#their stories matter and their culture matters

[alys-gay-parade]

I understand where this argument comes from, but we fucking need copyright

Let me tell you a little bit about my culture to explain:

Tlingit people are very protective of our work. Our art is sacred to us! So much so that our stories are actually protected under a culture-wide copyright.

Only Tlingit people are allowed to make Tlingit art and tell Tlingit stories. These copyrights are legally binding and usually family-owned. Why? Because colonizers are awful and will fake our art or use our stories against our will.

The most obvious form of this is the PNW Native Barbie. When Mattel was trying to design her for their dolls of the world collection, they had to consult with the cultural council to make sure the art on her garb wasn't Too Tlingit. Otherwise, they would be breaking copyrights due to the mass distrubution of the toy. If the guy running the company or the designers themselves were Tlingit, then that wouldn't matter. But because nobody on the dev team was Tlingit, they were pushing a hard boundary with Tlingit copyright law if they Didn't comply with the cultural council.

I agree that copyright shouldn't be in the hands of the distribution, such as Disney or Whatever. In an ideal world, the copyright belongs to the family of the guy that came up with the thing.

But never get rid of copyright, because it's the only thing keeping companies from owning EVERYTHING they distribute.

IP holders are bloodsucking parasites and should be treated as such. imagination landlords

[youcouldmakealife]

SOTM: Alexei Konstantinovich, Vladimir Petrov, Thomas/Anton; making polite conversation

Was aiming to get COTT out today, but twas not meant to be (tomorrow!), so please have a SOTM that's a full 500 words longer than it's supposed to be as recompense.

I'm not going to include a warning, per se, but I will remind people banjos is, was, and always will fundamentally be a lower case series, and so is Alexei Konstantinovich's biography (at least the bits that would never make it to the page), and that internalized homophobia is one of, if not the biggest reason why.

For the prompt: Alexei runs into Vladimir, Anton, and Vinny at an international hockey event, where Vlad introduces Vinny as Anton’s partner.

“You should have warned me,” Alexei says in Russian.

He had to wait for Vladimir’s son to leave first. His Russian’s the sort you pick up when the only time you hear your mother tongue is from your own mother, and all it took to lose him earlier was to speak quickly.

Not that he’d been trying to, originally — he’d been telling Anton a story about his father he was almost certain he hadn’t told him yet, Vladimir cutting him off with laughing interjections, and Anton started looking confused halfway through.

Alexei was in the midst of saying it all again, slower, over Vladimir’s increasingly enthusiastic efforts to disrupt him, but then Anton’s — Thomas came by, and they had, of course, all switched to English, a language none of them learned from their mothers, judging by his accent.

“You’re from Quebec,” Alexei said after he introduced himself, dropping out of their conversational English into a lilting French when he said his own name. Stupid, stupid.

“Northern Ontario,” he said, then smiled, like Alexei hadn’t just done the equivalent of — he doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember much about the nuances, what is and isn’t considered offensive, just that it was complicated. Complicated enough that no explanation he received made sense, but then, how could it? French values explained in fractured English to a culture shocked Russian boy who barely spoke a word of either language back then, who barely retains a word of either now.

“I apologize for the error,” Alexei said, or something like it, in his rusty, ancient French, and Thomas smiled even wider then, said, “no problem at all,” and it took Alexei longer than he’d like to admit to realize that he’d said it not in English, or in French, but in the same halting Russian Vladimir’s son spoke.

You don’t learn a language for just anybody. Alexei spoke paragraphs to the media in English by the end of his time in Vancouver — essays, if you added them all up — but he finds himself losing his place in the most mundane conversations, forgetting the very basics — the words for weather, for fruits and vegetables, for days of the week, for emotions.

Some English words are hardwired — if he stubs his toe, ‘fuck’ is still the word that leaves his mouth, but then, he knows a half dozen others who are the same, and some of them never left Russia. Paragraphs of English, he spoke. Essays. All gone now.

He still watches movies in English, though only the stupid ones where the plot doesn’t matter. His wife watches all the TV shows, rich women with too much time on their hands. English is what he defaults to with old teammates, contacts in the hockey world. The language of business, at least the business of international hockey.

And yet, it turns out, Alexei held on to his French a little tighter.

Alexei doesn’t understand at first, the way it’s put. First, the word itself, ‘partner’, then him trying to remember where he knows it from. Which is hockey. It takes a moment, because he was never a defenseman, and yes, Anton is one, he remembers that, but is Thomas? Has anyone said?

It takes even longer to process information when translation is involved. Long enough to make things uncomfortable, long enough for Vladimir make a weak joke about translating it for him, and Anton and Thomas take that as their cue to leave, which, of course, it is.

“You should have warned me,” Alexei says. “I shouldn’t have had to learn that in front of him.”

“You’re in North America,” Vladimir says, looking at the crowd. Alexei isn’t sure if he’s assessing whether any Russians are close enough to overhear them, or he's simply trying to avoid Alexei’s eyes. “It’s legal here. Not that they are, yet. It’s legal here.”

Not that they are, yet. Marriage, then, Alexei's assuming he's referring to, not —

Not that they are, yet. Said so matter of factly, like discussing upcoming vacation plans — something that hasn’t happened, but that he knows is coming. Said like something he’s looking forward to.

“Just because it’s legal—“ Alexei says, but Vladimir looks at him, then, and the rest of the sentence wilts on his tongue, the conversation dying around it. Vladimir nods curtly at him, and Alexei nods back, aware in that moment, Vladimir disappearing into the crowd, that he has lost a friend.

It keeps happening now. Some he lost to simple distance, time, difference. Some are dead now, or doing their best to end up that way, some walk away after detonating a grenade.

Alexei’s known Vladimir since they were kids, practically. Decades, he’s known him, most of his life. The sum of moments they’ve spent together might not add up to much if you put them end to end, some glorious games and a lot of chit chat at public events in the decades afterwards, but Alexei watched his son grow up. Grow into —

This isn’t the place, he thinks. Not for any of this.

He startles when a hand lands on his shoulder, and the hand pulls back as Alexei looks at Anton’s—

“Sorry,” Thomas says, that per-emptory apology that Canadians do, that Alexei always forgets Canadians do until he’s inevitably reminded.

“Excuse me,” is what he says when he repeats it in Russian, that halting, offbeat Russian that he must have learned from Anton, speaking halting Russian of his own, probably explaining himself in English, explaining a language in the tongue of another to someone who speaks neither, at least not well. Though it isn’t the same, really. Anton’s mother tongue may be Russian, but he’s American through and through.

“Are you looking for Vladimir?” Alexei asks, too loud, the English booming out of him, so that a couple and pair of men — who knows, perhaps a couple — look over.

“Oh, no,” Thomas says. “I actually wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh,” Alexei says. “Sorry, my English is—“

“Is French better?” Thomas asks, and Alexei mutely nods. “I just wanted to say—“

Alexei is quickly realizing his French isn’t as good as he thought when Vladimir cuts in again. Takes a lot after that exit, he thinks, but then, Alexei imagines he isn’t the one Vladimir’s attempting to save here, though that’s precisely what he’s doing nonetheless.

“Thomas,” Vladimir says. It’s only thanks to years of tournaments on top of the decades of knowing him that means Alexei knows what Vladimir Petrov sounds like when he's off-balance. Even then he heard precious little of it — thankfully, because whenever he did, it was after their fates had already been sealed.

He glances at Alexei once, glancingly, but Alexei isn’t sure if he sees whatever it is he’s looking for. Puts his hand on Thomas’ shoulder. Paternal, Alexei thinks. Paternal, and with no hesitation beforehand, no frisson of suppressed disgust.

“I can’t find Anton anywhere,” Vladimir says.

“That’s because Anton’s hiding outside,” Thomas says, laughter in his voice. In his eyes too, which catch Alexei’s, fragmentary, before Alexei can look away. “I’m sure he’ll come in as soon as we’re ready to leave.”

“I’m ready now,” Vladimir says, and Thomas, it appears, is right, because Anton appears at his shoulder as if summoned.

“Ready to go?” he asks, and Anton shrugs a shoulder.

Thomas politely tells him how nice it was to meet him, how wonderful is how long he and Vladimir have been friends, how he’s known Anton all his life, either completely oblivious to everyone else's discomfort or doing a masterful job of pretending to be, before they finally take their leave.

Anton looks bigger than the last time Alexei saw him, though of course, that isn’t true, it’s just that Vladimir’s gotten smaller. Alexei too, probably. Now Anton’s bigger than either of them. That boy who’d once been so small his father could fit him in the bowl of the Stanley Cup.

Antosha, who still lets his father’s old teammates call him by his pet name, even though he sulks about it like he’s still a child, clearly not aware that’s the reason they all still do it.

“Anton,” Alexei says, watches Vladimir’s hand come up, hovering over Anton’s shoulder. Shaky now, that hand. He used to have the hands of a surgeon. Though Alexei can’t say shit, can he? Not when they used to talk about his own hands like they were gifted from god.

Alexei he still remembers all the miraculous things he’s done with those hands, memories seared too deep to lose, but gun to his head, he can’t recall the last time those hands had done something good.

“Antosha,” he says, and Vladimir drops his hand as Anton looks back at him.

“I wish you all the best,” he says, or near enough, and Anton ducks his head slightly, mumbling out a goodbye.

Neither of the Petrovs look back again, but Thomas does. He waves one last goodbye, somehow still smiling, and, utterly helpless, Alexei finds himself waving back.

[cherryblossompink303]

Patience S2:05:~The Lobelia girls academy meets their match!~

➼ pairing: Kyoya Ootori x Reader ➼ summary: The lobelia academy returns with a strange proposal ➼ what to expect:  "don't let him have any more power over you" ➼ warnings: n/a ➼ S2:04 / S2:06

As the first day of the cultural festival started you all knew that it was a matter of time before the zuka club showed up, you knew the Lobelia academy had already arrived at Ouran that morning, it was a matter of when not if.

"Tamaki you need to stop pacing you're gonna give me motion sickness" You watch as he does laps up and down the music room. "I don't like this, it's too quiet, they're up to something"

"Maybe after seeing y/n and Kyoya kissing they've given up on the whole 'rescuing y/n from the taint of the host club' mission?" Hikaru shrugs.

"Are you kidding me, did you see benibara at the academy? We barely escaped!" Tamaki cries, staring at the twins in horror. "I must admit from what I know about the Zuka club they don't seem like the type to give up like that...Tamaki's right it is too quiet"

"See!"

As if on cue the door opens, and low and behold the three girls you have come to know as the Zuka club are stood in the door way. "You" Tamaki near growls at the sight of them.

"I knew it!" Hikaru exclaims, the twins standing up, all the host club becoming defensive.

The girls raise their hands "We come in peace"

"I find that hard to believe"

Benibara sighs, slowly approaching the host club, Tamaki tensing up as they approach. As they get closer, benibara raises up a hamper. "We are here to ask for your help"

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The Lobelia Girl's Academy meet their match!

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"What?"

"Please, we need the host club's help"

It is safe to say that the zuka club had very easily rendered the host club speechless. "This must be a trick of some sort, a ploy to lower our guards"

"No trick, we are....well we are desperate"

"And you want our help? If I remember correctly the last time you saw us you were going on and on about how pathetic we are, why would you want our help?"

The girls exchange hesitant glances, in the end Chizuru sighs "Because we are on the verge of getting shut down" Benibara lets out a groan of pain at the words, clutching her chest as she nearly drops to her knees.

"After the performance at Lobelia our fans abandoned us, said that we were a disgrace to the name of the white lily league....they formed their own club, and now the drama department has decided they can only facilitate one club....if we do not prove to be the most popular performance at the cultural festival we will be forced....to disband"

Tamaki's face falls, if there is one thing that will always work against him it is a good sob story.

"And so you're asking for help because...?"

Benibara sighs "It is clear that you all at least have a flare for the dramatic, we can't put on a rival worthy performance with just three people....however we are most interested in..."

The three girls turn to you "Me?" You look at them in skepticism, eyes darting between the zuka club and Kyoya as if to check that this was real.

"You are a brilliant performer maiden, not to mention an incredible singer, you are what can save us"

You raise your hands up to wave it off "Oh no, I am not doing that again, my days on stage are long over" The girls rush over "Please!" They beg.

"How do we know that this is not just another plan to steal y/n away from us again? You don't exactly have a good track record with this type of stuff" Kaoru questions, taking a bite out of a muffin from the girls care package.

"The reason the rest of the club abandoned us because of Benibara trying to kiss y/n against her will, we don't want to make things worse for ourselves" Kyoya's chin picks up, looking the girls up and down for any signs of them lying.

"Y/n?"

"Hell no, why should I help you?"

Tamaki nearly scares the life out of you as he appears behind you "Y/n....their club is going to get shutdown...their family is gonna get torn apart"

"Tamaki they are together im not sure family is the word you should use"

"You said the same thing about the newspaper club and look what happened there"

Tamaki stares at you and Kyoya as if you had just kicked a puppy in front of him. "B-b-but-"

Benibara sighs "Help us and we will owe you, anything, at anytime"

"Oh you don't want to say that with those two here" Hikaru nods to you and Kyoya as you exchange a glance, locking into a silent battle of wits.

"Call it an I owe you and you all swear to not meddle in my love life again and I'll do it"

"Done"

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"what exactly is this performance about anyway?" You ask, the combined forces of the Zuka club and the host club entering the academy's theatre department.

"It's more of a musical thing than the last one, portraying a story through the medium of song"

"Benibara, I am suprised to see you here" A group of girls enter the auditorium. Chin's high as they approach the stage. "It is our time to block out our performance"

"I meant just at the theatre department at all, I would have though that you would have dropped out by now"

"come on you've gotta give them a fighting chance" the words come out of your mouth somewhat involuntarily, you almost do a double take as you realise that you are actually defending them.

"Do I know you? You look familiar"

"Isn't that the girl that Benibara tried to kiss?"

"Why would you help them?"

You freeze at the crowd of girls that has suddenly approached you, throwing question after question at you. Benibara seems to pick up on this, placing a hand on your shoulder "Y/n is a friend of Chizuru's family, she heard of our troubles and decided to help us with the performance"

"But you are the girl who Benio tried to kiss even though you have a boyfriend, right?"

"i....yeah..." With every question that passes the more and more you realise how strange this entire situation is.

The girls surround you "Oh you poor thing, they must be manipulating you again"

"You should come with us, these ladies have no respect"

"Woah" you blink twice at the statement, what was it about Lobelia Academy girls thinking that just because you are doing something that they wouldn't they just assume you are being manipulated?

"I am not, I am helping them save their club as a favour for Chizuru's father as he has strong ties with my and my fiance's companies"

The girls all stare at you with skepticism, in full honesty you hadn't even convinced yourself with that explanation. "Hmm...well she is seemingly here voluntarily...okay benibara, but just know that even with this...peculiar recruitment, you still won't win" the girls walk out with their heads high, you let out a breath that you were unknowingly holding.

"Just so we're clear, once this performance is over with, this is the last time I am helping you with anything"

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You had to admit, while you did not love the situation that you have found yourself in, watching Benibara bark orders at the host club in a desperate attempt to make sure the rest of the host club doesn't look like a heard of elephants in pointe shoes was certainly the silver lining of it all.

"Just so you know...I didn't know about Benibara's plan when you came to Lobelia academy, if i had I would have tried to talk her out of it" You look over to Chizuru, who sits down on the seat next to you in the audience.

"What did you think was going on?"

"In full honesty? We thought that if you got a taste of what Lobelia was like and enjoyed it enough then you may be inclined to transfer, I don't know if you've noticed by now Benio has a bit of a crush on you and we also thought that you were locked in your engagement unwillingly, if we knew you were dating him earlier then it would probably be different"

You sigh "Well Kyoya and I weren't together at that point...or at least not properly, it's confusing, but that is besides the point. It shouldn't matter whether or not I am or was single, surely you can see how staging such a plot, or even the first time demanding that I transfer isn't a normal thing to do"

Chizuru pauses, turning to look at the stage once more. You do the same, watching Tamaki being overly dramatic with each move.

"It's funny, the main grievance that you all have with the host club is that you think they take advantage of girls. When in reality the girls know what they are getting into, and visit willingly, what Benio did was the opposite, and that's why the rest of the Zuka club walked out"

Chizuru pursed her lips, eyes still trained on the stage "I think...that benibara has let the fan club get to her head"

"I think so aswell"

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Day 5 of the Cultural fair

You have been pacing back stage for about an hour now, so long that your step count must have hit a record high. "Hey, it's y/n, isn't it?" one of the girls from earlier approaches you. "Hm? yeah" You make an attempt to calm yourself down and sound normal.

"Is it true that you volunteered to help Benio"

"Well...not exactly, but they came to our club for help and we agreed"

"i see..." She trails off, walking away "Okay?" You raise an eyebrow, turning around as you almost walk directly into Kyoya "Woah" he places his hands on your shoulders, lightly gripping them for stability.

"Sorry Kyoya"

He nods "It's okay, are you alright you feel tense"

"I...I don't like being on stage really... I used to do theatre a lot but i um...had a few bad experiences that caused me to stop, I guess that whenever I return It causes me to think about it."

"yeah...you're cousin clued me in to a bit of it when we came to get you out of Lobelia academy" You nod, taking a deep breath.

"hey, listen, don't give your father the satisfaction of getting your head even now, you have gotten the one up on him, don't let him have any more power over you. You're a good performer, we all know that, you just have to go out there for three minutes and show them what we already know is true"

You sigh "Yeah... okay"

"Good news!" Benio steps backstage, arms in the air as she is surrounded by the girls who had abandoned the zuka club.

"huh?"

"The fight is over, the zuka club is reunited!"

"What?"

"Well we figured that if you forgave Benio then so can we!"

"I have missed you all maidens" The girls start to fawn over Benibara.

You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose "Thats not...okay...sure, does that mean the performance is cancelled?"

"Oh yeah we don't need you anymore" Benio waves you off, not making eye contact.

"Okay"

You and the rest of the host club walk out the theatre department letting out a sigh "you know, it is probably for the best, I'm not sure our dancing skills would have helped the performance anyway" Kaoru mutters.

You laugh "Yeah, probably"

Next time on patience....'Join the black magic club!'

'Nekozawa makes an appearance in the host club, Honey has a secret admirer, and Kyoya's asked for relationship advice? find out next time on Patience!'

We'll see you then!'

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[serenpedac]

Dismiss the invisible by giving it shape

“Some of what keeps us human is to be outside on a dark night, gazing up at stars and galaxies and simply wondering.”* 

This quote made me pause, because of how I feel the same, but also because it made me think about M. M, who sits on the rooftop at night, watching the stars. M, who would choose to be human again if given the option, even though they don’t remember their human life. I feel like M’s human life is not often discussed, which makes sense, as we know next to nothing about it. However, that doesn’t mean it’s meaningless for who they are now, as a vampire.

On an old version of this post, @/agentnatesewellwas wonderful enough to point out that there’s a Patreon special in which M says they feel like they can rely on the stars, because they are a constant, they stay the same. The night sky that they watch those nights at the warehouse is still the same they would have seen when they were human. Maybe M used to look up at the sky as a child, mesmerised by those twinkling stars. Night after night, they would learn to recognise more of the patterns to be found there. And among all those stars, there are the Pleiades, standing out as a bright star cluster.

Six of these stars can be easily seen with the naked eye, but in the myth of the Pleiades, there are seven sisters. The brightness of one of the stars is variable, so models suggest it was brighter many centuries ago, only to then "disappear", giving rise to this legend (side note: see here for an interesting article about how the similar legends re the Pleiades in different cultures may have a shared origin). Although it's not hard to spot several more than 6, some time to adjust your eyes is needed. 

I can imagine that after their turning, overwhelmed by their senses, they go outside to find whatever quiet they can. As they look up at the sky, that once-familiar cluster catches their eye and suddenly, they see that seventh star so very brightly! And not only the seventh, but so many more, their blue-ish light scattered, veiled by an interstellar dust cloud. Their attention captured by the spectacle, they can forget about the loud, fast, itching world for a while. It’s a moment of peace. 

Adding in @/serially-wayhaven's idea here that it might have been N who tells them later about the myth, because I love that so much. As N tells it, there’s this feeling of remembering that M has, as if they’ve heard the story before. Some subconscious part of them remembers having heard this story when they were a child. Even if they don’t remember it, their past has left an imprint on them.

It's often talked about how looking at the stars is looking into the past, but what isn't talked about is how the universe we see reflects its history. In the very early universe, there were small fluctuations in density, called primordial density fluctuations. These increased in size because of the inflation of the universe, and under the influence of gravity, dark matter accumulated into them. These dark matter "wells" also drew in "regular" (baryonic) matter that condensed into galaxies and stars. The structures we see in the universe on large scales, of galaxies being clustered together and being spread across filaments, are all the result of these initial density perturbations leaving their imprint.

The dark matter that can't be detected directly, but underlies the structure we see in visible matter, creates a neat parallel to how M doesn't remember their past, but it did leave its mark on them. It's still visible in them in some way, whether it's through their Greek accent or the fact they can play the saxophone (among other instruments). Much like we can deduce information about the underlying dark matter distribution in the universe from looking at visible matter, we might be able to piece together more about M's past by gathering those crumbs.

* David J. Eicher in Astronomy Magazine, issue August 2024 The title is from I'll Keep You Safe by Sleeping at Last

Other parts in this series: [ N ] [ A ] [ F ]

[xcal1bur25]

The thing is, WotC is making an active effort to not be racist. The game is sword n sorcery fantasy, and that genre is built upon a whole mess of cultural ideas and myths and stereotypes, many of which have not so great origins. Not to mention that while I’d say WotC is trying to not be bigoted, I can’t say the same for the games original creators.

This is the result of them trying to tread the line between keeping the game’s core identity and appeal while rehabilitating and sanding off the more problematic edges where they can. They want their game to be inoffensive and inclusive and fun for everyone (yes, cuz that makes money, but that is what they want). I guarantee there were any number of discussions on “okay, how do we take this concept, that a lot of people find cool and compelling, but has kinda shitty origins, and keep the cool core fantasy of it while removing the shitty parts?”. I know these conversations happened because the way the book is written often makes it really damn obvious they happened. I mean - look at right here. They deliberately evoke the image of Norse Bersekers while also not really specifically being Norse Berserkers in any meaningful way, and also drawing super vaugely from a bunch of different cultural ideas about the sort of person tough enough to survive and thrive out in the wilds. They are super intentional about dancing around any allusion to any sort of real world analogue. It’s extremely “we’re not talking about anyone in particular, this is just a template for the players to project their own ideas about This General Sort Of Guy.”

And you see this in other areas too, in even more blatant ways. You see places where they actively distance themselves not just from the problematic origins of some of the myths and archetypes, but from places where their own previous lore had issues, like with them trying retcon various things about Orcs and Half-orcs. And it’s not like the new lore is perfect, hell I’m sure OP would look at it and go “yikes”, but take a look at what it used to be and gain some perspective on the fact that there was a sincere, serious attempt to look at the problematic aspects of the game and go “okay, so how can we do this in a way that is Less Shit.”

I am not arguing the result is perfect. It’s very obviously not. The end result is absolutely not above criticism. What I’m trying to say is that any good faith criticism should acknowledge the fact that WotC did, in fact, try. Tried and failed? Maybe. But they did try, and it matters that they tried.

There’s a difference between “Writing that is problematic because the writers are assholes” and “Writing that is problematic despite trying not to be”. I think it could do some parts of this site good to acknowledge that sometimes, in certain situations, with certain kinds of writing and stories, the skill floor for avoiding any sort of problematic, unfortunate implications is uh…higher than they sometimes act like it is. And it’s good to recognize the difference between “this writing is problematic because the writer is a shit person with shit beliefs” and “this writing is problematic because the writer has a skill issue.”

this isnt a defence of dnd but I was hoping to ask for clarification on a couple points you made that I dont fully understand and I'm clearly missing something. Namely that you mentioned racial connotations to the barbarian class and colonial connotations to the ranger class. Like I understand the term barbarian has imperial and xenophobic overtones to it but I can't tell where there are specific native stereotypes in it as it appears in dnd

yeah, i mean, a lot of the forms of racism that are at play here are deeply embedded into cultural norms and popular tropes, so if they're not stereotypes that affect you it can be easy to miss them. i'll be going solely by the DNDBeyond official class description: i've highlighted relevant sections

so, first of all, notice the very telling use of the word 'savage'. this is an extremely racialised term that is used against indigenous people to this day. yes, it's used here as an adjective rather than a noun, but in context it's telling, especially alongside 'tribe'--another very racialised word: europeans have 'ethnic groups' or 'nations', indigenous peoples have 'tribes'. 'savage tribe' is how indigenous people have been described for a long time, especially during the height of colonialism. some easy examples i found with a minute's googling:

note also the 'elk herd'. this class description is going to keep hammering home that barbarians are from nomadic backgrounds. a very common defense of the barbarian class is that it's based on norse berserkers--which is true to an extent, especially wrt 'rage', their headline class ability--but while the norse conducted raids and invasions, they lived in settlements. vast swathes of the conceptual makeup of the fantasy barbarian is derived from the colonialist imaginary of the nomadic, 'warlike', 'savage'.

moving on, we're hit with a barrage of direct comparisons to animals. now, i'm obviously not saying that it's racist to ever compare a character to an animal--but the barbarian class very explicitly represents a group of people with a certain lifestyle, and in the real world, comparing groups of people to animals has been a longstanding method of dehumanization that's been applied especially brutally to indigenous and Black victims of colonialism. and while 'animal spirits' is a fun vulfpeck song, here it's clearly invoked as a caricature of 'primitive' spirituality. why are the spirits 'fierce?' why must they be 'animal spirits?' why do other classes in DND invoke gods and demons, but the barbarian invokes 'spirits?'.

now it gets even more blatant. the barbarian is 'primal' -- they have an 'animal nature' -- they're explicitly contrasted to 'civilization' and associated with 'nature' -- this is a textbook example the 'noble savage' stereotype and it's as old as colonialism. and of course, the barbarian comes from 'tundra, jungle, or grasslands'.

so, here we have a very explicit confirmation of what i was talking here earlier re: barbarians very clearly intended to be nomadic peoples. they live in the 'wild places of the world' -- another colonialist trope rears its head here, the idea of an 'untamed wilderness' that can only be mastered by colonial domination, where the people are also 'wild'.

a 'frontier', huh? the idea of the 'rough frontier' is pure unadulterated colonial fantasy, straight outta manifest destiny. the 'frontier' is the area along which settler-colonialism takes place, where the civilized 'us' meets the savage 'them' in the context of the colonial national myth. and of course, the suggestion that your barbarian character might be a 'prisoner of war, brought in chains to ''civilized'' lands' is pretty clearly founded in the very racialised institution of slavery! (interesting to deploy the scare quotes around 'civilized' now when you were just drawing a fully unironic primal/civilized distiction a paragraph ago, wizards of the coast)

these same ideas about the ‘frontier’, about ‘wild lands’ and ‘the edges of civilization’ (and ‘civilization’ as a geographic notion with ‘borderlands’ that need to be ‘protected’) can incidentally also be seen here in the ranger’s flavour text. again, the idea that ‘civilization’ has a defined endpoint, beyond which there’s only ‘wilderness’ and ‘barbarians’ and ‘savage tribes’ has its origins in the roman empire, grandfather of modern imperialism, and the idea’s hold on the contemporary fantasy genre consciousness has its roots in manifest destiny and the american western frontier, where it serves the ideological purpose of obscuring the bloody and brutal wars of conquest that were waged nonstop against the many people who lived on the ‘uncivilized’ side of that imaginary dividing line in order to push the ‘frontier’ forward.

now, this part isn't on dnd beyond so i’m using a shitty little rulebook scan i found online bc i cba to properly pirate 5e again for this post, but by far the most played barbarian subclass is the path of the totem warrior. with the terms ‘spirit animal’ and ‘totem’, dnd 5e very specifically appropriates the real-world religous beliefs of native peoples. the term’s been beaten into the fucking ground over the last few years but this is some of the most cut-and-dry cultural appropriation i can imagine. and what does the path of the totem do? it gives the barbarian the abilities of animals, of course. Wolf Totems and Bear Totems and Eagle Totems, oh my! right back to the noble savage, the ‘wild man’, the dehumanizing animal comparisons we were talking about earlier.

now some of this, in a different context, could be innocuous and inoffensive. it’s not in a different context, though, it’s in this context--and in this context, it’s pretty clear that the ‘barbarian’ class has both feet planted firmly in the colonialist anti-indigenous imaginary. if you want a little more reading on this, this is a great article on the topic--but tldr: the colonial myth of the ‘wild frontier’ is load-bearing to the concepts of the barbarian and the ranger, and the barbarian in particular has anti-indigenous racist tropes marinating its flavor text.

[twoastricts]

Decided to adopt the head canon that Wyrms like to hoard trinkets. I have many thoughts and ideas about it, and reasons for adopting it.

Each wyrm, and being with the mind of a wyrm, (I.E. just the vessels and Hornet) enjoy hoarding one specific trinket. A holdover instinct from the days when they didn't have minds, as wyrms are true omnivores, able to eat anything, so instead of hunting instincts they had hoarding instincts.

Each wyrm's hoard was heavily guarded. They would never let anyone take from it without their permission, and were known for hiding them in little nooks and crannies.

Wyrms liked to encourage this instinct, especially in their kits. If a wyrm didn't collect and add to their hoard, it might be a sign of depression, anxiety, unhealthily high stress levels, low self esteem and hole slu of other mental health issues, sometimes also being signs of physical sickness.

While most wyrm instincts get covered up by their minds, different minds let through different instincts. Some wyrms struggle with borrowing instincts, other struggle with instincts revolving around mating and breeding. Wyrm with a capital W struggles with nesting instincts. That being said, the hoarding instinct is the only instinct, besides the instincts revolving around how their tails show their emotions, that every wyrm seems to have no matter what. There is a hereditary syndrome in which the instinct seems to not be there, but that doesn't stop wyrms with it from hoarding, as hoarding had become a part of wyrm culture, but they did struggle with figuring out what they wanted to hoard since it didn't come to them naturally. Sometimes the object that a wyrm hoarded would change, normally after some sort of trauma but it sometimes just happened. The literature of wyrm society nearly always mentioned what the protagonist hoarded, and having that change by the end of the story was a common trope. That being said, any time a wyrm that had this instinct tried to suppress the instinct, it rarely worked, unless it was supposed since kithood, then it might be hard to reobtain said instinct.

[just-french-me-up]

now u have fully descended into arcane hell (affectionate)…. may i humbly request ur jayvik fic recs queen? 👉👈

oh friend, i'm FLATTERED my descent into madness has not gone unnoticed, I feel so seen :') Though I'm afraid I have nothing much to offer here, cause I've mostly been reading what I feel like are the most widely read ones? So it's probably something new but... hey, you're giving me the opportunity, so I might as well send more love their way:

POST-CANON | Wait, we're alive?

This trope gets its own category, cause it's my ultimate weakness, I will read EVERYTHING that goes under that umbrella

A New Knife by surveycorpsjean 20k | E | One Shot | Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Smut, PTSD Jayce and Viktor try to rebuild a life, hidden from the world, after the events of season 2, while Viktor struggles to come to terms with what he did and who he's become. Very bitterweet at times, but always delicious

In the After by queercatfan 11K | E | One Shot | Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Smut, Fluff After the arcane spits them out, Jayce and Viktor find a refuge and try to regain strength and a sense of themselves. And then there's the matter of those feelings they confessed earlier in the astral plane

the line is covered in jellyfish by staroverlord 54k | M | WIP | Slow burn, Angst, Pining, Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together It's not all meadows and gentle breeze when the Arcane spits them out. Jayce and Viktor are stranded in a blizzard, and all there is is snow. As they struggle for survival, they also struggle with the state of their relationship, after everything that happened. A story of slowly rebuilding partnership and love, out there in the tundra

nobody here but us chickens by @antisocialfrog and @boomotherfucker 31k | E | Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Domesticity After the war, Jayce and Viktor are sent into exile. Jayce rents a cottage and buys a few chickens. They're chicken farmers now, or at least they try to be. In the midst of all this proximity and feelings they keep having to deal with. Can't resist the cottagecore vibes

Arranged Marriage AU

I'm weak for them, what can I say?

Cup Rune Over by surveycorpsjean 52k | E | King Jayce, Mage Viktor, Fantasy AU When peace is brokered between Piltover and Zaun, it is sealed with marriage. Viktor did not expect to be on the list of possible brides. Nor for his future husband to be so... palatable. A tale of falling in love, cultural differences and finding out that your husband is a nerd

heavy crown by vavavavoom 21k | E | Slow burn, Mutual Pining, Fake Dating of sorts Neither Jayce nor Viktor get to choose their spouse, when it comes to seal the peace between Piltover and Zaun. And Viktor is unreadable, secretive and overall a mystery to Jayce. And he's a great liar. Too good. And it unnerves him. Too much

Canon Compliant of sorts

Differential Burdens in Displacement by RhapsodyInWaves @yallstar 24k | T | Pining, Friendship, Feelings realisation The first time Jayce kisses him, Viktor is caught completely offguard. And then life goes on. As if nothing ever happened. Until Jayce kisses him again. And again. And again

the heart is hard to translate by jasspurr 7.5k | M | Fluff, Mutual Pining, Getting together, Love languages Viktor keeps doing things for Jayce. Many things. A myriad of things. And he can't quite figure out why

Alternate Universes

Coming Home (But Not to You) by queercatfan 119k | E | Modern Setting, College Professors, Friends to Enemies to Friends to Lovers Viktor comes back to Piltover and the Academy with the promise of a job and an office. Both are true. But the office is shared. Jayce Talis occupies half of it, along with enough bad blood, resentment and unconfessed feelings to make the room burst. Honestly what can I say about this fic that hasn't been said already? It feels like a warm hug in the back of my mind. The world is just... So FULL. And it has an even warmer sequel in Someplace New

Long, Long Time by TheTrickyOwl 40K | E | The Last of Us AU, you know the one, the third episode that felt like an entire movie | Domestic Fluff, Falling in Love Jayce falls into one of Viktor's trap. Viktor allows him to stay the night. Jayce never leaves. And they lived happily forever after, my hEART

The Oathbreaker by queercatfan 28.5k | WIP | E | Fantasy AU, Knight Jayce, Healer Viktor When Jayce nearly dies on a mission and breaks his leg, he is sent straight into the medical ward of the Palace in Piltover. That healer from Zaun intrigues him. Fascinates him. And there's more about him than meets the eye.

Love was the Law by ruinthatboy 7k | E | Season 2 Jayce meets season 1 Viktor, Smut, Angst The Anomaly sends Jayce too far back. To a time Viktor has not yet touched the Hexcore. To a time of partnership, affection and unconfessed love. And he can't go without getting a taste of it

I am, at my core, a slow reader, but I may update this list in a few months with more discoveries!

[writing-zelda-brainrots]

Imagine isekai reader being a huge fan of “Epic: The Musical” and sporadically singing the songs while on long journeys with the chain… imagine all the trauma it would cause Wars 😂

Admittedly, I have not watched Epic. I've heard a few songs, but not that much. Most of the knowledge I have on the Iliad and the Oddessy comes from pop culture osmosis and Overly Sarcastic Productions' videos on them.

I feel like if you don't tell them upfront that this is a piece of fiction, the chain might think that the Troan war and the things you sing about are actual history, including all the gods and monsters.

But it's still a fascinating story. Very captivating with many interesting characters, some more relatable than others.

I feel like "Would You Fall in Love With Me Again" would hit really close to home for various reasons.

I hope you're ready to become the designated storyteller for a while, because they really want to hear more stories from your world. Doesn't matter if it's about Greek mythology or history, it could be about any place or time you know about.

I, personally, would probably tell them about Kalevipoeg and his exploits.

[eurekapix]

How are you not, if you’re excusing the very things that bring such beliefs about?

Stories have power, and meaning, and are undeniably important in how they shape both individuals and cultures. Talking about them in the language of “truth” is exactly the sort of thing that makes it easier for nationalism, fanaticism, demagoguery and fascism to take root, because they depend on exactly that sort of doublethink.

I’m inspired by stories. My heroes include Sam Gamgee, Jesus Christ and Gene Kranz. The fact that I know Sam is simply fictional doesn’t diminish his importance to me. Not believing Jesus is God doesn’t make him less inspirational; quite the contrary. Knowing the real man was certainly very different from the figure described by the gospels is frustrating, but pretending otherwise does nobody any favours. Kranz never said the words most iconically associated with him; to suggest this doesn’t matter is to entirely miss the point of his story, part of which is that it did really happen.

There’s a difference between something being spiritually or culturally true and something being literally true and a lot of people who don’t live with this kind of belief system can’t seem to wrap their heads around it or they seem to think that people who function like that can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality.

[thealternatemind]

42,000 people. 42,000 people with full lives and memories and family and a culture that is being erased. 42,000 people. My mind can’t even comprehend that number. Innocents. Infants. That’s a larger number than people who live in my city.

42,000 people are dead. Israel is committing genocide. This is an ethnic cleansing. It’s not only been going on for a year but for A HUNDRED years.

Read “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian. Learn the history. Educate yourself.

Call your representatives. Advocate for a ceasefire. Free Palestine. 🇵🇸🇵🇸

[butchvamp]

i do think that for me personally. there is no version of taash's storyline that i can get down with except one where they reconnect with their qunari side. my main problem with their arc is that it perpetuates this idea that someone has to "choose" one culture, that they have to turn their back on parts of their identity in order to be the right kind of trans (the white western kind) and all of it just makes me so viscerally uncomfortable. and to be clear this is not me like... trying to make anyone feel bad, there are parts of taash's story that i personally connect with as well, like there is nothing wrong with the way taash does gender in general and there's nothing wrong with it resonating with people. it's when we put it all together in context within the game that it becomes a problem for me.

we know the qun does not have the same ideas around gender as the rest of thedas, we know that their identity, including gender, is connected to their duty. and so it doesn't make sense that taash's mother cares about them wearing dresses. why would she care about that. i'd ask if we've ever even seen any qunari in dresses but i'm pretty sure we've only seen three qunari women total and two of them are in veilguard and are scholars wearing what i personally consider a robe. the third is in trespasser and is ben-hassrath, and is definitely not wearing a dress. if anything, their mother should be concerned about the fact that they fight, since the whole point of leaving for rivain was to avoid taash being designated as a soldier. and to be fair, we get this a Little bit with the fire-breathing. but everything else about shathann's disapproval doesn't make sense in-universe.

and we also already know about the aqun athlok, which shathann even tries to bring up but the game shouts her down because....? i get that shathann is meant to be overbearing and kinda shitty, but this is not the way to do it. all this does is imply that aqun athlok is "wrong" and not as progressive as this other identity that rook has to teach taash about (and that also isnt even specific to rivain, or related to them connecting to their rivaini culture. it's the shadow dragons that teach them all of this along with rook. in general transness and the nonbinary identity are not integrated into the world in any meaningful way which makes it feel even worse). there are various cultures that have their own specific gender identities that do not adhere to the gender binary, and taash should have been given the chance to connect to their own culture in this way. and even if they really wanted to make it so taash just didn’t feel right with aqun athlok, that identity still should have been properly discussed as an option and handled with respect, rather than so carelessly thrown aside as “wrong” (though again not a depiction i would personally like but it would still be better than what we got).

and just. i really disagree with the idea that gender identity under the qun is More Rigid than elsewhere. it’s different, as we know from comments from iron bull and sten-- and we could argue in circles about inconsistencies with the things they say, obviously there have been retcons previously in an attempt to better develop the qunari beyond what we see in origins and da2, but i think this kind of development is a good thing, and is exactly why the regression with taash irritates me so much-- but when we look back at characters like warden tabris, dorian and his father and tevinter's obsession with bloodlines, the entire experience of playing f!hawke in da2 (and also da2 literally has a whole subplot about women being murdered for like 3 years and no one cares. these games just have a misogyny problem lol) and even tarquin in veilguard commenting about how his father forced him into being a soldier because he's a man(!!)-- there is a lot of rigidity, expectations, and violence around gender throughout thedas. but for some reason these rigid gender ideals and a lot of this gendered violence is held up as the status quo and not challenged at all by the writers in the way the qun repeatedly is. the exception being dorian (though you're still incentivized to forgive his father), but a lot of the characters in tevinter-- magisters, templars, the literal black divine-- are still allowed complexities and to be the good guys working with the shadow dragons, a grace not given to any qunari character besides iron bull (who ultimately still has to leave the qun or die later). i’m not trying argue that the qun is perfect and can never be criticized-- i like the flawed characters and societies within dragon age. but the qunari also deserve to be given the same depth, complexities, and engagement as everyone else, too. and it’s worth pointing out that it’s always the qun that’s depicted as backwards for the same harmful “rigidity” every other culture in the game reinforces.

and ultimately with the way the game inserts this very modern, anachronistic, and condescending language in a poor attempt to be as "correct" as possible to "teach" the player, while simultaneously writing such a careless, racist arc about their culture kinda just , makes me feel like they were actually trying to imply that one identity is more correct and progressive than the other. or, if nothing else, it's a bias that got amplified due to their unwillingness or inability to engage with taash's character beyond using them as a mouthpiece for corporate "representation."

there absolutely are people out there that are like taash, who don't necessarily have or want a connection with certain parts of their culture, and maybe they do identify closer with one aspect of it over another. this is all fine! this happens in real life, everyone has different relationships with their identity and heritage, there is no universal experience, and people are allowed to write about their own. but the thing is. this is dragon age. and taash was written by weekes. and both dragon age as a whole and weekes specifically has a repeated pattern of racist writing when it comes to depicting the qunari. and taash's quest along with the way the antaam are portrayed-- faceless, voiceless, basically naked bodies for you to kill-- makes this a series of poor choices that i don't feel generous enough to excuse.

and it sucks. so bad. that this happened. i want to like taash so bad. but.... man.

anyways if you read this far you should read this article, which is far more eloquent than anything i could write and really dives into the whole "civilized versus savage" binary that we see in a lot of fantasy RPGs and is really epitomized in taash's quest-- in dragon age, it's always the qunari and dalish elves versus a (usually white and/or human) andrastian:

[sir-illmatic]

The time is NOW. 🪄🌿🥔🌾🃏🫗👻🙏🏾💨💭💀✊🏾

[beau-bunny]

Aaron’s such an underrated character on Aphblr tbh. He’s become one of my favorite characters in the cast as I rewatch more and more of Mystreet. Aaron will tease you, but he’s also one of the best characters in the cast to go to for emotional support. He’ll tell you as it is, smack you upside the head when you’re being crazy and shake you back to rational normalcy, but then he’ll sigh and tell you you’re gonna be just fine and everything’s gonna be okay. He is the number one (and on occasion only) holder of brain cells in the whole neighborhood. He’s the most sensible, and often the word of wisdom/rationale, much more so than Katelyn or Lucinda or Zane or Laurance are. This can often make him come off as a serious character, but he’s still down to clown! He just does it in a different way!

He’s supposed to contrast Aphmau’s louder, more extroverted, playful, ditzy, eccentric personality, by being quieter, more rational, more responsible, more cautious and careful, more reserved, a word of wisdom to contrast her crazier, chaotic energy and pranking and punning and ponies and general whimsical tomfoolery. But that does not, by any means, mean that he is not participating in the antics. Just because he’s the only one who thought to bring a first aid kit and a safety harness doesn’t mean he’s not jumping off that cliff with everyone else in this crazy cast. You tell him to dig, he’ll bring shovels. He may sigh or say “oh god not again” when shit goes awry or the gang decides they are Dead Set on doing something insane for the 10,000th time, but by god he will commit. Aphmau kidnaps a baby and goes on a mad chase for a comedic bit, and he never complains about how “stupid” and “reckless” and “obnoxious” his girlfriend is, he just says in a completely calm tone, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go save my girlfriend.” And he chases after her immediately lmao.

Aaron enables the antics and participates in them, and if you rile him up or challenge him damn well enough, he will throw himself into the group antics with an unbeatable, fiery fervor. If the boys decide they’re all gonna pretend to be Santa and his elves in order to cause prankster-variety chaos one day, Aaron would join in and go right alongside them. He’s here to make sure it all goes to plan. He’s here to make sure you don’t break any bones when you jump off that roof like a madman. He’s here to help you run away from the cops, help you break into the building. He may chide you for doing it in the first place (“do you even know what you’re doing?!”), and if needed he may drag you back home if you’re barking up the wrong tree and it’s nothing but detrimental to you, but if it’s viable for the bit, he absolutely will show you how to break a window correctly.

And he can be a little shit if he wants to, too!! He can snicker at you and tease you and make quips, and I bet if Aaron himself dedicated his energy to it, he would make the best of pranks. He’s not an asshole that’s full of himself and too serious and stoic and cool for being silly, he’s not a whiny bitch, he’s actually very incredibly supportive. At times, much more so than Garroth, Laurance, Zane, Katelyn, etc. He’s reliable, he trusts Aphmau a lot, he knows how shittily Aphmau cooks and still does his damndest to support her, and he will force himself to eat her biohazardous cooking just to make her happy. He is the chef of the household. He’s good with animals, animals love him. He’s a kind guy!!! He’s just got his own unique energy and vibe to him, that no one else in the cast really has, and I really appreciate that core trait of him. He’s a grounding character. He’s probably got his own ways that he’s weird and eccentric that are a lot more hidden than Aphmau’s. If we didn’t have Aaron, the entire neighborhood would have burned down ages ago, ten times over.

I genuinely do believe he’d make a fantastic dad, being a combination of a soft and gentle and tenderly loving man, and responsible enough to always bring safety helmets and bandaids and snacks, very supportive of his kids development, emotionally available as a great source of genuine advice and wisdom while still getting plenty of encouragement. He would probably want to make an effort to be a very different parent than his father was, and since he was emotionally neglected as a child, he would refuse to do anything similar to his own kids. He’d be a good influence (and Aphmau would be the bad influence LOL)

He’s kind of a teddy bear of a man <3 If he weren’t so heavily wolf-themed, I’d say a bear would be the best animal that’d fit his personality and energy. He’d protect you like a bear, he can be really fucking terrifying if he wants to, but he’d only use that power to make sure Aphmau gets what she wants and needs to make her happy. He’d never use that terrifying intimidation factor of his on his friends and loved ones, never as anything more than a single look that has a derailing Garroth/Laurance/Travis/Dante/Gene/etc. get right the fuck back on track and start backpedaling, like if they started saying or doing something careless or stupid that made Aphmau feel worse. He’s quiet and reserved with that tired, grounded, solid energy of a bear. He’s a big guy. But he can also be really soft and supportive and sweet. He takes more time to come out of his shell and let down his walls, but when he does, he really dedicates his life to the few people he manages to trust. And it’s that thick outer shell that makes Aphmau a good match for him, because she’s kinda the only character in the cast who’s able to bring him out of his shell so easily.

She’s kind and extremely friendly, unstoppably and unendingly so. She’s sweet and naive and selfless in the way that proves to Aaron that she’s not trying to get anything out of him, she’s not lying to him, and she would never neglect him or just…abandon him like a discarded toy once she’s through with him. She’s not scared of him. She sees the best in everybody, and sees that there’s something more underneath that scary, prickly outer shell of defenses that’s managed to push everyone else away and keep the likes of Laurance and Garroth and Katelyn on their toes. She sees what no one else does, she sees the true beauty and the kind heart he has underneath. Even in MCD, when he’s literally held a sword to her throat and threatened her life multiple times, she can still sense that he’s full of shit and there’s a kind heart underneath, and if she does a little cultivating, extends a hand of gentle kindness and genuine affection, a kind of love and affection he’s never really seen before and been starved of all his life… it works wonders, and he steps out to meet her. He changes, drastically, because she sees the best in him, and that makes him want to become the best version of himself that he can be, for her. Where he might hate himself and grapple with feeling unloveable, Aphmau is there to remind him none of its true. And so he tries to keep her nightmares away in return, sticking by her side, taking care of her, cooking for her, encouraging her to keep doing everything she does best, defends her against the bullies that make her feel like she’s not good enough, and takes her by the shoulders to remind her that she is good enough, and all the voices out there and in her head that tell her she’s not are full of shit. Because he knows first-hand, better than most, the good things she brings to those around her and the wonderful presence she is in others lives, and how wonderful she is as a person. He trusts her. He’s here to guide her along in her path to becoming her fullest self, to give her that last big nudge to boost her along the way. Likely on a cosmic level, mainly, with her becoming Irene.

He’s very sweet, he’s sweet to Aphmau, Aphmau’s even sweeter to him, and genuinely I’ve learned to love the big, fluffy guy and I really appreciate him and his impact on the other characters the more and more I see of him. I don’t really know how I would enjoy Mystreet or MCD or the Aphverse without him. If he were real, I would love to give him one big hug, I bet his hugs would be amazing (topped only by Garroth’s rib-crushing bear hugs)

[blackexcellence]

The North Carolinian feminist, mother, and healer Omisade Burney-Scott, joined us to chat about menopause. As the creator and curator of Black Girls' Guide to Surviving Menopause, Omi shared insights about the change, her work, Love Craft Country, and she was sure to create a vibe.

Check out Omi's podcast Black Girls Guide to Surviving Menopause

Want to hear the WHOLE conversation? Watch the full interview HERE.

[with-my-murder-flute]

I absolutely love the take you have on Thara and how he knows how to matter to people. I've got the germ of another long analysis on what I think the ending of the book does pay off coming, but it's 1:30am and I just kind of need to dump all the stuff I've been thinking over for almost two weeks now, about how this story ended and why it ended that way and what Katherine Addison's metatextual context might be.

First, this book reminds me of the whole debate in category romance, where someone who doesn't read the genre much but thinks they're clever wants to write a "romance with a twist" and the twist is the the romance ends in tragedy. And romance readers are just like [unimpressed silence] because that book may be a good book. It may be a great book! It might even be romantic.

But it is not a romance novel, it does not belong on the romance shelves, are the shades of Romancelandia to be thus polluted?! Because it is by labelling a book as a romance that the author enters into a contact with their audience that it will contain, per the Romance Writers of America's definition, two things: "a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending."

And for better and worse, Katherine Addison's work has never been marketed as romance.

Which, I feel the need to say, has been worse for her. I know multiple people who have paid off mortgages and college educations writing midlist romance! (Well, erotica.) And meanwhile, Katherine Addison only started being Katherine Addison when she sold The Goblin Emperor to Tor, specifically because the books she sold as Sarah Monette (which were not really gay as in happy but queer as in "odd and also homosexual") did such poor numbers that not only did her publisher drop her, but her position in the algorithms large book distributors and retailers used to decide which books would be offered on their shelves at all was irretrievably tainted. They had to create a new persona with a blank slate publishing history to give her next book a fair chance.

For reasons I do not pretend to understand because I am a complete stranger to her, she wants to write queer stories but seems forcefully allergic to Happily Ever After Endings with a depth and integrity that, despite her brilliance and skill as a writer, she has run her career into the ground over it.

So then she got a second chance, and her novel about an abused child taking on an adult role so inherently abusive it seems very unclear at points whether he'll ever get to have friends, experience romantic love, or reach the age of twenty alive, got welcomed and touted as hopepunk, a kindly little alternative to the moment grimdark fantasy was having.

And again, I do not know her, but what I can say I see from the outside is the makings of a terrible dilemma. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and one of them was labelled Commercial Success and Adoring Public, and the other was Odd and Also Homosexual.

And also, I've observed a thing, in my time as a Tumblr gay: For reasons that are understandable and laudable in many ways, being a creator writing a gay ship can feel absolutely suffocating. Because LGBTQ+ fans have learned that when there's a place we seem welcome, we LET EVERYBODY KNOW, we show up at 3am with lawnchairs, we throw a party when there's the tiniest hint of new content, we endlessly speculate and theorize, we paint murals and write novels and choreograph rock operas. And also, we have merged shipping culture and activism into the cult of Good Representation, and learned how to make our anger and disappointment felt when we don't get it.

(Which again: laudable and understandable reasons! They weren't going to stop burying their gays unless we dug them up and paraded them around the streets as a warning!)

So like, when I was a fan of Check Please! which is a gay comic about gays who are gays, creator Ngozi Ukazu accidentally created the next great little meow meow, an antagonist who showed up once, stumbled out of the closet, slid a snapback backwards over his artfully tousled hair, and disappeared again. He was, I confess, my blorbo; I'd taunted the gods with my imperviousness to problematic white boys and got cursed with him.

And although she'd already planned how to end her story and what kind of role he would get, I watched that change over the years it took to get there. When she happily burbled about him while signing a book at a convention, the person she burbled to ran right to the internet to write up her complete notes about it and post it to Tumblr for all of us to froth and obsess over and write headcanons and novels over. Which, in retrospect: I get why that would feel intrusive! To have a nice little moment with a fan stuffed and mounted and dipped in bronze and mass-produced until it became the standard her own canonical writing was based off of.

She started cutting down his narrative prominence, replacing him with different plot beats and cutting down planned appearances. When, as a special favor to financial supporters, she shared a preview of the single page she'd baked his plot line down into and asked them not to leak it to anyone else, they absolutely leaked it to everyone else. If I remember correctly, she put the finished page in the print run of the book, but just completely skipped posting it online. We, with all our earnest love and admiration and inevitable lunatic fringe, seemed to have just gotten her fed the fuck up with us.

So like... I think that in some ways, endgame Thara/Iäna was the good, safe direction to take these books in. It was cute, it was thematically resonant, the fans all liked it, and gosh darnit, it just worked. The first two books in the series are completely structured and paced as a slow-building romantic arc between them.

But I also think that even if that was her intention, she could have been at war between the safety and comfort and happiness of one ending, and the unease and disorientation of painting a much more complicated picture and potentially disappointing everybody. After all, these books started as Thara being a roving solution-fixer, a lightweight, mobile, and highly adaptable agent in a world full of problems that need to be addressed. In many ways, tying him down to conforts best enjoyed at close proximity to Amalo could just seem like writing him into a blind alley that limited the other places the story could go.

(Yes, yes, "skill issue" and all the other grumblings. It's entirely true that there are writers who could spin endless plots based in quiet domesticity and coziness in a single city. But that's probably not her. So the quirky irony of her having paralleled the writing of this series with a Sherlock Holmes retelling that makes everything queerer and unhappier than the original is beginning to make a little bit of sense to me.)

Olgarezh is growing on me, and I'll get back to him another day with my character notes, but he still also feels like a desperate last-minute attempt to go "I didn't get the toy you wanted, but I DID get you a nice lollipop! Please put it in your mouth and don't cry!" Or as just an attempt to back out of one specific corner but demonstrate that she wasn't opposed to Thara eventually getting to smash (I'm so sorry Thara, just pretend I didn't say that honey) but needed to make some last-minute fixes.

So I just... wanted to express how much I feel that nobody who feels completely fooled by where the first two books were going was incorrect. They are, in my opinion, 1000% structured and written like a romance series. The relationship abruptly going to Nopetown feels discordant and weird as hell and unsatisfying.

But at the same time, I also think the author thinks that too. I think that for whatever reason, she wrote the first two books in one direction, and then for reasons I can only guess at, couldn't finish it off like that and had to go in a different direction.

And I don't think it was a decision made with less than full knowledge of just how pissed off the fans would be. I have not seen any evidence it was meant to queerbait us into making book sales and then swerved because she enjoyed causing pain or making people look stupid.

Personally, I get enough out of these books and am curious enough about what's going on here to stick around and want to excavate and think and create things. But also, if I want an LGBTQ+ fantasy romance, I should just go... read an LGBTQ+ fantasy romance, because we're living in a golden age of them right now. They, and these books, are different beasts in the end.

Re: The Tomb of Dragons ship situation/ending, spoilers for A Companion to Wolves and Angel of the Crows

Like I respect Addison's right to write the stories that feel meaningful to her, she doesn't have to just feed us fanbait, not every author has to do that

but I was white-knuckling up to the very last sentence of the book

I have trust issues ever since A Companion to Wolves, where the first book ends and you're like. I guess they have somehow found a way to survive and be happy in their unusual approach to society's sexual mores! And then the next book begins and it's like "Oh actually the main character is just resigned to permanent unhappiness with this, maybe he will dredge up a thin trickle of joy in life focusing on something totally different." And I'll be honest, I put that book down and never picked it up again, because I did the good girl Catholic thing and thought "Oh well I'll never experience sexual joy or deep enduring love but maybe I'll have like idk a career or some shit" long enough for one lifetime. NO MORE. I just gave up and went back to Every Marine a Wolfbrother.

And then Angel of the Crows was like, "I got shot down every single time I reached for queer joy or relationships and the one relationship that does remain is not really what I want or need and maybe I am a bit fundamentally unlovable, but I'll survive, we get by," and I was, again... I recognize this is not a story for me. It's not what I want from a story. But also, I am so disappointed and tired here.

So with this series I was just so much like... she does not owe us fanbait, I have trained myself to think it's tacky and bad to get upset that an author has not provided the exact kind of representation we want exactly how we want it. I watched the Good Omens fandom explosions and don't want to do that.

But at the same time. We have been hearing about the extreme gay agony of this beautiful muppet for FOUR BOOKS STRAIGHT. He is the world's most sopping wet little meow meow, and quite respectfully, if you do not want your fans to form a frenzy and start burning down uninhabited buildings due to an overload of unrequited textual sexual tension, MAYBE DON'T FOCUS ON IT QUITE SO MUCH.

So I'm here at the end of Tomb of Dragons going, "I guess I'm okay with this? I guess I can live? It's not exactly what I wanted and it's not delivered to the degree I wanted, but I guess we can get by here."

Is this what Stockholm Syndrome feels like? I literally don't believe Stockholm Syndrome is a real thing, I think it's been bunk since the day it was created, but also, this feels like what Stockholm Syndrome would feel like.

I will probably be able to like the new love interest! I can see myself in the future being happy with the way the story ended up going in, once I get over the fact that it went there! This makes sense and I can see it and reconciling all those feelings is what fanfiction's for!

I just also... am not so excited to see what else Addison's working on now. Because this overarching theme or emotional focus on the yearning for warmth and closeness and empathy and touch and desire, and the realization that you will just have to make do with slightly unsatisfying substitutes instead, is just way too similar to the defeatist ways I learned to approach life with when I was a child. It's exactly the mindset I wanted to get away from then and am still learning to let go of now.

I don't want to squash the fandom with my disappointment and negativity, and if fandom does just turn into everyone being angry and bitter that the author personally flipped them the bird and actually everything about these books is proof that they've always been shit, no thanks, not hanging out with that again. If I stick around, it's for Thara getting railed in exactly the way he wants in some happier future, and figuring out what that would look like.

[loriache]

honestly i'm kind of interested in the idea of laios in an arranged marriage. because obviously straight-up inherited monarchies are ...bad, to say the least! but it's what the characters are familiar with (even laios' father's extremely local, extremely minor leadership role is inherited, presumably through the male line). and it isn't just about what they think the best way to run melini is; in terms of ensuring that the other longed-lived nations respect melini's continued sovereignty, having it passed down in a manner that's close enough to their own ways for them to understand it and respect it is important. And it seems like most of the other nations have leadership through inheritance - thought that isn't confirmed for certain except with the elves.

Also, a marriage carries the potential to establish foreign allies - something melini is certainly lacking. A marriage could come with resources they'll badly need, treaties of mutual defence, money, legitimacy and political capital... not that these things can't be worked around, but if laios isn't strongly opposed, there are a lot of advantages! and i don't think he would be, because that's the framework for marriage (conferring practical advantages, building intracommunity relationships and providing a partner to do important work that he can't do) that he had grown up with. he isn't exactly a romantic and I doubt he's holding out for any sort of relationship of that nature.

Like, I don't think it's impossible that they would go with this path, because it's the most obvious and it carries a lot of advantages and it's what almost all the decision-making characters would consider normal and not objectionable. and it could be so interesting.

I think Laios would have major hangups if expected (i.e., by Marcille) to establish a genuine, romantic interest in a woman. Whether because of his sexual or romantic orientation, or just his own deep-seated trauma about rejection and being inherently disgusting and scary. And I think he'd hate the idea of having kids, too, and be very frightened of being like his father. But I don't think he'd refuse on that basis; he could cope with a marriage contract, with clearly laid-out expectations and responsibilities. And when it came to having a kid, I think he'd be reluctant to express that he doesn't want to do it, because he isn't naive and he understood when he agreed to be king it would carry responsibilities like this. It's clear from his nightmare that he already felt pressure from his parents to have children, probably magnified by the fact his father has got a position, responsibilities and wealth to pass on. Obviously he isn't a perfect martyr, so he might struggle when it comes to actually going through with it - but I don't think he'd actually, outright refuse. I think he might do it even though he doesn't want to, and I think that could be really messy in a way that appeals to me.

I don't know, there's something about negotiating these kinds of complicated situations that's interesting to me. and i love a platonic marriage. If they find a woman who has an interest in education, for example, and can work with marcille on setting up schools and universities. she'd ideally be politically savvy enough to be an able partner to laios: even though kabru can and would continue to do a lot of that, there are different spheres that a queen and a prime minister can work within!

how would their relationship work? maybe she finds laios' perspective on the world, and his frankness, unexpectedly liberating after an extremely controlled, cloistered upbringing. maybe she had a rebellious phase, has magic, or something else which makes her a relatively unpopular candidate for marriage - even as melini grows in power, i doubt that they'd be getting offers for the cream of the crop in terms of perceived value on the marriage market, because laios' relationship is a bit too ambivalent/monstrous for that, and melini too new. maybe she's a widow! an older woman, wouldn't that be cool - though they'd want her young enough that she could definitely still have kids.

certainly i think he'd be happy for her to pursue other relationships, though ideally in a manner that couldn't produce illegitimate kids. with other relationships in play, that's even more interesting. like, both kabru and toshiro have complicated emotions relating to infidelity. i think kabru would actually find it quite cathartic to be in the kind of high-status environment that rejected his mother for perceived infidelity, pursuing an affair that all parties consent to, though he'd likely be incredibly aware of the public image - since "image" is what he was rejected for. toshiro... i just really really love the way he'd feel about being the "other woman" in laios' marriage, considering his feelings about his father and maizuru. especially given how much closer he is to maizuru than his mother, being in her position...! his emotions would be so complex, it's incredibly tasty. i bet he'd make a bunch of assumptions about how laios' wife feels about it and be totally wrong, and that's so interesting. also, i think laios' wife should fuck marcille (she and falin have an open relationship).