#i need to write about him with external queer friends it is so important to me......

[callixton]

it is such a deeply held conviction of mine that toby was the most actively involved in queer politics of senior staff before coming into the white house that i forget this is like. not a universally held opinion

[not-poignant]

I've never played SDV but I love your SDV fics and I was wondering if, since Sebastian seems to be a fighter guy, that will become difficult/scary for Alex because of his violent dad? thinking about the bit where Alex thinks Sebastian is going to shove him in ch4, which I was obsessed with. And will Sebastian avoid drinking around him like Elliot did? Also unrelated, was wondering if youd share your fave advice about writing character that you have ever received? love your writing discussions

Hi anon!

Ooo we've got some nice meaty questions here, let's get into it :D

I've never played SDV but I love your SDV fics and I was wondering if, since Sebastian seems to be a fighter guy, that will become difficult/scary for Alex because of his violent dad?

Sebastian actually isn't a 'fighter guy' in the game, he's just a teenage goth nerd who lives in a basement doing IT. Heh.

But in the story, he is a fighter, and you'll see in chapter 5 actually that some of his actions are triggery. He's already been scary to Alex! Just by reaching out to him in the last chapter, and Alex expecting to be shoved. Sebastian assumed it was homophobia, but Alex was unconsciously triggered re: his father.

This is actually something the story is going to address. A lot of people see Alex as the school bully re: Sebastian, but Sebastian - while less violent - was far more verbally and emotionally abusive to Alex as a bully, and the scars cut deep. It's definitely not gone or forgotten, that's why they keep re-enacting old patterns that are quite toxic when they're together. Sebastian jumps to conclusions, Alex tends to let himself be repeatedly insulted, while getting incredibly defensive.

So Sebastian has been both difficult and scary for Alex for a lot of reasons, from his traumatic past, to confronting Alex with his own queerness, to now just also being quite a brusque and unknowable quantity as an adult.

And will Sebastian avoid drinking around him like Elliot did?

I don't know! He might later on, but I haven't decided yet where Sebastian will stand on alcohol. He's got a long track record of going to the tavern with his friends, and he offered Alex whisky, and while he realised belatedly it wasn't a great thing to do, that's someone who's definitely not thinking ahead about his impact on Alex.

Also unrelated, was wondering if youd share your fave advice about writing character that you have ever received? love your writing discussions

I have a terrible memory, anon, thanks to the ADHD, which means I don't actually remember any advice about writing characters that I've ever received to have a single favourite!

But these are things that I think are important:

It's important to give your characters (all of them, even the minor ones) goals of their own, and obstacles that will stand in the way of those goals (they can be internal or external or both). A character's goals can change!

I like to come up with 'three things/flaws that will change for this character, and three things/flaws that will stay the same.' I feel like it creates characters that have more depth. For example, in Falling Falling Stars, Efnisien has many things about him that change, but by the end, he's still someone who is -> shy and needs some assistance in life, chronically disabled, and quick to put himself down even though the language has changed. Everyone keeps some flaws, that's what makes us human.

Make sure your characters don't all sound like each other, or like carbon copies of you. If you're writing fanfiction you can do dialogue research. There are times characters might sound similar to each other (a family, all grew up together, friend-group with in-jokes etc.) but it's still going to often sound different to you.

I hope that helps!

[timetravelbypen]

Power of the Doctor ramble

So I’m of two minds about the lack of Thasmin kiss. I’ve hopefully figured out a way to watch this with my best friend who doesn’t have cable tomorrow, so once I’ve seen it again and can more fully appreciate what we DID get without my hopes of what we COULD get in the way, I might be able to solidify this a bit more, but. Because on the one hand, what we DID get was incredible! Overall I really really loved the episode! Their scenes together were all so good, there was so much care and respect built into every single line, and Yaz’ Doctorification arc was TRULY incredible. And it builds from and respects the Doctor’s choice in the previous episode, that this is something she just can’t give. And as a very ace person, a story treating platonic love as literally the most important thing in the universe is amazing, actually. And also this is a story of “it matters that the love was there. It didn’t save everyone, but it saved a lot of people, and it matters even if it wasn’t everything we wanted, because the love really was there” story. And I love those stories. But I work in corporate IP media. And I know, all too well, just how hard it is to get queer things greenlit. I have been there. I have spent so much time crying in office bathrooms trying and failing to get something through for characters *much* less brand significant, in much less high-profile formats, than the Doctor. And so I don’t really know if this was what Chibnall (and I don’t pin the “blame” for this on him at all) felt was best for his characters, or if some exec somewhere who hadn’t even read the scripts said “you can go this far and no further. Here is the line. These are the Rules.” I suspect, from my experience, that it’s the latter, although because of my experiences I might be reading into it too much. I have no way of knowing for sure. And I have to admit, it hurts that I thought maybe, just maybe, we might win this one.

Also, being a professional editor means sometimes it’s hard to turn off Editor Brain, and for the most part this episode did (which is high praise!), but I wanted 1-3 more lines in their final scene together. We’ll see if watching it without a GODDAMN COMMERCIAL BREAK in between “let’s not say goodbye” and Yaz being dropped off (seriously BBC America you’re the worst) changes my mind about this, but I think I just needed a tiny little bit more to get that Yaz “I’m with you, whatever happens” Khan would willingly walk away so easily. And I loved her arc and I’m SO RELIEVED she’s alive and I think she’s been left in a great place, and overall I think Chibs is pretty spare with his writing and that’s what I like about it? He doesn’t belabor the point, but this one, this needed just a tiny bit more, I think. It needed a “I think I have to do this next bit alone” / “Are you sure?” / “I promised I would get you home, Yasmin Khan. And I will.” / “Let’s not say goodbye.” Just that last little bit felt like it was missing, just one last little bit. Also I hope Yaz gets to have a good cry somewhere because she’s dropped straight from “my not-quite-girlfriend/best friend died” to “former companion support group” with nothing in between and OOF what whiplash.

Also also I knew that was exactly what returning-DT would say. I KNEW IT. *sighs forever* (10 brought me into this show I love 10 I will always love 10 but - again, less for the-actual-show-itself reasons and more for external fears that RTD will just pretend 13′s era didn’t exist reasons - I am not excited to see him back in this precise way, but we shall see.)

[longinglook]

I may or may not have spent my entire Sunday binge watching all of I told sunset about you and Gaya sa pelikula and now I have so many thoughts and feelings that I need to write about them so here we go! Under a read more (if tumblr allows me to) because it’s 2k words hehe

First of all, I knew next to nothing about both shows before starting them. I had seen a couple of gifs here and there, but really had no idea what I was in for.

I started with I told sunset about you, which has 3 episodes out of 5 out. All I knew is that it was going to be beautiful and possibly sad, and it was. Everything about this show is so high quality, from the audio to the dialogue to the locations to the acting, just wow. The production is better than a lot of movies I’ve seen, and every technical aspect is perfect. I am really loving the plot so far as well, I find the childhood friendship to stubborn rivalry to grown up friendship again very relatable. I think it’s a very common experience for a lot of non straight folks to develop an extremely close bond with a same sex friend when you’re too young to realize what you’re actually feeling for them until you’re a lot older and suddely the jealousy and possessivenes all make sense.

I love the recurring themes sprinkled throughout the episodes, starting from the chinese vocabulary that expresses the core thoughts of the two main characters: rival, intimacy, secret, male protagonist, as promised. They could easily be the episode titles, or the names of imaginary sections the show could be divided into. It’s a great way to integrate metaphors and deeper meaning into the plot.

That’s how most of the communication goes in this show, deep emotions are never conveyed through words because words are scary and loud and they can’t be taken back once they’re out there. The plot advances though stares and gestures and touch and gorgeous shots of the landscape. The pace is slow with hour-long episodes that could each be a movie of their own. This worried me a bit before starting, and I have to admit that at times I struggled to stay focused, especially during scenes that set the mood but don’t do much plot-wise. This is just a personal preference, though, and in no way I see it as a flaw. 

The dancing around each other the main characters do, sometimes literal, is frustrating but it determines an emotional build up that’s just starting to reach its peak. This is one of those shows that has me screaming if only they talked to each other, but the silences and unspoken words are so well directed and acted that it works. I struggle a lot with keeping in mind that they’re still in high school, they’re very young and I can’t expect them to act rationally just yet. 

I was really worried about Teh possibly going the insufferable Theory-of-love-khai way, and I am still not 100% sold on him. When he started helping Oh-aew again it felt like he was just doing it to make himself feel better about the whole thing. It was frustrating to see him so possessive and jealous while also so deeply in denial about his own feelings, to the point where he had me rooting for Bas instead. He was getting better, but then he fled at the end of episode 3 and now I have no clue what’s going to happen next. About this, I really have no idea if they’re going for a happy ending or a sad one. I’m really hoping it will be good, because so far there has been barely any emotional payoff for all the repressed longing and misunderstanding the show has put us through.

I do like their dynamic a lot though, I have a weak spot for childhood friends reconnecting and an ever weaker spot for informal mentor/mentee relationships. Oh-aew asking Teh to tutor him until he passes the admission exam was an almost exact mirror of Yuri on ice Yuri begging Victor to be his coach until he retires and I loved that a lot.

Now on to the one issue I have with this show: it feels too much like an art film. It reminds me of Moonlight and Call me by your name, in the way that I wasn’t able to connect with those movies because they are too perfect. They are so beautiful and carefully crafted that I can’t fully immerse myself in them. There’s a filter that stops me from relating to the characters and constantly reminds me that this is not reality. It’s pretty, it’s extremely well done, but it feels like art. It has some quirks, some scenes that feel too artificial. One scene in particular, the one where Teh buries his head in the paper Oh-aew wrote with his coconut scented pen to sniff it, which is a direct parallel to Call me by your name, bothered me in particular. Just as it felt over-the-top and purposefully weird in the movie, so it feels in the show. It’s a way of showcasing how a confused teen deals with attraction he barely understands, it’s raw and animalistic in a way, but it’s so quirky that all it accomplishes is to remind me that I’m watching an lgbt show. It makes me wonder if a scene like this would make sense in a straight relationship because here it seems to highlight how different and primal his attraction is. If I had to pinpoint it, I’d say that I have a problem with media showcasing queerness though peculiar, purposefully awkward scenes like these instead of normal kissing and cuddling.

Overall, I can’t wait to see how this show ends and I still think it’s one of the best bls to air in 2020, if not ever. It’s refreshing to see something with a big budget used well! So far my rating is 8/10, which I know is a lot lower than what everyone else seems to think but it’s still very much subject to change! Just hoping they won’t pull a Make our days count, but I doubt they’ll go there.

And now Gaya sa pelikula. Wow. Again, I knew next to nothing about this show before watching, and I was coming from a 3 hour I told sunset about you binge watch, so the bar was pretty high.

And boy, did this show deliver. I was blown away by the depth and the humor of it. It feels like the writers had fun taking all sorts of common tropes and stereotypes just to show everyone how well they can be evolved and made complex. Two strangers who somehow find themselves sharing an apartment sounds like the start of so many fanfictions out there, but it’s so well executed and interesting that you don’t even stop to think about how weak the premises for their meeting are. It doesn’t matter and it’s not even that far-fetched, either. The sister and the neighbor are also two characters that start off as extra stereotyped, but in just a few scenes they unveil an incredible depth and backstory. It blew me away.

Each character is so realistic. Everything they do and say makes sense, they all have their reasons and their past and they react accordingly, it’s so coherent. It’s impressive how everything takes place inside the house and you barely realize it because things happen and the plot moves anyways, and the way information about external events and people is conveyed is so seamless that you don’t even notice it. In only 7 episodes (so far) they have managed to give everyone a complex background and personality through the use of objects and small details and wow don’t get me started on the music.

The soundtrack is SO GOOD. I never really pay attention to music in shows but it plays a very important role here in my opinion and, well, it’s exactly the kind of music I like listening to and ahhh I just spent 4 hours playing the first kiss song on loop so I might be biased. Right from the start in episode 1, when Karl gives in to Vlad’s music and starts dancing to it, it’s established that it’s an important element to the mood of each scene. I love how the dancing I talked about for I told sunset about you comes back here, but while I saw it as a hesitant dancing around each other there, here it’s the opposite, it’s freeing and it’s about accepting yourself. And the end of episode 6 highlights this, with the beautiful quote “You are entitled to a love that lets you dance without fear and shame.” It made me cry a looooot.

I think the development of their relationship is masterfully done. It doesn’t happen too quickly nor too slowly. Karl goes through some needed shocks that act as his wake up call. When I’m watching bl shows I care the most about them feeling real and relatable. I don’t want to feel like they were written by a straight person trying to guess what it’s like to be gay. Now I didn’t look anything up about the Gaya sa pelikula writers, but I’d be very surprised if they were straight. I can relate to both Karl and Vlad for different aspects of their stories and their worries and thoughts. There was one part in particular that hit so close that I had to take a few breaks because it hurt too much. I am a lesbian, I’ve had relationship with a girl that lasted over a year, I am out to some friends but not all. I never came out to my parents, who are both very open minded and friends with a lot of gay people and would love me just as much if I told them, and yet I can’t. It’s not just that, I am terrified by the idea of them already knowing or being able to guess. When Karl freaked out over his uncle guessing, it hit me so hard because I’ve felt the same way so many times.

Episode 7 was amazing. I hate badly written drama the most, and 99% of shows can’t come up with any good reason for drama but they have to put it in there anyways and it sucks. This was the complete opposite, I adored it and I say this as a lover of fluff. It feels right, I think it’s an issue that would come up between two people like them. They are both right and the only thing that could happen there is what actually went down. I definitely think things will be fixed by the end and I am looking forward to it, but I am very glad this issue was included because it’s so important and so true to many lgbt people’s lives.

Another aspect I absolutely adored are the multiple references to lgbt theory and language, and Vlad has some of the best lines I’ve ever heard coming from a bl. When he tells Karl not to be afraid of the word, when he explains that “you don’t look gay” isn’t a compliment, when he scolds his sister for not acknowledging the things she used to say to him by covering them up with her ally act, those are all such important and educative moments that I hope everyone listens to. I love that Vlad is not correcting some ignorant bad guy, but it’s his accepting and loving friends and family that make the mistakes, because sometimes being supportive your own way isn’t enough if you’re not actively learning from the ones you want to support.

This is a 10/10 for me right now. I can’t find anything I don’t like about it. It never feels boring, it never feels overdone, it never feels cheap or unoriginal. It went straight to the top of my favorite bls.

And now I can’t help but compare the two a bit, because yes they are two different shows but right now the relationships they portray have reached the same point: there has been a climax and now the one who is more confused about his sexuality is panicking and taking a step back. It’s a coincidence that I watched both shows on the same day when their last aired episodes end in such a similar way, but it really leads me to compare the two. I don’t want to put them one against each other or say which one did it better because that’s not the point of this, they are both two amazing and important shows who are excelling in what they’re doing. 

Gaya sa pelikula is down to earth, it’s explicit and it’s straight to the point in explaining what’s going on inside each character’s head. It feels like watching real people deal with real struggles. I told sunset about you is a lot more subtle and quiet, and since we don’t really have a clear insight in the characters’ heads sometimes it’s hard to completely understand what’s going on with them. It’s a completely different way of narrating, and while Gaya sa pelikula makes me feel like I’m a part of the events, I told sunset about you feels like I’m just spectating from an outside perspective. They are different choices, but one of them ends up feeling a lot more emotional to me than the other.

To wrap it up, I highly recommend both shows and I can’t wait to see how they’ll end! They are both among the best shows of the year, both free of all those annoyingly stereotyped characters and plot points that most bls tend to overuse.

[sevensided]

this is just my experience but i watched s1-3 as a casual viewer before i ever joined a fandom at all- and i took mileven as it came (i thought they were very sweet but i wasn't too concerned about it yk? i completely agree the family/friend dynamics are the focus). so i wouldn't say it's impossible for byler to become canon & be accepted by general audiences even if most didn't catch the queer coding. all byler needs now is a decent build up that's explicitly romantic imo and id say the 2 more seasons we're getting would be sufficient to make it happen gradually and naturally (ik many fans are already firm that it's been romantically built the whole time but to be completely honest i missed all of that while in general audience lol). it's the perfect time to start i feel like given all that happened in s3, and them being so close in 1 & 2, almost felt like a turning point? that said i really am on the fence about whether i believe it'll ever be a thing. i love that dynamic regardless of it's relationship status but i am hopeful the writers will surprise me 😂

Thank you so, so much for this message @rosyrosalie and I think you’ve brought up some really important points!

You’re very right in that Byler is not obvious to the casual viewer. I personally had a slight suspicion when I watched it the very first time, but it was only upon rewatches and some thinking that I thought there might be something deeper. Now that I’m on board, it seems relatively clear.

I also agree that it needs an explicit romantic build up. With El and Mike it was there from the beginning, and I think I’ve said elsewhere that if ST was made in the 80s then Mileven would 100% be endgame, because it fits the genre and it also pays homage to the stories that the Duffers draw from. It would be a perfect (if overdone) full circle. In comparison, Byler is the dark horse. I would lay money that there would be fans who watch S4-5 and complain that their relationship development doesn’t make sense. But that’s not our job to convince anyone: that’s up to the writers to illustrate how embedded Byler is to the story and how it’s been an undercurrent since the start of the show.

This does make me wonder as to how they’ll accomplish this. In order to realistically portray Byler, they’ll need to:

Show Mike no longer has feelings for El (partly done in S3 finale)

Show that Mike not only doesn’t like El, but doesn’t like girls

Show that Mike likes boys

Show that Mike not only likes boys, but likes one boy in particular

Show Mike accepting his feelings for Will.

And then you have a whole new cycle: Mike struggling with (what he perceives to be) unrequited love for Will. That needs to play out until Will’s cycle is complete, which would look like:

Confirmation that Will likes boys over girls

Showing that Will likes one boy in particular

Showing that Will likes Mike, and always has.

Mike and Will have actually very different trajectories. As it’s been mentioned a few times, Mike’s resistance is external (what will his family, friends think?) as well as internal (I can’t be gay, I like girls), versus Will, whose struggle I see as being wholly internal. It was laid out in S01E01 that Will might be gay (“Lonnie used to call him a f*g, said he was qu**r” / “Is he?” / “He’s missing is what he is!”), which, as we all know, gives Will ten times more queer coding than Mike from the start. I disagree slightly that Mike has had a lot of queer coding. In my view, it’s far easier to see Will as gay than Mike. In this sense, the writers have a large job on their hands in showing the audience how similar Mike and Will are, and how Mike is, in fact, not only gay but in love with Will. I don’t think it’s impossible by any means. But you are right: it would probably take two seasons to get there.

At this stage I’d posit that realistically you’d need S4 to bring Mike from uncertain to questioning to acceptance. Then you’d need S5 to bring Mike from believing his feelings are unrequited to Will responding affirmatively to them. A two season arc altogether. And that’s not even taking into account all the subplots and, of course, the main story, which is Will versus his power.

Regarding what you said about turning points... I agree with you. I think this sense is helped significantly by the Party growing older. They’re becoming more self-aware, more mature. They’re figuring out where they fit in the world and what role they have to play in it. That can’t be underestimated. So much of the show is about growing up and being true to yourself. Along with family and friendship, I’d say that’s a tertiary theme: self-acceptance. It’s illustrated in different ways through the show (D&D is just one example - on the surface it’s shown as nerds versus everyone else) and S3 was certainly evidence that those underlying, conflicting feelings are coming to the fore and (in Mike’s case) disrupting everything they hold dear.

I’ll wrap this up because I’m just going on a tangent, but suffice to say I agree with you, totally, that this will be hard to pull off from a writing point of view. But I contend there’s enough evidence in canon to pull the strands together. I think it will take at least two seasons to manifest, but S4 will be deciding season. Not to build it up or anything, but you can’t realistically have S5 be the “big reveal” because it’s probably too late by that stage and could come across as pulling Byler out of the hat. But given the subtle foreshadowing it’s received so far, I don’t think that’s the case. Thank you again for your message!

[thecaffeinebookwarrior]

The Many Faces of the Strong Female Character

The much-requested, positive counterpart to my classic “Female Characters to Avoid in Your Writing” and it’s much-later sequel.  

Here, I will discuss some of my favorite fictional ladies and what makes them work so well;  given my rapturous love of women, there will probably be a sequel!  In the meantime, I talk more about portraying female characters here.

Happy writing, everybody!  <3

1.)  The Warrior

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When most people hear “strong female character,” they picture the most popular definition of the term:  a stony-faced, emotionally shallow, conventionally attractive broad who punches and kicks stuff.  She may occasionally shout things like, “I DON’T NEED NO MAN,” while perhaps punching a small baby. 

I decided to start with my wife Diana, because she is the perfect antithesis of this trope.  She isn’t stony, she’s courageous.  She’s unabashed about showing her doubts, hopes, affections, and optimism.  Her love interest never steals her spotlight, but she feels no need to shun romance to appear “strong.”  She’s beautiful, but not sexualized or objectified.

And while most Strong Female Characters™ are ironically reduced to damsels in distress at some point in their own narratives, Diana consistently takes the lead, totally autonomous over her own story.

You can kick ass AND love babies, people.  Joss Whedon, please take notes.

(Gif credit)

Other examples:  Okoye from Black Panther, Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road, Rey from Star Wars, and Ser Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones.

2.)  The Comedian

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If you haven’t watched Chewing Gum on Netflix, stop whatever you’re doing and watch it right now.  Its relatively simple premise – a twenty-four-year-old from a fundamentalist Christian household struggles to lose her virginity – is a segway into a hilarious, genuine exploration of human sexuality, relationships, and how we forge our identities.

Brilliantly portrayed by the series’ creator, Michaela Coel, Tracy is essentially that one friend who knows exactly what you’ve been thinking and isn’t afraid to say so.  She is never relegated to a single trope or stereotype.  She’s stumbling, clumsily but enthusiastically, through the life experiences that shape us.  Most importantly, she is allowed to be sexually curious, awkward, aggressive, insecure, and – I can’t stress this enough – hilarious.  The dialogue is infinitely quotable, and endlessly relatable. 

(Image source)

Watching shows like Chewing Gum makes me realize how few female characters – and even fe wer Black female characters – are portrayed as truly human.  Typically, they’re allowed to be sexy, but not sexual.  They’re allowed to be awkward, but only if it’s cute.  They can be insecure, but only if that insecurity can easily be solved by the affirmations of a male love interest.  And they’re rarely allowed to be the main source of a series’ comedy.  

So remember:  let your female characters be human.  Let them be awkward, funny, sexual philosophers.  It’s easier than you think.  

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Other examples:  Abbi and Ilan from Broad City, Leslie from Parks and Rec, Tina from Bob’s Burgers.

3.)  The Drama Queen

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Watching Riverdale is like hurtling along on a structurally unstable rollercoaster.  It’s utterly insane, a lot of fun, and once you’re on, you can’t stop.

But amidst the explosions of batshit crazy plot points, killer cults, and the existential perplexity of finding yourself attracted to emo Jughead, there are some real gems.  One of these is Cheryl Blossom, and pretty much every plot line surrounding her.

Cheryl is introduced as a fairly one-dimensional, catty mean girl, though the Regina George-esque charisma with which she’s portrayed makes her instantly likable.  Initially, we expect her to be a character we’ll love to hate.

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And yet, within the first few episodes, I was impressed by how layered and complex her motivations were.  Much of contempt towards others was misdirected rage from an upbringing of extreme emotional abuse, and grief over her dead brother -- all portrayed without a Snape-style condonation of said behavior.  By the end of season one, my thoughts were generally, “Oh, crap, I don’t think I can claim to be watching this ‘ironically’ anymore,” and “MORE CHERYL.”

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Season two answered my wish, and then some.  Cheryl was saved from an (impressively conscientiously portrayed) attempt at sexual assault by a pack of her female friends, and her attacker got the shit beat out of him in one of the most cathartic moments of modern television.

To the exaltation of my queer heart, she also came out as a lesbian, in a deeply moving story arc that I never would have expected from this show.  Without spoiling too much, she and her new love interest kissing in front of anti-gay propaganda footage was legitimately one of the most powerful moments I have ever witnessed.

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Before the season was over, she viciously threatened her abusive, homophobic mother while covered in blood, shot a serial killer with a bow and arrow, and joined a gang.  If that’s not gay culture, I don’t know what is.

Oh, how I wish this show was just about her.

Other examples:  Alexis from Schitt’s Creek.

4.)  The Lovable Bastard

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Ah, The Good Place.  I have never experienced such a breath of comedic fresh air.  A new philosophical principle each episode, examined and applied in hilarious and thought-provoking ways.  A complete absence of harmful stereotypes.  Incredibly lovable, three-dimensional, and ever-evolving characters. 

I was considering using my queen Tahani for this list, who externally larger-than-life and internally vulnerable after emotional abuse by her parents.  Also, she’s hilarious.  Everyone and everything in The Good Place is hilarious.  And I also thought about talking about Janet, who is the best character in anything ever, but of course:

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Instead, I’ll be talking about bisexual icon Eleanor, who is something very few female characters get to be:  the lovable bastard.

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Eleanor, when we first meet her, is not traditionally good in any sense of the word.  She turned down a high-paying job because she was expected to be nice to people.  She sold placebos to the elderly, and was great at it.  She was drunken, slovenly, hedonistic, and selfish.  And she’s instantly incredibly likable.

Why and how Eleanor is so enjoyable, even at her very worst, merits an essay all its own.  But in a nutshell:

We empathize with her.  We are introduced to “The Good Place” completely through her eyes.  We are in her shoes.  

The stakes are high.  When we discover that her entry into the good place was a mistake, we want her to be okay.

We come to understand her, and how her terrible childhood shaped her destructive behavior.  

She wants to be a better person, and with time, effort, and character development, we watch her become one. 

Not only is this an amazing lesson in how to endear audiences to your character, it is also infinitely refreshing.  The most famous lovable bastards are all men --  Han Solo, Dr. House, Captain Jack Sparrow, the Man With No Name, et cetera -- but women are rarely afforded the same moral complexity.  If a woman in fiction has done bad things, she’s not usually a lovable bastard.  She’s usually a bitch. 

Eleanor isn’t just a great character.  She conveys an important lesson:  women are people.  People with the same capacity for mistakes, growth, redemption, and love as anyone else.

(Image source)

Other examples: Chloe from Don’t Trust the B*tch in Apartment 23

5.)  The Cinderella

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Yep.  I said it.  Cinderella is a strong female character.

My girl not only survived in an abusive household, she persistently stayed positive.  She worked each day to make the best of an impossible situation, from which she had no means of escape.  That takes an insane amount of courage and tenacity. 

But Caff, I hear you scream, she needed help to escape!!  Well, my imaginary counterargument, so the fuck what?  MOST people need help to escape their abusive situations, and there’s no shame in that.  Accepting help from someone you trust is the best thing you can do in a situation such as that, and implying otherwise is horribly damaging to victims of abuse.  

But she married the prince, you more feebly protest.  Yes!  She did!  She found love and happiness and a great life in a socially influential position!  And that’s an amazing message!

So in the flurry of female warriors, let’s not forget Cinderella, who tells people that their terrible circumstances won’t last forever, to stay hopeful and kind, and that accepting help from a trusted friend can lead to a happy life.  

Cinderella is a bad bitch, and she deserves her happily ever after.

(Gif source)

Other examples:  For some reason, I’m thinking of Sansa from Game of Thrones.  When people try to discredit her as a strong character, they often make similar complaints.  But both, quite fittingly, end up as queens.

[dajokahhh]

Alright, time for some pretentious sociological-esque rambling. This is gonna be long as hell (its 1822 words to be specific) and I don’t begrudge anyone for not having the patience to read my over-thought perspectives on a murder clown. CWs for: child abuse, 

I think a lot of things have to go wrong in someone’s life for them to decide to become a clown themed supervillain. A lot of people in Gotham have issues but they don’t become the Joker. I think that as a writer it’s an interesting topic to explore, and this is especially true for roleplaying where a character might be in different scenarios or universes. This isn’t some peer reviewed or researched essay, it’s more my own personal beliefs and perspectives as they affect my writing. I think villains, generally, reflect societal understandings or fears about the world around us. This is obviously going to mean villains shift a lot over time and the perspective of the writer. In my case, I’m a queer, fat, mentally ill (cluster B personality disorder specifically) woman-thing who holds some pretty socialist ideas and political perspectives. My educational background is in history and legal studies. This definitely impacts how I write this character, how I see crime and violence, and how my particular villains reflect my understandings of the society I live in. I want to get this stuff out of the way now so that my particular take on what a potential origin story of a version of the Joker could be makes more sense.

Additionally, these backstory factors I want to discuss aren’t meant to excuse someone’s behaviour, especially not the fucking Joker’s of all people. It’s merely meant to explain how a person (because as far as we know that’s all he is) could get to that point in a way that doesn’t blame only one factor or chalk it up to “this is just an evil person.” I don’t find that particularly compelling as a writer or an audience member, so I write villains differently. I also don’t find it to be particularly true in real life either. If you like that style of writing or see the Joker or other fictional villains in this way, that’s fine. I’m not here to convince anyone they’re wrong, especially not when it comes to people’s perspectives on the nature of evil or anything that lofty. Nobody has to agree with me, or even like my headcanons; they’re just here to express the very specific position I’m writing from. 

The first thing I wanna do is set up some terms. These aren’t academic or anything, but I want to use specific and consistent phrasing for this post. When it comes to the factors that screw up someone’s life significantly (and in some instances push people towards crime), I’ll split them into micro and macro factors. Micro factors are interpersonal and personal issues, so things like personality traits, personal beliefs, mental health, family history, where and how someone is raised, and individual relationships with the people around them. Macro factors are sociological and deal with systems of oppression, cultural or social trends/norms, political and legal restrictions and/or discrimination, etc. These two groups of factors interact, sometimes in a fashion that is causative and sometimes not, but they aren’t entirely separate and the line between what is a micro vs macro issue isn’t always fixed or clear.

We’ll start in and work out. For this character, the micro factors are what determine the specifics of his actions, demeanor, and aesthetic. I think the main reason he’s the Joker and not just some guy with a whole lot of issues is his world view combined with his personality. He has a very pessimistic worldview, one that is steeped in a very toxic form of individualism, cynicism, and misanthropy. His life experience tells him the world is a cold place where everyone is on their own. To him the world is not a moral place. He doesn’t think people in general have much value. He learned at a young age that his life had no value to others, and he has internalized that view and extrapolated it to the world at large; if his life didn’t matter and doesn’t matter, why would anyone else’s? This worldview, in the case of my specific Joker, comes from a childhood rife with abandonment, abuse, and marginalization. While I will say he is definitively queer (in terms fo gender expression and non conformity, and sexuality), I’m not terribly interested in giving specific diagnoses of any mental health issues. Those will be discussed more broadly and in terms of specific symptoms with relation to how they affect the Joker’s internal experience, and externalized behaviours.

His childhood was, to say the least, pretty fucked up. The details I do have for him are that he was surrendered at birth because his parents, for some reason, did not want to care for him or could not care for him; which it was, he isn’t sure. He grew up effectively orphaned, and ended up in the foster care system. He wasn’t very “adoptable”; he had behavioural issues, mostly violent behaviours towards authority figures and other children. He never exactly grew out of these either, and the older he got the harder it was to actually be adopted. His legal name was Baby Boy Doe for a number of years, but the name he would identify the most with is Jack. Eventually he took on the surname of one of his more stable foster families, becoming Jack Napier as far as the government was concerned. By the time he had that stability in his mid to late teens, however, most of the damage had already been done. In his younger years he was passed between foster families and government agencies, always a ward of the government, something that would follow him to his time in Arkham and Gotham’s city jails. Some of his foster families were decent, others were just okay, but some were physically and psychologically abusive. This abuse is part of what defines his worldview and causes him to see the world as inherently hostile and unjust. It also became one of the things that taught him that violence is how you solve problems, particularly when emotions run high. 

This was definitely a problem at school too; moving around a lot meant going to a lot of different schools. Always being the new student made him a target, and being poor, exhibiting increasingly apparent signs of some sort of mental illness or disorder, and being typically suspected as queer (even moreso as he got into high school) typically did more harm than good for him. He never got to stay anywhere long enough to form deep relationships, and even in the places where he did have more time to do that he often ended up isolated from his peers. He was often bullied, sometimes just verbally but often physically which got worse as he got older and was more easily read as queer. This is part of why he’s so good at combat and used to taking hits; he’s been doing it since he was a kid, and got a hell of a lot of practice at school. He would tend to group up with other kids like him, other outcasts or social rejects, which in some ways meant being around some pretty negative influences in terms of peers. A lot of his acquaintances were fine, but some were more... rebellious and ended up introducing Jack to things like drinking, smoking cigarettes, using recreational drugs, and most important to his backstory, to petty crimes like theft and vandalism, sometimes even physical fights. This is another micro factor in that maybe if he had different friends, or a different school experience individually, he might have avoided getting involved in criminal activities annd may have been able to avoid taking up the mantle of The Joker.

Then there’s how his adult life has reinforced these experiences and beliefs. Being institutionalized, dealing with police and jails, and losing what little support he had as a minor and foster child just reinforced his worldview and told him that being The Joker was the right thing to do, that he was correct in his actions and perspectives. Becoming The Joker was his birthday present to himself at age 18, how he ushered himself into adulthood, and I plan to make a post about that on its own. But the fact that he decided to determine this part of his identity so young means that this has defined how he sees himself as an adult. It’s one of the last micro factors (when in life he adopted this identity) that have gotten him so entrenched in his typical behaviours and self image.

As for macro factors, a lot of them have to do specifically with the failing of Gotham’s institutions. Someone like Bruce Wayne, for example, was also orphaned and also deals with trauma; the difference for the Joker is that he had no safety net to catch him when he fell (or rather, was dropped). Someone like Wayne could fall into the cushioning of wealth and the care of someone like Alfred, whereas the Joker (metaphorically) hit the pavement hard and alone. Someone like the Joker should never have become the Joker in the first place because the systems in place in Gotham should have seen every red flag and done something to intervene; this just didn’t happen for him, and not out of coincidence but because Gotham seems like a pretty corrupt place with a lot of systemic issues. Critically underfunded social services (healthcare, welfare, children & family services) that result in a lack of resources for the people who need them and critically underfunded schools that can’t offer extra curricular activities or solid educations that allow kids to stay occupied and develop life skills are probably the most directly influential macro factors that shaped Jack into someone who could resent people and the society around him so much that he’d lose all regard for it to the point of exacting violence against others. There’s also the reality of living in a violent culture, and in violent neighbourhoods exacerbated by poverty, poor policing or overpolicing, and being raised as a boy and then a young man with certain gendered expectations about violence but especially ideas/narratives that minimalize or excuse male violence (especially when it comes to bullying or violent peer-to-peer behaviour under the guise of ‘boys will be boys’). 

Beyond that, there’s the same basic prejudices and societal forces that affect so many people: classism, homphobia/queerphobia, (toxic) masculinity/masculine expectations, and ableism (specifically in regards to people who are mentally ill or otherwise neurodivergent) stand out as the primary factors. I’m touching on these broadly because if I were to talk about them all, they would probably need their own posts just to illustrate how they affect this character. But they definitely exist in Gotham if it’s anything like the real world, and I think it’s fair to extrapolate that these kinds of these exist in Gotham and would impact someone like The Joker with the background I’ve given him.

I have no idea how to end this so if you got this far, thank you for reading!

[greatfay]

controversial opinions?

Cold pizza actually not good. Tastes like angry bacteria.

There’s a completely separate class of gay men who are in a different, rainbow-tinted plane of reality from the rest of us and I don’t like them. They push for “acceptance” via commercialization of the Pride movement, assimilation through over-exposure, and focus on sexualizing the movement to be “provocative” and writing annoying articles that reek of class privilege instead of something actually important like lgbtqa youth homelessness, job discrimination, and mental health awareness.

Coleslaw is good. You guys just suck in the kitchen.

Generational divides ARE real: a 16-year-old and a 60-year-old right now in 2021 could agree on every hot button sociopolitical topic and yet not even realize it because they communicate in entirely different ways.

Sam Wilson is a power bottom. No I will not elaborate.

Allison’s makeover in The Breakfast Club good, not bad. She kept literally and metaphorically dumping her trash out onto the table and it’s clearly a cry for help. Having the attention and affection of a smart, pretty girl doing her makeup for her was sweet and helped her open up to new experiences. Not every loner wants to BE a loner (see: Bender, who is fine being a lone wolf).

Movie/show recommendations that start with a detailed “representation” list read like status-effecting gear in an RPG and it’s actually a turn-off for me. I have to force myself to give something a try in spite of it.

Yelling at people to just “learn a new language” because clearly everyone who isn’t you and your immediate vicinity of friends must be a lazy ignorant white American is so fucking stupid, like I get it, you’re mad someone doesn’t immediately know how to pronounce your name or what something means. But I know 2 languages and am struggling with a 3rd when I can between 2 jobs and quite frankly, I don’t have the time to just absorb the entire kanji system into my brain to learn Japanese by tomorrow night, or suddenly learn Arabic or Welsh. There are 6500 recorded languages in the world, what’s the chance that one of 3 I’ve learn(ed?) is the one you’re yelling at me about. Yes this is referring to that post yelling at people for not knowing how to pronounce obscure Irish names and words. Sometimes just explaining something instead of admonishing people for not knowing something inherently in the belief that everyone must be lazy entitled privileged people is uh... better?

Stop fucking yelling at people. I despise feeling like someone is yelling at me or scolding me, it triggers my Violence Mode, you don’t run me, you are not God, fuck off. Worst fucking way to "educate” people, it just feels good in the moment to say or write and doesn’t help. Yes I’ve done it before.

Violence is good actually.

Characters doing bad things ≠ an endorsement of bad things. Characters doing bad things that are unquestioned by the entire rest of the cast = endorsement of bad things, or at the least, a power fantasy by the creator. See: Glee, in which Sue’s awfulness is constantly called out, while Mr. Shue’s awfulness rarely is because he’s “the hero.” See also: the Lightbringer series, in which the protagonist is a violent manipulator who is praised as clever, charming, diplomatic, and genius by every supporting character (enemies included), despite the text never demonstrating such.

Euphoria is good, actually. It falls into this niche of the past decade of “dark gritty teen shows” but actually has substance behind it, but the general vibe I get from passive-aggressive tumblr posts from casual viewers is that this show is The Devil, and the criticism of its racier content screams pearl-clutching “what about the children??” to me.

Describing all diagnosed psychopaths as violent criminals is a damaging slippery slope, sure. But I won’t be mad at anyone for inherently distrusting another human who does not have the ability to feel guilt and remorse, empathy, is a pathological liar, or proves to be cunning and manipulative.

It’s actually not easy to unconditionally support and love everyone everywhere when you’ve actually experienced the World. Your perspective and values will be challenged as you encounter difficult people, experience hardship, are torn between conflicting ideas and commitments, and fail. My vow to never ever call the cops on another black person was challenged when an employee’s boyfriend marched into the kitchen OF AN ESTABLISHMENT to scream at her, in a BUSINESS I MANAGED, and threaten to BEAT the SHIT out of her. Turns out I can hate cops and hate that motherfucker equally, I am more than capable of both.

Defending makeup culture bad, actually. Enjoy it, experiment, master it, but don’t paint it as something other than upholding exactly what they want from you. Even using makeup to “defy the heteropatriarchal oppressors!” is still putting cash in their pockets, no matter how camp...

Not every villain needs to be redeemed, some of you just never outgrew projecting yourself onto monsters and killers.

Writing teams and networks queerbaiting is not the same as individuals queerbaiting. Nick Jonas performing exclusively at gay clubs to generate an audience really isn’t criminal; if they paid to go see him, that’s on them, he didn’t promise anyone anything other than music and a show. Do not paint this as similar to wealthy, bigoted executives and writing teams trying to snatch up the LGBTQA demographic with vague ass marketing and manipulative screenplays, only to cop out so as not to alienate their conservative audiences. And ESPECIALLY when the artists/actors/creators accused of queerbaiting or lezploitation then come out as queer in some form later on.

Queer is not a bad word, and I’ve no clue how that remains one of few words hurled at LGBTQA people that can’t be reclaimed. It’s so archaic and underused at this point that I don’t get the reaction to it compared to others.

People who defend grown-woman Lorelai Gilmore’s childish actions and in the same breath heavily criticize teenage religious abuse victim Lane Kim’s actions are not to be trusted. Also Lane deserved better.

Keep your realism out of my media, or at least make it tonally consistent. Tired of shows and movies and books where some gritty, dark shit comes out of nowhere when the narrative was relatively Romantic beforehand.

Actually people should be writing characters different from themselves, this new wave in the past year of “If you aren’t [X] you shouldn’t be writing [X]” is a complete leap backward from the 2010s media diversity movement. And if [X] has to do with an invisible minority status (not immediately visible disabilities, or diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, persecuted religious affiliations, mental illness) it’s actually quite fucked up to assume the creator can’t be whatever [X] is or to demand receipts or details of someone’s personal life to then grant them “permission” to create something. I know, we’re upset an actual gay actor wasn’t casted to play this gay character, so let’s give them shit about it: and not lose a wink of sleep when 2 years later, this very actor comes out and gives a detailed account of the pressure to stay closeted if they wanted success in Hollywood.

Projecting an actor’s personal romantic life and gender identity onto the characters they play is actually many levels of fucked up, and not cute or funny. See: reinterpreting every character Elliot Page has played through a sapphic lens, and insulting his ability to play straight characters while straight actors play actual caricatures of us (See also: Jared Leto. Fuck him).

I’m fucking sick of DaBaby, he sucks. “I shot somebody, she suck my peepee” that’s 90% of whatever he raps about.

“Political Correctness” is not new. It was, at one point, unacceptable to walk into a fine establishment and inform the proprietor that you love a nice firm pair of tits in your face. 60 years ago, such a statement would get you throw out and possibly arrested under suspicion of public intoxication. But then something happened and I blame Woodstock and Nixon. And now I have to explain to a man 40 years my senior that no, you can’t casually mention to the staff here, many of whom are children, how you haven’t had a good fuck in a while. And then rant about the “Chinese who gave us the virus.” Can’t be that upset with them if you then refused to wear your mask for 20 minutes.

Triggering content should not have a blanket ban; trigger warnings are enough, and those who campaign otherwise need to understand the difference between helping people and taking away their agency. 13 Reasons Why inspired this one. Absolutely shitty show, sure, but it’s a choice to watch it knowing exactly what it contains.

Sasuke’s not a fucking INTJ, he’s an ISFP whose every decision is based off in-the-moment feelings and proves incapable of detailed and logical planning to accomplish his larger goals.

MCU critique manages to be both spot-on and pointless. Amazing stories have been told with these characters over the course of decades; but most of it is toilet paper. Expecting a Marvel movie to be a deeply detailed examination of American nationalism and imperialism painted with a colorful gauze of avant-garde film technique is like expecting filet mignon from McDonalds. Scarf down your quarter pounder or gtfo.

Disparagingly comparing the popularity and (marginal) success of BLM to another movement is anti-black. It is not only possible but also easy to ask for people’s support without throwing in “you all supported BLM for black people but won’t show support for [insert group]” how about you keep our name out your mouth? Black people owe the rest of the world nothing tbh until yall root out the anti-blackness in your own communities.

It is the personal demon/tragic flaw of every cis gay/bi/pan man to externalize and exorcize Shame: I’m talking about the innate compulsion to Shame, especially in the name of Pride and Progress. Shame for socioeconomic “success,” shame for status of outness, shame for fitness and health, shame for looks, shame for style and dress, shame for how one fits into the gender binary, shame for sexual positions and intimacy preferences, shame for fucking music tastes. Put down the weapon that They used to beat you. Becoming the Beater is not growth, it’s the worst-case scenario.

Works by minorities do not have to be focused on their marginalized identities. Some ladies want to ride dragons AND other ladies. The pressure on minorities to create the Next Great Minority Character Study that will inevitably get snuffed at the Oscars/Peabody Awards is some bullshit when straight white dudes walk around shitting out mediocre screenplays and books.

Canadians can stfu about how the US is handling COVID-19 actually. Love most of yall, but the number of Canadian snowbirds on vacation (VACATION??? VA.CAT.ION.) in the supposed “hotbed” of my region that I’ve had to inform our mask policies and social distancing to is ASTOUNDING. Incroyable! I guess your country has a sizable population of entitled, privileged, inconsiderate, wealthy, and ignorant people making things difficult for everyone, just like mine :)

No trick to eliminate glasses fog while wearing my mask has worked, not a single one, it actually has affected my job and work speed and is incredibly frustrating, and I have to deal with it and pretend it’s not a problem while still encouraging others to follow the rules for everyone’s safety and the cognitive dissonance is driving me insane.

It’s really really really not anti-Japanese... to be uncomfortable with the rampant pedophilia in manga and anime, and voice this. I really can’t compare western animation’s sneakier bullshit with pantyshots of a 12-year-old girl.

Most of the people in the cottagecore aesthetic/tag have zero interest in all the hard work that comes with maintaining an isolated property in the countryside, milking cows and tending crops before sunrise, etc. And that’s okay? They just like flowers and pretty pottery and homemade pastries. Idk where discourse about this came from.

You think mint chip ice-cream tastes like toothpaste because you’re missing a receptor that can distinguish the flavors, and that sucks for you. It’s a sort of “taste-blindness” that can make gum spicy to some while others can eat a ghost pepper without crying.

Being a spectacle for the oppressive class doesn’t make them respect us, it makes them unafraid of us. This means they continue to devour us, but without fear of our retaliation.

Only like 4 people on tumblr dot com are actually prepared for the full ramifications of an actual revolution. The rest of you just really imprinted onto Katniss, or grew up in the suburbs.

Straight crushes are normal. They’re people first, sexual orientation second. Can’t always know.

The road to body positivity is not easy, especially if what you desire is what you aren’t.

You’re actually personally responsible for not voluntarily bringing yourself into an environment that you know is not fit for you unless you have the resolve to manage it. Can’t break a glass ceiling without getting a few cuts. This one’s a shoutout to my homophobic temp coworkers who decided working a venue with a drag show would be a good idea. This is also is a shoutout to people who want to make waves but are surprised when the boat tips. And also a shoutout to people who—wait that’s it’s own controversial opinion hold up.

Straight people can and should stay the fuck out of gay bars and queer spaces. “yoUrE bEInG diVisiVe” go fuck yourself.

[grittyreadsfic]

[1/11] Hi!! I hope you're doing well :). I'm not here for anything in particular, I am just big mad about a fic that I'm /trying/ to write, and your vibes are that your blog is an acceptable place to scream about fic. So. Here I am. I'm writing about the loneliness of never fully feeling yourself in any part of your life. Because hockey RPF is prime projection real estate for me, I'm exploring that through the coexistence (or potential lack thereof) of hockey and not being straight.

[2/11] (I feel sort of bad for this, because I might not be queer. But like, I've been confused over my sexuality for enough years to be bothered by the loneliness of not feeling comfortable talking to my equivalent of my "hockey friends" about my tragic possible pining for my best friend. Hence the projection fic.) ANYWAYS, what I want to write about is, yes, the loneliness of being at the rink and not feel confident in bringing your sexuality there.

[3/11] However, I also want to write about the loneliness outside the rink too. In my life, my equivalent of "hockey" is a huge part of my life, and I don't think I'm really me without it. I'm at my best when I'm at the "rink". I’m at my most confident, my most ambitious, my most determined, my most resilient.

[4/11] I don't feel comfortable being honestly myself at the "rink" so I don't get to really be myself there, but I also don't get to be really myself outside the "rink" because I'm not really myself without "hockey". So, it's like I never get to be whole, and it's lonely because it feels like there's no one who knows me in my entirety, I'm always just broken up into pieces of myself (yikes that sounds dramatic, it’s not that bad it’s just :/ sometimes).

[5/11] The fic, while capturing that experience, is not super sad though!! It's a story of an old retired queer player (Danny Briere) taking a possibly-queer and probably-torn-up-about-his-sexuality-according-to-Captain-Dad-Giroux rookie (Carter Hart) under Danny's wing. From that, they feel less alone. It gives Carter someone with whom he's comfortable talking about all his confusion over his sexuality who really gets and understands Carter.

[6/11] He needs someone to lean on; he's a goddamn hockey player. Hockey players never do anything alone because they're always part of a team. That's how Carter grew up, and it's lonely to be faced with something he's so confused over and not be able to lean on his team. It gives Danny a chance for him to be seen by someone else in his entirety (sexuality, hockey, and everything else).

[7/11] *Gasp* I always circle around to The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known. It also gives Danny perspective that leads him to have compassion for his younger self, to understand that he didn't deserve to be alone then just as Carter deserves someone to lean on. It gives Danny a chance to have compassion for his current self too, to validate how hard it can be to feel not feel fully himself or fully known either at the rink or at home.

[8/11] Danny realizes that the reason it hurts for him is because, when he rips apart these pieces of himself, he never gets to be loved by his husband for all of who he is. But it's ok!!!! Carter gets the support he's missing and grows into himself a little. It's easier for him to come out to the people he wants to come out to (like teammates), once he has a better understanding of his sexuality.

[9/11] Also, Carter finally determines, that, yes, he has in fact had feelings for his high school best friend for about three years now. They start dating and Danny and his husband are very excited for their baby rookie, although the process of them being ready to date takes some time. Danny gets to see that he's not alone either, and he can in fact look for the corners of the hockey world where he gets to play hockey and not feel alone. Yikes this was incredibly long, I'm very sorry.

[10/11] I am seething because I know what I want out of this fic, I've written a lot of the scenes that really encapsulate important moments of Danny and Carter's arcs, but I cannot seem to outline it FOR THE LIFE OF ME. I lowkey want to throw my computer because I know where I am going!!!! But I cannot make a map and it's KILLING ME *screams*. Anyways thank you for running this blog!

[11/11] I really love finding new fics that you post about, and I also apologize for spamming your inbox with however many asks it takes to send you this whole thing. I'm sorry, you can do what you please with this, feel free to ignore it, I mostly wanted to vent and that has been accomplished. Also, fun fact, I just found out that you can only send ten asks in an hour or else tumblr yells at you and makes you wait an hour. Me: sends 11 anons. Tumblr: why are you like this??

editted with the final ask as of now: okay hello!! as of right now, it’s 10/11 for the messages because it reads as if that’s the end and i haven’t heard back from you about it re my post so i’ll edit it if need be! but for now: an answer (side note: i remember back when tumblr had no ask rules back in the day when i existed on pop punk tumblr in the early 2010s and i miss it)

this blog is 100% a place to come scream about fic! my need to scream about fic is why it exists in the first place

i am intimately familiar with the feeling you’re describing and i absolutely would love to read a fic focused around that (and god, what a fucking fun concept, i’m a sucker for fics with that kind of platonic dynamic at the forefront) 

i’m not much of a writer (i love world building and plotting things about but i never actually enjoy the act of writing) so take my suggestions with a grain of salt about it but: if you have the scenes, maybe try writing them all down on sticky notes/scraps of paper/programs like scrivener (i think it costs money idk if there’s free equivalent) and laying them out, and trying to figure out how to get from point a to b to c etc? or if you have someone you can talk through it all with, maybe? i process things externally and i’m more hands on, so those are just the two ways that come to mind for trying to map it out

i hope you get past the little block you’re having at this point of the writing process though! it sounds like a lovely fic!

[scripttorture]

Torture in Fiction: Tokyo Ghoul, Volume 7

My dear, sweet Anon- what on earth did I just read?

Tokyo Ghoul is a manga centred on a young man called Ken Kaneki in a world where humans share the world with ‘ghouls’, supernatural people that eat human flesh (and coffee for some reason). After an accident Ken has an organ transplant which turns him into a half-ghoul.

At the start of the volume I read Ken has been captured by a group of ghouls. He’s tortured. His torturer has Ken do simple arithmetic as he’s tortured, allegedly to ‘keep him sane’. For some reason his hair turns white.

The ghoul torturing him (Yamori) tells Ken his backstory, which essentially boils down to the idea that Yamori became a torturer because he was tortured.

Ken hallucinates a fair amount during all of this, reflecting particularly on his relationship with his mother and the ghoul whose organs saved his life.

Yamori returns with two human victims, a mother and child. He tries to make Ken choose which one should die. Ken refuses to choose and Yamori kills them both. This   somehow leads to Ken having the strength to break out of his restraints.

Ken and Yamori fight, Ken eventually gains the upper hand. He eats part of Yamori, making Yamori do the same mathematical exercises as he does.

Ken escapes, running into a group of friends as he does. He takes charge of the group and leads them safely out.

As is probably obvious I didn’t enjoy reading this much. But I’m rating the depiction and use of torture, not the manga itself. I’m trying to take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims and torturers.

I’m giving it 1/10

The Good

1) Torture does not turn Ken into a passive object. Throughout this chapter his opposition to Yamori is clear and torture only entrenches that.

2) Torture has an effect on Ken. I don’t like the way it’s handled but the story doesn’t have a survivor walking away completely unaffected.

The Bad

Alright where do I start? Let’s start with the small things.

1) Nico seems to be there to provide a stereotype of queer people. It’s unclear whether Nico is supposed to be a gay man or a transwoman. They’re in the story to get eviscerated by Yamori. This is to ‘calm Yamori down’ and stop him killing Ken too soon. I have- Issues with the only queer character being a stereotype who exists to be abused by their significant other.

2) I have no idea how turning Ken’s hair white is supposed to add to these scenes. To me it feels very much like an insistence that survivors have some kind of obvious, physical mark of torture. Even when they have superhuman healing powers.

3) While Ken does undergo a pretty drastic personality change (which we see via his hallucinations) and might be experiencing depression- immediately after torture and a huge fight he lurches straight into a leadership position. This is framed as him being sensible. It downplays the effects of torture to a huge degree.

4) The human victims only exist as a way to effect Ken. They don’t seem to have any personality or story of their own. They don’t resist. They cry and beg Ken to save them. And this positioning reinforces the idea that torture turns people into passive objects by making their victimisation all about Ken.

Yamori- oh lore what a mess. This story depicts torturers in an incredibly unrealistic way, it echoes arguments that are used to block real survivors from the treatment and protection they deserve.

5) Yamori is depicted as enjoying and excited by violence, treating torture as a hobby. This is not how torturers behave. The narrative links this to insulting stereotypes about mental illness.

6) The evidence we have suggests that torturers are sane before they torture and that it is exposure to violence over a prolonged period that causes their mental health problems. These illnesses do not make them ‘enjoy’ violence. In fact they’re the same broad symptoms that survivors suffer from.

7) Yamori’s open enjoyment of torture isn’t just unrealistic in the context of torturers, it’s linking mental illness that he explicitly developed as a result of being tortured to violent behaviour. It’s essentially saying that torture survivors become violent. That this abuse produces abusers. There’s no evidence to support this notion and it’s an argument that’s routinely used to deny real survivors support.

8) I really dislike the way the narrative implies that Yamori’s abuse makes Ken ‘stronger’. That he needs to be tortured and watch people die before he can physically break out of his restraints. Torture doesn’t ‘toughen people up’, it destroys lives.

9) I think that leaves the arithmetic. I’m honestly not sure what the author is going for with this. Ken says something to the effect that if he hadn’t done mental arithmetic while he was tortured he’d have ‘gone mad’. Which tells me that the author doesn’t really understand mental illness. Some torture survivors report mental exercises helping but they don’t protect from or negate symptoms. They don’t make survivors ‘sane’. And ‘madness’ doesn’t make victims stop feeling or stop caring about, pain. There are a lot of misconceptions and stereotypes about mental illness bound up in this idea and I’m not convinced the idea itself brings anything to the story.

Miscellaneous

The torture in this story is scarring and obvious. Usually for a story set in the modern day I’d put that down as a negative. Because most torture now doesn’t leave obvious external marks.

But this is also a fantasy story where the majority of the cast have supernatural healing powers. Techniques that would be scarring or fatal for a normal person wouldn’t necessarily be either in this setting. It would make sense for there to be differences between the common torture techniques in our world and in this one.

As a result I don’t think this is necessarily a negative point. But I’m not convinced the author thought about that before writing this.

Overall

I read this in isolation so I’ll happily acknowledge that context may have given the book more emotional weight. But mostly- damn I found this dull.

The impact of the scenario seems to rely on a reader not having encountered torture in a story before, or at least not in a way that focuses directly on the abuse. Looking at it, every other panel seemed to be screaming ‘LOOK! HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING SO AWFUL BEFORE?! FEEL SOMETHING!’

This rather loses it’s effect when you have even a passing awareness of torture in the real world. Because it shifts the internal response to the work from ‘oh my gosh how horrid’ to ‘oh, I see you traced that from the Abu Ghraib photos’.

When that’s mixed with an author who clearly lacked either the ability or the will to engage with the subject matter the result is flat. There’s no emotional resonance in any of these scenes for me, no reason to care about the characters. Rather then being shocked I found the ‘twists’ incredibly rote and predictable.

The way torture is used to reinforce Ken’s opposition to Yamori could have been quite positive. But it’s the exception in this portrayal of torture rather then the rule.

Torture turns Yamori’s other victims into passive objects who in Nico’s case seem willing to be victimised. It turns Yamori into a torturer. As a result the end message isn’t that people generally can survive torture and keep their humanity; it’s that only exceptional heroes can.

You could argue that for someone who doesn’t know anything about torture a rote story like this could be moving. But that seems pretty meaningless when the story in question misrepresents torture, torture survivors and torturers at every turn. The use of torture in this story reinforces misconceptions that harm victims and that allow torturers to act with impunity.

Torture apologia shouldn’t be anyone’s introduction to a complex and emotionally demanding subject.

The end result is that I don’t think torture added anything to this story at all. In fact I think cutting out all the pages of torture would have left room for a much more impactful story about Ken’s friends desperately trying to find him as the police close in around them all.

If anything I think torture takes from this story; it blunts the emotional impact of what could have been a powerful plot by focusing on torture apologia and gore.

For all that it borrows imagery from real world abuses it pulls back from the horror of those abuses. Because central to the image of a boy tied to a chair in a police station is this: people can be made to vanish. No matter how loved, how cherished, how important. Sometimes, for some communities, children can go out and never come home. And often there are no answers, no closure. There’s certainly no rallying in the local coffee shop and deciding to take on the mob or the police.

There’s just loss and mourning and false hope. It’s happening today.

I suppose ultimately for me, it feels as though Tokyo Ghoul chose the most tedious way to tell this story.

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[somarysueme]

WicDiv Thoughts, some overly personal

stiiiiiillllll can’t really put together my feelings about the end and epilogue.  I will say that I liked the ending and epilogue more than I expected to*, and the longer I sit on it, I find more things to like about it.

(* Except for everything about Baal and Mini)

That said, there’s still that huge, unpleasant gap between what I wanted/expected this comic was supposed to be, and what it actually intended/was. I wrote this post after 43 (the “everyone does the thing” chapter), using bits of a half-written reaction to 39 ("Laura did the thing” chapter) to talk about that gap. I decided to sit on it til everything was said and done Just In Case, but I mostly still agree with what I’d written. 

So Here Are My Thoughts

The full pantheon abdicating! This is basically where I expected us to go. Since 39 it seems like the natural place for the story to be headed. Laura’s revelations, along with the Daddy Forgive Us special made it clear that the only way out of the game was not to play it. I was kinda luke warm on that concept, but it made sense for where the story was at that point. I was waiting to see how it actually played out before getting fussy about it.

I give him a C for execution here. Maybe a C+. 

I thought Dio’s moment was great. Jon’s was beautiful. Inanna’s I definitely could have gotten behind if he’d actually gotten to have any of that arc on the page instead of getting put on a bus 30 chapters ago. 

The rest range from “meh” to “yikes.”

I could have liked this, I wanted to like this. Given how much “OKAY” has been miles more thoughtful than Mothering Invention, I was genuinely hoping to like this. I would have loved to see these kids find something more important than godhood to live for. But that’s not what we got.

We did get them realizing that being a god is not worth dying for. Which is good!  And essential! And basically the central conceit of this comic! 

But.

But...  

I really wanted to see our cast value their lives period. And while there was some of that, there was far more of seeing them be humbled. We saw them beaten down until they had no choice but to admit they Were Not Special (or at least, were not as special as they thought). I was hoping for them to find a capacity to value their lives because their lives have value whether or not they are special, but instead it was a story about being humbled, and I guess to me, I just can’t see that what young queer artists need is help being humbled. They need help being valued as people, they need the internal presence of self to command that value be respected, and they need the external support to give them a fighting chance at that.  And not to be That Fan, but that fighting chance doesn’t come from individual actions. It comes from worker solidarity and respect for labor as labor.  It just doesn’t work for me to have a series around the exploitation and consumption of young talent and leave anything material about money and labor practices out of the material.

(McKelvie’s My (6000 F) pantheon has unionized joke, but unironically.)

Anyway this comic was all about Don’t Let This Happen To You.  And that’s a good start, but I was hoping for it to be so much more than that. It could be that this is me looking at WicDiv and wanting it to say something broader about specialness and creativity and mental illness and exploitation. 

(There’s a lot to be unpacked wrt presenting itself as a story about the whole world through all of human history, while also intending to be  psuedoautobiographical for a very specific set of circumstances. But that’s not this post.)

It’s weird because like, Fandemonium already delivered masterfully on Laura learning to value herself outside of godhood.  Laura’s last pre-apoptheosis soliloquy about “I can’t save any of them, but I can still help them” was one of those wham moments that really cemented this book’s place in my heart. Living through Fandemonium and realizing that the gods were people, and needed actual love and support from people who cared about them as people, and that just being a decent friend is something worth living for, fuck!! That’s good shit!! That’s fucking excellent!! 

And for the rest of WicDiv’s run, I was always waiting for the story to get back to that place, but it never really did. 

 (ETA AFTER 45 IS OUT: ok fine I fucking love that Laura saved Luci. Big Gay Hero Girl drags naughty non-devil out of hell and they kiss, fucking A+. But “can’t save but CAN help” is still something I wish the comic had followed up on more. The friendship thing got touched on a little bit too,  but never in a way I found as satisfying as Fandemonium.)

So anyway Luci going Full Diva. Her future is this and her future is nothing.

The longer I chew on it, the more I like it, and the more it seems like the inevitable place for Elanor Rigby’s story to go. It’s a good continuation from where we last saw her have any scrap of agency, but also frustrating in that “the lat time we saw her have any scrap of agency” was basically the entire comic ago. It was jarring to have her go from [One Sassy Line Per Issue] to [Maybe I’m The Final Boss]. Her story suffered deeply suffered from all the time she spent off screen. But despite all that, I’m very much really looking forward to whatever the fuck Laura Wilson’s going to do about this. 

I’m trying not to get my hopes up for Talk Her Down ending. It seems perfectly in line with this series to end with the moral of “sometimes, no matter how kind or brave or caring you are, people you love pick their addictions over living.” That’s a song I’ve already heard live and in person, and I don’t really want or need to hear anyone else’s studio cover.

Uh final thought on 43 is.... Minanke DOES seem to count herself as part of the 12, which still lines up with my Emily Was Also A Fake God theory (Fauxmaterasu theory? Nokami hypothesis? Amaterasuspicion?) but it does seem unlikely to actually be a Thing between now and the epilogue. shrug.

(ETA AGAIN: I had to write out my feelings on 39 and Laura’s own abdication (unpotheosis?) to properly respond to 43. So here’s a draft of another unpublished post that I fleshed out.)

I have extremely mixed feelings about chapter 39. 

First Feeling: thank fuck the pregnancy plot is over. 

Second feeling: establishing abdication as an option established a nice overarching shape to this book. Things have felt directionless for many chapters, but this does make it seem like we are back on some kind of track.

Third Feeling: kinda liking abdication as a general direction for endgame.  For most of the series, I was hoping the whole that there actually was Something Important about the recurrence, but since it's clear now that it’s basically all lies, I like this this angle well enough.

Strongest Feeling: hell fucking yes to Laura’s shaved head. 

(Tangential Feeling: buzzing your own head is good and you should think about doing it. Doing it for catharsis in a moment of crisis is A-OK, but I did it once just because I felt like it and it was fucking great. banishing your high maintenance hair does not cure depression, but it does give you back an hour of personal upkeep every day and the fuzzy head is wonderful to touch.)

Contrary to most of the fandom, though, I absolutely loathed Laura’s monologue here, and the context that it puts around her not-choice. There’s a lot of shitty Hot Takes out there about how mental illness and addition and creation intersect. A lot of people will suggest that being unhealthy makes you a better artist, and what’s more that being a better artist is worth being unhealthy.  This series is unambiguously and steadfastly against that message, which is one of the absolute best and most important things about it!  I don’t want to diminish that.

But that all said, seeing Laura alone in the dark describing “an addicts moment of clarity” was... jesus it was all kinds of personally painful and upsetting. It hurt real bad, and not in the way I though I had agreed to be hurt. And I’m not sure how to spell out why.

I have thousands and thousands of words on why it struck such a sour cord in me, but a lions share can be summed up with “fuck absolutely every story where a Troubled Girl just needed to get traumatized/humiliated/humbled enough to Realize How Bad She Was Being.” Double fuck this one in particular for showing the girl getting over addiction/mental illness by literally sitting alone in the dark thinking about how much she fucked up.  That story is tired, and cruel, and dangerous, and thank Christ I encountered this comic at 30 and not 19 because I would have swallowed it down with all the other poison that Helpful Adults fed me.

But yeah though, her shaved look is fucking adorable as shit.  Neither she nor Britany made any hair mistakes.

ETA ULTIMATE: That last bit is the one thing in this post I don’t quite still stand by. By the end, it’s clear that the above wasn’t at all the story this book was trying to tell at all. I thought WicDiv was trying to tell some Epic Truths, Hard-Facts-About-Human-Nature shit. But despite the sweeping setup (All Across The World and Through All Of History) the book was using a complex allegory for a very specific situation (Selling Your Soul and Name and Life To Creative-Industrial Machines), and that made it muddy.  

(Insert Principal Skinner meme here “Am I out of touch? Was I simply interrogating the text from the wrong perspective?  No, it’s the original creators who are wrong!”)

I’m from a family of mentally ill, addiction-prone, recovering-Catholic artists.  Laura is in my blood. Half the people I love are Laura.  I have Laura’s painting on my wall and her books on my shelf. I’ve sat with Laura’s mother a few years after Laura’s death, as her father now slowly dying in the next room, and listened to her music for the first time. (It was good. It was really good.  And I never even knew.)

These experiences colored my read, but how could they not?  

I do now, I think, understand what Gillen was trying to say- the addiction he was talking about was to stardom, the attention and accolades, and free pass to make your own shit be everyone else’s problem. I understand now that the “art” that the gods made was always supposed to be Not Real Art, that there was no true “message” from their songs- all noise, no signal. It was never about Laura’s art, or even Laura as an artist.  And that was unpleasant to reconcile.

Because when you're Laura, or Elanor, or any of them, life doesn’t have to grant your ill-advised wish before it fucks your head and kills you. Sometimes you fight as hard as you can with every fiber of your being and you’re still in Hell. Sometimes you’re doing all the Meetings and self-reflection and therapy you can manage and you’re still a Destroyer. But the shit you create while you’re down there is worthy of creating. What you do with your too-short, too-fucked time matters. A fucked up life was still worth living because it was your life to live. And... I guess, from the story presented in Faust Act and Fandemonium, I sort of thought that this was what WicDiv was supposed to be talking about. I thought it was going to be about doing something good even when life is fucking you. But instead it is a cautionary tale that  that suggests you could have stopped getting fucked at any time if you had just gotten over yourself and said the magic words.

We spent half the comic watching Laura drag herself through the mud. Half the comic was focused on Her Mistakes, when so little of her circumstances were actually her fault. “Punish Ophelia until she gets over herself” is not at all what WicDiv meant to be about. I imagine the creators would be aghast to hear that’s what I got out of it. But the text is what the text is.  While it is intended (and successful!) at being many other very good things, this one really bad thing is still part of that mix, and that sucks.

Maybe I should have picked up on the discrepancy between my read and the intent sooner. Probably I should have just done myself a favor and stop reading once I did.

2016, 2017 while my life was going a bit to shit, this comic was exactly what I needed. Being in the fandom made my life better and helped me meet cool new friends and get through some of the hardest shit to happen to me since I was a kid. Then in 2018, it slid into source of frustration and soured promise. Now at the end I have no idea if I liked it or not. 

But that’s fine, now that it’s done. The ink is dry, the ritual is over. It’s just a comic book now.  Some pictures I still love and some words I don’t always agree with. A lot of noise, arguable amounts of signal, but not a song I want to play on loop anymore.

I have no real conclusion to draw here. I respect at how firmly WicDiv rejects dark and unhealthy parts of being a professional creator- especially unhealthy things that are generally just accepted as Common Wisdom. I don’t think it took enough care in spelling out what it was rejecting, though, and I do think it was remiss in not finding good healthy things to embrace as an alternative.

All of the above notwithstanding, I have to give it credit for delivering almost exactly what I wanted in terms of lesbian nonsense. That ain’t nothing.

I give this series ?????/∞ and am happy to be safely clear of Kieron Gillen’s Wild Ride

[yvaquietdays]

Deciding to be happy.

Sometimes meditation doesn’t work.  Sometimes being mindful of your downfalls doesn’t work. Sometimes yoga doesn’t work. Sometimes writing doesn’t work. It’s a little hard for me to describe how I’ve been feeling the last month or so. Of course I’m going to try, that’s why I write a blog. *sly face* So I’ve talked about cycles before. Being aware of the small turnovers of life makes the every day manageable; being aware of how our emotions and vibrations fluctuate certainly makes everything seem a little less daunting.

I’ve been conscious that I’m entering a new cycle of my life. I’m not so far away from turning 28, an age I’m told is the beginning of the fourth cycle in life. And whether you buy into the hokey-pokey, it makes sense if you suspend your disbelief for a moment. Apparently you have the first 7 years, the years of your childhood and innocence, of unadulteratingly questioning and experiencing the world you live in. Then the second stage, taking you to 14, where you’re contemplating adulthood and experiencing massive physiological changes and all the outcomes of that. Then to 21, where all the shit hits the fan and explodes outwards all over you and the people in your life. I’ve been dealing with the proverbial shit of this third cycle for a while, experiencing existential fear and anxiety for the first time, sorting through the people in my life, assessing how I relate and love, seeing my familial relationships through new eyes, shaving off the bits of me I don’t like. Essentially, the un-conditioning of myself and becoming a new person. 

The last time my life seem to change, there were signals. Life threw me signs that I was about to turn things upside down for a bit. I emotionally and spiritually gave up on London and I lost two friends to the music industry; its hold over all of us to get as much out of our creative outputs as possible (i.e money). This is important enough to mention because it damaged me a lot. It affected my trust with people and I felt so betrayed and let down. I’ve made my peace with them and with the situation, but I’ve learned from it, because at the time, it was just another knife in the side, and I didn’t want it happening again. From that point though, I headed steadily downhill somewhere close to the bottom, where I was thinking of jacking it in altogether. I considered going into property with my savings and my Dad. I considered opening a home-brew shop with my partner, who really was my anchor when I was close to floating off unmoored. I didn’t though, because my other anchor was my own spirit, the relentless resilience I seem to have inherited, that I’m sure I don’t deserve; my music and my innate and absolute desire to howl at the moon. Nitin played a huge part in getting me through this phase. Had I not worked with him, I might have forgotten how important singing was to me. He was a kind of the lifeboat that kept me chugging along in the rougher waters for a while; I was desperately unhappy but those days of rehearsals, shows, and being involved in the dance piece were all life rings that I could swim to and gradually get closer to solid ground. At this point, I believe I was shedding off the things I didn’t need to prepare myself for this next stage.

And this time, I’ve also lost two friends. I’m not going into any great detail about this, only that I believe it was for the best and ultimately the whole experience told me a lot about the people in my life, who I am, and what I stand for. It had a lot to do with how I’ve allowed people to take advantage of me for too long. This ties into one of my previous blogposts about saying sorry and not wanting to rock the boat. I have been conditioned to be nice and I am actively changing this. I have Jameela Jamil to thank for opening my eyes and forcing me to see that it doesn’t make me difficult or manipulative to call out the truth and stand strongly within it. They ended up deleting me from their life because of it. But I hated the entire situation. It hurt. Needless to say it had a big affect on me. That combined with new opportunities taking a while to come to fruition seemed to trigger my anxiety and low mood for the first real time since I wasn’t well. It brought back a lot of bad feelings about inadequacy, self-doubt and the need for external validation that I’ve worked so bloody hard on eradicating. 

Validation is the key word here. I believe it is what most of us struggle with going into our adult lives. I’ve worked very hard to not rely on other people’s voices to bolster my own self-esteem. I’ve done my soul-work, I only listen to my own. I’ve learned to tell the ignorant slut (pls read past post re this: it’s what I call my anxiety) in my mind to shut up when she’s being unkind. But over the last few weeks and returning from LA, which now seems like a dream, the voice has elbowed its way in and I’ve allowed it to have an affect on me. I’m waiting; waiting like I did before, waiting for good feedback, waiting for someone else to come at me with the next opportunity. Stagnant. Waiting for the world, looking for someone to blame.

So what the fuck am I doing? I mean, really. I have been arranging my own sessions, writing my book and flirting with a second, being open and vulnerable about my talent and about my humanness. I’ve been rocking it.

But recently, the difference was that I was doing my yoga, not practising it. I was forcing myself to set an intention of success, orienting everything around my goals. I meditated just to check it off the list. But you can’t apply mindfulness with brute force, with a shotgun to the head and your arm twisted behind your back. What I was doing went hand in hand with the thought that, “If I don’t, I will fail.” Before I knew it, I was telling myself I wasn’t worth it. I’m not creative. I don’t have any ideas. I don’t have an emotional scale. I feel nothing about anything. Have a baby, do something else. You don’t belong in that world (LA). You don’t know who you are. You’re not passionate enough about your art. You’re not passionate about anything. Why is nobody getting back to you? You’re forgettable. It’s because you’re not assertive enough. They deleted you because you meant nothing to them. They didn’t apologise to you because they don’t value you.

The rabbit hole is deep and it is wide. Once you’re on that slope, it seems pre-destined that you’ll end up at the bottom before you even notice you slipped. But I noticed. I’ve my best mate and flatmate to thank for a conversation that made me realise what I was doing, ‘cos I was feeling pretty low there for a minute.  The truth is that it takes real mental effort and strain to drag yourself up the mud slide back to even ground. When I was feeling pretty bad, I used to dream about doing the same thing over, and over, and over again and never reaching a resolution. I dreamt that I was at the bottom of the muddy bank and I could not get to the top where the grass was still green. So doing yoga and meditating over and over to force wellness doesn’t work. Negativity does not beget negativity. You have to accept your feelings and do the work to counter-argue with yourself in a gentle and loving way. I am worth it. I am creative. I feel everything, that’s why it hurts. I know who I am, more than ever. I’d be a great mum, but if I have a baby now I’ll probably forget about it and leave it in the washing basket. I am passionate. I am open and patient, and I trust that things will work out. I am hardworking. And they deleted you because they didn’t value you. That says more about them than you, you stone cold, lovely, bad ass bitch. 

Bye felicia.

I am entering a new chapter of my life soon, and I feel my world shifting to allow for it. It isn’t waiting if I regain control and organise my life. Just because someone is giving you an opportunity doesn’t mean that the work is done. It means that you’re just getting started, and you have to work, now more than ever.

Last week I wrote a song on the guitar. This has not happened in a long time. I was consuming a lot of emotional TV (Queer Eye, k thnks), and I was inspired to assess my own mental health. I got complacent, and the doubt got in. It never really goes away, and just because I was feeling better there for a hot minute in LA, doesn’t mean that the work is done. It continues. Always. I don’t want to wake up one day and realise I’m missing something vital because I looked to others to tell me what I’m worth. Everyone else wants as much as possible for themselves. If that means cheapening you so that they’re worth more; that is what they will do. Know. Your. Own. Worth. ‘Cos even your friends will undervalue you.

Self doubt waits at the door, constantly. It wants to be let in, but you keep it at bay. You nod to it, but you don’t allow it across the threshold.

After I recorded the song idea into my phone, I sobbed. Hard. I cried my eyes out. And then I was done. I let the tears come out, unbidden, because I needed to feel it. I think I needed to remember the power of that musical release, why I do what I do. Sure, I’m not like other musicians or singers. Maybe I am depressing, but I’m communicating something that is honest and what we all go through. I am me. And that is enough. It doesn’t matter, all that other stuff. It doesn’t. What matters is how I feel about my music. 

I’m getting to my conclusion, I promise. I meditated earlier this week, and the lovely Andy Puddicomb at Headspace told me to see my mind as the sky. Behind all the clouds, there is always a blue horizon. Just like when you’re on a plane and you finally get above the candy cotton clouds, and in your head you do a little Peter Pan style bounce across them. There’s a soft kind of release I get when I see that. Peace and quiet. Space and breath. Everything else; feelings, thoughts, how we dress, what the world might think...they’re the clouds. When I feel low, my mind seems like an overcast horizon that will not break. An endless, grey, unfeeling cloud of bleak whatever. When I feel good, it’s a summers sky with fluffy white clouds rolling through; you know they won’t stay forever. Meditating is grounding, and reminding yourself with nothing more complicated than breathing that your default setting is a vast blue sky. Warm and peaceful. It might even feel like nothing, but that’s ok too. Everything else is temporary. Clouds are impermanent. The sky is always clear.

So this is my point. I set my intention that day to have a good day. 

Enjoy the little details, enjoy my trial shift at the cafe, enjoy the look on southerners faces when I have a bit of craic with them. Enjoy cooking, enjoy the process, enjoy the walk between here and there, the blossoms, the warmth of the sun on my face. Choose happiness. Choose the blue sky. Decide to be positive. It’s not always easy, and maybe it doesn’t always work. After all, life throws us curveballs and it hurts to get whacked in the face, but it’s a damn sight better than choosing to be an arsehole about it. Try it.

Decide to be happy. 

xxx

[hellospunkiebrewster]

I just wanted to say that i love your writings. And i started to really love Konevi x Chambers ship but i'm too scared to like/reblog anything with them from you or that other blog because i'm scared people will yell at me for fetishizing gay relationships (i'm biromantic asexual girl). And i didn't even know that reading fics about cuddling or kissing is wrong when they are not your sexuality. And now im ashamed for liking it. But i still love your other fanfics.

This is a lot to unpack and I’ve deliberated on just how I’d like to answer. This is a difficult and very real issue in storytelling. Individuals telling stories that they have little frame of reference for, without the proper care, sensitivity, or research. This can be white people co-opting and telling the stories of people of color, or straight people appropriating and telling the stories of the LGBTQIA+ community. Unfortunately, many times it becomes a case of someone telling a story exactly as they would for someone of their demographic.

If you write a character as a poc, but tell the story the same way, without addressing their daily struggle, without understanding their lives, this is appropriation and taking someone’s experience and mutating it, alienating it, to fit into some sort of straight white person’s world. Why even bother making them a poc at all?

The same can happen with queer storylines (a lot of mlm romance is written by women). Authors scrub their characters clean of anything that might be considered problematic, difficult, or complicated. It’s one of the reasons why Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda (Love, Simon) is considered a little controversial in the industry. Simon is a character that is seemingly perfect, white, rich, with a liberal and educated family. He is scrubbed so clean of any queerness that the tagline is, “I’m just like you, except I have one huge ass secret.” And sure, we’re all essentially human, no one denies that, we all have that DNA, but to equate his experience to any other teenager’s is fundamentally flawed.

The LGBTQIA+ experience is so different for each person who lives it. Sometimes someone is lucky and they’ll have as privileged of a coming out as Simon, but much more often it’s not like that. It’s a bisexual woman struggling with the fact that she feels her identity has been erased because she is with a man. Slapping queer or poc characters into storylines without that care, to tell their real stories and struggles (internal or external), is what is problematic.

I adore Mr. Chambers and Mr. Konevi as characters. Their story is one that is often missing in historical romance and one that needs a lot of care to be told. While Bart Chambers does often toe the line of being our MC’s best friend, I will never call him her gay best friend. He is a person, not an accessory. He deserves the title of best friend or MVP not because of his gayness but because of his treatment of MC. I have gotten requests for NSFW ABCs or general smut requests for Chanevi that I will never write, simply because it is not my place. It’s why I avoid a lot of Driam (especially those with NSFW scenes) because I simply feel it’s not the place of a woman (straight, bi, pan, whatever) to tell that story simply because they both, presumably, enjoy penetration.

Does this mean the only valid stories of the queer experience are those written by queer authors? No. Someone is entirely capable of taking the care, listening to queer voices, and respectfully executing a story with queer characters, but it requires time and commitment. But also, support those amazing queer storytellers as well. They’re important and they don’t get nearly enough love.

Does this mean you can’t enjoy Love, Simon? No way. It’s a story that needed to be told, but understand that it’s not representative of everyone’s (or even a majority’s) coming out.

What do I personally do to be sensitive and respectful in the stories I write? I have given a lot of thought to each and every one of my stories. Care is taken to not treat a gay man like I would treat a straight woman and I don’t treat characters of color like I would a white character. My ideas are run by several friends of mine, I even asking them to read them, to make sure I’m not being insensitive or treading places I have no right to go. I speak at length with my friends from a wide range of communities to ensure I’m being sensitive to their struggles and experience. I know I write from a somewhat privileged place, I’m white passing, I’m married to a man so I guess I’m also straight passing (I hate that term so much), I’m neurotypical and I understand that. Privilege can be used in a positive way as well and I hope everyday that I am doing something to use the boost I was given by genetics and other luck derived factors in a way that brightens people’s lives and their perception of others or themselves.

Thanks for enjoying my writing, I’m not asking you to love all of it and I’m glad you want to be a well informed reader, sensitive to the stories you read. This shows that you never intended, just like I don’t, to fetishize or see these characters in any other way than they were meant to be seen. Read what you like, skip what you don’t, I know I take nothing personally.

[quartusbellum-blog]

SAMPLE APPLICATION

As promised, here is my application for the role of Marcus McKinnon. A couple notes before you read it: this app is not to be used as a guide on how to fill in the application. Every writer is different. I seem to favour long drabbles and bios in my own writing, but quantity is not a measure of quality, so you do you. It is purely an insight into how I plan to play Marcus. Secondly, any background information about Marlene and the McKinnon family can be adjusted to suit any Marlene players. 

ooc details

Name: Elva

Age: Twenties

Pronouns: She/her, they/them

Activity Level: I check the dash daily, and aim to post at least one reply a day. Obviously there’s the odd day where I don’t manage that, but that is what I strive for as a bare minimum. I’ll be doing mod duties as well, but there should be plenty of time for interactions.  

Other: No triggers, but I will be mindful of other players’ triggers and tag accordingly. This application requires content warnings for: death, murder, racism, bigotry.

Acknowledgement: I acknowledge that the themes of this game may include triggering elements. I also acknowledge that my character may be harmed, coerced, or even killed (with player’s consent) during paras/events or may cause harm to or kill others during paras/events.

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general ic details

Name: Marcus McKinnon

Age: 19

Ships: I’m not going to lie, I would love to see Marcus in a relationship because he would be so spectacularly bad at it. He needs roadmaps for everything, but romantic and/or sexual attachments would throw him way off.

Gender/Pronouns: Queer cisgender male, he/him pronouns.

Face Claim: Noah Centineo.

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biography:

Marcus McKinnon is the kind of person who would never travel without a guidebook. He likes to plan out his whole itinerary, marking spots along the map so he always knows where he’s going and if he’s on track. It’s like he needs external permission before following a certain road. Even as a child, the youngest of the McKinnon children, he wouldn’t wander off the paths cut into the fields and dive into the tall grass after Marlene and their older brother, Matthew. There’s something comforting about routines and familiarity. It keeps Marcus’ grounded. Like if he just follows the rules and does what he’s supposed to, he’ll get where he needs to be.

It’s probably why Marcus finds the act of swimming so thrilling. Growing up near the coastline, Marcus equates the cry of seagulls and thick salty air with home. But he wasn’t always fond of the water. Marcus learned to swim in public pools, and the first time he was taken to the sea, it took his mother a full morning to coax him in. But once he was in to his waist, then his shoulders, letting his feet slip away from the seabed and the water carry him, Marcus couldn’t get enough. In the water there are no paths to walk. The rules are different, no ground beneath your feet, only invisible currents, the kiss of the tide on sand as it draws in then bids it farewell again. It’s one of the few instances in which Marcus can let go and just exist in the moment, no thought for what comes next beyond the setting sun or wind picking up; just the elements and him, water warm against his skin, and his own muscles burning as he swims, proving himself a worthy match for the sea.

Needless to say, Marcus isn’t fond of surprises. At school, he would ask numerous questions before any important assignment or exam, feeling blindsided when the homework proved too difficult. He was never a particularly good student. His anxiety made it hard to concentrate, the information hard to take in, and in his frustration Marcus found it easier to simply slack off altogether. He turned to his Hufflepuff peers for permission or approval rather than teachers. Marcus never went his own way, never paved a path of his own. Not until war came knocking and he had to.

Marlene and Matthew had fought in the Order, while Marcus was merely grateful he didn’t have to; grateful that school kept him safe. Then he graduated, and the world rapidly descended into chaos. Dumbledore captured, the Ministry taken over, the Order hunted. His parents, Matthew, and Marlene, all murdered by vampires in Voldemort’s service. Marlene survived in the end, but not before Marcus watched her die like the others. Now she’s a sister who feeds off humans; who fed off him. Marcus loves her, would do anything for her. But she walks a path he wishes never to join her on.

Two weeks after losing their family, Marcus split from Marlene. He didn’t want to live as a fugitive, always running for his life, never knowing what tomorrow might bring. And though he didn’t admit it to Marlene, he didn’t want to live with werewolves and vampires, even if they weren’t the ones who killed their family. He wanted to go home. He wanted back in magical Britain. And so Marcus persuaded Marlene it was where he would be most useful, that he would gather information for the Radical Alliance but he couldn’t live with them. He returned to magical Britain where he was promptly arrested and interrogated by Death Eaters at the Ministry, but being a halfblood who showed little resistance, a mere boy grieving for his lost loved ones, repellent but no real threat, he was pardoned on the condition that he serve the Dark Lord faithfully for the remainder of his days. Only a few weeks later, Marcus’ arm was tattooed with the Dark Mark.  

It was a mistake, or so Marcus had thought in the first weeks after his return. His parents’ resistance to the Dark Lord--their shame, as it was remembered-- and Marlene and Matthew’s involvement in the Order; everyone seemed to know Marcus’ history, and as a consequence many refused to hire him. Nevermind that he was marked and that he walked with Death Eaters. Marcus spent the first few months taking whatever job he could get, dishwasher, nightclub toilet cleaner, pet sitter to some of the biggest pesks in the world of magic, test subject for potioneers, sometimes even dinner for hungry vampires looking for a consenting victim. For a time he lived in the ruins of his old home, the burned down cottage by the sea. But as the winter came, it was leave or freeze to death. Marcus could have followed his family then, but between the familiar and the unknown, Marcus will always choose the familiar, and in this case that was life.

Marcus moved from one dingy apartment to another, always thrown out of at the drop of a hat, sofas of sort-of friends from whatever job he was working at the time, until finally, a room he rents on the third floor of a crooked building on a winding side-street just off Diagon Alley. Marcus has the Malfoys to thank for that. They’d been trying to recruit him for some time, halfblood Marcus, just needy and gullible enough to let himself be preyed upon, still intelligent and attractive enough to be worth their time. It was the hope of his name on a lease that finally persuaded him to join the Silent Daggers. He needed help and they were offering it in the form of a recommendation for the position of Wizengamot Administrator. Marcus can finally afford a steady life, but it all hinges on his loyalty to the Malfoys. They haven’t tried to exploit his position yet, but Marcus has seen too much cruelty to think they did it out of sheer kindness. And yet it saved him, giving him a home, (a place for Marlene to run to if she’s ever desperate,) an income, something resembling a life even if it doesn’t feel like one, the hole left behind by his family’s murders too big and all-encompassing. Marcus owes them.

He feels stretched thin, his allegiances pulled between the Dark Lord whose mark he bears, Narcissa and Lucius he’s sworn to, and Marlene. Marcus has no map for this life. It died with his parents and Matthew and all the other victims of the first war. But Marcus needs one. Maps don’t just show Marcus where to go. They show him how to get back.

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my character is:

Please Describe a Belief your character has that is wrong. Alternatively: How is your character lying to themselves (and how is is it shown externally).

Marcus is kidding himself that he went back and joined the Death Eaters for Marlene. In his arguments, he emphasised how much good he could do from the inside. But Marcus’ reasons were more selfish than he will let himself believe. He’s afraid of Marlene, as he’s afraid of all vampires. The fact that they’re related and that he’s known her all his life doesn’t change that; he feels safer in the Death Eaters than in the Radical Alliance, because they’re not known vampires. This is partly PTSD, and partly racism, but either way, Marcus can’t be around the Radical Alliance long before the scar on his shoulder, a bite from Marlene he acquired the night she turned, begins to itch, then ache, until all Marcus can think about are those fangs, his dead family lying in the grass. Marcus doesn’t want to be like this, but he can’t overcome it without facing up to it first.  

Please Provide a description of Your Character’s Job.

Wizengamot Administrator. Since leaving Hogwarts and the tragedy that befell him afterwards, Marcus’ main ambition has been to stay alive, and to remain in the wizarding world as long as possible. To get a flat of his own, earn enough to pay the bills, and if he can feed himself too, even better. None of that was possible for long before the Malfoys became a common presence in his life. Marcus knows he owes it to them. Lucius and Narcissa might be tactful but the message is clear; he’s in their debt. Marcus doesn’t know when he’ll be expected to pay up, and for now, he lets himself enjoy the small comforts, food in his belly, a roof over his head, a bed instead of some moth-eaten sofa, quiet. He is an Administrator in the Wizengamot Administration Services, meaning he carries out the secretarial work for the Wizengamot, maintaining court documents, scheduling hearing dates, managing the Wizengamot members’ schedules and carrying out the administration of all legal proceedings. In this position at the Ministry, Marcus is well-situated to one day study to be a solicitor, but he’s already pretty valuable as an administrator. More than once, Marcus has been asked to reveal to the other Daggers what information has crossed his desk. He is also in a position to corrupt information, though as of yet Marcus has yet to be asked to do so, nor had the nerve to take that initiative himself. For not only might his position benefit the Silent Daggers, but it could benefit the Radical Alliance too.

ooc questions

Writing Sample:

Marcus breathed on his fingers, rubbing his palms together. His cloak was second-hand, threadbare, and beneath it he was shivering. He’d need a better one before long if he was going to keep being called out for long cold nights outside. Nights spent waiting, hunting, focusing on the task ahead to keep his thoughts from wandering; to dull the constant remembering.

A rattle from behind the bins made Marcus flinch. Never had he been stationed alone. Now that the Death Eaters didn’t operate in secret, now they were legitimate subjects carrying out their duty to society, they didn’t have to hide their intentions and could travel in packs. So where were they, whoever they were?

Every sound and shifting shadow caught Marcus’ attention. He couldn’t stand still; paced the length of the chained gates separating him from a humming train line. And he was cold. So cold.

His summons had arrived as soon as he sat down at his desk that morning, coal black paper folded into an airplane. It used the space bar of his typewriter as a landing strip. The message was simple: patrol duties, 8:00pm, Harrogate Train Station. Whether his mark burned due to some magic carried in the paper or because he’d simply imagined it, Marcus could never tell. He slid the paper into his pocket, where it felt like it was burning a hole through the fabric, he was persistently aware of it.

A train blasted through the platform behind him and all of a sudden he was reeled backwards, a gag spelled across his mouth. He drew his wand, but in the same second the spell dissolved and laughter filled his ears.

He threw the first curse that came to mind, the air exploding with a gush of water. It hovered in the air as it met a blocking spell, then dropped to the ground with a splash. White stars marred Marcus’ vision and he coughed.

“Evening, McKinnon.” Alecto Carrow stood before him, robes shining like satin under the streetlights. Everything about her made Marcus feel mocked.

“Are we back at Hogwarts now?” he asked, rubbing his lips with rough fingers. He spat on the ground. “Who are we waiting for?” As much as he didn’t enjoy his outings with Death Eaters like Carrow, he was glad to see her, and in her usual spirits. Any more time standing alone like that and he’d start to believe he had a bull’s eye on his back. His eyes slid past Carrow to a silhouette peeling away from the darkness, a man with ragged clothing, dirty skin, imperiused from the looks of him. And a werewolf, or at least associated with one, judging by the silver scars slashed across his face.

“Radical Alliance?” he asked through the roar of panic rising in his head. His mind strayed towards Marlene, hoping she was inside, and that she was safe; knowing that she wasn’t, even if she was a thousand miles from this town.

“Close enough.” Carrow whispered into the man’s ear. Marcus leaned forward hoping to catch a word. Nothing. The werewolf walked towards the gate, and begun to climb. When he tumbled onto the other side, he headed straight for the tracks. Then stopped. “Come along, McKinnon.” Carrow began to walk away.

“Wait.” Marcus’s grip on his wand tightened--sickly yellow sparks hissed from it’s tip. “You’re just going to leave him there? He’ll-- when a train comes...”

Carrow didn’t spare her victim another glance, turning around only to glare at Marcus. “Would you rather curse him dead?” After a moment’s silence, she let out a quiet scoff and kept walking. “We don’t have time for this, McKinnon. There are other wolves in Harrogate.”

Marcus turned to the tracks and the werewolf standing like a statue, eyes fixed ahead. A soft, dreamy expression held his face captive; if he knew deep down that something about this was amiss, his face didn’t betray him. It sickened Marcus, to see him so at peace. He stepped toward the tracks, but something stopped him from going all the way. Shove him off the tracks, he thought. Break his legs if you have to. Bones heal. 

But the mark, his arm, branded forever; the cut, binding him to the Malfoys; his flat, the warmth of his bed, food in his fridge, a job, a life. It was a package deal. He couldn’t have one without the other.

“Smart boy,” Carrow said as he stepped into line beside her. Marcus could hear the smirk in her voice; that was how well he’d come to know her. And she him, apparently. She reached a hand towards his hair, knocking his hood off as she ran her fingers through it. Marcus jerked out of her reach, hatred boiling up inside him, and, with it, relief that at least it wasn’t him standing on those tracks staring death in the face.

Exploration:

One thing I’m always eager to explore in fiction is war and belonging to an army as a means to financially bettering one’s life. How political groups prey on vulnerable or desperate individuals to create destructive forces in society. Marcus was overwhelmed by his new circumstances. Those first few months when Marcus was utterly alone, desperate, and striving to return some normalcy in his life, define who he is today. He got a lucky break--but at what cost? Everything he does is to ensure he doesn’t go back to that.

There are things Marcus does to maintain his quality of life. And then there are the things he does because that’s the person he’s becoming. I’ve played Marcus as a wholesome and naive character, a member of the Order of the Phoenix. In this game, I would like to see how far Marcus will go as a Death Eater and a Silent Dagger. He’s currently lacking strong attachments to any one group, and he doesn’t possess a firm awareness of who he is. He’s in pain and he doesn’t know where to direct it. As such, he’s easy to manipulate. And he’s learning bad habits. This could lead him down an extremely dark path, which I would relish the opportunity to explore. But I would also like to explore the opposite side of this one. I would like to see Marcus forging attachments to conflicting individuals or groups. The messier the better. He doesn’t like surprises, but how does he handle the pleasant ones?

Marlene and sibling drama. This is part of the reason I chose Marcus, so I could get the sibling drama I so crave. I want siblings who squabble, but also fight their enemies together. I set up Marlene as an assassin type character, with a desire for vengeance. Does Marcus play any role in this, tipping her off to where her victims are? If he gets in trouble, would he ask for her help? What shape does their relationship take now that they’re both close acquaintances with death? I imagine that they’re closer than ever, being the only surviving McKinnons, but I want to see plenty of friction between these two. They are fighting for opposite groups after all, even though Marcus assures Marlene he keeps no secrets. They love each other, but do they trust each other?

The Silent Daggers are currently secret, and they’ll remain this way for a time, probably until we get more players. But I would rather like to see the Death Eaters split once and for all, with Voldemort completely out of the picture. What happens if Voldemort is undone, with the Silent Daggers standing at the ready? I’m not sure what all the pieces are yet, but I would like to see how the magical world is reshaped and groups merge, or dissolve, or fracture. It’s something I’ll be thinking about, at least.

Confronting his questionable attitude towards vampires. Marcus doesn’t think less of muggleborns, but his opinion of vamps is shaped by his experience, and its not exactly kind. What will happen when he discovers he’s been allied to a vampire all along? If he ever discovers Narcissa is more than just wix, Marcus will have to confront his false belief, and by extension his grief. It’s that latter part that means he doesn’t want to.

Extras:

Aesthetic: [ x ]

[thereinafter]

I'm signing up for the Yuletide fic exchange this year; looong Dear Yuletide Writer letter below.

Dear Yuletide writer, hi! This is my first time writing one of these letters, although I’ve read Yuletide fic for many years. I’m excited about whatever you write for me and I hope this makes it easier. I’m thereinafter (isyche) on AO3.

I will be delighted if you write me something shippy for characters I ship (and I’m entirely cool with that being explicit if you’re so moved), but I am also delighted by gen fic, especially building on/exploring aspects of the world or backstory. I am the kind of person who enjoys Tolkien’s appendices and songs and reads all the codex entries in video games. I’ll always love something that’s like a bit more of the canon. 

I suggested prompts in case that helps you, but feel free to mix them up or come up with your own idea. 

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General likes:

Canon divergence AUs

Time loop stories, and other kinds of variations on a theme, generally (I do like “five times” fic)

Casefic for canons where there are cases or missions

Epistolary or “found documents” stories

Unconventional story structures

Worldbuilding/exploration of the canon world

Stories set around holidays and festivals, and balls, masquerade or not

Relatedly, characters doing things in disguise, whether they’re good or bad at it (and bodyswap, as a subcategory of this and forced intimacy)

Heists and rescues/jailbreaks

Court plotting, intrigue, spying

Road or sea trips/wilderness survival

Forced intimacy tropes like fake dating, bedsharing, huddling for warmth, marriage of convenience

Hurt/comfort (generally in the sense of one character in a pairing enduring hurt from external forces and the other saving and/or tending them)

Swordfights, training for all kinds of fighting, feats of arms

Characters creating things for others

In-universe stories, songs, mythologies, histories

Scenery and costume porn in the “rich description” sense

Lighthearted fluff and humor

Angst with happy endings

Us against the world pairings

Pining and extended UST, especially between work partners who are busy with saving the world or some other important task

Longtime friends to lovers, old friends meeting again, old enemies who aren’t really anymore, rivals who respect each other

Ascetic/hedonist or repressed/libertine or inexperienced/more experienced pairings

Stoic women who have a lot of hidden feelings

Characters who are very good at what they do (but may be awkward or lost in other contexts)

Loyalty/dedication/faithfulness/devotion, knight/queen dynamics (either one-way or where both consider themselves the knight to the other), love conflicting with other loyalties

People who know each other so well they can read each other wordlessly or sense each other across distances

Noble self-denial and sacrifice

in sex scenes: cuddling, laughing, eroticized hands and voices, clothed/semi-clothed sex, complicated undressing, extended making out, enthusiasm/eagerness/desperation, first times or first times in a while, talking whether emotional or joking or dirty, having to keep silent or hold still, interruptions and delayed gratification, sex against walls, mutual roughness, spontaneous/informal kink, magical or magic-enhanced sex in contexts where that exists

DNWs:

Coffeeshop/high school/other mundane AUs, soulmate/soulmark AUs, issuefic, non-canonical polyamory, non-canonical nicknames, non-canonical pregnancy and kids, A/B/O, formalized D/s, sexual violence/noncon, male dominance in het ships, daddy/mommy kink, incest

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Fandoms I requested (in alphabetical order):

Alpennia Series - Heather Rose Jones

Barbara, Margerit, Jeanne, Antuniet (I requested all four but any one or two or three of them is also fine)

In this series I love the canon ships as they are (don’t want them broken up or reconfigured), the women finding happy endings together despite their society’s prejudices, the Regencyesque setting with balls and seasons and duels, the way the magic works (especially Antuniet’s alchemy and how we see mysteries constructed through music and art), the way Margerit’s house becomes a refuge/salon for queer and intellectual/artistic women. 

Prompt suggestions:

one of Barbara's adventures pre-Daughter of Mystery? Her first efforts at being a duelist?

if you’ve read “Three Nights at the Opera” it says it's the story of Barbara’s glorious imprudence but in fact leaves most of it untold, so you could tell me more about her affair with Jeanne?

In DoM after Barbara and Margerit kiss the first time, a lot of the romance is off-page in the same way; you could show me one of the undescribed scenes from, e.g., their time in the convent with all the feelings and details.

Domestic fluff in one of their households as of Mother of Souls? a holiday celebration? Margerit creating another private mystery for Barbara? an elaborate ball or secret party thrown by Jeanne? 

Some kind of magical accident or student mistake results in a time loop or amnesia or h/c?

A road trip leaves one of the couples stranded in the mountain wilderness (Antuniet’s harsh practicality and Jeanne being used to luxury could make this interesting for them)?

One of them is kidnapped by one of their political rivals and the others have to rescue her?

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The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe - Kij Johnson

Vellitt Boe, Clarie Jurat, Gnesa Petso, Reon Atescre | Nasht (here, I also requested all of them but you don’t need to include all of them; see prompts)

This is a novella that turns Lovecraft’s Dreamlands inside out and subverts him delightfully while retaining the weirdness/horror/atmosphere I do like about his stories. I absolutely love the setting, the descriptions, Johnson’s extension of the existing worldbuilding, and the character of Vellitt Boe herself (an older woman with a past life of adventures who leaves her settled academic life to set out alone on a new one). I’d love anything that shows more of this version of this world. If you want to bring in more elements from the Lovecraft stories and treat them the same way, fantastic.

prompt suggestions:

It seems like Vellitt and Dean Gnesa Petso have a long history, did they know each other or travel together before working together at Ulthar Women’s College? (and you could make that a romantic history if you want). Did Gnesa convince her to stop adventuring and start teaching there?

We know she used to travel with Reon Atescre before he became the high priest Nasht; I like their friendship. “They had parted ways in the infamous demon-city Thalarion for no reason but the restlessness that is in the young”—what were they doing there?

“In her far-travelling days, she had walked in god-blasted wastelands …” what did she encounter there?

Why did she finally leave Randolph Carter and what happened after she did? Why did she change her name?

One prompt without Vellitt: Clarie Jurat returns home to fight the gods; I’d love to see how she does it.

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Elemental Logic - Laurie J. Marks

Zanja na’Tarwein, Karis G’deon

I fell pretty hard for these books, especially Fire Logic, about which I love so many things; I feel like Marks has some kind of direct connection to my personal id. All the circumstances of the way they meet with Karis breaking Zanja out of the prison, all the h/c, all the pining and angst, all their rescuing of each other, Karis’s eventual healing of herself and rediscovery of feeling, give me an absurd amount of feelings. I also love how the books are overall about the struggle to establish and hold a peace more than fighting a war, and the fact that Karis uses her amazonian strength to be a healer and creator/fixer of things while Zanja is the fighter, and all the other opposing elemental/mystical traits that mean they are often baffled by each other.

To sum up, I very much love them as a ship and would like a story focused on the two of them (Emil and Medric are fine characters, but I’d rather not focus on the whole group family; that said, if you write something that needs secondary characters, I’m fond of Norina and Clement and Seth and Garland too, and I love the ravens).

Prompt suggestions:

The two of them keep getting separated and almost dying or symbolically dying and then reuniting/bringing each other back. Which does work for me every time, so if you want to write something plotty that continues that pattern, I would be here for it. 

We’re told Karis loses her powers over water and thus avoids it, but we don’t ever see much of that; what would it be like if she had to sail somewhere? (I could see this going in a light funny or fraught angsty direction.) 

I’m intrigued by the implications of Karis sensing what happens to objects she forges, as with Zanja’s knife. 

A little mission/case they decide to handle together? There must be a lot of problems around Shaftal to fix still. 

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Sunless Sea

Presbyterate Adventuress, Brisk Campaigner (you could focus on either or both)

I've been in love with the Fallen London/Sunless Sea world for a long time and I will adore anything you write that evokes the atmosphere of the games. I'm fascinated with the story possibilities of every port (while not having managed to discover all of them even with my luckiest captains). I'm requesting the Adventuress and the Campaigner because I’m intrigued by their possible canon relationship, but if you want to bring in other characters too, go for it. 

prompt suggestions:

Backstory! What were their lives like before they joined the crew? Had they ever met before?

Tell me about an adventure onshore when the ship is in one of the ports and the captain is busy (for one or the other of them, or them together).

Or an adventure on the zee, fighting creatures or dealing with crew madness in the dark.

Medical situations in this world could get very weird; what kinds of things does the Campaigner deal with as ship’s doctor?

Abbey Rock particularly fascinates me; you could tell me more about the Adventuress’s deal to fight the Sisters’ Adversary for them, and her battle (and leave it tragic or fix it somehow after her victory if you choose).

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Tam Lin

Janet, Tam Lin, The Queen

I’m a big fan of the Child ballads and traditional folk/story songs in general. My favorite sung version of “Tam Lin” is probably Fairport Convention’s [lyrics]. There are many retellings, but I’d love another one or a story that spins off of it or fills in some of the blanks. 

The thing I love most at the heart of the story is Janet’s courage and steadfastness in enduring the fairy queen’s test to rescue her beloved. But I’m also fascinated by the darkness surrounding that, like the warning away from Carterhaugh at the beginning, the queen owing a tithe to hell, and the body horror of the transformations and having to hold on to these things. You could keep the pregnancy in or leave it out, whichever works best with your story.

Prompt suggestions:

An f/f retelling would be very my thing, but not required.

An AU in a very different setting, like space or virtual reality or another historical period or a culture with a different mythology around fairies/spirits (for an extra challenge, it could also be interesting set in one of my other requested fandoms, if you know them)

Something from Tam Lin’s POV or the queen’s that fills in their backstory together?

Something that elaborates more on Janet/Tam Lin’s initial and subsequent encounters between the lines of the ballad? 

Something set after the end that deals with the repercussions or further consequences? (are there permanent effects on Tam Lin? if there’s a child, is the child affected in some way?)

[fashiontrendin-blog]

Four Multifaceted People Unpack Their Biggest “Contradictions”

https://fashion-trendin.com/four-multifaceted-people-unpack-their-biggest-contradictions/

Four Multifaceted People Unpack Their Biggest “Contradictions”

Looking for people whose lives encompass some form of duality seems like a ubiquitous, almost easy task. Most of us engage in some daily form of shape-shifting: abstaining from the candor we’d use with friends when speaking to a grandmother; moving between professional polish and the soft, unglamorous realities of parenting; projecting or subduing aspects of our innate or acquired identities based on who’s standing in the room.

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To close out Man Repeller’s Duality Month, we talked to four individuals whose true sense of selves are divided in ways that appear to be at odds. Whether they chose their worlds or had no say in the matter; whether they embraced their disparate personas or negotiated them with difficulty and pain, we asked these people to explain the intricacies of how and why they move between multiple identities.

I live between worlds where the people in each of them can’t fathom me in a different way. I have a doctorate in nursing from UCLA, where I teach, and I do research on foster youth as they transition out of the system. I grew up in and out of foster care in Compton. My dad sold drugs, my mom was a heroin addict, and they were sometimes incarcerated.

Around high school, I started to hang out with gang-bangers — I was really just trying to survive. On the inside, I was very academic — taking AP and SAT prep classes — but I was in an urban environment where you have to have a certain amount of external bravado. Going to Howard University was a game changer. I thought, I’m going to a black college because I’m from the hood and all I know are black people. But I was not ready for upper-middle-class blacks who were like, “You said Tupac? Who’s that?” In general, I’ve found these black “elite” circles not very LGBTQ-friendly, so I didn’t really come out until very late in college, and even then I was still wearing skirts and dresses. I was trying to fit in. I didn’t want to attract attention: I was poor, struggling academically — my friends knew where they were staying for Christmas break and I didn’t. I think coming out as a lesbian happened later because it’s hard to figure out that identity when you’re like: where is my mom, dude, I haven’t talked to her in a year.

My sexual identity is probably more of an issue now that I’m on a nursing faculty whose average member is probably white and 52. I’ve fully embraced my sexuality at work, but I do dress ultra conservatively. My ankles are out; I’m in little loafers and blazers; they call me Dr. Miller. I also definitely tone down my blackness; I have to code switch. I play Erykah Badu in my office, not NBA YoungBoy. I speak and articulate differently because I think society has ingrained respectability politics into black people. I grew up with my parents saying things like, “Don’t embarrass us in front of these white people,” implying I needed to act a certain way to fit in with them. But when I’m with the black nurses, I can be more relaxed. With them, however, I’m less open about my sexuality.

When I leave work, I go back to my mostly white neighborhood, where they’ll call the police on me if they don’t recognize me. I wear basketball shorts, a backwards hat, a white tank and Jordan sandals. I party on the weekends, take Hennessy shots, go out at the clubs. I feel comfortable in both environments. I could be at a research conference sitting at the table with other PhDs, and I’m right in the middle of the conversation and feel good there. I need to sit at that table because I have great ideas. But I also feel good being with my hood friends; I feel connected to that world because it’s genuinely who I am.

Before I became a mother, I was more masculine and caught up in being a stud, which is what the black community calls a butch. Now I feel motherly; I’m very tender and gentle with my two-year-old. She brought a softness to me. I’m all about intentional parenting and I want to provide stability for her.

Now I don’t care about hiding anything. When I graduated from Howard — which is my pride and joy, by the way — I was like, “That’s the last skirt I’m wearing; I’m not going to be unhappy for anyone.” I can’t hide anymore; I have to be happy.

Paige Eden, Finance Business Analyst

I got a Bachelor of Science in business administration because it was practical, and I minored in math for fun. I then combined these skills in my Master of Science in business analytics. I really like the computational aspect of finance and that I can leverage my ability to work with large datasets to go beyond what most analysts can do in Excel. Because business analytics is an emerging field, I have a lot of freedom in terms of how I can arrive at an answer.

My work is intellectually challenging, and it tickles the logic part of my brain. That said, I don’t really have any room for creative expression, so nearly 100% of that comes from my life outside of work. I’m a radio DJ at an independent, student-run station, and every week, I play music from a different year on my show. I’m a dancer and have performed with different squads; I love tarot and the metaphysical.

It’s not that I can’t talk about my some of my interests with coworkers — like DJ-ing, for example — it’s just that I feel like even “mainstream” hobbies can make me feel uncomfortable because of the intense work culture. (My interest in tarot, however, I keep secret; I feel like it will lessen my credibility.) I’m lucky that my position gives me a good work/life balance, but most coworkers my age work at least 70 hours a week. It can make me feel guilty talking about what I do outside of work to people who don’t have the same amount of free time.

The most obvious difference in the way I live in my work and personal lives is my appearance and my scent. I love patchouli, but it won’t fly in a finance firm. Outside of work, my style is funky or grungy: a lot of bright colors and patterns, combat boots, crop tops and sleeveless shirts. At work, however, I have a “uniform” that consists of a button-down, long sleeve shirt and tailored slacks or a long skirt with stockings, heels and loafers. Everything is navy, black, white, beige or gray. I don’t remove hair anywhere on my body, so I have to keep my legs and armpits covered. What affects me the most is the undergarments I have to wear. I hate wearing bras, but at work, nipping means I have to wear a cup bra daily. It’s super uncomfortable. But I actually do agree with the thinking behind the spoken and unspoken policy that informs the expectation of my appearance at work. Someone dressed too flamboyantly sends the message that they’re not taking it seriously.

When I talk about work to my friends, it can get pretty awkward. What I do is specialized, and it can seem like I’m speaking another language. Some people straight up look at me like I’m evil when I say that I work in finance — it’s got such a bad rap. I have to remind myself that it’s not any different from working in advertising or being a model. Each of these vocations contributes to capitalism and inequality just as much as the others.

My parents emigrated from Mexico to Long Beach, CA, where my two older brothers and I were born. My father was an orphan and managed to move to the U.S., work in the restaurant industry, learn how to read and write English in his spare time and then start investing in properties. What I got from him is his work ethic, the fact that he keeps pushing. What I try to emulate from both of my parents is how caring they are. They’re super respectful and loving and genuinely care about their community.

They always treated me a little differently than my siblings, who are more masculine than I am. I started dressing in an eclectic way in high school, but I didn’t come out to my mother until I was 18, and it arose out of tension. My parents are Catholic, so their feelings stem from what the church has told them and also what it meant to be gay in their rural town in Mexico: being ridiculed and ostracized. It was intense when I came out, and my mom and I didn’t speak for several weeks. I think she associates any form of femininity with transitioning into a woman, even though I am comfortable in my identity as a man. Now, when I go home on the weekends, I avoid dressing in a flamboyant way to avoid going back to that place.

I’m probably the realest version of myself in West Hollywood, where I live. I dress in pieces that are more form-fitting; I wear a little more color or clothing that exposes my skin. I wear thicker heels, snakeskin boots, more feminine sandals. At home with my parents, I wear baggy jeans, sneakers and T-shirts I’d wear to the gym. I speak only in Spanish. I don’t flail my arms and I’m not as expressive or bombastic. We talk strictly about family and work, and I never mention my boyfriend. I don’t say “Peter and I went to this art show,” I say, “I went to this art show.” Part of my life gets omitted.

Honestly, when I’m there, it feels performative and exhausting. When I’m in a queer space — produced for queer people, by queer people — I feel energized; like electricity, like I can move forward and gain strength. When I’m with my parents, it feels like an anchor, which is exhausting but can be a good thing — it keeps me grounded. The foods I grew up eating, the huarache sandals I love, the wonderful childhood I had —  they’re really a part of me. I’ve decided to make it easier for my parents because my family is really important to me and I know that, underneath, it’s not so much a criticism of my character; they just don’t understand the fluidity. The way I dress makes me feel empowered, but it’s not going to change the core of who I am.

My late grandfather was a Russian Orthodox priest in Los Angeles, and priests in the Russian Orthodox religion are viewed like celebrities. He and my grandmother followed my parents to America in the 1980s. There’s a word in Russian — rodina — which roughly means “motherland.” It’s less patriotic than it is romantic, and it characterizes how my parents thought about their country. The Russian traditions my parents instilled in me have carried me my whole life. If I don’t know anything, I know that I’m a Russian woman. I know my traditions and my language. It’s a foundation of my life.

I went to church and Russian school every weekend, and I basically knew from a very young age that I was gay. Russian Orthodox is a very reserved culture; it’s about following the rules. There are so many beautiful things about its history and traditions and art, but I don’t agree with a lot of the rules against women. Women have to cover their heads and wear skirts; they can’t go behind the altar in the church. It makes me angry even thinking about it. They can’t take communion or receive confession when they have their periods because it’s considered unclean. I thought I was unclean. When you’re baptized, you get a cross, and I never took it off, believing that I would summon the devil if I did. I hid my sexuality. It took me a long time to understand that I’m not a bad person.

I think people who don’t know a lot about Russian culture are intrigued, but I am apprehensive about bringing up the fact that I’m Russian right now. I photograph people’s homes for a living, and I don’t mention it . I don’t want them to get upset or turn on me.

After my mom passed away four years ago, I made it a point to start photographing and spending time with my grandmother, who is now 92. I don’t bring up my sexuality — she justifies all of her opinions with the Bible, and when I told her I was gay, she was terrified I would burn in hell. I wear sleeves when I visit so she doesn’t see my tattoos. I have two dresses in my closet, and they are only for attending mass with her. People gossip. Even though I wear a dress, I still don’t look how they want me to look: I don’t put on a lot of makeup and I don’t wear heels (whenever I speak the language, Russians have a moment of shock because I don’t look the part). The fact that I’m the granddaughter of a priest means I’m supposed to be a prime selection of perfection and purity. My family is considered holy, in a way, because God selected my grandfather. People revere my grandmother; they come and give gifts to her so that she’ll pray to my late grandfather to pray for their family.

My mom really wanted me to be a part of this community; it’s where she went when she needed help. Now it’s just my dad and my grandmother, and family is important to me, so I want to hold onto it.

Photos by Maggie Shannon.