#sorry but this is distinctly less gay

[khruschevshoe]

OFMD Critique: Izzy Hands, "Burying Your Cripples," and That Fucking Finale

(Note: this is a cleaned-up/expanded version of a post I made earlier regarding disability rep in this show bc I was chatting with @itswhatyougive and @notthewriteryourelookingfor about "Burying Your Gays" and the parallels with the "Burying Your Cripples" trope in media, which is often more insidious because people are less primed to notice it and call it out.

Also, although I am analyzing a trope in media in the most unbiased way I can, I am going to get angry. Because this is a show that did its job at making us care about its characters and their portrayals and you can't get mad at me that I did just that.)

On a fourth note when it comes to the problems with the writing in this season of ofmd...the handling of disability. Because good God.

To preface this before anyone jumps down my throat about getting upset: I am disabled myself, both physically and mentally. I carry a small laundry list of mild to moderate conditions that impair my daily functions. I understand what it is like to desire to see characters that carry disabilities similar and dissimilar to my own onscreen. I also understand that there ARE multiple disabled characters in OFMD (ex. Jackie with her wooden hand, Ed with his knee brace, Pete with his cleft palate, Lucius with his mentioned bad back/wooden finger). I UNDERSTAND that these were all generally handled decently well, incorporated without drawing attention to them (although the disappearance of Ed's knee brace was strange to me in season 2, even that I could get with bc personally I only need to use my cane when my knee flares bad and can walk perfectly normally the rest of the time without an aid).

Which is all to say: the way that Izzy's death was written is insidiously (likely unconsciously, but still) ableist. His entire arc this season revolves around community and recovering from trauma and accepting himself both in a queer sense and a DISTINCTLY DISABLED sense. The way he remarks upon his own disability and his acceptance of himself and the way that the show is written to have his crew member ACCOMODATE him joyfully as an EXPLICIT SYMBOL OF LOVE was a breath of fresh air when it comes to disabled characters. I also enjoyed the way that he pokes fun at it occasionally in the same way that I do with my coworkers/friends (joking "oh really, you're going to ask an invalid to do that?" *gestures at my cane*).

But that ending. God, that fucking ending. *vehemently taps table* The fact that this character who opens up, who is accepted for both sides of his identity after dragging himself through the fucking pits over them, is killed. BECAUSE HIS MOBILITY AID COULD BE SEEN BY THE ENEMY. BECAUSE HE WAS SEEN AS UNIQUELY VULNERABLE. And then they FUCKING PULL HIS MOBILITY AID, the very symbol of his acceptance, from his FUCKING BODY SO HE CANNOT BE BURIED WHOLE?

I'm sorry. I really am. I don't mean to get furious about this. But as a disabled person who saw such hope in this character, who saw a storyline about a part of myself that is rarely displayed onscreen (that slow acceptance of the part of yourself you considered broken + the acknowledgement of love by your family/community in the form of loving accommodation without complaint), this hurt me at a very primal level that I didn't know I could be hurt at.

Bringing this back around to the "Burying Your Cripples" trope: the reason why an ending like this is so horrifying is because it is very much telling you that you can have a healing arc, that you can finally find yourself accommodation and acceptance, and it doesn't matter. Your disability will be the thing that kills you.

To people who say that this ending is justified because sometimes death is just random like that, that saying that death makes healing not worth it, I get what you're saying. In real life, of course you're right.

But this is a CLOSED NARRATIVE. It is a story with BEATS that MATTER, made of decisions by writers who had to purposefully decide to put scenes together. There's a reason they're called "arcs"- they're supposed to aim at a specific point. IF YOU LET EVERY CHARACTER IN A SHOW LIVE THROUGH THINGS THAT SHOULD HAVE KILLED THEM EXCEPT FOR THE DISABLED CHARACTER, YOU ARE MAKING A FUCKING POINT WHETHER YOU REALIZE IT OR NOT. Izzy's death is not showing "random chance" or "the risks of piracy"- HE DIED BECAUSE HIS MOBILITY AID WAS VISIBLE.

Lemme repeat that: costume concepts showed that the original design of Izzy's naval outfit covered his wooden hoof. It was a conscious decision to have the shot of the naval officer looking down at Izzy's leg, at his exposed leg, and pinpointing him as the weak one despite there being entire scenes dedicated to showing that he was still as strong as the rest of them. In a show where the budget and runtime was restricted, not a single shot or costume decision was on accident. They had to pay more to green screen in that leg.

If Castiel went to superhell because of his gay confession for Dean, then I cannot think of a clearer way to Bury Your Cripples than having Izzy die because someone saw his mobility aid.

Do I think they did this on purpose? Well, no more on purpose than David Jenkins looking at Izzy's Hayes-Code-era gay coding/arc and saying that he knew that Izzy would have to die because that's what characters like that do. No more on purpose than saying that the mentor character had to die because that's what characters like that do.

Izzy's disability was visible, was the cause of his death, because "that's what happens" to pirates who gain disabilities. They are weaker. They are more at risk.

I'm sorry, but fuck that.

Fuck the idea that in a show that created a careful space in its narrative (for a season and a half at least) for queerness to be treated ahistorically kindly, that often disregarded geographic, historical, and medical accuracy to tell a compelling story, and that purposefully provided racial and body diversity while calling out racism, that the disabled character getting offed is a "kind ending." It's not. It never has been. And I'm tired of accepting that sort of thing.

I am SO GLAD that fanfic exists with better depictions of disabled arcs/endings in OFMD bc I don't know if I could recover otherwise. Hope my fellow disabled folk out there are recovering as well, and that they understand that there is positivity to be made out of poison- it just wasn't what the finale gave us.

[jafndaegur]

Love like You

Mystic Messenger

Jumin Han x Reader

Calling Jumin feels awkward. You've only been in the messenger for two days and hardly know anyone. But the nagging feeling of the conversation between Seven and Jumin leaves a horrible pit in your stomach.

"I heard Jumin is gay..." Seven had said.

If you said the statement hadn't piqued your interest, you'd be lying. After all, no one believed you when you said you weren't a girl—just because Seven had disclaimed it and said you looked like a girl. Your voice being so high doesn't help the case, but a book cover can be very different from the actual story it holds.

I'm very open-minded. The statement you make was hurried and quick, you had wanted to make sure you had mention something in case Jumin is...well, is like you. Yet somehow that simple text of yours was turned on itself and made into another joke.

"Isn't it rather late to be calling?" Jumin's voice suddenly and tersely cuts through the line.

You want to make it right.

"Jumin." Your voice is much more serious than you intended.

On the other end, you can hear him sit up a little more, readjusting and assessing. "We just spoke in the messenger. Is everything alright?"

"No." You say evenly, taking a deep breath. Knowing with the corporate heir, the best way to approach this would be calmly and logically. "At least I don't believe so."

"I'm sorry, " he says it so genuinely, that you wish you'd clarified why things weren't okay first. "While I'm not equipped to handle formal complaints in regards to the RFA, I will be sure to pass on any concerns to V."

"No, I wanted to apologize. To you."

"To me? As far as I know, you've made no transgressions."

"For what happened in the chatroom, I wanted to apologize to you." You say earnestly.

The sigh he makes is less understanding and more annoyed. "It's a ridiculous prank that Luciel and the others enjoy prolonging. The fact that you too have jumped on such a joke is not surprising—"

"I meant what I said!" You interject quickly, hoping you catch him before he decides to hang up. "Really and truly. Such affairs to gossip like that, they're private and personal. And to make light of it is a slight on that trust of privacy. But...I genuinely meant what I said."

He says nothing, his breath a soft and steady pattern for you to listen to. You close your eyes and wonder what he looks like in that moment. Is he disgusted? Intrigued? Or entirely disinterested altogether?

"It is no one's business in regards to who you love," you say softly. "And who, whether it's a man, a woman...or just a person making their way—it shouldn't matter. If you love them and they love you in return, and you're willing to treat each other as equals as you work through life together...then what does it matter?"

"You surprise me by the hour," Jumin finally says. It is a gentle and murmured comment. "I admit I've never given it much thought. But I like how straight-forward you've made it."

"So you're not—?"

"It's never been a forefront concern of mine, but I suppose I don't have a preference either way."

You smile to yourself.

"Perhaps, at the end of the day, I would love a person making their way, doing their best." You swear there is something knowing in his voice and you can't help but wonder...

"Jumin, I—"

And once again he cuts you short. "I'd like to disclaim, I do not wish for you to feel like you must share your own experience as I've shared mine...if there's something you're not inclined to disclose yet, don't feel like you must."

Your heart beats a bit against your ribcage. It's a lovely and anticipant flutter. "In my defense, I don't think I've been subtle."

"Oh?" He asks, bemusement seeping through the tone.

"I did, after all, come distinctly forward and say I wasn't a girl," you laugh.

At Jumin's hesitation, you can practically hear the gears turning in his head. "...are you a man?"

"Perhaps..." You smile. "Perhaps I'm just an ordinary person making my way and doing my best."

He chuckles, it is low and warm. You can't help the feeling of your heart and chest warming, like the slow steep of liquor once you've taken a drink.

"Well said," Jumin murmurs.

[queenofthyme]

Okay this is kinda funny to me but I actually just finished binging your fic (did a descendants marathon, started mid D3, got genuinely interested in RoR, read the rest with bleary eyes and bated breath into what is now 4 am) and. I. I kid you not I was internally lamenting the lack of spicy scenes because you wrote the teasing incredibly well and. Well. I wasn't going to say anything bc ppl are completely within their right to not write something BUT then I saw your post and now that I know(1/?

(cont) and now that I know that not only is it maybe an option but that you'd be willing to write it let me just say. On my knees pleading. I was craving some MalxEviexUma content and you wrote it *so incredibly well* and it was such a delight to read. I appreciate you taking the cheating seriously and I really like how you handled the variety of queer revelations happening in this fic. Genuinely it is because of authors who write characters so well like this that I feel less isolated in my experiences

(cont) especially since things revolving around my identity and sexuality have been pretty present the past few months, and it's almost relieving and somewhat cathartic to get to read characters experiencing similar situations and getting to be accepted and also get together with their beloveds. And also have gay (dragon/tentacle/) sex lol. I like how you took your time with each of the characters to make their conclusions feel natural and anything but rushed, and I really love what a good grasp (3/?

(cont) you have of their voices. I could hear each of them (especially Uma) distinctly in my head the whole time, and could visualize their faces and movements so well because of how you wrote them. Character voices are hard, so many kudos to you!!! You really did a good job staying true to them! Also, somewhat but also not surprisingly, I was not having an easy time finding content for the three of them (or even a few of them) and sometimes when you're low on fics the ones you find aren't the most polished, but yk you take what you find or you make it yourself! But!!! That is not the case here! You wrote a beautiful and enjoyable and fucking sexy fic that exactly hit the spot for me and was a thrill all the way through. You do not know how many times I had to keep myself from jumping ahead or reading to fast to enjoy it because I was so excited. Also the only reason I'm not commenting is bc I don't have an ao3 account set up for this blog yet so I'm bothering you in asks instead!

I would like to be very detailed in my appreciation of how you wrote each character but I seriously need to sleep and I'm probably taking up to much space, so let me know if I can come back and rant to you about your fic in your ask box or if you would prefer me waiting till I can comment on the fic itself :3Thank you SO SO SO SO MUCH for writing such a scrumptious fanfic and for sharing it with the rest of us! /Grins/ Have a delightful rest of your week!

(final. Sorry it got split up! Tumblr was being an ass and giving me a word limit so I switched for Easter so I didn't have to verify w every ask and it fuckin dropped both problems lmao)

This is how you leave a comment, folks. If it's not 4 asks in my inbox when I wake up I don't want it.*

People like @gayafsowhat who leave comments and asks like this are the backbone of the fanfic community. These asks have sat in my inbox for a like a week because there's literally no way to adequately express my gratitude so I'll just say simply: thank you. ❤️

Also authors, if you are hesitating about writing for a smaller fandom or rare pair, fucking do it. Yes, I get more kudos on my drarry fics, but the enthusiasm and support you get from people when you write for pairings with less content is equally fulfilling (if not more - see giant comment above holy shit!??!?).

*This is obviously a joke. For the record, I gratefully accept and apppreciate comments in any format. ❤️

[karasbroken]

I know no one cares but me, but I must write what I must write. I am starting on the next Unfamiliar Idiom, but I'm mostly obsessed with getting this sex shop AU going, about 7k words so far.

I've settled on something that is probably unnecessary and possibly offensive, but it allows me to play with some ideas that interest me while still letting me mostly write cis-het smut (my other fandom's fics are m/m and I want to explore other scenes).

Among her other acting credits Claudia Black had a one episode role as a transwoman in some Australian show. (It was the 90s this was what representation looked like, and it was handled well, for its time, but of course wouldn't be a great casting choice now.) And there are people who find Claudia/Aeryn's looks too masculine, at least in comparison to other actresses whose characters they prefer to ship with John.

Certainly there are a lot of ways that Aeryn is coded as male and Crichton as female going by stereotypes about emotions, physical competence, communication styles. And John's homoerotic chemistry with almost every guy on the show (to match his heteroerotic chemistry with almost every woman) is undeniable. I want to play with gender expectations and heteroflexibility and have John confront some things he wouldn't usually admit to himself.

So for the first few chapters of The Leviathan John is going to mistakenly think Aeryn is Aaron, a gay man who cross dresses to become a sexy pro-domme. This little tidbit is when John is in the middle of convincing himself of this, mostly because he can't deal with the idea of a woman being stronger than him.

I think the intro is longer than the snippet, oops. (Still maybe PG-13.)

Officer Soon narrowed her gaze further, and sank a little lower, knees spreading wider for more leverage.  “Do that again…” John wasn’t sure if she meant touching China, or trying to get away. “And I’ll have to ask you to leave.” 

It shouldn’t have sounded like a serious threat, being kicked out. John was honestly ready to be done with this suddenly very weird night. But leaving of his own volition was one thing. Being cast out for breaking the rules, though. No, he didn’t want that. His heart was pounding in his chest, and John wondered if the dominatrix could feel it too. 

“Or I can find some other way to make my point.” Leather slipped up to lightly grasp his throat instead. The grip was delicate, precisely where the veins came close to the surface, squeezing just enough to highlight the throbbing pace of his rapid pulse. That dark scent, mineral and blood and smoke was masculine, as was the strength holding him down, even while the body in his view, from tight waist to narrow jaw was entirely feminine. Only a few wisps of curling black hair had escaped to soften the angular cheekbones. The rest of the Officer was distinctly hard.

While he might be a Southern boy, and a former football player, Crichton had grown up with cosmopolitan parents. He’d never been too worried about his own sexuality or anyone else’s. He’d even been talked into playing Brad a few times by a college girlfriend who was a regular cast member at the local movie theater’s Rocky Horror Picture Show nights. John knew what he liked, but he appreciated a good performance, and whatever was under the leather, Office Soon was definitely selling the hot domme look. He just wasn’t sure if being unexpectedly helpless until he-she decided to release him made the whole scenario more or less titillating. John wasn’t used to being physically overpowered. Certainly not by someone purporting to be a woman.

Some of his confusion must have shown in his face, because the Officer leaned in further, turning his head to one side with a firm nudge of thumb against the point of his jaw. Softly, for his ears alone. “Just say ‘banana’ and I’ll let you up.”

”Um… Sorry?” The increasing pressure of his-her hand, now slightly constricting his breath, had sent blood flowing everywhere but his brain, which only kicked in a few seconds later. That damn perfume was making it hard to think, too. Did he want to tap out? It seemed a little cowardly. The boys were enjoying the show too, jeering something about ‘kiss and make up’. From the thinning of those dark lips hovering just above his, John didn’t think that was going to get him out from under the domme. He probably wouldn’t like what happened if he tried.

“Do you need a lesson in obeying the rules?” The Officer asked again, reaching behind to slide that damn riding crop along his leg, and slapping him with it lightly, like he was a horse being encouraged to go faster. Despite the loud snap, it wasn’t hard enough to sting through his jeans. The whole situation was just too confusing, and he’d had too many beers and the smell and the realization that he was trapped until he found the right words to escape. John didn’t know how to respond, but his body did. At a second snap, just the sound made his dick harden and pinch. He hoped desperately that the room was far too dark for anyone to notice.

“No, ma’am.” Finally, his Southern upbringing kicked in. “I'm sorry, ma’am,” he said, voice a bit husky. “Won't happen again.”

[evildilf2]

heyy dude what’s up you don’t have to post this but your discussion of this had me thinking.. as a gay and trans person who would consider myself very religious but in the Jewish way I think this sites obsession w Catholic imagery is really bizarre like I do understand finding things about it compelling or wanting to reclaim imagery but it’s soo weird to me the way nonreligious people choose to engage with it sometimes it’s corny like you said. it’s also so weird to me that catholicism specifically is what’s been chosen as The Aesthetic Religion bc the Catholic Church is soooo antisemitic (on top of many many many other obvious issues) like my family had to leave Europe bc of it. like the Catholic Church has a long bloody history of inciting violence against ppl like me and that Wouldn’t actually change if I was cishet which I think is an interesting distinction between myself and people who want to post gay Catholic imagery stuff. but it’s also like can’t rly complain I think it would be weirder to me if non-religious people engaged with non-christian religions in this way, it would be a really bizarre form of cultural appropriation. the state of being a religious transfag on tumblr in 2023. sorry for rant <3

No need to apologize, I think this is a very important thing to acknowledge! I think the reason why Catholicism is the “aesthetic religion” of choice is largely due to the fact that Christianity in general dominates American culture. So on one hand, I’d say you be hard pressed to find a gay person in the US who hasn’t been impacted by Christian homophobia. & because it’s not uncommon for people to channel their angst with oppression into fascination with or fetishism over a sensitive subject, it’s only natural that so many people would be drawn to do so for Christianity. That said, the aesthetics of many Protestant religions are far more modest than Catholicism, and many Protestant faiths are far less literal with their interpretations of the Bible/biblical rituals and all that. Aside from Catholicism the 2 other faiths I’ve seen be romanticized are fetishized is like… the whole Southern Baptist midwest gothic “Ethel cain core” type thing, and Mormonism, but the only people I’ve seen fetishize the latter are ex Mormons whereas the former seems to have more of a wider appeal.

What you said about that specific oppression resonated with me; though I’m not Jewish myself, I recently learned that my mom & her side of the family are Jewish to some extent… but I was never made aware of this as a kid (despite that side of the family frequently discussing heritage), and I suspect this was due to how Catholic that side of the family is. It’s really fucked up, and I want to ask my grandma what she knows about that, but I’m hesitant to because I fear it would make her or other people in the family treat some family members differently. That dilemma itself definitely has made me uncomfortable with my family’s religious beliefs in a way that’s distinctly different from the discomfort with their homophobia I had prior, so I can only imagine it’s pretty upsetting to see that faith be romanticized when you’re directly and more severely impacted by centuries of Catholic antisemitism. I really appreciate you reaching out & sharing your perspective, apologies if I talked all over the place 👍

[amrv-5]

B, J 😳 (lol) also E, F, K :)

AHH Hello!!! Thank you for the ask (and just saw your other one specifying beejhawk LOL don't worry I got a one track brain and that would've been the characters regardless RIP) anyway these are all so long I'm so sorry LMAO NSFW below the cut:

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

I answered this one in depth here, but I'll also add runner-ups for each other: BJ's second-place favorite part of Hawkeye is waist, I think, because he's very grabbable. Soft, little bit of a curve, immediately compelling re: a hand should Go There. Hawkeye's second place fav on BJ, I'm going to go with jawline or arms. Masc, handsome, and uniquely recognizably distinctly BJ.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

BJ: Probably very embarrassed about it, conceptually, at least at the start. Really paranoid about being overheard or caught in a Swamp setting. Because I HC him as having some shame/guilt about sex and so probably for a long time had better alone time than partnered, I think that fantasizing ends up being a really important part of sex for him, even once he does get comfortable with a partner. It's definitely a slightly heady thing for him, and he does a lot of thinking himself into arousal. He's into talk and verbal fantasies, I think, which Hawkeye is good at and canonically enjoys doing for him (?!), and once he got over some initial nervousness I think he'd really be into 'starting' while Hawkeye was away and getting 'caught.' Like, Hawkeye out for a grocery run or something, BJ lays himself out on the bed and takes his time touching himself, maybe getting right up to the edge and then backing off, waiting for Hawk to get home and catch him at it, at which point he'd either take over, as it were, or sit on the edge of the bed and spin the most intense verbal fantasy ever while BJ gets off to the sound of his voice.

Hawk: I think in early show-timeline, he was probably the worst tentmate in the world. He's naturally high-strung, relatively high-libido (when he's in right spirits, I think he has lows that would temporarily lower the heat of his flame), and whenever he's stressed or keyed up and he can't find somebody to play with, well, he's going to be taking matters into his own hands. I think he sucks at being quiet but thinks he's doing a good job, so, we're talking about constant little whines and gasps across the tent while everybody sleeps or stares very hard at the wall and tries to seem asleep, because everybody recognizes there really isn't any meaningful privacy in the camp, and in the morning he really assumes he's been subtle. I'd love to see some sort of post-canon take on this where BJ wakes up to Hawkeye trying to get off quietly beside him in bed and takes over, like, 'why didn't you just wake me up?' Or talks him through it, whatever.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

I'm realizing in the course of posting this how much I HC BJ as a little shy. I really think Peg was probably his first outside of some, like, awkward high school fumbling. For me this is because I HC him as a repressed gay man who really struggles to figure out his relationship with desire through a lot of instilled guilt and shame about sex in general, but for a bi HC (since we're talking Beejhawk specifically) I think he'd still be relatively shy and inexperienced because, like, guilt/shame. He's confident with a partner he's known for a while, though, and since we're talking Beejhawk I'm gonna say once they settle in with each other and knows what makes Hawkeye tick, he gets a whole lot less shy real fast. He likes to do a good job, I'm saying.

Hawkeye I clearly HC as far more experienced, and I also HC him as genuinely great in bed. He just has fun and is thorough and knows how to listen and take direction and get inventive when it's needed. He's also very good at I think intuiting what BJ might need or want early on in the relationship, so he really knows what he's doing there, too.

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

Okay, so, sappy but I think they might genuinely go for anything that lets them kiss and talk. Just face-to-face kissing, chatting, really lovey-dovey eye contact and grinning. Disgustingly in love stuff.

Alternately, I think they'd both be big into oral sex. Hawkeye because he loves the act, has a ridiculous oral fixation that gets so satisfied, and specifically loves to take BJ apart. He likes to kneel over him, keep control, really leverage his strength and weight and position, stay active about it. Meanwhile BJ is a huge fan of lying down with Hawkeye's legs over his shoulders and just losing himself in it, taking his time, letting his hands wander while his mouth is busy. Very slow and sensual and thorough, just as much for him as it is for Hawkeye.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

Yeah awesome awesome I'm going to go with BJ's whole provider/caretaker complex first. I think that's really prominent with him, and I think it lends itself to a lot of different kinks slantwise. Some of my favorites to write/read are anything where that relates to physical caretaking, i.e. making sure Hawk is surrounded in soft things, warm, well-fed, relaxed, thoroughly fucked and maybe a little spoiled, etc. It's a good way for him to work out some of that protective and kind of possessive energy in a harmless nice way. Less obviously, I think he might have a thing for getting tied up and lightly embarrassed or teased. I think he has so much of an instinctive need to be in control that it would be incandescently taboo and hot for him to have all that stripped away. Especially if he was at Hawkeye's mercy.

And Hawk, I think he might be into competence. Like, anything where BJ shows himself to be effortlessly and unaffectedly incredible at something, that would be an instant turn on. And/or getting manhandled. I think he wants to feel a little delicate sometimes, and BJ throwing him around on occasion would do that. He's a big boy. It's not every day a 6'2" fella gets to feel small.

[snowangeldotmp3]

Ok ok! I skipped over Spider-Robin au! That Girl has the brains, the chaos, and the sass to be a great spider-woman 😂

What’s a sniper for that?? :D

- ficsandfancies

truthfully i haven't written a lot for spider-robin...sorry!! (most of my spider au is focused on spider-nance 😅) but, you are in luck, because i do have a teensy snippet from the au! it's rough of course, but i still hope u enjoy!!

Robin hadn’t expected to become a superhero. Hell, she didn’t want to be a superhero. But here she was, in a spandex suit and mask, perched on the roof of the Family Video, waiting for the bad guys to show up.

What’s that saying about power and responsibility again? Something something great power something something great responsibility? Honestly Robin hadn’t been paying attention when Dustin was giving her a big grandiose speech about it. Robin knew that she had too, who else was going to do it? The Hawkins Police department? Yeah, right.

So, for the last few months, Robin’s been Hawkins one, and only, Spider-Man.

That’s right, Spider-Man.

At first, Robin objected, she wouldn’t be the Spider-Man. Dustin explained that if she went as the Spider-Woman, it would inevitably be harder on her. Especially when trying to keep her identity a secret. Posing as the Spider-Man was easy, especially with her broad shoulders, it gave her a boyish look. So Spider-Man it was.

And it was safer, she hated to admit, all the headlines on the TV and The Hawkins Post all read the same thing; Who is the Spider-Man?

Jokes on them, really.

But it keeps her friends and her family safe and—

A tingly sensation spreading through her head interrupts her train of thought, along with a distinctly feminine voice slicing through the quiet of the night.

“Leave me alone, assholes!”

Oh well, duty calls.

Robin hops down from the edge of the Family Video roof, landing on the wet asphalt with a soft oof.

“What do we got, Rob?” Steve’s voice crackles through the earpiece, crunching once again on potato chips. Ah yes, Steve. Harrington. A guy she never thought would even remotely be a good person, much less a good, no, best friend. Turns out, she was wrong about him, very, very wrong, and he’ll never let her forget it. They’re a good pair. Dustin’s half convinced that they’re long lost twins or something.

And honestly? It’s not that hard to believe. They’re practically connected at the hip in everything.

“Um,” she starts, peering around the corner, “looks like two assholes and…” she squints, catching a glimpse of permed brunette curls, “oh, shit.”

“Oh shit?” Steve questions.

Oh, shit indeed. You see, Robin knows that girl. Or, rather, knows of her. It’s Nancy Wheeler.

Nancy Wheeler, who dated Steve Harrington in high school. Who recently dumped Jonathan Byers, photographer for the Hawkins Bugle; who’s studying journalism at Hawkins State; and, who’s the biggest priss Robin’s ever met.

Robin isn’t one to believe what people say about others, that would be incredibly hypocritical of her, but the few interactions she’s had with Nancy Wheeler proved the priss allegations. Always perfectly prim and proper and carried a certain air of daintiness with her. She was also unfairly gorgeous. A heart shaped face that pinches at the chin with big brunette hair. Robin always thought she kind of looked like a movie star, unfairly pretty in a way that was undeniable. And Robin’s not just saying that because she’s gay, this was a statement that was universally true, Nancy Wheeler was gorgeous. There was nothing else to it.

[generic-internet-name]

If feel like typing that desire rant I would absolutely read it

ok so. i typed it out a while ago but i don't know where it went so you're just getting some slightly nonsensical scattered thoughts. +stuff that's not really related to desire but other complaints i have(the first few are very rambly don't worry the last few are smaller)(sorry that was a lie they are all very rambly)

i understand why they might make desire use they/them pronouns and more neutral terms(if i'm feeling very generous i think maybe they thought it was bad representation. if i've thought about it too much and i'm mad then i figure it's probably to make it more palatable) but i'm still pissed cause he was literally the only representation i have ever seen of people who use the same pronouns as i. literally in all my time with queer media i've seen representation of so many different identities but never someone using he/she before desire. her gender fuckery was incredible. he was not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you. this is something i love about all the queer representation in the sandman comics. there aren't just lesbians, but dykes. there aren't just transgender people, but transsexuals. it was revolutionary for the time it was published(i have more to say on that, see point 3) and it's a distinct "fuck you" to respectability politics.

desire is the antagonist. again, i get why they would've done this, it's hard to have a show without an overarching plot and some major villain. maybe, just maybe have you considered, this story is in comic form because it works best in comic form?(see point 5)that maybe there doesn't need to be an adaptation into a different form of media? that it's alright as it is?(this isn't me complaining that it exists, don't get me wrong. i just think it worked way better as a comic.) in the comics they were in conflict, sure, but not any more than dream was against his other siblings. they're in conflict because they're siblings and that's just how siblings are(especially when they have godlike powers and are immortal)

2a. another benefit of it being a comic, people having funky speech bubbles. dream's voice is just normal and i'm so annoyed about that. reading the comics i imagined his voice with the same sorta quality as john's voice in malevolent, it's a little echoey and distinctly conveys he is not a person. show!dream is just normal. it was cool how all the endless had cool speech bubbles, it was cool how desire's was subtle and delirium was wobbly and colorful, it was cool how despair's was scratchy around the edges, it was cool that there was some contrast in how death's was normal. there's no way to show that same thing in the show.

3. cause i said i'd say this in point 1, time period. i feel like it doesn't work as well set in the modern day. the aesthetics are different. and the politics of it are so much different. it was so powerful to see a character doing a drag show when i knew it was published in 1989, when there were still sodomy laws in the us. it was cool to think about the symbolism of the corinthian, with teeth in his eyes, targeting gay men, killing them when they let him see them, in 1989, when the gay panic defence was still valid in every state. it's not like drag isn't villainized today, and the gay panic defence is still valid in most states, but it feels less impactful.

4. desire is not all sex!! i feel like he was made much more sexual in the show. i want to see desire being more about gender envy(i have so much gender envy for her) i want to see him being jealousy i want to see her being "ooh shiny rock" i want to see him being "that dress is so cool but sooo expensive..."(i feel like i'm overusing the word cool but whatever i'm from california)

5. back to what i mentioned in point 2, i just don't think it works as well in show form. there's too much silence. as a comic there are empty panels, there are slow panels, and they give the impression of space without me having to sit through thirty seconds of silence every time there's a dramatic moment. also there's no narration, which i mainly noticed during the episode he was hanging out with death, cause in the comics dream is narrating all the information about her, so she comes off as very cheerful and energetic, while we also get this information about her. in the show, though, she's monologuing about it, which makes her seem much more sorta contemplative and introspective than in the books.

conclusion: it's a good show objectively but it's not a good adaptation of the comics. i think if everyone who worked on the show got together and made an entirely different show that would be wonderful, but i just don't really like it as it is.

[crystalnet]

Lana LP1-4 Reviews

Here I will be listening through the first 4 LPs of Lana Del Rey for the first time, as a late-in-life super fan (Post-NMR poser). Sorry for anything perceived as hate, I do love this woman. 

Born to Die (2012)- This is when the trip hop beats feel a bit canned and temporally displaced from their English, 90s origins in an awkward way, and the strings feel a little canned too— reaching for Zimmer-esque grandeur but falling short. She also uses voices on this that eventually disappear completely from her repertoire, sometimes evoking weird freak-folk stuff like CocoRosie but in a bad girl poet context. She does a Lolita or Little Orphan Annie thing on track 2 Off to the Races, and becomes a weepy tweety bird lush hiccuping her way through Blue Jeans, and I do not bemoan the loss of this slutty b-tier Bond girl schlock she would eventually shed and become more direct about critiquing. It was probably always critique of the male gaze all along, but the lines are blurrier in the beginning for sure when she isn’t willing to so eloquently describe the dimensions of her containment within a patriarchal system. 

I imagine how much this must have spoken to the “bad” yet vaguely creative-seeming girls I knew in high school. Lana offered them a clarion call to actualization. By the time this came out though, I was in college working at an Urban Outfitters, and I remember distinctly that the cover photo with the sheer collared blouse and the anal-y coiffed, voluminous Auburn-dyed hair. It just seemed like a in-store promo. “this must be the UO special edition” I thought to myself. 

But no, this is how Lana presented, and it happened to coincide with a stupid new idea of the “hipster” that flourished under Obama. Irony, and something about the 60s and 80s and mustache memes all coincided in a fresh new hell that Lana could slot into. But she wasn’t neat and tidy like, say, Vampire Weekend. She was a bad girl. But was it just a bad girl character on par with early Gaga with her vacant party girl shenanigans? Was it new? Ultimately Lizzie Grant will of course go on to reveal the artifice in full, proving the authenticity of the bit as artifice and then go on to remove the mask and invite us in forreal, not just into another one of her haunted mirror labyrinths of lust. 

But as I already knew, Lana is less interesting here when she is refusing to take off the mask. This character could definitely speak deeply to someone who sees themselves as actually living a life comparable to that of this Lana Del Rey creation, and the stunning vividity with which the bit is rendered can be engrossing on its own. If all I can hear is the bit, the character, the “mask”, though, well then it’s all artifice without the true artistry she would harness later on and I question what lies beneath without much of an answer in sight. Video Games might come the closest as obvious as it sounds. The critique of her own character and of the culture at large becomes a little more defined. 

The contours of MTV’s idea of reality and its failing in the broader context of the 20th century, so tacky and Ed Hardy-ized compared to this misremembered flapper era opulence she insists on reminding us of, it all feels like the ultimate Punk-ing. To dog us all like that while also presenting as the ultimate specimen of a post MTV world. What would you have us do Lana? Go back to the 20s, be rich and white? Go back to the “Gay 1890”s and live for crystalline jazz singers hanging from chandeliers as champagne showers over us, absolving us of our post-industrial, Walmart-ified sins and burning us in a holy conflagration. Nice try Lana, but you’re gonna need to try again next time. Game Over. 

7.2/10 (Little more about the music… the writing, the beats, everything is serviceable here, the production helps things never become sleepy, which her vocal stylings might have eventually done. She does not hold back in terms of describing every cubic inch of the world-view of this Lana character. This is not just instagram filter music. It is deeply realized and sometimes novel-esque, if only in terms of seeming like a 11th grader’s slightly last-minute book report on Gatsby. But the ultra textual-density is all already there all along, sheer lyrical depth on par only with conscious rappers. You will not normally find this many words on any other pop records in 2011, that I can almost guarantee. And you also will not find such an utterly and deeply realized aesthetic world, unlike anything any other starlet was even attempting at the time.)

Ultraviolence (2014)

She’s singing softly again, like she always does. 

She’s coming on to me, (the gay male listener). 

After work, she pulls me in close by my blue paisley-patterned tie and I’m overwhelmed by her Chanel. She’s pulled me back into her world again and I’m hers completely, again and again and again~

This is the one where Lana steps out of the filtered instagram images evoking an abstract past and into the technicolor world of reality, where the Pygmalion of Lizzie Grant’s mind walks full-figured and flesh-covered from out of the mall displays like Kim Catrall in Mannequin (1987). But instead of a bright new future for Lana, this newfound realness comes more in the form of the specificity of a monochromatic, noir landscape and a world utterly described. 

Right off the bat, atmosphere seems to have taken on new importance. On her first outing, Lana was proving she was a real girl who could walk and talk. But on UV, now she has a whole windswept seaside to herself to pal around— she isn’t just Off to the Races anymore, but instead insists that every grassy lawn that exists in America is part of her vivid world, which now includes the aesthetics of the films of Lynch and Tim Burton as touchstones. The way they too revel in revealing the decay hidden by suburban facade through film, is also intrinsic to Lana’s music. 

This tension too is a part of her world, alongside all the F. Scott Fitzgerald signifiers— sometimes she even seems to be singing to us from the snow globe of Citizen Kane. A starlet tripping the light fantastique in Gotham’s red light district, but now speaking more directly about matters of the soul than merely of the body. And to really Make it Real, she extends her references explicitly: 

They think I don't understand

The freedom land of the seventies

I get down to Beat poetry

And my jazz collection's rare

I can play most anything

I'm a Brooklyn baby

(on Shades of Cool). Well okay then Lana, maybe you are more than a mood board. Maybe you like Didion and Kerouac, that tracks. Does she actually like Nabokov or is Lolita entirely useful to her for surface-level reasons? In early interviews she speaks of Cobain and Cash and Dylan, the greats of every genre. And here she does seem more genre-minded… if the trip-hop on LP1 seemed almost out of place under her Jazz age affect, then by leaning into the noir and the gothic that someone like Portishead always channeled, she brings her work closer to something of undeniable substance. Whether she is a trust-fund kid yucking it up in Brooklyn and cultivating a personality made up of vapid cultural cherry-picking, or if she is in fact slyly making fun of that girl is besides the point. She’s real now and she’s here and she’s taking (some) questions. 

She tells us on Sad Girl that she’s “a sad girl”. Not just in the summertime then? Do we take her word for it, or is this simply clarification. But we should have known that a being trapped in nostalgia like her early incarnation so clearly is, that she could not possibly be happy constantly looking back like that (or else looking in the mirror). That’s what fast sex and Chiffon is for, always has been, to distract from always looking to find one’s future hidden somewhere in the past. 

Generally, we’re introduced to a laconic Lana here. Gone mostly are the peppy, borderline creepy Lolita-isms, and most of the higher BPMs. Now there is darkness and there is violence in its wake. But whether it’s the literal violence of the darkest of relationships or the violence of what ensues when a Fame Monster begins to consume and digest an individual, as it had thoroughly begun to do to Lana, well that all depends on perspective. 

Lana had had her awkward SNL performance by now. She had already moved past the discourse around ideas that she was merely an “industry plant”. Something about the times back then and how Adele was the only pop star we allowed to write in a singer-songwriter mode had us truly questioning if this unique artist could possibly be real. “Fucked My Way to the Top” says to stuff all of that, that it’s not that deep. And we’re inclined to believe her. 

Lou Reed is mentioned. The beats too. But so is Axel Rose. And the drugged out Lolita returns roughly one time, on Florida Kilos, towards the end. But she’s mostly resolved to stay in ballad mode. She leaves bread crumbs, but the destination isn’t the point. Lana’s artistry here by merely existing as it does seems to say over and over to stop the meaningless discourse. To just shut up. ‘Here is some art that I made, that i needed to make’, she seems to say. And if the mood board seems more varied and specific this time than just ‘The Great Gatsby,’ well I think we’re inclined to keep believing her. She could have truly pulled back and become pure caricature after LP1. Instead she leaned in, slowed it down, clarified herself, and spoke of an all consuming darkness. A decade later and she’s still finding light amidst all the death and the violence of a Cruel World. 

8.3/10

Honeymoon (2015)

Well, so I have a confession to make. A bit of a mask-off moment for myself after so much talk of character and artifice. It turns out, embarrassingly enough, that I simply have trouble getting into or distinguishing a lot of early Lana. I say that as a super-fan of the recent 4 LPs, but that may not qualify much. Those who go all the way back with Lana are the real ones. And now that I think of it, more of BTD may have stood out to me than LP2 and 3. Despite the sunny cover featuring our honey looking glamorous in a sun hat, this album mostly continues the thread of dark glamour and decayed opulence she began to focus on between her debut and this 3rd full length outing. 

A bit of background: As is the case with many recent bangwagoners, Norman Fucking Rockwell is the moment I went from being a sometimes curious spectator to full stan. Specifically, with the initial utterance on that record (Goddamn, man child/ you fucked me so good that I almost said I love you), Lana had kicked down a backdoor in my mind and ever since that day, she has been with me. Even in 2019, that last summer before COVID, when the greatest ruled both my mind and my piano alike, I remember thinking: Oh, I should go back to her older LPs, right? But even then I knew the answer. It simply might not be for me, that earlier stuff. 

And why? The answer either does not exist clearly or is an uncomfortable one. NFR bandwagoners like me should almost feel a need to explain clearly that we are not actually just stans of Jack Antonoff’s production. It might feel that way given the data... he starts working with on her on LP5 which is the first to make a serious ripple on tastemakers’ AotY lists after years of resistance. And then he has been a mainstay collaborator ever since. But that can’t be it. I refuse to give a man credit when the majority of the words and melodies are hers. So what is it? Well, that is something to speak of when I do get to NFR and the material that followed. 

For now, I will focus on Lana’s honeymoon phase, even if it is a honeymoon as tragic as her Ultraviolence days. Much of this glides by my ears, and unlike post-2018 material, neither the melodies nor the lyrics often truly grab me. Now to be clear, nothing is bad, nothing is offensive... it’s all often so lovely. And on-brand. But it’s more than beautifully on-brand, right?

Well if the first two LPs had me thinking so much of the character of Lana, well then Honeymoon is the record that has me thinking more about the listener. The listener that Lana imagines when writing, the one she is singing to. Both the imagined one and the literal actual one. She is a girl between the ages of 14 and 24 I believe. She may or may not have had dog-eared copies of Gatsby or Lolita on her dorm-room desk. A poster of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss on the wall. Does she have crystals? Thoughts about astrology? (yes). 

Does she have a troubled past and upbringing? I think she likely does. That this platonic listener of my dreams, whose spirits still haunt r/lana and r/lanita alike, that she truly receives from beyond through these records, of that I am sure. That there is healing for that girl inside of these songs, positive. 

I know that several times this girl has moved on from Lana only to return when she needed her most. After a big breakup, or a big meltdown or a really, really bad day at work. But Lana’s songs are also there in the good moments. Nothing here is so blatantly “sad” that it cannot also just mostly be “pretty,” beautiful and transcendent of being emotionally one-note. Fodder for a road trip to the Grand Canyon. Or a time in her life when everything is calm and she can’t believe that death and violence is behind her now. Lana has and will soundtrack all of that for her. New songs to paper over the walls of her own mind with every year or so.

And so now something like Honeymoon is alive for me again. Because I understand at this point, that this is a conversation. And if I am not always one end of this two-way, than I am lucky enough to hopefully (and not intrusively, unwantedly) take part. Maybe some things, for some people, should stay behind glass. It might not be for me per se, and that’s ok. 

7.0/10

Lust for Life (2017)

She looks the most like my mom on this cover photo. And this is the first time she’s so clearly gone for a 60s thing... specifically a 1967, Summer of Love thing, Haigh-Ashburry, San Francisco, She’s Leaving Home kind of thing. It’s all right there on the cover and in that smile, and the daisies in her hair, if not always the actual music. 

So then this is the far-flung future for Lana. If her music and image and her character was always so haunted by some kind of vague 20s-through-the-50s specter of the recently Old World, then now she’s inhabiting a time that some of our parent’s might actually remember. And to make her intentions clear, that vibrato’d out surf guitar bass on opening track ‘Love’ screams Nancy Sinatra. And the white lace chiffon 

[vawsculturecorner]

PLATFORMING WITHOUT A PLATFORM - AN UNNECESSARY PREAMBLE

Hi! This is a long post about a lot of things but the short of it is I am working on some projects that are nowhere near completion and I wanted to post about them publicly to make sure I finish them. You can not read this megalith of text now unless you want some information or context. Otherwise, strap in!

Identity construction is one of those things I have practised relentlessly as a half human half internet shapeshifter, and whilst a lot of you probably know me as this pretentious fuck-about who is kinda chill sometimes, I figured I wanted to have on record a bit of an explanation/premise for why I do it and why I think it is something we should all practice and think about.

People who know me now know me as a serial yapper and for good reason - I never fucking shut up. However, surprising all one of you this has not always been the case! I was a super quiet and repressed kid, mainly born out of what I now recognise to be severe anxiety and difficulty understanding social norms and etiquette (ie, partially diagnosed neuro divergence). As a result, I grew up and befriended people I didn’t feel entirely myself around, and when I did “just do me”, I ended up freaking people out, pushing them away or burdening them with just too much emotional labour. What this also resulted in for me was this unshakeable sense that no one really knew who I was and that all these people were just friends with something that was, in essence, a simulacrum of me (i'm sorry Baudrillard I hope that I am using this correctly).

This happened my entire life but like most things, was super intense around the time I was in high school. At the same time, I had found the internet and specifically “weird facebook”. There are papers on it now but at the time, radicalisation and internet subcultures were a severely under-explored nook of academia, and even now I don’t know how much of it protrudes past the surface of memes and marketing trends and into the very real societies that were erected in the rubble. Being a 12-year-old who didn’t feel heard in real life when they voiced very real criticisms of the world, the media, and the treatment of people considered “non-normative”, virtual societies provided a haven for people like me (and people not so like me) to bond, congregate and create.

Not all of this creation was good - quite a lot of it was very terrible. I’m quite lucky that I didn’t end up worse than I did, but I remember being told by 28-year-olds from Michigan how “mature I was for my age” and how much they would love to meet me in person. I also distinctly remember the prevalence of racism, bigotry and general hatred that were presented as “edgy humour” and how it eventuated in a bitter and distorted explanation for our collective social exile. People who in real life would get the shit kicked out of them and shoved in a locker for breathing wrong all of a sudden had the confidence to call everyone a racial slur and complain about how trans people were tricking young men into being gay.

Whilst these are almost tepid reflections of people’s bigotry now, they likely started as gross exaggerations of the half-hearted beliefs that people vaguely subscribed to at the time, mutating over the years by an echo chamber of uncritical non-evaluation. I was unable to distinguish this then, as I assumed that everyone was being their one hundred per cent authentic selves online - why wouldn’t you? In this new world, you don’t need to adhere to the conventions set out in the physical world that were tricky and difficult to navigate, you could just exist and live in a way that felt natural to you.

Years pass, and I de-radicalise because no matter how many times I heard it, the idea that people with different skin, genitals, gender identity etc were somehow less human than me was always ridiculous and cruel, and I stop seeing myself as a weak person needing this type of hateful ideology to be strong and seize the strength in my empathy and love of people. Coming to this conclusion, I decided to nuke a lot of my social media presence. I was a very naive kid, but I will always think highly of the foresight of 12-year-old me who thought “maybe one day when I’m older and wiser I might disagree with all of this shit” and installed what was as close as possible to a “self-destruct button” on my digital footprint.

So there I am, starting from scratch (or as close as I could be to it) and it is just me and the void. I have a few people on Facebook that I know in real life, a bunch of high school people that I forgot I had on there (whoops), and some holdover internet friends who weren’t complete psychopaths (shouts out wrestle-chat I love y'all forever). So in my mind, anything I'm posting and saying is not being seen or heard and I can say and do whatever I want. Which makes me think - what do I want to do?

Like I said, in physical society, I already felt like people didn’t know the real me and that the me that inhabited virtual space reflected a more accurate (albeit, highly exaggerated) version of who I am. Being emotionally volatile and feeling incredibly isolated, I thought it would be interesting to subvert the traditional interfacing of social media (create a character or facade similar to how one would in real life when meeting new people) and go to the polar opposite. I wanted to create a virtual character that reflected the truer, more intimate and emotionally dense smorgasbord of who I was as a person. How else was anyone else going to see it right? As someone who didn’t see themselves making it to 25, I wanted some sort of documentation of who the real me was.

This isn’t to say I was playing 5D chess the whole time - I was a stupid kid who didn’t understand boundaries and was putting way too much of their dirty laundry on blast like a lot of other silly internet kids. But there was deliberate intention and some architecture behind it. I behaved impulsively but directed that impulsive energy into particular forms and shapes. I kept this up for the attention of no one - I wasn’t performing for a captive audience, I was sculpting a foreign body I assumed to be left to gather dust in the attic as it was only to be interacted with post-humorously/retrospectively. The framing of my internet presence as a “conversation with the void” would shape the majority of my online behaviour for the coming years. Consequentially, I spoke a lot (like a fucking lot) about my mental health and was unapologetically, disgustingly honest about messy feelings, hard truths, and confused angst and suffering. I let the isolation I was experiencing in real life bleed onto the screen in the hopes this foreign virtual body would engender some sense of understanding or relatability from others. Important to note - whilst I obviously hoped this would lead to understanding for me as a person, the main focus was always to create a character people related to, an idea of a person that someone might feel a type of way about. Maybe after enough exposure, they might gain an understanding of the thoughts and feelings people like me don’t talk about, especially not in real life, especially not to strangers on the internet.

I know what you are thinking (I am projecting) - oversharing on the internet? That’s not special nor unique, you are over-intellectualising a bad coping mechanism. And yeah, you are right, it isn’t special and I am doing that thing you said, but I think what makes it interesting for me was the transparency of the whole thing. Yeah, I was oversharing on the internet, I knew I was doing that, and I was doing that with a genuine, authentic desire for people to learn, understand, and relate to something that they may not have come into contact with before. I grew up around people who to this day know less about me now than they did the day they met me - I wasn’t doing this to fit in, I was doing this so that this parasocially constructed archetype stood out. I wanted people to look at the shit I did and go “Hey, I don’t feel so bad about that drunk text I sent, look at what this idiot did and then they thought it was a good idea to put it online”. I wanted people to see me talking about another situationship I fucked up and go “yknow if they just didn’t be so straight up about how they felt they would probably be fine”. I wanted this because at that point, they are engaging with that character enough to make a judgement about them and in turn, means they feel (at least to some degree) intimate with the character that they are engaging with.

I have been officially diagnosed with ADHD and Clinical Anxiety, and I have been unofficially diagnosed with BPD, Severe Clinical Anxiety, and Autism. I point this out to lend credence to my claim that I have borderline (hehe) severe (hehe) issues with emotional regulation and intimacy. Part of my struggles interacting with people in real life is lacking the understanding to tell which chalk lines are the handball court and which are the corpse outlines. A lot of this emotional isolation was the result of not understanding boundaries, being perpetually unsure how my actions were affecting people, and never being able to trust that people were communicating truthfully with me. Over the years, especially 2018-2022, a few tr(aumatic)oublesome situations made these issues exponentially worse to the point where they can be functionally debilitating. A lot of the ammo sourced for the proverbial digital character assassination of neurotypical people was what I observed to be a broad discomfort with transparent, pure intimacy. Life is incredibly short - if you and I are on the same wavelength and we vibe, why should we do up the top button that chokes us? I eventually assumed people saw the relief when they unbuttoned their collars more gratifying the closer they got to asphyxiation. Anyway, the character I wanted to create and the space I wanted to create around them was one where that authentic intimacy was encouraged and considered the default. I wanted to transform my little piece of virtual space and rewrite the laws of physics, reconfiguring social etiquette into something my brain understood. Ultimately, I wanted people to feel like they knew me, and feel toward me a kinship and affection that I felt so strongly for other people, one that was often unrequited and unidentified in a lot of the relationships I held.

Another fun piece of contextual relevance - I’m gender non-conforming/compliant! You knew that already because I never shut up about it. When I was talking to my dear friend Valerie about these ideas recently, they asked a really good question; if this obsession with identity construction was a response to feeling disconnected from my gender presentation? Whilst I think subconsciously that was definitely part of it (I like every other trans girl alive made their Fallout: New Vegas character a girl), I do think that this was more a response to the general isolation and feelings of not being understood than it was purely my relationship with gender. That said, I intentionally incorporated more femme-coded idiosyncrasies and mannerisms to my text, so I do think this was also a response to that internal disconnect that I wasn’t really able to name. I noticed I was a lot more comfortable and identified a lot more with that GNC character than I did with my physical self pre-transition, whereas now I think I identify with both about the same. Neat!

Eventually, I joined Twitter, and kept going full steam ahead with the identity construction stuff. It turned out some people did find this virtual me interesting enough to interact with! Enough time passes and I find groups of people with shared interests and start interacting with them. More time passes, and I find out that I live in the same country, state, and area code as them. I start running into these people at gigs, and all of a sudden something really weird has happened - My virtual and physical identities are intersecting and coming into conflict with each other. I am no longer in (almost) complete control of the way my identity is constructive and perceived by my onlookers, they are having natural and human deductions on my character in person as well.

This was a bit of a head fuck for me for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being my severe anxiety which provided additional (unwanted) context and framing for a lot of the (sometimes insane) shit I would say online. I start feeling like I owe people explanations, overthink what people think of my mannerisms, quirks, and offhanded statements, and start essentially breaking down completely.

There is another dimension to this as well - a lot of these people I was meeting in person were creatives. Specifically, creatives who made art that I enjoyed immensely and had already started to develop a relationship with that was independent of who they are as people. This is not unique - odds are, you do not know Will Toledo or billy woods or underscores, you know an idea of them, a character you have created in your own head and parasocially connected to them (see I like Twin Fantasy for original reasons its not just because I'm a furry). All of a sudden, here are these virtual characters revealing their physical dimensions and I had to wrestle with the comfortable intimacy I had developed and displace it in favour of the social uniforms I tossed aside when starting conversations at the digital agora. As a result, both these people I knew online and people that I would meet through them became victims to a duality of etiquettes - standard social convention, and the convention I had created myself that they were completely unaware of. As you can imagine, this is a lot going on for someone who also had just moved out/was juggling a lot of really toxic relationships/having a bit of an existential crisis.

This parasocial virtual character that I identified previously was the exact identity that I had essentially wished to create, and if you are reading this you are the judge of whether or not it worked! A lot of you reading this have now met me in person and I’m sure most of you can attest to the fact that, whilst it very much depends on the type of me that you get that day, I am a completely different ballgame irl than url. Interestingly though, people did start associating certain things with me - my taste in music and specifically my good ear for it, my sense of humour, my being generally entertaining and a somewhat trustworthy source when it came to values, ethics, politics (even if I wasn’t always agreeable). As a result, I started being taken kinda seriously for some things and started getting access to spaces and realms of discourse that I never would have if I had just replicated my physical self onto my virtual self. I had effectively constructed a virtual body that was able to speak a language and bridge a medium of communication that I, a severely anxious and atypically cognitive person, was unable to surmount otherwise.

I understand this is essentially an exercise in lampooning the very basic idea that identities are socially constructed, but I feel like there is a lot more to explore here - if we truly get behind the wheel of these systems and processes we can create in new ways that lead to more empathetic, ethical, positive and progressive results for people. The throughline here is distance; distance from identity and as a result a distance from one of the many machines that manufactures desire and discontent that the maw of capital is trying to decode and imprison.

If you have seen my ramblings lately you may have seen me talking about schizo-analysis, and rather than attempt to define that or any of the cursed glyphs that have left the tongues of Deleuze and Guattari, I will simply say that I use that terms to talk about “tracing free desire” (you academics who take issue with my use of the terms can suck my fucking dick A thousand plateaus is bullshit enough without your nitpicking). One of the things this involves is partially reclaiming areas of life that we have previously given over to professionals and experts so that our desire can travel freely through them, and make it harder to be identified by agents who would seek to capture and hold our desire (and force feed it with capital and material items until we can’t move). To me, the internet (decreasingly, as we move into its tyrannically regulated dark age) or more specifically minimally regulated virtual technologies provide a strong foundation for us to guide freer travelling desire and to construct paths of communication for us as a species that thrive guerilla style away from this death spiral we call late-stage capitalism.

And so we arrive at Platforming Without a Platform! This is an umbrella name for a series of projects that I have started the absolute bare minimum of working on and hope to continue to work on indefinitely - most likely as a hobby in my spare time or as the bulk of my attention when I am inevitably unemployable due to health reasons. I want to create “things” that draw attention to how we can create identities on the virtual and physical level, and the global narratives that we create with them. I want to reclaim the space given to what has been labelled “influencer” or “celebrity”, and highlight the beautiful complexity and intricacy of our individual relationships. I want to explore how the lore and canon of that one friend you see every couple of weeks is just as rich and interesting and soul-affirming as whatever stupid shit Kanye said this week. Most importantly, I want to create things that emphasise the value of these connections in building fluid identities and relationships, as a possible escape from the hegemony of imperialism currently crushing our backs and hopefully provide some radical hope that we can shift that boulder even a little bit.

Thanks for reading! I wrote this because I was inspired by a conversation my beautiful friend Valerie and I had the other day, and also (much like the JSV piece and the music wrap-ups) is a way to force myself to commit to things that I think have a lot of potential. Posting this means I have to follow through out of spite for myself, cause I refuse to not follow through on something i mention publicly (even if I only follow through a little bit). The first project that will be coming out under this “entity” is something I am working on with my friends Alex and Raymond which is crazy cause this year marks 20 years of us knowing each other. Given that we haven’t even made the first episode yet it is still fucking ages away but we have been working on it pretty consistently over the last few weeks (and I am hoping the first piece will be done within the next couple of months) so more information when it is closer to completion (probably the end of the year or early next year). We are calling it “Controller Abuse” and honestly, it's the most excited I have ever been for a project. Outside of that, I am hoping to do a couple more write-ups this year - one on an Eora-based artist that I have been fucking with lately, and another on the roles and responsibilities of audiences.

Thanks again!

[ede917]

*SPOILERS FOR DAWN OF YANGCHEN*

I actually finished the book a while ago, about two days after I bought it when it came out, it just took me a while to get my thoughts on paper as it were.

I'd like to preface this by saying I did enjoy the book and I am looking forward to the sequel. That said, there a few things I didn't much care for.

My biggest gripe was probably the fact that the majority of the book was from Kavik's pov. It's the Dawn of Yangchen, not the dawn of some random guy she picked up.

Another thing is that the story is a political drama. This is more a personal thing than any failing on the books part but I can't stand political dramas. Part of the reason for that is that I like to imagine myself in the position of the characters and think about what I would do in their place. That's not as fun with political stories as it's usually just me strong arming everyone until I get my way. It's the same problem I had with Shadow of Kyoshi and while she was smart enough to realize she was wrong, I probably would have ended up killing someone who turned out to be innocent. Like I said, not as fun.

All that said, I did like the book. Yangchen is exactly my kind of character. The same sense of justice and fairness for all that I believe in while still not being completely naive. And the ending of the book was so nerve racking and exciting I forgot all about my gripes with the politics.

I especially love the situation Yangchen put herself in by imprisoning the combustion benders. They all know they can't hold them there forever and they're far too dangerous to go free. The readers, and possibly the characters as well, know the only practical solution is to kill them (as spirit bending isn't a thing yet) but Yangchen doesn't even let herself think of that option. It leads so perfectly to what she said to Aang about how their duty to the world goes beyond any personal beliefs. It's so perfect in fact that I can't help but hope the consequences of her choice here come back to bite her in the sequel.

Overall, while I still think Rise of Kyoshi is the best book in the series; the Dawn of Yangchen is a solid read, at least as good as Shadow of Kyoshi. If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend you doing so.

[hamliet]

Do you want to watch Heartstopper, hamliet?

Er... not really. At some point, maybe. But the author and cast have made some really icky statements that have dampened my enthusiasm--actually, that have outright been triggers. This isn’t to cancel them or to cancel the story either, please don't misunderstand me, but instead to say that they touched on very specific triggers that alarm me, and hence I prefer to focus on other media for the time being even though the story itself is probably lovely.

I also wholly support anyone enjoying the story! Really not intending to cancel or imply a morality game besides saying that I found the author/cast's statements morally troubling, but I can say that about a lot of stories I enjoy to an even greater extent, so there is no high ground here. It's just me being sour because it hit a trigger in my life and the marketing dug into said trigger, which kind of turned me off to the story.

The author of Heartstopper, Alice Oseman, made a frankly racist comment about how her story was superior to "boy's love" from Asia which she said was primarily written by cishet women who "fetishize" MLM. Except... she's clearly drawing on yaoi influences, and she's a white woman in Britain, where she's a lot freer to be open about her sexuality than people who are, y'know, actually getting thrown in prison for writing about it like Chinese danmei authors. To be clear, I don't actually think Oseman is being malicious--I know nothing about her--but instead ignorant (I once shared that ignorance, tbh), and I hope she reconsiders that it's maybe a biiiiit easier to work out your own sexuality when you live a privileged life in her society. Whether or not an author is part of the community or not isn't easy to say, because there are also cultural issues that discourage exploration and where coming out is pretty much impossible. And frankly, it's also no one's damn business.

The second thing she said that really irked me, and the thing that triggered me, was that she implied it would be wrong to show teenagers having sex. I'm sorry, but a lot, maybe even most, teenagers do have sex or are at least curious. But, it's very normal not to--actually, I think it's good that there is representation of teenagers not having sex as well, not just for more ace rep, but also because teenagers aren't always ready despite the fact that media insists they should be. So the fact that Heartstopper doesn't have sex is not the problem.

The problem is that the idea that praising HS specifically for not having sex in it ignores that there is a a whole long, long, long history of this rhetoric being used in LGBT+ spaces to justify hate. "You can exist, as long as you don't actually do it" etc.

It also comes uncomfortably close to mimicking the purity culture rhetoric of evangelical true love waits rings and purity balls. It treats sexuality of any sort as something to be shoved in a closet. Not only that, but did you know? Did you know that there's a whole movement in Christian circles called "Side B" sexuality where gay and lesbian people acknowledge they can't change their sexuality but believe it's not a sin unless they engage in the act of sex? The idea that depicting the act of sex is inherently fetishizing, or that it inherently dirties a story or makes it less valuable, sends off major alarm bells in my mind, because I grew up in this culture.

Of course, it's good to have fluffy, sweet stories without sex. Plus, there should be more ace rep. Some prefer sexless innocent stories and that is fine! I like them too sometimes! People have different needs! But the fact that this is distinctly held up as a virtue and that some creators imply depicting sex is inherently degrading or fetishizing or whatever is A Major Yikes, mimics conservative religious rhetoric, and oversimplifies the concept of sexuality that leads to at best concerning and at worst dangerous results. Ask me how I know (actually don't, but just saying I have some very real history here and Stories).

[mrdarcygenderenvy]

Bride & Prejudice RANKED on my own arcane system feat. special guest SHAZLEEN

On today’s installation of ‘ranking Pride & Prejudice adaptations by my own ridiculous system’, I’ll be joined by SPECIAL GUEST Shazleen Khan, famous author of internationally renowned gay webcomic Buuza and haver of wise opinions. And also the author of this great magical girl essay blog and the friend who I watched this movie with after not having seen it since I was a kid. Shazleen’s opinions are similar to mine only much more interesting and relevant so we’re keeping mine to a… 

LIGHTING ROUND HARI OPINIONS!!!

OVERALL: I was somewhat skeptical about whether this would live up to my child memories but do you know? Imo it banged.

TAKES: Naturally there was some absolute tunes, some extreme time capsule fashion and Aishwarya Rai (Lalita, ie. Elizabeth) had some fucking points about colonialism. I LOVE a P&P where the heroine gets full into the opinionated rant zone, 10/10. Adaptation versions of Caroline Bingley (Kiran) and Lydia (Lakhi) were both SO good and the ‘hot accidental rain dream’ vibes were on point.

Even from my limited perspective Darcy’s ‘maybe I’m learning to be less racist now’ arc came across fucking weak, in that it was not an arc. He’s just a real dick at the start then shows up playing a drum and we’re expected to fully like and forgive him for some reason. There was some nuance in other places, it just felt like a full half hour was missing from the end. Even just from a narrative and 2004 standpoint, DEMONSTRATE SOME PERSONAL GROWTH.

you did it, racism is over

What you’ve all been waiting for: The Shazleen Interview

Thank you for coming today, Shaz (please imagine I’m a talk show host but from a late night show from the past, so we’re reclining in plush chairs in a sultrily-lit room with drinks and big hair.) So first off, what were your opinions on this adaptation - and what’s your level of interest in period dramas

Shazleen: Ok so I have a lot of opinions sorry this is gonna be my longass paragraph

So I distinctly remember watching this movie a few times as a kid, and it may be one of the first few I’d willingly watched by my own volition (probably because one of my friends as a tween was also wildly into austen at the time, and also musicals) 

I think I had the opinion for a while after that it sucks that this movie has a white dude love interest- which I guess is still the mood after rewatching. However I truly did not expect some of the really big brain conversations that take place in this movie, about post colonialism and race.

Shazleen: I always remember the bit in this movie where Lalita talks about how at the time, India had only had independence for 50 years and was well on the way to becoming an economic power, as opposed to America which broke down into civil war around the same stage of its existence- but I really didn’t appreciate at the time how much they talk about things like diasporic politics with the guy who had emigrated to America and now looks down on his fellow indian community living bck home, and also the really nuanced portrayal of wickham.

I think when I was 12 or whatever I felt Wickham was the better choice, but now having literally aged and gaining life experience, Wickham in this movie is an even more insidious villain. Unlike Darcy, who’s just an ignorant dickweed, Wickham masquerades as someone worldly and open minded, when really he’s just as condescending and exploitative as any other gap year  wanker on their white saviour pilgrimage across the imagined, savage east. 

live shazleen comments from discord while we were watching it

Shazleen: Darcy’s redemption sucks here though, it’s sorta wild he plays a drum and then they smash cut to the double wedding. Also I still stand by it sorta sucks Lalita has a crappy white dude to deal with, though I suppose at the time this movie was made it was pretty good to show an interracial couple?? But I guess it’s 2021 and I’ve sworn off white dudes forever and I kinda wish she met some nice diasporic boy. Raj is literally perfect and right there though I guess, so I suppose the actual normal wholesome couple with no racism is already present?

Shazleen: Also irt austen, period dramas and adaptations, I truly feel there’s so much overlap between specifically south asian culture and that period of british history. Like the focus on class systems, family values and image, like c’mon this is the shit hindi dramas are built on. I’m surprised this isn't a more common crossover subgenre.

Hari: There are a couple of others that I personally haven’t seen so like… hmu if you wanna watch.

Shazleen: Fuck yeah dude let's go

Hari: I think for me, one reason period dramas spark joy/ gender envy is they often present a love interest with a sometimes-repressed but ultimately very caring, charming version of masculinity that an assumed female audience is supposed to be into. (Did gawky teenage me want to be a broody but ultimately misunderstood hero who’s very attractive to women, in a sick jacket and rumpled little poet shirt: of course.) Is there a particular character, film or genre that sparks feelings of ‘now that’s a gender I can get into’ for you?

Shazleen: I feel like my specific gender is just messy gender mysterious fuckboy with zero emotional capacity, so like I guess it’s just anime. Sometimes I look upon emotionally constipated anime lads like “ Man I wish i could just run around and obsessively do my specific thing I like to do and a girl would just like, be into that “

Yeah Hari I guess I do just want a nebulous gendered other to see the scummy ratboy I am inside and be like “I could make sure they eat 3 healthy meals a day.” 

Hari: I dream of coming over and kicking down your door to feed u healthy meals, if covid blows over and I’m miraculously cured of my disability you better watch your BACK

Shazleen: my rat ass is ready

Hari: Moving on from your rat ass to some final questions: other old white ‘classic’ literature you would like to see made into an elaborate and dramatic South Asian musical complete with bangers, sexual rain scene etc?

Shazleen: Where’s my count of monte cristo hindi drama guys. I want a 5 movie film franchise, each film 4 hours long, with 10 songs, about my guy edmont dantes on his wild vengeance quest. To be honest I looked it up and there are SEVERAL desi adaptions in various languages, but I want a fucking big budget one yeah, put mr sharukh khan on that shit. Hire Amitabh Bachchan as the Villefort equivalent

Hari: biggest crush of this movie?

Shazleen: it’s lalita, she’s so beautiful, I would literally die for her. I’m crying every day, mr darcy get away from her please

Hari: 00s fashion hot takes? 

Shazleen: I think it’s fun to see the kind of kameez’s we used to wear in the mid 2000s. Desi fashion trends don’t veer so wildly, but those y2k pastels are a definite throwback.

Shazleen: Also an impromptu Ranking of all the songs

The general vibe is that the singing is generally way better in hindi, but a few of the songs are ok in english.

6. Worst: Take me to Love - Sucks ass, it’s the classic walking through water we’re having metaphorical sex song, and it’s boring as fuck, they shoulda just let them sing in hindi.

5. My lips are waiting: A valiant effort by the singer, but it just feels like everyones singing out of key lol

4. A Marriage has come to town: The hindi segments in this song are pretty good, and while sometimes the english rhymes don’t hit, the general lyrics are perfect for the classic crowd scene banger. Bonus points for mentioning rasmalai.

3. Dola Dola: It’s a nice celebration song!! There’s nothing wrong with it and would be good BGM at a mehndi.

2. No Life Without Wife: This is a classic, a fucking tune, immaculate, the ultimate meme song.  this movie gave us one gift it’s this one.

Hari side note: ‘No life without wife’ is actually a song that’s been stuck in my head on and off for 15 years and did not remember was from this film until rewatching, truly a tune

Shazleen: 1. Balle Balle: Ok I have to be real though, as important as memes are, the true marker of a great hindi movie song is the couple group dance scenes and whether it makes it onto the wedding playlist. And this one, has definitely been the BGM as I’ve munched some biriyani on an auntie’s special day, ygm. 

FINAL RANKINGS

Wildness: 5/10, as Shazleen says, the premise is not that wild a combo at all, and mostly just sort of works doesn’t it

Mr Darcy gender envy rating: 0/10 he’s just like a hotel heir with noughties hair I fully hate

How much I have a crush on Elizabeth/ Lalita rating: 10/10, scold me with your thoughtful opinions

Shoutout to: ‘White backpacker Wickham who emerges from the sea to play wonderwall and naturally turns out to be the absolute Worst’ really is a great piece of adaptation and spiritually extremely Austen accurate.

OVERALL RATING: Yes

[bao3bei4]

girlbosses, male wives, and other lesbian genders

a post about jing wei qing shang. but also mostly about another unrelated movie. spoiler-free.

for a lot of people, mulan 1998 is their definitive “ohhh i’m a chinese woman dressing as a man for contrived reasons and i get absolutely nooo erotic pleasure from this” movie. 

however, because i am very special and unique, for me it’s the love eterne 1963. it’s the shaw brothers adaptation of butterfly lovers, the classic chinese folktale. here’s how i’d summarize the movie: 

zhu yingtai, an aspiring scholar, convinces her parents to let her dress as a man to attend school. on the way there, she meets liang shanbo, another prospective student, and they become sworn brothers. they study together for three years, growing closer, until zhu yingtai returns home. liang shangbo accompanies her for the eighteen-li journey home while she hints she’s a woman, but he remains oblivious. by the time he learns her gender, her parents have engaged her to another man. he dies of grief, and while she mourns at his grave, it splits open, and she buries herself inside with him. two scraps of her torn outfit turn into butterflies and fly away.

it’s worth noting here that like. this movie is made in the huangmei opera style. so both zhu yingtai and liang shanbo are played by women (betty loh ti and ivy ling po respectively). because of this, basically every level of the film is preoccupied with gender: if we take zhu yingtai’s male performance as credible (as the characters in the movie do) the leads bond through male homoeroticism; the text is ultimately about a heterosexual romance; it is acted out by two women, in a performance that is difficult to mistake as heterosexual or even feminine; and the dialogue of the movie can’t help but remark on this.

basically it asks: what if lesbians could be gay both ways? wouldn’t that be based? 

like opera was traditionally made by single gender casts, so roles tended to be genderless, in that the gender of the actor doesn’t determine the gender of the role they play. roles are instead typed into four categories: dan (fem), sheng (masc), chou (clown), and jing (painted face). it’s a sick gender quadinary. each of these roles has further subtypes that are represented through stylized patterns of singing, makeup, costuming, movement etc.

so in butterfly lovers, betty loh ti plays a dan, and ivy ling po plays a sheng. but because of the textual cross-gender play, you end up with a woman playing a woman playing a man who falls in love with a woman playing a man.

i’m going to make a brief digression here into talking about like.. acting theory. in the european tradition, you see it evolving out of early concerns (from stanislavski, brecht) about the fourth wall, and its permeability or lack thereof. in chinese opera tradition, the fourth wall didn’t ever really exist. and mei lanfang, the legendary fanchuan performer, claimed that his success wasn’t just due to his appearance, but rather, his mastery of some nonliteral feminine subjectivity. 

If I kept my male feelings, even just a trace, it will betray my true self; then how can I compete for the audience’s affection for feminine beauty and guile?

i’m not going to argue that there’s like, an essence to being a woman because i’m not a fucking idiot. but there’s something to be said for the idea that the gendered interplay between the audience’s perception of the actor, the actor’s perception of themself, and the character they play is a massive part of the appeal of fanchuan performance.

this is echoed by david hwang’s m. butterfly, in which gallimard memorably says, “i’m a man who loved a woman created by a man. everything else—simply falls short.” btw sorry for having the type of brain disease where i constantly reference chinese crossdressing related media. you already know why i have it. 

anyway. parallel to that (but far less morally detestably), jin jiang argues “young male impersonators in yue opera embody women’s ideal men—elegant, graceful, capable, caring, gentle, and loyal.” so, trivially, 1) the eroticism embodied by fanchuan performers is distinctly different from their “straight” counterparts, and perhaps less trivially 2) it’s way better. 

back to the love eterne for a bit. one of the many reasons it’s lodged itself into my psyche is because there’s something more interesting at play than just all that. normally in opera, to compensate for any perceived residual femininity in the sheng, the dan camps it up even further. so this is how zhu yingtai first appears, this bratty femme pastiche of womanhood. yet within a couple minutes she’s dressed as a man, which she’ll stay as for the bulk of the movie. they do however make compromises with the makeup--more gently lifted eyebrows than the steep angles of the sheng opera beat, and an improbably masculine smoky eye. 

that’s right. they performed girlbossification on her. 

i don’t want to suggest that she’s straightforwardly feminine. i could write an entire other thing on her relationship to masculinity. instead i want to highlight the erotic interplay not just between the “girl” and the “boss” but also between her and her counterpart: the male wife. 

liang shanbo is ostensibly straightforwardly male, but his relationship with zhu yingtai isn’t gay in the ahaha what if i was into my bro way-- it’s a what if i was into my bro and i was his wife way.

that’s right. they performed force fem on a cis woman-man. like when zhu yingtai tells him he can’t watch over her as she recovers from an illness because “boys and girls can’t sleep together,” liang shanbo asks “are you implying that I’m a girl?”

there’s a lot of shit like this that builds up over the course of the movie. it all culminates in that final 18 mile journey. along the way, zhu yingtai compares them to a pair of mandarin ducks, one male & one female. liang shanbo sputters “i am a man inside out-- you shouldn’t--” before graciously conceding, “you may compare me to a woman.” 

this is like. a simple punchline. but it’s incredible. it’s true! liang shanbo isn’t a man inside out in that he’s a man and only a man, but rather that he’s a man seen inside first, built for desiring, by a woman & for a woman. as a perpetual object, he becomes a more believable woman than zhu yingtai. and at least in his view, it seems more likely that he could be a woman than her. but beyond that, his permissive tone reads as a kind of wanting in itself--recast, if she wants, “for you, i’ll be a woman.” 

obviously this is a classic lesbian mood. who among us has not seen “no gender only lesbian” posts. and speaking of classic lesbians, you might ask. did you just tiresomely reinvent butches and femmes but with a more annoying name? yes. no. okay. well. 

first, like butch/femme dynamics have both historical specificity and a classed character such that it’s not rlly that appropriate to impose them on the love eterne. and i guess more importantly, i wanna talk about stuff that isn’t real.

we fight all day about people who confuse performance with performativity, (i use we lightly here. for instance, i go outside every day so i don’t care about discourse) but what if we actually wanted to talk about the former for once? something specifically, whether we choose or are forced into it, that we pretend to be? 

anyway. what the hell does all that have to do with jing wei qing shang. i’m going to start by first making the argument that there’s no such thing as a naturally occurring girlboss. i think, honestly, she’s a product of capitalism (“boss” should be the tipoff here) but because both of these stories are set in ambiguously historical china, i’m going to say, instead that she’s a product of uhhh primitive accumulation.

semantics so that i can be canon compliant with marxism aside, if girlbosses are made not born, can you choose to be a girlboss? sheryl sandberg says yes. i don’t disagree, i guess, but i will say: stop glamorizing it! humans only become girlbosses when they’re greatly distressed. 

you become a girlboss when you have no other choice not to be one. when your wants are too great to be a woman, when the things you want are not things that women should want-- whether that’s something that really no one should want, like being a ceo, or whether that’s just something like loving a woman (or, as it is quite often, both) -- you have to become something else. 

another important part of being a girlboss is that other people are not. your excesses mean that not only do you lose something in the process, but your bosshood comes at the expense of others. the girlboss necessitates a girlworker, or so to speak. 

now we’re getting to jwqs. i’m assuming that you haven’t read jwqs, because most people haven’t. that was me until like four days ago. in broad strokes, the novel is about a woman, qiyan agula, who was raised as a prince, and her quest for revenge against the kingdom who slaughtered her people. of course, this involves marrying one of the princesses of that kingdom. it’s all very exciting (lesbian). 

what’s striking about jwqs is that both of them seem to fit the girlboss paradigm, in vaguely similar ways. qi yan (agula’s assumed name) seems to follow the lineage of zhu yingtai, who pretends to be a man to achieve her goals. she’s forced to give up much in the process, and also sacrifices a, uh, lot of innocent people. similarly, nangong jingnu, the princess, is inherently a girlboss because royalty sucks. but also, qi yan girlbossifies her over the course of their relationship. 

but i wouldn’t say jwqs is girlboss4girlboss. there’s something a little more complicated happening. qi yan isn’t zhu yingtai in that she’s a dan pretending to be a sheng. it seems more like that she was a sheng all along. it’s something that the women of the novel return to often: qi yan seems to be better than a man.

for instance, nangong sunu, jingnu’s older sister, reflects on this. 

Nangong Sunu had seen many foolishly loving women who sacrificed everything for the sake of their husbands, but there were rarely any men who would do the same for them. 

(...) 

Thinking it through, Nangong Sunu felt that Qi Yan was truly becoming more interesting. She intended to observe discreetly for a while, to verify if such a man truly existed in this world. (ch 221) 

and i forgot to write down the citation for this, but nangong jingnu also seems to argue that not only is qi yan prettier than a man, but she also seems to be prettier than a woman. (it’s the bit where she’s watching qi yan sleep. help me out here.)

moreover, the way qi yan relates to nangong jingnu is suggestive. jingnu brings out the elements of wanting to be a woman in her. it’s jingnu’s body that makes her wonder what she would look like if she was more feminine. it’s jingnu’s happiness that she resents, wishing that her people could have that as well. it’s her desire for jingnu that makes her a woman. 

(another important distinction i suppose--while one person can’t be both a butch and a femme, because the girlboss and the male wife are things we pretend to be until we embody them / them us -- there’s greater slippage between the two.)

anyway, the girlboss/male wife dynamic is reversed wrt who’s actually dressing as a different gender. that suggests an inversion in the implications we see from the love eterne, if we are to take the love eterne as the paradigmatic girlboss text. which i do, for no reason in particular. 

so then, is qi yan pretending to be a man? under the opera framework, we’re forced to say no. she’s not pretending to be a man any more so than liang shanbo (as acted by ivy ling po) was. but that, of course, feels incorrect, just looking at the text. is she, then, pretending to be a sheng? i’d strongly say no. the things that others see in her, they authentically see; and she does authentically feel the same things as liang shanbo wrt femininity.

so it has to be the opera framework that jwqs is subverting then. if qi yan kept some trace of her once-womanhood, if qi yan reveals her true self, and yet she still can compete for the audience’s affection-- jwqs’s inversion of the opera framework seems to argue instead that it’s that true self that allows you to compete. it’s being masc that lets you be a desirable woman; it’s being feminine that lets you be a desirable man.

there’s an increased gender ambivalence to jwqs, which make sense, i guess, seeing as it’s not meant to be a het story the way that the love eterne was. for instance, nangong jingnu crossdresses to go out in public, and qi yan remarks that jingnu’s disguise fooled her on their first meeting. when qi yan and jingnu go out in public, both disguised as men, they’re repeatedly perceived as a gay male couple. there’s freedom in that: they could be gay women only privately, they could be straight officially, but they could be anonymously gay publicly. 

so it’s through the gay male pretense that they can be gay women; it’s through the qi yan pretense that agula can love women; it’s the qi yan caring husband persona that coaxes jingnu in caring for qi yan in return-- jwqs, more precisely, argues that you can’t be a woman if you’re going to love them, and even less so if you’re going to be loved by one. 

this is perhaps well-trodden ground for anyone who has read wittig & certainly many people who haven’t. but it’s the layer of pretense that for me complicates these two narratives. 

i think it’s a relatable feeling: wanting something anticipating getting something, or wanting something for yourself anticipating knowing that you already had it. that is, desire in itself being constitutive of that reality. 

or less abstractly, knowing that you’d want to be a lesbian if you could, knowing that you’d want not to be a woman if you could-- anticipating any realization of either. 

the dramatic excesses & wants of the girlboss, i think, are a decent literary stand in for being a lesbian. 

i wanna note here that this is rlly just based on my experience being a transmisogyny exempt nonbinary diaspora lesbian lol. it’s fun & cathartic to overread this history & place myself in the accidental implications.

i don’t think most of the things i say are literally true. and i don’t want to overstep & say any of this can be generalized. please lmk if something here doesn’t read right! ok kisses bye

[alextir-creates]

Barrissoka Fankids (Updated) by Tigrette-of-Fire

Hey everyone! Folks who’ve been following me for long enough might remember my Barrissoka fankids. Sorry about the reposting – I took these guys down a while ago to do design updates, but then distinctly didn’t remember to save my caption for the work and have largely been too embarrassed to put them back up.

Some days I am filled with regret.

However, I’ve been able to re-put together most of the info about them, so I’m finally reposting! More info and the image description under the cut!

Kovis, Isu, and Berall are intended to be Barriss and Ahsoka’s biological children. It’s space with sci-fi tech and they’re both aliens – who’s to say that they couldn’t have biological kids? Also, trans people exist. I don’t have specific headcanons about that, mostly because it feels really transphobic and fetishistic to headcanon one of them as trans just so they could have biological children. Just… yikes. The point though is just not to be cisnormative.

I originally had all three of these guys having the surname name “Tano-Offee,” but I’m less sure about that now. I’ve changed Luke and Leia’s (as well as their OC little sister, Voxanni’s) surname to “Naberrie” from “Amidala-Skywalker” for this verse, so… We’ll see. If anyone has feelings one way or the other, feel free to shoot me a message.

Quick background on these kids: Kovis (he/him) is the eldest – depicted at about 22 in this picture. He’s generally mild mannered and is a Jedi Healer. Isu (she/her) and Berall (she/her) are twins – depicted at about 17 in this picture. Berall is the more extroverted of the two of them, but Isu – despite being definitively being the anxious one – is the adrenaline junkie. I’m still sussing out what I want their career paths as Jedi to be, but whatever they end up being, Isu’s going to be an ace pilot. As an aside and fun fact, Kovis is gay, Berall is aroace, and Isu is bi.

Star Wars © Lucasfilm

Art, Kovis, Isu, and Berall © Me

[Image ID: three bust drawings of Mirialan-Togruta (two alien species from Star Wars) hybrids. In the top right, labeled “Kovis” a young man who takes after the Togruta side of his heritage in that he has montrals and lekku. His lekku reach down to his pectorals, and they and his montrals are white with teal striping. The stripe pattern is similar to that of Shaak Ti and Clone Wars Era Ahsoka Tano. His skin is the green typical of Mirialans and his eyes are cobalt blue. He has long, hooked white markings accenting his cheekbones, and smaller, drop-shaped white markings in place of eyebrows. He also sports Mirialan tattoos – three diamonds by each eye, another three over the bridge of his nose, and a stripe of diamonds down his chin from his bottom lip (which is itself tattooed black). He is wearing a simple gold akul-tooth headdress with no beading. Kovis is wearing classically-styled Jedi robes, though they are in shades of grey and dark teal instead of the more typical beiges and browns.

Kovis is turned slightly to the viewer’s left, and is smiling gently.

In the middle left, labelled “Berall” is a teenage girl who takes after the Mirialan side of her heritage in that she does not have montrals and lekku. Her skin is a medium, olive-brown and her eyes are a bright teal. She has white markings covering most of her upper face, though there are drop-shapes of the olive-brown in place of eyebrows. She also has a white stripe running down her chin from beneath her bottom lip. She sports Mirialan tattoos as well – a long sting of diamonds going across her face, crossing the bridge of her nose to do so. Her hair is covered, and the covering based of Hokkeji-style Buddhist nun’s habit. The habit is pale lavender, with darker trim. She is wearing a pale-magenta high-collared shirt with gold trim over a pale-lavender head and neck covering (inspired both by Barriss Offee’s costume design and certain types of sports Hijabs). She has a pale lavender wrapping over the high-collared shirt at the chest level, and a lavender outer robe with a floral motif. She also has a gold akul-tooth headdress, though hers is much more ornate than Kovis’s, and includes four strands of gold beading going over the back of her head.

Berall is facing forward and smiling brightly.

On the bottom left, labeled “Isu,” is another teenage girl who takes after the Mirialan side of her heritage in the same way that Berall does. Like Berall, her skin is a medium, olive-brown and her eyes are teal. Her white facial markings, however, consist of two large diamonds that surround her eyes. She also has a white stripe running down her chin from beneath her bottom lip. She also sports Mirialan tattoos – a short chain of diamonds running vertically over each eye. She is wearing a dark-lavender hijab-inspired head covering. She wears a gold akul-tooth headdress even more ornate than Berall’s, though it only includes two strands of gold beading going over the back of her head instead of two.

Isu is also facing forward, though she is looking slightly to the viewer’s right and biting her lip nervously.

End ID]

[xenotwink]

Sorry for the long ask, another one is coming after it, as well, but this is only about HBHBHB.

Your Thranto fic made me smile. I love how from the start, you can feel the tension within Thrawn and it only grows thicker over time.

The first description from Eli’s perspective of Thrawn’s back, his elation at seeing it, and his curiosity for more was chef’s kiss.

“”Always wondered what color your blood was.” . . . “‘S blue,”” lol. Aside from laughing at that, this scene was fantastic. It felt more real than just jumping into things, even if Eli regretted the inaction later.

Then, their first kiss. It wasn’t a big dramatic wordy explanation, it was. A kiss. And I liked that.

A different tension, after that. Also, imagining Thrawn in pajamas, pajama pajamas, is funny to me. Idk why. Tall, scary, hot intimidating blue man in pajamas with like, tie defender patterns is what’s in my mind. He also has an ysalamiri pattern, one with ewoks, and another pair with Vader helmets (timeline? Who’s she).

Finally sharing a bed again, and then ‘I love you’s, and things are happier but not dramatic at this point and mmm. And, Thrawn being sensitive around his ridges with Eli taking great care and being loving is very wholesome.

“He was hot. Panting was always embarrassing but it was the way his species cooled.” THIS is an INTERESTING IDEA and i LIKE IT.

The proposal. 🥺 Thrawn being anxious about his gift and Eli being so accepting and impressed and ugh. Darling, you’re wrecking me.

I can’t comment on the sex scene because—I hope you don’t mind, sorry—I scrolled past it, as it’s not my cup of tea, but I’m certain it was written just as well as the rest of the work. 💙

But that sweet ending. Eli being comfortable enough to just go over and proudly bear his jewelry and Thrawn accepting him immediately and. 💙💙💙

Loved it. Love you. Thank you for the food.

-💙📘🖋

HBHBHB (pronounced hubba hubba hubba) I'm so glad it made you smile! that's my goal with most fics is to make people smile (or horny or both)

blue blood thrawn truthers! i think about aliens and dating aliens a lot ofc and just finding out what parts of them are different from your own and what they look like naked and just. idk. its fun.

at the end of the day, we all wear PJs, no matter how intimidating we look. he's just a blue dude then.

the intimacy of sharing a bed and keeping another person warm is just. ah. and that eli's not like "suck it up" but does help, if reluctantly.

i feel like more species on earth cool by panting than by sweating and i think the chiss are more a. lizard like b. bird like c. egg laying mammals of action. panting when you're among a species who Doesn't do that and you're trying very hard to not stick out more than your (dramatic) appearance lends itself to and you're distinctly Other and trying not to be- whew I think about that A Lot also. (which i cover more in the Sucrose series of Lizard!Thrawn doing his best to Pass as less "alien")

these boys keep marrying eachother? girl help they're so gay.

not bothered by that at all! i totally understand that not everyone likes reading that (but i tend to throw plot or worldbuilding or something in with the sex and that's why i don't divide it or w/e cause its part of it but like yeah 's all good)

they're fuck me earrings but they're also i love you so much and i'm yours earrings.

aaaa thank you for your wonderful review! This just made my day :' )