#such as issues of power and agency and consent

[waitineedaname]

i have a student conference in a couple weeks that i should be preparing my presentation for, but what am i doing instead? sitting down to outline my svsss gender essay

[minnichan]

But the definitions aren't clear? Look at how different countries define rape by law and you get different definitions. Some courts won't see it as rape if the victim didn't fight back or didn't clearly say no. If a victim complies out of fear, shock, or is incapable of fighting back because of mental impairments, to some courts it's not rape. Governments all over the world are not in agreement regarding the legal definition of rape so you think they'd be in agreement about who to sentence to death? Look at the Pelicot case in France where not all men habe been sentenced because the courts couldn't proof that the men were aware that she didn't consent. There are telegram groups out there where men share videos of themselves drugging and violating women and yet when you send police those videos they don't do anything because you can't prove that it wasn't consensual-non-consent or some other kind of roleplay. Our patriarchal society doesn't care about women so what makes you think they'd go after rapist? It wasn't that long ago when raping your spouse wasn't a criminal offense (here in Germany the government voted on this issue in 1996).

With enough money and corruption you can always frame someone for a crime. Bribe a judge or threaten their family to get the verdict you want. You think the queer hating governments of this world would not gladly frame gay and trans people and kill them? Some countries still have laws regarding death sentences for being gay, see Wikipedia:

Humans will always abuse laws and powers so no one should have the power to kill someone else. Also laws aren't set in stone. Humans write them. Look at how the U.S. government seems to be ignoring all their laws currently.

If we prioritise punishment over the protection of victims, we get to the current situation where law agencies leave CSAM online in order to lure more pedophiles instead of deleting it all. All those videos and photos are hosted on file hosters in the clear web as the darknet is too slow for downloads, only the download links get shared on darknet sites. Occasionally law agencies will shut down such a site and they only need to crawl the sites for download links and report those links to the file hosters to get them taken down. And yet they don't do it, because they prefer to lure and find pedophiles to punish them instead of listening to the victims who want the videos of their abuse gone. Ordinary citizens can't to this either because if you crawl such forums and accidentally download something, you could get into trouble for possession of CSAM.

You do not help the victims by focusing on the punishment of the perpetrators.

Thanks, Anon!

-submit your poll!-

[catastrophicdisasters]

apologies, i'm still angry abt TUA S4

so, if we take out all of the blatant issues with the season (character assassination, 'resolutions' that create more plotholes than they solve, rushed scenes that make no sense, side plots that go nowhere, raymond vanishing for no reason, etc etc), what are we left with? let's see:

fatphobia (multiple jokes made about 'chubby Diego', when David just looks hydrated and healthy)

SA played for jokes (it's clear that Klaus having sex while possessed is supposed to be funny, but he's being held hostage and forced to do this for money, when we already know he didn't even want his powers back??)

cheating

problematic / borderline problematic age gaps (either way you spin it, either Five is physically 20-26 while Lila is likely mid 40s, or Five is mentally 70s while Lila is mid 40s; Aidan was 19 while filming, and Ritu was 34)

waiting for the actor to come of age before introducing a romance (we already know what some fans can be like over Five/Aidan, this will not have helped; I would be horrified if I found out the show runners had planned a romance arc with a coworked 15 years older than me and then waited for me to turn legal age to execute it)

sexism (i was reluctant to call it that but i also don't know what else to call it - Lila basically had her agency stripped away to become the love interest two men fought over; Steve wanted Five to have a romance and didn't care who with - use Lila simply because she was there)

complete disregard of character trauma (Klaus being buried alive despite it having been mentioned in every prior season that he was locked in a mausoleum by Reginald, including literally being left to die)

possible overstepping of an actor's boundaries (i've not been able to verify this, but i've seen it said that robert sheehan has requested not to do sex scenes?) (still havent been able to prove this; wasn't an issue with other roles so... hesitant to leave it)

actors requests being ignored (David asked multiple times if the Lila cheating sideplot was required, but clearly it went ahead anyway)

bad cgi

that awful vomit montage

Reginald (im not quite calling it abuse forgiveness but uh. it's not far off tbh)

i don't even know what to call this, but basically told the Hargreeves the abuse they suffered was their fault because they shouldn't even exist??

what did i miss? (im sure there's something)

from the replies:

the song in the ep3 dance scene uses a slur for romani people (and is also about a man and an underage girl)

SA dismissal (it's literally never addressed that Allison SA'd Luther last season. like, at all. everything's just a-okay now!)

more sexism (Allison's arc was also reduced to serving men; there's a single line to explain that Ray left, with no mention of why (i could go OFF about this but this post isn't supposed to be about mishandling of characters); even after everything, all her bonding with Claire comes through Klaus's storyline. also, Sloane is just gone and nobody gives a shit - Luther has one line and that's it??)

so many issues with consent (all of the girls shown in the place Klaus works look drugged / Klaus doesn't want to be there and doing any of that, it's all against his wishes / they all get their powers back against their wishes - although they do tell Ben that wasn't his choice to make / Klaus gets his powers back against his will when Allison is pressured to do it to save his life)

[spitdrunken]

notes: Valentino being Valentino (AKA horrible), abusive ‘relationship’, manipulation/lovebombing, uneven power dynamics, loss of agency, heavily dubious consent + implied noncon, physical abuse. Essentially details the progression of how Valentino might go about pimping someone out. He's really not nice in this, be warned!

The issue with Valentino is that, when he wants to be, he can be very charming. No one wants to sell to a person who slaps them around from the very first day, right? To Valentino, first interactions are an art he has perfected and, while he cannot see very well, he does have an eye for the pathetic, and desperate. From the very way someone carries themselves, and how they speak, he can tell who would be the easiest. To discover amongst these people a few so-called ‘diamonds in the rough’, and have them bend to his every desire, is the part of his job that he takes the greatest satisfaction out of.

Perhaps you are new in Hell, the finer details of the realm entirely lost on you, unaware of Valentino’s reputation. Or you truly have nowhere else to turn to, and you decide to take your chances, the idea of fame, money and, most of all, a bit of certainty, is too appealing. Maybe you’re aware of both his reputation, and exactly aware of what kind of guy he is, and you are chasing the kind of relationships you had while alive. Living here has affirmed all of your worst beliefs about people. To be with someone who is certain to hurt you, is easier, more familiar, than someone who might… And, hey, if he’s rich, that helps too, right?

Regardless of your circumstances, Valentino would know how to make you feel special. Hell is violent, unpredictable, and truly lives up to that. Time spent with Valentino in the lavish, beautiful places he hangs out in, almost makes you feel like you aren’t in Hell at all. Sure, maybe he’s a little strict about the kind of clothes you wear, but he’s always so full of praise when you do listen. The gifts he gives are perhaps a little gaudy, but all of them are incredibly expensive, and it includes a phone of the newest series. He tells you so that it’s so you never have to leave him hanging again! And while he laughs at it like it’s a joke, and you do too, it’s the first time something in his expression truly makes you feel uncomfortable.

And wouldn’t it feel good, wouldn’t it make you feel powerful, to have a man who is so famous and powerful, who could practically have anyone, to have set his eyes upon you? While almost anyone would be a little suspicious at first, with time, perhaps you begin to believe him. Maybe you really are special, maybe the rumours about him are true, or maybe they’re not, but they don’t apply to you. You’re the exception. You- You have to be. Otherwise, what’s going to happen to you? You try not to think about it too hard, try to ignore all the talk about him that never stops going around. On social media, the stuff said about him is mostly positive. …Any negative comments you see about the Vees in general, disappear faster than you can blink.

All the while, you’re unaware of the mixture of pity and envy the other demons working for him look at you with. Oh, how they wish they could still believe there was anything good about the demon you’re standing next to. If only they still had hope for a better future. They know exactly what is going on, but even if some might want to give you a warning sign, the punishment that would be dished out for it far outweighs anything else.

You don’t see any of his employees often though, not in this stage, nor the next. Valentino prefers to keep his whores from fraternizing with each other. From his own personal experiences, his early days of being in this business, there is nothing that builds bonds between people like a common ‘enemy’ like him. He wants all of you isolated, and most miserable you can be, in all honesty.

It is exactly the moment that you start feeling a bit more secure about things, that the cracks start to show. He’ll start pressuring you into doing a shoot for Velvette. Those gifts you got you were reaaaally expensive, baby, you know that, right? You kind of owe it to him, is what he tells you. Some pictures might seem harmless enough, but once you’ve given him an inch, Valentino will never fail to take a mile. His requests become more and more pressing, his demands more and more explicit, until any ‘affection’ left in his tone has long since gone cold.

After that, you’re essentially just treated like the rest of his whores, and the exact same treatment. He’s cut you off from any support system you had left, has you living in a company-owned building and, possibly, has you under contract. Where the hell else are you supposed to go? You’d live on the streets if you were to leave now, completely to the mercy of whatever demon might stumble upon you. Now that you've featured in a couple of Valentino's films, it's safe to say that the fame you once might have desired, now becomes one of your biggest burdens. ...You know exactly what people will do to you, given the chance.

If you bring up the kind of things he used to say to you, about how special and important you were, he’d actually laugh at you right in your face. What the fuck? You can’t be serious. You actually believed all of that bullshit? Regardless of your response, it’s likely to make his temper flare, resulting in a punch to the face that knocks you backward a good couple of feet. I’ve got bitches begging to be touched by me, to even be looked at by me. You ungrateful whore.

Unfortunately for you, practically anyone who gets too closely involved with Valentino meets the same fate.

[drdemonprince]

Do you think I'm right in believing that "exact number of years alive" is a pretty inaccurate measurement of both the physical and social sides of aging and something no one should be taking seriously? People bring up age of consent about this but I think having to be 18 being the only protection against a certain kind of abuse is a very obvious negative symptom of this problem

Yes, I've had a piece kicking around in my head for months called "Abolish Age" that would explore a lot of this. For obvious reasons it has to be handled very deftly. But as i've written on here before, numerical age is used as a shorthand for a variety of aspects of a person's social status, from their social shrewdness to their physical development to their access to social supports to their capacity to wield power -- and it's absolutely awful at summing up just about all of that, and also flattens all those dimensions into one in a horrible way. It is possible, for example, for a person to have disabilities that both require a TON of social support and makes them appear small and "young" -- while also possessing the desire and capacity to engage in meaningful sexual and romantic relationships. But because we've equated all these variables under the single banner of "age", that person is regarded in our society as "child like" and banned from having agency. And every other possible combination of factors can play out too -- but one of the biggest issues in how we conceive of age is that we think if a person needs support that means they shouldn't have freedom.

[touchlikethesun]

TW: sa. Hi! I hope it's okay to talk about it but about your tags in that post about SVSSS and SA being a recurring theme, I agree with a lot of it. I would say that even Bingge can be argued to be have some trauma since his first time was coerced. Someone pointed out Bingge could've become hypersexual as a result of that trauma and that it made me see the whole harem thing in a new light (but it doesn't make him innocent since he forced himself on a bunch of wives). It really is such a recurring theme it's hinted for Shen Jiu and for Su Xiyan and Binghe with the Old Palace Master. Su Xiyan's story is even the catalyst for Binghe's tragic backstory... You made a very good observation OP!

hey anon, yeah it's alright to talk about! i do appreciate you including a tw, but this is a topic i find really interesting, i actually opened my laptop back up to answer you lol

as for luo bingge, i didn't get into it in my tags bc… lowkey didn't expect ppl to read them lol (ty for doing so tho xx) and also he's quite a complicated case. we obviously can't say for certain since we see so little of him and what we do know is told to us thru multiple layers of unreliable narration, but i do think there is enough to suggest many of luo bingge's early sexual experiences were probably coerced or non-consensual, leading to trauma-induced hypersexual behavior. (edit: i am adding this parenthetical a few hours later after writing the rest of this and i didn't know how to fit it in otherwise so apologies, but i think it's worth pointing out that luo binghe - both bingmei and bingge, so i think we can consider it to be a core trait - do naturally have a much higher libido than most people. with bingmei we see how this causes issues for him in his relationship with shen qingqiu, but it's managed with kindness because sqq loves him and is patient enough to teach him boundaries and managed by binghe himself who loves and doesn't want to hurt sqq and who has been taught consent and respect from a younger age. when it comes to bingge, who lacks the sort of safe space provided by sqq and has no education in the matter, i think it's easy to see how he would have a much harder time understanding and managing his libido - again it isn't an excuse for SA, but this is just another convention of the genre that were it to be realised has horrible implications and consequences.)

but also, luo bingge lives in a world where healthy consensual sexual dynamics are so rarely modeled for him (the aforementioned coercive sex, but also constantly being gifted wives by other men, and the normalisation of rape in a world with sex pollen (sorry ik i already said that but like really it is so incredibly fucked up if you think about the implications of sex pollen in a real world)), and where he is being taught that the only way to be safe is to have physical power over others - of course we the reader know this is because it's being written as a venting male fantasy revenge story with a target audience of incels, but concretely this is bad for luo bingge's psyche, and you know, also leads him to do horrible things in retaliation and hurt and innombrable amount of people

and again, i don't know how much of this was really intentional on mxtx's part and how much i am reading into it, but svsss is about making one-dimensional smut novel characters into fully realised people and extrapolating out the implications for what it would mean for that world to be a real one. like, shanq qinghua and especially shen qingqiu have to learn that the people they live with are not as simple as they might have appeared on the screen of the webnovel. and part of the extrapolating, from my read of svsss, involves interrogating the ways characters have and have had their agency infringed upon in the original pidw and finding ways to return their agency to them in svsss. this is perhaps most clearly seen in the way all the "wife" characters in svsss are allowed to be their own people separate from binghe, with different passions and drives and again, agency to direct their own lives, contrary to sqq's expectations of them. however this also involves bringing to light just how pervasive and damaging the sexual violence in the original story really is, by showing the abuse that su xiyan suffered, by showing how binghe is negatively affected by xin mo and the other coercive elements of this world, by subverting expectations with shen jiu and showing how he was also a victim, and by making the only truly irredeemably evil character the old palace master, a disgusting old pervert and sexual harasser.

anyways yeah i think it's a really interesting aspect of svsss, and while i can understand why it might not be at the forefront of everyone's mind (good lord is it a BUMMER to think about), it would be a disservice to the narrative to forget it entirely.

[virginiaisforvampires]

I recently came to conclusion that "giving agency" thing show does works only with Louis. I love book Louis too but it's stated quite plainly even in book themselves that one of his biggest flaws is his passivity, and Anne struggling to write him because he embodied her grief, and putting him on the backseat for a while certainly didn't help. But Lestat, Armand, hell even Claudia were never passive in books despite being victims too.

Lestat repeatedly lost his agency and had his consent violated but his nature always prevailed, which is opposite of being passive. Armand is very similar to Lestat, because he went through horrific things and still proceed to be gremlin that he is, who can be both ruthless and loving. Claudia's life was a prison but after death? She is always here, present, haunting Louis and Lestat. They never forget her and hold her dear.

So, I think show did good adding agency to Louis, but this decision only made Louis on the same level as other main characters, there was no need to change others too.

*sighs*

No.

In the books, Louis had plenty of agency too, and he used that agency to…..sit on his ass and do nothing 95% of the time. The only times Louis had his agency taken in the books was when Armand fucked with his mind (which has been made way way worse in the show), during the trial, and when Rhosh later abducts him.

In the show, Louis has more of a spine, yes. He’s been elevated to a level in which he has an actual inner fire and personality and a core of key characteristics that make him so much more than he ever was in the books. However, he is still passive and allows Lestat to take the blame for several of his own choices. The entire point of S1 and S2 was Louis realizing he was also part of the problem, and he accepts his own hand in the series of events by acknowledging that it wasn’t all on Lestat. Louis’ agency is taken by Armand which, as I said, has been made way worse in the show than anything Armand ever did to Louis in the books, and it was written the way it was to one, “fix” the fact book Louis is a canon liar and two, to directly contrast with Louis’ relationship with Lestat and hammer home the fact everything in the show centers upon those two.

Armand has had his agency taken in both the books and the show. He also maintains the power to later pull all the shit he pulls.

The same applies to Lestat. However, the issue is that the show is taking key moments in Lestat’s life in which he had zero agency and was the true victim and warping those key events into “Lestat was wrong here too because he had the agency to make choice xyz”, and that was never the case in the books. He didn’t have a choice in any of the times he was used and abused and violated.

Lestat’s true character is being sacrificed to put all of them on the same level, and the problem with that is it changes the entire meaning of the story moving forward.

For example, the trial. Lestat had no say in any of that. He was tortured, starved, imprisoned, and mind-fucked by Armand. He did not go into the trial to “willingly” choose between Louis or Claudia. Whichever way the show goes with this, because we still don’t know the full truth, it impacts the dynamic between Louis and Lestat moving forward and impacts Lestat’s relationship with Claudia. In the books, Claudia was Lestat’s pride and joy. He loved her and adored her. She was the apple of Louis’ and Lestat’s eye. I’ve talked about it before, but what the show has done is essentially erase that core of the unholy family to make Louis and Lestat the selfish parents who always put each other before their child. That is an issue moving forward, because it inevitably impacts their grieving and gives them “agency” in her death that didn’t exist in the books. In the books, Armand was her sole murderer, and Louis and Lestat could rightfully grieve her and always keep her in their hearts. In the show, that just doesn’t hit the same, because you realize they both basically threw their little lamb to the slaughter to save each other. Therefore, when you see them grieving in the show, it doesn’t exactly feel justified or earned to some people, because of that so-called “agency.”

Another example? The tower scene. We can’t speculate too much, because we just don’t have the straight of the story yet, but that scene was…..really a mockery in the aftermath of Claudia’s death. Instead of Louis killing Lestat, who he supposedly “blamed” for her death, he uses the opportunity to play spiteful relationship games hence the “metaphorical tower push.” Instead of just doing what Anne wrote by having Lestat injured and imprisoned by Armand, they warped the meaning of Louis and Lestat as the helpless parents and used it to, again, create soap opera relationship drama between Loumandstat and totally diminish any impact of Claudia’s death. Even the trial itself was not about Claudia at all. It was, again, about Loumandstat and all their love triangles and jealousy and spite. All of that can be traced back to the insistence they all need “agency” when no. They don’t.

There’s also the fact Sam has spoken about the later arc with Akasha, which is seemingly going to be threaded together with Amel, and he’s hinted at the fact Lestat’s “toxic masculinity” is why Akasha chooses him, which has been hinted will be tied back to the violence in 1x05. Here’s the problem with that. In the books, Lestat…..was nothing like Akasha believed. She misjudged him. In the show, thanks to 1x05, that arc cannot function like that now.

Lestat had zero agency with Akasha. It was a direct echo of Magnus. She abducted him, raped him, violated him, abused him, manipulated him, blackmailed him. All because she believed he was a certain way when he wasn’t at all, and that’s why her plan ultimately failed, because Lestat went against her exactly because she misjudged him. On top of that, she made him hate himself even more. She shamed him. She made him believe he was an evil monster even more than what he already believed, and it eventually drove him into attempting suicide.

How is any of that ^^ going to function in the show? Because the show has made Lestat into a very specific type of monster when the entire point of his character was that he was never that monster he believed himself to be and had all of his agency stolen from him over and over.

The abuse from his father and brothers, being ripped away from the monastery, having his books taken, being kept illiterate on purpose, being ripped away from the theater troupe, the abuse from Nicki, Magnus abducting him and raping him into vampirism and thereby snatching him from happiness yet again, Armand abusing him, Armand raping him, Claudia conspiring against him and murdering him just because she wanted one of them to “pay” for her condition, Armand abusing him and torturing him at the trial, Armand pushing him off the tower, Akasha abducting him and raping him and terrorizing him, Raglan James taking advantage of him when he was in a dire mental state, Memnoch abducting him, the angels taking him away and blackmailing him while in the coma, Amel taking over his body and trying to control him and causing terrifying fear and panic and pain.

It’s a recurring theme that ultimately culminates in Blood Communion when Lestat basically says all of his suffering was worth it for the life he was able to lead as the Prince with Louis and their children and his vampire family by his side.

Giving Lestat “agency” in any of that…..it takes away the entire meaning. The meaning was that he always persevered. He always triumphed even after being beaten down again and again. His light never allowed him to go down. Even though he was used and abused and violated, as Rose says in Prince Lestat, even though he was the “victim of a series of disasters and adventures”, he never stopped being full of light and love and insatiable positivity and strength. You rooted for him, because he was always an underdog who never had a choice in his fate of being immortal, but he made the best of it, and it led him to becoming the Prince of all vampires and him saying that everything that had been taken from him by the aforementioned disasters and adventures had been repaid to him “a thousandfold.”

What the show has done…..it’s like saying Lestat now deserves certain shit in the show, because he made xyz choice, and that was never ever the case in any of the books. The entire core of his character is warped now, because they’ve made him have the “agency” to make deliberate choices that book Lestat would’ve never made in the first place. Book Lestat didn’t need a redemption arc. He needed to accept himself as not being a monster and realize his existence wasn’t a “cosmic error.”

Show Lestat? You’ve got ignorant assholes out here making hour-long videos to rant about how Lestat is the villain. You’ve got a subset of morons who will never see Lestat as anything other than the big bad villain terrorizing Louis and Claudia. They will always think any pain Lestat suffers is justified. They will always think Lestat is a monster.

Well, what do you expect when you basically take the actual victim and say yeah this shit was actually their fault, because they had “agency.”

That’s the issue. That’s always been the issue. It started with 1x05 when they foolishly depicted Lestat as a cheating domestic abuser against his black partner, and it snowballed from there.

Meanwhile, the writers genuinely do not see an issue, because they don’t understand the material enough in the first place to even realize there’s an issue with what they’ve done to Lestat.

As I’ve said numerous times, it is what it is. There’s no sense crying about now, because the damage is done. S3 will truly show us whatever version of “real Lestat” they’ve gleaned from the books, and it’ll be up to each individual whether or not they can accept it, because this is the show we’re getting. When they get Lestat right, they get him really right. When they fuck Lestat up, they really fuck him up. Time will tell whether or not the brilliance can keep up with the issues and continue to maintain enough of a balance to make up for the writing blunders.

[williamrikers]

On the subject of consent in recent BLs

In this analysis, I will take a look at several love scenes in recent Thai BLs, how they frame consent and the sexual agency of the characters, and why those matter.

(KinnPorsche deserves its own post: I’m sure people have already written in detail about how much emphasis is placed on issues of consent/non-consent throughout the show and how fundamental consent is to the relationship arcs of both KinnPorsche and VegasPete, and I won’t belabor the point here. Also, special shout-out to The Warp Effect for what it brought to the conversation about gay sex, but TWE isn’t technically a BL so I decided not to include it in this analysis.)

I am going to take a closer look at the following shows in this essay: Not Me, The Eclipse, A Boss And A Babe, Step By Step, and La Pluie.

Not Me and The Eclipse predate the other shows by two years/one year respectively, but I feel it is valuable to include them here because both show very explicit negotiations of consent that I feel are spiritual successors to the wonderful scenes we’ve been getting in the other three shows.

Why am I even writing this? There used to be an unfortunate tendency in the genre to have a power imbalance between the “seme” and the “uke” character, which translated into the seme deciding when to have sex and what kind of sex to have��and even though recently, several shows have done good work in dismantling the seme/uke dynamic and questioning the associated stereotypes, it cannot be denied that the archetypes are still an important part of most BLs, and even in cases where the tropes are played with and questioned, understanding those subversions still requires a knowledge of and familiarity with the original tropes on the part of the audience.

However, gone are the days of Until We Meet Again and Dean’s “I’ve waited long enough, make sure you’re ready.” (I enjoyed UWMA a lot but that was. Yeah. Not Great.) Now, we see characters actually talking about and negotiating their limits, and doing what feels good to them.

Let’s start from the very beginning. Not Me was an absolute trailblazer in this regard, and not mentioning it here would be a gross oversight. The first time Sean and White have sex, it happens in their version of the beach episode. (Which, in Not Me, is the two characters briefly living in a tent inside an abandoned building. This show is the best.) Sean and White are removed from their usual environment and protected from the outside world by two barriers: the walls of the old house and the tent that’s literally enveloping them and giving them a space that is unequivocally theirs, shared, in which neither one of the characters has any sort of power over the other. And what happens in that space when they’re about to have sex is extremely interesting: the first thing Sean asks is whether White is afraid of him, which White denies. The following exchange goes like this: White: "So, what are we doing?" Sean: "What should I do to you?" White: "That’s up to you." (Watch the whole scene here.)

I find this exchange incredibly meaningful because this already turns the seme/uke dynamic that can be found in a lot of other shows on its head. OffGun as a branded pair can easily be stereotyped into the seme/uke dynamic just because of their physical appearances, and clearly spelling out that both characters have agency in this scene is incredibly important.

And then it gets better! Sean assumes that White is sexually inexperienced (which is not true but the fact that White was actually in a relationship with a woman back in Russia never comes up again after the pilot episode, so maybe the show expects us to assume this, too), and suggests they try different things and White can tell him what he likes and doesn’t like. Compared to the stuff we’re getting now, this scene isn’t very high heat at all, but it’s one of my favorite intimate scenes ever because them asking each other “Do you like this?” after every kiss, every touch, is so incredibly unique and transports a wonderful sense of figuring out sexual pleasure together, as a couple.

Sex in Not Me is not something one character does to another, it is something that is discovered and shared together, and we even get an afterglow scene in which they gently tease each other about their fast beating hearts. (And don’t get me started on the importance of White choosing to ask Sean whether Sean is okay with White not being like Black in that moment right before they have sex, because he doesn’t actually want to have sex with Sean as Black! He wants to discover and share intimacy with Sean as White, as himself, not as his brother! The layers!)

Anyway, I think that scene paved the way for a lot of the conversations around consent we’re now getting in BL, just because it is so explicitly, unashamedly putting forward a definition of sexuality that has nothing to do with one character actively giving and the other passively receiving, but frames intimacy as something that is built together. (More on giving and receiving later!)

Now, moving on to The Eclipse. I decided to include the first time Akk and Aye have sex for a different reason: while we don’t really see them actually talking about consent, we see them practicing non-verbal consent. Let me explain. Akk’s and Aye’s whole thing is teasing each other. At first, Aye is usually the one doing the teasing, but Akk gets the hang of it towards the end of the show and teases his boyfriend right back. When they’re in Akk’s childhood bedroom together, Aye clearly alludes to the fact that he thought they might use this opportunity to have sex for the first time, which Akk pretends not to understand, all while alluding to it himself. I love this guy. (Watch the whole scene here.) Anyway, Akk says he wants to sleep, lies down and once again, tells Aye jokingly he just wants to sleep, clearly expecting Aye to do what other BL protagonists do at that point and not take no for an answer (sidenote: I HATE the “saying no as foreplay” trope with a passion and as far as I’m concerned it should die already).

However, Aye is not like other BL love interests, and he backs off. He stops touching Akk, lies down with his back to Akk, showing Akk that he takes him by his word: if Akk says he wants to sleep, Aye is going to let him do just that. So now, it’s on Akk to say that, no, that’s not what he meant, can Aye please come back to cuddle. And then Akk is the one to escalate from cuddling to kissing, which is extremely important: we know that Aye has been ready to have sex with Akk since forever, it’s Akk who’s been having hangups about intimacy this whole time.

They don’t put consent into so many words on this show, but Aye shows Akk that he respects his limits and that Akk only has to tell him he doesn’t want to do something and Aye will take him at his word.

So, these are, to me, two foundational scenes of establishing consent: one that shows consent as something that is established verbally, as an ongoing conversation, and one that shows consent as something that is established physically, by showing your partner that you respect their choices and limits by way of simply acting accordingly.

Now, let’s get into the fun part: scenes we got so far in 2023. I’m writing this post on the 13th of June, and I’m sure this year still has some great things in store for us, especially because Step By Step and La Pluie are both ongoing and neither of the main couples are actually together yet at time of writing. However, they’ve both already given us AMAZING scenes on the topic of consent, so I feel it is worthwhile to write about those already.

I want to start off by talking about A Boss And A Babe.

Let me just preface this by saying that the intimate scenes in ABAAB are some of my all time favorites in BL ever, because in them, sex is something that is just so normal. When Gun and Cher have sex, we don’t see them very passionate, excited, reluctant or wide-eyed innocent (which are some of the emotions traditionally associated with sex in BL). On the contrary, in every single scene that shows them being intimate, both characters are incredibly calm. They’re certainly happy to be with each other, but in a subdued way. Someone described their second intimate scene as them seeming like they’ve been married for a few years. They’re both just… incredibly normal about having sex with each other. It’s simply something they like to do together. It’s a part of their romance but it’s not more or less important than any other aspects of their lives.

And consent is at the very heart of it.

When Gun and Cher have their first time, we see Gun explicitly asking for consent two times: first, “Can I kiss you?”, then, “Can I do more?” The second one even comes with the promise that if Cher says no, Gun will immediately go to sleep without mentioning it again. And then it is on Cher to say yes, to pull Gun close and kiss him to show him that he is comfortable with taking things further. (In the show, these two questions were shown apart from each other, I cut together a version of the whole First Time Scene in its entirety, watch it here.)

Now, things get more interesting: the second intimate scene shows Cher initiating the encounter (watch the whole scene here). Cher pretty consistently falls into the uke category, both physically and as far as characterization is concerned, but he’s certainly not shy in the bedroom. And this time, he’s the one who asks for consent from Gun: Gun asks “You’re starting it?” and Cher’s response is “Can I?” Despite him being framed physically lower than Gun, basically at Gun’s mercy, he still seeks confirmation that Gun is okay with the way things are going. Not to overstate it, but to me, this feels revolutionary. Once again, we’re being shown that sex is something two people do together, as a shared activity, and that the “seme” character isn’t expected to just be up for it. He, too, has the right to say no.

On this show, sexual agency is taken extremely seriously, and it is clear that both Gun and Cher give each other space to decide what they’re comfortable doing. This is shown in non-intimate scenes as well: there are so many moments on ABAAB in which the characters negotiate physical touch and closeness, asking each other for hugs before actually hugging each other, Cher leaning on Gun’s shoulder in the car but not allowing Gun to touch him because that’s not what he’s comfortable with in that moment, and so on. (The only exception to this otherwise pretty consistent rule is the kiss in the car scene, which I’m still extremely confused about because it seems to go completely against Gun’s character. Who knows what happened there.)

Of course, the fact that so much emphasis is placed on negotiation and consent isn’t surprising on a show that has such obvious kink undertones and whose Our Skyy 2 entry basically consisted entirely of Dom/sub roleplay at work—I’m just saying, I think someone on the writing team is way into BDSM and knows all about the importance of enthusiastic consent from all parties involved, and I would like to send them flowers.

Step By Step hasn’t really reached the point where we can analyse the dynamic between the main couple (although we can take some educated guesses based on the interactions we’ve seen so far). However, last week’s episode had an extremely important scene between Pat and Put: Pat wanting to have sex with Put, then changing his mind mid make-out (watch the whole scene here). I really like the way this scene was done. No matter how shitty Put treats Pat at times, in this instance, he immediately understood and respected Pat’s change of mind without Pat even saying or explaining anything—at the end of the episode, Put says to Pat that Pat should tell Put when he feels ready to have sex. (We already know this will never happen because of course, Pat and Put are not endgame, but I do appreciate the sentiment.)

BLs rarely include a whole storyline in which the protagonist is in an actual, serious romantic relationship with someone other than his endgame love interest (hi Moonlight Chicken!), or if they do then just to up the angst factor. In this case, however, I feel that this scene raises our expectations for Jeng even further: if the guy who is definitely not a romantic match for Pat treats Pat with this much respect in the bedroom, then Jeng has to do at least that and then some. I do feel confident that Jeng won’t disappoint in this regard, but it’s fascinating to see a show frame this kind of respect as the absolute baseline minimum, with the endgame love interest expected to do even better.

Now, the one you’ve all been waiting for. The one that made me write this whole essay in the first place: La Pluie.

Oh boy. Where to start.

A week ago, we got an incredible make-out scene on Saengtai’s floor, which ended in Patts stopping the encounter because he could tell Tai wasn’t really comfortable taking things further—@bengiyo talked about that scene in detail here. And then, three days ago, La Pluie gave us the most unique, trope-defying, timeline-changing blowjob scene of all time, and I want to talk about it.

Tai and Patts are making out on their bed, Tai is not ready to go “all the way” and stops Patts from undressing him. We see a very realistic frustrated reaction from Patts, who nevertheless immediately stops and accepts Tai’s wishes—it is clear that Patts does not expect things to go any further at this point, and that he won’t pressure Tai into anything.

And then, Tai offers to blow him.

(Unfortunately, this show is only on iQiyi so I can't link to it, but you can get a good impression of the scene here.)

I mentioned the concepts of giving and receiving earlier: other people have said this more eloquently than me, but there is a tendency not only in BL but also in wider society to view sex in terms of giving and receiving, with a lot of expectations and stereotypes attached to the roles during different sexual acts. On other shows, that blowjob might be framed as a consolidation or an apology, something that the giver does out of a sense of obligation without enjoying it much. Not so on La Pluie! Tai is shown incredibly happy and satisfied afterwards, both when they’re sleeping next to each other, as well as on the morning after (see also @ginnymoonbeam's post about that here). Tai offered to blow Patts because he simply wanted to, not motivated by guilt or anything of that sort. And he genuinely enjoyed it! In the post I linked above, @bengiyo points out that La Pluie consistently centers queer desire, or more specifically in this case, male desire for a male body; much in the same way that the camera fucking loves Force’s body on ABAAB: the sensuality of the skin, the hands, the abs, the flat chests, the broad backs and shoulders of these men is explicitly emphasized, and Tai’s desire for a dick in his mouth is made absolutely crystal-clear. Of course, since this is a TV show and not a porno, we only see Patts’s thumb in Tai’s mouth instead of his dick, but the imagery, the implications, are clear as day.

And it is such a gentle framing, too: Patts caresses Tai’s lip lovingly, Tai opens his mouth slowly, seductively, then faces Patts’s crotch with a soft look on his face. We do get a clear sense of this encounter as tender, and gentle, and most of all, desired. Tai’s queer desire is at the heart of this scene, and at the heart of the afterglow scene as well. He wanted this man’s dick in his mouth, openly suggested it, showed Patts he was sure about his decision after Patts asked him whether he was, and ended up clearly happy and satisfied with the sex they had. This post, also by @bengiyo, goes into more detail on that.

This, once again, shows us sex as a conversation rather than a series of predetermined acts, shows us sex as a shared activity, as something that can be wonderful and intimate and make people happy without following what society views as “the correct steps”. I think this is extremely important because one part of queer identity is figuring out one’s own relationship to sexuality, one’s own desires and needs, and BLs that ignore this aspect fall a little short in my opinion. Sure, those men are kissing, but do they experience queer desire? Do they experience joy in their queer desire?

For me personally, a show that does not shy away from these questions is a lot more meaningful than a show that does, and consent is at the heart of it all. By framing sex as a conversation, as something that is built and shared together, the shows I looked at here are actively positioning themselves against the idea that there should be predetermined roles for partners during sex, and instead suggest that queer joy can be found in communication and consent. Understanding sex and intimacy as something that is built together, with both partners as equals in conversation, is just as radically queer as a man waking up with a smile on his face after giving his soulmate a blowjob the previous night.

And quite honestly, a male character who clearly, passionately, unquestioningly communicates that he wants a dick inside of him—that is incredibly sexy. But maybe that’s just me.

[mademoiselle-cookie]

While Edwin is acting like an asshole to an actual 16yo who was just possessed by a demon, lost her memories and had nowhere to go, Charles was a dick to Edwin there.

He knows that Edwin doesn't like change, he knows he's not good with people, but he still decided, on his own and without Edwin's consent, to allow Crystal to stay with them. Charles is not the only one leading the agency, they both are and this kind of decisions should ABSOLUTELY be discussed before. Especially when one is clearly against even before this choice was formulated.

It's not like there weren't any other options for Crystal : they could have gone to the police and say she lost her memories (they probably know her already btw, thanks to her previous angelic behaviors), they could have asked other psychics (they're all probably adult given how Charles talked abt them)...

Many options except the one who will unnerved Edwin the most (and there probably many of us who would have the same reaction as him), but Charles is so excited that he tunnel-vision on Crystal and basically ignores Edwin's feelings (that he knows came partially from his traumas from Hell)

I will go as far as saying that Edwin and Crystal began this bad bc of Charles. Yes, Crystal - with her powers (she can do things he can't no matter his amount of knowledge or his time of pratice) and personnality - is a menace for Edwin's way of thing and self-esteem. But the biggest issue came from Charles behavior. Charles who's so clearly crushing on Crystal, Charles who's always taking her side, Charles who ignores Edwin's feelings and traumas and forces things on him he clearly doesn't want. Charles who talked about his more private feelings to a stranger but never to Edwin.

Charles has his own traumas and we can't expect him to cater to everyone and to always have the perfect reactions. But when you see Edwin's reaction to Niko, it's the day and night. Yes, Niko has a more calm attitude (the first thing she did wasn't to insult the name the boys are so fond of) and doesn't have powers that make her a competition to Edwin. But he accepted her almost immediately, he's never bitchy to her, he supports her and her traumas, they spends time together...

I'm honestly surprised Crystal is not a bit bitter at Edwin for the different treatment of her and Niko.

In conclusion, imperfect teenagers acting like imperfect teenagers

[rei-ismyname]

Magneto joins the Young Avengers part 2

After a while traipsing through Transia and picking up Pietro, the squad find Wanda. Except she's a Doombot. Seems like a pretty solid clue as to where she is.

Upon heading to Latveria, it comes to light that Wanda is living with DOOM and they're getting married tomorrow. She also has amnesia, so even if she were inclined to marry DOOM (she's not) she can't consent anyway. The plan is for Magneto to cause a ruckus and everyone else stealthily extract her.

Checking in with the Avengers, suddenly they're very interested in finding Wanda. Nobody gives a reason, except for Wolverine who wants to kill her and Billy, and Wonder Man who wants to prevent that. Logan engages in childish dickwaving.

'Guess I hit a nerve' says the man doing his best to antagonise everyone and murder women and children. He has no business accusing anyone of having inappropriate feelings for a teammate. Iron Man says something clever - 'we don't need Wolverine for this mission.' No, you don't. In fact none of you should be involved.

Anyway, they storm Latveria and then accuse everyone else of starting an international political crisis. I don't see anyone else acting with a mandate from the UN and US. Also, they did bring Wolverine. Surprisingly, he tries to kill Wanda.

You'd think Logan would be sympathetic to her situation, and think twice before demonising others for killing people. Nope.

The Avengers 'take command' of the situation and scold everyone for attracting Doombots. Nobody mentions that they didn't come out until the Avengers did. They take issue with Magneto fighting DOOM for some reason, as if one of the worst people around isn't taking advantage of his daughter's amnesia to marry her. I swear I'm not cherry picking here - The Avengers just escalated a situation that was in hand.

The Young Avengers, Wanda and Magneto leave them to it and look to reverse Wanda's M Day spell. Patriot ruins it, arguing that they should wait for the Avengers. Wanda gets her memory back and resurrects the Avengers she killed. Speed is disillusioned with this whole thing and Wanda is bombarded with so much aggression she decides to kill herself. Before she can, Beast asks her to try reversing the spell again and Magneto agrees. They need a volunteer though. Meanwhile, The Avengers are rushing to get to Wanda, because only they are allowed to fuck things up. They even bring Logan.

A volunteer is found, and Rictor's powers are restored! Good news, right? Well, the X-Men are still pretty mad about M-Day tbh. At least they have the excuse of massive trauma, but they're definitely being dicks. They manage to avoid the spell in favour of unspecified punitive punishment.

LOL. This, the Avengers object to, claiming they take care of their own. That's objectively false, but there's a hierarchy to the Marvel universe and The Avengers must always look better than the X-Men. Magneto is the most reasonable person here by far, and for some reason The Avengers shit on all their allies. Demonising Wanda until someone else starts doing it, ignoring that they have a legitimate grievance and that this problem is the Avengers' fault.

Next time, Hawkeye raping Wanda is played for humour, the superheroes fluff the situation, Wanda finally gets some agency, and this shitstorm concludes. Children get their souls crushed.

[vintageandroid]

More Actionable Things You Can Do

I just want to mention Jay Kuo's substack The Status Kuo, which not only updates on current events with the Federal Government and context, but also, critically, shares things that can be done and specific issues to address with your representatives, and also highlights things that are being done or have been done.

Mostly I wanted to link to his most recent one, which is lengthy but ends with some serious suggestions of things citizens should speak to their reps about.

tl;dr: put the blame on Musk right now and not Trump; urge your Dem congress members to join Senators Schatz and Kim:

[explanation + scripts below the "keep reading" cut, for both Dem reps and GOP reps.]

The second tactic is one suggested by the recent statements of Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey. Both senators focus on the fact that while the Democrats are out of power in government, they are not without power to slow or even stop the seizure of the financial levers of the government by the Trump White House. Sen. Schatz declared last week that he would use his right to withhold unanimous consent on all new state department appointees unless and until USAID was restored as an agency. This was a tactic used by Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Tommy Tuberville to stall Biden-era appointments. Such a move would force each and every Trump appointment to go through a full round of regular process before the Senate, instead of batching groups of appointees through. It would mean the GOP Senate would have to decide between using its time to pass things like the budget or get appointments through. Other Democratic senators should be urged to join Schatz in his protest so that he is not a single target who is easier to bombard. Sen. Kim also drew attention by suggesting over the weekend that he’s open to shutting down the government in order to protest the takeover of government systems by DOGE and the shuttering of whole agencies like USAID. Normally, it is the GOP that has threatened shutdowns when it didn’t get its way politically. Here, all the Democrats would have to do is pledge to do nothing—not lift one damn finger—to help the GOP pass its budget or lift the debt ceiling… unless the White House backs off of its attempts to shut off the money and furlough government workers. The government faces a March 14, 2025 deadline to enact a new budget. Barring something truly wild, it almost certainly will have to lift the debt ceiling to do so. Hardliners within the GOP inevitably will use the opportunity to try and extract concessions by way of drastic spending cuts to popular programs. If the Democrats band together behind Sen. Kim’s call to “Just Say No,” as it were, then the budget disaster will be entirely in the hands of the GOP.

(Excuse the long-ass excerpt; there's even more in the link above.)

I encourage you to call or write to your senators, especially if you have dem senators, and encourage them to unite with these two.

Let me give you a simple script.

If you're calling, begin by stating your name and your zip code, and if you're leaving a voice mail, include your address and, perhaps, a phone number. Then, choose one of the bracketed sections:

As a constituent, I urge Senator [Name] to band with [Senator Schatz]/[Senator Kim]'s call to [withhold unanimous consent]/[shut down the government] in protest of Musk's attacks on government agencies. Voters want to see you taking action right now. Thank you for your time.

That's it! That's all you have to say! You can reword that to suit your preferences better, but the important thing is, you don't have to be eloquent, you just have to tell them what actions you want them to take.

Calling is usually better than emailing, but a) the phone lines are melting to bits because they are getting 1500 calls a minute instead of the usual 30-50 and b) emailing is better than nothing. If you can, call, but if you can't, email! Simple as that.

If you have a Republican senator/rep, your focus should be on Musk. This isn't a perfect script, but let me try. Again, if you're calling, give your name and zip code (and if it's a voicemail, your address and maybe phone number), and then:

I want to express to Senator/Representative [whoever] that I believe Elon Musk has too much influence over the current administration given that he was not elected and his actions seem largely self-serving. I urge Senator/Representative [whoever] to take action against his rushed and clumsy dismantling of government agencies. Thank you.

Again, feel free to reword that and if anyone has a better script with more specific actions, feel free to add that.

Also, please remember to be polite to staffers and to be brave and do the thing! As I said in my 5Calls post last week, feel free to let me know you contacted someone and I'll tell you how cool you are for it.

[sansculottides]

𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗦 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗜𝘁𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁 𝗙𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀

On June 14, 2024, international news agency Reuters exposed a secret disinformation campaign by the US Department of State meant to discredit Chinese-manufactured COVID-19 vaccines amongst Filipinos. The US anti-vax fake news campaign ran from 2020 to 2021, and involved the use of dummy social media accounts posting false and unscientific information about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines, as well as weaponizing pervasive racist conspiracy theories that the COVID-19 pandemic was created and spread by the Chinese government.

We demand an immediate investigation by the Philippine government on the matter, and for decisive action to be taken by the government to hold the US accountable for its deception campaign against the Filipino people. The Reuters exposé has uncovered a clear national security threat to the Filipino people. The US carried out its fake news campaign at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was ravaging the Filipino people, and worsened already widespread anti-vaccination beliefs amongst the public.

We are appalled by the glaring lack of Philippine media coverage on the Reuters exposé. An international scandal has just been uncovered. How can truth be spoken to power, and how can political action be taken by citizens, if the media does not play its part? Silence is silence, whether due to the threat of repression or the suffocating consensus by media capitalists that unsavory things be left unsaid. We call on all media workers, whether working at mainstream media organizations, independent media, social media, or campus media, to take the lead themselves and focus public attention on this issue.

The year-long campaign clearly demonstrates the untrustworthiness of the US as a strategic diplomatic and military partner of the Philippines and of all Global South countries. The campaign was initiated by the Trump administration and was first focused on the Philippines. Later on, the project was expanded further into Central Asia and the Middle East. It took the Biden administration three full months to end the globalized and state-sponsored mass disinformation project.

This issue is not just a problem of specific administrations. The year-long campaign should remind the workers and the masses of the Philippines and the world that the US remains the world’s foremost imperialist power. Its overriding foreign policy concern is the maintenance of its dominant global military and economic position, and its means are deception and force.

The US’ covert effort to corrupt public discourse in the Philippines should prompt the Marcos administration to question the intentions of its close diplomatic and military ally. The disinformation campaign was motivated primarily by the US’ geopolitical rivalry with China, which has, since the former’s Pivot to Asia in 2012, increasingly taken on a more militarized and antagonistic form. US military and intelligence agencies are manufacturing consent in the Philippines to win the hearts and minds of the Filipino masses in its effort to overpower China through military means. This is its real goal, and not to aid the Filipino people to address Chinese maritime aggression.

The US has no legitimacy to pose as a champion of international laws and norms and as a partner to secure the Philippines’ national sovereignty. It conducted its campaign to serve its own geopolitical interests with no regard for the immense need of the Philippines to vaccinate its citizens against the pandemic. Once again, Washington D.C. has Filipino blood on its hands.

US interference in Philippine public life cannot be left without consequences. Philippine foreign policy should pivot away from its longstanding reliance on the US and towards ASEAN, and away from addressing Chinese aggression through militarized means and towards regional multilateral diplomacy. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙩𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙋𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙥𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙤𝙣𝙡𝙮 𝙗𝙚 𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙁𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙨. 𝙄𝙢𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙣𝙤 𝙛𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙨!

📷 AP

Reposted from SPARK - Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (Union of Progressive Youth), a socialist youth organization in the Philippines.

[itsclydebitches]

There's something I find pretty messed up about Little's part of the story. Penny is dead. The story puts focus on this and how it's effecting Ruby and is why Little's death is what breaks Ruby. The volume ends though with Little coming back so it's a happy end, right? Except Penny is still dead and never coming back. And they are going back to a world where people die when they are killed. It's like "Forget about your dead friend cause we got one where your actions don't have consequences."

Yeah, that's an issue with the Ascension arc as a whole. As discussed previously, we're already starting from a place of confusing messages because the world can't decide what Ascension exactly is. Some beings lose all their memories and (arguably as a result) their sense of self. Some just seem to get cool upgrades. Some change in such monumental ways they probably can't go back to their old life even if they wanted to (can Somewhat ever live with the other mice again now that they're like fifty times their size?). And some, Like Ruby, undergo no changes at all except a convenient and ambiguous ~emotional clarity~

So Ascension is a catch-all "Anything could happen" situation where all options, no matter how shady they appear to the audience, are eventually presented as #good by the show... except I'm 100% sure they only come across that way BECAUSE they happen to side characters we're not invested in/are leaving behind. Would people honestly have been happy if Ruby:

Completely forgot who she was (King)

Got some crazy physical upgrade that would fundamentally change the power dynamics of the show/other her in Remnant/imply that she's a faunus to strangers if she got some animal trait (the Caterpillar/Somewhat)

Came away with a new "purpose" and decided she didn't want to be a Huntress anymore (the Paper Pleasers)

There's a reason Ruby did not change except to inexplicably regain her confidence because the show and on some level recognizes that these options are indeed an awful kind of "death," something that would be bad to do to your main character (baring a monumental shift in the show). When we talk about the importance of growth (in real life and in fiction) we're referencing a context in which a person changes slowly over time, adapting to each change in a natural way, all of it a combination of environmental factors and personal agency. To just have some magical tree instantly change you without consent, making you "better" by its own, undefined parameters... that's not wonderful, that's horrifying! But as you say, even if we overlook all that and come at Ascension from a direction the story wants, accepting and praising such an aspect of this world... Team RWBY doesn't live in that world. What did they learn from this then? Yay for people who live in alternate realities because they get to become "better" rather than dying? Good for them, but our friends are still dead and our lives are still on the line.

If RWBY wanted this arc they not only needed to reeeeeally clean up what Ascension is/how it works, but decide on the message they're trying to impart. Because what we got, on a literal level, is Ruby being depressed enough to choose ending (that version of) her life, instead being rewarded for that choice by a pantheon she's kinda fighting against (in a way that both skips her development and ignores every other implied rule of Ascension), and is returning to a world where none of this matters because death is a Permanent Thing That She's Going to Be Seeing a Whole Lot More of Soon.

Penny is dead. Many other allies are dead. Weiss' Kingdom is gone. Salem is set to exterminate the rest of Remnant, and instead of dealing with any of that Volume 9 gave Team RWBY a (literal) fantasy world where everything is just fine, actually. Wouldn't it be cool if no one actually died and whenever it seems like they did they'd just come back as an upgraded version of themselves? Yeah! Too bad that's not the reality they're heading back to.

Honestly, the way to clean up all of Volume 9 for me is to slap a "It was just a dream" disclaimer on it. Volume 10 we learn that Ruby had a crazy, contradictory fever dream post-battle in which the biggest trauma she's ever faced is magically fixed by her subconscious? Yeah, that tracks. More than taking Volume 9 at face value.

[eclecticwordblender]

this is a genuine question im sorry if it comes off as weird but how do you feel about gay porn? like when there are 0 women involved in the making. also let us assume just for the sake of the argument that is ONLY about “legal” content involving adults

i think this is an entirely hypothetical and baseless situation to consider because under patriarchy the sex industry inevitably oppresses women. the problem is not the kind of pornography, it is the fact that the industry at large mistreats, dehumanises, traumatises and exploits women at large.

for the sake of argument if we were to consider a society where all misogyny magically disappears, even in those arguments, pornography is objectively bad.

pornography or the sex industry in general treats human bodies as commodities which can be bought and sold. it inherently gives some people material power over others because it allows them the power to withhold resources from others until their consent is purchased.

biologically trans/intersex/androgynous people are also coerced into pornography/sex industry and it is just as bad. in rare cases, men are also forced into pornography/sex industry which is not even half as bad but still extremely terrible nonetheless.

males do have more agency, power and autonomy in the sex industry especially when they are all the producers and directors, often overarching with the actors in pornographies. nonetheless i do not think it is okay to commodify any human’s body whatsoever. if men are resorting to performing in pornography because they need to to support themselves, it won’t be as bad as women have it in the industry but it will still be exploitation of the vulnerable. treating some humans as less human than others.

also, not to mention how pornography in general has proven to affect relationships negatively and increase abuse and violence between sexual partners.

[of course, i do care about women who suffer in and because of the sex industry way more than any of the aforementioned demographics. i still care about these issues, it is just that women’s problems in this context are more pressing, widespread, oppressive and harmful]

i hope i answered your question.

[moistvonlipwig]

not related to the latest ep bc i haven't watched it yet, this is just about the bad takes i keep seeing. but it truly is amazing to me how many people apparently did not watch the scene where helena is told she has to "give mark helly r". the profound horror of that statement, that despite all her apparent power in the company her body is still not her own, she must still submit to a man's sexual desires, seems to be lost on many of you. in fact you could read helena and helly as having very similar motivations in pursuing sex with mark -- in both cases, sure, there's attraction, but there is a very strong argument to be made that both helena and helly have sex with mark as a way to reclaim agency, to say: well, if this is going to happen, it's happening on my terms. helena is an oppressor, but unlike the other oppressors at lumon, she is also severed, also oppressed. for eight hours every day she has no control over her body, and while we don't know how voluntary it was for her to initially undergo severance, we know that in s2 she resisted going back downstairs, that she is terrified of helly who can do anything to her body and helena cannot stop her. the entire conceit of severance robs both parts of the self of consent: the innie cannot consent to their creation, existence, or destruction, or any of their outie's activities; the outie has more power, but still cannot consent to any of the innie's activities. and at least in s2 helena's choice to go back downstairs was coerced, so not even all of the outies consent to their own activities. this is a profound commentary on how exploitation, labor, and gender affect consent; yet so many people watched 2x04 and went "wow helena is A Rapist" as if this was the first time the issue of sexual consent between innies vs outies had ever occurred to them. and then these same people watched 2x06 and did not recoil at all at the sex scene between mark and helly that was not consented to by helena, that was in fact the fulfillment of the odious burden laid on helena in 2x02 to "give mark helly r". like sorry if you want to have a grown up conversation about how severance engages with the concept of consent i'm all for it but if all you want to do is scream and cry about how helena is A Rapist then um. well i just think you're very stupid

[panicroomsammy]

Sam Winchester, queer coding, and CSA themes

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time but what finally got me to write it down was this post about Sam and queer coding. For this reason (and that this got ridiculously long) I will not be restating all of the points made in that post, though I do agree with them.

I think the reason so many people refuse to see that Sam is queer coded is that he is queer coded in unpalatable ways, including being csa coded. I am only on season seven, but I am going to try and break down some of the ways that he has been queer coded so far. I must begin by explaining what I mean by queer coding and what coding is in general. When I say the word “queer” I do not necessarily mean “gay” or “bisexual” or any other lgbt label. I mean outside the norm. This is because “queer coding” is not so much about purposefully portraying a character as a certain sexuality, but about othering that character from those around them. Sam is clearly an othered character. We will start, as all things in Supernatural do, with Azazel.

When Azazel makes his deal with Mary that ultimately results in the othering of Sam via his psychic powers, the deals are csa coded in a variety of ways. The most obvious is that he possesses Mary’s father’s corpse to kiss her and make the deal. Hunting families are already incest coded in that it is a secret and something that children raised in it are taught no one outside of their family will understand, and in this case hunting is something Mary is trying very hard to escape. Her love for John (who is also her means of escape) seems to be a love for his “innocence” in the way that he does not know of the supernatural. She tells Dean that what she fears more than anything is her own children being raised into hunting. This is a very typical incestuous family melodrama plot (that I could cite in many academic articles but alas this is a tumblr post). Besides the explicitly incestuous kiss and the familiar plot, there is also the way that Azazel obscures what exactly he is asking for in the deals. When he makes the deal with Mary, he has taken both the familiarity of her family and her route of escape from her. He then offers the escape back to her, in exchange for something. He never tells her what this “something” is. This is a more insidious piece of csa coding. Mary lacks the knowledge necessary to consent to the deal - the same way that a child lacks the knowledge necessary to meaningfully consent to sex. All demon deals in the show are sa coded in that they are extortive and about owning someone and depriving them of autonomy, but in this particular case Mary not knowing what she is consenting to is highlighted. He also phrases is as “permission” (to do what he’s going to do to baby Sam), similar to language of asking for consent and implying that whatever he does that she does not understand she will have allowed so she cannot take issue with it later.

Fast forward ten years. Azazel comes to collect on his deal. Two significant things happen - he feeds baby Sam his blood and he is caught in the act by Mary. Let’s focus first on the latter. Azazel kills Mary because she walked in on him with Sam. The way he talks about this in the show has a stomach turning amount of innuendo to it. Specifically, he says she had to die because “she walked in on us” to Sam. The use of “us” is very clearly supposed to invoke an abuser’s attempt to convince a victim that they did in fact have agency in the situation and were just as active a participant as the abuser, though the audience knows this cannot be the case as Sam was an infant.

When Azazel feeds Sam his blood this is without consent which already gives it a csa implication. The way that he made the deal with Mary in the first place does the same. Then there is the way that Sam feels dirty because of the demon blood in him. “Something that I could not control happened to me as a child and now I feel dirty forever” is glaringly a metaphor for csa. The way that Sam says “so he could bleed in my mouth” made me pause the episode and sit there for a moment because of how much it sounded like a euphemism.

Then Sam becomes addicted to demon blood. The parallels would almost make me laugh if they didn’t make me nauseous. Ruby forces herself on Sam sexually before she starts feeding him her blood, and then later it seems that their routine is feeding Sam the blood and then having sex. This creates an association between demon blood and sex. There is also a more sinister undertone to it if you read with this in mind. Sam’s desire for demon blood invokes, for me at least, queer desire. Unlike what some people on tumblr would like to believe, sexual desire isn’t something that people only start feeling when they turn 18. It isn’t even something that we only start feeling when we reach puberty. Everyone has a human body that is capable of feeling arousal from the moment they are born. This is a simple fact of life, but it is one everyone likes to ignore. With this in mind we can understand the quote “within childhood sexual trauma, the experience of violation may be viewed in the moment as uncontrollably stimulating and overwhelmingly arousing” from this post. When someone experiences violation as a child, they may at the time feel pleasure in it or desire for it to happen again. What I am saying is that his whole life after Azazel fed him his blood maybe Sam, for all his fight against being a freak, deep down felt some kind of desire for something even without knowing quite what. And then Ruby gave it to him. This is an unacceptable desire and therefore coded as queer (sexual) desire. But as it is not just queer desire but one associated with both childhood and non consent, which makes it unpalatable to many people who may otherwise enjoy reading for queerness in subtext, therefore the queerness here is missed.

Sam’s fight against being a freak is also part of his queer coding. Some may see this and take it at face value, but truly what queer person can honestly say they have never tried to fit into heteronormative society? When one is constantly told by society that they are wrong, they will try to change to fit - even if just out of a desire for safety. Sam trying and failing at normality (including the ideal heterosexual romantic relationship which is taken from him with Jess’s death in the first episode) is a glaring example of queer coding.

Yet another aspect of Sam’s sexuality that I believe leads to his queer coding being ignored is that the vast majority of sexual situations we see him in are non consensual and he makes it explicitly clear that he wishes not to be in those situations. The first time we see him in such a situation is the pilot where the woman in white forces herself on him and tells him that he will be unfaithful to Jess. At the time this felt pretty extreme to me for putting in the first episode, even for trying to establish that a character highly values their morality. From there they just don’t stop putting Sam in these situations. The next time this happens is with Meg touching Sam sexually while she has him and Dean tied up with no motivation other than that she wants to. She later possesses him, which is used throughout the show as a sexual assault allegory. The next time I remember something like this happening is Becky groping Sam and refusing to stop when he asks her in season four. Later in season seven she roofies him with love potion and kidnaps him. When Sam and Dean investigate the mental hospital in season five, one of the patients grabs both Dean and Sam and makes out with them at different times. While Dean goes with it and does not resist, Sam tries to push the girl away. While neither of these situations had consent, it is much easier for the audience to swallow Dean’s reaction than Sam’s, as Dean’s reaction plays into the notion that men cannot be sexually assaulted because they should always want to have sex with women, while Sam’s forces one to confront that men are capable of not consenting. In the very next episode a high school boy uses a spell to swap his and Sam’s bodies. While in Sam’s body the boy has sex with a woman. Throughout much of season six I would argue something similar occurs. While I’m a bit fuzzy in the metaphysics of what exactly is happening here, Sam is functionally anywhere from two to three people over the course of the season. Despite the fact that they are all technically Sam, I would argue (as a system myself) that any one person within a system using the body to do things that the others would stop them from doing given the chance is non consent. We also know that soulless!Sam slept around with a lot of people during that year and a half. Again, as a system, I would say that is noncon. There is also the fact that during all of this Sam-in-hell (soul!Sam?) was being tortured and more than implied to be raped by Lucifer. All of this makes Sam and sexuality a much less palatable thing to focus on than Dean and sexuality. (Though Dean has his fair share of sa coding as well he covers it up with jokes that make it easier to ignore. But that’s another post.)

The bottom line is that Sam’s demon blood addiction is coded as queer in that it is a desire that is taboo, but it is a bit too taboo for most fans to enjoy or even acknowledge, leading them to voice outright denial of it, with the unpalatable themes of rape surrounding Sam and sexuality adding to the lack of desire to discuss this aspect of the character.