#but not a queer worldview

[fiftysevenacademics]

I think one of the reasons all the emotions hit so hard in Fangs of Fortune is the way hard, bitter feelings and violent actions are layered with softness and gentleness. All the main characters (except Ying Lei, who is just pure, soft sunshine), are hung up on rough feelings of grief, revenge, and remorse, betrayal. But each of them is willing to surrender those feelings, which for each of them have grown into a kind of mission, to let tenderness in. This gradually changes them.

The tenderness is shown through so many devices: touch, gaze, play and humor, frank and intimate conversation. It’s also shown through costumes:textured and soft textiles, fur, fluffy pom poms, velvet, that invite touch. Zhao Yuanzhou’s costume in his final scenes is the epitome of this– somber and solid-looking material on one side and a fuzzy white knit textile on the other to signify duality. In this case, the firmness of purpose, making amends, the inevitability of fate on the harder black right side, and the small choices we make to connect with and touch the lives of others on the soft white left.

The soundtrack music also conveys softness. Lead actors Hou Minghao and Tian Jiarui, especially, use incredibly soft, wavering voices to sing haunting ballads that sound like laments and lullabies. But there is also some harder rock music used during fight scenes to balance the dreamlike overall effect.

This all helps convey the theme that though none of the characters can escape what fate has chosen for them, they don’t need to let it harden them. Each has suffered great losses, each knows they will suffer more, but they remain pliable and willing toward each other.

I thought it was interesting that forgiveness wasn’t really a theme. There wasn’t a moment when Wen Xiao and Zhuo Yichen forgave Zhao Yuanzhou in order to love him. In fact, they held him accountable for his past actions until the end but loved him nonetheless. Zhuo Yichen showed his love by taking on the guilt of killing the man he loved, a death that both repaid a debt and saved the world and left him bereft and alone. Wen Xiao showed her love by tearing up the contract and releasing him to both be her lover and to die.

To live with duality, one must be flexible (a point made overtly in the swing scene). The characters that cannot do this, that rigidify on one side of the balance, are the villains. Wen Zongyu, who sealed himself inside hatred of demons after they killed his wife, and Li Lun, who sealed him inside hatred of humans, and a sense of betrayal by Zhao Yuanzhou for loving them. In the end, however, Li Lun, softens and releases the love that remains in his heart to save Zhao Yuanzhou and Zhuo Yichen. These characters live with contradictions and ambiguities.

So the main male characters become better, nobler men not by doing great, or violently masculine deeds, but by letting the softer, gentler, one might even say somewhat feminine side of their natures direct their actions.

[aroace-menace]

Aphobia is actually so wild though. I’m literally just chilling. Just going about my silly little life. And billions of people decide that my existence challenges their worldview and they’re not okay with that. That’s so funny. We have too much power.

[utilitycaster]

I’ve long noticed and previously commented on the odd fandom antipathy towards characters like Suvi of Worlds Beyond Number and Jonas Spahr from Midst; and simultaneously a far, far more generous approach to outright villains like Will Gallows, many of the witches, and Moc Weepe.

I’ve also commented on the favor and endless forgiveness shown villains before, and to get it out of the way, yes, a lot of this is due to horny reasons, and as someone who does not identify personally as a monsterfucker this might be part of my lack of interest. But I think it would be unwise to chalk this up entirely to people wanting to fuck the villains, and given that Suvi and Jonas are both extremely attractive as well it’s certainly not the whole picture.

Suvi and Jonas are born into and achieve positions of privilege - military/political no less - in imperial societies. They are both explicitly indoctrinated. They are not, in my opinion, brainwashed; but they are driven into who they become through competition.

I think a lot of people are really uncomfortable with characters shown to be complicit in and favored within this kind of society. I think Spahr and Suvi occupy a space that they find too close to home; too close to what they themselves are. A villain validates one’s beliefs: Weepe is ruthlessly self-interested, driven by profit, and terribly violent, and so it’s easier to be comfortable with him, ironically enough, because the story tells you he’s a bastard and you can feel good about clocking him as a bastard, and even like that this character is on a meta level telling you that you’re right in your beliefs.

Suvi and Jonas and those like them don’t permit you that validation. They participate in these harmful systems while believing it to be the right thing to do. They are also young people who grew up knowing little else, with unfathomably high expectations placed upon them. They are flawed, with no shortage of harsh edges, but they are also frequently kind and generous people who are incredibly important, as they currently are, to characters one might find more sympathetic. They are deeply human. And they are both the beneficiaries and the victims of a vast and complicated system. You cannot fit them into the box of a “stripped of choice” victim even though both have found themselves backed against a wall by their respective societies. You cannot avoid that the dissolution of their society would have devastating consequences, even if it might be right (which Midst directly explores; I suspect the Citadel might not be a thing to be dissolved). And while many people do so, one cannot in good faith and intelligent analysis treat them as nothing more than a shipping doll who needs to be programmed to become a mirror of the “correct” character of one’s choosing without ignoring who they are and what they bring to the table: a political savvy, a great deal of talent and intelligence, and a desire to embody the best parts of their respective flawed societies.

As Midst reaches its denouement, one of the core messages is that a harmful society is still one comprised of people: some upholding it, some actively furthering it, and some just living within it. While Worlds Beyond Number is nowhere near its end, Brennan Lee Mulligan’s body of work upholds a similar message; that one cannot lose sight of the personhood of people, even those involved in messy and damaging systems, and that people must be judged with that in mind. Suvi and Spahr are not cogs to be wrenched free and corrected, but characters to appreciate in their complexity. It is a shame that so many reject them in favor of those who consistently choose to do harm because it is less difficult and challenging to think in terms of Good Guy/Bad Guy.

[datshitrandom]

How was to be in a gay relationship (klaine) on screen?

“It was fucking awesome man. I mean the main thing here, like not because I’m trying to be blasé about the obvious thing in this question because we are saying that this is a gay relationship, nowadays, we just call it a relationship on tv, but to contextualize it, a gay relationship on mainstream Fox Network, that’s a pretty cool thing to be a part of. I often equate my relationship to that whole experience to Slumdog Millionaire which is, if you are familiar with Slumdog Millionaire is a kid that gets ask a bunch of questions and he just so happens to have the experience to answer this very specific things, now being cisgender straight kid you go 'oh oh what? are you going to allow this guy to talk gay shit?', I’ve been so culturally queer my whole life, not because I’m trying you know, actually, I was gonna say not because I’m trying to be cool but I’m gonna erase that, is because I am trying to be cool. All the sh— in my life that I have tried to emulate, learn from and be inspired by are one hundred percent queer as f—. It was in queer communities that I’ve found people that I idolize, that I want to be, to learn something from. And I’d say that’s a gross generalization, that’s a lot of things and a lot of people. But I grew up in San Francisco in the ’90s. I watched men die. There was an awareness of the gay experience that was not a foreign concept to me. So, it was a narrative that I cared deeply about. I wasn’t like a f— saint or like 'I’m the man for the job', they hired me and they said, 'You’re the guy,' and I said, 'Okay, I’m the guy I will do my best, I will do my best to talk about it in the way I believe and a way that I’m passionate about'. So in many ways I’m glad that it was me because it was a thing that I really like showing up for and it meant a great deal to me that it meant a great deal to other people. Because when people say they were affected by that show or that relationship, it’s not because of me, it’s because of that relationship on a TV and the risks that people took to put that on TV and most important of all it took the people watching it to have the "aptitude" for seeing beyond what was maybe given to them in other avenues of culture. People of all ages, all spectrums of awareness say, 'I didn’t grow up with a show like that and it was a really meaningful thing for me to see,’ and I go ‘I didn’t grow up with a show like that’ and that would’ve been very meaningful for me too, you know?, regardless of the fact that I’m a straight kid. That has value. For anyone who’s been an underdog, we all know, in any shape or form — sexual, religious, biological, whatever — it has value because there’s going to be a lot of people who see that and go, 'Okay, I can now understand this in a context that maybe I wasn’t able to before'. So short story long, what was it like? It was a fucking privilege and I love talking about it and I’m so grateful I got to do it." - Darren Criss at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo Q&A | April 27th, 2024 

[isdalinarhot]

All Homophobic Navani jokes aside I do think she is really working on becoming more accepting of this kind of stuff and like it would be easy to say it’s because of the crab yuri or whatever but honestly I think she started rethinking things when, like, her husband asked her to teach him how to read and she had to get really cool about a lot of things really quickly

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

as someone fascinated by the past i would love to have time travel fantasies but unfortunately pretty much every single scenario i can imagine just involves me dying immediately, most likely as a result of my disabilities but probably also violence, social ostracisation, etc, and i feel like this does change your outlook on the world and your understanding of your place within it

"what would i have done in X situation" died. that's what i would have done. i would have died.

i can joke about being a medieval scribe all i like but i wouldn't even have survived in a monastery bc of my health and my inability to eat literally any of the staple foods available at the time and if you can't survive a scriptorium you're pretty much fucked for everywhere else

my place in the modern world feels pretty fragile sometimes but some of that fragility definitely comes from the knowledge that it's only because i live in the modern world that i even have a chance

[intraven6us]

3 in the morning rant but I'm sick of living in a fucking straight world! I'm sick of every piece of media in every advertisement, every theatre centering around heterosexual courting and and pairing ritual! I'm sick of every song on the radio about heterosexual love lust or heartbreak! I'm sick of listening to straight women whine about how their boyfriends play too much video games or watch too much porn or how their girlfriends are too emotional or can't take a joke! I'm sick of the pointless categorisation of everything into male and female! I'm sick of discourse and I'm sick of something as simple as cross-dressing or transitioning being something that turns heads! And I'm sick of everything queer that does end up in mainstream culture sanitised for the heterosexual audience! I don't want to have to behave myself and keep it pg at pride so that the straights deem us family friendly enough to endorse! And I'm sick of who I am being made out to be some twisted perversion of human! I'm sick of monogamy culture and marriage and the house with the fucking kids and dog! Just for once I want to live in a world where I'm not a freak or unnatural and I can be open about who I am and the experience of life I'm having and just talk about how my day was without having to censor how queer it was so my fucking straight colleagues and friends don't need it explained or need to be spared from the explicit and disgusting nature of my fucking life! I'm sick of the heterosexual life being shoved down my fucking throat since before I could even understand what the blue and pink characters on my children's cartoon was indoctrinating me into!

[arcane-vagabond]

I need some of you to stop trying to find homosexual romances in straight media and actually sit down and start supporting the LGBTQ+ media that’s already out there.

[rebornrosess]

i think there is something to be said about queer subtext in glass animals songs almost always being likened to obscurity and murkiness throughout zaba vs explicit queer text being likened to the sun in helium as in…literally coming out into the light.

[kickbutts-singsongs]

I was scrolling thru the vaults of my notes app and

NOT ME SAVING A BKDK MEME IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2022???

For context, I technically didn’t start shipping them until late 2023, and when I first started the show (2021), I was completely against the ship, but as time progressed I found myself drawn to their dynamic and the story of their relationship but was in vehement self-denial that I shipped them (comphet anyone?)

but uh that’s all changed lmao

[valgreaves]

modern choices books are so fucking bleak bro they're never gonna make a guy like andy kang again like with their current design philosophy? they're not gonna put in the effort to include a short trans dude built like a brick shithouse again even as a nonromanceable npc because apparently every character in choices can only have like one of four preset body types now

i guess in the newer books you can customize LIs with different body types and pronouns but there's no heart to it. you have the option to make them trans and non-white but they're not designed + characterized with that option in mind. it's not the same as seeing andy's sprite for the first time and realizing that he's wearing a binder under his basketball jersey. hearing him talk explicitly about how difficult it is growing up asian and trans in a mostly-white small town and feeling like he has to work three times as hard to make up for it, to seize every fucking opportunity that gets dangled in front of his face because no one's gonna give him a chance otherwise. instead we just get mass-produced paper dolls and the writers still mess up their pronouns in the coding. It's Bleak

[roykiller07]

i am always so scared and avoidant of explaining my identity to anybody (even, if not especially, myself) in any more words than the vaguest description possible ("im trans these r my pronouns and im a lesbian") because i cant telepathically transmit my gender into their brain so theyll never understand the complexity of it and will think something is wrong with it because im 100% nothing if not a lesbian but my nonbinaryness does not necessarily exclude manhood but it also does at the same time?? idk. wish ppl would stop trying to get me to explain my nonbinary identity in binary terms (im ppl nobody is asking me to say anything more than what i already do)

that comedian was so right i am a man in the way that kraft singles are cheese. it presents like it would be in the same category, it tastes like an offputting version of the real cheeses, a lot of people would call it cheese and it calls itself cheese too unless legally restricted but when you look at the actual content it is an entirely completely different substance. which doesnt make it any less a cheese persay but certainly also makes it definitely NOT a cheese at the same time. and its way better on grilled cheese than normal cheese is. not sure how that fits into the metaphor but its important to me

the same can be said for the way that im a woman and for both a large majority of the "ingredients" are completely internalizations of external inputs instead of any actual innate part of my being, like being a girl in the weird girl by mommy long legs way or in the impact of growing up a girl in a sexist society way or in the betty grof way or in the autistic female cartoon characters way or in the when choosing which character was OUR character growing up amidst my siblings in any game or show, often ending up w the only girl instead of just anyone that resonated with me way (was always mad at the games/shows for only having one girl, never upset about having to be her instead of someone else unless one of my siblings took the cool genderless-esque one) (maya and zero from borderlands...) or in the im my mother's daughter way or like being a guy in the random stray cat of indeterminate sex way or in the when every new person got confused about my gender as an androgynous kid, laughing super hard with my whole class/whoever was there about how dumb they were but always avoiding answering/correcting them clearly and getting upset if someone else told them i was a girl way or in the feeling very uncomfortable when anyone but my family specifically called out that i was a girl as a kid way (when alex tried to tell me i was the ruler QUEEN not the ruler KING for my collection of rulers..... die) or in the im my brothers brother way or in the drag king way or in the tboy swag of harold tdi way or you know i could go on for literal eons and still feel like i didn't list enough. plus a lot of the items on BOTH lists apply to BOTH options

and besides that im also like totally disconnected from gender?? i definitely still feel agender and genderfluid at the same time all the time not to mention the constant banging at the door in the back of my head for catgender begging to be let out. overall point blank period i know that the reason i feel this way about my gender is because im autistic and when social constructs don't come naturally to me that includes gender. but that's never like. a definitive enough answer for other people or for my own sanity and it makes me mad because NOBODY UNDERSTANDSSS MEEEEEEE [emo crying on knees]

whatever who actually cares (me)

i think the last time i felt properly fully self expressed was when i was 10 and had a scratch account named mr fox and used a persona called mr fox on it and part of what was special about me was that my name was mr fox but i was actually a girl even though i would throw up if someone called me a miss or mrs

[smokedrac2004]

yknow its crazy how every american ive dated or even just generally been close to turns to full on usa-centrism and racism after we've cut ties. ive never faced that problem because see i dont lose a fucking spine about demographics im not in if someone in them made me upset once.

[freckliedan]

as much as i crave a hard launch i fear its not happening anytime soon and my tingly senses tell me it's dan who doesnt want to but phil wouldnt mind it at all

i'm sorry babes but i'm gonna need to verify your references before i trust your intuition regarding dan and phil <3 i vet my mutuals very thoroughly and the amount of people whose takes i agree with completely on here is much shorter than the list of people i'm following.

[babsaros]

i think we need to put "psyop" up on the shelf where you guys can't reach it

[good--merits-accumulated]

god writing the first bits of the italian renaissance au is so gruelling. i feel like putting up a big sign on top of the text that says I PROMISE I'M NOT WOOBIFYING TODD. HE'S A GROWN MAN WHO GETS A NUANCED PERSONALITY I PROMISE IT'S JUST THAT ALL THE OTHER CHARACTERS ARE LOOKING AT HIM WRONG. PLEASE