#and people love to romanticise the middle ages

[tyrannuspitch]

been looking at some images today, time for my wildly uninformed opinion. the difference between celtic and nordic knotwork is Like So:

[ch3rryb0mb3rr]

Tldr; please put warnings on smut and have it below the cut and stop sexualizing minors in media. Especially if they just came out of middle school thats weird. Write what you want but tag and put warnings when needed.

--

I get so pissed when im going to read something about my favorite character, and it's smut WITH ZERO WARNING.

No 18+, no NSFW, no MDNI and it isnt even in the fucking tags. I dont wanna read that shit. Put the damned warnings there for the love of all that is green on this earth it takes two seconds. maybe a bit more, but if you could pump out 3.4k words of pure porn, I think you can handle a couple of tags and warnings

I am a minor, and i use those warnings, so I dont read straight-up porn!! I also dont need to read about incest accidentally because there was NO warning, and it was NOT in the tags!!

(And for those of you who do put warnings, i thank you and wish the best in life!)

(I am also well aware that a lot of people dont listen to dnis like that, but it's helpful for the people trying to avoid reading stuff like that)

Also, while im on the subject, let's not sexualize minors in media. Yeah their hot, i can see that. But i dont want to see the start of an NSFW alphabet for a 15/16 year old. Aged up my ass. Just put the beginning below the cut?? And not after the first four letters??

I do NOT need to know a fav characters preferred body part is the tits thank you very much. I definitely do not need to accidentally read that they wanna suck on it like a damned bottle.

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'This character as your friend is soo perverted he wants to steal ur panties hehehe' NO HE DOESNT. HE'S A TEENAGER AND LIKES CATS. TF?? theres adults in the majority of the show that are reasonably attractive. Write that shit about them.

'Oh, they have this list of kinks,' and its shit only someone who has read hardcore smut would have. They are 16 and most probably haven't had sex because the creator cant give them a fucking break from trauma.

'He would be soooo toxic and blahblahblah [insert romanticised assault and abuse and trauma]' NO. that boy is my age and is a nerd. Motherfucker wants to study at princeton and has absolutely no flirting ability. You're only saying that because he's black, most of that shit reeks of racism.

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These characters are kids, CHILDREN, and you as an adult (if you are one) should not be writing smut about them, aged up or not. You should not be thirsting over a sophmore when theres PLENTY of good looking adults that you can be.

Theres a difference in growing up liking a character and having a crush on them and growing out of it when you're an adult. And being an adult thirsting over a teenage boy. It's not cute. it's not 'oh, it's fine because he/she's not real'.

Its really fucking gross actually.

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At the end of the day just tag your stuff correctly. That way its easier for everyone else to find EXACTLY what they wanna read. Because at this point im just gonna start reporting fics with no warnings at the beginning.

Someome younger than me with no parents looking through their devices could stumble on that, and not know what it means, read it, and be scarred for life.

I was reading that stuff way way way too earlier and its fucked up my mental state a bit so if we collectively start putting in the effort to help prevent this from happening to another 11 year old or younger than we should do so.

--

Start gatekeeping fandoms like creepypasta from young kids, start tagging shit correctly

Another child does not need to end up somewhat hypersexul with very violent intrusive thoughts by the time they hit high school because their parents wouldn't look out for them, and the fandom did NOTHING to try to prevent it.

Its not your job to parent the kid, and to look over their should. Thats not what im saying.

It IS your job to, again, tag shit correctly, put warnings for gore, bluring violent images, saying outright that a certain game/book/story/etc your recommending is NOT for kids due to its violent nature/sexual content/etc. Reporting accounts of children under the age limit for social media (i.e., a 10 year old with discord or instagram) (it is breaking the T.O.S)

Act like that one lgbtq+ chat room website I was on for a couple weeks where all the adults kinda looked out for me a bit. And supported me figuring out who I was and collectively riped a guy to shreds after I blasted him at a failed attempt to groom me. (And told me I had done exactly the right thing in this situation. Also, hi, if you know who I am from there!!!) (Story time if ya'll want I look back and think its the funniest thing ever how I dealt with him 💀)

[alezee]

Like 500 pages into a little life after skimming through it on my laptop a few years ago to get the gist.

Personally I love it.

I think it was written great. Feels like a modern classic

Time is ambiguous in New York City. Meaning 50, 100, 150 years later it will still remain relèvent and a beautiful story or maybe a cautionary tail depending on how you look at it.

People either love it or hate it.

Listen coming from someone who was physically and sexually abused by family, friends, medical professionals, and also attempted suicide, it was all written good. It wasn’t written poorly or romanticised in any light.

It is so so gut wrenchingly perfect and instead of breaking me, it healed me in a way. Cuz it was written. Correctly. Not even overdone.

I love Jude.

I love Malcom, JB, And I adore Willem.

I love Harold and Julia. For everything that they are and the amount that they fucking love Jude. They adopt him when he’s 40 after being his parents for like 20 years basically.

People tend to accept the kind of love they think they deserve. Jude is physically deformed from his abuse. That is something his abusers hold over his head while raping and beating him

Harold gets him the fuck out and his abuser(boyfriend) gets colon cancer and dies. Because karma.

Tbh I see nothing wrong with it.

I think if the story went in a lighter direction with an easier non rocky story line.

Jude would have had trusted therapists and adults in his life long before he did in middle age.

Because he didn’t have that, his brain devoured him whole time and time again.

His guilt is immense, and he feels disgusting and dirty for things that were not his fault.

No kid asks for that. No broken adult truly chooses any of that, jude clearly has some severe mental illness that’s never been treated properly.

Just. Anyway. I love it, and found comfort in it, not heartbreak.

[hisgxrlfriday]

RR fans and their scary parasocial ways

So I've been thinking about this for a little while and with the WWWY announcement a lot of attitudes have been re-emphasised online. I love Ryan and I honestly just feel bad- I don't think ruined is the right word nor am I trying to speak on his behalf. A lot of this is my opinion, but also, I'm really not making stuff up I'm just using them to justify my viewpoint. I'm gonna try and break it up into paragraphs, i know i said an essay but I'm in the middle of exams and theres nothing i want less than to write another damn essay.

Without further ado, here's my commentary on fan culture and how it how seems to have impacted Ryan Ross.

To clairfy, I'm assuming he's a bit done wiith the whole fame thing based off how little we see of him- compared to like, Jon.

Initial reception-

Obviously Panic blew up massively very early on, when they were very young. And fans treated them really gross. As a band they were harassed- if someone said to their favourite artist today "I want to lick you" they would get torn up. But there's a video where they talk about these kinds of comments being made to them at shows, and the interviewer laughs. These kids were young. Jon wasn't old enough to drink. And the behaviour was considered totally fine. Was it because they were a bunch of teenage boys, why wouldn't they want hot chicks all over them?

I'm not going to evaluate the effects harassment has. I am, however, sure you can understand. Yes that is just one example. But theres no doubt it happened plenty of times and people did not care. I'll go more into the sexualisation of the members later as well. But yeah. This was the treatment people dished out to Panic, its kinda obviously not cool! This is certainly more general than the rest, btw.

That fan who pretended to be Brendon Urie-

The sheer extent Chelsey Lynn went to in order to catfish Ryan is literally incriminating.

Here are the details: https://www.tumblr.com/pathetic-at-the-disco/171916782926/the-time-that-ryan-ross-was-catfished-by-a-fan

Brendon and Ryan's friendship, according to this, had officially fractured in 2010 and Chelsey wanted to rekindle it. We'll never know the genuine intent and that sucks- not too mention that you could begin to believe that it was driven by a sickening desire to prove 'Ryden'. It sucks that this fractured any chance of Ryan and Brendon hanging again- because Ryan clearly wanted that. And of course, he was so embarrassed. Why would he trust fans, why would he want to interact with anyone after that?

I think its clear that this did have a lasting impact, because Ryan clearly wasnt interested in rekindling the friendship after it occurred, personally I would never want to look at Brendon again after those messages leaked, its just a very personal thing and it sucks. We know that it was awkies between them because of that video from c2016 (made up time based on his hair) where Brendon explains that yeah, they saw each other somewhere and the conversation was super awkward the kind of thing you get from someone you literally toured the world with.

That instance in itself would have been enough for me to flee the country personally, but maybe I'm projecting.

The Milk Fic-

If Brendon Urie knows about it and Gerard Way read it, everyone ever knows about the milk fic. And theres two ways you can address this. I read the milk fic when i was young and it was gross. and then I read it again when I was older and that shit isnt just gross- its like. abhorrent. appalling. offensive. I think the issue with this isn't that its RPF- it's the fact that it is disturbingly vulnerable, highkey is romanticising abuse, and was (and kinda still is) the punchline to too many jokes. Aged 10 I proudly watched 'emo bands on crack' and other videos of the sort a lot, and the milk fic was mentioned a lot. Literally today (october, 2024) I saw a TikTok about it.

I think if i was a celebrity I would want people writing shit about me. Yay for a bit of fanfic. But when the work that is associated with you so broadly on social media is that... blegh. Its like, violating. I love CrankThatFrank, always did, but I'm telling you if Ryan Ross knew anything of CTF's content, which I assume he did based off the interview, Ryan totally knew about the milk fic. And that is no hate, Franks content was banger, and he wasnt the only person who contributed to it. So. I dont know, I dont see why fans would write that, but obviously the only people who would write about celebrities are fans. Its backwards.

[Edit] just proving my point, the photo at the end was posted on Halloween in 2024 and it’s soooo off putting that I’m not even blocking out the user

Conclusion-

I was gonna do a chunk about all his dickriders online but. I hope for their sake and his sake he doesnt see any of it. It's unfortunately embarassing. I'm going to pretend that he is completely unaware of them therefore it cant impact the relationship he has with them.

Anyways. Unsure if the tone of this is perfect, I've not really done a grammar check and I very well could keep adding to this post. Thank you for taking the time to read this all <3 happy to explain my thinking

[r3verse-the-polarity]

It is probably a neurodivergent thing because I feel like a lot of the people I know relate;

a person, regardless of how self-aware or intentional they are in their aesthetic or personality, is not just themselves, standing or sitting with you. One individual has a whole kind of "vibe" about them, which is very specific to them because it is the fusion of their style and personality and interests. Obviously the popularization of "aesthetics" through social media probably has a lot to answer for in this, but it's kind of nice.

This middle aged white man in a black puffer jacket and chinos... Mustard and lake water, TV ambience and coffee, enduring love, working hard, engineering.

Like, obviously this is all artistic and romanticised but I just get it.

I think that could be part of why music is so attractive to us. Every song is a whole atmosphere, and an album is a whole vibe And most musicians have a defined, manufactured visual and personal aesthetic to them. I feel like sometimes musicians and actors play a persona of themselves in interviews. We get so much more information from a subject than just... It.

Maybe and sometimes definitely it's wrong if we create so much chaos around looks and fashion before we know someone through conversation, and certainly we should not make assumptions about one another. I know that that sentence didn't make much grammatical sense but that's the way I thought it.

Creating characters I start with a vibe and it creates the person, rather than starting with the person and learning the "vibe" like we do in reality.

And I feel like this is when nd people become truly creative. We are so attracted to media because it's a controlled way of observing the world.

[brcdsweston]

"a burnt child loves the flame"

wait, is that BRODY WESTON? they kinda look a lot like ARCHIE RENAUX, don’t they? i heard the 21 year old is known as the HEDONIST around mckinley. it seems like they auditioned to be in THE WARBLERS which is so lame? people at campus have said they’re MAGNETIC, but don’t be fooled since they’re also REACTIVE. rumor has it, you can find them at HOCKEY TEAM {CAPTAIN} when they aren’t belting show tunes. their entire vibe revolves around A WORKING CLASS CHIP ON HIS SHOULDER, TAKING A PUNCH WITH A SMILE, A DEVILISH GRIN  but no one pays attention to that here in ohio.

brody weston is auditioning for the warblers with the other side - michael marcagi.

BASICS

full name: brody weston.

pronouns: he/him.

hometown: livingston, montana.

birthday & sign: september 2nd, virgo.

age: twenty-one

relationship status: single

sexuality: heterosexual, tried being with guys but wasn't for him.

occupation: student at dalton academy / social media influencer.

clubs: hockey team.

glee club: the warblers

major: music production.

CONNECTIONS

can be found here

HEADCANONS

Brody grew up in Montana with his mother. His father left them for another woman when he was a young teenager. Since then he & his mom has struggled with low income and putting meals on the table - this struggle and the abandonment of his father triggered reactive anger issues within the boy. If it wasn't for his high school P.E. teacher, who was also his mother's best friend, he would have been expelled from school however he directed Brody into taking up Hockey as an outlet for his energy and also anger, as it could be a violent sport. Thanks to this Brody received a scholarship to Dalton Academy to play hockey and study Music Production.

Alongside his classes and training, Brody earns money from being a social media influencer. A clip of a hockey fight he was in the middle of had went viral and he gathered a fan base who romanticised his reactive on-ice behaviour. He's known as the bad boy of varsity ice hockey and lives up to the persona so he doesn't lose any income as he sends most of his earnings back home to Montana for his mother to live stress-free.

The only thing that calmed Brody down growing up was listening to music - he didn't have a specific taste, he listened to anything with a captivating beat or grounding lyrics. Most people think that he wants to become an artist / music producer to chase the fame that he claims to love but in reality he hopes that one day he would be able to ground someone like music did for him.

[lonely-soul-02]

Noel's Letter To My Younger Self - The Big Issue

Quotes that stood out to me from Noel’s personal essay Letter To My Younger Self with The Big Issue magazine.

Note: for those outside the UK, The Big Issue is a newspaper style magazine that offers homeless people an opportunity to earn money. Homeless people stand on the street with an armful of magazines and will shout out to passers-by if they want to buy one, so to get a physical copy, you need to buy it direct from a homeless person selling it. This might provide some context for Noel's political comments.

“I was always a hopeful child if not always a happy one.”

“All I was interested in was music and escapism.”

"If my upbringing taught me anything, it was resilience, I got that from my mum."

“[Peggy’s] bark was fucking ferocious.  Her bite was non-existent. She had very, very bad language.  That’s where I learned to swear, from my mum.”

“When I was a teenager I romanticised everything…I didn’t know it at the time but I was already laying the groundwork for what I would become - an artist, a romantic.”

“[the Irish folk musicians] can make the most miserable subjects sound amazing and almost spiritual. I love that and I love it to this day.”

“Singing is good for the soul. It releases endorphins in the brain, you get high from singing.  It’s why people sing at church.  Football stadiums are the working man’s cathedrals.”

“And then one day Liam just said, you write songs, play us one of yours…It was only when other people joined in on my music and Liam started singing that the light bulb went off.  And it was like, wow, actually, this could be really fucking good.  I can’t articulate what kind of emotion it was. It was not a massive eureka moment, but it wasn’t indifference either.”

Translating Noel: it was a fucking massive eureka moment hearing his brother sing the songs he’d written

“You never knew what mood Liam was going to turn up in and I found the whole thing really fucking stressful.”

“I might step in to press pause on my younger self a few times and say hang on a minute.  Can we just go back a couple of months and fucking fix this?”

“I feel sorry for young people growing up in this country now, Brexit has been a fucking absolute unmitigated disaster…Politics has come to a fucking dead end…I don’t understand what any of them stand for anymore."

“The Tories are going to run this country into the ground and then pass it over to Labour and say good luck with that."

"[the politicians living in London] might want to get on a train once in a while and get outside of the M25 and you'll see how much of a fucking shithole this country is in."

"In the outskirts of Manchester where I was born, everything is boarded up. Everything is gone. This was supposed to be a modern world where nobody was gonna get left behind.”

N.B. It was David Cameron who said nobody would be left behind in a Tory Britain.

“Music of all forms is so fucking middle class now.  The working class musician is at the bottom of the pile now.  That’s why music is shit because youth culture, 99 times out of 100, comes from the working class.  That’s why so many kids now are loving Oasis. Because we were the real deal."

"Part of me is a little bit sad that no-one came to take our place. No one's come along to speak for them [youth] about their lives and their culture and where they're going next."

"Ive got two young sons...and I feel anxious for young guys. They don't really know how to behave with all this woke shit that's now foisted upon everybody. Angry white middle-aged women telling young guys how to behave and all this bollocks. I look at my sons and I have to put them in a headlock sometimes and say, don't worry about these people, just be who you are...They're shackled by the internet and wokeism and by living in a country where fuck all works."

"My 40s were the best decade of my life."

"Every day since I turned 50 has been a fucking ballache."

"If I could have one final conversation with anyone in my life...I'd talk to my ex-father-in-law who passed away recently. I didn't really get a chance to say goodbye . I'ld like to tell him what a great man I thought he was. And I'd also like to talk to my old granny, my dad's mum. I'd like just to say, you'll never fucking guess what happened to me and the other fella."

[heartofstanding]

Hi! I know it's difficult/impossible to judge the feelings of historical figures centuries after they're gone, but I always wondered why Joan of Kent chose to be buried beside her first husband Thomas Holland rather than Edward. I don't know much about her though, so I was wondering what you think about it. Thank you!

Hi! Sorry for taking so long to reply, as you'll find this is a very long reply! Joan's decision to be buried beside Thomas Holland is a very interesting one.There tends to be two main camps of through - that she chose to be buried beside Holland because she loved him "the most" or that her choice of burial location was the culmination of a deliberate policy of political obscurity that Joan had employed since the Peasants Revolt of 1381, where stories circulated that she had been attacked, and the arrival of Anne of Bohemia in 1382.

Behind the cut, I'll give an overview of the various arguments, some other possible explanations and offer my thoughts. I don't think it has to be one reason and one reason alone. People usually have a few reasons behind the major decisions they make and for a medieval noblewoman, who had a choice of locations she could choose to be buried at, the location of her burial was a major decision.

For Love

The most popular interpretation of Joan's choice is that it's a choice made from pure emotion and romance. She choses to buried beside Holland because she loved him the most. Her biographer, Penny Lawne, for instance, says that it is the "more probable" explanation for her choice:

Thomas Holand had been the great love of her life, and she wanted to be with him in death, and that this was in the end more important to her than any possible awkwardness this might cause Richard [II].

This does make a lot of sense. Medieval people believed that where and how a corpse was buried affected its condition in the afterlife, particularly during the second coming of Christ where the dead would rise from their graves. As Jessica Barker puts it, "if the dead were to be raised from their graves ... then it would follow that the person whom you lay beside would also be your companion in the Last Judgement". This suggests that Joan's choice reflected her desire to be with Holland in the afterlife.

Joan's relationship with Holland was exceptional. He was the second son of a knight, she was the granddaughter of Edward I, one of Edward III's first cousin who appears to have closely associated with Philippa of Hainault's household. Joan and Holland met, courted and married in secret. For whatever reason, it remained a secret and Joan later made a more conventional (though bigamous) marriage with William Montagu, the son of one of Edward III's favourites and eventually Earl of Salisbury. Holland later challenged the validity of Joan's marriage to Montagu via the papal courts and Joan supported his claims despite what appears to have been immense pressure not to do so, the loss of status and wealth that would result, and the possibility of alienating herself from her kin and earning the anger of Edward III. The papal courts found that her marriage to Holland was valid and annulled her second marriage, allowing her to live as Holland's wife.

The story of their relationship is extraordinary and has been hailed as one of the Middle Ages's great romances. In this context, her choice to be buried with Holland is the cherry on top, a testament to their enduring love despite the more prestigious marriage she made to the Black Prince and the twenty-five years that passed since Holland's death. It is clear by whatever metric that she still felt a strong emotional attachment to Holland.

I am very hesitant to romanticise their relationship too much. It was an extraordinary match, to be sure, but we do have to grapple with the fact that Joan was only around 12 years old when she married Holland and Holland was 24 or 25 years old, i.e. twice her age (we don't know the exact year of Joan's birth, she was born around 29 September in 1326, 1327 or 1328; Holland in 1314 or 1315). She married Holland (and their marriage was immediately consummated) by the spring of 1340, possibly in 1339. In other words, she could have only been 13 years at the most and possibly as young as 11, when she and Holland married. This, to me, looks more like a story of grooming and abuse than one of the greatest love stories of medieval England.

Obviously, Joan did feel strongly about Holland and probably did love him. Her choice to be buried with him may well have been motivated by that love, at least in part. That I read the relationship's origins as abuse does not necessarily preclude the possibility that Joan did not read it that way and that, in turn, does not necessarily preclude the possibility that it was abusive. Abuse is complicated and produces complicated responses in victims.

It doesn't necessarily follow, either, that her choice indicates that she loved Holland more than the Black Prince or was stating a preference for him over the Prince or was subtly rejecting her marriage to the Prince. By the same logic, we would need to revise the love story of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford to "he always loved Blanche of Lancaster more than Katherine". Both Joan and Gaunt only had one body.

The triple tomb and monument, like that of Margaret Holland, Duchess of Clarence and her husbands, John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset and Thomas, Duke of Clarence, might seem like an ideal solution but the double tomb monument was only just starting to become common in England and the triple tomb monument was never that common. Besides, the Prince's status as a war hero and the expected future king (he was even referred to as "Edward IV" in some contemporary documents), as well as his status with Joan as the parents of the currently reigning king, would make Thomas Holland's incorporation into their burial and monument unusual and I suspect be considered highly inappropriate.

For Political Obscurity

The other major line of thought is that Joan's choice of location for her tomb is part of a policy of "political obscurity" that she followed after the Peasants Revolt and Anne of Bohemia's arrival in England. Joan's status in Richard II's reign was awkward and liminal. She was the mother of the king but not, as had been the case previously, a queen in her own right. She lacked the title and authority of a queen and she never underwent the purifying and legitimising process of a coronation. While she acted as a quasi-queen in the absence of a queen and developed a reputation as a peacemaker, there is evidence that it wasn't exactly a comfortable fit.

Joan's reputation had suffered the most during Edward III's reign. Her clandestine and bigamous marriages and the ensuing scandal became public knowledge may have suggested to her contemporaries she was a headstrong, devious woman who was prone to the weaknesses inherent to her sex and wielded a certain sexual power over men. The slightly less sexist view was that that she was a giddy young girl who saw herself as acting out a courtly romance, possibly going further than she meant to. Her reputation shifted upon her marriage to the Prince towards the more sinister, where the unusualness of their match saw the surfacing of the idea that Joan had manipulated the Prince into marrying her.

This reputation was partially repaired by the way she conducted herself as Princess of Aquitaine, where the only criticism of her were complaints about her style of dress, much in the same way that clerics complain about women and fashion throughout the Middle Ages (it's basically an "old man yells at cloud" situation), and in the unstable last years of Edward III's reign and first years of Richard II's. She doubtlessly benefited from the fact that criticism was mostly focused on Alice Perrers and John of Gaunt.

But her scandalous past doesn't seem to have ever been entirely forgotten. In their accounts of Richard's deposition, both Adam of Usk and Jean Froissart report the rumours Richard was a bastard born from Joan's infidelity whose origins she deceived the Prince about. W. Mark Ormrod also argues that the story both recorded by Thomas Walsingham and Froissart that, during the Peasants Revolt of 1381, rebels broke into her bedroom in the Tower of London, broke her bed and asked her to kiss them, may have reflected a cruder story (now lost) current at the time, in which Joan was seen as "deserving" sexual victimisation because of her previous reputation. For Ormrod, Anne of Bohemia's arrival in England on the heels of these stories circulating mark the beginning of a programme of "self-effacement" and "political obscurity".

In his read, Joan's burial with Thomas Holland in the Greyfriars church in Stamford (Lincolnshire) is the culmination of this policy, where Joan effectively demoted herself from "princess to countess". Lawne, despite her claim that Joan's love for Holland inspired her choice, does seem to think there is something in this theory. The prominent placement of Edward's tomb would make Joan's also very public and she may, as Lawne suggests, have worried that her death would dredge up the controversy and infamy she had retired from court to avoid, perhaps even raising the question of the legitimacy of her marriage to Edward and thus the legitimacy of Richard's claim to the throne.

This is a tempting theory but there are uncertainties about it. Joan's retirement from court might have been less about her reputation and more about her declining health - Lawne suggests that Joan might have suffered from dropsy (edema) - or for a desire to live away from the controversies of court. She may have stepped back allow Anne of Bohemia the space to take up her role as queen and make it her own.

Joan may have also been sensitive to the fact that the last time the mother of the king had remained at court after the arrival of the new queen was during the minority of Edward III and his mother, Isabella of France, was widely condemned for her refusal to relinquish power to Philippa of Hainault, even to the point of delaying her coronation until it was an open scandal. Joan may have stepped back precisely to avoid similar condemnation rather than a desire for obscurity.

Other Reasons

Penance

Louise Tingle suggests that Joan's choice of burial may have been an act of "personal penance for her bigamous marriage". Her marriage to Holland lasted from 1340 to 1360 but nine of those years were spent in her bigamous marriage to William Montagu; thus her choice to be buried with Thomas is in some way to make up for this loss.

Preference for her Holland children

Ian Mortimer seems to suggest that Joan's choice of burial with Holland was her choosing her Holland children over Richard. I am not sure how he comes to that conclusion; none of her children chose to be buried in the same chapel. Her three surviving sons are the only beneficiaries to her will and Richard, addressed as "her very dear son", is named first and given her best bed while his Holland brothers also receive a bed each (the rest of her goods were to be sold), so she hardly shows an overt preference for her Holland children over him. We also don't know what her tomb monument looked like to know how or if she depicted her families on it.

Support for John Holland

John Holland, the younger surviving son of her first marriage, murdered Ralph Stafford shortly before her death and Richard refused to pardon him. The last recorded public act of Joan was a failed attempt to reconcile her two sons (they would reconcile after her death). It is not beyond the realm of possibility that she decided to be buried beside Thomas Holland as a gesture of support to John Holland, or as a sign of her forgiveness of him.

Location

The Black Prince intended to be buried in the chapel of Our Lady of the Undercroft in Canterbury Cathedral's crypt with Joan but at some point after his death, probably not too long after, the decision was made to bury him in the Trinity Chapel, beside the shrine to St. Thomas Beckett, one of the most popular (and the most famous) sites of pilgrimage in England. It's likely Joan was part of the group of people making these decisions at the time; others involved were likely to include Edward III, John of Gaunt, Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury and the monks of the cathedral. Louise Tingle suggests that during her marriage to the Prince, Joan probably did plan to be buried with him in Our Lady of the Undercroft, and I'd suggest it's possible that the shift in the Prince's burial location led to Joan deciding to be buried elsewhere.

There are couple of things to note here. The first is the Prince's final resting spot was altogether a more prominent and public location which would, in turn, lead to Joan's burial being more prominent and public. If Joan had a policy of political obscurity (or even if she did not), she may have been comfortable being buried in the more obscure chapel but not in the chapel that was effectively one of the hottest tourist destinations.

Secondly, Francis Woodman suggests that the attitudes towards lay burial to Canterbury Cathedral was that it was a privilege guarded jealously and even the Archbishops of Canterbury (as members of the lay clergy) had to buy their way in. The Prince appears to have the first lay person to be buried and if burial was as restrictive as Woodman suggests, this may have meant restrictions were placed on Joan's options for burial. I wonder if she may have been allowed burial in the crypt chapel but not the Trinity Chapel and the idea of being "alone" in the crypt chapel led to her decide to be buried at Stamford with Holland. Alternatively, she may have been allowed burial in the Trinity Chapel but not with a monument or with a smaller monument than she felt befit her station so she chose to be buried in Stamford where her choice of tomb monument could be unrestricted. There have been other restrictions that lead to Joan feeling she didn't want to be buried at Canterbury Cathedral and choosing to go elsewhere.

Other Emotional Reasons

We lack historical evidence for a whole range of human experiences that Joan experienced. We don't know the intimate details of either of Joan's marriages to know whether anything happened to sway her one way or the other. This is something that history can't give us answers for but that fiction can give us possible answers.

An author might write a scene in which Holland frets that if he dies before Joan, she will marry a high-status man and forget him, she might promise to be buried with him. Another author might make something of the strains of living with someone with a chronic, debilitating illness and depict Joan choosing to be buried elsewhere out of shame at her reactions to the ill Prince.

In Anne O'Brien's novel, The Shadow Queen, Joan views the Prince's finished finished tomb and reads the epitaph on it that he personally chose. Finding its sentiments alien to her, she comes to the realisation that she never properly knew the Prince and decides that she can't be buried with him. In Juliet Dymoke's Lady of the Garter, the Prince undergoes a personality change as a result of his illness and the marriage suffers. Although Emma Campion's The Triple Knot ends with Joan's marriage to the Prince, it's clear she imagines him to be an controlling and abusive husband (he murders her puppy when he's six), and that this is the reason Joan opts for burial with Holland.

Though, I would hesitate to read Joan's relationship with the Prince as Campion does. As David Green says:

There is certainly no reason to believe that Joan’s choice of burial site was the result of a difficult relationship with Edward. Indeed, such evidence as we have suggests quite the contrary.

Some final thoughts

There doesn't have to be one singular decision as to why Joan decided to be buried with Holland over the Prince. There were probably a number of factors in play. There are two other considerations.

Firstly, it seems unlikely her decision to be buried beside Thomas Holland at the Greyfriars church in Stamford was a big shock. It seems that way to us because what evidence that survives is the Prince's will, where he intends Joan to be buried with him, and then her own will, where she says she's to be buried beside Holland. No chronicler expresses surprise or shock at her choice of burial or suggests that it had any coded message, such as disapproval of Richard II or disavowal of her final marriage.

It may have even been a decision she came to in the months between the Prince's death and his burial (he died 8 June and was buried 30 September, his funeral was 6 October). Anthony Goodman suggests that, amongst other reasons (such as the hope of Edward III recovering enough to attend), the delay may have been caused by the problems arranging the burial. If so, my own theory about the monks' reluctance to allow Joan a more prominent burial may have been one of the problems.

Her will, unlike the Prince's, leaves no detailed instructions for the construction of her tomb. The recent study of the Prince's tomb suggested that such instructions suggest no work on the Prince's tomb had begun at the time of his death. By the same logic, the lack of instructions in Joan's will, in addition to no evidence of Richard contributing to financially to it, might suggest that work had already begun (and perhaps even finished) before her death.

Secondly, so much speculation about that her tomb in part rests on the fact that it no longer exists. The Greyfriars church in Stamford and the tombs of Joan and Holland were destroyed in the Reformation. There are no records which suggest what kind of monument that Joan commissioned for herself (or others commissioned for her) or drawings or descriptions of it. As such, we have no idea what it looked like and what kind of identity she constructed for herself through it.

She may have downplayed her royal connections, her tomb reflecting the idea of her self-inflicted demotion from princess to countess as Ormrod suggested. Or it might have emphasised her status as mother of the king, Princess of Wales and Aquitaine, Duchess of Cornwall and Countess of Kent. It may have well emphasised her Holland marriage and family at the expense of her royal marriage and son or it might have emphasised her royal marriage and son at the expensive of her Holland marriage and son. It may have struck a balance between the two. We simply don't know. Even if it had survived, without any other records surviving, there is no way to know if it was Joan or her sons that determined what the tomb looked like.

References

Jessica Barker, Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Structure (Boydell Press 2020)

Jessica Barker, Graeme McArthur & Emily Pegue "'Fully Armed in Plate of War'. Making the Effigy of the Black Prince", Burlington Magazine (November 2021)

Anthony Goodman, Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent: A Fourteenth Century Princess and her World (Boydell Press 2017)

David Green “‘A woman given to slippery ways’? The reputation of Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent”, People, Power and Identity in the Late Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of W. Mark Ormrod, eds.Gwilym Dodd, Helen Lacey, Anthony Musson (Routledge 2021)

Penny Lawne, Joan of Kent: First Princess of Wales (Amberley 2015)

Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV (Vintage 2008)

W. Mark Ormrod "In Bed with Joan of Kent: The King’s Mother and the Peasants’ Revolt" in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy, eds. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Rosalynn Voaden, Arlyn Diamond, Ann Hutchinson, Carol Meale, and Lesley Johnson (Brepols 2000)

Louise Tingle, Chaucer's Queens: Royal Women, Intercession, and Patronage in England, 1328–1394 (Palgrave Macmillan 2020)

Francis Woodman, "Kinship and Architectural Patronage in Late Medieval Canterbury: The Hollands, the Lady Chapel and the Empty Tomb", BAA Trans., vol. xxxv (2013)

[mishkakagehishka]

hi! different anon from earlier, lol :D

reading ur carrd and u specifically specified that u write non-romanticized yandere, and i am curious how the trope can be non-romanticized? /gen

as far as i know, the base yandere trope has always been pretty wack, and idrk if base yandere could be considered "romanticized" when its been like that since the start

Oh ! No worries, I'm glad to explain my reasoning :3

It's been a bit since I've consumed any original media featuring yand, but from what I've noticed in fanworks is that lots of people seem to think of yandere as a romance trope, if you get me? Sort of putting them in the same basket as "oh, he's a little jealous, but he's a nice guy!" or "oh, she's just passionate, how romantic that she killed her rivals!" which is, hm, dependant on how the love interest reacts, I guess. I think in a dark fantasy where they're both ruthless, it could work as a fucked up romance.

But when I write yandere, I use it as a psychological horror trope. It's scary to me, attractive in the usual weird "scary-hot" contrast fiction can awaken, but scary takes the cake, I think. Stalking, murder, being in danger, your friends/family being in danger, the fact that it's all dependant on the whims of someone you barely know (and then add according to the yandere type - a delusional might hurt you even if you play along perfectly because they'd delude themselves into thinking whatever they want to think, a sadist might hurt you just because they find it fun, a worshippy's horror is more subtle and based on the uncanny and uncomfortable with the whole pedestalling, but it's still there, and so on).

It's just me setting a sort of line. "I write a trope that is commonly shown as romantic, but don't expect that from me, because I see it as a horror trope and write it as such". Though, who knows, I only really read other horror-yand works, but I haven't branched out in ages, the situation might have changed since I was a middle schooler :3 But essentially i de-romanticise it just using a style i'd use to write horror rather than romance so the atmosphere fits what i want to show !

[runawaymun]

For the character ask: Galadriel (or Artanis if the time period is preferred) :)

1: sexuality headcanon

Ragingly bisexual & had a Thing with Luthien. Big strap energy.

2: otp

Galadriel/Celeborn. He's Wife Guy and I love them together.

3: brotp

Glorfindel! Shared experiences with the grinding ice and first age in general. I think there's a real sense of easy familiarity and fondness between the two of them, and I headcannon that she uses Laurefindele in reference to him and he uses Artanis in reference to her. They swap war stories about Turgon together :)

4: notp

Haladriel. I keep seeing fics with Celebrian as a Haladriel baby and I want to kms. I am horrified. I am disgusted. I commit my life to my lord and savior jesus christ--

I just hate it so much. Not least of all for the Celeborn erasure but mostly for how it cheapens both characters and has some problematic implications for how we treat women in fiction. I hate hate hate the whole "she has the potential to save him from himself/bring him back from the brink of insanity/hold him in check" die die die stop romanticising relationships in which one party is responsible for the actions of another especially ESPECIALLY women with men. Women are not here to "civilize" men. And just in general please give Mairon more credit than that. No. He is not refraining from certain actions because he wants that pussy. He is refraining from certain actions because he has long term plans and is capable of strategic thought. No, he is not offering for Galadriel to be "his queen" in a romantic sense. He is manipulating her just like Morgoth manipulated Feanor by playing to that disastrous genetic Noldorin arrogance. Also she's clearly grieving her husband and in no way in a position to have a relationship with anyone, least of all a corrupt maia. I know there's like... let people ship what they want and relationships don't all have to be healthy and unproblematic or whatever but I just take a LOT of issues with the way Haladriel is romanticised. And just...with it. In general. As a ship. It's bad & i hate it. UGHHHH I could go on about this for ages I am so sorry. There are very few ships that I hate more than fucking Haladriel.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

She collects butterflies. It's her special interest! She has a whole butterfly garden in Lorien & popular gifts from Celeborn include rare sourced caterpillars to add to her garden for her to bond with and study.

6: favorite line from this character

And you, Ring-bearer,’ she said, turning to Frodo. ‘I come to you last who are not last in my thoughts. For you I have prepared this.’ She held up a small crystal phial: it glittered as she moved it, and rays of white light sprang from her hand. ‘In this phial,’ she said, ‘is caught the light of Eärendil’s star, set amid the waters of my fountain. It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

7: one way in which I relate to this character

I think I really do have something of that pitfall of ambition & wanting to be someone and do things -- which is not in of itself a bad thing but it can become unhealthy and detrimental, which I think is part of why Galadriel's arc of desiring power and a kingdom, sailing to Middle Earth, but then kind of settling into a more background role of preservation & guidance and ultimately choosing to resist that core temptation the Ring offers her and sailing back home to simply be Galadriel is very meaningful to me.

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

She has boomer energy in my head. Can't really elaborate on any specifics but every time she shows up in longfics that take place in the third age she has moments that feel like trying to watch my parents use a cellphone.

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

Half cinnamon roll half problematic fave imo.

[bearlyloved]

18+  .Indie    .    Mutuals    Only.   FANDOMLESS OC, MAMABEAR,  by  S𝔞v𝔟𝔢𝔞𝔯    .    Established    1st    of    December   2021

Highly    Selective    &   sometimes   very intense themes      .    Crossover    &    OC    friendly

 main original verses & verses  include;  ORIGINAL MAIN VERSES , AU VERSES & CROSSOVER VERSES & HUMAN VERSES

EXPLORING: aerial arts/circus, vintage dolls & the 1950s

OTHER BLOGS INCLUDE: @funbonded & @moralpuppet

CARRD . PROMO .

dash bio/dash rules undercut for more please see my carrd

tw: terminal illness & child death 

˗ˏˋ ♡ dash bio Mamabear was created by Arthur Velvetine, a middle aged man who was desperate to give his dying daughter, Sarah Velvetine, the female role model she never had growing up. Everyday Sarah's terminal condition slowly got worse and her father made it his mission to fill her last years with love and happiness. After years poor Sarah didn't make it, leaving Mamabear's creator distraught and unable to look at his creation. She was then passed from household to household until the RUSHTOWN CIRCUS  found her. There she would learn to be a professional trapeze artist. Mamabear has always been romantacized by those she comes across, she has never truly felt love. She was only ever useful to others. She still seeks to find herself and be treated just as others are. Still craves to be seen as something other than an object. Even though she adores being a trapeze/aerial artist, the celebrity side of things has only amplified the objectification of her being. She longs that one day people will see beneath the faux fur and stuffing.

˗ˏˋ ♡ dash rules ♡ One. FIRST AND FOREMOST. General rp etiquette applies. / I am not my OC. Likewise I do not condone or romanticise any of the darker themes explored on this blog.  Two. DNI / I don't engage with people who are problematic or present problematic behaviour such as proshipping/pedophilia/ or you are a terf/ableist/racist or you show any kind of hate to anyone like that . If you see me interacting with someone problematic likely I haven't been informed yet and shall deal with it accordingly as soon as I am informed. I don't support anyone who does any of that nasty behavior and I never will and if you know you engage in such behaviors then please refrain from interacting with me. You're not welcome. Likewise don't bring drama onto my blog. If you see someone problematic here just message me privately. I won't be reblogging callouts. Three.  FOLLOWING. I'm selective. If I haven't followed back please don't take it personally. If we are mutuals and you decide to unfollow then soft block please otherwise I will see you on my Dash and still think we are mutuals and I don't really want to have to browse a list of followers to check every time I go to interact. Four. DON'T STEAL MY OC OR MY GRAPHICS. Some art used on the blog is my own others have been so lovingly created by chainsxwsmile, ryuniiis, candyeco and machopie Five.  TRIGGERS Warnings for you: This blog can be very gorey I also require you to be 18+ for this reason. Please do not follow if you're a minor. death, abuse, terminal illness Six. SHIPPING only romantically with muses who are also anthros/dolls/toys. Mamabear is also a lesbian please respect this.

[skrimply]

need to find a way to start romanticising and adoring and appreciating my 20s and adulthood bc i think at the moment im kind of mourning my weird fucking high school experience and lack of like. Normal Teen experiences and stuff. like it really did fuck me up to move somewhere so different my freshmen year and go somewhere i hated and it took me until senior year to make actual close friends and i got bullied and outcast and misunderstood and it all fucked with my mental health in a way that i couldn't understand or get other people to understand. and i was lucky enough to fall into a loving relationship so i did have companionship but it was long distance and that just created more, like, pain for me so i still felt lonely and isolated most of the time. and i didn't get a lot of chances to be a stupid teen and hang out with a big group of friends because i didn't Have any and some of the friends i did have didn't really like me much and kinda just used me. and i wish i had gotten to do fun things and go places with said group but i lived in the middle of nowhere and couldn't drive. my summers ans breaks with my bf were always lovely but always had to end with separating again and that heartbreak and i just spent so much of my teen years being depressed in my room. and that really sucked. so im trying to figure out how to be myself and find what makes me happy in my 20s because i do know that high school is NOT the best years of your life and its not supposed to be and aging is beautiful and exciting. and i have friends in college who love me and i am getting to do things i love and wish i could have done earlier. i have so so much life left to have fun and be happy and discover myself over and over again. AAAHAHAHKAHSJ

[nadzhosny2]

The Rantings of an Old Soul

Does anyone else feel as if they were born in the wrong era? I do. Constantly. My ways of viewing aspects of life are so categorically different from how society views them, that I feel as if I've been plucked from the past and slammed into the present with no recollection of how I got here. So being the nerd that I am, I decided to do some research into this and see if there is any coherent explanation for it.

Thankfully there was. The term for this feeling is ‘historical nostalgia or vicarious nostalgia’.

Whatever else you can change about your life, one thing you can’t do anything about is the time. If you don’t like where you live, you can move — if you don’t like when you live, well, tough shit.

Complaints about being born in the wrong era come up a lot online, often in the context of decrying modern culture and yearning for bygone days. Whether it’s memes about being misunderstood, lambasting other “kids of today” spending all their time on their phones or endless YouTube comments on Nirvana and Queen videos written by teenagers complaining that music today is bullshit, it’s a common yearning. Also if you don’t know who those two bands are, I am SERIOUSLY judging your music taste and you need to update your playlists IMMEDIATELY.

It should go without saying that almost any one of us, transported back even a few decades, would find the past to be unimaginably awful. Living in the Swinging Sixties or the Roaring Twenties probably sounds awesome — hello flappers and tie-dye shirts! — but it mostly just means foregoing the benefits of a huge amount of life-improving technological and medical breakthroughs as well as civil and women’s rights. You don’t have to go back that far for things to become utterly dire: Life expectancy among the middle classes in Victorian Britain (i.e., the 19th century) was just 45!

The sad thing about this though is that versions of a time period we didn’t live through are often idealised or romanticised, images of a simpler time, before tech dominated our lives, seem to show that people were happier then. Such periods are usually shown in film or other art forms in biased versions by avoiding the unpleasant, even painful, aspects.

But syphilis, tooth decay and dead-before-middle-age thing from the flu aren’t what people fantasise about, of course: It’s the dream of experiencing cultural milestones firsthand, even though the reality is that most people only become aware of the cultural significance of a moment many years later — just try asking the average Italian peasant how enlightened they felt while the Renaissance was actually happening. While Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael and Leonardo were busy creating their masterpieces of art, they wouldn’t come to prominence or even be unveiled until several years later. Also if you thought these people were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you need to be hit on the head. With a chair. Shame on you.

Putting all of this aside though, there are some things that used to be so powerful in the past that have utterly lost meaning in today’s world: language, art, music, love, marriage, MANNERS.

As a massive lover of Shakespeare and Homer (no, not Homer Simpson, because sadly that’s the first thing that will pop into people’s minds *HUGE eyeroll*), I developed a love for the older English language; a language that wasn’t spoiled by slang or oversimplified ways of speaking, that spoke in ways that resonated with your soul, using words that perfectly described a situation or a feeling. The language people use now is mostly sullied with cuss words or smut.

The language used to be dignified and elegant, Shakespeare’s sonnets are the prime example of this. The language flows beautifully and while it is drastically different from the way we speak today, the meaning behind the words is powerful. People just don’t talk this way anymore and it's a true loss. With all the trends and challenges that are flying around these days, is it too much to ask to have an Old English trend? Sigh.

Instrumental and classical music is something else that is missing from today’s world that used to be revered in the past. The works of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin have been forgotten and shoved aside in vinyl records somewhere, collecting dust in favour of Ariana, Beyonce, Drake and Post Malone. I remember the first time I ever heard a piece of classical music; I was 13 years old and was visiting a friend at her house, her father had an enormous collection of vinyl records that he had been gathering for 30 years, which he kept in pristine condition in a shelf mounted on the living room wall. His record player, a large, old-fashioned brass gramophone (the man was committed) was in the corner of the room and the most exquisite violin music was playing. I remember just sitting down, right there in the middle of the room, facing the gramophone and listening as the music washed over me, giving me goosebumps as it vibrated through my body. I sat there, not moving a muscle, until the song ended and then dashed to the gramophone to pick up the record sleeve next to it to see which song it was. That was the first time I had ever heard ‘Concerto in Two Violins’ by Bach.

After that day I was hooked, I went down the rabbit hole and started listening to all the classical composers I could find. Fortunately for me, YouTube had an abundance of videos of orchestras from all over the world that were playing the music. As I grew older I found Yanni, a Greek/American composer and pianist who was bringing instrumental music back to the modern world with his concerts all over the globe. His song ‘Nostalgia’ has such a haunting rhythm which is just breathtaking that I always listen to it with my eyes closed.

Just recently I found a duo called 2CELLOS who were doing instrumental versions of modern songs. The blending of the past and the present was so perfect that it was hard to believe and brought me such incomprehensible amounts of joy. Now don’t get me wrong, I'm not decrying today’s music, I'm an avid listener of all genres but there is just a magnificent beauty in the classics and the way it reverberates through the soul that is unmatched.

Finally, the aspect of life that has been butchered the most by modern society is love. “I love you” is a phrase many people tend to throw out into the world, without realising its full impact and repercussions associated with it. The society we live in today loves love, just for the sole idea of it. We lust for the idea of being head over heels in love, so maybe that is why it seems to slip through our tongues so easily. Media exploits love in the sense that it is used as a patch-up for when the going gets tough, used as a way to have someone finally commit fully to you, and has begun to underlie lies and most shamefully, it gets someone into bed. Maybe this is just my perception, but it seems to me that emotions are muted, and are shown through materialistic things rather than our faces. We would rather buy someone a bear over writing love letters or poems.

A love letter was the main way men and women expressed their romantic feelings for each other back in the 19th century. To put all their emotions down on paper, pouring their hearts out so that the others would understand how deeply they felt about them. Something to be cherished and reread over and over until it's dog-eared and ragged. A physical reminder of the love the other had for them.

What happened to courtship? To developing a deep bond to ensure the relationship has a clearly defined direction and it’s going just the right way. When prioritising the mental connection over anything else by getting to know each other, thereby capitalising on emotions was the main reason people got together. How all of this has been twisted in today’s world.

Today’s world is infinitely better in significant ways than it was in the past, there can be no doubt about that. It just needs to remember. These are perils of being an old soul stuck in a modern time that baffles her.

[unabellaguerra]

Ditto to all of that.

I come from a German-speaking middle & high school, and it's unavoidable that you get to read at least one thematically challenging and unsettling book from German literatureevery school year. From 10 to 18 years old, no exceptions.

What you see is a beautiful transformation from young kids declaring that a book shouldn't exist (after reading their first unsettling book) to older teenagers appreciating the writing style, author's intention, and themes throughout the years.

What I recall with the earlier books I read (I was around 13 when we first read unsettling books and at that age hated all of them xD): a novel about cyberbullying that depicts graphic SA, and another one on MC running away with his friend & trying to survive the real world (which includes the only main female character being sexualised by MC and sexualising herself). Speaking specifically about my class, we all hated them and we spent the next few lessons venting amongst ourselves and to our teacher.

Next up were 3-4 Holoucast novels in the next two years - some were fictitious, other were realistic like diaries or autobiographies. It was 50/50 - some we started enjoying and understanding the necessary brutal and unsettling scenes. With others we started criticising with how the Holocaust was treated (too romanticised, unnecessary violence, etc.) I.e. specks of literary critical thinking evolved.

(In those years, we read a romance novel of email exchanges leadong to the two people falling in love with each, which I absolutely hated and DNF'd, as iirc one of the MC's has a married spouse and I saw as cheating.)

Finally, with 16+ years, we students got introduced to the pillars of German literature. A novel about a 19th century family trying to live with their disabled adult son while being ostracised by society, Spring Awakening (the consequences of no sex-ed education discussed in early 19th century, which includes SA and abortion), Youth without God (a book criticising a fascist/authoritative government *wink wink the Nazis*, with emphasis on how it affects the youth), The Perfume (would you kill an innocent woman and make the best perfume out of her? Also cannibalism), another novel that alludes to the Third Reich with huge emphasis on Jewish persecution, etc. Oh and the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (when you wake as a "Ungeheuer" one morning) :p.

Around 80% of the class really enjoyed all these (disturbing) classics, with some even reading additional disturbing German books to really delve into the themes and author's intentions. Even with those who hated the classics, they now understood the necessity of why the novel was famous and were able to distinguish their personal opinions from literary critique. And imo, the transformation from "I hate it so it's objectively bad, burn it now!" to tipping toes into literary critique was mostly due to the school allowing/requiring us to read challenging books to challenge our moral understanding and in turn expanding our empathy.

Now, is this universal to every German-speaking class with German lit? Idk, maybe not. Were our German teachers perfect? Absolutely not. Imo, our middle school teacher failed to handle our "venting" situation when we mandatorily read these books. But our high school teacher was pretty god when we were teens starting literary critique. Was exposing such disturbing topics like SA cyberbullying to tweens as young as 10 *really* that necessary? Who knows. Nowadays, the German tactic of exposing horrifying images of the Holocaust during history with the mentality of "this is our fault. While we did not do, YOU alone are responsible that this never happens again." during history classes, with no warning, actually backfired. We have tons of Holocaust deniers thanks to that extreme tactic, and why countries such as Germany and Austria will always side with Isreal no matter what (the good and the horrible). So there's talk whether to change it, allow more trigger warnings and be more sensitive to tweens and teenagers. It's a whole different issue.

Tl,dr: Reading disturbing literature, especially as a school requirement, is a must and it comes with huge benefits and a few drawbacks.

I think some people forget that some literature and some media is meant to be deeply uncomfortable and unsettling. It's meant to make you have a very visceral reaction to it. If you genuinely can't handle these stories then you are under no obligation to consume them but acting as if they have no purpose or as if people don't have a right to tell these stories, stories that often relate to the darkest or most disturbing parts of life, then you should do some introspection.

[luckynumbersevenseven]

Last night i was writing a poem on the 580 east coming back from point reyes. Driving fast to give off an air of confidence. And not an air of “i am actually writing a sort of sad really sad poem behind the wheel of a car going at least 20 mph over the speed limit on the freeway at night”. Its not like i havent learned enough lessons. I know the risks. I have been in car accidents, like more by the age of 24 than most people have in their entire life. And still i am risking my life to write a poem. Is that poetic?ughhhh Maybe but also corny and just self destructive. I have stopped romanticising self distruction mostly. I take care of myself now and find reality quite enough to keep me…entertained? Occupied? Satisfied???? I enjoy making my bed every day. I am disgusted by the vacancy in the darkness that once seemed to promise so much to me.

I think about cars a lot. The potential and power they hold. These big metal dogs. And we can hold their leash for a time and pretend we have control. All day! Every day! As a means to an end! We do this forgetting that the dog isnt really a dog but is a machine and was not programmed for empathy. Because you cant program empathy. Machines areimpartial. Like the ocean or a forrest fire in some ways. Undiscerning. Unforgiving. A carless power…but there is no beauty in cars the way there is in the careless power of nature. Because the earth cares in a very differnt way. It does care. And because behind the invention or creation of the bloodless metal car beast is someone who did care and that is where it starts to unravel.

Whatever.

I find i do my best thinking while driving. I cant stop my mind from making poems. And then there is the desperation to not forget! The words that first fit that feeling! Is it worth dying over? The answer is sooooo obvious when i am judging from here in my bed. What the fuck.

I met two 5 day old goats last night. Behind a tarp in a hutch on a property in santa rosa. I was there to see the art of someone i met once and there was a cheesboard and everyone was middle aged and there were no lights by which to see anyones faces. The tiny goats seemed a cold and were shockingly passive to my touch. It was unsettling that something so young and new and small should trust me. I might have bad intentions. I dont even know my own intentions half the time. I have the power to kiss them or to kill them. The capacity or potential or whatever. Like a coiled spring, like how sometimes you think about saying the worst possible thing but you dont. But you could! But it seemed like maybe it wasnt about trust for the little goats? Like they just dont even know enough to trust or distrust. Like they didnt care. Their hair was soft and white still softer than grown goats but maybe not as soft as a lambs. And they were vaguely oily the way any farm animal is. But not smelly. And they did not shy from my touch. Nor did they really seem to welcome it. I dont think either one would have put up a fight if i had picked it up and left with it under my arm. I think it might have gladly slept in my warm bed with me. Impartial. Undiscerning.

When I saw the goats I played out some sort of fairy tale trade in my head. I lost my baby…so i earned this baby. ? Or something? But i forfeited? my baby. I do not get to take another one. A goat baby to replace the baby i know i could not have. Because because i am not ready? I would not love it the way i want to? The way a mother should? The way it would want? It? My baby. My baby.

Oh what do i know…i am living within a hypothetical. Not that the choice wasnt obvious. But the what ifs are soooo tempting.

The things that i wrote in the notes app on my phone while i was driving last night were mostly about the relief in giving up hope. Hope is so exhausting. My friend told me that they read somewhere that hope is similar to fear in its detriment to the mind and body. And i can attest. Like…the way you let out your breath when a door finally closes. Or when you try on something and it doesnt fit. The decision was made for you. Shows over. The relief in saying goodbye and meaning it.

I was thinking about how there is tissue/matter coming out of me following the abortion. It is somehow more clinical than blood. Less romantic. Grosser. I was thinking about how i had the weird urge to eat it. Maybe because in some way it wouldnt feel like a loss. Like in this way im capable of holding on or something. But whatever that metaphor doesnt even work cause id have to shit one day. But also the urge didnt feel metaphorical…just sudden and disgusting.

In my notes I wrote:

I hold onto the rag i used to clean up the spill of you

I live with it under my pillow

Weeping over whats unsung

Or what is sung and never heard because that is sadder

Repeating the lyrics under my breath

So i wont forget

And i got home and i did forget entirely until I read my note. I forgot all about how i would never sing a song to this particular baby. Or maybe any baby of my own. And how that made me want to break for a moment. A moment. Because longer than a moment might be self indulgent. And i am not broken. I just want to be able to break. For a moment. Like i am asking permission. A moment? Is it ok if i just break? I swear just for a moment i will be broken? And then i promise to put myself back together again just like before as quick as i can as good as i can. I promise. But there was nobody there to ask for permission. So i didnt.

The nurse (the one that wasnt my hinge match) asked if i wanted to know if it was twins.

I whispered “i want a hug” to the dark house. And then i cried for the person who said something so sad.

Like a child.

I am doing better though! I make my bed. I make my bed and and i think i am mostly doing better.

I hold myself up to an old picture for size. I use new language to describe my pain. Or whatever. And share the blame. I take the pill. I forgo the rest. I dont even have sex anymore.

Yea yea but here i am. And the blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere.

I didnt write it all down though. In my head i was turning over a line about waking up in the night and confusing the crescent of the face on the pillow next to me –– momentarily illuminated by the passing light from a car––for the moon

Thinking a lot about the moon. About confusing things for the moon. Man made things or earthly things for that big glowing moon. I dont have a good word for the power of the moon though. It is again an undiscerning sort. Is that power? Freedom from the sway of emotion? Freedom FROM choice? Freedom TO choose is one kind of power but its a human kind of power and it only gets you …to like a certain level of power…And dont get me wrong I am not trying to say that a prisoner is more free than the man that takes the train past the prison….

On my drive I was listening to fulsom prison blues (obviously) and also fast car. And those songs are about chosing. And disappointment. And consequence. The consequences of being human and having choices and how lonely and how insatiable. And freedom also. (A beautiless and boring oversimplification of these bangers)And i was thinking about how free I feel driving a car with a full tank on the open road at night with the windows down and the music up (and i am alone and choose the soundtrack without fear of judgement…) and a cigarette and even if that is some synthetic version or trope of freedom it still feels good when it hits the blood stream and ill take that over nothing.

Because i am girl and not a god or the moon.

[homo-sex-shoe-whale]

Online shipping, the fetishisation of gay men, and the romanticisation of queer trauma

An essay by me!

Word count: 2.8k

A link to the Google Doc version of this essay.

A big thank you to my friends Nathan @themeerkatnate, Mav @not-mavv , and Duke @dukedark-ness for reading this essay and giving me their thoughts as mlms on the topic. Make sure to check out their blogs and give them a follow!

So I was on a lovely website by the name of Twitter.com yesterday, just scrolling through while having my afternoon cup of coffee, when I saw that viral post of a girl reading a Larry fanfic through a classroom projector. I'm sure most of you have seen it. It's gone viral on Instagram, TikTok, and likely Tumblr too, and if you haven't come across it I'm positive you will soon.

Now, after getting through my initial reaction to that post which was, holy fuck, that's so embarrassing, I had a second reaction of... wait, this ship is still around?

And after I had some thoughts on the incredible permanence of some online ships and the weird obsolescence of others, I did get to thinking of how lots of these popular ships seem to stem from the same types of perceived relationship dynamics and homophobic stereotypes.

These online fandoms often seem to have an obsession with objects of queer trauma, such as having to hide a relationship, lying about sexuality for self-preservation, and even social rejection. So, after some opinions from my followers and the great archive that is the internet, I've decided to discuss some of the most popular examples of online shipping and the particular nuances they came with.

NOTE: Out of respect for all these people, I won't be sharing viral images or videos of them in perceived romantic proximity (or even kissing, as is applicable for some examples), but I will be describing certain moments I deem to be relevant. So even if you're unfamiliar with them, you won't be confused as to what I'm talking about.

NOTE 2: Although not all people within these fandoms were/are toxic, this essay is focused on the overall toxicity of the fandoms, and how they are toxic more so as a "hive" than as a group of individuals. When I refer to a fandom I don't mean every person involved in the fandom, but rather the collective impact of the group.

 1. Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson 

This is arguably the most popular example of online shipping. The absolute permanence of this ship, and how its fandom never seems to fully die off even beyond the lifespan of One Direction as it once stood, is downright impressive.  

I'm going to be the first to admit I was never in the loop with this fandom. My childhood best friend was actually a massive Larry shipper and asked me to beta read one of her fics, but that was before I even knew who tf Harry and Louis were! Not because I avoided the fandom or even because I rejected the online shipping, but just by coincidence, I delved into the world of pop punk music right when One Direction began gaining its popularity. I bought my first ever album, Riot by Paramore, in 2011- only a year after One Direction made their X-Factor debut. So, this fandom just bypassed me by a sort of weird coincidence.

But I don't need to be in the loop with this fandom to know the astronomical obsession with these two men, no, these two BOYS, was extremely toxic. In 2010, when One Direction made their debut, Harry Styles was only 16 years old. And Louis Tomlinson wasn't much older at 19! This made the two of them incredibly young when this unprecedented wave of shipping hit the internet, and although that must be traumatising for anyone, I cannot even fathom how overwhelming it must've been for two boys that young.  

I'm 18, almost 19 now, and I cannot begin to imagine how scary it was for the two of them to have their every interaction nitpicked within an inch of its life by thousands upon thousands of people online. I do not know this myself, but from numerous recounts by some of my followers, this massively impacted Harry's and Louis' nondescript relationship in real life, seemingly driving the two previously close friends apart. 

Now, before we move on, there's something we need to talk about. And that is the obsession with the dominance/submission dynamic within the world of gay shipping. 

With almost every popular mlm (an acronym meaning man-loving-man) ship based on real people, it seems that fandoms have a particular fascination with power imbalances in these relationships. You don't even need to look at the insane amount of fanfictions based on BDSM to figure this out. In almost all of the examples I'll be citing today, there is an age gap within the perceived relationship and a person the fandom has seemingly decided to be the top/dominant figure. 

Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are 3 years apart in age. Although it isn't all that relevant now, an age gap of 3 years when you're in your late teens is a lot more significant. In 2012, for example, when this shipping really started gaining traction, Harry Styles was 18 and Louis Tomlinson was 21. That power imbalance, albeit not that significant, is enough for a fandom to latch on to. We'll see this a lot more in the coming example with Dan and Phil.

 2. Dan Howell and Phil Lester

It's impossible to have a discussion about internet shipping without talking about Dan and Phil.

 Dan Howell and Phil Lester, although being popular YouTubers individually, are arguably one of the internet's most iconic duos. The two creators published their first videos together in 2009, and while their relationship was already a motive of speculation back then, the peak of the "Phan" shipping definitely came in the 2013-2016 era of Tumblr.

Now, I'm going to admit… I was actually on Tumblr when that happened. 

The 2013-2016 period perfectly aligns with my middle school days (I started middle school in 2013 and high school in 2016), and I was not only on Tumblr back then, but I was on Wattpad too! Again, this wasn't a fandom I had much contact with as I had a huge anime phase in middle school and I was on Tumblr posting mainly photography and Soul Eater content more than anything. 

But I did watch some of Dan and Phil's videos! And the occasional "Phan" content did not completely evade me as one of my closest friends in middle school had a fanchat for them. I wasn't involved in the fandom myself but they were actually one of the few English-speaking YouTubers I watched once in a blue moon (back then I watched mainly Brazilian YouTubers). One thing I did in fact notice over the years, around 2014ish perhaps, was that the two of them seemed to grow increasingly "awkward" around each other, in a way that many folks on the internet thought was reminiscent to Markiplier/Jacksepticeye, two YouTubers who also dealt with extraordinary amounts of shipping.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. The change in Dan and Phil's relationship, at least to the outside world, was clear to almost anyone who watched their videos for a while. I cannot blame them at all. The shipping was nuts. Between the countless fan videos, speculative comments, and insurmountable number of fanfics, there's no way the two of them didn't feel the weight of the shipping. The term "demon phannie" made its way into internet vernacular and there it stayed for years. Even Shane Dawson, who was one of the largest creators on the platform at the time, made several videos speculating on the nature of Dan and Phil's relationship and their sexual orientations. 

There was even porn made in which actors with similar appearances to the creators were made to have sex on camera. 

Now, this is actually a rare example where the two people involved in the ship actually came out as gay once the shipping seemed to die down. I'm incredibly happy Dan and Phil both reached a point where they were comfortable being publicly out, but I hate to say I'm shocked this day ever came. If I'd gone through what the two of them did, I don't know if I'd ever trust the internet. 

And again, this ship's fandom definitely had an obsession with the power dynamics they thought existed between the people within the ship. Dan Howell is 4 years younger than Phil Lester, and was only 18 in 2009, when they started making videos together. From my personal understanding, the shipping was often quite focused on this dominant/submissive dynamic especially in discussions from their early relationship. And this is in no way exclusive to Dan and Phil.

This general fascination with the older man/younger man dynamic, in my opinion, plays into the homophobic stereotype that gay men are predators. The idea that gay men usually seek younger men, and somehow "convince" them to engage in homosexual relationships, is popular homophobic rhetoric. The popularisation, exaggeration, and fetishisation of these power imbalances, in age and/or in relationship dynamics, is directly harmful to the mlm community. 

Not only that, but the romanticisation of a "hidden/forbidden relationship" is also detrimental not only to gay men and the mlm community, but to queer people as a whole. Queer people face huge trauma having to hide their relationships; queer attraction is already a societal taboo. And acting like this is good, or even desirable, is harmful to queer people as a whole, regardless of whether or not it's actually applicable to the people being shipped. It normalises this trauma not only to cisgender, heterosexual people, but to impressionable queer youth who grow to believe this type of trauma is to be expected. 

3. Frank Iero and Gerard Way

This is another example where the perceived power imbalances between the two subjects of the shipping were directly exploited online. Now, this ship did precede the others mentioned above. If we're looking at this topic chronologically, this particular ship did come first in the shipping timeline. It's closer to the origin of the shipping extended universe, if you will.

In case you aren't familiar with them, Frank Iero and Gerard Way are both members of the American emo band My Chemical Romance. This ship is the first one here of which I don't recall the full popularity. It really peaked in popularity around the late 2000s, circa 2008. And I don't remember this moment online as in 2008, I was only 6 years old and believe it or not, I wasn't really all that concerned with rumoured homoeroticism as a first grader. 

However, the popularity of this ship did carry over into the 2013-2015 Tumblr shipping boom. The emo fandom (or "bandom" as it was called) involving not only My Chemical Romance but other similar bands such as Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, and Pierce the Veil, found its hub on Tumblr. 

During this time, I did in fact listen to this style of music, but was focused a lot more on the anime side of Tumblr as mentioned earlier. Of course, I wasn't 13 years old like, "hey, this type of content might be harmful and can inadvertently perpetuate homophobic stereotypes," I just happened to care more about my silly little anime and ended up not getting involved. 

This ship does involve a discussion that the others don't, however. With Frank Iero and Gerard Way, there is quite often a certain sentiment of, "Oh, they brought this upon themselves!" as the two band members very famously kissed during a show in 2007. In my opinion, though, this doesn't really justify all the obsessive shipping. If you look at Green Day, a band often grouped in with MCR as another famous pop punk group, the members don't follow too different of a trajectory. Billie Joe Armstrong has, on numerous occasions, kissed both of his fellow band members onstage- particularly Tré Cool, the drummer. And Billie Joe Armstrong is openly bisexual, which none of the members of MCR seem to be but some, or even all of Billie's bandmates, are too. 

You'd think Green Day would face a lot more shipping as the more persistent onstage homoeroticism and Billie Joe's openness about his sexuality would warrant more "substantiated" speculation. However, Green Day faces nowhere near as much shipping as My Chemical Romance. Why is this? I actually don't know. It might've been because Green Day has been around for over a decade longer and generally has an older fandom, but I really am not that sure. 

 It could also be because of the lower lack of potential for forced relationship dynamics. The members of Green Day are all less than a year apart in age and are even similar in height. However, Frank Iero is 4 years younger than Gerard Way, who is not only the frontman of My Chemical Romance, but also considered to be the group's intellectual and creative "leader". Even beyond that, Gerard Way is quite visibly taller, and the perceived power difference between the two of them definitely did not elude their fans. 

This difference could even be partly due to the lack of a "mystery" with Green Day. There's not as much to speculate as, well… the members of Green Day are already open about their sexual orientations. It might be that shipping in the Green Day fandom has less of a forbidden appeal for most people. 

Of course, I won't just keep repeating myself, but my previous points about forced relationship dynamics still stand.

4. Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch

Better known for their roles in BBC Sherlock as Sherlock and Watson, Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch unfortunately had their roles follow them well into real life. This is the example I know least about, so have these thoughts from a follower by the name of @indubitably-a-goblin, who had the following to say:

"the main issues i had with it were:

a) they were both married at the time, freeman to amanda abbington and cumberbatch to sophie hunter (in which both had children)

b) the main reasoning for it was their chemistry in the many projects they've done together. which is, shockingly, their Whole Job. They're actors! That's what they're supposed to do! if they weren't good at interacting then they wouldn't be good actors! i don't know how people can't understand this.

c) they're real people. we don't know them. we aren't friends with them. we aren't their family members. we have zero right to be pushing this onto them and ruining their friendship by doing so. (this one relates to most of the ships you've mentioned though)

d) healthy friendships between two men are ignored so plainly in most medias and in fandom. its obvious that these two men have a relationship, but that doesn't mean it's a romantic one.

e) its fine to ship their characters, but actors shouldn't be treated as less-than-human or some sort of prop. they're doing a job, and once they are off-screen, they aren't here for your entertainment."

I believe she did a great job of summing it up on her own, and for the sake of avoiding redundancy, I'll leave it at that!

5. Corpse Husband and Sykkuno- an emerging yet subtle example

I am absolutely positive you remember how popular the game Among Us was a couple of months ago. And with the popularity of this game, some of its most prominent content creators became the targets of online shipping- as is the case with YouTubers and streamers Corpse Husband and Sykkuno. 

Although the shipping involving these two creators is nowhere near as strong as it was/is with the examples above, I do think there is once again a reemergence of a common theme here. Whilst Sykkuno is known for his happy-go-lucky, almost "innocent" persona, Corpse Husband is the antithesis of this, known for his much darker and moodier personality. 

Do I even have to mention what the common theme seems to be?

Again, although the popularity of shipping - at least with real people - seems to have died down a bit since the Tumblr shipping boom of the early to mid 2010s, I do believe this example is worth mentioning. Even though the creators are still close, they have in fact expressed discomfort regarding the shipping, and I can only hope the internet as a whole lets their friendship blossom and exist naturally without obsessive speculation. 

My final thoughts

As explored in the essay:

The romanticisation of objects of queer trauma as a part of online shipping normalises queer trauma to both cishet and queer youth. 

Online shipping, especially at a high intensity, can end up negatively impacting the very relationships they pine over. 

The relationship dynamics often forced on mlm ships perpetuate homophobic stereotypes about non-heterosexual men. 

If anyone else has thoughts on this matter, do share! This essay is moreso an opinionated observational piece and isn't meant to be taken as fact but rather just as my thoughts on the matter. I hope it was useful as a reflective piece regardless!

Date of posting: June 16th 2021