there is not enough femslash in batcest circles. the girls deserve to be just as weird about each other as the boys are. if BruDick gets to be weird father/son/brothers/lovers/friends/rivals/soulmates then it is only fair that Babs/Cass get to be mother/daughter/sisters/lovers too. Something about that deep intrinsic but undefinable love that is born out of trauma, especially if you consider Cass not knowing what healthy love looks like in the first place. i think it's fun and deserves just as much fandom content.
besides that, you can get even more niche with rarepairs like Helena/Steph. Huntress/Spoiler: Blunt Trauma is already a fantastic comic and even though it's their only real canon interaction it has so much potential. very comparable to TimJay in how Helena tries to get Steph to understand her morals and the corruption you could play with it.
batman: huntress/spoiler: blunt trauma (1998)
that comic also highlights on how both Steph and Helena are outcasts of the Batfamily and don't have the approval of Bruce to be doing what they do in "his city". I think there's so much Potential in Helena taking Steph under her wing because Bruce won't let her in and it becomes a weird codependent toxic sapphic mess. I think the protectiveness Helena feels over Steph from the get-go is so clear and the way she wants to look out for Steph, wants to make sure Steph understands the real world? I love them. Helena should be allowed to steal Steph, actually. I think it'd be fun.
there are a lot of other possibilities too like Babs/Steph or even getting weird with Helena Bertinelli/Helena Wayne and the existential question of "is it selfcest or not." But these two specifically live in my head rent-free, especially Helena/Steph and one day I'll convince everyone else to ship it too.
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i do not want to dig a hole but i am too much of a laura bailey pc enjoyer to not make this post so:
selfishness ≠ a lack of kindness
selfishness is a theme that has come up with all of laura's main campaign pcs. that doesn't mean that her characters are always making selfish choices or that they don't care about the rest of the people they're with or that they're not good. it's just that, for the most part, the first thing they're thinking of when they take action or make choices is themselves.
in jester and vex both it is more typical and obvious selfishness. vex's developed because she needed it to keep herself and vax alive and as safe as possible and it grew into a behaviour that she had to actively work to avoid. it's evident in her greed, her theft of the broom, her reaction to her own death which relied heavily on i'm okay/i survived to which keyleth reminded her that she wasn't the only one who had to witness and reckon with her death. in jester's case, she grew up in an environment that literally trained her to make every decision based on two things - her mother's opinion and her own. so, when she's out in the world without marion for the first time, her choices are those that will benefit her and her actions are those that consider her own thoughts and not really many others' (aside from the traveler's).
it isn't a criticism of either vex or jester to say that they are characters who act selfishly. in fact, i'd argue that to claim otherwise does a great disservice to exactly how immense both of their character arcs are. because the nuance of both jester and vex is that they are selfish, and they also hold extreme room for self-sacrifice and empathy. vex is much more brash than jester is, and jester is much more trusting than vex, but both of them are characters who begin with selfish impulses who grow with them. neither ever truly shed those impulses, but they use them in new ways, typically transforming them into impulses towards things that are in the best interest of the party.
you may have noticed the lack of imogen in this post about laura bailey pcs and that's because of two reasons. one, we are an unknown amount of time into her story, i can't analyse her development the same way i can vex and jester's. two, imogen's selfishness isn't the blatant quasi-self-aware selfishness that we see in things like jester complaining about her lack of money to caleb or vex stealing a broom. instead, imogen's is very internal, like a lot of laura's character work with imogen. it is a bit similar to jester’s in the sense that it comes from a lack of awareness moreso than vex’s practiced behaviour, but imogen’s is a lot more tied to inherent beliefs she has about the world and the people in it.
as a consequence of her powers, imogen sees people's thoughts as their entirety, she holds it above their actions to be the truth of who they are - to act against what they think or to say something that doesn’t cohere with what they’ve thought is akin to lying, so for her to act empathetically is to act in tandem with what someone else’s thoughts are, not how they act, which is typically not all that wanted. the same as vex’s greed and jester’s naivety, this is a trait that makes narrative sense and it’s one i find quite compelling, especially when read in the vein of someone struggling through trauma that has made them assume that the world is against them. imogen’s cynicism is coherent cynicism, i can’t say that in a similar situation i wouldn’t have the same predisposition towards the world.
the part that is particularly self-interested comes in if you look at how imogen has actually been treated in the campaign (quite well) in comparison to the cynicism that she’s developed from her past (something that speaks to a world out to get her). certainly, a bunch of shitty things have happened to imogen in the time we’ve known her, but the same can be said for everyone in bell’s hells and pretty much everyone in exandria at this point in time. but, in a fight to save the aforementioned world, imogen’s focus was getting her mother back on her side. which, while very consistent with her character and a choice that i enjoy, is a very selfish one. the fun thing (to me, obviously) about imogen is that she has, more than most, an insight into the opinions of others and she also tends to seek others’ opinions out and genuinely engages with them and supports their choices. but she still very much acts towards what she thinks is best. it’s one reason i enjoy looking at the dynamic between her and orym as one between foils, as orym tends to be stalwart in his beliefs and doesn’t care too much for other’s opinions if he’s already sure of his own, but his actions tend to favour collaboration and protecting others.
as i mentioned earlier, imogen is a harder case to look at because she is still in the process of her story. however, the circlet is clearly influencing how she interacts with the world and in the wake of the solstice, the hostile reaction towards ruidusborn people has started to become more and more apparent and i’m interested to see what route that ends up leading imogen down and how it will influence her relationship with the rest of bell’s hells. (for better, i think, based on recent conversations, but if it's for worse i will be just as seated and excited).
all of this is just to say, please stop assuming that claiming a character has a trait you think is a bad one is criticism or a hate post. in light of the fact that i know that people who don’t believe this will continue to not believe this, i’ll encourage anyone confused about the ability of a character to be good and kind and selfish all at once to look to what the text itself says, specifically scanlan’s words to pelor when asked what vex means to him:
“Her name is Vex, and she is greedy and mean sometimes, and she can steal a lot. She’s a little bit not the greatest person, but her flaws highlight everything that is right about her, which is she does all these things to protect her friends and her family. She would give her life for any of us and for anyone who was truly in need. And she’s not perfect but she’s the most perfect of all of us.”
would you look at that... an ability to be a multitude of things, some in conflict with one another. i know that's hard for fandoms to believe, especially about female characters with agency, but i promise its true!
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Mini VITD Sims Lookbook (Largely Alice Focused Edition)
Hi all -- I ended up downloading and playing with some more Victorian and Victorian-esque CC for Sims 4 last Saturday, looking for some new looks for my Valicer In The Dark versions of Victor, Alice, and Smiler (mainly Alice, as per the title). And, as I'm still getting the next Chill Valicer Save update ready, I figured I'd share the results, in case any of you were interested/wanted some more CC to download! Here we go:
First up, we actually have something that I downloaded from someone’s lookbook post for their Alice Sim a little while ago (I'm afraid I don't remember whose at this point ^^;) – a conversion of Alice’s London dress from Alice: Madness Returns! As in, one Mimoto-Sims ripped this dress straight from the files of that game (along with a bunch of others) and turned it into an outfit in Sims 4! :D I’ve been looking for this for a while, and I’m quite pleased with it, though it is a little weirdly shiny – and if you think Alice suddenly looks a LOT thinner than usual in this dress, she is. Apparently I didn’t make my Sim Alice underweight enough! I think I prefer my Sims 4 version having a waist that doesn’t look like it could snap in half at any moment, though. XD
Okay, onto the CC I actually downloaded on Saturday, with Alice modeling the Ever Elegant Blouse v2 and the Rather Ravishing Skirt v2 from Gilded Ghost’s New Woman set! I ended up pairing these two together because, with the apron, I thought this made another good “maid” Alice outfit – though she looks like she’s working somewhere fancier than Houndsditch in this set, that’s for sure. (Now I’m tempted for her to somehow get her hands on a maid’s outfit from the Van Dort estate when her and Smiler’s attempt to return Victor to his parents ends up in them robbing them for being shitheads who don’t care about their son...) But it’s a nice look for her, and I am THRILLED that this and the other tops from that set worked with her necklace! :D Seriously, so many outfits hide that necklace, and given that it’s suppose to be her wearing Lizzie’s room key, I’d like it to be visible more often than not!
Case in point, the necklace is also visible in this outfit, which is Alice wearing the Jacket Jubilee top with the Perfectly Plain skirt from the New Woman set. This set I just thought looked nice on her, and made a nice – semi-formal? This feels fancier than casual, but not fancy enough to be formal. Like, maybe this is something she’d wear if the gang were heading to the Golden Plum for a nice dinner, or to a park for a trio date. That sort of thing. Not “fancy neighborhood” wear, but a step above hanging around the house.
By contrast, Alice is definitely not leaving the house in this outfit. XD This is dzifasims’s Bespoke Corset, paired with a plain Get Famous skirt that I thought looked like a shift or underskirt (I thought the corset CAME with one, but apparently I was mistaken). It’s nice to have a plainer corset that doesn’t look like it was bought for sex purposes, unlike the base game one. Though I do like the “bought for sex purposes” one too. XD Alice probably prefers this one, though – it’s more her style, and I think it makes good underwear for her.
Onto the masc stuff, with Smiler showing off pandorasimbox’s Azariah’s Sacksuit. I have mixed feelings on this – the basic shape of the suit is okay, and I liked pairing it with the bowler, but as per usual this suit did not have any of the right swatches I needed for Smiler. The problem is, people do a lot of muted colors for Victorian-style clothes, and even the ones that include brighter swatches tend not to do a lot of yellow. Meaning I often end up with poor Smiler wearing beige because that’s as close as I can get. *sigh* I mean, I do rather like the look on them – they kind of look like they’re auditioning for a Charlie Chaplin movie – but it’s gotta be BRIGHTER, you know? *sigh* I gotta learn how to recolor clothes... (Also, amusingly, the boots are actually from Moschino – they actually look Victorian enough when you cover up the tops with a long pant.)
Fortunately, while [LonelyBoy]’s TS4 Solardius Outfit doesn’t have a yellow swatch, it DOES have a black swatch with gold decorative details, and that I can work with – especially when paired with the High School Years shoes I love so much for Smiler in the “black with yellow stitching” swatch. :) Not sure how much I like the high collar on Smiler, but this is certainly not a bad look for them!
And it CERTAINLY isn’t a bad look for Victor, who suits that high collar much better. XD As you can see, Victor got the nice dark blue swatch with the red tie, which is kind of the inverse of his tie/vest color scheme in the movie. XD But it suits him, and again, this seems like a nice, semi-formal outfit he might wear for an outing with his partners where he wanted to look a little more put together. :)
And there you have it – me playing with my favorite trio like dolls again. XD What can I say, it’s fun to dress them up in new outfits! And these particular sessions help inform me of what I’d like my trio to wear in the Valicer In The Dark universe. Since, you know, I’m pretty well obsessed with that these days. XD So don’t @ me, downloading CC is writing research, okay? Okay. :p
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What did you think about Behlül’s relationships with Bihter and Nihal? Did he love either of them? Did either of them love him?
I think he did actually love both of them, but in his own way. He seems to have a tendency to have a great big romance that he quickly burns out and rinse and repeat with the next person he fancies.
As to whether he was loved, I'd say yes by both, but also in a limited way. I think he's kind of like the high school crush of a girl from a very small town, where the girl wants to date someone mostly because she thinks it's exciting at that age. And so her crush toward the guy develops more out of her daily life having a very limited pool of potential boyfriends, than out of any wow moment of attraction to that guy in particular.
For Bihter, I think she would have equally fallen for a different person who was young, handsome and charming, and consistently close at hand to observe.
But I don't know if she'd have slept with anyone who was not so casual as Behlül. His cheerful lack of morals and friendly persistence surely helped a bit to remove some mental barriers in her mind. With someone less happy-go-lucky, she'd maybe just have had lovesickness and stayed at that as a 'noble' kind of compromise between cheating and withering without experiencing real love.
There is a word I can't quite translate, 'prepustiti se' (to let yourself go, to abandon yourself to a feeling/situation, can be have positive or negative connotations), which I feel works for both Bihter and Nihal's feelings to Behlül.
They were first pursued by him and they seem to have almost purposefully convinced themselves into loving him. Both were lonely and desperate in different ways.
Bihter was in an unhappy marriage, I don't think I need to elaborate too much as she herself describes it all in a self-aware way in the novel.
As to Nihal, she was frankly somewhat neglected by her family. Yes, she's otherwise "spoiled", but they made huge decisions to remove her brother, and her governess, and her kitchen buddies, and didn't even tell her until the very moment it had already happened! Extremely frustrating and scary for such an already isolated girl. She lived from day to day not knowing who she could lose next, no wonder she got all emo.
So when the situation came that everyone was suddenly eager to marry her to a guy - one she already knew and trusted and casually bantered with - I think half of the appeal would be a young girl's physical attraction to Behlül as a man, but the other half would be the idea of finally keeping someone for herself (because her family couldn't very well decide to whoosh away her husband on a whim, lol). I can see why she'd accept the situation.
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