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telafel · 1 year ago

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I finished reading that very questionable book the other day and I'm still so conflicted on it.

And here it is:

The book is 100% built around the ending and the ending makes some of the really ridiculous stuff and the gripes i had make sense, BUT then I have to wonder and doubt literally everything. But at the same time the ending also feels like a clever way to explain some of the sloppy writing earlier on in the book and not just for a real narrative reason.

I don't like that a lot of my complaints can be hand-waved by the twist at the end, because there's still a lot of egregiously bad segments and clunky writing earlier on in the book. I seriously resent how one of the main characters is treated constantly as thing punching bag for religious arguements because she has a strong sense of faith, but she is never forcing it on other or being judgemental. Then she is found to have a useful ability and she is *used*

And like the main character, Aranok, is just constantly played up to be so cool and selfless, but also this man that struggled through life for acceptance. But then you have out that while society doesn't have a high opinion of magic-users, he still had a mom and sister that love him dearly and he was sent off to this prestigious magic school. And in the sections that are his PoV show that, yes, he cares about people, but also has a maybe unintentional character flaw where he will reduce certain characters to tools and not have much thought outside of their usefullness (because he never gets to know much of these characters in any other capacity besides what they can do for him.) He gets shit from his girlfriend (one of the main characters) for not bothering to learn the name of a woman that died ostensibly because of him, but then he throws it back in her face when she learns the name of the horses they'll be riding on and not the stable boy....

Anyways.... besides the gripes, there is just a lot of Issues I have with the writing. All of the characters are very flat- for instance you learn one of the characters in the main traveling band is a pirate queen but that doesn't really matter much because the only way this manifests is how she sometimes thinks about the sea and she fights with two swords.... Yeah. All the characters behave the same too and the way their actions are written all feel like these big stage actions. I dunno when so many other details are lacking it all feels like these characters are on a very empty stage trying to make their actions come across to people far away. I'm very tired, im sorry if this doesn't make sense.

Also there is very little conflict in this story. Like stuff happens there are battles, but a lot of the side characters will just smile and agree and go along with things without a fuss.

The author really tries to diversify the story while doing it very half-hearted?? Like the same religious character that gets constantly challenged for her faith also has some obnoxious scenes where various characters try to matchmake her with this boy in their group making doll eyes at her, and when she expresses a lack of interest in sex or relationships she's challenged. Everyone is like "Well it's fine if you don't want sex, BUT you're REALLY MISSIN' OUT," which kinda feels shitty. Like is this ace rep or not? if it's ace rep then fine, but also don't have characters bug her about sex when she clearly expresses a boundary. But also the author implies towards the end of the book that no, she does experience attraction so she probably will get paired up eventually.... (with a side character that is heavily implied to be trans.) Also the whole attitude towards magic is almost an allegory for real life issues and hate etc etc. (I just found it kind of amusing that the cishet main character is like "They hate me for something I can't help!! i was born this way!!" when he can literally summon fireballs from thing air.)

But there are some genuine good points, like how the author can really spin together an interesting mystery through the story that really had me gripped to the end. I wanted to figure it out!!

Again there is this problem where like, at the end of the book you can't really trust if the gripes you have for the first 90% are legit or some weird play into the twist at the end, but let me tell you.... there is one part after the twist that I cannot really defend.

And I can't NOT talk about it because it bothered me so much, so like, Major Spoilers under the cut.

The twist is that the kingdom has had their memory altered en masse by a magic-user wielding a relic that greatly boosts his ability. He was thought to be minor but was biding his time during all the conflict and then struck and usurped everything. Basically he's put himself in place as king and altered everyone's memories so that they believe the true king is this demon-summoning necromancer and all this shit.

It makes some of the weird inconsistencies with characters make sense, and why there are people that will claim to have met the main character but he doesn't remember.

The weirdest thing about this twist is that Aranok and Allandria, the two first introduced in the book, are introduced as lovers. Their romance is *really* flat imo, but it's implied several times in the book that they have sex. BUT THEN when the mind-fuck is undone and they regain their memories it's revealed that they were never lovers, they were just close friends and for some reason they were puppeted into those rolls by the false king.

And like, i don't know that's really a Choice, because neither of these characters are consenting properly. It's consent under false pretense and it sits soooo sooo off for me. Especially when Aranok, not an hour later leers at her attempting to change and have some privacy because he thinks he can just see her naked because he did they they had their memories altered. It just... icks me out. It's not even unpacked really at all, they kinda just go "huh that's weird. Anyway-"

so yeah

#tel babbles #tel's book reviews

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lamortexiii · 4 years ago

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Cryptic Mystic: Karma, Keepers, or Something Else...

Karma, Keepers, or Something Else…: I am sure that you have heard the phrase “reap what you sow” at some point in your life, otherwise known as karma. Maybe you’ve experienced karma in your life. After all, we receive what we put out into the universe… or do we? Some believe there is a “keeper” or someone watching over us that protects us and provides us good or bad experiences based on how we interact with others (some may say “angels). If this is so, is this individual or universal? Maybe “keepers” are loved ones who have left their physical form, or maybe they are something that our human minds are currently incapable of understanding. For some this may even simply be a grandeur delusion brought on by narcissistic personality traits or possibly a mental disorder. A little unknown mixed in with a little psychology, served on a platter as per usual. Let’s dive right in to 2021 with this debatable topic, shall we?

I’ll start by informing you that karma actually possesses many meanings depending on what culture and country you are in. The most familiar American definition of karma - meaning that bad things happen to those who do bad things and good things happen to those who do good things - is but one definition of many. Now, this definition that we understand here in America is of course defined by what one perceives as good and bad - this can look different for many people. Having said this, there is no “one way” to believe in karma or to define what “good and bad” mean. For our purposes, I am going to define the terms karma, good, and bad in the most generalized sense that a majority of American society would view as the typical definition. Just know, this may or may not apply to your personal beliefs of what defines “good and bad” or your personal beliefs of what the definition of “karma” is. I completely agree that there are many viewpoints and perceptions and do not discount differences in opinions/beliefs by any means.

Karma originated from the Sanskrit term meaning “action, work, or deed.” It was a plain and simple definition, as if I were having a conversation with you and said, “The karma that he is completing on that house looks marvelous!” I realize how utterly ridiculous that sounds in today’s way of speaking - given the word was just used completely out of cultural context, but you get the point. The word “karma” at that time was just another word and carried little significance. That is, until 1000-700BCE when within the Vedic religion the definition of karma actually meant something that you likely would not guess. The definition took an abrupt and dramatic turn and was used to define not only the word “act,” but additionally it was defined as actions that took place regarding ritualistic and sacrificial occurrences.

Karma in itself has ancient roots in religion such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism to name a few. Karma is seen as a sort of rebirth process in which the way that an individual is in the present day affects their future - all within the same life cycle. Within this realm, karma also affects one’s samsara, or quality of life. In Asia karma is portrayed through symbols such as the endless knot, which symbolizes the never ending process of cause and effect. In knowing this, you can see why karma closely relates to the philosophical theory of causality, defined as when one event contributes to another event where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause. The idea of karma in this sense is seen as a never ending cycle - one that highly influences the circle of life. This is what we know and recognize in modern American society, as well as in many other first-world countries/cultures.

In current society we then view karma as defining the relationship of cause and effect. Some view this as a very spiritual term, believing that there is a higher power who controls the occurrences of karma. Others simply use the term with reckless abandon - not actually understanding what it means, as society has culturally appropriated the term to fit the American narrative. Yet others (myself included) question the occurrence of karma and the several possibilities that may be at play here. Whether you believe karma occurs due to a higher power, some other religious aspect, sheer luck, extraterrestrials, a delusional belief, something else, or maybe you don’t believe in it at all - and that’s okay! Regardless of what you believe, we’re going to dive into some of those possibilities today. As I always say, once you have read this blog it is up to you to ultimately decide what you believe.

From a personal standpoint, I have been in many situations where either I don’t know how I survived, or at the bare minimum how I managed to come out of certain situations unscathed. I have been in several car accidents that were so much more than just fender benders - coming out of all of those without a single scratch. I have never caused an accident, however for whatever reason I seem to be a target for idiots who don’t know how to drive. I guess I just have that attraction factor. All jokes aside, I consider myself lucky to have not been injured in any of the accidents that I have been in. I have to wonder how this is possible, but then another person can be in ONE accident and it’s all over.

I will share a more intimate incident with you that is much darker than a happenstance car accident. When I was much younger I tried to take my own life. I didn’t want to be in this body on this planet any longer. I remember thinking to myself - there has to be something better than this. I swallowed a bunch of unknown pills doused with alcohol. I attempted this on two different occasions. Both times made me extremely ill. The first time I vomited and then felt very tired. The second time I fell to the floor and almost became unconscious. I was very dizzy and couldn’t stand/walk. I went to sleep for several hours with a low heart rate and shallow breathing. However, after both of these occurrences many years later, I realize that I was put here for a bigger purpose. I have many reasons I am here - sharing this blog with you being one of them. I wasn’t meant to leave my physical form here on Earth either one of those times. I like to think that something is protecting me, however I cannot say with certainty what that is or why exactly…

My biological mother was in a bad car accident when she fell asleep at the wheel. It threw her from the car and knocked off both of her sneakers. She woke up laying in the grass without shoes. She told me that she doesn’t remember much, but that she saw white hands on her shoulders and felt like whatever that was had pushed her through the accident. She came out without any serious injuries - only suffering minor bruising. It is important to note that she has had similar experiences as I have with feeling things and experiencing premonitions.

To touch on karma a bit from a personal experience, I have a short but interesting story to tell. Growing up I didn’t have many true friends and found myself surrounded by individuals who acted in a manner that I did not understand. There was a lot of negative energy on behalf of those around me; jealousy, lies, deceit, bad intentions, and misery. I wasn’t treated very well by my peers or in relationships. In fact, I was bullied, mentally abused, and physically abused by several people as I grew from a child to an adolescent. Interestingly enough, I found that those who did absolutely wrong to me that had the worst of intentions always had something bad happen to them. One person that comes to mind was blown up in an explosion overseas while serving in the military. Another person was in a bad car accident. From what I know currently, all of these people who were utterly nasty to me continue to lead miserable lives - because they are in fact miserable people. Whether this is just their nature or that they just didn’t have the strength and willpower to seek better things for themselves is debatable. Nonetheless, none of them as far as I know are happy in the present day and have likely never experienced true real happiness. As described before, some of these people have had very bad things happen to them. Is this karma or maybe a keeper’s doing? I have no idea, but it is something I have turned over in my mind for many years, and continue to ponder on from time to time.

One theory some hold is that angels are protecting people. This could turn into a really big conversation, so I will try my best to stay objective here and stick to the main topic of karma and keepers. I challenge the theory of angels for the following reasons: The Bible was written by several people with several different versions available, as have all books that we know today. Christianity in itself, as well as several other religions point to the sky (or heavens) as being the source of an almighty power. What if angels are actually extraterrestrials and those who have experienced said “angels” rationalize their experience by putting a name on the experience, therefore believing it was a religious experience rather than something that they didn’t understand - as a form of coping with the unknown. That is my personal theory in relation to “keepers” and the “karma” experienced therein as being related to any type of angelic form. This also covers how extraterrestrials could very well be the forces pulling the strings. As humans we base our logical thinking on what it is we know to be true - or what we have been taught is the truth, but how do we really know? The short answer is - we don’t. It is much easier to put a label on something to be able to process what that thing is than to be left to wonder and be afraid of what we do not know and understand. It is much easier to read what others have written and blindly accept it as being “the truth” or “the way” without seeking further proof. Just a few things to think about - and this goes for any religion. Group-think is a good descriptive term that comes to mind.

The religious standpoint on karma and “keepers” has everything to do with psychology and the human brain and its functions. Think about it as I said before - the human brain naturally tries to rationalize and process new information in a way that is understandable and logical. This varies depending on who you are talking to of course, but is the ultimate foundation for religion. Beginning in ancient times before electricity, technology, and all of the wonderful (and not so wonderful) things we have now, the less intelligent brains of those before us attempted to rationalize what they were experiencing. Let me give you a universal example that is actually more recent - did you know at one point women were seen as being psychotic and even evil for having hormonal symptoms related to their menstrual cycle and even for having a menstrual cycle period? (no pun intended) Women were put through horrible treatment to try to treat PMS, and it was even seen as being a mental illness/disorder for a very long time! At one point in time menstruating women were seen as being involved in magic and sorcery (whoops, you got me!). To quote some religious scripture, “go apart from women during the monthly course, do not approach them until they are clean” Quran 2:222, “…in her menstrual impurity; she is unclean… whoever touches…shall be unclean and shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening” Leviticus 15, and lastly from the first Latin encyclopedia, “Contact with menstrual blood turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.” Okay… so… you realize how ridiculous all of this sounds, right? However, it was not ridiculous at the time - the people who lived in those times found a way to explain, rationalize, and describe what they felt was logical for explaining a woman’s menstrual cycle. Freud attempted to explain why people felt this way about menstrual cycles by stating that humans are naturally scared and uncomfortable around blood - again the human brain giving a logical explanation for why these thoughts and beliefs occurred. We know now through research and scientific data (actual tangible proof) that PMS is related to the shift in hormones women experience during that special time of month, which can cause a plethora of symptoms. This is easily treatable today with modern medicine or more holistic approaches - both of which have also been scientifically proven to work.

I know that last paragraph seems a little off course for this particular blog topic, but it carries a strong point that I feel necessary to make. Point being: religion is just another way the human brain tries to rationalize an event that is happening that is unexplained, new, different, abnormal, or scary; the same way that human brains of ancient times tried to rationalize with women bleeding from their vaginas. Having answers and an explanation gives people peace of mind. Once an idea becomes universal, again, it makes it easy to follow and just shrug the phenomena off as being caused by whatever is said by whoever is explaining it as their belief. The same is said for keepers, karma, and everything in between.

From a disorder perspective, it is very possible that some people believe in having a “keeper” because they are divine or special to a point of being above others. This behavior would likely fall under a more Narcissistic Personality Disorder or potentially some form of psychosis or schizophrenia. Reason being, these disorders involve hallucinations, delusions, and irrational beliefs that are of a bizarre nature. All three have key factors that make them different of course. For example, Narcissistic Personality Disorder revolves more around the person having selfish traits and not possessing the ability to connect with others all while believing they are of a certain prestige pedigree or above others. Psychosis and schizophrenia look similarly to one another in that both include symptomology involving hallucinations, delusions, and breaks from reality, however schizophrenia can actually cause psychosis. Additionally, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia may have symptoms of psychosis but not everyone with psychosis will be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Keeping it short here, but those are the basics of those three conditions. Knowing this, it is easy to see how someone could hold a belief that they have someone watching over them because they are special, or that some force is causing them to receive good karma or inflict bad karma on those who do them wrong.

Regardless of which way you choose to look at keepers and karma, both are definitely interesting phenomena that could use more research and productive discussions. Keeping an open-mind is always the path I personally choose to take because there are so many factors and options to consider before making a solid judgement on what the actual root cause of either one of these is. I wanted to kick 2021 off with an interesting yet somewhat debatable topic to really get you thinking. There are plenty more blogs in store where this one came from. This year will be much better than what we knew as 2020 (good riddance!) Here’s to another year full of education, knowledge, mystery, good conversation, and intriguing topics that really get those gears turning in your brain. Stay safe, be you, and never stop seeking the truth - whatever that truth is for you.

Cryptic Mystic Blog by PsychVVitch

www.LaMorteXiii.com

#crypticmystic #lhp #occultblog #witchcraft #wicca #pagan #highermagick #blackflame #coven #livedeliciously #thecraftyvvitch #psychvvitch #lamortexiii #luciferian #satanism #asabovesobelow #knowledge #freedom

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c-is-for-circinate · 5 years ago

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On Good Omens, queerbaiting, and heteronormative bullshit

Theory: Good Omens the miniseries and the way it treats relationships feels maybe a little weird and hits some of the same mental buttons as queerbaiting not because Aziraphale and Crowley are insufficiently gay, but because the entire rest of the show is. In this essay I will actually write this essay, because no, really, I think it’s A Thing and I might even be able to prove it.

There’s a lot of nuance to both sides of the whole queerbaiting/not-queerbaiting argument, and I don’t want to neglect any of it, but I think my big takeaways have been as follows:

On the ‘this is uncomfortable and queerbaity’ side:

Good Omens the miniseries ramps up the emotional relationship between Crowley and Aziraphale to be the heart of the entire show. Both demon and angel are coded as gay in a number of different ways, both individually and in terms of how their relationship is portrayed as a romance. And yet despite being the core of the show, they never make any of it explicitly romantic. There’s not a kiss, there’s not an ‘I love you’. The entire relationship is built from implications rather than explicit statements.

Years and decades and centuries of storytelling have given us gay relationships that we have to look for. That we have to find in implications rather than explicit statements. Sometimes stories were written that way for plausible deniability, so that content creators could keep mainstream/straight fans happy while also luring queer fans with crumbs and promises. Sometimes stories were written that way for plausible deniability, so content creators could slip hidden gay messages past censors. Sometimes stories were written that way for plausible deniability, so content creators could stay literally, physically safe. But either way, it’s exhausting. It’s been so long. We want to see ourselves on screen. We want somebody to admit out loud to what we’re seeing. We’re tired.

Also, when things get heated: the opposing side are apologists and boot-lickers, ready to bend over backwards to defend their Precious Author Faves in hopes of receiving whatever crumbs they can get. (Please note: this is an ad hominem argument with like ten different logical fallacies in it, and also it’s just mean. We will be assuming that all parties in this discussion are attempting to act in good faith with a healthy dose of frustration, and largely ignoring this point.)

On the ‘no, this is Good Representation, really’ side:

Aziraphale and Crowley are in a queer relationship--it’s just not a gay one. They are two genderfluid beings who mostly present as male out of preference or convenience, surrounded by additional similar genderfluid beings who may present as male, or female, or both, or neither. Their relationship is both romantic and asexual.

The fact that those ‘explicit milestones’ of kissing, sex, etc are absent from the show is in fact part of the point. Not only does it make sense for the characters themselves, but it means so much to see a relationship that is obviously romantic, that is the center of an entire story, where the key turning point is about something other than sex or marriage. A relationship can be super important, can be important enough to build an entire life around, without sex, without kissing, without wedding rings. It’s so good to see one that is.

Also, when things get heated: the opposing side are aphobes and probably transphobes, whiny babies who don’t really care about representation, they just want their kind of representation. (Please see above note about ad hominem attacks and logical fallacies.

There are a few points that everyone can agree on. Crowley and Aziraphale follow the plotline of a romance, and their relationship is the core of this show. They do not kiss, or have sex, or explicitly fall into any behavior that conventionally says, ‘yes, this human couple is dating’. Other characters in the show mistake-them-for-dating, but those characters are always uninformed about the real complex nature of this relationship.

One side says: it all comes so close to being a thing we so rarely get to see, to reflecting ourselves on screen. Why promise and not deliver? Why come so close and then shy away? Aziraphale and Crowley, with all they are to each other (with Aziraphale’s shop in Soho and his time in a discrete gentleman’s club, with their so-religious families that will disown them or worse for this relationship, with everything they are an have been) are a metaphor for gayness that refuses to commit past the point of metaphor and just admit it already, and it hurts.

The other side says: it has exactly hit the nail on the head of being a different thing we so rarely get to see, to reflecting a different portion of ourselves onscreen. It just so happens that the thing it’s reflecting is by nature a little confusing and undefined, is close to the kind of queerness you’re expecting without getting there. Crowley and Aziraphale (who’ve been alive for six thousand years, who have seen so many different ways humans love each other and swear to each other, who are not bound by our conventions or definitions and maybe show us that we don’t have to be either) are a metaphor for nothing. They parallel a lot of familiar narratives of a lot of kinds of queerness, without trying to be anything but what they are.

Two sides, everybody so starved for representation that they’ll grab for it and name-call and scrabble desperately when they almost get it. One relationship. One divided fandom.

Look, it is obvious by this point that this is a case of everybody fighting over our one specific instance of representation because there isn’t enough to go around, right? If gay relationships were more common throughout fiction, it wouldn’t be so important that Aziraphale and Crowley were among them. If ace relationships and alternative relationship dynamics were portrayed as frequently or given as much weight as sexual ones, it wouldn’t be so important.

And it’s not just about what’s important, it’s about what’s noticed. If there were gay relationships--or if there were ace relationships, or other kinds of queer relationships!--all over fiction, then being explicit would matter so much less. It is important, in this world, that queer relationships in fiction announce what they are out loud, because in this world they are so often brushed over or ignored. They have to clear a much higher bar than conventional straight, sexual relationships. If there were more representation in the world, everybody would be primed to notice Aziraphale and Crowley as a romance. We wouldn’t need it spelled out--one, because we’d already know, and two, because it wouldn’t be such a big deal if somebody else didn’t.

Of course, there’s more representation these days than there used to be--little dribs and drabs of it all over. There’s just enough out there that somebody can say, ‘look, we’ve seen basic gay romances, let us have this thing here, let us have this nuance’. And meanwhile half the audience (who may be gay, or bi, or ace, or transgender or genderqueer themselves in all sorts of ways) is gaping, because...okay, maybe gay romance exists in some places, in corners, but there’s still so little of it.

We’re all living on crumbs. It’s hard to appreciate nuance when you’re just a few steps past starving. It’s hard to appreciate the grace of ambiguous and open endings when you’ve seen them twisted against you again and again, and you just want something that’s yours.

Here’s another thing, an important thing. Humans are used to seeing patterns and we’re used to seeing stories. It can be very hard to tell whether a storyteller is trying to give us something new and strange told well, or something more familiar told badly--especially if we’re used to seeing the familiar thing told badly.

And: if the audience cannot tell whether an author is portraying Thing A well or Thing B badly, at a certain point it doesn’t really matter which it is.

And: sometimes the only way to tell if a story is trying to show you Thing A and succeeding or Thing B and failing, is to look around the story to see if you can spot Thing B done right, anywhere else.

In other words: How do you make a difference between an audience that is collectively sure that Crowley and Aziraphale are some specific, slightly-hard-to-define but very definitely queer thing (and sometimes being hard to define is an intrinsic part of queerness), versus an audience divided amongst themselves over whether or not they’re just a bad, cowardly approximation of ‘gay’?

You put actual, explicit gay somewhere else in the story.

And that’s where we run into problems.

The problem with Good Omens the miniseries and how it does queer representation, how it does Crowley and Aziraphale and their romance, is the same problem that Good Omens the miniseries has across the board. The problem is that half the writing team is gone, and so is half the story.

In the miniseries, Aziraphale and Crowley are, hands down, the main characters. This is their story, and everyone else around them--Anathema and Newt, the Four Horsemen, Heaven and Hell, the Them, and even Adam himself--are just bit players. I don’t fault Neil Gaiman for that, exactly. I’m sure he did his best, and his best meant he poured the heart and soul of the story into these two characters and the relationship they share. He gave them as much richness and depth as he possibly could. (That’s part of why we all love them enough to fight over them.) But the fact is, the rest of the story around them suffered.

Adam and the Them, Anathema and Newt, even Madame Tracy and Sergeant Shadwell--humans, all of them, and very much the people who actually stop the apocalypse. Considering the way Anathema kick-started Adam along his path towards Armageddon, they’re even the people who started the apocalypse. Very, very fundamentally, Good Omens is a story about how humans don’t need heaven or hell--not to be evil, not to be good, and not to keep being human. Except that the miniseries wrote the humans off to the side, and that cracked things a little. In some places, it cracked things a lot.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the miniseries. I love Crowley and Aziraphale at the heart of it, and the richness and depth of their relationship. I love the story about how an angel and a demon are so very very human, even though they think they aren’t.

But it’s a story that only works with enough of a contrast. We can only appreciate Aziraphale and Crowley as an angel and a demon who’ve become very-nearly human if we know what the differences are in the first place. We can only appreciate their similarities if we see enough humans acting the same way: with want, with fear, with desire, with pettiness, with love.

The difficulty with the miniseries is that we see a great deal of Crowley and Aziraphale being full of very, very human emotions and reactions. We see their worry and desperation and how much they care about each other. Nothing we see from any other character in the whole show comes close.

Anathema lives a life in service to (a prophecy, not a Host, but is it so different?) a thing she doesn’t quite understand and nobody can explain to her, that she just has to trust--but we see Aziraphale deal with Gabriel and Heaven again and again, and we see so little of Anathema’s fear and doubt. Newt is fired from (a nothing job, not God’s endless love) a world he vaguely understands but isn’t good enough for, and finds himself in a strange, confusing place where he’s probably smarter than his boss and everything smells a bit weird and it might technically be his job to hurt people except maybe he doesn’t want to--and we get none of it, compared to what we see of Crowley, six thousand years post-Fall.

Adam is human and not-human, full of powers that can bend the world around him to his whim, that can make things how he thinks they should be. He decides not to, because of love and selfishness, because he’d rather be human. He makes the exact same decision Aziraphale and Crowley make. We just get so much less of the weight of it.

The thing about telling the story this way is that it turns Crowley and Aziraphale into the only real people in the whole show, with everyone around them in silhouette and abstract. It stops being a story about how this angel and this demon are, effectively, exactly the same as everyone else--oh sure they’ve got some differences, powers and abilities and age and shape-shifting (and mutable gender, and vague non-existent sexualities), but hell, people in general are full of differences in all of those things anyway.

All of a sudden, the differences between baseline human and celestial being start to feel weird and cheap. If Aziraphale and Crowley are the only real people in the story, and they’re not reacting in the way most people would react--it’s not just because they’re individuals, with specific individual wants and needs and reactions. It’s either a statement or a weird error. If the only real people in the story aren’t people, everything starts to fall just a little bit apart.

And so we come back around to sexuality once again.

A deeply, deeply unfortunate side effect of the Good Omens miniseries fleshing out Heaven and Hell and neglecting the humans is that all of the queer content--all of the nonbinary characters, our one shining non-heterosexual relationship, all of it--went to characters who were not human. It makes so much sense, on one hand. That’s where all the new depth came from, so of course that’s where all the new queerness went. And why should non-human characters subscribe to human definitions of gender and sexuality? Of course they wouldn’t.

Because, right: the idea that sexuality is in and of itself a primarily human thing, which most non-humans lack but some experiment with for fun (and that is Word of God and that is explicit in the text of the show and the book)--that idea’s not actually inherently bad. The idea that sexuality is a requirement of humanity, that it comes part and parcel with love and ‘becoming more human’ (which is, after all, the best thing you can do according to show or book)--that idea is in fact bad. But if all of your desire for sex goes to your humans AND all your queerness goes to your non-humans...that gets real unfortunate, real real fast.

The problem is, just like the show neglected to give the full depth of human characterization and emotion to its actually human characters, it failed to give them the full depth of human sexuality and gender, too.

The humans in Good Omens are painfully heterosexual. It’s not simply that the Newt/Anathema and Tracy/Shadwell relationships are straight--it’s that they fall into place as though straight is the only choice. Both relationships are so very much a picture of no other options. Anathema and Newt are facing the end of the world, about to probably die, and also have been prophecied to get together under these circumstances for centuries. Shadwell and Madame Tracy are both very deeply alone, and getting older, and if they want to be anything but alone their only choice appears to be each other. These four people appear to default their way into traditional m/f relationships, whether it’s falling into (under) bed or moving to the country to retire together. They hit all of those ‘explicit markers’ we were talking about before, and they don’t do it with emotional build-up. They don’t do it with any real exploration of the individuals involved or why they’re making these choices. There’s barely any acknowledgement that these are choices.

The thing is, gay humans do exist in the world of Good Omens! We spend time is Soho, and we hear about a very specific extremely gay gentleman’s club, and we know it’s there, somewhere, hidden. We just never get to see it. Crowley and Aziraphale (who are our only touchstone to those queer areas, which the other human characters never seem to encounter) are the Only Queers In The World. And it sucks, and I think it happened completely by accident.

I suspect that the lack of human queerness was literally just a side-effect of the lack of human anything--Crowley and Aziraphale are in fact the only queers in the world specifically because they’re the only people in the world. None of the already-existing human characters were given enough additional development to add much of anything, including any new gay. The human world of Tadfield and the Witchfinder Army wasn’t given enough development to make it worth creating any new characters, let alone queer ones.

It just means that, all of the sudden, straightness gets accidentally equated with every single non-child human we spend more than two lines with, and queerness becomes exclusively the province of demons and angels. That’s really bad. It’s one of those unfortunate accidents that happens sometimes, because the world ain’t perfect, but it’s pretty not great. And that’s where our problems come from.

In particular that’s where this current debate comes from, because if sexuality = human and human = straight, and nonhuman = asexuality and queerness = nonhuman, then we’ve accidentally said some pretty damning things about humanity and equated all queerness with lack of sexual desire all at the same time. And it’s subtle, and it’s easy to miss, because it’s all about a lack of queer humans that’s all mixed in with the lack of humans at all, but it feels off. So we go looking for reasons and we go looking for scapegoats. It’s so easy to fixate on and blame the only queer relationship (the only developed, real relationship) we get at all, writ huge and impossible-to-miss all over our screen, rather than all the invisible ones we don’t.

Here’s what I take away from all of this: Crowley and Aziraphale are, in every real sense, the most important characters in the Good Omens miniseries, and their relationship is without doubt the most important relationship. It’s a well-developed, believable relationship. It’s neither a straight relationship, nor an explicitly sexual gay relationship. It is a different thing all its own, a thing that does not easily fit conventional human labels, that may or may not include sex at some point but certainly does not require it to be devastatingly important.

And I like that. I, me, personally, who would rather find a reason to feel heartened than a reason to feel angry, am really glad to see something so extremely not-straight at the emotional center of a story I care about. That’s me.

In the absence of anything that is an explicitly sexual gay relationship, this nebulous complicated thing at the core of this story looks an awful lot as though it’s trying to be gay and not getting there all the way. And that sucks. And for a lot of people, that hits some very specific buttons that have been made tender over many years of stories that try to be gay and refuse to go there all the way. The flaw, though, is in the contrast and the context around the relationship--not in the relationship itself.

Stories are hard. Telling stories, and making sure that they get heard on the other end the way we want them to, is hard. Figuring out why certain things resonate the way they do, why some people feel connected while others feel alienated when we’re just trying to make our point, is sometimes the hardest thing of all.

I don’t blame Neil Gaiman for not magically figuring out that this would happen with the story he was trying to tell, partially because I haven’t seen anybody else in this great big argument of ours notice it either. He tried to tell a story that was similar to but distinct from a story a lot of people wanted, and he didn’t make it clear enough. I still really like the story we got. I like all the slightly-different fanfic versions, too. I like liking things. That’s me.

If you’re still mad, if you’re still hurt: legit. That’s valid. But I don’t think arguing over this one specific relationship, what it Should Be and Shouldn’t Be, is helpful.

Basically: I don’t want to sit around getting angry at each other over why Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t get the same traditional markers of Happily Ever After as Newt and Anathema, as Tracy and Shadwell. I want to know why those couples didn’t have to (didn’t get to) EARN their happily-ever-afters with all the feeling and wanting and fearing and deciding that Aziraphale and Crowley did.

#good omens #driveby meta attack #I said I was going to keep my two cents out of this one!#apparently I lied #sigh

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incomprehensiblelentils · 5 years ago

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I did not get around to this yesterday but, a short selection of fictional things that meant a lot to me over the last decade! ...it is going under a cut bc it is Too Long sorry lmao.

Books

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: this book came out in September 2017 and I have read it four times already. It’s the kind of book I want to write but I’m not sure I’m clever enough to: every event and every character is so purposeful and you won’t catch everything the first time through. Every time I reread it I find something new to marvel at. I hope the Hulu series is half as good

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: this was the first piece of fiction I ever found with a family with a Chinese father and a white mother. This family is a lot less functional than my family, but I've read this three times because that means the world to me.

Ash by Malinda Lo: I discovered this in 2011 and it was the first f/f novel I ever read, and as I would later learn, one of a handful with a happy ending at the time, particularly in YA fiction. For a long time, I reread it every time I felt hopeless. I just reread it again last month and it is still as beautiful and meaningful to me as in 2011.

Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan: This is an Asian-inspired fantasy (becoming more common now, but still irritatingly rare) written by a queer Asian woman, with f/f. I think it is only the second one of these, after Ash? It is frustratingly rare, anyway. The worldbuilding is incredible also.

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan: We are getting more stories about biracial Asians, but they are still pretty rare and I treasure every one. This one felt so real to me.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth: The first half of this book captures so beautifully what it’s like growing up queer in a religious environment when you don’t even have the words or self-awareness to know what you’re feeling. This was another one I read over and over again when I was feeling low.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater: this is just a book for horse girls. I don’t know how else to describe this lol. I also feel like the romance is super downplayed until the very end, and honestly barely feels like a romance to me, so that’s refreshing!

Movies:

Pacific Rim (2013): I remember having this weird feeling when asked to give my top 3 movies once in high school, like maybe my favorite movie hadn’t come out yet so I couldn’t answer properly. I was right; this is the movie I was waiting for. This is my favorite movie. The feelings this movie gives me is the standard I hold all movies to.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019): but Megan, didn’t this just come out? Yes, and it’s my other favorite movie now. I love (almost) every second of this movie. This movie made me feel a way that I thought maybe I might never feel again, after a certain other franchise movie this year took a dump on my heart. I don’t care that we’re never getting a sequel, we got this and that’s enough for me.

Thor (2011): Those of you who have been around awhile know that I really love this movie. I loved it before we all jumped on the Thor train after Ragnarok and I will continue to love it probably my whole life. It just makes me happy.

Aquaman (2018): This is Thor but underwater and with a biracial hero. It made me cry in the theater and I do not want to hear any negative opinions about it, I find them personally wounding.

Belle (2013): The fact that Gugu Mbatha-Raw isn’t a superstar is tragic, and this movie is gorgeous and lovely and made me feel a lot of things as a biracial person.

Mad Max Fury Road (2015): I remember seeing the trailer for this in the theater and going “yikes that looks like a thing I would never watch.” Joke’s on you, past me!!!! I find this a deeply stressful but glorious film that I can only watch like, once or twice a year.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010): I do not need or want to hear about how this movie is Problematic, I know all of its issues, and yet. It brings me joy and it was one of the first movies I saw when I was just starting to break out of my religious upbringing and I laugh until I cry every time I watch it.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015): I am starting to realize that I am not and never really was a Star Wars Fan, which is to say that like...I love this movie specifically, I love the characters, I love the interactions, I love the stuff that happens. I do not so much love Star Wars as a whole? I like it fine! But this movie is the only part of the franchise to really make me go “oh, I get it.”

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017): This was a weird little movie that nobody saw and nobody talked about, but I adore it because it’s so gentle and romantic. I don’t know how accurate it is to history and frankly I do not really care.

Big Hero 6 (2014): are you tired of me mentioning I’m biracial yet? This movie has biracial protagonists and a cute squishy robot and no romance and superhero stuff and I love it so much.

F8: The Fate of the Furious (2017): I went to go see this on a whim with my wife and it was one of the most joyous theater experiences of my life. I don’t know, I just love everything about it.

TV shows:

Community: This only kind of counts because it started in 2009 but I started it mid-s2 so eh. Seasons 1-3 of this show are written on my heart, I can quote a ridiculous amount of dialogue from them and these characters will stay with me forever. Warts and all, this is my show.

Dollhouse: Another technicality but like, I met my wife because we both loved Bennett Halverson so I gotta put this on here. It’s pretty significantly affected my life! Also I find that it holds up fairly well, if you’re down for the admittedly iffy premise and an ending that’s a bit of a mess narratively due to sudden cancellation.

Agents of SHIELD: I would never claim that this show is “good” but I do think that it has mostly figured out what the hell it’s doing. And it has been a pretty significant part of my fandom life for the last 6 years, so to leave it off this list would feel wrong. It gave me Daisy Johnson, first canon biracial superhero as played by a biracial actor, and for that i will always be grateful.

Warehouse 13: I could not tell you why I fell so deeply in love with this dumb, badly written show that shit the bed in the final episode more spectacularly than I could have imagined, and yet I did! I think probably it is because I love found family so much, and also I find goofy camp charming more often than not. And of course, there is Bering and Wells, the femslash ship that fandom forgot. I will never be over how no one knows what we have suffered!!!!!

Runaways: wow was this a surprise! The Runaways comic is my favorite comic besides Marjorie Liu’s X-23 run, and this show has basically nothing to do with it, and normally that would piss me off but they got my kids’ personalities down so well and all of the actors are so perfect that I really can’t complain. And also, this show has canon f/f and neither of them die at the end! Which is...better than some other shows I could mention!

Doctor Who series 1 and 5: I had a very intense Doctor Who phase in college, and after all was said and done and I quit the show for a time, I realized that although I love a lot of the characters, and Thirteen’s run is pretty good so far, what I really loved was Nine’s run and Eleven’s first season. That is the show at its best to me. Eccleston is my Doctor and Amy is my favorite companion.

Legends of Tomorrow: Look, I am as shocked as anyone that this, the scrappy underdog of the DCTV lineup, is the one that’s most emotionally competent and has the best character arcs! But here we are. Season 4 was some of my favorite TV I’ve seen, uh, ever.

Albums

Dirty Computer by Janelle Monae: I listened to this for basically a year straight after it came out. It’s just ridiculously good.

Something Fierce by Marian Call: This was my on-repeat album in college. i drew a lot of strength from it, and I think that it’s still the best album to recommend to people who ask me about her.

Standing Stones by Marian Call: I heard most of these songs live at concerts before they were quite done yet, so it was really special to get to hear them all collected together like this. I’m going to get a tattoo with a lyric from one of these songs because no one’s quite been able to put my basic philosophy into words quite like Marian.

Heartthrob by Tegan and Sara: Hot Take, I know, because a lot of people hate this album, but it was so affirming to go out and buy A Lesbian Album from A Lesbian Band in 2013.

The Rent movie soundtrack: I know, I KNOW, but in my defense, my parents got me this for my birthday my first year of college and I needed it so desperately. I can definitely still do “La Vie Boheme” from the beginning and probably most of the other songs too.

In the Heights OBCR: I can only listen to this when I want to cry, but it’s my favorite musical. I got to see the show in 2018 and it was incredible. I think it’s better than Hamilton and I can’t wait for the movie to come out.

Trouble by Natalia Kills: this album is really great and also it says fuck a lot, which I used to be very nervous about hearing or saying, and this helped immensely!

#me

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thegoldendice · 5 years ago

Text

Love Is A Battlefield

Fandom - American Horror Story 1984

Pairing - Xavier Plympton/Reader

Rating - Explicit

Warnings - Suicide, Violence, Mental Heath Issues, Sexual Content, Language, Religious Content

Chapter - 8/12

Read on - ao3, ff.net

Fic Summary - The year is 1984. You're a poor student living alone in L.A., plagued by your problematic relationships with a false friend and a disturbed ex. You meet Xavier Plympton, an aerobics instructor with a dark past, at the gym where you’ve taken a reception job. You quickly develop feelings for him, and you learn to your relief that he likes you too. Soon a deadly series of events befall you and the people in your life. Overwhelmed by tragedy and with your blossoming romance cut short, you are left a wreck. Six years later you discover that while Xavier is dead, he hasn’t quite departed. You soon realise that if you are to be with him and finally achieve true peace and happiness, you must take your own life and become a Camp Redwood ghost.

Chapter Summary - You discuss your future at the camp with Montana and try to bring Xavier around to your way of thinking.

At the break of dawn, you awaken from a fitful sleep. You shiver slightly as you search the room for Xavier, recalling his angry departure from the cabin hours earlier when you revealed your plan to him. He swore, as he left, to stay near to the cabin for your safety. Your eyes filled with tears as the old wooden door slammed shut. Even though he was angry, furious even, Xavier was unable to abandon you. You realise he has not returned, but you don't doubt that he kept his word to remain close by. None of the troubled souls who haunt the camp have come near while you slept, as far as you can tell. He must have kept any potential intruders away. Finally, you fell asleep, too exhausted to remain awake despite everything that had happened.

Your stomach twists with hunger, letting out a loud growl. You don't remember the last time you had food, and of course, Xavier never offered you anything. You feel a renewed sense of sympathy for him at the realisation that he will never eat again. Neither will you when you go through with your decision to end your own life. There are certain things you know you will miss; food and drink especially, but the fleeting joy these things bring does nothing to ease your constant need for healing. You know that your true salvation lies in death. You also know you must convince Xavier of this because you will need him with you when the time comes.

You get up, throwing the useless blanket to the side. You are tired, but you can't lie still any longer. You find your clothes and get dressed after stretching away the ache from your back, caused by a mattress that had already seen better days when the camp first opened. You leave the cabin, looking out for Xavier as you descend the stairs. He's nowhere to be seen, so you make your way to the pier as you attempt to ignore your hunger. You sit on the farthest wooden plank, legs dangling off the edge towards the water. You gaze up, watching the sun beat a slow path towards it’s zenith. It spreads light across the whole valley, highlighting the beauty and seclusion of the area. Not a bad place to spend eternity, you think. You don't realise that Montana has approached you until she sits down at your side.

“You’ve slept with him, haven’t you?”

You turn to see her facing you with a look of exasperation on her face. You're not entirely surprised that she has guessed the truth. You caught a glance of your reflection in a dusty mirror before you left the cabin. The smallest hint of a renewed glow lingers about you, despite your tiredness.

“Why do you care?” You ask, genuinely interested.

“I don’t, really... sure, Xavier’s a great fuck, but I love Trevor.”

"So what does it matter?”

Montana briefly considers the question.

“You’ll find it harder to let go now. You shouldn’t have gone near him.”

You hesitate before responding. If you reveal your plan, Montana may react in a similar way to Xavier. You're not sure if you can handle her wrath right now. That being said, she's going to find out sooner or later. You decide to be brave.

“I’m not letting go. I’m staying.”

Montana’s eyes widen slightly before settling back to their normal expression of semi-boredom. Her mouth quirks up at one corner slightly, making you wonder what she might be thinking.

“How will you do it?” She asks, with more interest than you expected.

“Pills. An overdose. I know what to do.” You let it out in a rush.

“And Xavier’s cool with this?”

You look away in an attempt to avoid having to admit the truth. When you glance back, one side of Montana's mouth is still turned up in a humourless smile.

“Didn’t think so.” She says. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do, but just stop and think for a minute about all the things you’d be giving up. I’ve chilled out a lot, but a few years back I’d have been fucking furious at the thought of someone like you throwing their life away.”

“Someone like me?”

“You’re young and free. We’re completely trapped here Y/n. I get it, Xavier’s a total babe, but how well do you even know him?”

“It’s not just about Xavier. My life is such a mess. I struggle through the days exhausted because I’m too depressed to sleep at night. I’m so fucking lonely, I can’t even begin to describe it.” You struggle to keep the quiver out of your voice. “I look like I'm coping on the surface, but my mind is trapped in a constant battle with inner demons who tell me I’m worthless, I have no future... that I’m partly to blame for what happened here.”

“What!?” Montana, for once, seems shocked.

“Xavier asked me to come here with you guys the summer you were killed, but I couldn’t. If I’d been here maybe I could have changed something somehow, despite what he thinks.” You shrug, at a loss to explain yourself in a way that you feel will make sense. You watch Montana as she considers what you've said.

“No.” She sighs. “No I don’t think you being here would have made a difference at all, even if you’d tried to help. Something... happens here. People seem to die no matter how strong or brave they are. There’s an anger, a rage that takes over. I don’t think you’d have stood a chance.” Montana is quiet for several seconds before continuing on. “As for the other stuff, I get why you’d want to escape from it all but that’s what prescription drugs are for, right?”

You give an empty chuckle.

“They don’t work on me, I've tried. I turn into a zombie. Being here with Xavier is the most alive I’ve felt in six years.”

“Kinda ironic that you want to die then.”

“I don’t feel like I have a choice. I’m not prepared to go off and try to forge some kind of non-miserable life for myself for the millionth time, all for it to inevitably go wrong again and again. If I keep trying to do that I’ll end up wrinkly and decrepit with nothing to show for it. There’s no way Xavier would still want me if I tried to come back to him as a fucking pensioner.”

“You don’t have a lot of faith in how I feel about you, do you?”

You turn, startled to find Xavier standing behind you. You keep forgetting that you're the only person here who can't conceal the noise made when moving around.

“That’s my cue to leave.” Montana mumbles. “Look Y/n, whatever you decide... good luck.”

She gives you a small smile and stands up, nodding slightly to Xavier as she passes him.

“You’re not going to change your mind about this are you?” Xavier asks sadly.

“No Xavier. I have to trust my instincts.”

He watches you for a minute, and you can tell he is trying to decide something. Finally, he rolls his eyes and comes to sit beside you, grabbing your hand straight away as if he's been desperate to touch you again.

“Okay.” he whispers, dropping his head to place a kiss on your knuckles. “It was a shock at first, but I can’t pretend I’m not fucking delighted at the thought of you staying here with me. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

Notes: Important - I am not trying to glamourise suicide here. This story is intended to fit into the AHS narrative which is essentially a fantasy where a lot of messed up stuff goes on (as we all know!). What I’ve written only goes some way towards reflecting real life.

This post-canon part was originally only going to be 4 chapters but things are going a bit slower than I imagined so I’m not going to put a number on it now.

#xavier plympton #xavier plympton x reader #xavier plympton x you #ahs #ahs xavier #montana duke #ahs 1984 #american horror story #american horror story 1984 #fanfic #ao3 #ff.net

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dysphoric-dumbass13 · 5 years ago

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All of the bookish asks. I hate you. And your stupid fucking face. Im so tired dude i stayed up ridiculously late to finish that

Hey I stayed up ridiculously late to finish mine too. Well not ridiculously late because me and then I couldn't fall asleep anyways but whatever. And you literally love me you jackass.

1. (what book did you last finish? when was that?) Willingly? Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli, in July. For school? Of Mice And Men. I didn’t care that much, and I forgot to finish A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but I still finished my project fine without any issue whatsoever and should get at least a B, if not an A. But whatever.

2. (what are you currently reading?) The Odyssey, for school. But also I’m like ¾ of the way through What If It’s Us by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli. (what book are you planning to read next?) Well for English it will have to be A Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass, Night by Elie Wiesel, Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, or Lord of the Flies by William Golding. However, I really want to read The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. And I’m also trying to get a hold of the Harry Potter books because I haven’t read them since I was 7, and I was a compulsive moron so I read them out of order based on length and the title. I did that a lot.

3. (what was the last book you added to your tbr?) I don’t fully know what it means by that, but I’ll give this a try. The last thing I remember actively seeking out that I need to read again (for writing purposes, and the fact that I’m a nerdy bastard) was the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.

4. (which book did you last re-read?) Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli, I loved it so much that I read it twice in one month. I also re-read Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli twice before moving to the former.

5. (which was the last book you really, really loved?) Again, Leah on the Offbeat. I loved that book so much oh my god.

6. (what was/were the last books you bought?) I actually bought 3 books in September (after I got all my books for English), which were Leah on the Offbeat, Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda, and The Song of Achilles.

7. (paperback or hardcover? why?) Paperback. The hurt less to hold while reading, and they’re cheaper so I can buy more of them. But I do love a hardcover book if the cover is really intricate and beautiful.

8. (ya, na, or adult? why?) Idk. To me it doesn’t matter all that much as long as it’s a good book. I really like anything that isn’t racist, sexist, super heteronormative, transphobic, or hating of any particular religion (except like if it’s vaguely poking fun at catholicism and christianity because we deserve it)

9. (sci-fi or fantasy? why?) Fantasy. God I just fucking LOVE fantasy. I wrote a 20,000-word oneshot that was of the fantasy genre. I just love it too much.

10. (classic or modern? why?) Idk. Doesn’t really matter, again, as long as it isn’t racist, transphobic, against a religious group, or too heteronormative.

12. (political memoirs or comedic memoirs?) Idk man. But I hate politics in every way, shape, and form, so I’m gonna go with comedic memoirs.

13. (name a book with a really bad movie/tv adaptation) Um………. idk. I’m gonna go with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire simply because of the fact that they cut so much out and, sorry not sorry, if the whole series was written by someone not transphobic, homophobic, and antisemitic it would be better. It’s great, but it could be so much better.

14. (name a book where the movie/tv adaptation was actually better than the original) Again idk. I’m gonna say The Princess Bride because that movie is so fucking good guys.

15. (what book changed your life?) I know it’s not technically a book book, but Unknown Colors by Gabriels_Wings on Wattpad. It got me into reading again and that’s only benefitted me so far (except for distracting me from homework, but who cares).

16. (if you could bring three books to a deserted island, which would they be and why?) Well, obviously, Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda and Leah on the Offbeat (ok I’m gonna some up with abbreviations now, LotO for the latter and SvtHA for the former), and the last spot would be between The Song of Achilles and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein. Because they’re good books. And I’m gonna end up dying on said island and I need my gay fix with me.

17. (if you owned a bookshop what would you call it?) Oof, that’s hard. Probably….. Narnia. And it would be a very gay place with beanbags and a small coffee shop inside and it would be like this one place my mom went to all the time where you could buy a book and if you wanted to you could bring it back and they’d buy it back for slightly less than you bought it for. It was a great place. And my bookshop would be amazing.

18. (which character from a book is the most like you?) Toughie. I’m gonna go with… Blaise Zabini from Harry Potter or Abby Suso from SvtHA and LotO. Because Blaise is very gay and sassy (idk if he actually is in the books but hey, fanfiction) and Abby is a bi disaster and relatable af.

19. (which character from a book is the least like you?) Idk. Hannah Abbott? Because she’s a Hufflepuff? Idk man.

20. (best summer read?) LotO.

21. (best winter read?) Been a while since I actually remember reading a book in winter. I remember when I was in 5th grade I really loved reading Where The Mountain Meets The Moon by Grace Lin. That was good. But I think The Hobbit would be good too.

22. (pro or anti e-readers? why?) Pro, it makes reading at random places so much easier. Plus, I can then read gay fanfic at my christian grandparents’ houses.

23. (bookdepository or amazon?) I’ve never used Book Depository, but I looked it up (omg Kass you aren’t going to believe it, I googled something on my own!) and it seems smaller and cooler because it’s just books. So I’m gonna go with that one.

24. (do you prefer to buy books online or in a bookshop?) In a bookshop without a doubt, you can browse for hours. I love bookshops

25. (if you could be a character in a book for just one day, who would you be and why? bonus: any specific day in the story?) Simon Spier. From SvtHA. On the day of the carnival fair thing. Because zqawxsedcrfvtgbyhnujmikolplomiknujybhtvgrfcedxwszqa

26. (if you could be a character in a book for their entire life, who would you be and why?) Again Simon Spier. Because infdjfcdncewhfiubdkjcnsoawehfwedscnsaoufgrwiofbv cisahcsoainh

27. (if you could change one thing about mainstream literature, what would you change?) NO. MORE. DISCRIMINATION! And I swear to god people, quit idolizing authors who are racist or sexist or transphobic or homophobic or against certain religions or anything else because I swear they don’t deserve it! No more discrimination in the media guys.

28. (how many books have you read so far this year?) A lot. Idk the actual amount but a lot. Especially if we’re counting fanfic.

29. (how do you sort your shelves?) I don’t actually own enough books to sort lol. But I assume I would sort them alphabetically by author. And if I had a ton of books, I’d sort them further into genres.

30. (who’s your favorite author?) Becky Albertalli.

31. (who’s your favorite contemporary author?) Idk. I’m not that smart, I don’t put authors into genre categories.

32. (who’s your favorite fantasy author?) See above.

33. (who’s your favorite sci-fi author?) See above.

34. (list 5 otps) Oh god, here I go. Pansmione (Pansy Parkinson x Hermione Granger from Harry Potter), Wolfstar (Remus Lupin x Sirius Black from Harry Potter), Sabriel (Sam Winchester x Gabriel from Supernatural), Johnlock (John Watson x Sherlock from Sherlock), and Merthur (Merlin x Arthur Pendragon from Merlin).

35. (name a book you consider to be terribly underrated) What If It’s Us by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli.

36. (name a book you consider to be terribly overrated) Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck.

37. (how many books are actually in your bookshelf/shelves right now?) 19, including a book I accidentally stole from my 7th grade LA teacher (sorry), and a college workbook I stole from my dad on lifesaving first aid for heart problems. + 1 movie (Love, Simon), 5 comic books, and an adult coloring book because why not. I also have 2 full boxes downstairs full of kids books (about half of which I've never read or have any interest in reading) from when I moved.

38. (what language do you most often read in?) English because I’m a dumb bitch and don’t know other languages well enough. I might be able to stumble through a kid’s book in French, and I could read a basic novel in Spanish.

39. (name one of your favorite childhood books) Goodnight Moon was one of my favorites. I also was obsessed with Where The Mountain Meets The Moon by Grace Lin, and when I was about 5 my mom would read The Hobbit to my brother and I when she got home from work if she was working a half day, or she wasn’t held up too late on a normal day. Ah, some actually decent childhood memories.

40. (name one of your favorite books from your teenage years) SvtHA.

41. (do you own a library card? How often do you use it?) Yeah, and decently often.

42. (which was the best book you had to read in school?) The Outsiders. In 7th grade.

43. (are you the kind of person who reads several books at once or the kind of person who can only read one book at a time?) Multiple at once. I kind of have to if I want to read for fun while I’m in school.

44. (do you like to listen to music when you read?) Honestly, my mind is like an iPod I can’t fully control, I was laying in my bed half asleep singing What I Got yesterday morning for no reason, so I don’t have a choice. There’s more of a choice if I’m listening to music, so yes.

45. (what is your favorite thing to eat when you read?) Nothing? I don’t really like to eat when I’m reading, unless I’m reading on my phone and then it doesn’t really matter. But when I'm reading I usually forget to eat.

46. (what is your favorite thing to drink when you read?) Tea. Without a doubt. If I’m not too lazy to make it, that is.

47. (what do you do to get out of a reading slump?) Well, I do one of two things. I either try to convince Kass (@eyeforaneye-toothforatooth) to write something for me, or I’ll write (because I know I have to read over it a bajillion times, and I write too much for anyone’s good)

48. (where is your favorite place to read?) In my mind palace. I have a little place in my mind palace that I go when I’m reading or writing, and it changes. Sometimes it’s in a cottage at night with the only light a fireplace that I’m sitting in front of, sometimes it’s leaned against a tree. Three of my favorites are leaning against a cherry blossom tree looking out at a river, on a beanbag in a cozy, quiet bookshop/library, and on a beach in Roatan, Honduras. Other than that, it’s curled up on my UFO couch in my front living room, in front of the gigantic window.

49. (when is your favorite time to read?) It actually depends on the season. In the summer, always because I don’t want to go outside because it’s too hot. In the winter it’s during the evening. Spring it’s early in the morning. Fall it’s around sunset.

50. (why do you love to read?) Because you’re taking yourself and delving into a different universe, where nothing you know exists and only what you’re reading does. It takes me away from the world and all of my struggles, and puts me somewhere where that doesn’t exist. It’s refreshing. I hate you too

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ark-of-eden · 7 years ago

Text

Thoughts on the Function of Art?

(R:) I didn't want to append this to that big thread about censorship, questionable story content, and authorial intent because I am a Small Person who just consumes things and I was pretty sure that I can't actually add anything useful to the discussion. But I'm still stuck on it a little, so here is a thing that I'm putting behind a readmore in case everyone is fucking tired of the whole censorship debate.

tl;dr: Riss is old and grew up in an environment that was not exactly info-rich when it came to controversial issues. Riss is clumsily attempting to tape this and that together for some reason, possibly just to get it out of the brain. (This ultimately turned into a long fucking story about my early life that doesn't really go anywhere. It's just a long fucking story.)(**ALERT: This includes discussions of stereotypes, slurs, and fetishization.)

People in that thread pointed out the weird over-reliance on interrogating an author about what exactly they meant by writing certain content and that authorial intent should be a yardstick for whether certain content is edifying (and deserving of existence) or not. Other people wisely pointed out that every consumer will inevitably interpret every creation through the lens of their own experience and come up with a different take on what the piece is "saying" about whatever it depicts.

Back when I was very young, there was no way to directly contact any sort of creator. Novels had small text somewhere that mentioned how to send snailmail to the author C/O the publishing company, but naturally there could be no expectation that an author would ever actually write you back. Direct contact with creators was usually in the context of them being guests at a con or signing or gallery showing, which was sort of like seeing a band play live. Every other exposure to them was one-way or indirect, through their work or news articles or possibly from hearing a radio interview or watching a TV program about them, if they were important enough. This was pre-widespread-Internet, so nobody had blogs; some big-name people had fanclubs that mailed out regular newsletters, but the vast majority of creators had nothing but their content in circulation.

I guess that the point of saying all of that is just to illustrate that the present-day situation in which creators have public social media accounts that one can just drop into and toss opinions and questions about intent at them is...kind of a luxury, in my experience? For writers of "classics," there might be printed articles or essays in which they went on about their intent or process, but for creators who weren't popular while they were alive, historians have to go mining for diaries or letters to even get an idea of what sort of person they were, much less what they meant when they wrote that one scene from that one novel that was Kind Of Problematic.

And that was a tangent leading around to a perspective about creative work in general that I heard very early on and took to heart when it came to consuming media. I read somewhere that the point of creating something was to produce a response or emotion in the consumer. Any response. The creation was meant to be a catalyst for newness or change in the viewer, even if the response was something like anger, fear, or disgust. The worst possible response to a creation was dull indifference, because it had failed to do anything at all to the consumer.

I saw supporting evidence for this perspective in a lot of media. Bands built up weird, elaborate Aesthetics purely to draw attention to their songs, not because they were demonstrating some deeply-held belief system. (I've lost track of how many CDs I saw from bands who made dark music about cruelty, despair, and the emptiness of the universe and yet, in tiny liner-note text, poured out flowery squee about how they thanked the loving Lord God and Jesus Christ for blessing them with their musical careers.) Artists who talked to other artists about their craft admitted that they often made the art they did just because they wanted to make it for no special reason, but they fabricated deep-sounding bullshit to attach to it so that collectors would buy the thing just for the story that went with it.

A piece that kept getting talked about over and over back then was Piss Christ, which was literally a large glass jar full of urine that had a crucifix floating in it. Large sections of society were fucking outraged that this thing even existed, that galleries dared to let it darken their doorways, that the artist was even depraved enough to think up such a thing. I don't recall what the artist herself (I think it was a she) said about why she made it, but what was clear to me was that she had succeeded at the goal of art like an absolute champion. Nobody could look at that piece without having some kind of intense response, and whole groups of educated people were compelled to spill out their opinions and argue about it. Piss Christ was Successful Art, the thing that every piece of art wished that it could be. It didn't matter that most of the responses were negative. Apart from making it, the artist did nothing to encourage all the discussions prompted by the art's existence. People used it as a springboard for debates about What Is Art Really, the empty veneration of religious iconography, public obscenity, and all sorts of other things, entirely on their own.

Granted, there were clear downsides to not having instant access to people's creative narratives and backgrounds, or to the greater community of consumers. There were panels discussing themes in modern writing at cons and sometimes a nearby book club where people could rec things and talk about good and bad aspects to whatever they were reading, but if you weren't in a position to have either of those things? There wasn't a lot to do but chat with any reader buddies you might have or actually trust marketing. This book is a NYT Bestseller and has its own special display in Borders? Well, must be a well-written book with quality content, or else it wouldn't have that kind of backing, right? (I was such a trusting little idiot back then, seriously.) So this was when all those toxic norms of casual misogyny, racism, and queer villainization went unchallenged in a lot of places and was just The Way Things Are.

My family moved around to many parts of the US while I was young and I swear I never heard people anywhere bothering to have a discussion about the trend of weak female characters or how POC cultures kept getting reduced to exotic window dressing. There was a sense that those kinds of intellectual topics were the sort of thing that academics did in far-off Academic Country, where they only read classic literature and went over word-by-word symbolism with ever finer combs. I'm no quality literature historian, but I imagine that those kinds of thematic conversations probably got louder as widescale communication got easier, such that a person could throw out into the aether, "Is it just me, or is the only time when cultural elements from Asian, Middle Eastern, Native American, or African civilizations turn up in mainstream lit is when they need 'exotic savage foreigners'?" and people would be able to chorus back, "OMFG THANK YOU I thought I was the only one bothered by that!!" (I mean, advancements in communication helped every minority find other people like themselves, which is why the Internet is part of real life and a genuinely precious resource to isolated odd folk who are forced to live in places that are hostile to them. You no longer have to live your entire life being the only lonely freak instance of your kind in the entire universe.)

So I recognize the shitty situation of having mainstream marketers telling people which stories were good and which story elements were admirable without also having access to Discourse that would challenge those norms. I remember just accepting that girls would hardly ever be able to be heroes the way boys could be, and that people from far-away cultures were always primitive and backward but in fascinating ways. Nothing in my daily life countered anything that I read. Discussions that I found online much later in life caused me to rethink the trends in everything that I'd read as a kid and see it all with fresh eyes so that I could realign my opinions. It's vital to have discourse and challenge happening alongside creation so that we don't have generations of people absorbing shitty norms that are supported by fiction and not realizing that there are even alternative ways of seeing things.

But there's still that issue, in my mind, of a good creation being one that creates ripples far outside of itself by prompting any kind of response in the consumer. Which is, I guess, why it seems fine to me that Problematic things exist and that people encounter them even if they come away hating those things. The encounter with that thing can make a person think about their own perceptions and experiences, and it can prompt conversations about was learned from that encounter - the why of the result and what it means. Obviously, the same can be done with media that makes a person happy or comforted, and that ends up in Discourse because people end up comparing their experiences and questioning whether the people who are happy/comforted are correct to feel that way about the media.

(Bonus Tangent: it's never possible to be incorrectly upset/offended, only incorrectly happy, strangely. Because telling people that they are not allowed to be upset about something is controlling and aggressive, but telling people that they're wrong to enjoy something is...I'm not finding any positive result. It's shaming, which is a response used to exert social control over others. Talking about whether or not casting shame on total strangers leads to the desired result is something that even I don't want to take the space to talk about. I'm one of those who considers emotion to be out of a person's control. Emotion precedes action. What's important, IMO, is what action a person takes regardless of what emotions they might have, because it's possible to choose actions. Telling a person that they're not allowed to feel a certain way is an attack based on something that a person can't actually control. Whenever I see antis saying things like "no one should ever enjoy this content," I wonder how people are supposed to casually shut off their enjoyment. Can the antis shut off their outrage with a flip of a switch, since it's just an emotion too? Attempting to reprogram a person's emotional or motivational palette leads to things like conversion therapy, which has a high rate of failure/relapse and tends to traumatize people into other mental deformities. That's why it's far more useful to focus on responses to emotion instead of emotion itself. People with uncontrollable emotional responses - such as phobias or fetishes, say - can learn adaptive actions faster than they can unlearn emotional responses.)

This was a hugely roundabout way of saying that I really think that bad media or problematic media are still important. They can prompt discussion and introspection, as mentioned, but, IME, even a shitty representation of a concept can put cracks in a person's worldview and make it possible for them to be open to better ideas in the same vein later on.

For instance, I had that strict mainstream heteronormative upbringing. The only thing I knew about queer people for a huge part of my life was that they needed to be pitied because they were going to hell, and the closest thing to a trans person that I knew about was that Crying Game trap drag queen concept where the sinister man in a dress seduced honest straight men with borrowed feminine wiles. (I literally did not know that transgender people were actually real until after I was 20, which is one reason why I am such a massive late trans bloomer.) I also had that strict gender role upbringing in which there were certain things that a person must and must not do in order to be "proper."

Back when I first got on the Internet and started interacting with fandoms, genderswap fics were popular in my circle. Often, it was basically the same plot as the source material, but you'd switch everybody to the opposite binary gender and then, based on the assumption that men and women think and do things in slightly different ways, the plot would usually derail from canon because the genderswapped characters wouldn't do the same things that they canonically did. It was just one of many common fanfic thought exercises.

Looking back, reading genderswap fics was something that started eroding the strict worldview that I'd inherited. The "men and women just naturally do things differently" was enough in line with traditional gender roles that it passed by my defenses, but the swapped cast of just about everything ended up with lots of strong, heroic women and the occasional male sidekick. Further, writers tended to use the "women are more socially/emotionally intelligent than men" stereotype to correct shitty things that male characters did in canon because, if they were women, they'd be too smart and perceptive to do whatever stupid thing they did and everything would have happened differently. Nowadays, there's formal discussion about the lack of strong female characters in mainstream fiction, but in fandom, female writers just fixed the problem directly with genderswap so all the interesting, powerful people could be women and the guys could be useless arm candy for once. It was a way of reclaiming importance and power when canon media didn't give women much else to work with.

(I became aware while ago that Discourse is informing people that genderswap fics are hugely offensive to trans people. Now, I've described my crappy upbringing, but as a trans person, I don't understand this at all. I get that the "opposite gender" swap upholds the gender binary, but the issue is offense against trans people, not against genderqueer or nonbinary people. I seriously don't get why I should be offended? Is it because the genderswap doesn't include actual RL transgender experiences, as if the entire cast were realistically transitioning as a plot element? Genderswap is not acceptable unless it specifically includes things like "this is the story of how Cloud Strife got her testicles removed and enjoyed growing breast buds thanks to HRT"?? Maybe I'm an idiot, but those are two distinctly different story concepts and both have merit. o_o)

Later on, I became aware of people who were preoccupied with stories and fantasies of fantastical gender transformation, usually male to female. Some stereotypical male character would get injected with an alien serum or zapped by a fairy's wand or something and he would immediately metamorphose into a woman. There was often a disturbingly rapey element to these stories, like the boy wouldn't want to be transformed and was horrified while he was changing, but after he settled into the woman-shape or had sex as a woman after changing, he realized that he loved it and felt so much better that way. The stories were mostly just short repeats of this exact same situation, written by different authors with slightly different details, and this group never seemed to get tired of them.

Eventually, I learned that most of the people in the core of this group identified as trans women, but they lived in circumstances where they weren't permitted any female expression or had lost hope of ever transitioning. They fixated on transformation fic as a way to soothe the pain of living. Looking back, the noncon/dubcon themes that kept appearing in the fics made sense as a way of indirectly satisfying the powerful social forces that were demanding masculinity of them. The male characters were trying hard to stay male, fighting back against the transformation; they were clearly performing all the do not want signals expected of men threatened with feminization. They fought the good fight, but the enemy overpowered them! Womanhood was forced upon them! It was totally unexpected that they enjoyed being a girl after all, but because their maleness had been aggressively destroyed, they were free to stop performing resistance and love themselves.

But you can find fetish material like this in a lot of places, without any context as to the intent of the creator. (And I'd argue that it counts as a fetish if you crave it as necessary somehow, regardless of whether or not you're jacking/jilling to it.) Some people would write the same kind of stories for forced feminization as a type of humiliation. Among furries, transformation fetish material seems to add an extra angle of growing into new power and strength by a change into some larger, more magnificent creature in addition to changes involving sexual characteristics.

Further into the fantasy fetish scene is smut involving dickgirls/cuntboys. Those terms are inherently objectifying and fetishizing; the focus is entirely on the genitals and how a person has the "wrong" ones for their body. Understandably, this is where trans people get turned into dehumanized kink fuel, and real life "tranny chasers" exist who try to weasel into relationships with trans people just to have an embodiment of their fetish.

Artists seem to be slowly getting better with at least giving a nod to real trans people when tagging this sort of art, but (likely to get the most search hits) usually it's just "transwoman/man" alongside "dickgirl/cuntboy." And the art, at least, is clearly designed as fap fuel, so it's not like changing the label makes the content more respectful to the real humans it resembles.

Fetish art with that sort of name shouldn't be uplifting or encouraging because it makes trans people into objects, I know. But I enjoy it when I see it not because it gets me hot in itself, but because I feel heartened when I see sexy art of, essentially, trans people who have not had any genital surgery. I'm fortunate in that I don't have the worst soul-crushing dysphoria surrounding my (still XX factory standard) genitals, but I know a lot of trans people get seriously torn up about theirs and worry that they'll never be truly attractive to others because their genitals are "wrong." While it's possible to find humiliation art online of people with all kinds of body configurations, I tend not to (YMMV again) find much that seems to be specifically shaming or hating on characters who have trans genitals specifically because they are wrong/ugly/queer/etc. They're just participating in enthusiastic hot sex like all the other characters. Sometimes they're literally just standing around looking sexy, like any other badly-posed pinup. But when they're in the mix of whatever smut they're depicted in, they're objects of desire with their own sexual power, unashamed and equal to the others, and the other characters find them attractive and are clearly really excited to be doing whatever they're doing with that hot trans character.

And this response is very problematic, I know, because smut of trans characters that's designed to satisfy fetishes actually does lead to cis stalkers who want trans partners as living sex toys. And art of pre/non-op trans people being sexually liberated and desirable might end up being nearly indistinguishable from most of the fetish art I've seen, apart from lacking the objectifying dickgirl/cuntboy label. I hate seeing those terms in art tags, but the art itself makes me happy. Not even aroused, just happy to see characters who are essentially pre/non-op trans people being desired and enjoying themselves. When you've lived your life believing that you're ugly and unlovable, seeing people similar to yourself in those kinds of situations is a Band-Aid on an old, deep wound. I wish someone would look at me that way. I wish someone wanted to touch me that way. And even if you can't have that for yourself, you can at least look at art where similar people can, and even if those trans people are imaginary six-breasted purple foxtaurs, you can still feel like at least there are trans people somewhere in the galaxy who are free and happy and desirable. It's the same as those trans girls who spent years telling each other the same MTF transformation story over and over and over even though it was pure fantasy. They needed periodic inoculations of that fiction to keep themselves afloat when they believed that they could never have the reality.

That's why, to return to my earlier point and to the points that the people in that big thread probably said better than I have, I don't want bad media to go away. Even gross White Man Story For White Menfolk fiction can at least prompt discussion and response and might have little bits in it that made someone out there think of something in a way that they haven't before. Even depictions of minorities that are pretty clearly designed to be shallow fetish fuel might be a lifeline to some isolated person to whom that shitty depiction is the most positive representation of their identity that they've ever seen. You'd hope that they'd quickly be able to find better ones, but beggars can't be choosers, and if that shitty depiction hadn't existed then they might never have had the chance or the knowledge that different views were possible. You just can't know what people see and think when they consume a particular piece of media. They bring so much of their own context into the experience.

That's why I wish people would focus on action instead of on vague, catastrophizing speculations about intent or potential or who has a "right" to create or consume certain things. There are at least a couple of stories floating around about female fic writers who regularly wrote m/m smut, but who, IRL, opposed same-sex marriage and disowned their queer relatives. IMO, that's how you can tell who is making objectifying content - by whether they treat actual, living representations of minorities/fetishes like frivolous entertainment. I would bet that those IRL-anti-queer fic writers wrote things that were indistinguishable from the general mass of fanfic, which was why other fandom people were shocked to discover their IRL actions. People create things for all sorts of different reasons, not because ther creations are a clear window into their innermost motivations. You just can't know what's in a person's head, no matter what sort of things they create.

And I've literally spent hours writing this and sort of vaguely editing it paragraph by paragraph, so I'm going to post this now and release myself from childhood memory hell. Ultimately, that reblogged thread still said all of this better, but I just had a compulsion to LET ME SING YOU THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE FOR TEN FUCKING PAGES. :P

And oh hey, I was so caught up in time-warping back to the 80's and early 90's that I forgot that Wikipedia existed, so here's their page on Piss Christ. Turns out the artist was male. Says it was only a photo?? Lies!! I distinctly remember seeing the goddamn gross jar of pee!! Because human memory is a reliable, unalterable record!! (Okay, I've clearly gone on too long here. I apologize to the whole internet in advance.)

#fetishization #queer #early life experiences #slurs #queer fetishization #fandom politics #not even sure what to tag this as so just sort of be generally cautious

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