#bisho has opinions

[doctor-badadvice]

This man has not updated his wardrobe since 1947

There's already a few posts discussing outfits and symbolism and while I found them very interesting, I'm a person of strong opinions now writing two characters with chess related names. So here's my two cents (or should I say, nickels) about Bishop's appearance throughout the 2003 show and what tells us about the specific moment of his life that's being portrayed. The focus will be mainly on the palette, but also on whatever influences are behind the designs.

So let's get started!

1815 — Battle of New Orleans

Here's the first disclaimer. I know next to nothing about US history past what little school required me to learn and generically speaking, I've never been interested in the nuances of how people come together to kill each other. History classes were far more interesting to me when we talked about society and culture. So take what I'll say with a grain of salt. My military expertise here is a couple Wikipedia pages.

As far as Bishop's uniform goes, I have no idea what's going on. I read that uniforms were supposedly mainly blue with whatever color corresponded to what the unit's duty was, with the exception of musicians who had their colors swapped. If that's true, Bishop here could have been a musician having a not so great day at work. But the field medics later in the flashback are wearing the same color so it's probably just a choice to keep the color palette consistent.

Other than that, the belt would suggest he had some kind of rank. Though I don't think they were trying to be accurate past the bare minimum. I'm not going to guess what Bishop was up to in his mortal days.

Also, a special mention goes to Bishop's facial hair. He must have been popular in his time.

1870 — Creation of EPF

This is where colors start being relevant but first, another disclaimer. I appreciate the work wiki editors do, but it would be nice to have sources to whatever's stated on a given page, especially if you're providing estimated dates. I can't say I disagree, but it'd be nice to know where the information comes from.

So the wiki says that Bishop was supposedly born in 1776. It means that at the time of EPF's foundation he was nearing his hundredth birthday. No wonder he's dressing in all black. The average life expectancy at the time was about 40 years old. It's very possible Bishop had already outlived most, if not everyone he knew and it's probably something one would struggle to come to terms with.

Design wise, turtlenecks were nothing new at the time. Medieval knights wore garments in a similar shape under their armors well before the 15th century. And yes, I guess that's more of a coat than the average tactical turtleneck, but it still gives him a hitman, or even hunter vibe which is more or less what he was up to at the time.

1947 Roswell. New Mexico/present times

I can finally explain the title now. But first, let’s take a step back!

Bishop’s default outfit is the secret agent outfit™ we’re all well accustomed to. Specifically, I think the closest he takes inspiration from is Agent Smith from the Matrix movies (as I previously mentioned here). Guy in a black suit with shades, apparently impeccable self control and a distinctive way of talking that compels you to listen to him.

There’s so much to say about motivations and themes these two share, but let's focus on the aesthetic side.

These two fools are men in black. Yes, like the movies. The whole trope originates from some old conspiracy theories about the US government hiding aliens. These theories date all the way back to 1947 from some guy named Harold Dahl claiming a man in a dark suit told him not to tell anyone about some UFO sightings. Various fellow ufologists made similar claims over the years, making it a staple of their general paranoia.

Because of the second flashback, it’s possible that Bishop himself was one of these men in black, if not the one the rumors started from. It's a funny thought and I feel like Bishop would also find it amusing to watch people lose their minds about his fashion choices for decades.

Color wise, white has been added to the mix. It’s been a while now since the creation of EPF and Bishop has found some kind of balance in his life. He’s still dead set in his hatred for aliens and clearly enjoys inflicting pain on creatures he sees as undeserving of basic human decency, but he now has some purpose other than looking at the sky for something to shoot down. He leads an elite task force with men and funding devoted to developing a proper defense of the planet. He’s a foe not to be underestimated and a formidable fighter who can and will take on multiple opponents. But he’s also a very scared man who doesn’t wish what happened to him on anyone.

I often praise the show because Bishop can survive getting impaled but he still remains human. He will react with sheer violence to aggression and reform his ways when shown kindness. He will happily stick his hands in turtle soup for some DNA, but also be the best man at his friend's wedding and even attempt dressing up for the occasion despite having been deprived of normal human interactions for more than a century.

(I know it's a little cluttered in this point but I can't just leave out Casual Friday Bishop)

Design wise, I like just how an otherwise elegant attire works during the fight scenes and this detail specifically.

This man’s power is stored in the leggy.

Interlude

So this pic above is me right now.

For context, I usually consider the episodes of the staged alien invasion to the outbreak as part of the same arc. The entire situation is absolutely absurd from Bishop dragging the president into his fanfiction in response to budget cuts, to Baxter's bodily misadventures, to Bishop making a deal with a random ghost over the phone while New York is turning into yet another Umbrella Corp mishap.

But anyways we're here to judge this man's fashion taste and we have two outfits to talk about.

First off, a special mention goes to the catsuit and this pose specifically.

The sass is off the charts.

Though I find this one kind of depressing. There isn't a lot to read in it either other than Baxter grabbing the most generic tactical turtleneck for the sake of keeping Bishop from walking around bare chested (and the scene before this pic clearly shows Bishop isn't afraid to show some titty). But seeing him in all black right after moving to a new body kinda points out that Agent Bishop, leader of the EPF, is kinda on par with a piece of military equipment (and the president probably sees him as much to an extent). He's the mold for an army of supersoldiers for crying out loud.

But he switches back to the usual suit afterwards and what matters here is the supersuit.

S3 onward

Imagine being an alien, member of the starfleet of your planet and senior officer of the invading force tasked with taking over Earth. You have trained hard, wargamed the whole operation a bunch of times and concluded that it will be piss easy to conquer this underdeveloped planet.

You reach the surface, get into formation and then this nerd rolls up.

The best way to describe this suit is "hostile". It's hostile to the animators and to whoever has to stare at this eyesore before Bishop shoots at them.

And I love it. There's nothing quite like a black and red suit of armor with various cybernetics and lights to say that you mean business. It goes very well with how the stakes just start steadily rising from this point of the show onwards and seeing as the suit was ready during the staged invasion, we know that Bishop never really planned to retire after unleashing his army of clones.

It adds that extra bit of cyberpunk that I like to see and it shows that Bishop never truly gives up on anything since we have actually seen this design before.

Bishop was so proud of his Slayer he just stuck with him in spirit.

Couple that with a new coat to take off for extra dramatic effect and— maybe the president was right about not trusting him with unlimited budget.

2105 — New York apparently

Another century has passed and Bishop is still alive and kicking. Well, he doesn't kick as much anymore as it would be unbecoming if the beloved president of the Pan-Galactic Alliance were to go around kicking alien butt.

Jokes aside, you can disagree with Bishop's portrayal in Fast Forward, but they were still trying to do something meaningful with him. The idea of the turtles having to work with him when they were trying to kill each other just the other day is surprisingly deep for a season that felt the need to have the most unfunny robobutler ever.

They were clearly attempting a chess joke switching the palette to white with black streaks. Bishop has completely turned his life around and it even shows in the way he presents himself. It's nice to see just how much he managed to accomplish as well, even though it would have been very interesting to see him have a gradual change of mind, rather than selling us the concept through timeskip magic.

Does the design still hold up then?

Well, Bishop is clearly making an effort to look the least intimidating. He is fairly more patient when others don't immediately do as he says, even asking for help rather than blackmailing, and is still commendably dedicated to his job. He still asserts dominance by showing leggy (seriously, Mr President, that slit doesn't have to go this hard) and he's still deep down, at all times, ready to throw hands.

That's Bishop alright and it's no coincidence that he starts running around shooting aliens the second Baxter shows up in his life again. I'm not much of a fan of his new armor though. I think they were going for a futuristic design but it's the blandest they could think of. It reminds me of Obi-Wan Kenobi's armor in The Clone Wars but it just kinda comes out of nowhere. It would have been cooler if his tunic turned into a set of armor kinda like what the turtles got.

In any case, if you really want to see reformed Bishop really shine, you should check out @adenthemage / @violetvulpini 's art. You will not be disappointed.

[elfyourmother]

What is your beef with The Aitiascope? Only if you don't mind me asking.

Really a couple of things.

From a design standpoint it’s just wack and boring af. I mean basically every dungeon from the Dragonsong patches on is essentially a tunnel on rails but the better ones do a bit better of a job of obfuscating that and Aitiascope didn’t even try. Here is the magic wall, pull to it. Here is another wall. In an area that is supposed to be vast and boundless it stuck out for all the wrong reasons. The bosses are so damn forgettable I legit had to look up who they were because I deadass didn't remember them at all aside from Amon and I couldn’t tell you any of the mechanics

I could forgive all of that if the storytelling there was good but that’s really my biggest beef with it, from a meta standpoint I hate that dungeon because it’s probably the most blatant example of Endwalker’s biggest weakness to me, which is the clumsy and ham fisted attempts at manipulation of player emotions. It’s something this game generally avoids doing, which is why it sticks out so badly to me the rare times it does. And AS really genuinely felt like the writers looking me dead in my face and saying, “okay, I know we have not treated the deaths of these other characters with the same importance as Haurchefant, so here is their spotlight moment and please forgive us"

The thing is, I’m the type of person who is very stubborn and defiant when it comes to the perception of folk trying to manipulate my feelings and when I feel writers trying to hook puppet strings on me it has the entire opposite effect. I emotionally check out and start looking at my watch waiting for the shit to just end.

Ysayle showing up at the end as Shiva was downright tone deaf to the point I found it insulting. Sure I get what they were going for, “oh look, how clever, she’s recreating the ice boulder mech from Syrcus Tower’s Amon fight so we can hide. because you know she’s Ice themed” but all of that (quite bizarrely!) forgets that “Shiva” the Primal was a construct born of Ysayle’s self-aggrandizement-as-coping mechanism, something that was really a product of trauma more than anything, and imo it retroactively makes a mockery of her Azys Lla moment to have her just pop into that form in the Aetherial Sea like it’s nbd. That she willingly took that form again to save WoL et al, despite knowing it was basically a manifestation of self-delusion--that meant something. To have her just randomly do it again out of nowhere. And vaguely dehumanizing if I’m honest. After the shitshow of E8 back in ShB there is literally nothing I want to hear from this game about Ysayle anymore.

In short the whole damn thing just served as a reminder of why I’m an Everybody Lives kind of writer. I didn’t hate this dungeon because of that, ftr. I hated it because it really felt like they were beating it into the ground to the point it was tragedy porn, it was peak “look how sad it is your faves died. so sad. are you sad again yet?” writing. Like I said, when I sense that it has the opposite effect. I don’t feel grief, I just feel anger at them literally beating dead horses. (Between this shit and garbage ass DSR I sincerely just want the game to keep Haurche’s name out of its mouth at this point.) We didn’t even need this shit either, is the craziest thing to me about it. Every last one of those characters had a genuinely touching reference/moment elsewhere in the course of the story. Estinien and Alphinaud talking about Ysayle’s dream after Vrtra revealed himself to his people was like the one time this game has done right by her since Azys Lla. Even that scene with the Fortemps lads was fine. Please, if you have to keep going to this well (and you really really can stop now, game), can we just allow these quiet moments of dignity to stand on their own? We don’t need magic buffs and ghosts in the afterlife. Jesus H.

The trial at the end is really what saved that segment of the story for me but the funny thing is it was the canary in the coal mine to me for Ultima Thule, which has all the problems of this place but even worse. Because it’s a whole damn zone of it combined with the most gobshite pacing since the trolley nonsense in ShB and writing so hamfisted I was literally cringing in secondhand embarrassment for most of it. And just like AS it was the trial that saved it.

tbh AS just confirmed my preference for characters surviving and growing and healing, even stumbling and taking steps backward at times, instead of being tied up like forgotten loose ends or shoved onto buses for Teh Dramaz, with extreme prejudice even. AS illustrates to me why killing characters off should absolutely be the last resort, and why it has to be done with care. Because it’s very rare that stories can handle the aftermath properly, it’s a very tricky thing to get right. Eventually, even in stories that initially do, the temptation to make the player/reader/viewer wallow in it for cheap emotional hits inevitably becomes too much to resist.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt:

In Graham Greene’s short story “The Destructors,” a gang of arrogant boys demolishes the home of a stranger. They break into the man’s dwelling and, in an act of arbitrary aggression, dismantle it piece by piece. They rip up the floorboards and saw the support beams. They smash the glass and shred the wiring. They strip it to its plumbing and finally pull down its walls.

“My house,” their victim sobs when he discovers the wreckage. “Where’s my house?”

This is a tale for our times. There are destroyers everywhere, from the White House on down. But there is one particular demolition crew that needs your urgent attention, because its work stands apart for both sheer ambition and lasting harm. The demolition crew is called the House Committee on Natural Resources. Led by the powerful Representative Rob Bishop of Utah, a Republican, it is intent on erasing the great edifice that we call American conservation.

For more than a century, the people of the United States have been at work building this country’s conservation system. Like a family of visionary architects laboring over many generations, citizens here have erected a system of ideas and policies meant to ensure our society’s future by protecting it from ecological devastation. This system is built atop a few foundational laws: the Antiquities Act of 1906, the Wilderness Act of 1964, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, among others. Destroy this architecture of environmental sanity, and you destroy our conservation heritage.

The destruction is already well underway. Even as I write, Mr. Bishop and the other members of the House Committee on Natural Resources are waging a relentless assault on each and every one of these essential laws. If they succeed, our priceless public lands, water and wildlife will suffer irreversible damage.

Collectively, the Republican members of the committee have taken more than $6 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry over the course of their careers. Mr. Bishop alone has taken $400,000. Its members are also awash in money from the mining, timber and agriculture industries. Many have ties, too, to the political network of the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, among other interests ardently opposed to environmental regulation.

Like the arrogant vandals in Greene’s story, but with pockets full of special interest campaign cash, the destructors of today want to tear down the walls of American conservation. Soon enough we too will be asking: What happened to our land, our country, our home?

[elfyourmother]

instead of a long ass tag essay on somebody else’s post let me just elaborate on that last post about why I personally think Paladin is so bad in XIV from a story standpoint, in a game that is otherwise 95% stellar about Job lore and story

I’ve talked about this before but I think XIV!Paladin has 2 fundamental problems from a story/lore/flavor standpoint, both of which imo stem from what was likely a gameplay balance decision to have them start in Ul’dah

1) all of the classic Final Fantasy Jobs are rooted in 1980s AD&D. the original FF was literally based on AD&D 2E down to the Vancian magic system it used and would be used for all the NES entries. But even if you set that aside and just take a look at Paladin as it has always existed in the FF franchise, it has always primarily been a holy knight with holy powers. Emphasis on holy. Given its Japanese cultural roots this hasn’t always been a servant-of-the-divine sort of D&D Paladin, with the “Light” powers trending more towards animist concepts. But Cecil Harvey, the ur-Paladin in the entire FF franchise and still the most iconic one, the one we are even emulating for Endwalker (shedding Dark Knight and turning Paladin and going to the moon), literally received his Paladinhood from a higher power (the enduring spirit of KluYa, his Lunarian father), after climbing a mountain held to be sacred by the locals (Mount Ordeals) and undergoing a trial to defeat his Jungian shadow self. It’s the most ancient mystery cult thing imaginable and there is absolutely nothing mundane about it.

...and then FFXIV decided to take this mystic holy champion archetype and slap it on an elite order of secular bodyguards for a royal family. 

It makes no sense at all the way it’s been implemented. Paladins are not just elite bodyguards with a specific code of ethics. There is always some kind of mystical, vaguely (or overtly) spiritual element to them and by tying Paladins in with the Sultansworn they were stripped of everything that gives them their actual Paladin flavor, and in ways that are totally at odds with their actual toolkit at that. (I would argue that what the Sultansworn actually are in terms of classic FF Jobs are Knights.) If they wanted to keep them in Ul’dah for balance reasons, they could have been tied in with the Order of Nald’Thal. Everything wrong with Paladins is because of this Sultansworn albatross around their necks tbh.

2) Gladiator as their base Class is Bad. I think point 1 is the direct end result of this tbh. People often complain about the similarly weird leap of logic that resulted in Rogue -> Ninja but I think Gladiator -> Paladin is actually way worse. All of the base Classes only have the basic fighting style in common with the Jobs they evolve into, but the idea is that you’re taking this very basic foundation and building on it, taking it to 11. “Plussing” it, if you’ll forgive the Disney lingo. But GLD really makes no sense on its own, until you understand that it’s just the foundation for PLD. Yes taunts and things like that are involved in gladiator fights but these are 1 v 1 battles for the most part on the sands, why have all these tanky abilities? Why focus on endurance and no flashy high risk/reward offensive moves?? (And aside from the Russell Crowe movie, gladiators were really not particularly associated with sword & board for the most part, they used any and everything.)

But imo that’s how you end up with weird shit like arguably the most famous Gladiator in Ul’dah not even using a damn shield, and arguably the most famous sword & board user in the game, the one NPC who encapsulates Paladin ideals better than anyone else we have met in FF since Cecil not actually being a Paladin or even being from Ul’dah or having anything to do with any of this shit (and his class is Gladiator anyway???)

Real talk, fam...when somebody says the word “Paladin”, is the first thing that comes to mind an elite royal bodyguard order with no special religious or spiritual affiliation?

or

The military arm of a church devoted to the Goddess of War who have been fighting a 1000 years war against dragonkind in Her name, sworn to protect the people of the theocractic City-State in which they dwell?

...yeah, me too.

I know, I know. Like I said it was most certainly gameplay considerations. They couldn’t re-launch the game with only 1 tank Job. But if all we’re talking about is pure story considerations, there is no reason on earth why Paladins shouldn’t have been Ishgardian. We didn’t have to set foot in Ishgard to learn how to Dragoon, after all. In Gisele’s verse I headcanon that Ishgard has its own entirely distinct and deeply Halonic Paladin tradition that has nothing to do with the Sultansworn, passed down through the ages from the Knights Twelve, and honed and developed by the Temple Knights (who the Church views as the heir to that legacy). But not only the Temple Knights train in it, so do the knights of the High Houses, including Haurche. I just hc that he got a massive boost in holy/Light powers from The Incident, since he survives in my canon.

So in a scenario like this, why couldn’t we have learned to Paladin from a disillusioned Temple Knight who left the Holy See (maybe they were fed up with the class politics, or the Church’s corruption) and became a bodyguard for some wealthy Ul’dahn merchant to get by? Thus actually having a “free Paladin” concept that actually makes sense??? And we could have had a whole storyline dealing with helping them re-discover what it actually means to be a Paladin, which would very naturally transition into Heavensward, giving another side to the internal conflict. The SB quests could have been like the Scholasticate quests on steroids, giving us additional insight into how Ishgard is grappling with all the momentous change. And if you wanted to stick with canon they could have leaned in much harder with Haurche’s impact on WoL and their views of knighthood. All of which would have been way better than the disjointed mess we got and actually made sense.

[elfyourmother]

What's one fashion trend that Gisele can't stand?

Distressed anything. She finds it tacky and pretentious--it’s one thing to make a garment look artfully worn, but people putting holes in things for no good reason drives her batty. It’s a waste of perfectly good fabric and what’s worse, distressed garments are inherently more fragile and prone to wearing out sooner because they’re structurally unsound. Her hatred of wastefulness is one of the tell tale signs she grew up poor.

Aside from that, trend chasers in general. Which is sort of ironic considering how often she sets them. But she finds it sheep-like and distasteful behavior on the part of people who have no sense of personal style and thus rely on others to tell them what they should wear.

[elfyourmother]

i'm gonna need for people to stop this nonsensical fuckery bashing folk for their astrological sun signs. gemini bashing in particular is virulent and gross and p. goddamn hurtful. and all of this garbage has very little basis in anything other than misinformed pop culture level knowledge of a very complicated subject that can take a lifetime of study to completely grasp. consider:

1) there are billions and billions of people on this planet, and only 12 sun signs. diversity within sun signs is to be expected.

2) your Sun sign is only small part of your natal chart. there are 144 combinations of Sun + Moon signs alone. it gets even more complicated taking Ascendants into account, rulership of houses, planetary aspects, etc etc etc. even just isolating the Sun sign (which a competent astrologer would never do, newspaper carnies notwithstanding), we have to look at which house the Sun is in, how it's aligned with other planets, what type of element it is and whether it's cardinal, mutable, or fixed, etc. All of these things have an impact on how a particular Sun sign expresses itself, even before all those other factors. even day vs. night plays a role in some schools of thought. some of you who love to trash Geminis may have a strong Gemini presence in your own chart, despite being a different Sun sign.

3) we are not the sum total of the energies that were present at the time of our births. natal charts describe general patterns and inclinations, they are not infallible predictors of behavior.

4) any astrologer worth their salt isn't going to speak of negative qualities in a chart as reason why a person is a piece of shit. we talk about these things in terms of challenges and difficulties. we talk in terms of energies, strengths and weaknesses. and every single sign has both. every single sign relates to one another differently. your ~troubles~ with one sign in particular may be less about that particular sign and more about how your energies mesh with theirs. (this is where elements come into play very strongly)

5) please think about the implications of a statement that essentially says a person is terrible because of the circumstances of their birth. please. i don't think you want to go down that road.

signed,

a semi-pro astrologer, and introverted Gemini who's really rather tired of your shit.

[elfyourmother]

tbh this is the reason why I made a deliberate decision to stop using "Shepard" in my fanfics, and say "Imani", unless it's in dialogue with someone prone to using last names or who is not on a first name basis with her

that is a hugely taboo thing in ME fic (and DA for that matter, with Hawke) and I avoided it for the longest time because of that taboo. a lot of Mass Effect writers who write Shep-centric fics will straight up say you always always refer to Shepard as Shepard, use first names sparingly if at all because of "immersion" for the reader

because the unspoken rule of Shep-centric fic is that the reader should be able to project their Shepard onto the story so they feel included or w/e

and I'm like...no. no, fuck that.

even when I went with the crowd and stuck to "Shepard" only, I was always quick to include some marker of Imani's ethnicity in the fic, so people knew that even though they are reading "Shepard" this was not a generic Jane-chan story.

to me it's more important that people understand they are reading about a Black woman.

because all too often white readers want to see everyone as white until proven guilty. we see this all the time with book fandoms when they make movies and fans flip their shit over obviously black characters in the book being cast with black actors. like that little girl from the Hunger Games as the most hilarious example.

I can describe "Shepard" as black all day long, and there are still going to be folk imagining her as a white lady as they read my fic, because "Shepard" is a white lady. "FemShep" supposed to be a white lady whether her first name is Jane or Claire or Emily or w/e. and imo using "Shepard" allows them to keep that delusion, no matter how many times I make reference to Imani's dark skin or throw in cultural markers of blackness.

so one day I just said to myself nah, i don't care, I'm using "Imani" from now on. same with my Dragon Age fic and "Marisol" vs. "Hawke". I'm not burying their ethnicity for the sake of people's delicate sensibilities so they can ignore it and pretend they are not who they are. i'm not on that "colorblind" foolishness

and you know, I know this costs me potential readers, I know people see an ethnic name pop up to describe the white face they had in their head and find it jarring and hit the back button. I know it means i will never be one of the ~popular~ writers in the fandom and I won't have fics rec'd. but i don't give a damn bc i'm not doing this for that.

[elfyourmother]

i will fully admit that my Bioware characters are fairly reactionary and made as pushback against this type of shit, the kind of messages i receive as a Black woman in society

this is why it's important to me that Imani is strong without being a Strong Black Woman. it's important to me she has plenty of people around her to support her and love her and have her back even as she's threatening to drown under the weight of so much responsibility. it's important that she knows she doesn't have to carry these burdens all by herself and that people tell her "you don't have to be stoic Commander Shepard all the time, even when you are hurting". that's why it meant so much to me, probably more than it ever meant to a white girl playing a white Shepard, when Joker said that Anderson told him to take care of her. especially because Anderson is such a father figure to Imani. that this Black man who sees this Black woman like a daughter is telling people to look after her and take care of her means more to me personally than I could probably ever explain. similarly with Garrus and the way that he is her rock of support throughout everything, simply because he loves her unconditionally and he doesn't want to see her hurting (I am actually tearing up thinking about it). it's also important to me that she survives the war and is allowed to put down these responsibilities on a shelf and be with the people she loves and actually enjoy the peace she fought so very hard and sacrificed so very much to make possible. Imani has had a lifetime of suffering, of working and working and working, of having no one to turn to but herself. she lost her entire family at age 16 and has been alone for most of her life since. i don't want her to be Mammy Shepard to the galaxy and then die so everyone can be free. fuck that noise.

and Gisele, it's important that she gets her Prince in the end, that Alistair loves and cherishes her and he is willing to put everything on the line to fight for her because she means that much to him. fuck every last white fangirl who says "if you have a problem with being a mistress don't make him king and stay Wardens with him". the poor brown girl is worthy of being a royal wife and will be one, fuck you.

and for gods sake i just want something to go right for Marisol. it's important to me that she has arms to hold her when she cries and people to tell her that it's ok to not be ok, and that it's not her responsibility to fix everyone's problems, and that it's not her fault when the people in charge are batshit and do terrible things.

all have my girls have been through hell on some level, all of them deal with performing thankless jobs, all of them are forced to deal with grief and horrors, i don't want them to end up dead or miserable or alone. i want them to have a happy fucking ending. none of them are placed on pedestals simply because I need MY characters to be the center of attention and be the most loved or worshiped or w/e.

but you know, so the fuck what if they were? I want women of color to be the center of attention. I want Black women, whether they are dark skinned space marines or light skinned pointy eared elven healers, or sad clown Latina mages with a heart of gold, to be on pedestals, to be loved and appreciated not just for their strength and ability to kick ass and get things done but for their beauty and charisma and good hearts. i want them to be treated like they are worthy of love and affection and emotional support and have hot people of all kinda species and persuasions lining up to sweep them off their feet. we don't ever get to have that. if ppl can't deal with that, if they think it's unrealistic or improper or bad writing or w/e, fuck em, it ain't for you.

[elfyourmother]

parisa got me thinking, about why i tend to headcanon most characters as bipoly folks, whether it's a combo of legit meta interpretation or wish fulfillment to see myself in my faves

i'm not talking about just my OCs, I mean the way that I think of canon characters or LIs. all of them are non-het and poly-oriented (Thane) or at least open to trying some kind of non-monogamy for the sake of the OC and then discover they really dig it (Alistair)

i honestly feel like being poly is just the way i'm wired and it's an intrinsic part of my romantic orientation, as much as my bisexuality. it's only a lifestyle choice for me insofar as the alternative is soul-crushing self denial. I am NOT making some kind of "born this way" argument or trying to equate it with being queer as some kind of privilege/oppression thing or making sweeping political statements so please for the love of fuck do not come at me about that. but what I'm saying is that for me the ability to have serious romantic feelings for multiple people at the same time--a spectrum that runs the gamut from infatuation to lasting deep connection--is something that is just in-born and an important part of who i am.

and i was so goddamn miserable for such a long time because i didn't understand that. i was an absolute failure at monogamy and felt that it meant i was an awful person because i just couldn't do romance the way society expected me to. i get romantic attachments to people so easily, and internalized the message that it meant that I clearly didn't love the person I was with "enough" and i should break up with them because clearly they weren't The One. so i was a serial monogamist. occasionally, I cheated. (I'm not proud of that.) and I had so many regrets. i believed i was broken, that I was shallow/fickle/flighty and incapable of forming "real" attachments to people, and that it was just that i was "slutty" (being a survivor suffering in silence did not help either)

even after I came to terms with the fact that I wasn't straight, i didn't really know what polyamory was until I started exploring bi lit and tbh a lot of this goes hand in hand with me diving deeper into the Pagan scene bc you can't swing a besom at a ren fest without hitting a bipolypagangeek (tm), and questioning my sexuality came right along with questioning my spirituality. in those days i acted a lot like the classic stereotypical homophobe that rails against queerness in a "thou dost protest too much" way. I fully understand in hindsight that it was entirely out of self-hate. it was a hefty dose of respectability politics too, as a freshly out bi teen. "i'm not like those hoes that give us a bad name!" i felt i had something to prove, especially as a teen girl, and so i threw these other folks under the bus because the way they lived struck a chord with me and hit a nerve i was not prepared to deal with. i was still trying to figure out who i was.

then the way I actually came to polyamory was in a heinously abusive and controlling situation, and I realized coming out of it that I had to unlearn just about everything I thought was "correct". the self-proclaimed queen of our little setup used sex and affection as tools for manipulation, among other things. I realized, "hey wait a minute, this specific situation was fucked up, but the basic idea of this really resonates with me and oh god I would love to have this in a healthy way"

now, even being comfortable in my own skin about it, I still have those moments of fear and constantly edit myself. relationship discussions are minefields. i've been in a triad where one partner insisted we present as a heterosexual monogamous couple with a "friend"--not to parents, family, or co-workers but to our social circle, a freaking WoW guild--and it killed me. I've gushed about a new partner to someone I considered a close friend and had him not speak to me for months afterwards, acting like i was dating HIM and had betrayed him somehow. I was out to exactly one friend in the office, where everyone assumed i was a monogamous lesbian, and he is about the only person who didn't flip the fuck out on me or treat me like I was diseased when I told him. everyone in the goddamn world slut shames me and treats me like I'm just some kind of shallow immature fool who likes playing around and won't "settle down", even my supposed friends.

so as much as i carry on about having no fucks to give, when it comes time to sit and enjoy a bit of escapism in these video game worlds I love, sometimes i just fucking want to feel normal. i want to leave all of that shit behind. I need to, and I need to see myself in my faves. I want Thane to realize Imani and Garrus are a package deal and that he's as in love with the idea of them and being a part of what they have as he is with her. I want Alistair to be insecure of himself and jealous of Zevran and guilty that he's falling for Leliana and then I want to see her sitting him down and reassuring him and then all of them to kiss and hug and cry. I want Sebastian to struggle with the notion and then realize that he is following Andraste's example, that if he can love her and Marisol why can't he love Fenris and Isabela too? I want Loghain to give himself permission to love and be happy again, to be with Alistair and Gisele, without shame, in the way he denied himself with Maric and Rowan out of a misplaced sense of duty and self-sacrifice. I need these stories.

despite all that i caught myself projecting the same hurtful junk from rl, even with all of that said. mark 1 of the royal OT4 situation had Leliana and Zevran as an open secret but no legal status, Gisele going as far as to hide a pregnancy and deny a child because she came out with pointy ears. and then someone (mallow I think it was?) asked me why i felt i needed to go that route, why even in the freedom of my imagination i couldn't think of a polyship that didn't have to resort to secrecy and closets for the sake of "realism" and why i felt i needed to come up with 50-11 justifications for it as if to say, "no really, it's ok!" 

even for me, it's hard to give myself permission sometimes. but why can't Ferelden's king have a queen and prince consort? If it's good enough for Paul Atreides, it's good enough for Alistair. so I'm going to keep on writing this stuff, and I don't especially care who thinks it's ~unrealistic~, or bad writing, or dumb wish fulfillment, or shallow interpretations of "true love" because these characters aren't pairing off monogamously like every other goddamn ship. if you want to think I just need for my OCs to be the center of attention and get their way all the time, or that I'm not a "true" fan of some LI because they love someone in addition to my OC, be my guest. i'm not doing this for you or to be fandom popular.

[elfyourmother]

idk man.

i just feel like, all things equal, i would rather have a character with a heart that has room for a ton of people

i love giant snugglepiles and extended support systems and found families and even ~processing~

and we get told over and over and over again that True Love means things that are actively detrimental to most people with an inclination toward romance.

idgaf if people think it's Unrealistic or Sue-ish or w/e. idc if people think i'm just a hippie. I love that Marisol has a cozy little setup and folk are free to come and go as they please and no one's considered the poorer for it if they need time or space. I love that Imani was able to find people to love and sustain her after losing so much as a child. I love that Gisele is legally recognized along with Alistair's other partners and has a wonderful extended network of lovers. i just love that these women have such big hearts and so much love to give and make so many cherished connections with people, regardless of how they end up.

i can't ever say no to more love. there's enough angst in the world that i'm not going to deal with starvation economies for the sake of closed minded folks in my fictional sandboxes.

[elfyourmother]

that's the crux of the "lololol figure skating isn't a sport" meme that has been around since time immemorial

that was the entire argument at SLC during that scandal and what let to this cockshit lopsided valuing of technical merit. that was what it was about, it was about people angry that artistry was so important because it's ~subjective~ and the old meme was SO LOUD in the media at that time and that was what led to this judging system we have now

never mind that all of this X-Games bullshit with snowboarding and skiing that they keep adding is almost entirely about artistry. it's nothing but subjective scoring in things like halfpipe

but no one ever makes the argument that the extreme tricksy disciplines of those sports "aren't sports", because the face of those sports are Manly Dude Bros (and the occasional fresh faced California girl~)

figure skating is hyperfeminine women and men who do not perform gender properly in the eyes of society, in sequins 

that is why ~subjectivity~ of artistry is only harped on in that sport and used to dismiss it

[elfyourmother]

Christie Golden only gets passes for her bullshit WC novels in the fandom because Richard Knaak is so much more quantifiably worse as an author by comparison. The only reason people praise her so much is because the bar for WC novels is set so fucking low by the likes of him. Her prose is actually readable, and that's pretty much the only thing she has on him. Her novels are full of just as much misogyny and shitty characterization and terrible pacing and fucking up of established lore as his trash.

The Arthas novel is a prime example of that. Read it more than once--or fresh off a WC3 run--and it just unravels. The emperor has no clothes. Rise of the Horde was the only decent novel she wrote, and even that got silly in places (drain life does not work that way).

[elfyourmother]

re: cons though

the one thing anime cons have over comic cons is they are much more likely to have lounges and areas to decompress

even if it's just rooms for tabletop/card gaming

I think that part of the issue is that anime cons for the most part tend to be amateur fan-run affairs and comic cons tend to be much more top down and run by professional planners. I don't see that mentality of "we need to cram every available square foot with booths to sell to artists and dealers" at anime cons the way I do at comic cons

and I also think that anime cons are more likely to have breathing space just because of teh venues. anime cons are generally still held at hotels outside of the really big ones. comic cons are mostly a city convention center affair and it is an absolute crapshoot in terms of the facilities. Wizard World Philly is great because the Philly convention center is massive and pretty well laid out and there's a ton of space so you don't feel boxed in. NYCC is getting more and more hellish as the years go on because the Javits Center is just too fucking small for a con of that size (and old and run down but lol if you live here or have ever been to NYC for any kind of convention there you understand the complaints well). this year was slightly better since they massively cracked down on badge fraud and there were less people than 2012, but it is still incredibly claustrophobic and there's no real places to escape the crowds

even though i really prefer comic cons as a rule because they are usually much better organized (also anime cons skew way too young for me now and I can't deal with unruly teenagers carrying on), i feel like anime cons have them beat on this

[elfyourmother]

I'm really feeling a way about that lingering D&D nonsense in WoW regarding the tendency to write off entire races as irredeemably evil, or devoid of anything but mustache-twirling villainy. Certainly they're not permitted to have anything resembling complexity of beliefs or culture.

Mainly because I was checking some things on the wiki for the meta post I'm still working on, and I got angry reading the dungeon journal entry for Hydromancer Thespia in Steamvault (I did not realize they went and added entries for the BC 5 man bosses, last I looked it was only some of the Wrath bosses they'd hit).

here it is:

At the height of the night elf empire, the Highborne Thespia delighted in art and music. Her love of these things vanished during the Great Sundering, when she and many of her kin were sucked into Azeroth's deeps and transformed into hateful naga. In the millennia that followed, Thespia remained a close confidant of her childhood friend, Lady Vashj. Without hesitation, she journeyed with her comrade to Zangarmarsh and vowed to oversee the naga's quest to drain the region's water supply.

Why would Thespia's love of art and music "vanish" once she became a ~hateful naga~? Are the naga not allowed to have a love of art or aesthetic pursuits because they're ~hateful~? Have these asshole writers even looked at the actual naga in the actual game? Naga civilization absolutely reeks of a culture that values beauty and artistic pursuits. Look at how gorgeous their architecture and statuary is. Look at their armor and clothing. This is a culture that clearly digs art. jfc, the imperial palace in Nazjatar is said to be even grander than Azshara's original Eternal Palace in Zin-Azshari.

ffs, they have an entire caste of sorceresses called sirens, and you're trying to tell me they don't love music? Thespia herself is a damned siren. And, you know, this is the same race that produced a jokey reference to Lady Gaga in the last expansion. Really?

I was talking about this with Dandy and it really smacks of irl bigotry and bad seed rhetoric, and quite frankly also smacks of the complete loss of nuance when it comes to the non-human races in modern day WoW, especially the ones designated as villains.

[elfyourmother]

but i will say though that Zevran's canon romance does bother the shit out of me even when it's fixed and experienced properly. it's not the character per se but the writing and the kind of message being sent with it and how monogamy is again enshrined as the mark of a true relationship that everyone will naturally fall into if the love is "real" enough for a person

i mean, Zev basically states outright that he is poly--his jealousy talk if you romance Alistair at the same time is not actually about jealousy on his part, unlike the other characters' various jealous talks. His objection is not to the fact that you're involved with another guy (he says that he doesn't seek to put any kind of claim on you), but that Alistair won't be able to handle it. And if you press the issue, Zev says that he's not a cheat and that he won't sneak around with you and that whatever he has with you needs to be honest and upfront. that is the textbook definition of poly, and he actually takes a pretty indignant tone when he says he's not a cheat, it's like one of the few times in the game he ever shows any kind of anger. Zev is promiscuous but he's responsible and he doesn't want to hurt anyone.

(notably, he doesn't take issue with Leliana at all, and it's not about "hurr hurr girl on girl is hawt" fuckshit either. the implication there is that he believes she won't care, and well, judging from what can happen at the Pearl with Izzy that's a pretty safe assumption to make)

but in the end of the romance all of that flies out the window, and the implication there is that his poly-ness was a sign of how fucked up he was and now that he's fallen in love "for real" and he's not scared of that anymore he will be monogamous. that is so screwed up on so many levels to me

and it's something seen over and over again in Bioware games, this idea that sleeping around and having a lot of partners is just fine but when it's time to "get serious" then suddenly people have to pair off. and it's especially bad in DA given the double standards and the hypocrisy that characters can be made to exhibit despite this compulsory monogamy everyone's forced into. as I frequently gripe about, the same Alistair that demands you dump Zevran or Leliana has zero problems cheating on Anora or his future wife with the Warden if he becomes king (and this is seen as ~romantic~ by some of the same people who trash Zev), and Zevran himself--despite his strong stance against dishonesty in relationships--can be convinced to cheat with Cousland on whomever they marry when they're on the throne

it's infuriating and hurtful, especially as a poly person, and that's why i totally ignore it in my canon

[elfyourmother]

i am really sick to death of this historical accuracy bullshit to justify white supremacist fantasy settings

white fantasy creators do not give a flying fuck about historical accuracy

white fantasy creators will throw every kind of Victorian pop culture notion of medieval European societies into a goddamn blender with fucking katanas and dragons

they'll accept any kind of mishmash of European cultures as legit

they'll invent entire magical systems out of whole cloth, that have no resemblance whatsoever to the historical magical and occultism traditions of real world medieval Europe

they'll have everyone using totally anachronistic arms and armor and fashions from entirely different cultures and time periods

but suddenly when it comes to people who aren't white, historical accuracy becomes incredibly important out of nowhere

and it's not just Disney fantasy, sword & sorcery period

Dragon Age has an elf that speaks a mishmash of Spanish and Italian with a Ricardo Montalban accent hailing from a kingdom where everybody basically has Spanish names and yet the political situation resembles Renaissance Italy (and it's said to be in a desert but everyone from there we've seen so far save this one elf is white as balls)

there's another elf who comes from fake Byzantium and swears in fake Latin and yet inexplicably has an English accent

(this franchise has multiple, multiple characters whose accents don't make a fucking lick of sense for the countries they're supposed to be from)

we have no in-game explanation for English being the lingua franca of the setting when by all rights it should either be French or Latin given the actual history (I explain this in my headcanon, but still)

the fake Vatican is located in fake France and the Pope and all the priests are women and Jesus was actually Joan of Arc from a barbarian Celtic tribe born in fake Scotland

the armor and weapons particularly in the 2nd game are totally off the wall and anachronistic as fuck and JRPG levels of wtf at times

etc, etc, etc, etc. ad nauseum

and no one ever really complains about these particular historical inaccuracies, because it's a fantasy setting and we understand creative liberties are taken and Rule of Cool comes into play. we know it's not supposed to be historical fiction.

the head writer even waved that off with the kitchen sink mishmash stuff being intentional and told people not to think too hard about trying to come up with too many real world parallels to historical places and time periods

but! then there's BROWN PEOPLE (gasp)

we have to suddenly be very extremely accurate and fact-based when it comes to the existence of brown people.

there always has to be a "reason" for brown characters to exist, flights of fancy and creative license and Rule of Cool don't extend to human beings who don't look white (because brown people aren't cool)

suddenly the disbelief can't be suspended

the most creative and imaginative people suddenly cannot imagine brown ppl existing with white people in a world without needing all manner of explanations and historical reasons

and even when presented with these receipts, even when presented with the mountains of evidence that medieval and Renaissance Europe were not nearly as white as the Victorian lens of history white Western schools teaches them through, they will still cry and throw tantrums and make excuses (usually something about not wanting to seem "overly PC", yadda yadda coded racism)

this is not about not being able to imagine brown folks, it's about not wanting to do so. it's about white being their default setting for everything, and their preferred one

they want to imagine worlds where we don't exist