#like if you don't understand subtext in a story just say that

[jonathanbyersphd]

Another day of being exhausted of Jonathan Byers slander

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

trying to finish reading dungeon meshi now that it's done and just seeing everyone in the comments talking about ships. gun to my head

[mishkakagehishka]

I just . Repeating "characters are tools" you end up erasing so much about arashi's character and motivations and interactions with other characters if you avoid using her pronouns aka avoid showing she's transgender. It's on the same level of frustration with the translators i had when i saw they had Mika speaking standard English, there's a LOT that gets lost if you don't show those little things.

[hallofharmony]

everytime someone acts like sky has no lore i get so annoyed

[minakoaiinos]

Animating this season like you can't have the slightest bit of jest and god forbid jesting about yaoi

[teambyler]

YES Mike eating fruit on pizza was a gay metaphor

I saw a comment saying that Bylers are delusional for finding gay subtext in the "fruit on pizza" scene. We're "overanalyzing" things, they say!

Thing is, that's not the only gay metaphor WITH FOOD that is in Stranger Things. Remember this?

Any LGBT+ person has to react to this the way I did: haha that's a gay joke! "You can't have two of the same thing together"!

And then Robin gave her the jar of jelly, which gave it new meaning:

Vickie was just rambling about her ex-boyfriend and holding 2 slices that were incompatible. But Vickie is compatible with ROBIN. It doesn't matter that she's also a girl, you see! Giving her the jelly and their unspoken shared look and understanding is THE moment they realize their attraction is mutual.

And they made these points about Rovickie with food. (Also see another easter egg where they used food to associate Will with Mike.)

And then Vickie's immediate next line: "I don't know what's wrong with me." She talks about her mouth moving faster than her brain, but the GAY subtext is here also. Something "wrong" about her = being gay = feeling "like a mistake." This is Vickie telling Robin "I'm kind of odd / gay, you know..."

The Stranger Things writers KNOW about gay subtext. So when Mike calls FRUIT (a derogatory term for gay men) on pizza "blasphemous" and comically is made to eat it, AND he says afterward "No, you're right. It's good"? ...

... we're just supposed to IGNORE that????? Just accept it? And if it's not that, then what was the point of the scene?

It is frankly, a pretty BLATANT hint that Mike is QUEER.

And he loves Will. This isn't some unrequited love story -- the writers know the proper way to handle that which is to resolve it quickly... they did that with Dustin's hopes for Max being introduced AND resolved within the space of a season. (Same with Steve liking Robin.) Meanwhile, Will's love for Mike has been built over FOUR seasons, and everything remains unresolved between them, the Painting Lie being one of the most important things. (Will coming out to Mike being the other.)

-teambyler

[vorestarr]

i love when Astarion is mean, and i mean like genuinely mean, saying shitty things and lashing out specifically to hurt someone or push them away. i think it really says so much about him and about the specific situations when he feels the need to lash out. i love seeing it with Durge/Tav, but i'm playing a Karlach origin to romance him right now and he's so mean during his first romance scene when he can't even kiss Karlach.

after playing it, i went to look at the parsed dialogue for that scene because i wanted to see if there were any dev notes, and oh boy are there dev notes. walk with me here while i go through them all. (i didn't add alt text to the images below, but i did transcribe the lines i'm referencing in the images below, so all the important information is in the text of the post itself.)

it's the typical Astarion scene, but after his "i've been waiting to taste you" line, he diverges with: "Although your condition means tasting you could be a risky proposition. You're quite the forbidden fruit, aren't you?"

the player (as Karlach) has a few choices in reply at that point, but as long as they pick one that progresses the scene (i.e., not the one where you reject him last minute), he goes down the same dialogue tree. this tree starts with:

Astarion: All denied to us because of what Zariel did to you. [devnote: subtext, thinking about Cazador]

so right off the bat he's upset because Karlach's situation is reminding him of his own with Cazador.

but then his next line is:

Astarion: I - you know, I have no idea what to do with you now. [devnote: Astarion's mask as the flippant libertine is cracking a bit here. He's frustrated but vulnerable here. Because he can't physically seduce or touch Karlach, his usual means of interacting with a person is punctured. He's faced with the reality that he might not know how to handle a situation where he can't bite or seduce his way to the finish line.]

wow. that's a lot in that dev note.

at this point, the player has the option of a few responses, but two options to continue the encounter. the choices to continue it are: "You don't have to 'do' anything. We can just be." or "After the life you've led, I'm not surprised."

if you choose the first option, Astarion is frustrated but less mean. he says:

Astarion: 'Just be' what, exactly? Frustrated? Bored? What do we do, if not... that?

if you choose the second option, he's a little meaner. understandably so, since the player just poked at his painful past:

Astarion: You think you know the life I've led? The experiences I've had? You've no idea the stories I could tell, sweet Karlach. But you - you're just -

then, both the paths converge to the same final statement, which is mean no matter what Karlach has said to this point:

Astarion: Urgh! Why is this so difficult? I'd have already bedded you twice if you were normal.

importantly, there are dev notes for all of his lines here, but the notes are all the same:

devnote: Masking defensiveness with offensiveness. In truth he really does want what Karlach is offering (to just hang out without having sex) but now that it's within grasp he's floundering.

again, at this point the player has two choices to continue the encounter, and one to end it. i'll go down each continue path separately, since they can diverge quite a bit.

path 1

the first choice is to say: "Twice in this short space of time? Doesn't sound very satisfying."

he gets mad. and mean.

Astarion: Karlach! You know what I mean. [devnote: Frustrated] Astarion: Or maybe you don't. Astarion: There may be an inferno in you, Karlach, but at the end of the day you've been frigid for a decade, isn't that right? [devnote: Being mean-spirited in an attempt to drive Karlach away, even though he doesn't actually want to do that.]

the player again has two response options to continue the encounter, and one to end it.

the first choice to continue the encounter is: "You want to try that again? Without being a jackass, maybe?"

in response he says:

Astarion: This is impossible - you're impossible! [devnote: Masking defensiveness with offensiveness. In truth he really does want what Karlach is offering (to just hang out without having sex) but now that it's within grasp he's floundering.]

(at this point, the path diverts to merge with the dialogue tree from the previous branch where Astarion complains about Karlach not being normal. so we'll pause here, and continue down that dialogue tree with the path 2 header below.)

the second choice to continue the encounter after Astarion says that Karlach has been frigid for a decade is to say: "What's really going on here, Astarion? Suddenly you're so vicious."

he replies:

Astarion: Suddenly? Darling, you haven't been paying attention. [devnote: Seething and mean.] Astarion: Listen, it's just - ... I'm sorry, all right? Is that what you want?

again, at this point, he diverts to the same shared dialogue tree as the other response option. that merges with path 2, so we'll continue there:

path 2

to go BACK to the previous branch we went down, where Astarion said he would have bedded Karlach twice already if she was just normal, the other response option for the player is: "I am normal. 'Fucked up' is the height of normalcy."

instead of being mean, Astarion immediately apologizes:

Astarion: Oh no - don't you tar me with your 'normal' brush. My demons keep me extraordinary. [devnote: Karlach has punctured Astarion's bad mood with a joke.]

and then he apologizes, like he does in the other paths, saying he doesn't know what to do without being able to touch her.

Astarion: I - ...I'm sorry, Karlach. It's just, not being able to touch you - having to slow down, it's... I'm just not used to it. [devnote: subtext here is on the slowing down. That IS what he wants. But it's hard for him to see that clearly.]

Astarion: So, can you -... I don't know. Help? Show me what to do? [devnote: First breakthrough. He's asking for help knowing what to do when you can't jump into bed with someone.]

again, at this point, the player has two options to continue the encounter or one to end it.

for the first response to continue, the player can say: "We can just talk. As long as we want. Then we can sleep. Near, but not too near."

Astarion responds to this one pretty positively. he's still a little mean, but it's in his fond teasing way, and not his biting, cruel way:

Astarion: Karlach, champion of the Hells, wants to talk and then fall asleep? [devnote: Incredulous] My dear, you're much more boring than I gave you credit for. [devnote: Teasing] All right, Karlach. Let's try it your way. [devnote: Gently. He's feeling vulnerable, but sees that this might be a chance to feel safe.]

the second response option from the player is: "I don't know either. This is all just as new for me as it is for you."

he doesn't respond quite as well to this one, and goes back to being mean:

Astarion: Well. To quote you: 'Fuck.' Astarion: Why don't we put ourselves out of this misery and just sleep? If I can at least look at you, I won't have wasted my whole evening. [devnote: Peak of Astarion sexy toxicity.]

then, the scene fades to black and it transitions to the morning-after scene with Astarion, where the player first sees his scars.

i also think as a whole, this scene is just so representative of Astarion's early-game state of mind. he's following a comfortable script with all his interactions, but when he's confronted with something new, he flounders.

especially when it comes to sex, which is a touchy subject for him, his first reaction to any vulnerability is to lash out and hurt people. in this scene:

if Karlach brings up his past experiences, he lashes out. ("You think you know the life I've led?")

he blames Karlach for the situation because that's easier than addressing that he doesn't know what to do without his script. ("if you were normal")

if Karlach jokes about him ("Doesn't sound very satisfying") he lashes out even further, calling her frigid and impossible and then even doubling down if she calls him out ("you haven't been paying attention").

but if Karlach jokes about HERSELF ("'Fucked up' is the height of normalcy"), it snaps him out of his toxic bullshit and he's able to take a step back and apologize to her.

then regardless, he's also able to recognize that this is an opportunity to get what he wants without having sex, and recognize that he wants that too.

and then to me, Astarion being mean in that last response choice ("I don't know either") makes perfect sense, given the context of his other lashing out earlier in the conversation. even if the player didn't make those previous choices where he lashed out at them, he can still get mean and toxic on this choice.

crucially, with this choice, he's taken that step of hopeful vulnerability where he recognizes that maybe he does want to just spend time with Karlach without having sex, but he doesn't know how to do it. he asks for help.

if the player says they don't know how to do that either, he immediately puts those defensive walls back up. he doesn't want to flounder around, he wants an answer. he wants to know that it's actually possible to have a positive experience with someone without the script he's always used. the player saying they don't have that answer just pisses him off.

wow okay this post got really long, but i really vibed with the dev notes for this scene, and i think you can see exactly these toxic behaviors from Astarion in other scenes and in romances with other characters as well, but it's just so so clear with the Karlach scene and the dev notes just really highlight that.

[sudaca-swag]

American and european writers are stuck on these styles and tropes but... what are these? I'm not a fantasy reader but i'd like to know.

in my opinion it's usually a solid book structure that most writers don't dare to break or play around with, like you have a main character, a defined and explicit problem being made known (ex: bad guy wants to own this weapon), a very straightforward mission to preventing that problem and then the end that tends to sum up the story neatly (good or bad, generally not a nuanced ending enough since it's mostly one or the other). Which is fine sometimes, I enjoy lots of fantasy books that are like this, but it also turns boring sometimes when you're a non English speaker used to different types of books, take for example heaven officials blessing since it's the one I'm currently reading, the plot is hard to define sure you could say something about it but there's so many moments and different plots going around throughout reading it that there isn't a single climax moment, there are multiple peaks in the story, the ending is quite mixed and not completely closed since some things are left up to interpretation or the readers imagination, also the concept of time is much more flexible and past memories are interwoven in the story constantly not set in a flashback which also prevents "info dumps" to me. You could say that it's bc tgcf is a very long story, but for example the starless sea does this magnificently in just 500 pages or so.

Latin American literature too has a very distinctive pace, it's slower, it's focused on being pretty and poetic rather than in arriving to a plot climax, because the entire book is the journey that the reader is enjoying, the reader isn't just consuming a solid plot. It trusts that readers are also reading slow enough as to understand subtext so it doesn't explicitly say a lot of things, or it works a lot with foreshadowing what will happen in later books even though the reader might not immediately understand what it means, something that I've found in today's usamerican and European fantasy which is also the most published worldwide is how rushed it is, there is no reader-writer alliance in which the writer acknowledges the reader is smart enough to understand and the reader is patient enough to wait out, and it won't change probably because of how much money booktok is making editorial houses, and we all know what sort of stories booktok pushes the most.

[lemotmo]

I was hoping someone would ask her this. I know that makes me terrible 😅

Q. I don't know that you can look at it as the show or Tim not bothering to use him. It might actually be they're just being selective about when and how they use him. That might be a good thing.

A. Okay, I understand that at this point you all don't really have a lot of cards left to play so I get the need to make 'they're being strategic with how they use him' sound remotely plausible. It's not. That is not at all what they're doing. Mentioning his name costs them nothing. A line here or there to establish his presence, especially with Buck, costs them nothing. It's the easiest way to work a non main into the narrative. The problem with giving Buck and Eddie love interests separate from one another was always going to be figuring out how to work that person into the narrative consistently enough to compete with the BuckandEddie thing. On paper Tommy is the easiest love interest, by far, to work into the narrative. It's not hard at all to find places you could realistically slot him into. Look at how much they have inserted Brad into Bobby's narrative. And he doesn't fit in nearly as neatly as Tommy does. But the show has done it, and they've done it believably. He doesn't feel shoehorned into his scenes. They make sense. The show is more than capable of using Tommy effectively. If that's what they wanted to do. They're not using him because they don't need him. Tommy was never the point. Him being male was the point.

It was always going to be difficult to bring in someone and get the audience to a place where they would want Buck or Eddie to have the moments or conversations, that they would normally have with one another, with their love interest instead of each other. It was going to take effort. You don't need a ton of scenes but you need meaningful scenes. Scenes that show a genuine connection. And the show has made a point of not giving them any kind of emotionally connecting scenes. Oliver has even basically confirmed that in all of his interviews. Their relationship is not deep. They're avoiding that connection, or most likely Buck, is avoiding that connection. The reason why Buck is avoiding those conversations is the point of his story, and what we've yet to learn. Tommy is the amalgamation of every relationship Buck has had throughout the series. He is all of his love interests rolled into one. The age difference and teacher role of Abby, the fun doesn't want anything too deep and messy of Ali, the we're completely different and incompatible but attracted to one another and Buck wants to make it work of Taylor, and finally to the relationship in name only of Natalia. Tommy is all of those things. The only difference is he's male. His maleness was and is the only important thing about him in terms of Buck's storyline. He is the last piece before Buck figures himself out. There isn't a nicer way to say that. His only important trait is being male. He's a walking, talking plot device.

They're not being subtle about where this Eddie storyline is going. They're not. It's not hard to follow the yellow brick road here. Last night was the official start of his coming out arc. You can pretend you didn't see it. You can pretend the subtext and undertones of his entire plot last night wasn't what it clearly was, but it won't change the reality of what we all can see coming. My ask box indicates most of you can see what is happening here. Some of you can keep denying, that's your fandom right, but it won't change the storyline. If Tommy was ever going to be a genuine factor they would have leaned into him more, especially where Buck is concerned. They didn't do that. They leaned even more into Buddie. They have added an unnecessary Buddie moment into each episode so far. And that dates back to the start of last season. To make any other love interest remotely viable they needed to adjust the way they write Buddie and instead they doubled down on them. Buck's entire plot last night was how differently he reacted to and dealt with finding himself in the very same position Tommy was in back in season 2. They spent the entire episode highlighting how differently they handled the same situation. That's the point. And it wasn't a point in their relationships favor. They are massively different people. I have said all along that I don't think they're going to turn Tommy into the bad guy on his way out the door, and the way they handled Gerard last night, gross, further proves that belief. They're just incompatible. Something Buck probably already knows but is avoiding dealing with at the moment. Allowing Buck the agency to make the breakup about what is right for him, and only him, is the correct way to go. Giving him the ability to identify, recognize and finally walk away from the pattern is the growth he's earned. And having it happen an episode before or even during Eddie's big moment is deliberate. This is only going to go one way. Pretending you don't see the train coming isn't going to make it stop.

Thank you so much Nonny! As always, much appreciated.

And thank you Ali for saying the things we have all been repeating into infinity, but summarizing it so neatly and making it easy to understand for everyone who desperately needs to hear it.

I'm just leaving this here without adding anything. I feel all that needed to be said has been said and to be completely honest? I'm tired of talking about the guy. 🤷‍♀️

IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[jupiters-galaxy]

I've seen some people criticize how quickly Peter and Steph fell for each other (to the point of being the thing they treasure most), and while I do understand some of the criticism, I think there are a few key things that some people aren't picking up on.

-Treasuring each other IS NOT strictly romantic. While it's true that Peter is in love with Steph, and Steph with Peter, it goes deeper than their repressed love story. They ARE friends. They do genuinely like spending time together, although their connection is relatively new. They care about each other as people first; neither of them seem like they NEED to be in a relationship with the other. They seek each other out even when they're just friends.

-It's also important to remember that the lords in black only want treasured things in the metaphorical sense: they can't give up OBJECTS. It presumably has to be a person or a concept.

-It's important to remember that both of them have been through an unbelieveable ordeal. Peter's closest friends were murdered. Stephanie lost her DAD, and although they weren't close, that can't have been easy to stomach. I cannot stress this enough; Peter and Steph quite literally have no one else left. Peter has no other friends. It logically tracks for him to be attached to Stephanie, as she is someone who experienced the same traumas as him. From Stephanie's angle, she doesn't really like her friends, and since objects are out of the question, Peter is the only person who she feels truly knows her. He's really the only option for her, even if her feelings are confusing.

-I also want to point out that you can really kind of feel them falling for each other, although it is admittedly subtext. Peter is weak to Steph as early as the opening number. He does out of character things to make her happy; a compliment from her makes his day amazing; he faces his biggest fear in hopes of seeing her at Pasqualli's. Stephanie cares for him from the first day they meet, although her care is a lot more ambiguous. She teases him about how he's into her, but at the same time, she's protective of him, feeling horrible that he got beat up and wanting to stop it. Even beyond that, she's inclusive towards him, inviting him to hang out with her simply because she likes his company. Her attraction to him makes sense: we know that Steph has a thing for funny and smart guys, and Peter's geeky snarkiness ABSOLUTELY fits. Their relationship is one that just makes a lot of sense!

-Their relationship is actually portrayed really realistically near the end. They're not intense about their love, nor are they overtly sexual. In NPMD, they don't even kiss! The furthest they go is dancing close together and having conversations, cautiously stepping into a new relationship that they mutually want. Despite the heavy nature of their confessions in As Cool As I Think I Am (Reprise), the payoff is not drastic. The confessions were likely only so heavy because they both thought Peter was about to die. Of course he would go out detailing how he loves her, and of course she would say it back; their last memories together should be good ones. When faced with normalcy, they progress as most teens would.

-At the end of the day, they're two traumatized teenagers who already liked each other before the trauma. It makes sense that they feel like the other is the most important to them; after all, Grace is the only other survivor from their group, and they're thinking about her in a less than favorable way past Richie's death, if not sooner than that.

This is not to say they're perfect, but I think their portrayal was really sweet and a joy to watch. I think the implications are extremely interesting idk!! I love Peter and Steph, I think they're more nuanced than they're getting credit for. I love to see cringefail nerds getting badass and amazing girlfriends, let me have this!!!!!

Anyways yeah that's my hot take. One of many. NPMD is consuming me someone help

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

Inevitable been thinking about how that one anon viewed Laios as a monsterfucker, and I think it made me realize the source of that confusion:

I think many monsterfuckers, and also many (dare I say most) monster devourers like Laios, both derive their desire from the same source: a latent wish for apoteratosis, the wish to become a monster.

Linguistic side note: apotheosis, becoming a god, breaks down to apo- (towards the end point), theo (god), -osis (turn noun into verb), so I swapped in the root for monster, hence apo- terato -osis. Side note over.

Monster devourers are a rather rare archetype in (mainstream) fiction, but they do exist. Those who seek to mimic or emulate the monster's power, those who find them endlessly fascinating and study them well past the point of obsession, those who wish to show their dominance over the monster by proving that they can kill and eat it... and I think Laios is the first I've seen who takes the title quite so literally, where his obsession goes straight to monsters-as-food.

Monsterfuckers, meanwhile wish to become close to the monster in a non destructive way (or at least a typically less destructive one, usually the only casualties are furniture and few bandages are needed, but I'll acknowledge that exceptions definitely exist). They wish to bond with it, to connect to it through lust or intimacy, to be able to stand at its side. They wish, on some level, to join it. Side note, I'm not saying this is true of all teratophiles, some are just kinky and driven by the thought of positive physical pleasure, or who find the personality of a given monster appealing, but I do think the apoteratotic desire is an underlying driver for many, I'd guess well more than half, it's just a subtle enough thing that I don't think most are consciously aware of it.

There's also a third point to the secret apoteratosis triangle that might surprise you: the monster slayer. Sure many, even most, slayers are driven by something like disgust or xenophobia or even rationality, but a significant minority land in the "if you can't join 'em, beat 'em" a.k.a. "I can't be you, so I'll destroy you" camp.

And these three reactions are, I notice, the three most common reactions that people have to one thing: the unattainable desire. The sentence begins "I cannot have it..." and these three camps end it different ways.

The teratophages say "so I shall dominate it." They seek what power they can grasp so they can have some modicum of control, so they can try to "have" it anyway. The kaiju corpse scavengers in Pacific Rim including refined and suave mob boss types just smacks of this attitude.

The teratophiles say "so I'll get as close as I can." There's a werewolf romance book where they're considering trying to turn the girlfriend, though they have no idea if she'll survive it (boyfriend was turned by accident then abandoned, so he's clueless, and they haven't found any others to teach them), and she says that she's fine remaining human, because she shares the power through him. "I have it, because you have it." The façade eventually breaks and in a vulnerable moment she confesses that she'd be willing to risk even a likely death to try to be turned. When they get in contact with an elder who can turn her safely she doesn't even wait a week.

The teratophobes write that whole sentence as "if I can't have it, then no one can." I'm sure everyone has seen enough examples of this behavior to understand that it's just a kind of love turned corrupt.

I'm not the first to notice the underlying apoteratotic urge: the aforementioned werewolf story, indeed many werewolf and vampire stories romanticize the transformation of a human into a monster. Back to Dungeon Meshi, author Ryōko Kui is fully aware of it with how Laios's underlying desire is eventually brought out of the subtext and explicitly named as his dysphoria with humanity, and his wishing that he could be a monster. For Laios that desire skipped right past the socially unacceptable monsterfucking, explicitly a form of bestiality in that world, to the socially acceptable devouring, though tempered by his respect and admiration of monsters into a desire for symbiosis with them. He cannot become one in truth (or so he thought when younger) but he could become part of their food web. It's as close as he thought he could get. Of course, that's the Watsonian explanation; the Doylist explanation is that Ryōko Kui wanted to subvert expectations, and also wanted to explore this angle of it.

So, all taken together, I think people read Laios as monsterfucker coded simply because teratophiles, teratophages, and teratophobes all share the same root motivation: apoteratosis. Thus, all three branches are coded very similarly.

It's similar to something I've seen in Batman fandom: some fans project romantic love between various members of the Batfamily, which is both wildly against canon and thoroughly hated by some other branches of fandom. But it is understandable, since familial love and romantic love both come from the same root, love of another. If someone doesn't recognize the simultaneous similarities and distinctions, it's all to easy to conflate them. If you don't actually understand the distinction, then the signs of affection between siblings might look the same as the signs of affection between lovers. Likewise, if you don't understand the distinction, the urge of the monster devourers (or ecologists) might look the same as the urge of the monster fucker.

I've sat on this for near a month, partially because of my repeated absences, partially because I wanted to honor it with an equally in-depth response. But 24 days later I've still got nothing, while I can't speak for that particular person I think in general you hit the nail right on the head for the base roots. I got no notes. Even with Laios...like all I can add is how supplemental materials actually confirm he did want to be a monster researcher but found books too dry, the only one who seemed to really *get* monsters was shunned. and how wild he goes when talking with an actual werewolf, "The existence I thought unobtainable is now right in front of me".

[justchillandshipit]

Here I go again.

Buck asks Eddie if his son is the real reason he doesn't date. Eddie responds with, "That and, they weren't my type."

This has been a flag for everyone who reads the subtext, but let's take a moment to look at the last GIF.

Eddie says they weren't his type. Buck turns around to look at them and probably assesses what makes them, 'not' Eddie's type because the girls were all subjectively pretty. There were also a variety of types of women there.

But look closely at the GIF. Eddie said they weren't his type. While Buck is glancing back, Eddie gives Buck a quick look that really screams, "You are it. You are the type." When I noticed this from the GIF edit, I thought it might be the creator slowing it down, but nope. If I look at the episode, it is the same or nearly the same. This is early season two, and I have always thought, in the early episodes, there was no intent to pair Eddie with Buck as anything but a friend. However, this scene makes me wonder at what point Tim M or whoever was writing changed their minds about adding in a subtextual narrative.

I find it very difficult to see this scene as a heteronormative exchange. In fact, it even feels like Eddie is pushing back a little to test where Buck stands. Buck as a character who lacks self-awareness gives a mixed signal answer. (which tracks with his character at this point and matches his coming-out arc.) **edited to clarify** Buck's mixed signal response to Eddie saying they aren't my type is, "Not mine either, at least not anymore."**

A few seconds later, Buck says Eddie has a weak excuse. My lovely and wonderfully sassy Eddie says, "You live in your invisible girlfriend's house, and you're telling me about weak excuses." He essentially points at Buck's closet door, but of course, this is something that Buck couldn't see or pick up on at the time. These moments are small in the grand scheme of the show as a whole so I'm afraid it will be forgotten. It would be nice to have some sort of throwback acknowledgment that this scene hasn't been retconned.

To backtrack a little bit here, I would also like to point out something else about the early timing or the writing of these characters as potentially queer. They are outside. (True I don't understand the ins and outs of filmmaking so there may very well be a reason for this.) But the shot itself is making them walk close together. Not just close, their shoulders are literally bumping against each other, hitting and knocking at each other in a way that might appear "unintentionally" intimate--until you remember they are outside. It seems to me like there are dozens of ways to shoot this thing that don't require them to be so casually physical with each other. For the scene to be shot like this and then consider the canon conversation that took place, it feels quite intentional that the writers wanted viewers to look closely for something else.

Whenever certain people call Buddie shippers delusional, I think about this. Subtextual language aside, the scenes are shot in such a way as to plant the idea of "More." There is attraction here. There is flirting.

Someone, somewhere wanted to tell this story from the start; and I'm not mad about it. I'm 100% here for it, and I'm ready for it to go down as the most epic love story I've ever watched or read about, but I also admit that I want it to be canon, not so I can throw it in anyone's face that their ship is wrong, but so I can prove I'm not some weirdo putting two hot guys together. I'm seeing a real romance being built. I want that validation as much as I want everyone under the LGBTQ umbrella to see representation for themselves on screen.

If you want to see the scene, go to about 3:05.

[teainthesnow]

i shouldn't need to spell it out and yet

friendly reminder that unwanted 'constructive' criticism and useless comments (e.g. i don't like this. i'm confused.) are just rude. and this is true for fics, comics, and anything people are posting online

don't be that person

and if for some reason you decide to say something anyway, be nice about it. It costs nothing to be nice (:

(also note - even nice feedback and comments are hard to get these days. if negativity is all or the majority a person gets, well that's just hell to deal with... and also not a reflection of the author/artist/ect abilities)

image 1 - desc

TEAS GUIDE TO ONLINE ETIQUETTE (aka, how to not be an ass)

So, you're confused reading someone else's story?

no -> Hell yeah! tell them that you enjoy it!

yes -> do you feel the need to inform the author?

no -> nice

yes -> did they ask for your opinion?

yes -> then let them know (nicely)

no -> leave them alone -> but it's bugging you? -> will rereading help?

no -> then tough. leave the author alone

yes - go do that -> but it's still updating -> then of course it won't make sense yet, you wallnut

-> still confused -> have you tried looking for a thing called subtext

still confused

-> THEN TOUGH. LEAVE THE AUTHOR ALONE.

- ---- -

image 2 - desc

should you tell someone they made a spelling and/or grammar mistake? -> Did they ask to be told?

yes - then go tell them NICELY

no - then leave them alone

- ---- -

image 3 - desc

You want to tell someone that you don't understand their work? -> Did they ask for your opinion?

yes -> then tell them (NICELY)

no -> Then leave them alone. No buts. Don't be an ass.

[patricia-taxxon]

So, I watched that response stream that DeadwingDork made about my furry boinking video, here it is if you're curious.

By some accounts, this gentleman seems like he means well, with regards to pronouns he pulls the "when in doubt, they/them" gambit, which is partway there. If he finds this, I'll politely let him know I don't use they, just she & it. Thanks!

I have good reason to believe he began this journey in good faith, but over the course of the video he slowly gives up being charitable, and it's very frustrating to watch. There's a few key moments of miscommunication I noticed that I'd like to clear up.

DeadwingDork and I got off on the wrong foot very early on, and part of that's my fault. I start the video openly lusting after Garth Alphandomega, and this put him on edge. This might be an ideological difference we can't get past, he says that Garth is "Just a wolf" when I personally think he's quite different from a wolf. After that, I do the joke where I say "If the opportunity presented itself I would fuck my-" and cut to The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe, but he didn't have the context to understand what I'm saying by cutting to that album in particular, so he thought I was jokingly saying I would fuck my dog. He spends the rest of the stream with that initial impression of me lusting after what he perceives as literal animals, it's kinda the initial rock that starts the avalanche and closes him off from understanding basically anything that I'm saying, until the end, where he's convinced I've just spent 43 minutes coming out as a zoophile.

This might just be a difference in artistic philosophy, like he interprets Alpha & Omega to be about wolves whereas I interpret it as being about people through the aesthetic lens of wolves. Metaphor isn't just for abstract art movies, after all. Garth walks on 4 legs, but he has enough obvious persistent human-like traits both visually and behaviorally for me to understand him as a person delivered via wolf. For the same reason, he is disturbed by my lusting for Shoukichi Pompoko, because he interprets that movie as literally being about tanuki. I think this the main reason the concept of a character being "simultaneously human and inhuman" completely whiffed on him. He skimmed over my segment on how Leo can be both a wolf and hispanic & didn't understand the relevance, because I don't think that contradiction can be resolved in his head.

The most frustrating part of this stream is the way he clearly picks up on a lot of the overarching subtext that I'm putting down, but by that point in the video he doesn't have enough faith in me to interpret it as being put there intentionally. He treats the connection between my special-ed dog training and my current animal identity as an unintentional self-report, when it isn't. There's this *maddening* segment where I talk about Pom Poko for the first time, and he... honestly quite accurately picks apart the picture I'm illustrating about alienation, but he handwaves it away in favor of his horrible mangling of the exact literal sentence I am saying at that moment.

He says:

"There's clearly a story here, but it's being buried. There's a lot of stuff that's leading towards... 'oh, you watched this movie and this movie and your parents did this and your fuckin' teachers did this, and that's why this is happening.' That's like the fuckin' undertones of this video, [but] the main takeaway is supposed to be that this movie... I dunno, makes you f.. is supposed to feel like how fuckin' animal people feel like they're... whatever, I don't, I don't... whatever."

He grabs at the subtext, the story I'm obviously telling with the surface level anecdote of my experience seeing Pom Poko when I was young. I say obviously, because he and his chat both understood it. But then he discards that, assumes it was unintended, and importantly, he doesn't have a good answer for what I'm actually saying divorced from that. Because... what's even left after you remove the subtextual story I'm telling with this anecdote? The anecdote itself? Of course he's empty handed.

Other notes:

He can't decide whether I'm an over zealous recruiter trying to call everything furry, or that I'm a gatekeeper trying to force robust definitions of 'furry' into the general lexicon. This isn't very important, it's just kind of funny.

He is dismissive of me saying I won't report news if my only source is Kiwifarms, but he doesn't really give a good reason for it. I am having trouble summarizing his argument for why I should have referenced a website whose users doxxed me. He hilariously suggests that I should negotiate with them to have my address taken down, as long as I'm not a "lolcow" about it. I'll be charitable and say that I don't think he's thought this through very much.

He hates that I "compare autistic people to animals," when that really just doesn't mean anything on its own. A comparison is a comparison, a follower of mine pointed out to me they could say that trans people are like cockroaches & it could either mean they are doggedly resilient in the face of harsh circumstances or that they are pests that need to be exterminated. I meant something specific by using an animal metaphor to describe my autistic identity, and it transcends the literal reading of "calling autistic people animals."

He derisively calls Echo a "gay furry sex game" when it simply is not. I'll forgive him for this because he hasn't played it, but Echo isn't porn, it's a horror game. There's sex in it, and it has the framework of a dating game, but it is far from the main appeal. I'm not saying this to elevate Echo above the degrading label of "porn," because Adastra is definitely porn and it's almost as good, just not as easily recommendable to outsiders.

He thinks its commendable that Sean Booth bought my album, which is nice.

Overall, I don't think DeadwingDork is outwardly hateful, but he is quite gullible. He accepts hate speech at face value and buys into narratives useful for hate movements. There's echos of trans groomer panic, that old "you're the reason people are transphobic" chestnut, and of course, using Kiwifarms as a news source. He said he came into the video knowing nothing about me and had no reason to be approaching me in bad faith, but he clearly doesn't trust me enough to think the main rhetorical thrust of the video was intentional.

bad stream lol

[sexy-sapphic-sorcerer]

1: Magic is a Metaphor < 2: Morgana is a Lesbian < 3: Merlin is Gay < 4: Arthur is Bi

Do you remember when you were bullied in middle school? Because if you're reading this, I think it's fair to assume that you were. And your parents would say to you, 'that boy is just being mean to you because he likes you'. That's what this is.

Arthur is just so repressed. He has really bad daddy issues, and he doesn't know how to express his emotions, and he's really uncomfortable with physical intimacy, especially with other men, especially with Merlin. And this isn't me trying to psychoanalyse away his heterosexuality. It is a very evident part of his character.

And another big part of his character is that he has inherited all of these bigoted ideas about magic from his father that he has to work to overcome. Because, of course, Arthur himself is born of magic, but his dad is so ashamed of it that he hides the true circumstances of his birth from Arthur. Honestly, I don't know exactly how that would fit into this whole metaphor. I do have a half-formed theory that it could be interpreted as an allegory for intersex identity, I know that a lot of people headcanon Arthur as trans, so idk there could be something there. But regardless, it is only through his relationship with Merlin that he is able to overcome this magicphobia, because he realises: how could it be wrong when everything about Merlin is so right. And I just feel like there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

Of course, I have to mention this iconic quote from the audio commentary of the final episode: when the executive producer refers to Arthur taking off his royal seal to give back to Guinevere as passing over "the last vestige of his heterosexu- oh sorry, I mean his marriage." So, they knew exactly what they were doing.

I also thought I would just draw your attention to the fact that at one point Arthur says, "I only care about my men, they're more than friends, more than brothers." Now, I think we can all agree that out of context, that is a very gay thing to say, and yet somehow the context is even gayer, because Arthur is pretending to be talking about the Knights of the Round Table, but he's actually talking about Merlin, how Merlin is the only person he cares about, more than a friend. And then Merlin responds, "I understand. I wish I didn't, but I do." It's barely subtext at that point. This of course, brings me to my final argument:

Arthur risked his life to save Merlin at least eight times. It could be more than that, I genuinely lost count. And you have to keep in mind that Arthur is the King of Camelot and he doesn't have any heirs. It is quite important that he stays alive. And yet anytime that Merlin is in the slightest bit of danger, he will just drop everything to protect him.

And it's really only in those moments where he's faced with the thought of losing Merlin that he shows him genuine emotion. Such as in this scene (which was cut out of 4x02 purely because it was too gay) where Arthur is planning to sacrifice himself to protect Merlin, again, and he gives Merlin his mother's sigil, the only thing he has left of his dead mum and he wants Merlin to have it as something to remember him by. Also, apparently in medieval times giving someone your family crest was basically a marriage proposal, so that's pretty gay.

You know what else is pretty gay? Telepathically communicating with Merlin and then immediately leaving Gwen in the middle of an active war. This is literally the last time that Arthur and Gwen ever see each other. Poor Gwen.

In conclusion, Merlin is the story of gay sorcerers and bisexual knights getting into love triangles. Everyone in this show is queer and you cannot tell me otherwise.

[machinesonix]

Somehow I have made it this long without realizing that none of the screen adoptions of Dune so much as mention the Butlerian Jihad. Like I guess it's burned into my brain so hard I sort of assumed it was part and parcel of the universe. Don't get me wrong, I think that's probably the first thing you learn if you want to dive deeper into the setting, but it still hits me like if the LotR movies showed us the big flaming eyeball tower and was like ‘Oh, that's why there are bad things, but don't worry, that's just background stuff.’ Yeah, you can understand the movie, but if the story is just like Frodo vs. The Witch King you are losing out on any of the conversation about the corruptive allure of power or theological undertones. So without further ado let's pretend this is for the benefit of interested new fans roped in by the movies and not part of my desperate attempt to silence the howling specters of literary analysis that live in my blood.

The Butlerian Jihad is an event set ~10k years prior to the events of Dune in which humanity won their freedom from the machines that they had enslaved themselves to. As a result, it is a religious taboo to create a machine that thinks like a human. That's frankly the bulk of the information presented by Frank Herbert in the text without dipping into books 7+, but whether or not those are canon is frankly an enormous can of worms, which really makes sense when you consider the size of the worms. But boy howdy, Frank loved his subtext and parallelism. Everyone has a foil character, every theme is hit from multiple angles, and Villinueve has been doing an excellent job of capturing a lot of that in repeated imagery and dialogue. The Butlerian Jihad happens off camera, but it's themes are absolutely critical to the big picture.

The Butlerian Jihad was a holy war. It was not merely a rebellion against the machines, it was a crusade against them. The prohibition against thinking machines isn't just a law, it's in the pan-universal Bible. Absolute psychopath Pieter DeVries himself claps back at the Baron for insinuating he might have a use for a computer, and this is a guy who has been hired specifically for his preternatural absence of morals. Let's hold onto that idea for a minute. 

Probably my favorite scene in the first book is the one where planetologist Liet-Kynes is dying out in the desert. As the last of his strength fades to dehydration he hallucinates conversations he had with his father concerning terraforming Arakkis for human habitability. He's told that the means are not complicated. There is already enough water on the planet, the Little Makers just have it all trapped deep underground as part of the sandworm reproductive cycle. You just need to isolate enough water to start irrigating plant life, and once it's established that'll keep the water on the surface on its own. The hard part is making sure everyone on the planet is environmentally conscious enough to foster a developing ecosystem. Nobody can drink any of that water while it's being collected, because they'll just introduce it back into the water cycle where the Little Makers are. It's going to take generations, so that sort of water discipline is going to have to go above and beyond a social convention. People need to be willing to die before they'll take a sip and compromise the plan. Ghost Dad Kynes concludes that the only mechanism in the human experience to enforce this consensus is religion. 

In the context of this whole parallelism thing, you have probably noticed that the Butlerian Jihad is not the only holy war in the narrative. Paul sees a new jihad as the only way of creating a future where humans can flourish. Now you might be saying ‘Wait now, Machines. I thought the point of Paul’s holy war was to avenge Leto and disempower established power structures by taking away the control of the spice!’ And you’d be right. The thing is, without getting into spoiler territory, Dune Messiah is not going to be about how everything just gets so much better now that Paul has destroyed the economy, government, and untold billions of human lives. This isn’t the endgame. Dude can see the future and the way he does it involves looking into the past. Paul lives in a society defined by a holy war and his goal is to redefine society. 

Putting it all together you can see what I mean about the Butlerian Jihad being essential to the themes even though the story never shows us a thinking machine or a narrative beat where the absence of computers changes the outcome. It helps us see the big picture. I’ve seen a lot of dialogue lately on whether Paul is a tragic hero or a consummate villain and I’m not here to answer that, but I am here to underline the critical detail. Paul intends to be seen as a tyrant. Just like Kynes’ hallucination says, religion is the lever to make a value stick around forever. He wants to traumatize humanity to hate chosen ones and emperors the same way the machines traumatized humanity to change them forever. The Water of Life ritual doesn’t invert his values, it lets him realize these visions of war are the means, not the ends. He is absolutely not happy about it, but this is Paul’s terrible purpose.