#i'm not here for moralistic discourse

[doktorblitz]

Creature commandos head canons

also on ao3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62684284

I know this is an unpopular opinion but I kinda like the chemistry between Victor and Bride and wanted to explore head canons of those two, mostly fluffy touchy feely SFW stuff (much as fucking Frankenstein can be sfw). And since apparently ain't no one touching this one with a 10 foot pole, I may as well be first. I'll also say, if it sounds defensive that's because I've seen entire reddit accounts get their karma nuked into the ocean for discussing Victor's motives, not even necessarily defending him. And if it sounds rushed that's because I wrote this at 2 am instead of sleeping in a creative delirium, lol.

Firstly, I'll also address certain aspects. It's not necrophilia because he wasn't into her because she's a dead girl, she happens to be a dead girl by circumstance.  It's not grooming if 1) he didn't even intend to catch feeling and 2) he waited several years potentially making her a teenager if you wanna count by reanimation time.  And considering Eric literally sees her as an object and doesn't understand NO, Victor is the milder of the two evils, regardless if he(Eric) is "mentally damaged" as Gunn pointed out. Hell Vic actually lets her develop her own person hood and ideas, arguably gives her more room to grow instead of projecting what he wants her to be(you want your bride to be able to speak don't you? Implied speak for her self).

With that out of the way, I have some ideas. 

- when he's testing her to see what she's capable of, strength, endurance, physical evaluation and such, Vic might not be expecting her to be strong like Eric.  - maybe he discovers this when he has her try to lift something or other and she barely strains when a large human man would struggle with it.  - the good doc would probably be amazed and a little bit charmed, given how in canon that didn't stop him from getting intimate. - she gets quite protective of him just as he was of her(he defended her in the flashbacks explicitly risking his own neck for her, pun intended). - what if after said canon attempt to throttle him by Eric, once she came out of shock she picked him up bridal style and helped him to the bed after he got the air knocked out of him. - she happens to find him more than a little charming and he's shared some rather questionable opinions with her, for the time anyway, i.e. questioning God, choosing things outside the norm, etc.  - this is more of a implied background detail potentially but I'd guess he had to run to pokolistan to escape the various countries that wanted him dead for Eric in the first place, so he got asylum from the pokolistan royal family for a price. - part of that price was keeping his cadaver searching on the down low, another was entertaining the royal family occasionally, and the more unfortunate was the 3rd, taking a wife from the locals to keep good relations, albeit probably a slightly smarter more capable woman than the average house maid. - this could even tie into the joke bride makes about the royal bloodline, maybe Vic had made a similar joke to her almost 200 years ago while talking about the royals being inbred.  - my guess is he would've waited a period and maybe even tried to hold her at arm's length until finally he couldn't anymore, or another good explanation/theory I heard and kinda agree, he wanted to show her the better parts of being human. That includes relationships and sex, eventually, and I could see bride being the one to initiate.  - in that vein I could see her making the 1st move and him going all professor explaining the risks and possible outcomes before he agrees to anything. - similarly I have a thought that he may have used the "tell me what you want" method, ala "use your words", explicitly asking for what she wants, as some form of consent, in so much as can be given in that context. - another head canon I have about the unnamed wife is that there was no love lost there, she was an obligation, and that's also why he agrees to give her kids, 2 daughters seem to be implied. It was just the thing to do at the time after all.  - in that case the infidelity holds true only for the formal marriage not any feelings towards the wife, given he ended up sleeping with the bride. 

- Lastly as someone has also said in a couple posts, Eric could've taken a page out of Victor's book and been gentle and patient etc, instead he went and killed Vic and made him a saint in her memory. And he is not teachable, all the while Victor had tried to teach him to be patient and give her time to fall for him.

That's the sfw and canon ish ones I can think of, but I have a whole ass two AU ideas with head canons I could explore if anyone is curious. Hint, one of them involves rocker bride playing guitar. And yes in both I'm still keeping the canon ship of Vic/Bride.

Any takers/curious folk who wanna discuss that kinda thing, I'm here.

[senseandaccountability]

I'm back in my Organizing my IRL Community Politically to Overthrow This Motherfucking Government in 2026 era and not around here as much. Also: I haven't blocked people this generously before but god damn it DA fandom you suck so hard and you bore me so much. No love. The mixture of idiocy, grudges, antis, spitefulness, character hate, the DAV defense league/Good Fans that digs up some random teenager's reddit take to make stupid meta posts about (look what the stupid Bad Fans are saying - it's not a fucking discourse if three people on reddit say it and you know it, you just want to be edgy on main) and moralists is too much, I can't take it.   If you want me I'll be in the bar. Or on discord.

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Do you have any big opinions about rpf?

Not sure what we're counting as "big" here.

Aside from the standard "don't harrass the people it's about" take, I guess my opinion on rpf is that it does say something about its authors, readers and the broader fandom. Not in a moralistic "writing about bad things means you endorse them" sense, or even in the sense that you can conclude an author's historical takes from their writing. (I know a fair amount of people who will read or write McLennon without really buying into the theory of it being true)

But I think there's enough parallels between the trends in fic and the trends in analysis to see that these two things aren't neatly separable. As a fellow author, I can understand Cynthia being frequently brushed aside in fic, even if I don't love it – when it comes to analysing the real history though, I am less forgiving. However, because of the seeming link between the decentring of Cynthia in fic and her frequent exclusion from meaningful analysis, I find myself being (perhaps disproportionately) frustrated with her treatment in fic as a result.

Cynthia here is just an example among several, but I think the fact that she's not treated meaningfully better by the wider (generally more heteronormative) Beatles fandom speaks to the fact that what I'm describing isn't just attributable to the largely queer space of Beatles RPF fandom decentring straight relationships. (also any other lesbians fucking tired of people decrying any consideration to women as homophobia??)

I have also noticed that some people's takes on the history have a very literary bent – I'm thinking about times I have seen people call for symmetry between John and Paul, as though their relationship needs to be made up of perfectly mirroring feelings to be beautiful. There's an important distinction to be drawn here between descriptivism and prescriptivism – like, to be clear, there is something inherently literary in observing parallels between their lives, like say losing their mothers young, but I am specifically referring to people saying John and Paul should be analysed with the assumption of this symmetry existing, which feels like a limiting way of looking at real people.

That being said, I'm not sure how much engaging with RPF as such affects this sort of attitude. To some extent, we are all always trying to make sense of reality through narrative, but I'm not sure how aware of it people are.

With all that in mind,

I think RPF is a very cool way to express and explore thoughts related to the history (and, at least in my case, engage in discourse about the history as well as the fandom itself) that don't need to be fact-checked whilst being contained in an explicitly fictional realm. I also think that a lot of speculation people engage in about celebrities is actually kind of akin to fanfic and I sort of prefer the fact that RPF is upfront about its fictionality.

I like thinking about what RPF has in common with things like biopics and how it diverges from them, its strange but existing relationship with the concept of "truth" (which I think is somewhat distinct from the concept of "factualness"). I'm fascinated by adaption in general; I find the process of systematically pruning, supplementing and molding historical reality until it takes the shape of a narrative deeply interesting, and even when I don't love the product, I think there's meaning to be derived in understanding how we got from point A to B.

[beevean]

So some recent... discourse put into my mind the concept of "power fantasy", and how people relate to it in different ways. Of course, I'm talking about Hector :P

Is Hector, in the games, a power fantasy? I think the answer is "yes but actually no but actually yes it's complicated".

Let's be honest, first: Hector is a product of his time. He is, in many aspects, Castlevania's response to the wave of edginess that was en vogue in the mid-2000s - I don't compare CoD to ShTH for no reason lol. Hector was always meant to be an anti-hero contrasting the pure heroes the games always starred before him:

—Why did you choose the theme of "revenge" for this game? Iga: Up to now, the Belmonts have been seen as the good guys. I thought it'd be nice to do something other than a moralistic "good triumps over evil" theme sometime. After all, Castlevania has always had an excellent world for telling a "dark hero" story. Alucard would be one such character… though even he is fighting for a just cause: "I've got to stop my Father!" So he's still kind of a good guy. This time, though, I wanted the motivation itself to be impure. So this theme is what I came up with, and then I thought it would be even more interesting if each side was out for revenge on the other.

Hector has "impure" motivations. His quest is completely selfish: while all the other protagonists want to face Dracula (or others in his place) because it's the right thing to do, Hector is just in to kill the man who ruined his life. In fact, he really couldn't care less about the Curse, and multiple times in the game he asks why can't Trevor just deal with the issues he doesn't want to deal with lol. This is in line with other characters of the same caliber, such as Shadow sneering at a city being invaded by aliens until there is something in for him, or Guts who declares that he's willing to let a whole town fall prey to demons, as long as Casca is safe. However, this is not a detriment to Hector's character like it would be nowadays, as he's also very much mean to be "cool": while obviously every protagonist has his cool factor, even going back to Simon in the first games who defeated Dracula all by himself and then had to heroically struggle with the Curse, Hector is cool in that, well, deliciously over-the-top way that was all the rage back then. He can ride wyverns as he slashes them, he can go toe to toe with Trevor himself to the point that even he is impressed, he can forge a gun and an electric guitar, cutscenes show him punching a stone devil with his bare first, he gloats in Dracula's face that he can nullify his Curse... yeah, he's a gigachad lol. The flaws are only meant to make him cooler and not "boring", as paragon heroes were seen at the time.

I, personally, never cared about this part. I'm not the target audience for this kind of power fantasy. Sure, I like that Hector is over-the-top cool and I will always joke about his most outlandish feats, but I'm not so keen on reducing him to those alone. I couldn't even explain why avenging your dead lover counts as part of a power fantasy lol.

This is why I latched on so much on the first half of his story, the one where Hector deals with Dracula, and why I insist that Hector is much more than his admittedly cliché archetype of "angry man on a revenge quest".

Calling Hector "stoic" is not even knowing the meaning of the word. Calling pretty much any CV protagonist "stoic" is factually wrong, as even the more serious ones like Alucard and Shanoa have other depths to them (Alucard is still grieving for his mother and we see it in a nightmare, Shanoa was deliberately made stoic and she subtly longs to feel again), but Hector doesn't even begin to fit the definition of "One who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, or pain". The whole point of CoD is that Hector was left so emotionally vulnerable by his grief that both Isaac and Zead used him as a puppet. Anger is the complete antithesis of stoicism. "well anger is still a toxically masculine emotion" - memes aside, Hector shows other emotions too, most notably around Julia, the only person with which we see how actually gentle and polite he is when he doesn't have Dracula's influence scrambling his brain. By the way, you cannot ignore the effects of the Curse on both Hector and Isaac when you analyze them, especially the former:

It can't be plainer than this.

And it doesn't come out of nowhere, because not only Julia herself tries to warn Hector that Devil Forgemasters are susceptible to the Curse, he acts vulnerable around her. He apologizes for his unjust outbursts, sympathizes with her plight, is visibly affected by her grief when Isaac dies... sure, it might be all because he's lowkey crushing on her, if you want to see it that way (and I do have my words over the plot point of Julia looking like Rosaly: I would have preferred if the game had more time to show that Hector grew to see Julia as her own person beyond her appearance), but the point is that this behavior highly contrasts with how angry and aggressive he is to everyone else, which the reveal of the Curse recontextualizes.

Also, just saying, while anger can be toxic, the point of these storylines is usually precisely that revenge is bad. Unchecked anger is bad for you, and you shouldn't let yourself fall down that spiral, lest you lose yourself. Isaac got consumed by his own hatred and died as a tool; Hector realized in time that he should snap out of it and survives, also because he was nice to Julia and so she grew to care about him and saved him when he tried to kill himself <- a reaction that is very unmasculine, might I add, as toxic masculinity dictates that men should make other people pay for their pain. bro. bro this is the complete antithesis of "toxic masculinity". Again, this is really not knowing the meaning of the word.

I don't even need to pull examples from the manga, but just for completion's sake:

iunno about you chief, but someone who bursts into tears just because wifey told him that she's happy he was born isn't exactly the portrayal of toxic masculinity to me.

Which makes me segue into the next point!

Hector and Isaac are victims of abuse, and this is another very important angle to understand them. And I'm not just talking about their childhoods, of which we only get hints, although of course it does matter that the two experienced so much hatred and rejection in their youth that Dracula was the better option for them.

We don't see the details, but Dracula affected both of them deeply. He put them in a competitive dynamic, favoring Hector over Isaac: Isaac grew bitter with resentment, which made him double down on his loyalty to Dracula, while Hector only got the appreciation he craved at the price of his very humanity and morals, which weighed on him. The point of this favoritism is not really the core of their rivalry in game, as that one was caused by Hector's betrayal, but it gives a different dimension to the character. It would have been easy to have the mistreated guy the one who decided to turn his back to Dracula, but no, it was the golden child. Isaac was so entrenched in this dynamic that he never broke free, choosing instead to blame Hector and do everything in his power to prove himself to an uncaring Lord, including (in the manga) killing his own underlings so that he would be free to face Hector by himself. From PtR:

"My own body is proof of Your expectations for him" is such a hard-hitting line. Isaac fears that he didn't even disappoint his Lord, because his Lord didn't have expectations for him in the first place. It's Hector the one he's so proud of.

And Hector hates it. By all means, he should be happy to have a home, to be respected and appreciated and free to use his powers. And he used to be!

"Lord Dracula... You once accepted and needed my powers. There was a time when such a thing gave me joy..."

Hector was grateful for his Lord, but he couldn't live anymore in the safety of the castle, if the price was committing indiscriminate murder for the sake of a senseless revenge, going against his morals and being used as a weapon. Hector had to make a choice: keep living under Lord Dracula's protection, but losing his humanity piece by piece, or breaking free and facing the world that hated him, but as a free man?

Hector chose freedom over conditional safety and love. He was ready to die, as long as he died a free man. He put himself first, he turned his back against people who did not truly appreciate him, and despite the mess he left behind it was the right decision. And that's the power fantasy I adore, and that is what makes him a strong character in my opinion. It's the embodiment of achieving self-confidence, the healthy selfishness, the affirmation of the self when everyone else around you only sees you as an object or a prize, the reassurance that even if you fall, you can always get up and try again and become a person you can be proud of.

And Hector, after breaking free, very much acts like a victim of abuse. I spent countless words over how he displays the belief that he needs to do something to earn the right to be loved by Rosaly, unaccepting of the fact that she simply does because, well, he likes him and sees the good in him, and that's it. I wrote a whole analysis on how this belief stems from a sad naiveté on how the world works, because Hector is naive underneath the aloof exterior, and it's not something to make fun of him for, but a tragic result of living under Dracula for so long. I'll also point again to him having breakdowns because he hates himself and sees himself as inherently unlovable.

I could also spend all the words about the parallels about how Hector loves Dracula and how he loves Rosaly:

In both cases, he latches onto the only person who has showed him a modicum of kindness. He wants to give his life for them. The difference being, of course, that Dracula only appreciates Hector for what he does (and I could also go into a whole tangent on how Hector was personally raised by Dracula to be his knight and he has a piece of his essence inside him which parallels how abusive parents see their children as an extension of themselves), while Rosaly for who he is. With Dracula, Hector understands that all the shallow care in the world doesn't matter if he isn't also respected as a person: he still cares about him, in some fashion, but not the point of clinging.

And if Hector is ready to lay down his life for Rosaly because she finally showed him what real love looks like, is it any wonder that seeing her die would spark such a fury in him that it makes him prey to the Curse and to being once again twisted into a tool?

The power fantasy comes from the part where Hector breaks free of the abuse and manipulation - twice over. But he is also relatable, with all of his flaws, weaknesses, and mistakes he makes. The whole point of Hector's journey in the first half of his story is that he feels the need to atone for his sins, and the consequences of his actions all catch up to him in the worst of ways. Ignoring this to reduce Hector to an edgelord who only spends his life angry and then hooks up with a Rosaly replacement (which incidentally also ignores Julia's personality and agency and I might even call as misogynist as the plot point itself) is a huge disservice to the thought and care put into him to make him stand out from his own archetype.

Power fantasies are not inherently bad. Depending on the fantasy, they can be inspirational. Hector is inspirational to me, if that wasn't clear, I see part of me in his circumstances and I admire his arc: it tells you, "you can break free too, you have the strength to do so, and you will find people who will love you without reason". And I just generally speaking find him a very well written character despite stemming from a rather outdated context, because all the details come together to make him fleshed out and tridimensional.

[finelinens1994]

do you have any articule recomendation about social media?

i'm not sure what kind of topic you want, but i assume you mean something similar to what i've been talking about. so here are some good ones! keep in mind that you can also click "cited by other articles" within these links to see similar studies, or you can also use google scholar to search for things you're interested in. have fun :)

Moral grandstanding in public discourse: Status-seeking motives as a potential explanatory mechanism in predicting conflict. "… one becomes desensitized to public expressions of moral outrage and is unable to muster outrage when it is warranted, due to the overuse of outrage and similar emotions to communicate one’s moral superiority."

A Tempest in a Teacup? Analyzing Firestorms on Twitter. "Twitter users may share outgroup-directed negative content more because they wish to signal other group members of their group membership and because they believe that ingroup members will relish reading it [...] The use of negative in intergroup context may be hedonically pleasing due to the support that users may get from other group members."

Examining the role of moral, emotional, behavioural, and personality factors in predicting online shaming. "... participants with a stronger desire to appear morally credible to others and a propensity to convince themselves that ethical standards do not apply to them due to apparent extenuating factors were more likely to engage in online shaming and believe those who are shamed are deserving of this treatment."

bonus essay: Fuck Moral Art by Gretchen Felker-Martin. "... these sentiments have helped to congeal a prevalent culture of moralistic censure, one with no real impact on the vast edifice of corporate art but which can devastate the careers and lives of independent artists in the blink of an eye."

bonus essay: Why Defend Freedom of Icky Speech? by Neil Gaiman. "If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible."

[peterpumpkinhead]

about sand's character development

there's been a lot of discourse around sand's apparent paralysis while facing boeing, his ex. some people argue it is contradictory, some people argue it makes perfect sense.

it actually makes sense, but it could've been better constructed.

so here's the thing - sand's lingering feelings for boeing and the trauma of that break-up have been hinted at a few times, his resentment towards top being the loudest hint. the man was ready to THROW HANDS at top at any moment.

most importantly - to everyone convinced that sand is the moral compass of the show... he certainly is, probably, the least worse of them all, I guess, but this is a working class man struggling who still thought it was worth BREAKING HIS PHONE in order to trick his friend, so he could steal and spread an intimate recording made without consent of the man who supposedly "stole" his ex. doesn't that ring a revenge p0rn bell, my people? (I'm walking on eggshells approaching this topic, because I know it is sensitive). (also this isn't a moralistic dig at the character - all the characters on ofts are very flawed and I highly appreciate this)

also, the whole "stealing" a person is such a weird statement. his ex LEFT him for someone else, but the wording sand uses puts the brunt of the responsibility on top, not on boeing.

so sand's residual feelings for boeing are justified, I just think they we're too spread out and not reiterated enough in the series. sand also went through the ringer while pursuing ray, so the idea that ray is somehow so elevated in comparison to boeing is an impression that we get only because we've witnessed ray and sand's relationship, while sand and boeing's past has been rarely addressed - if it had been more present, as a true phantom of a relationship haunting sand more consistently, we would've understood sand's reaction immediately.

this is yet another evidence of the show's pacing issues and incomplete writing.

again, I must say, this is a show made by very competent artists. I believe the fast pace of production, low budget and small crew/cast/writing staff is what truly hinders its potential. props to the writers, directors, crew and cast for making a good show with such limited resources.

[lemonhemlock]

I don't know if I'm the only one getting tired of debating HOTD meta because so much of it is just running in circles. The topics are very universal in a way because they revolve around gender and a lot of the fandom that debates actively is female, but the characters are so...badly written and shoved together into this cash grab of a show, it's like they don't deserve to be debated and argued over. Think about it, in season 2 there are only 8 episodes and so many of them will just die and one of the main players will be in a coma. The series is developing like a badly written shonen anime and we're all here trying to make sense of this crap. Plus the HOTD is known as the "incest fandom known for really bad takes" which gets embarrassing to associate with sometimes.

I do think that, after writing so many meta posts myself, there's really very little I can further add to the conversation at this point. The vast majority of takes have already been debated and there definitely is a lot of recycling going around.

I don't know how the second season is going to be in terms of quality, though, and it feels premature to issue judgment on something I haven't even seen, not to mention methodologically unsound. Perhaps it will bring new topics of conversation that will revitalise discourse.

As for the last part, ASOIAF on the whole as a media text is known as the "incest show/books", so it's a given starting point that has to be accepted by anyone who wants to engage. It's not a perception that's going to change any time soon, but I don't think the general public is as pressed about that as teenage Twitter moralists would like to suggest, so the embarrassment factor is debatable.

[morkitten]

I used to advocate against these kinds of media because I believed it had a negative influence on people, that it would banalize or inspire people to do these things when these taboo subjects were depicted in an eroticizing way. And moralistic feelings were also a part of it, too, I wanted to be a good person and got swept away in it. Now I think the answer is a tad more complicated and I don't have all the answers (should all subjects be depicted in any possible way in mass media? *probably* not? but I don't know where the line is), but when it comes to things being made by a single person, small personal productions like that, I think everyone is better off just ignoring or blocking if it bothers you, this impulse to censor others is really bad. Feelings don't go away like that, people don't stop existing, you just push them towards ostracization and hiding themselves, and, well, sometimes *they do stop existing* because of that. And I don't think that's a moral thing to do not only because some of these people are working through personal traumas in their art, or because mob mentality swiftly erases nuance and will censor meaningful art thinking that it is advocating this or that when it isn't, but because these people are *human beings* for God's sake, and they deserve the minimum amount of respect and peace and *for their lives to not be taken away via suicide*. You may think that I'm being fatalistic here, but the line between that happening and not is a lot thinner than you think. Of course most people aren't going to do that from being harrassed and ostracized online, but you don't know how much of it is required to push any given person, speaking as someone who saw that happen to a person I knew. If you believe what they're doing is bad for themselves and others, you either consume what they did in their entirety, try to understand them as a person, and then try to reach out to them in an effort to help them realize themselves in a healthier way, which I don't think the vast majority of people are equipped to do or even understand what that looks like (hint: it's not via suppression), or you *shut the fuck up and block them*.

Another (small) thing that made me realize that I didn't want to be a part of it is realizing how many champions of this discourse didn't actually care about the existence of art like that having a negative impact on real people, but how what they actually cared about were the fictional characters themselves being treated badly, like OP described. SO MUCH of the discourse was fandom bullshit barely disguised with a social justice tarp on top, and fuck off if you are one of these people who try to control a favorite fictional character *that you didn't even create* and then lie saying that this isn't what you're doing.

I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:

Fictional characters are objects.

They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.

[septembersghost]

if you’re constantly vilifying dean for the moc, while excusing everything everyone else ever did, you have no rights

[max1461]

I feel like it's always got me searching for a hidden angle, you know. Like whenever there's a post about some cool thing, I'm always like "what is this user's discourse orientation? What are they trying to angle at with this?". Maybe this is just me but I feel like it's kind of a justified response to the vibe here. I don't know. Like things can't just be what they are at face value, they always have to exist as part of a Take ecosystem, you know?

Like someone will post about a strange animal. And in the past I would have been like "woah, cool animal!" and that would be that, it would be a strictly positive interaction. But now I'm like... is this... vaguing at some scientific theory the poster dislikes with a strangely moralistic fervor? Is it some kind of thing about human society, you know, "oh look, this animal does blah blah blah which is a metaphor for people". Is it like, a "nature is so fucked up, this is why we should incinerate the biosphere" kind of thing? This may seem like a paranoid way to interpret these things, but it's like. I'm not saying any of these are the most likely interpretation of a post about a cool animal, I'm just saying that the discourse here means that I have to assign them, like, 5% probability as interpretations, and having to do this is tiring. It incurs a cognitive cost, do you see?

Or it could even be some more subtle normative/didactic bent to a post, like "oh, you probably intuitively thought most animals vertebrates, but guess what, they're beetles!". Like I don't know, it just always feels like tumblr users are angling at something, like they're trying to surreptitiously educate or "educate" you, like a fucking edutainment game. You know what I mean? Does anyone else feel this? Idk.

I'm guilty of it too sometimes. It's just the culture here. Actually it's probably not that big a deal in isolation but I just feel like it's so constant that it's tiring, you know?

Idk. I think maybe the actual cognitive process of value judgement or of engaging with the normative just incurs an unusually high tax on me. And I keep coming back because, look: sometimes things that take effort are rewarding, especially when you're doing them intentionally. When I'm in the right mood I really do genuinely enjoy arguing on the internet. I find it fun! I want to have a place I can go to do that. And many people here (especially my mutuals <3) are really fucking fantastic arguers on the internet! I find that kind of thing hugely rewarding.

What I don't like is what feels like the constant passive inundation with like, normative or didactic content here, you know, even when I'm not looking for it. Like if someone starts their post with "I believe the problem with Marxo-Platonists is..." I can just be like "oh, yes, I want to partake in this argument" or "nah, I'll save it for later". But every fucking post about some fucking fish or some fucking ancient Sumerian tablet or some fucking TV show has to be, like, parsed while leaving open the possibility of a discourse interpretation, you know? Or even when it doesn't have one, I have to think before I reblog the post like "oh, wait, will this piss off user fish-abolitionist who follows me and believes all fish must be destroyed?" And it's tiring! I don't know.

Does that make any sense? I just, this is not a place where people are chill about things. People are not chill here there is no chill. Ya know?

I've said this before, but I feel like spending time on tumblr has been good for me intellectually but in some ways bad for my mental health. Like I've learned a lot by talking to the people here, and a lot of my political and philosophical views have become much more refined through the arguments I've had on here. And there are ways that tumblr has been good for my mental health, namely that for a roughly three year period it was the only thing providing me with any social contact, which was vital. And there are also people here who I can reach out to for various things, which is great. But I also feel that since coming here I've kind of gotten more anxious about things I never used to be anxious about, and not in any kind of useful way, just as a product of being surrounded by other people who are anxious about them. Like this is an environment where there's a lot of moral anxiety, you know, people are really concerned right and wrong. And I mean it's good to be concerned about these things to some extent, but I think the culture here kind of overdoes it, I don't know. I feel like the product of spending a lot of time in that culture is that I've gotten a little bit more ethical and a lot more anxious. If that makes sense.

Well anyway.

I make this post periodically cause I'm kind of dealing with this lately. Trying to parse it.

[vulcan-moon]

hey i just wanna say i feel you. dont publish this please if its too much. i just wanna say I'm also just trying to stay alive out here as a adult survivor of abuse myself, and fandom is some of the few escapes in my life, but the pro vs anti stuff makes fandom spaces exhausting and the discourse in and of itself can even be triggering. i hope you stay safe and that people dont start bothering you over this. sending you good vibes.

i'll get personal real quick, but i get you. i'm a csa and incest survivor, it IS exhausting, especially when you see yourself being talked about like part of some nebulous group of hypothetical people that are harmed/helped by antis/proshipping. rather than being seen as an actual real individual, youre viewed in the Discourse as someone who needs decisions making on their behalf rather than yknow... a human being who knows themself.

i'll even admit, i have personally engaged with Problematic TM content, both as a way to work through my trauma and take control of it, and as a way to basically self harm through triggering myself. i hate that this is a topic that is so deeply moralistic and divided, and that it is so widely treated like it can be viewed through a lense of good vs bad. i wish people could learn to just care less i guess? to accept the grey space inbetween and understand that humans can't be condensed down into "this is good, this is bad". life is too short to give a shit, especially about shipping drama of all fucking things. just block and move on, enjoy fandom for the escapism it's supposed to provide.

but yeah, i hope you stay safe too, anon! and dw, people have been nice so far, i think tumblr is mostly chill abt this kind of thing anyway (and even if people were mean, i'd just turn anon off for a bit lol)

[licncourt]

Your louis stan nitpicks are not inconsequential and deserve to be given it's due importance. It's not hate, just pointing out the obvious. Out of everyone, I at least, want to know your takes on the differences between show louis and book louis, as meta discourse. And I'm glad there are still movie fans out there, I adore the movie, and I adore the series. <3

Thank you for being interested in my thoughts!! I sat on this ask for a while because I wanted to see at least a majority of the episodes before giving my opinions on characterization, but I think I've seen enough now to talk a bit. For now, I'm going to hit the few main things I noticed as a Louis enjoyer first and a person second but also a fan of the show.

-

While I think it makes sense that this version of Louis has more externalized anger than the book version and is more keen on killing people who "deserve it" (like that racist asshole from ep 2), I don't like that the idea of feeding on evildoers being attributed to Louis. The crux of Louis' morality (as hypocritical as it is) and therefore his character is his approach to killing. He thinks vampires killing humans to sustain themselves wrong no matter the circumstances (once again, really missing the prostitute scene in the show) and feeds at random to keep things "fair". He drinks from animals right from the beginning and never lets Lestat tell him a damn thing.

Attributing Lestat’s supposed principles about only killing evildoers and having Louis go along with the human victims kind of waters down the hypocrisy that defines Louis. He's a black and white moralist who talks about ethics and fairness while living in luxury off the backs of the people he exploits. Louis is meant to have horse blinders on. He balks at vampirism from day one with this righteous, unwavering fury and not an ounce of concession or self-awareness.

Louis making exceptions for racists is one thing, but he's doing that AND pitching the idea of feeding on evildoers AND going along with the human victims for literal years before turning to rats. I want to see his Louis Bullshit in action!! And that means he should have more convictions and worse justification for them.

I get why the writers, in terms of racial optics, may have changed Claudia’s turning from Lestat’s babytrap moment to him granting Louis' request, but reasoning aside.....I don't like the change at all. Firstly, the Claudia babytrap is a HUGE moment for Lestat as a character that I miss, but that's not what we're talking about here.

Honestly, I just don't buy Louis requesting that anyone, let alone a child, be made a vampire. Yes, he feels guilty for her injuries, but in the book he's even MORE directly responsible for her near-death state (having fed on her) and doesn't even consider asking for her to be turned. He tries to physically stop Lestat from doing it in spite of his guilt.

The creation of a vampire is the most repellent act anyone can commit in Louis' mind. He has two fledglings in the books: one he created as an act of devotion for Claudia and he says that it destroyed his soul and his humanity to do it, even for her. The second was made under the influence of magical compulsion and that was a significant factor in his suicide attempt. He risked Lestat hating him and ruining his life rather than grant his request to be turned again while stuck in a mortal body. I just can't imagine Louis asking for this and the show certainly didn't sell me on the change.

As strange as this sounds, I wish he was...worse? Yet again, I understand why they may not have done that, but I think it's a detriment to his complexity. Although it's not nearly as egregious, I feel like the show is making the same mistake as the movie in portraying Louis to be more ethical and moral than Lestat.

Like I said before, Louis' character hinges on the idea that he wants to be a good person, but he's not. He's all talk and no action, so ignorant that his hypocrisy is invisible to him. He's so torn up about his sexuality that he doesn't have a spare thought for the fact that he owns slaves. In the book, he admits that his objections to killing initially were largely aesthetic. He refuses to kill the prostitute Lestat was torturing because winning the philosophical argument meant more to him than her suffering. Louis doesn't have the moral high ground.

Part of what makes him so interesting is that he's so hopelessly terrible even though he thinks he's in some eternal struggle to be good. He's a martyr more than he's a good person, and I think it's somewhat reductive to portray him as flawed but ultimately a good guy.

Book Louis fought with Paul and laughed in his face in the last moments before his death. He had no sense of irony when it came to his Kantian ethics as a slave owner. He loved Claudia with his entire soul but still hurt her deeply with his selfishness. He protested the torture of the prostitute but pushed her away in disgust when she clung to him for help. He has many sweet and sympathetic traits, but you should never lose sight of his brand of awfulness, even if it's more subtle than Lestat’s.

I would love to see AMC Louis defensive about his ownership of the brothel, more concerned about what it means for his soul than about the exploitation of the women who work there. I wanted to see him fight with Lestat while the tenor slowly choked to death on his own blood. I wanted to see Claudia rankling as he treated her like an inanimate object and a doll for his own comfort. I wanted to see him committing acts of mundane evil, not just kill racists in a particularly gruesome way and snap at his family.

-

Basically I wish they would hit harder with his Louis brand of nonsense and his particular kind of self-pitying, histrionic martyrdom. AMC Louis is a little too upstanding sometimes, I need him to be a little more evil and a little more pathetic about it. The other changes make sense in context, I just need that Louis morality hellscape, man.

Bonus: a meta post I made talking about Louis' moral compass , one I contributed to on the same topic, and how some of that ties into his key themes of hunger and control

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

for the writer asks!

🌻💌💫

🌻what makes you want to give up on writing? what makes you keep going?

i don't know if anything could actually make me give up on writing. i love it too much. the thing that makes me keep going is the writing itself. like, legitimately, when i feel myself getting to stressed and overwhelmed at like, life and my Actual Professional Job and shit, I take an afternoon off to write and it's legitimately like a pressure valve is released. It makes me happy in a way that nothing else really does, so I don't think I could ever give it up.

that being said, at risk of sounding like an old geezer shaking their first at kids on their lawn, i've seen a kind of devaluation of writing and literature recently that makes me a bit discouraged at times.

mandatory disclaimer: i do think that people have always been people and that we've been doing shit just like what i'm complaining about forever, it's just that the internet makes it easier to see, so i don't think anything is like, a product of today. people do the same things they've always done. I also do want to say that due to the nature of the ask that this is all way too broad of a criticism and that an actual discussion of literary criticism and writing today would require way more detail and nuance.

that being said, i think that a lot of current trends in fandom that i see just sort of devalues writing, literature, and literary criticism as an enterprise.

there's this weirdly puritanical insistence of analyzing all written work in a primarily moralistic framework, which i think is often just toxic to actual meaningful literary analysis. and we're back to book banning now and defunding public libraries, so it's really going to shit. there's a big devaluation of older literature nowadays, and reading comprehension of a lot of the books being critiqued in those respects is at times, nonexistent.

there's a lot of mob mentality. i've watched a lot of really amazing writers get attacked or driven off entirely based on some pretty baseless critiques of their writing--and like. this is something that I personally find to be one of the most disheartening things? I've seen multiple amazing queer artists get harassed because they didn't like, submit their Queer Card for the perusal of grown adults on the internet before writing the very kinds of stories those people want. and I think that it becomes very worrisome when there's a lot of people who have decided to judge written work not by it's actual content but rather by like, demanding the intimate personal details of the artist that no one is entitled to.

and i think that there's just a real devaluation of just writing as an art in general? I've seen a lot of analyses of fictional works that are like "the story is bad because the writer didn't do X." And I'm reading it like "huh. yeah you just wanted it to be a different story entirely. like, that's not a problem with the original story, it's just that you'd rather be reading a different story to begin with." Everyone's out here trying to be an amateur english professor--and like, I want to be clear, there's nothing wrong with amateur literary analysis. It's fun. I do amateur literary analysis. But a lot of what I see keeps getting tangled up in this weird drive to frame everything in primarily moralistic terms, and I think it's weird that the majority of fandom analyses or breakdown that I see tend to be discourse about whether some writing decision was Morally Right or Wrong. And that's not to say it's all the analysis that I see online--it's just common. Like, I'm still seeing the ace jon discourse on my dash in this the year of our lord 2023 and it's kind of weird to me that a lot of media appreciation on the internet is just us beating each over the head with rocks so we can claim the high ground. Dont get me wrong--sometimes there is a moral issue to be discussed, I just don't think it's nearly as often as a lot of fandom seems to think it is.

All of these things i'm referencing are very vague and non-specific, and none of them can be effective critiques without a more nuanced discussion, so I'm not certain I said anything of tangible merit in the past five paragraphs. and I do want to say that there's a parallel conversation about the very necessary role that critical analysis and examination for biases and harmful stereotypes, including in a moral framework, plays in our engagement with literature--it's just not one that really answers this question, so i won't subject you to it.

none of this really discourages me from writing so much as discourage me from being a writer. Like--I only dump my fan fiction on this tumblr, but I've got purely original works too. I've loved writing for almost a decade now, and I always dreamed of doing it professionally. but i also really love law and am fulfilled by it, and sometimes i wonder if i want to go through the potential hassle of publishing or if i just want to keep my stories for myself. I mean, i probably would still if i ever get that opportunity, but i also probably would chuck my phone into the sea if i ever made anything moderately popular

💌share something with us about an up-and-coming work (WIP) that has you excited!

there's a time loop TMA AU that I'm kind of looking to publish once I clear a few stories off my docket. It's much shorter and more artsy than nhthcth, which is part of why i'm considering writing and releasing it, because nhthcth is a fucking BEAST of a story and while kintsugi itself is much shorter, the series is Many Parts, so that's also gonna be around for a while.

i'm excited for it because it hits that kind of perfect balance of being very sad and wistful while still getting a decently happy ending. like, you get all those fun angsty emotions and there's still loss but it's still happy in the end.

💫what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback?

i answered that here and usually i try to come up with a different answer when i get duplicates but i feel like the nature of having a favorite means I can only have one

[eddington-suggestions]

Hi. I dunno know how to start this since your blog has been inactive for years, and I'm really hoping you get this. I just wanna say thanks for all the time and effort you invested here. I had fun reading it. I want you to know, I used your blog, sloansuggestions (also you?) and damarsuggestions for a coursework piece on contemporary literature forms, and you guys got me an A. So, thanks. You guys told a really great story spontaneously without tons of explicit narrative or wish fulfilment. You told a quriky humourous story and still made poignant points about war and friendship. Thanks for being not like the other fanfic writers, I guess.

Hi there, friend,

Thanks so much for your letter. I can assure you that despite my absence (likely due to some kind of temporal fluctuations caused by proximity to the wormhole) I have not yet forgotten the good ol' days I spent with my dearest friends @damar-suggestion and @sloan-suggestion . So, it's fair to say you can always reach me here, should you ever feel like a little reminiscence. I still feel plenty of fond nostalgia towards my time spent on these channels, after all.

It gives me great pleasure in knowing that our antics on subspace could keep you and others like yourself, entertained. Believe me when I say, it was a joy for us as well; all those jokes, all those heists, and all those moralistic arguments I had with my former crewmates made every moment truly worthwhile. I wouldn't call a single moment wasted, especially if there were others who we could lighten the days of or offer a moments distraction for. After all, it's sometimes the small things that bring us the biggest smiles.

Whilst I'd like to take credit for the opinions and discourse from @sloan-suggestion (especially as you've complimented them highly too) I can't; the channel @sloan-suggestion is in fact run by my dear friend Wendell Greer, and they are truly their own man and not merely an alias used by myself as a cover. This is also true of my dear friend Corat Damar, who (as you correctly guessed) is the owner of the channel @damar-suggestion .

I guess I may be as bold to speak for the three of us when I say, that we're all deeply flattered and take it as astoundingly high praise that you would wish to feature our tomfoolery in your important coursework. That you were able to get an A grade is a testament to your own great skills, but I am grateful that I could make such a meaningful contribution.

The subspace posts we made were true to the lives of us individuals, that given a second chance and opportunity to exonerate ourselves, had chosen to make. I wanted to tell my story, not as the naysayers would have me painted, but in my own words, as to reflect my own thoughts and feelings. Instead of those perceived by the bias of others, who quickly read into my actions what they wish to see without allowing for an opinion in opposition to their own. I am sure that is the truth for all of us. But, truly, if there was any wish fulfilment involved, it was the wish to be heard with equity. Of course, it wasn't entirely about the heavier topics, or else we'd have struggled to entertain anyone. And, I can't stress enough, we had plenty of fun in our journey together too. Sometimes, you find that truer words are spoken in jest than with intent. I guess that was the way with all of us.

Well, would you look at me rambling on. This was supposed to be a little nice acknowledgement of your kind letter, but I suppose I got a little carried away. Truly, thank you for your letter. It really made my day to here that our bantering and storytelling, however frivolous, was genuinely worthwhile. I speak from the heart when I say, there is none more touching a sentiment. And if there's ever anymore I can do to help, don't be a stranger. Drop me a line here on subspace.

All the best, your pal,

Michael Eddington

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. You made a post a couple of days ago about how queer historical fiction doesnt need to be defined only by homophobia. Can you expand on that a bit maybe? Because it seems interesting and important, but I'm a little confused as to whether that is responsible to the past and showing how things have changed over time. Anyway this probably isn't very clear, but I hope its not insulting. Have a good day :)

Hiya. I assume you're referring to this post, yes? I think the main parameters of my argument were set out pretty clearly there, but sure, I'm happy to expand on it. Because I'm a little curious as to why you think that writing a queer narrative (especially a queer fictional narrative) that doesn't make much reference to or even incorporate explicit homophobia is (implicitly) not being "responsible to the past." I've certainly made several posts on this topic before, but as ever, my thoughts and research materials change over time. So, okay.

(Note: I am a professional historian with a PhD, a book contract for an academic monograph on medieval/early modern queer history, and soon-to-be-several peer-reviewed publications on medieval queer history. In other words, I'm not just talking out of my ass here.)

As I noted in that post, first of all, the growing emphasis on "accuracy" in historical fiction and historically based media is... a mixed bag. Not least because it only seems to be applied in the Game of Thrones fashion, where the only "accurate" history is that which is misogynistic, bloody, filthy, rampantly intolerant of competing beliefs, and has no room for women, people of color, sexual minorities, or anyone else who has become subject to hot-button social discourse today. (I wrote a critical post awhile ago about the Netflix show Cursed, ripping into it for even trying to pretend that a show based on the Arthurian legends was "historically accurate" and for doing so in the most simplistic and reductive way possible.) This says far more about our own ideas of the past, rather than what it was actually like, but oh boy will you get pushback if you try to question that basic premise. As other people have noted, you can mix up the archaeological/social/linguistic/cultural/material stuff all you like, but the instant you challenge the ingrained social ideas about The Bad Medieval Era, cue the screaming.

I've been a longtime ASOIAF fan, but I do genuinely deplore the effect that it (and the show, which was by far the worst offender) has had on popular culture and widespread perceptions of medieval history. When it comes to queer history specifically, we actually do not know that much, either positive or negative, about how ordinary medieval people regarded these individuals, proto-communities, and practices. Where we do have evidence that isn't just clerical moralists fulminating against sodomy (and trying to extrapolate a society-wide attitude toward homosexuality from those sources is exactly like reading extreme right-wing anti-gay preachers today and basing your conclusions about queer life in 2021 only on those), it is genuinely mixed and contradictory. See this discussion post I likewise wrote a while ago. Queerness, queer behavior, queer-behaving individuals have always existed in history, and labeling them "queer" is only an analytical conceit that represents their strangeness to us here in the 21st century, when these categories of exclusion and difference have been stringently constructed and applied, in a way that is very far from what supposedly "always" existed in the past.

Basically, we need to get rid of the idea that there was only one empirical and factual past, and that historians are "rewriting" or "changing" or "misrepresenting" it when they produce narratives that challenge hegemonic perspectives. This is why producing good historical analysis is a skill that takes genuine training (and why it's so undervalued in a late-capitalist society that would prefer you did anything but reflect on the past). As I also said in the post to which you refer, "homophobia" as a structural conceit can't exist prior to its invention as an analytical term, if we're treating queerness as some kind of modern aberration that can't be reliably talked about until "homosexual" gained currency in the late 19th century. If there's no pre-19th century "homosexuality," then ipso facto, there can be no pre-19th-century "homophobia" either. Which one is it? Spoiler alert: there are still both things, because people are people, but just as the behavior itself is complicated in the premodern past, so too is the reaction to it, and it is certainly not automatic rejection at all times.

Hence when it comes to fiction, queer authors have no responsibility (and in my case, certainly no desire) to uncritically replicate (demonstrably false!) narratives insisting that we were always miserable, oppressed, ostracised, murdered, or simply forgotten about in the premodern world. Queer characters, especially historical queer characters, do not have to constantly function as a political mouthpiece for us to claim that things are so much better today (true in some cases, not at all in the others) and that modernity "automatically" evolved to a more "enlightened" stance (definitely not true). As we have seen with the recent resurgence of fascism, authoritarianism, nationalism, and xenophobia around the world, along with the desperate battle by the right wing to re-litigate abortion, gay rights, etc., social attitudes do not form in a vacuum and do not just automatically become more progressive. They move backward, forward, and side to side, depending on the needs of the societies that produce them, and periods of instability, violence, sickness, and poverty lead to more regressive and hardline attitudes, as people act out of fear and insularity. It is a bad human habit that we have not been able to break over thousands of years, but "[social] things in the past were Bad but now have become Good" just... isn't true.

After all, nobody feels the need to constantly add subtextual disclaimers or "don't worry, I personally don't support this attitude/action" implied authorial notes in modern romances, despite the cornucopia of social problems we have today, and despite the complicated attitude of the modern world toward LGBTQ people. If an author's only reason for including "period typical homophobia" (and as we've discussed, there's no such thing before the 19th century) is that they think it should be there, that is an attitude that needs to be challenged and examined more closely. We are not obliged to only produce works that represent a downtrodden past, even if the end message is triumphal. It's the same way we got so tired of rape scenes being used to make a female character "stronger." Just because those things existed (and do exist!), doesn't mean you have to submit every single character to those humiliations in some twisted name of accuracy.

Yes, as I have always said, prejudices have existed throughout history, sometimes violently so. But that is not the whole story, and writing things that center only on the imagined or perceived oppression is not, at this point, accurate OR helpful. Once again, I note that this is specifically talking about fiction. If real-life queer people are writing about their own experiences, which are oftentimes complex, that's not a question of "representation," it's a question of factual memoir and personal history. You can't attack someone for being "problematic" when they are writing about their own lived experience, which is something a younger generation of queer people doesn't really seem to get. They also often don't realise how drastically things have changed even in my own lifetime, per the tags on my reblog about Brokeback Mountain, and especially in media/TV.

However, if you are writing fiction about queer people, especially pre-20th century queer people, and you feel like you have to make them miserable just to be "responsible to the past," I would kindly suggest that is not actually true at all, and feeds into a dangerous narrative that suggests everything "back then" was bad and now it's fine. There are more stories to tell than just suffering, queer characters do not have to exist solely as a corollary for (inaccurate) political/social commentary on the premodern past, and they can and should be depicted as living their lives relatively how they wanted to, despite the expected difficulties and roadblocks. That is just as accurate, if sometimes not more so, than "they suffered, the end," and it's something that we all need to be more willing to embrace.

[him-e]

Hi, I sent the original ask about a Celibate Rey ending, I don't know what discourse came out of it, I didn't see it, but I wanted to clear the air. I didn't mean to come off dismissive of female romance/sexuality or of your ship in my ask. I understand it can be exhausting to defend your perspective over and over to people who don't want to listen, so I totally get if you thought I was baiting, though. I'm sorry for the trouble or stress this caused you.

Not asking to troll or continue the discourse, but if you don’t want to continue discussing this topic please delete this. But how can you see a valid Celibate-Rey endgame going? If IX were to end with Rey on her own and to some degree happy (Since this is Star Wars, the ending has to be at least slightly happy or hopeful) what kind of an ending would it be? If Kylo dies or survives, either/or.

Hey, no problem at all, and sorry for my snappish answer (hopefully you realized I was being part tongue-in-cheek, though). Admittedly the “better off alone/celibate” argument is something that cyclically resurfaces in other ships of mine, particularly Jaime/Brienne, which made me skittish on the whole thing, particularly when it’s tied to *female agency* buzzwords and the assumption that it’s the shippers who are arbitrarily trying to force a romance on the character, rather than it being part of the character’s canon narrative (not necessarily your case, but it’s such a popular argument against the J/B ship that I’ve developed particularly nasty anticorps for it)

So re: Celibate Jedi!Rey—

Is it a technically possible endgame for her? Totally.

Is it something I would personally be okay with and find satisfying? Well, yes, if:

a) it acknowledges and gives closure to Rey’s feelings for Ben, and viceversa. This includes admitting a degree of bittersweet in the happily ever after final picture.

Just considering the force bond alone without its romantic implications, Rey and Kylo, just the two of them, are connected on a deep intimate level. This is kind of a big deal, especially for Rey, whose familial bonds were suddenly and irrevocably severed when she was little, after which she was left completely alone with no chance to find her way back to her parents (ironically, now she has a magical tracking device in her head that allows her to communicate with another person even across galaxies. From completely alone, to never completely alone even in her own head. Big deal, indeed). 

Even if the bond is broken (because Kylo dies, or else) and no overtly romantic stuff happens between them, it will still leave a mark on Rey, an empty spot where something magical used to be that can only be partially filled with familial or “muggle” love and the purpose of a “lone” Jedi path. That she would bury Kylo (or watch him leave never to return) and immediately go to join the Resistance’s party original trilogy style as if nothing sad just happened doesn’t make a lot sense to me. In fact, it would infuriate me, as I hate when characters are written as if they had some emotion switch hidden somewhere that makes them go from sad to cheerful in the blink of an eye (and tbh TLJ, for all I liked it, already went dangerously close to that, with Rey’s jarring post-proposal cheerfulness on the Falcon during the whole Crait sequence, imo). 

So if they want to go that route, they need to be ready to tinge their happy ending with a little melancholy, otherwise I won’t find it realistic at all. This especially if Kylo dies, but also if he leaves or they are separated for whatever reason. (if Kylo lives, and redeems himself, and stays, I don’t see any reason why he and Rey should not be together, tbh. I mean it’s not like there’s still a Jedi order around dictating what Rey is or isn’t allowed to do. Like Palpatine was the Senate, she is the Jedi Order now, she can make new rules, lmao)

b) it avoids attaching moralistic implications to this choice (?) of celibacy (”that’s what I’m really meant for”, or “that’s how I’ll live my life to the fullest and be truly happy”, etc).

The figure of the Jedi in SW is, at the end of the day, a caregiver. A magical warrior/monk who essentially devotes their life to other people, denying any sort of personal ambition of satisfaction for himself (self-drive is closer to the Sith way). While the extent of this self-abnegation can be reframed and repackaged in a more “progressive” light (say Rey rebuilds a Jedi order with different rules, or just chooses a different way to be a Jedi, see above), the essence of caregiving and selflessness will probably remain untouched. It’s really funny to me that the people who want this endgame for Rey are the same one who get their panties in a twist at the thought of Rey being “reduced to an emotional caregiver” for Ben (paraphrasing some anti post I’ve read recently). The point is, Celibate!Jedi Rey wouldn’t be simply choosing friendship/family/a career over romance, she’d actually sacrifice her individual (in this case, romantic/sexual) desires in order to become a caregiver for an entire community. And this isn’t something I’d consider an especially subversive or /empowering/ endgame for a female character, quite the opposite, actually. The subtext here needs to be handed carefully, particularly if her endgame involves rebuilding some sort of Jedi school for gifted children: the risk of elevating her to a self-sacrificial virgin mother archetype would be pretty high. It can be done, and it can imply Rey will find happiness in this life, but without any sort of hamfisted *inspirational moral message for little girls*, if you know what I mean.

c) it doesn’t frame Rey’s choice not to be with Kylo specifically (if it is indeed a choice on her part and not something dictated by external forces, aka Kylo’s death or the Willabeth endgame, more on that later) in a moral(istic) perspective.

no “I can’t be with you because you have been mean to people, ewww” bullshit, thank you very much. This sounds like the ultimate anti wet dream, Rey rejecting Kylo because he’s awful, and I think we’re WAAAYYYY past it with all that happened in TLJ.

I hope this clarifies things a bit!

Another anon asked me to explain what I meant with the Willabeth endgame, and:

in POTC III Will Turner kills Davy Jones, so he has to take his place as the captain of the Flying Dutchman, which is a curse for life. He and Elizabeth (who are now married) spend a last day together on an island (during which it’s implied they fuck like rabbits and conceive a child, lmao), and then, at sunset, Will says goodbye, leaving the box containing his heart to Elizabeth, to whom he says, “will you keep it safe for me?”. It’s heartbreaking and a bit sadistic tbh but also incredibly romantic.

How does this apply to Reylo?

Well, Kylo could be 

sentenced to lifelong exile on a remote planet, or 

imprisoned for life, or 

going on exile on his own will, or 

leaving to form a new order of darksiders (or something) as he feels he has no place among the Good Guys and has Redeemed Himself But Not Really, or 

sentenced to death and then promptly freed by Rey, who urges him to leave never to return, for his own safety, or

in general, literally or metaphorically cursed to live an existence separated from Rey as a form of atonement alternative to death;

and Rey obviously can’t follow him, because she can’t and won’t abandon her place among the Resistance, and they both know this, but it doesn’t stop them for wanting each other and swearing they will wait for each other forever, cue pants-dropping emotional final goodbye scene which, while offering complete closure, leaves the possibility of a future reunion entirely possible.

Why do I think it’s a valid scenario?

it’s a good compromise between endgame Reylo and Celibate!Jedi Rey;

Kylo gets to Suffer ™, as y’all hope for;

an unwritten but very common and wise rule of storytelling (whether or not you agree with it) is that a couple who can’t be together NOW is more interesting than a couple who is Just Together and chillin’ on the sofa or something, so this endgame leaves things open enough to be further explored in hypothetical tie-in canon material (comics, novels, tv adaptations, maybe even a standalone Episode IX-bis in five or six years from now, WHO THE HELL KNOWS?);

the fanfictions would SKYROCKET; 

the force bond, if it still exists at that point, would be an INCREDIBLY convenient plot device;

Reylo Sex Island

end