#my gender is beast woman and i support all other beast girls of the world

[ahb-writes]

Book Review: 'Iron Widow'

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

action

Asian sci-fi

gender studies

giant robot

rebellion

revenge

sci-fi

social commentary

superhero

My Rating: 4 of 5 stars

The unearned demands of the noble class breed a very particular, very familiar stench of greed. Surviving preferential dicta for race, ethnicity, and gender, one encounters a sociopolitical infrastructure whose foundational phobias sting the eyes into blinking. The bigotry, the intolerance, and the chauvinism are ubiquitous, and as such, sweeping efforts of immense chaos are necessary to shake the firmament. IRON WIDOW affirms what is occasionally, truthfully, philosophized: Abrupt revolution is necessary when gradual progress is rendered functionally impossible.

Such are the woeful accuracies framing the corrupt polity of the land of Huaxia, its many provinces, and the army under whose auspices each citizen pays tribute. Forced conscription, unyielding tax burdens, a world under siege from biomechanical alien entities. The glaringly forthright and uncompromisingly distorted culture of violence, scarcity, and sexism of Huaxia gives readers a clear window into the novel's trajectory: Everything is terrible, and one young woman, Wu Zetian, pledges to fight for a new paradigm until it kills her.

Lady Wu, by fashionable accounts, is a mad woman. But readers know better. Readers know she enlists to serve as a concubine, a position of fealty and support during military operations, only to exact revenge upon a pompous fool. Readers know she acquiesces to train with a convicted murderer, only to further her ambitions to end the war on her own terms. Readers know she signs a contract with a sleezy media magnate, with her own blood, only because the manufactured splendor of public adoration is the only mirror that outshines the stratified grandeur of the national army. Many people view Wu Zetian as a bit mad, sure, but everyone in her life has failed her, abused her, or misused her. Zetian cannot unmake the trauma others have wrought, but she can definitely become a nightmare all her own, and terrorize in kind those who deserve it.

IRON WIDOW offers contemporary readers the type of noisy, foul-mouthed, vengeance-seeking young female lead character so many fantasy fiction titles lack. The type of hard-luck woman so many books mimic in earnest but ultimately blink when the blade is swung, when the trigger is pulled, or in the case of IRON WIDOW, when the 40m tall mech transforms and starts ripping people's limbs off. Zetian never knew a good person in her whole life, so why would she ever desire to become one herself?

The novel's setting is a futuristic Asian fantasy realm complete with giant robots, ravaging otherworldly beasts, hover-vehicles, holographic displays, fantastical god-beings, powerful physical manifestations of qì, and sprawling military-industrial complexes. The author clearly loves the mash-up, as readers will find multiple references to ancient Chinese literature and lore alongside sci-fi exploits like transforming mecha that typify the zodiac. The kitsch may not be worth admiring, if the reader isn't in tune with either, but it's plenty enough for those whose interests rightfully intersect.

The best thing about this book is how thoroughly committed the author, and by extension, the protagonist is to seeing this story through to the end. Zetian, for example, isn't bitter and pessimistic about death because she has no options, she's merely giving as much violence as she takes ("Too bad. I am exactly the kind of ice-blooded, rotten-hearted girl he fears I am. And I am fine with that. May he stay unsettled," page 114). Some characters match Zetian's grit; others push back. Another female mech pilot, Dugu Qieluo, for example, is aggressively unlikable. Lady Dugu doesn't hesitate to throw a punch (at a supposed ally) and defends her personhood with vigor ("Never appease. No one's ever been respected for appeasing. The only thing you did was let them know there are no consequences to treating you like trash," page 295).

Fighting massive bug creatures in the wilds beyond the Great Wall occupy the official duties of these and other characters. But piloting giant robots to save humanity feels comically miniscule in importance when juxtaposed with the gravity of avoiding sexual assault, navigating corrupt officials, sniffing out traitors, and spitting in the eye of any supposed fate.

For example, Zetian allies with a wealthy young man, Yizhi, a possible paramour from her days as an impoverished girl in the mountains. Yizhi is a sympathetic man with a gift for big words. His kindness and his wealth seem limitless. But, "How far does the darkness in him go?" (page 183), she asks, knowing full well the corruption that girds her country doubtlessly lines the young man's pockets as well. A soft rich boy doesn't survive as one of dozens of sons what for being only a soft rich boy. He may be an animal, but evidently, Yizhi hides his teeth. A durable contrast to Li Shimin, a 19-year-old man convicted of patricide. Shimin is Zetian's co-pilot, and fittingly, the man is all rough edges, beset with the tired eyes and ruined liver of an alcoholic. Shimin doesn't hide his teeth, and his protective alliance with Zetian, a pledge to bark, tear, and destroy anything in their path, wavers on the border between keenly obligatory and affectionately benevolent. It's a love triangle appropriate for a novel layered with dead bodies.

IRON WIDOW is a thrill. It's difficult to find a fantasy book with female lead characters whose uncompromising disregard for state discrimination and fervent rebuke of institutionalized sexual violence manifest so clearly and cleanly. The first half of the book doesn't waver. Vengeance is on the table from the very first chapter. The action is pointed and the character dynamics are definitive. The violence only recedes when, in the second half of the novel, the story shifts into a rather strategic atmosphere, as Zetian maneuvers her successes and failures into greater grabs for political power.

Nevertheless, the book commits to characters-with-issues and unbuckles their ambitions with glee. It's a riotous adventure whose characters always know the stakes, and whose characters are just smart enough to know the pain of giving in to the greed of others is often greater than the suffering required survive on one's own terms. Buttressing these themes, compelling B-stories fill in the gaps, involving filial piety, bisexuality, the myth of popular karma, the quest to rid the world of entitled pricks, and the sad, disquieting inevitability of death ("Dread hollows through me. We spend so much effort living these lives, yet every trace of their substance and meaning can be erased so quickly. So easily," page 338).

❯ ❯ Book Reviews || ahb writes on Good Reads

[sheepgirlmaidtummy]

What... do you think of Draco Centauros

yes.

[afro-elf]

fine, i’ll elaborate on my thoughts about tylor sift but they will be disorganized

disclaimer: i know a few people will read this and be like “op is a hozier fan can she really talk about the cultural obsession with mediocre white art?” and the answer is yes because a) i’m black and i have an english degree so can do whatever i fucking want, b) hozier is a better artist than taylor objectively, like his mediocre tracks would be considered her great ones, and c) the comparison of taylor to hozier is part of the problem Genuinely because i don’t even think white people like half the music they listen to, they just don’t wanna be left behind, we’ll get into this later. i’m sorry to everyone who is tired of hearing about him but hozier will be returning later in this post jsfglsjlgldsjlfd

second note: read this

i don’t just dislike taylor because she’s white. i don’t dislike taylor because she’s a woman. i don’t dislike her because she writes mean and petty lyrics about past relationships and people who wronged her. i don’t dislike taylor because her public circle of friends is almost exclusively blonde white celebrities with their own laundry lists of issues that includes ryan reynolds and blake lively who are poster children for white privilege and pseudo-excellence if i’ve ever seen them. i dislike taylor because the amalgamation of all of those things is so exemplary of a huge problem i have with the music industry in general but also like american society

fuck it, numbered list!

1. taylor swift consistently releases the same mediocre album but in different colors. every album is the same lyrically and tonally. her body of work rarely goes very far above “good for taylor swift”. folklore as both title and musical aesthetic is irrelevant to the actual content of the album, which is just every taylor swift album except set to folk pop and with a bit more cussing, congrats for baby’s first swear. i’ve seen folklore compared to much better bodies of work and even propped up by stans as album of the year, a distinction that rina sawayama and chloe x halle will be battling it out for if there is any justice in the world at all. the fact that she is allowed to do this and still be considered great when this is something that even white male artists are butchered critically for... astounds me. like we all know how well received all of coldplay’s similar sounding albums are.... Come on. 

2. i don’t think taylor or her work is particularly feminist and yet for some reason every time she frowns an army of white women brings her kleenex. i’m not saying taylor’s anger has always been unjustified, but her feminism to me has always felt like “i can do whatever a man can do” feminism, which is utterly fucking useless to me as a black woman. it’s only useful to her because as a wealthy, white, straight, cis white woman her ONLY obstacle in life is her gender. and if she just didn’t have that tricky little bitch then maybe people would take her seriously. like, just think about her music video for the man... what was the thesis of that? what was the point of that? with all of her privileges she’d just be gaining a single extra privilege. she’s a blonde blue eyed thin white girl, the world kisses her feet. i have no interest in proving myself any better or any worse than white men, they are not the standard for how a person should be treated, they’re cautionary tales, and white women are too. i think taylor capitalizes off of white woman victimhood, and it’s all over her writing style. even when she’s trying to be empowered, like in mad woman for example, there is this tone to it of victimization, poking the bear, unleashing the beast if you will. she invokes the imagery of salem witches and even more boldly chooses a noose to write about in the song which is..... surely going to be a white tumblr staple for many gifsets to come but holy shit is it hollow. she also tends to come back to teenage memories in her music and she’s thirty. i don’t think about being seventeen unless i’m being held at gunpoint but she seems to think about it All The Time. and part of this is to keep herself young, at least in her music, which only further ingrains this image of fragile teeny bopper taylor into the mind of the listener, fueling her victim image. this imagery and language means nothing because the world always rallies around taylor. even when she was the butt of jokes for not being beyonce (which she is not and never can be) and writing about her exes (which she does), she was largely supported by the industry and by critics. look at how many fucking awards she has!

3. folk and indie and alternative music is in a moment of transition, where musicians of color are getting the chance to really speak about how they’ve been treated in these overwhelmingly white circles and create their own standards and their own voices. and for taylor swift to swoop in with aaron dessner and jack antonoff fantano and almost reassert that mid-2010s indie sound as The Sound of folk pop in the popular consciousness.... it makes me violent! it! makes! me! violent! 

4. back to hozier! finally, i wanna talk about white standom, fandom, bandom, and womandom. i often see these very superficial comparisons between hozier and taylor (and hozier and florence and hozier and stevie nicks and hozier and whatever other white woman in fashion) and they frustrate me for more than one reason. i know that hozier has met taylor and said she’s cool, which is nice of him and he’s a nice man, but i’m not a nice man so i’m going to just say it: none of the people who have made those posts have listened to more than four hozier songs and it shows. the reason why this matters is because these posts catch on and create an image and preconception of hozier’s music that is divorced from reality and divorced from his influences and most importantly divorced from the deliberate and reverent blackness of his musical style. hozier has his white male privilege in the industry for sure but he’s not as towering of a giant as taylor and taylor’s music is an unsalted chicken, plain oatmeal, white paint drying on a white wall, a stick of unflavored gum. her music is so white it told me that its dad is a cop. i am, as a black hozier fan, exhausted with having to share space with white women who don’t know why hozier’s music kicks me in my lungs sometimes and think that taylor mentioning a tree ONCE in her 3 minute acoustic guitar slog about whatever suburb is the same when it simply is not. i swear some of you are pretending to love taylor because your friends love her and you don’t wanna be left out of the hot new musical discourse but she’s only the hot new musical discourse CONSTANTLY because she’s a white woman, she’s almost the Perfect white woman. like if someone asked me to describe a white woman, it would be taylor swift. her position at the top of the musical pyramid among people who eclipse her musically, vocally, and lyrically is only allowed because she’s The Perfect White Woman. she’s an ideal. white girls relate to her immediately because of it and now we have this unshakable mob of unbearable white women who think that the world has wronged someone who literally wrote fanfiction about the rich oil heiress white woman who owned her rhode island mansion before her aklghlghdhlgs it drives me fucking NUTS 

anyway that’s all. if you made it this far, listen to adia victoria, kaia kater, samantha crain, valerie june, kelsey lu, corinne bailey rae, brittany howard, kimya dawson, japanese breakfast, cold specks, left at london, rhiannon giddens, aisha badru, shea diamond, nadine shah, xenia rubinos, karen o, mirel wagner.... Anyone

[never-enough-fanfiction]

Hey ive been swamped with ACT studying latley, i was wondering if you can do head canons on what Benimaru would be like as a dad (x mother wife) where the two of you have kids? Since he is a proto nationalist I totally see him wanting a big traditional family. How would he react to pregnancy news? What would he be like when his s/o is in labor, or his reaction to babys first steps or first word. So much fluff!!

If, while reading this, you get the feeling that it was wirtten by some caveman who doesn't know shiet about children or words, know that this caveman tried her best to make it as cute and fun as possible, and that really is the pinnacle of her abilities. Okay?

+ As always, sorry for delay, I know how nerve wracking can exams be (just finished my midterms) and I hope you will achieve the highest possible results. Unfortunately you asked an author who is what she is ... Please take these 1 500 words as compensation.

Enjoy!

News

Benimaru took the news of your first pregnancy in silence. In a silence so deaf and long that every passing second tightened the hoop around your heart tighter and tighter.

It took you three days to get ready to say it to his face, and yet the stress was still eating you from the inside. His lack of response as you fumbled the ends of your T-shirt in your hands did not make it easier nor better.

You looked up sharply, preferring to face his anger rather than spending another second in uncertainty, and you found that Benimaru was looking over your shoulder, present body, but definitely not mind.

After a few calls and waving in front of his face, Benimaru seemed to wake up and shifted his lost gaze to you.

"We will have a kid?"

"Yes, we will." You repeated, stressing each word, trying to get through to him this time. You expected many things, but not so much confusion.

"A kid." He repeated, and his crimson eyes lit up the glow. "A kid!"

Benimaru cuped your checks and kissed every inch of your face. Lips, checks, temples, forehead, nose, eyelids.

"A kid."

The next person to hear the happy news was Konro, and then the whole city somehow. The residents' mouths did not close for the next 9 months.

Each time he took it better and better. Each time he almost went out of his skin showering you with kisses or dancing around the room with you in his arms. Only this first stage of the shock was shortened.

Pregnancy

Benimaru didn't know at first what a pregnant woman could and couldn't do, so it was best if you didn't do anything. After long interpretations from the midwife, the range of your allowable activities extended beyond sitting and breathing, but there was no question of any use of force.

After a while, you even stopped trying to lift anything above the bowl of rice. Every time Benimaru saw that you were carrying a package, you happened to get the slightest rebuke. It was worse for all Hikeshi within 100 meters for not-helping. After that, you didn't want to trouble the innocent firefighters anymore.

As you can't even look at sake, your evening drinking has turned into making up names over tea. (Not that Shinmon suddenly stopped drinking. He doesn't want to drink in front of you when you couldn't, and after every news of the next baby, the alcohol flows in streams, so he can't complain about abstinence.) He loves holding you in his arms, with one hand for growing belly. Once he felt a kick, he literally melted.

With time, as the family began to grow, it was his duty to make sure that the older children did not tire you and find them to do something.

Childbirth

The first time he had no idea what to do. He literally turned to Konro saying:

"Konro, [Y / N], labor, what do I do ?!" Sould he wreck some buildings?

Konro, as a loving friend aware that there was no time to explain it to him with words, kicked his composite ass to the hospital.

While the whole city was celebrating the birth of another Shinmon, Benimaru was sitting next to you, holding a small bundle in his stiff hands.

"You can hug them, you know?"

"They are too tiny!" he muttered, afraid to raise his voice so as not to wake the sleeping figure.

“They are stronger than you think, Love. They're Shinmon after all, ”you recalled with a chuckle.

Since then, every time the inhabitants of the viewer of Benimaru running to the hospital (have you ever seen Benimaru running? Me neither.), they immediately reach for alcohol.

Begginings

Benimaru has experience and no major problems in taking care of children, especially since they are his. In his time off work, you can see him sitting in front of the Guardhouse, giving his toothless child to chew on his forearms, and sometimes making a tour around the city together, to the joy of all the residents. Other times, he will sit in front of the little one trying to teach him the first words.

*

"C’mon kid, da-d." Benimaru tried to keep the child's attention who was much more interested in chewing a wooden puppet.

"Daaa ~"

"Close enough, da-d." Some time ago he made a bet with [Y/N] that their first word would be dad, and the rules did not exclude support. "Da-d."

"Maaa ~"

"No, DA-D." He sighed softly and looked up sharply for the approaching steps.

Konro stepped into the yard, gloomy, looking around until he found the Captain.

“Oi Waka, have you seen Hika and Hina? I can’t find them anywhere. "

The red-eyed man shrugged, pointing to the street.

"Maybe they are terrorizing the candy seller again."

Konro sighed heavily and disappeared behind the building, leaving them alone again, and Benimaru returned his attention to the child, already scrambling onto his lap.

"Wanna sleep?" He helped them climb a little higher and leaned in as they held out a small hand at him. He was expecting an awkward slap on the nose, but instead got a tug on his hair almost to the floor. "Ack! What the… "

"Waka ~"

"What?" He froze as he tried to untangle the strands from his impossibly grasping fingers.

“Waka ~” The child repeated, tugging again, and giggled smugly.

Waka? Does it count as a dad? Did he win?

The next achievement was to make sure they didn't repeat all those curses after him, or at least so [Y/N] wouldn't hear.

Beni with big family

You probably expected that just as with twins, the whole Guardhouse will look after them ? Hah, ya wrong.

ENTIRE CITIES WATCH OVER THE MINI MIXES OF BENI-CHAN WITH [Y/N] -CHAN. They are so spoiled that sometimes it feels like only you and Benimaru have any rules. On the other hand, there are no problems with finding your children, just call them by name and half the street will indicate their whereabouts.

• Maybe you can't see it, but Benimaru doesn't know what to do with himself out of happiness. Even when he comes home in the evenings after a really long day, the sight of all those faces looking at him as the center of the world makes him smile. At such moments, he will always find some strength to play.

• The fun begins when they are old enough to help him with his work, not putting the Infernals to rest or blowing up houses, but just making a errands around the city where he can show them what Hikeshi's job is and teach them about his core beliefs.

He doesn't always succeed, but he knows he can rely on you and your ability to use words if he does.

• Benimaru has no problem with cases when one of his children doesn't want to follow in his footsteps, he knows that he has raised them well and that when he is gone, they will take care of his city regardless of his position or profession.

• BUT NOTHING RELATED TO THE EMPIRE!

You had to use force to stop him from throwing your daughter's boyfriend out the door when he heard he was with the empire.

Play time

Benimaru's favorite form of spending time together is, of course, teaching his children everything he can. Regardless of their gender, they all have inherited above-average amounts of fire power and a love to destruction.

After several dozen problems with stopping his own children from killing their siblings, Benimaru created a game called: "dad agains everyone"

It’s fun to watch Benimaru surroded by figures half his height, who try to collapse him to the ground.

Rest of the family

Grandpa Konro

This man survived small Benimaru and the Twins. There is nothing this man haven’t seen. Which makes him the best grandfather in the empire. At this stage, Koro already has a separate locker for everything from his numerous grandchildren.

He is also your kids safe place when the parent's fury rages outside.

Aunt Hika and Hina

There were times when you had to entrust your older children to the care of twins (if your children were several years old, Hika and Hina were also older, don’t get me wrong). The girls made sure that the younger members of the family learned everything they needed to know about Asakusa, the inhabitants and their usual behavior.

In fact, at some point they were considered to be part of their siblings, and so were treated like ones (read: regular bloodshed).

Nevertheless, every time one of the stepsiblings messed up with someone they shouldn't (manga readers know perfectly well that kids have it after their dad), the two fire foxes turned into two bloodthirsty beasts, ready to chase away any problematic individual.

[kittyreading]

Manga Master List: Recommendations and My Personal Wish List

!!//PLEASE READ//!!

Below is every manga from my amazon wishlist I would recommend(as of February 11 2021) with a picture and a 3-5 sentence explanation of what the manga is about. Underneath will also be the number of volumes I have read, the number I own, and it’s status of ongoing or complete and how many volumes it has. This way you can decide for yourself if you think I have read enough of it to give an accurate recommendation.

This list only includes manga you can purchase (including digital purchases) from the wishlist. I decided that I would in fact include my personal amazon manga wishlist here and at the bottom for people to buy THEMSELVES a copy of any of these manga they would like. Keep in mind many of these won’t have volume 1 in the list but you should be able to get to the series page from the list. If a manga shows up on the amazon list that I did not include in this one that is because I have not read enough of them(or any of them) to recommend. Ok? Cool, enjoy the list!!

1. The Girl from the Other side is about a little girl living with a gentleman monster. It is a supernatural mystery with beautiful art.

Own: 0

Read 4

Series: Ongoing at 9 volumes

2. Pumpkin Scissors is a military fantasy about a War Veteran named Randal Oland who joins the pumpkin scissors core to help with war relief and uncover the deep corruption of the government. It is similar in themes to FMA in the sense it appears to be based on a World War, and corruption of government but it more focused on the power of the noble houses in government. There is also a fun science element but it is not as in focus as in FMA. The two but are very very different overall tho. Only 5 volumes were distributed in physical English copies as the publishing company went bankrupt, all others are only available digitally. (I couldn’t get the manga vol. 1 cover to work so the picture above is a poster for the anime)

Own: 0

Read: around 10

Series: Ongoing at 23 volumes

3. Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun is a slice of life about a bunch of highschoolers. Nozaki is the mangaka of a popular Shoujo manga who uses his personal experiences with friends to create his monthly comic series. It is a fun gender stereotype reversal manga with a large cast of both male and female characters (one could be HC as genderfluid but she’s still canonically female at this time) The manga is one of the easiest to read as the panels are mostly in straight down rectangles so the pages are extremely easy to follow and is very funny.

Own: 1

Read: 11

Status: Ongoing at 12 volumes

4. Yu-Gi-Oh! is well known to be about the card game yu-gi-oh, using magic and myths to further the story, HOWEVER, Yu-gi-oh! is the “Season 0″ of the series it is much darker than to be expected and there is no card game. The Yu-gi-oh most are familiar with is Yu-gi-oh Duelist (just found this out myself) and is the Yu-gi-oh you probably already know. There is no overarching plot to this mini series it is just Yugi fucking shit up playing games and destroying some bullies. I have yet to read any of Duelist as of the creation of this post therefore I cannot recommend it :/ 

Own: 5 (1-3 & 6-7)

Read: 7

Status: Completed at 7 volumes

5. The Way of the House Husband is about a former yakuza who gets married and flips his script. He becomes a house husband for his working wife and carries on doing chores and errands while still looking and acting scary unintentionally and getting himself in trouble. It is a slice of life comedy with some adult jokes but is over all extremely funny and pleasant to read.

Own: 0

Read: 2

Status: Ongoing at 7 volumes

6. Hikaru no Go is about a highschool boy who finds a haunted Go board. He meets the ghost who once was a prolific Go player. Together they work to become a world class Go champion meeting new people along the way. This series was cut short due to legal issues with a real Go player and therefore will remain unfinished but the story that is there is golden. It is still one of the most popular manga in Japan.

Own: 0

Read: 5

Status: Complete at 23 Volumes

7. Zatch Bell! This manga is about a teenager named Kiyo who gets sent a young boy with amnesia named Zatch Bell who turns out to be an alien called a momodo. Now the two must battle other momodo in order to understand what happened to Zatch and to make Zatch the new king. Along the way they make many friends and save both the momodo and human worlds. This one is difficult because it is a classic that did not do well in America so the volumes are expensive and the series is unfinished in English. You can only buy 27 of the volumes in English and a few of them are almost impossible to find, however it is well worth the money if you can afford it and it is available online.

Own: 6 (1-5 & 13)

Read: 15

Status: Complete at 33 Volumes only 27 printed in English (you can finish series online)

8. Fullmetal Alchemist is a cult classic most have read it, watched the series, or heard of it at the very least. This is one of the most popular Manga of all time and for good reason. The manga is about 2 brothers Alphonse and Edward on a journey to return their bodies to normal after committing the taboo of human transmutation. The manga has themes of racism, government corruption and manipulation of the military. The versions on my wishlist are the special Fullmetal Editions so they will have a different price point and volume number than the regular volumes or the omnibuses’ 

Own: 12

Read: 12

Status: Complete at 27 Volumes

9. Princess Jellyfish is about a young woman who is sort of an outcast otaku living with 5 other otaku women. She has a deep love for jellyfish as they remind her of her late mother. She meets a beautiful woman who turns out to be a male college student and slowly comes out of her shell making new friends and growing with old ones as well. This manga is very sweet and I really don’t know what else to say haha.

Own: 0

Read: 4

Status: Complete at 17 volumes

10. !!!HUGE TW FOR EATING DISORDERS!!! In Clothes Called Fat is a, oneshot, non romanticizing story of an office woman trying to lose weight and developing several eating disorders in the process. She goes through hardships in relationships and bullying as well. It has a bittersweet ending and should be read with caution but it is beautifully done. Please do not read this if you are under the age 16 at the very youngest there are NSFW moments as well as just generally not being a topic for younger audiences.

Own: No

Read: Yes

Status: Completed one shot

11. My LOVE Story!! Is an adorable Slice of Life shojo about a highschooler named Takeo Gouda, his girlfriend Yamato, and his best friend and hear throb Suna. This series is rather refreshing as the relationship starts pretty much immediately, the best friend is very supportive, and it is focused on Takeo’s personality over looks as he is often compared in manga to a gorilla or bear. It is a generally heart warming story with some emotional side plots. The ending is sort of sudden but it’s really enjoyable.

Own: 6 (1-3,8,10-12)

Read: 13

Status: Completed at 13 Volumes

12. Soul Eater is pretty popular but if you don’t know what it is about it is about a Weapon named Soul and his Meister Maka. They attend a school that teaches them how to defeat people before they turn into Demons, saving the world in the process. Once a weapon eats 100 evil souls and a witches soul they can become the new death Scythe! That is the plot presented, and it of course goes off into a much more complicated storyline. It is super fun and engaging with a fascinating plot near the end.

Own: 5

Read: 15

Status: Completed at 25 Volumes

13. D. Gray-Man is a little complicated. Similarly to Soul Eater D. Gray-Man is a story based around defeating people turned demon and the saving of the world through an organization, however the plot gets very complicated very quickly. The art is some of the most interesting and beautifully fun art I’ve come across and the characters are (so far as I’ve read) all amazing. The story has a lot of christian influence and is one you have to really keep up with to understand but I recommend it regardless!

Own: 10

Read: 10

Status: Ongoing at 27 Volumes

14. One-Punch Man is also very popular and is about a man who becomes so strong he only needs to punch you once to completely annihilate you, and it greatly annoys him. This manga greatly touches on the themes of self worth as Saitama becomes a hero that no one seems to want. The fights are fun and engaging, tho at times can be difficult to read. The art is gorgeous, with some of the most heavily detailed work I have ever seen.

Own: 3

Read: 7

Status: Ongoing at 21 Volumes

15. The Boy and The Beast is the manga adaptation of the movie by the same name. This is a bittersweet story about a boy who finds a family in the land of the beasts and the repercussions of this intermixing. It is sweet and sad and there’s not much else to say, but that it is a beautifully crafted story.

Own: 1

Read: 1 (but I’ve seen the movie and read the light novel)

Status: Complete at 4 Volumes

16. MAR is not a manga I should be recommending as I genuinely don’t think I have read enough of the story to do so but I love it so much I’m going to anyway. MAR is a classic Isekai Shonen, a kid goes through a door into another world and has to fight a war to save it, there is a super fun magic system and some wonderful story building with genuinely enjoyable characters and battles. I am recommending this more based off the anime than the manga itself because it was one of my absolute favorites when I was younger, so take from that what you will! This manga has the same issue Zatch Bell does however, the series did not do amazingly so the volumes can be expensive!

Own: 3

Read: 3

Status: Complete at 15 Volumes

Thank you for your time haha! I hope you liked the list, here is my wishlist again and if you have any questions please let me know!! I will try to keep this master list updated as it and the wishlist will only continue to grow, but I make no promises for doing it often. Making this took me a very long time so I hope you like it!

[politalysis]

# What has happened to JK Rowling?

Growing up in the early 2000s immediately made Harry Potter a huge part of your childhood. Even if you never read the books or watched the films, you can probably name the three main characters. Even if you weren’t interested in Harry Potter in the slightest, you probably know your Hogwarts house. It’s incredible what Harry Potter did for our generation all over the world. Children would stay up on their eleventh birthdays anxiously awaiting a Hogwarts acceptance letter, knowing full well that owl was never going to come. Our imagination kept the dream of going to Hogwarts and learning magic alive anyway. Even now at the age of 23, I can for the most part keep a conversation flowing with anyone who has read the books or even just watched the films. You could even go as far as to say it was our generation’s Lord of the Rings.

JK Rowling came from very humble beginnings. She suffered with depression in her childhood and early teens, and lost her mother to multiple sclerosis in 1990. These struggles inspired her a lot when writing Harry Potter. She channeled her grief and pain into her writing. In 1992, she married a man she had met whilst living in Portugal, but Rowling suffered domestic abuse at his hands and the couple separated a year later. She lost her job and moved to Edinburgh in Scotland, where she had to sign up for welfare benefits, which left her a poor and depressed single mother spending her time writing in coffee shops. When she finished writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, twelve publishers rejected the opportunity to publish the book. Once someone finally agreed to publish the book, it became the best selling children’s book of the year.

We all know how the story goes from there. Rowling wrote six more Harry Potter books, eight films were made, and Rowling went from a poor vulnerable single mother to a multi millionaire in the space of a few short years. Harry Potter is now a global brand estimated to be worth about $15 billion. The last four books have each consecutively set the record for the fastest selling book in history. Rowling is now the richest author in the world, with a net worth of $92 million. But as well as money, JK Rowling has over 14 million followers on Twitter. This gives her massive influence as well as money. Rowling seemed to initially use this influence for good, spreading mental health awareness, LGBT inclusivity, interacting with fans and creating a website for all us Harry Potter fans to determine our houses and let our wands choose us.

I remember being 8 years old when Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released, and I was attending a religious school where some parents complained and called to ban Harry Potter over the controversial decision JK Rowling made regarding Dumbledore’s sexuality. Rowling had made the claim that Dumbledore was gay. Looking back, the controversy was ridiculous and I can only imagine how embarrassed some of those parents must be. I also remember as I got older, re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I noticed more that the emotion behind Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald was one he held with a romantic love. So years later, when several members of the LGBT community attacked Rowling for only deciding Dumbledore’s sexuality after the books were written, I publicly defended her with my knowledge that that simply wasn’t true. I had this image of Rowling in my mind, that she had always been on the right side of this debate. She had always been inclusive and supportive of LGBT people as far as I could see, and I just didn’t understand the issue. Rowling had always expressed a centre-left political perspective, and although I didn’t agree with all her views, they seemed relatively uncontroversial.

When Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released, I hated it. It was a literary disaster, completely disrespectful of the original book series, the characters were a shell of the characters we had grown up with, the plot was almost deliberately ridiculous and overly elaborate and I immediately dismissed it as not canon. I have never forgiven JK Rowling for publicly stating the book was canon. She almost destroyed a whole two decades of her own hard work and the franchise that she’d built that had been like a home for a whole generation. All because she wanted to grab a few extra quid for a terrible book she didn’t even write. To this day I can’t help but wonder if she has even read the book. If I had written the masterpiece that is Harry Potter, I would view the Cursed Child as an insult. Perhaps I’ll even write a review one day, just for fun. Rowling also annoyed me by going back on her story, regretting pairing Ron and Hermione together and not pairing Hermione with Harry. Ron and Hermione are my favourite couple from the story, and their relationship had so much meaning. I couldn’t believe that the author who wrote such a clever and consistent relationship between two beloved characters could ever regret it. At this point in my life, I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Rowling was losing her mind. It was almost like she was trying to destroy her legacy.

As more years passed, the Fantastic Beasts films were released. The first film looked promising, but the second film was yet another disaster. Again, it was inconsistent with the franchise as we knew it, for some reason Hogwarts was full of people wearing 3 piece suits instead of the robes they wore in the Harry Potter series and Minerva McGonigall appeared as a teacher despite the fact that canonically there is no way she could have been old enough. The film was a disaster with both fans and critics hating it. Amongst this mess came controversy in December 2019. Rowling lost all respect she had once held amongst the transgender community when she made a public statement supporting Maya Forstater, a British woman who lost her employment tribunal case against her employer who fired her over transphobic comments. Six months later on June 6 2020, Rowling criticised the term “people who menstruate” and stated: "If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives." Rowling’s views on these issues were heavily criticised by GLAAD and even by the actors from the Harry Potter movies including lead actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.

Rowling published a 3,600 word essay in response to the mass criticism of her views four days later. The essay did her no favours, as she wrote: “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.” She seemed to be suggesting that trans women are often just men disguised as women in order to trick or even harm other women. This obviously angered the transgender community even more, and women’s refuge shelters that allow trans women were reporting no rise in violence as a result, children’s charities that support gender non conforming children were criticising Rowling, she was being made to give back awards and ultimately Rowling was labelled a Trans exclusionary radical feminist, a term often abbreviated to TERF.

JK Rowling is the perfect example of how money and influence can make someone forget their roots so easily. For someone who survived poverty, domestic abuse and sexual assault, she is so lacking in self awareness and how the things she has said and done can be harmful to transgender people. It is widely reported that transgender women are at more risk of harm in female restrooms than cisgender women. With acceptance becoming the norm, transgender people are feeling more safe to come out now than ever before, and so the rise in numbers of the community is huge, especially amongst our generation who grew up with Harry Potter. For a young transgender teenager to grow up wondering how Hogwarts would accommodate them, only to hear the author who gave us Hogwarts in the first place disapprove of equal rights for transgender people, must be very disheartening. However, JK Rowling has proven that she has no idea how powerful the legacy her books created really is. She was tasked with following up the Harry Potter series, and what she gave us was inconsistent and very poorly written screenplays. I have read better sequels on tumblr. Lots of them. Hogwarts doesn’t belong to JK Rowling, it belongs to the fandom. And I’ll be willing to bet my last penny that if Professor McGonigall witnessed any bullying of transgender students in her classroom (or indeed the girls bathroom!) she’d absolutely defend the victim without a moment’s hesitation. Hermione would decorate the Gryffindor common room with little blue, pink and white flags in support of a transgender first year who’d just been sorted into Gryffindor. Luna Lovegood would sit and befriend any trans student who looked lonely, and Ginny would dish out a bat bogey hex to anyone who dared pick on them. No matter what JK Rowling thinks, Hogwarts is not hers to ruin. It is ours. Regardless of what makes us different, Hogwarts is our home.

[siriuslyblack12]

high school paracosm

this might be the start of a mini-series where i share little bits and pieces from my paracosms/paras out of all of my current paracosms, this has the least world-building yet the most character development. it’s my second-oldest and definitely has a special place in my heart (i would literally die for any one of these characters lmaooo). it’s essentially about a group of british high school students dealing with all kinds of angst, drama and a fair amount of happiness.  i’m very scared to post this so we’ll see how it goes.

vanessa pierre

cis woman

bisexual disaster

dating cass johnson 

scouse

bottom set

she’s a natural ginger but dyes it black. blue eyes. white.

funniest person you’ll ever meet

shitty home life (to be specific, her dad left and she hasn’t seen him in years and her mum is addicted to alcohol and drugs. she tries to help her mum, but a lot of the time she has to sleep at cass or ruby’s house, or in the worst circumstances on the street.)

because of this, she always gives spare change or food to homeless people even if she didn’t have much to begin with.

her home did get better after her mum’s new boyfriend daniel checked her into rehab and group therapy to get help. everyone’s trying their best to make it work.

dyes her own hair. it’s part of her aesthetic.

friendship wise, she is closest to ruby. although she loves cass more than she loves herself.

cass johnson

non-binary 

attracted to women but doesn’t really label it.

dating vanessa pierre

top set

light brown hair with an undercut. brown eyes. mixed race.

the literal kindest, most caring and least judgemental

has a good relationship with their parents and 12 year old sister violet who are all very supportive of anything they do. definitely the type of family to  buy out the front row of every concert cass is in.

their biggest passion is musical theatre. a very talented actor and singer, their most notable role being ‘belle’ in the school production of ‘beauty and the beast’ that they also directed.

animals are also another big interest. when they get out of school they want to become a vet to help and care for all kinds of animals, and throughout high school donates any spare change to animal charities.

they’re pretty close with everyone, but particularly ezra and jonah

quite insecure about their body, but masks it with positivity and kindness. 

makes everyone around them happy.

ruby diaz

cis woman

straight and a very big ally

dated jonah blue for a year or so, but currently single

top set, very much what people would label a ‘tryhard’, ‘sweat’ or a ‘nerd’

dark curly hair. freckles. latina.

twin sister of asher diaz

she’s a very empathetic person, more often than not putting everyone else’s needs above her own. this could be to her detriment, but she’s making an effort to balance her own mental health

divorced parents, but she stays positive. goes to her dad’s house on weekends.

she likes to think she doesn’t care, but at heart she’s a hopeless romantic. the biggest shipper of every couple in the school, but particularly her brother asher and cole.

speaking of her brother, it’s one of those dynamics where they play fight constantly but would certainly die for the other

the cutest pet dog lmao

she’s a very outspoken activist, often lecturing her mum and older family members about their implicit biases

closest to vanessa and asher

asher diaz

cis man

gay

dating cole harrison-singh

middle set

dark hair. blue or brown eyes. latino.

twin brother of ruby diaz

coming out was really hard for him, as it is for a lot of queer people. he hated the fact that everyone made it such a big deal, and that they treated it as this big thing even though he’d been feeling this way for as long as he can remember

plays guitar and sings quite well, in the school band

his relationship with cole is tentative, but once they figure out their dynamic they’re extremely cute. we love to see it.

he was more affected by the divorce than his sister, and now feels quite protective over her as a sort of father figure that they no longer really have. definitely some issues he needs to work on.

very athletic

him and ezra are best friend goals, and he’s also obviously close to ruby

jonah blue

cis man

pansexual

dated ruby diaz, but currently dating erin saeli

top set, but one of those people really talented people that can get good grades without breaking a sweat

shaved head. brown eyes. darkskin black man.

his main hobby is swimming and he’s on an elite team that probably trains 6 or 7 times a week. sometimes he finds it hard to juggle that and school and a social life but he could never give it up

art is his hidden talent. mainly because he keeps it personal, but also because no one really expected someone as confident and outgoing as him to enjoy drawing and painting.

he and ruby stayed really good friends even after their breakup

if anything it made them closer 

closest to cass

ezra cheung

trans man

aro/ace

single

bottom set

dark hair. blue eyes. chinese.

he first figured out he was aro/ace when he was about 14/15 and everyone around him started to feel more comfortable in their own sexualities. his friends would talk to him about crushes and he’d just smile and nod.

mental health is something he really struggles with. fitting his life around bad days and episodes is a chore in and of it’s own. 

but he’s trying his best to get the help he needs and reach out to his friends whenever he needs someone to talk to.

would punch transphobes except he’s too nice

closest to asher and cass. him and cass bond over gender and cute kittens.

minor paras:

cole harrison-singh

cis man

gay

dating asher diaz

top set

brown hair. blue eyes. white.

adopted by lesbian mums, lily harrison and naveena singh. these two are an absolute power couple

he and asher met through the school band and he’s a very skilled piano player. despite this, he gets very shy when it comes to performing in front of other people so doesn’t do it often.

experiments with genderless clothing and makeup

just an all around good person

martha quinn

cis woman

straight

single

top set

ginger!! blue eyes and lots of freckles. white.

a teahcer’s pet to her core, would sell anyone out for validation (honestly me too)

doesn’t get along well with any of the other paras, but does warm up to them and make an effort to be a better person eventually. character development

crushed on jonah when he first moved to the school but got over it quite quickly

erin polka

cis woman

bisexual

dating jonah blue

middle set

long dark hair. thai.

works at mcdonalds part time

a girly-girl who is no less amazing and strong than the other women (i will have no internalised misogyny anywhere near me thank you very much)

big introvert. when she does speak or show passion in something you know it’s well thought out and communicated.

very very pretty. if she was real i would date her.

[allgirlsareprincesses]

Lucas and the Lost Bride: Swan Maidens in Star Wars

Five posts into my Folktale Types in Star Wars series, and I’ve finally hit the one that just breaks my heart: The Swan Maiden. Popular podcast What The Force made a splash in the Reylo community a few weeks ago when they posed a theory that used this common folktale as a basis for the idea that Palpatine as the “evil magician” would seek to turn Swan Maiden Rey for her feminine power, possibly even as a sort of romantic rival for Prince Ben Solo. Having delved a bit into the Swan Maiden tale type as part of my Orpheus and Eurydice post, I was intrigued by this idea and wanted to dive deeper to see if there were any further insights to be found. Not only did I find more, but…. I now believe that the Swan Maiden, or rather the universal psychology behind its enduring appeal, was the basis for Star Wars from the very beginning.

Trigger Warnings and Disclaimers: There will be discussion of infertility, miscarriage, divorce, domestic violence, and loss. I’m also going to be indulging in some armchair amateur psychoanalysis here, so take it with a grain of Crait salt since this is not my area of expertise at all. On a related note, some of my arguments are not terribly complimentary to Mr. Lucas, so if you’re sensitive to that, be forewarned.

For this analysis, I relied almost exclusively on In Search of the Swan Maiden: A Narrative on Folklore and Gender, by Barbara Fass Leavy. While her chapter on Orpheus’ Quest was extremely helpful in my first meta of this type, I found the full text of her book even more illuminating, as she gives a great overview of other scholarship on the subject by folklorists and anthropologists alike. Further, she approaches the subject from a self-described feminist perspective, deliberately seeking to provide a perspective that she believes is lacking in prior analyses of Swan Maiden folktales. Her thesis is basically that Swan Maiden tales are not romances at all, but stories of Woman as Other, and therefore of how she must always be either separated from or subjugated by Man. I don’t always agree with her take (which I find somewhat dated), but it’s a great starting point for discussion.

The Swan Maiden Folktale

The basic structure of Swan Maiden stories is as follows: A mortal man is the central character, and at some point in his adventures, he happens upon a beautiful maiden (often surrounded by sisters or other female companionship) who comes from an otherworld or fairy realm. She might be enchanted to appear as a swan, seal, mermaid, or another [water] creature, or she might be a nymph or goddess. Traditionally, the hero “captures” the maiden by taking something from her that is the source of her power or her link to the fairy realm. This stolen item might be her animal skin, or the pattern may be inverted as her captor places a mortal, domestic robe on her. She is then compelled to become his bride, sometimes willingly but often with much weeping and protest.

They live together for some time, and the couple may be happy but there is frequently a suggestion of the fairy wife’s wistfulness and longing for her home, for freedom. Even after she bears his children, there is a sense of the husband’s fear that she will flee if she is able. Eventually, the husband breaks a taboo, such as showing his nakedness to his wife, becoming violent toward her, or otherwise disrespecting her with his behavior. This may also coincide with the fairy wife retrieving the magical item that was stolen from her at her capture. The bond of trust thus broken, she flees back to the otherworld, abandoning her husband and usually her children as well.

Sometimes the story ends here and the fairy wife is lost forever, and other times it continues as the husband “quests” for his lost bride. However, the most common pattern by far is the permanent loss of the fairy wife. In the rare instances that she is recovered, this happens only by two means: either the husband reenacts his wife’s original abduction by recapturing her, which suggests it is not her choice to return with him and that she will be forever under his power, OR as I mentioned in my original Orpheus post, the perspective shifts from husband to wife and the story becomes a Search for the Lost Husband tale, which traditionally ends in the successful reunion of the couple.

Within this basic framework, there are a number of variations and motifs that commonly appear. As I mentioned above, the wife is often classified as an animal bride, which speaks to the bestial nature of woman feared by man. Further, she sometimes has two suitors: one her mortal husband, and the other her demon lover or incubus from the otherworld, her union with whom may in fact predate her capture. Because the loss of the fairy wife is usually final, it can be difficult to tell which husband the narrative intends to be the right match for her, and she usually doesn’t have the agency to choose, anyhow. If she stays with the demon lover, it’s because her bestial nature is her true form, and if she returns to her mortal husband, her flight still stands as an example of how she needs to be dominated and controlled. This stands in stark contrast to the beastly hero of Animal Bridegroom tales, where the assumption is that his human form is his true self and that his transformation is civilizing, emancipatory, and permanent.

Given this universal pattern for the Swan Maiden folktale, we can already see some elements of it emerging in the narrative of the Skywalker Saga. Before we get into that, however, I want to spend some time on the original swan maiden of the Galaxy Far, Far Away: George Lucas’ first wife, Marcia.

Marcia Lucas as the Swan Maiden

Marcia Griffin was a promising young film editor when she got a job mentoring a young George Lucas when they were both assistants to famed editor Verna Fields. Though George was painfully shy and introverted, the two spent enough time together on their work that love blossomed, and they started dating and eventually moved in together. George introduced Marcia to his friend Francis Coppola, who hired her to edit one of his early films, Rain People. Between that and editing another feature film, Medium Cool, Marcia’s career in Los Angeles was just beginning to take off when George proposed to her and convinced her to move to San Francisco with him so he could start his own independent filmmaking career.

Immediately, there are aspects of the Swan Maiden to Marcia. Firstly, the classic folktale bride often comes from a history of female companionship: she is usually surrounded by sisters, other maidens, or a matriarchal group of women. Marcia Griffin was the daughter of a single mother, and she had one sister. Her father, who had divorced their mother when Marcia was only two, was not a part of her life. In LA, she was beginning to succeed in film editing with the support and mentorship of other female film professionals. Part of the fairy bride’s “abduction” from her home world is that she is removed from this sisterhood, separated from the feminine influences in her life. This certainly seems to have been the case with Marcia.

Second, while I certainly don’t mean literally that George Lucas “captured” Marcia, the nature of that motif in the folktale is simply that the swan maiden leaves her own familiar world and enters her husband’s world, which is inherently foreign to her. Even in Cupid and Psyche or Beauty and the Beast variations, the bride’s choice to join her bridegroom in his world and be apart from her family is framed as a sacrifice, something that is not her ideal but is the best option under the circumstances. The few sources that are available suggest that George may have somewhat manipulated Marcia, asking her if she really loved him and wanted to be with him. In any case, moving to San Francisco was great for George’s career but effectively ended Marcia’s for a time. For some months after the move, she had no editing work and basically became a housewife, trying to support George by fixing him meals and encouraging him in his work. She was homesick, too, which is also a common trait of captured fairy wives. Many of the folktale brides chafe in their domestic roles, eventually resenting the mundane existence that they exchanged for their otherworldly former lives.

Another aspect of Marcia that made her like the swan maiden, if only from her husband’s point of view, was the fact that he felt she was somewhat “out of his league” at times. She was very beautiful, and already a successful professional when he was still a student. While George was so introverted and emotionless that it was often off-putting, Marcia was an optimistic extrovert who thrived in social situations and openly expressed her emotions. Even George’s friends expressed surprise that he had found such a wife: “‘She was a knock-out,’ John Milius remembers. ‘We all wondered how little George got this great looking girl. And smart too, obsessed with films. And she was a better editor than he was.’” The fairy wife’s otherworldly beauty and skill often contribute to her mortal husband’s feeling of unease, as he fears that she may recognize the imbalance and leave him.

When George’s first film THX 1138 bombed, Marcia encouraged him to try something the emotionally engaged the audience more. His somewhat cynical response was to film American Graffiti, which his wife helped to edit. The movie was both a crowd-pleaser and a critical success, making the struggling Lucases into overnight millionaires and gaining both of them Oscar nominations. Marcia began to gain more attention for her professional skills, and soon Martin Scorsese asked her to edit his first feature film, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. After a fruitful collaboration, Scorsese invited her back to be the supervising editor on his next film as well, Taxi Driver. While working on these films, Marcia frequently had to be away from home, and George, who was holed up writing his first draft of The Star Wars at the time, was less than thrilled.

His frustration with their separation seemed to be twofold: for one thing, his conservative upbringing had not prepared him for marriage to a successful career woman. “The Lucas family tradition had never allowed a woman to have an independent career--Gloria Katz notes, ‘That was actually a very big step for George; it was consciousness raising.’  George hated cooking and cleaning, and hired a housekeeper while Marcia was away.” And the other reason he didn’t seem to care for Marcia’s work was Scorsese himself, who had a terrible social reputation, especially with women: "’For George the whole thing was that Marcia was going off to this den of iniquity,’ Willard Huyck explains. ‘Marty was wild and he took a lot of drugs and he stayed up all night, had lots of girlfriends. George was a family homebody. He couldn't believe the stories that Marcia told him. George would fume because Marcia was running with these people. She loved being with Marty.’" Some sources say that Scorsese was flirtatious with Marcia, or at least that George thought so. Given this account, I’d argue that Scorsese is the first candidate for the role of demon lover to Marcia’s swan maiden (again, at least from her husband’s perspective). George saw his wife leaving to return to the otherworld, her home in LA, and there she would supposedly cavort with an unscrupulous lecher.

Marcia helped her husband write the final draft of Star Wars, then endured yet more separation as George traveled to Tunisia and England for filming. When the first editor on the film was a dismal disappointment, Marcia took over and along with two other editors, created the final theatrical cut. She is credited in particular with convincing George to keep several small character touches that charmed the audience, for extending emotional scenes for maximum impact, and especially for editing the final Death Star attack that is so iconic today. Despite a difficult production, Star Wars went on to become the most successful movie of all time at that point, and it garnered eleven Oscar nominations. Marcia won for her editing, which was a massive achievement, but George unfortunately did not win for writer or director.

After the exhausting schedule and runaway success of Star Wars, George and Marcia had planned to settle down and have a baby, but they were sadly plagued by infertility. Given that it’s an intensely painful and personal subject that people don’t even talk much about today much less in the 70s, it’s not surprising that the historical record is unclear on exactly what happened. However, the best that I can put together goes something like this: when George and Marcia married in 1969, she was ready to have kids right away, but he was not. It seems they may have waited for a while, but were trying by 1975, when Marcia was editing Taxi Driver. It sounds as though she had a pregnancy then that ended in a miscarriage. Some time after Star Wars was released, around 1978, the couple received the news that George was sterile, and they would never be able to have biological children together.

Every single account I’ve found about Marcia Lucas is written by a man, so I suspect they have no idea what this might have felt like, but I imagine a woman who had been ready for a baby for nearly a decade, had been trying for at least three years, and had experienced at least one miscarriage and maybe more, only to learn that she would never be able to have children with her husband. On top of all the other stresses the couple experienced, that must have been absolutely agonizing. With regards to the Swan Maiden tale, this sad fact relates in a particularly devastating way: in historic folklore, miscarriages were often thought to be caused by the wife’s unfaithfulness to her mortal husband in a tryst with the incubus or demon lover. In fact, the term “incubation” stems from this idea, when people had the superstitious belief that infertility could be cured by the incubus impregnating a woman. I certainly don’t think George Lucas had any such conscious thought to blame his wife and I’m sure he experienced as much pain as she did, especially knowing that it was he who was sterile, but as we will see, he certainly thought his marriage was threatened by a rival.

Around this time, the cracks in the Lucas marriage began to widen. George had always been dismissive and even derogatory toward Marcia, particularly impugning her emotionalism. She stated while they were still married: “But George just said to me, I was stupid and knew nothing. Because I was just a Valley Girl. He was the intellectual." Some time after their marriage ended, she shared more: “I was the more emotional person who came from the heart, and George was the more intellectual and visual, and I thought that provided a nice balance. But George would never acknowledge that to me. I think he resented my criticisms, felt that all I ever did was put him down. In his mind, I always stayed the stupid Valley girl. He never felt I had any talent, he never felt I was very smart and he never gave me much credit. When we were finishing Jedi, George told me he thought I was a pretty good editor. In the sixteen years of our being together I think that was the only time he complimented me." In folktales, this would represent a breaking of a taboo, as harsh treatment of her might cause a cruel husband’s fairy wife to flee.

Further, George never took the break that he promised his wife he would take. Instead, he kept working on the Star Wars sequels, often to such a point of exhaustion that he had to be hospitalized. He was also working on Indiana Jones with his friend Steven Spielberg, and on building Skywalker Ranch. Though the couple finally adopted a daughter in 1981, George would still be away for many weeks at a time working on various projects, leaving Marcia to manage both their daughter and the final stages of design and construction on the Ranch. This is how she met Tom Rodrigues, an artist with whom she developed an attraction. Marcia is open about this fact, but insists she was never physically unfaithful to George. She suggested to marriage counseling to him, which he refused, then suggested a trial separation, which he also refused.

Marcia complained that George was emotionally closed-off, cold, and struggled with intimacy. “[A friend] saw the Lucases at a party… just before the divorce and recalls: ‘I ended up in the corner with Marcia, chatting with her, and what she told me underscored a sense I'd always had that [intimacy] was not a gigantic part of George's life...She just sort of blurted it out that it was extremely isolating; it was like Fortress Lucas. I'd heard this from people who worked with him at that time. They would say, 'I can't stand it. He's brilliant, but it's so cold. I feel like I'm suffocating. I've got to get out of here.' Marcia told me she 'just couldn't stand the darkness any longer.’” For context, Marcia is quoted as making some recommendations during production on Star Wars to emphasize Han Solo’s “virility.” This suggests that sexuality was important to her, so it was likely another stressor in her marriage. In her book, Leavy suggests that many Swan Maiden tales express the husband’s anxiety that his wife will leave him because she is dissatisfied with his sexual performance. This is thought to be the origin of many sexually-coded taboos that are imposed upon the fairy wife, such as the idea that she may not see her husband naked, or that she may not see him in daylight.

In mid-1983, the Lucases finally announced their plans to divorce. They soon decided they would share equal custody of two-year-old daughter Amanda, but George somehow always characterized it as him raising her on his own. From the Empire of Dreams Making of Star Wars documentary: “I ended up getting divorced right as the film Jedi was finished, and I was left to raise my daughter.” This is significant in that it is consistent with one of the most distinctive motifs of the Swan Maiden: she frequently leaves her children behind when she flees her marriage back to the otherworld. While this is clearly not what happened, the fact that George viewed it that way demonstrates where he was psychologically following the divorce. To say that he was devastated is an understatement. Spielberg used the term “pulverized” and their next joint project, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, featured men having their still-beating hearts ripped out of their chests in one of the most famously-gruesome scenes of that era. George admits that the metaphor was a deliberate reaction to the divorce, and Hollywood legend has it that the scene was the origin of the PG-13 rating, so shocking was the imagery.

As an equal business partner, Marcia also took half of Lucasfilm in the divorce, costing George well over the price of another film and effectively halving his filmmaking empire overnight. He would claim in years to come that he did not see the divorce coming, would blame it on the “other man,” and would insist that his overworking was done for his family, but his later filmmaking efforts betray a good deal of guilt. I tend to agree with Michael Kaminski’s conclusion: “At the same time, the separation has a circular irony to it; George emotionally neglected Marcia for years in the hopes of securing his private empire, yet in the end this pushed her away completely, and when she left she took away the private empire that had instigated the process in the first place. His greed cost him his wife, and his empire. It is my opinion that Lucas chose to shape Anakin Skywalker's arc in the prequels in a similar manner because of his reflections on his own self-created loss.”

Like the tragic hero of the Swan Maiden folktales, George Lucas never recovered his lost bride after her flight. And I argue that he wrote their story with rather shocking fidelity in the Prequel Trilogy, featuring the most distinctive Swan Maiden in all of Star Wars: Padme Amidala.

Padme Amidala as Swan Maiden

As I mentioned in my Orpheus and Eurydice post, Padme is first recognizable as the fairy bride when Anakin says to her “Are you an angel?” Immediately, he has identified her as an otherworldly creature, a royal beauty who is clearly out of his league (notwithstanding that he’s a nine-year-old and all). In the films, Padme is idealized to the point that she seems a bit flat, a problem remedied in much of the animated and written content which has been released since then. But at least from George Lucas’ perspective, Padme was the ideal wife. Not the sassy, titillating, tough girl that Leia was in the Original Trilogy, but a sublime, ethereal, motherly figure. She was perfect bride for a tragic hero.

Padme hails from the lush, heavenly, water-soaked world of Naboo. Swan Maidens are nearly always water creatures and their capture often takes place by a body of water like a lake or stream. Naboo not only has such large oceans as to have an entire amphibious culture under the waves, but even the surface-dwellers live among massive waterfalls. Like Padme, but very unlike most of the other planets we’ve seen in the galaxy, Naboo is presented as the image of perfection, a dreamy landscape that reminds the audience that this is, after all, a fantasy. In this way, it is exactly like the fairy world from which the swan maiden comes.

One of the main parallels between Queen Amidala and the swan maiden is her bevy of handmaidens…. While I sadly have not yet read Queen’s Shadow, I understand it delves deeper into the culture of this unique sisterhood. In any case, Padme is consistently surrounded by female companionship when she is on Naboo or representing her homeworld on Coruscant. The queen feels a sense of kinship with and responsibility to her handmaidens, as they do to her. Compare this to one of the most famous examples of swan maiden tales, the ballet Swan Lake, in which Prince Seigfried first spots Odette among a group of swans who are also transformed maidens. When she agrees to marry the prince, Odette is thinking not just of herself, but of gaining freedom for all of her companions. This is why she takes the prince’s mistake so hard later - she feels she has failed the other maidens.

The capture motif starts almost immediately for Padme, with her first being taken captive by the Trade Federation during their attack. Soon, however, she is rescued by the Jedi, but as she has no option but to flee with them to beg help from the Senate, it is as though she is still a captive. This is also where the false bride motif first appears, as I mentioned in my Orpheus post. The queen’s decoy Sabe is dressed in a towering black-feathered gown, almost the precise image of the Black Swan. Later during the finale of The Phantom Menace, we see the real Queen Amidala in a white gown of soft layers, the visual counterpart to her double.

We come to realize that the villain of the saga, Palpatine, also comes from Naboo and exercises a level of manipulative influence over Padme. In this sense, he is the demon lover, the first husband of the swan maiden who often recaptures her from her mortal husband after the taboo is broken. I understand that in Queen’s Shadow, Palpatine’s malicious influence is much clearer, and yet it is far too late when Padme realizes it. While his relationship with Anakin’s bride was never depicted as romantic, Palpatine still qualifies as a demon lover character because his association with the swan maiden is always one of control, a power struggle. He offers her free rein of her heart’s desires if only she will remain under his power. Padme so desires to protect her people, to abolish slavery, and to be with Anakin that she remains blinded to what Palpatine takes in exchange, recognizing how he used her to gain power only when the Republic had already fallen.

On the shores of a secluded lake on Naboo, Anakin woos his reluctant bride, eventually taking her with him to Tatooine to search for his mother. This is another moment of “capture,” for even though Padme comes with him willingly, she is leaving her fairy world to enter the mundane sphere of her husband, where she is painfully out of place. On Naboo, she resisted Anakin on ethical grounds (“We’d be living a lie”), but on Tatooine and then Geonosis (dead planets), she fails to hold him accountable for his violent actions, in a sense losing herself. Notably, her wedding is the last time we see Padme on Naboo before she returns in death, which tracks precisely with the swan maiden tale. The fairy wife’s marriage marks her departure from the otherworld, just as her flight from the mortal world back to her home is often depicted as a literal or metaphorical death.

When Padme becomes pregnant, Anakin’s trauma from losing his mother (twice) resurfaces, and his anxiety over the possibility of losing his wife leads him to become ever more violent throughout Revenge of the Sith. This is extremely common in swan maiden stories, as the flight of the fairy wife frequently occurs right after she gives birth, usually expressing the historical fear of death in childbirth. Some readings even suggest that the husband’s anxiety is less about his wife’s physical safety and more about the loss of the life they had before children, and his fear about the unknowns of parenthood. Naturally, Star Wars takes a more literal approach, as Anakin is literally tormented by dreams of Padme’s death in childbirth.

Eventually, Anakin travels so far down the dark path that he comes to the inevitable breaking of the taboo. As mentioned above, this can take many forms, but in swan maiden tales it is most frequently the husband leaving his wife’s animal skin unattended, OR some direct mistreatment of her. Any form of domestic violence against the fairy wife, for instance, is almost guaranteed to result in her flight. And so it happens with Anakin: he Force-strangles his wife (which parallels the most common form of DV in the real world, manual strangulation), and the betrayal causes her death. Padme leaves behind her children and is interred back on the fairy world of Naboo, eternally separated from her husband. As I mentioned in my original Lost Bride post, this story type typically ends in tragedy like this: the swan maiden is not recovered, and the hero mourns her loss for the rest of his days.

Padme is by far the clearest swan maiden in Star Wars, and her story is sadly an almost exact expression of the tragedy of George and Marcia Lucas. She was an extraordinary woman tied to a mortal man whose fear overcame his love. Fortunately, Padme’s successors were poised to have greater success than she did in love and in folklore….

Leia Organa as the Swan Maiden

Leia is probably the least like the swan maiden of all the Star Wars leading ladies, but interestingly, she is also the one to most frequently experience the main motif of the folktale: the capture. The princess is captured or imprisoned so frequently throughout her story, it’s almost a little jarring when considered with her image as the modern emancipated woman. Still, there are certain motifs that are constant throughout her story, the most notable of which are the capture and the demon lover.

Princess Leia begins her story as another ethereal maiden from a lush and vibrant planet, Alderaan. Almost immediately, she is captured by this story’s demon lover, Darth Vader. Though he is later revealed to be her father, at the time of A New Hope, both the characters and the audience believe there is no relationship between any of the characters, so their roles as folktale archetypes may be different from their eventual position in the story. In any case, Vader takes Leia to the story’s underworld, the aptly-named Death Star. Remember that the capture can go either way: from the otherworld to the mortal world (like Padme), or the mortal world to the otherworld (Leia). There she is tortured with a device holding a needle, which in folklore is always a metaphor for sexual initiation. As I mentioned my Sleeping Beauty post, this tale is a subtype of the Quest for the Lost Bride, so the story is clearly framed this way from the beginning.

Meanwhile, mortal husband Luke (again, their sibling relationship won’t be known for two movies yet) learns of Leia’s capture and sets out on a journey to the underworld/Death Star to reclaim her. He brings with him Han Solo (who will of course turn out to be another mortal husband), and together they work to free the princess from Vader’s clutches. They return her to Yavin IV, yet another life-filled moon, which is an interesting contrast to the false moon of the Death Star. Moons in folklore are a feminine symbol, and in the swan maiden tale, they are usually associated with a transformation or revelation. While Leia never appears as a false bride version of herself, the light and dark “moons” of her story do appear to tell the story of feminine duality. In fact, the motif appears a second time in Return of the Jedi, with the second Death Star and the forest moon of Endor in the roles of dark and light moons, or underworld and mortal world, respectively.

In The Empire Strikes Back, Leia again experiences capture as Han Solo pushes her aboard the Millenium Falcon to escape Vader once again. With Han in the role of mortal husband by this time, the story more closely resembles the traditional swan maiden tale, with the fairy wife falling for her mortal husband and choosing to remain with him of her own free will. On Bespin, she is finally recaptured by the demon lover, as Vader lays his trap for Luke. However, this is where the story changes perspectives from husband to wife, as tends to happen in folktales when the destination is a happy ending. Instead of Leia being lost to the underworld forever like Eurydice, her husband Han is transformed and dragged to the underworld of Jabba’s palace, similar to the Eros and Psyche tale. Now, it is Leia who must pursue him and revive him from his enchanted slumber, a motif I discussed in detail in yet another folktale post.

Of course, the rescue of Han Solo appears to go somewhat awry at first, and Leia is yet again captured, this time by Jabba the Hutt. This time, we see a hint of the stolen garment motif, as the lecherous Jabba takes away her clothes and chains her to him. Getting in touch with her dark side, Leia is able to destroy this particular demon lover (ew), and escapes with Luke and Han. On Endor, Leia appears to have been captured by the Ewoks, though of course we know she went with them willingly (and the clothes change again, although with different intent). And finally, the princess is briefly captured by Stormtroopers before the Ewoks come to the rescue.

There is one more capture of Princess Leia which is an important part of the story, but which never actually occurs on screen, and this is the threat Vader makes when trying to turn Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi. At the thought of his sister recaptured and transformed into a dark version of herself (the false bride), Luke breaks and very nearly kills his father, choosing only at the last moment to turn fully into the light even at the cost of his own life. This scene, though beautiful and poignant, reminds us that the story is told from a masculine perspective, and that the fairy wife is a character who helps tell the male protagonist’s story of maturing into manhood. Return of the Jedi is my favorite Star Wars film, so I have no complaints about this, but it does make me glad that the final trilogy of the Skywalker saga tells the tale from a woman’s perspective….

Rey as the Swan Maiden

The story of Rey of Jakku is fascinating to me because it flips the swan maiden folktale on its head, “subverting expectations” long before Rian Johnson threw our heroine headfirst into a womb-like cave. Since The Force Awakens starts much the same as the previous trilogies, told first from Poe’s perspective and then from Finn’s, respectively, there’s no indication yet that the majority of the tale will center around a heroine’s journey. At first blush, Rey doesn’t seem much the swan maiden at all: she has no female companions, she occupies no magical otherworld, and she doesn’t seem the type to be captured, since she can clearly defend herself handily. She has somewhat of a chaste flirtatious banter with Finn, but he doesn’t quite fit the mortal or beastly husband, either. One could argue that her escape in the Falcon constitutes a kind of capture, but at no time does Rey seem to lack agency or the means of exercising her will.

Until, that is, she meets Maz, whom as I’ve said before is the Oracle in this story. Coming on the heels of her discovery of the Skywalker lightsaber and subsequent Force vision, her encounter with Maz makes it clear to Rey and the audience that her story is not one of rediscovering her lost family, but of finding a new sense of belonging ahead of her. This suggests that she will leave the world of the mundane and enter the otherworld, which is the pattern that the fairy wife takes in the Eros and Psyche variation of the swan maiden folktale. Suddenly, the familiar motifs appear in rapid succession: Rey is at a castle by a lake in a forest, just as most swan maidens are when they are discovered by the hero. She is pursued as the quarry in a hunt, with Kylo Ren in the role of the hunter, a common type for the captor of the fairy bride (Prince Seigfried was hunting when he discovered Odette). And finally, he captures her, sweeping her away in a distinctive bridal carry to his underworld lair. Kylo Ren is not, as it turns out, the mortal husband of this story; he is the demon lover.

The fairy husband or otherworldly lover can take many forms, just as the fairy wife can. He might be a true demon lover, in which case he is understood to be wrong for the heroine and dangerous to her (and to the interests of his mortal rival). He might also be an animal bridegroom, or the beastly husband to the heroine’s beauty, which usually indicates that he will be transformed back to his true princely form by the story’s end. He may be the heroine’s incubus, or the nightmare lover who represents all her dark sexual fantasies. And finally, he might even be a star, as the star-husband or star-bride is a common pattern in North American folktales. Demonic, celestial, or somewhere in between, the fairy husband is often a sure sign that the story focuses on the heroine’s journey rather than the hero’s.

On the underworld of Starkiller Base, Rey awakens from sleep and encounters her monstrous captor, immediately labeling him “creature.” Of course, he then removes his helmet, and Rey finds a handsome prince beneath the beastly skin. In the novelization, she recognized him when he chased her in the woods on Takodana: “She had seen this man before, in a daydream. In a nightmare.” There are other hints that Rey has seen Kylo in dreams before, and when he intrudes on her mind, he finds more dreams there of an ocean and island. Later, in The Last Jedi, their first Force Bond occurs just as Rey is again waking from sleep, and all of the bond scenes have a dreamlike quality to them. In fact, they often take place at night, and are visually coded with clear sexual imagery. All of this sleeping and waking and dreaming of both man and monster makes Kylo Ren a clear folktale figure: Rey’s incubus.

As mentioned above, the incubus is the dream lover of the heroine’s sexual fantasies. While those fantasies might be perfectly natural and healthy for a woman, female sexual appetites have usually been presented in folklore as dangerous, so the man who can satisfy those appetites is often presented as a demonic figure. Often, an incubus is blamed when a fairy wife begins to withdraw from her family, the suggestion being that she has placed her own base desires above the good of the community. If the woman is to retake her place as the good and pure bride of the tale, she must be recaptured from her incubus or he must be destroyed, to cleanse her of her deviant fantasies. If I may editorialize for a moment, I believe this is the dynamic at play in some of the fan arguments that Kylo Ren should die at the end of the trilogy: he is evil and Rey desires him, therefore if she is to remain the heroine of the story, he must die.

Of course, Kylo may not be JUST an incubus. He is, after all, also Ben Solo, which means that he has two forms: the beast and the man. When this is true in folktales, it is understood that the man is the true form concealed by the animal skin, which must be burned away or otherwise destroyed. However, this removal of the beastly skin to reveal the man underneath can also constitute the breaking of the taboo which leads to the separation of the couple. A common taboo is seeing the husband naked, which Rey very nearly does when the Force connects her to a shirtless Ben Solo. While it seems obvious that this was a deliberate choice on Rian Johnson’s part to indicate that Ben shows Rey his true self, we now know that Chris Terrio intends to continue this theme in The Rise of Skywalker: “When Ren takes off his mask, there’s a nakedness about him with Rey that he doesn’t express to anyone else.”

After Ben Solo extends a (naked) hand to her, Rey pursues him to the Supremacy, where the capture motif reappears as she is escorted to Snoke in restraints. Continuing the theme of revealing the true form, Rey calls Ben by his given name, yet another common folktale taboo that the heroine is forbidden to break. There are now so many broken taboos that the flight of the fairy bride is inevitable, and sure enough, when princely Ben proposes to Rey as the demon Kylo Ren, she flees his underworld back to the relative safety of the Resistance. As the story stands at the end of The Last Jedi, the fairy bride has left her animal bridegroom in his otherworld, choosing for now to live in the mortal world of the mundane. However, if the folktale pattern holds, she will not be satisfied there, and will soon begin to long for the otherworld again.

The Swan Maiden in The Rise of Skywalker

So this brings us to the theory raised by What The Force, that the appearance of Palpatine and Dark Rey in the trailers indicate that the final film of the saga will follow something of a Swan Lake pattern, with Palpatine enticing Rey to the Dark Side such that she must be retrieved by a redeemed Ben Solo. It’s definitely a solid idea, but I think that the variants of swan maiden folktales can offer us some surprisingly specific clues as to the path of this last film. First, let’s explore the folklore tradition behind the image of Dark Rey that appeared in the D23 sizzle reel:

Swan maidens are usually presented as beautiful, pure creatures, but there is also something inherently dangerous about them. The dominant capture motif alone speaks to the idea that woman must be possessed and subjugated, and the prevalence of sexual taboos indicate that her unbridled sexuality is fearful to the storyteller. The unmarried maiden is a target of the hero’s hunt for a bride, but the unmarried older woman is an evil witch. This is the “wild woman,” or the projection of the unrepressed feminine.These women are often the false brides of the swan maiden tale: a loathly hag, troll, or succubus who disguises herself as the swan maiden and fools the hero into marrying her. She is usually a male storyteller’s projection that splits the female image into the virginal bride and the man-eating witch. This is true even when the false bride appears in Search for the Lost Husband tales as the heroine’s rival for the prince’s affections.

It is difficult to trace the history of oral tales and whether they vary when passed down by women versus men. However, available evidence suggests that women have often told swan maiden tales not as a warning, but as a fantasy of escape, emancipation, and personal fulfillment. The escape from the mortal husband and his mundane world IS the whole point for women throughout history who have been sold into unhappy marriages, so there is little reason to have the heroine seek out her captor again. Notably, searching wives rarely pursue mortal husbands, but usually are seeking their lost animal bridegrooms instead. For men, on the other hand, the swan maiden story stands as a warning not to neglect or mistreat their wives, lest she run away and thereby cause the breakdown of the family unit. The false bride, therefore, is likely to appear to the hero as a contrast to his pure, true bride, but is unlikely to appear to the fairy wife herself. Then again, you could argue that the swan maiden’s story is one of transforming into the dark and liberated creature that will be truly free of her captor, so the false bride could represent the fairy wife’s temptation to flee her domestic life.

As applied to Rey, this suggests a few possibilities about her dark alter ego: if she appears, whether as vision, clone, or truth to Ben Solo, then she is indeed the classic false bride, the succubus, the Black Swan meant to draw him away from his true bride. In this case, Ben will need to be able to recognize light-side Rey as the real one, and will then be rewarded for his discernment. He could even recognize the true Rey within the Dark version. However, this centers so much of the story around Ben that it leaves almost no character growth for Rey herself, so I think it’s the less likely option.

If, on the other hand, Dark Rey appears in some form to light-side Rey, she will represent less a warning than a temptation to the power she could have if only she would let go of the affection and responsibility she feels toward her mythical husband. Given some of the cast comments about how “everyone has a dark side,” this seems much more probable to me. Seeing an emancipated version of herself, free of all attachments and therefore (so she thinks) free of the pain of rejection, could be a tantalizing concept for Rey, whom we know is positively drowning in her loneliness after her parents, mentors, and would-be lover all failed her. Resisting this temptation and willing herself to remain vulnerable, to keep her heart open to love and hope, would be the ultimate challenge for this character and a fitting ending for a saga of lonely Jedi falling to the Dark Side to protect their shattered hearts.

All of that said, it is a bit of a stretch to say that Dark Rey appears in the tradition of the false bride when she’s potentially not a bride at all, if she’s not specifically meant for Ben Solo’s character arc. In that sense, I don’t really think the Odette/Odile comparison is as apt as it seems based on the aesthetics. I could certainly be wrong and Lucasfilm may choose to have Dark Rey factor into the journeys of BOTH Rey and Ben, which would honestly be a masterstroke of folklore reference and archetypal psychology.

What about Palpatine as the “evil magician” and potential rival for Rey’s heart? Is there merit to this theory based on the folktale motifs? Well, we’ve already discussed the concept of the demon lover, whose relationship with the heroine frequently predates her original capture into the mortal world, and in this sense I do think the Emperor fits the bill. There are a lot of links between Rey and Palpatine buried in the films and expanded lore, most notably her origin on Jakku, which was the site of the Emperor’s “backup plan” if his Empire should fall, as well as possibly his lab which was tasked with seeking the key to immortality. The other distinct tie is in her musical theme, which is in fact a variation on the Emperor’s theme from the original trilogy. Further, if Rey turns out to be the mirror image of Ben Solo, who arose from the Light but fell to the Dark, then she may have her origins in the Dark Side and came the the Light. If so, there could be some kind of historical link between her and Palpatine, much as the swan maiden maintains a tie to her demon lover even after she has married another.

As I mentioned before, Kylo Ren too is a demon lover, specifically an incubus. Palpatine, on the other hand, might be classified as a revenant, or a dark lover that is returned from the dead. The revenant differs from the other enchanted husbands in that he holds no potential to transform into the loving spouse, but only to trick the fairy wife into leaving with him, thereby dragging her into death with him. Swan maidens are often lured from their mortal husbands in the belief that the revenant is a long-dead lover returned to the land of the living, and that her true place is with him. These fairy wives are fooled into following the revenant into Hell, and all of the characters suffer in their eternal separation and abandonment.

It seems very likely that Palpatine may make an offer to Rey which mirrors the ones Kylo made in the previous two films. Though it may or may not be darkly romantic in nature, Darth Sidious’ proposal may be very enticing to Rey if she is at an emotionally fragile moment. Her only hope in that scenario would be to keep faith in Ben Solo, and for him to show himself worthy of that faith by shedding his beastly skin and reclaiming his true identity. By recognizing and pursuing her true husband, Rey would in effect forget the revenant, and he would cease to exist.

The last point I want to make about some likely imagery in The Rise of Skywalker based on the trailers is a reference to a swan maiden tale subtype known as “The Orange Maiden” or “The Love for the Three Oranges.” In this story type, a man cuts into an orange, and a beautiful maiden emerges. She is desperately thirsty and begs him for water, but the man refuses, and she dies. The man cuts open a second orange and the same thing happens. Finally, he cuts open a third orange, and this time he offers her a drink, and the woman agrees to marry him. However, when he leaves her alone by a lake, she is impersonated by a false bride, who fools the bridegroom into marrying her instead. The heroine must then pursue the hero in a classic Search for the Lost Husband tale.

The cutting of the orange is typically a metaphor for sexual initiation, as the mythical husband penetrates the ripe fruit to discover the woman inside. Similarly, Kylo Ren enters Rey’s mind twice in The Force Awakens, and then continues to have sexually-coded encounters with her throughout their onscreen relationship. While I reject the idea that this was a deliberate rape metaphor, the allusion to him taking what was not offered freely is unmistakable.

As many have pointed out before, Rey’s element in the production design of the sequel trilogy is water, which is offered to her in progressively greater amounts throughout the films: Her first appearance in The Force Awakens shows her thirsting, drinking the last few drops from her canteen in the arid desert before rushing away to seek more sustenance. She next finds herself by a lake, and then in a vision in the pouring rain, facing none other than Kylo Ren. Later, Rey is surrounded by snow, another form of water (though not ideal for quenching thirst) as Kylo makes his first offer to her, which of course she cannot accept. In The Last Jedi, Rey is on an island surrounded by water, standing in the rain as she encounters Kylo yet again. Eventually, her association with water is so complete that she is submerged in it as she falls into the cave and emerges dripping. She fights Luke in the rain, then fights alongside Ben Solo on the Supremacy, afterward dripping with sweat and tears. At this point, Kylo makes his second proposal to her, which she again refuses.

If there’s one thing we know for certain, it’s that Rey will be completely DRENCHED in the final film of the saga, surrounded as she is by a raging ocean during her duel with Kylo/Ben. This seems like a likely place for a third proposal to take place, one that will hopefully finally quench Rey’s thirst which it seems has yet to be satisfied through the previous two movies. The folktale suggests that the man must learn to care about and give the woman what she needs before she will consent to marry him; and so Ben Solo must learn what it is that Rey truly wants from him in order to make her an offer that she will accept.

However, if Ben and Rey come to some kind of understanding at the end of their Death Star battle, there must still be conflict to resolve. It is for this reason that I think one or both of them may flee the other in a moment of panic or regression, not yet ready to embrace their true self and unite with their soulmate. This would also be the logical moment for Dark Rey to appear in some form, to tempt our heroine and hero in their moment of greatest weakness, when they have been divided. Then one or both mythical spouses would need to pursue the other in order to overcome the lie that separates them.

Conclusion: Triumph of the Swan Maiden

Swan maiden tales represent the feminine ideal of both men and women, but with vastly different aspects. The Quest for the Lost Bride variation of the story is characterized by a deep anxiety that the fairy wife will leave her husband forever, and that he will never be able to retrieve her. To avoid this fate, he overcompensates by capturing and imprisoning her, but this in itself is a broken taboo which will eventually lead to the exact loss that the mythical husband fears. Feminine freedom is a fearful thing, so the masculine must possess and control it, with terrible consequences for both his family and society as a whole.

Meanwhile, the Search for the Lost Husband version of the tale is characterized by the feminine fantasy of freedom, of the agency to make one’s own choices about what she will do and who shall have her heart. As such, she does not shy away from the beast, nor from the demon lover. Instead, she embraces him and pursues her husband’s true form hidden underneath. But, she does these only from a position of freedom and independence: her pursuit of her desires must always follow her escape from her original capture.

The Skywalker Saga tells both of these stories, and the ninth film will show their natural conclusion: The matured masculine will accept the liberated feminine, and the two will unite to ultimately defeat death itself.

Given that swan maiden tales usually end in tragedy, why am I so confident for a happy ending? It’s very simple, really: just as it was natural for George Lucas to tell his story of loss, it will be natural for JJ Abrams to tell his story of unity and balance. Abrams has been married to public relations executive Katie McGrath for almost 24 years, and they have three children together. Further, they are accustomed to working through their differences, as theirs is an interfaith marriage: JJ is Jewish while Katie is Catholic. And finally, Abrams does not appear to be insecure or threatened by his wife, despite her achievements and the fact that she’s taller than him (and even more so in heels, he laughs). While of course we cannot know what their relationship is like behind closed doors, it seems likely that Abrams’ view of romance is much more mature and hopeful than Lucas’ would have been at the time he directed the prequel trilogy. To the extent that the artist’s perspective is expressed through their art, I would expect JJ’s final installment in the Skywalker Saga to be a charming and idealistic romance.

I realize this is a really long way to say “they’re right,” but I thought this deserved a deep dive, so I hope you liked it, dear reader, if you made it this far. If you have not checked out my other entries in this Folktale Types in Star Wars series, you can find those here:

The Search for the Lost Husband: Reylo as Eros and Psyche

More Search for the Lost Husband: The Burning of the Beast’s Skin in Star Wars

The Quest for the Lost Bride: Anidala (and Reylo) as Orpheus and Eurydice

More Quest for the Lost Bride: Sleeping Beauty in Star Wars

Still More Search for the Lost Husband: The Revival of the Prince in Star Wars

…. And if you REALLY liked my ramblings, please consider sharing them! I also deeply appreciate comments, if you have any. Thank you so much, lovely Reylos (and Reylo-curious newbies)!

Oh and by the way, George Lucas remarried in 2013 and seems very happy. <3

Edit: I know the WTForce ladies hate Tumblr but I’m tagging them anyway since this was really all about Marie-Claire’s idea: @theforcerevisited​ Sorry Twitter isn’t my thing, lovelies!

[sparksinthenight]

Rant about Frankenstein

Because honestly what the fuck else would I do? Elizabeth, Justine, and Caroline are my favourite characters and Adam’s misunderstood but not in an owo sad boi way. Because honestly what the fuck else would I say? Y’all know me by now.

Hey did anybody else have to read Frankenstein for gradeschool? Because Jesus Christ, that book was unbelievably horrible. Victor is irredemable in so many ways, he gets a twelve-year-old girl killed because he doesn’t want to take responsibility for his own crimes, and also he marries his sister. 🤢

....... And this is the guy whose pain we’re supposed to be sympathizing with???? Like NO THANKS??!!!

His whole family is horrible by the way? His dad married a woman young enough to be his daughter who, more importantly, was almost wholly financially dependent on him at the time when he proposed and therefore could not properly consent? Like ... she had to choose between abject poverty and him and that’s not a real choice at all? They pretty much kidnapped Elizabeth who had her own family and it’s implied that she never got to see her real parents again. Do you know how unbelievably traumatizing that would be? They pretty much kidnapped Justine too though they let her see her family occasionally which doesn’t change the fact that she had to go so long without them when she was just an elementary school-aged child. And also they made her do child labour. While letting their teenaged son just lie around in a boat for no reason. And Victor pretty much kills her later to save himself. If you read between the lines you can see that they groomed Elizabeth and arguably even Victor from a disturbingly young age to marry each other (despite the fact that they grow up in the same house with the same adults and are therefore siblings). Neither child really has another option for people to marry it what to do with their lives and they both grow up knowing they’d inevitably end up married to each other as their father wants. Which is disturbing. That’s incredibly disturbing. Unbelievably disturbing. The way young-child-Elizabeth is described is too womanlike fo be describing a child? The same thing happens when describing Victor’s youngest brother? Who dates a five-year-old when he’s like eight or nine? Like I’m aware that kids date but that’s a fucked up age difference for two people so young and it’s described so creepily.

And honestly Victor’s whole family is so disturbing? But the worst part of it is that his family isn’t described as disturbing. They’re described as such good people and such a sweet, loving, perfect family. They’re painted as do benevolent and kind and generous. And like ... they’re not? At all? They’re abusive, exploitative, and predatory? I mean except the women but the women are all the victims of the men. And it’s painted as this pure, innocent, loving thing. We even talked in class about how perfect and loving his family is.

And I want to talk about the female characters. Caroline, who got coerced into marrying a “good, honest, benevolent” man under the implicit threat of destitution, sacrificed her life to save Elizabeth. Elizabeth, who gets kidnapped a groomed, is the only one who truly feels sorrow for Justine’s death. Sure the other members of the family mourn, but it’s just for show. There never is the deep, caring, vulnerable, emotional aspect to it. They go through the motions of mourning because it’s what’s right. You can tell because Victor had ample chance to save Justice but didn’t even try whatsoever at all because he wanted to save his reputation. Despite the fact that he’s much older than Justine. And the way he mourns is the same hollow way the other men in the family mourn. But Elizabeth’s mourning is so much more raw and agonized and real. Because they understand each other. They share each other’s pain. And Justine herself, from the little we see of her, is also shown to be a deeply loving girl. She holds a picture of her real/birth family close to her at all times. Her displays of love are not grand, ornate, and ultimately hollow like the men. They’re simple, and humble, and genuine, and pure. The women understand what live us, and what emotions are, while the men don’t.

I don’t believe this is intentional though, despite the book being written by a female author, because every single time the men are described they’re described as perfect and flawless while the women are described as pretty and beautiful and “oh they love the men so much” and that’s it. But their actions betray the truth of the profound deep ness and wisdom of their characters. And given how you know how like, what we see in the world informs how we write about it, subconsciously, right. Well Mary Shelley probably unconsciously write about the strength, camaraderie, compassion, and empathy she has seen but hasn’t consciously noticed, without even noticing it.

You might tell me, oh wow Mary is a female author why would she be misogynistic?

You need to remember that internalized misogyny is one hell of a beast. Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, After, Dark, and so many more misogynistic trash books were all written by female authors. And also the difference between Mary and her female characters is that Mary was from  a rich family whereas every single one of her female characters in this book were from a poor background and class is an even more impactful praxis than gender and multiple axis often intersect in very strange and horrible ways.

Back to the story.

And obviously everything that goes on when Victor goes off to university is horrible. And so many people talk about how it’s horrible for Adam but they never truly realize the pain that Adam is in. Apart from being Victor’s son and being thoroughly abandoned, and feared, and even hated by his father Adam is forced to live in a world that shuns him and sees him as a monster.

Adam is, in my opinion, the only redeemable male character in the book. Despite having no control over his emotions, his emotions are real. Adam is alone. Justine is alone. Elizabeth is alone. Caroline is arguably alone. The violence the Frankenstein family inflicts upon the members it considers lesser is unimaginable. Adam is alone, is lesser, is pretty much forced to grow up on his own because he failed to meet expectations. Victor is so full of hubris and ego. And honestly, at least this gets addressed but he never is truly held accountable by the narrative. He has such a goddamn high opinion of himself and thinks he can do everything. He never thinks of the fact that the guy he creates will be their own person. Victor views Adam as an extension of himself and his glory. And when Adam commits the “crime” of not living up to Victor’s expectations Victor abandons him immediately. Because Adam was supposed to be a monument to Victor’s glory, to Victor’s artistry, to Victor’s intelligence, Victor’s power. And he wasn’t that. He was a young, flawed child in need of guidance and support, guidance and support he never received.

So this all begs the question. Why did Victor feel the need to create Adam? Because truly, as messed up as Victor’s family, they are messed up in a different way. Victor, growing up his family, was always the darling. Always the centre of attention. Always adored and fired and called genus. For existing. When he went off to university, this was not the case. He was a bright student but he was one student of many. He was not special just because. Whatever position he had he had to gain somehow. And I’m not saying meritocracy is good, it isn’t. But it was a different system than what he grew up in and for the first time he wasn’t so close to the very top. Of course that would deeply “hurt” a man as coddled as Victor was. Of course that would drive him to need to “prove himself.” It would drive him to need to show that he was glorious. And he needed Adam to prove his worth to them and gain his position.

Everyone talks about how Adam’s actions were irrational, borne of over-emotional passion and disregard for the morals of polite society. They don’t see that in the face of extreme, unbearable psychological and even sometimes physical trauma m violence the only way forwards is with violence if your own. Think of it as do-it-yourself Karma.

Adam was alone. Justine was alone. Elizabeth was alone. Caroline was alone. But Adam had so much privilege - and yes it is privilege - that the others don’t have. Adam is free. Adam does not fit into the society and all its class-divides, gender-divides, race-divides, religion-divides, and other divides. He doesn’t have a place on the hierarchy. Or in society. He exists in his own sphere. And is beholden to none of the rules if said polite society. He doesn’t have to surround himself with people who want to exploit, abuse, and control him. He doesn’t have to do what they say. He doesn’t have to fake gratitude. He had the type of freedom that Justine, Elizabeth, and Caroline deserve but do not have.

I’m being rejected by society Adam retreated into the wilderness and lived in nature. I believe there is something deeply poetic about that. Because the wilderness is the origin and the end.

But anyways, Adam didn’t know how corrupt the Frankenstein family was. He didn’t know many things. But he knew rage, and he knew violence.

And he knew how to kill.

And it was so cathartic in a strange, subconscious way to see the Frankenstein family’s downfall. I mourned Elizabeth and Justine’s deaths. I seriously mourned them. But they were the only ones. And I still felt a sense of peace and calm at their deaths. Because now they’re free from their nightmare lives, right? Elizabeth, especially. Because she was getting so close to her wedding night. She was getting so close to the time when she would have to sleep with the child of her kidnappers, who she grew  up with, who she was raised to be a wife for. That’s not good. So it was actually a relief that he died before she could consummate that sham of a marriage. Elizabeth and Justine were beautiful, radiant souls that deserved to be in the world. But at least they’re free. They deserved to live. Big they also deserved freedom. Not either/or. Both. But still. If you ask me freedom is worth more than life. If humans had not been so neurobiologically wired to stay alive I would have happily died years ago.

And the Frankenstein men. Their deaths are viewed as such tragedy. They are so deeply mourned. We are made to feel heir loss so deeply. And we are meant to feel grief and terror for them. But I don’t. It feels so deeply, morbidly satisfying to see them finally be the ones that suffer, to see them finally be the ones that grieve.

Especially if you consider the class issues that pervade the whole book. They live in early Industrial Revolution Switzerland, a place drowning in poverty, death, and misery that the comfortably wealthy are shielded from. It’s good to finally see the iron bars if destiny bent in a shape they’re not supposed to be in. It’s good. Cathartic. Not terrible and unholy as the narrative would have you believe.

And that family is finally smites from the Earth. Gone. Rooted out. Along with all their festering corruption. And in his last grand, holy, martyric act Adam Frankenstein let’s the cold winds of the Arctic wilderness carry his spirit into death.

And though Victor is portrayed as a tragic, sensitive genius from a respectable family with a fatal flaw that destroyed him in the end, he was truly a rich, male, coddled, spoiled man-baby from an overprivileged and corrupt family who raised him to be who he was. And the men of the family, including the youngest and estranged son Adam, were all destroyed by their corruption.

But what else do you expect in a novel written by a rich lady of upstanding background from Georgian England of all places and times?

[golittlehollywood]

Here are some words - my words and thoughts on the current situation, the protests, the worldwide fight to end racism.

Let's go back in time when villages were small, tiny in comparison with the cities and villages we live in today, a time when no one and later only a few people could read and write and everyone needed to hunt to survive. It doesn't matter if I tell you about the Neanderthals or people living in the Middle Ages, what I want to point out works both ways. Centuries ago people had to depend on village communities. It was all they had and all that was safe. Everything familiar was good, which means that everything unknown, strangers and foreigners were seen as a danger. They were robbers, burnt down villages, took things etcetera etcetera. In a nutshell, prejudices were used as a defence.

  However, times have changed, we have changed. The world isn't the big scary beast it used to be anymore. There is no land to explore and seize no more, simply because it's all been done. We've been through it. There is nothing to defend. And still, prejudices turned into racism.

  I hope you understand what I mean. Please don't be like "what are you driving at?" Here it comes. Although times have changed and most of the human race accepts each other, doesn't believe foreigners take away jobs, rob the white, and kill everyone coming in their way, there are a few who hang on to these stereotypes and accusations.

 "Why" you may ask. "This all is so long ago, how are there still people who think like this?" I have been asking myself these questions too. Frankly, I am not sure why. All I can offer you is a fragment of a notion. You know how each gender (if we only think about male and female) has been associated with its own colour, right. Blue for boys and pink for girls. Somehow - and I am well aware that it is not as radical as it used to be, the structure is still within us. It is true, the human race has become more gender-sensitive but it is still considered weird to see a man wearing a skirt or a woman not dressing according to her stereotype. It's a long way of changing people's minds because it’s been like this for the past decades and we've come a long way. Unfortunately, no one can change what’s been taught and lived for centuries in a couple of years. That’s just not how it works, even if I wish it was.   

  My little explanation about gender stereotypes and being more sensitive can be adapted to racism. It is technically the same; it’s been around for ages and we have to accept that it will not disappear in a week or a month. Right now we can’t expect change but we can expect protests and education. This is why I personally think the current situation is a huge step towards ending racism. Whether there are posts online about all the black people who have been murdered or what to do, protests or riots all around the world, people promoting black businesses, authors, books and films/documentaries. I do not support every action that is taken, I do not approve of burning down police stations. Then again, you can’t attack a Malcolm and expect a Martin reaction. I understand the anger of black people and those who are standing behind them. If you are not angry, you are not paying attention. Murdering black people is a crime against humanity. It’s genocide.

  “Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense, our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention”. Martin Luther King said this years ago and his words did not lose their meaning over time. Au contraire. They are as important as on the day he spoke them. A riot is the language of the unheard. It is up to us to change it, we are the ones who can be heard, the ones who can be loud enough to not be unheard anymore. Use your voice, protest, demonstrate against injustice, talk about it, talk about racism with your children, educate them and yourself, support black people and businesses. 

  Don’t be silent.

[halliserres]

vampire: the masquerade oc meme

Notes: a Path of Enlightenment is an alternative path of morality to the humanity system, primarily for Kindred who are part of the Sabbat or are independent. Convictions are a personal guide of morals/ethics for Kindred to follow.

Links: V5 Character Sheet for a list of attributes and skills ; predator types

tagged by @malkavianfledgling​, ty <3 i think at this point yall know im shit at tagging others. also idk who of my mutuals play vtmb SO.

i dont rly have a vtm character fleshed out yet bc im still like ~4hrs into vtmb (and i dont know what half of this shit means.) so im just gonna bullshit my way thru this and make it up as i go lol. i’m also gonna do this for my malkavian who i haven’t even played yet bc everyone says u shouldn’t pick them for first playthru smh

BASICS:

NAME: Leto (her birth name is Kasumi Ueda; she changes her name after her embrace as a way to toss her old identity aside)

GENDER & SEXUALITY: Cis woman, bisexual

CLAN: Malkavian

GENERATION: 8th

PREDATOR TYPE: Siren, Bagger as a back-up

BIRTHPLACE: Portland, OR

PROFESSION: Errand girl for Lacroix. Before her embrace, she mostly did odd jobs to support a drug habit and couch-hopped a lot.

ATTRIBUTES AND DISCIPLINES:

ATTRIBUTES (Pick 3): Manipulation, perception, appearance

SKILLS (Pick 5): Subterfuge, stealth, firearms, investigation, security (if occult was in vtmb i’d replace one with that)

DISCIPLINES (Pick 2 Clan Disciplines): Auspex, obfuscate

MORALITY AND BELIEFS:

SECT: Camarilla

PATH/HUMANITY: 7-8 humanity

CONVICTIONS: Hold onto your humanity no matter what. Only kill if they deserve it. (i’ll probs come up with a better answer for this like, next week, but the gist of it is she’ll do anything to keep the beast away)

VIRTUES/STRENGTHS:  Adaptable, hardworking, imaginative, loyal, passionate (it’s hard constantly fighting your own mind, but goddamn she’ll do it)

SINS/FLAWS: Lust, envy / Paranoid, arrogant, blunt, deceptive (she has to be in this world, doesn’t she?), irrational, obsessive

CONNECTIONS:

BLOODLINE: Isaac Hopper (sire)

COTERIE: Billie Young (if i make her canon; she’s my Toreador who is basically a test run character before i get to start talking to stop signs), @princearcann ‘s himbo toreador who i don’t even know the name of but levy is unable to stop me from making all our ocs be friends.

GHOULS: Heather

ASSOCIATES: Sebastian Lacroix (she may or may not be sleeping with him), Therese & Jeanette Voerman, anyone u run jobs for in the camarilla run i GUESS i havent even finished this game lol

[needlekind]

power like mine: some meta hollering about Tiki

what is friendship, if not this

rosia here came back almost thirty minutes later and i was still going

tiki is one of my all-time faves and one of the first characters my friends, especially my non-fire-emblem friends, associate with me—young tiki was my first fire emblem and first sewn cosplay! i had four different people @ me at once when she was announced as an assist in smash. i love her so much. so obviously i had a WHOLE LOT OF WORDS TO SAY about my best lady over here, and now i am condensing them for all you lovely folks

this post will assume knowledge of fire emblem: awakening without offering any explicit spoilers! it also will not contain any plot spoilers for fire emblem: shadow dragon or fire emblem: new mystery of the emblem, but will discuss tiki’s backstory, and a couple things you can reasonably expect to happen by virtue of playing a 90s jrpg! while not image heavy, there are a chunk of them interspersed throughout.

LET’S TALK ABOUT WHY I LOVE THIS LADY SO MUCH

first, let’s go over Young Tiki’s appearance in the Archanea games, since most people are likely more familiar with her appearance in Awakening. it alludes to some parts of her backstory, as do her various quotes in Heroes (which, alongside Warriors, is likely where most people are familiar with Young Tiki), but let’s just get all our bases covered!

Tiki is the daughter of Naga, who is more or less just Literally God—just by virtue of sheer power, Naga, though not necessarily worshiped as a god just yet, is ruler of the powerful divine dragon tribe, and exalted and revered by humans alike even in ancient times. Naga dies ("dies"—ascends to godhood or an immaterial plane or whatever due to being TOO STRONG) very shortly after Tiki is born, a thousand years before Marth’s time, and on their* way, Naga puts Tiki to sleep, because the thing about dragons and Manaketes is that they are too fucking powerful, and their power will eventually drive them insane and turn them into feral beasts, which is why Manaketes are even a thing: by putting their power away into Dragonstones and taking on human forms, Manaketes can keep themselves stable, whereas if they lived life as dragons, they'd inevitably lose their mind completely and become monsters, no different than wild beasts.

* while Naga is portrayed as a woman in Awakening, and it’s commonly accepted as far as I know that their title “divine dragon king” is just a mistranslation due to nonspecific gender pronouns in Japanese, there is old Archanea-era official art which portrays Naga as male, so I personally like to think Naga is whatever the fuck they want to be and they just sort of decided to shit out a child of their own accord at some point, but that’s neither here nor there

Because Naga is, as previously established, so incredibly powerful, their daughter, Tiki, is, of course, fucking INSANELY bullshit powerful—and, of course, since she’s a newborn, she has absolutely no control over those powers. If she were to degenerate, she would effortlessly destroy the entire continent. Naga loves humanity too deeply to risk such a thing, so, as previously established, they put Tiki into a magic slumber to prevent this from happening.

She spends a thousand years in this sort of stasis, having constant nightmares about becoming a monster and hurting humans without having any control over it. She is woken up for brief periods of time at infrequent intervals so she can be comforted and/or fed by Gotoh (who i’ve complained about before, he’s just what if dumbledore was even WORSE because he’s SO MUCH MORE POWERFUL), Xane (who i absolutely adore but will not be mentioning again), and/or Bantu.

she certainly has some amount of awareness about her existence, even in sleep, because she can, of course, talk and has a basic level of cognizance—one day, after a thousand years of sleep, Tiki asks Bantu (she affectionately calls him Ban-Ban) where vegetables come from, and Bantu, taking pity on her, makes the decision to bring her out of the temple. and Tiki, who has spent a fucking millennium all alone having these terrible traumatic dreams, goes out into the world for the first time and she is immediately like I Wanna Do A Friendship

and boy howdy does she!!! Tiki spends basically the entire Archanea games effortlessly endearing herself to absolutely everybody—Archanea only has a few supports, but when you look at her Heroes quotes and see how eager and excitable she is, and you see how quickly she makes friends with the Warriors cast, it isn’t hard to extrapolate how beloved she must have been as part of Marth’s army. within a few seconds of meeting him, Tiki calls Marth, prince of Altea and leader of the Archanean resistance forces, “Mar-Mar,” and he is really only briefly shocked by the whole thing before realizing that she’s too cute. he can’t say no to her. she attaches herself to absolutely everyone, especially Mar-Mar, and all she wants to do is play and hang out and be pals with people! she spent so long in isolation but instead of dwelling on it, she really quickly jumps at the chance to make things happy and fun!

FE11/12 are sparse on supports, like i said, but she does have this really cute exchange with Bantu i want to highlight:

Bantu: Tiki, my child. Tiki: Oh, Ban-Ban! Bantu: Are you having a fun time with everyone? Tiki: Yes! I'm having so, so much fun! Bantu: Ooh, that's good to hear. It's very important you're having fun. Tiki: Oh, but... Bantu: Hmm? Is something the matter, child? Tiki: A while I ago, I, umm...I broke Mar-Mar's precious mirror...... Bantu: Oh dear...That's a bad thing you did. Tiki: Yes. I did something bad... Bantu: So, what did you do after that, child? Tiki: Oh...Mmm. I told him. I said "I'm sorry" to Mar-Mar. Bantu: ...And then, Prince Marth forgave you. Tiki: ...Yes.

and i love this so much because this happened, like...days ago. but she is so CONSUMED BY GUILT over her mistake that she’s just BRINGING IT UP UNPROMPTED, DAYS AFTER THE FACT, DESPITE THE FACT THAT IT'S BEEN ADDRESSED AND FORGIVEN!! she’s a good girl! she’s a sweet kid! but she also gets loud and impulsive and a little bratty sometimes: in her A support with Bantu, he tells her he’s going to leave her when the war is over to help other Manaketes across the continent. she gets terribly upset, and he redirects her:

Bantu: It isn't like we'll be apart forever. That's right. I'm sure I'll be back when you're a bit taller. Tiki: Huh...How tall? Bantu: Hmm? I guess...about my height. Tiki: Okay...Then, I'll transform and become bigger right now. Bantu: W-wait, Tiki! Tiki: ...Sorry, I lied.

my other favorite support of hers is with Navarre in Warriors, who is precisely as good at friendship as he looks—

Tiki: Hiya, Navarre! I heard you don't like to fight girls? Is that true? Navarre: Who told you tha-- ...Ah, Caeda. Tiki: So, I'm a girl... But what about my dragon form? Would you fight dragon Tiki? Navarre: Ridiculous. Tiki: But I'm curious. If dragon Tiki attacked, what would you do? Navarre: Unimportant. I only fight strong opponents. Tiki: So you'd fight me, because I'm super strong as a dragon. Navarre: You, strong? You're just a child. A rather conceited child... I have faced death time and time again, but never succumbed to his cold grasp. You have no such experience. Even as a dragon, you'd be no match. Tiki: Oohhh! I don't really wanna fight, but you're making me angry! Navarre: Just forget about it, Tiki. Tiki: I can't! I won't! You and me! Right here, right now!

"no, i won’t fight you in your dragon form because i don't fight anyone weaker than me” “WOW? WOW???? THAT WAS JUST A HYPOTHETICAL BUT NOW I ACTUALLY WANT TO FIGHT YOU FOR REAL. PUT UP YOUR DUKES BUDDY”

young tiki is peak Sassy Lost Child, but then not even four lines of dialogues later she’s distracted from her righteous fury because Navarre goes "i'm not going to fight you because you're precious to Marth" and Tiki goes OH!! SO IF I'M MARTH'S FRIEND AND YOU'RE MARTH'S FRIEND THAT MEANS WE'RE FRIENDS

and Navarre is like oh my fucking god

Navarre: That's not how it works, but... Believe what you want. Tiki: Teehee, yay! I'm so glad to be one of your dear friends, Nar-Nar! Navarre: Ugh... I'm leaving.

so she is just Like This all this time. at the time she’s recruited in FE11, she only has twelve years of human memories, so she’s treated like a child, and she acts like it, for the most part! but one thing that really gets me—and it gets overshadowed very often, because she's mostly like!! let's stay together forever!!! i love you so much i love all my friends!!!!! i love the beach because the ocean is big enough for ALL my friends to play with!!!!!! one of her character select quotes for her legendary version in Heroes is just "i love you all!!" she's SO cute—but one of legendary Tiki's dialogue quotes is "I heard someone say that I'm going to live much, much longer than everyone else... How much longer, do you think?"

they shelter her in this way, a little; she says she heard someone say that—when Tiki insists on her maturity, like in her Warriors supports with Corrin, it’s often in a humorously indignant way, but the fact is, by the end of FE12 she’s been a soldier in an army in two wars. none of it hits her sunshiney disposition, but the fact is, Tiki is aware of her own mortality or lack thereof, or, more importantly, her friends’ mortality—but she doesn’t seem to really know what to do with or about it.

FE12 ends with Tiki living her life happily as a part of the palace town. we don’t see Marth’s death; we only hear about it when we first meet her in Awakening. we don’t know what happens in between, either. we miss about 2,000 years of Tiki content. a lot changes in two millennia, of course, but the thing that sticks out to me most is this:

FE11 Young Tiki classic mode death quote: “No...I don't want to be...alone...”

FE13 Adult Tiki classic mode death quote: “I won't have to be alone...anymore...”

geez louise

so: enter Awakening Tiki!

hey not that i don’t LOVE her look, but, like. here’s a question. that’s a REALLY high slit. what do those garters clip onto

anyway

like i said, this post assumes Awakening knowledge, so we’re just going to breeze through where she’s at when we meet her as a quick refresher: by now, Naga worship is the cool new prevalent thing now and, as we’ve discussed, Tiki is the daughter of Literally Just God? so here we have a lady who is one part jesus, one part the oracle at delphi, and one part a deity in her own right. by now, degeneration isn’t so much a concern; Awakening doesn’t address how this happens—Young Tiki is permitted to leave the temple and travel with Marth because he assembles the Fire Emblem, then known as the Shield of Seals; of course, it’s split into the different gems by the time Awakening happens, so it’s likely some combination of her aging and therefore acquiring greater control of her power, and her putting those powers away (i.e. needing to perform her paralogue’s ritual to access any part of them)

anyway, so we have Tiki, thousands of years out from the deaths of her first friends—including Marth, who she calls the best friend she's ever had two thousand years after the fact—and now being worshiped as a prophet and oracle

and Tiki's defined by her loneliness in a lot of ways; keeping herself from being lonely again was the thing that drove her completely while she was still a child after waking up, and, throughout both FE11/12 and Heroes, she expresses a lot of fear of being left alone again, but by Awakening she's sort of...resigned to it? when you recruit her in FE12, she says she’s afraid of falling asleep at all again, that she worries if she closes her eyes they’ll never open, she’ll never see her friends again—meanwhile, Awakening Tiki is the queen of depression naps. she's more jaded, and she even openly speaks disparagingly of humanity, such as in Harvest Scramble:

So this is how the denizens of the Outrealms celebrate. People are scarcely different, whatever realm they inhabit. They pray for bounty, then despair when those prayers go unanswered. At times that despair gives way to war... Alas, festivals are but man placating his gods only to selfishly curse them later.

fuckin. for god's sake, tiki

but she's resigned to the fact that she is on a whole separate level from humans these days, that she's an object to be worshiped, the Voice before herself, and she still serves the role she's been given to its fullest? like, she resents being the Voice, but it brings people peace, so she does it. despite her ruder comments, it’s clear she does have a lot of love for humanity—she must, to do so much work and allow herself to be placed in such a lofty position so far away from them all for their sake

still, it’s made very clear she’s just sort of...accepted her lot in life, even if she has no love for it. again, from Harvest Scramble (all underlining mine):

Tiki: *Sigh* Raise your head, Say'ri. Please? Yes, I'd retired to a position of uninvolved security in my sleep. I merely observed. I intended to never again play a hand in the affairs of others. ...I thought that was best for everyone. Say'ri: And I violated that choice, ran contrary to my lady's wisdom! Tiki: Well, yes. Perhaps you did. My legend was meant to fade, as legends do. To scatter like sand in the wind.

it was around this point that rosia came back from her shower:

note the almost 30 minute time stamp difference

i wasn’t done

anyway

all of this, but she joins Chrom's army because destiny calls or whatever—Grima is an active threat, and she cannot leave the world to be ruined, so she's just kind of like yes all right i guess we're doing this and wipes the sleep out of her eyes and gets right back to it, but it isn’t until she has regular human company again that she realizes how much she missed it! a direct continuation from that last support bit:

Tiki: The choice I described before, to sequester myself away. That was how I felt back then. Back when we first met. But that is not how I feel now. Say'ri: Oh? Then...might I ask your mind now? Tiki: I'm thankful to you, Say'ri. Say'ri: Th-thankful?! ...To me, my lady? Pray, what could you mean? Tiki: Yes, to you. Without your intervention, I'd never have met all these wonderful people. And you've made me see that I am still relevant. That I can still be of use. Even to those resigned to live out their days in hermitage, warm company is a blessing. It was you who reminded me of that, Say'ri.

side note, she is secretly a HUGE goofball and it really only comes out when she's interacting with people on the regular again; she shoves an apple right into Say'ri's mouth mid-sentence and blows raspberries at her because she's being Too Serious and Tiki wants Say'ri to be honest with her and be just a regular FRIEND instead of a servant. i also want to talk about her complete lack of chill real quick, because that’s a DELIGHTFUL aspect of, again, Jesus But A Dragon’s silly personality; we discussed this with her Navarre supports and her solving the problem of not being tall enough for Bantu to stay by threatening to transform on the spot but oh my god do i ever love what a formal affair she makes out of threatening to EAT ANNA

Tiki: Is there aught you would like to tell me, Anna? Anna: You mean other than...um...how AWESOME you are?! Tiki: I hear you charged admission to my speech on the unending power of good. Additionally, it seems you are hawking my signature like a common market trinket. Anna: W-well, common market trinkets usually don't sell for 50 gold a pop! ...R-right? Look, come on! There was DEMAND, Tiki! The people just want to be a part of you! You get to spread your message, they get hope for the future, and I get a little coin! ...Er, or a lot of coin. Tiki: If your actions were so altruistic, there was no need to hide them from me. Yet even now, I see the shame of your deeds writ upon your face. Anna: But wait! Wait! I didn't do it for my own personal gain, I swear! Tiki: Such deceit only compounds your folly. Anna: T-Tiki? Wh-why are you pulling out a Dragonstone?! Tiki: To teach you that deceiving an oracle bears a hefty price. Now still your lying tongue and prepare to be eaten.

other people she threatens to eat: f!Robin, who realizes Tiki will answer questions in her sleep, starts with some history, escalates to ~were you in LOOOOOVE with prince marth~,

Avatar: (Er, Tiki? Hello, can you hear me? I want you to listen very carefully. Remember when you told me about ancient King Marth and how he saved you? Well, I was wondering... Did you love him?) Tiki: ...... Avatar: Hello? (This is odd. Usually she answers right away.) Hey, Tiki? Can you hear me? I'm asking you a question. Were you in love with King Marth? Did you want to marry him? Come on, spit it out! Tiki: Tiki...is not home. Avatar: Hey! What kind of dreamspeak is that?! You're supposed to answer my question! Tiki: *Snort* H-huh?! Whooza wozza?! What's going on?! Avatar: Aw, nuts. I woke her up. Tiki: Avatar? Is there an emergency? Is the camp under attack? Avatar: Er, well... I mean, that is to say... You were...moaning! Yes, that's it. Moaning unhappily in your sleep. I thought you were having some terrible nightmare and decided to wake you up. Tiki: Really? Thanks, Avatar. ...I think it was a nightmare. I vaguely remember being hounded by some awful hag. She wouldn't stop pestering me with personal questions. Avatar: O-oh? F-f-fancy that! What a funny dream! Heh hah! Tiki: *Yaaawn* But I'm still pretty sleepy. You don't mind if I doze off again, do you? Avatar: Oh. No. Of course not. Be my guest. Tiki: Just another forty winks and I'll...be ready...for action... ...... Zzzzzz... Avatar: (Whew! I dodged an arrow there! I couldn't very well tell her I was asking such private questions in her sleep...) Tiki: Zzz... *mumble* Avatar: (She's talking in her sleep again! Let me just bend down here so I can get a good—) Tiki: Avatar...mind your own business...or else. Avatar: WAAAAAAAAARGH! Tiki: Zzzzzz... Oh, and before you leave... fetch a cloak to...lay over me... It's a bit chilly...down here... Zzzzzzzzzzzz... Avatar: Oh! Uh, right. Of course! Whatever you say, Tiki! (Avatar leaves) Tiki: Hee hee... Zzzzzz...

a real highlight is yet another Harvest Scramble quip, when Lucina suggests Tiki wear her childhood outfit for the festival and Tiki

jams herself into the clothing

for a twelve-year-old

Tiki: ...... Lucina: ...... Tiki: ...... Lucina: Tiki. I...I don't really know what to, uh... I'm sorry... Tiki: Yes, well, that's quite enough dress-up for now. Or ever. Lucina: I was so focused on faithfully re-creating the outfit you wore in the past, I... I suppose I failed to anticipate how silly children's clothes would look on an adult. Tiki: Silly? I think that was a far cry from just silly, Lucina. Did you never stop to wonder how I would even fit into clothes that small? Lucina: I'm so, so sorry... Although it WAS you who decided to force your way into them anyway... Tiki: What was that? Lucina: N-nothing! I said nothing...

BUT ALSO

Tiki: Good. Honestly, three millennia alive, and I've never been so humiliated. Lucina: I was just... You've lived in such a different world than us all the time. Even now that you're traveling with us, you seem so distant at times... I'd hoped to help close that distance, but I fear I've done the opposite. For that, I'm truly sorry, Tiki. Tiki: ...... You're wrong about that. Lucina: Come again? Tiki: Yes, the result was...less than ideal. But the fact that you were trying to treat me like a peer, as your equal... You didn't put me on a pedestal or treat me differently than the others. The costume was embarrassing, yes, but on the contrary, I feel...happy. Lucina: You... Really? Tiki: I do. It's...quite liberating. Thank you for that, Lucina. I've forgotten how wonderful human friendships can be, fleeting as they are. I shall endeavor to do what I can to grow closer to the others. And I hope you'll continue to introduce me to new firsts, good and bad alike.

LIKE... HOW CUTE!!!! she's spent SO much time as an object of devotion before anything else that she's kind of forgotten how to be social, and being with Chrom's army reminds her again, and she's really quick to be silly and stupid and sassy about it, and she kind of just relearn hope and optimism in that way, too—a really good example is YET AGAIN present in Harvest Scramble, where like, she's talking to Nowi and she talks about how the dead become stars and that's the afterlife, and she's always seen it all these years as her loved ones being just out of reach, and Nowi's like wow cool!!! it's like they're ALWAYS with you because you can always look up and see them and they see you!!!!!

and Tiki's like

holy shit

three thousand years of existence and this nevER OCCURRED TO ME

i’m gonna segue into talking about her conversations with Nah real quick, too, which are honestly some of her sweetest; Tiki calls Nah “dear” and such in a way she doesn’t with anyone else unless Morgan is her daughter. she’s quick to answer all Nah’s questions, takes a lot of delight in seeing the usually-reserved Nah all sparkly eyed and overjoyed about the harvest festival, and takes her under her wing in a way she doesn’t really with Nowi; Nowi doesn’t particularly care about all her various Manakete lineage, but Nah has so much she wants to know but doesn’t have the resources to figure out. Tiki is very honest with Nah, telling her the truth of her lineage, of immortality and the loneliness that comes with it, will be painful, and she’s frank about how much it’s hurt her in a way she isn’t, always? but i think this quip from their A-support really demonstrates the Big Thing about Tiki and her character growth:

Tiki: ...Hear me, Nah. Remember when I said I had to tell you something difficult? We manaketes are destined to suffer because of our love for humankind. Nah: Destined to...suffer? Tiki: We live for millennia, while humans flicker out like candles. The greatest friendship I ever knew lasted just a few short decades... And when King Marth died, I was left to wander the centuries alone. Nah: ...I see. I have to be prepared to lose everyone I love. Tiki: The dragon blood in your veins curses you to such a fate. Nah: ...Wow. That's...depressing. Tiki: it can be very sad, yes. But it can make you strong as well. You will learn to cherish the memories of those wonderful people you meet. You will make them a part of you so they can give you courage always. Nah: Like a family inside your mind? Tiki: Yes, exactly! You will be able to pass on the memories to your friends' children! And then to their children and to countless generations to come. In this way can you keep them alive through the long march of time. Nah: ...... Tiki: Do you understand? Nah: ...I think so. Tiki: Never allow your fate to dissuade you from living a full, rewarding life, Nah. You must go out into the world and seek out friends. ...Seek out love. And when their end comes, as it will, you must keep them alive forever. You have the gift of near immortality, and you must find a way to share it. And what better time to start than now? Nah, let you and I be friends.

anyway the real thesis statement of this whole thing is: i love Tiki because we get to see her transition from this overly energetic optimistic ball of friendship and sunshine and joy to someone much more jaded and quiet who fills the necessary role of oracle with reluctance. she's defined by her loneliness more than much else and she goes from afraid of it to resigned to it to kind of accepting its inevitability but relearning that joy and optimism to make the most of the time she DOES have and reintegrating herself with human society and friendship, and the juxtaposition of someone who knows she's going to lose everyone she loves again and again and again and again and has accepted and made a sort of sad peace with it, against that same someone deciding to wholeheartedly throw herself into those fleeting friendships and sometimes in the stupidest possible ways, is VERY GOOD

tl;dr I Love A Girl

[officialjameelajamil]

I weigh

Today is my 32nd birthday.

This is the best birthday I’ve ever had because I’ve woken up to thousands of women sending me pictures and messages about the things they love about their lives, and the things they have done that they are most proud of. This has been going on for days now.

I was scrolling through “explore” on Instagram (always a certified mine field for one’s self esteem) and came across this disastrously damaging picture.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A group shot of grown women with their respective weights posted across each of their bodies, and the post asking what we think of their weights and then asking its followers, “What do you weigh?”

WHO CARES? What kind of crazed toxic nonsense is this? What is this post trying to achieve other than to induce anxiety into young women about something so entirely irrelevant? What are we teaching women about our value? Can it be measured using a metric system? Why do so many posts like this exist on social media? How is anyone supposed to get through the fucking day happy with themselves when we are given such unreasonable and shallow goals to achieve, falling short of which, no matter who we are, what we do, how many lives we save, how many children we raise, how many people’s lives we touch, we are not worth anything.

I snapped. I am just done. I’m so done with seeing this and letting it pass me by. It’s so dangerous and disgusting. It’s so belittling and abusive. We are subliminally bullied all day by the magazines, the side bar of shame, social media, and by each other. The onslaught is so aggressive that we are going to have to retaliate with 10 times the strength to undo all of the damage to the global psyche of women. So I posted this:

A small ode to the brilliant life that I am so lucky to live, that I built by myself from scratch, to the friends I am so lucky to have and to my self worth. This is how I measure myself. What I did, how I made people feel and how much I have enjoyed myself. It has taken me 10 years to get to the realisation that I am worth more than the digits on a measuring tape. And more importantly, the push back against body shaming shouldn’t just be about how much we love our flaws, it should be about something that isn’t really about the body at all. Self acceptance is important. But we deserve more than acceptance. Let’s step as far away from the conversation about our bodies as possible and make acclaim, integrity, achievement, contribution to society and kindness: Values worth shouting about again.

I posted it on twitter, and within an hour women started sending me their own ones. There were too many to keep track of. It happened so fast. The pictures were amazing. None of them were posed and filtered, nobody was contoured to within an inch of their life, or sucking anything in. It was women living their lives, writing down all of the things they were grateful for and proud of. All of the degrees they have, the babies they made, the cancer they beat or are fighting, their families they love, the disabilities they live with or help with, the relationships they have built, the companies they started. Just women waking up and remembering that they are valuable, and they do important, difficult, incredible things. Things that are more than just achieving the perfect lip liner, losing baby weight quickly or being able to EAT PIZZA WHILST AT A LINGERIE PHOTOSHOOT!!! (WOWWEE!)

Here are some of my favourites:

Women of every size and shape and age and background sent me their declarations of self love and clapped back at the shame they have been drenched in their whole lives. We are attacked by this beast our WHOLE DAMN LIVES. Bemused parents are writing to me that social media has their 8 year olds talking about diets and what they dislike about their tiny growing bodies. We are facing an epidemic of self hatred. Instagram while sometimes an amazing way for us to share, is in many ways, hurtling us at light speed towards the demise of what the suffragettes were building.

We lack focus because we are concentrating on the wrong things. Most of the women I know wake up much earlier than men to get ready, and spend much of their time and money on complete nonsense like manicures and pedicures, hair treatments, and waxing. Women bleach their bumholes. THEY BLEACH THEIR BUMHOLES. This is how far we have gone with our pursuit of perfection, that we are no longer satisfied with the natural colour of an area almost nobody in the world will ever see. We have to be thin, but with big breasts and bottoms, gravity free, spotless, hairless, ageless, light skinned but always with a year round sun kissed glow; we must be fun and eat pizza and drink beer but also completely cellulite free and we must all have tiny noses and enormous eyes and lips but with skinny faces, but our skinny faces must never look gaunt and old.

And after all this, and after all the work we do, that we do as much of as men, ON SUBSTANTIALLY fewer calories than we probably need, we get judged more and paid less anyway.

NO. I’m sorry but at some point something has to give. We have to object. We have to do it together. Rather than just complaining about it, lets fill the void of sense with some perspective and some regard for the lives we are so lucky to live. An education is a luxury and a beautiful thing, not afforded to millions of women in the world. Bringing children into the world and raising them to be happy and healthy and kind is a great achievement, that literally builds the world. Surviving illness and war and trials of mental health makes a warrior out of you. Fighting for the rights of those who have no voice is heroic and important. Reading and writing and filling yourself with knowledge makes you so much more fun to spend the day with. Travelling and being independent and supporting yourself is the sign of a woman in control of her life.

We spend our lives in pursuit of the approval of others when we don’t yet even really approve of ourselves. My opinion of me is now (and only very recently) the one that matters.

I remember being 15, miserable and so relentlessly disappointed in myself, thinking it didn’t matter that I had a full academic scholarship and that I had a job and good grades, a Grade 8 in piano and I was a good kid, because my hip bones didn’t jut out, I had a round face and my thighs were forever touching. I was taught nothing else mattered. And that my fat covered up my achievements. I am so, so aware of the damage the media does to a vulnerable mind, it ruined the first 20 years of my life.

I found this really sad old drawing I did of myself when I 16, with what I felt I had to look like in order to be accepted by girls at school, and society in general.

I can’t sit by and read the messages of self hatred that teenage girls send me, about how they hate themselves for not looking like Victoria’s Secret models. I can’t watch what happened to me, happen to them.

I hereby call out every newspaper run by a man that shames women about their appearance.

I hereby call out journalists who write passive-aggressive shaming articles about weight gain and congratulatory ones about women who lose weight.

I hereby MASSIVELY call out celebrities who don’t document what it takes for them to look the way they do. If you have had surgery, say something. If you have a strict diet and workout regime, say something. It is UNFEMINIST to push an image that was created in the fantasy lab of the patriarchy, essentially that of a sex doll, to other women, and pretend that it comes naturally to you, and that junk food and lying down in expensive hotel suites is what keeps you beautiful. You have a platform and have to use it responsibly.

I hereby call out the fashion industry for STILL after 10 years of being called out, perpetuating the idea that expensive clothing only looks good on stick thin, barely pubescent girls. (None of whom can afford your bloody clothes)

I hereby call out the women who troll other women online about their appearances.

I hereby call out the trolls that live in our own heads and eradicate all of our achievements and shower us in self-doubt and loathing.

In this uprising of female power we must realise we are being set absurd extra goals, thick and fast. The further we come as a gender, the more ridiculous the ideals we have to fulfil become. We are being distracted and exhausted and our eyes are being taken off the ball. Every minute you spend thinking about how thin or gorgeous you aren't, is a minute you aren’t spending on growing your business or your life.

I’m not saying it’s not important to watch out for your health. I’m not saying your BMI isn’t something to pay attention to. I do think it’s important to try to be active and put good food into your engine. But I also think the shame and feeling of failure is what drives us to the unhealthy eating habits we acquire to “comfort” us when we feel inferior and depressed. It’s a catch 22.

And by all means take pride in your appearance. Enjoy your looks, and your clothes and your sex appeal, but don’t make it your number one concern and selling point. It can be in your top ten, but it should never, ever define you. It isn’t important. We aren’t supposed to all look the same. And nothing good ever comes of self hatred. It will never further you. It will always hold you back.

Please think of the things in your life that you are proud of, that fulfil you, that make you happy and write them down somewhere, and look at that list every time you feel that you are failing, or that your jeans are tight, or you have a chubby arm in a group photo of a night out, or when you watch a video of a Hadid eating pasta.

Please remember you have every right to be here, and your life is important and it is precious, and on your death bed you aren’t going to be thinking about your love handles.

I love women and we deserve so much more than this. We can do better. We have to.

We can win the revolution against shame.

[obsidianarchives]

The White Progressivism of the Harry Potter Franchises

Hi, my name is Porshèa Patterson and I have a confession: I’m a Black woman who hasn’t read books with characters’ racial/ethnic, gender, or ability identity in mind.

Growing up, I was a voracious reader consuming any fictional stories that contained magic, strong female characters, intrigue or mystery, history, or all of the above. Often these stories were about white characters who either appeared as such on book covers or were described with attributes of white people — blonde flowing hair or alabaster skin — which, to be quite honest, were not always clearly white to me. People of color can also have blonde flowing hair, blue, green, gray, or hazel eyes, and alabaster can be stark white or gradients of brown.

In fact, it was not until I attended Lincoln University, a historically Black university, as an undergraduate student that I began to question how these identities shaped my consumption of media. Upon reflection, I realized that when I read books and watched movies or TV shows, I didn't seek to identify with characters because of their racial or ethnic backgrounds, though I often bypassed extremely white shows like Friends and chose to watch shows with female leads most. The highest priority for my entertainment choices was that I was introduced to vibrant worlds and cultures where I could see fairness and accountability in play. Coming from a smallish town in Middle Tennessee, my idea of fairness was very much shaped by my white peers and teachers, whom I engaged with most during classes and social events. To them, fairness meant seeing things from ‘both sides’ and compromising on a concept that didn’t concede the point in question with ‘either side.’ These were all perspectives I had to unlearn by questioning why I was comforted by certain media over others. It just so happens that one of the book series that resonated with me most is also one of the most popular franchises of all time, Harry Potter.

Being a longtime fan of the series and a recent addition to Harry Potter fandom communities means that any news about future stories or character backgrounds was met with happiness and anticipation. Was. Yet, since the release of Magic in North America on the Pottermore website, I’ve met all news coming from official content production sources with dread and preemptive disappointment. After seeing Native American Harry Potter fans, namely Dr. Adrienne Keene and Johnnie Jae, address the issues in J.K. Rowling having a white, Scottish character create the first and only accredited Wizarding school in North America, where she moved with the same sense of ownership over the land as other colonizers, my guard went up. Following Rowling’s dismissive response once confronted, I knew that I could never read her work without also understanding that she does not care at all about how the representation, or lack thereof, of characters and communities she does not belong to reinforce ignorance, racism, sexism, classism, latent homophobia, transphobia, or ableist thinking.

I’ve been lucky enough to engage with fandom communities through Black Girls Create and The Harry Potter Alliance which have helped me to deal with and gain clarity on the ways in which the Harry Potter series lives on through activism and critical discourse. Belonging to these fan networks means engaging in fan theory, fan-created projects, and fan fiction. However, Warner Brothers limits and even impedes fan-made products and Rowling complies by trying to be our sole official Wizarding World supplier. We can see her frustration with the fandom becoming something she cannot control or intuitively understand its needs. Instead of embracing the people who have issues and are vocal about wanting to help make things better, she ignores them in favor of ‘yes’ fans, who have the same limited understanding of marginalization as she does. The promotion of the latest Fantastic Beasts movie has exacerbated all of these issues, especially after the surprise unveiling of the only Asian woman character in a speaking role in the Fantastic Beasts series with more than two lines — we hope — presumably becoming the tool of white supremacy/blood purity later in the franchise. I made my earlier confession to make it clear that because I understand my own blind spots and limitations, I am also empathetic to these issues of within us all.

I have admired the strength, creative vision, and social mores that Rowling has embodied as an author, particularly when the fandom was at its nadir. Unlike other popular authors who have similar world-building talents, Rowling never announced deadlines that she couldn't meet and remained true to her characters’ traits, instead of integrating fanfiction that made no sense into canon. That is, until recently. Rowling's prolific writing prowess aside, the feature of the Harry Potter series that resonates most with the fans I engage with are the social mores of acceptance, standing against tyranny, questioning the status quo, and doing the right thing.

By building the Harry Potter series as an allegory of these principles, Rowling has established that these values are important to her and supports these ideals in some of her interviews and tweets. Simultaneously, her remarks in the same spaces also indicate her socio-political shortcomings. While many Potterheads of Color had no choice but to grow up with a hyper-awareness of the myriad of ways in which their identities are scrutinized and discriminated against in the world, Rowling has not had this experience. Race and ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, ability and disability each directly impact the ways in which peers, supervisors, content creators, and service providers decide how they treat us in formal and informal environments. Yet, in the Harry Potter series, there is little representation of characters who identify as any of the above and the ire they must face as someone who belongs to any of these communities. The main discriminatory thread that Rowling presents throughout the series is the concept of blood purity and the use of a slur for those regarded as impure blood being used by members of Wizarding society who are considered backward thinking by the general populace.

In many ways, the Harry Potter franchise and greater fandom are very reflective of white progressivism. Its steps and missteps look like the same conversations we have in political spaces. Directly impacted communities ask for inclusivity and the powers that be give us performative inclusivity. We voice opposition to the ways in which our lives have been presented and consumed by white people, then are told that we want too much or our opinions are invalid. In fact, one of the most egregious ways in which white liberals, including Rowling and her Harry Potter network, respond to the concerns raised by directly impacted communities is by ignoring our observations in service to their own sense of comfort. This obstinance leads Rowling to make oblivious statements like the Fantastic Beasts franchise was created in service to fans. Ironically, this statement will haunt the author, as even some of her most forgiving fans are taken aback by the latest installment of the series as evidenced by its numerous, poor reviews.

We are living in the time of peak social engagement, wherein societal blind spots are being brought to light. I urge us all to engage with those who openly share experiences that we do not have so that our shared values are as enlightened and inclusive as they are full of love.

[meierforbes8-blog]

Issues I discovered in my 1st 12 months as a intercourse employee

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[bennettmarko]

Fiction and Identity Politics

I hate to disappoint you folks, but unless we stretch the topic to breaking point this address will not be about “community and belonging.” In fact, you have to hand it to this festival’s organisers: inviting a renowned iconoclast to speak about “community and belonging” is like expecting a great white shark to balance a beach ball on its nose. The topic I had submitted instead was “fiction and identity politics,” which may sound on its face equally dreary.

But I’m afraid the bramble of thorny issues that cluster around “identity politics” has got all too interesting, particularly for people pursuing the occupation I share with many gathered in this hall: fiction writing. Taken to their logical conclusion, ideologies recently come into vogue challenge our right to write fiction at all. Meanwhile, the kind of fiction we are “allowed” to write is in danger of becoming so hedged, so circumscribed, so tippy-toe, that we’d indeed be better off not writing the anodyne drivel to begin with.

Let’s start with a tempest-in-a-teacup at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Earlier this year, two students, both members of student government, threw a tequila-themed birthday party for a friend. The hosts provided attendees with miniature sombreros, which—the horror— numerous partygoers wore. When photos of the party circulated on social media, campus-wide outrage ensued. Administrators sent multiple emails to the “culprits” threatening an investigation into an “act of ethnic stereotyping.” Partygoers were placed on “social probation,” while the two hosts were ejected from their dorm and later impeached. Bowdoin’s student newspaper decried the attendees’ lack of “basic empathy.”

The student government issued a “statement of solidarity” with “all the students who were injured and affected by the incident,” and demanded that administrators “create a safe space for those students who have been or feel specifically targeted.” The tequila party, the statement specified, was just the sort of occasion that “creates an environment where students of colour, particularly Latino, and especially Mexican, feel unsafe.” In sum, the party-favour hats constituted – wait for it – “cultural appropriation.”

Curiously, across my country Mexican restaurants, often owned and run by Mexicans, are festooned with sombreros – if perhaps not for long. At the UK’s University of East Anglia, the student union has banned a Mexican restaurant from giving out sombreros, deemed once more an act of “cultural appropriation” that was also racist.

Now, I am a little at a loss to explain what’s so insulting about a sombrero – a practical piece of headgear for a hot climate that keeps out the sun with a wide brim. My parents went to Mexico when I was small, and brought a sombrero back from their travels, the better for my brothers and I to unashamedly appropriate the souvenir to play dress-up. For my part, as a German-American on both sides, I’m more than happy for anyone who doesn’t share my genetic pedigree to don a Tyrolean hat, pull on some leiderhosen, pour themselves a weisbier, and belt out the Hoffbrauhaus Song.

But what does this have to do with writing fiction? The moral of the sombrero scandals is clear: you’re not supposed to try on other people’s hats. Yet that’s what we’re paid to do, isn’t it? Step into other people’s shoes, and try on their hats.

In the latest ethos, which has spun well beyond college campuses in short order, any tradition, any experience, any costume, any way of doing and saying things, that is associated with a minority or disadvantaged group is ring-fenced: look-but-don’t-touch. Those who embrace a vast range of “identities” – ethnicities, nationalities, races, sexual and gender categories, classes of economic under-privilege and disability – are now encouraged to be possessive of their experience and to regard other peoples’ attempts to participate in their lives and traditions, either actively or imaginatively, as a form of theft.

Yet were their authors honouring the new rules against helping yourself to what doesn’t belong to you, we would not have Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. We wouldn’t have most of Graham Greene’s novels, many of which are set in what for the author were foreign countries, and which therefore have Real Foreigners in them, who speak and act like foreigners, too.

In his masterwork English Passengers, Matthew Kneale would have restrained himself from including chapters written in an Aboriginal’s voice – though these are some of the richest, most compelling passages in that novel. If Dalton Trumbo had been scared off of describing being trapped in a body with no arms, legs, or face because he was not personally disabled – because he had not been through a World War I maiming himself and therefore had no right to “appropriate” the isolation of a paraplegic – we wouldn’t have the haunting 1938 classic, Johnny Got His Gun.

We wouldn’t have Maria McCann’s erotic masterpiece, As Meat Loves Salt – in which a straight woman writes about gay men in the English Civil War. Though the book is nonfiction, it’s worth noting that we also wouldn’t have 1961’s Black Like Me, for which John Howard Griffin committed the now unpardonable sin of “blackface.” Having his skin darkened – Michael Jackson in reverse – Griffin found out what it was like to live as a black man in the segregated American South. He’d be excoriated today, yet that book made a powerful social impact at the time.

The author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University who for the record is white, defines cultural appropriation as “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorised use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”

What strikes me about that definition is that “without permission” bit. However are we fiction writers to seek “permission” to use a character from another race or culture, or to employ the vernacular of a group to which we don’t belong? Do we set up a stand on the corner and approach passers-by with a clipboard, getting signatures that grant limited rights to employ an Indonesian character in Chapter Twelve, the way political volunteers get a candidate on the ballot? I am hopeful that the concept of “cultural appropriation” is a passing fad: people with different backgrounds rubbing up against each other and exchanging ideas and practices is self-evidently one of the most productive, fascinating aspects of modern urban life.

But this latest and little absurd no-no is part of a larger climate of super-sensitivity, giving rise to proliferating prohibitions supposedly in the interest of social justice that constrain fiction writers and prospectively makes our work impossible.

So far, the majority of these farcical cases of “appropriation” have concentrated on fashion, dance, and music: At the American Music Awards 2013, Katy Perry got it in the neck for dressing like a geisha. According to the Arab-American writer Randa Jarrar, for someone like me to practice belly dancing is “white appropriation of Eastern dance,” while according to the Daily Beast Iggy Azalea committed “cultural crimes” by imitating African rap and speaking in a “blaccent.”

The felony of cultural sticky fingers even extends to exercise: at the University of Ottawa in Canada, a yoga teacher was shamed into suspending her class, “because yoga originally comes from India.” She offered to re-title the course, “Mindful Stretching.” And get this: the purism has also reached the world of food. Supported by no less than Lena Dunham, students at Oberlin College in Ohio have protested “culturally appropriated food” like sushi in their dining hall (lucky cusses— in my day, we never had sushi in our dining hall), whose inauthenticity is “insensitive” to the Japanese.

Seriously, we have people questioning whether it’s appropriate for white people to eat pad Thai. Turnabout, then: I guess that means that as a native of North Carolina, I can ban the Thais from eating barbecue. (I bet they’d swap.) This same sensibility is coming to a bookstore near you. Because who is the appropriator par excellence, really? Who assumes other people’s voices, accents, patois, and distinctive idioms? Who literally puts words into the mouths of people different from themselves? Who dares to get inside the very heads of strangers, who has the chutzpah to project thoughts and feelings into the minds of others, who steals their very souls? Who is a professional kidnapper? Who swipes every sight, smell, sensation, or overheard conversation like a kid in a candy store, and sometimes take notes the better to purloin whole worlds? Who is the premier pickpocket of the arts? The fiction writer, that’s who.

This is a disrespectful vocation by its nature – prying, voyeuristic, kleptomaniacal, and presumptuous. And that is fiction writing at its best. When Truman Capote wrote from the perspective of condemned murderers from a lower economic class than his own, he had some gall. But writing fiction takes gall.

As for the culture police’s obsession with “authenticity,” fiction is inherently inauthentic. It’s fake. It’s self-confessedly fake; that is the nature of the form, which is about people who don’t exist and events that didn’t happen. The name of the game is not whether your novel honours reality; it’s all about what you can get away with.

In his 2009 novel Little Bee, Chris Cleave, who as it happens is participating in this festival, dared to write from the point of view of a 14-year-old Nigerian girl, though he is male, white, and British. I’ll remain neutral on whether he “got away with it” in literary terms, because I haven’t read the book yet.

But in principle, I admire his courage – if only because he invited this kind of ethical forensics in a review out of San Francisco: “When a white male author writes as a young Nigerian girl, is it an act of empathy, or identity theft?” the reviewer asked. “When an author pretends to be someone he is not, he does it to tell a story outside of his own experiential range. But he has to in turn be careful that he is representing his characters, not using them for his plot.” Hold it. OK, he’s necessarily “representing” his characters, by portraying them on the page. But of course he’s using them for his plot! How could he not? They are his characters, to be manipulated at his whim, to fulfill whatever purpose he cares to put them to.

This same reviewer recapitulated Cleave’s obligation “to show that he’s representing [the girl], rather than exploiting her.” Again, a false dichotomy. Of course he’s exploiting her. It’s his book, and he made her up. The character is his creature, to be exploited up a storm. Yet the reviewer chides that “special care should be taken with a story that’s not implicitly yours to tell” and worries that “Cleave pushes his own boundaries maybe further than they were meant to go.”

What stories are “implicitly ours to tell,” and what boundaries around our own lives are we mandated to remain within? I would argue that any story you can make yours is yours to tell, and trying to push the boundaries of the author’s personal experience is part of a fiction writer’s job.

I’m hoping that crime writers, for example, don’t all have personal experience of committing murder. Me, I’ve depicted a high school killing spree, and I hate to break it to you: I’ve never shot fatal arrows through seven kids, a teacher, and a cafeteria worker, either. We make things up, we chance our arms, sometimes we do a little research, but in the end it’s still about what we can get away with – what we can put over on our readers.

Because the ultimate endpoint of keeping out mitts off experience that doesn’t belong to us is that there is no fiction. Someone like me only permits herself to write from the perspective of a straight white female born in North Carolina, closing on sixty, able-bodied but with bad knees, skint for years but finally able to buy the odd new shirt. All that’s left is memoir.

And here’s the bugbear, here’s where we really can’t win. At the same time that we’re to write about only the few toys that landed in our playpen, we’re also upbraided for failing to portray in our fiction a population that is sufficiently various.

My most recent novel The Mandibles was taken to task by one reviewer for addressing an America that is “straight and white”. It happens that this is a multigenerational family saga – about a white family. I wasn’t instinctively inclined to insert a transvestite or bisexual, with issues that might distract from my central subject matter of apocalyptic economics. Yet the implication of this criticism is that we novelists need to plug in representatives of a variety of groups in our cast of characters, as if filling out the entering class of freshmen at a university with strict diversity requirements.

You do indeed see just this brand of tokenism in television. There was a point in the latter 1990s at which suddenly every sitcom and drama in sight had to have a gay or lesbian character or couple. That was good news as a voucher of the success of the gay rights movement, but it still grew a bit tiresome: look at us, our show is so hip, one of the characters is homosexual!

We’re now going through the same fashionable exercise in relation to the transgender characters in series like Transparent and Orange is the New Black. Fine. But I still would like to reserve the right as a novelist to use only the characters that pertain to my story.

Besides: which is it to be? We have to tend our own gardens, and only write about ourselves or people just like us because we mustn’t pilfer others’ experience, or we have to people our cast like an I’d like to teach the world to sing Coca-Cola advert?

For it can be dangerous these days to go the diversity route. Especially since there seems to be a consensus on the notion that San Francisco reviewer put forward that “special care should be taken with a story that’s not implicitly yours to tell.”

In The Mandibles, I have one secondary character, Luella, who’s black. She’s married to a more central character, Douglas, the Mandible family’s 97-year-old patriarch. I reasoned that Douglas, a liberal New Yorker, would credibly have left his wife for a beautiful, stately African American because arm candy of color would reflect well on him in his circle, and keep his progressive kids’ objections to a minimum. But in the end the joke is on Douglas, because Luella suffers from early onset dementia, while his ex-wife, staunchly of sound mind, ends up running a charity for dementia research. As the novel reaches its climax and the family is reduced to the street, they’re obliged to put the addled, disoriented Luella on a leash, to keep her from wandering off.

Behold, the reviewer in the Washington Post, who groundlessly accused this book of being “racist” because it doesn’t toe a strict Democratic Party line in its political outlook, described the scene thus: “The Mandibles are white. Luella, the single African American in the family, arrives in Brooklyn incontinent and demented. She needs to be physically restrained. As their fortunes become ever more dire and the family assembles for a perilous trek through the streets of lawless New York, she’s held at the end of a leash. If The Mandibles is ever made into a film, my suggestion is that this image not be employed for the movie poster.”

Your author, by implication, yearns to bring back slavery.

Thus in the world of identity politics, fiction writers better be careful. If we do choose to import representatives of protected groups, special rules apply. If a character happens to be black, they have to be treated with kid gloves, and never be placed in scenes that, taken out of context, might seem disrespectful. But that’s no way to write. The burden is too great, the self-examination paralysing. The natural result of that kind of criticism in the Post is that next time I don’t use any black characters, lest they do or say anything that is short of perfectly admirable and lovely.

In fact, I’m reminded of a letter I received in relation to my seventh novel from an Armenian-American who objected – why did I have to make the narrator of We Need to Talk About Kevin Armenian? He didn’t like my narrator, and felt that her ethnicity disparaged his community. I took pains to explain that I knew something about Armenian heritage, because my best friend in the States was Armenian, and I also thought there was something dark and aggrieved in the culture of the Armenian diaspora that was atmospherically germane to that book. Besides, I despaired, everyone in the US has an ethnic background of some sort, and she had to be something!

Especially for writers from traditionally privileged demographics, the message seems to be that it’s a whole lot safer just to make all your characters from that same demographic, so you can be as hard on them as you care to be, and do with them what you like. Availing yourself of a diverse cast, you are not free; you have inadvertently invited a host of regulations upon your head, as if just having joined the EU. Use different races, ethnicities, and minority gender identities, and you are being watched.

I confess that this climate of scrutiny has got under my skin. When I was first starting out as a novelist, I didn’t hesitate to write black characters, for example, or to avail myself of black dialects, for which, having grown up in the American South, I had a pretty good ear. I am now much more anxious about depicting characters of different races, and accents make me nervous.

In describing a second-generation Mexican American who’s married to one of my main characters in The Mandibles, I took care to write his dialogue in standard American English, to specify that he spoke without an accent, and to explain that he only dropped Spanish expressions tongue-in-cheek. I would certainly think twice – more than twice – about ever writing a whole novel, or even a goodly chunk of one, from the perspective of a character whose race is different from my own – because I may sell myself as an iconoclast, but I’m as anxious as the next person about attracting vitriol. But I think that’s a loss. I think that indicates a contraction of my fictional universe that is not good for the books, and not good for my soul.

Writing under the pseudonym Edward Schlosser on Vox, the author of the essay “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Scare Me” describes higher education’s “current climate of fear” and its “heavily policed discourse of semantic sensitivity” – and I am concerned that this touchy ethos, in which offendedness is used as a weapon, has spread far beyond academia, in part thanks to social media.

Why, it’s largely in order to keep from losing my fictional mojo that I stay off Facebook and Twitter, which could surely install an instinctive self-censorship out of fear of attack. Ten years ago, I gave the opening address of this same festival, in which I maintained that fiction writers have a vested interest in protecting everyone’s right to offend others – because if hurting someone else’s feelings even inadvertently is sufficient justification for muzzling, there will always be someone out there who is miffed by what you say, and freedom of speech is dead. With the rise of identity politics, which privileges a subjective sense of injury as actionable basis for prosecution, that is a battle that in the decade since I last spoke in Brisbane we’ve been losing.

Worse: the left’s embrace of gotcha hypersensitivity inevitably invites backlash. Donald Trump appeals to people who have had it up to their eyeballs with being told what they can and cannot say. Pushing back against a mainstream culture of speak-no-evil suppression, they lash out in defiance, and then what they say is pretty appalling.

Regarding identity politics, what’s especially saddened me in my recent career is a trend toward rejecting the advocacy of anyone who does not belong to the group. In 2013, I published Big Brother, a novel that grew out of my loss of my own older brother, who in 2009 died from the complications of morbid obesity. I was moved to write the book not only from grief, but also sympathy: in the years before his death, as my brother grew heavier, I saw how dreadfully other people treated him – how he would be seated off in a corner of a restaurant, how the staff would roll their eyes at each other after he’d ordered, though he hadn’t requested more food than anyone else.

I was wildly impatient with the way we assess people’s characters these days in accordance with their weight, and tried to get on the page my dismay at how much energy people waste on this matter, sometimes anguishing for years over a few excess pounds. Both author and book were on the side of the angels, or so you would think.

But in my events to promote Big Brother, I started to notice a pattern. Most of the people buying the book in the signing queue were thin. Especially in the US, fat is now one of those issues where you either have to be one of us, or you’re the enemy. I verified this when I had a long email correspondence with a “Healthy at Any Size” activist, who was incensed by the novel, which she hadn’t even read. Which she refused to read. No amount of explaining that the novel was on her side, that it was a book that was terribly pained by the way heavy people are treated and how unfairly they are judged, could overcome the scrawny author’s photo on the flap.

She and her colleagues in the fat rights movement did not want my advocacy. I could not weigh in on this material because I did not belong to the club. I found this an artistic, political, and even commercial disappointment – because in the US and the UK, if only skinny-minnies will buy your book, you’ve evaporated the pool of prospective consumers to a puddle.

I worry that the clamorous world of identity politics is also undermining the very causes its activists claim to back. As a fiction writer, yeah, I do sometimes deem my narrator an Armenian. But that’s only by way of a start. Merely being Armenian is not to have a character as I understand the word.

Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived. I reviewed a novel recently that I had regretfully to give a thumbs-down, though it was terribly well intended; its heart was in the right place. But in relating the Chinese immigrant experience in America, the author put forward characters that were mostly Chinese. That is, that’s sort of all they were: Chinese. Which isn’t enough.

I made this same point in relation to gender in Melbourne last week: both as writers and as people, we should be seeking to push beyond the constraining categories into which we have been arbitrarily dropped by birth. If we embrace narrow group-based identities too fiercely, we cling to the very cages in which others would seek to trap us. We pigeonhole ourselves. We limit our own notion of who we are, and in presenting ourselves as one of a membership, a representative of our type, an ambassador of an amalgam, we ask not to be seen.

The reading and writing of fiction is obviously driven in part by a desire to look inward, to be self-examining, reflective. But the form is also born of a desperation to break free of the claustrophobia of our own experience. The spirit of good fiction is one of exploration, generosity, curiosity, audacity, and compassion. Writing during the day and reading when I go to bed at night, I find it an enormous relief to escape the confines of my own head. Even if novels and short stories only do so by creating an illusion, fiction helps to fell the exasperating barriers between us, and for a short while allows us to behold the astonishing reality of other people.

The last thing we fiction writers need is restrictions on what belongs to us. In a recent interview, our colleague Chris Cleave conceded, “Do I as an Englishman have any right to write a story of a Nigerian woman? … I completely sympathise with the people who say I have no right to do this. My only excuse is that I do it well.”

Which brings us to my final point. We do not all do it well. So it’s more than possible that we write from the perspective of a one-legged lesbian from Afghanistan and fall flat on our arses. We don’t get the dialogue right, and for insertions of expressions in Pashto we depend on Google Translate. Halfway through the novel, suddenly the protagonist has lost the right leg instead of the left one. Our idea of lesbian sex is drawn from wooden internet porn. Efforts to persuasively enter the lives of others very different from us may fail: that’s a given. But maybe rather than having our heads taken off, we should get a few points for trying. After all, most fiction sucks. Most writing sucks. Most things that people make of any sort suck. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make anything.

The answer is that modern cliché: to keep trying to fail better. Anything but be obliged to designate my every character an ageing five-foot-two smartass, and having to set every novel in North Carolina.

We fiction writers have to preserve the right to wear many hats – including sombreros.

This is the full transcript of the keynote speech, Fiction and Identity Politics, Lionel Shriver gave at the Brisbane Writers Festival on 8 September.