#i don't have as much of an essay for you so just you know hi.

[scandalaciousintentions]

You know when I keep telling everyone I am not back in this fandom and then I keep reblogging the bejesus out of everything I see? I'm not quite buying it either and I must try harder.

But before I do.

This is such a beautiful collection of chapters. This is not ship-bashing; it is relevant to the essay that follows. I'm not personally a fan of Wolfstar and that purely comes from the way I read these chapters, the way I've always read them. (I also accept this is a personal interpretation and I am open to others.)

That said, the way that I have interpreted what we're told is that these two have not been close. Arguably not for years, but I'd go so far as to say that they've been bound together by James alone. There's not just 12 years between Sirius and Lupin in this moment, there is a chasm of distrust, enmity, possibly even fear.

Which is not to say that either one of them is personally afraid of the other. I think for Lupin it's going to be a fear of completely misreading this man for ten years, a fear that becomes introversion, a fear and a distrust of his own instincts on which he can usually depend. For Sirius, it's a little more tangible - the fear that this man will kill him. In this line alone, there is the immediate understanding that the traitor must die and for the first time, we understand that Lupin is, and always has been, ruthless.

But Peter's sudden emergence on that map changes everything. The world stops spinning on the same axis and this is not just a bonding moment; it's a binding moment. The vengeance killing of Peter Pettigrew is going to bind them together for all time. It's going to bring them a hell of lot closer together from now on.

The fact that Harry steps in and stops it throws a spanner in the works for how this relationship moves forward. I am fascinated by what the first interaction post-PoA looks like. It has floated around my head for years. Because, from everything the narrative tells us about a proud and defiant Sirius and a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher literally fleeing confrontation in the closing chapters, it's not going to work.

I love this one particular piece of dialogue precisely because it tells us so much about their relationship. It even tells us exactly where it's headed. And what I love most is that they get there anyway with the act itself never having taken place.

I've been waiting for someone to bring this up for a while. I don't know what gave it away...

"Shall we kill him together?"

Sirius literally dropped that line after twelve years apart from Remus and I think that's such a meaningful bonding activity for them 🤗

[littleglutton]

Zayne's EN VA has me in a fucking CHOKEHOLD over this entire event and the Immediate Disorder card altered my entire brain chemistry.

Do you all understand how fucking wild it is to hear our dear, big snowman go from his calm, slightly montone cadence to nuanced, hanging-by-a-fucking-thread feral!?

I'm already this man's biggest fan. He is already fulfilling every voice kink I have on a normal day. But holy hell, this event might have just placed him in god-tier for me. And before people come for me, I'm not saying it worked because "oh, he made his voice lower" blah-blah-blah. NO. It wasn't that his voice was lower or more "sexy."

It was the desperation.

It was the fact that it was still Zayne's voice and soft cadence but heightened to a frenzy with each little breath and delicious whimper showing how hard he was trying to hold on. It was Zayne with all of his icy control shattered. Even MC knew that this man would not let go until he had no other option. Infold is always precise with their animations and storytelling. THAT SMUG SMIRK HE GIVES US WHILE BEING INJECTED WITH FRENZY ENHANCER WAS THERE ON PURPOSE.

I don't think the lines were out of character at all, either. Because if you're a Zayne girlie, you know how much of an absolute menace he is while flirting - even if he goes about it in a subtle way. He's also a naturally authoritative person (soft!Dom 100%), so of course he's going to be more demanding, more confident, and even more teasing when all control is gone. Even his telltale little smirk, as rare as a cryptid, morphed into something absolutely devious and knowing.

"You want me to submit? Let me take what I desire first."

I can write an entire essay on this man, so let me pause here...

In my unhinged haze, I made "audio only" kindled so y'all can listen to this like a Secret Times ASMR and suffer right along with me!

I tried to get as many different responses as possible, but there are some repeat phrases during the interactive parts.

Best Enjoyed with Headphones!

Good End - Full Kindled

Bad End starts at the second interactive section. I managed to get quite a few different reactions!

Honorable Mentions: Warden Zaynie YELLING

🫠🫠🫠🫠

I hope you enjoyed these, and I hope this shows some love to Zayne's English VA! All of the VAs were PHENOMENAL (per usual), but this post is for Zaynie because I didn't expect such a drastic change from his usual, and it was flawless.

What were some of your favorite lines from this event? 😉

🩵💙🤍🩶🖤🩵💙🤍🩶🖤🩵💙🤍🩶🖤🩵💙🤍🩶🖤🩵💙

[rei-ismyname]

Cyclops earns Logan's respect through violence

The X-Men have just tangled with Proteus (and Moira, kinda) for the first time. It didn't go well, with Kurt and Logan feeling it the most after going through the looking glass. Logan is shutting down but Scott has an idea - insulting the fuck out of him. Really going to town emasculating, embarrassing, and provoking him into a fight. Are they lovers? Worse.

Scott knows what buttons to push. Chuck would be proud.

He figures he needs to speak Logan's language - toxic masculinity and ultraviolence. Kurt is like wtf are you doing? so Scott starts on him but it's in service of comparing him to Logan, accusing him of faking trauma.

Cyclops throws a drink in Wolverine's face and basically calls him a bitch, challenging him on their long rivalry. Logan takes the bait and stands up to fight. It's what Scott wanted but now he has to fight an angry and emasculated Wolverine. He keeps pushing him verbally during their fight, with his thought bubbles taking a very different tone. A judo flip and Logan is on his back, but he's up quickly and swinging to kill, bub.

Scott's shit talking intensifies, even as he's thinking about how difficult and dangerous this is. After framing the situation as 'man-to-man roughhousing' (so homoerotic) he moves to draw the other X-Men into the fight. There's a lot of drill sergeant vibes going on here, antagonising the team by giving them something to unite against. Scott flings Logan at Kurt, who is really not loving this at all.

'What's the matter shorty?' hits different

Banshee is wigging out, thinking they're going to kill each other - so he asks Colossus to break it up before someone dies. Jean knows what's going on, however, and tells them to stay out of it. Cyke is running rings around Logan, even reflecting an optic blast off Colossus to hit him from behind.

Woo, violence!

Kurt even speculates that Scott might be possessed, lol, so he tries to teleport in for a strike. Cyke has clearly played Space Invaders though, and he has his number, blasting him out of the sky.

With the others temporarily down, Ororo has finally had enough of this shit and she summons a lightning bolt as a warning. Cyclops plays possum a little then rolls into an optic blast right at her feet.

With three X-Men after him and more likely to join the fray (or just Storm getting serious) Scott quits while he's ahead, calling for peace. Logan especially doesn't think much of that notion until Scott and Jean explain. This was Scott leading and making sure the team was okay, Logan most of all.

Logan even opens up a little, admitting he was spooked. He says the obvious, that he hasn't thought much of Scott but is happy to concede he was wrong. I think Scott appreciates that more than he admits, and this is not the last time he'll have to fight all the X-Men. All that danger room training paid off. I could write a dozen essays on this issue but for now I'll just say it's an important one for the X-Men as a team as well as the Scott/Logan relationship.

I've never been in a paramilitary group, though I have had people try the tough love approach to my trauma. I don't speak to them anymore, because it's a messed up way to act. It's pretty satisfying here, and might even be the right decision. It's hard to argue with the results, but FR the X-Men all need therapy. Logan needs super therapy, or you know, to fight his friends every few months. This ISN'T Logan Behavior, not yet. It's messed up, but he's still a reasonable person at this point trying to be better. Havok and Polaris just watch without comment, which is kinda funny too.

[kittynugg]

Killing Filbrick in every fanwork is such a mood.

Anyway- I personally have 3 headcanons for what Stan's middle name could be:

1. Romanoff - Because I'm not sure a 1950s male baby would have been allowed to have a feminine middle name, but I still want him to be named after his mother. Although if paired with a trans Stan hc, I like the idea of his middle name being Caryn

2. Filbrick - Because the twins' genitor got even more lazy with their middle names and decided to just slap those birth documents with the same middle name

3. My tag where I joked about Stan having no middle name made me think about what if Filbrick literally decided to not give his other child any middle name (not sure how legal that is)

I literally wrote all of this and forgot to ask if the Caryn middle name was your hc or if it had been made canon and it slipped my knowledge

Anyway while writing this, I just got hit with a new idea- Filbrick didn't want kids, and even less twins. So, what if he couldn't be bothered with coming up with a name for the 2nd one and gave him as middle name the name of the firstborn ?

As a conclusion to this essay, the Romanoff middle name hc is my fav and I hold it very close to my heart, but in my head the Filbrick middle name hc is more realistic, and it breaks me. The only problem I see with it is that I headcanon Shermie as the older brother, so I don't know why Filbrick wouldn't have given his name to his firstborn (although I can counteract my own argument with- he got the name of one of his grandfathers. That or Filbrick couldn't be less bothered with names he used the same middle name on at least 2 of his children)

i think you can choose not to give your kid a middle name and that'd be kinda funny ngl like "i dont know these two kids' personalities yet because they were born six minutes ago and don't have them. but i like this one more you get a middle name and the other one eh throw him in the garbage idk"

i doooont think caryn is canon i just went for it because ford's named after filbrick, but romanoff is honestly sm better. its so much better and i'd love to adopt that headcanon but i think i've already referred to him as "stanley caryn pines" somewhere on the internet and that means there's no turning back. like. once the hc is public it stays

also i love how you dont even call him their father because he is not he is a sperm donor at best fuuuuuck that

I LIKE THE FIRSTBORN IDEA THOUGH STANLEY SHERMAN PINES THATS GOOD

but something ive always been curious about since i headcanon shermie as the baby in atots-- who the fuck is that baby if shermie is the older brother 😭 entirely /lh but also a genuine question

[blorger]

I think it's important to keep in mind that jkr herself isn't terribly consistent with what she has her characters say. Take for example Luna: she's the only character in the books who calls their father "daddy" but even she says "dad" on a couple of occasions, and not at significant junctures in the plot either, so a jkr slip-up is definitely believable.

As for Draco, I honestly don't think he'd ever call Lucius "dad" to his face or ever refer to him as such to other people but I can see him occasionally use the word "dad" in his head, like he might have done out loud when he was very young.

To me, the "dad" in the train scene makes sense if it's a freudian slip of sort: Draco uses "father" before and after the slip up and, since no-one ever acknowledges the use of "dad", he might not even realize he's said it.

The sentence he's using the word in, "dad and the others will be out in no time", can be interpreted as Draco trying to convince himself just as much as him trying to intimidate Harry. If Draco is secretly worried about Lucius - which seems like a pretty reasonable guess since Draco loves him and he's just gone to creepy jail - this is the moment when said worry would become visible.

This is just my interpretation of course but that is to say that, though I can see your point, I personally can reason my way into accepting Draco's use of "dad" in that one instance.

Going back to Percy, I think it's important to consider the fact that we see him mention/address his father more as the books progress because of authorial intent: jkr chose to have Percy talk to his father more and she also clearly chose how he addressed him. If none of this was her intention, she could have just as easily removed those scenes and/ or substituted Arthur with Molly and the general effect would have remained the same.

I have no horse in the autistic Percy race, though I heartily believe that it definitely wasn't jkr intention to have him read as such. If she'd wanted to have Percy be autistic he'd be the world's most cliche'd portrayal of autism imaginable, like, she's not exactly the most subtle of authors. I can definitely see jkr unintentionally writing an autistic Percy, either by basing his character off of someone and not realising that that person is autistic, or by choosing some character traits that she dislikes for Percy, not knowing that those character traits (that she might have seen on autistic people without realising it) are usually indicative of autism.

Either way, what's more important than jkr's intent is how we end up reading the character, divorced from jkr's shitty views, so autistic Percy is honestly quite believable.

To conclude this rambling essay I'd also like to add that I actually quite enjoyed your answer in that it gave me a new pov to consider things from so don't worry about coming off as rude, I mostly write meta to see what discourse comes out of it so thank you for enabling me :)

One thing I noticed only recently is that the way Percy calls his father and how it's an indication of his storyline's progress throughout the books. Percy's whole character arc is about how he's doing ambition wrong; there's this undercurrent of judgement towards Percy's desire to be an accomplished professional and i think his language reflects that.

Percy has had a very formal way of speaking since the very first book, it's one of the main indicators that we're supposed to read him as a pompous party pooper, but we don't see him address his father until book 3, when jkr starts setting up the ministry plot:

(from PoA: Percy enjoys the treatment Arthur is getting from the ministry, foreshadowing his interest in climbing up the ministerial ladder)

I find the use of the word "Father" interesting: the most notable person we see use the term in the books is Draco, who is very much posh-coded.

(from PS, one of the very first things we come to know about Draco is how he addresses his father: this is a scene from Harry and Draco's first meeting)

A not insignificant facet Draco's personality comes from how his elevated status in society has shaped him to be arrogant and dismissive of other people. Draco speaks like a Fancy Boy, with his "Father"s (always capitalised) and his insistence on calling most people (even his friends and housemates) by their last name.

Seeing Percy start to use the type of language we've been accustomed to see from posh boy extraordinaire Draco is jarring, and it primes us to start disliking him. As Percy's brief foray into the Evil side begins (basically From GoF onwards) Percy starts ramping up in his use of "Father":

and

and

but, at the culmination of his story arc, when Percy is reunited with his family during the battle of Hogwarts, Percy switches to "dad":

This, again, mirrors Draco in that he also changes the way he addresses his father when he's at his most emotional

and I find this very interesting.

[alacants]

nadalcaraz as a dynamic is so interesting to me. rafa playing at the philippe chartier like always. He knows this place so well and this is probably the last time he is playing there and he going for the ultimate prize for his country which he has done countless times before but only this time. this time he isn't alone. there is this kid with him who wants it as much as he does only. he wants it for him. for rafa. he could etch history and focus on solidifying his name even more in the history books but no. he is here for his idol smiling and tussling and being a bit silly and lost but he is giving so much. for rafa. and then it doesn't happen. and the other thing doesn't happen as well. (credit novak djokovic but that's a whole other ghost and story.) but rafa is there for him after that in a way he wasn't before? cheering for him at the davis cup on his feet (again. he is doing it for him.) congratulating him on both instagram and twitter (in emoji code too mind you.) and just yeah. Nadalcaraz. sorry for the rant lol

NADALCARAZ. man there is so much there. because in a sense they're both trapped in this relationship imposed upon them. i'm not trying to imply they wouldn't have wanted to have one anyway, just that it's out of their control. the moment carlos won a grand slam at nineteen he became the new rafa and there was nothing that either of them could do about it. 

SO given what has been imposed upon you, you can fight the relationship or embrace it. and both of them have embraced it.

on rafa's side—i've wondered if his enthusiasm for carlos was a sign that he'd more or less come to terms with walking away. this is an imperfect analogy, but i'm always, always thinking of serena williams and sloane stephens, after sloane's ao victory in 2013, when everyone was like, wow serena must be like a MENTOR to you and the response from both of them was, "hell no. absolutely not."

and like yeah, that was about racism. obviously. but i do think the response was not just pushing back at the racism, but also the raw reaction of competitors in their prime. i'm not here to teach/to learn, i'm here to kill the pretenders and feast on their bones/i'm here to overthrow the queen and take MY place on the throne.

(got a great ask-essay about novak and jannik that touches on this idea, op i am slowly but surely making my way to it!) 

sure some of that is just, like, their personalities. i just doubt that the relationship would look exactly the same if carlos had hit the scene even like… 5 years earlier. to quote @oldlizzie's juanki tags that i am always thinking about, they're trying to bury you but you're not dead. until you are.

meanwhile, it's tough for carlos because yeah. you have to live up to THAT. and we see him and juanki doing their best to politely push back on the comparisons—which is a hell of a balancing act, "of course i love rafa, of course i'm flattered, please don't"—because i mean! this is a doomed comparison! for reasons that have nothing to do with talent, carlos is very probably not going to win 22 grand slams! (though, like, i can't see the future. who knows.)

don't let the comparisons get to you. don't let the hero down. don't let him down at his last olympics. don't let him down at his final tournament ever. (the way the stress manifested during those olympic doubles matches was actually so funny, iirc it went like—rafa would indicate something unintelligible and carlos would be like where do you want me to go senpai you have to tell me i don't understand.) it would be very easy to resent this person who is going to shadow you for the entirety of your career no matter what you achieve. but he doesn't. 

like you said, it would have been easy for carlos to want to focus on singles. it would have been easy for rafa to back away from sharing the spotlight and setting himself up for an unflattering side by side comparison. but they both wanted to live that experience of tennis together—to create a moment where pastpresentfuture collide.

so yes. nadalcaraz. :')

[la-storia-di-lola]

.

[emmavakarian-theirin]

the way the music died at just the right moment made this so perfect

[fabdante]

honestly ok im not done with this asdfghjk and im not making it it's own post so i can open myself up to argument. i don't feel like i've read the book enough times to really make an argument that isn't a lot of rambling, you know?

but like i went into wuthering heights aware some people theorized heathcliff being brown. it was one of the many straws that broke the camels back for me. i found this intriguing.

i did not anticipate that it was just a legit piece of canon that is brought up incredibly often that large swaths of people just ignore (or worse, argue vehemently against) because he himself does not state clearly and with certainty his ethnicity, a thing that would not happen in the narrative because its not even in his perspective. on the contrary the novel is, largely, in the perspective of people who don't particularly care to find out what heathcliffs race actually is because they are just satisfied knowing he is other. i don't think it occurred to nelly once that he, perhaps, had his own culture and language before being taken here and that he is aware he's not the son of indian and chinese royalty. she doesn't ask. neither does lockwood.

however, i thought about this a lot. and it's under the cut

disclaimer: i've only read wuthering heights once and while i am sure it has entered my yearly reread list (which will only deepen my thoughts and analysis), this is literally just my impressions after my first reading of the book. some things may be misremembered, or perhaps further mused on upon a reread. some things i would have liked more specifics, if this was a real essay (like the exact number of times heathcliff is suggested to be romani, or how often he's compared to animals vs how often everyone else is). this is a post i wrote over the course of several weeks on tumblr.com and it reads like one.

we are confronted with numerous characters assuming what race heathcliff is and its usually not white, and it's certainly ethnicities that would be other to the people around him.

like its baffling to me how much of this conversation is taken up by the hand full of times he's described as dark skinned, a fair argument but easy to argue against because of the time he's also described in a fit of colorful language to be paler then the wall behind him. that and like, the way he's described as dark is also in line with how the term dark was used at the time by brontës contemporaries (though i personally don't think that's all she meant by referring to heathcliff specifically). it's easy to argue against the constant descriptions of his dark hair and dark eyes and dark skin as emily brontë, perhaps, trying to suggest he is just over all a dark, imposing character tying into theories that heathcliff is a literal demon (some people suggest this?). now, don't get me wrong, i agree with the assessment that regardless of the metaphor heathcliff is like a darker skinned guy with black hair and black eyes however it's the type of evidence that's much easier to argue against rather then him, repetitively, having characters pull the 'lmao what are you???' question or how intrinsically his race is tied into the plot and his character.

like, i said it reminds me of booker dewitt at one point in my many ramblings and let me explain. booker is often assumed to be white but but he is actually mixed race and is both white and indigenous. and while one can argue semantics about skin color and what not i feel the much stronger evidence to this canon fact is stuff like idk the fact he speaks at least one of the lakota/dakota/nakota language families fluently, doesn't recognize bible verses when they're quoted at him, has slurs thrown at him in earlier versions of the game we have footage of (implying other characters assume he is native american), has another universe version of himself who has found himself center of a phrenology study trying to prove he's native american, and, oh, the time another character straight up tells us about the time booker lost his shit at 16 because people were being racist to him and decided the best course of action would be to become participant in his own genocide to try and make himself himself appear whiter to avoid scrutiny before this fails horribly and he is now haunted by the fact he is participant in the genocide he is also victim of. this is the thing that haunts him, this is the thing that is chasing him, this is why he knows being made 'clean' in the eyes of a god that was forced upon him will not absolve him of the blood on his hands. bookers entire character is heavily influenced by this. like if we look at the time period and craft a probable history for what creates a booker dewitt, the influence of generational trauma and current trauma and just the impact of living in world where he is never truly a part like becomes very clear on his character and other characters around him. like booker is a character who deserved better writing from a writing team more willing to put time into communicating this story, but the seeds are all there.

like the reasons we know booker dewitt is indigenous outside of ken levines word of god statement are things like this that have clear and evident impact on his character and the world of the story. i argue the same is in wuthering heights. like yes, there are descriptions of heathcliff that line up with this to. but the crucial, crucial thing is how him not being white impacts the narrative and him.

but like i mean sure we can fall back on those vague descriptors i guess and argue back and forth about what exactly emily brontë meant because some people just don't want to accept that heathcliff isn't white and can pretend that descriptions of his dark skin aren't actually about him having dark skin.

there's this segment in which heathcliff laments about how he doesn't look like the blonde haired, blue eyed, pale edgar linton. there's another when he meets his son and is essentially like 'lmao why's it white?'. there's the numerous, numerous other people around him constantly throwing their best theory into the ring on what they think his race is which is almost always romani, often indian, and in one time occurrences each, chinese, american, and spanish.

literally when taken in by the earnshaws he doesn't even speak english. nelly, being a white woman from the area who likely has very limited exposure to other languages due to her class and limited education and limited time anywhere that isn't her direct local area, just assumes he's speaking gibberish. but idk perhaps the boy described as indian and romani didn't speak fucking english yet

and this all plays into the themes as well?

like a large theme of this novel is the way cathy and heathcliff do not quite feel they belong here but they feel a belonging and acceptance with each other, a large motivator behind their mutual obsession. (i'm getting to the resentment give me a moment) they understand the abuse they both experienced, they understand what the other wants (freedom, essentially), they understand how they both feel isolated and alone, etc etc. and part of that for heathcliff is clearly how he is othered by everyone else despite being the favorite son, despite how he tried to fit into the social trappings around him. its part of why he laments about edgar. because he recognizes, despite his age, that he's being treated differently because he does not look like edgar. sure it's, as with most things, a very cathy motivated thought i think. the threat that edgar will take all her attention, leaving heathcliff truly alone. hell he even kind of says that when he confronts cathy that one time and is like 'hey, you hang out with him so much more' and we, the reader, know under that he's saying 'and you are leaving me alone with these people'. but back in this moment with nelly he pinpoints rather accurately that edgar has an easier time because he's white. and heathcliff is not. and he can do the song and dance, he even tries to do the song and dance, but he can't become white. he can never just become white.

i think to this plays into the resentments between cathy and heathcliff. she resents that he's not white, that it makes this simple thing very complex, that in her eyes it's part of what makes him beneath her and no one is going to see him as being at the same level as her, that she feels so much belonging and what not with this person seen as other. like its very 'recognition of the self in the other (derogatory)' and i think he similarly resents these things in reverse, right? he resents that he's seen this way, that she might see him this way, that this simple thing is complicated when it should not be. and also, again, that this game is so much easier for cathy to play. she's white, she blends in, she's free to do things he is not because he has to give so much more to be even considered remotely human. and it's frustrating. because he is cathy, after all. except for the part where he's not. because for as much love as there is here, they're two abused kids who speak a similar language here and are angry with each other as well as the world.

like i just the way he's treated to like nelly, being presumably white, seems to assume all of heathcliffs mistreatment comes from him being ill behaved and insane which i mean sure some of it is because he constantly misbehaves and he doesn't want to be controlled and follow rules he doesn't like.

but isn't it a bit...idk...telling that no one really argues with hindley when he decides to make his adoptive brother his servant?

like people find it shitty when heathcliff does that to hearton, the white boy.

but when heathcliff spends years upon years doing all the barn work and getting whipped by his brother and being forced to live in the shitty attic with no access to heating like...the lintons, despite cathys bad behavior, give her an opportunity to 'grow' (force her into a box of polite society which she does not like but falls into anyway). they don't do that to heathcliff, they write him off immediately. their pity begins and ends with cathy who they identify as an unfortunate girl in an unfortunate family who is being raised poorly, despite the fact heathcliff is raised in the exact same conditions and misbehaving in the exact same way. the biggest differences are cathy is white and a girl, and heathcliff is brown and a boy.

like im just saying does the narrative need to spell it out for you?

are you that incapable of reading between the lines when it is literally that obvious.

like ignoring all these little nuances that perhaps i read into or misremember due to my bias here, the fact he clearly looks not white enough for everyone to constantly suggest he's not white implies that...just maybe...maybe that heathcliff is brown

i also wonder how much of this unwillingness for heathcliff to be brown is 'oh but he's a shitty person' and our current movement is to create these pure, stainless, people of color in our fiction. heathcliff is not that. he's the antithesis to that (though more on that later). he's a shitty, miserable person who makes himself more miserable and suffers in a tragedy he himself largely created. though i argue the story ends well for him (i mean he dies happily in cathys room and gets to haunt the moors with her forever in absolute freedom and bliss like that's literally what he wanted he got what he wanted), deserving it to end well for him or not, he's not this picture perfect representation that audiences crave before ripping something apart because they cannot understand that marginalized people do not have one uniform experience or needs from our media.

who cares that he's shitty when he's complex and an adaptation that actually represents him as he is would only make him more complex and interesting and do justice to the narrative emily brontë was trying to craft? it wouldn't necessarily revaluate the narrative, but rather bring to light this element of it which is so often neglected.

emily brontë was trying to make complex people with complex motivations and interests, which often lead them down self destructive paths. which sure, makes them shitty. but it makes them interesting and heathcliffs race is part of what makes him interesting and complex. the way his race and understanding of it balance with his understanding of himself and the people around him and the trappings of the society he's in. like it's such a large part of why he behaves like he does and why people behave how they do around him.

like we can all agree heathcliff is the monster these people created. he became the thing he was told he is because it is what he was told he is. again to bring up booker dewitt, booker is the monster that everyone created by telling him what he is and what he is worth is the violence he can commit so violence booker dewitt becomes. heathcliff, similarly, is told through this narrative by so many of these people that he is lesser, that no matter what he does he is not them. so what he does is go on a revenge quest to become them, to return the favor back to them, to take what he's decided will now be his because he was told he does not deserve it. and here's the thing. here's the thing about it. he kind of wins.

like don't get me wrong his revenge quest makes him miserable and could have been avoided and he did a lot of horrible things on that quest. but he did it, right? he got wuthering heights. he got thrushcross grange. he fucked with everyone's lives. and like sure it catches up to him mentally, but he dies in this success right? that he did the thing he wanted and everyone's miserable. and then he dies. and he dies happily because he gets to run off with cathy in the afterlife doing whatever the fuck forever and always like both of them wanted. like he literally gets everything he wanted in the narrative. eventually.

anyway

denying his race just feels...short sighted? missing the point?

and like i mean ok sure one time he's described as spanish and the actor they got for him is spanish. that's cool. that's great.

but i have to question why we went with the guy who fits exactly one off handed description of heathcliff from a line where he's also, once again, suggested to be indian and also american (it's all in the same sentence the speaker, unsure, suggests heathcliff is all three spanish isn't even a heathcliff race suggestion that gets it's own line)

another thing I've noticed repeated time and time again is 'well, sure, Heathcliff could be a person of color. but that's less important than divides such as class and-' and I'm not going to pretend I'm like deeply aware of the intricacies of late 1700s, early 1800s race relations and concepts in England. However I also feel like this is...really misunderstanding race but also misunderstanding the novel, which, again, makes it clear that Heathcliff's race factors into things. he doesn't get upset that Edgar is white and he's not because he feels equal to Edgar minus the fact he's poor. people don't suggest he's races that are not white because they view Heathcliff as equal.

when cathy and heathcliff meet the lintons, its because they were both behaving badly and spying on them. this gets the dogs to attack cathy as they try to run away. naturally they take her inside and heathcliff follows. much is said about his race during this time. then heathcliff proceeds to make himself look Very Bad in front of them after their dog attacked cathy (though, again, they're very quick to kick him out super late and make him go home and keep white cathy for six straight weeks). when cathy comes back, now the 'proper' lady the lintons made her into, she comments that heathcliff, described routinely with dark skin unlike the pale lintons, is dirty. he does not like this. its hard not to see a connection for him to the fact his skin is brown, and hers is not, and nor is edgar lintons. the lintons are invited to dinner at one point and they make it clear they do not want to interact with heathcliff, so heathcliff is sent away and has his whole 'linton is white and going to steal cathy' meltdown to nelly. who then proceeds to try and calm him down and is like 'we'll fix this by cleaning you up and making you look presentable and they'll have to let you to dinner'. so she does, she cleans him up and does his hair and gives him a pep talk and tells him to behave and she sends him out to the dinner. to which he is met with immediate and immense backlash when he hasn't even done anything beyond try to fit into the game.

he can wash himself as much as he likes, but heathcliff can never truly become 'clean', can he?

there's this idea, historically and otherwise, that dark skin itself is 'unclean'. that one is dirty for having it. its a common racist tactic. if you just scrub enough, you can become paler. if you're bad, your skin will become darker. bleach yourself so you look more innocent. the bad guys with blood on their hands are brown and black and dark and the good guys are pale and white.

perhaps emily brontë is a product of her time and she to saw heathcliffs dark skin as evidence of his bad behavior, as something unclean. (though, again, i'd argue she has him ultimately 'win'. he ultimately succeeds at the thing he wants. his actions are not forgiven or really justified but emily brontë still has him win)

but in our discussion its hard for me not to see such examples of this and not think that race is a huge factor in heathcliffs behaviors and world view. after all, when people look at him, they're not suggesting directly that he's poor in bafflement. they're suggesting hes romani or indian or chinese or whatever else.

the 2011 adaptation i think really puts this in the forefront because it becomes impossible to ignore the elephant in the room here. their heathcliff is black, and everyone else is white. characters use slurs the audience recognizes as slurs rather than words they don't understand are slurs. when cathy comments that heathcliff is dirty off handedly before realizing what she's said, we see him and his brown skin and understand why he is upset the one person who doesn't treat him differently has suddenly said something like that to him. sure there's an element here that cathy has changed and he's scared she's changed, that she no longer loves her moors and wants to run around outside with him forever in them. but the other element of change is that she might see him as lesser, as innately unclean.

like yes class is an element here but to pretend race is not when it so clearly is is...bizarre to me? particularly because class and race are connected and seem deliberately so here. like cathy is allowed to marry up, she is allowed to change class, she can do that quite easily. heathcliff, though, to change class has to run off for a period of three years doing who knows what and he is STILL not respected as being another class when he returns. now I'm sure one could argue 'oh it's because of his personality-' and like sure heathcliff is still very heathcliff like it's not like he's become super personable or anything. but like...neither are a lot of wealthy white men.

also, again, the narrative is very clear. cathy is heathcliff, heathcliff is cathy. they are two sides of the same coin. they are one thing. they are one codependent thing with very similar character traits except cathy is a white girl and heathcliff is a brown boy, which impacts the presentation of these very similar character traits.

we have to question in the text why heathcliff is so unpersonable and the answer goes back to the any time we see him try to play the game and he's immediately shut out. like why should he want to play into this polite society when the polite society has made it very clear no matter what he does, he will not belong here. his wealth is desirable, he is not. the text is asking you to ask why that is and the answer isn't just because heathcliff kinda sucks. because like hindley also sucks, mr earnshaw also sucks. sucking is not a uniquely heathcliff trait in this novel if anything most of the characters suck.

the why this is largely is yes, a response to trauma. cathy and heathcliff and even hindley like all carry the same trauma from their upbringing. but an element of this trauma for heathcliff is the racism. is the way his race plays into othering him, separating him, isolating him. the way his race exasperates that abuse, how it enables further abuse (like hindley turning him into a servant, for example).

i think there's something to be said about horror and discomfort, right? and like wuthering heights isn't necessarily horror like its gothic, its a gothic romance, but it's not necessarily horror despite the gothic and horror like being sisters but like. i do think there's something to be said about the fact wuthering heights wants to be discomforting. it clearly was if you look at reviews of the time and how clearly, clearly it made charlotte uncomfortable to the point where she allegedly burned emily's second manuscript (im not forgiving her for this) and i don't know i don't know if emily meant for this race element to be discomforting in the way i find it as an arab american reader. but i did find it uncomfortable in the way horror is. like i found it very akin to watching a horror film and sitting there wishing the main character just runs or turns around because the slasher killer is right there. it's the perpetual feeling of knowing you are the only brown person in the room and not knowing what that's going to mean at any moment.

i often write little vent posts i delete about this book because i have much to say and much frustration about this denial of heathcliffs brownness that i ultimately decide not to burden others with asdfghjk but in one of them i had a thought.

there's article after article trying to justify heathcliffs white washing in the adaptations where they insist he has to be white or that his brownness is only a suggestion and no one really meant it when they said he looks Romani or Indian or Chinese. and i have to wonder like why is it so important that he is white? does this whiteness impact the narrative? does it change it? is it important to it?

i'd argue the whiteness of cathy and edgar and isabelle and hindley is important to the narrative. it's an extension of how they fit into society, into how they are welcomed to it, as part of their class and their wealth or their ability to just squander that wealth. it's an extension of how they are treated by each other and others, like cathy being brought in and 'civilized' by the lintons for example.

on the contrary, the whiteness of someone like nelly, a character we presume is white due to setting and what not, isn't particularly relevant. it plays no strong element to her story, what race she is, outside perhaps who she chooses to sympathize with.

and see if heathcliff is white...what does that change? a lot of the impact is gone, in my opinion. a lot of the the tensions we see here are alleviated. suddenly the only thing separating him from the society around him is the money he does or doesn't have. suddenly the only factor in his isolation is himself.

if he's brown, though, in whatever way he is...that's a lot more relevant, isn't it?

it's a lot more relevant to the themes, to the story that's happening and the one that happened. he's no longer the only factor here, it's the fact he is in the outgroup and everyone else is in the ingroup and no matter what he does he cannot change his skin. he can't out wealth his skin. he can't escape the way everyone else views him.

it's a lot more uncomfortable to for a society unwilling to look its own racism in the face, isn't it? which is odd to say about a story that regardless of race is entirely uncaring on if it's uncomfortable or not. it wants to be uncomfortable, actually. i refer to watching wuthering heights 2011 as a 'gaping wound' and this is why. it's uncomfortable and it's supposed to be.

idk i just keep tacking segments onto this very long essay because i'm just baffled, you see. im baffled at how this element of this character which is SO OBVIOUS and so RELEVANT to the story being told is just...so ignored? so white washed? perhaps it's just because it was one of the things that made me read the book? because it was i will admit. like i wanted to know. i wanted to know how obvious it was and i came away baffled because it literally only stopped short of having heathcliff turn to the camera and say 'by the way im :insert race here:' like i don't know how emily bronte could have been more clear.

i don't understand.

i hope i have gotten across why i don't understand.

in princess weekes video on heathcliff she notes that, while he is most likely meant to be romani or indian but probably romani, it doesn't exactly matter what specific race heathcliff is what matters is that he is how he is othered and treated due to this race. i think this is mostly a fair assessment because while i do see credence to the argument of the fact he should be played by an actor of the race he is like...most likely to be, nothing significant changes about the narrative if he's romani or indian or black or arab (some have gone for arab heathcliff and i support it despite the book having no backing for this asdfghjk) or so on and so forth what matters is he is a person of color. while how we in the modern day understand that is a little different then emily bronte did when writing the novel, what matters is he is brown.

and yet. every single adaptation. save for the 2011 one. fail to make him brown. i don't understand.

tldr: why the fuck is heathcliff white in almost every adaptation when he so clearly is not if you just read the book good lord

anywho supplemental videos i forgot to add:

the day rue became black by yhara zayd (there was also something from her candyman video i meant to quote after rewatching but forgot to do so also watch that one because sure why not, it was something from her discussion about how its not racist to have characters of color who kinda suck or are villainous or what not but in general everyone should be watching yhara zayd)

heathcliff isn't white by princess weekes

"while under the influence of Wuthering Heights" that's really a real phenomena huh like that's a real thing that just happens to you after you read wuthering heights

[butterflysnowflake]

man can I just say how adorable Wolf's interaction with Delia in the wedding scene is? When she's explaining her situation he gives her the most understanding looks and it's because they both effectively had the same cause of death. Delia turned her mourning of Charles into part of her performance art, and died from being scammed with asps who were NOT defanged. Wolf wanted to deliver the most authentic performance possible and died from presumably a negligent armorer who didn't bother to check if the grenade was live or not before shooting. both of them were quite literally killed by their art (not by their own faults to be fair but from someone else's irresponsibility). and it's kind of lovely Delia got such a sympathetic escort back to the netherworld who knows her situation firsthand probably better than anyone else

it's weirdly wholesome and empathetic even as their situations were both played for morbid laughs, and if Delia didn't have eyes only for Charles (what's left of him) and Wolf wasn't in a committed relationship with Janet I'd even say I could have seen things going somewhere between them

[heir-of-the-chair]

I just need everyone to know that I fucking hate Hamlet prince of Denmark. This stupid fictional man makes me so goddamned angry I need to squeeze him like one of those rubber toys where the eyes pop out and shake him so violently like a child discovering snow globes for the first time. I fucking hate Hamlet prince of Denmark oh my god.

[spinnysocks]

kiburi x ushari but specifically doomed kiburi x ushari. more than anyone else in the army they believe with full sincerity that scar's plan HAS to work because they can't succeed without him

[skrunksthatwunk]

idk if i've discussed it before (i have certainly THOUGHT about it) but someone on my kuwa suffering ep 89 comp mentioned it and i just had to go off about it like. ok. sensui tells yusuke something along the lines of "you heard itsuki" when itsuki's inside the uraotoko, implying that not only can sensui hear those inside the uraotoko, but that he expects yusuke to be able to as well. which means that yusuke Almost Certainly Heard And Kind Of Ignored kuwabara's prolonged mental breakdown and wailing about how much he needs yusuke to live etc. which. guHHH i hate him yusuke you ass but also listen.

the only acknowledgement yusuke gives to this (if any) is when he says something like "sensui you're sooo fucking cooked this plan's going perfectly (my friends are going to get strong and kill you when i die)." he's trash talking to sensui, ignoring the others because, i think, he doesn't want to acknowledge what he's doing to them.

yusuke is explicitly recreating the experience he had with kuwabara's "death" at the hands of toguro, complete with the announcement of intent (and power) to kill, the inability to impede the threat in any way (barring a power-breakthrough), and the target in some way racing towards/volunteering for their death. yusuke learns through doing, and through tough love-style approaches. it's only effective if it hurts. watching kuwabara die like that was devastating to yusuke, but it sure as hell fucking worked. he beat toguro because of that maneuver. so even if he has to (re-)traumatize his friends in the process, this method will make his friends stronger, and he feels confident in that. but he never had to live with the consequences of kuwabara's death, not really. that's something hiei makes clear before they enter the cave as well, that there are no fake-outs ready to make him or anyone else stronger. the only deaths here will be real. the only power gained will come at a high, permanent cost. hiei's warning is an attempt to keep everyone alive, to keep yusuke from being stupid. and then yusuke decides to take that fatality into his own hands, but it's kind of his friends who would pay the price. he's going to make them live through the days, months, years without him, the actual permanency of loss (assuming they survive for that long), something he never experienced with kuwabara (a new facet of that traumatic scenario), AND he's escaping the emotional fallout of this choice through death. he doesn't have to see them mourn, won't get yelled at, won't watch them fail to move on. he's tapping out and choosing to believe they'll be fine.

but i think he feels guilty. just a little. i mean, yusuke couldn't even believe that people cared about him enough to want him alive in episode one. he's staked everything on his friends, which means he still kind of... doesn't value his own life, at least not compared to theirs. but he believes his friends love him and want him around, and we know that because he has to, or else he wouldn't make a plan that depends entirely on that love. he is actively leveraging the care he doesn't think he deserves, trying to hurt them in a way he is intimately familiar with (only worse), for.... what, exactly?

this is kind of my sticking point tbh. i don't think the answer is... super clear, but let's start with what it's not.

yusuke is not doing this because it is the most practical way to save all of humanity; that would be the mafukan, which he stopped. it could be a gamble to save all of his friends? the mafukan strategy would guarantee koenma's death/eternal imprisonment, whereas this strategy gambles all of humanity on the chance that his friends come out of the Easy Break Oven strong enough to avert the end of the world. if the sacrifice of even one friend is completely intolerable, perhaps he'd accept those slim odds and their steep consequences. yusuke tends to take risks like that, especially when he's got fight-induced tunnel vision. he doesn't think things through too much; his schemes are usually dependent on surprising his enemy enough to oneshot them. truthfully, i think this is the closest we'll get to an answer, and it's a more conventional one for this kind of story. but there is another layer i haven't been able to get from my mind.

i think yusuke is gifting each of his friends an honorable warrior's death.

so, in case it needs saying, yusuke, kuwabara, kurama, and hiei all (at least once, if not several times) exhibit a desire to die in combat in a way they deem noble to give their lives purpose (usually by self-sacrifice, but sometimes by another metric of honor, like hiei's duel with shigure and his desire to die in mutual defeat against an evenly matched opponent; or even kurama's decision to fight shigure in his human form, displaying a sort of passive suicidality via placing being true to himself in this (somewhat symbolic/inconsequential) way over survival). they need to make their lives count for something, because they feel guilty for being alive (kurama and hiei feel guilty for their past actions (hiei's is most evident in his distance from yukina, though that's not its primary reason), hiei, kuwabara, and yusuke have all been ostracized and made to feel like burdens on/unwanted by their caregivers and general society; all four of them have felt profound isolation even from their loved ones (yusuke and hiei are rather obvious; kurama can never tell his mother about the majority of his life nor what she truly means to him in the context of it; and kuwabara is separated from his peers for his spiritual awareness and his "stupidity" (plus his parents aren't around? and he is Desperate to define manhood/manliness through a broader pop cultural one which includes the warrior sacrifice thing bc he has no male role models BUT that's for another post) (i will admit kuwa's the most tenuous one here irt isolation)). they want to die for a cause so badly it's actually physically painful to me. it is passive suicidality, and they define their lives and identities by their relation to, engagement with, and skill at doing violence, etc. they live to die by the sword. anyway. nobody talks about it but i think it's very important to understanding what yusuke's doing here.

because i think he knows that about himself and his friends. they're kindred spirits. at the very least he knows this about kuwabara, who literally made a speech about this before diving into toguro's fingers In The Event That He Is Recreating Explicitly. he is dying nobly like they all want to on the chance that they'll get to break out and fight sensui rather than dying without even getting to take a swing. it's about his pride and theirs. but i don't think yusuke necessarily believes they'll win. he knows better than anyone how strong sensui is, and how wide the gap is between sensui and team urameshi. his stated position that humanity is doomed and that he doesn't care about its fate is, i think, not completely genuine, but if we take it at face value, he's not killing himself so that his friends can survive the end of the world. something's going to come around and kill them eventually. he's doing it so they can survive long enough to fight sensui. he needs them (specifically kuwabara) to be strong enough to free themselves to begin round two. but he's given up on their side winning, on humanity surviving, on his own victory---why should he think his friends are capable of winning? this could be another case of yusuke's fight-blinders. it could be another gamble, more blind faith put in his friends. but honestly it reads more to me that yusuke's giving them a chance to die together on the battlefield. them winning would be great, but it's not his goal. it's a pipe dream.

he knows he's going to be killed. they're probably going to be killed, too. but to make it so they last a little longer against sensui, to make the odds a little more even, so they are killed not like livestock, but like worthy fighters, he'd die a little faster. it's the best kind of death someone like them can have; and he'll deprive himself of it just to make their ends a little sweeter. even if the road to that is far more bitter.

but it's not like yusuke's friends know what he's thinking or agree to it, and he can't exactly make his case for it in the moment. he's making that choice for them. whatever his intentions, whatever odds he thinks they have of beating sensui, he's kind of sealing all of their fates. so how the hell is he supposed to acknowledge kuwabara screaming at him not to die, trying desperately to express what yusuke means to him in what could be their final moments together? this plan is going to hurt his friends terribly. it is already doing so, and he can hear it. his choices to stop koenma from using the mafukan and to die for his friends' strength are both selfish in some way, no matter how you read the scene. if yusuke comforts kuwabara, he might not get strong enough. if he twists the knife, well... how could he forgive himself? and either way by responding he would have to face them all and say yes, i'm doing this regardless of your feelings (with the intention of hurting you). so i think he does what he often does. he avoids it. he lets that emotion glance off him and his bravado and his one-liners so he doesn't have to deal with the fact that he's hurting people, that he's scared and guilty and unsure of himself. that he's about to die again, about to put kuwabara through the grief he saw at his wake again, only worse; about to put his quieter friends through something similar.

yusuke is confronted with the responsibility one has to the people who care for them, and he runs from it in an attempt to give them some small peace. just like when he died before and thought hey, at least my mom and keiko won't be burdened by me anymore. because the only thing he can really do for them is die.

[sskk-manifesto]

--

[angryjewishcockroach]

The relief when your goyishe friend is the one to bring up how insidious and constant antisemitism is

[babacontainsmultitudes]

[just venting a bit into the void you understand you understand 😌] Lately I've been feeling very caught between "I have a lot of thoughts on Sparrow and Normal and all that with the ending and teen talk and feel like I need to get them out and voice them for my own piece of mind and resolution" and "I am lacking the strength and energy to actually sit down and write it all out and kind of really just want to fully move on to other things (AUs, fics, anything else)" but my brain can't seem to commit to either and that's quite frustrating cause it's just left me very restless. *Sigh*. Idk! Just needed to complain about that a bit ig, it's silly but this is what has been ailing me as of late.