#i need him in a male lead role where he's a morally ambivalent character

[shijiujun]

Wang Duo as Gu Qingzhang | Shu Lin 

also known as, from cinnamon roll to murder puppy

- A LEAGUE OF NOBLEMAN (2023) -

[knotty-hottie]

@alycat919 So, we haven’t talked before, but your post in the Ouran High School Host Club tag reminded me of my final paper for my Gender/Women Studies and I thought I’d share it. I promise I’m not tagging for drama, but just because I wanted to thank you for reminding me. It was a lot of fun to write a research paper about my first anime, and, despite the negativity I talk about in the paper, it’s still a personal fave of mine. You’re free to scroll past this if you aren’t interested, or to engage if you are. I just want to share the work I’ve done with the fandom I’ve explored. 😁

Ouran High School Host Club: Rich in Benevolent Sexism and Rape Culture

He pinned her against the bed, looming above her like a wild beast. Her chocolate brown eyes were wide, her nightgown bunched, her breath caught in her chest. The two stared at each other, like predator and prey, for a split second that felt like an eternity. He opened his mouth, and spoke, surely, calmly.

“You should fix that, ‘being a guy or girl doesn’t matter’ naivety of yours. It’s your fault for being too defenceless.”

It may sound like something from a badly written smut piece, or the rape fantasy of a young person, but in Ouran High School Host Club, this is the reality of our heroine, Haruhi Fujioka. She is a ‘commoner’ (lower middle class) student at a school for Japan’s most elite, having gotten in on a scholarship. After an incident involving her stumbling into an occupied music room in search of a study place, a vase worth ¥8,000,000 (equal to approximately $73,000 in today’s United States dollars), and some classic anime tropes, she ends up as a member of the school’s host club. The series itself describes the host club as “[The place] where the school’s handsomest boys with too much time on their hands entertain young ladies who also have way too much time on their hands. Just think of it as Ouran’s elegant playground for the super rich and beautiful.” The series is one of the most famous of all time in the anime community, coming in at spot 20 out of the top 50 most popular anime of all time on the Anime News Network. On SBS, Ouran came in at spot 40 on a fan-voted poll for best anime of all time. On Funimation (the anime’s publisher site) and Crunchyroll (one of the most popular anime streaming sites of today’s day and age) Ouran comes in at 5 stars. It’s a well known, well liked piece of media, that has earned itself an anime adaptation from its manga origin, a dating simulator from its anime adaptation, and a live action reboot based on all three of the previous iterations. Yet, somehow, underneath all of the things to like, there’s a dark underbelly that many willfully ignore or are just plain unaware of. The series perpetuates gender roles, rape culture, and some not-so-subtle homophobia. The way that it gets away with these things is by portraying them through the lens of benevolent sexism, which catches readers, watchers, and players alike off-guard.

Benevolent sexism falls under the larger umbrella of ambivalent sexism, which is divided into two main categories. The first category is hostile sexism, which is what most people think of when they try and imagine sexism. It is described by Dictionary.com as, “[sexism] reflecting negative views of women who challenge traditional gender roles.” It is the toxic, hypermasculinized form of sexism that many are taught to look for. It is the comments of, “You aren’t a real woman if your hair is short like that,” and, “Women are dumber than men.” On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the idea of benevolent sexism. Rather than comments of, “Women are weaker than men, making them inferior,” we hear the benevolent sexist say, “Men should protect women, as it’s the right thing to do.” It’s those moments where women are told they look better when they smile, or are in dresses, or have children in arm. The words are complementary and polite, but they hold the same message as those negative comments of the hostile sexist. Ouran works carefully to craft its message so that it doesn’t insult its main fan base (young women), while still getting its message across. For example, there’s the character of Renge Houshakuji.

Renge first appears in the manga in ‘Episode 3’ and in episode 4 of the anime adaptation. She is what is known as an otaku, which, in modern culture, refers to someone obsessed with some aspect of pop culture (whether that be video games, anime, movies, etc.) to the point that their social life suffers. In Japan, the word has become a word similar to our ‘nerd’ or ‘geek’. In American culture, the word is considered derogatory, and usually falls in line with words like ‘weeaboo’ and ‘wapanese’. Renge wholeheartedly accepts her otaku status, locking herself in her room to do what she enjoys most; playing dating sims. After a turn of events, she ends up at the Host Club, believing that she is in love with Kyouya Ootori, a host who looks identical to one of her favorite characters. After she reveals that this is why she likes Kyouya, she is bashed for her hobbies and considered crazy. The moment her hobbies come to light, they are painted as wrong and she is vilified, even though her male counterparts are considered just and right in there own hobbies. When Hani, one of the hosts, is depicted as morally correct for acknowledging that he is allowed to like the color pink and cute things rather than martial arts. Renge is one of the few female characters in the show that is depicted as having personality traits outside of, “infatuated with handsome boys” and “ultra feminine”, yet she is considered “crazy” for expressing those outside traits. It isn’t that she isn’t traditionally feminine, but that she has more to her character than that, much to the dismay of her male counterparts. She has her own hobbies and ideas. She knows exactly what she wants and goes for it. Even if her methods are questionable and a bit on the stereotypically crazy side, she still goes after her aspirations.

When Tamaki, one of the main characters of the show, greets and flirtily welcomes Renge to the club, she flinches away at his nonconsensual touch. She seems shell-shocked, blushing in what seems like embarrassment. After she comes to terms with him touching her face without permission, she slaps him, calling him a phony (among other insults), and leaving him emotionally beaten before going to Kyouya, the one she really wants. She decides to reinvent the Host Club’s characters in order to help Kyouya make more money, which should, she believes, make him fall in love with her the way she loves him. She is shown to get her ‘comeuppance,’ in a sense, when everything she goes for backfires. Kyouya reveals that he does not like her, she nearly ends up hurt, and she is told that she must take her time and learn about others in order to have a good relationship of any kind. When you come into relationships expecting someone to act a certain way, you are harming your chances of a healthy relationship. The message is good, but Renge’s fate is not quite as nice. She becomes a frequent background character, used for exposition, cheap plot device, and/or the voice of the fawning fan girls. The closest we get to her personal hobbies is the fact that she sometimes cosplays and, if we’re lucky, hear her talk about them for five or so seconds.

Another example of women in the show comes in the form of Benio Amakusa and the rest of the Zuka Club. In the third book of the series, specifically in ‘Episode 10’, we are introduced to Benio. She is dressed in the men’s uniform, has short hair, and is openly flirtatious with Haruhi, acknowledging Haruhi’s sex publicly to the Host Club’s dismay. Once Benio and company reveal to the hosts that they are, in fact, women, Tamaki labels them all as lesbians. All three do end up showing attraction of some sort to women, but the fact that he labels them all as such simply because one is shown to enjoy dressing in the men’s uniform and having short hair is a disturbing thought in and of itself. Tamaki sees that one is a lesbian, and begins making assumptions about their collective character based on that assumption. He goes so far as to pass out in shock at the presence of lesbians, and, once he awakens, says the following to the three Lobelia Woman’s Academy members; “You girls are all wrong!! What can come from a woman loving a woman!? Why did God create Adam and Eve, if not--!” He’s cut off before he can finish the thought, much to the LGBT+ community’s pleasure. Much to the community’s displeasure, however, is the imagery used in the anime to depict lesbians as nazis, having them do the nazi salute to a flag labeled “women”. Back to the plot, once he believes that he might lose Haruhi to this all-girl’s academy, he has some of his fellow hosts dress in exaggerated womanly clothing and wigs so that she can have ‘the best of both worlds,’ so to speak. The hosts think that, if they act ‘womanly’ enough, they will be a satisfactory replacement. Haruhi proceeds to explain that she had never even considered going with the girls, as her home was with the hosts. The Lobelia girls promise their revenge in a seemingly silly and typical manner.

In the only other episode that the Lobelia girls show themselves in, we get to see them kidnap Haruhi and, under the guise of needing Haruhi to perform, trick her into a situation that would lead to a non-consensual kiss in front of a large crowd, if not do more to her. When you watch the show, there doesn’t seem to be much going on aside from a silly and ridiculous plan that some rich lesbians are pulling to get revenge on the ‘noble and correct’ Host Club. When you really think about what’s happening though, it’s scary. They kidnap someone. They nearly sexually assault someone. What does it say that there only true gay representation resorts to these tactics when they are previously thwarted? The girls are basically degraded to recurring villains with silly beliefs, antics, and existences. Why is that?

In volume 5 of the manga, ‘Episode 17,’ we get exposed to Ayame Jonouchi, who is entirely skipped over in the anime. She makes a return in the live action series, however, holding her own arc in the third episode of the series. She’s incredibly intelligent, notably attractive, and, according to the hosts, a monotone speaker. They even go so far as to call her, “Miss Morse” and “Morse Code Lady” at one point. She is described as scholarly looking and strait-laced, and holds a major grades complex. The last of those points explains why she has always been in the top two of her classes grading system, holding the second place position hostage directly under the Host Club’s Kyouya Ootori. Once Tamaki transfers to Ouran, however, she gets knocked down to third, much to her displeasure. She becomes a foil for Tamaki in a sense, showing that her struggle and constant practice to gain knowledge will never be enough to beat the natural tendencies of her male counterparts. After checking the traditional genders of all of the names listed on the sheet for her class, I discovered that there was only one other girl on the page. Her position? Seventh place.

Ayame’s tale’s conclusion is a little bit painful to watch, as it is near a cliche at this point. It turns out that she actually loved Tamaki for a certain comment he made about her straight hair during their first meeting. Her hair is naturally wavy, leading to her having self-image issues in the face of her crush that lead her grades to drop just enough for Tamaki to take her spot. Her wavy hair being exposed by the rain, a breakdown of frustration, and a few compliments from Tamaki later, she discovers that she is beautiful no matter how she looks on the outside, and becomes a regular customer of Tamaki’s. She is petite, cisgender, heterosexual, and pale. The only reason we know that she continues attending the Host Club is because it is literally written into the final panels of the chapter. We never actually see her again in either rendition of the story.

The most famous ‘woman’ in all renditions of Ouran High School Host Club is Haruhi Fujioka. She is a first semester high school student. She is of the lower middle class. She lives with her father that, in every rendition of the story, is called a ‘tranny’ who works at the local ‘tranny bar’ (rather than addressing him as a drag queen at a drag bar). Her mother was a lawyer before her passing. She is attending Ouran Academy on a scholarship. Her hair is short, she needs glasses, and she can’t afford a uniform. She wears her father’s hand-me-down clothes and her grandfather’s hand-me-down glasses to save money. She’s blunt, book smart, and open minded. She’s a lot of things, but, somehow, she gets some of the worst treatment of the series. She is the reader’s insight into the author’s world; the character being exposed for expositional purposes, so to speak. For the sake of brevity, let’s walk through some key episodes of the anime (which is the story’s most well-known adaptation) and talk about what goes wrong in each one.

In the first episode of the series, “Starting Today, You Are a Host!”, we are introduced to Haruhi Fujioka, the protagonist of the story, who is simply looking for a quiet place to study, and, by mistake, stumbles across a club room in use by Ouran Academy’s Host Club. The members (specifically Tamaki, the series’ largest offender) proceed to insult Haruhi on monetary grounds, insert themselves into her personal space, and assume her gender identity and sexuality. After Haruhi drops an 8 million yen vase, the hosts (again, primarily Tamaki) begin to call Haruhi a dog and basically use her as a servant/errand runner. At one point, Tamaki calls Haruhi a ‘piglet’ in reference to her poor ‘servant’ status putting her beneath him. Later in the episode, Haruhi is revealed to be conventionally attractive, her wants are ignored as the hosts makeover her. Her hair is cut, a uniform is bought, and contacts are put in to make her fit the traditionally beauty standards of manhood (as, for the moment, some of the hosts are under the ruse that she is, in fact, biologically male and cisgender). Once this happens, all who attend the host club seem to treat Haruhi better. She is talked to by girls (which, many argue, is understandable, as she is now a host. My counter-argument is that the girls had to request Haruhi in the first place, something they likely would not have done before Haruhi’s involuntary makeover) and the hosts begin paying her real attention. Tamaki begins claiming Haruhi as ‘his own’ to other people, signalling that, to him, attractiveness is the primary trait that is needed to be on the same level as him, personality be damned. He also proceeds to invade her personal space without consent, which leads to her calling on Mori (another host) for assistance.

Once we hit the final moments of the episode, we find that Haruhi has gone to a changing room as her uniform has been soaked in the events of the episode’s climax. Tamaki, yet again invading personal space without consent, walks in with little to no warning on Haruhi changing, discovering her sex is female. He is shocked and embarrassed, reacting in a seemingly cute way to the discovery. Kyouya eventually comments on the predicament, laying out on the table the true message of the episode. “Could this possibly be the beginnings of love?” he asks the viewer, turning to the camera. He wipes over all of the harassment Tamaki has done to Haruhi, ignores what she really wants in the moment, and waters her character down to ‘love interest’. She is the pretty, feminine foil to Tamaki’s handsome, ‘persistent’ (read as; incessant harassment) personality. They are clearly ‘meant to be together,’ and the show makes it clear in that moment that they will be together whether she wants to be or not as the men in her life see it that way.

In the eighth episode, “The Sun, The Sea, and The Host Club!”, we find the most controversial scene of the series. Before we can get to that, however, we need to walk through the circumstances that lead us to it. The Host Club is on a trip to the beach (after all the men in Haruhi’s life argue about which swimsuit she should wear, of course), and the male hosts decide to figure out what Haruhi is afraid of via a game. The game is that whoever finds out what Haruhi is most afraid of gets pictures (taken and supplied by Haruhi’s father) of Haruhi in middle school (the more I rewatch these episodes, the more creepy things I realize are in them). After a long day with no results, Haruhi gets called up upon an overlook by some of the Host Club’s guests. As she makes her way up to spend time with them, some drunk men beat her there and begin harassing the guests. They grab the girls, asking them if it’s dull without any boys around and ignoring the girls’ pleas to stop. Haruhi, arriving upon the scene, throws a bucket of shells at one of the offenders, calmly asking them to go away. She stands her ground when one of them attacks back, allowing for one of the girls they were harassing to get away at her own expense. After some verbal abuse, Haruhi is thrown off the overlook into the water below, where Tamaki immediately goes in after her. The other hosts handle the assaulters, and, once Haruhi is proven to be safe, the berating begins. “Are you one of those?” asks Tamaki. “Actually a martial arts master, like Honey-senpai?” He grabs her, and goes on. “How could you think that you, a girl, by yourself, could do anything about those boys?!” After Haruhi explains that her actions were a split second decision and she didn’t have time to think, he yells at her, “Well, think about it, you idiot! You are a girl!”

Tamaki and the rest of the male hosts seem to be on the same page, insisting that Haruhi needs to apologize for her actions. Haruhi, on the other hand, does not see any wrong in what she did, which leads to some friction between herself and Tamaki. The two refuse to speak to each other until one apologizes to the other. At dinner, to avoid talking, Haruhi overeats to the point of making herself sick, which she notices only after being chastised again by the hosts sans Tamaki and Kyouya for her actions. After they request an apology from her, she finds that she needs to empty her stomach’s contents and runs to the nearest bedroom. She finds out that the room is, in fact, Kyouya’s, and that the two of them are now alone, prompting the series’s most controversial scene. Fans sometimes call it, “The Scene in the Dark.”

Haruhi apologizes to Kyouya on multiple grounds as he takes the time to lay out all the hassle she has caused him. When Haruhi offers to pay him back, he points out that he has far more money than her and that she is already in debt. He turns down the lights as he lays out her dilemma and brings up a new solution as he leers at her; why doesn’t she pay him back using her body? While she stands there, attempting to process what he’s said, Kyouya takes action. He grabs her arm. He throws her upon the bed. He straddles her, pins her to the bed, and tells her, bluntly, “You should rethink your own gullibility, that things have nothing to do with a person being a guy or a girl. You’ve made a mistake in leaving yourself so open.” He looks her in the eye and, in simple terms, lays out that he could take her. He has more money, more power, and, most prominently, a penis. Haruhi says that he is bluffing, and, luckily, he was. He gets off of her, and she comments that he is “nicer than she thought” for the experience he’s provided. Bisco Hatori, the creator of Ouran, drives home her message bluntly. Women are weak and should be protected by the men in their lives. They should be passive and, if they fail to be such, should immediately apologize. If a man decides to not sexually assault or rape you, he is nice. You should be thankful that he has the courtesy to not sexually abuse you. It’s legitimately terrifying that this is the message that is being sent out.

As salt in the wound, the very next scene is with Tamaki and Haruhi, with the latter cast as a scared little girl in the damsel in distress trope. She hides herself in the closet, curled in a ball, as the audience and Tamaki discover that Haruhi is scared of thunderstorms! She explains that she has always had to rely on herself as her mother is dead and her dad is constantly working. In response, Tamaki promises to take care of her from now on, she seems to come to a silent agreement to lean on the men in her life more, and the two have an emotional make up moment. Haruhi gets love and support from her friends again once she begins to lean on the men in her life and accept the help. I’ve seen other people argue that the message of the episode is that everyone needs to rely on others sometimes, which is a fair argument, but I can’t bring myself to agree the more I look at it. If it’s just about relying on others, why is there the scared little girl imagery? Why do they even emphasize Haruhi’s sex at all in this scenario if it’s not about that? Hatori knew what she was writing, and the message she sent out. She had a plethora of other ways to explore this theme, and she wouldn’t have written it this way unless she meant for it to be taken in a gender-biased manner.

I could go on, but I feel that I’ve explained my stance on the matter. Ouran High School Host Club is a classic anime in the anime community. A lot of people I know and that I’ve heard from in my life grew up with the show, and some still seek a romantic partner like one of the hosts. In all of the series’s adaptations, we find that certain themes remain prevalent. Women are meant to be pretty, submissive things that are interested in their male counterparts at all times. If you have your own interests, you are obsessive and crazy. If you like the same sex, you are against men. If you take a leadership position, you’re a nag. If you stand for what you think is right, you are a bother to the men around you. It’s scarily similar to what I’ve seen on social media. If you talk about sex too much, you’re a slut. If you talk about sex too little, you’re a prude. If you are too skinny, you’re on drugs, too fat, you have no impulse control. It seems that there is no ‘right’ woman to possibly be, in the fantasy that is Ouran or in the reality we face daily. We can only hope that, someday in the future, we can look back at Ouran and unanimously see it for what it is; a romanticized sexist daydream disguised as a teenage anime romantic comedy.

Works Cited

2400 (2011). Thoughts: The Merit Scene in Ouran. [online] Midnight Express. Available at: https://2400express.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/merit-scene-ouran/ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Adler, J. (2015). ‘Ouran High School Host Club’: Haruhi, Heteronormativity, and the Gender Binary | Bitch Flicks. [online] Btchflcks.com. Available at: http://www.btchflcks.com/2015/03/ouran-high-school-host-club-haruhi-heteronormativity-and-the-gender-binary.html#.W6qeFGhKjrc

Darlington, T. (2009). The Queering of Haruhi Fujioka: Cross-Dressing, Camp, and Commoner Culture in <cite> Ouran High School Host Club </cite>. [online] English.ufl.edu. Available at: http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_3/darlington/

F. Innes IV, K. (n.d.). Benio Amakusa. [online] Absolute Anime. Available at: https://www.absoluteanime.com/ouran_high_school_host_club/benio [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Hatori, B., RyoRca., Werry, J. and Caltsoudas, G. (2002). Ouran High School Host Club. Hakusensha, p.All.

Hurford, Emily. "Gender and Sexuality in Shoujo Manga: Undoing Heteronormative Expectations in Utena, Pet Shop of Horrors, and Angel Sanctuary." Electronic Thesis or Dissertation. Bowling Green State University, 2009. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. 04 Oct 2018.

Lark, M. (2015). Gender roles in Ouran. [online] Themorninglark.tumblr.com. Available at: http://themorninglark.tumblr.com/post/100669214865/gender-roles-in-ouran-hey-guys-sorry-your [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Lark, M. (2015). Kyouya and that scene in the dark. [online] Themorninglark.tumblr.com. Available at: http://themorninglark.tumblr.com/post/100783759195/kyoya-and-that-scene-in-the-dark [Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].

Ogi, F. (2003). Female Subjectivity and Shoujo (Girls) Manga (Japanese Comics): Shoujo in Ladies' Comics and Young Ladies' Comics. The Journal of Popular Culture, 36(4), pp.780-803.

Ouran High School Host Club. (2006). [video] Directed by B. Hatori, T. Igarashi and Y. Enokido. Japan: Bones.

Ouran High School Host Club. (2011). [video] Directed by C. Han, Y. Tachibana and I. Natsuko. Japan: TBS.

SBS PopAsia HQ (2018). Votes are in: The top 100 greatest anime of all-time (as voted by you). [online] SBS PopAsia. Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/popasia/blog/2017/10/12/votes-are-top-100-greatest-anime-all-time-voted-you [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

SJ Party (2017). [online] Random Media Analysis Thoughts On OHSHC. Available at: http://thesjtparty.com/post/162171016890/random-media-analysis-thoughts-on-ouran-high [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (n.d.). Ambivalent sexism. [online] En.wikipedia.org. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (n.d.). Anime Top 50 Most Popular - Anime News Network:W. [online] Animenewsnetwork.com. Available at: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/ratings-anime.php?top50=popular [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (2018). the definition of benevolent sexism. [online] www.dictionary.com. Available at: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/benevolent-sexism [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (2018). Otaku. [online] En.wikipedia.org. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (2018). Ouran High School Host Club on Crunchyroll!. [online] Crunchyroll. Available at: https://www.crunchyroll.com/ouran-high-school-host-club [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (n.d.). Renge Houshakuji. [online] Ouran High School Host Club Wiki. Available at: http://ouran.wikia.com/wiki/Renge_Houshakuji [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (2018). Stream & Watch Ouran High School Host Club Online - Sub & Dub. [online] Funimation.com. Available at: https://www.funimation.com/shows/ouran-high-school-host-club/ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Wings, S. (2018). Ouran High School Host Club’s Infamous Episode 8: A Study on Rape Culture. [online] Pixels and Panels [ A Game x Manga Blog]. Available at: https://soaringwingsblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/ouran-high-school-host-clubs-infamous-episode-8-a-study-on-rape-culture/ [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018]

[reconditarmonia]

Dear Chocolate Box Author

Hello, lovely writer!

I’m reconditarmonia here and on AO3 (and have been since LJ days, but my LJ is locked down and I only have a DW to see locked things). I have anon messaging off, but mods should be able to contact me if you have any questions.

Coriolanus | Discworld | Harlots | Original Work | The Revenger's Tragedy | Simoun | Sleep No More | Spinning Silver

General likes:

– Relationships that aren’t built on romance or attraction. They can be romantic or sexual as well, but my favorite ships are all ones where it would still be interesting or compelling if the romantic component never materialized.

– Loyalty kink, whether commander-subordinate or comrades-in-arms, and the trust associated with it. Sometimes-but-not-always relatedly, idealism. I guess the two combined might be, in general, the idea of nobility of character and what that means. Also, gestures of loyalty.

– Heists, or other stories where there’s a lot of planning and then we see how the plan goes.

– Femslash, complicated or intense relationships between women, and female-centric gen. Women doing “male” stuff (possibly while crossdressing).

– Stories whose emotional climax or resolution isn’t the sex scene, if there is one.

– Uniforms/costumes/clothing.

– Stories, history, and performance. What gets told and how, what doesn’t get told or written down, behavior in a society where everyone’s consuming media and aware of its tropes, how people create their personas and script their own lines.

– Eucatastrophe.

General DNW: rape/dubcon, torture, other creative gore; unrequested AUs, including “same setting, different rules” AUs such as soulmates/soulbonds; PWP; food sex; embarrassment; focus on pregnancy; Christmas/Christian themes.

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Fandom: Coriolanus

Ship(s): Coriolanus/Aufidius

Fightsex ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Or fighting with high UST? (I should mention that Hiddleston!Coriolanus’s bemused reaction to Aufidius’s speech and kiss is, shall we say, not my headcanon; I like how equally obsessed with each other the two of them are.) The “he is a lion that I am proud to hunt” line seems to get quoted a lot, but I’m more interested in the part of the line that immediately precedes it - “Were half to half the world by th' ears and he upon my party, I'd revolt to make only my wars with him" - and this coexists with how they see each other as being so similar.

Fandom-Specific DNWs/Exception: PWP should be all right on this one. Cultural hangups around penetration in the context of fighting for dominance are fine, but DNW shame/reluctance when getting down to whatever they decide to do, please, and also DNW dialogue descriptions of what’s occurring in the sex.

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Fandom: Discworld

Ship(s): Polly “Ozzer” Perks & Jackrum, Polly “Ozzer” Perks & Sam Vimes, Tonker Halter/Lofty Tewt/Maladict, Tonker Halter/Lofty Tewt/Polly “Ozzer” Perks

/ ships: Destroy the Polly/Mal and Tonker/Lofty hegemony! /sarcasm These just seemed like ships that would be interesting to see - I guess I imagine them as being short-term given Tonker and Lofty’s one true love, but I’d be interested in seeing why Tonker and Lofty might let someone else in, why Mal or Polly might accept, and how that’d play out. Probably post-canon? How does it come about, if Tonker and Lofty have retired (to be criminals/freedom-fighters, or did they just rob the one bank to get enough to retire on and burn down the one place as personal revenge?) while Mal and Polly are still in the army? (Again, sarcastic about the Polly/Mal, I ship it and would be up for Polly/Mal pining in the context of one of these trios if that’s what you’re into.)

& ships: Just more of Polly and her mentor/s! I love that Monstrous Regiment is about a woman who joins the army in response to an immediate crisis but comes to learn that she’s a cunning bastard and that being a sergeant is what she’s good at. More of Polly learning from Jackrum (or deciding to do things differently, having things to teach) would be great. (She hasn’t heard nearly all Jackrum’s stories - or, even in retirement, there must be some adventure they could have, or something could come up around Jackrum’s big secret, or the book of blackmail.) So would Polly finding a new mentor in Vimes, learning how things work in Ankh-Morpork (as big city - how does she react to all the cultural differences? - or as a power structure where the rules of getting stuff done might be different than in Borogravia) or across periodic meetings when he’s in Borogravia. What are they cynical about, what do they believe in?

I request Monstrous Regiment a lot, so I have previous prompts for it in my “dear authors” tag.

Fandom-Specific DNW/Exception: gender headcanons, identity musing, or non-canonical pronouns. “He” or “she” for Jackrum are both fine, but I would not want to read the character making a big deal about gender identity or pronouns. Also, er, PWP would probably be fine for the / ships, although I’m still interested more in the character dynamics than in what would be hot.

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Fandom: Harlots

Ship(s): Charlotte Wells & Margaret Wells, Lydia Quigley & Charlotte Wells, Nancy Birch/Margaret Wells, Nancy Birch & Margaret Wells & William North

Charlotte & Margaret: There are so many levels to their relationship! In some ways it’s the usual “your baby is an adult person now”, but especially in season 2, Charlotte’s also working/fighting for the “side” that Margaret leads, and of course who Charlotte is as an adult person is so dependent on Margaret’s great betrayal of her. It’d be great to read something dealing with how thorny and complex their relationship is, their ambition and moral ambivalence, a conflict they have over something that’s not a keeper/relationship, ways in which their personalities are similar or different. (I would prefer to have Margaret’s selling of Charlotte remain an element of their backstory, rather than being the focus of the fic. If you want to start the story post-canon with Margaret back in place, don’t feel obligated to explain how she avoided transportation - I’m fine with that noodle incident or tacit canon divergence, but I’d prefer that the fic didn’t ignore the events of season 2 in general. Explaining it, or having her indeed transported, are also fine!)

Lydia & Charlotte: The other mother-daughter pairing! I love everything about the “loyal and beloved henchman secretly plotting revenge” plot in season 2. What if the secret hadn’t been revealed when it was, and Charlotte had become more and more compromised? Or, without that canon divergence, tell me more about what they genuinely like or admire about each other, or what Charlotte learns from Lydia about managing her house or her persona. Or maybe there’s another situation where, even as open enemies, they have to work together and help/rely on each other. (If you don’t feel like explaining how Lydia gets out of Bedlam and want to start the story post-canon with her back in place, I’m fine with that, whether we assume she manipulated her way out or that canon divergence happened and she wasn’t committed.)

Nancy/Margaret or Nancy & Margaret & Will: I was really happy that Nancy and Margaret got to kiss, because I’d been shipping them. What interests me most about the ship (and which is the reason I’m prompting both Nancy/Mags and Nancy&Mags&Will together) is Nancy and Margaret as partners-as-family. Both Nancy and Will are Margaret’s unmarried partners, to some degree or other, and play a parental role with the children that are hers but not theirs - do they have words for that when so many other relationships in their lives are definable and quantifiable? Did Nancy and Margaret ever try to live together or go into business together (after leaving Quigley’s - I’m not really interested in reading about them when they’re very young) or did they decide to live close but separate from the start? What’s a day in the life like for Margaret, Will, and Nancy?

I’ve requested this fandom before, in my “dear author letters” tag.

Fandom-Specific Exception to DNW: I recognize that rape and dubcon are endemic to the canon and specifically to a subplot I like, and I don’t expect you to avoid all reference to them, but would prefer not to have them described in detail, or to dwell on specific instances.

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Fandom: Original Work

Ship(s): Crime Boss/Right Hand Man or Woman/Undercover Police Officer, Female Aristocrat/Her Right-Hand Woman, Female Berserker/Female Officer She's Absolutely Loyal To, Female Commissioned Officer/Female Non-Commissioned Officer, Female Historical or Fantasy World Assassin-Spy/Her Female Patron, Female Re-Enactor Playing Male Soldier/Female Re-Enactor Playing Woman, Queen in a Court Full of Intrigue/Loyal and Vicious Female Writer, Recently Promoted Female Officer/Her Female Comrade-Now-Subordinate

So, clearly I love loyalty kink, stuff about how people relate to one another across a difference of rank or responsibility, questions of doing potentially fucked-up things for someone else because you’re loyal to them or are replacing your ethical judgment with theirs, or alternately of stopping someone from using the skills at their disposal in order to protect them or for a more farsighted goal. What kinds of situations could these characters be put in to risk themselves (whether that’s physically, or their ethics, reputation, secrets, position, goals...) for each other, or to ask someone they love to risk themselves? Maybe they’re the best at what they do, but what is it and how do they do it? How far do they need to go to prove their loyalty, if that’s what they need to do for personal reasons or for their own ambitions or wider goals?

Female Re-Enactor Playing Male Soldier/Female Re-Enactor Playing Woman does seem to be the odd one out, even if it also has to do with women soldiers, but I’d be so curious to know how they came to the decisions about who they would play, if they fall in love first or if their characters fall in love first and how all that plays out, all the tropey stuff that you might write for a historical canon but played as re-enactment, costume stuff...

For the military ones, these can be made-up societies, AU history where integrated or all-female armies were the norm, both women disguised as men in male armies, contexts where male soldiers are the norm but our female characters are there too for reasons...I think I'd prefer a context a little removed from the modern, but there's a lot of room for flexibility there. Same for the Aristocrat/Right-Hand Woman and Queen/Writer - historical or fantasy world, as with the assassin/patron, would be ideal. The re-enactors can be modern, or also in a made-up or future world. Gender wasn’t specified in the Crime Boss ship - I’d especially love to read that as f/f/f if you can swing it, but if that doesn’t work out, I would prefer f!boss/right-hand man/f!cop or f!boss/right-hand woman/m!cop over options with m!boss or two men.

I’ve requested this sort of thing before, so there’s more in my “dear author letters” tag.

Fandom-Specific DNW: If you go with a fantasy world for this, I would prefer human characters or, I guess, elves; DNW orcs, goblins, demons, dragons, etc.

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Fandom: The Revenger’s Tragedy

Ship(s): Lussurioso/Vindice, Vindice & Hippolito, Vindice & Hippolito & Castiza

It is my firm belief that had Lussurioso’s target not happened to be Castiza, Vindice would have loved being Lussurioso’s henchman. They hit it off right away - both times! I’d love to see something that explores that (not that it has to be AU, I mean, just the idea that Vindice actually likes the guy and really enjoys/is well suited for this job). And Lussurioso’s got the measure of him, too, to some degree (“Yet [swear to be true in all] for my humour’s sake...��cause I love swearing.”) Uh, not that this means you can’t write it as incredibly fucked up, though; I mean, a big part of Vindice’s character for me is that he might have no place in an honest world. Does Vindice have any scruples that aren’t related to his own family? Sex as manipulation one way, both ways? How much murder?

Or give me some family dynamics! I’m weirdly curious about birth order, which is not specified in canon - I firmly headcanon Vindice as not the oldest and Hippolito as older than him, but would be interested in your perspective on the rest of the configuration. How alike or different are they (beyond the canon path of Hippolito getting more into Vindice’s whole “elaborate murder” shtick)? What else might happen to our battlin’ brothers that’s off-screen in canon, where they’re more, or less, in sync/on the same wavelength? If Castiza learns about what the brothers have been up to during or after canon, how might that play out?

Fandom-Specific DNW: No movie canon. The razor scars? Just in the movie. As well, please don’t have Castiza (or Antonio, if it comes up) be truly corrupted.

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Fandom: Simoun

Ship(s): Aaeru & Neviril & Paraietta & Rodoreamon & Floef & Vyuraf, Aaeru/Neviril, Mamiina/Rodoreamon, Paraietta & Neviril, Paraietta/Rodoreamon

I’m so interested in the way that the war affects the relationship dynamics of this show - how Mamiina and Rodoreamon have this troubled backstory that they need to set aside and end up loving/respecting one another, how both Paraietta and Aaeru’s relationships with Neviril are personal relationships but also about them being soldiers and her being commander. And the way their experiences change them as people, and what that could mean for their relationships with one another.  One thing I love about the canon is how, in the mold of all my favorite epic yuri/shoujo animes, Everything Is Beautiful And Then Shit Gets Real, and that’s not just an out-of-universe fact of the show but something that the characters themselves, who are “supposed” to be priestesses and not an air force, have to deal with.

I don’t have a lot of ship-specific prompts, but I’m always interested in loyalty; sexual first times probably tie into the canon’s themes in a lot of ways; time loops or timespace play? I did start wondering (when prompting this for Yuletide) what might happen post-canon if Neviril and Aeru make it back to the main world when war is brewing again, but Neviril has no one from the old cohort to lead because they can’t fly anymore - so what do they do? (I think the way the show is allows for lost characters like them or Mamiina to be brought back, although I think I’d prefer it to be acknowledged in-story as due to magic or time weirdness rather than a tacit canon divergence/retcon.)

I request this allllll the time, so I have a lot of rambling in my “dear author letters” tag.

Fandom-Specific DNW/Exception: I don't need you to retcon the attempted assault(s), but please don't dwell on them. No Dominuura/Limone if that comes up, please.

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Fandom: Sleep No More

Ship(s): Bald Witch & Sexy Witch & Boy Witch, Bald Witch & Macduff, Sexy Witch & Fulton, Witch/Witch/Witch

I saw Sleep No More for the first(?) time in November, and it was really neat to explore and see all of the intertwining stories. I was especially interested in the Witches and the parts of their stories that I saw (I spent a lot of time with Bald Witch and with Fulton). One of my favorite things was the idea of this world of darkness and magic that’s underlying or intertwined with the social world, rather than in a separate space - I loved seeing the Witches at the ball and, holy shit, Bald Witch pulling off her wig after the ball in her solo ritual thing! This was the place in the loop where I first ran into her/noticed her, so I hadn’t realized it was a wig until that moment, and I was hooked. So, how do the Witches interact with the normal world, or deliberately carve out other spaces (like the apothecary shop)? What’s under the physical foundations of the castle and hotel and shops/what was there before, that they (or people like Fulton) might know about but that the world at large doesn’t know or has forgotten?

But also - who are the witches and how did they find each other? Are they still human, or are they immortal in some way? Do they have day-to-day lives or are they witching all the time?

BTW, I’d be happy to get just Bald Witch/Sexy Witch or Bald Witch & Sexy Witch if that’s what you’re more interested in, rather than all three.

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Fandom: Spinning Silver

Ship(s): Miryem Mandelstam/Irina, Miryem Mandelstam/Original Female Staryk Character, Miryem Mandelstam/Wanda

I really liked the book’s ideas of power - Miryem’s real-world power of accounting and hardheadedness becoming magic in the Staryk world, being a queen in one world while belonging to a disenfranchised minority in another. Power, rules, exchange - these play into a number of my prompts for these ships.

Miryem/Irina: Two queens with very different kinds of power, and different ideas of where their commitment lies - Miryem’s to “her people” whether that’s her family/other Jews/the Staryk who have bound themselves to her, Irina’s to “Lithvas” - and what’s consistent with their own ethics to fulfill those commitments. Widow them both and have the ultimate human world-Staryk world power marriage? A more serious rivalshippy thing where you make Miryem and Irina deal with the fact that they’re respectively a Jewish queen of a super-powerful magic country and the queen of a largely anti-Semitic country who’s not totally free from those beliefs herself? (I should mention that I am explicitly okay with the story touching on anti-Semitism or having anti-Semitism as a central issue.) What about different court traditions, when they visit each other - or, what happens when Miryem is back in the human world, knowing she’s a queen somewhere else? Can Miryem use the mirror from Irina to do an end run around the whole Persephone setup and travel back and forth whenever she wants?

Miryem/Wanda: I liked the early development of their relationship and wished we’d had more of that later in the story. How would Wanda’s gratitude to Miryem and the Mandelstams play in a land that views gratitude so differently from the human world? Might Wanda’s real-world “magic”, like the reading and writing Miryem gave her, manifest differently in the Staryk world too? Do you want to go full Tam Lin and have Wanda rescue Miryem from the Staryk world? Would Wanda ever consider converting to Judaism? What if she’s less settling into comfortable forest retirement and more becoming a magical gatekeeper of Miryem’s land in her own way?

Miryem/Original Female Staryk Character - Miryem must have more adventures in the Staryk world post-canon, not just the post-war rebuilding. Or maybe in an AU, there’s a different way that she comes into their land, or a Staryk character who comes into the human world. Who might she meet?

I also requested this for Yuletide, so I have more prompts in my “dear author letters” tag. And you can also feel free to ignore these pairings and write another fairytale about the Staryk and the Jews (possibly with Original Female Staryk/Original Female Human, Original Female Staryk/Original Female Staryk, or not).

Fandom-Specific DNW: I’m not interested in Miryem/Staryk or Irina/Mirnatius (as m/f, anyway), so please don’t get into either infidelity angst or poly negotiation. AUs where they never married them, killing both the husbands offscreen, or the assumption of an open relationship are all fine.

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

Who was Helen Kim?

Most of the readers of this blog should know by now that Helen Kim was the Dean of Ewha University and the one who sent Young Oon Kim to investigate Moon in the early years of the church. This is also confirmed in the official church narrative. But there is much more to the story that needs to be filled in to actually get a clear picture about the origins of the Unification church. The following Amazon link and the excerpt provided is from a book written recently about these events by a Korean patriot. I've included her note on authenticity because it describes the process by which actual historical accounts are accurately approximated in our modern world, unfortunately. Enjoy, Frank F

https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Tiger-Memoir-Korea/dp/159020266X

To Kill a Tiger

A Memoir of Korea

By Jid Lee

A NOTE ON AUTHENTICITY

While I tried to be as accurate as possible in my recounting of historical events, I added some fiction to the personal lives of the people affected by these events. 

The names of the characters, too, except those of well-known historical figures, were changed, and some of the facts, including the contents and dates of the incidents in their lives, were altered to acommodate the narrative integrity and consistency. That history is fiction is a cliche, and trying to explain why I attempted to fill in the blanks in modern Korean history with the information I gathered on my own would be a waste of time. The truth was intentionally cast out of the official version to be replaced by lies and propaganda, so the only way to arrive at the truth again is an exercise of disciplined imagination, and this I tried to do.

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As I grew old enough to challenge him, Father would curse me, "Those feminist bitches you imitate! They're nothing but a pack of dogs for the Yankee bastards! They're in cahoots with the right-wing hounds who do witch-hunting for their American owners."

For Father and other Korean men of his generation, progressiveness and socialist ideals did not connect with a feminist agenda the way they often have in other countries. Father was being a traditional man, a model of a stoic Korean husband, trained not to show affection for his wife. His daily sexist behaviors were anything but deliberate. But Father did believe Korean feminists were, in a way, traitors.

When I was growing up in the sixties, the voices of Korean feminists were only just starting to be heard. I knew nothing of these women's existence except through the famous names mentioned by the adults around me. Mother repeated to me what Father had told her about the history of the women's movement in South Korea, and I was able to trace his words back to where they came from. I found myself not only understanding but also sympathizing with him.

As a small, determined army of women who arrived in the arms of the right-wing dictator and his American champion, the first-generation South Korean feminists, exactly like their male counterparts, had no power base among the female masses. They were a privileged few, a select number of well-educated, English-speaking elite, alienated from the needs of the majority of Korean women. As part of Syngman Rhee's constituents, they took over the mainstream women's movement in South Korea in the forties and fifties, governing its center through the sixties and well into the seventies.

"The socialist feminists fought to keep Korea for Korean women, while the right-wing feminists served American interests," Mother explained. "The former made the women's movement accord with the people's wishes, but the latter betrayed the masses to promote their own agenda, catering to the Americans' anticommunism and playing direct or indirect roles in destroying the socialist grassroots republic. Like the socialist men, the socialist women lost power and some of them had to flee to North Korea, where they probably suffered the same fate as their male comrades. As you know, my sister was one of those socialist feminists. She went to North Korea with my socialist brother."

Father was embittered against the early feminists in South Korea for other reasons as well. They espoused beliefs in direct contradiction to deeply ingrained Confucian ideology, disrupting time-honored traditions made possible partly by keeping men and women in separate places. There was a personal reason he disliked them, too. The feminists reminded him of Grandfather's illegitimate wife, the liberated woman with a feminist lifestyle who took his father away from his mother, as I was to find out shortly, when I was in middle school. But the primary reason for his aversion to the feminists was political.

"It is unfortunate -- and tragic -- that the socialist feminists were wiped out be the right-wing camp," Mother said. "But history is made by contradictions, and sometimes by violent contradictions. The right-wing feminists had to be lackeys for Uncle Sam in order to be pioneers for women. To establish their democracy, they betrayed everyone's democracy. By riding on the American side, they brought American women's feminism to Korea. America is the hub of global feminism, and without the models established by American women, Korean women wouldn't have had much guidance."

Despite what they did wrong, the right-wing feminists deserve credit for what they did for Korean women. They created Ewha University, the first institution of women's higher education in Korea, and one of the leading women's universities to this day. Analogous to Radcliffe or Smith in America, Ewha University, founded in 1886, was the first pioneering institution of women's higher education in Korea. Initially, it was started as a small school-house for girls by a Methodist missionary woman from Ohio, but in 1946 it became a university with several subsidiary schools. Since, it has blossomed into the world's largest university for women and one of the centers of the women's movement in Asia.

It's first president, Helen Kim, was a devout Christian right-wing feminist whose alliance with right-wing dictators in South Korea invoked intense ambivalence among socialist men of Father's generation. As one of the handful of the early feminists who fought to replace age-old Confucian ideology with newly imported Christianity, Kim did not hesitate to place herself in the hands of Americans and the Korean toadies conspiring with them. Although Christianity, too, was a patriarchal religion, it seemed to be a creed relatively kinder to women than traditional Yi Dynasty norms. Judeo-Christian countries, for instance, enforced monogamy at least by law, while Confucian countries practiced legally sanctioned, one-sided polygamy for men. For this difference alone, Christianity was worth fighting for.

To this day, I remember the chapter in her autobiography in which Helen Kim proudly recalls the party she organized for American army officers during the Korean War. To boost the morale of soldiers fighting to preserve "democracy" in another country, she called in the teachers' pets at Ewha to pair them with the officers. I was disturbed by the absolute certainty with which she described her party.

"She claimed she just wanted to comfort the soldiers far away from home," one of the feminist professors at my university, who knew all about Kim's life as an educator, said in class. "But there was a rumor that the pary didn't end where it should have. Some people heard that some of the students and officers went further than expected, going out on regular dates and making frequent, possibly sexual, contact. 'She doesn't think there are enough whores and prostitutes in this country right now,' people whispered in anger. 'She thinks we need more, and she's the chancellor of a university dedicated to promote women's rights and equality.'" The professor paused to control her rising voice. "Regardless of the hearsay, Kim's party was morally reprehensible. Given that it was wartime, when the GIs' prostitutes filled the U.S. army base in the night, she should have abstained from anything that would reinforce the fallen image of Korean women. The selected Ewha students weren't poor, starving prostitutes, but in terms of the role they played for the army officers, they were members of a conquered race eager to please the conqueror. 

They were high-class one-night geisha, bluntly speaking, who were picked to serve the soldiers of a superpower. In peaceful times, when a man and a woman of different nationalities can sustain a relationship as equal individuals, such a gathering wouldn't be frowned upon. But in a country where so many of its women were made into playthings for soldiers from a conquering nation, Kim's party was a disgraceful idea, to say the least."

Kim didn't think about the consequences. Knowing that most of the prositutes -- and decent ladies -- who consorted with American military men were left behind in Korea, never sent for by their boyfriends who returned to America, she took the risk of throwing her students into the officers' arms. She wasn't concerned that they might become casualties of the war. The rumor that some of them went further than expected was very possibly groundless, but taking this chance during the war was not only morally questionable but also unpatriotic.

In another chapter of her autobiography, Kim confesses to having pledged an allegiance to Park Chung Hee, the military general who took over Syngman Rhee's dictatorship through a coup d'etat in 1961. With pride, she writes how she was summoned into his office immediately after the takeover and how unfalteringly she promised loyalty to him. As long as she was allowed to keep running Ewha University, she gladly shook hands with the dictator. It is impossible for me even now to shake off the disappointment that taints my admiration for her, admiration I believe she deserves for her ultimate achievement. The name Helen Kim provokes in me the same ambivalence that many people -- men who had good reasons to distrust her, and other feminist women who had doubts about her integrity -- admitted to feeling before and after her death.

But history must be examined with a sense of irony, as Father himself often insisted. Because Helen Kim so willingly made those shady compromises, she was able to keep what was to become the single largest institution of women's education, a haven for millions of Korean women who came after her. Because she spared nothing to preserve her cause, she was able to help rescue half of her country's population from ignominy and servitude. And because she pandered, she could help her fellow women to be free from pandering. Democracy is a strange beast. In my mind, her greatest achievement was to leave the next generation of women the weapons with which they could criticize her. She empowered them to become informed and able to sort right from wrong, and this empowerment may not have been possible without her flattery to the mafia-esque right-wing and their American bosses.