#anyways not to make me experiencing bigotry about bigotry. but i do have thoughts sometimes

[diamondrib]

but also can we talk about how I, star student who happens to be marginalized, have had so much trouble keeping a B in this one (1) teacher’s class and nowhere else bc he can’t treat me right? How I was so stressed going in there every day and didn’t feel comfortable asking for help? bc that’s just an example of a systemic issue when so many people are Like This

[vmures]

Not so Brief thoughts on insult reclamation and identity

Bullying and "othering" (treating someone as if they are so different from oneself that they are alien or monsterous) are sadly very common responses to encountering people who are perceived as different. Often that bullying will even rise to systemic abuse of entire groups of people. But it can also be very horrific abuse on a smaller scale. Taunting, verbal abuse, physical attacks, death threats, attempted (and sadly sometimes accomplished) murder. I've seen people respond to bullying in a lot of ways and have experienced some of these responses myself. One method is to shun the words they throw at you while trying to show that you aren't like that and therefore shouldn't be targeted. Another is to reclaim slurs and work on healing from the trauma of bullying and becoming comfortable in your own skin. And there is a whole lot of mix and match and reactions in between these two responses.

I think most, if not all, of us who have been bullied have used the first tactic at times, especially the trying to make ourselves less of a target--masking neurodivergence, being careful about how we present ourselves in certain social settings, etc.

But some take this technique even farther. They decide that they must be a good example of whatever different subgroup they are in and that the bullies should really target those other people who are not good. This frequently involves internalized bigotry.

For example, there was a point where I had internalized fatphobia so much that I was determined to try to be a "good" fat person, trying to eat the right food and exercise to show that I was trying to not be fat. This led to an endless spiral of shame, confusion, and guilt because no matter what I did I didn't lose weight the way the personal trainers and nutritionists thought I would. Then I got really sick and dropped a lot of weight and was absolutely unhealthy during that time. I was miserable and in pain, but people sure did seem to like me more, which was super annoying.

Eventually, I got better and as I got better I gained weight back. I was still eating healthy foods and watching my sugar then, but the weight returned anyway. So I eventually embraced the fact that my body seems to be comfortable at a size 18 (US size, and the size I've been most of my later teen and adult years. Nowadays, I focus on trying to feel less pain and being able to move better and not worry so much about the number on the scale. And truth be told I'm a lot happier and healthier both physically and mentally after shifting the way I looked at myself and my weight.

One of the things that I eventually realized is that for all that fat was (and is) used as a slur and a weapon, it's really just a descriptor of body type. I am fat. That is not a bad thing. It doesn't make me monstrous or ugly. And these days if someone calls me fat, I look at them and say "yeah, and?!" Reclaiming that particular insult did wonders for me. And you know what, so did reclaiming "freak" (a very common insult thrown at neurodivergent folks and anyone different), "geek," "nerd," "dyke," "fag" (some confused Louisiana middle-schoolers didn't realize it was usually used for gay men), "gay," "homo," and "queer." All of these were slurs thrown at me alongside physical violence and threats. There was a time I tried very hard to pass as cis and straight, but I was fucking miserable. All of the things that made up who I was were fucking slurs used to hurt me. Eventually, I hit the fuck you point of my life and reclaimed every last one of those terms. I'm currently working on reclaiming lazy. Because rest is required for a healthy life, and US culture's focus on always being productive is beyond unhealthy.

Because yes, words can fucking hurt and scar you worse than some physical violence does. They haunt you and pick at you for years after you first hear them. But part of that has to do with how much power you give those words yourself. Because far too often the one trying to weaponize the word has broadened the actual definition.

So yeah, I'm a freak, a queer, a dyke, and fat. So what? None of those things are inherently bad and those who say they are are lying to you because they do not want to see you and would rather you did not exist. So they other you and try to make you ashamed to exist. Fuck them. You get to keep on existing anyway. And isn't that the best revenge? Living your life and finding happiness where you can? And yes, it is dangerous to live as your authentic self. But that's why solidarity is so important. There is safety in numbers. Build communities with your fellow freaks, queers, fat folks, etc. See and be seen. Let people know that you are here and you are not going anywhere. Stand together and stand strong.

[variousqueerthings]

The Karate Kid/Cobra Kai Star Trek AU ideas...

@phantomcomet talked about a Star Trek AU and then I went too far in writing this post imagining some roles in Star Trek. I’ve stuck to the adults from TKK/CK and maaaainly envisioned characters through the lens of Starfleet (although not only). 

Anyway, here’s some thots! Any Star Trek/CK fans add more!

First things first: I did not think of a name for the starship Miyagi’s captaining, so I’m just calling it Miyagi’s ship for now. (The Bonsai doesn’t seem like a ship name really. The Crane Kick not so much either... The Cobra totally works though... anyway, someone have some ideas?)

Miyagi: Captain of the ship (later an admiral and then retires to take care of his bonsais). Obviously has a soft spot for Daniel, whom he probably spotted doing some whiz-kid stuff on a shitty, broken down civilian ship and took onboard. You know, you probably don’t even have to mess with his backstory that much to make it fit, he grew up on a planet on the outskirts of the Federation and saw some shit and is doing good, a la similar to Kirk’s backstory. He’s experienced abandonment from the Federation, so he may work within the system, but he’s fucking with it at every turn he gets and does what he thinks is right (a la Sisko. If Kirk and Sisko had a baby? Strange thoughts, but tell me I’m wrong).

Daniel: Engineer. Low key kind of a prodigy with engines. Engineers aren’t as often officer-class (unlike science/medicine and command, which I believe always are), so I can see Daniel coming into that from a less privileged space – definitely not the Academy – and initially butting heads with Johnny (as well as a bunch of others). He’s not head of engineering, but he works for the Lead Propulsion Engineer. Also he talks to the warpcore. You know he does. All the time.

Johnny: Security Babey! Also backstory is maybe he was trying to get into a command situation onboard a different ship led by Captain Kreese and he was the golden boy, but things went South when he was pushed to doing something he didn’t feel right about, so he was demoted for something bad that he’d done on Kreese’s orders and then couldn’t let go of. And he brings that baggage aboard Miyagi’s ship.

At this point people joke about Miyagi taking on lost causes and strays…. (but never to his face).

Ali: Doctor, of course! Did everything by the book and sometimes dreams that she’d let go of her parents expectations and could go out and do something outside of Starfleet. I feel like she might’ve studied with Johnny at the Academy and for a short while been onboard Miyagi’s ship with him and Daniel, but gotten transferred into a more specialised field at some point (chasing the dream).

Kumiko: Okay there’s three different things I see for her

1. Presumably this is a galaxy-class/exploration ship (similar to the Enterprise) and so civilians are also onboard. If Kumiko isn’t with Starfleet, maybe she was using it as transport as an incredibly famous dancer and there’s a whirlwind romance that can’t last vibe.

2. if Starfleet, definitely in Command somewhere. I kind of love her for a first pilot/flight pilot.

3. Command. Even if she’s not in Starfleet I can see her having command of her own ship: Quietly competent, but steely in conviction and capability, that’s her!

Kreese: Used to be a Captain, but quietly was ousted from Starfleet during an internal investigation that showed up a lot of problems during his command and even before that. Star Trek has depicted war, and bigotry, and I think Kreese would probably have some dirty laundry there (some of which hasn’t been uncovered). Still bitter about losing his command and losing Johnny and has some personal business with Miyagi that he puts on Daniel, like in the movies.

The OG Cobras: They were all on Kreese’s ship originally, but dispersed after the incident with Johnny. I wonder if only Bobby stayed on, studying intergalactic faiths and assisting in various first communications and interchanges.

Someone help me out with Jimmy, Tommy, and Dutch. Continue on in Starfleet, yay or nay?

Yukie: I caaannot see her as Starfleet. She obviously grew up with Miyagi on that planet and I feel like she’s heavily involved in the rebuilding efforts and has been her whole life. She’s traveled to earth multiple times to petition for relief efforts, and is incredibly anti-war – there’s a whole department dedicated to her work – wait is Yukie basically some hotshot activist who condemns Federation Neo!Colonialism… I feel like… that’s poetic… also you know where Kumiko gets her calm competence from!

Sato: I mean he’s some big-shot admiral while Miyagi’s still Captain and they have History! I think Sato bought into the Federation a lot more and is consistently angry at Miyagi’s choices and wants to initially trip him up, but he just can’t. And eventually they find themselves back home and patch things up – it’s the intergenerational environmental Trauma babey. You need to go back to the source to begin to heal.

Chozen: Speaking of intergenerational trauma… I mean, he’s gone through the Academy, he’s wound up as a combat pilot/second pilot on a great ship, (in this Sato isn’t captaining a ship, he’s risen in the ranks, but he’s pulling strings), he’s going through it. Unsure of what actually would happen, but I like him for combat pilot as a counterpoint to Kumiko’s flight pilot. Poetic.

Terry: OOOOKaaaay, who the heckening is Terry Silver in this? In canon I already HC him as almost a ghost, so how does that translate here? He’s an intergalactic crime boss, he’s got 50 different stories told about him (he’s an augment like Khan, he’s worked with Borg, he’s got contacts throughout the Federation, he came from the Gamma Quadrant) – only Kreese marginally knows him and knows he used to be an ensign, but before that… even he’s not sure…

Barnes & Snake: They work for Terry… do you think he’d do a longterm con of getting his own people into Starfleet through the Academy? I feel like he would. Officer Class, except Snake probably wound up in lowgrade security, I cannot see him having the brains to move that far up the ladder. I’m inventing a whole conspiracy now…. or maybe Terry hired Barnes after he got kicked out of the Academy, hmmm...

Jessica: I want her to be Science Class, so that’s what she is. Research and Development. Social sciences and Xeno-archaeology. She makes and collects gifted pots.

Carmen: She’s a nurse. I feel like she also came through in an unconventional way, possibly studying nursing in a civilian capacity and worked on civilian ships for a few years, using it as payment for traveling with her mom and her kid. Then, eventually, ends up on the same Starship as Johnny and Daniel and Co. (and now I kinda want to see her training under Ali, but in my head Ali left before Carmen entered the picture).

Rosa: I feel like the Diaz family didn’t grow up on earth – I’m aware that this puts people of colour mainly off-earth, but I’m thinking about Star Trek’s earth-metaphor as “paradise” (DS9) while it lets all the nasty stuff happen outside, which is… very similar to “first world/third world country” rhetoric + how in Karate Kid and Cobra Kai first Miyagi and then the Diaz family are immigrants. I think Rosa Diaz would get on with Miyagi – like a type of Guinan and Picard situation, where she’s definitely a civilian, but constantly ends up on conversation with the Captain and he’s not quite sure what exactly her history is. Also I’m imagining a lil toddler-Miguel on a big starship.

Amanda: Similar to Kumiko I can see Amanda in a lot of places – administrative? Officer class? Intelligence officer/analyst? Bridge crew? Captain-in-training? What are we thinking here? Also I wonder about her past, but that’s something I do in canon as well. I kind of like the idea that she’s worked incredibly hard for what she has, putting herself through the Academy, presenting the front of someone who grew up with giving parents on the “Paradise” of earth, but actually she didn’t…

[jj-lynn21]

Stellan interview

"Stellan Skarsgard Is Finally Seizing the Spotlight"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stellan-skarsgard-is-finally-seizing-the-spotlight

With roles in “Dune,” the Star Wars series “Andor,” and “Hope,” the character actor par excellence has never been more popular. He talks to Marlow Stern about his stellar career.

Few if any actors have built a resume as impressive as that of Stellan Skarsgård.

After achieving teen-idol status in his native Sweden—even releasing a pop single—due to the TV series Bombi Bitt, Skarsgård transitioned to film acting. It was in the mid-’90s, with roles as a sadistic oil rig worker in Breaking the Waves, a fiery abolitionist in Amistad, and a haughty mathematician in Good Will Hunting, that the towering, stone-faced Swede would cross over into America, and establish himself as one of the finest character actors alive.

He’s since maintained a healthy diet of what he calls “experimental films,” including a total of six with Danish auteur Lars von Trier, and Hollywood studio fare, such as the Pirates of the Caribbean and Mamma Mia! films, the Thor and Avengers superhero extravaganzas, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Cinderella. And right now, at the age of 69, Skarsgård is at his most prolific. There was his Golden Globe-winning turn in HBO’s Chernobyl, the upcoming villain in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, and a main role in the Disney+ Star Wars series Andor, which he’s filming right now in London. Oh, and he’s fathered eight children, including the actors Alexander, Gustaf, Bill, Sam, and Valter.

“There’s no competition, really,” the elder Skarsgård tells me of his talented brood. “There’s some joking competition at the dinner table, but I know they’re better than me, so I’ve given up.”

Skarsgård’s latest is the Norwegian drama Hope. Directed by Maria Sødahl, the wife of his frequent collaborator Hans Petter Moland, it is a heartrending autobiographical film about a long-married couple, Anja (Andrea Bræin Hovig) and her theater-director husband Tomas (Skarsgård), whose atrophying bond is put to the test when Anja develops terminal brain cancer. As they fight for Anja’s survival, the two reevaluate how their relationship went off-course, and why they fell in love in the first place. (The U.S. remake rights were quickly snapped up by Nicole Kidman and Amazon Studios.)

Anne Frank’s Stepsister: How Trump Reminds Me of HitlerNEVER AGAINMarlow Stern

In a wide-ranging conversation, Skarsgård opened up to The Daily Beast about his many great films, the controversy surrounding pal Lars von Trier, being a nudist, and much more.

How have you been passing the time during the pandemic?

In different ways. The first half of the year I was at our summer house on an island outside of Stockholm, and all my kids—who were also actors, most of them, and they weren’t working either—were all out there in two houses eating dinners together, having a good time, and seeing the spring inch-by-inch, everything grew, which you never get time to do otherwise. But this job I’m doing here now [in London], I was supposed to fly back and forth from Stockholm because I’m shooting this Star Wars series called Andor, and it would have been very convenient because it’s only a two-hour flight, but because of the quarantine I’ve been stuck here. For more than a month I’ve been alone in a hotel room staring into the wall.

Speaking of the Skarsgård household, I read a quote from your son Alexander who said that when he was a teenager, “Dad was always walking around [without clothes] with a glass of red wine in his hand.” Was that your vibe during the pandemic?

Not this time! Is it the wine that worries you? [Laughs]

Did the stress of the pandemic make you feel less… free?

No, I’m still taking off my clothes when I get home very often—and my kids also, some of them do. It’s not a big thing. We’re Swedes! And we have no God that says we can’t show our body parts.

What about it do you just find so liberating? I don’t go the full monty but when I go home, I do tend to take off my pants and let loose a little bit, because it is constricting.

If it’s warm enough you don’t need clothes, right? Unless you’re ashamed of your body—or taught to be ashamed of certain body parts. For me, it’s all upbringing. It’s cultural. Some cultures don’t care about what part of the body you show, and some cultures are very precious, and some cultures the women can’t show their faces.  

I’m curious what life was like in the Skarsgård household, because you’ve helped produce so many talented kids. Alexander described it as “bohemian,” similar to what you described during the pandemic, filled with dinner parties and a free-flowing atmosphere.

It’s always been a very open house, and the kids’ friends, it’s been easier to sometimes be in our house than their houses—especially during puberty, when conflicts arise—because we’re very relaxed and non-judgmental in our family. It’s really, truly pleasant. And my kids are more like pals to me. There’s no hierarchical relationship at all. It’s very nice. We just have fun!

It’s a very talented—and frankly, attractive—family. How did this happen?  

How did I make kids that look so good? [Laughs]

Is that something you’re particularly proud of?  

[Laughs] Well, the looks I don’t care so much about, but I’ve had two beautiful wives—and very smart wives—and that’s helped a lot. I’m not going to take much credit for anything. But what I’m proud of is, when I hear from other people in the business about Gustaf or Sam or Bill or Valter or Alexander, I hear that somebody worked with them and they were really nice on the set and totally cool with everybody, and how no matter what menial job anyone had on the set they were nice to them, then I’m proud. If they win awards it’s secondary to that, because that is a lottery anyway. Awards are sort of like reality shows.

They really are a popularity contest. Let’s talk about Hope. It could have very well been called Grief.

I thought it sounded bland to begin with, but in fact the film is about hope—and about love. It’s not a normal cancer film where it’s all about beating the cancer or fighting against it, but it’s about someone who gets a death sentence in a family situation with a lot of kids, like I have, and everything that was petrified in the relationship floats up again. It’s about how they rejuvenate their relationship, and through those horrible circumstances, find love again.

There’s one very powerful scene in the film that really encapsulates many elements and themes that it explores, and it’s the sex scene between you and your wife. It manages to capture the joy of reconnecting as well as the grief you’re experiencing.

I think it’s a great scene, because it starts beautifully—very gently—and it looks like it’s going to be really nice for both of them, and then her anxiety sets in, and things start to bad. And it does go bad pretty fast.

On another level, I’m an American and we don’t see sex very often in movies. And when we do, we don’t see it in the service of such complicated emotions.

With sex in film, it’s difficult, because sex is something that feels fantastic when you do it, and it looks ridiculous when you watch. Those humping movements like a dog? It’s not sexy at all! So, you can’t do a sex scene that looks like it feels, so they always have to be about something else. The sex scenes I had with Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves, it was about her curiosity, because she discovered her first penis, she discovered sexuality, and it was totally about the relationship. The sex was just there. And in this film, the scene is not really about sex but about something else. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sex scene that looks like it feels, and that can convey that beautiful thing that sex can be.

Really, in America, we get almost no sex scenes in movies. And it’s 2021.

It’s very strange. It’s not as bad as during the Hays Code, when you couldn’t let the lips meet for more than one second.

You just had a train going into a tunnel.

[Laughs] Yes, that very subtle image. But in America, you have a strong, strong tradition of bigotry or fear of sexuality. Only two years ago, in nine states in America, it was still illegal to have sex outside of marriage, and my American friends have told me that when they were growing up, it was even regulated how they could have sex—you couldn’t have oral sex or anal sex—so it is so ingrained in American culture that people’s sexuality is not a private thing, but something that everybody should interfere with.

Hope is also an exploration of mortality. Is that something you think about often? 

I’ve never been that interested in it. I’ve always been aware of it. It’s the only thing you know in life—you’re gonna fucking die. But already many years ago, I thought I’d had such a fantastic life that it would only be fair that I died, because I’ve already lived more than most people. So, I don’t feel any injustice in death. And I’m not afraid of death because I’m not religious, so I don’t have to worry about whether I’m going to end up in hell or heaven. But I have small children still, my youngest is 8, and I’m no spring chicken anymore, so I think about how I should stick around for at least another ten years until everything is set.

I read that you’d studied a bunch of religions in the wake of 9/11 and reached the conclusion that it was all sort of bunk.

I grew up with total freedom of religion—my parents weren’t religious, though my grandmother was very religious. It was taught to me without judgment, and it was a very tolerant upbringing I had. But I hadn’t read the Bible. And after 9/11, when I saw George W. Bush standing in front of TV cameras and claiming that God had put him there, I thought maybe it was time to read what they actually believed in. So, I read the Quran and I read the Bible. There are some fantastic stories—as fiction, it’s sometimes brilliant and sometimes boring—but the God in both the Quran and the Bible, there’s only one reason to really worship them, and that is fear. It’s a power that says, “If you don’t worship, you’re going to die—and not only die, but burn in eternity.” It’s a bit autocratic and dictatorial, I would say. It’s very hard for me to worship something under threat.

And if God put George W. Bush in the White House, then God has a very cruel sense of humor.

[Laughs] Yeah, he does. And the latest president said the same thing.

But he doesn’t believe in God. He only believes in himself.

Yeah. I think that if he had more appreciation from the liberals in America, he would have just as well gone populist-liberal.

I think so too. You know, I read that your Dogville co-star Nicole Kidman already picked up the remake rights to Hope for Amazon.

She’s picked up the remake rights, yeah.

Both you and your son Alexander have shared some pretty intense scenes with Nicole. There’s that dramatic scene in Big Little Lies where Nicole hits your son in the dick, and it almost seemed to me like payback for what you put her through in Dogville.

[Laughs] Yeah, I’ve done two films with her and Alexander just finished doing The Northman with her. But she’s lovely. I really like her. She’s so cool.

At least it was a prosthetic and not Alexander’s real thing.

Yeah… coward! [Laughs]

I gotta say, between Chernobyl, Hope, Dune, a Star Wars series, and even a Simpsons cameo as yourself, how does it feel to be at your most prolific at 69?

I’m just working! I’m doing my job and having fun doing it. I’ve been lucky and a lot of good projects have emerged. It goes up and down, you know, throughout life. And I don’t think I could have a better life than I’ve had. I don’t have any regrets. And I don’t have to be the star or be in something very successful, I just have to have fun.

Nice. Do you feel you’re underrated? I think you’re someone who’s so consistently great in everything that it can almost be taken for granted how great you are. I know you won a Golden Globe recently, and that was long overdue, even if it’s mostly bullshit.

I don’t know! I can tell you: it’s much better to be underrated than overrated. So, I’m very comfortable if I am underrated. But I’m a Swede with an accent—or most of the time I have an accent—and for being a Swede with an accent, I have been extremely successful internationally, so I can’t complain. When it comes to the big studio movies, and I’ve been in four or five gigantic franchises that have paid a lot of bills for me, their concerns are financial, and I’m not a ticket-seller. I’m a solid fucking actor, and I’d rather be an actor than a star.  

It gives you the mobility.

Exactly. The freedom I have. I can easily do small, experimental films and strange stuff—films that could ruin another actor’s career—so I’m in a good position.

I wanted to ask you about Breaking the Waves, because it’s the 25th anniversary this year and I consider it a masterful film. And it was Emily Watson’s first film, which is just extraordinary. How did you two establish such strong chemistry?

She’s British, which means she comes from a rather prudish society too, and to take on a role with an obscure Danish director—who wasn’t that famous at the time—and to take on a role with such explicit sex and nudity took enormous courage, but she was fantastic. My job was to love her, and that felt easy, but I think that she felt loved, and I think that she felt secure, which is essential for being able to do anything courageous. But she’s such a brilliant, talented, wonderful woman. I finally got to work with her again in Chernobyl. I mean, you just have to look at her and everything comes.

There’s this longstanding debate over whether Breaking the Waves is misogynistic or not, and I personally find it to be a misreading of the film. I’ve always thought of it as a biblical allegory of sorts about a desperate woman navigating a deeply sexist world.

Absolutely. Lars doesn’t have that in him. Those fantastic female roles that he has written, if you want to defend women in film, you’ve really got to take care of him because he writes the best roles for them. Those roles are very much him, and he definitely doesn’t have a negative attitude toward women. He loves them. There’s a plague of labeling people—not for what they’re really saying, but for what they appear to say. He was stamped as a misogynist and then he made a bad joke about Hitler at Cannes, and everyone stamped him as a Nazi, which is the furthest thing from what he is.  

Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves

You stamp people as a “racist,” a “fascist,” a “communist,” I mean this fucking stamping is as smart as QAnon. It’s frightening. The fantastic thing about mankind is that we’re not one thing. We’re all capable of the most brutal and horrible crimes and we’re all capable of love. We do good things and we do bad things. There are nuances. The way of seeing people as “good” or “bad” guys is forcing something upon humanity that is really dangerous, because when you say someone is the “bad” guy then you’re saying you are the “good” guy, and it’s forcing you to not look at your own flaws.

I’m a huge fan of Lars’ films but I think one thing that’s really colored people’s opinion of him are the allegations that Bjork made against him on Dancer in the Dark. You didn’t have the biggest role in that film, but is it something you witnessed?

I’ve never seen him do anything like that. It’s not him. And if you talk to any of the other women who have worked with him over and over again, you will not get those kinds of accusations. But the Bjork and Lars conflict was enormous during the shoot, and it had very little to do with #MeToo. Lars, like all directors, in the end is a control freak, and Bjork has controlled everything in her career—from the music, to the costumes, to the way she sounds—and if two control freaks try to make a film, there will be conflicts. I got phone calls from Lars during the shoot where he was in tears. She left the set several times, and it had nothing to do with sexuality. She tore up her clothes. They had a very difficult relationship. But you’ve gotta pick your toxic males. You can’t put a “toxic male” label on everybody, otherwise it will be watered down, that label.

I’m so excited for Dune. What can you tell me about it? Denis Villeneuve said that your Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is different from the comics or the David Lynch film in that he’s not as much of a caricature but a calmer, more sinister presence.

The thing about it, and why I’m looking forward to this film as well, is because it’s Denis Villeneuve. Whatever he does, he creates an atmosphere that is dense, that you can touch, and you’re just sucked into it. You’re never bored—even if he does long, slow takes. The atmosphere builds up, and you’re in his universe. I think it will be the same with this one. He’s lovely to work with, and a beautiful man. I did eight or ten days on the movie, so my character doesn’t show up for too much, but his presence will be felt. He’s such a frightening presence where even if he doesn’t say anything, I think you’ll be afraid of him. And I’m extremely fat. I had eight hours in the makeup chair every day. And in some scenes, I look very tall because I levitate. You’re going to have a lot of fun with it.

The whole HBO Max day-and-date thing is weird, and I hope as many people as possible get to see the film on the big screen.  

Oh, definitely. I think they made a deal with AT&T—which owns Time Warner, which owns HBO, which owns my phone—that they cut a four-week deal where it’ll be just for the theaters, but I’m not sure. That could change.

I also feel culturally obligated to ask you about Andor, the upcoming Star Wars series you’re in. What’s that about, and who do you play in it?

As you know, they’ll shoot me if I say anything! I can’t even get a proper script. It’s printed on red paper so I can’t make any copies of it, it’s ridiculous! Of course I’ve seen all the Star Wars films, because I’ve had children in the ‘80s, and the ‘90s, and the 2000s, and the 2010s. I’ve had children in five decades, which means you’ve seen all the Star Wars films—and seen all the toys as well. But when I saw Rogue One, it had much more atmosphere and seemed a little more mature—and that was Tony Gilroy, who’s the showrunner on this one. So, hopefully this one will be a little more than little plastic people falling over.

Was a part of the motivation to do Andor to look really cool to your kids?

I do think like that sometimes! I’ll go and do a children’s movie for that reason. But also, I’m not the most mature person myself, so who doesn’t want to go and fly a spaceship?

Plus, now you can give your kids action figures of yourself and say, “Play with me.”

Fuck yeah. Go play with dad. Don’t disturb him! Go play with him! [Laughs]    

I’m not the most mature person myself, so who doesn’t want to go and fly a spaceship?

OK, this is kind of a silly question, but do you have a favorite movie death of yours? My favorite has to be in Deep Blue Sea, because in that one you get your arm ripped off by a shark, and then the shark uses your body as a battering ram to destroy this underwater facility.

I would say that is probably, in terms of inventiveness, my favorite one too. It was Renny Harlin. Yeah. I like it! Fortunately, I didn’t have to spend that much time on that stretcher—it was a doll. But it looked really cool! And the sharks weren’t CGI back then. It was mechanical sharks, and they were pretty dangerous. The little boy in me was very excited.

Another movie of yours that I love, for entirely different reasons than some of these other ones we’ve discussed, is Mamma Mia! Is it basically a vacation filming these? I imagine the cast parties are a lot of fun, because it seems like you all are having a ball.

Well, it is. I’m not a singer and I’m not a dancer so I was scared stiff, but the only way to make it work—because it’s not much of a story—is that we had fun doing it, because that joy is contagious to the audience. And we really had fun. It was very relaxed in Greece there on the beaches, and the parties we had there were very good too. It was a nice bunch of people to hang with.

When the cast of Mamma Mia! goes wild in Greece, who is the one that parties the hardest? Who’s the VIP?

It depends what you mean by partying! I usually get pretty drunk. Down there, Colin [Firth] and I were pretty good at it. And at those parties, we also had 50 dancers in their twenties, and they had much more stamina.

I have to ask: Will the gang get back together for a third one?

I don’t know! It took 10 years between number one and number two, so if it takes another ten years, I don’t know. Some of us may just be there in urns, with our ashes!

You released a pop single in the ‘60s, right?

Yes. When I was 16, I became extremely famous in Sweden. We had one TV channel back then and I did this TV series, and it was like being a rock star. But it meant also that all kinds of shady people thought they could make money off me. So, this guy calls me from Stockholm and says, “Stellan, can you sing?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, try it!” And then I hear this guitar on the other end of the line, I go, “Ahh!” and then he goes, “Perfect! Come over to Stockholm.” I went to this very shady studio in the suburbs and we recorded it, and then the guy who was running the project said, “I listened to the tape now, and I think it’s better if I sing and you speak on the record.” So, I don’t sing on the record. But there were very cruel headlines in Sweden. One paper had a headline that read, “Stellan Skarsgård, who we loved on this TV series, we don’t like anymore.”

That’s so mean! In addition to Breaking the Waves, another film that really raised your profile in the United States was Good Will Hunting—which holds up remarkably well. Some of my favorite scenes in that film are the ones where you and Robin Williams are jousting. And I know he’s a wild card, so what was it like shooting those?

He really is a wild card because anything can come out of him, and he can say anything and do anything, and he has this urge to do it because he has these three parallel brains that are constantly working on finding something funny or interesting. Sometimes, even when we would do ten takes and everybody would be happy with them, he’d say, “I have to get something out of my body,” so we would do one extra for that. You didn’t know what you’d experience when the camera would start rolling—you just had to dance with it. And it was fantastic. He was such a lovely man and had no ego. He was just a volcano of creativity and ideas.

Do you ever think about your legacy? You not only have a bunch of talented children but also have amassed such a strong body of work.

The thing is with legacy: you won’t be able to enjoy it, so just forget it. No, I don’t. And it doesn’t matter. If you’re extremely successful, it takes a decade and you’re gone from people’s minds. You can only hope that your children remember you for a couple of years, at least!

Well, they’ll have the Star Wars toys, at least.

They’ll have the toys! That’s right. [Laughs]

[discoveringsandra]

Journal entry #13

Have you ever had to do something while you were in a clear bad mood for it?

I woke up on Monday from a bad dream. It was my birthday and my brother decided to surprise me with two sex workers who I thought, but didn't say so, were trans. Then I proceeded to hide myself in some sort of storage room (or maybe a closet) until the feeling of embarrassment was so bad I woke up.

This reminded me of a conversation I had with him years ago, before coming out to myself, where I told him that no, I didn't want him to pay a sex worker so I could lose my virginity. He was under the impression that having sex once would help me open up and I was offended by the fact he thought that was a good idea. Either he had a really low concept of me or a really high concept of what having sex can do to someone's personality.

The dream and the memories it brought made me afraid of coming out to him. I started to think about all the times he has uttered statements of "common knowledge" that were actually bullshit, or straight up bigotry. Sometimes I don't know if he actually believed them, he was just trying to piss me off or he was pretending to know more about something than he actually did. I want to think that he's learned and changed, but I'm scared that he would value more his own ideas of who I am than whatever I tell him. I said before that I didn't mind his girlfriend being present when I come out, but I think she can actually talk some sense into him if he reacts negatively.

Later that day, I had my grandma asking me when I was getting a girlfriend. Seriously, why? I have never really answered this question because it's not her business but she keeps insisting on knowing some girl that's like me, whatever this means in her head. My dad, who was present this time, decided it was a good idea to help me dodge the question by joking that I may end up with a boyfriend. I know it was a joke because he never speaks seriously about gay people, and much less about the possibility of someone close to him being gay. He may never try to destroy gay people because he doesn't see them as a threat, just as a joke. Diversity win, am I right?

Then, on Tuesday, I went to a job interview but I couldn't stop thinking about all of this bullshit. The interview was carried out by a consultant psychologist. When she asked about the biggest obstacle I could face, I decided to be honest and talk about how it takes some time for me to be comfortable and communicate with others, but it may have sounded to her like I said I was unable to communicate with others because she kept insisting on it and what I was doing to solve this problem she was clearly blowing out of proportion. I should have gone with the "I'm too perfectionist" classic, even if everyone knows that's just a lie told to try to appear as hard working, because I ended up having to defend myself for not wanting to think of my purely hypothetical coworkers as friends.

The whole thing left me thinking I had sabotaged my own job interview. I know that I have the privilege of a family that can afford to have me unemployed, but I feel bad when I do try to get a job and still fail, so bad I want to stop trying. It gets me wondering if I'm valued and respected by others, by employers, by my family, or if they think of me as a big child, someone who has to be taught how to talk with others, someone who needs to be to be peer pressured into having a love life.

Why is it that the first thing people ask is what do you do for a living? Why do people tell me about someone my age or younger who has a job when I mention my situation? Why do I have the feeling, by the way they react and the questions they make, that some people can't conceive the idea of someone not having a job or a partner, as if this was not only undesirable but impossible in their plane of existence?

It's not that I don't want or need any of those things, but I can't stand people, however close they are to me, trying to push me into doing things I can't control. The job market is anything but free and having a degree doesn't make a competitive candidate, I'll eventually get a job but I can't stand the ease at which I'm told that it would be good for me. Specially if they mean that it would be good to keep my mind busy. When I've had a job I dreaded it and spent every time I didn't have to focus on my work mentally writing what I hoped would be a bestseller. Some people see you bored and they think you'll get self-realization from doing uninteresting repetitive tasks for at least eight hours.

About my love life, well, I'm afraid of rejection. It turns out that I'm queer and people like me are lead to believe that we don't deserve to be loved or even respected. I wonder if that has something to do with my lack of openness... Yes, I have issues to solve, but I don't think anyone has the right to push me into a relationship, however well intentioned they think they are. Please, respect my fucking boundaries.

I need to add a "please, stop thinking you know better than me" slide to my coming out presentation, because they clearly do. If they did know better I wouldn't have grown up with the impression that I needed to hide my thoughts and feelings from them; I wouldn't fear that, the day I come out, the first thing they would try to do is convince me I'm not transgender simply because the idea has never crossed their powerful, insightful superperceptive, well experienced minds. I hope I'm wrong, but I'll add the slide anyways.

(and now some picrew to alleviate the dysphoria)

[siswritesyanderes]

Hello! I hope you’re having a good day! I have a request for Bellatrix Lestrange x hufflepuff muggleborn female reader (reader is a year younger than her). Bellatrix is madly in love with reader even though she despises her for being a muggle-born. Reader is terrified of her, but Bellatrix wants her to love her. Bella stalks reader at all times and is completely obsessed. She kidnaps reader’s family and friends and forces reader to marry her. Then Bella kills them off. I hope it isn’t too dark!

(Trust me, I’ve written darker, lol. In fact, gonna go ahead and say Bella’s thoughts are a bit darker than most of the other yanderes, so…warning: nothing too outlandish, but some of Bella’s pureblood bigotry and obsession stuff might be disturbing? Your mileage may vary. Also, I didn’t hit all the points in the ask, because I elaborated on some stuff and it was getting long, but I hope you enjoy it all the same.)

Purity was everything. And you either had it or you didn’t.That was it, on a fundamental level.

It was something she knew even before she knew how to read; some might say even before she knew how to talk. Her mother still told the story of when they’d set little Bella up with a playmate at age one and been somewhat mortified at how disgruntled and dismissive she suddenly became, in the presence of the other baby, until it had come to light a month later that the playmate they’d thought to be of pure birth was actually illegitimate via some filthy Muggle.

“She could tell that something wasn’t right with the little imposter,” adults would chuckle. “She had a nose for it, even then.” And they would pat Bella’s cheeks and she would soak in their words of praise with a broad smile and greedy eyes.

“An overly-intense child,” she had heard her father say once, when she was six and lurking in her parents’ doorway. “Well-mannered, but overly-intense. She is too observant of adult things, and she doesn’t get on well with other children, including her betrothed.”

“That contract has already been made,” her mother had responded, with a hint of grim humor. “They don’t have to get along. Just be glad he’s not secretly a half-blood, or Bella would sense it.”

And that was another thing that Bellatrix had grown up knowing to be true: that she was an incredible judge of character. As such, she never had to think about anyone twice; those who she loved were deserving of love, and those who she hated were deserving of hate, and those with whom she was indifferent were deserving of indifference.

Wanting someone, though…that was new.

And yet, even from the moment she’d first seen the mudblood girl- and of course, she’d known immediately that you were a mudblood, from the way that you carried yourself and from the surname that McGonagall had read off -she’d felt such a strong and unfamiliar yearning. Not love and not hate, but something with elements of both.

You weren’t ugly (Bellatrix never had been stupid enough to just assume that everyone ugly was a mudblood and everyone attractive was a pureblood, like Goyle and even Narcissa’s betrothed seemed to.), but it wasn’t your appearance that had earned Bella’s attention. It was something in your walk and the set of your expression and the awkward way you maneuvered in your school robes.

At twelve years old, Bella had seen the little eleven-year-old mudblood sit on the stool and wear the Hat, and she had thought, Be a Slytherin. Come to me. Sit here, and I will devour you alive. A mudblood in Slytherin would be a rarity, but Bellatrix wanted you, and so you were hers. She felt like a snake longing to bind you up in her coils. To squeeze you tightly, just to feel your feeble struggles and hear your weak grunts of pain.

She wanted to hear your voice.

She wanted to cut off your air.

But then the hat called out “HUFFLEPUFF!”, and Bella had expected to feel disappointed. Instead, a feeling of rightness washed over her. Of course, a mudblood had to go to one of the lesser Houses. Slytherin House could not be corrupted, no matter who Bellatrix desired. That would be like eating candy from a dinner plate: all wrong, no matter how much she enjoyed it.

No, it was only right that her mudblood was a Hufflepuff. Perfect. Not a mudblood who would think herself noble or clever. Not a mudblood with ambition. No, perish the thought. Just a Hufflepuff. Her Hufflepuff.

She repeated your name under her breath intermittently throughout the whole welcome feast: first name, last name, Hufflepuff.

She wrote it on her arm, when she was in bed that night, in the same spot where she normally doodled a Dark Mark, during her more boring lessons. When she awoke, she washed the ink off, satisfied that she would not forget your name.

It was while she scrubbed at the surprisingly-enduring stain of ink that she began to feel sick to her stomach.

Yes, she was always a good judge of people, and yes, she always got what she wanted, but…a mudblood? Did she really want anything from a mudblood but distance? Had she really allowed herself to grow attached to some-

She sank down to the bathroom floor and breathed deeply.

Was she like those blood traitors who disgraced themselves bringing half-bloods into the world when they had better options? She had never had any interest in her betrothed, a pureblood from a good family. She had always assumed that it was because she could only love herself and the Dark Lord (whom she had never met but heard so many great things about), and that marriage was just a means to an end, but…

Well, it wasn’t like she wanted to marry you, though.

She comforted herself with this fact. The air came easier.

She had no desire to marry her mudblood. Of course not. That was disgusting.

But her mudblood would not marry anyone else. Never. The very thought drove her back to her feet with a hot flush of anger coloring her cheeks. She whipped out her wand and aggressively cast Tergeo to rid her arm of the last of its ink. The skin cleared, with a sharp stinging feeling, either because she had been too fervent in casting the spell or because she had simply done it a bit wrong. She didn’t care; she savored the feeling until it passed.

For the rest of that year, Bellatrix woke up earlier than every other girl in the dormitory, got dressed hastily, and hurried over to the part of the castle (near the kitchens, but it was below her station to know where the kitchens were), where the Hufflepuffs would emerge for breakfast and classes. Contrary to the prim decorum her parents had instilled, she would drape herself carelessly over a banister and taunt the Hufflepuffs as they walked by.

“Oh, here come the badgers,” she would cackle, especially jeering at the ones she recognized. She already had a reputation for being a bully, so the Puffs, while annoyed, took it in stride and mostly ignored her.

Sometimes you managed to pass beneath her notice, in the crowd of yellow. But other times, Bellatrix would launch herself from the banister and wrap a tight arm around your shoulders, greeting you by your first name (instead of your last) in so sweet a tone that you flinched in fear.

“How’s my little mudblood doing this morning?” Bellatrix would coo, ignoring the other students’ protests at her use of the word.

“I’m doing fine,” you would answer quietly, ducking your head and averting your eyes.

It infuriated Bella that she was making such a spectacle of herself for a mudblood who didn’t even appreciate it. Bellatrix was beautiful, older, a Slytherin, a pureblood, and yet here you shrank, not in deference, but clearly in the hopes that your politeness would make the encounter end sooner.And of course, the other badgers soon realized that Bellatrix had taken a special interest in bothering you, and they started making efforts to protect you. Bellatrix changed tactics.

In her third year, your second year, she went more subtle. After all, it wouldn’t do for the other purebloods to begin suspecting that her interest in you, dear little thing, went past bullying.

She made a point of bothering other Hufflepuffs. Every other Hufflepuff. She racked up a few detentions right at the beginning of the year, reclaiming the badgers’ fear one hex at a time. Making herself a nuisance the previous year had caused them to forget that she was also quite willing to hurt them. Now, they remembered.

And so you feared her even more than before.

Whatever. What did your feelings matter, anyway?

Bellatrix commemorated your year of meeting by writing your name on her arm in ink every night, in her third year, and using Tergeo to clean it off every morning, until her left forearm always looked slightly inflamed. She imagined writing her own name on your skin, and she experienced a whole slew of new feelings at the image. She didn’t like to imagine the Tergeo part, though; she wanted it to be permanent.

She imagined carving her name, over and over again.

The first time, she would merely write “BB”, to let you accustom yourself to the feeling; she could be generous sometimes- it was a shame you wouldn’t appreciate it. Then, she would write “BELLA” a few times, in various places. And eventually “BELLATRIX”. She imagined her first time writing her full name would be on your back, right on the base of your neck. “BELLATRIX”, and just below it, “BLACK”. Your filthy blood would spill in the shape of her name, in her handwriting; Bella excited herself to excess, thinking of it. Picturing it. She dreamed about it, most nights (She rewarded herself when she had those dreams; they were better than the quite-forbidden dreams, the ones she forced herself to ignore, where she saw a wedding tiara glittering on your head and a loving smile curving your lips.), and could imagine nothing else whenever she walked behind you in the halls. 

She practically ached with the urge to run up and pin you to the ground, to yank your head back by the hair and make you watch as she took out her best silver knife…

She left subtlety behind her in her fourth year. She cornered you in the library during the first week of school.

“What are you writing?” she drawled, taking the parchment from you before you could answer. When she saw the heading ‘Dear Mum,’ she made a disgusted noise and cast Incendio on the letter until it was completely charred.

“Hey!” you protested, hilariously still bothering to keep your indignant exclamation quiet, out of respect for the library or at least to avoid incurring the wrath of Madame Pince. “That was for my mother! Bring it back.”

“You can’t bring something back that’s been burnt,” Bellatrix scoffed. She wasn’t sure that this was true, but she figured a third year mudblood and Hufflepuff wasn’t exactly going to correct her. “Why do you still write to that Muggle woman, anyway?”

“Because she’s my mother,” you answered, with such disbelief that you couldn’t even be angry.

Bellatrix snorted, trying to emanate ridicule when inside, fury was filling her so quickly she thought she might set the table on fire, next. Again, she experienced the familiar feeling that she was a snake who needed to catch her prey up into her coils until you couldn’t move, couldn’t think of anything or anyone else but the tightness of her hold. To feel your warmth on her cold body, to steal it for herself, yes… “She’s a filthy-”

“Muggle, yes. Sort of my whole family are; you never fail to mention it.” You made an effort to sound droll, but your voice was shaking. “If you don’t mind, I think I can manage to love them regardless.”

Bellatrix let out an actual growl, causing you to wince hard. “I mind,” she said roughly, able to think of nothing but her sudden powerful desire to set something entirely different aflame. 

All those Muggles- it was their fault, really. Without the Muggles, her mudblood wouldn’t be a mudblood at all. Worse still, the Muggles were getting your letters, your love…

She would rip their veins open with her teeth, if their blood weren’t too filthy even to piss in.

Smiling her nastiest smile, Bellatrix asked, “Do they even know how to use owls?” She made an exaggerated pitying face: “Or do you have to send it along the Muggle way?” 

“I use an owl. The postman doesn’t come here.” You had abandoned any attempt at wit; your tone was sheepish again.

“One of the school owls, I imagine.”

“Actually, I bought an owl of my own this past summer.”

“What breed?”

You looked wary. “I forget,” you answered, clearly lying.

Lying to the one who owned you. Lying with the tongue that belonged to Bellatrix, with the air that Bellatrix had so graciously allowed you. Lying, as though you didn’t know that Bellatrix’s name would one day be written on your back, your shoulders, your arms, your hips, your legs…Lying, as if you didn’t know how easily Bella could cut. Your. Tongue. OUT, and watch your dirty, delicious blood bubble between your perfect, lying lips.

Smart of you, though; Bella had already been plotting how to use the bird to track down the Muggles. There was only so much that she could do to them from a distance, but oh, come winter holiday…

She didn’t actually need to be told what your owl looked like; she had followed you up to the owlery the morning after you all arrived on the trains.

She spent the rest of that year, and the following year, wringing albeit-uncomfortable conversations out of you and terrorizing the other Hufflepuffs, at the same time where possible, until her mudblood was feared by proxy, at least among the younger students, and even the other Slytherins started to notice that Bellatrix was being quite particular about her bullying.

“What is it with you and the Puffs?” Andromeda asked, almost accusatorially, after pulling Bellatrix firmly aside into a broom cupboard.

“Gross; this room is for servants, Annie,” Bellatrix complained, deliberately ignoring the question.

“The Hufflepuffs,” Andromeda repeated. “Why have you been so…focused on them?”

Bella released her least-ladylike snort. “You’re one to talk, sister dear. Who is that mudblood, the one who calls you ‘Dromeda’?”

Andromeda blushed furiously. “You shut up about that.”

A gleeful cackle. “You needn’t worry about what I say; it’s your betrothed who’s starting to notice how you pine and consort with that badger. At least I keep my fascination in her place.”

“What do you mean, your ‘fascination’?”

“Mind your own business, Annie; I mean it.”

“You’re taking your OWLs in a few months, and your marks have been worsening since second year.”

Bellatrix shrugged. She didn’t do much schoolwork, but she understood all of her classes fine. She allowed her grades to suffer to free up time for observing you; Slughorn even let her sit in on the fourth year Potions classes, in hopes of “improving” her potion-making. “And you’re practically a blood traitor already, and you haven’t even left school,” she said to her sister, before flouncing out of the cupboard to track down her Hufflepuff (and failing that, maybe set Ted Tonks’ robes on fire).

The summer after her fifth year, Bellatrix visited your house for the first time.

A Muggle house, in a Muggle neighborhood. The swine had all stared at her on her way over, because of her robes and her clear superiority. At your house, however, the man who stood in the front yard, trimming a hedge by hand, smiled at her in greeting and asked if she was one of his daughter’s friends from school.

Bellatrix suppressed her disgust at this new development: a Muggle, and a singularly detested Muggle at that, speaking so evenly with her. “Is she home?” she asked the man curtly.

“She’s stepped out, but she’ll be back shortly. Would you like to wait for her inside?”

Bellatrix stared at the man, hyperaware of the weight of her wand in one pocket and her knife in the other. He wouldn’t be expecting it, wouldn’t be able to stop her.

But she still had the Trace on her, and she wanted to take her time with the vermin who called themselves her mudblood’s family, not rush to incapacitate them before she could be overpowered by brute strength. She wanted them dead, but they ought to suffer a little retribution, first, for having received love that did not rightfully belong to them.

Every bit of love that had been given to them, every time she had to watch you run to your parents on the train station platform, and hug them, and chatter with them with no fear or discomfort or flinching…They were thieves, filthy thieves, and she would bleed them, burn them, until they forgot what love felt like.

When I am grown and officially in service of the Dark Lord, she thought, reveling in the idea, then I can do what I like with all of them.

She wrapped a hand tightly around her forearm, sinking her fingernails into her own flesh until the images of you kissing your mother and father stopped replaying in her mind. One day. Not yet. Just a little longer. She was a student of the honorable House of Slytherin, a daughter of the noble House of Black; she could exercise patience for just a few years. And waiting would make it all the sweeter, would make their dirty blood beautiful.

“I’ll come back another time.” Bellatrix glanced dispassionately from the man to the house, memorizing them. She could see you in the Muggle’s face; she would remove those features from him, she decided. One day. “Tell her Bellatrix Black was here.” The thought of how you would react, when you returned home and received her message, gave her a pleasurable chill.

[dukeofankh]

When it comes to being a bi guy dating women, you learn that there are women who consider themselves “woke” on queer issues who have…some wild responses when confronted with the concept of dating a member of that community.

My basic theory is that the most common form of acceptance some women afford queer men is making a new category in their brain for them. “Okay, so there’s men, women, and gay men” the brain seems to say.(I’m going to largely focus on the bi male angle and let bi women speak for themselves. It’s also worth noting that this is pretty binarist in thinking...because I’m talking about bigotry). “I totally support gay men. Gay men are great, I’ve got lots of friends who are gay men. They’re a lot like my female friends. I don’t have to worry about them making a move on me, we can be friends and there’s no tension. It’s great.”

What’s important to note though is that gay men are considered fully and completely separate from other men. The perceived social role is totally different. I would argue they’re basically viewed as a separate gender. Which makes bi men a problem.

Bi men usually get filed as a gay man or a straight man depending on which one we read as most often. But if I’m out, as I am to many of my friends, topics will come up in conversation where they’re reminded that, oh, right, I am not actually straight. Or not actually gay. Gay-perceived bisexual men who remind women that they are in fact attracted to women remind women that, oh right, this is still a guy, one who I have to monitor possible interpersonal sexual politics with. This man isn’t actually nonthreatening. Straight-percieved bisexual men remind women that, in fact, they are queer. Which, if they’ve been considered as a possible romantic or sexual partner, is when some of those “woke” straight ladies can suddenly run face-first into the fact that, when it comes right down to it, they find the idea of being with a queer man in any sort of non-platonic context repulsive. The closest approximation, and I don’t want to suggest a parallel magnitude in any way, would be something like trans panic. Some straight women have a deep fear of men they’re interested in turning out to be gay. The idea that they were attracted, unwittingly, to someone who they thought was familiar but turned out to be an other. The fear of external humiliation, that they would look stupid or gross by association. That male bisexuality is kind of inherently tied to hedonism and perversion and that interacting with it makes them dirty in some way.

I dated a woman for a few years who knew I was bi but would basically treat me as straight. When I did something that didn’t fit that mold though, she’d get cold and withdraw. If I asked her about it, the explanation would vary. Sometimes it was that a friend of hers had a boyfriend come out and she was worried I’d do the same, sometimes it was that she didn’t mind but she worried about it coming up while we were out with friends, sometimes it was that she was worried that I’d cheat on her. It should be noted that this isn’t examples of me like, talking about how much I love dick. I’m a guy with a healthy femme side, and this would be in response to that. Acting in a way which was read as femme brought up all negative associations with bi men, regardless of the context. When she found out that I’d done a lot of soul searching about my gender and I’d considered whether I identified as male in the past, she screamed at me until I cried. Generally, it was clear that she felt my bisexuality was something akin to a habit for snorting whippits. She wasn’t going to break up with me over it but she didn’t want to know about it and she didn’t want me doing it in public.

Even if you aren’t out, you do definitely experience some level of ostracism from the public . Frankly, people are good at picking up when something deviates from a pattern. If they think you’re straight but you just…feel a little off? Most people read that as a bad feeling about someone. I think it’s people’s brains rapidly flicking between the “gay” and “straight ” boxes, not sure which one to put me in. In practice I think it reads that I’m being deceptive. So I’ve dealt with a lot of lack of trust. Not just from straight women, either. Some queer women still haven’t examined biphobia towards men in their thinking.

Anyway, I see a lot of discourse about the ways biphobia is experienced by women, but not a lot by men, so I thought I’d write up ma thoughts. Enjoy.

[angelo-thoughts-and-stuff]

Playing the Last of us part 2 just showed me why I hate and love the gaming community.

In my life, it goes anime, games, and depression. The first game I ever played was Lara croft on ps1. And I can't forget the feeling of being absolutely enthralled in this universe. This medium became my way of experiencing a world of fantasy, gore, love, and amazing storytelling. The reason I loved this medium is because even though I could fail over and over again I could still try again and not have the constant fear of someone telling me I was a failure. It's a medium in which I could have fun and relax and escape the horrors of the world. And last week one of my favorite games that I enjoyed the last of us came out with a sequel which I was really excited by. And the gaming community is going to war. I never realized until recently that gaming had such a toxic environment around it. You can just watch a slaty compilation on YouTube to see what I'm talking about. And this critique can also be directed at me. I fucking hate it when I play online games and it's just a lagy game or when I'm playing a fighter and I can't land a hit on the AI or when I'm playing PVP. It scares me sometimes on how much such a trivial thing can angry me, but it's cause I care about this medium, maybe too much sometimes. But I have never seen community hate on something so much, to clarify I read the leaks and I fucking hated them. I tweeted a pretty bigoted post on Twitter about and I vowed not to get the game. But I got it anyway and I loved the game. One of the best storylines I've experienced in my life. That doesn't mean that the game doesn't have a shit ton of things wrong with it cause it does like a lot. Like any medium there aren't perfect movies, books, or music all of our opinions are subjective. I don't think the game is a 10 out 10 or a 0 out 0. I really don't like scoring things but I know that it's important when it comes to critiquing art. In my opinion, it's a 8 out of 10 I absolutely love Ellie's storyline because it's believable and to honest Joel dying was not pointless, he's death is the reason why the story gets going.  I really didn't like Abby's storyline it wasn't done well. A lot of the side characters aren't really that well fleshed out. The first game primarily focuses on Joel and Ellie's storyline and both their character arcs are really well done but with some many characters in part 2, it's really hard to connect with them. A weird thought that I had I was if they splint this game into two-part like what they are doing with the final fantasy remake which I really hate but in the context of the story it would have helped. The people that are sad the Joel died and say it's a bad story really loss me. I have learned not to become a Stan of the things I like cause it really clouds my judgment on the things l like. As an example, Naruto is my favorite anime and I thought there was absolutely nothing wrong the story at all but going on social media and seeing how crazy people are about the things they love it really opened my to see that just loving something doesn't make it perfect and I don't want to a have a cult-like love for anything l like. Joel is one of my favorite character in gaming but he isn't a good person he's human and that's why l love he's character. I love it when writers create characters that are believed. A lot of times as fans we want the people we lot up to be perfect and obviously if we knew their flaws we wouldn't like them as much as we do. But there are anti-heroes who we love Deadpool, Vegeta and Joel falls into this category. Joel's story is sad, the world he lives in is sad losing your daughter in the beginning of an apocalypse is sad. Joel had to become a monster to survive in this cruel world. The ending of the game really left me  conflicted cause it really shocked me how selfish Joel was but he's decision made sense. I felt sorry for him throughout the game. But when you see him becoming a happier person in this depressing world it's such an amazing story, to see a character have hope in a hopeless world is compelling storytelling. It's very rare that we see our characters deal with their consequences, I really liked the risk that they took, it wasn't executed perfectly but I appreciate the risk.  The last of us part 2 isn't a story about "revenge is bad"  it's a story about forgiveness. It's about both Ellie and Abby learning how to forgive. I honestly haven't seen one positive review of this game anywhere and I'm going to to make a massive generalization but it seems they hate the game for either the following reason 1.) they killed Joel a "beloved character" 2.) you had to play as his killer 3.) they don't like the second half of the game. These are reasonable critiques but the ones I constantly see are "trolls" who are just hiding behind the really stupid defense of "it's just trolling or I'm joking" to hide behind their bigotry. And this why I sometimes hate the gaming community, it's the people who are saying homophobic and transphobic things about the game and making "jokes" about people that like the game. And there are people who say if you don't like the game that your bigot these two extremes are also going to be a part of the conversation it's just said that they are also going to be the loudest voices in talking about this game. These two sides are really infuriating when they talk about the game its just sad that this is how we as community react to things we don't agree on but this is who we are and I don't why I'm surprised about the war going on. Now, time to talk about Ellie's character arc I really loved it. It's her descent into revenge that makes the story believable. Here goal is to kill Abby it's pretty straight forward. And one quick side note I really didn't mind the violence cause I don't see how it's different from the first game violence. There are casual gamers that will find the violence disturbing but I've seen game reviewers and journalists who loved doom eternal and think this game violence is too hard to deal with like really dude?  I'm gonna make another post talking about Ellies' characters arc cause I really wanna flesh out my argument.

[b0x]

😔 some Thoughts on the Trans Experience under the cut that i wanna vent out bc of some posts ive seen around that just kinda didnt sit right with me i guess

every time someone on here is like “trans men cannot experience eldest/only daughter trauma bc they are men and are therefore experiencing transphobic trauma” it’s like... man, gender is way too complex to be so cut & dry about a topic like this. many trans men grew up experiencing the traumas of being a daughter And being a trans man daughter, both pre-transition and post. saying that isn’t saying “trans men are actually women because they experienced this women’s trauma” it’s just recognising that many traumas overlap, regardless of gender. i know it comes from a supportive place, validating us as real men, but that should include validating our unique experiences too. 

i hope this makes sense, but a trans-man-daughter is still 100% a man, still 100% a son, but is very different to and does not have the same experience as a trans-man-son. and a trans-man-daughter doesn’t mean “a trans man raised as a daughter because they didn’t know they were trans at the time”, or “a trans man raised as a daughter by a homophobic parent even after coming out and already knowing they are trans”. no, a trans-man-daughter can still also be a trans man raised as a son with 100% support, because a parent’s trauma can still pass on regardless of the circumstance, because a trans person’s relationship with themselves and their own gender and body and mind is so unique and one-of-a-kind that we were practically designed to overlap the many gendered concepts that so many gatekeep as a sense of empowerment. 

and it sucks making our own posts/experience sometimes, because they never feel like “our own”? because they all come from traumas and bigotry that have already been boxed and labelled and sorted into sections, and to be someone who has bits and pieces from all those different boxes/sections? a trans person can, for example, experience misogyny one year and then transmisogyny the next and that doesnt make the misogyny the prior year “actually transmisogyny”, it was still misogyny that was experienced, even if it’s later relabeled as “transmisogyny”. if anything that just makes it TWO kinds of misogyny experienced instead of just one. it’s terribly confusing. and trust me, for every cis person confused by a trans concept, i can almost guarantee you it’s just as confusing for the trans person themselves. and this isn’t also me saying that ohh trans people have it worse because we experience Double the bigotry and trauma - no absolutely not. i just think it’s important for people to realise that there are people who will experience both misogyny And transmisogyny and that in itself creates its own new kind of bigotry/trauma experienced, if that makes sense?

of course, i don’t speak for every single trans man, but it’s a very specific kind of transphobia a lot of us experience that ties in directly with eldest/only daughter trauma, and why we relate to and connect with posts like that, even when they’re aimed specifically at those who identify primarily as women.

and on top of all that, i see quite a few of the same trans man “supporters” who say “trans men can’t experience daughter’s traumas because they’re men” do complete 180s and say that trans women can’t experience eldest/only daughter trauma bc their transphobia doesn’t correlate with “womanhood” at the source, because trauma that sons/men/male at birth experience is different to the trauma that daughters/women/female at birth experience, which is.. horrifically and bewilderingly transmisogynistic, transphobic, alienating, and just..  Shocking. shocking that these two points can be somehow made in the same breath together without any of them realising what they’re saying.

it’s like.. this weird group of people who are somehow both the opposite of and exactly the same as terfs? theyre more like... tirfs - trans Inclusionary radical feminists - the people who treat trans men like a substitute for the “effeminate cis gay best friend”, the one’s who will validate your masculinity but not entirely consider you a 100% guy, latching onto that “biological fact” of trans men being “female at birth” and therefore considering you more of a “sister” than a “brother”, regardless of them knowing and understanding that you are a man. i guess its kind of very similar to the transphobes who make awful comments that nonbinary people are just closeted lesbians/gays?

anyway, yes, many traumas are gendered due to binaries designated by society and a misogynistic and men-restricting patriarchy (and many other factors that all play parts in this whole big system such as religion and the upper class), but traumas are traumas, and honestly shouldn’t be gendered, because they all overlap regardless, and can be experienced by anyone if the exact circumstances are met. that and every single trans experience is so unique and so so complex because gender in itself is an extremely unique and complex concept that it just cannot in any way be monitored or labelled into strict rules and laws and binaries.

every time i see a post on here about womanhood and daughter traumas and cis women’s misogynistic experiences and hell even a lot of lesbian traumas/experiences, i find myself completely and entirely relating to many of them every single time even though i am 100% a trans guy, and half grew up as a son. and i guess it’s just kind of weird but not so weird because sure while some days it just feels like im not calling myself a true trans guy, most days its just me validating and relating to an experience that i had that was unique to me and doesnt necessarily mean that im a woman because of it

because womanhood and manhood are temperaments, traits we are either born with or without, traits that are ever-changing and developing as we evolve generation by generation. anyone can pick up or be born with parts of womanhood and/or manhood. like that’s what makes all of us so unique, not a single one of us are alike in any way shape or form because of that. the combinations are always unlimited. so it’s just dumb seeing stuff like that gatekeeped. you cant Own an Experience like thats... what the hell is going on. every time its always the same thing, everyone’s always tryna play god in some way, be it mastering themselves, their own emotions and life, or controlling others, dictating what they think how certain things should be etc

it’s like that one post that’s like everything would be so much simpler if everyone was bi and nothing was gendered ghadjgdkgj

idk.. just.. to gender conceptual things like gender and traits and personalities and traumas is just so... unhelpful and unopen to change and not fluid whatsoever as theyre supposed to be. i dont wanna be all “nothing is real” abt it all but labels and binaries and decided systems and set laws are literally the reason, since the beginning of time, for wars and bigotry and oppression and poverty and the whole shebang. bc Someone decided one day that being a woman means this this and that, and being trans means that and this and that, and those meanings will be the basis we will rewrite occasionally and maybe add to, instead of completely scrapping our whole outdated initial ideas about it bla bla bla. 

im just tired gender is weird and stupid why are we arguing why are we so protective like just have a convo man rule with curiosity not adamancy and you’ll be sooo much happier trust me

[fishtomale]

When I was 14 a friend got me into Hetalia, and being that Hetalia is a bit of a hot topic right now I wanted to talk a bit about my experiences within that fandom and how I saw it cause harm. This was my first real fandom experience, so part of what I experienced will have been somewhat common in any fandom around 2011 and possibly even today, but this is the lens through which I can attest.

I would also like to note that I am not proud of my engagement with Hetalia. When I came to be 15 I grew out of believing offensive humor was harmless and edgy, and I realized that Hetalia’s very source material was unapologetically racist, antisemetic, and pro-imperialist, so I cast off any association with the fandom and original media.

Under the cut my experiences will be divided between the topics of racism / antisemetism, homophobia / transphobia, and pedophilia, so please read at your own discretion.

[[MORE]]

Racism / Antisemetism

- It goes without saying that the premise of Hetalia is problematic. The series, initially at least, focuses on humanized versions of the countries within the Axis Powers during the reign of Nazi Germany. These nations are not only treated sympathetically, but are the main protagonists.

- It was not uncommon for fascist and imperialist iconography to be found prominently displayed in both fanart and cosplays. It was a bit of a joke between certain cosplayers to say “I am not a nazi, just a weeaboo!”

- Cosplayers would sometimes take photoshoots in which they would do the “Heil Hitler” salute, and also point (fake) weapons at the Star of David.

- All this being said, among the “ironic” Nazis there were some legit out-and-proud Nazis. I wouldn’t say that these Nazi’s had a significant voice in the fandom, but the fans didn’t really have an issue with them existing in the same space.

- It was not uncommon to see fanart and fanfiction of ships between a country which had colonized / occupied / invaded another and the country that was colonized / occupied / invaded. Some more obvious examples of this would be England x India or France x Seychelles.

- Within the show and most offical art, characters that were obviously supposed to be understood as people of color were usually drawn very pale. Sometimes fanartists would draw these characters darker and would recieve a lot of harassment in the comments and inbox. The fans that would draw characters darker were almost always people of color themselves.

- It was really common to try and represent Japanese accents in fanfiction by writing dialogue like “Herro” instead of “Hello”. Most people did not see the issue with this and would go on and on about how cute they thought Japanese accents were.

- I remember a young girl from Bangladesh speaking up about how she was uncomfortable with how the creator of Hetalia treated brown characters, especially India, and she recieved a lot of anonymous messages that threatened sexual violence in response to this.

- It goes without saying that criticism was not well recieved or encouraged in the Hetalia fandom. You’d be much more likely to see the word “squick” than “problematic”.

Homophobia / Transphobia

- There are a few canon LGBT characters in Hetalia, all of which are cis men. I would argue that every single portrayal of same gender attraction in Hetalia is shown to be predatory.

- There was a wide range of attitudes towards shipping in the Hetalia fandom. Some people saw m/m shipping as activism. Some people were blatantly homophobic and saw m/m ships as a guilty pleasure. Some people would exclusively ship m/f ships and pretend they were oppressed for it.

- There were a couple of gender-nonconforming characters and it was really common to hear them referred to as “traps” and be portrayed in fanart in various stages of undress. It’s worth noting one was a child.

- There was a big split in the fandom based on whether or not you believed trans people were their gender. Those who were “pro-trans” or whatever were often referred to as the “SJWs” of the fandom, and when people posted trans headcanons there would usually be lots of bigotry in the notes.

Pedophilia

- It is worth noting that there are some pedophilia jokes in Hetalia’s source material.

- It was a huge joke that the character France was a rapist. There were multiple stories going around of adult France cosplayers jokingly threatening to rape children at cons.

- Adults at cons were also known to attempt and solicit sex from minors in order to “make their ship come true”.

- Characters that were children were frequently sexualized.

- Not only did pedophilia fics and art exist, adults I would have considered friends at the time would message them to me as a “favor” if they contained my favorite characters.

- When I would post closet cosplays adults would attempt to solicit inappropriate pictures of me in cosplay.

- Adults approached me on multiple occasions in order to roleplay sex and romance between Hetalia characters. They would take time inbetween the roleplay to ask me intimate questions about my own sexuality and sexual desire.

- When I expressed discomfort with a very popular ongoing fic, “Giving In”, after one of the protagonists admitted to having raped children multiple times, I was encouraged by an adult to stick with the fic anyways because it’s message of forgiveness was apparently really important.

- Looking back I was being groomed in some pretty public spaces and no one at any point stepped in and tried to help.

- It was pretty public discourse and opinion that teenagers reading pedophilia fics was a healthy way to cope with trauma. (Hint: It’s not.)

- There were no healthy boundaries between minors and adults in that fandom. Questioning adults, especially popular creators, often came with consequences because they were apparently the backbone of the fandom.

- I would gamble to say that many of the predatory adults I interacted with when I was 14 may still be in the fandom, as well as their previous victims who have normalized what happened to them.

[goldenkookietae]

Guns and Kinks | KTH | Prologue

BTS Story

Pairing: Mafia!Taehyung AU

Word count: 1,425 words

Warnings: Mature, Abuse, Anxiety, Panic attacks, Depression, Violence, Strong language, Sexual content, Femdom

Summary: Kim Taehyung is not one to break the rules, but his six best friends drag him along in breaking the underage drinking rule. There they witness a frightening murder in the room they were stealing from and can only wish they’d followed the rules for the first time. When the murderer finds out their hiding spot, she offers them a deal. Either she takes Taehyung and lets the rest go unharmed, or she takes all of them and decides their fate forever.

A/N: Keep in mind that Taehyung is not the one from the AU background, he gets sucked into it.

Disclaimer: This story is an AU fanfiction that I have created using the names of the members of BTS. I do not claim any ownership over the members of BTS. The plot and the personalities of the characters are entirely my own.

Do not plagiarize my work and do not repost.

Parts: Guns and Kinks (M) - Prologue

#

Taehyung's chest heaved as silent shivers ran through his body. He could hear the pounding of his heart in his ears, and it didn't help him calm down at all.

The woman standing before him was dangerous. He knew it. She had a dark aura around her. She dressed entirely in black, a black that looked darker than the ink that tainted the pages of his diary. Her eyes were black pools that resembled the voids in the depths of hell.

He unconsciously slithered backwards in fear, until he reached the wall. He realised that it was in fact a walk-in closet which was why all seven of them had fit into it quite easily.

But that only heightened his fear. They were stuck in a confined space and their only way out was now being blocked by a crazy woman who had just committed murder.

Remembering that, his eyes scanned that part of the hotel room which was visible through the now open closet door. And he regretted it the instant his eyes landed on the bloody figure of an oddly twisted man on the bed, a ruby red liquid seeping into the pearly white of the mattress underneath. Taehyung gagged as he turned around and puked the contents of his stomach. The stench of bile and the rusty smell of blood only added to his nausea.

As his mind went fuzzy, he flinched when he felt a figure touched his shoulders.

"Tae, it's me. Jimin." And it was enough for Taehyung to fall limp onto Jimin's shoulder, while the older helped him sit on the floor. On many occasions, Jimin would help him get through his panic attack, something he would always owe Jimin for.

Although, the need for such comfort had been very less, in fact none at all, over the past few months, it surprised Taehyung that Jimin could still calm his anxiety. He guessed, Jimin probably had the soothing aura by nature. He wondered what could be happening to him if not for Jimin. Just the thought of it terrified Taehyung.

"Nothing will happen to us, Tae. Now, take deep breaths." Jimin whispered soothingly, while he put his thumbs on Taehyung's temples and pressed them lightly. The action always managed to calm Taehyung down, even during his most severe panic attacks.

But Taehyung wasn't ready for it this time, and he definitely wasn't dumb to believe that lie. One of the first things he knew, that would only worsen his panic attack was being lied to about their situation being good, when it was obvious that it wasn't. It was true that he had had many panic attacks, but it never meant that he had gotten used to them. Each one was painful. It had vanished temporarily since he met his six friends he was with right then, but now it was back. And he hated it.

"Tae, even if something happens, we'll all be together." Jimin whispered in a firm tone as he looked straight into Taehyung's eyes. He had to admit, he was slightly assured by that, because he trusted his friends with his life.

What had he been thinking? A few moments ago, he had thought of himself as not being weak, but where was he now? Struggling to breathe and slumped against the back of the closet, while his friends stood tall in front him, shielding him from the woman who called herself Anya.

And Anya's thoughts seemed to have run in a parallel direction, as she mocked him in a lazy voice.

"Ah, what a baby! Can't face a gun by yourself, can you? And look at you," she darted her eyes to Jungkook, who stood firmly in front of Taehyung, "trying to act all manly. Pathetic." She spat the last word, her nails scratching against her gun as she lowered it to her side.

Namjoon took this as an opportunity to negotiate with Anya. He took hesitant steps forward, stopping next to Jungkook.

"Look, we don't know what your business here is, but I assure you that if you let us go, we will keep this a secret. Heck, it'll be like this never happened at all."

Anya stared at Namjoon with amused eyes, as though she found the situation funny, while she casually leaned her shoulder against the closet. She looked down to her gun and brought it up to her forehead and laid the side of it against her cheek.

"But it did happen kid. And you lot saw it. I can't let you off the hook that easy." Anya grinned, before her eyes shifted to Taehyung's crumpled form.

"And your reactions are hilarious. Especially that one over there. I'd like to keep him." She stared at Taehyung, licking her red lips, and he could tell by the way his friends had stiffened, that they were holding back only because she had a gun. A gun that she could definitely handle with ease.

And Anya noticed it too, as she let out an arrogant chuckle. She was far too experienced and confident about herself to be mocked by scrawny teenagers. She simply tilted her head before she continued, her eyes sparkling while she bit her lip.

"He could be my new toy. How does that sound, baby boy? Would you like to be my pet? I promise, it will be... naughty."

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"  Jungkook growled taking a step forward, his fists tightening. Before he could do something more, however, Namjoon gripped his shoulder tightly and gave it a light squeeze. It was a subtle message, that anger wouldn't help their situation. And Namjoon was absolutely right in that matter.

Anya liked to play around and was proud of her ability to mess up one’s emotions. She needed to have the power of authority in every situation and she hated it when people undermined it by talking back to her. Sometimes she found it funny, how the person talking down to her one minute would be lying dead at her feet the next.

"Watch your words, pretty boy. And, never, ever raise your voice at me." Anya warned, her tone low and husky, but perfectly clear. She scrutinized Jungkook with distaste, bringing her gun down to her chin, while the said boy tensed.

"Well, don't bother him, he's just a kid." Suga jutted in, earning a glare from Jungkook. Anya smirked at Jungkook before turning her eyes to Suga.

"Let's make a deal. If you let us go-" Suga began, only to be cut off by Anya faking a yawn.

"Then we'll forget we ever saw you shooting a bullet into a man’s head. You told me that. But it's not good enough. I don't see my advantage here." Anya shrugged lazily.

"But we promised we wouldn't spill a word about this to anybody. From the way I see it, you have everything on the plus side here." Suga muttered, baffled.

Anya snorted, shaking her head while she smiled to herself. "What makes you think I need you to keep this a secret? The cops will soon find about the murder and I assure you, they'll never be able to catch me."

"Why won't you just let us go then? A bunch of teenagers are definitely not a threat to you anyway." Hoseok blurted out, but backed away a few steps realizing he had yelled unintentionally.

"I'm having fun, that's all. I will let you go. Eventually. But you will have to pay me a little something before that. You kids are quite disrespectful. And I don’t take such insults lightly."

"Don't even think about it. I'll blow your brains off before you even get your fingers to your pocket." Anya stated in an even tone, taking a long look at Jin who gulped visibly. Slowly his hands moved away from the back pocket he’d stuffed his phone into.

"What do you want?" Namjoon asked desperately, "Just let us go and we'll do anything. How much money do you want?"

It didn't matter if they were offering money to mask a sin with the sole purpose of saving themselves. What help would ethics and morals be of, when they couldn't save their own skin? At this point, they considered it absolutely fine to be selfish. The man was dead anyway. Why put seven lives in danger to stand up for a dead man? Who knew, he probably even deserved it.

"Look at you kids thinking you could bribe me with money. Anyways, that's not what I want." Anya grinned as she looked at the quizzical looks thrown her way.

Her eyes fixed on one person at the corner of the closet, eyes closed, trying to regularize his breathing. In an instant all eyes snapped to the figure crouched on the floor. They dreaded her next words. Anya pointed a finger in his direction.

"I want him."

A painful silence engulfed them, where none of the boys could comprehend anything. At that moment Taehyung snapped out of his trance.

Why him? Why did it always have to be him? Why did he have to be a coward? Why did he have to be weak?

The world was a cruel place. A place that was ruled by bias and bigotry. Where both the strong and the weak made mistakes, but only the weak were punished. Taehyung just happened to be on the unlucky side, and he hated himself for who he was at that moment.

But wasn't this all his fault? Hadn't he been the one who had given away their hideout? Maybe it was fair enough for him to be punished this way.

In a chaos of words, Taehyung heard his friends offer to go instead. And he couldn't say a word. So, he let them.

"But I want him. And none of you. I find him very interesting. He'll be fun to play with." She chuckled.

"There must be another way." He heard Jimin plead.

"Alright. Now, let me offer you all a deal. Either you all come with me. Or I take the boy and you six walks away free. Please do the smart thing boys. He's not worth it anyway. Don't disappoint me."

It was a great deal.  Taehyung couldn't see why they wouldn't take it.

"I'll let you all go. Just give me him."

A moment ago, their only thought had been to save their own lives. But not now. The seven of them were a family. Brothers, who had been together through thick and thin. One would think, what kind of troubles could seven immature teenagers have faced?

But only they would know, troubles don't always come around when one is wise and capable enough to deal with them. Not everybody grows up with an innocent childhood. Some children are forced to take up responsibilities before they can even walk. Not everybody has a perfect family that is the source of happy memories. Many grow up and find themselves one. And that's exactly what had happened with them.

If they lost one of them, they would lose all seven.

"Never." Namjoon stated, bold and confident, though they all recognized the underlying fear in his voice.

"Excellent. More toys to play with." Anya clapped her hands together in enthusiasm as she twirled around.

"Put them in, boys." Anya called out as she lithely jumped out of the only window in the room, and disappeared into the cold night.

The seven of them blinked as they glanced at each other, not sure of what this might lead to. if Anya was walking away, did that mean she let them go? And who had she addressed?

Their question was soon answered when a few other men dressed in black stepped out of the corners of the room, making their presence known.

Taehyung watched each of his friends getting pulled up by their collars, guns pressed to their temples, and being pushed out of the window. He himself, was yanked to his feet a few moments later and Taehyung made no effort to stand on his own. It didn't matter anyway.

He stayed numb as a hand went through all of his pockets, and emptied him of the only memories he had. His belongings might have been cheap, but they were priceless to him. There was a reason he carried them around with him. A reason he carried her around with him.

Taehyung's mind flooded him with memories of her, and his scrambled thoughts drowned out the panicked voices of his friends. He barely noticed the ache in his back as he collided with the cold surface of a jeep.

Her smile was the last thing his mind remembered, before it pulled him into the pitch black of darkness.

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Masterlist - Main | Masterlist - Imagines | Navigation

[judythemoonicorn]

I’m 33 years old. That’s over three decades of being alive on this planet. More than that, I grew up throughout a major technological revolution - which in turn resulted in major world-wide cultural evolution. The internet changed a lot. A lot a lot. More than people even ten years younger than me may realize.

But that’s not me bragging, that’s me marveling at the amount of change I’ve experienced both personally and socially. 30 years ago my neighborhood was primarily white with a peppering of latinos (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, etc.) I lived (and continue to live) on the edge of the border between the North and South sides of my area (Northside is/was primarily slavic/baltic; Polish in the majority, Russians, and a peppering of others and Southside is/was primarily black and latino).

I didn’t see an Asian person in person until I was past 10 years old. Or at least I don’t remember seeing one before then. The only reason I remember that specific meeting is because I was running a lemonaide stand with a friend and a group of chinese (?) people randomly passed by, asked what we were doing, then laughed at us and walked off.

Anyway.

If you were to come to my neighborhood today things are vastly different. I now see asian people on a daily basis. There are germans, french, italians, indians, koreans, japanese, chinese, taiwanese, and god knows I don’t know all the possible places people have come from. My neighborhood is so diverse and busy now I don’t think my younger self would know where she was.

I emphasize this because, again, back then I wasn’t exposed to a great amount of non-whites. I could probably have counted on my hands how many POC classmates I had throughout gradeschool in my tiny, tiny school (my graduating class was 5 students including me). When I moved areas and went to High School, that school was primarily white (Italian) as well.

It wasn’t until my life went to shit and I moved back to my hometown with my mom and I switched schools (for the 4th time) I ended up in a primarily black/latino high school just a few blocks away from where I lived. Which, I should point out, a black child services woman didn’t want to send me to to begin with and acted like I’d be missing out or something if I went there or that I somehow “deserved better” than that place.

It was the first and only high school I went to where no one bullied me. People were kind and deeply interested in me and my drawings that I’d work on all day. I didn’t make any deep friendships; I found people treated me more like a curiosity all things considered, but people were amicable with me. Even if they weren’t always with each other (a LOT of fights broke out in that school, and it was the first one I’d been to that had students pass through a metal detector every morning).

Then it happened. The day came when a bunch of people were looking through my sketchbook and marveling at my work, and the girl holding the book turned to me and said something along the lines of “you don’t draw black characters?”.

I can’t say exactly what I felt at that time. Kind of shocked, kind of embarrassed. The thought had honestly never once occurred to me. Was I even allowed to do that? I’m ‘white’ after all. There’s a lot I’m not allowed to do, or I’ve always been told I’m not allowed to do, when it comes to POC. My father was/is pretty damn prejudice against just about everybody. I never saw the need to be, but my exposure was also very small to black families and their home and social cultures and the like. How could I, a Polish/Lithuanian girl who at that point in my life had practically no friends or real social relationships and a still blossoming access to the internet, be allowed to draw a black character?

Did I even have the right marker colors? (I only seriously took up digital art after I turned 18, before then I colored with alcohol-based markers like Copic and Prismacolor.)

It felt like a door opening. I was given permission to draw a black character. Someone had asked me why I wasn’t already doing it, and now I felt I had to. I remember very specifically buying a magazine where it had a photoshoot of some kind in it of Beyonce - who I felt and still feel is extremely beautiful. Plus she was the current hotness at the time so she seemed a natural fit for reference. I was studying for the GED at that point in my life, in a small ramshackle classroom where I was one of two total white kids surrounded by mostly latino guys and gals. People constantly asked me why I was there. I used “big words” (I still can’t believe someone said that to me...) and I was “really talented”. Life doesn’t really care what color your skin is.

Anyway, so I picked a picture I liked and went to it. I was nervous. Drawing the actual figure of the character wasn’t the hard part. Coloring her skin was. I didn’t have many brown colored markers, and markers were expensive for a young woman with no income. I’m talking sometimes $5 a marker. Prismacolor was cheaper and easier to get, but the color quality varied. I had tons of light-skinned colors. Only one brown I felt suitable for a black person.

Long story short on that one I created a character I really quite liked, and I was met with approval from my peers as well. It felt good. But I still felt I was missing the grand picture.

What did it mean to be ‘black’? In a physical sense, I mean. If I was meaning to portray the physical then surely it was more than just a skin color. Even I knew back then that I couldn’t just slap a darker skin color on a random face and call it a day. Half the time that’d just be a really tan ‘white’ person. I was so worried about not having the right marker color back then perhaps in part because it would be the only thing that distinguished the character I was creating as black. I was only drawing generic anime faces back then. What made the character read as ‘black’? There had to be more to it.

I think after that I started to take it as an observational fascination. There was a teacher at the GED program who was a tall, lean black man who played in a jazz band as a saxophonist, and I would stare at him the whole lesson (probably a little too much). He was perfect in my eyes for what I was looking for and what I hadn’t been exposed to growing up. The shape of his nose, his cheeks, his eyes, the gloss of his dark skin under lights; the way the palms of his hands were lighter than the rest of his skin struck me as romantic. I wanted to hold them and stare at them and study the lines I could so clearly see compared to my own pale hands. I never had a crush or anything like that despite the way I tell it, it just felt like an epiphany. Here I had someone to actively study. A model. Someone who was a mentor to me and I didn’t have to go through the social hoops of being a family friend or something.

Color was important. Absolutely important. But so was structure, attitude, body language, the shape of the face and the joints of the hands. The whole body had quirks to it that rang him as human just like me, but different unlike me. It’s hard for me to fully put it into words when I’m trying to describe it from a purely artistic sense. In the normal freaking world people are just people. But like I said before; when you want to recreate or portray the physical in a drawing/painting/whatever, there’s a whole other layer to it all. It’s like the real world is a photograph - very exact and to its own point. An illustration needs to capture the soul of a moment and all the elements that come with it.

There is a way to draw a woman that portrays her as a woman. To give hints to her personality and all else that she is. It’s like that. I needed to know what made a POC what they were beyond picking the right shade of red-brown.

And I say all this, I emphasize all this, because oh my god I see so many posts on Tumblr calling out ‘white people’ on their lack of ability to properly color black or brown characters. Or they call out whitewashing, or they call out characters being ‘too ashy’, and the accusations fly because holy shit a white person who’s been white all their life doesn’t know how to draw black people. Can you even believe?

I’ve literally seen images that feature extremely, purposefully washed-out color schemes getting railed against because one of the characters is dark skinned but the wash-out makes them look ‘white’. I remember that time Beyonce did a photo shoot and the lighting and makeup made her look very light-skinned and people called her out for whitewashing herself.

Maybe I don’t understand. I fully admit that. I’m only a simple, not-that-professional artist trying to understand the world. But I do want to believe there’s a lot more to being who you are than how you were born, who you love, or what color your skin is. When I see someone like Beyonce I see Beyonce. I don’t see a black woman. I see a woman who happens to be black. But maybe this, too, is ‘privilege’... And maybe there are things I can accept for the sake of artistic expression without the weight of racism or bigotry weighing on my mind and soul. I have to acknowledge that, too.

I sure mentioned Beyonce a lot. Jeez. Her and Rihanna are like the two most beautiful women in the world in my opinion though. And I often have Naomi Campbell on my mind too because she was a muse for Naoko Takeuchi when doing an illustration of Setsuna/Sailor Pluto. So.

ANYYYYbutt... As a closing thought, I have to wonder how different my thinking would be if I were a young artist today with all this access to resources and tutorials and every color under the sun with digital art. And a lot of people talking down to me about how awful I am as a white person for not knowing how to shade darker skin. There’s a lot of posts like that. Hm. Tumblr is a weird place.

[wineanddinosaur]

VinePair Podcast: Wine Has a Bad Language Problem

This week on the “VinePair Podcast,” Adam Teeter, Zach Geballe, and Joanna Sciarrino discuss how the language of wine tasting notes has created a gatekeeping effect in the industry. After listing what they have been drinking recently — including a Pennsylvania Nebbiolo — our hosts dive into a discussion about the pretension of many wine descriptors.

That conversation leads into the hosts’ opinions about how wine tasting notes often alienate people who are just getting into wine. This particular Eurocentric language creates a barrier for entry into wine, which can be intimidating to some and a turn-off for others. Instead, Geballe, Sciarrino, and Teeter believe that professionals should take a step back and allow consumers to make their own decisions about wine.

If you have any thoughts on wine language, please send your ideas to podcast@vinepair.com.

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Or Check out the Conversation Here

Adam Teeter: From VinePair’s New York City headquarters, I’m Adam Teeter.

Joanna Sciarrino: I’m Joanna Sciarrino.

Zach Geballe: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the “VinePair Podcast.” Zach and Joanna, how were your holiday weekends? What’s going on?

J: Do you want to take it, Zach?

Z: Oh sure.

A: He never misses a chance to be called on first.

Z: Well, I just follow the lead. Anyway, my weekend was nice. We had a pretty low-key fourth. We had a few of my cousins over for what my wife, who is from Wisconsin, refers to as “cooking out.” I refer to it as grilling. Whatever, it’s cool. It was pretty casual. The Fourth of July is a rough night for my dog, which is unfortunate, but he did OK. It was nice that my wife had a four-day weekend, which is cool. Yesterday, she said, “We gotta go back to work.” That just means her office. Still, it’s an adjustment for all of us. But it was nice to drink a lot of rosé over the weekend. It was warm, sunny, and just good weather for rosé. We also had some chilled reds from northern Italy. It was lovely. Joanna, what did you do?

J: Nice. So our Fourth of July was also very low-key. We just hung out at home and on our roof for a little bit. We also grabbed dinner at a local restaurant. We also had some rosé and had some more Tip Top Proper Cocktails, which I love. I really like them. I also had a really good, Oaxaca Old Fashioned.

A: Very cool, so my Fourth of July was good and also not good. On the good front, I had some really delicious wine. My wife is from Lancaster, Pa., and we brought some really cool wines with us. Keith, who is VinePair’s tastings director, and his wife Gina came along, and we had a bottle of Biondi Santi that was incredible. We also actually had a really great wine that’s made in Pennsylvania. It’s called Vox Vineti. He was a big wine lover from Manhattan, moved to Pennsylvania, found this amazing piece of property, and is making Nebbiolo and things like that, which was awesome. On the not-so-good front, I wasn’t sure I was going to talk about this, but I think I need to. That night of the Fourth of July, we were playing with fireworks in the front yard with the whole neighborhood. This guy across the street came out and yelled f*****g Jews at us and it wasn’t the first time that I have experienced anti-Semitism in my life, but it was pretty jarring. It reminded me of the two times recently I have experienced it in our industry. Once, an Amarone producer told me, without knowing I was Jewish, that the reason his Amarone prices were falling was that the Jews control the markets. Another time when I was in Chile, a wine producer said to me that the reason Chile is known for cheap wine is because of the Jews. I thought about that and thought this is completely unacceptable. The fact that this person felt it was OK to yell at us, and he had no clue that we were Jewish. Besides the fact that my in-laws are, but they’re not outwardly looking Jewish at all, meaning that they’re not religious. They don’t wear any head coverings, etc. He still chose to yell that at us anyway. Keith and Gina, obviously, are not Jewish. Then, the fact that these two producers have said these things to me prior to Covid as a “we know the truth,” right? I felt that I needed to say something because it’s completely unacceptable and absolutely ridiculous. We’re talking about all these other times where we want to root out all the huge issues in our drinking culture, whether it’s sexism, racism, xenophobia, etc. I believe that when this happened to me, I had not spoken up in the past. In both those situations, I didn’t say anything. This weekend made me regret that. I wanted to protect the publicist, who apologized for the winemaker who said it. I wanted to look the other way. At this point, I’m not going to protect those people anymore. Actually, the publicist who wanted to protect that winemaker, I’m pretty disappointed, still has that winery as a client, which is not cool. Anyways, not to take us down a weird path, but it was just something that I’ve been thinking about since it happened on Sunday. It weirdly ended my Fourth of July weekend, and it needed to be somewhat brought up because we all have to talk about these things or they’re just not going to go away.

J: I’m really sorry that happened to you. That sucks.

A: It was nuts.

J: It’s really disgusting.

Z: Adam, I think you and I have talked off-air about this before, but I, too, have been subjected to anti-Semitism. I have also been present when those things have been said when someone doesn’t necessarily know that I’m Jewish, and it’s awkward. It’s both offensive and awkward. For me, it’s often been hardest with “jokes,” where you think, “Do I want to be that person who makes a big deal about this?” One time in particular, I came very close to saying something, and I regret not doing it. I also think it’s one of those things where sometimes, you make a decision where the person telling the joke that’s inappropriate is frankly, someone who passed away within the next year and was quite old. Then, is this really worth getting into? I don’t know what it is. You end up in this place where you just recognize it. It also reminds you that this thinking, these beliefs, whether it is anti-Semitism or bigotry of all other kinds, it is there. Frankly, I’ve thought in my life that when someone says something in that vein, I know where they stand. They never say anything and they’re just thinking it real hard, you know where you’re at with that person. When they open their mouths and say something like that, now I know this is how you feel about me, women, or people of color. Obviously, this happens in a lot of ways and I know that many of our listeners have been present or victim to this, so it’s obviously not just anti-Semitism. For you and me, Adam, we’ve experienced it personally.

A: Yeah, exactly. I would assume a lot of our listeners have experienced this in another form, whether it’s sexism, racism, etc., and it’s just not appropriate. It’s not OK. If you are listening, and this happened to you, it can be really scary to say something in the moment, right? You don’t want to say something. I think whether you address it later or you talk to people who are involved, it is important if you believe you can. I think it’s important for people who represent these people. If you have a client, I understand that’s revenue, but if you have a client that is doing these things or is saying these things, it’s a reflection on you if you continue to work with them, and in this regard when it was the winemaker from Italy, “Oh, he’s just their export manager. He’s just one of the brothers.” He’s the export manager?! Come on, that means he deals with people publicly all the time and that reflects on that winery. You shouldn’t be working with them anymore, regardless of what fees they pay. Again, we have a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, over the past five years, there’s been an acceptance of saying these things again. Hopefully, we’re moving away from that, but there definitely seems to still be a large number of people who are very emboldened to say very hateful things to people — whether they know or don’t know those people are part of those groups. It’s not cool. It’s just not cool. Anyways, I will change the subject so we don’t only talk about this for the rest of the episode and get into a different one which is also equally, I think, about acceptance and trying to make things more inclusive to all people. Zach, I’ll let you jump into our topic for today.

Z: Yeah, so this started as a thought in my head that that’s been getting more concrete over the last couple of years, and it’s come from a lot of teaching and working with the public on wine in particular. Unfortunately, the wine industry — and I think you see this spilling out into beer and spirits, too — there is this emphasis on really specific almost comical tasting notes as well as European-centric, too. What I mean by this is if you go look at the tasting notes for a wine and it says “late season blackberry compote and spring sandalwood,” that is the type of language that I think all of us in one way or another roll our eyes at in a sense. It also has this really pernicious effect, which in my opinion, at least, it really gives casual wine drinkers and people who work in the trade, this sense that every wine is a test, and all of us fail. One, picking out all of those tasting notes is often being pulled out of someone’s ass, to be completely honest. You’ve got to write a paragraph about wine if you’re a reviewer or if you’re the person creating the shelf talkers for the winery or for the distributor. You’ve got to say something, and there’s only so many ways to describe wine. There are only so many flavors and aromas. There are a lot of them, but in the end, how many different ways can you say blackberry? Again, it creates this idea that these flavors, these aromas, are not just present in the wine, but distinguishable for everyone. If you drink this one, you should get these notes. That’s the perception that the industry gives off. It is not true and also serves to alienate people. I was just pouring at a public event the other day, and people asked, “What should I be getting in this wine?” I mean, just drink it. You can tell me what you think, but this isn’t a test. I don’t have a scoresheet here. I’m not looking to grade how good of a wine drinker you are. I’m really disinterested in that entirely. Again, this idea that every wine is a test for people is the one that I really want to see go away. Joanna, since you’re someone who is newer to wine, I would love to know from you if this rings true. Is something that you have experienced?

J: Yeah, that’s a good question. My initial thought when I’m tasting wine is what I taste, versus what I think I’m supposed to taste. Seeing something that says “marionberry,” maybe I can pick up some berry qualities or berry on the palate. I’m not necessarily looking to those descriptors to inform how it tastes for me. If I can taste a wine and then identify something that’s been written, great. But I also understand what you’re saying, Zach. I think for people, especially people who are trying to educate themselves about wine, people who are attending classes, I understand this desire to be able to taste what a professional says you should taste. I also see where that’s problematic because that leaves it to your own palate and what you’ve tasted. If you haven’t tasted a marionberry, which I don’t actually think I have, then you’re excluded from that experience, right?

A: Well, when you see these tasting notes, do you find them to be intimidating? I’ve definitely heard that from people who are getting into wine that’s what has always intimidated them to begin with. Or do you just think that they’re pointless?

J: Actually, what I find more intimidating in some of these other descriptors. I don’t know what a chewy wine is. What is a crunchy wine? I don’t know what that is, so that’s when I feel stupid.

A: No, I agree. An issue with wine is that it’s created this language for itself over years and years of writing about it. People collect it and make it, which is great, but it does then create a barrier to entry. The only challenge that I would posit, which is something that I think Zach and I have talked about before, is that I think a lot of people lose in wine like that barrier. That barrier to entry means that not everyone can enter the luxury market. I mean, think about it this way. If you’re talking about handbags…

Z: Adam’s favorite comparison!

A: I haven’t talked about this in the past?!

Z: Yes, you have.

A: No, I haven’t.

Z: Oh, yes, you have.

A: Whatever, so not everyone’s allowed to buy a Birkin bag. You have to walk into Hermès and you have to ask a certain way. Then, they have to size you up and then they’ll let you buy a Birkin. It’s an elite club. When you have the Birkin, you are known as someone who was able to buy a Birkin. I think in a lot of ways, the way we talk about wine is, are you in the know, or are you not? I’m going to say things in a way such as, are you going to appreciate this wine, or are you just buying it because it’s expensive? I had a similar experience recently where I went out to dinner with some people and we went to a very nice restaurant in Manhattan, Le Bernardin. I ordered a bottle of wine, and the wine came to the table. It was from an area of Burgundy that is not known for having the best Pinot Noirs, but if you’re on this specific spot in this area, you actually might as well be in one of the best areas of Burgundy for Pinot. The two people that I was with love wine, but don’t know a lot about or don’t speak the language. They asked, “Hey, can you tell us what wine?” The server just went off this laundry list of all these random descriptors and said what I said, but almost making them think that the wine was a diamond in the rough, but in a really weird way that totally overwhelmed them. All they were looking for him to say is “Oh, the producer is this person. They’re really known for making whatever and the wines f*cking delicious.” That’s all they were looking for. When he left, they were saying it was like he was testing them and did they understand what he’s saying? That’s what I’ve always wondered with wine: Is it both? First of all, to become really versed in wine, you are almost forced to learn all these descriptors and all these ways to talk about it because you want to be able to have these conversations with other people in the know. So it’s a way to challenge people, but then it’s also this barrier for a lot of people. Joanna, as you were saying before we started recording, it also doesn’t take into account the experiences of so many people who are currently coming into wine who have different aroma experiences, have different cuisine experiences than this traditional, very much French, Eurocentric way that we have always talked about wine.

Z: I think you make a good point, Adam, about a segment of the wine industry reveling in some sense in the way that the language creates a barrier to entry. Tasting notes like I’ve described are ubiquitous. You see them on $7 bottles of wine as much as you see them on $700 bottles of wine. It’s not just a high-end problem. I think it’s an all-of-wine problem. To me, it comes back to a fundamental issue that we have in the industry. If we want to talk about wine in a way that is accessible to people but also not the opposite. Sometimes, when it’s just like, “This wine is good,” I find that to be a little bit “eh, fine.” I think there is a middle ground to find and it’s maybe a middle ground of accepting that most people, given their life experience, may not be able to distinguish between blackberry, marionberry, loganberry, and boysenberry, but they probably have had berries before. They have some sense of that. Maybe they can’t tell you the difference between all these different pears but they’ve had a pear before. It’s about simplifying the language. Will there be a little bit of nuance lost? Yes, but I honestly think that a lot of those nuances are in the eye of the beholder in the first place. One person’s ripe pear is another person’s tart pear. It’s very hard to objectively discern these things, in my opinion. At the same time, to talk about other parts of the wine experience and the impact of the wine on us that often doesn’t get mentioned in tasting notes. They get talked about some in professional circles, and they’re adjacent to the things you both recoiled against — chewy and crunchy — but they are more about the texture of the wine. One of the reasons why I think it’s so important to talk about texture when it comes to wine and anything that we drink is because for so many of us, the things that we like and don’t like, have a lot more to do with texture than flavor. Yes, some flavors are off-putting, but I see this because I have a child, and I’m seeing him learn what he does and doesn’t like. It’s so much more about the texture of a thing than the flavor of a thing because flavors are malleable. We can learn to appreciate new flavors but if you don’t like mushy things, you’re never going to like a banana. It doesn’t matter what the banana tastes like, the texture of the thing is the problem. Wine, too, has lots of different textures that have to do with the ripeness of the grapes, the level of alcohol, residual sugar, the tannins — all these things and more. Yet, that element of wine is not mentioned, or it’s given an opaque term such as crunchy or chewy. I could sit here and try to explain to you what those things mean, but the point is we could talk a lot more interesting notes in descriptions of wine. I think it would be good for everyone in the industry to talk much more about the actual physical sensations of having the wine and waste a lot less time talking about ephemeral and very hard to define aromas and flavors. A wine that’s high in tannin is going to have the exact same physiological impact on everyone who drinks it because it’s just a physical and chemical reaction in your mouth. It’s not based on a memory. If you didn’t have red currants when you were a kid, and you don’t know what the f**k a red currant tastes like, it might as well be gibberish. Everyone can recognize, if they pay attention to it — part of it is paying attention to, of course — what their physical tactile senses are telling them. We have to be willing to talk about those things. I find them fascinating and interesting in how wine affects us in the same way that it’s interesting to talk about how alcohol affects us. And how over the course of an evening all the things we experience will be in some way affected by that. I don’t know, I get why the florid prose seems to sell bottles or sounds good or give someone something to do, but I just don’t think it does anyone any real good.

J: I also find that those types of descriptors — the more objective ones that perhaps more people experience — also feel intimidating. Almost as intimidating as saying something tastes like a rare fruit you’ve never had.

A: I agree with Joanna.

Z: I’m wondering if reading or hearing someone say it without any explanation is more alienating. I mean, someone can say this wine tastes like an anjou pear and you maybe not have had that, or I don’t remember how that is different from other pears, but you know it tastes like a pear, so you feel OK.  And talking about a wine that is rich, oily, or wine that is really lean and linear. We need to learn what it means to have those wines, but I do think that there’s real value. Again, maybe this isn’t for every last person who drinks wine. Nothing is, but for people who want to learn a little more, I do think there’s real value in focusing or thinking about these more objective, chemically and physiologically derived experiences with wine than just emphasizing flavor. I think it is similar to the difference between al dente pasta and overcooked pasta. It’s the same thing, but our experience eating it is different, even though the noodles are the same either way.

A: If you want to talk about descriptors, good for you. That is, if you want to get more into wine, but I think the problem that we encounter all the time that we need to try to rectify is when you are someone who is selling wine or you are someone talking about wine to people who love wine but aren’t as geeky or learning, just say it’s f*cking good. I think that’s something that beer does much better than wine, and I think spirits do in a way, too. Also, don’t judge people for words they use because you think you know better than them. Again, a publication we will not name wrote a whole takedown of the word “smooth” recently. It’s not the people’s fault who used that word? Don’t be a f*cking prick. I get that you don’t like that word, but that word exists in so many other beverages. Oh, this whiskey is really smooth. Oh, this New England IPA is really smooth and fluffy. Of course people are going to apply it to wine, so get over it and try to understand why they like that.

Z: Many wineries have sold their wine based on the notion that it’s smooth. That was the selling point for a lot of California Merlot for a long time. It’s smooth, and with red blends, same thing.

A: Again, that’s where I question: Do you really want to make money? Do you really want to get other people into these beverages? Do you want to get them excited? If you did, you would amend your language and you would become more accessible. If you don’t, then you won’t. Don’t be upset at the companies that have decided they’re going to figure it out and do it. Don’t shake your fist at the sky and say, “Well, they’re big wine.” Well, they figured it out. They’re bringing more people into wine in general, and there’s something that’s awesome about that. I think we’d be much better off starting with, “The wine is really delicious. It’s super refreshing.” People know what refreshing is, right? When you talk about wine, say, “This is a very refreshing white wine. It might remind you of lemonade.” Most people know what lemonade tastes like. Or, “This is a great red wine with the steak that I see that you ordered.” Things like that, I think, are much better. The reason that gosh, now, a decade or more ago, someone like Gary Vaynerchuk had such success was he just was willing to say that these tasted like banana runts or this tasted like Juicy Fruit. I don’t think that there were more people in America who knew what Juicy Fruit tastes like. I don’t really remember what Juicy Fruit tastes like. I was not allowed to have a lot of candy growing up. I think they thought, oh, my gosh, he’s breaking the mold using candy and other things as opposed to Anjou pear, which I love that that’s what we’re using right now in this conversation. Anyways, it was just refreshing to people that he wasn’t scared to say it tasted like something else. At the end of the day, what’s so cool about wine is that wine tastes like what you remember so it’s all based on flavors you’ve had before. When you walk up to a consumer who’s getting into wine and say you’re going to have X, Y and Z, and they don’t taste those things, you just make them feel stupid. I don’t understand why there has to be such one-upmanship of what is good and what isn’t. For example, there was another thing that happened to me this last weekend.

Z: This was quite a weekend, my goodness.

A: I think it’s interesting because this goes back to what you guys are talking about. Keith and I went to this amazing producer, Vox Vineti. We had his Nebbiolo, which was really, really good, but it tastes much leaner, less tannic, and all that stuff. I posted it on Instagram and I had a few somms who slipped into my DMs, some of whom I’m not actually friends with, who just happened to follow me. They said there’s no way. Well, that is what my palate told me. Trust my palate or don’t, why are you arguing with me? That is exactly what my palate said it tasted like to me based on the fair amount I had because I like that style of wine. What’s the fight? Why does it matter? I posted that not trying to say that Pennsylvania is going to be the next source of the best Nebbiolo in the world. I didn’t say any of that. That’s the problem with wine that we need to get over. Don’t tell the consumers it tastes like strawberries, let them tell you what they think it tastes like. “I think it tastes good.” Awesome. Then, that’s how it tastes. “I think this tastes like boysenberry.” Sweet, I don’t know what boysenberry is, but good for you. ‘This reminds me of the red wine I used to drink with my grandmother.” Dope. “This is from Virginia, but it tastes like Bordeaux.” Awesome. People should just get to have their own experiences with wine and everyone else should shut the f**k up.

Z: Well, I think there’s also one last piece of this. There is this unfortunate belief that there are right wines and wrong wines, again, coming back to this notion of it not being a test. I found this a lot as a sommelier, so often with tables, they do want to be essentially told what you said, Adam: “This is really good f*cking wine.” I always train my servers and say that my job as the wine director is to make sure that all the wine is good. The point is you’re not going to ever get to the wine that you recommend to them as the right wine and all the other wines are the wrong wine. Well-made wine is well-made wine. If people like the broad-strokes style that it’s in, they’re probably going to like it. Yes, some people might be more particular than others. This is true in all things. However, at some point you get yourself, guests, and consumers in this headspace where they’re worried about being wrong or worried about making mistakes. That’s when they choose something else. They either step away or they go back to the same thing they always bought or ordered. It’s a language problem. It’s a marketing problem. It’s an attitudinal problem, for sure. It’s unfortunate because it’s pretty widely spread, but it’s also exciting to me because I think it is an area where you get people coming into wine from other places, from other backgrounds, other experiences where you do see people who don’t need this framing. They don’t need to play within this established benchmark and established lexicon that exists around wine in a very Eurocentric way. I think it’s super exciting to see people breaking out of that framework and using the verbiage that makes sense to them. That is connected to their life experiences, their sense memories, and the foods they eat. That’s fantastic, and I may or may not connect with all of it. It may not be in my lived experience, but wine and the wine industry would be all the richer for more of that and less of the same old shit that’s been written for the last 50, 60, 70 years.

A: Totally. I completely agree.

J: Yeah, and one last thing. Some of my favorite wine experiences that I’ve had are when I’ve been in a restaurant and expressed to a sommelier the types of flavors or wines that I like. Then, they would bring me something that they think I would like.

A: I agree. That’s how it should always be, right? I’ve had a wine recently that’s one of the trendy wines out of California right now. I don’t really love oak, so I didn’t really love this wine. Yet, a lot of people do right now, and that’s OK. Even with critics, the reason certain critics took off in the past and still have followings is they have palates that other people like. There’s a lot of other people in wine that don’t agree with those people’s palates and that’s also OK. We shouldn’t just make wine for one person’s palate. That was a huge mistake when everyone followed Parker, and we’re now correcting that. It’s OK if some wineries make that style of wine and his palate likes that style of wine and there’s a lot of people that like that style of wine. That’s OK. I just think that there’s so much variety in the world of beverages that we can all find things that are delicious. At the end of the day, it’s just as you said, Zach. It’s the job of the person selling that wine to just ensure that the person knows that it’s really good.

J: I think the more language we can use to describe wine, the better.

Z: Exactly.

A: I agree. Well, guys, this has been a great conversation, as always. I won’t be with you next week. You’re going to miss me so much.

Z: I also do want to hear, listeners, if you have thoughts on this. We love to get your feedback on anything, but particularly this topic in which we are trying to push the conversation forward in how we talk about and think about things like wine. Please email us at podcast@vinepair.com. It’s really exciting to hear from you all, whether you agree or disagree, whether you think Adam’s Pennsylvania Nebbiolo is crap. Let us know.

A: Hey, hey, hey.

Z: Well, slide into his DMs for that, I guess. I’m sure it’s good. I would love to try it. I’m just saying.

A: I had some bottles.

Z: Oh, excellent.

A: I mean you are going to have such not a good conversation without me next week, but I hope it is at least a B-level conversation.

Z: We’ll see what we can do.

A: Talk to you guys later.

J: All right, bye.

Z: Sounds great.

Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, then please give us a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever it is you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show.

Now for the credits. VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City and in Seattle, Wash., by myself and Zach Geballe. He does all the editing and loves to get the credit. Also, I would love to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all this possible and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tastings director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team who is instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: Wine Has a Bad Language Problem appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-has-bad-language-problem/

[johnboothus]

VinePair Podcast: Wine Has a Bad Language Problem

This week on the “VinePair Podcast,” Adam Teeter, Zach Geballe, and Joanna Sciarrino discuss how the language of wine tasting notes has created a gatekeeping effect in the industry. After listing what they have been drinking recently — including a Pennsylvania Nebbiolo — our hosts dive into a discussion about the pretension of many wine descriptors.

That conversation leads into the hosts’ opinions about how wine tasting notes often alienate people who are just getting into wine. This particular Eurocentric language creates a barrier for entry into wine, which can be intimidating to some and a turn-off for others. Instead, Geballe, Sciarrino, and Teeter believe that professionals should take a step back and allow consumers to make their own decisions about wine.

If you have any thoughts on wine language, please send your ideas to podcast@vinepair.com.

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Adam Teeter: From VinePair’s New York City headquarters, I’m Adam Teeter.

Joanna Sciarrino: I’m Joanna Sciarrino.

Zach Geballe: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the “VinePair Podcast.” Zach and Joanna, how were your holiday weekends? What’s going on?

J: Do you want to take it, Zach?

Z: Oh sure.

A: He never misses a chance to be called on first.

Z: Well, I just follow the lead. Anyway, my weekend was nice. We had a pretty low-key fourth. We had a few of my cousins over for what my wife, who is from Wisconsin, refers to as “cooking out.” I refer to it as grilling. Whatever, it’s cool. It was pretty casual. The Fourth of July is a rough night for my dog, which is unfortunate, but he did OK. It was nice that my wife had a four-day weekend, which is cool. Yesterday, she said, “We gotta go back to work.” That just means her office. Still, it’s an adjustment for all of us. But it was nice to drink a lot of rosé over the weekend. It was warm, sunny, and just good weather for rosé. We also had some chilled reds from northern Italy. It was lovely. Joanna, what did you do?

J: Nice. So our Fourth of July was also very low-key. We just hung out at home and on our roof for a little bit. We also grabbed dinner at a local restaurant. We also had some rosé and had some more Tip Top Proper Cocktails, which I love. I really like them. I also had a really good, Oaxaca Old Fashioned.

A: Very cool, so my Fourth of July was good and also not good. On the good front, I had some really delicious wine. My wife is from Lancaster, Pa., and we brought some really cool wines with us. Keith, who is VinePair’s tastings director, and his wife Gina came along, and we had a bottle of Biondi Santi that was incredible. We also actually had a really great wine that’s made in Pennsylvania. It’s called Vox Vineti. He was a big wine lover from Manhattan, moved to Pennsylvania, found this amazing piece of property, and is making Nebbiolo and things like that, which was awesome. On the not-so-good front, I wasn’t sure I was going to talk about this, but I think I need to. That night of the Fourth of July, we were playing with fireworks in the front yard with the whole neighborhood. This guy across the street came out and yelled f*****g Jews at us and it wasn’t the first time that I have experienced anti-Semitism in my life, but it was pretty jarring. It reminded me of the two times recently I have experienced it in our industry. Once, an Amarone producer told me, without knowing I was Jewish, that the reason his Amarone prices were falling was that the Jews control the markets. Another time when I was in Chile, a wine producer said to me that the reason Chile is known for cheap wine is because of the Jews. I thought about that and thought this is completely unacceptable. The fact that this person felt it was OK to yell at us, and he had no clue that we were Jewish. Besides the fact that my in-laws are, but they’re not outwardly looking Jewish at all, meaning that they’re not religious. They don’t wear any head coverings, etc. He still chose to yell that at us anyway. Keith and Gina, obviously, are not Jewish. Then, the fact that these two producers have said these things to me prior to Covid as a “we know the truth,” right? I felt that I needed to say something because it’s completely unacceptable and absolutely ridiculous. We’re talking about all these other times where we want to root out all the huge issues in our drinking culture, whether it’s sexism, racism, xenophobia, etc. I believe that when this happened to me, I had not spoken up in the past. In both those situations, I didn’t say anything. This weekend made me regret that. I wanted to protect the publicist, who apologized for the winemaker who said it. I wanted to look the other way. At this point, I’m not going to protect those people anymore. Actually, the publicist who wanted to protect that winemaker, I’m pretty disappointed, still has that winery as a client, which is not cool. Anyways, not to take us down a weird path, but it was just something that I’ve been thinking about since it happened on Sunday. It weirdly ended my Fourth of July weekend, and it needed to be somewhat brought up because we all have to talk about these things or they’re just not going to go away.

J: I’m really sorry that happened to you. That sucks.

A: It was nuts.

J: It’s really disgusting.

Z: Adam, I think you and I have talked off-air about this before, but I, too, have been subjected to anti-Semitism. I have also been present when those things have been said when someone doesn’t necessarily know that I’m Jewish, and it’s awkward. It’s both offensive and awkward. For me, it’s often been hardest with “jokes,” where you think, “Do I want to be that person who makes a big deal about this?” One time in particular, I came very close to saying something, and I regret not doing it. I also think it’s one of those things where sometimes, you make a decision where the person telling the joke that’s inappropriate is frankly, someone who passed away within the next year and was quite old. Then, is this really worth getting into? I don’t know what it is. You end up in this place where you just recognize it. It also reminds you that this thinking, these beliefs, whether it is anti-Semitism or bigotry of all other kinds, it is there. Frankly, I’ve thought in my life that when someone says something in that vein, I know where they stand. They never say anything and they’re just thinking it real hard, you know where you’re at with that person. When they open their mouths and say something like that, now I know this is how you feel about me, women, or people of color. Obviously, this happens in a lot of ways and I know that many of our listeners have been present or victim to this, so it’s obviously not just anti-Semitism. For you and me, Adam, we’ve experienced it personally.

A: Yeah, exactly. I would assume a lot of our listeners have experienced this in another form, whether it’s sexism, racism, etc., and it’s just not appropriate. It’s not OK. If you are listening, and this happened to you, it can be really scary to say something in the moment, right? You don’t want to say something. I think whether you address it later or you talk to people who are involved, it is important if you believe you can. I think it’s important for people who represent these people. If you have a client, I understand that’s revenue, but if you have a client that is doing these things or is saying these things, it’s a reflection on you if you continue to work with them, and in this regard when it was the winemaker from Italy, “Oh, he’s just their export manager. He’s just one of the brothers.” He’s the export manager?! Come on, that means he deals with people publicly all the time and that reflects on that winery. You shouldn’t be working with them anymore, regardless of what fees they pay. Again, we have a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, over the past five years, there’s been an acceptance of saying these things again. Hopefully, we’re moving away from that, but there definitely seems to still be a large number of people who are very emboldened to say very hateful things to people — whether they know or don’t know those people are part of those groups. It’s not cool. It’s just not cool. Anyways, I will change the subject so we don’t only talk about this for the rest of the episode and get into a different one which is also equally, I think, about acceptance and trying to make things more inclusive to all people. Zach, I’ll let you jump into our topic for today.

Z: Yeah, so this started as a thought in my head that that’s been getting more concrete over the last couple of years, and it’s come from a lot of teaching and working with the public on wine in particular. Unfortunately, the wine industry — and I think you see this spilling out into beer and spirits, too — there is this emphasis on really specific almost comical tasting notes as well as European-centric, too. What I mean by this is if you go look at the tasting notes for a wine and it says “late season blackberry compote and spring sandalwood,” that is the type of language that I think all of us in one way or another roll our eyes at in a sense. It also has this really pernicious effect, which in my opinion, at least, it really gives casual wine drinkers and people who work in the trade, this sense that every wine is a test, and all of us fail. One, picking out all of those tasting notes is often being pulled out of someone’s ass, to be completely honest. You’ve got to write a paragraph about wine if you’re a reviewer or if you’re the person creating the shelf talkers for the winery or for the distributor. You’ve got to say something, and there’s only so many ways to describe wine. There are only so many flavors and aromas. There are a lot of them, but in the end, how many different ways can you say blackberry? Again, it creates this idea that these flavors, these aromas, are not just present in the wine, but distinguishable for everyone. If you drink this one, you should get these notes. That’s the perception that the industry gives off. It is not true and also serves to alienate people. I was just pouring at a public event the other day, and people asked, “What should I be getting in this wine?” I mean, just drink it. You can tell me what you think, but this isn’t a test. I don’t have a scoresheet here. I’m not looking to grade how good of a wine drinker you are. I’m really disinterested in that entirely. Again, this idea that every wine is a test for people is the one that I really want to see go away. Joanna, since you’re someone who is newer to wine, I would love to know from you if this rings true. Is something that you have experienced?

J: Yeah, that’s a good question. My initial thought when I’m tasting wine is what I taste, versus what I think I’m supposed to taste. Seeing something that says “marionberry,” maybe I can pick up some berry qualities or berry on the palate. I’m not necessarily looking to those descriptors to inform how it tastes for me. If I can taste a wine and then identify something that’s been written, great. But I also understand what you’re saying, Zach. I think for people, especially people who are trying to educate themselves about wine, people who are attending classes, I understand this desire to be able to taste what a professional says you should taste. I also see where that’s problematic because that leaves it to your own palate and what you’ve tasted. If you haven’t tasted a marionberry, which I don’t actually think I have, then you’re excluded from that experience, right?

A: Well, when you see these tasting notes, do you find them to be intimidating? I’ve definitely heard that from people who are getting into wine that’s what has always intimidated them to begin with. Or do you just think that they’re pointless?

J: Actually, what I find more intimidating in some of these other descriptors. I don’t know what a chewy wine is. What is a crunchy wine? I don’t know what that is, so that’s when I feel stupid.

A: No, I agree. An issue with wine is that it’s created this language for itself over years and years of writing about it. People collect it and make it, which is great, but it does then create a barrier to entry. The only challenge that I would posit, which is something that I think Zach and I have talked about before, is that I think a lot of people lose in wine like that barrier. That barrier to entry means that not everyone can enter the luxury market. I mean, think about it this way. If you’re talking about handbags…

Z: Adam’s favorite comparison!

A: I haven’t talked about this in the past?!

Z: Yes, you have.

A: No, I haven’t.

Z: Oh, yes, you have.

A: Whatever, so not everyone’s allowed to buy a Birkin bag. You have to walk into Hermès and you have to ask a certain way. Then, they have to size you up and then they’ll let you buy a Birkin. It’s an elite club. When you have the Birkin, you are known as someone who was able to buy a Birkin. I think in a lot of ways, the way we talk about wine is, are you in the know, or are you not? I’m going to say things in a way such as, are you going to appreciate this wine, or are you just buying it because it’s expensive? I had a similar experience recently where I went out to dinner with some people and we went to a very nice restaurant in Manhattan, Le Bernardin. I ordered a bottle of wine, and the wine came to the table. It was from an area of Burgundy that is not known for having the best Pinot Noirs, but if you’re on this specific spot in this area, you actually might as well be in one of the best areas of Burgundy for Pinot. The two people that I was with love wine, but don’t know a lot about or don’t speak the language. They asked, “Hey, can you tell us what wine?” The server just went off this laundry list of all these random descriptors and said what I said, but almost making them think that the wine was a diamond in the rough, but in a really weird way that totally overwhelmed them. All they were looking for him to say is “Oh, the producer is this person. They’re really known for making whatever and the wines f*cking delicious.” That’s all they were looking for. When he left, they were saying it was like he was testing them and did they understand what he’s saying? That’s what I’ve always wondered with wine: Is it both? First of all, to become really versed in wine, you are almost forced to learn all these descriptors and all these ways to talk about it because you want to be able to have these conversations with other people in the know. So it’s a way to challenge people, but then it’s also this barrier for a lot of people. Joanna, as you were saying before we started recording, it also doesn’t take into account the experiences of so many people who are currently coming into wine who have different aroma experiences, have different cuisine experiences than this traditional, very much French, Eurocentric way that we have always talked about wine.

Z: I think you make a good point, Adam, about a segment of the wine industry reveling in some sense in the way that the language creates a barrier to entry. Tasting notes like I’ve described are ubiquitous. You see them on $7 bottles of wine as much as you see them on $700 bottles of wine. It’s not just a high-end problem. I think it’s an all-of-wine problem. To me, it comes back to a fundamental issue that we have in the industry. If we want to talk about wine in a way that is accessible to people but also not the opposite. Sometimes, when it’s just like, “This wine is good,” I find that to be a little bit “eh, fine.” I think there is a middle ground to find and it’s maybe a middle ground of accepting that most people, given their life experience, may not be able to distinguish between blackberry, marionberry, loganberry, and boysenberry, but they probably have had berries before. They have some sense of that. Maybe they can’t tell you the difference between all these different pears but they’ve had a pear before. It’s about simplifying the language. Will there be a little bit of nuance lost? Yes, but I honestly think that a lot of those nuances are in the eye of the beholder in the first place. One person’s ripe pear is another person’s tart pear. It’s very hard to objectively discern these things, in my opinion. At the same time, to talk about other parts of the wine experience and the impact of the wine on us that often doesn’t get mentioned in tasting notes. They get talked about some in professional circles, and they’re adjacent to the things you both recoiled against — chewy and crunchy — but they are more about the texture of the wine. One of the reasons why I think it’s so important to talk about texture when it comes to wine and anything that we drink is because for so many of us, the things that we like and don’t like, have a lot more to do with texture than flavor. Yes, some flavors are off-putting, but I see this because I have a child, and I’m seeing him learn what he does and doesn’t like. It’s so much more about the texture of a thing than the flavor of a thing because flavors are malleable. We can learn to appreciate new flavors but if you don’t like mushy things, you’re never going to like a banana. It doesn’t matter what the banana tastes like, the texture of the thing is the problem. Wine, too, has lots of different textures that have to do with the ripeness of the grapes, the level of alcohol, residual sugar, the tannins — all these things and more. Yet, that element of wine is not mentioned, or it’s given an opaque term such as crunchy or chewy. I could sit here and try to explain to you what those things mean, but the point is we could talk a lot more interesting notes in descriptions of wine. I think it would be good for everyone in the industry to talk much more about the actual physical sensations of having the wine and waste a lot less time talking about ephemeral and very hard to define aromas and flavors. A wine that’s high in tannin is going to have the exact same physiological impact on everyone who drinks it because it’s just a physical and chemical reaction in your mouth. It’s not based on a memory. If you didn’t have red currants when you were a kid, and you don’t know what the f**k a red currant tastes like, it might as well be gibberish. Everyone can recognize, if they pay attention to it — part of it is paying attention to, of course — what their physical tactile senses are telling them. We have to be willing to talk about those things. I find them fascinating and interesting in how wine affects us in the same way that it’s interesting to talk about how alcohol affects us. And how over the course of an evening all the things we experience will be in some way affected by that. I don’t know, I get why the florid prose seems to sell bottles or sounds good or give someone something to do, but I just don’t think it does anyone any real good.

J: I also find that those types of descriptors — the more objective ones that perhaps more people experience — also feel intimidating. Almost as intimidating as saying something tastes like a rare fruit you’ve never had.

A: I agree with Joanna.

Z: I’m wondering if reading or hearing someone say it without any explanation is more alienating. I mean, someone can say this wine tastes like an anjou pear and you maybe not have had that, or I don’t remember how that is different from other pears, but you know it tastes like a pear, so you feel OK.  And talking about a wine that is rich, oily, or wine that is really lean and linear. We need to learn what it means to have those wines, but I do think that there’s real value. Again, maybe this isn’t for every last person who drinks wine. Nothing is, but for people who want to learn a little more, I do think there’s real value in focusing or thinking about these more objective, chemically and physiologically derived experiences with wine than just emphasizing flavor. I think it is similar to the difference between al dente pasta and overcooked pasta. It’s the same thing, but our experience eating it is different, even though the noodles are the same either way.

A: If you want to talk about descriptors, good for you. That is, if you want to get more into wine, but I think the problem that we encounter all the time that we need to try to rectify is when you are someone who is selling wine or you are someone talking about wine to people who love wine but aren’t as geeky or learning, just say it’s f*cking good. I think that’s something that beer does much better than wine, and I think spirits do in a way, too. Also, don’t judge people for words they use because you think you know better than them. Again, a publication we will not name wrote a whole takedown of the word “smooth” recently. It’s not the people’s fault who used that word? Don’t be a f*cking prick. I get that you don’t like that word, but that word exists in so many other beverages. Oh, this whiskey is really smooth. Oh, this New England IPA is really smooth and fluffy. Of course people are going to apply it to wine, so get over it and try to understand why they like that.

Z: Many wineries have sold their wine based on the notion that it’s smooth. That was the selling point for a lot of California Merlot for a long time. It’s smooth, and with red blends, same thing.

A: Again, that’s where I question: Do you really want to make money? Do you really want to get other people into these beverages? Do you want to get them excited? If you did, you would amend your language and you would become more accessible. If you don’t, then you won’t. Don’t be upset at the companies that have decided they’re going to figure it out and do it. Don’t shake your fist at the sky and say, “Well, they’re big wine.” Well, they figured it out. They’re bringing more people into wine in general, and there’s something that’s awesome about that. I think we’d be much better off starting with, “The wine is really delicious. It’s super refreshing.” People know what refreshing is, right? When you talk about wine, say, “This is a very refreshing white wine. It might remind you of lemonade.” Most people know what lemonade tastes like. Or, “This is a great red wine with the steak that I see that you ordered.” Things like that, I think, are much better. The reason that gosh, now, a decade or more ago, someone like Gary Vaynerchuk had such success was he just was willing to say that these tasted like banana runts or this tasted like Juicy Fruit. I don’t think that there were more people in America who knew what Juicy Fruit tastes like. I don’t really remember what Juicy Fruit tastes like. I was not allowed to have a lot of candy growing up. I think they thought, oh, my gosh, he’s breaking the mold using candy and other things as opposed to Anjou pear, which I love that that’s what we’re using right now in this conversation. Anyways, it was just refreshing to people that he wasn’t scared to say it tasted like something else. At the end of the day, what’s so cool about wine is that wine tastes like what you remember so it’s all based on flavors you’ve had before. When you walk up to a consumer who’s getting into wine and say you’re going to have X, Y and Z, and they don’t taste those things, you just make them feel stupid. I don’t understand why there has to be such one-upmanship of what is good and what isn’t. For example, there was another thing that happened to me this last weekend.

Z: This was quite a weekend, my goodness.

A: I think it’s interesting because this goes back to what you guys are talking about. Keith and I went to this amazing producer, Vox Vineti. We had his Nebbiolo, which was really, really good, but it tastes much leaner, less tannic, and all that stuff. I posted it on Instagram and I had a few somms who slipped into my DMs, some of whom I’m not actually friends with, who just happened to follow me. They said there’s no way. Well, that is what my palate told me. Trust my palate or don’t, why are you arguing with me? That is exactly what my palate said it tasted like to me based on the fair amount I had because I like that style of wine. What’s the fight? Why does it matter? I posted that not trying to say that Pennsylvania is going to be the next source of the best Nebbiolo in the world. I didn’t say any of that. That’s the problem with wine that we need to get over. Don’t tell the consumers it tastes like strawberries, let them tell you what they think it tastes like. “I think it tastes good.” Awesome. Then, that’s how it tastes. “I think this tastes like boysenberry.” Sweet, I don’t know what boysenberry is, but good for you. ‘This reminds me of the red wine I used to drink with my grandmother.” Dope. “This is from Virginia, but it tastes like Bordeaux.” Awesome. People should just get to have their own experiences with wine and everyone else should shut the f**k up.

Z: Well, I think there’s also one last piece of this. There is this unfortunate belief that there are right wines and wrong wines, again, coming back to this notion of it not being a test. I found this a lot as a sommelier, so often with tables, they do want to be essentially told what you said, Adam: “This is really good f*cking wine.” I always train my servers and say that my job as the wine director is to make sure that all the wine is good. The point is you’re not going to ever get to the wine that you recommend to them as the right wine and all the other wines are the wrong wine. Well-made wine is well-made wine. If people like the broad-strokes style that it’s in, they’re probably going to like it. Yes, some people might be more particular than others. This is true in all things. However, at some point you get yourself, guests, and consumers in this headspace where they’re worried about being wrong or worried about making mistakes. That’s when they choose something else. They either step away or they go back to the same thing they always bought or ordered. It’s a language problem. It’s a marketing problem. It’s an attitudinal problem, for sure. It’s unfortunate because it’s pretty widely spread, but it’s also exciting to me because I think it is an area where you get people coming into wine from other places, from other backgrounds, other experiences where you do see people who don’t need this framing. They don’t need to play within this established benchmark and established lexicon that exists around wine in a very Eurocentric way. I think it’s super exciting to see people breaking out of that framework and using the verbiage that makes sense to them. That is connected to their life experiences, their sense memories, and the foods they eat. That’s fantastic, and I may or may not connect with all of it. It may not be in my lived experience, but wine and the wine industry would be all the richer for more of that and less of the same old shit that’s been written for the last 50, 60, 70 years.

A: Totally. I completely agree.

J: Yeah, and one last thing. Some of my favorite wine experiences that I’ve had are when I’ve been in a restaurant and expressed to a sommelier the types of flavors or wines that I like. Then, they would bring me something that they think I would like.

A: I agree. That’s how it should always be, right? I’ve had a wine recently that’s one of the trendy wines out of California right now. I don’t really love oak, so I didn’t really love this wine. Yet, a lot of people do right now, and that’s OK. Even with critics, the reason certain critics took off in the past and still have followings is they have palates that other people like. There’s a lot of other people in wine that don’t agree with those people’s palates and that’s also OK. We shouldn’t just make wine for one person’s palate. That was a huge mistake when everyone followed Parker, and we’re now correcting that. It’s OK if some wineries make that style of wine and his palate likes that style of wine and there’s a lot of people that like that style of wine. That’s OK. I just think that there’s so much variety in the world of beverages that we can all find things that are delicious. At the end of the day, it’s just as you said, Zach. It’s the job of the person selling that wine to just ensure that the person knows that it’s really good.

J: I think the more language we can use to describe wine, the better.

Z: Exactly.

A: I agree. Well, guys, this has been a great conversation, as always. I won’t be with you next week. You’re going to miss me so much.

Z: I also do want to hear, listeners, if you have thoughts on this. We love to get your feedback on anything, but particularly this topic in which we are trying to push the conversation forward in how we talk about and think about things like wine. Please email us at podcast@vinepair.com. It’s really exciting to hear from you all, whether you agree or disagree, whether you think Adam’s Pennsylvania Nebbiolo is crap. Let us know.

A: Hey, hey, hey.

Z: Well, slide into his DMs for that, I guess. I’m sure it’s good. I would love to try it. I’m just saying.

A: I had some bottles.

Z: Oh, excellent.

A: I mean you are going to have such not a good conversation without me next week, but I hope it is at least a B-level conversation.

Z: We’ll see what we can do.

A: Talk to you guys later.

J: All right, bye.

Z: Sounds great.

Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, then please give us a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever it is you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show.

Now for the credits. VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City and in Seattle, Wash., by myself and Zach Geballe. He does all the editing and loves to get the credit. Also, I would love to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all this possible and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tastings director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team who is instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: Wine Has a Bad Language Problem appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-has-bad-language-problem/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/vinepair-podcast-wine-has-a-bad-language-problem

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

1/6 Hi! Im the questioning bi enby anon that is afraid of having ruined their life by questioning lol What can I do if there are no ways to chat to a professional online without spending money (im not economically independent) in my area? I dont live in the US and everything seems to be there. Aside from the pandemic, im not ready to go to any group in person yet. I’m very distressed about my queerness, to the point where it’s difficult to concentrate on other things like study.

2/6Part of me hopes this is not real and im just imagining things.I do have a therapist, but one time she made a weird comment about tinder including multiple sexualities so I never felt good about telling her about my possible bisexuality, but now things have escalated and im having suicidal thoughts in regards of my gender. I talked to an online friend about this but ofc these are things that exceeds him

3/6 i dont want to act on my thoughts, but im tired of having them so I considered talking to my therapist about this and see if she can relocate me with a gender therapist or something (and telling my parents something else) but im not sure if that’s a good idea

4/6 i do keep a journal and a private blog, but sometimes putting my thoughts there doesn’t make me feel better and I struggle to find the words to what im feeling. It used to help me a lot for other things, but for some reason is not as effective for this

5/6 i have joined a group online for nonbinary people but we cant talk about things regarding suicide and it seems like most ppl are more chill about these things that I am and sometimes it makes me feel worse to be in a group because it reminds me that I probably dont fit in standard society. I hate being sad about this.

6/6 so my questions are basically if there is somewhere i can talk to in chat without being US exclusive or requiring money and if it’s a good idea to tell my therapist about this even if she may have some prejudices. Honestly I dont know what to do, i want my life back lol (Tiger answered my previous ask, if they can answer this too it would be nice. If anyone else has something to say its welcome)

Hi anon. Have you actually told your therapist about your suicidal thoughts, if not about the cause of them? I think you do need to talk to a professional about these thoughts, ideally someone who is at least sympathetic towards queer people (if not queer themself) and qualified to address the suicidal thoughts with you (though obviously someone with experience of dealing with suicidal thoughts stemming from sexuality/gender related issues would be best, but may not be possible to find easily). Since you do already have a therapist I think she should at least be your starting point for this. Even if perhaps she doesn’t really understand queer identities she should at least be able to talk through the suicidal thoughts more with you and if she is not able to address the gender/sexuality issues specifically herself perhaps she can point you in the direction of those who are more understanding about those issues specifically (and if she is outright bigoted and unhelpful about this then she’s not a good therapist and you really need a better one but hopefully that won’t be the case, she may well be just lacking an understanding of other identities currently. Lots of people do make vaguely offensive comments about queer identities but because they’re ignorant not because they’re actually hateful).

Also I don’t want to pry too much but are your suicidal thoughts purely coming from your gender/sexuality issues or are there other things too? Other issues that you’re trying to deal with too, or mental health issues, something like depression or anxiety that may itself be causing or contributing to the suicidal thoughts? Because I’m certainly no expert in dealing with these things despite my own issues but if there are other issues in play here then those may need managing (or managing differently to the way they’re being managed currently) in addition to addressing the issues you’re experiencing specifically in regard to your gender/sexuality issues. Again I think that is something your therapist is going to be best placed to address, whether she can deal with it herself or needs to direct you to someone else.

I’m afraid I don’t really know very much myself about what kind of resources there are for people to access, about either specifically queer issues or suicidal thoughts and especially when I don’t know what country you are in. Where actually are you, anon? Unfortunately a lot of things will be US-centric or US-only, but most countries must have some kind of resources for queer people as well as broader support for suicidal people generally. (If anyone does have suggestions for those kind of things that may help anon then please add to this.) 

If it helps, you definitely aren’t alone and you aren’t the only one to have issues with or related to your orientation or gender or to feel isolated from ‘standard society’. Maybe it feels like you’re the only one like this but I promise you, you’re not, all of us who don’t fit the ‘norms’ and the ‘standards’ of wider society are probably going to feel excluded or isolated or invisible because of this at some point and feel varying levels of anguish over this. And while many people are chill about their gender or sexuality and some people it’s true never really experience any issues with them, many aren’t really that chill about it at all and only appear so on the surface, or many only become happier and accepting and able to embrace their identities after doing a huge amount of questioning and worrying and stressing out and having to seek help and support from others. And many people are going to be happy about it sometimes and then experience issues at other times, they’re not going to be constantly happy. Also many of your issues related to gender are probably very similar to many binary trans people’s issues and experiences. I know that there is still a lot of erasure of and even bigotry towards non-binary people even within parts of the wider trans community but overall I think there is more understanding and acceptance than erasure and bigotry there, so don’t think you automatically have to limit yourself to non-binary specific groups and communities because there is often huge amounts of overlap between non-binary and binary trans people’s experiences and in some ways they can be practically identical.

My main advice really anyway is try to talk to your therapist about this, she is there to help you and even if she may not feel able to deal with your specific issues herself she still has an obligation to help you and she should be able to guide you towards someone who is better placed to deal with them.

- Tiger