#like the former is so often like. the most gender role conforming characters

[smallhatlogan]

honestly can’t tell if some people’s “gotta be one of my favorite genders” and “characters that give me gender envy” posts are jokes or not 

[sugar-petals]

sub!Yuzu | nsfw alphabet

🌹 NOTE ⇢ content for our fave figure skater, the legend himself. mr. yuzuru hanyu is 1000% dom candy and i’m here to honor it at length ⛸

— WORDS. 5k

tags + warnings. dom/sub dynamics, femdom!reader, role reversal hc, smut, kinks, cum play, spanking, sex toys, very freaky yuzu, kitten play, mdlb, crying kink, food play, prostate orgasms, bondage, some deeper stuff & angsty bits, asthma mention, aftercare

  A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Once the cat ears come off, who is Yuzuru Hanyu not to remain in character for a while. For the shits and giggles, and because it’s cozy. Once a catboy, always a catboy, it’s the law of the land. Curling up, kneading at you for the head pats and massages, you know the programme. 

Also: Yuzu is famously soft-spoken and always finds the right thing to say. So, stimulating conversation for the cooldown. This is literally so nice. He’s unafraid to reflect everything in detail, say what he preferred, what you could change up together, what he wants to try next. The afterglow is not just physical, as in you give him something to drink, it’s 70% verbal which is very important to him as a consistent habit.

Of course, not to forget: Always gotta have a Winnie Pooh plushie ready. He embraces it readily and, as we know him, does some roleplay right then and there. Yuzu, professional cutiepie he is, is the kinda sub who treats all plush and pillow stuff as alive and breathing. You as his domme are in on the play and also treat his things as holy as they are to him. That Yuzu lets you into that world is the biggest compliment you can possibly get. 

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

We all know Yuzu’s godly ass and thighs. Or the staggering waist and beautiful black hair that makes him a total bombshell in his classic comb-back styles. His face is soft and expressive and so damn unique, his legs muscular and long, his back and tummy chiseled, the list goes on and on. Jesus, he has so many great features. All body parts a masterpiece. That are all capable of god-tier contortionism on top of that, gotta mention it in passing. Just so you know if you haven’t seen him bend his every limb into directions you wouldn’t believe are humanly possible. 

Interestingly though. If he chooses, Yuzu picks his feet: They are his most important instrument and weak spot. His ankles are where the magic happens. So, you taking care of them a little would mean the world to him, imagine a candle light massage. Not to worry, no-gross-alert. Yuzu has perfect and cute feet. That’s gonna be a Victorian moment, oh my god I saw his ankles. For his partner, short and simple: He likes a shoulder to lean on. He loves being touchy in general, all body parts are amazing to him. Being in a profession that’s all about the physics, Yuzuru knows about the wonders of the body.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Certified king of cumsluts, doesn’t even hesitate. The more, the merrier. If he’s not covered in sticky stuff, Yuzu would be underchallenged. It’s less about the taste, texture or any degradation, for him it’s the playing around with his tongue. Somebody wants his mouth preoccupied. Give the cat his milk. Feed him his own cum mixed with yours. He’s gonna lap at it and swallow.

Since Yuzu’s dream is a mommy domme baking him something, he just loves the smell of dough and hazelnuts and cinnamon and everything — you know what’s coming: Imagine the food play. Nuts indeed. Anything that even remotely looks like a creampie is something he wants to get his lips on. And Yuzu is not the type to be a foodie at all, let that sink in. Sexual-looking food is just too big a temptation, though. And you spoiling him that way... oh my. Surefire way to end up in bed right after. 

D = Dirty secret (pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Has a butt plug collection. Once almost went on the ice with one in. The more you know. Also— this guy is the kinda type fantasizing to get absolutely railed on a bed of plushies. He has troubles suggesting it to you because he doesn’t want them to get actually dirty. But the idea gets the two of you kind of horny. Sometimes, a thought is better as a fantasy than actually executing it. You can use it for riling up’s sake, whispering it to him during dirty talk. How you’ll bounce on him and ruin him and milk him while he’s splayed out so innocently on your bed. I smell corruption kink. 

Another secret Yuzu keeps is just how much he changed his mind about wanting his partner to control everything in bed. He grew up with a pre-defined ideal type of a cute, nice skater girl who’d let the reins very loosely around him, who he can speak Japanese to because he had problems with English, who is small and someone he will protect. It wasn’t something based on experience and trying things out: It was simply expected of him. People wanted the domineering Yuzuru on ice to be that way in private, and make use of his power, be a man, savior, boss. 

The reality being: He never felt truly as tough on the ice, nor was he gender-conforming in person. In fact, that is what he became famous for, and it reassured Yuzuru very often how people would accept and actually celebrate this side of him. Which is so refreshing, and a sight to see. The side that was dorky, clingy, childish, gorgeous, and cute has always been there, but now he embraces it more as his comfort place. He has to know what he’s doing in his skating programme and show competitive spirit to achieve his dreams, but that’s where it stops.

His former ideals are something people wanted to hear, it was an adaptation of the environment rather than thinking it through on his own. So, years later — oh boy have things changed. Yuzuru no longer defines his ideal type that way, saying whoever he likes is someone he’d be with. What was a fantasy template and filter is now gone and adapted to his newfound, own preferences. Yuzu is comfortably open-minded rather than being a copy to mainstream. He found fun in speaking English, opened up to the world at large, had more girls around him who he could befriend, grew more confident in his stature, and is well aware — turns out he’s the cute one. Who needs to be taken under a wing. He likes strong-minded girls and says if he had a wife, she’d dominate him. Yuzuru secretly wants her to be in charge entirely, she owns his body and soul. Not in daily life where things are just normal and everyone goes about their business. Sexually, where he surrenders instead, and is taken care of.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

The tale of an introvert. What he knows — he hides it well. Has eyefucked a whole lot of people and is the type to lust like mad from a far distance, and nobody will ever know. Crushes harder than peppercorns in a mill. If he loves someone, it lingers in his mind every split second of the day, may god have mercy on him. And if you know him: Yuzu aims too high to keep it light and easy and clumsy. He hates being an amateur, he’s terrified of starting out something. He dreads not knowing what to do, how exactly to behave, talk, touch, breathe, respond, negotiate, prepare. That’s a hundred percent like hell to him.

Ironically, he has a natural feeling for it and he’s literally amazing in bed, has a sense for social interaction is all the way cute with something valuable to say. But what he believes is something way different. Yuzuru is a diehard, nervous perfectionist. He can only think of it as a rated performance since his mind usually has to work that way to skate well. His esteem is on a knife edge depending on how well he thinks he does. So, the inevitable: He will shy away from sex altogether. He draws immense skating passion from staying celibate, in fact it’s his success secret, but it still eats him up from the inside and makes him frustrated beyond measure. Not even for the pleasure, since he’s so ambitious that’s almost forgotten about, but for being told he did well. 

That’s how much he believes sex is a drill and capability test. And it’s sad that he thinks it’s like his skating career, racking up points for the impossible things judges want and being in a deadlock when it comes to showing his artistic side. He feels thrown into cold water if he doesn’t know everything beforehand. If he ever works up the courage, which probably won’t happen, he will pay an expert to learn from rather than let something all over the place happen with a random person or even someone he might like. 

Yes, you heard that right. He’d rather see a sex worker than ‘mess up’ his first time according to his sky-high standards. So, Yuzu’s experience remains limited since he’s so 100% do or die, and so anxious, and so torn about social interaction, he doesn’t get how his peers can be playboys and get married and flirt with someone they like and all that. He sort of has an easier time with guys, but girls... he can’t approach. To top it off, he also feels like he’d burden his first time one somebody or embarrasses himself, so he will reject and avoid suitors. Those are usually not the people he crushes so hard on to begin with. It’s bound to be one-sided and he knows, so he will abstain and focus on career and use the cheers of his fans as a substitute.

Truth is, he feels helpless and distant from sex sometimes, especially with his practice-heavy lifestyle and hyper-smart mind, Yuzuru has an intelligence that exceeds what most people can grasp. He’s alone on the ice and Brian as a coach is often the only reference person who truly gets him, and leads him well without being controlling. But that’s professional life. Sexually, Yuzuru is metaphorically: coachless. He surely observed it well when Javier (the #1 ladies man, his opposite) was still active and a social butterfly helping him fit in, but Yuzu would always be worried about his extreme fame and spotless image when introduced to someone fangirling over him. He’d rather prefer someone who comes across as a mentor and solid, loyal-to-death person to look up to. So he would do anything to have someone benevolent like that. Most girls would expect him to be the sex god and expert, but he knows that’s only half of the story and based on his characters on the ice. Yuzu crafts these to counterbalance how he really is — withdrawn and indirect. 

Yuzu is extremely calculating and selective, he scans suitors well, protects his reputation, and is mortified of failure. So, he’d rather learn it by the book and from someone he’s not emotionally attached to. In a one-night stand that might also be the case, but he doesn’t know what to expect, and he’s absolutely terrified of sudden sexual vulnerability. He himself often says he values his own struggle between feeling so weak and being strong again 

Besides: He’d have problems squeezing hookups into his schedule and lifestyle, he’d have to cut down on things and create a double life. Plus, Yuzu is famously inept with social interaction up close, he flees the noise and unpredictability. So, it’s better to have a long-term partner. If he doesn’t know something yet, he has it down in one day like the single axel. Definitely counts on his partner teaching him.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

We know Yuzu’s signature move is the lean-back Ina Bauer. So, whatever position allows for an arch is the real deal (cough, taking the strap — oh my god his ass is made for it). But anyway, he can pull off anything with that stellar flexibility and core strength. 

If I think about it. Yuzu might like sitting on your lap very much. I know it’s not a sex position, I mean it can be once his inner lapdancer awakens or you use a strap-on, I rather mean... just for some sweet moments and making out. But yeah: Fathom Yuzu gyrating on your like that. Not in an outright lascivious manner or Chippendales style. The Hanyu way, with embellishments and all the grace. This is gonna be a huge turn-on and perfect foreplay position.  

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Not much to elaborate here: Yep, Yuzu is true goofball indeed. Really flustered and clumsy when eye-to-eye in missionary, and yet: He’s ultra serious towards the end, there’s gonna be an aggressive staredown before cumming. The feeling gets pretty intense, his duality between silly and ‘yeah, give it to me’ is no joke.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Would probably die from inflammation if he shaved clean under those tight suits and did all these chafe-heavy skating routines. Doesn’t have a lot of body hair to begin with, but for pits and pubes, it’s alive, wild, and decently long. Out of all people, Yuzu cares particularly about aesthetics, but in this case pragmatism will prevail. He doesn’t care too much about it either as long as it doesn’t get in the way of something. Having sex with Yuzu tends to be well um well all about a hundred types of friction so any stubble would be a bad idea.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

You haven’t seen a guy in love like that. It’s a figure skater thing for sure. Since he works to portray these sentiments on the ice daily, hardly anybody can play up feelings so delicately and palpably like Yuzuru. Emotion is what his entire career is built on. He knows how to express himself directly, appropriately, intimately. Couldn’t be any more romantic. Yuzu can’t go without it. 

Very passionate, ‘for your eyes only’ kind of atmosphere. Yes, he shows off on the ice, it’s his job (although of course, that word doesn’t really sum up what skating means to him). But private Yuzu is someone you can claim as yours. He will make it clear, he wants to belong to you, he’s yours, dedicated, devotion is the entire point. Less with a slant of what some subs like, very hands-on ownership of a mistress. It’s more emotional. He’s really attached and all smitten. Your private little haven is everything to him. 

Talking about little: Yuzu can be quite a pillow prince sometimes. At least when the initiative doesn’t go back and forth as it frequently does, you often alternate with suggestions and ways of tweaking an ongoing play session. You blindfold him or tie his wrists, He might be standard tired from practice or just fascinated to watch you work your magic on him. 

He also likes music to set the tone for intimacy, who’s surprised. Prepare: Yuzu likes dramatic classical music all the way. He’s probably one of the few people who can make it more than ‘classy’ and definitely more than cringe. He selects pieces very well. This is gonna be a practice template to cum together when the music reaches its peak. Makes the whole thing full of adrenaline.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

Lots of fun to him. Would beat it 24/7 if the ice wasn’t calling him. Drowns himself in lube. This guy’s me-time is so rated R, Cardi B would be inspired to remix WAP to wet ass penis as an anthem just for him. A dry dick is a ruined day for Yuzuru, as is a session without teasing his prostate in whatever way he currently fancies. Once he tried it, he never went back. The intensity knocking him out is something that Yuzu thinks about all the time. Strokes like a pro, does all these little moans, can do it forever, loves the feeling, chases the high. Adrenaline junkie on the ice? No different with his hand around his cock. 

Will masturbate everywhere in the house and has to really get his head in the game to make sure he won’t ruin any carpets. So, he always has at least two towels with him. In the kitchen, in front of the TV, in the shower, the bed. Watches his fair share of eclectic porn, he gets really desperate. Especially before you started dating, Yuzu would shut himself in until the lotion ran out. Can jack off to something romantic (he starts crying) or something extreme (he loves shocking himself and ). 

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Very curious about sadomasochism. Googles a lot of things that make him hard during the day. Often jawdropped by his research, but once he tries things out with you, nothing can really shock him anymore. Absolutely wants to be collared, it’s his biggest fantasy. Another little secret he has, Yuzu is decked out in skating gloves, right. He wishes he could feel you wearing them, or he keeps them on for sex himself, the lacey transparent ones. Looks especially pretty when his wrists are tied so, major photograpy material. Oh yes, Yuzu likes the camera, he can work it. The guy is photogenic in any position and can strike any angle you want. Your phone background is a new Yuzu snapshot every week already, imagine your gallery, 5800 kinky pictures.  

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

I’m gonna say it. The frozen lake out of town, late at night, condoms and lube with you. A quickie that will leave your genitals frozen. Yuzu might get stuck inside you because it’s -15 Celsius. Call that fantasy on ice. Jokes aside: Come on, Yuzu is the biggest ever hermit homebody. The couch will have a bunch of indents after your week-long fucking sessions after he comes home training. Also, at his desk while he does work for university. You ride him, Yuzu studies. Double the ambition. His dick is completely sore. The lake out of town thing might go down, but without sex. Just skating together under the stars, Yuzu doing amazing spins and spirals around you, very very romantic.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Yuzu is a crazed Sagittarius. Have you seen these men? They just want it all. Must be the influence of Jupiter. Zeus was definitely vibing that way. And yes, Yuzu has borderline unhealthy gold medal thinking in bed. He wants to be not just good but damn good with pleasing you. If you don’t have a good time and head home without an orgasm, he’ll consider himself a failure. Yuzu won’t cut himself any slack there. You’d have a hard time changing his ways into something more chill and moderate. Instead, you will see the benefits of rolling with it once you see how improvement fuels him and does make sex really mindblowing.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Couldn’t do things like slapping you, spanking. Yuzu makes for a terrible daddy dom, it’d not suit him.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Cum-dripping oral mess, Yuzu is the brave kind. Totally into it, and can’t resist a good blowjob. Will act different afterwards, there’s a lot of erotic tension. “This evening again?” is what those eyes are saying.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Outstanding kinesthetic intelligence. Every inch of his body follows his intent, and yours if you have him take on certain ways of kneeling. Yuzu can do it all, whatever you want. Tantalizing, moderato, overwhelmingly fast. He can take it, he can portray it. And knows the value of a pause like a true connoisseur. Not just when he wants to prevent cumming early, also just because the moment is right. That’s why cockwarming is a staple, as well as you having him wait patiently for kisses. To top it off: If you give him a blowjob, building up the tension by doing nothing is damn effective. The ruined orgasms you’re gonna give him... delicious.

Everything’s gonna have nice transitions as well, no awkward climbing and rolling and tangling limbs. If he gets something from another room that you need, no slouching. The university course as good as the extracurricular activities. Being inconsistent with any subsidiary details? Not in the Hanyu household, he’s keeping it classy. Yuzu feels like if he makes the bridges to new positions even remotely messy, the feeling is killed and it’s as if he’d break character mid-skate. Although he’ll have to practice and refine and test a lot of things because he’s not super experienced and adapting to your own movements is an individualized thing to do, he’s a masterclass of quality, period.

Even when things get fast and heated, nothing feels off. Having that kind of body smartness also means: Yuzu learns by touch, whatever you do. He knows by the way you pull his hair what comes next. How much saliva drips off your tongue when you suck at his neck, he knows how hard you’ll to ravage him in five minutes. This guy observes things you aren’t even conscious of because his physical understanding is just so fine-tuned.

The sense of rhythm, and every skating programme of him will showcase that, unbeatable. Unless his mood is really impacted by something severe, your guy feels it in every bone. He’s an artist, after all, he listens to music all the time. Dissecting rhythms to turn them into movement is what his line of work is all about. The pace will always fit the mood. Everything is precise, but never crude. Instead, the way he moves is dictated by an inherent flow. With little accents that match right with any thrust, like putting his hands on your sides when you’re on top of him.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Hit it Shakira: Whenever, wherever! He seemingly carries an entire condom factory with him. Or, to be more exact: At least three of them.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

This one’s a complicated case. Yuzu being reckless on the ice may or may not mirror in your private life. He might need some downtime, so bring out the soft domme stuff. No trial and error stuff, just going through a routine of things you love the most. On the other hand, he always gives it all. This guy’s endurance at your hands is amazing. Advanced kinds of BDSM he will not feel deterred from at all. Rough toys, anal hooks, sounding, whips, why not is Yuzu’s motto. But then again. He has such a confusing mix of innocence and feeling like he’s completely hardcore. You might end up experimenting a lot, but also not daring the leap sometimes because the mood is different. And then rather go for softer hours, where Yuzu will be all shy shy and more bursting with excitement than ever. A good, interesting mix is what I’m saying.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

Yuzuru, once he gets a bit of practice to gauge the situation... Viagra on two legs, absolute unexpected powerhouse. You might end up pondering to work out a little and go for a run because this guy is in a consistently outstanding shape to say the least. Olympic athletes are literally hard to fuck with. And since Yuzu is starfishing sometimes (which is very adorable), or he’s in bondage for some time, that presents a further problem: For a second round, he’s full of energy, while you already spent energy. So, you alternate with who’s active, and the other leans back entirely. He has to remind himself since his body is programmed for it: This is no contest — the point is feeling good.

You might ride him reverse cowgirl all the way while you watch TV, and after the overstimulation fades he will eat you out ad nauseam, full course slobbering, sweeping the whole menu. That way, it’s less about keeping up with him, which would be hard for most people not doing sports at his galactic level. He understands, Yuzu knows he’s not normal in that regard, you don’t have to worry. Some exercise still doesn’t hurt, just to further increase the quality of sex anyway.

Then again: Why go jogging and do some laps wasting valuable together time when Yuzu’s lap is the best workout? And running doesn’t guarantee your stamina in bed is perfect even if it does help. You rather wanna manage how to draw out the arousal. It’s a self-control thing, with the goal of having you match up in every aspect as good as you can. In which case, you can count on him to pull it off: Have you seen Yuzu doing jumps side by side with a bunch of female skaters? Copy paste. This guy knows how to synchronize with the ladies.

Something that has to be mentioned beside that, though. Yuzu has asthma since 2 years old, and it’s often a mind thing to him still these days. He doesn’t let it stop him from sleeping with you because as always, he’s not letting anything get in his way. He has learned to live and thrive with it. But you both have to mind the possibility of an attack, he prevents it with inhalers, and the mood plays a crucial role. Yuzu being comfortable and confident is so important to his breathing, and keeping a good rhythm rather than being chaotic in bed. So, you will plan most of your sexual activities rather than improvising. 

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Would stuff an entire sex shop into his every available orifice. Yuzu is a toy freak, he wants to try everything. Motto: a new one every day. Well, almost. But he can afford it. Buys stuff he uses solely on himself, things you use on him, things he uses solo and you use on him, and as the cherry on top, every possible high end vibrator on the market for you. Any size, too. This bitch will browse through the latest innovations, prepare to get off. He’s obsessed with seeing you use it on yourself. Yuzu owns a separate phone just for videos of you buzzing your clit, and him fingering you for minutes and minutes. 

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

Extremely so. Loves to be a total brat only to get put into his place. He does it so you’ll pull the chin grab on him. He likes getting choked out as a punishment as well. Yuzu also tends to be very around the corner if you will when it comes to soft subbing, he lays over expecting cuddles but doesn’t say so. Buds his head against your chest, nuzzles, and so on. Lighter forms of teasing come to him very easily. Loves to prompt. Roughhousing, banter, favorite thing.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Moderately loud because his voice is very very light, but unsurprisingly — he’s just beautiful. What a nice tone. Gorgeous whimpering sounds. And when you go hard on him, voice cracks! And really heavy breathing. What’s gonna be the most striking though is his expressiveness. We know it from the ice and interviews, and he can really amp it up even further. No need for screaming, that face will speak the volumes.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

You’ll be blessed with him if you have a huge crying kink. Yuzu definitely opens the waterworks every other week in bed. Happy tears, horny tears, relief tears, aftercare tears, orgasm tears, masochist tears, romantic tears, subspace tears, he has it all. He also begs for the type of pain that makes it stream down his face for minutes. He’s touchy-feely all the way and feels like he can really connect with you that way.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

His ass twitching is kind of a spectacle, but I don’t have to tell you, do I. Yuzu has muscles for the gods in there. So voluptuous, you can’t call it any other way. Big booty boyfriend, Jesus you can show him off, he loves it. Around the house, he will flaunt them big ole athlete buns in particular, acting like it’s unintended. Um, Yuzu, those are joggings. Smack it, he is sure to moan. 

And may I respectfully mention as well — this guy has some major big ass balls figuratively and literally. How else would someone be motivated to jump a triple axel like it’s nothing. Not kidding, they’re big and round and ugh. His love for tight pants doesn’t help. He knows what your eyes like and dresses just to flex the goods. Screams for more spanking and pinching if you ask me. Yuzu is definitely serving it. Well-endowed, you lucky girl.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Mega horny, ready when you are. On a scale from zero to hundred? Breaching into the 90 percent right there. Yuzu’s hormones are literally insane. On paper he’s 26, but his dick wants the 18th birthday party. Jesus is he gonna be clingy when he’s in the mood. All wrapped around you in a backhug in the kitchen or when you iron a costume of his, and that’s sexy of him. He’s not gonna hide what’s filling out those sweatpants. He’ll desperately grind up against you like it’s Christmas.

Paired with his puppy eyes and little “Do you have some time... I’ll iron this tomorrow” — instant pounce. He’s admittedly a bit hard to keep up with sometimes, though. The reason: With that level of exercise, he has major pent-up energy. That machine is definitely running. Heavy sports changes your hormones, nervous system, and especially blood flow. Now take that to the scale of his performances and regimens? That equals a firework of horny. No wonder he masturbates all the time.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Takes some time. He cools down, sweats it out, chugs water. However, don’t underestimate how tired Yuzu can already be. His daily routines and competitions have a toll on him. Ironically, he’s not a deep sleeper, however. Yuzu might toss and turn and have sudden energy bursts, or ideas, or gets hungry. So, he needs his plushies, he needs a weighted blanket, warm pajamas, a hot cup of his favorite warm drink, a light snack, and you by his side. Spooning him excessively and sometimes even humming to him. Yuzu looks like a certified angel on his pillow, his well-deserved rest from everything is so important, too.

NOTE - hope i could indulge you, thank you for reading!

© 2017-2021 submissive-bangtan. all rights reserved. no reposts allowed. depictions fictional.

[belfrygargoyles]

*whispers* I would like to hear what you have to say on reader inserts in the SW fandom because I too have a problem with them and I feel like not enough people are calling it out 👉👈

I’ve made a few posts about it in the past but I think it’s high time I actually Do This and really get into it.

Before I start: 1) This will be in specific reference to fanfiction written for the Star Wars fandom, particularly tcw and the mandalorian eras, 2) A lot of the issues come down to racist fetishization of men of color by white women; I am white, so there is much that is simply not my place to make statements on. What I can speak most on is my take from the gender side of things.

I’d honestly recommend reading this post by @nibeul with addition by @clonehub first, as they discuss the core issue with reader inserts in the Star Wars fandom.

And 3) some of this will involve discussion of sexual acts (as they relate to fanfiction) and sexual fantasies. These discussions will be non-explicit, and no pornographic text or content will be displayed.

Also. I’m GNC and nonbinary. I’m also a very feminine looking person that falls under the generalization of “small and petite.” I don’t have dysphoria, I like my body and the traits I have, and treating them like inherently female sends me into a blind fury. This is, unfortunately, important.

For the sake of making sure I come across as clearly as possible, I will be writing as though the reader of this post has never read or is broadly unfamiliar with reader-insert fanfiction.

Without further ado.

Hey, Star Wars reader insert fic writers? Please get your shit together.

INTRODUCTION

I’ve been reading reader-insert fanfiction since I was a grade schooler waking up early to check Quizilla. I love it! It got me into fandom, kept me engaged, helped me make and develop some of my oldest OCs, and it’s just fun to read and write- it’s like a self-indulgent little gift you can give to a bunch of people all at once. Because who doesn’t like the idea of starring in their own little adventure, usually alongside some of their favorite characters? It can be fun, immersive, get you attached in ways other ways of fandom interaction may not, make you feel just a little bit special, or be a way to express some feelings you might have about canon and the way the story went.

Like any form of fiction, it ends up saying more about the author’s feelings than anything else, whether the author realizes it or not. For many, many authors of reader-insert fanfiction, the primary enjoyment comes from writing “themselves” into the story- before the readers, the author most often makes the “reader character” someone they, themselves, can relate to and substitute for themselves. They write to live out a self-indulgent fantasy they have, and their readers can come along for the ride.

Some writers do actually try to write as diverse or as vague of a reader character as possible- as few details about the body, identity, etc. as possible so anyone could superimpose their image without the narrative directly contradicting it. This is not the kind of reader insert author I will be discussing.

The kind of author I will be discussing is the one most common in the Star Wars tag on Ao3: White, AFAB, cisgender, gender-conforming, able-bodied women who assume all of their readers are also White, AFAB, cisgender, gender-conforming, able-bodied women. Yes, you can tell.

ISSUE: fetishization of men of color

Again, this post puts it in the best words, but there is a rampant problem with Star Wars reader-inserts, particularly those involving the clones, Boba Fett, and Din Djarin, fetishizing characters played by men of color as either “physically aggressive and threatening, hypersexual and dominant, big strong men who are scary because they do violence and fuck constantly when they’re not” or “completely inexperienced baby who doesn’t know anything about things and needs a gentle nurturing guiding touch to introduce him to the mere idea of a vagina.” The former is common across all of them, the latter most common among clone trooper fics or Din/Reader.

I went into the Boba Fett/Reader tag on Ao3, because I like him and hoped to find something alright. Here are some stats I tallied up (give or take some) based solely on tags, summaries, and warnings:

There are 284 works in the Boba Fett/Reader category as of the time of this post.

198/284 are rated E for explicit sexual content. 69.7% of all Boba Fett/Reader works are sexually explicit.

259/284 are in the F/M category. 91.2% of all Boba Fett/Reader works involve an explicitly female or AFAB reader.

24/284 are tagged with or mention “Age difference,” “Older man/Younger woman,” “Innocence kink” or “Virginity kink.” 8.4% of all Boba Fett/Reader works are written explicitly with an age gap, with Boba Fett as the older party

26/198 E rated fics are tagged with or make reference to “Daddy kink” or involve the reader being called some variation of “little girl” by Boba. 13% of all E-rated works under Boba Fett/Reader are daddy kink fics, or allude to Boba Fett being a daddy dom/sugar daddy.

102/198 E rated fics are tagged as, make reference to, or suggest in the summary that Boba Fett takes a dominant sexual role with a submissive reader involving rough or painful play, or make reference to Boba Fett being frightening, physically intimidating, having a power dynamic over the reader, or being possessive or violent. 51.51% of all E-rated works under Boba Fett/Reader portray Boba Fett as sexually dominant and/or enacting use of physical force or pain play.

Just using this as an example, because it’s the easiest stats I can gather and also what made me realize there was a pattern.

The problem isn’t even necessarily that people write explicit fic about Boba- it’s that 1) over half of all fics in the category are explicitly pornographic, and 2) the way those pornographic fics are written. The two things compound on each other. They’re dominance fantasies projected onto a character of color in which he becomes extremely sexual, physically rough with the reader, possessive, and demeaning towards a reader character who is always written as White, AFAB, and petite.

This brings me to the next issue.

ISSUE: The way sexual relationships are portrayed.

Let me clarify so there is no chance of me being misunderstood: sex is good. Liking and wanting and enjoying sex isn’t bad. It is not bad if you are AFAB and have submissive fantasies. It is not bad to be sexually attracted to a man of color. You can write about sex even if you haven’t had it. Writing about sex can be a good way to express some more complicated feelings you could have about certain things. It doesn’t even have to be realistic. It has its time and it has its place.

This being said.

Sexual relationships as they are portrayed in the vast majority of E-rated Star Wars reader inserts are… not great.

The reader is always AFAB. I can think of maybe one fic off the top of my head where an AFAB reader was written with they/them pronouns and not just she/her.

The reader is almost always submissive, the dominant character is almost always portrayed as cis male. Even when the characters are supposed to just be having spontaneous casual sex, D/S or BDSM aspects will be introduced with no prior discussion or talks about it afterwards. Sometimes characters will start using dirty talk and it just does not fit at all, but it’s what the author thought was hot.

Sometimes, it just reads like a quick smutty oneshot. More often than that, it reads like the author doesn’t realize that sex… isn’t always a dom/sub thing. Or that someone can take the lead in sex and that doesn’t automatically make them a dom.

It’s not bad to be inexperienced. It’s not bad to have preferences or kinks or specific turn-ons.

But it gets… tiring to read, over and over and over and over, because that’s all there is.

That and… I dunno, it just has me a little worried? It doesn’t make me feel good knowing so many people can only portray a sexual relationship if it’s dom/sub. I don’t know why it makes me so uneasy.

Vanilla sex isn’t a bad thing I promise. It's this feeling of insistence that something "spicy" absolutely has to happen for it to be worth writing that gives... some weird vibes.

I’m going to move on to the next Big-

ISSUE: Every “reader” character is exactly the same

By which I mean the following:

Always cis AFAB female

If a character is written with gender neutral pronouns they will always be AFAB and written like Girl Lite

I have never seen an explicitly stated nonbinary/gnc reader character unless it was a request specifically for a nonbinary reader

I have never seen a gender neutral reader insert fic where the reader was AMAB

I have seen a grand total of 1 cis male reader fic and 1 trans male reader fic. The trans male reader fic was about dysphoria.

The reader is allowed to have one of the following backstories: slave/runaway, mechanic, medic, ex-Rebel, secret Jedi, bounty hunter.

The reader is allowed to have one of the following personality traits: throws knives, babysitter, completely civilian, WOMAN, says curse words.

The reader is never written with any narrative agency- things only ever happen to the reader character or around the reader character, they are never written to take charge and actually affect things on their own. Essentially the sexy lamp trope.

Remember when I said the majority of people writing Star Wars reader-insert fanfic on Ao3 were White, cisgender AFAB women who are gender-conforming and able-bodied? This is how you can tell.

It’s at this point where you can tell they’re really not meant to be reader-inserts, but author-inserts with the names removed- they were only meant for a very narrow selection of readers.

I’m nonbinary, I’m gnc, and I’m a very feminine looking person, generally speaking. I’m used to people looking at me and assuming oh, girl. I’m at peace with that.

I can barely stand reading some of these fics just because of how much the author emphasizes that the reader is FEMALE shes a WOMAN with BOOBS and a VAGINA and FEMININE WILES. There’s barely ever even a chance to give myself room to mentally vault over all the “she”s and “her”s because then I’m getting hit with Din or someone calling the reader “girl” or “the woman.” It’s unbearable, and I even fall into the general description every fucking fic author uses for their generic protagonist!

Even with the “gender-neutral reader” fics, it is just. Painfully clear that they just wrote a female character and changed the pronouns- no, there is no such thing as “male behavior” or “female behavior,” and I quite heartily rebel against the concept of gender essentialism. And honestly, I can barely even begin piecing together how I know it and what it feels like, because it’s just one of those vague conglomerates of cues and writing patterns I can’t consciously pick up on but I know it’s there- it’s frustrating, it’s demeaning, and it feels like you’d have to threaten these authors at gunpoint to get them to write a reader character who was any major deviation from the same three cutouts they use every time.

It seems like they can’t possibly force themselves to write a reader character who isn’t meek and submissive or has the sole personality traits of “mean and can hit things”- you can actually strike a balance between “absolutely no personality” and “fleshed out oc” you know? And you don’t actually have to tell the reader what their hair looks like or how full their figure is

It’s like 2:20 AM and I started this at like 8something PM but.

I’m someone who loves reader-inserts. I enjoy them. I still check for new ones regularly. I’ve been reading them for well over half my life now.

So many of these authors are just locked in on exactly one way to write things and it fucking shows. It’s like a self-feeding loop, they just keep writing the same things and the same dynamics because they see each other doing it and they never think about taking a step back.

It’s… exhausting. I’m exhausted. If you’re a reader-insert fic writer and you want to improve your reader character inclusivity and have also read this far, you can DM me or shoot me an ask.

[hexalt]

CW for discussion of suicide

- She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - What? No, I'm not. - She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - That's a sexist term! - She's the crazy ex-girlfriend - Can you guys stop singing for just a second? - She's so broken insiiiiiide! - The situation's a lot more nuanced than that!

There’s the essay! You get it now. JK.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the culmination of Rachel Bloom’s YouTube channel (and the song “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” in particular where she combined her lifelong obsession with musical theatre and sketch comedy and Aline Brosh McKenna stumbling onto Bloom’s channel one night while having an idea for a television show that subverted the tropes in scripts she’d been writing like The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses.

The show begins with a flashback to teenage Rebecca Bunch (played by Bloom) at summer camp performing in South Pacific. She leaves summer camp gushing about the performance, holding hands with the guy she spent all summer with, Josh Chan. He says it was fun for the time, but it’s time to get back to real life. We flash forward to the present in New York, Rebecca’s world muted in greys and blues with clothing as conservative as her hair.

She’s become a top tier lawyer, a career that she doesn’t enjoy but was pushed into by her overprotective, controlling mother. She’s just found out she’s being promoted to junior partner, and that’s just objectively, on paper fantastic, right?! ...So why isn’t she happy? She goes out onto the streets in the midst of a panic attack, spilling her pills all over the ground, and suddenly sees an ad for butter asking, “When was the last time you were truly happy?” A literal arrow and beam of sunlight then point to none other than Josh Chan. She strikes up a conversation with him where he tells her he’s been trying to make it in New York but doesn’t like it, so he’s moving back to his hometown, West Covina, California, where everyone is just...happy.

The word echoes in her mind, and she absorbs it like a pill. She decides to break free of the hold others have had over her life and turns down the promotion of her mother’s dreams. I didn’t realize the show was a musical when I started it, and it’s at this point that Rebecca is breaking out into its first song, “West Covina”. It’s a parody of the extravagant, classic Broadway numbers filled with a children’s marching band whose funding gets cut, locals joining Rebecca in synchronized song and dance, and finishing with her being lifted into the sky while sitting on a giant pretzel. This was the moment I realized there was something special here.

With this introduction, the stage has been set for the premise of the show. Each season was planned with an overall theme. Season one is all about denial, season two is about being obsessed with love and losing yourself in it, season three is about the spiral and hitting rock bottom, and season four is about renewal and starting from scratch. You can see this from how the theme songs change every year, each being the musical thesis for that season.

We start the show with a bunch of cliché characters: the crazy ex-girlfriend; her quirky sidekick; the hot love interest; his bitchy girlfriend; and his sarcastic best friend who’s clearly a much better match for the heroine. The magic of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is that no one in West Covina is the sum of their tropes. As Rachel says herself, “People aren’t badly written, people are made of specificities.”

The show is revolutionary for the authenticity with which it explores various topics but for the sake of this piece, we’ll discuss mental health, gender, Jewish identity, and sexuality. All topics that Bloom has dug into in her previous works but none better than here.

Simply from the title, many may be put off, but this is a story that has always been about deconstructing stereotypes. Rather than being called The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, where the story would be from an outsider’s perspective, this story is from that woman’s point of view because the point isn’t to demonize Rebecca, it’s to understand her. Even if you hate her for all the awful things she’s doing.

The musical numbers are shown to be in Rebecca’s imagination, and she tells us they’re how she processes the world, but as she starts healing in the final season, she isn’t the lead singer so often anymore and other characters get to have their own problems and starring roles. When she does have a song, it’s because she’s backsliding into her former patterns.

While a lot of media will have characters that seem to have some sort of vague disorder, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend goes a step further and actually diagnoses Rebecca with Borderline Personality Disorder, while giving her an earnest, soaring anthem. She’s excited and relieved to finally have words for what’s plagued her whole life.

When diagnosing Rebecca, the show’s team consulted with doctors and psychiatrists to give her a proper diagnosis that ended up resonating with many who share it. BPD is a demonized and misunderstood disorder, and I’ve heard that for many, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the first honest and kind depiction they’ve seen of it in media. Where the taboo of mental illness often leads people to not get any help, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend says there is freedom and healing in identifying and sharing these parts of yourself with others.

Media often uses suicide for comedy or romanticizes it, but Crazy Ex-Girlfriend explored what’s going through someone’s mind to reach that bottomless pit. Its climactic episode is written by Jack Dolgen (Bloom’s long-time musical collaborator, co-songwriter and writer for the show) who’s dealt with suicidal ideation. Many misunderstood suicide as the person simply wanting to die for no reason, but Rebecca tells her best friend, “I didn’t even want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. It’s like I was out of stories to tell myself that things would be okay.”

Bloom has never shied away from heavy topics. The show discusses in song the horrors of what women do to their bodies and self-esteem to conform to beauty standards, the contradiction of girl power songs that tell you to “Put Yourself First” but make sure you look good for men while doing it, and the importance of women bonding over how terrible straight men are are near and dear to her heart. This is a show that centers marginalized women, pokes fun at the misogyny they go through, and ultimately tells us the love story we thought was going to happen wasn’t between a woman and some guy but between her and her best friend.

I probably haven’t watched enough Jewish TV or film, but to me, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the most unapologetic and relatable Jewish portrayal I’ve seen overall. From Rebecca’s relationship with her toxic, controlling mother (if anyone ever wants to know what my mother’s like, I send them “Where’s the Bathroom”) to Patti Lupone’s Rabbi Shari answering a Rebecca that doesn’t believe in God, “Always questioning! That is the true spirit of the Jewish people,” the Jewish voices behind the show are clear.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend continues to challenge our perceptions when a middle-aged man with an ex-wife and daughter realizes he’s bisexual and comes out in a Huey Lewis saxophone reverie. The hyper-feminine mean girl breaks up with her boyfriend and realizes the reason she was so obsessed with getting him to commit to her is the same reason she’s so scared to have female friends. She was suffering under the weight of compulsory heterosexuality, but thanks to Rebecca, she eventually finds love and friendship with women.

This thread is woven throughout the show. Many of the characters tell Rebecca when she’s at her lowest of how their lives would’ve never changed for the better if it wasn’t for her. She was a tornado that blew through West Covina, but instead of leaving destruction in her wake, she blew apart their façades, forcing true introspection into what made them happy too.

Rebecca’s story is that of a woman who felt hopeless, who felt no love or happiness in her life, when that’s all she’s ever wanted. She tried desperately to fill that void through validation from her parents and random men, things romantic comedies had taught her matter most but came up empty. She tried on a multitude of identities through the musical numbers in her mind, seeing herself as the hero and villain of the story, and eventually realized she’s neither because life doesn’t make narrative sense.

It takes her a long time but eventually she sees that all the things she thought would solve her problems can’t actually bring her happiness. What does is the real family she finds in West Covina, the town she moved to on a whim, and finally having agency over herself to use her own voice and tell her story through music.

The first words spoken by Rebecca are, “When I sang my solo, I felt, like, a really palpable connection with the audience.” Her last words are, “This is a song I wrote.” This connection with the audience that brought her such joy is something she finally gets when she gets to perform her story not to us, the TV audience, but to her loved ones in West Covina. Rebecca (and Rachel) always felt like an outcast, West Covina (and creating the show) showed her how cathartic it is to find others who understand you.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the prologue to Rebecca’s life and the radical story of someone getting better. She didn’t need to change her entire being to find acceptance and happiness, she needed to embrace herself and accept love and help from others who truly cared for her. Community is what she always needed and community is what ultimately saved her.

*

P.S. If you have Spotify... I also process life through music, so I made some playlists related to the show because what better way to express my deep affection for it than through song?

CXG parodies, references, and is inspired by a lot of music from all kinds of genres, musicals, and musicians. Same goes for the videos themselves. I gathered all of them into one giant playlist along with the show’s songs.

A Rebecca Bunch mix that goes through her character arc from season 1 to 4.

I’m shamelessly a fan of Greg x Rebecca, so this is a mega mix of themselves and their relationship throughout the show.

*

I’m in a TV group where we wrote essays on our favorite shows of the 2010s, so here is mine on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I realized I forgot to ever post it. Also wrote one for Schitt’s Creek.

[voxofthevoid]

Taking It Up The Ass Isn’t Character Growth - A Rant

So, in response to an ask a while back, I said I had a rant brewing on fandom and sex positions, and well, a lot of you wanted to see it, so here you go. You literally asked for it.

Disclaimer: This is going to talk a lot about top/bottom roles in slash fic and fandom attitude towards them and is heavily filtered through the lens of my own tastes and experiences with fandom. I’d also like to be upfront that I am 100% in favor of people writing whatever fictional content they want, and it’s not what fandom does with characters that bothers me but rather how that translates into attitudes towards real, live people. Also, this is the essay version of a slow burn AU because I regurgitate my entire fandom history before getting to the point. Beware.

I discovered fan-fiction around a decade ago, had no clue what the hell it was, got hooked and dived deeper. I started participating in fandom circa 2013, and I was fairly young and also completely inexperienced both sexually and romantically. The fandom in question was Hannibal and my ship of choice was Hannibal/Will. It was/is a very chill fandom in general, but we had our drama. And chief among the contentious topics was—you guessed it—the top/bottom debate. I can’t actually remember any other topic that was discussed and argued for so ardently in that fandom, at least in those days. Even after I drifted away, I came across a few posts on the matter.

Generally, you had two camps—people who supported strict roles and those who were in favor of switching*. And because we’re a society plagued by illogical assumptions, the strict role camp mostly had people who thought Mr. Big Bad Cannibal in the Fancy Suits wouldn’t take it up the ass because he’s older, more experienced, more mentally stable, and of course, more ‘dominant’ in personality. Yes, that sentence is chock full of problematic shit. I am aware. Lots of people were aware and argued strongly against attributing top/bottom roles to personality. I don’t remember anyone arguing as enthusiastically for Top Will, but those voices were also there. But the general idea was that assigning strict top/bottom roles to a male/male couple was casting them in a heterosexual mold and thus, the progressive option was to make them switch. Strict roles also garnered comparisons to “yaoi” and uke/seme stereotypes, which was of course bad and fetishizing and we, the Western media fans, of course had to do better. Stealth racism is fun to untangle.

Anyway, I lapped up the woke juice. Partly because I was a baby queer from Buttfuck Nowhere, Asia, who had zero exposure to LGBT+ communities and what queer folks did with each other. Partly because it was the stance taken by most of my favorite writers so it seemed like a good position to emulate.

Emulate it I did. Most discussions I had about this happened in private with the handful of close friends I had in fandom. Where it really showed was in my writing. I made sure to write switching—maybe not in every fic, but then I alternated between fics. Thing is though, I did have a preference. I liked Top Will. I created and consumed a ton of Top Hannibal, and sometimes it was okay, sometimes it was not, but I couldn’t pinpoint why it made me uncomfortable. Back then, I thought I was a cis questioning/bi girl and once again, the impression I got was that not being MLM, having a preference was automatic fetishization. So I tried my best to justify my preferences, to my friends at least. I think what I said was that fandom was skewed towards Top Hannibal, and I liked the opposite because I’m a contrary fuck. Which I am, to be fair, but this was just me desperately trying to figure shit out without being offensive.

That’s the line I touted all the way until 2018, which was when I fucked off to grad school in A City, finally freed of Buttfuck Nowhere and able to actually date. At this point, I was settled in my sexuality (girls only) and questioning my gender (non-binary or trans guy). I had also tentatively figured out during undergrad that I’m an exclusive top and a Dom. Actual attempts at dating cemented that, yes, those are my preferences, about as flexible as a steel rod. Cue motherfucking epiphany over my fanfic tastes.

And see, over these years, I was engaging intermittently with fandom. I dutifully wrote switch couples. I also continued to have rigid tastes and continued to explain it away as being a contrary fuck—to be fair, until Steve/Bucky, my preference did seem to be the opposite of the larger fandom preference. But correlation, as we know, isn’t causation. Until Steve/Bucky, I continued to write versatile couples because I honestly didn’t have the guts to just say I liked it just one way. I do now but even then, I feel compelled to add that it’s because I want to see my own taste reflected in fic, so I write/read the character I relate to as a top, it's not that deep etc. Would I be as forthright if I didn’t have that reason? Would I have such strict preferences in fic if I didn’t have strict preferences IRL? The latter’s a mystery, but the former isn’t—I wouldn’t be because fandom is still entrenched in the same ideas that got me to this point to begin with.

In every fandom I’ve been in, I’ve seen some version of this debate go around. Sometimes, it’s one party saying “why would you write Character X as a bottom, he’s so Reason A” and a reblog chain that insults the OP and/or extols the virtues of switching. Sometimes, it’s a general-ish message that says they don’t understand why people have strict preferences when we all know real gay couples switch. Sometimes, it’s blanket statements that accuse anyone with preferences of fetishizing. Sometimes, it’s the same reasoning that gets you “Character Y is a top because of Reason B” transposed on versatile couples except this takes the form of “they switch because they’re equals.”

Ya’ll, I’m fucking tired.

I have long since lost count of the number of stories I’ve seen where an exclusive top learning bottom and liking it is character growth. Where a character who prefers to bottom taking a turn on top is empowering.

Isolated, these are fine. But I’ve seen enough of such stories that it’s distinctly discomfiting and a major squick. Sometimes a trigger, if I'm too immersed in the story. I’m not going to try and burn an author at the stake because they pissed me off. I am just going to close that window and quietly handle my shit. People can write whatever they want. But this one theme hits too close to home, as you can see from this 1.6k rant.

My friend (also my ex-girlfriend) and I had an all-out bitching session about this the other day. Both of us are kinky fuckers who have rigid, complementary roles we prefer and we have both had our grueling days of struggling to reconcile our sexual tastes with our ideologies precisely because of how these things are frowned upon in conservative and progressive circles. Seeing that in fandom, of all places, is both insulting and exhausting. Topping and bottoming aren’t personality traits. Neither is D/s. It’s sexual preference and power play. It really does not have to be that deep. I am not exorcising childhood trauma using the bodies of women. My partners, former and current, have not been brainwashed by the patriarchy. We will not become better, more complete individuals once I magically stop being a stone top and my partners embrace the joys of a strap-on.

I have, with my own two eyes, seen someone say that in a really committed relationship, of course the couple will switch.

Bullshit.

It’s transparent bullshit. This does not get attributed to cisgender M/F couples. Even when the automatic assumptions of woman = bottom and man = top get addressed, switching isn't presented as the default. No one’s saying “oh, if you really love your husband, you’ll peg him”. I do know butch/femme sapphic couples get their own share of shit. Because it’s all heteronormativity, right? Can’t have any other reason for top/bottom roles.

You have two extremes with “so who’s the woman” on one end and “it’s woke only if they switch” on the other, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re equally damaging. There shouldn’t be a pressure, however subtle, to conform your taste in fiction to some arbitrary idea of progressiveness. People are going to like whatever they want anyway; all this does is create an atmosphere where those likes can’t always be freely expressed without a lot of mental gymnastics. We’re seeing so many versions of this in the pushback against so-called problematic content, but smaller, subtler versions exist too.

Fictional characters aren’t real. They can be whatever you want them to be. And yes, other people will often want them to be the exact opposite of your ideas, but that’s just how things work. Meanwhile, the people behind these usernames? They’re real. No one should be throwing real people under the bus to ‘protect’ characters that don’t exist. Hannibal Lecter doesn’t care whether he gets fucked or dismembered in Author B’s fanfiction, but the discourse that surrounds the dick up his ass? That does affect flesh and blood people.

I am not claiming that this is the only attitude in fandom. Middlegrounds do exist. Plenty of people abide by fic and let fic and there are folks who pipe up to say not every RL queer couple switches. But it’s often the extremes that reach most people. That was certainly my experience, and I’m not the only one.

I don’t really know how to end this post. It is 100% a rant and one that’s been building up for a while. Bottom line is that people’s sexual behavior varies wildly and whenever you attack sexual tastes in fanfic by saying it’s unrealistic - or worse because let’s be real, that’s a very tame word choice - please remember that there’s likely someone out there who practices it.

* I’m using switch and versatile synonymously in this post. It’s mostly concerned with top/bottom debates. A lot of what I’m saying is also echoed in portrayals of and discussions surrounding D/s dynamics, but I’m not addressing that as much for now.  

[chibimyumi]

I too have a question on your opinion on something that I am pretty sure you've never covered, but, I know you have covered a LOT of grell things, and it IS a Grell thing. It's more like a theory I have seen that some people have, that the "butler disguise" and persona were sort of giving us a glimpse of what Grell was like before she became a reaper. BUt I am unsure myself. It has always felt like just a disguise and nothing more! What do you think??

Dear Anon,

Thanks for checking whether the answer to your question is already available before asking! (^▽^) I appreciate that a lot.

As to your question... I am not sure. As I have said often before, we don’t actually know all that much about Grell, let alone her inner psyche. Unlike Sebas and especially O!Ciel who are heavily built on their inner psyche and how they need to regulate their actions (i.e. we have a clear view of what they are hiding and why they choose to express what), Grell is a character built and centered on sheer expression. In addition to Grell not having all that much “screentime”, it really is impossible to conclude what she used to be/is like outside of her few appearances in the manga so far.

However, there is value in discussing what may or may not have been, so let us do just that ^^

Can Grell’s butler disguise offer a glimpse of her former self?

Disclaimer: I am not transgender myself, so I cannot speak from personal experience; only from secondhand experience from my transgender friends/acquaintances who told me their stories in confidence, or from interviews.

Before we can begin a meaningful discussion, we first need to consider the function of Grell’s disguise; the demure and hopeless butler.

‘The Watchdog x the Black Butler’ have earned themselves quite some notoriety fame in society because of their astonishing capabilities. Grell however, would have to achieve the opposite; inconspicuousness. With a male-coded body she had better choose a male disguise because 1. a female persona would reversely attract attention, and 2. female servants did not enjoy the same “privileges” male servants did, which would have made her service to Madam very inconvenient.

In short, we can conclude that a male disguise was not much of a choice, but an inevitability in the “stage and setting” the-great-actress had to play. So now the question remains: “why this specific demure and hopeless role, and does this role reflect her former self in any way?”

Now let us discuss both the “yes” and the “no”.

【tw suicide and transphobia mention】

“No.” - Why relive a trauma?

As I said before, we don’t know much about Grell, so we also don’t know how much her past affects her current self. One thing we are relatively certain of however, is that Grell probably killed herself because she couldn’t bear to live as a man anymore.

If we accept this as the reason Grell killed herself, then it is important to ask: “IF the demure and hopeless persona was the way she used to be, and IF it is unbearable for Grell to relive the life she had to end, why then would she choose this role?” There are many other ways to be an inconspicuous male butler other than the specific persona Grell went with. Butler Sutcliff could just have been mediocre and silent, for example.

We don’t know whether Grell has had enough time to move past her trauma, but considering how she still begrudges sex workers who want a hysterectomy enough to so violently kill them, it is fairly reasonable to say her trauma is still with her. If her past “self” was so unbearable that she killed it, I would say it makes no sense whatsoever she would choose to revisit that trauma since other options are clearly available.

Opposite or just different?

In a society as obsessed with masculinity as the early Victorian one, Grell must have experienced a real struggle by being ““blessed with a male status”” and yet unable to live up to a ‘proper’ male life. Who was supposed to tell Grell that ‘transgender’ is a thing and that it’s okay? Most likely Grell may not even really have believed herself when her subconscious told her she was a woman; the concept of ‘sex ≠ gender’ was unheard of!

All transgender people cope differently of course, but I learned that some transgender women initially overcompensate with hyper masculinity to convince themselves and/or others they actually are men. It is not inconceivable that Grell did exactly that to conform and avoid being exposed to danger.

In this case, it is likely that this persona is either very different or even the polar opposite from what she used to present herself as. Perhaps during her partnership with Madam Red, the choice for such a demure role was to help her temporarily live as a man without having to re-experience the traumatic life she had ended before.

“Yes” - Method acting

Grell is a self-proclaimed great actress, but no matter how gifted an actor, the possibility of slipping up will always exist. Grell is not performing in a 3-hour musical with a passive audience that’s simply there to see her shine; no, she is being undercover for a high-risk mission that tolerates zero mistakes.

Adopting a familiar persona can ensure maximum ‘naturalness’ and smoothness; it is a “role” that she had rehearsed for many years already, after all. She would already know why she used to act in a certain way, how she would have responded in surprise situations. This could spare her the effort of having to improvise a “logical” behaviour should her cover be tested, and could save her from being caught for character-inconsistencies.

To allow for this method acting however, Grell would need to trust herself mentally stable enough as not to be affected by unpleasant memories. Perhaps Grell has had enough time and opportunity to move past her trauma, who knows? In this case the violent serial murders stem from just perverse vindictiveness rather than being a reaction to trauma. Or it is even possible that Grell’s vindictiveness and hate were simply stronger than her trauma. We really can’t tell.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we don’t know enough about Grell to be able to tell whether the demure butler persona reflects her former self. There are equally valid reasons for both theories.

Under the assumption that the trauma is still present in Grell, it is most likely that the demure and hopeless butler is a far departure from past-Grell. This means that this persona only tells us what Grell was NOT like, but we are still left with no clue as to how Grell presented herself before she killed herself.

Alternatively, if we find it more likely that Grell would opt for the strategy of method acting, and therefore having ‘the familiar’ to fall back on, it would be possible that the butler persona does give a glimpse of her former self. This however, would demand the precondition that Grell has another coping strategy for her past trauma; a trauma we know was so unbearable it drove her to suicide.

I hope this helps!! What do you think? ^ω^ What would you have done if you were in her shoes?

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[aion-rsa]

The Mandalorian May Want More Cara Dune But Many Star Wars Fans Want Less Gina Carano

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This Star Wars: The Mandalorian article contains spoilers.

The Mandalorian‘s latest episode, “The Siege,” is a mostly entertaining action romp through Nevarro that gives fans more clues as to what the Empire is planning for the Outer Rim. The episode is also an opportunity for Mando and Baby Yoda to reunite with season one allies Greef Karga (Carl Weathers, who also directed the episode) and Cara Dune (Gina Carano). But, while the “getting the band back together” feel of the episode generally works in its favor, many Star Wars fans are dismayed by Carano’s return to the show.

The actor and former MMA fighter has quickly become one of the most controversial figures currently working in Star Wars, which has left many fans conflicted about how to celebrate the importance of her character while also separating Cara from Carano herself. Much of the debate between fans who support Carano and those who are petitioning for Disney to fire her from the show (using the #FireGinaCarano hashtag) stems from the views the actor has shared on Twitter.

For the past few months, Carano has used her Twitter handle to question Covid-19 mask mandates meant to protect people from a pandemic that has already killed over one million people around the world, posting conspiracy theories and memes that question a proven preventative measure that can slow the spread of the virus. Just days before “The Siege” aired on Disney+, Carano posted a meme suggesting that “Democratic Government Leaders” would soon “recommend we all wear blindfolds along with masks so we can’t see what’s really going on.”

She’s also been dismissive of adding pronouns to her Twitter bio in solidarity with the trans community, at one point using the words “boop/bop/beep” in her profile name to seemingly mock those who use pronouns.

“They’re mad cuz I won’t put pronouns in my bio to show my support for trans lives. After months of harassing me in every way. I decided to put 3 VERY controversial words in my bio.. beep/bop/boop,” Carano tweeted after her stunt was criticized by the Star Wars community. “I’m not against trans lives at all. They need to find less abusive representation.”

Carano later took down the joke, explaining that she’d spoken with The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal (who does use pronouns in his bio) about the meaning of the gesture.

“Yes, Pedro & I spoke & he helped me understand why people were putting them in their bios,” she tweeted. “I didn’t know before but I do now. I won’t be putting them in my bio but good for all you who choose to.”

After Carano declined to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement in August, she was praised by alt-right site Breitbart for “refusing to buckle and bow to the woke social media,” according to Vanity Fair.

“In my experience, screaming at someone that they are a racist when they are indeed NOT a racist & any post and/or research you do will show you those exact facts, then I’m sorry, these people are not ‘educators.’ They are cowards and bullies,” Carano tweeted at the time.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Most recently, Carano has shared conspiracy theories about unproven claims of widespread voter fraud in the aftermath of the US general election and has also announced that she’s joined Parler, a “free speech” social media site that’s quickly become a haven for right-wing extremists.

“We need to clean up the election process so we are not left feeling the way we do today,” she wrote in a recent tweet. “Put laws in place that protect us against voter fraud. Investigate every state.  Film the counting. Flush out the fake votes. Require ID. Make Voter Fraud end in 2020. Fix the system.”

What’s all the more alarming about Carano’s real-world views is the importance of her character, a rare female hero in Star Wars who doesn’t conform to the traditional gender roles or body type usually represented in the movies. On The Mandalorian, Cara Dune is a muscular ex-Rebel shocktrooper who likes a fight, especially when it means punching fascist Imperials in the face. After the end of the war, Cara chose the mercenary life over the New Republic but eventually settled down on Nevarro as its marshal.

Along the way, Cara has teamed up with Mando, a character who, despite being from an isolationist warrior cult, has shown himself to be surprisingly accepting and supportive of other cultures and belief systems, even learning to communicate with Tusken Raiders, a race often depicted as savage and cruel in Star Wars. In “The Marshal,” for example, we watch as Mando encourages Cobb Vanth to be more respectful of Tusken traditions and customs.

Pascal, who has been very vocal in his support of BLM and trans rights, is certainly a better example of the message of inclusivity Star Wars has tried to promote in its latest stories. Meanwhile, Carano has failed to grasp the message all together, personifying someone in the Star Wars galaxy who is more likely to wonder on the HoloNet whether the Empire was really all that bad.

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A post shared by Pedro Pascal he/him (@pascalispunk)

If calls for Carano’s firing lead to Disney removing her from the show, the Star Wars community could lose something important in the process: a mold-breaking character (at least in this saga) that many fans have seriously connected with. The better solution might be to recast Cara Dune, replacing Carano with a new actor while keeping the fan-favorite character.

“The Siege” subtly suggests that Cara might be ready to make a change, as she considers whether to join the New Republic’s ranks. While it’s just as possible that this could provide an easy way to write Cara off the show, a change of this magnitude to the character could also make it easier to recast the actor. This wouldn’t be the first time a popular TV show has recast a major character after all, even if recasting hasn’t happened very often in Star Wars.

Whatever happens to Cara Dune, it’s clear that we should be able to expect more from the actors who bring our favorite characters to life. Or at least the bare minimum — like not discrediting science in the middle of a deadly pandemic.

#FireGinaCarano for using her platform for spouting dangerous rhetoric that literally puts queer and trans BIPOC in danger. She is a racist transphobe. She has publicly shown her support and spread dangerous misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding covid19 as well

— 💫 Lune (they/them) 🦋🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 (@lunarsith) November 15, 2020

#fireginacarano and replace her w the ladies we actually want to see pic.twitter.com/sOmjp5Jahc

— olivia ✿ (@G0NKDROID) November 15, 2020

#FireGinaCarano and replace her with Frog Lady please. pic.twitter.com/u6yIqdBTcO

— Wren (@wrenhousevizsla) November 15, 2020

#FireGinaCarano and replace her with Ming Na Wen who is passionate about Star Wars pic.twitter.com/fQc9c1pFPc

— jews for hanleia and blm 💫 commissions open (@leiasskywalkers) November 15, 2020

Keep up with all of The Mandalorian season 2 news here.

The post The Mandalorian May Want More Cara Dune But Many Star Wars Fans Want Less Gina Carano appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3fm2YLK

[theharellan]

𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑬𝑻

repost,  don’t reblog !

𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

FULL NAME.      solas PRONUNCIATION.       soul-ess NICKNAME.       chuckles GENDER.         agender HEIGHT.    5′8″ AGE.  ?? (ancient, appears to be early 40s) ZODIAC.         capricorn SPOKEN LANGUAGES.    elvhen, king’s tongue (fluent), orlesian, tevene, qunlat, anders (not-fluent)

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

HAIR COLOR.       auburn. EYE COLOR.        blue-grey. SKIN TONE.         pale. BODY TYPE.        average, wide shoulders and narrower hips. not particularly built, most muscular in the legs and arms with a softer middle. ACCENT.         welsh. his voice actor is from south wales, although i believe he has described solas as being welsh-ier than he (gareth david-lloyd) is. VOICE.         example here. DOMINANT HAND.         left, learned to be ambidextrous b/c he used to have too much time on his hands (ha). POSTURE.         varies depending on situation and comfort-level. if he is in a position where he has to be taken seriously he will be straight-backed, arms often tucked behind him. in more comfortable situations he is more likely to slouch or talk with his hands. SCARS.         indented scar above brow, scars magic and mundane on his hands/fingers, web-like lightning scar on his chest. TATTOOS.         n/a. BIRTHMARKS.         do cleft chins count. MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S).       his bald head and elf ears are what draw the most notice. pre-veil, perception of him would vary depending upon how someone thought of him, ranging from someone who exuded wisdom or safety to the incarnation of dread (sometimes robbing him of a elf-shape in favor of a demonic wolf).

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 !

PLACE OF BIRTH.         unnamed village, since destroyed. located in the northern free marches along what is now the silent plains (although the geography was different in his time). HOMETOWN.         unnamed, adopted arlathan (though he was full-grown by the time it existed). BIRTH WEIGHT.          BIRTH HEIGHT.           MANNER OF BIRTH.         solas may or may not have been spirited into existence. experts are divided. FIRST WORDS.         “see.” SIBLINGS.         n/a. PARENTS.         don’t make me name his mother. i’ve come this far w/o doing it. PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT.         solas was raised in a small village with little to interest him. most of the lessons passed down by his parent were practical skills, his more esoteric interests discouraged until he found a community outside via people (wisdom, joy, etc) who had more interest in his love of learning things without any apparent use. she did make pottery, however, the first creative skill solas learned before he took to painting. he left his home shortly after he was able to pursue a life more in line with his interests and they never met again.

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 !

OCCUPATION.         guardian of mythal, general, evanuris, rebel leader, homeless apostate, and finally a member of the inquisition. CURRENT RESIDENCE.          haven / skyhold (inquisition). CLOSE FRIENDS.         wisdom (deceased), joy, miraen, ian lavellan, thora cadash, cadri cadash, cole, mythal (deceased?). varies depending on canon interpretations, occasionally he develops a good friendship with iron bull, for example, but it’s not guaranteed. RELATIONSHIP STATUS.          partner to ian lavellan. the exact nature varies on verse. FINANCIAL STATUS.         undetermined. among the inquisition he is taken care of, but he takes payment in the accruement of books. DRIVER’S LICENSE.        yes (modern verse, though he doesn’t drive if he can help it). CRIMINAL RECORD.         yes. likely was the most wanted person in elvhenan and becomes so again in the dragon age. in modern thedas he has also been arrested during protests and for sleeping on public property. VICES.        occasionally smokes, tendency to depression sleep.

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION.         asexual. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION.         panromantic. PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE.       submissive |  dominant |  switch. PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE.       submissive  |  dominant  |  switch. LIBIDO.         low to moderately low. TURN ON’S.         empathy. intelligence. creativity. willingness to engage in long conversations. TURN OFF’S.        conformity. cruelty. innocence, which shouldn’t be confused with optimism. LOVE LANGUAGE.    applies to platonic/romantic relationships. i mentioned solas tends to hold himself upright when he wants people to take him seriously. note: this body language during the veilfire chat after haven’s destruction versus scenes accessible to warm-approval inquisitors. if he likes/trusts someone he’s more likely to relax his body language, not needing to fear being brushed aside for expressing his emotions. also while he has a reputation for being solitary, his preferred state of being is not to be alone. people he has any affection for he will seek out. RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES.       he has a history of being in a strange relationship to himself and his body which means he has a rather short list of relationships despite his absurdly long life. as an evanuris solas avoided all romantic feelings to the point where he wondered if he was aromantic as well as asexual, and as fen’harel he didn’t feel it appropriate to act on any feelings he developed, feeling it was still inappropriate. the relationships he had prior to becoming evanuris tended to be emotionally intense rather than physically, with the exception of one in which he wasn’t altogether happy. with ian, the former was the case until after he learned the truth about solas’s past, it was only afterwards that the physical aspect of their relationship became more intimate.

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG.         hallelujah. HOBBIES TO PASS TIME.         painting, reading, dreaming/fade walking. MENTAL ILLNESSES.  traumatic stress disorder, depression, derealization/depersonalization. PHYSICAL ILLNESSES.         none. some physical weariness from his age that only set in after the veil, namely joint soreness. LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED.         right brained. FEARS.      failure. dying alone. complacency/complicity. SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL.         either too high or too low. there is no in-between. VULNERABILITIES.        as an apostate secrecy or his use are the only things keeping him safe, especially in an inquisition where he is unfriendly with the inquisitor. he awakes with more talent than the average mage, perhaps, but without the power he is used to. also despite posturing as logical, he’s more emotional than he lets on.

TAGGED BY:   stolen from @synthmama TAGGING:    @theshirallen, @valorcorrupt, @chantrysworn, @aniente (dalish or adrian), @sensehurt, @aesophs (vivienne), @felandaristhorns / @deathsreflection, @justicebound, @originsendure (eli tabris)

[hollowedrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, CAS! — You’ve been accepted for the role of Alice Longbottom. Holy hell, I’ve never had to analyze four apps as much as I had to for Alice. While I do want to congratulate you on being accepted, Cas, I really want to congratulate all four applicants for putting their blood, sweat and tears into their apps. All four of you deserve a spot in this roleplay, so much so that in a bit of a delirious haze I tried to convince myself four Alice Longbottoms running around Godric’s Hollow wouldn’t be weird. 

Cas, what made your app stand out is in the tiny details. The section where you describe how passionate Alice is, the way she nearly cried as a child when she learned she killed her mother’s flowers, the way she loves so fully, really tugged at my heartstrings. Balancing that with how withdrawn Alice has become, but not diminishing either side of her, was truly impressive. I can’t wait to see your interpretation of Alice in action. 

Thank you so much for applying. Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the follow list. Welcome to Hollowed Souls!

ooc.

name: Cas.

age: Twenty-one.

preferred pronouns: She, her.

timezone: GMT.

activity: Usually my activity’s pretty high, but since I’m in my last year of university and coming up to the completion of my last projects (my dissertation, final submissions) my studies take precedent. I literally finish at the beginning of May so I’ve not got long left, and writing’s my down time, so I’d put my activity at a 6 numerically for now, and much higher thereafter. I’m always easy to reach via Discord and, like I say, once things settle down again my activity is likely to increase.

are you applying for more than one character?: Nope, just Alice!

how do you feel about your character dying?: Breaks my heart, but if the situation arose I’d definitely consider letting Alice go.

anything else?: N/a.

ic details.

full name: Alice Freya Longbottom.

FREYA (NORSE ORIGIN; ‘LADY’ OR ‘GODDESS OF FERTILITY’): The name is not one that Alice has ever used, or ever liked to use, but it is a name her mother insisted upon, nonetheless. Perhaps there’s something to be learned from its inferring; a reminder of her mother’s pleading, her desire for high pureblood society and her daughter’s integration within it. Her wish for her daughter to blend into riches and position as precociously as teacups detonated in her hands and hydrangeas wriggled free from her fingers. Her middle name, Freya, summarises the wife’s role nicely: what purpose does she have beyond her feminine graces and her compliance? To sit idly and look pretty, to attract a persuasive member of that illustrious society and bear him an equally persuasive son; that is what Alice’s mother desired above all else. But Alice could never have filled such a role. She was a wily thing, built for crossing lines and confounding others. Though she seemed delicate to the touch, she could never quite sit without shifting in her mother’s white dresses; though she smiled softly, she could never quite drink her tea right. She could never quite do things as they were expected; she was always a little way off conforming to the frangible and airy thing her mother so wished for her to be.

date of birth: 24 August 1957.

former hogwarts house: Ravenclaw.

An outsider; that is what she’d always been. Though the Fawley’s exercised some element of authority over those their society deemed less than, they never truly broke into their own community’s inner throng. They could never quite be termed the most elite family of wizards; though they were, too, outsiders to everyone else. It would be the same for Alice throughout much of her Hogwarts career. At the Sorting Hat ceremony, she had watched the extraordinary legion of superior pureblood children join the Slytherin table, joined at the hip like a snake’s scales are to its skin. And, inaudibly, she had joined Ravenclaw; a house of vast intellect, soundless character, and the distinct misjudgment of always being underestimated. Ravenclaw, then, in her acuity, her wisdom, her hunger for wit and her terse tongue, was the only home to which she could ever have truly belonged. She shared little with the pureblood society into which her mother so desired to be inducted; not simply in their disparities of renown, but in a subtle rebellion which made her an antithesis to all those she had around her.

Alice had always been intelligent, though her mother’s fixation on higher society had always ensured that the Fawley household was not one that took advantage of this fact. Her strident wit and acumen always a cut above everyone else, though Alice was comfortable with the fact that few ever knew this. Ravenclaw Tower, abundant in quiet corners and quieter students, provided her with the capacity to observe; to hungrily run her finger over worn parchment and faded ink, to tiptoe silently through Hogwarts’ halls at night, to spend soundless hours in the school’s Herbology greenhouses and come to know the poisonous plants as if they were her mother’s hydrangeas, or the courtyard’s geraniums. In Ravenclaw, she could finally strip herself of the attempts she made to fit her mother’s specific, astringent matrix; in Ravenclaw, her eccentricity gave her courage. Solitude was a familiar companion, but passion was a more comfortable friend to her, and as she observed others in her stillness, her placement pulled her towards herself and who, against her mother’s devout protestations, she had the potential to become.

sexuality: Pansexual, panromantic.

gender/pronouns: Cis-gendered female, Alice uses she/her pronouns.

face claim change: N/a.

more.

how do you interpret this character’s personality? how will you play them? include two weaknesses & two strengths.

+ SHARP WITTED: She was a slippery thing; every time her mother seemed to grasp hold of her child, she seemed to writhe away, unwillingly, into something she couldn’t possibly understand. With her wit and elusive insurgence, she would have struggled to make a good pureblood wife; certainly, she and Frank were an attractive match, though their routines saw them reject much of convention. Was that what made him suit her? It was, perhaps, her sharpened intellect that he admired about his wife most; her observation of others, her understanding of others, the way she ran her fingers through ink and came away with all the knowledge, starving them from their parchment. It would be a mistake to underestimate her – and, indeed, she often was – for this very reason; the strategist on the chessboard, the strategist in battle: Ravenclaws were so often discredited with the common perception that they were not to be feared. Quite to the contrary, it was the Ravenclaw such as Alice – that observant, silent, sharpened and unobserved owl of a girl– who ought to cause apprehension. Devouring facts like nourishment, swallowing sagacity as if it was another half of her soul, seeking out unlit corners into which few others dare to venture; and yet, this dissection never went unrewarded. Alice has a sea of very particular knowledge, and indeed that is what propelled her so quickly into the ranks of the Ministry. Her fascination with the unknown, with poison and thorns; with fanged plants, with serrated stems, treacherous flowers. Her intellect has always been to her credit, though she has never been positioned so as to see it appreciated. In Ravenclaw, in Frank, in the Order; that had changed.

+ NOVEL: Never anxious to explore, never daunted by the small spaces into which she funnelled her scratched ankles and grazed knees, Alice always seemed to return into the house with her mother’s white muslin dipped in mud. She never feared the dirt; rather, she dreaded the prim, regulatory air of her mother’s suffocating teachings; cross your legs, drink your tea, sit straight, smile. Crossing her legs she just about managed, though her legs were short, and at times she felt balancing them one atop the other was strenuous; exhausting, at times. She drank her tea, though never in the way her mother told her to. She was no good at balancing a teacup on a saucer, or keeping her back straight as she lifted the liquid to her lips, a smile upon them which struggled to assert its authenticity. She would slurp at the tea, or uncross her legs in doing so, or hang her arms lethargically at her side once finished; these were all acts that filled her mother’s expression with abject horror. High society considered her a wild thing; uninhibited, undomesticated, unlikely to marry into affluence. But her novelty, her experimentalism, her desire to seek out the eccentric; they were the things her mother could not understand. Alice desired to become acquainted with the most peculiar of interests in the wizarding world – and, indeed, she had some fascination with the muggle world too. Since youth, she has been pulled towards the weird and wonderful, they dangerous but beautiful, the flowers that spat at her before she tamed them. She was like them, in a way. Nobody ever paid them much mind, those strange, peculiar things, tucked away into corners, outcasted. But, reared with love, they flourished. In some, their thorns subsided at a gentle touch, others secreted a venom to be used for good. It seemed that Alice was always in the places least expected of her; her nose buried in something profound, her curiosity unveiling something remarkable.

+ PASSIONATE: The first time she had pulled her mother’s hydrangeas from the ground and brought them inside, she had been quite horrified to learn that in doing so, she had killed them. You see, she had simply thought they looked so beautiful and brought them inside so as to spread their colour. But with compost under her fingernails and her mother’s perennial flowers withering in her hands, she had felt the need to cry. Alice had always loved things deeply, though they never seemed to be quite the right things; she had no great love of tea – she preferred freshly brewed coffee – or dresses, or chiffon. She had not even really entertained the thought of children, the very reason for which she had been bred, until she had met her husband. Everything had fallen into place then. And despite her peculiar interests, their strangeness did not diminish the love she had for them. Indeed, she devoted much of her Hogwarts career to the Herbology classrooms and greenhouses, she mastered chess as if it was her most reputable skill, she loved knowledge, and exploring, and the outdoors. Perhaps it was her passion, then, that suited her exploits as a graduate so remarkably. Her heavy moral compass, her strong code of right and wrong, her desperate need to do something good with her life. That was what she had loved about Frank too; the boisterous boy she’d bested once, so delighted that he’d finally found his equal, the stars in his eyes dissipating for the slightest of moments so that he might see Alice as she really was. Clever, slippery, sharp, and – some might say – superior in those ways. Alice always loved strongly; first, those material items had taught her to love. Then it was Frank. Then their son. And she feels the loss keenly.

- UNCERTAIN: In her mother’s displeasure, it had always been difficult for Alice to truly know who she was. Her years as a child, she was chastised for her impudence, while her years at Hogwarts saw her retreat into the furthest corners of the castle; to observe people, to learn about others in her invisible silence. She entered education an insecure, uncertain girl. It was difficult to grasp much about herself, raised in an environment which seemed to emphatically reject all the choices she made as it did. It was difficult for Alice to reconcile what he mother desired her to be and what she truly was – and indeed, how she could come to acquaint herself with her true nature. That had subsided; for a time. Chastised time and time over for her inability to fit high society’s mould, Alice had learned to reject it. As it had rejected her. Ravenclaw, Herbology, stratagem, chess: these things assisted her in coming to know herself as she really was – as she had the potential to be.This Alice, this was the Alice who had bested Frank Longbottom at his own game. This Alice had made discoveries of magical plants – dark, thorny and neglected – that even her professor had yet to discover. This Alice became an Auror, reinforcing the law in the face of evil. This Alice joined the Order. She wanted to do some good in this world as it threatened to crumble before them. And the war – that had only caused her to regress into her uncertainty. Now, she can barely be certain of anything. That Alice is gone.

- TRACTABLE: It had always been easy to influence Alice. Much of her adolescence she spent fighting for her mother’s approval; in quiet. So as to appear as less of a disaster, she would rehearse harmonising that tea-cup to its saucer – indeed, she would have spent hours at the task, should it have made her any less unruly. Her mother, whether knowingly or not, had planted a seed of hesitation in her child. There it remained, rotting inside of her; always second-guessing her decisions, comparing herself to the impossible standard of pureblood society. They would never have accepted them, anyway – that was, perhaps, why her mother had worked so persistently in crafting a daughter who might break into their inner elitism. It is her tractable nature, Alice’s susceptibility to manipulation, her tendency to craft her own self in accordance with others, that limits her. Though, in her later years, she had come to love the self she had ceased before to know – she cannot help, even now, in Godric’s Hollow, feeling her mind wander. To those jeering Slytherins, amongst whom she could never have been integrated. To her mother, who might have predicted their nightmarish outcome. To every single pureblooded mother, insistent that she would never fit the mould. Alice has to stop herself, sometimes, to keep from allowing herself to be precast too much by those around her: by the leaders of the Order, hellbent on salvaging their community; by Frank, hooked on vengeance, swallowed by grief. She has to hold on to those parts which make her human – for her son. Everything she chokes back, it has to be for her son. Even if it kills her.

- WITHDRAWN: This was the quality, perhaps, that he peers had always associated Alice with most – if, indeed, they paid her any mind at all. She had never much minded being alone. The quietness of the outdoors, the solace of the greenhouses, the stillness of her own company: each of these had always brought her enough happiness. Alice’s withdrawn nature appeared to go hand-in-hand with her other parts – her insecurity, her uncertainty. She was invisible, she thought – even as she had retreated from her corners, comfortable as they were, and moved toward Frank so that she might best him; she had never truly encouraged the thought that he might have heard of her before. Indeed, he hadn’t. But, in one interaction, he had resigned himself to know her. Alice’s reserved, solitary temperament continued after graduation; of all the Aurors, though incontrovertibly passionate, she was happy to be passive. It was not glory or the limelight she sought; but the good, triumphing over the evil. Now, this particular vein of her identity is irrepressible. Alice is too keen to have isolation swallow her. She sleeps alone (though, admittedly, through no choice of her own), eats alone, walks alone – interacts with others when she must. Though she knows she must claw her way out of this pit into which she’s fallen, the solitude is too much a comfort for her to leave behind. She is entirely withdrawn; grieving, anguishing, mourning. For her son. For the lives they’ve lost. For the cause, which seems so hopeless now.

how has the war affected this character, emotionally and otherwise?

Alice has lived much of her life diffidently. It was her ability to observe, her competency in control, her sharp intellect and quick-thinking which made her such an effective Auror. And her moral compass, pressed by Moody and bound to passion: that had outweighed any chance that she might integrate herself amongst Frank’s birthright; amongst the pureblooded families and Voldemort’s plight. Images, appearances, pretensions, disguises – falsehood was never a mask behind which she could easily hide. Passion and temperance are conflicting virtues, but virtues Alice possessed nonetheless; they have allowed for her calculated decisions, her strategy on the chessboard and, in the state of war, such as it is, the opposition’s next attack. Instrumental to the order not only through her stratagem, which shared communally was singular, but in her observance; her calm demeanour, her stillness, her inflexible composure. The ability to stare bloodshed in the face unfaltering, devising her next move. It was, perhaps, foolish of her, then, to complacently settle down with her husband as eagerly as she did: to so imprudently have a child. But in their small victories, their anticipated success, Alice had for the first time in her life expected a triumph rather than worked at it. Such a flippant assumption, she tells herself (over, and over, and over), cost her something irreplaceable. They – Alice and Frank – caused the unforgivable.

Then, something changed. Warriors and innocents alike, some younger than even her  un-weathered self (just children cleaving to their mothers, wailing out into a devastating smoke), slaughtered in the streets. It was a massacre. Whatever pyrrhic victories they were holding onto prior to that, they receded into the smoke and blood and dust. Now, Alice was certain, the enemy had assumed control. They lost some of their best members, and those they didn’t were infinitely marred by loss. How do you continue to fight when you lose the thing you’re fighting for? The death of innocents weighed too heavily upon their shoulders. And then, she lost her son. Her dew-eyed, lovely, guiltless son, taken from her. There are no words to prepare a woman on becoming a mother, and yet, somehow, there are even less to console the mother who outlives their child. Alice was not even granted the means to hold her lifeless son, to soothe him, as his consciousness wilted from his body. Indeed, if she had arrived a moment after she did, she would have missed her child’s final glance at the broken world his parents had brought him into. Alice Longbottom – always prepared, always assessing, always two or three or four steps ahead of her lulled adversary – scarcely arrived in time to watch her son, seized by a villain they ought to have bested, gasp his final breath. Perhaps that is what wounds her the most. Her son, lovely, died in the arms of a monster.

Alice rarely sleeps through the night, though on the occasion that she does, she rouses the house in the shrill of her screams. Plagued by hallucinations of her son, and her part in his death, the pain has not subsided. She finds herself returning to that night often, blaming herself; inconsolable, like Lily, like anyone who’s lost somebody in the war. The horror of the act, the cold-blooded murder of her son, she had barely been able to swallow. She could have died then, cradling her son’s body in her arms. At least the two of them would be together. Were she and Frank to blame, conceiving a child in amongst the throes of warfare? For so long in her life, she has anticipated the natural succession of things – reaching from stratagem on the chessboard all the way onto the battlefield – and yet, she had failed to anticipate a nightmare such as this. Though it hardly feels like living, she is surviving each day at a time. To take on any more than that is too difficult for her heart to bear. She and Frank had kept each other warm at night, once, the affection of their eyes resting upon their sleeping child. Now, she sleeps alone. Her husband – her magnificent, mercurial husband – is a shell of the man she married, and Godric’s Hollow reminds her of everything she’s lost. Everything they’ve all lost. Uncertain eyes are looking to her, to Frank, to Amelia, Arabella, Moody; whether she still possesses the subtle rebellion of her youth she can’t be sure, and whether she has the strength to continue? On that, she is even less certain.

The larger part of herself wishes to cling to her son, the memory of such an innocent little thing he was, as any grieving mother would. A smaller part – which she will not, and cannot, admit to anyone, certainly not Frank – wishes to forget the event entirely. To siphon the pain from inside her and place it somewhere else; not because she did not love her boy, but because words simply cannot describe how much she loved him. The trauma is ripping at the corners of her mind, tearing her apart; she is distorted and twisted, no longer the girl she was, second-guessing everything around her. Nothing seems real anymore. And yet the Order clings to hope; longing; the mortal ache for the future that had initially called them to arms. That’s real. It has to be real. But Alice is suffering; so much, she fears, that she won’t be able to recover from all she’s experienced.

Sometimes, she cannot help but think of her mother in all this. Whether she had predicted it in her infantile rebellion; where she is, if she’s alone, if she was right, all along.

where does this character currently stand? with those who wish to hide in godric’s hollow until the war ends, with those who wish to rebuild the order and continue fighting the war, or on neither side? why?

The Order is looking to Alice now, practiced as she is, amongst its various leaders. They are in disrepair, relegated to a memory of slaughter, every stain and every mar an aide-mémoire of all they’ve lost. Alice looks out into the air – renewed, untainted by tragedy – and it reminds her of her son. She thinks, in her anguish, she doesn’t have it left in her. A mother should not outlive her child – and Frank is lost to her too, searching for answers as if it might bring their child back to them. As if it were just some elaborate trick, and Frank need only figure it out. She wants to recede into the quiet, into the corners of the earth as she did at school  – to escape the calamity of war, the massacre of hostility, the mutilation that Voldemort’s plight brings to their doorstep. Whatever victories they had claimed, whatever progress had led Alice and her husband to conceive a child, she is watching them retreat into the past now; they are too distant, too far out to be touched. At times, she fails to recall a time in which it felt like they were winning. A spell, where they were doing something good. Now – they sit around lethargically, some members anticipating their next move, others mourning their loved ones. And somehow, she falls under neither.

She grieves her son; of course she does. Alice feels the pain of her loss as if her enemy were tormenting her, haunting her, impairing her judgement continually. She dreams of her son, she dreams of his death, she dreams of holding him again only for him to be taken from her once she wakes – she cannot let him go. And yet, she does not suffer as openly as some. Her screams are shrill, and they rouse Frank – sleepless – from his fanaticism, but the desperation of their members necessitates her valour. To remain strong, despite all she’s lost. To seem a leader, to strategise, to recuperate, to endure in their plight against Voldemort’s design.

Everything they were doing, they were doing for their son. When Moody had approached them, tested their loyalty, evaluated their morality; it was to make the world better, to do better. Alice was all too keen to leave pureblooded life behind. She had never truly belonged to it. Into a world of goodness they felt certain they were bringing a child – blameless, without guilt. Villainy took him from them. Unquestionably, there is a part of her which wishes to withdraw; to pull away from the violence, the hate. Towards nothingness, towards the blank space which threatens to eat them all. For the first time in her life she is utterly defenceless; her sharp tongue, her wit – they are failing her, and without Frank, who can she lean truly on? This, she must swallow. Alice knows she must. She wants to remember why they embarked on such an impossible quest. She needs to remember why they started.

how does alice feel about frank’s search for answers regarding their son’s death? does she want answers herself? why or why not?

They have both changed, this much Alice cannot deny. Neither of them are the people they once were; they are both marred by loss.

Clinging to the memory of their son.

But Frank is lost to her. It had been upon his shoulder that she had rested, and in the face of all things, he never hesitated in holding her up. Now, Alice feels as if she has no-one. Certainly, it is no priority of her husband’s to move on. Their bed grows cold with his absence – her heart falls once she realises that her screams have not roused her husband from sleep, but from his self-prescribed quest. They are changed; and Alice wonders if he is likely to ever return to her. The man she had married is gone. The twinkle of his eyes is faded, his zest for victory is dissolved – there is no light in his life, no encouragement to persist, other than unearthing answers around the death of his son.

If she had Frank to rely on, perhaps the situation would be more tolerable for Alice. She always had done so before. But he is consumed by possibilities – how did they get their hands on our son? They are empty questions; they have no answers. Alice knows this. There is a part of her, as there would in any mother, which wants to know the truth. How it occurred, how they’d lost their son to Voldemort. And yet, knowing cannot bring him back. Frank’s obsession cannot bring him back. Frank recedes from her the further he delves into the mystery – and she is losing him. Alice has lost her son. She cannot bear the thought of losing him too.

extra.

This app is a little rushed, but there are a couple creations in the talk tag and a Pinterest board I created which you can take a look at! I also did the ‘if I were / then I’d be’ task for Alice.

‘IF I WERE / THEN I’D BE’ TASK:

if i were a season, i’d be autumn. if i were a time of day, i’d be the small hours. if i were a place, i’d be a body of salt-water, hidden away in the mountains, and kissed by a silver wind. if i were a type of weather, i’d be the clouds. if i were a scent, i’d be freshly ground coffee, the smell of the earth after it rains, the salt of a sea breeze, burning wood. if i were a plant, i’d be moss healing the cracks of a corroded rock. if i were an element, i’d be earth. if i were a color, i’d be sienna. if i were a song, i’d be “sober” by lorde. if i were an item of clothing, i’d be white ankle socks, with the heels grayed. if i were an object, i’d be a rook piece on a chessboard. if i were one of the seven deadly sins, i’d be envy. if i were one of the seven heavenly virtues, i’d be temperance. if i were a god/goddess, i’d be eos (once, before she’d lost everything).

[evilelitest2]

100 Days of Trump Day 64: Fallout New Vegas

Edit: Of all the 100 Days of Trump i’ve done, this one has gotten the most response, I suspect because most Alt Rightists haven’t heard of anything I reference except Fallout New Vegas.  Also they keep saying its bullshit but can’t actually point to any specific fact to dispute because you know...morons 

Welcome Back to 100 Days of Trump, where I try to explain WTF happened in 2016 through 100 works of fiction, and I think we haven’t had quite enough video games in the last three days, lets talk fallout.  Now the Fallout series has a lot of depth, good characters, fun gameplay and interesting ideas so generally I recommend all of it....except Fallout 3....and Fallout 4....and Brotherhood of Steel.....Ok really just the first two games and this one, but the point is only New Vegas is really relevant to Trump, but play the first two if you like classic RPGs.

     So everybody knows that Fallout is a post nuclear world, but the premise of the...good games is that society collapsed.....nothing really changed.  People are exactly the same just with less fancy houses and and the sins of the Old World continue on to the future.  So ok, sounds like post Great Recession America, how is this about Trump?  Well FallOut New Vegas is about the player being trapped between three factions

 Caesar's Legion, a violent reactionary sexist, racist, right wing militant extremist group who advocate racial supremacy, and a return to an idealized past that never existed.

The New Californian Republic, A bunch of corrupt moderates who couch their language in the ideals of democracy and progressive ideals but are duplicitous, warmongering, and have become increasingly sexist, racist, classist, and undemocratic but look good compared to the first group.

Mr. House, a completely amoral rich plutocrat whose utter selfishness and open hostility to submitting to any form of control are mixed with surprisingly progressive social policies and honest look at the problems.

    So New Vegas is an alternate universe if Bloomberg actually ran third party, and Trump wasn’t a complete idiot. 

Today though, I want to focus on Caesar’s Legion.  One of the themes of New Vegas is even though the US has been wiped out, everybody is clinging to symbols of the past, clinging to them out of context and justifying their actions by claiming continuity with the past.  The NCR claims to literally be the US goverment despite a century long gap between the fall of the US and the NCR’s founding, or the fact that it doesn’t use our constitution, or the fact that it is only located in California.  And its desire to seize control of all the American land means it prioritizes war over its citizen’s well being (stop me if this sounds familiar).  Mr. House is determined to preserve the culture of Las Vegas, or rather the way we imagine Las Vegas, with all of the actual realities of Vegas culture removed, its the city center without the city around it, forcibly preserved by an immortal dictator.  All the factions try to link themselves to a mystical past (a past we know is utterly whitewashed cause its our present), but the worst of them all, is Caesar’s Legion

    See, Edward Sallow was a history nut of the old world when he read about the Roman Empire, and sought to recreate it anew in post apocalyptic Nevada, arguing that since Rome is the foundation of Western Civilization, a return to true Western Greatness.  Wherever they go, they bring cultural purity, slavery, Roman era gender relations, and require absolute conformity to their way of life.  According to Caesar

“Pax Romana=It means a nationalist, imperialist, totalitarian, homo genius culture that obliterates the identity of every group it conquers.  Long term stability at all costs.  The individual has no value beyond his utility to the state, whether as an instrument of war or production”

But here is the thing, speaking as a big roman history nut.....THAT ISN’T TRUE.  Pax Romonus means “Roman Peace” and means just that, peace.  Rome was an Imperialistic, slave owning, genocidal empire that could be extraordinarily brutal, but guess what?  It wasn’t nationalistic, the Roman Empire was always borrowing ideas from other cultured cultures in order to improve their empire, it was extremely multicultural and interventionist.   I mean

   The Roman Navy was Carthaginian 

   The Roman Gods were Greek 

    Later they converted to a monotheistic Sect from Judea

    For a while they worshiped a Syrian god named Sol Invictus 

   Most of the Elites Spoke Greek

   The Roman Legionary Structure was influenced by the neighboring Samnites

   The roman Calvary was almost always Gallic, North Africa, German or Syria

    Trajan and Hadrien were Spanish

   The Severun dynasty was North African/Syrian (and btw the dynasty that most resembled New Vegas)

    The Ilyrian Emperors who saved rome from the Crisis of the Third Century AD, like Aurelian, Diocletion, Claudius Gothicus) were from the Balkans

  Constantine was Balkan/British

   Flavius Aetius (who defeated Atilla the Hun) was Scythian 

   Justinian and Belisarius weren’t Latin Roman

   Hell after a certain point, almost none of the Emperors are Roman any more, instead they are German, or Hunnic, Syrian or Raba, Spanish or African, Gaulic or Balkan, non Roman Italian, 

  In fact, one of the main reasons why Western Roman Empire fell is that it didn’t allow the various Gothic/Germanic strongmen to become Emperor in their own RIght.

    Rome was never a homogeneous unchanging culture, from Romulus to Constantine XI Roman is defined by its capacity to change and adapt, and its multi cultural empire gave it a lot of ideas to draw upon.  And when you look at White Nationalists today who fetishist Rome, it is a rome they don’t understand.    By the Way, that Hegelian view of history, that is believed by Steave Bannon. 

   Also...the transformation to dictatorship doesn’t go as Caesar claims, cause guess what?  Julius Caesar didn’t invade a foreign nation to become Emperor, he had a civil war with his own country.  And Augustus Caesar took pains to ensure that his Empire was a soft and nonthreatening as possible, the more authoritarian emperors like Septimius Severus were terrible rulers whose regimes fell into civil war and chaos.  

Also The Julians didn’t claim to be “Son of Mars” they claimed to be descended from Venus Goddess of Love, hence her role in the Aeneid.  

This is the foundation of the Roman Imperium, the Goddess of Love     

     Also Rome didn’t emerge out of a harsh brutal land to fight against the weak fat settled people, Rome emerged in Central Italy, a lush fertile climate.  Hell according to legend, Rome was founded by the refuse and exiles from all the surrounding societies, who came to Rome for a second chance and married Sabine women.  Honestly Caesar (the in game Caesar no real life, Julius Caesar) seems to be confusing Rome with Sparta, and which of those two civilizations conquered the known world?  I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t the one with the eugenics model.  It was the one with the independent aristocracy, and a Republic who did most of the conquest of Rome.  This is a map of Rome at its height 

and this is how much of that was taken by the Republic, not the empire

That is more than half, and a great deal of the remaining was conquered by Emperor Claudius, you know, this guy?

the one with the limp and the stammer and the twitch.  The Empire mostly fought Romans, it was the Republic that did the real conquering. ��To say nothing of the road building.    

    And when the Legion tries to Cosplay as Real Rome, it never quite matches the true stories. 

   This stories resembles Roman propaganda, except...Rome rarely wiped out the entire population, in fact their empire was supported by a network of client kingdoms who betrayed their former rulers to side with Rome.  One of the most important pieces of Roman rule that if you surrendered, you were treated fairly, if you fought a bit and then surrendered, you were treated well.  If you fought to the death, stuck to your principles as Vulpes implies, then you were wiped out.  Just ask the Jews at Masada how Rome respects those who fight to the last.  

    So we have a violent, militant, reactionary culture fetishistic a past that never truly existed and they don’t seem to understand to justify extreme racism, violence, and horrifying sexism in order to fight against a corrupt hypocritical but far less awful democratic regime.  Sound Familiar

oh.....well that too but also this 

   Those who idealize history are always those who understand it the least, and New Vegas for all its buggy often frustrating gameplay glory, understands what happens when history is co-opted by those who don’t understand it but wish to use the symbols of nostalgia to justify their own atrocities.  Isn’t that Right Ulysses, so named after the man who traveled the ocean for 10 year trying to find home and then freed all the Slave?

Edit: I also want to talk about this real quick

Yeah that whole “War is great for its own sake” macho bullshit?  The Romans weren’t so into that, they were much more into “Hey, work for us, and you can keep all your stuff”  There is a reason why all of the ancient rome spoke of Roman Treachery.  

    The Pax was about law and order, not about conquest and survival of the fittest, I mean the entire point of the Aenied is rejecting the Illiad’s macho warrior culture mentality

[horrible-monstrosity]

post from like five weeks ago that i just got around to finishing now woot

oh man, I thought I had run out of salt to mine aside from heromaca, but just look at this fucking shit it's fuckig beautiful--

wait no actual first off, I want to complain about the fucking otter motif- we get it Ukuhara you made two pseudo-successful series with animal motifs, now you're being self-referential. fucking stop. There's nothing to the otter motif that can possibly actually add anything to the show- "uhh sometimes they hold hands ???" doesn't work because it's nowhere near the desperate clinginess implied in the trailers, and if that's how it's supposed to be it's an incredibly shallow motif, and it can't be the gay man thing because that's about hairy guys, not anime twinks. But becusae Penguindrum had a penguins and Yuribears had a bears and becueas meaningless callbacks are meaningful to retarded people, we have to have something so working backwards it's otters. My conficence in this production is though the roof

first off, there's the weird wait for it DOUBLE STANDARD with how people describe what they expect from this show versus how they describe Utena et al- with Utena it's about the porblems stemming from the magic evil society monster from forever ago, the good old patterwacky, how we're not saying the mens are responsible for all evil but we're saying hurr mens, how we're not saying women are the only victims that matter but every mention of male victims goes into some bizarre circular language avoiding ever actually assigning agency to any sort of a human cause while every mention of le female victims goe striaght to belbllbelbleblelbblbllbr but with these male characters it's suddenly, oh, it's about the expectations placed on men (reasonable enough), expectations to live up to muh toxic masculinity (no)... sentence ends. The expectations don't come from somewhere, they just... sentence ends. Not even society half the time. Because men can't be the victims of anything let alone a social anything, I guess. Definitely not from women. and of course there's some fucknaut beating off about "HRUUUUU BE AGNAISNTNT DUBE BRO CUTLURE ???" because why the fuck would a japanese director who writes deap n meeningful tresh care about your fucking misandric american derangement complex you fat unwed dangerhair rre-- Especially amazing how this *subtle/subconcious sort of leftist cancer is coming out of 4chan, but I guess you really can't expect people to be very reverse woke outside of, like, /pol/ (where they may be just a little bit too woke). fuck idk Reminds me of like 7-8 mins into this video where some shlubnut declares proposal expectations or some shit sexist... but does not say against whom. Because then they'd have to admit it's possible for things to be sexist against men, or a bad time for men because of their gender, and possibly because of the actions and expectations of a woman. Can't have that. So it's either sexist against women or it's just sexist against the air and nothing, I guess.

There's something about Iku being a communist edgelord and in some kind of commie cult, and about Penguindrum being a refutation of that... uh, somehow. I guess because it had something to do with a cult? Somehow?

There's something about Ikuhara and Hideaki Anno going on a gay spa trip, I don't fucking know- but interestingly, one anon's interpretation of the preview materials sounds entirely like the "hedgehog's dilemma" shit from Eva. And they did both work on that new Godzilla thing. Hmmmmm

And of course there's the convergence shit like "if it deals with The Stereotypes then it is a feminism even if it has ideological components that have nothing to do with anything feminism ever does or addresses". Can't have anything outside of the thing, obviously using the show's existence as validation for their own twisted and retarded viewpoints and so having to insist that is conforms entirely to said viewpoints while simultaneously not having the more odious elements of said viewpoints because we totally don't hate teh mens guys, we just like an anime that's about ~~sticking it to the virgin-whore complex~~ that totally exists while sucking off the male knight-beast complex most of the damn time except the knights are evil too and the one guy who's actually nice is a spineless wimp who's sexually assaulted by his sister all the damn time and should totally be happy about it FUC (srsly, there's an Utena fan site or forum thread or something I found once that talks about the virgin-whore thing in Utena with googly eyes and gooey lips but then suddenly mentions the show flipping it onto males and just... says it's "interesting" and leaves it at that... some fucking shit like that meh)

oh yeah, there's this guy

For a long damn while I've thought to myself that Ikuhara's works, while touted as feminist and certainly dealing with those feminist sorts of issues, aren't quite... so. They're certainly some kind of gynocentric, but with just a little bit more... sympathy for the male characters, responsibility placed on the females, and generally some sort of actual nuance. Maybe. Just a bit. Certainly more than basically every breakdown I've ever seen of his works has put forth up until this mofo. I guess the best thing I can say is his works seem to exist in some kind of limbo between the two... Utena seems like it's deconstructing the idea that the "roles" are some unique oppression to women or even fucking matter, including a backstory for Akio where his role as prince breaks him so badly (thanks to greedy peasants who, if I remember, are a mixed-gender crowd... where do they lie in the prince-princess-witch equation?) he basically fucking invents an evil role for himself where none apparently existed before. But then it ends like it was... not doing that, or something. In Yurikuma, I mostly saw people say shit like "this is what society makes lesbians do by being so mean to them!!" (lol remember when lesbeans got stoned and thrown off of roofs lollololol so oppress clearly the victims of anything etc etc), but there is just... no fucking society in that show outside of the cannibalistic sex offender bear lesbians and the Higurashi-tier paranoia-cult schoolgirl lesbians. The latter victimize themselves by coming up with ridiculous social mores to defend against the threat of the bears in their midst (entirely reasonable, but they sure found the most retarded possible way of doing it), while the former are cannibalistic sex offenders. NO ONE WAS THERE TO MAKE THEM THIS WAY. Hell, with the humans being called "yuri" and the bears being... well, bears, which is a gay guy thing, and the plot being about segregating two compatible but different halves of society where the more violent half can go "undercover" and "pass" within the less violent half in order to hunt them... it comes off more like the females are trying to political feminist themselves and build a wall to keep the males out. Which comes with the implication that men are cannibalistic sex offenders, but since the grils are being characterized to an absurd height of feminine toxicity as well and the show is about both sides learning to cool their tits it kind of works. Kind of. fuck idk The entire plotline with the teacher who let herself be waited on hand and foot by some guy (nice fucking meaningless reuse of the coffin motif from Utena, by the way- shit like this is why even if this was the most reverse woke anime ever it would still just be shit) and then when he simply got bored of her and politely moved on she lost her shit and immediately killed him, then remained bitter about it for the rest of her life and went on to assault teenage girls... that has got to be taking the piss. It's just gotta. If not Iku has his head up his ass to heights previously unimagined.

and then there's those converging lefttards in that thread going "he is wrong with his subjective interpretations of a vague show though!! he is wrong!!! reeeee" Uhhhh, there's like a bazillion types of feministsms so the show can't possibly be about critiquing it!! It can't just, like, pick a type, or pick out some commonalities (there sure are plenty for something so supposedly nebulous), and mull over that, it's unposstible!!

Finally I find this interesting... while his previous works had some kind of strange innocence about them despite the sexual shit, the first male-centric work he does outright has "lust is life!" as a tagline and the word "desire" worked into the title. I'm... not even implying anything with this, I just find it really kind of interesting. The title itself actually inspires more confidence than his last two works- the "zanmai" could mean "lust" or "desire" and is likely referring to the same thing as said tagline, and the "sara" could mean "dish" (as in "this place's signature dish", not a literal plate or something); lusting after food is often metaphorically used to mean lusting after someone sexually (gobble someone's cock, etc), so already it looks like there's something vaguely resembling a coherent symbolic framework rather than the random-words-based titles and plots of Yuribears and Penguindrum.

Honestly however this show turns out it's going to be a fucking disgusting beautiful delicious shitshow and I cannot fucking wait.

[emilydoc]

Production Journal

What role will you as the creator play in the video.  Will you narrate, ask questions from behind the camera, be a character in the video, remove your presence from video, or a combination of the former options? How does this method help the message of your project?

I will ask questions from behind the camera as well as be a character in the video. This method will help the message of my project by guiding the interviews in a pointed direction and also providing personal insight to strengthen the message. 

Make a list of no less than 5 interview questions for each interviewee. As you create the questions think about the relationship between what you to include in the film and what questions might generate that material.

What is your name, age, and pronouns?

What does gender mean to you?

How would you define your personal gender?

What is the gender binary?

Do you feel like you fit into it?

How do other people most often perceive your gender?

How would you define the difference between gender and sex?

As a social and cultural construct, how do you personally feel gender affects our society?

What are gender roles and how do they affect your everyday life?

If you could change one thing about society’s perception of gender, what would it be?

Have you experienced discrimination based on your gender identity?

If you could choose on piece of information to be taught in schools worldwide about gender, what would it be?

How do you think gender roles are harmful to society?


Are they useful in any way?

Do you have plans to undergo any type of physical/hormonal transition? Or have you before?

Does your gender expression align with how the majority perceives you? 

If not, why do you think that is? How does it make you feel? If so, how does it make you feel?

Do you feel pressured to conform your physical appearance to fit into society’s confines of gender and rules of expression?

Do you feel more comfortable around people who identify outside of the gender binary? 

What is the most frustrating think about our society’s standards of gender?

What do you think is the most widely misunderstood concept surrounding gender identity?

Are you happy with your gender expression right now? Does it depend on how other people perceive you or is it more about how you see yourself?

Do you experience dysphoria? Explain what that is like and how it makes you feel.

Do you go by the name you were given at birth? If so, would you like to change that to align closer to your gender identity? If not, has it been difficult to undergo that change in your life? What is the hardest part?

How do you feel gender relates to sexuality?

Make a detailed list of shots you NEED for the video and shots that you WANT for the video.  This list should include locations, b-roll shots, and the shots of the interviewee.

Interviews: Luc, me, Erin, Cat, and a professional or professionals. 

B-roll: ????

Look through what you have written about so far and think through any obstacles or anxieties you have about your production plan.  Write them down and brainstorm alternative plans.

My only anxiety is that I’m unsure of what to shoot for b-roll.