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princesssarisa · 4 years ago

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Some more “Little Women” remarks: the problem of Beth

I honestly think most commentary I’ve read about Beth’s character is bad, both academic and from casual readers.

I understand why. She’s a difficult character. Modern readers who love Little Women and want to celebrate it as a proto-feminist work need to contend with the presence of this thoroughly domestic, shy, sweetly self-effacing character, seemingly the opposite of everything a feminist heroine should be. Meanwhile, other readers who despise Little Women and consider it anti-feminist cite Beth as the embodiment of its supposedly outdated morals. Then there’s the fact that she’s based on Louisa May Alcott’s actual sister, Lizzie Alcott, and does show hints of the real young woman’s complexity, and yet she’s much more idealized than the other sisters, which often makes readers view her as more of a symbol (of what they disagree, but definitely a symbol) than a real person.

But even though the various bad takes on her character are understandable, they’re still obnoxious, and in my humble opinion, not founded in the text.

Here are my views on some of the critics’ opinions I least agree with.

“She’s nothing but a bland, boring model of feminine virtue.”

Of course it’s fair to find her bland and boring. Everyone is entitled to feel how they feel about any character. But she’s not just a cardboard cutout of 19th century feminine virtue. So many people seem to dismiss her shyness as just the maidenly modesty that conduct books used to encourage. But it seems blatantly obvious to me that it’s more than just that. Beth’s crippling shyness is actively portrayed as her “burden,” just like Jo’s temper or Meg and Amy’s vanity and materialism. She struggles with it. Her parents have homeschooled her because her anxiety made the classroom unbearable for her – no conduct book has ever encouraged that! In Part 1, she has a character arc of overcoming enough of her shyness to make new friends like Mr. Laurence and Frank Vaughn. Then, in Part 2, she has the arc of struggling to accept her impending death: she doesn’t face it with pure serenity, but goes through a long journey of both physical and emotional pain before she finds peace in the end. Her character arcs might be quieter and subtler than her sisters’, but she’s not the static figure she’s often misremembered as being.

‘She needs to die because her life has no meaning outside of her family and the domestic sphere.”

In all fairness, Beth believes this herself: she says she was “never meant” to live long because she’s just “stupid little Beth,” with no plans for the future and of no use to anyone outside the home. But for readers to agree with that assessment has massive unfortunate implications! The world is full of both women and men who – whether because of physical or mental illness, disability, autism, Down Syndrome, or some other reason – can’t attend regular school, don’t make friends easily, are always “young for their age,” don’t get married or have romantic relationships, aren’t able to hold a regular job, never live apart from their families, and lead quiet, introverted, home-based lives. Should we look at those real people and think they all need to die? I don’t think so! Besides, it seems to me that the book actively refutes Beth’s self-deprecation. During both of her illnesses, it’s made clear how many people love her and how many people’s lives her quiet kindness has touched – not just her family and few close friends, but the neighbors, the Hummels (of course), the local tradespeople she interacts with, and the children she sews gifts for who write her letters of gratitude. Then there’s the last passage written from her viewpoint before her death, where she finds Jo’s poem that describes what a positive influence her memory will always be, and realizes that her short, quiet life hasn’t been the waste she thought it was. How anyone can read that passage and still come away viewing her life as meaningless is beyond me.

“She needs to die because she symbolizes a weak, outdated model of femininity.”

SparkNotes takes this interpretation of Beth and it annoys me to think of how many young readers that study guide has probably taught to view her this way. No matter how feisty and unconventional Louisa May Alcott was, and no mater how much she personally rebelled against passive, domestic femininity, would she really have portrayed her beloved sister Lizzie as “needing to die” because she was “too weak to survive in the modern world”? Would she really have turned Lizzie’s tragic death into a symbol of a toxic old archetype’s welcome death? But even if Beth were a purely fictional character and not based on the author’s sister, within the text she’s much too beloved and too positive an influence on everyone around her for this interpretation to feel right. This seems less like a valid reading of her character and more like wishful thinking on the part of some feminist scholars.

“She's a symbol of pure goodness who needs to die because she’s Too Good For This Sinful Earth™.”

Enough with the reasons why Beth “needs to die”! At least this one isn’t insulting. But I don’t think it’s really supported by the text either. If she were a symbol of goodness too pure for this world, then she wouldn’t forget to feed her pet bird for a week and lose him to starvation. She wouldn’t get snappish when she’s bored, even if she does only vent her frustration on her doll. She wouldn’t struggle with social anxiety, or dislike washing dishes, or be explicitly described as “not an angel” by the narrator because she can’t help but long for a better piano than the one she has. Now of course those flaws (except for accidentally letting her bird die) are minute compared to her sisters’. It’s fair to say that only “lip service” is paid to Beth’s humanity in an otherwise angelic portrayal. But it seems clear that Alcott did try to make her more human than other saintly, doomed young girls from the literature of her day: she’s certainly much more real than little Eva from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example.

“She’s destroyed by the oppressive model of femininity she adheres to.”

This argument holds that because Beth’s selfless care for others causes her illness, her story’s purpose is to condemn the expectation that women toil endlessly to serve others. But if Alcott meant to convey that message, I’d think she would have had Beth get sick by doing some unnecessary selfless deed. Helping a desperately poor, single immigrant mother take care of her sick children isn’t unnecessary. That’s not the kind of selflessness to file under “things feminists should rebel against.”

“She’s a symbol of ideal 19th century femininity, whom all three of her sisters – and implicitly all young female readers – are portrayed as needing to learn to be like.”

Whether people take this view positively (e.g. 19th and early 20th century parents who held up Beth as the model of sweet docility they wanted from their daughters) or negatively (e.g. feminists who can’t forgive Alcott for “remaking Jo in Beth’s image” by the end), I honestly think they’re misreading the book. I’ve already outlined the ways in which Beth struggles and grows just like her sisters do. If any character is portrayed as the ideal woman whom our young heroines all need to learn to be like, it’s not Beth, it’s Marmee. She combines aspects of all her daughters’ best selves (Meg and Beth’s nurturing, Jo’s strong will and Amy’s dignity) and she’s their chief source of wise advice and moral support. Yet none of her daughters become exactly like her either. They all maintain their distinct personalties, even as they grow. Admittedly, Beth’s sisters do sometimes put her on a pedestal as the person they should emulate – i.e. Amy during Beth’s first illness and Jo in the months directly after her death. But in both of those cases, their grief-inspired efforts are short-lived and they eventually go back to their natural boldness and ambitions. They just combine them with more of Beth’s kindness and unselfishness than before.

“She wills her own death.”

Of all these interpretations, this one is possibly the most blatantly contradicted by the text. Just because Beth’s fatal illness is vague and undefined beyond “she never recovered her strength after her scarlet fever” doesn’t mean it's caused by a lack of “will to live”; just because she interprets her lack of future plans or desire to leave home to mean that she’s “not meant to live long” doesn’t mean she’s so afraid to grow up that she wants to die. It’s made very clear that Beth wants to get well. Even though she tries to hide her deep depression from her family and face death willingly, she’s still distraught to have her happy life cut short.

I’ll admit that I’m probably biased, because as as a person on the autism spectrum who’s also struggled with social anxiety and led an introverted, home-based life, I personally relate to Beth. If I didn’t find her relatable, these interpretations would probably annoy me less. But I still think they’re based on a shallow overview of Beth’s character, combined with disdain for girls who don’t fit either the tomboyish “Jo” model or the sparkling “Amy” model of lively, outgoing young womanhood, rather than a close reading of the book.

#little women #beth march #meta #literary criticism

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miraculouscontent · 4 years ago

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(miraculous asks)

Anonymous said:

Oh My Gosh!!!! I was just thinking about Party Crasher and man I hate how they had Ladybug get captured for the men to save! It's a continuous thing you see in media: strong heroic woman gets put in peril so that the men can shine. I didn't even realize it until you said it! I get that it was probably meant to be a "role reversal" of Chat always getting kidnapped or brainwashed for Ladybug to save, but the fact that this is the "guys' episode" it read like "well damn, we can't have the guys be strong if a girl is in the way; let's have the girl get captured so the boys can prove their worth by rescuing her!".

At least in Sandboy, Ladybug was still competent and came up with the plans, but this?! It makes me sick, and it's all too easy to fall into these traps; even Kim Possible did it! In my magical girl story, the heroine does get put in a magical coma and require someone to bail her out, but it's her female friends AND her boyfriend who save her, so it's not just a girl being weakened so a boy can be powerful, especially since said boy actually does a minority of the work required to save her; the focus is on the female characters so it's her girl friends who do most of it. I still ended up scrapping that side plot anyway, and do you know why? Because regardless of who saved her, I still didn't want my female protagonist to be put in distress at all due to the unfortunate implications! Needing help in a fight? Sure. But outright being captured or kidnapped? Nah fam.

I was honestly thinking about that when the first episode came out. Like, they could’ve just had Marinette NOT SHOW UP in time so the guys take care of things, which at least gives more of a message that Paris wouldn’t go to hell just because Ladybug is a little late or something.

And yeah, the “boys squad episode so gotta toss the girl out” is... sigh.

Anonymous said:

I think the writers were trying to show Chat angsting to show his regret instead of an actual apology. Still doesn't explain why Aeon didn't bring up her death afterwards. Did Olympia delete that from her memory banks?

I guess? :|

I don’t know why Chat can’t just apologize without fishing or trying to earn sympathy. Like JUST SAY YOU’RE SORRY, DAMMIT.

Anonymous said:

If you haven't read Maribat, then you won't regret it. I am not in the DC universe but I started reading it and WOW. Literally every single time Marinette is a badass queen and gets her complete revenge and is actually happy! Even if you absolutely love Lukanette (which I have nothing against) you should totally try it.

Appreciate the comment, but I find it hard to ship other Marinette ships outside of Lukanette. Ivanette is a very loose exception and it’s not like I ship it hard or anything.

Anonymous said:

Despite not being a Lukanette shipper I love you. Why? Because you amazing, so right in literally everything and I love you <33

gkdfjgfdngjkfdg thank you

bat-anon said:

The NY Special made it so that Max is literally the only Black/Brown kid that doesn’t exist to make Love Square happen and that just makes me hate it even more.

I wish you didn’t make me have this realization because I hate it.

At least Delmar existed in the New York special???? I guess???? I dunno, I’m trying here, I don’t recall him doing anything love square centric.

Anonymous said:

I honestly don't mind Alix's outfit as Bunnix! I feel like it fits her, plus she's an adult so its not much of a problem, not saying it can't be improved however. I DO have issues with the designs for the underage girls outfits however....those are very sus

Yeah, the problem I take with Bunnyx’s is that it’s a bodysuit. If there was just more definition, like having actual boots, I wouldn’t complain as much.

Anonymous said:

I actually just really like the idea of the new bee being a genuinely nice person who becomes friends with Marinette. Not exactly close friends (since I like the idea of friendly working relationships without actual personal stakes in them). I also enjoy the idea of the new bee having some small animosity for Chat Noir- just because their personalities aren't the greatest mix. I also think that it would make sense for the miraculous of subjection to be at odds with the miraculous of destruction

Full agreement but we know how much the writers are resistant to have characters go against Chat.

Anonymous said:

Not gonna lie the scene where the girl squad gets akumatized almost makes it seem like they got akumatized on purpose, similar to Manon in Puppeteer 2(although she was a little kid who was probably just imagining she could enact revenge). And why can't they have a uniformed design, like they're a team but wear different colors, similar to the Sailor Senshi(like, Alya's the leader and wears orange, Rose wears pink, Alix wears green, Juleka wears purple, and Mylene wears yellow). It's so boring.

Mood.

Not to mention that WE ARE SO TIRED OF THEM GETTING AKUMATIZED INTO THE SAME AKUMA.

AT LEAST PALETTE SWAP THEM.

Anonymous said:

Relating to the Didn't Need Burrows and Treatment of Marinette bingo cards, have you considered making one for whenever the show fails at girl power? It could say things like "sexualized frames of teenage girls" "boy tells girl what to do" "girls don't get to keep Miraculouses", and "girls are forced to apologize whenever a situation goes wrong". And in the center, it could say "Don't show this to your daughter!"! Lol! What do you think?

lol I feel like I have enough cards, otherwise I would.

Anonymous said:

I saw another post that talked about Miraculous New York, and they theorized that it was rewritten to focus more on Marinette and Adrien in order to get viewers invested in the Love Square again after more people started to lose faith in the ship. Do you think that's a possibility?

I think so. The whole special comes off as trying to reassure love square shippers because of how hard it goes for him. I cut out Marinette’s crushing and it cuts like 18% from the episode, meaning it’s even worse than Season 3 (15%).

Anonymous said:

Maybe the point of the [break-up episodes] is meant to discourage people from shipping Lukanette and Adrigami too?

Spoiler alert: didn’t work.

Anonymous said:

Are we not gonna talk about how in one ask, somebody legit said "(long dreamy sigh) Viperion"? Like same.

RIGHT????

Same.

Anonymous said:

Ml fandom: I hate how Ladybug keeps secrets from Chat Noir! He sacrifices himself for her all the time and she never appreciates him for it! He has EVERY right to get mad at her!!

ML Fandom when Chat Noir does the same thing in the special: ....Wow Ladybug was way to harsh on Chat Noir!! She doesn’t appreciate him at all!! Shes so mean to him!

i hate it

Anonymous said:

Idk if it's just me, but a majority of the fandom is split in two; it's never one or the other "MARINETTE SUCKS AND IS A HORRIBLE PERSON GUARDIAN MARY SUE WHO SEXUALLY HARRASSES" or "ADRIEN SUCKS HE WAS NEVER ON MARINETTES SIDE" but im personally on the latter, but not to that extreme. i hate videos bashing marinette and then never acknowledge adriens faults

Yeah, the fandom gets more divided as time goes on because of the writers trying to increase the drama/tension.

Anonymous said:

I am PERSONALLY offended they gave Luka the snake miraculous. Snakes have such a negative connotation. A lot of people insult Lila by calling her a SNAKE. And now those ML writers DARE insult the best character in ML?! HOW DARE THEY!?????

I adore Viperion but I agree that I first heard he was getting snake and was like, “BUT MY BOI???”

It gets awkward too because other animals like the pig have negative connotations, like how Daizzi basically means “idiot/stupid” and they’re giving it to the freaking blond character, really???

Anonymous said:

I think that Ivanette would be even better if Marinette was plus-sized character.

I see why you’d think that. I just disagree because then it turns the ship into “let’s pair the heavyset characters together because they heavyset.”

Anonymous asked:

On the topic of romance failures and general series salt, my main issue right now is how the series puts so much focus on romantic relationships while failing to consider other levels of relationship or what they affect.

On the L² front I can completely buy Marinette being in love with Adrien. Most of the time she genuinely wants him to be happy and is ready to take a step back for him, however much it hurts. But in terms of romantic love? It. Is. A. Crush! But if we step back from the formula, what is there left between them? Their civilian relationship is held together by a “comedy” of errors and without that there is surprisingly little left. Well, besides two “best friends” desperately trying to make it happen because somehow they lost their individual characters and instead of being friends became matchmakers?

I too like Luka and Marinette together. Their relationship is pretty nice to see and all. But sometimes it feels like it happens in a dimension of its own, like the writers want to make the endgame clear in that the “sideships” can be easily cut out of the big “how they got together”-recaps. I especially miss reactions from and interactions with Juleka. She is Luka’s sister, Marinette’s friend, and IIRC someone aware of if not even a bit player in the great shipping game. She is in a prime position to step up and bring progress on all fronts: She can talk with Luka. She can either give Marinette helpful pointers or go “All in or nothing”, i.e. trying to make Marinette get her Adrien-feelings in order as she does not want her brother to get less than Marinette’s full heart. Similarly, she can counteract “friendly acts” and stop humiliating situations from escalating, or she herself can escalate them in the “All or Nothing”-scenario. Yet she remains basically a background character who gets little attention from the camera and almost no “non-focus identity”

As for Kagami, I may be too biased. *Any* positive Kagami/Marinette relationship is to me what Lukanette is to you. So naturally I have lots of opinions when it comes to her role ;) But can I just say that Adrien/Kagami is the weirdest ship for me? They have a few cute scenes and I think if they’d spend a lot more time together, they’d do each other good but I don’t know how they work. “No Hesitation” Kagami would lob Adrien’s head straight off with all his…everything. If we are meant to take Adrien’s love for LB seriously (and I guess we have to because how in the name of sanity is any form of the stated endgame gonna work otherwise???), how does Kagami fit into that picture as a girl who can hardly express emotions while Adrien is the definition of a guy who can not stop flirting or goes for all kinds of romantic gestures? Sometimes it feels more like a “social fit” and “Mommy/Daddy approves” kind of deal which is quite the shame! Normally I like these kind of relationships in fictions but they need a solid underlining or good development. One they haven’t and one the series has not been giving to anyone so far.

Yeah, the whole thing with the love square versus side ships ends up feeling extremely forced. Keeping Luka away and forcing Adrien into Lukanette episode are the biggest giveaways, basically a big fat sign that says, “We know Marinette would forget that Adrien exists if she hung around Luka for more than five minutes.”

AND YEAH, KAGAMI WOULDN’T PUT UP WITH ADRIEN’S GARBAGE. I liked Adrimi but it’s definitely more flawed than Lukanette.

Anonymous said:

Watched your opinion on the New York special and I agree with you. It was mediocre at best. It could have been something nice, like if they added Kagami and Luka, for example, so that we can get a bit of development from the new couples on season 4, so that it doesn’t feel rushed when they start dating on season 4. It could also be a good opportunity to see the other temporary heroes one last time, since Marinette technically has the miracle box.

They could have had an epic fight with the American Superheroes, maybe even giving the bee miraculous temporally to Aeon or Jess so that we didn’t need to see their awful and uncreative superheroes designs. It would have been nice if they made something more useful other than being characters that believe that Adrien and Marinette are “Meant to be”, like, we already got a ton of these already, couldn’t we get someone who didn’t feel something about this ship? It has so much wasted potential that I don’t even know how to start. Do you agree with anything I said?

I agree, yes. They could’ve easily thrown Luka/Kagami into the mix (or had Marinette/Adrien stay behind while flipping perspectives or something; flawed but they could make it work).

Anonymous said:

I'm rereading ladybugout and wow... the moment of silence after "chat deserves that kiss" gets me every time. Everyone stopping and just staring because wow he really just said that

Me whenever Chat Noir opens his mouth in the show.

Anonymous said:

I saw the Backwarder post you just talked about and yes, it is so totally ridiculous. They forgot another thing, though. Miraculous isn't just about comedy, action, and romance, it's about embarrassing Marinette. And the fact that almost everyone in the comments was acting like the medicine scene at the end was funny was just stupid and saddening to hear or read about, because it shows how people have been conditioned to hate and rally against Marinette without even realizing it. Granted, there was one lady who said it reminded her of her husband, so I guess that's okay(but all it means is that Adrien will be Marinette's--aka "his lady's"--husband like eeerrrgh!). And there was one person who said they liked that Juleka's advice because "If you're friend isn't willing to commit crimes for your happiness, is she even your friend?". But everyone else liked the ending. And I don't get the person who said we got "Subtle progression with Adrien and Marinette". We're right where we started.

Weeeeell, I understand the “comedy, action, romance” comment because all of those basically boil down to embarrassing Marinette or invalidating her. Comedy and romance goes without saying while action involves her dealing with Chat “Nice Guy” Noir.

Anonymous said:

Is it just me, or does Snow White's "Red Shoes" form look a lot like Marinette. I know, I know, Marinette is Chinese and Red Shoes is Korean, but they still look strikingly similar. They're bodies are really similar, too, but that might just be because animation tends to use eerily similar body types for its female characters on a whole. It's sad and it makes me think of how cute Marinette would be if she was fat. I also think Snow White was cuter than Red Shoes but that's kind of the point.

I think it’s the body type thing but that’s just a guess since I didn’t immediately make the connection.

I agree that Snow White is cuter.

Anonymous said:

Am I the only one who's never liked "destined to fail" characters? Basically this is when characters aren't allowed to be good at/succeed at something or else the whole universe will somehow fall apart. Think of how in The Amazing World of Gumball, if Richard gets a job, the world will be in complete and utter chaos. So he's better off as a lazy, bumbling dad. In Phineas and Ferb, Candace is always trying to rat out her younger brothers but if she gives up or succeeds something bad will happen.

TV Tropes put it the best: "Not only is she not allowed to succeed, but she's also not allowed to stop trying!"(conveniently under the Cosmic Plaything trope). I just don't like it because it shows that the writers just want to lead them on with the promise of success then snatch it away at the last minute. And now we're back at Miraculous Ladybug, where Marinette is humiliated every time she doesn't sign a gift that's for Adrien, and yet when she does, everyone in Paris DIES. Except for...HIM.

you: *mentions Candace*

me: [a million awful flashbacks]

Also, yeah, it’s so hard to watch, especially in “Chat Blanc” because it’s like, “Oh, you want to give a gift to a boy and you dArEd to use your powers for it? Congrats, but everyone else is DEAD and you can hang out with him as much as you want! You’re welcome!”

Anonymous said:

I think it’d become a “faintest idea blackout card”rather than a bingo.

(referring to my “Faintest Idea” card)

We’re getting there.

darkmoonravewolf said:

I hate that everything on that list could happen and very likely will

(referring to “Didn’t Need Burrow”)

Yeah, and it makes me sad :’)

Anonymous said:

That’s be real here. Miraculous ladybug is not a show about Marinette; Miraculous Ladybug is a show about Adrien. Adrien is the real main character.

Notice that when they focused on Adrien in “Lies,” they only cut back to Marinette (IN A SCENE THAT CAN’T EXIST) to have her fawn over him.

Anonymous said:

Is it just me or are Lady Noire's eyes huge? Maybe it's just the green but they seem way bigger than Marinette's

I’m not sure, but considering Rena’s facial structure being different from Alya’s, it wouldn’t surprise me.

asexual-individual said:

With what you've said about Adrien lacking a reason to exist outside of development for Marinette and Gabriel, I have to wonder how different the show would be if Chat Noir's identity was also kept from the audience. Adrien would still be there as himself, but he only gets as much focus as Alya, and Chat Noir's identity is treated as a mystery (a Tuxedo Mask type mystery, but a mystery all the same).

I see what you mean but it might cause Adrien+Chat’s screentime to feel excessive once the reveal happens, because suddenly their screentime gets combined and it’s like, “oh wow so the combined screentime is his then.”

Anonymous said:

I know that the kwami's really only exist so we can hear our protagonists' thoughts outloud (like what the Coraline movie did with adding Wybie to the story). But honestly, what's the point in having magical gods in the jewelry if you're not going to do anything with them?

Marketing with “cute” side characters.

guisendisguise said:

It's funny, originally, I had shipped Marichat in the sense that Chat and Mari start hanging out and both fall in love with the other's supposedly less perfect, more real selves. Then Luka was introduced and I ended up putting both lukanette and marichat at the same level. Then S3 hit and killed any love I had for Marichat. The writers themselves killed the Love Square for me. At this point, it's very clear they are living in a delusion where the Love Square could ever work narratively without Deus ex Machina or Deus Lo Vult (God wills it). Basically, they've gone past scraping the bottom of the writing skills barrel and are now shoulder deep in the hole they dug thru the bottom of said barrel. I'd like to point out that the bottom of the barrel is writing poop and now they're digging thru the useless plastic landfill the barrel was sitting on top of

Uggggh, yeah. Any appreciation I could’ve had for Marichat died in “Weredad.” I already didn’t like Adrien/Chat and then “Weredad” just showed his complete lack of... well, ANYTHING.

cosmostellar said:

Honestly feels like MLBs writers are going based off the "JUST IMAGINE EVERY POC CHARACTER YOU'RE WRITING AS WHITE" instead of, yknow, fleshing them out while developing them also in the context of their cultures and giving them these little things that the audiences who belong to the same minority can identify with. I don't mean "have Marinette walk in qipao 24/7" bcs thats just... bad on its own but man, /some/ casual acknowledgments of her culture would be nice.

Reading the sentence “JUST IMAGINE EVERY POC CHARACTER YOU'RE WRITING AS WHITE” physically hurts me.

Anonymous said:

Ok, I've always thought that Chloe was robbed of redemption (they held it in front of us, but then jerked it away while Astruc says, "She's irredeemable! We thought she was redeemable, but she wasn't :)!" What are your thoughts! Also, I just recently found your blog and I really like it :)

Thank you!

But I have no sympathy for bully characters, so I didn’t want Chloe redeemed. Maybe I’m still bitter about my own bullying experience, but I just wasn’t here for Marinette being forced to forgive Chloe, which is basically what they did until they backpedaled.

The time spent on her was wasted though and that I can agree on.

Anonymous said:

Me: Writes a 1k rant about how the tweet makes no sense as the "mistake" is about motivation and not the critical plot. Also me: Remembers that in MLB the plot always comes back to the romance. Finally me: Wonders why he got involved with the series post-S3 when all the red flags were already everywhere.

Mistakes were made.

Anonymous said:

I'm semi-catching up on miraculous, and- is it my impression, or does Kagami rebel against her mother more in few episodes she's in (even though her mother's influences on her seem to be stronger in general), than Adrien in the entire show? I /know/ that I don't want to see Adrien free himself from his father w/ the desperation I want to see Kagami free herself from her mother and realize that the standards she's held up to are unhealthy and too strong.

Yeah, I’m way more invested in Kagami than Adrien.

Anonymous said:

Am I the only one confused about whether the staff stopped caring and half-asses the series or cares too much and over-produces the hell out of it?

Nah. It really feels like they secretly hate the love square so they have to keep forcing it.

Anonymous said:

ngl I haven't watched any new episodes since Chameleon and I've been getting all that Miraculous News via tumblr to avoid that Marinette Brand Second Hand Embarrassment™

Understandable.

Anonymous said:

If they aired the 6th one first WHAT WHAT HAPPENED TO LEAD UP TO THIS???? WE ARE ON SEASON FOUR WITH TWO SPEICALS, GETTING A THIRD, AND ANY DEVELOPMENT WE HAD HAS GONE BACKWARDS, SUCKED, OR STATUS QUO YO-ED AWAY!!!!! HOW THE HECK DO WE GET ADRIENETTE FROM FOUR SEASONS OF NOTHING?????? I USED TO FANGIRL AT THIS NOW I AM TERRIFIED.

Answer: We don’t get Adrienette. We get forced love square and rushed/fake “development” of it while being constantly confused as episodes air out of order.

Anonymous said:

im sorry But adrienette has been suck in this limbo of one sidedness for 3 seasons. neither of them have become closer, neither of them have confided in one another, but somehow people still ship it? at least luka was able to make a move on marinette lol adrien still repeats the same boring “shes just a friend” line. adrienette is a really boring ship.

lol don’t apologize, you’re absolutely right.

nahte123456 said:

Very minor bit of salt to throw to the pile, but can this show just decide on how strong Miraculous holders are? Yes it's a cartoon and not the focus but in the Furious Fu episode we literally get Ladybug dodging lighting and then Su who seems mostly human and is at least slower then Fu was outspeeding her. It's distracting trying to figure out what is and isn't a serious threat in this show.

The deciding factor in the strength of the miraculous holders is “whatever works for the plot.”

Anonymous said:

At this point the only thing I'm excited for concerning Miraculous Ladybug is when it gets a reboot in like, a decade with actually competent writers

Best case scenario is that Zag goes bankrupt and Disney/Netflix picks up the series and gives it to competent people.

Problem is that the love square has been ruined so badly for me that even a “good” version of it wouldn’t be something I’d be into, but still.

Anonymous said:

Honestly, the problem with having all of Marinette's mistakes result in huge disasters (ex. Feast), is that is gives off the impression that teenagers aren't allowed to make mistakes. This show clearly doesn't like giving second chances to the protagonist, so why would life give one to you? Am I right, kids?

Exactly.

Marinette makes mistakes and suddenly the world is ending.

Anonymous said:

If your gonna watch the show, at least pirate the episodes so the writers dont get your support

Don’t worry, I have no interest in financially supporting the show.

Anonymous said:

ml in a nutshell: wasted potential, then giving themselves more potential, only to turn the rest of it into a dumpster fire

Yup, that’s it.

Anonymous said:

u know, when My Little Pony, Sofia The First, and fanfiction carries out character development, respect, romance, and the main plot better than the original show, especially when the shows mentioned above are aimed more at little girls and the original show is aimed at slightly older audiences... somethings wrong

*sigh*

And then it’s like--people will excuse the show because “it’s a kids’ show” and then I’m just “okay then, why are there actually good kids’ show?”

If shows get a pass for being for children then all childrens’ shows should just not try and be garbage since the standard is so low.

Anonymous said:

ive seen some cool fic ideas/concepts/reviews that made me think: ml could use so much more looking into how a character thinks in some situations. one fic i read had alya in chameleon (i know its been forever since the ep came out but hey) not question lila cus she thought: "hey, lb wouldnt befriend a bad person" w and added a plot line of lila making her think lb was cobsidering replacing rena rougue. like, just a few lines to make them seem better pls?

YES. Like, show us characters’ perspectives and why they’re rolling with the facts that they’re rolling with, otherwise they just end up looking like jerks.

We sort of got it in “Ikari Gozen” with Kagami but of course it was just to make Marinette look bad.

Anonymous said:

You know I’m honestly considering making reviews of this show and if I do I could create hour long rants about the show just from that mans twitter.

Yeaaaaaah, once you had in the Twitter stuff, it just becomes, “okay so this is going to add another hour or two then.”

Anonymous said:

Okay one thing that bothers me is how plain marinette's suits are despite being a DESIGNER. Her multimouse suit it just blocks of color and her ladynoir suit is just grey with green lines. I think the lines are supposed to represent actually clothes. Like the limes on the calves are supposed to make it look like boots but why not actually GIVE her boots. (Right, because she has to have a skintight suit unlike the boys who get some layers.)

THE SHEER DISRESPECT OF HAVING THE FASHION DESIGNER WEAR SUCH A PLAIN SUIT.

It also goes to show who really designs here, like oh, interesting, the girls get skin-tight simplistic bodysuits and the boys gets all the cool stuff--

Anonymous said:

I heard some people in my class saying they watched Miraculous Ladybug for the first time, and they were saying how good it was, and I was like: 'Oh you poor fools. You have NO idea what it's truly like.'

You know what they say: ignorance is bliss.

bat-anon said:

Isn’t it INTERESTING how in Frozer, Luka understands that Marinette is torn between her crushes and continues to support her even though he knows she probably won’t chose him, and in the exact same episode Chat Noir refuses to help save the city because Ladybug told him AGAIN that she wasn’t romantically interested in him? HMMM 🤔😑

dbfgjbdfjkgf

I’M REMINDED OF “FELIX” WHERE IT’S LIKE--THEY WERE CLEARLY TRYING TO SHOW HOW MUCH “BETTER” CHAT NOIR IS THAN FELIX, BUT LUKA WAS THE RESPECTFUL ONE.

Anonymous said:

You know what I want to see? An evil kwami, like they just want to commit crimes. No moral high grounds, just chaotic evil.

That’d be amazing just because I wouldn’t be able to take them seriously.

Anonymous said:

Watching S1 and S3 episodes back to back, it feels like reading salt fics at times, especially in regards to the L². Like, Marinette was happy about weird plans, she both needed and wanted the final push, and most of the time there was at least something coming out of it. Nowadays it just makes her sad, Alya and the girls act *against* her, and we get shipping for shipping's sake.

That’s a good point. The shift from Seasons 1 to 2 to 3 is rather noticeable.

Anonymous said:

I hate how Adrien's busy schedule seems to only matter when it's used to make Marinette feel bad, but the second Marinette has a bit more to do, it somehow has a negative effect on not only her, but also everyone/everything she cares about, like, what's up with that??

I’m reminded of “Lies” here and I hate it. :|

Anonymous said:

Honestly, the way the show treats teenage girls is horse ass. The show treats the teenage girls of this show as if they're stupid, naive, emotional, clumsy, and need a boy to tell them what opinions to have. Marinette is always treated like the show's punching bag and blamed for everything that goes wrong because she's "emotional" or "obsessed with Adrien", Chloe could've been redeemed but the writers would rather keep her a brain-dead Alpha Bitch Valley Girl(even though Gabriel and Felix, the latter of whom is a teenage boy introduced in one episode, get to be treated as redeemable, despite the things they do being far, far worse), and Lila is a conniving, self-absorbed fox.

And even though Kagami seems better, she's still roped into the "girls catfight over an oblivious guy" cliche and so far, all of her akumatizations have been because of Adrien. Whenever Marinette tries to move on from Adrien the other characters tell her what's good for her and steer her in the "right" direction because she apparently can't think for herself, and the writers LOVE to use the girl squad to tell us who Marinette should be with, because they apparently know better than she does.

Plus the show loves to treat all the girls as the same, making them all either fight over Adrien or be obsessed with shipping, as if teenage girls are all one assimilating, homogenized group(also when they treat Marinette as if she's "just as bad as Chloe", rinse and repeat for the other ladies.). Honestly, the show feels like it was written by those types of people who think "teenage girls are the worst" so they make them all mood-swingy, obsessive, showoffs, emotional, and downright clingy.

Plus the way Thomas Astruc talks about the female characters on Twitter is even worse, and only serves to make this more evident: he claims Marinette "has poor control over her emotions"(all the while calling Adrien "perfect"), that Chloe was racist in Kung Food "because she's stupid"(so rather than having that scene serve as a lesson on respecting other's cultures, he just did it to pick on Chloe and make her look "stupid"), that she's incapable of being redeemed, that Lila's unlikable but Gabriel and Felix aren't(even though he claimed Felix was a terrible character and a "cliche", that's not what the show says my guy), and other such nonsense.

Other Twitter users have also called out Miraculous Ladybug and its stereotypical treatment of teenage girls. The only shows I've ever seen do this worse are those pretentious "darker" Magical Girl "deconstructions" aimed at grown men such as Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna, as well as most shonen/seinen shows such as Naruto and Death Note, which says a lot. Honestly, whenever I feel like watching a show with empowering and respectful depictions of teenage girls that treats them as bright and intelligent and actually unique from one another, I just watch Equestria Girls, Liv and Maddie, LoliRock, ANT Farm, Moesha, PreCure, or Sailor Moon. Because the way the show acts towards them is deplorable, absolutely deplorable.

Yes to all of the above. Almost all of the girls are involved in love affairs in some way, the two teenage girls are irredeemable while Felix got a sympathetic backstory right away (Chloe took forever to get hers which is a failure), and Marinette is flawed because she’s “too emotional” (a misogynistic stereotype).

Anonymous said:

Hi, I'm the anon who got upset at the lady who made the "Miraculous Ladybug is a Mess" rant, and yes, thank you zodiacspirit17 for liking and agreeing with my rant! I'm glad someone else saw that video! And ugh, Marinette learning to love Chat Noir? Really? I don't remember that line but I also don't want to go back and revisit it to make sure so I'll take your word for it. Ew. That was actually one of the things I hated about the Glaciator scene. Chat was supposedly comforting Marinette by taking her to the rooftop where he planned Ladybug's date, and yet only Marinette finds out about Chat's crush on Ladybug and comforts him on that(while rethinking her feelings), while all Chat knows is that Marinette's heart was also broken. He never asks who it is, or tries to help her get over her crush even if he doesn't know it's coincidentally him.

I know it's because of the "love square" but it's unfair that only Chat's love problems are directly addressed. Come to think of it, the reason Chat took Marinette to the rooftop...I know he was doing it in-universe to help her instead of intruding on her personal feelings(which might have also been why he didn't ask her who her crush was, he was probably thinking along the lines of "we don't have to talk about it right now, we can just have fun!"), but meta-wise, since we know she's Ladybug, the writers were probably trying to tell her "See? This is what you could've been doing, but you missed it. Shame on you!" That's a huge issue I have with the show: characters will do things in-universe to help Marinette, but the show has a different motive in mind. Compare to how Tikki gave actual advice to Marinette in Puppeteer 2, but the writers intended that for the statue scene so they could embarrass her in front of Adrien and the thousands of eyes watching the show(except we're not laughing.). Even if characters do support her, the writer is using them as props for her ritualized humiliation. And yet Luka is the problem somehow.

If Marinette needs to learn how to love Chat Noir, then it should at least be balanced out by Adrien learning to Marinette. I'm sick of this double standard that "girls need to learn to accept boys who like them but guys can do what they want". Another thing she said was that "Marinette needs to learn to define herself outside of who she's crushing on." NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. You see, unlike Adrien, Marinette HAS a life outside of who she's crushing on: she has school, she has Kitty Section, she has her "girl squad", she has her parents, she has her outside family, she babysits Alya's and Nino's siblings, and she has OH YEAH HER FASHION DESIGNING! I didn't even count being a superhero since Adrien does that, too. She has so many things to do outside of Adrien, and yet the fact that she makes gifts for Adrien or dreams about Adrien or wants to have kids with Adrien somehow makes her nothing but an "Adrien fangirl"?

First of all, she's the bloody protagonist?! That's such a "Real Women Don't Wear Dresses" argument, that she can't have her own life AND be in love at the same time! And somehow her crushing on Luka also means her life revolves around him, too! But Adrien's life doesn't revolve around Ladybug even though he doesn't really have anything going for him in his ordinary life? Outside of being rich, hot, white, and male, that is? What are his interests and hobbies, besides what Gabriel lets him do to pass the time? He doesn't even like modeling! And the Agreste plot is more about Gabriel, Emilie, and Nathalie than it is about him.

And what about his friendship with Nino? He didn't even care that Nino was getting strung along by Lila with the others! What about his friendship with Chloe that also waxes and wanes? Granted, Chloe's not a GOOD person, which that lady acknowledged, but she at least tried to change and has more development than him, the writers just won't let her change. I hate when people come for Marinette for doing literally anything when the show won't let her have agency and progress. It's so unfair of her and I wish they could see that. These double standards are driving me insane and they're sexist(maybe even a little bit racist, too), and it hurts even more when a woman's doing those things.

(I had to cut off some of this ask because I didn’t get all of it, so I cut it off at the point where it still seemed like a full ask.)

I FEEL THE “GLACIATOR” THING SO BAD. It hurts even worse when you realize that “Frozer” has to take place after “Glaciator,” so Chat Noir heard that Marinette has love problems and then ignored it to ask her for advice about his own love problems later on. The total lack of insensitivity???

Also, the idea that Marinette’s life would revolve around her crush on Luka is stupid. It’s the exact opposite, in fact.

Meanwhile, Adrien has so little going for him and the “interesting” parts of him involve who he’s connected to or what his father has forced him into.

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ms-interpretation · 4 years ago

Photo

They are both so funny! Someone somewhere on tumblr described (jokingly) their relationship as being ‘Annoyed to lovers’. I love that take, I find it hilarious. I mean just look at Jeong Tae-eul’s face in the first screenshot when she’s just found the talisman. It just screams: “Are you actually serious?” and Lee Gon must know how strange he is coming across and just decides to... roll with it. I adore their dynamic. How Jeong Tae-eul is so straight-forward and Lee Gon so outrageously earnest. Tae-eul quickly becoming quite bothered by him during their interactions early on (wonder why? *cough* *cough*) and Lee Gon being so happy to have finally met her that he just decides to answer basically everything and anything she asks honestly and openly (the exception being his name) even though it makes him sound completely insane is all compelling stuff. In this scene Tae-eul outright teases him a lot. First about the talisman and then about the “monopoly” money. We see her get quite serious however when she asks him about why he told her "I finally get to meet you". She clearly felt his sincerity in that moment and wants to get to the bottom of what the hell is going on. To say that’s she’s taken aback is putting it mildly. She is quite frustrated by this whole situation and about this man in front of her who is seemingly spouting out nonsense, but who is simultaneously seeming to be incredibly earnest. You see her struggle with this paradox in their scene at the chicken place and while they’re in the bamboo forest as well.

I would argue she feels something between them early on. There’s definitely some outright attraction. After he catches her off-guard with his compliment (”You look better in real life too”) the camera emulates her point of view and lingers on him as she is looking at him (he is hilariously framed in a very attractive manner in that scene). Then Tae-eul undercuts the moment as she tells him he looks like a criminal, however not before taking him aback by asking him why he is staring at her in a certain way (the implication being romantically). Lee Gon is even flustered for a moment in that scene (which is equally as hilarious as it is adorable). Tae-eul undercuts the moment deliberately, I would argue, to re-assert herself after having been flustered (I love her). A person on twitter has written some really great ‘meta-threads’ where they spell out some of the cultural subtext which cannot be fully translated through subtitles. An example is the “Will you continue talking down to me?” exchange. They bicker about how they are addressing each other (which has to do with who’s older and Korean speech levels). This adds to the emotional and somewhat flirtatious subtext of their interaction, an aspect slightly lost on international viewers. I have attached a link to the thread below. Tae-eul later teases Gon about how she might be older than him in episode nine, which can be argued is a fun continuation of their bickering here. I do think that some of the subtext in scenes like these might have been lost on the international audience (of which I’m part) at times due to the need to read subtitles + not having access to the characters’ tone through their use of language. Saying that however I don’t think that dramas should simplify their scripts to cater to international viewers (that would honestly be awful), but it can be worth keeping in mind when watching as an international viewer. Tae-eul is flustered by his compliment here, and then again when he compliments her at the hotel, but being the somewhat “tsundere”-like character she is she quickly hides it by basically insulting him instead. We see later that this slightly thorny aspect of Tae-eul is part of her personality, which at first glance may obfuscate her very passionate and kind character (her taking on KSJ’s bullies and telling him, somewhat rudely, to come back to the dojo springs to mind - I really like her).

So two quite quick-witted and unapologetically straight-forward people meet and it all unsurprisingly ends up with them bickering a lot. One of the thing I like the best about their bickering is that it is really equal, neither of them simply “takes it”, so to speak, instead they respond in kind. This creates an air of honest reciprocity between them. Later in the episode stuff gets more serious. Tae-eul gets more and more genuinely annoyed by all the impossible things Gon keeps claiming. After he asks her if there might be a reason for her helping him, she doesn't respond. But she thinks back to that moment later. His lack of a name and the fact that his claims are genuinely insane becomes a bigger issue for her the more they get to know each other (i.e. the more they connect). Her frustration is quite understandable. Her well-honed instincts are basically at war with her rational mind and world-view (and she has started to like him, which makes it all personal). There’s not much Lee Gon can do however. We feel his frustration easily since we know that he’s telling the truth. It all results in their fairly cold goodbye in episode three. Then of course she misses him, and really starts to believe him. Resulting in their quite emotional reunion in episode four. It is so great that in episode five she continues to tease him after she arrives in the Kingdom and finally seeing that everything he has claimed is true. Why? Because it furthers their relationship instead of resetting it. It is also an indication that Tae-eul’s slightly ‘thorny’ attitude is part of her personality and not simply a consequence of her being annoyed with him. She starts to realize just how much she likes him in episode five and six but she also freaks out a little, because she's more emotionally guarded. Which is why after she first opens up, expressing admiration for him and apologizing for leaving him alone, she then states that she cannot compete with a person from his world (expressing some insecurity. I’ll write more about that scene later). Lady Noh’s warning words are fresh in her mind. Back in the Republic however, after missing him and being worried she finally decides to embrace her love for him when he returns.

Let’s talk about the first mention of the Royal Ancestral Shrine. Lady Noh is referred to here as Tae-eul finds the talisman planted in Lee Gon’s wallet. A talisman which states it purpose as finding love for the recipient. This because Lady Noh is, as she stated in episode one, adamant of finding Lee Gon a Queen so that he can fulfill his duty as King (which entails providing the Kingdom with an heir). This talisman and this mention of the Royal Ancestral Shrine foreshadows this aspect of the plot and is brought up again later in episode 16. Where Lady Noh brings it up, hinting that Lee Gon and Jeong Tae-eul might marry in a year (‘completing’ the Royal Ancestral Shrine as she put it). A very nice person on soompi explained this for me. She also makes Lee Gon bring a talisman with him as he goes off to have a weekend with Tae-eul. Later on they find themselves back in the Kingdom, almost like the talisman (which Lee Gon accepted this time around which indicates his change of heart from episode one) have deliberately brought them back to the Kingdom to lightly push them to move forward in their relationship. One can definitely argue that it’s technically FateKid’s doing. A very good meta which has written about this in particular is linked below, this blog has a lot of really great posts about TKEM. I would highly recommend it.

Lee Gon’s amused expression in the last screenshot is such a funny beat, especially in addition to Jeong Tae-eul’s disbelieving expression after she’s found the talisman and her subsequent “Good Luck”. I do so love the comedy in this show. It works so well with the quite grounded characters Lee Gon and Jeong Tae-eul are.

Link one (spells out some subtext easily lost on international viewers): https://twitter.com/jungpilot/status/1304404562896277505?s=21

Link two (talks about FateKid and LG’s and JTE’s future and more): https://bitchesoverdramas.com/2020/06/16/the-king-ep-16-the-happy-ending/

#the king eternal monarch #the king: eternal monarch #lee gon #jeong tae eul #I really appreciate how LMH and KGE are so great at comedy in scenes like these #it would be easy to go too far which neither of them do thankfully #tkem meta

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cto10121 · 3 years ago

Text

“It Was Just Puppy Love!1!!”: Or, On the Relative Innocence of R&J’s Love

“Puppy love” is a common descriptor for people writing about Romeo and Juliet’s love, typically when they want to downplay their relationship, but don’t want to sound too derogatory. But lit crits of the play have rather known otherwise, and even the most casual reading would challenge that view. Because if by “puppy love” people mean that R&J are just wittle innocent bbs!!1!1! who are just discovering what love and kissing and sex is…um. Nah?

It’s subtle (and some of it not subtle at all) and maybe even unconscious or accidental on the part of Shakespeare, but R&J, realistically or not, do seem to have some implied romantic experience and/or knowledge. Let’s review.

Romeo

This one is fairly easy. Apart from the pre-play crush on Rosaline, portrayed as lusty from the get-go (she would not “ope her lap / To [his] saint-seducing gold” *plays smallest violin*), Romeo consistently doesn’t think much of virginity or chastity. “Arise fair sun,” he says in his monologue, an apostrophe to Juliet, “and kill the envious moon.” The moon is traditionally associated with chastity, the virgin goddess Diana. In this word play Juliet is her “maid,” and “fair more fair than she.” According to Romeo, Juliet needs to leave her service, i.e. quit being a virgin. He is not the only one; Juliet also likens the moon as fickle as inconstant, changing every month.

Granted, Romeo’s playboy-ness can be and is overplayed, and culture has long had his name synonymous with the likes of Casanova and Don Juan. But honestly it’s more canon-agreeable than the portrayals of Romeo that make him a clumsy lug, an immature wimp, or a drip, which is much more contra-text. I prefer it anyway.

Juliet

This is where things get more interesting, if vexed.

We are first introduced to a quiet and obedient Juliet with her mother and the nurse talking about her age (14 in a fortnight) and telling embarrassing tales about her childhood. When asked what she thinks about marrying and of Paris in particular, she gives diplomatic answers worthy of a politician’s wife while making it clear that marriage is not her desire or concern at the moment and that she is only doing this to please her mother. She is definitely no rebel; we see overall, a pretty sheltered girl.

At the ball, however, she meets Romeo, and we learn that she can play Romeo’s artful flirtation game just as well as he can. At the end of their shared sonnet, Romeo kisses her twice. “You kiss by th’book,” Juliet tells him. The phrase “by th’book” is a little obscure, but generally critics have taken it to mean Romeo is a good (experienced?), right, or “correct” kisser.

But how does Juliet know Romeo is a good kisser? How can she tell?

Occam’s Razor has it that Juliet says this because she just likes Romeo and has fallen hard for him, and this isn’t a true reflection of any expertise or prior experience on her part. *shrug* I go by this reading for the most part, but it really just depends on how you read the line (I remember that Globe theater actress—who actually looked 14, so yeah, awkward—deliver it very knowingly). There is still the possibility, though, Romeo may not even be her first flirtation or kiss, although he is almost certainly her first love.

There is more. After the party ends and the guests leave, Juliet subtly gets the Nurse to tell her the names of the other guests and sneakily slips in Romeo. “What’s he that follows there,” she asks coyly, “that would not dance?”

But how did Juliet know Romeo did not dance?

If we take this implication seriously, it means that Juliet actually did notice Romeo too or even first—maybe even pegged him as the Hot Guy Who Won’t Dance (modern AU!!!). Which means that Redha’s “Le Bal 1” choreography in RetJ with Juliette seeing Romeo first is perfectly canonical (as if that musical can’t get any more awesome).

In any case, post-ball Juliet very quickly reveals her good knowledge of sex in the ways she deals with Romeo’s courtship. She asks him not to swear by anything, because men break their vows very easily and change in their love, so she knows not to trust them. If Romeo is serious about his love, he has to marry her first. In her soliloquy she looks forward to her wedding night when she would “die” (orgasm) in his arms. And even amid the horrific notion of marrying Paris, she fears the possibility of her heart, “with treacherous revolt” would turn to another, and plans to kill herself if that ever happens.

It’s a lot for a 16th century thirteen-year-old. But I suppose this is what happens when you’ve been raised by the Nurse, who has zero filter. Also your conservative Catholic parents who try to shelter you from boys and the sex stuff but you still know them anyway precisely because you are a good Catholic girl(tm) raised by conservative Catholic parents. Tale as old as time.

Also, also—Shakespeare really didn’t give a fuck about Juliet’s age past that first scene, didn’t he? He has her excitedly expecting orgasms on her wedding night. On the other hand, as someone who was once a 13-year-old girl herself…eh, legit. Shakespeare knew somehow, as always.

In Sum

While there is always the danger in characterizing R&J simply as horny fiends cockblocked hard by feud nonsense, characterizing R&J’s love connection as a result of inexperience and romantic immaturity is also not quite right. For one thing, some of canon doesn’t support that, and at least one big aspect really doesn’t (Shakespeare going above and beyond to sink Romeo/Rosaline vs. R&J). It just shows people’s discomfort with adolescent eroticism and sexuality that they must minimize it or pigeonhole it somehow.

#romeo and juliet #rj meta #r&j meta #cristina metas #and now i’m haunted by the ‘hot guy who wouldn’t dance’#all modern r&j aus should have it but alas

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thewatsonbeekeepers · 5 years ago

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Chapter 10 – Oh No Love, You’re Not Alone [TLD 2/2]

[A line from Rock’n’Roll Suicide, which titles the previous chapter – listen here! X Possibly Bowie’s best song.]

This chapter aims to break down the infamous hug scene step by step – I couldn’t handle this scene for a long time, Mary and Irene seriously breaking with the otherwise reasonably coherent series, but I have a reading. This reading is complicated in that it relies – like this whole meta series – on every character in the scene being a part of Sherlock. This is obviously sad because it means that our boys don’t come together in one of the only moments of physical affection they’ve been allowed in the last ten years, but bear with it. There are three important symbols we need to know going into this scene: our three main characters. The grounding of this meta series is that, within the EMP, Sherlock is our eyes, the part of his brain that is consciously navigating the subconscious and trying to make sense of it. John represents his heart, normally in antithesis with Mycroft as the brain, but in TLD really taking centre stage himself. To get a handle on Mary, I refer you back to my TST metas [XX]; TLDR, at the end of TST Sherlock stages Mary’s assassination attempt on himself via Norbury, only to replace himself with Mary at the last second because he cannot cope with the implication that it is the loss of him that has made John suicidal. To be colloquial, then, Mary is comphet – which is essentially her function in every Sherlock Holmes adaptation anyway, but you know. Thinking about Mary in terms of comphet is useful particularly in terms of her obsession with Sherlock wearing the hat which dogs the end of this episode, and which for many spoiled this scene the first time around (i.e. me). Wearing the hat is a euphemism in tjlc for masking one’s sexuality, drawing on the Victorian phrase ‘a hat of someone else’s choosing’ X – Sherlock’s throwing off of the hat was so momentous in TAB that many of us were reluctant to see it brought up again. However, this all makes sense.

Before we take this scene from the top, I feel the need to say that someone has brought me tea in a glass, by pure coincidence. I feel this is a good omen.

The scene opens talking about Eurus!Faith, and one of the first possibilities touted is that Sherlock made up a dream woman who gave him all the info he needed. Not subtle – although Eurus has other purposes in the narrative which become very important, she does also kick the narrative along quite nicely here. However, as mentioned in the previous chapter, she’s not the only character who does – think of the random comments that allow Sherlock to piece together ‘everyone’, despite having nothing to do with the case. So what our boys are saying about Eurus!Faith, if we think about it in the context of the episode, instead of just her, points to the artificiality that is casting such a massive shadow right now. John’s ‘magic dream woman’ comment comes straight after Sherlock talking about being able to predict anything – undermining the entire basis of the episode as magic and dreamlike, so we know where we stand. Sherlock is only experiencing all of this semi-lucidly – kind of like TAB – so it’s up to his heart to try to get him to twig it I suppose.

Sherlock then suggests that Eurus!Faith was a hallucination brought on by drugs, in keeping with the theme of the episode, but also with our own themes. Drugs are used to cover up one’s true sexuality, and Eurus up until this point has only been used in her various disguises to veil Sherlock’s desires as heterosexual, so in that sense she is linked to the mirage that drugs can cause. Heart!John’s response is to keep Sherlock off the ‘sweeties’, which is a good sign for us – the more we fixate on the sober region of Sherlock’s brain, the more we’re in the place where he can’t hide from who he is, and his heart is pushing him there.

It seems that comphet!Mary is the one pushing Sherlock to talk to his heart here, which might raise questions, but as we’ll see one of the first things she tells heart!John to do is to ‘make him wear the hat’ – everything she says is fitting in with the paradigm of Sherlock Holmes that the heart cannot cope with and needs to leave behind. Mary also suggests that Sherlock should wear the hat to her as a tribute, because she’s dead. I like to read this as the weird sense that we should be respectful of old classics, as though queering them is somehow disrespectful – this gets thrown up a lot in relation to Sherlock Holmes. One time it really got thrown up though was in the making of TPLoSH – the reason it’s not more explicit is because the Conan Doyle estate didn’t want Wilder to damage ACD’s legacy. The necessity for comphet of the Victorian era is dead and gone, but we still consistently pay tribute to it in our culture.

Sherlock keeps mentioning Culverton’s confessions, which we’ve talked about in the last chapter – but in this world of mirrors, he’s unable to map them onto himself perfectly yet. It’s the same thing as Eurus heterosexualising his interactions – we’re working in a world of mirrors and proxies, because the reality of queerness is so off limits in his mind.

Then we get the text alert. Irene Adler has long been established within the mind palace as a symbol of Sherlock’s sexual desire. So, at the end of this, as Sherlock is about to neglect his heart and let it descend out of Baker Street, we get this sudden cry of sexuality – and the heart turns back. Comphet!Mary, through the hat linked to conventional storytelling metatextually propelling Sherlock’s comphet well into the 21st century, immediately jumps to the conclusion that Sherlock loves Irene Adler. There are several reasons why this is absolutely wrong. Firstly, we are dealing entirely in symbolic people here, so why Irene would suddenly be a real person instead of a metaphor is tonally dubious. Secondly, Irene is a long established metaphor for sexuality anyway. But thirdly, and most importantly – this scene, which revolves around the Irene Adler text alert, is the beating heart of the episode and arguably the entire series. For Irene Adler to be referenced once more in the series, in a minor line, suggests that she is not the actual focus. It’s about what’s going on within Sherlock.

[A side note: Mary’s exposition in this scene makes me cringe – I hope I’m not the only one? But if you will set up a complex network of metaphors and then leave several years between series, maybe you need that.]

John then deduces that it’s Sherlock’s birthday – again, reasonably unbelievable that he wouldn’t know this, given that Mummy and Daddy Holmes would definitely have made a big deal of it. It’s difficult to know for sure what the birthday symbolises, but John saying he has always wanted to know it might make us remember Sherlock actually seeking out John’s birth certificate to find the name Hamish on it. This meta [X] explains why this represents hiding a part of ourselves that is essential – i.e., from birth – which would fit the concept of the birthday. However, this may be tenuous.

Heart!John’s outburst at the discovery of Sherlock’s sexual desire – not necessarily how it is directed, but that it exists – is basically: well, what do you do about it? Why don’t I know about this? It is incredible that Sherlock has managed to compartmentalise this from his heart for so long, but that’s the pro of having an incredibly intricate mind palace I suppose. The Harvester in High Wycombe situation is sex without strings attached – I think the veiled suggestion here is masturbation, because Sherlock has refused the heart any involvement in it, but Sherlock denies the suggestion. The level at which heart!John is losing it is desperate, and the idea that ‘High Wycombe is better than you are currently equipped to understand’ suggests an affection starvation of epic proportions. I had problems with John’s claim that romantic entanglement would complete Sherlock as a human being (Sherlock being ace is a common reading, often touted by the writers themselves, and whilst I don’t subscribe to the theory such a statement plays into a pretty harmful narrative about ace people). The line is still dubious when said by heart!John because of the wider narrative it plays into, but spoken by Sherlock’s heart to himself does suggest that Sherlock’s denial of his sexuality has been crippling him.

The idea that comphet!Mary sent heart!John back to Sherlock is a difficult one – there are two warring versions of Sherlock’s heart here, and comphet!Mary’s idea of heterosexuality (posh boy and dominatrix, even whilst metatextually acknowledging that it’s a boring cliché) does require the unity of Sherlock and his heart, just in a way that isn’t possible. However, another possible reading about letting Sherlock die without comphet!Mary might take us back to TST – the hypothesis assassination when comphet!Mary took the bullet for Sherlock at the last second admittedly slowed down Sherlock’s analytical processes, but it’s quite possible that his heart wasn’t ready for it, that the heart wouldn’t have let him realise it and Sherlock would actually have died in the mind palace. His heart was too afraid to show up – which, true or not, is echoed in the idea that heart!John wasn’t there when Sherlock/Mary were shot by Norbury, but attending to heteronormative domesticity (sorry Rosie). It’s also devastating that the heart wants to be the Sherlock Holmes of the stories still – and we’re breaking through, but it’s TFP which will finally push through that, not this scene.

Heart!John’s admission of cheating here is vital. Eurus as mirror for John has long been discussed, and as we’ve seen in a previous chapter (X) she takes on a female form to give Sherlock’s desires an acceptable outlet – but here we have an acknowledgement from heart!John that he betrayed comphet!Mary in his texting of Eurus. The texting is made to parallel Sherlock’s own engagement with his sexuality in terms of Irene – he’s later revealed to have texted her too. Whether that just suggests merely thoughts or masturbation (or something else?) I don’t know, but the parallel suggests that such engagement with his sexuality is the same as heart!John’s covert engagement with gay trauma Eurus – in other word, both romantic and sexual illicit desires have been acknowledged, and have existed simultaneously though compartmentalised. We can see the paralleling of heart!John’s romantic desires with Sherlock’s sexual desires in moments like when heart!John admits that he still wants more – the camera focuses on Sherlock, who looks at heart!John like a moment of realisation (possibly because he’s recognising the form his heart has taken – that’s the headcanon).

But this is not a happy scene. Heart!John declares that he has never been capable of comphet, but that he wants it, and comphet!Mary tells him to get the hell on with it – taking special emphasis to call him John Watson. There’s no Hamish here, which in a conversation begun on birthdays might make us worry, but crucially calling him John Watson rather than John is a link back to the original stories, when we know that using just first names is a big indicator of the modernity (read queerness) of the adaptation, not least in the EMP (see TAB). Comphet!Mary’s heterosexual compulsion is thus still going strong based on the historical stories. And what’s sad here is that the impulses are acknowledged! Sherlock not only acknowledges his sexual desire but even that he acts on it (the texts), and heart!John acknowledges his romantic attraction, and where they had been compartmentalised the hug as a moment of unity tells us that Sherlock has joined those dots, acknowledges his existence as a romantic and sexual being. And then – he puts the hat on, he still needs a high of some description to cope with his birthday. I believe that Sherlock’s acknowledgement of Mary’s ghost at the end, previously visible only to John, is a new recognition of the compulsory heterosexuality that his heart has been grappling with – but he puts on that hat in order to capitulate to it. (Never fear, the hat is coming off later).

The hat wearing comes in a separate scene, in terms of framing, to the official hug scene, although logically they must happen within 20 minutes of each other in the same room. [I am resisting the urge to make a crack joke about what happened in the interim. I’m sure there’s something on AO3 about it.] It’s a horrible addendum, because heart!John has just confessed his biggest secret, and Sherlock acknowledges it – but then immediately downplays it. Just texting. In superficial terms, this downplaying is personally not what I would want from a friend – in metaphorical terms, it’s deadly. It’s a subtle undermining of the entire previous scene. We can see that the wall hasn’t been broken through, that he’s still chickened at the last second (much like at the end of TST) in other ways – he still has the appearance of drugged Sherlock, in particular the facial hair, which is used to reference bearding typically in the show. I also maintain – though others may take issue with this – that Cumberbatch’s gait changes when he plays a high Sherlock, and although ostensibly not high here that slightly clumsy gait remains the same. It is not a good vibe. And then, the final shot of this scene isn’t one of acceptance or closure. After Sherlock acknowledges Mary’s presence, the look on Martin Freeman’s face is one of quiet but terrible sadness, as well as anxiety.

A final thought before I leave this scene, having discussed what happens at the end of TLD in a different chapter – it’s worth noting that Sherlock has a mug of an unspecified hot drink throughout this scene, but it’s left ambiguous whether it’s coffee or tea. (Yes, it could be something else, but given the heavy focus on coffee and tea earlier in the episode, along with the pre-established drinks code, we can assume.) This ambiguity, I think, is deliberate – it allows Sherlock to acknowledge desire but still mask it through vagueness and ambiguity. It’s a way of lying to himself – and goodness knows we’re all capable of that, and can probably see how such a fudge might apply to a mental analysis of such a situation. I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on this scene though – do let me know! Until next time.

#sherlock meta #emp theory #tjlc #tjlc is real #meta #my meta #mine #thewatsonbeekeepers #bbc sherlock #chapter ten: oh no love #you're not alone #david bowie ref #what a guy #mofftiss #johnlock

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056crowshit6556 · 5 years ago

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Disillusionment in the characters of Mitzi May and Mordecai Heller

I wanted to discuss what I find to be a fascinating relationship between Mitzi and Mordecai.

There’s no better place to start than with Ivy Pepper’s dream sequence in “Nightmare”.

Okay, so breaking this scene down. The three characters Viktor, Mordecai, and Mitzi surround a tree which represents Atlas, or at least, a conceptualized version of what Atlas has become, everything he built, and everything he represented. Ivy calls the thing they’re surrounding a “ghost”, and asks why they don’t turn around, i.e. move on with their lives. Why don’t they leave?

Mitzi and Mordecai are attached to the tree by a blue ghostly mist. It’s specifically attached to their eyes, showing how their connection to Atlas gives them ‘vision’, focus, purpose, and foresight.

I find it particularly fascinating that Mitzi and Mordecai are the ones attached to this tree by the soul sucking/soul giving light, but I think it’s appropriate considering that Atlas was their entire world. He is what connects Mitzi and Mordecai, which is what I’m going to try to explain through this post.

Both characters were born and raised in abject poverty (appropriately enough, one came from ‘northern’ poverty, the other ‘southern’ poverty— a subtle but efficient dichotomy between the two). Both had talents that Atlas fostered, both of them liked how Atlas made them feel special, both of them vied for his attention, which is the main source for the animosity and connection between them in the first place.

I’m interested in their relationship because I find it fascinatingly bitter, complicated, mysterious, and for some reason, very tender. Not tender as in affectionately warmhearted, but tender because both of them are a soft spot in each other’s memories. Mitzi acknowledges Mordecai as “a helping of salt to rub in her wounds” and Mordecai states that he has “mixed feelings” about this meeting. That I’ll explore in a moment, but first, it stands to mention what Mitzi says to Asa in “Heartstrings”:

“You only know someone until you don’t”

Which to me, might be a little tongue-in-cheek on Mitzi’s part, suggesting that she knows something about Mordecai that no one, not Asa or even us, the readers, fully understand. If there’s something about Mitzi’s character that has been shown so far it’s that she goes through the motions of social grace and banter while maintaining a sense of condescending, underlying humor about the irony of situations. This line went over my head until I went back and read it, and the subsequent scene of them talking in the car further adds to the implication that they know each other more intimately than expected.

Being taken in by Atlas, they were exposed to each other as a consequence of circumstance. They both shared Atlas to a degree which bordered on the unhealthy, because I don’t think they formed identities beyond the ones they formed in relation to Atlas. With the added fact that they were both fairly young and impressionable when Atlas took them in, and the subsequent familial rivalry and resentment their relationship created, there’s no surprise that they’re both disillusioned and blindly clinging to the dead tree as seen in Ivy Pepper’s dream.

The problem I see between Mitzi and Mordecai is that because of circumstance, they had to be vulnerable with each other, and even though jealously may have created resentment between them, I think the two flashback scenes in “Hamstring” and “Confessional” state multitudes about that resentment. It’s not just jealousy, (Mordecai asserts that he has no interest in defending her, which sounds petty and jealous although he could have valid reasons— it’s unclear at this point), but I figure that the other layer to Mitzi and Mordecai’s resentment of each other stems from the assumption that they were vulnerable with each other at some point. Whatever happened at this moment, which Mitzi refers to as a “bad memory”, altered their relationship in some form or another.

“What’s left to question between you and I?”

“That remains between us.”

I can’t imagine Mordecai taking too kindly to anyone he has to be vulnerable with, and I don’t think Mitzi would enjoy admitting she has weaknesses or flaws either. It’s one of the reasons I find their characters to be so similar. Neither of them like dropping their protective facade but I think in the past they did with each other. (Mitzi’s facade being a socialite debutante, Mordecai’s facade being a cold-blooded sociopath). I think they perform traits of those facades, but the problem is I think those traits were fostered and encouraged by Atlas, maybe without him even meaning to. It’s like...two children will act a certain way because they can tell those actions please their parent. It’s really sad and really distressing but that’s the way these two characters operate in the realm of the story.

The man Mordecai is interrogating, Grombach, states that Mordecai doesn’t seem like the “cake-eater” type, but he does fit right in with that crowd.

And Zib, who knew Mitzi before she met Atlas, states that she’s not the sleepy eyed girl he found in Georgia anymore in “Blood-money” (although I think Zib might be looking at Mitzi through nostalgic rose-colored glasses).

Case in point, Mitzi and Mordecai’s characters are alot more multi-layered and complex than simply a socialite-flapper and a triggerman-cake eater, although they did perform those roles reasonably well.

(That’s one of the reasons why it’s difficult to tell who is taking the gun in that particular flashback. Mordecai claims that Mitzi didn’t shoot anyone, so it’s reasonable to assume that Mitzi is handing the gun to Mordecai. (I could be completely wrong but it’s fun to speculate). She taught him how to maneuver, or at least interpret, social situations. In turn, he could have done something, or helped her, commit a murder. It’s ugly but that’s his speciality. If Mitzi is handing the gun to Mordecai and asking him to eliminate someone, then in such an instance she stops being “Atlas’s little wife” and starts being a boss. Maybe Mordecai trusted her judgement on it and the plan went horribly wrong, and so he blames her for it. There’s alot to unpack there so I’ll just leave it at that).

This idea of creating a persona is even perpetrated by Mitzi, who claims Mordecai to be her ‘little project’ in the mini-comic “Photoplay”— and although I’m sure he was reluctant at first, Mordecai allowed Mitzi to help him integrate into Atlas’s society— the 1920s flapper way.

(Not to mention that line from Mordecai: “You like it because he likes you to like it?” That sums up perfectly what I’m trying to get at— I’m not saying Mitzi’s interest in photography is a facade, or Mordecai’s interest in being a bookkeeper or a hitman is a facade either, but what I’m getting at is those interests were directly correlated to Atlas and were absolutely influenced by Atlas. They call each other out for using Atlas’s money or clothes, and I imagine there’s been other times where they purposefully nitpick the other when Atlas gave them a gift. It’s jealousy in its most blatant form).

That one line by Mordecai is so good because it encapsulates the way their relationship was at the beginning before “things visibly deteriorated.” They were both butting heads with each other, nitpicking the other because they knew how Atlas changed both of their lives. It’s so childish but definitely prevalent among siblings— Mordecai thought he had some sort of upper hand, that he was his own person, but Mitzi reminds him that he’s wearing Atlas’s shirts, inevitably reminding him that he can’t escape Atlas’s influence. We want to think we’re our own person, free from influences, but those closest to us inevitably remind us where and what we came from.

And neither Mitzi or Mordecai can hide from each other the fact that Atlas took them in and gave them financial security, food on their plate, clothes on their back, and a sense of purpose. He made them feel different than how they actually feel about themselves. This is expressed by Serafine to Mordecai in “Redivivo” and “Keepsake”:

“And like dat, he’s lit up a path out de black mire you got yourself in. Shinin’ a direction for you, real clear. His direction. But once you take dat direction, once dat light is on you, dat’s all you got. De other loa leave you. You are obliged to him only, always. Or else you are lost again.”

And in “Vestige”, Mitzi admits that she liked how he made her feel special.

Serafine sums it up pretty well: Mitzi and Mordecai found someone that ‘lit up’ the path in front of them.

I want to briefly mention their interaction in “Hamstring” and “Monomania”. Mordecai speaks very differently to Mitzi than the three other male characters in the story (I’m referring to Zib, Rocky, and Wick). It could be the mysterious nature of their relationship but the conflict it adds to the story is intriguing nonetheless. More so, I always got the impression that he spoke to her as an equal. Zib doesn’t like that Mitzi’s capable of deceit, Rocky places her on a pedestal and views her as a damsel-in-distress, and Wick sees her as the elegant flapper widow of the late Atlas May (and a romantic interest, not a business partner). The difference between the aforementioned relationships is that Mitzi and Mordecai don’t want anything from each other, and they call each other out quite bluntly— Mitzi tells him he can’t treat her as both an enemy and a confidante, Mordecai places some blame on her for Atlas’s death. So when I say that their relationship feels equal to me, it does seem that they have an equal amount of dirt on each other, but at the same time, they tell each other the truth. Two cats in the same boat and the boat’s name is Atlas? Such close familiarity means they can’t hide things from each other, not really, and they can’t raise their expectations of the other person when they already know that person’s limits. In contrast, Zib wants Mitzi to run away with him and forget Atlas, Rocky wants her approval, and Wick wants her because of his romantic interest in her. I’m not saying their intentions are wrong or mistrustful, in fact, they aren’t. All characters have motive, it’s what drives the story. The thing is, they’ve all created misconstrued personas of Mitzi, but I don’t get the impression that Mordecai has, and I don’t get the impression that she’s construed a false premise of him either.

That’s the consequence of “growing up” together, building an identity alongside someone, and then, as Mordecai puts it, they witness each other’s identities “visibly deteriorate”— whatever happened between them before Atlas’s death was the incident which revealed each other’s vulnerability. Mordecai tells Mitzi to “keep her charade” out of the way, insinuating that he knows she’s capable of putting on appearances, but it’s a possibility that he’s trying to remove her from the bootlegging business because he doesn’t want to see what happened to Atlas happen to her. Personally, I would love to see the narrative ironically drive Mordecai to lose his current composure (a kind of karmic retribution for looting Lackadaisy’s storeroom, even if his underlying intentions were to push Mitzi farther away from the business, he still did a great job of putting her life in danger). I don’t know if that voodoo sigil Serafine carved on his chest is going to do anything, but if it did, it could make him behave in a way that would expose his charade as Asa’s hired gun as well as his persona as a cold unfeeling triggerman.

Mitzi continues to run the Lackadaisy Speakeasy out of commitment to Atlas; Mordecai continues to take out targets for Marigold out of commitment for obtaining the truth about Atlas’s death— but the problem here is that they’re doing these things in service to a ghost. Neither of them can make things go back to the way it was. Atlas is dead, and without him, they’re lost. Their current commitment to Atlas is commitment to his memory, which is why in the dream sequence they stare blindly into his ghost, tethered to the dead tree.

And clinging to a ghost is a dangerous path to choose.

The lines “You’re obsessive” and “You’ve brought [losses] on yourself in your persistence” stands out to me.

In my opinion, Mordecai is projecting when he tells Mitzi she’s bringing shame to Atlas’s memory, because in an ironic way he’s kind of doing the same thing? This is coming from the same cat bastard who was running ‘round the woods stripped down to his underwear killing people on Marigold’s behalf like he ain’t got no goddamn sense. Literally our first introduction of Mordecai’s character in the comic paints him as an incredibly unhinged individual, so I think the irony of him saying Mitzi is embarrassing is just as hypocritical as Mitzi saying he’s obsessive. It’s so poignant and so deliberate how they project these things onto each other.

(Mitzi accuses Mordecai of being obsessive and she’s right, but her reluctance to give up the Speakeasy is borderline obsessive too. On a brief side note, it’s sad to think about but I genuinely think he’s going to get himself killed because he can’t let go of Atlas. And likewise, Mitzi is going to get into some kind of trouble (either with Wick or the law) because she’s clinging to Atlas’s memory and everything associated with his memory. They’re both obsessive to a degree and it’s showing through their self-serving choices throughout the story thus far. I could be wrong about this but my assumption is that Mitzi refuses to give up the Speakeasy because she feels some sort of underlying guilt, and Mordecai refuses to give up searching for answers because of a sense of obligation; but as stated above, Mordecai projects his feelings of guilt onto Mitzi, and Mitzi projects her feelings of inadequacy onto Mordecai).

The big elephant in the room is whether or not Mitzi and Mordecai conspired to murder Atlas. Personally I think no, but I do think they did something that indirectly caused his death. Perhaps they took out someone together, and that created a chain of events which led to Atlas’s demise. That would further instigate their obsessive guilt over what happened, but it’s a mystery for now.

It’s because of their fixation on Atlas’s memory that they’re both attached to the dead tree in Ivy Pepper’s dream. If they weren’t, they’d be lost in some desolate exodus across the desert landscape, a wasteland similar to the one conceptualized by T.S. Eliot in his work “The Waste Land.”

A few lines from the poem paint an eerie landscape similar to Ivy’s dream:

and

lastly

“I was neither living nor dead”

It’s a common theme among modernist literature that, as William Butler Yeats stated in his poem “The Second Coming”, the “center cannot hold.” After the horrors of World War I, combined with the rapid growth of consumerism and materialism as well as a decline in religious faith, things seemed to “visibly deteriorate”, people in the early 20th century were so disillusioned with the state of things that they felt they had no “center” to keep them tethered to this world; in a sense, what could give them a purpose or sense of meaning? At the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche famously quoted “God is Dead”, but it wasn’t in praise of humanity for turning towards science and reason, but despair because it begged the question: If God is Dead, then what the hell do we believe in? What do we put faith in?

In the case of Mitzi and Mordecai, that faith was in Atlas May.

Trees make excellent visual representations of “centers” in storytelling because our ancient ancestors considered the tree to be their home, their safe haven, the “center” of their world. Why else do trees continually reoccur as symbols of centrifuge throughout mythology, storytelling, and religion? Why else would it be called the tree of life and the tree of knowledge in the book of Genesis, or the World Tree Yggdrasil in Norse mythology, or the Kabbalah in Judaism if it wasn’t alluding to the fact the we evolved as a species alongside the trees?

It makes sense that the story’s center is Atlas, represented by a tree— but that’s the problem— Mitzi and Mordecai are centering themselves around a dead tree. But the memory of Atlas is what continues to give their eyes “light”, and so they don’t look away to face the reality that they are lost in a habitual wasteland.

With Atlas gone, both characters experience disillusionment with either themselves, the world, and maybe even their perceptions of Atlas. Basically, they built their identities around him, and I think they gave each other their most honest representations— which resulted in a sort of strained tenderness between the two which defers foremost to bitter resentment.

#Lackadaisy #Lackadaisy Cats #lackadaisycats #mordecai heller #mitzi may #long post #theory #theories #my southern sensibilities couldn't resist calling Mordecai a cat bastard #actin' like he ain't got no goddamn sense #my posts

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streetcarname · 5 years ago

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i watched my own private idaho last night and MAN. MAN!!! it def fucked me up fr. river phoenix is an incredibly amazing actor!! and the way he captured all of mike's emotions and the campfire scene. my god the CAMPFIRE SCENEEEE

i'm not narcoleptic or share any part of mike's nor scott's story but man. i felt seen in a weird way. it probably helped that river phoenix is bisexual himself right? but anyway, the unrequited love he has for scott is something that a lot of lgbt+ youth, including myself at one point (bc i'm a bisexual dude), has gone through. so i really felt... seen yeah. even though i've only been in relationships with women.

also, i feel like scott isn't straight but he has internalized homophobia instead? because he said "two men can't love each other", even though he actively sleeps with men (though it is for money). my first thought was when i was watching that was not "oh scott is straight" but "scott has internalized homophobia". mike agreed with him, even though he confessed that he loves him in a romantic sense after? so yeah. to me it just feels like they both have internalized homophobia. scott may have genuinely liked the girl, but idk :/ to me just feels like he was also actively trying to escape mike's feelings and his possible attraction to mike

cause,, y'know? i had no idea what mopi was about before i watched it but as i was watching the movie pre-campfire scene i thought the entire movie was building up to scott and mike getting together. i know the writers themselves did not intend for that and river was the one who rewrote the campfire scene to be a confession scene, but with the way scott was always actively taking care of mike and even going to italy w him to find his mom didn't feel like brotherly love. i thought it was all supposed to be implication for how scott felt about mike, i.e. that scott loved mike in a romantic way.

and it makes sense that scott wasn't straight but had internalized homophobia right? because he's a heir and there's no way he could've possibly been as successful afterwards if he came out as bisexual/dated mike in the time period the story is set in.

idk. that's just my take on it bro. feels like scott was in love w mike too but didn't wanna admit it so he completely avoided it. especially with that deleted scene that appeared in my own private river after mike confessed, where you can just see scott looking worried? confused? idk but definitely being emotional and trying to process it as he's holding mike. why did he even hold mike? idk. i rly don't know! but yeah. just wanted to talk about it

#lukes.txt #my own private idaho #my own private river #keanu reeves #river phoenix

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askovertherainbowblog · 6 years ago

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Why Bi+ Isn’t Half-Gay and Why It Matters

For a while I jokingly called myself half-gay. First of all, it really doesn’t matter to me if someone wants to call themselves half-gay. Who knows, maybe I will use that term again one day. The goal of this post is more so to use this term to dive into the psyche of myself a few years ago and why, even though I was attracted to, sexually active with, and romantically involved with women, I considered myself more of an ally than an LGBTQ+ person.

The problem with the idea behind my use of the term half-gay, for what I now call bi+*, is really fundamental. There is nothing gay about being bi+. Wait, what?

Gay has evolved as a catch-all phrase for same-sex activities. “Gay rights” is a catch-all phrase for the rights of all sexual orientations that aren’t heterosexual. “Gay Straight Alliances” are used to describe clubs in schools that support students who aren’t heterosexual and their allies. Many lesbians I know use the term “gay” and “lesbian” interchangeably to describe their sexualities. I also freely use the term “gay” for my own inclinations or attractions when I’m feeling very attracted to women.

The problem with this for people who aren’t monosexual** is that their experiences are interpreted as a combination of heterosexuality and homosexuality. A half-gay, half-straight, so to speak. This ignores anything that makes the non-monosexual different from the gay and the straight. Solidarity has been a gift for many communities. You have probably experienced the feeling of “wait, you have experienced this too?!” when you learned about someone else who shares a similar experience. It can make you feel less alone, less ashamed, and more likely to speak up. Terms like mansplaining or manspreading have become commonplace because they describe the experience of many people –experiences that may have been hard to put a finger on before. Although they are criticized for being such minor issues in a sea of human-rights travesties, if you have heard these terms this speaks to the power of a large group of people having a shared experience and being able to communicate about it. Naming experiences is an incredibly powerful tool. So, back to the half-gay term. Well, isn’t a bi+ just half-gay? A friend of mine used the wonderful analogy of the werewolf. The werewolf is not a human, and she is not a wolf. The werewolf does not cease to be a werewolf regardless of which manifestation she has shape-shifted into. The werewolf is always a werewolf. So whether the bi+ is single, in a same-sex relationship or in an other-sex relationship – they don’t stop being bi+.

Here are a sampling of things that bi+ people experience that is unique to being bi+: not half-gay or half-straight. I have found myself in a conversation more than once where the people I’m talking to define their sexualities by the genders they’re not attracted to. For queer folks this can be a way to signal queerness. A lesbian might make a comment about not being into men, or a gay man will clarify that he isn’t into women. Depending on the circumstance it can be a way of signal to “your people” belonging and to potential love interests that you’re “batting for their team.” Heterosexual folks do the same thing. They will often establish their sexualities with anything from passive comments to more aggressive homophobic comments. For example, “he’s an attractive man, but I’m not saying I’m attracted to him, I’m not gay.” It’s an expression of our sexualities by showing the gender we are not attracted to. This is a bi+ unique experience. I simply can’t relate to not being attracted to someone based on their gender. I can’t signal to the queer folks that I belong by saying I’m not into men. I don’t have the gender-based distaste response I see in many monosexuals.

A potentially unique bi+ experience is my attraction to ambiguous gender expression. The more ambiguous the more likely I am to find them immediately attractive. There is something glorious about seeing someone, checking them out, and being like “wow you are HOT!” and not actually being sure where they fit on the gender spectrum. This could possibly be a shared bi+ experience.

Another unique aspect of being bi+ is that bi+ people mostly date people who don’t share our sexual orientation. Straight people will by definition date straight people, and lesbians/gays will by definition date lesbians/gays.*** Bi+ people can date straight people, lesbians/gays, and other bi+ people. There are much fewer bi+ people than monosexual people in the dating pool, so statistically speaking it’s not as likely for bi+ people to date bi+ people. This means even in a world of misunderstandings about sexuality, many monosexuals can trust they have a shared experience with their partners, this isn’t the same for bi+ people. This can be rewarding, because respectfully sharing differences is always an enriching experience, or it can be difficult as you navigate misconceptions or assumptions. Which brings me to my next point.

Bi+ people unfortunately also have the unique experience of being misunderstood or “othered” by both straights and gay/lesbians. This is one of the shared experiences us werewolves have. These are a sampling of experiences that make the bi+ experience distinct from just being “half-gay.”

The second problem with calling the bi+ person “half-gay” is the implication that the other part of the bi+ person is “half-straight”. This might seem like an innocent enough implication. Bi+ people are in different-gendered relationships all the time, right? The problem with using the heterosexual experience to explain the bi+ experience is, first of all, that bi+ people are not straight. It is generally understood in the queer community that the assumption of heterosexuality is problematic. Queer folks, particularly folks who do not necessarily set of people’s “gay-dar” will have a hard time being seen for who they are and especially seen as queer by other queer people. This is a common discussion point for femme lesbians who are not necessarily read as queer. If this assumption is problematic for lesbians and gays, then it is more than fair to ask that bi+ people are extended the same curtesy.

Secondly, bi+ people are often accused of “straight privilege.” Now, I am very happy to admit the areas of life in which I have privilege. My first post outlines some of the many ways I move through the world in a position of privilege. However, although bi+ identities experience different types of discrimination than homosexual identities, they do not experience straight privilege. This is because bi+ aren’t straight. Wait, what?

Here I would like to follow in the footsteps of a bi+ advocate I respect, Shiri Eisner, and point out the importance of the difference between privilege and passing. A comparison would be useful here. Transgender people often discuss the topic of passing. Passing generally refers to being perceived as a woman, if you’re MTF****, or man, if you’re FTM. The difficulty with passing is that once you are not seen as having the identity you have, i.e. in this case you aren’t seen as being transgendered, there are other risks. Maybe you have a new healthcare provider and they don’t give you all the information you need. Maybe you meet someone at a bar and really hit it off, but now you have to find a way to disclose your identity without knowing what kind of reaction you might receive in return. Maybe you’re in a conversation with other people who see you as “one of them,” and they start speaking poorly of sexual or gender minorities. Maybe you feel scared to speak up, scared to “out yourself.”

Acceptance can feel superficial when you don’t know how someone will actually react if they “find you out.” Of course I am not transgendered, so I can only speculate on the challenges of passing as it relates to gender. But I hope you can gather that passing is obviously not the same as privilege. Having male-privilege and being a trans who passes as male are two vastly different things. Certainly, the trans person who passes will have a different experience than the trans person who doesn’t pass, but again these are not questions of privilege. Similarly, bi+ people may have people assume they are straight, but this is not the same as having straight privilege. Because bi+ people are not straight. The statistics speak for themselves. In many studies, bi+ people fare the worst out of straights, gays and lesbians on many measures of mental health, addictions, and harassment.***** How is it that bi+ people are experiencing straight privilege if they are faring worse than straights, and also worse than gays and lesbians, on many measures related to physical and mental health?

So if bi+ people aren’t “half-gay” and they aren’t “half-straight,” what are they? Well, I’m glad you asked! We are bi+! We are similar: we also love people and want to find acceptance in community. But we are different: we aren’t straight or lesbian/gay, and our experiences are unique. So, call yourself what you like, maybe you’re feeling particularly gay today. But also know that regardless of how straight or gay you feel, you aren’t any less bi+.

Love,

Dorothy

xxoo

*I decided to use the term bi+ because although I use the term bisexual for myself, I want to include other non-monosexual identities. I do not mean to say that other non-monosexual identities are somehow under the umbrella (or below) the bisexual label. I think of it more like a cluster and I’m using “bi” as the primary label because that’s how I identify. Labels are hard, bear with me, and certainly let me know if you have a better idea!

**Monosexuality refers to when you are attracted to only one gender: so heterosexual or homosexual.

***With the exception of dating a bi+ person of course.

****MTF refers to male-to-female, and FTM refers to female-to-male transgendered people.

*****For example, check out the Bi-invisibility Report: Impacts and Recommendations by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission

#dorothy #LGBTQIA #LGBT #QUEER THEORY #QUEER IDENTITY #BISEXUAL #BI #BISEXUALITY #BISEXUAL COMMUNITY #QUEER #halfgay

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lpeejay-blog · 6 years ago

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Peer-graded Assignment: Getting Your Research Project Started

I would like to look into the “National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health” (AddHealth) dataset. I have 2 lovely niece and nephew and their ways of being brought up is a constant conversation topic at my family table. Hence, I’m particularly interested to study the factors that may influence an adolescent’s health and risk behaviors.

While looking through the AddHealth Code Book, there were many factors such as personal traits, families, friends, romantic relationships, peer groups, schools, neighborhoods, and communities. I was most concerned with factors that would affect an individual’s upbringing and character, such as Section 29 on delinquent and undesirable behavior and also factors that impact their health such as Section 28 on Tobacco, Alcohol, Drugs.

I decided to zoom in on the topic of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs as these are things that my family finds taboo and would definitely shun from. At the same time, I was also reminded of news that reported that there is an increasing trend of teenagers getting hooked on these things at a much young age. If I were to make some guesses on what might influence a teenager to eventually fall prey to these substances, it would largely be due to family, education, and social factors. As I grew up in a very close-knitted family, I’m vastly interested to see if there are any associations between adolescents’ relations with parents (Section 16) and their actual usage in tobacco, alcohol and drugs.

Relatedly, the second topic that I would like to explore would be Section 33 on suicide tendency as I feel it would be very helpful if we would be able to identify would are the factors that would increase an adolescent’s tendency to think about these things. Relatedly, at this point, I would also be interested in Section 18 on Personality and Family, as it contains questions touching directly on communication with parents, as well as Section 39 on their relationship with their siblings.

Sections interested: Section 16,18, 28, 39. A personal code book based on these sections and variables have been picked out and saved separately.

The association I would like to study would be (1) Association between use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs and relationships with their parents, and (2) Association between suicide tendency and relationships with parents and siblings

Literature review seems to suggest that there are indeed some associations between usage of substances and parental influence. The paper “Peer and parental influences on adolescent tobacco use” by Anthony BiglanTerry E. DuncanDennis V. AryKeith Smolkowski, showed that structural equation modeling indicated that inadequate parental monitoring and association with deviant peers and predicted tobacco use.

There was even a paper titled “Family Dinner Meal Frequency and Adolescent Development: Relationships with Developmental Assets and High-Risk Behaviors” by Jayne A. Fulkerson, Mary Story, Alison Mellin, Nancy Leffert, Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Simone A. French, that examines the associations between family meal frequency and developmental assets and high-risk behaviors among a national sample of adolescents. Consistent positive associations were found between the frequency of family dinners and all developmental assets, including both external (e.g., support, boundaries and expectations, On the converse, consistent inverse relationships were found between the frequency of family dinners and all high-risk behaviors measured (i.e., substance use, sexual activity, depression/suicide, antisocial behaviors, violence, school problems, binge eating/purging, and excessive weight loss.

However, there was also a paper “Parent‐Child Communication About Adolescent Tobacco and Alcohol Use: What Do Parents Say and Does It Affect Youth Behavior?” by Susan T. Ennett Karl E. Bauman Vangie A. Foshee Michael Pemberton Katherine A. Hicks that showed that contrary to the assumption that parent‐child communication about tobacco and alcohol use is assumed to be critical to child use of these substances, parent‐child communication was not related to initiation of smoking or drinking. The study however, suggested, that parent‐child communication about rules and discipline predicted escalation of use.

To this end, I am interested to further study if frequency of evening meals together with parents has any associated on eventual alcohol use. It might be interesting to look at variables that looks at closeness of relationship with their mother and father, such as how much does the adolescent feels his parents care from him. I would hypothesize that the closer the relationship the adolescent has with his parents, the less likely he would use tobacco, alcohol or drugs. The variables I would need would be H1WP8, H1WP9, H1WP14, drawing mainly from Section 16.

For the second association between suicide tendency and relationships with parents and siblings. There is a study “Risk factors and life processes associated with the onset of suicidal behaviour during adolescence and early adulthood” by D. M. Fergusson, L J. Woodward, and L. J. Horwood that examined associations between childhood circumstances, adolescent mental health and life events, and the development of suicidal behaviour in young people aged between 15 and 21 years. The results found that by the age of 21 years, 28·8% of the sample reported having thought about killing themselves and 7·5% reported having made a suicide attempt. The childhood profile of those at greatest risk of suicidal behaviour was that of a young person reared in a family environment characterized by socio-economic adversity, marital disruption, poor parent–child attachment and exposure to sexual abuse, and who as a young adolescent showed high rates of neuroticism and novelty seeking. Mental health problems including depression, anxiety disorders, substance use disorder, and to some extent conduct disorder, in addition to exposure to adverse life events, were significantly associated with the onset of suicidal behaviours.

Another paper, “Risk factors for suicidal behavior among a national sample of adolescents: Implications for prevention” by Angela E. Waldrop, Rochelle F. Hanson, Heidi S. Resnick, Dean G. Kilpatrick, Amy E. Naugle, Benjamin E. Saunders, studied factors associated with suicidal ideation and attempts were examined among a national probability sample of adolescents. It was found that suicidal ideation was positively associated with female gender, age, family alcohol and drug problems, violence exposure, lifetime depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Suicide attempts were associated with female gender, age, sexual and physical assault, lifetime substance abuse or dependence, PTSD, and depression.

More specifically on family relationships, the paper “Family Factors in Youth Suicidal Behaviors” by Barry M. Wagner, Mary Alice C. Silverman, Catherine E. Martin, found that both fatal and nonfatal suicidal behaviors have been linked consistently to negative parent-child relationships (e.g., high conflict, low closeness), child maltreatment, residing with less than two biological parents, and family history of affective and antisocial disorders. Parental separation/divorces and family history of suicidal behavior and alcohol/substance abuse are more strongly associated with completed suicide than with other suicidal symptoms, but family systems problems (such as low cohesion and adaptability) and insecure parent-child attachments are more consistently associated with nonfatal suicidal symptoms than completed suicide.

To this end, I would like to hypothesize that low family cohesion, both with parents and siblings would be strongly associated with higher tendency of suicide ideation and attempts. The variables I would need would be H1SU1, H1SU2 as well as those from Section 39 such as H1WS5A on perception of love they receive from parents, H1WS1B on amount of time spent together, H1WS3B on how often the siblings quarrel or fight.

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years ago

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you ever think about how they hired twins to play the triplets that dean and crowley have sex with. I feel like that right there is proof that they're not queerbaiting, because no one could possibly be baited by that because 99 percent of everyone didn't even notice it. They just put it in there cause dean's bi and they write him as bi.

It’s funny, for whatever reason I was thinking last night about how my own personal definition of the way the show may or may not queerbait has changed over the seasons, and it’s not just to do with personal growth but the way the show is written and the way they are handling things.

My impression of how it all felt in the start of season 10 was utter disbelief that they were so on the nose about Dean and Crowley, and I know not everyone wants to/does think that they hooked up, but there’s some stuff the show pushed there that in some ways it would have no other excuse to do and I went cold on Drowley several times after feeling like the handling was sweeping it under the rug, writing it off as villainous queerness or other ways to distance Dean from it like suggesting he wasn’t in control or roofied by being a demon, that thankfully at least was not how Crowley died on the show, with 12x15 giving us the last example of how that dynamic had matured, and it WAS matured, and at least in terms of respecting that Dean n Crowley had once eloped, was about as good as it could get. And I think owning that the dynamic wasn’t a sense of that time being abusive was important given how much Dean and Crowley interacted and behaved towards each other AFTER, as well as exactly how we were supposed to read whether Dean should feel violated or smug or nostalgic about it all (and he did flash between them depending on the season or episode in the time after). But at the start of season 10 this whole journey was really only just beginning.

Obviously people had written about the queercoding and Crowley’s seduction before then, but in very careful metaphorical terms, and as much as it was suggestive in season 9, the fact is that without season 10 it could easily remain a metaphorical ~seduction to evil~ where this was written in terms of romantic seduction - except for where it was fatherly or brotherly - but 10x01 smashed that and made it really really clear that you could read that Dean and Crowley had been hooking up, even independent of the twins/triplets subtext. Specifically when Crowley is annoyed Dean and Ann-Marie hooked up in his bed, and Ann-Marie tells him and Dean to get a room, and he’s like, we had one. Of course you can pretend that not everything Crowley says is innuendo (and room = specifically the bed), but that exchange had a lot of jealousy and a lot about his and Dean’s *personal* relationship, as much as the other stuff was about the more wild stuff they shared with others while howling at the moon. Which was part of the longer term emotional game Crowley was playing about their business relationship and Dean being his scary consort and them sort of going exclusive >.>

And in that context, Crowley mentions they’d done some memorable stuff to triplets together, and on rewatching you catch they’re hanging out with twins in the bar before that, but the wider context was this absolute explosion of queer subtext and borderline text and a dynamic that needed concentrated work to not come to the conclusion they’d been fucking all summer, with and without buddies of whatever gender with them. Focusing on the male twins in the background as a hint that Dean had had sex with men is ignoring where Crowley directly implies they’d been hooking up and now he wanted to go exclusive with Dean as the hugest neon sign that, yes, Dean has been having sex with at least one man, regardless of the gender of the triplets. Like, I know people were like hurr blurr the triplets could have been women, #no homo, sometimes men sleep with triplets together like bros. Which traps us into hyperfocusing on what the triplets were and using them as the definitive proof, when in fact the reason triplets were being banged in the first place was because Dean and Crowley were banging all the time everywhere up and down seedy bars in America, and Dean didn’t want the good times to end, while Crowley wanted the d all for himself now pls.

And considering that’s the thing under the paper thin surface that you can remotely pretend that Dean only slept with women and he and Crowley were just hanging out the entire time, regardless of no matter how much more subtext the show piled on later, less close to the surface but with more confidence that everyone knew Dean had banged Crowley and the only way any of this worked any more was that that had happened, even just when we only had 10x01 to work with, the whole Dean n Crowley thing was so enormous that you can’t just speculate on what the twins were to approach to what degree was this queerbaiting or not. The twins are a detail that you can pick up on and speculate on if you look deeper, as they know we sometimes do. I’m not saying they’re NOT an aspect of this, but they’re a relatively buried easter egg of subtext compared to, say, Crowley sobbing over his flickr albums in the next episode :P

To what degree Drowley was queerbaiting is the real question, and since Crowley is now consigned to the show’s history books, we have the full story in a way. In the context of what we have now, I don’t think overall, all comments included, the show ever pretended, even when distancing Dean from it, even when painting it as abusive or Dean having diminished responsibility, that Dean and Crowley did *not* bang. I think there are multiple comments which as long as you are permissive that Dean would have could have probably did, that in seasons 11 and 12 pretty clearly indicate a memory of having slept together one point or another, especially 11x23 and 12x15 with overt references to sexual things from Crowley to Dean, or 11x07 and the implication that over a year later Dean still has Crowley’s answerphone messages from howling at the moon, and knows and remembers details of his personal life fondly. (I don’t think that’s the only time Bobo wrote them like that but that’s the one that springs to mind :P)

Buuut they never showed them on screen in such a way that could be seen from the moon as them together, like actually showing them IN a sexual relationship while Dean was a demon, or having Dean confirm Crowley’s innuendo with more than the usual reactions where he gets plausible deniability to any gay stuff going on. And SOME of that I think MAY be to do with the problems with the villainous queerness slant, and the way it was at times framed as abusive/Dean lacking control. Because they would not commit to exploring the aftermath of that relationship SERIOUSLY, i.e. making it clear they had slept together when Dean was a demon, and him on-screen dealing with how that made him feel and how he felt about Crowley, and even, god forbid, his own sexuality, the best they could do to resolve it was to establish eventually a sort of civil exes dynamic, both aware of their history, but not harping on it, even if Crowley remained somewhat to entirely besotted by Dean for the rest of his time on the show. The lack of handling it seriously means it stays as a somewhat jokey subtext later on, and they can play it off as no harm no foul by the end of season 11 and through season 12.

I think in that vein it also eventually contributed to Crowley being sidelined and eventual downfall, because he was trapped in the subtext of being Dean’s ex and all the enormous complications that made between them and for his personal life, again without being able to explore it or leave a lasting, openly discussed impact on him. He no longer directly antagonised them, but he couldn’t cross any lines which made him human or part of the team for more than passing moments because the longer he was around Dean the more awkward it got and the more it would beg them to explore what, exactly, were Dean and Crowley now, and the obvious issues that would have/could have arisen if we discussed this like adults and we were allowed to just textually state in a frank and open way that Dean had been seduced by Crowley that one time.

And I think in terms of where that puts us, it means that Drowley was very much a stifled relationship, officially over and no chance of getting it back, which in some ways is as large as or larger then Destiel in the weight it puts on the show when it comes to answering queerbaiting charges, because it could never be addressed openly while Crowley was alive, still ISN’T acknowledged, and Dean is as closeted as he was before, despite in his actual living human memory, knowing what it’s like to bang Crowley on the side for 3 months of his life with no direct personal growth (that is: now banging Cas, happily, or even banging other random guys, no angst, just for fun hook ups, equivalent to the textual times he picks up women) to show for this wild college experimentation metaphor phase of his life.

At this point you really can only change the final judgement on it by making Dean canonically bi and then giving him the character growth, acknowledging the role Crowley had played in it, and allowing him to live what had just been subtext as a textual part of his character. In all other respects, I think the fact that Dean subtextually has hooked up with Crowley, and presumably other men probably other than the male implied triplets we saw on screen as well, but it’s relegated to this one particular part of his story and locked up in the subtext box, is going to look absolutely like one of the show’s worst sins of queerbaiting if we get to the end and that box is never opened again. And not to say it all looks rosy while we wait until the hypothetical what if of textualising Dean’s bisexuality and trying to live a positive life of hoping that will happen. As it stands, the handling in the text is depressing, and speaks of how far the show will currently allow any queer relationship for Dean to go. Meaning a worst case scenario is that his borderline subtextual marriage to Cas may never move beyond a similar point if this remains the high water mark of the show’s willingness to show Dean in a genuine, sexual relationship with a man. And that’s something you have to at least think about, in terms of how it looks now, and how it might look one day, no matter how positive you are about the endgame of the show, when it comes to being realistic about the show’s queerbaiting, or at least perceived queerbaiting if you don’t believe they are. That’s what other people are seeing, both with Drowley and Destiel.

I mean, that deleted scene in 10x14 says it best: Cas and Crowley trapped together, frustrated and living in angry despair in their competition over Dean, where he is busy not picking either of them, while they vie for his attention and consider each other his boyfriend in all but name, and yet he will not commit to either of them in the way they desire. And this is the same frustrated wall that Cas is still stuck bouncing up against, even when his romantic rival is *utterly* vanquished and removed from the narrative, and hadn’t even really been competing for Dean for like 2 seasons before that.

#Asks #10x01 #dean x crowley for ts #this isn't meant wankily at all because I love the show and I'm forgiving and permissive of all this as anything #but still #I have to see this and call it when I do #regardless of how I feel in general about the show #so I am writing from as neutral a point of view as I can here #dean is bi #and you know I personally celebrated each and every nugget of Drowley subtext they gave us :P

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lyricdissonance · 7 years ago

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odds please! for ask thing

1. How do you define your sexuality?i’m bisexual, i also identify as queer3. At what age did you first suspect that you are sexually attracted to other girls?first started realizing i “like like” girls instead of just “like” at 15 I believe?5. Did you have an “aha I like girls” moment or was it more of a gradual realization?gradual realization, i had a whole lot of female actresses and musicians i really admired and then realized i was also attracted to them. then i kinda brushed that aside for a while, thinking that my celeb crushes didn’t count as real crushes, before i also got crushes on girls i knew irl which made me realize i definitely wasn’t straight7. How did you become comfortable with your sexuality?reading posts by bi bloggers on here helped a whole lot, they made me realize that i didn’t have to fit a narrow definition to be “allowed” to call myself bisexual. and as someone who grew up in a conservative environment, i probably wouldn’t have discovered my sexuality when i did without tumblr since i’d never been told before that it was ok to not be straight, and i thank the internet for showing me there are other ways to live life

9. Who was the first person you came out to? How did they take it?it was by text message to a male friend who was the only other bi person i really knew at the time. he was super supportive and we haven’t talked in a while but i’d love to catch up with him someday11. How out are you?out to friends and two family members, but closeted to most of my family. which means i can be gay on tumblr and twitter but not instagram and facebook. funny how that happens13. Was anyone surprised when you came out or did people seem to already know?a few people have been surprised, but these days when i meet someone new i prefer to casually mention my sexuality rather than do a real “coming out” and i don’t normally get any reaction from that15. How soon after meeting someone do you usually tell them about your sexuality?like the last answer, if i feel like i can trust them i’ll just try to slip it into conversation. i don’t have a timeline for when i do it though, it’s just whenever i feel ok doing it17. Have you ever wished you were completely straight?not so much that as just wishing my sexuality could be not a big deal. i’d love to be out to everyone but i know it would cause problems in a lot of my family relationships19. If you are not a lesbian, about what percentage of the time do you find yourself attracted to other girls?i gave up using percentages a while ago but i’m attracted to men and women about the same amount overall21. How often do you find yourself trying to sneak a peek or stare at a cute girl?only all the time because girls are Too Cute to not do that

23. What is your current relationship status?

single af

25. Do you remember anything about the first time you kissed another girl?i’ve kissed one person and she was nonbinary, we were hanging out in her dorm common room when she went for a kiss on the cheek and i was like “well we might as well do one on the lips too”27. What is your ideal first date?wherever we go i want us to be having fun! i love going out for food or drinks but if we don’t have a connection then it’s just us staring at our plates so there’s always that risk of it being too awkward. i’d love for us to try something new where we can talk and laugh while getting to know each other29. How flirty are you?i’m the certified worst at flirting. i’m trying to be more confident but my idea of flirting right now is staring across the room31 Do you want have children someday?no but i want to volunteer with children someday and do something to help make their lives better33. How often are you asked if you have a boyfriend?not often, i think my family is used to me saying no by now lmao35. Have you ever been on your period the same time as a girlfriend?nope (see above, single af)37. Have you ever been in a long distance relationship?nope39. Has a girl ever dumped you for a guy? Have you?nope and nope41. Have you ever had a crush on a straight girl?oh yes43. Would you ever date a trans woman?absolutely45. Where do you think is the best place to meet a potential lover?

a wendy’s parking lot in upstate new york

somewhere where you can meet people who have a common interest, like a bookstore or a dance class or an lgbt event. but the romantic in me wants to believe that the love of my life could be found anywhere

47. Have you ever cut your hair super short? If not, would you ever want to?have not but would love to! even if i don’t like it i want to be able to say i tried it49. What is your opinion on septum/bull nose piercings?don’t want one for myself, but i think they’re cute51. How muscular are you?not very53. Have you ever been told that you don’t look gay, or that you’re too pretty to be gay?

hasn’t happened to me

55. Do you wear skirts and dresses? If so, how often?i may not consider myself very feminine but i do love how skirts and dresses look on me. so like once or twice a week on average?57. How much jewelry do you typically wear?i go without it a lot but i like wearing a piece of statement jewelry when i think an outfit needs it59. How often do you wear a bra?almost always when i go out, but home is a No Bra Zone61. Have you ever worn a suit?nope but i’d try it!63. Do you carry a purse?yep, i find it convenient to have all my stuff with me65. Have you ever worn any men’s clothing?because of my body shape finding men’s clothes that fit well is Hard but i’ve worn men’s shirts on occasion67. Have you ever shared clothes with a girlfriend?

no but i like this idea so cute girls who are my size please hmu

69. Who is your favorite LGBT celebrity?my faves include freddie mercury, janelle monae, st. vincent, and lady gaga71. Have you ever watched Will & Grace?nope73. How well do you feel LGBT women are portrayed on television?i’d like for us to survive to the end of the show for one thing. and not be overly sexualized. i’m glad that we’re seeing more positive and happy depictions like on b99 but we could always use more75. Do you watch any LGBT YouTubers?tbh i don’t really follow any youtubers77. Do you have a favorite LGBT themed blog or website?i follow a lot of gay blogs on here, too many to choose a favorite. and i really like autostraddle.com79. Have you read any LGBT themed literature? If so, do you have any recommendations?

i really need to start reading more lgbt lit, but shoutout to the misfits by james howe which was the first time i ever encountered gay characters in literature. i think it’s important that that book showed a gay boy who was unashamed about liking feminine things and had friends who supported him. i know my young mind was opened a little after i read it. and now that i’m looking it up again it turns out the author is gay which makes it even better!

81. Boobs or butts?Certified Boob Lover (tm)83. Ellen or Portia?

probs ellen

85. Have you ever been to a gay bar or a gay club?no but there’s a gay club that’s popular w people at my school that is on my list! 87. Do you have any LGBT relatives?my sister, no others that i know of89. How outdoorsy are you?i’m definitely more outdoorsy than i used to be! i’ve learned to enjoy a bit of hiking, kayaking, and exploring but i still don’t do well with heat and bugs lol91. How many rainbow items do you own?one rainbow rubber bracelet, and a couple of bi pride items93. Have you ever participated in the National Day of Silence?no, as far as i know it was never a big thing at my school? i knew one or two people who did it95. Have you ever attended a PFLAG (Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays) meeting?no, i’m kinda curious about what a meeting would be like tho97. Have you ever been part of a softball team?nope99. Do you play any video games?

well i used to be a hardcore nintendogs player back in the day

101. (on a scale of 1-10, how attractive are...) Women who wear glasses?glasses on girls are GR8 - 10/10103. Women who are covered with piercings?kinda neutral on this, i support women getting the piercings they want but "covered with piercings” isn’t really something i look for in a person - 6/10105. Women with short hair?if you have short hair i am guaranteed gay for you - 10/10107. Tall women (i.e. around 1.83 meters/6 feet or taller)?

*wearing a shirt that says I <3 Tall Women and carrying a sign that says Tall Women Please Date Me* yes - 10/10

109. What does equality mean to you?to me it means i’m treated the same as anyone else and i have all the same opportunites111. Do you eat meat at all?yes113. How do you feel about the terms “woman crush” and “girl crush”?i find them harmful to girls trying to figure out their sexuality bc the implication of a “girl crush” is that all women have crushes on women and that it shouldn’t be taken as serious attraction. that being said i think a not-insignificant amount of women who say stuff like that just haven’t realized yet that they are attracted to women (i was one of them whoops) and i hope we can find ways to talk about the “girl crush” problem that leave room for questioning people to talk about their feelings115. How do you feel when people use the word gay to mean things such as stupid, dumb, boring, or idiotic?i hardly ever hear it anymore but i don’t like it117. What are your views on gender identity and bathroom use?everyone should be able to use the bathroom that they feel safest and most comfortable in, gender neutral bathrooms need to be everywhere, and any lawmakers who want to get in the way of that can fuck outta here119. Have you ever been called a gay slur?nope121. Have you ever been discriminated against because of your sexuality or gender identity? If so, please explain.not like, personally, but the number of people who have said in my presence that they “don’t believe” in bisexuality is Too High123. Americans: How did you feel on June 26, 2015?it was really incredible, i’d been watching as state by state (including my own) had legalized same-sex marriage and suddenly it was all across america. seeing all the love and happiness being poured out on that day was amazing125. Have you ever tried to “pray the gay away”?luckily i’ve never been there, but it breaks my heart to think about people going through that127. What LGBT stereotype do you most disagree with?"bi women are just doing it for male attention” excuse you i’m clearly doing it in the hopes that jenna coleman will fly to the states and elope with me get your facts right129. What advice would you give to a girl who is struggling to figure out her sexuality?

take your time! you don’t have to 100% understand your feelings but please let yourself feel what you feel and remember you are not alone. and i want to be here for questioning girls the same way that other people were there for me when i was questioning so if you need someone to talk to i am always here.

#thanks anon!!! <3 #wlwask #Anonymous #ask

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brittanyyoungblog · 4 years ago

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What Scientists Get Wrong About Relationships

I went to graduate school to study the psychology of romantic relationships. Relationships are one of the most significant and consequential things in our lives, with the quality of our relationships affecting both our physical and mental health. As a result, understanding what makes for happy, healthy, and successful relationships—and how we can help those who might be struggling—is of great scientific and social importance.

While I learned a great deal about relationship research and theory in my training that has since proven useful in my work, something I’ve increasingly noticed in the years since graduating is that many theories and models of relationships are based on faulty assumptions that may be hindering our ability to meaningfully understand how relationships work.

In this post, I’m going to focus on one specific theory of relationship commitment and discuss some of the problems embedded in it. This theory—the Investment Model of Commitment—is one that I’ve long held near and dear because it was developed by my academic grandmother, Caryl Rusbult (my graduate advisor’s former advisor). I’ve done a lot of work with this model over the years and have great respect for the creator, who has made a lot of important and enduring contributions to the science of relationships; however, this model, more than 40 years old at this point (and still widely used to this day), is overdue for a revision.

In a nutshell, the Investment Model posits that commitment to a given relationship is a function of three separate, but overlapping factors: investment size (the resources attached to a relationship, both tangible and intangible), satisfaction level (how you feel about the relationship), and quality of alternatives (the other romantic options you perceive outside of your relationship).

Commitment—the desire to persist in a relationship—is seen as being highest when there are many investments (you’ve poured a lot into it), satisfaction is high (you’re happy with how it’s going), and quality of alternatives is poor (you don’t perceive any better options).

Sounds pretty straightforward and makes sense, right? That’s what I thought for a long time, but I’ve come to see that there are some issues with the assumptions built into this model and the way its variables are measured.

First, this model was built around the presumption that everyone is (or wants to be) monogamous. The monogamy assumption is embedded in a few ways:

· Perceiving people other than your partner as attractive or desirable (i.e., having high quality alternatives) is necessarily seen as something that lowers commitment. In other words, if you think the idea of dating someone else or spending time with someone else is appealing, that’s seen as lowering the quality of the relationship. But what about people who are consensually non-monogamous? Research finds that about 1 in 5 adults say they’ve been in a sexually open relationship before--that’s a huge chunk of the population! And, of course, these folks find their alternatives to be attractive. But the model makes the problematic assumption that this is going to be to the detriment of their relationship.

· Similarly, one of the items used to measure commitment is, “It is likely that I will date someone other than my partner in the next year” (note that a low score on this item translates to a higher overall score on commitment). But what if you’re in a consensually non-monogamous relationship? That will ding your commitment score. That’s important to point out because it means that comparing commitment levels in monogamous and consensually non-monogamous relationships would likely show the non-monogamous folks as being less committed. This model is based on a definition of commitment rooted in monogamy as the ideal relationship state, which means it isn’t well suited for studying commitment in diverse relationship structures (which, as noted above, are very common) and could therefore lead to some faulty conclusions.

Another limitation of this model is that it doesn’t address sex anywhere. I think it goes without saying that sex is a pretty big part of most people’s relationships—and sex can be seen as both an investment (having built a sex life and sexual communication skills together) and a part of satisfaction (how you feel about the overall relationship). It’s a curious omission, but not surprising because, in the past, the field of sex research has historically been quite separate from the field of relationship research. Incidentally, this is part of the reason why I fuse both sex and relationships into the work that I do—I think it’s important to not just study one or the other.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that this model should be discarded or that it hasn’t made an important contribution to the study of relationships—just that it’s time to be revised and updated and, in doing so, we can further enhance our understanding of when and why relationships work, and when they don’t.

Plus, many of the necessary revisions are easy enough to make. For example, sex could be added to the satisfaction and investment scales with simple items such as “I feel satisfied with our sex life” and “I have put a lot of time and effort into building a sex life with my partner.”

Likewise, we need to remove the presumption of monogamy and revise the model such that it accounts for diverse relationship structures. This would include dropping the problematic commitment item mentioned above, while also revising the alternatives scale. Revising the alternatives scale is the heaviest lift because it necessitates reconceptualizing what a “relationship alternative” really means anyway.

There are at least two types of alternatives: the alternatives you could have instead of your current relationship (e.g., being alone, being in a different relationship, having a different type of relationship), and the alternatives you could have in addition to your current relationship (e.g., keeping your current relationship but having additional sexual and/or romantic partners). These are very different things—and would likely have very different implications for how committed someone is to their relationship.

For example, if you see the alternatives that involve ending your relationship and doing something different as being very appealing, that would likely put a damper on commitment. By contrast, if you see the alternatives that you could have in addition to your relationship as appealing, that could potentially have the opposite effect—and pursuing those alternatives might even strengthen the relationship by fulfilling unmet needs.

Of course, if those “in addition” alternatives involve cheating rather than consensual non-monogamy, that might very well result in different effects. But that just serves to further highlight why we need to reconceptualize this whole idea of “alternatives” and what we’re really talking about here: breaking-up, cheating, having an open relationship, or something else.

The Investment Model is just one of many relationship models that are ripe for revision. My hope is that we’ll start revisiting some of the old standards in the field, check them for embedded assumptions, and update them in ways that can better account for relationship diversity.

Want to learn more about Sex and Psychology? Click here for previous articles or follow the blog on Facebook (facebook.com/psychologyofsex), Twitter (@JustinLehmiller), or Reddit (reddit.com/r/psychologyofsex) to receive updates. You can also follow Dr. Lehmiller on YouTube and Instagram.

Image Source: 123RF/Natalia Kopyltsova