#in that well known metaphor

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

I AM NOW THE PROUD OWNER OF A 400-PAGE LONG BOOK OF ACADEMIC ANALYSIS ABOUT MDZS (both the novel and CQL, as well as the wider danmei sphere, internet authorship, fan reactions in both CN and non-CN spheres, and so many more interesting things – there are photos of the contents list below) >:DDDD

I only got it this afternoon so have only read the (quite long?) excerpt available online and pages I came across while flipping through, but everything I've read so far is really interesting and well-written. If you're interested, it's promoted on the blog of @pumpkinpaix, where there are also chapter spotlights with comments from authors of each paper/chapter about them and about MDZS in general (which is how I found out about it, one came up in tumblr's 'based on this tag you follow...' recommendation), as well as FAQs (including where to buy it, though I did link that at the start). Alternatively, all posts about it are in the tag #catching chen qing ling!

I really recommend it, especially if content about MDZS interests you! and I promise I haven't been told to advertise this it's just something so so cool... a collection of academic work about MY FAVOURITE BOOK... and I know people do follow me for meta/analysis so this might be the sort of thing people looking at this blog will be interested in..?

[lollytea]

I really love hope is a thing with feathers and I also really LOVE the hope as a sewer rat poem too but I wish it was not explicity written as "well actually" against Dickinson asgvsjnk. The imagery is SO GOOD but this whole vibe of "my metaphor is better than your metaphor" kinda sours it for me

[fallloverfic]

I've seen some very odd takes about certain language used in the scene where Mizrak rebukes Olrox at the end of Castlevania: Nocturne, which I think might be due to lack of knowledge about the historical context of certain things.

CW: historical racism against First Nation groups

I know reading academic articles isn't for everyone, but I have to wonder if a lot of people in the Castlevania: Nocturne fandom have not watched things like, say, Disney's 1995 animated Pocahontas, which, for all its many, many flaws, features the song, Savages. I'm not going to quote it in full here, you can find the song lyrics elsewhere (though the European colonizers do use the lines "vermin" and "barely even human", among other epithets). It's not a great song for a lot of reasons (among them being it tries to "both sides" things). But to look at the scene in CN where Mizrak, a Christian working in a European Christian church with at least some Europeans, calls Olrox, a First Nation man, an animal without the understanding of how Christian European colonizers (typically as part of or at least backed by some Christian churches) have viewed First Nation peoples and treated them, and certain epithets used for them, and how European Christian dehumanization of "new world" groups and non-Christians generally worked/works?

Well.

[girlvasectomy]

Stranger Things and the Upside Down as a Homophobia and AIDS Allegory

One of my favorite theory (if you can call it that) that has emerged—especially when revisiting Season 1—is the idea that the Upside Down functions as a metaphor for homophobia and, more broadly, the AIDS crisis.

Queer Characters and Queercoding

The first season introduces four known victims of the Upside Down:

– Will Byers

– Barb Holland

– Dale and Henry (the two hunters who disappear and are later found dead in the Upside Down)

From the start, Stranger Things presents homophobia as a key part of its story, especially through Will Byers. Will is repeatedly subjected to homophobic bullying—his father calls him a “fag,” his classmates mock him, it's mentioned in the show's Bible. It's even mentioned how other adults think he's gay:

"He’s dead. That’s what my dad says. He said he was probably killed by some other queer."

Will was later confirmed to be gay.

Barb Holland's character has been interpreted by some fans as queer-coded, particularly through insights from the companion novel "Stranger Things: Rebel Robin" and its associated podcast, "Rebel Robin: Surviving Hawkins." In the podcast, Robin Buckley reflects on individuals who are perceived as "different" in Hawkins. She mentions both Will Byers, who is canonically gay, and Barb in this context, suggesting a shared sense of otherness. Robin states, "Barb is like me, well not exactly like me. She fits in better. Probably because she knows how to survive Hawkins better than most people." This implies that Barb, while adept at navigating the social dynamics of Hawkins, conceals aspects of herself that deviate from the town's norms.

Additionally, the podcast reveals that Barb was aware of Mr. Hauser's homosexuality and kept it confidential. This indicates Barb's understanding and acceptance of queer identities, as well as her willingness to protect such secrets in a potentially hostile environment. While the series does not explicitly define Barb's sexuality, these subtle cues contribute to interpretations of her character as queer-coded.

Dale and Henry, the two hunters who go missing. It's the hardest to know if they were queer as we know very, very little about them but some fans have read them as potentially queer-coded—two men on a “hunting trip” together, lost in the same space where Will and Barb disappear. Their Queercoding definitely fall more into confirmation bias but I believe it's still important.

The Upside Down is Fairyland

In the show, Troy taunts Mike, saying:

> "Will's in fairyland now, right? Flying around with all the other little fairies?"

If we take "fairyland" as a coded reference to the Upside Down, then the show implicitly frames the Upside Down as a place where queer people are sent, abandoned, or erased. The fact that he say that Will is with the other fairies add coding to the other victim of the Upside Down.

AIDS, Silence, and Reagan’s America

The setting of Stranger Things—1983—is significant. This was the early stage of the AIDS epidemic, a crisis that would devastate the LGBTQ+ community throughout the decade, while the government turned a blind eye. Season 2 even features a “Reagan/Bush ‘84” sign in front of Mike’s house, subtly reminding the audience of the political landscape of the time. Ronald Reagan’s administration infamously ignored AIDS, treating it as a “gay disease” and refusing to acknowledge the suffering of thousands.

Now, think about how people treat the Upside Down:

– It’s a dark, decaying reflection of the real world, as if it exists alongside but separate.

– The town of Hawkins ignores its dangers until it spills over into their daily lives.

– The Upside Down is a place of sickness and infection—the air itself is toxic, and creatures like the Demogorgon spread its influence.

And then there’s Will. He is the one who escape the Upside Down, but he doesn’t come back unscathed. He’s hiding something (the slug he coughs up in the last episode of Season 1), much like how people in the early days of AIDS might have concealed symptoms out of fear of discrimination. Will’s mother and friends want to believe he’s "better" after being rescued, but his sickness – or his homosexuality – lingers, unspoken, just beneath the surface.

Eleven

Eleven is an interesting parallel to this metaphor. She is one of the only characters who can communicate between the real world and the Upside Down, and she exists between binaries in other ways too.

With her cropped hair, baggy clothes, and initial lack of gendered presentation, she is gender nonconforming (GNC) – even being mistaken for a boy, and even for Will, by other characters – until she’s literally forced into a pink dress and a wig to “pass” as a normal girl.

Her first unfiltered reaction to seeing a girl (Nancy) is to call her “pretty.” She lacks traditional social conditioning about gender and attraction, making her an outsider in yet another way.

If the Upside Down represents queerness as something suppressed or ignored, then Eleven—who can move between the two worlds—represents someone who refuses to be confined by traditional expectations. She is a figure who is both rejected by society and holds the key to confronting its horrors.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Stranger Things Season 1 can be read as a story about queerness in a small, conservative town—a town where being different means being pushed into the shadows. The Upside Down is not just a monster-infested wasteland; it is a space of forced invisibility, a place where those who do not conform are cast away, erased, or left to suffer in silence.

From the way Will is bullied and called a "fairy" to the fact that Barb, a queer character, is simply forgotten until people found a cause more safe and clean for her death (the chemical leak lie in Stranger Things 2). Stranger Things subtly critiques the way LGBTQ+ individuals were (and often still are) treated. The Upside Down is a place of isolation, silence, and sickness—just as homophobia forced many queer people into secrecy, and just as the AIDS epidemic took thousands of lives while the world looked away.

[behold-the-griffin]

so I finally started watching house and I finally understand the essence of a poor little meow meow. he’s such a bastard but MAN season three ain’t kind to him.

[sysig]

Getting up to trouble is his speciality (Patreon)

[sotogalmo]

12:22

Nevermore by sasakure...... Such a Luka song but like. Also. Ivan- but I see it as like. How similar they are

[loverboybrightsideghost]

computer search how to make being disappointed in yourself productive

[ame-to-ame]

Oh on last rb's note my friend actually read love bullet per my recommendation hehe and she likes it and it makes me so so happy hehe

[obnoxiousarcade]

I have a longing to be understood more than anything else i think

[agriocnemis]

I am finding it increasingly annoying that people misunderstand me or assume things about me that feel extremely off from how I actually mean to come off or just... am.

[shortscircuits]

swifties rule because every 6 months they're convinced an unknown author is secretly taylor swift

[brw]

i wrote a big long thing but kind of forgot where i was going with it so i'm just gonna write . i think one of the things with krakoa and the mutant metaphor as an extension is that krakoa genuinely like. is a eugenics state. i do not think i could actually live there without in some way being endangered. what i mean by that is that krakoa is not accessible in any of the images we have seen from it. what i mean by that is that krakoa doesn't visibly have an actual functioning hospital & healthcare system so much as it has a bunch of people that happen to either have healing powers or were doctors before krakoa act as the healthcare system, but very little seems to be organised. what i mean by that is that the emphasis on krakoa seems to be first and foremost on curing the disabled and not supporting them. and idk, the frustrating thing is that this isn't really expanded on like... at all by writers because disabled people are not in the writing room at all. it just isn't considered. maybe vaguely alluded too, but there seems to me be very little acknowledgement that krakoa is actively hostile to disabled people in a lot of ways.

[bredforloyalty]

wish i could say what those lines from phantom thread make me feel or what they make me think of without saying it

[edwardwonghaupepelutivrusky4th]

while i'm using this blog for elementalposting i have a thought / question i'd love to hear other ppl's thoughts on too

so of course ember & wade get the complementary colors of orange and a more turquoise/green blue (as opposed to a "pure" blue more like ultramarine) that wade has, and i was appreciating how neat it is and how good it looks that the Combination / Overlap / Meeting of their colors is given this like, purple/pink color? especially visible on wade when they touch, i think, as the one more refracting & reflecting light while ember emits it. like it's great to emphasize The Metaphor of their elements & colors & how they interact & affect each other, and it's also great b/c it looks good

but my thought was mostly like "is that how their orange and cerulean colors would combine according to Additive color mixing??" since like, looking at a Subtractive color wheel re: like using pigments and all, orange / blue green / fuschia type red violet purple are Kind Of close to being triadic, which you know, based on Color Theory looks good lol, and i definitely think that's the most important reasoning to use here like, their colors mixing into a bright purple has Meaning and it Looks Nice lmao. but ember is Luminous and wade reflects the light wavelengths that result in the visible blue green we see him as, so it's like, if we're just going with the idea that their Light's interplay is the interplay of orange & cerulean, would the Additive Color Mixture of those colors of light maybe actually result in that magenta-y color / a pink purple? (while ofc the subtractive mix of colors that are complementary or close to it make less saturated dark greyish brown type situations)

i've made a rough diagram about it lol

i'm not that practiced at working out how different colors of Emitted Light mix either in theory or experimentally lol like, i don't have an Orange and Greenish Blue spotlight to shine on the same spot and see what happens. but using my own visual aid it's like, okay, so basically what's happening is Red (and a lil green) + Blue (and a lil green)....we know the Red + Blue light straightforwardly would create Magenta, and if it was Red + Blue + an equal amount of Green, it would create a White light. but because it's Not the equal amount of green, and it's More of the red + blue, that's kind of equivalent to "okay this Would be white light, but it's then pulled into the Magenta field a way," or "magenta, but pulled a bit towards white" so, Brighter, more of a Pink maybe lol

basically i'm just thinking like "ooohh this might be kind of like how the Physics of their light would really play out" even when it's like, okay, wade's not quite Generating light the way ember is, this isn't like, "realistic" realistic and there wouldn't really be any real world experimental counterpart, like, dye some water wade's color and get an orange flame going and see what happens when you get them really close....that's not gonna yield purple light lol. at least not visibly. and idk what would happen if you were like "let me get on the other side of this small clear tank of dyed water and see what the torch looks like from here" same as i don't know what would even happen the [wade-colored spotlight] and [ember-colored spotlight] were overlapped. and i also know that color theory, whether subtractive or additive, also just goes "it's complicated" lol like the Reality may not always fit the Theory, of course

and i'm not looking for it to be like "yeah wow this is peak realistic regarding the laws of optics" b/c it's already Not trying to be, serving the Metaphors and the Visuals comes first rather than like, trying to be hard scifi about "what if people were made of fire or water" and like, it's fun to think of how things would work in that scenario, Unless it gets in the way of anything else lol in which case it's like "it doesn't really have to matter that this part isn't 'realistic' because this is built around a Metaphor, not around 'but how would it all Really work if your body was all flames'"

(bonus: kinda fun thinking too about how ember's flareups are Also purple....it's sure yet more "oh god additive light rules" trying to look up the colors that fire can become lmao but it's also fun thinking about how like, via wade this becomes about more than just her Temper and about breaking down that temper into basically repressed or suppressed emotions....and before wade the Purple Light Of Ember's Feelings is being let out through her temper building up and bursting out, and then Through him the Purple Light Of Ember's Feelings is coming out perfectly naturally through their interacting. or maybe they're separate purple things lol....hey girl. did you know. your violet doesn't have to be so violent....End Of Post)

[navree]

Is there any meaning or symbolism behind Joffery, Rhaenyra,Aerys get cut by the iron throne?

So, practically the Iron Throne cuts people because it is sharp and uncomfortable as shit because Aegon specifically designed it that way as a metaphor for how ruling isn't easy and one should never get complacent about it. And it makes sense that people likely did cut themselves on it, even Aegon himself had his blood drawn from that chair (though that's because he was apparently holding onto the chair way too hard while reading Nymor's letter and not just an accidental slip), and if we're looking at it from a purely logical perspective, that's why people get cut on that chair.

But narratively, I do think there's a meaning to who we've seen get cut with the Iron Throne. Some of the most famous occupants who were ever hurt by the Iron Throne are some of few people we're narratively informed shouldn't have been anywhere near it. Maegor is literally killed while sitting on the chair, some say even by the chair (which is a theory I like), Aerys is cut so often that he is referred to as King Scab, and Joffrey very publicly slices himself quite badly on the thing. All three of these rulers are people that anyone even giving the material a cursory glance knows were unworthy to sit on the Throne. Maegor full on usurped Aegon the Uncrowned (and was a monster), Aerys was an absolute nightmare who singlehandedly brought about the utter ruin of his House, his family, and Joffrey is a bastard borne of incest who is psychologically disturbed and nearly ruined the realm with his bad choices and definitely not the right heir. So there is some genuine merit to the idea that the Iron Throne only wounds those it rejects, the ones who sit on it who are unworthy, and Septon Eustace does claim that Rhaenyra's cuts are a sign that the Iron Throne itself is rejecting her because she's not the true monarch (though Eustace is a Green partisan and as such we should look at this a bit askance). But I do think that claim isn't to be wholly dismissed. I'm not as anti-Rhaenyra as some people, but she was not a good queen. She was a bad politician and a bad administrator and her governance of King's Landing was atrocious, and it's in King's Landing that her true downfall begins. Doing things like hiking taxes, being cruel to the populace, alienating Daemon by wanting Nettles killed (for no reason), causing the Velaryons to abandon her due to her treatment of Corlys, the way she let rumors propagate about how badly she was treating Alicent and Helaena when they were both very well loved, that's what led to not just her having to abandon the city after the Storming of the Dragonpit but her eventual death. She wasn't doing her job as queen properly and was actively contributing to more suffering and misery, and so it's not out of bounds to assume that being cut on the Iron Throne is a symbol that she just wasn't right for the job at this point. And honestly, as I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of eldritch abomination Iron Throne that does have some sort of strange magical say in who it considers worthy and how it'll be involved dispatching the unworthy (Jaime kills Aerys and then sits on the Iron Throne, stained in Aerys's blood and yet uncorrupted by the Throne itself, hmmmmmmm). And it ties into this idea that Valyrians used literal magic to build things, like Dragonstone and potentially the base of the Hightower, which is fun.

I don't think, however, that you can chalk up anyone who gets cut on the Throne with being explicitly "unworthy" of kingship/queenship either. Viserys I in the book cut himself on the throne and in F&B there's not really much to the idea that he likely shouldn't have been king, while the show does hold that more strongly but hasn't ever brought up the concept of cuts from the Throne being considered rejection by the Throne. There are also plenty of people in ASOIAF who are also bad rulers or just not the true rulers who aren't mentioned as having ever cut themselves on the throne, Robert was a bad king and never cut himself, Aegon IV is literally called "the Unworthy" and there's no record of him cutting himself, Tommen is just as much a bastard borne of incest who has no right to be in the succession as Joffrey and he hasn't cut himself yet. So I do think the aforementioned practicality of the situation does need to be taken into account, but broadly I agree with the in-universe symbolism that the Iron Throne is capable of physically rejecting occupants who are undeserving, giving them bloody wounds like they give the crown or the land or the people, to tell them that this will never truly and rightfully be there's, they've lost it or they just straight up never had it to begin with.