#as a point of discourse

[pynkhues]

Is it usual for fandom to be so strict with sexual configurations of queer couples, whether it’s top/bottom, Dom/sub, or gender roles? If you’ve preferences for a set configuration of any of the above, more power to you, but the strictness with wanting to control how others interpret the story is confounding. I wonder if it’s motivated by a sense of insecurity RE: the likelihood that strict top Lestat will lose primacy in fandom with Season 3. Some people used to act like this at even the mere suggestion that there could be something sinister behind Armand’s façade: they asserted that it was out of protectiveness of a character of colour, much in the way those against bottom Lestat or sub Lestat assert that they want to protect Louis. But insecurity is at the core of it: they see the textual evidence leaving a breadcrumb trail in a direction they dislike and they respond by policing the fandom in the here and now to feel in control.

Oh, man, I honestly don't know, anon. My last few experiences of fandom have had pretty different contexts - I was in the Succession fandom, but while I dabbled in Kendall x Stewy, I was mostly there for gen sibling stuff (and wrote a handful of gen sibling fics), and before that Good Girls, which was anchored by a delightfully deranged cis het ship, so it's been a hot minute since I've been in the trenches of a queer ship on a queer show, and - - yeah! It's certainly ! A place to be on the internet!

I'll probably regret this in the morning, (it is almost midnight here rn, haha) but like - - yeah, I do think it comes from a place of insecurity to be honest. The vitriol in the discourse in this fandom really took me by surprise, and I've thought about it a lot over the last few months, and honestly I tend to think there was this discourse about Louis as a housewife that took off post s1, which I think is an interpretation of canon, albeit not one I personally agree with, which grew during the hiatus into this femme!Louis discourse which I don't want to get into, but will say that I personally don't see. I think that has been compounded by some (not all) people having a sexual/kink preference re: top/bottom, who weaponise the language of the housewife / femme Louis discourse to try and stamp out alternative iterations of the ship dynamic in fandom.

And look, I could be wrong on this - who knows - but I kind of do suspect that Louis becoming canonically a dom in s2 resulted in that idea of him being challenged, and that a subset of the fandom accepted that, and leant into all that that opened up with Louis' character, as a part (but not all!) of his sexuality, and another very vocal part has rejected it absolutely to the point that they act like Louis was forced into the role and that its unnatural to him. As a result, that faction of the fandom became more aggressive around top/bottom discourse as a means to not only maintain their personal preference (which is actually the more popular one, I think, in this fandom), but to try and ignore the fact that their interpretation might not be the intended one from the canon view point of the show.

Which is just a way of saying - - yeah. I think this policing comes from a place of insecurity. Like as somebody who likes and writes the less popular thing, why is my ask box the one that gets bombarded with it? If they were secure about it, if they felt their interpretation was the one the show was building towards, I don't know, wouldn't I be a blip on the radar? Especially given I rarely use main fandom tags and only have like, two popular fics?

I was actually talking about this with someone earlier, but even that idea of 'textual evidence' pops up all the time in this discourse, and it's like - - nothing is real until a character says it, but as soon as Lestat - literally - says 'you can be on top', there's always different ways to read it.

And look, sure, there are! But if that's your argument, then you can't deny there are different ways to read everything else too, including your assessment of scenes where Louis maybe bottoms, becaause that's probably the most 'textual' this show ever gets.

[opashoo]

I'm absolutely losing my mind seeing "We need to not treat men and masculinity as inherently evil and worthy of hatred, and not fall back into biological and gender essentialism because that hurts everyone, including trans women" being misinterpreted as "Women need to stop oppressing men", "I think trans women are actually men" or "You specifically who have trauma around men need to get over it because men are the real victims". It's so willfully disingenuous. It makes me sick how willing people are to read in bad faith, especially how willing other trans women are to suddenly start harassing and dogpiling another trans woman.

I am a trans woman too, I understand what it's like to feel unsafe, but it helps no one this cynical attitude that crops up every time someone suggests being kind to men in our lives. "You could save a man you know from falling down the alt-right pipeline" is not the same as "It's your fault that men murder you". "There are people who could be on our side if we don't meet them with immediate hostility" is not the same as "You need to shut up and stop criticizing power structures for the sake of your oppressors' feelings" (I promise there are a lot of people who can be taught about their complicity in oppression without immediately shutting down but you need to work with them). This kind of attitude isn't somehow more informed or correct. It's just lashing out to avoid considering one's own agency.

Making a better, safer world for ourselves requires all kinds of work, but it's always work. It's hard to try to reach out to people who could very realistically harm us, it's work that not all of us can afford to or are able to do and that's fine because we're all just trying to survive. But some of you would rather condescend, tear each other down, and make more enemies before even considering it a possibility.

[tmmyhug]

[vulturesawake]

Why are so many people convinced that "white, passing trans man in a liberal city surrounded by supportive family, peers, and medical professionals who is systemically equal to a cis man" is universally the only transmasculine experience in the entire world ever

[weedle-testaburger]

'sCi-Fi iS tOo WoKe nOw!' may i remind you that in 1972 the doctor corrected his companion on an alien's gender and pronouns

[styrofauxm]

look. i'm sorry. really sorry for not just letting this die. but it bugs me. so suffer i guess.

If I saw a canonically trans character and said "well I prefer to write them as cis" people would be pissed at me, for good reason.

If I saw a canonical trans woman/man character and wrote them as a demigirl/boy and said "while the show just says she/he's trans, not that she/he's a trans woman/man" people would be pissed at me, also for good reason.

If a character was directly implied to be trans, and the creator confirmed later that they were meant to be trans, and I went "well it wasn't said explicitly in the show so it's not canon," people would be pissed at me, for good reason.

If the majority of a fandom did those things, we could collectively agree that the fandom is really transphobic.

You can sub this out for any queer identity with mainstream representation, and probably non-queer identities too.

So why is it considered acceptable to do these things to aspec characters?

Why are ships contrary to aspec identities the only ships against a character's canon queer identity that get popular?

Why are aspec people the only ones that get consistent ship discourse over our real identities?

Why are aspec people the only ones asked to sit back and take it?

Why is it on aspec people to not ruin allo people's fun in fandom, but allo people are allowed to ruin ours?

(The answer to all of the above is: aspec identities are viewed by other queer people as functionally straight and are treated as such)

[doodlebloo]

This shit is happening IRL right now for real likeee

[eclipsedomens]

i'm gonna say something that's gonna piss a few of you off, but like i think some of you need to realize that assigned gender at birth isn't like. Scripture from God. like you do realize that's a human doctor and some motherfucker behind a computer. like it is not fault-proof. in fact in the case of intersex people it is often Intentionally faulty because society refuses to accommodate them to any degree. even in perisex people they can be wrong. have you all never heard of cis perisex people with the wrong gender on their birth certificate because of a clerical error.

all this to say i think if you base how you treat someone based on their assigned gender at birth i think you are just being transphobic and intersexist with extra steps. Sorry.

[sforzesco]

something. about. the horror of being sent on an impossible (death) quest and obligations and hospitality politics. the trauma of not having a home, and then the trauma of being in a house that becomes actively hostile to you, one that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones if you step out of line. all of this is conditional, your existence continues to be something men want gone.

it's about going back as far as I can with the perseus narrative because there's always a version of a myth that exists behind the one that survives. the missing pieces are clearly defined, but the oldest recorded version of it isn't there! and there's probably something older before that!! but it's doomed to forever be an unfilled space, clearly defined by an outline of something that was there and continues to be there in it's absence.

and love. it's also about love. even when you had nothing, you had love.

on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is Not About Ovid Or Roman-Renaissance Reception, Depictions And Discourses On The Perseus Narrative.

edit: to add to the above, while it's not about Ovid, because I'm specifically trying to peel things back to the oldest version of this story, Ovid is fine. alterations on the Perseus myth that give more attention Medusa predate Ovid by several centuries. this comic is also not about those, either! there are many versions of this story from the ancient world. there is not one singular True or Better version, they're all saying something.

Perseus, Daniel Ogden

Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, edited & translated by Stephen M Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet

[the-goose-caboose]

I think a lot of what makes the tma/tme and transandrophobia discussion so volatile is people forgetting systemic vs personal opression

Like I think a lot of tumblr leftists learned “bigotry isn’t just personal! It’s also systemic opression of marginalized groups.” But forgot the “just” and instead started thinking bigotry only exists on the major scale.

Yeah, misandry isn’t a real systematic problem, but you are still capable of personally being bigoted against masculinity.

This is what leads to people telling transfems who disagree with them to kill themselves but still believing themselves to be good transfeminists. They think that acknowledging and fighting against systemic oppression is the only measure of activism

[abrillustrated]

thinking about mizu from blue eye samurai. thinking. thinking so much. thinking about how mizu operates outside of gender. like we joke about her gender being revenge but straight up? it literally is. like she grew up as a boy and is most comfortable being a man, but behind that is the feeling of betraying himself because he isn't being honest about who he is and he lives in fear of being discovered. and when he lived as a woman, she found joy there as well. she fell in love, and though she wasn't good at it, she liked being a wife and enjoying a simple life. but in that life too, she isn't being honest about who she is. and when she reveals her true self, it's not a woman, she's a demon, a weapon. she's to masculine to be a woman, and too feminine to be a man. ultimately, mizu is most comfortable when they are being a murder machine. that's when they feel they are being the most true to themself. like a sword, they are neither man nor woman, but a blend of both, which makes them stronger.

[maybeiwasjustjade]

Genuinely, perhaps 99% of me, believes that the only reason Condal and Hess made HOTD Aegon a r*pist/have adult Aegon’s introduction the aftermath of the SA of a maid, was because they knew that if Aegon was just a drunk and a cheat—like almost all Westerosi men—he would be too tragic of a character not to root for, and they really couldn’t have that. No, Aegon has to be the monster to Rhaenyra’s saint, because if you took away the act that made him monstrous, he’s so easy to root for, and the TB/TG divide would be significantly larger.

Cheating and visiting brothels are quite common in Westeros, with the vast majority of male characters doing one or the other or both. Drinking is even more so. Aegon would still be palatable with either or both traits because it doesn’t make him worse than Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra had three bastards with Harwin because Laenor’s gay, so it makes her affair understandable and valid. Aegon was forced to marry his own sister as a young teen, and clearly despises the whole targ-incest tradition. Why is it a crime that he doesn’t find his little sister sexually or romantically attractive???

Aegon’s basically a Greek tragedy made flesh. The eldest son conceived to be a long-awaited heir, yet simultaneously cheated out of a birthright. Born wanted yet unwanted, the heir who is not an heir. Meant to be loved, yet raised without it, with a mother’s disdain and fear as his only companion. His father stopped wanting him sometime after his second birthday (probably around the time Jacaerys was born), and his mother never wanted him anyway. His mere existence is a threat to a crown he never wanted, yet nobody cared when they placed it on his head. He wants love but no one loves him, and contrary to popular belief, that lack of love didn’t just stem from adulthood. He was a little boy once too, who very much didn’t deserve that level of apathy.

Married to his sister despite his clear disdain for his family’s incestuous tradition. Forced to father children on her at the grand old age of sixteen (and she fourteen). The only thing he ever really loved was his dragon, and the children he had. And even those he loses to tragedy, and someone else’s doing.

It’s not at all a surprise that Aegon’s defining trait is his love for Sunfyre. A ridiculously strong bond, born from years of having only each other. Moreover, a dragon is the symbol of power, which Aegon has little of. He can’t protect himself from his own family’s abuse or machinations, and unless he claims the crown everyone he loves will die. Dragons also represent freedom, and the ability to just fly away. And if there’s one thing Aegon wants more than anything in the world, it’s to run away from his family and the accursed throne.

In that, he’s not so different than a young Rhaenyra (pre-personality change anyway). Young Rhaenyra hated having to conform to societal standards. Hated having no choice but to marry, and to whom. She too wanted to fly away to freedom. There’s too many parallels between the two, even down to their ages pre-timeskip. Rhaenyra was about 18, and Aegon now is only 20. Yet Rhaenyra at 16’s only problem was whether her infant brother would replace her as heir, while Aegon’s was being forced to play house with his sister and newborn twins.

Perhaps misogyny and society would always be Rhaenyra’s greatest opponent, and the same Aegon’s ally when it comes to their claims, but it was not the only issue. Precedent declared that Aegon would be heir ahead of her, yet it was Rhaenyra’s position and honor that Viserys defied law for, even when she committed high treason against the crown thrice. She got everything; Aegon had nothing. He’s the underdog of the story, not her. So had they not made him an on screen r*pist (unlike Daemon who was off-screen one and merely an on-screen pedo and wife-killer), it would’ve been very hard for the writers to push their “Rhaenyra good, TG bad” narrative. Those two would’ve had too many parallels and foils for it to work, and they really couldn’t have that, could they.

No, Aegon has to be the villain; Rhaenyra has to be the hero. It’s a black and white war, good vs evil. That’s the story HOTD is trying to sell, and not at all the complex tragedy of a family tearing itself and its dynasty into pieces over greed and idiocy.

[gregoriahlover]

anti 1: look at that guy, shipping incest. isn’t that weird? i sure hope he doesn’t have a sibling at home 🤢

anti 2: yeah! i’m so relieved that you agree with me. it seems like everyone condones and glorifies incest these days

anti 1: awesome! i would never even think about participating in the glorification of illegal and immoral actions. ew!

anti 2: you’re cool. let’s go play military propaganda game where you shoot each other with heavy weapons and bombs. modern warfare or black ops?

anti 1: doesn’t matter to me either way! at least neither of them glorifies literal illegal activity which ruins lives and triggers traumatized people :p

[aropride]

this post is so bad my jaw actually dropped. like. yes being trans and going thru the wrong puberty is often incredibly traumatic. that is not the same as the intentional and widespread medical abuse against intersex people (especially children). irreversible medically unnecessary often physically harmful and psychologically harmful+traumatizing hormone treatment and surgeries are not the same as having to go through natal puberty, which is also often traumatizing, but it is different. and you know damn well that is not what intersex people are talking about when they talk about forced medical intervention and abuse. it is not the same thing at all. & this is such an obviously intentional misinterpretation of what intersex activists have been talking about.

[shorthaltsjester]

one of the most infuriating parts of seeing people refer to cr as the “it’s love that saves people” show is that they completely ignore the context of that quote and that, yes, it is the “it’s love that saves people” show and that’s actually why c3 was a disappointment. because caduceus doesn’t just spontaneously say that to trent out of some pity for the fact that trent doesn’t have anyone, it’s that, as is central to caduceus’ journey and the mighty nein as a whole, when people love you they will challenge you and negate the foolish cycles of thought that can only emerge from a life lived in isolation. the mighty nein learned this lesson, with characters who notably and violently rejected the notion that they could be open to one another eventually realizing the only way to honour the friends they found and the version of themself that those friends came to care for required being honest with those friends about their motivations and feelings and desires. and in the c2 finale(s) we see the consequences of the choice each of them made to give up the lonely versions they’d sold themselves away as in favour of being a member of the mighty nein. fjord returns to an imperfect but cherished relationship with vandran that he’d previously committed to avoiding, beau finds her footing in the cobalt soul where her loudness isn’t just put up with but is valued for its keeping the institution true, caleb decides not to be the version of himself years of solitary confinement and abusive manipulation would have him be by electing to imprison trent, veth makes the choice to return to her family rather than see the empire bureaucracy through, jester opts to continue adventuring and helping her friends as they need it since she’s found her place in the world to be wherever they need her, yasha is finally able to make the choice to fully face her grief and bring the collection of penance stored in her journal back to zuala’s grave, caduceus returns to a grove recovering from a once-encroaching sickness attended by a family likewise recovering and commits himself to rebuilding the temple. there’s not a single outcome in terms of the character’s “happily ever afters” (which, as a side note, is why the claim that what people are frustrated with c3 for is the abundance of happy endings absurd and obvious in its refusal to actually take seriously a divergent opinion to its own — c2 was also a largely happy ending, likewise boosted by a an unlikely dice roll, the difference is the narrative earning) that is not mediated by literal years of character work and dming that orients that work toward the campaign plot (or that orients the plot toward the character work). c2 feels earned because it proves the implicit message of “pain doesn’t make people, it’s love that makes people”, where transformation happens in either case, but love is a transformation born out of choice, and pain demands a transformation for survival.

if you want to take seriously that c3 is part of a world constantly negotiating with the claim “it’s love that makes people.” you have to take seriously the initiating claim that’s it’s not pain that makes them, and that, in fact, in light of the love that one chooses, pain becomes inconsequential. given the frequency with which the fandom rolls out the “it’s not. x characters fault, they’re traumatized” i’d say it’s pretty obvious that bells hells have failed to qualify for, let alone pass, the “it’s love that makes them” test, since they are all still quite significantly defined by their pain and a refusal to choose love in the sense of transformation. there’s a bell hooks quote i used for this cr edit I made awhile ago that i’ve always felt really resonates with what caduceus says in that scene + what cr has tended to say about love through the characters and their journeys. and you can go to the link for the full quote but the pertinent part is that love is a commitment to being changed and a commitment to struggle to achieve that change even if it means letting go of the easier notions of ourselves as unlovable or broken to do so.

like, to be clear i’m not saying that bells hells don’t love people or each other at the end of the campaign, but that their love is a noun and not a verb. laudna goes to lieve’tel and has to be told she isn’t broken, ashton sacrifices himself and it’s not even the love of bells hells that saves them, it’s the deus ex machina of essek. bells hells are defined by their stagnancy, their refusal to give up on the definitions of themselves they’ve come to hold as a result of trauma. and while the initial creation of those identities is not on them, the continued maintenance of those identities such that they become bad faith habits that disallow any notion of growth to occur in the face of senses of self which assume their own brokenness is on them. and in all honesty that still could’ve been an interesting story, especially since it shows they’re of the same kind as ludinus, but it would not have ever been a story about the kind of love that caduceus is talking about when he says it’s love that makes people — let it not be forgotten that love (and fear) as a noun kept caduceus alone for years and love as a verb showed him the pay off of giving up stagnancy’s safety to pursue something else — nor the kind of love that c1 and c2 are built upon.

[imperial-cat]

Reading Orym discourse on twitter is kinda funny, "it's unfair that he has a trump card and can shut down any conversation with it", like, I don't know but, if I don't have a counter argument in a discussion, maybe this means the other person has a valid point?