unafraid to be an extremely fun ride.

listened

kacey musgraves, deeper well - i feel like this album, which drops a saturn return mention in its title track, will be incredibly annoying to people who are allergic to the phrase "self-care" or anything that smacks of woo, but i found it really lovely and perfect for being in your thirties and in some ways so content with life that you're overwhelmed with tiny everyday beauties you can't believe you're lucky enough to have and also you are thinking about death and god, like, constantly. like this one really met me where i was at. i think i'm still not convinced she's ever written a better song than merry-go-round but after giving up on musgraves halfway through golden hour, which everyone loved and i found unlistenably boring, i was totally won back over by the sheer humble prettiness of her melody & her sparse accompaniments here. also writing a love song called "anime eyes"... real people's princess shit i have to say.

rosie tucker, utopia now - this album rules! you should listen to it! clever and weird and inventive and funny, not lacking in anger or even in bitterness but rooted in a sincerity that keeps it from being a downer or feeling cynical. some of the most interesting lyrics i have heard all year by a long shot. my favorite track is probably "gil scott albatross," which spends its first half touring breezily through contemporary gloom (the dark side of moon colonization, landfills filled with consumer waste) before announcing "i wanna turn the argument around" and declaring, in my favorite line of the year, "if you're holding for hope, then it's time for you to learn that where there's pain it means you still got nerve" - all before landing on a surprisingly sentimental tribute to the centrality of personal connection: "cuz i love you now and i always will." in less than three minutes! really cool stuff happening here.

beyonce, rennaissance - ok listen so i didn't have HBO Max when lemonade came out and i didn't want to listen without watching because i didn't want to do it Wrong and then i just kept never getting around to it and then i felt like i couldn't listen to any of her other new stuff and also i heard break my soul and it didn't grab me... anyway this album is awesome and i was wrong about break my soul

beyonce, cowboy carter - this album is also good and taking a friday long walk to give it a devoted first listen was a great time but i think for the most part i sort of admire its ambition more than i enjoy it

#media 2k24 #isabel 2k24 #i keep feeling like i don't have time for these and today being like #still too sick to Do Stuff but less Must Sleep All Day than yesterday... felt like a good excuse

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xxlovelynovaxx · 3 months

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The person in the tags really said "I see kindness and emotional availability as inherently feminine traits" like congrats! That's the radf/em brainrot!

Idk, why might people pick emotionally open men who aren't steeped in toxic masculinity to headcanon as trans? Is it maybe because of the intense pressure on the transmasc community to not "give in to our inherent toxicity" or "defy the evil nature of our manhood"? Is it maybe simply because people pick characters they like and relate to, to headcanon as sharing their identity? Should people be picking unkind and emotionally unavailable characters to personally headcanon because you don't like that the characters they feel connected to are niceys?

Also, wow, that's some transmisogyny in "the characters headcanoned as trans women are usually mean and aggressive". Are they? Are they really? Or are they unafraid to stand up for themselves in a way that transfems find empowering? Is there a transmisogynist expectation put on us to just take abuse and that we're dangerous and mean and aggressive if we refuse to? Also, I'm just curious, how many of these "mean and aggressive" characters aren't white? Is this an endemic problem of "mean, aggressive" characters, or is it simply a character type that's commonly found to be empowering?

Also just. "It's wrong that an alleged majority of headcanoned trans men are about nice people and an alleged majority of headcanoned trans women are not". So its wrong for people headcanoned as trans to be nice... but also to be mean? Like sure, don't get me wrong, there's a point to be made about variety in representation but these are headcanons. This is personal fandom. This isn't corporate media, it isn't even really media a lot of the time, not even fanworks! Headcanon≠rep in any way, shape or form.

But I do find it curious that whether characters should be treated as more nice or more mean is gendered, especially when I've seen other transfems make the exact OPPOSITE complaint about transfem headcanons - that they rely on misogynistic standards of femininity, especially in terms of "acceptable behavior" and that they in fact wished people would examine that and consider headcanoning women who were messy and imperfect as transfem. But, y'know.

(Also, this is focusing on a specific type of headcanon, almost to the point of tunnel vision. Because I guaran-fucking-tee there are plenty of transmasc headcanons that aren't "emotionally available sensitive man". Like, really showing that anecdotal bias. I've seen fucking Dean Winchester headcanoned as transmasc. Just about every TF2 character. Kim Kitsuragi, who I don't know much about but even if he is kind and emotionally available I do know he's supremely fucking dysfunctional. Harry Dubois as well, who I KNOW is not emotionally fucking available. Apparently from my trans partner, Sans fucking Undertale. Certain interpretations of botw/totk Link. Fucking interpretations of Miku Hatsune. Jade Hunter from Rainbow High.

But really, I keep going back to "people see feminine traits and say trans man because they see trans men as women" when the only traits named were LITERALLY "kindness" and "emotional availability". Fucking. If you think only women are kind and emotionally available you're reinforcing toxic masculinity and are in for a rude fucking awakening at toxic femininity and women who are bullies in general, and how these attitudes allow them to face less or even no consequences.

My fucking gods. Kindness and emotional availability. Feminine traits. Fuck.

#transphobia #transmisogyny #transandrophobia #also the blatant 'I'm trans so I'm right'#like nah actually gender essentialism is still transphobic when you're trans #you had a chance to make a point about 'hey these trends seem to pedestalize transmasc and demonize transfems'#but instead you pedestalized transfems and demonized transmascs #idk it's just #blegh

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scribble-dee-vee · 4 months

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Writeblr Intro circa 2024

Hi writeblr!! Sooo, I've been around here since about 2014. (Yes, I am ancient.) However, I've been dormant for the past 4-5 years. Blame college and a brief stint on Twitter. Now that I'm active again, I thought I should make an updated writeblr intro so ppl know my Deal. Basically, I want to engage with other folks who write fiction (esp original SF), and that's a little easier if I have a clear post that outlines what I do. Here to make connections and hear about your blorbos :)

About me

Hi, I'm Vee! They/them, 23, 💖 🤍 🧡

I do journalism/comms in western New York

My literary jam is feminist/adult SF and gothic lit (OG or modern) 🥀 ⚔️ 🌙

Enthusiastic about gay people, body horror, and sociopolitical allegories

I cook, run, play tabletop games, and occasionally draw. Other than that, I'm mostly writing (for work and for fun)

If you were on pre-2020 writeblr, you likely know me from my eight billion daily tag games. (I still like tag games and appreciate u for tagging me. I have also gained adult responsibilities and better mental health, so I respond very slowly now. <3)

Always happy to get asks or dms, tho as I've noted: I may reply slowly.

Sometimes open to beta read! I only read one longer project at a time, but it's always super fun :)

I tag very consistently – happy to tag triggers for followers/moots

Fun fact: I love mushroom hunting and worked as a mycology TA. #cottagecoreera 🍄 🧚‍♀️ 🌱

About my creative writing

I write,,,, feminist/adult SF with gothic leanings (surprise!)

Longform and short! Trying to do more short writing this year, and I'll likely share a bit on Tumblr. It's easier to clip a short story than a 150k novel, god bless.

The Aesthetic: moral g(r)ays, Victoriana, androids/cyborgs, Women™, monstrous femininity, incessant Hamlet/Frankenstein motifs, extremely boring socioeconomic worldbuilding, evil queens and/or dilfs, psychosexual witchcraft, probably a cat. Also, an ominous, plot-relevant letter laced with anthrax from your unhinged and brilliant ex-wife. Open if you dare.

Major projects

I'm going to be writing some short work this year, but these are the longer projects that I have going in the background. If I reblog blorbo-related text posts, they probably have something to do with these.

Let me know if you want to be added to any project-specific taglists 😎

Heart of Lead – Series

The big one

Perpetually evolving

Never ceasing

Pls send help I can't stop adding shit

5-book gothic fantasy epic that I'll definitely publish one day but probably no time soon! My bastard child, my wicked firstborn, my greatest love <3

Character-oriented political drama set in a pseudo-Victorian, dystopian oligarchy where everyone's heart is made out of metal. It's about coming of age and discovering queer identity in a world that is absolutely fucked. God is an extraterrestrial lesbian who gives ppl very traumatizing magic powers. There are cyborgs, shapeshifters, and morally gray women in STEM. It's tight as fuck idk what else what to tell u.

Book 1 is about achillean monarchists, and book 2 is about sapphic anarchists. There are only two genders, I guess.

At this point, I've drafted most of the books at least once. Working to refine a lot of raw material atm!

Tag: "heart of lead tag" or "hol tag"

Lost Letters – Book

Aka the current active HoL WIP, and book one in the revised series structure

Length: 80k as of now; around 120-140k when the first draft is finished, I presume.

Genre: adult fantasy, gothic, noir detective drama?? um?? If you want me to frame it in BookTok terms (why?) it's a dark academia villain x villain tragic romantasy. Hrgh.

Summary: Cyborg soldier goes to college, joins a shady socialite frat, and falls in love with the jilted heir-apparent to the throne. Hilarity ensues.

(By "hilarity," I mean a militant revolutionary faction and a tragedy of Greek proportions.)

POV characters: Charles (the cyborg), Dale (the heir), and Cecelia (Charles' sister, a junior detective, the love of my life and potentially the Chosen One???)

This book is twisty and dark and immensely fun to write.

I'm about halfway through the first full draft! Hoping to share snippets and vaguepost about my children here.

Tag: "lost letters tag" (also "hol tag," tho that one's less specific)

The Last of Mortal Tourists – Book

The next longform project on the docket!

Length: a standalone work that will hopefully fall on the shorter novel/novella spectrum.

Genre: literary SF, cyberqueer, psychological space quest

Summary: The consciousness of a dead coding genius, trapped inside a spaceship, seeks a new planet to sustain their sister, the last surviving human, after the destruction of Earth.

If you're here to get wildly philosophical about gender and the myth of essential self, this is the story for you! That's why I'm writing it, lol. 🏳️‍⚧️ 🚀 🤖

This one started out as a short story (100% finished) which I want to expand.

POV: Archer Alto, the coder. Spaceship? Human? Soul?

Supporting Cast: Pandora, the last human, and Abby, a holographic impression of Archer's childhood consciousness

Tag: "the last of mortal tourists tag" or "tlomt tag"

If you read all this way, you get a whole bouquet of flowers that are certainly NOT poisonous: 🌸 🌹 💐 🥀 🌺

#writeblr #writing #writeblr intro #for my mutuals #scribble-dee-vee #project intro #hi writeblr!#original post #hol tag #heart of lead tag #lost letters tag #tlomt tag #pls feel free to tell me abt u in tags/replies!!#would love to expand my active writeblr connections #and yah like I said lmk about those tag lists #I def want to post more snippets/tags this year

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tabithatwo · 9 months

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i have kindve a rant abt jackie that id like your thoughts on. whenever people write fics where jackie is like. wholly a dumbass it really irks me. like the most we see of her is in the wilderness, of course shes useless?? shes a normal person, she wasnt trained in survival tactics. theres another rant in there abt how she very much could have adapted but she was depressed and suicidal and i think thats mostly why shes useless, but thats a conversation for another time! but yeah. when shes just ditzy and shit in fics it really rubs me the wrong way. like i follow the hc that shes autistic, and specifically the kind where shes very socially aware but still sometimes fucks up a little. like how usually when shes mean she has no idea that it came off that way. i feel like people took that and twisted it to mean that shes some useless moron thats constantly oblivious and needs to be babied. i hope that made some sense? idk, im just curious if thats something other people have noticed and have a problem w or if im too personally offended by it lmao

Here is part 2 that anon sent separately!

Honestly anon fucking preach lol, that’s my thoughts on it!! I don’t think you phrased anything mean, I get the passion behind it comes from an important place! I tend to really bristle at any women being portrayed as stupid, even when it’s done in a cutesy (read: patronizing lol) manner.

NOW I can get behind a one liner joke like “aww she’s so stupid” about any of the yjs bc they ALL have their dumb moments, usually around EMOTIONAL intelligence! But I know what you’re talking about and I’ve seen it too—portraying her or describing her as likable but fucking dumber than a rock is honestly more annoying to me than the evil genius mastermind take most of the time.

It isn’t supported by anything we have of her character. There’s even a BIG point made with Shauna’s hallucination of her, where Shauna recognizes this sort of unfair impulse to jump to diminishing Jackie’s intelligence. I think that shauna simply feels like she needs one thing that’s just hers, one thing that she’s better at, and in her mind intelligence is the only option. But even she recognizes that’s bullshit. I think that yes shauna is framed as more book-smart than Jackie (honestly shauna is framed as the most book-smart, probably tied with Taissa) but we actually know very little of Jackie’s academic achievement, so it’s sort of up in the air.

But as far as day to day intelligence, I don’t think we’re meant to think Jackie is stupid. If anything, I think the lack of woods participation (which, as you said, is fucking depression and suicidality and fear) can be interpreted negatively as laziness, if one is inclined to interpret it negatively, or a fear of failure, more so than stupidity.

To each their own, I don’t think sort of notably off characterization is malicious unless the person is being cruel about it, but yeah I get annoyed and tend to click away lol and I do think there’s a lot lot lot of misogyny that infiltrates some popular jackie takes.

#yellowjackets #jackie taylor #shauna shipman #asks answered #jackieshauna

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deathbirby · 5 months

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Decided the Church was the biggest threat??

You do realise she destroys TWSITD too right? But TWSITD is an organisation that isn't made of giant superpowered dragons, they just have the tools to kill a giant superpowered dragon if necessary.

She captures Rhea in most routes specifically so that she can get her help in fighting TWSITD after the war.

She also takes criticism several times. From Manuela, Lindhardt and Ferdinand and constantly changes her opinions.

She doesn't even say the Church is the biggest problem, she says Crests and Nobility are, because, if you fucking recall, the only reason TWSITD were able to kill her siblings at all was because of the nobility system and Duke Aegir!

Holy shit it's almost like she identified the root cause instead of the thing instantly in front of her, which she still ALSO DEALT WITH.

She needed Those Who Slither to capture Rhea, who she keeps free from their grasp. She is using them as best she can to defeat an eternal monarch of all of Fodlan for a millenium, before dealing with the less powerful force. She doesn't call Those Who Slither less important, but you don't win chess by killing the Queen do you? Doesn't mean she isn't the most powerful piece on the board, sometimes it's necessary to do one before the other.

Who would have thought in a tactics game a character would take the time to identify the severity of their threats.

Also Fodlan's history is legitimately twisted BY RHEA. Who's history is she going to listen to? Even Claude gets angry.

The character who most refuses to listen to anyone else's perspective, that would be a very special king man who can't see the forest for the trees. Crests are important because other places have advanced military forces, but y'know, we can't do that so forced caste system and breeding stock of women it is! The rich and poor just need to understand each other and the poor need to understand why I live in a castle and only marry women with crests.

Not only that. There's so much irony in the way that every single route ends with a unified Fodlan, without Rhea as the head of the religious state, who have all undergone reforms that serve to the betterment of the people.

Edelgard legitimately correctly identified the problem areas of Fodlan, that's why all the routes share the same outcomes.

Unification. No Rhea. No TWSITD. Political reform.

Wow!

You argue that she was wrong when she was entirely correct.

Fodlan's past doesn't even matter. It matters to Rhea and TWSITD.

What matters is nobility and crests feed into each other and Rhea is purposefully destroying technology to keep Fodlan in a state of perpetual readiness to accept the return of the goddess who she expects to *drumroll* unite Fodlan! Edelgard blames the Church for a few things they didn't do, but it scarcely matters because the Church is doing wrong things and so is TWSITD and she's getting rid of both.

She doesn't even remove the faith and keeps it running during her occupation of Garreg Mach. What more could she possibly do?

She's not interested in world domination, she never forces Brigid to fight.

She just knows that she can't reform Adrestia without the standing army that is the Knights of Seiros banging down her Empire. Or did you miss the bit where Rhea calls for the summery execution of the head of a sovereign nation without a trial or discussion. And then refuses Byleth when she tries to stop Edelgard from being executed without any form of discussion.

Look, I know people are going to be more harsh on Edelgard and more forgiving to the others because of, reasons? I guess it's kind of evil of her to support disability care where she enables others to work in environments that allow them to reach their maximum potential. Instead of, idk, believing that you're either born strong or weak and the job of the strong is to accept the weak and never try and understand how circumstances may very well be the thing that makes someone "weak."

But what do I know, it's not like there's a character with crippling anxiety that only comes out of her room in a singular route due to the support of someone who helps the "weak" find their strengths. Unlike someone in another route who baulks a being called a shut-in like that very same character. What a guy!

In the end, the history doesn't matter.

Fodlan is a misogynistic, homophobic, feudalist society, ruled by an eternal theocracy, and nobility who would rather assassinate their leaders than attempt reform.

It does not facilitate the common people, who are likely illiterate due to the suppression of the printing press by SOMEONE, and is stifling its own potential for the sake of mindless xenophobia. Which is what the officer's academy is for, by the way, to fight invaders like Dagda and Almyra, two places Rhea has coincidentally collected two people from! Don't forget how Catherine said she would have struck someone who wasn't Shamir down! Rhea did that. Super chill and peaceful. And that's not even mentioning the cover up that was Christophe... Or the treatment of the Western Church, who *checks notes* ah, yes, they eradicated over their errant beliefs over the saints and Rhea's position as archbishop. Yes. She handles dissent from sovereign people well.

The Church seems good because they can afford to appear good because Fodlan has no choice! The nobility are church backed and the church is nobility backed and the Holy Kingdom has no choice because it also church backed!

So yeah, she might have been able to swing an internal reform of her country, all while TWSITD enact their plans in the Kingdom, or she wages a shadow war against them. But, that's probably going to get her the ire of the church if her people start reading and realise their gods are all fake because Sothis is literally dead.

But that's not going to help the poor crested woman in the Kingdom who is needs to have her 10th child so this one, hopefully, maybe might be crested. Which is what Mercedes, Ingrid, Marianne, Dorothea and Bernadetta all have in store for themselves! Oh, and probably Annette and Hilda too but it's less obvious.

Sure would be kind of Edelgard to only help Bernie and Dorothea.

"That example you gave comes from Adrestia!" Yeah, I know. But do you think in the world Sylvain is so afraid of that HASN'T happened? It's unfortunate that the land of Man's Strength didn't have more female students... Unless... You don't think that's indicative of what life is like there do you? Some kind of land where the future king might forget to include one of his close female friends in his list of friends!? The very same one who lost the man she was betrothed to since birth? Surely that places values its women and wouldn't fatten their only daughter up to be breeding stock despite her personal ambitions, all because the loss of crests would destabilize their nation as a whole because the nobility would lose their power and so would the church that legitimises them as an actual nation??

Things are great there. There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

Who fucking cares why Nemesis and Seiros fought. Seiros dragged the entire continent into a war out of vengeance. That's what happened. She then neglected to look into Those Who Slither in the Dark not for one year, not for two, not for five, but for one THOUSAND years.

They're ONLY exposed because of Hubert and Edelgard. Don't fucking forget that. It was their actions that got Those Who Slither killed.

But na, Rhea is gud.

Or at least it's far more comfortable to just believe that both the women are bad and the Boi has all the answers.

"He's setting up the groundwork for a democracy" I hear people bullshit.

You know that's a bad thing right? He's not setting up any fucking schools. Duscur was a genocide. Fodlan is xenophobic. Literally any votes that happen are going to go the exact same way the Voice to Parliament did in Australia and I don't say that as a joke, it's disgusting what happened. Democracy is fucking shit for groups of people who cannot use socially equitable (publically available and suited to the individual circumstances of the user) services to attain political power to force progress.

Dimitri's entire idea isn't to raise these people up, it's to hear what they say and decide PERSONALLY if that's a good idea.

Which is going to go oh so well the first time that comes into conflict with the legitimacy of the church or crests.

Meanwhile Edelgard establishes a system that actively contests her individual judgement through the use of expert testimony filling in for various public and political sectors that are open to literally anyone who proves they are the best in their field, with an intentional retirement plan that breaks the line of succession opening the door for any commoner to rise to the position of emperor.

But yeah, I guess the person who destroys all the major corrupt institutions of Fodlan, believes in rehabilitation instead of retributive justice (she does not kill Aegir or any of the nobles responsible for her imprisonment. She even offers Rhea a chance to surrender and instead serve public reform, something she also offers Jeritza,) creates public schooling, changes her mind on the purpose of religious thinking, grants sovereignty to her vassal state, creates a workspace specifically designed to enable the disabilities of several workers while also aiding them in reaching their personal potential (even while those people could very well turn on her later), and rules the most sexually liberated nation in all of Fodlan, both with regard to gender expression and sexual preference (see Lindhardt, Caspar's less-toxic masculinity, and like, all of the gayness of all the Eagles) which she personally fall under. Yeah. That woman is the stuck up bad guy because she thinks that Nemesis and Seiros fought for the right of humanity to rule itself vs immortals. Instead of. That, ah. Other reason. That they fought.

Yeah Seiros fought Nemesis out of revenge, but did you ever stop to think that maybe Nemesis might not have wanted a dragon pope either? That he may have actually have been a good leader in the north?

Seiros is justified in wanting revenge for her family, but she didn't do Fodlan any favours. She didn't help them. Dagda is doing just fine without the Goddess. Crests may have been genetically wiped out over time if Rhea didn't put so much importance on them to the point they literally change inheritance.

I get it, Slithers bad. They killed Edelgard's family. They hurt her. But it sure must suck to not be able to see the path beyond that and how that was even made possible. Edelgard can see it. She even explains it. Everyone agrees because no one keeps Rhea in charge, including Rhea. And they all kill the Slithers. Except Dimitri who did it on accident and got very lucky it wasn't a Hydra situation... We hope.

Sure is fucked up that Three House's main character dies of screen half the time. Weird.

I also feel like I didn't mention Claude enough. Y'know, the guy who looks into Fodlan's history like crazy. Super fucking crazy and answers all of, zero questions until he asks Rhea who tells him because literally only she has that information and STILL she doesn't know shit about the Slithers.

Yeah, what was Edelgard supposed to do again?

Claude got really lucky. His reformed Fodlan would have been super bad of he didn't know the specifics of *checks notes* Rhea is a dragon and the Slithers did bad things to Fodlan.

Wait. That's the same shit Edelgard knows!

Oh, but it's different because, ah, Seteth and Flayn are still alive, no, wait, that happens in Crimson Flower too.

Seteth is allowed to be in government? The same guy who slaughtered the western church for headcanoning Cichol wrong? Wonderful.

Except, Edelgard doesn't really actually say that Seteth and Flayn can't hold government. She says they can't "rule over humanity" which is contextually different. She doesn't want them to do what Rhea did, but public office is different...

Aww beans. Looks like all she did was start a war under the entirely true pretext that Rhea was abusing her power in the here and now, and so she could break the shackles that her oppressors had over her by turning the tides on them through Byleth or a captured Rhea.

So evil. I hate it when someone comes along to criticise the religiously and politically sanctioned sexual slavery of women and then asks why the King of said kingdom isn't just surrendering to her terms despite the fact that he doesn't have any political motivation outside of:

1. Revenge

2. Occupation is bad? I think? (Wait doesn't the church occupy us-)

when surrending to those terms would actually remove them from under the church's legitimization and provide them with the means to undo the harmful social practices such as sexism and xenophobia instilled within them from the church that lead to his personal trauma in the first place.

But y'know, the name would change. He'd still be in power because Edelgard does maintain the regional leaders for a time while she puts her reforms in place, but the name would change and that's icky. Better die on this hill for some reason so the sacrifice of everyone who died in this war can be even more for nothing as we half ass the same fucking reforms off the back of Rhea's dethroning and the death of the Slithers. Oh shit, that wasn't Dimitri was it. That's Sylvain who does that. The most Eagle Lion to ever be a bisexual man repressed by the sexist and homophobic society he lives in.

Fuck off Edelgard is wrong. The history is vague because Rhea literally hid it and even then it's not actually the truth because we literally still don't know if Sothis was benevolent or not. Rhea is also trying to install a method of governance (Sothis) that already fucking failed. Most good rulers and gods don't let their nations nuke themselves to death but maybe Shamir can tell us of the time Dagda did that to themselves. And the history also doesn't matter. Who cares why Nemesis did what he did. It was bad, it's Rhea's origin story for why she doesn't let humanity advance itself. The cause is irrelevant because it literally can't happen again! Not to mention that, if the Nabateans were as bad as the Slithers, we do genocide the Slithers, but that's okay, because they're bad.

What a useless criticism to level at her. That's like saying it's unjust for me to hate the church for homophobia because I don't understand the persecution of catholics under Nero.

Bitch, who gives a shit they're doing bad fucking stuff now! Yes, I think it's also valid to overturn the government of a nation that wants me dead on sight for being gay, they're violating human rights and citing sovereignty as their excuse, fuck that, people over countries.

War is bad, yes, but y'know what's also bad? Political reforms that fail because the population is uneducated, xenophobic, and democracy is a system of privilege and popularity that gives voices to those who don't know what they're fucking talking about. Just look up Voice to Parliament in Australia, it's just racism that got it knocked back. Democracy gave a voice to racism.

Bring on the Edelgards of the world. I'm disabled as fuck and I want her meritocracy more than anything. Definitely much more than I want dumbfucks "we hear you" new world with upward mobility determined by how able bodied and willing to participate in bioessentialism I am. I think there's a word for it. Ah. Eugenics. Crests are a form of eugenics. Rhea and Dimitri both endorsed eugenics. (remember! He only pairs with crested women! And his right to rule is literally based on his possession of a crest.) Good shit.

Adrestia: Commoners can become the Emperor.

Faerghus: You can become queen if you're afab, heterosexual and have a crest. (You also need to be able to produce viable children who are also crested. It's a good thing nothing bad has ever happened to queens who failed to produce legitimate heirs to a king, that would be a worrying precedent! Henry the who-th?)

"Everyone can participate in politics!" With what fucking education? No one goes to school but the rich! It's the same shit we have irl, it's the same thing they ALREADY HAD.

Just say you're a sexist and move on.

Edelgard bad because no pebis :C

P.S. Claude is just a less effective Edelgard who prolonged the war due to his vanity. His refusal to choose a side so that he could be the ultimate victor stalled the war for several additional years racking up additional loss of life which he could have prevented by deciding that he didn't need to be the sole author of this victory and reform. Either side could have won sooner if not for his impotence. And the Roundtable is still full of crested nobles with no schooling and religious doctrine so it's still a fucking L. Die poor Leonie of the world and anyone who wants higher education. Get born rich next time?

P.P.S. You gotta feel somewhat bad for Dimitri, he can basically marry Dedue or Felix, but he can't actually marry them because he reinforced heteronormative practices that require him to take a wife instead of actually getting to be with his husband. Sure "everyone" can participate in politics, except for the bisexual king who isn't actually allowed to be himself because of all the bigotry he reinstalled in his country. Meanwhile Edelgard and F Byleth are referred to as spouses in the Japanese, exchanged rings, and the English made it homophobic so certain characters wouldn't seem to bad to the sensibilities of particular white men. How. Interesting.

LMAOOO WHY IS THIS OVER 3000 WORDS LONG??

Nahh you gotta out and touch grass my dude, there is no character worth writing a whole college thesis about.

#edelgard discourse #grey borb #bro you cant call me sexist and expect me to take you seriously #put this energy to better use than your fictional waifu #seriously go outside #this is just sad

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nothorses · 1 year

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i'm sure you've talked about it before, but why do other transmascs feel the need to white knight for women whenever transandrophobia(/anti-transmasculinity/whatever term is "acceptable" for the moment) is brought up? it's always something to do with "it's distracting from misogyny and we should band together against it", "it makes it sound like trans women oppress trans men", "isn't this just dividing the community?", etc.

i swear, every time even the term comes up (not even as THE point of discussion, just at all), at least one transmasc shows up to lecture me about how it's a bad term. it's such "pick me" behavior.

i ask you why other transmascs need to do this, but we know it's some mixture of self-hatred ingrained by having being in some kind of close proximity to manhood, internalized transphobia, and feeling the need to be "one of the good ones" squabbling for approval.

the 2010s feminism movement of target brand mugs saying "Male Tears" and the insistence that using broad violent statements is okay if it's "punching up" really poisoned the conversation. transmascs shouldn't feel so defensive of proving their masculinity is "good" by preventing transmascs from organizing and acknowledging our specific issues.

not sure what i'm even asking anymore. feeling kind of disheartened and frustrated for feeling like i have controversial opinions when i say that *shuffles notes* transmascs are affected by specific societal oppression and pretending otherwise is naive at best and an act of violence at worst.

I hear you. And I think that like... while it is frustrating, to be constantly undermined by people who are clearly just doing it because they think it's some kind of "redemption", I also tend to feel more heartbroken than anything else.

Like, I know how they feel. I was around for shitty 2010's feminism; I was pretty deep in the movement, in fact. I internalized a lot of those ideas, and they're exactly what kept me from realizing I was trans for so long.

When I finally started to realize I was more on the masc side of things, I still had enough hangups that I started a sideblog (that nobody knows about. and still won't!) just to reblog stuff that I felt represented "acceptable" masculinity. The concept was so novel to me that I legitimately felt I needed an archive of "proof" that masculinity could be "ethical".

And I've kinda ridden with this current movement toward acknowledging transmasc oppression. I saw others start talking about it before me, and eventually felt emboldened enough by them to join in; mostly just kind of nudging at the boundaries, suggesting that we consider transmascs are also oppressed, and that maybe we should make sure our trans-specific spaces and resources, and things like domestic violence shelters, include them.

I watched that guarded, hesitant seed start to sprout and grow, and I grew with it. I think my early posts really reflect this; I'm pretty sure my most popular post is still, to this day, the one that essentially just points out that men AND women can have a toxic relationship with masculinity and femininity. Another early banger was "testosterone doesn't make you evil".

Y'know, shit feminists were saying in the 2010's.

I feel like I see a lot of transmascs today kind of forgetting this, idk, three years of "history" (generously). Like we've always had a community ready to support us when we say these things; spaces where we can talk about them without having to constantly remind everyone that we do, in fact, believe transmisogyny is real and that it needs more attention than it currently receives. Because we can take for granted that others believe this, and trust that we do as well.

And that's encouraging! It means we have a community now that- to my knowledge- we have never had before, and it means we're finally getting somewhere after decades of isolation and shame.

But it's also kind of sad, I think, that folks so quickly forget what it was like before this. And it is frustrating that we grew and they didn't, and it is frustrating that they seem to be choosing shame and isolation.

And... they're there for the same reasons we once were. In a lot of ways, that means we are uniquely positioned to offer them a bit of compassion. It doesn't mean we have to, or that it'll always be successful, but it does mean that we can.

I also think that like, it's barely been three years, y'know? Not everyone's looped in yet, and not everyone's in a place where they feel safe and supported enough to even begin to consider these ideas more seriously. There will always be people who act this way (Blaire White & Kalvin Garrah are living proof), but the growth of our community and our movement means we'll start to see it less as time goes on.

This isn't really a solution, or an answer, and you probably know all this anyway. But idk. I think perspective is important.

#transmasc #transandrophobia

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