#but that perspective and storytelling narrative is *MUCH* MORE LIKELY to come from a woman than a man

[fantastic-nonsense]

the Big Two need to hire more women to write comics not just for gender parity's sake or so we can get better-written female characters or any of the other dozen completely valid reasons why we need more women in comics, but also because the perspective a lot of women bring to the superhero genre is fundamentally different from the mostly middle-class white men who dominate the genre

like Ivory Madison portraying the cycle of violence and abuse through the parallel institutions of marriage and the mob in Huntress: Year One to showcase how Helena is both a victim and freedom fighter in the context of her family and cultural history....what man would have thought of that? even Greg Rucka didn't do that, and he basically wrote the book on how to write traumatized religious female vigilantes who have complex relationships with their families

[justforbooks]

Haruki Murakami

The acclaimed Japanese author’s deceptively simple writing combines fantasy and reality in stories of everything from missing cats to dystopian histories via fantasy thrillers and meditations on love.

Japan’s bestselling living novelist Haruki Murakami started writing aged 30 and became a literary sensation in 1987 when his fifth novel Norwegian Wood was published. His mixture of realistic and dreamlike narratives has earned him a dedicated fanbase, and his name is often floated as a contender for the Nobel prize in literature. If you’re new to him, or want to re-read his greatest hits, here are some places to start.

The entry point

Murakami’s novels can be crudely separated into two categories: the fantastic and the realist – although many fall somewhere in between. Published in 1987, Norwegian Wood lacks the otherworldly strangeness that has come to characterise much of Murakami’s most popular work. Instead the novel is a deceptively simple reminiscence of young love. Landing on a German runway, narrator Toru Watanabe hears the titular Beatles song and is transported back to his college days and turbulent love affairs with two different women. Nostalgic and sweet, Norwegian Wood is Murakami’s most accessible novel, and the book that transformed the author into a literary superstar in Japan.

If you only read one

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is peak Murakami, and features many of the things the author is known for (Mysterious women! Vanished cats! Phone sex! Spaghetti!). Unemployed thirtysomething Toru Okada is looking for his missing cat and missing wife when he sleepwalks into a wild goose-chase of increasingly bizarre events. “The best way to think about reality,” he declares, is “to get as far away from it as possible.” Part detective story, part nightmarish Alice in Wonderland, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle becomes a story about Japanese history, bizarre mysteries and red herrings. Abstract, infuriating and very funny, it is Murakami at his most beguiling.

If you’re in a rush

If you want to make a critically acclaimed film, adapt a Murakami short story. The South Korean thriller Burning took Murakami’s story Barn Burning as its foundations, while, more recently, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi won an Academy Award for his adaptation of Drive My Car. Some of Murakami’s finest storytelling can be found in his microcosmic worlds. Sleep, published in the New Yorker in 1992 and included in the short story collection The Elephant Vanishes, was the first time Murakami wrote from the perspective of a woman and the result is stunning. The story offers a character study of a devoted wife who is suffering from a sleeplessness that is not quite insomnia. Murakami frequently – and justifiably – receives criticism for how he writes female characters, but Sleep is a brilliant story that uses the liminality of the night to evoke the unease of being a woman in a patriarchal society.

The memoir

Murakami’s biography could be the backstory for one of his protagonists. The author was running a jazz club, turned 30, and quit to become a novelist. The rest is bestseller history. Murakami’s slim memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, offers an insight into his diligent creative practice. “Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day,” he explains. Only seriously taking to running in his 30s, Murakami reflects on the comparisons between marathon-running and writing , and demystifies the author’s practice as regimented routine, endurance training and occasionally injury inducing.

It’s worth persevering with

Across three volumes and over a thousand pages, 1Q84 is Murakami’s most ambitious novel to date, encompassing cults, assassins, parallel realities, two moons and creatures that emerge from the mouth of a dead goat. Following twin story threads of fated lovers, Murakami’s epic is set in a version of 1984 that slips between the familiar and unfamiliar. While 1Q84 is certainly sprawling, it’s structured like a maze with the occasional trick mirror and trap door. It was bemoaned by some critics as a disappointment when first published in 2011 and its length may be intimidating to the casual Murakami reader, but descend into 1Q84’s world and you’ll be treated to a page-turning thriller, a tender love story, a pulpy mystery and a meditation on the metaphysical mysteries of a world not dissimilar to our own.

The one that deserves more attention

After its publication in English in 2001, Sputnik Sweetheart left the orbit of Murakami’s more popular works. It’s a shame because the novel offers a refreshing variation of the author’s most predictable trope: women vanishing. Narrated through the eyes of a typical Murakami narrator (male, pining, passive), at the heart of Sputnik Sweetheart is a lesbian romance between Sumire, a wannabe Jack Kerouac, and Miu, an older, refined wine importer. Lusting after Miu, Sumire begins to shed her bohemian exterior, transforming herself to become Miu’s chic personal assistant. The unequal romance soon develops into self-obliteration as Sumire seems fated to be forever Miu’s sputnik – orbiting her from the isolation of space – before she disappears. Sputnik Sweetheart’s yearning romanticism is as tender as it is uncomfortable.

The masterpiece

Departing from his typical thirtysomething, whisky-drinking, jazz-listening protagonists, Kafka on the Shore is narrated by 15-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura. Fleeing his violent, dead father after receiving an Oedipal prophecy, Kafka finds refuge working in a small coastal town’s library. Alternating with Kafka’s tale is Satoru Nakata’s, an older man who lost his childhood memories at the end of the second world war, but instead gained the ability to converse with cats. Nakata is forced on the run after he crosses paths with a sinister cat-catcher who goes by the name Johnnie Walker. Both characters embark on vision quests, with one foot in everyday Japan and the other in a magical undercurrent that delivers the characters to each other. Murakami has said that the urgency behind his stories is “missing and searching and finding”. Kafka on the Shore eludes genre pigeonholing, and instead exemplifies its author’s ability to map a dreamscape labyrinth, one with its own strange poetic justice.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[bestworstcase]

Hello, long time lurker and fan of your analyses here. There is one thing that I've been thinking over in relation to how people in the fandom react to Salem, that I'm puzzled with.

I followed one blog because of their posting about a game, and the villain of the game have extraordinarily similar circumstances to Salem, and that got me reflecting...

Both of them had tragic circumstances (or at least, implied), both of them were "corrupted" by "dark creatures" and considered "evil" because of it, both were betrayed by loved ones and both had their faith in the gods shattered and rejected them and deride divinity, but I see that there is much more analyses, understanding and sympathy for the guy than for her.

He wasn't portrayed to be very sympathetic in the game (in fact, he wasn't that present, showing up mostly at middle-end) and most of his characther was informed by a movie and a dlc, and yet...

Why would that be? It is because gamers are more prone to sympathyze with villains? It's because Salem's a woman, or that people are more willing to see depth in video games than in animation? It is lack of media literacy?

Thank you for your time!

it’s gender. mostly

(*without knowing the other story it’s difficult to say how much narrative framing contributes to the disparity, but framing can have a significant influence; by this i don��t mean whether the character is portrayed sympathetically per se but more, whose perspective do we see? what details are given focus?

salem as a character has been kept extremely opaque—the lost fable is narrated from ozpin’s perspective so we don’t really know why she does anything, we only know why ozpin believes she did everything; to understand her v1/v3 soliloquies we need context given in v6 and arguably v9 before it’s possible to start piecing together what she’s really talking about / what she really means, etc—and that’s something rwby does on purpose, because it’s Making A Point about the power that storytellers have over their audiences, and truth being more difficult to come by than asking for just one side of the story.

which has the effect of making salem a difficult character. the thematic point the story is making with her character is that it is really, really easy to fall for dehumanizing propaganda if that’s the only source of information you have. to see beneath the surface with her you really need to pay close attention to what she says and does and be very skeptical of what other characters say about her, including the authoritative spirit of knowledge [i.e. you need to pick up on ruby only asking specifically for ozpin’s side of the story AND that it’s never stated by anyone that jinn’s answers are objective factual truth AND that the lamp probably works like the staff in that she answers the exact wording of the questions put to her]. because the narrative we’re getting about her is heavily steeped in in-universe propaganda designed to convince people that she’s an unreasonable, deceitful, supremely manipulative and malevolent, inhuman monster.)

<- but with that being said. fandom is always much more critical of female characters than male ones, and it tends to be much more difficult to persuade a fandom to dedicate this level of interest and energy to a female character than a male one. you can see this in action even within just the rwby fandom: compare the fan reception of raven vs taiyang, for example, with leaving her child in the care of two loving parents because she felt unable to take good enough care of yang being styled as the worst most horrid unforgivable thing a mother could do whereas letting his five year old "pick up the pieces" is often… flat out ignored in favor of headcanon that he’s the best dad ever.

or just the fact that the vast majority of the fandom regards the lost fable fight as "salem murdered her kids, ozma died trying to protect them" even though that is explicitly contradicted by what’s shown on screen with both ozma and salem being equally aggressive and oz having no idea what happened to those girls from the instant the fight began because he wasn’t thinking about them; they BOTH killed their kids in their fury at each other. but the fanon is that salem murdered her children on purpose in a vengeful rage and ozma was a good dad—in its most extreme form this becomes the Dadpin Nonsense.

(there is also an extremely funny talking point in dadpin circles to the tune of "if ozlem were gender-swapped no one would question that salem was abusive!" as if a) tauradonna shippers who scream and cry about blake being abusive don’t exist and b) dadpin people wouldn’t eat ozpin alive if he was a woman)

it’s complicated by the reality that salem does do a lot of very horrible things—terroristic attacks, enabling a serial killer by using him as her attack dog, her abusive treatment of cinder, everything she does to lionheart, sacking atlas, razing vale—and her moments of restraint or mercy are very easy to miss (she actively disguises her own release of her hostages in 8.9 for example) and again you have to be very attentive to detail to pick up on the fact that she cares about cinder. so it isn’t like she has an obvious "good side" juxtaposing all the atrocities, which means except for those who make a conscious decision to try to figure out what’s going on in her head while keeping an open mind, no one is going to see anything but the atrocities.

and again, fandom in general is a lot more willing to do that with male characters than female ones.

i think the clearest sign that It’s The Misogyny is the sheer amount of extremely widespread, extremely entrenched fanon there is about salem that is straight up contradicted by the text. her supposed "disdain" for humanity, for example; people act like it’s outrageous and nonsensical to suggest that salem thinks highly of humankind in the abstract (despite her indifference to individual people) even though… in both of her soliloquies she speaks quite highly of mankind… or her supposed "obsession" with magic, never mind that she barely uses "real" magic herself (most of what she does is Grimm Stuff, and she uses dust to make her grimm battlewhale fly) and never mind that she keeps flat out warning cinder that magic "comes with a cost." etc. this is a kind of flanderization driven by people disregarding what she says/does and mentally inserting generic villain tropes to fill in the gaps of story they miss by doing that, and then these ideas become memetically repeated often enough that they become the accepted lens through which everything she does is refracted.

(and that is how you get nonsense takes like "salem calls emerald’s semblance a semblance because she’s furious that this pitiful imitation of REAL MAGIC somehow fooled her, not because 'semblance' is what that kind of magic is called." this is why salem’s the only adult character who’s read as condescending and disdainful when she refers to the 17-19 year olds as children, even though all the older adults and some of the teenagers themselves do that. etc. there’s a preconceived notion that salem is disdainful of humanity and the text is bent to fit that reading even to the point of creating the absurd double standard that it’s… wrong for salem to use the same language used by every other character in the story?)

this kind of sexism is covert and usually subconscious; it emerges out of disinterest and an unexamined reflex to read female characters as less competent / less moral / less complex / less trustworthy / less rational etc. than their male counterparts, often with a side helping of blaming bad things male characters do on female characters instead. (eg see team rwby being blamed for things ironwood does in v7-8 by certain circles, or the constant "everything oz does is justified because salem evil" drumbeat).

watch how fast this fandom turns on summer rose once she turns out to be neither a martyred paragon nor a slave.

[strawberrypinky]

Writer Interview Game

Thank you for tagging me @heyitszev 💕 I love yapping.

NPT: @legacygirlingreen @goodgirlgonebard @gufu-vire @nyda-the-tav @seluneschosen @autistichalsin & anyone who wants to participate 💕

This is a long one, lol

When did you start writing? I think I've been writing stories for as long as I have been able to. My first-grade teacher supported anyone in the class who wished to be creative, so whether it was writing, crafts, or painting, she supported us in our ambitions. I think I may have even read out my first story attempts in front of the class back then. I could be wrong about that, though - It was twenty years ago, lol.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write? I read quite a few non-fiction books, which is something I don't think I'll ever do myself. It's just not my personal vibe or strength. I also enjoy books with bittersweet endings or even tragedies, and whilst I have tried time and time again to write a full tragedy, I always end up with a happy ending instead.

As a queer woman I'd also love to write queer stories at some point. Whilst I love reading queer stories, I haven't ever written one. I suppose that comes down to oftentimes not feeling queer enough.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often? @heyitszev semi-recently said reading "fire & ice" was like reading an evil version of Pride and Prejudice, and I have never recovered from that. Jane Austen is my favourite author of all time. I've pretty much read all of her books, and if there's someone I look up to, it's her. I also love Thomas Hardy and the Brontë sisters, but I don't find myself emulating them as much as I do Jane Austen.

While controversial, I also do find J.K Rowling inspiring - or rather, what she has created with the Harry Potter series. While I am in no way, shape or form condoning or supporting the things she has said in regard to especially LGBTQ people (!!), I admire the fact that she has created a lasting legacy with the Harry Potter series, which has managed to bring people from all ages and all backgrounds together. To create something so universally beloved is admirable.

Shame she's a raging cunt though.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space? I usually write on my living room couch with my dog next to me, lol. For some weird reason I cannot focus at my desk. At all.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse? I wish I knew, lol. My ideas come to me at random. Sometimes I listen to a song and I'm suddenly hit with the best idea I've had in months. Other times I simply need an hour away from my laptop to do anything but write, and I'm back writing at neck-breaking speed.

If anyone's got great ideas to muster up a muse let me know though, lol.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you? My writing has changed drastically over the years, and I can't compare recurring themes from five years ago to recurring themes now. My stories used to focus much more on romanticism and being in love, and while I still adore love stories, I do think my focus has shifted to more complex storytelling.

Feminism, especially "first wave" feminism, is a topic I broach quite frequently lately. Women trying to challenge the entrenched structures that deny them basic rights and autonomy. Deeply personal and often overlooked struggles of women trying to define their own narratives within a society intent on silencing them. Women being controlled by the men in their lives – fathers, brothers, husbands (or, in the case of fire and ice, also a god) – and a struggle for autonomy amidst operating within set boundaries. Personal aspirations versus societal expectations. Fire & ice is touching on these subjects more intensely in the next chapters, particularly chapter seven, which is entirely from Elodie's perspective. The first chapters were entirely from Enver's perspective, a man who has been intent on refusing Elodie any choice whatsoever.

Another topic that I have written about more frequently is the question of destiny and whether or not the choices one makes can impact one's life one way or the other, for better or worse. The concept of destiny versus free will, whether the events of one's life are predetermined by some cosmic force or if one, through making different choices, can shape the course of one's existence. I often try to grapple with the tension of determinism versus agency - particularly in "fire and ice" with the coexistence of divine omniscience versus human free will and, ultimately, Enver and Elodie's different outlooks on this.

Does that surprise me? Truthfully – yes and no. I am, and always have been, an advocate for the right of a woman to choose her own path in life. I support a woman wanting a traditional lifestyle as much as I support a woman choosing to have a career that fulfils her. The debate around divine omniscience versus human free will is more surprising to me. I grew up as an atheist and never gave much thought to divinity until much later in life. I'm an Anglican now - perhaps my personal journey played into this.

What is your reason for writing? Truthfully, I have just always loved writing. As a child/teenager, it was a way for me to express myself because I struggled to do so otherwise. Nowadays, I know that's because I've got the tism, lmfao. We love a good ol' late diagnosis. I have always loved immersing myself in different worlds. It's simply a creative outlet for me - just how others draw or craft things, I write.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating? "It's like I'm reading an evil Pride and Prejudice" - @heyitszev GETS A DOUBLE MENTION BECAUSE I WILL NEVER RECOVER! EVER! Will forever yap about this. Might even get it tattooed.

Otherwise I just appreciate people telling me that the stories I write have them invested in the storylines and characters. I think that is the greatest compliment anyone could give me. If my silly little stories stuck with you in one way or the other, I feel like I've accomplished everything and more.

I also like personal highlight comments, lol. But yeah.

How do you want to be thought about by your readers? Hm, that's a difficult one tbh. I suppose if someone reads my stories I'd hope they understand I pour a lot of love, time and energy into what I publish.

Beyond that, I'd like to believe that my stories are understood to have depth beyond any romance or smut at the forefront. That anyone who reads them understands they are personal commentary on certain issues and viewpoints.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer? I have been told I am wonderfully descriptive. That the way I write is beautifully illusory and that readers can immerse themselves into the story through the descriptions of sounds, smells and whatever else surrounds the characters. So yeah, I guess that.

How do you feel about your own writing? LMFAO that's subject to change like... daily. Sometimes I have the biggest god complex, but mostly I hate everything I write and would like to burn it as soon as I hit publish. It's usually kind readers who make me feel good about it, ngl.

The few moments I actually like my writing, I appreciate how far I've come and that I thoroughly enjoy being able to express myself this creatively.

I can't wait to get a MA in Creative Writing in the coming years. Maybe I should do this tag again afterwards 🤔

[filmfauxpas]

Twilight and Its Ever-Changing Directors—Why Catherine Hardwicke’s is The Best. 

Twilight is one of my top three favorite films and was my introduction to fan culture. My stepmom was an avid fan, taking my sister and me to the midnight premieres, playing the original soundtrack on the way to school, and reading each book as they were released. Every fall, I enjoy revisiting my favorite characters as part of my Halloween tradition. While my love for the series is unmatched, there are things I wish were different. Like many fans, my biggest gripe with the franchise is the constant change in style, which primarily comes down to the director changes between films. There is no doubt that Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight was the best. Her 2008 adaptation was the most well-received among all the films by critics, as it ranked highest according to Rotten Tomatoes.

Hardwicke’s understanding of teenagers demonstrated in films like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, made her the perfect choice for Twilight. Summit, the producer of Twilight, approached her after recognizing her knack for exploring the complexity of teenage emotions.  Hardwicke agreed to direct and, despite a modest $4 million budget, she created the beloved film starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. Blue, dreamy, moody, and romantic, the first Twilight aesthetic became iconic, thanks to Hardwicke’s indie film sensibility. Unlike other adaptations of the time, Twilight felt more intimate—its hushed dialogue, early 2000s fashion, and on-location filming only added to its charm. Following its release, Twilight grossed $393 million worldwide. Following its success, Summit wanted a sequel as soon as possible, giving Hardwicke less than a year to create and direct New Moon. Hardwicke argued against execs, which ultimately ended in Summit abandoning her to find someone who would meet their demands. 

In 2009, New Moon was directed by Chris Weitz, and the remaining three films were also helmed by male directors. Although the sequels enjoyed box office success, critically, they fell short compared to Hardwicke’s original vision. Hardwicke expressed her opinion on this choice of directors, saying: “[it was] a heartbreak for me. There are other badass women out there that could have done those.” The absence of a woman's perspective is evident in the remaining films.

Weitz was still finishing New Moon when Eclipse began filming, leading David Slade to take over as director. Previous to Eclipse, Slade solely directed gritty and disturbing films like Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night. Summit chose Slade because of this, hoping he would create a “complex, visually arresting world,” as they described it in their 2009 official press release. While Slade brought a darker tone to Eclipse, the film suffered in its portrayal of Bella, who seemed more passive and confused, caught between Jacob and Edward. This shift in focus, from the internal struggles of the characters to more surface-level action sequences, is where the magic of the first film began to dissipate.

In Hardwicke’s Twilight, Bella’s perspective of Forks is misty and lulling, reflecting her remembrance of the town from when she was a child. There's a certain awe to Forks, the Cullen family, and budding romance between Edward and Bella. Even amid conflict, there was a lingering sense of wonder. As the films progressed, however, that distinct storytelling faded. The blues become auburn and shift to gray, much like the narrative. Some might argue this reflects the maturing of the theme, but I believe it reflects the later directors’ lack of connection to the source material. Hardwicke and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg fought to give Bella more agency and have her be a “little less passive than she was in the book,” as Hardwicke described. Rather than focusing on the internal and emotional conflict the main characters face, later directors indulge more in the action of the books.

Despite the disappointing predecessors to the first film, Hardwicke remains positive about her work on the Twilight set. “As a director, you work so hard; you pour your heart into so many projects; some of them get made, some of them never get made,” Hardwicke explained. “This one got made, and people loved it and appreciated every little detail. I mean, people are wearing the shoes that Bella wore and asking how you chose this and that, and they really care about the love and attention that filmmakers put into it.” Even though she wasn’t able to continue directing the series, her impact on the franchise is enduring and continues to be admired by fans.

In the end, while the saga might have evolved in ways that didn’t always meet my expectations, Twilight will always hold a special place for me. And every fall, I return to Forks, finding comfort in the nostalgia and magic of that first film.

[iirulancorrino]

Movies that attempt something different, that recognize that less can indeed be more, are thus easily taken to task. “It’s so subjective!” and “It omits a crucial P.O.V.!” are assumed to be substantive criticisms rather than essentially value-neutral statements. We are sometimes told, in matters of art and storytelling, that depiction is not endorsement; we are not reminded nearly as often that omission is not erasure. But because viewers of course cannot be trusted to know any history or muster any empathy on their own — and if anything unites those who criticize “Oppenheimer” on representational grounds, it’s their reflexive assumption of the audience’s stupidity — anything that isn’t explicitly shown onscreen is denigrated as a dodge or an oversight, rather than a carefully considered decision. A film like “Oppenheimer” offers a welcome challenge to these assumptions. Like nearly all Nolan’s movies, from “Memento” to “Dunkirk,” it’s a crafty exercise in radical subjectivity and narrative misdirection, in which the most significant subjects — lost memories, lost time, lost loves — often are invisible and all the more powerful for it. We can certainly imagine a version of “Oppenheimer” that tossed in a few startling but desultory minutes of Japanese destruction footage. Such a version might have flirted with kitsch, but it might well have satisfied the representational completists in the audience. It also would have reduced Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a piddling afterthought; Nolan treats them instead as a profound absence, an indictment by silence. That’s true even in one of the movie’s most powerful and contested sequences. Not long after news of Hiroshima’s destruction arrives, Oppenheimer gives a would-be-triumphant speech to a euphoric Los Alamos crowd, only for his words to turn to dust in his mouth. For a moment, Nolan abandons realism altogether — but not, crucially, Oppenheimer’s perspective — to embrace a hallucinatory horror-movie expressionism. A piercing scream erupts in the crowd; a woman’s face crumples and flutters, like a paper mask about to disintegrate. The crowd is there and then suddenly, with much sonic rumbling, image blurring and an obliterating flash of white light, it is not. For “Oppenheimer’s” detractors, this sequence constitutes its most grievous act of erasure: Even in the movie’s one evocation of nuclear disaster, the true victims have been obscured and whitewashed. The absence of Japanese faces and bodies in these visions is indeed striking. It’s also consistent with Nolan’s strict representational parameters, and it produces a tension, even a contradiction, that the movie wants us to recognize and wrestle with. Is Oppenheimer trying (and failing) to imagine the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians murdered by the weapon he devised? Or is he envisioning some hypothetical doomsday scenario still to come? I think the answer is a blur of both, and also something more: In this moment, one of the movie’s most abstract, Nolan advances a longer view of his protagonist’s history and his future. Oppenheimer’s blindness to Japanese victims and survivors foreshadows his own stubborn inability to confront the consequences of his actions in years to come. He will speak out against nuclear weaponry, but he will never apologize for the atomic bombings of Japan — not even when he visits Tokyo and Osaka in 1960 and is questioned by a reporter about his perspective now. “I do not think coming to Japan changed my sense of anguish about my part in this whole piece of history,” he will respond. “Nor has it fully made me regret my responsibility for the technical success of the enterprise.” Talk about compartmentalization. That episode, by the way, doesn’t find its way into “Oppenheimer,” which knows better than to offer itself up as the last word on anything. To the end, Nolan trusts us to seek out and think about history for ourselves. If we elect not to, that’s on us.

[toastofthetrashfire]

Shadow the Series and Narrative

So in my last post about art in Shadow. I mentioned I wanted to write separately about narrative. So here goes! All my thoughts so far on how Shadow is bringing in narrative. From storytelling to the narratives that get forcibly suppressed or exposed. I’ll be including a little detour through disability studies on the way.   

Ghost Stories: Where Does the Horror Lie?

I want to start with the story of the one armed man told in the marketplace in episode 7 and use this to think about how disability and queerness get narrated in different ways by and within the show. 

In the scene we’re given the story of the one armed man. The context of the story is important here, as it is told to an interviewer and audience expecting a ghost story. And the one-armed man’s disability and queerness are used within this context to add to the horror for the listeners. The man was a boxer and part of the navy before this was cut short by disability (when he has his arm torn off) which marks the start of the tale’s horror. The story continues as the teller explains that the man became a prostitute for “homosexual millionaires.” The tale seems to reach its climax as the man’s clients overdose and he is arrested. The woman telling the story explains how the man received an influx of letters from gay clients before discussing the way his haunting manifests. Interestingly, the host and listeners react at this point as if this is the end of the story, expressing their fear verbally and through expressions of disgust. Because disability and queerness alone are enough to make this a horror story for them.

At this point, Dan makes a pointed intervention into the narrative by asking how the man died. Now, Dan could be asking because he dreamt of the man and wants the full information. From a script perspective it would make sense as a way to make Dan more than a passive receiver of information in the scene. But given Dan’s expression (irritated, defiant) and the way this is framed, I think there’s more going on here. Typically, the climax of a ghost story would come when we find out how the spirit died or was formed. Yet the tale that’s told is already seen as complete simply through the role of queerness and disability. Dan points out this discrepancy, and in doing so starts to challenge the way queerness is being used narratively as a source of horror by the storyteller. 

I think it’s also important to consider the in-show audience(s) in this scene. Because we have the crowd/interviewers and we have Dan/Nai. Their experiences of this story are markedly different. The crowd reacts with horror at the idea of queerness and disability. Yet, for Nai and Dan the horror comes from homophobia and a dominant society that narrates queerness as inherently horrifying. Nai’s face falls the moment homosexuality is brought up. He knows where this is going and how the narrative is weaponizing queerness. He and Dan eventually choose to leave, not staying to listen further after the man’s death is explained. It is an inhospitable narrative space, a narrative that rejects them, much like Hamlet as a narrative rejects Dan’s full identification (I discuss that here). In dominant narratives, queerness can only exist as haunting.

Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and Empathetic Horror

Okay a quick little detour into disability studies here. I promise it connects back in really fruitful ways!

In disability studies, particularly the side that looks at literature, there’s a concept called “narrative prosthesis” coined by David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder. Narrative prosthesis is a way of thinking about disability’s role in narratives. Mitchell and Snyder point out that, unlike other forms of identity which are often underrepresented, examples of disability abound in literature and narrative. However, the vast majority of these examples use disability symbolically and metaphorically rather than as an avenue to explore the experiences or perspectives of disabled people. Instead, narrative relies on disability as a “prosthesis” that helps stories to create meaning. Disability then becomes a hurdle to overcome, a catalyst to start a story, a sign of a character’s moral growth or decline. Think of captain Ahab from Moby Dick, the madness of King Lear, or the blinding of Oedipus. Disability is present in these tales, but never given space to tell stories about disability or disabled experience itself. Disability must always represent something else. 

I’d argue that within the ghost story told in episode 7, disability and queerness are forced into this mode. They’re made hypervisible, but only to serve a narrative function–to mark the one-armed man as morally deficient and elicit moral disgust and horror.  

This use of disability as narrative prosthesis has long been a presence in horror as a genre as well, at least in the case of western tradition. Consider the following: using disfigured faces for jump scares, using it to signify degeneracy and evoke disgust, using madness and mental illness to mark a threat to normalcy. Even figures like Frankenstein can be read as coded in disability. Whole books could be written on the topic just listing the various examples of how horror has employed disability for horror. 

However, there are points to be made about how horror as a genre also has room for more complex depictions and narratives about disability and alterity (the film Freaks is a great example). Recent scholarship has begun trying to unpack the ways horror can be both inhospitable and a space of identification for disabled and otherwise marginalized audiences. One scholar, Angela M. Smith, has looked at the role of disability in classic horror cinema. She notes the ableism but also how the genre has examples of other possibilities. For example, stories such as Frankenstein where the monster draws our sympathy and whose violence mirrors the horrors society first wrought on him. Or the way horror victims can give us narratives about trauma. Or the way the mad scientist so often fails to create the perfect human, leaving us to confront our inability to control human difference.

Another scholar, Melinda Hall, has noted that, while many horror narratives fall into ableism, there is an alternative tradition of empathetic horror. She points to films like Tim Burton’s Edward Scissor Hands and Steven King’s Carrie to talk about horror that is ultimately empathetic to outsiders. She writes, “These alternative encounters can build inroads to political inclusion by fostering the acceptance of vulnerability and pushing for the rejection of exclusive social norms and ableism by highlighting them as horrific.” Here, the source of horror is inverted. The horror in the narrative no longer resides in disabled bodyminds but in social systems that abject those who are different.

So What About Shadow?

I don’t want to speak too definitively here about how Shadow is tackling disability. I think that can only really be explored with the full story in mind. But I do think the show itself is trying to make a distinction between where the horror lies. If the story in the market is one of narrative prosthesis, then the story Shadow seems to want to tell is one where society is the source of horror. And it’s doing so with disability to a small degree but queerness to a much larger degree. 

Notice how the story focuses on trauma, queerness, and mental illness in tangible and empathetic ways despite the surreal and spooky elements at play. The horror and tragedy lies in what society did to Trin that forced him to become a ghost. And that’s very different from the narrative told in the market. That story requires the listeners to dis-identify with queerness and disability. In contrast, Shadow itself asks us viewers to dis-identify with homophobic social norms and identify with its queer and mentally ill characters. It’s as if the show itself is trying to grapple with the question of how to make a narrative space that is hospitable to experiences of trauma, disability, and queerness by playing with the horror narrative. 

Suppressed and Confessed Narratives

Okay so switching gears slightly, I want to think about another way narratives show up in the show. Particularly a demand for confession. 

One thing that struck me (and sparked my thinking in my other post on art) was the multiple points where Brother Anurak tells Dan to record his dreams. Despite telling Dan to do so multiple times, Dan resists this. This resistance is notable in a few ways. First, at least in my mind, a dream journal is typically written. So in my mind, Anurak is asking Dan for a written account. Something which Dan bucks by only recording his dreams through drawing. Second, dream journals are often used and recommended for people who want to have lucid dreams. It is interesting then that the show seems to frame Brother Anurak’s request as misguided or even threatening. Especially since the ring the monk gives Dan achieves that same goal but is framed more positively. So if we were just dealing with this request as part of the supernatural mechanics of the world, it wouldn’t make sense to emphasize the request as something to avoid. 

What might be the reason for including this then? Well, I’d argue that it aligns with a trend in the show of characters being forced to make aspects of themselves public. Anurak is compelling Dan to write, to narrate, to reveal things about himself to an authority figure. Anurak is a priest: so is he pressuring Dan to confess? 

This push for Dan to write and narrate speaks to the way certain narratives in the show are forcibly confessed. Nai is outed by Anan, his queerness narrated to the world through slurs and bullying. Trin is outed through the letter where he narrates his feelings to Master Joe. His letter isn’t allowed to stay private, much like his sexuality, and is used to forcibly spread the word of his queerness through writing. Similarly his use of drugs is exposed after his disappearance/death. I’d argue Brother Anurak’s push to get Dan to write a dream journal fits with this theme.  

Foucault

This compulsion by society to make queerness and alterity something to confess has me thinking of Foucault’s work on sexuality and the “repressive hypothesis”. In his work The History of Sexuality, Foucault notes how we often look back at the period from the 17th century to the 1970s as a time when sexuality was socially repressed. In this view, the 1970s was a sexual revolution and now we could talk about sexuality freely. However, Foucault complicates this assumption. He argues that the attempt to repress sexuality actually was accompanied by a “discursive explosion.” From books on moral and immoral sexuality to a compulsion by psychologists and society to classify and pathologize sexual differences such as homosexuality. Interestingly, he argues that this compulsion to discuss sex stems in part from the Counter-Reformation as the Catholic church called on followers to confess their sexual desires and actions. Foucault argues that confession would evolve over time to become part of the relationship between parent and child, patient and psychiatrist, and student and educator. 

Interestingly, Brother Anurak functions as both priest and psychiatrist. He also has taken on a quasi-parental role for Dan and is operating in an educational setting. 

This is an interesting contrast to the way we might conceive of the closet and the idea that society suppresses queer narratives. I think the key here is that dominant society is immensely anxious about difference, especially when it comes to sexuality. It therefore must be narrated on society’s terms. Queerness and other forms of alterity must be identified, confessed, and announced like a warning. They need to be framed as disgusting and horrific (like in the story of the one-armed man) in order to be contained. Yet, authentic, self-actualized expressions of queerness must be suppressed as this challenges the narrative. For example, Nai is told by the librarian that he shouldn’t express intimacy (even friendship) and Brother Anurak seems to want Dan to suppress the shadow. Stay in line or confess, but never express queerness in a way that challenges the assumption that it is horrific. They aren’t allowed to tell their story on their terms.

And once again, Shadow itself challenges this framing. It focuses on the stories that aren’t told and does so on the character’s terms. We see Nai’s experience–we’re asked to identify with him, to understand the way Anan and society have failed and traumatized him. And we get this in the context of him choosing to tell part of the story to Dan. This isn’t him being outed, and it isn’t a narrative that simply frames his queerness as a source to be exposed and contained. Similarly, the show explores Dan’s trauma and does so in a way where he is allowed to confront his father on his terms. We see the way his father harmed and failed him, and he is allowed to take up space in that narrative. We are allowed to see Trin beyond the way the school treats and narrates him as well, if only briefly so far. It’s hard to say for sure with only half the episodes out, but I suspect that the mystery around Trin will be tied to a narrative desire to expose the horror of society, to tell Trin’s story on his terms. 

The suppression and forced confession of narratives work hand-in-hand. Queerness and other forms of difference must be talked about in certain ways. Such difference compels discourse while suppressing actual voices. It’s no wonder then that queerness gets attached to haunting–difference must always be stated and forcibly visible but never fully included or co-existing*.

*Side note. In my post on art in Shadow I mention the idea in surrealism of trying to merge reality and the unconscious in a manner where they co-exist. It feels apt then that Dan’s merging of dream and reality is occurring in a show thematically exploring queerness.  

Sources:

Michel Foucault. The History of Sexuality

Smith, Angela M. Hideous Progeny: Disability, Eugenics, and Classic Horror Cinema. Columbia University Press, 2012

Hall, Melinda. "Horrible Heroes: Liberating Alternative Visions of Disability in Horror" Disability Studies Quarterly, 36.1, 2016.

Mitchell, David and Sharon Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. University of Michigan Press, 2014.

[mimiatmidnight]

So, twelve hours post, here is my first round of thoughts:

I will never recover from all the baby clips. NEVER. RECOVER.

Doria is the classiest, most dignified person in history. That poor woman deserves a medal for what she endured so strongly.

The producers did such a fantastic job of weaving the love-storytelling in with the historical discussions and the present-day narrative. And MAN what a love story. I really thought I had a good sense of them before, but I feel so different now. I see them and their love in a new light. Which, hey, isn't that the exact point of this whole thing? So, mission accomplished. I am completely warmed and enchanted.

I especially feel I understand so much more about who they were before each other. I love how dedicated the producers were to establishing Meghan's pre-Harry personhood and just how much she lost to be with him. And I was so unspeakably moved by Harry's recounting of his relationship to the people of Lesotho and Botswana. How they took him in when he had no place he felt at home. How it fundamentally shifted his development into the man he would be become. Genuinely one of the most beautiful stories in the whole production.

Meghan is better than me because if I had to meet my future in-laws and there in my kitchen was Kate Middleton looking at me the way Kate Middleton looks at people, I would be on the next plane back to America. EXPEDITIOUSLY.

Also um can we take a sec to laugh at how Cambridge stans (esp those in the rota) are taking personal offense to Harry's cheeky but astute observation about his male relatives marrying for convenience rather than love? SO funny. I think he was very obviously talking about his parents, but hey if you wanna be like "This is so clearly about William and Kate" like . . . Ok mama, if the tiara fucking fits!!!!

Meghan is better at communicating the warm, gooey, happy parts of the story, and Harry is FAR better at communicating the serious, difficult, upsetting parts of the story -- the "shocking revelations," if you will. Meg is seemingly still struggling with this incredibly frustrating naivete surrounding their situation, and it does not come across the screen well to me. But that is a discussion for others to have, so that's all I'll say on that.

The Black historians and political commentators they brought on were absolutely critical to nailing that side of the story. Afua Hirsch was my very favorite.

I've already gotten at least one anon asking about my perspective on the addressing of Harry's SS costume. I appreciate the interest, but no. I am the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. My family and I have been discussing how to internalize and process Harry specifically, as well as people like him, for years now. And it's not something I'm willing to do over the internet with strangers. Sorry, but I hope you can understand.

Mandana's scene was so funny. She was like "Royal expert? You literally just made that up right now 🤨" LMAO

Ashleigh's appearance knocked me BACK omg. I'm so touched to see how they connected all those years ago, and I hope they have found a way to reconnect, away from all that sabotage.

As I posted just before, the way they are juuuuust planting the seeds for the Jason storyline to come . . . literal fucking chills.

I love that they know which photos of them are iconic. When the umbrella shot showed up I was like "Yeah they know that was history right there" 😌

Oh and showing them Meghan's old This or That interview, the producers are SO real for that kjgfhfdgfjgh

Please believe me when I tell you that I am not usually one to be all "Ohhhhh Diana ohhhhh she's looking down on them ohhhh this or that." Lol. But the clip of Archie reaching his little hand to her photo on the wall, and not to her face, which babies are neurologically wired to focus on, but to her hands. Yeah a bitch might just have teared up or whatever 🥲

I thought the whole thing was really well produced. So far, it's not the nuclear war all those panicking lil media experts were predicting. But my sense is that Volume I was very much an introduction to lay the groundwork for whatever we're about to go through in Volume II. And I cannot wait. For the time being, I am so over the moon to be granted this truly moving glimpse into what a beautiful life Harry and Meghan have built for themselves.

[gamerdog1]

Baccano Review

Since the early days of humanity, we humans have been fascinated with storytelling. From cave paintings, to oral storytelling, to the invention of the printing press and beyond, stories have been a staple of how we share experiences, lessons, or histories with subsequent generations.

When it comes to the recounting of events, though, therein lies a problem: from which perspective is the story told? Who are history's main characters? How can we possibly get a complete look at an event (or events) from only one person's perspective?

While most stories take a singular perspective, linear approach to storytelling, some attempt the daunting task of rounding up as many perspectives as possible, showing that there is always more than one side to every story.

One such series is Baccano (2007), an anime based on the light novel series of the same name, written by Ryohgo Narita. Unlike most historical anime, Baccano's story is told from a dozen or so perspectives, creating a unique viewing experience that rewards audiences' close attention with a satisfying thrill ride.

Describing Baccano's plot is a bit difficult, simply because of how much goes on in it. Its a gangster story about various crime families in New York, and their endless cycle of violence against one another. Its a horror story, about a train hi-jacking that goes wrong after a murderous monster climbs aboard. Its also a comedy about a pair of goofy criminals who mess up their plans all the time, yet still somehow get away with them.

Yet, all these separate plot threads are interwoven in a such a way where each is essential to the overall story. Characters encounter each other in key moments of the plot, and their stories are changed because of each other. In one episode, we see a major character watching a fire break out at a factory, where he bumps into a mysterious woman. In the next episode, we see what the woman was doing before she got to the fire, and where she went afterwards. By doing this, Baccano weaves a complex story where dozens of 'main characters' can shine to their own degrees.

Where this comes most in handy is with how the series doles out scenes and important information. Instead of showing scenes in a linear fashion, Baccano cuts up events and scatters them to the four winds, forcing audiences to put together a timeline as best they can. One minute you could be seeing a gunfight in 1932, then the next you're seeing people board a train in 1931, seemingly unrelated. I found myself trying to plot each scene on a timeline as I watched, but by episode 4, I didn't need it anymore.

The non-linear storytelling of this anime can be tricky to anyone not accustomed to it, having a keen eye and keeping track of the three major events of the story is all you really need to understand the order of events. Each scene is book-ended with something shown in a previous episode, or relates to something that is revealed in the next episode, showing you exactly when each event takes place in the overall narrative. Its not rocket science to understand the story: it just takes a keen eye, and a basic understanding of cause and effect.

Beyond the story itself, I really enjoyed this series, especially because of its atmosphere and setting. Its a rare treat to see an anime set outside of Japan, especially a historical series like this one. Much like Black Butler (2008), another historical anime set outside of Japan, the English dub is a treat, featuring all the old-timey accents that you'd expect for the time period. That, combined with the occasional use of slang (such as using 'giggle juice' to refer to alcohol) and references to 30's pop culture, made the dialogue flow smoothly, and feel natural for the setting.

While taking place in the 1930's, Baccano is in no way a realistic depiction of history, something which isn't helped by it's fantasy plotline. The fantasy element of Baccano's plot doesn't ruin the show (I believe it actually makes the story cooler, though I feel like it could've been integrated more smoothly into the setting, or at least given more time to develop.

That, unfortunately, is the main issue with this series: it really needed more time. With a plot as dense and complex as this, you'd think it would get more time to stretch out and get comfortable. 13 episodes is shockingly little, especially for an adaptation of a light novel series with over 20 books in it. It baffles me that Brain's Base (the studio behind this anime) didn't give this series a longer run, or even a second season. It certainly could do with it.

Still, this series makes the most of its short stay, like a tourist who insists on 'doing everything' on their weekend vacation to New York City. Every character gets a decent amount of screen time and a clear goal, and that goal is either reached or missed tragically. For a show with such a short run, its quite impressive just how much information and story is packed into its 13 episodes. By the end, I felt a connection to the key players, like we'd spent a whole afternoon together (which may or may not be related to me watching most of this anime in one afternoon).

All in all, I quite enjoyed Baccano, though I wish it was longer. The non-linear storytelling was a bit jarring at first, but didn't take me too long to understand. The characters ranged from hilariously stupid to genuinely cool, and each was entertaining to watch. At the end of the day, though, I only wish this series was longer. Characters like Ennis didn't feel like they got the time they deserved, and could've brought this series up from 'great' to 'excellent' if they had gotten more time to develop and explore.

I definitely recommend this series to anyone who hasn't seen it. Sure, its violent, bloody, confusing, weird, and ridiculously short, but it makes the most of what it has. We can only hope for a surprise second season announcement in the near future.

(Also this guy is the best character. I will not apologize.)

[mindfulwrath]

Books of 2022

Not including DNFs.

“The Authentic William James” by Stephen Gallagher - a British show cowboy is accused of setting a theater fire that killed a German noble. Sebastian Becker, special investigator for the British Crown, must find the accused so he can be scapegoated before rumors of assassination spark a pan-European war. Along the way, Sebastian finds that the accused man’s daughter has been kidnapped by another, rather more authentic stage cowboy. This book has an awful lot, folks: murder, Theatre, cowboys, turn-of-the-century Hollywood, labor rights, addiction, insane asylums, and more! Fans of “Murder with the Devil and Friends” will probably enjoy this one (I did). Recommended.

“The Amulet of Samarkand” by Jonathan Stroud (reread) - A young magician in the heart of the British Empire summons a djinni to steal an artifact from the man who humiliated him, and fucks it up worse than any other protagonist I’ve ever read. The story is half told from his perspective, and half told from the perspective of the snarky, self-aggrandizing djinni whom he has enslaved to carry out the theft. Mr. Stroud did not pull his punches with this one, I tell you what. Still, it works infinitely better as part of a trilogy than on its own, maybe more than any other Book One I’ve read. Recommended.

“The Golem’s Eye” by Jonathan Stroud (reread) - MR. STROUD DID NOT PULL HIS PUNCHES WITH THIS ONE, I TELL YOU WHAT. Our young magician from the last book continues fucking things up, but this time while the djinni ruthlessly roasts him for his fashion sense while the two of them try to get to the bottom of a series of mysterious break-ins. We also get to spend some time with our third protagonist, a young woman who has a resilience to magic and is part of a small Resistance, whose goal is to break the stranglehold the magicians have on the government. Boy, if you thought Book 1 was scathingly critical of empires and those who run them, Book 2 doubles down on it hard. Chillingly relevant, despite being written in 2004. Stroud also does a great job writing a protagonist who exhibits the very real disease of being 14. Recommended. (Bonus points for correctly attributing golems to Jewish tradition!)

“Ptolemy’s Gate” by Jonathan Stroud (reread) - MR. STROUD DID NOT COME TO FUCK AROUND, GODDAMN. The thrilling conclusion to the Bartimaeus trilogy, and it really delivers on every front. No setup goes without payoff. Honestly, it feels like these 3 books are really just one very long book, because details from Book 1 and Book 2 come back with real significance, little fanfare, and a hell of a lot of momentum. I really fucking love this series, and this book drives home why. Recommended.

“How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi - Dr. Kendi defines racism, antiracism, and many related terms and intersections, goes through the origins and history of racism as well as his own journey from being raised in a racist world to choosing to be antiracist. A greatly clarifying and galvanizing read, at least for me. Dense at times, but well worth slowing down for. Recommended.

“Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Vol 2” by MXTX - Things get much worse but also much gayer for our fast-talking protagonist - although really the vast majority of this book is about side-stories that happened many years in the past. The side-stories are really good though, and add to the narrative tension rather than distracting from it. I really do think this series (and probably all MXTX novels) could be used as a masterclass in non-linear storytelling. Recommended.

“Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix” (vol. 1) by Shiro Amano - An abridged version of the story of KH1 told in graphic novel format: kid’s world is swallowed by darkness, he gets separated from his two friends, he somehow acquires a magic key-sword that lets him fight the creatures of darkness, he goes on a quest to find his friends and ends up saving a bunch of Disney worlds along the way. It’s got some interesting little tidbits and alternate translations (and very, very cute art), so I certainly enjoyed it. Recommended if you’re already a KH fan or if you want to get the basic story without playing several hundred hours of games or watching a few dozen hours of cutscenes.

“Heaven Official’s Blessing: Vol 2” by MXTX - The plot thickens and things get worse for the protagonist (and isn't that just a summary of all MXTX novels?). I had some trouble with keeping all the names straight in this one because everyone has three names and it's a little trickier when I don't have a face to pin them all to, but it's still a good read. You can feel the plot putting on weight like a teenager getting ready for a growth spurt. Plus there's a really fun scene in a gambling den that is simultaneously the most chaste and the dirtiest thing I've ever read in published fiction. Recommended.

“Dracula” by Bram Stoker (reread, via Dracula Daily) - A fresh methodology on the old classic. I'd forgotten some of the twists and turns since I read this book back in high school, and the "daily" format is something I'd long wanted to engage in (i.e., reading a book that has a set timeline according to that timeline). The community of memes and analyses was a great joy to partake in, too. Recommended, particularly via Dracula Daily (there's always next year!)

"Dreadnought" by April Daniels - A teenage trans girl inherits a superhero mantle that not only gives her superpowers, but the body she's always wanted. This causes a tremendous amount of problems and immediately flings her into a mire of political turmoil while having to navigate high school and an abusive father. This is a book that knows its stuff back to front and remixes it adeptly. Recommended, but with trigger warnings for abuse, transphobia, and some fairly disturbing gore (and that's coming from me).

"Heaven Official's Blessing: Vol 3" by MXTX - The plot thickens, and things get worse for the protagonist. No, I mean really, REALLY worse. But there's also a damn good kiss in there, and plenty of other fun stuff to keep it from being oppressively grim. Recommended.

"Ancillary Justice" by Ann Leckie - A fragment of a ship's AI, confined to a human body, seeks revenge for the murder of her favorite lieutenant. Unfortunately, the person she's seeking vengeance against happens to be the emperor of a massive, millennia-old space empire, whose consciousness occupies a thousand bodies. A sedately paced, intricately built story about love and imperialism and culture and war and music. If you like Robots With Feelings, complex political dramas, or conlangs, this book is for you. Recommended.

"Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Vol 3" by MXTX - This one is primarily flashback, although not all the same flashback (have I mentioned the whole "masterclass in nonlinear storytelling" thing yet?) and stitched together in a way that flows naturally and keeps you reading to the very end. Also, a damn good kiss in there (vol 3 seems to be the magic number for that). But also also, some really fucking horrifying gore, to the point that I went: "who looked at this and decided they could make a show that got past the censors?" I mean, they were right, whoever they were, they managed it and "The Untamed" kicked ass, but I have to wonder what kind of person rolled up their sleeves to do it. Recommended.

"The Long Earth" by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett - The course of human history is forever changed when a rogue scientist releases the designs for a device that allows people to step to parallel Earths, all of which seem to be uninhabited. A young man named Joshua, able to step without the aid of a device, is recruited by an artificial intelligence to go on an expedition to find what's at the end of the seemingly infinite stack of Earths. An interesting read with a lot of cool speculation about alternate Earths and some very grounded and unfortunately relevant observations on the nature of humanity. It doesn't read like a Pratchett, although it has some very Pratchett-esque concepts in it. I liked it okay, but not enough to particularly want to read any of the sequels.

"Moving Pictures" by Terry Pratchett (reread) - The wild ideas of Holy Wood are escaping into the Discworld and causing hauntingly familiar scenes to play out in a little spit of desert by the sea - but anywhere where Things That Don't Exist can become Things That Do Exist, there will be Things That Want To Exist trying to come through.... Dryly funny as standard for Pratchett, and probably at least a quarter written just to see how many film references he could upend in one go. Featuring (what I think are) the first appearances of Gaspode The Wonder Dog and Archchancellor Munstrum Ridcully. Recommended.

"Fadeout" by Joseph Hanson - Dave Brandstetter, an insurance investigator who is "contentedly gay," investigates the mysterious disappearance of a small-town entertainer who hit the big time. Atmospheric, noir-adjacent, and pleasantly twisty, this mystery also benefits from half the cast being queer. It would be excellent if written today, and considering that it was written in the sixties, it's in a league of its own. Recommended.

"Are Prisons Obsolete?" by Angela Davis - A novelette-length essay on the origins, consequences, and possible alternatives to the prison-industrial complex, as well as a litany of reasons why it's imperative for the health of our society that the carceral state be dismantled. Thought-provoking and perspective-shifting in many ways. Recommended.

"Station Eternity" by Mur Lafferty - Mallory Viridian seems to constantly be followed by murders - and constantly finds herself solving them, too. She thought escaping Earth to a sentient space station would free her from her 'curse,' but, whoops, it doesn't. Featuring multiple sentient alien species, military interferism plots, eighty percent of a romance, and several murder cases across space and time, this felt like a book trying to do too many things at once, each interfering with the execution of the others. The detective story got lost in the space station story, and the space station story suffered from having to serve a detective story. The dialogue and the plot both clunked audibly at times, although the third act featured a clever twist and a fairly satisfying finale. The book wasn't so grating that I gave up on it, but I was glad to be done with it.

"Iron Widow" by Xiran Jay Zhao - A young woman living in a world that’s a milieu of ancient and modern China seeks vengeance against the celebrity kaiju pilot who killed her sister. And then seeks vengeance against the system which allowed said sister to be killed. And then decides: "since this system is fucking over everyone and everything I care about, how about I fuck it right back?" It's like Pacific Rim meets Handmaid's Tale meets real Chinese history, and that’s not even getting into the nuanced and incisive meditations on gender and sexuality. Recommended, but with content warnings for body horror, familial abuse, heavily implied sexual assault, and hardcore misogyny.

[onewomancitadel]

I think what's funny about being a very dedicated romance lover is that there definitely times where I actually don't want it in the thing I'm into or at the very least I don't want it to be bland and really boring. I get it, Zelda/Link shippers go way back, but the gestural relationship was always way more interesting as a chaste knight/lady dynamic, and it's just lazy leaning into cutesy wholesome rivals-to-lovers shenanigans. (There are no intended TOTK spoilers in this post). It could not be there, and the story wouldn't really change in BOTW (or indeed even Skyward Sword); it's not achieving overly much except finally leaning into the (ostensible) inevitability of Link and Zelda getting together. Meanwhile - yeah - if I have to draw comparisons, any implicit Beauty and Beast dynamic to Link and Midna actually transforms Midna's character arc and the ultimate tragedy of her disappearance (and inability to reconcile their partner dynamic with who they both are and the nature of the Zelda myth).

Similar to that vein I really don't like companion romances in DW, which is why I feel that (even though she was polarising) someone like River Song was more interesting if the Doctor had to have a romance, but I always preferred the Doctor as a sexless figure/professor/parent type thing. Idk, the companion romances were very clumsy and uninteresting (which is why Donna remains one of the best companions - despite the fat single woman jokes, ugh, I can't believe people say only Moffat's run was misogynistic) and just obviously there to pander to a more familiar format of storytelling by the time of the reboot (self-insert Doctor with a sexpot companion). This is why I really don't like the Thirteenth Doctor's casting as an attractive (relatively) younger woman, just because it's really apparent they weren't thinking too hard about who would actually be appropriate for a Doctor. I don't know if that makes me unfeminist (I don't even like Tennant's Doctor, and Eleven works because he's unconventional) or something, I'm not sure - I think they did her wardrobe well enough but I just can't get over the casting there (and I know she has some sort of a companion romance, again, which it seems like they didn't even commit to with a female love interest, which says a lot. What I'm really getting at here with Thirteen is that I would've preferred a less conventional actress for the Doctor).

But it really comes down to motivated versus unmotivated romance, and sometimes we're not even really talking about the same thing - fluffy superficial shit (and yeah, you can definitely argue Doctor/Rose isn't superficial, but to me it does break part of the identity of DW and the Doctor's dynamic with the companions, and the characterisation of that relationship is exhausting and so fucking boring) is just fluffy and superficial, but from a storytelling perspective I want to be thinking about what these romances achieve narratively. If anything I think what is, say, critical to writing a companion romance with the Doctor is that it should by nature be fraught and taboo, and despite Rose's parallel-world disappearance the nature of them having feelings for each other is just a foregone conclusion and the will-they won't-they shit is just boring romcom bullshit. I find the Davies era mostly unwatchable because of this nonsense now (and then Martha gets saddled with that bullshit too, which brings down her entire run as companion).

I enjoy romance which is narratively justified and I find it tedious and boring when it's shoved in my face where it's inappropriate, which is fucking hilarious because that's a common detraction to the romances I enjoy. But we know it's assigned as a bad faith criticism in these circumstances and rarely do they explain why it doesn't work. But in writing romance, what I think is valuable is asking what it achieves on multiple levels - character, plot, theme - and whether it belongs there, particularly tonally.

I understand it's not a popular opinion (Zelda/Link and Doctor/Rose are huge ships in the General Audience alone, and the reason I think the former especially has been leant into is for an obvious reason) but I think it's worth considering critically for where romance does and doesn't work, because even if those ships are nominally popular, sometimes things are just popular because they hit familiar tropes and feel inevitable and cute.

[indigovigilance]

I have a new hero, and her name is Roz Kaveney.

As a youngish trans man, Kaveney’s and my life histories (up to my age, anyways) have a lot in common, and I’ve decided to address some choice quotes from that perspective. I hope it doesn’t come off as self-centered; my focus was how oddly recurrent the experience of coming out as trans can be, even across decades and across oceans, in ways people don’t usually talk about. It feels like I’m tracing over the Mona Lisa with crayon to add anything to this article, but Notorious NRG gave me permission, so with his blessing, I’m taking a crack at it:

or read it on Ao3

(If you want to learn way too much about me keep reading; otherwise just go to the article it's pretty fantastic)

Ask [Roz Kaveney] one question—in my case: “How did you grow up?”—and you end up with a story… with basically every line of that story being pre-polished, witty and ready to serve as a snappy pull quote. 

Just me, being 0% surprised that a trans woman is an amazing storyteller. Spend your entire life explaining to people who you are and try to feed them a digestible narrative of why you should be allowed to live your life the way you choose to live it, and you’ll be an amazing storyteller too. When every introduction is an elevator pitch for your own civil rights, you get pretty good at telling a story.

Her debut novel, Tiny Pieces of Skull—which she initially wrote in the mid-1980s, when there was no such genre as “trans fiction”—won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Trans Fiction when it was finally published in 2016. 

I recently pulled my “Hermione Granger is a trans man” fiction off of ice, only to find that Ao3 doesn’t have a tag for that. So, felt, both on the waiting to publish bit and the why is there no category for this already bit.

She is the last living trans woman who was within the Trans Group of the London Gay Liberation Front. 

History likes to talk about firsts, and very rarely about lasts. They are just as important. I am one of the last (if not the last) transgender people in my home state to use the court process to change my name. I was stuck in a weird liminal period where legislation allowing transgender people to use a simplified process had been passed, but was not in effect yet, and I had a deadline (graduation) to beat. It feels weird to be a last but also, for me as I hope it is for Kaveney, bittersweet knowing that it means the world you leave behind is better than the one you entered into. That when you're gone, you’re taking the last remnants of an injustice with you.

Kaveney is a working writer, not a historical figure; she lives her life very much in the present tense. “I don’t mind talking about my activism,” she says, “but I think my poetry is more important.”

The struggle to be more than your activism is real. It’s at the heart of activism, its principle motivation: permission to live an ordinary, unexamined life, or an extraordinary one, just like everyone else. That’s what equality means: being treated as more than your labels. My gender is the canvas: please, please look at the painting. It is far more beautiful.

One of Kaveney’s more impressive accomplishments is that she has spent almost 50 years actively fighting the British TERF movement, and, in the course of that fight, has borne witness to nearly its entire history. She saw it take form. She saw it rise. She may yet see it fall. 

As the article alludes to later, Kaveney didn’t just witness history, she made it, and what a thing to do, to thrust your hand into the stream of time and direct its flow. From an ocean away, I thank you for diligently protecting my right to exist from people who… well, we won’t talk about that.

Roz Kaveney was, by her own account, a “horribly precocious teenager.”

I am not the first to observe that queer people, particularly transgender people, seem to have been given an extra sprinkle of brainpower on their way down to earth. I still can’t figure out if perhaps a powerful brain lends itself to questioning the precepts of gender, or if trying to understand one’s biological predisposition ends up being a lifelong analytical reasoning bootcamp, or if it simply the confluence of “I can, so I must” that takes the most intelligent, powerful transgender people that Creation has to offer and thrusts them into the public sphere, and that demographically they are simply overrepresented because gifted cis people have the privilege of living unexamined lives.

So, she read. A lot. In multiple languages: “I was reading a lot of French just to annoy my French teacher,” she says. “I had a feud with one of my French teachers, and so I’d try and get ahead of him on lessons and sabotage him.”

Are you sure you weren’t just doing your practice rounds for having much bigger conflicts with authority in adulthood? Almost as if you saw high school as a training ground, and teachers as combat dummies you could hone your skills on to get ready for the boss battle? I’m just sayin’.

Kaveney told her childhood best friend about her gender when she was only five.

We know. We knew. We always knew. There's so much to say about this that I will not say it here. I cannot possibly do it justice without absolutely derailing this article.

…but it was only in the late 1960s, with the Manchester group she calls “street women,” when she made any real contact with trans life.

Yes, the internet made it easier, but it is still so freaking hard to find other trans people, and my life changed when I finally did. Because it’s not just the people. It’s the life, and it’s full of so many other people too, the unwanteds from every corner, and you learn just how broken the system is, to have left so many people behind.

“It was great, but they were very responsible and discouraged me from running away from home and starting to transition in my teens,” Kaveney says. “They said, ‘Your life will be much better if you go to university, and you’ve got years to sort things out.’

I gave myself this advice. I’ve received this advice. I’ve given this advice. I’m glad I finished university, and I’m not sure I would have finished if I had come out earlier than I did. But it is advice that is not for you; it’s for everyone else. It is advice that says they will hurt you if they know. It hurt to give it, and it hurt to take it. Everything about this is hurt.

…and about that time, when I was in Manchester, I got picked up by a police car and correctively raped by a cop who explained to me that he was doing this to demonstrate what my life was going to be like if I persisted in these courses.”

I was going to join the military and become a doctor. I would have been a good fit, in a lot of respects. My mother encouraged me in this plan, until I came out. Then she warned me that this would happen to me if I tried to break gender norms in the military, and that I had to choose between the military and being trans. I chose being trans. That also meant choosing not to go to medical school (It’s a little more complicated than that but not by much).

Kaveney was admitted to Oxford University; she cut Manchester mostly out of her life, though she would still take trips there, “just when I couldn’t cope.”

Denial of gender queerness in academia is real, but there’s an even better quote about it below so I’ll discuss it more there. Suffice to say, pretending to be cis is like holding your breath, and sometimes, you just have to open your mouth and take a big gulp of air so you don’t keel over.

In conversation, Kaveney tends to walk past the difficult parts of her story at a brisk clip.

Same. No further elaboration. We can walk by this at a brisk clip together.

She mentioned leaving Oxford once. What she did not mention to me, but has mentioned to other interviewers, was that she had begun to transition the year before she left. “The kind of education that she had, the kind of expectations that she had, were hugely confounded by transitioning,” says her friend and colleague Lisa Power, who authored an oral history of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). “You know, she was on her way to a massively successful academic career, and it all got upended. And she’s very funny about it now. But actually, that must have been quite horrific.”

Absolutely in lock-step with you, sister. I took a leave of absence the semester I was supposed to graduate, then announced my new identity at the beginning of the next semester. Everything crashed and burned. My recommenders wouldn’t recommend me, the military officially would not take me, despite scoring in the top decile for my medical school entrance exams. I moved to another state halfway through my last semester and took whatever work I could get. I went from being a star to barely holding my life together in the course of a year. But I was finally alive. I’m still working on developing my sense of humor about it. Kaveney has me beat on that front.

It’s a crime, because here’s the thing. Kaveney is talking about it. I’m talking about it. Who isn’t talking about it? Who did exactly what we did (because it is a very reasoned decision that I’m sure we both thought was going to work out okay and obviously didn’t) and will never talk about it? Who isn’t here to talk about it, because this is how things played out when they were ready to make their debut on the world stage? What has the world lost to this story?

~~~

There's a whole other half of this article that I want to address but this seems like enough for one post. I hope that me sharing my story helps someone at least a fraction as much as Kaveney sharing hers is helping me. I only just found out about her today, and I have a feeling that the more I learn, the more important she's going to become to me.

This is Roz Kaveney. We've been friends since 1985, and I can attest that she's been on the right side of history. I learned so much from her:

You should read this article. (And if you do, post your favourite quote or thing you learned from it...)

[bloodmaarked]

circe // madeline miller

first published: 2018 read: 11 june 2024 - 16 june 2024 pages: 352 format: e-book

genres: fiction; adult; historical fiction; mythology (greek); retellings favourite character(s): odysseus, pasiphaë, and the lion least favourite character(s): don't have one

rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑 thoughts: not sure if i read a different book than everyone else; the consensus on circe seems to be pretty much 5*s across the board, but i found it really nothing to write home about. it was, oddly, engaging yet boring; too much happens and yet not enough happens because we're kept on the sidelines of the action. i'm not well-versed in greek mythology aside from having read percy jackson about 15 years ago, but perhaps this would have been a more engaging read for someone familiar with circe's story? as it was, i felt like perhaps circe was just not a great character to centre a 300+ page novel on.

there were soooo many characters mentioned throughout the duration of the book, as the story weaves the myths of countless other greek heroes and gods into the narrative. i’m glad i was reading this on libby because i was using the wikipedia search every other page to get some backstory on the characters i was less familiar with. madeline does give a little context but sometimes she makes you wait for it and sometimes the knowledge feels assumed. i would say that too much was packed into the story, but at the same time if you took out all of that what would be left? circe did not have a substantial enough story of her own for much of the time as she spends the majority of the book exiled on an island. however, i felt the characters who we got an in-depth look at were interesting and well-written. circe’s immediate family (perseus aside), and odysseus and his family, come to mind here. i loved pasiphaë, especially once we got deeper insight into her motivations. i kind of really wish we’d had a novel about her instead? that would have genuinely been a cool look into how a woman confined in a man’s world made herself a weapon in order to survive. i think the feminist perspective could’ve been drawn out much more than with circe, and as it was i felt the story lacked the feminism that it claimed to have.

i did like madeline’s storytelling and the richness of the world and the island of aiaia, and the way she brought the myths to life. her writing style is simplistic but evocative.

plot-wise… there wasn’t really one. again, circe spends the majority of her time in solitude on an island. things sort of got a bit interesting around two-thirds of the way in but still. i just think circe and her story is not interesting enough to sustain this book. it could have worked if it was compacted into a 100-200 page short story, perhaps.

i wish i’d seen what everyone else did in circe but overall i was just unmoved. i had no intention of reading any more of madeline miller’s work, and that hasn’t changed in light of this book.

[notmuchofarolemodel]

music- sia’s movie

originally written on jan 24 2021

I can’t believe i’m writing about this. again.

So, if you didn’t already know, Sia directed a movie about an autistic girl, starring Maddie Ziegler. This is problematic for so many reasons, including the fact that Maddie is allistic (not autistic), Sia did next to no research on autism before directing the movie, and after announcing the movie, she took to twitter and attacked autistic people voicing their opinions. But she’s done so many more awful things since. So yay, article by me, the sequel. /s

Sia has done a few interviews over the last while about her movie and has responded to criticism about it. (very badly.)

Despite her claims, Sia was never going to cast an autistic actor in the first place. She said:

“I realized it wasn’t ableism [Casting Maddie]. I mean, it is ableism I guess as well, but it’s actually nepotism because I can’t do a project without her. I don’t want to. I wouldn’t make art if it didn’t include her.”

It was also found that Sia said had written a film for Maddie a long time ago- in 2015- which almost certainly means she never had any intentions of casting an autistic person.

The plot of the movie, and a clip have both been leaked since the release of the trailer in November.

‘Music’ falls back on harmful Hollywood sterotypes again, and again- but yet, after it was no longer fresh news, almost nobody but the autistic community was talking about it. It’s still set to be released soon this year, but stereotypes such as ‘autism = special/savant abilities’ as seen in Rain man, and ‘Autistic people don’t have feelings’ - are ones that lead to underdiagnosis, and biases in the professional world.

“We are particularly alarmed that Sia has said it would be ‘cruel’ to cast a nonspeaking autistic person as an actor. It suggests that she thinks that autistic people don’t understand our own lives and aren’t the people who should be telling our own stories. When people tell stories about autism that cut out an autistic point of view, when storytellers view us as objects to tell inspirational stories about, or when autism is treated as a narrative device rather than as a disability community full of real people, the stories that are told fall flat, don’t speak to our reality, and are often harmful to us.” -Zoe Gross, ASAN

Sia refused to refer to her main character as disabled, and only used the term ‘special abilities’ which just further proves how these sterotypes affect people’s view of autistic people. In today’s society, autism is a disability, and that’s not a bad thing. She also described the film as “Rainman, the musical- but with girls”

There are several meltdown scenes in the movie, and one of them has been leaked in a clip. In this, Music is having a meltdown in a park, and she is then held in prone restraint. Meaning she was jumped on top of and pinned to the ground. This was not only unnecessary, but potentially deadly. This film is going to be big, if it gets released, and it was very much made for a neurotypical audience’s enjoyment. People will likely see this movie, and think that restraining an autistic person is ok. It’s not. This is how people get killed. Recently a story came up about Eric Parsa, a 16 year old autistic boy who was killed at the hands of the police last year, after they used this ‘technique’ on him.

Regarding this scene Sia said, “If they [cinema-goers] watch the movie, it will allow them to touch into their compassion. That scene was so important to me, because of all the people staring. I felt compelled to put it in.”

This is why people need to listen and learn from actual autistic people. There’s so much dangerous misinformation out there, and it’s unacceptable. There is nothing ‘compassionate’ about harming people, and autistic people are people. i.e people who deserve the same rights and dignity as everyone else.

Sia continues to further dehumanize autistic people by constantly talking about ‘levels of functioning’. humans are impossibly complex, and there’s no one way to function. In an interview with Sia, nonspeaking autistic people are compared to ‘inanimate objects, like wigs’.

Sia also said “People functioning at Music’s level can’t get on Twitter and tell me I did a good job either.” This is untrue, firstly because, again- there’s no one way to function, and just because a person can’t speak, doen’t mean they don’t have a right to opinions, and feelings (and it definitely doesn’t mean they should be compared to ‘inanimate objects’), and secondly because many nonspeaking autistic people have taken to twitter and social media to tell her she’s done a bad job, she’s just chosen to ignore and insult them.

This whole thing is so infuriating, and it’s very obvious that Sia does not care about autistic people.

“Sia being ableist AF while claiming she meant well is some serious abled savior bullshit. I can’t believe so many people green-lit this project & the press team approved the ‘special abilities’ language. Disabled people clearly weren’t part of this production team.” -Kristen Parisi via twitter

She also claimed she decided to make the movie because she was inspired by a 16-year-old named Stevie that she met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. “Stevie used to sit next to me in the front row at my AA meetings. He was low-functioning and on the spectrum with echolalia; he’s the reason I wanted to make this movie,” she said. Autistic people don’t exist simply to be inspiring or make you feel good about yourself. We’re people, who just want to go about our lives, the same as anyone else- we don’t need a cure and we don’t need to fit people’s idea of what autism is, just let us be, please.

Finally, I’m just going to touch on the question ‘Why isn’t any criticism being directed at Maddie?’ This is because she likely didn’t have much say in the film at all. Keep in mind that she was only 13/14 at the start of this project. Sia also said Maddie was worried that people would think she was mocking autistic people. The film is a mockery of autistic people, but Sia is at fault.

“She had researched her role for two years, we watched movies together, and I taught her the nuances and ticks I had observed from [a] friend [with autism],” Sia said. “We did this in the most sensitive and respectful way.”

I can confirm that that is very much not sensitive and respectful- not to mention that Maddie also watched autism meltdowns as a part of her reseach too (filming a meltdown is incredibly dehumanizing) , but the fact that she learned how to ‘act autistic’ from sterotypes, taught to her by a person who just, doesn’t know anything about autism is awful, but also quite absurd. It makes no sense.

No, I do not wish to watch an abled-bodied actor wear my stims like itchy clothes. A caricature of my being.

No, I do not want to see her dance around in skin not her own, profiting from a life not her own.

No, I do not wish to support yet another film that will profit off the lives of disabled bodies without one disabled body involved. -tiffany hammond

I recieved quite a bit of backlash when I posted the first time about why casting a nondisabled actor for a disabled role is bad- from allistic people, so if any of you are reading this as nondisabled people- I literally do not care if you disagree, you don’t get to dictate how autistic people feel. Try a little harder to get out of your own head and see things from another person’s perspective xx

Now, for the love of God, please don’t watch this movie if it comes out in February, and listen to Autistic voices. : Here is a thread of positive autistic representation instead :)

click here for thread!

Sign the Petition

Filming & posting videos of children's autism meltdowns on YouTube is a clear violation of YouTube's community…www.change.org

link

Sign the Petition

Sia has announced she is directing a movie about an autistic woman, and claims she wants to represent the…www.change.org

all other relevant links are linked within the underlined text.

my original article - link

[traincat]

Disregard my last ask because the latest issue raised a troubling question that I, as a black man, feel the need to clarify with you, a woman. That whole whole Ned Leeds/Betty Brant business is sexual assault via deception right? Like you know more about Clones and Spider-Man 616 than I but I feel like that’s besides the point because it happened to Betty. She is carrying the child of whom she thought was her dead ex-husband. And Ned clone has to know he is a clone. He has to know. Unlike Ben and Kaine, he has the awareness and information of the Jackal and the awareness of his progenitor’s death.

Or am I reaching too far and reading too far into things?

I'm glad you came back and asked this specific question because it's definitely something I have a lot of thoughts on, and I’m glad you asked my thoughts on it as a woman because I think this is one of those comic book storylines that’s hard for me to divorce that fact from -- the fact that I’m a woman definitely plays into how I view this storyline specifically and how it effects me, in ways I don’t think were necessarily intended by some of the writers involved in its ongoing arc who were not looking at things from the same perspective I’m coming at them from. I definitely don't think you're reaching or reading too far into things -- I think that is what's being presented on the page, albeit likely without authorial intent. Just as like a general disclaimer, I'm not closely following Spencer's run for the sheer reason that I'm not enjoying it very much, although I'm aware of the general directions it's taking through friends and social media. But I actually think this Betty/Ned issue goes back pretty far.

First things first, I think Clone Conspiracy really wreaked havoc on how Spider-Man as a series has always handled clones. Pre-Clone Conspiracy, there was a very clear clone narrative going on: clones are their own person, they are not direct copies or replacements of the original. You see this with Ben Reilly and you see it with the Gwen Stacy clones. Clones are treated as their own individuals, even if they have to struggle to get to that point -- there's even an issue of Spider-Man Unlimited where Ben and Betty go on a date. Betty doesn't know that Ben is Peter's clone -- he's introduced as his cousin -- and they both reflect on how you can't go back to the way things were. So even though Ben has all of Peter's memories regarding his initial romance with Betty, the narrative makes it clear that Ben and Betty cannot recapture that connection or that exact relationship.

Here's where Clone Conspiracy changed everything, in my opinion for the worse: Clone Conspiracy's clone narrative is that these clones are, essentially, the original person. I believe the Marvel wiki still actually lists the end of Clone Conspiracy as 616 Gwen Stacy's issue of death instead of Amazing Spider-Man #121, because Clone Conspiracy treated that Gwen not simply as a clone with all of the same memories, but as essentially Gwen resurrected through a cloning process. The Billy Connors who was cloned is treated as the same Billy Connors who was killed by his father in Shed (Amazing Spider-Man #630-633). And the clone Ned is treated as the same as 616 Ned. This is a mess, to put it simply, because it goes against all the previous Spider-Man cloning narratives and, honestly, most popular sci-fi clone narratives, and it's seriously undermining decades of good Spider-Man storytelling in ways that Slott didn't address and that Spencer seems unwilling to. It probably wouldn't have been a very big deal -- a frustrating one, but not a big one -- if all of the clones had perished at the end of Clone Conspiracy, but they didn't. Billy Connors escaped, and it's immensely frustrating to me to see Peter treating the Connors family reunion as something he can tolerate when Curt Connors ate his kid, and the Ned clone slithered away in the gutters to, I assume, spite me personally.

Which brings us to the current Betty Brant storyline in Amazing Spider-Man, where Betty has showed up heavily pregnant and informed Peter that the child is Ned's.

Yeah, I would say this is in fact the worst possible part. (ASM (2018) #67) Just speaking for myself, I'm generally not anti-pregnancy or baby storylines in comics, but this one is making me very uncomfortable for reasons beside Spencer being apparently unable to find any way to fit Betty into his stories without her showing pregnant.

So I'm actually going to take this back way, way to when Betty and Ned first got married, with some explanation of who Ned Leeds is for the uninformed, because, especially with the MCU's Ned Leeds in the mix, he's not exactly the world's most well known Spider-Man character. (I’m sure @ubernegro, who is much more well read on Miles Morales’ canon than I am, has thoughts on how the MCU’s Ned borrowed heavily off the character of Ganke Lee with a 616 Peter Parker character’s name pasted over him.) Ned was initially introduced as Peter's competition for Betty's affections -- Ned was older than both Peter and Betty, a working reporter, and presented as the more "stable" option compared to Peter, who of course Betty vastly preferred before circumstances tore them apart. Ned and Betty married in Amazing Spider-Man #156 and jetsetted off to Europe for Ned's job. This is where the cracks in the marriage began. Betty later reveals that she felt abandoned by Ned in Europe, to the point where she was able to come back to New York without his immediate notice -- as a woman, it's very easy to read their relationship at this point as being one filled with, if not abuse, then emotional neglect. Betty and Peter have a quick extramarital affair at this point -- Peter has just broken up with Mary Jane and Betty claims she and Ned are separating -- that persists until Ned returns and punches Peter over it.

(ASM #193)

(ASM #229) Betty and Ned reconcile off panel shortly thereafter, but that's pretty far from the end of the story. It's implied that the problems Betty and Ned previously had start to develop again, namely that Betty feels abandoned by Ned, that he is inattentive and, again, as a woman, it's hard not to read it as emotional neglect, if not abuse -- yet. Betty does start another affair at this point, this time with Flash Thompson, and Ned starts acting strangely. It would later be retconned that he was suffering the effects of hypnotism by the Hobgoblin, but like I said, that's a retcon, and what was happening at the time was that Ned was acting erratically in part because he was the villainous Hobgoblin. Ned becomes controlling, threatening, and verbally and physically abusive towards Betty.

(ASM #284)

(ASM #283) "I suppose you think it's all right for a wife to cheat on her husband!" "No -- but I won't let you hurt her, either." Leaving aside that Peter also had an affair with Betty, something he's conveniently forgetting in the above panels, I've always really liked this exchange, because the narrative makes it clear through Peter's response to Ned that, whatever the audience may think of Betty for cheating on Ned, it is reprehensible for Ned to publicly humiliate her and/or physically abuse her as a response.

Then Ned Leeds dies in Spider-Man vs Wolverine and he's revealed as the Hobgoblin posthumously shortly thereafter and that remains canon for years and years until it's later retconned out, as comics are wont to do. But that's not really that important for this conversation -- my point being, at one point in Spider-Man canon, it's made fairly clear to the reader that Ned is an abusive husband. He emotionally neglected and abused Betty several times over and physically hurt her at least once on panel, with the clear intent that the reader should realize that he is physically hurting her. So for me as a reader and as a woman, this has always been a really uncomfortable relationship. I have a problem with later Spider-Man comics claiming that it's "not Ned's fault" that he abused Betty because of the retcon that he was hypnotized, and I have a problem with the MCU making Betty and Ned into a cute summer fling in Spider-Man: Far From Home, because I feel like Ned's clear abuse of Betty either gets excused or entirely glossed over. And I don’t think the initial abuse storyline is bad -- I think there’s some amount of value in portraying Betty as a woman who marries too young, who experiences a terrible marriage, and who then spends years recovering from that marriage, which was the case up until they retconned Ned’s abuse of her as a side effect of him being controlled by the real Hobgoblin. What I’m specifically uncomfortable with is the post-retcon attitude that since Ned didn’t really mean to abuse Betty, it’s perfectly fine to portray the relationship in a positive light when even before Ned’s abuse became physical that wasn’t the case. I think that’s ultimately really irresponsible storytelling.  As a reader, I’m not against soap opera style storylines -- someone getting impregnated by a cone of their ex-husband seems pretty par for the course. But there’s so much additional context here that I still haven’t entirely processed how I feel about this Betty storyline, except that what I feel isn’t positive.

So yes, I would agree with you when I say I think there’s quite a lot of deception involved in Betty’s pregnancy storyline -- the Ned clone didn’t tell her he was a clone, even though he had full knowledge of that fact, just as he had full knowledge of how badly the original Ned treated Betty over the course of their relationship -- that renders their sexual encounter and Betty’s pregnancy uncomfortable for me as a reader, to put it mildly. I don’t think it’s out of character for the Ned clone, given that he acts much like the original Ned: he’s selfish and controlling, withholding information from Betty to suit his own needs. The tragedy of Ned and Betty isn’t that Ned died, as more recent Spider-Man stories like to portray it -- including this one, where Betty doesn’t have the knowledge that a) the Ned she reunited with was a clone and not the original and b) that that clone later died. (ASM #816.) The tragedy is that writers continue to force Betty Brant into Ned Leeds storylines instead of letting her as a character grow past him, and that the only way Spencer thought to include her, one of the longest running Spider-Man characters, back in the story was to have her appear starry-eyed over carrying the child of (the clone of) her abusive ex-husband, and the tragedy is that nobody writing more recent Betty and Ned interactions seems to realize that Ned was a villain not because he was briefly the Hobgoblin but because of how he treated Betty. 

[extasiswings]

If AK sticks around and is added to the cast unless the show does something in the finale that assures that Buck and Lucy will always be just friends then it is probably at least to the fandom meaning that she is potentially bucks next serious love interest/endgame. I hope that is not the case and she's just there to be part of the team and a firefighter but the general consensus probably around the fandom and especially Twitter if she is added as a main is that she is Buck's endgame and Buddie have lost. Unless in the finale Buck or Lucy friendzone each other. Also Lucy doesn't stick me as the type that wants any of the things Buck wants in a partner and relationship. Like she doesn't want children or family. Who knows if she even wants relationships considering she is Buck's counterpart only he's probably gonna be 4.0 and she's 1.0

I think unfortunately that is the one fear when it comes to Lucy being added to main cast from a fandom perspective.

I understand what you’re saying and I don’t necessarily disagree (although to be clear I don’t think she would be bumped up all the way to main cast if she sticks around) but my perspective is more: people in this fandom and especially in the Twitter fandom are so heteronormativity poisoned and insistent on their own brain rot that the cast and writers and showrunners could literally hang a neon sign, hire a sky writer, and build a fifty-foot billboard saying “Buck and Lucy are just friends and will never be more than that” and the people who insist on freaking out and screeching about queerbaiting whenever a woman so much as breathes in Buck or Eddie’s direction would still never be happy. I have no strong feelings about Lucy either way—I’m not invested in her sticking around but I could see some potential narrative value in it, it’s too soon to tell.

I am fairly confident at this point that by the end of the season we will have some confirmation of queer Eddie who has feelings for Buck. And as far as I’m concerned, as soon as that happens, Buddie is canon, it’s going to happen, and whether or not Lucy sticks around will have absolutely no bearing on that (or may even be a positive thing as an objective outside voice of friendship). I also know that there are people in the fandom and especially in the Twitter fandom who will twist literally anything and everything to fit their weird, warped view that actually the writers and showrunners are evil homophobes and that they won’t be happy with anything short of Buck and Eddie loudly proclaiming their love and kissing with tongue regardless of other narrative considerations (like, say, Buck’s character arc and whether or not it would make narrative sense for him to start an explicitly romantic relationship with Eddie right now, immediately after breaking up with his long-term girlfriend), and tbh I doubt they would be happy even then! [Sidenote: if I’m wrong about the timeline those same people will be insufferable throughout the next hiatus but being wrong about the timeline wouldn’t mean I’m wrong about the end goal].

All that to say, I think the writers can and should do what’s best for the narrative and pay the clowns on Twitter (who have regularly demonstrated they wouldn’t understand longform storytelling if it slapped them across the face with a brick) absolutely zero attention. And I think the rest of us should do the same. And I also think those same clowns on Twitter should a) stop watching if they’re just going to complain; b) log off the internet and go outside and touch some grass; and c) learn when to shut the fuck up. Because it’s really fucking annoying.