#and makes me feel so happy

[onewomancitadel]

I'm not a fan of the fact that Dune Prophecy is based on Brian Herbert's books (which I consider to be noncanonical) and I am generally emphatically against prequels and I do notttt like this expanded universe business - that is to say, I have every reason to be disinterested in this show, perhaps most of all, as I have elaborated at length upon, that the Bene Gesserit story I enjoy is God Emperor into Chapterhouse - but despite that one of the things that made me happiest this year was Dune Part Two. Even through its unjustified book divergences and various other issues, I still loved it enormously and incongruently, and so if I can put that aside, I might still find something to enjoy in Dune Prophecy.

The Bene Gesserit are hard to get right because the basis on which the BG operate does not fit easily into stereotype. They're not girlbosses. They're not really femme fatales. Up until Heretics, they're never even "sexy"; I wonder how much the influence of Eileen and her passing played into this, because she had such an influence on the books (I mean, even in the sense that he felt more comfortable writing sexual material by himself). They're a political force, but not a neutral political force - this is the exchange of women within a feudal system, with the careful control of reproduction, the body as a politic, writ large instead as a political body. It works specifically for the setting, because without the fabulistic conceit (and, yes, many of the psychoanalytic and biologically essentialist ends; I can't expand here but I think this idea is evolved in some interesting ways though, centrally explored through Paul), it just wouldn't work the same way. I think that, for Frank Herbert's foibles (the aforementioned, Alia's arc in Children of Dune), he had very specific thematic and narrative ends which bolster the BG and consequently the female cast generally that they are given serious aims and roles in the story. That the women of the BG order engage in the exchange of women - Jessica and Leto's relationship is much darker in the books, but also, weirdly, more trusting - works as a potent narrative device because their morals and their beliefs and behaviours are so far and alien, measured in centuries, their lifespans fit as a collective, yet it's also an unnervingly fitting and dangerous critique of women acting under patriarchy and facilitating it. Except there is a sort of beauty to that ambition, a sort of righteousness, and I suppose that's one of the things I love so much, and so specifically, about Dune, is that you can sit with all of that, and you're allowed to appreciate it. At most you can tell Frank gets really fired up about bureaucrats.

But it's through that feudalistic exchange of women and the specific talents and practices and inherited body of knowledge in the BG, that is, the total mastery of the body as an internal and external force including the very soul made material in transference, which translates to that political and ethical responsibility they hold and enforce, not in the sense that women stay a man's rough hand - paltry and boring - but as actual participants and lessoners in society. For better or worse. It's interesting because the shift in Odrade's arc in Chapterhouse is not to reject that force, but to reject obedience (which is part of their relationship to the Tyrant), and obedience to an overwhelming maw of reactionary fear. "We are to punish them." It's the moment that's worth reading all three books for, to me. He tests them against the Honoured Matres and the Bene Tleilax alike: the Bene Tleilax do what they do with no moral aim, up until a very particular change in Heretics, but that twist only really makes them a further foil to the BG. The axlotl "tanks" (that's not the twist I'm referring to) are a literalisation of what the BG do, made extreme. So how different are they? I think that is not just a rhetorical question because of the literal technology involved.

What I also really like about the BG is that the specific thematic drive is not "lulz women control men with sex tee hee" - though this is a thing with the Honoured Matres, in contrast to the BG - but instead that libidinal forces organise life and society. It might sound like a fancy way of saying it, but what I really mean is that sex, sexual attraction, and sexual desire - indeed, lack thereof - motivate all sorts of behaviours and ambitions, and political desires, and culture and cultural values, and the identification of this fact and manipulation therein is a type of power they hold. The reason it is dangerous that Jessica loves Leto I is that she has given over power. She is not supposed to do this. (I think this is why Herbert retcons Paul being conceived out of love, not personal ambition to rear a kwisatz haderach herself, and having written this I think I feel somewhat better about the change; maybe these are confluent ideas in Dune).

The nuance of the BG is directly tied to the nuance of the Dune setting. The nuance of the Dune setting is what makes it Dune*: this is why I reject treating it as a straightforward didactic text, but the very common trend now is trying to outsmart a story, and fingerwag at people who seemingly don't get it. The BG are hard to get "right" in a desire to write a feminist story functioning as a moral invective - which fits women as political objects as opposed to sex objects.

I wish I could go see Dune Part Two again - it was a wonderful day out, honestly - and I was thinking that yesterday then read good things about Dune Prophecy, but I don't know what those good things constitute. So maybe I have to join in on Dune Prophecy.

*The unapologetic alienness and total commitment to what it is makes it Dune as well, and perhaps that's why Dune is hard to adapt.

[tawnysoup]

Found my fav Slay the Princess route recently. Dragon my beloved. Your horrifying beak mouth was an impossible-to-refuse lip syncing challenge 💖

Shoutouts to @blacktabbygames for making such a cool game!

[inkskinned]

she's singing in another room and my dog is asleep at my feet. my grandma asked me why i haven't found a man yet and i laughed. oh, you know. i like my house clean.

my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.

my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.

my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would know someone for only 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.

at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.

my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.

i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.

two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.

it's worth it for this moment, i think. my lover is still humming the same song she's been singing for four days straight and i don't want to kill her for it. her guitar is beside my bed. her toothbrush is in my bathroom. in a few moments i will make us lunch. we are lucky enough to have found each other. it is lucky enough to be in love.

[hinamie]

trick or treat!

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

Physically? I am sitting in my bedroom. Mentally? Spiritually? I AM DEAD ON THE FLOOR!!!!! THESE TWO HAVE KILLED ME!!!!

(Another drawing! This was originally attempt #1 at drawing stan, and then fiddleford just showed up. Kinda feels like them five minutes after the above acting like nothing happened though, so it works sdjkgkjfshj)

[framblebee]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 1x2 | 1x3 | 1x4

[o0kawaii0o]

FULL THROTTLE - Congrats on season 2!

[gremnda]

Hello Ethubs nation :]

no text version

[artrealla]

[the-phantom-peach]

skyward sword… yeah <3

Crimson Loftwing

↻ ◁ || ▷ ↺

[egophiliac]

(almost) four years in, and I finally had time to draw something for the anniversary! woo! 🎉🎉🎉

[vaguely-concerned]

the strength it must have taken for illario to not immediately go full 'lmao since when have you even had a kiss hello lucanis' sibling violence mode during the café talk. inspirational. rook and lucanis really were doing all that right in front of his salad huh

[hinamie]

make it vicious, take a stab

[berrysquared]

It’s hot hermit summer!! 🐠🪸🤿

This is the piece I made for the amazing @boatemvillagezine the whole zine is absolutely stunning and you should go check it out if you didn’t yet!!

[whimstories]

I colored it! 🥹🥳 I'm learning color! 😭🥳

[keferon]

Did you think I was done? Ahahahaha no, I have more.

Because chapter 70 of MOMU gave me the very dynamic between them that I missed so much, I just blacked out and started drawing uncontrollably lmao

Also. ALSO. I noticed a while ago that Prowl has the habit of..like…constantly frowning. So. I did a bit of research and made this graph.

In 70 chapters, Prowl frowns rougly 104 times. And the intensity of this gesture is very clearly correlated with the development of his relationship with Jazz, as you can see ahahahahah It might be wrong tho don’t take me seriously I’m not good with graphs