#obligatory jenkins good reference here

[akilliosacheron]

i have a complex about not disliking blaseball characters for any lore related reasons, if theyre lored to be 'unlikeable' or are gradually disliked by a team and i feel like its odd to be like that 🤔

like, you were given this guy and maybe they arent good at the game but someone decided that they were unredeemable (exaggeration) and then it became popular and its like... i dunno

i also have a complex about players who are bad at the game and get ignored and i accidentally went on a rant about it in the tags for yall eho know moist talkers players lol

[mayihavethisdanse]

“What is this, the Dark Ages?”

Or, Arthurian themes and allusions in the Brotherhood of Steel mythos as seen in Fallout 4. (But that’s a lot of words.)

Yep. We're doing this. 

First, some obligatory caveats: there is no single Arthurian canon, just 1500 years of assorted fanfic based on the whims of whoever was writing at the time. For this extremely highbrow Tumblr meta, I have ignored most of it and drawn on my favorites. Also Wikipedia.

Also, I am not an expert in Arthurian literature (or Fallout lore, come to that), and I preemptively beg the pardon of anyone who is.

Finally, in no way am I claiming that all these parallels and thematic echoes are deliberate or even significant. In fact, I'd break it down into:

Clearly deliberate allusions, whether in or out of universe;

Probably coincidence, but could be someone deliberately capitalizing on a coincidental similarity;

Almost certainly coincidence, but fun to speculate about; annnnd

Blatant Monty Python references. (Because of course there are.)

I'll start with the big one.

Arthur Maxson, boy king and unifier

(source)

So across all the retellings and variations of King Arthur’s life story, there are a few consistent elements, particularly in his early life and rise to power. Some of these threads are echoed in the Fallout universe, specifically (and unsurprisingly) in the person of Arthur Maxson.

Both the legendary King Arthur and Arthur Maxson were born with a claim to power lying in their ancestry, both were fostered away from their families, and both proved themselves in combat at a young age. 

King Arthur united the warring kingdoms of Britain into a single entity, making them stronger against outsiders and receiving general admiration and acclaim. Arthur Maxson united the divided factions of the BoS after the events of Fallout 3 and is held in similarly high regard by his men.

The name Prydwen is a reference to the ship of the original King Arthur. Presumably, Arthur Maxson (or someone in the BoS who anticipated his promotion) christened the airship in a deliberate homage to the Arthurian myth.

King Arthur is associated with his legendary sword. I think it’s notable that Maxson’s legend is associated with a bladed weapon, too. ("He killed a DEATHCLAW with a COMBAT KNIFE!”)

Probably coincidence, but fun: the historical emperor Magnus Maximus, who pops up a lot in early Arthurian legend, was known in Welsh as... Macsen. (⌐■_■)

Round Table, but make it dieselpunk

(Continued under the cut.)

Moving away from obvious allusions and into some looser parallels:

Like the Round Table, the Brotherhood is an exclusive knightly order with its leader being the one able to open it up to his chosen few.

Like the Round Table, the BoS sees itself as defending human civilization against forces of chaos. (I’ll touch on their tech-hoarding tendencies when I get to the Grail stuff.) This idea of civilization in the face of chaos goes back to the BoS’s founding, even though the level of isolationism we see in most of the Fallout franchise is not exactly what founder Roger Maxson had in mind: “Notably, Maxson's ultimate intention was to establish the Brotherhood as an organization that works closely with people outside of the Brotherhood, as guardians of civilizations, not its gatekeepers.” (source) In a lot of ways, Arthur Maxson represents a return to his ancestor’s original ideals.

Renegade knights? Internal politics? Traitors within? We gotchu.

In both the medieval legends and in all chapters of the BoS we’ve seen, there’s a big focus on bloodlines (ew). Ironically, it’s probably Arthur Maxson’s unquestionable ancestry that allows him to be more progressive than either of his East Coast predecessors when it comes to boosting Brotherhood numbers by recruitment (even though you can still see a clear division between “born Brotherhood” and recruited soldiers, but that’s a topic for another day). Maxson sees himself as an Elder who "cares for the people"—however misguided and patronizing that attitude might be—and whatever else you might say about the guy, you can't say he doesn't believe he has a duty. Which brings us to…

Know Your Enemy: Danse as Gawain

Before I start this section, an acknowledgement of authorial bias:

Gawain, as portrayed in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is my very favorite of King Arthur’s knights. (Other stories aren't always as flattering, but like I said at the outset: I'm sticking to the ones I like.)

That poem is my very favorite piece of medieval Arthurian literature. In this section, I'll refer to the modern English translation by Simon Armitage.

...that’s it, I have no other biases to disclose. 

What? 👀

(Art: Clive Hicks-Jenkins)

All right. So in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you’ve got this himbo loyal knight of Arthur’s who finds himself caught up in... you know what, let me just paste in the Wikipedia summary. (The Toast, RIP, also did a pretty entertaining and more-or-less accurate recap.)

It describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who dares any knight to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain, Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving the lord and the lady of the castle where he is a guest.

Don’t worry too much about the plot details, though; for this post, I’m more interested in the thematic parallels. The Green Knight story is full of contrasts: order vs. chaos, civilization vs. wilderness, mortal man vs. Other... but let’s start with Gawain himself. 

Some stuff to know about Gawain:

He was "as good as the purest gold, devoid of vices but virtuous and loyal". Gawain took his principles more seriously even than the rest of Arthur’s knights, not out of pride but out of humility: "I would rather drop dead than default from duty," he says. 

He’s faithful and honorable and never even tempted to betray an oath, even when offered every variety of seduction and riches, except for a single moment of weakness in a desperate desire not to be executed for random shit by powerful forces for reasons he doesn't understand.  

Even though he doesn’t really understand why he needs to die, he sticks to his oath. Gawain's one weakness is a moment of desperate, private, human desire for survival. He'll submit to the headsman’s axe if he has to, but he'd still rather live. 

Above all, Gawain is the ideal of a human man: he might be the bravest and loyal man there is, but he’s still fundamentally human.

You can probably see where I'm going with this.

A few more fun facts about Gawain that resonate with Paladin Danse’s story:

He’s got a bunch of really shitty brothers. (No comment.)

Gawain (SPOILERS!) doesn't actually end up beheaded, but he does willingly kneel for his execution and gets a cut on the throat as a reminder of his sin. And, uh, Danse can also get his throat cut! It doesn’t end as nicely but it’s, you know, a thing that can happen.

Gawain might be a really good guy, and he tries really hard to be one, but in the end he’s nothing more than that: there’s nothing supernatural about him, he has no special powers beyond his own principles and devotion. He’s just a dude doing his Best. 

Wait, why not Danselot?

Oh, that guy? Here’s the thing.

Lancelot personifies the continental ideals of courtly love that became popular in the High Middle Ages. Central to his story is the prioritization of personal relationships and romantic feelings in a way that you don’t really see in Gawain's, at least in the Green Knight tale. (Later stories hook Gawain up with an extremely delightful lady, but even that is a different flavor of romance than Lancelot's and has more to do with Gawain honoring his word and his egalitarian treatment of women (hell yeah). In the poem, Gawain is impressed by Bertilak's wife but resists her temptation; in fact, the biggest risk is not that he'll yield to her advances but that he'll be discourteous to her, i.e., violate his principles and cause dishonor to his king and his host.)

Lancelot is driven by passions over principles in a way that Gawain never really is (at least in the stories I’m talking about; later writers have committed character assassination to various degrees). Yes, you could argue that both Gawain and Lancelot betray their oaths, but Lancelot’s betrayal is never, um, blind. He knows what he’s doing and makes a deliberate choice to prioritize his love for the queen over his love for the king. It doesn’t make him a bad guy—he too is an ideal knight with one fatal flaw—but his character isn’t as comparable to Paladin Danse. 

Yeah, Gawain is (in most stories) a prince and a kinsman of Arthur’s, but he’s ultimately a native boy who doesn’t break the mold of a Knight of the Round Table. Likewise, Danse is portrayed as competent and valuable to the BoS, but not exceptional or breaking the mold of what a BoS soldier should be: he simply represents the ideal. Meanwhile, Lancelot is a foreign prince who was marked from childhood as special and fancy, and his storyline goes alllll over the place. (Much like this post.)

For example, Lancelot goes to absolutely absurd extremes to prove his devotion for no other reason than to prove it. (“I’ll do any useless humiliating thing you want. I’ll betray every oath except the one I made to you. That’s what love is!”) Gawain would never. Danse would never.

Ultimately, Gawain's tests are of his character and not of his love. And like Gawain, Danse’s devotion is to service and his principles, not to another person—even Arthur Maxson.

All that said, there are some similarities: both are beloved by Arthur, both are held up as the ideal of what a knight should be. And even if their fatal flaws are different, both make the point that no matter how good and brave and loyal they might be, no human being can be perfect. 

(Except Galahad. Who is, as a result, very boring.) 

I’ll conclude this section with a quote from someone else’s take on the Greek Knight poem:

I like Gawain. He’s not perfect, but he’s trying his best which is all any of us can do. He’s not like the other knights in the Arthurian legends who occasionally ‘accidentally’ kill women on their little adventures and then feel hard done by when they have to deal with the consequences of that. Gawain holds himself to a high standard – higher, it seems, than Arthur and his knights hold him to considering how hard they laugh when Gawain tells them how bad he feels about the whole thing.

I think Gawain is very relatable in this story. We all want to be better than we actually are.

And that, more than anything else, is Danse.

The Grail myth

What’s that? Lost relics of power? Better send some large armed men after ‘em!

The parallels to the BoS’s tech-hoarding ways are obvious enough that the games themselves lampshade them (albeit by way of Monty Python). But it also ties into the larger themes of “purity” versus “corruption” and the BoS’s self-image as a bastion between civilization and chaos. (See Maxson's line in response to the Sole Survivor’s quip about the Dark Ages: “Judging from the state of the world, it wouldn't be a stretch to say we're living in that era again.”)

But the ultimate futility of the Grail mission is also worthy of note. The BoS might want the power of prewar tech on their side, but they’re no more to be trusted with it than any other group of human beings. No matter how they try, the “corruption” of humanity can’t be overcome as long as they’re striving to harness power for their own ends. You can only achieve power by surrendering control of it.

The death of Arthur

The nature of gameplay being what it is, it's not guaranteed that the Arthur figure will be fatally betrayed, bringing Camelot down with him—but it's not unlikely, either.

Awkward.

Some final spitballing:

Outside the Brotherhood, there are some fun parallels of the Arthur myth with the rest of Fallout 4. Betrayal by one’s own son, for example.

The key difference between the BoS and the legendary Round Table: King Arthur’s knights, for all their flaws and human weaknesses, are usually presented as unambiguous Good Guys. The BoS is... a little more ambiguous...

...but damn if they don’t think they're the good guys. 

A-ad victoriam, fellas!

[bisexualamy]

Top 5 Books of 2020

Last year I did a top 5 books of 2019 post and I really enjoyed it, so I’m doing it again! Reading was a really wonderful way for me to keep my head above water during this Year Of Hell and hopefully some of y’all will enjoy these <3 Also this is your obligatory reminder to support your local libraries. You don’t need to buy Audible. Many libraries will let residents get access to their online catalogs during the ongoing end times even if they’ve suspended in person service.

(Also mutuals DM me and add me on Goodreads. Pls. I want more Goodreads friends.)

5. Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery

Okay, some of y’all know I love personal essays. I never read the The Toast while it was still active, so this was my first time reading any of Lavery’s longform work. I often struggle reading transmasc narratives because my experience of my own gender runs counter to the “traditional” narrative. I feel like I grew into being a man instead of necessarily being born one, it feels disingenuous to refer to myself as a little boy, etc. This collection of essays really saw me. Lavery’s anxiety around what transitioning into a man will “make him become”, his attempts to reconcile his female gendered experiences with is present dysphoria and reality, gah I loved it. Also, the essay about William Shatner just, I feel very seen.

Lavery is Christian and this book is very much from a Christian perspective. His faith is obviously very important to him and I valued the perspective he has in reconciling his religious upbringing with being trans. You guys know that I talk a lot about marrying my own Jewish faith with my gender and sexuality, how I spent years (and still do) attempt to reconcile the two. Ask myself questions like “what does it mean to be a Jewish man?” There were parts of this book that just didn’t resonate with me, but I’m not Christian. If Christian religious references trigger or otherwise affect you, definitely proceed with caution here. But Lavery is very earnest in his discussion of the topic and I think it shows in the final book.

(Also, the metaphor of Joseph wrestling the angel and being given a new name as a double-edged metaphor for transness? How did I not think of this before. It’s perfect.)

I could go on but I highly recommend any transmasc folks who feel like me to read this book. This is the kind of book I want to buy my own copy of, reread, and annotate.

4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This book has been picked up a bit by booklr, as it deserves. I really didn’t think I would like it in the beginning bc of the framing device, and boy was I wrong. Do you want a wlw love story told with honesty and care and emotional depth? Read this book. This book isn’t fluffy, but I didn’t finish it feeling betrayed. Also, I’m absolute sucker for a story set in Old Hollywood.

3. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

This book is not specifically about “cancel culture” (it was written in 2015) and I think bc of that it’s actually a great resource. While it starts by looking at Twitter, Ronson looks a lot more at how society shames people overall. He looks at the workplace, sex and the sex industry, and the prison system. He’s also just, really funny. This isn’t my first book of his but it’s definitely my favorite.

2. The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

This book was actually a bday gift from a friend, and she was so right! I’ve read dreadfully little Terry Pratchett and everything I read that he’s a part of, I love. The basic premise is “what if the multiverse was discovered tomorrow and anyone could go there. What happens to society?” It’s hard for me to talk about what I loved about this book without spoiling it, but suffice to say it constantly subverts your expectations. It’s both realistic and optimistic, the worldbuilding feels so cool and real, and a large part of it is just, exploring this new world. It’s been a while since I read a book where the main conflict wasn’t inherently antagonistic, and I really enjoyed that.

1. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraquib

I have talked my friends’ ears off about this book already but please everyone should try reading some of Abdurraquib’s work. I was only familiar with some of his poetry and spoken word stuff before this, and his books are just as good. This book is more than the sum of its parts: it’s poetry and personal essay and cultural history and music journalism. It’s personal and analytical and real. It’s so, so good. You don’t need to know much about hip-hop to enjoy this book, but if you do it’s that much better. Abdurraquib is so good at slipping you in and out of anecdote. You don’t realize you’re reading poetry until you’re immersed in it. Just, I cannot recommend this book enough.

[notbecauseofvictories]

The Shape of Water: Review

I feel like I should preface this by saying that I have...zero background in cinema. In college, I used to throw pillows at my Film Studies friends any time they started talking about whatever grim Russian film was assigned that week. I think reviewers and critics make a big deal out of what is essentially the only question I care about: “Will this make me feel a genuine human emotion?” (Follow up questions, “If not, why?” and “If so, how?” are permitted, because I do recognize critical analysis of art is important.)

The point is: I’ll let more knowledgeable folks talk about cinematic quality and technical skill. I’m here to talk about how the movie made me feel.

Another side note: I do genuinely think that the most important thing that any piece of art can do is make you feel a feeling. It can be any feeling or any shade of feeling from sadness to joy and misanthropy to optimism, plus those harder to pin down emotions like the I-didn’t-know-anyone-else-felt-this mix of recognition, relief and understanding. Emotions are very particular and specific, and yet at once universally human; intrinsic to our existence and yet we’ve spent millennia talking about them as though there’s a fascinating and eternally unknown quantity. (Terence’s “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto” was probably ironic, but it’s such a good phrase I’ll forgive him for it.)

Anyway, The Shape of Water did make me feel a feeling, but it was not the feeling I was expecting to feel.

Given the trailer, posters, marketing etc. for the film (and probably my own bias) I went in expecting the love story to be central---emotionally and to the plot. I was prepared to swept away by monster romance and the transgressive eroticism that comes with it. I was primed. I was ready.

Except that was not the story del Toro wanted to tell. Crimson Peak was his Gothic romance and love affair with the grotesque, and he’d moved on. Specifically, to the US in the 1950s, where the grotesque isn’t meant to elicit both empathy and disgust, but just disgust---and the 1950s has a long list of ways to be grotesque. (Conveniently, our main characters illustrate this: not-speaking, not-straight, not-white, not-American.) I’m not sure when the concept of “normal” came into being, but the US definitely rolled out its most pervasive and rigidly-enforced incarnation with full-page color ads and Leave it to Beaver. The American fantasy of the nuclear family and the suburban ranch, a Cadillac in the driveway 

But the American fantasy is just that, and del Toro underscores its artificiality multiple times. One of the early scenes features Giles---a gay alcoholic illustrator, played with incredible humor by Richard Jenkins---dragging Our Heroine, Eliza, to a diner for pie. As he’s ringing them up, the owner of the diner drops his southern twang and confides in Giles he’s really from Ottowa; the decorations and folksy character of the diner were mandated by corporate. The key lime pie they take home is bright, artificial green and Eliza spits it out, disgusted.

(Artificial green is a running theme, and always associated with the American fantasy asserting itself. Giles is told to change the color of jello in an advertisement from red to green before being shut out of the project for his past; when military operative Strickland, The Villain, thinks he’s on his way to a promotion due to his capture of the Fishman, he buys a “teal” Cadillac that everyone mistakes for green.)

(...I think del Toro might have cribbed some notes from Gatsby, but it makes thematic sense so I’m not complaining.)

Of course the problem with the American fantasy is that it is fundamentally dishonest, with nothing but money and power driving. There’s no emotional or human honesty there. “Decency is something we sell, son,” the Obligatory 5-Star General says to Strickland. “We export it because we weren’t using it.” The fantasy hurts the people outside it by pushing them further out; while Giles and Eliza have one another, they both articulate how alone they feel, simply because they fall outside the narrow boundaries of the fantasy. Zelda---Octavia Spencer, acting rings around everyone---is unfulfilled and unhappy, though she’s followed the script for her life.

But the fantasy also hurts the people who struggle to live within it. Strickland is an extraordinarily terrifying and convincing Villain, in part because he so clearly spirals over the inability to be the fantasy he aspires to. He certainly feels comfortable passing judgment and enforcing it; he calls the Fishman an “abomination” and refers to “your people” when talking to Zelda; tells Eliza he “doesn’t mind” that she can’t speak. After all, he has the car, the split-level ranch, the June Cleaver wife and the two children and the job---he fits into the fantasy. At least until he doesn’t.

(In an early scene, Fishman bites off two of Strickland’s fingers. Strickland has them reattached---he refuses to be “incomplete”---but the surgery doesn’t take. For the rest of the movie, Strickland’s fingers slowly rot, indicating his deteriorating mental state, and this is my favorite conceit in the entire movie.)

However, it would be a mistake to think that del Toro is dismissing American fantasies entirely. He has his Heroine live above a movie theater, and there’s a song-and-dance number like something out of an L.B. Meyer flick; Giles and Eliza watch black-and-white movies on their television and practice tap. Del Toro is obviously not turning his back on the sheer fantasy of the screen. Additionally, the action is bracketed with obvious fairytale narration---a princess, a prince, a monster. The main plot is the rescue of a prince from the tower and the final act involves Sleeping Beauty awakened to herself with a kiss.

But the difference between the American fantasy and the fairytale del Toro paints is that the fairytale comes from an honest and human place. It doesn’t exclude any character---in fact, as they come to believe in it, they find themselves freer. Zelda sees her marriage for what it is; Giles stops clinging to his old partner, his untenable crush on the diner owner; Eliza finds herself complete. Dr. Hoffstetler, who is secretly a Russian spy, refuses to kill the Fishman and shyly tells Eliza to call him Dmitri.

And in the end, that’s what I felt the most---when, one by one, the characters all believe in the fairytale instead of the fantasy and are freer for it. That’s where the emotional core of the film comes from. That exclusionary fantasies can be escaped, by changing the stories we believe in and tell.

This is not to say that monster romance isn’t an element! The relationship between Eliza and the Fishman is central to the plot, it is the driver for everything that happens. The movie takes pains to establish Eliza’s routines for the audience, so she can obviously break them for the weird scaly dude in the fishtank. But it isn’t the emotional core of the movie, and it isn’t trying to be. It’s the honest fairytale that punctures the fantasy, the Real Deal of blue and red in a world of artificial green.

And for those who asked: yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus fishsex.

Other thoughts:

It is an unexpectedly and extremely funny movie. It might have been the audience---they laughed at everything, it was infectious---but also I think that in making it very human, del Toro brought a brightness and a levity to the screen that just isn’t there in some of his other work. Plus, Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins are just a pleasure to watch, and their comedic timing is impeccable.

It is also a very violent movie? Not that del Toro has ever shied away from violence, but this was Tarantino-esque in places.

Michael Stuhlbarg is one of those actors that every time he’s in a scene, I can’t help watching his face. He had a smaller role as a USSR undercover spy/scientist, especially compared to Spencer and Jenkins, but I love watching him.

The fantastical elements. I mean, I knew they had to exist, because this is del Toro’s homage to American fairytales, but in particular there’s a sex scene....

I did find some of the nudity gratuitous, not...untasteful, just it existed more than it needed to. But that might have been because I was in a theater full of people, and I’m easily embarrassed.

Honestly, my only complaint is that I could have done with more romance, or more establishing shots to develop the attraction between Eliza and the Fishman. I didn’t get the frisson of chemistry between them, and while I don’t think it’s an enormous impact, I was disappointed.