#one thing about me i’ll find queer themes in anything | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

stardustdiiving · 1 year ago

Note

I would love to hear more about your thoughts regarding Wanderer being trans whenever you find the time to write about it more!

(follow up to this post)

AWESOME. okay. So. This got super long and I keep nitpicking if it clearly says every single thought that goes through my head or not so I’m just going to post it

There’s many interpretations about this headcanon I enjoy, but one particular angle I would find interesting to explore that I’ll pitch here is basically centered on a characterization where Wanderer’s internal relationship with his own transness is very tied with his non-humanness, maybe even more so than his gender.

The appeal of this angle for me is essentially having a character’s queerness tie into genshin’s overarching themes about identity & personhood, especially in regards to the relationship between divinity & humanity—themes that obviously apply to Scaramouche (and also basically every other not human genshin character I can think of that people generally agree are engaging characters)

Scaramouche (which name I use for him is intentional & reflects what era of his life I’m talking about) to me is someone who basically enforces a sense of apathy over his own emotions, especially ones relating to his sense of identity—he seeks godhood in hopes of being able to purge himself clean of experiencing (human) emotions, and therefore the vulnerability & trauma he associates with having them.

Intuitively I can see him feeling a similar conscious apathy about his gender: I see him as viewing gender identity as a “too human” trait and therefore something he’s above, basically—which is really a deeper deflection of his own insecurities with his personhood/identity.

So to Scaramouche, internally, anything about his transition or transness is less about gender and actually far more about his desire to obtain godhood, and this is a mental narrative he really sticks to because it fits in comfortably with his hatred of humans and desire for a purpose/identity for his existence as a non human entity “without a heart”.

If this were a fic I were writing, Scaramouche would undergo a lot of physical/medical transitioning during his time as a Harbringer and he would essentially be narrating & viewing anything gender affirming thing he does as him becoming closer to godhood and further from being human. This would contrast how I’d portray Kabukimono earlier on in his arc—where I imagine Kabukimono took on a lot of social transitions based on observing humans and building a sense for what human things he liked to participate in or mimic.

Kabukimono, in a manner similar to Scaramouche, might sometimes categorize some of his transness as relating to being more of a puppet/nonhuman origin thing than a gender thing, (ie getting gender dysphoria from having long hair but rationalizing it has more to do with not wanting to look like Ei), Kabukimono was more in a position of building towards his transness being a positive thing that affirmed him his sense of personhood & sense of belonging with others. By the time Scaramouche reaches the point of resenting humans, and in turn resenting his own sense of humanity in his arc, he needs to establish all parts of his identity as the farthest thing from human as possible

The irony, however, that I’d highlight in the hypothetical fic of this, is that Scaramouche’s experiences with his transness are narrated as being things no one could ever understand because of how inhuman he is—while in practice you see a lot of his trans experiences are actually pretty common ones many trans people would understand.

So like, Dottore does his canon typical physical experiments/modifications on Scaramouche, and the entire time Scara is undergoing but also gloating the entire time how he’s able to endure this because he’s not as weak as humans are—and this continues when, at Scara’s request, Dottore gives him Evil Mad Scientist Top Surgery, and he’s having this snide internal monologue about how godlike he is because of all the inhuman ways he can physically modify and mold his body to be to his liking, and then suddenly he looks in a mirror and sees himself with a flat chest for the first time and just has… like, a moment of very genuine happiness with feeling more like himself for the first time, and processing all the ways he can exist more comfortably in his body without having to work around dysphoria constantly. He imagines himself existing among humans in these brief thoughts without even realizing it, and the idea is this is written in a way that makes him sound very human—and how he seems happier when he lets himself be.

Meanwhile Dottore in the background is just, very nonchalant about this and makes some bored comment about they ought to not delay more important procedures any further if he wants to ascend to godhood anytime soon. Scaramouche kind of snaps out of it & back into his usual sort of headspace/mindset and kind of sneers at him how this was a far more significant step in ascending to godhood than Dottore could ever understand.

And after he says this he mentally pauses, because he really hadn’t been thinking of it like that before—and then wonders if it was true, because it wasn’t an experiment that made him feel more powerful like the other ones had. What he feels now is something other than more powerful—but there’s not really any other explanation for this reaction. More godly, maybe. It makes him feel not more powerful, but closer to what he wants—which is a god.

So from there my idea is Scaramouche kind of…attributes the joy associated with his top surgery, and other similar major landmarks in his transition, with his pursuit of godhood. It spurs him on to want to be a god even more, because it's solidified in his mind as the one thing he really needs to be himself/truly happy

And then he does finally reach godhood—and is plugged into the Everlasting Lord of Arcane Wisdom’s body, he’s just finds himself feeling disappointed.

He has this minor mental crisis about it where he’s not unsatisfied—he’s more exhilarated than he has ever felt in his entire life, because he feels unspeakably powerful in the way he should be. It /is/ everything he wanted, and he savors the sheer triumph and power of the movement, but it’s just not the same. It’s not enough to make him regret what it took to get here but he’s really frustrated, because he doesn’t feel happy. Which is not an emotion Scaramouche really cares about, but even one thing he wants being somewhat out of his reach when he had hoped to suppress all the unpleasantness of having emotions is deeply unpleasant for him.

I think the next time Scaramouche really feels something close to what he’d been missing is post Inversion of Genesis, after he becomes the Wanderer.

In this narrative I think it would be an extra kick in the face that Dottore had helped him with part of his transition while Scaramouche watches Dottore kill Niwa, where Dottore basically affirms Scara’s dehumanization while Niwa insists on affirming his humanity with his dying breath. There’s the obvious violation violation of realizing someone basically sabotaged your support systems to isolate/alienate you from the world, then manipulated and groomed you into joining the fatui so they could experiment on you for their own satisfaction and intrigue, but he also finds himself grappling with recontextualizing alot of his interactions with Dottore, and coming to this conclusion that Dottore was only ever vaguely interested in Scaramouche’s potential for godhood, and doesn’t care about…this other part of why that was important to Scaramouche as a person. (Which is his transness, basically)

It’s not that he ever believed Dottore cared about him or wasn’t pursuing his own interests, but I think recontextualizing how dehumanizing Dottore’s treatment + view of him is, forces him to really pick apart his transness vs desire for godhood, and realize there’s sort of a distinction between the two he hadn’t been making.

Post IoG I think this line of thinking, along with learning Niwa hadn’t betrayed him making him hate humans much less, lets Wanderer start developing a much healthier relationship with his transness, and also just his entire identity in general. He can reconcile with his own humanity, which lets him reflect on himself more, and I think eventually he can come to an answer on why becoming god wasn’t what he needed to be happy with himself + his gender.

So essentially I’d write present day Wanderer as being more comfortable with his gender than Scaramouche would be. If I were to apply our contemporary English labels/language to his gender I think he’d more or less jsut view himself as a trans guy, but I guess by technicality has a sort of “non binary” gender bc he just doesn’t view himself in terms of human binaries due to being a puppet?? That’s just my own characterization tho. All in all I bend characterizations of characters’ queerness in line with what whatever sort of transformative work I feel like doing so this isn’t even the only way I’d write trans Wanderer. Just usually the one I go off the most when portraying him as a character

#additional thing. in my og post I mentioned I kind of default view Wanderer as trans whenever I portray him in my fan works right #u can absolutely do a trans reading of the fic I wrote based off this concept of Wanderer/Makoto resemblance #I have thoughts on a more active trans reading of it that I did actually consider while writing it #even tho there wasn’t rlly a way for me to like mention wanderer’s transness naturally in the text #scaramouche #wanderer #Genshin #genshin tangents #gender impact #asks #fern.txt

81 notes · View notes

albertserra · 4 months ago

Note

hii bc i’m really curious and would love to engage more deeply & widely with cinema myself… can i ask how you got into film as an art form and how you cultivate your relationship to it? bonus if you could share (i’m sure you have before) what are the things you look out for in a film that makes it both good and a personal favourite. and how/where do you keep discovering things to watch (aside from the obvious like mubi and criterion collection)!!

I’ll start with the finding things to watch because that part is easier. You obv touched on the easy ones - though I’ll say some online ‘film festivals’ are more niche and also really good. My friend told me about this one and there’s some interesting stuff in it. There’s also kanopy which is free with a library card. Solidarity cinema’s archive is also great! Other sites for stuff you can’t find on these ofc. Then with all this access it comes down to actually picking what to watch. At this point I just kind of have things I gravitate towards - actors, directors, themes, etc. and the people I follow on here/letterboxd also introduce me to some really cool stuff. To just get your feet wet though I get it can be overwhelming! I’m happy to help with recs if you give some criteria or things you like. My letterboxd account has helped me a lot in terms of not only keeping track of what I’ve seen and my thoughts on them but also finding things to watch through lists or other people. I started with the imdb top 250 when I was in high school which wasn’t necessarily bad but my taste has changed drastically since then lmao. Which kind of gets into the other part of your question

Like I said I started in high school idk why I think I was just bored of the video games I was currently playing and had a lot of time since I couldn’t find a job for a summer. Ended up deciding to get into movies and started an imdb account and scrolling through the imdb top 250. I liked thrillers and crime movies a lot, then I got really into Kevin spacey because I thought he was hot (LMFAOO) which led me to watch se7en, which lead me to David fincher. Stuff like that. But my enjoyment was still mostly superficial. It’s only when I had the opportunity to take film electives in college that I really started thinking about film seriously as art. It exposed me to a lot more and I learned the basics about film language/techniques-mise en scene, editing etc. inwhat was essentially a ‘film 101’ class which was a prerequisite for the more interesting classes. Then in those I got exposed to more world cinema and film theory (two highlights were classes that mixed the domain of film theory with other disciplines, one for queer theory and another for feminist theory). Reading and watching all this and being forced to write long form for assignments helped me develop my appreciation for what I was watching as well as the language I could use to talk about the films. My personal taste developed kind of alongside all this and is of course still developing. Jeanne dielman is how I learned I loved slow cinema, a Soviet cinema class got me to think about political messaging in film, stuff like that. But even then these were still just seeds I think. I was too young and inexperienced to really appreciate some of it but looking back I see how valuable it all was. Someone like you would def have an advantage starting out with a literary background, so I think a lot of the skills are transferable

Good and personal favorite, for me, don’t have much difference. But I think that’s me just being spoiled from having seen so many ��classics” that a really well executed film doesn’t do much for me if it doesn’t do something new/different that excites me or doesn’t trigger any kind of emotional response in me. Good example of this would be the brutalist recently - undeniably well made, but narratively and technically not really anything special or fresh, not to mention the murky politics. Something like “the white silk dress” / áo lụa hà đông on the other hand- it’s not as pretty to look at, it’s not as polished, but it’s so much better imo. Heart and soul and a real driving force instead of empty aesthetics and an Oscar bait narrative.

I’ve never liked the idea of a film “canon”, especially because of how much it tends to leave by the wayside when I much prefer “third world” cinema, films that fall through the cracks, etc. But I can understand the importance of films like citizen Kane and breathless and the rules of the game even if on an enjoyment level idrc about any of them. But I think they’re a good base to then branch out/away from.

This was really long sorry…. Ummm. Feel free to ask more or dm or whatever!!

#asks #sawasawako

16 notes · View notes

g-oblincat · 2 years ago

Text

The other manga I've been keeping up with that recently just ended! And I'm going to talk about it!

Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-senpai ni Koishiteru (Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!) by Sal Jiang

A lesbian office drama written by a Twitter artist I really like! Ayaka has a crush on her senior at work, Hiroko, and constantly tries to make Hiroko notice her. Hiroko is a lesbian who’s closeted at work and trying her hardest not to fall for Ayaka, who she thinks is an oblivious straight girl. The appeal is the comedy of watching two women made stupid by love freak out over each other, underlined by queer angst.

Things I like about it:

Charming characters! The main couple is SO easy to fall in love with and root for- they are so earnest and funny and have great chemistry. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re drawn REALLY well with fun, expressive faces and cute designs.

Themes of queerness as identity and community! More in the spoiler section, but my favorite scenes in this story take place in in a gay bar with a character’s WLW friendgroup as they talk about being gay. The community is my favorite part of being queer and I never see it reflected in manga, and I love how much fun and love is put into the scenes with the friendgroup.

You can read the official English comic online here! I think this is the most affordable I’ve ever seen a manga actually, so it’s definitely worth a buy! I will admit I am using the Dynasty Scans pages in the spoiler section of this post, since that’s the version I read before finding out about the official English version.

Expanding on my two points above in the spoilers section!

Time for the section where I play show and tell

That’s the premise!

Great characters and chemistry

Ayaka is SO cute. I love pretty femme girls who are kind of bratty, and she’s portrayed in a way where you know the author’s having so much fun with her.

Some random out of order/context Ayaka faces from the earlier chapters! I forgot how cute and sweet she comes off in the earlier chapters, she’s a total goblin later lol

Hiroko is also such a fun character! I love the contrast between a really serious, straight laced, determined-to-not-fall-in-love person at work to uhhhhh womanizer at night lol.

Speaking of fun, a character interaction trope I’ll never get tired of are “characters who comedically overreact when they’re in love with someone” and that fits this couple to a T!

What a cute sequence….

Both characters’ POVs from the same chapter. Hiroko focusing on how hot Ayaka is, and Ayaka imagining wedding bells when Hiroko looks at her LOL.

I could keep showing screenshots of these two until I basically go through the entire comic lol.

But even outside the main two, I really like the side characters as well! A standout is Risa - Ayaka’s colleague who’s also a baby gay and has a crush on her. I’m unusual in that I usually like love triangles, but I do think this one is written really well! She’s sympathetic, her doomed longing for Ayaka is delicious and relatable. (Spoilers) I love how her selfishness and selflessness is balanced- her crush and competition with Hiroko makes her sabotage Ayaka’s crush in small ways in the beginning, but she fundamentally cares for her friend and roots for them in the end. Also, (BIG SPOILERS) she and Ayaka end up dating and breaking up but still remain friends, which is another favorite trope of mine. (HUGE SPOILERS) I love this page, any manga that includes a scene like this is top tier for me…. She feels realistic and her story is really sweet!

(Left) Baby gays smashing braincells against each other and (Right) Risa’s eyes wander….

Queer community and identity

This section has more spoilers than the last one!! If you haven’t read this comic but plan on it, I recommend you not read this part!!

In my last post, I said that Yuri as a genre doesn’t need to have anything about queerness as an identity to be good, but then I realized that most of my favorites did have a focus on identity…. Yeah IDK what to say LOL. But the identity aspect is a big plot point/theme of this story, and it’s written SUPER well.

First of all- Hiroko’s backstory centers on homophobia and her being super closeted at her workplace. I’m iffy on homophobia stories (just cause I’ve read a lot of them and they tend to hit on the same points), but the homophobia theme leads to one of my fav scenes:

Context: Risa knows Hiroko is closeted and rants about it to the bartender at a lesbian bar who knows Hiroko.

I love this focus on how queer people interact with the straight world, and the generational divide between older and younger queers. I can only speak from a US perspective, but progress around LGBTQ acceptance has come so far and so fast the past few years that if I was born a few years earlier or a few years later, I’d have a radically different life experience. It’s something I think about a lot when reading memoirs and articles by older queer people, and contrasting that with my life and the observed lives of people younger than me online. This theme is explored well in this story- the cultural tensions between Hiroko and Ayaka and Risa, how straight people may react more positively to queer people now but it’s still not perfect, and how Hiroko has changed her workplace for the better.

Also speaking of the lesbian bar- I love the girls at the bar lol. Right after the scene with Risa, a gaggle of lesbians come in and comfort her and it’s SOOOO heartwarming and cute. I love how this friendgroup is written- supportive, but also will call you out.

It’s so fun to read these guys gossip, give each other relationship advice, bicker with each other, and be horny at women together.

Hiroko’s relationship with the girls is more bickering, but Risa and Ayaka end up going to them for advice a lot which is so sweet and the elder/baby queer relationship I need (not portrayed because I can’t find a screenshot that doesn’t reveal a big plot twist)

Anyway…that’s it…. If you’ve read this comic please talk to me about it…if you haven’t please read it. Thank you.

#personal #manga recommendation #yuri #Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-senpai ni Koishiteru #Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!

42 notes · View notes

misty-caligula · 2 years ago

Text

Okay, so I’m not used to really getting... noticed... in the way that I have been recently. And I’ve been kind of just vibing quietly before I actually respond to anything. But I got some responses to my big thesis post which I think warrant extra attention, because I think perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I wanted to be.

It’s worth mentioning that I have almost 500 posts up at this point, and have been very much immersed in yj theory for a fair while, so it’s hard to necessarily know how clear I am in any given context, and if I’m making assumptions of a reader. So I’m going to respond to a couple of things and see if I can redo a bit of Jackie/Coach stuff. My intention isn’t to say “Ah you’re wrong!” but to reframe my own position. If you don’t like what I’ve got to say that’s fine, I’m just a random on the internet. I’m not Right, I’m just thinking thoughts.

(Long post ahead about meta analysis of jackie and coach and society)

@inthegloomglow

Really good post but… coach and Jackie didn’t deserve to die for not being calm about all of this. They murdered his brother. I’m not sure that’s the point I’m supposed to get? But it’s weird to condemn them for that.

@areyoushuri

!!!! Criticizing Jackie and Coach for not being well adapted to the willingness and struggling to accept the rituals and cannibalism created is odd considering that the vast majority of viewers probably wouldn't survive/accept something like that. Yes, they're stubborn, not built for the wilderness, etc. but so many of the traits we criticize now served them well before the crash.

Okay! So first thing’s first. I do not hate Jackie or Coach. I think they’re both really interesting characters, with interesting through-lines. I think that they’re well acted, well written, and bring a lot of value to the plot. I’ve completely fallen in love with Jackie and Shauna’s really messy ... mess, and will absolutely go on giant tangents about it if you don’t stop me. I find Coach to be a really intricate and tragic portrayal of being queer in the 90s, one that speaks to me as someone who was struggling with being queer in the 90s, and whose dad was queer in the decades prior. I love these disasters, as I love all the disasters on this show.

I’m not critiquing them as people, I’m digging into the metatext of their actions as thematic devices. I also don’t know if this actually needs to be said but I’ll be very clear: If these were actual human beings then I wouldn’t want any of them to die, the point is that they are not humans, they are commentaries on society and culture and trauma and the way that people adapt or fail to adapt to changing situations. I don’t think people deserve to die for being wrong, or making mistakes... I just accept the theme of characters either surviving or dying based on their values within the show. I hope that’s clear, but just in case... there you go.

So my big concept of the show is that there’s this one giant question that the yellowjackets keep getting asked: “What really happened out there?” And that what DID really happen out there, fundamentally, is that there was a fracturing of social realities. Think of it like... the ‘jackets used to be part of “Society,” a huge world-wide group of all connected human cultures as a whole. And then they went off to the wilderness and they lost contact with Society, and they had to build a whole new culture all of their own from the ground up. We’ll call that the Team. Then they were suddenly rescued, after they’d fully given up on ever seeing Society again, and were forcibly thrown back in, and now are expected to just... reassimilate. And they’re struggling to do so.

So if you think about the show as a collection of big chunks, you can think of it like this:

> The ‘jackets are normal kids, living in and learning from, and protected by Society

> Their connection to Society is severed, but they expect rescue, and so they build a micro outpost of Society in the wilderness

> They slowly realise they’re never going to be saved

> They begin to recognise that the values and lessons that Society gave them are not all helpful in the wilderness and will get them killed. They start to develop the Team to replace what’s not working

> The Team grows in power, and the individual survivors have to make a decision about whether they’re going to remain loyal to Society or join the Team. Those who don’t join the Team die, not because they’re bad but because Society cannot protect them in the wilderness. To be very clear, neither Society, nor the Team, are inherently good or bad, they’re simply cultures that exist and offer each individual a place within them to provide and be provided for. But Society is NOT here, it’s a memory of a culture that’s been severed, and cannot provide anything anymore, only the Team is capable of doing so. THAT’S why only Team members can survive.

> The only survivors left are Team members, the Team stabilizes into a functioning self-perpetuating system

> They’re rescued and forcibly reintegrated into Society

> The remaining Team members now find themselves in the opposite situation, the Team is now toxic and can’t help them anymore, just like Society couldn’t help them in the wilderness, and they need to shed it to adapt back to Society just like they shed Society the first time. Those who can do so will eventually live long and happy lives. Those who can’t will die.

Coach and Jackie’s big thing in common isn’t that they suck, or that they’re unpleasant to be around. It’s that they’re Society loyalists. They just can’t let go. And what I think is most interesting about that is that both of them are being MISTREATED by Society. They’ve both been assigned roles that they cannot fill, and have held onto those roles SO tightly that it’s getting them killed.

Jackie’s absolutely plastered with unearned privilege. She’s constantly being told how perfect and brilliant and incredible she is. But she knows it’s a lie. And in order to defend her place, to justify her situation, and protect herself from anyone finding out, she holds Shauna SO close to her, so that she can have someone to feel constantly superior to. To make her look good by comparison. Except that Shauna is so many of the things that she secretly knows she isn’t and feels she NEEDS to be. So she spends a lot of effort beating Shauna down and focusing on convincing her that she has all these flaws and things so that she doesn’t realise that Jackie’s not actually this perfect person that people tell her she has to be.

Once she’s in the wilderness and Shauna starts to shine on her own - because the Team simply needs a different set of skills than Society did and Shauna’s willing to engage with it - Jackie’s control slips and she resents it, she fears it so much. And she can’t accept losing that level of authority that she got given by Society, to take a lower role with the Team. And so she stays loyal to Society even when it’s nonsensical. She sits in the snow and simply waits to be rescued, because that’s what Society has taught her to do.

But the Team doesn’t work like that. It requires Team members to be self-sufficient, and to work together. Jackie won’t go inside because Society has taught her to wait for Shauna to submit to her authority and apologise and invite her in, to give her the position that she Deserves. Shauna won’t do that because the Team has taught her that each Team member needs to be a part of the whole, that Jackie must eventually request permission to join the Team as a regular member. It’s a conflict that doesn’t get resolved, because neither will budge, but in the wilderness the Team can protect you and Society cannot, so Jackie’s faith in Society is punished with death.

That’s why Jackie can’t make a basic campfire to literally save her life. Because the Team would’ve taught her how, would’ve required her to learn. Society would provide her with someone to do it for her. So she just never bothered to learn. It’s why she’s unable to recognise just how dangerously cold it’s getting and be REASONABLE and knock on the door. Because Society has taught her that she’s protected from danger, that if it ever got Dangerous someone would come and help her. She doesn’t know the difference between damn cold and dying cold. Society works because of hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of people working together in intricate systems of mutual support and deep heirarchy. You don’t need to know how to put out a fire because when your house catches fire you call 911. You don’t need to know how to escape the wilderness because when you get lost they send a rescue helicopter. But without the connection to Society its lessons are literally destructive - Sit and wait until you die. Rescue isn’t coming.

Sidenote: If you want to go REALLY deep into the meta of it, the Team then gets rewarded with food by predating on Jackie as a vestige of Society, much the same way as they get little bits of technology by picking apart the wreckage of the plane. The plane is useful to Society as a transport, it’s useful to the Team as a source of supplies. Jackie is useful to Society as a member, is useful to the Team as a source of food. But I digress.

Now Society isn’t always a nice place to be, and Jackie’s not treated all that well within it either. People find her frustrating and comment on how undeserving she is of her position. They actively go behind her back when they can, Jeff cheats on her with her supposedly lesser best friend, Coach Martinez tells her to her face that she’s kinda mid, and people are generally mildly annoyed at her most of the time. But Society has her back, and as long as she plays by the rules, and follows the lessons, her life is pretty much made. It won��t necessarily be everything she ever dreamed of, but she’s solid, pragmatically. But the stress it puts on her, to conform and try to fit the role she’s arbitrarily placed into by Society is going to slowly ruin her and she’ll end up a bitter and unhappy person if she remains completely committed to it (assuming they never crashed, obviously). And what she doesn’t seem to realise is that the Team offers her community, and acceptance, and respect on the terms of her actual reality, on what she’s able to genuinely provide, whatever that is. But she’s so caught up in holding onto Society that it literally gets her killed.

That’s not to say that she doesn’t have a potential place in Society where she could be genuinely happy. Just that the one that she’s assigned isn’t right for her. If she was able to be let go of her fear, if she was able to be honest and stop trying to conform to the expectations put on her by those around her, and take a position in Society that more suited her she COULD have a perfectly comfortable life, happy and healthy. But the fact that she’s been assigned this life path that she knows doesn’t fit, that she’s so insecure about, is what MAKES her such an unwavering loyalist for Society, because she has so much to lose.

And that’s what makes her and Coach so similar. Coach is born in the ‘60s, is brought up in the ‘70s and ‘80s. We don’t know when he realised he’s gay, but it has to have been a very scary thing for him. He has been living in a world of deep and abiding homophobia his whole life (I remember the 90s, I can only imagine the 70s...) and then came AIDS. For his whole life Society has convinced him that living in the closet is a life-preserving choice. That he can get all kinds of value from Society, all sorts of good things, as long as he plays by the rules, fits his assigned role. And being gay simply doesn’t fit his role.

So he hides it. He hides it despite the fear it causes, the pain it causes, the fact that it keeps him away from Paul whom he loves. He takes on a job that he hates, surrounding himself with a bunch of girls who he despises. Because, as Natalie said, if he actually threw in his lot with Paul, if he went against Society, then he’d be reliant on Paul (and by extension the Gay microculture) in a really intense way and if he lost him then he’d have nothing left. He’d have blown his entire life up, and been stuck. Coach, like Jackie, is ruled by his fear that without Society’s handouts of privilege and gifts and authority that he’d simply have nothing left on his own. It’s a painfully real portrayal of the fear and self-hatred that perpetuates the ongoing trauma of the closet in the real world.

He’s spent his entire life giving up real parts of himself for the sake of Society, he’s all-in. And he, like Jackie, is just too invested to let go. He can’t appreciate that Society has nothing to offer him in the wilderness, that the Team can and will protect him if he lets it. A lot of people make jokes about the idea that Coach might be eaten if he sticks around too long, because he only has one leg. But that kind of ablest absolutism is Society thinking. Because the Team still hasn’t turned on him. When they decided they needed to sacrifice someone for Lottie they didn’t say “Okay, where’s Coach gone? Let’s go hunt him.”

The Team just doesn’t have the room to see him that way. NOBODY is expendable in the wilderness, every sacrifice is an agony they struggle to cope with. And... I guess if you wanted to get very dark with it, Coach’s missing leg means that his food value ratio to his potential value as a Team member is lower.

And Coach has shown plenty of value to the team in the wilderness. He’s actually capable of providing real advice as an adult with life experience. He taught them to shoot and hunt, he made sure that Nat wouldn’t get pregnant (thank GOD after the nightmare that Shauna went through), he’s perfectly capable of holding down the fort, and once he’s adapted he’s remarkably capable of getting around. To the Team he’s a pair of hands, a thinking mind, company, experience, and just... a human being. To Society he’s lost a lot of value, but the Team simply doesn’t conceptualise him like that.

And when he WANTS to, he proves how capable he really is. He got to the cliff on his own without too much struggle. He got into and out of the cave all on his own. Not saying it’s easy to be an amputee, but it’s not AS disabling as a lot of people would assume. And he’s still got a perfectly functioning mind, hands, etc. What he doesn’t have is a will to join the Team. To genuinely engage with the reality they’re in.

Again, this is reiterated with a second camp fire disaster, making the point that he’s been in the wilderness for most of a year now and he still can’t do something as simple, as fundamental to Team survival (but not Society survival) as lighting a tiny fire. Because in Society he’d never have to, Society simply provides. And in the wilderness he’s been relying on the Team to provide and not recognised that he’s been doing that. Not recognised the fact that he’s not been pitching in. That every fire he didn’t light someone else did. Every scrap of warmth he’s enjoyed all winter has been provided by the Team, not Society.

In S1E10 when Shauna gives up on Society and finally commits to the Team she does so with a fight with Jackie. And the only person on Jackie’s side is Coach, the other Society loyalist, who - like Jackie - assumes a position of authority based on his status within Society. And Lottie - the Team authority - says “Stay out of it, Coach.” She asserts that this is Team business, that Society has no say here. And, without Society providing the backup behind his words, and without actually contributing anything to the Team (not because he Can’t but because he Won’t) Coach has absolutely no power and no say, and he disengages from this point. And because he simply won’t join the Team his fate is sealed.

Coach also provides a viewpoint on the Team from Society’s perspective. Because the audience perspective is so deeply rooted in the Team, Coach’s viewpoint is the alternative. He’s the last tiny vestige of what they left behind. Like a tourist, watching a culture he doesn’t understand, assuming that he’s better than them, that they’re evil, that he knows what’s Really Going On. That his loyalty to Society will someday gain him some sort of advantage or reward, even as he stands on the edge of the cliff. Because his attachment to Society is so strong that he’d rather die than join the Team, an unthinkable option.

So when Coach sees the ‘jackets eating Jackie, his response of horror is not just that of Coach Ben Scott reacting to cannibalism in his face. It’s also the response of Society to the unforgivable breach of social laws by the Team. The fact that they’re able to do it, that they seem to be enjoying it, completely giving into the deepest taboo... he can’t handle it and neither, by extension, can Society. And as he’s powerless to stop it he simply closes the door, trying to separate himself from them. When he finds Shauna carving up Javi he tries to rescue Nat, the only Team member he sees as somehow redeemable, as a potential Society ally. And when she rejects him, when she shows him that she, who was on the fence, has now willingly and knowingly joined the Team he sees in her his faith in Society collapsing. Because here’s the girl who he put up on a pedestal, as “the good one” and she’s rejected Society. So either a) he’s wrong about Society, and Nat’s right. Or b) he’s wrong about Nat and right about Society.

Or a secret, third option, he could lose himself in a tantrum of repressed rage, burn down the cabin and also throw himself off the cliff, giving up on EVERYTHING in the process. (That’s my personal theory, but we’ll have to wait to find out)

Now he COULD respond at this point by going “Fuck it, fine, I can be a Team member too, if it saves my life.” And he might find in it the kind of value the rest have found. But doing that would require him to accept that they’re never ever going to be rescued. That Society truly is gone. That it was all for nothing. That he gave up his life, gave up Paul, gave up happiness and love and everything ... and never got his reward. No, he HAS to keep holding on, has to keep believing that there is a point, is a purpose to it. For his own sanity.

Again, we can read really deep into the meta of this and say... that’s what coming out of the closet really is. It’s saying “I’m SICK of giving up so much for Society, and I don’t believe that the reward is there, or if it is that it’s worth it. If the alternative is to be a monster, as Society tells me I am if I’m queer, then fuck it I’ll be the monster you say I am. Because that’s what’s going to keep me happy, to give me love, to feed me, and give me a life I want to live.” I’m not saying that it’s a completely 1 to 1 exact match, but you get the idea.

And so Coach tries to destroy the Team, tries to reassert the dominance of Society, because the Team is a bunch of inhuman monsters as far as Society is concerned. They’re deviant, corrupted, feral. But they’re not. They’re just trying to create a new culture that will get them from monday to sunday without dying on tuesday. They’re just trying to face a harsh reality with a perspective that makes sense, to them. They’re neither bad, nor good, neither moral or immoral. They’re surviving, or dying, and that’s what matters in the wilderness.

*Intermission, go grab some snacks*

Okay so this is already really really long, but you can flip the script and watch the exact same story happening in reverse in the adult timeline too. In Season 1 the whole big question is why is Travis dead? Who killed him?

And the answer is... the Team did. Like, in a LITERAL sense, he put the noose on his own neck. And Lottie pressed the button, at his command. He literally did kill himself. But he never intended to die, and what got him there was the Team. He genuinely believed that he needed to do the ritual in order to connect with It for all their sakes. And he - like Coach and Jackie in the wilderness - was wrong. The rituals they’d developed, the beliefs they’d formed to cope in the Team simply were of no use now they were back in Society.

But he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t accept that they were truly out of the danger, that the trauma was really over. That Society could protect them, when he’d had it proven so powerfully to him that it couldn’t help them in the wilderness. And his unending and irrational faith in the Team is literally what killed him. And Lottie, who MIGHT’VE been able to somehow rescue him from the situation - she was standing RIGHT THERE - was herself so absorbed in Team thinking that she instead just stood by as he died.

(Again, I really really need to be clear, I do not hate any of these characters, I love them all dearly and I’m reading into the meta rather than their literal actions, I don’t blame Lott for her actions as I don’t blame Travis for his, this is just how the story is written and WHY)

I could make a similar argument about Nat, and almost did, but she’s SO complex (she and Shauna have such intricate relationships to the Team and Society) it would honestly take up as much space as I’ve already written now and my brain’s getting tired. But I will end with a little thing I thought of as I was writing this.

There’s a third Society loyalist I forgot to mention: Laura Lee.

Laura’s faith in God is mirrored with her faith in Society. Neither are based on anything solid in the wilderness, she never gets any form of external validation of any of her beliefs. She just interprets what happens through her own lens and assumes she’s right. She’s been provided with a role of spiritual authority by Society, in an acceptable religion, and she assumes that she’s competent to hold it. When Lottie comes to her for advice, she provides it and assumes she’s correct. When Lottie sees things she interprets them as though her opinions were fact. When she sees the plane she decides that she should use it to save everyone, and because she decided that, she assumes that it’s God’s will, and so she assumes she cannot fail. That God has her back. Just as she, and Jackie, and Coach, assume that Society has their backs.

In the plane, Laura Lee sees her opportunity to reconnect with Society. And her unwavering faith in the capacity of God to provide protection from harm and Society to provide functional and reliable transportation without needing to work for it ... gets her killed. The lack of connection to Society, and the incapability of Society, and its’ God, to provide for the Team is displayed as a giant fireball in the sky for all to see, proof that they are truly, deeply alone. That Society cannot help them here. But it still takes a while for the lesson to really sink in. And for some of them, it just never does.

#yellowjackets #long post #spoilers #theory #meta

40 notes · View notes

mackeydoodledoo · 2 years ago

Text

Burning Sun: Chapter 9

Pairing: Rosalie Hale x (Fem!)Reader

Summary: You've seen her in the school halls, the cafeteria, anywhere really. You, for the longest time, hoped... Wanted to be noticed by Rosalie Hale. However, you give up when you realize it was getting you nowhere... Throughout high school and just some time after the high school years, Rosalie’s true feelings come to fruition.

Chapter Warnings: Push-n-pull Relationship

Chapter Theme: War with my Mind - Crimson Apple

Key: Italics = Thought, +*+ = Time Skip, Bold/Indent = Text messaging

A/n: None

--------------------------------------------------------------

You packed your suitcase and follow Rosalie to her car, awkward silence filling the tension between the both of you...

No words were exchanged when the both of you finally reached back to your apartment. She only drove off when you exited the car with your things.

+*+

It was all bullshit...

At one point Rosalie Hale wanted to be in your presence... Next thing you knew she wasn’t willing to go the distance with you in actually trying out a queer relationship.

Maybe it was because the cooling system in your apartment was getting repaired that day and the heat was really getting to you...

“You do know that sometimes it's hard for her to open up about certain things?” Your friend asks, over the phone

“Doesn’t mean she has to hide them from me,” You say, “I want her to feel like she can trust me with anything...”

“Has she given you anything she felt that she can trust you with?” She asks

I found out she was a Vampire and knew about it since high school...

“No...” You lie

“See, maybe she wasn’t ready to tell you certain things yet,” Your friend attempts to enlighten you

“Yeah, well... I have no time for waiting,” You say, “She can feel comfortable in her own time. For me, right now at least is to get this degree... I can’t afford any distractions...”

“What about after college?” She asks, “Would you come back here to mend things with Rosalie?”

Before you could leave for classes, you stop. Attempting to contemplate an answer.

“I don’t know,” You confess, “That isn’t in my plans right now... I’ll talk to you later...”

You hang up the phone and slide it into your back pocket as you sling your backpack over your shoulder; heading out to your classes of the day.

+*+

After the day, you finish any class assignments due tomorrow. But, you lie wide awake in your bed... Thinking of your last interaction with Rosalie. Internally fighting how much you harbor your undying love for her, and the fact she’s been very one sided with you and solely thinking of herself.

“God Rosalie...” You groan as you thrash yourself around: trying to find a good position to sleep in

Rosalie knew how to put me to sleep...

You were naturally warmer than the average person; the night wasn’t cool enough to keep you sound asleep...

+*+

It was difficult trying to get goodnight’s rest throughout the week. You didn’t tell any of your friends out of fear that they’ll judge you and encourage you to take the leap to go back to Rosalie. As well as

As you finish the assignments for the week, you heard your phone go off for the billionth time today.

God Rosalie enough...

However, she was persistent...

Finally, having enough hearing your own ringtone, you finally cave in and decide to pick up your phone.

“What Rosalie?” You ask

“Wow is that how you greet your future in-laws?” Alice asks

“Oh... Sorry Alice,” You sigh, disregarding the fact Alice said ‘future in-laws’, “Rosalie has not stopped attempting to call me all day...”

“She could be in worse shape...” She says, “She's been in and out a lot.”

“Not my turn to watch her like a damn hawk Alice,” You scoff

“But, that’s not why I’m calling you,” She says

“Then.... Why are you calling?” You ask

“Since I couldn't track down your new address to send wedding invitations-”

“Wait hold on, ‘wedding invitations’?” You ask, interrupting

“For Bella and Edward,” She clarifies, “Don’t worry, Rosalie hasn’t stopped thinking about you.”

You couldn’t help but blush as Alice gives you tea on Rosalie.

“Go on,” You clear your throat

“I’m inviting you to be Rosalie’s date,” She bluntly says

“Huh?” You ask

“Rosalie doesn’t want to ask you herself out of fear of rejection so I agreed to do it for her,” Alice explains

“Why me?” You ask

“Because you’re the only one she wants,” Alice says

“Well she’s going to be much more stubborn,” You scoff

“I know deep down in that big heart of yours you’re going to change your mind,” Alice tells you

“Try me,” You reply

You hang up your phone and lean back into the couch as the laptop sits in front of you: a half-done document on the screen. For some reason that sole phone conversation took a lot out of you. You walked into the kitchen to grab a snack and walked back to the couch.

It... Would be nice to see everyone... Especially Rosalie...

Yeah no chance buddy. She plays with our feelings how many times now?

You continuously argued with your easily loving side that Rosalie had hurt you, more times than you would have liked. But, to be Rosalie’s date at a wedding....

Would have all of the boys jealous...

You decided to play along with Alice’s little plan. Since you were aware of her “I can predict the future” gift.

Buuuut, this essay comes first...

*Alice’s POV* You pick up your phone as it rung, smiling at the screen.

“I knew you’d change your mind,” You smile

“You didn’t even hear my question,” She says

But not long before she makes the realization of your gift.

“Nevermind, forget that,” She says, “When is the wedding?”

“August 13th,” You answer

You hear her nearly choking on something over the phone...

“That’s literally a month away!” She yelps

“Don’t worry, I’ll have everything ready by then,” You say, in a chipper tone

You hang up after a thorough conversation with Y/n to give her all the details and you text them to her too, to make sure she doesn’t forget anything while she continues school.

*Y/n’s POV* 1 Month Later...

As you pack your medium-sized suitcase, you double-check if you have your wedding outfit: you do. You finish up packing all of the little things you need to bring.

“Okay... Got everything,” You sigh, closing your suitcase

You bring your suitcase out from the closet room and head to the door, slipping on your shoes.

“Time to face some old friends,” You sight to yourself, exiting your apartment

Chapter 10

#Rosalie Hale #rosalie twilight #Rosalie Hale x Reader #rosalie hale imagine #twilight saga #female reader

37 notes · View notes

zucchinibread777books · 1 year ago

Text

More Than a Best Friend Book Review

More Than a Best Friend (Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend) by Emma Alban Book Review

Summary:

When Beth enters her first season, she finds that the only friend she can make is the slightly infamous Gwen, who is already a few seasons in with no sign of a match. After learning that their (recently single) parents have history with each other, they become determined to set up their own match. Little did they know that they would find their own love in the process.

The good:

I thought that this was a super cute lesbian romance! It was just the right length for this kind of story and I’ll definitely be reading the sequel when it comes out.

I really appreciate that this wasn’t some sort of enemies to lovers arc. I’ve had to avoid a lot of lesbian romances recently because they all seem to start with one character who is just absolutely horrible but is excused because of some trauma they’ll reveal later. Those romances always make it seem like the two characters would be the most toxic relationship and I just can’t stand them. There’s also usually emphasis on one of them being closeted. Despite this being a period piece, there wasn’t a lot of focus on them coming to terms with liking someone of the same gender. Gwen and Beth were a cute match from the start and I found myself rooting for them immediately. Rather than drama between the two of them, it was mostly outside issues that prevented them from being together.

Even with those outside influences, there wasn’t really any homophobia against the main characters. In fact, there was no direct homophobia against them, just mentions of how society would view them. It’s a nice break for people who are tired of homophobia being such a main theme in queer stories.

I also really loved that there was an older lesbian couple in this story too. It’s so nice to see different generations of queer characters and have them give advice and talk to one another. Gwen especially had such a great support system and I was so glad they weren’t entirely alone as they went through their issues.

The Bad:

If you are looking for something historically accurate, this definitely isn’t for you. There were a lot of times I noticed certain phrasing and lingo that was so modern it took me out of it a bit. Not necessarily modern slang, but definitely not language that would be used in the time period it is set in. And as much as I loved the lack of homophobia, the amount of characters who knew and accepted their relationship was definitely not realistic.

Adding on to that, the sex scenes. They were very unrealistic for the time period, especially because of how entirely public they were. Even in the comfort of their own homes, they should have worried a lot more about being caught. I also just personally wish they weren’t so integral to the story. I understand smut is really big in the publishing world right now thanks to things like booktok, but once the characters had sex it felt like that was their only motivation for anything. The constant mention of each others fingers having been inside them really took me out of the story.

I’m always iffy on relationships like the one in this book too. Where parents get together and their respective kids also get together. Step siblings being a couple just feels odd to me. It felt right for the situation they were placed in but still.

This is also a personal pet peeve but I’m really not a fan of main characters having similar names. Beth and Gwen were very easy to confuse, being the same length and the only vowel being e. They were interchangeable in my brain for a while. Mason and Montson were even worse. If it weren’t for context clues, I would’ve assumed I misread and they were the same person.

Overall:

I thought this was really good, especially for a debut novel. It definitely took influence from a lot of popular stories, including Parent Trap and Bridgerton, but put its own spin on them. (It also reminded me a little of the comic High Class Homos) I enjoyed reading it a lot and it was a good break from the heavier-topic books that I was in the process of reading at the same time. I’m not sure it’s at the top of my reread list because it did hit a few of my pet peeves, but I definitely want to read the sequel. I’d also recommend it for anyone looking to read more cute lesbian romances!

3.5 Stars

3 notes · View notes

fanby-fckry · 1 year ago

Note

23, 33 and 2 for the writer ask!♡

Yet another writing ask

Thank you for the ask! <3

23. Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?

Dialogue comes easier to me than anything else 9 times out of 10. But honestly? It’s only certain aspects of description that are difficult for me.

Specifically, I have trouble describing where people/things are and how they’re positioned. Trying to write fight scenes is a nightmare, I often forget to describe what a character is doing in favor of dialogue or describing sensations, and trying to figure out where characters are in relation to each other sometimes requires brainstorming sessions with my beta and visual references.

I’m assuming this probably has something to do with the fact that I struggle with spacial awareness irl. I run into walls a lot, I suck at directions, and if you ask me to guess how tall someone is, my answer will likely be, “uhh, taller than me,” with no further elaboration.

33. Give your writing a compliment.

It has vastly improved since 2020.

I know that sounds like kind of a backhanded compliment, but I really am incredibly proud of how far my writing has come.

It’s much more organized and plot-lines make actual sense. The overall prose has improved, and I think my character voices are becoming more consistent.

Looking back at my old work fills me with both cringe and pride because wow, that sucks compared to what I can do now, and I can do so much better now.

2. Anything that you'd like to write but feel like you're unable to?

Occasionally I think to myself, “wow, I wanna tackle [insert big project with heavy themes here]!” And then I think about how much of a responsibility that would be, from research, to actually writing it, to the potential negative feedback… And I kinda drop it for a while.

One of those projects was a big deconstruction of the A/B/O trope with commentary on a lot of real-world relevant topics including trauma, rape culture, and how gender roles and stereotypes surrounding masculinity/femininity are applied within queer culture and same sex couples vs het culture.

Idk if it’ll ever see the light of day, though, because it’s a really heavy fic. I don’t know if I could even commit to writing it long-term because it hits a little too close to home, sometimes, and I tend to find myself needing to take long breaks whenever I do work on it.

So, it’s a story I want to tell, full of topics I want to comment on, and I’m not sure if it’s one I’ll be able to write.

#fanby answers #boyywithluv #and they were mutuals #ask game

2 notes · View notes

lucifers-writing · 1 year ago

Text

Original blog (pls check this one out too): @coven-of-cards

Hey, this is a writing blog for the host of the Coven of Cards System, I encourage you to read all of this before requesting or checking out the blog please!!

Fandoms I will write for

- Miyagi-Verse (all movies + cobra Kai)

- Star Wars

- The Outsiders

- Original pieces (own stories off the top of my head or book ideas I have planned out)

- Pokémon (I’ll try my best lol)

- Marvel/DC (not as much but I’ll try)

———————————————

Boundaries

Things I will, won’t, and will maybe write (This is for all my fics in general)

👍

- Fluff. OMG I LIVE FOR FLUFF. I LOVE JUST READING WHOLESOME STUFF ITS SO CUTE AND MAKES ME SO HAPPY. If u have a fluff request PLEASE drop a comment or send ur requests in my ask box! I love hearing your ideas!

- Angst. I love angst just as much as I love fluff! We gotta make the readers cry sometimes, that’s life. Just like with fluff, if u have an angst request, please drop a comment! Remember, this includes violence, major/minor character death, etc

- DIVERSITY. LIVE LAUGH LOVE DIVERSITY!!! POC characters? Bet, just don’t change the characters ethnicity or race! I will never make a character a different race than they actually are (example I won’t make a black character white or vise versa) but if a character doesn’t have a canon race and their race isn’t obvious, I will do my research! Queer characters? OMG YES!! Again, I won’t change a character’s canon sexuality. But if a character doesn’t have a canon sexuality, I’m willing to experiment! I have no problem headcanoning a character as bisexual. But (example) I won’t make a lesbian character bisexual for a story just bc someone asked me to. I find that to be disrespectful. I also will definitely have characters that are neurodivergent. As someone who is neurodivergent, I find it hard to find stories with a Y/N who rlly shows what anxiety feels like, or any mental disorder for that matter. So if you want to request a character who is neurodivergent, I’m all for it! I’ve always headcanoned Tommy (karate kid) to have ADHD and Jimmy (karate kid) to have social anxiety. If you request a certain mental disorder I don’t know much about, I will research the disorder first so it may take a little longer than usual! Anyways, I’m all for diversity and will have lots of diverse OCs and if requested, Y/N stories too!

- Ships!! Both platonic and romantic. I will not ship real people like actors though. I’m also all for writing abt ships that aren’t my own, again, love diversity! I personally don’t ship Lawrusso(karate kid) that much but I think they’re hella adorable and would love to write a Lawrusso fic in the future. Also, again, just bc I love diversity doesn’t mean I won’t write about heterosexual couples too. You ship Tommy and Susan and are struggling to find a fic abt them? I gotchu! It’s not a crime to like a ship that is not queer!

- A lil bit of spice. A little make out session will always be okay with me. I will only write the kissing, anything beyond that is considered smut in my eyes. So if u want a lil kissing then that’s alr. Kissing in general will always be okay with me, kissing in general falls under the fluff section. Making out has its own section.

- Crack fics. Another type of writing I love is comedy. I’ll write stories purely just about a group chat of people doing stupid shit. Or incorrect quotes bc you have to love those.

- Alcohol/drugs/smoking. News flash, most of my stories are gonna be karate kid/cobra Kai/the outsiders themed. Or just 80s movies and general. And guess what? During those movies everyone is smoking and drinking and having a whiff of cocaine once in a while. I’m not uncomfortable with writing about this type of stuff, but if you are remember I will always read back and add trigger warnings.

- Other alternate universes. Uhm, we need these! I love doing the occasional soulmate AU or a fantasy realm AU! It’s just such a fun way to add a little twist to the stories. If you want a crossover, it depends on if I’ve seen the movies or not but I’ll try my best.

- Gore. There are times I will write it and times I won’t. If it’s gore to get off, absolutely not. If it’s gore for angst, yes. If it’s gore for a horror story, yes. If it’s gore because I’m writing a fanfic/ one shot of a fandom that involves a lot of violence (examples are movies Star Wars), yes. Fantasy, yes. I will not write gore for you to get your rocks off or just to take pleasure in because that makes me uncomfortable. If gore is written, it is strictly for angst, horror, fantasy, etc.

- Headcanons for characters. I’ll do headcanons for characters, readers (as long as the request has enough info about the specific reader to do so), and same with OCs. Also, if requesting headcanons for a certain reader and your boundaries are different than mine (example not okay with kissing, PDA, etc) then tell me, and don’t be ashamed to tell me.

———————————————

Maybes

- Smut. This is definitely more on the no side. I’ve never written smut but like, it’s whatever the reader wants. I’ll try my best. Lists of things I won’t write in smut will be in the ‘no’ section. Anything on smut that’s a maybe will be on here, obviously. Also the smut will not be detailed, and will most likely just hint at it so pls don’t get your hopes up.

- Requests. It sounds bad at first but let me explain. If you comment a request once and wait, I will try my best to do it! Keep in mind I am busy and have a life outside of social media. But I won’t accept a request if it breaks my boundaries or you spam my comments with a certain request. If you do the first one, I’ll remind you to read my boundaries before requesting and if you continue to disrespect my boundaries, I’ll block you and you can’t read my stories. As for the second one, I’ll simply ignore you and if that doesn’t work I’ll block you. So don’t do those two things please.

- x female reader. I’m sorry to say this (truth hurts) but female readers have 50x the amount of writing content than male readers have. I can’t find a single Star Wars x male reader fic, can’t find a single Karate kid x male reader fic without smut that I haven’t written myself, and it sucks. And if it is a male reader, it’s usually a heterosexual couple. Nothing wrong with heterosexual couples, but queer male readers exist too. So I will only rarely write content for female readers. If it’s a WLW ship, then of course I’ll write than for you. But heterosexual ships are simply not my specialty.

———————————————

🚫

- Pro-shipping. Any pro-shippers are not allowed on any of my blogs. If I find out you’re a pro-shipper, you’re getting blocked.

- Zoophilia. Y’all are weird.

- Rape, dub-con, and non-con. All of these make me very uncomfortable and will simply never be written. Call me boring, call me rude, but I don’t think it’s healthy to get off to rape. This is a safe space page and will stay that way.

- Pedophilia or large age gaps. I think this explains itself. No minor x adult, no large age gaps (4-5 years is my limit. Nothing over that. And 4-5 is still on thin ice.)

- Omegaverse. It simply makes me uncomfortable. Anything to do with breeding makes me uncomfortable. So I’m sorry but if you’re into that, you won’t be getting it here.

- Kinks I will never write: CNC, scat, piss, spit, extreme choking, slapping/spanking, any form of hitting basically, pet play, age play (age regression does not count), whipping, rimming (I know a lot of people r gonna get annoyed at that but I just hate it. Any form of eating someone out makes me very uncomfortable.) These all make me uncomfortable and there are no ways to wiggle around them.

- Kinks I will add trigger warnings for: Extreme BDSM, any form of gags or covering the mouth, slight choking (even just a hand resting over the neck. This does not include someone lovingly holding the side of the neck), finger sucking, religious kinks as long as it’s respectful, (and usually I’ll add a warning for just the smut itself but these are specific kinks I will point out), degrading, uses of the safe word, inappropriate use of the force. And after smut I will ALWAYS WRITE AFTERCARE BC AFTERCARE IS SEXY ASF.

- Full on smut. The closest thing to smut you’re ever going to get on this page are hints that it happened, suggestive language, making out, and skipping the action but knowing that’s what happened. I’m leaving the smut to your imagination but I will never write it full on.

I am begging you on my hands and knees to KEEP YOUR REQUESTS INSIDE MY BOUNDARIES.

———————————————

Characters I will write for

Star Wars:

Also note, the reason a lot of Luke and Leia’s stories will be kinda tied together is because they are twins, we don’t do incest on this blog

- Luke Skywalker (PLEASE HE’S MY FAVORITE PLS REQUEST FOR HIM I LOVE HIM)

- Sith!Luke Skywalker (unpopular opinion but Sith Luke is such a cool idea)

- Farmboy!Luke Skywalker (can you tell I like Luke Skywalker?)

- Mechanic!Luke Skywalker (you can can’t you?)

- Literally any other AU!Luke Skywalker (send requests NOW /nf)

- Leia Organa (she was my bi awakening)

- Farmer!Leia Organa (ESPECIALLY if it’s Luke being a prince instead of a farmer, but I’ll make them both farmers too because both are cool ideas)

- Sith!Leia Organa (especially if Luke is also a Sith, but him as a Jedi instead is also accepted)

- Royal AU!Leia Organa (where both her and Luke are royals/political figures, but Luke can just be a regular farmer too if you want)

- Literally any other AU!Leia Organa (send requests within my boundaries)

- Han Solo (I thought he was kinda mean when I was 4 but like, 🤷)

- Request AU’s for Han Solo bc I don’t have much for him

- Chewie, Yoda, etc and all must be platonic/family

- Poe Dameron, request AUs

- Finn (FN-2187)

- Stormtrooper!Finn (omg imagine if the reader is a general or a rebel?! I’m giving you guys ideas)

- Actually rebel!Finn (where he was actually a rebel and didn’t lie about it lol)

- Just gonna say now if you have any other AU’S about characters besides ones I’ve listed just request

- Din Djarin (I think that’s how you spell it?)

- Sith!Din (read a fic like this once)

- Regular dude!Din Djarin (where he’s not a mandolorian)

- Kylo Ren (I want to boop his nose)

- Jedi!Kylo Ren (this was a cool concept in my head)

- Padawan!Kylo Ren (could be training under Luke still, training under the reader, just giving ideas)

- Ben Solo (yes they will be different, Ben Solo will be used if he’s just a regular guy and Kylo Ren is for any Jedi or Sith AUs)

- OCs x reader (OC must belong to the reader or have permission from the person owning the OC)

- General Hux

- Anything else, send requests

The Outsiders

(For this I’ll be more strict because most of these characters are minors)

- Ponyboy Curtis (ONLY MINORS AND NO SMUT)

- Johnny Cade (ONLY MINORS AND NO SMUT)

- Dallas Winston (I think he’s 17 so 16+ only and no smut)

- Two-Bit Matthews

- Darry Curtis

- Sodapop Curtis (16-17 only and no smut)

- Bob Sheldon (I think he is 18?)

- Cherry (16 and no smut)

- Marcia

- Randy

Request AUs

———————————————

Any other fandoms, I’ll write for any character and rules still apply. No proshipping here.

#the outsiders #karate kid #kk1 #kk #Star Wars

3 notes · View notes

ocpdramblings · 1 year ago

Text

Maybe I should start using this blog to talk about my hobbies as well so that I can associate it with things I like. I like art, I do a variety of mediums. Watercolor, charcoal, graphite, trying to get into pastels and gouache, digital, not a fan of acrylic but I can do it, really want to try oil painting but I don’t have the space for it to dry.

I like reading classics a lot. Pride and prejudice is a fave rn and I impulse purchased Jane Austen’s entire works. Read the predecessor to Dracula, Carmilla. Very good. Very gay. Way more gay than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be subtext. It was not. I also like reading trashy books as well. I really enjoy the ones that TikTok recommends that have absolutely insane plot premises. I don’t care about the writing at that point I just need to read.

I’ve recently gotten into Overwatch. Never played a FPS before. Made a couple new friends from it. Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, I really wanna get into Celeste. On the second Ace Attorney game, I love mobile and gacha games, I wanna play more otomes even tho I’m not a big fan of romance when I am implicated.

I unmask a lot with this blog and every time I reread a post I can’t help but think of how bland it is and how I’d never talk like that in real life.

My favorite game is Okami. Never met other people who like it. Very sad.

I watch anime, tho I do this thing where I’ll watch a popular anime a couple years after it comes out. And I tell myself that it’s to see if it lives up to the hype but honestly it’s bc I’ll have random moments in which I want to watch anime and then the only ones that come to mind are popular ones on social media years ago. I say my favorite is Bungou Stray Dogs but that’s actually my favorite manga not my favorite anime. My fav anime rn is probably High Card. Doesn’t have the highest budget but I like the premise so far and the characters. My favorite mangas are Bungou Stray Dogs, Kuroshitsuji, and Witch Hat Atelier (also not caught up on). I wanna start reading firefly wedding.

I read a lot of romance manhwas, mainly with female leads but I have a couple with male leads that I adore. I haven’t watched any tv shows in a while but I’ve been telling myself that I’m either going to watch Hannibal or Dexter. I’ve been wanting to consume more queer material involving women since I’ve found that despite being sapphic, very few women media shows up recommended to me. Favorite movie of last year was Bottoms. I watched it several times. I want to get into cdramas. The next film I see will either be The Handmaiden or Maja Ma. Or one of the Saw movies. Been on a Saw movie binge with friends. I find the themes inconsistent. An unforgivable crime.

There’s no actors I’m particularly into. Never got into anything Marvel aside from Spider Man. I plan on reading the comics soon bc a friend of mine really likes Spider man and I want him to know I care about his interests.

I’ve found a new enjoyment for figure skating. I have a couple of male skaters that I quite enjoy, but I’d like to watch more and eventually get into some female and ice dancing pairs as well.

I crochet. Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday. I graduate with my bachelors in the spring. I plan on doing my masters in IO psychology. My favorite color is blue and pink. I’ve been dying my hair for I think two years now. Maybe six months away from two. My friends say that I am surprisingly progressive in regards to my political views. I don’t know what that is supposed to mean.

I have a new car cause I recently got into a car crash. I’m very privileged. I don’t have to worry about money. I do regardless. I somehow have this personality disorder, and I have had one of the best life’s a child could have. Though every time I say that my friends say that’s weird considering the amount of trauma I’ve gone through. I think I have turned out well despite my circumstances. I like caring about other people. I’d like to make it my life’s goal to improve the life of somebody I don’t know yet.

Feel free to reach out to this blog anytime. It’s a side blog so I’m likely not gonna end up following anybody but I like talking.

#my post #personal

1 note · View note

cryptidcoast · 2 years ago

Text

Welcome to my blog!

Hi! I’m CryptidCoast and I’m a digital artist and animator. I have many interests but currently my main one is Transformers (and my own ocs lol)

Here are some things you should know before following:

I use He/Him pronouns!

I am queer, and I will not tolerate any queerphobia on my blog

There will be no hate speech on my blog in general

I have adhd (and probably autism) so I will sometimes joke about how these things affect me

I have social anxiety, so it my take me a while to respond to people

I am an adult, so I will post art with adult themes from time to time (things like suggestive art or gore, but I don’t currently draw nsfw, and if I do at any point, it will go on a separate blog) I’ll do my best to tag potentially triggering content, but I’m not always great at knowing what is triggering to most people. If I do post anything triggering that isn’t appropriate tagged/has a warning, please let me know!

Lastly, (despite my anxiety) I love talking to people about my interests and making friends, so if we are mutuals, don’t be afraid to tag me in things!

FAQ

Do you take commissions/are they open?

Yes, I take commissions and they are currently open. If your interested, you can find out more here: https://artistree.io/request/cryptidcoastofficia

What programs do you use?

I used paint tool sai 2 to draw, and toon boom harmony (and sometimes clip studio) to animate

Do you do requests/art trades?

I typically don’t take requests unless I am asking for them. I do take art trades, but only with mutuals/friends. (Unless stated otherwise)

My socials

Here’s where you can find me in places other than tumblr! They will be in order of most active to least active

My instagram: https://instagram.com/cryptid_coast?igshid=MjEwN2IyYWYwYw==

My YouTube: https://youtube.com/@CryptidCoast

My new grounds: https://cryptidcoast.newgrounds.com/

My carrd: https://cryptidcoast.carrd.co/?fbclid=PAAaZJOTM71P4RDgvser9c2jDxL4x8w1PiAetVVxx-ffi_dbb_PjHAnHTdafs_aem_ATTE0JMk-84VQ_0p432UPuHjq4Jxk6pSNMD8CQYsZJrfOXSpkdEy34loNVCGtLd9XI0

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2FCryptid_Coast

1 note · View note

vacantgodling · 2 years ago

Text

re. about

ren (or rimz for cool kids). he/him. twenty five. black. queer. neurodivergent.

i'm redoing this because i'm losing steam (thanks work) and i'm pulling back on a lot of projects to mostly focus on things that make me personally happy. as is the nature of my brain, i will still jump back and forth between projects when i lose the flow for another, but i’ve narrowed my important wips down to just three main ones. other projects are currently being shelved, or put to the side as half baked ideas that i still need to keep in the oven before i introduce them to anyone formally.

(so if you don’t see a wip listed in the wips tab, it’s either shelved indefinitely or i want to work on it on my own for a bit. you can ask me about my other wips if you know/remember them but i can’t guarantee i’ll answer about them at this time. this also doesn’t mean i won’t ramble about them when i feel like it.)

important sideblogs = no pressure to follow just fyi

@babylonsfalling -> all my fandom and other nonsense goes here

@todazzlingreading -> this is a personal checklist for things i want to read by y’all that i don’t have time or spoons to get to at the moment i see it. once i read a post there i’ll delete it from that blog and rb it over here with any comments in the tags :3

to find my art commissions, please look here: https://www.tumblr.com/vacantgodling/715216537870532608/commissions-are-open

re. disclaimers / interaction

i mainly write fantasy; it’s a broad overarching label that covers all of my interests and it’s my first love in writing. horror and horror adjacent elements always make an appearance in my works. i emphasize complex mlm relationships and male leads, and romance is a great love of mine as you’ll notice from the king of my current wips. worldbuilding is also a great love of mine. i also love writing smut and talking about my characters having sex.

as such some disclaimers: following me is a very much curate your own experience. i don’t want to hold back talking about adult and mature themes so if you’re uncomfortable with anything i talk about i’d just suggest you unfollow lol nothing personal.

i’m open to asks and talking about anything but there’s no pressure. anons are always cool. i’m probably not gonna do writing based tag games too too much bc writing has been nonexistent lately but character asks or ramble ones i will do :)

also, as a personal ask: please do not refer to any of my characters as babygirl or girlie(s). shit makes me squick thanks.

re. main wips

linked are the main tags & once i finish the wip intros for paramour and tcol (revamping them) i’ll link them as well. feel free to ask to be on the taglist for any of these (i’m going to do better with these) — taglists will be activated for all writing and official posts. this won’t include ask games or random babbling.

PARAMOUR || “saved” from an imminent social death through arranged marriage, HYACINTHUS SHRAPNEL is whisked away to The Chateau aux Aisles D’or, where an unlikely sexual relationship with his butler AMON leads to far more than he bargained for.

THE CHRONICLES OF LATHSBURY (check out the crash course HERE) || The Aegean Guild of Explorers, led by the mysterious newcomer to Lathsbury Madja Fandel welcomes its newest contingent after the guild bid: PIPER FAIRWIND a MBW with a fighting spirit and desire for money and glory, DEUX UNDERSHIELD a naive protector seeking answers for her brother’s spurn, SANDRA “SAN” DEARBORN a vicious hunter with a chip on their shoulder, CLEAR BRIGHTENDALE a medic with a host of dark secrets, and FORTE SYMPHONIA a ranger seeking his own destiny, are as ready as they’ll ever be to enter the fray, to conquer the mysterious and dangerous LABYRINTH. Forces that have been in motion since before their lives even began are finally reaching their peak, and the five of them will have to use everything they’ve learned and then some to stay alive.

re. navigation

talking -> musings and personal thoughts

about renjamin -> insight to me / who i am

ren analysis -> when i get meta about my wips

ren mix -> a treasure trove of my music taste

ren polls -> any polls i make

ren reads -> for my ramblings and analysis as i try to get back into books

friends tag -> talking with friends or boosting my friends work

others work -> boosting other writeblrs work

hall of fame -> praise / things that make me happy that i want to keep

ren writing -> all of my writing in one place

ren poems -> all of my poems in one place

ren fic -> all of my fandom related writing in one place

ren art -> all my art

q eh you eh -> queue

sex mention -> tag for any sexual content.

worldbuilding -> all of my worldbuilding notes across all my wips

find the word tag -> for this game specifically so i can find it

last line tag -> for this game specifically so i can find it

ren hot cakes -> specifically for my overly opinionated opinions

writing recap -> tracking my writing journey so i can hold myself accountable

#writeblr #re intro #writeblr intro #about renjamin

38 notes · View notes

knotwerk · 2 years ago

Text

Poetry and Proper Hydration

“There's a poem for this!” Stede exclaims.

Ed smiles. “Of course there is,” he says, delighting in the power of words to ground his sweet man.

—Tango

Reading poetry feels intimate to me, like a deep conversation. Poets let me into their innermost world, and all I can offer is my close listening. Putting poetry in Proper Hydration feels like another way I get to continue the conversation.

The idea for including poetry in PH emerged organically as I wrote the very first chapter. PH1 is all Ed POV, and I wanted to be sure that I showed as much of Stede’s interiority as I could even without access to his perspective (which felt too close to home to write, lmao). As Ed & Stede’s first evening together wound down, I was like, fuck yes, I’m going to give this blorbo my cluttered-ass nightstand poetry pile, and then Kayleb Rae Candrilli’s poem “Water I Won’t Touch” fluttered up to the surface of my consciousness and offered itself, and I was like, wait, no, I can’t put a poem in a fic—and then I was like, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING IN FIC, and it felt so good to let this be a way that Stede could share inner feelings with Ed, and Ed could receive them through his own filters but always with appreciation, which would in turn encourage Stede to share more of himself—and then it was just natural to continue that ritual. I mean, I literally do it every night, myself.

My writing process is: 1. scenes drop into my head 2. outline a few beats I want to hit, a theme I want to explore/question I want to ask (and many emerge as I write, so this one’s also nonlinear lol) 3. insert the scenes I can see in my mind already, and then 4. go. The first draft is basically me finding out what the story is (thanks @gaypiratebrainrot for that language), so I tend to write a piece in order from start to finish. Which means that as I’m writing a Tuesday day for them, I’m sort of percolating on what the Tuesday night poem should be.

Sometimes the poem just bubbles up to the surface, like the way that you’ll be going on about your day and find that a fitting song has popped into your head. Sometimes I [re-]read a collection from an author I’d particularly like to feature in the installment to see if anything fits or jumps out at me. Sometimes I have to go hunting, especially if I know that there’s a specific emotion or question I want to play with and nothing’s already come to mind. Sometimes I literally google “queer poems about X” and go down a few rabbit holes. I encountered Michael Field on one of those lil trips, for instance.

I’d say 40% of the poems in PH bubble up in my mind as I’m writing. Another 40% are deliberately sought by choosing an author I want to include and [re-]reading their work, and the other 20% is from a hunt by theme or feel (the poetry foundation website and poets.org are super helpful—you can literally search by theme on poets.org, which is fuckin fun as fuck). I hang out with the poem, let it sort of marinate during my processing time, and see if it fits the vibe; like, I’ll read them poem for myself, and then I’ll read it again and think of how it would hit the PH guys. Does any of the imagery fit the theme, etc. (the first poem in Buttons [Ars Empathica by Donika Kelly] includes the mention of a man with metal teeth, which in the poem is referring to a fuckin chainsaw, but it also made me think of OFMD Buttons and his fuckin metal teeth—my dot-connecty brain looooves this shit—retconning canon references in poetry YES HELLO CONVERSATION WITH POETRY AND CANON AND MY FIC THEMES GAAAAH SO FUN BRAIN GO BRRRR).

And sometimes, I read something and am just like must give to blorbos STAT.

How I Got Into Poetry

“Years ago, [Stede] had turned to poetry to explore the mystery of emotion, to increase his tolerance for the ineffable. It always seemed as though poets were able to show him things that he didn’t quite have access to within his own experience. He often felt a bit like an outsider as he read—hell, as he went about his life. Lately, though, each poem resonates with him in a profound new way, revealing a depth of emotion inside him that he didn’t even know he had the capacity to feel. It's like he’s reading these poems for the first time, now that he's reading them with Ed's arms around him—now that he has a clearer sense of himself.”

—Buttons

It me, lol

Poetry as a means to explore the mystery of emotion has always been a thing for me, and actually most of my journaling/personal writing over the years has been in free verse. But I had some traumatic shit go down in my life a few years back (2016ish), and on the other side of it, I couldn’t really tolerate big feelings, especially the ineffable shit. I couldn’t even read shit with feelings in it. Like, even chill fiction was unsafe. I read nonfiction for a while, and then little by little, as I found my way back to myself, I could tolerate a little more. Not an entire novelsworth of feelz and interiority, but… a page. I could do a page. And it felt *good,* and omg actually you can pack an entire novelsworth of feelz into one fucking page. And I know that there isn’t necessarily a conclusion to the idea/experience/feeling that the poet is writing about, but they were able to integrate it enough to a) write it down b) workshop it c) submit it to a million publications and then d) publish it in a collection. Made it feel kind of safe to read. To be clear: that’s not because said poem was "good enough for publishing" (because lol fuck publication as a sign of good/worthy reading) so much as it probably meant the content was integrated enough for the writer to look at it a million times in the process. I don’t need a happily ever after, or an integratedly-ever-after in a poem. I just need to know that the poet was able to fathom integration—or their survival of the un-integratableness—of the subject matter.

So I started following poetryisnotaluxury on Instagram and my tolerance grew further. That account made me remember how much I love poetry, so I made the conscious decision to start reading more. Worked out well cuz around that time (2019ish?) my shoulders and connective tissues were like FUCK NO to holding up larger books, so I kind of went for it. I had also just come out as trans, so I decided to focus my reading on queer poets. Little by little I found myself with a bedtime poetry reading practice that continues to this day.

How Do I Find Shit to Read in the First Place

poetryisnotaluxury is still a primo source. I also now get POETRY magazine and American Poetry Review, and when I read something in there that hits me, I track down the writer and explore their other works, too (and sometimes I search their name in [podcast app] and listen to any interviews they’ve done!). I also listen to the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast (I HEART Helena de Groot) and get a lot of my reading recs from there. If I really vibe with a poet, I’ll look up poets they’ve named in the acknowledgments section of their book, or see who they’re quoting in their socials.

#proper hydration ofmd #poetry 🤝 fanfic #fanfic #poetry #it’s personal and I’m having a great time

28 notes · View notes

testudoaubrei-blog · 4 years ago

Text

“She doesn’t want me - not like I want her.” - Catra, Heart Pt 1.

There’s a lot of things that make the themes and emotional arcs of She-Ra impressively, even staggeringly mature for a kid’s cartoon. There’s the themes of religious trauma and oppression, of self-determination, how love can be both the best thing in your life and something that utterly guts you and twists you, how it can bring people together or tear them apart, and also other themes like the conflict of loyalty versus finding your own path, etc. But one of the craziest and gutsiest things about the show is that it’s a kid’s cartoon that hinges on queer desire. Catra and Adora’s love story is not desexualized or abstracted. It’s very explicitly a story of two women who don’t just love each other, but who want each other. This is pretty clear throughout the show (though especially in season 5), and established really thoroughly at every level of their interaction with each other. Catra and Adora have better sexual chemistry than most straight rom com couples (okay, bad example, that’s not saying much), no matter how much said rom coms may try to make that attraction explicit rather than implicit with steamy make out scenes or characters hopping into bed.

The thing is, you can show desire without even mentioning sex - it’s literally how Hollywood did this for years to get around the Hayes Code. Even today the sexiest movie I’ve ever seen is Jane Champion’s “Bright Star”, where the most explicit reference to sex is a somewhat elipitcal proposition from the heroine that is very gently declined by the hero*. She-Ra, kids show that it is, is a masterclass in showing desire without making anything explicit, and showing desire (directly or indirectly) is so important in a queer love story, especially, since queer love is so often desexualized as a way of defanging its challenges to heteronormativity. This is going to be a three part essay. First of all, I’ll talk about how the show in general portrays sexuality and desire without being explicit and especially without inviting straight dudes to oggle its characters, then I’ll touch on portrayal and role of desire in Catra and Adora’s relationship, and finally I’ll talk about what the show’s portrayal of desire is telling us and why it's important. Because this is a show about desire, about wanting - it starts with Shadow Weaver’s rhetorical framing of ‘isn’t this what you’ve always wanted, since you could want anything?’ and ends with Catra’s cutting ‘What do you want?’ and Adora’s explosive answer (Catra. Our girl wants Catra) two episodes later.

So let’s drive in.

First, I’m going to use the term ‘sexual desire’ and variations to refer to sexual attraction as depicted in the show, even though it is never named as such and instead is shown by (very clear) implication. When I talk about say, an outfit or a pose or a situation being sexualized, I refer to commonly understood social coding that something should be read sexually. I use these terms to make what the show is doing implicitly explicit. Because make no mistake, the show is very much doing these things very deliberately.

In hindsight, it's not only creepy but ironic and ultimately telling that the initial online tempest in a teapot about the show was over how She-Ra’s outfit wasn’t sexy enough, or whatever. Because the outfits in this show...I wouldn’t describe them as dowdy. There are so many crop tops. So many boob windows (on both male and female characters). There are thigh highs and open backs and I’m pretty sure Double Trouble has a garter belt and I think that’s black leather all over Catra in Season 4? Noelle Stevenson’s philosophy toward costume design can as always be summarized by a tweet (there is always a tweet...or two):

https://twitter.com/gingerhazing/status/1258874007253729280?lang=en

In addition to this, there’s an apparently deleted tweet where Noelle talks about characters getting crop tops and boob windows ‘as a treat.’ (Some dude on Twitter got in a huff about that, perhaps? Because that site is joyless.)

Of course, creepy neckbeards on YouTube didn’t have distressingly attractive (male) alien overlords in open-fronted gowns and platform heels or nonbinary shapeshifting lizards in mind when they complained about the new She-Ra not being sexy enough. They wanted drawings of conventionally attractive (white) women in skimpy clothing, and they wanted an art style that was tailored to their gaze - detailed, if not realistic, in its depiction of certain parts of women. She Ra’s gleeful celebration of all kinds of people’s bodies - men, women, nonbinary people, butch women, thin women, and perhaps especially muscular women - isn’t what they have in mind. Nor is the art style of the show catering to them, and I think it’s the art style that’s important to the rest of this essay. The show’s style draws the characters so that even when they are dressed in a fairly sexualized fashion (like Catra in season 4), the actual animation doesn’t sexualize them - not in the perspective, not in the details shown (there’s no cleavage drawn, no matter how low cut the top), nothing. So even when every character on screen is dressed in thigh highs and low cut tops with boob windows etc, the show never feels weird or gross or leering. Instead, it feels like it’s celebrating its characters bodies, not objectifying them and especially not objectifying them for the benefit of straight men. And that’s important because this is a kids show, but also because let’s be honest, cartoons that objectify their characters for the benefit of a presumed straight male audience are pretty fucking irritating and even some great shows would be better off if they didn’t do it.

But there’s another thing that the combination of the costuming and art style does. I think it’s important that these characters are often dressed in a sexualized way because even while the audience isn’t invited to check them out, they are definitely checking each other out. This is a show where queer people, mostly queer women, are constantly looking at each other. I’m sure they are Looking Respecfully. Mostly.

Adora checks out Huntara (or at least her muscles), and the Buff Butterfly chick in Elberon. Bow checks out Sea Hawk, (as does Mermista, probably the most explicit opposite-sex attraction on the show). So many characters check out She-Ra. I could go on. These expressions of queer sexuality (appropriate for the target viewership, since they’re not explicit) form a kind of constant background that models a respectful and healthy form of desire that isn’t constrained by shame or twisted by power or control. The art style, and the way the show is animated, thus move the focus away from reader’s reactions to the character’s bodies, and put the focus on how the characters feel about each other. The characters of She-Ra aren’t here to cater to the desires of the viewer (especially not straight men), the show is here to celebrate their desires for each other. Also, this whole thing very accurately captures the vibe of an early 20’s friend group who are probably all hooking up with each other much better than a couple of contrived love triangles could.

But it’s with Catra and Adora that the gazing escalates the most, and it’s with them that it’s most important to the plot. Because as I said before, She-Ra is a queer love story at its heart, and the desire that Adora and Catra feel for each other shapes the story throughout. These two women wanting each other is baked into the very structure of the show.

Catra and Adora’s desire for one another is shown in a variety of ways, mostly indirect. There are a lot of glances - until season 5, not the kind of open leering at one another that we’d seen between other characters. Mostly it’s fairly playful - wiggled or cocked eyebrows, glances at each other while smirking, that kind of thing, or really intense and somewhat angry glares when they’re fighting. By season 5, we get Catra staring open-mouthed at Adora’s new transformation and blushing. Another major way that the show establishes the sexual tension between Catra and Adora is by their body positions. This is clearest with the dance and fight sequences in Princess prom, which can get pretty risque for a kid’s show - I’m not the first person in this fandom to point out where Adora’s knee is here:

Seriously, there is no heterosexual explanation for this. Then there’s Adora and Catra in the portal reality - they are basically constantly entwined around each other - shoving, wrestling, reaching out for each other. It’s friendly rough housing that is also a lot more. This kind of ‘blocking’ of Catra and Adora continues in different ways for much of the show. As someone on Discord mentioned, you can’t even count how many times Catra ends up straddling Adora over the show’s run. It’s a lot. And yeah, the way Catra and Adora fight is not...it’s not without its share of ambiguity (and let’s be honest, isn’t that part of the fun of enemies-to-lovers? People that say it doesn’t have to involve violence just hate fun). It’s in the way they wrestle and eagerly launch themselves at each other, ‘like am'rous birds of prey,.... rolling all their Strength, and all their sweetness, up into one Ball: And tear their Pleasures with rough strife.’**

Of course, there is a very dark side to this - the implication that Catra, frustrated by her perception that her friend rejected her, is channeling her frustrated desire for Adora in increasingly violent directions, becoming a sadist in the most literal sense of the word and perhaps trying to destroy what (who) she can’t have. This is pretty intense for a kids show, but it’s all (very clear, very deliberate) subtext. Moreover, it’s thematically important - it shows how everything good in Catra is being twisted by her resentments, her fears and her desire to dominate as the only means of keeping herself safe. She mauls Adora in a parody of a lover’s embrace (twice, though once under control by Horde Prime, who mostly wants to torture both of them).

Probably the biggest thing that establishes the sexual undertones of Catra and Adora’s relationship is the voice acting, however. AJ’s purred or snarled ‘Hey Adora’s are fan favorites for a reason - they convey so much of the ambiguity of Adora and Catra’s relationship, but they are also flirtatious as all hell. And as I mentioned in my previous post, Aimee Carrero’s line delivery of ‘Hey Catra’ in the first episode of Season 2 is just about as flirtatious as any line Catra delivers. There’s an edge of playfulness and teasing to both of them that is intensely flirty, and a guardedness that speaks to their own discomfort with how much they want the other person. My friend billypilgrim has pointed out to me that there are actually distinct phases of this kind of verbal (and non-verbal) flirting:

1. Pre sword, pretty organic, tinged with some issues with showing vulnerability etc, but overall pretty natural wholesome and obviously reciprocal

2. Post sword, pre promise, mostly confused feelings or strong feelings, usually mixed with anger/ or an attempt to get a rise out of the other. Mix of adversarial and reciprocated exchanges

3. Promise, prompted by memories they kinda swing back into a more guarded, but still mutual back and forth that isn't quite pre sword, but feels more organic than others.

4. Post promise -portal, mostly one sided offensive digs or angry comments that reveal desire. Not a lot of back and forth that I remember. Primarily adversarial

4. Portal reality- see above, very mutual, very reciprocated

5. Post portal -pre corridors, limited interaction, one sided digs that give way to just no contact. Very adversarial no reciprocation..

6 post save the cat. Lots of mutual reciprocated flirting with angst imposed by history /circumstance, wholesome but with some of the undercurrents of trying to figure each other out again

So the flirtation mirrors where their relationship is as a whole.

Then there’s the other stuff. Catra shredding the bed she shared with Adora is hard to read as anything other than romantic (or indeed, sexual), and it conveys Catra’s frustration, longing, grief and rage.

The way these two interact in Season 5 is a subject all its own, though. Noelle Stevenson literally saved two scripts for Save the Cat and in his words, ‘we got the gay version.’ Under Prime’s control Catra torments Adora by caressing her face, speaking sweetly to her, and acknowledging her own desire for Adora (‘you broke my heart’) - Prime is among the most important and the most twisted Catradora shippers in the show, in his own way, since while he’s not as all knowing as he claims, he can recognize Catra’s feelings, and Adora’s as well. He tries to use them against Catra and Adora since like Shadow Weaver he believes that love is a weakness, but ironically his prodding only make Catra and Adora stronger (because there is strength and power in lesbianism). The way that Adora is so gentle with Catra even when they fight, the way they reach out to each other, the way Adora cradles Catra after she falls...yeah, we definitely got the gay version of the script.

As the season continues we see this attraction develop and grow. The strained arguments (full of unspoken desires) in Taking Control give way to an easy teasing that is more explicitly sexual and romantic than anything we saw before (except perhaps in the portal reality). This reflects where their relationship is - as Catra and Adora know themselves better and also understand the other a bit better, they are starting to tease apart the muddled feelings they once had for each other, and have already started to discard the more unhealthy aspects of their dynamic. They still wrestle and tease, but now they’re laughing and smiling and grinning at each other. And they can’t keep their hands off one another. It’s hard to find a scene in Season 5 when they’re not touching, until Shadow Weaver shows up (and even then, we still get Catra jumping into fire for Adora and Adora transforming into She-Ra to save Catra in the Failsafe chamber).

Then there’s Heart Parts 1 and 2, where it becomes clear that Noelle is very much Going There. If you didn’t have the kiss spoiled, Heart Part 1 may have been the time when you said to yourself ‘Noelle Stevenson you magnificent bastard, you’re actually going to do it.’ Here’s where the -problem- that desire poses for Adora and Catra is posed so explicitly. This actually begins with the end of Failsafe, where Catra’s anguished ‘what do you want?’ and Adora’s non-answer set up the central conflict of the final two part episode - Adora becoming comfortable with her own desires. In her line ‘Adora doesn’t want me...not like I want her’, Catra expresses what she thinks is her unrequited desire for her best friend (a woman who is about to sacrifice herself for the world). For Catra, Adora wanting her is inconceivable, because Catra thinks that she is unlovable. Meanwhile in Adora’s own hallucinatory journey toward her own death we see that montage of Catra -showing- Adora what she wants most in the whole world, and then disappearing. For Adora, her desires are half-formed, on the tip of her tongue, but quickly shoved aside to focus on her duty and her mission, to save her friends rather than grasp at what Adora wants for herself.

And then there’s the Heart. It’s easy to say the power of love saves the day, but that’s not specific enough. It’s romantic love, erotic love, queer love that saves the day when Adora is confronted with what she wants and finally reaches out for it rather than turning aside in favor of what she’s supposed to do. She tries to do it again and avoid the question of what she wants, but she doesn’t have ‘world enough, or time’ and so the situation, and more importantly Catra’s declaration, forces her hand. Adora’s transformation into She-Ra from Beast Island onwards has always been about her connection to other people, often a desire to save them or help them. But here it isn’t just the prospect of saving Catra, but ~wanting~ Catra that enables Adora to transform, take the power of the heart and murder Prime with the power of friendship. And so lesbianism saves the universe.

So that’s a bit of how the show conveys the (pretty intense) desires of two women for each other without ever mentioning the word ‘sex’ and how that plays out in the show. Stepping back and looking at the whole of Adora and Catra’s arcs, before the show it is implied that neither character can fully accept the nature of their attraction - either how they feel, or that the other returns their feelings. After the pilot, they are both denying their sexuality in some way in Season 1 - Adora is suppressing her desire for Catra and focusing on duty, and Catra is denying her desire for Adora and twisting it into a desire to hurt Adora and make her suffer, while also shoving it aside in favor of her quest for power. Yet for both of them the underlying attraction is simmering under the surface. Often they use it to get under the other’s skin (Catra does this more than Adora, but Adora definitely has her moments), but it’s there in so many of their glances, their lines, and even their blows. Catra is the first to admit that she wants the other (perhaps as early as the end of Season 4, it’s hard to say) but she continues to assume that Adora doesn’t return her desire. Meanwhile Adora continues to dodge confronting what she wants, a question that gets brought up again and again through the show. Adora has grown so much over the series - she’s twice walked away from everything she knew and twice turned away from her closest friend to do what is right, she’s twice walked away from her destiny, she’s saved the world repeatedly by sheer force of will and a strategic amount of ass kicking. But she’s always avoided the question of what she wants, thinking that what she wants is selfish, or a distraction, just like Shadow Weaver taught her. Here she is a counterpoint to the way Catra internalizes Shadow Weaver’s view that love is a weakness and that Catra is unworthy of love anyway. Adora is convinced by Shadow Weaver (not just in Failsafe, really through her entire life) that what she wants distracts her from what is really important, that it weakens She-Ra, when in fact it is only by embracing her desires that Adora can be her true self, and really be the hero she deserves. Again, this isn’t just an abstract self-acceptance, this is an explicit embrace of her sexual desire for another woman that gives Adora her power.

So other than celebrating how lesbianism saves the universe, how should we take the central role that queer desire plays in the show? How does it reflect the queer experience and why does it matter?

First off, I think any celebration of queer sexuality is fucking great. One that introduces these ideas in an age appropriate ways to kids is particularly impressive. Because one thing about queer relationships is that their depiction is often desexualized. In kids shows, this is clearest with the fade to white at the end of Korra (which was the best they could do at the time, it was 2014, it was great), but also through all kinds of pop-cultural ‘family friendly’ depictions of same sex love that consisted of hand holding while straight couples were shown making out in the same shows (insert a 2000’s sitcom here). This means that while mild and non explicit depictions of straight sexuality are considered ‘appropriate for children’ similarly innocent displays of queer sexuality are considered intrinsically explicit or even obscene, something that lives on for higher age ratings for queer content in many countries. The message of this is clear - queer desire is dirty, and wrong, and shameful in a way that straight desire isn’t. Only by openly showing and owning our desires can queer people strike back against stigma (hence the PDA and sometimes risque clothing at Pride).

But beyond this, I think Catra and Adora’s experience of desire reflects so many of our experiences. How many of us, like Catra, have assumed that other people never wanted us like we wanted them? This is perhaps a universal experience, but I think it can be particularly poignant for people attracted to the same sex, when it is easy to assume that of course they wouldn’t like you ‘like that’, especially when we’re dealing with internalized homophobia. By the same token, how many of us have, like Adora, struggled to understand or articulate or act on our own desires when they weren’t what we were taught we -should- want (as I mentioned in my last post)? Noelle Stevenson didn’t come out to herself and the world as a lesbian until he was 24. I didn’t realize I was bi until I was...significantly older than that. I think Adora’s struggle to -want- what she so desperately wants is something a lot of us have felt, but so is the power she finds in finally owning her own desires and acting on them.

So She-Ra isn’t just a depiction of queer relationships or queer people. It’s a celebration of queer desire, packaged in a show that is totally appropriate for elementary aged kids. It’s kind of amazing.

Anyway, just a reminder that this is a series and if you like this here are the other ones. Part 4 will be coming, maybe next week, and will focus on how She Ra thematically and dramatically pulls off a power of love ending. I am also going to explicitly talk about why this ending works when other power of love endings fall flat.

*If you are attracted to guys at all, see this movie, the camera itself is very into John Keats and if you like dudes you will be too. Even if you aren’t, it’s a great movie and a perfect antidote to the both too-reverently ‘historical’ and not-at-all actually historical conventions of costume dramas.

**If you get this reference, yes I made it for you, specifically. Yes you. You know who you are.

#she ra #she ra spoilers #spop #she ra netflix #catradora #she ra adora #she ra and the princesses of power #noelle stevenson #meta #analysis #long

435 notes · View notes

gothamcitycentral · 3 years ago

Note

your top 5 batman rogues for the send me a character and i’ll list thing

That’s be Killer Croc, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Man-Bat, and Bane! But since I’ve done Bane already, I’ll throw in Harley to complete the Sirens

Killer Croc

Favorite thing about them

Everything I love his theming with humanity

Least favorite thing about them

Not so great explanations on his… crocodilian-ness. Originally he had a skin-condition which kinda worded for what he was at the time, but not so much when he was 10 feet tall. Then he had “reptilian activism” which is… so bad I can’t even articulate it.

Favorite line

In Joker’s Asylum: Beauty and the Best, “… They’re the monsters… not me…. Put me back”. I can just so easily imagine with whole body shaking, voice quaking with devastation. It hurts my heart every time.

brOTP

Him and Ivy!

OTP

Definitely him and June Moone

nOTP

I don’t like him with Orca or him with Harley

Random headcanon

He’s used a stake as a toothpick before.

Unpopular opinion

Killer Croc designs with human mouths don’t look him.

Song i associate with them

This Animal I Have Become by Three’s Day Grace

Favorite picture of them

Poison Ivy

Favorite thing about them

Honestly I just like plants. Though I also love how she has an inverted struggle with humanity. While most mutated characters try to maintain their sense of being human, Poison Ivy instead wants to shed it.

Least favorite thing about them

All of her backstories where she sleeps with her college professor.

Favorite line

“They can bury me in the ground, as deep as they like. But I'll grow back.” Not crazy or anything, but I like it.

brOTP

Her and Croc, like I said. I also like her and Bruce being friends.

OTP

I’m basic, her and Harley. I also think her and Selina are pretty funny together.

nOTP

Her and Batman. Just no

Random headcanon

Poison Ivy is effectively immortal, when it comes to dying of old age. When her body should die of age, it instead regrows. Every time this happens she becomes more plant and wood like.

Unpopular opinion

Feminine fatal Poison Ivy is really boring and generic

Song i associate with them

Poison by Alice Cooper and Its the End of the World as We Know It by R.E.M.

Favorite picture of them

Scarecrow

Favorite thing about them

A character who debuted as a man who dresses as a scarecrow and was fired from his job as a college professor because he shot a gun in his classroom evolved into one of the most queer coded Batman characters.

Least favorite thing about them

He can be pretty egotistical I guess.

Favorite line

“When the dawn comes, when Gotham lies in ruin and I turn my gaze to the world beyond, the legend of the Batman will be worth nothing at all...”

brOTP

Him and Harley! Psychology buddies!

OTP

That’d be him and Bane. Evil chemists loving each other and committing atrocities <3

nOTP

Not a fan of Mad Hatter and him, mainly because I don’t like Mad Hatter. And him and Riddler is too much white twink for my diet.

Random headcanon

Learned how to barley play an acoustic guitar to harmonize with his birds

Unpopular opinion

“Scarecrow is definitely Ace” this is the horniest old man I have ever seen

Song i associate with them

… This is Halloween, kinda

Favorite picture of them

Man-Bat

Favorite thing about them

Frankly I just think bats are cool animals I am an easy person to please

Least favorite thing about them

Kirk can be written as a pretty boring guy a lot of the time, unfortunately.

Favorite line

Something along the lines of “Well, I believe it should work, but I did turn myself into a bat, so-“

brOTP

I don’t think Kirk has friends. I guess you can count that magic squad team up Wonder Woman organized (no, I don’t know why he qualified).

OTP

Again, basic, but I think him and Francine can be pretty sweet together. Even if I find them divorcing funny.

nOTP

I suppose I’m not a big fan and him and Bruce.

Random headcanon

Post transformation he’ll occasionally wake up, drenched in sweat, and the taste of blood in his mouth. He vomits in the sink.

Unpopular opinion

All “Batman is a furry jokes” should go to him.

Song i associate with them

Don’t You Dare Forget the Sun, by Get Scared.

Favorite picture of them

I love Kirk covering the Batsignal

Harley Quinn

Favorite thing about them

I love this whole identity and personally Harley crafted for herself to ignore her trauma

Least favorite thing about them

Sometimes she just shows up in things she shouldn’t.

Favorite line

When she first appear in Jame Gunn’s Suicide Squad and announced she just took a shit

brOTP

Her and Bruce would be iconic

OTP

Again, Harlivy. Though most Harley ships are pretty enjoyable.

nOTP

…Joker

Random headcanon

She will brand for hair if she gets the opportunity.

Unpopular opinion

So I think her “new age” designs are fine as long as they maintain the diamond motif and aren’t too “this is just underwear”.

Song i associate with them

Blood // Water by granson. Well, Into the Knight Harley, but still.

Favorite picture of them

Thanks!

#my asks #killer croc #waylon jones #poison ivy #pamela isley #scarecrow #jonathan crane #man bat #kirk langstrom #harley quinn #harleen quinzel #long post

36 notes · View notes