#this is my ideal depiction of romance in media

[can-a-tuna-fish]

He is not listening. (Bonus)

[graysoncritic]

A (Negative) Review of Tom Taylor's Nightwing Run - What Went Wrong? Barbara Gordon

Introduction Who is Dick Grayson? What Went Wrong? Dick's Characterization What Went Wrong? Barbara Gordon What Went Wrong? Bludhaven (Part 1, Part 2) What Went Wrong? Melinda Lin Grayson What Went Wrong? Bea Bennett What Went Wrong? Villains Conclusion Bibliography

Out of this entire essay, this was the section that I considered cutting entirely. After all, in the past there have been instances when Barbara Gordon and her romance with Dick Grayson have been weaponized by Taylor and his fans against his critics. 

The example that comes to mind was when Taylor and Redondo were criticized for not including Duke in a Nightwing cover that parodied The Brady Bunch.

(Taylor, Tom, writer. Redondo, Bruno, illustrator. Battle for Bludhaven’s Heart Finale. Nightwing: Rebirth. 96, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2022)

Personally, I believe that, while discussions of how Duke’s positioning in the Bat Family is warranted, the matter was blown out of proportion, and many of the attempts to cancel Taylor crossed the line into harassment (make no mistake, while I believe him to be a terrible writer, I do not wish him any ill-will). That being said, Taylor also escalated the matters when attempting to pin said negative comments onto DickKory shippers who did not like that he wrote DickBabs.

(While the original Tweet has since been deleted, the screenshot used is available in this tweet 

Neb | 🏳️‍🌈 [@NebsGoodTakes]. Twitter, 20 June 2022, https://twitter.com/NebsGoodTakes/status/1538939571789934593)

For this reason and this reason alone, I considered removing this part of the essay. While I have no idea if anyone will read this monstrosity, I did not want my arguments to be invalidated simply because I did not have a favorable opinion on the DickBabs.

However, after much consideration and numerous discussions with other Dick Grayson fans, I found that the subject of Barbara Gordon’s portrayal in this run (as well as in many recent DC media), and her romance with Dick perfectly embodies many of ideas I wish to explore in this essay — mainly, how shallow approaches to progress ideals create deeply problematic narratives that not only undermines the themes of a story, but they also destroy characterization.

I will start by once again stating that I do not believe this is a problem unique to Taylor’s writing. As I alluded to above, I believe DC’s modern portrayal of Babs does a great disservice to her wonderful, empowering, complex character. This is but the analysis of one of the stories she appears in. It is my hope to prove that in Taylor’s Nightwing, Barbara Gordon is not written as a woman with a strong sense of self and an internal life, but rather idealized girl whose existence revolves around the men in her life, and whose perfect yet shimmering depiction serves only to make her into the reader’s proxy-girlriend.   

Barbara Gordon in the late 90s and early 2000s was a mature and confident woman in her late-20s to early-30s. She had her own job, her own friends, team, villains, and the type of confidence that can only come with age and experience. She was serious while still having a sense of humor, pragmatic, and she knew exactly what she wanted for herself. 

(Gail, Simone, writer. Bennett, Joe; Barrows, Eddy, illustrator. Perfect Pitch: Part One. Birds of Prey. 87, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2005. pp. 22)

She was also flawed. She could get angry at people for little reason, she could be too cold or too straightforward without considering the other person’s feelings, she could be purposefully petty and selfish, she could get unreasonably jealous, she was impatient, she could be too proud to admit when she was wrong. It was all of these factors which allowed Barbara Gordon to be her own person — to be a fleshed out, well-rounded woman. 

(Dixon, Chuck, writer. Leonardi, Rick, illustrator. The Gun. Birds of Prey. 39, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2002. pp. 16)

Babs’ life did not revolve around Dick. Yes, she loved him, but she still had some interiority. She had a life outside of Dick Grayson, outside of Bludhaven, outside of Batman, and outside of Oracle. She had her own goals, her own dreams, her own likes and dislikes that worked independently of the men around her. She had her own history that informed her decisions, she had both positive and negative relationships with other women and those relationships were not dependent on her connections with Dick or Bruce. 

(Gail, Simone, writer. Timm, Bruce; Lopez, David; Melo, Adriana, illustrators. A Wakeful Time. Birds of Prey. 86, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2005. pp. 02)

By comparison, Taylor’s Barbara is not a woman, but a girl. She is very young and very immature. If Dick is written like a young man who just left home and is experiencing adulthood for the first time, then Babs is written as his girlfriend who is still in college and does not have concrete plans for her future. 

Note that when referring to Taylor’s Babs, I mainly characterize her through her relationship with Dick. That was intentional. While writing this essay, I struggled to think of Barbara having any meaningful interactions with characters who were not Dick or Dick’s friends, the Titans. I also struggled to think of her doing something for herself rather than for Dick and the Titans. I struggled to define her goals independent of Dick, I struggled to describe the plans she has for her future that do not revolve around her relationship with Dick, and I struggled to give an account of what she does in her spare time when she is not helping Dick, Nightwing, the Titans, or Batman. That is because everything in Barbara Gordon’s life, as written by Taylor, is constructed around Dick (As many may know, it is really hard to prove a negative. How can I get supporting evidence from the comics that Babs does not have a life outside of Dick Grayson when my argument comes from those factors not existing? For this, though I hate to do so, I’m afraid I’ll have to rely on the reader’s familiarity with the run being discussed).

Barbara is a constant presence in Taylor’s Nightwing run. She is a secondary protagonist, and she is often portraying helping Dick Grayson behind the scenes,

(Taylor, Tom, illustrator. Redondo, Bruno The Battle for Bludhaven’s Heart Part Two. Nightwing: Rebirth. 93, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2022 pp)

Helping Nightwing as Oracle,

(Taylor, Tom, writer. Redondo, Bruno, illustrator Leaping into the Light Part 4. Nightwing: Rebirth. 81, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2021. pp 19)

Or fighting by Nightwing’s side as Batgirl.

(Taylor, Tom, writer. Redondo, Bruno, illustrator. You are Nightwing. Nightwing: Rebirth. 105, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2023. pp. 05)

She is always present, she is always doing something… But all of that is in the service of the men around her rather than for herself.

As Dick Grayson Fan A pointed out during a discussion, “Modern Babsgirl is forced to be perfect at everything. She's never allowed postcrisis Babs' edges, her flaws and intrinsic motivations. Taylor's Babsgirl is designed to be the perfect girlfriend for his blank self insert Nightwing. There's no meat to her bones, she's just shimmer and gloss.” (The subject of Babs came up when DC announced the lineup for Birds of Prey (2023) and Babs was not included on the roster.)

In other words, Babs as portrayed in Taylor’s run lacks any bite, edge, and maturity that would make her feel like a woman with her own sense of self and with a life that is not dependent on her boyfriend. Babs’ portrayal is a shallow girlboss-type of feminism, where though Babs is powerful and intelligent, she is not allowed to be a real person for she serves no purpose other than to be the perfect, understanding, badass girlfriend.

As a result, Dick and Barbara’s relationship becomes hollow. Because Babs lacks interiority, individuality, and agency, she becomes a flat character. This, in turn, makes it so it is hard to understand why Dick and Barbara are together other than for the fact that DC mandates it. The over reliance on the childhood friends-to-lovers trope only increases this hollowness rather than fleshing out their relationship. While Taylor includes flashbacks of Dick and Babs as friends when children, growing up together as teenagers, and fighting together as Robin and Batgirl, those instances feel removed from their individual histories. These moments exist in isolation, removed from the context of the rest of their lives, be it together or separately.

(Taylor, Tom, writer. Redondo, Bruno, illustrator The Battle for Bludhaven’s Heart. Nightwing: Rebirth. 92, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2022. pp 06 - 07)

DC currently treats Dick and Babs as a foregone conclusion. As a result, Taylor does not make an effort to get his readers on board with the relationship because he assumes that they should already support it. Dick and Babs are portrayed as getting along great, never having had any conflict, tension, or disagreements. This idealized romance would not necessarily be a problem if it didn’t come at the expense of developing Dick and Barbara as individuals outside of their relationship. They are not one being, but two separate people coming together. They should be written as such, but in trying to create the perfect relationship, Taylor robs Dick and Babs of their identity outside of their romance. 

Not only does this inseparability that Taylor attempts to portray as “charming” destroy Dick and Babs’ individuality, it can also be downright insulting. In #106 Taylor infantilizes Dick when making it so Babs needs to be the one to wake him up so he can start his work as Nightwing. 

As I mentioned previously, Dick is known for his toxic perfectionism, his obsessive tendencies that often come at the cost of his health. Making Dick laze around in bed while people need his help and having his girlfriend tell him to get ready for the day, as if she was his mother and he was a teenager who did not want to go to school in the morning, is not only out of character, it also diminishes Dick’s competence. It makes it seem like he cannot function as a responsible adult without Babs being there to hold his hand through everyday difficulties. 

Not only that, the scene also plays into incredibly sexist dynamics where women are expected to carry the domestic labor in a relationship — the man cannot keep track of his own schedule, and so it becomes the woman’s responsibility to attend to his needs. What was intended to be a “cute” scene portrays Dick as being immature and irresponsible, and portrays Babs spend her time keeping track of an adult man’s responsibilities.

(Taylor, Tom, writer. Byrne, Stephen, illustrator. The Crew of the Crossed Part One. Nightwing: Rebirth. 106, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2023. pp 08)

This unhealthy codependency further insults Dick when, in #107, Babs demands Dick come back home as he is about to help his ex, Bea. Rather than believing Dick’s capability as a vigilante who has been operating in the field for far longer than she has, Babs shows her complete lack of faith in Dick’s ability to get anything done by himself by telling him that she “wants him home now.” 

(Taylor, Tom; Byrne, Stephen The Crew of the Crossed Part Two. Nightwing: Rebirth. 107  e-book ed. DC Comics, 2023. pp. 19)

This is a great contrast to Nightwing (1996) #66, where Babs encouraged Dick’s independence and had full trust in his abilities to take on such difficult challenges on his own. When Lockhaven goes up in flames, Babs trusts Dick to be able to handle the situation by himself, even though she also knows that Dick’s mind is greatly preoccupied with Bruce and the murder of Vesper Fairchild. Indeed, in the next issue (not part of Murderer/Fugitive, but happening simultaneously to it), Dick does handle the Lockhaven fire by himself, without requiring any assistance, before returning to Gotham to help with the investigation that should clear Bruce’s name.

(Dixon, Chuck, writer. Burchett, Rick, illustrator. The Unusual Suspects. Nightwing. 66, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2002. pp 18 - 19)

This healthy separation and this unconditional trust not only portrayed Dick and Babs as both trusting each other’s abilities as heroes — Dick did not worry about Babs’ capability of taking care of herself, and Babs knew Dick could handle his own — it also portrayed them as being more secure in their relationship. They were individuals first. They had their own independent lives and personalities outside of their romance. They trusted the other’s ability to win on their own and handle their own cases without help. And that, in turn, made it so that they could stand on their own, and so that their relationship did not feel so vulnerable.

That being said, it wasn’t as if previous depictions of Dick and Babs didn’t present them with hardships, or demonstrated how, at times, they could bring out the worst in each other. As much as they could compliment one another, Dick and Babs could also disagree, get into arguments, and even fights. That is because they were individuals first, with their own opinions, preferred way of doing things, and their own background that would sometimes come in conflict.

Taylor avoids having meaningful conflicts in his story. While this negatively affects his narrative in a myriad of ways, the lack of the conflict in the plot also affects the relationship between Dick and Babs. It is fine to have a wholesome, sweet romance, so long as it is balanced with a plot containing other forms of tension. This way, the relationship can be a safe harbor for the main characters, the one space in their lives where they can be safe, and the one source of strength they can draw upon when facing the challenges ahead. By balancing a conflict-filled plot with a wholesome romance, the stakes of the plot feel higher while the romance feels sweeter. They foil one another to create a cohesive and unified story.

In Taylor’s Nightwing, all major plot beats take a backseat to the sitcom-like relationship between Dick and Babs. The lack of conflict in the plot and the lack of conflict in the romance makes it so everything is stagnant.

I do believe that Taylor thought he was writing a “Will-they-won’t-they” style romance in the beginning of his run. In Nightwing #95, for example, Batwoman implies that the reason Dick and Babs aren’t together is because Dick and Babs are scared of crossing that line. 

(Taylor, Tom, writer. Redondo, Bruno The Battle for Bludhaven’s Heart Part Four. Nightwing: Rebirth. 95, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2022. pp 17)

Wally also played into that idea when, in #91, he pointed out that Dick and Babs were already together and just needed to make it official.

(Taylor, Tom, writer. Redondo, Bruno, illustrator. Get Grayson Act Three. Nightwing: Rebirth. 91, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2022. pp 19)

More than that, I believe Taylor attempted to make a commentary on comics imposing needless conflicts in relationships to keep two characters apart. In Taylor’s view, Dick and Babs were always in love, always meant to be together, and never had a complicated history that prevented them from rekindling their romance when Dick is trying to regain some control over his life after recovering his memories. This shows a lack of understanding as to why Dick and Babs often break up and does a disservice to both their characters.

Now, to explain this, I’ll borrow heavily from a private discussion I had with a Dick Grayson Fan A once distinguishing the difference between external and internal conflicts in a romantic plot. While we were not talking Dick and Barbara then, much of what we said still applies to their relationship.

External conflicts, as the name suggests, involve external forces that keep the couple from being able to develop their relationship despite their mutual feelings for each other. This is the case with a romance like Clark and Lois. Given Babs’ laugh at Dick’s condescendingly sexist claim that Babs shouldn’t be with him because it is too dangerous (as if he doesn’t know very well that Babs can easily take care of herself), it seemed that Taylor believed that this was the conflict that has been keeping Dick and Babs apart. And so, with one panel, he dismissed the idea that external forces could keep Dick and Babs apart because they are able to face their enemies together.

(Taylor, Tom, writer. Redondo, Bruno, illustrator Battle for Bludhaven’s Heart Finale. Nightwing: Rebirth. 96, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2022. pp. 17 - 18)

But in the past, what broke Dick and Babs up were not external conflicts, but internal ones. If external conflicts are created due to external forces, internal conflicts preventing a couple from being together come from the characters not yet being who they need to be in order to be happy together. This can be due to a clash of personalities, worldviews, needs, wants, or goals. To prove my point, I want to look at Dick and Bab’s break up in Nightwing (1996) #87 and the Nightwing Annual #02. (I’ll be honest in saying that it pains me to cite Nightwing Annual #02 in this essay, for I absolutely detest it. I believe Dick is written incredibly out of character and it, quite frankly, captures one of my major problems with how some writers choose to depict DickBabs. In trying to prop Babs up, Dick gets knocked down and ridiculed, and often burdened with the full responsibility as to why Dick and Babs haven’t been able to get together due to timing and Dick’s immaturity. As such, writers make it so Dick and Dick alone must change in order to become a partner worthy of Babs. They greatly mischaracterize him, fault the failures of Dick and Babs’ relationships on those mischaracterizations, and then portray Babs as the patient woman waiting for her immature soulmate to grow up. This is both an insult to Dick’s character and a propagation of sexist tropes where a woman must put her life on hold in order for the man to “catch up” to her maturely. Not only that, it unfairly requires that only one party makes changes for another. It is not Dick and Babs that must change for each other, but Dick who must change for Babs.)

Just as Taylor uses Dick and Babs’ shared history to bring them together, their breakup explores how shared history can make being together so difficult. 

In Devin Grayson’s run, their shared history can be painful to Babs. Not because she doesn’t look back on their time growing up together fondly, but because it was such a happy time in her life that it makes her feel bitter about what she lost. While she is incredible as Oracle, she is still frustrated that she can't be Batgirl anymore. The past, no matter how good, is a reminder of what she can no longer be, and Babs wants to move forward. So Dick bringing up their time as Robin and Batgirl, however fondly, is painful for it makes her feel like they are stuck in the past they shared rather than moving forward together.

(Grayson, Devin, writer. Zitcher, Path, illustrator The Calm Before. Nightwing. 86, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2003. pp 21 - 22)

But to Dick, the past you share with someone is what makes your relationship in the present special. The past informs the present and the future. Dick, much like Bruce, doesn’t move forward by disconnecting himself from the past. His parents are part of his past. So is Robin. His childhood with Bruce. The past is something good to Dick, even when it's also so filled with pain. Dick is not shackled by his past the way Bruce is because he does not see it as something that needs to hold him back. You can move forward while still embracing who you once were and honoring the legacy you carry on your shoulders. The past informed who Dick is now, the relationships he has, and the person he wants to be. The past is where much of what he loves exists. So when he brings up their shared history when talking to Babs, he is not doing it because he loved Batgirl but cannot love Oracle, and he is not doing so because he is just focused on who they were then and not who they are now; he does it it's because to Dick, there's no such distinction between Batgirl and Oracle. They are both Babs, and he loves both of them. 

(Grayson, Devin, writer. Zitcher, Patch, illustrator. Snowball. Nightwing. 87, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2003. pp 16)

The way Babs copes with trauma is by divorcing herself from the hurt, by letting go of who she was and embracing who she wants to be. Dick, on the other hand, merges who he was then with who he is now. He doesn't see those people as separate entities, but rather as extensions of him. And that makes sense when you consider that Babs' main trauma relates to something that was taken away from her, and for Dick, the only way he can remain connected to his parents is through the past. It's a great example of incompatibility. Neither one is "at fault" for how they view this issue, neither of them is more correct than the other. They are just different. They care for each other, but the way they understand and interact with the world prevents them from being happy together at this moment. For that to work, internal change is needed. 

In portraying Dick and Barbara as complex individuals first, who have different attitudes towards looking back at the past and looking forward to the future, Grayson managed to make their relationship feel real. There’s a weight to their breakup, you can see why they care for each other and why this decision is painful and not taken lightly. They love each other, but they are not in a place where they can be themselves and be happy together yet. It is not danger that keeps them apart — it is the very same differences which they admire most about each other which pushes them away. 

In Nightwing Annual #02, we see other reasons why Dick and Babs failed to come together so often. These included Babs being scared of Dick eventually leaving her due to tensions between Dick and Bruce

(Andreyko, Marc, writer. Bennett, Joe, illustrator Hero’s Journey. Nightwing Annual. 2, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2007. pp 22 - 23)

Timing,

(Andreyko, Marc, writer. Bennett, Joe, illustrator Hero’s Journey. Nightwing Annual. 2, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2007. pp 25)

And, perhaps most importantly, the way in which Dick devalues his own life. 

(Andreyko, Marc, writer. Bennett, Joe, illustrator Hero’s Journey. Nightwing Annual. 2, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2007. pp 37 - 38)

This is something Grayson also alludes to during her run, when she often portrays Babs being both worried and frustrated at Dick’s tendencies to push himself too far.

(Grayson, Devin, writer. Zitcher, Patch, illustrator Snowball. Nightwing. 87, e-book ed. DC Comics, 2003. pp 13)

In both Grayson’s run and the aftermath of Infinite Crisis, the toxic perfectionism referred to many times during this essay led Babs to break off their relationship despite their mutual love. 

Having lost the mobility of her legs due to the Joker, Babs sees her life as Oracle as a second chance, and one which she will use to its fullest by putting herself first. It makes sense, then, that she sees Dick’s self-sacrificing tendencies and his desire for approval as both concerning and irritating. As Dick constantly puts himself in near-death scenarios for even the smallest of things, Babs decides that she would rather wait for a time when Dick learns to value himself more rather than to continue in a relationship where she is the only one who cares about whether Dick lives or dies. 

Whether this is the right solution to their relationship is up for debate. Personally, it irks me that stories will often frame this as Dick having to mature to be with Babs and not place an equal burden on Babs having to learn to accept that this is just who Dick is. But that is irrelevant to this discussion, for what matters is that there have been plenty of reasons why Dick and Babs did not work out in the past, and those are almost always rooted in who they are as individuals struggling to perfectly fit together as a unit. Dick and Babs have a messy history, both as individual characters with their own stories, and together as friends and romantic interests. They are two different people who, although their morals align, approach life differently. The development in their romance, then, comes with how willing they are to change for the other, and how willing they are to accept the things that cannot — and should not — be changed. It is about a balance of give and take, and when Babs and Dick broke up in the past, it was because they were not able to find that balance. It is because they, as individuals, clashed. As Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and Cesar Alfonso Marino put in their essay analyzing Dick’s portrayal in the Batman Family (1975-1978) series, Dick and Babs will often find themselves in “point[s] of inflection which marks that both heroes must go their separate ways to avoid further tensions (developed by sexual attraction and/or problems about leadership).” (Pagnoni Berns, Fernando Gabriel and Marino, Cesar Alfonso “Outlining the Future Robin: The Seventies in the Batman Family.”Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 years of Robin, Nightwing, and Batman edited by Kristen L. Geaman, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2015, pp. 32)

In other words, it was about interior conflicts, not exterior ones.

When taking this into consideration, one can see how Taylor’s portrayal of Dick and Babs’ relationship is not only incredibly hollow, but incredibly cynical. Because Taylor removed Dick’s self-destructive, toxic perfectionism, that is no longer a point of friction in their relationship. Because Babs is no longer the pragmatic woman who doses out tough love, that is also no longer a point of friction in their relationship. But as a result, Dick and Babs are no longer themselves, and their relationship is no longer representative of their shared history. Instead, we are left with an insulting and purposeful misrepresentation of their past relationship, with Taylor displaying a blatant disrespect and disregard for anything his predecessors contributed to these characters. Dick and Babs were never apart because of danger. Dick would never condescend to Barbara in this manner, and Barbara would never let something so trivial go unchallenged or get in the way of what she wants. What got in their way was a matter of compatibility. They may compliment each other in the field, be great friends, get along well, but in previous attempts to make their relationship work, they found that they were simply too different to share a life together, their goals did not align, and their approaches to life did not work together. Getting and staying together was not a matter of external factors, but rather whether they could do the difficult internal work necessary to make their romance last. 

I want to make it clear that I actually love the childhood-friends-to-lovers trope. But what makes friends-to-lovers interesting is the fact that it creates inherently messy romances. If you two characters who have loved each other for so long, then they naturally have a history. They have seen each other at their best and at their worst. Yet, insecurities, timing, and compatibility keep them from being able to get their happily-ever-after. That creates a messiness that adds weight and meaning to the relationship. Seeing them overcome these challenges, become better individuals, and then finally come together is what makes the narrative so effective.

Dick’s and Babs’ romance, as currently portrayed, lacks that weight. Taylor and DC want that history, that “true love” aspect of their relationship without acknowledging the complications that come from having lived so many years in close proximity. In other words, they want the appearance of a long shared history without acknowledging the contents of said history. This robs both Dick and Babs of their individual personalities and backstories, for it is there where the source of their conflicts lie. All of the things that make them interesting individuals are sacrificed for the heteronormative DickBabs amalgamation. There is no Dick Grayson. There is no Barbara Gordon. There is only a happy, wholesome, smiling couple of nothingness — as it was put earlier it is all “shimmer, gloss, and no substance.”

And this does not affect only them.  

In making Dick and Babs inseparable, Babs has become heavily involved with the Titans. This leads to the majority of Babs’s interactions in the current canon to be with Dick’s friends. And because, once more, Taylor skirts away from conflict, that means that all of Dick’s friends have become Babs’ friends. However, by making Babs friends with all of Dick’s female friends, Taylor created a shallow girlboss feminist narrative where all of these women’s individual personhoods are reduced their relationship to one man. He does not take into account who they are, only their gender and their mutual connection to Dick. In trying to do a girl-boss feminist empowerment, Taylor instead creates a deeply misogynistic narrative. 

Kory and Babs, for example, should be allowed to dislike each other despite being on the same team. They are, after all, supposedly fully realized women with their own personalities, values, and goals. Their existence is not dependent on Dick Grayson or their romance with him. Real world women dislike one another for various reasons that are unrelated to men. Male characters often hate each other without it being because of a woman. So why can’t the same be true for female characters? 

To attempt to make Kory and Babs friends simply to undermine expectations because one of them is Dick’s ex and the other one is Dick’s girlfriend is not empowering. It sacrifices characterization for the purposes of subversion.To think of the dynamic between these two characters in terms of their relationship with Dick reduces their existence to a man by implying that the only possible reason they could dislike one another is because of said man. It is not due to different value systems (which would be incredibly reasonable given their different background and cultures), it is not because their personalities clash (as they are two different people), it is not because their likes and dislikes may contradict (once more, because they are two different people). All the things that would make them realized individuals with agency are ignored in favor of focusing on their relationship with Dick. 

Babs is a cisgender, straight, middle-class white woman from New Jersey. Kory is a warrior Princess from a different galaxy. It would not be unreasonable to expect their opinions to conflict when their backgrounds, upbringings, and experiences also differ. After all, those are things that shape our value system, dictating our perspectives. 

Having different values or different ways to express your opinion does not mean that one is right and the other is wrong. It does not mean one is superior to the other. It only means they are different. Diverse. To believe one must be correct and the other must be wrong is to fall into the traps of ethnocentrism. By making Kory and Babs values indistinguishable, the story implies that there is only one correct way to interact with the world. This eliminates diverse perspectives in favor of a monolithic one. The fact that Kory's culture is the one that is ignored so that they are compatible with Babs implies that Babs – the cisgender, straight, middle-class white woman from New Jersey – is the one whose culture and world views are correct and, therefore, superior.

Dick’s relationship platonic relationship with Donna is also devalued and watered down in favor of Dick and Barbara’s romance. Because Dick and Barbara are depicted as having been each other’s best friends since childhood — when, in reality, Dick was closer to Donna during his preteen and teenage years, and Donna is often portrayed as his best friend — Donna’s place in Dick’s life is replaced by Babs. Babs must be everything to Dick — his true love, his longest childhood friend, his one female best friend. 

This creates a narrative in which Dick cannot have a significant interaction with another woman without it being a threat to his relationship with Babs. Needless to say, this is an incredibly heteronormative worldview which implies that men and women who are not related cannot share deep and significant platonic intimacy without some underlying romantic tension. So naturally, Donna cannot he Dick’s longest friend, his best friend, because in the heteronormative world portrayed in Taylor’s run, that would mean that she is a rival to Babs.

Perhaps it is for this reason that Melinda was revealed to be Dick’s sister so soon into her introduction. If Melinda and Dick were not related but were still meant to interact with each other, that would create a bond that some might see as romantic or sexual. So by presenting Melinda as Dick’s biological sibling within moments of the two first interacting, Taylor strips Melinda of any romantic or sexual appeal. In this heteronormative world, only by being related can Dick and Melinda share intimacy without threatening Babs’ position in Dick’s life. 

Needless to say, this heteronormative worldview which only allows for the relationship between non-biologically related men and women to be seen through lenses of romance and sex is also a misogynistic, male-centric worldview. In this story, women are not treated as people and are instead perceived solely through their relationship to Dick Grayson.

[purgemarchlockdown]

I think Mahiru being a literature student is very important to consider when understanding her because Mahiru is a character built around Narrative, well everyone is to some extent (I need to finish that post) but Mahiru especially because she's someone who's main vision of love is influenced by Storytelling.

She sort of subtle but you can see it how she talks about romance, as she says:

Mahiru: [disappointed] I have a pretty poor vocabulary, so I can’t describe it beyond clichéd phrases.

Admitting to only being able to describe love based on commonly repeated ideas in stories and media, soap operas, shoujo manga, films, and so on. The first thing we see Mahiru doing is TIHTBILWY is read.

Mahiru: Yeah, yeah. You’ll deny it at first. I mean, I was like that as well. Before then, I always admired soap operas and shoujo manga because I thought that they depicted a world different from our own. 

She's admiring the idealized idea of love rather than the real thing, and you can see that in how she describes it.

Do you really think you know what love is? If you do, let's just overheat together

Let's have matching pain, this sickness is pretty bad

This idealized idea of a person who can always be there and share in her pain no matter what she does or the circumstances their in.

If they don't then:

Tell me, oh tell me why, won’t you just accept me?

But stories are forms of communication, and stories, especially the highly idealized romance stories Mahiru seems to gravitate towards. Can promote regressive and conservative gender roles and ideas. Ones that Mahiru seems to have accepted she needs to fufill to reach the societal line of acceptability.

Mahiru: Hm? I do~ Cooking, washing, cleaning, I love doing all those sorts of things~ Fufufu, I passed all my self-imposed training to become the perfect wife with flying colours! Yuno: Wow, incredible… I don’t know whether to call that old-fashioned or what. ……isn’t it a pain?

TIHTBILWY is presented as a Maganize, it's fundamentally something people buy and subscribe to. Mahiru is very much a character shaped by gendered narratives is society and I think that's interesting.

[likealittleheartbeat]

hello !!

i was wondering, do you know any other characters like aang from other shows/movies/books? or maybe, just his theme of radical kindness appearing in other stories?

i've been missing aang, and it would be nice to find other representations of such a fun and warm personality like his.

ps.: your blog is like, fantastic. truly.

🥰🥰🥰🥰 This is the best ask I’ve ever received!!! Depictions of radical kindness in media is a special interest of mine—not exaggerating. So I’ve done my best to make a list of rec’s, just tv, from most formally similar to ATLA to least, with a short description for each.

1. Fruits Basket (2019)

"My mom told me, it's better to trust people than to doubt them. She said that people aren't born with kind hearts. When we're born, all we have are desires for food and material things. Selfish instincts, I guess. But she said that kindness is something that grows inside of each person's body, but it's up to us to nurture that kindness in our hearts. That's why kindness is different for every person."

An anime orphan whose established memory of the kindness by which her family raised her ends up transforming and liberating a whole clan from an intergenerational curse that enforced an abusive hierarchy all within a show that has a deeply queer subtext, beautifully complex plotting and character development that due to its zen influence refuses to demonize anyone or any perspective wholly, AND a straight romance you can actually root for!? Nothing comes closer to ATLA thematically than this show. While the lead Tohru Honda is the biggest representative of radical kindness, the character of Momiji Sohma with his complex purity, idealism, and gender performance is one of the closest you'll find to Aang in any media.

2. Mob Psycho 100 (2016-2023)

"The truth behind one's charm is kindness. Just be a good person, that's all."

Mob Psycho 100 explores a core tenant of ATLA's critique of imperialism and power: greatness and perfection are overrated. They both ask the question about what to do for the world with one's gifts if that's the case. How can one be both normal and prodigious at the same time? The satirical comedy and style of this anime, which deconstruct a lot of the shonen genre tropes, are pretty distinct from ATLA, but when ATLA arrived on the airwaves, it was a pretty massive break from tradition in Western animation, and for both of these series, that difference of style is tied to the message of the show about the experience and acceptance of difference.

3. Natsume's Book of Friends (2012-present)

"As I encountered kindness, I wanted to be kind myself."

The anime, Natsume's Book of Friends and ATLA both depict the challenge and necessity of facing abandonment, loss, and a deep-seated loneliness with kindness and gratitude despite the persistence of grief. Both take a deeply spiritual view--even a responsibility--of this experience that demands a compassion for all beings including those who intend to do harm. Natsume, an orphan shuffled between houses who is one of the few people who can see spirits called youkai, inherits his maligned grandmother's book of yokai names, becoming a target for them in the process. He hides all of this from everyone in his life, and even five season in, still has trouble admitting to the one person who understands him when he is struggling and needs help. The gentle and light tone papers over a profoundly honest representation of attachment trauma and the wisdom of compassion that develops as a tool to cope with it.

4. Hunter x Hunter (2011-2014)

"You can do whatever you want to hide your feeling. You still have a heart."

If you think that "Radical Kindness" is by definition non-violent, then this show is either not for you or going to change your mind. Gon, the protagonist of HxH, like Momiji mentioned in Fruits Basket, is another rare character whose naivete and optimism are treated with respect. He is allowed to suffer, to be wrong, to be stupid, and to inspire others away from their own cynicism with the persistence of his beliefs nevertheless. But HxH is a show that integrates the most violent aspects of the world (organized crime, capitalistic competition and privileging, state-sanctioned brutality, pure sadism) with its examination of human potential for goodness. And even within a list of shows deeply inspired by spirituality and religions, this show is abundant with religious references as it seeks out meaning, balance, and an ethic for modern experience. On top of that, it ranks with ATLA for the depth and relevance of its magic system to its themes, plus its got gay subtext out the wazoo!

5. Mushishi (2005-2014)

“Make sure to remember, every person and place has a right to exist. It is true for you too, the entire world, as a whole, is your home."

Elegaic, episodic, compassionate, and strange, with some of the best short story-telling of all time, Mushishi is the story of a medicine-man who travels the Japanese countryside helping people deal with the spirits that accompany the little trials and tragedies of life that cling to our minds long after they're passed. The protagonist, Gingko, and the show itself takes the approach of restraint to observe these problems fully and come to a conclusion that's taoist in its balance and acceptance of reality--"Eyes unclouded by hate" as Miyazaki/Gaiman would have it. Each episode is like a therapy session arguing for you to choose to live even as the heaviest burdens sit on your chest.

6. Reservation Dogs (2021-2023)

"See...love doesn't have to be received, it can just be."

We're finally out of the animes, and moving away from the zen and shinto approach into some other options. Reservation Dogs' indigenous humanism was groundbreaking, bringing in distinctly modern American realities (with the kind of true-to-life details only a an on-location shoot could offer) with Native beliefs about ancestry, community, and connection to the land, while rarely feeling preachy. Instead, it's just fucking hilarious and casually heartbreaking. Four friends on the edge of graduating high school on a reservation in Oklahoma try to figure out what to do with their lives after their plans to go to California get abruptly messed up. Radical kindness as a concept often gets focused on accepting the enemy but what about accepting the weird stoner uncle who farts all the time and won't talk about his years in the army. I think that might be a more important goal of radical kindness, in truth, if we are being asked to look and accept reality for what it is, because growing comfortable with disappointment and the mundane let's us live without the relentless striving that drives perfectionism.

7. Skam (2015-2017)

"The second you start looking for hate, you find it. And when you find hate, you start hating."

A Norwegian teen drama that understood internet culture better than any show before or since, four season-long romance plots better than any romance film from that decade, and a masterfully constructed exhortation about leaning into failures of connection to build deeper compassion rather than demonize another person or group. Each season focused on a specific character within a high-school friend group, emphasizing the limited scope of subjective experience, and had them confront the challenges of opening up to others fully. And even when they return into the scenes with new protagonists, their lives weren't sorted perfectly, reflecting how resolving a single romantic plot point would not resolve life. The impact of this low-budget public-television web series (!!!) will be felt for years (it's already been referenced by Netflix juggernauts like Sex Education and Young Royals), but we're not likely to see something that juggles political themes, heartfelt characterization, realistic dialogue, and meta-commentary (it flashed its own hater and fan comments across the screen in the last episode!!) in such a obsession-inducing package anytime soon.

7. Boys Like Boys (2023)

"Because I have always been someone who hates myself, I don't have the courage to face it. Running away is my only option...What if I give myself one more chance to be brave?"

So how can a reality show make it onto a list of radically kind tv series, especially a dating show!? Well, when that reality dating show casts people who radiate warmth, vulnerability, and respect and seem to have the kind of chemistry that most scripted shows can't even manage, it's a good start. But then, when they elevate that cast with a format that addresses the cruelty of dating, elimination formats, and broader societal exclusion (an important consideration for a gay dating show), it offers a new model for future shows. Boys Like Boys did this when mid-season (spoiler alert) they had contestants vote out a contestant, only to provide the contestants with a vote in which they could retain a contestant who they didn't want to leave. In fact, many of the contestants asked if they could abstain from making a vote that would eliminate a constestant and were allowed to. The final result left one contestant, Jia-Hang, up for elimination--he had voted for himself to be eliminated, and many contestants, recognizing his reticence to continue on the program, didn't want to force him against his will to stay. Then, looking around at nearly the whole cast sobbing, even apologizing to him for not providing him enough support, Jia-Hang chooses to stay on. This is just one of many heart-warming authentic moments in the show that illustrate the vital influence of kindness to impact the trajectory of our hearts.

8. Joe Pera Talks With You (2018-2021)

"I can help you reach things. I can tend the garden. The different hours we keep are a good thing. And when they overlap, I can offer companionship and entertainment."

So much has been written about this show's groundbreaking kind approach, I'm going to quote instead: "It can be difficult to convey how a TV show airing on Cartoon Network’s provocative nighttime programming block Adult Swim can evoke almost nostalgic feelings of kind-heartedness. The premise of Joe Pera Talks With You is so simple as to almost be beside the point: Comedian Joe Pera plays a lightly fictionalized version of himself as a sweet Michigander, a middle-school chorus teacher with small and specific passions. Joe likes breakfast food, obscure trivia, beans, trips to the grocery store, and his grandma. He greets every day with a contented smile, stands beneath a pale blue sky, packs a balanced lunch that contains no surprises. (A turkey sandwich with cheese and a tomato, a banana, some trail mix, and as a treat, some cookies.) Joe, more than anything, is satisfied. His greatest joy is sharing these small pleasures with you, the viewer who exists on the other side of the fourth wall he has cleanly dismantled, often speaking quietly to the camera like he’s sharing a secret, just between you two. That he’s talking “with” and not “to” you is a crucial distinction in the show’s title: Joe never lectures nor rhapsodizes. Instead, he waxes poetic about what he loves and who he cares for and how he leads his life, telling his stories from a vulnerable position of welcoming you into his daily existence.” --“A Great Comedy About Being Good,” Allegra Frank for Vox

9. Anne with an E (2017-2019)

"Her life was not short on challenges, and still she held no grudges, believing instead that grace is perennial like the green, green grass."

While maligned for not being the 1980s version, this Netflix adaptation of Anne of Green Gables takes what many have read as an autistic subtext and made it text, giving Anne a performative quality that pushes a lot of the audience into the same irritation that the characters of Avonlea feel for Anne at first, and, thus, requires its audience to persevere toward the same kindness that Anne inspires in her adoptive mother figure, Marilla, among others, which is much more rewarding than simply identifying with Anne right away. In so doing, it enhances the development of its broader approach to acceptance--an approach in its insistence on the requirement of a community of kindredness (see Sebastian's excitement at finding out about the black community in "The Bog") that is much more rigorous than many other shows will cop to. Expanding far beyond literal adaptation into queer, black, and indigenous characters, without disguising history or disparaging the thematic seed of grace at the heart of the novels, Anne with an E imagines what it meant and what it might still mean to build real joyful community with others through kindness.

10. Little Bear (1995-2003)

"Interesting."

A childhood favorite that disguised in its simplicity a wide-openness to the world and an acceptance of different natures. While most child shows emphasize kindness, few do so with as much patience, wonder, and generosity extended to its viewers. Little Bear is a curious kid who goes on adventures in the woods around his house that can turn into games or small imagined experiences. He is sometimes with his friends Cat, Duck, Hen, Owl, and Emily, whose personalities, along with Little Bear's, bring about small tensions in their games that ultimately resolve, if not independently, then with the help of Mother Bear or Father Bear, who give each other knowing glances about the expected childhood behaviors. This is the first show that initially taught me to observe things while withholding my judgment, that first step of radical kindness.

12. The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968)

"The key to happiness is finding joy in the simple things."

One really old and somewhat controversial throwback for my last entry. If you have concerns about a sheriff character representing radical kindness, I would encourage you to start with the third episode of season 3 where Andy, the sheriff in question, has to explain to the new mayor why he doesn't carry a gun and lets prisoners go to gather their crops. There have been some fantastic pieces written about the complexities of this show's bucolic fantasy and Southerners (of all races) attachment to it, but they all acknowledge a type of humanistic and deceptively simple virtue found in Mayberry that audiences long to witness, if not emulate themselves. It's a morality that resists the "hyperactive zealotry" and bureaucracy that the show satirizes through Barney Fife (along with guest characters like the new mayor) and instead emphasizes the understanding that one can have for each individual and the trickstery middle paths that one can find to address conflict.

[roundtriptojupiter]

Hi there! If you like reading fanfiction or original fiction about your (favourite) characters and have a few bucks to spare for a chronically ill writer, please read this entire post!

I’m Jupiter, I’m a disabled queer man on a break from school and currently without a job. Hopefully that’ll change soon, but in the meantime, I’ve decided to test the waters opening writing commissions!

These are not emergency commissions, but I would really appreciate this post being spread around anyway—just don’t feel pressured to!

It’s $1 CAD per 100 words (ex. $5 for 500, $10 for 1k...) and all payments are preferred be done through P*yPal. (I can negotiate if you don’t have P*yPal, though!)

I have 8+ years of experience writing and you can find examples of my work on Ao3. Please contact me on Discord (preferred: just send me a friend request @ roundtriptojupiter) or through Tumblr DMs on this blog (less ideal, please only if you can’t use Discord!).

Things that I will write: gen/SFW, fanfiction, OC fiction, AUs, crossovers, OC x canon, character x reader, characters from media I don’t know, characters from improvised roleplay (ex. MCRP, D&D), slash/romance*, poly relationships*, furries, gore, horror*, dead dove*, NSFW*, PWP*, kink*, unhealthy relationships*, and human x non-human relationships*

*as long as it does not conflict with anything on my ‘will not write’ list

(There is also a list of fandoms I’m familiar with in the notes, if you would prefer to not ask me to write characters from a media I haven’t consumed)

Things that I will not write: real person fiction, incest, underage, adult/minor, bestiality, NSFW involving bodily fluids/excrement other than the expected + blood/spit/sweat/tears, pregnancy (the idea of it is fine, just no actual depictions), and anything involving bigotry

These lists are subject to change and I reserve the right to deny any commission for any reason. Payment will be required after discussing details but before I begin writing. There are no refunds.

Again, please reach out if you’re interested! And reblogs are incredibly helpful :]

By the way, if you’re going to message me about copyright law: I’m aware! I have a vested interest in the topic and have made multiple detailed presentations on fanwork and copyright law. A small independent creator doing individualized work for payment is unlikely to attract any legal trouble due to it not taking profits away from any legitimized businesses, as corporations do not do writing commissions. Thanks for your concern!

[aihoshiino]

Heyy so i came across your blog and I LOVE it! I love how you analyse Ai because her character is so fascinating!

You know i always considered Ai to be unfortunate when it comes to right environment and people. From the very beggining her mother neglected her, other idols were really jealous(and many other people tbh) and etc..

Because of this I believe she never got the chance to develop herself emotionally, in the sense she either isn't sure to how to react or she never realizes/acknowledge her emotions. Which caused her to lie and put up a mask. Hence in Viewpoint B she says she is natural born liar. So it makes me think maybe she is contradicting because she isn't sure anymore. She knows she can't distinguish between her lies and truth. That's why even when she says lies are exquistie form of love but never once told the twins she loves her because she dodn't want to lie.

So there are two ways I see this:

She wants to love others like her fans and other members of B-Kamachi, for that she lies. Saying "I love you to fans" or "I am interested in you too" to Nino as Ai can then believe that she can love them. It is stated she couldn't love or trust people so maybe for these people she deep inside never felt love but wanted to love because she was desperately trying to love.(I think Ai was trying to love because she never experienced love so other emotions were foreign to her, so to feel something she wanted to love?) Here Ai lies to love.

Another way is her love for Aqua and Ruby. Ai knows lying is bad and still restorts to it to love others but never told the twins that lie because she was scared. Ai said 'I love you' when she was 100% sure those words weren't a lie. In this context Ai never lies to love.

So in the end idol ai and real ai are two sides of same coin.

Ps-Also maybe the lines "Sorry I can't love you" to Hikaru signify that she consider him to be important or something? But she never felt that 'spark' of love she was hoping for, maybe because he might be the first person she 'loved' or at least close to it?

This is pretty much my take on it too! Being in a home environment like the one Ai grew up in really stunts your emotional growth and your ability to learn how to socialize. That on top of Ai already being neurodivergent in a way that affects how she processes social information means she was always on the back foot and struggling to catch up in terms of understanding herself and other people. This is made ten times worse by the way other people would misread Ai's intentions and actions and react in accordance to what they think she means, which makes it even harder for Ai to understand and make herself understood... so it all just snowballs into tragedy.

As for Hikaru, my best guess is still that she was, essentially, apologizing for not being able to love him in the way she felt she should have. The sense I get from Ai is that she has a very idealized version of what 'love' is in her head, born out of never having it and being raised in the entertainment industry that loves to simplify and commodify it. Since she'd never loved or been loved by anyone before, she had no frame of reference for her own emotions but because they didn't exactly match the simplistic, almost fairy tale like depictions of love and romance in popular media, she concluded that whatever feelings she had weren't 'love'.

[sasubaeuchithot]

I was reading one of the comments on chapter 13 that essentially praised you for how the username YoungAndOverIntelligent was very accurate because your intelligence shows in your writing and I was nodding along saying DAMN STRAIGHT (might not be able to claim the title of no1 Sasuke glazer cuz that's naruto's job, but trust and believe I AM the no1 kh glazer, I will fight anyone who tries to disagree I fear 🤷‍♀️) and then I read your response and.

oh.

HOW DID I MISS THE ACRONYM NO OH MY GOD I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING I'VE BEEN SOOOOO BAMBOOZLED DAMN ITTTTTT THAT'S TOO GOOD UGH

Even in your inside joke of a username there exists humour indicative of high level smarts 😔

Okay but on a more serious note, I genuinely have to once more thank you for sharing your work with us.

I've sent an insane amount of Asks to you these past few weeks; at least, insane considering how rarely I generally send Asks, and how you're the only person I've sent more than two to.

Fanfiction has been a pivotal part of my life for as long as I can remember myself, and I find that it's an incredible way to, among other things, express your love for a piece of media, to make friends with people in the same community and give back to the fandom, to practice and hone your writing, and most importantly, to have fun.

It's very soothing to have a comfort read that perfectly encapsulates my thoughts and feelings on these characters and on the world that Kishi has carefully crafted but, in the same breath, basically wasted, in a fandom that I feel like so often misunderstands the point.

There are many fandoms I've been in, thousands of fics I've read, millions and millions of words consumed in the past three-four years, and hundreds of literary works (both fanfiction and not) that have, in some way or another, left their mark on me.

But Kizuna Hikari has always stood out to me the most. Maybe that sounds unbelievable. Out of all the beautifully written works I've read (the number of those is actually astronomical), I'd still pick kh over every single one of the works that have ever pierced my soul?

Yes. I can't put it into words, exactly, but there's a feeling that engulfs me every time I think about it that is so unique in its warmth.

Both because I especially love Naruto, multiple flaws and all, and because this story hits every mark that it's aiming for dead-on.

Not very many stories can achieve that.

Most fanfiction, no matter how gorgeous, or well-written, or enthralling, or in character, feels like fanfiction. This of course doesn't have any effect on how much I love it; the vast majority of the time, I long for that exact feeling of a fanmade work infused with copious amounts of the author's love and passion for their creation. It doesn't matter that it's fanfiction.

But there's a degree of believability in kh that brings about a different type of comfort.

Naruto's ending sucked. It makes me miserable to think about it. The Naruto fandom, for a fandom that insists on the show's greatness, collectively misses the point of an alarming amount of the story's arcs, characters, and overall essence in a way that has me seriously concerned for the world's media literacy.

But kh is so concentrated on, and deeply rooted in, the realistic depiction of a differing outcome and the consistently in-character portrayal of Naruto and Sasuke and their simple, but still incredibly complicated, relationship, without either of their ideals and convictions taking the backseat in the name of conventional romance; romance that also just doesn't fit these characters.

It's been three years since I first read it, and it continues to be equally wholly satisfying, and provides me with what I initially didn't even know was the idyllic, fleshed out exploration of the events following that final battle that I needed.

It also helps that I relate to/crave and ache for the, in my eyes, inherently queer type of love/attraction that exists between your Naruto and Sasuke way more than that of any other romantic love story that I've ever known.

In other words, the meticulous planning, loving effort, and skillful writing that make up your story have bewitched me, body and soul.

Wow, this took a direction I couldn't have foreseen. I only started this rant to whine about missing the YAOI acronym

okay you've turned me into an embarrassing jelly goop of a person on the floor over here 😭 I've trained myself to be good at taking compliments but this is making me blush and squirm because it is so beautiful and kind and like do I deserve this???? (yes i do, i keep telling myself, because I believe your sincerity but even my therapy trained brain is too flustered to work correctly 😭😭😭)

but lmaaaoooooooo i love when people fall for my username. the height of humor to me is making people think I'm pretentious but really my brain is just a twelve year old giggling at the word "sex"

[robbierants]

Homosexuality In The Victorian Era

TW: TALKING ABOUT SEX AND MASTERBATIAN

I was thinking of this while writing chapter 4 for my fanfic today, since Joanne and Mila are very much Queer Coded (Queer older sister and gay little brother)

My short answer is that it makes a huge difference whether one is talking about male/male or female/female love, what class one was in, and which part of the Victorian Era this was taking part in. As I'm sure you know, Queen Victoria's reign covered more than 60 years and was a time of unprecedented economic, political, and social change in Britain. As a sweeping generalization, public response was much worse for men that for women, though both kinds of relationships were tolerated so long as they were kept quiet.

In medical texts, males who slept with other males were referred to as sodomites, Uranians (women in men's bodies), or as being "sexually inverted," all of which also overlapped with those who were transgender (there was little distinction made between the two by most medical texts, though some did distinguish between them). The public trial of author and celebrity Oscar Wilde in 1895 caused a media frenzy, and his sentencing and subsequent ruin is a chilling reminder of what could happen to someone in his position when found guilty of sodomy. It is important to remember, though, that Oscar Wilde wound up in front of a judge because he sued the father of his lover for libel (for calling him "posing somdomite" in a note), and the father, the Marquess of Queensberry, countered with a second trial for sodomy and indecency, for which Wilde was found guilty.

As has been very thoroughly discussed, there was a lively underground gay culture in Victorian England. Starting in the 1700s, men could meet like-minded men in what were called molly-houses, dress in what were considered women's clothes, and (especially starting in the late 18th century) hire male prostitutes. In another generalization, Victorian culture generally frowned on public expressions of male-male desire but looked the other way if it was coded, such as in the case of artwork depicting nude young men or literature hinting at male-male romance but not describing it specifically. It was very different for men actually caught having sex: public outcry was usually swift and caustic, and punishment could be brutal. Only from 1861 was sodomy no longer punishable by hanging in England, and sex between two men was only made legal in 1967.

But with women, and that is another story. As Sharon Marcus shows in her book Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (2007), the intense expression of love and affection between women was encouraged by society, and women were invited to enjoy looking at the bodies of other women, even in sadistic/masochistic acts--adult women whipping younger girls was a popular topic in pornographic books for women. Reviewers of books that describe female-female desire often made horrified protests against characters they saw as "monstrous" and overcome by horrific sexual desire, but despite such printed protestations the lived reality was very different. Marcus suggests what was shocking to Victorians was not the female-female physical desire in itself but the idea of sexual desire outside of a stable relationship; excessive love of sex was considered deviant and dangerous, and the female desire for another female was thought to be a result of sexual desires overflowing their proper channels. Marcus describes women who exchanged rings and called themselves married. As Marcus writes, "Women who established longterm relationships with other women, by contrast, saw themselves, and were seen by others, as placid embodiments of the middle-class ideal of marriage: a bond defined by sex that also had the power to sanctify sex" (21). Friendship, love, and even physical desire were expressed freely in letters, and hand-holding and kissing were not considered shocking, but the norm for female friends. For two women to sleep in the same bed, even touching and kissing, was not in itself considered problematic, and was even encouraged. (In contrast, two men could sleep in the same bed, but should not touch. The horror at male-male love was connected with a general horror of masturbation. A hysteria about idle boys engaging in masturbation alone and together contributed to things such as the invention of the graham cracker and the founding of the Boy Scouts)

This is not to say that female-female love was embraced wholly by society. In 1810 (before the Victorian era, but telling), there was a trial with echoes of the Wilde trial almost a century later. Two Scottish schoolteachers, Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods, were reported by a pupil as having had sex in her bed while she was in it. The pupil's grandmother, Dame Helen Cumming Gordon, withdrew her girl and contacted the parents of the other pupils so that they, too, were removed. Pirie and Woods went to a judge to sue for libel, and though the judge ruled for them (partly because the judge refused to believe that two middle-class Christian women could do such a thing, and partly because the pupil in question, Jane Cumming, was a mixed-race illegitimate child, and the judge believed rather that she had learned of lesbianism from Indian culture), their careers were ruined. The trial was fictionalized as the play The Children's Hour. Medical texts described such "perverted" women as "Tribades" (women who had sex like men with enlarged clitorises) and Sapphists (from the Greek poet Sappho). They described "digitation" (manual stimulation) as one possible perversion. There was the belief that female masturbation could cause excessive sexual desire or sexual inversion. Some wrote that women sharing a bed together could lead to improper "excitation of desire," but it's important to separate moralist texts from general public perceptions. Contrary to the popular belief, Victorian medical texts describe that female sexual desire, arousal, and orgasm all very much exist.

If the relationship displayed is one that is stable and marriage-like, my research suggests it would have been accepted, though not embraced, so long as the sexual elements were kept discreet.

Further reading: Duberman, Martin, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey, Jr., eds. 1989. Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. New York: New American Library. Marcus, Sharon. 2007. Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton: Princeton UP. Rupp, Leila J. 2009. Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women. New York: New York UP.

[redux-iterum]

Hoooookay, so, “defanging Clan culture”. This is something I’ve noticed pervasive in a lot of people’s propositions for “a better Clan culture” (and by extension, other societies like the Tribe and the Sisters). They see the unfairness either consciously or unconsciously built into the societies and go, “That’s bad,” and reactionarily erase it from their own work. The Clans forbid medicine cats from having families for stupid reasons, so these medicine cats can have families. Adoption is treated weirdly by canon, so these Clans have Correct™ ways of viewing adoption. I could go on.

 However, the end result is an unrealistically utopic society. The code is designed to be free from abuse; not a single bad thought enters the head of a character unless The Plot Demands So; toms, mollies, and jacks have nothing stopping them from filling any role; everyone regardless of age, gender, ability status, background, sexual orientation, mental status, etc, is happy because this society welcomes and accepts all.

I’ll take my leave before the flowers start singing.

Now, if you just want to experiment with an idealized Clan culture with zero shades of darkness, more power to you.

But I think something a lot of people are misguided on is that a well-built setting doesn’t necessarily mean a utopic one. Many stories have unfair aspects to their fictional societies, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with depicting these or having a protagonist who believes in something counter to what we do, even if said protagonist never changes their opinions on it by book or series’ end (especially in adult media, and to a lesser extent in YA).

What I think is more constructive and elevates worldbuilding is instead to work out the “why is it like this” and the “how did it come to be like this” and delve further into the “what if it was…”. Take medicine cats not having families, for instance: canon’s “why” and “how” are very similar, “a medicine cat couldn’t be a mom and a doctor and so forbade anyone else from having a family.” Most of us find that very stupid. A reactionary approach would just go, “a medicine cat can have a family,” but a reconstructive approach would integrate medicine cats’ celibacy into the culture by instead going, “medicine cats cannot build families for a religious reason; they are to be as detached from the moral realm as possible so they can remain attuned to their warrior ancestors, and this attunement is muddied by indulging in earthly things like raising a family.” Unfair? Yes, but it’s good worldbuilding.

 Before someone puts words in my mouth, what I’m not saying is, “I think the Clans need to be grimmdark,” but what I am saying is, “think about how the Clans (or Tribe or Sisters or whatever) would realistically view X or Y and how they interconnect with other aspects of their culture.” It’s okay for a society to still need growing up to do; aren’t we all like that?

Side-note before I finish: while thinking about this in relation to canon Warriors, it came to me that part of the reason why we as the readers are so miffed at why the code hasn’t been changed to alleviate inter-Clan relationships despite constant drama surrounding them (ignoring the aspect that the authors love forbidden romance), is because it keeps getting shoved in our faces so often and constantly abused for drama. Had forbidden relationships not be used so often as instigators of drama, I don’t think we would’ve spurred the Erins into addressing it in TBC and ASC.

[sapphire-weapon]

i feel a lot of eagoleone fics that depict ashley as still having crippling ptsd and relying on leon are aimed to be self inserty and that’s why people like them/read them more

That's so frustrating and makes me feel some type of way because, like. It also sort of ties into people who refuse to ship Leon and Ashley because they project too hard onto Ashley and the thought of being a romantic/sexual interest for an older man is scary to them.

It's like this generation understands fiction and media so little that they don't have fictional role models, which is so weird to me because like. That was so huge in my generation.

Aeris was such a huge role model for me when I was growing up. She was something I aspired to. So I loved reading romance fics with her in them because the whole thing was an ideal/fantasy for me. The idea that that could be me one day -- that I could be like her and have a romance like that.

So this generation's outlook of "if the character is not like me as I am right now, I can't relate to them" is just so foreign to me. I don't want to read about characters who are exactly like me. Fiction is fantasy and fantasy is escapism. Don't I deal with myself enough already in the real world?

Maybe there's a larger sociological component to this that ties into my generation always being told "you can be anything you want to be when you grow up" but.

idk it just bums me out.

Reader fic exists, if someone wants to self-insert with Leon. It sucks that this has crept into canon ships, too. When I look up fics about Leon and Ashley, it's because I want to read about Leon and Ashley -- not Leon and a thinly-veiled caricature of myself.

Sucks, man.

[advancedpottery217x2]

Love even unto its innermost parts

I consider myself a romanticist. It happened suddenly a few years back, when I found that this word fit what I consider to be important in fiction. If I just said this out of the blue one day however, people would probably get the wrong idea about me. I do have a general fondness for both ロマン and romance in fiction, and I also feel those two are connected while still being separate entities.

I've wanted to write about my stance on romance in fiction for a long time (since the Mitsumei post that's now uhhh two years ago apparently), and I did say in my Sakura no Toki post that I would expand on my concept of ロマン in a future post. While these topics are quite similar and I have no qualms about it myself, it still felt "wrong" to group them together without a further idea connecting them besides the label of romanticism. Until this March when I actually got that idea and right now when I finally decided to write this post.

This post will probably make even less sense than my previous ones since it is almost completely born from my personal views on abstract concepts, so don't feel bad if you don't understand.

(NOTE: Views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect my view on relationships in real life. Also not a spoiler-free zone for anything.)

In my mind romanticism is たった一つの大切な想いを貫くこと.

(No the Gunslinger Girl song did not lead to this thought although I will link it here anyway because I love the manga which you should go read right now.)

To understand this we must first separate love projected from within the self and love projected towards the self.

Love projected from within the self is what you personally find important to yourself and ideals, convictions you wish to share and experience with others. It is what you like and what you consider crucial to understanding your personality and beliefs. It is important to realize that this is a form of love.

I guess this is more of a problem in recent years where media consumption as a set checklist with guidelines is more prevalent, but I believe that is an antithesis to the nature of love. This may seem like a given, but life is possible to live without having a solid idea of these things, giving birth to people who cannot use their own words to express their opinions. I believe being selfish is an important part of love as love cannot exist without two distinct entities whose emotions come within the self.

Love projected towards the self is a fictional work's backbone, or the thoughts that went into it during its creation. How this gets conveyed to the self varies depending on the medium but ambience is important in all of them. Ambience is felt from every corner of a work so the stronger the backbone is, the more it shows in multiple facets of the work (総合芸術). Of course, not everything has the luxury of having a singular vision so this concept is not necessarily tied to a work as an entirety; feeling love from singular part(s) is not any lesser.

The message a work conveys (if it exists), willingly or unwillingly is only one part of this love. I believe you can feel it in anything, from a character's spoken and unspoken words to intimate depictions of backgrounds. Personally, music is a big one for me and is the reason I am an Aquaplus fan now. It doesn't have to be straightforward either, if anything being drawn to things that appear contradictory is proof of ロマン in and of itself. The act of using your own experiences to process and accept two clashing senses within you is a sort of 原体験 of realizing the self and the world are separate entities that operate on their own merits which brings me to my main point.

The moment the loves within and without the self meet (貫く) is the moment the feeling of ロマン is born.

You could simply call this finding something the fits you or speaks out to you but this post is about love. The only love you are privy to the most intimate details of is the love that comes from within. This is because unless you can somehow mind link with other people you will never be able to fully understand what goes into their love, even if you are on the same wavelength. That is why we seek love to reach our innermost parts. This is true in real life too but that is outside the scope of this post.

Not everything in the world has the kind of love that resonates with you and sometimes it does not have love at all. That is why it is necessary to acknowledge these truths, to distinguish what does and does not fit you to have conviction in your own love.

Of course this is only true when the levels of love do not overpower each other. If the outward love is too strong, personal ideals overtake the work and color our perception of it to the point where it is no longer recognizable to others. In an internet example, I feel this is the case with people who take their headcanons too far and push them to the point of general acceptance, with some people not even realizing or refusing to realize that they are far beyond the context that the original work has presented. If the inward love is too strong, the work seeps into the psychology of the self to the point of lowering a person's ability to form their own thoughts on it. Another more personally aggravating internet example are those eroge reviews on Japanese Twitter that basically write the same points and have the same game quote peppered in. This is not to say these cannot exist (as much as I don't want them to), but they are simply not ロマン.

How does one go about in search of their ロマン then? As I said before, selfishness is an important element. Reading recommendations and reviews is valuable in gauging if you will enjoy something. However if that is all you rely on, it is easy to lose sight of your outward love. It is important to balance these with your ability to pick out things in the wild. After all, between ロマン discovered through others and ロマン discovered yourself the latter has more ロマン度. If you find it hard to broaden your horizons, seeing what your friends that have common interests and common reasons for liking those interests also like is a good start. The latter is especially important in the ロマン department as finding things that hit in that regard is harder than simply finding things you will enjoy.

Simply finding things to enjoy is also a skill one should hone. However, one must understand that something that does not match your love is not something to be shunned or frowned down upon. We are equipped to enjoy many things in life no matter how they relate to us. To that effect I do not associate romanticism with optimism. The act of believing in and finding love in the world is one of the most human actions one can take. That is why we feel such elation at the meeting point of loves. In that moment the beauty of the world enters our hearts we feel at one with something outside of the self and revel in the joys of communication. That is why I cannot stop my pursuit of ロマン.

たった一つの大切な想いを貫くこと is more straightforward in the romance department. As outlined in the ロマン section, romance also arises from two distinct entities whose emotions come within the self. That is why being able to see how both people come to hold romantic feelings and the moment those feelings become mutual feels victorious. Unless you are a devout romance hater or fan of a losing character in a romcom, seeing two characters get together is a cause of celebration.

And there's the rub: The outward trappings of romance are discussed much more than the intricacies of their feelings.

I can enjoy lighthearted will-they-or-won't-they, tension caused by unrequited love, and dramatic events fighting against the odds as much as the next guy but my eyes always remain on the prize: the actual feelings two people hold for each other.

Until recently I was vaguely in the camp that romances with obstacles in their path are the most rewarding at the end. It's a popular sentiment, so you can't go wrong with it right? It is quite sound as if the feelings in the relationship are not strong enough they won't make it to the end. But as I felt increasingly aloof with a lot of those stories I started to think that my true interests lied elsewhere.

The truth lies in たった一つの大切な想いを貫くこと. What causes people to develop feelings for another person? How do these feelings remain and grow stronger as opposed to fizzling out? How far are you willing to go for another person? How do these feelings interact with your own set of values, your own love to the world? Yes, true love is born when a character's love from the self and their love for another person harmonize, resulting in たった一つの大切な想いを貫く in their actions. That is the love I seek with my entire body.

Since there is no requirement to go this deep most of the time it is possible to be satisfied with much less. In some cases less can be more, and to reiterate I am not saying that only one kind of thing should exist. I simply wish for people to think more about the characters' feelings for each other when discussing fictional romance rather than on the playground level of who likes who.

Too often are romances lauded or condemned for reasons other than this. An all too familiar internet example is people throwing around certain parts of a relationship as problematic. Is it so fucked up to value a fictional relationship based on how the characters feel towards each other... But on the other hand you have people who value those certain parts above all else. I'm looking at you people who think incest routes in eroge are the best even if there is no other meat to the relationship regardless if they are blood-related or not. I guess if you're there for the outward trappings alone I can't blame you for getting exactly what you want but going around spouting about how it's a purer form of love is a completely different story. In eroge I feel surface level romance discussions are even worse because sex scenes can fool people into thinking something is deeper than it actually is.

As scenario writer Hozumi Kei wisely stated in a BugBug interview:

──今聞いてもワクワクしてきますね。 保住：美少女ゲームって、実は「恋愛をちゃんと描かない」んですよ。『ONE』や『ToHeart』の段階で既に確立している手法なんですが、ヒロインは必ず問題を抱えていて、主人公はそこに必ず首を突っ込んで二人で解決する。このことがメインになってしまい、そのついでに二人は恋愛したりセックスしたりするんです。 ──つまり多くの美少女ゲームは「恋愛」をテーマにしていないということですか？ 保住：自分はそう思っています。未だにこの手法で作られている作品がほとんどですよね。それだけ凄いメソッドということですが、そろそろ卒業しなきゃいけない気はしています。 ──『ましろ色シンフォニー -Love is Pure White-』は恋愛を中心にした作品、ということでしょうか。 保住：主人公もヒロインも色々抱えているんですが、その中で恋愛を進めていくことで、物語が進んでいく。その辺りが上手く描けた作品だと思います。ここまでド直球の恋愛作品って、当時中々作れなかったと思うんです。そこに挑戦してくれたぱれっとさんには感謝していますね。

I have played Mashiro-iro Symphony and was impressed with how it put romance at the forefront of Hozumi Kei's routes, even if it wasn't exactly to my taste.

In the end I simply wish for people to embrace love more. Embracing your own love is knowing yourself as best as you can and aiming to find it in the world. Embracing love from the world is acknowledging that many different forms of love exist and there is always exciting new frontiers to be found out there. Embracing the nature of romance is understanding love's great capacity and the way it interacts with the self.

Romanticism is realizing love is a terrifying force, and it is up to the self to give it context in our everyday lives.

ロマンチストなので。

~Bonus Corner~

What are some works I feel exemplify the things I talk about in this post?

I will say everything mentioned in the Sakura no Toki post counts and with the new knowledge in this post let us reexamine this equation:

時間経過(=連続性があること) + ロマン = 刻

Why do I feel ロマン from Sakutoki? Because the love of art is etched into every facet of this work. Through the music, backgrounds, characters, and the various art pieces in the game, art is attacked and affirmed from different angles all in service of the overflowing pathos associated with both creation and consumption. In this regard I like Toki more than Uta.

On a pure ロマン front I consider the Tears to Tiara series to be the pinnacle of it, as evidenced by the fact I made this blog at first to post about it. Marui Takeshi's other works also excel at the element of ロマン as well as Shumon Yuu in Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo Yori mo,. Years back I changed my VNDB comment for that game to "わかってるなぁ" without really knowing why but the mystery is now solved. I'll get around to his other games someday!!

In the romance department, you know me, I will say Mitsumei. Shipping is a bit more complicated than what I wrote above since depending on how much is actually in the original work there is a lot more imagination required. But the fact that Edgeworth and Franziska have such a relationship that is barely touched upon in official media have led to me thinking about it more than most of the naysayers so I will say what I most want to see of them in official media is them having a heart to heart conversation to further my thoughts. 支離滅裂な思考・発言

Back to the topic at hand I greatly enjoyed ISLAND as a romantic work which really does seem like a rarity amongst the debates I've seen about the science fiction parts of the game. I have wrote about Hakuchuumu no Aojashin before and that is probably the stronger recommendation between the two here. Astraythem was a surprise for me last year in how the time travel plot elevates the themes of love presented in the game and not just for the main relationship. For anime Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: First Kiss wa Owaranai, the latest installment of the series is good for its deliberation of romantic feelings to an extent not seen in most other media. It was kind of funny seeing reactions to it praising that aspect as a novelty when I think about it every day with Mitsumei but that's another story. Need season 4...

I must include a special shout out in this post to Eris from Princess Connect! Re:Dive who kind of destroyed my brain during the game's 6th anniversary event earlier this year.

Eris (CV: Kuwashima Houko) is functionally a clone/copy of one of the main characters Yui (CV: Taneda Risa) who after the events of the previous game (the Ameba soshage) was forced to watch the protagonist loop while stuck in the VR game world countless times with the reset occurring when either the protagonist or Yui died. Of course Yui and by extension Eris hold romantic feelings for the protagonist so watching so many loops gradually destroyed her sanity levels to dust to the point where the only thing she desires is a world with just her and the protagonist. Honestly during this part of the story in the game, I had a passing interest in her but not much in the grand scheme of things since that part felt like a slog to get through while it was updating. In the end Eris disappears after a confrontation between her and Yui.

This event brings proper closure to that plotline while also further establishing Yui and Eris's feelings for the protagonist. This event blew me away because Priconne is a mobile game where a lot of the characters have romantic feelings for the protagonist. But these always felt more like trappings due to being the kind of game where you raise your bond levels with girls like some kind of romance game. Of course it is not a romance game and there are no big depictions (not yet...) except for Yui and that is mainly one-sided since the protagonist is not forward at all in the love department. Even then I felt that Yui's feelings were more of a plot device as they caused Re:Dive to happen and she is too shy to do anything most of the time. That's why seeing Yui and Eris going at each other like a catfight in this event felt like a light from the heavens. The two finally felt like realized characters with romantic feelings instead of two bishoujo with the word "love" stuck to them. Kuwashima Houko's ability to express Eris's pain, longing, bitterness, and faint hope was stunning. You really feel that the weight of her feelings has engulfed her to the point of no return and the event works on processing them in a world where she was not given the mercy of complete death. God please let Eris win. Eris reappeared in the main story in this month's update let's fucking gooooooo.

Lastly, the manga panel from the header image of this post is 恋は忍耐 which I found completely by chance when I saw it had an Ikuhara Kunihiko (Mawaru Penguindrum director) recommendation on the obi. After reading the first chapter online and impulsively buying the first volume on Bookwalker I can understand why. If I hadn't seen that panel I don't know if I would have had the energy to write this post so quickly. Looking forward to the next volumes!

[savoryangel]

geez, that's painful but checks out. being asian in the 80s was tough

lots of east asians have tan/olive skin!!! just because pale skin is the beauty ideal and is what's most depicted in east asian media, doesn't mean that all east asians are naturally fair-skinned. omg how are you gonna make someone named "lou jitsu/yoshi" blonde?? that is so crazy 😨

lou jitsu's fully fluent in english wtf! and his ethnic accent is wonderful and doesn't need to be hidden

how was lou jitsu replaced with a white man??? who was he? don't tell me that white man did yellowface

media where an asian man is 1.) the lead—not a supporting character and 2.) a hero are important because they're not roles given to asian men in amercia. you'd think it'd be appreciated rep. i also wonder if lou jitsu's films had romance in them as asian men are typically viewed/portrayed as being the bottom of the dating pool and are desexualized in america, unlike asian women. this was EVEN MORE prevelant in the 70s and 80s and 90s. it'd be great for lou jitsu to challenge that bias

yeah! I’m glad they tackle on the treatment on bipoc actors in the film industry, it feels accurate and still goes on today with other influential people !! I KNOWWWW IT WAS BAFFLING SEEING HIM BLONDE LIKE HOW DID YOU FUCK UP THAT BAD?? 😨 ANNDD YESSSS,, there was no need of his voice to be dubbed over he speaks English VERY FLUENTLY,,,, and his voice is very lovely as it is <3

To answer your question he was replaced 2 times!! (I just remembered about the storyboard I’m gonna mention rn😭 ) so there was gonna be a reboot of Lou Jitsu based on this storyboard panel that was scrapped. There isn’t much info about who was gonna be casted but it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth that he gets replaced while he’s missing???

Yoshi used to have many dojos around New York but after his disappearance, it has been taken over by his rivel actor Khristoff Van Branford who happens to white. He views Yoshi to be irrelevant, a “scene-stealer” and a “whiny bellyacher” whatever that means. It may be out of jealousy of how successful he was. Tho he hasn’t done any raunchy things rather than just him taking over his dojos and his past with him feel,, racially motivated.

I’m not entirely sure if there was any romance in his films since most of films are mentioned by the name or just show a small fight scene. Though he did HAVE SEVERAL EXES during his career if that counts but we don’t know much about them except for big mama. He did co-star with Tang Shen who happened to be Yoshi’s love interest in other interactions in tmnt but it’s unknown what relation status rather than acquaintances in rise since she’s only shown once

I hope that answers all anon !! <3 I’ll get to the next question

[unohanabbygirl]

I think there must be some portrayals that are overly idealized. My guess is Harwin, because there are no descriptions of him in the books but everyone must have come to the consensus that "damn he must have been too handsome for the crown princess to risk everything and have three kids with him, or if the rumors were false he must have been even more so for people to make a rumour" and of course the classic forbidden romance of the knight and his princess.

Some historians are like Rhaenyra and Harwin WALKED so that the romance of the dragonkinght and Queen Naerys could RUUNNN.

For those who haven't read the books, have an idea, in all family trees and official records the boys were registered as Leanor's children, but Daeron II? If you look at the books that exists in the universe,THE KING is registred as son of Aemon the dragonkinght (probally), the whole kingdom shipped them so much.😭😭😭

Daemon too (This is more of an ode to GRRM because he's such a Daemon fanboy).

The general public has long since came to the conclusion that Harwin was a hybrid mix of prince charming (despite not actually being a prince) and the world’s sexiest man. I mean, why else would Rhaenyra risk everything by being in a relationship with him.

Many people (specifically young girls) fawn over their affair to the point where media depicts it as being perfect. As you said it’s the ideal forbidden love trope, so people are going to romanticize the shit out of it. Though Rhaenyra and Harwin love the movies made about them, they can’t help but roll their eyes sometimes because things between them were the furthest from being perfect.

There was jealousy, insecurity, fights and everything in between just like any other couple. Given their circumstances its understandable why. But none of those possibilities are looked into from the outside. In a way in makes them feel as though they aren’t being looked at as human beings who once went through life, just words on a script.

And don’t get me started on Naerys and Aemon!

Naerys and Aemon’s romance is seen as even more tragic than Rhae and Harwin’s because AT LEAST Laenor was happy for Rhae to have found love with Harwin while he did his own thing on the side. Still happily claimed the boys as his own and all. With these two its a more tragic affair.

Naerys, A shy girl who was unwell most her young life and married off to her awful brother. Forced into bed with a cruel man who would never allow her the joy of secret love while he himself slept around with many. Aemon, the brother who she was stuck to by the hip joining the kingsguard so he may always be by her side in some way.

There’s a movie about them from the early 90’s which is basically on the same level as the notebook and Titanic. Just any romance film thats overall loved.

Luke loves it but he never watches it often because Naerys death scene makes him cry 🥹

[mistprints]

Young People aren't as Interested in seeing Sex On-screen like Older Generations (and that isn't a bad thing)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOCBjXWy6e8&ab_channel=TheYoungTurks

Saw this breakdown of study recently that just made my blood boil.

The hosts of the normally progressive and supportive (disappointingly less so as of this past year) TYT news channel started going in about how Gen Z are lonely and all hate sex. The study they are talking about was about how Gen Z prefers to see platonic friendships and found-family stories in their movies and shows now. Nothing wrong with that, as I myself also love those stories. Romance is not the only direction a relationship between two people the same age and unrelated can take in movies. But they went on to have a close-minded discussion, tying in the facts of Gen Z being a lonely generation, which, on it's own, is true. We aren't as connected despite having the internet making us more connected than ever. But these are not correlated by causation.

Some of the oldest of gen Z are in their mid-20s. It isn't a lack of experience or loneliness to blame for people being disinterested in only sex. I think it's very mature to want more out of life: more types of relationships being shown than the end-all being just romantic love and nothing more. Plenty of people are romantic but not sexual as well. I think that's pretty sad if your only way to connect and be loved is by a lover and no one else. But i guess it just shows how much men of older generations lacked in connections with other men because of fears they'd be perceived as gay and how society pressures all people to think all friendships between people the same age must turn romantic or it's a failure. What a sad way to live. I'd love a life filled with close friends hanging out and enjoying life. That is far from lonely. It isn't even a new concept, despite media depicting otherwise to push a certain "ideal" into our heads. Even a TV show called "friends" has them pairing off and romantic relationships blooming, which again, not a bad thing. But weird how we perceive it as inevitable.

I'm disappointed in TYT "progressive" media for implying such a shallow look at the issue. How can anyone be healthily happy while their happiness is chained to only one other person? Shouldn't we all have a broader support system and connection? Romantic stories are not the only stories to tell and not having that aspect in a movie doesn't take away from that. (recent movies have actually been embracing this more. See: The Barbie Movie (2023) or Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) for examples where the main character does not end up with anyone at the end)

We just want more variety in our stories, it's not that we are all sex-aversed hermits. It's just not the only thing nor as important to us, unlike older generations seem to be so starved and addicted to since it's the only way for you to feel something, apparently. Because you have no other connections that are emotionally fulfilling for you. You don't allow it for yourselves. And then you laugh because the younger generations can see past it and want a deeper kinship than that. You can have unrealistic, loveless sex as your standard for entertainment if you want. But don't pretend it's not weirdly deprived to get hard watching actors do it in the theater.

Romance has it's place and can be a lovely thing to experience if that is what you want for yourself or even just to see it as part of a story you watch. It just does not have to be the only thing, and people deserve to see what they want and could have that is not only this. You can have a wonderful relationship with someone in your life as a friend and it's amazing if you are able to retain that for a long time. You don't have to pursue more. Sometimes your family is a group of your closest friends. Society doesn't have structure to support that, as they are incentivized to want people to marry off and have children. But this is your own life and you get to pick what you do with that.

[onewomancitadel]

Sorry I keep my blog mostly to fandom nonsense but this does sort of speak a little to writing about depicting relationships so like whatever... anyway saw this ostensible anti-capitalist call all relationships transactional by nature (and is a good thing) and it made me laugh but in a really sad way. It's true that you need fundamental values that you can ground your beliefs in so you're not just randomly buying into whatever the algorithm or some nonsense clickbait is selling you lol.

Relationships aren't transactional, they're only transactional when someone is using you that way... it's a poisonous conception of a relationship and it's worth considering whether people view you that way but certainly not universalising about the absolute ideal model of a relationship.

I don't really know how much this fracture speaks to the inability for people to understand storytelling isn't an in-out transaction and the same is especially true for romance... like treating relationships in media as just the equivalent of figuring out the best household appliance on the market, or even the same conception of personal relationships, like nonsense pseudo-deep 'the only reason you're with the person you are now is chance, you could fall in love with anyone so it doesn't really matter' lol k I'm sick of absurdists universalising their belief systems. I hate when those 'the universe means nothing so make a difference!' posts go around like I know you guys think you're freeing yourselves from religion but you're universalising your beliefs in a way that suggests you are really really not lol.

On this webbed site or indeed other webbed sites people will make the same kind of nonsense cynical claims about romance and ideals in fiction like 'nothing happens for a reason these characters could be with anyone' and I have to wonder if it's all connected? Like is there genuinely some social shift into absurdism (and relatedly nihilism) which is impacting the way people relate to stories and other people? Because sometimes I feel like it transcends media criticism and the type of commentary that's valued online and it's speaking to something more fundamental in peoples' attitudes, and I wonder if a whole system of anxiety (nothing matters/everything matters to an extreme degree of toxic anti/purity culture!!!!) is operating here lol.

Sometimes I feel like the whole 'things that happen in story matters in an intelligible logical way' is like a microcosmic argument I have with absurdism asserting itself as like the ultimate philosophical discourse which is uninteresting and boring but like whatever. I feel like it can be a really silly move to relate the way people personally relate to each other to the way they engage with fiction because it's not 1:1 but it's hard not to when fandom politics are entangled with shifting politics and manners of relation online.

Anyway I didn't quite know how annoyed I was to see 'relationships are transactional' asserted so unironically. The whole point of romantic relationships, friendships, and family is that they're about human connection and vulnerability. They can't be summarised in an easy way because they're like the root of how you interact with the world from when you're born, whether or not you continue to cultivate those relationships or whether or not there wasn't the sufficient presence of them... they're not a transaction because you can't buy them and because you don't need to, they're something that you put effort and care into which turns into something really special worth more than anything? I don't get tired or annoyed helping my friends, it brings me joy? That joy is not self-serving?

You can see how it relates back to what I write about on here because like... the complex relationships that people have with each other is something you can never really exhaustively describe. It's a never-ending font of intrigue and magic.

[prettyboykatsuki]

What is an example of your view on heteronormative romance please?

what is the tone of this.. dskjddsk

there's not really a particular depiction that im modeling this after. being socialized a woman always came with a particular set of things i was supposed to want out of my romantic relationships, ideally with cis men. they're not things i can ever understand because ive never been straight and my entire perspective on love and relationships is deeply shaded by that fact.

it's not something i can easily pinpoint or describe other than feeling of isolation i experienced by not wanting things that other people i knew wanted. not personally understanding the social romantic norms that came explicitly with being a girl who liked boys. because i wasnt a girl who liked boys.

i didn't particularly care about height, or about being pursued or about money. and on an individual level, plenty of straight women don't care either im sure. heteronormativity and it's appearance in books, movie, media, songs is very general. it exists on a macro level and effects everyone in different ways. there are expectations for what constitutes a 'normal relationship' - going outside of this at all can be detrimental to social status because it breaks norms. but like when talking about any norms, your awareness (or hyperawareness) of them can be greatly effect by how much you break them.

there is a specific dichotomy formed in straight relationships defined by gender roles that people are expected to want or follow. and anyone who doesn't experience those things can face a degree of social backlash, regardless of their sexuality or identity.

but for me and other queer people, heteronormativity is inherently isolating because i can't mold myself to it even i wanted to. not being straight isolates you from these expectations even if you desperately try to mold to them, which is why the concept of straight passing is ridiculous.

it's not really something that can be easily understood without lived experience to some degree. i can try and explain it all day long but if you've never experienced that kind of alienation - it might be difficult to pinpoint what exactly im talking about