#i like to think they are tied to him on that intellectual spectrum

[ace-exploring]

Can you define sexual attraction for me? I’ve seriously tried to ask this on the AVEN asexuality forum multiple times and just became even more confused by the term “sexual attraction” every time. For me I just understand my asexuality in terms of “I don’t want to have sex with anyone ever”. Is sexual attraction just sexual desire directed towards a person? Because if it’s not, I seriously have no idea what it is. Please enlighten me.

That's a really difficult question to answer, anon, because sexual attraction, for some people, can be tied into many different types of attraction as well. It's also difficult asking another asexual what sexual attraction is, because we're all on a spectrum and experience it differently. Some don't experience sexual attraction at all, others only experience it after developing a deep bond (demi), and some only experience it sporadically (grey) or under different circumstances.

Sexual attraction is different to just a physical response to another person. It's different to just wanting to have sex with them. It's different to just thinking or daydreaming about sex with them. You can not be sexually attracted to someone and still think or want to have sex with them (eg, very occasionally I think about sex with women but I am not attracted to women). You can be sexually attracted to someone but not actually want to have sex with them.

Side note: I think asexuals think a lot about this because allos tend to (not always) lump their attraction all in one. If they're romantically attracted to someone, they're probably sexually attracted, too. If they're intellectually attracted, they're probably sexually attracted, too. If they want to have sex with someone or are thinking about having sex with someone, they're probably sexually attracted to them. You get my point.

For me, on my asexual journey, it took me a while to realise the difference between aesthetic attraction and sexual attraction. I love to use Jason Momoa as my example because I think he's the epitome of male aesthetics. He's a work of art. I would really love to cuddle up with him (physical touch is one of my love languages). But I am not sexually attracted to him, and I do not want to have sex with him.

That can also be difficult for me to answer, because I'm in a monogamous marriage, and I don't want to have sex with anyone outside of it, so it's incredibly rare for me to actually feel sexual attraction to anyone outside of it.

I'm also grey-ace, so I don't even feel sexually attracted to my husband all the time. I think I have the strongest emotional and intellectual attraction to him, and in my experience, my sexual attraction built on that. He's my best friend in the whole world.

Just a side note that I don't identify as demi, because I have felt sexual attraction for a complete stranger. As I didn't have any emotional connection to him, saw him in passing, and haven't seen him since, I can only describe it as a 'jolt' of sexual attraction, of the sudden thought and urge to basically get naked and do naughty things with him. I can't even remember what he looks like now.

But when I am sexually attracted to my husband, it's like I look at him and suddenly think, wow, that man is amazing, and he's mine, and I want him naked and all over me. It's like wanting a sense of closeness that even a hug can't satisfy. Speaking as a cis-woman who is exclusively attracted to men, it's a yearning for the man to be inside me. It's what almost feels like an emptiness that needs to be filled and he's the only one who can fill it.

It's like looking at him and becoming aroused, though arousal is not always directed at someone.

Some people say that it's a physical reaction, that your body literally gets hotter when you 'have the hots' for someone, but I've never experienced that.

I hope that this helped a bit. Like I said, asking another asexual to define sexual attraction is difficult, not just because it's like asking a colour-blind person to define the colour red, but because everyone experiences it differently.

[gaygryffindorgal]

Happy FFWF Gryff! Pick as many OCs as you like, tell me their zodiac signs and how well you think they fit the traits!

thank you for asking!

“as many as you like” might have been a bit of a mistake but i’ll put a read more to save yalls dashes...

want to play? send me a ffwf ask!

hphl;

genevieve davenport, cancer

nurturing and loyal, cancers are also protective of their loved ones. while reserved, they stand on a foundation of strength – and aren't afraid to act when they feel it's necessary.

gen is certainly not nurturing, but she is protective of her friends to a fault. she is reserved and prefers action to words. maybe not the most traditional "emotional cancer" but some of the traits are fitting!

olyvar yaxley, scorpio

the scorpio personality is often misunderstood due to their intensity and their tendency to be harsh. however, scorpios are extremely emotional, and crave intimacy. they have a powerful presence and demanding personalities, and their penchant for mystery is what makes them one of the most interesting signs.

i actually wanted him to be a scorpio and decided his birthdate based on that, so this one's very fitting😂

fantastic beasts;

irene quinn, taurus

typical sun in taurus traits include being hard-headed, down-to-earth, tenacious, reliable, loyal, and sensual.

irene is definitely hard-headed, not so much reliable. she's quite fickle and selfish in a way. she's not very down-to-earth either, living in her own head a lot. not a great fit.

ethel malinda, leo

leos are radiantly joyful, liberal with their appeal and endowments. they are fiercely proud and confident. they love and live life to the fullest rather than being in charge at home, work, and play. leos are very loving, theatrical, and creative.

ethel is cheerful, confident and knows what she wants, deciding to carve her own path, instead of the one appointed to her by her station. i think leo fits her quite well.

marauder’s era;

bessie quinn, gemini

playful and intellectually curious, gemini is constantly juggling a variety of passions, hobbies, careers, and friend groups. they are the social butterflies of the zodiac: these quick-witted twins can talk to anyone about anything. find them buzzing between happy hours, dinner parties, and dance floors. 

i didn’t mean to make the quinn twins be geminis, it just happened😂 bessie is definitely extroverted but she’s more icy and difficult to approach than her people person brother camron. she used to be more bubbly as a child, but her older brother’s passing made her close off. still, i’d say it’s not the worst fit.

august macnair, capricorn

they are ambitious, determined, materialistic and strong. they will keep going when others would've given up ten miles back. this makes them great partners in life, as well as friends or collaborators. capricorns tend to keep small circles, but are loyal and supportive of their friends and loved ones.

august is definitely ambitious and determined. i wouldn’t call him a very good partner or a friend, just ask libby... still, i feel like capricorn suits him alright.

hphm;

verna malinda, sagittarius

sagittarians are optimistic, lovers of freedom, hilarious, fair-minded, honest and intellectual. they are spontaneous and fun, usually with a lot of friends, and are perhaps the best conversationalists in the zodiac (maybe tied with gemini).

this one fits verna quite well, even though she’s more on the jock side of the spectrum, rather than intellectual... she tends to be optimistic, wild, and appreciates honesty. she definitely has a lot of friends.

 gael romero, pisces

pisces people are known for being emotionally sensitive, gracious, and emotionally aware. pisces characters are regarded for being among the most sympathetic of the zodiac signs, and they will go to great lengths to ensure the happiness of those around them. they're also creative and imaginative.

yeah this is probably the most far-fetched so far... gael is a bit of an asshole, and doesn’t care that much about people around him (except his mum!!!) so yeah no, definitely not a fit 😂

golden era;

max avery, cancer

an entirely different cancer than genevieve. max is a bit of a rebel in her family and was sorted into gryffindor. they’re very compassionate and while she has built up walls around herself, they’re really quite caring and friendly. not perfect but i’ll take it.

juno creed, pisces

now here we have a pisces who actually fits the bill. he’s in tune with his emotions, and values loyalty and doing the right thing. he cares deeply about people and wants to help as many as he can.

hpma;

roe malinda, virgo

virgos are known for being practical, sensible, and loyal. they make excellent friends and partners. virgos are known for being perfectionists, and can be meticulous and single-minded in their pursuit of improvement. 

roe is way too eccentric and in her own world to fit the bill of practical and sensible. his persona that he constructed to protect herself and others from the curse is the exact opposite of a virgo, but inside i feel like roe has some virgo qualities, like their work ethic and meticulousness.

quincey alderly, aquarius

aquarians are highly intellectual and creative. marked by independence, they don't like to be instructed what to do. while they can be social, they are not likely to participate in social interactions unless they truly want to. aquarians are ideas people, never suffering a drought of inspiration.

quincey is creative and while he likes to spend time with his friends, he doesn’t want to be the center of attention. this one is an alright fit!

next gen;

baby quinn, leo

the quintessential leo, i think. i decided he was a leo before i decided his birthday, again😂

river st. james, aries

like their fellow fire signs, leo and sagittarius, aries is a passionate, motivated, and confident leader who builds community with their cheerful disposition and relentless determination. uncomplicated and direct in their approach, they often get frustrated by exhaustive details and unnecessary nuances. 

river is way too detail-oriented to fit this description. i feel like his aries-ness comes out in his competitiveness. definitely passionate and motivated, though.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous said: I didn’t know too much about the late British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton until I followed your superbly cultured blog. As an ivy league educated American reading your posts, I feel he is a breath of fresh air as a sane and cultured conservative intellectual. We don’t really have his kind over here where things are heavily polarized between left and right, and sadly, we are often uncivil in our discourse. Sir Roger Scruton talks a lot about beauty especially in art (as indeed you do too), so for Scruton why does beauty as an aesthetic matter in art? Why should we care?

I thank you for your very kind words about my blog which I fear is not worthy of such fulsome praise.

However one who is worthy of praise (or at least gratitude and appreciation at least) is the late Sir Roger Scruton. I have had the pleasure to have met him on a few informal occasions.

Most memorably, I once got invited to High Table dinner at Peterhouse, Cambridge, by a friend who was a junior Don there. This was just after I had finished my studies at Cambridge and rather than pursue my PhD I opted instead to join the British army as a combat pilot officer. And so I found out that Scruton was dining too. We had very pleasant drinks in the SCR before and after dinner. He was exceptionally generous and kind in his consideration of others; we all basked in the gentle warmth of his wit and wisdom.

I remember talking to him about Xanthippe, Socrate’s wife, because I had read his wickedly funny fictional satire. In the book he credits the much maligned Xanthippe with being the brains behind all of Socrates’ famous philosophical ideas (as espoused by Plato).

On other occasions I had seen Roger Scruton give the odd lecture in London or at some cultural forum.

Other than that, I’ve always admire both the man and many of his ideas from afar. I do take issue with some of his intellectual ideas which seem to be taken a tad too far (he think pre-Raphaelites were kitsch) but it’s impossible to dislike the man in person.

Indeed the Marxist philosopher G.A. Cohen reportedly once refused to teach a seminar with Scruton, although they later became very good friends. This is the gap between the personal and the public persona. In public he was reviled as hate figure by some of the more intolerant of the leftists who were trying to shut him down from speaking. But in private his academic peers, writers, and philosophers, regardless of their political beliefs, hugely respected him and took his ideas seriously - because only in private will they ever admit that much of what Scruton talks about has come to pass.

In many ways he was like C.S. Lewis - a pariah to the Oxbridge establishment. At Oxford many dons poo-pooed his children stories, and especially his Christian ideas of faith, culture, and morality, and felt he should have laid off the lay theology and stuck to his academic speciality of English Literature. But an Oxford friend, now a don, tells me that many dons read his theological works in private because much of what he wrote has become hugely relevant today.

Scruton was a man of parts, some of which seemed irreconcilable: barrister, aesthetician, distinguished professor of aesthetics. Outside of brief pit stops at Cambridge, Oxford, and St Andrews, he was mostly based out of Birkbeck College, London University, which had a tradition of a working-class intake and to whom Scruton was something of a popular figure. He was also an editor of the ultra-Conservative Salisbury Review, organist, and an enthusiastic fox hunter. In addition he wrote over 50 books on philosophy, art, music, politics, literature, culture, sexuality, and religion, as well as finding time to write novels and two operas. He was widely recognised for his services to philosophy, teaching and public education, receiving a knighthood in 2016.

He was exactly the type of polymath England didn’t know what to do with because we British do discourage such continental affectations and we prefer people to know their lane and stick to it. Above all we’re suspicious of polymaths because no one likes a show off. Scruton could be accused of a few things but he never perceived as a show off. He was a gentle, reserved, and shy man of kindly manners.

He was never politically ‘Conservative’, or tried not to be. Indeed he encouraged many to think about defining “a philosophy of conservatism” and not “a philosophy for the Conservative Party.” In defining his own thoughts, he positioned conservatism to relation to its historical rivals, liberalism and socialism. He wrote that liberalism was the product of the enlightenment, which viewed society as a contract and the state as a system for guaranteeing individual rights. While he saw socialism as the product of the industrial revolution, and an ideology which views society as an economic system and the state as a means of distributing social wealth.

Like another great English thinkers, Michael Oakeshott, he felt that conservatives leaned more towards liberalism then socialism, but argued that for conservatives, freedom should also entail responsibility, which in turn depends on public spirit and virtue. Many classical liberals would agree.

In fact, he criticised Thatcherism for “its inadequate emphasis on the civic virtues, such as self-sacrifice, duty, solidarity and service of others.” Scruton agreed with classical liberals in believing that markets are not necessarily expressions of selfishness and greed, but heavily scolded his fellow Conservatives for allowing themselves to be caricatured as leaving social problems to the market. Classical liberals could be criticised for the same neglect.

Perhaps his conservative philosophy was best summed up when he wrote “Liberals seek freedom, socialists equality, and conservatives responsibility. And, without responsibility, neither freedom nor equality have any lasting value.”

Scruton’s politics were undoubtedly linked to his philosophy, which was broadly Hegelian. He took the view that all of the most important aspects of life – truth (the perception of the world as it is), beauty (the creation and appreciation of things valued for their own sake), and self-realisation (the establishment by a person of a coherent, autonomous identity) – can be achieved only as part of a cultural community within which meaning, standards and values are validated. But he had a wide and deep understanding of the history of western philosophy as a whole, and some of his best philosophical work consisted of explaining much more clearly than is often the case how different schools of western philosophy relate to one another.

People today still forget how he was a beacon for many East European intellectuals living under Communist rule in the 1980s.  Scruton was deeply attached in belonging to a network of renowned Western scholars who were helping the political opposition in Eastern Europe. Their activity began in Czechoslovakia with the Jan Hus Foundation in 1980, supported by a broad spectrum of scholars from Jacques Derrida and Juergen Habermas to Roger Scruton and David Regan. Then came Poland, Hungary and later Romania. In Poland, Scruton co-founded the Jagiellonian Trust, a small but significant organisation. The other founders and active participants were Baroness Caroline Cox, Jessica Douglas-Home, Kathy Wilkes, Agnieszka Kołakowska, Dennis O’Keeffe, Timothy Garton Ash, and others.

Scruton had a particular sympathy for Prague and the Czech society, which bore fruit in the novel, Notes from Underground, which he wrote many years later. But his involvement in East European affairs was more than an emotional attachment.  He believed that Eastern Europe - despite the communist terror and aggressive social engineering - managed to preserve a sense of historical continuity and strong ties to European and national traditions, more unconscious than openly articulated, which made it even more valuable. For this reason, decades later, he warned his East European friends against joining the European Union, arguing that whatever was left of those ties will be demolished by the political and ideological bulldozer of European bureaucracy.

Anyway, digressions aside, onto to the heart of your question.

Art matters.

Let’s start from there. Regardless of your personal tastes or aesthetics as you stand before a painting, slip inside a photograph, run your hand along the length of a sculpture, or move your body to the arrangements spiraling out of the concert speakers…something very primary - and primal - is happening. And much of it sub-conscious. There’s an element of trust.

Political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, defined artworks as “thought things,” ideas given material form to inspire reflection and rumination. Dialogue. Sometimes even discomfort. Art has the ability to move us, both positively and negatively. So we know that art matters. But the question posed by modern philosophers such as Roger Scruton has been: how do we want it to affect us?

Are we happy with the direction art is taking? Namely, says, Scruton, away from seeking “higher virtues” such as beauty and craftmanship, and instead, towards novelty for novelty’s sake, provoking emotional response under the guise of socio-political discourse.

Why does beauty in art matter?  

Scruton asks us to wake up and start demanding something more from art other than disposable entertainment. “Through the pursuit of beauty,” suggests Scruton, “we shape the world as our own and come to understand our nature as spiritual beings. But art has turned its back on beauty and now we are surrounded by ugliness.” The great artists of the past, says Scruton, “were painfully aware that human life was full of care and suffering, but their remedy was beauty. The beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation…It shows human life to be worthwhile.” But many modern artists, argues the philosopher, have become weary of this “sacred task” and replaced it with the “randomness” of art produced merely to gain notoriety and the result has been anywhere between kitsch to ugliness that ultimately leads to inward alienation and nihilistic despair.

The best way to understand Scruton’s idea of beauty in art and why it matters is to let him speak for himself. Click below on the video and watch a BBC documentary broadcast way back in 2009 that he did precisely on this subject, why beauty matters. It will not be a wasted hour but perhaps enrich and even enlighten your perspective on the importance of beauty in art.

So I’ll do my best to summarise the point Scruton is making in this documentary above.

Here goes.....

In his 2009 documentary “Why Beauty Matters”, Scruton argues that beauty is a universal human need that elevates us and gives meaning to life. He sees beauty as a value, as important as truth or goodness, that can offer “consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy”, therefore showing human life to be worthwhile.

According to Scruton, beauty is being lost in our modern world, particularly in the fields of art and architecture.

I was raised in many different cultures from India, Pakistan, to China, Japan, Southern Africa, and the Middle East as well schooling in rural Britain and Switzerland. So coming home to London on frequent visits was often a confusing experience because of the mismatch of modern art and new architecture. In life and in art I have chosen to see the beauty in things, locating myself in Paris, where I am surrounded by beauty, and understand the impact it can have on the everyday.

Scruton’s disdain for modern art begins with Marcel Duchamp’s urinal. Originally a satirical piece designed to mock the world of art and the snobberies that go with it, it has come to mean that anything can be art and anyone can be an artist. A “cult of ugliness” was created where originality is placed above beauty and the idea became more important than the artwork itself. He argues that art became a joke, endorsed by critics, doing away with a need for skill, taste or creativity.

Duchamp’s argument was that the value of any object lies solely in what each individual assigns it, and thus, anything can be declared “art,” and anyone an artist.

But is there something wrong with the idea that everything is art and everyone an artist? If we celebrate the democratic ideals of all citizens being equal and therefore their input having equal value, doesn’t Duchamp’s assertion make sense?

Who’s to say, after all, what constitutes beauty?

This resonated with me in particular and brought to mind when Scruton meets the artist Michael Craig-Martin and asks him about how Duchamp’s urinal first made him feel. Martin is best known for his work “An Oak Tree” which is a glass of water on a shelf, with text beside it explaining why it is an oak tree. Martin argues that Duchamp captures the imagination and that art is an art because we think of it as such.

When I first saw “An Oak Tree” I was confused and felt perhaps I didn’t have the intellect to understand it. When I would later question it with friends who worked in the art auction and gallery world, the response was always “You just don’t get it,” which became a common defence. To me, it was reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s short tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, about two weavers who promise an emperor a new suit of clothes that they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid or incompetent. In reality, they make no clothes at all.

Scruton argues that the consumerist culture has been the catalyst for this change in modern art. We are always being sold something, through advertisements that feed our appetite for stuff, adverts try to be brash and outrageous to catch our attention. Art mimics advertising as artists attempt to create brands, the product that they sell is themselves. The more shocking and outrageous the artwork, the more attention it receives. Scruton is particularly disturbed by Piero Manzoni’s artwork “Artist’s Shit” which consists of 90 tin cans filled with the artist’s excrement.

Moreover the true aesthetic value, the beauty, has vanished in modern works that are selling for millions of dollars. In such works, by artists like Rothko, Franz Kline, Damien Hirst, and Tracey Emin, the beauty has been replaced by discourse. The lofty ideals of beauty are replaced by a social essay, however well intentioned.

A common argument for modern art is that it is reflecting modern life in all of its disorder and ugliness. Scruton suggests that great art has always shown the real in the light of the ideal and that in doing so it is transfigured.

A great painting does not necessarily have a beautiful subject matter, but it is made beautiful through the artist’s interpretation of it. Rembrandt shows this with his portraits of crinkly old women and men or the compassion and kindness of which Velazquez paints the dwarfs in the Spanish court. Modern art often takes the literal subject matter and misses the creative act. Scruton expresses this point using the comparison of Tracey Emin’s artwork ‘My Bed’ and a painting by Delacroix of the artist’s bed.

The subject matters are the same. The unmade beds in all of their sordid disdain. Delacroix brings beauty to a thing that lacks it through the considered artistry of his interpretation and by doing so, places a blessing on his own emotional chaos. Emin shares the ugliness that the bed shows by using the literal bed. According to Emin, it is art because she says that it is so.

Philosophers argued that through the pursuit of beauty, we shape the world as our home. Traditional architecture places beauty before utility, with ornate decorative details and proportions that satisfy our need for harmony. It reminds us that we have more than just practical needs but moral and spiritual needs too. Oscar Wilde said “All art is absolutely useless,” intended as praise by placing art above utility and on a level with love, friendship, and worship. These are not necessarily useful but are needed.

We have all experienced the feeling when we see something beautiful. To be transported by beauty, from the ordinary world to, as Scruton calls it, “the illuminated sphere of contemplation.” It is as if we feel the presence of a higher world. Since the beginning of western civilisation, poets and philosophers have seen the experience of beauty as a calling to the divine.

According to Scruton, Plato described beauty as a cosmic force flowing through us in the form of sexual desire. He separated the divine from sexuality through the distinction between love and lust. To lust is to take for oneself, whereas to love is to give. Platonic love removes lust and invites us to engage with it spiritually and not physically. As Plato says, “Beauty is a visitor from another world. We can do nothing with it save contemplate its pure radiance.”

Scruton makes the prescient point that art and beauty were traditionally aligned in religious works of art. Science impacted religion and created a spiritual vacuum. People began to look to nature for beauty, and there was a shift from religious works of art to paintings of landscapes and human life.

In today’s world of art and architecture, beauty is looked upon as a thing of the past with disdain. Scruton believes his vision of beauty gives meaning to the world and saves us from meaningless routines to take us to a place of higher contemplation. In this I think Scruton encourages us not to take revenge on reality by expressing its ugliness, but to return to where the real and the ideal may still exist in harmony “consoling our sorrows and amplifying our joys.”

Scruton believes when you train any of your senses you are privy to a heightened world. The artist sees beauty everywhere and they are able to draw that beauty out to show to others. One finds the most beauty in nature, and nature the best catalyst for creativity. The Tonalist painter George Inness advised artists to paint their emotional response to their subject, so that the viewer may hope to feel it too.

It must be said that Scruton’s views regarding art and beauty are not popular with the modern art crowd and their postmodern advocates. Having written several books on aesthetics, Scruton has developed a largely metaphysical aspect to understanding standards of art and beauty.

Throughout this documentary (and indeed his many books and articles), Scruton display a bias towards ‘high’ art, evidenced by a majority of his examples as well as his dismissal of much modern art. However on everyday beauty, there is much space for Scruton to challenge his own categories and extend his discussion to include examples from popular culture, such as in music, graphic design, and film. Omitting ‘low art’ in the discussion of beauty could lead one to conclude that beauty is not there.

It is here I would part ways with Scruton. I think there is beauty to be found in so called low art of car design, popular music or cinema for example - here I’m thinking of a Ferrari 250 GTO,  jazz, or the films of Bergman, Bresson, or Kurosawa (among others) come to mind. Scruton gives short thrift to such 20th century art forms which should not be discounted when we talk of beauty. It’s hard to argue with Jean-Luc Godard for instance when he once said of French film pioneering director, Robert Bresson, “He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music.”

Overall though I believe Scruton does enough to leave us to ponder ourselves on the importance of beauty in the arts and our lives, including fine arts, music, and architecture. I think he succeeds in illuminating the poverty, dehumanisation and fraud of modernist and post-modernist cynicism, reductionism and nihilism. Scruton is rightly prescient in pointing the centrality of human aspiration and the longing for truth in both life and art.

In this he is correct in showing that goodness and beauty are universal and fundamentally important; and that the value of anything is not utilitarian and without meaning (e.g., Oscar Wilde’s claim that “All art is absolutely useless.”). Human beings are not purposeless material objects for mechanistic manipulation by others, and civil society itself depends upon a cultural consensus that beauty is real and every person should be respected with compassion as having dignity and nobility with very real spiritual needs to encounter and be transformed and uplifted by beauty.

Thanks for your question.

[qqueenofhades]

I really don’t want to start a discourse™, but I want you to know that I really appreciate how you write joe and Nicky in deo volente. So many of the fics I’ve read have placed yusef in the role of more sexually experienced and less devoted to god, while Nicky is depicted as an inexperienced and virginal priest/knight/monk and so forth and so on. Your narrative of joe out there rescuing people and being faithful, while Nicky looks back on his life of gambling and pleasures of the flesh ...(1/?)

Not to say that there’s anything wrong with either, obviously. I love guilty priest Nicky and repressed Nicky and p much every Nicky. But in the vast array of fics out there, it’s rare to see the opposite. Not that you’re working in a binary morally good/religious vs. not way. Your writing in the fic is really subtle and and your characterizations reveal a lot of depth. I just think it’s cool to see Nicky, average second son of a duke, drinking and gambling and feeling terribly guilty (2/?)

Guilty about the crusades and the fucking horror of crusade 1 without being excessively devout. Just an average dude. Not some paragon of virtue (btw, I’m on chapter 2 of the fic, so I don’t know how much your characterization changes moving forward. You have a lovely ability to combine your incredible knowledge of history, your beautiful writing, and these intimate details of the characters that make them fit— fit the canon and fit the history. (3/? Shit I’m sorry this had gotten way too long)

I enjoy the way you’ve really inserted us into the quotidian aspect of history. Aaaaaanyway— the discourse that I was afraid of: I think that a lot of fans of the movie that are generating fan content (tysfm to all of you beauties, btw 🙏🙏♥️) are westerners (which is a whole nother kettle of fish) and that carries a sort of ignorance about the Muslim world in the Middle Ages and this desire to simplify Europe as “Christian” “fighters for faith” etc. (4/? Fuuuuck. One(??) more)

And when we do that, we end up as characterizing the brown people as “not that”. The thing I love about this fandom is that people are definitely down on the crusades. I feel like all the fic I’ve read has been particularly negative about those wars, but the thing I love about your fic is that you don’t just say war is bad because people died and it was despicable and this pious white dude says so and this one brown person agrees. (5/6, I see the end in sight I swear it)

Instead you give us a larger cast of Muslims and Arabs and really flesh them out and give them opinions and different interpretations of faith, and I really appreciate that. The crusades were terrible, and we know this because these regular dudes who struggle with their different faiths and lives say so. And I just. I think that’s really great. Also, I fucking love yusef’s mom. I feel like more people would be accepting of the gift in this fashion and I think she’s lovely and (god damn it 6/7)

Aaaaaaaand. The bit where yusef returns and she’s already gone breaks my fucking heart. Also the moment where he’s like “I’m not sure about Abraham’s god, but my mothers god is worth my faith”?? Just really fucking great. So. Excellent fic. Excellent characters. Excellent not-being-accidentally-biased-towards-white-Christians. That is what I came here to say. Thank you so much for your amazing stories. I love them and I love history. Sorry about the rambling. idek how I wrote so much. (7/7)

Epilogue: tl;dr: you’re great.

Oh man! What a huge and thoughtful comment (which will in turn provoke a long-ass response from me, so…) I absolutely agree that no matter what fandom, I don’t do Discourse TM; I just sit in my bubble and stay in my lane and do my own thing and create content I enjoy. And I don’t even think this is that so much as just… general commentary on character and background? So obviously all of this should be read as my own personal experience and choices in writing DVLA, and that alone. I really appreciate you for saying that you love a wide range of fan creators/fanworks and you’re not placing one over another, you understand that fans have diverse ranges of backgrounds/experience with history and other cultures when they create content, and that’s not the same for everyone. So I just think that’s a great and respectful way to start things off.

First, as a professional historian who has written a literal PhD thesis on the crusades, I absolutely understand that many people (and regular fans) will not have the same privilege/education/perspective that I do, and that’s fine! They should not be expected to get multiple advanced degrees to enjoy a Netflix movie! But since I DO have that background, and since I’ve been working on the intellectual genealogy of the crusades (and the associated Christian/Muslim component, whether racially or religiously) since I was a master’s student, I have a lot of academic training and personal feelings that inform how I write these characters. Aside from my research on all this, my sister lives in an Islamic country and her boyfriend is a Muslim man; I’ve known a lot of Muslims and Middle Easterners; and especially with the current political climate of Islamophobia and the reckoning with racism whether in reality or fandom, I have been thinking about all this a lot, and my impact on such.

Basically: I love Nicky dearly, but I ADORE Joe, and as such, I’m protective of him and certainly very mindful of how I write him. Especially when the obvious default for westerners in general, fandom-related or otherwise, is to write what you are familiar with (i.e. the European Christian white character) and be either less comfortable or less confident or sometimes less thoughtful about his opposing number. I have at times tangentially stumbled across takes on Joe that turn me into the “eeeeeeeh” emoji or Dubious Chrissy Teigen, but I honestly couldn’t tell you anything else about them because I was like, “nope not for me” and went elsewhere rather than do Discourse (which is pretty much a waste of time everywhere and always makes people feel bad). This is why I’m always selective about my fan content, but especially so with this ship, because I have SO much field-specific knowledge that I just have to make what I like and which suits my personal tastes. So that is what I do.

Obviously, there’s a troublesome history with the trope of “sexually liberate brown person seduces virginal white character into a world of Fleshly Decadence,” whether from the medieval correlation of “sodomite” and “Saracen,” or the nineteenth-century Orientalist depictions of the East as a land variously childishly simplistic, societally backward, darkly mysterious and Exotic, or “decadent” (read: code for sexually unlike Western Europe, including the spectrum of queer acts). So when I was writing DVLA, I absolutely did not want to do that and it’s not to my taste, but I’m not going to whip out a red pen on someone else writing a story that broadly follows those parameters (because as I said, I stay in my lane and don’t see it anyway). Joe to me is just such an intensely complex and lovely Muslim character that that’s the only way I feel like I can honestly write him, and I absolutely love that about him. So yeah, any depiction of hypersexualizing him or making him only available for the sexual use and education of the white character(s) is just... mmm, not for me.

For example, I stressed over whether it was appropriate to move his origin from “somewhere in the Maghreb” to Cairo specifically, since Egypt, while it IS in North Africa, is not technically part of the Maghreb. I realize that Marwan Kenzari’s family is Tunisian and that’s probably why they chose it, to honor the actor’s heritage, but on the flip side… “al-Kaysani” is also a specifically Ismai’li Shia name (it’s the name of a branch of it) and the Fatimids (the ruling dynasty in Jerusalem at the time of the First Crusade) were well-known for being the only Ismai’li Shia caliphate. (This is why the Shi’ites still ancestrally dislike Saladin for overthrowing it in 1174, even if Saladin is a huge hero to the rest of the Islamic world.) Plus I really wanted to use medieval Cairo as Joe’s homeland, and it just made more sense for an Ismai’li Shia Fatimid from Cairo (i.e. the actual Muslim denomination and caliphate that controlled Jerusalem) to be defending the Holy City because it was personal for him, rather than a Sunni Zirid from Ifriqiya just kind of turning up there. Especially due to the intense fragmentation and disorganization in the Islamic world at the time of the First Crusade (which was a big part of the reason it succeeded) and since the Zirids were a breakaway group from the Fatimids and therefore not very likely to be militarily allied with them. As with my personal gripes about Nicky being a priest, I decided to make that change because I felt, as a historian, that it made more sense for the character. But I SUPER recognize it as my own choices and tweaks, and obviously I’m not about to complain at anyone for writing what’s in graphic novel/bonus content canon!

That ties, however, into the fact that Nicky has a clearly defined city/region of origin (Genoa, which has a distinct history, culture, and tradition of crusading) and Joe is just said to be from “the Maghreb” which…. is obviously huge. (I.e. anywhere in North Africa west of Egypt all the way to Morocco.) And this isn’t a fandom thing, but from the official creators/writers of the comics and the movie. And I’m over here like: okay, which country? Which city? Which denomination of Islam? You’ve given him a Shia name but then point him to an origin in Sunni Ifriqiya. If he’s from there, why has he gone thousands of miles to Jerusalem in the middle of a dangerous war to help his religious/political rivals defend their territory? Just because he’s nice? Because it was an accident? Why is his motivation or reason for being there any less defined or any less religious (inasmuch as DVLA Nicky’s motive for being on the First Crusade is religious at all, which is not very) than the white character’s? In a sense, the Christians are the ones who have to work a lot harder to justify their presence in the Middle East in the eleventh century at all: the First Crusade was a specifically military and offensive invasion launched at the direct behest of the leader of the Western Roman church (Pope Urban II.) So the idea that they’re “fighting for the faith” or defending it bravely is…

Eeeeh. (Insert Dubious Chrissy Teigen.)

But of course, nobody teaches medieval history to anyone in America (except for Bad Game of Thrones History Tee Em), and they sure as hell don’t teach about the crusades (except for the Religious Violence Bad highlight reel) so people don’t KNOW about these things, and I wish they DID know, and that’s why I’m over here trying to be an academic so I can help them LEARN it, and I get very passionate about it. So once again, I entirely don’t blame people who have acquired this distorted cultural impression of the crusades and don’t want to do a book’s worth of research to write a fic about a Netflix movie. I do hope that they take the initiative to learn more about it because they’re interested and want to know more, since by nature the pairing involves a lot of complex religious, racial, and cultural dynamics that need to be handled thoughtfully, even if you don’t know everything about it. So like, basically all I want is for the Muslim character(s) to be given the same level of respect, attention to detail, background story, family context, and religious diversity as any of the white characters, and Imma do it myself if I have to. Dammit.

(I’m really excited to hear your thoughts on the second half of the fic, especially chapter 3 and chapter 6, but definitely all of it, since I think the characters they’re established as in the early part of the fic do remain true to themselves and both grow and struggle and go through a realistic journey with their faith over their very long lives, and it’s one of my favorite themes about DVLA.)

Anyway, about Nicky. I also made the specific choice to have him be an average guy, the ordinary second son of a nobleman who doesn’t really know what he’s doing with his life and isn’t the mouthpiece of Moral Virtue in the story, since as he himself realizes pretty quick, the crusades and especially the sack/massacre of Jerusalem are actually horrific. I’ve written in various posts about my nitpicking gripes with him being a priest, so he’s not, and as I said, I’m definitely avoiding any scenario where he has to Learn About The World from Joe. That is because I want to make the point that the people on the crusades were people, and they went for a lot of different reasons, not all of which were intense personal religious belief. The crusades were an institution and operated institutionally. Even on the First Crusade, where there were a lot of ordinary people who went because of sincere religious belief, there was the usual bad behavior by soldiers and secular noblemen and people who just went because it was the thing to do. James Brundage has an article about prostitution and miscegenation and other sexual activity on the First Crusade; even at the height of this first and holy expedition, it was happening. So Nicky obviously isn’t going to be the moral exemplar because a) the crusades are horrific, he himself realizes that, and b) it’s just as historically accurate that he wouldn’t be anyway. Since the idea is that medieval crusaders were all just zealots and ergo Not Like Us is dangerous, I didn’t want to do that either. If we think they all went because they were all personally fervent Catholics and thus clearly we couldn’t do the same, then we miss a lot of our own behavior and our parallel (and troubling) decisions, and yeah.

As well, I made a deliberate choice to have Nicky’s kindness (which I LOVE about him, it’s one of my favorite things, god how refreshing to have that be one of the central tenets of a male warrior character) not to be something that was just… always there and he was Meek and Good because a priest or whatever else. Especially as I’ve gotten older and we’ve all been living through these ridiculous hellyears (2020 is the worst, but it’s all been general shit for a while), I’ve thought more and more about how kindness is an active CHOICE and it’s as transgressive as anything else you can do and a whole lot more brave than just cynicism and nihilism and despair. As you’ll see in the second half of the fic, Nicky (and Joe) have been through some truly devastating things and it might be understandable if they gave into despair, but they DON’T. They choose to continue to be good people and to try and to actively BE kind, rather than it being some passive default setting. They struggle with it and it’s raw and painful and they’re not always saints, but they always come down on the side of wanting to keep doing what they’re doing, and I… have feelings about that.

Anyway, this is already SUPER long, so I’ll call it quits for now. But thank you so much for this, because I love these characters and I love the story I created for them in DVLA, since all this is personal to me in a lot of ways, and I’m so glad you picked up on that.

[ckret2]

How are you able to write such good romantic scenes when you’re on the aro spectrum?

Gonna start with the weird answer and then explain the logic behind it:

I’m fascinated by the concept of obsession.

Like, particularly, when one person is obsessed with another person.

Typically what fascinates me most is the darker end of the “obsession” spectrum—the “I’ll die for you and/or kill for you,” the “I can’t imagine existing without you and will reinvent myself into some sort of idealized person who can support you as perfectly as possible,” the “I literally worship you like a literal actual god because you are that perfect to me,” the “I hate your guts but I can’t stop thinking about you for more than three seconds and I haven’t slept right in months because of it.” So, yandere tropes, “I’m stalking you out of love” tropes, zealous cults, unrequited love, knight & lord, all that stuff. I’m very interested in the psychology of how what ought to be a positive emotion can get twisted the wrong way into something so negative—how something protective can be twisted into something destructive, how something supporting can twist into something harmful, etc. You know, good horror shit. And so that’s something I spend a lot of time thinking about, reading about, and ultimately writing about.

Here’s the thing though. If you understand how obsession works inside and out, you’re like, 90% of the way to being able to write romance. That is, I think, fundamentally why I’m interested in writing romance in the first place. Because on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being “total indifference to a person’s existence” and 100 being “can’t go five seconds without thinking about the person and dreams about them at night,” romance clocks in at, like, 40. You’ve just gotta take Full Obsession and dial it back to a reasonable, healthy, sane level, and then paint it pink and that’s the Romance Feeling.

And then you chuck in a bunch of other positives to go along with the “can’t stop thinking about them” factor to make it a convincing romance.

The characters have gotta be friends with each other—if you can write friends, hell, turn it into “friends who call each other ‘my love’ and are making plans to spend their lives together” and you’ve got a quick and easy romance right there without any extra effort. And I understand how friendship works, I’ve got friends! Friends are a thing I can do. Lovers are friends with benefits. (The benefit is love.)

The characters probably find each other attractive in some way—if it’s physical, then you just gotta think “okay, this character finds that look attractive somehow,” and then describe their physical features in poetic language—the more you wanna emphasize the physical attraction aspect and the more it’s infatuation instead of an old steady love, the more deliriously flowery you can get with the description. If it’s attraction to their personality or other mental traits, just, do that same thing, but with mental features instead of their body. I know how to use descriptions to make things sound pretty, I can do this one too.

If there’s sexual attraction, then apply that same flowery language to generally eroticized body parts and/or body motions, and/or describe the arousal these observations cause the viewpoint character. (I’m also ace—I have never looked at someone and felt sexual attraction—but I do know what a state of arousal in and of itself feels like, and I understand on an intellectual level that people can feel it spontaneously when looking at someone they find attractive, and from there it’s really easy to combine “he looked at someone he thought was very good looking” and “he is feeling arousal, this is what arousal feels like to him” into “he looked at someone good looking and because of it he felt arousal” like it’s a pretty simple cause-and-effect there.)

The characters have gotta respect each other as, like, people, instead of idealized statues and/or dolls (as would be the case if it was obsession instead of love), which means they’ve gotta understand each other really well—so just, you know, write them comprehending each other’s quirks, recognizing each other’s oddities without needing them explained and not finding them weird, being generally familiar with each other. If you know what both your characters are like, you can write each of your characters knowing what the other one is like, too. Bam. Done.

The characters, especially if they’re only newly attracted to each other, probably feel the physical symptoms of that—rapid heartbeat, butterflies in stomach, tongue-tied nervousness, etc. I’ve never felt those things in direct connection to having a crush but I’ve felt them in connection to other things, so I can write about them too, I can intellectually imagine a “this character likes that character so much that it causes this physical reaction” cause-and-effect scenario.

And I could go on but it’s just gonna be a longer list like that.

All of the above things—feeling lowkey obsessed, being extremely close friends, looking at each other and going “ooh you are aesthetically and/or intellectually pleasing,” respecting each other, understanding each other, physically reacting to being around each other—are all things that make perfect sense in my little aro brain without having ever felt romantic attraction in my life, and they’re all things that I know come with romance because like, I see romances in movies, read them in stories, see people talking about them daily, and have several psychology courses and books under my belt that talk about the mechanisms of love along with all the other things that come in human brains. The very first movie I was ever taken to was Aladdin and I’m not sure if I was even speaking in full sentences by then—I’ve been passively absorbing research on romance practically since I was born. I’ve just gotta remember what I’ve learned and put it together in a way that sounds sensible and that matches up with what I’ve learned about how romance works and what I know about, like, how humans work.

And if a given couple’s romance differs from the above list—like, they’re totally in love but they aren’t best friends and they don’t have that deep knowledge of each other because they fell in love in two days and eloped in under a week—then that’s fine, that just necessitates amping up other factors to strengthen the love—maybe increase the obsession factor if it’s a rapid infatuation rather than a slow burn, maybe have them idealize each other more than they should which keeps them feeling attraction for each other but covers up flaws they’ll probably notice later... and when you’re writing inside their perspective you can write their romance to be as beautiful and perfect as they feel like it is, but if you recognize those flaws in their relationship you can hold onto them to use later—either to shake up the relationship and force them to grow and stabilize it, or else to make it come crashing down.

The point is, you gotta keep it realistic even when from the characters’ perspectives it’s an idyllic perfect relationship. If they’ve known each other a week, then they don’t know everything about each other. You can’t claim they do without it sounding ridiculous. They might feel like they know “everything that matters,” but it’s disingenuous to try to demonstrate No They Really Are In Love by giving them knowledge they haven’t earned yet. Show they love each other in spite of their ignorance. That goes for any other trait that a “full” “developed” romantic couple has but that they lack.

What matters, ultimately, is that at the end of the scene, it’s got to read like the characters are attracted to or in love with each other—even if it’s for dumb or shallow reasons—and not like the author put the attraction on top of them like funny hats.

And on that note?

Although being aro gives me a very obvious disadvantage writing romance that alloromantic folks don’t have—no personal experience to draw upon, even as little as knowing what it feels like to have a crush—I think it does give me one specific advantage over allo writers: I’m going to side-eye a romance plot line unless I’m convinced it works, and that applies to my own plot lines as well. And I think that being aro sorta automatically gives me stricter standards for what it takes to convince me a romance works.

Particularly in movies, it’s easy for the writers/directors/whoever to default to shorthands to “demonstrate” that characters are in love: tropes like “they argued and insulted each other for half the movie, then in a heated moment they kissed, then they were clearly attracted to each other the whole time,” that sort of thing. I can’t stand that. I know not being able to stand poorly-written hollywood romances isn’t an exclusively aro/ace thing. Plenty of allo folks complain about piss poor romantic subplots. But I have noticed a higher willing suspension of disbelief among allo folks to accept it as a given that two characters belligerently sniping at each other are doing so because they’re suppressing attraction (perhaps because there are hidden Signs Of Attraction that are invisible to me? I don’t know) while I see a much lower willing suspension of disbelief for that sort of thing among a lot of my ace- & aro-spectrum friends. I recognize I’m working off a limited data set, here, but I theorize it’s just harder to accept that two characters being assholes toward each other are better off boning than ignoring each other for the rest of their lives if the person being asked to accept this doesn’t have personal memories of Attraction™ to fall back on to fill in the gaps between the shorthand the director is using to symbolize (but not demonstrate) attraction.

So I can’t use those kinds of shorthands in my own work, because they don’t work for me. If I want the audience to feel like two characters are in love, I’ve got to bust my ass to demonstrate to myself, first and foremost, that they’re in love. That means I can’t just say they like each other, I’ve got to SHOW why they like each other. I can’t just say they’re attracted to each other, I’ve got to SHOW the audience what it is find attractive about each other—I’ve got to describe it clearly and compellingly enough that the audience can see their attractiveness too, no matter if I’m describing a robot disguised as a spider or a pile of volcanic rock in the shape of pteranodon. If they’re arguing and hate each other but are suddenly going to kiss in a moment of passion, I’m not going to trust that the audience will just Get that they were secretly attracted the whole time, I’ve got to go into their heads to demonstrate why they feel attraction in spite of their arguing and why, to them, that attraction overweighs their differences.

At no point am I able to create the skeleton of a romance and expect the audience to add the flesh and blood simply because I myself can imagine the flesh and blood based on my past experiences—because I don’t have those past experiences.

Anyway that’s what goes into how I write romance.

[knit-wear-it]

Abnormal Psychology II

Joan Leland’s Two Greatest Disappointments

PhD student!Crane, Undergrad!Harley, Narrator!Joan Leland / Writing exercise to help me work through backstories. Which includes rewriting the first part of this. Because it was terrible.

Read Abnormal Psychology I Here

**Reminder: Harley killed her college boyfriend.

Abnormal Psychology II

2. Joan Leland's Two Greatest Failures

Eight years before Harley meets the Joker.

Joan Leland had been teaching Psychology at Gotham University for over twenty-five years, the tenured head of the department for nearly ten. During those years, she’d seen many precocious PhD candidates, but few of them stood out like Jonathan Crane.

She first met Jonathan when he was twenty-two years old, freshly graduated from a southern university known for its football team rather than its academics. With a bachelor’s in clinical psychology, and a minor in chemistry, his grades had been excellent, and his tutors called him ‘brilliant’ in their referrals. He was an obvious choice for an interview. 

The young man Joan met had been caustic, bordering on rude, and she immediately suspected he was either on the spectrum or suffering some other mental health ailment. That wasn’t a mark against him - so many students of psychology were drawn to the field because of their own struggles. But Crane had a unique interest - obsession if the intensity in his pale eyes was any indication - in fear that hinted at PTSD more than intellectual curiosity. Still, despite Joan’s reservations, Crane was invited to join that year’s group of post-graduate students.

He hadn’t fit in, making numerous enemies amongst his cohort, fellow twenty-somethings who submitted complaints about his rudeness and inflexibility. Then there were Crane’s complaints - of which there had been many - accusing his peers of being lazy and holding him back. In the end, Crane spent the collaborative early years of his PhD working alone. 

It was in Crane’s third year that Joan became well acquainted with him. As head of the department, she had the final say in allocating budgets to research projects. Predictably, Jonathan believed his doctorate thesis to be of paramount importance above his fellow graduate students, and he spent an increasing amount of time lobbying Joan for more money, and issuing empty threats about going to the dean if she didn’t agree. 

“Twenty-thousand dollars?” Joan asked warily, raising her eyebrows at Crane over the top of the proposal he’d just handed her. He was a skinny, pale young man at twenty-five, with an untidy flop of black hair and striking pale blue eyes. His clothes were always neat and tidy, his preference for gray slacks, black oxfords, and ties beneath wool vests separating him from his peers, who tended towards more childish versions of professional dressing. He might have been handsome if it weren’t for the way he carried himself - arrogant, impatient, full of disdain.  

Joan felt sorry for him. 

“I require a larger pool of test subjects,” Crane explained stiffly, his top lip curling. “The volunteers aren’t good enough.”

“Why aren’t they enough?” Joan frowned as she removed her spectacles. “Your peers have no problem with the volunteers.”

Crane closed his eyes and inhaled sharply like he was rallying his patience, or maybe he found being asked to explain himself deeply offensive. 

“I require a certain kind of subject,” he forced a bitter smile that made Joan’s eyes widen. “I need to vet them myself. It’s essential to my research.”

“I understand, Jonathan,” Joan offered him a sympathetic smile and set his proposal aside. “I’m afraid twenty-thousand is out of the question. I may be able to free up five for you.”

“Ten,” Crane insisted sourly. “Dr Leland, I’m sure you’re aware that it would be generous to call the department’s psychopharmacology resources lacking.”

“I’m sorry, Jonathan, this isn’t a negotiation,” Joan sighed as she got to her feet, adjusting her pastel suit jacket. “You’ll have to make do with five-thousand. Now, please excuse me, I have a meeting.” 

She gestured to the door when an idea occurred to her - perhaps a creative solution. Crane isolated himself from his peers, and he never spoke about friends or family. He was missing empathy in his life, with no one to care for, and no one to show him compassion in return.

“Actually,” Joan’s smile brightened. “Have you thought about signing up for the free therapy program the student union set up?”

Crane’s pale eyes widened incredulously. 

“Dr Leland… are you suggesting I need therapy?” he demanded indignantly.

“Well, no,” Joan admitted, though it was abundantly clear Crane needed to talk to someone about his past. “You are a licensed therapist, Jonathan. I’m suggesting you volunteer your time to help these students. It would be good for you to practice outside of your research.”

Crane squinted at her owlishly for a moment, then quite abruptly, he snorted out a laugh.

“I don’t think so,” he said smugly. “Children with eating disorders don’t interest me.”

“Most of them are there for depression or anxiety, or trauma they need to work through,” Joan pointed out, feeling a swell of pity for him. “Psychology isn’t just research and test subjects. We’re here to help people too.”

“Mm,” he sneered, disagreeing but apparently not feeling the need to make his case. He wasn’t holding himself back because he held an unpopular opinion - Joan had heard plenty of complaints about his outright disdain for patient welfare. But this time it seemed he didn’t feel it was an argument worth having. An argument that was beneath him as he found so many things to be. 

“How are you finding the lectures?” Joan asked hesitantly, shouldering her bag as she followed him out of her office. 

“Most of them are morons,” he shot her a withering look that could have stripped paint off the wall. “I’ll also be lobbying the dean to remove the teaching requirement for students in their fourth year,” he informed Joan crisply. “Some of us have more important work to be doing.”

Then he turned on his heel and stomped down the hallway without a word of farewell. 

Joan sighed, feeling another surge of pity for Jonathan Crane as she locked her office door and headed in the opposite direction. 

Gotham University’s campus was covered in snow, a treat for students returning from their Christmas breaks. Joan smiled at colleagues and a few students she knew or recognized as she walked toward the student union building, struggling with the question of how she might help Jonathan Crane.

The student union was a modern building painted yellow and red, and it hadn’t aged well since it was constructed in the late seventies. Joan took the lift to the third floor, where she’d been given a small office to assess the students assigned to her. Four or five other members of staff from the psychology department volunteered their free time there too, with patients dolled out to them in a kind of raffle. Students wanting therapy would be added to a waitlist and scheduled with whoever was available whenever they were available. It wasn’t ideal but it was better than nothing. 

“Hi, Dr Leland,” the volunteer behind a receptionist’s desk greeted Joan brightly, handing her a file. 

“Hi Sarah,” Joan smiled back at her. “How is everything?”

“It’s pretty dead,” Sarah observed affably. “I guess the kids are feeling pretty good after the break. No finals to stress them out.”

“Sure,” Joan agreed politely, inwardly thinking that many of these young people would likely be in need of more therapy after the holidays, not less. “Who am I seeing today?” she opened the file, her eyes widening when she found a police report inside. 

“Ah, she’s kind of a special case,” Sarah sighed. “Her boyfriend was Guy Kopski, you know, the boy who committed suicide before the holidays?” She cringed, which made Joan frown, deeming a cringe to be a particularly inappropriate response from someone working closely with students requiring support and compassion. “Anyway, the financial aid office insisted she either take time off from school or get some form of therapy. She’s waiting in your office.”

“The FA office is involved? That seems heavy-handed,” Joan mused, scanning the police report before she turned the page. “Oh,” she nodded, understanding. 

Harleen Quinzel was on a full-ride scholarship, and she was an orphan. The financial aid office wanted to make sure their investment paid off. 

Sad stories were something you got used to working in psychology. It was important to empathize with your patients, and that never got easier or less painful, but the longer you did the job, the more you accepted those stories as part of life. Joan would never feel numb toward the people she helped, but their stories did become less shocking to her. Including Guy Kopski’s violent suicide.

To jump off a building, one truly had to want to die.  

Joan knocked on her office door before pushing it open, her lips curving into a patient smile, which came naturally to her after years and years of listening to sad stories. 

“Harleen?” she asked the girl waiting for her, keeping her voice soft. 

Harleen Quinzel sat at one end of a pale green corduroy couch, looking out the window. She had long, honey blonde hair that fell in soft, messy waves around her shoulders, and she wore the typical GU-girl winter uniform of leggings, a collegiate sweatshirt, and snow boots. She turned her head when Joan said her name, her sober expression inspiring an almost painful pang of sympathy in Joan. Harleen looked strained and pale, her blue eyes overly-large like she’d lost a lot of weight quickly, with bruise-like smudges beneath. It had been about three weeks since Guy Kopski’s suicide, and Joan realized that Harleen probably hadn’t had anyone to talk to about how she was feeling in that span of time. 

In fact, if she had no family to speak of, she would have spent most of that time alone in Gotham while her friends went back to their family’s homes.

“Dr Leland,” Harleen greeted Joan warily. 

Joan lowered herself onto the other end of the couch; she should have taken the chair, but Harleen was so… alone, it seemed more natural to sit beside her. To be closer to her.

“I’ve been filled in about Guy and the financial aid office,” Joan explained kindly while Harleen nodded. “This may be a very general way to open, but would you like to tell me how you’re feeling today?”

Harleen took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, her eyes on one of the many ferns populating the room. 

“Numb,” she said eventually, not looking away from the fern. “Like it didn’t happen.”

 “Acceptance is the final stage of grief,” Joan replied kindly. “It’s only been three weeks. It makes sense that you haven’t fully processed Guy's death.”

“No,” Harleen caught Joan’s eye. Her eyes were glacial, like an icy arctic sea. “I’ve accepted that he’s gone,” she said softly. “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it.”

“There isn’t one way you should feel about it,” Joan said patiently. “It’s not about what you decide you should feel - you’ll feel whatever you feel. That’s one of the things we’re here to talk about so you can understand and cope with those feelings.”

“I know that. I meant I don’t know what I’m feeling, or if I’m even feeling anything at all,” Harleen explained, her gaze shifting back to the fern. She blinked at it a few times, her face placid as she searched her feelings, trying to understand them. “It’s like it didn’t happen to me, but someone else…” she murmured to herself.

Joan was about to jump in, not wanting to push her too hard in the first five minutes when Harleen spoke up again. 

“Everyone knows green is a soothing color,” she observed, running her hand over the corduroy couch cushion. “Doesn’t it seem a little patronizing to use it so liberally?”

“I’m not sure everyone knows that,” Joan offered her a wry smile. “You’re a psych major, aren’t you?”

“You’re the head of the psychology department, aren’t you?” Harleen countered tartly, imitating Joan’s tone perfectly. Then she shifted back into moroseness, almost more intensely than she had been before, and she took a deep breath like she was bracing herself. 

Joan felt a startling thread of dread roll through her gut - some sixth sense waving a flag that there was something wrong with this young woman. The way she flipped on a dime, from depressed to… whatever that was, and back again. It made Joan wonder if there wasn’t something ingenuine about her grief.

But, Joan reminded herself, there was nothing wrong with anyone. No matter what their pathology, no matter what their circumstances. There was a diagnosis to contend with, but no human being could be wrong. 

Aside from, perhaps, some of the most vicious psychopaths.

What made a person human if not empathy? 

“I’m hoping to get into the PhD program after I graduate,” Harleen said, giving Joan a hopeful smile that looked forced. 

“That’s wonderful,” Joan beamed at her, shrugging off her unease. “There’s pretty stiff competition, but you’ve certainly got the grades for it. What are you interested in?”

Harleen licked her lips, eyeing the fern thoughtfully as she considered Joan’s question. Or, perhaps she was considering how to answer Joan’s question. The longer the silence stretched on, the more Joan came to feel she was trying to craft an answer for Joan’s sake, rather than telling the truth. But that was ludicrous, there was nothing she could say that Joan would judge her for. 

Then Harleen looked at Joan, and there was a faint gleam in her eyes, something dark that sent an uneasy shiver rolling over Joan’s shoulders. 

“Psychopaths,” Harleen announced grimly, the word seeming to hang in the air between them. “I want to understand the way they feel,” she added, sounding more subdued.  

Joan raised her eyebrows. Psychopaths were frequent favorites for the younger students, no doubt because they were one of the more exciting pathologies. Not to mention the many movies featuring glamorized versions of them - Hannibal Lector, Patrick Batement, Frank Booth, and nearly every other villain created by Hollywood. 

But there was something… certain about Harleen's words. 

Something personal. 

“Psychopaths don’t feel very much,” Joan pointed out cautiously, watching Harleen turn her attention to the corduroy couch, stroking the ribbed fabric slowly. “They have almost zero emotional intelligence. Everything they do is driven by impulse, trying to feed the pleasure center of their brain for immediate gratification.”

“Really?” Harleen frowned as she looked up at Joan. “All of them?”

“Generally speaking,” Joan said hesitantly, holding Harleen’s gaze, which was intense and made her feel somehow… exposed. 

Harleen sighed and looked down at the pale green couch cushion.

“I wonder if psychopaths find green soothing,” she mused, sounding genuinely curious.

That brought a smile to Joan’s lips. Curiosity was one of her most prized qualities in a student.

After that first meeting, Joan met Harleen every other week for the rest of the semester, getting to know her sad story and her curious mind. There was something about her that made Joan feel protective of her, almost like she owed it to Harleen to give her what she needed to succeed. 

There was also something about Harleen that reminded Joan of Jonathan Crane. Something a shade too ambitious, something a fraction too disinterested in the people around her. They both had sad stories, but while Jonathan’s seemed to drag him down, Harleen seemed to exist separately from hers, as if none of it had really happened to her.

Joan was dismayed but not surprised when the world found out what Jonathan Crane turned Arkham Asylum into. His fear toxin, torturing his patients, working with the mob, the Scarecrow moniker, all of it seemed like an inevitable conclusion.  

But she could have never predicted how Harleen’s story panned out. 

Joan had always worried about the way Harleen monitored herself in front of other people. Over the years that followed their first meeting, she could never understand why her most talented student felt the need to hide her thoughts and feelings, and there was always something decidedly… clenched about how she carried herself. As if there was a weight on her shoulders she couldn’t shake off, something constantly holding her back from being herself, something she was constantly fighting against. 

It wasn’t until the world was introduced to Harley Quinn that Joan understood what that something was.

And all it had taken was the Joker to unlock it.

A/N: Again, just a little writing exercise with some throwbacks to the Harlequin, but nothing revolutionary or spoilery.

Now time to write what I’m supposed to be writing...

[isabel3710]

Aro-Spec Pride

Sander Sides Fanfiction

Summary: Logan is not one to scroll through Tumblr. However, he's glad of the one time he did.

Word Count: 916

Logan didn’t often spend time on sites such as Tumblr, he found it pointless to waste time looking at pictures with humorous captions when he could be doing something productive. Sometimes, though, he found it necessary. Logan would often help write the scripts for Thomas’ videos. Usually, he was in charge of the research behind them but he did enjoy coming up with plot lines and ideas as well.

Today was one of those days when Logan was trying to find new video ideas for Roman, usually, this consisted of him looking online to see what the fans liked from past videos. However, one problem of him looking on social media sites was him finding things that didn’t relate to the videos. Most of the time he found it annoying, but this time he was intrigued.

The post he had found was of a photo, but not the normal ‘memes’ as Virgil liked to call them. It was of the Aromantic flag with different colored text written over the top. The text read: 'AroSpec Awareness Week Feb 16- Feb 22.' It had caught Logan’s eye because he was Aromantic or Aro as most people called it.

For the next few hours, Logan lost himself in Tumblr posts all surrounding Aro-Spec Awareness Week. He found posts of people talking about their experiences with being on the spectrum, he saw ‘memes,’ and he ever saw edits and fanart of him and his fellow sides all decked out in green.

And Logan was happy, happy that there was an entire week dedicated to the spectrum he was on. And as he scrolled through more posts Logan decided that he wanted to do something to celebrate as well.

-------

It took some time before Logan decided what he wanted to do, and when he did he decided that he was going to need some help. Yes, he could just summon what he wanted but Logan wasn’t the best when it came to summoning. That was Roman’s domain. So, the logical side approached the one who would be the best equipped to help him. Virgil.

Logan stood in front of the dark purple door, not bothering to hesitate as he knocked. It swung open to reveal the side he was looking for.

“Hey, Lo." Virgil said, “what’s up?”

“I need your help,” Logan said.

The anxious side stifled a yawn as he looked at him through his bangs. “Let me guess, you need my help in telling Princey off again?”

Logan chucked “no, I need your help with a project I am working on.”

“Okay, what project?”

Now, this was the moment in which the intellectual side paused “do you know what Aro-Spec Awareness Week is?”

“Yeah.” Virgil said, “what about it?"

“Well, as you are aware. I am Aromantic” Logan said, “so since there is a week dedicated to ‘Aro Pride and Awareness’ I thought I would make something to show my support.”

“And you need my help with it?” Virgil clarified.

“Yes.”

The darker aspect paused, thinking it over before nodding “okay, yeah I’ll help you.”

“Excellent.”

“Cool," Virgil said, “so why don’t you tell me what you're thinking.” Logan nodded before he began to explain his thought process.

------

It had taken a couple of days to finish Logan’s Project, luckily it was still Aro-Spec Awareness Week when he did. To be honest, if it hadn’t been for Virgil’s help Logan didn’t know if he would have known where to start. Let alone finish it.

It was towards the end of the week when Logan walked downstairs to breakfast wearing his new, handmade necktie. The tie was hand-dyed in the colors of the Aromantic flag and hand sewed, two things Logan (originally) didn’t know how to do. Luckily, Virgil had some experience from when he had made his patchwork hoodie. Logan knew that Virgil had both dyed and sewn the patches unto the jacket, which was why he had come to his darker counterpart in the first place.

“Ahh, Logan!” Patton cried when he saw him, throwing his arms around the logical side “you look so good!”

“Uh thank you, Patton,” Logan said. Untangling himself from his friend’s arms and clearing his throat slightly.

“Wow Specs, only you could find a way to show pride in the nerdiest way possible,” Roman said with a smirk.

“...Thank you, Roman.” To be honest Logan didn’t understand his friends’ reactions. After all, they shouldn’t be that surprised. In Thomas’ videos, he did tend to wear the same necktie, yes, but in the Mind Place, he wore a variety of ties. Wanting to understand Logan questioned them about their reaction.

“I’m just so proud,” Patton said “you never really show off any kind of expression of your identity. Even after you came out.”

“Yeah, the rest of us have always shown off a little bit of self-expression. Roman does with his personality and Patton wears his flag’s colors on a bracelet.” Virgil gestured to the friendship bracelet that Patton wore.

“And I do it in my jacket,” Virgil continued gesturing to his black and purple jacket that they all knew was to represent his Asexuality. “But you don’t do anything.”

“Yes, I am aware,” Logan said, “however, I thought that now was the perfect time to do so.”

“Why?” Roman asked.

“It is Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week.” Logan explained “or Aro-Spec Awareness Week as I’ve found most people calling it.”

“That’s so cool!” Patton said with a wide grin.

Logan smiled back “I agree.”

[musicmaniac94]

Ace Week!!

It's day 3!

I'm following the prompts from @asexualawarenessweek posted here

Here's my day 1

Here's day 2

Here's some definitions:

Greysexual/ Grey-asexual - Someone who experiences occasional and/or mild sexual attraction. They may act on it, they may not.

Demisexual - A person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone.

Zucchini - term referring to a QP partner. Since there is not adequate language to describe queerplatonic partners, some people refer to these partners as zucchini.

October 22nd: Gray-asexuality and demisexuality

Notice: Ace-spectrum people, including gray-asexual or demisexual people, have just as much right to call themselves asexual without needing to qualify it even though they may occasionally experience attraction. Those who disagree suck. Thank you.

Ok! Let's talk about my zucchini!

He has asked me to describe him in his own words as, "Nice and steamed, buttered, salted and peppered, and down right perfect."

He's a demiromantic and greysexual guy who just recently realized that the way he experiences attraction doesn't mean he's broken.

I know I keep saying it, but he really is my biggest supporter and best friend. He's the only person in my life that understood me before I knew I was aspec, which no surprise because as we know now, so is he.

In preparation for this ace week post, we had a super long conversation about his asexuality and how he experience attraction. I asked him a bunch of questions.

Here are some of his answers:

How did he know he was apsec?

After hearing me talk about each sexual orientation on the spectrum, he realized that he only truly felt sexual attraction to strangers about maybe once a year. The initial attraction he feels when seeing hot people, is nearly always mild enough to ignore. He has never felt the need to act on this attraction. Because of this he felt that greysexual fit him the best. His sexual attraction, although mild, is conditionally attached to the other types of attraction he experiences.

What sort of attraction does he experience?

After a long pause, said that what attracts him the most is personality. When he sees an attractive person, even if he initially feels sexual attraction, he will immediately think "What is their personality and would it fit with mine?" He said that he will always experience intellectual attraction first, then he can feel emotional attraction. Only after knowing the person in those ways, then he may experience romantic attraction as well. Then, and only then, can he experience sexual attraction that he might want to act on.

He also said that he believes his emotional and intellectual attractions are tied to his platonic attraction. So he can be intellectually and emotional invested in a friend he has no romantic feelings for. He has only experienced romantic attraction for two people.

How has being greysexual affected his interactions with non-aspec people?

Like he said in the previous answer he doesn't normally see people and think they're sexually attractive. His co-workers think it's strange. They will point out someone they think is sexually attractive, but all he will notice is clothes or the way they give off a certain vibe. He'll make comments on that while his co-workers are confused and make fun of him for only seeing that.

Even if it's one of the rare instances he does agree with them, when they tell him to go talk to the girl, he doesn't. He admitted to me that he doesn't understand wanting to go up to someone and flirt just because they're attractive. He doesn't like acting on this kind of sexual attraction.

He often tells me about his frustrations of growing up not knowing about these terms. Like me, he was eventually led to believe there was something wrong with him. That he was the weird one. He always thought it was normal for everyone to want to know a person before desiring sex. He now knows it is normal for him and a lot of other people on the ace spectrum, just not everyone.

Why greysexual instead of demisexual?

During a lot of our conversation, some of the experiences he was describing made it seem like he was demisexual. So I asked him what about this particular label he identified with.

He explained that while it's true that he needs to feel a connection to the person to be sexually attracted to them, that need for connection is tied to his romantic orientation, hence him being demiromantic. He doesn't often feel sexual attraction and when he does it comes with conditions. He always needs to feel the other attractions first, but even then he doesn't feel the need to act on the sexual desire.

[letterboxd]

Life in Film: Michael Tyburski.

The Sound of Silence director Michael Tyburski shares some insights into the making of his debut feature, and answers our new “life in film” questionnaire.

In The Sound of Silence, Peter Sarsgaard is Peter Lucian, a house tuner in New York City who believes that the notes emitted from a household’s appliances must harmonize in order to bring peace to its residents. However, his state of mind collapses when he struggles to apply his methods for a new client, Ellen (Rashida Jones).

Directed by Michael Tyburski and based on a short film he made with co-writer Ben Nabors in 2013, The Sound of Silence debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and stood out for its “remarkably silly” unique premise and strong performance from Sarsgaard. Fans of ASMR, get your headphones out; the film’s sound design will trigger those sensations.

The Sound of Silence started life as your short film Palimpsest. Is the ‘house tuner’ occupation at all based in reality? Michael Tyburski: The short answer is no, it’s a fictional profession. The character idea is something that my co-writer Ben Nabors brought to me. Right away, I loved the idea of a practise where someone shows up at your door and offers you a solution to the emotional problems that you’re having.

A lot of alternative therapies exist in New York City so it didn’t seem so far from reality that people would take someone intellectual, dressed well in a tweed blazer, with professional-looking tools, seriously. I really liked that as a conceit. We tried to base it in real science and looked at sound engineers and acousticians for what tools they would use. We tried to make it exist in a very real New York City; that’s why we have touchstones like the character being profiled in The New Yorker.

How has your research into music theory affected your own domestic space? Actually, I moved, for the first time in ten years—after living on a pretty noisy commercial street—during the course of developing and making this movie. Somehow, during the edit, I made my first apartment move within New York City, to a much quieter street. I also took a cue from the main character, Peter Lucian, because I moved my office below my apartment, in a subterranean space. At least I can control the sound a little bit more now that I’m cut off from the surface level, similar to the way Peter does it in his “fallout shelter”.

Michael Tyburski and Peter Sarsgaard on the set of The Sound of Silence. / Photo: James Chororos

The character Peter Lucian feels like a perfect fit for Peter Sarsgaard. When did you have him in mind? He was my first pick. I knew I wanted him from the beginning when I first started thinking about who would be the perfect house tuner. I feel so lucky to have him and fortunately the script resonated with him right away. He’s someone who’s very musically inclined and he plays a number of musical instruments. I was so gratified that he connected to the part so closely.

He’s such a chameleon of an actor. He can play a lot of dark roles, but also he has a very scientist-like intellect. I also think he has one of the best voices, it’s very unique and I enjoy hearing him. So for a movie about sound, it kind of seemed fitting that someone with those types of qualities would work for the role.

What was important to you about keeping Peter’s house-tuning technology analog instead of digital? I think he’s just someone who has the philosophy of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”. Even though his tools are a little more dated, they’re still as effective. They might not be as efficient as digital technology so he’s a little slower, but they still work. There is at least one sound engineer in New York City who we found in our research who measures the sound in rooms, and there’s one thing called a spectrum analyzer that we use in the film that we completely got from this guy’s tool bag.

Director Michael Tyburski.

The film is carefully crafted and you have Peter obsessing over every inch of New York City. What degree of obsession did you have in the making of the film? I’m pretty obsessive as an individual in general. I like to be very organized and have everything mapped out. We had been developing the screenplay for so many years that I got tired of reading it, so before we made the movie, the first thing I did after Peter came on board was sit down and record the entire script in audio format. I kind of had this radio edit of the movie. That transitioned into a rough animatic of the film that I put into the timeline and I was able to add in location references, tonal reference photos, dialogue in different room tones, and then music.

Logistics-wise, we only had 21 days to shoot the movie which is very conservative especially because we had a lot of ground to cover, but I just needed to be as efficient as possible, so it was helpful to have that thorough, animatic tool.

With all the technical departments it was a very close collaboration and I like to be very involved in all details. For the sound design, I wanted to re-record all of the tuning forks, which were kind of an aural motif through the film. When you’re shooting in the elements, you don’t always have the control over the environment, so I hand-recorded each one of the tuning forks myself. We were aiming for that level of precision.

We’d like to ask a few questions about your life in film. What was the film that made you want to become a filmmaker? My choice is probably not that unique but when I was 13, maybe a little too young, I got a VHS copy of Pulp Fiction. That stunned me and took me from A to B. It shook up how I thought contemporary American stories could be told.

Which film do you think is the best love letter to New York? Annie Hall, closely tied with Midnight Cowboy. I suppose I love that era of New York.

Which film has the greatest sound design work of all time? There’s a lot, but one of my favorites is Play Time.

Nice choice. Greatest production design of all-time too. Yeah, not bad. I used a few frames for my look book.

Jacques Tati’s ‘PlayTime’ (1967).

Which is the most overlooked performance from Peter Sarsgaard? I loved him in Experimenter, which I think is an underrated film. More recently too, Errol Morris’s Wormwood. I don’t know how many people went down that rabbit hole because it was long, but I think he was so good in it.

What films did you watch to prepare you for The Sound of Silence? There were three that we were looking at, for a lot of different reasons. We watched Jonathan Glazer’s Birth for the mood and that fairytale vibe it has in a mysterious, alternate New York City.

Being John Malkovich for its bizarro version of science, and I love the naturalistic quality to that film. And obviously The Conversation for its production design and how it follows a man obsessed with sound.

This is a nicely-timed, autumnal, gentle film. What films give you those peaceful autumn vibes? My favorite is Hannah and Her Sisters.

What mindfuck movie changed you for life? I’ll have a couple Kubrick on this list, but for this probably A Clockwork Orange.

It’s Halloween next month. What movie do you watch every Halloween? The Shining! There’s my next Kubrick.

As a teenager, what film character felt like a total mirror to what you were feeling at the time? One of my favorite coming-of-age films is Harold and Maude. I definitely identified with Harold.

What’s your go-to comfort movie? And how many times do you think you’ve seen it? My favorite film of all time, which I promise will be my last Kubrick, is Barry Lyndon. I think it’s just a perfect movie and I’ve certainly seen it dozens of times. I think it does everything I want in a movie. I don’t even know what genre to call it because it’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s an epic. I love the idea of doing a perfect epic movie that covers a lot of ground.

Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Barry Lyndon’ (1975).

What film do you have fond memories of watching with your parents? We were a big Chevy Chase household and National Lampoon’s Vacation holds up as a fine movie.

What’s a classic you could just not get into? Maybe Brazil. Admittedly I think I need to rewatch it because I first saw it when I was 14 or 15 and I just didn’t quite get it at the time.

What classic are you embarrassed to say you haven’t seen? Two Kurosawa films; Rashomon and Seven Samurai. They’re always on my list to brush up and they seem to come up in conversation more and more.

Which movie scene makes you cry the most? Definitely the holiday classic It’s A Wonderful Life.

What film was your entry point into non-English language cinema? That was a good one, I like that question. I remember when I was in my freshman year of high school I was given two VHS copies from someone who knew I was getting into film. One of those films was Persona, but then the other one, which I knew I watched first, was a film called Woman in the Dunes.

What filmmaker—living or dead—do you envy the most? If Kubrick, go for living… If it’s Kubrick go for living? Oh my gosh.

I feel like you’re going to say Kubrick. Yeah. Envy is a funny word. Kubrick has an admirable career for the depth of his filmography. You know, like a lot of film nerds I’m a huge Paul Thomas Anderson fan.

Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Prestige’ (2006).

What’s a film that you wish you made? I would love to make a movie about magic but ever since I saw The Prestige I think it would be hard to compete with that. That period, that Victorian era of illusion, I don’t know if you can top that.

It’s time for best-of-decade lists. What’s the greatest film of the 2010s? If we went back even further it would be easier. For the last 10 years, I think Phantom Thread is pretty great.

‘The Sound of Silence’ was released on September 13 by IFC Films and is in select cinemas now.

[salavante]

that character ask thing, how about August en Zaied?? :3c

That funky, hunky elf. 

Full Name: August en Zaied

Gender and Sexuality: Male and mostly Heterosexual. I think there is the off-chance fellow that might pique his interest, but not at a frequency that I think he would self-describe himself as bisexual.

Pronouns: he/him

Ethnicity/Species: Umbran Elf. I talked about this a little bit in Ganzrig’s thing, but most people on Ismes have a different race back in their heritage at some point, and individuals will look a little more or less human depending on how many actual humans are back in their ancestry. August is on the more human-y side of the spectrum. 

Birthplace and Birthdate: I don’t tend to give birthdates to characters who do not use the same calendar systems as us. Maybe he was born in winter, ironically. August’s family formerly lived in one of the Umbran Empire’s capitol cities, and he was probably born on the family estate.

Guilty Pleasures: Not a ton. August is a very serious, dignified person and doesn’t put himself at risk of looking silly very often. He’ll smoke tobacco on occasion and likes his wine and port. He also knows how to play the accordion but just barely…which, really means that he doesn’t know how to play it at all, HAH. August also has a fondness for roses, as his mother had a garden on their old estate that she was very proud of. One thing he is guilty about is that after being exposed to and promptly rejecting most new technology…he really does prefer using an electric razor to a straight razor and no one can ever know. I think that’s his one true guilty pleasure. If someone caught him using it he’d be absolutely mortified.

Phobias: Oh wow I can actually fill this one out as god and OP intended, because August is a shipwreck survivor and now has a phobia of drowning and deep water, which is a shame because he’s a sailor by trade and formerly really loved the ocean. I do think it’s something he can work through if he tries, though.

What They Would Be Famous For: As far as August is concerned, he would prefer to not be famous for anything, ever, and that everyone would just leave him to his own business. Unfortunately, he has a moderate cult following on The Hunt for having a unique powerset and being kind of a dreamboat.  

What They Would Get Arrested For: August is fairly lawful and coolant headed, so, not a ton, but if he were doing something to ensure the safety and wellness of his family, he’d go to some pretty far lengths. There’s a perfectly serviceable AU out there where August is a mercenary, pirate or assassin.

OC You Ship Them With: August was never actually envisioned as being a ladies man, but it’s just what happened along the way. All of the ladies he has slept with in-game have been older than him, so I guess he likes mature women, HAH. I enjoy the chemistry between August and Jake’s character Elias, who is a silver tongued cannibal and a privateer, go figure. It’s kind of a classic chemistry, sailor-hero type and pirate. Many moons ago, when August was first conceived and was still a female character, his love interest was a half-orc bard named Benji, but he’s since been written out of August’s original story and has been replaced byyy….Iona Howell, August’s canon love interest. The ferocious, emotionally unstable illuminator/wizard who is trying her best to get her shit together, and August’s on and off again girlfriend.

OC Most Likely To Murder Them: Pre-defection Iona was probably capable of killing August in a manic/jealous rage, though I think at the end of the day August is more powerful than her and would probably have killed her first as long as she didn’t get the drop on him. Ganzrig also threatened to slaughter and dismember him, but that’s just what Orcs do, I don’t know if she would have actually killed him.

Favorite Movie/Book Genre: August is from an early/mid 1800’s level society and so movies really overstimulate to the point that he generally avoids them. He resists most new technology at first blush and is very, very stubborn, though there are a few benefits that he cannot deny. He’s not really much of a reader either, his education stopped when he was somewhere between the ages of 12-14 so he reads kind of slow and his own handwriting isn’t very good, but that still puts him at an advantage among other sailors. He probably likes poetry because a) the ladies like to be read poetry and b) it’s something that could be easily translated into song or read aloud, which is his preferred method of receiving media. Epic poems, sea shanties, etc. August would go to a play before he would go to a movie, and would be perfectly entertained by being read aloud to.

Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: August used to be an atheist before his world’s god, Al Fortuna, decided that he was their new favorite person. Now he just thinks Gods are assholes and generally does not like any media that presents gods as anything other than fickle and more trouble than they’re worth. And he absolutely, tremendously hates the idea of things being ordained by “fate”.

Talents and/or Powers: A couple fun ones! August is ambidextrous and can wield a pistol and sabre at the same time, and is in generally very nimble. But the most notable thing about him is that August possesses a passive ability called the Miasma of Misfortune, which is tied to Ganzrig’s Fortune’s Favor. While bad luck does not fall on August’s own head, he exudes an aura of bad luck to people in his vicinity, which gets worse the longer that he is exposed to them without reprieve. August has learned to manipulate the Miasma to a degree, and can either reel it in or dump all of its focus on a single target, usually ending with some foolish prick stabbing himself on ‘accident’. Celair has also been teaching him some cantrips. He is from a low-magic setting, so he is not very magically potent.

Why Someone Might Love Them: August is easy to become infatuated with, but not easy to be in a relationship with, and there is a string of broken hearted maidens behind him. He is dashing and courageous, with an intriguingly intense personality, and is confident, but not in a way that dips into vanity. He’s also very earnest, a reliable, straightforward man that keeps his head on straight and seldom shows his temper (though when he does, watch the fuck out). Though not an intellectual, August is very cunning, and has a dry sense of humor that some appreciate. He’s also quite chivalrous, and I think there is a very classical, romantic element to him.

Why Someone Might Hate Them: When I say that August is not easy to be in a relationship with, it’s because he’s a vault and values his privacy to a fault. He seldom wears his heart on his sleeve, and prefers to keep his stronger emotions to himself, for better or worse, and has trouble expressing his feelings even when it’d be in his interest to. He’s the most stubborn man alive, and would sooner double down on something than let someone he doesn’t like be right, making him just a little spiteful. August is resistant to too much external change, especially with technology. He’s also quite dreadfully serious and finds people who are too goofy kind of offputting (ex: he tolerates Wybjorn, but probably wouldn’t have anything to do with him if they did not have friends in common). Someone may also find his priorities shrewd at first glance - his number one concern is providing for his family, and so he is easily motivated by money. Because he is very private, he is not likely to divulge information on his personal life, leading his motivations often obscured and at times misinterpreted. He does not care very much about what other people think, and so seldom clarifies. 

How They Change: August changes a bit over the course of Godslaughter, but not very much, as he has mostly existed in an NPC capacity. The thing he will have to learn is to be emotionally candid with his family when he returns home, because they are going to have a lot of questions and he’s not going to want to answer any of them, but he HAS to. And things aren’t going to be the way he left them. Most of August’s challenges in this department are on the horizon.

Why You Love Them: August has a somewhat colorful meta history. He is my oldest character that I still use regularly (at over 5 years old) besides Calvin, and he was conceived at not a very good point in my life. I had been quietly struggling with my gender identity for many years, and had found myself pushing against my constraints in fiction, but by the time I got to the original August, I was exhausted and beaten down. The first pass at August was a very sad, somber character that was a lady crossdressing to work as a sailor. I’d hit on something important, but wasn’t really ready to open myself up to what it might mean, which, aside from being conceived during the worst year of my life, lead to Kismet collecting dust. Fastforward to 2018 when I was looking for Gods for Godslaughter, and remembered that I had always liked Al Fatima and Al Fortuna, and took another look at August by association. By now I was out as transmasc and decided it’d be a good step for myself to retool August into a character that I could be proud of - a confident, earnest person who wanted nothing more than to be the captain of his own fate and to protect and provide for the people he loves. I don’t really like talking publicly about my trans-ness, I (like August) have come to the conclusion it’s not really anyone’s business but mine, but my journey is inseparable from him. And that’s ok. August is my tiny hope that someday I can get a genre fiction story to a publisher that’s about a trans person, but is not about his transition or his coming out.

[rainbowdoom32]

So I'm going to start identifying myself as aspec. Previously I identified as a bisexual aromantic but upon furthur consideration I might be asexual.

I'm posting about this b/c 1) it puts it out there and makes the lable feel more real and tangible

2) I know some of y'all IRL or on a personal enough basis that I feel you should know

3) A queers need more visibilty in gen

4) cause I want to talk abouy it

So Idk how to do a read more and am on mobile so if you dont want to hear about what being aspec means to me start scrolling now

So. In the aspec community (do we have a better word?) theres an overwhelming discourse about sexual and romantic repulsion. For those of you who dont know thats when the idea of sex , sexual content, sex itself, the idea of romance, romantic gestures, and/or romantic content acts as a squick for you it creates some spectrum of a revulsion in you to be confronted with one or more of these things. Its an overwhelming discourse for many reasons but the one I want to talk about is that it makes it obvious that your ace or aro if your repulsed by sex or romance. The process for discovering your aspec identity is easier in a way, specifically in a way it isnt for me.

See I dont experience sexual or romantic repulsion. I like romance stories and porn. I actively seek these things out. I'm not put off by discussions of others romantic or sexual lives (specific aspects may repulse me but in general I'm interested in these especially when coming from people I care about). So naturally as a teenager I never considered myself as aspec. i considered myself bisexual almost immediatly (there was a thing where I thought I was tricking myself into thinking I liked women to be included in the queer community. More on that later) it took two very short very middle school esque (one took place my sophmore year) relationships and an accidental internet encounter with the concept of aromantisim for me to realise that the reason this wasnt working for me was because I didnt really want it.

The more I thought of myself as aro the more things made sense. At the slumber parties as a kid I never had a crush to confess. Those two failed relationshios? Guy friends I'd gotten real close to and thought my new stronger friendship feelings must be what romantic attraction feels like. Also the real sticker, I dont get jealousy in romance at all. Like that one goes over my head. I dont understand why cheating is the worst thing someone can do in a relationship to the point that people who've been sucked into a cycle of abuse and have become convinced everything is their fault will snap when they discover they were cheated on. That is absolutly mind boggling for me.

The point of that is I never got that ew ick romance feeling. As a reult the road to discovering I was aromantic was long and and full of doubt. Doubt that went along the lines of "Maybe I just havent found the right person". Which also happens to be the exact thing my mum says to me everytime I try to explain that Im aromantic to her. Bisexuality she understands and accepts. This she doesnt. So even though I know intellectually theres no right person for me that niggling doubt remains andit haunts me.

Now im going to devolve a bit here and I know what this sounds like but im seriously not trying to be offensive just explain something

See I read a fanfic recently. I dont remeber how I found it but it was a Stony fic and the story and the set up were very romantic cliche. Basically Steve was Tony's booty call it evolves to friends with benefits Steve falls in love. Textbook stuff. But see theres a wrench because the author identifies as aromantic is with the definition we have aromantic. They write their identity onto Tony. Thats something we do in fanfic and in writing. But the problem I ran into is this: the author identifies as aromantic because they experience romantic repulsion(yes they told me this) so in the fic Tony is in love with Steve but experiences romantic repulsion. The idea of romance of romantic commitment makes him anxious and sick. This is how the author feels FWB allows them to experience intimacy without triggering their repulsion. Identifying as atomantic makes them feel not broken. This so good right? This is why we have labels

Except. When I read this part of the story it hurt me. Directly. See Tong Stark has Daddy Issues. Ehen the author wrote about Tony's romantic repulsion narritevly they tied it into Tony's not nice childhood. I dont know specifically why it wasnt part of thwir explanation when I told them their story hurt me. I didnt ask. But this narritive decision made what was essentially was an author expressing their experience as an aromantic in a story feel like a personal attack against my aromantic identity.

See when I read that what I read was "Tony Stark cant commit to an actual relationship with Steve Rogers because Howard Starks Grade A parenting fucked up his ability to recieve expressions of love and his ability to commit. Tony Stark is in romantic love with Steve Rogers but his childhood trauma prevents him from expresing it in the traditional manner this is what being aromantic is"

That hurt. Because it hit that little doubt in my head about not having met the "right person" and mixed it up with some childhood trauma made you a broken person. It also hit me while I felt safe. Romance stories are my escapism. Their like an extra element of fantasy in a story for me. I specifically seek out romantic stories as a comforting mechanism. Fanfics in particular because of their inclusivity. I was in my safe space, and I was whammed in a sore spot.

The problem is though the author has a right to that story and that label and to express themselves. We usually draw the line at self expression where it hurts other people but thats not what happened here. What happened here was definitial confusion. The author and I were using "aromantic" to describe two different but similar romantic orientations. In doing so we hurt each other ironically in the same way. We both said to each other "Your identity is wrong and toxic you hurt people and yourself by expressing it the way you do". (I left a comment saying how her story affected me)

When I say I'm aromantic I mean I experience no romantic feelings. None nada zilch. The idea that I might one day experience a type of romantic feeling is an aggression against me. The same way the idea that gay people can choose to be straight is an aggression against being gay.

But I can't invalidate someone else to protect myself. What do I do? I dont want to hurt myself and I dont want to hurt other people? Idk

And now to why I no longer identify as bisexual.

I'm a virgin. Because most peoples first time is with someone their in a romantic relationship with. And we'll I dont do that. Im also a socially anxious person. I have no idea how to instogate a sexual encounter and honeslty I wouldnt feel comftorable dping it with someone I couldnt trust or alternatively someone I'm friends with and would have to continue being juat friends with in post we had sex awkwardness. So ive never had an opportunity to have sex.

But I also havent sought them out. And I dont feel particularly driven to. These are reasons to think your asexual but I'm sure it's also the experience of many introverted and secually awkawrd people. And it's not like I couldnt have sex at some future point. Even now if an opportunity arose I might say yes, of only to confirm my asexuality.

The thing that has made me actually consider if I'm ace tho is a weird quirk of mine. I cant get off to prom videos. I use lit erotica. Why? Cause the idea that those are real live people puts me off. Porn stars and amateur porn makers know people get off watching their videos. Theyre okay with that. But I'm not. At all. Thats a big ol nope for me.

See I'm a ciswoman. Which means I have a clitoris. An organ whose only purpose is to provide pleasure. As everyone knows reciving pleasure via the clit requires no participation by a second person. The fact that my clitiros functions as intended and that I use it isnt sexual attraction.

Thats a new idea for me. But it's true isnt it? Sexual attraction is about other people. And sure I can appreciate other people's hotness. But just because I think a horse is pretty doesnt mean I want to fuck it. Remeber that thing about thinking I was faking bisexuality?? I was right. I wasnt sexually attracted to women. But what I hadnt bothered to consider because of heteronormativity was that I wasnt sexually attracted to men either.

Other fun fact in case you might be an ace person who's read this far (why? Also hi Katie and possibly Sadie but definelty Nishat. No im not implying any of you are ace) I dont have sex dreams. But I do have dreams in which I masturbate. So stick that jn your pipe and smoke it.

Anyways these are all experinces that I have that I feel neccessry to share to make it so the repulsion story isnt the only one out there. And also to start a discourse about how experiencing and not experiencing repulsion affect aspec experience. Thanks for reading!

[maydei]

What is it about Hannibal (the show + person) and his relationship with will that you absolutely love about? They do seem like an interesting couple (I haven’t seen the movie so I cannot relate much) but what about them? I genuinely curious and am interested with your thoughts and opinions.

Hi Anon!! This is a really big question, but I’ll do my best to answer it. I’m definitely gonna put most of this under a cut, because it got really, really long.

First of all, the relationship that I love in regards to the Will//Hannibal dynamic comes from the TV show Hannibal, which was written by Bryan Fuller and ran on NBC from 2013-2015. It was an extraordinarily unique and in-depth take on the Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham friendship that was based on the books, insofar that Will Graham was one of the few who deeply understood Hannibal Lecter prior to the revelation that he was a cannibal. Of course, Bryan took that concept several steps further.

My first suggestion? If you can stomach any kind of horror or gore, watch Hannibal. It is without a doubt the best television show I’ve ever seen, if only because it is visually beautiful, every character is complex and has clearly outlined motivations of their own, and is a really deeply intellectual piece of media. It’s not an easy watch, and I don’t mean that because of content. The story itself, the character drives, even the dialogue will challenge you. It’s not something you just sit down and understand, it really did take a lot of work for me to grasp the full spectrum of what was going on at any given time during my first watch. I’d never encountered something that pushed me that hard before, and even with a week between episodes or more (since I watched when it was originally airing), I was often left like ?????. Think of it like Black Mirror, except every episode is tied together. It’s gonna screw with you a little, so you’ll want to be prepared. 

The thing other than the fantastic writing that brings this show and these characters to life: the actors. Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter presents a character that you better not take your eyes off even once. Hannibal says things so smoothly and with such conviction, but it’s only if you watch his face at all times that you will see the micro-expressions of what he is actually thinking and feeling. There’s a reason he’s often referred to as the Devil, as smoke. 

Hugh Dancy as Will Graham presents a man who is haunted by his own desires from empathizing too closely with killers. He can feel what murderers feel, and that gives him a unique perspective. He puts himself inside their minds to recreate their thought processes as they kill, and that gets to him. It haunts him, and sticks with him. It puts him in the position of needing someone to help him find his way back to himself when he gets in too deep.

It’s such a unique dynamic. I really couldn’t tear myself away. And that’s only where their story begins.

It starts as a sense of curiosity. Hannibal by nature and necessity is a solitary creature, and he has been pretty damn happy that way. When Jack Crawford asks him to profile Will Graham and clear him for field work, it is a unique opportunity for him as an already-established killer to see inside the workings of the FBI. That’s advantageous for him, of course. He can then keep tabs on the investigation against him. But in the process, he discovers Will, who thinks like a killer. Will, who has forcibly shoved his own personality into a very safe box of isolation and rescued dogs and fly fishing, things that require control and perfection. Will uses these constructs as shields to keep the darkness inside him at bay. He absorbs killers to gain their insights, but once they are inside, he has a really hard time getting rid of them. 

It may seem backwards, but despite Hannibal meeting other killers who are very much like him, he ultimately rejects them because he doesn’t want someone exactly like himself. He wants Will because he is so incredibly human, but trying so hard to restrain his own darkness. What Hannibal wants above all is to set him free, come hell or high water. And fundamental transformations can be exquisitely painful, even in their beauty. Hannibal wants to see what will happen.

The Hannibal/Will relationship doesn’t stay stagnant, ever. There is a constantly shifting dynamic of power once we reach S2 and Will is aware of Hannibal’s nature. Will puts himself in a position to learn more about Hannibal, and in doing so, finds himself feeling the pull that Hannibal described, discovering the ways in which they are so alike. And the tension in these scenes is indescribable. If you’ve seen any of the gifsets I’ve reblogged, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Every molecule of space between them is charged with intent. Every word is carefully weighted. Every glance is measured to not be too soon or too late, hoping to glimpse beneath the other’s veneer of civility and see the creature inside. They are so cruel to each other as they learn one another, but in their cruelty, they push each other to higher heights, and the friendship never quite fractures. 

In a word, they get close. There are moments standing in firelight and shadow, genuine smiles shared, tension that builds and grows until every inch of darkness between them is thick with it. Flirtatious glances. Familiar, intimate touches that hold such rich subtext. They understand each other like no one else does. They stand on the very edge of becoming something more, becoming family, when everything collapses, and they are both devastated by it.

Their relationship is the very definition of “can’t live with him, can’t live without him”. They are described by others as being “identically different”, as being “nakama [friends, but more like… family. like a group of people tied together by life and circumstance who would not easily be broken apart]”. 

Hannibal’s revelation of love for Will Graham comes in their separation. It hits him like a train, to be honest. It’s the first time the viewer realizes that underneath the very polite and elegant and put-together man that covers the vicious killer, he really does crave companionship. Even in his solitary life, Hannibal has never been actually solitary. He fills the gaps in with friends and acquaintances, people he cares for to an extent, but mostly people he uses for their advantageous nature. Will is the first person who really sees Hannibal down to his bones, and the loss of him, and the loss of their mutual potential, deeply wounds him. 

Like. I can’t even fully explain all the things about these characters that get to me. I think the thing I like most is that, even as a serial killer, Hannibal is still so very human. He finds pleasure in art and architecture. He enjoys history and philosophy and educational pursuits. He’s a talented artist and musician and chef. He gets annoyed by rude people the same as the rest of us. The main difference is that he eats them. 

This show is visceral. It’s a game of cat and mouse, a chessboard of intellectual bad decisions, but every choice is born from emotional need. And the best thing about it is that Bryan Fuller fully accepts, welcomes, and acknowledges the love between Hannibal and Will canonically in the show. Not just “haha that’s gay” jokes. Everyone else can see it. Everyone has some sort of parting shot about it. But in the end, even Will is faced with the point-blank realization that, yes, Hannibal is in love with him, and has the question turned back on him: but do you ache for him?

By the end, there is no doubt that the call has been heard, and the draw between them culminates in what Hannibal has really desired all along: he and Will hunting together, fighting together. Achilles and Patroclus, as they have been described by Hannibal himself. 

This show is a masterpiece, honestly. It unfolds the confines of civility and sees predators set free. It sees them together, reunited. It sees them in love. It sees them from beginning to end, where even the end is not really the end. 

I dearly, desperately hope for a season four of this show. I’m comforted by the fact that all the writers, producers, and actors have voiced their support of doing so, if they can find a production company to pick them up and get the rights of the other Hannibal characters [re: SotL] the way Bryan desires.

The fandom is incredible. Everyone is a little bit older than my prior fandoms, and people tend to be well-seasoned to the concept of reading what they enjoy and silently passing over things that are not to their tastes. There’s… not really any fighting the way there is in other fandoms. Those who disagree have civilized discussions, because the first and foremost rule of the fandom is the first and foremost rule of understanding Hannibal Lecter: “Whenever possible, one should always try to eat the rude.” 

And the fandom is alive!! It’s actively creating new art and new gifsets and new fics and new everything every day, and not on a small scale, either. There are thousands of people still out here eagerly awaiting the revival of a truly groundbreaking show that showcased LGBT relationships (not just Hannibal and Will, mind you. Margot/Alana is real and alive and nourishes my soul to this day), a diverse cast, riveting and powerful female characters, and the kind of plotline and visual storytelling that the ancients would weep if they could see. 

TLDR:  I love this fandom. I love these characters. I love these monsters, and I see myself inside them in ways that is absolutely concerning to polite society. I love the imagery, the depth of morality. I love that it’s feasible for me to write a fic in which the characters can love each other and are constantly working around one another to achieve their own ends, and that every fic I read by everyone else has a different insight to their relationship. That every fic I read is a fucking masterpiece, seriously, oh my god, the quality of fiction in this fandom is so high, it’s amazing. 

Join us, Anon. The Atlantic is a little chilly this time of year, but you’ll get used to it, I promise.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: Avengers #164: To Fall By Treachery!

October, 1977

Oh hey look!

Whirlwind, Living Laser, and Power Man Not That One! Apparently the theme of this iteration of the Lethal Legion is The Worst.

Then again, the previous version was run by Grim Reaper. So maybe every version of the Lethal Legion is just terrible.

What even qualifies these guys to be the Lethal Legion? Sure, two of them were in the previous incarnation but I don’t think Grim Reaper okayed any franchising. The man is very particular about intellectual property.

Not much to say about the cover. A cool enough battle scene with the Lethal Legion kicking the Avengers’ collective asses. Except for the POV person.

Maybe the Avengers would be doing better if Hank Pym had stayed Ant-Man. Because lets be honest: Ant-Man? Kicks ass. Yellowjacket? Largely ineffectual.

Anyway, lets begin.

WITH FANSERVICE.

He’s single, ladies and gentlemen.

Anyway again, with a filler the previous issue, the Avengers have finally gotten some quiet days to relax, heal, and clean up from the previous several catastrophes.

Now the Avengers can finally look into what is even the deal with Wonder Man. He was raised as a zombie due to the Grim Reaper’s scheming but regained his own memories somehow. During the Grim Reaper’s attack, Wonder Man revealed that he wasn’t quiet human anymore, with eyes that crackled with energy. Ultron’s encephalo-ray had only a temporary effect on him due to this.

So whats the deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal??

Well. He’s become a creature of living energy. His cells are like miniature fusion reactors more than living tissue. Even though his body seems to simulate normal life-signs and functions, he has a totally unique physiology (for now).

He probably wasn’t even dead those years he was dead! Confusing, I know. But perhaps it would be better to say that he was dormant and... metamorphosing. Like a beautiful ionic butterfly.

These answers come from a scientific huddle between Tony Stark, Beast, Black Panther, Yellowjacket, and Alice the lady biochemist.

Her last name is apparently Nugent and she becomes Doctor Spectrum at some point. The things one learns when one just wants to know if a character has a last name.

Anyway, Beast was part of this scientific mosh-pit but he cuts out early, feeling superfluous. Why would Tony Stark even call in a lady bio-chemist? Doesn’t he know that Beast worked in a bio-lab and also is currently insecure about his usefulness to the team?

Doesn’t help that because Beast was too busy making jokes, Black Panther got to all the best exposition before he could.

So basically Beast is feeling underappreciated and useless.

This kind of goes back a ways. Not only has Beast felt useless on the team due to being knocked out or kidnapped or whatever so many times, he also feels like everyone is judging him by his cover and forgetting what he can do. Told to carry heavy things. Yelled at for joking. Disregarded when actual science stuff happens.

Things have gotten so bad he actually misses Patsy, where before he seemed to resent her presence.

I miss Patsy too.

Anyway, can anything break Beast out of this funk? Maybe a dozen hot dogs with mustard.

Except no. The cart guy runs when he sees a blue gorilla man in a trenchcoat very politely attempting to engage in commerce.

WILL NOTHING BREAK BEAST OUT OF HIS- wait what’s happening.

A mob of women has spontaneously manifested to fangirl over Beast. Just clamoring and trying to touch his fur and he has the biggest shit eating grin.

I guess these girls don’t hate and fear mutants. Although its my theory that the Marvel universe is just full of furries because Tigra faced a very similar response in issue #215 when she was on the Avengers roster.

People in the Marvel U just love people with a full-body fur coat.

And are rudely handsy and slut shamey. For shame, the Marvel public.

ANYWAY. Believe it or not, Beast getting his esteem back via effusive female appreciation actually ties into the plot.

A mysterious monocle man with an N ring drives by the growing crowd and hopes that Beast doesn’t recognize him. OH IF ONLY HE DIDN’T HAVE TO DRIVE HIMSELF LIKE SOME KIND OF PROLE.

But, yeah, no, Galactus could run by and Beast wouldn’t notice it right now. You’re good, monocle guy. Well, not morally. You know what I mean.

Monocle man heads to the docks to meet up with... POWER MAN (no not that one).

But the original. The cheap knockoff version of Wonder Man. Eric Josten. He who did a crime and destroyed the Avengers just because he was smitten with Enchantress. And then quit crime because she abandoned him. And then recrimed because Black Widow told him to. And also was in the first Lethal Legion even though there were no morally dubious ladies to tell him to. That Power Man.

Wanna know something hilarious? Between then and now, Luke Cage beat the shit out of Josten for possession of the Power Man name. And Luke Cage doesn’t even really like the name. Perhaps beating up Eric Josten was reward enough.

Eric Josten doesn’t like being reminded that he lost his own, uninspired name and hucks a crate weighing tons at Mysterious Monocle Man, or Count Nefaria for short.

Count Nefaria would be dead and this story would be a lot shorter had he not been smart enough to hide behind a hologram.

He offers to increase Josten’s power should he agree to be in his employ and dang but Josten is impressed by this dude not getting crushed by a crate. He’s in.

Count Nefaria sets him his first task: breaking two others out of prison. We can guess who because they are on the cover.

SEVERAL DAYS LATER, the Whizzer is relevant to this book again.

He’s listening to the news, as old people are wont to do, and not being retired very well. For example, he reads about a prison break and wonders if the Avengers will need help corralling the escapees. And hears about a bank robbery that the police are helpless to stop and immediately springs into action, getting into costume and racing towards the door.

And nearly kills Scarlet Witch.

She was coming to visit his old man self because at this point, he’s still her dad. And to avoid running over her, he slams himself into a wall. ... I know people prefer Magneto as the twins’ dad but are we absolutely sure that this man isn’t Quicksilver’s dad?

Anyway, Wanda starts yelling at him for almost dying again. Whats he doing risking having another heart attack and going out to fight bank robbers? You’re retired, the Whizzer! Tony Stark gave you a nice, undisclosed job and you have a nice home and at least one child who visits! Relax and enjoy your retirement!

And then she steals the bank robbery all for herself.

Also, we finally get the retcon for that time Scarlet Witch flew with Wanda wishing she still had that experimental flying belt she was testing for Stark. Everyone get that? EXPERIMENTAL FLYING BELT. But it didn’t work so we’ll never see it again.

Plot hole filled.

At the bank robbery, the obvious suspects are bank robbering. Living Laser, Whirlwind, and Villain Formerly Known As Power Man. But they are bank robbering on Count Nefaria’s orders.

Hmm... why would a richie rich hire supervillains to rob a bank? Or drive his own car?

But no time to wonder about that. This is an Avengers book so lets see some Avengers. Lets see some Avengers entering the scene by smacking Living Laser in the face with a shield.

Because if there’s one constant its that Living Laser definitely deserves to get hit in the face with a shield.

Although. I’m not sure whats wrong with Hank Pym here. He’s all standing not shrunk but telling Cap he’ll totally shrink on command but why wouldn’t he already be shrunk? Wasp is already shrunk. She knows where its at.

So this is a fight.

Power Man charges forward and WHAM!s Cap before he can get his shield back.

Weirdly, Cap doesn’t recognize him. Despite Power Man embarrassing the kooky quartet and being the impetus behind Cap rage-quitting the team like a Hawkeye.

... So maybe that’s why he doesn’t recognize him. On purpose.

Apparently Hank did finish those power-ups to his and Jan’s powerset he promised to do before he got amnesia because he and Wasp are faster than ever.

Nearby, Black Panther squares up against Whirlwind because... ...? I guess he probably has the best reflexes on the team. Or maybe they have a grudge match because of that one time they fought in a garage.

Anyway, Whirlwind puts the spin cycle on Black Panther.

Geez. Its like when a cat grabs the pull cord for a ceiling fan.

Cap breaks off to catch him which loses the Avengers the advantage since Living Laser is able to recover.

Remember, he once took over a South American country. He was a big deal in his intro issues and a significantly less of a big deal anytime else.

Free of distractions and standing in front of the Perez store, Living Laser prepares to atomize both Cap and the Panther when suddenly Scarlet Witch enters the fight and is MVP again.

I’m digging that she’s consistently so competent recently.

She causes a water main to break, geysering Living Laser up into the air, and causing thousands in property damage that Tony Stark will probably have to pay for.

Huh. Its not clear whether this is her upgraded control of nature powerset or the probability manipulation one. It could go either way.

With Scarlet Witch evening and perhaps bamboozling the odds, Power Man convinces the other two that its time to go. Living Laser melts the street into tar to slow the Avengers’ pursuit.

So the Avengers don’t even bother. Cap decides its too risky for Yellowjacket and Wasp to pursue alone. There will be another chance to get those goofs.

In the meantime, he reflects that the team has been falling short of its rep lately. A subject which he has a lot of bitter, unspoken words about.

Meanwhile, in a secret laboratory, Nefaria has wind blowing his cape indoors. Perhaps small vents set near the floor.

Anyway, there are some scientists. And they are working on something called Project N because of course Count Nefaria would have a Project N.

These scientists were in Nefaria’s employ when last he showed up and tried to blackmail the world with a Doomsmith Command System because the obvious step up from weirdly squeamish Not-Mafia leader was Obvious Bond Villain.

He was stopped by the X-Men but Thunderbird died stupidly and pointlessly, punching a jet to death.

The scientists quit when Nefaria couldn’t pay them, having gone bankrupt on his Obvious Bond Villain scheme but now he has bank robbery money to get them their back pay so they’ll finish the project for him.

One of the scientists even helped design the machine Zemo used to create Wonder Man and later Power Man.

And speaking of Power Man, those three idiots Nefaria duped into working for him are the ideal subjects for the project.

DUN DUN DUN?

Oh and once the Lethal Legion has exhausted their usefulness and Nefaria has sent them off to their doom, he will enjoy “dismissing” the scientists. A phrasing that none of them decide is at all ominous nor do they draw a connection between themselves and the other lackies that Nefaria just said he was going to get rid of.

I mean, look at this. Look at how the lettering changes for that line. He is definitely going to kill them and is only being slightly subtle about it.

Whats that thing about the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom as DnD concepts again?

Meanwhile upstairs, the Lethal Legion squabble. Because most villains dislike each other. I think its a matter of big personalities.

For example, Living Laser is complaining that bank robbing is beneath him. And fair enough. His MO tends to lean more towards pointless destruction and coups. Whirlwind doesn’t like to work for anyone else. Plus, this mansion is dusty and there are no servants so Whirldwind correctly deduces that Nefaria has gone broke and is using the three of them to steal him some quick, easy cash.

But Power Man believes that Nefaria is going to boost their powers and doesn’t think the other two should be so high and mighty when he had to break them out of jail.

Before this verbal spat can escalate, Nefaria calls them down to the lab to totally increase their powers swearsies.

The next day, the Avengers sit around and gossip.

Even though Iron Man is the Avengers Chairman he’s been awfully absent lately. Sure, his employer (how did anyone ever fall for this?) Tony Stark has been having troubles but that’s no excuse! The Avengers need their leader in this trying time!

And Captain America intends to discuss that very subject! Once they have quorum. DEMOCRACY!

Beast finally shows up and brings them up to quorum. He’s been missing for two days but hey, bright side, he’s in a lot better mood.

Captain America: “Beast! Where have you been for the past two days?”

Beast: “Well... I promised Barb, Sue, Melanie and Paty I wouldn’t tell -- but it was a gas!”

Has Beast just come back from an orgy? He’s gone for two days, in the company of several women who presumably were the ones who were groping him on the street, and he smugly insinuates that he’s not going to kiss and tell.

(Fun? Fact: Paty is a reference to Paty Greer, a Marvel artist and Head of Production. That’s, uh, an interesting way to cameo a coworker.)

I can’t believe that this is where Beast’s insecurity plotline was heading. Or rather, I could because I’ve read these issues before, but if I hadn’t I can’t believe that this is where Beast’s insecurity plotline was heading.

I’m not even mad.

Oh anyway suddenly a car is thrown in through the window.

The Lethal Legion have returned for a rematch.

Cap tells the Avengers to hang back until they can be sure that the injured Wasp is okay then they can attack as a group. TEAM WORK, y’know?

But Power Man inadvertently activates Wonder Man’s McFly button by calling the Avengers cowards for not immediately leaping at people who threw a car at them.

I mean, he couldn’t have known that Wonder Man has been dealing with a fear of death, not eased by learning he didn’t even actually die the first time.

Actually, that’s what has Wonder Man so nettled in this particular instance. Power Man went through the same process he did but he didn’t pay the same price Wonder Man did. He didn’t die. He didn’t become some inhuman (but not Inhuman) thing. So fuck you Power Man, you can’t be as strong as Wonder Man because you haven’t earned-

WHUMP!

Yeah. Wonder Man that wasn’t the most brilliant move right there.

Of course, one setback and Wonder Man’s confidence shatters and he’s hesitating in battle again. Of course freezing up in the midst of three supervillains is REALLY ILL-ADVISED.

So despite Cap’s tactical plan going to blork he figures heck with it, charge anyway.

And having draped an unconscious Wasp over his arm and declared that medically there’s nothing more he can do for her, Yellowjacket leaves her and joins in. Also, calls dibs on Power Man. Because that’s how superheroics work.

Usually superheroes also stop crimes instead of waiting for people to attack them at home but the Avengers flipped the script.

Beast leaps at Whirlwind and clings to his back. And manages to hold on despite the spin cycle! Good job Beast!

But then Power Man just peels him right off Whirlwind and punches him into the horizon. If this comic weren’t a coward, he would have made the Team Rocket twinkle.

At least now he’ll be air dried after running through the wash.

Power Man then goes looking to finish off Wonder Man. Professional rivalry or some such? But Yellowjacket intercepts him because he’s got Dibs. And he also enhanced his supersuit by integrating his disruptor gun into the suit powered by his shoulder wing vibrations.

See, now the giant shoulder wings aren’t completely pointless!

Actually, I think he uses them to fly? But I like to think it was mostly ornamentation. Like some nice rims on your car? Because the Yellowjacket suit was originally designed when Hank was going through a chemical induced disassociative middle life crisis episode?

But So Last Season strikes so soon and while Yellowjacket’s disruptor blast hurts Power Man when he thought nothing could hurt him, it isn’t enough to stop him.

It is enough to make him really peeved so now Yellowjacket goes crush, okay? And next, Luke Cage!

And then Power Man’s muscles go all rubbery and he falls over with the slab he was hoisting falling on top of him.

Wonder Man is a bit bummed. He should have been able to take him out from the start. What kind of hero was he that he couldn’t beat up everything forever the first try?

The Avengers really need a therapist on staff. I think being able to talk to someone about these things would help instead of just bottling it up. Or Wonder Man can do what Beast did to improve his esteem.

Anyway, Living Laser and Whirlwind also find themselves with superpower performance problems and Black Panther and Scarlet Witch take them out easily.

Black Panther is not afraid of flipping off a gift horse though and claims that he totally could have beaten Living Laser either way. I mean, probably. That’s his function as a hero in these books. To win, either way, eventually.

And more of Scarlet Witch’s power confusion. I don’t think hurling a bench at someone is really tapping into natural power but also what probability are you altering so a bench just launches itself across a street?

Seconds later, Beast shows up. That is an amazing rate of speed. He was tossed into the horizon! He really booked!

Anyway, despite what Black Panther said earlier, now he’s saying they were cheated of their victory against the Lethal Legion. The Lethal Legion were someone’s dupe and sent them here to be defeated. And beating up villains gift-wrapped for you doesn’t count as a win in Black Panther’s book, no sir.

Perhaps things change later but this kind of cements these thing villains as goofuses. Power Man was already there, having lost his name to Luke Cage. Living Laser was pretty much there too. Despite stealing the Serpent Crown, his second big outing against the Avengers left him an afterthought to his stolen superpowered tyke bomb. And Whirlwind got shot in the nipple once by Yellowjacket. So, okay, maybe they were always goofuses. But this cemented it by making them patsies too.

Oh and the Avengers don’t have to wait long for the other shoe to drop as a giant shock wave makes a sine wave out of the street, tossing the Avengers hither and yon.

BU-THOOM!

The non-secret mastermind of this whole thing shows his face. Again. To the Avengers. We’ve seen him before in this issue and they’ve seen him before a LOOOOOOOONG time ago, back when he believed in the silliest of plans and not personally murdering people.

And like an RPG boss or a pokemon, Nefaria has evolved into a stronger form: EVIL SUPERMAN.

I mean, we’ll get into it more later but basically evil Superman. One of Marvel’s many.

I like his cape askew. Its distinctive but also ludicrously pretentious. That and the giant N on the belt makes this pretty peak Nefaria.

Oh and he’s totally going to kill the Avengers. Yeah. He no longer has qualms about dirtying his hands. With murder blood.

I’ll have further Nefaria thoughts at the end of this story.

Next time: EVIL SUPERMAN

[joel-furniss-blog]

Anti-Taste

During my project I’ve often described my work as being anti-taste. Why? Honestly, I saw it in one of my assessment feedback tutorials and like it enough to adopt, something about it ringing true to me and sounding like a highfalutin professional artist phrase or some such.

My only problem is I struggle to understand the exact definition of ‘taste’, let alone how to be opposed to it. For this is why I’m researching, to see the meanings of taste, it’s societal standings, its spectrum of good/bad, and its relevance to my art practice. In my ignorance I often associate taste with humour, where jokes are often categorised into good taste or bad taste, but when jokes are highlighted for their taste its often done by calling out those that are bad taste. A joke in bad taste is recognised as inappropriate, mean-spirited, ‘punching down’ ethos or otherwise being cheap, lacking substance or comedic weight. Naturally, this leads me to believe that good taste jokes are the opposite end, they are appropriate, good-hearted, they punch up, they are rich, and substantial. But I’m not talking about comedy, we’re talking about the far less serious artworld.

From dictionaries we can define the taste I want to tackle as ‘a person's tendency to like or be interested in something’, ‘the ability to discern what is of good quality or of a high aesthetic standard’, and conformity or failure to conform with generally held views concerning what is offensive or acceptable’. This information is certainly contradictory as it displays taste as being individual and social, both dependent on singular intake and expression but also a cumulative collection that dictates the wider society and culture. This is ‘good taste’, a collection of agreements and reinforcement that certain aesthetical aspects are pleasing while others are not.

So aesthetically what is good taste? It’s mainly contextualized as a broadly defined standard of beauty, a set of angles, tones, colours, and lines that, for some reason, appeals to us and please our minds Philosophers have discussed aesthetics for centuries, from the ancient Greeks who saw aesthetics as purity and beauty, that which pleases the emotional side of a person. However, into the modern era thinkers began recognising pre-deemed culture as effecting sociology, the decided values and traditions built around us and our personal interpretations of those influence us and our taste. German philosopher Immanuel Kant recognised this and formulated in his Critique of Judgement a more inclusive approach to aesthetics, seeing that there exists both a personal taste as well as an objective beauty, which he specifies is empirically impossible to define.

This presumes that there is a cultural or societal consensus on taste, a lofty standard that all visual creations are to be judged by. Kant says this faux-consensus enables the judgement of taste, essentially a template which others are judged upon and that this base ‘good taste’, and that this base taste is actually good for aesthetics, as it gives us freedom to appreciate other aesthetic pursuits.

If good taste is less of a guideline for artistic elements and more of a base to judge art upon, then what is or makes bad taste? Bad taste is often conflated with vulgarity, a lack of sophistication and emphasis on the crass, or it is bombast, all style and no substance, or kitsch, a mass-produced item lacking artistic merit. Much like good taste, it is difficult to describe wholly as there exists no definite indicator of it, only examples. A quick example would be to compare a rustic cottage to a busy city street, the cottage is minimal, quaint, and elicits a feeling of comfort, it would be classed as good taste whereas the city street is overbearing, monolithic, and might feel dangerous, thus bad taste. However, this speaks only to aesthetics, the emotional aspects of each example are as equally important. While a cottage is secured it is also isolated and potentially boring, whereas a city street is less secure but rife with a humanistic presence and opportunity. Surface level they might seem either flawless or flawed entirely but when observing them removed from labels ‘good’ and ‘bad’ we can see each having negatives and positives. In that sense taste is just more dichotomising rhetoric, boiling down complex and multi-dimensional examples as being one or the other, good or bad.

There’s also an argument to be made on the intersection between class and taste. Historically, good taste has been decided by the ruling classes, those in power who are either rich or powerful enough to appreciate aesthetical status. For example, a field peasant is not concerned with the colour of their tunic as its strictly utilitarian, it keeps him warm, whereas a king who is able to afford bespoke clothing can consider its aesthetical importance. Eventually this became a way to separate oneself from the working classes, by focusing on aesthetical abundance it created a clear divide that both protected the ruling class as sophisticated and oppressed the working class as vulgar. While attitudes have shifted slightly more toward equality, elements of classist taste are still prevalent in society, for example we still appreciate colours for their ‘richness’ like royal purple and burgundy, colours which were reserved and used by those in power. It’s why we see opera as classy and sophisticated, an aspirational event of glamour, even though the average J. Doe would probably get little out of watching people sing in foreign languages for hours.

However, like I said, attitudes have shifted away from good taste as wealthy maximalism, which we now recognise as gawdy and shallow. The Palace of Versailles, home of the French monarchy, is famous for its baroque interiors laden with gold and mirrors but is not seen as desirable to the common person, instead it’s a relic of a bygone time, an example of the hubristic decadence of funny kings.

But perhaps the class effect on taste hasn’t dissipated but has simply shifted from bawdy maximalism to quiet minimalism. Designer homes show this, with their minimalist approach to exterior and interior, white walls, slender furniture, hidden storage, espoused as the environment of the intellectual and the reservedly powerful. It may be appreciated by many for its cool, pleasing design but how many in their lifetime will be able to afford a Kevin-McCloud-approved white countryside cube? Despite being a stylistic and theoretical response to baroque styles, minimalism is held with similar unreachable regard as its ostentatious counterpart.

Not everyone has adopted minimalism as the new ‘good taste’, as the garish design policy of the western aristocracy still lives on through small bubbles. Take for example the home décor of Russian celebrities laden with rich materials and animal prints, or the Dubai attitude of excess having people drive Lamborghinis with pet cheetahs in the side seat, or look at the Manhattan penthouse of the current US president shining with marble and gold. The gawdy still exists in the contemporary era. The reasoning for this is theorized as compensation for a past trauma or inadequacy. For example, the recent adoption of baroque styles by the Russian elite is maybe making up for the decades of the culturally deficient brutalist and sickeningly grey Soviet design. The excess of Emirate nobles is perhaps a statement response to western imperialism that effected their past, a supposedly deserved oil-funded ‘fuck you’ to the powers that were. And I’ll let you decide whatever Donald is compensating for.

This take on taste is quite interesting to me. For long I had thought of taste as a hidden order unconsciously decided and enforced by wider society, and that individual taste exists but only plays into and is ultimately trumped by the societal taste, but perhaps taste is less of a metre on which we measure things but more of an aspirational insecurity for which we try to atone for. Often I’ve looked at an artists work and thought ‘Wow that’s great… I wish I did that’, I feel like it’s par for the course of all artists, it can hearten us to resolve our work or just as easily depress us into a state of creative dearth. Our individual parameters of taste are a reflection of what we lack and aspire to be, it is a cathartic response to ourselves.

So then what does it mean to be anti-taste? The ‘anti-‘ implies rejection, but a rejection of what? Is it a rejection of society’s understanding of a standard good taste, so that individual taste is supreme to the individual? A Marxist denouncement of taste as aesthetical class oppression? Or is it a more personal dismantling of insecurity and a want to create without the constraint of doubt? If there’s one thing I’ve noted in my research it is that binary thinking is ultimately reductive, sorting, labelling, and pigeonholing such a vast term is equivalent to intellectual bondage and only serves to maintain the confusing aspects of the term.

I see anti-taste as an adoption of deliberately unseemly aesthetics, what would be bad taste, as simply that, a demonstration of perceived bad taste. By adopting the unaesthetically pleasing I attempt to demonstrate the key foundation of taste, that ultimately it is subjective opinion and subject to scrutiny. Hopefully my denouncement of taste is not mistaken for simply being in bad taste, but then again perhaps that’s what I want. I suppose it ties into my other themes of self-destruction as not many artists seek to make deliberately bad work, a representation of worse as better.

Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

[astrognossienne]

Thoughts on Milo Yiannopoulos, if you have any?

Fascinating human. Amusing one, as well. Milo is an outspoken fellow who riles up a lot of people.He’s very pro-free speech; he doesn’t let political correctness censor him. He speaks his mind and I, of all people, totally respect that. I actually agree with some of his opinions, while I disagree with others. I’m always intrigued by people who confidently claim their place in a subculture that they have every reason to expect would reject them, and that’s kind of how his (former) embrace by conservatives struck me. It reminds me a little of what I consider the basic comedic theme of the movie Beverly Hills Cop, in which various scenes derive a lot of comic punch from Axel Foley encountering rich high-class snobs or powerful people and out-intimidating them while still just being himself (without changing anything about about his appearance or clothes, and despite driving a really beat-up car, etc.) Similarly, I always enjoyed the spectacle of Milo, dressed like an overstyled young cashier at an H&M, speaking to auditoriums full of young conservatives in jackets and ties. He seemed to win people over by being a really exaggerated version of himself, and that’s something I like.Milo has a unique ability to be very confident and articulate in a speech or debate setting. However, when you dig deeper into what he says, his arguments hold a lot less weight than they may seem on the surface.When Milo makes an argument, he typically starts off with some statistics (I love statistics). This raises his credibility. But then Milo will mix the stats in with some blatantly unscientific, typically broad claims about a group of people, and combine the two to conclude his final point. He uses the sense of credibility that he gained from the statistical fact to make people overlook his unproven opinion and think that his argument is sound. So, basically his argument style is illogical and irritates me. But most people seem irritated by the conclusions that he makes, rather than his flawed way of getting there. Another thing I find interesting is that liberals aren’t immune to the desire to punish and humiliate, and for some reason Milo seems to bring that out in them. Maybe he deserves it, I don’t know, but where is the compassion for him as a victim of abuse? His detractors may say “oh, he expects the very identity politics he derides to shelter him, LOL!” Well, if liberalism is actually based in compassion for people who are less fortunate or marginalized or victimized in some way, why shouldn’t it apply equally to people you don’t agree with politically? Or is it really just about intellectual judo, humiliating and silencing people you don’t agree with, and winning arguments on the internet? I don’t know. To me, he comes over as an empty suit - he uses tired arguments and if in doubt he uses tu quoque arguments: like he can’t be racist, because he is sexually attracted to black men. If someone paid him $1 more to argue the opposite points, he would switch. He, like most folks in the media (across the “political spectrum”) is trying to build a bigger media presence and get a bigger paycheck.The list goes on but more than anything he’s said, to me, his comments about pedophilia crossed a line that no one would be particularly too keen to entertain.He is a self described provocateur, and is intentionally heinous. Nevertheless, this also allows him to bring up some legitimate points that wouldn’t be heard otherwise.

[egregiousmeme]

The reason we don't want a green or white taako is because we want representation, and we don't want anti-semitic characters. They Mcelroys want poc to speak up if they think they are doing something wrong. So they did and we are working for a better result. White and green taakos arent good because the character is coded otherwise and green is awfully horrible against what taako is coded as: jewish. And mexican.

(Sorry for the super late reply, I just needed to make sure I did my homework on this one, and I a few other things to attend to. But if you don’t believe me I implore you to do your research and tell me your findings. I would love to have an intellectual discussion on this matter! Thanks for the wait!)

Okay so I will say this: representation is important. It is very important.Undoubtedly so.

But there already is such great representation of poc with Lucretia,Kravitz, and Angus (as well as many others!) all being smart and intellectualpeople who are adored by nearly everyone in terms of popularity. It warms myheart to see this. So representation is there (at the very least more so thanother not so great places I’ve seen in other fandoms) and poc are not invisible.

People of color are people through and through and deserve their time toshine. Period.

I am all for supporting poc and I honestly like the sun taako design. I’vesaid it and you read it (I’m pretty sure). One reason I am held back by thewhole proposal is this quote in the mcelroy’s post talking about the problem:

“ Yesterday, we heard from folks who said it was problematic that we madeMerle brown, considering that he has a backstory where he was, more or less, adeadbeat dad. That’s a harsh boiling down of the character, but the criticismabsolutely has merit. We didn’t think of that when we decided on Merle’s newdesign. But it’s kind of exactly what I’m talking about here: If the Taako inthis graphic novel had dark skin, how many similar criticisms could be laid athis feet? If we gave Magnus dark skin, and then he spent the campaign being themore physical, more aggressive, less intellectual member of his team, there areissues there, too. Is any of that good representation? ”

I’m not sure if Taako is good representation. Because, despite hischarming attitude and character quirks, he’s not a great person moral-wise. Theway to fix this? Just promote the idea that Taako specifically will not bebutchered and shaped into a stereotypical thieving dark skinned dude. Get people to accept that those character traits are not because of his dark skin tone, but because of the character by itself. Because stuff like that happened to Merle (which I just flat-out don’t agree with at all, he’sthe very definition of a peacemaker and should not be boiled own to “blackdeadbeat dad” but, okay.) will also happen to Taako. I don’t want that to happen. I don’twant people to twist it even more to harm those that are trying to findrepresentation in characters they relate to. That’s just fucked, I think we can agree on that much.

While I do not prefer to have a white Taako for the non-canonical comic (more aesthetically than anything),I don’t hunt down people that draw him as such or put hastily slapped on labels for people who are just drawing something that they love. Just as I don’t hunt down people for any other design they desire to draw. That’s just pathetic to harass people like that. Let people draw him how they want to draw him, and if you don’t like it then you don’t have to reblog or spread it to others, it’s just that simple.

But let’s hop onto the far hotter topic of the green and blue skin colors, shall we?

Green skin is anti-semitic, right? Well not by itself, no.

Unlike some of the more prominent racial propaganda depicting races throughout history (such as yellow peril, blackface, and red skin, ect.), green skin was not a widely-known by many, and is not nearly as present in other anti-semitic racial caricature elements as black hair with a beard, hats with a rounded top and/or kippah caps, hooked noses, dark clothing, and are typically depicted in negative light. Here’s a quick google search. The green skin isn’t really found anywhere in these depictions, as they were mostly in black and white to be used in newspapers. The only photo I have found is this image for an anti-semitic nazi propaganda flim, which by the way, was originally in yellow. So the “green skin is anti-semitic” argument is weak at best, and completely unstable at worst when looking at that by itself.  In any case, I do not think the people that draw green Taako are racist, but rather they merely draw inspiration off of other artists that draw him with that skin tone, or draw upon the typical skin color to depict a witch, you know, cuz’ he’s a wizard (I got some more research if you want to argue the witch claim, just hit me up). Heck even some Jewish people like to draw Taako green, that’s when you know the whole thing is rocky.Finally, Taako was never said to be Jewish, not sure what episode you got that from, but if you know, again, please hit me up with the timestamp and everything.

Finally blue.

Blue is ehh. It’s not green, it has no racial connotations, and is a cannon DnD 5e skin tone forthe sub-race of the High Elf– The Moon Elf, just the same as people arguing for the Sun Elf, it has equal ground in that regard to cannon. But all Taako fan designs are cannon, as stated by the fucking guy who plays Taako soooo “cannon” DnD skin tones may mean nothing in the grander scheme of things. But I think blue specifically, wasn’t the point.

The point that the Mcelroys were trying to do by using a fantasy skin coloris the same thing they were doing for their podcast: Not tie Taako down to onerace. No group of people can claim to be a blue race and “have” Taako (just the idea of being possessive over him for racial reasons is a weird just typing it out). Anyway, no one “gets” him. But they didn’t do too great of a job since it stillseemed to be tied too closely to lighter skinned people with the brightness of the blue hue and the fact that the Moon elf is typically depicted as “pale or fair-skinned.” Ruh roh. Okay idea, not great execution.

Personally? I’d change around with the blue hues to make them darker and make up a new sub-race so it isn’t closely related to “white” and is more on the middle of the spectrum. Or just make him Mexican and everyone will have to deal with it. //Shrug

But I guess that it matters very little when you consider people that are protesting for a change in the skin tone actually may be too late. It is conceivable that it is too late in the development process to change the designs. For all we know they have already printed out hundreds of pages when they posted the previews of the new designs. We just don’t know. I certainly hope not, but I can accept it with a grain of salt. I’m not sure others can swallow such a big pill though.

The whole fandom (white and poc both) are trying to come to terms with this situation that we’ve been given. We are all trying to discuss it and see what we can improve upon so there is a better and more diverse representation without harming the ones we are trying to support.

But Justin Mcelroy said that all Taakos are equal, and I am merely following the wishes of a guy that doesn’t want people to bully each other over drawing something they love. Sue me.