#i mean a lot of the female villains are queer or queer coded

[genghisthebrain]

you know the feeling you get when watching a nature documentary about a lion brutally murdering an antelope? where you think, damn, that's brutal, but what a pretty kitty (i want to pet it)?

that's how sapphics are with female villains. thank you for coming to my ted talk

[sarasade]

The Dragon Prince & Queer Subtext - Fandom and Media Analysis of Sort

Lately I’ve been pondering about the ins and outs of Viren and Aaravos’s relationship and why they give off such a queer vibe. So I ended up writing this 2 and half Word document pages long little breakdown because why not.

I think what’s going on here is about the underlying elements of the story- subtext and how their relationship could be perceived through a queer lens. Note: my brain has marinated in queer subtext juices my whole life and I have no intent trying to prove my reading is the only right one.

That Sweet Sweet Gay Shit- A Fandom Perspective

There is a lot of queer subtext between them. Homoerotic subtext even. Their scenes together definitely activated the search function in my brain’s queer coded villain trope lexicon. 

You know- mutual penetration with a phallic object (knife), sharing some kind of mysterious bond through blood magic, so, you know, bodily fluids are indeed involved, the classic slash fiction trope “we are close but we cannot touch” -gay pining because the mirror separates them. When Aaravos is shown for the first time in the mirror the camera does this Laura Mulvey Male Gaze 101 up-down pan shot of him from Viren’s POV. Something that’s usually reserved for female characters when male characters “check them out” in a movie. And then my personal favourite: Something that comes out of Aaravos enters Viren, comes out and then transforms into a creature with a toddler level intelligence- they made a freaky little metaphor baby together! Awwww!

And let's not even talk about the possession and Aaravos slowly taking over Viren’s body. The aesthetics of a toxic queer romance are all over their interactions.

No, Viren! Don’t express vulnerability as an intimidating male figure! Tumblr will babygirlify you!

Storytelling

So what about their interactions makes me perceive them in a queer way? By “queer“ I mean the broader concept of queer here; does the way the characters are depicted come across non-heteronormative and disruptive to gender norms.

I’m mostly talking about the season 2 here since they share their most intimate scenes together in that season.

1 Story Function

Aaravos and Viren’s interactions are supposed to have multiple purposes in the story: They move the plot forward, characterise both Viren and Aaravos, create emotional conflict and intrigue in the viewer etc. Viren observing Aaravos through the mirror is supposed to create mystery and spark the audience’s curiosity. Viren is a device through which Aaravos’s allure gets demonstrated to the viewer so of course their interactions come across pretty, hm, charged. Anyway there are layers of meaning here the audience can interpret in multiple ways both intuitively and through an analytic lens. The meaning naturally changes the more context we get. There are still three more seasons to come.

2 Gendered Tropes

There is a certain element of seduction present: Viren gives Aaravos more access to himself and his body little by little in exchange for Aaravos fulfilling his desires (for power). This could be read as having sexual undertones. Some of Aaravos’s first words to Viren are clearly something Viren wants to hear “How may I serve you?” Weaponising manipulation and seduction, where a character poses as submissive while having alternative motives, is something female characters traditionally do in stories. I don’t know about you but Aaravos’s character has a bit of a femme fatale thing going on if you ask me (haha!) There is something about him that defies gender roles that’s not just about his androgynous looks.

A traditional Femme fatale is often a tragic figure trapped in unfortunate circumstances. They are shrouded in mystery which prevents the audience from empathising with them or understanding their motives. The character often uses coercion to make their victim do what they want. And yes there definitely is an element of coercion and even a threat of violence present in Aaravos and Viren’s relationship. Their goals are aligned for now but what happens if/ when Viren decides to defy Aaravos? TDP makes me wonder (with horror) what it is that Viren has really agreed to.

3 How the Show’s “Camera” Portrays Aaravos

Even the camera emphasises him as an object of desire. Something he is from the story point of view as well. Viren desires access to Aaravos’s power after all. When the camera puts Aaravos on display in an objectified manner in the beginning of the season 2 it’s supposed to, in my opinion, heighten the feeling of Aaravos seeming harmless at the first glance. And by “objectified” I mean he’s portrayed without agency.

I joked earlier about male gaze and Laura Mulvey but I do actually think there is some truth to that. One of the biggest reasons behind me thinking Aaravos was a pretty pretty lady at first was how he was introduced in such a feminised way. And I wasn’t the only one. Just look at the comments under his TDP Wiki article. (Lots of het men being confused about their sexuality. Also shout-out to that one lesbian). This makes him appear less threatening so the story can build suspense around his true motives. It’s not evident that Aaravos is a completely sinister figure at first, at least compared to Viren who seems more like the main villain of the story prior to the seasons 3-4. Little did we know back then that Aaravos was the true alpha male of this whole sordid affair.

Aaravos in the mirror from Viren’s point of view, season 2, episode 3.

Why I’m not mentioning anything about Viren’s gender performance is because his story conflict is all about struggling with traditionally masculine gender expectations. Understanding how his character relates to hegemonic/ toxic masculinity/ emotional struggles men face in real life is a core part of understanding his character as a whole. That’s a broad topic and this post is long enough as it is so I’m going to leave it at that. (Maybe someone else has written about that already?)

4 The Audience Is Also at Aaravos’s Mercy

Aaravos’s submissive façade is supposed to fool both Viren AND the audience. The show plays rather cleverly with the audience’s expectations here. Slowly the roles are starting to flip until it’s clear that Aaravos is the one in control. Given Aaravos narrates the opening of the first story arc it raises even more questions: Is his control over Viren supposed to parallel his control over the whole world of the show? This circles back to the show’s themes of freedom vs destiny. It feels almost meta in a way how the story’s villain tries to gain control over the whole narrative.

5 Horror and Fantasy

The powerplay between the characters naturally creates a plenty of tension and it’s not unusual that this translates into something sexually charged in the audience’s minds. While this is the perspective I’m the most interested in, there are other layers to Aaravos and Viren’s scenes together.

For example this kind of breaking of bodily boundaries is common in horror as well. Aaravos is beautiful and mysterious but is also associated with repulsive things like larvae and blood and there is something very eerie about him in general. These kinds of emotional reactions of repulsion and attraction are essential to horror. The audience sees that everything isn’t definitely quite right about him but it’s also understandable that the audience (and Viren) find him fascinating. I think the key word for these scenes in the season 2 is “ambiguity“. Even if you aren’t invested in these characters this show would be much less fun without all the nuance their interactions have.

In a good story everything isn’t just literal. Especially since TDP is a fantasy story- A genre that’s traditionally been all about symbolism and intertextual references. I could go on and on about the genre traditions with similar flavour to what Aaravos and Viren have. Michael Moorcock’s classic sword and sorcery antihero Elric of Melniboné and his pact with the demon Arioch comes to mind.

Something Something Fandom

Viravos as a ship lives in the subtext but the subtext isn’t always black and white. Fiction uses metaphor and other storytelling methods to create meaning- To give a narrative experience. The queer subtext in TDP feels very elaborate to me and while I’m dissecting these scenes more analytically here my emotional reactions are the original source of that interest. No matter how much time passes I’m still a morbid teenage goth at heart and that part of me loves the dark fairytale aesthetics akin to TDP season 2.

I didn’t even touch on the element of Viren giving into a “forbidden desire” (literally his desire for power but- you know- multiple readings etc.) when making a deal with Aaravos. Something very typical to the horror genre as well. It’s a “deal with the devil” -sort of situation and those stories often paint the agreement as something corruptive and sinful and therefore transgressive. This post by Tiredsunrisesmeta got you covered on that. Also queer coded villains something something- Anyway, read Tiredsunrisesmeta’s blog for more.

Pictured: Yours truly

Last and Least

I remember when I saw a post here saying that “Viravos couldn’t be canon because it’d be too sexy.” and that’s just the funniest way to put it in my opinion. Their relationship feels a bit too, I dunno, mature? for this show. But what does “canon” even mean? Is a gay ship canon when two characters of the same gender kiss and declare their love? Get married? Have kids? Personally, I don’t want to see LGBT+ characters’ stories just copy straight romance tropes beat by beat all the time. I want something that feels authentic and what’s more authentic than Viren being a cringefail bisexual getting rejected by men and women and then getting his life ruined by the sexy femboy elf satan? Kinda iconic honestly.

[problemswithbooks]

BNHA Ch. 429

So, I guess Toga is dead, and people are losing it.

I get why people liked her--she was actually queer, being pan/bisexual. She was representation for them and that's rare in shonen manga. But here's the thing--she was bad representation at best and insulting at worst. Nor do I think she was made queer because Hori really wanted to represent a queer girl. Himiko was always the author's poorly hidden fetish--she just was. She liked girls as much as boys because Hori wanted to draw a girl touching sexually on another girl. You can see this in how he draws her and Ochako in solo pics together.

I mean, people seem to understand this when it comes to Momo and her outfit being overly sexual or that both Himiko and Hagakure's Quirks either leave them naked or they have to be naked to use them. These are excuses to draw girls in a sexual manner. Himiko being into other girls is the same thing and that's the kindest interpretation.

Given how Himiko acts and her Quirk being heavily coded sexual desire, and therefore her use of it against someone unwilling being sexual assault, it could just being playing into harmful stereotypes of predatory gays.

As a queer person myself I just found Toga insulting. She was designed to be overly sexual and give the male author a female character that he could draw being suggestive with his other female characters. When he did flesh out her character, her backstory was eventually the trope/fear of straight people, that gay people will be so overcome with their lust that they end up sexually assaulting them.

In the end Ochako accepts this part of Toga and says she'll giver her blood forever, but as much as a lot of readers took that that as some deep lesbian confession, for me it really fell flat. Hori never really gave any of the main kids time to actually learn about their villain or show how that changed their minds toward them. Shoto only works because Touya is his brother (even though he admits he barely remembers him). But Ochako goes from not thinking of Toga at all pre-first war, to one thought about her during her speech, to suddenly caring about her so much she--given how Toga's quirk is coded, is willing to essentially fulfill Toga's kink for the rest of their lives.

It's weird and it comes out of nowhere. It's made even stranger because Toga doesn't actually change or show remorse for anything she did, which included personally hunting and murdering people before she joined the LOV. None of the death and destruction she is also partially responsible for is brought up either, something that Ochako was rightfully upset about during the first war when less people and property had been destroyed. Ochako just accepts everything about her suddenly and her past serious crimes are forgotten so they can cuddle and cry.

Am I shocked Toga died--a little. I didn't think Hori would have the guts to kill off a young girl character, especially one that he clearly got a lot of joy drawing in sexy poses. But at the same time, once he killed off Shigaraki and ended Touya's story with his slow death, I'm not surprised he went the same route with Toga.

This isn't Naruto--Hori isn't really kind to characters that do something wrong, especially if they don't try and change. Enji, Bakugo, Hawks, and Aoyama all sort of got punished for what they did. Enji is the worst off, being permanently crippled, missing an arm and burned everywhere. Bakugo's hand is damaged, his heart weaker, plus he feels bad that Izuku lost his Quirk so they can't compete the same way he wanted them to. Aoyama, despite doing way less wrong and even helping his class during the forest raid, still leaves school because he doesn't feel he earned being there yet. Hawks lost his Quirk and even though him running the HPSC could be seen as good for him, Hawks always wanted a break, but now he has one of the most time consuming and stressful jobs out there.

So, if this is what characters who actively did good things and even changed and fought to be better get, what would characters who never changed and never did anything positive for anyone but their friends/themselves get?

Before the last Arc started, when so many people said the LoV were 100% going to be redeemed I had doubts and always thought it wouldn't make sense with how the story presented redemption or treated other non-LoV villains in the past. That if the main LoV did get some happy ending where they were bffs with the main cast it would clash with how other characters had been treated.

That doesn't mean that I think how Shigaraki, Toga, and Touya ended up in the manga was well done. I think their endings fit far better then a last minute redemption would have, but at the same time you can feel how rushed everything has been since the end of the first war arc. Hori was done with this story months if not years ago, yet he was contractually obligated to finish it. Because of that I think he left out as much as possible. As much as I think he's written some pretty obsessive stuff, particularly towards women, I can't really fully blame him cutting corners or the story being shit at the end.

We know Manga authors, particularly those that work with Jump are treated like shit. That they suffer incredibly long hours at times not even getting to go home for days. We've gotten messages for Hori saying he's sick quite a few times. On top of that, weekly story telling is not a great way to tell a cohesive narrative. Ideas probably change week to week or at least month to month and you can't go back and change the last chapter no matter how much you need or want to. Then you remember he also gave a lot of ideas to the people who made the movies, which would also change his plans for how he wanted the main story to go.

The story is bad--it has been for a while, but I think a lot of people put their hopes on their favorite characters getting a happy ending, even when there were signs that probably wasn't going to be the case. I know how much it sucks when a character you love gets a shitty ending (Stain was my fav, but he got an absolute dogshit ending) but at least, knowing what I know about the industry I can't really blame Hori the way I see some other people doing. Criticize it, sure, but saying Hori hates his readers or is horrible writer isn't true. BNHA was popular for a reason--he's great with characters and the beginning of the story had some great pacing. We'll never know, but I wouldn't be surprised if BNHA could have been amazing if Hori had been treated better and the story hadn't needed a chapter every week.

If anything BNHA has taught me how much a story suffers when authors/artists are treated like crap and forced to work past burnout.

[neonscandal]

jjk having queer-coded villains seems to be an intentional choice. what are your thoughts on this

Anon comin in hot today! I feel like this doesn't really need a spoiler warning though it does detail info about characters yet to be animated so read at your own risk.

To be honest, I wouldn't even say that it's coding, JJK has an assortment of characters with varied identities from our protagonists to our antagonists which includes:

Megumi - a lot of fans interpret his non-gendered answer to what his type is, focusing instead on personality, to mean that he's pansexual.

Mahito - genderless ✨ and/or physically lacking reproductive organs that would typically define gender binary

Tengen - presumably assigned female at birth, has since transcended gender or is more non-binary

Kenjaku - another character who's just.. lived so long that they're just kind of gender fluid? Though, considering their history, intersex may be more appropriate? We know that, as Noritoshi Kamo, he mixed his blood with what would become the cursed womb paintings but she actually consummated with Jin for some extra razzle dazzle

Uraume - canonically they/them

Kirara - assigned male at birth (though I believe canonically referred to as they/them) with an androgynous gender expression

Please note: I don't consider myself an expert on the matter as gender identity, expression and sexual orientation exist on spectrums. Subsequently, if you think any of the above characters belong elsewhere based on canon or headcanon, I get it. If, based on canon, I'm outright incorrect, feel free to drop a comment and I'll edit accordingly.

With the distribution of the above in mind, I don't think it's unilaterally something focused just among the antagonists. Though, ironically, some of my color coding is also debatable at this point, I suppose. I think the more interesting observation is that, with enough time, such labels aren't as binding or lack the need for definition. Like, Tengen has all the time in the world to be whatever they want to be and they simply become. In fact, unrelated but kinda related, you see a similar idea in Hell's Paradise with the mercurial gender fluidity of the Tensens, too. Honestly, that's another show to watch with a curious lens.

All that to say, I think the varied representation is more interesting due to the conversation around the mangaka's own identity. Gege Akutami's anonymity has been shielded by their pen name but, also, I don't believe they have confirmed pronouns. While people argue that they went to an all boys' school previously, they also, during a stint as an assistant on another manga, unveiled themselves with a femme presenting avatar. Seemingly to avoid being defined by visual perception (or to pre-emptively avoid recognition by devastated fans..), they appeared in a video interview dressed as Mechamaru. Couple that with the fact that there is a notable lack of romantic pairings within the story, especially those that would be typical of a shonen story. Arguably, that could leave a lot of Aro and/or Ace characters that I'm too obtuse to have picked up on. In fact, one could interpret Akutami's previous comments about Gojo accordingly.

Subsequently, I don't think the intention is to vilify queerness just because some of the antagonists fit the bill. I think, if anything, there's just representation that isn't necessarily cultivated around "othering" queer characters or using their diversity as a plot line, if that makes any sense? Which isn't just concentrated on the "bad guys". For the most part, these are just subtle realities of the characters... okay, Kenjaku's identity can definitely be charged to the plot though. 👀 Seemingly contrary to what I just said about diversity as a plot device, I'm now having mixed feelings specifically with Kenjaku because their identity does inform the plot but also intrinsically brings nuance to them as a character. The more I think about it, this diversity is actually what humanizes them which, connotatively, still seems like a positive thing. Hm. Maybe I'm a hypocrite? Not sure but I'm curious as to your thoughts so feel free to leave them below 👇🏾

[grimm-tales-gamer]

Fallen Hero: Sidestep 1?

Not sure how to even start this. I guess basic info and then fun/not fun facts? Here we go! Also if it matters, all my sidesteps are gender queer one way or another. Either trans, non-binary, ect

Name: Nicole Saxon Gender: female she/her Villain Name: Robin Hood Villainous Role: thief Motivation: life Scar: friendless Reason for gala: money Where is she now?: at the ranch with her girlfriend, Julia Ortega.. with both her legs broken. Not everything is great. Nicole is an entire mess, that could be said about all sidesteps but she feels like a mess in particular. Nicole as a villain is a technology thief that steals from villains, saves people, doesn’t kill (yet), gives to charity, and would help a kitten out of a tree for a kid. She desperately misses being a hero. She also desperately misses having friends. Having the friendless scar is rough on Nicole. She knows she’s messed up for feeling the complete lack of connection to other people and misses the feeling of companionship and camaraderie she felt as sidestep. She has such a need to feel it again she will manipulate people to get a connection. Things Nicole is willing to do include but are not limited to: befriending Mortum as the puppet, using her telepathy to make Argent think of her as a friend, and of course risk getting caught as a villain relighting old friendships and old romances. Nicole is so bothered by her scar, so lonely that she is suicidal. But thankfully her.. girlfriend? Yeah we’ll say girlfriend. Is having her go to therapy and Nicole is working through things herself. She hopes that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Her motivation being life doesn’t mean she wants “the good life”. Nicole just wants to live. She “works” and lives at an electronic repair shop with a coworker she likes and gets to help out the rangers every now and then. That’s the life she wants. At least it’s second to her becoming a hero again, but that ship has.. probably sailed. Either way Nicole needs money and a lot of it to keep herself and her loved ones safe.

Fun facts?: Nicole is my sidestep “prime”. On account of her being my first ever play through. Nicole is probably the friendliest of my sidesteps, or at least the least prickly. She also jokes a lot. If there is a teasing or joke response she most likely chooses it. Also, I just remembered she has like 92% empathy if that shows anything. As said before, Nicole is relighting an old romance. With Julia Ortega. They are super sweet together. Though, Nicole is worried that if Ortega would ever find out about her being a regene (which Julia did) or about being a villain (which Julia did not) Julia would abandon her. Nicole’s vice is alcohol. Thanks Ortega… all joking aside Nicole should probably slow down. Nicole’s lowest relationship is Argent at like 68 I think. Due to her high subtle manipulation, Nicole resisted hollowground and was able to “agree” to work for her. Totally not gonna feed information to Ortega. If you’re curious as to why Nicole would do this: Nicole misses being a hero. This might be the closest she will ever get again. Nicole’s handwriting is so bad that before she got a phone as sidestep she left a handwritten note for Ortega. Ortega and the others thought it was written in code. Thinking sidestep was in trouble they searched for her only to find her eating at a diner. Sidestep got a phone shortly after this. Ortega plays the guitar and taught Nicole while she was sidestep. Nicole still plays a little to relax. I can’t think of anything else right now, so let’s end it with appearance and stat stuff? If you care to read: Nicole prefers anonymity to an extent. About 60%-65%. Very much prefers empathy as stated before at about 92%. And is very cautious at 80%ish. She also prefers subtle manipulation, sitting at about an 82. Nicole’s appearance: Race: white, lots of freckles. Height: short. I imagine she is maybe 5ft (1.5m) Hair: curly red hair put into a thick braid over her shoulder. Shut up, it’s aesthetic. Eyes: green.. they used to be blue but then the Void happened. Style: fashionable preppy with lots of piercings. I imagine her wearing lots of skirts with guards and tights with sweaters. Almost a fashionable librarian look.

[dekusleftsock]

I think if hori wrote toga better more people would like her but he hardly gives a shit about her so her story and personality and thoughts are messy (as in badly written) and nonsensical. I wanna like her but you have to do a lot of leg work to make her interesting and worth the time and love, Hori doesnt love her enough to but a lot of effort into her, unlike the other two male villains who he wont shut up about. Togas always just been (for me personally) an underutilized, underdeveloped waste of what could have been a cool idea. The Anti-toga people are not unfounded in most of their criticisms (MOST), shes the only seemingly queer person and of course shes a lustful blood sucking pervert psycho murderer with no real depth.

(btw you are more than welcome to both ignore this and LOVE toga I am not saying for you shes not worth the time or energy, this is just me reflecting on her and how hori has treated her, i appreciate and value fanon and the effort fans will put into loving her, thats so cool and based, im glad you can find joy in something like that, for people who like her- I wish she was cared for by her writer 💕)

Uh… what I see or believe isn’t fanon broski.

Look Horikoshi has always had a problem of pushing aside the women in his series, the worst of this case has ALWAYS been ochako. Do I think that’s because he wanted to write a gay love story? Yeah, I do. Does that make it okay? Absolutely not. I will be the first person to shout from the rooftops that horikoshi does not write women as well as he should. He has fan service abundant, he makes crude jokes using women that really aren’t all that funny, he’s pushed aside his women and their moments in order to forward bkdk’s development.

But you can absolutely not come into my ask to tell me that she is an, “underdeveloped wasted idea”. Because she’s just fucking not.

People think toga is just “the blood sucking bisexual who likes animals too”, but she’s just fucking not. That’s never been her defining trait or character.

Toga is a subversion of the yandere trope. That sadly means there will always be misogynistic rhetoric because that’s what the trope is. At least BEFORE the subversion happens, which is now! Where Ochako DOESNT FIND HER CREEPY!

She’s going to be creepy and weird and have issues because she’s a villain. She’s a queer villain. Her entire story is one that defies the tragedy of carmilla and refuses to let her identity be anything but “Himiko Toga”. She has always been a character about identity. She’s never been “possessive” or “jealous” over Izuku for this purpose. It’s the reason why she’s bisexual, why she just “has an attraction to blood”. It’s a queer story wrapped in metaphor and it always has been. Why is THIS monster/villain queer story any worse than, idfk, the joker and Batman. I haven’t found a single person able to genuinely voice that to me in a way that is convincing! Horror and unconventional ways of love and ESPECIALLY blood has always always ALWAYS been a part of queer coded stories for a LONG TIME. We are the unconventional. We always have been. And that’s not me “bending over backwards” HER PARENTS LITERALLY CALL HER A DEVIANT AND SHE ASKS WHY NO ONE ELSE STRUGGLES WITH THE URGES SHE DOES.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll fucking say it again, Toga is horikoshi’s most well written and thought out female character. Ochako got kicked over and over again, same with momo, Tsu, Mina, and whoever the fuck else.

And I’m sorry, but writing a queer villain inspired by the lesbian vampire trope isn’t homophobic or bad writing.

She’s HAD depth. Idk if you read her backstory or her feelings on Ochako, twice, hawks, or even Izuku but she’s HAD depth. And I’m tired of pretending she hasn’t.

Normally I wouldn’t engage with shit like this but you reached out to me DIRECTLY. So let me make this clear: you can have whatever opinions you want on toga, and I will not get angry or express anger in any sort of way. But this account? This is not your fucking space and I will ABSOLUTELY meme on you for it.

[applestorms]

was having a conversation the other day about free will in the stanley parable, and between that & rereading the malo jake necro post (& betweengenesisfrog's response) i'd like for this next astronaut ramble to be a look into the ways that homestuck treats the ideas of agency & free will, both in a meta sense (vriska constantly hogging the spotlight) & a social dynamics sense (jake & patriarchy). TW for vague references to questionable kinks & the effects of extreme patriarchy on women under the cut.

ok, so the idea of free will in the context of video games is interesting since by nature most video games (if not all, depending on how you define what a "video game" even is) involve a pretty clear goal/set of goals and some sort of process intended to get you there. as such, in video games you can kinda categorize two different kinds of free will: free will where you have (full/partial) control over the means, the process by which you get to the end, & free will where you have (full/partial) control over the ends, or the ultimate goal/end state.

for example: TSP mostly allows you free will over the end goal through your decisions, but once you get on a path it's not really possible to change the code the developers originally wrote. you can veer off track towards a different ending, but you can't change the process of getting there by nature of how the game functions. in contrast, deltarune (at least from what we can tell w/ 2 chapters) does kind of the opposite of this, giving players free will over the process (do you encourage noelle, or viciously control her?) but promising that the ultimate end state is going to be the same no matter what. thus, "your decisions don't matter," in terms of what ending you'll get, but the process by which you get there is certainly going to change, at least if ch.2 is setting a trend for the rest of the game.

this doesn't apply super cleanly to real life, however, where it's a lot less clear what should be considered an end state or process. it's also very individualistic, focused entirely on the impact of the player's decisions, where in real life you have to deal w/ the choices of everyone else too. i'm thus inclined to call the social dynamics/less theoretical side of free will "agency," & agency is super important when talking about the ways that any piece of media deals with patriarchy. my video game example here is analog: a hate story, since that game delves straight into the ways in which women are forced to negotiate w/ a social structure that frankly fails to even recognize them as people, much less beings with agency (a society which translated "sick daughter" as "pale bride," if you don't get the picture. highly recommend playing analog btw).

homestuck, w/ all of its video game logic & (attempts at) social reflection, deals w/ both of these sides to agency & free will. i believe optimistic duelist already has a lot of good explanations of how hs deals with the latter, particularly w/ the light aspect/vriska stealing the spotlight, as well as how free will in paradox space is based on the idea that every individual will ultimately achieve their goals no matter what, so i won't repeat all of that here. really, it's the social dynamics side of agency that interests me here, particularly for the characters rose, dirk, & especially jake. but before that:

homestuck is fundamentally a queer comic. not only does it spin on an axis of gay teenage drama, lord english himself as the ultimate villain of homestuck can be read as representing patriarchy itself, which is particularly obvious when observing the arcs of the striders (pre-scratch) and dirk & jake (post-scratch) and how they are negatively influenced by lil cal & caliborn respectively. interestingly, since hs takes on a script of flipped gender stereotypes wherein many of its female characters are active agents in the plot while the male characters are more likely to deal w/ the story's emotional core (mean girls & fluffy boys, as deltarune likes to say), you can generally see the influence of patriarchy much stronger in the cast's male characters, and there is no one for which this is more true than jake.

so, getting back to my original motivation for writing this post: as i stated in the tags here, i think it's notable that jake's fascination w/ blue women ultimately does not work out in the slightest in his real life relationships, specifically because of the ways in which said blue women take away his agency, as demonstrated in both the game over timeline & a lot of the post-canon content that shows more of jake's relationship w/ jane. to break shit up a bit here:

jake, jane, & jender

for all his stated interest in "blue women," & the posters all over his room, jake really doesn't have a good track record w/ homestuck's actual blue women. jane & aranea are the obvious candidates here, but jake's parallels to tavros (through the lying down beaten up visual, page title, etc.) also shed some light on his potential connection to vriska (who, imo, is basically the ultimate standard of hs girls w/in that flipped script i mentioned earlier, similar to how jake is the ultimate homestuck boy).

to summarize: not only does jake manipulate jane into friendzoning herself (in the best conversation of the entire comic), aranea & jane are the two most prominent characters that tear jake a new asshole in the game over timeline, specifically in that they completely take away his agency by treating him in the stereotypical way that women are in media. as these posts so beautifully outline, not only is the gender script flipped for jane & jake, it's flipped specifically in their relationship to control & how others view them; in some ways, they still adhere quite strongly to their traditional respective feminine & masculine gender roles, with the whole 50s housewife vibe jane gives off & jake's gentleman schtick.

it's thus not a massive jump to me to see jake's interest in blue women as just another fantasy that he holds onto while still isolated from the rest of humanity, but ultimately doesn't play out the way that he wants it to in reality, something that fits very well into jake's established use of escapist fantasies. jake's fantasizing about a relationship w/ jane can potentially be read as nothing more than compulsive heterosexuality (GT: I consider you [jane] to be a lovely lady of the highest caliber and i really think any gent worth his salt would be a huge bozo to let the chance to go steady with you slip through his fingers. A6A2:4588), & jake's interest in aranea is largely limited to his initial reactions to seeing her.

while this style of image is used to show light romantic interest, the fact that jake's heart uses a ? rather than a 3 even to start makes it clear to me that his initial interest in aranea is quite superficial & questionable even to him. (A6A2:4584)

to clarify, this isn't really meant as an argument for or against the jake necrophilia debate from that post, but just pointing out that his interest in blue women is largely another superficial fantasy, & one that in the end actively works against him once his agency is forcibly taken away from him during the game over timeline.

also, sidenote: the parallels between the game over timeline (& thus terezi's initial killing of vriska) & the epilogue's decision between meat & candy is also striking w/ regards to how homestuck deals w/ the idea of free will, particularly in how it's implied that in the end, the initial decision doesn't work either way. here's some quotes from the very end of hs^2 to clarify that connection since i've mentioned it quite often (HS^2:406):

CALLIOPE: bUt, paradoxically, the critical moment which determined its capture within the black hole happened *after* that point. CALLIOPE: i refer of coUrse to yoUr decision not to retUrn to the mediUm and fight my brother. JOHN: wait, wait. JOHN: you mean, the meat and candy thing? JOHN: oh my god. JOHN: you mean i actually DID make a mistake that day.

ROXY: your choice literally didnt matter ROXY: the whole thing was symbolic in the first place ROXY: literally symbolic in the case of the picnic i mean come on ROXY: it was just some steak and a plate of candy suckers

CALLIOPE: i mean, i wouldn't go so far as to say that the meal we shared was unimportant, given the sacred significance of the two options i presented. CALLIOPE: but yes, yoUr choice of snack was infinitely less important than the choice which it presaged. CALLIOPE: and even then, calling it a choice woUld be sorely misleading. CALLIOPE: think of it like a coin flip. CALLIOPE: the series of events that led to Us being trapped beyond the event horizon of an Ubermassive black hole could be considered "tails", while the events which would have occUrred otherwise could be considered "heads". CALLIOPE: since both were possible, and paradox space is the way it is, they actUally both happened. and we jUst "happened" (hee hee) to get tails instead of heads. JOHN: you mean we ended up with the bad possibility. CALLIOPE: not at all! since both possibilities depend on one another's existence, it really doesn't make sense to call them "right" or "wrong". they both just "are".

2. corpses & agency

in rereading the jane friendzone conversation, one particular line from jake stood out to me again:

GT: I know its hard to believe but i know dirk pretty well and... GT: Well im more than a little sure he likes me in that way if you catch my drift. GT: And what with how he is... GT: Just so relentless and aggressive about everything you know? GG: Yeaaah. GT: So i just start to wonder deep down if maybe its inevitable.

usually i read these lines from the perspective of dirk's insecurities about feeling predatory in his relationship w/ jake, but this line from malo has made me rethink it from jake's pov:

I think you are correct that Jake has a “theme of irresponsibility”, but part of that motif is in the way he acts as a living Burnie Lomax -- Jake pretends to be a corpse puppet, emphasizing the interests of others as a way to downplay his own interests, passively achieving his desires. This is true even in Jake’s apparent resistance to Dirk’s advances!

which. honestly complicates things even more lmfao, though i suppose it all fits into the idea of jake fitting the stereotypical role of a woman, negotiating for his agency by manipulating others since he feels like he can't say what he wants outright. his motivation might be more along the lines of social anxiety, but it still fits how women are often socialized to be less direct about their desires (i don't have a link for this, but recommend the paper social influence & gender by linda carli for a formal approach to this idea, if you can get your hands on it). i suppose the conclusion here is that jake does in fact want agency, he just doesn't want the responsibility that comes with it. roxy does make this joke after all (A6A5A1x2:5812):

GT: You almost scooped my boyfriend out from under me in one fell proposal. TG: oh DID i TG: from under u eh? ;) GT: Wait. No i mean... TG: ;););););) wonks 4 eternity GT: WHOA NOW WAIT A MINUTE!

(though of course, the real real conclusion here is that bones of black marrow has the best interpretation/implementation of this idea.)

3. puppets & dirk (ft. tentacles & rose)

ANYWAY. while it's slightly different, i do think there are some potential parallels between jake, dirk, & rose's respective relationships to a lack of control, particularly in a fetishistic context. rose's tentacle thing, dirk's puppet thing, jake's dead thing(s). homestuck's a lovely comic when you start looking past the surface.

to be honest, i don't have a ton of conclusions to draw here, mostly just noting more of the connections. i think i mentioned elsewhere the connection between dirk & rose as following the convention of the human kids matching their chumhandle-initials counterparts the most closely, but jake & rose have a lot of weird parallels that i'm not sure how to make sense of. just to list a few: they both have a connection to the creation of the first guardians through writing the MEOW & BARK codes, their theme songs on the LOCAM album link them through the horrorterrors (rose's song is "orchid horror" & jake's is "emerald terror," also linking them through their shirt symbols), & their connection to dirk feels particularly notable w/ regards to the events of post-canon stuff.

they also can be considered the most intelligent out of their respective groups of human kids, rose due to her status as seer of light & jake due to sheer subconscious will, meaning that they are on par w/ the other omniscient/semi-omniscient narrators that homestuck loves making its villains. more specifically, i guess that means they're both aware to some degree about the nature of the world of homestuck itself, which is often the most important kind of intelligence in homestuck (it's what light basically comes down to, right?) since it's so goddamn meta all the time. (you could also make the connection there w/ dirk a little bit, since he's got that connection to plato & plato loooves talking about how philosophers are the most intelligent people ever because they are aware of the Forms, as seen in his metaphysics from books V-VII of the republic. can you tell i'm getting sick of reading the republic by now lmfao.) so, yeah.

[tiredsunrisesmeta]

On Viren, Evil Queens & Queer Coded Villains

In an interview with Cartoon Universe titled Season 3, Runaans Plan, and Aaravos Speech! The Dragon Prince Interview with Creators, Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond, talked about how an early concept for The Dragon Prince that they played with was the idea of “not evil step mother” (around the 26:35 mark).

This could relate to the creators’ desires to showcase non-traditional families and not to demonize stepparents. Harrow, for example, while keeping an unfortunate distance from Callum, is a loving stepdad. However, so far in The Dragon Prince we haven’t encountered a stepmother, good or evil. My theory is that “not an evil stepmother” relates to Viren.

In many ways, Viren epitomizes the evil queen/evil stepmother archetype. In fact, there are numerous scenes and aspects of Viren that directly parallel famous evil queens and stepmothers. Here are just some of the examples:

1.     Like the Evil Queen in Snow White Viren has a magic mirror that he demands answers from. Mysterious all-knowing beings inside the mirrors answer back.

2.     Viren orders his own “huntsman” (Soren) to kill a royal heir (Ezran) that has a deep connection to animals. Soren like the Huntsman can’t bring himself to kill the young royal. 

3.     Viren's green voice stealing spell is an obvious reference to Ursula's voice stealing spell in The Little Mermaid.

4.     Like Mother Gothel in Tangled and Queen Ravenna in Snow White and the Huntsman, Viren hides his true appearance (which is “ugly” and scary) with glamour magic where he takes the life force of younger, beautiful beings and uses them to keep an attractive appearance.

5.     Viren also shares visual similarities with the Evil Queen, Cinderella’s stepmother and Maleficent such as their circle jewel pendant, dramatic collar, black and purple colors, staffs, their scowls, postures, & attitudes.

6.     Like Cinderella’s stepmother Viren has two children that are kind of dopes & are sometimes mean to the princes. He expects a lot from them.

7.     Viren's magic is often visually like evil queens' magic, both are presented as dark & disturbing. 

8.     Like Viren, evil queens make magic with suspicious, “disgusting” ingredients & cast spells w/ staffs. Both seem to take from nature & threaten & exploit youthful & natural "innocence."

I would argue that Viren was the “not evil stepmother” that was one of the starting ideas behind The Dragon Prince. He’s technically not one because he’s a man. But he embodies the role in significant ways. For me, this is another layer that adds to Viren’s queer coding. (If you want to read the other parts of my Viren is Queer analysis, you can read them here (Part 1) and here (Part 2). Here’s why:

Evil queens & villains specifically in Disney films have over time been adopted by the LGBTQ+ community. Intentional or not these characters are popularly thought of as queer coded or as having queer appeal. In his book Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company from the Inside Out, Sean Griffin writes "gay culture seems to have a special fondness for Disney villainy. [...] the number of gay men who dress in drag as Disney villains for costume parties or for Halloween testifies to the attraction that these characters have in gay culture". 

Griffin posits that there are two reasons why queer audiences gravitate towards these villains. The first reason is the exaggerated, unconventional way villains perform their gender in contrast to the more traditional gender performances of the heroes. They bring attention to gender itself as performance & thus take on qualities of camp & drag. This connection to drag was made explicit in Disney's The Little Mermaid when it's villain Ursula was modeled after the famous drag queen Divine.

Female villains like evil queens & stepmothers often have strong sharp facial and body features in contrast to the heroine's soft features. They wear visible makeup as opposed to the heroines’ more "natural" beauty. They are audacious, sassy, powerful & imposing in contrast to the more demure, modest heroines. Many evil queens are motivated by the pursuit of beauty that remains out of their reach such as the Evil Queen, Ursula, & Mother Gothel. While Viren isn’t motivated by the pursuit of beauty, vanity and physical appearance are important enough to his character to warrant nods such as his glamour spells, obsession with mirrors & fancy clothes, almost as if the show is aware of the tradition Viren borrows from.

The camp & the theatricality of gender expression of male Disney villains are often shown via their archness, sassiness, foppishness, particularly fancy sense of style, & impeccable overly cultured manners, speech & mannerisms. They're often "represented as using their cultured dandyism to hide their evil design[s]". Viren borrows heavily from Jafar & Scar. Jafar & Viren both have magic staffs, snake motifs, and even have parrots in common. Like Jafar, Viren is his monarch's most trusted magical advisor who ultimately betrays him. Like Scar, Viren is a usurper. Griffin writes "Both [Scar & Jafar] are overly refined, fey and seething with frustration for feeling that their talents and abilities have been overlooked." That’s literally Viren! Scar & Jafar were notably designed by out gay character designer Andreas Deja. Griffin writes that in an interview "Deja admits to conceiving of [Jafar] as a gay man “to give him his theatrical quality, his elegance.” It is these characters’ qualities & legacies that Viren borrows from.

Griffin writes "Traditionally, Disney’s animated villains move and speak with enormous style and panache—so much so that they often “steal” the scenes from the supposed leading characters in the stories. In this way, they more overtly “overperform” their gender roles and readily become the targets of camp readings." I would argue Viren fits this description. He too can be audacious, imposing, & occasionally sassy. He's impeccably well dressed (Amaya even derisively comments on the fanciness of his clothes) & seemingly impeccably well mannered. Theatricality & performance play into Viren’s role as a manipulator and persuader. He uses his panache, speech, & manners to seduce people to his point of view or at least he tries to. This contrasts him against the earnestness of the heroes.

This takes us to the second reason why queer audiences gravitate & identify with Disney villains. According to Griffin "on a more basic level, gay culture’s appreciation of Disney villains is a humorous cheering on of those forces within the narrative that disrupt and frustrate heterosexuality’s dominance.”

Examples of this are Evil Queens trying to separate young heterosexual couples such as Ursula & Mother Gothel. Griffin uses Maleficent as an example: "Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent actively works to spoil two generations of heterosexual coupling. […] During [the] overtly narrated introduction, strong emphasis is placed on procreation, particularly on the king and queen’s difficulties in having a child. The story proper begins with the countrywide celebration of the birth of the princess Aurora. When Maleficent arrives, she is informed quite bluntly that she is “not wanted.” Maleficent retaliates by placing a death sentence on the child to be fulfilled on her sixteenth birthday. In this way, she attempts to take away the procreative success of the king and queen and kill the princess just at the moment when she herself would be about to explore heterosexual courtship."

Similarly, Jafar actively tries to separate Aladdin & Jasmine as opposed to the benevolent campy & queer coded Genie who uses his powers to bring Aladdin & Jasmine together. Of Scar, Griffin writes: "The most obvious gay figure in the film is the villainous lion Scar, voiced by Jeremy Irons, who archly portrays a physically weak male who makes up for his lack of sheer strength with catty remarks and invidious plotting. Animated by Deja, the character fairly swishes, disdaining the concept of the heterosexual family in his attempt to usurp the throne for himself." Scar "refuses to support the heterosexual patriarchy that Simba and his father represent" & challenges its dominance by killing the patriarch Mufasa & preventing Simba from gaining his rightful place on the throne with Nala as his queen by his side. Scar is contrasted by Zazu, Timone, & Pumba (all campy & queer coded too) who support Simba's divine right to rule.

So how does Viren "disrupt and frustrate heterosexuality’s dominance" when he himself used to have a wife & has two children? Firstly, he is a divorced single father. While that in of itself does not code him as queer it does preclude him from the ideal patriarchal, heterosexual nuclear family. It also complicates Viren’s status & role within Katolis Castle in relation to King Harrow (a single father himself) & his family. In Callum’s Spellbook, Callum writes “Lord Viren and his children, Claudia and Soren, were kind of like my second family.” Thus, once Queen Sarai dies, Viren becomes the only other quasi parental figure to Callum and Ezran & becomes the closest adult to Harrow living in the castle. Viren is placed in a unique position that is much like a “stepmother”. (I suspect this subtext is one of the reasons why the theory that Viren murdered Sarai persists despite little evidence for it).

If looked through the narrative framework of the evil queen/stepmother trope, Viren and Harrow’s relationship takes on a symbolically queer quality. Viren essentially acts as Harrow’s second “wife” and second “queen”. Their families co-inhabit the castle & Viren has ready access to Harrow’s private rooms and occupies them with familiarity. In their first scene, Viren enters Harrow’s bedroom & wakes him. He is the first-person Harrow sees when he wakes up, symbolic of how a wife would be the first person a husband sees upon waking, or how Sarai used to be the first person Harrow saw.

What really drives home Viren occupying the archetypical role of evil queen/stepmother is how Viren connects with queens in The Dragon Prince itself. In flashbacks, Viren’s story connects him tragically to the queens of Duren who he tried but failed to save & to Queen Sarai who saved him at the cost of her life. He lives, they die. Viren carries out their legacy when he casts the Magma Titan Heart spell & ends the famine. Later in the narrative Viren is challenged by Queen Aanya & the Sunfire queen.

The parallels and connections between Viren and Queen Sarai are the most telling (In addition to the parallels I explore in my other analysis). The first parallel is in their respective first scenes. In her first scene, Sarai stands on a balcony alongside a newly coronated Harrow, looking out at the citizens of Katolis. The King and Queen gaze upon their shared kingdom. Similarly, by the end of Viren’s first scene he too stands on a balcony alongside Harrow as they look out at the land of Katolis, like two co-rulers. 

The second parallel is that both Viren and Sarai pose for portraits with Harrow. Sarai's portrait is an intimate, family portrait but a subtly royal one. They pose on a dais between their respective thrones, clear symbols of royal power. For the second more official portrait, Harrow invites Viren to join in on this expression of royal power by inviting him on to the dais, between the same two thrones. When Sarai leaves the throne room with her children, Viren bows to her then takes up her place beside Harrow (though on the left side as opposed to Sarai being on the right). Viren becomes more than a servant, he visually takes on the role of co-ruler and co-royal, the role of a Queen.

After Harrow’s death Viren further frustrates heterosexual dominance by becoming a usurper. Traditionally, evil queens/stepmothers are framed as usurping the role of queen and mother from the protagonist’s biological, dead mother. When their husbands/kings die, they take sole control & power of their kingdom/household, power that is not "rightfully theirs".

Viren becomes a usurper when he tries to get himself coronated as regent (& later takes the crown in Book 3) and attempts to have the princes assassinated. Furthermore, he tells Soren that he will be next in line and will become king once Viren is dead. Viren is essentially making his children the heirs of Harrow instead of Harrow’s own child with Sarai. He spoils & challenges the concept of heterosexual marriage & family much like many evil queens & figures like Scar & Jafar. It's a rather uncomfortable, potentially homophobic trope if presented at face value with no subversion. This discomfort extends to Viren’s "death".

Disney villains that transgress & disrupt traditional idealizations of gender & sexuality are almost always defeated by young heterosexual love. It is no coincidence that Viren’s “death” has many of the same tropes as Evil Queen deaths. He falls to his death like the Evil Queen, Maleficent, and Mother Gothel. In the face of their deaths Snow White & The Prince ride off into the sunset. Aurora & Prince Philip dance the night away. Rapunzel & Eugene fight off Mother Gothel, save each other & kiss. Similarly, Rayla goes down with Viren off a cliff (just prior Viren was consuming the lifeforce of an innocent baby with the help of Aaravos, with whom he has a coded & charged relationship). Callum saves Rayla by declaring his love & unlocking a new magic flying ability all while Viren plunges to his death. Rayla declares her love too & they share a kiss. Young heterosexual love triumphs yet again.

In most fairy tale media this is the end for the Evil Queen. But The Dragon Prince subverts this by reviving Viren which opens the possibility of a new direction for his character. Ultimately, there's a reason why a sizeable part of the self-proclaimed Viren fandom tend to interpret Viren as bisexual, gay, or queer. His character borrows heavily from a history & tradition of queer coded villainy. Hopefully, this unique queer appeal of Viren is still a part of him & his story in the next seasons.

[licncourt]

As an EXTREME newbie to the VC fandom, I've seen so many people hate Anne Rice even though they love her work. Not saying they're not justified, I'm just clueless. Can you explain why she's so hated, if you can?

Oh God, that's a big question with a list of reasons that could circle the globe BUT I will do my best to explain the Anne Rice lore. A lot of it has been covered already by this thread, but I'll give a tl;dr/short form list here (please feel free to ask for sources/receipts for any of this btw, I'll dig them up if anyone wants)

The raging AR narcissism is covered in the link, but that's the jumping off point for all of these problems

She was notorious for harassing and suing fanfic writers (again, all the details are in the link) as well as pretty much anyone who spoke negatively about her writing (her infamous "interrogating the text from the wrong perspective" rant is here)

Her handling of characters of color is notoriously racist, as is her incredibly normalized depiction of slavery in Interview with the Vampire. POC, when they do actually appear in the series, are pretty much exclusively villains whose actions are very racially coded. Otherwise they're just heavily fetishized (sometimes both). She explicitly calls "the East" barbaric and evil compared to the "the West" which has "no place for evil". Racism is a BIG one

Most of her female characters (of which there are very few) also fall into sexist tropes in much the same way

In spite of its reputation as "queer media", AR clearly goes out of her way to downplay the gayness of her GAY relationships and she does so by normalizing pedophilia and incest in the books so she can say "vampire love is just different ❤️". Both incest and pedophilia are constant themes in all her published work to a very creepy degree which is its own problem

Sexual violence is heavily and frequently justified within her narratives, everything from the romanticized grooming of a child to outright victim blaming (she pretty much comes out and says "they were asking for it")

She had very harmful and regressive views on mental health inside of and outside of the books. She openly believed that overcoming mental illness is a matter of willpower and those who can't are just weak. The suggestion that any of her (favorite) characters be read as mentally ill or neurodivergent was very poorly received

Also she was just unhinged, a couple of my favorite examples being the time she feuded with the founder of Popeye's in character as Lestat and the time she opened her novel Blood Canticle by having "Lestat" berate the audience for not liking Memnoch the Devil

Basically, she was a racist, sexist, often mean-spirited, narcissistic nutcase who only wrote three good books but kept going anyway

If I missed anything, please add them on!

[iamnmbr3]

Can I sign up for a Disney- Service where I pay them not to put out any type of new content or interviews? Bc wow I am tired of this show and I’m tired of Mike Waldron shooting his mouth off and spewing grossness. But here we go again. He’s given another interview and I am once again left wondering why Disney had to hire him and not...literally anyone else. Like if they just grabbed a rando off the street it couldn’t have been any worse and statistically it probably would’ve been a lot better. 

"I knew that I wanted to position somebody opposite Tom, opposite Tom's Loki, who had the same energy in a way, but also a totally different energy, that female energy”

Female energy??? Can someone please tell Mike that "girl" isn't a personality trait. Remember when I talked about how Sylvie isn’t a good female character because she’s physically strong but not strongly written? Remember when I talked about how she’s an empty “strong female character TM” who is a woman first and a human second because she’s not a good character who happens to be female but rather a character whose defining and only personality trait is her gender? Yeah.

"But it's one thing, I guess, to be narcissistic and to think you're great and everything, it's another thing to really believe that, to project that outwardly. It's another thing to really believe that and to actually practice self-love and everything. So if the show is about Loki falling for Sylvie a little bit, the hope was always that maybe that it's also about him learning to forgive himself." 

What. No really. WHAT. Mike’s pathetic attempts to justify his ridiculously bad romance and also pretend like he didn’t straight up lie to us about Loki learning self love are hilarious. this makes NO sense. huh???? This is just a really bad attempt at damage control. Loki doesn’t learn self love. He never says anything positive about himself. The show frames him internalizing other’s harmful messages about him like that he is a villain and a pathetic loser as something positive. What has he learned to love about himself? Mike has yet to be able to name one positive trait he has. His hatred for Loki is so obvious. And how is loving Sylvie him forgiving himself???? she didn't do any of the things he did???? This makes ZERO sense.

"He is just a character who doesn't like to self reflect, and would rather pontificate, and would rather scheme, because he's good at it, because he's very clever. "

Really? He would rather pontificate? Another comment that seems to indicate that Mike really didn’t watch Thor 2011. Remember how the opening scenes established how SILENT Loki is and how he is constantly spoken over? That’s a big part of his other and victim coding. The way Mike constantly shames Loki for speaking is very disturbing given the way Loki is Other coded. And also given the fact that he is now canonically queer. Why must the Other be silenced??? 

“And when faced with an actual mirror of himself, he sees things that are attractive and that he empathizes with. He also sees things that are broken and wounded, and it helps him understand those very things in his own psyche" 

Wrong. But also? Where? Where is that in the show??? This never happened. He’s just lying here.

"I mean, he has done terrible things. That was part of the work that the first episode had to do, was hold him accountable for that, sort of lay him bare and everything. And the journey that he's been on has been one of reckoning with that. Is it possible to atone for that? I think Loki's still trying to figure that out."

Terrible things? Huh. Kinda like Thor. Remember when he slaughtered all those Jotnar while laughing (which was considered totally acceptable in his culture)? Remember when Odin slaughtered and enslaved thousands? Remember when Loki was motivated by trying to PREVENT a war? And. Remember when Loki was captured and TORTURED by Thanos? Also. The first episode didn't do that. The first episode was about things he hadn't done bc it was him seeing his future. AND FURTHERMORE the TVA can't hold him accountable bc if what Loki did was bad then the TVA has no moral high ground bc what they did was orders of magnitude worse. And if what the TVA did was ok then Loki didn't do anything wrong. Why does the TVA get a pass for their horrific acts of evil???

"I think, for me, that's one of the most important scenes in the show because this is a guy who has been driven by glorious purpose, by the feeling that everything he does is in the service of his grand destiny."    

So Mike really just watched that glorious purpose clip and decided it was Loki’s whole motivation huh? What an idiot. So much for the Loki Lectures. Obviously this guy was asleep during them and didn’t bother to watch Thor 2011 either. You know, the movie all about Loki’s backstory and motivations. Guess he also missed the fact that Loki is LITERALLY KNEELING when he comes through the portal and looks awful bc he’s just been tortured is very obviously repeating the stuff Thanos told him while breaking him. Loki is not motivated by believing in a glorious purpose. He cries when Thor tells him to look at the destruction in Avengers. 

And in Thor 2011 he is motivated by wanting to avert a war and also more deeply by his desire for love and validation. He never wanted the throne. He wanted to be Thor’s equal. He has a mental breakdown and tries to kill himself when he comes to believe that he is inherently monstrous and that he can never earn his family’s love. LOKI IS DEFINED BY HIS LACK OF SELF ESTEEM AND HIS SELF HATRED! That is. The opposite of what Mike has said. Also Mike contradicts himself. Is Loki someone who is arrogant and needs to learn his purpose isn’t glorious or is he someone who needs to learn self love? It can’t be both. What a disgusting, victim blaming, abuse apologist lying hack.  

“In that moment, he sees that no, it was his destiny to get his neck snapped by the bad guy he was working for"

Excuse me? Working for??? Loki never went back to Thanos. He died sacrificing himself to save Thor. WTF!!!?!?

[sazandorable]

About moderating and banning content on AO3!

Okay so! I haven’t had the spoons to do this for a while but I cracked and ranted about it on twitter which is... not... conducive to long rants, so!

This is a h u g e discussion part of the l o n g history that led to the creation of AO3, which older, more informed, and more articulate people have talked about at length and can be found around if you look (I reblog some of it in my AO3 and fandom history tags for the curious). So I won’t go into that here, nor into the practical reasons why it’s not even possible to put that system in place anyway.

Arbitrarily, or the purpose of this post, because it’s the biggest topic I’ve seen brought up lately, I’ll be talking about fic depicting underage characters in se*ual situations, but honestly I could hold the exact same conversation on literally any controversial content.

This is about why you, specifically, if you are a content creator and especially if you are marginalised and especially if you are queer and especially especially if you are sensitive to fiction depicting certain things... do not, actually, want a banning system on AO3.

What? Of course we do. There’s a lot of p*do shit on AO3 and p*do shit is gross. No one should condone that, wtf? It would be easy to do — just periodically delete the entire Underage tag!

What will happen if that is done is that people will re-upload and continue to write it, they’ll just stop tagging and you will run into it with zero warning nor ability to filter it out. Again, this is not a theoretical — we know this is what happens. When I was a teen, adult content (all adult content) was not allowed on FF.NET; it was everywhere regardless, and without tags. The exact same thing happened on tumblr when adult content was banned as well. It’s not a matter of “staff not handling it well” — it just doesn’t work.

To keep safe the people who need to be able to exclude that tag, that tag needs to exist and be used.

Well, shucks. A reporting system then?

A reporting system would operate in one of two ways:

-an algorithm, which would delete a lot of stuff we wouldn’t want it to delete.

-humans, which is... the bigger problem.

An algorithm sounds great. We do want it to delete everything.

Okay. What about the daddy k*nk fics between consenting adult characters? What about the fics featuring characters that are children in the canon but are adults in the fic? What about the fics about teenagers exploring their se*uality together, written by adults about the experiences they remember having or wish they could have had? What about the thousands of SasuNaru and Drarry and other shounen and YA fics that will get written, by teens or by people who remember being teens? What about the se*ually explicit fic written by teens who are se*ually active in real life? What about the fics about CSA as trauma, about healing from it? What about the fics written by survivors of CSA to cope about their trauma? What about the fics that clearly show that it’s evil and traumatic? What about the super dark, harrowing, but beautiful and artistic that I’m glad I read even though it fucked me up for days? What about the ones that were really shitty but also horribly hot?

Well, some of these are still not okay, but maybe some might be. It depends on how it’s written. We’ll have humans moderating content and deciding, then.

Okay.

The thing is, I don’t know which of the things I just listed were okay for you to be depicted in fiction and which were too much. Odds are I don’t agree with you. Odds are if I asked 10 people randomly picked off the street, not everyone would agree.

Odds are, even if AO3 arbitrarily decided on which of those are allowed and which are not, you would not agree with their choice, and you would still be unhappy with the decision. (Or you would be happy, but your friends wouldn’t.)

Odds are, different AO3 content moderators might not agree on whether a given fic qualifies or not — is it artistic enough? Does it show enough that these actions are evil and wrong? Can the author prove they’re a teenager? Can the author prove they are a CSA victim? Can the author prove that this is to help them cope with their trauma? The author seem to be functioning alright, they mustn’t really be traumatised!

You know what I mean! There’s absolute, objectively gross shit out there that is not artistic and should not be published.

I agree that there’s vile stuff out there that makes me sick and that I think is very clearly just ped*philic trash. But there is no way to, 1) stop those from getting published anyway, 2) take those down and preserve the safety of everything else.

If we start forbidding some things, there’s two ways to go about it.

One single, clear, arbitrary rule — for instance, absolutely no adult content featuring characters under 18 (leaving aside the fact that this would not even work for the reason cited above). So we lose all the stuff from teenagers, all the coming of age stories about adolescence, all the stuff from CSA survivors; people who need to write it can’t publish it anymore, and people who need to read it can’t anymore either (and as a cool bonus, they’re told it’s wrong and made to feel bad about it). Depending on whether the rules applies to characters that are under 18 in the canon, we lose entire fandoms.

Or, subjective moderation by humans, according to what they estimate to be gross.

Let’s assume all moderators can agree on what’s gross or not.

If there is a system in place to ban some underage works because “gross shit”, then that means other gross stuff can be taken down on account of being gross and harmful.

Yeah! Gross stuff should be taken down! Come on, surely everyone agrees on what’s gross and harmful.

Ah.

But the problem is.

Here is a list of things I have seen — with my eyes seen — called harmful to be depicted in fiction:

Murder

Non-con

Inc*st

Cannibalism

Torture

Self-harm

Mental illness

Drugs

Racism

K*nk

Non-negotiated k*nk, but healthy k*nk is ok

Spanking k*nk

BDSM where the woman is a bottom, but woman top is ok

Healthy depictions of BDSM

Unhealthy depictions of BDSM

Queer people doing bad things

Abusive relationships

Rival/Enemies to lovers

Redemption stories

A happy relationship between a 17 yo and an 18 yo

A happy relationship between a 20 yo and a 60 yo

A happy relationship between a boss and their employee, or a college teacher and a student

A happy relationship between a 14 yo boy and an older teenage boy, because that’s reminiscent of older men preying on younger gay boys IRL

Se*ual content featuring a character whose age is unclear in canon and some people headcanon them as being underage, some as being a young adult

Loving, consensual fluff between characters that are evil villains, because it romanticises them and their actions

Dark content shipping female characters

Fluffy content shipping female characters, because it’s misogynistic to act like lesbians are only soft all the time

Consensual s*x featuring a canonically asexual character, because it implies that all aces can and should still have se*

Fics about the same canonically asexual character hating s*x, because that erases the experience of s*x-positive aces

Shipping a character who is perceived by some fans as queer-coded with a character of a different s*x

The tendency to ship a black character with white characters

Fluffy drunk s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Sleep s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Trans characters not experiencing dysphoria, because that idealises the trans experience

Consensual s*x between adults that are not married

LGBT+ content, because kids shouldn’t see that.

I guarantee you: you, I, and 10 random people plucked from the street will not agree on what, in that list, is and isn’t okay to publish and consume fiction of.

So why should your taste be the one followed? Why should it be the taste of mods you don’t know? Why should anyone get to dictate? What if the mods think your OTP is gross and your NOTP is fine?

This is the slippery slope argument.

Yes, it is the slippery slope argument. Because we know it happens. Because we’ve been there, because I’ve seen it happen myself twice already and I’m not even thirty. Because we know people do complain loudly about all of these things.

And because the second there is a banning system in place, assholes will use the system to abuse it and get stuff they just don’t like taken down using the “it is gross” argument, and one day you’ll wake up and the beautiful fic that helped you come to terms with your abuse/trauma/identity/orientation/k*nk for feet will be taken down and wonderful vulnerable creative people will have been harassed out of fandom because they argued with 1 person who didn’t like their foot k*nk fic that happened to also feature, for instance, a CSA trauma backstory.

Again: not exaggerating. Not theoretical. It happens, we know it happens, AO3 was created literally because it happens.

I still fucking hate that stuff.

That is completely fine and normal. No one likes everything. Me too! Most of the dark stuff is niche and the creators know only few people will like it the same way they do.

(For the record, I get grossed out and triggered by fics about an asexual character who does not like s*x having s*x with their partner to make them happy. Deep in my gut everything screams that that’s fucked up, terrifying and harmful, how can people write that. But I recognise that there are people who love and need that, and I leave those people and their content alone.

OTOH, I read a lot of otherwise dark shit and I enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed, say, Hannibal, in the same way some people enjoy true crime documentaries, horror movies or r*pe fantasy k*nk. It helps me explore stuff that I like to see in fiction, in a safe, controlled way. I’m also asexual, 90% s*x-repulsed IRL, and, obviously, I would never abuse a child. For that matter, I wouldn’t kill and eat people, either, nor would I do 90% of the tamer k*nky stuff I read.

Of course, Hannibal was fucked up and lots of people probably think Hannibal was gross and should not have been aired — but as exemplified by the fact that it was created, aired and watched, lots of people thought it was fine, interesting and even fun to watch.)

You can and should curate your experience and protect yourself. The AO3 website now allows you to exclude certain tags, and people have developed tools to help with that such as plugins that save your filters or hide fics that contain certain words.

But no, it isn’t going to, and it shouldn’t, get banned.

[handsmotif]

The Queercoding of Pinky and the Brain

This originally was just me infodumping to my friends on discord, but I decided it might be interesting to some people on here, so I polished it up and made it an actual essay lmao

To start, we’re going to break this into 2 sections -- the relationship between the mice, and Pinky’s relationship with gender, because queercoding doesn’t just mean gay!

For a 90′s show, Pinky and the Brain (and its mother show, Animaniacs) was very progressive for its time! But there were still lots of things that they couldn’t slip by censors, and thus, that’s where we have to read between the lines. And that is something I wanted to clarify here before we dive in, the actual meaning of queercoding. It’s NOT the same as queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is when the people producing certain media purposefully dangle the possibility of queer representation to lure in audiences (most prominent examples are BBC Sherlock, Riverdale, and Supernatural I GUESS? who knows abt that last one anymore), but never follow through, purely for profit. Queercoding is when media producers WANT to write in queer representation, but can’t, usually because the censors won’t let them. So, they must resort to subtext. (example: the policemen from Gravity Falls) It could also be unintentional, simply assigning certain characteristics associated with the LGBT community to characters. (example: Bugs Bunny, many Disney villains) Either way, it heavily relies on the audience picking up subtext, but whether it’s malicious or not varies, depending on the media. Bugs Bunny is an example of positive accidental queercoding, while a lot of Disney villains are negative examples.

Now, to actually discuss the gay little mice! Pinky and the Brain, whether it be intentional or not (based off comments from Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, and Tom Ruegger, signs strongly point to intentional, but it’s never been explicitly confirmed), is an example of positive queercoding.

There are many moments that I could pick out to discuss here, but we’ll start with some VERY on the nose gay metaphors. 

Remember Romy? If you don’t, that’s their actual biological son! Romy came about due to a cloning accident, where their DNA got combined and spat him out. 

There’s SO many things I could say about Romy. Every appearance he makes has an overarching gay metaphor as the plot. His first appearance in the episode Brinky (yeah it’s literally titled their ship name), it deals with his dads (WHICH I ALSO WANT TO POINT OUT, he DOES call them both dad, and they do both call him their son) disapproving of the fact that he wants to leave home and not follow in their footsteps of taking over the world. Brain even goes as far as disowning him whenever he tells him, which is certainly something a lot of queer people can unfortunately relate to. Also seen a lot in this episode is Pinky and Brain arguing even more than a married couple than usual, which pushes Romy away even further. Later, when Romy eventually does leave, and Brain starts to regret chasing him away, he tries desperately to reach out to him, but Romy doesn’t want anything to do with him. They end up tracking him down to an apartment building, where Romy is now living with his human girlfriend. When questioned about their relationship, the girlfriend, named Bunny, goes off on a tangent about how people shouldn’t judge others based on labels or relationships (hello?), and that Brain needs to be more tolerant. Brain apologizes and Romy forgives him. Happy ending.

Romy’s only other appearance is in the comics. Essentially, the plot of this one is that Brain wants to become the president of the local high school’s PTA, but he needs Romy’s help to make it look like he has a normal home life. He also enlists the help of Billie, the obligatory Woman introduced to make sure Brain doesn’t look as gay as he actually is, that he has a crush on. She pretends to be his girlfriend, and Pinky pretends to be Romy’s uncle, while they make up the story that Romy’s actual mother was lost at sea. Because if the organization found out that Brain has a son with a MAN??? THINK of the controversy! Anyway, the plan works, and Brain actually manages to get elected as president. Throughout this though, Pinky gets WEIRDLY jealous that Brain keeps brushing him aside for Billie. To the point where during Brain’s inauguration, Pinky actually dresses up as the wife/mother lost at sea and storms into the room.

[ID: Comic panels of Pinky, Brain, and Romy on stage at the inauguration ceremony. Pinky busts into room wearing drag, saying, “Yoo hoo! I’m back from years lost at sea to be with my son and ungrateful husband! Narf!” He then hugs Romy, while glaring at Brain. He goes on to say, “I’ll stand by your side, even though you left me behind!” The people in the audience begin to question this, saying, “Oh great fuzzy bangs!”, “What’d she say?!”, “He deserted her to be with that other woman!”, “What kind of monster is he?!”. Brain then rips off Pinky’s wig and says, “This isn’t my wife! This isn’t even a woman! It’s my roommate, Pinky.” Pinky replies, “Well, yes... But Romy really is my son! Poit!” And Brain responds, “N-Nonsense! He’s my son!” More people in the audience angrily speak up, saying, “What’s that?”, “He lives with a guy who likes to dress up in women’s clothing and the both claim to be that kid’s father!”, “Grumble! Mutter!” /END ID]

Needless to say, this doesn’t end well for them. What we can conclude from this is that homophobia exists in the Pinky and the Brain universe, and our characters are directly affected by it.

Moving on, And-There-Was-Only-One-Bed is a pretty common occurrence with these two. Their cage is big, they have plenty of room for two beds, but? They choose to sleep together? Even in some times where this has been inconsistent and they DO have separate beds, they’re always RIGHT next to each other. (what if we put our minecraft beds together ❤😳)

I would like to mention the episode, You’ll Never Eat Food Pellets In This Town Again! This episode is interesting to say the least. Deals with a lot of the meta of the show. Anyway. In this episode, Brain has a nightmare that he’s in a loveless marriage with Billie. You know, the woman he’s supposed to have a crush on. In the end, he wakes up from the nightmare in the same bed as Pinky.

Speaking of female love interests, Pinky is seen having multiple relationships with characters of different species. Any time this is brought up by Brain, Pinky counters with Brain being too intolerant. An honorable mention with this is in Wakko’s Wish, when Pinky is with Pharfignewton, and Brain’s constant pestering about their relationship could be read as jealousy. Pinky needs a mousy date, after all!

Something else I would like to mention is in one episode (I forget what it’s called, I’ll try to look it up later and edit this), Brain is applying for a job. The employer asks Brain if he’s married, and Brain hesitates before saying he “has a roommate,” but that he’s occupied with his own things, which then cuts to a shot of Pinky applying lipstick.

Leading into part two of this essay, Pinky’s relationship with gender! Pinky has always been very gender nonconforming, and loves to wear dresses, do his makeup, and make himself look pretty. For the most part, this is played pretty straight, and not as a gag, like a lot of shows tend to do! It’s just a casual fact about him that he likes to present femininely sometimes.

This does play into their taking over the world plans pretty often, where Pinky wears drag, usually either to sneak into somewhere. Like in one of their earliest appearances on Animaniacs, Noah’s Lark, where they pose as a couple to board Noah’s, and I quote, “love boat.” After boarding, Noah says to himself, “Who am I to judge?” Okay. Yeah. Alright. Anyway.

I actually had less to say on this than I thought I did, but I wanted to make sure to emphasize that Pinky at the very least is coded as being Not Quite Cis, and that he’s played a key part in helping a lot of people watching the show figure out that they’re also Not Quite Cis. 

Wrapping this up because I’m hungry, but I want to throw in some more honorable mentions that I really do not see any type of cishet explanations for:

They literally go on a romantic date at a very fancy restaurant in Brain’s Night Off. This is played extremely casually, and the only remark from anyone that they receive is that they are “much smaller than the usual clients.”

Pinky, on at least one occasion, daydreams about him and Brain being a married couple, and wanting to be a housewife (the original malewife ❤)

There’s an issue in the comics where Pinky has a crush on another male mouse, and when Brain gets annoyed, Pinky reassures him that he thinks Brain is cute and quite the catch too

Brain attempting to kiss Pinky in the reboot??????

Brain actually did conquer the world once in the Halloween special, because Pinky made a deal with the devil for it, and thus Pinky got sent to hell! Brain actually went to hell and gave up the world to bring him back

Brain was extremely close to conquering the world once more in the Christmas special, but after reading what Pinky’s feelings for him were (nothing romantic, just Pinky basically just praising Brain for being so hardworking and an amazing mouse, and lamenting that he never gets anything for it), he gets so emotional that he sabotages himself and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas instead

TLDR; these mice are very queer and need therapy, and are probably the most heavily queercoded characters that I can think of in children’s media.

[fandomshatelgbtqpeople]

Let’s talk coding

Coding is a subtextual portrayal of a character having a certain identity, where that identity isn’t explicitly stated in canon.

Google Ngram has the term, “queercoding” existing in an academic context as far back as 1982. Characters can also be coded as having certain disabilities, genders, races, ethnicities, religions, etc. depending on the circumstances.

Here are some characters lots of people think are queercoded:

From left to right: Prince Wu (LoK), Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeau (MCU), Sabine Wren (Star Wars: Rebels), Elsa (Frozen), Miles Morales (Into the Spider Verse).

It’s important to note that many queercoded characters are equally coded as multiple queer identities. A character might be coded as gay, bi, ace, aro, and trans all at the same time. In fact, those are all interpretations I’ve seen for Elsa, and they are all equally valid. That’s why the term is queercoding. “Gaycoding” was popularized a few years ago by exclusionists who wanted to accuse ace and, to a lesser extent, bi people of “stealing gay rep” when they headcanoned queercoded characters as ace or bi. "Gaycoding” shouldn’t be used because it’s based in exclusion and is usually incredibly reductive anyway.

Here are some characters who are coded in other ways:

From left to right: Temperance Brennan (Bones, coded as autistic), Korra (LoK, coded as having PTSD), Garnet (Steven Universe, coded as Black), L3 (Solo: A Star Wars Story, coded as female), Superman (DC Comics, coded as Jewish). All of these characters were intentionally coded--and some of them are great examples of how intentional coding can still be handled really poorly.

Coding has to be two things: (1) recognizable to the target group and (2) not precluded by anything in canon.

That means for a character to be queercoded, they have to be recognizable as queer by queer people. For a character to be autistic coded, they have to be recognizable as autistic to autistic people. For a character to be coded as Jewish, they have to be recognizable as Jewish by Jewish people. Etc. Coding isn’t something for the outgroup to decide. It doesn’t matter how many cis straight people read a character as queer. If queer people don’t read them as queer, they’re not queercoded.

While having said “I’m straight” in canon doesn’t preclude a character from being queercoded because claiming to be straight doesn’t preclude a person from being queer, being canonically an adult does preclude a character from being coded as an adolescent because you can’t be both (no, neither Kyl0 Ren nor Entrapta were adolescent-coded). It also means that a character who’s canonically a human man can’t be femme-coded (sorry again, kyl0-ben stans). Male characters can be femme, but that’s not coding and comes down to gender presentation.

Coding can result from multiple things, including but not limited to:

Accident (more common for queercoding than many other types of coding)

Writers trying to slip representation under the radar

Writers wanting to give non-human characters or characters in a secondary world setting real world identities (unlikely for queercoding but common for other types of coding)

Bigotry against the identity being coded

Queercoding can be homophobic when a character is intentionally queercoded and then mistreated or villainized, or when it’s done in order to queerbait the audience. Sometimes a piece of media can become homophobic when a creator realizes they’ve accidentally queercoded a character they intended to be straight and reacts badly. But queercoding isn’t inherently homophobic. In particular, reason #2 was especially common prior to about 2010 and was often done by queer creators themselves. Not all queercoding is queerbaiting. Queerbaiting requires an intent to mislead the audience.

Finally, coding is subjective. That means that not everyone will agree on which characters are queercoded. Not everyone will agree in their interpretations of which queer identity(ies) a queercoded character has. There’s nothing wrong with that. People have different experiences that lead them to relate to different characters and that lead them to relate to the same characters in different ways. It’s perfectly okay to disagree about queercoding. Unless a creator comes out and says “yes, I intentionally coded X character in Y way,” no one is right or wrong.  

[only-genius-wit-and-taste]

Thinking about that Ursula K. Le Guin quote about how we tend to think of evil as interesting when in real life evil is boring and how it reflects the way fiction interacts with society.

I wrote my undergraduate disseration on Victorian sensation fiction and I find it interesting to think about how the traditional novel developed. In Victorian novels, happy endings served a very specific purpose. They restored order and confirmed what the world was supposed to look like, whether that was a happy, heterosexual marriage, or the detective catching the criminal and sending them away to be punished. A novel had to a have a proper, appropriate ending, but sensation novelists (less respectable, often women) realised that they had lots of space in the middle to tell more interesting stories. So we get female characters who have affairs and secret babies, or murder their husbands, or run away to become actresses. They have power and agency and we're not quite supposed to approve of their actions, but they're certainly more interesting than the respectable heroine who mostly exists to look pretty and be a prize for the hero. Of course, tagged on at the end of the novel, we have to have a chapter where the disobedient female character realises how wrong she was. Depending on the severity of her crime, she either dies, is shipped off to an asylum, or repents and marries a nice man. Order is restored and we know that the novelist isn't condoning the character's actions, even if she did just spend 95% of the novel showing us how much fun it is to be bad.

Then, later, we got things like queer-coded villains and "bury your gays", because that was the only way queer writers could see themselves represented. Again, the end of the story had to restore order and show what the world was supposed to look like. Anyone who stepped outside the status quo had to be punished, or shown to be evil. But in the middle there's lots of space to tell the more interesting stories.

Heroes are boring in traditional, mainstream fiction because they represent order. They exist to restore things to normal, to the way they're supposed to be. Their moral dilemmas are simplified and unrealistic: save your girlfriend or save the city, but you can't do both. It's a mildly interesting abstract question, like the trolley problem, that we might enjoy pondering for a moment. But most of us recognise that, like the trolley problem, it doesn't have much to do with our real experiences.

Villains, on the other hand, grapple with more complex ideas. They don't fit within "normal" society, and they want things to change. They fight for their own right to exist, even at the expense of other people. We might not agree with all of their actions, but we cannot deny that they are never boring.

(Except when they're written by big movie companies who completely miss the point and give us "person with completely legitimate goals who was violent one time and is therefore obviously a terrorist" or "literal nazi but his dad was mean to him and he's played by an attractive white guy so maybe he's not so evil after all" and nothing in between.)

Of course, in real life, it's the other way around. Throughout history, the heroes have always been the people fighting against the status quo. Evil is boring because it is always the same. It always benefits evil to keep things the way they are, because evil people are always the ones in charge. Good, on the other hand, can look like a thousand different things. Good people are the ones facing complex moral dilemmas, and trying to decide how much violence is acceptable to make change, and arguing and listening and thinking and creating and making mistakes and regretting them and failing and trying again until something works. Good cannot work towards a happy ending where order is restored; good people recognise that we always exist in the middle of the story.

[muffinlance]

Hi there! I saw that you are trying to make a blind!zuko au, so maybe he can have termic sense, kinda like toph... he could sense the heat of people but it becomes hard in the cold ( maybe fire benders are more visible with water benders being less because of maneging ice) he could fight fire benders but earth, air and water is almost imposible unless the conditions are correct ( sorry for my inglish)

I fully admit I have read and enjoyed the blind-Zuko-gets-heat-vision stories. But that is part one of the problem: those stories have already been done. My entire brand as a writer is "writing the stories you never knew you wanted, for the holes in your life you didn't know needed filling." If someone else has done a concept well already, my assistance is not required.

Part two of the problem: pick a part of you that isn't often--or ever--represented in the media. Now imagine that almost every time the media does touch on that part of you, it's changed or twisted, so it's not at all your experience.

I remember this when I was growing up and some of the best female leads in fantasy were in Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, and they got literally slapped by the male protagonists any time they displayed emotion, because that was Too Much (nevermind that the men were just as emotional). And now we've progressed to the age of Strong Female Characters, which many writers seem to think means "carbon copy action girl", and that is not much of an improvement in the diversity of roles front.

I remember this in all the queer-coded villains in tv and film.

I am living this with the ace characters in literature being literally inhuman. (I love you Murderbot, but I would kill to have you meet some ace human not-friends and just hang out getting grossed out over gratuitous sex scenes in media together.)

So while I am not personally blind, a common theme I have seen expressed by that audience is the desire for a blind character whose blindness is not negated by a super power. AKA, one that is actually reflective of their experiences.

I imagine characters like Toph and Daredevil are to blind readers what ace, queer, and female characters are to me: it's nice to see any representation, but it would be much nicer if media producers would do some basic research and try to create characters that are well-rounded and based in lived experiences.

So, I have said it before, and I will say it again: when I write my blind Zuko, he is going to be blind. No cheats. No cures. And no pity party, either.

But first: I've got a lot of research to do. <3

[chibi-netherlands]

Nyissa

I don’t often make posts, but this has been really bothering me and I see no one talking about it in the Belgariad fandom? I’ve been rereading the Belgariad series. It’s a guilty pleasure, mostly cause I love Silk. But god I have issues with this series. I just got through the 2nd book, aka Queen of Sorcery. Which means the introduction of the Nyissans as like... a secondary antagonistic force. People have talked about the Angaraks being asian coded, which in light of their role in the story feels honestly disgusting. But like... the Nyissans are so queer coded? They are wearing rainbows everywhere, it’s hard to distinguish men from women, they wear make-up, etc etc. They are feminised or sexualised or both.(I love Sadi with all my heart, but there was no reason to give him the title of “the man who is no man” in the prophecy, Like absolutely zero. Most characters are not named after physical traits in the prophecy) 

Also it feels like they’re vilified every time they’re mentioned. Being too sexy isn’t a crime, but they are extremely sexualised and most of the protagonists are against that. Add to that that they do drugs and lots of them, their city is a murder hell hole, and that they trade slaves and you get a pretty clear picture of the matter that Eddings absolutely does not want you to like Nyissans. (I don’t think there was any particular reason to add slavery to this world. It barely has any consequences for the plot and only really serves as yet another reason to make the Nyissans the bad guys) Silk has a roulette wheel for a moral compass and even he doesn’t have good things to say about Nyissans. When the people who we’re supposed to root for are having a casual conversation about basically committing genocide because the Nyissans are bad people, it just feels like a bad comic. 

I personally don’t like Salmarissa. Just don’t vibe with her. She’s a good obstacle and antagonist, which I like, but I don’t like her personally. However, I still think they did her dirty. Just like they did the Nyissans dirty. Cause she is the sole ruler of Nyissa. She is the only female ruler in this world. There are other queens, but they either have little to no power or only rule behind the curtains. You get some who come close, but never are they the sole ruler of a queendom without having to add any asterisks. Salmarissa is a queen, but her people are never portrayed as good. 

Even Sadi is never completely portrayed as good. Sure he’s on the protagonists’ side, he’s part of the prophecy and he’s useful. But he’s never given the true “redeeming” moment to show us maybe there’s more to Nyissans. He’s never really given the chance to bond with anyone on a deep level, and at the end of it all he goes back to Salmarissa even though she tried to have him killed.

I like making lots of headcanons for this series, to fix things that bother me. Usually these headcanons are about the cultures and the people, to show that they’re not all good and not all bad. I have A LOT of headcanons about Nyissa and its people. Because I care them, even though they are made the villain at every step. 

wow I had so much more to say than I thought