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crooked-wasteland · 11 months

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The Toxic Romance of Fizz/Ozzie

I have gotten an ask in regards to depictions of abuse in Helluva Boss and there is obviously much to say on the topic. Many others have gone over and criticized the show for its poor examples of abuse, however I believe a greater problem exists on the flip side of that topic. Hand in hand with abusive relationships, the show has crafted romantic ones that are just as damaging to the young adult audience this show appeals to. Just as some say that poor representation of abuse and abusers puts people at risk of becoming victims, so too does the poor representation of love and romance turn into a quagmire of unhealthy codependency that sets unrealistic standards for relationships and people that are inevitably going to become toxic when removed from fantasy.

It is one of the few reasons why I insist that Helluva Boss is not a show targeting adults, as it does not appeal to mature individuals with any true life experience. Overwhelmingly striking a chord with the stunted, socially disabled adult minority, or the emotionally volatile demographic of early twenty-something teenagers who have yet had the experience in life to identify harmful relationships or the biological maturity of their brains to reason outside their emotions, who make up the majority. It feeds off the sense of victimization that both of these groups harbor towards reality and requires a fantastical disconnection of such to engage with authentically.

That is not to say this is an attack on that group. As seen before with the meteoric rise of damaging media like “50 Shades of Grey”, it is not fair to claim no one can authentically interact and enjoy the material at presentation. Identically it is not proper to claim that individuals who enjoy this sort of media for what it is are somehow of subpar intellect. However, it is more fair to recognize that many who did see “50 Shades” as a romantic tale often ended up in abusive relationships when seeking out that “ideal” they believed the book portrayed. Many individuals who wandered into the kink scene looking for their own Christian Grey found exactly that as they were manipulated, controlled and taken advantage of by unsavory individuals. As such, this is not to say that media of this sort should not exist or be banned, but that coherent and concise criticism is necessary for these topics to keep people from reenacting unhealthy and toxic relationships.

In the words of Youtuber Swoop, “It’s not drama, it’s dangerous.” I feel it rings true here and for artistic media in general. It’s not just fiction, and it can have a real world impact on people, relationships and lives.

I covered over some of the issues with Stolitz in a previous post found *HERE*, but for this breakdown of harmful depictions of relationship dynamics, I’m going to be focusing on FizzaRolli and Asmodeus. The reason being, this is a textbook codependent relationship that is portrayed as an ideal through the narrative, and it is rather alarming to witness the way the fandom fawns over it. As I previously pointed out in *THIS* post, the issue with the Fizz/Ozzie relationship in the special episode is that the story conflict is FizzaRolli’s codependent nature on Mammon not being corrected, but rather redirected to being purely codependent on Asmodeus. I have legitimately seen it argued that because the characters are happy in their relationship, then the codependency is just love, which is why this essay is being written in the first place. This is direct evidence of a harmful and unhealthy dynamic being sold to an impressionable and immature audience to their own detriment.

According to PsycheCentral, codependent traits can be broken up into cognitive (how you think), emotional (how you feel), and behavioral (how you act).

Cognitive traits of Codependency are that the individual has difficulty identifying their own opinions from another person’s, primarily the target of the codependency. This means the individual will often conform themselves implicitly to the beliefs of their target. They lack a stable sense of self and attach to their target in a way to ground them psychologically. Additionally, they struggle to identify or express their needs because of this lack of identity. And it should be made clear that the lack of identity does not mean that they see themselves as an extension of the other person, but are highly changeable and lack any core sense of who they are or what they believe in. Their self image is so volatile that the act of codependency is a maladaptive coping skill to find some form of stability in another person. This also extends into a form of mirroring; taking on the desires of those around you as your own.

The episode makes it very obvious how FizzaRolli is codependent on Mammon because it is seen in the negative lens it is expected to be. FizzaRolli’s opinions and beliefs are mirrored images of Mammon’s greedy philosophy. Being the best with all the money and fame is what Mammon has instilled in Fizz’s core, and from the jump Fizzarolli expresses these values as his own. FizzaRolli doesn’t communicate with Mammon out of a sense of fear and often shelves his own feelings and desires to accommodate the King of Greed. These are obvious and I am sure everyone can easily identify them in the dynamic.

However, these are identical to FizzaRolli’s dynamic with Asmodeus. At the end of the episode when Ozzie and Fizz have their minute in the greenroom, Fizz consistently fails to communicate with Ozzie about his needs or desires. In context of the episode’s opening, FizzaRolli is able to easily lie to Asmodeus as to why he is participating in the pageant. It is never established that Fizzarolli is expected to participate, additionally his job with Ozzie would make his need to be hired by Mammon obsolete, let alone their relationship. So it appears to be solely Fizz’s choice as to why this episode occurred in the first place. It is obvious that Fizz feels out of control and overwhelmed about this situation, but he believes Ozzie would want him to participate because he would “lose him” otherwise.

Which means FizzaRolli believes his participation in the pageant is also what Ozzie actually wants, seen when he says “You’re with me because of who I am at my best!” And FizzaRolli is so entrenched in that belief that he imposes it on his partner despite Asmodeus clearly stating he would wish Fizz wouldn’t go. FizzaRolli’s decisions and thoughts are just as entirely embedded in the thoughts, opinions and desires of Ozzie, if not more, than Mammon. Just because Asmodeus’ cognitive priority is Fizz does not change the toxic codependency that this cycle is rooted in. It could be argued that because Ozzie rejecting FizzaRolli’s belief at the end of the episode allows Fizz the freedom to quit, it is only because of Fizz’s belief that Ozzie wanted him in the pageant, not Mammon, is why he ever forced himself to go in the first place.

Emotional traits of Codependency can be broken down into a single feeling: Fear. The difficulty of saying “no” due to a fear of rejection or abandonment. A fear of not being accepted, loved or supported. Feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem are all intrinsically tied to a codependent dynamic. This results in the individual giving of themselves beyond their own boundaries in order to appease their target and maintain a sense of value to that person.

Again, this is clear in FizzaRolli’s dynamic with Mammon. He never asserts himself in any way regardless of how uncomfortable he feels while simultaneously pushing the limits of his own mental and emotional health to the point of resentment. He attributes everything he is and has to Mammon, highlighting his utter lack of self-esteem. Additionally, the episode goes out of its way to show Fizz feeling inadequate in direct contrast to the competition.

This inadequacy goes deeper still, however, when presented with the Fizz/Ozzie dynamic because FizzaRolli believes he is unworthy of his relationship with Ozzie as a fundamental basis. He says, “I’m barely worthy of working with a King of Sin … Without all this, I’m just nothing.” And it isn’t FizzaRolli who finds value in himself. He spills himself out to Asmodeus, leaving himself vulnerable and empty, and instead of seeing his own value, it is Ozzie who fills him up. He originally places his value in his work. His fame and abilities are what his entire sense of self-worth is hinged on, which gets replaced by another external source that FizzaRolli arguably has less impact on One could argue that while unhealthy, FizzaRolli has a direct input in his work and thus feeds his self-esteem through his own merit. The solution to that problem is to give up all control and ownership of his emotional state for it to be regulated and maintained entirely by Ozzie. One could reasonably say that the solution to this episode’s conflict was for Fizz to actually become less of a whole person to find happiness.

And then there are the behavioral traits. Keeping in mind the emotional motivation behind all behavior is fear, the individual may take on more responsibility than they can handle or are not even their responsibility in the first place; pressuring themselves to support their target, getting caught up in the other person’s matters, or even “rescuing” them from their hardships. They tend to overshare, lack boundaries and are constantly seeking external validation and approval.

For this one, I’m skipping the Mammon comparison entirely because I feel the situation is self-evident. Instead I am going to pivot slightly to add onto this thought:

In the PsycheCentral article, licensed marriage therapist Kate Engler says, “All codependent people are people pleasers, but not all people pleasers are codependent.” She proceeds to expand this point by explaining how Codependency is a more extreme form of people-pleasing due to its mutual nature. When two people are in a true codependent dynamic, neither party can function without the other one.

That is to say, Asmodeus is also codependent on FizzaRolli.

Ozzie does not express his codependency in such a way that feels so textbook in comparison due to his social superiority, however, we see in Oops how codependent Asmodeus is on FizzaRolli to regulate and maintain his own emotional state. Ozzie is so incapable of functioning without Fizz that, if not for Stolas, he would have immediately signed away all his factories and even resulted in the death of his partner. He doesn’t make decisions based on his own values, but denies Stolas a crystal due to his partner’s wants and desires. Asmodeus’ proud announcement of doing so, as well, shows a degree of approval seeking. Being so pleased with himself on the belief that he did what his partner would have wanted him to do, and openly seeking validation for that decision as well. He lacks any sense of self outside of elevating FizzaRolli and Fizz lacks any sense of self outside of Ozzie’s approval.

The sole reason this relationship even seems to be healthy is because of the fact that Ozzie has no character outside of being in love with FizzaRolli. The unrealistic nature of a whole other human having no will, desire, or purpose outside of being in love with you is unrealistic and unhealthy. It is predicated on a belief that another person will make one "complete", placing the responsibility of your existence as a person on another and believing that is love. It is handing someone a gun to aim at your head, but its okay because they will never pull the trigger. If Asmodeus had any sense of his own identity, he would inevitably cause immense emotional and psychological harm to Fizz, and the only saving grace is that he is poorly written.

The result is that FizzaRolli and Asmodeus depict a fundamentally toxic dynamic being depicted as mutual support and love. It is a demented ideal of what a healthy relationship should look like that is actively poisoning the concept of relationships for an entire demographic of young people. It reaffirms anxious attachment styles that a concerning majority of the fandom embody, fundamentally dooming a percentage of those individuals to replicate this rotten cycle in their own reality. Regardless of how few people ended up abused following their romanticization of 50 Shades of Grey, the fact that even a single person ended up in that position due to a piece of media is too many. As such, I feel it is beyond necessary to denounce the “most wholesome” relationship of Helluva Boss for the dysfunction it actually is.

#helluva boss critique #helluva boss critical #helluva boss criticism #vivienne medrano #vivziepop #helluva boss #spindlehorse critical #spindlehorse criticism #romance in fiction #long post #critical thinking #critical essay #in this essay i will #fizzmodeus #fizzarozzie #codependency

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ineffable-opinions · 2 months

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BL: Romancing in a Bubble?

As always, please let me know if you have suggestions, critiques, comments or corrections.

I will only be discussing BL broadly (here I use BL as an umbrella term) and not just live action. I don’t want to club together BL and GL since in spite of their shared roots they are very different in their genre conventions, target demographics, and history. Also, I am not very familiar with it.

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I consider BL a genre in itself – practically well as the way Masala is a cinema genre.

Please check the content/trigger warnings before diving into the works I have mentioned below. Feel free to message or ask.

BL / romance

I don’t think BL is romance or even a sub-genre of romance. A lot of BL is romance. Many more of them have at least a romantic side to them. There is enough overlap between those genres to give the impression that BL is romance. (I remember the discussion Killing Stalking had prompted.)

But there are plenty of BL devoid of romance. Like One Room Angel, Social Reform Season, and The Orc Bride. Similarly, BL is not exactly a porn sub-genre even though there are plenty of ero-BL.

Also, there are plenty of BL where romance takes backseat such as The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, Blue Morning, Brother, Lawless Gangster and Thousand Autumns.

BL / queer

Queer – Can I call it a genre the way I call BL a genre? Even if one were to ignore queer as method in academia, it is still so complex.

Let me quote Taiwanese tongzhi (queer) author Chiang-Sheng Kuo:

[W]hat exactly is queer literature? Is it queer literature if queer people like to read it, or is it only queer literature if there are queer characters in the books? Or is it an appendage of the queer movement? If a queer author writes a book without queer characters, does that represent a certain aspect of queer culture?

(You can find the whole interview here.)

I think the problem persist even when I think of queer as a label.

Then there is the issue with conception of “queerness” itself. Like, in a way it is a limiting term. Is it fair to call normative or customary male-male erotic practices such as masti and Launda Naach, “queer” just because that’s how it is perceived elsewhere now?

To quote what Kaustav Bakshi wrote in Writing the LGBTIHQ+ movement in Bangla:

In the last decade, the question of decolonizing queer epistemologies was being raised periodically, whereby queer politics, despite having a shared agenda of toppling heteronormativity, and queer culture, albeit having a shared aesthetics, became more and more regionalist – not in a negative sense – but, with implications of difference, which can be interpreted and understood only when one subjectively experiences the ‘region’ with respect to gender, class, caste, ethnicity, physical and intellectual ability, access to education, metropolitan cultures, and most importantly, the internet.

[T]he attraction towards the launda is not understood as ‘queer’ – non-normative or out of the ordinary – but, as an integral part of sexual life, which is not always compulsively alert to the heterosexual-homosexual binary.

Imo, decolonizing queer epistemologies comes in handy when discussing BL since there are plenty of BL dealing with:

Historical BL set in eras and locations that had customary male-male sexualities and practices.

BL with special settings, like omegaverse, with different (if any) idea of queerness.

BL / other queer content

Just as Japan has gei-comi, and other manga like Shoujo Manga Artist Minamoto-San Comes Out, and Kieta Hatsukoi (shoujo), What Did You Eat Yesterday and My Brother's Husband (seinen) beside BL manga, different countries offer diversity in queer content with noticeable overlap. But clubbing them together would not be easy. Moreover, this diversity is as much cross-sectional as it is temporal (tanbi, JUNE, shonen ai, yaoi, BL in Japan).

BL the main difference between BL and other queer genres is BL’s focus on moe (affect). Anyway, BL predates LGBTQ+ acronym. It predates de-pathologization of homosexuality in many BL creating regions. Fu-people (BL fans) were creating BL before mainstream media started representing queer people in media. Fu-people battled state and its censors everywhere along with queer people. Live action BL is commercialized and we get mostly feel-good content. But that is capitalism (and the State) reaping the dividends of decades of fu-people’s labor of love.

I wonder if it is apt to consider BL the way western queer shows (such Verbotene Liebe, Queer as Folks, Os Nossos Dias and SKAM) as benchmark when discussing BL? Won’t it be better to evaluate consider BL in relation to local non-BL queer content in BL producing countries? But then, there are BL inspired by western queer culture such as Partners by Tamaki Yura.

Here are three gei-comi that I recommend for BL audience, through which they can get an insight into non-BL queer manga from Japan (created with androphilic men as target audience) :

Fire Code by Ichikawa Kazuhide

Fisherman's Lodge by Gengoroh Tagame

Coming Home by Go Fujimoto

Here is my BL versus gei-comi list which I think highlights their differences and similarities (I have included only Gengoroh Tagame’s works since they are probably the easiest to access/buy/borrow):

Do You Remember South Island P.O.W. Camp? by Gengoroh Tagame || Hitori de Yoru wa Koerarenai by Matsumoto Yoh

Arena by Gengoroh Tagame || Jinx by Mingwa

Cretian Cow by Gengoroh Tagame || The Orc Bride by Madobuchiya (Nishin)

Uo to Mizu by Gengoroh Tagame || Terpenoid by Okadaya Tetuzoh

My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame || The Story of My Brother by Ike Reibun

There is lot of overlap between BL and gei-comi. Gengoroh Tagame first published in JUNE (a magazine that contributed to BL we know now). There are magazines and anthologies (Nikutaiha BL) that offer crossover between different streams of queer content.

Similarly, there are danmei (Chinese BL) novel written by queer men such as the autobiographical works: Six Records of a Floating Life and Waiting Until 35 Years Old by NanKang BaiQi and Bei Cheng Tian Jie (北城天街) by FeiTian YeXiang.

BL / Queerness - exploration and conflict

Here are some live action BL (I’m not including some of the more famous ones like TharnType and Wedding Plan) where plot is rooted in character’s queerness and its exploration or implications:

Lan Yu – first danmei to get live action adaptation. The central conflict is rooted in the queerness of its characters, particularly Chen HanDong.

A Round Trip to Love and Irresistible Love – based on danmei by Lan Lin. These are part of a shared universe. The former has both ‘coming out’ (Cheng Yichen) and ‘leaving home’ (Lu Feng). In the latter, all the conflict is rooted in compulsory heterosexuality and we get the perspective of not only an amphiphilic (bisexual) man (Xie Yan) but also an amphiphilic woman (Xia Jun) of the same social class.

Boys Love: The Movie

No Touching At All (2014)

Udagawachou de Matteteyo (2015)

The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese

Sing in Love (2022) – Queerness is part of the main conflict.

Mood Indigo

Life: Senjou no Bokura

Light on Me

I don’t keep track of these things usually, so this is based off memory.

In Japan, most BL has dealt with the struggles of being queer in a largely heterosexist society since the days of tanbi and shonen-ai (such as Zankoku Na Kami Ga Shihai Suru by Hagio Moto). JUNE gained notoriety for focusing on it and yaoi boom was movement away from that. Then yaoi gained notoriety for existing in a bubble. When BL started to treat heterosexism in society as a part of the narrative, it garnered praise for being ‘transformative’.

BL has managed to carry within it different modes of identity and queerness.

Take Okane ga Nai (No Money) by Hitoyo Shinozaki and Toru Kousaka for example.

It is often held up as the epitome of all that is wrong with BL (or yaoi as anglophone fandom calls it). What’s less talked about is the main character, Ayase Yukiya’s queer angst and his exploration of identity that spans several volumes of the manga series. Kano on the other hand doesn’t struggle with his identity at all since his attraction to Ayase is driven by a very strong, initially unreciprocated emotional connection dependency (formed when his father died and he was at his lowest). For him, sexuality is merely a form of expression of his attraction for Ayase. Therefore, it does not inform his identity in anyway.

Within cannon, Someya and Honda’s pairing offer contrast to Ayase and Kano’s pairing. In a way, Kano and Someya have post-queer and pre-queer identities, respectively. Someya is a self-actualized person who mentors other queer characters (club staff, Ayase, Honda, Kano). There is a lot of give and take that happens between Ayase and all the queer people he meets at Someya’s club. Ayase's and Honda’s struggles with identity and sexuality are juxtaposed with Kano's and Someya's self-assured disposition.

That is also why I don’t think I Told Sunset About You stands out much. It can easily fit into the BL fold because there are plenty of BL that approached the same theme as I Told Sunset About You in a similar fashion (including these live action BL: His - Koisuru Tsumori Nante Nakatta, Life: Senjou no Bokura and The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese).

I recommend the danmei novel Sissy by Shui QianCheng, the author of the works Beloved Enemy, My Stand-In and Meet You at the Blossom are based on, for a more detailed exploration of heterosexism, including femmephobia and homophobia.

Sissy, Beloved Enemy and Professional Body Double (the novel My Stand-in is based on) are all part of 188 group (a shared universe of novels).

There are plenty of other BL from other region that are focus on themes such as heterosexism and compulsory heterosexuality. Here is such a one-shot: Romantic by Motoni Modoru (part of the anthology Tanbishugi).

BL / terms

I like BL and associated terms like danmei because of the culture and the history associated with those terms. Tanbi and danmei are different readings of same characters 耽美 but they represent very different things. Shonen-ai literally translate to boy(s) love but that term (or BRM (boys’ romantic manga) as Emiko Nozawa puts it) carries within it so much history and specific artistic styles and sensibilities. Waai is derived from yaoi/yuri but there are fu-cultural processes, very different from that of yaoi creation, behind the production of Y-novels. I learned a lot from exploring these words alone.

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yukidragon · 2 years

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Just wondering, in terms of the Sunny Time Crew Show, we know who’s Jack, but who are the other characters and what were their respective roles? Where can we find more information on what the TV show itself was about?

I’m afraid our clues so far are pretty limited. What we’ve been able to scrape together so far is some of the teaser tweets and the artwork Sauce made of the cast, one of which is used for official merchandise.

As always whenever I include some of the official publicly posted artwork for the series, I want to give full credit to Sauce for drawing it. They put a lot of hard work into this and deserve to be credited.

Remember, don’t repost the privately posted images from the SnaccPop Patreon. Let’s give our full support to Sauce and the team where we can, okay?

We know the names of the rest of the cast members thanks to a map of Cloudy Town. There were big, big plans, according to this map.

Starting us off is the star of the show, Sunny Day Jack, the main man himself. Even on the map, his school house is right there at the top, drawing immediate attention. It’s in his signature primary colors, though the print shown is worn with washed out colors.

Luckily, Sauce was kind enough to post a version of the map on their twitter that didn’t go through the aging process. Since the twitter is gone, allow me to show it here.

Directly from the school house is Knackadan Drizzle’s field. Quite the name, huh? It’s a pretty sporty place, fitting for a sports themed clown... or rather a coach themed clown?

While nothing has been confirmed for certain, it looks like Knackadan Drizzle was responsible for the lessons on the show that related to sports, likely also teamwork and cooperation as well. Fittingly, he is colored in shades of green and yellow like his field. I imagine even his green mustache might be something of a nod to the green grass on the field.

The playground isn’t associated with any one person, but right next to it is Daisy Chain Jane’s Joke Shop. Like Jack’s school, the joke shop sports primary colors, similar to Jane’s design.

Now Daisy Chain Jane is a pretty interesting character. Those who remember this post I made about the SunnyTime Town AU might recall that Daisy Chain Jane is a character exclusive to that AU rather than the fictional world of the show.

Then again, Buddy existed in the show as a belt puppet that apparently could talk, so it’s possible that Jane might exist in the show’s canon as well.

My guess is that there were plans to have her character introduced during the next season as Jack’s big sister. After all, the map itself was posted with the caption that there were big plans. Jack’s murder certainly scrapped any future for the SunnyTime Crew Show... at least 40 years ago.

Next we have Rory Rainberry’s Bakery in shades of purple, pink, orange, and red. Some of you might know his actor Jean Laurent, but the character he plays seems to be a lot more wholesome than this candid shot.

As suggested by this picture and the map, Rory is a baker. I’m sure he teaches kids about nutrition, staying healthy, eating sweets in moderation, and maybe a few simple cooking recipes they can do at home like putting peanut butter onto celery.

Finally we have Cloudy-Belle Sue and her white, pink, and pastel blue library. Sadly, we don’t have a picture of her alone, but I suspect that she was in charge of story time with the children, likely using fables to teach important lessons that are outside the scope of the more grounded parts of the show.

Overall, the show seems to have been aimed at young children, teaching life lessons in a way they can digest easily, with cheerful clowns in bright colors acting as both their teachers and friends. CloudyTown was meant to be a place of fun and learning. It’s hard to say for sure what the age range of its target demographic was exactly, but I’m sure we’ll find out in the game’s full release when we get a look into the backstory of the show.

I will point out though for those who might not have caught it - the colors of each character’s locations seem to correspond with the main colors in the characters’ clothes and hair. The main colors of the show, as shown by the logo and at the bottom of the map, seems to make it clear that Jack was always intended to be the main character, no matter what he says that there is no leader of the crew during the interview.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars

#Sunny Day Jack #Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack #SunnyDayJack #sdj #swwsdj #Headcanon Ramblings #Ask #Sauce-y Art

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olderthannetfic · 1 year

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Right, exactly. ‘Bara’ literally means ‘rose’, of course, but it’s pretty equivalent to ‘pansy’ in English, i.e. it’s an old-fashioned slur that some dudes found it entertaining to name things after, including that old magazine Barazoku. (And more power to them. I love Pansy Division, which is the same kind of deal.)

Gei komi are definitely more of a cis gay male culture thing, by, for, and about gay dudes. (Maybe bi dudes? I don’t read enough gei komi to know how they are about mlm who aren’t gay.) Not that they’re always realistic, obviously. That guy getting knocked up by a minotaur really sticks with one! (Yes, I am a basic bitch who has only read Gengoroh Tagame.) But they’re more of a direct representation thing than BL is. Or at least, that’s how they’re marketed and the kind of personas the authors usually have.

AFAIK, the overall category is just ‘gay comics’, and the muscle stuff has some term referring to that with ‘bara’ being more of a foreign language term at this point due to us not cringing like “Oh shit, I just called a dude a pansy”? If you’re hanging out in gay bars in Japan, you may well know more though.

Certainly, an individual artist might try their hand at selling to both gay magazines and BL magazines (with different pen names, one imagines). And certainly, people who like m/m content sometimes stray into other areas looking for more. I don’t want to gatekeep here: they’re obviously not hermetically sealed bubbles. But broadly, the various hairy, muscley, and chubby styles stereotypical of gay comics tend to stay there, and the willowy bishounen tend to stay in the stuff nominally aimed at women. Same with plotlines, styles of porn, yadda yadda. It’s Nifty.org vs. AO3. It’s not as simplistic as “Romance is for girls!” or “All gay men write about coke can dicks!”, but we know the two styles when we see them.

They’re not literally genres in that they’re defined by the target market rather than the content. Theoretically, you could have some muscle porn in a BL magazine and it would then be defined as BL. And we can’t know for sure who is actually creating or consuming them. A cis woman who likes drawing ultra masculine hairy men would presumably go submit to gay mags rather than BL ones.

But we know the ostensible target demographic and the trends that are more typical of one or the other. Gei komi are definitely presented as a gay thing by gay men for gay men. There’s no layer of abstraction like with drag or BL.

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hiiroamagisbestfriend · 2 years

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hi!! :3 not sure if the requests for the christmas countdown is still open , but if it is !! can i rq rinne for christmas shopping (dec. 12)?

Christmas Shopping!

w/ Rinne Amagi x GN! Reader

you actually sent this request to me after I already got the 10 i needed, but I was already planning to put Rinne here so it worked out in the end??

Warnings: Nothing! Just Fluff!

When Rinne Amagi, leader of Crazy:B and king of troublemakers asked for you to come with him someplace, the signals were basically blaring inside your head. Not that you actually had a choice, seeing as he already had an arm around your shoulder and started dragging you with him, either not hearing or just straight up ignoring any words of protest coming from you.

To say you didn't like Rinne could be quite the understatement. He'd always do these kinds of unreasonable things, and just expect for you to play along. You know that getting riled up is exactly what he wants, but it's not like you can just bottle up your grievances against him! Even now, he can just squeeze you in tighter as you try to flail around to no avail.

When you realized that trying to escape was just a waste of energy, you decided to just hang your head low and follow his lead. Still though, it did make you a bit embarrassed to be this close to Rinne. Sure, he was crass, loud, and did nothing but cause problems for you; but you know that it's not like he ever did anything with purely bad intentions, and if it really comes down to it, he was objectively a pretty attractive guy.

You quickly dispel such thoughts, realizing that such an intuitive person as him could probably find out what was on your mind if you linger on it for too long. "Amagi-san... Where are we even going?" A sigh made its way out of your mouth at the end of your question.

"Come on now, we're best buds aint' we? Just call me Rinne already!" He lets out that signature hyena laugh of his and you wonder when exactly he started considering you a 'best bud' of his, or maybe he was just trying to get a reaction out of you? I mean, sure maybe to other people you two would seem close, but you know within yourself that you did not like this man at all. You try your best to keep a poker face, and it seems like it was good enough to dissuade him.

"I made it big at the pachinko machine earlier! So now I gotta spend all this cash while I'm still feelin' the high!" Your face sours at that, partly wondering whether or not to even bother scolding him on that awful outlook. When Rinne suddenly stopped, you looked up to see that the two of you were at the entrance of a nearby mall. You sighed again; he really was about to spend his money, wasn't he?

He brings the two of you to the first store he could lay his eyes on, which seemed to be cute store full of plushies and other toys. He grabs a bunch of random stuff off the shelves and shows them to you, his sparkling eyes catching you off guard. "Hey, which of these do you think otouto-kun would like?"

When you look at the things he was presenting, it was quite difficult to make a choice, seeing as he just grabbed all sorts of things. "Hmm..." You took a good look at everything, before coming to a pretty sound conclusion. "If it's your little brother, he'd be plenty happy with anything just as long as it was you that got it, wouldn't he?"

Rinne ponders on your words for a bit, his finger on his chin as he makes a comical thinking face. "I guess so. Still, what looks good here?" He nudges the things back at you, and you take another look at them. There were a bunch of kids' playthings like action figures, dolls, cars, and plushies. Jesus, how old was the target demographic that Rinne was going for?

"I guess this? It's got a sketchy looking face, like you." The fox plush you were pointing at did have quite the strong resemblance to Rinne, and while you'd never admit this next part, it actually looked quite cute. Rinne turned the plush in question to look at him, imitating the dumb smirking expression it had. "cute."

Your eyes widened when you realized what you just said, but you start to thank every known God in existence as it seemed like Rinne didn't hear you. Rinne then turns to look back at you. "What's up? Somethin' on my face?" He moves a bit closer to you, pretty much forcing you to look at his face. When he's up close like this, you really can't help but admire how handsome he is.

You can feel your face start to heat up and decide that literally nothing would be worse than having Rinne see that. "Huh?! Hell if I know, go look at a mirror or something!" Before he could even reply, you brisk walked all the way out, leaning against a nearby wall. You were quite curious as to what he was going to end up buying though, seeing as he showed you some pretty childish options for his younger brother.

You start massaging the space between your eyes, when you suddenly feel a hand on your shoulder. He didn't even seem all that troubled by how you shouted at him earlier. "Alright! Next stop!" He holds you by the wrist and drags you to a jewelry shop, letting you sit down on one of the chairs as he looks at the stuff they had on display.

When you realized this might take a while, you decided to go check some of the stuff out too, seeing some reasonably priced accessories like necklaces, rings, and such. They seemed like the type that Rinne would often wear, so you wonder if this was a shop he frequented.

Your eyes land on a pendant that had a modestly sized jewel of your favorite color on it, making a mental note to come back to this place soon once you had some money to spare. You decided that it would probably best to go back to Rinne, turning around before bumping into something.

You look up to see that Rinne standing right in front you, and you wondered just how long he was there. "Uwah?! What do you think you're doing?!" You quickly made space between the two of you, taking a few steps to the side. Rinne's eyes linger on what you were looking at for a few seconds, before he let out a small chuckle.

"I'll be here a while. I'm not sure what a good gift for MERUMERU would be, so just sit tight somewhere nearby would ya'?" He makes a shooing motion, signaling for you to go and find something else to do. A part of you was kind of disheartened at that, a slight frown appearing on your face before you did as he said.

You were walking around aimlessly, though still close enough to the store so that Rinne could find you easily if he were to finish soon. Though the day has been quite hectic so far, you can't say that you completely hated it. Sometimes you wonder why Rinne even hangs around you, compared to him, you found yourself to be a total square. You can't even admit to yourself that you like him, and you treat him badly because of that.

What if one day he gets tired of that? Of you? To try and shift your thoughts, you slap your cheeks more forcefully than you wanted, having to wince in pain at what you just did. "Ugh... Stupid Rinne." You cover part of your face with the back of your hand, knowing full well that you were blushing quite a bit.

"Oh? Turns out you can call me by my first name!" Your jaw drops when you realize that the worst possible person to have heard you, just heard you. Your mouth starts making all sorts of weird sounds as Rinne pulls your hand down, showing your blushing face to him in all its glory. "Wouldja' look at that? You're way cuter like this, you know?"

Rinne puts on his iconic hyena laugh as he started to poke your cheeks, making you even more embarrassed than ever. "Come on, aren't you gonna' yap at me like usual?" Rinne was more than ready to play this game for the long run, until he realized your eyes were starting to water. "I love you."

"HUHHHHH?! Someone starts crying and THAT'S the first thing you say to them? Just how stupid can you be?!" Rinne didn't even give you time to react before putting you in a headlock and giving you a noogie. "Are you an idiot?! What are you doing!"

"Kyahaha! That's more like it! Can't have you cryin' on me on our first date now can I?" Ugh, just what is this guy talking about? You wanted to complain some more, but you suddenly realized you didn't even want to cry anymore; let alone feel sad. Not that you'd give him any credit for this, seeing as he was the source of your grief to begin with. He lets you go, rustling your hair a bit before a more serious expression appears on his face. "I love you."

"I heard you the first time!" You don't really know why, but you can somehow tell that he was being serious. He's trying to hide it, but you can see how his hands were shaking ever so slightly, and how the tips of his ears were just the slightest twinge of red; though that was hard to make out because of his hair being a similar color.

"I love you." He repeats like a broken record, his piercing blue eyes not wanting to stop looking at you for even a second. "I lo-"

You put your hand over his mouth, your heart not being able to hear that phrase even just one more time. "Okay! I get it! Stop saying it already!" You can hear his muffled voice try to sound out another 'I love you' and you suddenly feel like punching him in the face instead of giving him a proper answer.

You close your eyes and take a deep breath, needing what little help you can get in order to mentally prepare yourself for what you were about to do. When you decided you were ready, you pulled your hand away from his mouth, looking him in the eyes. "I'll only tell you this once, so clean those ears out and listen up." Rinne's eyes start sparkling, and you suddenly feel a whole new level of nervousness. "I love you too, you big idiot."

You were preparing yourself for whatever it was he would do next, not sure if he would pull you in for a hug, or scream at the top of his lungs, or maybe even admit this whole thing was an elaborate prank. But when none of that happened, you couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at his relative silence. "Hey, Earth to Rinne? You there?"

You shake your head when you receive not even a nod in response. "You still need to finish shopping, don't you? Come on." You realized by now that he probably only came here to buy gifts for his friends, and probably made you help him pick out gifts as a pretense for going out with you.

You turn around and try to look for a good shop for the two of you to visit next when you suddenly feel something around your neck. You tilt your head down to see that the pendant you were looking at earlier was now situated on you. Then, you felt something placed on top of your head, grabbing it with your hand to reveal that it was the fox plush that you found rather cute earlier.

You sighed, finally realizing what was going on here. Rinne probably intended on buying all sorts of stuff that you wanted and then giving them to you as a gift at the end, but without making it obvious to you by disguising it as gifts for his friends.

You grabbed Rinne by the wrist, taking the initiative this time as you point at a nearby shop. "Well? What are you waiting for? You won it big right? I'm not letting you go until I squeeze every last penny out of you!" This time, it was Rinne letting out a sigh as he got dragged from place to place, his wallet bleeding more and more as the day went by.

When Rinne had not even a single cent left, the two of you found yourselves absolutely swarmed with an innumerable number of bags and wrapped presents. Rinne would usually totally hate this kind of situation, after all, not having money means not being able to gamble. But being able to make you smile this much makes him think that maybe it's a price he's more than willing to pay.

"I lo-" Rinne got cut off when he felt you flick your finger right at his forehead.

"I get it, dummy. I'll be in your care from now on, then."

Yep, Rinne knew that he certainly wouldn't regret giving his all to you.

it might be a bit rushed? for that i apologize

Likes and Reblogs are greatly appreciated!

#.❄️.#.✨.#enstars #rinne amagi x reader #amagi rinne x reader #rinne amagi #amagi rinne #enstars x reader

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volleypearlfan · 2 years

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Boys Like Girl Leads Too

Recently, an animated adaptation of the comic strip Phoebe and Her Unicorn was cancelled by Nickelodeon, who claimed that boys won't watch cartoons with female protagonists. This incident shows how out of touch TV executives are with the audiences of their shows.

Contrary to popular belief, gender doesn't matter. A good show is a good show, and if it's good, then anyone, including boys, can watch it, and history has proven that time and time again. Here are just a few examples:

Winsome Witch is a series of Hanna-Barbera shorts that aired during The Secret Squirrel Show. Even in the 1960s, Hanna-Barbera knew that boys can watch shows with female leads. Winsome Witch is about a witch named Winnie, and the magical mishaps she gets into. She's just as clumsy and hilarious as any other male H-B character, and she doesn't have a sidekick. While she is obscure nowadays, that's just because the various backup segments in Hanna-Barbera shows aren't very well-known in general.

Also from Hanna-Barbera is The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, a spinoff of Wacky Races, featuring one of the most popular characters, Penelope Pitstop. She dresses in pink and is often a damsel in distress, but she's still able to save herself, and sometimes even saves the all-male Ant Hill Mob. If there's one thing H-B was good at, it was keeping in touch with their audience. If you look at the Amazon reviews for the complete series DVD, you'll find a lot of male reviewers praising the show, if only because they found Penelope to be hot. Guys WILL watch your cartoon if it has an attractive female character.

Speaking of which, there are a whole bunch of anime starring cute girls (known as 'moe' or 'bishoujo') and guess what? They're targeted at male demographics (such as shonen, young boys, or seinen, adult men). Shows such as Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star, and K-On! are popular with boys and men not just because of their cute girl characters, but because they're funny and relatable. In particular, Konata Izumi from Lucky Star behaves a lot like the average otaku.

Going back to Nickelodeon, they don't have very many Nicktoons with female leads. Just one of them is The Mighty B! It's a show about a young girl, Bessie, and is just as absurd and slapstick-filled as SpongeBob. Though short lived, it was a big hit for the network, getting 1.92 million viewers in the 2–11 demographic AND beating out Bakugan, a male-oriented anime, in the ratings.

Another short-lived 2000s female-led cartoon is Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. At the time it premiered, it was the Cartoon Network's top-rated hit for kids 6–11. It has a cult following today, a good chunk of which are guys who think the characters are cute. Again, guys WILL watch your cartoon if the girls are cute.

A much more notable Cartoon Network show is The Powerpuff Girls. Admittedly, the pilot didn't do well with a test group of 11 year old boys, but the actual show became a huge hit with everyone including boys. Everyone can enjoy watching little girls beat up bad guys.

Lauren Faust, who worked on PPG, would go on to create My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. And we all know how the story goes: it was bashed for being "the end of creator driven animation" and "smarts-shaming" by people who hadn't even watched the show. A certain image board watched the show to see what all the fuss was about, and thus, Bronies were born. It's important to note that Faust deliberately made the show in such a way that everyone, from boys to adults, can enjoy it. And did she succeed. Once again, guys like to watch cute girls kick ass.

Exactly ten years ago, a spinoff of Avatar: the Last Airbender premiered: The Legend of Korra. Nickelodeon was hesitant with the show at first. They thought that boys wouldn't like the show because Korra is a girl. They were dead wrong - the boys in the test audience didn't care that she was a girl -- they thought she was awesome.

Despite all of these girl-led cartoons being popular with guys, TV executives still seem to believe that boys don't want to watch cartoons about girls. In a Discord server I'm in, someone noted that The Casagrandes was forced to shift its' focus from Ronnie Anne to her cousin, Carl, so that boys would watch the show (I don't watch the show, so I wouldn't know). Compare that with its' parent series, The Loud House. We have one boy and ten girls, but boys still like it, even after the sisters got just as much, if not more, focus than Lincoln. Despite all of that, Lincoln still gets over-promoted and put in the title cards, even if he doesn't appear in the episode. Nickelodeon is so out of touch, it's not even funny.

Cartoons transcend gender. Whether its' cute girls doing cute things or girls in action, a good show is a good show.

#cartoons #animation #anime #phoebe and her unicorn #nickelodeon #hanna barbera #winsome witch #penelope pitstop #the legend of korra #azumanga daioh #mlp fim #the mighty b #lucky star #k on #Cartoon Network #the loud house #the casagrandes #long post #my animation essays

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sueske · 1 year

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The Kishi poll is so funny. ‘You know what he did’

Some people will vote for making the worst hetero ships canon, while others will vote for putting the ‘gay agenda’ in their fav shounen. Some for Boruto existing.

I wish we knew exactly what Kishi actually wanted with his story and what changes his editors forced but it’s hard to say. Especially with how his interviews contradict each other.

One of the longest running things I’ve heard about Kishi is how he’s a misogynist because his male characters are always more powerful and female ones suck. And his story is always worse for female characters. I don’t think making a shounen story having OP male characters is enough to be called a misogynist, especially when the target demographic is young-teen boys, but it also feels weird how none of the Konoha 11 girls are in any way amazing or their canon version memorable compared to their male counterparts. What are your thoughts on the ‘Kishi is a misogynist’ debate?

I mean most of his contradictory interviews are about the endgame couples. kishi said he wanted more mission type arcs like the low but his editor made him write a tournament instead. he wanted the sns vote2 battle to be a close fist fight but jump said no to the point that kishi said they really bothered him about it. I guess they settled on a compromise. he fought 5 years to include the reverse harem jutsu in before editors said okay. he also said that a lot of the ideas he had were unshonen like. he also said he had a lot of trouble writing the pein arc, and I think this is where he really struggled with those unshonen like ideas. he also said that because it's a shonen, even though he doesn't agree with some of what's in the manga, it's shonen so it has to be 'hopeful' - although for the last two links there don't seem to be proper sources for and I can't be bothered to dig too deep into them, so take them as you will. anyways he was fine with ending naruto how it was without boruto, from the start he envisioned the end as sns' reconciliation. so it seems there's lots of stuff he fought for/had to change but at the very end he said everything he wanted to put in the manga he did which is like? (I think that's the source, it's one of those post series interviews that he said that in but I'm not gonna watch all of that again sorry). I guess he gave up on other things but what was most important to him (obviously the bond between sns) he fought for until the end to write.

as for the misogyny bit there's a poll running check it out here 😀 as for my own personal opinion on it hmm I think I'll keep my thoughts to myself for now.

#anon #ask #kishimoto interviews

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pissfizz · 8 months

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I haven’t said a list about the “removing sokkas sexism” thing yet but I wanna explain my thoughts on it. Does removing this aspect of his character ruin the whole show? No. Does it destroy his entire character? Also no. In most cases, it would be fine to remove this and still have a perfectly good, respectful adaptation. Things don’t have to follow the source material exactly to be a good adaptation, see the Scott pilgrim anime for example. However, this is not the Scott pilgrim anime. There are two glaring issues I see with doing this, plus one minor one. Let’s start with the minor one.

While I see how it’s problematic due to the representation involved, a lot of katara’s arc revolves around the sexism in the water tribes, and that includes within her brother. Both of these siblings have a lot of their initial arcs undermined by this change. However, you say, they could just be planning something new! This is true, and this is fine. Not to my personal preference, for a plethora of reasons, but I can see how it’d still be done well.

Let’s move on to the bigger issues.

Issue one. Removing sokkas sexism from season one because it’s “iffy” is a red flag. From the sounds of things, it sounds like the show runners fail to understand that how Sokka acted wasn’t a product of the times, and was actually a lesson for the target demographic of young boys that “hey, acting like this is bad. Don’t act like this.” They seemed to pass by on the fact that he is like that for a reason, and that his arc of bettering himself is important. When combined with the fact that the original creators left the project due to “creative differences”, this red flag is even louder, brighter, and practically dripping with blood. If you fail to understand a character being sexist and then bettering himself, what else do you fail to understand? It’s a fairly simple arc and it isn’t metaphorical in the slightest, which makes it hard to believe they didn’t understand it. Sokka is more than his season one arc, but the arc is still important, and if they’re willing to take it away, which also undermines a lot of kataras arc and probably takes hers away too (presuming they take away the N Water Tribe’s sexism as well), what ELSE are they willing to change or take away?

This leads to issue number two. “Mari,” you say “they probably aren’t that stupid to misunderstand such an on the nose arc like that, don’t you think you’re a little presumptuous?” To that I say, you’re probably right, although I wouldn’t be surprised. The alternative, and more likely reasoning, actually is something else. Capitalism. Art can no longer be art, instead it has to marketable and perfectly polished. Three thought processes probably happened here: 1) Your protagonists can’t be bad people, that would be endorsing their behaviors! 2) By making a character sexist, even in an arc where he realizes he’s wrong, some people might be uncomfortable or dislike him, costing Netflix money (or potential money) and 3) showing an arc about a man becoming a feminist could make some of the audience uncomfortable or upset, costing them money. Now, as you can see these are all stupid. Number one is technically more of a fan point of view that hollywood abides by and worsens. Which these three points leads to the same question from the early issue: if they’re willing to cut this stuff to stay profitable, what do lose of the original story are they going to change and/or make way more obvious and simplistic.

I can’t say for sure, but I have zero faith the show will be good due to these reasons.

#atla #avatar the last airbender #discourse

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natsmagi · 8 months

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anon acting as if ur drawings have to pass a “good rep” test as if ur not drawing girl versions of already stick thin anime boys. like ?

RIGHT??????? ITS INSANE!!!!!!!!!! and like i dont wanna be too mean bc genuinely i do understand the desire for more diversity. ive looked at the enstars cast countless times and gone "wow. they should really add some flavor here" but like. at the same time this is an idol game. based on far east asian idols and their beauty standards. Which tend to only really include 1 body type. if u want diversity ur not gonna find it here unfortunately. So, instead of complaining to strangers on the internet, why not simply praise those who do give you the diversity you want? praise those who see and share your vision? and if there is none, then why not simply create it yourself? we're all only here to have fun. and if youre going to be disrespectful towards me and my peers you obviously arent our target demographic and theres no reason for us to cater to you. criticism is fine, and im very open to it! but i think we all know that anon didnt exactly send it in good faith

the enstars fandom feels so entitled to the artists that provide food (FOR FREE) that they never stop to see the bigger picture. the issues youre complaining about are in the game itself. you are barking up the wrong tree here

#also sometimes when people add diversity it ends up........ so stereotypical???? which feels counterproductive............#characters like hiyori and tsukasa are canonically said to have a little more fat to them #yet its never pushed for these characters to be portrayed with these bodies more #tsukasa sometimes. but NEVER hiyori #why is that?#why cant hiyori be chubby?#why dont we push for that?#it would literally be so wonderful to see this girly girl whos self-assured and confident #dressing looking and acting however she wants without a care in the world #and also be on the bigger side #why do i only ever see people push for bigger sizes on characters like makoto niki and tsumugi?#am i the only person that finds it weird?#and i wanna emphasize I SEE NOTHING WRONG WITH VIEWING MAKOTO NIKI OR MUGI AS BIGGER!!! I THINK THEY LOOK LOVELY!!#but when its /only/ them?#thats when i raise an eyebrow #good diversity comes from having a variety IN said diverse group #or else itll feel either stereotypical or dehumanizing #why are we only pushing for the nerdy people or those who love food to be a bigger size??????#push for MORE!!!!!!!! HAVE MORE BE A SIZE BIGGER!!!!!!!!!!!!#GET CREATIVE WITH IT!!!!!!!#DONT JUST LISTEN TO YOUR GUT BECAUSE YOUR GUT COULD BE PERPETUATING STEREOTYPES THAT HARM THE COMMUNITIES YOU TRY TO INCLUDE #ask

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riverdale-retread · 1 year

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Riverdale S7 E 15 (Chapter 132) Miss Teen Riverdale

Betty’s idea about giving a forum to the young women of her high school to air their grievances was a huge hit immediately, as we saw at the end of the last episode. The first letter she gets is from Veronica. We know it’s from her, but Betty doesn’t immediately scream “Oh this is Veronica!” even though Veronica basically outs herself wholesale: “I’m sick of living in a world that doesn’t take me seriously as a young business woman.” Who else talks like this or thinks like this or runs her own business in the entire high school? Nobody but V. Lodge! However, Veronica says she can’t open a checking account and I’m confused because then how does she own things? What? Also, I do understand that this is supposed to go towards women not having access to full adulthood by being denied participation in financial life, but nobody should ever take a high school student seriously as a business person. This… is not… a real problem.

Toni also outs herself in her letter: “I’m Black, I’m bold, I’m beautiful” and wants to be celebrated for those things. The only other black girl who gets to talk in Riverdale High School, Tabitha, is out of town and has been for weeks (months). First, I don’t understand why Toni doesn’t have any sort of feminist/ gender consciousness. If she’s presented as so smart, why is she dumb enough to want to fuck with fashion magazines of all things? I thought she was so off the beaten path? Secondly, she keeps pretending that her real issue is racial justice but she does not give two hoots. What she wants is to be celebrated not for being Black, which is a political stance and a still (sadly) radical one, but celebrated for being pretty, which has never not happened in the history of men objectifying women. You see, I think Toni’s real problem isn’t that Black women are not yet, in 1950, a large enough spending demographic for glossy magazine advertisers to target via fashion magazines. It’s that she’s decided to be the prettiest of the Beats or the Outsiders or whatever, but actually that she is super square and super mainstream and very very boring. What she wants is to be a cheerleader, and thought just as hot as a blonde cheerleader. She’s a stolidly normcore provincial pretty girl pretending to be an outsider. In short, being Black was and remains the main framework of oppression and injustice for millions, but it is NOT TONI’S ACTUAL ISSUE.

Cheryl, being in the closet, manages to actually not out herself except in her very formal way of writing “forever worried that I will reveal myself.” She posted this letter - in an abundance of caution - from the post box downtown when she was on a fake heterodate with Kevin. She is wearing a marvelous outfit. Navy coat with red collar, and perfectly matched red leather gloves and patent leather red handbag which has a very very 2023 fashionable shape (it looks almost exactly like Prada’s reissue of the 1990s bags, and I suppose if we posit a 25 year fashion cycle, these bag shapes and materials really were de rigeur in the 50s??). OK so this really is a problem. Cheryl is the first girl with a real problem here. Her dad and mom are psycho, and she’s gay.

Next up is the pregnant Midge, who - pardon the pun - has the mother of all problems. She’s pregnant, inexplicably determined to keep the baby and marry Fangs and also has not told her parents about this. I’m so sorry, but Midge is so dumb. I’m shocked that she knows the word “stigmatizes” and also apparently how it’s spelled.

Evelyn is so annoyed at the poster that was shoved into her locker that she sends Betty the first hatemail. “Should I say Little Miss Busybody? What makes you think that you have all the answers anyhoo?” She is not wrong. She is not wrong! Why is this show making me agree with goddam Evil-Lyn Forever-Never. Also sidebar to gush that the cream sweater navy skirt 1950s cheerleader uniform, worn with the bright red lipstick everyone sports, is SO FLATTERING on all of them. I wonder if some lucky souls nabbed one of these at the Riverdale going-out-of-business sale.

Then comes Ethel. Ethel is sketching a long legged thin woman with a tiny waist, wearing a swimsuit and sash. She says that she’s finding it difficult to be grateful because she’s surrounded by beautiful people and the world “constantly reminds her” that she’s not. Betty, looking not coincidentally exactly like the imaginary beauty queen Ethel is sketching, arrives just in time to see it. She says, “That’s a beautiful sketch.”

It turns out it’s not for art class, but for the sign up sheet for Miss Riverdale Teen Queen Pageant. The person who conveys this information is Alice Cooper. The very strange echoing of clothing that’s going on between Ethel and Alice in this scene creeps me out. Ethel is wearing a yellow inner top that matches the gold-ish tone of the Cooper sofa, and over that, an unadorned magenta cardigan. Standing right behind her, Alice is wearing a blue inner dress or top, and the exact same shade of magenta cardigan, except hers is bedazzled all down the front.

Ethel is so polite. She says that Alice has ‘asked her’ to be the assistant for the pageant (instead of, you know, made it clear that Ethel is in no position to refuse Alice Cooper anything if she doesn’t want to be sent back to the 19th century insane asylum). Betty finds the entire affair an “embarrassing cattle call” but Alice is extremely proud that it’s going to be broadcast live on national tv from the RIVW studios. Betty is not interested in participating, even though Alice lays it on very thick, saying it’s “glorious, and wholesome, and all-American.” She tries to manipulate Betty into participating by dangling the prizes - a new car, Hollywood screen test, or a scholarship.

OK that last one is huge. I mean the US college tuition inflation has been extraordinary, but this is from a Time Magazine article I just googled: At the University of Pennsylvania, students were charged $600 in 1950 (nearly $6,000 today) (This article is from 2016, and $6,000 in 2016 has the same "purchasing power" or "buying power" as $7,642.05 in 2023). $30,000 is not anything to sneeze at!

Betty is very enticed by this scholarship money, as Alice knew she would be. Apparently this is the first time this particular pageant is giving an actual scholarship. Riverdale is 10 years behind Miss America, by the way, which made itself a scholarship program in 1945.

While Betty is thinking about it, Ethel is trying to hide her bitterness at Alice’s assumption that she wouldn’t even want to try out.

At school, Betty runs into Veronica giving a speech to the other girls about how Edith Head wants to design something for her to wear that would be perfect for the pageant. What is it with Veronica insisting that these very ancient people born at the end of the 19th century (Edith Head was born 1896, a few years after Cole Porter) are all about Veronica Lodge. Is there a chance she’s lying? I mean, that song that she sang with Betty which she insisted was written by Cole Porter didn’t sound like his style whatsoever. Betty is very disapproving, but Veronica says that if she won a beauty pageant it would be great publicity for her movie theater business. It’s a business decision.

Her saying this doesn’t seem to ring any bells for Betty in terms of the letters she’s read, but maybe she’s fixated on the one singular hate mail she got, which okay, fair.

Betty says that the pageant objectifies girls. Cheryl is very defensive of this pageant, so she attacks Betty. She brings up the fact that Betty flashed Archie from her bedroom that one time and also that Betty flashed her underpants on live television. This is very interesting though, that Betty outwardly pushes back against her mother while Cheryl appears to defend the family against any and all attacks (while insisting on being herself to much higher risk of peril).

Anyway, Veronica agrees that pageants are objectifying to women but since she “loves being beautiful” she enjoys participating in a game that she can win. Cheryl rolls her eyes at hearing her say this as Veronica leads the way to the In Group Sofa. Ahead of her is Midge and behind her is Toni, who is wearing a really very odd outfit. All the other girls are covered up right to the collarbone but Toni is wearing a super low cut, like, barely covering her nipples low-cut, top with extremely thin spaghetti straps. She looks like she forgot to put on a shirt. Veronica’s logic gets very very twisted up. Even though she is going to be participating in a pageant in which “old fuddy duddies will decide” - this is literally what a pageant is - she says that in the end, she “decides if I’m beautiful or not. And I am, as are we all.”

This is something I find myself between a rock and a hard place about. In my country & culture (I’m not born or raised in America, I just sound like I am, because cultural softpower of the US is immense) there is no such thing as ‘we are all beautiful.’ Exactly one type of body is beautiful, exactly one shape of face is beautiful, and they will tell you down to the last cm and kg what beautiful is, and you can see how far you are from beautiful using the metric. The inability to meet this standard means all sorts of indignities happen to you, ranging from people being mean and dismissive of you all the way to being unemployable regardless of your qualifications. This sucks.

HOWEVER, this same shit is reported to exist in the US (fat women are underpaid by factors more than thin women are, even though all women still lose vis a vis comparison to men doing the same work) but the American cultural norm is to tell this stupid fucking lie about it, which I find insulting to my intelligence. Every time I hear this idiotic “we are all beautiful” bullshit I want to holler NO I’M NOT AND FUCK YOU FOR LYING.

If you aren’t the ideal, I think it’s just more efficient to know you’re not and flunk out of that race and do something else with your time. This is our way. The American way is to keep insisting that being beautiful is essential to being allowed to exist as a woman, which I find truly offensive.

Plus, it’s only standard issue pretty girls who are thin (like Veronica Lodge and the actress that plays her) that say bullshit like this. Are all men tall? Do all men have good hair? No, right? So it can’t be true that all women are beautiful.

Now, in the context of the show, Veronica is saying this to Betty, Toni, Cheryl and Midge, who all of them have perfect skin, lovely hair, symmetrical faces,perfect teeth, huge doe eyes and very narrow waisted shapely figures soooooo - Veronica is correct that “we all” are beautiful if you limit it to these five people.

And this is the point at which I started to truly, deeply, genuinely despise this episode. I hate this even more than the very strange Racism Against Koreans is Bad episode with Reggie.

Veronica says that the way to subvert the girl-on-girl implicit violence of a beauty pageant is for all the participants to stick together and ‘support’ each other.

No it isn’t. This is just reinforcing toxic femininity in the American style where women are never allowed to actually openly compete and show actual human feelings like aggression, power-hunger, the urge to dominate, disappointment or anger.

Toni of course is all about hypocrisy. Betty is shocked that Toni is going to participate because unlike me she believes Toni’s hype about herself. There is something VERY INSIDIOUS going on with Toni’s character hideousness this season. I hate it so much. I know that ‘playing the race card’ is a racist tool specifically designed to prevent racial minorities in the US from bringing up any topic which might lead to their being given fair compensation and recognition. The thing is, Riverdale the show keeps having Toni actually use ‘the race card’ over and over. Riverdale thinks playing the race card is a real thing for black women. The stupidly reductive thinking seems to be that if you’re a ‘real’ black woman who ‘really’ cares about racial injustice you should just disappear from white society like Tabitha Tate and deal with the problem of wrangling the ‘really bad’ white people who are elsewhere, not here. If you choose to continue your education and not place yourself in mortal danger all the time, then you forfeit your right to bring up racial prejudice unless you’re a ‘race card player’ like Toni. Toni just wants to do what she wants to do - indulge in her inner square that wants to wear ball gowns and have the other squares smile at her and call her pretty - but she will stick some racial element (“This is the first year this pageant is integrated” but see also, “I am the first black cheerleader”) as justification.

The only two with rights about this ar Cheryl and Midge. Cheryl says very simply that she has to compete because her family sponsors the pageant. Casually, she drops the fact that she wins every year. It made me wonder if this is why Betty is truly not interested - she’s not any more interested in playing a game she can’t win than Veronica, and she has insider information to know that it’s more likely to be Cheryl than anyone else. But see, at least Cheryl’s answer is honest, both to herself and to others. High marks.

Midge later tells a concerned Fangs that the reason SHE is participating is because she just wants to do something silly and lighthearted, where she gets to be a mainstream one-of-the-girls before her pregnancy is inevitably revealed.

Veronica comes to find Betty later in the locker room to finally come honest. She wants one of those prizes - for Veronica it’s a toss up between the car and the scholarship (I’m pretty sure she’s had her Hollywood screen test). That’s why she’s participating. She openly admits that she was bullshitting the other girls. She only tells Betty what her real intentions are. Then she asks Betty if she isn’t deeply tempted by the scholarship - the ability to pay for college.

Sidebar - a 4 year full expenses paid scholarship, which is what Veronica seems to think the prize is, is massively more powerful an incentive than the actual prize given to the Miss America winner in 2021. She would’ve gotten $100,00, which would cover literally 1 year and some change at Yale University which costs $88K a year minimum, all in.

Of course, Betty is extremely tempted. In the direct antithesis of a Cheryl slow-mo walk down the hall, which are usually to express Cheryl in a really great, world-conquering mood, Betty does a nervous, worried slow-mo walk full of hesitation towards the sign up sheet immediately after. She signs her name right under Veronica’s.

In the kitchen of the Cooper house, Alice needles Betty about having signed up after all. She interrogates Betty, wanting to know if Betty plans to win and then pull off some stunt (“pull down the temple”). When Betty says she genuinely wants the scholarship money for college, Alice scoffs at her, telling her that she could probably earn an academic scholarship. Alice wants Betty to not go to college, which makes this Alice consistent with the Alice of the OG timeline. And this is how you know Betty is not going to get the scholarship money - Alice is involved.

Alice reminds Betty that she won the pageant one year, calling it a major highlight of her life, before she reveals that she had a dream of a career as a stewardess, which she gave up as soon as she married her husband and had two kids in short order. Betty is so nice - she wishes that the dream could’ve come true for Alice. But of course, Alice always has to puncture any kind gesture by Betty by bringing on the bad news: The pageant is not a one-and-done event. It requires spending a huge amount of time with Alice as she makes the participants ‘rehearse’ for the pageant. Betty is deeply aggrieved by this news. Too bad there wasn’t any fine print on that poster Ethel drew up.

All the participants in the pageant are walking in a circle with a book on each of their heads to give them better posture. Apparently this is going to be a two hours-long ordeal - Alice orders “one more hour of posture work.” Alice sounds absolutely deranged as she lists out the femininity checklist for all the things the girls are supposed to aspire to be. Toni, even though she’s participating just as obediently as all the other sheep, pretends to be above it all and makes a little self satisfied joke about how she’s proud of her “shapely backside.” Evelyn calls her “Greaser Garbage” to which Toni shoots back “Preppy Troll.” I’m with Evelyn. Shut up, Toni.

In the corner is poor Ethel, who is so humiliated at being disregarded that she has a full on hallucination. She imagines herself as having won the pageant. And it turns out her parents are still alive! Ethel also wants her paintings - not comic book work - to be hanging in a gallery or a museum. And voila - her self portrait is at the Guggenheim!

(By the way, I’m reading The History of Art Without Men and this is history -accurate. Many of the earliest Renaissance women painters’ most famous works are their self portraits at first, because that was a permissibly feminine topic and you could just look at yourself in the mirror so it wasn’t a disadvantage you weren’t allowed to learn anatomy). The final thing that Ethel wants in this perfect night to start the rest of her perfect life fantasy is to have Jughead Jones be her boyfriend. (“Just the ginchiest” is what she says.) Alice thinks that this is a terrible choice, because Miss Riverdale Teen Queen as the pick of the litter and Jughead is substandard. (I mean. I love Jughead Jones but he kind of is - and especially in this universe. He was last seen flipping his shit about milk.) Jughead comes up to the stage in a suit with a bowtie, tells Ethel she’s always been his best gal, and gives her a little peck on the cheek.

I WAS ROBBED.

I suppose 1950s and on live tv and her lipstick can’t be messed with and all that but I AM ROBBED.

Ethel deserves to fuck Jughead Jones’ brains out just the one time to get this fixation out of her system. She’s so much cooler and more talented than he is.

I am very discomfited by the way that the way Ethel is being treated by Alice is both accurate to life (if you are a child that all the adults around know you have no other adult advocate, you tend to get fucked over) and yet extremely annoying because Ethel is and always has been so interesting and so shafted all the time and this is more of the same.

Alice treats this orphan exactly like a hired servant - “I hope you did the thing?” is such a nasty way of giving a work instruction, and she’s making Ethel do all this for FREE.

The appointment that Ethel was supposed to have made is at Mary Andrews’ dress shop, which is called Perky Peach. I mean it says “Perky IN Peach” but from afar it will look like PERKY PEACH. “Shop for Ladies and their Daughters.”

While the young girls are all standing silent like mannequins in a circle, Alice and Mary chitchat “back in the day” when they competed for Miss Teen Queen. They are both wearing flower patterns (Alice, tight-ass ones, Mary, blowsy ones) but the girls are all in single colors. Red for Cheryl, purple for Veronica, Toni in emerald, Evelyn in maroon, Betty in hot pink, Midge in blue.

Mary and Alice start out pretending they don’t hate each other. Alice tells Mary that she always “gave me a run for my money” to which Mary concedes that Alices always won. They sound like they’re joking but they’re not, and Betty is the only one who picks up on the fact that these are the first shot of a battle to come. Mary says she thought being Miss Teen Queen might have been “a stepping stone to doing something important with my life, like… being the First Lady.” As in - Alice may have won this crown every single year of high school, but she has *not* done anything at all important with her life. Alice picks up on it immediately, saying that there’s “nothing more important than being a wife and mother.” This is an aggressive thing to say to a woman whose husband is dead and so she can’t be a wife to him for one, and for another, Mary owns a business and Alice doesn’t. Alice also has more than one child too. Mary pivots to say that she thinks these girls of the new generation can do “anything that they want.” Which indicates that she didn’t actually WANT to be either a wife or a mother or perhaps even a dress-maker.

Veronica, who doesn’t really fight other women, seems not to understand that the old biddies are actually fighting, so she suddenly pipes up to ask the group if they think there will ever be a female president. (FYI, Hilary Clinton was born 1947, Geraldine Ferraro was born 1935, Sara Palin and Kamala Harris in 1964).

Evelyn is (of course) immediately repulsed by the idea but see, I like how she puts it. She just says it outright: “I wouldn’t vote for a woman.” I like this better than coming up with some stupid statement about why women can’t do the job or whatever. Just own your misogyny.

Toni, of course, doesn’t really care about women but she also can’t stand it when she isn’t the one who started a social issues conversation so she brings up an entirely different topic when she says, “Or a black president for that matter?” She does tack on man or woman but then it just makes things unclear what the hell they’re talking about thereafter -The Civil Rights Act was in 1964 and women in the US could not open bank accounts on their own until l1974.

Betty is the most optimistic of everyone and *almost* correct - she says (from the context) that she thinks there can be a black woman president within her lifetime. President Obama aside, since Betty was born in 1938, she would’ve been 83 when Kamala Harris became a female, black and asian Vice President in 2021. Cheryl clearly thinks that there would have to be seismic changes in society for either scenario - a black president, a woman president, a black woman president - to be possible.

Alice doesn’t like where this conversation is going because being political is not good for ratings on her beauty pageant, so she comes bearing down on Mary to say that it’s “important to manage expectations.” It’s just for a second, but Mary sneers directly at her even as she says “Of course,” to keep up a united front of adults against the girls.

This entire time however, Ethel has been kneeling at Betty’s feet pinning Betty’s dress.

Mary said at the start of the segment “Look at all these gorgeous girls,” but she didn’t mean Ethel. Ethel was left out of both gorgeous and girls and nobody noticed except Ethel. Because she was implicitly told off by Alice for not keeping the conversation on track, Mary takes it out on Ethel by suddenly remembering to issue an instruction to the charity case: “Can you make sure you pin Betty’s dress all the way around the hem?”

Alice is totally shit but so is Mary, no exception. Not even waiting for any sort of response from Ethel, Mary turns to one of the ‘gorgeous’ people who still counts as a girl - Midge - to ask how the fit is on her dress.

Ethel has a choice between a) homicide and b) tears, so she starts crying. I would d

too. What a horribly pitiful thing they’ve reduced by Ethel to, the one who can kill a man with her bare hands when she has to! Betty asks her if she’s crying, to which Ethel promises to “not get any tears on” her dress which just broke my heart. Betty though is a nice person in this universe, so she does care about Ethel, but she’s not very bright, which is why she asks Ethel WHAT THE MATTER IS. What the fuck do you THINK the matter is, Betty??

This is something Riverdale the show consistently does by the way. Betty has had immense difficulties in previous seasons - her mother was and is both insane and abusive - but she’s also privileged and very blinded by that privilege. As a consequence she has a sort of stupidity when it comes to even the most obvious kinds of empathy - like the situation that Ethel is in right now, forced to work as a slave seamstress for her classmates because she is living on charity in one of their homes. Her only other option is the insane asylum. I think this is why Betty stans are completely unable to cope with any criticism about Betty in any way whatsoever - not just because they’re stans, but because the show is very adamant that Betty for all her aspirations to goodness is actually very unkind and unjust in action because she is blinded by her privilege, and being able to stan Betty Cooper requires totally tuning out this very important point about her. Her privileged blindness is inexcusable and obnoxious, and so is yours.

Ethel like all disadvantaged people who are wronged knows exactly what is happening, including the fact that if she were to try to tell Betty the truth, Betty would take offense at being called privileged, at being called blinded by that privilege, which are all true, and so she just gives up. “Nothing” is wrong, Ethel weeps, “You’re just so beautiful, Betty.”

There’s a lot in there. Why is it the oppressed and wronged always feel so protective of other people? (Don’t answer that. I know the answer. Fuck me if this didn’t get me right in the feels.).

Betty really does not understand why she’s crying. She’s trying, but she just doesn’t get it, at all. Because blinding pretty woman privilege, blinding middle class privilege, etc etc.

There isn’t time to go through any of this though because Mary announces to everyone that she’s going to have let out Midge’s dress a bit. Somehow this is taken as a huge BANG sort of realization on Alice’s part. Evelyn is very smart. She says a sentence perfectly constructed to out Midge’s pregnancy to Alice: “You better start cutting back on those desserts, otherwise that cute Serpent boyfriend of yours might decide that you’re too much woman to handle.” Though she means well, Cheryl only makes things worse by overreacting, telling Evelyn to kill herself (“Take a long walk off a short pier.”) Midge is smarter than Cheryl. She’s smarter than Midge as well.

And can I also just put in a word for us ruler shaped girls who only gain weight fore and aft -directly in the belly? I’ve always had a fat tummy but I’ve never been pregnant. When I gain weight I gain it in the FUPA first and most.

Midge needed to have more of a plan and a lie ready - like “Oh yes I’ve been gaining weight in my middle giggle giggle”???

Alice approaches Midge like a shark to demand a conversation later.

Later that evening Betty is hanging out with Ethel. Since she’s essentially a kind person in S7, she is still worried about why Ethel burst into tears at the dress shop, but appears to also be no smarter or less blinded by her privileges than she was earlier in the day.

What ensues is an INFURIATING fumble of a conversation. Ethel says that she wishes she was competing with all of them. She wants to be considered a girl, in other words, in her cultural context. Betty says - and she both seems to mean it and it is true - that Ethel is beautiful, so she should be competing if she wants to. Ethel counters that Betty’s mom said Miss Teen Riverdale is supposed to be an embodiment of the ideals of the town, which Ethel has understood she can’t be because “I’m the girl whose parents were murdered, quiet, likes comic books, draws creepy pictures.”

What she doesn’t say is made deafening by the fact that she doesn’t say it. She’s fat. Ethel is beautiful and fat. But the show absolutely refuses to address the fact that all the actresses other than Ethel for that generation are extremely slender - even the ‘expanding with pregnancy’ Midge has stick thin arms and the whole of her clavicle bones show end to end through her skin.

Because the show can’t let Ethel say she’s fat, Ethel doesn’t say that it’s because she’s fat that she’s not being allowed to compete in the beauty contest, and Betty, because being cosseted lessens her intelligence, simply takes Ethel at her word. But Betty not knowing that the beauty standard of the 20th century leans towards extreme thinness for women is exactly like Toni having to ask Tabitha what it’s like to be black in the rest of America.

Betty says true things about Ethel - that she’s inspiring because she’s overcome so much adversity. That Ethel has as much right as anyone else to be competing for the prize and the title.

Because the show - and Ethel and Betty - won’t address the obvious visible physical difference between the two characters, Betty’s line about Ethel having “more pep in your little finger than the rest of us do in our whole bodies combined” comes out really really cringe.

Ethel can’t stand it anymore and takes off, saying she shouldn’t have said anything.

Betty means what she’s saying, but how seriously can Ethel be expected to take this sincerity? Not very, honestly.

Meanwhile, Midge is getting the third degree from Alice, who knows she’s pregnant. Teedum.

And now we are five (plus Ethel standing in the back). Alice announces to the group that Midge is “no longer with us” and is no longer a student at Riverdale High, because she’s been carted off to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. Alice Cooper is so obsessed with depositing girls with the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, isn’t she? She’s the type of person who can’t stand the thought of having to suffer something alone - she has to inflict the same suffering on others.

She drops the hints as heavy as anvils: “When you see her in six or seven months, Midge will be right as rain.”

Veronica finally gets it. She seems to know the duration of human gestation anyway. She tries to ask if Midge is pregnant, but Alice, wearing pink gloves (she’s pink handed rather than red-handed, I guess?) makes ‘close your mouth’ motions with her hands so she can continue her lecture about how “we must treat our bodies as temples.” Alice does have a way with words. She wants the girls to “guard against defilement” and instead regroup that afternoon to have some “good clean fun” preparing for the pageant.

As she exits the room, we see that she was using Ethel as a literal clothes hanger tool to hold on to her purse.

Later, wearing what looks like a dinner napkin as a scarf, Betty, who is really very dumb this episode, just simply does not understand why Midge was sent away. I was a bit taken aback by this. Betty Cooper is supposedly a straight-A student but she just does not know at all how long pregnancy lasts (Uhhhh does Midge also not know??). Evelyn AGAIN SAYS EXACTLY WHAT I AM THINKING because she snaps, “I thought you were supposed to be smart” before explaining to Betty that “Midge has a bun in the oven.” She just keeps the truths coming! “She let a greaser paw at her like a dirty rag.” I meannn I hate Fangs so yeah, I’m even going to excuse her misogynistic language.

Why does this keep happening to me, the humble Riverdale episode recapper? In S4 I was BRET. I had to identify with BRET WESTON WALLIS and now in S7, I’m Evelyn. Thanks Show, for the realizations I did not want.

Evelyn is just laying all the truths out on the table - that Midge is pregnant, that Betty is not very smart, that everyone knows that Cheryl and Toni are a dyke pair, and that Fangs should never be allowed to breed and now he’s gonna have offspring.

She gets threatened by Toni with physical violence which is just comical. I’m a short girl myself, but dude, Toni should never threaten people with physical violence. You’re literally like 90 lbs, Toni, shut up.

Betty really is dumb.

Like, actively stupid.

Look at this face:

Betty finally FINALLY puts it together that Midge has fucked Fangs and that’s why she’s pregnant. When she seeks confirmation, Toni clearly thinks she’s stupid just as much as Evelyn does, so she’s short with Betty, “Yes, Betty.” Betty wants to know if it was once or multiple times. The femme superdykes give her identical, OMG faces because they are both the type of queer girl who didn’t realize for a long time that they were queer because they thought they were just smarter than the majority of other girls, who of course happened to be straight.

Veronica’s love for Betty is everlasting, plus she’s a virgin herself, so she is willing to meet Betty on the same grounds. “I’m guessing they were doing the deed on the reg,” she says, trying to elevate Betty’s grotesque stupidity to the level of something akin to banter.

Toni starts to try to explain the ‘situation’ to all of them like they’re all 4 years old. “Midge loves Fangs and Fangs loves Midge.” Evelyn comes in once again with the correct take: “Quite the cautionary tale if you ask me.” Cheryl is completely unable to come up with a good come back beyond a very paltry No One Asked You type of comment, because I think Cheryl also thinks fucking around with boys is stupid and for the weak and always is going to end up with a cautionary tale type situation. She dislikes Evelyn, in other words, but doesn’t disagree, and only wishes she wouldn't keep spouting truths.

Betty continues to be extremely idiotic - “I’m wondering how Midge could have ended up getting…” is what she says. Not even Veronica knows how to salvage this. Both dykes, Evelyn and even Ethel, who as I’ve said wants to preserve Betty in her innocent stupidity rather than have her face the hardness of the world, give her looks. I think Betty is lying when she says that she “of course” “understand[s] how it happened.” But she’s seen now that her ignorance has shaded fully over into just a lack of intelligence, so she makes something up about "wondering if they were using…” because she’s heard that a man and a woman need to ‘do’ something ‘at least once’ to have a baby but there are ways to maybe make that not happen. Betty Cooper simply does not understand the mechanics of sex.

Veronica continues to want to adore Betty, because she just does, so she supplies the word - protection! Using protection! - because she can’t in good faith adore someone who is irretrievably stupid, and she doesn’t want to admit that about Betty. I am rather surprised to hear from Cheryl that she asked about birth control to Midge, with enough specificity to receive an answer: “Midge said they were, but once it slipped.” And then even more squick- Toni asked Fangs about birth control too, and heard about his incompetence with a condom directly as well. Ew. Cheryl does make an annoyed, oh these damned hetero morons type of eyeroll face as she tells her tale, to her credit.

This makes Veronica burst out that this is why the birth control pill is necessary, that birth control needs to be in the hands of women (not on the dicks of men) because “we’re the ones who have to live with the consequences.” I wish Veronica could be more radical in her feminism -that there should BE NO consequences, but as she’s said at the start of this episode, she likes inhabiting a face and body that’s considered beautiful too much to want to topple the whole thing over.

It’s clear from Betty’s expressions that she still isn’t sure how exactly Midge got pregnant, she doesn’t at all understand what ‘protection’ means really or what ‘it’ is that could’ve have slipped nor what it slipped from, and isn’t following Veronica’s train of thought whatsoever. But the looks that even Evelyn and Ethel gave her has had a silencing effect.

It’s really kind of a violation of human rights, isn’t it, that Betty just does NOT KNOW simple basic facts.

Anyway, Veronica is going on about how boys who impregnate girls have proven their manhood but girls who get impregnated by that same boy are treated as ‘fallen’ to which Betty starts to voice a very conventional fact; "Midge’s life is just… [ruined]."

Cheryl is a leader.

Can I say that again?

CHERYL BLOSSOM IS A REAL LEADER.

She cuts Betty off at the pass: “Her life is not ruined,” she says, categorically. Cheryl Blossom is not going to LET “this”- i.e. Fangs’ incompetence with keeping a condom on his damn dick - hurt one of ‘her’ Vixens in some irretrievable way.

Toni only WISHES she could exhibit this sort of moral, almost compulsive, valor.

Anyway.

Evelyn is so very even keeled. I kind of love that about her. She hates everyone at a very chilled temperature. Even her bright red lipstick has a chilly blue undertone. Evelyn points out that Cheryl and Midge are neither of them Vixens.

Toni wonders if Fangs even knows what has happened to his baby mama, to which Evelyn again acts as oracle to say everyone will eventually know. Cheryl and Toni take off to try to find Fangs so he can learn the bad facts from sympathetic tellers.

Veronica is still worried that she’s very in love with a very dumb girl, so she checks in with Betty to ask what she’s thinking about. Betty says that she’s thinking about how one night can change everything for you. I mean. That isn’t true though, not when you’re Alice Cooper’s daughter. Ethel had two very big nights - one was when her parents were murdered, which is the same night she got sexually assaulted by Julian Blossom, and then the night she killed the Milkman, which made all the adults back off from hauling her directly to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy again. Betty by contrast got caught doing a long distance strip tease with Archie, and then flashed her panties on live television but she has had to deal with no consequences whatsoever, other than her mother continuing to be crazy. So no, it isn’t true that one night can change everything - it only is true if you don’t have the right combo pack of protections.

Betty follows up with Ethel. Ethel is thinking about Midge at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. Betty basically Yes-ands her, by saying she cares a lot about Midge being sent to an insane asylum (she doesn’t) as lip service so she can get Ethel to agree to take Midge’s spot at the beauty pageant.

You know what? I think I understand now why Betty has nothing to say about Ethel being beautiful and fat and how her fatness might be a problem for a beauty pageant. She’s too stupid to know the facts of heterosexual reproductive intercourse - so by extension she’s too stupid to know that fat girls are given a much harder time in life, a harder time than girls with bad skin, girls with glasses, girls who are too skinny, girls with bad teeth. All she sees is that Ethel is beautiful (factual) and deserving (also true) and so in a true genuine way, thinks she should compete if she wants to. Rather than Ethel being judged ineligible by reason a biography marred by violence and her body type by her mother, Betty genuinely thought Ethel didn’t want to be in the beauty pageant (because she herself didn’t) and genuinely also thought Ethel didn’t mind playing scullery maid to Alice Cooper and her own classroom peers. There’s clueless and then there’s criminal levels of clueless. Betty is fast approaching the latter.

Ethel in any case does not need to be asked more than once. She is so very conscientious though. She is immediately worried that Alice will be left high and dry without an assistant. Betty says she has a plan for that.

Meanwhile, Fangs has been told. He is hollering about how he’s going to “go out there to that convent.” Toni stops him from developing this scheme any further. Cheryl also chimes in, saying two kidnappings does not a solution make. Both these girls are betting that Midge’s parents don’t know that Fangs is the father. Cheryl says something weird - “We need to keep it that way so that you’re not arrested.” Why would Fangs get arrested? Are there anti miscegenation laws in Riverdale? Will they accuse him of raping Midge? What?

I also wonder about Toni playing the Friar Lawrence role to this pair. Her advice has thus far been singularly bad, hasn’t it? She knows how to rig up a home pregnancy test using frogs but doesn’t know any abortionists or even advise Midge on trying to find one. She ASSUMES that Midge’s parents will simply not accept the whole truth, and so steers Fangs and Midge into trying to get their ‘romance’ accepted first before dropping the pregnancy bomb, but that just isn’t how conservative families work. If Fangs and Midge had gone to the parents to say, do you want Midge to have a bastard child or do you want the baby born in matrimony, Midge’s mother wouldv’e gotten her an abortion whether Midge wanted one or not OR allowed them to marry. Here again, if Fangs let’s say showed up in all his biker glory and just burst into the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, wouldn’t that have been materially better for them both? Toni has done no research about this. She hasn’t asked Ethel anything. Ethel got out - why not ask HOW she made that decision stick?

I think Toni has a lot of unexamined hidden motives here -she simply does not want Fangs to have a happy romance with Midge in any direction. She’s very pleased, actually that Midge has been sent away.

When Fangs wants to know what he should do, Toni smirks and giggles as she tells him to write a hit song that becomes a gold record so that he becomes “undeniable to Midge’s parents.”

Yeah so what conservative racist parents (as per Toni’s assumptions about them) would want their child impregnated out of wedlock by not just a guy who is of color but a rock’n’roller of color?

This is insidiously evil of Toni.

Cheryl, of course, never liked Midge being with Fangs to begin with. But she’s moved by his plight, so she actually comes up with useful solutions. She’ll arrange a phone call between Midge and Fangs, and she wants Fangs to remain calm.

Meanwhile, I assume Betty and Ethel have made good use of the insider information that Ethel has access to from her days of slave labor as Alice’s assistant and have gotten Ethel a really gorgeous pageant dress. Ethel really does have “perfect poise” as Betty says. She can do spins in a ball gown with a book balanced on her head. That’s a neat trick.

Alice is very startled to hear that Ethel will be replacing Midge but lies in a white way (“That’s WONDERFUL” she screams) before insisting that she must have an assistant.

Turns out Betty has roped Long Duk Dong - no sorry, Dilton Doiley, into the role of the assistant. I hope she gave his extra huge Asian cock a blowjob.

Sorry. Sorry. I hate S7 Dilton and I hate this actor and I hate what they’re making him do.

Alice asks to speak to Betty in the hallway. She is enraged. Alice yells at Betty about trying to undermine her. Betty says she doesn’t understand what the problem is. I think she genuinely is stupid enough this season for this to be actually true. Alice tries to explain: “Ethel does not represent the ideals of Miss Riverdale Teen Queen.” Betty snaps back, “Why? She’s not pregnant!”

Alice says that Ethel has “an unsavory history.” Betty is again struggling to catch up, asking if this is about Ethel’s parents being murdered or if there’s “something else.” It occurs to me that maybe only a handful of adults other than Jughead and his editor, that is, Sheriff Keller, the principal, his husband, the head nun at the Sisters, Alice and maybe also Mary know that Ethel managed to avenge her parents and kill a man in self defense.

Alice doesn’t actually say if it’s the parents being killed or something else, to which Betty comes to some sort of conclusion that makes her put on a a horrified face to say “Woah, you are awful.”

Uh. What is this, by the way? It’s entirely not clear. Does Alice in fact blame Ethel for her parents being killed? Like, are we doing an Oscar Wilde thing here? ( “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness”??) I’m still inclined to think that this is about Ethel being fat, but Alice and Betty both think fatness is unspeakable on the level of leprosy so they can’t even say it to each other. I say this because Alice says, “I am not gonna let you turn this competition into one of your crusades!”

Crusades for what? Advocacy of murder attempt survivors? Surely not.

Alice is very clear about her priorities. She wants “to protect the office of Miss Riverdale Teen Queen” first and foremost, because it seems to have been the only competition and externally validating thing she ever went out for and won. Ethel’s well being is a secondary priority, and again the wording is so weird. She wants to protect Ethel from “the scrutiny that Miss Teen Queen demands.”

Scrutiny like somehow a tabloid somewhere is going to take an avid interest in a small town electing a teen beauty queen to say OMG TWO PEOPLE WERE MURDERED THIS ONE TIME IN THIS TOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE? Or scrutiny like, if you include a fat girl in a beauty contest everyone will mock her and the contest because that’s how fatphobia works?

Betty, who has been steadfast in calling Ethel beautiful, makes me lose faith in her. She says it plainly to Alice. For Betty, participation in this entire competition is purely pecuniary. To her it’s quite simple - Ethel is an orphan and she needs the money. But this carries no weight to Alice, because she can’t stand the only competition she’s ever won to be reduced to a mere charity. Alice screams at her that she must be the one to get Ethel to withdraw from the pageant. Betty stamps her foot in frustration.

Then she goes exactly to the Dyke Triumvirate for advice, down in the Dark Room. Veronica, for whom this is really just a lark to assuage her everlasting boredom and loneliness in Riverdale, Alice’s decision to not allow Ethel into the competition doesn’t make sense.

Betty finally fully (well as much as Betty can be fully honest about anything which isn’t much) admits that she knows the issue is Ethel’s non-ideal body type (“Ethel doesn’t represent the ideal blah-blah-blah”). After saying a bunch of things she may or may not have meant about Ethel’s looks, Betty really doesn’t want to be the one to admit to (a) cooking up this whole plan to sabotage her mother (because it’s plain now that this was the intention) and (b) telling Ethel she can’t participate. She tries to get the other three on board by talking about Ethel as a charity case. - “Imagine what winning would do for her.” She’s saying this to one girl with hereditary wealth, a daughter of major Hollywood players who owns her own apartment and her own movie theater (somehow, without also having access to a bank account) and Toni, about whom nothing is known but who doesn’t at all seem lacking for resources.

I don’t know how Ethel would feel if she knew this conversation happened other than humiliated. These four skinny girls held a round table ABOUT her without her, silently agreed among themselves that she doesn’t represent the ideal, but decided that she deserved their charity and graceful self abnegation for the scholarship money (which assumes that she’d choose the competition money and not the Hollywood screen test or the car by the way, which nobody has asked Ethel about).

Cheryl because she has the most leadership chops comes up with the best solution - all the thin, telegenic participants will withdraw if Ethel doesn’t get to participate. Without competitors, there can be no competition. Furthermore, all four of them seem unduly certain that Ethel doesn’t actually represent any sort of threat to their own bid for the title.

When Betty says she will confront Alice about all this again, Veronica stops her. Veronica knows Betty is not just kind of dumb, and that Alice Cooper might not be. She assumes that Hal Cooper is just as stupid as Betty, for one, and for another, Veronica Lodge is an expert at patricide (actual and metaphorical across all universes). She suggests threatening Hal Cooper, and volunteers herself as “a more seasoned negotiator.”

Right away, the girls go to “bend” Hal’s ear. Veronica immediately says that Ethel must be allowed to participate in the pageant. Hal says he’s already been yelled at by Alice about the Ethel issue, so that’s all already decided. Veronica knows a lot about TV so she starts dropping references that make Hal Cooper very vulnerable - “ad spending” “money brought in by live television” “sold all your commercial spots” and “cash those checks.” Having softened him up, they threaten to have all the participants pull out. They also want the swimsuit promenade cut. Hal says, grossly, that the swimsuit segment is a judge favorite event. Veronica incongruously points out that it’s the swimsuit competition that is “Plainly sexist.” My dear pretty little hypocrite - THE ENTIRE THING is sexist. WHY even bring up sexism? Do any male competitions exists that look anything like this pretending to be scholarship competitions? NO THEY DON’T.

Veronica, I love you, but fucking stuff it. Don’t bring up critiques about sexism if you’re going to participate at all. You’re disqualified from feminist discourse.

Hal and Alice have a big blow out fight right before the competition about Ethel. Hal says that since the judges like thin girls (he doesn’t say this but this is what he means) there is no way that Ethel will win the contest (because she is fat) because all it comes down to in the end is does the girl conform to the conventional standards of beauty, which in living memory has NEVER been not skinny and Ethel is fat (he doesn’t say this either but this is what he means). Alice is simply freaking out.

They are screaming the name ETHEL but Ethel pretends not to hear, and asks Betty if they are fighting about her (because they are screaming ETHEL MUGGS at each other). Betty does what Betty does and lies.

With 13 minutes of this episode to go, we are finally at the Miss Riverdale Teen Queen Pageant. The audience that we see for this is 100% all the boys who have ever had a speaking part this season. Not a single girl who is not in the pageant is shown watching this. They just weren’t selected so they disappear from existence. This pageant is entirely for male eyes only. Any talk about these sort of events being anything other than pornographic entertainment for the era when actual pornography was not readily available for private viewing is completely disagreed with by Riverdale the show.

Julian says he is mad they cut the swimsuit bit. Jughead makes fun of him, asking why he wants to “see your sister prancing around like a bathing beauty.” Archie totally looks like he has taken something, he looks so manic, and when Jughead calls Julian pervy about the desire for the swimsuit competition, guffaws. Jughead also laughs a lot as his own joke. Julian is annoyed, telling Jughead to drop dead. Is this - is this the first time they’ve actually said anything to each other? I can’t recall.

The judges for this event are Cheryl’s father, the high school principal and the high school child psychologist. This is very gross. The thing is being emceed by Betty’s father. Kevin is singing in the most oleaginous way over the girls silently parading around modeling their gowns. Jughead whistles at Veronica’s turn on the catwalk. Fangs wants Toni to win (why?).

Alice is in some sort of culty fugue as this event goes on. There’s an in studio audience cheering.

Veronica’s trick was tightrope walking. WHAT? WHY COULDNT’ WE SEE THIS? Reggie thinks this was awesome (“Who knew she was an acrobat!”).

Ethel closes the evening with a big song. I found it immensely cheesy though wow, Ethel is graceful and can sing really well, who knew?

Oh and Betty delivered the Gettysburg Address, apparently, which Jughead found “stirring.” Uh OK. Now THAT is really pervy.

Julian wants it just to not be Cheryl (we aren’t told what her talent was) that wins

Clay says they should’ve made the musical about Ethel instead of Archie.

Then they announce the winner. I realized at this point that I misunderstood what the prize was - you get ALL of the above. A car AND a screentest AND a scholarship. It wasn’t Or. It’s AND. For all her money having ways, neither of Cheryl nor Veronica have a car of their own so I see now why they want to be in this competition still. Everything else I said still stands though!

There’s a drum roll. Julian is intensely begging it to not be Cheryl (Why doesn’t Julian want Cheryl to have a car? Selfish dipshit.). Fangs is not thinking about the locked up knocked up Midge at all, focusing all his nervous attention on Toni, just like she wanted. Clay, despite thinking Ethel should win, does not expect her to, so he braces for impact with a wince.

The Coopers open the envelope with the winner’s name in it. Alice takes it from Hal, who look happy, and announces that it’s Ethel Muggs. Hal looks unhappy. The judges glare at each other. The boys in the diner lose their shits, screaming and hollering. Ethel is overjoyed. Betty looks overjoyed. The only one with a very honest, human reaction is Evelyn Evernever once again - she is upset and finds this whole thing incomprehensible. She also refused to do that deeply insulting thing of making the girls who are standing in a row begging with their tits for scholarship money hold hands with each other as the one winner among them is announced. I stan Evelyn Evernever for this. When she competes against other women she competes wholesale. I find this much more honorable. Why the fuck do the girls have to hold hands?

The next morning, Fangs runs into the diner to get a call from Midge. These two not very bright people being guided by Toni Topaz with ulterior (possibly unexamined) motives are very miserable. Midge’s despair at the end of the call is entirely Toni’s fault. Because all she has is this one phone call, Midge has to pretend she’s fine. Fangs should’ve driven into the convent on his bike.

That same morning, Betty walks into her mother’s kitchen. They have the scariest conversation I’ve ever seen between mother and a daughter on television. I’m not sure that this moment of complicated terror borne out of two women who represent the absolute most insane sides of white culture (I’m not white by the way, just in case that wasn’t clear) is worth the cost of having to sit through this horrible episode (because it truly was horrible) but this is what happens.

Betty launches the first attack. Is Alice exhibiting ‘sour grapes’ because Betty lost and Ethel won? Alice counters by showing Betty that she was in fact the winner. Betty has a hard time (Because as I’ve said for the umpteenth time, she is really stupid for this episode) wrapping her mind around what she’s lost. Alice says that all the men were deeply unhappy but live television’s demand that they put on a ‘flawless’ show forbade any of them from contradicting her.

As I’ve said, winning this contest multiple times is the only accomplishment Alice Cooper has had in her life, and Betty, by pushing a fat orphan to compete in a beauty contest, tries to besmirch exactly the things Alice values about her winnings by turning into a charity. It stamped her as beautiful and rewarded her apparently painful conformity with standard hetero culture. So in turn, Alice took Betty’s win away from her and gave it to Ethel.

If the winner had been any of the other girls, it’s strongly implied, she wouldn’t have done it. She even says it herself - “Maybe I just didn’t want you to win.” Alice tries to have a total victory - for all of Betty’s “grandstanding, Ethel would still have lost,” and moreover, it’s Alice, not Betty, that changed Ethel’s life for the better. And she also got to take something away from Betty that Betty really wanted - a way to go to college, without having to ask Alice for permission. I cut your achilles tendon and popped all your balloons, basically.

Then Betty does the most white woman thing of all time and tells her mother that she will think well of her. She stabs her mother in the face with the words “I love you.” Instead of expressing a natural human feeling - I am angry with you - which white women are not allowed by their culture to feel, Betty says “I know you are a good person” but in the most stony-faced, glassy-eyed way possible.

I think the victory belongs with Betty though. Sure, Alice materially hurt her daughter, and did that thing of cursing her daughter to “live the life I lived." But in retaliation, her daughter announced that she thinks she’s a piece of shit and she hates her, using the Opposites Day language of white womanhood. Moreover, it was Alice’s dream to a) keep Miss Teen Queen a validation of womanly perfection and b) to have some sort of legacy in the world which for her boiled down to being a Miss Teen Queen who raised a second generation of Miss Teen Queen. By hurting Betty, Alice hurt herself, because Alice cares about this competition and Betty does not want to give her mother any sort of legacy.

White anglo culture takes insidious passive aggression to a HIGH ART level and these people scare the shit out of me.

Secure in her victory, Betty goes to write an answer to all her girls who wrote into her newsletter. “There is a hope for a better tomorrow. In fact, we girls are that hope.”

This is completely unearned. Betty just engaged in a final battle of mortal combat of the soul with her mother, and has come out with like severed limbs and severe blood loss, though she won because she took away the one happy achievement her mother ever had in her life. She made Alice kill her own one shining earned-it-myself achievement. This event that Alice told the world on national TV is something more special to her that Christmas itself has been permanently tarnished for her, because in a desperate bid to survive this hate-filled battle with her daughter, Alice stabbed herself in the heart. There is absolutely nothing hopeful here. Betty is lying as per usual.

#be forewarned: i say a lot of very broad out of pocket things in here because it's the only way i could get this written #i disliked this episode so much i almost gave up doing any more write ups #i procrastinated for three weeks and i am not a procrastinator #anti betty cooper #riverdale s7 #riverdale 7.15 #miss teen riverdale #riverdale opinion #riverdale recap

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sixty-silver-wishes · 1 year

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So usually I don’t read the Daily Beast (often sensationalized news/tabloid outlet), but I clicked on this article today:

I can’t tell if I’m angry at the author of this article or feel extremely sorry for her. Essentially, she’s a lesbian conservative who’s feeling disillusioned by DeSantis’ anti-LGBT policies. But some of what she says is genuinely making my head spin:

DeSantis has been governor of Florida since 2018. He’s built a platform on being anti-LGBT since around 2020, and only now that he’s released an advertisement that makes absolutely no departure from his previous statements and actions, suddenly you’re shocked?

I’m sorry, but “limited government, personal responsibility, and individual liberties” like what? The government keeping themselves out of the decisions women and trans people make with their bodies? Personal responsibility like recognizing one’s place in systemic injustice and working to right it? Or do you mean “personal responsibility” in the conservative ideological belief of only looking out for oneself and not one’s community? Individual liberties? This woman lives openly as a lesbian, and it sure as hell wasn’t conservatives that gave her that right. By “individual liberties,” is she only talking about not caring about issues until they affect her own freedom? Because that’s exactly what’s happening. Conservatives have been working for years to oppress the LGBT+ community, but as long as this particular woman isn’t feeling threatened, it’s fine. She can even join them in oppressing members of her own community, until they actually turn on her, which, surprise, they did.

The ignorance here honestly breaks my heart. DeSantis “tarnishes the image of the conservative movement” by being homophobic? What image did the conservative movement even have in the first place that positions them as a champion of LGBT+ rights? DeSantis isn’t “going against conservative principles” by being a bigot; he’s embodying them. Those “conservative values” the author is championing are exactly what got him to where he is now. The author is shocked at his bigotry, but as of writing the article, she’s still ignorant to the fact that because she’s only looking out for her conservative “individual liberties,” she and the rest of our community are in danger.

Ms. Yvonne Dean Bailey, I doubt you’ll see this, but I feel sorry for you. But the truth is, DeSantis is not just one bad individual tarnishing your ideology. He is your ideology, and the only reason why you have the freedoms you speak of is because of generations of sacrifices by the LGBT community fighting against those “conservative values” to give you and the rest of us better lives than the ones they had. Conservatives may say they promote “individual liberties,” but what that means is stepping on the most convenient marginalized group to give more power to a privileged demographic that gets smaller and smaller the more they’re allowed to oppress people. Being a conservative lesbian woman is not going to stop them from seeing you as a lesbian woman, and therefore a target of homophobia and misogyny. Your ideology and “values” will not protect you from them.

I don’t hate you, Yvonne Dean Bailey. I think you’re ignorant, but I don’t hate you. I’m scared for you, just like I’m scared for myself and every other person in this country. I hope you take the long, painful, terrifying journey of introspection and deconstructing the harmful values you’ve spent so long supporting, because I want you and our whole community to be safe. You can do a lot of good if you keep questioning and thinking. But please, Yvonne Dean Bailey, as a queer person who lives in Florida, I want you to understand what’s going on, and despite what you’ve learned, bigotry doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You’ve taken the first step, but it’s not the end. Please keep moving.

#lgbt #queer #politics #rambles #us politics #florida politics #florida

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saithebatguy · 2 months

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TIMING: Current FEATURING: @deathsplaything & @saithebatguy LOCATION: Alistair's apartment (above the Sugar Pot) SUMMARY: Sai comes to Alistair's apartment to talk Bat Week. The meeting is informative in more ways than one.

Sai walked up to the door next to the Sugar Pot, which he hoped was to the apartments above the businesses, armed with the usual bat week materials. For a bat lover, Alistair was harder to convince than Sai thought, but he didn’t mind too much. He liked the excuse to talk about it more, and he had to admit he was curious about the tea shop owner. With his knowledge of lamias, and a comment about being around long enough to pick up some things… Well, Sai put two and two together, and was harboring a theory that the other person wasn’t exactly human either. Probably not a vampire, considering his lack of strength — his hitting the crocodile with his cane didn’t do much to it — but there were plenty of other types of undead. Not to mention other long lived species, although Sai didn’t know as much about them. Not that it mattered much anyway. Humans were really the main target demographic of his bat conservation, but every participating business for bat week would help.

There was no buzzer system on the door to the building. Maybe Sai should have called ahead and made a plan for Alistair to let him in, but it was a little late for that now. The door was unlocked, though, when he tried it, so he let himself in, and walked up the stairs to the landing. The doors there weren’t marked with names, but he figured the one on the left would be above the Sugar Pot. And Alistair had mentioned that was where he lived, so it seemed like the best guess. Sai gave a loud knock on that door. Hopefully, he wasn’t waking Alistair up. It might not start them off on the best foot for the bat week conversation.

—

They knew it had been a bad idea to invite the strange bat guy over to his flat, Alistair knew that. But after a certain point, they had to respect the man’s perseverance. That’s how he’d ended up listening to an audiobook, pausing it when they heard the knock on the door. Melody and Tommy had keys, so they knew it had to be someone else. Brutus was the first to head over, and Alistair was glad for it, they’d be able to see who it was upon opening the door. “Coming!” The necromancer called out as they got up off of the couch of their rather minimalist apartment. More minimalist for ease of movement than actual love of the design.

Opening the door to the apartment, Alistair cast the spell that allowed them to look through Brutus’s eyes, taking in the appearance of the other. “Sai, I’m guessing?” Alistair spoke with a quirked brow, waiting for an answer before allowing the other unspoken entry into the flat. “Come on then, tell me about your bats and your bat week idea. I’m all ears.”

“It’s me,” Sai agreed. “Thanks for inviting me over to talk about this.” He would have followed the other person into the flat, only there wasn’t really an explicit invitation. Body language, wise, Alistair was saying come in, but that didn’t really cut it for some vampires. Come on then seemed more an invitation to talk than step inside. So Sai stayed at the door. He could talk just fine from here.

“So the whole idea for bat week is really to get people in town excited about the bats and build some local love for the animal,” Sai said, gesturing as he talked. “The idea is really to have participation for businesses across town. I’m planning to set up a web page on the conservation society’s website with all the participating locations and ways to participate. I have some really incredible posters designed by a local artist for it – I brought a couple if you and your business partner want to look them over later –- but really if there’s unique ways for your business to participate, I think that’s the best way to engage people in both bat week and your business. For example, the local comic shop is going to have an educational comic on bats. And selling Batman comics too, I think.”

Either Alistair didn’t notice Sai’s inability to enter, or simply didn’t mention it. But once Sai started on his speech, Alistair rolled their eyes and ushered them in once more. “Come in before the other neighbors get confused about a man getting on a soapbox about bats.” They growled, nodding slowly in thanks after Sai walked through the door front door behind him after he stepped past the threshold.

Only works at night and didn’t come in right away. Interesting. Alistair knew what the signs were, but wasn’t about to call the man out on it. After all, if he was a vampire, he had the upper hand. Well, maybe not. He was in the home of a necromancer, after all. The thoughts flitted through their mind, then left as quickly as they arrived. They truthfully didn’t care what the signs were, the likelihood was still low.

They took a deep breath as they tuned into what Sai was talking about. They bit down on their lower lip as they listened, trying their damndest to act like they cared. But if Sai truly cared this much for the bats, then they’d be an asshole (more than they already were) to not at least give him a fair chance with it. “Well I don’t know what kind of ideas you’d have for a tea shop,” Alistair remarked, crossing their arms over their chest, eager to hear ideas that Sai could have.

—

At Alistair’s invitation, Sai walked into their apartment, closing the door behind him. It was a bit sparse but nice enough, he thought. Although Sai wasn’t really sure what counted as nice these days. He hadn’t been in many apartments in the last few decades. Most of the people he knew were more old school. Crypts and mausoleums.

“Well, one option is you could make some sort of bat themed tea blend for the week,” Sai said. “I saw you had some sort of summer-themed drinks on social media, so maybe something like that. But I wouldn’t want to stifle your creativity or anything if you had other ideas.” Sai was more than happy to come up with ideas, but really the beauty of it was when each business provided their own flair. “What do you think of when you think ‘Bat Week’?”

They kept telling themselves they didn’t mind, that it didn’t matter if they were a vampire, but it did, didn’t it? Alistair’s expression was unreadable and deep in thought. If they were to ask, they’d have to be careful about it. They’d also have to be prepared in case things went south. The man kept talking about bats, no surprise in the slightest, there. Then, they were asked a question and they needed to be quick with a response, something that showed they were paying attention when in reality, they weren’t in the slightest. “I think a crazed man on a mission,” they muttered under their breath before turning to face Sai. “I think I could get some gummy bat candies and put it in an iced tea. Not like I can base a drink off of their diet seeing as how they eat bugs.” Alistair pulled a face.

After a moment of silence, Alistair let out a deep sigh, then shook their head. “Listen, I know you’re a vampire.” The necromancer finally spoke, tapping their foot on the floor below them. “You only work and come out at night, you wouldn’t walk through the door without an explicit invitation.” Alistair moved their hands as they spoke. “And you should know that I’m a necromancer. You’ve walked into the home of a necromancer.” They didn’t move to trap them or do anything of the sort. “Your excitement for bats could get you killed, Sai.” They said instead, pinching the bridge of their nose in exasperation. “I won’t be the one to do it, but you deserve to know the truth.”

Alistair sounded disgruntled, but that hardly mattered when he was coming up with great ideas, like bat gummies. They were on the right track with this. Only the conversation got a bit derailed, when Alistair changed topics to vampires.

It didn’t worry Sai that Alistair knew he was a vampire. Not when Alistair first started talking, anyway. They clearly weren’t a hunter, and Sai hadn’t thought they were human, anyway. But the next words out of their mouth stopped Sai cold. He knew what a necromancer meant. That they could take control of Sai anytime. Right now if they’d wanted.

What Sai couldn’t figure out was why Alistair was telling him. Didn’t they know vampires would want them dead? Most anyway. The jury was still out on Sai and this necromancer. He’d liked him well enough before this moment. But announcing themself as a necromancer was an effective threat. Which seemed like overkill, since Alistair could have just asked Sai to leave if they were getting annoyed. There must had been some shift in the conversation, in the tone, that Sai had missed. He felt unsteady, like the rug was pulled out from under him and he hadn’t gotten his bearings on what was happening here yet.

“I don’t know why you invited me here if you’re just going to threaten me into leaving,” Sai said, raising his hands slowly as he backed away from the necromancer. Maybe more powerful vampires could fight one and win, but Sai didn’t think he could. He wasn’t looking to find out, either way. “But you know, point taken, I will happily get out of your hair, and you never have to see me again.” He hated to leave Bat Week on this note, when it had seemed like Alistair was starting to get into the idea, but this was one of the few occasions when he thought it wasn’t best to press the topic. Clearly, Alistair wanted nothing to do with him, or they wouldn’t have said anything.

Alistair sighed, then shook his head. “I’m not threatening you, but you deserve to know the truth.” The spellcaster explained with a tired sigh. “I want to help you with your bats, and god forbid, be your friend. But you deserve to know the truth.” Alistair didn’t attempt to stop Sai from leaving, they didn’t raise a finger. Instead, they stood where they were, hands at their sides. “I want to help with your bats, you know. But I can’t have the balance be this uneven without you being informed.”

He had nothing else they could do except let Sai leave, knowing that they had every right to leave, had every right to be afraid. They’d spent so much time being told that vampires, mares, furies, and zombies were the monsters. But what if it was them that was the monster, not them? They were just trying to survive, to live one day at a time the only way they could, and Alistair could just snap their fingers and take it all away like their life didn’t matter. Snuffing out the flame that was trying so hard to burn brightly; that’s what he did. “I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner, but I wasn’t sure until you couldn’t walk through the threshold.”

Sai waved away their apologies. There wasn’t an obligation for Alistair to tell him, the way he saw it. In fact, he almost wished they hadn’t. Ignorance was bliss, right? And he still couldn’t puzzle out why Alistair had told him in the first place. “You know, a lot of the vampires I know, if I told them, would love to see you dead,” Sai said. It probably wasn’t smart to say. But he was just pointing out the obvious. Telling Sai that Alistair was a necromancer, when they planned to let him leave, didn’t make a lot of sense. Vampires and necromancers were more or less natural enemies, as far as Sai knew. “I really don’t understand why you’d want to tell me.”

Sai should leave, he really should. He knew that. But against his better judgement, he believed Alistair that they wanted to help the bats. That was hard for Sai to walk away from. And Alistair had every opportunity to kill Sai if he wanted, basically from the moment Sai had walked up to his door, and he hadn’t. Not yet, anyway. “So you’re human then, right?” Sai asked, wondering if there was something he was missing. As far as he knew, all necromancers were.

Alistair raised a brow at Sai’s comment, and a cocky half-smile appeared on the necromancer’s face. “I’d like to see them try.” And that was the truth of the matter. No matter how it was laid out, Alistair was capable of horrible things. They’d done it before, they’d probably do so again. Vampires coming after him was the least of their concerns. “Because you’re a vampire. I can tell, and it’s easy to tell if you know what you’re looking for.” Alistair wiggled their fingers in front of them, like the idea of Sai being anything else but a vampire was comical.

“I told you because you seem to have tunnel vision for anything related to bats. It’s going to get you killed. And I think you’re rather interesting, it’d be a pity to see you die.” They shrugged a shoulder, trying to shrug off the idea that they’d be bummed out if Sai got himself killed.

“Human,” Alistair repeated with a nod of their head, hands clasped behind their back, trying to show that they weren’t about to try anything. “Come from a long line of necromancers in Scotland. Can’t exactly be a spellcaster and anything other than human.” They tilted their head to their shoulder and raised a brow expectantly. “You can either take the information and store it away, or you can rush out of here and sentence me to a life of swatting vampires like their flies. That’s entirely your choice.”

The necromancer walked over to the kitchen’s island and tapped the piece of paper. “Fruit bat punch,” Alistair spoke, picking up the paper and handing it out in front of them for Sai to either take or disregard and leave out the front door. “I know fruit bats aren’t native to Maine, but I’m not about to make a drink based on the diets of those bats. They eat bugs. I’m not making bug tea.” They pulled a face, clearly moving on from the idea of vampires and necromancers at odds. “A tropical fruit iced tea where the proceeds of the drink go entirely to your bat fund.” The paper outlined the details of the proceeds, how it would be kept track of and all the logistical nightmare details. “The choice is yours.”

“Even if I ran out,” Sai said, and he should, he reminded himself, “It would just be so I don’t die. I wouldn’t send other vampires after you or anything,” Sai said. Alistair cared about bats – even if they loved to pretend they cared about nothing for some reason – and that was enough in Sai’s books. And for some reason they’d revealed sensitive information about themself for Sai’s benefit too. “Not unless you started swatting us like flies first,” Sai added, to make it clear there were some lines. He still had his loyalties to his clanmates after all.

“I’ve been doing all of this for years, and nothing terrible has happened yet,” Sai pointed out, still not sure exactly what point Alistair was trying to make. “Are there a lot of necromancer’s in town, then?”

Sai took the paper from Alistair, when he offered. He knew he should leave. But he believed what Alistair was saying, that he didn’t intend Sai any harm. And Sai liked the necromancer, and did want to be friends. Even if it was sort of like those unlikely animal friendships you saw on social media. But it worked for those animals, didn’t it?

Besides, clearly Alistair had been thinking about Bat Week. They’d already drawn up a plan and everything. Sai could hardly cut him out of it now. “I think this is a great idea,” Sai said, moving to sit down, as a sort of a white flag. He was still a little tense, but mostly back on topic now, as he looked over the paper. “And incredibly generous of you. We got a little off track, but I love the bat gummy idea too, there’s no reason you can’t do both. Just maybe clarify, fruit bats aren’t local if anyone asks. I wouldn’t want the event spreading misinformation or anything.”

Listening as Sai explained himself, Alistair let out a huff. “I wouldn’t kill you. I also wouldn’t control you. The only reason I’d control an undead is if they were out to kill me first. So your vampire friends are safe, as are you.” They shook their head at the idea of going on some sort of warpath for one reason other than they could. “I wouldn’t seek out the undead for the express purpose of killing them. Would other necromancers? Possibly. But I can only speak for myself.”

Alistair thought for a moment, but only Aleksander came to mind in terms of other necromancers in town. “There’s only one other that I know of, and he’d use you like a puppet for the thrill of it.” There was a dark expression that crossed over their face as they spoke of Aleksander, a snarl forming on their lips. There was clearly no love for the man.

“I decided that if you’re committed this much to bat conservation I can…” Alistair trailed off, the words getting stuck in his mouth like they had a bad taste. “I can… show that I care about something.” They forced a smile, and it was clear they were uncomfortable, stepping outside of their bubble of comfort into something strange and unknown. But they were trying. Because Sai’s excitement for bats was infectious, Alistair, for once in their miserable excuse of a life, wanted to know what it was like to feel such a surge of positive emotion as well.

“I’m trying to turn over a new leaf,” they admitted with a sigh. “Trying to care more, trying to pretend I’m not so bloody miserable all the time.” They pulled a face again, still very much uncomfortable. “And I figured I’d start easy by caring about someone else’s passion first.”

Sai nodded at the tea shop owner’s point. He’d never actually met a necromancer before. He knew they were real, sure, but for the most part, they were sort of like a boogeyman. Everyone was scared of them, but you never really ran into one. Until today, at least. “I hear your point about running into someone else like this other necromancer,” Sai said. “But it’s not like I’m just going to stop doing this work or anything because I’m scared of the one other necromancer in town.”

When Alistair started talking about caring more, Sai smiled brightly. “I think that’s great. And really, I’m honored this is the cause you chose to care about publicly,” Sai said. Despite what the other person had said, it sounded a lot like this road led to Alistair posting on social media sooner or later. “Besides, it’s sort of your passion too, right? Since it’s with tea, for Bat Week at least.” He looked at the paper again, full of technical details. “It looks like you put a lot of thought into it.”

“If you do run into any other necromancers, I can do my best to advocate on your behalf. They’ll be more likely to listen to me than to you, an undead.” Alistair remarked with a simple shrug of their shoulder. “If there are more, I don’t know them personally.” They tacked on. “I will always be on your side unless you decide to go on a needless rampage.” They stated with a nod. “And if it requires it, then perhaps I’ll still be on your side.” They shrugged their shoulders again, a smirk on their face.

Then, Sai sounded excited, like what they had admitted brought them joy. Of course, it did, Sai was so excitable. They had half a mind to grump and shut down, but they had to remind themselves that they were actively fighting against that. “I’m not sure if tea is a passion more than it is something I have an obscene amount of information about in my head.” Alistair knocked the side of their head with a roll of their eyes. “I did put a lot of thought into it, because this matters to you. And I care about the environment, so I care about bats.” Because I care about you, they didn’t dare to say. God forbid they care about anyone other than themselves.

“I ran it by Melody, and she seemed far more excited about the idea than I cared for.” They admitted, knowing it was because of the exact reason Sai was excited. Because he was caring about something that benefits someone else and not themselves. “So, I’m all in, if you’ll allow me to be.” They shrugged their shoulders. “I have enough in the bank that I can stand to help out your organization with this drink. I’m willing to do this for you and your bat cause.”

Probably better to not ask Alistair what qualified as a needless rampage, and take the offer of support, Sai figured. His appetites were pretty standard for a vampire, tame even compared to some others he’d met, so probably nothing that might qualify. Unless maybe Esther made plans that involved slaughtering a lot of humans, which wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. All in all, he figured better not to open that line of conversation. He hadn’t forgotten what Alistair was in the last five minutes, after all.

“I think that’s pretty close to a passion anyway, especially if you cared enough to learn about all of that,” Sai said. “If you’re helping out, that’s what matters more than the why, to me anyway. And this sort of creativity is really what I think is going to make Bat Week shine. You know, if this goes well, I’m thinking the next steps might be to petition the town to make bats the town’s official animal, or a species of them at least.”

Sai stood back up, still smiling. There had been a dip in the middle where things went South, but overall the meeting had gone pretty well, in his opinion. “I’ll bring by the posters to put up once they’re finished, which should be soon,” Sai said. “A local artist and business owner in town volunteered to work on them, actually. She sent over the drafts to me, and I think they’re pretty good.”

Alistair listened as Sai spoke about Alistair getting close to having a passion, which caused them to roll their eyes in response. “It’s not a passion, it’s just… something I do.” They murmured, realizing that Sai was, in fact, right. They didn’t want to admit it, however. Then, Sai began talking about making bats the town animal. “Alright, one thing at a time, Sai.” Alistair spoke up with a smirk, clearly amused by Sai’s enthusiasm.

“Well, I’m glad you approve of it.” They spoke, nodding their head as they stayed in their spot. “I’m sorry to have called you out on the whole vampire thing and spook you, but.” They shrugged, rubbing the back of their neck. “You deserve to know the truth, that’s all.”

After a moment, Alistair nodded. “Good, have them go to Melody, she’s the one with the working eyes, after all.” Alistair waved their hands, then walked over to the front door to let Sai out. They opened the door, and Brutus trotted over to sit beside the necromancer, tongue lolled out of his mouth with his tail wagging a mile a minute. “Thanks for stopping by, I’m glad I could help you on this mission of yours.” When Sai left, Alistair closed the door behind him, and threw his head back, letting out a frustrated sigh. It wasn’t a total failure, was it?

Oh well. Only one way to find out. And that was by seeing if Sai ever talked to them again.

#writing #alistair

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