#but of course taking the characters who are canonically attracted to multiple genders and deciding that bi ppl no longer exist

[elfcollector]

bi women can be masculine and prefer topping and still be bi! bi men can be flamboyant and still be bi! sexuality is not entirely dependent on how many gay stereotypes you fit, thought we'd got this sorted in 2010 but what the fuck do i know!

[yansimstorythatiwillnotworkon]

Matchmaking Overhaul

The matchmaking system is used for the sake of peacefully eliminating your rivals by convincing them to fall in love with another boy. While the idea is generally nice and helps add romantic aspects to the game, it’s still lacking significantly, I believe.

I already put down brief ideas about rewriting the “crush” system, and just like that, these ideas will be just as brief and unofficial. This, of course, means that I can change my mind at any time and may add or take away from the ideas I’m documenting now.

(As per usual, more explaining and a brief art piece below.)

First, I’d like to talk about the benefits of matchmaking students OTHER than the rivals. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that one of the “patrol” students, like Himari on the first floor (who also has the capability to apprehend you), gets in the way too much. Of course, speaking from Himari’s current functions, she truly isn’t that much of a threat, but I digress. If she had more obnoxious patrolling functions, then matchmaking might be a good way to keep her from patrolling at a certain time. Say you matchmake her with another compatible student, and in the mornings, instead of patrolling, she begins spending time with that student elsewhere instead.

With that explanation out of the way, I want to talk about compatibility. If you want to matchmake someone, you should have all of the necessary information for both parties. The necessary information in this case would be- the student’s likes, personality, type and thoughts on dating. Currently, you can chat with students or drag them around the school to learn their interests, which is time-consuming but still rather simple. If it’s to be time-consuming, it should at least include multiple unique actions that doesn’t include waiting in a room for the student to find their way inside the room with its poor programming.

A good idea could be offering a student gifts, asking them questions, or just generally spending time with the student. What you learn can depend on the student’s personality, their willingness to speak about their feelings, how chatty they are, and what exactly you ask about.

Back to the compatibility, though. Putting it into a simple idea, two students who all like cooking, drama, nature, art, and socializing would be pretty compatible. But again that’s very face-value. What if, say, Gema and Akane had the same likes and dislikes. It doesn’t mean that they’d be compatible at all in terms of dating or even bring friends because of how different their personalities and lifestyles are. Akane is meant to be uptight and likely keeps romance to a minimum if not completely silent as a subject, and Gema has proven that his “type” is either anime characters or unique fashions like the gyaru girls. Both of them can be found attractive in their own right, but if their personalities and appearances aren’t compatible with their preferences, they likely wouldn’t get together. Or at least it would be very difficult.

This leads me to “types”. While having a preference in terms of appearance (think Osana with Taro), it doesn’t guarantee that the student will only date a student who holds all of those physical attributes. However, it does help the player decide what possible candidates may be. As you all probably read recently, I’m unable to add same-sex relationships due to my religion, but in the game, it’s likely that some students will have a preferred gender to date, which could also help the player narrow down their options.

Also, allow me to comment on something else. As you may know, some characters have canon friendships in the game, like Osana and Raibaru, Sukubi and Rojasu, and Saki and Kokona. In my story, one of the friendships is Saki and Kenko. While they are good friends, I doubt that they would be compatible due to their different lifestyles. They can like the same things, like each other’s appearance, but Kenko might desperately prefer someone who takes better care of their body, which Saki does not do.

I think that all of what I’ve discussed thus far could be somewhat used for some sort of matchmaking system. As I said, I admit that I wasn’t able to put this in quite effective words. It all looks messy as I’m re-reading it, but that’s likely due to my lack of sleep. I plan on putting some more effort into this in the future, definitely when I’ve actually gotten some shut eye.

Although my religion restricts me from making certain things possible, I encourage other creators to possibly put in their thoughts and make art regarding a revamped matchmaking system. Maybe put in characters that you think may be compatible and why. Do they have different likes and dislikes from the canon information? Is their personality different, thus making them compatible with different students? I’m always curious to see such things in this community.

(I realize his pose looks a bit strange. He's meant to be tying his apron. 😔)

[tma-mspec-week]

TMA Mspec Week FAQ

Q: What is TMA Mspec Week about?

A: This event is about celebrating canon mspec characters, as well as your mspec headcanons in the podcast The Magnus Archives

Q: Why make a TMA Mspec event?

A: This podcast has a rare instance of an mspec ace main character, as well as multiple unique mspec characters, which is something we all love deeply and want to celebrate. On top of that, we want to encourage creation of fanworks with mspec headcanons for other characters, because the more the merrier! The mods are also bi/mspec people themselves, or simply folks who enthusiastically support mspec identities, so this is a very exciting opportunity for us!

Q: When does the event take place? 

A:  From January 25th until February 1st, 2021

Q: What does "mspec" mean? 

A: Mspec means "multi spectrum" and is an umbrella term for all queer identities that include attraction to more than one gender, e.g bisexual/biromantic, pansexual/panromantic, polysexual/polyromantic, omnisexual/omniromantic, etc.

Q: What tags does the event use?

A: To get your work seen and reblogged/retweeted by us, tag it as "#tma mspec week" on Tumblr, and "#MspecWeekTMA" on Twitter.  

Q: Do we have to use all of the given prompts?

A: Nope. We give a selection of three types of prompts per day, generic / mspec-related / character list, and you can choose to use one, two, all three, or none of the suggested prompts. They're there purely for your inspiration

Q: Character prompts give you three characters per day. Do we have to use all three??

A: Nope! If you choose to use the character prompts at all, you can choose one, two or, if you want a little challenge, even all three. And, of course, your work absolutely doesn't have to be limited to the chosen characters. Meaning that if out of a list of Jon, Tim and Melanie you chose just Jon, your work can still be JonDaisy, JonMartinGeorgie, just Jon or something entirely else. We wanted to add the character prompts to hopefully inspire out of the box thinking about which characters could be mspec, and encourage a wide diversity of representation in the works that could be created!

Q: What do you mean by "the works have to touch on the topic of mspec identity"?

A: While there are no strict boundaries, the main goal of the event is the celebration of mspec identities and content featuring them. This can mean an explicit exploration of a character's identity and self-discovery, but it can also simply mean, for example, a MartinGeorgie artwork or a JonPeter fanfic. We leave it up to you to decide how you personally interpret this topic and how you personally want to celebrate it. We won't strictly police the content, but also ask people participating to only submit works they genuinely believe fit the event.

Q: Do the works have to be focused on romantic relationships?

A: Nope! The works can be romantic couples or romantic poly, but they can also focus on just one character, a friendship, QPP relationship, found family, or otherwise platonic relationships. The only important thing is touching in any way on exploration/celebration of a mspec identity, however you envision it.

Q: Can the focus in the work be on a different identity alongside the mspec one, or are only mspec identities allowed?

A: Yep, it absolutely can be! We more than encourage intersectionality, and if you want a character to be bi ace and trans, or maybe pan and nonbinary, or simply queer in their own unique identity, we completely support it.

Q: Can the work feature mspec/lgbtqa+-phobia or otherwise negative/upsetting/angsty content?

A: Yep! You can certainly explore or feature elements such as bi/pan/mspec-phobia, aphobia, transphobia, etc. within your work, as long as it doesn't promote such behavior as correct or justified. But please be sure to tag and warn for such themes accordingly.

Q: Do all characters in a work for this event have to be mspec?

A: Of course not! While the focus should be on mspec identities, it doesn't mean that it can't feature gay, lesbian, aroace, or straight characters. However, we will not allow erasure of canonically mspec characters, such as Jon (both as mspec and ace), Tim, and Georgie, in favor of different headcanons.

Q: Are only mspec fans allowed to participate?

A: Of course not, any fan of any identity is allowed to participate, of course as long as they act respectfully and in good faith. 

Q: How do I submit a work to the AO3 collection?

A: Please see the information here

Q: Is there a minimum or maximum word count for fanfic?

A: Nope

Q: Is any ship/headcanon/content/etc. not allowed in this event?

A: Nope, aside from works that promote any sort of x-phobia or bashing. Everything else is allowed, so long as you make sure to provide appropriate rating and content warnings

Q: Can I submit a work that was created and posted previously, but that I believe fits the event?

A: Yes! The 8th day, February 1st, is reserved specifically for previously posted works to be reposted/retagged/added to the AO3 collection.

Q: Who are the event mods and how can I get in contact with them?

A: You can send questions directly to this account through the ask box or DM us on Tumblr or Twitter. 

The mods for this event are:

Saj (@ sajwho, @ saj_who on Twitter)

Aza (@sazandorable, @sazandorable on Twitter)

Fly (@apatheticbutterflies)

If you have any more questions left, please feel free to send them to our ask box!

You can also see the event rules here

[kinetic-elaboration]

November 2: The Wanheda Tape, Writer’s Commentary

Today, some notes on The Wanheda Tape, my take-off of The Blair Witch Project.

This was my first idea for Chopped Choice: Horror, and the one I initially thought was more developed/easier, because I had the whole general structure for it: Octavia finds a tape, the tape has a ghost-hunting adventure gone wrong it, scary stuff happens, the end. As opposed to what became Mad Women, which was just two unconnected images at that time. But when I realized the Blair Witch idea was a literally a story in a story in a THIRD story and that I didn’t have any concrete ideas for the innermost story, the legend upon which the main ghost-hunting story would be built, I backed away and decided to work on developing Mad Women instead.

Then I finished that fic earlier than anticipated. And I still really liked my Blair Witch idea because I love the super cliche, traditional horror stuff: ghosts, witches, woods, autumn, etc. Sci fi horror was fun but it didn’t scratch that particular itch.

So one day after work, I took a walk, and suddenly all of the disparate, scattered ideas I’d been having for The Wanheda Tape came together, and I knew I just had to write it.

The big problem so far had been, as I said, the legend. I’d already decided I wanted to include Princess Mechanic exes as one of my tropes, and I wanted the legend to relate to them in some way, even just as a thematic parallel. I wanted the witch of the legend to have a lost love, too. I also figured the legend would have to be fairly old. And I toyed early on with the idea of like a utopia/commune/separate woods-y community that goes wrong.

The canon legend Wanheda was an immediately attractive option to base the rest of it around, because what’s creepier than a witch who controls death, a witch in some way associated directly with death? Plus I like canon parallels in modern au fics. But Clarke was already in the story, so that seemed impossible. I set it aside.

I thought about using the Grounders, and paralleling the woods-y community/main town war with the inter-clan wars of the canon. Perhaps Lexa as the witch, and Costia as her lost love? This was plausible but it didn’t seem to fit right, I think in part because Lexa isn’t a minor community leader; she’s not a separatist. She is the main one in charge, the Official Commander. Plus, it seemed complicated, trying to parse out Grounder drama and turn it into a legend that would then parallel a modern delinquent au.

What suddenly fit into place for me was using Wanheda, not despite Clarke’s presence in the modern au, but BECAUSE of it. The parallel between the two would then be immediately obvious, with really no work at all on my part, and it would allow me to try to do a story with multiple interpretations. I’m not the biggest fan of ‘maybe it was supernatural, maybe it was all in x character’s head’ but this was the sort of story that lent itself to ambiguity, plus I could always heavily imply that the supernatural reading was right.

So in other words, modern!Clarke and Wanheda would be paralleled, connected in the text, and it would be unclear if the creepy things happening were directly the witch’s doing, the witch through Clarke, or directly Clarke. Then Jasper, Monty, and Octavia would summarize the three possibilities in the final scene, to make it more clear. Octavia sees her as the mastermind of everything: she lured her friends to the woods, killed them, escaped herself, and got away with it. Jasper sees her as a tool used by the witch, even if his version doesn’t quite sound properly supernatural: something happened to her, through her, in the woods, and that broke her. And Monty sees her as a victim of the witch just as surely as the other three were. (I admit the three weren’t quite as separate as I’d wanted...and this was after re-writing!)

I’m not sure if all three possibilities are really equally convincing, but I do like to think they’re plausible, even that Clarke was somehow doing everything: going to the woods was her idea; she was in charge of navigation, and could have gotten them ‘lost’ on purpose; she was the last person to see Miller, and she wasn’t with Murphy and Raven when they saw the fire. And then of course Murphy sees her chanting in the woods--or he sees someone who he identifies in dialogue to be Clarke, and who seems to be her based on dress, although I was careful not to have the neutral observer of the camera actually name her, because--is it her? Really?

But still, there are distinctly unnatural phenomena going on, and distinct witch-iness. And Clarke’s involvement seems undeniable. That she either innately has or has created a connection to Wanheda is clear. To what extent the witch works through her, uses her body, and to what extent the witch exists as a completely separate, even physical, presence is what I hoped would be ambiguous. Is the figure Murphy sees a possessed Clarke, or the actual Clarke, or a bewitched Clarke (like Miller in the final scene)? Is the person holding the camera in the end a possessed Clarke? The witch herself? If the latter, where is Clarke? Dead? Still lost in the woods?

Wandering the streets of Arizona?

Does it matter that I chose to include four figures in the woods in Monty’s memory, and not five?

I didn’t answer all of my own questions, but I do have ideas that I worked off of, mostly to keep continuity.

First, Clarke imo is very good at lying and doesn’t mind lying if she feels she has a good reason to do so. So she is a liar in this fic, on at least one occasion. When she takes the book from the tree, it is not empty. She keeps it for the writing inside.

Another possible lie: that she doesn’t know why she thinks the witch is real. I think it’s plausible she’s been to the woods before and had weird things happen to her, or felt some inexplicable presence, in which case she is manipulating her friends by not being forthright about what they’re doing. Alternately, this is her first woods-y expedition, but her inherent connection to Wanheda allows her to ‘feel’ a presence the others cannot.

Second, the general outline of Wanheda’s journey and Clarke’s are the same: both using magic they cannot control and shouldn’t be messing with to defend/protect their loved ones, perhaps particularly motivated by residual feelings for lost loves (Wanheda’s need to avenge her lover in particular, Clarke’s need to protect Raven in particular), and both face consequences for their actions.

Wanheda was always a witch, and benevolent magic allowed her community to thrive, as the village believed. But after the villagers attacked, she turned to black magic for her revenge. It was successful, but the price she paid was that her community never thrived again. (Yeah this is kinda a moralistic story lol.)

Clarke tries to use witchcraft too, when she sees her friends being threatened--like Murphy, she reads the strung up dolls as a warning. So on the second night, after reading the book, she tried to protect the group using the circle of stones. It wasn’t successful, but the more magic she tried, the more caught up in it she became, losing herself in the process. Whether she was the active tool of the witch or a more general casualty, like Miller, I left open.

I didn’t think too much about the gender dynamics of it--except for the Wanheda legend, which is obviously about Competent/Independent Women Being Threatening, and the chaos that comes from men’s reaction to that--but now that I’ve rewatched the actual Blair Witch Project, I kinda want to poke at that more. Not totally sure I’ll like what I’d find in my own work lol. A tale of two women punished for their hubris? Maybe.

Still, it’s more problematic if women are punished where men are not. At least Wanheda and Clarke actually did something. At least they tried. Wanheda made a deal with the devil (perhaps literally) out of understandable rage and sorrow, and Clarke, called to that history, the physical manifestation of that memory, flew a little too close to the flame. To the extent that she and her friends are punished for their curiosity--this is just a trope of horror, which is in so many ways about allowing us to imagine what we cannot really see, and showing us the worst case scenario of the curiosity we can’t satisfy in real life.

[kyoties]

Fic Friday

Heart Strings by November09, InoSaku, Comedy, NR

"Every so often Naruto and his friends get together, taking a weekend out of their busy schedule to keep in contact. This time Uchiha Sasuke is invited." Tags: Multichapter, Other Ships ao3

Sand by dustbunny3, TemaSaku, Romance, G

"Sakura has problems on the way to Suna and Temari makes her an attractive offer." Tags: Drabble, Innuendo, Post-Series ao3

Legacy of Fire by DangerSloth, KushiSaku, Fantasy/Romance, Explicit

"In Sakura's mind being a royal knight for Duchess Tsunade was tough enough, but when the intelligence network of the Kingdom has failed, Sakura is thrown into a world bigger than she imagined. And what is a knight to do in a world filled with beautiful women? Woo them of course." Tags: Smut, Fantasy AU, Gender Changes, Multiple Partners ao3

Mutual Comfort by MissMarionette, DeiSakuSaso, Romance, G

"A short piece revolving around Sasori and Sakura living together, with Deidara joining in because he's lovable like that." Tags: Polyamory, Fluff, Sharing A Bed, Domestic ao3

Bravado by rowdyhomo, InoSaku, Romance, G

"Sometimes all one needs is some grass, a clear sky, stars, and someone to share it with." Tags: Childhood Friends to Lovers, Short Fic ao3

Sakura's Love Types: Alphabet Challenge by ohtheregoesmygrades, MultiSaku, General, M

"It's another Alphabet Challenge! This will feature 26 one-shots. Each one-shot will feature Sakura Haruno and a different letter from the alphabet. Most of the one-shots are romance but there are a few gen/family/crack one-shots thrown in when there was no character that matched the letter. On that note, if you're looking for a specific pairing go to the letter that matches the first one of your non-Sakura person's name." Tags: Multiple Relationships, F/F, M/F ao3

Plain Words by ColourVegan, AsuSaku, Romance, T

"It was refreshing with someone as comfortable in their own skin as Asuma, Sakura decided." Tags: Short Fic, Same Age AU ao3

Pulling My Weight by itsthechocopuff, ChojuSakuShika, Romance/Adventure, T

"During their mission to Wave, Sakura realises how behind she is in her training and decides to do something about it. She vows to become a shinobi her Village and her teammates can respect and depend on. But Sakura has always been a paper-ninja, so her first stop for inspiration is the library where she finds unexpected help in the form of one very bored tokujo who quickly goes on to become an integral part of her life. Soon, despite the neglect of her sensei and all odds seemingly against her, Sakura's destiny begins to change." Tags: Polyamory, Canon Divergent, PTSD/Anxiety Mentions ao3

Cracking the Planet by kitsurama, MultiSaku, Romance/Adventure, NR

"When Sakura gets sent to the past by her Hokage to stop the world from ending, she doesn't know if she wants to bash Naruto's skull in for putting her in this position or kiss him for giving her the chance to save everyone." Tags: Polyamory, F/F, Time-Travel, Fix It AU ao3

Snow and Sakura by hannahmayski, TenSaku, Romance, G

"Sakura hates snow. Snow is cold mornings, cold days and colder nights. Snow is icicles in her soul as she watches Naruto tremble in front of the Raikage, begging for another’s life. Snow is her worst memories. Luckily, she has Tenten to make her hurt a little less." Tags: Hurt to Fluff, Good Girlfriends ao3

[thecloserkin]

fic rec: Dante’s Stars by Pretani

fandom: A Series of Unfortunate Events

pairing: Violet Baudelaire/Klaus Baudelaire

word count: 94k, complete

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: Yes

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: I’m fucking crying it’s so beautiful

Bottom line: The one and only Violet/Klaus epic, read it and bawl your eyes out (def read the warnings first tho)

It’s a canon-divergence AU where the Baudelaires stage their own deaths to escape Count Olaf. In canon the three Baudelaire orphans—inventor Violet, bookworm Klaus, and baby Sunny—are hounded from guardian to guardian by cartoonish villain Olaf, who will stop at nothing to get his hands on their fortune. Olaf murders or incapacitates every single adult who spares two seconds of sympathy for these kids, leaving a wide swathe of destruction in his wake. In this fic the Baudelaires have decided to wipe the slate clean and assume new identities.

I have mentioned in the past how salty I am about the Baudelaires’ characters being sidelined for Snicket the narrator, Olaf the villain, and/or sundry other bit-players (in the Netflix show the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender p much steals every scene they’re in). In canon we’re not really privy to the kids’ inner lives. This fic avoids that pitfall by sticking with tightly focused third-person Violet and Klaus POVs.

The thing this fic does really well is instill a pervasive sense of dread/paranoia which is remarkable because for the first 25% absolutely nothing ominous happens. The orphans get taken in by a slightly addled, very nice old lady and they just … live in her house. For free. While she cooks for them. And every morning Violet and Klaus hook up in her barn.

Ok back up so the ship they’re passengers on goes down in a storm, all hands lost, the Baudelaires are presumed drowned with the rest. Which is positively providential. The first event of any import to occur is that Klaus swipes some cash from a dead man’s wallet. Violet has ethical qualms but Klaus quashes them by pointing out that Sunny’s starving:

”I’d do anything for her,” he said. “Even become a thief or a murderer.”

Then his dark eyes found Violet’s. “I’d do it for you, too.”

So on the one hand I think this is rather extra. I mean, what possible use could a dead man have had for that money? Money that could put actual food in Sunny’s stomach. The Baudelaires are keenly aware that justice does not equal unquestioning obedience to authority and I think their exposure to a raft of tyrannical and unjust authority figures has hammered that home. They’re down with bending the rules because they know the rules are never even-handedly applied anyway (ie. the show trial at Hotel Denouement, the farcical final exam at Prufrock Academy). On the other hand I remember how uneasy they felt about stealing Hal’s keys in Hostile Hospital, and that was barely a misdemeanor! A friend of mine astutely pointed out how Violet is always trying to behave in any given situation the way their parents would have wished, whereas Klaus takes a pragmatic approach: do whatever keeps his sisters safe. And that is a very interesting contrast and one I want to see explored further.

They get on a train. Things that happen: Klaus notices when Violet is down in the dumps or angry or upset or in this case, wistfully jealous of other people who lead “normal” lives, bustling all around them. He’s not in love with her yet but noticing is the first step. Violet atm is super focused on being the elder sister, the adult in the room, the One In Charge. They get off the train and as soon as they blow into town Violet gets catcalled and propositioned. One of the themes of this fic is the horrendous baseline level of violence against women, some of it normalized and casual like the catcalling. The Big Bad Villain of the piece is literally a guy who’s murdered multiple girlfriends on account of them fridging his ass, since he appears to think that women owe him sex. And this man’s driving ambition is to add Violet to his list of conquests.

So often, men treated her as little more than an object … Klaus was different. He saw her, the woman she was inside.

HOW COULD SHE NOT FALL FOR HIM?? Is there another man she could learn to trust enough to fall in love with? However I’m getting ahead of the story. Klaus is still in the phase where he’s awakening to his attraction to Violet:

She was mother and sister, soft skin and tender strength, and he hid his face in her neck. Like a child, she rocked him gently, cradling his head.

I have to protect her, even if it’s from myself.

He couldn’t take this, his brave, beautiful sister, so near … the knowledge of what those men wanted to do to her. I”ll kill them … And what he wanted …

God but it kills me, Klaus thinking that his attraction to Violet is as noxious as those vile men and their rapacious stares. Klaus himself otoh is president of the Violet Baudelaire Fan Club. The contrast could not be more marked. Look at him building her up when she’s about ready to to give up on picking a lock because she’s lost her hair ribbon:

”I’m done, Klaus. I don’t have anything else to give”. ”Vi … “ he was pleading, willing her to believe in herself again, because he did. “You’re a brilliant inventor,” he told her. “It’s who you are. Nothing can take that away. You don’t need your ribbon.”

The unwarranted parallel that he draws between himself and a bunch of sexual predators is the source of so much angst and pining:

Is that what I am? A pervert?

She’ll blame herself for this

Well, well, well, if it isn’t ye olde I’m-Leaving-Her-For-Her-Own-Good-Lest-My-Perverted-Attraction-To-Her-Despoil-Her-Innocence. I am absolute trash for it every time, film at 11.

”I love you, Vi … I’m in love with you.” He said it like he was confessing to a crime, and she wanted to scream, to laugh and cry all at once.

THEIR LOVE IS A CRIME!!! Could these babies be more pure??

They’d always had an extraordinary connection. It was the reason for their seamless partnership, their ability to support one another … But now, the bond that had kept them alive was killing him. How could anything ever be right again?

”Vi, I’m sorry … I want to be your brother, but I can’t … I want to be more than that … I don’t know what to do.” ”Kiss me,” she said, “and be both.”

THATS IT THATS A WRAP I CAN NOW DIE HAPPY. That “kiss me and be both” is PERFECTION.

And she knew she’d never willingly give herself to anyone but him.

she’d loved him even then. Who could tell when they had crossed the line? It was already too late.

cross the line what line??? they were made for each other.

”You know, we missed the sunrise,” he said, nose to nose with his sister.

Violet and Klaus carve an extra hour out of their morning to go make out in the barn. I shit you not these kids spend a whole month without progressing past first base because Klaus doesn’t want to “pressure” Violet into anything she’s not ready for. Violet, for her part, is beginning to suspect there’s something wrong with her person; why hasn’t he even tried to take her top off? Thank you #Patriarchy for teaching us that desirability is the measure of a woman’s worth. God they are so thirsty. This bitch almost fell over the first time he touched her tits:

“Vi,” he spoke into her hair, voice breaking. “Tell me you don’t want this. Tell me to —“ But she only titled her head, to meet his mouth in a feverish kiss.

So Klaus and Sunny are having a snow fight and Violet tugs her glove off to tousle his hair and it’s THE SEXIEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN BYE. True story after I read this fic I legitimately thought that “Vi” was a pet name Klaus called her by in canon, and when I finally finished the books much much later and realized that it wasn’t—well, it should have been.

There is a fairy tale about a princess who disguises herself in the skin of a donkey to escape the attentions of her lecherous father the king. Violet and Sunny discuss it. Violet points out that rape is wrong because rape is rape, because it is coercive, not because it’s incest. I love it when fic highlights the fairytale parallels to the Baudelaires’ situation, and I feel like Donkeyskin was such a spot-on choice because it’s all about surviving sexual assault and learning to make oneself vulnerable again afterwards? Klaus is the prince who sees through her disguise and falls head over heels in love with her CHANGE MY MIND. On the subject of happily ever after:

”Is that what you think I want? A fairytale? A walk down the aisle in a white dress?" He felt a lump forming in his throat. "Most girls think about those things, don't they?" "I don't," she told him. "I prefer not to. And as for children…well…I love them. That's why I don't want any of my own … how selfish would I be, to bring another little life into this? Another hostage they could use against us. Imagine how awful it would be if…" She shook her head. "No children… not ever. I couldn't protect them." And she turned to him with a soft look. "It's no sacrifice, Klaus. Not for me. I've already been through a… a wedding, you know." He felt her shudder, and she averted her eyes. "I won't be sorry if I never see another wedding dress again."

My dudes, when you have children each and every one of them is a hostage to fortune because of course they are. Also, Violet’s traumatized by the whole idea of being a bride, after going through the wringer of her fake wedding to Olaf. Olaf put Sunny in a cage to compel her compliance, and that’s what the Big Bad in this fic does too. He says things like “You’re a sick little bitch, aren’t you? Spreading your legs for your own brother” which turns their beautiful relationship into this ugly depraved thing to be ashamed of. I mean, this guy was literally a voyeur who would watch them from his hidey-hole while they were being intimate?? My god I would feel so unclean. And the worst part is, he overheard them calling each other by their real names not their aliases, so now he knows who they are and since the Baudelaires are still on the lamb this is bad. It gets pretty dark pretty fast.

“He won't want you anymore! No one's gonna want you when we're done!"

So he kidnaps and rapes Violet. Klaus and Sunny rescue her, dispatch the villain (Klaus’s earlier “I’d do anything” for his sisters, including becoming “a thief or a murderer,” acquires sudden resonance), and that’s when fucking Count Olaf shows up!!!! These kids just cannot catch a break. Turns out the Big Bad was actually working for Count Olaf all along. Olaf’s plan is still the same plan from The Bad Beginning where he plotted to steal the Baudelaire fortune by marrying Violet. Since Count Olaf has never in his life paid a henchman a salary, he was keeping the Big Bad sweet by promising to let him ravish Violet first. Let the full enormity of that sink in. Oh wait a minute Olaf isalso bent on knocking Violet up asap so the union can’t be dissolved on non-consummation grounds, or somesuch:

"You look at me as if I were a usurper, boy, about to steal something of yours. Tell me…" He gestured at Violet. "Is she yours?"

Why would you do this to me??????? This is so, so painful. Olaf uses an electric cattle prod on Klaus and makes Violet watch??? It’s ok though the Baudelaires prevail in the end, and emerge from the bloodstained ordeal as the family they are. My kink will forever be Violet and Klaus praising each other’s bravery and resourcefulness. They! Are! So! Proud! and! Supportive! Of! Each! Other! This line from earlier in the fic gets me every time:

I’ve failed them. This was his greatest fear, worse than death or any torment fate could devise. In his head, he imagined the struggle, saw his girls beaten and shot, felt each blow and bullet as if his own body were the target instead.

Klaus Baudelaire laying down his own body between the world and his sisters is really the only thing I care about:

And then her gaze fell to the marred canvas of his body.

I bet his back is a mess of burn marks ugh. Four weeks after Violet’s discharged from the hospital (practical Violet made sure to get the green light from the medical professionals) they finally have sex again, which is a relief—after the rape they were both hesitant to initiate sex because she thought she was damaged goods and he thought she wanted space? Silly kids. Oh and and here they are being mistaken by strangers for a pair of lovebirds:

One of the women sighed dreamily. "Did you ever see a more likely pair of turtledoves?" "Of course not," Mr. Poe sputtered, dabbing his brow with a handkerchief. "The very idea!" And he excused himself hurriedly, to make some phone calls. "Don't be silly," said the other. "They're siblings. Haven't you heard? … They're the Baudelaire orphans." "Well, I daresay," the first one went on, "anyone would've taken them for sweethearts."

I CANNOT WITH THESE TWO

The Baudelaires finally, finally come into their fortune free and clear. They put on their parents’ wedding rings and move to Canada. A cat (!!!) leaves baby Beatrice II in a basket outside their front door, and that completes their family. Nobody deserves good things more than these kids, and this fic ends exactly where it ought, describing “a rural life of moral simplicity.”

I read this fic years ago and it was w i l d rereading it again, thanks for coming along for the ride. If anyone wants to scream/cry about this fic in particular, or Violet and Klaus in general, feel free to send me an ask or message me ANYTIME

[thebellwitchblog]

Some Things I Feel the Need to Address in Fandom

Hello there! I’ve been in fandom for a long time and as such have witnessed it evolve into what it is today. I wasn’t around during the times when people feared Anne Rice and her lawyers, but I did pop into the scene soon after when the horror was still fresh in everyone’s minds, and I’ve been around in some capacity ever since. Fandom has always always had problems that needed addressing, and that’s what I intend to do in this post. Yes, there are plenty of posts just like this one floating around Tumblr and other sites where fandom gathers, even in the author’s notes of fanfiction where disclaimers once stood.

All fandoms across the board have the same problems, some more so than others, but the same general themes show up. Of course depending on the canon material there are more problems of certain types than others, but really most problems stem from one thing: People are trying to police how others experience fandom.

What do I mean by this? Well, simply put, select people are trying to decide what is and isn’t acceptable for other people to do in fandom. This goes beyond educating about polite ways to interact with each other and straight into deciding what is or isn’t okay to headcanon or ship.

The major problem with this is that fandom arose from people that were passionate about some creative work or another and wanted to share this passion with others, even if they didn’t agree on certain aspects what bound them together was their shared love for the source material. There have always been ship wars and discourse in the communities, but here within the last few years, particularly here on Tumblr, these have gotten out of hand.

It is perfectly fine to disagree about who should be paired together, to disagree over headcanons and how characters should be remade. It’s okay to disagree, but once disagreements become demonization and a toxic us vs them ideology then fandom becomes a dangerous place. I’ve witnessed all out vicious wars on here over things like shipping a 17 year old with someone in their mid-20s. This isn’t okay.

Fanon is literally anything you want it to be. That’s why it isn’t canon. Fanon is taking the canon and changing it up as much as you would like until it’s perfectly suited for you. Do you ship these two characters? Great now they’re together in your fanon. Do you think this character gives off major ace vibes? Well guess what! They’re ace! In your fanon. Your fanon does not under any circumstances get to invalidate someone else’s. Let me repeat that one more time, but bolded. Your fanon does not, under any circumstances, get to invalidate someone else’s.

So far I’ve talked in really general terms, but now I’m going to address some more specific things I’ve seen. Again, these aren’t about any specific fandom, but specific problems I’ve seen people fighting over in multiple fandoms.

Shipping minors with adults. This is, not gonna lie, a very very iffy area and it comes up a lot. Whether or not this is okay is dependent on the age gap. NOT the age gap in the canon work, but rather the age gap in your fanon. What do I mean by this? Well, let’s say a character in canon is 21 and you’re wanting to draw them with another character that’s maybe 15 in canon. How could this be made remotely okay? Easy! Age up the younger or de-age the older enough that they’re within an acceptable age gap. This sort of stuff has existed in fandom since the dawn of fandom. It’s really nothing new. Note: This is not pedophilia! Pedophilia, by definition, is a chronophilia (sexual attraction to individuals within a specific stage of life), and mental illness, characterized by the sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children, which the DSM-5 includes up to age 13, by adults. Even without changing the ages, a 15 year old being shipped with a 21 year old is not pedophilia. It is Hebephilia or, more likely, Ephebophilia depending on whether the 15 year old is experiencing puberty or just after it and what definition of the two you reference as these have not been formally included as a mental illness as of yet and thus do not have an agreed upon age range, but regardless 14 and 15 year olds do not fall in the range of pedophilia.

Shipping canonically non-het characters in het relationships. This is what we’ve been doing all along with cishet characters this entire time, guys. Literally probably 90% of slash/femslash (oh geez are these terms even used anymore? I think I’m showing my age) is two canonically heterosexual characters being shipped in a pretty gay relationship. Granted this usually happens because there wasn’t a lot of representation, but now that representation is growing it’s to be expected that people are going to do the same with the LGBT characters. This goes right back to what I touched on earlier in this post- let everyone experience fandom like they want. Note: It is not homophobic to ship a non-het character with someone of the opposite gender just like it’s not heterophobic to ship two het characters in a gay relationship. This especially goes for characters that we don’t know their sexuality specifically we just know that they’re non-het.

Feeling like the creators of the source work owe you something. This one isn’t something you see outright stated a lot, but it’s evident in how people act towards animation studios, authors, etc. Whenever something doesn’t go how people want it to in the canon, then people practically riot and threaten the creators- even the voice actors and actors will get hate from fans when they don’t have any, or very minimal, control over where the story goes. Yes, you can get upset over what happens in the canon and get worked up, but when it gets to threats and absolute chaos? Especially when it’s just a rumor? That’s not okay anymore. That’s when it gets toxic. We have headcanons and fanon for a reason. It’s there so that if the canon material goes completely opposite of what you’d like you can still have that perfect ending. That’s a large part of why we have fanworks. 

Other Problematic Ships. Policing ships isn’t always due to age gaps. I’ve witnessed it with canonically abusive characters a lot, for instance. Regardless of why a ship is “problematic” there is no excuse for telling someone they cannot ship it. Not only does this fall back to the whole “Let everyone experience fandom how they want” ideology I’ve brought up on multiple occasions throughout this post, but also they can interpret this ship however they want. People disregard canon a lot in fandom, so why is this any different? More often than not the character isn’t abusive in their fanon no matter what the canon might say. Even if the character is still abusive in the ship, that doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to ship it. I’ve talked to some people where these ships were an honest to god coping mechanism for them after they got out of an abusive relationship. Note: This does not make it okay to romanticize abuse.

These next few points aren’t specific to fandom but instead Tumblr as a whole that are a huge problem in fandom as well.

Echochambers. Tumblr, and social media in general, is notorious for this. People surround themselves with like-minded people and block anyone that even slightly differs from their opinions. Why is this a bad thing? Because when we’re surrounded by the same viewpoints our viewpoint narrows. A lot. And misinformation spreads faster and is harder to get rid of. Not to mention other problems such as nurturing an us vs them ideology. Things get blown out of proportion, people become unable to cope with opposition, and it’s just not a good time for anyone involved.

Callout Culture. Callout posts are so so so common that it is honestly overwhelming. If you’ve been on this site and actively posting for any length of time, you’ve probably been called out by someone for some perceived crime against humanity. Whether or not you actually committed this crime, or if this “crime” is actually worth the backlash, you’re now blacklisted by a varying number of people depending on how many followers the person has. Congratulations! Crimes can be, but are certainly not limited to: - reblogging a post from someone you didn’t know was some vile creature in human clothing (whether they actually are one or not doesn’t matter. What matters is they’re considered one). - you used a term you had no earthly idea was a slur. No slap on the wrist for you, you’re going straight to the gallows. - posting fanart of a ship someone considers problematic (see two prime examples above!) Why is Callout Culture such a problem? It demonizes and turns entire communities against someone for minor mistakes or entirely bogus reasons in the first place. If someone makes a mistake they shouldn’t be blacklisted immediately; they should be informed of why what they did was wrong first and foremost and given the chance to change.

Holding Grudges. Please. I am begging you. Let. People. Grow. If someone says something years ago and then not only apologizes but proves they’ve changed? Let it go and move on. What is the point in insisting that people need to widen their views if you won’t let them live down a mistake they made beforehand? If they change then reward their efforts instead of holding their mistakes over their head. This goes for actors and actresses, directors, producers, people here on Tumblr, etc.

I could keep going and bring up even more problems, but honestly I’m tired. It’s time to wrap this up.  tl;dr stop acting like you own fandom and let people do what they want. Let people ship what they want, headcannon what they want, etc etc etc. Fandom belongs to everyone and canon material belongs to the actual creator, not you. The only thing you own is the stuff that you make. Mind your own business, stay in your lane, and let things go every now and then. You’ll be a lot happier, I promise.

[nonbinarysasquatch]

An Argument for Rebecca Bunch’s Bisexuality:

So first things first: it should be clear that this post isn’t exploring whether Rebecca is intended to be seen as bi. It’s clear from Rachel and Aline’s comments, and Rebecca saying that she has certain bi tendencies in season 3 are just an exploration of sexual fluidity that Rebecca is not intended to be bi.

It’s also clear that a lot of the things related to Rebecca’s seeming queerness come from Rachel Bloom and I also want to be clear that this isn’t commenting on Rachel Bloom herself as she’s a real person and her business is her business.

This is purely examining why Rebecca can be read as being bi when only looking at the show itself.

In an interesting way, I think Rebecca seems the closest to the experiences of myself and other bi people I’ve known out all the characters. The other queer characters on the show largely eschew stereotypes, but if we ignore authorial intent, in a funny way Rebecca seems most the stereotypical in terms of a queer narrative. She seems a lot like a closeted bi woman who hasn’t broken through her own internalized biphobia.

The hints that Rebecca could be bi begin very early on, particularly in the first episode when she goes to the strip club to look for Josh. Rebecca is sitting right in front of a dancer (in the original pilot she apparently stuck her face in the dancer’s bare chest) and only vaguely seeming to look for Josh. Now, this could be read as Rebecca being in denial (as we know she is) but still… it’s a weird thing to do if you’re a straight woman. But admittedly, this is not out of character for Rebecca.

In the second episode, we are introduced to Josh’s girlfriend, Valencia Perez, who herself is confirmed to be a WLW in season 3. Rebecca, still very much in denial about her feelings for Josh, tries to befriend Valencia, inadvertently becoming the first woman Valencia has ever been able to be close to (and possibly helping to awaken her own queerness.)

Rebecca is clearly jealous of Valencia but also seems to genuinely like her and be attracted to her (keeping in mind “Feelin’ Kinda Naughty” was originally “I Want to Fuck You With My Jealousy Dick” before the show moved to the CW.) And obviously, Rebecca tries to make out with Valencia and is swiftly rebuffed (again, by a woman who herself will later realise her own attraction to women.)

Why does Rebecca do it? She wasn’t doing it to impress Josh, he was clearly uncomfortable with Rebecca and Valencia having anything to do with each other. Valencia wasn’t giving her any signs. And wanting to make out with someone isn’t a typical expression of jealousy. The simplest explanation is that Rebecca misread Valencia’s actions as evidence of attraction, and being impulsive and having boundary issues, Rebecca acted on it, probably with little thought to why she was doing it.

There’s not much for the rest of season 1. Rebecca spends most of season 1 dealing with her feelings for Josh and Greg. The big thing I would talk about though with season 1 is the ways that Rebecca and Darryl are paralleled (something deliberate on the part of the writers.) Both are lonely characters with identity problems. When it comes to loneliness, Darryl and Rebecca do act in similar ways, hatching schemes and even being in denial about their own stalking behaviour. Both can be inappropriate in their efforts to deal with their loneliness.

As far as identity issues goes, when faced with who she really is inside, Rebecca buries it (in season 2 outright expressing disgust for who she really is inside.) Darryl, on the other hand, quickly adapts to realising he’s bi, even proudly announcing it to his employees at work.

The show does other things to parallel Darryl and Rebecca. For instance, they both fall for men named Josh. Darryl even gets Rebecca’s heart flutter theme when he and WhiJo first kiss, something that is otherwise exclusively used for Josh Chan (until “Getting Over Jeff” when it’s used for Paula and Jeff.)

Another interesting level is that Maya is a character that mirrors Darryl. She is also bi and Darryl initially bullies her because she reminds him of himself, especially the parts of himself he doesn’t like.

In the first episode of season 2, one of Rebecca’s most bi moments happens and much like her kissing Valencia in season 1, it makes so little sense if she’s intended to be straight. I am naturally referring to her attempting to seduce Paula, literally feeling up Paula’s crotch with her foot, not even realising she was doing it. Then, having successfully convinced Paula to help her find Greg, Rebecca is clearly turned on by Paula’s hacking. Why? There’s no context for any of this ever given.

It’s not like Rebecca is super horny all episode long or something. Contrarily she has recently been having sex with Josh. It’s not as if there was some subplot about her being sex starved. Rebecca just inexplicably tries to seduce Paula, then gets horny from Paula’s actions and it’s not set up or brought up again.

Several episodes later, Rebecca tries to re-initiate her friendship with Valencia, erm, kidnapping her and taking her to Electric Mesa. Rebecca and Valencia take drugs (accidentally) and bond over both having gotten burned by Josh Chan. They pee on Josh’s equipment and Rebecca expresses excitement over the best part of the experience being that she and Valencia saw each other’s vaginas. And of course, in the tag we see Valencia, ask to see Rebecca’s vagina again. Valencia, who will later end up in a relationship with a woman…

Two episodes later and Rebecca and Valencia are still bonding, Valencia for the first time partaking in criminal shenanigans. Rebecca, apropos of nothing pretends she and Valencia are lesbians who are house shopping, even though no one is actually even around. It should be noted that at the end of the episode, Valencia decides she needs to get laid, picking up a guy at the bar, disappointing Rebecca. Valencia at this time obviously hasn’t embraced her queerness (in fact that’s something that we never really get to see, since it happens in the time jump.)

The rest of season 2, mostly has Rebecca dealing with Josh and Nathaniel, but there is a tiny beat in the video for “So Maternal” when Rebecca imagines two grown women breastfeeding from her. Objectively, this an odd thing for a straight woman to imagine herself doing.

Season 3 is possibly a bit lighter on these Rebecca moments of apparent bisexuality. I’m admittedly in the middle of my current rewatch so I only have notes for the first half of season 3 to look at it.

But obviously, the show for the first time directly acknowledges Rebecca’s apparently bi-curiosity, when Stacy misunderstands, thinking that Rebecca is bi and possibly seducing her. Rebecca denies that she’s bi but backtracks a little and clarifies that she does have certain bi tendencies, saying she’s a 1.8 on the Kinsey Scale. Now obviously, the Kinsey Scale is a very, very outdated model, but even taking the model as it is and looking at Rebecca’s behaviour, a 1.8 seems a bit low.

A point of interest is obviously Valencia ending up in a relationship with another woman. It’s impossible to look at Valencia’s queer narrative and not talk about Rebecca. Rebecca was the first woman she has ever loved. The show makes it abundantly clear how much Rebecca means to Valencia, not only via her outburst in “Josh is Irrelevant” but simply in the number of times Valencia forgives Rebecca. Rebecca has given Valencia every reason to give up on her but Valencia cares enough to remain her friend.

Rebecca is a part of Valencia’s queer narrative. That much is incontrovertible.

The final point I would make about Rebecca really relates to what it can be like to come to your bisexuality (or any sexuality really.) In general, even now, we still live in a culture that is very homophobic and particularly biphobic (which are related things, but biphobia has threads in both other queer people and straight people as well.)

I didn’t wake up one day and realise I was a bi. There was some denial and personal dismissal. I was a teenager in the 90s and back then most people didn’t think of bisexuality as a real thing. So when you are confused because you feel this other thing but are afraid of it because what if it means everything you know is wrong… it’s weird. And it’s easy to dismiss it.

Personally, I was in a relationship for most of my 20s that kept my sexuality (and gender issues) buried. I knew they were there but I chose to believe they weren’t significant or important. And I thought, well, maybe it just isn’t strong enough to call myself bi. I was aware of sexual fluidity. It took time to even let myself explore it.

Rebecca has spent her entire life seeking male attention, obviously eschewing close female relationships until she came to West Covina (and I’m not even going to touch on the DELIBERATE romantic parallels they do with Paula and Rebecca here.)

To me, Rebecca Bunch, regardless of intention, feels like a bi narrative. Will there be any payoff? Unlikely. And hey, this show has done a lot for the bisexual community (literally gifting us with an anthem) and it has multiple bi characters (though I do think readings for Valencia’s sexuality are still open as long as they don’t label her.) So it’s not like I’m going to be pissed and the fact that they even took the time to acknowledge Rebecca’s bisexual tendencies as being a real thing and not just a joke is kind of remarkable.

But it’s not going to be explicit canon. Rachel and Aline don’t think Rebecca is bi. But I certainly do.

[one-that-had-to]

On Musilová

As requested by @orcinus-wanderer, on the development of Tatiana’s similarity to her mother. I’m still not entirely sure this answers the question, but hopefully it will still give you all some insight on how Tatiana came to be.

Also, putting this at the top since this gets long: My inbox is always open, not just for prompts. If you ever want to hear more about how I developed  a character or if you have any questions about the actions or motivations or anything, feel free to ask!

I developed my Commander with two major themes in mind. One, I wanted to explore the relationship between the Council and a Commander who didn’t come from one of the member nations, someone who maybe wasn’t as under their thumb as they would have liked. Two, I felt like no other Commander went far enough on the sort of trauma they should have post-tank.

So, I started creating my Commander with a few basic facts. First, she was going to be horrifically traumatized post-tank. Obviously. Second, she was going to be dual-national. She was going to be something-American, because I am American and I know I can write Americans without much extra research.1 Third, she was going to be a she.

My Commander was going to be a woman for entirely obvious reasons. I’m a woman, technically, and I like to see myself represented in media that I like. I’m also bisexual and so a woman in power? Wielding authority with ease? In uniform? With muscles? There’s a reason I sometimes refer to her as my wife.

Early on there was a time when I really doubted that decision, though. The internet People aren’t generally kind to female characters and I’ve experienced that myself firsthand plenty already. So, for a while, I considered having a “backup” male commander who would essentially be identical to Tatiana in all respects. Except he’d also be a total asshole, because if I had to use him then it was because other people were being assholes, and I guess I figured it would be a good way to take revenge, or something. That eventually got folded in with how I write Van Doorn sometimes.2

I eventually settled on my Commander being Czech-American for honestly rather meaningless reasons.3 I then settled on her first name, Tatiana, because it was relatively popular in Czechoslovakia at the time, it had different pronunciations in Czech and English, and I just liked the sound of it. It also didn’t start with an L, which is something a lot of my characters have.4 Then, to find her last name, I just googled for a list of most common surnames in the U.S. and scrolled down until I found a French name I liked. I specifically looked for French names because I could have some pronunciation goofs and I just like to bag on the French language. Thank you, William the Conqueror.

To make the dual-national part of her story work, I knew Tatiana had to spend a significant amount of time in her non-council member country and have significant ties to it. So, obviously, she had to have been born there and raised by her mother and maternal grandparents. 

Despite knowing this, I never intended to give Tatiana a Czech last name.

On a whim one night, I decided to look up common Czech surnames regardless. I ended up finding the name Musil, derived from the past tense of the word “must” and roughly meaning “he had to.” I saw that, went “what kind of chosen one name bullshit is that,” and made it Tatiana’s birth name.

It was only after finding the Musilová name that I realized that Tatiana is a woman whose entire life is influenced by the other women in it. Most of her teachers in the U.S. would be women, including some of the ones that she likes and some of the ones that turn her off of education for good.5 She joins the army in part because there is an attractive woman who comes to her school for the pull up challenge. Once she’s in the army, she finds an older woman mentor who teaches her how to toe the line to keep herself safe without crossing the line. She’s almost outed by a woman to the army.6 To ensure her bisexuality7 was never erased, I made her most significant prior romantic relationship (which eventually became her only other significant romantic relationship) with a woman. Her grandmother is the reason she can live on her own with ease, unlike some certain other commanders.8 And of course, Tatiana’s mother is the single most important person in her life.9

On this I realized that if I were to make a second male commander, he absolutely could not just be Tatiana, but a man. So I dropped that thought and dedicated myself entirely to building Tatiana as a human and as a character. At this point, I don’t think I could make a second commander even if I wanted to.

So, realizing that Tatiana is a woman almost entirely influenced by the other women in her life, I realized that Tatiana absolutely had to take after her mother. Most importantly, she also had to get her stupid high will from her mother, and her mother would get it from her parents, Tatiana’s grandparents. Stupidly high will became a Musil family trait -- one that brought Grandpa Musil and Grandma Musilová together fighting in the Czech resistance, one that brought Libuše to the United States after fleeing from her home for her children, one that brought Tatiana to XCOM to save the world.

Thus, my favorite line from Tatiana’s flower character study: (And she must, because it is her name. Not the one shortened and butchered by foreign tongues, and not the one forced upon her by the stranger that is her father, but the name passed from father to son to her mother to her.)

That being said, it’s not as though Tatiana doesn’t take after her father at all. He’s an American man who somehow manages to visit communist Czechoslovakia multiple times, falls in love with a Czech woman, and spends ten years trying to figure out how to bring her and their kids to the U.S. to have a better life. Or, at least supposedly better. That takes tenacity and a strong will of his own. His side just doesn’t have anywhere near the influence on Tatiana as her mother’s.

Ultimately, it made sense for her to have a Czech name. She’d identify much more strongly with Musilová than with Mercier, that she’d identify with her mother’s side much more so than her father’s. That was going to be how I highlighted the tension between her and the Council.

Everything that one needs to know about Tatiana, everything that informs her character comes from the other women in her life. The Musilová name ties everything together neatly, the influence of women in her life, her struggle with her dual-nationality, and her very reason for doing everything she does. Even though Tatiana’s gender does not matter to her story,10 being a woman is important to who she is as a person. This is why I usually write her full name as Tatiana Musilová Mercier even though she technically doesn’t have a middle name.

Everything tied together perfectly, all on accident. I had this whole realization in bed at 3 A.M. while trying to fall asleep.

In short: Why does Tatiana take after her mother so much? Because she had to.

1. Oh, how wrong I was. She ended up being an east coaster, and to me as someone who has only ever existed on the best west coast, the east coast just like. doesn’t exist to me? Not to mention all the army stuff.

2. He’s really only a huge asshole in Amelia AU, where he is for sure the one who outs Tatiana to the army.

3. Honestly, I didn’t want Tatiana to be Czech, but we don’t always get what we want.

4. Tatiana was very almost nearly named Lýdie, but  Lýdie didn’t sound the name of a military commander.

5. The teachers that turn her off of education are almost certainly all women. Two of her good teachers in high school are her world history teach and her physics teacher, who when I imagine them are my US history and physics teachers, respectively, who are both men. I go back and forth on this.

6. Similarly, I go back and forth on this, too. Thematically it makes sense for it to be a woman who nearly gets her discharged, but I usually imagine that it’s a man that does it.

7. Attraction to one gender? In this economy? Absolutely not.

8. Please learn to cook, Lizzie and Weir. 

9. To break Tatiana’s will enough in both canon and in Hunter AU, the Elders use her mother against her. I have some cut content from Hunter AU, if anyone would like to see that.

10. Since Tatiana is very much “me, but a better me,” it’s debatable whether she fully identifies as a woman since I sort of question my gender myself.

[bluerobokitty]

Okay, so I was one of the interviewees for the #LanceIsBi article that just released recently, known as “Shardy”. Given how much the article is being discussed now, I’ve decided to post my entire interview in full to show just how in depth the discussion actually became. 

The article barely scratches the surface of the issue of the bisexual treatment in fandom, this is true. However, as someone who has been screaming into the void about this for a solid year and a half now, it was nice to finally have a platform on which to speak.

This whole thing started because the #LanceIsBi movement gained so much traction to the point of trending on Twitter. The editors of Den of Geek grew curious and wanted to look at why such a thing happened. Remember, not nearly as many people are involved with VLD discourse. Our fandom’s discourse so multi-layered and so complicated, people on the outside can’t really see it unless they become involved themselves. As far as DoG was concerned, this was just a fandom thirsty for bi representation. 

My quotes about it being mostly for a shipwar are not used within the article, but that would be an entire article on its own. However, this article did focus on how fans do queerbait themselves and others, the importance of separating fanon from canon, and real bisexual representation comes from the characters, not background colors and jokes by voice actors. I’m not gonna toss the baby out with the bathwater here - that’s a pretty good start. 

So without further ado, here is my interview. It was conducted via Twitter DMs back in October, but for ease of reading, I formatted the interview to post here. It’s a very long post, so if your “read more” function doesn’t work on your phone, I apologize. 

What’s your name? (You don’t have to give me your full name if you aren’t comfortable.) You also don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but if you’re willing to say so, how do you identify?

My name is Shardy and I identify as a bisexual female.

How long have you been a Voltron fan?

I’ve been a Voltron fan since Legendary defender first aired. I never had the chance to watch the original as a child, but I had friends who were super into it so when the reboot happened, I decided to check it out.

How do you interact with the Voltron fandom? Do you write fic? Post fanart? Discuss the series online? Whatever!

I interact as much as I can through fanfic, artwork and zines, I’m trying my hand at making merch, and I’m always discussing the series on Twitter or Discord from meta and worldbuilding to theories and ships.

Why do you see Lance as bisexual when the show hasn’t expressly said that he is?

So when I started headcanoning Lance as bisexual, I saw bisexual Lance headcanons making their way around fandom since day one. By then, fandom was pretty small and it was obvious that he was mostly headcanoned as bisexual for shipping purposes. Which, I really don’t mind, so long as people are respectful about it. I hadn’t entirely embraced my own bisexual label yet, I was still confused about a lot of things. But then I see this guy in this show who clearly prefers the opposite gender, but if he were bisexual, maybe it would be because he’s nervous around his own gender? Maybe he doesn’t know how to approach dudes like that? Maybe he doesn’t want to risk humiliating and outing himself by hitting on a straight guy? And I realized that was MY experience. That’s exactly how I felt around other women. Nervous, scared, maybe I should just stick to guys since it’s safer, makes me less vulnerable.

Lance is my favorite character because he’s closest to me in personality, so I projected a lot of experiences onto him. Of course, I relate to all the other characters in lots of different ways, too, but Lance is a bit special to me when it comes to my sexuality. I really used him in my fanfic to explore my own sexuality, and that’s the case for a lot of women in fandom, really. I know that he is thus far explicitly straight in canon, but the beauty of fandom and transformative works is that we don’t always have to strictly follow canon. So long as you don’t start insisting that such things are canon, because that’s when you start to queerbait yourself and see things that aren’t there, and if you base your expectations like that, you’ll only disappoint yourself in the show if not hate it. Which I’m starting to see a lot of people in fandom do.

This is why I am so incredibly bothered by #LanceIsBi movement. Which I will get to here in a minute because this movement stems from a much bigger problem that’s been festering in fandom for over the past year.

Do you think the series will ever openly confirm Lance is bisexual? How will you feel if they do or don’t?

I don’t think Lance was ever meant to be bisexual. I think he was always meant to end up with a girl (my money’s on Allura given the events of these past two seasons lol). It would be cool, though. I would like to see a little arc dedicated to him coming to terms with his attraction for his own gender, too. Because that’s what bisexual representation is all about. Coming to terms being someone attracted to multiple genders. And accepting that it doesn’t make you confused or broken or prone to cheating or anything else people who don’t understand bisexuality try to throw at us. Embracing our label. Even if Lance were to end up with a girl in the end, that would still be good representation because it’s never about the gender of our partner but our experiences and growing with our identity.

Unfortunately, people just don’t really accept bisexuals in different gender relationships most of the time. There was this huge blowup in fandom earlier this year about that. I’m a bisexual cis woman but I married and had a child with a cis man. It doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, so I get told a lot that I don’t really count as a queer. It looks invalidating. I think it’s because a lot of people think bisexual issues and homosexual issues are the same thing, and while we overlap in some things, our needs and our issues are not the same at all. We are two unique sexualities with our unique issues. I’ve been having quite a time trying to educate people about that ever since I came out.

So I don’t really blame the producers and the crew at all for not wanting to open that particular can of worms. It would be amazing if they did anyway, and a great opportunity, but if they don’t want to deal with that blowback, then that’s completely understandable. So if Lance is explicitly straight all the way through the series, I don’t have an issue with it.

Why do fans, particularly with Voltron, read so many of the characters as LGBT when there is very little if any canonical evidence in the series itself that they are? I know it isn't just Lance being bi. I've seen people Keith as gay, Pidge as trans, etc.

I think a lot of fandom headcanons the Voltron characters as LGBT+ because with so little representation out there, of course we would take matters into our hands. The producers of Voltron also worked on Legend of Korra, which we know ends with a bisexual girl/girl couple, so I think there’s an expectation that Voltron will do the same thing. Shiro and Keith obviously have a very intimate relationship. Lots of shoulder touching. There’s a million reasons from shipping to seeing ourselves in these characters that make us headcanon them as different sexualities. Tumblr in particular has always been attractive as an LGBT+ space so that’s why such headcanons are prevalent there.

How did you first hear about the #LanceIsBi movement? What about the whole #LanceIsBi thing appeals to you?

Alrighty, here’s the thing about the #LanceIsBi movement that super bothers me as a bisexual.

It’s not really about the headcanon. People are allowed to headcanon whatever they please, for whatever reason. That I have no problem with.

The #LanceIsBi movement came about because Jeremy Shada said that Lance’s milkshakes brings everybody to the yard. This is nothing against Shada, I assume he was just joking about how handsome Lance actually is – which he is! Lance is a really pretty guy, he has a better skincare routine than I do. So of course, it’s not a stretch to say that other people than just the ladies are attracted to him, that’s just how good-looking he is. But to take that as confirmation that someone is bisexual… that’s not how bisexuality works. It’s not about who’s attracted to you. It’s about YOU being attracted to two or more genders and how YOU deal with that. And what we seen in canon is that Lance is very much only attracted to women. As of right now, there is no bisexual story there.

It just really takes away from what real bisexual representation is, like I mentioned earlier, being about Lance’s personal issues as he comes to terms with this identity of his. Or even just him saying “Hey, I’m bisexual” or “I also like dudes, but here’s why I’m not as confident around them.” It doesn’t really have to be that deep, you know, I don’t need him to rehearse a whole documentary on bisexuality in order for it to be good representation. It makes it about HIM. About his character growth. HIS story. That’s what matters.

One issue with bisexuals (and I assume it’s not so different with pansexuals and aroaces from what I’ve seen) is that it feels like our identities have to be determined by OTHER people. Are we queer enough? Are we oppressed enough? Are we not with a different gender partner? Our own voices are never enough and it’s exhausting. Lance being confirmed bisexual is because of a joke by his voice actor. The colors of the scenery behind him. Because of multiple genders being attracted to him instead of the other way around. But it’s not his own character that confirms his identity. That bothers me. It infuriates me.

Added to that, fandom tends to blow things way out of proportion. They queerbait themselves a lot because they twist things around because they want their headcanons (specifically their ships) to be canon that bad. I’ve seen people new to fandom say they got into the show because they heard about this bisexual guy being awesome is a cast member only to find out that there’s this guy being awesome who is explicitly not bisexual at all. It’s awful seeing that kind of disappointment. Had I not been in Legendary Defender fandom since day 1, I probably would have fallen for that trap, too. I love this show so, so much and fandom makes it look like the crew is delivering something that isn’t there at all, and they’re even taking the heat for it. Lance is being held up as a bisexual icon next to actual, canon bisexual characters from other fandoms and that’s just… not right. Because once again, it’s not about his character, it’s only about what fandom wants. And non-fans come into this show with these expectations of seeing something that isn’t there.

And if Lance were bi, and if he still ended up with a female character, I know for a fact fandom would not be accepting of that. A lot of people would be, for sure, and it would be great to have that kind of support, but there’s a lot of people out there who won’t and then the whole “bi-het” debate starts up again. And it’s a debate that affects a lot of bisexuals in real life.

This whole movement, taking a joke as canon confirmation of Lance being bisexual, just feels like fandom actually doesn’t care about bisexual issues and representation. They only like it because they feel canonly validated shipping Lance with another male character because there’s this really weird attitude in fandom right now that all your headcanons must be canon in order to be valid. It’s very transparent, and very upsetting. It makes light of bisexuality, turns it into a shipping tool, and completely forgets what fandom is all about in the first place.

First off I just wanted to thank you for being so open and honest with all of this. These are fantastic observations on the whole thing and you really nailed a lot of things I was interested in asking about. Do you think fans would be better off seeking out shows/other pieces of media that feature canonical bisexual characters? Or do you feel as though people want that in their favorite shows regardless? Or to put that question another way, there are other shows out there with confirmed LGBTQIA (and anyone else I missed, nonbinary etc.) characters. Why focus on a character that, so far, can only be headcanoned as bi? Is it just fans REALLY wanting an LGBTQIA character in their favorite show? Why put so much expectations on this one specific show when, admittingly, all of TV has lot of work to do when it comes to representation?

When it comes to for the specific demand that Lance be bisexual, it boils down to a ship war. I’m sure you already know, our fandom is pretty notorious now with our ship wars and how far certain shippers will go to have their ship be canon confirmed. It’s pretty messy, and there are a few factors at play here.

Like I said earlier, a lot of fandom really doesn’t care about actual bisexual representation. Those of us who ship Lance with someone else such as Shiro or Allura, we can get some pretty heated comments. So when things pop up like #LanceIsBi, it’s a little transparent. I remember before S2 came out, fandom lost its mind when an interview said that Keith and Allura were gonna have moments together (whether platonic or romantic, it wasn’t clear at the time and could be interpreted either way). A lot of Gay Pride Keith edits came out and the whole thing was pretty ugly and, dare I say, misogynistic in tone because how dare Keith have a meaningful relationship with a woman even if that relationship is not romantic. And when a lot of Kallura shippers were like “well, we think Keith is bi or pan” (asexual Keith headcanons are also pretty popular with Keith fans), we’re immediately fired back with how that doesn’t matter, we’re just using bi/pansexuality as a copout, we’re actually homophobic, etc.

So when one character is heavily headcanoned to be bisexual but other characters are not allowed to have that same headcanon, it’s pretty telling. And I think it has to do with stereotypes. Lance is flirty and flamboyant and extroverted, maybe a bit promiscuous, so of course he must be bisexual. Keith is the stereotypical emo gay, skinny with some muscle, tight pants, weird hair. And once these headcanons are popularized, the rest of fandom is bombarded with them with no room for argument. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone admit to headcanoning Lance as something other than bi, and anyone who says they don’t headcanon Keith as gay (I am one of them) is met with hostility.

It’s not something I’ve ever seen in fandom before, at least not to this extent and I’ve been involved in online fandom for the past fifteen or so years now. Sure, there’s always been ship wars, there’s always been people being nasty to each other over fictional characters, but it feels different these days. It’s a different type of fandom wank. There’s a different attitude here.

I’m wondering if it has to do with the line between creator and consumer thinning so much now thanks to social media and cons becoming so frequent and mainstream. Fifteen years ago, there was no way we would ever dream of being in contact with showrunners, crew, and voice actors on our favorite shows. We never even sought out such contact, not unless you were really gutsy. And cons were very few and far between, so the only way you could interact with any of these people is if you had enough money and could travel to them. Now with things like Twitter especially, you can just tweet your questions and tag creators in your work, and chances are good that you will actually be seen and acknowledged.

And with this exposure, this really thinned line, I think a lot of fandom fully believes that they can actually influence a show. It’s been done in other shows, or at least enough that the creators give this illusion that fandom influences a show. So they think it’s the same with Voltron, but it’s not. Voltron is not a TV show, it’s a Netflix series meant to be binged in one sitting. But fandom has this belief that if they push and push and push enough, then all their fanon dreams will become canon. And they push back on the rest of us who don’t really go with the flow because they feel threatened.

Sheith, followed closely by Kallura, is the biggest threat to Klance, like I’m just gonna be brutally honest here with the whole ship war thing, we all know what it’s about. Like I said, fandom pushes for a bisexual male character, completely ignoring two things: 1) Lance explicitly flirts with women and ONLY women in canon and 2) Shiro and Keith are very intimate and touchy for a pair of guys (lol I’ve known a lot of guys and they don’t shoulder touch to this extent like Keith and Shiro are so TOUCHY). You would think fandom, determined to have mlm representation, would be all over Sheith because they are already established to have a personal, intimate connection that definitely goes beyond just a pair of dudes being bros. Instead we get all this age discourse, accusations of pedophilia and abusive power imbalances, etc.

And on the other side of this, Keith can’t be bi/pansexual because that makes him still available for Allura. Kallura is a threat because they’ve been the ship of Voltron since the beginning. They were heavily teased in DotU, they get together in the sequel comics and every reboot so far (except for Legendary Defender at the moment). By insisting Keith is gay, then he won’t want to be with Allura. There’s even this headcanon popular in this circle that Allura is a lesbian, yet I’ve seen very little femslash content in this fandom, and none of it reaches the popularity of the mlm ships.

So it’s pretty clear from the two issues that bisexual representation isn’t really something a good chunk and the loudest part of fandom really cares about. This section of fandom only accepts bisexuality when it’s convenient for their favorite ship.

And they insist that the rest of fandom kowtows to these headcanons because I guess there’s this belief that if they get all of fandom to unite for a headcanon, then the showrunners will have no choice but make the show reflect what’s popular. Even though that’s not how fandom or media works at all.

I think it’s a generational thing. A lot of these fans tend to be younger, for some this may even be their first big fandom, and there’s this weird belief among them that they’re only allowed to ship things in hopes it’ll be canon and their headcanons must be 100% backed by canon, so they tend to read too deep into every little joke and offhand comment and fanwork responses made by cast and crew. Maybe because they’re new to this, but these kinds of fans just don’t seem to understand the transformative nature of fandom. That while we do everything out of love for the source material, the stories and art and other content we make doesn’t necessarily have to have a 1:1 reflection of canon.

That's all fantastic insight, especially on the generational gap between certain members of the fandom. Yeah, your comments about the hate for the Allura/Keith ship just reminds me how weird I always found that since in all incarnations of Voltron they've been pretty much the ONLY canon ship of the main characters.

This is all fantastic, I wish I could use it all but as it is with articles I know I'll have to really cut it down. But still, it's all super helpful. Legit.

[mrslittletall]

So I took this meme if your character is a Mary Sue from poirozon https://poi-rozen.deviantart.com/journal/Mary-Sue-memes-are-dumb-744133759 from Deviant Art. Let’s fill it out for Ornstein, just for the lolz!

1. [ ] They are possessed by an angel. 2. [ ] They are possessed by a demon. 3. [ ] They are a werewolf/vampire/faerie. 4. [X] They are physically strong. (Well, canon.) 5. [X] They have a rare hair/fur/skin color. (Brightred, that is unusual). 6. [ ] Their eyes are an unusual color. 7. [ ] This eye color happens to be red. ( 8. [ ] Their eyes change color. 9. [ ] They have wings. 10.[ ] They can grow extra body parts/shapeshift. 11.[X] They are immortal. (Canon..., at least he can’t die from old age or lives for thousands of years.) 12.[ ] They have large boobs.  13.[X] They are very muscular. (My headcanon.) 14.[X] They are very attractive to the opposite gender. (Another one of my headcanons. But Ornstein isn’t interested in dating women. He had to turn a lot of them down.) 15.[ ] They are pyrokinetic/etc. 16.[ ] They have sixth sense/can mind-read/etc. 17.[/] They have an object of some sort that gives them powers. (Does the dragon slayer spear and the leo ring count?) 18.[ ] They have a special ability/power, but they don't know about it yet. 19.[ ] They were bestowed/cursed with these powers. 20.[ ] They are a healer. 21.[ ] They are from a very rich/royal family. 22.[ ] They don't know that they are from a very rich/royal background. 23.[/] They have lost one/both of their parents. (He doesn’t know his parents, so this half counts.) 24.[ ] They ran away from home. 25.[ ] Their parents are cruel, uncaring, abusive etc. 26.[ ] They witnessed one/both of their parent's death. 27.[ ] They are part angel/demon/faerie/some other mythical creature. 29.[ ] They were abused/spoiled as a child. 30.[/] They are very attractive to the same gender. (He hasn’t encountered that much gay or bi/pan people, but the ones he encountered are thinking he is cute.) 31.[ ] They have lots of friends/no friends.  32.[ ] They are emo.  33.[X] They look much younger/older than they really are. (Well yeah, I hc that they don’t really age anymore at a certain point and Ornstein keeps the appearance of someone who is in their mid 30ies.) 35.[X] They have lots of morals and declare them a fair bit. (Um, yes? Why should this be a mary sue thing?) 36.[X] They have a mental disorder. (Later Ornstein has depression.) 37.[ ] They have an emotional disorder. 38.[ ] They struggle to stay sane. 39.[ ] They are a psycho. 40.[ ] They have multiple personalities. 41.[/] They are very intelligent. (Half true, he’s not a genius, but he has a clear tactical mind.) 42.[ ] They have hallucinations. 43.[ ] They can summon spirits/demons/angels etc. 44.[ ] They have an unusual/unrealistic pet. 45.[ ] They have a guardian spirit. 46.[X] They have a 'special type' of soul. (Canon!) 47.[ ] Their soul is not the same as them. 48.[ ] They can talk to spirits/ghosts. 49.[ ] Some part of their body glows. 50.[X] They have a rare/unusual name. (Canon!) 51.[ ] They were born on an important date, such as New Year's Eve, etc. 52.[ ] They have a twin/sibling(s) that they were separated from at birth/a young age. 53.[X] They are connected with a certain element. (Canon! It’s lightning!) 54.[X] They are connected with a certain animal. (Canon! It’s lions!) 55.[ ] They always dress like a certain 'label'.  56.[ ] They look quite a bit like a character from a popular anime/manga.  65.[ ] They are very mysterious/dark. 66.[ ] They are very lively/happy. 67.[ ] Their mood changes a lot/very quickly.  68.[X] They are very patient. (He trains the silver knights...) 69.[ ] They are from a long line of assassins. 70.[X] They have a piece of jewelry/clothing that they always wear. (Canon! The Leo Ring!) 71.[/] They have amnesia. (Only applies to the old dragon slayer.) 72.[ ] The have some sort of harmful curse upon them. 73.[ ] They are involved in some sort of prophecy. 74.[ ] They are 'the chosen one'. 75.[ ] They have insomnia. Total: 16 points **** Take points off your character's overall score if they fit any of the following statements- 1. [ ] They smoke. 2. [ ] They are an alcoholic. 3. [ ] They are overweight. 4. [ ] They are addicted to drugs. 5. [ ] They have a short temper. 6. [ ] They enjoy bullying others. 7. [ ] They do not care much about others. 8. [ ] They are relatively emotionless. 9. [ ] They have some sort of permanent medical condition. = 0 points ***** Total: 16 points Your point score: 5: Anti-Sue. Your character may be a bit on the boring side. Of course, this does depend, but generally if they score that low, it wouldn't hurt to 'spice them up' a bit. 6-15: Balanced Character. If your character scored around here, then they are probably quite a well-balanced and interesting character. Those scoring in the higher end of this category may be a bit too much though. 16-25: Borderline Mary-Sue. We have a problem. You need to tone your character down. They are most likely a bit annoying to others, too.) Listen here! I haven’t decided to give all this characteristic to him that are totally canon! Yeah, this meme is really dumb ^^’ 26: Mary-Sue. Please revise your character... NOW.

[jacnaylor]

Holby city and casualty & biphobia

Holby city and casualty have recently been trying to step up when it comes to diversity, especially when it comes to sexuality, and in most cases this has been done well. The Dom and Isaac storyline in particular was written well. They have a history of trying to tackle sensitive topics with a lot of grace, and are well above average on the diversity scale compared to similar shows.

But, there is a clear pattern of biphobia across both sister shows that I want to draw attention to. Not because I don’t appreciate the efforts from the shows, but because I have a feeling the writers and some audience members might not even understand how harmful some of the biphobia on the show could be. So this is just to show you where some areas can be improved.

Let’s start with casualty, as there’s less to talk about in that show compared to holby city.

1. Jez

I really like Jez as a character, but right from the get go he has been the stereotypical oversexualized bisexual. Yes, people can enjoy having a lot of sex, but when it’s done in reference to a bisexual character it just seems iffy to me. It’s like he’s having more sex because he’s with both men and women on different days of the week. Then, when we finally see him starting a relationship with Louise (we’ll get to her in a minute, wow) he breaks it off - for reasons other than his sexuality, admittedly - and is very soon in a relationship with his current boyfriend. To me this seems like he’s being pushed around partners quicker than any other character because there’s “more choice”. You don’t really see this with anyone else. Casualty love pairing people up but they usually drag out one couple and one love interest for months, but bisexual characters move from partner to partner. Sidenote: as a bisexual person, the more choice thing is a myth. You might be in a club with 200 people and not fancy any of them, no matter their gender.

And, of course he’s attracted to multiple genders and can end up with anyone. But the fact they pair him with men more frequently seems slightly dismissive to me. The writers have not stated a preference, and there may well be a preference, but they are not using the opportunity to address biphobia toward bisexual people who end up with someone of another gender to their own. Obviously let’s add yes give me all those same sex couples, i love it, but they aren’t exploring this enough at all. I want more same sex couples on mainstream tv but I just wish they would take the chance to explore different aspects of the bisexual dating experience.

I’ve been thinking about this post for months and before that they had never referenced Jez as bi. Now in the last week they have, and that’s amazing and I’m really happy about it. But it took the writers A YEAR. I KNOW THIS, BECAUSE I WAS WAITING. When Jez first talked about his sexuality it was ‘fluid’ or ��unlabeled’ or some other such nonsense that basically meant they didn’t have to say the b word. They have since rectified this as stated, but when even contemplating writing a bi character, do some fucking research beforehand guys, it isn’t hard. And yes I know some people don’t like labels, but when it’s done in tv it seems like a lazy excuse and we all know it.

2. Louise

When Louise started her brief romance with Jez she was hesitant because of his sexuality. Jez said that it's ok and that it doesn’t affect their relationship, but no one really said that her opinion was uninformed, let alone wrong. It was basically something she wasn’t comfortable with and no one called her out on it and it’s never been mentioned again.

This scene was sort of infamous for me because this is the scene where Louise said “It’s your choice.”

Choice? Choice? C H O I C E???/

And the worst thing is Jez didn’t even call her out on it. He just let her call his sexuality a life choice and then got into a relationship with this woman who didn’t respect this part of him. Are you kidding me? I might be forgiving of ignorance when we learn from it, but mate. No way would this happen. And, not to mention that Louise is a trained health professional and should know about different sexualities by now.

3. Toby

For those who are slightly newer to casualty, Toby was a very sweet natured f1 a couple of years ago. Very timid for a long time.

So, after a traumatic experience, he had an ill advised relationship with the pregnant daughter of a senior staff member (all above board, it just probably wasn’t the best idea given their issues at the time). After some mistakes, he sought out the help of a counsellor, Ben, who he ended up dating. So, we have a canon bisexual character.

Then, when the affair was exposed - It shouldn’t have been happening anyway because I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t date your therapist, so that seems predatory in itself - Toby was ashamed of his sexuality and accused Ben of taking advantage of him. Ok, so they end up together when Toby decided to leave the hospital but….man.

The whole ‘ashamed of his sexuality, accuses colleague of taking advantage’ was something the show did again with gay character Seb in recent months. This isn’t solely biphobia in that sense, but general shitty writing for lgbtq characters. It’s a storyline that paints them as malicious, ashamed, sneaky. This happened in Holby with Dom and Malik as well, and it’s just a horrible storyline that seems to only happen with lgbtq characters and I do not know why at all.

4. Alicia

In recent times Alicia found out her father was cheating on her mother with another man. She had a massive problem with this, mostly because of the cheating, but she couldn’t seem to accept her dad’s sexuality. Yes, cheating is always wrong. I can’t remember exactly how her father identifies but if he is bisexual then....well, he didn’t just marry her mum out of convinience, he loved her. And he could have cheated on her with anyone. And to me it seemed Alicia was more angry that it was a man than anything else (please correct me if her father does identify as gay, though the point still stands about Alicia’s reluctance)

It just seemed like it was thrown in there to make it “worse” or something and Alicia was sort of awful about it all really and used it as an excuse to ruin her own life (though my issues with that character are for another time)

So now, the holby city section

1. Serena (/Bernie)

Ok, so. Before the avid fanbase for this ship, like, comes at me, let me just disclaim: yes, anyone can identify however they want! But! When it speaks to a pattern of biphobia! I have an issue with it!

So, we had the really wonderfully acted love story between two older women on Holby, Bernie and Serena. Bernie has had a relationship with a woman after the breakdown of her marriage but Serena never has. They had a really lovely story that I enjoyed.

But the word bisexual was rarely, if ever, used. When Serena was first coming to terms with her kiss with Bernie, she tried out calling herself a lesbian. Even though she had many relationships with men and one even after she first kissed Bernie. So, because she did have a romantic connection with Robbie after Bernie, I think it’s pretty clear she’s bisexual, and this would have been a lovely discussion if they didn’t just start calling her a lesbian straight away (same with Bernie, even though she was also married to a man. I’m more familiar with Serena’s story so it might well be that Bernie was always a lesbian but I’m pretty sure she reads as bi too but maybe that’s my opinion.)

There’s also that fucking awful scene in which her and Raf test out whether they want to kiss each other. She does not want to kiss Raf, and so they declare she must be a lesbian.

WHAT?

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize not wanting to kiss your mate, a skinny scottish man who cries too much, was how we measure our sexualties now. Just because I don’t want to kiss every man I know doesn’t make me a lesbian. You can be a bisexual woman and not want to kiss some guy you know at work, guys. In case you didn’t know.

I’m just like...just say bisexual. It isn’t hard.

2. Lee

Ok, so, Dom, whom I love dearly, started a relationship with a man named Lee. Lee stole all of his stuff. Lee was not a nice man. Lee also had a pregnant girlfriend. Lee is bisexual.

Lee comes back after having been in prison and proceeds to physically attack people on the ward.

It’s like they equated the lies and the cheating with his sexuality. Instead of showing us a positive relationship between a gay person and a bisexual person (which is another issue within the community itself that they could have done something positive with but nope) they showed us a gay man being lied to, cheated on and attacked by a bisexual man who seemed to have mental health issues. Also his sexuality seemed to be directly related to his mental health issues, like he was being self destructive and cheating because of his repressed sexuality. Then he attacks Dom’s new partner and says Dom still loves him and all of that, so his mental health is always tied up with his feelings for Dom which I don’t this is helpful in anyway. 

Like, do I even need to explain how harmful that is? I don’t think so.

3. Fleur Fanshawe

Biphobia from gay characters on holby is not something new. Instead of being progressive in their writing, the holby writers just choose to give into stereotypes again and again. Fleur Fanshawe was an older gay woman = great. What wasn’t great was how she treated her ex girlfriend, Sophia.

So my memory isn’t a plus because I hated the storyline but what I remember is that, after they broke up, Sophia went back to her boyfriend. Fleur was very angry about this, about her “going back to men”. It was all just written very weirdly and just wasn’t good representation for bi/gay relationships. The behaviour, again, was never called out, and because their exit dates are the same I assume they got together again, even though Fleur always seemed to look down on Sophia’s bisexuality.

This is just another example of bisexual characters experiencing shame reinforced by their partners and others around them. It’s just tiring to me. It’s exhausting that the bi characters are always having to explain themselves or feel guilty.

4. Try be bi

That’s what I’m calling this section. This is the section where we talk about the odd, random, bisexual kisses that don’t seem to have a bearing on the plot.

Zosia, who is bipolar, is usually a character written very sensitively. She kissed Sophia whilst experiencing a bad mental health episode. I cannot speak to whether this behaviour is accurate and I won’t pretend to be an expert on bipolar disorder. However I think this kiss was thrown in there just to be shocking and to be a symptom of mental illness. Zosia is never confirmed bisexual and has never done anything like that afterwards, so I think it was a cheap shock ploy and it did a disservice not just to bisexuality but to mental illness as well. This was represented as a symptom of her mania but I think there were probably better ways of doing that.

Then quite a few years ago we have Donna, a nurse, having a one night stand with lesbian friend Micki. She was drunk at the time I think, and she never had any other relationships with women. Again, cheap shocks. Bisexuality is not something you just try out for the night. This is like those girls who kiss each other at parties without understanding that it’s for someone else's benefit and that they, as heterosexuals, are privileged above lgbtq people doing the same thing. Just a weird, unnecessary interlude in general.

5. Lofty

Now last night nurse Lofty was confirmed as having feelings for a man and a woman. He said “He loved them both.” Not in a poly way, since he left the woman because of his feelings for her brother. Now I along with many others welcomed this development! I want more lgbtq rep!

What I didn’t like is everyone suddenly calling him gay because he kissed a man, when he literally said in the same episode that he did love the woman he was with at the time. The media was also to blame since they basically described it as a gay bombshell. It was, in my opinion, a bisexual bombshell.

And, ok again this is my view this isn’t fact or how you have to see it, but for me this came out of nowhere, since his sexuality wasn’t ever brought up before. It almost seems as if, possibly, they are introducing it as a way to let Dom be with someone? And ok this is not confirmed but the two lgbtq characters on the same ward usually get together.

Look I like Lofty and this could be great. However, it might have been nice to introduce a new bisexual character without shoving it onto a preexisting character for the sake of convenience.

6. Jas and Morven

Now, given what I just said about Lofty and the writers randomly pushing bisexuality onto existing characters just because, you might think - Hold on a sec...but hear me out.

I love these two, my beautiful daughters. I adore them and their friendship.

But the friendship took a turn when, after weeks of Morven connecting online with a man called Nathan, she found out Nathan was actually her best friend Jasmine, cat fishing her because of her own loneliness.

Before this, Morven had said she’d really connected to “Nathan” and that she had very strong romantic feelings for him.

But they disappear as soon as she finds out it was Jasmine. It’s like, the words, the talking, the feelings were all genuine. And yes, Nathan was a fiction, but I think they could have Roxanne’d this and had her realise her feelings for this person were real, and that in actual fact that person was Jasmine. But no. They just had them fall out instead of falling in love. No bisexual roommates for me.

Oh and whilst we’re here, let’s talk about how apparently you can only have one lgbtq couple a ward (Berena as opposed to both Berena and Jasmine/Morven) Raf and Fletch, also best friends who lived together and helped raise Fletch’s children together. Jokingly described their relationship as a ‘sexless platonic marriage’. Couldn’t make it a relationship? For whatever reason. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the writers consistently deny friends to lovers relationships that have basis and positivity in favour of dramatic coming out stories, shock kisses and various other biphobic shitty things.

7. Dan Hamilton

In the words of my good friend, this was a real shit show.

Briefly romantically involved with the likes of Chrissie, Dan was originally portrayed back in 2011 as a ladies man. He shared a kiss with canon gay character Malik. This attracted criticism because apparently this was a ‘repetition of gay storylines seen on other dramas’. And ok this was a few years ago but...really

The storyline starts with him having tension with Malik - especially after he finds out Malik is gay. When Malik threatens to report Dan for something he did on the ward, they fight and then share a kiss. After this Dan rushes to his then girlfriend Chrissie and confesses his love for her. He proceeds to just try and avoid Malik and forget about the kiss. This is what they said about the storyline at the time (they being producers)

"It really isn't a 'coming out' storyline. The focus really is on Dan's character. Dan is Mr Conventional – he wants Chrissie, he wants the wife, the house, the career and 2.4 children. It won't be about him coming out and coming to terms with his sexuality. If anything, the kiss with Malick has made him even more determined to try to have a conventional life – because that's what he wants the most."

I mean, yes I like the fact not every story is a coming out story but...it seems weird for them to put it that way, especially since it was a coming out storyline if we’re being honest. Because they never discuss the bisexuality in the same way they discuss being gay on the show. Seems suspicious that they try not to delve into bisexuality. Instead of really showing how he felt for Chrissie and Malik the story was more about him being ashamed. Because that’s all the writers seem to know how to write. And I understand that it’s important to show these kind of struggles but...we never see Dom or Fleur or Malik being ‘ashamed’, only ever the men and women discovering their bisexuality. Malik tries to blackmail Dan, saying he would reveal their kiss to Chrissie. It’s almost implied - intentionally or not - that the sexuality is the issue above the cheating.

Astill also said he hoped Dan would “transform into a bisexual predator - no man or woman is safe from him.” I think the actor means he wanted Dan to be openly bisexual and as we know he’s a player, that that would still remain a part of his character. But the phrase bisexual predator is just fucking awful and harmful. When he left the show he did praise the fact Dan was the happiest we’d seen him after coming to terms with his sexuality (and I think leaving with another man?) and like, yes that’s good, but it was such an overdone story and it had its flaws for definite, not the least of which was once again painting bisexuals as confused, repressed or sexual predators or cheaters. And it seems again, a cliche, to make one of the most sexual characters bisexual, because it seems to go hand in hand on this show.

Very quick end point to explain something I said earlier: I want more same sex couples on my screen, but by showing a bisexual person in a relationship with someone of the same gender you could: explain some of the problems within the community as regards to biphobia - but that isn’t happening. By showing a bisexual person with someone of another gender you could delve into the myth of bisexual privelage - but that isn’t happening either. Instead what we have is bisexual characters very often only dating the opposite gender after their bisexuality is revealed. We see this with Dan, with Jez to an extent (he seems to have more positive relationships with men) Toby and most likely with Lofty. Again, not saying this is wrong or that these characters can’t have a preference. But the preference is never stated, it’s just implied. What this suggests to me is that the writers are having these characters ‘choose’. Which is another myth that needs to be dismantled. Bisexual people do not stop being bisexual because they are with someone of a certain gender, but for the purposes of writing these shows that’s what it feels like. Bisexuality is revealed as a shock, through a bombshell featuring a same sex relationship, and then forgotten. It feels as if these writers are using bisexuality as a stepping stone for the characters actually being gay. Now people might not agree with this and everyone’s experiences are different, but to me as a bisexual viewer that is how it feels.

I guess what I’m saying is they’ve had enough bisexual characters by now that they should be writing them as well as they do other lgbtq characters. For shows that usually handle things very well and sensitively they are still failing in this department. I love these shows but it’s 2017 guys it isn’t hard to talk to bisexual people, or you're bisexual viewers, fix your mistakes, talk to your target audience and the audience you’re trying to represent and see where you can do better. Why the fuck are we still having this conversation.

[sage-nebula]

Alan and Seven for the meme

I answered for Alan here, so I’ll answer for Seven now!

Seven:

sexual orientation headcanon

Actually, Seven is canonically biromantic bisexual! There was some sort of official guidebook that was released for Mystic Messenger at some point, and there’s a part where the characters are interviewed, so to speak. And during that interview, there’s a part where we get this exchange:

Q: “What do you look for in a woman?”

707: “Does it have to be a woman? Why are you limiting my potential significant others? lolol Whether it’s a woman or a man, what’s important is that we share the same sensibility! If that person lets me deactivate my restrict jokes switch, then I’ll just go for him or her.”

Now, I did see a screenshot where apparently someone e-mailed Cheritz and asked about this, and Cheritz said that they weren’t trying to make a statement about his sexuality, but rather to show that—regardless of the player’s gender—Seven is an all-loving person who loves and accepts everyone. However, I’m still taking this as canonical confirmation that Seven is bisexual, because he outright says himself—multiple times!—that he is attracted to anyone regardless of their gender, so long as they share the same sensibility as him. And to be honest, he flirts / hits on the other guys throughout the game, never shows the same nasty homophobia or awkwardness when it comes to potentially being gay that Zen (and sometimes the others) do, and all around just, yeah, comes off as pretty damn bi, so.

It’s not a headcanon, but Seven is canonically bisexual, and I think that’s pretty goddamn awesome!

mental illness / neurodivergent headcanon

He absolutely, without a doubt has C-PTSD as a result of both his abusive childhood and the time he has spent working in the intelligence agency (so, basically he has C-PTSD as a result of his entire life up to this point). I explain in-depth why that is here. I also think he has chronic severe depression, both as a result of his C-PTSD and simple genetics (his mother was pretty obviously mentally ill, so it’s little wonder that he could have inherited clinical depression from her).

3 random headcanons

Since Seven is canonically fluent in 17 languages (that was also in the book—this boy is a fucking genius), the majority of the music he has on his MP3 player is not Korean. Instead, while he does have some Korean music, he also has a lot of songs that are in Arabic, English, Italian, French … you name it, he listens to it. Sometimes he posts links to some of his favorite songs in the chat, and then tells Yoosung they’re about something completely different than they actually are since Yoosung can’t understand whatever language they’re in.

He was born left-handed, but trained himself to be ambidextrous after joining the intelligence agency, since he needed to be able to use weapons with either hand. 

Once, for funsies, he decided to post a list in the Messenger of his dating preference order for the RFA members (before MC joined). Jumin was in the number one spot. Seven claimed that this was because he would get to be around Elizabeth the 3rd all the time if he was Jumin’s bf, but while that is part of it, it’s also because he legitimately finds Jumin to be the most physically attractive among the RFA, because while he recognizes that Zen is gorgeous, Zen isn’t really his type. (Of course, Jumin would never date Seven in ten billion years because he’s under the impression that Seven is a cat abuser, but still. It’s the thought that counts.)

[projectshakespearia]

Two Gentlemen of Verona: World of the Play Part III

Valentine rescuing Sylvia from Proteus depicted by Angelica Kauffmann in 1789.

Introduction While it may be easy to dwell upon some of the inherent weaknesses in Two Gentlemen of Verona, there are also many merits in this comic caper. Multiple devices, plot strands, and character personalities seem to be templates for Shakespeare’s later (and greater) works. In the oft disputed timeline of the Shakespeare canon, this may have well been his first play. Examining the text as the work of a budding writer experimenting with this craft (I’m imagining my beginning playwriting students here) I can see a talented kid with a lot of great ideas, but not always a strong sense of how to put them together. I’ll say it again, even Shakespeare had to start somewhere! This post will explore some of the stronger attributes of Two Gents and suggest where creative seeds were sown only to bloom fully later in his career.

What Characters! It’s difficult to quantify exactly why Shakespeare remains so adored, so produced, so revered centuries after his death. As a director, I love the possibilities in a Shakespeare play. His plays are playful. The fact that they were initially written to be performed in relatively minimalist conditions with language used to describe setting provides limitless open worlds to interpret and conceptualize. Shakespeare is demanding of actors and demanding of his audiences to imagine and embrace the “theatrical” rather than consume naturalistic representations of “life” as we do in watching film or television. But within these highly fantastical spaces that knit together history, mythology, folk stories, poetry, and romances live characters that breathe. Shakespeare’s characters range from the lowliest of “foolish fools” to the loftiest Kings and Sorcerers from magical sprites to abandoned princesses, but they all share a common thread of humanity and humor. Shakespeare’s characters all possess some spark of the universal which makes them intriguing companions for audiences to join on a two hour journey. (Or, in many cases, four hours.)

In Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, he posits that in writing before Shakespeare, literary character was relatively unchanging. The likes of Classical figures such as Agamemnon or Oedipus might encounter a revelation for which they suffer and die, but their change occurs due to their relationship to fate or the gods. “In Shakespeare, characters develop rather than unfold, and they develop because they recognize themselves.” He asserts in his collection of essays that Shakespeare essentially “invents” the human in a very humanist sense. Shakespearean characters are capable of growth, change, self-discovery, and self-reflection. This is perhaps one reason actors enjoy playing Shakespeare so much - even when the sense of reality is heightened and theatrical, characters respond to each other and the world around them in relatable ways.

Proteus and Valentine Shakespeare reveals truth about human character and foibles, and heightens these quirks to comic effect. Consider the way in which Proteus instantly shifts his affections from one woman to the next and back again. Proteus draws attention to his own fickle failings: “O heaven, were man but constant, he were perfect!” After everything that Proteus has done at this late point in the play including lying, manipulation, trickery, abandonment, breaking promises, and attempted rape, this underwhelming self-assessment is very funny. Proteus’ journey is one of being repeatedly “metamorphosed” each time he encounters something new: losing Valentine, his journey to Milan, encountering Sylvia, his re-discovery of Julia. Proteus lives up to his name embodying a “protean” man, elastic and possessing many dimensions. While he may represent an extreme plastic and pliable personality, he is nonetheless, perfectly human: flawed, resilient, and capable of change.

Proteus’ absurdly lovesick behaviors are echoed and more developed in later comic and dramatic works. Consider Romeo’s painful infatuation with Rosalind, instantly transformed the moment we sets eyes upon Juliet: “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.” Even Romeo and Juliet’s first “tender kiss” is reminiscent of Julia and Proteus’ pledge to “seal the bargain with a holy kiss.” Proteus is a first draft of the besotted Orsino being taught the very nature of love and devotion by a page in disguise or the naively charming Orlando undergoing a similar transformation under the tutelage of Rosalind. Shakespeare loves depicting foolish young men blundering their way in and out of relationships with less foolish young women.

Valentine, too, undergoes great change throughout the play. In the first scene, he eschews the idea of love and chides Proteus: “Love is your master, for he masters you; and he that is so yoked by a fool, methinks should not be chronicled for wise.” But, as his cleverly observant servant, Speed, points out that he, too, has transformed because of love. Valentine admits to Proteus when their reunite in Milan his, “life is altered now.”

Love causes the deeply-rooted friendship to completely alter the objectives of the nascent young lovers. While Valentine turns his newly discovered romantic vigor towards wooing and wedding Sylvia, most of Proteus’ energy goes into undermining both Valentine and Thurio for the sake of winning Sylvia’s heart. Valentine’s sole purpose becomes Sylvia, so much that when he thinks he has lost her, he is no longer “Valentine” but has been reduced to “nothing.” 

Neither of these young men are sophisticated enough to understand love or women and Shakespeare pokes fun at their inability to figure it out without the prodding of those around them, whether it be their servants or the objects of their affection.

Syliva and Julia The female counterparts to the male protagonists are typical of many of other Shakespearean heroines in their cleverness, grit, and maturity. Shakespeare writes his females, whether they are sisters, cousins, or devoted friends in pairs; one wide-eyed and plucky and one slightly sadder and wiser. This template is evident in duos including Helena/Hermia, Rosalind/Celia, Beatrice/Hero, and even Kate/Bianca. In every case, the young female lovers possess wisdom and determination in matters of love and devotion where the male lovers lack these qualities. Even more often do the women teach the likes of Orlando, Orsino, and Claudio how to properly woo a woman and love a woman.

Sylvia and Julia are both delightful constructs of Shakespeare’s imagination, and in many ways better developed that Valentine or Proteus. Both are proactive, although Julia more so, and exercise their own agency to either get what they want or avoid something they don’t want. Both, in her own way, teaches her love interest lessons on love.

Both women are constrained by their social structure not to actively pursue men they are interested in and both, at times, use letters as a means of expressing emotion. In the Elizabethan world, and as Shakespeare points out through Helena in Midsummer, that the idea of a woman wooing a man was against nature and that women were “not made to woo.” In Julia’s first scene with Lucetta, she tries to get around vocally expressing her interest in Proteus, by subtly prodding Lucetta to talk about his qualities instead. When Lucetta delivers a letter from Proteus, Julia denies that she wants to see it. But she, of course, does want the letter. She chides Lucetta in hopes that she will “for the letter to [her] view” because she is a maid. Here Shakespeare emphasizes the complexities of love games and how everyone must play their part appropriately. Lucetta should know better that Julia’s status prevents her from overtly expressing attraction and Julia should know enough to find a way around social convention to get what she wants. In the end, after some teasing and clever wordplay, Lucetta delivers the letter and expresses her approval of Proteus over Julia’s other potential suitors.

Julia is very preoccupied with her status and modesty, which is at odds with her attraction to Proteus. She is the one, after all, who asks to seal their bond physically upon his parting. After Proteus’ prolonged absence, Julia decides to take matters into her own hands and asks Lucetta: “fit me with such weeds as may beseem some well-reputed page.” She knows she has to cast off her gender in order to enter the world of men and she speaks of Proteus using language echoing Speed’s regard of Valentine as a “hot lover.” Julia, being denied Proteus, only wants him more:

O, know’st though not his looks are my soul’s food? Pity the dearth that I have pined in, By longing for that food so long a time. Didst thou but know the inly touch of love, Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow As seek to quench the fire of love with words.

Julia, to put it bluntly, is hot for Proteus, and is willing to risk her reputation in order to see him again. Desire wins out over social convention and thus she departs to Milan where she finds herself part of a complex love triangle. As part of Proteus’ convoluted plot to win over Sylvia by outwitting his two rivals, he has Thurio perform a romantic song for Sylvia and then claim the credit for himself. Julia, now donning the identity of Sebastian, watches the performance, heartbroken at the notion that Proteus is now actively pursing another woman. To add insult to injury, Proteus then enlists the help of Sebastian to deliver a letter and ring, the very ring that Julia had given Proteus back in Verona, to the hands of Sylvia. Julia, tormented by the decision to aid Proteus in getting what he wants even if it is at odds with her desires, soliloquizes in a manner echoing Proteus’ self-assessment earlier in the play. When first confronted with the decision to betray Valentine and pursue Sylvia, Proteus laments:

I cannot leave to love, and yet I do; But there I have to love where I should love. Julia I lose and Valentine I lose: If I keep them, I needs must lost myself; If I lose them, thus find I by their loss For Valentine myself, for Julia, Sylvia. I to myself am dearer than a friend, For love it still most precious in itself.

Proteus, once again, has been transformed by love to identify himself only by the love he feels. There is nothing else. He cannot be friend to Valentine and true to himself. He cannot be devoted to Julia and true to himself. Valuing his own self more than Valentine or Julia, he chooses this Proteus over previous iterations.

Julia responds differently to a similar romantically-charged identity crisis:

How many women would do such a message? Alas, poor Proteus, thou has entertained A fox to be the shepherd of thy lambs! Alas, poor fool, why do I pity him That with his heart despiseth me? Because he loves her, he despiseth me. Because I love him, I must pity him. This ring I gave him when he parted from me To bind him to remember my good will; And now am I, unhappy messenger, To plead for that which I would not obtain, To carry that which I would have refused, To praise his faith which I would have dispraised. I am my master’s true-confirmed love, But cannot be true servant to my master Unless I prove false traitor to myself. Yet I will woo for him, yet so coldly As, heaven it knows, I would not have him speed.

In this passage, rich with imagery, Julia grapples with which persona to embrace. She is simultaneously all of these things, a fox, an unhappy messenger, a servant, and none of these things as she has layered disguise upon disguise in her pursuit of Proteus. Underneath the page’s clothing, she is a young woman in love with a man and in order to fulfill her duty as servant to her unwitting master, she must betray her true self. In the end, both she and Proteus choose to honor the power of love, but in different ways. Proteus does so by honoring the love that will please himself and Julia honors to love that will please the one she loves.

Luckily for Julia, Sylvia remains steadfastly devoted to Valentine. Sylvia’s behavior towards her beloved, while perhaps slightly more restrained than Julia’s, bears certain similarities. Julia has Lucetta serving as go-between, but Sylvia relies on her own crafty device to express her interest in Valentine. Rather than tell him directly, which would be unseemly for a woman of her station, she enlists Valentine as servant to write letters in her name for a supposed lover. Valentine, as Julia later does for Proteus, agrees to aid the one he loves and composes letters and delivers them to Sylvia for her to distribute. Sylvia then hands the letters back to an extremely befuddled Valentine.

VALENTINE: Madam, they are for you. SYLVIA: Ay, ay, you writ them, sir, at my request; But I will none of them; they are for you; I would have had them writ more movingly.

It takes Valentine the witty explanation of Speed to understand Sylvia’s meaning. I want to write you romantic letters, get it? Eventually, of course Valentine does get it and the pair of lovers finds themselves on the happy path towards a union, but for the Duke’s disapproval and Proteus’ meddling.

Love in the Space Between When Valentine is banished by the Duke, Sylvia takes a familiar proactive course of action by following him into the wilderness. While Julia literally changes herself into a male form to protect her virtue, Sylvia shields herself by enlisting the honorable Sir Eglamour to guide her to Mantua. This begins a series of “chases” of one lover in pursuit of another, in a way prefiguring the chaotic and comic quartet that ventures into the woods outside of Athens in Midsummer. Sylvia pursues Valentine for love. The Duke pursues Sylvia in a rage. Thurio pursues Sylvia for the sake of proving his honor. Proteus then pursues to win Sylvia for love. Finally, Julia chases after Proteus chasing after Sylvia.

Once all the characters enter the green space, outside the strictures of city society, all hell breaks loose and subversions are allowed to play out. The Duke is captured by a ragtag group of banished men, Proteus “rescues” Sylvia from the same bandits only to attempt to “love [her] ‘gainst the nature of love,” and Julia is finally free to reveal her true identity, honor be damned. Only once every “rule” is essentially broken, are things allowed to be repaired to a “happy close.” Valentine admonishes Proteus for his betrayal of friendship and Julia, in her final courageous act holds Proteus accountable for what he put her through:

O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush! Be thou ashamed that I have took upon me Such an immodest rainment, it shame live In a disguise of love: It is the lesser blot, modesty finds, Women to change their shapes than men their minds.

Proteus, thoroughly shamed, begs forgiveness all around. And, of course, it is granted. In addition, the bandits are forgiven by the Duke and allowed to return to civilized life, Thurio gives up his claim to Sylvia, the Duke recognizes Valentine’s worthiness and approves the match to his daughter, and Proteus and Julia are reconciled. In this scene of “mutual happiness,” the one much-maligned seemingly strange point is Valentine’s initial forgiveness of Proteus where he essentially “gives” Sylvia away to his friend. Granted, it is weirdly misogynistic and difficult to rationalize in a modern world. But, considered within the context of the green space, it may make more sense as a first attempt to “right” the subverted world. Proteus has upended their friendship, Valentine calls him out, Proteus begs for forgiveness, and joyously because of his own love for Proteus, Valentine acts as Julia does - putting the desires of the person he loves most (in this case, Proteus) before his own desires.

This arrangement, is of course, very short-lived as it serves as catalyst for Julia’s reveal and Proteus’ final realization: “What is in Sylvia’s face, but I may spy more fresh in Julia’s with a constant eye?” Proteus has, chameleon-like, altered himself repeatedly in this play, and not yet found happiness. In observing the devotion and love Sylvia, Julia, and Valentine perform for him (even Sylvia warns him multiple times to rediscover his “first best love” in Julia Proteus) realizes that perhaps he would do best to be a devoted lover.

While by no means a perfect play and certainly not progressive in terms of gender roles, Two Gents is rich with humor and complex characterizations. In essence, this is an exploration of a common Shakespearean theme he revisits countless times: the tension between the devotion of women and the inconstancy of men in matters of the heart. In the end, the clever and passionate women succeed where the men fail by temporarily upending convention in order to become active wooers. The men learn from this experience and the “natural” order restored.

Two Gents is not without its charms and while some transitions and motivations may have been improved by the addition of a couple lines of dialogue, it does overall contain the essential elements for a crowd-pleasing romantic comedy: misunderstandings, conflict, music, chase scenes, and ultimately happiness for all involved.