#a certain woman book

[asagirisfavpen]

Lately, I've seen a lot of posts about Kuni being the Azure King. But something about this theory didn't sit right with me so I made some research online. Just so you know, I didn't read the novel, but I've read a lot of Tumblr posts about it.

So, first of all, let's see why people think our beloved Kuni is the Azure King.

Same Japanese va, Yoshimasa Hosoya

Both of them are idealists.

Same hair color (anime only)

Kuni was a teacher and it's known that the Azure King attended some elite education institution (said in the light novel)

And probably other reasons, but this are the ones I met.

I personally think these are ways to make Kunikida and The Azure King something like a parallel. Especially the thing with the same voice actor must be it.

In Beast, he also wears blue (according to Harukawa in an interview) because he's not traumatized by the Azure King incident. So he can't be the Azure King (In Beast, Odasaku is the one that caught him)

Then who is the Azure King?

My theory is that he's Takeo Arishima. He fits the high-quality education thing and he also had some ideals. But what truly makes me suspect him as the Azure King is the fact that one of his most well-known books A Certain Woman has the main character, Yōko Satsuki, based on Sasaki Nobuko.

In the anime/light novel, she is The Azure King's lover. But in the real life, she was Kunikida's ex-wife.

Takeo Arishima also committed suicide, like The Azure King did. Well, he didn't explode himself, but you get the idea.

But then we have another problem. This Takeo is a writer. Then the character must have an ability, right? Well, it's obviously based on A Certain Woman. But what does it do? That I don't know and can only speculate. But after reading the summary of the book, I think his ability is related to the fact that he wanted to get rid of the criminals (Light Yagami kinnie moment) like how Yōko wanted to get rid of people's expectations of her. So maybe his ability tells him who committed the worst crimes so he can get rid of 'em.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Fun little game whenever you come across a shallow parody of YA female protagonists: take a tally of the traits she has and see how many apply to Luke Skywalker.

[twilight-zoned-out]

"Seven years ago we all went through the flames; and the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured."

Although Dracula was published in 1897, some think that it takes place in 1893 because of the way the days and dates used line up. If that's the case, Jonathan Harker's epilogue, seven years later, would have been added around 1900. A new era bubbling with new change and new conventions. The story ends with Jonathan looking ahead to a new century filled with the unknown and being able to look on the past, despite its darkness, "without despair."

[alisfelia]

book cover art

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

"okay yeah he can't write female characters at all but he's one of the greatest authors of his time" have you considered no?

[redheadedfailgirl]

From 'Dream of a woman' By Cacey Plett.

This sums up exactly how I feel about most transition timelines. As much as they reflect people's experiences, they are also a narrative. And the narratives that get shared the most tell a lot about what our values are. The timelines that get the most attention are the ones where people go from sad, loser, nothing boys into beautiful women.

But if you go to /r/transitiontimelines or a similar place, and sort by controversial or look at what has the least likes, its people who made timelines when they still don't 'pass' yet. Even if they're happy as can be, that's not what people are looking for.

I think it says a lot about what people expect from trans women, that they only want to see us be beautiful. In some cases, that they want to believe they can be beautiful. So there is no value in trans life if you're not beautiful.

[blood-choke]

hiiii… i wanted to ask more about this particular val scene where mc and her talk about that portrait and mc is a bit stuck on the word husband and wants val to know theyre not a man. can i ask what inspired that type of convo? i wanted to know if it’s something you’ll touch up on again? is this underlying feelings mc had before their entombment… worried that val sees them as a man just because mc is masc? cause i know that’s kind of broader discussion in the lesbian community iirc….. was that why you wanted to incorporate it? this ask has so many questions LOL but basically i wanted to say i was intrigued and it did made me think more on those type of dynamics (thinking back to those resources you rb’d a while ago that go more into depth about diff things in the lesbian community)

oh boy get ready for another long-winded answer from me!

a lot of the feelings mc has about their gender are inspired by Leslie Feinberg's work (mainly Stone Butch Blues)

Feinberg was someone who lived & passed as a man for years of hir life, and wrote a lot about the complexities of hir gender and what it was like being a "gender outlaw."

there was actually a scene in particular from sbb that kinda put the kernel of an idea in my mind that led to this narrative of the mc feeling overshadowed by Standard and anxious about being perceived as a man. it's towards the end of the book when Jess (sbb's protagonist) meets Ruth (a trans woman that Jess falls in love with)

Jess offers to help Ruth carry groceries up to her apartment, and Ruth takes this the wrong way & is offended, partly because she thinks Jess is a man.

One Saturday afternoon I found her clutching two huge bags of groceries and fumbling with the downstairs front-door lock. I pulled out my key.

“Here, let me.” She didn’t say thank you. She hurried ahead of me on the stairs.

“Can I help you carry those?” I offered.

“Do I look weak to you?” she asked.

I stopped on the stairs. “No. Where I come from it’s just a sign of respect, that’s all.”

She continued up the stairs. “Well, where I come from,” she called out, “men don’t reward women for pretending to be helpless.” Once I heard her apartment door close I kicked the stair in anger and frustration.

later, after they get to know each other better, they have this interaction:

I laughed and picked at my salad. “Do you know if I’m a man or a woman?”

“No,” Ruth said. “That’s why I know so much about you.”

I sighed. “Did you think I was a man when you first met me?" She nodded. "Yes. At first I thought you were a straight man. Then I thought you were gay. It’s been a shock for me to realize that even I make assumptions about sex and gender that aren’t true. I thought I was liberated from all of that.”

I smiled. “I didn’t want you to think I was a man. I wanted you to see how much more complicated I am. I wanted you to like what you saw.”

i think the inspiration here is quite obvious, hahaha. i figure anyone that's read sbb can sense the similar through-line here in my work. though the conversation between mc and Valentina has a much different tone.

there's another scene later as well after something happens to Jess and she has to have her jaw wired shut. she's working at a new job and is unable to speak, and she's also passing as a man at this job. she overhears some of her female coworkers talking about her and they refer to her as a "creep" and speculate that she's always watching one of them. Jess overhears all of this and then walks out of the job, goes home and pulls the wires out of her mouth herself:

After I was sure I’d gotten the last piece of wire out of my gums, I rinsed my mouth with whiskey and then drank the rest of it so I could sleep without remembering how Marija’s words had stripped me of my humanity.

butches & gnc women still face this kind of dehumanization; compared or likened to men in a derogatory way, accused of being "heteropatriarchal," the predatory stereotype of the fat ugly lesbian, and on the other side they're also hypersexualized, especially online and in queer spaces. butchphobia is a specific kind of misogyny that hits from all sides, even from the people that are supposed to be a part of your community. and this attitude especially effects trans women and women of color, who are already experiencing all of these things due to transmisogyny and racism.

i also really wanted to use this to touch on the kind of gender essentialism that we see in a lot of these cis feminist discussions - to these women at this job, Jess had committed no real crime other than being quiet and being the “wrong” kind of man. something about this scene has always stuck with me and really bothered me, but it's hard to put into words; on one hand i can admit i have probably been one of those women who made some kind of similar remark about a man i barely knew, but i've also been someone on the receiving end, too, because of the way i look. the mc in blood choke is put into this box, but they can't fit in, as someone who has been on both sides and doesn't really understand where they belong because of it; how can she stand beside Valentina or Hana or Clear when they might see her as a perpetrator, someone who can't be trusted? how does this mindset harm both the women and the men of the council and everyone in between? how can we break this cycle?

one of the films i mentioned recently when talking about the character designs was The Same Difference, which is specifically about the Black lesbian community and the discrimination within that community based upon gender roles (though this is not something limited to just the Black lesbian community)

a lot of the women in that doc talk about the boxes they're put in as AG or stud lesbians - they can't have their hair long, they can't wear makeup, they can't do this or that, they have to be aggressive and hard or else they're not real studs. they discuss stud on stud (or butch4butch) and how other lesbians look down on those types of lesbians, as well as the disdain for bisexual women for "betraying" the community. it explores the way misogyny and the patriarchy still oppress these women and forces them into this restrictive gender role despite their refusal to adhere to the other role originally assigned to them, and the way racism specifically intersects and exacerbates it for Black lesbians. there's a stud that's an exotic dancer and wears a weave, and a lot of other studs have a problem with this because a weave is "a female thing." another section follows a pregnant stud, and how the community shuns her for that, because she "dresses like a man and acts like a man" so why is she getting pregnant when she should be "the man"?

mc doesn't remember how they felt before entombment, but waking up they feel this need to prove themselves - both in that they are hard and aggressive like a butch should be, but also in that they want to be this person for Valentina or Clear or Hana (or all of them) that is safe and comforting. but they aren't sure how to do that when the world perceives them as this one specific thing - as a husband, as Standard, as a man, specifically this man who hurt Valentina.

of course we've already seen this to not be true of the companions with the last chapter as the mc learns more and spends more time with everyone. but this is kind of the foundation of where this whole idea came from. it started with my novel & i chose vampires for that story & this one because there is a long history of lesbian vampirism (and also because it's sexy) but there's this "curse" that both Hana & Valerie talk about in their respective stories, the first one being the racism she's had to face, the transphobia, along with this alienation and perception of lesbians as predatory and conniving and aggressive, as vampires, which i just think really lends itself to expanding upon these issues lesbians & trans women face both in general and within the community.

anyways if you want to read more i suggest Stone Butch Blues, which you can get for free on Leslie Feinberg's website, as well as S/he, by Minnie Bruce Pratt, available on the internet archive, Gender Failure by Ivan E. Coyote & Rae Spoon also on the internet archive, and you can rent The Same Difference for $10 on vimeo.

[mostofthingsmostofthetime]

So the new Hunger Games book. I have some thoughts.

Can't wait to see who's gonna play which characters.

Wonder what Snow will look like middle-aged.

I'm guessing the movie will cut Maysilee having a sister due to Madge being absent from the original films & if so, I wonder how that will affect the Mockingjay pin origins or if they'll completely remove the fact that it originally belonged to her.

Omg, the film could use the same reaping dress (or more likely a replica) for teen Miss Everdeen that they used for Katniss as it is said to be something that belonged to her mother during her time as a Merchant, in the original series.

Can't believe we might finally learn Katniss's parents' names lol.

Omg, do you think they'll at least hint at the baker/apocathery/hunter love triangle?

Oh (no hate to Woody Harrison but) young Haymitch is gonna be white, isn't he? Well, at least they could let him have black hair. & that wouldn't nessaryly even break movie cannon. All they'd need is to have a scene showing/implying that the stylists are gonna dye his hair after he ends up winning the games. The movie could even create an in-universe reason (outside of the Capitol citerzens just thinking it looked better). Such as with blonde people in 12, not coming from the Seam. Snow views it as the perfect subtle punishment to help Haymitch feel a loss of cultural identity by separating him from his community (now that he looks & lives more like a Merchant).

Hope the movie won't try to appeal to Hayffee/Effie stans by adding unnecessary scenes of them getting close, as if Haymitch didn't have a whole ass girlfriend while Effie would be nose deep in Capitol propaganda at that point in time.

Everyone who's saying it's gonna be weird to find Haymitch hot is weak. I was attracted to Woody Harrelson in a wig.

Don't know if this is at all realistic/accruate, but this is how I'd want the movie to end. Haymitch, back in 12. Maybe waking up in his new house after being sedated (due to him losing it after his last interview). Him desperately trying to find out where his family/GF is after discovering his old house empty (left there as a reminder), his GF's family not opening the door & everyone seemingly too nervous to speak to him. Till he eventually ends up on the Everdeen's doorstep (where Miss Everdeen is being comforted) & they explain what happened as best as they can. Then, after he returns to his new home, he gets a phone call from Snow bassically telling him that he should have behaved himself, leading him to rip the phone out of the wall before completely trashing the place. When he eventually wakes up, Hazelle is cleaning up the mess (he forgot to lock the front door). She tries to talk to him about applying alcohol (she was given by miss Everdeen) to the wounds he sustained from smashing up the place & about his girlfriend (as I could imagine the two having been friends as I can only see Haymitch's GF being from the Seam), but he tells her to get out before he starts drinking the alcohol right from the bottle, with a voice over of older Haymitch saying the line 'there's survivors, there's no winners'. Or something along those lines.

Maybe that's too fanficy, though lol.

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

hotd never fails to disappoint

[wellzofyouth]

Yall I'm so sorry I do not like Peacemaker

[sassmill]

“If a lot of men get killed at one go, does it make the killing of one man less of a crime? I don’t know, Andy, I don’t know. I’m only twenty and they say today the world is ours, but Pa was twenty once and felt the world was his, and long, long ago Mad was twenty too, laughing at applauding audiences, smiling from picture postcards, and when I am as old as she is nothing will have changed…”

Daphne du Maurier, Rule Britannia (1972)

[beardedmrbean]

Helsingin Sanomat reports on a study published on Tuesday that suggests one in five men in Finland believe women might deserve violence perpetrated against them.

Among men under 35, the proportion rose to one in four who at least partially agreed with the statement "a woman can deserve violence because of certain ways of dressing, her behaviour, or her appearance".

The study did not define the term violence in the questions put to men, so respondents could be referring to emotional, psychological, physical or economic violence.

"The situation is serious," said Silla Kakkola, who chairs both Finland's Violence Observatory and Nytkis, the coalition of women's organisations in Finland.

"Not all men idealise violence, but far too many do."

The survey did find that some 78 percent of the all-male respondents thought men should intervene more often when they hear insulting or objectifying talk about women.

Some 60 percent thought that gender equality had already been achieved in Finland.

Researchers received 1,058 responses to an online survey from men aged 18-79. The margin of error was 3.2 percentage points in either direction.

Nato spending

Aamulehti carries an opinion piece looking at the implications of the incoming Trump presidency on Finland's defence spending.

The president-elect has repeatedly demanded that Nato countries spend more money on defence, criticising those that don't currently meet the alliance's target of spending at least two percent of GDP on their militaries.

Finland is currently above the two percent threshold, but that figure could drop after 2027.

AL looks at recent statements by Finnish politicians, most of whom seem to agree that a new target of 2.5 percent is likely to be agreed soon.

There is some discord on how it might be funded, with SDP MP Tytti Tuppurainen suggesting new joint EU debt might fund the outgoings and European states potentially agreeing a new "social contract" to firm up consent for defence spending.

Reaction was not positive from the traditionally debt-averse parties, with Finns Party legislator Mika Bergbom calling such talk "irresponsible".

The paper seems fairly clear, though, that defence spending is going to rise once Trump enters the White House — in Finland and elsewhere.

Lapland tarmac

Iltalehti follows up on recent comments by a senior official at the Ministry of Defence about the poor state of Finland's road network in the north.

Janne Kuusela had said that highway 21, from Tornio to Kilpisjärvi in western Lapland, was narrow and risked causing supply bottlenecks in an emergency.

In the worst case scenario, he said, troops defending Finland would arrive via the Norwegian and Swedish borders instead.

On Tuesday IL asks a defence expert to outline a scenario in which an attack might materialise in the north. Jaakko Puuperä, editor of the Nordic Defence Review, said that the most likely scenario involved invaders crossing the border at Raja-Jooseppi with 10,000-20,000 soldiers.

They would move quickly from Salla to Kemijärvi, but would then quickly face supply issues as they tried to push west.

Puuperä says that an oft-repeated maxim that poor roads benefit the defenders is not altogether true, as defending forces also need infrastructure.

He concedes, however, that roads in poor condition are generally better for the defenders than the attackers.

IL suggests that fixing and perhaps widening the north-south link in western Lapland is an important measure to ensure any possible invasion could be stopped in the east, close to the border, rather than progressing west towards Norway and the Atlantic.

[woolandcoffee]

Finally reading Gone Girl and you know what, I woulda gone girled this man too.

[cocksuki2]

breasts and eggs by mieko kawakami is so uniquely woman. not in a feminine sense, or a gender-identity sense, but in the sense that i can feel the soul of womanhood in it, which i have rarely ever felt in other books. 

it captures the experience of being labelled “woman” so precisely that it’s startling and there were several times in the novel i had to put it down and take really deep breaths. 

natsuko, a 30 year old and unmarried woman living in tokyo, experiences the challenges of female bodily autonomy and questions what it means to be a woman and what it means to have children. the novel raises questions about family, sexuality, child-rearing, and womanhood through the eyes of its protagonist who, 10 years later and at the age of 40, grapples with wanting to have a child of her own without a partner. 

in the novel, natsuko, while working on her book, begins to question what it means to raise children, as well as the possibility that she would like to have a child of her own. however, she faces roadblocks on account of strict social norms in japan and the lack of bodily autonomy of women.

the novel, deftly and beautifully, traverses across women’s reproductive rights while posing questions about not only the ethics of anonymous artificial insemination, but of having children in the first place. posing it as both delight and misery, natsuko navigates her way through conflicting ideas about life, death, and birth as a single woman. 

the story deals a lot with natsuko’s own ideas of romance, sex, and loneliness, as well as her own image of herself. she questions her own family and history, reminiscing often on the time she spent with her mother, grandmother, and sister in her childhood, as well as what it meant for her to grow up poor. she considers cycles of poverty, as well as the cycles of mother and daughter, through the lens of a woman with no desire for a longterm partner or sex. 

natsuko, is asexual and sex repulsed. it’s a large part of the story, though it’s not a defining trait in who natsuko is as a person. still, she experiences the desire to have a child. she calls her own womanhood into perspective, doubting it on account of her lack of sexual attraction, detailing it as it “being as if the sexual part of her never grew up”. she states often that she has breasts, that she gets her period, that she is as woman as any other woman, yet still feels that some part of her womahood is missing because of her lack of sexual attraction. 

the novel raises challenging questions of self discovery, as well as details the frustration in being labelled “woman” in society. it beautifully captures the thoughts and burdens that come with womanhood, as well as gender identity and bodily autonomy. 

there are so many aspects of this book i could go into. i truly could not get enough of it while reading. not just because i found the protagonist to be both relatable and interesting, but because kawakami’s voice as an author is so gripping and emotionally real. reading the book, it felt as if natsuko’s thoughts mirrored my own and often, after finishing reading, i questioned whether i had actually read lines in the book or if i had thought of them myself as part of my own inner dialogue. 

it’s so beautifully layered, to the point that i think it would take me multiple posts just to cover what i’ve picked up on the first read-through, and reads like you’re looking back on a life i could have lived at some point. it’s delightfully human but also, uniquely woman. it touches on many of the unspoken (and often unaddressed) trials of being a woman that otherwise would go unheard about. 

i don’t think i’ve ever read anything like it. it touched me in a way no other novel has and detailed an account of womanhood that i felt in a very deep part of my being. this may sound cheesy, but in a way, i felt a large kinship with a lot of the women in the story. whether it was their experiences with men, their experiences with children, or their experiences simply moving through the world, i found connection in all of them. 

[thetimelordbatgirl]

I will never get over the same crowd that always scream, "WE CAN ALWAYS TELL", straight up putting this in the Sex Matters/Transphobes seeking to control children while they in school rules:

Like look at this- just look. The way its only boys not getting affected really by these rules. Trans students are basically getting targeted for just existing, while female students are being told, "You can't wear pants because you could be mistaken for a boy.", aka terf's trying to enforce their standards of being girls/women onto female students.

Oh, and if you thought it wasn't obvious its pro- fuck up any trans students and female students day, look at this one:

They are basically saying its fine to exclude students from certain lessons based on their gender, even citing the, "oh your gender gives you an advantage", reasoning that they use to claim that women...are basically weak at anything once a trans woman beats a cis woman at again, anything really, including fucking chess.