#examples of the second can be. well the biggest one I’ve personally experienced was someone I knew who told me they were thinking of ending
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floodpool · 2 years ago
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I’d also posit that it can/sometimes means “if you are constantly down on yourself and self destructive that is often very hard on people who want to or do love you, and sometimes people cannot handle that because you become the person who (unintentionally or intentionally) mistreats others and tries to justify it, so look out for that too”.
It also sometimes means “you’re not in a place where you can handle your responsibilities to yourself AND being a good partner/friend”.
These aren’t value judgments. I’ve been in those situations myself, on both sides, and had several friends experience both sides as well. It’s a phrase that’s been generalized to encompass so many things that it doesn’t accurately represent any of them, unfortunately.
"No one can love you until you love yourself" is like the worst possible way of articulating "if you don't respect and value yourself, it's very easy to become attracted to people who don't treat you right and then justify their mistreatment, so be careful."
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sunshinechay · 2 years ago
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This is something that I (and the rest of the audience at large) have been wondering for a while. Exactly what is La Pluie trying to say about soul mates. My take away from the show so far is that, soul mates, at least romantically, are not born, they’re made. The soul mate connect experienced in the show is often believed by society to mean an instant and everlasting romantic relationship, but isn’t always necessarily the case. Tai and Tein’s parents are a really good example of this. They tried a romantic relationship, for a really long time, had beautiful sons together but in the end, their marriage and romantic relationship did not work and they split up. In contrast to them, Patts and Tai’s relationship IS romantic and has the potential to be something that lasts for the rest of their lives, if they can work through their issues together, if they communicate and remain open and honest with each other.
I can’t remember exactly who said it, but I do recall someone mentioning in a post that Tai and Patts’s relationship does not work because of their soul mate connect, but in spite of it. They each have their own issues (one of the biggest ones being Tai’s hangs ups about the connection because of his parent’s split).
Each side is presented. Tein and Bow seemingly both in the camp of believing soul mates are meant to be romantic, with Patts also falling somewhere into this category (although where exactly is a little more murky) and Lomfon being the opposite. He doesn’t believe in the soul mate connection is romantic. Lastly, Tai being somewhere in the middle of the two beliefs.
The latest episode had me wondering though, if the rest of the world falling more or less in the middle. That thought came with the idea that “soul mates as meant to be romances” could very well be a largely recent ideal. Likely something that came up in the second half of the 20th century (mostly likely along side and perhaps influencing the idea that engagement rings need to be a thing™️ a man gave a woman when they got engaged and that it had to be a diamond. Or when weddings became to grow into the large commercial industry it is today).
Building on that, there has to be people for whom the hearing loss connection is inherently platonic with no way of it becoming anything else. Other than the fact that many people believe the soul mates are meant to be a romantic connection, very little else has been explained about how and why people are connected. What happens if the two people who are connect have no way of being in a romantic relationship with each other. A good example is what happens if the two connected are opposite genders, but are only attracted to those of the same gender as they are, ie a lesbian and a gay man are connected. Or when both parties are attracted to the same gender, ie a lesbian and a straight man, or a gay man and a straight women. And even this is a very simplified version of the ways in which a soul mate connection would have to be platonic.
I’ve seen some people say that they think Tai’s father is gay and if so, it does help to explain why his parents connection could not work as a romantic relationship. They got married years ago, in a social conservative country. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that Tai’s father repressed that side of himself or didn’t realize it until later in life. But what happens to those in todays world, for whom it’s entirely possible that they have figured out their sexuality or gender prior to hearing their soul mate for the first time, or them meeting in person.
I have so many questions and no way of answering any of them. Half of them don’t even make sense or have probably been answered by piece of the show I’m forgotten but god damn do I have questions that I’m probably never going to get answers too.
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madmaddyenby · 4 years ago
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/rp /dsmp
ok so- c!tommy. we are all aware he’s traumatized, and experiences ptsd from being in traumatic experiences, this is basically fact.  while i’d like to talk how c!tommy experiences ptsd, i’d like to bring up a thing i haven’t seen mentioned a lot when it comes to c!tommy and his trauma- c-ptsd.  also known as complex-ptsd.   it occurs when someone experiences something traumatizing for a period of time.
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[image description: A screenshot of text with the words “CPTSD stands for Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is a mental health condition in which a person might experience intense PTSD symptoms that coincide with other mental issues. CPTSD occurs in people who have been subjected to on going traumatizing experiences”. end description]
which, as we know, the exile arc fits the description of “ongoing traumatizing experiences” pretty fucking well.  the exile was basically just two weeks of trauma.  for a lot of reasons too, there was dream abusing tommy, tommy being isolated, tommys own depression/suicidal thoughts/bad mindset in general.   this would all be considered a ongoing traumatizing experience(s).  
ptsd is very similar to c-ptsd in how it develops, but ptsd occurs after one singular traumatizing event . (by the way, the event doesnt have to be life or death, it could be something like witnessing or hearing about a shocking event!!!)
symptoms of c-ptsd overlap with ptsd a good lot of the time, due to them both being trauma disorders.  however, there are a few differences.  here r some symptoms of c-ptsd, alot of which are ptsd symptoms that alot ofpeople with c-ptsd experience as well
reliving the traumatic experience
avoiding certain situations 
changes in beliefs and feelings about yourself and others
hyperarousal (jitteriness, being on alert, etc)
somatic symptoms (physical symptoms with no underlying cause)
lack of emotional regulation 
change in consciousness
negative self-perception
difficulty with relationships
distorted reception of abuser
loss of system of meanings
now, i’ll go over which of these fit our boy c!tommy, and how they fit for some of them atleast.  i will only be talking about the things that are a result from c-ptsd, but also c-ptsd works where it coincides with other mental illnesses a person has so.  its also important to note that within a person these symptoms might not stay the same over time, and not everyone who has c-ptsd or ptsd is going to experience it the same.   (so not talking abt how pain affects him after dying in the prison, though that is a clear sign of ptsd) 
reliving the traumatic experience
tommy’s done this with exile a few times, when revisiting logstedshire, when he saw the craters in logstedshire, when visiting dream in prison, when during the disc finale dream dug the hole and told him to put his armour in, etc etc, he’s even described himself as being trembly in the fingers near plain biomes, while visting logsted he mentioned how shaky it made him to be there, and when he visited logsted one time he had an immediate reaction to seeing a hole in the ground that came off as him reliving it. flashbacks come in from sensations during a traumatic event, like sight, feeling, emotion, etc, etc.  it seems like with these he’s experiencing more of a reliving the emotions kind of thing. 
avoiding certain situations 
i was originally not gonna include this one, but thinking about it, he kind of does in a way.   this symptom also includes keeping yourself preoccupied to avoid thinking about it, which is something c!tommy seems to do alot.  with focusing on building the hotel, and doing tasks, or grinding for supplies instead of actually thinking about it.  
changes in beliefs and feelings about yourself and others
c!tommy uh. does this a lot.  a lot of it stems from how during exile tommy was isolated and made to believe no one cared for him, and even if that wasn’t true c!tommy never really got much closure on that.  hes not really trusting ppl that b4 were really close to him, tubbo n ranboo for example
lack of emotional regulation
this can also be described as uncontrollable feelings.  this is the one i’ve wanted to talk about the most i think- because this is really fits c!tommy.  he tends to lash out alot, for example burning the flower c!ranboo gave him, there are a bunch more examples of this that include him yelling at others, that one time when he spleefed c!jack 
negative self-perception
yeah.  theres a few examples of this one, the one that first comes to mind is that time during the green festival where he was talking about how he was worse than everyone he didn’t wanna be (including his abuser, c!dream...) .  theres now when he was building his tower by the prison when he was saying he couldn’t use the cobble because it was too him, and people didnt like the cobble. alot of this i think comes from c!dream making him feel basically worthless in exile :(
difficulty with relationships
  Yeah. um.  Alot for this one!!! The first to come to mind is c!tubbo.  c!tommy and c!tubbos relationship is very very wonky, especially considering recent events with tommy feeling like he is being replaced with c!ranboo.  (which he isnt by the way! he just feels as though, which is a valid feeling for him to have :]) .  another person that comes to mind is c!ranboo.  he’s even mentioned how his and ranboos relationship goes back and forth quite alot.  its not very surprising to see that he has difficulty with relationships especially considering a lot of the reason that the exile affected him so badly was because he felt so alone and was so isolated from his friends.  another thing that comes to mind, is when he made c!sam sign that contract promising hat he’d be his best friend and protect him.  theres most likely way more that can be said here, but this is the first stuff that comes to mind.  
distorted reception of abuser
um... yeah.  this one.  this can also be described as , “ becoming preoccupied with the relationship between you and your abuser. It can also include preoccupation with revenge or giving your abuser complete power over your life. “  which is um.  yeah.  c!tommy.  he’s mentioned how whenever he’s around c!dream he feels like hes conditioned to be his friend (which. yea . he was .).  right after he left logstedshire this was very very prominent, he was the biggest c!dream apologist around (/j), saying things like “dream didnt do anything wrong” and even explaining how he wasnt sure about things when it comes to c!dream, that his mind became flip floppy whenever he thought about him.   right now, hes focused on getting back at c!dream, not fully for revenge, mainly for his friends and how he doesnt want c!dream to go around killing and reviving everyone, but the point still stands.  (this all makes me extra sad because he had gone to the prison the second time in the first place to get closure :(( )
loss of system of meanings
Systems of meaning refer to your religion or beliefs about the world.  This can also refer to getting a strong sense of hopelessness or despair about the world, which as of late mainly c!tommy seems to have.  mainly referencing in his stream where he visited dreams bunker, he was asking what the point was of finding things that made him happy if dream was just going to get out the prison and destroy it.  theres also a few things that also go with this, in one stream while he burnt down ponks lemon tree for sam nook he said  "thats still decaying, but yknow, arent we all." and that one time when he gave that hotel invitation to c!techno he was like “ahahha we could die tomorrow anyway” 
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its also important to note that, “Any type of long-term trauma, over several months or years, can lead to CPTSD. However, it seems to appear frequently in people who’ve been abused by someone who was supposed to be their caregiver or protector. “ Which is.. fairly accurate in c!tommy’s situation.  c!dream might’ve not been a caregiver or protector necessarily but he was still someone that was looking after him yknow? 
there are most likely more things than what i layed out that show that c!tommy most likely also has cptsd, however this is just the stuff that i thought up :] add to the post if you’d like to!
(also this isn’t saying that c!tommy doesnt have ptsd, he had both ptsd and c-ptsd. also i am not an expert about ptsd, cptsd, or mental health in general, if i got any information wrong let me know)
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interact-if · 3 years ago
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Taking the spotlight for Day 6... Lucirene!
Lucirene, author of An Angel’s Song
Latino Heritage Month Featured Author
In the forest of Bres an otherworldly sickness corrodes the soil and changes the creatures within. “A parting gift from the fallen angels”  say the citizens of the Hyaku Region and the mark on your hand confirms it.
Though the scent travelling in the air is sweet and enticing everyone knows better than to get closer. But the mark, it pulses, it burns, the pain spreading as fast as the corruption of the forest does.
Your masters are calling, and it seems like this time you cannot escape them.
An Angel’s Song Demo | Author’s Ko-fi | Author’s Patreon | Read more [here]
Tags: dark fantasy, romance
(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!)
Q1: So, tell us a little bit about the projects you’re working on!
I have so many, but the only one public is An Angel’s Song. It’s, more than anything, a story about grief, loneliness and overcoming it all while navigating a hostile environment and discovering long lost secrets about the Divine and about the MC’s country. That one is very cathartic for me to make because of the themes, I feel like I’m working through a lot of feelings I didn’t even realize I had by writing it.
The next one is also an IF and it focuses on comedy, adventure and character interaction. It’s supposed to be more lighthearted, more fun, but knowing me… I don’t know if it’ll stay that way. Basically, it goes: A Captain’s boat falls prey to the storms and the strange creatures living under the sea, and they and their crew end up washing ashore an icy, snowy country. I already have the main cast written down and they have so much synergy, it’s amazing.
And the last one I’ll talk about (a traditional novel) actually happens in the same setting as my second IF, but many, many years before, when their local deity/guardian was born. It’s more of a romance-fantasy than anything, a love story between a Goddess and a half-dragon, however it also showcases many of the situations the people had to navigate and face before their country could become the place you’ll see in my second IF.
Q2: What excites you most about using interactive fiction? What are some of the biggest challenges?
What I like most definitely is how much freedom we have as authors. Of course, one is constrained by one’s ability to code but I think, for the most part, we can do so many things, reach an entirely new level of immersion that would not be possible with a regular novel. It’s amazing how sometimes I’m reading something and get so into it, feel so connected to the MC I feel dread when they do, panic when they have to make a choice that will clearly impact a lot of people in their world. With IF you can really feel like you’re part of the story.
Another thing I like is being able to explore other paths with my writing. Like for example, what if the MC had done this instead of that? How would that have affected their relationships, their world state? Writing branches is a lot of work, especially because they could change so many things, but it feels oddly satisfying when you do decide to include them. 
Challenges… Coding, mainly. I feel like a lot of new aspiring IF authors are a bit afraid of coding and I can understand that, especially since, had it not been for the help of the community, I would have taken way longer to actually start using Twine. Hopefully with time for resources come up and it becomes less daunting.
I don’t know if any other author feels the same way but, though I think branching is a blessing, it is also a curse. I can only write the same conversation so many times, I mean I know I’m writing it in different tones and sometimes with different results but it gets frustrating after a while because it feels like you’re stuck, like you’re not progressing at all.
Another one would definitely be finding a balance between reader interaction and just following your vision. Since it’s IF at times I feel like I have to meet a quota of branches or ways in which you can react, sometimes I also find it difficult to make the MC feel like a real person instead of a reader-insert. I’m working on that.
Q3: What has been something in your project you’ve had to do a weird amount of research for?
That’s a difficult one… I don’t know if I would consider it weird but I do tend to investigate a lot about fashion, especially when designing the main outfits of the characters. I spend hours trying to find out what colors were used back then, what they meant, who was allowed to use them. I have this little image with some palettes for kimonos depending on the season.
I also spend too much time coming up with names, especially for places. Like I look up names of places that already exist, what they mean, I try to investigate if the words that I want to use make sense, then I panic because I can’t find anything, but I think that’s usual for writers. I also spent more time than necessary researching for the name of a tree that you will see way later in the book, which no one will probably notice what the name of the tree means or what it symbolizes but it makes me happy.
Honestly, I feel like the amount of research I have had to do has not been particularly weird? If anything at times I think I should research more, even if some aspects of Japanese culture will not apply to Kyou.
Q4: Which of your characters is most like you? How?
The initial version of the MC from An Angel’s Song, which I miss dearly since they had more personality. They were autistic coded too, and I hope some traces of that still remain. Apart from that I feel like all of the characters from the main cast share something with me, even if their experiences are, of course, more dramatic than my own.
A lot of them have issues with a paternal figure or an absent mother, which also resonates with me. Some of Saori’s traits draw inspiration from ways in which I talked or acted before I became a little better at masking, before I became more self-aware. Hazuki being emotional and caring, K being a bit clingy but devoted, Masa having a temper yet loyal, Miwa being friendly but reluctant to open up beyond surface level information. I think those things describe me.
There’s also Rei but I don’t think I’m writing her book anytime soon. She’s someone that’s very family oriented, she’s a bit temperamental but she means well and she’s not afraid to speak her mind. Now that I think about it, maybe Rei is more the person I want to become.
Q5: Does your heritage influence your characters as you create them? (How? Why or why not?)
I’ve been living in Venezuela my whole life so I think so, even if most of the time I don’t even notice it. I believe that this happens especially in regards to relationships because people in Venezuela are very family oriented and also, from what I’ve experienced, they form strong bonds with their neighbors, which creates this strong sense of community —sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t, but my mom and her friends always make at least some friends in their neighborhoods and they gossip with some coffee about the happenings of the rest—. So when it comes to writing a character it is very important to me to make an emphasis on family relationships because those are a strong part of my culture, of my identity. 
In An Angel’s Song you have the main cast having issues or conflicting emotions about one or multiple members of their family, which influence their behavior and their outlook on life, but for the most part they are (or will be) able to form similar relationships with people that are not related to them, or to work towards restoring that relationship, transforming it into something healthier. 
In my other books family dynamics are also immensely important. For example, I’m going to mention Rei again because I love her. So, Rei has a sister named Rin, and they are both very close, even if they haven’t spent much time together. Their bond and trust in each other helps them overcome a lot of obstacles and they rely on each other when they need support or encouragement. Rei also has other people that she thinks of as siblings, and restoring that relationship with them is one of her main goals. There’s also this recurring guilt she feels at leaving her birth family and her home to explore, because to her, families are supposed to stay together.
Another aspect that I think influences my writing is religion, even if I wasn’t raised in a particularly religious household nor do I belong to any religion. Religion is a big deal in this country, we have so many events and holidays relating to religious figures. I remember when I was very young I loved going to one of the churches here because the Virgin of that town had a building filled with pretty clothes to dress her with. 
So, in that vein, I try to think about the character’s relationship with religion, do they believe in the Gods? Do they trust them? Do they follow local deities or prefer the main pantheon? How does this religion shape the way people interact with each other and the world? In regards to characters that are Venezuelan or Venezuelan-coded… I do have a few that are Venezuelan, but I don’t think I’m going to be releasing their stories soon, so I’ll keep it quiet for now.
Q6: What is something you love to see in interactive fiction?
People being passionate about their work! This isn’t something exclusive to IF, but it is something that I love seeing. I also like seeing the different ways people innovate within the genre. I feel like sometimes, especially with newer writers, there is this idea that an IF has to subscribe to a specific format and that’s simply not true. If you don’t want to use a stat system you don’t have to, if you want to add combat then go ahead, if you would prefer to write an MC that’s already pretty pre-established (which is something that I personally want to try) then there’s nothing stopping you and I encourage you to give it a go. IF is very versatile and it’s wrong to try and fit authors into a box, especially if they want to bring something new into our little corner of the internet.
Q7: Any advice to give?
In general, I advise people to have fun writing, to not worry so much about how good it is, about if people will like it. Writing, at the end of the day, ends up being a pretty solitary activity and having those thoughts in your head too long will make you spiral. Be kind to yourself, be open to feedback when it comes (and learn to distinguish constructive feedback from destructive feedback) and enjoy the exploration of your world and characters. 
You are not alone in all of this. If you can, join a group of writers you can talk with, exchange ideas, get feedback from or just exchange memes (the ultimate bonding experience). Don’t be afraid, you’re not alone.
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teamsarawatshusband · 4 years ago
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Do you think there is a chance that WYB really believes in China's innocence in this? If people in China don't have all the information, then maybe he also doesn't know what is happening.
Okay, I’m gonna be very careful in how to answer this.
First of all, I don’t know him in person (obviously), so I can never know 100% what he does and doesn’t believe. Much like with any other celebrity.
My assumption on what he believes in this is based on what I know about his life and how that might potentially affect his thinking in matters like these. It is also based on what I know from my personal connections to Chinese citizens and what they have told me about politics and human rights affairs in the past.
Since Yibo is living in China, there is a big chance that he doesn’t have access to all the news regarding this specific political situation. So I do assume that he most likely doesn’t know the details of what’s going on in regards to the human rights violations and why exactly Nike spoke out against the government of his country.
However, he is very familiar with the business side of working with brands and he has had political situations affect career decisions in the past. So I can’t help but think that he knows things are fishy.
He must know that brands, especially big corporations like Nike, don’t make business-damaging statements against a whole country like this without global pressure. Let’s not forget, Nike like any other company, first and foremost has to think of their marketability and consumer’s trust. So, Yibo must know that consumers (not governments or political institutions but regular people) all over the world are watching the news and demanding that companies such as Nike take a stand. So, I’m assuming he knows that, in the eyes of the global population, based on their sources of information, the Chinese government is doing something bad.
Whether or not he believes this information to be true is a different question.
Now, if Yibo had lived his entire life in China, had grown up with the censorship and propaganda of the Chinese government throughout his life and not aware that this is different in other parts of the world, then I would assume he’d believe it to be false.
However, he has lived in South Korea for several years. So he did have access to a non-Chinese point of view on politics and life in general. He also has traveled to other countries professionally, both as a singer as well as an actor. He must know that independent sources of information are much easier accessible in other countries. He must know that the amount of freedom to publicly criticize a government or state personal opinions varies largely from country to country. I am convinced he is aware that censorship and deliberate spreading of misinformation is a common political practice in China. So, based on that, I do assume that he takes information from Chinese news with a critical mindset that doesn’t simply trust and buy into everything that is served to him.
He also has witnessed political situations affect his or other co-stars’ careers. He used to be in Uniq which, as all k-pop bands, suddenly wasn’t allowed to appear on Chinese TV anymore, even though they hadn’t done anything wrong. And a big change of course of action like that was kept all hush-hush in the entire Chinese media. He must know that this wasn’t fair, that they innocently fell victim to political agendas. An entire career, fanbase, performance platform simply taken away from all of them, one second to the next, and they hadn’t caused it and didn’t have any say in it either. Are we really assuming that they simply took that blow without wanting to speak out and fight for the success they had worked so hard for?
The 227 situation was very similar. The international success of one Chinese series brought so much traffic to AO3, that the Chinese government noticed it as public platform depicting values that they didn’t want China to be associated with. More importantly, a public platform with content that they couldn’t control. So they went and blocked it. And who had to suffer the blame? The government? Of course not. Xiao Zhan, who hadn’t done anything other that be an actor in the series. Because of this he lost so many marketing deals and job offers that people believed his career was over for good. All while doing nothing wrong.
Yibo, as the second main actor in the same series, 100% saw all of this go down. He knows that Xiao Zhan hadn’t caused any of it, knows that he was blamed unfairly. He also knows that remaining silent under those circumstances will only cause more harm to a career and public reputation. He knows that the only option is to say what you are expected to say, regardless of what you think.
And, I mean, based on all the situations that I have been in in my life, where I was forced to say something against my will, and based on knowing Yibo to be quite headstrong and having a competitive mindset... I just can’t picture him going, “Well, they make me say this. So, I believe it too.”
Now, based on what I have heard from people that I personally know IRL, I think some of the things that my aunt and uncle have mentioned left the biggest impression on me. My uncle is European but has lived and worked in China for decades now. My aunt is Chinese, grew up in China and only after meeting and marrying my uncle has traveled out of the country.
My uncle is very outspoken about life in China. When talking to him in person, he will tell you everything he personally experienced, including things like tax evasion, people avoiding police charges with hush money, countrywide blocking of messaging services and email providers, copyright frauds as legitimate business endeavors, illegal confiscation of items by police/border control etc. etc. etc. Basically, the gist of his reports is, “In China, if you are a regular person, you have to be aware of this, work around the corruption/unfairness and, most importantly, not make a big fuss about it. If you are somebody with money and powerful connections, you can buy yourself out of any situation. Unless if you stand in the public eye, then you’ll be used to make an example of  - under the guise of a just and law-abiding country.“ He will tell you all of this, while over here. Never when in China. Because he knows the consequences.
My aunt is a lot quieter on the matter. She never directly spoke out against Chinese politics and never directly called out the issues of censorship and corruption. But she often asked, “Are we really allowed to say this here? Back home we can’t.” And when I talked to her about specific political situations she confirmed a lot of things with small examples from her experience. While my uncle is mostly angry when speaking about those things, my aunt is primarily careful in her phrasing. She very clearly loves her country dearly (who wouldn’t it’s a beautiful country with wonderful people), and she is very pained by how it is governed, and how that governing affects both the people living there as well as how China is perceived in the world.
I have never spoken to them about celebrities or specific entertainment issues, but what I do know from them is, if somebody in China is a public figure with success and a bit of wealth, they will:
- most certainly be aware that their government’s actions are often unjust and based on corruption and personal gain
- be forced to side with said government or, if they refuse, forced to retire for good
- have to do propaganda related work. Either, if they (or somebody close to them) did/said some non-government-compliant things, for people in power positions to overlook those, or in return for specific freedoms they wouldn’t get to enjoy otherwise.
Especially the forcing of propaganda jobs on public figures, I can’t help not relating that to Yibo.
Just compare some of his songs... “無感 Wu Gan”, for example, with his recent “青春恰时来 - Youth Comes in Time”.
Wu Gan is musically progressive, sounds fresh and goes with the genres and types of music Yibo has shown to love before. And he officially wrote it himself. Youth Come in Time, which he released but was neither composed nor lyrically written by him, sounds like a polar opposite. Musically, it sounds like what you would hear in a 90s advertisement.
And looking at the lyrics, I mean... that song has lines like “strengthen the country”, “we stand in the front row”, “I am with my country”, “the Chinese stage is taking off” - how is that not propaganda?
Do we really, genuinely think that somebody believes in this, even though in the songs that he wrote himself, and has stated to be about his own personal experiences, he says stuff like, “don’t become a puppet whose feelings are manipulated by others”, “every day there’s someone going on and off stage - just remain emotionless”, “You’re famous but you have no works and the voices scolding you only get worse”, “I’ve trapped myself and I can’t make my goals distinct”?
Do we?
Really?
I’ll leave that up to you.
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binniesthighs · 4 years ago
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♡nsfw alphabet w minho♡
I tried my best to make a list of my own, but I borrowed a few terms from this lovely template! 
requested by a cutie anon! 
Aftercare: (what they are like after sex) ok, so I see minho as someone who would be super caring after you’ve both properly come down and would want you to feel as comfortable as you can be--he doesn’t want you do have to do much. I am a big believer in minho drawing you a bath to help you relax and get cozy after: he’d hold you in his arms too while giving you a little massage. 
Bdsm: (are they into it? how “hard” do they like to go?) yes. the answer to this is yes. I feel like minho is one who really really gets off to the feeling of being the one in control, and knowing that you’re under his control. hearing your little whimpers, or seeing the way that you toss around when he’s using toys or has you bonded turns him on like no other. along this line, I feel like he’d also gladly tease you relentlessly until you’ve got tears in your eyes. he’ll only give you what you want if you ask him nicely 
Cum: (anything to do with cum) sooo minho loves cuming on you. he loves it a ton. for him, its the perfect picture when you’re gasping underneath him, just off your own orgasm, hands bound or clawing to the bed when he’ll cum on your chest, or your back, mayyybe even your face if you’re comfortable. oh! if you’ll cum on him...he doesn’t mind that either.
Degredation: (do they like using names on you, or for them?) as we have seen above, I feel like he would be into using degrading names, or having you say them back to him, for example: “you’re such a whore for my dick, tell me that you’re a whore for me.” etc. Of course, he never means what he says, he just knows that it amps things up for the both of you. 
Experience: (how experienced are they?) minho is fairly experienced, and also knows well what he likes and knows how to ask you what you like as well. minho isn’t scared to give you instructions or guide you in how you pleasure him as well--he would ask you to do the same!
Favorite (pet names): well, i think that there is a general consensus that minho likes kitten and kitty--it just makes sense lol. Otherwise, the softer ones would be my love, sweetheart, hun, doll, baby girl/boy etc.
Gagging: (size kink perhaps?) I think yes on this one. minho is alll about the power that he has over you, so seeing you gag would boost his confidence. knowing that you have to work a little harder to take him in reassures him that you’re his and that you only bend to him. at the same time, he would never push you to do something that made you uncomfortable and would ask you if you wanted to use safe words/ symbols. 
Hair: (how well groomed are they?) this is kind of funny because I think that minho would actually really care about this. mostly from a functionality standpoint, but also when he’s trimmed he feels more confident and like he’s got everything together and organized for when he’s with you. 
Intimacy: (the romantic aspect) so minho has 2 modes, and they vary depending on his mood or yours. mode 1 is where he’s doming the hell out of you and he gets to do what ever he likes, making you cum over and over again, teasing you for as long as you can take it and doesn’t show much mercy. on the other hand, when the vibe is different, holy hell he can give you the softest, most intimate sex that you can ever experience. i’m picturing super slow and deep thrusts into you, kissing you just as slowly in between while he tangles up his hands in your hair u g h i love thinking about this 
Jack off: (all about masturbation) I see Minho as one who would jack off really lazily, much later at night when there isn’t too much else to do; it isn’t something he prioritizes often unless there’s something that crosses his mind that really turns him on, he’ll even risk doing it somewhere semi-public if it means he gets to roll the image over and over in his mind, especially of you. Oh, and he loves jacking off in the shower when its steamy and warm, I don’t make the rules!! 
Kink(s): Minho loves having you all dressed up for him, I’m talking lace, velvet, anything strappy, harnesses, collars, chokers, thigh garters, maybe some kitten ears, mostly he just loves watching you and this is like icing on the cake. I see him having a hand kink as well?? When he’s worshiping your body, he watches his hands trace you all over, he loves it when you suck on his fingers, or when he rubs his thumb over tongue. Also, breath play, edge play and voyeurism!  
Location: anywhere. and I mean it. the more risky it is, the more exciting it is for him. bathrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, kitchen, living room couch, dining table, shower, bathtub, hotel rooms, the place doesn’t matter, it’s you that does. he would never miss an opportunity to be intimate with you whether its more slow and passionate or sweaty, rushed and needy. 
Multiple (partners): i think that this is something that minho would be open to! but not at first. minho is someone who can be very possessive at times, so sharing you with others when the realtionship is new makes him a little nervous--bc he wants you to be all his! after a while though, the idea of sharing you with someone and watching you get wrecked under them...he wouldn’t oppose. 
No: (something they won’t do, turn offs) while he won’t say no, daddy kinks aren’t his favorite, it’s simply something that doesn’t turn him on; he prefers to be the one calling you names hehe. he’s mostly an open minded person, just because he gets off on helping you get off. 
Oral: loves loves giving oral to his partner, it’s one of his favorite ways to begin foreplay, he’s exceptionally skilled as well, and knows perfectly how to use his mouth to tease. gives one hell of a blowjob, and knows how to make you cum over and over just from his tongue on your clit. he won’t ask you to blow him, but rather tease you until you’re begging to do it for him. 
Pace: super slow or super fuckin’ fast. there is no in-between and that’s that on that! if you ask me, as much as he revels in pounding you into the bed, it’s the slower and more sensual moments that linger on his mind longer. 
Quickies: i think this goes without saying, but minho never passes up the opportunity to take you right then and now. funnily enough, if you’re at work/school and send him a message about how you might be feeling a little horny, this man will drive all the way to you just to help you out. lil anecdote: his favorite thing to do is fuck you bent over a bathroom sink, battling the time before someone notices you’re away. he loves watching your fucked out face in the tinted green bathroom mirror. 
Ropes: (tying you up au) i added this to the list mostly for fun, but also I’ve got this idea of minho loosing his mind over having you tied up or restrained. ropes, ribbons, velvet, bow ties, handcuffs and much more. there’s nothing more that he likes than seeing you all helpless and not able to do anything about it. he thinks you looks so pretty tied up especially if it’s ribbons of pretty colors that look beautiful on your skin. 
Stamina: bucket loads. I’ve definitely seen something somewhere talking about how minho’s got a dancers stamina and I can’t agree more. minho’s got the stamina to draw out his thrusts for hours or give it to you as quickly and as roughly as he possibly can, granted he’ll be a sweating mess by the time that he’s done, but he sees that as sign that he did his job very well. 
Toys: in my oponion, yes and no. lolll I say this for the reason of minho’s ego getting in his own way. he feels fuckin’ amazing knowing that he can make you cum as hard as you do only from his body and would much rather use the tools at his disposal rather than toys...but...seeing what toys can do to you and how he can use them to his advantage is soemthing he won’t pass up. His personal favorites are all kinds of vibrators, cock rings, hmmm and occasionally nipple clamps
Unfair: (tw: dubcon) (how much that they like to tease) oh my, very much so. fuck, it’s probably his favorite thing to do to you! I’ve said before on this account that minho is into teasing even when it isn’t “that time” meaning he’ll brush up against you in public with his hand or grind himself into you when you’re sitting in his lap. his hand will creep up your thighs slightly when the two of you are in the car together to make you squirm a little bit. and of course, he’ll tease you for real when he’s got you all to himself, and would do it for hours if you let him. 
Volume: frick i love thinking about this!!!! i see minho as being someone more on the quiet side: shaky exhales, choked little breaths, the occasional soft “mmm” or “ahh.” if he’s really loosing himself in it however, looking down at you with tears in your eyes, or drool slipping down your neck from blowing him, he’ll let out some of the most unapologetically erotic moans on his pink lips
Wild card: (you pick!) i would like to use this place to talk about how much a bratty sub makes him go frickin’ feral. There is something about the way that you bite back at each of his demands, it only makes him want to dig into you even harder. you’d say to him as he’s relentlessly fucking into you “i-is that all that you can do? you’re bo-boring me...” in seconds, he would have you flipped around into a completely different position, something you didn’t even know existed that makes your muscles burn but your heat ravenous. he’d say, “if i’m so boring how is it that I’ve made you a fucking mess for me three times already?” 
X-ray: (what’s going on under those pleather pants) thicc thighs I’ll tell you that HA, jk that’s just me having the biggest most embarrassing thigh kink alive lmaooo. buuut it’s true! minho’s got those perfectly toned and thick thighs that he loves having you grind on of course. as for what this letter is really about, I see minho has having just the right proportions. not to be cheesy, but it’s like this boy was practically frickin made for you!! buuuut I think we all know that minho’s packing with something  
Yes: (biggest turn ons) on top of the ones mentioned above, I wanna make this one kinda cute and sentimental just bc I can lolll, but a major turn on for minho is a bomb ass personality!! minho really treasures people who are unique, true to themselves and passionate about something! he finds this super super attractive. this man is an absolute SIMP for a personality and that’s the first thing he falls in love with about you! (also shhhh I’m not pushing my pan!minho agenda shhh) 
Zzz: (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards) kinda like with aftercare, minho can’t rest himself properly until you are fully taken care of! as soon as he knows that he’s covered all the bases: cleaning you off, getting you clothes, water, food, giving you a massage if you need it. as soon as the two of you are all cuddled up in together, then he’ll be able to relax himself, patiently smoothing down your hair as you fall asleep yourself, then, he’ll be out like a light. 
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cestcirque · 3 years ago
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Hi, is it okay to ask for a few writing tips?
So I've decided to come back to writing after almost 8 years of not doing it, and of course I thought it was a good idea to get back to it in a format I've never done before, a SMAU 🙄😓
I'm having a hard time trying to get the point of each chapter across through texts. Sometimes it feels like a character messages the other and it feels so unnatural like, I try to explain the context of something (like a characters bg story) and it feels like overexposition.
My main difficulty with this is making sure that the readers get to know and feel what happened outside of the "phone" without necessarily having to write out a scene, because there's a lot of subtly and body language in written scenes that help with the build-up of emotional plot points. Without that, I feel like the climax of my story is a little...lackluster?
Since you two beautiful stories that definitely made me FEEL things without having written parts, I thought of asking you if you ever had this problem and how did you overcame it.
Omg 🥺 yes, always down to give writing tips!!! I’m so touched it’s me you want to ask 💕 I truly think there’s so much you can do in SMAU and I wish more people explored it in depth
I’ll direct this towards SMAU but some of it is just philosophy for prose writers as well! ⤵️
I had trouble at first too, but it’s really just a shift in thinking. Instead of action, the focus is character—SMAU is literally all about how people interact with each other, and in my opinion that gives more opportunity to hone in on some very specific emotions
When it comes down to it, it’s like you’re writing a script. And in order to write a script, throw out that prose mindset. Just throw it out 😝 Body language doesn’t exist here!
Think about the scene you’re trying to write. Obviously first make sure it’s a *necessary* scene to advance plot / develop character. Then consider the following, in this order:
1. Don’t be afraid to let important things happen “offscreen”
First step is to let go of the details, esp when your characters are doing things in person. With SMAU, you don’t need to tell your readers everything! In fact, it’ll be impossible to tell your readers everything. The trick here is simply showing that your characters experienced it nonetheless. But rather than giving a play-by-play after the fact (one of my pet peeves 🙄), consider how the action would have changed the way they speak to each other
Something like… “God, why didn’t one of us bring an umbrella?” “Ugh next time I’ll check the menu before making a reservation.” “Weird that the park closes early on Sundays.” “Was nOT expecting it to be that much to rent a car.”
OR to focus on character… “You know you didn’t have to sneak out this morning.” “No fun, at least come inside next time.” “Not even a goodbye?” “What, missing me already?”
2. Find a good reason for each interaction to be happening in the first place
So you’ve figured out which scenes can happen offscreen… but wait, what if your characters are physically in the same space or there’s an in-person action that’s absolutely crucial to your story? Well, what would cause someone to text about it? Find the reason. My biggest pet peeve in SMAUs is when characters start texting each other while they’re in the same room… they’re only doing that bc the writer didn’t find a good enough reason
I’ll use Step 7 of Aperture as an example. The scene at the bookstore is where I struggled the most in the “no prose” challenge. Yet the solution was so simple once I shifted my thinking: “Akaashi help, I’ve lost you.” “Sorry sorry, I’m on the second floor. Literary fiction.” Two lines of setup. And now they can have their conversation
3. Say as much as possible with as few words as possible
Once you know all your interactions are on solid ground, try to write dialogue that tells you more than just the words. Say things without saying things. This is what I try to do in general, even in prose. Always try to do this. I think over-explaining is the mark of an amateur. Remember you’re not the only one on the court thinking—readers can connect the dots too
Example. My absolute favorite line of The Cardinal Set was in Page 21 when the interviewer asks Atsumu if he lost track of the prompter. He says, “Not at all, forgive me. I don’t believe I could’ve made it through that speech if I wasn’t looking at her.” Not only does that tell you what’s physically happening in the studio, but also exactly how he’s feeling
An easier exercise might be to ask yourself how a character says “I love you” without really saying it. We all say it without saying it sometimes—“get home safe” or “have you eaten yet?” or “I saw this and thought of you.” Shirabu said, “Let’s start over, okay?” Semi said, “I’m literally already getting ready to go out.” Atsumu said, “I will never disclose her name.” Akaashi said, “I’ll be back in a bit with stuff to make you breakfast”
4. Remember a SMAU is not just limited to “social media”
If you’ve gone through the first few steps and there’s still something that you can’t articulate quite right, maybe you can tell the story with a different frame. I mean I spoofed a whole online article, for God’s sake 😅 and that was probably my favorite thing to write
Think about how much you do on your phone! It’s a lot! All the world’s a stage! Back to Step 7 again, I literally added in that Google search screenshot hours before posting it, simply bc I realized I could??? Like it’s amazing how much the visuals on your phone can help tell the story
5. Do things that can only be done in SMAU
Last miscellaneous piece of advice. Seems basic but I think people still forget it bc the format is already so different. Why did you choose SMAU in the first place, and not any other method of storytelling?
Point being SMAU is a completely unique way to write. What really sells it is proving that you couldn’t have told this story any other way. I mean what’s the point if you could just as easily tell the same story in prose? I talk a lot about visuals having equal weight in the plot, but you can do it solely with writing too—in no other medium can you so easily sext the wrong person 🤣 and you can’t even try explaining these alternating conversations in prose
So experiment! Go wild! You can do so much more in SMAU than you think!
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hi! random question that you’re not obligated to answer (i just love your ka metas): do you think that aang acted like he was entitled to katara’s affection? sorry for the bother if this is a question you’ve gotten before, i’m just curious about your thoughts
Hi anon! It’s always lovely to hear people like my metas 💛 And you’re in luck - I have not gotten this specific question before, though I have answered similar questions, and as such I will probably link those posts throughout.
Forewarning: I use the general you very liberally in this post, so like. It’s not directed at you, anon djhskdjsajs I don’t want you think my sarcasm is in response to your ask (your ask was very lovely!! 💕)
Okay. Let’s get started! The funniest thing about the (nonsensical) claim that Aang acted “entitled” to Katara’s affection is that there is no canon evidence to support it. Opponents more often than not can only bring up one (1) episode as an example of supposed “entitlement” because no other Kataang interactions in the series demonstrate entitlement from either end! Like, wow. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. And I’m sure we all know what episode opponents love to propagate, don’t we?
Yep, you guessed it: “The Ember Island Players.”
From the get-go, the fact that people who vigorously oppose Kataang essentially only appeal to the contents of one episode for Aang’s supposed “entitlement” is a major indicator that, in fact, the entitlement is not truly there, and that those opponents are actually misconstruing the entire episode. I mean, if you are trying to make an argument about something but you only have one piece of “evidence” to support your claim, then a) any half-decent teacher/professor would fail you, rip and b) that’s a sign that maybe your claim doesn’t hold water. If you can’t find evidence to support it, then you’re probably looking at your case from the wrong angle. Analysis 101.
As such, I find the “entitlement” claim particularly ridiculous because opponents repeat the same faulty rhetoric over and over! The only people that might be convinced are those with confirmation bias. I’m sure that’s their audience, of course, but it’s still hilarious dfjaksdasks.
Anyways. Here’s the excerpt from the EIP transcript that opponents l o v e to spotlight with their “entitlement” claims:
Aang: Katara, did you really mean what you said in there?
Katara: In where? What are you talking about?
Aang: On stage, when you said I was just like a… brother to you, and you didn’t have feelings for me.
Katara: I didn’t say that. An actor said that.
Aang: But it’s true, isn’t it? We kissed at the Invasion, and I thought we were gonna be together. But we’re not.
Katara: Aang, I don’t know.
Aang: Why don’t you know?
Katara: Because, we’re in the middle of a war, and we have other things to worry about. This isn’t the right time.
Aang: Well, when is the right time?
Katara: Aang, I’m sorry, but right now I’m just a little confused.
Aang tries to kiss Katara.
Katara: I just said I was confused! I’m going inside. [Exits the balcony.]
Aang: Ugh, I’m such an idiot! [Puts down his head on the balcony railing.]
Opponents claim Aang’s behavior is “entitled” here for two reasons:
1) He asks Katara several questions about their relationship status.
2) He kisses her.
Before I get too far into this, we have to consider the context of the episode. Katara and Aang have this conversation after just watching 95% of “The Boy in the Iceberg,” aka Fire Nation propaganda. I have talked about the specifics of the play being imperialist propaganda here, but the gist of it is that this play is meant to demean the Gaang, to portray them as lesser and weaker than the Fire Nation. The fact that the play ends with Ozai’s victory is a stark reminder of this mentality. So: Katara and Aang have just watched this play that preys upon their insecurities and paints them as awful caricatures of their true selves. It is only natural that they would be more tense than usual. The reason I bring this up is solely to inform their conversation on the balcony, however; I don’t think their frustration solely defines what they say/do, but it’s worth keeping in mind, “Hey, they’re stressed and upset, of course this conversation might not go perfectly.”
Now, I have talked about the infamous EIP kiss before and approached all the rhetoric surrounding it like Snopes Fact Checker in this post, lmao. I did discuss in there why the kiss is wrong, which no one has ever argued against, but also why the kiss is simply a mistake: not sexual assault, not entitlement, not an unforgivable decision. I’ve copied and pasted specifically my notes on the “entitlement” claim below regarding the kiss, but if you have time, I definitely recommend the whole post jksdhjasdka (I’m quite proud of it). Anyways! Here’s the excerpt:
Claim: Aang acted entitled to Katara and her affection.
Status: False.
I’ve briefly addressed this already, but Aang backing off when Katara pushed him away is the exact opposite of entitlement. An impromptu kiss is not always indicative of entitlement. It can be, especially if the person being kissed has never expressed any interest in the person kissing them, but Katara and Aang were mutually interested in each other. They’d mutually kissed twice already by that point: in CoTL and during DoBS. The EIP kiss was inappropriate. NO ONE HAS EVER SUGGESTED OTHERWISE. But when you’re 12 and you’re already kind of in this semi-relationship with a girl you’ve been through hell and high water with (who has kissed you twice on the lips and on the cheek multiple times, not to mention it is only you she ever expresses such affection towards), it is not fucking “entitlement” to make a move on her, even when the timing is off. IT’S JUST A MISTAKE. A POOR DECISION. NOT ENTITLEMENT. NOT MANIPULATION. NOT SEXUAL ASSAULT. Full stop.
Also, these EIP people love to call Aang entitled for this kiss, but there isn’t a single peep heard from them about Zuko’s line in TSR where he demands to know what’s “wrong” with Katara, since she hasn’t forgiven him yet when everyone else has. And look. I think Zuko was just frustrated here, and that he, too, made a mistake and is obviously not irredeemable for it, but. If you’re going to argue that Aang was entitled in EIP, you’d better be ready to acknowledge the argument that Zuko was acting entitled in TSR, too. And hell, let’s take it a step further! Call Aang entitled for EIP. Call Zuko entitled for TSR. Call Sokka entitled for choosing to stay at Boiling Rock on the off chance his father would arrive, thus making Suki and Zuko feel obligated to stay behind with him, effectively putting all of them in danger. What an entitled decision, risking his friends’ lives on the 0.01% chance Hakoda would be one of the many, many possible war prisoners arriving at Boiling Rock!
Damn. That sounds ridiculous as fuck, doesn’t it?
And guess what. That’s exactly how the “Aang was entitled” arguments come across. Hate to break it to you. Trust me when I say to do yourself a favor and stop perpetuating that faulty rhetoric!
So that is what I have already assessed, lol.
To be frank, the most frustrating thing I see perpetuated is that the EIP kiss somehow ruined Aang and Katara’s relationship. But when it comes to assessing weighty issues like the notion of “entitlement” in a relationship, the fact of the matter is that you have to look at both the relationship as a whole and the context in which it is situated. Opponents never want to do that, because doing so debunks their entire (baseless) argument, lmao. Katara and Aang are best friends. And by EIP, they have both expressed romantic interest in each other multiple times. (Here is a post explaining the development of Katara’s feelings for Aang, just to put out that fire before anyone sets it lmao.)
So why, why do opponents think Katara would never find it in herself to forgive Aang for a mistaken kiss? Katara is shown over and over again throughout the series to have one of the biggest hearts. She wants to see the good in people. That’s why she gives Jet a second chance (even though a person could argue he did not “deserve” one); that’s why she helps the Fire Nation village in “The Painted Lady”; that’s why she forgives Pakku (once she sees he’s willing to change); that’s why she is the second person in the entire show (excluding Iroh) to offer Zuko a hand of kindness (in CoD)! That’s why she eventually forgives Zuko, even after all he has done to the Gaang (e.g. sending an assassin after them, being complicit in Aang’s death, attacking her and kidnapping Aang at the NWT, manipulating her with her mother’s necklace, to name a few, lmao. bless his heart, but like Jet, someone could easily argue Zuko doesn’t “deserve” another chance - and yet Katara still gave him [and Jet] one. in fact, she gave Zuko multiple).
In other words, Katara is almost always willing to extend friendship and compassion and forgiveness to others - why would she revoke that privilege from Aang after a single error that is comparatively lesser to all the other horrible things she’s experienced in the war? Again, I’m not downplaying how terrible of a decision Aang made. It’s inexcusable. But it’s not the end of the world, and considering the context of the show (e.g. Aang and Katara liked each other and they both knew it), it’s… not some heinous crime. Compared to, oh, how about attempted murder? lmaoo
Even beyond Katara’s innate kindness, Aang is Katara’s best friend. She loves him. The show portrays it as romantic through the seasons, but even if someone isn’t into shipping (which is super valid), Katara and Aang’s connection is one of the primary lynchpins of the show! (The other being Aang and Zuko, the greatest foils of all time.) Katara and Aang epitomize several of A:TLA’s thematics (and aesthetics) because they are complementary: yin and yang, push and pull, Tui and La, moon and ocean, blue and orange, water and air. This gifset and related commentary beautifully demonstrate how even when Katara and Aang disagree, they respect the other’s the decision. So after 60~ episodes depicting Aang and Katara as having mutual respect and love for each other in every form as well as emphasizing Katara’s natural inclination towards kindness/giving people the benefit of the doubt, opponents still think Katara wouldn’t forgive Aang because of one mistimed, inappropriate kiss? What?? Make it make sense, lmao.
In sum, the kiss was a mistake, not an act of entitlement, and it’s absurd to think Katara would hold that against Aang for the rest of his life.
To backtrack a bit, opponents also love to use the fact that Aang asked Katara several questions about their relationship status as examples of his “entitlement.” Just typing that out highlights the ridiculous nature of this assertion, lmao! Let me rephrase it for maximum hilarity:
“Aang was unsure about where their relationship stood? Well, how dare he ask numerous questions to resolve his confusion!”
Like, what was the alternative jskfajksdas if you are in relationship limbo with someone, it is far better to ask them ‘too many’ questions for clarification than to simply assume one way or the other! Kissing Katara was wrong, flat-out, but asking her questions to better understand where they were in their relationship was like. exactly the right decision, lmao. I genuinely don’t see how that could be indicative of entitlement? Especially because, once again, Aang and Katara both like each other and they both know that by this point in the show. That’s why Aang doesn’t ask if Katara likes him - he knows she does. That’s why Katara doesn’t negate her feelings - she knows she’s interested in him, and the blockade between them is not a lack of reciprocation, but the fact that they’re “in the middle of a war” and consequently it’s not “the right time” for them to begin a relationship. Katara has seen Aang die before! She knows he’s facing a near-impossible victory! I can’t blame her for not wanting to start a relationship with him at that point. It would hurt twice as much to lose him again if they were together in a romantic fashion (amatonormativity, am I right?). Again, Aang’s kiss was entirely inappropriate, but him asking her questions about their relationship is a) an example of fostering healthy communication and b) what any therapist would encourage, lol.
Oh, but I’m “forgetting” something, aren’t I? Right. This line:
Katara: Aang, I’m sorry, but right now I’m just a little confused.
If we want to talk about parallels, which I know the A:TLA fandom adores, this line sounds suspiciously like:
Yue: … but I like you [Sokka] too much and it’s too confusing to be around you.
Yue and Katara are actually in similar situations here. Outside forces are interfering with their relationships; for Yue, there is her arranged marriage, and for Katara, it’s the life-or-death nature of the war itself. They aren’t confused about their feelings, as Yue knows she likes Sokka and Katara knows she likes Aang, but they are confused about how to reconcile those feelings with their external circumstances. And can you blame them for that? They are facing impossible decisions (the fate of their nation and the fate of the world respectively). I would be confused, too! So Katara’s response isn’t a reaction to any so-called “entitlement” from Aang; she is experiencing genuine confusion about how to approach her own feelings for him in the midst of a war.
In sum, Aang asking questions about their relationship was a logical step to take resolving his confusion and is in no way related to “entitlement.” Katara’s confusion was not “letting Aang down easy” and interpreting it as such requires disregarding every preceding line of the conversation and its context.
As you can see, Aang’s actions in EIP are not at all “entitled.” His questions were understandable. While his kiss was inappropriate and inexcusable, it was also a mistake, and there is no canon evidence to support the conclusion Katara would never be able to forgive him (her literal best friend!) for it.
Before I end, I’ll touch briefly upon the DotBS kiss, because it is also occasionally used as an example of Aang’s “entitlement” towards Katara’s feelings. Whether you like the trope or not, this moment falls under what is called the “Now or Never Kiss.” TV Tropes actually lists Kataang/DotBS as an example under the Western Animation tab:
“Avatar: The Last Airbender: The fact that he’s finally going to face the dreaded Firelord, and possibility that he might not come back alive from that battle, gives Aang enough motivation to kiss Katara.”
Again, whether you like the trope or not, it involves reciprocation from both parties:
“The Not-A-Couple [i.e. both parties] don’t want to go out without revealing how they [i.e. both parties] really feel. It’s now or never. They kiss.”
Katara and Aang both like each other. When Aang initiates the DotBS kiss, Katara kisses him back. Her lips are still puckered when he pulls away. Furthermore, Katara had initiated a kiss with Aang prior to this incident, in CoTL. Katara was also the one to initiate every cheek kiss with Aang (who is the only character she ever demonstrated such affection towards). So Aang kissing Katara during DotBS follows an established precedent of Katara initiating different kisses, romantically inclined, with Aang. It’s not entitlement; it’s him knowing they mutually like each other and him realizing this might be the last time he ever sees her. Again, you can hate the trope, but don’t blatantly misconstrue its meaning. You’ll sound like Fire Nation propaganda, lmao. (For clarification, jic: the general you. not anon!)
Here is a fantastic post by @imreallyhereforkataang explaining the DotBS kiss in more detail as well as discussing why Kataang’s progression in the second half of Book 3 was, in fact, well-developed, and how Katara and Aang are best friends above all else and know that (which was the core of their relationship from the start).
And a bonus fun fact: in the original storyboard (link takes you to storyboarder Giancarlo Volpe’s DeviantArt with said storyboard), it is noted that Katara smiles after Aang kisses her. Why? Because she likes him as much as he likes her! It was changed by a “higher authority,” according to Volpe, probably to add more realism to the romance (i.e. Katara likes Aang, yes, but as she herself points out in EIP - there’s a war going on, and love is always terrifying to reconcile with war).
(Seriously, though, do read Volpe’s description on the storyboard. Takes you a second to scroll down and maybe a minute to read. Short yet informative, discussing how you can see on the storyboard itself that someone revised the image so Katara isn’t smiling after the kiss.)
Anyways! Opponents’ argument that Katara wasn’t interested in Aang therefore is and has always been entirely inapplicable.
To conclude: the entitlement assertion is laughable. There is no canon evidence to support it. As such, I encourage you to laugh whenever you see it! Pull an Azula, for that matter:
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[ID: Gif from “The Beach” episode of A:TLA. Ty Lee, mimicking a guy, asks Azula, “Hey there sweet sugar cakes. How ya likin’ this party?” Azula proceeds to burst into exaggerated laughter, earning stares from everyone else at the party. End ID.]
Thank you for the great ask, anon! Hopefully my response was satisfactory 💛
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living-with-pmd · 4 years ago
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11 Women With PMDD Share What It's Really Like
Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is the evil cousin of PMS. They share the same types of symptoms—moodiness, increased hunger, cravings, fatigue, cramps, pain, brain fog, and depression, among others—but for PMDD sufferers, those symptoms get so bad they can cripple a woman's ability to lead a normal life.  
While up to 85 percent of women get PMS, according to the US Department of Health, only about 5 percent of women experience PMDD, according to the American Journal of Psychiatry.
We asked women with PMDD what it's really like living with the disorder. Here are their stories:
"I was diagnosed with PMDD last summer. Six months prior to my diagnosis, I started taking a certain birth control and soon every month I was experiencing severe PMS issues. I am a generally happy person, but during those few days I was someone entirely different. I was extremely depressed and anxious, having much more frequent panic attacks, and was super sensitive and lonely. I was even suicidal, which was terrifying. And the worst part was I was convinced that I had always been this miserable, and that I would always be this miserable, and it was never going to change. It felt as if someone had completely burned out the light in me and all happiness and joy and hope was gone. I didn't make the connection that it was related to my period but thankfully a close friend did. I have since switched birth control, which helped a lot, and increased the dosage of my anti-anxiety and anti-depressant meds. Most importantly, I am aware of the way I feel those few days so I know to expect it, and I can logically remind myself that I will stop feeling that way soon. Looking back, I realize that I've probably always had pretty bad PMS or PMDD. The birth control worsened it but it was also causing a lot of issues I wasn't aware of previously as well." —Katherine H., 22, Edmonds, WA
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"PMDD is out of control. I cry really easily for about a week. My biggest issue is that I am convinced that I am failing at everything—being a wife, a mom, work projects, fitness, my whole life! And even though it feels so real I constantly have to question if my feelings are valid or if they are amplified by my cycle. I just set an alert in my phone to remind me to consider my hormones the next time I feel that way." —Krysten B., 32, Toronto, CA
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"A week before my period, I become a complete psycho, completely unlike myself. I'm tearful, want to eat everything that's sweet or salty, have absolutely no tolerance for anything other than perfection, and prefer to be left completely alone. I already take an antidepressant but my PMDD was a complete nightmare so my doctor gave me Prozac to take for just 10 days a month. Basically, I start it when I start to get that irrational feeling and keeping taking it until my period starts. And that's just the emotional stuff. On the physical side, I have debilitating cramps, backaches, and headaches that last for days. Yep. I'm a peach." —Kristen L., 40, Knoxville, TN
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"In the past, PMDD almost made me suicidal and totally broke my spirit. Yes it wasthat bad. Every month. Eventually I got tired of being a 'crazy PMS woman' and decided I needed to fix this. Since I don't like to take pharmaceuticals, I branched out to homeopathic remedies and I discovered St. John's Wort and essential oils, especially clary sage and Doterra Calm-Its. It's a lot better now but I still have my hard days." —Amy S., 43, Zebulon, NC
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"My PMDD got so bad I had to go to a psychiatrist and be put on Prozac along with another antidepressant I was already taking. I was a mess—anxious, crying randomly over the smallest thing, and eating everything in sight. One example is someone made a YouTube mashup of the Age of Ultron trailers with Pinocchio footage and the 'I've got no strings on me' song and that wrecked me for weeks. Every time I thought about scenes from Pinocchio I would start panicking and crying at my work desk. It's been a few years and I'm better now. I'm off birth control and weening myself off the Prozac. I notice a week before my period I will sob during any sad part in a movie or book I'm reading, and a day or two before, I notice I'm more likely to be anxious." —Kate W., 36, Alaska
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"This has impacted my ability to work effectively. My pet peeve is when people say 'it must be close to your time of the month' when they simply don't like what I'm saying. I have run into that problem a lot at previous jobs and it makes it really hard to be taken seriously. It's bullshit because my feelings are valid regardless and also PMDD is not a joke. I am so lucky now to have a male boss who understands but it wasn't always that way. I have also have found a lot of relief with naturopathic and herbal remedies." —Amalia F., 28, Vancouver, Canada
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"My PMS was tolerable until my second child was born and then everything went off the rails. I'd be looking forward to plans with others, happy, and then about 10 to 14 days before my flow would start, my mood would turn on a dime. I'd be horrible—crying, screaming that ~nobody understands~, just so much emotional pain. I'd basically lock myself up in the bedroom for a full day to cry, get angry, and feel sorry for myself. It took three doctors before I finally found one who would listen to me before I was finally diagnosed with PMDD. I took Prozac for three years for it but it made me feel numb, like a zombie and not like myself. So I quit and my family just deals with me now. As I've gotten closer to menopause the PMDD is not as bad, but can be very unpredictable due to hormonal swings from perimenopause. The worst part now is I feel like my friendships have suffered. I always seem to have episodes around major holidays and events and I end up bumming everyone out if I do show up so I end up staying home a lot." —Colleen T., 50, St. Paul, MN
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"I'm overly emotional for the week before my period. Saying that makes it sound like it's not that bad but I get so distraught that my fiance has actually scheduled it in his phone as 'blood sport' to remind himself what's coming. I'm thankful that he's patient because I also feel like everyone hates me that week, too." —Kenlie T., 36, New Orleans, LA
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"All month long I'm fine and feel even and calm and then suddenly, the week before my period, I can't handle even the tiniest little thing. My irritability goes through the roof (which is not great since I have a 5-year-old) and I feel like I have no friends. It really makes me sad." —Jessica S., 28, Broomfield, CO
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"I know my period is coming because all of a sudden all of my joints hurt, especially my knees and ankles. I also get crazy gnarly cramps and once I even had a cyst that ruptured while I was on a date and the guy had to take me to the hospital! It was so embarrassing. Thankfully my husband now is very understanding when this time rolls around each month. The worst part is people who just think I make this stuff up. Some months are better than others and sometimes the pain is completely debilitating! My emotions are also a rollercoaster. Anytime I see something cute or inspiring, I burst into tears." —Ivie C., 21, Rexburg, ID
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"My PMDD manifests in both mental and physical symptoms. From the time I got my period at age 12, I've had extreme cramps and heavy bleeding. I'd leak at school through a super maxi pad every class so I'd tie sweatshirts around my waist and have to scrub my clothes when I got home. It was super humiliating. I'd have to take six to eight ibuprofen at a time to deal with cramps, and if I didn't I'd end up on the floor sweating like I had the flu. Sometimes I'd even throw up. This meant I ended up spending a lot of time sick in bathrooms and knew where every restroom was at all times. Birth control helped manage the PMDD and other issues, but as soon as I was done having kids, I had a hysterectomy. That was the best thing I've ever done." —Mandy P., 39, Mendon, UT
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a19972132/premenstrual-dysphoric-disorder/
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felassan · 4 years ago
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Highlights and insights from the MELE launch cast & crew reunion panel
[rewatch link] [highlights & insights from the N7 Day 2020 reunion]
In case a text format is better for anyone (in terms of accessibility for example). Cut for length.
Some paraphrasing.
If anyone’s interested in just the line-reading session, it starts at timestamp ~1:04:45.
In addition to the cast and crew from the N7 Day reunion, at this reunion also in attendance were: 
Mac Walters (Project Director for MELE, Lead Writer of the og MET)
Melanie Faulknor (Lead Producer for MELE)
Crystal McCord (Producer for MELE)
Fred Tatasciore (Saren)
Seth Green (Joker)
Kimberly Brooks (Ash)
Ash Sroka (Tali)
This was the biggest reunion / meetup of the cast so far, and some of the cast and crew were meeting for the first time here.
It’s been so long since the og MET that PW & KW are getting to watch their kids experience playing it for the first time
JHale doesn’t play but since MELE she’s been sneaking around Twitch jumping into peoples’ MELE livestreams to lurk, watch and comment a bit
What drew Seth to the character of Joker? The whole concept of the game. He likes games and MET’s mechanics (different trees of adventure, stacking reputation, choices carrying between games) at the time were the most sophisticated that he’d ever heard pitched. He thought this was new and exciting and wanted to be a part of it. For the character they cast him based on his personality traits (i.e. he sounds quite similar to Joker personality-wise)
Would Seth ever want to play Joker again if the opportunity presented itself? Sure, he loves the character, and if the writers ever had more things to explore/expand with Joker he’d be down for it. 
Seth said that it’s a different kind of fan that approach him about this project. The fans have spent many many hours in an intimate exchange with “him” that he hasn’t been a part of, but they experienced it nonetheless. “I’ve hugged a lot of strangers, you know what I’m saying? It’s great, you get an interaction with fans that you never get as a performer in any other experience”
Seth has been a space guy since he was little, it inspires him
With the state of the world the way it is now [covid, masks etc], does Ash think Tali’s story will be more impactful now than it was before? Ash hopes so, and that anything they do here will have a positive impact on a bigger level. Ultimately that’s why most of them do what they do, they want to reach people in deep ways. She hopes Tali is an inspiration in courage, bravery, standing up for what’s right and thinking about the greater good
The [MELE I think] dev team had a last team meeting with Greg Zeschuk, one of the founders of BioWare, who they had invited to it. He was regaling them with stories of the inception of Mass Effect. “You would imagine this sort of well-laid out, drawing boards everywhere... [but] it was basically just a napkin sketch in a Greek taverna with him and Casey going ‘We wanna do a space opera’, and then it took off”
The process of creating lore through development is very organic. A lot of it comes from character and story development. It builds up over the course of the game’s development. They did the codex entries at the end, the idea being that if they saved them for as late as they could, then they could pull from the story, characters and meaningful moments, and build them from there
PW wrote a bunch of the codex entries, elevator banter & lots of little bits of lore. They describe their time on the og MET as being a “baby writer”. They originally came in after Mac had back surgery and a junior writer was needed to fill in. “It was really fun, it was us sitting in a room together going ‘What do you think a hanar or a krogan thinks about this or that’?” For a first project for them this was an amazing experience - the world building itself creatively with all these awesome people
They tried to add multiplayer in every game but only got it to work in ME3
They had a lot of plots laid out in ME1 that they called “global plots”. These were outside the core critical path and would take players from planet to planet, and were sprawling stories. They pulled out a lot of really interesting concepts and ideas from these that did make it into the game, but all of the global plots ended up getting cut due to time. Mac still has old diagrams and spreadsheets which detailed how all of these would have come together
Q. If you all had to take a long-distance road-trip with two squadmates, who would you take and why? PW: “Jack and Mordin. Mordin because the drive would never lack for things to talk about at length quickly, Jack because you know you wouldn’t pay for the room. You wouldn’t know how you’d get the room, but you wouldn’t be paying for it.” Courtenay: “I’d take Mordin because there’d be singing, and FemShep just to have this thing - happen. In the room that I get for free.” JHale at this point fistpumped while saying “Yeess” [then I think what she said was “steaming hot”]
Seeing as asari are long-lived, how open is Ali to one day reprising her role as Liara? “She’s a character very close to my heart, it was such a great opportunity. In some games that we work on the character has already been created or voiced by someone else, but this was really a group effort. When I first went into the booth, the only thing I’d seen of her was a sort of like, rendering, and we slowly kind of came to her voice and presence. I would love to bring Liara back any time... hey, she can live a really long time guys. :D”
Caroline and people who do what she does (Creative Performance Director) are so critical to the quality of games. Caroline: “This group of people are extraordinary. We were lucky to have such an extraordinary cast. Every [recording] session was new and challenging. It was a labor of love. I’m tearing up right now thinking about it. I’m remembering my last session with Jen, she was the last session, just sobbing and sobbing”. When JHale was trying to say the lines of Shepard’s goodbye with Garrus, a line hit her like a tonne of bricks and she was in tears and was like “Shepard does not cry”. “It took me a second, I got it out and took another run at it, it was in there but stuffed down as it should have been, and I finished the line [and there was silence in the booth when usually Caroline would have been talking to give direction or instruction] Did we lose her? Did Skype crash?” and it transpired that what had happened was that Caroline was in floods of tears
ME was the first time Keythe had ever come across branching dialogue. “Normally when we work on a script and it’s from page 1 to 100. In this it was get to page 5, then go back to page 2 and play it a little differently. The skill and the fun and joy of it was to be able to go back and play a scene in a different way, with different writing, with different outcomes. This was not only a challenge but a real treat. So to all the writers who dreamed up how this build-your-own-adventure plays out, you have my undying respect. It was a real pleasure”
VEDA is a proprietary system that BW use to record the dialogue, which is the closest way of having it feel like having people in the booth together (it’s all digital and VAs get to hear the line someone else has done in that scene). Caroline really pushed for this because of the amount of time etc that was wasted due to lack of this sort of thing on ME1. William: “It was a god send for me, thank you, getting to hear a cue from Jen or Mark.” Ali: “Us being able to bounce off each other helps make it more real. This for me was the most real acting experience on a game I had ever had - the writing being so good, Caroline helping us through, being able to hear each other.” JHale was always early coming in to record relative to the others so only got to use VEDA a few times - a bit of Liara content and the scene with Anderson towards the end. “Those two times, oh my god it was amazing”. VEDA being a thing also helps from a scheduling standpoint
Seth and Tricia Helfer (EDI) only got to be in the booth actually together 1 time, to record/shoot a piece of promotional video. “We actually got to record a scene together and we were like ‘oh my god this is the best thing ever’. It was great, even though I had to stand on a stool. She’s the best”
Seth: “As an actor, the kind of opportunity to do this kind of material in games just didn’t exist.” Fred: “Oh, never! I had never had a villain part that was complicated like that. In a game? Never before, it was really interesting”
Raphael always goes back to the fact that ME brought more women into gaming than any other game before it. “The writing and the complexity of the relationships gave us so much ballast”. “This set this apart from running, shooting, gunning, looting”
JHale: “What I noticed in the times before when I got to be around fans, there was a huge hunger among women in the gaming world for something they could really jump into. They were starving for something which fed them what they deserved and needed”
Mac: “[praising Caroline] Caroline would often come to us as writers and challenge us and say, as an example, ‘Do we really need another male character to do this? Why are we writing another male character for this?’ She pushed that very early and to the betterment of everything we created”
PW: “Karin and Cookie and all of the editors across the trilogy, [were critical in] making sure that Shepard sounded consistent - [especially since] we had a large writing team, writers came and went, Mac is the only one with a significant writing contribution on each of the games”
PW: “[on game dev] It’s a process of getting hundreds of people pointed in the same direction, all believing that this is something worth doing”
Ash: “Having all the different possibilities and avenues, going back to play them all out in the different ways [really helped to round the character of Tali out and make her feel like a natural person]”.
VAs only get paid for the original recording sessions, not again (as in they don’t any royalties or anything from something like the remaster)
In MELE, they left all the original credits at the end of each game in
Fred: “It’s creating in five dimensions [because of all the outcomes and relationships etc]”. Seth: “The cool thing is that the audience feels that. They’re immediately struck by how dense, thought-out, prepared and planned the entire universe is”
How was it for the new MELE devs coming onto this? Crystal: “I knew it [the series and fans’ love for it] was big, but I didn’t know it was BIG! Working on MELE there was this infectious excitement. Being part of it was so exciting.” Melanie: “I came on at ME3, I had a 3 or 4 year honeymoon period with BioWare. Coming onto MELE, I’m getting really emotional. One of my first meetings originally was going into a cinematic review for an epic Tali scene in ME3”. Crystal: “On MELE, we had an hour or 2 every day where the team came together to play the game. In those reviews, a lot of the devs who worked on the original would tell all these stories. It was really fun to hear all the inside stories on ME’s creation and be a part of that”
DC: “Should this unit get vaccinated?” Ash: “Of course”
How do they think ME will be viewed in the next 10-20 years, what do they think its legacy will be? A piece of history, ground-breaking. It broke down some barriers and opened doors for people. It’s a powerful, powerful community. It’ll continue to age quite well and be enjoyed by a new generation, it’s original and evergreen and there’s a lot in it that people go back to. There’s a lot of universal things in it (personal experiences, like there will always be love, people fighting to belong, trying to make sense of their pasts etc)
JHale and Alix did the “I love you Shepard, now go save the world again” Shep-Sam exchange and both got teary. It was then Seth’s turn to line-read: “Jesus Christ, now that I’m good and choked up, fucking mess”. Ali was also actually crying from it
Seth: “It can’t be overstated, this community is so large and global, it is one of the most powerful fandoms that I’ve ever been greeted with. Thank you”. Ash: “It’s the most amazing group of fans ever. We’re all so grateful”
Some funny anecdotes/stories:
PW didn’t realize that Alix could do different accents. They remember a time when they were listening in the booth and an Alliance soldier was complaining about the gear had been given. They said “Wow that’s really good, who is that?” and the VO producer said “That’s Alix, Patrick”, “because she wasn’t doing her [normal British accent but was doing a Californian accent instead]. Alix roasted me later for not recognizing her voice and never let me heard the end of it”
Alix: “[on Sam’s toothbrush] Caroline’s like, ‘So then she pulls her toothbrush’ and I’m like ‘What? Sorry? A toothbrush?’ and obviously it’s funny now as everyone knows that Sam’s thing is her toothbrush. Caroline’s like ‘Yeah, you’ve gotta like, flirt, over the toothbrush’ and I’m like ‘Who wrote this - a frickin toothbrush, are you kidding me? Really guys?’ ANYWAY. I was wrong and it worked. :D”
Fred: “I remember a 12 year old kid coming up to me and being like [flat tone] ‘Oh yeah. I killed you’.”
Keythe: “The other assasin I play is Kellogg in Fallout 4. People come up to me like ‘Omg. I love you so much. And then I fucking KILLED you!’”
Courtenay once went out to dinner in NZ with a few prominent people from the Game of Thrones cast. “Everyone around was making a big deal out of it like ‘Omg, it’s so-and-so from GoT’. I was feeling a bit like ‘Hi, I’m here, just nobody’. And I looked around in the restaurant and there's one guy in the corner and he’s got an N7 shirt on and he’s just looking at me like [knowing look, does a peace sign]. And I’m like ‘I got one! I love you guys!’”
PW: “I have a question for the cast members, because I don’t know if JHale has done this to all of you or if she just does it to the devs. Show of hands if Jen has ever made you do push-ups.” JHale: “It’s just you guys”
Karin: “One of my favorite editing files that I ever had was a ME file. It was before Seth was coming in for a session. I opened it up and it was just 20, 25 lines with the word ‘Shit’, over and over again, and I was like, ‘This file is perfect, I don’t need to do anything to it, have fun!’”
Seth: “Didn’t we do a track that’s like 60 seconds of laughing? Escalating laughing? I don’t know about other actors but for me getting into a laughing fit is kind of like trying to get into a crying fit, it takes the same level of commitment, you start to follow a path until like you’re hysterically uncontrollably laughing. I remember looking through the glass, and I’m deep in it at this point, and I make eye contact, and I can see from the other side of the booth and they’re like [making ‘okay you can stop’ now gestures] - ‘Like that’s plenty, we got it’ and I was like ‘okay, okay [dying]’”
JHale: “The craziest thing Mark and I had to deal with was how many times we had to say ‘I should go’”. Mark: “We also, Caroline and I tended to use that as short hand when I needed to go to the bathroom”
The panel host: “The first time I interviewed Ali was a decade ago. She did the ‘I’ll flay you alive with my mind’ line halfway through, it was my first interview and I literally fell out of my seat [from being star-struck]”
Ash line-read Tali’s drunk omni-tattoo scene and in response DC said “I totally get why people wanna romanticize all these characters :D”. Karin: “We’ve had more than one person come up to us and show us actual tattoos that looked like that”
[source]
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im-the-punk-who · 4 years ago
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Hi! I’m new to the fandom and I’m simply curious (not trying to start a feud or anything), why don’t you like Steinberg?
Hello dear anon! And welcome to the fandom! 
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Oof. That’s a question. xD 
I’m going to try and stay as uh. neutral as possible. Because I’ve already written the post I know I failed but, the intent in answering this is also not to start a feud or hurt anyone’s feelings. 
Okay, so I got fairly negative in this chilis tonight, so I want to start by saying that even in light of the opinions I’m about to express, Black Sails is one of, if not my number one, favorite TV shows of all time. Certainly in recent memory - I’ve been hyperfixating on this show for 18 months with no sign of stopping, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for everyone who worked on the show - even Steinberg. (The one exclusion is Michael Bay, he can go twist.)
AND I think Stienberg is an incredibly talented writer. Black Sails is one of my favorite shows because it does such a wonderful job of weaving stories, creating characters, and melding things in a way that is both unexpected and makes sense narratively. I have changed as a person because of the show, and they will have to pry James McGraw and Thomas Hamilton from my cold dead knives-attached-to-them hands. None of what I’m going to say is meant to detract from that.
I will also say that a lot of these issues are not particular to Steinberg and are in fact a systemic problem with American TV + Film. And I’m not leaving Robert Levine out of my criticism, it’s just that Steinberg had the biggest hand in the pot(he wrote a full half the episodes) and a lot of what I’ve heard as far as talking about the show comes from Steinberg. So, he gets the brunt. But it isn’t that I think Steinberg was the only problematic element of the show. 
Also, these are all my opinions and are colored by how I interact with my fandoms. I am not only a fandom veteran, but I work and pretty much live in the entertainment industry. I work in indie film and theatre and am surrounded by artists and creators of all walks of life, like, constantly. I know what is possible, and when I see something that can be improved, I want to note it because it is important to me to always be striving forward. Like Miranda says about Thomas, this isn’t out of malice, or out of hate. It’s because I genuinely love this show, and I love entertainment as a whole, and I think in order to get to a better, more inclusive industry we have to have hard conversations and look critically at the media we consume, and it is frustrating to me to time and again see the same faces in the room. 
But if that isn’t your cuppa, that’s fine! Fandom isn’t meant to be stressful and if all you want to do is watch a show about gay pirates that is your tomato and I applaud you. Have at it you funky motherfucker.
OH! One more. At some point I’m going to talk about Silverflint. When I do, it is NOT meant as a ‘you shouldn’t/cant ship this’ or ‘this pairing is bad’ or any negative attack on the people who ship that pairing. My criticisms in this post are exclusively about what it means for Steinberg as a writer and Black Sails’ representation of gay and mlm men. While it’s not my cuppa, this is a sail your own ship blog. 
OKAY! SO! 
My main criticisms of Steinberg & Co boil down to:
The homozygosity of the writers and directors shows a complete lack of desire to include marginalized people in the writing of a show that is about them. Which leads to:
The centering of white men while choosing a historical setting and time period that was in fact dominated by people of color and specifically a black woman, 
The gratuitous inclusion of violence against women, particularly sexual violence, and again, that the female characters are often sidelined for the central male characters. 
SO.
Black Sails is a show centered around queer, female, and black leads, and yet there were only two non white-male directors (one bi-racial man and one white woman) and only 7 female writers - one of whom was Latina. The entire rest of the major creative staff was white men. I’m not going to comment on sexualities but none of the writers or directors are out as queer according to a quick google search. 
Let me reiterate the important bit there. 
In Black Sails, where the last two seasons specifically feature around a real, actually-happened-in-history event that shaped black history in the Caribbean, there was not a single black writer on the entire show. 
This is the main difference between inclusion for inclusion’s sake, and actually centering marginalized voices. Black Sails has a ton of gay, POC, and female rep in front of the camera but practically zero representation behind it, which leads to storylines and implications that Steinberg and his writers, as white men, simply would never realize.
It’s like why Silver and Miranda never realized the true reasons James was waging war on England. They just did not have the life experiences to realize they were missing a piece of the puzzle, and so they filled in their own without even realizing they’d done so. 
Because no one in the room of Black Sails was a part of these marginalized identities, nuances get lost or mistranslated, motivations get muddled through a white man’s gaze(or a straight person’s) and implications that someone within those communities might think is obvious won’t even come up.
And again, because there were no writers or directors of color in the last two seasons (the biracial man directed episodes 2x02 and 2x04 - WHICH MAKES SENSE IMO) the entirety of the historical lore that the show bases itself on in its latter half is filtered through a white man’s lens. And so there is no discussion of how changing something changes the meaning, how leaving someone out or changing their role to be more minor might affect people for whom that is their heritage. How the entire story they’re telling might change with one simple exclusion or addition.
So, how does this relate directly to Steinberg, you ask? Well, simply, because it was his show. 
Steinberg(and Levine) were involved in every major decision about the show, from its conception, to the script, to choosing the writers and directors. They chose how they wanted the show to look, to think, what stories to tell and how they wanted to tell them. Their decisions(and the biases that formed those decisions) are woven into the show.
And look. I don’t for a second believe any of this was willful or malicious. I don’t think that John Steinberg and Robert Levine sat down one day and said ‘you know what would make the gays really angry? If we locked the only two canonically gay men up in a prison camp.’
But the decisions that were made in the show were based in ignorance in a way that shows more than just simple negligence or laziness(especially given the attention to detail in everything else). The things they leave out or change in the Maroon War plotline for instance are not small details easily missed. They are big, giant waving flags. They are things that are irreplaceable to still have the same events and stories and tell them respectfully. 
It shows an insane amount of privilege to, for instance, write a show airing during a time when the Black Lives Matter movement was at the forefront of the American conscience, include black characters and black storylines, and yet not include a single black voice on their creative team. 
In a show that centers a gay man’s love and his journey in attempting to process the horrible things done to him and his lover because of it, we are given just forty minutes of the entire show dedicated to their relationship - and just fifteen of those minutes actually feature the lover! 
(Relatedly, the entirety of the gay romantic rep is two kisses, and a forehead touch. That’s the entirety of your gay intimacy representation. And yet there are in the first two seasons alone - because that’s all I’ve clocked so far - something like twenty seven minutes of scenes involving a naked or half naked woman. Five minutes of that is explicitly wlw sex.
Again, I just want to reiterate this because it’s important in recognizing bias. 
There is fully twice as much female nudity in the first two seasons, as the entirety of the time the two gay characters have together on screen. )
Steinberg is a perfect example of how a lack of understanding why the diversity you are representing is important, matters. I dislike Steinberg because he, just like every other straight white cis man I have known, profited off of marginalized voices without including them or creating with them in mind.
Art does not exist in a vacuum. You cannot create something - especially something as back breakingly, intensely a labor of love as Black Sails - without putting several pieces of yourself into it. But those pieces color your narrative. They will expose things about you that you don’t even realize. And it’s in these places we are weakest, and why a diverse group of writers with a diverse group of experiences can help a piece be stronger. But for whatever reason, John Steinberg thought that he could make art with only people who looked and thought and experienced like him. 
The lack of representation behind the camera in Black Sails was evident in front of it and yet Steinberg is out here getting to pretend like he created the most inclusive groundbreaking show that ever existed. It is important to me, personally, to acknowledge that. And that it kind of makes my skin crawl in the way all media made by straight white (cis)men makes my skin crawl. I wish I didn’t have to feel that way about my favorite tv show just because it was created by a man of privilege, but here we are.
SO. I hope that helped? Feel free to take what you want and leave what you don’t! 
Below the cut is a more in depth look at things that I think show what I’m talking about, but that up there ^^ is the gist. <3 |D
SURPRISE!
The Maroons and the Maroon War
So the first thing I want to point out is that the Maroon War was a real thing that happened. It lasted ten years, and resulted in the most substantial victory the Maroons ever achieved against the British. Not only that, there was in fact a KICKIN’ badass female leader of the maroons named Queen Nanny, who is to this day honored as a national hero in Jamaica. While they weren’t able to drive the British out, the outcome of this war led to a mostly self-governing Maroon population in Jamaica from the mid 1700s on. This was a long term fight that had a very tangible and real outcome, even if it didn’t end in the destruction of colonialism. 
And what is this war turned into in Black Sails? A white ‘madman’s revenge’  that is doomed to failure after six months.
That, my dear pirates, is a problem for me. (And those familiar with my brand of spiceyness know that I do not ascribe to the ‘Flint is a Madman’ trope, but that IS what Steinberg ascribes to, what he seems to have written the show thinking.) 
There was no narrative reason to include the Maroon War in the narrative of Black Sails. The Maroon War didn’t happen until a decade after the Golden Age of Piracy, and aside from Silver’s wife being a black woman there is no mention of Silver ever having contact with them. To me, this feels like the choice of a showrunner who found a cool historical event and saw a chance to up the stakes of their white male heroes while getting in some sweet sweet POC rep. 
Except that they then took the major events of the Maroon War and gave them to their white characters, Flint and Silver. 
Here’s the thing. If you’re going to take a piece of culturally important history and use it for your show, you NEED to have sensitivity writers. You need to have people who are at least familiar with those events and who care about them to do them justice. Have an expert come in and read your script or go over your ideas. Or just like. Hire a black writer. Hire ONE black writer. As a treat.
The important Maroon figures, Nanny, Cudjoe, and Quao, all get sidelined or ‘sexified’ and then used as plot points for the white characters. Nanny gets split into two women - the older mother queen and Madi, the young naive warbent visionary. Quao(Mr. Scott is the closest, or Kofi possibly) gets killed off because the writers realized they didn’t exactly have a place for him in their writing. Cudjoe(Julius) gets a few scenes and one good speech but his entire role in the war gets given to Silver. And THEN. That sexy Queen Madi figure gets used as emotional bait for Silver and then has to learn he has betrayed her and destroyed the hope and freedom she had wanted to bring to her people. 
Gross, pirates. Gross.
Anne Bonny/Max/Mary Read - a heads up, this section includes a semi in-depth discussion of both Max and Anne’s sexual assaults. If that bothers you, the paragraphs talking about that begin with a ***
COOL NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT LESBIANS. Words my 20 year old self would never have imagined coming out of my mouth. 
Specifically, I want to talk about Max, and Anne, and their backstories both involving extreme sexual trauma at the hands of men. And then Mary Read and the once again sexification of female characters.
(Actually while I’m here another criticism I have of Steinberg is that his writing does not seem to recognize how queer people existed in the past - again, likely because he didn’t have any gay historians to be like ‘actually buddy that doesn’t make sense also why is Anne not dressing as a man? If you want to fuck with anything and insert modern day terminology and ideas into this show, make her non binary and REALLY piss off the hetties.’)
(This same ficitonal gay dramaturg who is definitely not me has also questioned John Steinberg repeatedly about where Mary Read is, unsatisfied with the answer ‘well we wanted her to be hot so we made her a sex worker and then had Anne have to rescue her but then we realized it would be weird not to include her actual character so we gave her a five second cameo at the very end of the series and also made her like 13.’)
Anyway! So my main point in bringing up Anne and Max is the sexual trauma they are exposed to in the show, particularly being that they are the two primary wlw in the show, who Steinberg has said he views as being completely gay, and what THAT whole unexamined idea looks like. 
***Max. My dear Max. There was literally no reason to have her be repeatedly r*ped(and for the love of god there was even less reason to make it that gratuitous and graphic). Max being assaulted like that did not add anything to the gravity of Eleanor’s betrayal. The traumatic event was being tossed aside by Eleanor, and that could have been just as emotionally damaging without the sexual assault. And the only reason for her to be continually assaulted was to bring her and Anne together. 
***The reason imo that Max’s r*pe plot was added was because it was the only thing these white straight men could come up with that felt emotionally damaging enough to them. The act of betrayal itself wasn’t enough, the act of being thrown away, of having a lover put your life in danger because of her own ambitions wasn’t enough, they needed her to be r*ped to really drive home the point. 
***Anne, on the other hand, is never shown being sexually abused, but we are given an explicit account of her own traumatic history and how Jack saved her from this vile beast who was passing her around to his friends.
But here’s the thing pirates - that never happened. According to every account we have of Anne Bonny, she chose her husband, and married him against her father’s wishes. They were probably relatively happy until her husband started being a pirate spy and Anne started cheating on him with Jack. 
And yes, when they were found out. Her husband had her beat. That’s not fucking cool, and if they really wanted to go the damsel in distress route they still could have had Jack ‘save’ her from that. But at no point was she sexually abused by her husband(at least not in any accounts I’ve read.) 
You know who did likely sexually abuse her or at least manipulate her and Mary for his own benefit? If you guessed our Rat man Jack Rackham, you would be correct, because when he found out about Mary and Anne’s (supposed, but probably real) relationship, it’s implied he extorted both of them into fucking him to keep their secret from the crew. 
The addition of sexual abuse to Anne’s past isn’t done to be true to her character and was in fact explicitly untrue. Now of course I don’t know the reasons why they chose to do this, but I can guess. Just as with Max, the most traumatic thing a male writer can think of for a female character is for them to be sexually abused.
And the most disturbing part of this to me? The parallels it has to the real world of why straight men think lesbians exist. These characters who would be called man haters in present day are given these incredibly traumatic man-centered histories. It brings up something very uncomfortable in me about particularly wlw sexuality being viewed as a reaction to trauma at the hands of men. It’s just gross, I dont like it, and honestly there is no fucking excuse for it besides a room full of white straight men writing this bullshit. A room that Steinberg chose, because they fit his ideas.
In Fact heck, the women of Black Sails in general
***I honestly struggle to think of a single female character who I think was treated fairly in Black Sails. Miranda and Eleanor are killed for taking sides and not understanding their partners, Madi is betrayed in the worst way possible, Max is given a pseudo empowering ending but has that fucking terrible start. Idelle ends off fairly well, but tied to a man she may or may not have any actual feelings for, in what is essentially a political marriage. And Anne has her entire identity tied to a man who will be dead in two years as she is robbed of any agency whatsoever without him. (Oh, and the whole r*pe thing. And also her support for Max’s r*pe or death until she started having fee-fees. Who wrote this stuff. >_>)
Even though the characterization of each and every one of these women is PHENOMENAL - and again I will repeat that I absolutely LOVE these characters as they exist in a vacuum. I think they are well rounded, real, feeling people given motivations and drives and FEELINGS and they SHOW THEIR ANGER and i LOVE THEM. 
But the show punishes them for it. Miranda is essentially fridged to move Flint’s storyline along, and to make room for Silver. Eleanor is killed for the emotional damage it will cause Rogers. Madi is placed at the center of a conflict she explicitly says she is willing to die for and then not only is her entire cause taken from her, but when she tells Silver to fuck off he - in possibly the most predictable white man move ever - says ‘no i will stay until you change your mind. I will never leave you. I don’t care about your choice in this matter, I will wait forever for you. I’m your biggest fan. I’ll follow you until you love me. papa, - paparazzi.’ 
And I touched on this before, but I want to talk in more detail about what is possibly my hottest take to date, the sexification of Mary Read and Queen Nanny, as they are presented in the show. 
Max is to Anne what Mary Read is, historically. She is the lover that Jack Rackham discovers with Anne, and then he joins them in their bed. They form a triumvirate that upholds Jack at the expense of the women. But for some reason, Steinberg didn’t want to just include Mary Read as an actual character. For some reason he needed to make Anne’s love interest a sex worker who was in need of saving (and who, coincidentally, we never see working the brothel after she becomes lovers with Anne, because she is now a madam. :) Gross.)
And Madi. My dear sweet fucking Madi who didn’t fucking deserve any of this bullshit send tweet. 
So, historically, Queen Nanny was the Queen, spiritual advisor, and the military tactician of the Windward Maroons. She would have filled both Madi and the Queen’s character roles(and Flint’s, but who’s counting. A BLACK GAY LEAD? Inconceivable. I digress.) But, I guess, because they were wishy-washing with Silver’s sexuality or felt they needed to give him a female love interest because of Treasure Island, or because they were leaning a bit too hard into the gay shit and needed to backpedal, they took Queen Nanny and split her into a character who is for all intents and purposes powerless in the war and Madi, who is young and naive and does not have any real world experience outside of the Maroon camp.
Because that’s sexy, or something. They could have had the Maroon Queen be a fucking badass lady who works and fights alongside Flint and Silver and one ups them and teaches them shit and has her own ideas about where the British can stick it, but instead they made her into the perfect caricature of a female monarch, letting the big strong men handle the dirty work or something. Because white male power fantasies. 
Just let women be powerful and not nubile and let them have character arcs over fucking thirty and let them be CENTERED in their own. fucking. narratives. 
God damnit Steinberg.
James Flint, mlm extraordinaire
Oh, my love. My most amazing child. The light of my life. My purest cinnamon roll. 
~~And now we’ve come to the dreaded Silverflint criticism part of our programming. Please please know and remember this isn’t a criticism of people who ship Silverflint. As I said up top, Your Tomato Is Not My Tomato and that’s cool. Please don’t take this next part as an attack on Silverflint as a fandom ship.~~
My criticism of Steinberg as it relates to Flint is related to:
What a romantic/sexual relationship with Silver being the basis of the tension and plot means for Flint in particular as a gay or mostly mlm man. 
Refusing to confirm Thomas and James being alive at the end and honestly the whole finale in general but like I’ll try and focus.
The major problem I have with Silver and Flint being coded as in love with each other is the implications there in terms of gay men’s relationships to other men. 
From every corner, men are inundated with the idea that any close relationship between them must be gay. That intimacy cannot exist unless there are sexual feelings involved. That a relationship cannot be close, deep and soul shattering and life altering, unless one guy secretly(or not so secretly) wants to bone the other dude. That two men cannot value each other as partners or friends or truly know each other unless they are gay.
Seeing both of the meaningful relationships Flint forms with other men be sexually coded feels a bit the same way as Anne and Max’s sexual assault plotlines does vis-a-vis being wlw. (Even with Gates, Flint never spoke about Thomas or his plans - Silver is absolutely the closest person to Flint besides Thomas and Miranda.) And this is just as true for Silver. Having both Flint and Madi - the two people he trusts - both be people he’s in love with also just feels. I don’t know. 
It feels like a confusion between male intimacy and male love that is so so familiar to me as a gay man I could choke on it. Where they wanted these men to have a deep and really lasting connection, but could only figure out how to do it if they were in love. Friendship wouldn’t have been enough - only romantic and sexual love is enough for the gay man(or men, at all).
Just because it isn’t queerbaiting doesn’t mean it’s good rep, and I would have liked to see truly deep male friendships that did not center on sexual attraction - particularly for Flint as a confirmed mlm(and Silver too, if you’re counting him. The same arguments for why I dislike Flint being paired with Silver are also true in the reverse.) 
Even if both Flint and Silver were confirmed mlm I still would have LOVED to see a platonic relationship between them. In fact I would have loved that EVEN MORE. Men! Who fuck men! Not needing to fuck each other to be important to one another! Who made this. Very delicious. 
But because there weren’t any queer writers on the show, writers who understand this kind of struggle that gay and mlm men face, they thought ‘oh, let’s also have them be in love with each other. More gay rep is better gay rep, right?’ False. THOUGHTFUL gay rep is better gay rep.
Okay and here’s my last thing. The fact that Steinberg refuses to say whether or not the explicitly mlm men are alive at the end of the show - that the words he specifically uses are ‘up for interpretation’ is. Fuck, it’s gross, okay? It’s fucking gross. 
I have been around enough men, enough people in power, enough people with leverage who also know how to play the field, to know that when someone wants a group’s support but does not agree with them, their go to phrasing is that it is ‘up for debate’ or ‘up for interpretation.’
Say the gays are alive. Steinberg refusing to acknowledge the reality of the ending of his show to maintain his own sense of artistic integrity is what, honestly, really sets me off about him and I don’t care if this is a nuanced take.
Like yes, death of the author. I honestly don’t care if he thinks they’re dead or alive. What I care about is that he thinks he can get away with being clever and leaning hard into a story is true/untrue’ - doesn’t realize what the implications of that are, and didn’t when he was writing, and didn’t have anyone else in the room who would think about it either. 
ANYWAY. So this is....my long drawn out explanation for why I do not like Steinberg. Uhhhhh tune in next week for more of my totally unpopular opinions!
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whyqueerbaitingisbad · 4 years ago
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movies & shows
cracks knuckles* alright this is going to be more of a rant than an analysis because i’m basing this on both my research, but also how it felt to personally be baited by these shows. there are obviously more pieces of bad (almost every horror movie) and good ones but these are the ones i’ve watched.
please keep in mind that i am but one queer and everyone has different opinions.
Supernatural (CW) 2005
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This show is 15 years old and just ended. From season 5 till 15, there has been tension between two of the lead characters. They were constantly shipped together and not only did the entire fandom know about this ship but so did almost all of Tumblr. On top of that, the actors and show runners knew about it as well. Which is why it makes it ridiculous that it was constantly pushed aside while the romantic coding  kept happening, even after show runners dismissed it as being intentional. The Destiel (Dean x Cas) case has been going on for years, and as the show came to its end, many fans had hope. But N O P E. Instead, we got a love confession from Cas where Dean looked like he was near constipated and the Cas was killed and sent into a fiery place that was not hell but s u p e r  h e l l.
… w hy.
Sherlock (BBC) 2010
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Just like Supernatural, this show was renown on Tumblr for not only how good it was, but its hinting at a potential relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. But again, like Supernatural, the intentional tension between the two characters was denied by producers. This caused an uproar within the fandom, and even left some people believing that, after the last season aired, it had been a joke and the producers were hiding a “secret, unaired season” because they had felt so robbed by this show that had implied something and denied it.
The 100 (CW) 2014
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We got lesbians. We got background gays. We were happy. Then, all of a sudden, one of them is killed for no reason. Did it advance the plot? No. Was she fighting and died in battle? lol no. She was doing literally nothing and got shot and died. And then the producers kept bringing her back once a season in the form of a ghost or illusion because why? Because she was a fan favourite queer character. ✨bury your gays and sparingly bring them back for profit anyone?✨
Voltron: Legendary Defender (Netflix) 2016
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*deep breathe* This one is a special disaster. Not only was there romantic tension and romantically coded scenes for 7 seasons, but producers, voice actors and artists working on the show repeatedly said “don’t worry klance (Keith x Lance) shippers, you’ll be happy”
. … w h e r e??? You code one of their scenes with a sunset in the background while they talk about love and then one of them goes on a date with someone who has declined his advances for 7 seasons but now in season 8 decides to do a full 180. Not only that, but you announce at a Comic Con (a convention) that a character is gay and has a fiancé, only to kill off the fiancé and never make it explicit in the show except at the last second of the last episode where he marries a no name character. 
Personally, i’d like to say a big fuck you to the show that strung me along for 2 years and never stopped saying we’d be happy to then pull the rug out from under us and call us crazy for thinking anything from the past 8 seasons was intentional.
Scooby-Doo (2002) 
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While not being outwardly queerbaiting, this movie’s filmmaker has just revealed some shocking news, which wasn’t at all shocking to the gays who had watched this movie over the years. In July of 2020, James Gunn, the filmmaker of Scooby-Doo, revealed in a podcast that, initially, Velma was explicitly gay in his script, but then the studio watered it down until it became nothing. This isn’t an example of baiting as much as it is changing a character’s initial design to “better fit an audience”. The worst part of all this is that with Velma’s character having been written with a l i t t l e queer subtext, people had been theorizing about if since the movie came out, but were always yelled at by the internet for “imagining something that isn’t there”. But now, even with it being said that the initial point was for her to be gay, people have no objections to still refusing to accept it. Why?? So we can’t get the subtext gays OR the confirmed gays?? Make it make sense.
Brooklyn 99 (NBC) 2013
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To have the queer characters firstly introduced without mentioning their sexualities and have it brought up naturally was so goddamn nice to see, because no one does a big deal about it unless they ask for that. This show is amazing in general but the way they show their queer characters is *chefs kiss*.
She-ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix) 2018
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This. Show. My heart SOARS. It's just a remake of an old show so absolutely nothing was ever expected, but then it was sprinkled in and ENDED WITH A BANG. And it was so beautiful and real to see the struggle of two friends who care for each other and want to be together but have different visions of the world fall in love. And they also had characters with disabilities, a non-binary character and jUST SUCH A GOOD SHOW.
Kipo and The Age of Wonderbeasts (Netflix) 2020
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This is a case where you go into it not expecting anything and are BLOWN AWAY by the bare minimum. And not because it’s bad!! It's mind blowing because this is the simple representation we need!! Not something over the top, but an every day relationship. It’s just two boys falling in love and going on dates and being nervous around each other, yet i was so stunned. Because it’s not shown enough. I should not be this excited over something that should be this normal. 10/10 though this show is so good for all kinds of representation.
Steven Universe (Cartoon Network) 2013
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This show did so much for queer representation with its general message of loving everyone and loving who you want. Especially since it was aired on Cartoon Network, a channel for kids, it was able to help normalize something so looked down upon in some circles. It made it easy to watch for s o m e people because it's a cartoon but it's so beautiful to see these ladies so in love with each other, both platonically and romantically and we see them have a family dynamic that isn’t a “nuclear family”. Rebecca Sugar (creator) really said “lemme just break all stereotypes real quick”.
Adventure Time (Cartoon Network) 2010
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It's the “knowing a fanbase shipped something so hard that the creators made it canon” for me. This relationship had been theorized by fans for years, but it had never been explicit in the show. When the finale episode came out and the two shared a kiss, it was a moment of celebration. The producer of the show said that it had not really been planned but when the episode was being made, the choice of what happened was given to one of the artists (bless your soul Hanna K. Nyströmthe). And as the show releases little bonus episodes, its latest was centered around Marceline and Bubblegum and their relationship. AND WE LOVE TO SEE OUR DOMESTIC LESBIANS BEING HAPPY AND IN LOVE.
Yuri on Ice!!! (anime) 2016
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The fact that an A N I M E gave us a love story between two men is mind boggling and it makes me so happy!! Especially because it's a Japanese show and they’re very conservative about these things just makes it more emotional. The creators said they wanted to make the anime take place in a world where gay/straight isn’t a thing, it’s just love (ladies, you’re going to make me cry). So as the weekly episodes came out and fans start speculating, THEY GAVE US THE LAST FEW EPISODES FULL OF ROMANCE AND EMOTIONAL SCENES BETWEEN THE TWO AND THEN THEY GET R I N GS?!???!! You watch for the figure skating, you stay for the figure skaters that are in love.
Shadowhunters (Freeform) 2016
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*insert me being frustrated that the actors are straight so we can move on from that disappointment*
This show really said “let’s name a whole episode after this couple because they deserve it”. But seriously, they gave us two characters whose entire plot does not center around their sexualities while still showing us the differences in a relationship between someone experienced and someone new at this. They were both powerful and amazing characters apart from each other, with their own story lines and goals but they loved each other so much omgs. SO MUCH. 
It was so great to watch.
Love, Simon (2018) 
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There’s a lot of disagreement on whether this movie is good representation or not. However, we need to take into consideration that this was Hollywood’s first movie with a main character that was gay, where the story’s focus was on Simon’s love story. The biggest problem, for me at least, was that the actor playing Simon is a straight man and not queer. My problem is not with him, but the fact that there are other actors that are gay and that could have played Simon just as well. (the love interested was however played by a queer actor so ✨progress✨)
All in all, this movie does represent what a lot of queer kids have to go through: being outed at school, how they then come out, the bullying and doubt they go through.
The book is also really good.
Call Me By Your Name (2018)
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This movie is so aesthetically pleasing and was able to capture the confusion and heartbreak felt by a boy who’s struggling with his own feelings towards a man. His inner conflict and joy and l o v e he feels but doesn’t know how to deal with is so well communicated through the screen and just breaks your heart because it feels so real.
But again, they could’ve gotten gay actors to play gay characters…
through having this list here, i want to show you that it’s not hard for creators to give good queer representation. the LGBTQ+ community isn’t asking for much, we just want to be well represented on screen as just a regular character, not some token queer kid there for the diversity points. having been exposed to so much queerbaiting and just not seeing any representation on screen, i always get over-excited when i see a queer character, and that’s not how it should be. it should be a normal thing, something you can find in most pieces of media, just like there’s a straight white cisgender person in everything.
and they seriously need to start casting queer actors for queer characters...
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know-the-way · 4 years ago
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thoughts on Spellwood in part 4? should we curb our enthusiasm for Spellwood in the future?
Okay, first things first, I originally read that as “curb stomp our enthusiasm” and was like “fuck, that’s a bit intense, okay” and had a wee giggle over it, so thank you for that.
Second - It’s genuinely up to you. I have always advised shippers of any ship to be cautious because shows often like to fuck around, but if what you’re really asking is if I still see potential or possibility for something (backstory, a conversation, reconciliation, etc) - then yes, I do.
One of the things that I always found necessary for Spellwood was that Faustus needed to pay for his actions. And he needed to understand why. The man was (rightfully) tortured all throughout the season and I personally think, by the defeated tone in his voice when Prudence last visits him in the witches cell (“I’m blind and chained, daughter, what more could I do?” when previously he was very much “oh no, I’ll still prevail, you think you’ve won, but I have greater powers on my side and you can’t stop me”), he understands in some regard that his ambitions were... quite frankly, really stupid.
I also... okay... this is pure gut feeling based on Richard’s acting choices (a biased gut feeling), but I got the impression that Faustus gained some sort of genuine, yet twisted admiration or respect for Sabrina in their two weeks of training. I don’t think the praise he gave while Ambrose, Prudence, Roz, and Agatha were there was him posturing - I personally think he meant it. Holding back an ever-persistent wave of nothingness clearly requires a lot of strong will and determination, and the fact that Sabrina accomplished that is impressive. It doesn’t stop him from wanting to kill her for her power, of course, because - even if he decided that he maybe even liked her - at that point, he’s gone too far not to see it to its originally-intended end (and he’s full tilt insane, as well).
YET... when he sees Zelda, he looks frightened and hesitates. Then, when he raises the knife - the strained look on his face, to me, was like “you have to, you bloody have to, nut up and just fucking do it.” Then, when Zelda yells “STOP,” he looks up in frustration and sighs - which could be interpreted as “fucking hell, don’t make me rethink this, don’t try to weasel a conscience from me now, I’ve accepted this is who I am, I’m here with the knife, this has to be it.”
These interactions left me personally with three things - 1. imo, there’s still a human in there somewhere... it’s a very small sliver, but it’s there 2. if I’m correct in thinking he gained respect for Sabrina, that theoretically eliminates one of his biggest motivations for revenge (because he previously saw her as unworthy and beneath him and defiant without reason) and 3. the coven got catharsis... maybe not to a completely satisfactory level, but catharsis nonetheless.
You could read all of this as a closure to his arc - I mean, as we know it right now, he is scattered in pieces across the Earth. But... given that my feeble monkey brain can already think of a few ways they could remedy that (and why they’d want/need to) - I think there’s a chance for a return.
AND - to tie it all back in, now that he has paid (in part) for his actions and other characters have experienced different layers of betrayal and mal intent... Zelda and Faustus could, at the very least, come to a cautious understanding of each other and where they went wrong.
Example scenario:
Faustus: “Sucks to be lied to by someone close to you, huh?”
Zelda: “Idk, did it suck being trapped in your head while not having control of your body nor any idea of when, if ever, you’d get it back?”
(Obviously, there are many more layers to their issues that would need addressing, and no - what happened will never be acceptable or okay or even justified, but as a human person myself - I can personally testify that we are very complicated creatures and our relationships even more so. Sometimes, against all better judgement, we allow people new chances. And sometimes, rarely but sometimes, they surprise us.)
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luluxa · 5 years ago
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Drifter
Something I wanted to do for ages - an illustration to one of my original worlds. And I’m using James as a character because of reasons :D
Edit: the reasons :)
An intro for an AU fic set in one of my original worlds. Written a while ago and by now I honestly don't know when (if) I'm gonna finish it, and as a standalone bit it doesn't make much sense, but I guess it can provide some context for the art.
Guide You
Summary: Jeremy and Richard are set to have an adventure in the lands they know very little about, and of course, for that they will need a guide.
So it would appear they were going in the entirely wrong direction.
Hammond glares at Jeremy, weariness and anger on his little mug underlined poignantly by a ratty beard.
“You are a bellend, Clarkson,” he says very politely due to their new company, a nice change to all the abuse that was hurled at Jeremy for the last three days.
Their – well, Jeremy doesn’t want to say ‘saviour’, since they weren’t dying or anything – their finder inclines his head at Hammond’s expressiveness. An inclined hand is all the emotion that can be read off him, since he doesn’t remove his scarf or goggles, remaining mysteriously faceless and nameless.
“You could turn around and go in whichever direction you wished,” Jeremy retorts testily. He really doesn’t fancy appearing incompetent and pathetic in front of strangers.
“And then explain to your wife and children I just left you in the desert for the wild goats to feast on your flesh?”
Jeremy huffs, gesturing at his face. “Of course, the wild goats wouldn’t do you any harm since you look so much like one they’d accept you in their ranks immediately.”
Hammons scratches at his beard. “I look like Rob Dawny Jr and you know it. Don’t be jealous of my good looks.”
Jeremy lets out a massively sarcastic snort and the mystery man sighs and switches off the engine of his Falcon.
“Would you prefer to continue with this admittedly entertaining comedy double act or shall we make a camp?”
Jeremy and Hammond both grin at the comment and agree that the camp would be great.
“I’m Ainnay,” the man introduces himself at last, as they all dismount. “You, I gather, are from Ktider.”
“We are,” Jeremy nods, “I’m Clarkson, the midget is Hammond, and we were supposed to make a documentary about the desert but he’d challenged me to a race and then we got into the sandstorm and lost all our bearings.”
“You lost our bearings!” Hammond starts again, jabbing a finger at him. “I told you were going the wrong way!”
“Oh sure, because the direction you had proposed wouldn’t have lead us to the mountains a thousand miles from where we’ve started!”
“Yeah, where there’s at least some civilisation and not endless dunes with just an occasional goat skeleton stuck in a dried bush!”
“Gentlemen, please,” Ainnay interrupts them suddenly, holding his palms up. “It’s very easy to get lost in the desert, especially for someone who’s never been here before. Experienced Freemen sometimes get lost in sandstorms. I wouldn’t fight about it on your place. Of course, going for a race in the desert is another matter entirely,” he adds smoothly.
Jeremy gapes at him for a second, exchanges a glace with Hammond, and they both smirk.
“The race was definitely not my fault,” Jeremy says easily.
“You agreed to that!”
“And you agreed to follow me around! Five years ago, in fact!”
At last, Hammond gives up. “Yeah, all right, that was my biggest mistake and I have no choice but to concede it,” he says with as much sarcasm as he can muster.
While they were arguing, Ainnay managed to start a fire and somehow task semi-distracted Hammond with erecting a canopy, so Jeremy can celebrate his victory by sitting down and taking off his incredibly annoying itchy scarf.
“Ohh, I swear, it only cumulates the sand in your hair and does nothing to protect you from it!” he groans, scratching at his head vigorously, while Hammond nods along. “This is rubbish!”
Having brought all his pots and little bags under the canopy, Ainnay sits down as well. “It’s cos you’d put it on all wrong,” he comments. “I’ll show you later how it’s done, but one of the main things is that you put your goggles on it, not under it.”
Jeremy shrugs sheepishly and then has to spend a while ignoring Hammond’s speculations about the comfort of goggles-wearing, because Ainnay takes all his head-gear off as well and appears to be immensely pleasurable to look at.
Swallowing and averting his eyes with an effort from the sinfully pretty bow of pink lips, Jeremy hopes his blush will be mistaken for a heat rash. Will he ever be past this stupid and perverse notion of finding men attractive?
“Are you a Nahan, then?” he hears Hammond ask cautiously and looks up to see a red vertical stripe on Ainnay’s forehead, revealed now when he’s flicked the curls away from his face.
“I am. Couldn’t you tell that by me name?” he asks, looking confused, his accent very slight but audible now when Jeremy thinks about it.
Jeremy glances at Hammond, both of them shrugging.
“Not really. Should we?” Jeremy scowls. “Are we being massively ignorant and rude somehow, by any chance? In which case, please excuse us, we’ve literally came over here a week ago and know close to nothing about the local customs.”
Ainnay smiles, eyes squinted and sparkly, making Jeremy’s insides quiver. “No, not so far, although I can tell already you have a potential.”
Jeremy finds it in himself to snort and Hammond grins ruefully – well, he could get away with a lot, being stupidly charming when he wants to, but Jeremy has nothing to counterbalance his bellendism. He rather hopes he won’t offend Ainnay terribly at some point, as he does, indeed, has a lot of potential – and experience – in this area.
“Nahan people have pretty distinct names,” Ainnay explains calmly, making tea. “A Nahan man will always give you just one, it’s our ‘Amma namet’, a tribe’s name, given to us by someone from the tribe we live in. Those names are Ruisk in origin and usually descriptive – mine, for example, is two words: Ain – soft and Nay – hard.” Ainnay glances up from the tea, looking very soft and lovely indeed, and although Jeremy has known him for twenty minutes, he can tell the ‘hard’ part is there as well.
He nods. “Got it. Why is it always just one name?”
Ainnay offers them cups with tea and switches to making some sort of heavily spiced sandwiches that Hammond eyes with deep distrust.
“Do you believe in any sort of higher power – gods, fate, anything at all?”
Jeremy scowls at the sudden subject swerve. “No,” he says categorically, and Hammond shrugs with indifference. The little fussy moron sips the tea and tries very hard to not make a face – Jeremy thinks the tea is perfectly fine, but then again, Hammond is known to make faces at water. “I mean, we have organised religion in Ktider but it’s no more than a collection of fairy tales and a list of ridiculously strict rules and improbable threats of post-mortem punishment to make an illiterate peasant behave.”
Ainnay frowns fleetingly at that. “How odd. Well, here people do believe in higher powers, although no one’s imposing it on them. I would guess it’s because living somewhere as unpredictable and dangerous as a desert makes you invoke anything at all to ease your struggle with the world around.”
Jeremy contemplates it and nods. “Maybe. The seamen are like that as well – every sea-going man I’ve ever known was superstitious as hell, regarding the seas to be well, almost a deity of its own.”
Ainnay nods. “Yes, so is the desert – you know these lands as Tensah, I think, but it’s really the name of the goddess that is supposedly looking over us.”
Jeremy notes that Ainnay doesn’t seem to be very religious himself, wondering, why doesn’t he conform to the beliefs of his people.
“So what does it have to do with names?” Hammond asks, ever impatient and probably annoyed with the non-promising dinner.
Ainnay doesn’t look bothered with the rudeness, remaining serenely calm and immersed in the food making. “Our tribe names are designed to hide us from the goddess who’s known to not like men very much. Women go by the first name always, as they’ve nothing to fear.”
Men fearing a goddess sounds pretty entertaining – Jeremy’s heard about ancient people worshipping Earth like the ultimate Mother, and it was proposed by some historians in those ancient times women were the rulers – he wonders, whether it was or hell, still is, true for the local desert people.
“I think we have something similar to your Amma namet thing – nicknames,” Jeremy says on an afterthought. “His is Hamster,” he points at Hammond, making the latter glare.
Ainnay hums. “Yeah, we have nicknames too, but it’s not the same thing. Amma namet is absolutely formal and ritualistic rather than amusing and affectionate. It’s for permanent use, since our first name has to be hidden. The first name can only be used one on one, and only your mother can use it, or a person to whom you give that name – usually a life partner. So, if a Nahan man ever gave you his first name he would be actually saying ‘I love you and I want to spend my life with you’.”
“I hope to never hear that one,” Hammond says immediately, and Jeremy immediately and ridiculously wonders what is Ainnay’s first name.
Bad thought, he tells himself angrily. Incredibly bad and out of order.
They receive their plates with the sandwiches and Jeremy makes a point to declare it very tasty – which it is – to counterbalance Hammond’s politely concealed but still evident disgust.
“Don’t mind him. Hammond hates everything that isn’t eggs and gin,” Jeremy explains, talking away his portion to not waste anything.
Hammond lets him with relief. “I don’t hate everything. I’m just not used to foreign food, sorry. I have some crackers on me, I’ll be fine with those.”
Ainnay shrugs. “All right. What’s gin?”
They spend another hour discussing alcoholic beverages and food, Hammond increasingly horrified with Ainnay’s descriptions of the local drinks that seem to include snake bile and scorpions, until Jeremy realises that while remaining perfectly deadpan, Ainnay is having a lot of fun making Hammond queasy, and sits back to be entertained.
“There’s no such thing as rotten shark soup!” Hammond cries eventually, riled up and red in the face. “You’re having me on!”
Ainnay looks at him with clear-eyed sincerity. “Why would I be having you on? It’s a delicacy, I’ve had some, they serve it with fried whale intestines – it’s actually delicious, as long as you don’t breath in.”
On that, Jeremy gives up, giggling and pointing helplessly at Hammond’s constipated mug. “Your stupid tiny face, all scandalised,” he manages at last. “Ainnay, you’ve got to stop or Hammond will be sick.”
Looking pleased with himself, Ainnay nods. “As you wish. Although everything I said was the truth.”  
“You’re worse than Clarkson,” Hammond says, looking hurt. “I hoped to meet someone nice on this journey.”
Ainnay’s expression remains as kindly and innocent as it was. “Tough luck.”
Jeremy dissolves in giggles again, delighted beyond words, and Hammond turns away pointedly, sulking.
“And here I thought we’ll be stuck with just the scenes of the dunes and Hammond moaning,” Jeremy says, pleased, patting his absorber under the coat. He’ll have to sort the stream soon, to not spend hours and days editing the raw material. “That would’ve made a boring show.”
Noticing Ainnay’s confusion, Jeremy produces the absorber disc from under the layers of his dusty robes. “We have them on us 24/7, basically. Bit difficult to make a comprehensive story out of the uninterrupted stream, but we resolved it by embracing a lot of the randomness. People like it, oddly enough.”
Ainnay just looks more confused. “Hold on. I did not understand a word. What is that thing?”
Hammond turns around from his sulking and his crackers to gape at Ainnay along with Jeremy. “You don’t know what it is?”
Ainnay shrugs. “Should I?”
Jeremy looks at his absorber. “Well, yeah, since it came from your part of the world. It’s black niurite, it absorbs the perception of a person connected to it.”
Still blank, Ainnay reaches for the absorber but thinks better of it. “Could you be more specific, please?”
“It absorbs your perception, things you see, or hear, or smell, or what you feel by touch – it stores it as a stream of uh, sensory experience. People then can duplicate it to their absorbers and tune in. It’s a bit like dreaming,” Jeremy tries to explain, “only it’s not your dreaming and everything is real. Well, you could tune into your own stream, which would be like remembering something, but you know, with full presence in the moment. So what Hammond and I are doing here is making a stream – after editing it’ll be his and mine streams in turn combined into one. There should be also a third-person perspective of our discmen, but since we’ve lost them right after coming here, it’ll be just our points of view, so to speak.”
Ainnay listens with his mouth open. “Whoa,” he manages at last. “That’s amazing!”
Bemused, Jeremy exchanges a glance with Hammond again. “Are you saying you have nothing like that in your lands?”
Still transfixed with the absorber, Ainnay shakes his head. “No. We don’t really know what to do with black niurite – your lot likes it enough to buy it, so we sell it to you. We just thought you use it for jewellery or something else decorative. Can you show me how it works?”
Luckily, Hammond has a spare absorber, so he gives it to Ainnay, tying his scarf around his eyes securely and explaining how to connect to it, which takes Ainnay a while but eventually, he lets out a startled yelp and waives his hands about, reacting to something Hammond has on it.
“Bloody Norah!”
Filing away the unfamiliar curse, Jeremy watches Ainnay go from flaily amazement to the stillness of intent concentration – he always loves to watch kids do it, but a grown man discovering streaming is especially endearing.
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bigskydreaming · 4 years ago
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Have you seen Linkara's review of The Dark Knight Returns? He goes into why the view of Robin as a soldier, popularized but by no means invented by Miller, is so dangerous.
I have not, but I need to refresh my memory before I go check it out because I’ll either agree with it or be infuriated by it and I can’t remember which just at the moment but would like to before I restart that argument ten years later.
LOL, so like, I knew Linkara yeeears and years ago. We were both regular posters on Gail Simone’s messageboard on CBR like fifteen years ago, maybe longer. Pretty sure we even met in person a couple times at Gail’s annual SDCC breakfast meetups, but not sure. I do know for sure though that he and I were both involved in a three way argument about this very topic with another guy.....I just can not remember if he was the one who agreed with me or the one we were both fighting with about it, LOL. I THINK we were in agreement as while I wasn’t like.....as pro-DC as most YABSers were given that it was Gail’s board and I mostly hung out at the X-boards and just swung by YABS once a week or so BECAUSE I couldn’t stand all the ass-kissing that went on at that board so that DC writers and artists would hang out and post regularly, LOL, like I’m pretty sure I remember Link as being one of the less....vehement of the pro-DC camp.
(Tbh, one of the biggest ways in which I disagreed with Gail on stuff is I UNDERSTOOD her feeling a need to be civil with other DC pros even if she didn’t like them personally, I just....couldn’t manage the same and didn’t feel any desire to try. Like for example, not sure how many people know who Ethan van Sciver is, but he’s a long time high profile DC artist, best known for his GL stuff.....but he used to hang around YABS pretty regularly. EvS is ALSO a haaaaaardcore conservative, Trumpian, and all around terrible person. And he always was.
Like he’d play it civil back then but his opinions were downright hateful on a variety of topics, particularly towards marginalized groups, but he was good at picking just the right moments to half-assedly walk something back the second he took something ‘too far’ - so like, the end result was he said it and everyone saw and remembered, but before anyone could react he’d drop the mea culpa card and be like oh I’m sorry I know that was out of line, I was just caught up in the moment and it’s all good cuz this is all friendly debate anyway right? We’re just talking here.
And he’d pull this crap all the time but because he was a DC pro, people would let him get away with it and warn people off coming down on him so he didn’t feel unwelcome at the board. Now the painfully ironic twist here is that shockingly, totally unexpectedly.....fast forward to about five or six years ago where good old Ethan burns a shit ton of bridges and decides well why not make things a dumpster fire for everyone in my vicinity....and he became the driving force behind a bunch of alt right comic book fans starting their own weak ass version of Gamergate, only called Comicsgate. It never was nearly as....big...as Gamergate was, but it was still ugly. And the thing is, Ethan sicced his sycophants on other industry pros he’d worked with over the years but always disagreed with on politics.....like really let the ugly fly....and most of these pros included Gail as well as a bunch of the other DC professionals from back in the YABS days.
Because thing was....that was literally WHY he’d hung out at YABS so much back then, despite being so far in disagreement with most of the progressive leaning board. He was always just interested in stirring shit up, he never actually had the slightest interest in debate or seeing the other side of anything....he just knew how to play the right cards to get the right people to come to his defense and cool things off rather than run him off, in the name of keeping things civil and such...all so he could start it all up again a couple weeks later.
And this is literally why that kind of thing doesn’t work for me at all. Because he wasn’t really that subtle even then, most people knew all along exactly what he was doing, and letting him get away with shit that would have gotten anyone else banned purely because he was a industry pro just meant that his opportunities to subject anyone in his vicinity to just vile, hateful shit ended up more protected than all the marginalized posters on that board who didn’t come to it to see his shit but had to constantly listen to it anyway because people were more interested in making excuses for him than making it comfortable for everyone else.
And in the end, he ended up turning on the very people who’d protected him from everyone else ripping into his hateful viewpoints with the directness they merited. Which just. Sigh. To me just smacks of a whole lot of unnecessary years spent putting up with his barely veiled bullshit until he didn’t bother even veiling it anymore....even though the reality is NOBODY was ever buying into his veil of it in the first place and we all knew what was right behind it all along. Anyway. Not that it matters LOL, but good old Eth, was one of the primary reasons I decided not to go into comics when I had a couple of opportunities come up, as I decided to focus my efforts on Hollywood at the time instead. Lmao, I figured if I was going to have to keep my mouth shut about coworkers whose opinions I vehemently disagreed with in the name of professionalism, I might as well focus on the profession that would pay me more money to keep that to myself. Look, at least capitalism is useful when ADHD and trying to pretend to be decisive about life choices.)
Long ramble nobody asked for aside, like I said, I can’t remember Link’s take on this particular topic but it’s likely the one I agreed with for the most part. My own take has always been that Miller sucks and if he said it chances are I said he was wrong because he is about everything and my religion is people saying so and by people I mean me. My religion’s also big on self-actualization. Not sure what else, I did just make it up and I think I’ll probably just stop there so I don’t accidentally make it a cult.
But yeah. I mean, maybe it’ll surprise people given how critical I am of the abusive elements of canon, but I’ve never applied the child endangerment/child soldier argument to sidekicks. It’s obviously not that they don’t get hurt in these stories and even traumatized, it’s not that they’re NOT in danger as kids....it’s just why I put such an emphasis on it being their choice to fight crime and be heroes and NOT something that Bruce or any other mentor or parent pushed them into.
Because this is one of the reasons why death of the author more often than not just doesn’t work for me. Authorial intent matters. Readers are always free to interpret a text however they want, regardless of authorial intent....but IF a writer has a specific intent behind a narrative choice, chances are most interpretations that refuse to align themselves with that viewpoint aren’t really all that RELEVANT to the story the writer was trying to tell in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong. Those other interpretations can still exist. They’re allowed to exist. People can abide by them all they want. But if someone’s takeaway from a story is a deliberate choice to read it entirely different from the story the writer intended it to be.....like, their interpretation is all well and good, but it’s not actually at all a RELEVANT commentary on or review of the story the writer was actually writing. They’re not actually saying the writer did a poor job of telling the story or was wrong in how they did it....because they’re not actually talking about the story the writer was actually telling.
Thus their commentary on it exists. But it’s just not that relevant. Because nothing in it even CAN offer an opinion on how else the writer could or should have written that story....because the story they ARE talking about isn’t the story the writer was even interested in writing.
Now, there are some times when authorial intent DOESNT matter. And when criticism of it is entirely fair and earned even if it’s of something the writer didn’t consciously or deliberately write into their story at all. But these things are almost ALWAYS unconscious. Unlike what I was just talking about, where the writer was very consciously writing the story a certain way for a reason, and thus people who aren’t interested in reading the story the way it was written to be read just can’t offer up a commentary that says anything useful or meaningful about the story that was actually written...the flip side of this is when the writer puts things they don’t intend into the text, but still are very much there all the same.
And this sort of thing applies to things like micro aggressions or racism, homophobia, sexism....things where a writer didn’t sit down intending to be offensive or alienate their readers but still put in things that they don’t think to view as offensive due to their own privilege and lack of experience EXPERIENCING the microaggressions that marginalized readers might be all TOO familiar with and thus can’t avoid reading into a passage where the writer might not have INTENDED harm or offense, but delivered it all the same. Because they didn’t think to put it into their story, they weren’t TRYING to....but they didn’t think to avoid putting it in there either, even if it’s because they didn’t know to until it’s pointed out to them that it’s there.
And this also applies to when the writer puts into their story, via whatever viewpoint they’re writing from, things that herald from their own viewpoints, how they view the world, even in terms of unconscious biases or expectations....but things that readers can still interpret as something they vehemently disagree with, even if the narrative seems to condone it. Because a lot of these viewpoints are things where the way they’re written....even just not coming out as clearly not condoning or agreeing it can effectively be read as tacitly condoning it.
So to apply all this to the idea of child sidekicks and child soldiers:
They’re not one and the same, and thus treating them as one and the same or interchangeable is IMO an inherently flawed perspective that doesn’t ever have anything USEFUL or RELEVANT to the stories that most people are trying to tell with child heroes and sidekicks.
With the notable exceptions of Miller, Ennis and certain other writers who by their own admission usually aren’t even trying to write about superheroes but rather deconstructions of the genre as a whole.....the vast majority of comic book writers, even the ones I dislike LOL, aren’t writing about child soldiers when they write characters like the Robins. Because CONSCIOUSLY, with INTENT, they’re already trying to write something completely different:
Child heroes and sidekicks are almost universally written to be child (although to be really fair, for the most part they’re largely teen) empowerment allegories. They’re youth power fantasies.
They’re stories about kids, about teens, getting to be the ones to save the world. About kids who don’t need adults to save them because they save themselves or their friends. Kids saving other people, other kids, grown adults. Stories about child HEROES are written as metaphors of hope for the future and the promise of the younger generations, or power fantasies where kids who feel helpless and powerless in their own lives can read these stories and vicariously imagine through the characters the idea of one day having the power to save themselves or other people, what that would be like, what they’d do with that.
But here’s the important part, and why people interpreting these teen and kid heroes as child soldiers doesn’t really offer relevant commentary to stories that are written to be allegorical youth power fantasies, regardless of authorial intent or death of the author....
And that’s because the key ingredient here, the thing that’s not really up for debate or open to interpretation....is that these stories can ONLY ever be allegorical.
Because like I said before, child heroes and child soldiers are not the same thing. There simply IS NO REAL WORLD EQUIVALENT for child and teen heroes as comic books style them.
And that’s why the fact that with most every child hero in comics, no adult makes them be a hero. They choose that for themselves, it’s almost universally characterized as a self-determination or empowerment moment rather than one of coercion like Miller likes to characterize it. His choice to characterize Bruce essentially drafting Dick as Robin to fight alongside him does nothing to provide commentary on any other superhero story, no matter what he’s told himself or his fans, because his story is the only one where Robin was drafted!
You can’t condemn narrative choices that nobody but you has actually written and then act like you’re saying something about any narrative other than your own fsjsjfshfzgzfhgs.
And you also can’t claim that you’re just seeing in the text something that’s inherently there and the other writers didn’t just see to avoid like I was talking about being a valid critique....because what’s being commented on there isn’t anything that was written unknowingly. Other writers consciously wrote the same things as Miller in terms of a child engaged in all that violence....but they deliberately wrote those moments to be metaphors of a kid that gets to save themselves and other people and CHOSE that, which is inherently opposed to the interpretation of a kid who is ONLY in harm’s way because he was forcibly drafted by a more powerful figure or force who cares neither what he wants or if he gets hurt.
These two ideas are mutually exclusive. They can not coexist in the same narrative because a character can not be powerless and self-empowering about the exact same specific choice. And thus anything that’s said about one of these narratives is inherently unable to say anything that’s relevant about the other....because the other is not written by its writer TO BE the kind of narrative that particular commentary is dissecting. It’s not TRYING to be that narrative, so no review of it can possibly say how flawed it’s execution is of an idea it’s not actually trying to execute.
And the differences between child heroes and child soldiers are not just limited to choosing that or being drafted and these other differences are equally key.
The biggest being that child heroes can not be seen as ‘basically’ the same thing as child soldiers.....UNLESS you are also perceiving adult heroes as basically the same thing as adult soldiers. And not even law enforcement or police or temporarily deputized or whatever else you want to spin it as....SOLDIERS, specifically. You don’t get to bring up something as charged as child soldiers and then get vague with your terminology when the close scrutiny that brings to your analogy stops working in your favor.
If sidekicks are child soldiers then you must in conjunction view adult superheroes as soldiers. And not in the abstract one man war on crime way Miller likes to consider Batman in his attempted deconstruction of superheroes. ACTUAL soldiers. If there’s no room in your comparison for child heroes to differentiate from real world child soldiers, there’s no wiggle room for the adults either.
And again, except for Miller, Ennis and specific others who by their own admissions are not TRYING to view superheroes the same way most other comic writers are, but fail to see that genre conventions are largely interpretive and thus seeing room for different interpretations of superheroes isn’t actually a commentary on how other people see and write those same heroes....like except for these select few, most writers are not writing superhero soldiers unless they’re Captain America or Captain Atom. Yes I know there are other superhero soldiers but let me be pithy. Even those aren’t really the same as their real world equivalents.
See, real soldiers don’t make distinctions about whether or not they’re willing to use guns. Their personal views on killing are not prioritized over whether they’ve been told to use lethal force to accomplish their objective. They have a chain of command. No matter the rationalization, they pledge their loyalty to singular nations and the aims and objectives of those specific nations over the abstract of acting in defense of the whole world.
Now again, maybe that applies to Captain Atom, but for the most part can you say the majority of comic book writers are TRYING to write Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman etc through that lens? No. So while Miller really thinks he said something when he wrote his Batman with guns, fighting in the Middle East, killing people left and right, none of that actually ‘showed’ people that at the end of the day, Batman is no conceptually different from a real world soldier like. No all he actually did was write his own take on Batman, and said look, he’s a gun toting murderous asshole, huzzah I have deconstructed the modern superhero!
Like. Shut up Miller. Honestly.
But seriously. Superheroes do not have a real world equivalent and neither do child heroes. Even when it comes to nonpowered ones like the Batfam, they’re still deliberately written in a larger than life, four color perspective that requires a suspension of disbelief at the front door. We ALL know and understand that they aren’t a blue print for how to go out and be a real world vigilante. Even real world vigilantes exist. But they don’t look anything like the Batfam and it’s disingenuous to pretend they do for the sake of teh discourse. Nobody honestly believes that there is even the OPTION of going out one day and deciding to become a comic book style vigilante like one of the Batfam. It’s why even they’re termed superheroes despite the lack of superpowers. On a CONCEPTUAL level it’s understood that the stories being told about them require an extrahuman medium. You can not simultaneously write characters according to a mythic scale but then attempt to interpret that very writing on a real world one. It doesn’t work.
Which brings me to my final piece of this pie. Or puzzle. Idk I’ve been doing this response for awhile I forget what this is.
And that is again, the difference between interpreting a story in a way the author probably didn’t intend and understanding when a story isn’t meant to be interpreted in the way you’re trying to.
And this difference is how I can understand and reconcile the idea that it’s not inherently abusive for Bruce to allow his kids to fight crime at all, even though that would inherently be child endangerment in the real world, but at the same time, I can view him as abusive in other ways that don’t make allowances for the differences between real life and comics.
Basically it boils down to: CAN this specific element of a story be duplicated in real life or mirror a real life action or idea? Is there a direct parallel to a real world equivalent at all?
I can view Bruce fighting crime or saving the world alongside a child Robin without viewing that as child endangerment or inherently abusive, even when Robin gets hurt in the process....because there is no real world equivalent to those parts of a story. NO ONE, child or adult, is going out there and doing those things Batman and Robin style. Even the people who dress up in their own real life vigilante personas basically just do niche neighborhood things like walk people home from the bar. And even people doing real life vigilantism in terms of taking out criminals, like, that’s usually more of a personal revenge thing and not one where they’re trying to attract attention via a costumed persona. When you think real world Batman and Robin, nothing comes to mind for a reason.
And thus this says nothing inherently abusive about their dynamic, even according to real life parallels of child endangerment, because it’s not a real scenario. And thus it’s not TRYING to say anything about real life. It’s innately allegorical. It’s power fantasy emphasis on the fantasy.
In contrast, when you have something like Bruce hitting one of his kids.....no matter who the characters are, that specific interaction and the dynamic it presents DOES have a real world equivalent. That’s just parent/child abuse. And thus even if the writer didn’t intend for it to be interpreted that way, it’s still a valid interpretation. If it looks like a parent hitting their child, you can call it a parent hitting a child.
Batman and Robin fighting killer mind controlled plants together? Can’t happen. I’m not going to call it child endangerment when it’s not a realistic scenario and not meant to be, and I’ve already been presented with a valid alternative interpretation of this being a child empowered to help save people alongside his superhero father. There’s no point in condemning a dynamic that CANT be translated to a non allegory in real life.
But Bruce hitting his son? A father no matter how good hearted normally, being affected by extreme stress or grief or something else that makes his behavior take a turn for the worse and reach a point where he physically lashes out even if he never would have in the past? Nothing remotely allegorical about that. That story has too many real world equivalents to dismiss as having nothing to say about abuse in real life. Even if the writer didn’t intend for this to read as abusive because they were thinking of how much worse Dick has been hurt fighting alongside Bruce and never held that against him even though technically it was Bruce letting him get hurt....doesn’t matter. That interpretation still requires viewing through a lens that can’t exist in reality. No kid can ever excuse a parent hitting them by thinking of how much worse they got hurt taking down their local mob together and if he didn’t blame his dad for that cuz he wanted to do it to help people then how can he blame his dad for hurting him in a moment of anger? Umm. Doesn’t track see? They’re not the same thing at all.
Or another one that really bugs....I’ve heard people defend shipping a Robin while underage with an adult by saying if they’re old enough to make the choice to risk their life and have that choice respected, they’re old enough to choose who they want to be with. Umm. No. That’s not just apples and oranges that’s genetically modified grapes and seventeenth century cannonballs.
That logic doesn’t apply because neither of those things is the underage character choosing ANYTHING. They’re fictional. Everything they choose is just what their writer wrote them choosing. But again, one of those choices is one that an underage reader CANT choose in real life and have respected by every adult in their life, and thus will never have a bearing on their life as anything BUT an allegory they have to interpret and translate into something actionable they can apply to their life and choices. The other choice is them being written as presented with an option that’s actually a textbook real life grooming technique and something abusers use to justify the relationship they’re trying to cultivate with a minor by saying aren’t you mature for your age, aren’t you old enough to know what you want or to do this or that in which case you should be old enough to make this choice?
See the difference? Putting on a cape and going out to fight robots? Not directly applicable. Saying yes to the grown man saying he wants to have sex with you and thinks you’re old enough given this other choice you’ve made that highlights your maturity? That’s a choice that can be presented both to a Robin or a real life minor, but a writer justifying that choice for that Robin by saying well he’s already previously made this other choice that has no real life equivalent.....that creates a pretty misleading interpretation to people reading that story and not stopping to think through the distinctions between what KINDS of choices the writer is presenting these characters with and then justifying via their narrative.
And while I haven’t watched the video you’re referencing, anon, I would definitely agree that this is an example of how viewing child heroes as child soldiers is....not great. Aside from being cynical, misusing the idea of death of the author and helping to validate Miller’s choices and thus ego which is NEVER a good look LOL....it also intentionally or not paves the way for putting fictional types and MEANS of harm on an even playing field with real life ones and acting like it’s all one and the same with no distinctions to be drawn. And this doesn’t actually offer anything substantive or constructive about holding characters accountable for reasonable expectations of harm, when the sources of harm have no reasonable equivalent and thus only exist in the medium of being a youth power fantasy in which the child involved is fictional and can’t truly be harmed, with the harm done the second the scene ends and where the character can be back in fighting form the very next scene. Thus the only lingering element there IS the power fantasy.
Nope, all it actually does is muddy the waters in the REVERSE, and make it so it’s actually easier to justify or rationalize types and means of harm that DO have a real world equivalent, but by pointing to examples from a fictional medium and emphasizing the fictional character’s lack of being harmed while de-emphasizing the fact that the writer has full control over depicting this in a solely positive light that doesn’t ALLOW the fictional character any angle from which to voice that this CAN result in harm when not written for fictional characters according to a writer’s specific intent.
And that’s that about that. My opinion: you have it.
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deafmatteo · 4 years ago
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hi hi so first i really love your writing, it’s so comforting and lovely, and i look forward to every little bit of it!
and idk if you’ve already answered something like this but i was wondering about your thoughts on skam france season 5?
hello, thank u! 🖤🖤🖤
and i have talked a bit about skam france s5 when i was watching it live but im more than happy to talk about it again & put all of my thoughts into one post JFJSJD.
let me just put a disclaimer here for abuse, both personal & what was shown in the season. also adding a read more because this got LONG, i am so sorry. i talk a lot </3 (ignore the spelling errors, i literally woke up and saw this anon and jumped out of bed to answer dflkgjkdlg)
also! i talk about deafness as a disability in this but that’s my own personal experience & what was written into the season. we know arthur sees it as a disability because he was raised in a hearing society as a hearing person. not all D/deaf people believe this!! this isn’t universal.
first things first, i just wanted to let people know these feelings come from a very personal place. i lost my hearing similarly to arthur — i was beaten as a young child and as the years have gone on and i’ve grown, my hearing has gotten worse. i was hard of hearing with mild to moderate hearing loss in both ears and now i call myself deaf because i have severe hearing loss in my left ear & i am completely deaf in my right ear. (don’t worry about being apologetic or anything! i’m very open about how i lost my hearing because although it’s sad & traumatic, it’s talking about how trauma and disabilities are often more intertwined than people realize. you don’t ever see a disabled person thriving in their natural environment. you see traumatized disabled people learning how to survive.)
i don’t have problems with how arthur lost his hearing. i think it’s a very important story to tell & it’s one that does occur — even if people don’t recognize it. it added to the fear and isolation he felt during his season because he was suddenly extremely disconnected from his peers and the people he called his best friends.
i also absolutely ADORE noee and camille. having a Deaf* woman who was as sassy and blunt and straight-forward as she was is a good thing. people often talk about how D/deaf individuals can come across as rude or unattentive or too blunt and it can be true but when people often talk about it, they do it in a rude/offensive manner! noee did it in a manner that wasn’t stereotypical and felt real. she also had the distain towards hearing people because they continually traumatized & belittled her and they showed that in a way that you knew was justified. she had been hurt by these people and she knew what arthur was experiencing, hence why she was so warm around him. having a Deaf love interest who wasn’t a hearing-people pleaser or someone who needed approval from hearing people was so good because it helped add layers of her own identity that the audience may not even realize exists.
camille as well. having a hard of hearing gay (queer? i can’t remember what he labelled himself as) person on screen without fetishism or trauma porn was refreshing. that doesn’t happen and seeing it was?? amazing. he was able to have fun, be himself, etc. also him acting as a connector between noee and arthur is a reality as well. he exists inbetween both of their worlds and while it’s clear that he is comfortable and okay with it, it’s a reality that often stems into feelings of anger and hurt. (as shown in arthur!) it’s good to see a hard of hearing person who doesn’t feel ostracized from the Deaf community & or the hearing community. he’s just vibing!
the isolation that arthur felt. the lonelines, the pain, the fear—all of it is a reality of the situation he was in. even with his friends attempting to support him in the ways they knew how, he still felt alone. having noee and camille there was such a good!! good thing!!! to have. the way noee criticized his friends, the way ARTHUR eventually yelled at them (especially lucas, like wtf was up his ass), the growth of arthur from clinging onto his fantasy world and accepting himself. i geniunely enjoyed these aspects.
NOW ONTO MY CRITICISMS.
my biggest one is the abuse clip. it was absolutely unnecessary for them to include the audio (and the shadowing) of arthur’s violent abuse. i understand they needed to potray his dad’s behaviours but there were many other ways to go about it that doesn’t re-traumatize people. i rarely rarely get triggered by things due to desensitization & repression and this made me extremely nauseous and it caused me to spiral into memories of my own abuse. yes, i understand the story of arthur’s dad being the villain and contributing to the trauma. no, it did not need to be done in this way.
also the way it was brushed aside & arthur forgave him after the car accident. i know it’s contributing to the cycle of abuse and it will continue after the seasons have passed but i think it should have had more fear, confusion or anger. we could see that arthur hated his father, just by how he constantly attempted to fight back and argue. i understand that it was him acting from a place of survival and trying to mediate to make things calmer but this is his perspective—we could have felt the underlying emotions or seen a brief moment where arthur let his anger take over when he was alone. the abuse was written solely for hearing people. it was trauma porn. it was used as a way to make people feel sorry for arthur and to weaken him. it wasn’t written as integrated into the plot as it should have been and was brought up only to deter the plot away from his cheating. it was one of the things that made it clear the plot was more written for hearing people than for deaf people.
(again, it’s not the actual story i’m criticizing. it’s how they integrated it.)
the second was noee using her voice to essentially beg arthur to love her. using her voice was a moment of vulnerability and fear that they could have either: a. used in a different manner or b. not included at ALL. i am an oral deaf person—i was raised in a hearing environment & i went to speech thrapy for many, many years. i use my voice a lot. however, whenever i am without my hearing aid and i am tired, i don’t often use my voice because i am insecure about my deaf accent.
noee doesn’t use her voice at all. she has talked about how using only sign language gives her power and stregethnes her identity in a way that the hearing world would never be able to. it was a pivotal moment of her own identity and growth and they threw it out the window to tell arthur she loved him. he rejected her so she used her voice, something that reminds her of her trauma and pain, to beg him to love her back.
another is how alexia said that she wasn’t wired to love disabled people. i love alexia as well, except for this alone was enough to hurt my opinion of her. it’s a reality of abled people—they often act like loving a disabled person is more work and view disabled people as less than to avoid seeing them as potential lovers/friends/etc. my main problem is the fact it wasn’t ever properly addressed and they used it as a plot device after she had been nothing but loving and supportive to arthur during the beginning of his journey. she was so, so loving and caring and they could have used to as a way to talk about how relationships and perspective changes rather having her just be straight up ableist.
when arthur first got his hearing aids, he got smaller ones that were less visible to avoid having other people see. this is a big example of internalized ableism and is a very important point but they never touched on it again. i think it would have been more personal and monumental of his growth to have him go back & change the hearing aids he uses to better aid him in his day-to-day rather than aid his desire to be hearing-passing. i just wanted to see continuation of this.
the love triangle. ABSOLUTELY USELESS. i love both alexia and noee as love interests. they are well-developed women who both had vulnerable moments in the season where they talked about their insecurities and were vulnerable and still had arthur reject/use them both. this is more of a fandom criticism but the love triangle was used solely to demonize noee while they continued to put arthur on a pedestal. the season could have gone either/or with them as love interests or not at all. the season was meant to focus on his journey as a now disabled person and the love triangle took up a large portion of that.
(don’t think i’ve forgotten about people calling others fatphobic/biphobic for preferring noee as a love interest)
this isn’t entirely a criticism but a good point to note. i don’t think skam france had a plan in regards to season five when they casted arthur but he should have been played by a hard of hearing person and there should have been foreshadowing in the earlier seasons for this. i think arthur’s actor did a fantastic job with the content he was given but it would have been a bit more personal if played by a truly deaf/hoh person. noee’s actress talked about this! she said how good of an opportunity it was for season five to occur because it’s extremely rare for deaf people to get opportunities and casting designed for them. having a main actress talk about this and still having the main actor being abled is a bit? bad taste. i just think it’s a product of lack of planning, is all.
ALSO THE CAR CRASH????? this isn’t a big criticism, i’m just like HUH? me & arthur really out hear being deaf and getting hit by cars ig. arthur kinnie
*definitions that add as to why i use deaf & Deaf in this piece.*
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