#sex is not inherently more evil or potentially evil than literally any other thing that can be used to abuse

[craycraybluejay]

ik people like to act like sex and imbalanced sexual dynamics are uniquely traumatizing (moreso than any other kind of power imbalance, abuse of power, or just flat out abuse period) but from personal experience not really. there's nothing inherent to sex and sexuality that makes it traumatizing. there's nothing inherent to sexual trauma that makes it more traumatic than any other trauma.

and chiefly trauma is never really about the intentions of any party who made or let it happen. someone who wants, intends, and tries to hurt you might bounce off you just like that; because they simply failed to psychologically damage you, because what they did didn't bother you a lot whether it be mental physical or sexual. conversely someone who does not want, intend, or try to hurt you may scar you for life with something either they don't understand is harmful or isn't even inherently harmful and is uniquely that way to you.

i just. i'm annoyed at the narrative of trauma being taken away from the survivor themself. if i say this was traumatizing and you think it's not a big deal, too fucking bad, listen to me. if i say that wasn't traumatizing at all and you think it's the worst thing in the world upon hearing what it is, too fucking bad, you don't get to tell me what my trauma is. i'm sick of seeing people put words in each others mouths and tell someone's story for them without that person's consent. idk like? it makes me so angry that whenever i used to talk about things people would blatantly disregard the most horrific times of my life and instead focus on stuff i was neutral or even positive toward as a big terrible thing that ruined me.

nowadays i'm very grateful to have people who are chill and don't jump to conclusions no one asked them to. people who listen when i tell them "i know this sounds bad but it wasn't actually" or "i know this sounds stupid but this was world shattering." people who i get to laugh with. the RIGHT people who extend me the same kindness of knowing their strange "good bad things" and "bad fine things."

life just isn't as simple as "this is always terrible for people" and "this is always fine for people." PEOPLE aren't a monolith. yes, even that thing that you think must be the worst thing possible. yes, even that thing that you think no one could possibly be hurt by. it's hard to involve myself in serious discussions about abuse because there is a very clear Narrative people want to follow and if you as a "victim" don't follow it then either it didn't happen or you're wrong about your own experience.

hopefully I can consult my therapist about this phenomenon in discussions of abuse and trauma. and also about the specific thing that made me think of this. it irritates me quite a lot when others pity me for something that i knowingly chose-- and in retrospect never hurt me either. like what are you fishing for. why are you looking at me like that. i'm fine, maybe you're the one that needs counseling if my talking about this creates such a visceral reaction in you.

[renidrag]

why do u think Luz is trying to get closer to Greta? is it possible she only likes drama and getting in the middle of it? lol

I kind of fluctuate on this one - I think Luz does probably love a bit of drama, she’s said that she’s an asshole and seems to think it’s kind of endearing lmao

Where I sit is that Luz wanted Riley (duh cause she’s hotter than the sun) and then she had her, so now she’s onto the next thing cause Riley’s obviously not in a place to date her or even want to have sex with her again. Greta was maybe initially attractive in that Riley was all heart eyes over her and there’s nothing hotter to Luz than someone someone else wants (this might have played into the Riley thing as well, like Luz wanted her because Greta did too) but also they have shared experiences that have brought them closer together, and Greta refusing to hook up with Luz is probably making her more into it??

I don’t think Luz is like inherently evil cause she’s literally a teenager - I think maybe she just likes girls and as many girls as possible. She’s had Riley and now she wants Greta and she doesn’t know what’s happened between them because Greta won’t talk about it. That’s not to say I think she’d back off if she knew but she certainly doesn’t have all the puzzle pieces rn

From Greta’s perspective I think Luz is attractive in that she’s headstrong and goes after what she wants which means Greta doesn’t have to make any decisions, she immediately understands Greta’s home life, and she also has the potential to piss off Sela or at least her presence insinuates that Greta is gay to her mum without having to have that conversation. There’s no way she’s over Riley like at all but Luz is no-emotional-strings-or-traumatic-experiences-attached so it’s probably a relief to find someone that’s overtly attracted to her that’s making it easy

EDIT: I forgot to mention that Luz probably wants Greta also just cause she’s hot and vice versa like sexy people can just like other sexy people

[13tinysocks]

I wanna see some anti fanfic rec plspls

You asked for it. May I present, a creepypasta x reader anti-reading list.

Quick Disclaimer: No author names will be dropped nor fic links or sites they’re on. I dislike these works but I don’t want anybody to be harassed. Don’t go after people, holy shit. These works are only here because of some heavily disturbing content. One of them just makes me super mad because of a few circumstances. These are purely my opinions. I am not writing Jesus nor do I write the cleanest stories out there. Dark topics should be explored in fiction. However, some things just shouldn’t fucking be romanticized. Fanfic is practice, I’m not taking points off for wonky writing.

You’re allowed to like whatever the fuck you want. I’m not shaming you or the authors. I’m talking about media I dislike, which I am completely allowed to do. If your friend or favorite author’s work is in here, maybe don’t send this to them. I get it’s tempting but still, it could be upsetting. Again, don’t fucking harass anybody. 

This list is in order of - Pisses me off to FBI open up to whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck.

Content warning for: Rape, miscarriages, abortion, necrophilia, sexism, child grooming, multiple types of abuse, ablism, and meanie head criticism of popular fics. Seriously, this gets exceptionally bad at the final one. 

First up in our lineup a pretty popular. It’s the least upsetting and problematic. It’s a various creepypasta x reader mansion fic. This is more of an honorable mention because it’s frustrating to read over being super bad.

Recruited.

Summary: (Y/n) killed an attempted rapist and covered it up years ago. She is recruited into the cpp’s to be considered as a proxy along with two others. Follow her through a journey of no character development into becoming a proxy.

What’s wrong with it?

-Brian literally is a misogynist. He literally hates women.

-(Y/n) is an asshole. Not in an entertaining bad bitch way. No, in an unaware bland way. Points off for being a business major, girl you have no soul and it shows.

-She is treated like the voice of reason who is always morally correct. Thing is, if anyone is neurodivergent or mentally ill and ya’know shows symptoms of it, they’re cRaZy, evil, and an annoyance. 

-Yes, people creeping on or getting clingy can be shitty/annoying but sometimes the way (Y/n) acts is completely unjust. It left a bad taste in my mouth because the character felt okay to be shitty to people who weren’t like her.

-The endings are disheartening and make no fucking sense. Cody, who is clingy at worst, gets rejected Jack, who TRIES TO BREAK (Y/N)’S FUCKING LEG, gets with her. Can I get a HELLO?????? 

-(Y/n) also doesn’t get with Jeff who suddenly turned into her brother character after hundreds of pages of romantic tension. Again, Recruited is not inherently bad but it may be really disappointing to people who are here for 1-2 specific characters.

-Queer bait-y author’s notes and inconstant love interests. Author’s notes would read like “Teehee, maybe I’ll make (Y/n) have Jane and/or Natalie endings……” But that never happens after it’s teased multiple times. I get not wanting to add more to your plate but don’t suggest it if you don’t want to do it or only want to please heterosexual readers.

-They put Tim outside like a dog for being a bad boy. 

-Author’s notes and percentages fill in details for the reader that aren’t in the fic. I’m not going to read all of that. Put important information in the fic. 

-Lot’s of excessive jealousy. Painfully heteronormative. 

What about the good?

Readable. Dramatic like Big Brother. Can be an entertaining read if it’s your thing.

Conclusion

Left a bad taste in my mouth. I feel like the author literally hated half the cast and was annoyed while writing them. When you don’t enjoy writing something it shows. Also, her other work (pandemic! Reader X X-Virus) is super tone-deaf and I don’t recommend that either. Don’t recommend joining this fic’s Discord server either. Won’t get into details but in my and my friend's experience: it’s not a good environment with a lot of playing favorites. 

-

Next up on our list is a grossly popular Eyeless Jack X Reader fic.

My Imaginary Monster

Summary: Immoral monster, Eyeless Jack, sneaking into a 5-year-old girl's room. He gets attached, sticks around through her childhood. Thing is, he gets real creepy. Starts to catch feelings for a 16-year-old he’s watched grow up. He kisses a minor who reciprocates his feelings which is textbook child grooming. Nasty fucker runs away, there’s some drama from that. (Y/n) grows up, comes back to town, and Jack’s a’creepin’.

What’s wrong with it?

-Jack is a literal child groomer. 

-Do I need to say more??? Immortal adult kisses a 16 y/o. Gross.

-People in the comments are going gaga for grooming. Are you kidding me, he’s a pedophile.

-The OC’s take up more than half of the ~200 page run time. I couldn’t get attached to any of them even after the supposed significance. Which is fine but they took up so much of the fic that it got boring and annoying incredibly quickly.

What’s good about it?

I enjoyed Ben. He did the right thing and I can respect that. Trans and poluyamourus reprrensentation.

Conclusion:

No child grooming in my fucking lobby. I think the author was trying to paint it in a bad light. But the thing is, you can write a creepy stalker fic without making them a groomer. A lot of people are trying to escape their troubles through fanfic, including those who’ve dealt with sexual abuse. Don’t bring that into x reader spaces. Don’t put readers through that again. 

-

Last and absolutely least we got a Tim X Reader. 

BIG TW. FUCKING HUGE TW. MOST OF THE TW’S FROM EARLIER ARE FROM THIS ONE FIC. 

Pure Forgiveness.

Summary: (Y/n) is abused by her mom. Her dad killed himself and she’s all (Y/n)’s got in this world. Until Tim comes along and “saves” her. He takes her to the mansion and keeps her as a pet to torture. 

I’m going to get into all the nitty-gritty to satisfy your morbid curiosities so you don’t read it. 

What’s wrong with it?

-Chapter 1 opens with (Y/n)’s miserable life. Her mom hates her so much she has a fucking torture table for (Y/n).

-There’s an attempted rape in chapter 2.

- She’s taken to the mansion by Tim in chapter 3 because he’s “off his medication” and “acting nicer than normal”. Hi, mentally ill person here, that’s not how it fucking works you ding dong. 

-Mental illness is made out to we wholly evil.

-Also tic’s are made out to be scary. As a person with tics, don’t write tics as scary or super weird. Thanks.

-(Y/n) not being able to escape, fight back rapists, and other horrible shit is labeled as weak.

-At one point (Y/n) is dragged through the mansion, beer bottles and used condoms are thrown at her. Girl has to shower off cum.

-(Y/n) is tortured in various ways. Mostly beaten, berated, burned, cut, starved, etc. 

-She is drugged and repeatedly raped by Brian and Toby. These rapes are recorded and shown to (Y/n).

-Brian has black hair. Why?

-Toby and Brian give (Y/n) a forced abortion.  

-(Y/n) gets raped almost every fucking chapter.

-At one point Jack orally rapes (Y/n) to abort a baby. 

-Toby and Brian are necrophiles. They skull fuck a corpse at some point. It is graphically described how they like to have sex with dead bodies.

-Slenderman forcefully impregnates (Y/n) to “keep the (Tim’s) baby safe” whatever the fuck that means.

Why does this happen?

Because Tim wants a kid because his dad raped his mom and his mom was a prostitute. He’s soooo sad guys :(((

Feeling hungry? Here’s some things that are eaten by various characters.

-Hair 

-Cum (forced)

-Toby 

-Piss 

-A miscarried baby 

What’s good about it?

Nothing. Fucking nothing. Don’t read it.

Conclusion

If you like this fic you need therapy, I’m not joking. It’s like a car crash and Rob Zombie movie horribly mish-mashed together. It sucks. The comments praise literal abuse and berate (Y/n) for being afraid. Fuck this fic and everything it stands for. It’s shock horror and torture for the sake of it. It makes no fucking sense and it’s harmful. People think this is okay. It’s not. 

-

Thank you to my pals in the server for helping out and finishing some of these where I could not. Especially you Connie, everyone say thank you Connie she got through Pure Forgiveness. Absolute trooper legend. Again, don’t go out of your way to harass these people. I made this list so you can avoid these works because they have the potential to be upsetting. I’m not the police, I can’t force anyone to stop nor do I want to. Author’s are allowed to explore dark topics but some should be done respectfully or not at-fucking-all. I hope these people grow as writers and understand treating some things a certain way isn’t cool. You can enjoy dark fics, I do too, fuck I write them too, but Jesus God, some things are a no from me chief.

[hellsbellschime]

1I feel for Jamie so much. Right now he resents himself, what he has become. It is not how others see him, I disagree. It is how he sees himself. He tried to kill Bran, but he saved a million people. His reckoning with what he did to Bran has not come yet; for all he knows so far Bran is dead, and not by his own hand. Meeting him again will be a great moment for him (arghhhh, the show took that away from us!) He has come to the realization that what he has become was because of Cersei. Therefore

2 he chose to leave her and not return yet in search of himself. He is going through an identity crisis, not exactly a redemption arc, because his crimes are frankly, at least as I see them, not that great (apart from what he did to Bran and his reasons for it that are seriously messed up). In this he is very similar to Jon, not Theon. I also do not see how Theon can redeem himself by saving Jeyne. Jamie did not actually kill Bran, but Theon killed those boys. What Theon did is hugely evil.

3 He destroyed WF and created a power vacuum in the North that allowed for the Bolton coup. Had Theon not attacked WF there would actually be no RW. Indirectly, Theon is responsible for the murder of the Northmen at the Twins, of Robb and Catelyn. So no matter if he regrets it or not, no matter if he feels remorse, his crimes are much more heinous than Jamie's. He might redeem himself by sacrificing for the Starks but it won't undo anything. So in my opinion there's a stark contrast here.

4 Jon and Jamie save lives; they are not perfect and have made mistakes, sometimes grave ones, and there's a lack of morality in Jamie highlighted by having sex with Cersei in the Sept. But is his lack of morality inherent in him, or is it acquired after so many years of addiction to his toxic sister? Theon by contrast chose to kill when time came to decide. He chose to do harm, unlike Jamie. Sorry for the rant, I just had to put this opinion out there and give another twist to the dialog.

I mean, I don’t think it’s fair to blame Cersei for who Jaime is. She is definitely a nightmare, but even she thought that Jaime’s reaction to Bran catching them was inappropriate and too much. So how can she be to blame for what Jaime did to him? And Jaime didn’t have sex with Cersei in the Sept, he raped her in the Sept. Not to mention, if Theon is indirectly responsible for everything that happened at the RW then Jaime is indirectly responsible for literally everything horrible that has happened in the series. He may not have successfully killed Bran, but that was his intention, and if indirect responsibility is in consideration then he’s responsible for the murders of thousands of innocent children and smallfolk in general now. 

For me Theon has done hugely evil things, but the potential for his redemption is different because he has actually lost his sense of entitlement whereas Jaime has not. Theon’s only hope for redemption now is that people won’t see him solely as the man who did all of those terrible things, and that even though he’s done so many terrible things he can still do something good for someone. And that’s why his narrative arc means something for me. He’s saving Jeyne Poole who is essentially a nobody. She’s not anyone important to him, he has no emotional ties to her, and he’s not going to go down in the history books for coming to the rescue of Lady Jeyne Poole. She’s expendable and no one really cares about her for her, which is why the fact that Theon is risking his life to save her is actually so meaningful. There’s no glory in it but it’s the right thing to do, and it will mean literally everything to her. Theon began his journey in a similar state of mind to Jaime, he was arrogant and believed that he deserved a lot more than he got in general, and especially when it came to the respect of other highborn people. Now Theon has suffered enormously but has also genuinely changed. He’s not the person he was before because he doesn’t want to be that person, and he’s doing the right thing because he actually wants to do the right thing. He may be beyond the point of redemption, but that doesn’t mean that all of the choices he makes don’t matter anymore, and for me I think it’s more meaningful to have a character who is making choices that aren’t being made in exchange for something else, but are just simply their own choices. And it’s especially meaningful for Theon’s character arc that he’s making the much harder choice because it’s the right choice, even though there is a very strong possibility that he’ll just suffer horribly and die and ignominious death as a reviled asshole instead of gaining any favor with anyone else besides Jeyne. 

Jaime on the other hand is still in the glory and respect phase of his emotional development. Contrast the fact that Theon is saving Jeyne with the fact that Jaime is trying to save Sansa. Saving Sansa WILL bring whoever does it glory, whoever does that likely will go down in the history books as saving the lost princess of Winterfell, and it will be especially memorable and attention getting if it’s a Lannister who does it. There are thousands of people he could save now, but he’s not saving them, likely because there’s nothing in it for him. Jaime wants to keep his promise to Catelyn but it’s because he wants to be known as someone who does keep promises, it’s not because he actually cares about keeping promises. Even now he’s broken his promises to people a hundred times, but because people don’t know that he’s made those promises and because it’s not something that will actually make him look better and he doesn’t care that much about something that won’t change his image in the eyes of others. Theon’s perspective on what matters and how people see him has evolved, but Jaime’s hasn’t yet. 

That’s not to say that it’s impossible for Jaime to evolve in the future, but the problem is that all of his motivation to change is external. Even when it comes to his dream about his mother, he’s not doing that because it’s what he himself wants, he’s driven by the idea of other people seeing him in a different way than he wants to be seen. He’s still extremely invested in the perception of others but he’s not actually putting in the groundwork of just being a decent person to everyone and earning his reputation through that. And that is truly how all of the best characters have earned their reputations for being good people in Westeros. He and Theon are different because they’ve both done evil things, but Theon has an understanding that the things he’s done are evil while Jaime still excuses himself. Theon murdered two innocent children, but the brutal reality is that the world won’t care or even really remember them. But what’s different now is that Theon cares and remembers them, and it haunts him even though the smallfolk are seen as mostly dispensable by highborn people. Jaime tried to murder Bran and threatened the life of Edmure’s baby, but in his mind it’s still the ends justifying the means and these are things that he rationalizes and excuses by saying that he was somehow forced into these choices. That’s not to say that Jaime is incapable of change or finding some measure of decency, but his motivation for his own behaviors and decisions is entirely different than Theon’s, and he’s much further away from becoming a truly decent person than Theon is.

[aion-rsa]

Superman & Lois Reveals the Truth About Morgan Edge’s Krypton Plan

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains Superman & Lois episode 10 spoilers.

Superman & Lois Episode 10

Superman & Lois episode 10, “O Mother, Where Art Thou” picks up literally at the moment where we left the show last week, with Morgan Edge revealing to Superman that he’s not only a Kryptonian, but that he may very well be his brother. There was just enough ambiguity in that reveal to leave us wondering if Edge meant it metaphorically or literally, but as this episode explains, he really did mean it. If nothing else, he is biologically the half-brother of Kal-El.

But that’s somehow not even close to the biggest thing that went down in this episode of Superman & Lois, so let’s get down to it…

Tal-Ro and Zeta-Ro 

Just to get this out of the way up front, as far as I can tell, neither Tal-Ro (Morgan Edge’s Kryptonian name) or Zeta-Ro (his father) are names from the pages of DC Comics. In fact, the concept of Superman having a literal biological half-brother like this, one that doesn’t involve any kind of fakeout (or a dream/hoax/imaginary story) is completely new.

Lara Lor-Van

But, it’s important to note that the show points out one key difference between Lara’s previous family and the one she started with Jor-El later on. Lara (while in the body of Lana Lang) explains that she had been “genetically matched” with Zeta-Ro, and Tal-Ro was their offspring. She makes it a point to mention that she fell in love with Jor-El and “gave birth” to Kal-El. Why is this significant? 

When John Byrne rebooted the Superman comics in 1986 (before “reboot” was a word we all threw around a lot), one of the key changes he made to the mythology was making Krypton a society seemingly devoid of love, and one that had possibly even moved beyond the pursuit of sex as the primary means of reproduction (let alone recreation). Partners were matched based on their genetic compatibility to produce the most suitable offspring, and children were conceived and carried to term in a kind of high tech birthing matrix. Jor-El and Lara were unique in that they actually fell in love, and their love influenced their decision to send baby Kal-El away.

Sound familiar? There were elements of this in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel movie. But that film took it a step further, where Jor-El and Lara conceived Kal the old-fashioned (and more fun) way, and Lara gave birth to him in the traditional manner, as well. So just the shift in those couple of words in Lana/Lara’s exposition points out the fact that while yes, Edge may technically be Superman’s half-brother, it doesn’t quite carry the same weight.

Nature vs. Nurture

Ah, the tale as old as time in Superman stories. Is a potentially all-powerful Kryptonian inherently good, or only as good as the environment in which they are raised?

But this episode takes it a step further. It isn’t that Tal-Ro was raised by an evil version of the Kents, it’s simply that he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and only saw humanity’s less noble characteristics. Again, it’s subtle, but it’s a hint that in Superman’s world, nobody is truly beyond redemption…although Edge sure is making a solid case for himself in that regard. Jerk.

The Eradicator

So, it turns out that the secret ingredient to Edge’s infusing of Kryptonian souls/consciousness into human bodies was something called the Eradicator. What is the Eradicator? Folks, I sure am glad you asked!

The Eradicator was arguably the single most important macguffin in Superman comics (if not all of DC Comics) from the late ‘80s through at least the mid-90s. It’s a millennia old device that was created to preserve Kryptonian culture, albeit with the “eradication” of others. Uh-oh.

The Eradicator survived the destruction of Krypton and eventually came into Superman’s possession, and the device decided it should protect Krypton’s last survivor…sometimes by trying to turn Earth into New Krypton (whoops) and other times by altering Superman’s mind to make it more Kryptonian (double whoops), and ultimately by evolving into a humanoid form that looked like Superman after the Man of Steel perished at the hands of Doomsday (ok, that part’s understandable).

It’s serving a pretty similar purpose here, this time with the added bonus of having been corrupted by Zeta-Ro. Between that and the fact that Edge is basically carrying on the Eradicator’s comics mission for it, I have to wonder if we’re headed for a scenario where Edge merges with the device and basically becomes the Arrowverse equivalent of the humanoid Eradicator/Krypton Man/what have you down the road.

Although it’s pretty cool that this thing is going to be housed in the Fortress for a while, and that opens up other story possibilities.

The Solar Flare

Admittedly, the how and why Superman’s solar flare is able to help “fix” all the Smallville residents who were housing Kryptonian souls is a little fuzzy. But it IS the first time we’ve seen this particular power used in any media outside the comics.

Superman is often described as a living solar battery. All of his powers are a result of his cells absorbing solar radiation like they’re batteries, and as long as he’s in proximity to a yellow sun, it’s basically an inexhaustible power supply. Almost all of his powers are manifestations of that solar power in some way, with perhaps heat vision being the most tangible representation of it.

But in recent Superman comics, it was revealed that when necessary, Clark can release all that excess solar energy stored in his body in one massive blast. When he does, he’s out of gas for days or weeks, but it can be done where necessary. I have to appreciate how it wasn’t used as a video game special attack for a boss fight here, and was instead used in a healing capacity. Good lord, this show gets it.

The Fortress of Solitude…and Another One?

This is why at the end of the episode we see Superman crawling to the Fortress, clutching the Eradicator like a football. He used the last of his power to get there, and he’s so weak he can barely walk. Cut to Morgan Edge and Leslie Larr…

…who appear to have a Fortress of Solitude of their own, this one in the desert. It’s kind of cool that these Kryptonian fortresses always seem to have an elemental quality to them. How much do you wanna bet that Edge’s fortress is powered by the stolen Kryptonian sunstone crystal that houses Lara’s knowledge and memories?

Metropolis Mailbag

And none of the above even gets into all the other great bits in the episode! 

Another standout episode for the Kent sons, particularly Jonathan, who once again shows that he doesn’t need powers to be an awful lot like his Dad.

Or what about that genuinely chilling performance from Erik Valdez?

Or the introduction of Dabney Donovan to the Arrowverse! Another Jack Kirby creation joins Morgan Edge…this guy is one to watch if you know the comics.

Tyler Hoechlin spent more time in costume in this episode than several other episodes combined, and I can now safely say that nobody has embodied the character this perfectly since Christopher Reeve. It was all about the quieter moments, particularly his chat with Lana.

Speaking of quieter moments (and Lana), Elizabeth Tulloch and Emmanuelle Chriqui’s heartbreaking scene when Lana volunteers for the Eradicator process sure was something, wasn’t it?

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Got any questions about this momentous episode of Superman & Lois? Spot some deep Superman lore that we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Superman & Lois Reveals the Truth About Morgan Edge’s Krypton Plan appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3cJV5iZ

[demonsonthemoon]

More Real (Your Brutal Truth)

Fandom: Supernatural Pairings: N/A Word Count: 7581 Summary: Dean accidentally gets hit with a "gender-affirming potion." Except that, for him, it's anything but affirming. The hunting life hasn't really equipped him to deal with the fact that he's stuck in a female body for the next few months. Note: Title from Against Me!'s "Delicate, Petite & Other Things I'll Never Be.” I've seen some discourse going around about the "inherent transphobia" of certain fanfic tropes like genderbent AUs, mpreg or sex swaps. Those posts made me realize that I hadn't read any new sex swap stories in a while, despite them being hugely popular a while back. Now, that might be in part due to the fact that they were especially popular in the Supernatural fandom and that I had moved away from it, but I also think there genuinely aren't as many of them as they were before. Anyway, the point is that I've always enjoyed them, and while they can indeed rely on transphobic and essentialistic stereotypes there's also just SO MUCH potential for gender exploration in them. And this is why I decided to rub my greedy little trans hands all over the trope, because I will always prefer subvertion over cancellation.

Read it on AO3.

“You sold me out, you bitch, you-” The second witch jumped at Elena before either Dean or Sam got the time to draw their weapons. She wasn't supposed to arrive this soon, they hadn't been ready, and if they didn't do something, one more person would get hurt. Sure, said person was a witch, and usually Dean would have said good riddance to her, but Sam had done a thorough job of convincing him that not all witches were the same, and Elena had actually been helpful so...

So Dean jumped into the fray, dragging the second witch (he couldn't help but call her The Evil Witch in his mind) away from Elena. The woman whispered a spell, and Dean was tossed across the room, hitting a set of shelves. His vision darkened, but at least he had the satisfaction of hearing a shot ring out before he lost consciousness. Sam would do what he had to do, Dean wasn't worried.

Turns out he should have been worried. But not about the Evil Witch. About the bottles that had been broken in his fall and whose content had been splashed all over him.

“And there's no way you can change him back? Give him the opposite potion so the effects counteract each other.”

“That's not how it works, the potion acts on your current shape, if we tried to turn him back that way, his body wouldn't be right. If it worked at all. The spell is designed to be unbreakable. That's what it's for. But it's only temporary, it won't do any damage. He'll just turn back to his normal body after a while.”

“How long?”

“It depends on the person, on the metabolism. I can't say...”

“Give me an estimate.”

“Between two to four months? Sometimes it lasts longer than that, but usually not less.”

“Four months. He has to stay like this for four months?”

Dean figured it was past time he woke up properly and found out what this conversation was all about. The first thing he noticed was that he was no longer on the floor, but had been moved to a couch. That meant he'd probably been out of it for a little while, which wasn't great news. Sam and Dean really couldn't keep getting knocked out as much as they did and still avoid brain damage. Statistically speaking, it would be a miracle.

He opened his eyes slowly, mindful of any potential headache.

“And he's just... He's fully...”

“Yes,” Elena replied through gritted teeth. “I told you, that's what those potions do.”

“Yeah, okay, I get it, I just...”

Dean sat up, and the movement must have caught Sam's gaze because he immediately moved towards him.

“Dean. Hey. How are you feeling?”

Dean stretched his shoulders, still coming back from the haze of unconsciousness. “I'm fine.” His voice sounded weird, so he coughed a little.

“Don't freak out, okay? But there's been... an issue.”

“This is literally the worst way you could have phrased it if you didn't want me to freak out.”

Wow. His voice really did sound weird. What was up with that?

He ran a hand over his face, trying to shake out his wooziness. His cheeks were... surprisingly soft. He'd shaved that morning, sure, but it was nearly evening know, so his five o'clock shadow should have already settled in.

“You broke some potions when you fell. Nothing dangerous, okay? But you're...”

Dean pushed his brother away, sitting up straighter. He looked down at himself.

“What the fuck?”

“They're gender-affirming potions,” Elena said, drawing Dean's attention away from what were definitely breasts on his chest. “It's not dark magic. It helps some people, when they can't access hormones or surgery.”

“Gender-affirming potions?”

“You know,” Sam replied awkwardly. “For transgender people. It's like...” He winced. “A sex change.”

Dean looked down at himself again. At his breasts and the way his t-shirt fell awkwardly over them, too large for his frame. At his jeans beyond that, and the way they were too large around his hips despite the belt that was supposed to hold them in place.

“What the actual fuck?” He couldn't help himself and put a hand to his chest, cupping one of his boobs just to make sure that it was really there, that it was real.

“Dean!” Sam exclaimed in protest.

He could take his prudishness somewhere else though, because Dean was freaking out. “You mean that I'm a woman now?”

“Your body's female, yes,” Elena explained. “Temporarily.”

“You need to change me back.”

“Like I told your brother, I can't. No one can.”

“This is bullshit. I can't just be-”

“Dean, come on, it's not her fault.”

Dean was about to protest again, because it was definitely not his fault either, this was what he got for trying to help a witch, he'd known it was a bad idea... He stopped when he noticed the expression on Elena's face. She wasn't revelling in this like someone who had just gotten their ways or played a bad joke. She looked sorry and, more importantly, she looked scared.

Dean forced himself to take a deep breath and calm down.

“Okay. Fine. So, what do we do? We just... wait? I'm just supposed to live like this for several months and pretend everything's fine?”

Elena shrugged. “Loads of people do it. For what it's worth, I really am sorry. This is the opposite of what those potions are meant for.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. If you can't help, we'd better just go. Before another one of your spell goes off in a way it isn't meant to.”

Dean knew he was being too harsh, but he couldn't help it. The way his voice sounded kept irritating him, and now that he'd noticed it, he could feel the ways in which his body wasn't the same as before. He felt like he had a good excuse for being snappish.

He'd pulled his belt as tight as it would go and still needed to regularly pull his jeans up from where they threatened to fall off his frame. What a ridiculous situation.

He'd had to pull the bench-seat forward in the impala to reach the pedals comfortably, because turning into a woman had apparently also made him a good two inches shorter. Which was bullshit. Tall women existed.

He'd thrown a glare Sam's way, daring him to comment or complain about how he was missing his leg room. His brother hadn't said anything. He kept giving Dean short glances out of the corner of his eyes as he drove. It pissed Dean off, although the rational part of him knew that it was normal for Sam to be freaking out about this as well.

Dean got out of the car as soon as they'd pulled into the parking lot of the motel they'd booked the night before. He made a beeline for their room and didn't even wait for Sam to walk in before he locked himself into the bathroom.

With some trepidation, Dean started pulling off his clothes, starting with his shoes and jeans, then his t-shirt, until he was standing in his boxers and socks.

He raised his eyes and looked into the mirror.

For a while, he couldn't move. It as possibly the strangest thing he'd ever experienced. The reflection looking back at him was both decidedly him and not him. His face was thinner and a little softer than it had been, without any visible facial hair. But at the same time, his eyes were exactly the same as they'd been before, just like his hair.

Then there were the more obvious difference, i.e. his chest. He had boobs. Not too small either. Once again, he couldn't resist the urge to grab them, just to check that they were really there, that they were really his.

Touching them was weird. Not bad weird, but not really good weird either. Considering how much he liked touching girls' breasts, he was kind of confused that the only feeling being able to grab his own provided him with was bewilderment.

Dean stared at his boxers. He knew he needed to check. Knew he wanted to check. To be honest, he already knew that the change was as complete as Elena had promised. But he couldn't not check, right?

So he dropped his underwear and looked at himself. He looked and he felt... not much, really. That was weird, right? That was most definitely weird. He had a vagina, for fuck's sake. Of course he was supposed to feel something.

Dean had heard his brother close the door, so he knew that he was sitting in the next room, being thoughtful and giving him space. It made him feel a little guilty about what he did next, but once again... He couldn't not, right?

So he touched himself. Just a little. Just to see what it felt like. He let his fingers skim over the lips of his vagina, then trailed them upwards to gently press against his clit.

This was so weird.

This was so, so weird.

He stopped. He stopped before the sensation became more than that. A sensation, not yet really pleasure. He pulled his hand away and closed his eyes for a moment. Breathing.

His pulled up his boxers, put on his t-shirt again, and gathered his jeans in his arms. He didn't want to put them on again, not if they kept falling down. He had some sweatpants in his duffel. Those might hold better.

Four months. He was supposed to stay like this for four months.

Fuck. He was going to have to shop for clothes.

Sam didn't comment on his state of undress when he came out. “You okay?”

Dean shrugged. “I'm fine.”

“Dean-”

“Look, I don't want to talk about it right now, okay? I just got turned into a girl by a witch and am going to have to stay that way for the foreseeable future. I don't know how I fucking feel about it. Weird. I feel weird! But I'm fine, and talking about it isn't going to change things.” He dropped his jeans on his bed, then turned to his duffel and put on his sweatpants. Back turned to Sam, he added: “I'm gonna need to buy some clothes.”

“Yeah. Right. We... We can go tomorrow. I can... I'll grab some takeout for us to eat, okay?”

“Sure. Yeah. Good idea.”

“Okay.”

When Dean didn't add anything, Sam grabbed his wallet and moved to leave the room.

“Don't forget the pie!” Dean called after him, finally turning to face him.

“Of course not,” Sam said with a smile.

A kind smile.

He closed the door and Dean groaned. He knew he was about to be on the receiving end of a lot of those smiles in the coming week. Which was bullshit. His body had turned female. It wasn't as if he was sick or anything.

Dean put a hand on his stomach.

Shit. Elena had said that her potion turned your body fully into that of another sex. Did that mean he was going to have his period?

Going clothes shopping the next day was just as awkward as Dean had anticipated. He dragged Sam into a Goodwill, figuring that at least in a second-hand store no one would find him weird for picking up way too many items and trying all of them on. It took him five tries to find a pair of jeans that actually fit him. He put a skirt into his basket without trying it on and without looking at Sam. Shirts were easier, although most t-shirts were annoyingly thin and let the shape of his nipples show through.

How was he even supposed to begin figuring out his bra size?

He categorically refused to set foot in a lingerie store. The small little shops all had women wearing bright friendly smiles in them, and he knew they would ask him whether he needed help and he would have no idea how to reply and he just wouldn't. So they went into a department store, and Sam hovered over him awkwardly as he walked to the underwear department.

Finding out that sports bra came in standard shirt sizes was a relief. Dean was ready to take a pass on the chance to wear sexy underwear if it meant not having to try on 5 different bras. So he took two of the sports one in the same size as his t-shirts and didn't look at Sam until they were back in the car.

They went back to their motel room. They'd booked another night since they didn't already have a new hunt planned. (Technically, Sam had booked another night, because Dean didn't really want to know how the reception clerk would react if he saw his new face.)

“Go ahead if you want to...” Sam started, gesturing towards the bathroom.

Dean sighed, but carried the bags of new clothes inside with him.

Changing was slightly easier than it had been the day before. He wasn't used to his new body, far from it. But at least the ways it moved and the new sensations had stopped being as foreign. At least it felt like his body again. Different, but still his.

Dean pulled out one of the two pairs of jeans he'd bought. It had strass lining the pockets, which Dean didn't feel great about, but well. When in Rome.

He put those on over his boxers (He was not going to wear panties. Out of the question. Especially not with his brother there.), then put on the sports bra. The sensation was weird, but not much more than the feeling of his boobs moving when he walked had been. He put a branded white t-shirt over it. Finding a simple t-shirt that didn't have a horrifying design printed on it had been surprisingly difficult. This one had been his only decent find, but Dean had figured that he could always just wear his regular stuff. Oversized shirts were a thing with women, right?

He finished his outfit by putting the flannel he'd picked that morning back on. It was warm enough outside to go without, he supposed, but he wasn't ready to relinquish his layers. He rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves, then stared at his reflection.

He walked out of the bathroom.

“I look like a lesbian.”

Sam looked up from his laptop, where he'd probably been looking for a new case. “What do you- Oh.” He started laughing, then tried to hide the giggles behind his hand.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Come on. Don't be shy. I said it first.”

Sam tilted his head to the side, still laughing slightly. “I mean... Yeah. You kind of do. Jeans and flannel, you know?”

“I'm not going to wear one of those floral blouses, absolutely not happening.”

“But, well, it's not a bad thing, is it? I mean, you do like women, so...”

“Yeah. Straight women. 'Cause I'm a guy.”

“I know! I know, dude, I just mean... I just mean it's not too bad if people assume you're a lesbian. Might stop some straight guys from trying to flirt with you.”

Dean grimaced at the possibility. He had already considered it, had in fact spent most of the morning avoiding looking at people's faces so as to ward off any attention.

The thing was, he didn't care if it was a guy or a girl. The idea of anyone flirting with him while he was in this body just felt wrong. He wasn't about to explain that to Sam though, because the man was too smart for his own good and might pick up on the subtexts that there were times when Dean would be comfortable getting flirted on by a guy, and that was one of many conversations that Dean didn't want to have with his brother. “I guess.”

“Hey. Don't worry about it. You look fine.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

It did get easier after that. Once he got past his original discomfort, Dean set out to explore the possibilities of this new body more thoroughly. He wasn't about to wear a sexy dress or whatever, but he just let himself... be. Stopped hunching in on himself to hide away, which didn't feel natural to him in any body. He let his body be a body, and found it quite interesting to notice the differences between how people interacted with him now in comparaison to before. Especially women. Comments that would have obviously been taken as attempts to flirt in his old body were now received like honest compliments. He never got anything more than a smile and a thank you out of them, but there was often something so honest in that smile that Dean couldn't feel mad about it. Sam – who was in on the joke, obviously – found it kind of hilarious.

Another thing that was seriously throwing off Dean's flirting game was the fact that he and Sam kept being mistaken as a couple. And sure, considering that this had happened before when they both looked like guys should have prepared him for it, but it was still infuriating. A girl and a guy could hang out together without being a couple. And, yes, Dean and Sam had different hair colors and body types, but they were still brothers. Couldn't people see that?

Dean's exploration of his female body also took a more... hands on turn. Becoming female didn't mean that he'd lost his libido. Besides, weren't all guys curious about what sex felt like for girls? So Dean touched himself. In the shower, like he usually did, because Sam was always in the next room. (It was frustrating sometimes, but Dean would never trade privacy for the sense of loneliness that had settled in his bones when Sam had left for Stanford.)

He quickly figured out that sitting down would be a lot easier that staying up. So he did just that, settling himself on the tile of the shower floor, back to the wall, and spreading his legs.

He watched his fingers trail the length of his vagina to settle on his clit. He rubbed against it sotfly, experimentally. The sensation was strange, diffuse and too much all at once, like he was already overstimulated despite barely feeling anything.

He kept going. Soon the sensations changed, growing more familiar along with his arousal. He trailed his fingers lower once again, between the lips of his cunt and... yeah. He was wet. The sensation was a complete mindfuck, and Dean had to close his eyes as he slipped a finger inside of himself. Once again, the feeling wasn't what he'd expected. Not that he'd consciously imagined something but... yeah. He moved his finger around a little, trying to keep on rubbing his clit with his other hand at the same time. The angle wasn't great, which was really frustrating. He pushed another finger inside himself, still not looking, curled them upwards a little and... okay. He felt... something. Something good. He kept pushing in and out, a little more insistantly and maybe... he used his thumb on the same hand to rub against his clit as he moved and that was... really nice.

He felt his muscles clench as his orgasm approached, speeding up his rhythm even as his wrist started to hurt, frustration growing as he teetered on the edge.

And then the spasms started, and Dean struggled to keep any kind of rhythm at all as the sensation washed through him in several waves.

He stayed sitting for a few seconds, pulling out his fingers and washing the white fluids coating them in the flow of the running shower. He was careful as he stood up, legs still a little shaky. Washing himself down felt weird, as he was overly conscious of his vagina and the way the sensation of being stretched open still lingered.

He didn't spend much more time in the shower much after that, and walked out and into the bedroom as usual. After all, this was the usual. He jerked off in the shower all the time.

The next step was to actually wear the skirt he had impulsively bought in the charity shop. He told both himself and Sam that it was only a way to look the part when they went to talk to some witnesses for a case. They were supposed to be insurance investigators, so his usual butch look wouldn't work as well.

Sam didn't seem convinced, but he didn't say anything. That was pretty much his entire policy on this whole sex-change thing. He did what he had to do to sell their covers when they were out in public and acted as if nothing had changed in private. Dean had to goad him into making any kind of comment or joke. It was... nice, Dean guessed. Thoughtful, definitely, even though it didn't really make Dean any more comfortable. Joking was his go-to coping mechanism. Sam's silent respect only made him feel like this was a bigger deal that it really was.

Just like wearing a skirt wasn't a big deal. He just... wanted to try how it felt. (He did go back to a department store to buy himself some tights, because shaving his whole legs wasn't something he wanted to do. And rocking a skirt with unshaved legs kind of went against the idea that he was wearing it to blend in in the first place.)

And it actually felt... nice. Lighter than wearing jeans, allowing him a freer range of movements. (To an extent. Sam had to nudge him as they were seated on one of the witnesses' couch so that he would close his legs.) It felt even better without the tights on, which Dean figured out when they went back to their motel room to wait for nightfall before they broke into the cemetary to salt and burn the local vengeful spirit.

Sam avoided his gaze a lot during that evening, but he also didn't say anything. Dean knew the skirt thing was weird. Most of the time he shed his feminine clothes as soon as they were alone, reverting to sweatpants and old t-shirts. He would have to put on jeans again went they went out at night. But for now... it felt nice. Fun. It looked good and it was comfortable and... well. There weren't a lot of things about this situation that were comfortable, so couldn't he enjoy this one without overthinking it?

Three weeks into the spell, Dean's stomach started hurting. At first he thought he might have eaten something bad, but it wasn't the same kind of pain. Then he found blood in his boxers.

Fuck fuck fuck.

He'd known the day would come, because Elena's potion was very thorough, but knowing it in theory hadn't meant that it had actually felt real.

This was very real. At least they were back in their motel room and not in a witness's house. Having to excuse himself to change his underwear would have been a lot more awkward in that situation. It also explained why Dean had felt so horny the past three days.

“I need to go to the store,” Dean grumbled.

Sam hummed, barely looking up from his laptop. The thing they were hunting was apparently only talked about in some African legends, so finding a way to kill it had been slightly more difficult than expected. “Beer run?”

“Yeah,” Dean easily agreed, happy for the excuse.

Finding the personal hygiene section of the local supermarket hadn't been an issue. The problem was that Dean was then faced with a lot more options than he knew what to do with.

He didn't know how he felt about the idea of tampons, because sticking a wad of cotton in his vagina and carrying it around all day was just... uncomfortable.

So, pads. Was he supposed to get the normal ones? Bigger ones? Was the fact that there were special packs for the night something he should be worried about?

He took a pack of the bigger size, figuring it was better to be safe than story, then was struck by the thought that the pads wouldn't fit inside of his boxers and that he would have to by some panties after all.

Fuck his life and fuck Elena's potions.

In the end, he bought the menstrual pads, a pack of three pairs of black panties, some painkillers, and turned around last minute to grab a six-pack of beer as well.

Had to keep up his cover right?

He didn't look the cashier in the eye when he paid for his items, even though the middle-aged woman didn't seem particularly interested in his selection. Dean knew he had nothing to be ashamed off. This was all natural and blah blah blah. Except it wasn't natural, not for him. It was fucking witchcraft and it fucking hurt.

As soon as he was back in the motel room, Dean settled at the table, opened a beer and used it to wash down one of the painkillers.

“Are you okay?” Sam asked, looking at him over the screen of his laptop.

“Just peachy. You find how to kill this thing yet?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

“Maybe? I'm not sure if that's good enough, Sammy.”

Dean had thought that it would become more bearable as time went by. He'd thought that he would get used to his new body, that it would get easier not to frown when Sam called him Dee in public or when guys in the street looked him up and down.

Instead, it just grated on his nerves more and more. At first it had been weird, confusing. Then there had been a short while where it had been... almost fun. He'd been able to see it as a sort of experiment, and he'd played with it, hyping up his female persona as some sort of game. But now it just felt heavy. He was tired of not recognizing himself in the mirror, tired of the offended looks he got when he dared act like normal in this new body, like no one had ever seen a woman chew with her mouth open or stare at a waitress' ass. He was tired of pretending, tired of being judged, and tired of this fucking body that didn't belong to him.

Still a month and a half. At least.

Even hunting was weird now, because he was used to being taller, larger. It was also very frustrating that every monster they fought always immediately went for him, like being female per definition made him the easy target. So he'd taught some monsters a lesson or two about sexism. At least there was that.

Sam obviously noticed that something was wrong. His puppy eyes had basically been trained on Dean ever since the potion had hit, and they only intensified as soon as Dean's mood turned sour.

“Quit it, Sam. I'm fine. Just... tired of this fucking spell. But there's nothing we can do, right? So leave it alone.”

“Maybe we can't reverse it, but you could still talk about it, you know?”

“It's not because I'm a chick now that you get more chick flick moments. Don't even try.”

“Yeah, but that's the thing, Dean. You're not a chick, like you say. You just have the body of a woman and are forced to interact with the world like you're one, and don't try to bullshit me because I know it's not easy for you, I have eyes.”

“Yeah, well. Still doesn't change the fact that there's nothing to be done about it.”

Sam frowned, looking thoughtful. It was the kind of expression that indicated he'd just had an idea that would probably take some time to work through.

Dean left him to it, instead starting the series of pull-ups and push-ups he'd begun doing every evening to compensate for this new body's lower upper-body strength.

Dean hadn't been so dilligent about keeping in shape since his dad had been around to tell him off for not doing it, so the activity brought back some weird memories. At the same time, it allowed him to genuinely feel in his body, in control of it, despite whatever form it took.

So yeah, Dean had a woman's body now. But as long as nobody tried to talk to him, and as long as he had the fire in his muscles to focus on, he could ignore that. It was fine.

“What's this?” Dean asked, looking at the item Sam had just handed him. It vaguely looked like the sports bra that Dean always wore when they went outside, and he wondered if this was a jab at him for not washing his underwear enough.

“It's... uh.” Sam looked... embarrassed? Awkward, at least. “A binder.”

“A binder?”

“For your...” He gestured vaguely towards Dean. “Chest.”

Dean frowned. “And you had to buy me one because...?”

“Look, it's not like a bra or something. It's to... to flatten it.”

“What the fuck?”

Sam looked towards the ceiling, probably trying to find his words as much as not to snap at Dean for his lack of helpfulness.

Sue him. He was the confused one in this conversation.

“A binder is a garment that transgender men use to make their chest look flatter. More masculine.”

Dean stared at the piece of fabric in his hand, which basically looked like some sort of black tank top.

“Okay. So why did you buy me one?”

Sam threw his hands in the air. “Oh, I don't know, because I like throwing around money we don't have! Think for two seconds, Dean. I bought you one because Elena's potion is making you miserable. Because you've started flinching every time someone calls you Miss on the street. Because it feels really uncomfortable to have to call you Dee when we're out and I keep messing it up.”

“This isn't going to make me a dude again.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “You're already a dude. That's the whole point. But it can make you... Look like more of one. At least a little. I don't know. You don't have to wear it, I just... I just thought it would help.”

Sam's voice nearly broke over the end of his sentence. Dean suddently realized how helpless Sam was feeling in this situation. Taking care of each other was what they did. What they lived for. When there was nothing that they could do... It felt wrong. Painful.

So Sam was trying to help.

Dean still felt like there was something not quite right about his brother's reactions, though. Sure, this spell was a pain in the ass, and Dean could admit that he'd been acting in a pretty foul manner because of it, but it wasn't like they hadn't ever been in annoying magic-related situations before. It almost felt like there was... some personal stake for Sam in all of this.

But Sam hadn't said anything, and Dean wasn't going to ask. His brother wouldn't expect him to.

Instead, he wordlessly stood up, binder in hand, and went into the bathroom.

He'd been avoiding looking at himself in a mirror for a few days. Couldn't muster up any awe or curiosity anymore for this too-familiar and still foreign face that stared back at him. He looked now. Tried to see himself behind every little difference that amounted up to too much, to something that had become close to unbearable.

He undressed. As usual, he had ditched his sports bra when arriving at the motel, still not used to the feeling of it over his chest. The fact that the binder looked even more constricting did not make it sound like an inviting alternative. Still. He ought to try. For Sam's sake, but mostly for his own. He didn't know if hiding his chest would be enough for people to treat him as a guy again, but he did know that the novelty of grabbing his own boobs had worn out a long time ago.

Pulling the thing on was not exactly a pleasant experience, but Dean figured it out. It was indeed constrictive, though it still allowed him to breathe. Once properly in place, he was glad to noticed that he didn't actively feel the fact that his breasts were basically being squished against his torso.

He looked up towards the mirror.

It looked... It looked like Dean was wearing a weird tank top, instead of underwear. But his chest did look... flat. Almost normal, if not for the fact that Dean's usual body had broader shoulders. He turned to the side, looking for the telling bulge that insisted on changing his silouhette and making it so recognizable as female, but could barely see any curve at all.

Dean grabbed his t-shirt, one of his old ones, from the male section of a department store somewhere. He puts it on, then looked at himself again.

It's not perfect. Dean's face is still slightly too thin, slightly too soft, so it's not perfect. But Dean can sort of see himself again in his reflection, in the eyes that never changed and the way his gaze can slide down past his collarbones without catching on anything.

So maybe Sam's idea had some merit. He braced himself, then went back into the motel room. Stopping a few feet away from his brother, he ironically spun around, showing himself off.

“How does it feel?” Sam asked, ever the worried type.

Dean shrugged. “It's a little weird. I can feel it when I breathe too deep.” He did exactly that, feeling the fabric stretch to accommodate the rise and fall of his chest. “But it's okay.”

“Okay. Do you...” He trailed off, unconsciously biting his lower lip.

“Do I want to wear it? I don't know. Don't know if it's gonna be enough to... pass. Or whatever. But I guess I'll try?”

A shy smile. “Okay. Yeah. That sounds good.”

Dean could let it go. Should let it go. This isn't something he feels comfortable talking about, and if Sam had wanted to talk about it he would have.

But he couldn't just ignore ir either, could he? Because protecting each other was all they had.

“Hey, Sam?”

“Mmh?”

“How did you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you know to get me this? That it'd help.”

Sam shrugged. “I didn't. Not really. I just... guessed.”

“I didn't even know those things existed.” Dean could already feel he was treading unsteady ground, and told himself this was as far as he'd push.

“Like I said. A lot of trans people use them.”

There was a pause. Dean looked at Sam without saying anything, giving him the choice of where this conversation was going to go next.

But the fact that the silence lasted for more than a second was enough to indicated that something needed to be said. Both of them knew it.

“I was doing some research,” Sam explained, not looking him in the eye. Of course there had been research, this was Sam. “Before this.” He gestured towards Dean. “Before Elena.”

That, Dean hadn't expected. Because “before Elena” could mean a whole range of thing from three months ago to three years. He wanted to ask, but held his tongue. He was already overstepping by having initiated this conversation, he needed to rein himself in and let Sam go at his own pace.

“Research on the transgender community. I mean. Yeah, obviously. But that's why I knew what a binder is. And I figured... Remember how Elena said something about your situation being the opposite of what her potions were for?”

It did ring a bell, vaguely, so Dean nodded.

“They're meant to allow people to have the body they feel is aligned with their true gender, right? They're meant to ease the discomfort created by the fact that the way you feel and how people see you don't match.”

Dean nodded again. He kept noticing the care with which Sam chose his words, and thought of how much blunter he would have been if he'd had to talk about the same topic, of how many of the terms he knew would probably sound offensive to some, because Dean had never thought he would need to learn new ones.

“With you, it went the other way. Instead of fixing it, it created that discomfort. That mismatch between who you are and how people see you.”

Thinking of the past month, Dean could agree that that description felt right. He hadn't realized, before his body had changed, how much of his confidence and of his sense of self was based on how others percieved him and interacted with him.

“I figured... I figured you're kind of stuck in the same situation as someone who's trans? In a weird way? And obviously it's not the same, because you know what your real body's like, and you know it's temporary but I still figured... I figured that you're a guy, and so you want to look like a guy, and that this might help.”

Sam stopped. He looked down at his feet, then at the ceiling. “This is gonna be a really awkward conversation, isn't it?” he asked drily.

“Sam, you don't have to-”

“I know.” He smiled. “I know I don't have to, but I got this far so...”

Dean sat down on the second bed, facing his brother. In the narrow space between the two pieces of furniture, their knees could almost touch.

Dean didn't like emotional moments. They made him uncomfortable, because he didn't know how to react during them. Allowing himself to be vulnerable was equivalent in his mind to letting himself get killed.

But he knew he needed to be there for Sam. He knew that this might be more important than he'd expected, and that Sam needed him. There wasn't anything Dean wouldn't do for his brother.

“I don't think I'm... like you,” Sam started, looking at their knees instead of towards Dean. “When it comes to gender. I mean... You're so... confident. In your own identity. You overplay masculinity all the time, but it doesn't feel jarring. It feels like it comes naturally. Like you know who you are.”

Dean probably could have argued about the overplay part, but he wasn't sure it was the kind of hill he wanted to die on. He knew he sometimes... compensated. Played up his love of women to avoid thinking about other things, and built himself a persona in the process. It was strange, in a way, that Sam could see right through that and still call Dean confident. Dean was the person he'd needed to be. In order to survive a lonely childhood, in order to thrive in the hunter's life and its constant danger. Sam had always been the one who dared break the unspoken rules, who tried to find another way. Wasn't that confidence?

“It's not like that for me. It doesn't feel natural. It feels like it's always shifting. I look at you now and it looks like you feel so uncomfortable in this new body, and all I can think about is that I'm barely comfortable in the one I have right now.”

Dean had pushed. Dean had wanted to know, he'd wanted an answer, but he didn't know what to do with what Sam was telling him.

“What does that mean?”

“Honestly?” Sam's smile was self-depricating and Dean hated it. This was an expression he knew well. He'd seen it throughout all of their childhood every time Sam came home from school after a day of being bullied and called a weirdo, everytime he asked their dad for something simple and normal and got the answer that those things weren't for people like them, every time he'd been called a freak or called himself one, because of hunting, because of his visions, because of who he was. “Not much. I don't think it can mean much, not with the lives we've got.”

“Sam-”

“No, listen. I've thought about this, okay? I've thought about this for months. My relationship to gender is... complicated. Weird. And I think that... maybe that puts me on the trans spectrum. Somewhere. But I'm not a woman. I don't want to transition. And if I don't... it's just easier to let people think what they're gonna think, you know? And maybe what they think isn't the truth, isn't my truth, but it's my choice to tell them or not, and I've decided not to.”

“Okay.” Dean looked at himself, at his too-loose shirt and the new sweatpants he'd bought because Sam had insisted he couldn't keep wearing his old ones all the time without washing them. He looked at his chest and the way it felt new to see is so flat, the weird kind of relief that that sight brought. He thought of everything Sam had done for him in the past weeks, how careful he'd been, stopping himself from making any kind of jokes because even if Dean had been gauding him into them he knew that they might still hurt, maybe not right then, but later on, on days like today when Dean's new body felt like it was seeping with open wounds. And here Sam was, looking at him with eyes that begged him not to fall into pity, that begged him to actually listen and understand, and Dean couldn't do anything else. He couldn't help. Even though that was his job, because he was the big brother and Sammy was everything. Despite all that, he still couldn't help. “Okay.”

“Hey, Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry I didn't tell you earlier. It wasn't... It wasn't that I didn't-”

“Don't even go there, Sam. This isn't... It's about you. It's personal. I get that. I'm not gonna get mad that you kept it a secret or whatever. You had every right to. But... I'm glad you told me. You gotta know that.”

Sam smiled then, small and shy, but a smile all the same. Dean had wanted to do more. To be more. But this was something. Maybe it was even enough, at least for now. “Okay.”

“Okay. Chick flick moment over!” Dean proclaimed before letting himself fall backward on the bed. Sam tried to push his feet out of the way when Dean put them up beside him, and Dean kicked him in retaliation, leading them to play-wrestle like they hadn't since being both teenagers.

Dean got out of breath too quickly and had to surrender, wincing at the way his chest was constricted under the binder. That meant he wouldn't be able to wear it when they were out hunting. Actually... that wasn't too bad. He didn't need it when it was just him and Sam and whatever monster they were chasing. Those moments were when he was closest to feeling like himself, present in his body, adrenaline rushing through his veins, and Sammy by his side.

In the end, the effects of Elena's potion lasted for three months and 22 days. They dissipated just as quickly and as thoroughly as they had set in. Dean had felt tired all morning, and had settled for a nap right after lunch. He woke up to the uncomfortable sensation of being squeezed across the stomach, and it took him a minute to figure out that that was because his pants had become much too tight.

He changed immediately, taking the time to stare at his own face in the mirror, to rub his hands over the familiar stubble across his cheeks. He laughed aloud, an expression of pure joy that amplified when he recognized the lower tones of his old voice.

As soon as Sam came back from his trip to the local library (the thing they were after was mostly likely a ghost, so he'd been digging into the city records for potential gruesome deaths), Dean was gesturing at himself.

“I am back in the game!”

Sam smiled, with genuine happiness and relief. “That's great. So, how are we celebrating? Burgers after the hunt's done? Hitting up a bar or three?”

“I am going to get laid! It has been way too long.”

Sam chuckled, rolling his eyes at his antics. “Right.” They both knew that Sam had been celibate for a lot longer than three months and wasn't any worse for it, but they also both knew that Dean wasn't Sam.

Dean was pretty sure he didn't have to explain how much he'd missed being able to flirt with women, even more than the physical act of sex. Sam was too smart for his own good, he probably understood.

“It's good to have you back, man,” the younger brother said, clapping Dean onto his shoulder.

And it was good. It was really really good. So good that Dean couldn't help but think about what Sam had revealed, the day he'd bought Dean's binder, about how he didn't seem to experience the sense of rightness that Dean now felt at being back inside himself. But there wasn't any bitterness in Sam's eyes, not any jealousy. Only light. He was living his life, as well as he could, just like Dean was. That was their truth, and it didn't matter if it was a little imperfect.

It was good all the same.

[bigskydreaming]

Im asking this genuinely so pls dont yell at me; when you say that those using trigger warnings dont care about their readers’ mental health and wellbeing, what else are trigger warnings supposed to be for? To make sure people don’t enter fics that have material that would harm them. Just like tv shows that warn about nudity or violence or what have you. Its a rating system, theyre warnings. Tagging for rape or underage ARE the looking-out-for-readers thing. Past that, it is on readers to decide

I try not to yell at anyone engaging in good faith, I know it doesn’t always seem that way, but I would rather be engaged with than ignored...the latter is when my volume goes up, lol.

But in answer to your question, it comes down to the fact that trigger warnings are well established enough in fandom by now, that they exist as a kind of social contract.

In short, its EXPECTED that you provide trigger warnings, and that if you don’t have them, someone will bring that up at some point.

Problem is, this counter-productively works against what trigger warnings are actually FOR.....once we reach a point (which we’ve long since reached)....where a lot of people are only including the trigger warnings because of the social contract that expects them to have them, and not ACTUALLY because they’re prioritizing their readers’ well-being.

Something I see a LOT after trigger warnings is the phrase or sentiment “enter at your own risk”....and the phrasings are so, so key to what I’m talking about. 

Take a small sampling and just look for what I’m describing and I’m fairly certain you won’t have to go far to find an example of a fic where the tone of the author is not one of concern for readers, but preemptive concern for potential backlash from readers.

And these are two very different things.

Like, we all know how to read and interpret tone and nuance. Its genuinely not that hard to tell the difference between a sincere expression of wanting readers to be aware of potentially triggering content, and a faux-expression of that when really, the only thing you’re worried about triggering is a negative reception from people, and you want to get ahead of that by making it clear from the get go that hey, you did your job, you warned readers, and thus nobody has any grounds to say anything about your content itself.

Because also too there’s the fact that trigger warnings are inherently fallible. They rely on the author’s own AWARENESS of their content and everything it might include......but a racist author isn’t going to place a trigger warning for using their characters as mouthpieces for even blatant white supremacist ideology. 

A genuinely predatory author (and yes, they absolutely do exist, and its willful stubbornness that people rely on to pretend that like, for some bizarre reason, only genuinely predatory people don’t partake in this otherwise global hobby of reading and writing fiction, like what even is that, how do you arrive at that conclusion, that like, actual pedophiles are so busy preying on ‘real life’ teenagers in their zip code 24/7 that they just don’t have TIME to go online and cultivate predatory relationships with real life teenagers via social media? That doesn’t make any sense!)

But anyway, a genuinely predatory author, is absolutely NOT going to tag or place trigger warnings for pedophilia, etc....because they don’t WANT the things they write perceived that way.

People trying to normalize incest are not always going to tag for incest because they want to DISTANCE the cute, sweet dynamic between two ‘only sorta brothers’ as other than the kind of incest that destroys families...regardless of the reality that most cases of incest are the LATTER and its the FORMER that’s so rare it barely exists. 

And that sort of thing is how we get terms like dub-con and pseudo-incest and ‘consensual underage sex’ when its describing a relationship between a minor and adult....because this is mitigating, distancing language. Its entire reason for existing is to make unpalatable content seem more palatable.

And especially in Batfandom, we KNOW this.

Because we all, practically universally, give Devin Grayson crap for describing the rape in Nightwing #93 as ‘nonconsensual sex’ and go.....THATS NOT A THING!

And then half of fandom turns around and....acts like that and similar stuff...IS A THING.

That doesn’t work! LOL. It just...doesn’t.

Or another example, because abuse can be just as triggering as rape.....like, for me, personally, I’m a survivor of both, and yes, both CAN be triggering. But not as much as people might think....like, just reading a depiction of these things doesn’t trigger me.

Its, like you were saying at the get go, yes, a matter of surprise.....the kind of thing that CAN be warned for, and prepared for, and its the sheer unexpectedness that’s usually the trigger. 

Like.....I went off a few weeks ago about reading a story that was supposed to be about Dick’s brothers learning the truth about what led him to take the Spyral mission and what happened in Forever Evil. That’s what the summary said, that was it, that was the only thing it led me to expect about the story. So understandably, I go into the story expecting it to be sympathetic to Dick. I’m looking for catharsis from it honestly, a salve for the many fics and canon events that blamed and punished him for something I don’t consider his fault, right?

And then towards the end....I get Jason punching Dick again, before hugging him, because that’s just how he reluctantly shows love or whatever.

This genuinely triggered me, yeah. Its why I got so upset about it. Because I was blindsided, I had no way to prepare for it, because I went in expecting catharsis for a story that bothered me due to its victim blaming, and instead I got the author heaping on more of the same abuse we already saw in canon.....with zero awareness that’s what she was doing. 

So....that’s absolutely something I wrestled with should I message the author and ask them to add a trigger warning or not? Because I genuinely could have used one. It would have helped. I would have avoided that story if I had any notion that might crop up in it, because frankly, that’s not something I had any interest in reading.

But problem is, there’s only really two realistic outcomes there. If she was open to hearing a genuine request for her to be aware that her content contained triggering material for a reader....chances are, she probably would have just edited it and taken that out entirely. It was just one line. Easy enough to do. It certainly didn’t add anything.

Problem is....there’s an equal and opposite likely outcome....that she’d get defensive, call this unsolicited criticism, and double down on the idea that what she had written wasn’t abuse, because obviously she doesn’t condone abuse, so she wouldn’t have written that plain and simple. It has to be acknowledged that a lot of authors ARE innately defensive about social content in their work, and not open to hearing they’ve done something offensive or triggering....because that’s like...literally the basis of the ‘no unsolicited criticism’ movement in fandom, even though being critical of toxic ideology expressed in content is NOT the same as offering criticism of someone’s writing in general. 

So you see what I mean? A trigger warning COULD genuinely help in that situation....but our fandom environment simply flat out is not conducive for readers to be at all confident that they even CAN come forward and alert an author that they delved into an offensive, even harmful take with their content and be well received no matter HOW they phrase it....

For much the same reasons I mentioned in that other post. People are more likely to instinctively jump to the defense of the person WRITING the content that offended or did actual emotional harm....than the person simply trying to say, backed by their own lived experience of....being offended or experiencing emotional harm....hey, this is a problem for me and I would appreciate it being regarded as such....

Otherwise, what is even the POINT of this entire system of trigger warnings in the first place? If a problem for a reader isn’t regarded as worthy of attention in and of itself.....at least, not in comparison to whatever problem that READER’S problem creates for the WRITER.

You see what I’m saying? For this, and a lot of other reasons, trigger warnings are innately fallible. They rely on an honor code system, and the uncomfortable truth is none of us are actually naive enough to believe everyone in fandom is innately honorable enough to honor that....if they were, would we have as much cases of anon hate, spite fics, etc?

But fandom as a whole looked at the trigger warning system and decided well....its good enough. Because its not like I’m proposing a viable alternative, its not like I have a BETTER system in mind, offhand. All I do have is the point that well...no...its NOT good enough as is....because for a ton of reasons, there’s a ton of cases in which there’s a ton of people for which it flat out doesn’t work for or benefit at all.

But when this comes up to any degree, in any capacity whatsoever....and the only thing people fall back on is well, I tagged it, or I used trigger warnings what more do you want, or its good enough for me so that’s what matters, or just....

“I did what I was supposed to per the social contract about trigger warnings, so if anything goes wrong in your reading experience at this point, that’s entirely on you.”

Like, does that make sense?

Basically, there’s a world of difference between:

This is a problem that still needs solving because the solution provided now is not all-encompassing or inclusive....

And....

This is a problem that’s already been solved as far as I’m concerned, and I’m utilizing that solution so any further problems are just in the mind of the reader and have nothing to do with reality, let alone me and my work.

Again, as I said above....its the difference between genuinely engaging with other members of your fandom community with actual concern for THEIR fandom experience.....or faking engagement with other members of your fandom community when your only real concern is YOUR fandom experience, and at most, the experiences of anyone who already is of like minds to you on a subject.

Hopefully that answers your question or clarifies my stance there, anon. And thank you for actually engaging on this. It feels a bit like shouting into the void a lot of the time, lol.

[muchymozzarella]

So you're saying if someone takes a canonically gay character and ships them in a heterosexual relationship, they're not being homophobic. And if someone takes a canonically mixed-race black/white couple (and yes I'm talking about Reylo) and ships the white character with another white character instead, they're not racist. If your answer to both statements is "no they're not", you're full of shit.

No, they’re not :))

 Especially since FinnRey isn’t any more canonical than Reylo at this point. I’ll be ecstatic if Reylo dies in ROTS, don’t get me wrong, since I actually really dislike the ship itself, but I have nothing against shippers since they’re literally just… shipping fictional characters. There’s nothing wrong with being a Reylo, and y’all act like there is, and that is DISTURBING. 

Man, imagine if I said “FinnRey shippers are homophobic because FinnPoe is a thing”. Imagine. Same energy, right? 

I do find that when people have a specific trend in their shipping (for example, never shipping nonwhite or non pale characters) it’s definitely indicative of something, but that doesn’t exist in the ship alone. That exists in trends. 

If a black queer woman who advocates for POC rep and black rights and engages in activism decides to ship two white men even when there’s potentially a black man to be shipped with one of them, I don’t say YOU’RE RACIST because you can tell how STUPID that is.

As for shipping a canon gay character in a hetero relationship, I find it squicky. But I don’t assume someone’s homophobic because of it. If they say or do homophobic things, they’re homophobes, but otherwise, I just stay away from these fics because I personally don’t like it. 

I also don’t think that fantasising about fictional men can be equatable to any real life actions against homophobia that you’re taking in your own life. Straight men who jack off to lesbian porn aren’t champions of the queer community. Neither are straight women who jack off to gay men having sex morally superior to those who jack off to straight men and women. 

Y’all gotta stop acting like you know the reasons people ship something.

I ship for all these reasons, for different ships: 

 I like the dynamic and chemistry they have

 I like that they’re good for each other

 I like that they’re toxic for each other because they’re terrible

 I like that they’re equals who differ in ideals

 I think it’s sexy but 100% would have one or both of these people arrested IRL

 I think they’re sweet and I want to have that kind of relationship

 I think they’re doomed to fail and I want to see it happen 

 I think they should be canon

I don’t think they should be canon so I enjoy their fanon

As you can see, most of these entries contradict each other. Obviously. I get different things from these different ships. That is NORMAL. 

It is normal to watch horrific war movies or gory horror and romcoms for different reasons. You get different things from different media. 

That goes the same for ships. Sometimes I want my ships to be UwU perfect cute and sweet - like, for example, Good Omens. 

Sometimes I want my ships to be morally reprehensible. Like, for example, Hannigram. 

I do, however, think people should be aware of why they ship certain things. And sometimes it involves ingrained racism that you need to self-examine, or something else in your life that you’re using fandom to cope with. 

And sometimes it’s just for shits and giggles. 

But y’all who send anon messages like this? You’re apparently just doing it to have the license to bully and harass people on the internet. Shipping ain’t your religion, stop acting like evangelical nutcases preaching the purity of your own ship vs. The Inherent Evils of others. That’s how we got Catholicism. And look how that turned out. 

PLEASE STOP DEFINING YOUR IDENTITY WITH WHAT YOU SHIP!!!!!!! Ships are important to my life but goddamn fucking stop pretending they are your entire existence, and stop projecting that onto other people. 

[nightcoremoon]

ok so let's talk twilight. girl meets vampire. girl falls in love with vampire. vampire falls in love with girl. girl and vampire start dating. evil vampire wants to eat girl. vampire kills evil vampire.

new moon. vampire leaves girl. girl gets depressed. girl rebounds with werewolf. werewolf wants to fuck girl. werewolf realizes he's the rebound. werewolf leaves girl. girl seemingly attempts suicide. vampire learns about this and attempts suicide. girl goes to tell him she's not dead. vampire king gives a warning.

eclipse. vampire and girl are back together. evil vampire girlfriend wants revenge. evil vampire girlfriend makes evil vampire army. vampires and werewolves kill evil vampire and army. vampire king gives another warning. vampire marries girl.

breaking dawn. vampire and girl get married. and fuck. girl gets pregnant. baby will kill girl. but abortion is ~evil~. girl dies and gets turned into vampire. werewolf wants to fuck the baby vampire. vampire king shows up to kill the baby. it was a big misunderstanding lol. happily ever after except for the people who died.

that's the gist of things for anyone who doesn't remember.

ok so there's two groups of people. team edward, people who are satisfied with the canon. team jacob, people who say "fuck that, girl should be with werewolf instead". and many people on team jacob proceed to say that team edward all condone pedophilia and stalking and other terrible things. fandom wars happened. and in the end, most people moved on.

...

but not me.

now, I wasn't an obsessed super fan. I thought the first book was boring as shit until the second half. it took me a month to read the first half and three days to read the second half. I read the entire second in literally one day. the entire third in like 3 days. and the entire fourth in like 5. I watched all the movies in theaters. but none of this was by choice. my mom and my several sisters basically made me, but it was okay I guess. personally my fandom progression started with final fantasy 12. it moved into eragon, death note, jak and daxter, avatar the last airbender, invader zim, tales of symphonia, a dash of harry potter, sly cooper, my little pony friendship is magic, dead space, red vs blue, twokinds, resident evil, etc. I'm not in the twilight fandom by choice, but I know all the lore and trivia so fuck it. I might as well be.

I'm team edward.

I know what you're thinking. "but he's 100 years old trying to fuck a teenager! he watched her sleep! he almost killed her drinking her blood! he made her suicidal and depressed! he was super jealous and possessive whenever jacob was around! he broke her bones when they had sex! he impregated her with a monster baby that killed her! HE IS TEH EVILEST EVAR!!1"

let's take this one piece at a time.

1- he didn't try to fuck her. she tried to fuck him. but he said not until she's a full grown adult capable of making her own decisions, and not until marriage ~because premarital sex is wrong~

2- yeah watching her sleep was a little creepy but we can attribute that to stephenie meyer thought it was romantic because she's a dumb white mormon cultist

3- he is a VAMPIRE, and not by choice. and it was either suck the poison out of bella or let her become a vampire. which he didn't want to happen because ~being a vampire sucks 🥁~ so yeah he saved her life. and he managed to not drain her dry and kill her even though her blood is so goddamn delicious because she's a fucking mary sue

4- he didn't make her suicidal and depressed by leaving the country so she didn't get in any life threatening situations like being around jasper who has the self control of a fat kid in a twinkie factory. bella just took the breakup really really badly, and if someone reacts badly to a breakup, it's on THEM, not the other person. saying any differently is, what's the word, toxic and clingy. her emotional instability for plot is just indicative of the author's inherent misogyny (which makes sense, as dumbass mormon cultists are rife with the stuff)

5- he was not jealous and possessive. JACOB was the one who was toxic, since "that cold one will TAKE MY BELLA AWAY FROM ME". jacob wanted bella for himself because he had a crush on her since they were kids, and it was a super unhealthy obsession. edward could read his thoughts and was pissed; consider his backstory in hearing potential rapists' thoughts and killing them. but edward couldn't kill jacob because he was bella's friend. nothing more, though, and jacob fumed in his nice guy fedora

6- again, edward is a VAMPIRE, and a horny bastard at that, because he is a gentleman and therefore probably was a virgin too. he even told bella countless times that it would happen but bella thought it was #WORTH to get some of that hot vampire dick. I guess she's into some super kinky shit. no wonder 50 shades of grey made sense as a twilight fanfiction. anyway, bella seems to have fully consented, otherwise she's the world's most unreliable narrator.

7- the monster baby plot arc was propaganda against female bodily autonomy because "teh babby haz a SOUL and abortion is MURDER even tho she'll LITERALLY DIE otherwise but hey backwoods redneck mormon values are more important than the lives of women, right? anyway, ironically enough, he respected her bodily autonomy by not fixing the mistake he didn't think could happen (uterus vampires can't get pregnant but dick vampires can get other people pregnant? NANI, THE FUCK???) because bella didn't consent to him killing the fetus that was literally breaking her bones from inside since ~abortion is wrooOOoong~

and now, counterpoint.

...and counter-counterpoint.

"edward groomed bella" edward's main focus when she was 16 was to not kill her and drink the delicious cherry fanta, and his main focus at 17 was to make sure she didn't die and that nobody else killed her and drank her delicious cherry fanta, and only when she was a full ass adult was he like "alright fine you wanna marry me sooooo bad here's ur fuckin diamond ring". yeah they made out but like, consider that a FUCKING MORMON WROTE THIS BOOK. one can't fault a character for the dumbassery of the author. that's why in this house we stan james potter. and besides, a few years ago whilst playing truth or dare I at 21 was dared to kiss a 17 year old and I did- granted I didn't know he was 17 at the time but that doesn't even matter because granted edward was a lot older than 21, but granted that doesn't even matter anyways because you know how many teenage girls would make out with oscar wilde, keanu reeves, chris evans, or danny devito jason momoa if they had the chance? I know I would have. it isn't necessarily sexual unless you want it to be. besides, the argument could be made that brain development stops when you become a vampire, considering their body stops developing too. technically edward had the brain and body of a 17 year old, he was just 17 for a long time. so any way you slice it, there are acceptable explanations justifying this in the magic fantasy land of what-ifs and JUST BAD WRITING.

we good?

now let's tackle jacob.

he demanded she "choose" him over edward. he was just as childish and petty as mike. oh, poor mike. he was just too dumb. SWM be like. anyway, he literally abandoned her, his friend, because she wouldn't fuck him, when she needed her best friend the most. because that's who jacob was to her. he was her best friend. she kinda ignored him because edward is smexy and it overpowered her tiny teenage girl brain, or at least that's the author's excuse (yay for internalized misogyny). when they were in the mountains and he was keeping her from dying of hypothermia edward literally had to ask him to stop thinking about fucking her. while she was unconscious. which is kinda rapey. and then to top it all off, he wanted to fuck her baby daughter. so jacob is literally every single thing people called edward. he is jealous, possessive, creepy, obsessed with bella, and a whole bunch of other stereotypes associated with brown skinned man wanting to fuck white skinned women.

...

...

...

oh dear god.

wow I can't believe that the white woman who took an existing native american tribe and rewrote their culture to fit her vampire love story for white girls to have a sexy ~exotic~ savage feral werewolf boy in the love triangle turned out to be a racist all along.

so ideally, jacob would be the ideal partner for bella. lore-wise as well. bella and jacob grow old together in their plain regular normal human lives (and hopefully bella's face doesn't get clawed off like sam and leah BIG OOF FOR THE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE), edward and tanya get married like they were supposed to do all along and gallivant off and do vampire things, all that jazz. edward isn't creepy and weird, bella isn't a magic mary sue with a magic fucking jean grey mind shield, jacob isnt an asshole.

but after reading the books and the evidence provided, I cannot in good conscience be team jacob over team edward.

thank you for your time.

fuck stephenie meyer.

and fuck all the dudebros who dog on girls for liking twilight anyways, as if dudebros don't watch and consume shitty media all the time.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

I, Whedon

by Dan H

Monday, 23 February 2009

Dan on Joss Whedon, Nice Guy Syndrome, and the Man!Feminist~

So what with the release of Dollhouse, Joss Whedon's new series about how men treat womenthere's been a certain number of people on this site talking about good old JW's much vaunted feminist credentials. While none of us would go so far as

actually calling him a rapist

a lot of us get a little bit uncomfortable with the way he tries to pass off scenes of hot women wearing skimpy costumes as empowering.

A few of us have spent a while trying to put our fingers on exactly what we find so frustrating about Joss Whedon, and now our esteemed editor and I have started to rewatch Firefly, I think I've worked out exactly what it is:

Joss Whedon thinks exactly like me.

Or, to put it another way, Joss Whedon thinks exactly the way I used to before I grew up, got a girlfriend, and became less of an insecure douchebag.

Basically, Joss Whedon's portrayal of women tallies almost perfectly with the phenomenon known generally on the internet as

Nice Guy Syndrome

.

Just to clarify, the term “Nice Guy Syndrome” has two essentially contrary meanings (check out the

Urban Dictionary Entry

. Its first use is the perceived phenomenon whereby women date “jerks” because they're stupid/insecure/oppressed by the patriarchy/have Stockholm Syndrome when they should really be dating “nice guys” like – well – whichever guy is using the phrase. The second meaning of the phrase is the phenomenon of creepy, insecure guys who can't get a date because of the messed up way they treat women (usually by pretending they want to be “

friends

” with women they actually want to sleep with) who ascribe their lack of sexual conquests to their being “too nice”.

It's this second definition that I'm talking about here. I know exactly what these guys are like, because I used to be one and, to be honest, part of me probably still is.

To lay it all on the line, both for the women in the audience who are wondering why the fuck these creepy guys are following them around, and for the men in the audience who are wondering why women find them so creepy, the key points of Nice Guy thinking are these:

Respect For Women is Paramount: The basis of Nice Guy thinking is the idea that Women must be Respected. It is the duty of men who Respect women to protect women from men who No Not Respect them. A woman is, of course, powerless before a man who Does Not Respect her, she can be saved only by the intervention of a Nice Guy.

Women Do Not Enjoy Sex: This is the central, axiomatic tenet of Nice Guy thinking. Sex is a service a woman performs for a man. Ideally she will perform it willingly for a Good man (i.e. me) who cares about her and Respects her, but frequently women are tricked or forced into providing sex for Bad Men because women are Stupid.

Men Are Evil, Male Sexuality is Evil: To be sexually attracted to a woman is fundamentally disrespectful. After all, women don't like sex, they only provide it out of a sense of social obligation. Therefore a man who respects women will do his utmost to suppress any sexual desires he has, and he will certainly not tell a woman he is attracted to her (a really Respectful relationship has to grow out of friendship remember). Nice Guys tend to idealise lesbianism as the perfect non-exploitative relationship for women, they tend to do this to give them an excuse to fantasise about hot chicks doing it.

Women Are Weak and Stupid: The reason it is so important to Respect women is because you, and only you, are capable of protecting them from the undeserving men who would demean them. Women are not capable of protecting themselves, or making their own decisions. A woman who has sex with another man is effectively being abused. A woman who has sex with you is wilfully degrading herself for your benefit.

In short, this all adds up to one fucker of a Madonna/Whore complex, and a totally sexist worldview which is inextricably bound up with the belief that you Truly Understand Women.

Enter the Man!Feminist

I'm not going to get into the “can men be feminists” argument here. What I am going to say is that in my experience guys who pride themselves on their ability to understand women are guys women want to stay the fuck away from them. Men who self-define as feminists should, at the very least, take a long hard look at the way they think about women.

Anyway, this was supposed to be an article about Joss Whedon. Where to begin.

Joss Whedon is a feminist. And how. His shows are packed full of “strong women” and feminist themes and sisters doing it for themselves. Unfortunately they're also packed full of examples of fucked up Nice Guy logic.

I'm going to start with the big issue here, which is Whedon's portrayal of male and female sexuality. It isn't universal, but there is a strong tendency in Joss Whedon's works to view male sexuality as evil (see point three above) and female sexuality as play-acting (see point two).

I'm not going to count Angel and his Curse, that was a specific plot-event, and it was supposed to mirror a classic teen issue (“I had sex with this guy and he totally changed!”) but after the Angel drama, Buffy's next sexual encounter is with Parker who, while manipulative, is direct and honest about the fact that he's after sex. Of course the way he treats Buffy is horrible, but that's sort of my point – he's the Nice Guy's classic idea of the “jerk” who extracts sex from women by trickery. And of course corn-fed Iowa boy Riley only realises his own attraction to Buffy when it manifests in his punching Parker in the face (thus allowing the worthy Nice Guy to overcome the unworthy Jerk and claim his reward in the shape of hot Buffysex). Then of course Riley gets written out for being too boring, and Buffy gets with Spike.

The Buffy/Spike arc is telling, particularly when taken over the course of seasons 5-7. Like Parker, Spike is quite upfront about the fact that his attraction to Buffy is sexual and it's this as much as the fact that he's a soulless killing machine that makes their relationship so destructive. Buffy clearly doesn't actually enjoy having sex with him (see point two) she's just reacting badly to her traumatic resurrection experience. And of course Spike's Evil Male Sexuality finally culminates in an attempt to rape Buffy (because remember folks, all men are

potential rapists

). Then between series six and seven, Spike gets his soul back, effectively redeeming him, and his redemption, of course, manifests as his no longer being overtly sexually attracted to Buffy. His redemption arc culminates, in fact, when Buffy gives Spike the “best night of his life” by lying platonically with him while the world burns.

There's a bunch of similar examples in Buffy, Oz isn't allowed to have sex with Willow until he has first proven himself worthy by refusing to have sex with her, and of course when Willow gets together with Tara, Oz is effectively retconned out, with Joss insisting that Willow is definitely gaybecause, as per point three, lesbianism is inherently empowering. Faith's promiscuity is deeply intertwined with her psychological scars, and Anya's love of sex is presented, along with her literal-mindedness and love of money, as a mark of her ex-demon “otherness”.

Now I should stress here that I'm not saying that Joss Whedon has done anything wrong with his portrayal of the characters in Buffy. Like my earlier article on

race in fantasy

this is basically a call for people to be honest about their assumptions.

Anyway, that's Buffy. Next stop: Firefly.

Madonna, Whores, and Sacred Prostitution

The first thing I should say is that there actually are some reasonably sexually active women in Firefly. Wash and Zoe's relationship is clearly healthy and functional, and Kaylee has been heard to bemon the fact that she “ain't had nothing 'twixt her nethers don't run on batteries” (although that line was from the movie, and has been denounced by fans as out of character).

But if you're going to talk about sex in Firefly you really have to talk about Inara.

Inara, for those who haven't seen the series and couldn't work out what was going on in the film is a “Companion”. Companions are kind of space-Geishas, super-high-class prostitutes who are trained in – well – pretty much everything (possibly including espionage and martial arts, if we're to judge by Saffron, the evil Companion who appears in the episode Our Mrs Reynolds). Companions occupy a ludicrously exalted position in the society of the “'verse” (as Whedon cutely calls it) roughly equivalent to modern movie stars or corporate high-flyers. Whenever Inara walks into a room, people flock around her saying “oh my Lord, a real Companion, I've never seen one before! You're so amazing and empowered!” We are told at great length how the Companions are valued and respected, how a companion always chooses her clients, and how they basically have a free pass to go anywhere and do anything within the Alliance.

But every two episodes, somebody will smack Inara and call her a whore.

Not only does Mal (which means bad, in the Latin, by the way) constantly condemn her profession, but most of her clients treat her like property, or try to “take her away” from her fantastically prestigious career, or just generally treat her like shit. This is completely stupid. It's like having a series set in the present day in which one of your characters is on the board of directors for GSK, and having every third person they meet treat them like a street drug dealer. It's also a classic example of the way that Whedon will try to have his cake and eat it when it comes to these sorts of issues.

Inara is a classic male fantasy, but more than that, she's a classic Nice Guy fantasy. She's a woman you can have sex with without feeling bad about it. Indeed the whole Companion ethos is constructed around the assumptions of the Nice Guy worldview. Respect is paramount, and the whole thing is sublimated in ritual to ensure that respect is maximised at all times. The companions do not enjoy sex (you never once see Inara have an orgasm). The role of the companion is to select men who she considers worthy and allow them to have sex with her. It's “empowering” only in the sense that the Companion is always detached from the whole proceedings, the perfect untouchable being who briefly lowers herself to be with her client

Put simply, it's a very male idea of what female sexuality is and should be, and viewed as an ideal of female sexual behaviour, it's actually kinda creepy. Inara doesn't choose clients who she's attracted to, or people she thinks will satisfy her sexually (a number of her clients in the series are virgins she's been hired to make a man out of). Her decision to service somebody or not is almost entirely a judgement of their moral character which, yet again, is a pillar of the Nice Guy ethos, where sex is a reward for good behaviour.

And needless to say, Inara is always underneath.

Dirty Girls

The final element of the Nice Guy ethos is the most controversial and the most destructive. Deep down, all Nice Guys believe that women are weak, stupid bitches who don't know what's good for them.

This is the bit I'm going to get most flak for trying to pin on ol' Joss, but bear with me.

The really dangerous thing about the Nice Guy ethos is that it leads you down circular lines of argument like “I'm a nice guy, so there's nothing wrong with the way I'm acting towards this girl” or – to relate this back to good old JW “Joss got an award from Equality Now! That means nothing he creates could ever be sexist in any way”.

To put it another way, Nice Guys like to believe that the world is divided into Nice Guys and Jerks, and that the only reason that there are any problems with sexism at all is because of the Jerks (and that incidentally part of the reason there are so many Jerks out there is because women keep having sex with them, so really the women are to blame).

To put it yet another way, Nice Guys believe that there are Good People and Bad People, and everything the Good People do is Good and everything the Bad People do is Bad.

Let's bring this back to Whedon.

In the Firefly episode Shindig, Inara hooks up with an evil man named Atherton Wing. Atherton Wing acts like the stereotypical Jerk. He takes Inara for granted, gloats about the fact that everybody wants to have sex with her but only he gets to, and keeps going on about how she's his because he bought and paid for her. He asks Inara to come and stay with him to be his Personal Companion, and she considers it even though he is patently evil. Finally Mal baits him into calling Inara a whore, at which point Mal punches him and they wind up in a duel.

This then leads to the following exchange

Inara: You have a strange sense of nobility Captain. You'll lay a man out for implying I'm a whore but you keep calling me one to my face. Mal: I might not show respect to your job, but he didn't respect *you*. That's the difference. Inara, he doesn't even see you.

First off, see that word “respect” again. Remember guys, that's what it's all about. You respect women, other guys don't. How do you know? Well you know you respect women, don't you? And the other guy treats them differently to you, so the other guy must not respect women.

Secondly, look at what happened here for fuck's sake. Inara, a Companion, one of the most highly paid, high-status individuals in the entire 'verse, falls in with a Bad Man and she is completely incapable of extricating herself without Mal's help. She's supposed to be the goddamned poster child for female empowerment in the series but the moment she's faced with a man who (horror of horrors) “doesn't respect her” she becomes totally powerless and has to be rescued by Mal. Mal who, let us not forget, calls her a whore, pays no attention to her wishes, and generally treats her very, very badly.

But it's okay, because he respects her. Just “her” of course. He doesn't respect her choices, her career, her wishes or her privacy, but he respects “her” as a kind of abstract entity. But in the Whedonverse that's the way it is, there are Bad Misogynists who Oppress Women and there are Good Guys who fight against them. The idea that an otherwise sympathetic character could have an attitude towards women that isn't appropriate (or even, shock horror, that Joss Whedon could have attitudes that are not appropriate) is simply unthinkable. He's a feminist, therefore he cannot be sexist. He respects her, therefore his actions are respectful.

A big part of Joss Whedon's problem is that he wants at one and the same time to have empowered female characters and also draw attention to the fundamentally disempowering situations women often face. As far as it goes, this is laudable, but he frequently lacks the subtlety to do these ideas justice. Worse, because he is so fond of presenting Good, Virtuous, Powerful Women versus Bad Oppressive Misogynists he frequently falls into the all-too-common trap of presenting abuse and oppression as being direct causes of virtue or, worse, empowerment.

To bring this up to date, with a final example the pilot episode of Dollhouse sees Eliza Dushku taking on the persona of a shit-hot hostage negotiator. Said shit-hot hostage negotiator became a shit-hot hostage negotiator because, as a child, she was abducted and sexually abused. By drawing a direct line between childhood abuse and adult success, Whedon confuses empowerment with obsession. The shit-hot hostage negotiator literally would not have become the woman she was without the man who abused her. She owed her success to him absolutely. By entangling his female protagonists' successes so intimately with the indignities they suffer at the hands of his male villains, he creates a world in which women are defined only by how men treat them, and the only choice he gives them is whether to accept or reject the roles men put them into, and that is anything but feminist.Themes:

TV & Movies

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Whedonverse

,

Minority Warrior

~

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Arthur B

at 11:28 on 2009-02-23

Its first use is the perceived phenomenon whereby women date “jerks” because they're stupid/insecure/oppressed by the patriarchy/have Stockholm Syndrome when they should really be dating “nice guys” like – well – whichever guy is using the phrase. The second meaning of the phrase is the phenomenon of creepy, insecure guys who can't get a date because of the messed up way they treat women (usually by pretending they want to be “friends” with women they actually want to sleep with) who ascribe their lack of sexual conquests to their being “too nice”.

I'm pretty sure the first definition was invented by guys who fit the second...

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Rami

at 15:23 on 2009-02-23*agrees with Arthur*

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Rami

at 16:30 on 2009-02-23I read part of

a book once

that argued that the "Nice Guy" effect goes beyond just sexual relationships -- that it's a kind of dysfunction that views *any* interpersonal interaction as an implicit contract of that nature. So you get thought patterns like: "I did well in school, therefore I deserve my parents' affection"; "I organize group activites and provide pizza, therefore I deserve Extra Regard and Love from my social circle"; "I Respect and Honor women, therefore I deserve for them to want to sleep with me".

There was lots of his argument that I'm not sure I agree with but it all seems to hit very close to the

geek social fallacies

, which is to say, very close to home...

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Dan H

at 19:08 on 2009-02-23Interesting, you might have a point there. It ties in rather nicely with good old Joel from Surrey and "I worked hard at school so I deserve to get into Oxford."

On another point (and I know it's a bit gauche to be suggesting further reading for my own article - sorry folks) it strikes me that one of the few times I've seen the "empowered prostitute" thing working in fiction is in Jaqueline Carey's otherwise awful Kushiel series. It works there, I think, for all the reasons Inara doesn't work: people genuinely treat the high-status prostitutes with respect, the main character seems to actually enjoy what she does, and enjoy it in the "get off on it" sense as well as the "derive spiritual fulfillment" sense.

Clue: when you compare unfavorably to Jacqueline Carey, you are in trouble.

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Nathalie H

at 20:37 on 2009-02-23Ooh, good article! I think I agree with everything you've had said (which is not as common as I'd like when it relates to feminism) - I think you've explained the things that bother me about Joss.

I'd like to follow up on this:

"The companions do not enjoy sex (you never once see Inara have an orgasm)." - that is true, but that may be because of US TV limitations. It's probably also worth considering Inara's one episode of sleeping with a woman, which according to your Nice Guy code appears to be the best thing for women...she appears to be enjoying herself, but then she always /appears/ to be enjoying herself. All we learn is that 'people are surprised' and 'people think two women is hot', which...yeah.

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http://rudecyrus.livejournal.com/

at 20:58 on 2009-02-23Don't you mean "hot-shit hostage negotiator"?

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Nathalie H

at 21:15 on 2009-02-23(Follow up to previous comment fail - should be "you've said", and agreeing not being as common as I'd like relates to men's viewpoints rather than yours personally. Should not comment while I'm watching TV!)

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Shim

at 21:27 on 2009-02-23

Not only does Mal (which means bad, in the Latin, by the way) constantly condemn her profession, but most of her clients treat her like property, or try to “take her away” from her fantastically prestigious career, or just generally treat her like shit. This is completely stupid.

Agreed. Actually, if it were just Mal, I could sort of forgive it. You could construct some... thing... where Mal was meant to be unconsciously hypocritical about his sexism, being as he is a bit erratic anyway, and disliked the "Companions" bit as part of the culture he's rejected, so kept undermining it (which... isn't that difficult). Trouble is, as you said, Inara

only

gets respect at the plot-convenient moments. The rest of the crew barely notice her or are entirely blasé about her, even the posh kids (who you'd expect to be inclined towards the normal hierarchy) don't seem to show any deference. And the culture shows none of the etiquette rules you'd expect, or explanations for why Companions have special status, to help suspend disbelief.

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http://descrime.livejournal.com/

at 23:24 on 2009-02-23The problem with Companion -> Geisha -> female empowerment is that geisha weren't empowered. They had status, but that's hardly the same thing. The geisha were slaves. Their knowledge/skills and their behavior was all scripted around what men wanted and would pay for. They were taught to repress emotion and reflect only what men wanted to see. It was only the top geisha "stars" who got to be choosy about their clientele. I don't find any of that particularly empowering.

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http://wormwood-pearl.livejournal.com/

at 09:42 on 2009-02-24I

submitted this to reddit"> :)

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Dan H

at 14:29 on 2009-02-24

Their knowledge/skills and their behavior was all scripted around what men wanted and would pay for.

The Companions, however, seem to live in this special magic world (or "post patriarchy society" as the "Whedon is totally feminist" crowd like to call it) where "what men want and will pay for" magically overlaps totally with "what the Companion wants to do" which also, weirdly, seems to overlap entirely with "her lying there looking motherly while the guy lies on top of her and thrusts like a sixteen year old."

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Rami

at 14:39 on 2009-02-24@wormwood-pearl: Yay! Someone actually used the bookmarking feature! I knew I put it there for a reason...

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Wardog

at 15:06 on 2009-02-24I think is a really interesting article, Dan, and I really want to say something about it ... but I'm not sure what to say. I think I'm still just traumatised by Nice Guy Syndrome... as A WOMAN I should know about this stuff, right?

Also I think it's slightly dodgy ground to try and establish what lies "behind" Whedon's presentation of women. After all, this has changed a lot over the years. Although Buffy was probably self-consciously constructed to be a "feminist" heroine, Early Season Buffy is "empowered" almost by chance. I mean, she's a bubbly 16 year old who worries about cheerleading and boys, and just happens to kill vampires competantly on the side. I suppose what I always liked about her is that being into cheerleading and worrying about boys (i.e. being a person) was never really presented as a hindrance to her being good at her job. Set that against someone like Starbuck who is "strong" only when she's pretending to be a man, and the rest of time is a nuclear-explosion sized mess. Or, for that matter, bloody Cameron in House - the fact she is a woman (and thus, inclined to be over-emotional when she should be professional) is always portrayed as some kind of hindrance to her doctoring.

Sorry, this is a heap of undigested thoughts.

Talking about Firefly is also awkward because there just isn't enough of it. I mean, we never really find out what is with the Companion Guild - if it is EVIL and OPPRESSIVE, or if they're secret ninja assassins or what. And we never really see what Whedon was trying to do with Inara - admittedly what he seems to be starting to do is rather depressing. I think there's also a lot of like in Inara, if not for the messy virgin/whore issue. None of the women in Firefly are standard hotties - Kaylee is adorable and girly, Inara is poised and graceful, Zoe is Amazonian, and all of them are clearly very good at their very different jobs. I love Kaylee's touchy-feely mechanical skills.

It's just there's so much that's awkward and unfortunate in Inara. She's gets all hot and flustered over Mal, which leads to her behaving like an idiot a lot of the time. *None* of her clients ever seem to respect her (the first guy whinges that she's sped the clock up to cheat him of his cash, Atherton Wing is an arse, the guy in Canton has an overbearing father who keeps hustling her to just get on with the bonking), except the one woman to whom she gives a back masage while they talk about the softness of each other's skin (which is, of course, what lesbians spend all their time together doing...). Kaylee is all awestruck about how wonderful companions are but, again, she's a woman.

Anyway, I'm babbling now.

But, yes, v. interesting article.

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Dan H

at 17:18 on 2009-02-24

Also I think it's slightly dodgy ground to try and establish what lies "behind" Whedon's presentation of women.

Oh absolutely, but I thrive in slightly dodgy ground.

Much like the Rowling Calvinism article I don't actually mean to say that I know for certain that Joss Whedon thinks about women this way, just that I keep getting the *creepy impression* that he does, and I know from first hand experience that thinking about women this way is in no way incompatible with self-defining as a "feminist."

Which I suppose makes this sort of a meta-article really, the whole point of which winds up being "guys who self-define as feminists, Joss Whedon included, should take a good honest look at how they actually think about women because guys, there is a non zero chance you are a creepy asshole."

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Wardog

at 16:28 on 2009-02-26Much like the Rowling Calvinism article I don't actually mean to say that I know for certain that Joss Whedon thinks about women this way, just that I keep getting the *creepy impression* that he does, and I know from first hand experience that thinking about women this way is in no way incompatible with self-defining as a "feminist."

To be fair to you, there is definitely something "off" with the Whedonverse.

I am more forcibly struck by it than ever since embarking upon the second series of Veronica Mars - of may be one of the most successful "empowered" women I have seen on television. Veronica has a lot of strengths and a lot of, quite interesting, weaknesses to balance them out. I think what I like best about it, actually, is that she is a *person* I can admire and, in some respects, aspire to be more like. The key word being "person" not "WOMAN".

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Sonia Mitchell

at 23:05 on 2009-02-27

I think what I like best about it, actually, is that she is a *person* I can admire and, in some respects, aspire to be more like. The key word being "person" not "WOMAN".

Reminds me of the comments beneath your article on

Mesuline

(I've been playing with the random button too) re. gay characters in fantasy. The OMG we're including empowered women/gay people/disabled people/etc! being a step up from invisible but still some way off Veronica Mars (as you describe her - not that I've seen VM). Not sure if I'm in total agreement as it applies to Firefly (not seen enough of Buffy to comment) but this is definitely an interesting article.

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http://arkan2.livejournal.com/

at 15:30 on 2009-02-28Just when I think your reviews can't get any more brilliant, you come out with something like this. Your insight and clarity are matched by few others of my acquaintance (and several of the rest are also on this site, I might add). I salute.

There are a lot of specifics to this article which I will address later, when I have more time and cognitive energy at my disposal to give this wonderful essay they intelligent response it deserves.

For now, I feel obligated to render Kyra a friendly warning re:

Veronica Mars

. Warning: the following material is heavily biased, and if you really want to continue watching with an open mind, I suggest you don't read it, I just thought I should give you the option of knowing what you're (probably) in for. (Like I said, very biased, you might find yourself disagreeing when you see it yourself.)

Veronica Mars

starts out good, but somewhere by the beginning of the third season the main character devolves into (and this is my feminist cred taking one for the team, but some things have to be said) a real

bitch

. She treats the people who love her like crap, even when they go to heroic lengths for her benefit, and constantly plays the victim whenever they do not comply with her wishes (well, that last one may just be her boyfriend). Oh, and she keeps making the same mistakes about mistrusting people based on total hearsay (the way she dumped Logan at the end of season 1) over and over and

over

and over again.

On a show where at least half the cast are lovable jerks, you wouldn't think this would be a problem, and it probably wouldn't: except that the writers obviously intend us to ascribe to Veronica's view of reality. Logan and Dick and Vinnie and all the other jerks are lovable

because

they act like jerks, and the writers make it clear to the audience that they're supposed to be jerks. Veronica is vile because she's a jerk, and the writers make it clear to the audience that she's supposed to be heroic.

To invert your message, Kyra, and use Whedon to illustrate a point about

Veronica Mars

: the difference between Veronica and all the other jerks in the cast is like the difference between Mal and Jayne on

Firefly

. They're both jerks, but Jayne is an admitted jerk, whereas the writers keep trying to tell us, despite all the evidence, that Mal is a Nice Guy, who's maybe just a little rough around the edges.

Also, in season 3, Veronica goes off to college, and one of the overarching themes of the season is her interactions with campus feminazis. I wish I were making that up.

... Wow, I didn't expect that to turn into a rant. [insert chagrined smile emoticon here]

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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/

at 14:49 on 2009-03-02I'll confess to not being very familiar with Whedon's shows, but I still found this article very interesting - the Nice Guy logic seems to be fairly common in popular culture (and society in general). Then again, the Whore/Madonna logic isn't exactly new...

One of the things that annoy me the most, is that Nice Guy logic gives women basically two options: you can be with a Jerk who may do things like beat or rape you, or you can be with a Nice Guy, who'll never do that sort of thing, but who is just as controlling as the Jerk. Either way, you can't win, because having a partner that treats you like an equal is out of the question. (Unless you're a lesbian, of course, and then you don't have to have any nasty sex, because women are totally sexless, you know.)

Also, when women choose macho Jerks, it's seen as a proof that 'we want men who treat us badly', because that's the way of nature, isn't it? [insert eyeroll here]

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Dan H

at 14:55 on 2009-03-02

Also, when women choose macho Jerks, it's seen as a proof that 'we want men who treat us badly', because that's the way of nature, isn't it? [insert eyeroll here]

It's *science*. You can't argue with *science*.

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http://arkan2.livejournal.com/

at 00:30 on 2009-03-25Reply to “I, Whedon”

For someone so obsessed with punctuality in person, I always seem to join these parties at about the time the music has gone on its fourth repeat, the refreshments are down to the crumbs, the organizers are beginning to put away the balloons and decorations, and even the diehards are beginning to think it's time to go home.

Still, now that I've finally put together the time to say what I have to say, I'm damn well going to say it.

So first, I'm linking Kyra's article

Consuming Problems

, which I just read last week. In Kyra's first comment she says:

Possibly it's the weird transaction to which popular culture tends to reduce relationships: the man gives the woman romance, in return she gives him sex. When both should surely be mutual activities =P

Which is an interesting perspective on the those Nice Guy assumptions. (Personally, I'm all in favor of romance, although “embarrassing and awkward”? Yeah, definitely.)

As for the main argument … well, that's about six hits to the self-esteem in rapid succession, especially that “Heartless Bitches” essay. As if I didn't have enough problems with insecurity. Oh well.

The really dangerous thing about the Nice Guy ethos is that it leads you down circular lines of argument like “I'm a nice guy, so there's nothing wrong with the way I'm acting towards this girl” or – to relate this back to good old JW “Joss got an award from Equality Now! That means nothing he creates could ever be sexist in any way”.

It's just a slightly modified version of the privilege self-defense mechanism “I'm not sexist/racist/heterosexist/classist/ableist/ageist/whatever, therefore I'm not part of the problem and I don't need to do anything differently.” The upgraded version is “I support women's rights/the NAACP/give money to charity/etc. therefore I'm doing my part for equality and I don't need to do anything differently.”

Whedon's portrayal of sexism as being the sole province of the Misogynist-of-the-Week makes him an enabler. The none batshit-crazy misogynists in his audience (i.e. more than 99.9% of them) can breathe a sigh of relief, suitably assured that they are not in any way a part of the problem.

To put it yet another way, Nice Guys believe that there are Good People and Bad People, and everything the Good People do is Good and everything the Bad People do is Bad.

I think that basically sums up what I just said in the last two paragraphs. And maybe that explains Mal and his behavior: sure he's objectively no better than Jayne, but because he's Good/a member of the

Elect

(yay for referencing my first ever ferretbrain essay!) everything he does—including insulting Inara and kicking helpless prisoners into engines—is automatically Good, too.

Nathalie H, notice also in that one scene where Inara is with another woman, they talk about how great it is to be “just us girls,” away from men where they can “be themselves.” (As my sister pointed out, apparently Inara

really is

that melodramatic when she's just being herself.)

Which I suppose makes this sort of a meta-article really, the whole point of which winds up being "guys who self-define as feminists, Joss Whedon included, should take a good honest look at how they actually think about women because guys, there is a non zero chance you are a creepy asshole."

Exactly.

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http://arkan2.livejournal.com/

at 15:06 on 2009-03-26Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this. A while ago I read an

essay

by internet columnist Karen Healey about the portrayal of "strong women" in

Buffy

,

Angel

, and

Firefly

. As I recall, the comment thread also contained something about female sexuality in particular being depicted negatively.

From what I saw, it doesn't exactly fit the Nice Guy Syndrome model, but it's another way of looking at the portrayal of women and sexuality in Whedon's work that doesn't come from either the "Whedon can do no wrong" or the "Whedon is a rapist and everything he does is misogynistic" camps.

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Wardog

at 16:17 on 2009-03-26Interesting post, thanks for the link.

There's also a link to

to this

in the article ... which makes me hit the wtf button.

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Arthur B

at 16:24 on 2009-03-26Kyra, that link is incredible. Curse the day that

Firefly

was cancelled and we were denied this genius.

Inara: NOOOOOOOOOO DON'T LOOK AT ME I HAVE THE DEATH CUNT

Mal: I KISS YOUR DAINTY HAND FOR I AM YOUR PURE WHITE KNIGHT WHO RESPECTS YOU, EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE THE DEATH CUNT

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Wardog

at 16:28 on 2009-03-26I *know*, I *know* - it's awful! Makes me actually relieved they stopped Firefly when they did - and that's heresy!

What gets me is:

Mal: INARA, YOU FILTHY WHORE ... oh, you've been gang-raped ... my mistake, you're not a filthy whore.

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Arthur B

at 16:39 on 2009-03-26It reads more to me like:

MAL: Inara, I do not like you, because you are a slutty slut who sluts about the place.

INARA: Oh no, Reavers! I must turn myself into a chemical weapon so that none may touch my venomous DEATH CUNT.

MAL: Inara, I like you now, because you can't slut about the place thanks to the DEATH CUNT which

beckons to me in my dreams but I can never ever have it because it is unattainable, unattainable like you are, sweet Inara, let me place you on this pedestal and kiss your sweet hand, yes, let Mal take care of it, let Joss Mal take care of it all...

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Dan H

at 23:27 on 2009-03-26Tragically it's even worse than that. Comedy DEATH CUNT jokes aside it's basically

MAL: Inara, you may think you're a strong independent woman who is able to make her own choices, but really you just want a man to treat you like a woman.

INARA: No Mal, I really am a strong independent woman and I make my own choices and am totally empowered.

[ INARA gets GANG RAPED by REAVERS ]

MAL: See!

INARA: You're right! My horrific abuse experience has made me realize that your perception of me is more accurate than my own!

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Dan H

at 23:28 on 2009-03-26(Of course, it's not Joss Whedon, it's Tim Minnear. I bet Joss Whedon was all like "no Tim, don't do that, it would be totally fucked up", but then the networks were all like "no, put it in, we want to mess your show up" - this being of course the only possible interpretation of any flaw in the works of the Great Man).

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Arthur B

at 23:42 on 2009-03-26I think we're agreed that the story requires one or both of Inara and Mal being completely pathetic, just in different ways; given that it was never filmed, I suppose we'll never find out for sure...

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Wardog

at 09:29 on 2009-03-27Of course, the other rather indicative thing about this idea is that it's an anti-rape weapon that only works *after* you've been raped. Flaw, much?

It seems to me rather illustrative of much of Whedon's thinking on this issue - i.e. that punishing people for committing rape is more important than preventing rape happening.

Sigh.

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 10:02 on 2009-03-27I like how its effectiveness as a deterrent is completely undercut by the fact that nobody knows she has the frackin' weapon. Way to prevent rape, jackass.

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Dan H

at 11:30 on 2009-03-27

It seems to me rather illustrative of much of Whedon's thinking on this issue - i.e. that punishing people for committing rape is more important than preventing rape happening.

This, again, is why I'm so iffy about Joss Whedon's attitude towards women. It's not that he hates women or is anti-woman, it's that he's the kind of guy (as are a great many of us, I think) who is really into the idea of protecting women or, better still, punishing men who don't treat women "right".

For a lot of guys "girl gets horribly abused, I beat up the abuser, she is eternally grateful and we have teh hot secks" is a fantasy and, as a fantasy, it's relatively harmless (in the sense that fantasies aren't real, and any guy with half a brain eventually works out that other people's abuse experiences aren't about you). The problem comes when you try to dress that fantasy up as feminism.

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Arthur B

at 12:54 on 2009-03-27

I like how its effectiveness as a deterrent is completely undercut by the fact that nobody knows she has the frackin' weapon. Way to prevent rape, jackass.

This is almost precisely like the anti-rape device in

Snow Crash

, which fails horribly for similar reasons. Supposedly, the idea is that if Mr Potential Rapist doesn't

know

whether any particular woman possesses a vagina dentata, or whatever the hell it is the weapon is meant to be, then he's going to play it safe and not rape anyone.

This doesn't really work in universes with insane space rapists (especially insane space rapists who are perfectly willing to continue gang-raping someone after the first few guys drop dead screaming OH GOD IT'S A TRAP SAVE YOURSELF). The whole point of a deterrent (other than you don't keep it secret -

vhy didn't you tell the world, eh?

) is that the person it's deterring needs to have some kind of self-preservation instinct and the capacity to understand the threat, and as I understand it it's debatable as to whether the Reavers possess either.

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Arthur B

at 12:56 on 2009-03-27(I should add that it doesn't work in our world either, because a potential rapist never knows whether a woman is carrying a gun, or a knife, or whether he'll be caught for his crimes and shanked in a grimy jail cell.)

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Viorica

at 16:05 on 2009-03-27I . . . I . . .

. . . I have no words. So after Inara has learned her place and understands that Mal will only respect her if she's had her sexual freedom taken away, what? They have sex?

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Dan H

at 16:47 on 2009-03-27I don't think that the implication is that they have sex (can't blow that good ol' will-they-won't-they now can you), but it's still clearly supposed to be a touching, romantic scene and not

as creepy as all fuck

.

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Viorica

at 22:19 on 2009-03-27I . . . okay, I'm not at all averse to hurt/comfort, but the idea of people being drawn together due to the girl being sexually abused is just . . . EW. EW. EW.

(Incidentally, this far from the only instance of this sort of thing in Joss's work- last week's episode of Dollhouse had a women sobbing on the floor as her boyfriend cradled her after a fairly sexualised attack. It wasn't nearly as bad as this, but it was still kind of creepy.)

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Dan H

at 22:29 on 2009-03-27As ever it's all about context and awareness. Ultimately there's nothing intrinsically wrong with hurt/comfort (as I understand it is called in fandom), there's not even anything *specifically* wrong with a guy who likes the idea of "comforting" vulnerable women (with his PENIS).

It's when he lies to himself about the "with his PENIS" bit and pretends that his attraction to hurt and abused women comes from his EMPATHY with the FEMALE CONDITION that it gets skeevy.

Incidentally I'm really loving typing "with his PENIS".

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Viorica

at 23:24 on 2009-03-27Well in the Dollhouse example there had quite a bit of comforting done (with his PENIS) before the attack or the cuddling, so as I said- not nearly on the same level.

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Wardog

at 21:53 on 2009-03-28I really really badly want to participate in this discussion because I want an excuse to say 'with his PENIS' ... but I can't think of anything ...

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 09:35 on 2009-03-29I'm just enjoying mentally removing the quotation marks.

Incidentally I'm really loving typing with his PENIS.

Heehee, I'm a child. :D

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Morgus

at 18:33 on 2009-12-06I think the problems that you have with sexuality in the Whedonverse stem from the fact that the sensibility portrayed is essentially traditional. Everybody's monogamous, the only lesbian couple is an outlier in every way, and the protagonist wants nothing more than to be normal. The symptoms of "nice guy syndrome" overlap with "traditional, 'safe' relationship syndrome."

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Morgus

at 18:34 on 2009-12-06Now that I think of it, I have never seen a genuine polyamorous group potrayed in media outside of porn. Whedon's "problem" may not be that he's a "nice guy," but that he's a product of Western society.

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Morgus

at 19:00 on 2009-12-06This gave me a great thought about liberalism in general. It's not really about accepting people who are marginal, it's about creating an ideal of normalcy that everyone, presumably, can agree with and conform to. Or at least that's the goal of "mainstream" liberalism.

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Wardog

at 09:25 on 2009-12-07I'm not sure more polyamory in the Whedonverse would help with his portrayal of sexuality.

Also maybe I'm being down on pornography here, and admittedly my knowledge of it is perhaps less than yours, but I can't really recall many genuine, functional and loving polyamorous groups portrayed in porn either. Unless you are counting the device that everyone fucks everyone else as polyamory (something, I suspect, most practising polyamorists would take issue with).

And finally saying the problems with somebody's atttiude to / portrayal of something springs from the fact they are "a product of Western society" is about as helpful as pointing out they wrote their text a certain way because they had two arms. We are all products of the ideologies that shape us - that's, uh, kind of the way it is.

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Morgus

at 00:10 on 2009-12-09>Also maybe I'm being down on pornography here, and admittedly my knowledge of it is perhaps less than yours, but I can't really recall many genuine, functional and loving polyamorous groups portrayed in porn either.

That kind of strengthens my point about truly alternative relationships being completely foreign to society as a whole. And no, I have never seen any such relationship in porn.

>And finally saying the problems with somebody's atttiude to / portrayal of something springs from the fact they are "a product of Western society" is about as helpful as pointing out they wrote their text a certain way because they had two arms. We are all products of the ideologies that shape us - that's, uh, kind of the way it is.

I guess I really should have been more clear about my "thesis." Marriage exists more or less to inhibit sexual competition, and that, I think, is also the core of "nice guy" syndrome.

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Arthur B

at 00:18 on 2009-12-09Woah! That's an awfully simple explanation you're offer for an awfully big concept. Is marriage

really

that simple?

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Morgus

at 07:13 on 2009-12-09Anything on top of what I said is purely subjective, IMO. Kind of like Marx's "false consciousness." Economic motives are everything, questions of race and religion are distractions.

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Arthur B

at 11:23 on 2009-12-09Yes, but even if you restrict yourself to the material benefits of marriage it's still more complex than reducing competition. What about children? Obligating people to look after their own kids through a powerful social expectation that people should only have children within a marriage has historically been a big deal, for example.

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Rami

at 19:36 on 2009-12-09

Economic motives are everything, questions of race and religion are distractions.

There's a lot more to the 'economic' motives of marriage, IMO (including financial motives) than sexual competition. And inhibition of sexual competition is just as subjective as other motives (like those Arthur mentions).

That kind of strengthens my point about truly alternative relationships being completely foreign to society as a whole. And no, I have never seen any such relationship in porn.

Surely by definition an 'alternative' relationship is one that is foreign to society as a whole ;-)?

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Morgus

at 02:52 on 2009-12-12>What about children? Obligating people to look after their own kids through a powerful social expectation that people should only have children within a marriage has historically been a big deal, for example.

I view the desire to increase the size of one's herd the ultimate manifestation of material greed.

>There's a lot more to the 'economic' motives of marriage, IMO (including financial motives) than sexual competition.

By "economic" I mean "materialistic." Status within society, building up of one's social group, etc.

>Surely by definition an 'alternative' relationship is one that is foreign to society as a whole ;-)?

My point (which you are distracting yourself from perhaps on purpose) is that relationships are essentially homogeneous. That is also the great lie of our "consumer choice." Yes, there is, on the surface, great variety, but our place as a consumer and the seller's place as a seller is essentially the same regardless of one's choice of product or venue. One's desire does not make one an individual, especially if it's for what everyone else wants. Vast resources are wasted to hide this fact.

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Guy

at 03:39 on 2009-12-12@Morgus: I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the Marxist/Materialist worldview, but I also think there's a problem with evaluating it as an ideology if you don't have some sense of what it would take to demonstrate it to be incorrect. I mean, OK, we can start by looking at various social phenomena and saying, "Yep, that's part of the economic base, that's only part of the social superstructure, that thing over there is base..." &c &c. But if somebody picks out some example and wants to argue that it shows that not all relationships are fundamentally driven by economic motives or structures, how are you going to respond? By what criteria are you going to judge the validity of their counter-example? If you say it's "self-evident" that it's invalid, or the criteria of validity boils down to "proper materialist interpretation = valid, other = not valid", then you end up stuck in the bubble of a self-validating ideology. I know it's a big ask, but, can you say anything about what your criteria of falsification would be?

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Morgus

at 07:27 on 2009-12-12>I know it's a big ask, but, can you say anything about what your criteria of falsification would be?

Self-sacrifice of one sort or another. Priesthood doesn't count, that brings great status. (and wealth) Kind of like Yukio Mishima, he said that he did not believe in the sincerity of Westerners, since they kept their sincerity locked within their torsos. He was referring, of course, to seppuku, which he ended up committing quite publicly.

Another less gruesome criteria would be the degree to which a person is individuated. If he/she pursued goals or had a way of thinking that had nothing to do with the world of the "people" or any established group or immediate, simple-minded self-interest. In short, I would accept a person who had displayed an ability to transcend the linearity that arbitrarily limits the human condition.

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Wardog

at 15:51 on 2009-12-12Lol!Rand.

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Morgus

at 19:59 on 2009-12-12Nope, Ayn Rand only acknowledged "rational" self-interest, IOW simplistic money-grubbing. Even if there were rules governing this idealized quest for money, the basic motive was inherently banal.

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Rami

at 22:44 on 2009-12-12Still don't quite follow. But...

By "economic" I mean "materialistic." Status within society, building up of one's social group, etc.

given the above and your implication that "rational" self-interest != self-interest, I'm thinking our basic definitions of key terms differ too much for me to understand your point unless you expand further.

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Morgus

at 22:55 on 2009-12-12I really don't know where your confusion's coming from. I'm not a proponent of simple-minded self-interest, and I've said so repeatedly. "Rational" self-interest is another form of simple-minded self-interest dressed up as logical positivism. Long story short, I dislike banal motivations veiled as heroic, transcendent things.

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Arthur B

at 23:02 on 2009-12-12But given your views on the purpose of marriage, it sounds like you don't believe that people by and large have any non-banal motives...

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Rami

at 23:47 on 2009-12-12

I really don't know where your confusion's coming from.

Well, for instance, you said "economic interest", and seemed to mean by it something different from what I mean when I say "economic interest". You also seem to understand "rational" self-interest differently. Extrapolating from that, I would expect that your definition of "simple-minded self-interest" would differ from mine too, so I have no definite idea of what you mean when you say it. How are you defining "simple-minded"?

I dislike banal motivations veiled as heroic, transcendent things

I don't know which culture you grew up in, but in mine marriage is always understood as a useful thing that serves certain functions. Not heroic or transcendent.

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Morgus

at 01:14 on 2009-12-13>But given your views on the purpose of marriage, it sounds like you don't believe that people by and large have any non-banal motives...

Yes, that is precisely my point. Those who conceive of better things are great people.

>How are you defining "simple-minded"?

Linear, unimaginative, gotten from some other, still more mundane source like your church, your parents, or corporate America.

>I don't know which culture you grew up in, but in mine marriage is always understood as a useful thing that serves certain functions. Not heroic or transcendent.

"But marriage is about love! And sanctity and shit!"

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Morgus

at 06:34 on 2009-12-13And back to the point. Nobody's disputed that Whedon's sensibility is traditional, they've disputed only my wording of my criticisms.

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Rami

at 07:01 on 2009-12-13

Nobody's disputed that Whedon's sensibility is traditional

Well, I'd not call it traditional per se

1

, but I don't think anyone was arguing about that to begin with -- I think we're mostly agreed that it's problematic.

they've disputed only my wording of my criticisms.

Well you did make a few other assertions beyond "the sensibility Whedon portrays is traditional" ;-)

[1]: Assuming Anglo-American 'tradition', yes, there's a good deal of overlap with Nice Guy but I really don't think either is a pure superset of the other...

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Wardog

at 19:33 on 2009-12-13I also rather think this discussion that wandered rather far from the original article. Shall we rein it in?

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Morgus

at 23:12 on 2009-12-13yeah okay mom

And btw all the 4 bulletpoints at the beginning of the article could easily describe the Victorian view of human sexuality. Just sayin'.

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Melissa G.

at 00:19 on 2009-12-14

yeah okay mom

Um, that was rather rude. And Kyra makes a valid point. This has nothing to do with the original article anymore. And the discussion doesn't seem to be going anywhere so why not just put an end to it?

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Morgus

at 00:58 on 2009-12-14Strange how the Internet both disinhibits people and makes them more overly sensitive. That was really my way of jokingly backing out of this while reiterating my point.

If you don't want to move us off track any more, then don't respond to this. I am done.

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Rami

at 02:36 on 2009-12-14

That was really my way of jokingly backing out of this while reiterating my point.

Try appending a ;-) to indicate humorous intent, it works better on the Internets :-)

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Morgus

at 03:06 on 2009-12-14noooo you are off track

oh shit so am i

edit: I just looked at my first post. It comes like 9 months after the one before. It appears that digression is healthy.

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Rami

at 03:29 on 2009-12-14

noooo you are off track oh shit so am i

WTF???

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Arthur B

at 03:41 on 2009-12-14

I just looked at my first post. It comes like 9 months after the one before. It appears that digression is healthy.

Here on FB, we don't mind if the conversation on an article peters out. We're not against someone resurrecting a discussion if they have a new point to make, but we also recognise that there are times when nobody has anything useful to say and it's best if people stop posting for a while.

This is one of those times.

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Arthur B

at 20:36 on 2012-11-30Super-special three year necro because I finally started watching

Firefly

and uuuuuuh...

I mean, maybe I'm not being fair and I'm judging it in the light of the article but the Inara/Companion stuff is just toe-curling and I 100% see Dan's point about it being a kind of Nice Guy fantasy (right down to several of her clients apparently being Nice Guys).

On top of that I'm having trouble sussing how she even fits into this culture. Most people think Companions are awesome, but they only seem to mention their existence when Inara happens to be in the room - so far I've yet to see an Alliance officer griping about his long tour of duty and daydreaming about hooking up with a Companion he'd employed back home or anything like that. On top of Mal being unceasingly unpleasant about her profession, Shepherd seems to disapprove when he first meets her, so even though Shepherd comes around fairly quickly it still seems as though there's some social stigma attached to it (because where else did Mal learn that "whore" was a word you could use to insult people with?) but this only seems to come up when Whedon needs Mal to be unpleasant to Inara. Unless there's an episode which unpacks all this late in the series (or a diversion revolving around it in the movie) it doesn't seem we ever get any insight into the history of the institution and how it came into being and got to the level of social acceptance it has, which would seem to be an obvious and necessary thing to work out considering the amount of work which has clearly gone into figuring out other aspects of the future history here. On top of that, I don't feel that I'm getting enough indications as to whether Mal and Shepherd's disapproval of the concept pegs them as conservative but in line with a substantial body of feeling in the general population, or markedly old-fashioned in a way which makes their view of the subject eccentric or extreme, or so far out of step with public opinion that they're being kind of nuts about it - in other words, I haven't the slightest idea what level of social acceptance the Companions are meant to have.

It feels, in fact, like something Whedon ham-fistedly patched in because he wanted prostitutes in his space Western without the consequences of having prostitutes, in the same way that the Reavers are his way of having a culture of people living out in the wasteland with a reputation for brutal atrocities against settlers without having Native Americans portrayed in the way they were often portrayed in the nastier sort of golden age Westerns, and how the Browncoats were a way to have a Confederacy analogue without the slavery angle.

I dunno how I feel about all that. On the one hand it's obviously a step up from having an unreconstructed Western with all the nastier setting elements intact. On the other hand, seeing the main character giving the old "We [the South] Will Rise Again!" line and having his belief that the war was about freedom from central government meddling be actually justified gives me shivers.

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Arthur B

at 20:43 on 2012-11-30Ew, I'm watching the "I don't respect your job but he doesn't respect

you

" episode.

Between this and the fact I have seen literally nothing so far to make me imagine that the Alliance as a whole are evil aside from the River thing (and nothing to suggest that that isn't the responsibility of a small conspiracy within an otherwise benign society rather than evidence of all-pervasive corruption) and I'm beginning to think that the only way I'm going to enjoy this show is if I regard Mal as an unutterable prick who deserves whatever horrible stuff happens to him.

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Michal

at 00:24 on 2012-12-01Well Arthur, there's a certain a "major" plot twist in

Serenity

that bears a striking resemblance to a short story by Michael Moorcock. Which means you'll just have to watch it to the end now to find out what that resemblance is.

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Arthur B

at 01:25 on 2012-12-01Unless it involves Simon and Inara merging to become an androgynous Antichrist who consumes the world, or Mal having a breakdown where he almost but not quite accepts the fact that he murdered the whole crew and dumped the bodies in the cryo-berths, or Vera the assault rifle killing Jayne, turning into a humanoid form and declaring "Farewell, friend, I was a thousand times more evil than thou", I think I'm going to be disappointed. ;)

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James D

at 06:39 on 2012-12-01

On top of that I'm having trouble sussing how she even fits into this culture.

Well first of all it's important to note that there are regular ol' prostitutes in Firefly too (as you'll see in one of the later episodes), and the Companions look down on them just as much as Mal does. I get the idea that Companions are basically just like highly-trained, high-priced prostitutes controlled by a central body who requires them to undergo regular health checkups and pass various tests before 'licensing' them (these details are mentioned). Regular prostitutes can't get these licenses, thus they're looked down upon. Because of how beautiful/smart/good in bed the Companions are, they're in absurdly high demand and can basically pick and choose from a large pool of potential clients. More cultured types give them a moral pass, more conservative, old-fashioned types like Mal and Shepherd Book (who have presumably had little exposure to Companions due to living out in the boonies) tend to be less approving. It seems like the whole "Companion" thing is Whedon's ideal for legal prostitution, rather than a separate thing altogether.

In principle I don't really see anything wrong with it, but the whole Nice Guy angle is definitely creepy. Also, I think Mal taking issue with Inara's profession was set up as a conflict that would initially keep them from getting romantically involved despite obvious chemistry, but would eventually resolve - Mal would later loosen the stick up his butt, come to terms with Inara's profession, and they'd finally hook up. Of course, it ended after only one season, so who knows what would have happened otherwise.

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http://jmkmagnum.blogspot.com/

at 07:20 on 2012-12-01I could see that working, but they went WAY overboard on making Mal disgustingly judgmental and disrespectful toward Inara. It doesn't feel like they have great chemistry that if Mal could just get over his superficial hangups they would be great together; it feels like Mal is sexually attracted to her and has an attitude of "If all your life choices and personality were different, I wouldn't have to look down at you." And so more than rooting for him to modernize his views, I root for him to get the hell away from Inara and let her live her life.

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Dan H

at 13:44 on 2012-12-01@Arthur

On top of Mal being unceasingly unpleasant about her profession, Shepherd seems to disapprove when he first meets her, so even though Shepherd comes around fairly quickly it still seems as though there's some social stigma attached to it (because where else did Mal learn that "whore" was a word you could use to insult people with?) but this only seems to come up when Whedon needs Mal to be unpleasant to Inara.

It should come as no surprise to those who know anything about Whedon fandom that I've heard people cite this very issue as evidence that the way Mal treats Inara is *one hundred percent okay*.

Because, you see, Firefly is set in a post-patriarchy society, and so when Mal calls Inara a whore, he isn't using a misogynistic, gendered insult in order to assert his superiority over her, he's just expressing his entirely rational, entirely well-founded disregard for her profession - just as you might call Jane "mercenary" or Book "preacher" or for that matter call Simon a "quack".

This, after all, is the ideal of all social justice movements - to get to the point where we can be as racist and misogynistic as we like but it will be okay because everybody will be equal anyway.

@James D

Regular prostitutes can't get these licenses, thus they're looked down upon.

I agree that that's how it seems to work in the setting (and I'm aware that all you're doing here is pointing out how things work in-universe, not arguing for any particular interpretation of it), it's just that this makes things *even more* fucked up, because it means that Mal's attitude problem goes from being "looks down Inara because she is a prostitute, which is wrong because it is none of his damned business whether she is a prostitute or not" to "looks down on Inara because he *mistakenly believes* her to be a prostitute, when in fact she is a Companion, which is okay because Companions are special."

Kyra and I have just watched Easy A, which suffers from exactly this problem. It's about a girl who gets a reputation for being a slut because she lies about losing her virginity. She spends the entire movie being horrendously slut-shamed, which the movie seems to feel is wrong *only* because it is based on a factual error - as in the reason it's wrong to slut-shame this girl is because she isn't a slut, not because slut-shaming is wrong *in general*. It's full of horrible scenes where she pontificates whether maybe pretending to be a slut is as bad as really being a slut, and people say things like "I know you're not really a whore, because a real whore doesn't know she's a whore".

It seems like the whole "Companion" thing is Whedon's ideal for legal prostitution, rather than a separate thing altogether.

Pretty much this, but once again that just creeps me out even more. Ironically, Whedon here is arguing for exactly the kind of ridiculous straw man "legalized prostitution" that Chester Brown was arguing against in

Paying For It

, where legalization isn't about providing prostitutes with better working conditions, or proper legal protection, or any level of social acceptability *as a whole* - it's just about making sure that the only people who are allowed to be prostitutes are really hot.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 14:33 on 2012-12-01

the reason it's wrong to slut-shame this girl is because she isn't a slut, not because slut-shaming is wrong *in general*.

It's been years since I saw

Easy A

, but I still get slightly sick thinking about it. What a disgusting piece of filth. It's strange the way it seemed to completely miss what's actually wrong with slut-shaming, as you outlined, but to clearly understand how gross slut-shaming is and how pathetic and hypocritical slut-shamers are. It's all the worse for almost managing to be decent.

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Dan H

at 15:04 on 2012-12-01It kept coming *so close* to redeeming itself. There's the bit towards the end when she talks to her mother, and she's like "oh yeah, I was a total slut in high school" and you believe for about ten seconds that it's going to point out that there would have been *nothing wrong with that*. Then she follow up with "I had a very low sense of self-worth."

The very last line is, in fact "it's none of your damned business" but in the context of the wider film it seems a lot like she's saying "it's none of your business whether I have sex with my current boyfriend, because what goes on in a conventional monogamous relationship is understood to be private, in a way that the broader details of my sexual behaviour are not."

Gah.

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Arthur B

at 15:59 on 2012-12-01Watched

Our Mrs Reynolds

last night and yeeeeeeeeeah I think I'm done.

Note to

Firefly

fans about to write in with "but it gets so good in episode 7/10/14/the movie!" - I'm not interested and I'm not going to read what you have to say. The series is just too much of a slog and too prone to fall over its own incoherent setting and Minority Warring for me to devote any more time to it.

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James D

at 17:49 on 2012-12-01

Pretty much this, but once again that just creeps me out even more. Ironically, Whedon here is arguing for exactly the kind of ridiculous straw man "legalized prostitution" that Chester Brown was arguing against in Paying For It, where legalization isn't about providing prostitutes with better working conditions, or proper legal protection, or any level of social acceptability *as a whole* - it's just about making sure that the only people who are allowed to be prostitutes are really hot.

Yeah, it also would have been nice to see, say, a male Companion, or a Companion that isn't traditionally attractive. To be honest the whole thing just doesn't seem terribly thought-out; it seems like he just wanted one of the crew members to be a prostitute, since it's unusual/shocking/challenging/etc. at least for the basic cable crowd.

You have to remember who his initial audience was here; I don't know how much you non-American types know about regular Fox programming, but it's generally "edgy" in certain specific ways (see: the Simpsons, Family Guy) and very conservative in others. You might even say they're edgy in a reactionary way, what with Family Guy often pushing the line in terms of what racist/sexist/homophobic jokes it can get away with (despite its superficial white guy liberal leanings in general).

So Whedon decided he didn't want to make her just a regular prostitute, that would be too gritty and/or unsympathetic (either for his taste or for Fox's), instead making her a "special" prostitute, and attached some half-assed ideas about the sex trade in general. But really he never does anything with those ideas - Mal never has to explain his fundamental assumptions about prostitution being immoral, because I think his attitude was meant to be a stand-in for the average Fox viewer's. Not that that excuses Whedon or anything - just that I think he bit off way more than he could chew given his medium, and probably should have scrapped the whole idea.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 18:04 on 2012-12-01

it's generally "edgy" in certain specific ways (see: the Simpsons, Family Guy) and very conservative in others.

Not to mention

Glee

, created especially for the mainstream America that most certainly is not homophobic, racist, sexist, or bigoted in any way, but does think it's a bit unfair that minorities get treated better than everyone else and should really stop whining.

"I had a very low sense of self-worth."

There's nothing wrong with being a slut as long as you hate yourself for it. That way the Nice Guy you decide to settle down with when you get tired of sex with Alpha Jerks can reassure you that you're a good person after all for seeing the light and deciding to devote yourself to him. He will be in charge of your virtue from then on, you'll have his permission to feel good about yourself.

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Jules V.O.

at 02:20 on 2012-12-02

Of course, it ended after only one season, so who knows what would have happened otherwise.

Actually, we *do* know what would have happened otherwise:

gang rape by reavers.

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Daniel F

at 11:23 on 2012-12-02

Watched Our Mrs Reynolds last night and yeeeeeeeeeah I think I'm done.

But you didn't even get to

Heart of Gold

or

Objects in Space

!

It got worse, I'm afraid.

Quite early on while watching

Buffy

, I reached the conclusion that Joss Whedon is at his best when he's not consciously trying to be feminist, and when he's not thinking about gender issues at all. The more he tries, the worse the end result. In the context of

Firefly

, I found that the show is at its best when Inara is not in the plot. I don't know about the best, but

Ariel

is still the episode I enjoyed the most, and it starts by inventing an excuse to exclude Inara for the duration of the episode.

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Dan H

at 11:35 on 2012-12-02

Actually, we *do* know what would have happened otherwise: gang rape by reavers.

Worse: Gang rape by Reavers, the primary narrative purpose of which was to allow Mal to demonstrate *how good he would be for Inara* by *not being disgusted by the fact that she had been raped*.

This little titbit made me particularly uncomfortable because I suspect that "girl I fancy gets raped, I am totally supportive about it, she totally has sex with me" is a far more common fantasy than any of us would like to admit.

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Michal

at 13:49 on 2012-12-02What is up with anti-rape devices in science fiction that only work while you're being raped? First the dentata in Snowcrash, then this thing.

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http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/

at 14:51 on 2012-12-02Well, I don't know if this is what Stephenson or Minear had in mind, but what occurs to me in the face of both of these stories is that if you're in a situation where you're going to get raped, there's no reason to believe that that's where it will end, and a device that doesn't protect you from rape but does incapacitate or kill your attacker might save your life. In theory, anyway. In practice, that kind of thinking assumes that there's only one attacker and that you're going to be in a position (and in a state) to escape once they're taken care of, neither of which strike me as reasonable assumptions for the sort of situation where such a device might conceivably be of use. I suspect the actual appeal for writers is the ironic reversal - the attribute that supposedly makes women vulnerable makes them dangerous - hence the popularity of the vagina dentata trope in general.

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Arthur B

at 15:27 on 2012-12-02I seem to remember that in

Snow Crash

the dentata is mentioned as being there for deterrent purposes - because rapists never know who's got a dentata, they don't know whether they're going to lose a dick in a rape attempt.

In practice, as I mentioned upthread, rapists these days never know whether someone they're targeting is carrying a gun or a knife or mace or whatever. Doesn't stop 'em!

Also the discussion of the device in

Snow Crash

seems to assume that rape always consists of complete strangers attacking you and humping you briefly in an alleyway.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 16:12 on 2012-12-02Knowing that a potential victim might be armed probably fails to move them because they can't actually imagine a weak, helpless woman knowing how to use a gun or knife properly. I would guess the image of vagina dentata working effectively is exponentially more vivid.

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James D

at 20:12 on 2012-12-02Also you have to be in a position to use a knife/gun/mace/whatever effectively, which if the rapist gets the jump on you might not be an option. From what I understand, the dentata just works without you having to do anything except insert it beforehand.

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Dan H

at 23:30 on 2012-12-02

Also you have to be in a position to use a knife/gun/mace/whatever effectively, which if the rapist gets the jump on you might not be an option. From what I understand, the dentata just works without you having to do anything except insert it beforehand.

Of course the flip side of that is that the dentata only works in the case of actual vaginal penetration. If it's meant to be used as a way of incapacitating a rapist so that they can't harm you *after* they've raped you, it's still in practice far less reliable than pretty much every other kind of cybernetic weapon implant you might want to get. If it's meant to be a deterrent, it's one that is - without wanting to think too deeply about the details - easily circumvented.

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James D

at 23:39 on 2012-12-02

If it's meant to be a deterrent, it's one that is - without wanting to think too deeply about the details - easily circumvented.

The obvious solution is to have dentata in every part of your body. FOOL PROOF

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Arthur B

at 01:23 on 2012-12-03Uh, is it just me or is this getting kind of unnecessary?

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Wardog

at 10:06 on 2012-12-03Well, it's slightly more entertaining that thinking too hard about the doomed hypothetical future of Firefly. I mean, I know there's lots to dislike about the show, and the gender politics are all Whedony and unpleasant, but ... uh ... I quite liked it.

That doesn't mean it's not wildly problematic in very many ways, and perhaps the only reason I like it so much is because it didn't have a chance to go horribly wrong, but I thought it was fun and witty, and actually I was pretty passionate about it when it first aired. Or rather after it was aired and cancelled.

I think it's harder to watch in retrospect because The Whedon Problems have sort of developed over time. It's easy to downplay how fucking awesome Buffy, and some of Angel, was in the light of, well, Dollhouse and Whedon deciding he was god's gift to feminism. Before he basically decided that liking to watch hot women run around in tight fitting clothing was morally equivalent to raping them and that sent him off on a Nice Guy Minority Warrior spin ... he did good stuff.

I miss that guy.

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Arthur B

at 10:40 on 2012-12-03Eh, I find Whedon's wit to be kind of grating personally. (In particular, I find that the more it comes out in his writing the more the characters end up sounding like the stock Whedon characters he's been using since the early days rather than distinct individuals.)

Possibly this is a "you had to be there at the time" thing because I came onboard

Buffy

fairly late (mainly catching episodes when I happened to be in Dan's presence and the show happened to be on) and I don't recall having a reaction more positive than "eh, this is OK". I guess maybe I'd be more appreciative of his stuff if I'd got on the Whedon train earlier (say, during the early

Buffy

period or something) but as it is my first exposure to him involved more mediocre stuff so even his better material just ends up reminding me of the mediocre stuff, if you see what I mean.

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Robinson L

at 15:30 on 2012-12-03

Arthur: as it is my first exposure to him involved more mediocre stuff so even his better material just ends up reminding me of the mediocre stuff, if you see what I mean.

Yeah, that makes sense. Ptolemaeus and I recently re-watched the first three seasons of

Buffy

, and even that wasn't as great as we remembered. (Even in his early years, Whedon had an inflated sense of his own profundity.)

I also am quite fond of

Firefly

, despite its more deplorable elements (e.g. the protagonist), but I can see how you'd come to the conclusion that it's not worth your while, and it really doesn't get significantly better. As Dan has already mentioned, in some places it gets even worse.

Kyra: Before he basically decided that liking to watch hot women run around in tight fitting clothing was morally equivalent to raping them and that sent him off on a Nice Guy Minority Warrior spin ... he did good stuff. I miss that guy.

Me too. Still, there's always the

Avengers

movie/

Avengers Assemble

.

Dan: Because, you see, Firefly is set in a post-patriarchy society, and so when Mal calls Inara a whore, he isn't using a misogynistic, gendered insult in order to assert his superiority over her, he's just expressing his entirely rational, entirely well-founded disregard for her profession - just as you might call Jane "mercenary" or Book "preacher" or for that matter call Simon a "quack".

Apart from not really being an at all accurate picture of what social justice movements struggle for (as you point out), this argument is also ludicrous just on the face of it, considering how many villainous cartoon misogynists Whedon populates the

Firefly

'Verse with to make his hamfisted gender commentaries.

This little titbit made me particularly uncomfortable because I suspect that "girl I fancy gets raped, I am totally supportive about it, she totally has sex with me" is a far more common fantasy than any of us would like to admit.

Well, there's nothing wrong with fantasies, even about stuff that would be highly messed up in the real world, so long as you don't try projecting those fantasies onto the real world ... like by portraying such a fantasy as series drama, for instance.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 18:04 on 2012-12-03

Buffy

worked for me when I first watched it because I'd never seen anything like it before, and I often had no idea where it was going. There was a brightness and innocence to it that made it genuinely fun. Buffy's pathos felt warm and real and unavoidable, not hard and dry and bloodless like it did in the later seasons. I don't think this is all hindsight on my part, even though I haven't seen the show in at least five or six years.

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Bookwyrm

at 04:54 on 2013-01-27Hi! This is my first time commenting here. I came across this short story after reading this article. Its probably unintentional but it kind of reads like a cautionary tale against this sort of behavior.

http://www.halloweenghoststories.com/featured/index.html

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/yeKsQ_cNqux16s489peIhdzZ2dSaOlA-#da226

at 03:40 on 2013-08-05I will use Buffy for most examples as I am more familiar with this, his longest running project. . .

Rape is all about power. The rape scenes in Buffy are no different. Buffy was the one with the power. The chosen. The heavenly, loved, good one. She trained Spike to be sexually violent with the rapes she performed on him. Pushing and degrading him; beating him and demanding he perform sexual acts. She was the one in control, with all power. When Spike broke emotionally and reciprocated, he was judged to have shown how evil he had been, was, and always would be. A double standard that is dangerous to encourage.

Wheton's simplistic view that Buffy is justified in her treatment of Spike because he is all evil, encourages the viewer to subconsciously believe that anything they do to a person they define as "evil" is justified. The slayer and the vampire are on fairly equal footing physically. They should both have been judged as rapist or neither should have been judged as such. It doesn't matter that Spike was an evil vampire without a soul, for the character arch had already surpassed that basic premise.

The positive message of equality and forgiveness, even atonement for past acts, are given lip service in the series but they become superimposed with the concept that one evil act makes us, and everything we do, always and forever evil. The second message is even more simplistic, juvenile, and dangerous, for it demonstrates that certain chosen few are not to be judged by the same criteria as everyone else. It stereotypically enhances the fact that, in Whedon's world, the privileged, regardless of their sex, is all-powerful. Evil men show it, good men keep it hidden, and those with power don't even have to acknowledge it. Huge fallacies.

A good man can perform acts of evil, and an evil man can perform acts of good. It is the nature of the beast. Therefore man, being defined in this context to include both sexes, is neither good nor evil. There is just man, in all his imperfections. If you attempt to judge a man's entire moral compass by one single act, or even a lot of acts during one period of his growth and development, then you do not judge the man. A man should be judged on the total sum of his parts for the development he has achieved to date, with the understanding that new experiences will have an effect and will alter and change him. Man is not a stagnate creature. He is not the man he was; nor is he the man he will become.

Though Whedon had ample time, in Spike's character arch, this level of development was never achieved and any time the journey was begun, the Spike character was reset to ground zero. Almost like James Marsters brought more depth to the role than was intended and so the character was punished for the transgression. The same hold's true in all Whedon's excellently casted series.

I wasn't sold on the rape concept and couldn't even suspend my disbelief long enough to see the scene as anything more than an end of season rating ploy. I viewed Inara's rape episode in Firefly with similar trepidation, and there are numerous instances in Whedon's work from which to extrapolate.

I won't even get into the glaring inequality that appears when you view that both Angel and Spike were working to become “champions”, a telling word that. Whereas, if she hadn't been chosen by outside forces, Buffy would have been an airhead. Other than to say the men were the “earners” while the woman was “the little girl to bestow gifts upon but not capable of walking the path on her own.” Which is further demonstrated by the fact that the slayers had watchers and the champions choose their own path.

As for empowering women, the all powerful slayer, does not even have the strength of character to live her life in the open and instead hides in the shadows to obtain the sexual relief that Wheton's male characters flaunt and mostly take for granted. The message being that women should be ashamed of their sexual appetites and must work to suppress and hide them, least they be found out and the woman subsequently fall from grace. Inara is allowed to have sex, but not to enjoy it, and has to be paid to perform it. Faith, being Buffy's foil, is showed as the unstable and nasty, common, girl, who repeatedly falls outside of the norms and morays society demands. Thus, is she to be despised, because she openly pursues such sexual liaisons. Faith is also written as crude and unacceptable because she isn't diplomatic and she repeatedly shows human qualities that keep her from being chosen one material.

Even employment is harangued. Their are many women in food service who are intelligent, warm, and friendly. That are working to better themselves because they were not born into privileged circumstances. Many are working for their families survival, and if that isn't a noble act, I don't know what is! Joss portrays them as end of the line, throw away characters. Social services is also not immune to his prosaic view of woman. He had an opportunity to show that we all fall on hard times and can struggle and overcome. He failed to do so.

True empowerment comes from knowing if we do what is necessary, with dignity and decency, even if we never climb any higher on society's perceived social ladder, we are worthy and have overcome, regardless of the outer trappings of our souls.

His views are too cut and dry, to one-sided and are mired too much in the upper crust motif of his life. Good actors of both sexes, who journey outside Whedon's work morality, appear to be left behind because they manage to raise questions, to shine the light of inquiry into the character they portray in ways that Joss Whedon will grudgingly capitalize upon, while he reins in the character to assure that those questions remain out of focus and unexamined. Then, those actors seem to be condemned and dropped by the wayside as quickly as feasibly possible. I would question his level of devotion to his supporters who constantly ask for, but never see, the actors they have grown to love receive any roles with substance. The individual talent pool that is not being taped seems to grow exponentially.

So, is this all evil/all good concept he repeatedly embodies in his work, Joss Whedon's internal beliefs manifested? Scary thought. I watch Joss Whedon's projects for enjoyable escapism. His works are not my answer to the feminine mystique. Nor is he my guru.

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Arthur B

at 13:14 on 2017-08-31It feels timely to dust this one off since

this wave just broke

.

To be fair, by this point

even the Torygraph kind of gets that Joss isn't as good an ally as he proclaims himself to be

. But it kind of feels like a sea change has happened.

Whedonesque has shuttered

, and whilst the decision to close isn't overtly connected to the open letter the fact that they suggest donations to a C-PTSD charity when Kai's open letter talks about how she had to work through that kind of points to it being a factor.

There's separating the art from the artist, of course, and more power to you if you feel able to do that, but Whedon's proclamation of his woke bae nature isn't art, it's self-promotional rhetoric, and whilst the fact that someone has behaved badly and caused harm to others shouldn't in principle have any effect on the validity of their arguments - truth is truth even if Hitler is saying it - it's hard to look past the hypocrisy, especially when his feminist talking points are so tied to the image of himself he promotes.

You don't get to claim the brownie points for being One Of The Good Guys unless you actually are a good guy, and Dan's diagnosis of Whedon with Nice Guy Syndrome in retrospect seems dead on.

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Robinson L

at 00:00 on 2017-10-31On the one hand, this is sadly consistent with the increasingly dubious quality of the feminist discourse in his works—and makes all the messed up sexual politics, especially concerning consent, in

Dollhouse

that much creepier. (I’m a little amazed that

Telegraph

article didn’t cite any examples from

Dollhouse

; it seems such a natural choice.)

On the other hand, up to this point I could’ve seen Whedon as basically a decent guy whose feminist analysis isn’t as sophisticated as he thinks it is. I didn’t think the occasional bouts of awfulness in his storytelling necessarily reflected back on him as a person. Maybe I’m too naive.

In any event, I’m sure I’ll still retain a soft spot for

Buffy

,

Angel

, certain elements of

Firefly

which don’t involve the main character, and the first

Avengers

movie. But, well, yeah, this really sucks, no pun intended.

(By the way, I clicked the link for the

Telegraph

article and it took me to the donotlink site. I copy-pasted the tinyurl provided on the donotlink site into url bar, and it took me directly to the

Telegraph

article, complete with the regular url. Does that mean I did something wrong?)

Oh yeah, final thought:

While none of us would go so far as actually calling him a rapist

I remember at the time, we generally agreed this accusation was a tad overblown—I certainly thought so. In light of Ms. Cole’s revelation, though, it seems eerily close to the truth.

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Arthur B

at 10:25 on 2017-10-31

I remember at the time, we generally agreed this accusation was a tad overblown—I certainly thought so. In light of Ms. Cole’s revelation, though, it seems eerily close to the truth.

Yeah, in retrospect I still can't get onboard with, eg, assuming a particular character is a rapist and an abuser based solely on the fact that they're the white partner in an interracial relationship, or for that matter armchair diagnosing Whedon as a rapist based solely on the content of his work.

That said, I can totally see merit in saying that a particular work expresses a rape culture worldview, and doing so doesn't necessarily amount to accusing the creator of rape. It is unfortunately the case that it's completely possible for someone to perpetuate rape culture and rape apologetics without themselves being a rapist; that's kind of how rape culture perpetuates itself to begin with. And it's going to be pretty hard to keep what Kai's had to say out of mind when tackling Whedon's work from here on out.

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Robinson L

at 20:30 on 2017-10-31Oh yeah, I didn't mean to imply I agree with the

reasoning

in that post, even in hindsight. You're absolutely right that an artistic work can promote rape culture without the artist(s) behind it being rapists - there are numerous such works out there.

I just find it morbidly interesting that, even though I still find the logic which led up to it faulty, the accusation itself ultimately proved not so far off the mark as I originally assumed.

[pass-the-bechdel]

Supergirl season two full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (twenty-two of twenty-two).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

49.93%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Nineteen. 

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-five. Thirteen who appear in more than one episode, five who appear in at least half the episodes, and two who appear in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty-six. Thirteen who appear in more than one episode, four who appear in at least half the episodes, and one who appears in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Though the numbers turned out higher than last season by virtue of some stellar narratives in the early part of the season, in reality this was a disappointing return to the show, by-and-large shallower and overly dependent on life-defining concepts of unhealthy romance (average rating of 3.09).

General Season Quality:

Starts out fantastically well, but loses steam around mid season, and turns pretty damn sour by season’s end. A shocking waste of the potential promised by the first season; I’ve practically got whiplash from how severely this turned.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Well, this was a clusterfuck. Let’s see if we can break it down into three manageable categories: world building, politics, and relationships.

The primary victim of this season’s bad storytelling is the alien world of Daxom, and the shoddy world-building there leaks out all over the rest of the narrative. We’re told initially that Daxom is some horrible party planet whose politics were at odds with truth, justice, and the Kryptonian way - we’re told this within a clear framework of confronting ingrained prejudices (something I applauded at the time, you may recall), a context which implies that there is complexity and nuance to Daxom that is going unrecognised, and which we might reasonably expect to explore as the season progresses. It doesn’t happen. We’re told that the people of Daxom are kept drunk so that they won’t question their oppression; we’re told that they were all too drugged up to ‘feel anything’; we’re told that they maintained a sex-drenched hedonistic society headed by an evil, war-mongering, slave-owning royal family (the slavery thing really makes it seem like Kara buried the lede by complaining about a ‘party planet’, too: honestly who cares if they’re partying? They have slavery. SLAVERY). Our hero Supergirl even tells us that the Daxomite prince was ‘the worst of the lot’, though she conveniently neglects to detail how he was the worst, which becomes conspicuous once it is revealed that her new boyfriend Mon-El is that prince. Everything we ever learn about Daxom is cartoonishly negative; it’s also somewhat at odds with itself. Were the Daxomites viciously oppressed and constantly partying? While it is technically possible to have both be true, the entire planet is treated as such a homogenous whole it’s hard to know who was suffering, who was livin’ it up, and who was doing both. Are the rich people being kept drunk and drugged so that they won’t object to their own superiority? Are the poor people provided the freedom and resources to party hard on a constant basis to prevent them from rioting over their non-specified hardships? The details are so vague we can’t even draw clear conclusions about who is responsible for this situation, because if everyone is drunk, drugged, or otherwise unable to gain perspective on their circumstances, then can they really be blamed for them? Daxom’s entire population is tarred with the same broad brush, a collection of cliches masquerading as world-building but really only serving to form a blurry image of a dysfunctional and inherently bad society. And with Daxom’s bevy of stereotypes standing unquestioned and therefore unclear, we segue easily into...

Politics. Early on when I applauded the show’s transparency about stating its political convictions, I had no idea how far they intended to take it, and how blisteringly uncool it would be. Where, at that early stage, the politics the show was declaring was all about equal rights and therefore undeniably positive, as the Daxom issue grew the political mess became far less inclusive. Despite being confronted by the reality of Krypton’s flaws back in the first season as well as in this one, the positioning of Daxom as an uncomplicated evil serves to backtrack on Supergirl’s personal growth in recognising that she is not immune from bigotry herself, instead validating her hatred. Ironically, they get the opportunity to examine the same confrontation for Mon-El later in the season when meeting with his parents forces him to acknowledge how far his personal beliefs have strayed from his upbringing, and yet they waste that chance as well, because duh, Daxom is bad. Exploring what was wrong with Daxom wasn’t about furthering that statement on equal rights, not least because exploration of Daxom’s flaws didn’t really happen at all, we were just handed the party line and told to go with the idea that this whole planet was garbage. And then on top of that, the show went and made the political division of Krypton and Daxom into a stand-in for real life American Democrats vs Republicans, with Rhea echoing Republican catchphrases while the much-championed equality-advocate and literal alien President of the United States is explicitly identified as a Democrat! Supergirl’s writers thus make a statement not about political policy or basic rights, but about political affiliation in the real world, and there’s nothing positive about using the cartoonish villainy of Daxom as a vehicle for attacking Republicans. This sends the message that Supergirl is not a show for Republican audience members, and that divisiveness is just not useful. Instead of using their show as a platform to promote positive and healthy ideas, it is used as a weapon to shame and (again with the irony) alienate a potential half of its viewership, and in the current political climate, that’s irresponsible story telling, not to mention anathema to Supergirl’s first-season theme of unity across barriers. 

So, we have a world that is just broad-strokes Bad News, an ill-advised not-metaphor for real-world political divisions, and a bunch of missed opportunities to explore the nature of bigotry. That last one is a bigger problem than it may initially appear, too, as noted in the episode posts: if the writers were trying to tell this story in a serious way, they’d have really invested in deprogramming Mon-El. As eager as they were to make Daxom ‘evil’, they didn’t want to also make Mon-El ‘evil’ as Kara said he was when she spoke unknowingly of Daxom’s prince, and so Mon-El becomes a victim of the vague world-building of Daxom, and creates a feedback loop which in turn makes Daxom’s world-building more vague by virtue of its politics not being clearly reflected in the unfiltered behaviour of its favourite son. The show wants Mon-El to be blamed for being born the prince of Daxom, but it also doesn’t want that - it wants the cheap drama of Kara expressing her own bigotry, but it doesn’t want Mon-El to actually be that bad, but it doesn’t want to admit that Kara is prejudiced, but it doesn’t want her opinion to be wholly justified in this one instance, just every other one, etc, etc. The show is too afraid to demonstrate Supergirl having ugly beliefs of her own to question, nor does it really want to do its due diligence on having Mon-El process the complex reality of having everything he was raised to believe called into question and/or summarily rejected by his new society. In the process, the season forgets to have any kind of moral centre, losing itself in that all-encompassing disavowal of Republican politics but failing to be specific  even then, and a superhero story without a moral centre is...kinda pointless. The resulting mess of politics and lazy short-hand, again, cripples Mon-El’s functionality as a character as he ends up tacked together out of disparate pieces, never really Daxom enough for Daxom, his playboy issues mostly pared down into base-level comic relief, and a grotesque romantic entanglement thrown in over the top to make his convoluted non-personality worse.

Which brings us to: relationships. Perhaps surprisingly, I don’t actually think Mon-El himself is the worst part of this season - as noted above, I see him as a symptom of much bigger issues - but his relationship with Kara is a huge problem. It plays pretty much every toxic bullshit trope I would have expected this show - especially after the precedent of awareness set last season - to avoid. The fact that Mon-El’s fuckboy behaviour is the only real evidence of that Daxomite heritage the show is refusing to properly unpack means it comes off not as a learning curve for him so much as an uncharacteristic weak point for Kara, that she would tolerate being screwed around by the thoughtlessness of this guy. That the show repeats this lazy drama literally one episode after another, having Mon-El mistreat or disappoint Kara at the start but make it up to her by the end, is further damaging as it shows Kara suffering a cycle of poor behaviour without any indication of why she keeps coming back to it, which again makes her appear weak-willed in total contradiction of her usual Supergirl persona, feeding an image of her as so love-struck as to be victimised by it despite any such ‘love’ being entirely unearned by the arcs of the narrative. That this is not only a massive unhealthy cliche but also one which is being served up without commentary as though the writers legitimately think it’s unproblematic romance makes it all the more shocking. Kara’s personality is overridden by her romance with Mon-El, and the rest of her relationships - most notably with Alex - are sidelined in favour of it; as the season wears on Kara rarely manages stories of her own that don’t revolve around the spontaneous and awkwardly forced romance with Mon-El. Why does she love him? Because the script says so. She loves him despite him being a Daxomite, but we’re not gonna explore that because it’s in admitting-that-good-guys-have-flaws territory. Giving the romance nuance or believability or unpredictability would require better characterisation of Mon-El and therefore Daxom and therefore, Kara’s prejudices that we’re supposed to pretend aren’t really a problem because Daxom is Evil. If Kara could have spent the season navigating the pains of bigotry with Mon-El, that would have been interesting and thought-provoking storytelling, and if they really insisted on making a romance there at least they woulda been treading some less generic ground.

Then again, they were already treading less generic ground when Kara was oh-so-briefly with James Olsen, before some fuckwit decided that it was too racially subversive to tell that story, and James ended up shafted with a promising but under-developed personal story and little to no contact with the rest of the characters all season long, making it almost weird when he occasionally graced us with an appearance. Alex at least fared better in the relationship that drew her away from Kara the majority of the time, scoring one of the only good subplots of the season in the form of her coming-out process, though I must admit I dislike Maggie and find her a flat, poorly-drawn character, as if the writers went ‘she’s a tough lesbian cop! That’s three words! It’s plenty of personality!’ and just kinda left it at that, and that taints the ongoing story of Alex’s personal life. The only passable romance in this season of Unnecessary Romances For Everyone Not Called James was J’onn and M’gann, and that possibly only worked because it was understated and featured but briefly; Winn’s relationship with Lyra, on the other hand, was just another cliche mess as irritating as it was dull, and pointless to boot, like the writers couldn’t figure how to write Winn a personal plot without it being a romance. Nice work, guys. 

There is so much more that we could complain about this season - don’t even get me started on the total misfire which was the CADMUS plot - and so few things to appreciate - Lena Luthor deserves a nod, queer rep is always a win, Martian stuff is great, Clark Kent is delightful - but it’s probably time to let this bad batch go. If we’re lucky, the folks behind Supergirl learned about a trillion lessons about how to do storytelling and will get back to actually trying, come season three. If not, I guess y’all can look forward to me bitching about it. A lot. They burned my trust in this show worse this season than I would have thought possible, and I’m not convinced they can earn it back. We’ll see. 

[ansu-gurleht]

So, what is the technological advancement in your world? Is magic common or rather somewhat rare? Are some species more likely to be magical than others? Classical distinction between good and evil or more complicated than that? How about healthcare? And what do the people believe in, many Gods, Religions, maybe Major Religions? What about love? Special Cuisine? (Sorry, many questions)

okay let’s get CRACKIN! gonna put in a read more here for people who don’t care, b/c this is about to get LENGTHY

technologically we’re not too far ahead! maybe think early renaissance europe? no gunpowder, tho’ we have magic gun staves. we got crossbows, siege weaponry, and also magical prosthetic limbs! a lot of “technological” advances here are b/c of magic, but i don’t think that makes them any less valid.

magic is common enough that everyone knows it exists, but not everyone knows its scope. somebody (esp. like, a human in a rural village) might be surprised to meet somebody who can use magic, but they wouldn’t really doubt that it’s real magic. and also, there’s a bit of mystery in exactly what magic can do, how much there is in the world. think lotr, although in practice, my magic is much more of a hard magic system. (see sandersons laws of magic for what i mean by that!)

the three sentient races in my world (orcs, humans, and elves) can all practice magic to varying degrees. orcs tend to be born with an innate gift, and if you aren’t, then you either can’t do magic, or you can barely do magic with great effort. humans don’t tend to have innate ability, unless they have an innate gift for studying. b/c studying magic is the only way for humans to be able to learn and practice it. you might consider orcs to be d&d sorcerers, whereas humans are wizards.

elves….are a different story. they’re ALL inherently magical. their entire BEING is magic. that’s not to say they’re not flesh and blood, real people - they just treat magic like breathing. that doesn’t mean they’re all wizards or sorcerers or shaman, but they have the best “starting point,” so to speak. orcs have the worst “starting point” in that some of them can’t practice it at all, but orcs ALSO have they highest potential of power.

good vs. evil is absolutely not a thing - this setting really focuses on the grey aspects. it’s important to note - my original premise for this setting was, “what if a huge good vs evil battle like in lotr happened, except the ‘evil’ won?” naturally, orcs aren’t inherently “evil,” they were just slaves to a relatively “evil” force, the trolls. i won’t elaborate on the trolls too much, since even in my head i’m purposefully keeping them somewhat vague, but they were a powerful race who created the orcs as slave-warriors to try to destroy and conquer the world. but then the orcs won and realized being slaves wasn’t great, and that they didn’t like what they’d been made to do, and so they killed their gods, their makers.

there’s another force in the world, one which you MIGHT could consider a “truer” evil than even the trolls, but i won’t elaborate on them. spoilers ;P

(as a small note on my races: i’m using rather familiar names for them, like “orcs” and “elves” and “trolls,” but they’re really very different from what you’d expect. i shan’t elaborate on how, esp. wrt elves, b/c, again, spoilers.)

orcs are a very communal race, and always seek to protect and take care of their sick, weak, and disabled. i’ve already mentioned magical prostheses (orcs, esp. those who regularly fight, tend to lose limbs a lot :P), but magic and traditional medicinal cures are also used to tend for the sickly. the elderly and infirm are cared for and protected as well.

humans are a bit less caring, and esp. in communities w/o orc rule or influence, sometimes even discard the sick, elderly, and disabled. they tend to excuse it as being barely a dent in their population, b/c, well…..humans fuck like rabbits. that’s the primary reason that the orcs and trolls couldn’t completely destroy them. they destroyed their cities and homes, slaughtered them by the millions, but there were always those hiding in the forests and jungles, who just refused to die.

b/c of their magicalness, elves rarely NEED to worry about healthcare. magical healing and remedies are either something anybody can do, or something somebody down the street can do. it’s a non-issue to them.

ooh, boy, religion. humans believe in either a vague almighty God, or a vague almighty Pantheon of gods (possibly derived from old elvish religion), but it’s really not very well established. it really depends on the place, b/c a lot of places developed different religions due to their isolation after the war. 

orcs, and a lot of the humans under their rule/influence, have a very flexible system. they are ancestor-worshipers with some animist aspects. they also worship certain primordial elemental spirits (who they also consider ancestors) of the four elemental planes (earth, air, water, fire). it’s a bit odd to call them “planes”. they’re really like four pieces to the puzzle that is the world; they overlap with one another and their interactions create the world as we know it.

anyways, some orcs tend to have cults devoted to specific proposed ancestors, certain sacred sites, as well as some of the elemental spirits. it depends really on the specific culture - there’s a lot of variety.

elves worship “star gods” who speak to them (and only them) from the heavens, and also send their “emissaries” in the form of “dragon gods” to rule over/protect/guide the elven people. it’s quite a bit more complicated than that, but a lot of stuff about elves is spoilery, so that’s all you get.

ah, love. i’ll give you this: love for humans isn’t exciting. it’s about par for the course either in the real world, or in other fantasy worlds.

orcs, though? it’s very different. there’s not really “soulmates” in the sense of exclusive partners throughout your life. sure, some might be pretty attached and stick together, but it’s not exclusive, and not an end-all-be-all. gender/sex is irrelevant when it comes to orc love/mating. if they like somebody, and that somebody loves them back, they’re gonna fuck. sometimes publicly, but they try to keep it somewhat private, if not always quiet.

it works mostly off of hormones/pheromones. it’s worth noting that orcs age very differently from humans: orcs reach the size of an adult human by age 3 or 4. they reach full orc adulthood by age 8 or so. most orcs live until about age 40, rarely longer.

anyways, once an orc reaches adult age, their reproductive glands responsible for producing and receiving sexy-times pheromones are fully developed. (it makes it a bit difficult to determine exactly what “adult age” is for orcs, since some orcs finish developing by age 6, while others don’t finish until they’re 12, or at all. northern, “civilized” orcs tend to assume an age of 8.) 

for orcs, “rape” is basically an incomprehensible concept. orcs can literally only fuck if they are receiving the same pheromones they’re putting out for somebody. (this is why human-orc relationships are very, very rare, even not considering stigma; a human is just not equipped, from an orc’s point of view, to have sex.) 

way back when, during the big ol’ war, humans and elves spread rumors about the orcs “raping” and pillaging, but what they were really talking about was post-battle orc orgies. these were (and still are, occasionally) very real things. the adrenaline and excitement of battle, as well as the closeness with your comrades that results, tends to result in a lot of orcs getting really horny for each other. this was also effective, especially from the trolls’ point of view, in replenishing losses from the battle by reproducing. so after battles, humans within earshot miles around could hear, uh. a lot of orcs getting it on.

elves are different. obviously. when are they not? they DEFINITELY have life-partners, although sometimes multiple at a time. elvish culture is highly female-driven, and as a result, the most common er, “configuration” for an elvish couple is a lesbian couple. men are also usually expected to be together, b/c a lot of them have a hard time getting with women, due to their lower status. women will have multiple female life-partners, and typically only one male life-partner, which is how they reproduce. (elves are also very romantic, except not so much usually in “hetero” relationships. those guys are just there for babies, more or less.) it’s typically sort of a “competition” among elvish females to see who can pick the least deplorable man to mate with, just as it is for men to try to elevate their status by mating with powerful women.

one quick note on “gender.” humans, culturally, tend to be pretty cisnormative, i guess? there are men, and women, and transgender people are generally considered, er, not good. except in certain northern, orc-dominated territories, where nonbinary people are often considered to be almost as great and important as their genderless orc superiors.

orcs, as i’ve said, just don’t have a concept of gender, nor do their “sexes” look different from one another. there are no secondary sexual characteristics, and their primary sexual characteristics aren’t immediately obvious. 

elves consider there to be three genders : women, men, and “something in between”, as they refer to it. that third gender is sort of a catch-all for noncomformative elves, and have a sort of middle-of-the-road social status: not as high as women, but not as low as men. 

okay, last question! special cuisine…..i haven’t actually thought much of this! which is good, b/c i need to. orcs like to use a lot of spices and herbs, either that they gather in the wilds themselves, or grow in small gardens. they also have a special fermented alcoholic drink which only orcs enjoy, that gives a sort of energy boost, kinda like caffeine. humans tend to eat what they get, and tend to shy away from too many flavors. elves eat…uh….magical food i guess. fish? lots of fish probably. 

[badcharacterization]

A Court of Mist and Fury

This book has appeared on so many “Best of 2016″ lists, and after reading it I wonder how many 2016 releases these people actually read... Strap yourselves in, kiddos, this is like 8 pages of rage in the original Word document. Unpopular opinions under the cut.

Note: I originally took these down as notes on my phone, I’ve edited for clarity and punctuation and stuff, but not everything is properly capitalized because this book has taken enough of my precious time already. I did something similar with ACOTAR, and will probably post that one later (it is on goodreads though). I should have cited page numbers but that would have taken forever so you’re just going to have to guess from context clues.

-time skip time skip

-the mating bond sounds super yucky

-is this foreshadowing, is Ianthe going to steal Feyre’s shitty man?

-look at them sweet gender roles

-“inherent female magic.” no thank you bro

-Feyre is straight up depressed…and it’s actually depicted well…whoa

-I’m already tired of male this and female that though. We gotta make sure that everyone knows that the Fae are “primal” and “animalistic”

-and everyone is super duper straight apparently?

-so basically Amarantha was faerie Hitler? Just in case you didn’t already think she was super evil. There’s still no explanation of why she was so twisted, and I don’t expect the author will ever give one.

-I smell some vaguely Middle Eastern cultural appropriation

-also Feyre hasn’t learned to read after months in the spring court?

-Amarantha banned holidays, like the White Witch. How original.

-Rhysand suddenly has Feyre’s best interests at heart. He must have an identical, nicer twin.

-I’m still not over him drugging her and forcing her into skimpy outfits. That will never be okay to me, no matter how nice to her he is

-let’s have some more foreshadowing about Ianthe. It’s a little not subtle and barely qualifies as foreshadowing

-I know Feyre is depressed but she is passive in an out-of-character way. She used to disobey Tamlin pretty much reflexively.

-what did Feyre think Tamlin did for income? Of course it’s egregious taxes on all his subjects

-it’s almost like the author realized that ACOTAR had problems at some point and is trying to correct them all. She apparently doesn’t really plan or outline any of her books

-it feels like Tamlin has even less self control in this book than the last one, though it was always pretty bad. The author/narrator acts like this is a significant change and a sign of how what happened has traumatized him but it…isn’t? He was always physically intimidating her and manipulating her.

-I appreciate the author acknowledging that Tamlin is an abusive overprotective jerk, but Rhysand has issues too and he hasn’t really apologized or made amends at this point

-I didn’t expect Tamlin to want a domestic wifey but I guess this is a fae thing or an “omg look how evil he is now” thing

-have some awkward writing

-it is kind of a relief when she leaves the Spring Court, mostly because nothing interesting seems to happen there and it’s all a lot of foreshadowing about Ianthe, and Feyre being surrounded by courtiers with no bearing on what happens

-the introduction of Azriel, Cassian, and Amren is kind of…fanfiction-y. There’s something about the dialogue and how you can tell them all apart in an instant that feels like it was once part of a fanfiction.

-if Velaris is so famous for art and has so many artists and its location is supposedly secret…then who’s buying the shit?

-also where are the farms

-if a girl notices a guy’s scent, it’s done.

-have some more pretty fae dudes, as if there weren’t enough already

-I don’t think the Illyrians were supposed to be POC but their portrayal as warlike, women-abusing brutes is still kinda not nuanced. The name also refers to a historical region and people in the real world so…that’s not great

-Also the mating bond seems to be purely sexual, judging by the case of Rhysand’s parents. It’s actually kind of horrifying, the idea of becoming magically bound to someone you’ve just met and may come to hate in time. Why is it so desirable? Does it usually work out fine? What happens when one partner is already married or spoken for?

-Also it’s creepy as per the usual

-Also obvious foreshadowing lol

-Also a great excuse not to properly develop a relationship

-Time to bash Feyre’s disabled father again

-Ellipses everywhere

-“You needed not to be alone.” How about you quit telling her what she needs mmmkay?

-This sentence made me gag a bit, so I’m sharing it: “the voice was at once the night and the dawn and the stars and the earth, and every inch of my body calmed at the primal dominance in it.”

-And she’s using her pet word, primal, again

-There are flushing toilets in what seemed to be a medieval shit-land…okay

-At least this relationship is being built up better, but I still can’t get over the forced drugged striptease shit

-Amren’s back story is cool

-“Deadly bit of flirtation” Feyre needs to stop being so melodramatic, he was just flirting

-The Weaver is exactly the kind of weird, creepy faerie I’ve wanted to see in this series.

-Barbecue is an odd choice of words

-Rhysand feels more like her tough life coach than a potential love interest right now.

-Why is Feyre acting like Ianthe approaching Rhysand for sex was some unforgivable assault, when he had the power to make it stop immediately? It’s not even comparable to Amarantha.

-And how could Ianthe theoretically force herself on Lucien when males seem to hold more power than females in the Spring Court? Are priestesses an exception? Are there rules about turning them down? Does she enjoy some kind of special status?

-Foreshadowing about Ianthe and Tamlin again

-It’s almost like…Ianthe was behaving like literally every male character in this goddamn series. “The ownership and arrogance in that gesture” hmmmmmm…that sounds familiar

-Double standard time: Sexually aggressive men are just alpha males, sexually aggressive women are eeeeeevil

-Feyre complains that being rich and a woman in the human world is restricting but it seemed like she had a lot of freedoms when she went back and her father had his fortune back. Also, when she was poor. Someone had to know she was sleeping with that Isaac guy. Nesta certainly did.

-Almost forgot about the female mercenary, too

-Also apparently there are queens who are in charge in the human lands, though it was only mentioned in this book?

-The whole  humans not having holidays thing is still dumb. They would have created new ones after disavowing fae ones. Whenever people abandon an ideology en masse, something usually crops up to fill the psychological void.

-time to reminisce about how shitty Feyre’s human life was

-It’s not like Feyre’s sisters were also kids when they lost their mother and their fortunes fell or anything

-Cassian and Nesta’s hate thing is a little exaggerated; the ship is almost too obvious. “Look, they’re acting like they hate each other” is a sloppy shortcut to “they have sexual tension and they’re going to end up in a relationship.” Because the author doesn’t want to spend too much time fleshing out any of the other relationships in this damn book

-If Amren ends up being a villain, too, I’m gonna lose my shit.

-Feyre’s human life sucked guys, remember? REMEMBER??? ISN’T SHE SO MUCH BETTER OFF IN DOUCHEY MISOGYNIST FAERIELAND???

-There’s an unnamed brown faerie…such diversity. Much wow

-The food is so good and spicy and shit it’s somehow curing her depression a bit…okay

-Feyre pays a lot of attention to Azriel. Begins to feel weird after the first couple of times

-“Yeah, Rhys, thanks for making me dance like a stripper, but the magical disembodied music was great”

-I almost like Cassian now. Almost

-Unless Ianthe is secretly super powerful I think Lucien doesn’t have to worry about her “preying” on him. Chill.

-So Rhysand and Feyre are basically texting…okay

-Rhysand is petty as shit about Tarquin: “I know we’re not in an actual relationship or anything…but I’m mad because you smiled at him.” All the men in this series need to chill

-Varian and Amren makes no sense. It just crops up out of the blue…and is…a thing

-The language around attraction is interesting and gendered. Men are “predatory” when they’re interested in a woman. He gets “lethal focus” on her. Which leaves me wondering…does he want to fuck her or eat her? I honestly can’t tell.

-What does “tattooed panes of his chest” even mean? His chest is a window?

-Have a very vague description of Rhysand’s room

-SJM always writes romances where the characters instantly click or feel attraction, and the only thing keeping them apart is stubbornness

-This part feels like a draft, it’s a summary of Feyre’s training and interactions with Mor, and I actually want to see what that’s like. Mor was supposed to be a less manipulative replacement for Ianthe, but we hardly get to see her interactions with Feyre

-The way Feyre is dressed, she’s basically being presented as Rhys’s partner and she doesn’t seem to mind? Unless Mor gets a crown, too, and the author just neglected to mention it

-So two of the queens are married to each other? Yay! Background token LGBT characters

-How do the mortal lands even work, politically? Two of the queens can be married to one another and not have to worry about producing heirs? Why so many queens? Do they rule together or each govern different kingdoms?

-Most of the queens get a sentence or two of description, but then SJM goes on and on about the beautiful one and treats her as the most important woman in the group

-Also all beautiful women hate each other at first sight y’all

-I thought she only picked Mor’s name because she thought it sounded cool but she’s actually (clumsily) referencing Irish mythology

-So humans and fae can interbreed, like in the Throne of Glass series

-“The Black Land” seems like the author gave up on names. It also resembles the name for Ancient Egypt, and the description of its history confirms that

-Also what is with all the evil faerie queens running around? How can someone be much worse than Ms. Tortures-Everyone, Amarantha?

-If the queens know of the Veritas but have never actually laid eyes on it, how would they know it shows the truth?

-Okay, let’s have entire pages all about the sex lives of Illyrians. Thanks, Sarah, I really needed to know that

-Of course sex stuff is more thought out than anything with the politics, magic system…or like anything else

-Okay, obviously Rhysand is someone she likes now, why is flirting with him still “lethal” and “dangerous”? Is she afraid of Tamlin’s reaction?

-…how would wings make for interesting sex positions? Maybe my imagination is just lacking but…why

-the description of the court of nightmares is super vague

-It feels like YA female protagonists always have to have a female friend or servant who’s more into clothes and makeup to dress them. It’s almost like a main character can’t actually be invested in girly things

-I think this scene is meant to show how much things have changed since Rhysand forced Feyre to dance like a stripper and drink drugged wine Under the Mountain, because now he asked her permission before including her in his schemes…but it rings hollow for me. This romance doesn’t work unless you ignore everything from book 1

-“That primal, male rage” you just gotta gender everything

-also really convenient that the author gets to attribute everything awful Rhysand has ever done to his “mask” or persona as a high lord

-Yeah let’s keep woobifying him and brining up how awful Amarantha was. It makes him look better…if you don’t think about it too hard

-The Starfall scene is kinda vague and doesn’t do much narratively, just like the solstice scene in book 1.

-LOOK LADIES RHYSAD IS A FEMINIST!!! DOESN’T THAT CANCEL OUT EVERYTHING BAD HE’S EVER DONE?!??!?!?

-So the Illyrian blood rite is basically faerie Hunger Games.

-So Rhysand is not only the most powerful high lord alive, but he’s also the most powerful of all time?

-Feyre’s description of him fingering her is ridiculous. “Every point in my body, my mind, my soul, narrowed to the feeling of his fingers…”

-Why does it seem like SJM has a thing for whipping? Also why are they whipping him? Torture for information? Just to show that they’re a bunch of irredeemably evil dicks?

-This isn’t a YA novel. It just isn’t.

-I sense some drama over the whole “you knew we were mates all along” thing

-Yep

-How is this the most important thing in a fae’s life though?

-Feyre has every right to be mad at him, and confused and shit. Jeesh.

-So the mating bond involves the female offering food to the male…gender roles galore

-If he felt the mating bond when she was human, does that mean that high fae can bond with humans, or that she was meant to change?

-So the faeries who tried to assault Feyre on Calanmai are called “Picts”…that’s an actual historical people, just like Illyrians. Kinda icky, even if no one really identifies with those names anymore

-Her descriptions of orgasms are always ridiculous

-“A slow, satisfied male smile” WE GET IT SARAH HE’S MALE JESUS CHRIST

-They sexed so hard they caused an avalanche? The fuck?

-What’s with all the roaring

-Another “male” smile. This is my least favorite phrase

-Post mating bond behavior is not cute. He wants to fight any “male” who looks at or comments on Feyre, including Cassian, who’s just a little shit

-“Feral” returns

-The mating bond makes them act like animals in heat and FEYRE CAN’T SO MUCH AS GLANCE AT ANOTHER MALE WITHOUT RHYS REACTING? HOW IS THIS DESIRABLE?

-And, sure, he’s fighting it, but this is still being presented as a model relationship?

-“Purr” has returned

-oh no the human queens are such awful bitches for not trusting the people who historically screwed humans over a bunch.

-The description of what happens and what Mor looks like when she holds the Veritas is kind of vague

-It’s understandable and logical for the queens to suspect manipulation, the only really bad thing about them is that they’re willing to abandon the humans on Prythian

-Lemme guess, Nesta and Cassian are mates, too? Isn’t it supposed to be super rare?

-So the beautiful young queen is nice after all. Beauty=goodness, kiddos

-How does Feyre know that the other queens betrayed them? The info could have been tortured out of them and they could be dumping the other bodies all over the city for all she knows? It seems like she’s leaping to conclusions [note: she ends up being right, of course]

-How can Feyre see Amren? Are they that close to each other? Cassian and Azriel are airborne but it sounds like city streets are between Feyre and Amren and buildings should be obstructing the view

-Sometimes SJM tries too hard to be a serious writer

-The fight is pretty cool, it just feels a little too effortless and efficient. It’s also frustrating that Feyre has had this vast power and hasn’t really used it much in combat until now

-her skill is made a little more believable by the fact that she doesn’t have a lot of precision, just raw power.

-Rhys is respecting her autonomy! Let’s just forget about book 1 completely

-So…the ring retrieval was a test to determine if she was strong enough to be his mate, too…not a douche move at all

-So convenient that all of the Hybern soldiers/underlings are sadistic creeps, it means the mains don’t have to regret killing them

-Jurian is described as tan, like many of the other characters in the book. But it just makes me think they’re meant to be white people with tans.

-The King of Hybern has no name and is also described as “blandly handsome” like a man in his 40s…wait I thought all fae are super beautiful and look young?

-So…literally all the faeries in Hybern’s court are dead-eyed and evil and there’s no art or furniture. That sounds fake…but okay.

-Just in case you didn’t understand that Tamlin isn’t just a bad person, now he’s super evil and possessive…oh wait he always was

-He actually has a point about Rhysand, how can you ever fully trust someone who could possibly mess with your mind?

-Also kind of messed up how two of the evil humans queens are like the only queer characters in the goddamn books so far

-why would the queens buy the idea that the king of Hybern is on their side? He wants to bring down the wall, unless he somehow hid that part from them

-it’s baaaaad for women to want power and eternal life. They can only have it if men give it to them

-Speaking of which, IANTHE IS EVIL GUYS! WHO SAW THIS COMING???

-So Hybern and Ianthe’s plan is to overthrow the high lords and let the priestesses rule. I know they’re supposed to be corrupt or whatever, even though there’s not any concrete evidence of this, but how is overthrowing the high lords a bad thing?

-While the twist with Nesta and Elain has interesting potential, Nesta and Cassian being mates is boring

-And super obvious

-Weird that Feyre suddenly thinks of her father, out of the blue, after weeks of not giving a fuck about him, when Elain is changed. Also prioritizing men’s feelings…again

-King of Hybern made a creepy comment about Mor and then forgot her, very cartoonish

-THIS SCENE IS DRAMATIC ENOUGH!!! Why add the Elain/Lucien mates reveal? Jeesh

-Gotta demonize that young ambitious queen for looking at fae men

-Sudden convenient powers

-And now a sudden chapter from Rhysand’s POV

-So Amren says mating bonds can’t be broken, but I’d be more interested in the story if it was in fact breakable and if Feyre and Rhysand would have to decide to live and love without it. This book treats it like the end-all-be-all though

-Awww Amren cares about Feyre after all

-Rhysand’s narrative voice sounds like Feyre’s, where I would expect him to sound very different

-GUYS RHYSAND MADE FEYRE HIS HIGH LADY DOESN’T THAT MAKE HIM THE BEST FEMSINIST EVER?!?!? WOMEN CAN STILL ONLY DERIVE POWER FROM MEN IN THIS UNIVERSE…BUT RHYSAND IS A SEXY FEMININST

-this is treated like a plot twist and I wish the scene had actually been shown…although that would only make this godforsaken book even longer.

-Aaaaand it’s totally confirmed after like two pages that the mating bond isn’t broken…just kill the drama and tension…just murder it

-Lucien is obviously suspicious of Feyre

Final thoughts

-Tamlin allying with Hybern comes off as stupid, not evil. Granted, he did not seem all that intelligent in ACOTAR, but you would expect someone who’s lived for centuries to be a bit savvier. He had to have heard of what Hybern was all about

-Women are constantly defined by their relationships with men. Like apparently the mating bond existed when Feyre was still human and Rhysand sent her visions of the night sky to comfort her and she painted it on her dresser drawer. It’s a minor thing but it just keeps coming up

-Feyre just kinda lacks agency in general. It’s supposed to be this cool, “she’s learning how to fight and defend herself” plot in the middle of the book, but Rhysand determines her goals, and his wants and needs drive the plot more than hers. It gets worse after the mating bond sets in.

-Also Ianthe is the only female character who does not have a devoted relationship with one man and she is demonized for keeping herself independent and sleeping around. Mor also isn’t in an established relationship, but it’s obvious that the author is hinting at her and Azriel being a potential couple.

-I would like to see Cassian cope with a disability, one that makes him worthless in the eyes of his culture…but I know that shit is getting cured ASAP, of course after milking it for a bit of melodrama and man feels. Like, there is no way he’ll actually have to go without his wings

-Ianthe’s betrayal of Feyre’s sisters lacks a real punch. Even when Feyre implicitly trusted her, she obviously didn’t like Ianthe much and her sinister intentions were heavily foreshadowed. If that relationship had actually been established as a strong friendship, the betrayal would seem like much more of a betrayal. Instead, it’s kind of like “Oh no, I knew there was a reason I didn’t like her all along.”

-This book seems to call into question the idea that the high fae are superior to and different from lesser faeries, especially if Illyrians can interbreed with high fae. This still doesn’t indicate where things like the Suriel and the Weaver fit in the hierarchy. It’s implied that both are more powerful than individual high fae, though it seems that the Suriel is pretty easily deceived and captured. The world building doesn’t make any sense if you question it too much

-The whole “lesser faeries deserve better” message that crops up once or twice, in between all the feels and sex, also rings hollow because pretty much all lesser fae so far have been demonized or portrayed in a negative light. The Picts, the Naga, the Attor and his dudes, etc.

-If Rhys is so awesome, why let the Court of Nightmares keep existing in its current state? Especially if he supposedly cares about Mor so much?

-In that scene where Feyre is watching her sisters get dunked into the cauldron, it all feels very detached. She’s watching Cassian and Lucien’s reactions, when I feel like she should be very narrowly focused on her sisters and what’s happening to them. The author doesn’t fully commit to the first person POV, because she wants to make it very, very super obvious to the audience that Cassian is Nesta’s mate and Lucien is Elain’s, but it makes the scene lack something emotionally. First person gives you the ability to make the narration emotional and immediate, but that comes at certain costs. One character can’t see or notice everything you want them to.

-Also she’s just always got to prioritize male feels over female suffering. OH LOOK SOMETHING HORRIBLE IS HAPPENING TO A WOMAN AND OH NO A MAN IS REALLY REALLY SAD AND ANGSTY ABOUT IT LET’S FOCUS ON HIM INSTEAD

-The author just seems to care more about men than women, in all honesty, and this is part of the reason I can’t just escape into this world or consider this book even a guilty pleasure. The Throne of Glass books were starting to get this way, too, especially because she keeps killing off the girls of color in that series.

-And basically any woman who’s greedy or doesn’t derive her power from a man is demonized. Especially if they’re sexually active or aggressive in their pursuit of the men they want. Rhysand’s behavior in ACOTAR was even worse than Ianthe’s, it’s such a double standard and it’s laughable that anyone would call these books feminist. There is nothing in Ianthe’s actions to imply that she is violating any of the men she’s pursued. She’s pushy, shady, and needs to learn when to back off, sure, but it’s not like she’s assaulting anyone. Especially when the men she’s gone after are obviously way more powerful than her (Lucien, too, is obviously the heir of the Autumn Court, even if he enjoys lower status in the Spring Court).

-I’m still not over the idea that getting rid of the High Lords would not be bad. Like, Rhysand and Feyre both agreed that the current social system is stultified and deeply unfair to “females” and “lesser faeries”? How is the idea itself so bad and repulsive to them? They react with disgust and shock when Hybern brings it up

-I feel like pretty much every character is more interesting than Rhysand, with the possible exception of Tamlin. This may be mostly because I feel that they have potential and that the author hasn’t written enough about any of them and hasn’t had the chance to ruin them or waste their potential (like Manon in Throne of Glass). She just tries way too hard to make Rhysand seem sympathetic and loveable after all of the questionable things he did in book 1. And it shows.

-Come to think of it, it’s super strange that the Night Court lands are so neatly divided into “sadistic shitty assholes” in the Court of Nightmares and “peaceful artsy people” in Velaris. Like, what nation has ever been like that? People aren’t either irredeemable dicks or good people, every place has a mix of people.

-Amren feels like the kind of character I would love with a different author, but is barely developed. Same with the rest of the inner circle: Azriel is too much of a cipher to really make me care, Cassian is kinda all over the place, and Mor is built up as this amazing female role model who’s been through so much and has great inner strength…but then the author barely pays attention to her. Basically, the author cares about her self insert and her perfect love interest, and everyone else is just set dressing.

-The King of Hybern is so boring, and is just like the King of Adarlan in Throne of Glass. The comparison is even more obvious because neither of them ever receives an actual name.

-There were some moments where ACOTAR was well written/compelling, however fleeting. There were also spots that showed some potential. There are more of those in this book, but as more of the world is revealed, it becomes clear that it’s all built on heteronormativity and a rigid view of gender and gender roles. The magic system is poorly developed, the politics and geography is poorly established, and the plot limps. Instead of tightening these things up, the author chooses to focus on romance and sex, pausing frequently to allow the main characters to have sexual tension, going on for pages about the sex lives of her winged fetish-boys, and demonizing anyone who stands in the protagonists’ way. This story isn’t really about the looming war, it’s about two people falling in love and having a bunch of sex. All of the other stuff is just stuff she needs to put down on the page so she can get back to describing male abs and sex scenes. That’s not to say that this is a bad thing, but I expect more plot, world building, and character development out of something that’s labeled as “fantasy” and about 600 pages long. And the romance just doesn’t work for me. Too much brooding and woobifying, the bond is just boring and too convenient.

-There were a few times I almost quit this book, but about midway through I started hearing about what a shitfest ACOWAR is and that motivated me to finish, because I love a good shitfest, if I’m in the right mood.

[jimmerscrackpotideas-blog]

The X-men Are Suckers

So I appeared at the end of the ESPN True Hoop Friday mailbag.. http://www.espn.com/espnradio/play?id=18816025 and I delivered a  rant about how the X-men are  dangerous for the children. Someone on Twitter called my rant Trumpian, and it mortified me. I think in part because of my super woke view of Sex work  (which can seem Liberitarian but is actually influenced much more by 3rd wave feminism), and the fact I left out a couple of shots at Trump, So I'm writing out my thoughts here, to hopefully clear up anything that can possibly be seen as Pro-Trump in it.

The premise of the X-men is that superpowers are caused by mutation in the form of the fictional “X-Gene” (not to be confused with the X-Chromosome). The X-Gene is distributed randomly through the population of humanity, seemingly at random. People born with the gene are no longer human, but literally a different species ( called Homo Superior in the comics, but most commonly “Mutants”) . All Mutants possess some sort of power. Some can be rather trivial, like having blue fur or wings like an angel, that allow you to fly.  Some can be unimaginably powerful, like the ability to warp metal with your mind, to read and control the thoughts of others, and even warp space-time, matter and reality itself.  The power of some of the Mutants within the X-men cinematic universe, is unfathomable and god-like.

Within this the mythology of this universe, Mutants are split into roughly two camps.  The X-Men are the heroes, lead by Charles Xavier.  Professor X's philosophy is what guides their actions. The X-men attempt to protect and save humanity, even though humanity largely hates mutant kind and fears it. They do this in the hope, that through their courage in fighting for what's right, that humans will see Mutants not as monsters, but as brothers.

The main antagonist of the X-Men is Magneto, an old friend of Professor X.  Magneto is a Holocaust survivor. He has seen humanity at it's most cruel, and it's most evil, at it's most vicious. Magneto does not believe that humans will ever love and accept Mutantkind. He believes the only way to for mutants to survive mankind's evil nature, is to band together and fight against Humanity for the survival of mutant kind, by any means necessary ( I use that specific phrase intentionally).

In truth, the main villain of X-men universe (cinematic and comic) is not Magneto, but the government. The government fears and hates mutantkind, because mutants are different, and because they are powerful, and most of all, because they are out of the government's control.. The government is always trying to force mutants to register, to imprison them, to experiment on them and to eliminate their mutation (or failing to cure the mutation, eliminate mutants themselves). They are portrayed as always being cruel, always being vicious, always being prejudiced and evil. It is the government that both the X-men and Magneto are forever struggling against, the X-men struggling for acceptance, Magneto struggling for survival and independence.

If you are thinking to yourself, some of these themes might sound familiar, they are. Because, from the inception of the comics, the X-men in general, and the Professor X/Magneto dynamic in particular, have been an allegory for the civil rights movement. Professor X being analogous to Martin Luther King Jr., the viewpoint that through courageous moral action, mutants will shame humanity into no longer oppressing mutants. That humans will gain empathy for mutantkind and that human and mutant can live together as brothers.  Magneto is analogous to Malcolm X, the viewpoint that humanity will always hate and fear mutantkind. The only way that Mutantkind will ever be safe, is not appealing to humanity's moral guilt, but through mutantkind's empowerment.. If mutant kind are strong enough, then if humanity cannot love mutants, they will fear them enough to leave them alone. And if they don't, Magneto and his group of mutants will fight humanity to the death.  

On the surface,   this seems like a rather good way to introduce the civil rights movement to children. Particularly to the children white America, who's parents may or may not teach them anything at all about the movement.  I would, however, argue, that the praise X-men gets for this analogy is misguided, and it's actually a terrible metaphor for the civil rights movement. I am not talking just about the fact that it ultimately vilifies the Magneto/Malcolm X approach, but the metaphor itself is fundamentally flawed and problematic  Here's why: Races are not separate species, all races are humans..  Black people are not inherently dangerous, and that fearing, hating and oppressing black people is both irrational and immoral.  However, Mutants are, by definition, a different species.  Some of the are INCREDIBLY dangerous, some have the power to level cities and destroy even the world itself. Fearing that sort of power is rational, not irrational, and controlling that power is necessary for the survival of the planet.

Mutants are not like Captain America, who was granted his powers after psychological screening and much thought and planning. Mutants are not like Iron Man, who's suit Tony Stark built, and the implications of that suit and the responsibility of the power of it was all too well known to him. Mutants are granted their powers by chance.  A roll of the dice determines if your born with powers that can potentially kill millions and billions. Mutants are literally weapons of mass destruction, scattered all throughout the world. It would be akin to taking the Social Security data base, pulling out a number at random, and handing Joe From Albuquerque the nuclear football, with no guarantee that Joe isn't crazy, or racist, or an insecure megalomaniac that surrounds himself with anti-scientific morons. It would be madness to hand over the nuclear football to someone like that.  And that's exactly the danger that Mutant kind pose to humanity within the Marvel universe.  The power of mutants is simply too strong, to immense, to just go unchecked. I would argue that the government in the X-men universe is not acting out of prejudice, but out of necessity, as cruel as that necessity might seem.  

However, were I born a mutant in the Marvel Universe, and presented with these three opposing world view, choosing which one to embrace would be easy. Choice one is the government that would seek to enslave and destroy me. That's a non-starter. The second choice is adopting Xavierism, that is if I am nice enough to humanity, humanity will suddenly not fear the fact that I can destroy a city with my mind. That world view is absurdly naive. No, I would join with Magneto, and fight for my survival. It's the only logical thing to do, to do anything else would be marching to my own destruction. Because the conflict between humans and mutants is inevitable and unavoidable, and I want to survive that conflict.

While the X-men fails as a Civil Rights metaphor, it is in that existential conflict between Homo Sapien and Homo Superior, that the X-men actually succeeds as an analogy. Not the civil rights movement, which it presents too simplistically and depends on a fatal false equivalence. No, the X-men is a useful allegory for the brutality of  evolution, a demonstration of survival of the fittest. That is, when two species are in the same eco-system, and have the same role within that eco-system, and are fighting for limited resources within that eco-system, those two species are in direct competition and only one species can survive. I would argue the world of The X-men better represents the fight between pre-historic Homo Sapien and Neanderthal, than it does the civil rights movement.

Yet, even then, the Xman is a poor representation of that struggle, because it presents the X-men's world view as heroic, and not fatally naive. That if Charles Xavier's world view is embraced by all of mutantkind, humanity is going to steam roll over them and wipe them all out. Xavier is not viewing the world as it is, but as he wants it to be. He is unwilling to face the hard truths of the world, and instead embraces wish thinking. While his world view is on the surface a beautiful one, it will doom his people. This is why I think the world view that Xavier and the X-men represent is a terrible lesson for the children. That it teaches them not to view the world as it is, but how they want it to be. This sort of wish thinking, of not confronting hard truths, is endangering our country, our government and our world, right now. Our failure to confront scientifically verifiable truths, because we choose not to believe them, is madness. It's better to teach children hard truths, and not sweet lies, and it's better for our government to based on reason, not wish thinking and delusion.

And that is why, as a neutral observer, watching these three world views, I choose to be #TeamMagneto

The reason I side with Magneto, and not government, is the same reason I watch the NBA and not Big 10 basketball: I will always side with exceptional and diverse talent over balanced mediocrity. However, the side I would NEVER take is the side of the X-men, because the X-men are suckers.

[rustyfilingcabinet]

Doing surveys because what fuck else am I meant to do with a storm outside?

1.) Do you believe in fate? Hmmm. I do believe we all have a purpose, I do believe that certain things are meant to be or not. But I also believe that our actions directly affect our future. 2.) Do you sleep naked? I do. 3.) What is your favorite thing to cook? I love cooking bokkeumbap because it's crazy fast and simple but so so tasty. 4.) Do you believe that humans are inherently good or evil? I think we all have the potential to be both and circumstances dictate which way we end up. Sometimes. 5.) What turns you on? Oh... oxygen 😂 erm. Anything down to tone of voice and posture can be turn on with the right person. I'm literally so easy. 6.) What is your favorite snack? Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm. Biscuits. 7.) What do you think will bring on the end of the world? Nuclear war, global warming, black hole, etc. I think probably nuclear. Ultimately however we go we'll be the cause of our own demise. 8.) What is your favorite type of foreplay? All of it. Always. Haha. 9.) Favorite restaurant? Don Antonio's was lovely but that's long gone. The Italian I went to in Germany was beautiful and actually really romantic. Er, imge in town is nice. 10.) Do you believe in the death penalty? Nope. Absolutely not. One person wrong doing will never justify taking a life. 11.) Do you use sex toys? By yourself or with a partner, or both? I do sometimes but not very often. By myself. 12.) Salty or sweet? Sweet. 13.) Do you believe in ghosts? I do. 14.) Have you ever done role play? Haha no. Id be awful at that. 15.) Would you ever go vegetarian or vegan? I like the idea of being vegetarian because I hate factory farms. But. No. 16.) Do you have faith in a higher power? Oh man this is a deep one. I don't believe in a god in the sense of some dude sitting on a cloud dictating. I believe in something divine that exists in every thing and, if we live well and nurture it, we will be nurtured. 17.) Favorite sex position? If you’re a virgin, which position interests you? Hmm. I'm a fan of doggy style because it gets dat g spot. 18.) Favorite dessert? All of them. 19.) What quote or mantra do you live by? Love and compassion are necessities not luxuries and without them humanity cannot survive. 20.) Any fetish? Not really no. Lil kinks but no full on fetishes. 21.) If you had to eliminate chocolate or meat(that includes chicken or fish) from your diet, which would you keep? Oh my shit I would rather die haha. Erm. Id keep meat. 22.) Do you focus more on the past, present or future? The present? I dont know yaknow. 23.) Where is the craziest place you’ve ever done it? His grans bed. 24.) What have you eaten today? Was it good? A really coconuty curry. So good. 25.) Do you judge people for what they wear or how they express themselves? I try not to judge people at all. People's actions speak for themselves. 26.) What was the best orgasm you’ve ever had? Orgasm #39392 i don't understand how I'm meant to answer this lol. 27.) What do you eat when you’re watching a movie in a cinema? Whatever I bought at the shop before arriving at the cinema because fuck cinema prices 28.) What is something you have that everyone wants? Literally nothing 😂😂 plo when I have that? Haha 29.) Do you shave or trim your pubic hair? Depends on my mood and what's going down. Mostly I just trim because I don't feel any more or less empowered with a shaved foof. Depends what I'm feeling. 30.) Are you an optimist, pessimist, or a realist? I'm an optimist for others, a pessimist about myself but a realist in general. 31.) In your opinion, what is the best food your country can offer? Oh its all shit in England. Erm. Greggs do a mean sausage roll haha 32.) Have you ever/would you ever do anal? Yep. 33.) If you were to run away, where would you go? Depends why I was running away lol. 34.) In your opinion, what is the worst food your country can offer? FUCKING marmite. 35.) Biggest sexual fantasy? I actually don't really have any specific fantasies. 36.) Are you an introvert or an extrovert? How does it affect your life? I'm an ambivert. Neeeeed space and my own time and silence but also need a few hours with people so I don't go mental haha. 37.) What is your ideal take out? Imge fishcakes, a curry, naan and some shami from balti, a lil chicken and onion ringd from somewhere. Id never eat it all but id enjoy the idea of it haha. 38.) What’s more important- length or width? why? Are we talking dicks here orrrr? Both are kinda important in that the dick has to be proportionate. But. I reckon a girthy dick is better than a donkey dick 39.) What are you known for by your friends and family? ....what the fuck type of a question is that? Known for being me. 40.) What is a dish you are dying to try? Errrm none. I just cook it if I want to. 41.) Have you ever had cyber sex or phone sex? Yep. 42.) What political affiliation do you associate yourself with? I support Corbyn but not Labour. 43.) What is the worst experience you’ve ever had with food? Omg I was once so so ill after eating a mixed grill and it was probably the meat but my brain decided it was the egg so I've never touched a runny yolk since. 44.) Do you talk dirty during sex? Nope haha. 45.) What do you think happens when you die? I'm still wondering this myself. 46.) What is your favorite foreign food? I only really eat foreign food tbh and I can't choose. 47.) How often do you masturbate? Varies. Sometimes multiple times a day sometimes like once a week. 48.) What is something no one can ever steal from you? My wealth. Because it's non existent 49.) Favorite alcoholic drink? Sailor Jerry. 50.) What was your first orgasm like? I fell over. So.