#its probably a risk to use myself as an example of what i consider to be unhealthy behavior

[96percentdone]

'without thinking about what harm their actions or ideas might cause' so these tags from the post about abuse, I'm a little lost by the ideas part, could you explain a bit more about what can be harmful?

I'll use myself from a time where I was at my worst possible self as an example, because I think it makes a good reference point.

So in the past, I was in a relationship where I was deeply jealous of the friendships my then partner had with other people, because they talked about them a lot, and used language to refer to them that I had associated with romance based on y'know culture and upbringing etc. Now, jealousy isn't actually a morally wrong emotion to feel, nor is it wrong to have anxieties or insecurities about things someone in your life is doing. Like all emotions, they're inherently neutral; the moral failure lies in how you deal with it. In my head, I wanted my partner to stop associating with them, because that would make me feel better.

That's not something you can ask for. It's actually pretty common on abuser warning signs that if someone is trying to get you to stop associating with your loved ones. When you ask someone you're supposed to love to cut out people they love, because it would make you feel better, that's something you do without really thinking about the harm it causes your partner. Those concerns are irrelevant. The abusive party is first and foremost concerned with assuaging their own anxieties and fears, by whatever means would best do that, and if they accomplish that then they're happy. It doesn't occur to them you might be less happy to not have those friends in your life, or that you'd be more alone or more dependent on them. On some level, subconsciously, they might want the latter, but more than likely they're not actively thinking either of those things. They're not thinking in terms of 'how do I make your life worse', they're thinking 'how do I make myself feel better'.

This is what I mean by an idea that is harmful. It's an fix that doesn't consider the other people involved or how it affects them, and is entirely focused on just immediately curbing the emotional response you're having. A lot of this mindset is actually something anyone can have, without being abusive. People when they're stressed or overwhelmed often are not thinking rationally, but are thinking shortsightedly and in extremes about making the stressors go away as soon as possible. This usually results in bad, selfish ideas, and they never come close to addressing the root of the problem. That doesn't inherently make you abusive. That's human. I think it's important we remember this going forward, before we continue talking about abusive people.

Back to the personal example, I didn't ask for this in my relationship. I knew that if you do this, this is just blatant abuse. I did ask for them to stop using that language to refer to them around me (anywhere/everywhere else is fine), and I also asked if I could possibly hear about one of them less. I don't think I was out of bounds on the former; it's a small thing that doesn't involve majorly changing your life or your feelings. However, the latter still feels wrong to me. I can see like now that 1) that didn't address the reason I was anxious and insecure (too long and irrelevant to unpack for this post) and 2) it set up this idea that I don't want to hear about what/who makes them happy because that makes me upset. That's a feeling that causes division and isolation in a relationship, where you either decide not to talk about what you love to keep your partner happy, or you talk about it and then feel responsible when they're not. That's not a position you should put someone you care about in. Your partner is not responsible for managing your emotions. I don't think I should have asked that, and if I was in that position again today, I would not.

But at the time, when I suggested this, none of that was on my brain. I was just thinking about how I wanted to not feel so miserable and insecure anymore, because I was overwhelmed by it. My suggestion didn't come to pass anyway, even after I brought it up, and surprise surprise it turns out that request wasn't the solution, because just trying to dodge things that make you feel anxious doesn't solve the source of why you have this insecurity and lack of esteem.

The action is in how the bad idea is implemented, by force or coercion. While someone who isn't abusive but is handling their feelings like shit might say or do things that put strain on the other person (I'm sure everyone has had unpleasant talks or arguments that were stressful to navigate, and have been on either end), they still care about the other party. They will try, although not effectively (cannot stress this enough the more overwhelmed you are when trying to have the talk the more likely this conversation is gonna be a hot mess), to have an actual discussion and reach a mutual agreement where all parties are okay at the end. The abuser isn't.

To the abusive person, their shitty idea is the only solution, and it must happen, or else you don't really love them. They see anything that isn't complete acquiescence as you wanting them to stay in pain, and so they react as though that's what's happening. Again, they're not thinking about you, or how you feel. It's not on their brains. They are only thinking about their pain, and making it stop, so if you disagree with them, or have any issues with it, they don't see it as you expressing how this affects you, they see it as you trying to invalidate and dismiss their pain, which makes you the bad guy.

This is also why it is common for people to see their abusers make claims they were the real abuse victim, because that is genuinely how they see it. They understand that disregarding someone else's concerns or feelings is abusive, which is what they think you're doing. They can't see that they haven't thought once about you this entire time, or that they're dismissing you. As I said before they aren't thinking about you at all. It's about them, and their feelings, and making those feelings go away, which often involves you doing something.

This is why I think it's bad to think about abusive people as conniving, or as a separate type of person. They're not. They start at the same place everyone else is also capable of, but they navigate those places in a shortsighted and self-centered way throughout. Nothing they do is really about you. You aren't a person to them; you're a means of managing their emotions. They're the only real person with a rich inner life and complicated emotions, and they want to be happy, and you're there to make them happy. An abusive relationship is one-sided because the abusive party does not see their victim as a person with needs or wants, but as a thing that is meant to make them happy, and if its not doing that, it must be fixed. It's dehumanizing.

I used a romantic relationship as an example, but this is the dynamic in any type of abusive relationship. The only changes are in the kinds of unreasonable things they might expect from you to caretake for their feelings. I hope this helped make things clearer.

[cardentist]

hallo, hi...sorry for probably asking something small. but i see you explain things very well and if its okay i wanna have a person explain this to me.

what's a transfem and transmac? i don't quite understand what those terms are. i think i see people use them in context different from just "trans man" or "trans woman"...and looking online i still don't really understand it.

if i am being a bother, please let me know!

@re-ikrmso

well ! the first thing to understand is that these terms will ultimately mean different things for different people !

labels are for people, people aren't meant to conform to labels. so ultimately people will have their own ideas about what different labels mean to them on a personal level.

it's kind of like how there really Isn't one firm definition that separates bisexual from pansexual, the distinction is largely personal and highly dependent on the context of an individual's life. their experiences, what communities they grew up and/or found themselves in, etc !

which ultimately makes it very difficult to give a definitive definition of labels like this that won't risk alienating people, or that other people won't simply disagree with.

THAT SAID.

to my understanding, "trans masc" as a term simply means anyone who is trans in a masculine way, while "trans fem" as a term means anyone who is trans in a feminine way.

for example:

someone who is a Trans Man is most likely someone who was assigned female at birth who then identified as a man (if you'll excuse the outdated terminology for convenience).

but trans Masc may include a variety of other trans identities !

a nonbinary person who transitions or presents in a masculine way may consider themselves trans masc, or at least consider them relevant in discussions about trans masc people, because they have similar experiences (such at with testosterone, bottom/top surgery, how they're treated because of their presentation, etc).

and this Can be true whether this nonbinary person considers themselves Aligned (meaning they are nonbinary in a masc direction) or Unaligned (meaning agender or completely separated from the gender binary). it's ultimately up to personal preference.

or an intersex person may be assigned male at birth And Be Trans Masc, may still transition (medically or socially) into a masc presentation.

they're also convenient terms for people who play further with gender. genderqueer people, genderfluid people, bigender people, etc.

because ! for instance. I am a trans masc person. I was assigned female at birth and I have identified myself masculinely. I would like to take testosterone and go through the social transition into a masculine person.

I also consider myself a trans fem person ! I would like to present femininely as well as masculinely, and importantly I wish to continue doing so after I HAVE medically and socially transitioned. after I've had my name changed, after I've had my legal sex changed, after my body and voice has changed.

there will be times where I will be visibly identifiable as a trans body presenting femininely, And I Like That. I won't just be presenting femininely as a man, I want to be both a feminine and masculine person.

and what this means for me is that I will share experiences with both trans masc And trans fem people, especially socially (and especially where I live, in the deep south).

but there very much so Does need to be a distinction between me (an afab person who is trans in both a masculine and feminine way) and a trans woman (an amab person who is a woman) (again, apologies for the outdated terminology).

and in that sense ! trans fem is a good way to get across the fact that I share Experiences with trans women, but am not one. in much the same way that amab nonbinary people can say the same.

so in other words ! trans fem and trans masc are umbrella terms that loosely connect multiple different sorts of people with similar lived experiences and needs. which is a convenient way of speaking About said needs and issues that may affect all sorts of these people in as efficient a way as possible.

instead of Specifying trans women and a list of other identities that may share things in common with them (a list that will never encompass every kind of person who may), you can shorten it to one more generalized term.

the Drawback of this is that not everybody sees the term that way. some people see trans fem and trans masc as identities in and of themselves that trans women and trans men aren't a part of. some people are people who Do share lived experiences with either trans men or trans women but don't consider themselves either trans fem or trans masc.

and that's like. Okay Actually. it's just expected that for any term that exists in queer spaces there will be people who don't like it or don't personally identify with it or just have a different experience with it.

but ultimately I do find it convenient to use and I choose to do so.

[valictini]

My take on the whole egg situation (this is all MY OPINION based on what we've been shown for the past 2 months) :

Why did they get some of the eggs back only to end the arc one week afterwards?

I think it's because the admins loved their characters and knew it was going to end soon, so they wanted to be able to play as much as possible before leaving, even if they were not paid.

Why did some of the admins not get this opportunity ?

Either the studio considers them "not their problem anymore" (Pomme and Dapper who left) or they consider them liabilities and at risk of leaking stuff because they publicly supported the ex admins (Empanada, Sunny) All of this is speculation, but my guess as to why Cherry was so upset was not only because she was fired, but she was refused the opportunity to say good bye as Empanada.

Why is the studio icing out their admins instead of straight up firing them?

Because then there are fewer chances for legal retaliation because "they left on their own accords." Never mind that 99% of the admins never intended to sue the studio and only wanted to be treated right, or at least know what was going to happen to their role.

It also shows how little the studio cares about its admins. I believe 100% that they still dont see them as colleagues/employees, but as fans to whom they gave privilege. Privilege that they're not entitled to and thus can remove at any misstep. To me, there is literally no trust there.

Don't get me wrong, there is some truth to this. From what some of the admins said, they did genuinely feel privileged to be part of the project. And that's precisely why some of the more exploited admins stayed, too. They felt lucky to be part of the project and sacrificed themselves in order to meet the studio's unreasonable demands.

But here's the thing, just because you love your job doesn't mean you have to be punished in some way to balance it out. Just because you're passionate doesn't mean you don't deserve basic fucking respect as a human being.

You'd think that after so long, after so much work, the admins would be trusted as colleagues... well, Pomme's example is there to show us that no, they don't care. The second they think you did something wrong, you're just trash to be disposed of, behind closed doors. (I believe to this day we still don't know why Lumi was iced out)

Why did they keep the server running when Quackity said there would be a pause?

Because, as Quackity stated, his #1 priority is keeping the project running. What we didn't realise at the time is that it meant that everything else would be ignored.

Mire importantly, i think they didn't want the more active players to lose interest and so, they simply left it open for them. Never mind all the ccs that missed out on lore and events for the crime of wanting to make sure things were solved before playing again.

What is going to happen at the event of the 24th?

Probably a reset of some sort, seeing how many ccs are ending their character's lore while some still being like "well this character is done but I'm not". Idk if I can bring myself to care though, with how hard the studio is trying to make us forget everything.

They want us to forget that they fired dozens of people via a single discord announcement that didn't even stay up for 24h before the server was closed. They want us to forget that to this day (as far as I know), nothing has been done to contact the exploited ex admins. They want us to forget the fact that Quackity promised to keep running the server only when the problems were solved, and then opened the server back up only two days after. They want us to forget that some of the admins that were still technically in the studio have been and are still being iced out instead of fired. All to save their own asses from a lawsuit that they're honestly INVITING on themselves at this point.

All this to say, thank you, admins. I'm sorry the studio prioritised the project's image above your wellbeing. I'm glad some of you had a positive experience and got the opportunity to leave on a positive note. I'm sorry for the rest who had to go public to even be heard about the abuse you suffered from.

I'm still hoping for a miracle, for some sort of satisfying resolution. I'm still hoping to see my favourite ccs coming back, signaling that stuff have actually been solved. But I won't hold my breath either.

Again, all this is just my opinion. I'm probably wrong on some of the more speculative parts. You might not agree with everything I said. And that's fine. As fans, we will never be given the full truth anyway, so all we can do is speculate.

[chaos-creature-on-the-roof]

So uh

Small vent? IG? Idk this is like my first official vent and I try to keep the blog mostly light and fun and stuff but I really need to get this out somewhere and obvsly if any of my followers or moots sees this and wants me to delete it bc its upsetting them I will immediately and also I'm putting it under a break so no ones has to scroll through it to ignore it cause I don't want it to be annoying or anything

So uh my parents and I were talking today and I mentioned some of the stupid an t trim said during the debate and on the comment about 'transgender operations on illegal aliens' we derailed into the different Horn me treatments and surgeries one could get to feel more comfortable (though for my parents it was just all the bad side effects and things that could go wrong) and when talking about T and E my dad said it was a fad in gen z right now to deepen their voice and my mom said that they both have bad side effects and concerns and mom used me as an example and

She said that since she had a history of ulcers and heart problems and high blood pressure as well as the skin cancer on my dads side and general poor health on both of my families I would probably never be eligible for T due to the health risks

And shes right? Because I never even considered that and also T can cause several anger problems and emotional regulation problems and I already have enough of that from both sides of my family and myself and I don't wanna make it worse

But I guess I don't have to worry about that since its probably not gonna be possible for me anyway

I don't know if I wanna scream or cry or break something or all three but the ability to start T once I was old enough has been something fueling my spite for life and my desire to keep going to prove someone wrong and now that's breaking and I don't know what to do-

But I'll settle on this because murder is illegal and crying is dehydrating and I already have a headache

Anyway like I said if this is too upsetting to anyone I'll obvsly delete it no questions asked

[gyroshrike]

if there r no filler episodes in avatar then what about the great divide

Oooooh, I don't know if I want to go sticking my nose into potential Avatar Discourse, but I will just for this because I actually love this episode AND I have strong opinions over what people complain is "filler."

This probably isn’t going to be very organized or concise because if I try to make it too fancy, I’ll take forever to write it and never post it ahaha.

So, for starters, the only kind of episodes I refer to as "filler" is usually for when an anime series catches up to the manga chapters and the production team has to stall by making up new episodes to tide the audience over. To literally fill up empty space.

For example, Naruto episodes 143 through 219 are "filler" because they were never in the manga and they needed episodes while they waited before jumping into Naruto: Shippuden. Then they completely returned to the canon plot.

Filler is what I use to categorize new content written to act as a pause or spacer between canon plot arcs when they don't have enough canon content to work with. AND I usually tend to refer to episodes as filler when they are entire arcs, not just one episode or scene added for fun or to flesh out plot or characters. I'll elaborate on this later.

If a writer goes in, writes a script, and consciously makes the decision to have an episode as part of the story... that's not filler.

People seem so caught up on the Main Plot that they jump to label anything that doesn't technically contribute to moving it along as filler. These people aren't considering that it's not just Plot that makes up storytelling. Every episode of Avatar contributes to the overall experience in some way.

They flesh out the characters—either themselves as people or their dynamics with each other. We get to see motivations, how they think, how they handle different conflicts, who they are as people.

They contribute to world building—the world of Avatar is so rich and interesting, on it's own, but also in its current state of transition as a land shaped by war and refugees.

Immediately this episode visits 1.) the themes of Aang's role in solving conflict and 2.) Katara and Sokka's differing ways of doing things.

Aang is not above simple motivations. Custard tart. He's not some all knowing wise man, he's a person who gets hungry, gets driven by silly things. We also get to see something very important. Aang gets angry, but not very often, so it’s impactful to see what makes him angry. He's not above getting fed up with bullshit. He's realistic and rounded! He gets a chance to get angry at people selfishly putting lives at risk.

There's two rival clans who have the same goal and Aang agrees to protect them on their journey and help keep peace between them. The conflict between the two clans have origins so long ago neither of them can prove which origin story is true, but they are determined to cling to their hate for the other and refuse to work together to the point of endanger their own lives and the lives around them. And right when the fighting is about to come to a head, Aang steps in to say he knows the TRUE origin story and the conflict was actually just a big misunderstanding.

He... He LIES. Aang LIES to end this conflict that doesn't matter! And I think that's so cool. The first time I saw this episode, I thought to myself, "Ah, well that's really lucky that Aang knew those guys. I guess Being 100 Years Old plot point saves the day again. That doesn't bother me, but wow, it sure is a convenient thing." Then, out of earshot, AANG REVEALS THE TRUTH. He totally made up that story! There was no coincidence! That blew my mind as a kid! And that is so much more realistic and it gives us such cool, interesting insight to Aang's character. Aang's moral compass is very strong and he will fight for what he thinks is right. But he's also not unreasonable or stupid to get so hung up on what's "good" or "bad" on paper because, "Oh nooo, lying is baaaaad. We can't do thaaaaat it's wroooong." Which is something I feel like we expect out of characters like him. We see him lie, we see him steal, we see him cheat.

I really think this is a great example of how Aang believes in spreading joy and reducing suffering in the world above all else. Not black and white morality and rules of what a good person is or is not supposed to do.

I feel like shows that have morals to teach often rigidly set their "good" characters (especially characters like Aang) to Never Do Bad Things Ever (which is why Avatar is so good, because it challenges that.)

Lying was the right choice there! It was the smart choice! Aang's job is to keep peace and he made a choice to tell a lie that wouldn't hurt anyone in order to create peace. Between two rival clans! Who have been rivals for a century! And it having such a stupid solution really reflects how stupid the conflict was. It's also a good example on how history can get totally warped until no one knows the truth anymore, but these clans would rather cling to forgotten half-truths and hate each other than seek a solution for a better future.

This episode even lets us see a bit into Katara and Sokka as characters too. Katara sided with the Gan Jin because she believed they were the victims and had the moral high ground. Sokka admits to taking the Zhang’s side, "Because they fed [him]." That's still the show taking time to flesh out these characters for us and deal with a type of conflict they haven't before. We now understand the siblings better as characters!

This episode also gave us more inside into the lengths that people of the world have to go to in order to escape the war. It’s not just this one town or this one group of people. It’s everyone who is feeling the effects of the Fire Nation. We see examples of it over and over and over again and I feel like that is important.

The argument about fun, silly, or side plot episodes being "filler" makes me angry because if those episodes DIDN'T exist, people would complain about the reverse. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people critiquing shows or other media for having too many characters and not taking time to develop them all, for being all action and not taking time to breathe, for not showing us the characters domestic sides or letting them have fun.

Shows deserve to have down time, as do the characters, either literally or from the main plot. It lets us see fun new sides of them, see them dealing with situations we haven't before and in almost all episodes that I see people calling filler, but were written intentionally, we get so much fun character development or insight which is a GOOD THING.

Revisiting the anime thing, let me be clear, I don't think ALL extra episodes or scenes added that weren't in the original iteration is filler. In the Boku No Hero Academia anime, we see a whole pool scene added that wasn't in the manga, along with a scene of Bakugou and Kirishima walking together afterwards (I THINK that wasn’t in the manga, sorry if that’s wrong). These scenes give us just a bit more sense of the class's dynamic outside of school and the growing friendship between Kirishima and Bakugou, which becomes plot relevant later. These kinds of things help better establish the emotional ties between the characters and make it more believable and satisfying when high stakes emotional conflict happens.

In Spy x Family, the anime made a much bigger event out of Anya's school acceptance celebration, a whole episode. Just because they close to drag it out and give it fanfare it didn't get before doesn't mean it's filler. It was just fun! It was just breathing more life into what was there! And that scene gave us an exciting way to see the lengths Loid, Yor, and Franky are willing to go to make Anya happy, (even if Loid frames it as being part of the mission) while giving us the audience a darned good time.

The Owl House production got cut down and basically all the "filler" episodes had to be ditched. Luz pretty much says in the show that we lost out on a beach episode! And we were pissed about that! Everyone would have loved a beach episode! That's what happens when you cut "filler" stuff. We lose out on fun shenanigans and seeing our heroes and how the operate in domestic settings, because people can be very different people in the "battlefield" verses in a home. Or in a dangerous situation verses a fun or safe one. Hunter basically didn't know what to do at first in a safe environment. That's an important thing to learn about characters!

Characters just doing things has meaning. It has use. It has weight. Your story is as much your characters and world as it is your plot. Fleshing out any of those is worth taking the time to do so.

[Aang hate is not welcome on this post]

[pochapal]

So I am a little bit worried that perhaps people in your askbox are letting themselves get a little too incautious.

Like ok. It’s the most minorest of minor things, but: I do not think you should have been told the words “Anti-Mystery vs Anti-Fantasy.” I think that should be classified as a spoiler.

Don’t mistake me as making this bigger than it is, Iim sure that nothing at all will actually end up being effected by this. Really I’m only bringing it up so I have an example to point to. That being said-

It was genuinely impressive that you picked up so early on a part of the story that won’t be explicitly named/discussed till episode 3. But I hope you agree with me here: when you get something right, people should not show up in your askbox to tell you that you did so. “Detective or Romantic’ is something the author calls ‘anti-fantasy/anti-romantic’, it shows up in episode 3” is something would be perfectly fine for you to have learned once you got to episode 3.

So I guess this is a polite request addressed to everybody, which I hope they at least consider: just…..for the purposes of this interacting with the very entertaining liveblog pretend like all parts of Umineko that haven’t been reached yet have not been written and do not exist. Your piece of fandom trivia, author comment, whatever, you will probably end up having more fun sharing it at a point where you don’t have to cut it free from and discuss it in the absence of every bit of its content.

luckily in this case i did clue onto the "anti-mystery/anti-fantasy" framework pretty early on so other than the name itself i don't think i've really spoiled on anything concept-wise that i hadn't already pretty much figured out but i can see how if this is a Core Theme that doesn't get solidified in the text until several episodes from now that throwing that kind of information around does come with a certain amount of risk.

but that said yeah. i get that everyone is having fun but once again keep it in mind that any information shared with me should not reveal anything more than what i've already speculated unless it well and truly has no bearing on the way i approach/will approach certain parts of the story (in this case something like the "ryukishi07 used to be a social worker which is why this story is interested in exploring nuanced abusive family dynamics" trivia is fine but information that specifically has to do with stuff that has either not been confirmed/hasn't happened yet is best to avoid). a good example of how to behave with it is how everyone left me to wrestle with the non-mystery of the missing rose until i reread for myself the truth even though anyone could have easily spoiled the fun by saying "you already have the solution to the rose mystery. check back in chapter 5".

so far i do think everyone interacting with the liveblog has been good outside of that incident a few weeks back where a post broke containment and i had to disable notifications (but that wasn't really anyone's fault). just yeah. try not to get ahead of yourselves in the excitement!

[erikahammerschmidt]

I have said this before, but there is a certain dissonance in a lot of the arguments about how animals with certain disabilities should always be put down to end their misery... that it's cruel to keep them alive.

I'm not talking specifically about the recent story of the two-headed calf. There have been many other examples.

And I am... truly not sure what my own opinion is, on that calf or any other example. 

But part of the reason I find myself unable to commit to an opinion... is that for many years I've seen a certain self-contradiction in the opinions that people do have.

If I find myself thinking: "An animal that will be in pain all its life should be euthanized as soon as possible," I feel an obligation to follow up that thought by asking myself: "Do I want this fully for the sake of the animal's best interests? Not because it would be more convenient for humans?"

And if I answer that yes, my motivation is entirely sympathy for the animal... then I follow it up with the question: "If a human child was in the same condition, destined to be in pain forever, do I think the human child should be euthanized as well?"

and my ethics respond to this with: "No, no-- extending that to human life is a dangerous place to go. If the problem is noticed before birth, then yes, abortion would be understandable and could be considered merciful... but even then I would not call the parents cruel if they chose to continue the pregnancy. And after birth, I would be against killing any child, including one that was going to be disabled and in pain."

And when I find myself giving this answer, I follow it up again, with: "So then, why would you do the same for an animal?"

And if my answer is "because humans are more valuable than animals!" ...then I realize this proves, on some level, that my reason for wanting animal euthanasia cannot really have been mercy.

Because if it really was mercy, if it really was in the animal's best interests... then it should be even more of an imperative when a human, the more valuable creature, is in the same predicament.

So, either I am lying to myself about being in favor of animal euthanasia... or I am lying to myself about being against human child euthanasia... or I am lying to myself about the reason being mercy.

Unless, of course, there is some fundamental difference which makes it merciful for an animal but not merciful for a human.

And what could such a difference be?

Is it because humans can ascribe value to their lives beyond physical comfort-- because there are many people who live with constant pain and still do not want to die? (But the same is probably true of animals. Animals, like humans, will often choose great pain over a high risk of death, even to the point of chewing off a limb when caught in a trap.)

Is it because humans can comprehend what is happening to them, while animals can't? (Is this really true, though, for humans in infancy and childhood? For humans who lack the ability to communicate with their caretakers? And in the cases where it is true-- wouldn't it be even more horrific, to be trapped in that condition and fully aware of what it was?)

Is it just because painkillers for humans are more readily available than painkillers for animals? (This is perhaps the only valid reason I can think of, and makes the mercy-killing of animals feel less like a good thing, more like a tragic act of desperation in a world that allows no actual care for animals' comfort, forcing us to choose their death as the lesser evil.)

I have come to the conclusion that this is one of the ethical questions without a good answer. One of the questions where our opinions are destined never to be fully logical, always somewhat hypocritical. There are many questions like this, because ethics is a convoluted, messy thing. 

And in this particular example, I've resigned myself to answering that question (if necessary, in my own life) on a case-by-case basis, and perhaps never being sure if the choice I made in any case was the "right" one.

And that's why you won't find me posting unsolicited judgements of the way strangers (like the owners of the two-headed calf) chose to handle it.  

Really, that's why I try these days (don't always succeed, but try) to avoid judging the choices of others in general, unless the right and wrong of it is VERY clear to me. 

And even then, I try to put more energy into helping anyone harmed by the choice than condemning the choice itself. Because helping makes the clearest, most positive difference. There are so many times we can't be sure what's the right thing to do, so I have to take the chances when I see them.

[nickgerlich]

Smile For The Camera

In spite of marketers’ best efforts to try to overcome the limitations of the e-commerce platform, the fact remains that for all the ease and convenience of shopping online at home, there are some matters that can only be resolved inside a BAM store. Unless a customer has already performed the task before and is now simply in re-order mode, there’s risk in buying some new things.

Like clothing and other personal products.

Walmart, though, is making significant steps to help resolve some of the time and space gaps. Their efforts are not perfect, and could indeed raise eyebrows, but they are big steps. For example, in September 2022 they expanded virtual try-on in the women’s department. They had bought start-up Zeekit in 2021, and the technology allowed users to upload a photo of themselves. The AI and AR would take it from there, letting shoppers “try on” clothing right there on the screen. I wrote about it at the time, and reaction from my MBAs was mixed.

And now they have partnered with Perfect Corp. to offer AR-powered try-on in the cosmetics department. Users can sample 1400 different products, and this time do not need to upload a selfie. Oh, and it is all designed to work within Walmart’s iOS app. Score one more point for mobile.

Now for people like me who absolutely hate to shop for clothing, virtual try-on would be golden. I’d even be willing to take the risk on the first purchase when it comes to actual fit. Let’s face it, a 34” waist in one brand may be comfy, but in another brand may be either too big or too small.

But I understand Walmart’s inclinations to try this with women first, because—no sexism intended—women tend to be more conscious of these matters. If Walmart can crack this nut, it should be easy peasy to rope in the guys.

I also understand the limitations of even these high tech solutions. Color can vary considerably across phones, tablets, and laptops, by virtue of settings and quality of the device. Nuanced shades in the red family, for example, could come out looking muted or like a fire truck.

Then there’s the issue of privacy. Walmart swears that no user data (including images) will be saved from the cosmetics try-on. But for its clothing service, it does depend on just that. Would you want to share a photo of yourself with Walmart—or anyone, for that matter—just for the sake of seeing how you might look in that new dress?

Walmart is also considering how to use the clothing try-on inside its stores, with sophisticated mirrors that have cameras built in. Stand in front of the mirror, and then tell the machine what to do next. If trying on clothes is not your jam, this could save tons of time.

Back to the cosmetics, I see this greatly enhancing sales. Walmart may not be every woman’s first choice for beauty products, but this could pierce that veil. I have to laugh every time I enter a Dillards or similar department store, and find myself having to cut a trail through a cosmetics department that is at least a couple hundred linear feet long. Female clerks in lab coats await customers, and they give them personal applications. It’s great theatre, because it has the look and feel of science going on.

Which then raises another question. Do women crave that 1-on-1 interaction for something so uniquely personal as one’s choice of beauty products? Speaking for myself and not all men, that would send alarm bells and flashing lights into action. No way, no how. Alas, we are not all the same.

I realize there are some for whom purchase of these types of products necessitates a visit to stores. I also realize that the majority of the reluctant ones are probably closer in age to me than they are my students. When you have done something a certain way for decades, it can be hard to learn and adopt new methods.

I bet my tech-savvy daughters would be all over the cosmetics try-on. Instead of the usual Ulta gift card I put in their Christmas stocking, I could just as easily do it for Walmart and let them get on their phones. Because they are young, they are not as likely to be stuck in their ways.

There’s no future in getting old, and let’s face it, my generation’s major consuming days are behind us. Subtract 40 years, and you have legions of young shoppers open to new ideas. Walmart is genius for seeing this future.And that, my friends, is always something I am willing to try on.

Dr “Wearing Shades” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[builder051]

I'll take Sherlock and Glee for the asks game if you please.

Sherlock (2010s starring Benedict Cumberbatch)--100% of brain lights up in complete delight... until it all starts to go downhill

Firstly, as you all know, I am on the autism spectrum, and so is one of my biological parents. That is NOT an excuse for improper social behavior, but giving you the background information about possibly how and why happens (or happens to such an extent) could lend some context.

I love to create. Any kind of content. Writing, drawing, painting, photo editing, sewing, setting margins for business letters... the list could go on. It makes me so happy to take on a project that feels fun and feasible. Something I learned when I was young was, basically, if you don't have it, you don't necessarily have to buy it. Look at your materials, or at cheaper materials, and create what you want exactly the way you want it (like, if the beaded princess crown at the Busch Gardens gift shop is, in fact, too big for your head, we can hit up Walmart and get wire and beads and make a crown that fits you, in any color you want).

I've carried that attitude through most of my life. Like, nice-fitting jeans from Goodwill-- I can hem them, the length doesn't matter.

That's actually given me a lot of confidence in my abilities, and it brings out ingenuity with problem solving, especially when it's crunch time (like, signed paper needs to be delivered to the customer--whose office is in Montana--before a certain deadline in not-my-timezone? No prob. Run to my boss's office, hand him a pen, run to the fax machine, run to the phone, let the Montana contact know the doc has been sent, and bam. (Sure, the expectation may be for an engineering review, and the expected delivery method may be SharePoint link, but a signature from the maximum authority and the convenience of instant delivery? No one can complain about that.)

Things start to go south, though, when my efforts (which I consider to be "good energy," if that makes sense) don't wind up doing what I want them to do, or things turn out to be much more difficult than expected. For example, when using black paper and a white marker for a drawing, it will become clear, when one tests the quality of several white markers on a scrap paper, that some are better quality, or better suited to the tasks, than others.

But say I started with the Crayola iridescent paint marker (nice tool for outline/contrast, but not a great choice for linework or edges), and my drawing is not showing up. I must choose, then, to

1) scrap my drawing (and maybe do it again with something like a matte brush tip)

2) go over my drawing again (and again) with the Crayola in hopes of improving what I already have (though with equal probability of ruining it), or

3) become a frustrated mess of hopelessly selfish human and hide under my desk with all the dinosaurs and paper clay and other odds and ends I use for art with my kids.

More often than not, it's choice #3. I don't exactly know how to, like, have frustration for a thing, and, while still acknowledging it as important and real and meaningful (enough so that I still have desire to make the thing and make it in my own correct way), put it away in my brain's side pocket and move to perform different tasks. I tend to try and try and try to bulldoze my way through, risking breaking my supplies (because I so hate leaving projects unfinished, or with the current step/chapter unfinished), or I become sad and feel negatively about myself and my skills and the fact that I will have to put everything away in order to take a break (kids and cats, lol), then get it all out again for my next try.

Glee--cute and quirky, and then it was cutting edge, and then it was the BEST, and then it started tilting the other direction, and it ultimately fell on its own sword and became the absolute WORST

A lot of things, mostly books and classic television programs, that have been considered from, broadly, 1950 to 2020, as "things we will pass down to our grandchildren," including, but not limited to, the following:

Harry Potter-- and that's sad. That's a travesty. Some aged wine grows more precious over time. Some just goes off.

Dr. Seuss--Because he had an actual career, and writing nonsense books was only part of it. I respect that particular treasury. But he was a guy. With a life. And, in comparison, like, even if Bohemian Rhapsody is a glory film, it doesn't erase the bad choices that still stand, unchangeable, in their influence on modern history.

Mr. Rogers (ok, he helps kids learn to tie their shoes... but, I kid you not, one skit in the world of make believe had a puppet who identifies as a woman, performing in a (very fictional) talent show, during which she was dressed up as, and pretending to be, a kitten, who was singing (horrendously) an original song, in which the lyrics begged the Moon (cognizant, apparently, and generous) to give her a star as a birthday present. What the everloving fuck, here? Not to yuk anyone's yum, but... a grown man, who has created an OC 'verse for children (his main consumers) and those who watch with them. I'm seeing... possible ageplay x furry x accompanist? what accompanist? x personification of balls of rock x obvious greed and pestering as a method to be rewarded x light references to Wicca and Paganism (I don't care, but some people might. Could bring on some leading questions from the littles, too.

Magical family recipes that are actually on the back of a can of condensed soup

BMI (used as an indicator of health--Have you ever seen a male ballet dancer? Yeah, like, in jeans on the bus he just looks like a dude. In tights and a tank, he looks like Secretariat. Depending on his height, he probably weighs something like, 1.5x the expected--visually based--BMI. Put him in high-healthy, verging on overweight. He probably eats 3,000+ calories of healthy food on the daily, and regular deadlifts, eh, 100 to 130ish pound partners? See? V healthy. Chart means nothing.)

Binarily- segregated restrooms (Ok, have you seen a toilet stall in Iceland? They're mostly non-gendered, at least in big public places, like the airport. The regular stalls--usually, like, 20 of them in a row, with a couple of handicapped/accessible/baby-changing stalls on the end-- contain one regular toilet. The door and walls go from 1cm above the floor to 1cm below the ceiling. All have sliding locks that operate only from the inside, and outside hardware is barely visible; it's just the flat (no screwdriver marks) heads of the screws that brace the locks to the doors. Then there are sinks. That pour out water. And pumps. For soap. And paper towels. The entire population has a grip on what purpose bathrooms serve, as well as what people do in bathrooms, and the differentiation of both private and public spaces in order to meet most efficiently serve the population.)

Frosted Flakes is (are) the sugary sweet part(s) of a complete breakfast. (!) Conjugate that, Tony Tiger. and WTF is a "complete breakfast?"

Math problems about trains. Nobody cares about crossing paths anymore. It's all arrival time, landing time, time zone, jet lag, how late to your meeting you can be before it's considered rude (and how disheveled are you allowed to look before high fashion hits slobbiness)?

Filler foods, which is a ridiculous American ploy to short farmers and natural food producers by making those goods more expensive and then creating a "store generic brand" version of the same product that's cheaper. Yay, save 20 cents! But that packet of breakfast sausages you just put in your cart is made of mostly soy and meat... leftovers. The brand that's beside it, that has the "naturally raised" sticker on it, that one's made of humanely farmed meat and probably a few salts, spices, and safe preservatives."Far East" instant couscous? Made in America, it's heavily mixed with condensed powdered dairy and soy filler. Kosher couscous pearls, you know, from that tiny aisle with grape jelly and yummy crackers? One ingredient. One! Whole wheat. You do not need a chemistry lab to make couscous.

Why am I so passionately angry about this? I'm allergic to dairy, soy, cashews, and oats. The ONLY milk I can drink is almond. When I eat bites of oral food (usually for social fun), I have to ask for every last ingredient to make sure I will not cause myself to have an allergic reaction, which is different from a gastroparesis flare up, which need to be medically treated differently, lest further damage be caused by overtreatment or symptoms left to stew and spread. My big kid and I are also touch-sensitive to oats, so, in addition to not tolerating whole-grain bread, we cannot use many lotions and shampoos (marketed for sensitive skin, lol) because they contain colloidal oats. There are even exam gloves on the market, meant to help nurses with dry skin, which I do understand is a problem, that contain colloidal oat powder (inside) and have a regular silicone outside. There is too high a risk for touch-transfer, though, and we frequently have to ask and remind practitioners to NOT use the oat-poisoned gloves.

ADDITIONALLY, there are something like 3 or 4 types of formula in existence for sustaining us tubies that don't contain at least one of the major allergens (usually dairy or soy). Of those few, at least one has CORN SYRUP as its primary ingredient. Ok, yeah, fortify the tubies and give them easily accessible carbs to keep them running. But, um, nutrition? Like, the absolute and awful, yet hilarious, truth that pirates (yes, of the caribbean) were healthier than individuals of European military forces traveling by sea, because the pirates ate a more balanced diet--fruit, bread, alcohol (aka sanitary hydration), and the redcoats died of things like scurvy because nobody thought to bring a lemon wedge to go with their hardtack and tea... People don't subsist on corn syrup. They can't exercise. They can't gain lung capacity, the ability to walk long distances, the critical thinking to problem solve and maintain self-care and do work. There is ONE type of tubie formula our family depends on (well, 2, because there's grown-up and pediatric) on the market that is allergen-free, pea protein based, contains natural minerals, and mixes with water and other dissolvable powdered supplements. We're immensely blessed to have it. We have to bring our own if anyone's in the hospital, since it's "rare." But OMG, the stuff has saved my life.

Forgive the ranting. I like to explain myself.A lot.

[beauty-and-passion]

Time to talk about the flower shirt

You read the title. Time to talk about this.

This is the infamous flower shirt Thomas put on in his store and, since the fandom is the fandom, everyone started to speculate about those flowers.

At first, I didn’t want to do it. They’re just flowers and other people already talked about them, so what could I possibly add to the conversation?

But while I was writing about Orange, I had to talk a moment about the orange flower. It was supposed to be a small parenthesis, just a couple of words about that.

But then I looked at the other flowers and what other people told/not told about them and how some didn’t find Patton’s flower... so here I am, adding my two cents to this theme.

You needed it? Probably not. Well, I’m writing it anyway.

So let’s take a closer look at those flowers and see each one in detail:

__________________________________

Roman: Red rose

Should I really explain why it’s perfect for Roman? Red roses are the universal symbol of love. Basically in all cultures red roses symbolize passion, true love, romance and desire. Also, according to this website, even the shade has a meaning! In fact, the deeper the red shade is, the stronger is the passion.

And even the number of red roses has a meaning! In this case, we have only one single red rose and that "represents love at first sight, or if it’s coming from a long-term partner, they are saying “you are still the one”.”

You know what that made me think? About Thomas telling Roman “You’re my hero”. A perfect symbol that he was “still the one” for Thomas.

__________________________________

Orange: Lantana camara

This is an incredibly peculiar flower.

Lantana Camara symbolizes severity and rigour. And this alone can be analyzed in all possible ways, but there are other interesting details about this plant I think it's worth mentioning.

Lantana is toxic for livestock, such as cattle, sheep, horses, dogs and goats. According to Wikipedia, previous studies suggested it could be toxic for humans too, especially the green unripe berries. However "other studies have found evidence which suggests that its fruit poses no risk to humans".

Lantana is a freaking invasive plant. In some areas, it's so predominant, to reduce biodiversity, because its presence "can significantly slow down the regeneration of forests, by preventing the growth of new trees". Also, as if this isn't enough, this plant can also produce toxic chemicals which inhibit other plant species.

Lantana has also a great adaptability, that helped it to be so invasive: it can live in a wide range of different environmental conditions, it can survive long periods without water, heck it's even resistant to fire. It's not a plant you can underestimate. Like Orange, I assume.

But Lantana isn't just an invasive plant. Lantana has always been used for medical purposes, because it showed good antimicrobial, fungicidal and insecticidal properties and its extract helps against respiratory infections and ulcers.

Also, since it doesn't have many pests or diseases, lantana became a common ornamental plant. It even attracts butterflies!

In other words: isn't that the perfect plant to symbolize the double nature of a dark side? It can be a threat, change the environment, destroy and even kill. But it can also be a medicine, something useful, something beautiful.

Whoever Orange is, Lantana camara tells us that, whithout a doubt, he’s a dark side.

__________________________________

Janus: Sunflower

Do you think Janus isn't perfect enough as he is? Do you think there's not enough husband material in the snek?

Well, you’re wrong and the sunflower is here to prove it.

Sunflower symbolizes loyalty, adoration, longevity, vitality, worship. Now add this up to the sunflower’s behaviour and how it follows the sun... and you’ll get Janus. Janus literally acts like a sunflower: Thomas is his sun and everything Janus does is for him. His whole existence is centered around Thomas.

But we already knew that, because it's the same message that shone through his playlist. Everything about Janus tells us how much he adores Thomas, from his canonical behavior in the series, to his playlist, to this flower.

Oh, do you need another proof that this is flower is perfect for Janus? Some societies use sunflowers as religious symbols. Ah, some good ol' reference to religion: it’s like being in his playlist all over again.

And, of course, sunflowers are used for a variety of reasons, like cooking oils, skin care and so on. Even the flower says self care.

This man is perfect.

__________________________________

Remus: Green chrysanthemum

Here's another interesting flower.

Chrysanthemum symbolizes death and it’s the typical flower used for funerals. And I thought this was its universal meaning. It was perfect for Remus just like that.

But then I found out that Europeans use chrysanthemums for funerals and to honor the dead. This flower actually has a whole lot of meanings, some completely different from this.

In China, for example, chrysanthemums are associated with wealth, prosperity and long life. Also they're symbols of new life and reincarnations, so they're the perfect gift for old people or newborns.

While in Japan chrysanthemums are symbols of power and royalty. And that's even more fitting for Remus, because he's a Duke, so he is royalty.

But chrysanthemum also symbolizes friendship - and not just "a friendship", but a meaningful one. It's a symbol of loyalty, devotion, romantic/platonic love and, in general, positive energy. It's a flower with an incredibly strong meaning, so it can't be given too lightly.

And this makes it even more perfect for Remus. It's a flower with a huge plurality of meanings, it's both associated with life and death, it's powerful and it's royalty.

Also, you can eat it. Isn't that the perfect Remus flower?

(On a side note: please notice how chrysanthemums and sunflowers are both associated with joy, loyalty and devotion. I would have never considered "joy" a common trait between Janus and Remus while loyalty and devotion... well, they both care about Thomas and his career and they both work for him despite not being accepted, so I can see why those are common traits.)

__________________________________

Patton: Nemophila

Surprise surprise, this flower wasn't easy to find. I’ve never heard of it, so I had to search among endless lists of blue flowers, hoping to find one that would perfectly match the one on the shirt.

And that’s how I found nemophila.

First of all: nemophila is also known as "Baby Blue Eyes" and it's an extremely rare color to find in nature. It’s very famous in Japan, thanks to the Hitachi Seaside Park. Open this link: it’s a literal sea of blue and it’s absolutely gorgeous. Of course, it attracts people every year.

Nemophila represents prosperity, congratulations on success and victory. Not the first things you would associate with Patton, right?

Well, while I was searching more informations about this flower, I found out this website about the essence of Baby Blue Eyes and the passage I quoted down below has the exact same words you can find on that link:

With its pronounced affinity for water, the Baby Blue Eyes flower essences addresses qualities of tender sensitivity, innocence and trust associated one’s early childhood relationship to the father, or other significant masculine figures that are in some way disturbed.

Very often the father was absent, or there was a lack of support or genuine presence. The Baby Blue Eyes type attempts over time to cover this wound of vulnerability with a false “hardening,” such as emotional distancing, mistrust, cynicism or spiritual alienation. It is a flower that can be equally helpful for men or women, although it is especially needed for many men who struggle to become strong, by disowning their pain.

So nemophilia’s essence has qualities associated with childhood, to the father figure and attempts to “repress” and hide emotions.

That’s Patton. That’s him, period. The childhood-related emotions, that are linked to Patton’s longing for “a simpler time”. The mentions of a father figure - who migh be absent or showing lack of support (like, idk, suggesting you should die so your friends live?). And the attempt to “cover the vulnerability” doesn’t remind you anything? Like the Nostalgia episodes?

This flower is Patton.

__________________________________

Logan: Blue petunia

I would like to say, from the bottom of my heart, a huge "FUCK YOU" to this flower, because I spent TWO DAYS searching all the blue flowers in the world and all possible variants, asking myself why this goddamn flower looked so familiar and why it was so hard to find. Blue isn't even a common color in nature, so why couldn't I find it?

I've learned more about blue flowers in these two days than in my entire life. I've searched among flowers I never saw before, like glandora diffusa, leschenaultia and omphalodes verna. I was so desperate to consider this flower a new species, with the petals of a bellflower and the corolla of a morning glory. I even found a goddamn chinese variant of the morning glory that was somehow similar but not that much and why, WHY this was so hard to find?!

And then, after two days and a lot more desperation, I remembered: my dear friend @reptilianwithscallions​ told me about a post they made, regarding this shirt and the flowers. Maybe they had some idea about Logan's flower?

Well, let's all thank my saviour and this post, because otherwise I would've kept searching until the end of my days.

Long story short, Logan's flower is a fucking blue petunia.

And it's a very peculiar choice, because petunias have multiple meanings, several of which can be contradictory.

In general, petunia symbolizes anger and resentment. It reminds someone that you're still angry or disappointed by their actions and you haven’t gotten over the things that caused these feelings.

Oh my, I didn't know we were back in Logan's playlist. It's basically what he kept expressing towards Thomas with his songs: that he was angry at Thomas for his decision, that he doesn't approve that Thomas hasn't "a real job" and so on. Petunia is a flower that screams passive-aggressive, so it's perfect for Logan.

But petunia's meaning deeply changes, depending on the color of the flower. And while petunia in general symbolizes anger, a blue petunia is a symbol of peacefulness, intimacy and deep trust, shared between two or more people. It's so wholesome, because the deep trust reminds me - again - of Logan's playlist and how it ended: no matter what, he and Thomas are always best friends.

Also, petunia flowers have even a secret meaning behind. Since they’re also gifted to new neighbors or to people who have just moved into a new home, they represent a perfect welcome and a way to express affection and kindness to others.

You’re lucky to be so wholesome, you tricky flower.

__________________________________

Virgil: Perennial Geranium

Geranium is a confused flower.

Some of the other flowers have conflicted meanings, but not as much as this flower. These are the most common meanings I found:

Folly or Stupidity

Gentility and kind nature

Clever minds

Ingenuity

Melancholy

Perfect gift for a bride

You can gift it to someone with whom you have planned a meeting 

You can gift it to someone with whom you haven't planned a meeting, just to make them feel welcomed

True Friendship

See? It’s confused.

Aside from jokes, this variety of meanings is due to its great diffusion: since geraniums grow everywhere, every culture gave them a different meaning. And sometimes these meanings depend on the situation too.

Awww, isn't it perfect for Virgil? He can be good and bad at the same time. Anxiety can be bad for Thomas and detrimental for his life, but it can also be the alarm Thomas needs. It depends on the situation.

And, just like geraniums in general symbolize positive emotions, happiness and friendship, so Virgil is in general a good guy. All he does is for Thomas' wellbeing, not against him.

And this is confirmed by the vast use of geranium's essential oil. It's one of the most popular and it has a ton of properties: anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-depressant, decongestant, relaxing and so on. Just like our Virge boy can be incredibly useful under the right circumstances. (Did someone say "Flirting with social Anxiety"?)

Also, geraniums are simple, humble flowers that usually grow outside, but then we take them and make them part of our homes. Once again, it’s Virgil: he's an outsider, he's humble, he talks bad about himself - but Thomas and the others took him and made him part of the famILY anyway.

__________________________________

Thomas: Cherry blossom

I searched this flower everywhere and the only one that looks like the one on the shirt is the cherry blossom. Why did Thomas make a cherry blossom with eight petals, when they all have five? I have no idea. Is this a different flower, maybe? Maybe, but I’m done: I've looked at enough flowers and I don’t have any strength left.

As you probably already know, cherry blossoms are extremely important in Japan. They're beautiful, they're everywhere and they're meaningful.

Why? Because cherry blossoms are considered the perfect metaphor for human existence. When they blossom it's a pink ocean, a party, people go to admire them - but they’re short lived, because in two weeks, the blossoms start to fall. It's just like human life: a small, rich, glorious parenthesis in the void. Something little and precious that ends soon.

But cherry blossoms also symbolize rebirth, optimism, hopes and dreams. When they bloom, it means springtime is coming and spring has always been associated with renewal.

That’s a very good choice for character Thomas. He’s basically a cherry blossom, the whole series is: something that reminds us how beautiful life is, how multi-faceted, how important. Just like Thomas' single being encompasses seven different sides of himself, so life presents a wide range of choices, of aspects, of flavours. All beautiful, all worthy of appreciation, no matter how different they can be from you and your experience.

And this becomes even more important, in relation to the passage of time and the transience of life. Because life is short and, after that, there won't be any more time to appreciate anything.

In addition to that, I would like to point out how the theme of passage of time is something we already saw in the series. And not just one time, but several. Since the first season, we have episodes all around the concept of growing up, growing old, not being a child anymore, becoming an adult. And the last Aside keeps going in this direction. It's clear this is a big theme and its connection with the cherry blossoms proves it.

But why is the flower so different on the shirt? Because Thomas wanted to mess up with us? Probably. Almost certainly. Once again, thank you Mr. Sanders for making me question everything.

The floor is (figuratively) yours now: if you have any other information, thoughts or opinions, feel free to share them.

_______________________________

TAGLIST:

@willpowerwisps @royalprinceroman @reesiereads @mudpuddlenl @shelby-711 @allmycrushesaredead @aquatedia @sweetkirbi @whatishappeningrightnow  @effortiswhatmatters  @atlasistryingherbest @bella-in-a-bag  @doydoune  @miasheer  @forever-third-wheeling @mishanthropist  @corndot @payte @mcang3l  @geekyapollokid  @kawaiipotatuh  @hypnossanders  @idontreallyknow24  @imcrushedbyarainbow  @simplyapannightmare  @patton-cake

@riseofthewerewolf @frog-candy-bee @bosspotato01  @rosesandlove44 @methaley @sololad  @firey-alex  @sashootkahoot​ @chewy-rubies @groaaaaan  @croftergamer​ @misty-the-girlflux-mess​  @thedevilseyes​  @arya-skywalker​  @csi-baker-street-babes​ @queen-of-all-things-snuggly

@virgildarknessdementiaravenway​ @mishanthropist​  @dracayd-universe​  @unknown-artworks​   @lonelyfangirl453​  @starlightnyx​ @alienvamp-hesitantflowerface​ @stubbornness-and-spite​  @alittletoo-extra​ @averykedavra  @iloveeverytjing123 @bookedforevermore @joyrose-fandomer @anachronismes @the-cloud-14  @mihaela-tbg @igonnatalknothing

@thatoneloudowl​  @grayson-22​  @softangryfuckingdepressed​ @theotherella​  @boopypasta​ @nevenastark​ @varthandi @floofyconfusednerd @nothing-worth-mentioning @mikalya12 @roses-bubbles @cuter-on-the-inside  @coldbookworm  @orchidstanslogan  @snixxxsmythe  @frog-candy-bee  @holleratyour-buoyancy @alexowlndra  @fadingbagelbananapatrol  @our-bloody-mari666  @cxsmospooks @we-need-more-empathy  @riverraysong

[starshipsofstarlord]

𝑅𝑂𝑃𝐸𝑆 𝑂𝐹 𝑆𝑇𝐴𝑅𝐷𝑈𝑆𝑇

Summary: Kaz had faced two of his fears - almost watching you die and going against his touch aversion. And now he has to deal with the consequences that not only burden him, but also yourself

Pairing: Kaz Brekker x reader

Warnings: mentions of death, mentions of violence, touch aversion,

Word Count: 3255

Masterlist Link

The night, it’s integrity toiled with you, as you say at the camp, with Inej planning on abandoning you all, and Jesper missing that bleating goat. It made you wonder of what direction that you should pursue going in, as you ogled up at the glittered sky, the sequinned stars glinting mischievously back at you. You were nothing other than a speck in the world, as they were in the laminated skyline, the Saints and dark generals were the ones that whisked you down such demeaning paths. The crows were to scurry from their brash threats and existences, the journey of catching the sun summoner had been all for nought.

Not a kruge had been earned in your name, the small bump of adventure had inevitably ended up as being a waste of both resources and time. And now the task of returning through the dreary and life threatening fold lay at your feet; such a plain that was created from pure evil was nerve wrecking. You’d never be considered as one of the goods that served the gods, but you were nowhere close to the Darkling’s maleficence. Had he not only taken hostage of a symbol to all geisha, but your veins were adeptly black, and the toxic venom was spreading with each hour that sourly passed. None of your fellow murder knew of the state that was combusting you; you had saved Kaz, with no regrets of doing so. That dagger had landed in Aleksander’s shoulder, and he had spread his shadowing cloud over to you, tormenting you with the image of complete destruction.

You were lucky to have escaped from his entrapment, Kaz had saved you, whisking your from the overbearing plough of suffering, even grabbing you with his glove covered hands, pressuring himself to do such an act to keep you alive. Though, you didn’t know how much longer you would remain so, and that was why you were gazing up at the constellations; hoping that you’d end up in their blazing glorification. Perhaps you’d survive, nothing was known of your current condition. Or you’d be cursed, turned grisha or something significantly worse. One thing that you’d learned on this gruelling mission was that anything was possible, even Kaz had made a step in his discomfort to rescue you, hauling you away from your inevitable doom by the arm, and stepping into the shrouding darkness. If it had not been for him, then you’d surely have composed into a defiled corpse, ripped apart by the darkness that Aleksander exhibited, and had enhanced through ancient looms that had been integrated onto absorbable parchment.

“I see that you’re less tense; does this mean that you are no longer mad at me?” His voice rang in your ears, prompting you to grind your teeth together as though you were mashing up crystals of salt. Eternally, you were grateful for the risk he had taken to ensure that you would not meet whichever saint you believed in once you travelled through the ropes of pitch and certain demise. You refused to give him the source of satisfaction of giving him your undivided attention; most feared him enough to comply and give him all the attentiveness he demanded as he struck his cane upon a surface, however, unlike those commoners, there was nothing about Kaz Brekker that struck fear in you. He were merely a man, whilst albeit had done some unforgivable things, had suffered same as everyone else, but terribly more so. “I’ll take your silence as a no then, should I?”

In turn, you crossed the folding origami of your arms over the expanse of your chest, and continued to ogle your pupils up towards the passageway of luminescence that hung like a chain in the velvet sky, causing Dirty Hands himself as he had been known, to release a heartfelt huff of frustration. It had taken quite the toll on him to oppose his own serious paranoia, and yet here you were, ignoring him after the cold events. Gulping, you couldn’t help but have annoyance seed in you as he continued to hover his presence beside you, he was using the tactic on purpose, full well knowing that it would eventually have you splintering until you cracked. You’d always had a soft spot for Kaz since the day you had met him; he was so brutally concurred with the ways of making a victim squeal like a sow giving birth, yet there continued to be an innocence within him, of which he hid from most. It was quite the contrast, as were his child like eyes that bore into you like his wish was to make you frail from poised embarrassment until you disappeared into a fine speck on the shoulder of his coat.

That was an irrational thought though, Kaz Brekker simply wanted to know, and not for the first time, why you disposed of reciprocated speech, and chose to pretend to be deaf to his consolation that he was attempting to reprimand with you. “Because if you remain to be angered with me saving your life, then, I would like to know. I’m not going to scoundrel around your presence all evening, we’re going to have to start moving sooner rather than later if we ever hope to get upon the route that I have planned. As useful as your combat is, and irreplaceable as I may think you are at times, I will allow you to go on your own path as you wish. You aren’t the only one that wants to part from the crows; Inej also has intentions to. If this is also because of the sun summoner, then they are freely your beliefs, though I certainly think you have the strength to strive towards something controversially more.” Inej leaving - that was news to you, and thus you finally surrendered, turning to him with spite written upon features, and commenced in supervising his lean form with integral eyes.

“To where do you have plans to go Kaz?” In turn, the volume of your sound increased, as you marked him as your target of choice. “And you’re right, I am pissed that you decided to save me rather than prioritising your own life; if anything were to happen to you, I’m not sure how I’d handle it. I have an inkling of a feeling that I wouldn’t even be able to. That’s because if you weren’t here I’d probably go crazy and envelop myself in a spiralling madness of which I’d be averted onto a path of nothingness. You are the one that has gifted me with a purpose, and time and time again you continue to preserve my life and I’m not sure I can cope with that. Just knowing that you are willing to throw yourself in the eye of danger to ensure that I do not meet my eventual end that is coming anyway. And worst of all, you faced off against that no good, dirty grisha, murderous General. Do you have any idea of what he would have done to you if he were to explicitly, and cruelly as are his routines, contort your body into the whim of his Darkling abilities.”

“I have an idea or two.” He admitted, toying with the fingers of his gloves, relieved to not see what lay beneath the leather. He stared at you in the face, feeling sickened from the sight of the creases that promoted your frown that was directed thoroughly towards him. It wasn’t a good feeling to be on the other end of your diverging glare, it was making him conflicted with the perishing of his emotions. A part of him was laughing inside that he was intimidated by someone, a woman no less, the other was rather impressed with your ample stubbornness. Now that was one thing that the two of you had in common; you both stood like stone, shadowing behind your beliefs or there lack of, as though Medusa had fixed the pair of you with her grey glazed glare, and forced you to be the way that you were. “And it was in fact you who decided to save my life first, I was merely returning the favour.” He now took it as his shift to allow his eyes to travel up into the beyond, the highlights that flawed his irises being triggered by the ambience that strobed in the frustrated sky, that was getting more antsy by each second that passed.

“I saved your life because I care about you, not because I value your skills and require them. That is a vast difference that separated us from being merely a single detail in a rope of stars. We’re separate in thought, and consolably close in real time and space, that fate has chosen us to be. We were both close to death in that second, he could have tarnished us both if that were his main priority, and we should be thankful that he realised that we were not lying when the admittance of not knowing of Alina Starkoff’s whereabouts fell off our tongues like misconducted liquor.” Your voice cracked, thinking about Kaz dead was the last thing that you wanted to obscure your mind, however it was the only thing that was roaming around the space like a moth darting around in a light fixture, having fallen captive to its own instinctive nature to fly too close to the example of fire. “Never, and I mean this Kaz, step in the path of death that narrows in my sights; I’d rather it be me than you of whom takes a fall into such a never ending abyss. You’re the face of this operation, and I am merely a killer that you decided to take under your wing whence times got too tough for either of us to cope alone.”

“I am not bound to make any promises, especially when you speak of accepting death so gracefully. And to answer your prior question, we are returning to Ketterdam, and I- i um-“ he fidgeted, his jaw contained to clench and release in a rhythm as he attempted to get the words out. “I need you to come with me on this, trust me, I have a plan, one that does not involve you dying. There will be no funerals that parallel this task ahead of us, if anything happens, you are my priority.” The heart felt ropes of words interlocked, much like the passage of beaming stars that made a blanket in the material of the sky; they shon stirringly in the abyss of the above, daring to deter you as its source of focus, causing you to freeze up as Kaz spoke his difficult to say words. “And when we get the one million kruge, that is when I will allow you to go out on your own, then you will have the expenses to protect yourself, and disappear if we cannot manage to end this eternal wrath that the grisha and hierarchy establish through the existence of the fold, they turn the tides of where whomever can go, and if they are gone, you shall have the freedom to venture to the place that your heart most desires, you’d no longer have to be trapped by my side similarly to my cane.”

“Everything that you are saying is tipping my head upside down; that I out of everyone, am your priority and that you are to set me free like a bird that has been trapped in a cage? Perhaps, this is a situation that it seems not you have enquired to think of, but I do not want to leave your side, even if I can. If I so much as wanted to, I’d have taken the chance to wrangle free in the midst of the journey from Ketterdam to these exasperating lands that want us to be persecuted for this job that we have taken underneath our midnight wings, though if you hadn’t noticed, I remain here. And whilst I wouldn’t have been peripherally if you weren’t to have saved me from my possible annihilation, I still have no intentions of abandoning you in any way, although that resolutes from you openly willing to take the risk of your own life in order to preserve my own. Never, and I compensate that with defiance, do that again.” You swiped your finger towards him, watching as the crease between his brows stiffened and grew deeper like a crescent that exhibited itself in the lawns of time, he poised his head back at your jurisdiction, clearly offended by your selfless demand.

“I cannot make that promise, there are little to no things that I have connective nurturing for; money and wealth stomp on nearly anything, but to me your life is priceless, even if your opinions do not retrograde the same reflection of worth.” His palm was shaky beneath its armour of leather as he went to reach for your hand, it took him a minute or so until he paid the dues of contact, but he faced his greatest fear, and denied avoiding contact. The prospect of Kaz touching anyone, let alone it being you, stirred a strange sensation through your body, as though you were being electrocuted via a storm, more specifically, a bolt of lightning that shot down from the angry clouds, shooting adrenaline and a high pulse through every limb of your form. “Do not mistake me for not having care towards Inej and Jesper, but without you I’d lose the path of succeeding through all my personal struggles, because you are the one thing that reminds me to continue to fight all of the harms in the world that wish to prosecute us, as though we are rodents that climb out from the sewers and run through the streets, poisoning them. There is a strong suit that wraps around me, stubbornly suffocating my interests, so that I have an avoidance of ever allowing anything to proceed to happen to you - get that through that steel skull of yours, you are smart and strong and my number one mine of gold for me to protect.”

“Kaz…” it felt like a forbidden sentence slipping off your tongue, simply by saying his name. You gave his hand a squeeze, noticing how he stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed a second later, getting used to the notion of silent amorist exchange; his blue eyes scalped every inch of your face, staring at the skin that compressed against your bone structure, the twinkle of the stars illuminating each distinctive feature that condoned your image. “I don’t know what I should say it’s - it is like we have been risking everything for nothing. And I am no gold mine, I cannot get us all that kruge, and I sure as hell can’t beat against the most powerful grisha known to man. I may be strong, but I am not strong enough. I may be smart, but certainly not smart enough. Overall, to everyone I am missing something, and it makes me wonder what else you see in me rather than an opportunist that can bring men to their knees in a second by sweeping beneath them, ready to swipe anything of value that they carry within the income of their pockets.” Drifting on their own accord, your eyes diverted once more to gaze up into the magnificent scenery that stroke above; each star was different within its placement, as well as how much it glowed under the pressure of insistent staring. It was as truly beautiful sight, and as you accorded your eyes to focus on the chord of light, Kaz’s eyes remained tuned upon your perseverance.

“The fact is you could bring any man, including myself,“ he gulped for a moment, feeling just how cheesy his words were as they spewed out, before he continued. Each word he spoke with giving you a new light that you saw Kaz under, he was not just a ruthless killer that likened to getting his hands dirty on a job, he was human like everyone else, many people seemed to forget that. But he had never appeared more humane as he did in the second with you, his hand clasped foreignly in the clasp of your own, and his eyes void of all intent, they were pure and for a second juridical with the haven of content. He wasn’t envisioning good, he was allowing himself to see what was right in front of him. “To their knees.” He finished his sentence, only to go on and elongate the mercenary like talk that he often had a problem with discussing. Though now could be the last moments that he could open up in such a way; it was uncertain how the turn of planned events would turn out, sailing through the fold was a danger all in itself, a toiling threat that was pushing you all forwards with a stern hand on each of your backs. “And you don’t even have to lift a finger to do so, every emotion you make me emit makes me possess a vigil weakness that I try to keep hidden, but in order to get the last of my strength through it, I acquire to get this off my chest before we venture to our next route. I care deeply for you, when I’m around you it feels like I am beneath water, the liquid gurgling in my lungs like sickening liquor. I have never felt this way, not have I ever had a desire to be monitored by these virtual sources, but they’re here, as are we.”

Taking a sturdy breath, you raised Kaz’s gloved hand and aligned it with your lips, gently pressing a kiss to the material that separated your skin. “You will not lose me Brekker, I’m not going anywhere. We’ve gotten this far, and that’s impressive all on its own. The trip back to Ketterdam cannot be as difficult as our journey here, we endured betrayal from that oaf that helped us cross the border, we got in and out of the Little Palace unscathed, and escaped the General on another account. I’d say that’s quite impressive, and behind every ploy you have been the grand mastermind. So let’s go home, and we can pick this up from there. ‘Tis a shame though, the stars don’t quite shine as bright back there, but we’ll have each other, and that is enough to brighten and guide me through the nights.” His lips stretched at the sides, depositing an appearance of relived thought. There had merely not been much of a fight between you on the situation, if he were to have pried any further about your safety he was sure there’d have been, but things had settled before they reached that stage. The primary battle though was to be against one of the most powerful grisha to walk the earth, of whom was keeping the Sun Summoner hostage. But as you had supposed, things would work themselves out. “I’m going to check on Inej, I won’t be a second.” He remembered the smile on your face as you trekked off, it was a notion to which he analysed that you were one of the few people who were kind to him. Once you were out of his vision, he looked up at the stars. There may have been no saints resting up there, but it sure was a peaceful view.

[potteresque-ire]

More ask answer about Word of Honour (山河令, WoH) and the so-called “Dangai 101 phenomenon” under the cut ~ with all the M/M relationships shown on screen, does it mean improved acceptance / safety for the c-queer community?

Due to its length (sorry!), I’ve divided the answer into 3 parts: 1) Background 2) Excerpts from the op-eds 3) Thoughts This post is PART 1 ❤️. As usual, please consider the opinions expressed as your local friendly fandomer sharing what they’ve learned, and should, in no ways, be viewed as necessarily true. :)

(TW: homophobic, hateful speech quoted)

After WoH had started airing, I had waited for one of China’s state-controlled media to publish opinion pieces about the show. Specifically, I’d like to know ~ what is the administration’s current take on Dangai  (耽改), as a genre? How does it characterise the closeness of the same-sex leads—the closeness that is suppressed when the original IP, of the genre Danmei (耽美) was converted for visual media presentation?

This is important, as China is a country where the government’s attitude becomes the official public attitude. The state opinion pieces will be quoted and parroted, especially if they come from heavy-weight sources (state-controlled media also have their importance/influence hierarchy). Production of the upcoming Dangai dramas will adjust their scripts accordingly. Marketing tactics will also adjust, make sure it doesn’t spread “the wrong message”; Dangai and Danmei dramas have both been pulled off shelves during or immediately after its airing before (Addicted 上癮 and Guardian 鎮魂, respectively), despite having already passing the censorship board.

If a heavy-weight state opinion piece pans the one-lead-fawning-over-the-other scenes in WoH (there are a few of them), for example, scenes / lines of such suggestive nature will likely disappear from the upcoming Dangai dramas for at least a year or two. If the critique spills over to a harsh stance against the presence of queers in Chinese media, all future Dangai dramas can become strict “socialist-brotherhood” stories, their “no homo” message reinforced by, for example, by inserting a female lead (or changing one of the leads to female).

Whether the official public opinion equates the true public opinion or not, public behaviour in China is quickly driven by the official public opinion. Example: the Xi regime’s conservative stance on queer issues has already translated to a quick deterioration of queer tolerance in China; open expressions that were tolerated, even welcomed, just several years ago are now met with significant hostility in the public.

This is a reflection of the nature of their government. A quick thought experiment may explain this. Take … jaywalking. It’s probably fair to say we’ve all committed this “crime” before?

Will you still jaywalk if your government declares it immoral to do so? Where I am, in the United States, the answer is definitely a no. The public will probably laugh at (and make memes about) the poor official who made the declaration, kindly ask the government to do something useful for once (f*** off), and keep jaywalking.

Now, what if the declaration comes with a law that includes a one-year prison term + lifelong criminal record for jaywalking? Let’s say this law is fully executable and irreversible, given this being a thought experiment—nothing you, or the public, can say or do can contest it.

Will you still jaywalk, even if you disagree with government’s stance that the act is immoral? You’ve got a neighbour who continues to defy the law. Will you think twice before letting your young loved ones go out with them?

Very soon, jaywalking becomes “bad”—even though such “badness” had little moral basis at its origin. It is bad because the government has “characterised” it to be so—an authoritarian government that doesn’t allow challenge of the characterisation.

The retention of queer elements in Dangai is the jaywalking in the example. The Chinese government stepping in to characterise (定性) an event, a phenomenon etc is common, and the people know the drill well that they fall in line quickly.  

If a powerful state-controlled media publish a negative opinion piece on the queer elements in Dangai / Danmei, therefore, those elements can disappear overnight.

My question had been: will the state do it? The Xi regime has made its distaste for LGBT+ representation in visual media abundantly clear with its NRTA directives. However, while the Chinese government typically puts ideology (意識型態) as its Guiding Principle, exceptions have always been made for one reason. One word.

Money.

TU is a legendary financial success story every production company (Tencent itself included) wants to replicate. As a result, there are ~ 60 Danmei IPs (book canon) with their copyright sold for Dangai dramas; this long line of Danmei dramas in the horizon has been nicknamed “Dangai 101”, after the name of the show “Produce 101” Dd was dance instructor in. These dramas are all competing to be the next TU by profit.

Adoration from fans is nice, but money is what matters.

C-ent is currently in a financial bleak winter. The anti-corruption, anti-tax-fraud campaign started by the Xi regime in 2018, which cumulated to a sudden (and unofficial) collection of 3 years of back-taxes from studios and stars, has drained a significant amount of its capital; the number of new TV dramas being filmed fell 45% between 2018 and 2019, and production companies have been closing by the tens of thousands. The tightening of censorship rules also means production is associated with more risk. The commercial sector outside c-ent is also eager for replications of TU’s success—they need more “top traffic” (頂流) idols like Gg and Dd whose fans are sufficiently devoted to drive the sales of their products. Such “fan economy” would benefit the government, even if it doesn’t have direct stakes in the companies in and outside c-ent. People’s Daily, the Official State Newspaper, previously published a positive opinion piece on fan economy in 2019, estimating its worth at 90 billion RMB (~13.7 billion USD) per year.

But if the state allows the queer elements in Dangai’s to pass the censorship board (NRTA) for profit, how can it do so with the current “No homo” directive in place? From previous experience (scarce as it may be), the queerness has to be sufficiently obvious for the shows to make the profit everyone is wishing for. Dangai dramas in which the leads’ romantic relationship remains subtle have not sold the way TU does, even if they are well-reviewed and feature famous, skilled actors (as Winter Begonia 鬓边不是海棠红 last year.)

NRTA, and the government behind it, can’t just say I’m turning a blind eye to the flirting and touching for the money. What can it say then?

Here’s what I’d thought—what it can say, or do, is to “characterise” these Dangai dramas in a way that leave out its queerness. It did so for TU. TU’s review by the overseas version of People’s Daily devoted a grand total of two characters to describe WWX and LWJ’s relationship—摯友 (“close friend”). The rest of the article was devoted to the drama’s aesthetics, its cultural roots. (The title of the article: 《陳情令》：書寫國風之美 Chen Qing Ling: Writing the Beauty of National Customs).

How could it do that? The State’s power ensuring few questioning voices aside, I’ve been also thinking about the history and definition of Danmei (耽美)—Dangai’s parent genre as the causes. Based on the history and definition, I can think of 3 ways the queer elements in Danmei (耽美) can be characterised by the state, 2 of which provide it with the wiggle room, the movable goalposts it needs should it choose to want to overlook the queerness in Dangai.

The 3 characterisations I’ve thought of, based on the history and definition of Danmei (耽美) are:

1) The queer characterisation, which focuses on its homoerotic element. * Summary of the characterization: Danmei is gay.

2) The “traditional BL” characterisation, which focuses on BL’s historic origin as a “by women, for women” genre. The M/M setup is viewed as an escapist protest against the patriarchy, a rejection of traditional gender roles; displays of M/M closeness are often “candies” for the female gaze. * Summary of the characterization: Danmei is women’s fantasy.

3) The aesthetic characterisation, which focuses on beauty—from the beauty of the characters, the beauty of a world without harm to the romance. * Summary for the characterization: Danmei is pretty.

The queer characterisation (1) is well-understood, and likely the default characterisation if it is to be made by the fraction of i-fandom I’m familiar with. Most i-fans I’ve met, myself included, would likely and automatically associate the M/M relationships in The Untamed  (TU) and WoH with queerness.

The “traditional BL” characterisation (2), meanwhile, equates Danmei with BL as the genre of homoerotic works developed in 1970’s Japan for women comic readers, and has been widely interpreted from a feminist point of view.

Under such interpretation of “traditional BL” works, the double male lead setup wasn’t meant to be an accurate depiction of homosexuality. It wasn’t about homosexuality at all. Rather, it was about the removal of women and along with it, the rage, the eye-rolling, the unease women readers had often felt when attempting to interact with mainstream romance novels of the time, in which the female leads had mostly been confined to traditional women roles, and their virtue, their traditional feminine traits.

The M/M setup therefore acted as a “shell” for a het relationship that allowed removal of such social constraints placed on women. The lead with whom the woman audience identified was no longer bound to the traditional role of women, such as being the caregiver of the family. The lead could instead chase their dreams and roam the world, as many contemporary women already did or aspired to do; they were no longer limited to playing the passive party in life and in the relationship—and they enjoyed such freedom without risking the love, the respect the other male protagonist felt for them.

BL, in this traditional sense, has therefore been interpreted as an answer for, and a protest against the heteropatriarchal gender norm still dominant in societies deeply influenced by Confucianism, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China. The M/M setup is, at heart, (het) women’s fantasy. The inclusion of two young-and-beautiful male leads also satisfy “the female gaze” ~ the popularity of BL among het women has therefore been compared to the popularity of lesbian porn among het men. In both cases, the audience is drawn not for the homosexual element but by the presence of double doses of sexual attraction.

(Please forgive me if any of my wording comes as disrespectful! I’m not used to talking about these topics.)

The availability of the “traditional BL” characterisation (2) is key to bypassing queerness as a topic in the discussions of Danmei (耽美).

The aesthetic characterisation (3) is very closely related to 2) in origin, but deserves its own point as a characterisation that can stand on its own, and may be more obscure to the English-speaking fandom given the common English translation of Danmei (耽美) as Boy’s Love.

Boy’s Love, as a name, amplifies the queer characterisation (1) and de-emphasises the aesthetic characterisation (3); Danmei (耽美), meanwhile, does the reverse.

Where does the name Danmei come from?

When BL was first developed in Japan, it used to have a now out-of-fashion genre name: Tanbi. Tanbi was borrowed from same name describing a late 19th century / early 20th century Japanese literary movement, known as Tanbi-ha and was inspired by Aestheticism in England. Aestheticism “centered around the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it need serve no political, didactic, or other purpose”. Along the same line, the core belief of authors of Tanbi-ha was that art should celebrate beauty and reject the portrayal of ugliness in human nature, the darkness of reality:

…Tanbi writers argued that the ideas of naturalism writers such as “objectivism,” “truth is more important than beauty” and so on would “oppress human beings’ desire” so as to “lose beauty and human nature.” Accordingly, they insisted on “acute mental and emotional sensibility” [Ye, 2009].

(Source, with more details on Tanbi.)

Neither romance nor homosexuality were requirements for works in the original Tanbi-ha genre. BL borrowed the name Tanbi because its early authors saw their work created under the same principles: the emphasis on the beauty of their characters, their love (romantic and platonic), in a world that was also beautiful and untouched by ugliness such as sexism and homophobia.

The stubborn persistence on keeping one’s eyes trained on the beautiful, the willingness to turn a blind eye to reality for the sake of the beauty is built-in in the genre’s name. Tanbi  meant more than beauty, aesthetics; its kanji form was written as 耽美;  耽 = to sink, drown in, to  over-indulge in; 美 =  beauty.

Tanbi, therefore, literally means to drown in, to over-indulge in beauty.

Over time, as the genre expanded its writing style, Tanbi eventually fell out of favour as BL’s genre name in Japan. However, as it gained popularity in the Sinosphere in the 1990s, starting with Taiwan and Hong Kong, the kanji of Tanbi was retained as the Chinese name of the genre.

In Mandarin Chinese, 耽美 is pronounced Danmei. A hyperfocus on the aesthetics, the utopian aspects of traditional BL is therefore retained in Danmei by its name. People’s Daily could therefore devote its review of TU on its aesthetics. Realism, including politics and all discussions of social issues, can therefore be swept aside in the name of respecting the genre’s tradition.

I’ve mostly been reading about and observing c-fandom, and I believe these 3 characterisations have all attracted its own kind of fans. Fans who care and talk about queer issues even when it isn’t encouraged by their sociopolitical environment, who shine a light upon these issues in their fan works. Fans who treat the M/M leads as if they were a traditional cishet couple, such as calling one of the leads 老婆 (wife) and assigning him biologically female functions when needed (via, for example, the ABO trope). Fans who insist the works must meet their beauty standards, rejecting those that fail (for example, if the leads are not good looking enough) by claiming they’re there for Danmei, not Danchou (耽醜, “over-indulgence on ugliness”). Fans who are drawn to the genre by a combination of these characterisations.

By the history and definition of the genre, all the above reasons for fanning Danmei are as valid, as legitimate as one another.

I thought about this related question then: are c-fans of the second (traditional BL characterisation) and third (aesthetic characterisation) groups homophobic? When I first asked this question, I—a fan whose fandom experience had been entirely in English-speaking communities—assume the answer was yes. I thought, in particular, the insistence of treating Danmei’s M/M couples as cishet couples in a homosexual shell had to be conscious queer erasure. How can anyone ignore the same-sexness of the leads? How can anyone talk about Danmei without associating it with homosexuality?

However, as I read more—again, specifically about c-fandom, and in Chinese—I realised the answer may be a little more complex.

Previously, I had largely thought about homophobia in terms of individual attitudes. This has to do with my current environment (liberal parts of the United States), in which the choice to accept or reject the queer community has become a close to personal choice. Pride flags fly all over the city, including the city hall, every summer, and most churches welcome the LGBT+ community. I hadn’t considered how an environment in which queers have never enjoyed full social exposure, in which education of related topics is sorely lacking, would affect Danmei’s development as a genre.

In such an environment, it is difficult for Danmei to evolve and incorporate up-to-date understanding of RL queerness.

The consequence I can see is this: Danmei is more likely to be “stuck” in its historical characterisation as (het) women’s fantasy inside than outside the Great Firewall, with its queerness de-emphasised if not erased—and it draws fans who are attracted to this kind of characterisation accordingly. This is, perhaps, reflected by the fact that the (het) women-to-queer ratio of Danmei / BL fans is significantly higher in China than in the West (Table 1 in this article summarises how Danmei / BL fans have split between different genders and sexual orientation in the Sinosphere vs the West in different research studies).

Another driving force I can see for Danmei to retain BL’s traditional feminist and aesthetic characterisations: women in China are not free from the social pressure that led to the birth of BL in 1970’s Japan. While many of them have achieved financial freedom through work and have high education, the young and educated have been subjected to immense pressure to get married and have children especially in the past decade.

In 2007, the China’s state feminist agency, the All-China Women’s Federation (中華全國婦女聯合會), coined the term 剩女 (literally, “leftover women”) for unmarried, urban women over 27 years old. The government started a campaign that, among other things, associated women’s education level with ugliness, and their unmarried status with pickiness, moral degeneracy. The reason behind the campaign: birth rates are plummeting and the state wants educated women, in particular, to nurture a high quality, next generation workforce. More importantly, the government sees a threat in the M/F sex imbalance (high M, low F) that has commonly been attributed to the country’s “one child policy” between 1979-2015, which encouraged female infanticide / abortion of female foetuses in a culture that favours surname-carrying boys. The state fears the unmarried men will become violent and/or gay, leading to “social instability and insecurity”. Therefore, it wants all women, in particular those who are educated, to enter the “wife pool” for these unmarried men. (Source 1, Source 2: Source 2 is a short, recommended read).

For Chinese women, therefore, patriarchy and sexism is far from over. Escapist fantasies where sexism is removed—by removing women from the picture—are therefore here to stay.

Danmei is therefore not queer literature (同志文學). The difference between Danmei and queer literature is highlighted by this reportedly popular saying (and its similar variations) in some Danmei communities:

異性戀只是傳宗接代，同性戀才是真愛 Heterosexuality is only for reproduction. Only homosexuality is true love.

The attitude towards heterosexuality is one of distaste, viewed as a means to an end the speaker has no interest in. On the contrary, homosexuality is idealised, reflecting the disregard / lack of understanding of some Danmei fans have towards the RL hardships of c-queers. The ignorance may be further propagated by gate-keeping by some Danmei fans for safety reasons, keeping queer discussions away from their communities for fear that their favourite hangouts would meet the same uncertain fate of other communities that previously held open queer discussions, such as the Weibo gay and lesbian supertopics. Such gatekeeping can, again, be easily enforced using tradition as argument: the beauty 美 is Tanbi and Danmei (耽美), remember, includes the beauty of utopia, where ugly truths such as discrimination do not enter the picture. A Danmei that explores, for example, the difficulty of coming out of the closet is no longer Danmei, by its historical, aesthetic definition.

[I’ve therefore read about c-queers viewing Danmei with suspicion, if not downright hostility; they believe the genre, by ignoring their RL challenges and casting them as beautiful, even perfect individuals, and in some cases, by fetishising them and their relationships, only leads to more misconceptions about the queer community. Dangai, meanwhile, has been viewed with even more distaste as potential weapons by the state to keep gays in the closet; if the government can shove the Danmei characters into the “socialist brotherhood” closet, it can shove them as well.

I haven’t yet, however, been able to tease out the approximate fraction of c-queers whose views of Danmei and Dangai is negative. The opposing, positive view of the genres is this: they still provide LGBT+ visibility, which is better than none and it would’ve been close to none without Danmei and Dangai; while Danmei may skim over the hardships of being queer, fan works of Danmei are free to explore them—and they have.

This article provides insights on this issue. @peekbackstage’s conversation with a Chinese film/TV director in Clubhouse is also well worth a read.]

That said, Danmei can only be dissociated from the queer characterisation if there’s a way to talk about the genre without evoking words and phrases that suggest homosexuality—something that is difficult to do with English. Is there?

In Chinese, I’d venture to say … almost. There’s almost a way. Close enough to pass.

The fact that M/M in traditional BL has been developed and viewed not as queer but as a removal of F also means this: queerness isn’t “built-in” into the language of Danmei. The name Danmei itself already bypasses a major “queer checkpoint”: it’s impossible to refer to a genre called Boy’s Love and not think about homosexuality.

Here’s one more important example of such bypass. Please let me, as an excuse to put these beautiful smiles in my blog, show this classic moment from TU; this can be any gif in which the leads are performing such suggestive romantic gestures:

How can I describe this succinctly? In English?

Two men acting in love? Er. That’s… the definition of gay, almost.

Two men acting gay? Well. GAY.

Right. Fine. Let’s go negative. Queerbaiting? … Still gay, because the word “queer” is in there.

[Pie note: for the record, I don’t think TU or WoH is queer-baiting.]

Personally, I find it impossible to describe the GIF above in English that I do not automatically associate with RL romantic love between two men, with homosexuality. But can I do it in Chinese?

… Yes.

There’s a term, 賣腐 (pronounced “maifu”), literally, “selling 賣 the rot 腐”, derived from the term known among i-fans as fujoshi and written, in kanji, as 腐女. Fujoshi, or 腐 (“rot”) 女 (“women”), describes the largely (het) female audience of the Japanese BL genre (>80%, according to Wikipedia). Originated as a misogynistic insult towards female Japanese BL fans in the 2000s, fujoshi was later reclaimed by the same female BL fans who now use the self-depreciative term as acknowledgement of their interest being “rotten”, for BL’s disregard of the society’s traditional expectations on women.

賣腐 is therefore to “sell the rot” to the rotten women; ie. the suggestive romantic gestures, exemplified by the GIF above, between the M/M leads are catering, performing fan service to their target audience.

[賣腐 is also a term one will see in the state opinion pieces.]

There’s nothing gay about this term.

I’ve therefore found it possible to talk and think in Chinese about Danmei while giving little thought to queerness. The history and definition of Danmei allow that.

Again, I’m not saying any of this to excuse homophobia among in Danmei and Dangai fandoms. The point I’m trying to make is this — given that Danmei has three potential characterisations, two of which can be discussed without abundantly evoking queer concepts and vocabularies, given that history of Danmei, as a genre, already favoured characterisation 2 (traditional BL), the government addressing homosexuality in its opinions on Danmei and Dangai is far from a given.

By extension, the popularity of Dangai may mean a lot or little to c-queers; by extension, the state can approve / disapprove of Danmei and Dangai in a manner independent of its stance on homosexuality, which is itself inconsistent and at times, logic-deying (example to come…).

This is both good and bad, from the perspective of both the government and the c-queer community.

For the government: as discussed, the “triality” of Danmei allows the state to “move the goalpost” depending on what it tries to achieve. It has characterisations 2 (the traditional BL characterisation) and 3 (the aesthetic characterisation) as excuses to let Dangai dramas pass the censorship board should it want their profit and also, their promise of expanding the country’s soft power overseas by drawing an international audience. These characterisations also allow the state to throw cold water on the popularity of Danmei / Dangai should it desire, for reasons other than its queer suggestions—despite the Xi regime’s push against open expressions of queerness (including by activism, in media), it has also been careful about not demonising c-queers in words, and has countered other people’s attempts to do so.

Why may the government want to throw cold water on Danmei and Dangai? They are still subculture, which the state has also viewed with suspicion. In 2018, a NRTA directive explicitly requested that “c-ent programmes should not use entertainers with tattoos; (those associated with) hip-hop culture, sub-cultures (non-mainstream cultures), decadent cultures.” (”另外，总局明确要求节目中纹身艺人、嘻哈文化、亚文化（非主流文化）、丧文化（颓废文化）不用。”).

Subculture isn’t “core socialist values”. More importantly, it’s difficult to keep up with and control subculture. 環球網, the website co-owned by People’s Daily and Global Times (環球時報), ie, The State Newspaper and The State Tabloid, famously said this on its Weibo, on 2020/03/04, re: 227:

老了，没看懂为什么战。晚安。 Getting old. Can’t figure out what the war is about. Good night.

The State also cannot stop subculture from happening. It doesn’t have the resources to quell every single thing that become popular among its population of 1.4 billion. What it can do to make sure these subcultures stay subcultures, kept out of sight and mind of the general public.

Characterisation 1 (the queer characterisation), meanwhile, remains available to the state should it wish to drop the axe on Dangai for its queer elements. I’m including, as “queer elements”, presentation of men as too “feminine” for the state—which has remained a sore point for the government. This axe have a reason to drop in the upcoming months: July 23rd, 2021 will be the 100th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the state may desire to have only uniformed forces and muscled, gun-toting “masculine” men gracing the screens.

What about for c-queers and their supporters (including group I fans)? What good and bad can the multiple characterisations of the genres do for them?

For c-queers and their supporters (including group I fans), their acceptance and safety are helped by the Dangai genre, by the Dangai 101 phenomenon, if and only if the state both characterises the queer elements in these dramas as queer (characterisation 1) AND their opinions of them are positive.

Personally, I had viewed this to be unlikely from the start, because a queer characterisation would mean the censorship board has failed to do its job, which is embarrassing for the Chinese government.

Characterisations 2) and 3) are not bad for c-queers and their supporters, however, and definitely not “enemies” of Characterisation 1);  they can not only serve as covers for the queer elements in Dangai to reach their audience, but also, they can act as protective padding for the LGBT+ community if the content or (very aggressive) marketing of the Dangai dramas displease the government — with the understanding, again, that the “traditional BL” arm of the Danmei community is itself also highly vulnerable by being a subculture, and so its padding effect is limited and it also deserves protection.

The downside to achieving LGBT+ visibility through Dangai is, of course and as mentioned, that these dramas are, ultimately, deeply unrealistic depictions of the c-queers. The promotion of these dramas, which has focused on physical interactions between the male leads for “candies”, can encourage even more fetishising of queers and queer relationships. The associated (character) CP culture that makes and breaks CPs based on the dramas’ airing cycle may also fuel negative perception of queer relationships as attention-seeking behaviour, something that can be initiated and terminated at will and for the right price.

Finally, with all this said, which characterisation(s) have the government taken re: Dangai and/or WOH? And what opinions has it given to its characterisations?

PART 1 <-- YOU ARE HERE PART 2 PART 3

[sketching-shark]

LMK fandom: Oh, what do we do about this guy who has nothing but hurt Xiaotian, tried to replace Sun Wukong and his crew, hurt Tripitaka and ordered servants to cannibalize a monkey? Oh I know! We’ll turn him into our little meow meow~ he’s so innocent and Sun Wukong is obviously the villain!

What doesn’t help is this idea is perpetuated by multiple fan fic writers and artists for some reason. Especially some aus they make that turn SWK into a bastard for the sake of the story rather than considering cultural context and thinking they should be respectful.

And almost everyone lets them get away with it just because the art or fanfic is good and they get so popular that no one can point what is actually wrong without feeling like they’re going to get attacked.

I'm starting to feel like my blog is the one anons go to specifically to vent their frustrations about the Six Eared Macaque in his lego monkey show form & the associated fandom lmao. But I guess this makes sense, as I’ve had fun quasi-dragging him before & will in fact use this anon submission as an opportunity to have my own, to put it academically, bitch fest about not just this fandom's favorite protagonist-traumatizing meow meow, but about the way villains are often treated in not just fanon, but increasingly in canon works as well. But same policy as with the last anon; I'll post my opinions below the cut, and as fandoms love to say, don’t like don't read if you don't want to see me dunking on the six eared simian & common fandom tendencies towards villains.

Oh man I would say where would you even begin with this but anon you’ve pretty much started yourself with my main gripe with a lot of ways that the Six-Eared Macaque is portrayed in fandom; there seems to be this unspoken agreement that his acts of violence towards Sun Wukong, Qi Xioatian, and Qi Xioatian’s loved ones are either to be framed as somewhat or totally justified, to be immediately forgiven/excused, or to simply & completely be ignored. Like friends maybe this is just me not seeing the proper posts but while the fandom is inundated with art and fanfics of Macaque as a generally decent individual & a true member of team good guy, I have yet to see one person address the fact that this monkey literally kidnapped & mind-controlled Xiaotian’s best friend and father figures & forced them to brutalize Xiaotian while ol’ Six Ear looked on and laughed (X_X). Like this kind of fandom villain treatment is definitely not something that’s solely at work for Monkie Kid, but it is kind of nutty how fandoms will swing between yelling that people should be allowed to like villains without even mild critique, and then will just flat-out not address the villainous behavior, and will even bend over backwards to frame even characters who committed genocide as just poor innocent widdle victims who need a hug. At its worst, I’ve even seen tons of people in a fandom get really angry at other people who don’t like a villain, and will even start accusing those people of hating real-life mentally disabled or abused individuals all because they don’t like the fandom’s favorite literal war criminal. The Monkie Kid fandom is FAR more chill & better than a lot of other fandoms I’ve come across in that regard, but that is an exceedingly low bar, & the tendency to woobify certain kinds of villains-- as with Macaque and the extreme emphasis on his bad boy/sad boy thing--is very much at work.  

 I’ve also talked before about a kind of monoculturalization of certain character interpretations and story beats in fandoms, and one of the more popular ones that seems to be applied to Macaque a lot is the “hero actually bad, villain actually good” cliche, as observable from the general fandom assumption that Mr. Six-Ears he wasn’t even slightly lying or remembering things through a rose-tinted or skewed lens when he gave his version of his and Sun Wukong’s past. Like at this point it seems the possibility that people WILL NOT even consider is that Sun Wukong never did & still doesn't care that much about the Six Eared Macaque (in JTTW they weren’t sworn brothers & in Monkie Kid the only thing the monkey king really said to Macaque before attacking him was a pretty contemptuous "Aren't you ever going to get sick of living under my shadow?," & responds to his "beloved friend" getting blown up with "You did good, bud" to Qi Xiaotian, who did the exploding), or that their original fight may in fact have mostly been instigated by Macaque. After all, to repeat what this anon summarized & what I've said before about their original JTTW context (& in an example of the things that do feel like it's often lost in translation) is that the Six Ear Macaque was a villain not just because he beat up the Tang Monk, but because he wanted to take over Sun Wukong's entire life and identity so he could have all that glory, prestige, and power for himself. To quote the macaque himself from the Anthony C. Yu translation, "I struck the T'ang monk and I took the luggage...precisely because I want to go to the West all by myself to ask Buddha for the scriptures. When I deliver them to the Land of the East, it will be my success and no one else's. Those people of the South Jambudvipa Continent will honor me then as their patriarch and my fame will last for all posterity." And in order to do this, the Six Eared Macaque had apparently made Sun Wukong's "little ones," his monkey family, his captives through either trickery or force, and gotten a number of them to take on the appearance of Tang Sanzang and the other pilgrims. It's also made clear that in very direct contrast to Sun Wukong, he doesn't care about these monkeys beyond how they might serve him. In fact, after Sha Wujing kills the monkey posing as him the Six Eared Macaque not only all but immediately replaces him with another, but also "told his little ones to have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines." So this monkey is not only willing to risk the lives of a lot of other monkeys for his own personal benefit, but is also a literal cannibal. And yes yes, I know a lot of people have argued that Monkie Kid shouldn't be considered a direct sequel to JTTW & that's fair enough (for example, Sun Wukong probably shouldn't be smashing anyone into a meat patty in a children's cartoon lol). And of course, it needs to be noted that there are a buttload of really out there & really cursed pieces of media based on JTTW & that were created in China. Yet the above description is the oft-ignored in the west original facet of the Six Eared Macaque's character. And it is this selfishness, entitlement, and treatment of other individuals as tools for his own self-serving ends  that is, from where I’m standing, still very much present in Monkie Kid. Like besides repeatedly going out of his way to physically and psychologically traumatize Xioatian, with the last episode Macaque seemed to be going right back to his manipulative ways. I’ve seen people frame their last conversation as Macaque softening to Xioatian a little bit, but personally that read a lot more like that common tactic among abusers where even after they’ve hurt you they’ll dangle something you want or need over your head (in Macaque’s case, the promise of desperately needed training and information about a serious looming threat), with the implication that you’ll only get it if you do what they want you to, such as, in this case, Xioatian going back to Macaque as his student even after having been so terribly hurt by this monkey, which would give Macaque power over Xiaotian and probably Sun Wukong as a result. And it is this violence and manipulation that it seems the fandom at large has tacitly decided shouldn’t even be addressed, instead leaning more towards a (and this is an exaggeration) “Six-Eared Macaque my poor meow meow Sun Wukong has always been bad & has always been wrong about literally everything” reading. 

And while it is the case that I am not Chinese and feel that as such it would be best left to someone who actually comes from that background to provide more context into how common interpretations of the Six Eared Macaque from China may clash really badly with the stuff the western fandom creates, it also must be noted that, as much as we all want to have fun in fandom & in spite of all the out-there versions of JTTW from China, we westerners should recognize that there is a very long and very ugly history of western countries stripping other cultures’ important religious and literary works for parts & mashing them into their own thing while implying or even insisting that what they present provides a true understanding of the original piece. And while I trust most individuals in regards to Monkie Kid are able to step back and think “this is a lego cartoon and not a set guide for how I should understand JTTW” (especially given the insistence that JTTW and Monkie Kid should be considered there own separate works) there does nevertheless seem to be something of a tendency to take the conclusions people come to, for example, about Sun Wukong’s characteristic in his lego form & then assume that’s just reflective to Sun Wukong as a totality. I imagine a good portion of this is due to people not reading JTTW & especially to not having easy access to solid information or answers about JTTW’s many different facets (like geez awhile ago I was trying to get a clear answer on what is considered the most accurate translation of the names of Sun Wukong’s six sworn brothers & got like 5 different responses lmao), but that tendency to take a western fandom interpretation & run with it instead of doing any background research or questioning said interpretation is still very much at play. As such, & as made prominent in the way people have been interpreting the dynamic between Sun Wukong and the Six Eared Macaque in the lego monkey show, tbh it does seem kind of shitty for western creators & audience to sometimes go really out of their way to ignore all of this original cultural & narrative context for the sake of Angst (TM) in Macaque's favor, demonizing Sun Wukong, and shipping the monkey king with his evil twin (X_X).

And speaking of which, even beyond the potential inherent creepiness & revulsion that can be inspired by this specific ship given common interpretations of the og classic's original meaning (again, it's my understanding, given both summaries of translated Chinese academic texts I've been kindly provided with, my own reading of the Anthony C. Yu translation of JTTW, & vents from a number of Chinese people I've seen on this site, that the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China as having originated from Sun Wukong himself as a living embodiment of his worst traits, hence why only Buddha can tell the difference between them & why the monkey king is much more slow to violence after he kills the macaque), I'd argue that in the face of all the uwu poor widdle meow meow portrayals lego show Macaque is, especially if you include JTTW's events, still in the role of “Sun Wukong but worse” as he is very much a violent & selfish creep. Like he was basically running around in JTTW wearing a Sun Wukong fursuit, but there he had the sole reason of wanting to replace Sun Wukong wholesale so he could have all the good things in the monkey king's life without actually having to work as hard for them. But if you combine that with Macaque now claiming that he used to be best friend with Sun Wukong in his pre-journey days (something that's made funny from a JTTW context given that that status actually belongs to the Demon Bull King lol), his original violence has now blown into this centuries long and really unhealthy obsession with the monkey king. Like he's apparently gone from wanting to literally be Sun Wukong to being so obsessed with getting revenge on Sun Wukong that he's got basically nothing else going on in his life. Like he's only appeared in two episodes but...does he have any friends? Any family? A career or even a hobby that DOESN'T center the monkey king? Anything at all outside of his "get revenge on and/or kill Sun Wukong/use his successor as my personal punching bag” thing? Like dude! That is extremely creepy and extremely bad for everyone all around! As I’ve said before, this seeming refusal to see beyond the past or to do something that doesn’t involve Sun Wukong in some capacity is a trait that makes Macaque an interesting and somewhat tragic villain--he even seems to be working as Sun Wukong’s reflection in a mirror darkly, with lego show Sun Wukong pretty clearly not being able to heal from his own past which is hinted to be defined by one loss after another, and with Monkie Kid even kind of having these two characters somewhat follow their JTTW characterizations in that in the latter half of the journey Sun Wukong often gets sad & starts crying in the face of what seems insurmountable odds (& Monkie Kid Sun Wukong does seem to be hiding some serious depression behind a cheerful facade), whereas the Six-Eared Macaque retains a worse version of Sun Wukong’s pre-journey characteristic of getting pissed and lashing out if things don’t go his way--but it’s also what would make any current friendship or romantic relationship between these monkeys horrific. Although to be fair even the fandom seems to recognize this in an unconscious way, in that a lot of the art & fanfic seems to swing erratically between them kissing & screaming at each other in yet another example of bog-standard fandom adulation of romanticized toxic relationships lol.  

At the end of the day, of course, this is nothing new. You'll find versions of this dynamic across a ton of fandoms and now even canonical work. And as such, I can only look at this kind of popularized relationship dynamic with a kind of resigned weariness whenever it pops up, & my frustrated question with the popularity of this kind of pairing is the exact same one that I have for a multitude of blatantly toxic villain/hero ships, given common fandom discourse & the tendency to either ignore or justify the villain's actions & demonize the hero: if you're THAT convinced that everything is the hero's fault, if you believe THAT much that the hero is the one in the wrong for the villain's pain and their subsequent actions, then why are you so set on them not only becoming a romantic pair, but framing this get-together as a good thing? Like I know we contain multitudes but that's waaay too many contradictions for me to wrap my head around. And it definitely doesn’t help that one branch of underlying reasoning behind this kind of pairing seems to be the ever-present “you break it, you fix it” mentality, where the assumption is that if you’re in a failing, abusive, and/or generally toxic relationship (platonically or romantically), if you put in enough time and effort & attempts to compromise, you’ll be able to restore/have the relationship you dreamed of, even with someone who hurt you really badly. And this assumption isn’t limited to fandom: I’d even argue that it’s everywhere in the culture, hence why a lot of people feel like they “failed” if they have to get a divorce or make the choice to leave an unhealthy friendship. Personally, I feel like people could really benefit from more stories about how it is not only the case that the people you hurt don’t owe you their forgiveness & you can still become a better and happier person without the one you hurt in your life, & that while it can be really hard it can also be a good thing to leave a relationship, even if it’s one that once meant a lot to you. 

  But in all honestly, from my own perspective this kind of pairing is starting to read far less like enemies to lovers and far more like a horrible fantasy where you can pull whatever shit you want, even on the people you "love," & never be held accountable for your terrible behavior or even have to consider that maybe you were in the wrong. It's another facet that makes me larf every time I see people insist that fandom is an inherently "transformative" or "progressive" form of storytelling like friends you are literally just taking status quo toxic monogamy & rebranding it as somehow beneficial & romantic (X_X).

But as to anon’s last frustration, it is hard to know what is the appropriate response with this kind of thing...like for my own part I’m keeping my frustrations to my blog & now increasingly to posts that you would have to click on the “read more” button to see what I have to say, but I totally get the hesitation to give even a mild critique to big names in a fandom. Like I've now seen it happen repeatedly where someone who has a big name in a fandom will make something that's kind of shitty for one reason or another, someone will message them with some version of "hey, that's kind of shitty, you shouldn't do that," and the typical response is either to blatantly ignore the issue completely, or more popularly to make a giant crying circus that seems deliberately geared towards stoking emotions on both sides of the, for example, fiction does/doesn't affect reality issue so that something that didn't even have to be that big a deal gets blown out of all proportion, with the big name often framing what often started out as a very mild critique into a long crying jag about how the initial response to their kind of shitty thing was so mean/cruel and they're just a poor innocent & that YOU'RE the true racist/sexist/bigot etc. if you don't agree with their opinion. It must of course be noted that there have also been numerous instances of people taking it too far the other way & sending not just big names but smaller creators literal deaths threats over stuff like innocuous ships which like holy hell bells people that’s a horrible thing to do. But for the big names at least, the end result of all this fighting is usually that once the dust has settled they have more attention/fame/money/power in the fandom than before, and with anyone who might have a problem with their stuff feeling afraid to voice their opinion lest they be swarmed by that person's fans. In that way fandom does often seem to increasingly be geared towards presenting an “official” fandom perspective about various facets of a piece of media instead of allowing for a multitude of interpretations, and with criticism, no matter its shape or form or how genuinely warranted it may be, being hounded out of existence. I feel like a lot of this could be made less bad if there wasn’t this constant assumption & even drive to think that a different interpretation of or criticism of your favorite work of fiction or your fanwork isn’t a direct claim that you are a thoroughly loathsome individual (& maybe also if people cultivated an enjoyment of learning things about important works from a culture outside their own, even if what you learn clashes with your own initial understandings), but I guess we’ll see if that ever happens. 

So these are my general thinks about the Six Eared Macaque’s current fandom meow meow status & some of my bigger gripes with fandom tendencies as a whole. I stand by my idea that the most interesting & beneficial route for Macaque moving forward would be a kind of “redemption without forgiveness from the ones you hurt” arc--as I think was done pretty excellently with the character Grace in Infinity Train--and if for no other reason than gosh dern this monkey really needs to cultivate some sort of identity beyond his “Sun Wukong but worse” persona. 

[beevean]

SEGA and its most recent Sonamy side – more canon than ever

[Translator’s note: this article was originally written in Spanish by @latin-dr-robotnik​]

Hello again! Today we’d like to discuss about something that’s been happening recently, and probably taking Sonic fans by surprise: what is going on with SEGA and its stance about Sonamy?

At the beginning of this year, to celebrate the 200 articles on Seaside Hill Paradise, I finished what I call “the Sonamy trilogy” of articles that I started in 2018 and which cover different themes, such as:

SEGA and the eternal issue of the Sonic-Amy dynamic

“I love you” – Forbidden words in Sonic

SEGA and the eternal issue of “Sonic’s girlfriend”

The idea was to offer a more-or-less complete analysis about the many facets of their dynamic in the last 27 years; a dynamic that, you may have noticed, is not that easy to pin down, and that we’ve been updating almost regularly (although I also intended to investigate on other dynamics, like Knuckles and Rouge’s for example, and write about them). Generally speaking, in these articles I don’t draw objective conclusions about the status of the ship in canon (despite the fact that the available information tends to confirm it in various occasions). I also like to repeat myself and say that shipping is supposed to be for fun, not for tearing each other’s hair in that black hole of misery that is Twitter, but recent events left us slightly perplexed, and this is why we’re here once again.

We left the status of the Sonamy canonicity with these two peculiar instances back in August: Sonic mentioning his “girlfriend” in the Japanese version of Sonic Battle, and the Twitter account of SEGA of Europe saying Sonamy is their “favorite videogame romance”. Now, let’s recap a bit…

Sonamy in Sonic IDW... Round 3

[SPOILERS ALERT FOR IDW SONIC #14-#35]

In 2018, when IDW just started, I decided to study a little how the Sonamy dynamic worked in this new universe. To our surprise, the comic didn’t waste time in dropping its biggest bomb, in one of the cutest scenes we had seen in ages. Since the very beginning, IDW proved that it didn’t intend to deceive those fans that looked for a bit of development of both characters.

I wrote an article about it in June 2019, and it coincided with the beginning of one of the most infamous arc I’ve seen in a Sonic comic for a long time: the Metal Virus Saga. The question is, what has happened since then?

Well, in 2019, with the same accuracy of an aimbot, I said “We’ll probably see some new interactions between Sonic and Amy sometime around IDW #20”. And wouldn’t you know, as misery and tragedy settled in that arc, it was exactly around IDW #20 that we saw some Sonamy interactions: both exhausted, to their limit, with a Sonic that couldn’t even touch Amy to soothe her pain, due to him being infected with the virus.

The arc developed like this in what felt like an eternity, to finally conclude in one the most absurd ways in Sonic history. But it wasn’t a complete disappointment, as, after months and months of asking and discussing on the internet about how much Sonic and Amy deserved a hug at the end of the arc… it actually happened.

Since that moment in IDW #32, we shippers thought that it was what both of them deserved after so much time spent separated and pushed to their limit to survive, but also that after the end of the arc everything would go back to normal. However, what we didn’t know was that the Sonamy train had no intention of stopping, not in IDW, nor anywhere else.

A recurring detail in IDW Sonic is that Amy’s tail starts wagging every time she sees Sonic, as if she was a happy dog. I swear, it happens every time.

Come IDW #35, once again we have some hugs and bits of dialogue between our hedgehogs. For sure, the question here isn’t their relationship itself, as it was for IDW #2, but rather the issues this arc is slowly dealing with. But it’s really nice to see them again, sharing that closeness that they’ve had in the comic since the beginning– be it with some gestures of affection, a wink, a gesture, a private joke.

My favorite image is the first one, Belle’s reaction to seeing Amy hugging Sonic. It’s like she’s thinking “oh, is she his girlfriend?”, and she wouldn’t even be wrong in thinking that.

It can’t be denied that IDW Sonic provided us the conversations and the emotions that the games seldom do. Certainly, the comic has its share of issues and it’s not really a story that I personally follow for its own merits (it’s more because it’s still Sonic, for my interest for things like this, and Belle’s existence… whom I already ship with Tails, sorry not sorry), but what it does well it does really well.

For now, we have to see how IDW Sonic will follow the development of the characters, especially in view of the closure of the current story and beyond. And we may be done with this part of the article, but there is still a lot left.

Sonamy in merchandise

Taking us completely by surprise, recently SEGA launched, in collaboration with Hot Topic, a series of Sonamy-themed t-shirts. No, seriously.

So many people told me this as soon as the voice spread (you know who you are, thank you guys for thinking about me <3), and I can’t help being still surprised that this is actually a thing. T-shirts with lines like “You’re my favorite”, “Love in the fast lane”, and my personal favorite, “S&A Forever”, with drawings of Classic Sonic and Amy… in SEGA-approved products. I don’t know if you realize how much of a big deal this is, even more than “Celebrate the 25 years of Sonic’s girlfriend” from 2018.

One of the things that surprised me the most (aside from how explicit they are in officializing the relationship, and the fact that there are still 2 months left before Valentine’s Day 2021), was the decision to use Classic Sonic and Classic Amy. I tried to understand this decision by analyzing the simplicity and easiness with which the Classic designs convey a message (let’s not forget that Classic Sonic was so iconic because it was specifically designed to convey his expressions without words), besides the fact that they’re inherently cuter than their modern designs. There’s also the controversial aspect of post-Adventure Sonamy, with all the dubbing and weird interpretations that the fandom made over the years… By comparison, the Classic design are a much simpler choice.

What is actually going on?

Well, let’s take a step back and think about what we just saw. The way SEGA has been recently trying to push Sonic and Amy in front view (and for the entirety of 2020, based on the articles I mentioned in the beginning) tells us the harsh truth we all have to accept sooner or later: Sonamy sells, and it sells a lot.

From a strictly business point of view, the ship is so iconic and popular, with fans and detractors alike, that it would be absurd for SEGA to ignore the chance to print these two characters and get a load of money. As I said in my 2018 article, despite the fact that in Japan Sonic isn’t as big of an icon as it is elsewhere, they know pretty well that Sonic + Amy = love, and they have huge amounts of merchandise to back it up. It’s in the West that because of different cultural values, of which we’ve already talked about, along with some internal resistance, left this aspect of the franchise a little on the side. But they’ve been trying to fix it… and how…

Let’s not forget that a decade and a half ago Sonic Team seriously favored Sonamy. They officially said it, Sonic X was their purest view of Sonic they had at the time.

Outside of the business perspective, I believe we’re facing the moment that we’ve been waiting for: it’s time they’ll establish once and for all the dynamic of these two characters, following more closely the original Japanese vision of Sonic. I said many times that, in trying to change canon, the West, especially SEGA of America, did nothing but confuse fans and generate more discussions than needed, by introducing different data and portrayals that contradict the canon established by Sonic Team.

We’ve talked about Unleashed and emotional support, about Sonic X, about the major moments that opened the door to interpreting this dynamic as something more. We don’t threaten at gunpoint those who would rather stay away, but we respond to those declarations that still try to violently discredit the simple fact that Sonic and Amy, who are most of all close friends, form in some measure a couple that, even with its imposed limitations, manages to captivate fans and not fans everywhere in the world. Even the Simpsons used it as a joke, and that says a lot.

What the future has in store for us.

Unless something else happens in this last month of 2020, this is the most complete compilation I can offer at the moment about the status of Sonamy in the fandom and in the official canon. Yes, canon.

It’s impossible to ignore the signals. As you may have noticed, I’ve been considering Sonic and Amy as an official couple, with its clarifications (for example, that at the end it’s more of a friendship, that it’s not a romantic relationship in the most explicit way, that it’s more of a personal perspective to justify a more mature vision of the relationship in the future, not right now), but nowadays I think that SEGA has spoken loud and clear. I think canon is ready to negotiate the idea that Sonic and Amy, apart from being excellent friends who would risk their lives for each other in a heartbeat, have something else on their hands (probably the other’s hand). This won’t automatically translate into a kiss, or a complete love declaration (although Sonic X came close…), or a commitment to a formal relationship like we know them in real life. SEGA canon affirms that Amy is “Sonic’s girlfriend” and nothing more. Outside of that detail, they still pretty much function as friends interacting with a little flirting here, and a little Sonic running away there. It’s the basis of their dynamic, now enhanced by the fact that SEGA is giving us a clearer message.

I think that this all may culminate in a game or an animated series, but I wouldn’t completely count on that. It is good to recognize how far the official position goes on this issue, but at the same time I want to reaffirm that there are things that are better left in the hands of the fandom, and in the meantime that IDW or any other continuity gives us hugs, winks, gestures and words of encouragement, we as the fandom will take care of exploring other avenues and hypothetical scenarios.

This is all I have to say on the matter for now, and I hope you’re happy with this wonderful Sonamy experience we’re going through – I certainly am. See you next time!

[autisticcassandracain]

I have many thoughts on the weird phenomena in the DC fandom and the Batfam fandom specifically where probably the majority of people just straight up. haven’t interacted with the source material. and almost all of those thoughts can be summarized as ‘lmao that’s weird and mildly concerning’.

and because I’m annoying I will list them all here right now <3

1. To preface this post, I mean, obviously, comics are inaccessible as all hell, both in the disability kind of way and the ‘you need to understand the concept of hypertime to fully comprehend the DC timeline’ kind of way. Because of this, even if you don’t have a disability that prevents you from reading comics, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at the amount of comics you need to read to have even a base understanding of a character and go ‘no thanks <3′ and just enjoy fanart and fanfic in a vacuum. Ultimately, this is fandom, this is supposed to be fun, it doesn’t really matter.

2. That said, it’s VERY weird to me that the majority of this fandom just straight up hasn’t interacted with the source material, and moreover, that it’s considered rude to tell people that they should do so. It’s especially weird considering the amount of fanon-only fans I’ve seen who straight up have a superiority complex over canon. The idea that it’s gatekeeping to tell fans of something to actually interact with canon is just. so weird, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what ‘gatekeeping’ actually entails. 

3. But honestly I’m less interested in discussing the ways in which canon and fanon fans should interact with each other (personally, I think it would be helpful to create separate tags of some kind, but that’d require quite a big overhaul of the current fandom state) than in figuring out how this actually happened in the first place. On the one hand, it’s obvious; long-running superhero comics the way DC writes them have made themselves so thoroughly inaccessible that most people are simply too daunted to even try. Most media has a cohesive beginning and end (or at least, a planned end somewhere). Comics just... don’t.

But I do think it says something that, even among people who are clearly interested in the characters (since they have, you know, entire blogs about them), the effort to get into comics just seems to be too much to even bother. This really doesn’t bode well for the future of DC Comics. Obviously, I am no expert on anything at all ever, but I’d personally be surprised if DC survives beyond the few decades, at least in its current form/without a big overhaul.

4. But on the other hand, I don’t think the confusing state of DC Comics is the only thing to blame here. Fandom has a well-known problem with reducing any character down to archetypes to more easily ship and write fic/make content with. This problem is particularly prominent in fanfic, which, if you read enough of it, you’ll eventually start seeing not just the same tropes and trends, but essentially the same fics over and over again. And not just within the same fandom; everywhere, or every large fandom, at least. 

Fanon Batfam is entirely built on a bunch of those tropes; insecure/depressed sadboy Tim, team mom with optional hidden trauma/emotional problems Dick, bad boy with a heart of gold + sadboy combo Jason, abused sadboy Damian/angry easily-villified-for-fic-reasons monster Damian, good dad Bruce for found family fic and bad dad Bruce for angst fic, etc. This all culminates in a found family dynamic that’s generic and malleable to whatever fic the writer wants to write.

(This isn’t getting into the ship fic, which I avoid like the plague because the vast majority of it is incest, but I’d bet real actual money that the tropes in those fics fall under what is often preferred by the Migratory Slash Fandom.)

By having a decent excuse not to get into canon (the inaccessibility of comics) and a, by now, well-established fanon fandom, many fans feel free to use the batfam fandom as essentially an excuse to write whatever fic with reduced archetypes and tropes they personally feel the itch to write, without having to bother with even consuming a canon. This is compounded by the fact that canon itself is often contradictory and frankly bad, meaning that whatever interpretation of a character you want/need to go for your fic is at least theoretically backed up by canon (for example, you can just as easily cast Bruce as an abusive shithole dad who his kids need to get away from as a loving father figure who cares deeply for his children), which you can always use as a defense if people question your characterization.

5. This focus on fandom trends and tropes over actual creativity or care for the characters is also visible in the way bigotry manifests in this fandom; namely, in literally the exact way you’d expect. The female characters and characters of colour are shuffled to the side, non-existent, vilified, and/or reduced to harmful stereotypes. 

Barbara is probably the one I saw the most often in fanfic, but usually just as ‘Dick’s girlfriend’, and even then, she was often vilified for Dick angst (especially in fics about examining Dick’s trauma from his canon sexual assault; Kori also often gets the short end of the stick in those). After that, probably Stephanie, who fanon fans don’t really seem to know what to do with, so she’s basically just there as comic relief waffle girl, most of the time, though sometimes she can be used to either further Tim angst or further vilify Tim, whatever the fic calls for. Cass has gotten included more in batfam fics as of late, likely in response to critiques of fandom racism for leaving her out, but again, it’s clear people don’t actually know what to do with her. She’s often reduced to a racist stereotype of a quite, stoic therapist for whatever guy du jour needs it. That, or she’s in Hong Kong and just not there. Duke especially gets left in the dust in fandom, usually just being non-existent, but when he’s there, he’s almost always nothing more than the straight man for the actual fun characters to play off of. Talia probably has it the worst, though, and almost universally gets vilified by fanon stans in order to write sadboy Damian.

All of this is extremely predictable behaviour and falls entirely in line with general fandom misogyny and racism; ignoring or vilifying women and characters of colour, or using them as very minor characters at best. The only two characters of colour who aren’t regularly left out of fic are Dick and Damian, who are both also conveniently the two characters most often drawn and written in a whitewashed manner. In addition, there’s a real trend of demonizing Damian in fanon fics where he isn’t written as an abused sadboy, which I’d argue is in no small part due to fandom racism, considering Damian’s behaviour is in no way as bad as Jason’s, who doesn’t get anywhere close to the same demonization and gets woobiefied instead. I also find it convenient that Damian is probably the batboy who receives the most vilification in fic, when he’s the most obviously non-white of the batboys they’re willing to acknowledge.

Fandom often cries for more diversity in canon, only to ignore the diversity already there and focus on the same generic white guys. The batfam fandom is a brilliant example of this.

Which is not to say that fandom racism and misogyny isn’t present in the canon parts of the fandom (and canon itself); it absolutely 100% is. But I’ve found that canon fans are also more likely to like and care about at least one of the characters I’ve listed as ignored/vilified, and are willing to create and consume content for them, whereas fanon fans... aren’t, really. I’ve never seen a fan of fanon Cass the way I’ve seen fans of fanon Dick, for example. Obviously, this could just be by coincidence, or I’ve just surrounded myself with people like that, but it’s been a trend I noticed. Racism and misogyny is present in every part of this fandom and should be addressed as such, but I feel like it manifests the most blatantly in the fanon parts of this fandom. 

(I’d also recommend the articles Migratory Slash Fandom’s Focus and Beige Blank Slates, which expand more on the type of fandom racism I think is especially prominent in the batfam fandom, as well as literally every article in the What Fandom Racism Looks Like series.)

6. All this leads me to conclude that the majority of fanon fans don’t actually like the characters all that much; they’re convenient excuses for them to participate in fandom. Which I also think is, in no small part, a reason why so many of them react so negatively to being told to pick up a comic; they came to this fandom specifically to consume it as a fandom, because they wanted the fandom experience without having to consume a canon. 

This is not a phenomena unique to the batfam fandom (again, see the Migratory Slash Fandom), but it does fascinate me. While fandom is often said to be an experience focusing on transformative art, I think it’s also safe to say that, especially as fandom has become more mainstream, an increasing amount of people are looking to it less as a way to engage with their favourite pieces of media, and more as a type of media in and of itself. I think the reasons for this are similar to the reasons mass media entertainment like the MCU are so popular; you gain a lot of enjoyment out of it with very little risk involved. 

By consuming the same fics of the same characters (or the same archetypes) over and over again, you are rarely at risk of being challenged or even disappointed. It’s often very clear right from the start whether or not a fic will appeal to you, and if it isn’t, it’s easy to just look for another one. It requires less emotional investment than most other types of media, even ‘popcorn media’ like the MCU - or, yes, DC Comics. It’s safe, it’s enjoyable, it’s comforting, like McDonalds, but just like McDonalds, it’s ultimately bland and unsubstantial. 

7, TL;DR. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s like, wrong to enjoy the fanon version of the batfam without wanting to engage with canon, and I certainly don’t think it’s okay to harrass people over it. But I do think it’s in large part based on a desire to interact with fandom rather than other pieces of media because people are scared of being let down by those pieces of media (or worse, just uninterested in actually thinking), which is mildly concerning. 

[bonearenaofmyskull]

hello! this is kind of hannibal related but not a meta question, just someone i guess looking for a little advice, and you seemed like a nice middle-ground to come to. i just wanna say i am biased towards Will because he is a huge comfort character and this is mainly about him. but i have a lot of trouble believing in my own opinions - opinions that mostly surround Will and my interpretation of his character. (1/2)

(2/2) i can/have formed my own opinions for him, but then immediately doubt myself when challenged or seeing someone with a different view. i'll think "what if i'm just fooling myself?" or "am i just seeing what i want to see?" i have a need to be 100% correct about who Will is, which is probably impossible. so the question i wanted to ask is: how do you feel so assured with your opinions on characters, and can you offer any advice in valuing those opinions? apologies if this is strange.

The question isn’t strange--it’s very relatable--but it is very hard thing for me to give advice on because, in Hannibal terms, I’ve got nature, nurture, and choice all on my side in this. I’ve always liked the sound of my own voice, I have an English degree, I’m well read, I’m old--and I was old in tumblr terms even when the show was new, I’m practiced, my job literally requires me to lead figurative horses to literary water AND get them to drink the Kool-Aid, plus I’d been educated about the source material for the show for longer than a great deal of its fans had even been alive and--I cannot stress this enough--I worked hard to be educated on the show itself (none of my opinions were formed without multiple repeated viewings and homework on this site and others)...and in the end, it simply does not matter to me when people do not agree 100% with what I’ve said. Like you said, that would be improbable at best. 

That said, I’m also not taking any real risks with my interpretations. You won’t see me dying on the “Will is autistic” hill, for example--and you won’t see me dying on the “Will is not autistic” hill either. (Not that I’ve always made perfect judgment calls when it comes to controversy, but I digress.) I have always considered my purpose here to be to try to get to the best, clearest, and soundest understanding of the show and what it’s trying to say. Though I am human and have biases about what that is, I don’t have any agendas outside of helping everyone, including myself, reach that clarity of understanding, and so because of that my opinions are relatively “safe,” so to speak--generally speaking, you won’t find me exploring “what ifs” and asserting headcanons and fanon over text, at least not in anything I myself take very seriously. Those things are at odds to my purpose.

The thing that makes me nervous about your ask is that you make it sound like whatever your interpretation of Will is, it’s controversial enough that you frequently encounter opinions that undermine that interpretation. I know you didn’t come to me wanting to see me suggest that maybe you should consider that these other opinions actually are correct, but that is something that has to be acknowledged. 

To give perspective, I scanned down my activity log for recent metas that have gotten comments and came back with this one about Hannibal’s religious belief and this one about what he learned from Mischa. 

What I want you to see with these metas are two things: how I hedge my bets, and how I support my points. 

WRT to supporting points: In the religious belief one, I’ve got something like 14 text citations, including paraphrasing of 3 separate additional pieces of research, while in the other (shorter) one, there’s around 8, and again I cite both the books and interviews with the creators. I cannot stress this enough: do your homework. Even if you are just having opinions for the sake of having opinions. 

The other thing is more subtle, but you can see me hedging my bets both structurally and in my use of language in both these metas. 

The language one is easy to spot if you’re looking for it, and I do it specifically because I know I’m in an environment where people will argue if they can argue, and I want to provide language that gives them subconscious permission not to bother because I’m not married to those individual points. These are things like “it’s impossible to say exactly to what he was referring,” “probably,” “speaking personally,” “if you think about it from Hannibal’s own point of view,” “it’s difficult to say,” “I would caution against reading that without respecting...” and “I couldn’t speak to whether or not it’s coincidental.” Generally teachers of writing caution against sounding like your opinion is less than 1000% exactly the one and only interpretation of a thing, but that’s not practical on this website, and moreover, I find it to be important to concede the limitations if individual supporting points because it is not the individual points that make the interpretation but the sum of the whole (if you can prove it with a single piece of evidence, then it is fact, not interpretation)--and it is in that place that my confidence lies. So again, if you have done your homework and conceded your biases and recognized the limitations of the individual pieces of evidence, then you may have confidence in your conclusions. 

The point is: do not be deceived by my apparent confidence: I am not confident because I know where the strengths in my argument are. I can have confidence because I know where the weaknesses are, and I always at least try to acknowledge them. 

Like I said, I’m not in the business of taking big risks here.

And if you look in the notes, you still see people getting hung up on one little point or other, like getting a burr up their butts about citing the books or the creators (the author is dead, dontcha kno), but that also gives me permission to side-eye their objections because any one thing is only ever a tiny fraction of the point that I’ve made, and it always deserves as much weight as every other piece of supporting evidence, which is to say I never hang my opinions on just one thing. So if they want to be a fool about one little thing, that’s not my problem unless their opinion starts gaining traction in the community or I realize I left something out or didn’t make a point well, and in either of these cases I’ll go back and address it.

The other thing I do is structural, and you can see it in both the metas I mentioned: I address the context of common interpretations, authorial comment, and references to the source material first, before going on to whatever point I’m making. I do this because these are the commonest things people will be thinking of when they come into reading my post. I had no interest in repeating that Hannibal learned about his capacity for murder from Mischa’s death because it is utterly the lowest hanging fruit you could possibly pick. But I mentioned it ANYWAY before getting to my point about hopelessness because if I didn’t, people would be all up in my notes shouting about that hoary old chestnut because I hadn’t first acknowledged it hanging there, and it would still be obstructing their view. 

To come back to your question, then, yes, I have experience and personality that predispose me to confidence about what I do on this website, but the real reason I have confidence in what I have to say is because I am doing my due diligence: my opinions are not risky because they are thoroughly grounded in text that I research, dare I say, fanatically. I do not assert myself on things I cannot provide an abundance of evidence to support, I acknowledge the limitations of the individual parts that make up the whole, and I make sure that I have addressed or at least thought about alternate opinions even if they are beside the point. 

And finally, remember that my purpose is not to serve my own comforts and biases, but to do the best job that I can, for myself and for the fandom. If your self-doubt lies in knowing that your interpretations serve yourself instead of the artist’s work or the fandom as a whole, then I think you should ask yourself why you perceive that there is a divide between these things. And I don’t know what that answer will be, or if it will be something that is easily set aside or not. 

But if you do your homework thoroughly and well, if you consider opinions outside your own, and if you keep a reign on assertions that you make, then there is no reason not to be confident.