#and it's also very paternalistic in a way where we never know what's good for us and must not care about our health

[vamptastic]

a lot of people talk about fatness and will say well i care about people's health so i want them to be thin. and then you take that to its logical conclusion where fat people are choosing not to lose weight to idk, spite you, or because we hate ourselves, or whatever, so we need to be Made to lose weight. and of course there's no ethical way to Force people to lose weight like, you cannot force people to diet and exercise without being outright fascist and even if you do it won't work for every single person. so it just gets used to justify being a huge asshole to random fat people and say actually when i materially worsen the lives of fat people in concrete and measurable ways i'm helping them. basically any level of poor treatment individually and societally and in healthcare gets justified as concern for fat people's health even when it demonstrably worsens our health. even people who think we need to be kinder to fat people often justify it by arguing that being kind is more likely to make them thin by being cruel. like in your ideal world we just don't exist. very insidious.

[duckiemimi]

this was commented a while ago on my tiktok (it was about this post), but it’s so good, it’s stayed on my mind ever since. i’ve been meaning to talk about this for a while!

on geto & empathy.

let’s address the likely reason why people tend to see geto in this empathic light and through this lens that almost absolves him from blame.

the hidden inventory arc, especially towards the end, was written in a way that humanized geto; we read his mind, we saw his thoughts and how he processed them, we shadowed him as he went through traumatic event after traumatic event. we were placed in his shoes as he ran through a never-ending marathon—essentially, we were him in his moments. we’re supposed to empathize with him.

it’s why at first hand, his defection might’ve seemed like a logical conclusion to us. it made sense. (unlike how it was for every other character in the story, and especially how it was for gojo—geto’s decision came to them all as a shock.) this is what makes him a well-written character and an overall excellent villain.

it’s also probably why geto is such a personal character to many people, but this intimate association doesn’t make him faultless. yes, he was a victim of circumstance, but so was everyone else in the story. geto was also a perpetrator who inflicted harm on other people: a genocidal cult leader who had his eyes set on the greater good, someone who disregarded the means for the end. “well-written,“ in my opinion, also means multifaceted, complex.

now let’s talk about geto pre defection.

geto is gojo’s foil. at first read, he’s supposed to contrast gojo in a way that highlights specific aspects of gojo’s character. (and vice versa, but this arc is also called “gojo’s past arc” for a reason; gojo is our main character in this part of the story, he is our point of reference.) geto serves as a comparison to gojo, but he also stands as his own character. where gojo failed to empathize with the “weak,” geto succeeded. but what was empathy to geto anyway?

empathy, in its colloquial connotation, is seen as a virtue. it’s a community-building tool and it’s inherently human. it’s how we contextualize our place in the world and our connection to other people. in broad construct, it’s a “good” quality to have, to be empathic—but not all forms of empathy are the same.

geto’s empathy towards the “weak” was, in a word, paternalistic—like how a father would interact with his children, or how a deity or a king would interact with their subjects. it stemmed from his arrogance and his “well-meaning” saviorism tendencies: in short, “i am better than you, therefore i know better than you. i know what’s best for you.” this is especially true in regards to his patronizing attitude towards non-sorcerers pre defection (and it extends post defection, too).

geto’s sense of duty as a sorcerer manifested in how he assumed responsibility, and to a lesser extent, authority over non-sorcerers. it’s a type of benevolent prejudice; these people are powerless and weak, therefore inferior to him, and so it’s his job to protect them, it’s his job to care. while he had good intentions, he saw them as “lack,” not as humans who were ultimately just different from him. he saw them as helpless victims of themselves; which, given his occupation at the time, was an apt contextualization, but within the bigger picture, it ironically dehumanized non-sorcerers. it was underhandedly condescending, whether he was conscious of it or not.

the very root of his defection is this: he did not view non-sorcerers as equals to him in the first place. sure, plenty of other sorcerers also have this mindset, especially the very powerful ones, but geto made this the basis of his purpose, taking on the moral high ground by giving it meaning. after toji and after mimiko and nanako, he recontextualized and changed the meaning of what it meant to be powerful—but while his circumstances and his proximity to non-sorcerers changed (him revoking his empathy towards them), the patronizing way he viewed them (“monkeys” now) was constant; it was his pivot foot from charitable pity to resentment and hatred.

some things to consider: i assume geto was fairly new to the jujutsu scene in the hidden inventory arc, given his non-sorcerer family. i also assume he must’ve felt very alone prior to his enrollment, being the only one in his family to see cursed spirits, and possibly the only one in his childhood environment. this grand introduction to a some sort of a secret society must’ve felt special to him; it must’ve made him feel special, especially considering he was put on par with the kid who everyone thought was immensely powerful.

i can see why he thought himself better compared to the non-sorcerer background he grew up in. plus, it would be hard to not let your ego inflate when someone like gojo keeps referring to you as half of “the strongest duo.”

i also think that despite how black and white and consequential his outlook on life was before and after his defection, he probably still had his doubts and moments of wavering throughout his decade-long career as a curse user. i mean, he said it himself—his goal is only possible for one person only, and it’s not him. that could definitely be a factor, and it could also be some lingering sentimentality, too. he burned the bridge between him and his past and he just couldn’t risk the distance, but he probably thought of it sometimes.

i’ll end this post with a quote from him from the anime that made me really think. geto does care, but at such a young age, it was a juvenile and idealistic concept of “care.” had he stayed and grown up a little, worked through the trauma and organized with his fellow sorcerers (instead of assuming responsibility alone like he did, leaving to create a better future for sorcerers without including them in his plans), perhaps he could’ve made this a reality:

“survival of the weakest. that’s how a society should be. the weak help each other and discourage any who are too strong.”

[redstrewn]

No wait here’s the link to the playlist: https://spotify.link/55TnO2GLGDb

I hope it works! Sorry im no good at this sorta thing — musa

Hi im sorry i never got around to actually finishibg commenting on the whole thing but since its been like 5838849392829 years i might as well post what ive had in the drafts. Sorry that its mostly just me keysmashing and going insane over a couple songs bc my braincell just does that AHSJDNFJFK

OUH I LOVE PRODIGAL SELF thank you for introducing me to this song its rly my vibe OOOUHHH. Sleeplessness so rreeeal. Darkness. MMMMM.

Hidden place is so smeggzee...MMMMM. OMG THE FINGERS GIVEN TO TOUCH W LINE MC moment real....kept in a hidden place be careful. SOOO REAL.

HAWLLLYY SHIT IM OBSESSED W THESE LINES AAARRRGGHH SHAKIJG MY CAGE RATTLING IT CHEWING ON THE BARS GOING FERAL

He's the beautifullest, fragilest Still strong, dark and divine And the littleness of his movements Hides himself He invents a charm that makes him invisible Hides in the hair Can I hide there too? Hide in the hair of him Seek solace Sanctuary

IM CRAZY!! IM CRAAAZY!!!! I GO INSANE OVER THESE FUCKING LYRICS [SHAKES YOU BY THE SHOULDERS] MUSA U R SO INSANE (/pos) FOR THIS IM GOING INSANE THESE LYRICS AAURGEHHRHHRGRGGRGRGEGRGGRHRHRHRHRHRHRHR IM GOING CRAAAZYZYYZZYZYZYZYYZYZYZ

An echo a stain....the vibes of this song OOUUUUUU sexy sinister....MMMMM.

Don't say no to me You can't say no to me I won't see you Denied I'm sorry you saw that I'm sorry he did it An echo A stain A stain I can't say no to you (I can't say no to you) Say nothing Free falling Complete

Those last two lines SCARY AS FUCKCKKCKCKKKC GOD I FUCKING LOVE IT MMMMM NOMNOMONOM DRINKS THIS POURS THIS DOWN MY THROAT THATS GOOD GOURMET MUSICS.

Now the seer......

What is human? Is there really nothing but seeing or seen? The voice is wordless tissue The fog from Heart of Glass Listen to the lips that feed you The voice is a second flesh that cannot be seen This body is not for vision The seer cannot go there But the tongue is a pawn for the restless An indecipherable alphabet Each word an eye, lidless And we speak in tongues from part to part Broke, broke part to part From invisible state to invisible state to invisible state To invisible state Where do I end? In the flames or in the ashes? Where do I end? My body is the end My body is the end My body is the end

Now i wont pretend my dumb ass understands what the lyrics are actually saying so im just taking what my bumbling ass sees.

Taking "this body is not for vision" with the voice being "wordless tissue," makes me think of Leander's use of his body. For all his mental games he's also very physical in the way that he just uses it as a tool. "He works hard and parties harder," doesn't like naps, and his eyebags scream he doesn't sleep well either. He's a manwhore. He uses his body a lot. He probably uses his body to seduce not just for the sake of sex itself but also the added bonus of getting to know someone better (information is currency hurr) and gain someone's favor or something. But there is no seeing him. He's masked. Who even really knows each other in this game lmao? The only one doing the seeing here is him. "Each word, a lidless eye."

Goes with "but the tongue is a pawn for the restless." Wow that guy sure is restless and likes to manipulate people with words and convincing and drinks doesn't he. "Fog from the heart of glass" makes me think of a fog obscuring the heart.

"Listen to the lips that feed you." "I can keep you safe, as long as you trust me." There we go again with Leander's paternalistic, watchful-eye vibe.

"An indecipherable alphabet." Idk i like thinking of this with Vere's "His nice guy act is bullshit" lol. He may be speaking but it's coming from the ass. Indecipherable because what he says is just bullshit, empty flattery to get his way.

"And we speak in tongues from part to part. Broke, broke part to part. From invisible state to invisible state to invisible state. To invisible state." IDK what this actually means but I'm taking this as how his identity is in pieces. He reconstructs himself, breaking off the pieces he doesn't like and hiding them while he speaks from the parts he wants you to see. Invisibility, hiding the true, whole image of him. Like a puzzle with missing pieces. You're not seeing all of him. His visage fractured. You get it. I just like rambling.

"Where do I end? In the flames or in the ashes? Where do I end? My body is the end. My body is the end. My body is the end." Ha hoo. Ahh. Endings. Flames and ashes of extermination (though can also be rebirth). My body is the end. I don't know. Thinking of his like of masquerades. The hiding is something he likes, maybe not just because it's something he feels he has to do but also because he's "happy" with it. The perfect (constructed) image of himself. Iunno. Perhaps he wants to die being unknown. In the flesh of the body he uses as a tool. Maybe he wants to die in his facade. [Head in hands.]

I know you translated and expanded seni düşünmek on another ask, so I'll write my thoughts on it on that ask.

No light, no light....

yeah thats good

Would you leave me If I told you what I've done? And would you leave me If I told you what I've become? 'Cause it's so easy To say it to a crowd But it's so hard, my love To say it to you out loud

You can't choose what stays and what fades away And I'd do anything to make you stay

hhrhghrhghrghrgrkgkgkgkgkgkgkhhghhghghghrhrhrhhrrghgkkrgkghrkghh. its fine. im cool.

You want a revelation You want to get right But it's a conversation I just can't have tonight You want a revelation Some kind of resolution Tell me what you want me to say

IMMMMMMMMMMMM FUCKING GGGGG GGGGGG FFFIIINNEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the way this song can also be a kuras song omfg. AAAAAAUUUUUUUURGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

hamlet got me reading abt the play and went on a whole ride about it. that was fun thank you.

[pynkhues]

ok but can we talk about jess and kerry? like jess being the one to show the rabbit on the call and logan being nice to kerry? i’ll admit my thoughts aren’t fully formed but something about assistants and caring and being cared for????

cont. (jess and kerry) the fact that it’s likely that kendall’s kids are very close to jess is very 🥲🥴

God, yeah, it's a really interesting one, especially since Shiv, Roman and Connor have never been shown to have personal staff in the same way, although they undoubtedly do.

I've been thinking so much about that beat with Logan and Kerry in this last episode where Logan puts the president on mute and summons Kerry to him – playful and conspiratorial – and asks her if she'd like to hear what an angry president sounds like. The look of real happiness on his face when she giggles.

The show has often used other characters as proxies, I think, for the Roys as children – most notably with Iverson for Kendall (and Iverson for Roman too, given Logan slapped him as an adult in 2.06) – and I think that moment with Kerry was very much in the same vein.

After all, it's such a fatherly beat for Logan – paternalistic and indulgent in a way that's really easy to imagine he was sometimes with his own kids when they were younger, when that sort of thing was enough to make them happy.

Logan's a complicated character who I think can sometimes be oversimplified, and I think there's this interesting shade to his dynamic with his children where his own refusal to see himself as aging is projected onto them. After all, if he's not getting older, how can they be? He wants them to be happy with scraps and indulgences and shoulder squeezes and being told they're good kids, because they probably were happy with that once, and it's fostered an arrested development across the whole family where everything's just kind of constantly compounding, slight after slight, wound after wound.

In a lot of ways too, I think Kerry can be partially seen as a proxy for Kendall. Her first appearance in the show is in 2.07 as the Roy's go back to England, and it's really when Kendall's starting to regain some independence from his father in the aftermath of 1.10. For that first half of season 2, Kendall was the carer, the assistant – he was the obedient son, taking care of his father's medication, acting on his father's every whim. 2.07's notable in that sense, because Naomi's starting to have an influence over him, and Logan takes him to the boy's house specifically to re-tighten the leash. Kerry's next appearance is in Congress, again where we see Kendall take on a degree of independence again, even while he protects his father, and across this season, we've seen her wrangle in the way Kendall was in those early s2 episodes.

I don't know. It's not a fully fleshed out thought, haha, but that scene on the plane combined with the loaded, uncertain, guarded-yet-vulnerable looks between Kendall and Logan at lunch after Logan's spiel – I think there's a lot you can read into it, and yeah, I think it's about care, but I also think there's this need Logan has for his kids to be children still. Not just to combat his own sense of mortality (which he of course became very aware of again in this episode), but because he wants them easy, he wants them on the plane with him, obedient (gosh, he even tells Kendall to behave on the phone at the start of the ep) and happy to see him and delighted at any indulgence.

He misses who they were, and doesn't know how to deal now with who they are, failing or unwilling to see how he's the one who's made them like that.

Jess and Kendall are really different to me. I think his relationship with her reveals a lot of things – his insecurities and dependencies, the way he hides when it comes to things he doesn't want to deal with. Kendall's a deep blackhole of neediness, and Jess is there to, well, assist. Kendall just needs a hell of a lot of assistance, haha.

It's interesting though too that Kendall's really using Jess as a bridge to his family this season in a way that we haven't really seen before. She mediated the phonecall between Kendall and Logan in 3.01, shepherded all his siblings into Rava's apartment in 3.02, and now is holding an iPad to connect his kids to a giant rabbit in 3.04.

She doesn't feel like a proxy to me in the same way Kerry did in this episode, but I think there's something to be said in the way that Kendall uses Jess not neccessarily as an extension of himself, but as a sort of mask. She's the face that picks up drugs for him, she (and Gerri and Karolina) are the ones who clean up his shoplifting, she's the voice when Logan rings. She holds up the iPad for the children his sister's just told the world he's estranged from.

Kendall, at his core, is just constantly terrified, and I think more than anything, Jess provides a sort of safety for him. She's Willa without the sex.

I guess that's sort of telling in it's own way maybe – Logan, Connor and Kendall all seek support, but Logan and Connor want comfort, and Kendall wants safety.

[fedeipox]

The Way of Time (Rdr2 fanfic) - Chapter 9 (3/3)

Hello again! 

I tried with a little experiment this time. People on Wattpad and Ao3 appreciated that, hope you will too!

Just a little information before you start reading: I won’t be posting this here anymore (I want to focus on Gifs and photos mostly) so if you are interested you can go on Ao3, Wattpad or Fanfiction and you’ll find the rest there. <3

Part 1 here: https://fedeipox.tumblr.com/post/645629699195846656/the-way-of-time-rdr2-fanfic-chapter-9-13

Part 2 here: https://fedeipox.tumblr.com/post/646163870469259264/the-way-of-time-rdr2-fanfic-chapter-9-23

Chapter 9 /3/3) - Getting accustomed

Words: 2,3 k

Emily didn’t waste time. As soon as they untied the horses from the wagon, she run to the girl’s tent looking for Mary-Beth.

“You have no idea what I just discovered!” she almost yelled.

“What?” asked Mary-Beth raising her eyes from Tess of the d’Ubervilles.

“There is a ghost in Emerald Ranch” she whispered kneeling down next to her.

“A ghost?” she whispered back with wide eyes.

“I swear to you, I’ve seen her! She was at the window, and I might know who she is.”

Emily exposed her theory about a young woman, the lover of Mr. Wagner, the ranch owner. She was killed by his husband because of his jealousy and now her ghost didn’t leave the house until midnight, when she used to hunt the entire ranch and scare the other women out of it.

“Wow, this makes a really good story” said Mary-Beth in the end with sparkling eyes.

“Do you want to write it?”

“Can I?”

“Of course! Who knows, maybe one day you’ll be famous for it.”

“That’s the dream” sighed Mary-Beth taking out a little journal and writing a couple of lines.

Emily peeked at it trying not to be noticed, but from upside-down she couldn’t make anything out of it. Mary-Beth had a strange handwriting: small, twisted, with the words really close one to the other.

As soon as she put the journal away, Emily looked around, pretending indifference, and causally her eyes fell on Dutch in the distance, smoking his cigar and watching the camp people at work. 

It was like this that she thought of asking Mary-Beth about the ‘Kieran situation’, no-one better than her to give advise. She told her about her idea of trying to convince Dutch to free Kieran, if only he had done something for Dutch in turn.

“I don’t know” answered Mary-Beth with a shrug, “you should go and ask Dutch in person. Talk to him, he will listen.”

But despite Mary-Beth’s certainty that Dutch would have listened to her, Emily was still unsure. She knew she had to speak with him: he was the boss, the ruler, the one who took all the decisions there, but she had postponed that moment because Dutch’s character intimidated her. There was something in him that pushed her away from him in a resolute way, and, since the beginning, since that moment when she had attacked him because of his camp organization, they hadn’t truly spoken again. 

But Emily knew she had no other choice: she had to face him soon or later, and, after all, it was for a good cause. 

Hi, Dutch. How are you? No, no, what the hell, they saw each other everyday, what a stupid start. Hello, boss! Boss? No, not boss. Just the idea to say that word made her sick. Hi, friend! Friend? What friend? They weren’t friends. Hi, we need to talk. Yeah, right. Like they were a couple and she wanted to leave him. No, no, no. She had to be natural, just natural. Which meant be an idiot and embarrass herself.

“Hey, Dutch. Can we talk?”

...

Dutch narrowed his eyes and nodded slowly. What did she want from him? She seemed nervous. Maybe she had caused some more trouble? Besides, the fact that she wanted to talk with him was strange. Generally, she looked for Hosea when she needed to talk, never for him, because Hosea had that paternalistic way of doing things that reassured everybody. It had always been like that, ever since Arthur and John were young. 

The girl slowly headed to the back of his tent, away from indiscreet eyes, and he followed her.

“I-I… well, I have a proposition” she started and Dutch noticed she was looking everywhere but to him.

“It’s a bout Kieran.”

Dutch breathed deeply but tried anyway not to lose his composure. He didn’t want to clip her wings, even though he knew where she was going.

“I was wandering, if… if he proved himself to you, would you, erm, let him live?”

She looked up at him and it was at that moment that Dutch understood that she cared, she truly cared about that O’Driscoll, and she probably would have done anything in her might to help him. But he still din’t trust him, he could never trust him, he knew Colm’s boys, they were unworthy of trust. Anyway, he was intrigued.

“Prove himself?” he asked.

Emily’s eyes sparkled with hope.

“Yes, yes, like… give something to you, or do something for you. A, erm, loyalty token or something.”

“Uhm… loyalty token. The only thing that I could possibly want from him is his boss hideout.”

Then, Dutch thought about something. It was a very devious thing to do, he was aware of that, but if she was so determined to help, she would have helped, but by following his rules.

“If you are able to convince him to talk, give away this information, I’ll let him live” he said in the end.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“I can’t” said Kieran when Emily explained the terms to him.

“Why not?” she asked.

Kieran wasn’t an idiot, he knew what Dutch was doing, using that girl to get what he wanted, and he knew his options where two: if he spoke, Dutch would have found an excuse to kill him and even if he didn’t, Colm O’Driscoll would have found him, sooner or later, and Kieran would have paid for his betrayal. 

But even if he tried to explain that to Emily, she was too convinced that Dutch might never kill him, and she didn’t want to listen to him.

“Are you sure that’s not just an excuse?” she asked angrily. “It seems to me that you’re not trying to help me getting you out of this situation, Kieran.”

“Why, why would I lie?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve tried to help and Dutch is meeting you halfway.”

It was at that moment that Kieran understood Emily had fallen in Dutch’s trap. “Don’t you understand he’s playing you?” he naively asked.

Emily was outraged by that statement and she left Kieran to walk as far away from him as possible. It seemed he liked to be tied to that tree after all.

...

Hosea came back the day after. He had left Arthur halfway from camp when he said he wanted to reach Javier and Charles near Blackwater to free Sean. He said the bear hunting didn’t go exactly as expected, but he had fun at least.

The first among them to come back was Charles, all dusty and sweaty, telling everybody about their success in West Elisabeth. Then, Sean and Javier showed up and it was time for introductions.

Emily found Sean incredibly cheerful and full of life for someone who had been captured and tortured: he had an everlasting big smile on his thin freckled face and as soon as he stepped foot in camp, some sort of festive atmosphere had come with him. 

“Come on! Le’t celebrate the return of Uncle Sean!”

Emily was exited about all that happening. She was craving music, mental lightness and the company of someone who could ward off the heavy and dark thoughts from her mind. 

Those weeks had been hard: she had done things she had never thought to do, living in that place that seemed to destroy, day after day, her good intents and rightful ideas. 

The preparations implied the purchase of alcohol and for that Sean seemed to think he could take Dutch’s place, ordering to go and buy some in Valentine.

“Nah nah, Mr. Macguire, your party, yours the responsibility to buy what you want” said Miss Grimshaw putting some dollars in his hands and pushing him towards the wagons.

“I need company” complained Sean, but Miss Grimshaw’s answer was a simple gesture with her hand, like to tell him: ‘not my business, choose who you want’.

Sean looked around. He had no intention to bring Javier nor Charles. Their journey back to camp had already been boring enough. He needed someone alive, someone with a good sense of humor. 

“Hey, you girl!” Sean called out loud.

Emily didn’t answered and didn’t even turned around. There were five girls in camp, how could she know he was addressing her?

He could walk closer and ask her gently, but Sean being Sean, he preferred to be rude and quirky as usual. 

“Hey, the new girl! Yeah, you! You come with me to buy some booze?” he yelled and now Emily’s attention, together with the one of everybody else in camp, was caught. 

“Sorry, you were talking to me?” she asked walking closer.

“Yeah, you come with me?”

“S-sure” she agreed a little taken aback for the request.

He could have asked everybody, maybe his girlfriend, but he had asked her. Why? And this fact was also noticed by Karen, who anyway had pretended not to hear nor see what was happening and kept to work as usual.

“You know Valentine, girl?” asked Sean getting on the wagon.

“Yeah, I’ve been there a lot of times.”

“Good, so you can guide me there.”

“And, my name is Emily, by the way.”

“Okay, Emily, nice to meet you. How did Dutch find you?”

Emily frowned at those words. 

“They haven’t told you anything about me?” she asked.

“No, they should have?”

“Not a word about the crazy dumb girl that comes from the future?”

Sean laughed and this way Emily noticed he missed a tooth, maybe more than one.

Javier, Charles and Arthur hadn’t said anything about her since they had recused him, and Emily felt bad for that. Not that she wanted everybody to talk about her, but she would have appreciated a mention, a few words to explain her presence in their group. 

So she started with her story. Sean was delighted that in the world existed someone who talked almost as much as him, and Emily was happy to have found someone who finally liked her the way she was, with her habit to speak too much, her being naive and her simple humor. A bond was created between them that afternoon, a good friendship which, unfortunately, wasn’t destined to last much.

“And you say Hosea believes ya?” asked Sean when she was done with her story.

“Actually, a lot of people believe me now.”

“Well, if they believe you, I believe you too. These weeks mustn’t have been easy for you all, since Blackwater.”

“No, not really. But from what I heard, you got the worst.”

Sean started about all the things the Pinkertons had done to him and how he had played the ‘brave big boy’ and told them nothing. Emily let him talk, glad that, unlike the other people at camp, she didn’t have to pull the information out of him. 

They easily bought two crates of beer and two of liquor at the general store in Valentine and came back right before the sun was down completely. 

...

When Arthur arrived, the party had just began. The first bottles had been opened and Sean was about to end his speech, half drunk already. Right after that, music started.

“Come on! Play something we can dance to!” Emily exclaimed, and Arthur noticed she had some color on her cheeks. Had she been drinking too?

“Like what?” asked Javier, taking his guitar.

“I don’t know. What you dance to in 1899?” she laughed.

“I might have an idea” said Uncle sitting on one of the logs near the campfire with his banjo. 

(Music) 

He started a song which Emily was sure to have heard someplace else, maybe right in the future. It reminded her of a public event, with a great crowd and a lot of flags and banners, and she remembered herself, very very young, on her father’s shoulders to watch whatever was going on on the distant stage.

Then, Uncle started to speed up the rhythm of the melody and Javier joined him with those few notes he was able to catch. Anyway, the two of them together made something great to which Emily couldn’t resist and, grabbing Mary-Beth’s hand, they started dancing. 

With their skirts moving frantically to the rhythm of their jumps and the sound of their laughs, soon the eyes of everybody were on them and Mary-Beth felt so embarrassed she had to stop. Emily begged her with the eyes and tried to pull her back to the dance, but she simply wouldn’t keep on. 

“Come, dance with me!” exclaimed Sean taking her arm and the two of them started swinging around. 

Emily loved music, she loved to dance and sing, it was the best way she had to stop thinking and in that moment she forgot everything. 

She started laughing in that sweet way that made her irresistible to others eyes and this didn’t slipped away from Karen, who was the only one who didn’t like what she was looking at. Jealousy is powerful and dangerous, and God knows how dangerous Karen could be.

The rest of them was enjoying the music and the presence of that strange girl, who brought such an unusual happiness among them, making them forget all their problems.

Emily let Sean go and reached for Tilly’s hand instead, who needed a little more insistence to join the dance, but in the end proved to be the best dancer among them.

Hosea was again proud he had insisted to keep her with them, Charles felt peaceful in looking at her dancing, Sean had finally found someone to have a fun time with, Mary- Beth felt lucky in finding such a friend, and Arthur… well, Arthur couldn’t help but still feel unworthy of her, even though he knew nothing romantic could start between them, because of his past, because of what he was, because he was sure she wouldn’t stay with them much longer. 

[kinetic-elaboration]

July 28: 3x01 Spock’s Brain

Today’s ep was the infamous Spock’s Brain. I’d never seen it before and always insisted I didn’t want to but...this is a complete rewatch so I guess I kinda had to.

As predicted, it was bad. Utter nonsense for a premise and the actual execution shot through with sexism. There were some aspects that I did like but most of them have been done better by other eps--and in any case were not worth the ridiculous basis of the ep itself. Honestly, if I were watching all this live, and I waited months for this, I might have wondered if the show weren’t better off cancelled.

But I would have been wrong because the next ep is The Enterprise Incident so! Sometimes you just need to be patient.

This episode is starting out so strangely. Why is the bridge being shot from all these weird angles? And why do the colors seem...duller?

They really can spy on these other ships, huh?

“My name is Captain James Kirk.” Not breaking out the middle initial today, I see.

Chapel going for the drama as she falls down.

Kirk too, sprawled over his chair. (Makes me think of “The chair is, in fact, not bolted to the ground.”)

This honestly reads like a bad parody of Star Trek.

Ridiculous lines include: “His brain is gone.” “His incredible Vulcan physique.” “In search of his brain.” “Where are you going to look for his brain?” “It was taken out, it can be put back in.”

“Spock’s body is more dependent on his brain” than a human’s. Ummmm I feel like there’s something suspicious in there.

The only good thing about this ep is Kirk’s devotion to Spock.

Seriously why does the bridge look so different? Filming it from a different location changes everything.

When Kirk paces in front of the view screen, it really shows off how small it is.

“The spaceship that has Spock’s brain.”

I like these schematics and Chekov’s little presentation here. Also Kirk can automatically put years to all the planet evolution codes or whatever--like on the one hand, of course he can, that’s his job, but on another... what a nerd.

Honestly these people--obviously, they are underground on the ice planet. Obviously!!! I actually do appreciate this scene in general, with the bridge crew working out a problem on the bridge, which actually almost never happens--it’s definitely the best scene of the ep--but still. It’s obviously the ice planet.

Also, I like that Uhura gets to contribute. She thinks outside of the box, asks the good questions. Don’t just look at the outside evolution of the planet--ask about what the brain could be used for, and where it might be.

“Get there, find the brain.”

Oh no, he accidentally called Scotty Spock :(

“High of 40. Livable.” I realize this is a Russian joke but that’s really not that bad lol. Definitely not an ice age anymore.

“They give pain and delight.” So they’re dominatrixes?

“You are small.” Well no need to be mean about it.

Don’t you have a companion?? Love that that’s one of their synonyms for “spouse” or “partner.”

The alien men look like they’re wearing short jean skirts.

“A dead and buried city on a planet in a glacial age.” That’s a good idea. Could have done something better with that.

Chekov’s still stuck on the no women thing, I think.

Why did they dress Spock in a leftover outfit from This Side of Paradise?

McCoy and his stimulants again, waking up the alien lady after they stunned her. Multi-purpose.

“I know nothing about a brain.” Clearly.

So all the women live below ground, and all the men live above...

Ah-ha, they have found Spock’s voice.

“There is a definite pleasurable experience connected with the hearing of your voice.” This ep is almost worth it for that line.

Also Kirk’s face when he hears Spock’s voice.

I like that Spock is still funny. Honestly he’s probably funnier disembodied. This is a very humorous Spock characterization. “That is a practical idea. It seems unlikely that I shall be able to get to you.”

WHAT IS BRAIN.

They’re being quite sexist, aren’t they? “No engineering geniuses here. Only women. None of these women could ever have done surgery on Spock’s brain.” Like I know it’s that they’re obviously (or supposedly obviously) naive and childlike but like combining that with the sex segregated society and the actual phrasing of these lines (WOMEN?? Engineers?? Doctors??) plus Kirk assuming the Controller is a man (who says?) all creates this like definite sexist vibe while watching. Ugh make it stop.

How can Spock’s brain control everything? They’ve only had it for 5 minutes.

“Mistress.” I told you they were dominatrixes.

Oh yeah Captain Sulu!!

More sexist quotes: “What a way to maintain control over a man.” “I’ve certainly noticed their delightful aspects.” Please stop talking; you’re digging yourselves in a deeper hole.

(Seriously though--I feel like the unspoken world building fact here is that the women need the men for procreation specifically, which is why they capture the men, and then control them--using the “pain belts”--to have sex--the “pleasure.” They probably also use them for other labor, given the presence of the male guards and the line “they won’t help us if we don’t control them” or whatever it was. But surely the delightfulness of the women is more than their physical appearance, is what I’m saying.)

What is the commentary on gender here? Women = scary, dumb, and hot?

Yeah, how DOES Spock’s brain fit into this?

Lol at Spock’s empty body calmly watching them all fighting.

“Science will triumph.” A real lost opportunity in the AOS-verse to have Kirk say this after a bar brawl.

“You are a disembodied brain.” I feel like there’s a (McCoy) joke in here about how he’s reached his ideal state.

His body is the building. (I was right, I totally called this plot point as soon as Spock started talking about his incredibly large body and how his brain was still doing things like regulating oxygen. I must say... this is not a bad idea, except for the brain stealing part. Like there’s something in there, the idea of the complex as a body, powered by a brain. Idk.)

So basically Spock is taking another opportunity to insult Bones’ medical skills. Oh Spock, never change.

I feel like Bones is enjoying his Spock puppet, on some level.

“Pain bands.”

Use the Spock puppet, Kirk! Use it to fight the lady alien!

“The controller is young and powerful, perfect.” / “How very flattering.” LOL I can’t believe this is real.

“You took his brain. You will put it back.”

So the alien lady puts on the spiky helmet and now she’s suddenly smart. I hate thissssssssssss.

(I actually do think the idea of old knowledge stored outside of the... brains...of the current generation, for their own protection, as decided by the paternalist elders... is not itself a bad concept. Of course it’s also a concept that other eps did better, like The Apple or For the World is Hollow or even Return of the Archons. Again, combining it with all the gross things they said about women earlier just leaves a bad taste. Even though--even though!!--we don’t know who the elder people were. Like, was this a matriarchal society that saved the women in the underground because they were better? Or was it a patriarchal society that put the women in the underground because they were considered weak and in need of protection? I rather assumed the second, but I think there’s some evidence for the first, in particular, that the story reeks of Sexualized Male Fear. What’s a better combination of hot and scary than a matriarchy of women in short skirts?)

“Got your gun.” (But the other way around.)

“Our need for the Controller is more important than your need for your friend.” That sounds an awful lot like “The needs of the many outweigh needs of the one” and we all know what Kirk thinks about that. That said, he’s really not...engaging with her facially fair argument at all.

“No one may kill a man. Not for any purpose. It cannot be condoned.”

Love Scotty’s acting skills. Gotta get this gun back really fast--create a diversion by fainting! But not too much!

I do love McCoy. He’s an adventurer too. He pretends he’s not but he jumps at the chance to discover and learn. He will not hesitate to put himself in danger if it’s for the common good or to protect his friends.

“Put the teacher on.”

Now finally Kirk is engaging with the fate of the society he’s encountered lol. Like, again, he’s not wrong; they’ve stagnated under the computer/controller and it’s not moral to steal from someone else to keep your comfortable and boring life going when you could just do the work yourself, but coming this late, it feels like an afterthought. It’s also weird that she just like stood by and let them take Spock and his brain after all that to do about...not letting them have the brain. Like at the end of the day she was not so inept. Also, they never explained what happens to all the knowledge in the teacher. One would assume they’d have to access it--or not? They’re just to start from scratch? Also legit I guess. And finally... all I can really hear, in the emphasis on integrating with the men again, is “You’ll learn how to develop a society naturally and also about heterosexual sex wink wink.” (Except that as I said... I think they know about that.)

I see McCoy’s regretting that “child’s play” talk now.

“Give priority to reconnecting Spock’s vocal cords.” Yep that’s how the brain works for sure.

Wow Spock really does have to do everything himself. Including operate on himself.

“This Vulcan is telling me how to operate.”

How did he operate without...opening Spock’s skull... in any way??

Not to question the verisimilitude of Spock’s Brain lol.

Everyone’s being so rude--Spock is providing valuable last minute exposition/explanation about this weird-ass society!

It’s always odd when they don’t return to the bridge. Like, they’re not going to collect Chekov?

That was... something.

I liked a few things: any excuse for Kirk to be devoted to Spock; the humor Spock showed; I liked the bridge scene where they looked at the map of the planets; and I liked certain things about the premise of the episode, although, like I said, most of the general aspects (post-disaster society, reliance on computers, etc.) had been done better in other episodes. I liked the look into the Male Brain lol.

What I didn’t like was how outright ridiculous the basic catalyzing event was--Spock’s brain has been literally stolen like??? Are you kidding me? That led to a considerable amount of dialogue that read like a Star Trek parody. Did not like that. And of course, as I said... the sexism. I think I’ve unpacked that enough. It didn’t need to be sexist, and you can explain it in a way that’s not, but the vibe sure was. It was like... well a lot of TOS is like this imo. You can give it an A (or at least a B) for effort, but what comes out is so obviously tainted by the sexism of the creators. Like, for example, how they say they believe in women who are just as capable and professional as men, but struggle to show it. This ep wanted to show a matriarchal society but it wasn’t really a matriarchal society--it was a Freudian dream that was all about the male psyche and what it most fears and wants.

All that said.. the next ep is a D.C. Fontana creation featuring one of my favorite TOS Ladies, the Female Romulan Commander, so I will be receiving a consolation prize.

Also the AOS verse is still more sexist and doesn’t have an excuse I said what I said.

[grison-in-space]

I think this is a clouded take of someone who works with population as a whole, and not breeding dogs

As someone with exactly that background? bingo. That's exactly where he's coming from. You actually can get away with that in other animal fancies where you are bluntly expecting to do a lot more culling, as in mice or rats or chickens, but for something like dogs where you expect every dog you produce to at least go on to a non-breeding home as a pet, it's not a great option.

The thing is that I do get where he's coming from, I think; I suspect that he's concerned that breeders will use tests as they always have, to screen animals out of the breeding pool and use only dogs that pass the tests to breed on... which will only concentrate in exciting new problems, especially if you're not bringing in new alleles via outcrossing on a sustained and regular basis. In general, the safest and most healthy way to get very specific, extreme traits in a predictable breeding population is to keep the pace of selection slow. You can do that in two ways: you can select hard, routinely cross in new blood, and then go back to selecting after outcrossing has mixed things up a bit, or you can take a large founding population and you can select slowly, letting many animals in each generation contribute to the next. The culture of dog breeding is sufficiently fucky, especially about outcrossing and backcrossing, that I can see why he's not necessarily leaning on that option here; I'm assuming some of the audience is breeders working within purebred lines who are barred from outcrossing by the cultural mores of their communities, at least for now. So it does make a certain amount of sense to try to tell people to relax their selection pressure instead in order to retain whatever residual diversity is still kicking around.

But bluntly it's never a good idea to decide that people will only do the foolish thing with more information and tailor your advice accordingly. That's some enormous paternalistic bullshit, and more to the point it also doesn't teach breeders who want to be doing better by their animals how to use the information from tests effectively in order to figure out how to produce healthy, sound animals within their community, given the cultural restrictions of that community. You can retain more animals in a breeding pool by, as you say there, crossing carriers to non-carriers and normalizing that as a reasonable response to long-term success. That's good! That gives you something to encourage breeders to try, especially those working with rare breeds!

That's a part of why when @wyrddogs and I were talking about Kermit's IVDD screening results, I pointed out that the test result in question isn't perfect and that it provides information rather than mandating a specific decision. You can change the culture about what people do with test result information by talking about why someone might choose to breed a dog who carries a disease risk and what they choose to do with it. Fuck knows that this is not a new concept to breeders, either, especially with y'all in BCs who routinely play with merle! Or dermoid sinus in Ridgebacks, or deafness in cattle dogs: it seems like this is a totally known response to how to handle otherwise desirable traits that are also linked to disease outcomes, so now we need to shift the cultural consensus within breeders to acknowledge that maybe dogs that don't score perfectly on every potential health test are worth breeding forward... to other dogs that are very strong on that particular axis, at least. Dog breeders know how to do this. The only shift you have to make is dealing with the tendency to treat health tests as a binary all-or-nothing call, as opposed to ways to estimate risk in conjunction with both environmental and background genetic factors, which is how disease actually works. (oh, is that all--just change people's minds about how to respond to information? yeah, yeah, it's harder than I'm making it sounds, we all know what dog people are like, but the point remains that you won't make any progress if you don't try.)

I don't follow FDC directly because I'm not going to breed any time soon, but I've glanced at them occasionally from the perspective of someone with a strong population genetics background and a deep interest in other people producing the kinds of dogs I want to keep. As I understand it, teaching people how to get the goals they want with dogs is the whole goddamned point of the thing. So... teach people why this shift matters, especially in the aggregate. Don't just advocate that they not look, tell them what to do with what they see!

Yes, every FDC podcast pisses me off, but the most recent one might be the most so. Dr. O'Neill essentially recommends against all health testing (or disorder testing a he calls it) unless it's a major issue in the breed based on quality of life and population AND the test showing significant value to change population over time. Basically saying unless over 20% of the breed is affected, don't test for it in favor of genetic diversity. I think this is a clouded take of someone who works with population as a whole, and not breeding dogs. Just about every health concern in border collies, less than 20% of the population is affected. And a big part of that? Genetic testing that prevents two carriers being bred to each other. That doesn't mean that carriers are pulled from the gene pool, they just aren't bred to other carriers. I've seen very, VERY few cases of dogs being pulled from breeding on their genetic testing results alone. But pull the genetic tests, and you have NINE different easily tested for genetic diseases common to the breed that it would be exceedingly easy to breed two carriers to each other when breeding blindly. According to OFA, only about 10% of the breed has failing hips, but what kind of life is in store for a high energy dog who's body can't withstand that lifestyle they need? Only two percent fail elbows, but elbow dysplasia in the breed is more likely to be a career ending diagnosis than hip dysplasia and IMO a much worse QOL prognosis.

Sure you can't guarantee the results of any breeding, but coming from a breed where more dogs are washed from breeding for bad temperament than failing a health test, I'll keep spending money to stack the cards in my favor and will buy from breeders who will do the same.

[yellowocaballero]

For the director's commentary: the end of Human Relations where Sasha takes the fall for Leitner's murder and Jon sort of stands up to Elias?

Oooh really interesting pick, thank you. It’s a fairly long scene so I won’t copy/paste it, but the link to the story is here. TW for rest of this post for discussion of abusive relationships. Also sorry this reply took so long, I had other stuff to do then I typed out an essay and then deleted it lol. 

The relationship between Jon and Jonah only really solidified for me as I was writing that scene. It’s very intense, and as an ending it’s very impactful: the reveal for Sasha of who Jon and Jonah were, and the reveal for the reader of the nature of Jon and Jonah’s relationship. I explore it more here and here, but I will say that basically every relationship in Human Relations is about people trying to control each other. It is thematic.

I enjoy thinking about the very many reasons why somebody would do an objectively shitty thing. Every relationship in HR is characterized by a lack of trust born from fear and paranoia, and it’s low-key a symptom of them all being psychologically eroded by the Eye. Everybody in HR - Sasha, Tim, Martin, Jon, and Jonah - has tried to manipulate and control other people in the cast, but every single one of them did it because they thought it was for the person’s own good. 

Sasha didn't tell Tim a lot of important information because she thought that he couldn't be trusted with it! Tim didn't tell Sasha his concerns and suspicions because he didn't trust her! Martin was blatantly manipulative of Jon because he was invested in not being killed, and then later on invested in breaking Jon free from Jonah's control! Jonah controlled Jon because he paternalistically  thinks Jon's an idiot who can't make his own decisions! Jon tries to control Sasha because Jonah wants him to and also because he's also being a little paternalistic! It’s a mess!

Jon and Jonah’s dynamic is so unhealthy that it veers into abusive, and I did want to make a commentary on the abusive friendship or relationship that is “politely not talked about” or that it just so common and taken for granted that we don’t mention it. It’s a fine line between  "they genuinely like each other and there might even be love there" and "Jonah really just thinks Jon should be working for him and doing what he's supposed to do instead of all of his stupid 'independence' ambitions". Does Jonah care about Jon? Yeah! Will Jonah leverage their initial imbalanced power dynamic for the next 200 years to make Jon feel inferior and keep him under his control? Also yeah!

I think Jonah likes, cares about, and supports Jon so long as Jon's doing what he wants. Which he almost never does, so there's conflict. It comes down to like, if a chronic manipulator can have genuine friends, or if he only knows how to hold significant long term relationships if he views it through the lens of control. I’m still uncertain if Jonah is...capable of caring about Jon in a legitimate way. Definitely not in a healthy way. I’m sure Jon’s also uncertain of this. 

Very interesting, would like to explore it more. I’m uncertain if I’ll ever write a full sequel to HR, mostly because I’ve already done a S3 rewrite and I find rewrites boring, but time will tell. Thanks for the question!

[mahizli]

In The Right Place (Riyo Chuchi & Obi-Wan Kenobi, 21 BBY)

Art by i-Dud- so talented.

Chapter 20 of ‘Sparks of Hope’.

***

Cold. Senator Riyo Chuchi was cold, despite the warm furs covering her shoulders.

Her golden earrings felt icy, and her body trembled helplessly in the shuttle as she clung to the handle, breathing in the scent of battle-worn men, trying to forget the stench of blood.

Her eyes stung, and Riyo tried to blink back the tears threatening to spill, overwhelmed by what had just happened on Orto Plutonia.

I am the only woman. I am the only woman here.

The thought was circling in her brain, like a crazed animal trying to break out, and Riyo tried to breathe out – because she was a Senator, someone who had to represent her people and had managed to do so, finally achieving peace between Pantora and the tribe of Chieftain Thi-Sen.

I am just a woman. I am just a woman.

“Are you all right, my lady?”

The metallic voice of Threepio rose beneath her and Riyo nodded, forcing her eyes to stare ahead, into space, into nothingness.

He made me feel like a girl. I felt like just a girl, brushed away and trampled upon. And so many died.

Chairman Cho had shocked and frightened her, had made her feel small and brittle inside, just like the worst moments of her life, in the Legislative Youth Program, where some had mocked her shyness and reserve – before Padmé and Mo had stepped in and made her feel like she finally belonged in politics.

Riyo was used to the political world – to the polite sneers and the paternalistic sentences, all these small, unseen obstacles that were so hard to remove because so many of them were implicit.

But what she had discovered, that day – the display of brute power, of pure colonialism, of prejudice and violence… and all those soldiers around her… the sweat and blood and fight and death…

So many died.

She had felt like a savage herself. Witnessing all this. Unable to say anything, until it was her turn to speak. Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi had urged her on, and something in the way he had looked at her had allowed something warm and brave to unfold deep within her – something Riyo Chuchi would never have believed to harbour.

She had spoken words she did not know she had in herself – and in those kind, intelligent eyes of Chieftain Thi-Sen… In those eyes of the one Chairman Cho had dared to call a beast, she had read consideration. Respect. Trust.

He saw me as a whole. He did not belittle me. He raised me up.

The sky blurred before her eyes, and Riyo raised a hand, wiping her cheek, feeling herself tremble. There was no one directly beneath her, the troopers and the Jedi careful to give her some space, but the space was crowded, and she could still feel them, hear them, smell them – the adrenaline and sweat and post-battle euphoria.

Yet so many had fallen, and her cheeks burned with icy tears.

“Senator Chuchi, allow me…”

The voice raising behind her was soft. There was no bloodlust, nothing overwhelmingly virile in Master Obi-Wan Kenobi – at least not with her. Riyo had seen him in combat, though, also in the Senate, when he was trying to argue for the Jedi, and held nothing but admiration for him – how could she not, when he was the one Duchess Satine held in such esteem...?

She also knew that he was, perhaps, the only man in this small aircraft to be able to soothe her and understand a bit of what she felt. She had seen Master Kenobi’s eyes, as Chairman Cho had decided to wage war. Had witnessed his gestures, as he tried to communicate with the Talz – Knight Skywalker had joked with the men, had told them Master Kenobi had been fiercely hugged.

But right now, Riyo was unable to do anything but acknowledge him with a nod, knuckle still wiping her tears delicately, staring into nothingness.

May I join you, Senator…?

It was not a voice, not really. It was something tentative, like a hand stretched out, a soft brush against her very essence.

It felt delicate. Considerate. Like a snow-flower peaking between icy slopes.

And so Riyo nodded, and allowed the Jedi Master to step into the small space she had claimed for herself.

“I brought you some tea”, Master Kenobi told her, handing her a steaming cup – and she realised he had removed his gloves, hands somewhat red in the relative cold of the ship.

Yet how comforting it felt to see fingers, not fists. To meet kind, concerned grey eyes, not scowls and sneers of contempt.

Riyo Chuchi took the cup, placing both hands around it, warming her palms without drinking, for a while. And she realised, then, that the voices of the troopers seemed muffled, as well as their presences.

It was just the window. The inky sky. And her and a Jedi Master.

“I shielded us with the Force. I should have done so earlier, Senator. I apologize.”

Riyo breathed out, somewhat shakily. It felt better. Safer, somehow. So much calmer – allowing her to gather the strength to lift the cup to her lips, taking a sip that soon warmed her chest.

“It is I who should apologize”, she whispered, in the end. “I… I did not mean to turn away from you. I… I should…”

“Senator Chuchi…”

His voice was so very gentle. He was not touching her, was not invading her private space – yet she felt his warmth, somehow. His calm and kindness.

“Please know that every man here deeply respects you for what you have achieved today. And believe me when I tell you that I am, truly, aware of the difficulties you had to face, and still have. Men and women – and species - should be treated equally. I wish the world could be more like the Temple in that respect. Alas, there is still so much to achieve…”

“I… I am not sure… I am not sure to be in the right place, Master Kenobi.”

There. It was out. It made more tears spill, tears she valiantly tried to hide taking another sip of tea. But when she finally mustered the courage to gaze up at him, there was nothing but warmth and compassion in his grey eyes.

“I know the feeling, Senator Chuchi.”

She had not expected these words. Not from someone so masterful, so accomplished and so strong as him.

“My Master, however, used to tell me that doubt it is a double-edged sword. It can cripple us. Make us feel little. Unable us to move. But… it can also protect us from forgetting to be reflective. Teach us to reconsider. To always be humble, and to act because we seek to do what is good, not what can bring us power.”

Riyo blinked, allowing his words to sink in, finally finding a semblance of calm. And Master Kenobi went on:

“As a Senator, you are entrusted with power and responsibility. People look up to you. They trust you. They allow you to represent them. And it is only if you keep wondering, asking yourself the question ‘am I still in the right place?’, that you will remain so. In the right place. And tending towards what is good, to your best abilities.”

He was smiling at her, head gently tilted to the side. And Riyo felt something warm within her – something reminding her of the fire in herself, when she had faced the Talz, determined to stop this war. But it was not as burning, not as ephemeral. It was rather like an ember, something that would not vanish, but grow as she would enfold, learning to be more confident.

Because she was not doing it for herself. She was doing it for others – to serve and protect them. And… they had seen it. Those who truly mattered. Chieftain Thi-Sen. Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. Knight Skywalker. Captain Rex. And the troopers that were standing around her, still shielded by the Force, but no longer making her feel threatened.

Senator Chuchi took a deep breath, and then she lowered her cup, a shy smile on her lips.

“I thank you, Master Kenobi. I feel much better now. And I would like to thank your men, as well as Knight Skywalker.”

“You are most welcome, Senator.”

He bowed, slightly, and then, very softly, the invisible curtain he had drawn around themselves and the others vanished. They were both back in the loud, crowded ship, surrounded by men who were used to battles and fights, but who were all yearning to do their best.

She was no longer afraid. And so, Senator Chuchi lifted her chin, gathered her fur around her shoulders and turned around.

For a while, all was silent.

And then, one of the troopers cheered, the acclamations soon echoing in the whole ship, making her blush, then smile, then laugh softly and bow her head in silent thanks.

“Hurray for the Senator! Hurray for that speech! Hurray for peace!”

Riyo no longer felt cold. She felt daring, and brave, and fiery, and taller than ever – but she also knew it was because of them. And so, she stood even straighter, lifted a small fist, like she had done on Orto Plutonia, and placed her other hand above it in a salute that was also a vow.

“We will make it last.”

Her cheeks glowed, and the ember within her was alight – because, just here and now, Senator Riyo Chuchi felt indeed in the right place.

[gascon-en-exil]

Good points all around. I can fill in some details on the negative perception of M/M content.

In the last decade or so, transformative fandom has been disproportionately dominated by M/M content, equivalent to and sometimes even more numerous than M/F content. You can see this in AO3 metrics, as well as in many of the big-name ships and ship drama of the 2010s, ex. the Johnlock Conspiracy of Sherlock, Destiel of Supernatural, or the Voltron shipping war that kicked off the anti-shipping phenomenon. In more recent years there have been attempts to explain the reason for this abundance of gay male-centered fan content, because it certainly isn't reflected in published media which continues to favor straight relationships or, as the ask points out, marketable lesbianism.

One conclusion has been that it's the fault of horny straight women "fetishizing" gay male relationships, and because horny is bad in some internet circles and "fetishizing" anyone is bad then it follows that all that M/M content is also bad. This results in what I've seen dubbed the "eat your vegetables" mentality toward F/F, where people attempt to push lesbian content as morally superior to M/M for all manner of reasons, and to condemn fans and fandoms that still favor M/M. Focusing on male characters is misogyny, yaoi reduces gay men to heteronormative stereotypes, erotica itself is bad and M/M content, like the hypersexual culture of real-life queer men, is just overall too horny to be truly progressive, (this one from TERFS) yaoi "converts" women into gay trans men, etc.

Somewhat related to this, it's also become something of an in-road for straight men (like...you know...) to enter into the performative social media game of determining the worth of everything based on how progressive you can make it sound. Fujoshi, after all, can always rely on the line of thought that they're women exploring their sexualities and that to oppose this is classic patriarchy, while queer men like me know that our sex, our relationships, and the ways we engage with those subjects in fiction will always be politicized regardless of anything else we do or believe. Now though these men can freely express their revulsion toward M/M content while claiming to be feminists supporting lesbians...provided that it's a safe sort of lesbianism that's still accessible to them (as always happens to be the case when it comes to talking about fictional lesbians) and that that feminism also comes with some oddly paternalistic caveats like those found in a certain notorious piece of fanfiction.

This all however rests on the assumption that M/M and F/F are of equal appeal to everyone, which is patently untrue especially when discussing erotica. This only holds up if you view queerness through an abstract, nonthreatening, and virtually sexless lens, with its existence only valuable insofar as it allegedly proves how progressive a piece of media is - that performative social media game again. I can't imagine anyone who enjoys any sort of queer content genuinely thinks this way - but it's sometimes useful when they're trying to win arguments on the internet.

That brings me to FE and all this recent nonsense. It's clear that what really bothers these people about Dimitri's queer subtext, and that there are fans (sometimes even queer fans!) who enjoy it, is that it threatens their established belief that Dimitri, Rhea, and the Lions represent all manner of conservative/reactionary evils that their fave stands against. It's very similar to their dismissals of Dimitri's mental illness or Rhea's own bi-for-Byleth sexuality for that matter, because that's more axes of oppression they can't be allowed to exist on. As I know personally, it's not enough to even partially buy into the Eagles as the "gay house," because I also ship Ferdibert but have been told more than once that I ship it the "wrong" way - meaning how I see both characters in relation to Edelgard, of course. This has never gotten me to stop shipping Ferdibert, by the way, but rather just left me a bit annoyed, as well as reminded of this meme:

You may imagine who's who.

At least I can probably take some satisfaction in knowing that I likely won't have to hear from that person again, because I imagine that listening to me talk for a solid hour about all sorts of Three Houses/Hopes pairings, including quite a few F/F ones, is too tall of an order. How I'd love for this crowd to try tangling instead with the anti-Studentleths over on Twitter, who'd promptly call them all pedophiles for shipping Edeleth. The trouble with always trying to claim the moral high ground is that eventually someone will claim an even higher ground than your own.

I’m sure sending you an ask off anon will probably get me put on a list of some kind but fuck it, I’ve already got one unhinged stalker, what’s another one in the mix lmao, and i want to make it extremely clear that I support you in this.

Like it really says something that these stannies absolutely do not quit after four damn years of the same thing. Doesn’t matter how factual you are (correctly citing art history in its original intent and context, canon game dialogue and timelines, interviews, etc), how polite you are, how straightforward you and others are because none of that matters at all to these chumps. This is a straight up gamergate-style sealioning campaign that in the end isn’t really about edelgard at all—she’s just the convenient platform for these people to expound their insane maximalist fandom-as-politics viewpoint that has irreparably damaged houses’ reputation for fans and has conflated videogame communities as a testing ground for in-group loyalty metrics.

Aside from what you and others have already said, it’s telling that they always follow a set script: Church Evil and Fascist, Edelgard Revolutionary and Morally Good, alongside truly reprehensible weaponisation of identity politics and socjus buzzwords. It’s not enough to assert that Edelgard is a pure lesbian hero (biphobia what), it must mean that by diametrically opposing her, Dimitri has to be evil, straight (but when they grudgingly acknowledge his queerness, it’s then asserting that said queerness can only exist within him being repressed and tamping it down because of evil Faerghian misogynist politics, never mind that Adrestia is the biggest misogynist of the continent lol), and singularly obsessed with targeting what she represents; Rhea, the chief architect of all that is evil in Fódlan and directly responsible for its misogyny, homophobia, and whatever else alongside with lobbing assertions of her being a “groomer” (which anyone with half a brain cell not dedicated to being chronically online know is now a popular right-wing argot used to directly target the lgbt community with truly heinous accusations equating them to paedophilia), among other things.

Only extreme statements and buzzwords for the characters, all the time: Edelgard as a hero, Dimitri and Rhea as representatives of ontological evil that Edelgard must defeat with extreme prejudice.

Let’s also point out the fact that in a true debate—because they’re not really debating at all and I say this as a professional debater myself who has won medals for this shit and trained youth teams in my country—the onus on the opposing side has to accept neutral statements from their counterparts. They cannot seriously say that their statements on Edelgard must be taken as fact while simultaneously discounting yours as fiction, because at best that would obviously be called out as ad hoc attempt to muddy the waters; at worst, blatantly trying to control the debate solely with their own parameters as the only acceptable ones, and thus openly attempting to silence dissenting opinions. If they really want to try to convince others that they’re really presenting legitimate debate, they cannot seriously pretend that their actions support that claim when they:

Approach you first and then continue to hound you

Constantly repeat themselves in an attempt to wear you down and confuse you, which is absolutely something that can be penalised in formal debate

Get offended and then accuse you of abuse when you firmly disagree with them and draw boundaries

Let’s also not forget the fact that their actions as a community absolutely do constitute harassment when they’ve been caught gloating about running moonlitboar off tumblr, the revelation that they keep a list of Edelgard critics to monitor them, forcing vas to apologise for expressing negative opinions about Edelgard (note how Rhea gets called so much bad shit but you don’t see Rhea fans calling for her haters’ blood), and even prompting YouTubers to change entire videos to avoid backlash, if not to simply stay in their good graces (and milk them for views and ad cash)

Aside from absolutely garbage essentialist Pure Lesbian Women are from Venus, Evil Repressed Hettie Obsessed Men are from Mars viewpoints, it’s truly mind boggling that they’ve bought into the belief that f/f is somehow purer and “less problematic” than m/m solely because they’ve decided that the heavy mlm moments for the Lions must point to their inherent moral degeneracy, which I would again like to remind them that that is actually homophobic; hell, I’ve seen quite a few using fujoshi as an insult. Let me take the time to explain that fujoshi and mlm fandom in Asia (explained by Asian fans themselves!) has always been seen as a symptom of mostly women fans being disgusting and “rotten,” and that their interest in mlm relationships is not only a betrayal of their gender (and ofc fujoshi as an insult in the west is a popular argument with terfs), but a sign that they’re degenerate and that something is deeply wrong with them.

Never mind that across the world, ff in media has sadly mostly been used as porn fodder for straight, misogynist men, because lesbian sex titillates them while gay sex repulses them. Utena is the outlier in a sea of garbage and said ff garbage is mostly shown as porn anyways. Gengoroh Tagame, a popular gay mangaka, has spoken about how female fans of mlm in japan are often big supporters of lgbt rights. Let’s not even get into the fact that the demographics of most edelgard spaces (like r/edelgard) are of straight men.

I also really despise how they’ve discovered “antisemitic” as a new buzzword. I’m Jewish. I loathe how most people only seem to care about opposing antisemitism when it’s in a videogame or movie, instead of in real life when we get hatecrimed. But it’d be remiss of me not to mention the way my blood boils when edelstans seriously repeat church slander of the nabateans being fake humans, evil reptilians wearing human skins as a disguise for them to manipulate the world from the shadows and using a fake, evil religion as their cover (not to mention how they describe the tenets of said religion as evil and conveniently forge and misrepresent its texts to make it look worse…where have i seen that before), who impede societal development to keep themselves on top, and, as the cherry on the shit cake, as miserly hoarders who keep monumental wealth to themselves and refuse to use it to help others.

Really makes you think then that it doesn’t take much for them to admit they see the Nabatean genocide as a positive, that its completion is necessary for edelgard to succeed (even if they hem and haw about what they think would happen to byleth, Seteth, and flayn), and borrowing from blatant irl genocide denial rhetoric saying that the agarthans (who are literal moustache twirling evil villains) were the original inhabitants who actually got genocided by the nasty coloniser lizards and that their retribution is absolutely justified and understandable. I laugh to think what their though process will be like if they even play the jugdral games.

And finally, since it bears mentioning, they should keep byleths name out of their fucking mouths. As a huge self admitted Byleth stan, seeing them whinge and whine and bitch and moan about poor Edelgard getting criticised really grinds my gears when the last four years has been seeing me constantly trying to navigate a fandom space that relentlessly shits on byleth and says they ruin the games and are nothing but player pandering or when people fucking celebrated the scene of shez killing them in hopes. Edelstans don’t get to try and use them as a prop to prove how edelgard is so good to them (and is so pure as a whole) when we have quantifiable data showing that Byleth smiles the most in verdant wind, has an incredibly strong character arc in azure moon, and that for THREE ROUTES OUT OF FOUR in houses (two if you count hopes scenarios when they’re kept alive) they always end up opposing her, because that is their actual character. Let’s talk about how r/byleth is mostly populated by r/edelgard fans who mostly post porn of fem byleth but have admitted to actually hating her, but liking the fact that she’s got big tits and can be used for yuri fanservice. Or let’s talk about feh: all their alts so far show their loyalty and closeness TO THE NABATEANS. And fuck it, I’m of the opinion that actually the devs’ edelgard bias is what ruined byleth and what made them silent. Because when they’re separated from houses (and thus not in her immediate focus), they fucking shine!!!

Tldr: hi raxis, what’s good!!

Addendum: edelgard has the most 3h alts in feh, cipher card art showing her naked and/or with suggestive costumes, is the most attached to the avatar characters in 3h/hopes/feh of her roster, is named first in the dlc for 3h in engage, has the tea set paired with hreslveg blend, ETC. if that’s not obv favouritism by an obv mostly male dev team, then, well…

Hey, how are you? Hope things are well!

When thinking about that exchange from the other day, @butwhatifidothis had an excellent post that put into words more eloquently than I could about issue:

They are right - I never mentioned it myself because my brain didn't quite go there, but many of the arguments were basically "this character would do this hypothetically", which is nothing more than mere headcanon.

Full disclosure, but I am not a professional debater. I am not even trained. Back in school I famously hated debates because I always felt they relied on twisting facts rather than empirical data. I liked data, that's why I went into the Sciences.

The only debating in Science is whether your results are accurate and if your method is indisputable. Is this ethical? What are we basing our ethnics off of? Proper science doesn't care about your opinions, or how bad so and so was back in the 1700s. Science - and Math - liked numbers, and numbers are cold and inflexible.

So I must admit that debating (not discussions, but debating) do tend to make me nervous at times. I like to learn, and to be challenged on how I view the world. But debating is not a skill I am honestly good at. I can lost track of the original point. I can get discombobulated by the lexicon and factoids when they are rapid fired at me.

That's why I engage in them. It's practice. If I don't do it, I will never get better.

And my untrained eyes could see that this debate... was not really a debate, but a shake-down. I was curious to see where it would go.

If anyone else finds this in this situation, here is my unprofessional advice:

Do not insult or use language that could be misconstrued as aggressive. Remain polite and sincere. Remaining polite does not mean agreeing to everything they say. But, instead of saying something like "You are wrong!" re-word it as "I don't agree with your view" or "I do not believe that is correct".

Do not let yourself be bullied. If this means you wish to disengage, just disengage. Make it comfortable for yourself. In my case, I was comfortable to keep going, but that may not be true for you. They make take this as a win, but you aren't being graded on this and this isn't politics. It's video game stuff.

Use only facts, do not use headcanons or opinions. This makes it harder for the other person to fight you, because you are remaining neutral. If you wish to discuss or bring up something that is not based on text, be sure to make it clear.

Call out when they twist your words. One user claimed that I had once used their name in my post. I never did, so I asked them where I had said that. It forces the other user, if they wish to respond, to either acknowledge they made a mistake, or they risk making themselves look like liars.

Never take it personally. They don't really know you. They are just bored and angry.

Always try to get them to think. This one I am still trying to master. When they make a claim, ask them why they think that. Why are they drawing that conclusion? What if they thought about it this way? If they are regurgitating whatever they have heard from others, they may get tripped up by this. This does run the risk of irritating the other person, but I find it is a helpful tool to both learn and to challenge your opponent to explaining themselves better.

This is the hardest one of all. Do not lose sight of the topic. It is not uncommon for these discussions to go a million different directions. If you lose sight, you may end up on a path you don't want to be on. Stay on topic. I'm still working on this too.

It's really cool that you are a trained debater. If you have any other further advice, or if my advice is terrible, I would love to hear it!

Ultimately, I think many of these types of fans just want to use whatever buzzwords and language they can to not only guilt the other party into bending a knee to their opinions, but to also shame anyone who likes another fictional character.

It's really a shame that other fans feel the need to go to such lengths over someone who is not real.

But per your addenhem, it is true that Edelgard gets a lot of love and attention from IS. She is popular. She doesn't need someone to come sweeping in defending her fictional honor.

Poor Claude really gets the shortest end of the stick in all this. This guy doesn't even have the same number of alts as Dimitri in FEH.

The sexuality stuff confuses me the most. Perhaps it is because my particular sexuality makes up 1% of the population, but I usually don't see why it is such a big deal when it comes to FE. FE doesn't make statements about sexuality. It is not try to teach about sexuality. It is not trying to push an agenda of any kind except the Make Money Agenda.

This weird vilifying fans of who likes mlm content, often framed as disgusting straight fujos who fetishize men. I find this an odd statement. From my point of view, anything that has any sort of sex is fetishizing, period. Straight, gay, whatever.

Well, regardless, thank you for the nice ask. I hope I could give is an answer that gives it justice. :)

[revlyncox]

Dreamers (2021)

Working toward a better world, a world of racial justice and an end to interlocking oppressions, requires imagination. On this weekend when we remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., let's also consider both the history of civil rights and the unbounded creativity of speculative fiction by writers of color as sources of inspiration. 

Expanded and revised for the Washington Ethical Society, presented January 17, 2021. 

“We are creating a world we have never seen,” writes Adrienne Maree Brown in Emergent Strategy. On this weekend, as we remember the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., support a peaceful transfer of power, and recommit to his legacy and the work of civil rights yet to do, it may seem like a luxury or a distraction to engage with imagination. It is not. Just like we cannot allow oppression to steal our joy, we cannot let it steal our imagination. Neither threats of violence, nor attempts to push us into re-creating a fictional and regressive society of the past, nor manufactured austerity preventing relief from reaching working people, nor white supremacy in any form should be allowed to steal our imagination. Our ability to dream of a better world is a matter of collective survival.

What does it take to dream big? What fuels our ability to imagine a future without limits like racism, classism, and sexism? Entering a dream state where equality is possible takes some practice. Music can get us there. Listening to activists who are moving our society forward can help us get into that frame of mind. Great art can invite us into that kind of transformational trance.

Dreaming is important. Dreaming gives us creativity, energy, and a warm vision around which we can gather a community. Dreaming is not enough. Once we have imagined a better world, we have to (we get to) build it, to keep building it, and to rebuild the parts that got torn down when we weren’t paying attention. The next step is to use those dreams as a doorway to action.

Dr. King’s words and actions demonstrated connections between systemic racial inequality, economic injustice, war, threats to labor rights, and blockades to voting rights. All of those forces are still relevant. He and the other activists of his era left a very rich legacy, for which we are grateful. We are not done.

I’ll be drawing today from Dr. King’s 1963 work, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” (Also available as an audio file from the King Institute.) I think the critiques he offered in that letter are still valid, especially for us in this community that strives to be anti-racist and yet must acknowledge that we are impacted by the norms of what King calls, “the white moderate.” His letter was a response to Christian and Jewish clergy, who had written an open letter criticizing nonviolent direct action. Though Ethical Culture uses different language and methods than our explicitly theist neighbors, I think it is incumbent upon us to hold on to the accountability that comes with being part of the interfaith community. So I believe this letter is written to us as well. Dr. King wrote:

I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the … great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises [us] to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I would like to think that, in this community, we have made some progress since 1963, and that majority-white communities have stopped explicitly trying to slow the pace of civil rights. Indeed, WES can be proud that racial justice has been woven into its goals from the beginning, though we must also be honest that a perfectly anti-racist history is unlikely. At the same time, I see people who claim to be progressive rushing to calls for “civility” or “unity” without accountability. Understanding the direct link between the intended audience of this letter and the people and communities with which we have kinship today is an act of imagination that we must embrace in order to learn from the past and to continue Dr. King’s legacy. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” can help us understand why we need to dream of something different in the world.

We need dreams and we need plans. We seek inspiration as we continue to work toward bringing a dream of economic and political equality fully into reality.

One place I turn for inspiration is toward socially conscious science fiction. Looking at how the art form has offered critiques of what’s wrong and pathways to what’s right, I see suggestions for how we can nurture the dream of a better world.

Science fiction has even helped me understand spiritually-connected social movements, such as the one depicted in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. The series depicts a self-governing poetic community that tries to live sustainably in an environment affected by catastrophic climate change, and that maintains an improbable vision of exploring the stars. The poetry uses the word God, but not in the way that it is normally used. Recognizing that WES is not a community that makes use of theism, I hope you’ll be able to hear how that metaphor is used in the world of the story. In Parable of the Talents, the main character, Lauren Olamina, writes a poem for her community:

God is change

And hidden within change

Is surprise, delight,

Confusion, pain,

Discovery, loss,

Opportunity and growth.

As always, God exists

To shape

And to be shaped 

(Parable of the Talents, p. 92)

In the book, the community that reflects on change in meditation and song is able to use that energy to maintain resilience, even in the face of white supremacist violence and criminalization. Butler imagines an inclusive community led by People of Color who strengthen and encourage one another, inject their strategic planning with an expectation for backlash, and still imagine and make their way toward a better world. Her books provide inspiration to those who know that the negative extremes of the world of the story are possible.

Socially conscious science fiction spins dreams that are extreme, that challenge us in good ways. In science fiction and in practical experience with progressive movements, we learn that dreams need help to become reality.

The alternate universe where justice rolls down like water may seem too fantastic to believe, it may be cobbled together in ways that seem mis-matched to mundane perceptions, and it will certainly take work to achieve. Nevertheless, like Dr. King, I believe “we must use time creatively.”

Dreams Are Extreme

The first thing to note about dreams, whether sleeping or socially conscious, is that they are extreme. Things that would be totally absurd or unthinkable in everyday reality are woven into the fabric of a new vision. The dream might be a positive one, in which we imagine what it would be like to live in a better world. On the other hand, dystopian dreams can also be effective at stirring us to action. In an imagined world, we are met with the possibility that a flaw in our current society might go too far. Absurdity comes uncomfortably close to the truth.

Dr. King spoke about the role of discomfort in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” saying that nonviolent direct action is meant to bring that discomfort to bear so that those in power will sit down and negotiate, to recognize people of good conscience. This is different from using violence as coercion, which is destructive to democracy; this is using peaceful means to declare the right of people to have a voice in what concerns them. Dr. King writes:

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.

Tension has a place in literature and drama that can also be used for racial justice. I once served as an intern at a regional theater. In one of the plays we presented that year, the plot hinged on something unexplainable and highly improbable, which is one definition for science fiction. It was the 1965 play Day of Absence by African American playwright Douglas Turner Ward. In the story, white citizens of a racist town awaken one day to find that all of the African American residents have mysteriously disappeared. They slowly come to realize that they cannot function without the neighbors they mistreated and took for granted. Rather than try to solve their problems, they spend the rest of the play panicking and blaming each other in comedic ways.

Between the satirical script, the exaggerated makeup, and the abstract set, the show turns reality inside out in an effort to alter the audience’s collective conscience. Day of Absence shines a spotlight on the links between racial oppression and economic oppression, and is an incitement to join a movement for change. Consistent with the Revolutionary Theatre aesthetic, the play is meant to make people uncomfortable. We should be uncomfortable with the real systems of inequality parodied in the play.

It worked. Audiences were uncomfortable. Some patrons were able to take that discomfort and use it to grow. Some patrons were not ready to deal productively with their discomfort. For art or spirituality or dreams or anything else to offer the chance for transformation, creating the opportunity can’t wait until everyone is equally ready to begin the journey.

One goal of satire is to take something that is true and to exaggerate it until the truth cannot be ignored. When that something is oppression, making art that can’t be ignored and suggesting a justice-oriented overhaul to society is going to seem extreme to some people.

Speculative fiction by writers of color, even when not satirical, can also use exaggeration for a positive effect. The 2019 HBO Watchmen series explored this, creating an alternate history that lifted out problems with racism and policing in our own timeline. The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin explores extremes of climate change and identity-based exploitation, and weaves in glimpses of generational trauma between parents and children trying to survive in a society that rejects their wholeness. Extremes in literature can reflect back to us the plain truth.

Similarly, a dream that draws people together for the hope of a society that is very different from what we have, a dream that re-imagines the future of justice and economic opportunity, is going to be considered extreme, which is not a good thing by some standards. Every time there is a popular movie or TV show in the science fiction/fantasy genre that uses multiracial casting, and every time a speculative fiction novel by a writer of color receives sales or awards, there are claims that social justice warriors are running amok, or that trends have gone too far. Allowing for multiracial imagination is considered a violation of balance, a bridge too far. Inclusion is considered extreme, rather than a tool for bringing imagined futures into being.  

Dr. King explored this critique of extremism. In “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he expresses some initial frustration at being labeled an extremist for his peaceful methods. It seemed that any movement toward change was too radical for the white moderate clergy. But the status quo was not and is not acceptable. Dr. King writes:

So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." … (Dr. King gives a few more examples before he goes on.) So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? … Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. (paragraph 24)

I believe the nation and the world are in need of creative extremists. We need dreamers. We need bold playwrights, courageous writers, and artists who cannot be ignored. We need the power to imagine a more just and radically different future.

Dreams Need Help to Become Reality

Another point that connects science fiction with visions of equality is that dreams need help to become reality. We hear often that “the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” but the unwritten part of that is that actual people have to do some bending. Dr. King wrote about that, too; though he uses “man” in a way that was common at the time to mean people of all genders, and he invokes his own religious tradition, we can all hear the collective responsibility in this passage. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King wrote:

Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity. (paragraph 21)

We can and should have hope. We still need to act according to our values. No act of encouragement, no vote cast, no letter written is a wasted effort. We must use time creatively. In the case of arts, literature, and entertainment, we must also use time travel creatively. Progress does not happen by accident.

Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura in the original Star Trek series, spoke about the creation of her character and why she chose to stay on the show. None of it was an accident. When she first met with Gene Roddenberry, she was in the middle of reading a book on Uhuru, which is Swahili for freedom. Roddenberry became more convinced than ever that he wanted a Black woman on the bridge of the Enterprise. Nichols said:

When the show began and I was cast to develop this character – I was cast as one of the stars of the show – the reality of the matter was the industry was not ready for a woman or a Black and certainly not the combination of the two (and you have to remember this was 1966) in that kind of role, on that equal basis, and certainly not that kind of power role.

Nichols was also an accomplished singer and stage actress. The producers never told her about the volume of fan mail she was receiving. She was considering leaving the show to join a theatrical production headed for Broadway, when she was at an event (probably a fundraiser for the NAACP, but Nichols doesn’t remember clearly) and was asked to meet a fan. The fan turned out to be the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He told her how much he enjoyed the show, and that it was the only show he and his wife allowed their children to stay up late to watch. She told him that she was planning to resign. “You cannot!” he said. Nichols goes on:

Dr. King said to me, ‘Don’t you understand that you have the first non-stereotypical role in television in a major TV series of importance, and you establish us as we are supposed to be: as equals, whether it’s ethnic, racial, or gender.’ I was breathless. ‘Thank you, and Yes, I will stay.’

Nichols’ decision to stay had a ripple effect. Whoopi Goldberg said that the first time she saw Lieutenant Uhura on television was a major turning point for her as a child. Mae Jemison, the first African American astronaut in space, spoke about Uhura as an inspiration. Stacey Abrams is a fan.

The inner workings of a TV show with cheesy special effects, beloved as that show may be, might seem inconsequential to the future of human rights. I maintain that anything that expands our ability to dream of a better world is necessary. Stories that give us building blocks for change make a difference. And representation matters. People are hungry for diverse, respectful, innovative stories. Representation increases the chances that someone from a marginalized group can get the resources to tell their own stories rather than relying on the dominant group to borrow them. In this age of communication, it is possible to engage people from all over the planet in a conversation about our shared future. The trick is that we have to work to make sure all of the voices are included. The dream of a better world needs people who can make it a reality.

Imagination is key, and it is a starting point. In Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Maree Brown writes:

Science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together. I suspect that is what many of you are up to, practicing futures together, practicing justice together, living into new stories. It is our right and responsibility to create a new world. What we pay attention to grows, so I’m thinking about how we grow what we are all imagining and creating into something large enough and solid enough that it becomes a tipping point.

Earlier, you heard another quote from the book, in which Brown names the Beloved Community that we can use imagination to grow ourselves into. She names “a future without police and prisons ... a future without rape … harassment … constant fear, and childhood sexual assault. A future without war, hunger, violence. With abundance. Where gender is a joyful spectrum.”

Brown frames this imagined future world, this Beloved Community, as a project of both imagination and community organizing. A better world is possible.

Conclusion

The arts, in particular science fiction, can ignite a kind of a dream state. By using time and time-travel creatively, we can envision a world of justice, equality, and compassion. We have yet more ways to craft stories and plans that respect the inherent worth and dignity of every person. The dream of economic equality, the dream of equal voting rights, the dream of equal protection under the law all need foundations built under them.

If we wish to count ourselves among the dreamers, let us take action. We can continue to build coalitions with partner organizations of other faiths and cultures. We can send representatives to workshops and meetings, and listen carefully to their findings when they return. We can read about dismantling oppression and share what we find with each other.

This community is a place where we can dream freely. Let us use time effectively. Let us enter into the powers of myth, creativity, and art to imagine a better future. And then let us work and plan to make that better future come to pass. May our dreams refresh us and energize us for the tasks ahead.

May it be so.

[yourdeepestfathoms]

Constructive Critique

  ‘Hiiiii-’ Joan swung herself into Maggie’s cabin, narrowly avoiding the myriad of shoes and cigarette packets that littered the floor, and flopped down onto the bunk. ‘Are you ready to go?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Maggie didn’t look up from her laptop.

  Joan was used to this- when Maggie was in her ‘creative zone’ (otherwise known as the ‘fuck off and dont talk to me zone’), it sometimes took her a while to be able to leave it.

  She settled in for a wait and made herself comfy on Maggie's bunk- as usual, the bed was unmade. Unable to help herself, she twitched the covers into place before she sat down.

  No response.

  Hm. 

  That was odd. Maggie usually hated anyone tidying up after her.

   Joan could still remember the time she’d relegated Anne to sitting on the floor for having the audacity to fold up her pajamas for her. Granted, Joan was never subjected to quite the same level of temper as everyone else….but still, even she was used to being ordered sharply to ‘just leave it alone Joan, jesus-’.

  She smoothed out the bedspread. 

  Still no response.

  Weird.

  Biting the bullet, she rolled onto her stomach, rearranged Maggie's pillows and started to order the bits and pieces scattered on the bedside table, expecting every second for Maggie to look up and bark at her to stop.

  Nothing.

  Sitting up, she looked at Maggie more closely.

  She was staring intently at her laptop screen, but she didn’t look how she usually looked when working- the peaceful faraway look was gone. She wasn't typing or clicking through. Her hands were in her lap. 

  In fact, they were clenched into fists.

  ‘Maggie?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Mags- are you ok?’

  Joan crawled off the bed and came over.

  ‘Mags?’

  Maggie jumped as if waking up when Joan touched her arm. ‘What? Oh, sorry-’

  ‘Are you ok?’

  ‘Fine...did you want something?’ Already, her eyes were drifting back to the screen and Joan felt wrong footed.

  ‘I just….we were going to get something to eat?’ She wondered if this was Maggie's way of letting her know she wasn't in the mood- a bit of a change from her usual ‘Fuck, can we take a raincheck?’ but still a possibility. ‘We don't have to if you don’t want-’

  ‘Oh-’ Maggie seemed to catch onto Joan’s hesitancy, to notice the way her fingers twisted anxiously ‘Sorry- of course we were....’ She shook her head. ‘Of course we can-’

  But her tone was off- Joan was more used to Maggie's flat affect than anyone, and she could tell what was normal and what wasn’t. This….wasn’t.

  She put out a hand to pause Maggie in the middle of her perfunctory hunt for her wallet and keycard. 

  ‘Mags? Something's up. Tell me? Please?’

  Maggie got her stubborn look for a moment- as if planning on flat out denying all and making Joan fight her over it- but then she sighed and shrugged.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Honestly. Really really stupid-’

  ‘What?’ The suspense was killing Joan. She was seconds away from breaking her new year's resolution to give up biting her nails. (Three months in and going strong. Maggie’s- to give up smoking, at Anne and Joan’s joint request- had lasted all of two hours and twenty minutes.)

  Maggie bit her lip, obviously debating whether or not to actually finish.

‘-someone left a review on my last recording-’

  ‘Oh!’ Joan bounced happily for a moment. She knew how much reviews meant to Maggie- despite her repeated claims that her music was for her not for anyone else, Joan knew that the rare confirmations that someone else had actually noticed the piece of herself that she’d thrown into the void of cyberspace were precious. ‘What did they say?’

  In answer, Maggie tilted her laptop screen so that Joan could read for herself.

‘-know you’re only starting out as musician….constructive criticism….whoever taught you really missed out on a few things didn't they?.....irritating tendencies….poor technique...know you’re sensitive…..would be happy to point you to some online resources….’ And then the sweetly poisonous ending ‘Please know this comes from a place of wanting you to be better and improve...’

  There was no name, no address, no picture icon.

  The first time she read it, the faux-concern and almost paternalistic tone made her want to laugh.

  Then she read it again- and looked at Maggie, drooping in her chair and looking so very tired- and hot anger took over.

  ‘It’s...polite, isn’t it?’ Maggie quirked an eyebrow in her usual sardonic manner but her hands didn’t unclench. ‘I didn't think people talked like that any more-’

  ‘Oh Maggie-’

  ‘I feel like blaming my teacher was a bit harsh….poor Mr Greyson isn’t even here to defend himself. And it’s hardly his fault I never paid attention in class-’

  A muscle gave a tiny, almost imperceptible twitch, just under Maggie's right eye.

  ‘Mags-’

  ‘Nice of them to concede I’m still learning though. I guess. Although-’ Maggie turned to face Joan properly for the first time. ‘They think my technique is bad? Imagine how much worse it is for me, I’m the one actually trying to play despite it, jesus, like c’mon, cut me some slack-’

  ‘Maggie!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fuck them!’

  Maggie blinked at her. ‘What?’ It wasn’t often that she was able to surprise the other girl, and Joan made a mental note to let Maggie know just how adorable she looked when she was really, truly taken back, when things were less fraught.

  ‘Joey?’

  ‘Fuck them, Mags! Fuck whatever patronising little-’ she paused. It wasn't that she was reluctant to swear, more that she was afraid of Maggie laughing at her for her choice- she’d never heard the end of it when she’d frustratedly called a queue-jumper an ‘inconsiderate dick-face’. 

Ironically, it had been an attempt to prove to everyone that she was adult enough to swear if she wanted to. The attempt had, she had to admit, backfired spectacularly well.

  ‘Go on-’ There was an amused quirk to Maggie's eyebrow- obviously their thoughts had followed a similar vein. ‘A little-?’

  ‘Never mind. Point is-’ She stabbed a finger at the laptop screen. ‘I cant believe anyone would have the nerve to say shit like that- as if they’re the arbitrator of what good music is, when they’re not even brave enough to come off anon!- and to then call you sensitive!’

  Maggie shrugged. ‘Constructive criticism and all that-’

  ‘No! Constructive criticism is-’ Joan groped for a good comparison. ‘When I tell you that I want tips on how I can make the others listen to me. Or when I direct you guys during rehearsal. Not….this. This….’Oh I’m such a good person, I’m so wise and talented, let me point out all your faults in a really unnecessarily nasty way and then call you thin skinned’...if they really care, why aren’t they linking you to their own page? So you can get tips from them, if they’re so good. Or even so you can ask them questions privately?’

  Maggie shrugged. ‘Maybe they just don't want to- I mean, they don’t have to-’

  ‘Maybe they know exactly how nasty the message was and don't want to face any consequences from it, you mean-’ Internally, Joan wondered if it was bad form to snap at someone when trying to stick up for them. Oh well. She’d ask Maggie later, Maggie would know. ‘Maybe they just like patting themselves on the back by pointing out non-issues or things you’re already aware of and are working on by presenting themselves as this master musician, but in a way that means you’ll never ever be able to respond to them! Well, I have a response-’ she leans forward ‘Fuck you! Fuck you and fuck your help and advice!’

  She was breathing a little harder by the time she’d finished: Maggie was leaning back slightly in her chair.

  ‘Um…..wow....are you….ok?’

  ‘Yeah….’

  ‘....I already wrote a response, you’ll be sad to hear. It was a bit different to yours.’ On the screen, Maggie's finger pointed out her polite, calm message of reply: ‘Thanks for your interest….always appreciate feedback...thanks for listening’.

  Joan suddenly felt foolish. Maggie clearly didn’t care that much. What was she even doing, ranting and raving when what Maggie probably wanted was just to forget about it? 

  She probably wasn’t even all that bothered by it- sure she’d seemed a little off, but Maggie was the absolute pinnacle of taking things on the chin, she’d probably barely registered the thing. Stupid Joan, overreacting; stupid overemotional Joan….

  Hic-

  Joan had never wanted to die more. Hiccups- was it possible to have a more childish marker of distress?

  ‘Yeah…..’ She tried to hold her breath surreptitiously and then gave up. ‘Sorry, just….I got cross…’

  ‘I can see….’ Maggie's lips twitched. ‘Pity whoever wrote that if they come across you, huh?’

  ‘Yeah….’ Her face was burning. Why was she so stupid? Why couldn't she have just passed over it like Maggie obviously had?

  Because you’re thinking about how you’d feel, the little voice in her head responded immediately, because you’re imagining how you’d feel if you got a message like that, how you’ve felt when you have got messages like that- like you don't want to make anything anymore, like you're embarrassed for people to see any of your work-

  She shut it down. That was her, not Maggie- cool, collected, talented Maggie. As if Maggie would be affected by a stupid review.

  She shook away too the image of Maggie hunched in her chair and staring sadly at the screen. She’d probably imagined most of it.

  ‘Shall we go get food then?’

  As if in evidence of her okay-ness, Maggie almost bounced out of her chair, grabbing her phone from the floor and stuffing her keycard deep into her pocket as she made for the door, Joan trailing behind.

  ‘Ok-’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ Maggie pulled the door firmly. ‘We got pizza the other day, so I’m feeling maybe Thai- or ramen, we haven’t had good ramen in ages-’ She paused. ‘Are you ok?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Joan nodded quickly. ‘Fine-’

  ‘Cool- so….maybe ramen? Unless you’re not feeling noodles….also there’s that creepy guy who works there and I think I heard he works extra shifts now so maybe not-’

  Half way down the corridor, Maggie suddenly stopped. Joan wondered if she was going to say she’d forgotten something, but instead, she grabbed Joan's hand and squeezed it hard.

  ‘Joan?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Thank you-’

  Joan felt a bit nonplussed. ‘What for?’

  Maggie looked at her as if she was an idiot. ‘For….you know….’ She gently bumped her shoulder against Joan’s. ‘For caring enough to get angry on my behalf? For saying fuck a million times- it was funny, cheered me right up-’ Her expression sobered. ‘Just...thanks. I know it’s ridiculous to let some internet random get to me but….yeah.’ 

  She gave Joan’s hand a parting squeeze and let go, straightening up, back to normal again. ‘As you say, fuck them, next time i’ll just let you reply and save myself the trouble…’ Her lips twitched and she tilted her head. ‘Anyway…back to important stuff….food choices and that.’ She looked at Joan ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Yeah-’ Joan hid her smile and started down the corridor. ‘Let’s go.’

[malaysian-rants]

so what do we REALLY think of Sex Work?

If there’s one thing quarantine in Melbourne’s lockdown has brought me, it is the endless curiosity to understand our thoughts and unpack them. So at least once a week, I do a poll on my Instagram page feed into my nosiness and see what thoughts people around me have on different topics - exploring our stances on our mortality to orgasms to parenthood. Last week, I decided to understand where people placed themselves in regards to sex work and BOY, did the whorephobia jump out!!!!

“ Whorephobia can be defined as the fear or the hate of sex workers. Sex workers like me would argue that it also embraces paternalistic attitudes that deem us a public nuisance, spreaders of disease, offenders against decency or unskilled victims who don't know what is good for them and who need to be rescued.” - Thierry Schaffauser

Let’s rewind a little bit though. The people that responded to the poll were mostly friends from Malaysia and Australia. Malaysia being where I grew up and Australia where I’ve spent some of the most telling years of my young adulthood. Growing up, we have stignamised ideas of sex work, a very narrow-minded understanding of the various FORMS of sex work, and an even more warped perception of WHY people choose Sex Work (SW). The word of the day is choice - the agency to choose sex work. All the choices are worthy of our respect. In Malaysia, most view sex work in a very derogatory sense. We, unforunately, perceive sex workers as dirty, unsafe, in need of rescuing - saviour complexes, or an easy getaway card out of “real” work. It’s funny the amount of times teenage/young adult women will say, “should we just drop out and become strippers? hahahah” as if the sex work industry doesn’t involve immense skill and tact that is not necessarily a natural skill; it has to be learnt - like many of the skills a lot of us use in our jobs. Coming to Australia, the perception shifts. Some forms of sex work are decriminalised which create safer working conditions for SWs. It’s not perfect though, there still lies a lot of racism within the sex work industry especially against Indigenous SWs and there is still stigma in presenting as a sex worker in public situations.

SO LET’S SKIP AHEAD TO MY QUESTIONS AND DEBUNK SOME OF PEOPLE’S PERCEPTIONS ABOUT SEX WORK!

Question #1 Are Strippers Considered Sex Workers?

46% answered YES and 54% answered NO. *drumroll please* The answer is YES! Strippers/Dancers do fall under the umbrella of sex work. 

Let’s take a brief dive into this. SEX WORK actually an umbrella term coined by SW activist Carol Leigh to create an alliance between the marginalised groups of work & to counter the whorephobic second-wave feminism's derogatory terms.This term also helps to combat "lateral whorephobia" - another useful term to remember. SEX WORK as a term helps to unite a diverse range of workers. It combats strippers/dancers from saying "well at least I'm not a whore", cam girls from saying "at least we don't f*ck our clients", pornstars from calling escorts dirty - because ALL ARE SEX WORKERS. It takes away the stigma that people WITHIN the industry put onto different types of work - whorearchy as SWs call it! There are so many types of work that fall under the umbrella of sex work, a few to name being - strippers, dancers, cam girls, phone sex operators, pornstars, sugarbabies, people that work in brothels, pro-DOMMES, pro-SUBs, escorts, online workers, street workers, and the list goes on.....

(to flag: the next few stats may be inaccurate as more than half of the people that did this DID NOT PERCEIVE STRIPPERS AS SEX WORKERS - which may/may not change the future questions’ answers)

Question #2 Do You Know A Sex Worker Personally?

43% answered YES and 57% answered NO

Question #3 Should We Decriminalise Sex Work?

Around 75% answered YES and 25% answered NO. The real answer is YES! We 100% need to be decriminalising sex work and working towards unlearning our biases surrounding SW and sex workers.

Question #4 What Are Our Ideas of What Sex Work Involves?

“prostitution, escort services, massage services with happy endings, bartering”

“stripping, escorting, phone sex operating, sexting services, online entertainment”

“paid services for cash” 

“using your body as entertainment for another’s pleasure/enjoyment”

“people that sell any form of body pics (eg nudes) to escorts”

“exchanging sexual activites for something eg. cash, benefits”

“anything that involves direct touching from both parties” “lap dances”

“consensual services provided by adults”

Now.... there were HEAPS of people that replied with prostitution. Now that’s the first word to DELETE from your vocabulary. Sex workers don’t appreciate when people call them this. Below are more helpful ways to refer to SWs

Question #5 What Are Your Opinions of Sex Work?

“if you’re that comfortable in your body and feel safe at work then all the power to you”

“it needs to be acknowledged as an actual industry” “it’s work and should be protected and provided benefits as all jobs receive”

“I’m here for all women getting their coin! why it’s a taboo, I will never understand”

Sex work is Work. 100%, scream it from the rooftops! Here’s a response that I think is quite commonly held across the board.

“It depends on why they’re (sex workers) doing it. If they want to then YAS if they have to/no other options then :(” At the end of the day, whatever reason people go into sex work - we must give them ALL THE RESPECT and continue to advocate for safer working conditions to prevent exploitation,abuse and assault. There are a multitude of reasons why people go into sex work:

It’s a side job to earn more income

It's survival work

Sex workers also play a HUGE role in disability support. Having access to sex work services can assist with building self-esteem and give people with disability a greater degree of autonomy in being able to fulfil their desires independently.

Our work structures (because of capitalism) are INHERENTLY ABLEIST - people with chronic illnesses and disabilities that need FLEX work seek out SW as an option 

Question #6 Would You Date Someone That is Currently A Sex Workers?

It was a clean 50/50 split and THIS is truly where the internalised whorephobia jumped out because look at the next answers

Question #7 Would You Date Someone That Was Previously A Sex Worker?

82% answered YES whilst 18% answered NO. Here are some of the reasons why people answered NO for either of the questions and let’s debunk some of these!

MYTH #1 - “Cause I believe in monogamy” You can still be monogamous and date a sex worker. Way back when, monogamy was described as one person for LIFE and nowadays it’s evolved to one person at a time. This where the distinction that sex work is WORK becomes important. Sex workers are working when they interact with their clients/members in whatever form. 

MYTH #2 - “I’m a selfish boyfriend” This isn’t really a myth per say but it’s a popular line of thought. It interesting that we internally perceive our partners as ours/our property/someone we have onus over. I loved the honesty in this answer because like they say, it’s selfish. So yeah some people see dating a sew workers as “sharing” - as if SWs were engaging in the same capacity to their partners as they were to their clients. Well fam, I’m here to tell you that sex workers can make that distinction and if anything, are BETTER at establishing boundaries than the most of us. 

MYTH #3 - “I just think I wouldn’t feel safe having sex with them” This rhetoric only continues the damaging narratives that are projected onto sex workers which perpetuated the stigmatisation and discrimination sex-workers receive on the daily. Take a step back and unpack why you feel this way. What about sex workers do you perceive as dirty? In regions where sex work is decriminalised and destigmatised, workers have safe access to medical check-ups which means they’re probably getting tested more often than your average joe!

MYTH #4 - “I would feel less experienced (sexually) which would make me less comfortable” this.... well, is pretty common and stems from our own personal insecurities. some of us have felt this way REGARDLESS of whether our partner is a sex worker. It’s important to note that not all SWs work in the same way - some forms of sex work don’t require you to be physically present with another human, some just require a lot of imagination, creative and emotional intelligence ie phone sex operators.

So that’s all the questions! 

I’ve decided to start a #SexWorkSeptember series to talk about sex work across the globe to probe more open conversations!

Here a some phrases that are WHOREPHOBIC and we’ll unpack them in the coming weeks!

“I respect them and power to them but personally.... I couldn’t cause I have principles and morals ya know”

“I just couldn’t date someone that’s a sex worker :/”

“It’s alright if my friends and peers do it but oh no my mother/sister/niece/aunt could never! no that’s not okay!”

A final thing to remember is that sex work IS NOT easy nor the easy way out! Sex work can be difficult. Sex work requires marketing skills, assertiveness, confidence and a sales-like hustle. It’s as easy and difficult as your own jobs!

Over and out,

Lama :)

[locked-behind-the-walls]

Reviews of Some Nova’s Fics

I have been on the (non-fiction) writing kick as of recently, which finally lead to me writing some fic reviews. I've been planning to start writing reviews for B7 fic for a long time, but those plans mostly involved some highbrow "New Wave" gen in the vein of the stories published in The Aquitar Files. Of course, this means that when I did write some reviews, they were about the stories of the classic slashfic author beloved by the fandom. :D

Why Nova? While I like her, she's far from being my favorite B7 author, in slash or in all the fic. I think she's just easy to write about, for me at least - there are a lot of things that I like about her, and a lot of things that frustrate me, and they often are in the same story. Her writing has a lot of clearly discernible patterns and tropes, and I find it much easier to write about them than about the subtleties and nuances of relationships between the characters; I may say that while I like reading both gen and shippy fics of all types, I may tend to write about even the shippy fics in the same way I write about gen. I also probably tend to "accentuate the negative", not because my feelings about this author are mostly negative, but because I find it easier - and more entertaining - to write about the things I dislike than about the things I like.

Let's start? Be warned, those reviews contain spoilers and discussions of heavy subjects. The fics I read and reviewed here: Delinquent, Avon at the Window, Five Easy Pieces and a More Difficult One, Town Mouse, Country Mouse, Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry, Before and After, Why I Can't Stand Vila Restal, Prime Suspect, Time and Fevers, Outlaws and In-Laws.

Delinquent

This was the first Nova's fic that I read and one of my favorite ones so far. It has some problems - while I like good boy/bad boy pairs, I think she sometimes tries too hard to shove Blake and Avon into these roles; the way Avon regains his rebelliousness after getting together with Blake felt too abrupt, almost comically so (I know that Magical Healing Cock is a thing; perhaps we should come up with the B7-specific version, Magical Class-Consciousness Rising Cock); and, of course, "undesirable associates" gets repeated ad nauseum. But I just find the idea of Avon being Blake's childhood hero so adorable, and it's for sure one of the most original takes on "they knew each other pre-canon" trope in this fandom. It's interesting to review it after reading other Nova's fics - now I can clearly discern some tropes and headcanons she used in many other fics, e.g. exploring characters' backstories, accentuated differences in Blake's and Avon's upbringing, love restoring the fighting spirit in characters and so on.

Five Easy Pieces and a More Difficult One

I... frankly don't remember that well the more psychological parts of this one, even though I read it not so long ago. What I remember well is all that sex and the bit with the uprising, which sums up my priorities quite accurately. (The sex was damn good. And so was the uprising.) In my defense I must say that it's one of those "faux-casual sex turns into emotional commitment" fics, so sex and romance are interwoven very closely here, even by the fanfiction standards. It's also quite trope-heavy, going through several slash cliches, and as someone who's not a fan of many slash cliches I can say that it's done in pleasantly non-cringy way (except the first part, which was somewhat cringy. I think nothing can redeem Visiting a Gay Planet and Trying to Fit In for me, except maybe outright parodies).

Town Mouse, Country Mouse

Another story about Blake's and Avon's very different upbringings, the one that probably got the most stylized, most deliberate and most extreme about emphasizing these differences. I found the sordidness too sordid and the cutesiness too cutesy, but it was probably the point.

Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

Oh right. One of my least favorite tropes of all times is using other people as cannon fodder to showcase your Great Romance, and this fic is this trope in spades. Nova clearly likes it - she uses it in several fics, sometimes with several people. That's where we would't agree, I guess. Avon killing himself is another thing which we would't agree on. I get it that Avon have seen (and done) some shit, but the only case in which I can imagine him killing himself is, ironically, if he shared Blake's idealism - it would make such a hellish mix with his personality that it might get just too difficult to bear. This one is not the major point of disagreement and I think can be written convincingly, but here it just comes off as too dramatic. I liked the Vila voice, though, it was pleasant to read and created interesting interplay with the grim backstory and not exactly sunny main story.

Before and After

The only thing I liked about this fic is that Avon got put against the wall for killing Blake. (This review will surely gain me a lot of friends in the fandom.) It was bold and quite cathartic. But of course, here it was because he wanted it - he's too cool to just be shot, apparently. I can also add half a point for the homophobia thing - I don't mind exploring this subject matter in slash, and don't even mind portraying main characters as homophobic, it could be done in an interesting and nuanced manner, but here I felt like it was only somewhat interesting, but mostly felt forced and just made them too unsympathetic. Apart from that, it's just way too similar to Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry, except now Deva is also dragged into the Not As Good As performance.

Avon at the Window

Ouch. I guess we are supposed to read this one in non-quite-serious, kinky way, because otherwise the situation described here becomes just way too appalling and overshadows any enjoyment one could derive from characters getting together. On the other hand, at least here Avon's Horrible Past is not as jarring as in Outlaws and In-Laws, because this fic is much more angstier and here it's more a center of the story. Nova is very unsubtle at laying out the angst here, crude even - and effective, considering that from all her fics, I remember this one the most and it provoked the strongest emotional response. It's a controversial trope, and I'm not a fan of how she engages with it, but in its own way, it worked.

What I dislike, however, is that Blake is basically mischaracterized for the sake of angst. I can see him to be uncomfortable with prostitution, but I can't see him react in such over-the-top judgemental and aggressive manner. I think it would be more realistic - and more interesting - if he tried to be understanding, but was making such poor job of it, being so clearly not okay with the whole situation despite trying to be, and it eventually lead to falling out between them. I believe he at least would bother to learn more about it and would knew how old Avon was at that time! And then I would be able to buy his more bitter and aggressive behavior PGP because well, Avon shot him, he has the right to be upset, and besides he did seem more bitter and aggressive in general in the last episode. As I said, Nova is very unsubtle here and sometimes it hurts the quality of the fic. Also, while treating domes and space stations as ordinary cities under the open sky is a very common trope in Blake's 7 fanfiction, it also one of my least favorite ones and here it's truly egregious in the bits set in the Space City.

The part I liked the most is the one where they are discussing the book about the prostitution. Nova can be very good in sociopolitical stuff, and those ARE the themes where I wouldn't mind her to be unsubtle, but alas, there is too little of it in this fic.

Why I Can't Stand Vila Restal

At this point it started to read like several other fics, some of them Nova's and some of them not. I don't have much to say about this story - it's easy to read and the sex is good, but there is just nothing new about it. Also, Blake is too paternalistic in this one, which can be done well but I just don't dig it, especially in sex scenes.

Prime Suspect

Another fic that I mostly forgot soon after reading. Blake playing detective was fun, and the resolution was deliciously wacky - but what I love about Nova is that she's not afraid of wackiness. Orac bashing is probably the only sort of character bashing I can stand, and no, that's not because it's not alive, it's because it's such an asshole. (I like Orac anyway).

Time and Fevers

Other characters are dragged into Blake's and Avon's love lives to make a point about their love - again! Deva, this time, and Jenna, somewhat, and while I like Blake/Deva, but definitely not like this. At least some time is given to explore their relationship, though not much. I would have preferred if Jenna either got a larger role or wasn't mentioned at all - as it stands now, it's just too creepy. Did she also die? I think we just are not supposed to care. :(

I liked quite a lot of things about this fic. I have a weakness for the washed out, beaten down Blake, and this fic portrays him rather well. Characters are older than usual in this story, and it is also handled well. The theme of love giving you back your mojo is developed better than in Delinquent, even though it involves unfavorable comparisons with other relationship (but not explicitly so, thankfully). The angst is good and not overdramatic, but rather more muted and melancholic, which goes better with Blake's 7 fics. The stuff about sexual histories of the character was, like almost always in Nova's fics, one of the strongest points. However, some bits gave off the vibe that was too romcom-y, especially Dayna and Soolin acting like matchmakers - it's just so not my thing.

Outlaws and In-Laws

One of my favorite Nova's fics and so quintessentially her - very good and hot mess at the same time. It has a lot of themes which I like and most of which Nova generally does well: explorations of characters' pasts and their sexual histories; political themes, including sexual politics; quite a lot of worldbuilding and interesting original characters. That first time is one of my favorite ones, the sex is original, hot and not unrealistic at the same time. Even the cheesier parts didn't feel that bad (or maybe my love of the Gothic genre helped me to get through them). However, the mood of the first and the second part of the fic was just way too different, which again might have been the point, but I don't think that it works that well there. I agree with Aralias' review that Blake is too damn passive in the second part, and this that just felt like him abandoning Avon. I think it contributes to the sudden drop of temperature in the story, figuratively speaking. I also wish we spent more time with Blake's mom - she seemed like a fascinating character, and yet most of her arc was spent on wackiness and being an obstacle.

So, those are my reviews of Nova so far. Maybe I'll write more in the future after reading more fics, or maybe not. Of course, all those fics are also well-written, and easy to read, and have good characterizations, but other people already wrote about it. At this point I can describe Nova as an author who sticks strongly and noticeably to the tropes and headcanons that she likes, and some of them I like too, while others not so much. Her fics also have a lot of mood whiplash, some of which probably wasn't intended as such. I also got the impression that she's better in more lighthearted stories than in straightforward angst.

[ethereousdelirious]

Ask and ye shall receive

Fandom: T.he G.reat G.atsby

Characters: N.ick C.arraway, T.om B.uchanan

Pairings: N/A

Tropes: hangovers, heat exhaustion

Summary: N.ick, battling a vicious hangover, goes to New York with T.om only to get heat exhaustion. (It’s honestly pitiful how bad I am at writing summaries but that’s what happens ghgdjhgdz)

Warnings/Notes: there’s actually no emeto in this one believe it or not

More notes under cut

Uh yeah so I wasn’t really feeling inspired by the prospect of writing yet another Natsby fic, so I decided to explore Nick’s relationship with Tom? I really like Tom as a character for lots of reasons but in this context because, while he’s genuinely awful and has no redeeming qualities, he’s never really antagonistic toward Nick (or Jordan, for that matter). You can tell he doesn’t think of himself as a bad guy and that’s fucking fascinating to me, especially in terms of his ability to form connections with people he doesn’t perceive as beneath him.

ALSO I was kinda exploring his toxic masculinity vs Nick’s gentler, less threatening masculinity and Tom’s ability to express affection within that hypermasculine framework.

God sorry anyway. You didn’t come here to read an English paper. Here’s the fic. it’s short.

--

In New York, surrounded by temptation at every turn, it was so hard to not overindulge. 

In weaker moments, Nick would reflect that at least his occasional night of drunkenness had far fewer negative consequences than a night spent in the arms of a strange woman, or under heroin's hazy spell.

Today, however, no such excuses filled Nick’s head, only an arrhythmic pounding that worsened significantly when he had to stand up to exit the cab he had taken over to East Egg.

The flat soles of his leather shoes crunched in the white gravel of the driveway, grinding against his eardrums.

It wasn't even the worst hangover he'd had, not by a longshot, but it was certainly enough to make him wish he was back in bed.

Oh, well. Nick sighed as he approached the door. There was nothing to be done about it now.

Tom was waiting for him just beyond the heavy, oak door of the Buchanan estate.

"There you are," he said, his booming voice filling the hall. He pushed past the butler and wrapped his arm around Nick's shoulders. "I was beginning to think you'd never make it."

"Oh, I thought I was on time," Nick said, struggling to check his watch, but Tom wasn't even listening.

"I want to introduce you to some people," Tom said as he steered Nick back down the driveway. "You need connections if you're going to get anywhere in life."

"Oh," Nick said flatly, his head buzzing. Still, he knew from experience it was pointless getting irritated with Tom. "Thanks," he added. His mouth was dry and still tasted vaguely of gin.

"No, no. No need to thank me, Nick," Tom replied loftily. "We look out for each other, don't we?" He gave Nick a long look, the kind that indicated this was not a rhetorical question.

"Of course we do." Nick tried to smile.

"Good." Tom patted him on the back and pushed him toward the passenger side of the coupé. "Now let's go."

The drive into the city was a welcome rest, a sort of calm before the inevitable storm of heat and light that was New York proper. Tom talked the whole way with Nick chiming in at the appropriate pauses, usually to agree. Tom Buchanan was not the sort of man you could argue with.

Nick didn't even bother to ask where they were going when they got out of the car, just followed along in Tom's wake and tried not to walk into people.

It was hot. Even with his hat and the light material of his suit, Nick could feel the sunlight pouring down on him, heating him inside and out.

The light alone would have been enough to exacerbate his headache to the point of agony, but the noise was almost unbearable. Dimly, he could make out Tom's hulking form beginning to disappear into the crowd and he tried to speed up again.

It was too much. He stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and tried to catch his breath, to get the buzzing in his head to calm down.

"Nick?" Tom's voice was suddenly near. "What are you doing?"

"Sorry, I--"

"Do I have to lead you along like a dog? Come on." Tom put a hand between Nick's shoulders and all but shoved him forward. The crowd obligingly parted for them and Nick allowed Tom to march him forward. It was just easier.

Tom was a fast walker. Usually it was no trouble for Nick to match his pace but today even keeping himself upright felt like a struggle. His face was almost painfully hot and the throbbing in his head was starting to make him feel sick. The hot dryness of his breath irritated his cracked lips and he couldn't help but lick them, wincing at the taste of blood. Nausea rolled threateningly in his stomach and his vision wavered.

"Where're you taking me, New Jersey?" he tried to joke.

"Very funny. We're almost there, just a few more blocks."

Nick fought the urge to just let himself fall down on the sidewalk. He was starting to get dizzy, like he was stuck on one of Coney Island's thrill rides.

Without warning, Tom led him around a corner and Nick stumbled. The vertigo left him unable to right himself and fell heavily against Tom before hitting the wall of the building next to them.

"What's the matter with you?" Tom glanced around like Nick was embarrassing him.

"I..." It was so hard to think, let alone speak. Nick's head was swimming with the severity of the pain hammering at his temples and the base of his skull.

To his credit, Tom did look concerned. He pressed the back of his hand briefly to Nick's cheek, then looked him over. "Must be the heat. My fault, really. You always were delicate."

Nick's knees buckled as if on cue. He slumped half-conscious against Tom's chest, loathing that heat generated by their bodies' proximity but unable to move.

"Okay!" Tom hauled Nick to his feet and arranged his limbs so he could lean against Tom's shoulder. "Think you can make it back to the car without fainting on me?"

It took a long while for the word's to permeate the static buzzing in Nick's ears. They were a ways down the sidewalk when he mumbled an affirmative, more of a sound than a word.

"Good man."

Nick made it to the car without blacking out, but it was a near thing. The world was a blur of pain and noise, stimulus with no clear edges or details. He didn't even notice he was lying down in the backseat until they were halfway over the bridge, and then he only closed his eyes. If he could just sleep.

He couldn't. Even the slightest movement of the car jostled his aching head and brought him closer to the verge of vomiting. It was all he could to not cry out. He doubted Tom would appreciate it.

His breathing must have changed because Tom said, "Hold on, we're almost there," and accelerated.

Even through the feverish haze clouding his mind, Nick couldn't help but be surprised. Tom had always had a soft spot for him, but he would have expected his affections to fade by now. Nick had always lacked the commanding hypermasculinity that Tom always projected. Tom would certainly never allow himself to end up in this position.

Nick was still dwelling on this unhappy line of thought when the car came to a stop. He sat up slowly and stood up even slower.

Tom was waiting there by his shoulder, ready to catch him and give him a paternalistic pat on the shoulder.

"We'll get you sorted out inside, don't you worry."

Only then did Nick notice that they were back at the Buchanan's estate. His heart sank. "Oh, Tom, really, it's okay--"

"Nonsense. You're coming inside and you're not leaving until you're back on your feet again."

Nick was too tired for a proper protest, especially knowing that this was not an argument he could win. But desperation prevailed. "Really, I can just go--"

"I won't hear a word of it."

Tom continued to pull him along at a speed much faster than Nick could manage. His heart was pounding painfully in his chest, hard and rapid. He knew he ought to thank Tom, but he really didn't want to.

Still, he tried to move his lips to form the words and found them numb and tingling. The noise of the birds and the wind faded to radio static.

There was an odd pressure on Nick's stomach, preventing him from drawing a full breath. His feet weren't touching the ground.

And he still felt awful.

Confused, he opened his eyes.

Tom had him in a fireman's carry and was walking down one of the many hardwood halls of the Buchanan estate.

Nick sighed, his face burning with shame.

"I can walk," he croaked.

"Nonsense." Tom tried to glance at him, craving his neck awkwardly. He turned, maneuvering through a doorway, and deposited Nick onto a bed.

Nick arranged himself so he was on his back. He didn't have the energy to do much else but stare at the ceiling, although he did notice a pitcher of water on the bedside table.

"You're gonna be just fine," Tom said. He moved to Nick into a sitting position as easily as a child would move a doll, then poured out a glass of water. "Drink."

"Thank you," Nick said. He downed it without even passing for breath. The quickest way out of here would be to get better, and the quickest way to do that would be to drink. So he did. His head was still pounding and fuzzy, too much so for conversation. His eyes were starting to slide closed of their own accord.

Tom's blue gaze appraised Nick with the cool detachment of a predator assessing prey. "Get some rest," he said, reaching down to ruffle Nick's hair. "If you're not better by morning I'm sure Daisy will have a whole army of doctors in here, and I'd rather avoid the hassle." He gave a half-smile.

"I understand," Nick murmured, not able to bring himself to fake a laugh.

He sank back against the pillows and closed his eyes. Before drifting off, he could have sworn he felt Tom gently removing his shoes and bidding him a quiet "good night."

[hawthornewhisperer]

okay! i'm SUPER curious on your thoughts about the more controversial aspects of yen's fertility and the ableism. i've seen so many people who HATE yen talk about it, so obviously i don't trust their judgement. but i know you love her, so i feel like your take will be genuine. that is if you feel comfortable sharing!

Sure thing! But I want to include a disclaimer first: the ableism storyline in particular is not something I have personal experience with, so while I will do my best to express my own personal issues with the way it was handled, my thoughts are in no way a replacement for the thoughts of actual people with disabilities, whose voices should be considered with far, far more weight than mine.

Another disclaimer: I’ve only ever seen the show, so I have no idea what is show-only and what is also drawing from the books. (It’s my understanding her backstory was majorly beefed up for the show, but that’s the full extent of my knowledge.)

(this got long so it’s below the cut. TW for infertility and ableism).

We’ll start with Yen’s infertility plotline.  Early on, she sacrifices her uterus as part of her transformation, although now that I’m thinking about it I’m a little unclear about what she got in exchange-- was it “beauty” or “the ability to not age” or “more magical power”? It doesn’t really matter, though, because basically we had a woman giving up her ability to be a mother (via pregnancy and childbirth) in exchange for power, which is unfortunately a very old, very misogynistic trope. It plays into the idea that women can either be mothers *or* they can be powerful, and also that powerful women are somehow unfit to be mothers. None of that is good, quite frankly, but I will say the fact that Geralt is *also* infertile (and the reason he gives for it on the dragon hunt) does help mitigate that a little bit. It also implies that pregnancy and childbirth is the *only* way to become a mother, although it seems the show is aiming to undercut that so I’ll reserve judgment on that front for now.

Then, somewhere around the incident with the djinn, she decides she wants her uterus back. I was super thrown when Jaskier said she was painting an *amphora* on her abdomen, as to me that was pretty clearly a uterus/fallopian tubes/ovaries-- which does admittedly look like a double handled amphora-- and even after having watched the episode twice I’m not sure if he’s supposed to be mistaken or if I am. I went into the show having heard there was a bit of a yikesy infertility plotline, so that definitely colored my impressions. But now that I think about it, I don’t know if her uterus/lack thereof is actually discussed in that episode? She is more interested in the general concept of *power* and is clearly searching for a new meaning for her life, but I’d definitely buy that her desire for a baby isn’t fully articulated until they go on the dragon hunt.

A lot of the critiques I’ve seen of her storyline revolve around the fact that her change of heart comes out of nowhere, and honestly, it sort of does. We have no hint in the first four episodes that Yennefer has particularly strong feelings about children, childbearing, or motherhood. (Full disclosure: I had to fast forward through almost all the scenes with the baby in episode 4 because children in peril, especially babies, is something I just Cannot Handle in my escapist media. Quite possible I missed something there). So in episode six when Yennefer is suddenly desperate for a cure for her infertility, it strikes a lot of people as another echo of an old misogynistic trope: that women who decided not to have children will *always* regret it, and moreover, they must be punished for their choices.

And honestly? I can definitely see why people read it that way and are upset, because our culture tends to be very reductive and paternalistic about women’s choices around their fertility. I have *lots* of cisgender female friends who have never, ever wanted kids and have been told over and over again that they’ll “change their minds” or will one day regret their choice when it’s too late. And that’s super, super shitty, and I get being annoyed when a show seems to play into that exact narrative.

Now, *for me* (a woman who fairly recently gave birth to a daughter, who definitely wanted a child), what saved the entire storyline was the post-coital conversation where Yen admits she just wants to be important to someone. Yennefer is intensely lonely, and she’s never truly belonged to anything resembling a family. I can buy that after several decades alone, she’s sick of it. And I can also buy that she’d think a baby would be a perfect solution, as babies *do* love you unconditionally and goddamn it’s the best thing in the world (to me), and Yennefer has always struggled with people not thinking she’s enough. I see how attractive that solution (trust me, babies think their parents are the *entire world*) would be to a lonely, loner woman, and I like that it gives her a space to acknowledge her feelings have changed over time. Her journey is about finding a *family* and I read her infertility plotline as a first step to Yennefer eventually finding a family in a way she never expected, and so for me, it ultimately worked. But I also get why it didn’t work for others!

Okay, now the ableism storyline, which is a lot trickier for me to parse. Basically, she undergoes an incredibly painful physical transformation to be more conventionally beautiful, which implies there was something wrong with her before or that there’s something innately *lesser* about having a physical disability.  It’s presented as essentially par for the course for all mages to go through an “attaining physical perfection” process (Sabrina’s boobs get bigger, right? I’m not imagining that?) but Yennefer wasn’t just making her tits bigger.  And when it comes to people with disabilities, this is basically saying “your life would be more worthwhile and you would be more desirable if you were able-bodied,” which is a profoundly ableist way of thinking.  It also draws on the “magical cure for disabilities” trope, which I know a *lot* of people with disabilities have spent a lot of time deconstructing exactly how and why that’s painful for them. But for me, it’s enough to know that trope is painful for others, and therefore it’s best to be avoided. (I do think we still need to make space for people with disabilities to invert/twist/deconstruct/use this trope in their own art, but that’s a whole different conversation.)

And honestly? I think the biggest problem is I doubt anyone thought too hard about it. They were going for a big, showstopping transformation moment like Yennefer had at that ball, and they worked backwards from there to engineer a way for that reveal to have as much impact as possible. (From what I’ve heard, there’s some vague references to her having some sort of physical disability in the books but most of it is the show’s invention).  They didn’t want it to be just “she has a scar on her face that’s gone” or “her nailbeds no longer suck,” they wanted her transformation to be splashy and astonishing, and were only thinking about it from an ableist perspective that having a physical disability would be the worst thing possible.  And that sucks!  It’s hurtful to people with disabilities, and I genuinely wish the show had thought through it more.  

So yeah, those are my thoughts. Like I said, I’m still grappling with the best way to handle those two storylines in fic (especially in non-canon set stories, which is probably going to be most of my stuff) and so if anyone has any guidance, I’m all ears.