#like the weird gendered implications of that particular reading are so very not it for me

[fiona-fififi]

...

[ricksanchezbignaturals]

i rewatched s7e3 and the weird sort of straight washing that happened with unity was worse than i realized in my first 1 and a half viewings. so im here to be a little bit more of a hater lol.

okay so like fuck this bitch in particular

now, i understand that unity has appeared in the comics which i haven't read so it's possible there's some lore there that idk about, but here's the deal as i understand it and why this specific alien acting like the face of unity bugs me so much. this alien is part of a species that, as of the episode in season 2, was very recently assimilated by unity. so like im not sure why there's so much focus placed on her specifically. having her act as a representative of sorts made sense in the first episode, she was a president on the newly assimilated planet that rick and the kids were visiting. but like, that's it, right? it doesn't make sense to me why she would be any more important than any of the other, what? trillions of life forms unity has under its belt? like the only reason for her to be here at all is to be recognizable to the audience, which like, fine. i think it's a little dumb, but whatever. the problem isn't having her as a symbol (personally i think it'd be cooler to not have an entity like unity tied down to being primarily represented through one body but i digress), the problem is that she's treated like more than that in this episode.

this is a part i didn't notice until my rewatch that really irked me.

these are concurrent shots from the scene when rick shows up and starts spraying unity. we see it in virginia telling rick to take it easy through the body of this human, then we see it continuing the conversation from its spaceship in the body of the alien. i am like super not a fan of the implications of that. this alien is not supposed to be unity any more than any one of my cells is me, but here it's depicted as though whenever unity does something in any of its bodies, it's coming from this lady. and like, that'd be super lame even if it wasn't an obvious womanification of a nongendered entity.

now im no english major so i don't have an elegant transition to put here, but yes, it is time to talk about pronouns. yeah yeah, ik, trans person gets hung up on pronouns, bite me okay, it's relevant. i went back and watched the first unity episode to be sure id remembered correctly, and yes, in that episode nobody uses gendered pronouns for unity. morty says "they" which seems more to be referring to a number of bodies, and other than that, people mostly say "unity" or "it". as for the new episode i noticed rick using nongendered pronouns twice

but after that he goes with she/her for the rest of the episode

and yeah, i think that is pretty disappointing. i didn't catch that "it" until my rewatch, but the use of "them" did make me really happy but then everybody started she/hering it. the combination of all that emphasis being put on a female body and people calling unity she so much makes for an episode that manages to be significantly less queer than the one that came out in 2015. it feels weirdly cowardly after that "we're all a little gay" bit in the last episode and doesn't inspire much confidence in me regarding rick's relationships with nonwomen. like stuff can be gay if it's for a joke, but there's more money on the line now than back in season 2, so rick's ex lover needed straightening up.

idk. i still like the episode because im easy and focusing on rick's mental health and relationships always makes me happy, but man, i am certainly not happy with how they handled unity. they really did it dirty, watered it down to being pretty much just another alien lady.

(also to be clear, i am not trying to shit on the writers here. obviously idk exactly what went on, but im pretty comfortable placing the blame squarely on execs)

[gay-jesus-probably]

(Feel free to ignore this-! I’m just happy to hear someone’s deep takes on Zelda)

I really love your deep dives and interpretations/discussions on the Gerudo people and their history, influence and life in BOTW/TOTK (I totally agree with all you’ve said)

I just want to ask/Point out (after reading your imperialism post about TOTK) didn’t the Zora for many years like- not want to serve or be a part of the Hylian families army either? Like, even before Mipha’s death, weren’t the Zora very much against conforming to the Hylian’s rules and such? (In every game?) I’m a bit confused on how Hyrule is split up, the Zora’s having their own kingdom(s), the Rito and Goron’s having elder’s/their own leaders but still serving the royal family??

It’s always bothered me how these separate races all still have statues to the Goddess Hylia (Started in BOTW) and not their own deity’s to pray to or follow (Like the Zora praying to Nayru makes sense, or even something like Jabu Jabu to bring back- or the Rito could’ve prayed to Valoo, a great dragon or something.)

It just feels like Nintendo COULD’VE put so much care into all their races stories and histories! But oops no this game will be for Kids(TM) and we can’t put anything too deep or serious. Makes me sad :( I wanted to see them in a deeper context.

Oh yeah, it's very weird that they just put zero effort into explaining some of the worldbuilding. I mean, in BOTW it makes perfect sense to have the races be off doing their own things! It's post apocalypse, Hyrule does not exist anymore, these different communities have no real reason to interact with each other! And I really liked that BOTW outright showed that there was no particular effort for diplomacy, but people still got along as individuals - I liked that we saw different races hanging around each other. I loved that there were Gerudo in Goron Town to trade for their gems, I loved that Goron were allowed into Gerudo Town because they're a race of rock people that legitimately don't have any real need for gender and just use masculine terms by their own choice, and the Gerudo understood that. And I loved the whole Tarrey Town sidequest, because it actually felt really satisfying to build up a new town that had inhabitants from all the races, not for any particular reason, but just because they were people that wanted to live there and work together. They didn't need a big central government to make it a whole Thing; they were just getting by.

And we also saw the less good side of these things, like that one guy in Hateno that greeted you at the gate, and decided Link was trustworthy specifically because he was Hylian, making it clear that xenophobia still existed. I like that Kass was kind of thrown by Link asking if he was a giant bird, and the implication that Link was being kinda insensitive there and Kass was choosing not to be offended. I liked that there was a Hylian couple on their honeymoon in Rito village because the guy genuinely loved the town and its culture, while his new wife looked down on the Rito and hated being around them. And I liked that the older Zora still held a grudge against Hyrule for many things, up to and including the fact that Mipha died defending it, and the older generation would rather risk everyone's wellbeing than accept help from a Hylian that had been involved. And I like that you can run into other Hylian's near Zora's domain that outright tell you Zora have been trying to recruit them to do something important, but they all refused to get involved because they don't think that those weird fish people could have anything serious going on and it all seemed really sketchy.

My point is, BOTW really did feel like it'd been a hundred years since the end of the world, and everyone was just trying to get by and live their lives. You saw people being open minded and accepting other races for no other reason than the fact that they were all people, and you saw people being petty and bigoted just because they didn't trust people that looked and acted differently from them, but for the most part people were all just getting by and doing their own thing. BOTW gave the impression that Hyrule had been an equal alliance between the Hylian's, Zora, Goron, Rito and Gerudo (and with the Sheikah having a considerably less equal role, specifically built on the Sheikah having been forced to submit to cultural genocide to save their own lives, and the Yiga clan being the survivors that fought back instead), with Hyrule acting as sort of the core of the alliance, if only due to literally being in the geographic middle.

I mean fuck, the existence of the Divine Beasts suggests that things are equal! Yeah, Hyrule has a royal family with holy powers due to literally being the descendants of a Goddess, and they're the ones that always get the reincarnation of the Hero that's the only one who can wield the bullshit OP magic sword... but they don't get a Divine Beast (Link's dinky little DLC motorcycle doesn't count). The Divine Beasts were specifically made to be weapons of mass destruction, and they were specifically made for the non-Hylian races. That really does suggest an active effort being taken to balance the scales, that the ancient people saw that only Hylian's were granted divine favour, and so if the gods wouldn't give that power to other races, they'd fucking make it themselves. The existence of the Divine Beasts feels like a promise to keep everyone on equal footing, and say what you will about pre-Calamity Hyrule, but they didn't even question keeping that promise.

...And then in TOTK, all of that's just gone. The Sheikah aren't their own people with a complicated relationship to the throne, now they're just Hylian's with a different aesthetic. The 'alliance' between the races turns out to be built on Hyrule's first King and Queen pointing their stockpile of magical nukes at everyone and asking them politely to become their subjects, and pretending not to notice the implied threat that they'd magically nuke anyone who refused. In BOTW the Sheikah race being sworn servants of the Hylian royal family was acknowledged as a fucked up situation, and that power imbalance being horribly abused in the past was what created the Yiga clan. In TOTK, we're outright told that Rito, Goron, Zora and Gerudo all exist for the sole purpose of serving the Hylian royal family, and that is framed as a good thing and the proper way of the world; the first sign of Ganondorf being evil is that he refuses to submit.

And even putting all that super gross ancient past stuff aside, the present day is equally fucked. Hyrule has been gone for a century. In BOTW, few people even remembered that Zelda had ever existed, and of those people not many of them cared. Nobody was really interested in having a central government, they were all getting by just fine on their own. And again, it was made pretty clear that the pre-calamity situation had been an actively maintained collective alliance between independent nations. There was a reason that people were predicting that Hyrule's monarchy would be abolished in TOTK, and that's because we all saw that there was literally no reason for anyone other than the Sheikah to respect Zelda's authority as a ruler - the Zora were the only other people to still remember her, and they were completely done with the Hylian royal family anyways. If Zelda rolled up declaring herself the Queen of Hyrule anywhere else, she'd be laughed out of town, because that's the standard response to a random teenager showing up and informing you she was actually the highest authority in the land. Zelda had no inherent authority left at the end of BOTW, if she wanted to be in charge, she'd need to earn it. That's the state of the world that we were shown.

Except nope, nevermind, Zelda's the almighty God Princess of the world and literally everyone mindlessly accepts her ultimate authority. She can order people to strip naked and walk into a monster den to die for her amusement, and they would immediately do it without asking any questions (yes I know the underwear thing was a misunderstanding, but the fact that everyone jumped to follow the misheard order without a single question is horrifying). And the imposter Zelda arc just hammers home the point that Zelda is in a completely unearned, lifelong position as dictator of the world, and literally nobody cares if she abuses that power. Zelda brainwashed Yunobo and forced him to ruin his own business and nearly destroy his own people? He's just worried she'll be angry that the mask keeping him brainwashed was destroyed. Zelda summons a giant monster to attack Yunobo and Link then walks away? Oh my god, the giant monster Zelda just summoned to kill us might hurt her, we have to save Zelda from it! Zelda literally openly attacks King Dorephan and tries to murder him? He'd rather go missing in the middle of a crisis and suffer alone in hiding than let anyone know that Zelda just tried to kill him. I don't understand why they bothered with the fake Zelda arc, because literally nothing the fake Zelda does is allowed to have consequences.

It just doesn't make any goddamn sense. Nobody feels real anymore, there's no politics between the races, there's no reason for anything being the way it is now. The entire world of Hyrule has been reduced to just Zelda's Fanclub, and nobody would ever consider doubting her for a second. I don't understand why the fake Zelda arc is in the game, because it's never actually allowed to be part of the story. Nobody actually cares about 'Zelda' tormenting people, and so we're told that there is literally nothing that can possibly happen to make Zelda lose her authority. There's no stakes. We're not supposed to care about anyone who isn't Zelda, we're not given any real reason to care about Zelda herself, and so why the fuck are we still here?

...I've distracted myself a lot here lmaoo, I'm not really sure where I was going with all of this beyond just rambling about shitty writing and bad continuity. The point is, BOTW had some really good writing and worldbuilding. That Hyrule felt like a real place inhabited by actual people, and the different races were their own, independent people. When they worked together, it was a sign of them putting time and effort into reaching out to each other and meet on the same level. Meanwhile TOTK feels like it's made of fucking cardboard most of the time.

(Also for the record I agree that the Goddess statues being Literally Everywhere was kinda fucked, BUT I'm willing to let it slide as a matter of just game design; that's where you go to trade spirit orbs for upgrades, so you want a spot to do that in every major town for player convenience. And using different deities in different areas wouldn't work, because the players are introduced to the mechanic with a goddess statue; they're not gonna naturally assume that the statue of a giant fish can do that too, so most of them would assume the statue is scenery and just ignore it. I thought it was at least a nice touch that the goddess statues had different decorations in some towns, and that some towns put the statues away from the main areas; it gave the impression that while everyone while worshipping Hylia was widespread, everyone was doing it differently, and in some places it wasn't very popular - just look at the Kakariko statue being in the middle of town with a well maintained pond surrounding it and torches to draw more attention to it, then compare that to the Gerudo Town statue being down a side street on the edge of town, away from the main gate, with nothing of any real importance nearby, and nothing to get people's attention. It really works with the Sheikah's culture being built on their devotion to the Goddess, while the Gerudo's history with Hylia and her followers is a lot more complicated, and so their statue's location implies that worship of Hylia is pretty unpopular among the Gerudo.)

[waterdeepthroat]

for the pride oc ask game, 5 and 6 for lottie!

tysm!

5. How did you figure out your oc’s identity?

So, Lottie was my first BG3 OC, and she was kind of the character I used to fuck around? Idk. I knew I wanted her to be pansexual and just really really horny because that was before any of the news came out about which characters were polyamorous, so I was trying to figure that out for myself, and I wanted to trigger every single romance option I could. Over the course of the game they slept with Lae’zel, Astarion, Shadowheart, Mizora, the Emperor, Haarlep, and the drow twins (I forgot to end the shadow curse in act 2 so she never got Halsin lmao). Her being transfemme was also a complete accident on my part- I remember messing around and trying to see all of the genital options and I planned to just leave her with the default, but I forgot and actually got jumpscared the first time I took off her armour lol. It was a surprise but I was just kinda like, “fuck it, I’ll roll with it.” So, tl;dr, Lottie is transfemme because I accidentally gave them Penis B and then I just decided to work it into their backstory. Unfortunately I don’t have a better answer than that- pretty much everything about Lottie was me accidentally sticking shit to the wall and just going with it. (Lottie was always supposed to be some form of non-binary though, because I chose they/them pronouns in-game and was overall just really excited to hear what that sounded like in a video game.)

6. How does your oc feel about labels? Theirs, or in general?

I was actually talking to Mac on Discord yesterday (if you’re reading this hiiii) about Forgotten Realms slang and the weird homophobia/transphobia that pops up, despite this being a world where bisexuality is the norm, trans people supposedly aren’t discriminated against (with the exceptions of some highly gendered societies, like the Drow and possibly Rashemen). But Lottie is from Luskan, originally, which doesn’t seem to have any particular word for trans and pan people, so I’m just going to go with the whole Realms equivalent. They would identify as sildur (an elven loan word meaning trans, but with some kinda weird implications that we’re gonna ignore) but not poised (the general Realms word for people who haven’t “finished” transitioning, which is used by other people to describe someone, which gives me the ick for obvious reasons). Since bisexuality/pansexuality is the norm, I wouldn’t assume Lottie would make that a huge part of her identity, though she could also be considered a wild one or thaethiira (someone who uses kinky magic in bed, specifically transmutation magic). Overall, Lottie is just a very proud kind of person, so I’d imagine they’d be pretty up-front about being sildur if it came up (as it would have to their many, many partners) and would feel very attached to that label. However, being called poised would piss her off, and she’d take it to mean that the work she’d put in to appear more feminine wasn’t “good enough” for people.

[starmalt]

Finished reading A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas the other day. Had some thoughts I wanted to get out about it.

I don’t follow booktok, I don’t see any of it and I don’t seek it out. What very little I heard of this book prior to reading didn’t sound particularly interesting to me, and the only reason I’ve read it is because I received it as a christmas gift, and I felt I might as well see what all the hype is about. And having finished it, I… still have no idea why this book has so much hype behind it.

I don’t care about any of these characters, for one thing. The two main characters of Feyre and Tamlin don’t have a lot going on beyond “likes to paint + cares about her family + Loves Tamlin” and “Likes to play the Fiddle + unwilling court lord + loves Feyre,” respectively. Maas goes through great pains to write paragraphs of text explaining the backstories of Tamlin, their third wheel Lucien, and the villain Amarantha, but none of it ever amounts to anything interesting happening in the moment. The only character I found to be at all interesting was the sister Nesta. She’s initially portrayed as being a huge selfish bitch, that does little to help the family and spends all the money Feyre earns, and then later on, get’s a lot more depth with the realisation that she was the only one in the family who cared enough about Feyre to break through High Fae glamour, and the way she describes hating their father for how much he let down their family. She’s was the one single character that made me want to spend more time with her.

I expected a story about noble Fae courts, lords and ladies and royalty to involve a lot more political drama, dealing with high society/courtly etiquette, but it rarely comes up. Half the book is spent describing the two MCs going on picnics, arguing over surface-level racism, or brooding on “how can I love such a horrible creature!” There is some court drama that comes up, but it’s not til fairly late into the story, and none of it’s very interesting or complex.

The prose is bland and repetitive. Everyone’s always clicking their tongues, cracking lazy smiles or feral grins. The clicking tongues in particular got to me in particular as feeling like a strange choice. In the first few chapters where we’ve only seen the mortal realm, I tried to take the good faith approach that maybe this was just a weird choice of cultural thing in this region. But then nearly everyone ends up doing it, including the villain, a human hating High Fae from a different island entirely. There’s also a few instances of metaphor that feel, questionable. “My bowels turned watery” in a moment of fear and dread sure is a… interesting, choice of words to go with.

I also couldn’t help but feel weird about how often the author insists on using “male” and “female” as descriptors. I can’t easily put it into words, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Semi-related is the way that Fae, despite being ethereal immortal creatures, living for centuries, adhere to the same strict binaries of gender and sex that humanity does. I saw a fan trying to defend this once, saying “she doesn’t want to write ‘that’ kind of book,” to which my immediate reaction is a massive eye-roll at the implications of “tHaT kInd of bOoK” but it’s also lazy worldbuilding. Like, at one point in the book, Tamlin is required to take part in a sex ritual to bring about the coming of spring, which involves being possessed by ancient magics that drive him into sniffing out a fae woman to perform the ritual with. Feyre, learning about this, asks “but wait- then how come males were also there?” to which Lucien explains “well, after he performs the ritual, we’re allowed to also mingle with the women there,” and it all feels so lazy and uninspired. Not to mention, high lords like Tamlin have the ability to shapeshift into powerful, predatory creatures. The narrative draws attention to it frequently. In moments anger or stress, the beast is barely contained beneath the surface, claws poking out at the knuckles (this happens constantly) and you mean to tell me that they subscribe solely to human experiences of sexuality?

The lazy worldbuilding isn’t limited to just LGBTQ adjacent topics, either. Things that could be interesting get hand-waved away as unimportant or not worth the time to explain. There’s a lot of little things here that bothered me. The way that characters refer to the mainland solely as “The Continent” (it’s not named??? + strange word choice!).Likewise, “Prythian” doesn’t sound like a proper name for a country, so much as the word for a person from a place called Pryth. And why is the main setting for the story shaped exactly like Westeros? Feyre doesn’t know how to read, but she knows the word “effervescent.” The reason for a pond being made of starlight isn’t something worth thinking about, just a place for the love interests to skinny dip. There was one thing in particular that really got under my skin, to the point that I can’t let go of it, and it’s a moment early on where Feyre claims that humans have no holidays.

I thought that was a strange thing to say, but the story goes on to explain that humans were formerly enslaved by the Fae, and therefore forced to celebrate only their holidays, only their gods. I thought the idea that no humans ever tried to hold onto their own beliefs in secret, or no one ever thought “why don’t we have a day off” after being freed was dumb, but it was a ignorable kind of dumb. Until Feyre learns of the spring solstice ritual and thinks to herself “humans have no holidays. The only thing close to this would be the spring celebration back in my village – nothing religious – just a small gathering in the center of town with a small harvest feast and a day off of work.” You mean- like a holiday???? I was baffled. It got even worse when the story drops the fact that humanity’s been free of slavery for 500 years. I have so many questions. Why does there have to be a religious connotation in order for a celebration to be considered a holiday? People have celebrations for all kinds of reasons outside religion – changing seasons, in honour of important historical events, or people, harvest times, natural events (like a meteor shower or notable animal migration). Humans forgot all their old gods from before the slavery – and in 500 years no one tried to come up with new ones, or just plain old superstition of any kind? Myths or legends? What about the day they were freed from slavery? Important leaders who came out of the war with the Fae?

The story, the worldbuilding, characters, the prose – none of it came across to me as being very interesting! So why is it so hyped? The only remaining explanation must be because people like how scintillating it is – except, even that isn’t done very well. The vast majority of the romantic gestures illicit an eye rolling “oh my god, they were roommates” reaction out of me, and scandalous moments are fairly tame, all things considered. I’ve never been a big fans of phrases like “I’ve read better fanfic than this” because it implies that fanfic is inherently bad. But like, genuinely, if I was in the mood for reading a hot and steamy romance, I would prefer to look up a fanfic of a preferred ship. It gives me the impression that this really is a book for normies who maybe want to read trashy, horny, fantasy romance, but considered themselves to be above fanfic or other obviously trashy books, and so they take refuge in something deemed acceptable by way of popularity.

All in all, I think my thoughts on this can be summed up in – if not for it’s sexual content, I would assume this book was written for children.

[scarubaru]

James Wood wrote an essay targeting post-modern fiction, specifically books like White Teeth, Infinite Jest, and The Underground. You can also include the likes of Pynchon and Murakami in this corpus of work, though the last author isn't mentioned in Wood's essay. Anyway, the gist of this essay was that these books are awash with ideas and information and numerous plots and sub plots, and that this is all very impressive, from a technical standpoint, but it doesn’t really have any impact. You’re not enticed to return to any of these books once you’ve read them, not like say, Madam Bovary, to give Wood’s example. He calls the style of writing in these post modern novels Hysterical Realism.

Now I think Wood is being kind of a crank here; he has a particular set of literary sensibilities, and he gets prickly when those are overlooked. When you’ve been a critic for as long as he has that’s probably a hard thing to avoid. And I enjoyed White Teeth, and The Underground. Their density and intricacy is what makes them interesting to me. Wallace I've not read, so I can't assess the criticism leveled at him. Still, I agree with Wood on his assessment of lack of impact, though I'd phrase it a bit differently.

One way you can go about writing a story is to ask "wouldn't it be weird if." That's how a lot of genre fiction is written. Wouldn't it be weird if there was a society where people could change gender at will? How would they conceive of gender? What would the societal and political implications of this be? And then you see where that takes you.

Books like White Teeth, The Underground, and The Wind Up Bird Chronicle ask a lot of 'wouldn't it be weird if' type questions. It's kind of baked into their premise. They are so long because they pile on these questions, these plot threads, and try to connect them by the end. The issue is, and this is where lack of impact rears its head, they rarely follow up on these questions.

So take Wind up Bird Chronicle: Wouldn't it be weird if one day my wife vanished, and in the process of trying to find her I crossed paths with a psychic prostitute and a traumatized war veteran from Japan's Manchuria campaign? Yeah, that would be pretty weird, and Murakami keeps you reading by presenting these scenarios, but they never go anywhere. There are no implications to any of these scenarios. The story climaxes, these plot threads connect, briefly, and the story ends. Toru, the protagonist, is as detached as he's been since page one.

Murakami's ability to pose these 'what if' questions, to compose characters based on them, and then connect them through hundreds of pages is impressive. Ditto for Smith. Her characters are less passive than Murakami's, but they're still tangled in a web of eccentric plot threads that seem eccentric for their own sake. You as the reader are being shown a cabinet of curiosities, and they're all organized and presented neatly and methodically, but once you've gone through it all and read the little placards you can't help but wonder what it is the curator is trying to convey.

I'd argue genre writers are much better at posing and answering 'wouldn't it be weird if' questions. They want to dive in and explore the implications, and they're not afraid to get their hands dirty in the process, so to speak. If Gethen, the planet in The Left Hand of Darkness, were incorporated into a Smith or Murakami novel, it would be a throw away plot point. You may get twenty pages of description about politics, history, culture, and an emphasis on how utterly 'weird' it all is, but at no point would the author try and see where that weirdness might take them.

Finally, to stretch all this to its breaking point, I would argue that when Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary, he wasn't asking 'wouldn't it be weird if' but rather, 'what if.' He wasn't interested in didactic finger wagging, and so he could conceive of characters, put them in situations, and follow them. It was a story that 'could have happened', and so the term Realist Fiction. That's the sort of fiction Wood appreciates.

When you start wondering how weird it might all be, you have to let your characters get caught up in that weirdness. It's not enough to relegate the weird to an aesthetic choice, and the characters can't be passive spectators, otherwise you get a tangle of plot threads that, when viewed as a whole, aren't terribly impactful.

[guiltycorp]

~Arcane!Viktor’s vaguely-queer-moments~ with commentary about how it might just be straight after all to keep myself in check.  Alright, so I might miss something, feel free to add (although this is more for myself tbh, sort of a journal entry). Personally, I didn’t notice like half of this when I was watching for the first time and didn’t really think much about the possibility, however the second time I was quite surprised to notice that there was... eh, quite a bit.  Also, this isn’t meant to cover anything from LoL lore, but it’s nice to remember that as a character he was originally a soviet-coded robotic mad scientist. Idk it’s not a very gay archetype by itself but it IS rather sensual.  Anyway!  1) Saying 'it’s Viktor’ and then continuing to soulfully gaze into Jayce’s eyes for another couple of seconds as his theme swells (’It’s Viktor’, fittingly). 

might just be fanservice for league players who remember old champs, gasp, oh it IS viktor, the machine herald, plus letting the theme’s violin notes hit just right, plus this is the finishing scene before the story gets back to vi... kinda awkward tho??   2) ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t my bedroom’ as the excuse he came up with when Mel came across him and Jayce breaking into Heimerdinger’s lab, clear implication (although Jayce talks at the same time so it might be harder to hear for some viewers).  ...might be a generic excuse for trying to open the wrong door and also too subtle, flew right over most ppl’s heads, however this is probably the most overt viktor line in the show 3) Right after that he throws a sour look at Jayce who’s busy mooning over Mel. 

uhh concern that his new partner would be more interested in a gorgeous corrupt politician rather than in scientific progress? doubtful:) however also subtle, didn’t notice this on 1st watch 4) Doesn’t return Sky’s interest, in fact the first time we see them together he kept on looking at Jayce (who was about to give a speech yeah but also had his back turned to Viktor atm). 

well, this could be for a variety of non-queer reasons... more like an additional detail and in later scenes when he’s busy with hexcore he’s practically ignoring jayce almost the same way he does her, so im not putting it here  5) Viktor bleeding onto Hexcore and passing out while Mel&Jayce have sex (with Viktor’s theme worked into Romance track), in this case i actually prefer a metaphor for the rich and powerful of the world finding both cooperation and pleasure together while the less privileged inevitably suffer and have to turn to less ethical means to survive, but well... The fact that Jayce is having sex with his political partner while his scientific partner is dying is still a bit? Suggestive? These readings aren’t mutually exclusive.  6) “Singed: If you take this path, they will despise you. Love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress. It’s why I parted ways with Heimerdinger. Viktor: Jayce will understand.”  idk this seems like a logical answer after the mention of singed’s previous lab partner but still, love.. more a weird choice of words on singed’s part tbh, could be just a generic type of love in a ~friendly colleagues~ way lol 7) no visible nipples under a really high support brace 

might be just stylistic design choices ig, low pectoral muscles.. due to muscle atrophy maybe?   So, like, all of this can be viewed in a different light, I guess? And most overt hints are in Act I.  This is naturally a familiar path for anyone who has experience with fandom and reading into things, impossible to say for sure whether it’s all in our heads or not... Earlier I’d say that it doesn’t even matter! We do have one rly cool queer couple in the show and also perhaps this ambiguity suits that particular storyline, AND more importantly Viktor’s sexuality or gender wouldn’t really add that much to the themes of the show, in my opinion. It’s just really nice for fanart and fic ideas, various additional materials and rediscovering the homoeroticism of cold war metaphors in League lore.  But after that whole thing on Amanda Overton’s twitter (one of the writers for Arcane) with first an implication that any queer-seeming moments are just the results of ‘no stigma against affection between men, friends or family’ followed by a bewildering ‘I’ve faced what felt like identity erasure myself many times. I’ve not given a real-world label to any one of our characters because I sincerely believe it will be more satisfying to learn this as their story unfolds.’ Which um. Reads as ‘wait and see’, essentially, also backed up by a different artist (Evan, although he isn’t working on s2) on the show seemingly for this particular issue (’I super do need people to stop asking us about things that aren't explicitly shown in s1. I get that people want assurances, but it'd be such a massive disservice to spoil any of the moments being cooked up’).  And after that I’ve began to feel a familiar frustration...  Like, this isn’t that big of a question in the story? Like I said, Viktor’s sexuality or gender isn’t super relevant to his character since he already has lots of other narrative-defining traits (risk-taking scientist focused on improvement of life quality & leaving a legacy, comes from zaun, disabled, close to dying), plus if Amanda is to be believed there’s no stigma towards sexuality or gender expression in Runeterra so it wouldn’t be seen as an alienating trait, just a sort of sad one if he had an unexplored (and potentially unrequited) crush on Jayce. Which again, isn’t really needed to drive home the idea that their relationship is slowly falling apart because of a divide in ideologies and personal circumstances. Or rather, it just wouldn’t be a good twist for s2, but it would have been a potentially cool detail to add or imply in s1.  My point is that if the queercoding was intentional why not say so? And if it’s not what’s the big deal in saying ‘nope! it wasn’t intentional! however we can see how it could be viewed that way, best of wishes to the fandom, you’ll get your riot mlm and or trans rep someday, xxx’.  Or, yknow, ignoring the question. Instead homophobic and/or sexist fans took the first part of the answer as an opportunity to gloat that the idea of a queer Viktor is entirely delusional while us losers received familiar bait of ‘maybe it’ll happen in s2!! be on the lookout for bi Jayce trying to seduce robo-Viktor (Even-Bigger-Dick-Now) who fell out of love with Jayce because of hexcore or an undercity flood or whatever’. Argh idk, I’d easily expect such an answer from a riot marketing team! But it’s really kinda sad to see the same sort of vague placation of both sides from a queer writer who pushed forward Vi/Caitlyn whose relationship truly kept me on the edge of my seat the whole show. sigh

[autisticandroids]

Just here to say Angle Autism is the most powerful phrase.... please tell us more.... I know you have that God Tier Autism Content 👀👀👀

so i actually have a lot of thoughts on this. first, read this essay, it made me think many thoughts years ago when i read it. 

anyway, there’s two really interesting things about angels established in canon. first of all, they’re not all ambiguous disorder weirdos. lots of angels are just regular people with no particular disorders. and it’s unlikely that it has to do with how much experience with humans they have, given the huge amount of experience with humans cas accumulates over the course of the show, and how much he remains an ambiguous disorder weirdo (even if a better adjusted one). also, anna is definitely also an ambiguous disorder weirdo (if a less obvious one than cas) like, her bluntness and her coldness and her hyperrationality and her somewhat weird mannerisms..... and like, she lived as a human for twenty years. it’s not about experience. it’s about being an ambiguous disorder weirdo.

at the same time, a number of angels are ambiguous disorder weirdos, that seems really common. it’s not just cas. anna, rachel, hannah...... there are others but i’m blanking. from a doylist perspective, this makes sense: those are all angels who need to be sympathetic, and the thing about angels is that they follow a rather alien system of morality that causes them to think nothing of committing a lot of really terrible crimes, so portraying them as naive to the evil that they do is kind of required, and like. cas is already there, pulling the naive because of ambiguous disorder shtick with his whole heart, so like. that’s kind of the path of least resistance. angel you need made sympathetic? make them cas-ish. (this also helps because the audience loves cas and maybe if these angels remind us of cas we’ll love them too). the doylist perspective also explains why, other than cas, all the ambiguous disorder weirdos are “””female””” (angels don’t have genders, but from a doylist perspective the perceived gender of the angel influences both their treatment by the writers and their perception by the audience) angels: women are more likely to be perceived as helpless and therefore sympathetic, so good angels tend to be female, and giving an angel ambiguous disorder is another way of keeping them sympathetic, so good angels tend to be ambiguous disorder. 

on the other hand from a watsonian perspective this is has some wild implications. like it seems that ambiguous disorder is just really common among angels? does it have something to do with status? also the implication in lily sunder has some regrets that female-vesseled angels like, experience sexual harassment drives me SOOOOOOO crazy, that combined with female-vesseled angels being more likely to be ambiguous disorder weirdos is like!! especially since we know cas used to have a female vessel (and we know he’s come up in the world since then, he was given his own command). there’s so many things, like. i know i personally have a history of walking eyes wide shut into situations where men are creepy to me because i, an ambiguous disorder weirdo, don’t realize that this is a creepy situation until FAR too late. like i am very trusting and gullible. and we know certainly that that’s a trait cas shares, but it seems likely that this is common among ambiguous disorder weirdo angels. would only a stupid, trusting angel choose a female vessel? i think about angels and gender constantly. and also ambiguous disorder. what the fuck.

anyway i love referring to myself as an ambiguous disorder weirdo it’s my favorite phrase. the joke here is that i have a professional diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder from a psychiatrist which i received as an adult. i am, in my own extremely humble opinion, very funny.

[gendercensus]

I saw that you removed third gender because of the anthropological definition- that's not the definition most people use for it. Third gender relates mainly to the western binary and means a gender that's neither a man nor a woman but something else. It's now known as maverique, which has a flag and is more popular, but people who had the gender identity before the word was established used third gender instead because it was the easiest to explain. I just wanted to clarify this because seeing someone call one of my genders a scientific term was super weird and kind of offensive. As much as I care about the safety and comfort of poc in the nb community, we already replaced the term while acknowledging that none of us meant the one that is incredibly transphobic and racist to begin with they just co-evolved separately and with nothing to do with one another. If possible, a note that the history of third gender as a nb identity and as a term within anthropology would be really appreciated. Our community is very small and I'd hate for young nbs to feel as though the term they relate to isn't a gender they can identify with without being bigoted, especially when we've done the work necessary to establish community elsewhere where there are less problems for everyone.

For context, this ask is a reference to this part of the 2020 worldwide report:

Last year I decided that I would remove terms from the checkbox list that were chosen by under 3% of participants in both the over-30s and under-30s group and that didn’t correspond with other more popular terms on the list. This year one term met the criteria: third gender. I looked into the phrase a little more last year, and found that it’s essentially a term used by white anthropologists to describe non-straight-non-cis people in non-Western societies. That could include LGB people and binary trans people, in addition to people whose genders are not described by the M/F binary. On the basis of racism alone I am very happy to finally remove this term from the checkbox list next year.

There is a lot going on in my head in response to your ask, so I’m putting it into bullet points to tidy it up!

I would really love to see some sources to back up the claim that maverique has the exact same meaning as third gender and that one has replaced the other. Something about this claim feels very off to me and I can’t quite articulate why.

I can definitely see how third gender as an identity term could have evolved separately alongside the use of third gender in an anthropological context. “So if you’re not a man or a woman but you still have a gender, what are you?” “Oh you know, some third gender, I guess?” It’s very intuitive, and the definition is right there in the term itself.

I agree that the way I talked about the term third gender in the 2020 report doesn’t take into account the people who started claiming and using it independently of the anthropology context. My tone was pretty insensitive, so I’d like to go back and edit the report to correct that.

My understanding is there are several words that mean “a specific and whole gender identity entirely distinct from female/woman/feminine and male/man/masculine”. To claim that one particular word has entirely replaced another with the exact same meaning, with the implication that this was an intentional community decision by consensus, seems very bold to me - there is certainly no mention of it on the Nonbinary Wiki pages for third gender or maverique - so if that truly has happened I would like to read more about it.

~

Edit: Also, just spotted this:

I saw that you removed third gender because of the anthropological definition

That isn’t true. I removed it because it was chosen as a checkbox option by under 3% of respondents in both the over-30 and under-30 age groups. With some exceptions, anything that is chosen or typed in often enough will be on the checkbox list, regardless of whether or not I personally like it.

[elyvorg]

So… I was talking about aspec V3 headcanons? Well then, let me lay down the facts.

Maki Harukawa is on the aromantic spectrum. Yes, even though she explicitly develops a crush on Kaito, and no, I’m not trying to dispute that part.

This is basically canon. Let me tell you why.

Maki is aro

For this, we need to consider the conversation Maki has with Shuichi in the first training session in chapter 4, while Kaito has temporarily disappeared to the bathroom. On one level, this conversation exists to be the only actual meaningful indication* that Maki has romantic feelings for Kaito until she goes and confesses them. Someone like Maki wouldn’t care about asking Shuichi if he “liked” Kaede (in that annoying loaded meaning of the word “like” that specifically refers to romantic attraction) unless she was trying to come to terms with the idea that she also “likes” someone else in the same way, and the only plausible candidate for that is Kaito.

But even more striking about this conversation, far more so than the general implication that Maki would only bother asking this if she happened to be crushing on a certain spiky-haired space dork, is the way Maki approaches and thinks about this whole topic in general. Take a look:

Maki:  “Well… I assumed you didn’t, because that would be weird. […] Liking someone you just met… especially in a situation like this…”

Shuichi:  “… Then tell me… under what circumstances is liking someone *not* weird?”

Maki:  “…Huh? I… don’t know. I don’t… really understand what that is.”

I, as an aromantic person myself, fully agree with Maki that it just seems weird to start romantically liking someone you’ve only just met, especially in a life-or-death situation where surely there’s way more important things to be focusing on. But apparently, most people do not find this thought weird at all – love at first sight is supposedly a real thing that can happen, and something something dangerous situations can bring out more hormones and passion???? sounds fake but okay – and so opinions like mine and Maki’s here are very much outliers.

And not only that, not only does the thought of crushing on near-strangers bewilder Maki to the point of disbelief, but she also can’t even come up with an answer to when crushing on someone would ever not be strange and bizarre. Like the whole concept is just alien to her. She can barely even wrap her head around how “liking” someone in that way even works. The very reason she’s even asking Shuichi about this is because she doesn’t understand why she’s feeling this way about Kaito.

This is how an aromantic person would view this kind of thing. It doesn’t sound even slightly like something an alloromantic person would say in this situation. That’s not up for interpretation – that’s just the truth about these views that Maki is expressing. Again: I’m aromantic. I would know.

Even from a character who then does turn out to nonetheless have a crush on someone, these statements are pretty much as canonically confirmed arospec as you can get short of them straight up using the word "aromantic" or a variant.** And, well, obviously Maki isn't about to go calling herself that. From the way she’s questioning this, she clearly doesn’t realise that her perspective is the outlier, so she’s probably never even heard of the term. Besides, she most definitely has way bigger hurdles to be getting over first in terms of her self-acceptance before she's ever going to particularly care about figuring out labels for her orientation of all things.

Aros with trauma are still aros

Now, granted, I severely doubt that Maki being arospec is what the writers intended to convey. Haha, deliberate aro representation in mainstream Japanese media, especially something more complex than vanilla aro, that's a funny joke. What the writers probably meant by writing this conversation I just discussed is to suggest that Maki is viewing things this way a result of her trauma.

But hey, guess what? Even if it is because of her trauma - and I'm not denying that it probably is - that doesn't make Maki any less aro. Some people are arospec because of trauma, and that's equally as valid a reason to be arospec as without. Maybe Maki would have grown up alloromantic if she hadn't been scouted as an assassin, but that's irrelevant, because that's not the Maki who exists now.

In writing this conversation, the writers were presumably attempting to communicate that Maki is so messed up by having been manipulated and abused and moulded into a soulless killing machine that she can no longer comprehend the idea of how or why anybody (especially not herself) would fall in love with someone when they'd only just met, or even really in any circumstances at all. …And in doing that, the writers unintentionally wrote a character who, as a result of her trauma, is aro(-spec). This is an objective fact about the canon story that does not change just because the writers probably weren’t aware enough about aromanticism to actually realise this.

Aros who feel romantic attraction are still aros

So, of course, Maki does in fact come to romantically love Kaito despite this. That fact becomes very important to her, and me lengthily explaining here that she’s actually arospec is not remotely trying to diminish that. But it’s also very important to me that people realise that Maki’s romantic love for Kaito comes from an aromantic perspective. She eventually chooses to embrace those feelings not remotely because it just feels to her like the natural way things should go, but despite every single conscious part of her insisting that this is weird and illogical and doesn’t make any goddamn sense to even be happening at all. She is not going to suddenly fall into all the boring romantic cliches and stereotypical alloromantic approaches to love just because she does in fact happen to be experiencing romantic attraction. There’s nothing alloromantic about Maki’s crush on Kaito.***

As for the specific flavour of arospec that allowed Maki to fall in love with Kaito anyway? This part is somewhat more up for interpretation because there’s no real explicit indication of this in particular, but I personally like to go with the idea that Maki is demiromantic. It feels appropriate for Maki’s character and trauma to imagine that she can only begin to potentially feel romantic things towards a person when she has an emotional connection with them – when she trusts them and knows that they trust her. It doesn’t necessarily have to take very long – she’d only been friends with Kaito for a handful of days before that telling conversation with Shuichi – and she may not even have to have consciously admitted to herself that she trusts them, but she needs to have that bond. She’s normally so guarded and has such strong automatic barriers up during her interpersonal interactions that seeing most people in a romantic light literally isn’t even an option in her brain.

Maki’s confession of her feelings for Kaito does read as rather strongly demiromantic, I think. She makes a point that this is about who Kaito is and what he’s done for her, before even getting to the part where she admits to having fallen for him. And she says she “fell for” him, not that she was always in love with him or anything to that effect. This happened somewhere along the way during their friendship, because of their friendship, and because of Kaito being his incredible trusting supportive self towards her when she needed it most.

Maki Harukawa is demiromantic, and she’s wonderful.

  ---

[some grumpy Amatonormativity and Aro Erasure 101 footnotes, can you tell I am bitter about this kind of thing]

(* When I say “actual meaningful indication” of romantic feelings, I mean something that isn't just the narrative infuriatingly pointing at things that are actually perfectly platonic in nature and going “ooh look how romantic~!”. Newsflash: worrying about somebody and wanting to rescue them when they're sick and injured and have been kidnapped by someone you think is an evil sadistic mastermind is not somehow proof of romantic feelings. That is a thing that friends do. And on the same note, teaching somebody how to build a crossbow is not some kind of deep metaphor for romance; it is literally just a lesson in how to build a goddamn crossbow. Maki would have done both of these things in exactly the same way if her crush on Kaito didn’t exist.)

(** It's exactly like how characters can be considered canonically confirmed same-gender-attracted when all they've done is show attraction to the same gender****, without them actually needing to explicitly refer to themselves with the word “gay”, or “lesbian”, or “bi” or whatever else. Anyone who tried to insist that was necessary in order for it to “count” would instantly be written off as homophobic. So if that’s the case, then a character explicitly saying something such as “I don’t understand what it means to like someone that way” equally constitutes them being confirmed aro, and trying to argue that it doesn’t “count” without outright hearing the word itself is, guess what…?)

(*** This also inherently means that there’s nothing straight about Maki’s crush on Kaito either, since societally-expected “straight” attraction is allo as well as hetero. I gather that some people in this fandom like to devalue and erase Maki’s crush (and potentially also Maki herself) because they feel that it’s an Obligatory Forced Straight Romance and don’t like that, or something along those lines. Well, good news! It’s literally not that, actually, because Maki isn’t straight.)

(**** …This only applies so long as it actually is very clearly romantic or sexual attraction and not just people deciding platonic affection is totally romantic thanks to the disease that is amatonormativity. Because, you know. That happens. Literally all the time. (Even from V3’s narrative itself; see footnote 1.))

[gofancyninjaworld]

watching ONE write women

One of the joys of following a writer for a while is that you get to follow how their ideas develop.   One of the things that ONE brought up in an interview (annoyingly I’ve lost the link) was that he didn’t think that he wrote women particularly well. 

I was thinking about that.  When ONE says that, what comes across to me is that he has no problem writing a female character as an individual rather than a role.  All the girls and women he’s written so far have their own voices, own their problems, and have something to do within the story that would be noticeable if they weren’t there.  Quite frankly, that alone is over and above what various tests of representation (such as the Bechdel test) ask for.  

What he’s not so good at is appreciating what being female brings to a character’s experiences and outlook.  But he’s not just left it at that.  More on what he’s been doing in a bit (and under the cut).

“...the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges...” -- Anatole France

With his sharp eye and talent for exploring the implications of whatever he posits, ONE has brought up some issues are not inherently gendered, but usually are. 

A: Childcare

Metal Bat appears to be the main, if not sole, carer for Zenko.  How it affects him is fascinating.  He’s one of the longest-serving heroes in the Hero Association, being there before Class S was formed, literally within the first six months of its establishment.  He’s been extremely loyal and is highly trusted by the HA -- they put Narinki’s life into his hands without fear.  His battle strength is literally praised to the heavens.

Metal Bat makes Zenko a priority, structuring his availability around her school schedule and being present in her life. He gets very angry if these times are threatened without overwhelmingly good cause.  His reward is to be perceived by the Hero Association as less committed and so they under-recognise him in terms of ranking, and since rank and pay are linked, under-pay him as well.  It’s a story all too many women can relate to.  But that’s not all.

Because ONE writes so simply yet conscientiously, something else comes up and has a peek: intersectionality. It’s the concept that we often have multiple social disadvantages that interact and compound our problems.  The first is sexism.  Regardless of whatever childcare policy the HA has, the sexist assumption that only women care (for the record: this is bullshit) makes it unlikely for them to ask Metal Bat.  Second, social capital. The fact that he’s Zenko’s sole carer means that he has low social capital, that informal network of people around you who can help out -- or tell you where to find help and what things to say in order to get that help. [Aside: this is why programmes to help people, unless they reach out aggressively, tend to disproportionately attract those who need it least.]  Metal Bat doesn’t have the knowledge.  The third is the challenge brought by his being a 17-year old boy.  He’s quick to perceive challenge as threat, and threat as something to be met by anger.  Witness him threatening to smash the HA headquarters if it turns out that he’s missed Zenko’s piano recital for nothing -- completely not useful to anything. [Another aside: the importance of learning to disambiguate emotions and do useful things with them even if it means being vulnerable as a part of growing up as a man is the whole point of Mob Psycho 100.]

What do the Neo Heroes do?  They ask Metal Bat if he wants help with childcare AND HE JUMPS SHIP PRONTO.  If that’s not an indictment of the Hero Association, I don’t know what is.

B: Emotional Labour

Saitama has been delegating more and more of the day-to-day work to Genos.  What started as an act of service to express his gratitude, respect and love for Saitama is increasingly turning into a second job for Genos.  It’s not just the cooking and cleaning and the shopping and the bailing Saitama out if he’s forgotten his wallet again, it’s also the worrying about Saitama, sometimes at inappropriate times.  Has he drunk enough water?  Has he clean clothes in good repair? What sales is he looking forward to? Have they been marked on the calendar?  It’s honestly not doing Genos any good, and it’s one of those things all too many frustrated wives and girlfriends can relate to.  This doing the practical and emotional work for another is not intrinsically gendered, but funny how often it breaks that way.

It’s not doing Saitama any good either.  He’s using this freed up time to fritter his life ever more aggressively away, playing games with King and finding pointless competitions to enter, all while complaining about feeling less and less connected to anything (if you don’t address the problem, it doesn’t get better, duh!).  Worse, he’s started to take that gift of service for granted, witness him airily telling King how he’ll just have Genos go clear up the mess of monsters he’s left outside the flat.  I was heartened to see what happened when Saitama went a little too far and asked Genos to go cook and instead of jumping up, Genos gave him the the evil eye and let the awkwardness hang there.  That was good -- there’s hope for this guy yet.

Speaking of Genos, he also over-functions for something else Saitama struggles with: advocating for himself.  He tends to have Genos be the ugly one so he doesn’t have to be.   You can see just how bad he is at self-advocacy when Forte and friends could invite themselves into Saitama’s house at will despite his protests -- and it stopped the instant Genos showed up.

In a sense, it’s not surprising that Genos can do that. When you’re differently-abled (and for once, this is not a euphemism) as he is, being able to clearly ask for what you want and need is life-and-death necessary. If Genos was shy about it, he’s long since had to discard that.  But!  Let me point to a nuance the story touches on.  How pushy you can be without being punished for it depends a lot on who you are, intersecting strongly with race, gender, social status, etc (remember my mentioning intersectionality before). What’s called assertive in a man is called bitchy or sharp-elbowed in a woman.  Even taking gender and race out of the equation, there’s still a noticeable difference in the way the world treats Saitama and Genos.  You don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to understand the way the short, ugly Dr. Kuseno sweats making sure that Genos positively radiates youth, beauty, wealth and power. That’s part of his right to ask and be taken seriously.  You can see how drastically different it is for Saitama, even from his middle school days.  Genos notices, and makes sure to leverage his social power for Saitama. 

What I love about these examples are that by not automatically heaving a woman into these characters’ roles, ONE’s brought a less frequently seen angle that illustrates the problems they deal with are not ‘womens’ issues per se but are rather inequities that disproportionately affect women -- which is at the heart of what feminists keep saying.  When you read Makai no Ossan, you can appreciate that ONE could have gone with female characters and done a great job, but his choosing not to has brought a very welcome dimension to the story.

Women proper

“I’m not like other girls”

Still, bit by bit, ONE has been working more women into his stories.  After his interview, the next thing he worked on was the single-volume sequel to Mob Psycho 100,  Reigen.  He took his challenge head-on by making the POV character Tome and putting her in an all-girls’ high school.

Throughout the story, we see Tome thinking of herself as special, better than her fellow classmates, whom she sees as vapid and shallow.  The denouement comes with Tome being humbled as she gets to know her classmates better and realises that  they pursue interests just as varied and weird as hers -- only they’re also practicing being socially adept on top of that.

It’s a gentle story, but it’s still a great side-swipe at self-internalised misogyny, the idea that it’s shameful to be like a ‘girl’ and it’s something to distance oneself from.   Fortunately, Tome can laugh at herself and grow up.

“Ha ha ha”

For a long time, the only (named) women we had in OPM were Tatsumaki and her younger sister Fubuki.   We’ve gotten more women both good and bad: in particular, it’s been very gratifying to find that one of the most dangerous, story-shaping villains in the story is Psykos.

In the webcomic, ONE’s pushed even further.  A recent Tweet featured him talking about how hard he finds it to draw women. And he’s added several.   No same-face for him!    I’ll talk about the new heroines he’s added, but first, let me draw your attentions to something most artists don’t realize they do: massively skew the gender distribution of crowds, even when it is incredibly illogical to do so.   With ONE, even drawing the crowds at the fair who gaggle at Amai Mask, he’s got a far more even balance of women and they’re not all young and pretty -- which is much more true-to-life.  He’s in the business of drawing people.

ONE has featured microaggressions before, particularly in the way Fubuki can have perfectly sound things to say and be totally ignored,  but he brings it properly to the fore with Suiko.  No one calls her incompetent, but the little put downs she gets when she puts herself forward for the hero test in lieu of her brother, oh they’re well-observed The look on her face just makes it.  I love the way she shut the recruiters up subsequently. 

  Let’s conclude this tour with a look at Webigaza’s lonely figure.  We have another mono-manically focused cyborg in the story.  Genos has been called a lot of things -- determined, obsessive even, but crazy? Never. Notice who it’s been reserved for instead.  It’s no slip of the tongue.

Wrapping Up

I’m of the impression that ONE really wants to try to capture as much of the human experience as he can in his stories, however whimsical or fantastical the stories themselves are.  I’m disarmed by his humility in accepting that he’ll never have the lived experience of half the world’s population but he sure as hell can put some effort into learning how to to writing well-realised, believable, female characters.  

I watch ONE’s continued development as a writer with interest.    

[nightcoremoon]

weird opinion but christians aren't religious.

ok so like, jews generally follow god's rules, muslims follow allah's rules, hindus probably follow their gods rules, so on and so forth. and overall they do it out of faith; they do it because they want to honor the deity who loves them rather than because society forces them to.

granted the zionists and the radical extremists and the zealots do exist but as loud minorities and thus are statistical outliers & don't matter.

christians are... a different breed.

"if you aren't x branch and dont obey y rules you'll go to hell so we'll fucking murder you" is pretty much the main driving force behind a significant portion of christianity in history. the catholics, the protestants, the orthodoxy, all are built on a foundation of fear, anger, and hatred. it's shaped the way society developed; in the 4 nations that did the most genocidal imperialist colonialism- England, France, Spain, and Italy- a combination of convenient coastal locations, naval prowess, military tendency, christianity, and ultranationalism lead them down a path of missionaries, holding bibles in one hand and bloodstained knives in the other. the religion is inseparable from the culture and inseparable from the horrible things done in the name of their god, and the resulting cancers of society we feel today from the campaigns of slaughter. xenophobia. capitalism. savage barbarism via sensationalized capitol punishment. misogyny. queerphobia. gender fascism. classism. racism. all of these issues in the "civilized world" stem predominantly from those four nations and the disease ridden pestilent filth some call pilgrims.

here's something interesting:

there are less than 1 million rastafari in the world.

there are less than 5 million shinto in the world.

there are less than 25 million jews in the world.

there are less than 30 million sikhs in the world.

there are roughly 100 million african cultural religious adherents in the world.

there are less than 400 million chinese cultural religious adherents in the world.

there are about 500 million buddhists in the world.

there are about 1.1 billion hindus in the world.

there are about 1.2 billion nonreligious people in the world.

there are 1.6 billion muslims in the world.

and one final statistic

there are over 2.1 billion christians in the world.

the jewish count is a highball, rounded up, and includes several different definitions of jewish including people who are only one quarter. so for every single person who is even remotely jewish, there are more than 8 christians. for every hindu, there are 4 christians. for every atheist, agnostic, or "other", 2 christians. this frightening statistic should set off warning bells for everyone who is involved in a discussion about religion. and anyone who knows BASIC world history and can correlate data at all can probably piece together what I'm putting down.

now, I may be slightly biased here considering my eclectic religious beliefs. now, I personally believe that there is some primary force of energy that may or may not manifest itself as a humanoid being, that engineered the most basic laws of physics in the universe: atomic magnetism. as can be inferred by planck's constant and its implications, our universe is digital, written in binary. an electron either moves or doesn't move. there are no other options. so I genuinely believe in some form of intelligent design; whether it's a bearded guy on a cloud, some dude with six arms and an elephant for a face, just a big swirling pool of ectoplasm, or a big ol' plate of spaghetti and meatballs, something is out there that we are physically incapable of contacting from our plane of existence, just as a drawing on a piece of paper cannot reach out to interact with the world: a gif will move on its own but it will never acknowledge our existence, even if it could think by itself. and all the different mythologies of the world- egyptian, greek, norse, shinto, whatever- very well could be the agents of that unknown "god". perhaps anubis, ra, and bastet are just angels with animal heads that all of the peoples of ancient egypt saw and were like oh I guess this must be a god. maybe zeus and loki were the same person with a magic dick who fucked a bunch of animals in both greece and the scandinavian countries and spawned all of the horrible half-animal monstrosities that, idk, made vishnu think "well I have to kill that" and caused the biblical flood or something. maybe the jewish god gifted wisdom to siddhartha for sitting under a fig tree for 6 years through the angel pomona [roman goddess of fruit, had to google that one], so buddha gets his wisdom from demeter and is in nirvana right now right a step up from hades on yggdrasil the world tree keeping an eye on his charge persephone. any theory could theoretically be true but we ants of humans will never fucking know because we can't just point a telescope at the magellanic clouds and say "look, there's amaterasu with russell's teapot, and she's having tea with... *rubs eyes* lemmy kilmister??? wow I guess gods are real after all!" it's impossible to know the secrets of our universe because of the very restrictive nature of the universe itself. is it a circle? is it a donut? WE DONT FUCKIN KNOW.

we cannot know what religion is truthful.

""anyone who says that any one religion is more or less true than any other is a fucking moron, and if they're suggesting that White Western European Colonial Imperialist Protestantism is the one true faith, they're probably a fucking racist colonizer who beats his wife/sister and burns gays at the stake. and considering how that exact demographic is typically the one that murdered people for not converting to their religion, I don't think they have the intellectual non-deranged ability to make those logical connections.

again, I'm not saying that there AREN'T a lot of people of every religion who are evil assholes who contributed to mass genocide. israelites killed palestinians. shiites killed sunnis. hutus killed tutsis. danes killed geats. turks killed armenians. the ottoman empire has as much blood on its hands as the holy roman empire. germans who called themselves aryans but weren't actually aryan killed jews. but all of these tragedies were isolated incidents rather than repeated patterns over the course of two thousand years. not like christianity was and is.

just look at the United States, Canada, Mexico, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, & India's British Raj. Britain, France, Spain, and Italy, by extension Protestantism and Catholicism, are the shared factor between the long and bloody history fraught with massacring indigenous populations who wouldn't convert religions. native americans, indigenous canadians, latin americans but predominantly mexicans, the eastern chinese, coastal africans, aborigine aussies, indians- coastal coastal coastal. true the western chinese and the mongols/hunnu and xinjiang muslims haven't exactly been on civil terms and the silk road has always been a battleground and the middle east was already tenuous before murrica bombed them for oil but those happened in such a spread out area among asia which is FUCKING HUGE, MIND YOU! but also that's three high traffic places with massive diversity, it's human nature to have conflict, but not nearly to the same level as all of the shit christianity has done to the world. it's impossible to separate the religion from the cultures; victorian england without protestantism is just dirty people who die at 15 from having their 3rd child. italy without the catholicism is just grass and cheese. france and spain without religion are just kingdoms that fought wars with england for forever and now just make food that's one part delicious and three parts horrifying. religion is directly responsible for a significant portion of the evils those countries committed. one religion in particular.

they don't practice religion the same way as the rest do. they aren't faithful to their god. they don't follow his rules out of love but out of fear. they execute dissenters without a second thought, heresy they cry. they execute women and little girls for being free thinking or having sickness associated with mercury poisoning in the water, witch they cry. they slaughter men women and kids alike in the name of cramming their beliefs down the natives throats, we're chasing out the snakes they cry, we're bringing god to your godless people they cry, we're just civilizing you they cry. they shit in the streets and proudly display rotting corpses and leave the impoverished disabled and starving to die alone and whip their slaves and rape teenage girls and scrap in the streets while sopping wet with spilled ale over insignificant insults and stab people to death in the night and never even fucking BATHE, and they have the nerve to say the natives were uncivilized. the nerve. because hey. they read a magic book they stole from a culture who stole from another culture who stole from another culture, mistranslating each time from hebrew to greek to italian to english, and they think they're better because their skin is white.

christians never evolved. their mentalities have stayed the same. all thatms advanced has been technology. that's it. they're still the same evil disgusting degenerate bastards they always were. they just have the money they stole to buy stained glass windows, rosary beads, giant tacky metal statues, bigass robes, leather, and printing presses. and as time passed they used the money they continued to steal to buy cars and websites and radio stations and commit felony tax evasion and secretly molest children and line the pockets of the politicians.

all of their holidays are stolen from pagans anyway.

so fuck christmas. fuck easter. fuck lent. fuck the golden calf christian holidays that the tiny minded fragile snowflake conservatives lose their collective shit over because the pandemic response common sense stipulations won't let them buy the shit they can't afford with money they shouldn't have for people they don't even LIKE, all in the name of tradition, tradition! the rituals that worship something so much worse than satan or baphomet or pan or whatever: the dollar. they buy all the new shiny shit they can, at the expense of the chinese kids that the corporate pigs outsource to, buy the pine trees and the coca cola vunderbar and the fake mint corn syrup Js and watch the same shitty cookie cutter white supremacist hallmark fash movies and stuff their kids full of enough sugar to go into a goddamn coma when the african slaves who pick the cocoa beans will never get to know what actually being a kid will ever feel like because they're gonna die from falling into a combine harvester and be eternally forgotten to history and no christian will ever give a shit because they don't fucking care about what they don't see on their safe space news or hear on their safe space radio or read on their safe space social media. they think their worst sin is eating cheeseburgers so instead they'll go eat a mcchicken or chick fil a or an arby's chicken sandwich instead but not at popeyes because "that place is sketchy" and by that they mean they don't wanna eat where black people eat, that's why cracker barrel was so popular for so many white christians for so long because it had racially segregated seating until barely 20 years ago.

they don't love jesus. they love a paper doll they shove into their back pockets until every other sunday where they go to a fucking mall with a baptism waterslide and raise their hands like a bunch of dumbass weirdos and away to adult contemporary indie schlock with the word jesus pasted into a boring-ass hetero romance song, pat themselves on the back, then go to starbucks to scream slurs and misgenderings at 14 year old starbucks baristas who give them a cappamochalattechino instead of a fucking carmamochalattechino because you mumbled under the mask you didn't even fucking cover your nose with because you don't give a shit about the virus beyond how it inconveniences you.

they are horrible people who pretend to be good. until you suggest the slightest infinitely small inconvenience to them that would alter their holiday plans even the littlest smidge. then they would kill you if not for the police. don't get me started on them because you know by now what I'd say about those fuckers. but they'll gladly wear shirts about how they'll kill you. how they'll go back 200 years. how they'll murder you and watch you slowly suffer because their primate brains shoot a million endorphins when they watch things die by their hands because they never evolved a sense of empathy, compassion, or morality beyond how wearing a cross necklace will remove any of the consequences they will face in their afterlife.

they are horrible people who pretend to be good. unless you're gay or black or trans or Not Christian™ or mexican or disagree with them about politics economics sociology science technology music or movies. assimilate or die. assimilate or die. assimilate or die.

they don't deserve special treatment for their false idols.

they aren't better than jews or muslims.

they're worse.

so much worse.

and they should be stopped.""

-Nightingale Quietioca

save as draft arch draft bookmark draft where did I put my keys contra code kontra kode I need to remember this and copy it buzzwords keywords find it later please god tumblr don't bork on me this is good stream of consciousness repackage repackage change the words this is a great character study if I do say so myself thanks 3am me you're welcome 3am me

[mrmrblueeyes]

Writing Trans Characters

Hello! My name is Jasper, I'm FtM and I'd like to give some thoughts to people writing trans themes, particularly for cis people who may want to write a trans character. Just a warning! This is probably going to be kind of rambling and may not come across as completely organized.

Now listen. I'm going to be honest, I only thought of this because I found an insert fic where the reader is coming out as a transgender man. It was alright, but I did have a problem with it.

You just need to use b/n or something of the sort, rather than y/n because most trans people don't see or want to see their birthname as their name. I, for example, use Jasper because that, not my birthname, is my name.

It was basically written like this; y/n was used to mean the reader's old name, and then their name was o/n or "Other name."

The author did say she had to be educated before being able to write it, and it's something very small, but I personally feel like it's off putting- which could just be because of my experience, and if other trans people don't mind or think I'm being ridiculous, that's well within their right. Like I said, it was fine! That was mainly my only thing.

Now onto other stuff!

Even I have had to think through implications of how I write characters that are like me. I honestly haven't read many pieces about trans people by cis people, to my knowledge.

Most of the trans media I consume is made by other trans people, though I have watched movies like Boys Don't Cry or Three Generations, which both have cis actors and I'm fairly certain the latter is made by cis people as well as the first one.

Personally, my one desire for trans media is that it doesn't revolve around the trauma of living the trans experience.

Don't misinterpret that; those are important stories, I believe awareness of our struggles is not a bad thing. However, it's kind of weird for cis people especially, because media has put forth this story as the story, and cis people seem to love writing it.

This is especially apparent in my earlier example of Boys Don't Cry, or, if you would like, take a pick of any crime show involving a trans victim. I'd recommend watching the documentary Disclosure if you'd like to hear more on that.

I think a good example, one that I liked anyway, would be Lily and Dunkin. It's written by a cis woman, and it comes across in a way that is real but with consideration for the trans children who may pick up the book. It represents the issues Lily faced in a way that is easy for younger audiences to understand, and honestly, I could partly relate to both Lily and Dunkin. Point is, it's a good book.

Of course, you may and probably are not writing a children's book.

It's best to have a trans voice with you if you want the best portrayal you can get. While every trans person is different, you'll probably get a better understanding of what a trans audience would like in general.

If you are writing about trans trauma, don't do it outright. Again, going back to Boys Don't Cry, I spent the first half of the movie growing to see myself in Brandon. I wanted to do what he did and be seen how he was seen. We're from similar places as people as well as where in the world we live.

And then, the second half of the film, I was hit with the reality that if I did so, the trauma Brandon endured could very well become my own; I could possibly have the same end. There are also other bad things about that movie (removal of Phillip DeVine is a big one, as well as it kind of being more focused on the romance, imo), but I think the graphic violence probably affected me most.

Also! I'm sorry, this one kind of goes back into fanfiction territory, I have only seen it referenced as an issue in fanfiction, but I do believe it is worth a mention because I have had to consider how to go about writing this in my own work.

Please, for the love of everything holy, do not make a man trans solely for the purpose of him having children.

I said I had to think about writing that? I did, I don't want it to come across like I was only writing him for that, and I as well as many other trans men would never want to have children that way; but I had a trans character, and he existed long before the possibility of him becoming a father through that was on the table. That character is in multiple pieces of my personal writing, and in that particular piece, it would align with his character, he would be willing to.

Of course, if I published this work, readers would have no way of knowing that, so it may be better off not to do it unless you're sure of it and can explain your motivation behind it.

As well, don't make being trans their whole thing. It's a part of me, yes, but obviously, I am more than that. I love art and I aspire to be a good son, I'm not the best at decision making and I can bake, but cooking things that aren't cookies or cakes is rough. If all your character has is the fact that they are trans, you need to develop them more.

You see a lot of characters that trans teens relate to or believe to be trans have a lot more to their character, and the media they're from isn't solely focused on their gender.

If that's a big part of their story, go for it! But don't forget that we're people too, and I'm honestly more focused on my education and my favourite movies than I am about my gender in everyday life.

Being trans may change how I interact with people, of course, so learn how that may be.

Like if they're out-but-not-completely, and they hesitate to think if they could use their real name in an introduction, or if they're afraid they don't pass- if that is important to them- and use their birthname.

Or they're newly out and really confident because someone called them sir/ma'am in public. Whatever you do, don't have them just tell random people their birthname unless it would make sense, AKA they're not out to others at all, so they use their birthname.

That is all I have as of now, like I said, it was kind of rambling so I apologize, if you'd like to add anything or have questions, what better place is there to ask?

TL;DR - Write trans characters with consideration to who is viewing them, and make them realistic. Know or learn how being trans affects daily life.

[jadelotusflower]

December/2020 Roundup

I hope everyone is getting through the holiday season alright! It’s been kind of a busy month for me and I didn’t have much time for creative pursuits, so the reading/watchlist is a little shorter this time.

December Roundup

World Without End by Ken Follet - set 150 years after Pillars of the Earth, again in the town of Kingsbridge, this time we follow the lives of two branches of the Builder family tree - the descendants of Aliena and Jack, Merthin and his brother Ralph, and those of Tom (through Martha), Caris, Petranilla and Godwyn. But miracle of miracles, there’s a second female pov in Gwenda to provide the peasant perspective.

This is in many ways a rinse and repeat of Pillars, where the goods guys suffer and suffer until the end when the bad guys get their comeuppance, and by now it’s starting to wear on me (there is one more novel set in Elizabeathan times, but I’m not sure I’ll bother with that one). While Pillars was set in the backdrop of The Anarchy, World covers the start of the Hundred Years War and the Black Death, and the latter seems rather prescient - Kingsbridge goes into a six month lockdown at one point, and not wearing masks becomes a political issue. As always, it’s the detail of day to day life I enjoy the most about these books, and Caris trailing the English army as they pillage France, and her efforts to fight the plague are confronting but compelling.

In fact I enjoyed Caris the most as a character, but was disappointed in her ending - she spends the whole novel reluctant to conform to the social expectations of women at the time and doesn’t want to be trapped by marriage and children, and yes she unwillingly becomes a nun, but in a way that gives her the freedom to pursue her interests in medicine (albeit still constrained by her gender). But rather than her happy ending having the power and satisfaction of prioress of the nunnery running the hospital (her life’s work), Caris renounces her vows and ends up married to Merthin after all. Maybe it’s that Merthin is a bit of a wet rag of a character, maybe I just bristle at Follett’s world where men can find satisfaction in the clergy (Prior Phillip being the best example), but for women marriage is always the pinnacle despite their abilities and success in other areas.

Also, Follett Never Write Another Sex Scene Challenge.

Smallville (seasons 1-3) - This has been a year of comfort watching for many people, a time to revisit those old shows we loved because they feel familiar in a time of uncertainty. This month I started a Smallville rewatch - I was a casual viewer back in the day but only really started to get interested about halfway through (when Lois showed up), so I’ve actually never seen it all the way from beginning to end. And well...the early seasons are a slog, let’s put it that way. Bad CGI and stilted acting aside, this was a teen drama first and foremost and the early noughties was strong with this one.

I remember never particularly caring for Chloe as a character, but wow is she painful in the early seasons, pining over Clark while he’s pining over Lana, but while his mooning is just annoying, she is almost manipulative in blaming him for not reciprocating her feelings and it’s very Nice Guy and cringe.

It’s funny, I remember not being a particular fan of Lana either, but I’m actually liking her a lot more on rewatch - wearing a necklace with part of the meteor that killed her parents is metal af. It is kind of weird to see grown man Lex hanging out with these fifteen year olds - I mean the actors don’t look it, but the characters are very much minors! Twenty-somethings should not be calling a teenager their best friend! It’s particularly creepy when the minute Lana turns 18 Lex develops romantic feels for her :-/

Once they start to bring in more of the Lore it gets better - I actually got very emotional when Christopher Reeve showed up - it’s such a great scene, and the strains of John Williams’ original themes in the background made me tear up. But the core concept was always an interesting one - that when Clark arrived the meteor rocks/kryptonite infected some of the population giving them superhuman abilities - lending credulity to the Monster of the Week episodes and the murder happy teenagers of Smallville. However they never really do a deep dive into the implications of Clark’s arrival and the meteor rock essentially causing widespread mental illness that’s dealt with either by these kids getting killed or institutionalised, but maybe that’s too heavy for this type of show.

It’s also very apparent (and disappointing) on rewatch just how quickly they sidelined Pete Ross, the only black character, who is unceremoniously booted at the end of the third season. Tale as old as time.

2020 Roundup

Books read:

Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Avonlea

Anne of the Island

Anne of Windy Poplars

Anne’s House of Dreams

Anne of Ingleside

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The History of the Kings of Britain

The Pillars of the Earth

The Sunne in Splendour

Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him

The Testaments

Kathryn: The Tainted Queen

Gutsy Women

Girl, Woman, Other

The Evening and the Morning

Women and Leadership

World Without End

That’s a total of 18, a vast improvement on last year, and I’ve really enjoyed getting back to books again.

Writing (complete):

Auld Lang Syne - 3169

The Years Are Rolled Away - 6026

Writing (wips):

The Lady of the Lake - 14,493

Against the Dying of the Light - 44,021

Turn Your Face to the Sun - 2064

Total: 70,093

That’s around 7k less than last year, and I haven’t progressed as far with my wips as I would have wanted (in fact my goal was to complete the three above) but oh well, here’s to a better and more productive 2021 and all that.

See you all next year x

[quillyfied]

Mega Good Omens Fic Rec Post 3

THE FINAL CHALLENGER APPROACHES.

This will hopefully be the last Mega Fic Rec Post I make for a long, long time; I have enjoyed it, but a lot of work goes into these and I’m tired. There are 73 titles on this list, organized by category: Jaunts through History/Canon, South Downs, Post-Apocalypse, Bus Ride/The Night Before/Heaven and Hell, AU/UA, Just Soft, Touch-Starved/Body Worship/Wings, Bonus, and H/C /Whump/BAMF. Please enjoy these treasures as I have.

Mentioned questionable material where appropriate; several authors have Tumblrs but I wasn’t able to tag them, for whatever reason. Oh well.

Mega GOmens Fic Rec Post MASTER

IF A LINK IS BROKEN OR I HAVE MISATTRIBUTED SOMETHING, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

JAUNTS THROUGH HISTORY/CANON

1. let me feel your heartbeat (grow faster, faster) – @thehoyden (T, the one where Aziraphale had a big ole crush on Crowley before the Fall and it doesn’t stop from happening. This one’s just cute; starts with a “senpai notice me” vibe that morphs into mutual pining very, very quickly. It hits the high notes of a lot of cute romance tropes and I’m into it.)

2. Pride and Prejudice and Angels – SanSanFanFan (G, the one where Miss Crowley and Mr. Fell clash wits. Kinda. Mainly it’s a lot of lovely pining and Aziraphale being sad about awful things happening in London, so he’s escaping to Hampshire for a while, where Crowley happens to be in the middle of a temptation she promptly abandons in favor of lifting Aziraphale’s spirits. Not finished, but already sparkling with Crowley being miffed about gender double standards and Aziraphale letting himself be cheered up by Crowley. It’s great.)

3. Kissing, Accidentally – @skybound2 (G, the one where Crowley can’t help kissing Aziraphale after pinning him against the wall.  Hilarious and sweet and featuring that best trope of all, Crowley going boneless and speechless at an unexpected show of affection and wanting from his angel.)

4. Visible world (or, you are responsible forever for what you have tamed) – @matchahedgehog (T, the one where Russian folklore plays a significant element and it’s weird and beautiful. I don’t think I can really convey what this is, exactly, but there are elements of building a new world and holding on tight to love even through the toughest times and it’s gorgeous.)

5. I’ve Been Drowning All These Years – @terrible-titles (T, the one where Crowley comforts Aziraphale five times and one time Aziraphale comforts Crowley. There are some discomfiting scenes Crowley is talking Aziraphale through in this one, but the comfort is sweet and the resolution is well-deserved.)

6. Moving Rocks – shiphitsthefan (T, the one where confessions are made in 1941 but they can’t act just yet, and waiting is agony. I really adore this one, especially what happens when they finally Smooch, because it happens in a spot I rarely see anyone putting it and it made me smile. The longing is so painful, poor Aziraphale. Poor Crowley.)

7.  On a Wing and a Prayer – @alphacygni-8 (T, the one where Crowley is a pining mess but he has a plan. This is another trip through history of Crowley trying to go about his business while his feels are crushing him, but I think it’s how Crowley tries to go about confessing that helps make this one a standout; there is a restaurant and there is a lot of food and there are, of course, miscommunications aplenty. The historical scenes are nothing to sneeze at, either, they’re all packed with longing and bittersweetness. Lovely.)

8. in the shapes of angels – @qwanderer (T, the one where navigating an intimate and loving relationship of any stripe is difficult when your true form is a bit noncorporeal. This one crescendos in a form of angel-demon soul bonding that really reverberates and sticks in the brain, the visuals are incredible. And the implications of switching bodies gets a lot more high-stakes, too. On top of it all this is a story about finding someone to share your life with, whatever the arrangement of the relationship might actually be, and friends it’s tender and scary and wonderful.)

9. Pilgrim – brasspetal (T, the one where Crowley is on a sabbatical to sort out his feelings and he writes love letters, of a sort. This one is one of those fics that feels like treading in deep water knowing there’s something more in the depths, but it’s more tranquil and less unsettling. There’s an overstory about Crowley traveling with a group of humans and an undercurrent about him working through how he feels about Aziraphale and the two work together to bring about something memorable and, I feel, truly impactful. It’s entirely possible that by the time the last chapter is up, the story will be something completely different from what I’ve described, and that’s cool.)

10. drowned in living waters – @mortuarybees (G, the one where Crowley and Aziraphale make out in a field and almost get caught. This one is short and sad and made me feel sad things, though the imagery is gorgeous and the argument leading up to the kissing is entertaining. Stupid Gabriel and his stupid face.)

11. Things They Need – LostSoftSpaceDyke (T, the one where Crowley and Aziraphale take lovers as stepping-stones to get to each other. This one is bittersweet and FRAUGHT, friends, it is absolutely a heart-masher. The ending rights it, of course, and beautifully, but welcome to Hopeless Longing Town, friendos, population One Angel and One Demon.)

12. Off the record – @paintedvanilla (T, the one where Crowley reports his personal sins and then neglects to report his virtues. Bookverse, a wonderful character study of Crowley and Hell’s bureaucracy and how certain things affect Crowley personally. Includes a lovely homage to Freddie Mercury, of course.)

13. By Any Other Name – ausgezeichnet (@thebeatlesaremyboyband) (T, the one where Nanny Ashtoreth and Brother Francis fake a wedding to get Thad Dowling off their backs. While it definitely has its funny moments, what stands out more to me in this one are the soft, quiet moments of pining sprinkled in between their adventures. There’s real strain between Crowley and Aziraphale with this turn of events, and I can’t wait to see it all boil over. Also Thaddeus Dowling is a dickbag in this one and is deffo getting his.)

14. God’s Gift – Katzedecimal (T, the one where Crowley and Aziraphale are undercover as a lady and her tire-woman while on a job. This one is based on one of the stories from The Akashic Records by PeniG (which y’all know I adore), specifically one where a potential 30K caper is laid out involving this exact scenario, and I love that someone actually tried to tackle some of it. The friendship is so good, and the little bit of excitement that happens in the plot is Terribly Exciting. Just ladies taking care of ladies, what could be better?)

15. All I Want (Is You) – amavyllis (G, the one where Crowley and Aziraphale don’t touch but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to. Oh, y’all, the longing. The LONGING. And the sheer ACHE of not being able to touch someone you would like to be physically close with. It is PAINFUL and it is GOOD and I am DYING.)

16. meantime i ask you to be my valentine (i’ll be your valentino) – hipsterchrist (T, the one that follows Saint Valentine’s Days through the ages. This one is really interesting, actually, and has one of the most eclectic collections of historical moments I’ve ever seen in one of these types of fics. That ending scene is on point, though; I spoil nothing but you guys TEARS. Of LAUGHTER. And also OVERWHELMED WITH EMOTION.)

SOUTH DOWNS

17. Let Me Live Here Ever – @moveslikebucky (T, the one where they’re soft and just talk about their feelings and smooch a lot. This one is part of a larger series but you don’t need to have read it to read this one. It is so very soft, y’all. So tender. I will never be over stories where they just lay in bed all day and revel in how they feel about each other and their life together.)

18. The Cottage, The Husbands – Dragonsquill (G, the series where Crowley and Aziraphale have a life in the South Downs and it is good. Featuring lots of cute little tableaus and some of the most fun OCs ever—Twelve in particular is a treat, she’s Crowley’s stylist and absolutely wonderful. The whole series is just FUN, it’s cute and casual and domestic and great.)

19. For All the Stars in Heaven – ausgezeichnet (@thebeatlesaremyboyband) (T, the one where Heaven and Hell need to shove off already. This one takes off almost without warning, and escalates rather quickly before a frankly genius solution to The Problem of Aziraphale and Crowley is found. I only deal in happy endings, so you KNOW it’s good for the husbands. Surprisingly good, in fact, I didn’t see it coming at all.)

20. Angel and Demon Teatime – @penig (T, the one where Crowley and Aziraphale entertain a few unwanted guests for a while. This one is really cool, with a lot of sensory details while Crowley and Aziraphale relive a lot of the sensations of Earth and bring them into the physical world for the spies Heaven and Hell sent after them to experience them, too. The spies are both precious, though in completely different ways, and the ways they go about changing through this visit are subtle but profound.)

21. The Tales of Eden Cottage – Jupiter_Ash (G, the series where Crowley and Aziraphale slowly settle into their new South Downs community. This one has a lot of fun OCs and some extremely touching stories (the one about Joshua in particular broke my heart in all the best ways). Their neighbors are a lot of fun and the fic in particular that has a facebook chat of their speculations on who the new guys moving into Eden Cottage are is fantastic.)

22. A Brand New Angle – @fallsouthwinter (T, the one where Crowley and Aziraphale pick a direction and gun it. Has first kisses, dancing, delightful neighbors, gardening—all the best ingredients for a heartwarming, satisfying South Downs romp. And this definitely is one—with some promising things to come, judging by the standalone in the same universe!)

23. A Safe Place for You – Vagabond (@waffleironbiddingwar) (M, the one where learning to receive love is a little bit harder lesson to take in than giving love. M for a humanly intimate scene that borders but does not cross into full smut, and an ethereally intimate scene that is weird and pretty. This whole thing is achingly poignant and heavy; every word drips with emotion and it’s both difficult and sweet, much like the subject matter, I suppose. A memorable and beautiful piece.)

24. Act of Service – @dietraumerei (T, the one where people think Aziraphale is Crowley’s sugar daddy. This one starts off hilarious and then slam-dunks itself right into the Feels Pile, with a side-helping of discussing dynamics and reaching acceptance. An instant classic and one I’ve definitely read more than a few times.)

POST-APOCALYPSE

25. Thou Knowest Us Happy – @mirrorleaf (T, the one where Gabriel gets the truth shoved directly into his face. This is a fic of a fic (the original I have not read bc it’s rated E and I can’t do that for personal reasons), and while this fic references its source quite a bit, it’s not confusing enough for the fic itself to be off-putting. In fact, it’s a gorgeous one-two punch to the throat: first, the Banishing of the Archangel Gabriel, which is INCREDIBLY satisfying; second, the Making Sense of It All, where Aziraphale and Crowley realize they’re truly free and start to explore the various contexts of their relationship, past and future, which is very sweet. A delectable little treat, all told.)

26. Courage – @mandysimo13 (G, the one that’s a good old-fashioned post-apocalypse love confession. There’s a cute little characterization of Courage woven throughout, because of course Crowley personifies the emotions he is or isn’t dealing with, but on the whole it’s adorable and intimate and cute.)

27. when the earth is trembling – @stammiviktor (T, the one where Crowley takes Aziraphale on an amazing date. Listen, I adore stories where Crowley falls to pieces under the weight of his love as much as the next dork, but Crowley delivering? Crowley being, if not confident, then at least secure in the choices he’s making? Crowley showing his angel a good time because he knows what his angel likes? SIGN ME UP, FAM. Especially if we still get Crowley coming a little undone at his attentions paying off in a hoped-for but still unexpected way (to him, anyway).)

28. Little Terrors – @runwiththisdinosaur (T, the one where Aziraphale is being more affectionate and Crowley is one hand-touch away from an aneurism. This one doesn’t pull away from Crowley’s all-consuming fear of Aziraphale Falling for loving him, and captures the messy feelings and hurt and heartbreak and healing these two getting their act together demands. Also Indian food.)

29. Forgiveness – @guanin (G, the one where Aziraphale has a well-deserved breakdown after Armageddon’t. This one is super-duper cathartic and has Aziraphale working through all of his hurt feelings and confusion over Heaven and how they treated him, and how he subsequently treated Crowley. Featuring a very patient Crowley and a very weepy Aziraphale and a lot of wondering about fate and choice.)

30. Of burnt books and courting Crowley – robynvite (T, the one where Aziraphale accidentally finds out Crowley’s in love with him and then sets out to properly woo him. I love fics where Aziraphale finally takes the initiative, and he does so with gusto. Anathema serves as a great sounding board and go-between for these lovestruck idiots, and Crowley not knowing how to handle Aziraphale being flirty is the best thing. Also, Aziraphale finds out they burned the second Agnes Nutter book and has an angelic come-apart.)

31. that I may hear my heart fall from your lips – song_of_fate (NR, the one where Crowley and Aziraphale get to be themselves at last. Y’all like awkward but shyly happy getting-together fics? Y’all like Greek vacations? Y’all like Anathema being a bro and Crowley being casual and Aziraphale being absolutely taken with him? You’ve found your fic, folks, and it’s not even finished yet. More softness to come!)

BUS RIDE/NIGHT BEFORE/HEAVEN AND HELL

32. please please please let me get what I want this time – @sarahbacou (NR, the one where Crowley is extremely tired and Aziraphale muses on their situation. The tone of this one is mournful and apprehensive, but ultimately tender as Aziraphale cares for an exhausted-to-the-point-of-delirium Crowley on the bus ride home. The scene after they get off the bus is just straight-up heartbreaking, there are no other words for it, but it ends hopeful, especially knowing what we know about canon.)

33. Ethereal Love – @mariannightroad (G, the one where trying to teach Aziraphale to sleep morphs into something a little bit more. The purest and sweetest of romances, the most sexless making love of all time (even for weird angel essence-touching, it’s pretty devoid of lust), and just really really Soft u guys.)

34. Long Night’s Journey Into Day – @whatawriterwields (T, the one where Aziraphale keeps watch through the night. This one is adorable and very tender, with a terrible nightmare and an amusing adventure involving remote tea-making and FEELINGS. Aziraphale loves Crowley so much.)

35. Maybe Tomorrow Will Be a Better Day (If You Let Me Look at Your Beautiful Eyes) – TheWinterSldier (T, the one where Aziraphale ponders about Crowley’s eyes while wearing his body. There’s some historical jumping but the majority of the story is focused on retelling Crowley’s trial from Aziraphale’s head, and the meal at the Ritz afterwards. There are a lot of emotions about Crowley’s eyes. Ironically, there were also a lot of emotions about my eyes. Or, rather, in my eyes. Just overflowing with feels.)

AU/UA

36. Hard Times – @northeasternwind (G, the one that’s the bandstand scene in the context of Speremint’s Reverse Omens AU. I love the characterizations of Anthony and Azirafell so much in this particular AU, and the building tension and sudden breaking of the dam at the end is exquisitely done.)

37. Rosemary and Sage – AJissoverytired (T, the one that’s based on the witch AU by masao-micchi and is PRECIOUS. Crowley is the Red Witch, a very famous and talented mage, who accidentally gets turned into a snake by a rival and winds up being found by Aziraphale, a mage-in-training who’s starstruck by the Red Witch. They strike up a familiar contract, with Crowley conveniently not letting Aziraphale know who he actually is, and enter the Completely Ridiculous Comedy of a pseudo-love square. The world is vibrant and fun, characterization is spot-on, and it’s so funny and sweet I’m dying. Worth the read 4000%.)

38. Only Love (Can Bring the Rain) – @soft-october-night (T, the fairy tale-ish AU featuring a sweet prince and his handsome gardener boy. Y’all. Y’ALL. Pining and childhood friends-to-lovers and class struggles and vegetable-growing contests and subterfuge, oH MY. The flavor of this one is Very Very Good, absolutely a gem.)

39. Running in the Shadows (Damn Your Love, Damn Your Lies) – @soft-october-night (M, the one that’s vaguely a Persuasion AU but is mostly a messy, emotional romance shoved into Regency decency. M for mentions of sexual activity that would most certainly overwhelm the sensibilities of a more delicate readership, but it’s not bad at all for a modern reader. I think soft_october might just own my soul, because HOT DANG, that is two AUs in a row that are scratching my itches in the best ways. The LONGING. The EMOTIONAL TURMOIL. The MASQUE BALL. The CLASS STRUGGLES. I have read it twice already and will definitely be coming back to it a lot, because there’s lots of meat on this here bone. Adam Young and Crowley’s relationship in particular is touching, and Crowley’s friendship with Anathema is top-notch.)

40. I have loved you (for a thousand years) – @asideofourown (T, the one where they’ve been dating the whole time but SOMEONE missed the memo. Classic miscommunication at its finest; Crowley’s chapter is painful enough with his pining and heartsick longing, but Aziraphale’s chapter knocks it out of the park with his perspective of actually being in a relationship with Crowley and the various misinterpretations that’s caused. They’re so stupid and I love them.)

41. Gravity – Emmbee_89 (T, the one where Crowley was Raphael and he and Aziraphale had (and have) a love so powerful Aziraphale created Time and they couldn’t be separated even after the Fall. Oh sweet Jebus and all his little elves, the tenderness and powerful heartbreak this one causes gave me actual physical pains. Bittersweet and lovely. I am so proud of them.)

42. The Love You Leave Behind – @gloriouscacophany (T, the one that’s a 1980s college AU where Aziraphale is studying abroad and Crowley is the singer of a rock band. This one is UNBELIEVABLY gorgeous. Listen, I don’t usually go in for human AUs, but this one caught me, hook, line, and sinker. The sensory details are lush (especially when Aziraphale is noticing Crowley, hoo boy) and the story has some built-in heartbreak that’s already paying off (hello, homophobia), but despite the incoming pain and torment, I have full faith and expectation of a great ride along the way. Truly spectacular.)

43. Pray For Us, Icarus – @seaskystone (G and T, the series where Crowley keeps reincarnating as a human and Aziraphale loves him. Listen, I know 90% of you already know this masterpiece, but for the 10% who don’t, this series will heck you up one side and down the other. It will drown you in sorrow so that the good moments are sweeter than air. It is so intense, so emotionally raw, so dadgum TENDER, I had no idea what to do with myself after I finished it. Like a cheese grater on a sunburn when it’s bad, like hot chocolate on a bitter cold day when it’s good. A fandom staple for sure, cathartic and satisfying as only successful recovery after a long, hard, difficult event can be.)

44. Magnesium and Oil – @quaidpoppinjack (T, the one that’s a monster hunter AU. The great thing about fandom is that sometimes people will make AUs you would never have thought of, but once you know of it, you need it desperately. In this one, instead of tempting and thwarting, Crowley and Aziraphale are tasked with gathering the escaped creatures of Eden and sending them either to Hell or Heaven to stock for the impending War. The worldbuilding is AMAZING, the little details are great (for those of you wanting Crowley in hunting leathers, welcome to the party), and the story itself is just good, okay. Great action, lovely plot.)

45. alpha centauri – @hyruling (T, the one where Aziraphale agrees to run away to Alpha Centauri during the Apocalypse. To my understanding, this work was previously deleted by the author, but I’m so glad it was brought back so I could read it, because two very scared, very piney idiots carving out a domestic life on a barren planet WITH A CAT is the jam I didn’t know I had. Watching them circle each other is great; watching it all come tumbling down when Plot happens is even better. It’s a happy ending, don’t get it twisted, but you always have to wade through the Bad before you get to the Good, after all. A lovely little piece, absolutely A+++.)

46. Truth Untold – GenericUsername01 (G and T, the series where Crowley was Raphael, Aziraphale was made to be his assistant, and holy crap on a STICK where to even start. The worldbuilding is INSANE, I love how the Archangels are described and go about their business (word to the wise, do NOT skip the prologue work, you miss all of the best context if you do). And if that’s not great enough, there’s a whole system of angel-devil nemesis pairs all over Earth, whom we get to meet when devils start wanting to repent. There’s baptism involved and it’s horrifying and heartbreaking. Not finished yet, but it’s ramping up. Also, Crowley is functionally blind, which is about to start causing some real humorous problems since no one else knows about it, certainly not Aziraphale.)

47. Take me to the room where the red’s all red (take me out of my head, that’s what I said) – @raiining (M, the one that’s a Dom/sub AU with gentle top Aziraphale and bottom Crowley. No real sexual elements in this one, but I can understand why the M is there, the subject matter might be a little Much for some people even if it is fairly chaste (if sensual). The dynamic between Crowley and Aziraphale is delicious af, especially when they’re snapping at each other and then later melting into each other. It’s just. So good.)

48. Take This Sinking Boat and Point it Home – sobakasu, sssnakelady (T, the one where Crowley and Aziraphale used to be the same being, and the combination of fundamental incompletion compounding with being in love is tearing Crowley apart at the seams. Darkly emotional and absolutely raw with feeling, quiet and powerful and subtle. Crowley is absolutely heartbreaking, but Aziraphale manages to bind it all up quite nicely—not perfectly, they’ll have to work at it, but sweetly and with perfect love.)

JUST SOFT

49. Three Unthwarted Wiles – @almaasi (G, the one where Aziraphale lets Crowley get away with a few things. Oh my heaven it’s so SOFT, I know that’s the point of this section but HRRGK. Crowley does so much for Aziraphale and Aziraphale returns the favor as often as he can and they just love each other so much I’m sobbing.)

50. The Original Bar Joke – @deathbycoldopen (T, the one where Crowley sees himself as the punch line in God’s big ineffable joke. Sad until finally it isn’t, but Crowley spilling the beans via joke-that-turns-into-scathing-self-reproach is a unique flavor I wasn’t expecting and it broke my heart. Absolutely wonderful.)

51. Love Stories – @just-quintessentially-me (G, the one where Aziraphale is the maudlin sad drunk. Guys, I’ll be real, the emotional payoff of this fic is sweet, but the real highlight for me is Aziraphale scolding a fire he accidentally sets, because nothing feels so Aziraphale as him being drunk off his wings and attempting to LECTURE a FIRE. Also Crowley’s reaction to Aziraphale setting a fire in the bookshop is…well, about how you’d expect. A fantastic little number I quite enjoy.)

52. no mind to lose – @saints-and-demons-preserve-us (T, the one where Aziraphale goes fast and Crowley is a mess. Starts with an ode to Crowley’s long hair, as it rightly should, and evolves into a rather adorable start-stop where Aziraphale engages in various touching activities and Crowley is doing his level best, bless him, to catch up and remember how limbs and lungs work. Precious.)

53. Alas, Poor Yorick! This Is Gonna Suck! – WhiteQueenWrites (T, the one where Crowley finds his perfect opportunity while teaching a theater class to the Them. Yes, it’s canon!verse, not an AU. Yes, Crowley and Aziraphale kiss while teaching Romeo and Juliet. Yes, it is exactly as adorable and tween-traumatizing as you would expect. It’s very fun!)

54. Divine Intervention (aka God Ships It) – @theladyzephyr (G, the one where God has had it up to HERE with two idiots stuck in denial. Oh, folks. This fic is a TEASE. This fic is TANTALIZING. This fic is INFURIATING. And it is so, so worth its weight in gold, because the moment of triumph is so unspeakably sweet. It’s so good, y’all. So good.)

55. Learning to Speak the Language of Flowers – @junkshop-disco (M, the one where Crowley and Aziraphale are orbiting closer. M for discussions of trauma, I think. I’m not sure if I have the words for this one but I’ll try anyway. It shifts between the night the world didn’t end and the events after, and the time Crowley and Aziraphale spent in the Dowling household, and the transitions between the two are so smooth sometimes it’s hard to catch which time period you’re in. The writing is emotive and beautiful, and the emotional impetus behind the fic is compelling. Highly, highly recommended.)

56. seasons, changes – @whatawriterwields (G, the one that cycles through four seasons of Crowley and Aziraphale’s new life in love. Gorgeous and descriptive and so sensory—it really captures a lot of the best parts of each season. And also it’s incredibly loving and I die.)

57. waking up to you – @whatawriterwields (G, the series that’s a collection of tender morning moments. Listen, this writer is the MASTER of tender fluff, and this series is overwhelming. I have had to physically clutch at my heart and wail at my ceiling because of how cute everything is. If you need a dose of fluff after reading something angsty, here’s your medicine.)

58. Nemo dat quod non habet – @liquidlyrium (T and M, the series that examines the aftermath of the trials in Heaven and Hell, and Crowley and Aziraphale have an actual conversation. M rating is just to be safe bc the makeouts can be intense, but it’s not bad. The stories are basically revolving around the same conversation from two different points; Aziraphale’s bit goes more into the kissy-kissy afterwards. Powerful and raw, but understated; there’s dignity in this series, and a good bit of playfulness. The writing carries itself exceptionally well.)

59. Where to Start – @freyjawriter24 (T, the one where Crowley’s almost kissed Aziraphale plenty of times through history. Oh, y’all. Crowley’s emotions are laid so bare. The longing is so good. The scenes are all pretty original and interesting, and you can get a good sense for what Aziraphale’s feeling in these moments, too. Top-notch.)

TOUCH-STARVED/BODY WORSHIP/WINGS

60. The Power of Touch – @wordsintimeandspace (T, the one where Crowley needs some tending to and Aziraphale is more than happy to do it. It’s lots of kissing and touching and it gets intense but not too sexual. Also some lovely communication and boundary negotiation and it’s great.)

61. show a little skin (baby I’m begging) – @summerofspock (T, the one where Crowley can barely handle seeing Aziraphale flash a little skin now and then. Oh, y’all, it’s so much fun. Crowley is in over his head, someone please help him. Ankles, collarbones, FOREARMS. Oh lawd.)

62. You’re the Only Prayer I Need – @kedreeva (G, the one where Crowley’s shedding and Aziraphale helps. Featuring an absurdly large bathtub, wing bathing, and finally the peeling of snakeskin, which sounds so intensely satisfying, tbh. Simple, companionable, and nice.)

63. Of Firsts and Foremosts – @kedreeva (T, the one where Crawly finds Aziraphale cornered by Ligur and steps in. This one has really interesting bits of lore stuffed into it and a sweetly cautious blooming camaraderie between Crawly and Aziraphale; on top of that, there’s cuddling and wing care and both are extremely good.)

64. At Least Eleven Second First Times – @enjambament (M, the one where Aziraphale has to get used to being on Earth in a body again. M for risqué elements that brush up against smut without crossing over. This one is all about feeling things, from emotional to physical sensations, and how Aziraphale is overwhelmed by it all, but there’s also bits of the inherent diversity of the world and the significance of being able to feel things and on top of being secondhand-overstimulated, it drops you directly into Feels Town and it’s delicious.)

BONUS

65. a snake by any other name – @asideofourown (G, the one where Crowley’s snake form is spotted by a herpetology student and an unlikely companionship is struck. This one is from the view of an OC and is really cute, involving Crowley growing fond of a human with proper appreciation for serpentine charms. Also the OC and her girlfriend have a fun argument about what Crowley actually is and it’s adorable.)

66. Always Trust a Dog’s Judge in Character – notebooksandlaptops (T, the one where Warlock moves back to his London home and starts building a life. This one is so good, y’all; adult (ish, he’s nineteen) Warlock is such a delight and you can see Nanny Ashtoreth’s influence all over him. It’s even better when he meets Adam and forms the biggest crush known to man (good thing it’s reciprocated, that would have been awkward), and befriends the rest of the Them (Pepper in particular is to be feared and respected). A fic about growing up and finding yourself, and I love where it’s going.)

H/C /WHUMP/BAMF

67. In Peace I Will Both Lie Down and Sleep – @fizzybiscuits (G, the one where Aziraphale is having nightmares. This fic feels so organic—like a logical continuation of the show, or at least one of many directions it could take. Aziraphale having vivid bad dreams and NOT TALKING ABOUT IT is so on-brand, and Crowley getting worried out of his gourd is also on-brand. Vulnerable and sweet and soft, once the nightmares are dealt with.)

68. A Touch Like Sunlight – @just-quintessentially-me (T, the one where Crowley acts the hero like an idiot. This is Crowley’s vengeance against the Archangels and it’s heart-pounding; of course stuff goes off the rails pretty quickly, but even the stuff that goes right has tension in it. A great adventure, with an appearance from BAMF!Aziraphale.)

69. Chokecherry – unsmilingchuck (T, the one where Crowley helps clean up Aziraphale’s hands after a frankly awful punishment from Heaven. This fic feels calm, maybe more so when it’s revealed what it’s in the aftermath of, and Crowley is very methodical and meticulous in his care. It’s clear how much they care about each other and that’s always the jam.)

70. Thus saith the Lord – @themanicmagician (T, the one where angels can be drafted into Her service like a hive mind. Oh, folks, you want historical pain? You want emotional torment? You want a thrilling chase and a tender aftercare and a triumphant victory? You want to be in your friend’s house and hear the Plagues song from Prince of Egypt and almost have a complete breakdown bc you’re reliving this fic? Then join me in singing this one’s praises, because it delivers. It does not let up even for a second, once it gets going. This is probably one of the darkest fics I’ve ever read, but the ending balances it out. It’s great.)

71. In Somnis Veritas – PinkPenguinParade (T, the one where Aziraphale volunteers to help Crowley with his nightmares. Oh, y’all. Y’all, this one is so good. Just two immortal beings, working through their various traumas together. There’s pain and healing and a beautiful, beautiful ending. This fic hits all the right notes, it’s splendid.)

72. Incongruous States of Being – @zehwulf (T, the one where Aziraphale is a BAMF and that was never truly up for debate. Featuring an argument meant mostly for fun, and then a fight meant mostly for not-fun. Protective Aziraphale through the roof, gang. Very, very good. The tension is exquisite, and the characterizations are perfection. A wonderful take on Aziraphale and his abilities.)

73. Aim Your Arrow At The Sky – @trellanyx (T, the one where Aziraphale is a warrior and don’t you forget it. Warnings for some pretty graphic violence. This fic is not epic-length but it is epic-scope; it’s downright cinematic. The details are so crisp and the action so well-described, and threaded through it all is fierce, tender, desperate love. A wonderful read, especially if you want to see two particular Archangels get theirs.)

[karnsteinreview]

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Carmilla on Goodreads

Release Year: 1872

Format I Read: audio dramatization (previously read the ebook)

Length: 2h 22m

Genres: Horror, Gothic, Vampires

This review is going to be a little different.

Since we’re in the midst of spooky season and Halloween is less than a week away as I’m writing this, I decided now would be a good time to reread and discuss this book. The fact that audible is giving away a dramatization of this book for subscribers also helped, and though I’ve read Carmilla before, the dramatization is the version I went with for the reread. The dramatization is really good, all the actors are wonderful and Rose Leslie in particular really said gay rights with her performance.

Carmilla is a book that I’m always surprised by the people who do know what it is and the people who don’t. I feel like it has gotten a lot more recognition over the past few years with the web series of the same name being pretty popular among internet gays, but even some people who watched that web series didn’t realize that it was based on a novella from the 1800s (though it said as much in the credits).

In case you don’t know, Carmilla is a novella that revolves around a young woman named Laura who lives in Styria with her father, and under weird circumstances they take in a house guest: Carmilla, a girl who appears to be of a similar age as Laura. Assumptions can be made when I say that this is a vampire story, and its ones that predates Dracula by several decades. It’s also very gay and the namesake of this very blog you’re reading now.

I don’t think spoilers really ruin the book, and I think a lot of the “spoilers” that I’m going to discuss are rather obvious, but here is your one and only spoiler warning. Normally I’d be more careful, but as I said, this is a different sort of review.

Given that I named my blog Karnstein Review, after the Duchess Karnstein herself, it should be fairly obvious that I adore this book. It’s a book I knew at least hinted at some sort of sapphic relationship between Laura and Carmilla, but when I’d first read it, I assumed it would just be hints. And subtle hints at that. It was written in the 1870s, after all. Well, it’s very very very gay. I’m not sure how else to describe it other than that. The gayness is not only overt, they blatantly discuss love and romance and kiss each other. It’s a lot more than I expected from a 19th book.

But, I also have to acknowledge that it is a 19th century book about a lesbian, and it’s one written by a man nonetheless. Things don’t end well for Carmilla and Laura’s relationship, and there’s pretty intense judgement on any kind of sexual feelings, much less sexual feelings between two women. The message that Carmilla’s seduction of Laura is wrong and immoral is as blatant as her seduction of Laura is. So why do I like this book so much?

Well, for one thing, I’ve always been a sucker for vampire stories (my god I only realized that pun after I wrote it). I think that a lot of queer people who grew up with religious backgrounds are drawn to vampires and vampire stories, and there’s a reason for that. Particularly with these older stories like Carmilla and Dracula, one of the major themes of vampire stories is sexual fear, desires, and moralizing about those things. Vampires represent something that we are told is dangerous. Something that can kill us and even hurt our very soul. Vampires will seduce you and take something from you that you need to live a normal happy life. They may even steal your salvation. In Carmilla when I was rereading it, I noted that her need for blood is never described as thirst or hunger. It’s called lust, specifically “lust for living blood.” Many who grew up with feelings for people of the same gender have been told similar things about those feelings. Vampires are those feelings. And these vampire stories were often written specifically to express and moralize about sexual feelings. Of course vampire stories are attractive to us.

With Carmilla the sexual moralizing plain, and it would definitely not be something I let fly in a modern book, but there’s something strangely familiar about it here. The book is told from Laura’s perspective, and she herself described her confusing and intense feelings for Carmilla. She’ll say she’s in love with Carmilla and repulsed by Carmilla in the same sentence and it doesn’t feel like a lie either time. She’ll be clearly very troubled by Carmilla’s overt flirtation and courting, but also keep doing things that put her close to Carmilla. She’ll keep flirting back and keep acknowledging the feelings that she has. It’s paradoxal, but it’s a familiar feeling. It’s someone just realizing that they have feeling for someone of their same gender and being very, very troubled by what that means. Laura’s words and thoughts feel very familiar to me, and I don’t think that J. Sheridan Le Fanu was purposely trying to accurately portray my own gay panic, yet he definitely did.

I don’t think that Carmilla is the perfect story. I keep imagining all the ways in which I’d like to rewrite it, which all involve me just giving Carmilla and Laura a happy ending, but I think it’s an important to the history of gay fantasy and horror. I also think that it’s a story that can still mean a lot and speak to queer people today, as evidenced by the very popular web series adaptation of it. It’s a book I would happily suggest, but it’s also a book I’d suggest you know what it is going in. It’s a lesbian vampire story written in the 1800s, and all the implications that come with that are true.