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near-dareis-mai · 1 year

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Hi, so I was wondering if you've read twot books or spoilers and can tell me what happens with Siuan and Moiraine in the books? Like, I know they don't end up together and each of them has a man but they were friends so what happened to that? Did it end? How? I tried to look for the spoilers myself but I couldn't find anything specific about them and I know they're barely in the books but I'm really curious about how their relationship ends in canon or if at least they end up on good terms or what and I don't know who can I ask and you seem really nice so maybe you can help me? Or point me in the right direction to where I can find the answer?

Spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time book series

Anon, I’m very surprised you haven’t been able to find anything about these two because I’ve seen many posts about it, especially on tumblr, but I tried my best to summarize everything you asked for. It got a bit long, because we’re talking about a story that spans 15 books, but uh, enjoy. (You will not enjoy this.)

The short version is:

Moiraine and Siuan start their quest for the Dragon Reborn when they are 22/23 years old. They are Accepted (studying to be Aes Sedai) in the White Tower when they both hear the prophecy of the Dragon being Reborn. They become Aes Sedai very soon after this, and kickstart their quest to find the Dragon Reborn by Moiraine riding out of the Tower to physically search for him and Siuan staying in the Tower and learning to be a spymaster so she can do information gathering for the search. At this point in time, there’s no real doubt - unless you’re reading the text with blinders on - that Moiraine and Siuan love each other and are romantically/sexually involved with each other. These bitches gay. -

The main book series starts 20 years after the above happens. By this time, Moiraine has searched all over the Westlands for the Dragon Reborn, before finally finding viable candidates at Emond’s Field. By this time, Siuan is the Amyrlin Seat. At this point, there’s no real hint in the text that they’re still romantically involved. However, the text makes it very clear that they’re each other’s closest friend, they’re still very much devoted to their joint cause, and to each other through the difficulties arising from that cause. -

Strictly in the book series, it’s never really gone into detail what happens to the relationship in the ~20 years when Moiraine is (mostly) out of the Tower searching and Siuan is (mostly) in the Tower spymastering. I think you are led to infer that while they remained devoted to their cause and to how they are tied to each other by their cause, their actual romantic relationship supposedly either ended soon after Moiraine first left the Tower to search or gradually fizzled out. Also of interest here is that it seems to be a belief held in-world by the Aes Sedai and out-world by the author of the books, that these kind of "youthful" relationships between Accepted, while definitely being sexual and affectionate, shouldn't be considered "real relationships" and were merely stepping stones to a "real" relationship when they mature, usually with a man (issa yikes, chief). Even disregarding that, a truly satisfying explanation is never given of just what happened. -

By the end of the main series, Moiraine has been massively depowered due to a term of imprisonment in a magical other-realm where it’s explicitly stated that she went through severe mental torture. After her rescue from said realm, she gets comparatively sidelined by the narrative, and gets married to Thom, a man she has very little on-text interaction with before that. -

By the end of the main book series, Siuan is, uh, dead. But not before she is deposed from the Amyrlin Seat, stilled, then un-stilled but depowered, made an unpaid servant (hey there’s a word for that, isn’t there) to a lord on a technicality over an oath, gets spanked by said lord for misbehaving, falls in love with that lord in a very Stockholm-ish romantic progression, agrees to marry said lord, mentors Egwene as the new Amyrlin Seat, does a bunch of daes dae’mar-ing to ensure Egwene stays in power, and then dies at the last battle in a throwaway death.

The much longer TL;DR version is below the cut:

The Wheel of Time series consists of 14 books in the main series, with each chapter in the book written from varying third-person points of View. Moiraine and Siuan both have some chapters in their point of view through the series, but only four chapters in the entire main book series where they actually interact with each other, all of them in The Great Hunt (Book 2).

(However, Robert Jordan also wrote a Moiraine-centric prequel novel called New Spring, which takes place 20 years before the main book series, which is gloriously gay and gloriously Siuanraine, and I will get to it at the very end of this post, because it deserves its own section.)

Back to the main book series:

The two chapters in which Moiraine and Siuan first interact are Chapter 4 and 5 of The Great Hunt (Book 2). They are from Moiraine's PoV, and the essential gist of them is a) Moiraine is at Fal Dara following the events of The Eye of the World (Book 1) b) Siuan comes to Fal Dara for a state visit as the Amyrlin Seat c) Moiraine is summoned to see Siuan privately and all the other Aes Sedai who came along with Siuan thinks Moiraine is being chastised for her waywardness in the meeting, but in private they actually embrace warmly, and Siuan mentions that Moiraine is the only person with whom she can remember who she used to be when she was younger and not the Amyrlin seat. They also discuss that their conspiracy to find the Dragon together will have both of them stilled if the other Aes Sedai find out. Then they discuss Rand and various other matters of political importance, and then at the end of the second chapter they hug again before Moiraine leaves, and Moiraine thinks of Siuan as “my dearest friend”. Also, it’s mentioned that Moiraine and Siuan feel a tingle when each other channels, which is something only two female channelers very close to each other feel and even then it’s supposed to be temporary, whereas Moiraine and Siuan’s had lasted for over 20 years and counting.

So at this point, while it’s not explicitly stated that these two were gay for each other, at least when younger, just the way they were written already set a lot of gaydars pinging. To set further context, the two chapters described above (which are from the second book in the series) are the first substantial Moiraine PoV chapters we get in the entire series, and Siuan wasn’t even in the first book (though she was mentioned in passing, but only as the Amyrlin Seat, not as Siuan). We got a tiny peek into Moiraine’s PoV at the very end of the first book, but for most of the first book (The Eye of the World) she’s very much shrouded in mystery, a figure of awe and mystique, with even some hints alluding that she might actually be a Darkfriend that might secretly be working against everything she said she was working for. So the two chapters described above from The Great Hunt (Book 2) are the first time we actually get a look into who Moiraine is internally, what drives her, what her foibles and truest feelings are, the very intense feelings that lie behind her emotionless mask, and it’s very interesting to me that Robert Jordan thought that it was necessary for Siuan to be there for these chapters, that she was the person who could wrangle a show of true emotions and sentiment from Moiraine, who is so tied up in not showing any part of herself to the world that can be used against her.

The next (and final) two chapters where they interact are in Chapter 7 and 8 of The Great Hunt (Book 2). A lot happens in these two chapters, including Moiraine and Siuan’s find-the-Dragon-Reborn plot being found out by an Aes Sedai who used to teach them, but crucially to the Siuanraine dynamic is at one point the Aes Sedai deduces “Moiraine could not do this alone, and who better to help than her girlhood friend who used to sneak down with her to snitch sweetcakes.” Again the important things to note here that is already established by Book 2 that a) Moiraine and Siuan were the closest of friends when they were younger and studying at the Tower to be Aes Sedai and b) This closeness is intrinsically tied into why they have taken this quest together, their trust in each other throughout the years despite so many lengths of time apart when mistrust could have fostered between them, and how they can be truly equal with each other despite Siuan’s title as the most powerful woman in the world and despite Moiraine hailing from a powerful and wealthy noble house that once used to rule Cairhien.

After this, Moiraine and Siuan do not meet each other again in the main book series.

Moiraine’s story in the main book series after this: For the next 12 books in the main series, Moiraine PoVs are few and far in between (not enough) and mainly concerned with Rand and with the events of the main plot, until the Fires of Heaven (Book 5). Near the end of Fires of Heaven, Moiraine seems to “die” when tackling Lanfear (a Very Bad Girlboss) into a timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly magic doorway. At this point, we are given to think Moiraine is dead dead, and we have to wait six books later until The Knife of Dreams (Book 11), where we learn that Moiraine is not dead but is imprisoned in another realm (the realm of the Aelfinn and the Ellfinn) and there’s still a chance (but not a surefire chance) of bringing her back alive). In Towers of Midnight (Book 13), the rescue actually happens, Moiraine comes back. Moiraine has 9 PoV chapters in the entire main series before her "death", and two very small PoV snippets in Book 14 after her rescue, which IMO is woefully small given her importance in the narrative.

A few things to note about Moiraine’s story before her rescue/return from the other realm:

1. When Moiraine seems to “die” near the end of The Fires of Heaven (Book 5), she passes Lan’s bond to an Aes Sedai friend of hers, Myrelle, in a hail-mary gambit to save Lan’s life from the heavily depressive urge a Warder would get after their Aes Sedai dies. Myrelle does questionable things to keep Lan from giving in to this urge, and because of this as well as because of the passing of the bond itself, Moiraine and Lan’s relationship fractures in a way that is never repaired on page even after she is rescued, partly because the narrative in the last three books didn’t seem to think their relationship deserved the page time to even have a talk with each other that could be a step forward in that recovery.

2. Moiraine is aware of her fate before she tackles Lanfear through the magic doorway, because she’d seen (admittedly hazy) visions of multiple versions of the future due to plots reasons that’ll take too long to explain, and therefore knew that she had to tackle Lanfear in the doorway and be presumed dead, for future events to pass in a way that would lead to the Light’s victory.

3. Moiraine jumps into the magic doorway in Book 5, and it’s interesting that her decision to do this comes after Siuan’s deposal and reported “death” in Book 4. She really said death is not getting you out of this relationship mfer. (I’m kidding, bookcloaks.)

4. Moiraine thinks Siuan is likely dead when she jumps into the doorway, as Siuan is reported dead after being deposed from the Amyrlin seat. An interesting part here is Moiraine’s response when Egwene tells her of the news of Siuan’s deposal, stilling and presumed death:

“There is a saying in Cairhien, though I have heard it as far away as Tarabon and Saldaea. ‘Take what you want, and pay for it.’ Siuan and I took the path we wanted, and we knew we would have to pay for it eventually.” (The Fires of Heaven, Chapter 15)

The interesting part is Egwene is bemused by Moiraine’s seemingly callous reply to the demise of her oldest friend. To me, this ties back to a certain scene in New Spring where Lan thinks Moiraine is utterly callous and cold when she doesn’t openly react to the betrayal and death of an Aes Sedai she had once respected/cared for, but once he bonds her as her Warder and gets access to her emotions, he realizes that despite her emotionless facade she’s actually hurting very badly inside. (New Spring, Epilogue Chapter)

A few things to note about Moiraine’s story during and after her rescue/return from the other realm:

1. When Moiraine comes back after the rescue, she has one big moment where she reconciles the Dragon (Rand) and the now-Amyrlin (Egwene) during a major disagreement, and this reconciliation is crucial in bringing all the forces of the Light together into a unified Coalition to fight the dark. But aside from this, Moiraine is unfortunately... benched. It’s like the narrative post-rescue didn’t know what to do with her aside from “Yay, mom’s back!” She’s basically benched to being a cheerleader from the sidelines, which is... a choice.

2. Moiraine comes back from Sindhol (the magical timey-wimey realm of the Finn) significantly lower in power than she used to be. However she has a bracelet angreal that will allow her to channel a lot more, to an extent even greater than she used to be able to at her full power, but it’s still annoying that she had to be depowered like that for no real plot reason, especially when the plot immediately scrambles to point out the angreal as if to say “See! She’s not really depowered!” Just... narratively useless and annoying.

3. Moiraine never gets to reunite in the books with Siuan, the person she started this whole quest off with. Not a single conversation. It seems an odd narrative oversight to not have a bookend scene near the end of the series where the two people who started the quest together have a discussion about how everything panned out twenty years later.

4. Immediately upon rescue from Sindhol, Moiraine professes herself to be in love with Thom and marries him right away. This is regarded by many readers to be the most egregious pair-the-spares relationship out of the whole series. Before this, Thom and Moiraine shared one major scene alone, which consisted of them speaking in subtle daes dae’mar terms about their individual histories (The Shadow Rising, Chapter 17), as well as a couple of blink-and-you’ll miss it interactions here and there. Moiraine does know from a vision by Min that she’ll marry Thom, so there’s the added weight of Moiraine - a woman whose entire life is shaped by prophecy - marrying a man that prophecy said she’d marry. Overall, while the hints are there from early books of a Moiraine-Thom endgame, and the more astute readers definitely picked up on them while reading, narrative hints are not the same as relationship development. There isn’t really any scene of Thom and Moiraine actually enjoying each other’s company, other than an aside comment from Thom that she laughed at his gleeman jokes at one point, and the scene mentioned above of them daes dae’mar-ing around each other in The Shadow Rising, where Moiraine sounds “distinctly amused” when they were verbally sparring (which could be read as her being amused by how far out of his depth he is trying to play the Game of Houses against her, but YMMV.) Juxtaposed against this is Thom’s (justified) wariness against Aes Sedai and his various attempts to undermine Moiraine’s authority with the boys during the early books due to this wariness, which was what personally made me uninvested in their romance, because while his wariness may be justified, his actions don’t exactly bode for a lasting relationship with a woman who is Aes Sedai personified. (Also, when Moiraine marries him, Thom mentions his dislike for Aes Sedai, and Moiraine says that for him she’d throw away the bracelet angreal and give up the Power, which... why is a powerful woman throwing her power away for love always seen as romantic. Why is it almost always a woman who gets a romance arc like this. Why.)

5. Upon rescue from Sindhol, it’s very explicitly said that Moiraine suffered very severe mental torture while in Sindhol, but then the narrative refuses to give her the narrative space to talk about it. In the same scene, the male PoV character muses of her state post-imprisonment and post-mental-torture as “Humbled, cast down. That made her seem stronger to him for some reason.” (Towers of Midnight, Chapter 57) which just... plays into this tediously recurring idea in fiction of suffering being good/necessary and being depowered being a good/necessary thing, but it’s especially glaring here with the gender/power dynamics in play.

Siuan’s story in the main book series:

Siuan’s story arc is too extensive to go fully into so I’ll try to summarize key points:

1. The first couple of Siuan PoV’s we get are mainly ramp-up chapters showing her side of the search for the Dragon Reborn, and of awaiting news from Moiraine on how shepherding Rand is going. It’s noted that Siuan was born a fisherman’s daughter in Tear, and because they fear and revile all channelers in Tear, she was bundled off to Tar Valon on the very day it was discovered she could channel, and she has lingering bitterness from being forced to leave her home this way. It’s noted that she’s quite proud of where she comes from, and keeps her furnishings simple as Amyrlin.

“Oh, they do hate it, child. Hate it, and fear it. When they find a Tairen girl who can channel, they bundle her onto a ship for Tar Valon before the day is done, with hardly time to speak goodbyes to her family.” The Amyrlin’s murmur was bitter with memory. (The Dragon Reborn, Chapter 29)

(Also, she fucking hates horses, which is amusing because Tear is known for its horses. And also amusing because Moiraine loves horses.)

2. Siuan was made Amyrlin at 30 years old, the youngest Amyrlin ever until Egwene comes along in the main book series. At the point when the book series starts, Siuan has been Amyrlin for about 10 years. She has a Warder named Alric. While it's not stated in the books, Robert Jordan (the original author of the book series) stated in his notes that Siuan met and took Alric as Warder when she went traveling for a brief period of time outside the Tower after she was raised to Aes Sedai.

2. Siuan’s story takes a major turn in The Shadow Rising (Book 4), where she’s deposed as Amyrlin Seat in a coup by Elaida, stilled in a sham trial held by Elaida, and left for soon-to-be-dead along with her keeper Leane. Siuan and Leane are rescued by Min. Siuan’s Warder Alric is murdered during the coup trying to defend her. After hearing that all of the Blue Ajah, most of the Green Ajah, and substantial members from all other Ajahs except the Red had fled the Tower in protest of the illegal coup, Siuan resolves that instead of dying (owing to the severe depression that stilling comes with) she’ll find where they’ve fled to instead, which she eventually puzzles out is Salidar, a small village in a country called Altara.

3. Upon being stilled, Siuan’s appearance turns very youthful, making her look like she’s about 18 years old, despite her being ~42 years old. This means she’s unrecognizable. Here’s something she says about her new face:

Moiraine herself wouldn't recognize me with this face. (The Gathering Storm, Chapter 41)

(It says a lot to me that this is from Book 12, seven books after Moiraine has been presumed dead, at a point in time when Siuan and Moiraine’s romantic relationship is supposedly definitely over for decades now, and yet it’s still Moiraine whom Siuan defaults to as the person who she should count on to recognize even when she’s unrecognizable. It’s like even when the narrative doesn’t want to linger on their closeness, it can’t help but have them set each other up as the standard for intimacy/closeness.)

4. While escaping with Leane, Min and Logain, Siuan runs afoul of Lord Gareth Bryne, an Andoran nobleman and general. She ends up giving an oath of servitude to him to escape imprisonment and then running away to find Salidar, with the understanding that she’d complete the term of servitude after she was done with her Dragon Reborn cause. He ends up being infatuated with her (when he’s 60 years old and he thinks she’s 18 years old, mind you), and chasing her all the way to Salidar, where he makes Siuan his unpaid servant as the fulfillment of the oath. There begins a tedious arc where Siuan falls in Stockholm-love with this man, and ends up turning into a teenager personality-wise, literally running away if he so much as looks at her, or alternately throwing tantrums at him, which is a very weird narrative U-Turn compared to the 22-year old Siuan from New Spring - a prequel book set 20 years before the main series - who spoke rather maturely and realistically about relationships, and who Moiraine specifically said was very good at controlling her temper.

5. Siuan’s personality in general takes a very weird narrative U-Turn after Gareth Bryne hunts her down in Salidar. The woman we meet in The Great Hunt, who spoke with elegant pathos about Fal Dara being built for war in the midst of all that beauty, turns into a prudish and immature teenager whenever she comes into proximity with Bryne in the latter half of the books. It's as if the narrative is trying to change her into some imagined ideal of what a love interest for Bryne should be - virginal, prudish, inexperienced - except it's like fitting a square peg into a round hole because Siuan was already established as none of those things. It’s just... very weird, and very jarring because it’s like there’s two Siuans, the normal one who’s mentoring Egwene and taking care of business around Salidar and the teenager who comes out when Bryne is around or being discussed.

6. In Lord of Chaos (Book 6), Nynaeve heals Siuan of the stilling, even though stilling was previously thought to be un-healable. However, Siuan is restored to much lower strength in the Power than she used to be and given that the Aes Sedai work on a strength-based power structure, she’s very low in the totem pole even after being healed from stilling. Also, she’s still Lord Gareth Bryne’s unpaid servant. Also, the narrative makes sure to mention that she had to beg on her knees to be accepted back into the Blue Ajah.

7. Siuan never has a reunion with Moiraine in the books. But Siuan does think this in Book 12:

She didn’t regret her life. Yet, at this moment, passing army tents—holes and broken ruts in the path shaking the cart, making it rattle like dried fishbones in a kettle—she envied Moiraine. How often had Siuan bothered to look out of her window toward the beautiful green landscape, before it all had started going sickly? She and Moiraine had fought so hard to save this world, but they had left themselves without anything to enjoy in it. (The Gathering Storm, Chapter 12)

(Crucial to mention that at this point here, Siuan thinks Moiraine is dead. That is to say, she thinks Moiraine is not in this world. The world in which there is nothing left for Siuan to enjoy. The poison for Kuzco. Kuzco’s poison.)

(Also crucial to mention, it’s after this moment of stock-tacking that Siuan makes the decision to actually pursue an “entanglement” aka a relationship. Again, very amusing how even as the narrative actively avoids having Moiraine and Siuan meet again, it cannot help but hold them up as the standard for each other that needs to be stepped over to move on to something else.)

8. By the end of Book 12, Siuan has accepted to marry Gareth Bryne, and made him her Warder (in a situation where he basically corners her into it in a high-stakes moment where Siuan can't really refuse.)

9. In Book 14, the final book in the series, during the Last Battle, Siuan says how proud she is of Egwene as her legacy, and then dies in a farcically throwaway death by saving Mat from a burning building. If that seems abrupt to you, it is even more abrupt in the narrative.

So, that’s how Moiraine and Siuan’s stories end in canon. Moiraine depowered, married to a man who can’t help but speak of his distaste for Aes Sedai even as he’s marrying one, and estranged from her Warder who she was closest to aside from Siuan for 20 years. Siuan depowered, dethroned, Stockholm-ed into love with a man who spanked her like a child for misbehaving, and then dead in a throwaway scene.

New Spring (NEW MF-ING SPRING)

Robert Jordan wrote a Moiraine-centric (and Lan-centric) prequel novel called New Spring, which is chronologically situated roughly 20 years before the main book series, when Moiraine and Siuan are roughly 22-ish years old and Lan is roughly 26-ish years old. New Spring has 22 chapter chunks from Moiraine’s PoV, 8 chunks from Lan’s PoV, and 1 small chunk of Siuan PoV. New Spring covers Moiraine and Siuan hearing Gitara’s prophecy, being raised to Aes Sedai, starting their search for the Dragon together, Moiraine escaping the Tower to search for the Dragon on the road when the Aes Sedai show plans of putting her on Cairhien’s throne, and meeting Lan on the way, who is returning home from fighting the Aiel War, Moiraine and Lan having misadventures together, and the book culminates with Moiraine and Siuan deciding that Moiraine will continue the search on the road while Siuan will use her newfound position in the Tower as the mentee of the Blue Ajah spymaster to facilitate Moiraine’s search from the Tower. In the final scene of the book, Moiraine seeks out Lan again, reveals to him the truth about her search and the prophecy of the Dragon being Reborn, and asks Lan to become her Warder, which he accepts.

New Spring has its flaws and there are some (non-Siuanraine-related) moments that make my skin crawl, but if you are a fan of the Siuanraine ship or Lan/Moiraine brotp from the show, this is the book you want to read. The main book series has flashes of both these dynamics here and there, but New Spring is where you really delve into just how strong Moiraine’s feelings for Siuan used to be when they were younger, and also into how she meets Lan and decides to make him her Warder.

New Spring is... a jewel, the book of my heart. It’s a delight to see all three of these characters when they were young. It’s interesting to read about Moiraine’s social fauxpas/mishaps and her temper and how she chastises herself for the mishaps even when others don’t even notice, and how you can already see how this tendency is going to develop into the Moiraine we see twenty years later in the book series, who is so closed off that she seems stone-hearted to others, when it fact she’s feeling things very deeply. It’s a delight to see Lan grousing about Tairens and various other soldiers not showing the proper courtesy needed, not following proper form. It’s a delight to see Siuan coming up with various zany ballsy plots ranging from secretly keeping a notebook of potential Dragon Reborn candidate names right under the Aes Sedai’s nose to buying a bunch of mice from a stableboy right after she’s passed her Aes Sedai test, to put into Elaida’s bed, under the reasoning that it wouldn’t be dignified to do this after she’s officially raised Aes Sedai so this is her last chance.

But most of all, New Spring is... super gay. Maybe it’s not explict explicit about it, but it’s impossible to read New Spring and not come out realizing just how terribly in love Moiraine and Siuan used to be, twenty years ago. The entire book is like a Siuanraine fanfic. If you read no other book in the series, if you’re a Siuanraine fan, anon, please read this book.

(In a book-only sense, it’s also utterly heartbreaking to read New Spring, because you get the sense that this is what Moiraine and Siuan truly gave up: the closeness they had to each other. That, even though they didn’t want to, in the twenty years to come they’d both turn to other people for affection, and get closer to other people, and that this change would creep up on them so slowly over twenty years that it’d have happened before they even noticed that it had happened, or had space to mourn it.)

In New Spring, you learn that Moiraine and Siuan arrived at the Tower on the same day, and that they’re within a year of age, with Siuan being slightly younger. They were entered into the Novice enrolment book on the same day. They graduated from Novice to Accepted on the same day, in three years time, which was the fastest anyone had done it (a record shared by Elaida who came a few years before them) until Nynaeve/Egwene/Elayne all break it twenty years later. They were also raised from Accepted to full Aes Sedai on the same day, in three years time, which was again a record matched only by Elaida and broken by Nynaeve/Egwene/Elayne twenty years later. Siuan and Moiraine remained in lockstep in their strength in the Power as well, and were in their prime two of the most powerful Aes Sedai in the White Tower, matched by very few others until the events of the main book series.

I can quote so many passages from New Spring to show how gay it is, but I’ll restrain myself to four:

She had never been as close to anyone as she was to Siuan. Or loved anyone as much. - New Spring, Chapter 6, Moiraine PoV

The sight of Moiraine always made her smile. Cetalia had been wrong in one particular. She was not a pretty little porcelain doll; she was a beautiful little porcelain doll. - New Spring, Chapter 12, Siuan PoV

Siuan could have kissed her. In fact, she did. - New Spring, Chapter 12, Siuan PoV

“Novice and Accepted, she was sent to my study more often than any three other girls. Except for her pillow-friend Siuan. Of course, pillow-friends frequently get into tangles together, but with those two, one was never sent to me without the other. The last time the very night after passing for the shawl.” Moiraine kept her face smooth, kept her hands from knotting into fists, but she could do nothing about burning cheeks (...) And spreading out all these intimacies! (...) How close she and Siuan had been was no one’s business but theirs. - New Spring, Chapter 17, Moiraine PoV

(The last one especially is important because they’re specifically mentioned as being pillow-friends and pillow-friends was confirmed both in text and out-of-text-by-the-author as being a term used for a sexual relationship, so at that point this goes from simply “Is anyone else getting a gay vibe...” to “This is 100% canon.”)

Anyways, a lot obviously happened in the 20 years between New Spring and the main book series, but I thought it’d be nice to end on a high note.

I hope that answered your question, anon!

#wot book spoilers #wot books spoilers #wot spoilers #wheel of time book spoilers #moiraine damodred #siuan sanche #moiraine x siuan #siuanraine #the wheel of time

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cheonmaneechan · 1 year

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One of the wonderful things about When They Cry is not only how Ryukishi07 noticably improves as an author and builds upon his themes and ideas from his previous works, but also how each successive work gets more blatantly queer than the last.

Higurashi has quite a bit of plausable deniability on whether its characters are lgbtq. The most obvious ones are Furude Rika and Houjou Satoko for each other, but this can plausibly be denied by someone who doesn't see it without too much of a strech in the original eight episodes. Personally I'd argue that literally the entire main cast of girls are lgbtq of some kind except maybe Hanyuu, but each of those arguments do require interpretation. This is Higurashi from 2002.

Umineko gets more blatant with explicitly queer characters, more often on the magic side but there are some on the human side as well. It's a coinflip on whether Zepar or Furfur is trans (though some clowns will use real life voice actors to try to give a definitive answer). Bernkastel and Lambdadelta are notorious toxic witch lesbians. Furudo Erika and Dlanor are in a less explicit relationship that's a bit dicey at times and coming after Furudo Erika's unpleasant breakup with her boyfriend. Williard seems to be in a relationship with Ushiromiya Lion by the end even as Ushiromiya Lion explicitly states they're unsure of their gender and or don't want to say on the matter and Williard accepts that without hesitation and explicitly states that the audience should too. Ushiromiya Ange has a relationship with Mammon that can be interpreted as romantic as well, and with the open ended ending of her future, one can imagine Ushiromiya Ange as all sorts of sexuality and potentially still in that relationship with Mammon if not closer. And then of course there's Yasuda Sayo or as I'd like to call the queerest and most gender and sexuality character of all time. If I tried to count their potential queer identities, I'd probably miss at least one or two, but they ain't straight and they ain't cis even if their individual personalities might be. There's even more that you could say about the themes of Umineko overall that also tend to involve Yasuda Sayo to some extent, but I'll leave it there. By the latter half of Umineko or the answer arcs, some people reading at the time were wondering basically "Where'd all this gay shit come from?" among other things. Some people couldn't handle it at the time and many still can't, and some are somehow still in denial of Umineko's queerness to this day more than likely. This is Umineko from 2007.

Ciconia even with only one episode out and presumably an eighth of the way done by traditional When They Cry standards manages to be EVEN MORE explicitly queer within said one episode. This time, with no interpretation or any serious level of reading and understanding the text and characters needed, the main protagonists Mitake Miyao and Mitake Meow who share a body are either transgender one way or the other with Mitake Miyao being a boy and Mitake Meow being a girl. To this they're like Yasuda Sayo except they definitely know their sex, and like Ushiromiya Lion they'd rather not say at least yet. Mitake Meow's boyfriend Jayden respects this and that his girlfriend might be trans and that she can tell him and they can work whatever out when she's comfortable about it. There's a whole ass scene or so about this and is impossible to deny. Ciconia also mentions explicitly there being surgery to acquire a penis in the futuristic setting as well, and possibly even artificial wombs if I'm not mistaken too, things that are at the moment still medical hopes and dreams for so many trans people. There's also discussions about the struggles of lgbtq people as well as gay moments mostly among girls but even with a guy as well (not listing them partially because my memory of some of their names is fuzzy, lol). There's a pro yuri nun idol squad even who states that love has no bounds and yuri is the best thing ever essentially, you literally can't get more explicit and in the text than this unless your measure of gayness deems sex to be the epitemy and ideal of gayness at all times. I'm not even sure how you could be a queerphobic When They Cry fan without blatantly ignoring at least one work or malding about it constantly. This is Ciconia from 2019.

This post doesn't say much about Higurashi GouSotsu from 2020 because I haven't watched it myself, but that's pretty explicitly gay too and much more explicit than the original and makes the queer content in the original as well more blunt and obvious. Not necessarily recontexualization so much as a potential fragment that builds upon what was already previously alluded to for nearly two decades by that point.

To people who genuinely think any When They Cry work is definitively and undeniably straight...I really don't know what to tell you lol. Like there's room for intepretation for quite a bit of this including towards a cis or heterosexual explanation at times, but at some point you're just not reading the text very well to think that it's all just cis and straight and that the gays are just delusional somehow, lol.

#higurashi #higurashi spoilers #umineko #umineko spoilers #ciconia #ciconia no naku koro ni #ciconia spoilers #when they cry #lgbtq #07th expansion

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dreamsofanenbysapphic · 1 year

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arospec

a poem(?), a collection of ideas, things i have been thinking about, about relationships and the platonic/romantic binary

some citations:

arospec wiki sources, amatonormativity, instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy, my favorite poem by alok vaid-menon, aromantic manifesto, amatopunk

full text below the cut:

screenshotted text from various sources over a galaxy background, spread across two images:

arospec, is an umbrella term

People on the aromantic spectrum may feel little to no romantic attraction, or feel romantic attraction differently, more rarely or

Loveless Aro describes someone who is some way disconnected from the concept of love, rejects the idea that they need to experience love

Quoiromantic (also called WTFromantic experiences may include:

Finding the concept of romance to be inaccessible, inapplicable, or nonsensical.

the questioning itself

becomes the identity

Disidentifying with the concept of romantic attraction - either as a social construct or as something potentially applicable to oneself.

a disidentification with the romantic/nonromantic binary,

They may consider themselves relationship anarchists.

Amatonormativity

to describe the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship.

[elizabeth brake]

Due to the ambiguous nature of romantic attraction, sometimes defined by the actions that one takes during a relationship, such as holding hands, kissing, or cuddling. However, none of these activities alone necessarily indicate romantic attraction.

The prefix nebula- comes from the Latin word nebulous, meaning "clouded" or "unclear".

Queerplatonic relationships (QPR) and queerplatonic partnerships (QPP) are committed intimate relationshisp which are not romantic

This way of thinking is also one that places certain relationships above others, such as Romantic relationships being viewed as 'above' or 'superior' to Platonic relationships. If two people are dating they are 'more than friends'. If they aren't dating then they're 'just friends'.

Amatonormativity prompts the sacrifice of other relationships to romantic love and marriage and relegates friendship and solitudinousness to cultural invisibility.

Amatopunk!

challenges amatonormativity, and how society views aspec people, polyamorous people, and others who do not fit into the "right" mold.

Relationship Anarchy (abbreviated RA) is the belief that relationships should not be bound by set rules, aside from the rules the individuals involved mutually agree upon.

sensualarians have relationships that are often "in between" typical relationships categories, whereas relationship anarchy completely breaks down all relationship categories

Relationship anarchy questions the idea that love is a limited resource

i want a world where friendship is appreciated as a form of romance. i want a world where when people ask if we are seeing anyone we can list the names of all of our best friends

[alok vaid-menon, friendship is romance]

queer liberation must abolish romance as its long term goal aromantics aspire to:

view queer intimacies as web-like counter-publics that reinforce rather than compete with and enervate each other.

transform queer intimacy into political solidarity and action.

[aromantic manifesto]

Relationship anarchy (sometimes abbreviated RA) is the application of anarchist principles to intimate relationships. Its values include autonomy, anti-hierarchical practices, anti-normativity, and community interdependence. RA is explicitly anti-amatonormative and anti-mononormative and is commonly, but not always, non-monogamous.

With one's relationships starting as a blank slate, the act of distributing physical intimacy, sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, etc. is according to one's desires rather than preexisting "rules"

Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.

[josé estabon muñoz, cruising utopia]

#arospec #relationship anarchy #amatonormativity #queer poetry #napowrimo #nebula writes #or in this case nebula collects a bunch of screenshots of ideas that live rent free in their head #it was useful to me to organize the ideas a bit #everyone pretend i spelled cruising right in the image

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coraniaid · 1 year

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The online Buffy fandom seems to really like talking about the "original plans" for the show, but also to hate the concept of citing sources or providing evidence. So there are all sorts of ideas from the "original plan" floating out there in the aether that you seem to have to choose whether or not you believe based largely on vibes.

Generally I'm inclined to be pretty skeptical of the concept of an "original plan" for the show, whether that's the idea that Dawn was "originally" going to have telekinetic powers or that Faith was "originally" going to kill herself in the middle of Season 3 or that Buffy's parents were "originally" never going to be appear on screen. It is very hard for me to square ideas like these with the general tone or theme of their respective seasons. (If they're true, I think my main takeaway would be that we're fantastically lucky that the show turned out as well as it did.)

Similarly, but somewhat distinctly, I'm very dubious of readings which suggest that, for example, Amy's actions in Season 2's Bewitched, Bothered & Bewlidered are a sign that Amy's characterisation in the first half of Season 6 was actually planned out well in advance. I don't think that interpretations like this are really supported by the text of the show at all, and frankly I don't think they give the writers enough credit for the very real skill involved in making things up as they went along.

For the most part, and barring evidence to the contrary, I'm inclined to put most of the "original plans" people like to talk about down to misunderstandings or miscommunications. Maybe an idea got idly tossed around for a few minutes while a season of the show was first being brainstormed, or maybe an actor initially only signed up to appear in five episodes, and from those tiny true fragments an "original plan" for the character was retroactively inferred which was never intended by the show's creators.

But there are a small handful of exceptions to this general rule -- the idea that it was "originally" Xander who was going to come out as gay, not Willow; the idea that "originally" Angelus was going to kill Oz rather than Jenny Calendar; the idea that "originally" Kendra was going to survive Season 2 and go on to have Faith's Season 3 arc -- that I think are different. I haven't been able to find hard sources for these claims either, but they've all been repeated for so long, and for so often, with so little variation, that I think it's more likely than not that the writers have at some point described these as the original plans for the show. These, I'm reasonably sure, aren't misunderstandings on fandom's part.

Let's call them what they are instead: lies.

The show's writers may well have claimed these, but if they did I don't think there's any reason to believe they were telling the truth.

Yes, it's very easy to read Xander as a (deeply, deeply repressed) gay or bisexual man. It's the most sympathetic way to make sense of his awkwardness around Larry Blaisdel, and of his frequently expressed opinion that Angel and Riley and Spike and Oz (and all the other men his two best friends date) are attractive and of his jokes about wanting to date them. And if you believe that Buffy herself is bi -- as I do, but (perhaps crucially) the writers explicitly don't -- then it makes a certain amount of sense that her metaphorical Heart should be as well.

But nothing about the way the show actually treated gay men over its seven seasons suggests to me that the writers would ever have seriously considered having one of the leading male chararacters come out as attracted to men. The actual show gives us Larry (who boasts to Xander about how out he is without ever actually showing romantic or sexual attraction to another man on screen, then is quietly killed off and seemingly never mourned), and Andrew Wells (whose obvious but unacknowledged attraction to both Warren and then later Xander is always played as a 'hilarious' joke) and Jane Espenson tried to smuggle Giles/Ethan past the other writers for an episode or two but ... that's really it, isn't it? (Not counting things unique to Angel the series, anyway.) We didn't even get the (supposedly) originally scripted kiss between two men in Smashed, allegedly because the writing team that brought us Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered were worried about there being "unfortunate implications" to having sexual attraction be something that magic could influence.

Equally, yes, it really sucks that Jenny Calendar died and it's nice to imagine that the writers at least considered keeping her alive and trying to do something interesting with the character. But I'm pretty sure that the writing was on the wall for her as soon as the show retconned her as being linked to Angel's curse (if not well before).

Why would Angel kill Oz, specifically? What links these two characters? Why not go after somebody Buffy has actually had a conversation with first? Or somebody that Angel ever had a conversation with? When you know the show's full history -- when you know what happens to not just Jenny herself but also Gwendolyn Post and Maggie Walsh and Joyce Summers, to Cordelia and Tara and Anya, to every adult woman with any impact on the plot and to any woman who dares to break up with one of the Core Four -- how plausible does it really sound that the writers ever considered sparing Jenny at the expense of Oz?

And yes, it also stinks that Kendra only got to appear in three (or, let's be honest, something more like one and a half) episodes before she was killed off. And that her name is only spoken once after Becoming, and only as a bit of exposition to set up the new, more plot significant, more interestingly written vampire slayer. It's infuriating to realize that of the six Slayers we see called before Chosen it's exactly and only the two white Slayers who get to live and have full character arcs. It would have been great if Kendra could somehow have stuck around, or if the writers had found a pretense to bring her back somehow.

But the fragments we see of Kendra's personality -- painfully shy around boys, a stickler for following the rules, raised from a young age to respect the authority of her Watcher -- suggests she's utterly unlike Faith. How could she have had Faith's Season 3 arc, without her character being totally rewritten from the ground up? How could she have this arc and still be Kendra?

Yes, Kendra should be important. She's the second Slayer we ever meet, somebody who's very existence upends everything we know about the show's mythology. The first -- and for a while, only -- person we meet who can really understand Buffy and appreciate exactly what she's going through as a Slayer. Kendra should be one of the major characters on the show, and her untimely death should have long term ripples and ramifications for years to come. But equally it seems very obvious that the writers didn't care about her at all, and that they never did and were never going to.

So she isn't a major character, and her death doesn't matter.

I think it's doing the show more credit than it deserves -- and willfully downplaying its very real and persistent homophobia and misogyny and racism -- to pretend that any of these things could have been different. Even if it does turn out that the writers ever claimed otherwise.

#btvs

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gwyns · 5 months

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I’m feeling a little snarky tonight. I was reading something a Gwynriel/Elucien posted, and saw an E/riel had reblogged it to share their opinion, so I randomly saw it (I didn’t go actively seeking E/riel content).

An E/riel - “And for the love of god, the "you're the new ribbon Az." line: Tell me you can't discern the difference between platonic and romantic banter without telling me you can't discern the difference between platonic and romantic banter. Every single instance in ACOSF that involves Azriel being around Gwyn for training, for example Gwyn's loud laugh, is quite obviously platonic. Her laughing loud enough to briefly gain the attention of absolutely everyone in the room? Come on now. That is a natural reaction to look over in the direction of a loud noise.”

Same E/riel - “Gwyn to be Azriel's partner and lover and mate? Doubtful. Very doubtful. There's just not enough evidence in the current text to come to that conclusion logically vs what's going on with E/riel together. Why can he smell elucien's bond when no one else can? Why does such a thing physically hurt and sicken him to sense? Why does he agonize so much over Elain to the point where he can hardly take care of himself? Why is he always so instinctively protective over Elain? And yes, I am bringing up the "shadows poised as snakes, ready to strike" against Nesta. Azriel was willing and waiting to scrap it out with Nesta over Elain. Let's be real now.”

I laughed out loud when reading this. They also said that Azriel’s shadows were dancing to Bryce’s music in the HOFAS bonus chapter. It literally says in actually text, that Bryce’s phone had died, and that Azriel’s shadows were dancing to his humming. Azriel smelling Elucien’s bond isn’t a big deal, and it was in his pov, so obviously?? And Amren could smell Feysand’s. When Nesta & Cassian visited the Prison, Lanyths was about to tell them that they’re mates from smelling them.

WE can't discern the difference between platonic and romantic? US??? that's a big claim coming from the same fandom that hinges all their hopes on smelly bread

gwyn being loud isn't the only instance of sjm highlighting az's attention shifting to her though. if that were it, i'd agree with them that it doesn't necessarily mean anything but both az and gwyn are constantly looking or paying attention to one another. sjm continuously shows us this in a nessian book. it's been said many times, if e/riel were endgame, sjm could've easily made these type of interactions happen between them. like hello?? we all expected elain to be in this book more but guess what? she was notably absent and that's for a reason

hey um, do they realize that agonizing over someone to the point they can't take care of themselves isn't a good thing? like... at all? i am actually worried for them if this is what they think relationships are supposed to be like. i mean sure there will be uncomfortable moments and you will worry and struggle at times, i've been there. i've worried to the point where i made myself physically ill but it wasn't over whether or not i'm worthy of him, it was because i was genuinely worried for his safety. big difference. relationships take work, but ultimately your partner will make you feel good about yourself. they'll encourage you (hey that's something that az did for gwyn!), you'll feel at ease around each other (hmm something az was around gwyn, interesting...) and making conversation will be the easiest thing in the world (huh yet another thing that happened around gwyn... weird how that works)

yup! i've only read that bonus chapter once but i remember bryce being upset that her phone died since it was her only connection to home, to hunt, at the time. if his shadows were dancing to the music on her phone, why weren't they doing it the whole time? e/riels really act all high and mighty and like their word on canon is law when they literally can't even read. sjm explicitly tells us things but they're so delusional they actually believe the opposite. it's quite fascinating really

#antielriel #anti e/riel #asks #anonymous

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yuriskies · 1 year

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Otherside Picnic vol 8 spoilers below the break

It's always nice when a work retroactively adds new layers of complexity to previous parts of the story. A really neat, almost Easter egg-y, example of this is how the end of UraPi vol 8 makes a brief bit of descriptive text in File 15 ("Overnight in the Otherside") far more interesting.

After Sorawo and Toriko's intimate moment in the Otherside, they start trying to find a new label that's unique to them to move beyond the baggage they accumulated with "accomplice". Working off Toriko's suggestion of SoraTori, Sorawo hits on the idea of using a non-standard kanji for the nue (鵼, which can also be read as "strange bird"), taken from the first kanji in Sorawo's name (空魚) and Toriko's name (鳥子). Toriko says she knows about the yokai (a chimera with the face of a monkey, body of a tanuki, limbs of a tiger, and tail with the head of a snake), but Sorawo also mentions that the term can also be used to describe something with an uncertain shape. It's a really nice bit of wordplay that thematically plays in to Sorawo's resistance to having a relationship with a societally-defined shape.

Sorawo's solution was most obviously foreshadowed in the epigraph for File 23 ("Funeral of the Moon"), where the nue is mentioned as a harbinger of a soul summoning ceremony. It turns out, though, that Sorawo and Toriko's exploration of the Otherside in File 15 involves the nue as well.

The motif of the nue is clearest at the end of the file, when Toriko presents Sorawo with a knife with an epigram consisting of the first kanji of each of their names engraved side by side. The intended meaning is probably SoraTori (after all, she did try to name their first trail in the Otherside SoraTori as well), but can easily reinterpreted to read as nue with the benefit of hindsight.

However, the motif also occurs near the beginning of the file, when they have their first overnight stay in the Otherside. Sorawo and Toriko go up on a hill after dark to find a spotlight beam indicating the location of the gate they plan to trek to. Suddenly, they're weirded out by a pheasant's cry nearby, and scramble back to their camp as the darkness sets in. Rather than hang out at the campfire for a bit, the two run for their tent as Sorawo mentions the night darkness growing "terrifyingly deep". This comment sticks out, because at other points when Sorawo is in the Otherside at night, she makes no special mention of how dark it is.

Plumbing some of the deep lore around the nue suggests that Sorawo and Toriko probably encountered one on the hill without recognizing it. Over time, the cry of the nue came to be associated with the mournful cry of the scaly thrush. However, early versions of the nue myth identify the call as being associated with the green pheasant**. In the 14th century Heike Monogatari, Emperor Konoe is haunted by a nue, which is depicted as appearing from a thick black cloud that blots out the night, creating a darkness "so thick nothing could be seen".

By the end of vol 8, the nue, the relationship, and the Otherside have been explicitly linked to one another by the narrative. This early appearance of the nue motif might have symbolic meaning, perhaps a harbinger of the mounting pressure Toriko is putting on Sorawo for a romantic relationship. This sort of parallels some of Toriko's behavior in the tent that evening - getting pouty when Sorawo doesn't want to treat it as a camping date, wanting to link their sleeping bags together.

It's little details like this that make UraPi so interesting to me. It's tapping into one of the fascinating things about ghost stories - the wealth of detail that slowly created a series of coincidences that may or may not mean anything. Sorawo notes the following during the T-san saga: "When you dig through true ghost stories, there's no shortage of unbelievable synchronicity. Coincidences that seems to make no sense happen, and then end without ever making any sense. Things that are pure chance if you ignore them, but seem like ominous signs that you can read anything into once you let them bother you..."

Miyazawa is a ghost story nerd, and it's incredible how well he repurposes the framework of ghost stories to tell the story of a romance. Although he has said in interviews that he doesn't plan too far ahead and instead relies on sprinkling plot hooks into the story for himself, ttrpg-style, it really speaks to his mastery of the craft to do what he has with Otherside Picnic.

** The veiled connection to the pheasant also seems relevant to Kasumi's word salad in File 25. Although her first bit is translated as "Jack the Pisser", the original text is "Jack the Pheasant Hunter", 'pheasant hunting' being a Japanese euphemism for taking a leak.

#Otherside Picnic #iori miyazawa #textual analysis #otherside picnic vol 8 #otherside picnic spoilers

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sunriseverse · 7 months

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For your show ask/list....uh...5, 15, 23?

5: kinnporsche

god, kinnporsche.........i'll be upfront, i have yet to finish it just because each episode requires both a large time and mental attention commitment, but. it's absolutely gorgeous in terms of cinematography, especially on the budget they were on, and the acting and writing are both very solid. i think it's a really good example of how a common trope (bodyguard mafia romance) can be elevated above the rest of the media it shares its roots with through attention to and love of the craft on the part of everyone involved. there's a reason kinnporsche is, like, the only thai bl, or really bl period, that i can think of that has a fanbase that's still going strong not only for the actors, but for the show, the story. there are bits about it that aren't my favourite thing ever, but i can understand how and why they fit into the plot and the genre that the show is in. also, i've heard some utterly batshit things regarding how it even came to exist (apparently the novel it was based on had a lead based on (the persona of) the actor who plays him in the show???) which is always fun.

15: zhiming youxi/the spirealm

my darling my beloved my sweet sweet love. currently at episode, uhhhhh, 48/78? i really love that each episode is so short, relatively speaking, because it means i can sit down and watch three episodes and not feel too bad about ignoring other things because i've only spent an hour (or.......a bit more, if i'm screencapping for yelling purposes) watching them. i love the acting so much—everyone feels like they're giving their roles their all, and it shows, and i love that. and the chemistry between nanqiu! chemistry is, in my opinion, absolutely key to romantic shows, and even more in censored romantic shows, where they can't supplement the subtext with, well, text. and, god, the cinematography and costuming...........i want to talk to whoever costumed the show and shake their hand profusely—each character has an aesthetic and even if it shifts over the course of the show, it still fits them. and so many characters have memorable ensembles! zhuang rujiao especially, i just adore her costuming to bits. my main complaint about this show is that i wish that the way we wound up with it hadn't cut out the intro credits, because i'm sure they were fabulous.

23: spring fever (2009)

an explicitly gay chinese film? well, yes, actually! (because it's also technically a french film.) the thing about spring fever is that it's..................hard to describe? it's very artistic and atmospheric, but not a lot happens, which i can definitely see as being a drawback for people. i've seen multiple people talk about how confusing it was for them, to which i just shrug and say "kid, sometimes you're not meant to understand art, you're just meant to experience it". i personally think that the way the film is shot is very intentional and well-thought-out, but, uh, i also think that part of that "well-thought-out"ness was to make something that evoked emotion, not necessarily rationality. cons of this film are that it's basically damn near impossible to get your hands on—probably because of the whole mess with it being made while the director was still under censure for a previous work he'd made that pissed off the SARFT (state administration of radio, film, and television), and when i watched it, my reaction was basically "wow. you know, not art i would personally make, but i'm glad someone wanted to make it and now it exists because there's someone out there it'll mean a lot to". also this film features explicit onscreen drag! which i thought was cool.

#ask #ask meme #thanks for the ask! i hope these responses are coherent :)#c.txt

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radioromantic-moved · 2 years

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NYX'S LIBRARY OF GAY SHIT

every (completed) self ship fic i've ever written babey!!! there will be a link to this on my carrd in a little bit. don't worry it's not the full text of every single thing under the keep reading it's just links. i promise

EYE OF THE STORM (DELLA X NYX)

untitled reunion (i'll level with you guys this one is old and probably embarrassing. but in the interest of posterity it's here)

SOMEONE WILL REMEMBER US IN THE FUTURE (THETIS X XENO! THEY HAVE A NAME NOW!)

the sea and those who love it (i haaaate this dialogue i cannot write anything old-fashionedy without sounding like a cringy roleplayer!! also this is technically not complete it was supposed to be like a multichapter thing but it works like this so. it's fine)

YOUR ANNUAL ENTREPRENEUR (FRANK X NYX)

"ray of sunshine" (unfortunately i think maybe i think all of my old shit is a little cringe. this is fine i hope it's fine. aged only a little poorly.)

DOOR TO NOWHERE (HELEN X NYX)

ode to a modern meneleus (this one still fucks. written when i was real sad about her canon death.)

nothing worth loving isn't askew (the longest completed self ship fic i have Ever Written! light body horror in chapter 5, general creepy shit throughout but filtered through the perspective of a protagonist who deals with scary shit through humor. this thing is a Beast it's over 50 pages and i've never shown it in its entirety to anyone before. this feels a little like sending your firstborn child off to school.)

not a fic but! her ship playlist :)

FOLIE‏‏‎ ‎A‏‏‎ ‎DEUX (CYTREX. JESUS CHRIST.)

tw for alcoholism or at least the suggestion of it for everything here

an awful realization fic (how this wretched bullshit all got started)

another awful realization fic (the sequel...briefly suggestive but not on purpose and it's incredibly awkward and terrible for all involved)

whatever this is. (okay i was struggling with intrusive thoughts and having a really bad evening and i needed to comfort myself somehow and listen. listen. listen. did it make me feel better? yes. i don't have a defense on this one. your honor there are worse coping mechanisms...)

drabblecember 3 (not very explicitly romantic but perhaps that is a good thing.)

barstool operatic (has never seen the light of day before! this is a little like sending your secondborn child off to school but they still haven't learned it's not okay to bite people and you're worried you will have to attend a parent teacher meeting. conflicts a little with the canon of the first fic on the list though it doesn't necessarily conflict with the second. genuinely one of the best fanfics i've ever written i just wish it wasn't. well. for this.)

they have a playlist too

COBRA LILY (BERNTIGONE. SO WE DON'T HAVE TO END ON THAT)

drabblecember 1 (sadly the only completed fic i have of them as of right now but i like it the best out of the 3 drabblecembers so it's okay)

one more playlist for the road!

MOTH TO A FLAME (MOSS X NYX ALMOST FORGOT)

drabblecember 2 (still don't Love this one but i may have been too hard on it before. i still want to develop my‏‏‎ ‎monprom‏‏‎ ‎s/i‏‏‎ ‎more they're too generic right now)

#said i would do this a while ago and now that drabblecember is over.#they are all here...mostly. left out a few either because they were incomplete or just didn't make any sense out of specific context.#you can rb this if you want but you don't have to <3 #additionally you don't have to read all the fics if you don't want to #they're just here. in case.#unfortunately i think the best ones writing quality wise are the‏‏‎ ‎cytrex‏‏‎ ‎ones...SORRY...‏‏‎ ‎#and the helen one but i can't imagine anyone is actually going to read all 50+ pages of that.#nyx makes something #self ship #self shipping #not putting all their tags on this right now<3

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panoptical · 2 years

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RE: My last reblog, Daisy and Basira are not in a (canon) relationship. They are not "poor lesbian representation" because they're not explicitly lesbians. Here is Jonny's response to this interpretation, from the Season 4 Q+A:

Whoa. OK. This is going to be quite a long answer… So, I’d ask that people bear with me. There is never going to be an explicit textual clarification of that. Uh, for a very specific reason. [...] With Daisy and Basira what that has always been is the idea of partners within a, in this case, the police, but within a context of an us-and-them mentality. The idea of having your back against a world that is believed rightly or wrongly to be hostile to you. The sort of compromises that get made, uh, and the- the sort of excuses that you create for yourself to allow certain very harmful, uh, occasionally evil behaviors, because you have this mentality that it’s us against the monsters that we have.

Now, adding an explicitly romantic aspect to that relationship? Would to, my mind, massively complicate and potentially… Subvert it. Making a sacrifice to excuse the… violent and, uh, harmful acts that someone has done because you are in love with them? Is a very different thing to making compromises to excuse the violence and harmful acts someone’s done because you have their back within the police or a context of, uh, us-versus-them.

That’s not to say explicitly they are not. I am, a hundred percent, not saying they are not romantically involved. And I’m- I’m not going to go into my own headcanon is. Uh, because that would have undue influence. [...] But, I will say that textually that’s not a relationship that’s ever going to be… codified one way or the other."

TL;DR - Daisy and Basira being in a relationship is not canonical to the text of the show because it detracts from the purpose of their characters, but Jonny isn't against it as a fan interpretation. He just knows it would diminish the point being made to make that canonical.

This isn't to bash anyone who likes the ship, but to say calling Daisy and Basira bad representation is disingenuous. They are not representation at all because that's not the point of the dynamic. The Daisy/Basira dynamic is about the enabling of violence in the police force and the us vs them mentality that lets police excuse brutality. There's obviously more to this issue that the show doesn't touch on as well as it could, but the dynamic itself is not the issue.

(obligatory do not harass people for their headcanons disclaimer in case this post gets popular)

#I guess this will go in the tag.#tma #excerpts from the archive #police brutality mention #(Just in case)#Not tagging as the ship because that would be rude.#There are issues with the writing of the show as there are with every show. But this is not one of them.

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akajustmerry · 2 years

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Wait ur tags are so intriguing like I can like instinctually tell if it’s qb or misogyny or actual gay subtext but do u have a more concrete explanation for the difference?

okay so there's a lot of misunderstanding around these terms. here's a brief explanation:

queerbaiting: when a piece of media is explicitly marketed as being lgbt, but actually isn't. for example, much of the marketing for killing Eve s2 was billboards with jodie/sandra kissing and dancing and being sexy despite s2 of the show not delivering any of them being actually gay in the way the advertising suggested. Queerbaiting is about false marketing to make money off queer audiences.

Queer subtext: this is what a lot of ppl think queerbaiting is but it isn't. Queer subtext is where the media itself is not explicitly queer, but has a lot of implicit themes that underpin the story. Subtext is what you're shown without really being told directly. Subtext is not headcanon though it has to be imbued intentionally by the author. For example, the subtext in Good Omens is that Crowley and Aziraphale are in love. This is never explicitly stated by anyone, but it is the subtext Neil Gaiman puts in the show with how they talk, act and how others talk about them too. Another great recent example is the queer subtext Rebecca Hall put into Passing (2021) that she's spoken of in multiple interviews. Again, it's not explicit but is intentionally an implicit part of the story. Subtext is rarely accidental.

Homosocial Misogyny/homophobia: as far as I know I made this term up (I probs didn't but whatever). I use it to refer to stories where the meaningful interactions are between people of the same gender (primarily men, but there are examples with women too), but this is not because these people are gay, it's cos they don't respect or care about women in an explicit/implicit misogynistic way. BUT ppl CHOOSE to interpret that as queer headcanon. Primary examples of this are ships like s*ucky, tom/gr*g, house and w*lson, basically most ships involving 2 canonically straight white dudes. Often in these ships, the idea of them being a couple is explicitly mocked by the text in a homophobic way. ie. it's made clear that the idea of these characters sharing a genuine romantic connection is one ppl should not take seriously.

Sometimes these things can all exist in the same piece of media. However they're not really interchangeable concepts. The way queerbaiting has been bastardised into meaning "queer headcanon I decided was subtext that was then not made explicit" is my villain origin story. That term was created to refer very specifically to how queer consumers are exploited for profit by mocking our desire to see ourselves represented. It's not the term you use because your 2 straight white characters didn't become canon lovers. Anyways, I hope that helps ❤️

#media representation #anon #/

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autisticcassandracain · 2 years

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So, Wonder Woman is basically Moon Knight. And of course the gods are even worse than myth ever since COIE because George Perez wanted to play the unreliable narrator trope with classical mythology. (Think Queen Hippolyta and Heracles.)

I've never read Moon Knight and know nothing about him so I don't get what you mean hy that, and I can't figure out what COIE stands for either, nor do I know what you mean when you say Perez 'wanted to play the unreliable narrator trope' (which is not a trope but a literary device, I'm sorry but I can't resist being pedantic).

That said the greek gods in the comics are in no way worse than in the myths. Like at all. It is pretty much impossible to present the gods in a fashion worse than they were in Greek Mythology. Nearly all male gods are rapists. Nearly all gods in general are vain, prone to anger, and do not tolerate anything less than uncompromising worship. Almost all gods have atrocities on their hands, though the extent of them tends to vary from myth to myth and source to source.

Something to note is that there is not really a set 'canon' to greek mythology. We have our primary sources, but they often contradict each other. A lot of our primary sources are also, in and of themselves, interpretations of stories that would've been well-known to the audience, but are unknown to us. What the gods did or didn't do is heavily dependent on the source you're reading. Euripides, in particular, is famous for casting the gods in a bad light and focusing on their flaws. He's the one who wrote The Madness of Heracles (about Hera driving Heracles to madness in which he kills his wife and kid), Hippolytus (in which Aphrodite orchestrates the murder of a man for worshipping Artemis and disdaining her; the murder involves making his stepmother fall in love with him and then having her commit suicide), etc etc. Reframing myths to put more blame on the gods (or highlight that which was already there) is hardly a Perez original. The exact role the gods did or did not play in certain tragedies in greek mythology is often in flux.

The issue with Hippolyta and Heracles' relationship is not with any mythological aspect; it's because Perez himself decided that raping someone does not mean you can't still have a romantic subplot with them.

In greek mythology, rape was almost universally glossed over and not seen as a big deal. Most if not all Greek heroes, and a lot of the gods, are rapists, and this is rarely presented as even so much as a character flaw. I am no classicist, I am not super familiar with ancient Greece's attitude towards rape at the time most myths were codified, but Ancient Athens in particular had really shitty views on women, and since Athens was the cultural center of ancient greece, this is where a lot of our primary sources come from (in particular the plays), which absolutely influences the way women were portrayed in the texts. It is not that the texts are untirely unaware that rape is bad (just like they're not entirely unaware that it sucks to be a slave), but when they choose to engage with it is highly selective. So, basically, rape was commonplace, and usually, the act of rape was not that big a deal.

This is not the case in Perez's writing. In Perez's work on Wonder Woman, rape is explicitly framed as a violent, evil act. He is clearly writing from a modern perspective, where rape is near universally condemned. But he then proceeds to handwave it anyway and write a romantic subplot between a rapist and his victim, multiple times. This is not a historical sourcetext from a long dead civilization that had wildly different values than our own; this is a modern text that should've known better. It is also not adequately explained by godly intervention (while Heracles' rage and behaviour was influenced by the gods, he wasn't outright possesed), and even if it was, this would still he a highly questionable thing to put in your writing. And even outside of Wonder Woman, Perez co-wrote the Judas Contract, which displayed a similar issue with rape apologism. His handling of mythology is not the issue here.

Once again, super not a classicist; I've never had an opportunity to study greek mythology, and my reading is limited to the Iliad, the Oresteia, the Bacchae, and assorted plays by Euripides (the guy mentioned above), as well as whatever stray academic papers I've managed to get my hands on. Notably, my knowledge of Heracles is emberassingly small. My historical knowledge is also really not impressive. I might very well be talking out of my ass here (and I'm certainly and intentionally missing nuance and detail bc I'm not getting into All That).

But to my view, while Perez's hellenic gods were hardly the most mythologically accurate, he did not make them substantiably worse than they were in myth (in fact, a lot of his gods - like Aphrodite - were portrayed as substantiably more moral). And claiming that gods in comics are portrayed as morally worse BECAUSE of perez is honestly ridiculous. The idea that someone with even a base knowledge of greek mythology wouldn't have decided to explore the fucked up aspects of the greek gods if perez hadn't gone there first is honestly ridiculous.

#My posts #Asks #Rape ///#Sorry if im missing something my brain is not at 100 bc its 27 degrees celcius inside #Which is the hottest its ever been in my house im pretty sure #I also forgot the name of the exact period of ancient greek greece im talking about to f

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synnthamonsugar · 2 years

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I’m sorry if this sounds rude but why should eris’s message have been to so someone other than drifter? Did ikora go camping with eris in the disciple’s bog? Did mara wield stasis with elsie on europa? I’m not trying to sound like a dreris shipper by any means but drifter is the one to talk to about this situation. He helped her make the nightmare harvester and is the one she would follow up with about its application. I agree with the rest of the take but I really don’t get this part at all

If she thanked him for his help studying the darkness/egregore & friendship I wouldn't have an issue with it. That would have made perfect sense within the narrative and been a nice piece of development for their friendship dynamic.

The implication that Drifter was a catalyst for a major positive change in her outlook on life is the part that frustrates me, given we have seven years of lore involving Ikora (mainly) and Mara helping Eris along on her path of recovery. "For so long I believed peace was beyond my reach. No more. I have found it in guiding others down the same path that saved me" would have been a stellar emotional payoff to Ikora's years-long mission to help Eris regain some sense of peace and happiness in her life. It would have made more sense for Mara to be the one Eris invited to the Pyramid with her, given their system-spanning journeys to track down and study them.

So why didn't it?

It's a rhetorical question, but I would offer that art doesn't occur in a vacuum, and while I definitely don't think, or want to suggest, sexism is at play, there's a compulsion in every level of media (executives to fans) toward prioritizing relationships between men & women over women & women. It's another reminder that even generally progressive fandom spaces will never be easy ground for people who want to explore women's relationships, and we'll always have to fight heavy headwinds.

There's also something ... not great? about the idea of a man providing emotional closure to a woman struggling with trauma & mental illness when hitched to a fan interpretation of romantic subtext. None of the interpretations are good: that what a woman needs is a guy to get her back on track, that men and women can't have emotionally gratifying friendships, and that friendship alone can't be a catalyst for positive change. This one is especially tricky because men and women's interactions will overwhelmingly be read as romantic even when explicitly platonic in the text, while anything short of an onscreen kiss will leave viewers debating whether two close women are in love or just good friends. I want more men's and women's friendships, but can't have them because they're always read as romances, which makes me wary of women's and men's friendships in media . . . ad infinitum.

For my part, I like Eris' and Drifter's friendship, but want to see it explored in a way that doesn't make it The Definitive Eris Friendship And Raison D'être which it's kind of been for the last two years. (Identical statement, in reverse, for Drifter.) I want to see Ikora and Eris get more than scraps of meaningful lore. I would like to see Mara and Eris get screentime together. If I could wave a magic wand there would be balance, equal exploration of all of these relationships but . . . it doesn't happen for whatever reason.

Maybe this is a long standing Bungie writing issue, because I'm certain if I was in the fandom back in the TTK days I'd be penning an essay about "so random xD" blue robot eating up most of the expansion dialog and playing Eris' foil. But I can't help but think the quality of women's interactions have kind of gone downhill since like ... Shadowkeep. It's demoralizing.

#asks #destiny critical #ig #ask to tag etc.

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littleeyesofpallas · 3 years

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I saw @crysuzumushi asking about the TBtP flashback's squad 9 jackets, and the kanji on them, and I gave a brief answer (although @bleachbleachbleach beat me to the punch *shakes vindictive fist*) but I figured I'd post a little more at length about this here, because it's a cool detail... Although I think I've covered most of this in some old Bleach post from a while back...

六車九番隊

Muguruma[六車] is obviously just Kensei's surname, but it's made up of the kanji for Mu[六]:"Six" and Kuruma[車]:"Car" which is technically an old pre-automobile ideogram of a wagon, but was adapted to be the word for "car"/"automobile" upon their invention and introduction into China and Japan.

[九] is just the number "Nine" and then [番] denotes a number in a series,

and [隊] is of course the same kanji used in Gotei 13[護廷十三隊]: "Safeguard, Imperial Court, 13, Squad(s)"

So it just reads "Muguruma(6 Car) No.9 Squad." It's also the decidedly less sexy explanation for his "69" tattoo.

But what's actually more important than the words themselves is the style evoked here. This is pretty clearly, for those who would recognize it, a Bousozoku[暴走族] aesthetic.

The term is made up of [暴]:"Violent"/"Wild"/"Crude" and as a consequence can also directly refer to "delinquency," [走]: "running"/"racing," and [族]: an archaic word for "tribe" and consequently a colloquial term for a "gang." I often see this translated into English as "Run Wild Tribe" or "Violent Running Tribe" which are both technically accurate, but I feel they miss some of the nuance.

The specific tie between bousouzoku and the 1980s comes from the Japanese car boom. As Japan rocketed onto the world stage as an automotive manufacturer, cheap car and motorcycle parts became available right along with a growing call for automotive industry labor, as well as increasingly poor work conditions and fast rotation of layoffs. This meant a lot of factory towns became hotbeds for these kinds of biker gangs.

And I should note, they're often called "biker" gangs, but technically they often included cars as well. The only point was that they were loud and disruptive, often elaborately decorating their cars and bikes to be as garish and noise making as possible. This also includes removing mufflers as a pretty standard practice, and if you've ever heard an unmuffled exhaust pipe running then imagine a dozen or more of those coming down your street in the middle of the evening.

You used to see a lot more of this in anime during that time, and subsequently lingering into the 90s, but they started to fade from pop culture in the 00s. Similar to the classic banchou, yankii, and tsupari character types, they actually persisted in anime for quite a while after they'd more or less vanished from the real world. But in a lot of ways those romantic popculture images also served to influence the real world in return.

Keeping in mind that, because of the monolithic role of the yakuza in Japan's organized crime scene, bousouzoku have always been very distinctly a youth culture phenomena; effectively any biker who implicitly ages out of the biker scene either has to develop a normal life with a real job, or throws in with more serious organized crime.

Anyway, the jackets in particular evoke a distinctive style of old 80s Japanese biker gangs that tended to involve a jumpsuit (repurposed from factory labor) combat boots, and often the long tail jackets with text embroidered. The long white coat somehow became kind of the classic look, but there wasn't any specific meaning to it; plenty were black, or blue, or even bright colors like orange, red, or purple.

Anyway... the point I'm getting at with all this random context is that when Kubo made the very deliberate choice to put those jackets on the 9th Squad's seated officers in the flashback it was to indicate pretty explicitly that Muguruma runs his squad like a biker gang. (This bousouzoku motif is in turn why his hollow form looks so mechanical, with slats like vents or a set of tail lights for face, and big pipes or pistons sticking out of his back and arms)

#bleach #kensei muguruma #muguruma kensei

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oatchi · 2 years

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callie. tell me about the tfa college fling (sentinel/optimus/elita)

(COMICALLY LOUD EXPLOSION SOUND AS I BREAK THROUGH THE WALL KOOL-AID MAN STYLE) HI DAISY. HOPE YOURE READY FOR THE ESSAY LOL

My rating of the ship, 1-10, 10 being OTP and 1 being NOTP. 8 it is NOT perfect obviously seeing as things went sour towards the end but I think it really had potential to be a very very good couple.

Whether or not I ship it: I think it should be obvious that I do. With the way I act.

Why do/don’t I ship it: Well you see (10 miles of text) They have such good chemistry from what we have seen of them together. They were such a good group of friends, with an overall light amount of teasing on all sides. In future episodes, Blackarachnia is very clearly shown to have some very heavy feelings towards Optimus, and yet also calls Sentinel "loverbot." It is a strangely implied love triangle, which I, as a person who's been in quite a few polyamorous relationships, LOVE to completely break by saying they were all dating. Plus, you ever notice how touchy feely Sentinel is with Optimus? They way they act like bitter exes sometimes? Yeah. There's no way they weren't a disaster, force to be reckoned with, always getting into something polycule.

What made me start shipping it: (or if I don’t what could’ve gotten me to ship it.) I literally felt it the first time I watched Along Came A Spider. The MOMENT I saw those flashbacks, I was just... Under that belief. Like, yeah. That's a polycule. That is Optimus and his girlfriend Elita-1 and his boyfriend Sentinel. The rest of the series only went on to reinforce it to me.

How I would want them to ideally get together: Getting together... Hm. I haven't thought about it too much. I feel like what makes the most sense, to me, is that they all met at the same time and it naturally progressed. Though, I can definitely imagine Elita being the one who brings it up. The other two would never say something like that outright. Optimus, during academy, being too shy and passive for it. Sentinel being too prideful for it. Elita, on the other hand, seems like the type to blunt about it. Something like, "Everyone already seems to think I'm dating one of you two, or maybe secretly you two were dating." And when met with the naturally uncomfortable "Yeah, haha, uh... They sure do." She responds with a "Well, maybe it would be easiest if we all actually were. Dating each other, that is." I don't think the boys recover for a while from this. But when they do settle into it, they realize it's not all that different from just being a friend group, and they're happy in it.

What I like about it: I just really love to see all three of the characters happy tbh... ;_; Optimus, Sentinel and Elita deserve the world, and not a single one of them deserved to deal with the shit they went through. To imagine a simpler point where they were all happy and didn't have all that trauma is just... It's simply very nice. But on the topic of their shared pain, it's also an integral part to all their characters that I LOVE to talk about.

What I don’t like about it: I don't have many gripes with it frankly. The ship itself, that is. I suppose on a superficial level, I do dislike that it was, in actuality, the strangest, vaguest love triangle ever. But that's not really about the ship itself? I'm sorry, I'm biased. I like it a lot.

What I like about the fandom/fancontent for it: There is some of the most bittersweet and saddest art in the TFA fandom for it. Just really, genuinely gorgeous pieces for it. Though often not explicitly romantic, anything involving the three of them is always a little heart-string pulling. I also believe people that take the time to make content for the three of them understand them better than most, which is sooo nice to see.

My pet-peeves when it comes to the fandom/fancontent for it: People cutting Sentinel out to focus on Optimus and Elita. Sorry I know it's a bias, but you can't just pretend they weren't at least friends just because you don't like him. They had a falling out. They had to have something to fall out OF in order to have a falling out. Also, anything that makes one of them like, grossly soft and submissive. I've got my eyes on you, Optimus woobifiers. Don't do that shit.

The song that reminds me most of it: Oh dios mio (running to my playlists) Okay, in all honesty, this is probably going to show my bias the most, but I do have some rather... Insane picks for a specific Sentinel playlist that has a focus on his relationship with Optimus. So while it doesn't fully cover it, I think these ones talk the most about Elita, at least in retrospect. Alone Again (Naturally) - Gilbert O'Sullivan The Winner Takes It All - ABBA I'm... Not gonna try to explain. You get it or you don't. Again sorry it is Sentinel perspective I only have a playlist for him </3

When it comes down to the most popular arguments against it, how legitimate do I feel they are?: I'm sorry they feel very biased and I know I'M very biased but just because you don't like Sentinel (which is almost always the driving force) doesn't mean you can just say there was NO chemistry for them. It's clearly shown that Sentinel was while a bit stupid and overconfident, he wasn't explicitly mean or rude until he literally watched Elita die. And to the slightly rarer argument that Elita is a girl that gets in the way of a gay ship. I..? They both so clearly had feelings for her, and her for them. I don't get it even a little.

And lastly any unpopular opinions you haven’t already mentioned? I think personally in a future standpoint, Optimus and Sentinel reconciling is much more feasible and healthy than Optimus and Blackarachnia. While they definitely miss each other, even IF Blackarachnia became fully technological again, what then..? She has crossed some serious boundaries, ones that aren't easily forgivable. Optimus maybe, but to the rest of Cybertron...? "Elita" is far gone, and other than the technorganic thing, she seems fairly happy with where she stands, performing unethical scientific experiments on living specimens and such. And honestly, good for her! Girlboss it up! But I don't think it's feasible for them to reconcile in a way that doesn't either completely downplay one or the others character traits or history. And obviously, Blackarachnia and Sentinel is out the window. Thanks for the indulgence :-)

#callisto.wav #miniconsuffrage #tfa

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