#second queerness is also a culture that you engage in

[stupidcupid06]

I want to talk for a second about what it means to be queer. This is, of course, a highly personal topic that varies from person to person, and I won’t mind if people disagree, but I think its important to talk about what I see as fundamental aspects of these words.

I am asexual. This means that I don’t want to, and probably never will, have sex (consensually). Plenty of people throughout history have been asexual, but I want to focus on the priests - christianity, in its conquest of the world, banned many of its priests and nuns from having any form of sex. As such, they probably attracted a good deal of asexuals, as it was a job that provided an institutional reason for them to not be interested in sex. Their parents, who might have otherwise insisted they have children, have no reason to complain, now.

Here’s the thing, internet. These priests were almost all not queer. Despite being connected with a label that is deeply queer, and despite living out their entire lives asexually, they were almost universally not queer, as I’m defining it.

Because queerness isn’t about what label you use. It’s about the actions you take.

So what does define queerness, then? Queer people are those who challenge the dominant narrative. Those who ask, “Why do we believe that my happy life requires sex, or mairrage, or for me to be the same gender as my birth?” “Why do we demand that everyone live the same way, with the same pronouns, using the same language?” Queerness isn’t about gay, straight, ace, allo, cis, trans, or nb. Queerness is about questioning society. And more specifically, it’s about living in such a way that it makes your questions about society readily apparent.

Now, this is a difficult idea to handle, internet, especially as you all live in a place where anyone’s identity is argument fodder. But I think it’s worth bearing in mind. I’ve met two cishet white men who I would absolutely consider queer, and a few bi people who I wouldn’t. Because those cishet white men were not just allies, they also live their lives outside of the dominant framework of society. They, just by existing, caused people to question society. and what’s accepted and not accepted.

And similarly, the bi people I mentioned all didn’t exist outside of society. They lived firmly within it, only willing to show their bisexuality to trusted people very privately, and never willing to question their society when outside of these small, trusted circles.

(Tangent: I’m not saying that being a social chameleon makes you not queer, because I am both of those things, but rather that you need to use your social maneuverability to spread queer ideas in your society and exist in a queer way even as you move among social groups.) (also none of these people I’m talking about (bi or cishet) have described themselves as queer to me, for the record)

“But wait, cupid!” you might be asking, “Doesn’t this lead to people with queer labels being excluded from queer communities?” I’m glad you asked, rhetorical straw man! I believe in a variety of different queer communities. There should be communities open to anyone which help all people become more queer. There should be specific support communities to help groups of specific labels. There should be cishet-excluding communities which help people who aren’t cishet become more queer. There should be communities of all types for all kinds of different queer people. The key is:

Maintaining compassion for individuals, and helping them become more queer and come to terms with their queerness and survive in an anti-queer society.

Maintaining anger against societal structures, which tell us who we can be and otherizes us and keeps us queer.

Done that? Great! You’re queer!

[daughterofzeus-the-novel]

I know some of classicsblr dislikes the way Madeline Miller modernized the Illiad for Song of Achilles but I loved Circe and I'm really liking this one so far

[stewiesclark]

Second Nature: Chapter One

Full Series

September 18, 2013.

“It’s Wednesday. I have class tomorrow, Grace and you know that I rarely go out then.” Harriet pleaded to the much shorter strawberry blonde in front of her.

“Okay, let me reiterate. Nic is going to be there and you know this part and I could use a friend, there’s nothing weird about it at all. You don’t have to drink, I just need a friend there,” Grace pleaded for the millionth time. She had been trying to convince Harriet to go out with her all week to this party and each plea was unsuccessful. Her philosophy was something along the lines of preferring to not get into straight people's business — it’s not her culture.

Harriet deadpanned her, realizing she was going to lose but figured she could use some leverage in this scenario. “What could I possibly get out of this?” She asked playfully but also very seriously. Whenever one of them wanted something that the other REALLY did not want to do they playfully leveraged each other. Some people would call it using your friends, but Grace and Harriet would call it sisterhood.

“Nic has a hot, tall friend, Harrie, I’ve already thought through all of this,” She answered with an air of glee to her. Harriet couldn’t exactly deny the offer. While Grace is going to try to get this guy to see her again, she could be talking to someone new which is always fun for her — first, she needs a way to find other queer people on this campus and second, she loves to get to know people.

Harriet decided to drag this out for a moment or two longer for the anticipation to build. She faked thinking thoughtfully for a moment and then reluctantly answered, “Fine. I’ll go with you,” which ended with her giving Grace a genuine soft smile.

When they finally ended up at the party, it was a fraternity house that was as dirty as they come. Grace was taking her to meet up with Nic and Harriet had never met the man, but just based on the immense anxiety he gives her friend, she already was NOT a fan.

When they met up things were awkward, to say the least. It was Nic clearly just wanting to have sex with her and Grace becoming very very very into him. “You’re Harper, right?” He yelled at her over the loud music as Harriet was deep into drinking a cup of ‘battery acid’.

“It’s Harriet,” She yelled back but also deadpanned at him, and in response he just shrugged. “Grace told me that you’re gay so I thought you could meet my friend.” Harriet’s queerness was very well known, she didn’t really try to hide it and she hasn’t tried to hide it since she was in middle school, but it always made her laugh that at these kinds of things, they would always put her with the other gay person.

The girl Nic introduced Harriet to was tall, kind of lanky, and really pretty, almost engraving with her eye contact. She had really rather enchanting blue eyes and very engaging features to the point where you could not look away. However, the issue with that was that she was so goddamn tall that looking at her for a prolonged amount of time would probably break her neck. Harriet was not even short at all, she was about 5 '7, but the girl she was looking at was tall. 

At this point in time, it was very apparent that she had been staring for a good while at her and that became apparent when the taller girl spoke up, “Hi, what’s your name?” She said kind of awkwardly but her posture was tall still while leaning in over the loud noise of the party.

She giggled a little when it became clear that she had been staring earlier which just made the other cock her head, “Oh it’s Harriet.” She smiled softly before asking her what hers was back. She knew well that it was Breanna Stewart, but she did not want to come across as a fan.

“Breanna,” she replied and she could tell by the look on her face that it felt nice to be able to say that to someone rather than being told who she was by another person even if Harriet did know who she was. After all, this was UConn where people eat, sleep, and breathe basketball. The only place that might be more bullish about basketball is the state of Indiana which is where Harriet called home.

Breanna pounded for a moment on what to say before going ahead and asking her, “Do you want to go outside? It’s super loud in here and I would like to be able to talk to you.” She smiled at her and Harriet returned that with a nod which was the best to do given how ungodly the noise in the party was.

When they got outside, they both had a cup of a punch which contained god knows what and sat on a bench to talk, “Soooo how do you know Nic?” Breanna asked her to tease her because she knew how much of a dick he could be (to put it lightly).

“Oh he’s very on and off again with my best friend and the only way he would talk to her is if she came here tonight.” Harriet grimaced, “What a catch!” She joked before taking a sip of her punch and asking the same.

“He’s my ex’s best friend and he invited me because he told me and I quote ‘this hot girl that is sadly gay is going to be there so I think you should meet her’.” She explained in air quotes which got a laugh out of Harriet.

“He’s a character alright.”

“Enough about him though, what brings you to UConn?” Breanna asked inquisitively because she knew why she was there but other people’s reasons were always interesting.

She thought about it for a moment and how she wanted to answer this question, “Academic scholarship and I have family who live around here.”

“Oh wow so you’re like smart smart,” She teased.

“So what brings you to UConn?” Harriet posed the question back.

Breanna paused, not quite sure how to answer it exactly, “Basketball but that’s really not interesting at all.”

“I mean it is interesting, that’s a whole other life that most people have never lived.” She said kind of sounding philosophical of sorts.

The two kept talking about Harriet’s schoolwork which was in Economics and Engineering and Breanna’s experience with basketball and how she ended up here. They both went into detail, but not so much detail to the point where it was too much detail or too much for comfort.

Once they both realized hours had passed and Breanna had to be up in like three hours it became a problem, “Oh shit! It’s so late, can I have your number?” She asked which took Harriet off guard because she always gets shocked when people want to talk to her especially when someone like Breanna wanted to who was (in her head) out of her league.

She gave her her number and teased, “Wow this is a bold first move, just make sure you remember to talk to me with how busy you are.” She made a joke out of this since a piece of their conversation had been about how Breanna was so busy with the combination of basketball and schoolwork that she barely had time to eat.

“Well maybe Nic did one thing right by having us talk and don’t worry I’ll remember to talk to you,” She said kind of flirtatiously leaning close to her which made Harriet go insane inside and as she was thinking about it Breanna moved near her which made Harriet go, “you have to sleep,” She said placing her hand on her cheek and rubbing it. 

“I do, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Then before Harriet knew it they had parted ways and Harriet was thinking about the things she said and her expressions that made her go insane and at that moment she realized, I’m fucked. 

[orpheusdrinkinga40inadeathbasket]

The Beatles invigorated the role of the fan because they were the first cultural product to engage holistically with the figure of the teenage girl. They emerged onto ground broken by Elvis and then outpaced their predecessor creatively and commercially. Elvis supplied an avatar for the forbidden promise of sex, but his appeal rested in how easy he was to objectify, his obviousness. Cartoonishly handsome, he was a body onto which the teenage girl could project unspoken and illicit desire. He inspired adoration, but it could not compare to the ferocious awe frothed up among Beatles girls. There is no Elvis equivalent to the term "Beatlemaniac." "To younger teenagers, the Beatles' cheerful, faintly androgynous sexuality was more approachable than Elvis's alpha-male heat," wrote Lynskey. The Beatles offered something more complex than an empty sexual template. They presented an opportunity for identification. A girl could invest her desire in the band, but she could also discover herself there. The gaze cast on the Beatles was a queer one from the start. Before American women looked at the Beatles, they had been seen by Brian Epstein, the closeted gay record clerk who discovered and ferociously advocated for the band when record executives failed to give them a second glance. Watching them play a lunch hour show at a grimy club in Liverpool, Epstein picked up on the magnetic potential of the four young men. In Vivek Tiwary's graphic novel The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story, artist Andrew Robinson closes the frame around the future manager's stunned face as he beholds the Beatles for the first time, as if he could sense his life pivoting around that one rapturous moment. "There was some indefinable charm there," he wrote in his 1964 memoir A Cellarful of Noise. "They were extremely amusing and in a rough 'take it or leave [it] way' very attractive." Upon becoming their manager, Epstein was tasked with convincing the world to see the Beatles the way he saw them: via a gaze that desired its objects without othering them. Heterosexual desire spans a chasm, coveting difference. Queer desire pulls together like elements, finding attraction in affinity. That teen girls could even feel the kind of active, demanding sexual desire evinced by their screams was still a novel concept in the early '60s, which carried vestiges of the prior decade's postwar conservatism. "In a highly sexualized society (one sociologist found that the number of explicitly sexual references in the mass media had doubled between 1950 and 1960), teen and preteen girls were expected to be not only 'good' and 'pure' but to be the enforcers of purity within their teen society—drawing the line for overeager boys and ostracizing girls who failed in this responsibility," wrote Barbara Ehrenreich in a 1986 essay. "To abandon control—to scream, faint, dash about in mobs—was, in form if not in conscious intent, to protest the sexual repressiveness, the rigid double standard of female teen culture. It was the first and most dramatic uprising of women's sexual revolution." Befuddled by the Beatlemaniacs' exuberance, interviewers and critics (who were more often than not men) pinned the scream to a desire, of all things, to mother the band. "It has been said that you appeal to the maternal instinct in these girls," began an interviewer in 1964. John cut him off: "That's a dirty lie." Joking or not, he was right. The dynamic at hand did not correspond to a mother/son model. Beatles girls wanted the way men were expected to want: unabashedly and directly, as active agents in the exchange of desire. There was nothing coy about their hunger.

Sasha Geffen, Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary

[cherrybomb107]

Okay, so, y’all already know I’m one of “those” Jinx stans(I don’t think she did anything truly monstrous and would defend her with my life). I feel this way for two main reasons: I see myself in her, and my personal biases kick in when it comes to my girl.

Now, I don’t consume fiction to make moralistic judgments of the characters; I’m here to have fun and be entertained. But, because stan culture has affected us all and made fandom discussions so personal and emotionally charged, I’ll bite. There are ppl in this fandom who won’t even call Silco a proper villain because of how nuanced he is. As if two things can’t be true; it is perfectly possible to be both nuanced AND a villain. Yet this same sympathy is not always expressed when talking about Jinx. Why is that?

Answer: misogyny and the demonizing of ppl with mental illness imo. Cause that’s the only plausible explanation I’m willing to accept why so many think of Jinx as a monster for killing cops, gang members, and asshole politicians, yet give all the grace in the world to Silco, who flooded the Lanes with Shimmer, had children working in his factories, was ready and willing to kill Powder before she hugged him, and waxed poetic about revolution when he never had any real plans of helping Zaun. He just wanted to be in charge. Like I said, I don’t consume fiction to make moralist judgments of the characters. But Silco’s actions are WAYYYY worse than Jinx’s, by a long shot.

And to my second point: my personal feelings. Disclaimer: ofc I don’t think killing ppl is right, nor am I an advocate for mindless slaughter. However, that is not what Jinx does. Her views on violence are incredibly warped due to the environment she grew up in. But even still, she NEVER harms innocent, non-combatants, much as some parts of this fandom likes to act like she does. I love the Firelights! I sympathize with their plight! But, they are literally a gang. And the ones that Ekko rolls with(Scar and the others) have inserted themselves into armed conflicts with Jinx before. They have been shown to be willing to use lethal force.

Silco is a drug kingpin. Jinx is his daughter. So no, I don’t think the daughter of a drug lord engaging in armed conflict with gang members makes her “monstrous”. It’s a street fight. Anything goes. If you pull up with bats and fists, and somebody else pull up guns ablazing, I do think that they’re responsible for escalating the conflict. I also think that in a street fight, you can’t pull up on someone and expect them to abide by the rules you set for yourself, yk? To continue this, as I said, the Firelights were willing to use lethal force. In episode six, when they interrupted Vi and Jinx’s reuinion, Scar knocked Vi out cold. He then raised his spear and was about to stab her in the back before Ekko stopped him. They then proceeded to kidnap Vi and Caitlyn. All of this because they followed Vi and THOUGHT that she was working for Silco! Is assaulting, almost killing, and kidnapping someone just because of your suspicions not “monstrous”? Or is it different because the Firelights are the “good guys”?

Now onto the Enforcers. Jinx sees the Enforcers as monsters who killed her parents right in front of her, and brutalized Zaunites all throughout her childhood. I know the show is fictional, but it touches on real life political themes. And our real life experiences inform how we consume fiction. I’m Black, female, queer, and from the US. The Enforcers are incredibly reminiscent of cops in my country. And if you know anything about the history of policing in this country, then you’d understand why I don’t give nary a fuck, nor a shit, nor a damn that Jinx kills Enforcers. Same sentiment applies to the Council. Fuck em🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️

Tldr: I don’t think killing someone is the worst thing you can do to them. It’s about who you kill and how you do it. Jinx quickly kills cops, gang members, and politicians. I never have, nor will I ever, consider her doing so “monstrous”

[peppermint-rat]

Now that I'm thinking about it have another exmo ramble

One of the most damaging things for me was the message that it was sinful to even like, witness/hear "unholy" things. Went to a movie not knowing there was cursing or sexual content? Repent. Downloaded a song that had the fuck word in it? Delete it immediately, repent. It created this constant state of fear about the world outside the church, as it was meant to. Don't look outside, just stay where it's safe and be grateful for that safety.

As an autistic person who had a hard time relating to other kids in general, this added a level of resentment toward non-member kids at school. Because they could swear and talk about sex and drinking/drugs around me and there was nothing I could do about it. I felt like they were harming me. So I snapped and lashed out a lot, which worsened the bullying I was already getting.

It also affected my relationships badly because in order to feel like I could keep those relationships without sinning, the other people had to also follow the standards of the church. To everyone else, I was just super controlling, and maybe I was. But at its core, I was afraid that I would have to lose those connections if I didn't try to keep them safe for me. I'm sure y'all were told a thousand times not to spend lots of time around people who did not fit church standards, because they would eventually infect you. Imagine my horror, then, when my best friends started dating boys before they turned 16. Imagine how hard I pushed my first boyfriend, who was a non-member, to not swear and keep himself "clean" and come to church, knowing I wouldn't be able to stay with him if he never got baptized and properly joined.

In a way, the church was right, because as soon as I stopped caring about what my friends did, I realized their choices weren't actually threatening to me, nor were their identities, which made me relaxed about non-mormon standards and allowed me to realize I was queer which led me to leave the church. So yeah, engaging with forbidden things and forbidden people will absolutely lead you away from the church. They just have to make sure you view that as scary so you don't find out how much happier and how much safer you'll actually feel if you leave.

And of course all this is why the neo-puritan internet culture bothers me so much. It's the same shit all over again. Don't tolerate a second of behavior that might be considered "impure" because it will rub off on you and make you a bad person. Police everyone else or you're at risk of becoming evil. Fuck that, fuck that so hard.

[spitblaze]

Tumblr fucking sucks ass and I'm not joking. I think I might hate this place actually. I hate the shitty circular queer discourse that ALWAYS assumes malice or disgust and nobody is given the benefit of the doubt and if they do are also presumed guilty, I hate that every single statement needs to be couched in qualifiers and conditions and speaking on One Topic about One Group is not fucking allowed, I hate that this website has built a transphobic surveillance culture around itself, I hate that people will see ONE POST that sucks and spend the next several months publicly ruminating over it and extending the discourse long after it's run its course and assuming the worst about everyone involved, I hate that seven out of ten posts about feminism are made by the terfs who run rampant on this site and have nothing better to do than spew vitriol and hate because they don't care to develop the emotional maturity to see anything from a point of view other than their own, I hate that the moment a transgender person dares to have sexual wants and desires outside of the vanilla ideal you’re a freak and a deviant and a pedophile somehow, I hate that for SO LONG we let depressed anti-recovery teenagers dominate the attitude regarding mental health and self-improvement here and it has had lasting effects TO THIS DAY, I hate that as the internet has gotten meaner and crueller and less accommodating that the place that loves to pat itself on the back for its openness and tolerance has 100000% followed suit, I hate that every single fucking topic is dominated by overconfident white shutins who do not talk to other people irl let alone queer ones, I hate how every interesting and important topic of social justice is co-opted and bastardized into an unrecognizable cudgel that only further enforces the status quo rather than challenging it as they're meant to, I hate how often the gender binary is re-invented and deviations from it are punished, I hate that we love to say shit like 'be cringe be free uwu' but the second a member of the cringe queers du jour makes something twee or says something stupid everyone jumps on the dogpile to talk about how that entire group should be prevented from speaking or making art or associating with REAL queers, I hate that making points about double standards and discrimination always involves using people we should be in solidarity with as a gotcha if not throwing them directly under the bus, I hate that for all the talk about engagement with fandom we have nobody ever decides to actually examine their engagement thereof and how so much of it is still a cesspool to this day, I hate how everyone makes such huge generalizations and expects everyone to agree (guilty but I'm pissed), I hate how people take fucking everything personally (including myself), I hate that people are going to read this and get mad at me because everyone here has worse reading comprehension than the average fifth grader, I hate that people cannot self-express without other people getting indignant because they didn't see themselves in it, I hate that the only other regularly inhabited parts of the internet anymore are fifty times worse about ALL of this, I hate how much of a fucking nightmare for my mental health this has become, I hate that people are probably gonna give me sarcastic or smug 'yeah you should probably just log off king's in the comments or to me personally, I hate how much of this I personally am guilty of, and I especially hate that I'm still fucking here.

[hanzajesthanza]

I love your blog and recently watched your amazing YouTube essay! In a nutshell it blew my mind. Having the historical context of 2th century Polish history leading up the the publication of this work, in addition to your detailed analysis of Orwellian and Huxlian societies has helped me gain a whole new level of understanding and appreciation for The Witcher.

I read the books years ago and am beginning a re-read. Being someone who didn't receive the most thorough education on reading media critically or analytically as a younger person, and now trying to redress this fact about myself as I read works like this going forward as I approach middle age (I'm a bit of a "late bloomer" in several aspects of my life including building this skill set), I unfortunately missed a lot of allegory and subtext in my first reading. I enjoyed it mostly fannishly and getting into the characters at that time in my life. Your analysis has been really helpful on this journey of getting back into the books.

My question for you is that I've seen a few random references online to people theorizing that the Dopplers are an allegory for the LGBTQIA+ community. However, I've not been able to find any detailed analysis of this possible allegory and only finding people mentioning it in passing on forums and such.

As a reader who is also part of the LGBTQIA+ community, I would love if Sapkowski had intentionally injected allegory and commentary on queerness and the othering of our community in his work, but I'm reluctant to get excited about something that might not actually be there.

Of course I know a lot of these things are up to the interpretation of individual readers. But I'm also extremely curious to know what you think. Are you of the opinion that there is any queer subtext or allegory in the Witcher saga?

Thank you for your time if you get a chance to answer my ask! And thank you as well for your beautiful work on this series so far, I'm really looking forward to more!

thanks! and honestly, though i'm younger i also have a mixed relationship with reading and media literacy. so you're certainly not alone, also related to witcher/all things fantasy and pop culture, i think it's normal to engage with it for only the characters and story, especially on the first read.

as for LGBT subtext in the witcher...

the first thing to acknowledge is that LGBT subtext is preceded by actual LGBT text in the witcher. we already have some lesbian, gay, bisexual characters and relationships, and at least one trans or gender non-conforming, androgynous character.

the second thing to acknowledge is that this text isn't particularly meant to empower or represent, either in a positive or negative light. it's less about actually being LGBT, and more about how LGBT identities have been represented in the genre.

usually, it goes along with the regular practice of the witcher, its "guiding principle" as i might call it, being to subvert reader expectations, parody, or satirize elements and popular tropes of the fantasy genre. so, for example, mistle rapes ciri not because sapkowski wanted to depict lesbianism as predatory -- he wrote it because he was familiar with the trope of female heroines in fantasy being ahem, "claimed" by male warriors, and wanted to subvert this trope by having a woman do it instead.

so, we get a lesbian relationship, that, like the M/F relationships he was referencing, begins with a rape and turns into a romance by the end of it. this isn't to say that this is a logical sequence of events, but just that it was inspired by other texts -- it was never intended as commentary on lesbianism itself, but instead, of some fantasy texts that sapkowski had criticism of.

speaking of the author's perspective... i'm certain that if he was asked about any of this he would say he doesn't have any opinion, but this is just what i'm collecting from reading him... i'll go from best to worst.

(ŚKA = Świat króla artura, HiF = Historia i fantastyka, RZwSJ = Rekopis znaleziony w Smoczej Jaskini)

the good: his opinions on same-sex female relationships are... neutral to somewhat... positive? he seems to correlate lesbianism with feminism (aka political lesbianism). though he's denied identifying with feminists and feminism, saying that he does not intend to appeal to feminists or read feminist publications, in ŚKA and HiF he starts explaining unprompted ideas about the prehistory of matriarchy, associations of magna mater, and the relationship of wicca... and in RZwSJ includes an entire paragraph with recommendations of fantasy featuring lesbian relationships.

so i think any opinions he has about lesbianism are entirely conflated with his ideas of female power and worship, and/or as previously mentioned, challenging fantasy tropes - both are huge themes across all of his writing. which... i guess is a good thing?

however, i think that this interpretation of lesbianism through the lens of politics can be problematic because he fails to understand that a lot of lesbians like other women for kind of the same reasons straight men like them: because they are fucking hot. (but i guess he did acknowledge this a little with philippa and her countess, so whatever)

i'll also allow myself a small tangent about neratin ceka here, because i feel like his representation was not bad at all, and yet he's entirely missed whenever these discussions about sapkowski's views on LGBT happen, probably because no one read as far as past chapter 2 of tower of the swallow.

we even get the joke cliche of "i'm a bad guy, but i'm not a bad guy" with stefan skellen, who fantasizes about banditry and rape, and wants to kill ciri out of reasons of state, but, when he's told that ceka's gender doesn't really matter unless he wants to marry him, its his being a good soldier which counts, skellen's like, "yeah, ok, that makes sense to me, you're right." so the story doesn't make a joke about him at all, only for a moment raising the "what's his gender??" question in the mouth of a villain -- other than that, neratin ceka is treated by the story just the same as all the others of skellen's hanza (well, except for the fact that he was an imperial spy... but see, he was given an interesting role in the story).

anyways, here's the bad: LGBT characters being the butt of a joke, and not even "characters" but the concept of, for example, the only representation of fat GNC women being antagonistic, stupid, and gross (season of storms, the guardswomen of kerack), or homosexual quid quo pro committed by the guy who is so fucked up evil he will do anything to get political influence, including gay sex (season of storms, sorel degerlund) or attempted homosexual rape (narrenturm, the werewolf), or... homosexual sex slavery (lux perpetua, szarlej trying to "buy" reynevan).

it's... cringeworthy. though i will say the last one i mentioned here read like a monty python sketch rather than punching down, it is more making fun of the discomfort of the slavers themselves at the idea of homosexual desire and sex (which is ironic, because... they are slavers).

with an overview here, i feel like in terms of same-sex male relationships, more often than consensual relationships are jokes about rape, situations like pederasty, actual rape but this time treated as a serious threat (it was either in warriors of god or lux perpetua, one of the times in which reynevan was kidnapped). ... i don't know if i can name one positive, romantic gay relationship from any of his writing (whereas i might be able to name a couple of lesbian ones)

at the same time, he's never said that being gay is wrong, immoral, or espoused fears of gay people taking over, which... is notable as we look amongst his contemporaries in the polish SF/fantasy space of the 80s-90s. (that, and that he's so staunchly pro-choice). but that also doesn't make him some champion of LGBT rights, lmao.

when it comes to the subject, i think he is mostly just a contrarian who seeks to challenge conservative sensibilities and what is considered socially acceptable... so this sometimes results in accidental representation, and sometimes it results in offensive situations or "jokes". i don't believe he has an agenda either way for LGBT rights or condemnation, he generally is against oppression of any sort, but he doesn't put himself on the frontlines of advocacy. and at the same time carries his own biases of LGBT topics, some of which i don't agree with. (ik you didn't ask for this whole review, anon, but i wanted to include it to clarify the topic).

so, finally, about eternal flame.

i wrote this out years ago (with more of a gerlion spin to it, and i kind of roll my eyes at it now) but the basis of the dopplers as an lgbt allegory analysis is that:

dopplers are entirely innocent beings which are persecuted for no reason other than they're different, so they change shape amongst society to remain undetected --

and they've done this successfully, so much so that at the end of the story we realize that more people than one might have assumed, including chappelle, the head of the church of the eternal flame (coughs, catholic church, coughs) who was persecuting the protagonists for relation to a scandal involving a doppler, is in fact a doppler himself who took the persona after the real chappelle died two weeks ago.

so... i think that if one chooses to see it, they can -- though i probably wouldn't argue that this is a certain meaning, it's only one possible interpretation.

and again, it's not like positive representation, hah, i think one can draw their own conclusions from that short summary (especially the part about high-ranking priests being gay... hmmm...), but the fact that the dopplers are innocent and being persecuted and tortured for no reason, and we hear tellico's side of this at the end of the story putting them in a sympathetic light, and the entire moral of the story being acceptance of the other (with tellico even being adopted as dainty's cousin, lmao) i find it palatable because of that.

sapkowski has also denied that he includes any allegories in his writing, but because this doesn't make sense when looking at the first/second nilfgaardian war, i think to interpret this more as there is no specific representations of people or historical figures in his writing (the quote went something like "please do not look for the alter-egos of stalin or bierut amongst my characters...") rather than allegories to real life events or social realities, because those he certainly does include.

[f0point5]

Your take on Chappell so wildly misinterprets literally everything that has happened to her in the last few months. She lives with Bipolar disorder for 1, and that means it can be very hard for her to navigate her mental state. She also has depression. Cancelling shows and making mistakes is going to happen when you are a new artist, but you are also a young person in general.

She never wanted the level of fame she has now, she's a queer artist, who makes music for queer people, of course she's overwhelmed and trying to navigate a world she never intended to enter. I think it's easy to hate on successful women who stand up for themselves and are honest about their problems because we don't like to see women succeed. Period.

You have alot of people who engage with your blog, I would imagine probably a lot of girlies, just based on F1 tumblr vibes, If I were you, I would wonder how I'm supporting and uplifting women in an world where we aren't especially supported rather than spend my time hating on a girl who makes music you don't like...

She's a vocal, passionate defender of art and culture, she donates money and time to Palestine and speaks up about LGBTQ and Trans issues, she rightfully called Kamala Harris out while still maintaining that she will never stand with republican values and will still vote for her and everyone wants to pretend they don't understand that tribalism is bad and she is completely right.

Music taste is completely subjective, no one said you have to like it, it's definitely a select audience it caters too, but disrespecting it and disregarding her entire discography because one song annoys you, is crazy.

First of all, I’m not here to uplift and support anyone. That’s not my sole purpose in life, my goal or my vocation. I like or don’t like or have my opinions regardless of the gender of the person concerned.

Second, I’m not here to hate on anyone. Saying that I think she’s unprofessional is an opinion. Hateful? I personally don’t think so. But you can disagree that’s fine.

Third, I haven’t listened to her entire discography and I don’t claim to have done so, I’ve listened to several songs, none of which are my vibe. Now, did I sardonically link that to her professionalism? Yes. It was tongue in cheek, but if that offended you, I can take that on board.

Fourth, she can defend or not defend or spend her money on whatever she likes. All I’m saying is, she expressed her opinions in a way that was not easy to understand twice. And I think that if you decide you’re going to be one of those celebrities who wades into politics, you are taking on the responsibility of being eloquent enough to articulate your point because people are listening.

But on the actual subject of the main thing I said - I think she is unprofessional. And I think that matters regardless of age and diagnosis. I think you have a responsibility to manage your health in conjunction with the job that you do so that you can still do your job. If that is not happening, you might be in the wrong career. I highly doubt that any singer starts their career thinking or hoping they’re never going to aspire to any level of fame and influence. I simply don’t think that’s why you do that job. And if you don’t want fame, maybe do your small shows instead of performing at the VMAs, maybe keep a low profile instead of getting involved in the most polarising conversation in the country. My point is, fame is a trauma. No one deserves that, and certainly not everyone is equipped - for whatever reason - to handle it in a way that will be good for their health. All I’m saying is, from the outside, it seems like she falls into that camp, and if I were someone who spent their money supporting her, I would find it annoying.

[bonesandthebees]

hi bee :) semi-new anon here just hoping that you’ve been doing okay <3 i wanted to say that i absolutely adore your writing, and will happily read it, no matter what fandom it is you’re writing for, or if you’re just writing original works /gen!! your writing has always inspired me heavily hehe, it’s wonderful.

also, on the topic of original works, do you have any good novel recommendations? i’ve recently gotten back into reading and have been super into fiction, but i’m down for any sort of recs. one of my favourites at the moment is good omens :)

here’s your daily message to go have some water or tea and take care of yourself !! 🌷

hello hello!! I'm doing pretty alright now, feeling a lot better than I was this past week :) and that's so sweet of you to say, it's so reassuring knowing I have so many of you guys willing to read my silly stories no matter which fandom they're about (or even if they're original)

and yes I do have some recs!

I made a post about two months ago now talking about books I'd read that I really enjoyed so there'll be some crossover here but also some new ones I've read since then

one of my new favorite novels is The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. it's a heavy fantasy story following 4 different intertwining POVs. the fantasy world itself is made up of several different countries all inspired by various real world cultures that's not just limited to western europe which is incredibly refreshing. the world itself is incredibly fleshed out and interesting, the characters are all very diverse and have so much depth, and there's also a very beautiful sapphic romance <3 I'm reading the prequel to priory right now and I'm also loving it so far

another book I really enjoyed is actually a duology—The Radiant Emperor series by Shelley Parker-Chan. the first book in the series is She Who Became the Sun which I really enjoyed, however the sequel book He Who Drowned the World is the one that absolutely blew me away. just letting you know in case you're not comfortable with it, both books contain sex and some graphic violence. the story is set in 14th century China when it was ruled by the Mongols, and it's an incredibly well done queer retelling/fictionalization of the rise of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Emperor who ushered in the Ming dynasty. the text engages with so many themes of the expectations of masculinity and femininity and how they restrict people, and really dives into gender expression and how it can be wielded in different ways. again the first one was really enjoyable, but the second one was on a whole other level and I'm still reeling over how good it was and how much it emotionally hurt me.

ok and then last one for now

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - I know we all heard about this one thanks to the iconic bigolas dickolas wolfwood on twitter but also they were so right about this book. it's gorgeously written. the book itself is mostly written as letters exchanged between two women who are time traveling agents on opposing sides of a war for who controls the timelines. it's a beautiful love story, it's sci fi but with a heavy bend towards spec fic which I personally really like, the world concepts are incredibly fascinating, and it plays around with time travel in a very intriguing way. it's a very short book so it's an easy one to burn through. I checked this one out from my library but I'm highkey tempted to go to a bookstore and actually buy a physical copy for myself just because there were so many gorgeous lines I want to highlight

hope this helps!! my taste in books is usually: sci fi/fantasy/spec fic with sapphic women so hopefully that's something you enjoy as well lmao

[sliceofdyke]

what r ur favorite wlw movies u would recommend (and also possibly where i could watch them for free)

also unrelated but i was trying to remember the url u had right before this one and i can’t 😭 i’m terrible at remembering stuff like that. but i feel like u always have urls that are so You, like i remember i came back after a hiatus once and u sent me an ask like “oh im maddie btw this is my new url!” but i could already Tell lol bc it’s always aggressively aquatic and/or sapphic. queen of urls fr 🔥🔥

HI STARRY!!! resident dyke at your service 🫡 pleased to share some of my favs! linked is each movie's letterboxd, and ill also share where i watched them! (i recommend watching on a computer with some sort of adblocker extension like ublock origin.)

saving face (2004) dir. alice wu - MUST WATCH for all the gaysians out there! it's about a closeted chinese-american lesbian and her traditionalist mother, and centers on their relationship as well as both women's individual struggles in love and life. it's primarily a comedy but it has its serious moments, and i absolutely loved every second. racial and cultural familial expectations are an element present throughout this movie, and that's one of the reasons i like it so much. but i think it's presented in a way so that people who aren't chinese can understand! also, the relationship between the mc and her love interest is so engaging, and it really captures the struggle of many queer relationships where one person is more "out" than the other. the first site i found that has this movie in good quality was 0123movie.net!

next up is the incredibly true adventure of two girls in love (1995) dir. maria maggenti!! this movie was so good i audibly yelled at one point. although it's a lesser-known indie movie with a low budget, it has a raw honesty and heart to it that modern queer cinema often lacks (cough cough euphoria cough cough love simon). i was absolutely sold on the two mcs' chemistry and the progression of their relationship, and i loved how their blossoming first love was portrayed so authentically complete with all the rough edges and awkward glances. randy and evie were so endearingly dorky and cute, and i related to them SO bad. the heartfelt depiction of a multiracial sapphic teen love story really made me burst with joy. also a note to anyone who watches: trigger warning for pedophilia, lesbophobia & the d slur, verbal abuse, and threats of physical abuse. i can elaborate on these if anyone wants! btw a lot of more popular p1rating sites don't have this movie, but one that does is braflix.ru!

we all know her. we all love her. it's bottoms (2023) dir. emma seligman!! truly one of the best satirical works of our generation /srs. it's about two lesbians who end up starting an after-school fight club to lose their virginity before the end of senior year, and the shenanigans that ensue. bottoms does not take itself seriously at all, and lots of things make no sense plot-wise, but that is exactly what enables it to be so hilarious and silly. class periods are less than five minutes long, there are curse words in the school announcements, murders occur that are never addressed. and it's so FUN!!! a super good movie to watch with a group of friends that are as gay as you are. trigger warning for blood (lots of it) and comedic use of homophobic slurs. you can watch it on most p1rating sites but one that i've seen has it is myflixerz.to!

fourth, the half of it (2020) dir. alice wu! another masterpiece by miss wu, this time about a nerdy introverted high school girl who gets roped into ghostwriting love letters from a cheerful jock to the hot girl he has a crush on, and she ends up falling for the crush as well as they become friends. i watched it a couple years ago and rewatched it last year, and i loved it both times! i really appreciate how it's a story about friendship above all else and shows how platonic love can be just as important (if not more) than romantic love. and from what i remember, the filmography is also really good. this one is also available on myflixerz.to!

last but not least is kase-san and morning glories (2018) dir. takuya sato! anime movie about the budding romance between a shy gardening enthusiast and the charismatic ace of the girls' track team. this is a perfect movie if you want to watch something very low-stakes and laid-back! you can watch it on allmanga.to (this site has no ads on mobile which is so nice). i watched the subbed version but there is a dub as well. this movie is based off the manga of the same name, which finished in 2017, but there is also a currently ongoing sequel series about the couple's post-high school lives! if you're interested in reading that after watching the movie, feel free to reach out and i'll send you the website i read it on.

some other sapphic movies i've been meaning to watch but haven't gotten around to yet are: but i'm a cheerleader, the watermelon woman, portrait of a lady on fire, the handmaiden, and desert hearts!

hope this helps :)))

[respectthepetty]

Reading the (Visual) Rainbow 101

Lesson 6 - Cultural Awareness

Because I get so many asks about colors, I decided the best way to celebrate Pride is to educate anyone who is interested in how to better Read the (Visual) Rainbow and simultaneously allow myself to appreciate queer media.

With each lesson, we've been working through how to read visual messages, but what if the message is in another language, literally or figuratively? What happens when you Just. Don't. Get. It?

This will be the toughest lesson because it requires active engagement with the media you consume, so let's get to work!

Basics

Ethnocentrism is the practice of evaluating other cultures based on the expectations of your culture. When you do this, you misinterpret messages and place value on concepts that aren't important to that culture.

Cultural Literacy is the capability to understand one's culture as well as others while appreciating the similarities and differences.

Way back in Lesson 1, rhetorical situations were mentioned. Within a rhetorical situation, we must think about the work's creator and its intended audience because sometimes, the intended audience isn't YOU and you cannot relate to the creator. So what do you do?

All of the video examples I have suggested up until now are from American artists or artists whose country predominantly speaks English. Language and culture are closely connected, but language isn't the only aspect of culture. However, for time's sake, think about how not knowing a language hinders us from understanding a culture. If we can't understand what people are saying (literally), we won't understand what they are trying to say (figuratively).

Which means we have to actively investigate the media we consume.

Video Examples

Much like Hayley Kiyoko's "She" music video, where we needed to understand the cultural reference for "This Coke is a Fanta" to understand its purpose within the video, the two videos suggested in the previous lesson require cultural understanding. Both were from cishet men yet dealt with trans rights, but if you were unfamiliar with the cultural context, you probably missed it.

Sweden

Avicii's "Silhouette" is a song about progress and self-realization. The video reflects this. We see a masc-presenting person wake up in the morning. The video shifts to a fem-presenting person waking up later in the day. The transition between cool lighting to warm lighting lets us know this isn't simply a difference in day or two different people, but an evolution of ONE person, a concept we learned in Lesson 2. We see similar bottles next to the clocks, with two additions later in the day.

If you didn't realize these characters are the same person, go back and notice the use of red. While the first person is being operated on, we see red blood mixed with shots of the second person in red.

So how is this about trans right? We can see it is about a trans woman, but we have to think about the rhetorical situation to understand the rest.

The creator is Avicii who was a Swedish DJ and producer. The audience would be other Swedes. In 2012, when the video was released, the Swedish government debated whether to amend its transgender laws. The most significant being forced sterilization, which was a requirement if a person underwent gender affirmation surgery. A person also had to be unmarried. People were loud about this.

In the video, right before the masc-presenting person is about to undergo surgery, the song stops as the older doctor's CD player begins to skip. He hits the player several times while cursing, "Does it have to be so fucking difficult?"

When the song comes back on, the lyrics pick back up at:

Straight ahead on the path we have before us Day by day, soon the change will come Don't you know we took a big step forward Just lead the way and we pull the trigger And we will never get back to To the old school To the old rounds, it's all about the newfound We are the newborn, the world knew all about us (We are the future and we're here to stay) We've come a long way since that day And we will never look back, at the faded silhouette

If you weren't a Swede in 2012, you probably missed how significant this video was, and it's because you don't understand most of the context in which is was made (rhetorical situation) since you weren't the intended audience.

Puerto Rico

The other suggested video was Bad Bunny's "Yo Perreo Sola" which translates to "I twerk alone." It's a feminist anthem about a woman not wanting to be harassed while dancing by herself rather than for the attention of men. However, it's also about trans rights.

We begin the video with Bad Bunny as a fem-presenting character in red with X's in the doorway. We see him in various scenes like the pink room surrounded by pink flowers and chained up by women as he continues to push against the ideas of masculinity.

All are important, but the most significant is the scene where his two characters meet and dance with each other.

The neon signs read "Las Mujeres Mandan" (women rule) and "Ni Una Menos" (not one *woman* less). These two signs are layered historical messages.

The first started as the title of an old Mexican movie about a man who left his wife and kids for his mistress (shenanigans follow), but the famous Mexican musician Paquita la del Barrio popularized the saying by turning it into a feminist anthem about demanding respect from men. It's on the level of Aretha Franklin's "Respect."

The second sign is a fourth-wave feminist saying popularized in Argentina regarding femicide and other gender-based violence. Its message demands that not one more woman be the victim of this violence.

Now, to start connecting the dots: Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican. His audience would be other Puerto Ricans and, largerly, Spanish-speakers in Latin American countries. That's a lot of people who understand these two messages. But also, Bad Bunny placing himself as a feminine character emphasizes that trans women are included in these messages. Trans women are women, so they too rule, and we should also be concerned for their safety. This video was his way of commenting on the murder of Alexa Negrón Luciano, a Puerto Rican trans woman.

The murder rate for trans individual is high in PR, especially for trans women. A month after releasing this video, two Puerto Rican men were charged with the murders of two trans women. Puerto Rico is a United States' territory; therefore, it abides by US federal laws, yet this was the FIRST time Puerto Rico charged a person with a hate crime. Advocates have long been vocal about the need for change and should not be brushed aside, but having an internationally famous musician approach the topic helped people see the need for this type of law, but if you weren't the intended audience, you might have simply believed his video to be a fun journey through gender expression and gender performance.

What can you do?

Because most of us are watching our favorite shows with English subtitles, we tend to associate what is happening on our screen with our culture, but we must always remember, for a majority of us, this isn't our culture; therefore we must be aware of the disconnect. Awareness is the first step. Education is the second.

For example, Thai shows might include coordinated colored outfits because Thai culture associates certain colors with days of the week. Depending on the day of the week, there is a good and a bad color to wear. Make a mental note of it, and you'll start noticing it in other shows.

A show might mention a historical event or a holiday in passing that the intended audience would understand, but as an outsider, you might know nothing about. Look it up!

Or the show might touch on current events like unarmed protestors being beaten and arrested. LOOK! IT! UP!

There is no easy way to gain knowledge. Media is a great way to be exposed to other cultures, but you have to be willing to do a little extra work and actually learn about the culture and the issues you are seeing depicted on your screen.

It can be as simple as looking up a book shown.

Or what the characters are eating.

If you want to be a better reader of the visual rainbow, you have to look up cultural references you are unfamiliar with. You don't have to know everything, but you should be curious enough to look up something because you are watching a visual form of media from another country, and the visuals are important to the overall story.

Activity

Watch both videos and notice their similarities and differences. Note any symbolic objects and, of course, the colors.

Lady Gaga x Ariana Grande "Rain On Me" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoAm4om0wTs

Naomi Watanabe x Yuriyan Retriever "Rain On Me" parody - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psSdawz69kc

See you for Lesson 6 - It Could All Mean Nothing!

[olderthannetfic]

I've recently read your write up on why "queerbaiting" as fandom uses it isn't a real thing in large-scale media production, and it was interesting and enlightening. Do you think there is any growing chance of more media execs learning about how fandom and online spaces use "queerbaiting" as a term and what they might think about it? And do you think there is a chance that the BL-type buddy cop dramas people in fandom are looking for will be created purposefully by Western companies?

--

Queerbaiting anon part 2: And do you or anyone else here have any idea about why things like the movie Bros wasn't widely watched by fandom-type people when on the surface it seems to play around with similar iddy tropes in romance circles that people would like?

Big Hollywood execs don't care about us because we're not numerous enough. That isn't likely to change.

Things like Heartstopper do demonstrate enough audience compared to budget to be viable. I think we'll continue to see more canon queer things, but they'll be in proven niches, like youth-oriented real world dramas.

I haven't seen Bros. My sense is that the level of cis gay male culture may not be what a lot of fandom is into. QAF did have a big fandom of slash fans, so that's not universal though.

It may have more to do with the fact that most single movies don't get much of a fic fandom. Serial media is what generates this type of engagement: gaps and then new canon. People who love straight fanfic also don't tend to write it for one-off romcoms. To the extent that those have a fandom at all, they get referenced in future romcoms or rewatched annually by fans.

I did hear about fandom watch parties for that gay Christmas movie. People were approaching it fannishly. They just weren't making it one of their fandoms, writing fic for it, or thinking about it more than 10 seconds after watching.

[neuroticbookworm]

La Pluie: Maybe we will get a 'happy ending' after all

Now that I have slept on episode 7, read some amazing meta, and tossed my thoughts around in my head for a few days, I want to add my two cents.

I've previously written about my fear that this show might not give us a satisfying ending. I followed that train of thought and realised that my main concern before episode 7 was that since the show is so good at arguing against its own soulmate trope, in order to give us a happy ending, it would have to either compromise on the characters' journey (Lomfon doing a 180 all of a sudden with no convincing explanation) or the narrative (maybe soulmates are meant for each other, sike!).

(do these insane projections say more about my own insecurities than the show's cracks in the writing? Yes, yes it does)

Episode 7 felt tangibly different than the previous La Pluie episodes because, while the show has subverted tropes before, this is the first time it has fully and deliberately sidestepped the audience's expectations. We were all braced for a Lomfon-shaped ticking bomb to blow up Patts and Tai's relationship, and yet all we got was a meek temper tantrum at the breakfast table that was promptly ignored by Patts and Tai. We also saw Lomfon talk about soulmates with Tien. It was something Tien said to Lomfon here that made me wonder if the show was bringing yet another condition of modern romance into its soulmates subtext: Loneliness and Self-Isolation.

(Read more about trope subversion in La Pluie episode 7 here, by @lurkingshan)

For a show that completely hinges on the soulmate trope, it does very little to actually engage in the specifics of it. The lack of details around the concept of soulmates in Rainverse is pretty nifty, as many subtexts can be layered on top of one another like a decadant cake. I've previously explored the subtext of boundaries and shared experiences in a romantic relationship. @sunshinechay has wondered how platonic love, romantic love, and sexual desire can fit into the Rainverse and its possible combinations of soulmate pairs. @bengiyo has put forth the theory that the reason for Tai's parents' separation and eventual divorce might be his sexuality/queerness.

Allow me to add another layer to the subtext cake: insecurities around romance, fuelled by societal expectations.

What do people who do not have rain-induced hearing loss really think about soulmates? Does it create a hierarchy, as some love is "more destined" than others, and is therefore more special? Not all who have hearing loss end up having a soulmate, so does that mean that they might feel not "worthy enough" for a love that is destined, written in the stars? What happens when someone with hearing loss chooses to defy destiny and date someone without hearing loss? Will their partner always feel like the second best, comparing themselves to phantom perfection?

Even after we remove the soulmate trope from the above questions, the sentiment is still eerily familiar. These are the same questions those of us who have had the misfortune of experiencing the modern dating culture have tortured ourselves with, time and again. Am I worthy of love? Is my love special, or is it too replacable? Will I ever measure up to their ex, who everybody thinks was the "love of their life"?

Dealing with these insecurities and building up the courage to take a leap of faith in the hopes that you will land in a happy relationship is a universal experience. Sometimes we have the strength to do it, but oftentimes we don't. And when we don't, self-isolation is the answer. Lock ourselves up away from every and all human beings, and live life with the least human contact possible.

In Rainverse, this loneliness is taken from real-life abstraction and elevated to something concrete and observable: the isolation of people who have hearing loss but don't have a soulmate.

Tai was self-isolating himself after his parents' divorce, and his friends and family know it. Whenever we see a character implore Saengtai to reconsider talking to his soulmate, they never directly tell him that the soulmate connection is perfect and he is guaranteed to find happiness if he reaches out.

Here's Tien doing it all the way back in episode 1

And here's Bow in episode 2

If we tie in Lomfon's argument that the concept of soulmates is simply a coincidence, then this process of "opening his heart" and "talking to him first" sounds an awful lot like... dating. Just plain old dating someone after a chance encounter, with all the insecurities, arguments, and compromises. Well, ain't that a neat little trick?

Another reason why episode 7 felt so different from the previous episodes was the misunderstanding trope at the end, and how out of place it felt in a show that was setting itself apart from other BLs with sharp and smart writing. I also instinctively thought that this was a bad writing choice, but @ginnymoonbeam's excellent theory on how the show might subvert the misunderstanding trope and rather explore Tai's insecurities around his relationship with Patts has convinced me. It also allows me to segue into Tai's potential big bad question: What if it doesn't work out?

Tai is a romantic at heart, and his attitude around his parents' divorce has shown us that he is also an all-or-nothing romantic. He believes that a love that has the possibility of ending is not love at all. This sentiment is evident in episode 6, when Tai is talking to Patts about Doi Mae Plieng and about his dad proposing to his mom at the top of the mountain

I believe this will be the main arc for Patts and Tai, moving forward. Tai has to learn that there's absolutely no certainty that Patts and Tai will be together forever, till death do them part, but that does not mean that it's not beautiful and meaningful enough to try. The show has gone to great lengths to establish a clear timeline of events, to show us that Patts has an additional 5 years of life and relationship experience than Tai, and he needs every help he can get to convince Tai to believe in love again. And this is the happy ending I believe we will get: not a happily-ever-after, but a happy-right-now, and that's not so bad.

As I finish up this post, I realize that this is all pure speculation and the show might still do something completely different, and if they do, well, GMMTV is gonna make their money back for all those Micellar Water product placements, as I would need a bucketful of it to remove my many, many layers of clown makeup.

tagging @respectthepetty, look, RTP, I worked through my La Pluie fears, I'm not afraid of Lomfon anymore!

and tagging @absolutebl, we might get a HRN instead of a HEA, and maybe that'll be okay?

[wellntruly]

The 4077 Film Festival

I watched three (plus) movies that they watched on M*A*S*H; this is my book report.

“Marlene Dietrich is back in town.” / 2x24 ‘A Smattering of Intelligence’

Okay so this one is actually just referenced in dialogue, not a specific film we watch them watch, but it happened that I watched two of Josef von Sternberg’s Marlene Dietrich films right before starting the M*A*S*H fest programming in earnest, so prologue, baby, prologue!

I had moved Shanghai Express (1932) up my watch list ever since it kicked off the Little Gold Men podcast’s Pride month Oscar flashbacks series this year, reminding me that I really wanted to see another Marlene Dietrich movie. Just stepping forward a few years into the 1930s also felt good, felt right after watching just so many (all) of Buster Keaton’s movies from the 1920s. Hot Chronological Summer!

I ended up watching both it and Morocco, because Shanghai Express SO enchanted me. Morocco (1930) is the one where Dietrich dresses in a tuxedo and steals a kiss from a woman, but Shanghai Express actually felt more pervasively, albeit subliminally queer to me, perhaps because she and her fellow sapphically inclined co-star Anna May Wong were rumored to have had an affair at some point. There’s just something about the scenes of the two of them lounging in a train car together just listening to music or silently playing cards and coolly eyeing anyone who comes in that says ‘gay culture.’ The actual romance plot is heterosexual of course, but it was wild how much more I was into that relationship than I was her one with Gary Cooper in Morocco, a much more famous and famously handsome star than [looks him up yet again] Clive Brook, and yet Brook all the WAY for me, girl. If we have to choose between Marlene Dietrich’s male love interests in von Sternberg pictures.

Anyway in the second season M*A*S*H episode ‘A Smattering of Intelligence’, Radar is engaged in a bit of hoodwinking (the 4077th’s second favorite pastime after flirting), and to indicate that he’s surreptitiously swapped some papers to further confuse some spy vs. spy antics going on, lights a cigarette and strikes a leg-up pose silhouetted in the doorway, causing spy #2 to ask if that’s the signal, and Hawkeye to remark, “Either that, or Marlene Dietrich is back in town,” and honestly describing Radar as being in drag as a famous bisexual woman from the ‘30s is not necessarily the least accurate description of Radar’s gender that I can think of.

Should you watch Shanghai Express? Babe yes, so moody in the best way. The play of light and shadow! This mysterious cast of characters all thrown together on a train! The Chinese civil war??? SHANGHAI EXPRESS.

Should you watch Morocco? Also looks so so beautiful, but if you only have room in your life for one Marlene movie, easy choice it's the above.

Blood and Sand (1941) / 3x05 ‘O.R.’

And now we reach the movies they actually watch on the show, although the first is a slight feint: this one we only hear. Early in the third season episode ‘O.R.’, recognizing that they’re all going to be working through the night, Radar asks Henry if he should pipe the audio from the movie in over the PA system, and Henry approves of this. I IMMEASURABLY approve of this, and think hearing the sound of old movie dialogue and Spanish guitar playing half muffled overhead as they operate is one of the most spellbinding atmospheres this show ever captured.

But the interesting thing about the choice of Blood and Sand for this episode, is that what this movie was most known for was actually its bold Technicolor visuals. Reportedly, director Rouben Mamoulian would carry around spray paint with him so he could change the color of props at a moment’s notice, and was also known to just paint shadows onto the walls sometimes if he couldn’t get the effect he wanted with light alone. The efforts of Mamoulian and his crew nabbed them the Academy Award for Best Cinematography: Color for 1941 (this was the era where there were two cinematography categories for color and black & white; ran until the 1960s actually!), as well as a nomination for Art Direction.

Though the film got no other notices and somewhat mixed reviews overall, Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth were big deal movie stars, and their star-power is probably what contributed to much of this movie’s commercial success. When Father Mulcahy, hearing a scene playing over the speaker, asks what this is, Henry just states the title and their names. From another table, Hawkeye adds as a piece of description: “The Frank and Hot Lips of Old Seville.”

As it happens, Hawkeye’s joke is not so far off really! Tyrone Power is playing a passionate dumb matador married to a beautiful and innocent Linda Darnell (secret stalwart of the M*A*S*H programming, she's in two of these!), but gets swept up in a tumultuous affair with a powerful temptress played by Rita Hayworth. Something I learned watching Blood and Sand is that when Loretta Swit is playing Margaret in glimmering, half-lidded seduction mode, a big loose enticing smile on her lips, she is absolutely channeling Rita Hayworth in movies like this. And given the way Blood and Sand goes (I am so sure you can guess), Hawkeye would seem to be implying that Margaret is fully capable of destroying Frank’s whole hapless married ass.

Verisimilitude Corner: What plays over the speakers is 100% a scene in Blood and Sand, but I believe that the Spanish guitar I so love is actually lifted from a different part of the score and layered in with this particular Power & Hayworth dialogue. It creates a much more distinctive auditory profile to weave through the background of this scene; I completely understand why they would have done this.

Should you watch Blood and Sand? Naw, it’s sure got a look, but story and construction aren’t exactly anything to write home about

Leave Her to Heaven (1945) / 3x18 ‘House Arrest’

The first thing I noticed about Leave Her to Heaven should have occurred to me earlier: 20th Century Fox. All three of these titles turn out to be Fox movies, making all the sense in the world, as M*A*S*H the show was produced by the Fox television arm, after the success of the feature branch’s surprise hit, M*A*S*H the Altman film. Licensing clips of movies is definitely easier when they are also your movies.

The next framing element we need to discuss is that once more, this film was known for its vivid Technicolor cinematography, again the winner of the Academy Award for Cinematography: Color its year! And yet, what they’re watching on M*A*S*H is definitely Leave Her to Heaven, and definitely in black & white. Come to think of it, all films they watch are.

I have tried to figure out what’s going on here, and in the process have learned a lot more about the mechanics both physical and economic of Technicolor film, but have not come up with any definitive explanation (yet), just an educated guess. Which is, as it so often is, especially with the Army: cost. Shooting Technicolor film was outrageously expensive, involving huge cameras that you had to rent by the day from the Technicolor company, through which you would run three strips of film that were treated in different ways, so would respond to light and then dye differently (yes they dyed the film! incredible! are you seeing why it was SO ‘SPENSIVE), and then they’d all be layered together, et voilà: the richer-than-life colors you see in Technicolor films from the 30s-50s.

And as a side product this process also resulted in: a black & white negative. Now I have not yet found anyone confirming this, but my suspicion is that the studios would also make some copies off this negative that were not run through the pricey dye process, and those black & white reels would have been available for cheap if you were, say, the U.S. Army, looking for a discounted way to distract for a couple hours the people you’ve sent to fight a war from the fact that you’ve sent them to fight a war. I think it’s a good theory! But if anyone has actual info PLEASE let me know, I’m so so interested in what was going on here.

But meanwhile: in the third season M*A*S*H episode ‘House Arrest’, Hawkeye, on the titular house arrest, learns that Gene Tierney, striking in any color scheme, is in the movie they have that week, and is ready to move Heaven & Earth, or at least Father Mulcahy, to be able to see her. What Hawkeye does not know at this moment, nor would anyone watching this episode who has not seen John M. Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven, is that it also predominantly takes place in SMALL TOWN MAINE. I love the idea of M*A*S*H writers putting this easter egg in here, winking “and this will be one for the Criterion crowd :)” (also predicting the emergence of the Criterion Collection ten years later).

Verisimilitude Corner: For reasons I cannot fathom, the Leave Her to Heaven clips playing on the wall of the Swamp are happening all out of order. The first scene we see set at a table takes place in the early middle of the film, then we cut way back to the beginning portion in New Mexico, before swinging all the way to a piece in the last act. There is no wedding scene in this film, no matter what Father Mulcahy says, but it is in fact even funnier that Henry cries at the one he does, as this is actually one of Gene Tierney's big dangerous femme fatale moments (for all that like, they all are—tbc!!), and his weeping at it tracks with how Nurse Able is mystified by his reaction, and earlier he'd complained that after looking away for two seconds he had lost the plot.

Should you watch Leave Her to Heaven? So turns out Leave Her to Heaven is considered one of the few COLOR NOIRS, and it kinda fucks totally. It looks so Douglas Sirk melodrama gorgeous, but with a plot straight out of Gone Girl. And like, you ever seen Vincent Price, young? NOT I. Impossibly tall. Shows up in a rain storm in the New Mexico desert. Martin Scorsese has said this is one of his favorite movies—the taste.

My Darling Clementine (1946) / 5x22 ‘Movie Tonight’

And finally, from the Potter era, and from Potter’s heart, comes the fifth season episode 'Movie Tonight', where we watch really a remarkable amount of the battered copy he’s managed to track down of his favorite film, the John Ford western My Darling Clementine.

Harry Morgan is so cute, the phrase “My Darling Clementine” is so cute—with its lilting song to match—and this episode itself: it’s cute. The film screening works just as Colonel Potter hoped it might: a way to bring his campful of grown theater kids together during a tense patch. It’s very funny how little urging it takes for them to begin using every unplanned projector failure intermission as an opportunity to get up and start doing impressions for each other.

But do you know what’s so intriguing? When I finally watched My Darling Clementine, I found it actually struck a kind of harmony with M*A*S*H’s more melancholy currents. Filmed in 1946, it’s been called one of the first true post-war westerns, and there does feel something sort of haunted in it, this sense of loss. It starts in the song even, which after those first lines you remember is actually about a young woman “lost and gone forever.” So many of the characters are carrying some sort of wound, physicalized in coughs or injuries if not simply the toll clearly being wrought on them by the deaths that keep falling around them.

And then there’s that the two main characters are a brooding, Shakespeare-loving, TB-stricken outlaw surgeon (oh okay!), and their reluctant but-I’ll-do-it new marshal, a mellow, even-voiced, semi-secretly then not at all secretly total fucking weirdo, who caused me to message a M*A*S*H friend part-way in, hey, did we know Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp is Such A BJ. Fun, FUN. That would have been fun in the mess tent.

The film itself isn’t devoid of humor, either, should mention! Particularly around Old West Hunnicutt. It's that element as well as its dreamy bleakness that pairs well with a mobile hospital post in Korean War sitcom purgatory. Colonel Potter, famously, loves horses, so his 2/3rds horse-based explanation for why he loves this movie raises zero questions, but what that doesn’t indicate is you’re also going to get scenes like one where Doc Holiday is having alcohol poured over his hands so he can do emergency surgery on a pair of scrubbed tables in the saloon. This was a good pick, M*A*S*H writers, is what I’m saying.

Should you watch My Darling Clementine? Oh yes if I was not clear: Yes

4077 Film Festival: Closing Remarks

I enjoyed this process so much. I love conceptual experiences and homework, so, really optimal for me. And I love old movies and I love M*A*S*H and I love their use of old movies on M*A*S*H! Contemporary cultural elements like this do wonders I think to recall you to their actual time period, as this show is so much about the 1970s and Vietnam, that remembering it's actually set in the '50s can give me an enjoyable swoop in my stomach as I suddenly fall back further in time. It was the 1950s... The records that show up in 'Your Hit Parade' are all jazz... M*A*S*H: good show, good movie & music supervision.

Up next: NOT Bedtime For Bonzo (1951), a real movie, that also underscores my statement above as I just need to express to you: starred future president Ronald Reagan. M*A*S*H!!!!

[msfbgraves]

The CK writers can’t NOT know how the Sauna scene looked! I don’t know what gay culture was like in the 80s for non-Americans, but I do know, as an American, that gay men frequented saunas and gay bathhouses to engage in casual sex with other men. It was considered a “safe” spot away from judgement, and part of the gay cruising culture. And the fact that Terry engages with Daniel in a sauna, apparently without clothes (?) speaks volumes. What with Daniel looking so frightened, all done up to the throat with his white virginal robe…meanwhile Terry towers over him and doms him without laying a finger on him. The scene is LOADED. Especially given how campy and off his rocker Terry was in KK3…and the general weirdness of that movie, and how much gay, grooming, and obsessive subtext there is…the sauna was such an odd and perhaps deliberate choice for Terry and Daniel to have an interaction. I’d sell my soul to get the answer from the CK writers on this!

Nonnie, I really can't help you. All I know is that both Cobra Kai and and of course The Karate Kid III are very mainstream pieces of media and they're writing for the mainstream. Now, I've also seen mainstream writing teams deliberately trying to write queer themes and kink and it often comes out really off putting. If you watch Hugh Grant in "Maurice", with the faintest veil of plausible deniability, you get a beautiful queer romance, but watch "A very English Scandal" and it's completely awkward and unpleasant. As for kink, Paul Giamatti and Maggie Siff in "Billions" are just uncomfortable, they're so not into this dynamic, like the writers, presumably. But in stuff that would never be marketed as "queer" or "kinky" people often end up having to fan themselves, and I think that's because the writers either are completely oblivious or they have to pretend they are but I'm guessing the former, giving the actors more freedom. I really wouldn't put it past them to think of that sauna scene as "just" a callback in CK. Did they mean to cast a female lookalike of Terry as Daniel's wife? They didn't even know they'd get Thomas on the show and they don't know how to write character - there's hardly any overlap between their young versions of Terry and Kreese and what Marty and Thomas are playing, and I don't blame the actors for that! And yet! Daniel's ill fitting suits! The way he still gets sexually harrassed by his "rivals", be it Tom Cole or Johnny Lawrence painting a dick on his face - somewhere the penny dropped for Daniel that all these boys not so much wanted to kill him but they wanted to fuck him and men still want to fuck him and I think it was Terry that opened his eyes. Triple painful that with Terry he was into it and that ended badly. But he's learnt to see it and he doesn't like it, if he does flirt people into buying his cars. Was that the writers or Ralph? Hm, I think the writers didn't want him to look sexy and Ralph has a no nudity clause that some nuns may find a tad restrictive (no way he was unfamiliar with creeping men in Hollywood, the way he stayed away from anything romantic in his films) and yet here we are. It reads as a middle aged man who has been either beat up or prepositioned one too many times. And Terry was the first to use sex against him. And Terry knows he was the first. And he knows that'll fuck with Daniel's head six ways to Sunday because he knows they have chemistry. And it's a brilliant role reversal because Daniel has also used flirting to get what he wanted from people. He would have called it friendliness and it was, but he loves asking for it when he knows people can't do anything to him even in high school, he knows it confuses men and makes girls like him. He does it to Johnny in the first film and Chozen in the second but when he does it with Terry he doesn't get the usual flustered confusion but now Terry is doing it to him and he's never been at the receiving end of that...

...but it's very plausible that in his sales jobs he totally was and it was Amanda who taught him to weaponise it and there's something very hot and very familiar about her anyway...

The only way I can get this to make sense in my head is:

Ralph and Thomas have always known exactly what they're doing. I really applaud how Ralph has played the shadow of Terry before we knew Terry would even be in Cobra Kai. And Thomas' re-entry in the series is seamless. No continuity breaks like with Ralph and Billy. Man is a writer who knows his craft and he made them listen to him or he wasn't coming on the show.

The writers do not consciously know - if they knew they'd try to undo it in the text - but they do pick up on it and it bleeds into their writing.