#i can’t fully explain why but it absolutely feels like misogyny

[gods-silliest-goose]

if i had a nickel for every time a recent piece of media turned a mother who lost her children into a villain who commits evil acts and demonizes her in a way that makes most audiences unsympathetic to her pain, id have two nickels, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice

[tyrannuspitch]

Jumping off @kidrat​ ’s recent post on JKR, British transphobia, and transphobia against transmasculine people, after getting a bit carried away and too long to add as a comment:

A major, relatively undiscussed event in JKR’s descent into full terfery was this tweet:

[image id: a screenshot of a tweet from JK Rowling reading: “’People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Rowling attaches a link to an article titled: “Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate” /end id]

This can seem like a pretty mundane TERF talking point, just quibbling over language for the sake of it, but I think it’s worth discussing, especially in combination with the idea that cis women like JKR see transmasculine transition as a threat to their womanhood. (Recite it with horror: ”If I were young now, I might’ve transitioned...”)

A lot of people, pro- or anti-transphobe, will make this discussion about whether the term “woman” should include trans women or not, and how cis women are hostile to the inclusion of trans women. And that’s absolutely true. But the actual language cis women target is very frequently being changed for the benefit of trans men, not trans women, and most of them know this.

Cis people are used to having their identities constantly reaffirmed and grounded in their bodies. A lot of cis women, specifically, understand their social and physical identities as women as being defined by pain: misogynistic oppression is equated to the pains of menstruation or childbirth, and both are seen as the domain of cis women. They’re something cis women can bond over and build a “sisterhood” around, and the more socially aware among them can recognise that cis women’s pain being taken less seriously by medicine is not unrelated to their oppression. However, in the absence of any trans perspectives, these conversations can also easily become very territorial and very bioessentialist.

Therefore... for many cis women, seeing “female bodies” described in gender neutral language feels like stripping their pain of its meaning, and they can become very defensive and angry.

And the consequences for transmasculine people can be extremely dangerous.

Not only do transmasculine people have an equal right to cis women to define our bodies as our own... Using inclusive language in healthcare is about more than just emotional validation.

The status quo in healthcare is already non-inclusive. When seeking medical help, trans people can expect to be misgendered and to have to explain how our bodies work to the doctors. We risk harassment, pressure to detransition, pressure to sterilise ourselves, or just being outright turned away. And the conversation around pregnancy and abortion in particular is heaving with cisnormativity - both feminist and anti-feminist cis women constantly talk about pregnancy as a quintessentially female experience which men could never understand.

Using gender-neutral language is the most basic step possible to try and make transmasculine people safer in healthcare, by removing the idea that these are “women’s spaces”, that men needing these services is impossible, and that safety depends on ideas like “we’re all women here”. Not institutionally subjecting us to misgendering and removing the excuse to outright deny us treatment is, again, one of the most basic steps that can be taken. It doesn’t mean we’re allowed comfort, dignity or full autonomy, just that one major threat is being addressed. The backlash against this from cis women is defending their poorly developed senses of self... at the cost of most basic dignity and safety for transmasculine people.

Ironically, though transphobic cis women feel like decoupling “women’s experiences” from womanhood is decoupling them from gendered oppression, transmasculine people experience even more marginalisation than cis women. Our rates of suicide and assault are even higher. Our health is even less researched than cis women’s. Our bodies are even more strictly controlled. Cis women wanting to define our bodies on their terms is a significant part of that. They hold the things we need hostage as “women’s rights”, “women’s health”, “women’s discussions” and “support for violence against women”, and demand we (re-)closet ourselves or lose all of their solidarity.

Fundamentally, the problem is that transphobic cis women are possessive over their experiences and anyone who shares them. Because of their binary understanding of gender, they’re uncomfortable with another group sharing many of their experiences but defining themselves differently. They’re uncomfortable with transmasculine people identifying “with the enemy” instead of “with their sisters”, and they’re even more uncomfortable with the idea that there are men in the world who they oppress, and not the other way around. “Oppression is for women; you can’t call yourself a man and still claim women’s experiences. Pregnancy is for women; if you want to be a man so badly why haven’t already you done something about having a woman’s body? How dare you abandon the sisterhood while inhabiting one of our bodies?”

Which brings me back to the TERF line about how “If I were young now, I might have transitioned.”

I’m not saying Rowling doesn’t actually feel any personal connection to that narrative - but it is a standard line, and it’s standard for a reason. Transphobic cis women really believe that there is nothing trans men go through that cis women don’t. They equate our dysphoria to internalised misogyny, eating disorders, sexual abuse or other things they see as “female trauma”. They equate our desire to transition to a desire to escape. They want to “help us accept ourselves” and “save us” from threats to their sense of identity. The fact is, this is all projection. They refuse to consider that we really have a different internal experience from them.

There’s also a marked tendency among less overtly transphobic cis women, even self-proclaimed trans allies, to make transphobia towards trans men about cis women.

Violence against trans men is chronically misreported and redefined as “violence against women”. In activist spaces, we’re frequently told that any trauma we have with misogyny is “misdirected” and therefore “not really about us”. If we were women, we would’ve been “experiencing misogyny”, but men can’t do that, so we should shut up and stop “talking over women”. (Despite the surface difference of whether they claim to affirm our gender, this is extremely similar to how TERFs tell us that everything we experience is “just misogyny”, but that transmasculine identity is a delusion that strips us of the ability to understand gender or the right to talk about it.)

I have personally witnessed an actual N*zi writing an article about how trans men are “destroying the white race” by transitioning and therefore becoming unfit to carry children, and because the N*zi had misgendered trans men in his article, every response I saw to it was about “men controlling women’s bodies”.

All a transphobe has to do is misgender us, and the conversation about our own oppression is once again about someone else.

Transphobes will misgender us as a form of violence, and cis feminist “allies” will perpetuate our misgendering for rhetorical convenience. Yes, there is room to analyse how trans men are treated by people who see us as women - but applying a simple “men oppressing women” dynamic that erases our maleness while refusing to even name transphobia or cissexism is not that. Trans men’s oppression is not identical to cis women’s, and forcing us to articulate it in ways that would include cis women in it means we cannot discuss the differences.

It may seem like I’ve strayed a long way from the original topic, and I kind of have, but the central reason for all of these things is the same:

Trans men challenge cis women’s self-concept. We force them to actually consider what manhood and womanhood are and to re-analyse their relationship to oppression, beyond a simple binary patriarchy. 

TERFs will tell you themselves that the acknowledgement of trans people, including trans men, is an “existential threat” that is “erasing womanhood” - not just our own, but cis women’s too. They hate the idea that biology doesn’t determine gender, and that gender does not have a strict binary relationship to oppression. They’re resentful of the idea that they could just “become men”, threatened by the assertion that doing so is not an escape, and completely indignant at the idea that their cis womanhood could give them any kind of power. They are, fundamentally, desperate not to have to face the questions we force them to consider, so they erase us, deflect from us, and talk over us at every opportunity.

Trans men are constantly redefined against our wills for the benefit of cis womanhood.

TL;DR:

Cis women find transmasculine identity threatening, because we share experiences that they see as foundational to their womanhood

The fact that transphobes target inclusive language in healthcare specifically is not a mistake - They do not want us to be able to transition safely

Cis women are uncomfortable acknowledging transphobia, so they make discussion of trans men’s oppression about “womanhood” instead

This can manifest as fully denying that trans men experience our own oppression, or as pretending trans men’s experiences are identical to cis women’s in every way

[hchollym]

If Rheagar was such a bad guy then why does most of westeros still think about him positively after the Rebellion?

This ended up being a long response, so I'm going to put a lot of it under the cut for length.

First of all, even if most of Westeros thought that Rhaegar was fantastic, that still wouldn’t mean that he actually was fantastic. Perception plays a huge role in politics, which is obvious from Sansa’s observation about Margaery and the Tyrells:

The smallfolk cheered them as well.

The same smallfolk who pulled me from my horse and would have killed me, if not for the Hound. Sansa had done nothing to make the commons hate her, no more than Margaery Tyrell had done to win their love.

Reality does not always equal perception, especially where the rich and powerful are concerned.

Second, there’s absolutely no evidence that most of Westeros thinks about Rhaegar positively. In fact, quite the opposite. The story that has been told across Westeros ever since Robert’s Rebellion is that Rhaegar kidnapped and raped Lyanna; that’s the story that Robert (as the new king) spreads, and it’s what most people believe, including children like Bran:

“Robert was betrothed to marry her, but Prince Rhaegar carried her off and raped her,” Bran explained. “Robert fought a war to win her back. He killed Rhaegar on the Trident with his hammer, but Lyanna died and he never got her back at all.”

That doesn’t sound too positive to me.

Third, it may seem like Rhaegar is viewed as mostly positive because of the POV trap. We only really get a few people’s outright opinions about Rhaegar (instead of vague or implied ones): Daenerys, Jorah, Ned, Bran, Barristan, Cersei, Jaime, Robert, and Jon Connington.

Of those, 2 of them (Bran and Robert) see Rhaegar negatively, 2 of them (Ned and Jaime) see him almost indifferently (I’ll talk about that later), and 5 of them (Daenerys, Jorah, Barristan, Cersei, and Jon Connington) see him positively. That seems like there is more good than bad, but you have to look at the context.

Daenerys certainly isn’t going to view her brother (that she never met but has heard tales about from Viserys) as a villain when she’s been told a very different story, and even if Jorah and Barristan didn't like Rhaegar, they would never tell Daenerys that. It’s also worth noting that Jorah traded slaves and Barristan was part of a Kingsguard which has seriously questionable morals, so I can’t say that I hold either of their opinions in high regards.

Jon Connington thinks of Rhaegar in a positive light because he was in love with him, but ironically enough, he barely knew him. That's obvious from the fact that he was more jealous of Elia’s relationship with Rhaegar than Lyanna’s, which would make no sense if he truly knew what transpired and what Rhaegar was thinking.

Cersei thinks of Rhaegar positively because Rhaegar is to her what Lyanna is to Robert – a fantasy of what could have been that serves as an escape from the awful reality. Robert has abused Cersei countless times, and she’s understandably unhappy with him. She didn’t even know Rhaegar, but she deludes herself into thinking that her life would have been better if she had married him:

If she had only married Rhaegar as the gods intended, he would never have looked twice at the wolf girl. Rhaegar would be our king today and I would be his queen, the mother of his sons.

This is just like the way Robert deludes himself into thinking that he would be happy if he married Lyanna. Neither of these ideas are based in reality.

There’s also an unrealistic perception of royalty that comes into play. Look at what happens to Cersei:

Cersei was soiled goods now, her power at an end. Every baker's boy and beggar in the city had seen her in her shame and every tart and tanner from Flea Bottom to Pisswater Bend had gazed upon her nakedness, their eager eyes crawling over her breasts and belly and woman's parts. No queen could expect to rule again after that. In gold and silk and emeralds Cersei had been a queen, the next thing to a goddess; naked, she was only human, an aging woman with stretch marks on her belly and teats that had begun to sag … as the shrews in the crowds had been glad to point out to their husbands and lovers.

The perception (as opposed to the reality) is what really sets the royal family apart, and Rhaegar certainly had an advantage in that regard: he was a handsome and intelligent prince and a talented jouster and swordsman. On paper, that sounds great, so for people who didn’t really know him (like Cersei and Jon), what’s not to love?

Also, compare that to Aerys (who was growing increasingly paranoid and delusional and even looked like he was going mad by refusing to cut his hair or nails) & Robert (who was an abusive, angry drunk). To people like Barristan, Rhaegar seemed like the lesser of all evils (though the bar is certainly set very low).

Now think about the two people who view Rhaegar almost indifferently: Jaime and Ned. With Jaime, I say it’s indifferent because his memories and thoughts about Rhaegar aren’t really based on his opinion about him; they are more about his guilt at failing to protect Rhaegar’s children, which I think he realistically would have felt regardless of how he felt about the prince. It’s no secret that Jaime hates Robert, but he doesn’t seem to particularly love Rhaegar either. He mostly just gives facts about him that are tainted by his youth and his guilt.

Ned’s opinion is what people usually point to as an excuse for Rhaegar “not being so bad” because if Ned doesn’t hate him, then surely he must not have been so awful 🙄 The irony of that is that Ned had a much greater opinion of Robert than he deserved (at first), but that certainly doesn’t mean that Robert was a saint. And he mostly just remembers facts about Rhaegar; the only “positive” thing he thinks is this:

There was no answer Ned Stark could give to that but a frown. For the first time in years, he found himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen. He wondered if Rhaegar had frequented brothels; somehow he thought not.

If not frequenting brothels is the standard for being a great person, then his expectations are far too low.

I also think this is rooted in Ned’s misogyny. Even though Ned doesn’t think poorly of Lyanna (which he shouldn’t), he knows that she went with Rhaegar willingly, and because of that, he doesn’t seem to fault Rhaegar for the power imbalance as much as he should.

Since he doesn't think of Rhaegar as a rapist, that implies that he seems to just accept that this was a bad decision that Rhaegar and Lyanna made together that had domino effects. It's not as bad as some characters thinking that Lyanna “seduced” Rhaegar, but it still doesn't put the blame fully where it belongs (by acknowledging that Lyanna was still a child who Rhaegar took advantage of).

Ned clearly still loved Lyanna dearly, but I do think he didn’t understand her decision to run away with Rhaegar in the first place, and part of that is because his views about Robert didn't match up with hers (which was obvious when he assured her that Robert was a good man who was true and would love her with all his heart). Even though he told Robert that he didn’t see the iron underneath Lyanna’s beauty, he still somehow thinks that Robert loved her truly:

Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to have been his bride.

That’s one of the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read, and yet somehow Ned believes that. By the time he starts thinking about Rhaegar again, he’s finally seeing Robert more clearly, and because of that, he’s finally beginning to think about/understand why Lyanna made the decision that she did. So I personally think that Ned's thoughts about Rhaegar (above) have more to do with Lyanna than the prince.

This became way longer than I intended, and I feel like I went off on a few tangents (sorry), but to sum it up: Not everyone views Rhaegar positively, and even if they did, it doesn’t make him a good person. He left his wife and children to kidnap a girl that was still a child, locked said girl in a tower without access to her family while she was pregnant, and set into motion a war that killed so many innocent people. I don’t care how many people “liked” him in the books; Rhaegar was still a jerk.

[apencilandpen]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few weeks, but like when someone asks me why/what I like about kpop my brain kind of fizzles out because depending on the person and/or the situation I have to tailor the answer. Because it’s so hard to concisely explain exactly how it as a genre encompasses and mixes together everything I’ve ever loved about the arts - music, dance, storytelling, make up, fashion, sincerity, passion.

It’s hard to explain to my aunts that I am absolutely enthralled by the choreography these groups and songs have and that it makes me want to start dancing again. I can’t explain how I’ve never really consistently seen performances like this from artists I’m familiar with, especially male pop artists, and it’s like a breath of fresh air. I don’t know how to say that I’ve rarely seen styling or fashion like the kinds of things they wear, onstage and off, and that it makes me want to be more adventurous and intentional with how I dress (and yes I know that there are stylists for everything but the point stands). I don’t know how to explain how fun and cool it is for someone who loves movies that the music videos are storylines that often connect, and that they use storytelling as a vehicle for the themes and ideas they’re conveying in their music. It’s hard to articulate how much I enjoy being overwhelmed by the depth of sound that goes into the production of this music. 

I never have the words ready to explain that the fact that I know the members of these groups learn English - a fucking hard language - for interviews and fan meets and tours has made me want to at least try and learn how to sing their songs in their language, and how that has made me try something new and challenging on my own for the first time in a very long time. It takes too long to talk about how much I admire and respect the incredibly hard work the members of these groups put in all the time in order to be really good at what they do. It’s hard to explain that yes I think the members of the groups I like are handsome or pretty or whatever, but I love that when they perform they look like they’re supposed to be there, they look like they’re living their dream, they look happy. It takes too much energy to explain that I’ve thought of every insidious, “mean girl” reason not to like them and have been wrestling with my internalized misogyny almost every day because of this, because I refuse to be “not like other girls” anymore. I can’t concisely articulate how I got into kpop when I was the least satisfied with my life and questioning who I was/wanted to be as a person and felt the most disconnected from the people around me, a point that I’m still working through, and it was something new and interesting and different and wholly mine. It’s so hard to explain to someone who doesn’t already know it how listening to Magic Shop or One Day At A Time or Mikrokosmos or Turbulence or Love Myself feels like the group is taking your hands and saying “you don’t have to analyze this. you don’t have to guess. you don’t have to make this fit. we did this on purpose. we wrote and perform this for you, on purpose, because we appreciate you and care about you and want you to be able to care about and for yourself.” I don’t know how to explain that sometimes, it’s not about the music or the videos or the content, it’s about knowing that there are other people who care about this as much as you do, it’s about knowing that music with intention and purpose transcends language because you know what the song is about without fully understanding what the lyrics actually say. 

Hell, I can barely say any of this to my friends who do get it, let alone having the time and precision and emotional control to someone who doesn’t. With the latter, what comes out is “I just think it’s cool and fun!” And if whoever asked does get it, it’s still hard to explain, and it’s so much easier to just say “I love them.” I know that they’ll understand.

[jebazzled]

SOOO the Drama: Making it Work with Tragic Backstories

Hi everyone, how are we doing? It’s been a while since my last unsolicited tutorial. Is everyone eating well? Is everyone drinking water? Dressing warmly if it’s cold wherever you live? 

Today we’ll be talking about tragic backstories, and how to use them rather than abuse them. 

This tutorial will mention a number of triggers, though not with great detail - more in the interest of providing context. 

Specific triggers mentioned: abandonment, verbal abuse, child neglect, car accident, transphobia, animal death, cheating, bullying, parental death

In the rp community we often joke about loving to put our characters through hell - about really running them ragged - making ourselves weepy. For a lot of us, writing Heavy Emotional Content is a lot more fun than fluff, or characters who are happy, fulfilled, and well-adjusted. I’m literally planning to kill off one of my characters in the next couple of weeks. I get it. 

But there’s also a fair amount of discourse in the rp community about what is pejoratively called “trauma porn.” It’s discourse that is warranted! Because while we love fictional drama, the truth is that sometimes...

well, sometimes it can be too much, can’t it? 

Here’s the thing about trauma: a tragic backstory does not a well-developed character make. Too often, too many of us lean on these traumatic histories as a crutch towards building a character, without meaningfully exploring that trauma with any depth. The truth is, in fiction, tragedy only builds character when when you do. And tragedy is far from the only way to create a nuanced character. 

In this tutorial, we will examine common approaches to character backstories, alternatives to tragedy-as-a-default, and figure out how to have your cake (the feels) and eat it too (with purpose.)

BUILD-A-BACKSTORY

In my experience, the most common approach to writing a freestyle application is writing a chronological history (you can read my app guides, including thots on alternative styles of freestyle, here). Ain’t nothing wrong with that! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! 

It’s an approach that makes sense, as it forces you to fill in the blanks to answer the question: why is my character Like That? And often, as writers, our first instinct is to provide the saddest answer possible.

“Why is Susie so clingy?” 

Her parents abandoned her at a fire station when she was an infant, and rather than being raised in foster care, she grew up at the fire station. But the entire company that raised her died while fighting a wildfire, and she is certain that any time anyone walks away from her, they will never come back. 

“Why is Brent such a misogynist?” 

His mother never wanted him and told him so every day of his youth. When he hit puberty, she stopped speaking to him entirely, and the day he turned eighteen, she changed the locks while he was at school. 

“Why is Lichen such a high-achieving go-getter?” 

Lichen was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning they break their legs, and every afternoon they break their arms. At night, they lie awake in agony until their heart attacks put them to sleep.

Feels like a lot, doesn’t it? I may have done a little exaggeration, but - not a lot, frankly. 

Especially if other characters on a site are loaded with tragic histories, it can be hard not to equate a certificate from the school of hard knocks with a Pulitzer. You want something juicy to write about, yes? And this is all so juicy! 

But here’s the rub: often, these histories will never come up again outside of an application, or will not be practically dev’d out beyond shock value. Susie will never be reminded of Frank, the fireman who taught her to ride a bike. Brent will focus his sexist comments on objectifying women’s bodies rather than degrading their personalities and motives, which were the issues with his mother. Someone who didn’t read Lichen’s app would have no clue that they have had a total horror show of a life. 

If you are writing a tragic backstory that doesn’t have a continual impact on your character, you are writing trauma porn, and it is doing nothing for your character. 

This doesn’t mean that your characters should be fully and constantly occupied with memories of their trauma - in fact, constant introspection is an easy way to stall threads (per my “why aren’t people writing with me?” guide here) - but it does mean that if your answer to the question, “why is my character Like That” is a compelling one, it is one that a reader should be able to answer even if they haven’t read your app, if they’ve read a few of your threads or other writing. 

This is a careful balance, of course, but think of your characters the way you think of yourself! For example: probably the most Potentially Dramatic thing about my personal life is that my older sister is developmentally disabled, and I am one of her legal guardians. When my parents die, I will inherit my older sister, and will uproot my life from wherever I am living at the time to move back to my hometown and make sure she is taken care of and happy. This is not something that I constantly think about, but it is difficult to know me for any meaningful length of time and not be aware that I have a developmentally disabled sister, as I mention her in passing, think about her when her favorite music comes up on Spotify, and tell people to donate to her favorite charity, Special Olympics. 

If I were writing an app of myself as a character and spent a good portion of the app untangling my relationship with my sister, and then never mentioned her in any of my thread posts, then is she really important to my character? Or was I flexing her for depth?

Do you see what I am getting at here? If it matters, it will come up more than once. If it only comes up once, and it’s in your app, you should think of something to explain your character’s personality and motivations that is perhas a little less loaded. 

BUT WITHOUT THE SADS, HOW DO?

The good news is: you absolutely do not need a tragic backstory to write a nuanced character! Again - think of your characters the way you think of yourself, or of other real people. While everyone has gone through heavy things in their lives from time to time, chances are that your life does not resemble that of a soap opera protagonist. And aren’t you a multifaceted person, full of depth and life? Aren’t you someone whose story is worth telling, even if it feels like your life is pretty ordinary? 

After all, it’s not the past that makes a character - it’s the present, their current voice, actions, and missteps. That is where you want the real juice to be, because that is the shit you’re writing! 

Some potential “everyday histories” for our above cast of characters:

“Why is Susie so clingy?”

In elementary and middle school, Susie was bullied on and off - a few weeks spent hanging out with the in-crowd, followed by a month as a social pariah. She could never understand why. When she moved to a different state for high school, she attached herself like a barnacle to the clique the Tulips, and has made it her goal not to let herself get shaken back to the outskirts this time. 

This isn’t as dramatic as Susie’s earlier backstory - in fact, it could apply to any number of people, being passed between friend groups for years on end. But again: your character doesn’t need a one-of-a-kind daytime talk show-worthy backstory to have a unique and compelling history and voice! 

“Why is Brent such a misogynist?”

Brent’s mother never wanted children, and made it pretty clear to him throughout his youth. His father, though, as always there for him - including when his mother walked out and never came back, after cheating on Mr. Brent’s Dad for years. From then on, Brent and his dad only had each other - and their bitterness towards the woman who wronged them.

This still gives you some family drama - unloving mother, and some adultery - but having Brent be raised by someone who has their own beef with women eliminates the shock value of locking your son out merely for being a boy. Also, this take acknowledges misogyny as a learned behavior.

“Why is Lichen such a high-achieving go-getter?”

When their parents divorced, Lichen only came out to their mother as nonbinary, and presents a fully different persona when they are with their father. Being in the top 5% of their high school class and being a national champion Lincoln-Douglas debater is the only thing Lichen and (deadname) have in common. 

I acknowledge that Lichen’s previous story was a meme. The above story could be made much more intense (for example, if Lichen’s father were a member of the Westboro Baptist Church and then Lichen’s supportive mother dies in a freak accident and Lichen, unable to hide their true identity, is imprisoned in their father’s basement until they pretend to have seen the error of their ways and identify as cis again) but the above gives plenty to chew on! 

While drama and trauma can be satisfying to write, there is plenty of drama to be found in the everyday. Building a well-rounded character is much less about what happened to them and much more about what they are doing, thinking, and feeling now. 

That said, 

TIPS & TRICKS FOR WRITING TRAGIQUE CHARACTERS

Don’t go overboard. If it is not going to come up ever again after the app: leave it out. 

Impact is about the character, not the reader. If it was important enough to leave in the app, it should have an identifiable impact on your character. The main purpose cannot have been to shock the reader. 

It’s not meaningful JUST because it happened. If someone can follow your character’s story for any extended amount of time and not realize that, say, your character’s mother died in a boating accident, then it isn’t actually important that your character’s mother died in a boating accident, and you should let her live. 

If ALL of your characters have a heavily dramatic backstory, ALL of your heavily dramatic backstories lose their meaning. Dramatic backstories are fun but they should not be a constant: they will begin to feel cheap and lazy. 

Your character does not need to dwell on their tragic backstory! While a character should acknowledge their history, a character does not need to realize that their backstory is meant to be tragic. For example, Sally might have been raised by her Aunt Agatha after her parents disappeared in a hot air balloon when she was a baby. Rather than being sad about her missing parents, Sally might think of them as total strangers and of Agatha as her sole parental figure - and her sadness might be for Agatha, who does miss Mr. and Ms. Pumpernickel. 

And that’s literally all she wrote! I hope you find this helpful when you’re writing your characters - tragic or otherwise - and developing their plotlines. The world is not made of trauma and fluff alone, friends. Go forth and contain multitudes!

[angelmichelangelo]

there are a lot more problems that just the lesbian jokes. for example, his casual racism where he makes jokes about being mexican, asian eyes, and uses a stereotypical indian accents. he also has problems with misogyny, like talking down to his female audience and taking his channel more seriously bc it had larger male audience compared to the gaming channel and phils channel.

again, like i’ve said before: i can’t acccept an apology for dan when it isn’t aimed at me. i am fully aware of that and i’m not trying to sit here and tell everyone that dan’s an angel and never done anything wrong in his life because that would be a lie.

dan did make those jokes. they were awful and bad and not good at all and harmful.

dan also removed those videos with an explanation as to why. he told us that he no longer believes it’s a reflection as to who he is anymore, and no longer wanted them on his channel for people to watch and think that this was the kind of person he still is, because he isn’t.

dan has changed since then, big time. if you think dan is a lesphobe or a racist, then you haven’t been paying attention to the dan that exists today. dan said shitty things, i am aware of that! i can see that and i know that it can be harmful to those people, but dan took those videos down and explained why it was bad, why he had changed since then. i’m sorry but if we keep “”cancelling”” people over mistakes made over 10 years ago, then it proves that people are taking into account to the type of person dan is today.

and as for the misogyny, i’m afraid i don’t know what you’re talking about? either i haven’t seen what he’s said before about “talking down his female audience” but i know today dan absolutely does not do that.

once again: actions speak louder than words.

dan did a shit thing, he hurt people and that’s okay to feel hurt at what he said. but dan apologised, removed the videos because he disagreed with the messages they sent out, and has clearly changed and become a better person.

[bemused-writer]

One of the reasons why I adore Jun Mochizuki's works is because her villains create very great conflicts. In Pandora Hearts, I couldn't bring myself to hate Jack because he was such a well-written sociopath. Manipulative and ruthless, but also charming in an odd way. The greatest twist villain I have ever seen in media too. As for you, what do you think of Jun Mochizuki's villains and which are your favorites?

I could never bring myself to hate Jack either. He is … an atrocious person, but I can’t help but pity him to a certain degree. He was charming, mad, and a complete mystery to himself. Everyone else may have wondered why Jack did what he did, but I think the most confused person was Jack himself. Sure, he said it was for Lacie, but I think deep down even he knew that was an excuse.

Anyhoo, I generally like Mochizuki’s villains. Isla Yura was kind of… yeah. I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of that one. I have a feeling he is some kind of stereotype, but words are failing me at the moment. My feelings toward Isla Yura are similar to my feelings for Dr. Moreau, although I have a much more visceral reaction to Moreau. I kind of hate that guy. XD

But hating a villain is sort of the point a lot of times, so let’s talk a bit more about the obvious villains Mochizuki has written (excluding Jack since we just did), starting with Pandora Hearts.

Leo was pretty great because he was sort of more of an antihero and that only happened later in the series after a long list of bad things happened. He was in mourning and he felt he was out of options and he ultimately came around. So, he’s not really a “proper” villain because he never had genuine villainous intentions and he redeemed himself.

A better example of a villain in PH is Vincent and you can still make a solid argument for him being more of an antihero. Everything he did was for his brother, the one person he cared about to the point where you could easily argue his feelings were probably a bit incestuous based off his behavior alone, but he did bucketloads of awful things even ignoring his unhealthy attachment to Gilbert. Sure, it was largely stemming from trauma caused by Miranda (which probably explains some of the misogyny), but still. He somewhat redeems himself later on with both Gilbert and Ada, thus giving him a full arc. Vincent is perfectly balanced between being likeable and absolutely despicable and is therefore a good villain.

Both of these characters have a lot of depth; you can’t quite hate them, but you can’t fully agree with what they’re doing either. I think Mochizuki did a good job in PH.

Now let’s get to VNC. Ruthven is the most obvious villain at the moment, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he becomes something of an antihero…

I’ll be honest, though. I’m not sure I want to see Ruthven be an antihero. He’s committed some genuine atrocities, and I would very much like to see him answer for those crimes. To date, he seems to be attempting to reignite a war, he’s working with Charlatan and the Church, tried to kill Chloé to cover up a conspiracy, he assaulted Noé, and he holds both Noé and Jeanne under his sway (they’re both basically sleeper agents at this point…). We’re only seven volumes in and this guy is wracking up quite an evil count.

Still, he also took Jeanne in when no one else would, he spared Noé when he didn’t have to, and he was the one who stopped the vampire/human war in the first place. He also seems to be under the sway of Charlatan, so he might be a curse bearer that’s had his will stripped away, thus making him a victim like everyone else. None of that excuses the bad he’s done even remotely, but it does add way more nuance.

In short, Ruthven is a good villain.

So, how about Teacher? We don’t know nearly enough about him to make a good assessment, but I’ll give you my current interpretation of the character: Teacher is a chess master, and quite possibly the ultimate big bad in this series. He has no real attachment to anyone; he’s the definitive Yagami Light: he’s doing everything because he’s bored and curious and he wants to see what will happen if he pushes variables just right.

To date, he took Louis in when his family didn’t want him and then proceeded to use him as an experiment for the kid’s entire life to see “how he would react.” He also killed him in front of Noé when the experiment reached its conclusion.

He went to the black market, bought Noé off of it, told him to call him “Teacher” instead of “Master” and then raised him as his own. That almost sounds like a good deed until you then remember he has also kept a great deal of knowledge away from Noé, thus keeping him ignorant of many basic things in society that really would have come in handy. He spent all his time training him to fight and use the world formula, was apparently a difficult trainer, and then sent him off into the world on his own without any really useful knowledge to investigate The Book of Vanitas.

As if all of that wasn’t suspicious enough, he appears to be watching Noé through Murr, so he knows all of the heinous things happening to Noé and has literally done nothing to prevent any of it; he’s just watching.

Noé is Teacher’s puppet and he doesn’t even know it. He’s genuinely fond of him as a mentor and would do anything for him without question. It’s truly insidious.

So, yeah, Teacher is a great villain, but I think we’re all going to be furious with him by the end of the series. The real question is whether we’ll see any redeeming features to the guy. Does he have any good reasons for doing any of this? Who knows! The fact that we can’t see his facial features reminds me of Xai Vessalius, and I don’t think that guy did anything to redeem himself whatsoever, so, you know.

Uh, but as far as who my favorite villains in Mochizuki’s works are? Probably Jack. XD He’s such a scumbag, but a sympathetic one, and the twists surrounding him were both a lot of fun and utterly devastating. Still, VNC isn’t over yet, so there’s plenty of time to see if that opinion changes!

[missaudreyhorney]

Misogyny In Fanfiction

Two days ago, I read a tweet that said most of fanfic is misogynistic, one of the reasons being the “outright erasure of women”.  I’ve been thinking about it ever since because it really got on my nerves as someone who’s been into fanfiction starting when I was 11/12 years old. This is by no means my comprehensive thoughts on the issue, this is just a rant.

I don’t feel completely comfortable calling myself a woman for a couple of reasons, but fuck, I feel much more seen and represented in the fanfic community than I do in most any other online spaces. I understand that we often perpetuate sexist stereotypes and ideals, which I’ll get into in a minute, but what it is about fanfic that this person views as erasing women? Most fic writers are women, most fic readers are women. Women really pioneered this whole thing because they loved Star Trek so much and wanted to write about the characters. I can’t think of any other form of media/content where we’re allowed to fully express ourselves in any way that we want.

I will admit it can seem misogynistic at face value, especially as the person mentioned “abusive/stalker themes”, but I think it goes so much deeper than that. Jenny Nicholson has a video talking about 1D fics on Wattpad and I haven’t seen it in a while but at least one of the stories involves the members of the group kidnapping someone. Does this person condone kidnapping? No. Does this person actually want to be kidnapped? No. Does this person have an odd fantasy that they use as a form of escapism and wrote about it to share with other people? Yes, absolutely.

To me, there’s a huge difference between a male novelist writing a female character as meek, mild, and wanting a gruff older man to ravage her, and me as a fanfic writer creating a female character based on myself who is meek, mild, and wants a gruff older man to ravage her. There are similar elements, sure, but this is what I want. This is my sexual agency, this is written from my perspective. I have written a blowjob scene where it explicitly says that Reader moans not because she thinks the man will like it, but because she’s enjoying herself so much while doing it. 

If I want to write a story about Reader being spanked and called a slut, can y’all just let me do that without policing my fantasies and what ideas turn me on? Can you do that not only for me but for all other women and queer people? Can we have just one place where we can say whatever we want without having to explain ourselves or apologize? I understand why there’s a need to analyze the reasons that we like these particular things but this is on us as individuals to figure out. It is not society’s responsibility to shame me for listening to Lana Del Rey while fantasizing about being roughed up by a man 15 years my senior. 

[mom-of-today]

Hard Talks

Happy Friday/Saturday/Fourth of July, friends and followers!  I was listening to one of my classic podcasts and they were talking about the horrible misogyny that exists within politics. The way the women were questioned more harshly than the men, forced to take more hard-line directions, not allowed to get away with the generic, broad strokes, that their male counterparts were expected to give. They had to give solid answers, were judged not just on their words, but also on their attire. They could not look too “old” but they also could not dress too “young” and the conversations were often not about what they said, but how they seemed to “behave” on screen, and to their male counterparts.  It made me consider the conversations we have had in our household in the last couple of months. We want to raise well-rounded young boys who don’t grow up to hate themselves, with suppressed emotions they are never allowed to express among other things. But as we are also white, cis-gendered, heterosexual individuals we have had to explain concepts that are foreign to us.  Our oldest son was very concerned about the concept of gay marriage, and the ability of two boys to get married. He thinks mostly from his own perspective because, of course he does, he’s eight, so he was mostly thinking about boys. And when I say he was “concerned” I mean he was concerned that two men could not get married because they were two men, rather than the idea of two men getting married was somehow a gross concept to him. As two straight people, how do you explain that of course two people should be allowed to get married if they love each other? Regardless if those two people are of the same gender.  Openly we have had these conversations regarding gender-norms and what other people might expect of them, but also that we just want them to live their very best lives and be happy. That is our only expectation. So when my son wants to paint his room a shade of reddish-pink we say “Absolutely!” and paint his room that color. When he gravitates towards the pink end of the red spectrum we support him. Our middle child is much more of a typical “boy” in that we have never had these questions from him, and he has always gravitated towards “boy” things. Just to be clear, it isn’t that I’m leaving him out of this conversation, he just fits what most people consider to be “gender normative” and therefore he has never pushed the limits of social acceptability when it comes to norms (at least not in that way, but that’s another post all together).  Despite our best efforts to help him understand, it’s a tricky conversation to navigate without telling the whole story. And without having many real-life representations. Neither my husband or I have a huge social group; I moved around so often that I never become any good at keeping in touch with people (and before the internet and cell phones you had to actually call people, gross), and my husband moved a couple hundred miles away from his family/friends, became more liberal and lost many of this childhood friends. Since he isn’t the most social person, making new friends has always been more of a struggle for him, but I find that I struggle to make friends because I’m awkward af in real life. So while I know people in my personal life that are members of the LGBTQIA+ community, we have lost touch over the years and don’t see much of each other now.  So how do you explain to your children about social constructs that you yourself have no experience with? How do you do this justice without trying to sound like apologist?  With all the protests going on in the country, we have also had to discuss what BLM stands for, why they are protesting, and why it’s a good thing. While we might have issue with the destruction of property on some level, we also understand that no real change has ever been achieved through passivity. So we have had to have these conversations with our children about race.  Did I mention that we are white. I mean look at me! I am almost as white as it gets out here, and talking about the unfair treatment of BIPOC members of our community feels awkward. Possibly because it isn’t a habit, because it isn’t part of our daily conversations, because I have never really had these conversations myself with anyone and wouldn’t even know where to begin.  Over the last several months I have attempted to educate myself, and it’s been eye opening, but I can’t exactly sit my children down with a book about how to be a better ally that was designed for an adult. So we have just been encouraging them to understand that this is important, that there are people who are not treated fairly because of the color of their skin, and that they get judged no matter what choices they make in their life. That their lives are in danger just for existing.  Attending public schools in which they have been in many diverse classrooms, they, quite honestly, do not understand what I even mean when we have these conversations. They look at me and say “But that doesn't matter, mom, everyone is important.” And they aren’t wrong. They don’t quite understand why people would judge anyone based on the color of their skin, and I don’t either. Not that I have not been guilty of micro aggressions against the BIPOC community in my life, because I most certainly have (but again, not the time for that post here), but in my adult life I have actively tried to be better and not judge anyone, but definitely not BIPOC, just because they present themselves in a certain way. Forcing myself to learn about their actual lives, their systematic oppression and all the big, and small, ways in which we force them into certain lives I understand why racism and white supremacy is such an issue.  Explain that to an eight and six year old. Teach them 31 years of life experience in one conversation, or one million, why these members of our community are suffering and so, so angry. You can’t. You can try, but they will never fully appreciate a lifetime of experience. They are too young to sit through a movie they don’t find all that interesting, let alone an entire conversation that is too “adult” for them. But we try, and we make connections, and we buy (or are planning on buying) books to help them engage with the BIPOC community in a way that is more child-friendly, but also doesn’t minimize the damage that white people have caused. Do we want them to feel guilty? No, not really. They can’t help it. But we want them to be allies to people who have had no choice, and limited voice, in what happens to them. We want them to love, and be loved, and we want them to never think that a black man running in their neighborhood is threatening, intimidating, or something to be suspicious of. We want them to think critically of the world they live in, and we want them to be mindful of the people who live in it with them. To care more about ALL people, but especially those of the BIPOC community and the LGBTQIA+ who do not have the same opportunity to speak up and stand up.  Love is stronger than fear, than hate, than violence and we will try to do so much better raising this generation. I just hope we’re doing enough. If you have any solid books you recommend for children, let me know! I am always open for better book ideas to help my children understand complex social issues.  hugs and love.

[bellamygateoldblog]

there's a new ask game going around! what are your fav ships of the decade?!

: I’m picky about ships, I’ll be honest. I do enjoy a great many, but it takes a lot to leave an impression. To have found their way onto this list (of possibly the highest regard) these each have that something special. They’ve made my heart do things, made me pause scenes to compose myself, made me wanna bang my head against a wall, etc.

SO I only have a handful to offer here, but I appreciate you giving me this oppurtunity to fawn over these royal pairings.

Chuck and Blair | Gossip Girl

My most recent devistation, the freshest pick from the list. The scene that marked the very beginnings of their romantic relationship caught me totally by surprise, but most definitely sparked an intriuge deep inside me. Two wrongs make a twisted right.

They’re just so entertaining to me. They’re passionate, sexy and intense, but often have extremely sweet and emotional scenes, domestic-like moments, banter, and they work towards, against, and with the other in an always-twisting partnership.

MMm the way their relationship changes, grows and expands, how it thrives and suffers under different physical conditions but also due to the ever-changing internal emotional climate of each character involved is *chef’s kiss* delicious. Emotionally they’re rarely in the same place at the same time, but when they are there’s a balance and calm. They’re incredibly complicated and yet shockingly simple at the same time. It kept me on my toes. It annoyed me. They’re two characters with deeply-rooted issues and challenges, flaws that need to be dissected, an understanding of themselves and of the world that needs to be reached before they can fully and wholely be brought together as two people rather than two incomplete ideas. I just find there to be so much content to them. They could never be boring. They come back home. To each other, every time. And regardless of however much they still need to work on themselves, they love the other, still, intensely, and sometimes to a harmful degree. And I do also.

There’s so much allure in their chemistry, and they evolve so much throughout the show they’re basically unrecognisable by the end, as people and partners. In this show these characters were ‘falling in love’ with a new person or back in love with an ex every 3-5 working days, but Chuck and Blair, they were a constant. Of course I clinged to it when everything else is so uncertain and fleeting. I find both of these characters to be the most facinating, nuanced characters on the entire show*- throw these two at each other and there’s fireworks in good and not so good very bad ways. I think it’s quite clear why i’d become consumed with such a ship.

*for the sake of my own sanity I choose to ignore the clumsy and irresponsible retcon of Blair’s character somewhere at the end of season four, which was worsened and complicated further in five… i mean GG season five gave me the same ugly feeling as T100 season six. Blair and Bellamy were both major casualities…sometimes denial is your best friend.

Nick and Sabrina | tcaos

These two. The absolute JOY i feel when i think of them…i can’t even explain it. During part one I was indifferent towards the pair- I found them vaguely intriguing mostly because Harvey/Sabrina was a snooze-fest and I found Nick to be a lot spicier and more compelling as a character- but come part two and cue me *falling in love* in the most unexpected ways. Now I’m attached and fully prepared to have my heart broken.

In my experience, the best ships are those that come out of nowhere and sweep you off your feet. Suddenly you’re anticipating more content of them together, and without ever having a hand in it at all you found a new love. This is them. Nick is so gentle with and about Sabrina, completely defying everything it means to be a ‘bad boy’ type in the process, as is she with him.

SO going on a tangent but it’s eventually relevant- to my delight, the writers have avoided falling into The Good Protagonist hole with Sabrina. She’s got flaws. A lot. She fucks up. A lot. She’s special, it’s at the core of her character, but she’s not placed upon a narrative pedestal. Which means she doesn’t come across as being more than him at any point. And, while a lot of writing of f/m couples have remnants of misogyny, whether intentional or not, it’s like…completely absent here. Which means he doesn’t ever come across as more than her, either! He’s written as protective without treating her like a delicate passive in her own life. He’s shown valuing her needs and supporting her ambitions rather than challenging or questioning them. They are equals in every sense of the word and that makes them so easy to root for. He goes to the bottom of the ocean for her- just in the middle of an episode, it’s no biggie, he’s just- “hey babe” when he gets back. And they are both prepared to walk into literal hell for eachother.

There’s such a deep respect between them, emotional vulnerability and expression, there’s communication, there’s supporting and belonging. SHE TAUGHT HIM HOW TO LOVE. They are so well matched and at no point did I feel like there was something missing in them. UGH part three cannot come soon enough- i’m all like: *FRAGILE, please handle with care*.

Eliott and Lucas | Skam France

Evak, and any variation of them, needs no explanation as to why it’s so iconic. It just is. I can’t put a finger on what exactly it is about them I’m so fond of, i’ve never been able to, but they give me heart ache. I think these two might be my favourite version of Isak and Even as characters so, naturally, so is their relationship. I cherish the ships that have a certain intensity to them. And I’m a romantic. I choose Elu.

Will and Mike | Stranger Things

This is the softest ship I’ve ever had. My liking of it developed so subtly that I didn’t even notice it until…well, now. From season three. I’m not as giddy for this one as I am for the others on this list, but they popped into my head when I read the question so that‘s a sign I probably subconsiously wanna include them.

The friendship between Will and Mike is just so pure and sweet, and as much as i adore their dynamic exactly as it is, taking this into romantic territory could actually work and I might be surprised by it, but I also wouldn’t be surprised at all. There’s just something about the way Mike is with Will that I love so much. Mike is the one there to comfort him whenever something goes wrong, Mike is his best friend. Despite them both belonging to a group with two other boys they seem closest. And if the implications of Will’s sexuality do eventually lead to him being canonically gay, i say why not? Why not go there? Let’s add another one to the Finn Wolfhard gay character cinematic universe.

[tearlessrain]

so this turned into Scorpion King: Book of Souls Liveblog Part 1, because I got started late. witness a bunch of people trying to make one man’s considerable hotness singlehandedly carry an entire hour and a half long movie with very limited success under the cut.

I do want to state right up front that there’s only one reason I’m watching this and that reason is that for some reason zach mcgowan is the protagonist, so I’m not really up to date on the whole mummy/scorpion king franchise, the last one I saw was the one with all the jackal dudes and that was a while ago. so I have no idea what’s going on.

oh good they’re just going to town with the exposition, very thoughtful

so if the sword was forged in the fires of hell by anubis then who the heck did they fight when they were taking on the jackal headed dudes because I kinda assumed

are these two series actually related or

holy shit this is so Extra already look at this shit

y’all this is my jam I am living right now

also as people following my art blog may note, I am a huge fan of black and gold aesthetics. this movie is really just ticking off all my boxes right off the bat, it’s terrible, but five stars.

they’re REALLY going to town with the exposition

sword forged in the fires of hell that condemns souls to “the neverending darkness” and must be somehow destroyed... are we talking about anubis or sauron here.

this is just lord of the rings, but bad and with a sword. lord of the sword.

okay prologue is over and some dudes have smashed their way into a tomb. if the last however many mummy movies have taught me anything it’s that this might potentially be a bad idea

I love how they’re just not even setting up any of the characters we’re just diving right in I’m getting strong “yeah you all know the drill by now” vibes here

#squadgoals

really though the gal on the left is pretty badass, she hasn’t done or said a single thing but I respect her and her bootleg Xena vibe

and like shoutout for putting at least one actual black guy in egypt I guess

so I guess the one in the middle is... psychic or something? not that “hey if you plunder this blatantly cursed tomb it might be bad” requires psychic powers to know but

I mean that giant black sarcophagus they found recently in real life turned out fine I’m sure this will be great go nuts dude

uh oh it’s the fang of sauron anubis

oh that doesn’t seem good, but it’s actually the better option since for a second there I thought there were pulling a “black guy dies first” in ancient goddamn egypt

wait we’re still doing exposition okay the narrator is back. hi narrator I missed you.

look  I know it’s campy and all but can we take a sec to unironically appreciate how wicked COOL this guy looks with his glowing eyes and crap. this movie is just so satisfying to look at, every single shot has been peak aesthetic

“SEND THE BIRD” and then it’s actually just a regular bird that was anticlimactic

HOLY GREENSCREEN BATMAN

holy FUCK WE’RE ONLY JUST NOW AT THE TITLE SEQUENCE WHAT

okay I guess now we’re going to ACTUALLY start the movie, third time’s a charm

and we’re off to a fantastic start my friends

and judging by the choices of the cameraman in this scene I can tell they’re trying desperately to distract me from the fact that the dialogue sounds like it was generated by a neural network that was fed several dozen mediocre fantasy novels.

it’s working.

I am being personally attacked. god.

oh no some people on horses are coming I assume from the background music that this is a bad thing

OH it’s bootleg Xena and her merry band of deeply mediocre extras okay

I understand the adorable small child’s father must die but must it be at the hands of the worst mediocre extra. seriously he’s been on screen for five seconds and I already hate him.

I guess the protagonist’s name is Matthias, other writers might have let us know that when he was introduced, but these guys know damn well that it literally does not matter what his name is. they could have had her ride up and be like “we’re looking for a man named Jebediah Switchboard McDougal” and anyone who’s voluntarily watching this movie in the first place would just be like “that’s fair”

yeah just in case you weren’t sold after the blacksmithing or the hunting scenes, let’s have him just singlehandedly take down half a dozen ninjas in less than a minute. just fuck me up

oh shit they shot him

oh shit they shot him again

they’re just boromir-ing the hell out of this dude

and yet he’s still going to town on those ninjas

NO NOT THE ADORABLE CHILD WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS

I’ve decided I don’t like bootleg Xena after all

it’s a good thing he’s got three arrows embedded in his torso because that is the worst cage ever. it’s made of like. bamboo and string. have you seen this man’s arms how did they expect that to effectively contain him.

whoa it’s... BOOTLEG XENA 2.0: GOOD GUY EDITION

or not. she didn’t free him or anything she just killed his original captors and then took off with the cage with him in it

no I think she is good she’s... healing him? by... getting scorpions to sting the hell out of him? has the FDA approved this.

I’m sorry I can’t take this scene seriously the background music is way too close to the “ooga chakas” from hooked on a feeling. also the sheer degree to which they’re pulling a reverse male gaze here is kinda overshooting sexy straight into unintentionally funny. I mean I know this is the entire reason I’m watching this insanity but like even I think this is excessive.

“the scorpion king escaped” that is giving him way too much credit he was stolen by the superior bootleg Xena.

and in case NONE of the previous things drew your attention away from the lack of a plot, here’s just straight up nudity because why not.

I thought I had a thing for zach mcgowan but I’ve got nothing on this cameraman.

also there’s some kind of “reluctant chosen one king” thing going on I guess but like they literally couldn’t have put less effort into it

I haven’t heard people this concerned about what the moon is doing since I left evergreen state college

aaand apparently he can see and speak to... ghosts now? ghosts that spit thousands of arrows from the sky? know what why not I’ll accept literally anything at this point.

oh they aren’t ghosts they’re just really sneaky dudes

it’s a shame jebediah switchboard’s one and only weakness is extremely shitty cages because he sure ends up in them a lot

hmmmm we’re getting some uncomfortable racist undertones and misogyny in one go okay. not worse than I would expect from a movie of this.... caliber, but I’m not thrilled, especially since this whole situation has yet to have a single actual point to it.

actually okay it’s veered quickly away from “rudyard kipling-esque Vague Native Tribe Encounter” and into... some kind of weird mad max thing mixed with a D&D campaign that’s gone wildly off the rails. but they’re on thin fucking ice.

I really appreciate that matthias is approaching this situation with exactly the same strategy with which I play skyrim, which is “sneak up on everybody one at a time even though there are a ton of them and that shouldn’t be possible, shoot them all with a bow you looted off one of them”

and now they’re just... suddenly free and back on their horses, then matthias had a vague fake deep exchange with the leader and they rode away. there literally was no reason for that entire interlude. nothing happened, there wasn’t character development or anything. this godforsaken movie could have been ten minutes shorter.

“the plot is down there, just past that greenscreen” is what I heard there.

I’m sorry I’m dying for some reason all I’m getting from this visual is “wait are you saying the panel is all the way on the other side of the convention center” like the costumes are just mediocre enough that in bright light they don’t look like they’re actually actors in a movie.

the moon’s rising. but I can’t for the life of me remember why that’s important. she’s got some kinda egyptian steampunk millennium rod though.

okay the lenses must align with the cipher. did anyone mention a cipher before who knows.

good job matthias you solved the moon puzzle and your prize is a metric ton of blue jello.

all right through the jello portal they go. to find the book of souls, probably.

in this case I actually do need more exposition. are we just not gonna explain ancient egyptian jello narnia. no. okay.

stop forcing zach mcgowan to be quippy I know all the cool movies are doing it but this is neither the time nor the place nor the actor for it.

oh my god they’re being attacked by a rock golem thing and I don’t think a screenshot can fully capture how bad the cgi is. not of the rock monster itself, but trying to integrate it with the real actors and set pieces was... oof.

okay a mostly naked woman has risen out of some nearby water and called off the rock golem with no explanation. why not.

neither of them looks into this so much as confused as hell

honestly, same.

oh god no they’re trying to make the rock golem be the comic relief this movie never needed. please don’t. you can barely handle writing the plot relevant dialogue now’s not the time to get fancy. I take it back, trying to make zach mcgowan be quippy was actually somehow not the worst option.

she IS the book of souls!

okay that’s a pretty cool visual I’ll give them that. digging the iridescent moon tattoo.

and that seems like a reasonable stopping point because I started this kind of late and have to get up for class in the morning. tune in tomorrow for, I assume, more of zach mcgowan running around in various states of undress while absolutely nothing coherent happens around him.

[deepdarkwaters]

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Got back from the Kingsman double bill a bit ago and am trying to put my brain into words even though I'm very tired and a bit numb and I smuggled five hours' worth of gin into the cinema in an Evian bottle so I'm as drunk as Harry at breakfast time.

OBVIOUSLY THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW

Watching them back to back like this was interesting because it highlighted so clearly how much better the first one is than this fumbly ridiculous sequel. Not saying it's not good or not worth watching or whatever because it absolutely is worth watching for several reasons I will babble after another teacup of gin, but holy god is this really the best they could come up with? REALLY? A 100% true fact that I believe with my entire heart: YOU reading this, you are a better writer than people being paid obscene money to write films. I could easily name thirty fic writers off the top of my head right now who have an infinitely better grasp on pacing and plot and characterisation and dialogue than the people responsible for this stuff. I've not read any press or fan reviews but I imagine there's going to be a hell of a lot of backlash over so much in this from every angle because it's just so incredibly lazy and sometimes ugly and absolutely cannot stand up to its own hype.

Really good things:

* SPECTACULAR, EH!

* Eggsy/Harry and Eggsy/Merlin shippers, goddamn we have a lot of new stuff to work with. Chemistry through the roof, especially Eggsy/Harry (including possibly the best clingy desperate hug I have ever seen on film in my entire life WE HAVE WAITED SO LONG AND IT'S HERE AND IT'S BEAUTIFUL). That was the heart and backbone of the first film, I'm so relieved that it's not only survived but evolved into something fiercer and often messier. So so good to watch. Pretty sure I've got Harry/Merlin written down the inside of my heart like the words in a stick of rock, and though it's not romantic you get much more of a sense of their friendship here and it's all just a bit shattering and gorgeous.

* Pretty much everything to do with Harry's memory loss and Eggsy and Merlin trying to shock him into remembering was great, Y E S  P L E A S E. And Harry's matter of fact comments about his loneliness, fuckkk. Angst writers, go forth with all this new information and break my heart some more! Fluff writers, fix him!

* Lots of beautiful intricate fight choreography which is literally all I need in my action films, so even if I did think the rest was complete balls (which I don't entirely) then I'd still be happy. Nothing comes near the vivid glorious gutpunch of the church scene as a standalone set piece, BUT there's so much Harry & Eggsy teamwork and please just inject this directly into my veins, it's amazing. Prepare for several years of me writing many more elaborate fight scenes than I already do.

* Part B to the above: Whiskey is a lot of fun and his fighting style is full on hardcore pornography to me.

* Merlin in a flawless Kingsman suit, RIP me.

* One of my Bespoke WIPs is about Merlin and Eggsy getting into the habit of going to the pub together sometimes and rolling home completely drunk with a kebab in each hand then trying to get in the house really quietly because Harry's asleep but they end up waking him because they think it'll be really nice to cook him breakfast in bed and Harry comes stomping downstairs in his dressing gown like "it's four o'fucking clock, put those frying pans away and drink some water!" while Merlin and Eggsy side eye each other and try not to giggle. So maudlin singing drunk Merlin was very nice to see :P

* Eggsy and Roxy bromance. There’s such lovely chemistry between them as well, it feels so natural and real, and it’s so good (and miserably rare) to see platonic friendships that aren’t shoehorned into some shitty boring love triangle.

* Eggsy and Tilde were seriously adorable. It ended up not at all satisfying as a romance plot arc because it was like CUTE - fight - marriage, it needed so much more screen time. Like all the important stuff was there, but it was just so abrupt. Include a satisfying romance or don't include one at all, fuck your lazy bullet points. But it started so well and I hope there's a ton of fic that treats them better than the script did. I appreciate the anti-Bond-ness of it all, that Eggsy's genuinely in love and wants to settle and is figuring out how that and his job can possibly fit together, especially with the complications of marrying into royalty. Interested to see where they take that if there's another film. Until then, soo much scope for fic.

* I'm shipping Harry/Elton like burning.

* Poppy was terrifying in a vaguely Umbridge-ish way. That sort of characterisation is always freaky, Julianne was great. So glossy and cheerful but absolutely dead in the eyes. And I'm ambivalent on Charlie, but I ABSOLUTELY want lots of brutal older woman villain/pathetic younger male minion smut. Please provide asap.

* T H E   M Y T H I C A L  B R E A K F A S T   S C E N E   I S   R E A L

Really bad things: well where the merry fuck do I start haha.

* I will never ever understand why they thought it was a good idea to wipe out all the locations and almost all the existing characters at the very beginning. It's lazy shitty writing. If you feel like you need to shake up your fictional world you don't just knock it all down and start over. It's cheap and very shallow angst.

* I only have two middle fingers but I need about seventeen million to even begin to profess my disgust at them killing Roxy. I knew it was going to happen, it was the only spoiler I asked someone for ahead of time and it was not at all a surprise to find out for sure. Still utterly infuriating. The way people responded so positively to her in the first one is a real indication of how ridiculously low the bar is for female characters in action films ("good at something" and "not the hero's love interest" are literally the only two requirements), and JG/MV didn't even think enough of her to follow through on the absolute base level achievement they made before. Fuck everyarse involved in this decision.

* Absolutely revolting honeypot mission scene. Not really the fact that it exists, just the entire way it was handled and shot - so predictably male-gazey and laddishly "waheyyy!" that it kind of turned my stomach. Horrible and completely unnecessary.

* A million new characters and not enough time spent on any of them to care. Tequila was barely more than a cameo. Champ and Ginger hardly had anything to do. All the Statesmen (except Whiskey) were completely two dimensional and it's such a jarring contrast to the obvious care taken over Eggsy, Merlin, and Harry. It's not even because we already know them, I don't think? It's weird to try and explain. The Statesman characters just feel so rushed and shallow, there's no substance to any of them. Kill off Roxy and replace her with paper cut-outs, ok that makes loads of sense!!! Whiskey’s a level up from the others because he gets loads more screen time and some beautiful fight scenes, but his ~emotional plot twist fell completely flat. I don’t know what it was, the pacing or a boring cliche backstory or what. It was just dull as fuck. WE HAVE HEARD THIS EXACT STORY FIVE MILLION TIMES.

A bad thing that's somehow not really a bad thing even though I'm fucking numb and want a hug:

* I've been raving for ages to people about Roxy being killed off and trying to figure out a way to satisfactorily explain how I feel about a character dying for a reason and a character dying because a writer is a lazy bastard who wants some quick angst. Merlin's death was an A+ wonderful death along the lines of my dear fictional boyfrends Quincey Morris and Lee Scoresby and a million others. Maybe it comes from all the swashbuckly historical adventure stories I grew up loving, but I'm a desperate sucker for a good noble death. Characters brave and self-aware enough to look at the bigger picture of an impossible situation and realise that their death means a better outcome for the people they love? This is ABSOLUTE CATNIP to me. Characters who go down fighting to the very end. If a character I love with my entire soul has to die, this is how I want it to happen. Give them some agency and a proper goodbye.

I mean I fully expect him to be magically resurrected with fancy prosthetic legs if there's another film because we saw those wedding set photos of him in the nice neon green cgi stockings, so really I should be saying "death". I totally reject this one. (I reject Roxy and JB's deaths as well, but the big difference is I really can't see the filmmakers bringing them back. Eyeroll.) Maybe that's what's making it easier to deal with? A not-real noble courageous self-sacrificing death. That's about as good as it gets. All three of them get Oscars for this whole sequence.

Anyway the tl;dr of it is:

This film is a very beautiful, very patchy mess. The good stuff is absolutely gloriously perfectly incredibly wonderful. Most of said good stuff is the interaction between Eggsy, Merlin, and Harry, which is written and performed with real care and heart. Nearly everything else is relatively lacklustre filler, misogyny, and shitty nonsensical decisions. These people cannot write women.

I liked it? I will definitely see it 900 more times, mainly for wet terrified Harry and gorgeous fight scenes. But ffs, how can it possibly be this difficult to pinpoint the reasons why people loved your extremely successful creation and consider including them in future plans?

I'm feeling fairly zen about everything. I kind of trained myself ages ago to think of sequels as just another bit of fanfic, so it's going to make absolutely no difference to the cheerful fluff porn and fight scenes I like to write. What I'm annoyed about isn't so much to do with ~new canon~ limiting what we're allowed to create for ourselves now, because that's just silly. It's more about being pissed off at the shoddy state of action films, particularly women in action films, when it seems like it should be SO EASY to take these astronomical budgets and create something groundbreaking. I'm so tired of this unimaginative lazy narrow-minded bullshit.

[sanaseva-archive]

okay, hi. it’s me—the annoyance in this fandom. and i’d like to talk about something, so bear with me.

 there’s a problem in this fandom that doesn’t need to be discussed. why not? it’s not up for discussion, basically. it’s up to you all to sit back and learn that this shit you all are pulling needs to be stopped. period.

 i’m breaking it up to a couple of core parts so you all know what i’m talking about.

 first of all, let’s talk about the islamophobia and racism in this fandom.

 here’s the deal: shut up and listen. is that too hard? then just shut up and close your browser. delete your blog. take a walk. go on with your shitty life.

 i don’t know why this needs to be explained—seriously. i don’t understand it. it’s not physics or the study of runes. it’s the basic thing called logic thinking and common decency at the least.

 you’re all doing something incredibly harmful and it’s not okay. when you started calling a brown character a rat i—i thought it was a joke. and when it was pointed out it’s racist, by people of colour in this fandom, you kept doing it. why? do you take enjoyment in calling brown people rats? do you think you can get away with it? guess you can, but you can stop doing it to people of colour. it’s disgusting.

 next. the idea of this season is: please don’t let me be misunderstood. the reverse of this? please don’t let me be understood. just so we’re clear. there’s no reverse. the song was in reverse, the message was clear. so you can shut up about that.

 so when the fight broke up, and sana was hiding in the bathroom stall, what did we hear? the two white random, irrelevant white girls talking about how they thought (assumed, didn’t know but talked anyway) it was about homosexuality, and how muslims are homophobic. was it there for the lols? no. it was there for us. to know. that it wasn’t about that.

 my point: shut the fuck up about it. it’s tiresome, getting old, it’s toxic. if you keep talking about this, you’re spreading harmful messages to others. what messages? that muslims are homophobic. which they can be, i’m not saying some aren’t. i’m saying that that’s not the point of this season and that non-muslims are equally likely to be homophobic. don’t believe me? wow, i guess it’s something that has been fed to you by media representation and… dare i say it? people talking shit of shit they don’t know on social platforms. precisely what you’re doing right now.

 second thing we need to talk about: the series. yes! let’s talk about what content we have right now and why us people of colour and why muslims are upset, shall we? (note: we have all the right to be upset.)

 let’s first get this out of the way: we know it’s written this way to prove some point later on in the season. probably something along the lines of muslim and brown boys not all being homophobic and shit. you know. that thing you keep shutting your eyes from. we understand that, we know that.

 we’re just. not. happy. about how it’s written. it’s kind of doing a lot of damage right now. look at some of the messages some people (people of colour, muslims, muslim people of colour) receive. and what we should be getting is much more healthy scenes between muslims, muslims and people of non-faith, people of colour and white people, to weigh up to the damage its doing. we don’t get that much of that. and it’s frustrating, because we understand why (sana’s lonely) but there are so many ways to portray loneliness than completely erase healthy interactions between people on the fucking screen.

 don’t bring up the hei briskeby videos, because they don’t count. i’m talking about the real episodes here. the real clips. the clips that the casual viewer will watch.

 so yes. the series itself is… partially at fault here. the writing, i would say. especially filming only the people of colour in a fight and—wow. that chokehold they had on the only black guy? yikes.

 what’s worse is that they surely know—or at least have a slight idea—of what outbreak their clips will give. and they keep doing it. keep feeding this shit to us, and leave us to either deal with it, or completely shut down our inboxes. which results into people thinking we’re selfish, because we don’t answer their wish to learn more about culture and islam and the experiences people of colour have.

 third thing we need to talk about: vilde and noora. yup. i’m putting them on the agenda.

 i, as a lesbian of colour, wholeheartedly believe that vilde’s character is poorly written this season. she’s obviously not too different from earlier seasons, but she’s definitely had more emphasis on her ignorance, and how that ignorance is dealt with is—less acceptable. i do believe, on top of that, that she will be “redeemed” (i’m just not sure i’ll buy into it) and that she will learn, apologise and maybe grow the last episode or something, since we won’t be getting any more.

 but what bugs me the most about the way they’re writing her this season is that, she’s coded as possibly lesbian (or bi, if you prefer, but i’m gonna talk about her being lesbian, and you can make your own post about her being bisexual). and she’s literally the only character fully coded this way. if you’re interested in why, just… google it. believe it or not, we aren’t google. but the key point is that she is doing a lot of what us lesbians perceive as compulsory heterosexuality. and they completely villainised a potential lesbian this season which is just falling into the same shit people have done over and over again. lesbians are bad, lesbians are racist, lesbians are this and fucking that and that pisses me off. if, by the off chance, she eventually is canonically declared as lesbian, i’m not sure i will rejoice or throw my phone through my computer screen. they ruined her character to me, they ruined a (coded) lesbian to me, a lesbian, simply because they wanted to put her to be the ignorant girl who keeps shitting all over sana.

 and noora. man. i’m not too mad about noora as a character herself. she’s flawed, she has her good moments and shit. but she takes up so much of her own storyline from sana’s. it’s a mess. she’s talking about herself, her problems with dickhelm, and sure, that’s what friends do—talk about what bothers you. but we’re so frustrated that she’s once again on the screen, talking about the same old thing, and rip the minutes that could’ve been spent on sana from our hands.

 don’t get me wrong. we all know that sana is a listener. but there’s a line. and they jump over it, time and time again.

 and then there’s the misogyny in this fandom that needs to be addressed. and this is a harder one, because it’s hard to spot.

 during the course of season three—up to this day, i see this shit—people keep shitting on sonja and emma for no other reason than them being girls who got hurt in the process. sonja? remember her? she got cheated on. and while even kept saying he felt controlled by her you somehow got the idea that she’s toxic. she isn’t. a toxic relationship would not end with isak thanking sonja for the help she’s given. she knows even and—well, at the most, she might have been a bit controlling because she doesn’t understand that even is his own person with or without his bipolar disorder.

 and emma? she outed isak, which is fucked up and there’s no excuse. but stop thinking she’s the absolute villain to isak’s life because she’s a girl, who got hurt, in the process. accept that, move on, because isak sure did.

 you thought i’d end there? really? nope. ain’t gonna happen. i’m gonna bring up vilde specifically again.

 you think she’s just a dumb ignorant islamophobe? partially true. she’s islamophobic and is not a good friend to sana. she’s ignorant, yes. but you’re reducing her character to something she isn’t. you’re reducing her to the blonde dumb girl, which is just as shitty as people defending her islamophobic behaviour. her islamophobia does not correlate to her dealing with whatever she’s dealing with (compulsory heterosexuality, if you will), but if you reduce her to a two-dimensional character it’s quite misogynistic itself. if you’re woman and doing that—check yourself in the mirror.

 same goes for noora, basically, but i don’t think anyone is genuinely despising her for anything else than the shitty line here and there and the serious screentime she’s clocking.

 we also had a run in with the lovely subjects of biphobia and ableism too. you all can’t stop anywhere, can you?

 since we aren’t discussing, let me just point out these things:

 bisexuality does not equate to cheater. a cheater can be of any sexuality. the stereotype is that bisexual people are cheaters is harmful and it ends here. whether a bisexual person/character has cheated can be discussed without bringing in their bisexuality to the conversation.

 and mental illness… it seems it’s harder for you to grasp this part. so let me put it this way: think of the most embarrassing shit you’ve done. called your teacher mum and everyone laughed? peed yourself in public? pretended to talk on the phone and your phone ended up ringing? whatever. the most embarrassing shit you’ve done. think of that. feel what you felt at that point. oh my god, what did people think of you?

 do you want your crush or your partner of a few months know… that? say it involved a second person. say you… shat yourself on your best friend’s expensive, newly bought couch, felt so embarrassed you left the house and deleted all your social media and never answered their calls.

 say your partner brings them up.

 would you… tell them that?

 i don’t mean to trivialise mental illness here (i’m struggling with my own). it’s much more complex (guilt, self-blaming, embarrassment, sadness) than what i’m saying here. i’m just breaking it down to a point where hopefully even the most abled person can understand.

 you’re expecting someone who deals with this every day to just tell their partner. it’s not that easy. it’s a lot of compartmentalising that needs to be done, so you can tell that story without breaking down completely. what happened to even broke him enough to switch to a new school. that’s not something you just tell someone, regardless if you’re together with them, without having thought it through for weeks—even months—and analysed each possible turnout and reaction. that’s not something you tell someone unless you really, really, really need to.

 that’s not to say that it’s… bad. that even and sana weren’t honest with isak from the start. but it’s what it is. even isn’t perfect. sana isn’t perfect. isak isn’t perfect. none of these characters are completely perfect. why not? because they’re supposed to be realistic, human and resound to us. we’re supposed to be able to relate to them, in a way.

 lastly, but most importantly: stop thinking you’re so bloody entitled to send shitty asks to people, especially the muslims, people of colour and disabled people of this fandom.

 now that i’ve said my piece, kindly don’t find your way into my inbox and think it’s time to discuss. as i said, it’s not up for discussion.

 don’t understand what i’m talking about? congratulations, you just won the prize: read this post again until you get it.

 peace the fuck out.

[gameotheque]

‘And so ends Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. With a shot that I assume to be the growing Mila Tree, which appeared in Fire Emblem: Awakening. A beautiful and significant shot that matches the adventure we just ended.

This game was a real mixed bag for me, in a way that no game I’ve played lately was, even. I’ll attempt to write down my thoughts on it, though I still need some time to digest the game fully, as it usually takes me a few days to do so.

I’ll preface this all by saying three things: One - Yes I did indeed play Fire Emblem Gaiden, aka the game this is a remake of. Two -  Overall I have to say I absolutely, undoubtedly enjoyed this title, and finally, Three - I’m not really seeking to have arguments or discussions about the thoughts and opinions I’m about to post below. If you disagree with anything, then great! You’re your own person and I’m in no way attempting to sway everyone who reads it to think exactly as I do. But that also comes with the caveat that I ask you not to send me any messages trying to tell me why I’m wrong. I really don’t... care.

Firstly, it’s important to state that I consider this game muuuuuuch more playable than Gaiden, so that’s a win on that front. The original game felt much like a chore through most of the campaign, and the weak-to-nonexistent characterization, combined with the unimpressive budget did nothing to alleviate that impression, specially when coupled with the erm, dubious map designs.

The new art style, from lead artist Hidari, is very pleasant to the eyes, and the official character art is super nice, all in all. The game’s graphics are very cool and the models have been refined from both previous 3DS titles, so that’s always good to see. The soundtrack is also fantastic, with a mix of new and old themes that are just excellent. The voicework, as is always the case with this franchise after the 13th installment, is excellent, but it shines even more in this one, owning to just how much of its dialogue and story beats are voiced. This really helps characters and plot points that might have otherwise been unmemorable to appear more fleshed out.

The gameplay, with the addition of features such as Casual Mode, Exploration, Mila’s Turnwheel, Supports and Skills is also a marked improvement, even if I personally feel that they could have been explained a little more clearly to the player, and that the support pools had been expanded more and that their overall writing quality was better. 

With positive aspects discussed, it’s time for me to delve into the elements that I consider big negatives to the experience. I’m sorry.

It pains me to say this, but I continue to be... baffled by how a game adapted in the year 2017 managed to include more sexism, misogyny, heteronormativity and a general lack of Care towards its female cast than its 1992 inception. That hurt my enjoyment of it more than anything else ever could. 

I’m not saying this to pretend that this series has ever excelled in those regards, no, all titles in the core series (as well as its spin-offs!) are fraught with similar issues, ranging from sexualized designs to mistreatment, unchecked abuse and lifting male characters up to the detriment of their female peers. But it’s hard to ignore that there was an upping to the ante of these last few beats in this title (except the sexualized character designs, which were fewer in number and less in-your-face about how blatant they were than the last title).

You don’t have to diminish your characters’ agencies in their world just simply because you choose to set your story in a misogynistic setting, and in fact a lot of dialogue in this game tries to do right by women... but all its attempts pale in comparison to how often it slaps you in the face with misogyny.

 This affects the stories of characters like Celica, who often gets relegated to second banana despite the fact that she should share an equal role with her co-protagonist. Faye, whose ONLY character trait is her obsessive love for the main hero. Mathilda, whose exploits and achievements are massively overshadowed by her ostensibly supportive husband and thusly end up as no more than lip service. Sonya, whose new ending for some ungodly reason sees fit to punish her? Clair, whose character largely gets treated as a prize to be fought over by two other male characters, as well as having most of her screentime devoted to her brother AND yet another unrequited crush on the main character. Tatiana, whose lover chooses to keep her in the dark regarding his past over fears of “burdening” her, whatever the hell that means, and Rinea, who gets the overall most insulting ending a character with her inception could possibly have. She is abused, mistreated, victimized and is then even burdened with the need to forgive her abuser. 

All of these examples, as well as others that I don’t want to keep discussing out of fear of turning this overview into a larger, uglier monster don’t help to paint this game as anything but inhospitable to women. Basically, the discussion of narrative sexism should go farther than ugly, fetishistic outfits of previous titles and people should care about these issues, too.

(I do have to note that it does, at least bring an advance in LGBT representation with the character of Leon. Who seems like an improvement over other queer characters in the series with his writing, even if there is a lot about it to improve upon again. Namely maybe not setting up his character to have an arc that revolved around unrequited love towards an ostensibly straight peer).  

I know a lot of those problems were already there in the original, but some of them were not... and even if they wanted to keep the game faithful to its original incarnation in tone, they should have at least cared enough to update the more unseemly elements it had for a new, modern target audience, and not magnify these problems with new inclusions. In doing that, it chooses to do the most boring thing a remake can do - remain stagnant.

As I said some hundred (thousand?) words prior, I DID like it, but it does worry me that a lot of people seem blind to its issues, which is just something I can’t wholly ignore. It’s absolutely possible to enjoy a thing while also criticizing its flaws, and this was something this fandom never had an issue doing, so I’m not entirely certain why there is so much silence regarding this title’s flagrant problems.

I still have to play the Sixth, post-campaign Act, though I’ve already fully spoiled myself as to what it entails, and I can already say it’s a huuuuuge positive aspect for me. 

I laughed, I got warm feelings, I nearly cried, and most importantly, I had fun with this title. I can already say I’ll replay it in the future, and this franchise still remains incredibly dear to me, despite its myriad of flaws, that I can only hope will get better with time. Hopefully.

[loudlytransparenttrash]

Feminism is Misogyny

Feminists may be responsible for saying some of the most misogynistic things that I’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing and reading. Typically you’d expect to hear things that are anti-woman from the people deemed as the usual suspects. But I want to make it clear that feminists and feminism may be the single greatest blow to the progress of women in the history of mankind.

You might say, “How can this be? Feminism is supposed to be a cause for equality.” Over the last three years, I found myself researching feminists and feminism after dedicating my life to this movement, but the more I have researched, I found myself faced with this glaring paradox. A paradox which had me casting off the feminist label entirely.

While feminists say that feminism is about equality, actions speak louder than words. These actions suggest an uncomfortable truth. Feminism is not the assumption that we are equal, but the assumption that women are weak and need a leg up. It’s the idea that women are oppressed by an all-powerful patriarchy, and that we need to push men down to thrive as fully functioning independent creatures.

If a man were to suggest that women were weak and needed help doing everything from getting jobs to basic decision making, you’d say this man was sexist. If a man said that a woman could never make meaningful decisions about her life because of her weakness, you’d call for this man’s job and ask that he be fired. If he suggested that women could be easily manipulated and brainwashed into making those decisions, you’d think he was absolutely nuts.

So why do we let feminists do it? Contrary to popular belief; Feminism suggests that women are weak in body and in mind. It suggests that women were no different than slaves to their husbands in antiquity and that they were treated slightly better than beasts of burden. But this is merely historical revisionism fueled by postmodernist bullshit.

To say that for thousands of years, women never used their wits and were living mindlessly under male subjugation is to lie to yourself and everyone else. Both men and women made decisions that you may not agree with or understand in today’s society where we don’t have world wars, plagues and famine on our door steps. Men were being forced into war and were being used as pawns while women and children were protected at all costs and have always been seen as the future. Did women have it easy? Of course not. Did men have it easy? Of course not.

The narrative of modern feminism suggests that all men in the past were boorish pigs subjugating women. That these men, feeling jealous of the power women wielded, kept them out of sight and under control. Was that the case, or was this a more practical reason for keeping a woman inside the house?

The more dangerous the world is, the more men are likely to want to protect the women that live in it. It’s not societal constructs - biology and human insticts have since the beginning of time made tasks and goals more suitable for one sex over the other, both having their positives and negatives. I’m not saying that they are right or wrong for doing this, I’m merely explaining the process behind it. 

One thing that is a fact though, that women who must be protected, limits a woman’s freedom. It keeps women as fragile flowers who must be protected from the elements. The issue we have though is today’s feminists still demand the highest security even though today’s elements are completely different to when feminism was first born.

What are feminists doing today? Getting men fired for telling a joke they don’t like, getting professors fired for disagreeing and male college peers kicked out with false rape claims. Safe spaces, trigger warnings and the concept of both affirmative consent and action. There have been several notable second wave feminists who outright said that they believed all heterosexual sex is rape, because they believe that women simply do not have the power to meaningfully consent to sex. In reality, the people removing a woman’s ability to consent to sex, are feminists.

These feminists went so far as to suggest that if a woman isn’t saying “yes” like a broken record, then a man can accidentally rape her. The people single-handedly turning women into fragile flowers that need special protections, are feminists. The people suggesting that women can not get hired or recognized as assets to a company are, you guessed it, feminists.

Women are not being made to do things for themselves. In the effort to protect women and help them succeed, you’ve created a generation of women who’ve never had to apply themselves as much as men. The women who actually apply themselves and work hard, get lumped in with the women who’ve never had to get their nails dirty. All of this is made possible through the power of affirmative action.

In trying to save and protect women, feminism has removed women’s agency. They talk endlessly about choice, but choice means nothing if you lack agency. Women’s choices mean nothing if you believe women to be so easily manipulated by men and our culture as a whole. To them, the women making choices they don’t agree with, must be suffering from a bizarre kind of Stockholm syndrome.

Most women feel insulted that feminism thinks they are far too weak and stupid to make meaningful choices. Make no mistake, there are feminists right now who think that women are far more likely to be manipulated into living a traditional lifestyle than men. Because to them, no woman in her right mind would choose family over her career.

The freedom that feminists have claimed to fight for, is not the right to be protected. The freedom that they are suggesting was won for women, is a woman’s freedom to make her own choices. That means the freedom to make choices you don’t agree with. It’s the freedom to fail, succeed, and grow.

All these choices mean nothing without consequences. To take away consequences, is to remove the weight of women’s decisions. Feminists have succeeded in doing that, by suggesting that anytime a woman makes a decision that is problematic, that she is merely being manipulated by our patriarchial culture. She can’t be held responsible for her actions, because no one pulled her aside to explain to her how she’s oppressed. If she does something morally reprehensible, she can always blame it on a man.

I wonder how many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers would have been thwarted by this nonsense. No one told my grandmother, or her mother, that they couldn’t do things. They were strong women who worked alongside men, and achieved just as much as men. They did so all without the help of feminists and feminism. These women were forged through strength and perseverance.

But women don’t need strength and perseverance anymore to succeed. Now they just need a vagina, and STEM fields and business corporations will roll out the red carpet for them to avoid being seen as sexists. You don’t need to be as skilled as men anymore, because feminists have lowered the bar for you and your predecessors. You don’t need to prove you’re as physically fit and strong as a man to join the armed services because feminists have demanded to give these women a break and make it easier for them.

To believe that patriarchy exists in the first world, is to believe that women are absent from decision making on everything from voting, to their choice in what latte to drink. You have to believe that there weren’t female anti-suffragettes, and that there aren’t women who protest against abortion. You have to believe that there isn’t a great number of women who voted against free tampons and birth control. You have to believe that women don’t vote conservative or become housewives.

On the other end, sex workers, models, and actresses would also be poor manipulated flowers that don’t know they are under male control. They would be innocent weak willed damsels tricked into living a life of submission to the male gaze. How could they possibly make the decision to be “objectified” in this manner, don’t they know they’re oppressed!?

Feminists want women to have choices as long as they make the choices they agree with. When you look at the facts, you come to the uncomfortable conclusion that every woman of note, prior to the existence of women’s suffrage, accomplished everything they did without the help of feminists or feminism. When forced to acknowledge this fact, it becomes obvious that the only thing women need to be empowered in the first world, is the desire to empower themselves through self-reliance, hard work, and dedication.

You don’t need feminism. Feminism needs you and the money you are willing to throw at it. They have to convince you that there is this carefully coordinated conspiracy against women by men, to keep them down. If a culture has a deep contempt for women, they aren’t going to care that women are upset. They aren’t going to try to protect them, and they certainly aren’t going to take your protests seriously.

You could not convince a culture with deeply entrenched misogyny to give women voting rights, birth control, or abortion. You could not convince them to give women alimony, child support, or affirmative action. If there is a group with a deep contempt for women and their choices, it’s feminists and their various theories on how we’re all being manipulated by men on a conscious and unconscious level.

I as a first world woman, am not oppressed and neither are the other first world women reading this, it doesn’t matter what your skin color is, you aren’t oppressed in this country. Women do face sexism at times, sure, but so do men and yes it’s a problem but nothing on the part of modern feminism is doing anything to stop that.

What modern feminists are doing is telling the world that women are easily offended by these “microaggressions” and need to be protected from nearly everything. This is because feminists get offended by everything from being smiled at, to being complimented on their shoes. If anything feminists are responsible for breeding more sexism in the population than ever before.

These women are encouraging men to protect women from sexism and everything else that they don’t like. They might say that a woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle, but let’s compare what men have done for women compared to feminism and we can decide then who’s more important for women. Only a fraction of women call themselves a feminist so I think we all know that answer, as much as feminism loves to exaggerate its importance, women simply don’t want to be told to hate and wage war on men. 

You aren’t going to eradicate sexism. Discrimination based on sex happens through natural human preferences, developed through learned experiences. If you see women acting like entitled fragile flowers, instead of strong independent women, then those men will see women as entitled fragile flowers. You aren’t going to eradicate a male preference, by merely demanding it to be so.

In trying to eradicate a preference for men, these women are breeding a contempt for women in our populace with their outrage. Mark my words, there will be a breaking point. There will come a time that we all stop catering to the whims of feminists, until no one takes these women seriously anymore and we have already started to see this happen. This is the bed you are making for yourselves, you will soon be forced to lie in it.

[afearing]

since apparently theres no consequences for delivering unto this website extremely long and good takes i will present to you my hot take on the ace d'escourse, with no sources because I Dont Feel Like It. its more words than is reasonable bc i have been stewing in this for like 4 years and if i dont type it out at some point im going to fucking lose it. no, literally, it’s 3 pages long in word about shit no one cares about anymore. please remember to like and subscribe.

some background on me, i id’d as ace for something like 8 years, from the first time i read the wikipedia page on it back in maybe 2009 or thereabouts. i also id’d as aro for about a year in 2016. that is to say, i have a lot of compassion and understanding for asexual individuals and feel i understand the inclusionist side of the argument pretty well, as i never questioned inclusionism until maybe 2014 or so, when the discourse blew up. i took some time off tumblr because i was so fucking distraught to think that, as i id’d as aroace at the time, that i had to come to terms with not being lgbt. lol i was a little too attached to being ‘gay’ because... fun fact, past dumbass self... you are gay. anyway, i really dont want anyone to feel that i hate them, but after i cooled off a little bit i realized that the exclusionist take on asexuality just makes more sense. hopefully i can explain why clearly enough.

i really believe that what is understood as aphobia is 100% of the time simply a manifestation of our culture’s expectations surrounding sexuality. while “expectations surrounding sexuality” as a very broad topic does indeed cover both the lgbt community and people on the ace spectrum, facing these issues does NOT make a person lgbt. i subscribe to the idea that lgbt is for people targeted directly by homophobia and transphobia. ace issues ARE super important to talk about and the whole inclus/exclus nonsense is entirely because this discourse has been put under the wrong category. im aware that probably most people will not care that much about my opinion on the correct framing of asexual activism as i no longer id as ace but i think this is important for everyone. sexual expectations also weigh on straight individuals, especially women, and i’m going to describe a few examples to try to demonstrate why i believe both that it doesn’t make sense to consider asexuality lgbt as well as why it does make sense to frame it as an issue based mainly in misogyny.

call out post for myself, i use reddit, and i think the r/childfree community is a good example of what i think the framing should be like. although it’s acknowledged that not wanting children has larger social consequences for women, both men and women talk about their issues in the forum, including horrific accounts of reproductive coercion and rape, the intersections with race/being lgbt/ageism (although they could do a LOT better with intersectionality, many posters do touch upon it), profoundly cruel comments made by those who have/want children, difficulty finding an understanding relationship partner, discrimination at work, misunderstandings and even hatred from family and acquaintances, discrimination in healthcare, etc.

i think you can tell where i’m going with this. even though being childfree cuts against the expectations for sexuality in most societies, even though it leads to unfair judgment from others, and even though they face discrimination on the basis of the way they express their sexuality, childfree people do NOT frame parenthood/childfreedom as an axis of oppression, nor do they claim that their lack of desire for children makes them lgbt. it’s not even a question if straight childfree people are straight, because duh? nor if the presence of lgbt childfree people makes the whole community fall under the lgbt umbrella, because it obviously doesn’t.

to drive the point home, the reason why this is NOT an axis of oppression is because parents face a ton of issues as well! they also face reproductive coercion as well as judgment over the number of kids they have, constant scrutiny and moralization over every aspect of their parenthood style, judgment based on parents’ age/wealth/sexuality/marital or dating status/race, housing and employment discrimination, especially for mothers, the government hating poor parents and cutting their benefits, and more i’m sure i’m not thinking of. again, this is due to societal expectations of sexuality. to complete the analogy, people who aren’t ace face their own set of challenges and discrimination. part of homophobia/biphobia is tinged with hatred of our sexual attraction; no one except for straight white men is allowed to really express their sexuality without backlash, and even then there is this shame leading to a lack of proper sex ed and horribly unhealthy understandings of sexual attraction in a large portion of the populace. so calling aphobia an axis of oppression is just not right. and in addition, the large proportion of lgbt aces doesn’t make asexuality lgbt, that’s not how groups work.

some more on what i mean by ‘expectations around sexuality’... in terms of my experience in the US, there is some blueprint in many people’s minds of what a person should be like in terms of sexuality, and that is something like “cishet, abled man, who is neither ace nor aro, who gets laid regularly (but not to excess) starting no later than 18 and ending no later than 28 when he settles down with one cishet abled wife, also neither ace nor aro, who has only had sex with up to three committed boyfriends, and they have precisely two children, approximately two years apart in age, whom the parents can financially and emotionally support to the utmost, because they are also moderately to very well off, and the parents work under traditional gender roles to raise their children as conventionally as possible.” and if you deviate from this script in ANY way that’s viewed with moral panic and scrutiny by someone. and the connection to misogyny is that women are seen as sort of the bastions of sexual morality. we are punished especially harshly for nonconformity.

if you’re poor you’re fucked because either you don’t have kids or you can’t send them off to private schools and feed them fancy organic shit. if you’re lgbt or polyamorous or aro or ace? fucked! if you dare to reproduce as a disabled person, and if your disability impacts your parenthood, especially for women, you’re practically crucified even in liberal circles. if you have too few kids or too many (don’t you know only kids turn out weird? / how can you possibly raise 5 children properly?), if you have too much sex or too little, if you split up the work in your relationship not along gender lines, if you do unconventional things in your parenthood, like accept your trans kids or move a lot or any number of other things, the social judgment rains down like the fires of fucking hell. meaning practically no one can escape it!! huge bonus to the screaming crowd with pitchforks if you’re a person of color or a woman, mega ultra bonus to women of color.

but does that make everyone i just talked about lgbt? no! although every single one of the groups i mentioned is tangentially related through this issue, even though all of them face a lot of horrible problems and discrimination, that does not make those issues inherently lgbt. again, they are tangentially related and i could see a good case for solidarity among many of the groups mentioned; all of them are fighting for greater acceptance of different kinds of relationships, greater acceptance of seeking happiness and being who you are rather than pressuring everyone to conform as much as possible to the LifeScript. but all of those groups are equally related to the lgbt community - that is, tangentially only. just as you can be childfree and straight, a stay-at-home dad and straight, a straight woman of color, so too can you be polyamorous and straight, ace and straight, or aro and straight.

that’s it for my main point. ace and aro people? your lives are hard. i’m not going to downplay it in any way because i know there are a lot of people who actually hate your guts. fuck, i’ve seen people full-on shittalk asexuality, in the internet and real life, in the most blatant of ways, so it’s not just something you can necessarily escape by logging off. not as much so for aro people tbh but i predict as much once the Public gets more wind of your existence. i fully believe that you face a higher risk of sexual assault; discrimination in relationships, housing, and the workplace; horrible comments from everyone who thinks their shitty opinion on your sexuality and love life matters; and I believe you that that hurts and is terrible and that you deserve a place to discuss and provide support.

but. those issues are not exclusive to you. they’re not exclusive to lgbt people, or oppressed people, and so those issues don’t and cannot make you lgbt, nor do they make ace/aro vs. allo an axis of oppression. our communities intersect, yes, considerably, but you are not a subset of lgbt. perhaps our rhetoric can help you, but because straight ace and aro people exist you cannot and should not consider yourselves lgb+. i think you understand that the issues you face are a form of oppression, but they are the result of the toxic and misogynistic sex culture in this society, which, yes, targets lgbt people but also, practically everyone, including groups which are definitively absolutely not inherently lgbt, such as parents, gnc straight people, poc, disabled people, the list goes on.

to conclude, what really converted me to being an ace exclusionist was the example of a straight grey or demi ace. how could you possibly argue that someone who falls in love with the opposite gender only, but with more conditions or less frequently than someone not aspec, is lgb+, can call themselves queer, etc.? exactly what material reality does that person share with a gay or bi person? i think that their issues fall in line with aspec community issues but extremely clearly not at all with lgbt ones. 

the end but post script since i brought up orientation modifiers: perhaps it isn’t my place to say, but i don’t think that microlabels are very healthy and that it would make more sense for the ace community to work on expanding the idea of what sexuality is than to try to create a label to describe every single person’s experience of their sexuality. not that i think you should necessarily kick grey ace people out of the aspec community or that they’re not valid or whatever, but that perhaps it makes more sense to say that some people experience sexual attraction less frequently, and that’s alright. i don’t know.  i spent sophomore year of high school poring over those mogai blogs looking for some new orientation label that would make me go like, oh my god that’s me! and believing that if those labels helped people feel that way they weren’t doing any harm. but what actually finally made me feel like that was expanding my understanding of what attraction is and a better conception of lesbian issues and why i might feel so disconnected from my sexuality and why i might be obsessing over every interaction with a guy looking for signs i was attracted to him but feel super disgusted whenever they exhibited interest in me. i spent so long trying to go like maybe im cupioromantic lithsexual and feeling terrified that that i had such a weird and esoteric sexuality that no one could ever possibly understand enough to be in a relationship with me... like, ok dyke! i know a lot of people have had similar experiences and i don’t think i know a whole ton of people now in college who are still doing that, which makes me think those labels are more harmful than not. 

i guess that’s anecdotal but it’s easier for me to believe that a person could cling to those labels due to internalized homophobia than actually have a new form of sexuality heretofore undiscovered throughout all human history, but that’s just me. and so many of them just sound so unhealthy, like dreadsexual. i really wish people would work on expanding what not being asexual can mean and look like and i dont think there would be this drive to create these labels anymore. even demisexual which i think is probably the most mainstream conditional orientation, i think many people who have never heard of it and are perfectly content not to would describe the way they experience sexuality a similar way and just consider it normal. sexual attraction isn’t necessarily having your nethers set aflame upon first making eye contact with someone, it looks different for every person and it’s alright to just be how you are without making it part of your whole identity.

The End II. this is 2,200 words. if you read this far you’re a fucking mad l- *the academy cuts my mic line while looking directly at the camera like in the office*