#sorry that the reality of patriarchy is uncomfortable for you

[wewontbesleeping]

wow... the sexism i'm seeing towards kamala harris right now is really messed up, guys. i just want to say, as a man, that i'm not like that. and i apologize on behalf of all of those other men, who are bad (not like me, who is good). actually, they aren't even really men. real men would never do that. and yeah, i mean. i'm not going to say anything when my male friends "joke" about women being inferior to men, but please know that i'm silently disagreeing in my head. even if i also laugh along, i disagree and i'm not really like that. anyways. i just wanted to remind everyone that not all men are like that. can someone please tell me that i'm a good person now?

[livgr3]

Panel 1: Gender, Genre, and Excess

CONTENT WARNING: blood, gore

Raw (2017) written and directed by Julia Ducournau

"I’m fed up with the way young women and their discovery of sexuality is portrayed on screens ... For me, sexuality is in the body. And you should certainly not be a victim. It’s not something that you go through, it’s something that you are active in, and it’s perfectly okay. Your main aim should be to climax, because if it’s not your main aim, you’re never gonna climax. So, that’s what I wanted to show you: a sexuality that is not apologetic, shameless, in the body, in the now and aiming at climax." - Julia Ducournau, British film Institute, 2017 "Masochistic pleasure for women has paradoxically seemed either too normal - too much normal yet intolerable condition of women - or too perverse to be taken seriously as pleasure." - Linda Williams, "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess," (1991)

Synopsis

Ducournau's Raw follows the demure, innocent young adult Justine as she begins her first year at a prestigious veterinary school, previously attended by her parents and currently attended by her older sister Alexia.

It is the school's tradition that all new students undergo a bizarre, humiliating hazing ritual. During this week-long ritual, Justine and her cohorts are forced to each eat a rabbit kidney. Justine, forcibly raised to be a strict vegetarian by her parents, refuses to eat the kidney until she is urged by her older sister.

After her first taste of meat, Justine begins to change. She develops a full-body rash and an insatiable taste for raw meat, which soon devolves into cannibalism.

What is particularly interesting about her newfound hunger, though, is its direct correlation to her sexual awakening.

Genre

Despite its highly graphic content and horrific themes, I personally categorize Raw as a film in the coming-of-age genre that simply uses elements of horror as a visual and multi-sensorial tool through which to further explore themes of sexual discovery.

This brings me back to the two quotes at the top. Ducournau argues that the prototypical narratives of the feminine sexual awakening in the coming-of-age film far too often simplify the true complexity of young women's desires. These stories often conflate sexual attraction (to men) to the desire to be sexually attracted to (by men), crafting the woman as an inherent victim and object of male desire even if she is allegedly the protagonist of a narrative. In Ducournau's cinematic vision, to portray the woman as the active subject of her sexual desire is to separate her desire from man's desire completely. In order to achieve this exploration of the distinct and uncomfortable realities of female sexuality, Ducournau chooses to represent sexual hunger through cannibalistic hunger.

Much of Williams' musings on the horror genre reflect most feminist film theorists' consensus that horror sees women as its common victims. While Williams offers a few retorts on the state of female agency in horror, she ultimately concedes that horror caters deeply to men's psychosexual pleasures, whether they be sadistic or masochistic. In the quote above, Williams addresses the improbability of women's sadomasochistic pleasures guiding the cinematic gaze. She very interestingly describes women's desires as "too normal" or "too perverse;" women's sexuality is, deep down, known by the patriarchy to exist, but is far too big a taboo to openly talk about.

In Raw, Ducournau brings these unspoken desires to the surface in the most disgusting, unavoidable way possible.

Gendered Bodies and Excess

Another content warning (sorry Prof!!!)

Rather than rely solely upon the male/female gaze to address the viewer within the narrative, Ducournau uses various bodily sensations to suture the viewer to the protagonist's perspective. This is referred to multi-sensory spectatorship, in which the on-screen body evokes a sensation in the body of the viewer.

For example:

This mirrors Williams' texts, in which she writes that "the body of the spectator is caught up in an almost involuntary mimicry of the emotion or sensation of the body on the screen along with the fact that the body displayed is female" (26). However, Justine in Raw does not just evoke feelings of fear, as Williams suggest women in horror typically do. Through a multi-sensory experience, Justine's sexual awakening addresses women viewers and invites them to welcome their sexual desires which have been deemed "too perverse."

She even addresses us by looking directly at the camera when the culminations of her cannibalism and sexual awakening meet:

Racialized Bodies and Excess

The film does not see Justine sexually engage with men until later into its narrative, when her sexual awakening has already been realized within her own terms. Here, Ducournau flips the hegemonic gaze and poses an objectification of men, with a particular scene of Justine gawking at men's topless, active bodies.

The most notable object of her sexual gaze is Adrien, her roommate. Adrien is ethnically ambiguous and the only non-white person in the main cast of the film. He identifies as gay early in the film, though he has sex with Justine and has an implied flirtation with her sister, causing his sexuality to also be ambiguous. As he is assigned Justine's roommate despite his being a male, their gender roles in relation to one another can also be considered ambiguous. This ambiguity deconstructs any binaries that would have helped us eaily define Justine's sexuality or sexual desire, but this results in the objectification of Adrien and his body.

It is also notable that Adrien is murdered for cannibalistic consumption, with his mutilated body one of the most graphic displays of the film. (not showing that here, you're welcome :D). This detail, along with Adrien's place as the film's only POC, still falls back on tropes of racial exploitation and excess as relating to the "Othered" body on screen.

Though Ducournau's film is quite remarkable in its methods of reversing and deconstructing the male gaze, its ironic objectification of men can get pretty hairy when the implications of racial objectification are not carefully considered.

Discussion Questions

(I hope the GIFs weren't too gross. Here's this:)

Do you agree with Ducournau's claim that young women's sexual awakenings in coming-of-age films are victimizing? What films can be described this way? Which ones can't?

Is the objectification of men the "solution"/rebuttal to the objectifying male gaze? Why or why not?

Why do you think cannibalism and sexual desire are often connected in horror films? Do you think this aspect of Raw is necessary to tell its story of female sexuality?

[klapollo]

Sorry but the way feminism has been seemingly abandoned on here in favor of progressive MRA rhetoric and basically leaving it to become a Terf Thing is so fucking dire. Yeah its uncomfortable for some men to confront that they benefit in some way from an unfair power structure but that's how dismantling ALL institutional oppression works and you have to tolerate discomfort to work towards liberation. And we absolutely cannot liberate women when our only two "feminism"s available are girlboss let women be feminine pop feminism and that woman in the bathroom has a square jaw I'm calling the cops feminism.

Like if you truly want to liberate women and end patriarchy you gotta grow up. I'm sorry. Its a bad scene when I look for feminism on the site that introduced me to it and all I get is terf posts. It's bad that I have to check every loudly, fiercely feminist post to make sure the op isn't a terf bc we're all pretending that certain things in society don't skew based on your gender. It's bad when I can more reliably expect feminist theorists on TWITTER to be trans inclusive. get over this meninism phase ASAP and fix this shit bc I'm tired. We will literally never end women's oppression so long as we're afraid of confronting the material reality of how institutional oppression works and that misogyny is real, violent, wears many faces and is everywhere. Deal with it how you must but as an ardent feminist I refuse to let my political philosophy become a dog whistle for transmisogyny bc of pussyfooting around individual feelings on an institutional problem

[plaexus]

This exaggerated and forced femininity in female idols prevents us from "getting to know" them and puts them in a certain patriarchal box. 

For example, loveyus love KARINA, the SM's product, but they kind of don't like Yu Jimin. We also have this weird Winter baby girl thing (which is recent, right?), which is so weird that every time she puts on pants people start calling her little boy, prince, etc. And this whole cunty thing is a bore and is nothing more than sexualization with glitter.

It's all very monotonous and uncomfortable and out of touch with reality. 

(Sorry to send it again, but there's a spelling mistake in the other one.)

you're right in a lot of your points. i feel like how the patriarchy bleeds into the kpop industry is a whole monstrosity of a discussion that would be hard to tackle here. as much as i would like to speak for the girls, which i can't, but all i can hope for is that they have some form of input into the whole production process of their music and performances. and more importantly, that they find significant empowerment in their career. obviously and sadly, kpop idols are objectified by their fans and the public, and are severely restricted by their companies, female idols all the more so. so i can only hope, as artists at least, that female idols not only aespa are free enough to present themselves how they want in the way that makes them feel the best in their skin and is healthy for them. may be a pipe dream for now, but idk i've been a kpop fan for as long as i can remember and i just keep hoping for more progressive ideas to seep into kpop

your points about jm and mj in particular, well yeah, large segments of their fanbase do subscribe by those quite harmful and overly reductive lines of thinking. i suggest though that you find the fan spaces where these mindsets are less rampant. personally, i think aespa as a whole are able to show such diverse aspects of themselves, that i for one am not predisposed to boxing them into these labels

[rabbitdrabbles]

TW: violence, sex-based oppression, trafficking, non-con I'm scared to share it in the OG post of the "unpopular whump opinions" but my unpopular opinion about the overall preference of MALE whump, is that some people do it to escape the reality of misogyny/ AFAB discrimination (because let's face it, most transmen have grown up through female socialization too and have faced sex-based oppression even after coming out).

Like... torture, abuse, non-con, being trafficked... it is all a historical and modern-day reality for both sexes, but the primary perpetrators of terrorism, wars, domestic violence and sex crimes and most leaders of trafficking rings have been historically cis men. In the p*rn industry alone, it has been estimated that more than half of the women in it have been trafficked, whereas he percentage of men who have been trafficked is about 17% (still too high if you ask me). In today's day and age, it's still mostly AFAB people who suffer domestic violence and sex crimes, just check out some videos from Yemen or Afghanistan. I truly feel uncomfortable when I read the so-called fem-whump, because even though it's not a real person getting hurt, real names, real people, real news headlines, real cases of young girls having gone missing, being kidnapped and brutally murdered pops up into my mind - cases from yesterday, last week, last month, last true crime podcast, a friend, another friend's sister - they all pop into my mind and reading 'lady whump' is like a continuous exposure to reality. I want to read whump to escape reality, not to re-immerse myself in it. I'm not a fan of child whump either, for a similar reason.

Writing male/ male-on-male whump is like taking back control from the patriarchy.

I'm not saying that EVERYONE feels that way but on a subconscious level, I'm willing to bet at least some people do.

For the record: this is all just my personal feelings on the matter. If anyone who reads this enjoys femwhump, as long as you don't harm or wish harm upon real women, you do you.

hello!! respectfully, I’m not sure what post this is referring to, you might be directing this at the wrong person? unless I’m mistaken in which case someone correct me please.

I think you’re absolutely correct though!! I will be entirely frank I think I simply enjoy male whump because I find it hot, but I’ve heard and heartily agree with this perspective too even if it’s not the main reason why I personally enjoy it. I also definitely understand why one might get super turned off by femwhump as it so harshly mirrors what women/AFABs face so often in reality, it’s also a squick of mine but I think for different reasons; either way I completely resonate with you. frankly I’m surprised this opinion (more of a fact tbh) isn’t more well known within the whump community? like I’ve seen people complain about why there’s such a lack of fem whump and well idk I kinda thought the reason was obvious haha. not dissing anyone who likes it ofc I kinda just figured everyone knew femwhump would stay in the minority for the exact reasons you described, evidently not though so thank you for putting it in words!!!

edit: found the post and my reblog, I’m honored you chose me to tell your opinion to haha and sorry I took so long to respond!!

[cinemorg]

Barbie (2023)

This movie has made like half a billion dollars in its first week so odds are good that you've seen it, but in case you haven’t seen it, let’s get the plot synopsis out of the way (SPOILERS):

Margot Robbie plays Stereotypical Barbie, the tall blonde pretty skinny Barbie in a world of other Barbies who are slightly different (most notably Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon)). Ryan Gosling plays Ken, surrounded by a few other Kens led by Simu Liu, and Allan (Michael Cera), a perpetually uncomfortable friend of Ken’s who seems to love the man deeply while also being very annoyed by him much of the time (don’t say Greta Gerwig knows nothing about male friendships).

During a girls’ night dance party, Stereotypical Barbie starts to have some unexpected and unprecedented thoughts about death, and wakes up the next morning to find that nothing in her home in Barbie Land is working the way it should. She seeks counsel from Weird Barbie, who tells her that she needs to go to the real world and find the girl her doll avatar belongs to and get her to stop thinking about stuff. That’s Gloria (America Ferrera), a somewhat timid woman with a murky career at Mattel and a caustic teenage daughter named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). So Barbie sets out to find Gloria, while Ken tags along and discovers the wonders of patriarchy. After a lot of zaniness, confusion, and pictures of horses, Stereotypical Barbie exiles herself from Barbie Land and joins forces with Gloria and Sasha to visit a gynecologist.

I debated with myself for a little while whether to try to approach this movie, because although I really enjoyed it, it’s very obviously not made for me and there’s no way I can understand it in the way someone who grew up playing with Barbie can understand it. It’s a story about what it means to grow out of the childish fantasies represented by Barbie and all of her friends and professions, and begin to confront the reality that there is no valid culturally approved femininity (or masculinity) to grow into anymore, which is a difficult situation that the Barbie concept simultaneously encourages, laments, ignores, and helped to create. I can speak to Ken’s bullshit here, but to some extent the interplay between Stereotypical Barbie, Gloria, Sasha, the CEO of Mattel (Will Ferrell), Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), and the world at large is unknowable to me because they are based on experiences and fantasies I’ve never had, stories about myself I’ve never been told. But in the end I decided I wanted to try, because the discourse around this thing has become so muddy and stupid it’s threatening to overtake the merit of the film itself, which is a real shame.

Obviously there is nothing to the right-wing idea that the movie is too feminist or anti-man, and those criticisms can be dismissed without a second thought. Right-wing commentators like to pretend that they’ve never actually met a man in real life, but the rest of us have, and we know that most men would, if given the opportunity, be absolutely thrilled to take up residence in a big stupid mansion and call it the Mojo Dojo Casa House. Every cis-het man wants to wear obnoxious clothes, sing songs with his friends, and cry. Not up for debate, sorry. As for the too-feminist angle, the primary goal of the women in this story seems to be to feel like they’re not doing everything wrong every minute of every day. If you oppose that, get fucked!

I’ve also seen a lot of pretzel-knot-logic thinkpieces and social media posts deliberating with excruciating self-consciousness whether Barbie is feminist enough, whether it’s too capitalist, whether it really understands itself. This is third-wave feminism masquerading as something modern in a time when even fourth-wave feminism is sunsetting. All of these concerns come second, and a distant second at that, to whether it’s a fun, clever movie that you can have a good time watching with your friends and helps you feel good about yourself. We don’t have time anymore for tedious, labored games of “Should I Be Enjoying This?”

More about that: Greta Gerwig’s real triumph here is not that she managed to get Mattel to produce a movie that’s openly critical of its product (while also selling it), or that she created something that can be easily imagined to be infuriating to bigots, or even just that she made a lot of money for a lot of people; it’s that she managed to use a plastic fantasy land to make an engaging movie about the lived experiences of multiple generations of American women where everyone is kind of stupid and cringe in equal measure, but each character comes out looking like some kind of hero if you think about them for long enough. That’s the triumph because that’s real life.

There’s an effort here to release us from the prison of constantly asking ourselves whether we are feminist enough, or too capitalist, or if we understand ourselves, by more or less taking the position that to an extent these questions are nonsensical to ask about your personal experience as someone who is growing and developing in a world that you didn’t create and can’t control. I’m sure there are plenty of Mattel products floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. You probably also played with a Weird Barbie when you were a kid. These things aren’t really spiritually related, and shouldn’t be. When Gloria, someone who lives an unremarkable life but spends her free time drawing pictures of Crippling Shame Barbie, delivers her tired (though still not wrong) speech about the contradictory expectations put on women in American society and then gets brutally shot down trying to pitch an “Ordinary Barbie” to the Mattel CEO, that’s not supposed to be the moment that ties the whole film’s message together; that’s a woman who has yet to learn that there can be no ordinary Barbie because there are no ordinary women. She is still growing, as is her daughter, as is Barbie, as are we all, and all this bone-headed discussion about whether Greta Gerwig has accomplished these granular yet amorphous feminist-labeled goals only serves to suppress that realistic and compassionate ideal in favor of yet another set of impossible-to-meet standards.

That said, I want to bring this back to Barbie visiting her gynecologist for the first time. Gerwig herself has said in interviews that her own memories of feeling ashamed of her body inspired her to include that scene, because she wanted girls in the audience to see Barbie happily taking care of herself and know that it wasn’t something that needed to be hidden. It also seems to be an important line in that much is made earlier in the movie of Barbie having no vagina (in one scene she says plainly to a group of wolf-whistling construction workers, “You should know that I don’t have a vagina.”), but here she is confirming that not only does she have one now that she’s transitioned to the real world, she has a human one that needs maintenance. She is real now. She is herself, whatever that might be. And as intent as some seem to be on robbing this movie of its authenticity, the singular characteristic of Gerwig’s Barbie that shines through is that for all of its silliness, it’s a genuine film with genuine heart, and that’s what it wants for its audience. Be genuine people, or do the best you can. Forget the rest.

P.S. I know I’m ignoring Ken’s storyline, which is a huge part of the movie. Suffice to say that Ken’s self-worth is completely tied up in getting a woman’s attention, and when that doesn’t work he tries to heal his wounds by fully investing in patriarchy, which also doesn’t work. So then he has to try getting a life. Tale as old as time.

[prettyboykatsuki]

Hi I don’t want to make you uncomfortable and you don’t need to answer this if it does but how do you become confident or at the very least accepting of yourself because I’ve tried so hard for years and nothing works and I’m always left feeling so gross about myself and how I look to the point of just idk hating everything and wondering how someone could ever love me because of it I feel like everyone is so accepting of themselves and I don’t know why I can’t be I’m sorry is this considered dumping you don’t need to respond

this a deep, complex issue. i don't think there's really a way to answer this completely without opening up the conversation to some deep shit about patriarchy, race, capitalism etc. about why beauty standards is a scam. there is no real way for me to tell you this. for me, learning about those things guided a lot of my journey.

this is just my view on it, but the reality it wasnt even that i accepted myself. i just decided i didnt want to suffer for nothing.

im gonna die some day, full stop. at the end of my life, i don't want to be commiserating about how much i suffered because of something as insanely arbitrary as appearance. beauty standards are an evil and a marketing scheme. they change all the time without warning or precedent. they're finnicky and shitty.

attractiveness politics are a poison, but the opposite of self-hate is not self love based on your appearance. the ugly, bitter, truth is that even if you became your ideal self over night - you would still not be happy. because the beauty standard would change just as fast. that level of obsession will eat at your joy no matter what. that's how it keeps people in check.

that's not to say being "unattractive" wont effect you, it will. it's an evil like anything else. but there is a very real possibility you're the way you are now forever, and chasing that high is going to make you more miserable than merely accepting yourself ever will.

the only answer is general indifference to your looks. you have to understand and accept they are the least important aspect of who you are. you're going to die someday, and you're going to look back at the rest of your life. how much of that do you want to waste on self hatred rather than fostering the other, better, important parts of you.

im not beautiful by convention. but im interesting, a great cook, and fantastic mediator. im a terrible singer. i love books. i don't really like warm drinks. i am full person outside of my appearance and that person is loved by others. by friends, family, partners.

ive been like this my whole life and been in several relationships. there is hope for you. the only way to accept yourself is looking at the big picture and asking yourself.

does not looking the way you want really dictate you living a life of misery?

every time i got depressed over it, i just repeated that. im suffering for nothing right now. slowly i accepted that and moved on. it was like a switch flipped after i really understood it.

[zzzpax]

so my father disappeared from this world when i was an infant, he disappeared from my grandparents life (with whom i maintained a relationship against the fact that i am their son’s daughter and he was no longer communicating with them), he also vanished from my mother and i’s world, and nobody ever talked about or discussed his existence during my whole childhood, at least not until i started therapy and it became obvious that it was a manic neurosis the way everyone avoided mentioning him and telling me what really happened. until this day it isn’t really clear what triggered his self imposed exile and what made him start despising his own family so he had to delete his presence.

and yes, what i just described isn’t an anomaly whatsoever in this society, it has been normalised in our conception of families that the paternal figure doesn’t really hold a lot of responsibility when it comes to emotions or raising a child, and it’s necessary to also understand that patriarchal communities that ensure that gender stays dichotomised in a binary archetype that gives different and drastically different purposes and amounts of privileges to each of them does construct a rigid and hierarchical familiar system that is inevitably and inherently violent and aggressive with anything that doesn’t conform to its norm; probably the root of so many social problems that we are facing right now worldwide, such as mental health and how it relates to individuals who can’t and will never adjust and/or adapt to society unless society goes through a series or transformations that will eventually lead us to being able to change the way it is and the way it submits the minorities, the divergent, the powerless and the vulnerable. 

so, what i am trying to say here, taking in consideration the consequences of an absent and unaccountable paternal figure that directly relates with the way with cis-men are raised and how we perceive them in and as a patriarchal society, it is a fucking tragedy that it is a fucking standard: my dad vanishing and everybody taking care into acting as it wasn’t important or relevant and making me forget so i forgot about his existence and the pain it means to be abandoned and neglected as a child, to be able to normalise the discomfort we are taught to swallow when it comes to us and trying to develop a sense of identity, purpose or spirituality; naturalise the generalised misery we go through daily with the promise of an upgrade in our existence through acquisition of material goods (a bigger house, a faster car, a more luxurious life), so we learn to follow the social norms that are supposedly going to make us less uncomfortable and dissatisfied with the lives we should oh so desperately love (because wanting to kill yourself is seen so negatively even though probably every last one of us have had at least a fantasy with suicide) and very rarely attain any kind of happiness getting more and more hopeless and frightened that we will never be truly happy so we avoid pain.

unfortunately (or fortunately), with humans depending on their senses to understand reality, and also our senses providing us with very unpleasant physical manifestations of pain through our nervous system, our instinct makes sure we avoid sources of pain because usually it means danger, sickness, death. and because of this it may be easy to trick the human psyche (at least to an extent and where the consciousness rules over the subconscious) into thinking that it is possible to be happy (or at least happier) through not experiencing physical pain and through pleasurable activities and hedonistic behavior that it is and it has only (in a historical sense) been possible through privilege and power. 

only when you’re wealthy you have time to feast because you don’t need to spend all of your energies trying to get access to food in the first place.

in times in which a considerable amount of the population has almost immediate access to multiple and abundant varieties of food, in which we have developed technology to a point where we have running water, health services, life insurance and free time if we have power of acquisition, is easy to be fooled into thinking that we might eventually be happy and no longer suffer as we earn power, or rationally validate the delusion of mercantilism that has made possible to materialise power transversely in our society: it’s easy to trick ourselves into thinking that as long as there is money in abundance we will get some sort of happiness along the way. 

and now i’m practically preaching Freud (and i am so deeply sorry because i definitely am not his fan neither do i share most of his ideas but psychoanalysis is important and most definitely not his exclusively) but because we have to indeed repress our deepest emotional needs and because we are forced to neglect ourselves at mercy of patriarchy. so, if the only redemption is to at least be able to be forgiven by our physical pain, we will stay in permanent crisis and war with our deepest needs, leading us to indulge and be condescending with our wounded subconscious, so it’s stops being relevant how we secure our comfort, how we take into consideration what we destroy to get what we want. and ironically we never get it, so it escalates into even more violent ways of achieving by any means, an even more comfortable comfort. 

it’s no surprise  that the powerful and wealthy will stay disastrously frightened of loosing their power and design even more unfair and violent systems to ensure that things won’t ever change, to ensure that we stay ill and unhappy chasing a less painful existence through precarious coping mechanisms that will never be able to relieve us, the same way they don’t relieve them.

in order to transform society, the world we live in, we need to transform ourselves from within and only then, transform our families and the way we are raised, so we can start changing our community and stop feeling attacked by minorities that are fighting for their own rights. fighting against a society that doesn’t take them into consideration because its owners are rendered terrorised due to their own inability to face the inner pain that won’t ever vanish. because it can’t be excised. so it turns urgent for them to be able to face it and become comfortable with it. and it is because they have already given so much in order for them to get enough power or privileges so they can afford a more comfortable life, or because they have never had to deal with the nuisances of getting where they stand in terms of power and wealth that they are unable to come to terms with the idea of facing said suffering in the first place and get fucked by fear. fear about about having to deal with said distress. 

without ever having to deal with pain we get fucking terrorised by the idea of it and are incapable of even measuring it against anything we know because in fact, we don’t know pain and all we have ever been told is that it is intolerable. biologically, when we feel pain, bells start ringing because it means that our existence is being threatened, so we associate every kind of pain with the danger it represents. we flee from any kind of stimuli that signifies pain. we fight, like our own life depended on it (and it truly, let me tell you that it probably doesn’t endanger the precious gift that life is when it comes to our inner turbulent and psychic conflict), and we become aggressive against anything that threatens to take comfort away from us, being violent in reaction to any whom is jeopardising our well being. 

it probably is (at least to some extent)  because of this that we might completely end society and humankind with our reckless ambition to avoid suffering.  because the powerful, the privileged, the supremacy, submits everyone to become comfortable with the pain that society and reality inflict, to exempt themselves by oppressing others. others who are different, who are enslaved, who can’t adjust. so they can live a more comfortable life at mercy of the misery of others and never even attempt to ever trying to come to terms with the fact that we are not able to ever eradicate pain because we are not in control of reality and we can’t evade its principle. or maybe, if we learn how to face the struggles inside ourselves and our inner wounds that hurt and makes us uncomfortable, the unavoidable truth, that as long as reality exists and permits that we coexist with other individualities, and wish to continue enjoying the blessings that comes with cooperating and developing a culture (such as technology, language, art, love, pleasure, the possibility of developing ourselves spiritually) we will have to pay the price of respecting every form of existence and them will have to respect us by suppressing their urges to evade the distress of not being able to get what we want how we want when we want without working for it and negotiating with reality first. 

pain is the price we pay to be conscious. because consciousness (as it has been depicted many, many times) exists to restrain the unconscious. and restraining the unconscious is tremendously and terribly painful.

and what i wanted to say in the first place, and what i am aiming to illustrate here in relation to our challenges to get to a better society in which we develop finally an additional level of consciousness that has to be with a way of collective thinking and perceiving reality is that probably, right now that we are transitioning still through the era of Pisces to the era of Aquarius, is that astrology might be a fundamental and irreplaceable key to what and how we continue our path. 

Because astrology, learning to read its language and understanding how we have developed it so that is able, through the study of transits of celestial bodies around us, to identify and associate certain characteristics to them that affect us and the way we perceive and interact with time and reality. because it helps us to understand our pain, where it comes from, where we are, how we are and how we can transform ourselves to attain a more purposeful existence in a life that lacks purpose, knowing that everybody represents an otherness with its own intricate network of sensibilities, inherently divergent and sometimes radically difficult for us to relate due to the way that they exist can make us become more empathetic and ready when it comes to experience pain and not letting someone lead a dreadful existence by the expanse of our own.

[panda-noosh]

how’s about a keith scenario where they go to this planet with a full on royal system (so like almost royal au but not) and the princess is like sick and tired of the oppressive patriarchy (cuz duh) and is super excited that the paladins are there and basically begs keith to help her sneak out to fight with them and stuff

words: 1.7k

notes: here you go! x

+++

    Keith couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

    Of course, he had heard rumours regarding your desire for action many times before finally arriving on your planet - but never before had he actually listened to them.

    Because why would a princess want to live a life of fighting? Why would a princess crave to hold a sword in her hand, when she already had the entire planet ready to protect her at the drop of a hat?

    It was confusing to Keith, and yet he stood before you now with his jaw slotted open, unable to figure out just how to respond to the request you had just asked of him.

     You blinked like an innocent new born child, tilting your head to the side. “Well?

    Keith shook his head dumbly, still staring at you with narrowed eyes, as if expecting you to suddenly start laughing and claim it was all a joke. “I don’t … I don’t understand.”

   You grunted, folding your arms over your chest. The jingle of golden and silver bracelets made Keith wince - oh, the irony.

    “I want you to teach me how to fight,” you repeated. “I’ve seen you fighting around the grounds recently, and you look like you know what you’re doing. I can’t think of anyone better to teach me what I want to know.”

   Keith flushed. “Okay… . But did you ever stop to think that maybe your dad would absolutely slaughter me if he found out I was training you with a sword?”

    “My father won’t find out,” you said smugly. Keith raised a brow in question. “We’ll do it at night, of course. Only the guards are ever around at night, and it’s not like they pay too much attention in the first place. I swear, my father pays them to sit around most of the time.”

   Keith snorted. “I’m sure they’ll do something if they hear you crying because your wrist got a cramp in it.”

   You pouted, and Keith silently cursed himself. Why was he always so loose with his tongue, always letting his stupid comments cloud his vision before he could think better of them?

    He quickly tried to shift the topic before you could look too deeply into his jab. “Look, I can’t help you. I’m sorry. The risk is just too big, and I don’t want to get Voltron into any more trouble than we’re already in.”

   “You say that as if you’re all a bunch of runaways.”

    Keith shrugged. “It depends on how you look at it. We prefer the term anti-heroes.”

    You groaned, nudging Keith with your elbow. It was a surprisingly powerful nudge, and Keith teetered a little bit before finding his footing.

    “I promise it won’t be a waste of time,” you tried. “You’re all bored during the night anyway - this will give you something to do.”

    Keith blanked - you were right, of course. All throughout breakfast, Lance had done nothing but complain about how boring the palace was during the night, when nobody was expected to leave their assigned bedrooms unless absolutely necessary. Though Keith hadn’t chipped in on the conversation, he had certainly agreed and his lack of insults towards Lance had shown that agreement better than any words could have.

    He inhaled deeply. Were you really persuading him right now?

    You seemed to catch on to his moment of hesitation, as you immediately perked up, surprising Keith by placing your hands on his shoulders to look him in the eyes. He grew uncomfortable, a knot forming in his stomach that forced him to look away before your gaze could get too harsh on his own.

    “Please, Keith! I promise - if you think I’m a lost cause on the first lesson, tell me and I’ll never ask you again. I promise.”

    Keith hollowed out his cheeks. “Princess…”

    “Pleeeeease?”

   And despite Keith’s better judgement nagging at the back of his head, the look of pure ambition and hope in your eyes right now was enough to have him rolling his own, and nodding slowly in agreement to your plans.

+++

   Keith pulled his coat impossibly closer to his body, trying desperately to fight the chill that came with the night time. The moon was low on the horizon, casting an almost red-like glow against the mountains - Keith stared at it for a few seconds, basking in the beauty of the planet he was currently standing upon.

    You reached out and touched his shoulder, gently easing him out of his stupor. He turned to look at you, could barely stop himself from giving you a warm smile when he saw just how prepared you had come. He had been ready to tell you the basics, have to hold your hand through the lessons which included what to wear, how to hold a sword - but it seemed you already knew all of that.

    You wore a loose grey button down shirt that you had tucked neatly into a pair of brown trousers. White socks were pulled up over the bottom of said trousers to keep the fabric from billowing out around you, and you wore a pair of hunting boots that were tied tightly to your feet. 

    And in your hand was a silver sword.

    Keith stared at it in awe for just a moment. You chuckled at the dazed expression on his face, gently nudged him to bring him back to reality.

    “Shall we get started?”

    Keith nodded. His nerves were beginning to settle in now. He had never taught someone how to fight before - had never needed to. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t pass the burden of this type of knowledge onto anybody else, and yet there was something about you that had made that stance waver a little bit.

    The lesson started smoothly. You were a natural when it came to the basics, showing Keith that you had at least been practising on your own for a little while before coming to him for advice - he could respect that. It made his job a lot easier.

    You were too predictable though, which was something Keith picked up on almost immediately. It only took a few ticks to figure out exactly how you dodged, your go-to steps, the way you swung the sword. You needed to change up your stances every now and then, and that was exactly what Keith told you to do.

    You tried. Within the next few rounds, it was clear that you were trying desperately to follow his advice, but your body wasn’t cooperating. Every time Keith went for you, you would take a moment too long to decide what your next move would be, now that you were being forced to switch up your stance every time Keith dove.

    This moment of thinking made it extremely easy for Keith to swipe at your side, knocking you to the floor in a few seconds flat.

    You glared up at him, rubbing the no doubt bruising skin of your rib cage that had been batted by Keith at least four times now. He simply smiled, placing his hand on his hip and staring down at you in the darkness.

    “Ready to give up yet?”

   “Do you think I’m a lost cause yet?”

    Keith hummed. “I think you have a bit of potential.”

   You rolled your eyes, forcing yourself to your feet again. “One more round.”

    “I’m worried you’ll break something if I-”

    You took Keith by surprise this time, jumping towards him before he even had a chance to raise his sword. He stumbled back, your sword clashing against his own, sending vibrations straight up his arm. He hissed, trying to catch himself on the tree behind him - but that wasn’t going to happen. Not with how fast he was falling.

    So, instead, he naturally reached for the closest thing to him, which just so happened to be your outstretched hand. His fingers wrapped around your wrist before his body landed in the grass, and then you were on top of him, and Keith wasn’t entirely sure what to do.

    You yelped at the sudden collision, your forehead smashing against Keith’s chin. White light flashed behind Keith’s eyes, but he blinked it away, his brain coming back to reality in a matter of seconds as the shock of what he had just done won dominant over any other emotion.

    He tried to scramble free, placing his hands on your waist, but there was little point. You were grunting, rubbing your forehead with a dazed expression on your face - you had definitely hurt yourself.

    “Are you okay?” he asked, reaching up to rub at the space between your eyebrows.

    You jerked away from his grip, only then seeming to come back to earth. Your eyes raked over Keith’s body - the body which you were currently on top of - and your eyes brightened, face immediately flushing. Keith could barely hold back the titter of amusement which escaped him when you yelped again and pushed yourself off of him, grabbing for your sword and stumbling back with raised hands.

    “S-sorry,” you stammered, shaking your head. “I didn’t - That was an accident. I just got overconfident.”

   Keith sat up, swiping the dirt from his legs. “No. It was my fault. You did good.”

   Even in the darkness Keith could see a small glimmer of a smile appearing on your face, clearly proud of yourself for doing well in your first lesson. 

     “So you don’t think I’m a lost cause then? We can do this again some day?”

    The hope in your voice made Keith’s heart tremble. He had never seen himself as lucky, or fortunate to have the skills of a swordsman embedded in him. He had never before seen the pull factors of such a thing, and yet why would he, when he himself had never not had those skills, never known life without that knowledge deeply rooted in his brain?

    He looked up at you now and nodded slowly, even though he knew he shouldn’t be getting your hopes up. He was with Team Voltron - he wouldn’t be able to stay around for too long, and you both knew that.

    But for now, the hope and the ambition was enough to settle you. Keith would teach you as much as he knew in the short time he would have with you - and who knows? Perhaps a friendship could blossom within the knowledge being shared. 

[sciencespies]

What 'Bridgerton' Gets Wrong About Corsets

https://sciencespies.com/history/what-bridgerton-gets-wrong-about-corsets/

What 'Bridgerton' Gets Wrong About Corsets

In the opening scene of the steamy Netflix period drama “Bridgerton,” Prudence Featherington, one of the eligible daughters of the social-climbing Lady Featherington, is dressing to be presented to the queen of England. Prudence doubles over, gasping for breath, as a maid yanks the laces of her corset tighter.

“I was able to squeeze my waist into the size of an orange-and-a-half when I was Prudence’s age,” Lady Featherington says.

Many movies, historical as well as fantastical, have a similar scene. Think of Gone With the Wind’s Scarlett O��Hara death-gripping a bedpost; Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean laced so tightly into her corset that she can barely breathe; Titanic’s Rose in a nearly identical scene; Emma Watson, playing Belle in Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, declaring that her character is too independent to wear a corset.

One other element shared by some of these scenes, among many others? None of the characters suffering through the pain have control over their own lives; in each scene, an authority figure (Prudence’s and Rose’s mothers, Elizabeth’s father) tells them what they must do. It’s a pretty on-the-nose metaphor, says Alden O’Brien, the curator of costume and textiles at the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in Washington, D.C.

“To have a scene in which they’re saying, ‘tighter, tighter,’ it’s obviously a stand-in for … women’s restricted roles in society,” O’Brien says.

The trouble is that nearly all of these depictions are exaggerated, or just plain wrong. This is not to say “Bridgerton” showrunner Shonda Rhimes erred in her portrayal of women’s rights during the early 19th-century Regency era—they were indeed severely restricted, but their undergarments weren’t to blame.

“It’s less about the corset and more about the psychology of the scene,” says Kass McGann, a clothing historian who has consulted for museums, TV shows and theater productions around the world and who founded and owns the blog/historical costuming shop Reconstructing History, in an email.

Over four centuries of uncountable changes in fashion, women’s undergarments went through wide variations in name, style and shape. But for those whose understanding of costume dramas comes solely from shows and movies like “Bridgerton,” these different garments are all just lumped together erroneously as corsets.

If one does define a corset as “a structured undergarment for a woman’s torso,” says Hilary Davidson, a dress historian and the author of Dress in the Age of Jane Austen, the first corsets appeared in the 16th century in response to women’s fashion becoming stiffer and more “geometric.” The corset, stiffened with whalebone, reeds or even sometimes wood, did somewhat shape women’s bodies into the inverted cone shape that was in fashion, but women weren’t necessarily pulling their corsets tight enough to achieve that shape. Instead, they used pads or hoops to give themselves a wider shape below the waist (kind of like Elizabethan-era booty pads), which, in turn, made the waist look narrower.

Silk stays and busk made in the Netherlands between 1660 and 1680

(© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

Quilted silk jumps made in England around 1745

(© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

This shape more or less persisted until the Regency era of the early 1800s, when there was “all sorts of invention and change and messing about” with fashion, Davidson says. During that 20-year period, women had options: They could wear stays, boned, structured garments that most resemble today’s conception of a corset; jumps, very soft, quilted, but still supportive undergarments; or corsets, which were somewhere in between. O’Brien says the corsets of the Regency period were made of soft cotton (“imagine blue jeans, and turn them white”) with stiffer cotton cording for support, and occasionally channels in the back for boning, and a slot in the front for a metal or wooden support called a busk. (Remember, though, these supports were made to fit an individual’s body and would gently hug her curves.) Eventually, the term corset (from the French for “little body”) is the one that won out in English, and the shape gelled into the hourglass shape we think of today..

But all along, these undergarments were just “normal pieces of clothing,” Davidson says. Women would have a range, just like today’s women “have a spectrum of possibilities, from the sports bra to the Wonderbra.” Those simply hanging around the house would wear their more comfortable corsets, while others going to a ball might “wear something that gives a nicer line.” Even working women would wear some sort of laced, supportive garment like these—giving lie to the idea that putting on a corset immediately induced faintness. For Davidson, the myth that women “walked around in these uncomfortable things that they couldn’t take off, because patriarchy,” truly rankles. “And they put up with it for 400 years? Women are not that stupid,” she says.

These garments were comfortable, Davidson adds, not just by the standards of the time—women started wearing some sort of supportive bodiced garment when they were young girls, so they were accustomed to them by adulthood—but by modern standards as well. O’Brien concurs: “To have something that goes further down your bust … I’d really like to have that, because it would do a better job of distributing the support.”

By the Victorian period, after “Bridgerton,” corsets had evolved to a more hourglass shape—the shape many people imagine when they think of an uncomfortable, organ-squishing, body-deforming corset. But again, modern perceptions of the past shape how we think of these undergarments. Davidson says skirts were bigger during this time—“the wider the skirt, the smaller the waist looks.” Museums often display corsets in their collections on mannequins as if their edges meet. In reality, they would likely have been worn with their edges an inch or two apart, or even looser, if a woman chose.

McGann suggests that one of the reasons corsets are associated with pain is because actresses talk about their discomfort wearing an uncomfortable corset for a role. “In many cases, the corsets are not made for the actress but rather a corset in her general size is used for expediency,” McGann says. “This means they are wearing corsets that don’t fit them properly, and when laced tightly, that can hurt!”

So, in the Regency era and in other periods, did women tighten the laces of their corsets beyond what was comfortable—or healthy—in service of achieving a more fashionably narrow waist? Sure, some did, when they had someone to impress (and in fact, Davidson gives the Gone With the Wind corset scene high marks for accuracy, since Scarlett O’Hara is young, unmarried, and trying to make an impression). In “Bridgerton,” social striver Lady Featherington’s insistence on her daughters’ narrow waists similarly seems logical. Except…in the Regency period, where dresses fall from the bust, what would be the point of having a narrow waist? “The whole idea of tightlacing is completely pointless…irrelevant for the fashion,” Davidson says.

“There is no way that period corset is going to [narrow her waist], and it’s not trying to do that,” O’Brien adds.

Davidson has another quibble with the undergarment fashion choices of “Bridgerton” (at least the first episode, which she watched at Smithsonian magazine’s request). Corsets and stays of the Regency period were designed less to create the cleavage that modern audiences find attractive, and more to lift up and separate the breasts like “two round globes,” Davidson says. She finds the corsets in “Bridgerton” too flat in the front.

In an interview with Vogue, “Bridgerton” costume designer Ellen Mirojnick laid out her philosophy on the series’ apparel: “This show is sexy, fun and far more accessible than your average, restrained period drama, and it’s important for the openness of the necklines to reflect that. When you go into a close-up, there’s so much skin. It exudes beauty.” But, Davidson says, “while they sought sexiness and cleavage and maximum exposure, the way they’ve cut the garments actually flattens everyone’s busts. If they’d gone back to the Regency [style of corset] you would have gotten a whole lot more bosom. You would have had boobs for days.”

“Bridgerton” does, however, get a lot right about the status of women in the early-19th century. Marriage was one of the only options for women who didn’t want to reside with their relatives for the rest of their lives, so the series’ focus on making “good matches” in matrimony holds true. Once wed, a married woman legally became her husband’s property. She couldn’t sign contracts or write a will without her husband’s consent.

By the mid-19th century, women had made significant gains in being able to own property or obtain a divorce. It wouldn’t be until 1918 in England or 1920 in the United States, however, that (some) women could vote. Around the same time, corsets were falling out of fashion, and many writers of the time saw a connection between liberation from the corset and women’s liberation.

In “Bridgerton,” Regency-era young women don corsets ahead of their presentation to Queen Charlotte.

(Liam Daniel / Netflix)

O’Brien says that looking back now, that conclusion doesn’t hold up. “You have all these writers saying, ‘Oh, we’re so much more liberated than those dreadful, hypocritical, repressed Victorians, and we’ve thrown away the corset.’ Well, I’m sorry, but if you look at shapewear in the 1920s, they’re doing the exact same thing, which is using undergarments to create the current fashionable shape,” which in the Roaring Twenties meant using “elasticized” girdles and bust-binders to “completely clamp down on a woman’s natural shape.

“Society always has a body ideal that will be impossible for many women to reach, and every woman will choose how far to go in the pursuit of that ideal, and there will always be a few who take it to a life-threatening extreme,” O’Brien adds.

O’Brien and Davidson hope people stop thinking of corsets as oppressive tools of the patriarchy, or as painful reminders of women’s obsession with fashion. That attitude “takes away female agency,” O’Brien says. “We’re allowing fashion’s whims to act upon us, rather than choosing to do something.”

Wearing a corset was “as oppressive as wearing a bra, and who forces people into a bra in the morning?” (Some women in 2021, after months of Zoom meetings and teleworking, may be asking themselves that exact question right now.) “We all make individual choices,” Davidson says, “about how much we modify ourselves and our body to fit within the social groups in which we live.”

It’s easier to think of corsets as “strange and unusual and in the past,” Davidson says. To think of a corset as an oppressive tool of the past patriarchy implies that we modern women are more enlightened. But, Davidson adds, “We don’t wear corsets because we’ve internalized them. You can now wear whatever you like, but why does all the Internet advertising say ‘8 weird tricks to a slim waist’? We do Pilates. Wearing a corset is much less sweat and effort than going to Pilates.”

#History

[gotgifsandmusings]

the way you guys handled the racism part of the podcast was just. awful i couldnt even finish the rest of the podcast bc i was so offput. expected better from you :/

I’m so sorry to hear that, seriously.

I don’t want to hide behind excuses; if our tone or words were hurtful, that’s the way of it, and all I can do is apologize for it and learn why. It was not our intent, and as we said at the start of it, we’re more than open to a dialogue.

I’ve received positive and negative feedback for pretty much every portion of the podcast, however (it’s not like “oh yay, person X agrees so we’re fine!” or anything, of course), and I do think there’s some value in digging into that.

Julia and I tend to be more forgiving of Martin, not that we’re asking anyone else to be. And given the virulence with which we go after D&D, I understand how hypocritical this can come across as, and how frustrating this can be too. But the reason we are is basically two-fold:

One is that we believe there’s a value to his books. Now, there’s also a value to the political discussion on Bill Maher’s show, for example, but yet amazingly, decent political commentary shouldn’t come with a side-serving of Islamophobia. I don’t watch his show, so why should I accept and praise books that don’t handle race well? That don’t handle female sexuality that amazingly, particularly in the cause of wlw scenes? That oftentimes do feel like the sexual violence could be easily toned down, or it’s unnecessarily gendered, or it does fall into unfortunate patterns with things like dead mothers?

The answer to that ties into the second reason, which is that his pattern is getting better. FeastDance felt more thoughtful, felt like there was more of an emphasis on female and other marginalized voices, and it felt like there was great intentionality on Martin’s part to do so. I haven’t read all his interviews; I can’t guess at what’s in his head beyond what his body of work shows us. But you can bet that if he was coming across as someone who was unwilling to reflect and engage with his own shortcomings, I wouldn’t be as invested.

I could be wrong about him. I’ve said this a lot before, but I could be really, really wrong. For now, he has my benefit of the doubt. I’m not asking you to bestow yours.

Back to the problems at hand though, and the value of his books. No, they’re not perfect at all. There’s a lot of issues, and these are issues that a more intersectional author likely wouldn’t have. To be perfectly honest, I think we’re starting to have a tendency of expecting perfection in every area from our media now. While I love that we’re finally in a place where our cultural dialogue is pushing for the change we want, and that storytellers are actually listening (look at like, Clexacon’s mere existence, for instance), I think this can easily become a double edged sword, where you’ve got the fandom raising pitchforks about Steven Universe not doing well with butch representation.

ASOIAF is no SU. It’s a book series written by a white dude in his 60s that spans twenty years. Which is why Julia and I put so much stock into the pattern and direction the books seem to be headed, because our social dialogue shifts so much. Well, depressingly not as much as it should, but I think it’s hard to deny that there is far less tolerance for bullshit in our media, and far more expectations of representational media that are not just once again glorifying the white male lens. 

I don’t believe the book series simplistically does that at all. I find there to be feminist takeaways in Martin’s critique of the patriarchy, and in the way Martin holds up a lens to the bullshit assumptions by this society, which is one uncomfortably reflective of our own history (though certainly not highly accurately so). I wouldn’t say my willingness is to forgive the issues in the books, but more like say, “these are here, these are problems, but I still find this text valuable. I still find the close-POV different and worthwhile.”

I can’t speak for Julia, but I can at least say this is what we had hoped to convey in the podcast. I believe we failed spectacularly. I think our tendency not to plan or overly structure our episodes went heavily against us here. Everything we were saying was in a larger context of “and this is a problem,” but wow we really didn’t make that clear.

What we did was basically raise the problems in turn, talk about what we think his intent was and what its function in the story has been, and then conclude on “this could have been better,” which after you know…like ten minutes of what probably sounds like rationalizations was not exactly going to come across as particularly meaningful. Had we structured more, I think we could have been clearer about “and it did not land.”

Showing Dany as completely unable to comprehend the political situation she was in, and being over her head with the complexity, did *not* require a lack of Essosi POVs, even if we suspect that’s partially why Martin made that choice, for instance.

But of course that didn’t come across, especially when there were some downright flippant things said that we also didn’t clarify. Like Julia mentioning she didn’t want a Dothraki POV, probably because it’d be very close to one as distressingly violent and patriarchal as Vic, which is simply unpleasant to read (and I’m also not sure I agree; I would have loved Dany eating the heart from a POV of someone in the Dosh Khaleen, for instance).

We know each other well, and we know the intent and place we’re coming from when we’re saying something, so I think that led to us not explicating stuff that absolutely needed to be explicated. Again, there’s no excuse. I wish we had planned  and presented everything differently, and it seems pretty obvious now how badly we needed to do that. I’ve learned a lot just in the past day, and all I can do is try to be better.

However, I will say…I suspect there’s also going to be content disagreements in the conclusions Julia and I land on. I’ve seen this with the fandom dialogue about the issues of sexism in the books before, and we’ve often received criticism for defending how he writes the patriarchy and women. Or for how women in the past basically are these pure, idealized victims, or they’re forgotten. We believe that’s to a point most of the time, that being one that provides a fuller picture of Westeros’s bullshit patriarchy (unnammed Mama Martell as an exception because there’s no reason for that at all), but we know it’s a point that doesn’t land.

Then there’s stuff like Arianne’s ‘hypersexuality’, which I simply don’t agree with. In my view, and something Gretchen and I were just discussing, Cersei is far more sexualized (she just tends to view sex from a manipulative standpoint always, instead of deriving pleasure from it, Jaime aside which is clearly unhealthy), and the degree to which this is a problem for a Dornish POV to have these traits (which I think is played up in the fandom) is one where I part ways with a lot of people. I can’t answer how I’d feel about it if I weren’t white, so I do my best to acknowledge that lens whenever I can. But in general, from what I can tell, my lens is also just a bit less Doylist than where some land.

And that’s fine, too. We’re all just engaging with the books how we like to do, and taking from it what’s there for us. There’s no objective takeaways, and not to belabor the point, but I could be so wrong about these books.

Why am I all Doylist with D&D? Because Watsonian analysis is useless in GoT, sure, but because they’ve violated my trust and my benefit of the doubt so thoroughly. I’m not there with Martin, and maybe that’s a problem. I suspect I might even be too Watsonian for my own good because of how engaged I find myself with certain aspects. Half of why we recorded that podcast was to kind of slap ourselves in the face with some Doylist realities, but I do now think the tone ended up being too dismissive, and I don’t feel good about it.

Anyway, this is just a super long-winded apology, as well as a meek explanation I suppose. Certainly not an excuse. This episode was requested a lot for us, probably because of how defensive of the books we get, and I feel like in our attempt to talk every angle of the issue, we ended up just coming across as doubling down on that defense. Moving forward you can bet your ass I’m going to be far more cognizant of this.

What’s funny is, feeling defensive actually wasn’t my experience at all recording it. Hell, even just pulling your asks for it, I was like, “wow this all really sucks,” and found myself getting a good deal more nervous for TWOW coming out. Because…god…I think I might be wrong. I’m back in that place I was in during season 5 where I was wondering if Sansa was going to get raped by LF (obviously a different context than the show), or if we’re not supposed to see Tyrion’s misogyny.

I’m not ready to give up on Martin yet, but I’m sure as hell not asking anyone else to forgive him. And if nothing else, I know now that at least a few takeaways we had were certainly not his intent, but the result of our own engagement and projections onto the media. I think I might be wrong (and where’s TWOW).

[shannon-jeanna]

When I think about Aziz Ansari’s statement from last week, the thing I keep coming back to is that final paragraph break—the literal space—between his first two paragraphs and the third one. There’s this gap between his initial defense of his behavior with “Grace,” the pseudonym given to the anonymous woman in the story published by Babe, and his final expression of allegiance with all the women who have told their stories of harassment, assault, and rape over the past few months.

Or rather, it is the lack of space between these two things that says more than anything that was actually typed out.

“I continue to support the movement that is happening in our culture,” Ansari says at the end of his statement. “It is necessary and long overdue.” It comes just three sentences after he describes his encounter with Grace as being “by all indications…completely consensual.” There is no real transition between his description of the “sexual activity” during their date, which by Grace’s account was not completely consensual, and the larger context implied by that ending. He does not attempt to build a bridge for the reader or himself. There is no mention of assault, harassment, or abuse. We are simply meant to infer what the “movement” Ansari mentions is and why exactly it is “necessary and long overdue”—or what any of that has to do with him and Grace.

It’s not that the inference is hard to make, but the lack of effort given to actually describing what’s happening—the hesitancy to name structural oppression, let alone his role in maintaining it—while still claiming space as an ally to the “movement,” is as much a choice as the use of the word “completely” before consensual. And that tiny gap on the page, where so much could have been said, is the silent, inactive place where most men have chosen to remain when it comes to uncomfortable conversations about patriarchy.

Ansari is not alone in this, even if he was also among those men who remained quiet on stage at the Golden Globes while wearing a shiny #TimesUp pin. That silence was echoed at the Screen Actors Guild awards over the weekend: Alexander Skarsgård once again failed to mention domestic violence while accepting an award for playing a rapist and abuser in Big Little Lies, and Sam Rockwell, winning for his part as a racist cop in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, finished his speech with a vague show of support for “all of the incredible women in this room who are trying to make things better,” which he also said was “long overdue.”

These statements represent just how little space most straight cisgender men have ever been willing to devote to really talking about gender, sex, and power. Or how much thought we’ve ever given to investigating what consent really means, and how it involves us. When James Franco appeared on TV after the Golden Globes, not only did he not voluntarily bring up the allegations against him, but, like pretty much every male actor who has been on TV this month, he also didn’t take the chance to center women or the #metoo movement (started by Tarana Burke.)

When directly asked about the accusations, Franco only briefly acknowledged the importance of victims being able to speak before telling Stephen Colbert, “Look, in my life I pride myself on taking responsibility for things that I have done.” Yet, Franco and the men who support him never take responsibility for the everyday ways in which they hold onto their power—pushing others away from the mic so that they can continue to speak.

The vagueness with which Ansari expresses his support in the midst of refuting a claim of sexual coercion is how most men choose to talk about the sexual violence that we have always known exists around us. It’s like the white people condemning Donald Trump for his “racist remarks” who will never venture into how they themselves help maintain white supremacy. We might write down the correct words, or include them in our art, but when the conversation comes to our front door, most straight cis men would rather defend our position than actually cede any space.

In that way, finding that gap in Ansari’s statement was like finding a mirror too, for all the times in my own life that I’ve been silent about the role I’ve played in perpetuating patriarchy. All the times I’ve become defensive about the power I’ve brought into my interactions with women. Not to mention the many times I didn’t challenge the misogyny around me. It is a glimpse, that pregnant pause, at the chasm that exists between the support of #TimesUp we might express publicly, and our actual willingness to give up our time.

Despite the brevity of Ansari’s statement, many have expressed disbelief that he had to go to the trouble at all. At The New York Times, Bari Weiss wrote that Grace’s story and the subsequent discussion about consent online “trivializes what #MeToo first stood for.” Meanwhile, Caitlin Flanagan at The Atlanticlaments the “humiliation” of Ansari and how a “hit squad of privileged young white women” apparently “destroyed a man who didn’t deserve it.”

But the actual consequences for Ansari will continue to be minimal at best. “We do not live in a society where published allegations of sexual assault alone ruin one’s career,” writer Danielle Butler explained in an essay for Very Smart Brothas. “If it’s any consolation for the Weisses and Flanagans of the world, they may simply look to the likes of R. Kelly and the current president of the United States for solace in how little such accusations hinder powerful men from thriving.” Or look at Gary Oldman, who picked up an Oscar nomination this week despite his abusive past. No, a discussion about consent will never derail this movement, but if anything does, it might be that thing that has always protected men: our refusal to engage, and this reflexive desire to accommodate.

Time is valuable, as so many victims have emphasized in their statements. Yet the men taking up most of the space, money, and screen time in our culture have failed to respond to the literal nature of the current call to action. We have again left women with the labor of transformation. Some have donated money, but most have scoffed at the idea that they could be doing more. All while others insist on keeping the standards for how we treat women as low as possible, because perhaps they too fear disturbing the universe.

It’s exactly how we’re meant to behave in a patriarchal society. The path of least resistance is the white line between paragraph two and three in Ansari’s statement. It is the path that might allow one to acknowledge the pain of others—to sometimes even say “this is long overdue”—but to never acknowledge the connection between that pain and your everyday life. It’s the place where you learn to think about your own power as a neutral thing, as a fact of the world, rather than something you are actively maintaining.

Uncomfortable words always tend to get stuck in our mouth. Speaking about privilege as a man, or the reality of sexual harassment in your community, means placing a mirror in front of yourself. It might even make you look weak. It’s easier to remain quiet and pass this onto others, which is precisely why white men like Matt Damon emphasize the “preponderance” of innocent men instead of acknowledging their part in this system. Yet, this urge to delineate between “good” and “bad” men is itself a product of patriarchy, and just creates another hierarchy of masculinity—another claim to space. After all, the only way to be worth anything in this system, to feel like a “real man,” is to put oneself above someone. To dominate.

But taking the time to name our responsibility is the bare minimum we can do to interrupt oppression. If queer Black trans women can speak publicly about the sexual violence they’ve faced, then straight cisgender men can certainly risk some embarrassment or shame to say a few lines about power. We have to accept that we will necessarily stumble, but also that every bit of our space in this world that we don’t use to dismantle patriarchy is being used to keep it in place.

[lapetitetorte]

Not surprisingly, I have a story? It’s pretty long, and I’m sorry. My husband, Doctor Glass, recently went on a weeklong workshop. The participants worked on teams, slept in a dormitory, shared meals and spent all day together. While there, Dr Glass acquired a strikingly beautiful female friend, who was absolutely luminous – like a fallen star or a revolutionary. She was also just about to enter university, making her very much younger than Dr Glass. They were on the same team, had much in common, and seemed to enjoy each other. However, there was a twenty-something dude on the course who, according to Dr Glass, “made things awkward.” Immediately, he tried to make the workshop all about his pantsfeelings for Luminous Girl. Although he was on a different team, he was constantly buzzing around Dr Glass and Luminous Girl, getting in their way (which was dangerous and distracting, as they were doing physical labor) and trying to get her to talk to him, work with him, come over and look at his work, etc. In return she tried to ignore him, laughed him off politely, repeatedly referenced her desire to do her work, physically moved away whenever he got close to her, and stuck like glue to Dr Glass; saying NO in all those thousand little pleasant ways that women are trained to do. Awkward Dude tried to impress her with physical activity, but Dr Glass cut him off because he was being distracting. Confused and annoyed, Awkward stepped up his Game, trying to impress her with his intellectual cred, and it went down like a lead zeppelin, with Luminous and Dr Glass resuming their own work and conversations. So Awkward started loudly asking wasn’t Dr Glass married?! At this, Awkward Dude attempted to kill Dr Glass with his laser-eyeballs at every turn, lurking and glaring and pining like a bad Snape impersonator. (Dr Glass wasn’t sure why he was suddenly the target of the resulting animosity, as he clearly had no romantic interest in Luminous, until I explained it to him: Dude had decided that the reason Luminous Girl was not sleeping with him was because she was the Possession of Another Male, and further, a Male who Already Had His Fair Share of Females; thus Dr Glass was the enemy for not shunning her and leaving a clear path for fellow males. “Oh,” said Dr Glass in sudden revelation, “That makes sense, I guess.”) But the guy persisted – it wasn’t that Luminous didn’t like him! It was that she was clearly in thrall of my husband. The solution was to get her alone! So whenever they sat down to a lecture, Luminous, practically dragging Dr Glass by the arm, would move like lightning to position herself between him and a safe wall – with her lovely admirer circling them and glaring, loudly asking Dr Glass about his Wife Back Home. Awkward Dude implied that Dr Glass was creepy and odd for always hanging out with a girl half his age. Awkward Dude was annoyed that the course director, an older woman who should presumably know better, had assigned dorm space based on teams, so that Dr Glass and Luminous bunked in adjacent rooms (while he, Awkward Dude, was in the wing with the married couples!) because it was inappropriate and wrong to place a married man next to a teenaged female. On a particularly cold day, Dr Glass noticed that Luminous did not have warm clothing, and lent her an extra hoodie. It happened to have his name on it; Awkward Dude practically ignited, to the point where even the other people on the course were laughing awkwardly at him and saying “Uh, she’s… allowed to wear clothes?” Luminous and Dr Glass both liked hiking, so one evening after dinner, they went out for a hike by themselves – not inviting the others in case Awkward Dude got wind of their plans. (“I mean, it sounds cruel, but I just hated him,” Dr Glass said.) It was after curfew when they walked back to their rooms,and the halls were completely dark; Dr Glass hung back to fill his water bottle. When he got to the rooms, at the end of the corridor, Luminous had been cornered by Awkward Dude. When Awkward spotted Dr Glass, he yelled at him about how inappropriate it was to go hiking alone with Luminous. Luminous seized the opportunity to flee to her room, locking the door. “I think it’s inappropriate to police her hiking,” Dr Glass said mildly and went to bed. The next day was the last day of the course, and Dr Glass had had enough. Awkward Dude was “trying it on” in front of the whole group, making everyone uncomfortable. He had dragged Luminous into yet another unwanted conversation and Dr Glass called him out, in front of everybody, a deadly blow to Awkward’s pride. Awkward Dude tried to appeal to the group – he was only trying to be friendly – but Dr Glass had him up against the ropes, metaphorically, he’d broken the floodgates, and everyone began to laugh at Awkward instead: the old married couples, the other young men, and Luminous. “I really feel bad about that, actually,” Dr Glass said. He hadn’t really wanted to humiliate the younger man in front of everybody, especially since his only crime had been really inept flirting. Was it really Dr Glass’s place to speak for Luminous? Perhaps he’d made a big deal out of nothing. But Dr Glass didn’t regret it. He just felt odd. He didn’t know why he’d been so savage over something so banal as Awkward’s favorite movie. He was pretty sure that he didn’t regard Luminous as a possession, or something to be protected. He’d just snapped. “OH MY GOD,” I replied, “WHY DIDN’T YOU DO MORE? WHAT A FUCKING CREEPER!” Well, Dr Glass wanted to assume good intentions on everyone’s part. They’d all lived together, after all, eaten together, worked together. Emotions had run high. It would have been pretty terrible for the Dude if he’d been ostracized right at the beginning, just because he wasn’t very good at talking to girls. After all, he was there for the workshop. They all were. “AAAAH,” I wound down, “But what Luminous? WHOSE WORKSHOP WAS RUINED BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T FEEL SAFE?! She couldn’t just relax and enjoy spending time with you/her other new friends/nature – she practically had to have a bathroom buddy! He didn’t even let her focus on the work she was PAYING MONEY to do! You did not cross a line! HE CROSSED THE FUCKING LINE!” Dr Glass totally agreed. But he still felt oddly uncomfortable about it all, as if there was something there to regret, like he was missing a piece of the puzzle. And then I asked The Question. And after I asked The Question, his face changed. He looked sick. “I didn’t think of that.” After The Question, he wished he’d been more explicit – gone to the course director. Been there more for Luminous. The good intentions that he wanted to assume, the passes he was willing to give the other man, evaporated, completely. They had evaporated for me, halfway through the story. When I tell this story to women, they spot The Question right away. The men don’t; they think that Dr Glass behaved like a gentleman, neither doing too much nor too little. They are feminist men, and good people. They have read “The Gift of Fear” and they talk about privilege and the patriarchy, and they don’t spot it. The Question is this: Why Was Awkward Dude Waiting For Her In The Dark? Earlier in the story we heard that his own room was far away from hers. It was dark, at the end of a dark hall. He was waiting there, after midnight, with the lights off. HE HAD BEEN WAITING FOR HER IN THE DARK AT THE END OF A DARK HALL AFTER CURFEW, HE KNEW SHE HAD GONE OUT AND HE WAS WAITING FOR HER TO COME BACK. He was angry when he realized that she wasn’t alone. And Luminous was afraid – bolting into her room. Locking the door. And the women go HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THAT as soon as they hear about the atmosphere, and the men just accept it as another anecdote of Awkward Dude’s awkwardness, you know? Because how rude/silly/inept to pester a woman about hiking with another man! While the women are going BAD INTENTIONS BAD INTENTIONS FUCK SHIT THAT WOULD NOT HAVE ENDED WELL. And then you point out The Question to the men, and wait a while, and they suddenly go OH. OH MY GOD. WHY WAS HE WAITING FOR HER IN THE DARK. THAT’S – THAT’S PRETTY FUCKING SKETCHY. Everything changes. Dude-sympathy is gone. They put on the Matrix-goggles and peer into the world that apparently only women see. Awkward cornered Luminous in the dark after curfew at the end of the hall when he thought she was alone and he had a lot of anger and when my husband showed up he read Luminous as afraid and she ran into her room and locked the door. That is the reality. The good intentions, they are not there. Perhaps Awkward would have said that they were, that we, in our paranoia, are seeing rape in every dark corner. Perhaps he was trying to apologize for his previous behavior, or lend her a book, or make sure that she got back safely from her hike… so he’d chosen to do so alone, in the dark, making her afraid. That was what had been bothering Dr Glass. He wasn’t wearing the Goggles of Feminine Intuition, but he picked up on the signals that something wasn’t right. Seeing the Question doesn’t make you paranoid – it means your instincts are working. If you live in the world of women, it isn’t your duty to educate everybody, to hand-hold and explain, to pass out Matrix-goggles. It’s Situation Normal: All Fucked Up. But perhaps you, Letter Writers, have good men, men who just need to wear the goggles. That’s not really what I think, but our society is fucked up. I’ll assume good intentions on their part. Maybe it will help.

Comment on Captain Awkward post “#322 & #323 ‘My friend group has a case of the Creepy Dude. How do we clear that up?’” from user ElodieUnderGlass

This story is important.

I know it’s long. It’s worth a read. See if you can spot the question. See if your loved ones can.

[thebigqueer]

oooh thanks for the tag!!

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

i currently have 43! i swear i had 44 though... weird

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

160,710 💀

3. how many fandoms have you written for and what are they ?

honestly just the riordanverse

4. What are your top 5 fics for kudos?

"lost voices"

"promise?"

"let's f*ck with the patriarchy"

"his orbit"

"home"

5. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

i usually don't, but if i see a comment that kind of strikes out to me, sometimes i do! not really though. i think i just don't have the energy to respond (sorry to all those people that leave comments!! but i want you to know that i see you and feel so incredibly happy whenever someone does give me a comment!!)

6. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

"broken internally," which is a nico one-shot!

7. what's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

i would say "growth," which is just a platonic piper/jason one-shot!

8. do you write crossovers? if so, what kind?

nah not really. BUT i was thinking of a grishaverse au with some riordanverse charactres, though that was more of an au rather than a crossover. i just feel weird combining fandoms unless they're AUs.

9. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

not really (which i am very glad for thank you for only nice words lmao)

10. Do you write smut? if so, what kind?

nah, smut just makes me personally uncomfortable to write. totally valid if you like to write it though!!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i don't think so???? im not sure

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

nope

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

ACTUALLY im writing one right now for the riordanverse big bang!! it's going to be a valgrace au!!

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

hmm... i don't think i have one in a fandom. i do tend to think the most about solangelo but lately ive been a little bored with them, so i don't think i have one. in terms of ocs though i think leo & casey are my favorite, and then lexi & mikaela.

15. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

its not really a WIP because i haven't even started it but i was thinking of doing a rachel dare/alex fierro summer fling fic. i might still do it but who knows. i really do want to though.... and maybe "grief and glory"?? honestly "grief and glory" was something i was really excited for but then i got busy and then the big bang started so i might not finish it but i think ill just be on a hiatus from it for a bit and then come back later.

16. What are your writing strengths?

i have no idea. i do tend to write a lot but in my opinion thats a curse on me not a strength

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

i think it's cool!! i don't do it much since the languages that the characters i write about are languages that i don't speak unfortunately.

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

i would say it was riordanverse because thats when i actually started publishing my fics, but in reality... i actually wrote my first fanfic for the rainbow magic series 😭😭😭 it was with my friend in like 2nd grade and it was just the same kinda shit except i used ocs instead of the usual characters

20. What's your favourite fic you've written?

i have a few. i don't like how i wrote them but i definitely had fun writing them.

lost voices

broken internally

the thin red line between love and hate

fellas, is it gay to perform necromancy on your ex-crush?

i'll come back to you

poetry

tagging: anyone who wants to!!!

20 Questions, Writer’s Edition!

Thank you @ailec-12 for the tag!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

35, mostly one-shots

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

41 119 words

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Only two in AO3: Percy Jackson (and its sequels), and The Century Trilogy

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

A Tale of a New Beginning

The Benefit of Doubt

A Hundred and Fifty Nine Hours

A Doctor for a Sick Patient

Happy Coming Of Age

5. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yep, I try to. I sometimes forget but if somebody is nice enough to comment, I try to be kind and reply, besides I love it when authors answer to my comments on their works

6. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

For all that I love angst, the only two I can think that have an angsty ending are "Isn't Blood Thicker Than Water?" and "Boy's Telegram"

7. What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

I'm not sure it's the happiest, but it's hopeful and I like it: "Shut Up, Six, A Ten Is Speaking"

8. Do you write crossovers? If so, what's the craziest one you've written?

I haven't yet, but I have a few thought out. Definitely a Star Wars+Riordanverse one, and a HP+Riordanverse too

9. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don't think I have, I can't remember if I did

10. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope, but if I did, I'd write full feelings, not much porn (a disappointment to many people, no me cabe duda)

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I know of a fic that's similar enough to one I did, but since it's not exactly the same... admittedly, I haven't the balls to straight up ask, so that's on me

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yep, somebody translated a fic of mine into Russian, I'm very honoured

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope, but it sounds fun. Wait, no, my cousin and I did write a hilariously cringe fic on the summer we were 12 or 13... I think we should publish it to make people laugh

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Hard question. I have many. Ironically, the ship I've written the most about is one I don't like much anymore

15. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I have a suspense story I've written enough of, but I'm missing crucial bits. I have a bunch of historical AUs for Percy Jackson, the other day I found a couple of Harry Potter ideas... I have lots I want to finish but I'm slow and easily distracted

16. What are your writing strengths?

I have no idea. I'm careful with dates and ages and that shit, if chronological consistency is a strength, then it's mine

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I don't proof read. And I'm not great with dialogue (too many descriptions)

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I prefer using only short phrases, or even just words, to imply they're speaking another language. Perhaps let the reader know by explicitly saying they've switched languages.. I'm not a fan of full dialogues in other languages because going back to the notes to find the translations is tiresome

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Percy Jackson with my cousin, but although I can't remember for sure, I'm almost certain I must've written for Harry Potter or Narnia when I was a little girl

20. What's your favourite fic you've written?

Uuuufff... em.. I'm terribly fond of: "Of Babysitting and Disney Features", "Nerds", "Happy Coming of Age" (found family is my favourite trope), and "It's Called A Cruel Irony" (it was interesting to get into the mind of an objectively not nice person)

Tagging (no pressure): @malloryiswlw @liperbicons @blackpebbletoad @crushing-on-nico-di-angelo @euriipides and whoever else wants to do it!

[goetianovel]

Chapter 3: The Beginning Of Memory

Time had passed, since Peter's near death experience. Bune had left him to dry off and get dressed, and generally speaking just recover a bit from the whole mess. Right now, he was seated on his bed, head in his hands, trying to determine if he had finally just gone insane from the rigors of life and was being punished with weird dreams and illusions of drowning.

He'd pinched himself a few times. Dunked his head in the sink (which, amazingly, did not result in him getting dragged into the depths of the ocean again). All sorts of little jolts and shocks in an attempt to wake up from whatever was happening. But he was still in reality, he supposed. No waking up in bed drenched in sweat, no sudden awareness of what was real and wasn't.

This was as real as it was going to get, he supposed. And so he stood, took a deep breath, and stepped into the living room. When he got in, he noticed Bune, and a girl that he had never seen before. She was cute, he supposed, a canary who couldn't have been more than 5'6”. She was a bit stocky, with surprisingly muscled arms. They both turned to look at him, and he noticed that they had already gotten comfortable, sprawled on the couch with the television on.

Bune gave a casual wave, as if all of this were unremarkable. Just two girls breaking into a man's apartment and rescuing him from certain death, no big deal at all, no sir. She had a cigarette dangling from her lips, the air filling rapidly with smoke. “Howdy, Peter. You feeling any better?”

Peter leaned against the doorframe, taking a deep breath. “I... don't know who you are. Who either of you are. I don't know what tried to kill me back there, and I don't know who talked to me on the computer. But I don't want any part in this, okay? Just... please, go.”

Bune shook her head, putting her feet up on the coffee table. “Oh, boy, if only it were that easy. No, you're going to want to participate in this, Mr. Beckman. And you're gonna want to sit down and listen up, because we've got some important things to tell you.”

Peter bonked his forehead against the doorframe in frustration. “You're not going to leave until I hear you out, are you?” He asked, before giving up and entering the living room, sitting down in his roommates overstuffed recliner and slumping a little. “Fine. Go ahead.”

Bune nodded, clearing her throat. “So, my name is Patricia. But I'm going to bet money you know me by a different name entirely. It's like a memory you forgot you had, right?”

Peter nodded. “Bune.”

Bu... Patricia... nodded, smiling. “Yes, exactly. Bune. Prince of Hell. Except, of course, the archivists got it wrong, and I was actually a woman the entire time.” She leans back. “As it turns out, when a three-headed dragon is roaring at you, it's a bit difficult to determine their physical sex.”

Peter just nodded, figuring he'd let this woman say what she would and get out.

Bune continued on. “And you, Peter... you're not a mortal. You never really were. You're one of us, Pete...” she stood. “Or, should I say, King Baal.”

Peter was prepared to exclaim that he was never a king, and certainly not a ball, before something unlocked in his head. Some reservoir of memory locked away by things beyond his power. He remembered his true form. His leadership in Hell. His brothers and sisters and fellow demons, his lovers, his armies...

When he came to, he was on the ground, looking into the concerned eyes of Bune and the other woman. He sat up, holding his aching head. Yes, he was Peter Beckman, 19 years old, employee at the Speed 'Em Up gas station and terminal anime addict... but he was also, had always been, King Baal. Second son of Lucifer, the Lord of Pride, and the general of his armies.

“There we go, it's all coming back, isn't it, Pete?” Bune said, dragging him to his feet. “Feels good, doesn't it? Like an itch that's finally been scratched.

Peter shook his head. “If anything... I'm more confused than ever. What... what happened? If I'm some King of Hell, then what am I doing as a... barely legal gas jockey?” He asked, wondering if there was some sort of union he could speak to. Could Kings of Hell get stipends?

Bune sighed. “Well, sit down again, because it's story time.” She replied, setting Peter down on the chair before sitting next to the bird woman. “Though, uh, Mikey here is gonna need to explain it to ya.” She said.

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Mikey?”

The bird cleared her throat, before speaking up. “Michelle. The Angel Michelle. She who shall raise the dead for Judgement when the world ends.”

Peter blinked. “I thought that angel was Michael.”

Michelle seemed rather peeved at his comment. “No. I'm Michelle. As it turns out, when a society, and therefore its religion, are built upon a foundation of patriarchy, said patriarchs are a bit uncomfortable with the idea of answering to a woman when they go and bite it. So they told a great big lie about how I was a man, so they could sleep a little better at the idea they at least wouldn't be judged for being sexist pigs.”

Peter paused, not quite expecting that level of vitriol. “...I'm sorry, I'm just going off what I remember from Sunday School. For what it's worth, I'm not upset or anything. Just surprised.”

Michelle sighed. “It's not your fault. It's... just a sore topic. Anyhow, uh...” She suddenly whipped out a cue card, reading off of it. “Be not afraid! That's what I'm supposed to say when I meet people, anyhow. Yknow, SOP and such. Wouldn't want anyone getting the wrong idea when a being made of thunderclouds with a million compound eyes descends on a lightningbolt. But then, you're not seeing me as that, are you? Nobody has, for about... 20 years, now, really. So let's drop the formalities, shall we?” She smiled, folding her hands on her lap. “Do you have any questions, to start off?”

Peter paused, before nodding. “Yes... for starters... why am I here? On Earth? Not just that, but in a mortal body?”

Michelle tapped a finger against her thigh, thinking. “Well, to put it bluntly... there's been a rebellion in Hell. Someone went and found something they weren't supposed to get their hands on, and up and rewrote reality.”

Peter nodded, somehow already knowing what she was talking about. “The Chalice...”

Michelle nodded, seemingly a bit perturbed. “Yes, I suppose you would remember... The Chalice. Metatron's, in fact.” She sighed. “It was left behind in the event of her death. The idea was that, when filled with the blood of a chosen one, they would be able to make wishes. Any wish. And it would come true.”

Peter nodded. “And then Andras found it.”

Michelle seemed taken aback. “And you know about that too, of course. All those memories... You're around the age...” She sighed. “Yes. Andras stole the Chalice. Your older brother, in fact.”

Peter felt uncomfortable. He had remembered Andras being his brother, but somehow he hadn't made the connection between the dreams and reality.

Michelle continued on, seemingly oblivious to Peter's discomfort. “He killed its guardians. Took the Chalice. And then, he made his wishes. He made himself the King of Hell. And then he killed everyone who did not swear loyalty to him.”

Peter felt a chill. “...and I didn't...”

Michelle nodded. “You didn't. It was the most shocking betrayal in a long time. You two... you were inseparable, in Hell. And when the time came, you stood against him.” She closed her eyes. “You dueled for seven days and seven nights. In the end, he only won by a hair's breadth, even with the powers he had. But you fell.” She opened her eyes again. “And those he killed, he gave new lives. They were reborn as mortals, free to live their lives, sentenced to live and die, again and again, until they would swear loyalty to him.”

Peter swallowed. “How many...?”

Michelle shook her head. “Just the one. The forces of Heaven discovered his treachery early. But he's changed Hell. Even an army of angels would be hard-pressed to even gain entry to the First Circle.” She admitted. “And that is why we have been hunting down those who he reincarnated. You have some... protections, that others do not.”

Peter seemed perturbed. Even with his memories, he felt loyalty to his new, mortal life. He had rent to pay. A job to do. Family and friends he couldn't stand to abandon. “But... what about now? What about all of this?” He said, gesturing around the apartment, though they all knew he meant much greater things.

Michelle seemed saddened. “For now... you must abandon it, Peter. We will see to it that your disappearance is not noticed... we can easily replace you, until you can return.” She said. “Nobody will notice. And when the time comes, we'll give you your Mimic's memories and you can go on like nothing happened.”

Peter felt a lump forming in his throat at the idea. Something... bothered him about that. The idea that he was replaceable, in the grand scheme of things. The idea that, to some extent, he was never meant to exist in the first place. Had everything not gone poorly, Peter Beckman would never have been. Or, at least, he would have been so much different.

He took a deep breath, holding back tears that threatened to flow freely. “I understand... but... I like this life. I like how things are now. It's... smaller. More comfortable. I don't have to worry about political backstabbing or diplomacy, wondering if some demon will make an attempt on my life for political power or some trigger-happy angel will try to smite me.”

Michelle nodded. “I understand... but...”

Bune, at this point, butted in. “If you don't do this, there stands a very high chance of the entire world being destroyed.”

Peter started. “Wait, what?”

Michelle glowered at Bune. “Yes, unfortunately, there are some remarkably high stakes going on. You see, for all its flaws, Hell was a finely tuned machine. Set about through treaties and agreements to maximize rehabilitation and minimize any unnecessary suffering. Heaven was not happy, but it was at least willing to let things go on as long as a close eye was kept on it.”

Peter frowned. “But how does that affect the world?”

“If you would let me finish, I was going to explain that, among other things, Andras' actions have left a great number of demons... “unemployed”, for lack of a better term. They have been cast out of Hell, and into the world. And they have set about corrupting men and women with glee.” Michelle said. “If our... employer, as it were, discovered this, they would most likely find this new world lacking. They would initiate the Apocalypse, and try again with a blank slate.”

Peter was taken aback. “Then why hasn't he already?”

Michelle cleared her throat. “They do not realize there is a problem yet. We have worked very hard to ensure that they don't for a long time. At least long enough for us to set things right.”

Peter thought about this. The way Michelle made it sound, he was extremely vital for this mission. They had sought him out specifically. But with his memories back, he also realized he was simply incapable of using the demonic powers he'd had before. “But what can I do? I can't do any of the demon things I could do before. What makes me any more qualified than the next guy?”

Bune smiled. “Well, you actually do have one power left. We checked your auras and everything. Essentially, you're sorta the ultimate medic.”

Peter remembered his healing abilities, distantly. A touch that could mend wounds, calm the mind, even bring peace to a damaged soul if he concentrated strongly enough. He supposed it was something... but he certainly would have preferred, say, his enchanted scythe, or his legions of demons. “Well, that will be useful, but... do you think it'll be enough?” He asked.

Bune considered this. “Well, you've got me and Michelle to be the heavy hitters. And there are a few demons running around in Hell that haven't drunk Andras' metaphorical kool-aid. I think we're almost as ready as we'll ever be, really.” She admitted.

Peter looked to Michelle. “You're coming? I thought you said angels couldn't get into Hell.”

Michelle sniffed. “As the Lady of Judgement, I'm allowed certain freedoms when it comes to matters of the afterlife. Not even Andras can bar me from Hell, should I wish to enter. However, entering is the easiest part of our journey, I'm afraid.”

Peter considered this... then frowned. “Wait... how do we get into Hell in the first place? We don't have to die, do we?”

Bune shook her head. “Nope! No dying necessary. It's incredibly simple, actually! The simplest! Don't worry, Peter. It'll be fine.”

Despite Bune's words... or, perhaps, because of them, Peter began to worry.

[summerb4jc]

What Post Modern Art Means To Me: or The Time I Had To Make A Piece of Art In My Contemporary Art History Class And I Did Not Like It

By Summer Barney

I took a contemporary art history class my senior year of college.

I don’t know about you guys, but a lot of contemporary art just makes me mad. I guess the distinction for me is modern vs post modern art, in that modern art the view is “the audience can glean whatever meaning or reason they’d like from this work, I the artist made it and to me it means x, y, z.” vs. the post modern view of “Art has no meaning. This has no meaning. I made this for no reason other than shock and shock alone, and since art is meant to elicit an emotion, and you are mad, that makes this is art!!!”

So basically Jackson Pollack splatter painting vs. Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes:

Jackson Pollack’s “meaning or reason” was essentially to explore the medium of splatter painting. He so thoroughly explored the medium that he knew exactly how to create the effect he wanted. I’m down for artistic exploration! If your reason to create is you want to explore a certain medium, I’m down baby, I’m cool. Do you.

Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes? Well. He made sculptures of boxes that he painted to look exactly like the Brillo boxes that were currently being sold in stores (which, you know, opens a whole other avenue of graphic design copyright but that’s not what we are talking about right now.) But then the real kicker came when he went to display these somewhere in Europe, I believe, and there was an issue with customs and he could not get access to his sculptures in time for tha gallery opening. So instead!!! He had his assistants go to a store, buy actual boxes of Brillo Pads, AND DISPLAYED THOSE INSTEAD. There are SO! MANY! THINGS! That bother me about this, but like while I could l tentatively get behind the “exploration” of COPYING SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK VERBATIM

I DRAW THE LINE AT BUYING SOMETHING FROM THE STORE AND PASSING IT OFF AS ART, AND NO! YOU DON’T GET A PASS FROM ME, ANDREW, BECUASE THIS MAKES ME SO ANGRY!!! IT IS DUMB!!! IT IS NOT YOURS, YOU DID NOT MAKE IT!!!!!

But I digress, this is not what I was originally intending to tell you. So, I took a contemporary art history class my senior year of college. I saw a lot of art that made me angry, and I saw very little art that I liked, but one piece that just sent me sizzling with annoyance was John Cage’s 4’33”

For those of you are not yet in the know, click the link to the video to experience for yourself. For those of you who don’t want to click out and watch it but still want a description it is this:

A song of silence.

That’s all. It’s 4 minutes and 33 seconds of rests, and in the video you get to listen to all the audience sniffles and shiftings while the orchestra remains silent and for some reason I could not HANDLE that back in college. It annoyed me SO MUCH!!!

Did I mention that this class annoyed me?

Also, disclaimer, since I hate to think that my expressing my vehemence might hurt someone else: everyone is entitled to their own opinions. If you genuinely enjoy post modern art, create post modern art, or like stuff that’s shocking for shock’s sake, that is your right, it’s all you, and I’m glad you like it. My emotions are my own, and while I really, really, really dislike a lot of contemporary art, that doesn’t mean I’m saying you should dislike it too. Honestly, I feel my dislike is pretty much the general reaction the artists were going for half the time, so...it all works out.

ALL THIS TO SAY!

At the end of said contemporary art history class, we had to make a contemporary piece of our own. And I was just sick of it! Sick of it! I am sorry but I like art that is pleasing or interesting to look at! I also like and understand the value of art that is ugly or makes you think, like if the artist is working through past trauma or trying to make a statement about something important but difficult, but I had just been through a barrage of art examples that kept slapping me in the face while screaming “stop looking for meaning! There is no meaning here! You are mad because I want you mad!” Empty, vapid, shock art!!! I don’t like it! You can’t make me! GAH!

And so! What I did was I just leaned into this everything is meaningless sort of outlook and just made what amounted to a bunch of cliche’s in a trench coat. I made a pretty little shell of buzzwords around an empty PULSING NOTHINGNESS. It meant nothing! I was going full on Duchamp’s Fountain! (More or less. My true motivation was to pass off my stupid, stupid cliche sandwich with the same gravitas of my sculpture instructor when he said “if I look at it and can tell exactly what it is, you might as well not make it at all and just write it down instead.” UGH)

My theme was feminism.

(Not that I don’t believe in equality, and since I am incapable of not having any meaning, I had to make up meaning, but I was just going for the buzziest buzzwords. All buzz, no bee, sound and fury and nothing else)

So I took a canvas and painted it a multitude of colors. This was the secret inner lives of women.

Than I took that painted canvas and I covered all that color in a thick layer of white. That was the mask society makes women wear to cover their true selves.

Then I painted a red triangle on that canvas, and here is where I really started reaching because the red represented periods (?), the triangle represented femininity (??) and also it wasn’t a square because the patriarchy means we get one less side than The Men. (???)

And then! The real kicker! Remember John Cage’s 4’33”? WELL! I took that canvas, placed it on my bed, and filmed it from above for 4 minutes and 33 seconds in dead silence, the only noise my breathing and the cars passing by my house, and this represented the media and its views of women and how we have to be perfect and also somehow being alone at night unsafe in a parking lot and man I worked really hard to put meaning into something that meant nothing to me except that I was mad and I was making something that it made me mad to make and I ended the whole video by going “boop” just before I stopped the camera

And

THEN!

I had to show it to the class. And here I was, Boo Boo the Fool, thinking I’m gonna stick it to post modern art in general, when in reality, I had to suffer JUST AS MUCH AS EVERYONE ELSE AS WE ALL WATCHED MY VIDEO, IN SILENCE, FOR FOUR FULL AMERICAN MINUTES AND THIRTY-THREE CANADIAN SECONDS. It was awkward, it was uncomfortable, it was...the female experience.