#they are talking about a very specific subset of fans who made the whole of fandom an unsafe space for many people

[fiona-fififi]

...

[karenandhenwilson]

I think I figured out, at least for myself, why the 9-1-1 fandom and part of the Buddie-or-Bust side of it feels so much more toxic than ever before when I know for a fact, those demanding Buddie has to become canon and who are looking for any tiny clue to be able to say it will become canon have always been this toxic. (I mean, with the exception of some people who came into the show because with Buck being bi the show was suddenly not queerbaiting anymore--lol, it hurts even just writing this as if it were really true--and then became die-hard Buddie fans or at least pretend to be to garner enough followers and clicks to make money out of fandom. But I'm not talking about them here.)

Before Bucktommy, there was no real opposition for them in the fandom. Buck and Eddie both had other LI and those had their fans (I know for a fact there are still people now shipping Buck with Taylor or Buck with Marisol or Eddie with Shannon). But those were very few fans and they created their own little spaces in fandom places and were barely noticeable. So the Buddie-or-Bust fans were able to mostly ignore them. And there have of course also been some small fanon ships for Eddie and Buck with other people, but those are barely noticed either.

But Bucktommy? That got huge in practically an instant. Because so many people were excited for bi story line with an established character and one in Buck's circumstances (not even Buck himself). And the Bucktommy fans were loud about their support of this new canon ship. So Buddie-or-Bust fans suddenly felt threatened and became much louder in their hate for anything not Buddie. Because now, for some reason, the fans of the other ship seem to be a threat to them. And also, for the first time for any of the LI of Eddie or Buck, they made an honest effort to set up Tommy and the relationship with him as something long-term. Which the Buddie-or-Bust fans recognize just as much as the Bucktommy fans, and so they try even harder to find fault in every single thing.

And that did change something in the behavior of the die-hard Buddie fans. At times, I've been neck-deep in Ana bashing, in Shannon bashing, in Taylor bashing, in Chimney bashing, in Abby bashing, in Maddie bashing. Because I enjoy a good bashing at times. It can be very cathartic. But you know what I've never seen there? I've never seen any of those characters being called derogatory names. Or their fans being called derogatory names and, in most cases, their fans didn't retaliate to the bashing either. (Though, at least for Chimney fans they sometimes very viciously go against people even just mentioning they don't like him and it came up a couple of times that Chimney fans found derogatory names for those bashing Chimney because that group of fans also seems to be unable to avoid content bashing their fav and instead sought it out deliberately to complaint about it.)

I can't even count anymore how many derogatory names I've seen for Tommy or Bucktommy or Bucktommy fans. They seem to come up with a new name every other day. And they enjoy trumping each other in their creations and using those names to get around the boundaries others try to set for themselves by filtering out the already known names.

And I already see people coming at me with "Oh, but Bucktommy fans started it by calling us BoBs." and just: No. Once more, you get an F in reading comprehension. It's always been made very clear that BoBs stood for Buddie-or-Bust and I personally don't see anything derogatory here but also, it's always been made very clear it's a specific subset of Buddie fans who behave poorly to separate them from the Buddie fans who don't care about Bucktommy. Because those people using that term are very well aware that there are really just a couple of very loud bad apples in the Buddie side of fandom and the rest of the Buddie fans don't deserve to be lumped in with them. While, on the other hand, all Bucktommy fans are always called names as a whole.

And I think their biggest problem is not even necessarily the "threat" they perceive Bucktommy to be to their own ship, though that's clearly a big part still. Otherwise, they wouldn't come after authors and artists and other fans who once shipped and created for Buddie and are now creating for Bucktommy. And otherwise, they wouldn't tag so many Buddie fics as Bucktommy, too, in some kind of strange hope to convince Bucktommy fans to ship Buddie again. (Without noticing that all they are accomplishing is to make everyone annoyed at them. And yes, that includes those Buddie fans who don't care for Bucktommy at all because they need to curate the Buddie tag very carefully now, too.)

I think their biggest problem is this belief that their ship is only valid if it's canon.

Which is so strange. Fandom has always mostly been about ships that are very much not canon. And no one ever expected their ships to become canon in the past, as far as I know. (Except if it was promoted and then didn't happen. Looking at Sterek here.) Canon ships barely get any attention. I mean, look at all the 9-1-1 ships that are canon, including Tarlos, and how little content there is for any of them, and also how little engagement there is for this content compared to Buddie. That's always been a trend in fandom, that's not new with 9-1-1.

It's not only strange, I also think it's honestly sad for these fans. Because they have deliberately set themselves up to be disappointed and dig that hole of disappointment ever deeper. Even if Buddie should ever go canon, which I honestly don't think will happen, it won't be at all what they expect. And they'll either leave the fandom or turn on the ship they were so toxically addicted to before.

[eivor-wolfkissed]

Replaying dragon age now that I'm older- I've actually changed my opinions about Anders a lot and honestly? I *hate* Anders. There are certain things about his character I do like, and I like the tragedy of it all. But honestly I'm just not the biggest fan of him anymore. I think he's a good example of a bad activist who ends up hurting others more than enacting good change. He's more of a selfish accelerationist, rather than someone who listens to the people and fights for change that actually benefits them, but in the long run, his actions end up hurting mages even more in my opinion. He was a better person before he ended up getting jaded and possessed by Justice, then later, Vengance.

I think another thing that fueled my dislike of him is watching his hardcore fans do terrible things on here to other people (like watching some of his chronically online white fans accuse people of color within fandom of supporting police brutality just because they liked certain characters or held nuanced opinions about the templar/mage stuff, and misgender/exclude trans fans from queer fandom spaces for the same reasons stated above, to name a few things). All of these things combined have lead me to just be extremely annoyed by Anders overall. Not to mention his dick behavior towards other companions- like supporting Hawke selling Fenris into slavery, while pretending to be a freedom fighter? Lmao. Cringeworthy. Anders is not a morally good character by any means. For the things I do like- I do always side with the mages in DA2, and I fully support the actions taken to help mages escape the Kirkwall circle specifically. I really enjoyed doing the side quests with the mage underground. I love Anders' refusal to be caged and his determination to live freely (just wish he respected that in others and didn't support selling Fenris into slavery simply because he didn't agree with him. That's beyond selfish and straight up diabolical. Again, another thing that reminds me of IRL white leftists who refuse to deconstruct their bigotry). I just think the final action of destroying the chantry only invited chaos and didn't actually help mages at all (see the violence in DAI and how many innocent less powerful mages get killed by mobs of non mages because they no longer have protection. The circles needed a lot of changes but ripping them away completely and suddenly left a vacuum and invited way too much chaos imo).

And to be clear, this isn't a post with intent to shame all Anders fans. Not all of his fans act in the way I outlined earlier- just a particular, small but loud subset of them I have observed up close and interacted with one on one in the past. I don't think it's wrong to like this character at all- it's silly to claim that someone is morally wrong for liking a fictional character. There are things I still enjoy about his character! However growing up, getting a little wiser about activism, and watching *some* (not all) of his fans act like genuine bigots towards other dragon age fans, have made me lose more and more enthusiasm for him overall. It's also extrordinarily tiring to watch extremely sheltered and privileged people who have never witnessed acts of mass violence say that his final act of blowing up a church is Good and Moral when in actuality, it ended up murdering people who had nothing to do with the conflict. I do firmly believe that people who are gung ho about that action have a very idealized view of violence and do not actually comprehend how horrific and traumatizing these acts are on societies as a whole. It only ends up hurting the most vulnerable people and does nothing but invite violent chaos. I will fully admit I used to be one of those people, until I actually talked with and listened to real life refugees and other people who have experienced acts of terrorism and violent revolution in their respective home countries. These things always impact the most vulnerable members of society in horrific ways, and never actually holds people in power responsible... and all too often, pushes societies into even more authoritarianism.

Anyways. That's my essay on why Anders now annoys me greatly as an adult fan and why I veiw him more as a tragically doomed character rather than a freedom fighter. Anders, to me, is a terrorist in it for him and his. Not a freedom fighter. Everything stated here is my personal opinion- I'm not interested in debating people on my post, only sharing what I now think of this character- any kind of combative harassment added to this post will be ignored, blocked, and deleted.

It will be interesting to see what happens after I post this. If this post upsets you, please ignore it and do something healthy with your emotions, please do not engage in bullying.

[gaywatch]

Ohhh, this is interesting. Cody makes great points, but there's some nuance I want to mention when it comes to "The need to overtly sexualize every relationship can ruin great story development," in that most shippers actually don't do this.

The thing about "overtly sexualizing every relationship" implies an old misconception. For some reason, non-shippers treat shippers like there's a single group of a thousand people or so traveling from show to show and exclusively focusing on shipping. Shippers then get accused of "sexualizing everything" even if they've only voiced interest in a single ship. In reality, shipping is a massively popular past time that has only gotten even more massive with the rise of fandom in general in the past fifteen/twenty years, but each group is still made up of largely different people. Few shippers sexualize everything, but there are enough shippers in the world that everything will be sexualized.

Oh, but what about the actual hobbyist shippers? The ones who have dozens of ships and run around collecting more? Well, I dunno what to tell you man. Some people show up to stories for different reasons than you do. But even the hobbyists usually care about more than just the ship. That might be their focus, but it's very easy to care about a ship, the rest of the cast, the world, the story, etc all at the same time. Coming at a comment about shipping with "ugh don't you care about anything else" is like...well, yeah, but that's not what they're talking about at the moment? They made a shipping comment? Maybe later they'll comment somewhere else about some crunchy aspect of the magic system, but right now they're talking about a ship.

I'm a hobbyist shipper. I'm a hopeless romantic who lowkey hopes for at least a casual ship in most art that I consume. I love queer ships so much I have a Youtube channel dedicated to them. Even I don't enjoy shipping to the exclusion of everything else a story offers. Sometimes the only thing I find interesting about a story is the ship, yeah. But the other 85% of the time I'm a fan of the story as a whole, as are tons and tons of other shippers. People may think I still "miss out" on the "more important" aspects of a story, but I think the people who avoid fictional romance like the plague are also missing out. I just don't judge them for it because everybody is entitled to their own version of a good time.

(Shippers shouldn't be pestering creators to take sides, obviously. They shouldn't be pestering creators with shipping stuff period, until and unless the creator starts the conversation. But those shippers are typically young and/or immature, trying to assert that their opinion is the correct one and seeking validation. This is not behavior exclusive to shippers.)

Anyway, shippers are not a monolith despite the louder/more immature ones making it seem that way, and I understand that's what Cody experiences but he's only exposed to a very specific subset of shipper.

Other Voice Actors: hey guys here's my obligatory social media presence (:

Other Voice Actors: thanks for supporting my project (:

Other Voice Actors: I'm going to pretend like the fandom doesn't exist for my own sanity (:

Cody Christian, the voice of Cloud Strife:

Homie showed up to the ship wars with a bat and is just taking out kneecaps.

[utilitycaster]

I do agree that expressing the opinion that wishing Laudna would stay dead is neutral but I'm noticing that a few of these takes are coming from people who tend to not talk about her or enjoy her. And as an older person who's been around the block a few times, this is more than a bit irritating as it's a trend that's not uncommon in terms of fandoms preferring mlm and m/f shipping and male characters over female characters. It's something that should be thought about when discussing this.

I want you to understand that this message is very much typed through gritted teeth and that I have turned off anon again for the next while. I am not only more than done with the abuse from people who think that sadness over a fictional character death excuses their behavior; I am done with the people like you, who are wringing their hands and saying "well, there could be fault on both sides", particularly the ones who can't even say it with their whole chest.

I am a queer woman in her 30s. If you are younger than me, you are lecturing the wrong person about How It Used To Be. If you're older than me, you should, frankly, know better than to send something like this.

Here's what you haven't seen from me, and, while I don't know for sure, I suspect a lot of the other people with a significant following who have expressed an interest in Laudna staying dead (incidentally? most of whom are also queer women, because the tumblr fandom skews heavily in that direction): a shitload of anon hate that I, at least, have been IP blocking to great effect.

I've been on Tumblr for roughly a decade in various forms, I've had anon turned on the vast majority of the time, and I've been called a cunt on anon more times in the past four months than I have in that last near-decade, and exclusively in the context of people not liking what I said about Laudna or Imogen and Laudna. I have openly said I don't like FCG or Molly, I repeatedly said Molly should stay dead, and I in fact stated prior to this episode that regardless of my issues with the previous episode that I hoped at least one death (nonspecific, though, cards on the table, of the three who died, Fearne was my favorite), and I've never received anon harassment from the Molly or FCG fans.

I have literally gotten the argument that saying I preferred Fjord to Laudna was sexist. This is idiotic, and dangerously so; sexism is an institution, preferring one male character to one female character is nothing more than a personal preference, and hiding behind a shield of faux oppression because other people have different tastes is abhorrent.

I don't think going into anyone's personal feminist bonafides is going to be productive here, so I will also say that last campaign, I found that fans of Beau who did not ship her with Yasha were frequently vile towards Ashley; more recently, they were pretty awful towards Laura for having Imogen decide to be angry towards Laudna.

This is not coming from a place of feminism or a desire to see female characters or F/F ships. This is an unhinged refusal to accept that other people prefer other characters and actors. And, you know, for a time, I made the same excuses you did - that Keyleth and Marisha received immense volumes of hate in Campaign 1. Here's the thing: Campaign 1 ended five years ago, and even if it was still ongoing, nothing excuses the behavior I have seen very specifically and uniquely relating to a small subset of fans of Marisha's characters.

The kindest interpretation I can have from you is that you truly are only seeing a small portion of what has been going on, and in your deep ignorance thought you were providing a helpful perspective. However, regardless of intent, you were doing anything but.

[rikeijo]

I'm a little lost with the part of "You like/promote Yurio? Fu*k you, then" What's going on with his character in the jp fandom?

Thank you for the question~ It's a very interesting issue...

It's mainly one specific subset of Jp YoI fandom, rather than the whole fandom. That subset is VicYuu (Victor seme Yuuri uke) I-won't-accept-it-the-other-way-around fujos.

(In all my posts, when I rant about fujos, I talk about fujos = classic fujos, who believe in ukes and semes, but not necessary that homosexuality is valid outside their fantasies, and not "BL fans" in general.)

You see, fujos in general very often are ✨obsessed✨ with their uke character (if you ask me, they simply self-insert a little bit too hard...) and because of that they treat very seriously, like very seriously and very personally any perceived ""insult"" to their uke.

It's not only YoI, more of a general trend, but fujos often choose the main character as their uke, because if you do that then you have much more material to have fun with, than when your fave is a side character.

So in YoI, Yuuri is the main character, but there really was that very easy to notice trend to promote Yurio quite a lot. In Mitsurou's interviews for example, she often talks a lot about Yurio, that he's such a cool character, that she likes scenes with him and so on... In a lot of interviews with other staff members (the producer Otsuka M. is an example of this), they talk about how Yurio is their fave, too. Another thing is that in official art Yurio is almost always there with Y&V, and sometimes even between them.... (Do I think that the purpose was to lesser the gay vibes? Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised, if that is the case.)

So important staff members, like Mitsurou or the main producer, mentioned a few times that Yurio is more like a classic protagonist of a sport anime, that they knew he's going to be popular for sure... Because of this, long story short, fujos started to be worried that the next season's protagonist will be Yurio. (In my personal opinion, they were right. This was exactly the feeling that I've got looking at what was going on back then.) This made them incredibly triggered every time Yurio was in some way "treated like a main character". Examples: Yuri!!! on life guidebook illustration, where Yurio is in the middle and in the brightest spot, Mitsurou's Welcome to the madness manga, and the fact that Yurio EX program was animated so nicely, and Yuuri's wasn't...

In addition to that, Mitsurou, who those fujos call "Yurio's mother", doesn't treat Yuuri in the same way... She sometimes even likes to say things that can be read as quite mean, so this also adds in to the grudge they hold "because Yuuri isn't treated as the protagonist he is, and Mitsurou mistreats him on purpose, because she wants to make Yurio, her fave, the protagonist!!1!". The result is that since early 2017, fujos hate both Yurio and Mitsurou. (I personally don't think that she hates Yuuri or anything. Imo, Mitsurou's version of Yuuri and fujo version of Yuuri are simply like two different characters.)

Plus, there's also this thing people in Jp fandom call "settings thief". If you look at any VicYuu fanart, it's not hard to notice that fujos like Yuuri to be like really feminine... They like to think that he's naturally very girl-like and very tiny (easier to self-insert, I suppose?). Also, that he, of course, is the best skater there is! But, actually in canon the one character often described as looking a lot like a girl, or having a small built is Yurio. And the one who won gold is also Yurio... So, fujos are simply salty that there is a char with these traits in the canon, but that's not their fave.

Whoaa... That's got long! But this is still a very simplified version 😂

[thetaekookcloset]

I joined fandom thinking army are so great because never seen any artists appreciating their fans the way BTS does but saw a really different side. Even though I am a jk bias stan, love his voice, the way BTS fans behaviour is so hypocritical. I knew my baby always gets hate from major jikookers and pjms but I also feel pity for Taehyung. I never used to like taekookers because some are really delusional, followed your account only coz you talk sensibly and respects both of them so I respect you in return. Never had much of an impression of Taehyung though coz thought he was always army fav or something and coz of him jungkook gets hate thrown. Even if i am more of indifferent towards Taehyung never want him to get death threat coz that thing is pretty cruel. Now I see army trending dynamite anniversary, freejiminfromtaekookers and complaining about Jim's interview and I am blown away how people are not doing anything for Taehyung. I mean wasn't he a fav? No votes for SDA and death threat thing on Max ot7 account. Wah! I think I need to change my perspective a little. Saw his solo begging people to vote but.... Feeling pity for that guy got a shitty fandom. Might be bitter but it's the truth, funny no Taekook bloggers are addressing this issue.

I hear you, anon -- and thank you very much for your kind words, by the way.

I think the thing is that with a fandom this massive, you’re naturally going to have so many different kinds of people, in every little corner and faction of the fandom.  There are shippers and supporters, non-shippers, solos, antis, OT7s, people with biases who still love the group as a whole, and that’s just the people who consider themselves deep fans of at least a member of BTS.

Then we all see different parts of those different aspects of the fandom, and we all choose to engage with them in different ways.  I think a lot of people with a bias tend to see their fave as being less well-treated, both by the company and by other fans, and because the fandom is so big, there’s always a reason for them to think and feel that way.  Taehyung stans are always going to see Taehyung antis and feel like Tae is getting the short end of the stick, you know?  Whereas Jimin stans will always think Taehyung is the obvious favorite of both the company and the fandom.  This is just one example, it’s a phenomenon that seems to perpetuate itself throughout the fandom over and over again.

Personally, I’ve seen a lot of people on Twitter specifically talking about voting for Tae for SDA and reporting the death threats.  I haven’t been talking about these things on the blog for a couple of reasons.  One is that I assume most people are aware of it already and it isn’t really what I use this space for, nor is it something I want to dwell on in this space.

Obviously the death threat issue is disgusting and I think it’s horrible when it happens to anyone.  It honestly made me feel sick to see those messages and I mostly just hope that Taehyung himself didn’t see them, and that none of the members did, frankly.

But as for the fandom as a whole, I just feel like it’s too massive to generalize in any direction.  Even the subsets of this fandom are so huge that I don’t like to make generalizations about them for the most part, especially since I know how frustrating it can be to have all Taekookers lumped together as though we share one mind and all believe the exact same ideas.

[sqbr]

Tangential ramble, but I keep thinking about it every time this post crosses my dash: I suspect that the main reason so many Taylor fans imagine she's secretly queer is just that she's got a lot of Very Invested fans, and the subset of those fans who like the idea of their favourite singer being queer find it easier to pretend their existing "looks secretly queer if you squint really hard" fave is queer than get into a different, openly queer fave.

But also I feel like tin-hatting about Secret Gayness is kind of it's own separate thing to straightforward fannishness about someone who's unambiguously queer, and is closer to, like... the people who still think Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison are secretly married. Especially these days, when there's a lot more unambiguous queerness around.

In either case I feel like it's a specific sort of...overinvested single minded Need for your fave to live the sort of life you'd find most emotionally satisfying to watch, whether that be queer, married to your other fave, Sending You Secret Messages, or whatever, which outweighs any investment in accepting them for who they really are.

I've never been into celebrity fandom in a big way, but I still have celebrities I like whose more dedicated fans I'm vaguely aware of, and there have been a few times one of these celebrities behaved in ways that had people speculating they might be queer, often as a prelude to coming out. And it felt like there was a big difference between the people who speculated a little and were hopeful but made it clear they respected the fave's privacy and would remain fans either way, and the ones who got REALLY INTO Searching For Clues as it's own form of enjoyment in and of itself and got ANGRY at anyone who said we couldn't know for sure until the fave came out. In those cases where the celebrity did later come out, I'd be curious to know how those second sort of fans behaved next: did they just remain Intense Fans really into how queer their fave was, or did they get less invested now it wasn't a Secret Only They Saw? I'm guessing a mixture of both.

Because those brief windows where I had a Maybe Secretly Queer Fave were kinda exciting(*), and I can definitely see some people seeking out that specific form of excitement. I mean I'm just speculating based on Vibes which these kinds of fans have shown is unreliable, but that's what rambling under a cut is all about.

This is all different when we're talking about fictional characters, because writers really do Leave Clues and (try to) create satisfying narratives in a way real people generally don't, and so it's much more reasonable to interpret fictional characters that way. RPF which acknowledges that it's more about crafting a fun narrative than trying to really understand the real people's feelings is similar. People can definitely still veer into Weird Fictional Tin-Hatting in broadly similar ways to Weird Real Life Tin-Hatting, but the lines are different.

(Also I don't have anything to add regarding the whole bi erasure thing but OP's icon is a mood)

(*)I'm oblivious and disconnected enough that it was like "Hmm, Janelle Monae is singing about how much she likes vaginas, I wonder if this means something... Oh hey, she came out!"

all goofing aside I genuinely don't understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene(TM) is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you're willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.

[yamayuandadu]

The Two (or more) Ishtars or A Certain Scandalous Easter Claim Proved to be The Worship of Reverend Alexander Hislop

Once upon a time the official facebook page of Richard Dawkins' foundation posted a graphic according to which the holiday of Easter is just a rebranded celebration of the Mesopotamian mythology superstar Ishtar, arguing that the evidence is contained in its very name. As everyone knows, Dawkins is an online talking head notable for discussing his non-belief in such an euphoric way that it might turn off even the most staunch secularists and for appearing in some reasonably funny memes about half a decade ago. Bizarrely enough, however, the same claim can be often found among the crowds dedicated to crystal healing, Robert Graves' mythology fanfiction, indigo children and similar dubiously esoteric content. What's yet more surprising is that once in a while it shows up among a certain subset of fundamentalist Christians, chiefly the types who believe giants are real (and, of course, satanic), the world  is ruled by a secret group of Moloch worshipers and fossils were planted by the devil to led the sheeple astray from the truth about earth being 6000 years old, tops. Of course, to anyone even just vaguely familiar with Christianity whose primary language isn't English this claim rightfully seems completely baffling – after all it's evident in most languages that the name of the holiday celebrating Jesus' resurrection, and many associated customs, are derived from the earlier Jewish Pascha (Passover) which has nothing to do with Ishtar other than having its origin in the Middle East. Why would the purported association only be evident  in English and not in Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, virtually any language other than English and its close relatives – languages which generally didn't have anything to do with Mesopotamia or early christianity? Read on to find out what sort of sources let this eclectic selection of characters arrive to the same baffling conclusion, why are they hilariously wrong, and – most importantly – where you can actually find a variety of Ishtars (or at least reasonably Ishtar-like figures) under different names instead.

The story of baffling Easter claims begins in Scotland in the 19th century. A core activity of theologians in many faiths through history was (and sometimes still is) finding alleged proof of purported “idolatry” or other “impure” practices among ideological opponents, even these from within the same religion – and a certain Presbyterian minister, Alexander Hislop, was no stranger to this traditional pastime. Like many Protestants in this period, he had an axe to grind with the catholic church  - though not for the reasons many people are not particularly fond of this institution nowadays. What Hislop wanted to prove was much more esoteric – he believed that it's the Babylon known from the Book of Revelations. Complete with the beast with seven heads, blasphemous names and other such paraphernalia, of course. This wasn't a new claim – catholicism was equated with the New Testament Babylon for as long as Protestantism was a thing (and earlier catholicism itself regarded other religions as representing it). What set Hislop apart from dozens of other similar attempts like that was that he fancied himself a scholar of history and relied on the brand new accounts of excavations in what was once the core sphere of influence of the Assyrian empire (present day Iraq and Syria), supplemented by various Greek and Roman classics – though also by his own ideas, generally varying from baseless to completely unhinged. Hislop compiled his claims in the book The Two Babylons or The Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife. You can find it on archive.org if you want to torment yourself and read the entire thing – please do not give clicks directly to any fundie sites hosting it though. How does the history of Easter and Ishtar look like according to Hislop? Everything started with Semiramis, who according to his vision was a historical figure and a contemporary of Noah's sons, here also entirely historical. Semiramis is either entirely fictional or a distorted Greek and Roman account of the 9th century BC Assyrian queen Shammuramat, who ruled as a regent for a few years after the death of her husband Shamshi Adad V – an interesting piece of historical trivia, but arguably not really a historical milestone, and by the standards of Mesopotamian history she's hardly a truly ancient figure. Hislop didn't even rely on the primary sources dealing with the legend of Semiramis though, but with their medieval christian interpretations, which cast her in the role of an adulterer first and foremost due to association of ancient Mesopotamia with any and all vices.

Hislop claims that Semiramis was both the Whore of Babylon from the Book of Revelations and the first idolater, instituting worship of herself as a goddess. This goddess, he argues, was Astarte (a combination of two flimsy claims – Roman claim that Semiramis' name means “dove” and now generally distrusted assumption that Phoenician Astarte had the same symbols as Greek Aphrodite) and thus Ishtar, but he also denotes her as a mother goddess – which goes against everything modern research has to say about Ishtar, of course. However, shoddy scholarship relying on few sources was the norm at the time, and Hislop on top of that was driven by religious zeal. In further passages, he identified this “universal mother” with Phrygian Cybele, Greek Rhea and Athena, Egyptian Isis, Taoist Xi Wangmu (sic) and many more, pretty much at random, arguing all of them were aspects of nefarious Semiramis cult which infected all corners of the globe. He believed that she was venerated alongside a son-consort, derived from Semiramis' even more fictional husband Ninus (a mythical founder of Assyria according to Greek authors, absent from any Mesopotamian sources; his name was derived from Nineveh, not from any word for son like Hislop claims), who he identifies with biblical Nimrod (likewise not a historical figure, probably a distorted reflection of the god Ninurta). Note the similarity with certain ideas perpetrated by Frazer's Golden Bough and his later fans like Jung, Graves and many neopagan authors – pseudohistory, regardless of ideological background, has a very small canon of genuinely original claims. Ishtar was finally introduced to Britain by “druids” (note once again the similarity to the baffling integration of random Greek, Egyptian or Mesopotamian deities into Graves-derived systems of fraudulent trivia about “universal mother goddesses” often using an inaccurate version of Celtic myths as framework). This eventually lead to the creation of the holiday of Easter. Pascha doesn't come up in the book at all, as far as I can tell. All of this is basically just buildup for the book's core shocking reveal: catholic veneration of Mary and depictions of Mary with infant Jesus in particular are actually the worship of Semiramis and her son-consort Ninus, and only the truly faithful can reveal this evil purpose of religious art. At least so claims Hislop. This bizarre idea is laughable, but it remains disturbingly persistent – do you remember the Chick Tracts memes from a few years ago, for example? These comics were in part inspired by Hislop's work. Many fundamentalist christian communities appear to hold his confabulations in high esteem up to this day – and many people who by design see themselves as a countercultural opposition to christianity independently gleefully embrace them, seemingly ignorant of their origin. While there are many articles debunking Hislop's claim about Easter, few of them try to show how truly incomprehensibly bad his book is as a whole – hopefully the following examples will be sufficient to illustrate this point: -Zoroaster is connected to Moloch because of the Zoroastrian holy fire - and Moloch is, of course Ninus. Note that while a few Greek authors believed Zoroaster to be the “king of Bactria” mythical accounts presented as a contemporary of Ninus, the two were regarded as enemies – Hislop doesn't even follow the pseudohistory he uses as proof! -Zoroaster is also Tammuz. Tammuz is, of course, yet another aspect of Ninus. -demonic character is ascribed to relics of the historical Buddha; also he's Osiris. And Ninus. -an incredibly racist passage explains why the biblical Nimrod (identified with – you guessed it - Ninus) might be regarded as “ugly and deformed” like Haephestus and thus identical to him (no, it makes no sense in context either) - Hislop thinks he was black (that's not the word he uses, naturally) which to him is the same thing. -Attis is a deification of sin itself -the pope represents Dagon (incorrectly interpreted as a fish god in the 19th century) -Baal and Bel are two unrelated words – this is meant to justify the historicity of the Tower of Babel by asserting it was built by Ninus, who was identical to Bel (in reality a title of Marduk); Bel, according to Hislop, means “the confounder (of languages)” rather than “lord” -the term “cannibal” comes from a made up term for priests of Baal (Ninus) who according to Hislop ate children. In reality it's a Spanish corruption of the endonym of one of the first tribes encountered by the Spanish conquerors in America, and was not a word used in antiquity – also, as I discussed in my Baal post, the worship of Baal did not involve cannibalism. This specific claim of Hislop's is popular with the adherents of prophetic doomsday cult slash wannabe terrorist group QAnon today, and shows up on their “redpilling” graphics. -Ninus was also Cronos; Cronos' name therefore meant “horned one” in reference to Mesopotamian bull/horned crown iconography and many superficially similar gods from all over the world were the same as him - note the similarity to Margaret Murray's obsession with her made up idea of worldwide worship of a “horned god” (later incorporated into Wicca). -Phaeton, Orpheus and Aesculapius are the same figure and analogous to Lucifer (and in turn to Ninus) -giants are real and they're satanists (or were, I think Hislop argues they're dead already). They are (were?) also servants of Ninus. -as an all around charming individual Hislop made sure to include a plethora of comments decrying the practices of various groups at random as digressions while presenting his ridiculous theories – so, while learning about the forbidden history of Easter, one can also learn why the author thinks Yezidi are satanists, for example -last but not least, the very sign of the cross is not truly christian but constitutes the worship of Tammuz, aka Ninus (slowly losing track of how many figures were regarded as one and the same as him by Hislop). Based on the summary above it's safe to say that Hislop's claim is incorrect – and, arguably, malevolent (and as such deserves scrutiny, not further possibilities for spreading). However, this doesn't answer the question where does the name of Easter actually come from? As I noted in the beginning, in English (and also German) it's a bit of an oddity – it  actually was derived from a preexisting pagan term, at least if we are to believe the word of the monk Bede, who in the 8th century wrote that the term is a derivative of “Eosturmonath,” eg. “month of Eostre” - according to him a goddess. There are no known inscriptions mentioning such a goddess from the British Isles or beyond, though researchers involved in reconstructing proto-indo-european language assume that “Eostre” would logically be a derivative of the same term as  the name of the Greek Eos and of the vedic Ushas, and the Austriahenae goddesses from Roman inscriptions from present day Germany  – eg.  a word simply referring to dawn, and by extension to a goddess embodying it. This is a sound, well researched theory, so while early medieval chroniclers sometimes cannot be trusted, I see no reason to doubt Bede's account.

While Ushas is a prominent goddess in the Vedas, Eos was rather marginal in Greek religion (see her Theoi entry for details), and it's hard to tell to what degree Bede's Eostre was similar to either of them beyond plausibly being a personification of dawn. Of course, the hypothetical proto-indo-european dawn goddess all of these could be derived from would have next to nothing to do with Ishtar. While the history of the name of Easter (though not the celebration itself) is undeniably interesting, I suppose it lacks the elements which make the fake Ishtar claim a viral hit – the connection is indirect, and an equivalent of the Greek Eos isn't exactly exciting (Eos herself is, let be honest, remembered at best as an obscure part of the Odyssey), while Ishtar is understood by many as “wicked” sex goddess (a simplification, to put it very lightly) which adds a scandalous, sacrilegious dimension to the baffling lie, explaining its appeal to Dawkins' fans, arguably. As demonstrated above, Hislop's theories are false and adapting them for any new context – be it christian, atheist or neopagan – won't change that, but are there any genuine examples of, well, “hidden Ishtars”? If that's the part of the summary which caught your attention, rejoice – there is a plenty of these to be found in Bronze Age texts. I'd go as far as saying that most of ancient middle eastern cultures from that era felt compelled to include an Ishtar ersatz in their pantheons. Due to the popularity of the original Ishtar, she was almost a class of figures rather than a single figure – a situation almost comparable to modern franchising, when you think about it. The following figures can be undeniably regarded as “Ishtar-like” in some capacity or even as outright analogs:

Astarte (or Ashtart, to go with a more accurate transcription of the oldest recorded version of the name) – the most direct counterpart of Ishtar there is: a cognate of her own name. Simply, put Astarte is the “Levantine”equivalent of the “Mesopotamian” Ishtar. In the city of Mari, the names were pretty much used interchangeably, and some god lists equate them, though Astarte had a fair share of distinct traits. In Ugaritic mythology, which forms the core of our understanding of the western Semitic deities, she was a warrior and hunter (though it's possible that in addition to conventional weapons she was also skilled at wielding curses), and was usually grouped with Anat. Both of them were regarded as the allies of Baal, and assist him against his enemies in various myth. They also were envisioned to spend a lot of time together – one ritual calls them upon as a pair from distant lands where they're hunting together, while a fragmentary myth depicts both of them arriving in the household of the head god El and taking pity on Yarikh, the moon god, seemingly treated as a pariah. Astarte's close relation to Baal is illustrated by her epithet, “face of Baal” or “of the name of Baal.” They were often regarde as a couple and even late, Hellenic sources preserve a traditional belief that Astarte and “Adados” (Baal) ruled together as a pair. In some documents from Ugarit concerned with what we would call foreign policy today they were invoked together as the most prominent deities. It's therefore possible that she had some role related to human politics. She was regarded as exceptionally beautiful and some texts favorably describe mortal women's appearance by comparing them to Astarte. In later times she was regarded as a goddess of love, but it's unclear if that was a significant aspect of her in the Bronze Age. It's equally unclear if she shared Ishtar's astral character – in Canaan there were seemingly entirely separate dawn and dusk deities. Despite clamis you might see online, Astarte was not the same as the mother goddess Asherah. In the Baal cycle they actually belong to the opposing camps. Additionally, the names are only superficially similar (one starts with an aleph, the other with an ayin) and have different etymology. Also, that famous sculpture of a very blatantly Minoan potnia theron? Ugaritic in origin but not a depiction of either Astarte or Asherah.

The Egyptians, due to extensive contact with Canaan and various Syrian states in the second half of the Bronze Age, adapted Astarte (and by extension Anat) into their own pantheon. Like in Ugarit, her warrior character was emphasized. An Egyptian innovation was depicting her as a cavalry goddess of sorts – associated with mounted combat and chariots. In Egypt, Ptah, the head god of Memphis and divine craftsman, was regarded as her father. In most texts, Astarte is part of Seth's inner circle of associates – however, in this context Seth wasn't the slayer of Osiris, but a heroic storm god similar to Baal. The so-called Astarte papyrus presents an account of a myth eerily similar to the Ugaritic battle between Baal and Yam – starring Seth as the hero, with Astarte in a supporting role resembling that played by Shaushka, another Ishtar analog, in the Hittite song of Hedammu, which will be discussed below.

Shaushka – a Hurrian and Hittite goddess whose name means “the magnificent one” in the Hurrian language. Hurrian was widely spoken in ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia (and in northernmost parts of the Levant – up to one fifth of personal names from Ugaritic documents were Hurrian iirc), but has no descendants today and its relation to any extant languages is uncertain. In Hittite texts she was often referred to with an “akkadogram” denoting Ishtar's name (or its Sumerian equivalent) instead of a phonetic  spelling of her own (there was an analogous practice regarding the sun gods), while in Egyptian and Syrian texts there are a few references to “Ishtar Hurri” - “Ishtar of the Hurrians” - who is argued by researchers to be one and the same as Shaushka. Despite Shaushka's Hurrian name and her prominence in myths popular both among Hittites and Hurrians, her main cult center was the Assyrian city of Nineveh, associated with Ishtar herself as well, and there were relatively few temples dedicated to her in the core Hittite sphere of influence in Anatolia. Curiously, both the oldest reference to Shaushka and to the city of Nineveh come from the same text, stating that a sheep was sacrificed to her there. While most of her roles overlap with Ishtar's (she too was associated with sex, warfare and fertility), here are two distinct features of Shaushka that set her apart as unique: one is the fact she was perceived in part as a masculine deity, despite being consistently described as a woman – in the famous Yazılıkaya reliefs she appears twice, both among gods and goddesses. In Alalakh she was depicted in outfits combining elements of male and female clothing. Similar fashion preferences were at times attributed to Ninshubur, the attendant of Ishtar's Sumerian forerunner Inanna – though in that case they were likely the result of conflation of Ninshubur with the male messenger deity Papsukkal, while in the case of Shaushka the dual nature seems to be inherent to her (I haven't seen any in depth study of this matter yet, sadly, so I can't really tell confidently which modern term in my opinion describes Shaushka's character the best). Her two attendants, musician goddesses Ninatta and Kulitta, do not share it. Shaushka's other unique niche is her role in exorcisms and incantations, and by extension with curing various diseases – this role outlived her cult itself, as late Assyrian inscriptions still associated the “Ishtar of Nineveh” (at times viewed as separate from the regular Ishtar) with healing. It can be argued that even her sexual aspect was connected to healing, as she was invoked to cure impotence. The most significant myth in which she appears is the cycle dedicated to documenting the storm god's (Teshub for the Hurrians, Tarhunna for the Hittites) rise to power. Shaushka is depicted as his sister and arguably most reliable ally, and plays a prominent role in two sections in particular – the Song of Hedammu and the Song of Ullikummi. In the former, she seemingly comes up with an elaborate plan to defeat a new enemy of her brother - the sea monster Hedammu - by performing a seductive dance and song montage (with her attendants as a support act) and offering an elixir to him. The exact result is uncertain, but Hedammu evidently ends up vanquished. In the latter, she attempts to use the same gambit against yet another new foe, the “diorite man” Ullikummi – however, since he is unfeeling like a rock, she fails; some translators see this passage as comedic. However, elsewhere in the Song, the storm god's main enemy Kumarbi and his minions view Shaushka as a formidable warrior, and in the early installment of the cycle, Song of LAMMA, she seemingly partakes in a fight. In another myth, known only from a few fragments and compared to the Sumerian text “Inanna and the huluppu tree,” Shaushka takes care of “Ḫašarri” -  a personification of olive oil, or a sentient olive tree. It seems that she has to protect this bizarre entity from various threats. While Shaushka lived on in Mesopotamia as “Ishtar of Nineveh,” this was far from the only “variant”of Ishtar in her homeland.

Nanaya was another such goddess. A few Sumerian hymns mention her alongside Inanna, the Sumerian equivalent of Ishtar, by the time of Sargon of Akkad virtually impossible to separate from her. As one composition puts it, Nanaya was “properly educated by holy Inana” and “counselled by holy Inana.” Initially she was most likely a part of Inanna's circle of deities in her cult center, Uruk, though due to shared character they eventually blurred together to a large degree. Just like Inanna/Ishtar, Nanaya was a goddess of love, described as beautiful and romantically and sexually active, and she too had an astral character. She was even celebrated during the same holidays as Inanna. Some researchers go as far as suggest Nanaya was only ever Inanna/Ishtar in her astral aspect alone and not a separate goddess. However, there is also evidence of her, Inanna and the sky god An being regarded as a trinity of distinct tutelary deities in Uruk. Additionally, king Melishipak's kudurru shown above shows both Nanaya (seated) and Ishtar/Inanna (as a star). Something peculiar to Nanaya was her later association with the scribe god Nabu. Sometimes Nabu's consort was the the goddess Tashmetu instead, but I can't find any summary explaining potential differences between them – it seems just like Nanaya, she was a goddess of love, including its physical aspects. Regardless of the name used to describe Nabu's wife, she was regarded as a sage and scribe like him – this arguably gives her a distinct identity she lacked in her early role as part of Inanna's circle. As the above examples demonstrate, the popularity of the “Ishtar type” was exceptional in the Bronze Age – but is it odd from a modern perspective? The myths dedicated to her are still quite fun to read today – much like any hero of ancient imagination she has a plethora of adversaries, a complex love life (not to mention many figures not intended to be read as her lovers originally but described in such terms that it's easy to see them this way today – including other women), a penchant for reckless behavior – and most importantly a consistent, easy to summarize character. She shouldn't be a part of modern mass consciousness only because of false 19th century claims detached from her actual character (both these from Hislop's works and “secular”claims about her purported “real”character based on flimsy reasoning and shoddy sources) – isn't a female character who is allowed to act about the same way as male mythical figures do without being condemned for it pretty much what many modern mythology retellings try to create? Further reading: On Astarte: -entry in the Iconography of Deities and Demons in Ancient Near East database by Izak Cornelius -‛Athtart in Late Bronze Age Syrian Texts by Mark S. Smith -ʿAthtartu’s Incantations and the Use of Divine Names as Weapons by Theodore J. Lewis -The Other Version of the Story of the Storm-god’s Combat with the Sea in the Light of Egyptian, Ugaritic, and Hurro-Hittite Texts by Noga Ayali-Darshan -for a summary of evidence that Astarte has nothing to do with Asherah see A Reassessment of Asherah With Further Considerations of the Goddess by Steve A. Wiggins On Shaushka: -Adapting Mesopotamian Myth in Hurro-Hittite Rituals at Hattuša: IŠTAR, the Underworld, and the Legendary Kings by Mary R. Bacharova -Ishtar seduces the Sea-serpent. A new join in the epic of Ḫedammu (KUB 36, 56 + 95) and its meaning for the battle between Baal and Yam in Ugaritic tradition by Meindert Dijkstra -Ištar of Nineveh Reconsidered by Gary Beckman -Shaushka, the Traveling Goddess by Graciela Gestoso Singer -Hittite Myths by Harry A. Hoffner jr. -The Hurritic Myth about Šaušga of Nineveh and Ḫašarri (CTH 776.2) by Meindert Dijkstra -The West Hurian Pantheon and its Background by Alfonso Archi On Nanaya: -entry in Brill’s New Pauly by Thomas Richter -entry from the Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses project by Ruth Horry -A tigi to Nanaya for Ishbi-Erra from The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature -A balbale to Inana as Nanaya from The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature -More Light on Nanaya by Michael P. Streck and Nathan Wasserman -More on the Nature and History of the Goddess Nanaya by Piotr Steinkeller A few introductory Ishtar/Inanna myths: -Inanna's descent to the netherworld -Inanna and the huluppu tree -Inanna and Enki -Enki and the world order -Inanna and Ebih -Dumuzid and Enkimdu

[lunartearrose]

I CAN TELL YOU ANOTHER SILLY HC THO I love the hc that the S4 do have like. Fans. Skull is not very responsive with them.

Can you imagine like. Coroika universe fancams. skull voice: aloha whos making these videos of us on tiktok

God thats hilarious. Tbh i feel like team fans just have the oddest interactions

Like skull fans? Everyone knows he doesn't get it. A small subset protec him from the weirder fans because he would just not get it. He gets chocolate and he's like "oh cool a normal gift. I guess maybe I'll swallow the box whole later" he thinks its all just generosity with nothing behind it. "Why make videos? Why theorize about my movements? Why even give me things or waste a crush, I'm just some guy. But also please keep giving me chocolate."

Aloha: Skull!!!! Those fans are crushing on you!!!

Skull: but i don't know them? And they don't really know me...? Why would they

Aloha: I- well-

ANYWAYS i just have such ideas for how the s4 and some others interract w their fans

Aloha? He interracts w his fans a whole bunch on social medias n crap and by manga look is a highly obvious flirt sometimes (just to keep the fans guessing??) but if you go to a party with he downloads your exact adress to his brain off your vibes alone and this kind of intimidates ppl! Nobody gets close enough to catch his secret vibes but he has them and none of his fans are sure they WANT a peek behind the veil behind what he puts out (but his friends do! They care him and he cares them)

For army tho? His fans are a bit invasive bc hes easy to fluster and has a tough time balancing being polite with assertiveness towards ppl that find him just so cool! This leads to aloha intersections (that just confuse and fluster army more before he gets vanished for his own good by a caring? friend), mask and rider getting agressive with fans and skull. Asking the questions that kind of bring ppl back to the reality that Army Is Just Some Guy. But blue team is the best at getting ppl to leave army alone

Mask? He has strict ground rules with his due to a cyan teammate getting hurt by one once. Nobody is allowed to know where he or his teammates live, nobody is allowed to know anything deeply personal. He has dupes of clothes specifically to annoy the press, and especially is nobody allowed to see him maskless. If he could he'd get rid of info abt his team on the net at all (and the urban legend team doesn't sound all that bad to him) but its a nigh impossible task so he just keeps a careful eye on accounts to make sure that they for certain aren't being creeps.

Rider of course just intimidates, he's cool and his fans respect this, but as where skull 100% not get fans and their interactions and movements, rider is a good 50%. He was a fan once himself, he understands being casual and how cool it is to get autographs. But something like stan twitter makes him so absolutely baffled. What the hell are fancams? Why is there an imagines? Why is any of this necessary, just admit you think someone's cool and move on?!?!?!

Oh also Xbloods are rude to their fanbase on purpose the fans just like enjoy this bc its part of what they do. Nothing wrong here, Vintage just isn't sure if he likes or dislikes the attention, so do what you want But He Will Be Mean and Scary. And maybe occasionally post pictures of the food he ate today. After he ate it-

Team emperor (both iterations) are kind to their fans! But where army lacks the assertiveness to shut down invasive questions if you say something weird Emperor will personally (and perhaps politely depending on how bad it is) tell you it's highly unbecoming of a fan to ask or do such things. And if there is one thing emperor teaches prince it's to not let fans overstep simple boundaries no matter the tone they have.

Blue team has contracted some fans but their flavor of weird is a bit intimidating but nobody will rlly approach for an autograph or anything. Weird teams weird and specs would be shocked to learn they have fancams

Team hachi is similar to the blue team situation (specs would be shocked to find they have fan cams. But also hachi made a fancam of goggles???)

The guardians? They just got here from the mountains maybe some people know hive but otherwise in universe everyone's like WHO THE HECK ARE THESE???

Anyways Ty for allowing me the time to rant! And don't worry abt asks or dms its all cool uwu i like to talk either way

[dwellordream]

“…There is a real belief on behalf of a not insignificant subset of society that the medieval Church was a shadowy organisation dedicated solely to suppressing knowledge and scientific advancement. This is not true.

The Church was in all actuality the medieval period’s largest benefactor of scholars of all stripes. Initially, in the early medieval period much learning was focused in monastaries in particular. Because monks took a vow to eschew idleness, they were always looking for new ways to work for the greater glory of God, or whatever. Sometimes this took the form of doing manual labour to feed themselves, but as monasteries such as Cluny rose to prominence they did more and more work in libraries as well.

Monks copied and embellished manuscripts and kept impressive libraries. Sometimes this work took place inside what we call “scriptoria” where more than one scribe is working at a time. They saw themselves as charged with transmitting knowledge. A lot of that knowledge was, of course, pagan, because they were extremely into classical thinkers. They were also reading this work of course, and writing their own commentaries on it. Many of them took the medical texts and used them to set up hospitals within their monasteries, as we have talked about before.

Lest you think this is all one big sausage fest, women were also very much about that book life within nunneries. They also had their own scriptoria and were busy scribbling away, reading, writing, and thinking. If you wanted a life where you strove for new scholarly heights, odds were that in the early medieval period you did that inside a monastery on nunnery.

As the medieval period moved on, scholarship eventually moved out of the cloister and into cities when the medieval university was established. The first degree awarding institution to call itself a university was the University of Bologna established around 1088, though teaching had been going on there previously and students had been going to Bologna from at least the late tenth century. Second was the University of Paris, which was established in 1150. Again teaching had been happening there from much earlier, and at least 1045.

Medieval universities weren’t like universities now, in that they didn’t have established campuses or anything like that. They were, more or less, a loose affiliation of scholars who would provide lessons to interested students. The University of Paris, for example, described itself as “a guild of teachers and scholars” (universitas magistrorum et scholarium).

In Paris there were four faculties: Arts, Medicine, Law, and Theology. Everyone had to attend the Arts school first where they would be asked to learn the trivium, which was comprised of rhetoric, logic, and grammar. Basically that meant all undergrads spent their time learning to argue, which is how the whole Abelard thing comes about. Then if they wanted more they could go do medicine, law, or theology. Theology was considered the really crazy good stuff, as medieval theologians were sorta held up in the way we worship astrophysicists like Neil de Grasse Tyson (ugh) or Stephen Hawking now. But if you wanna be a dick and super modern about it and think that nothing is more important than science, you will note that medicine is there and actively pursued.

So what, what does all of this have to do with the Church not being suppressive? Well literally everyone, both scholars and students in a medieval university was a member of the clergy. That’s right. Are you a Christian and you wanna learn about medicine? Well you need to take holy orders first. So every single scientific advancement that came out of a medieval university (and there were plenty) was made by a man of the cloth.

The quick among you might have spotted that the thing about unis is that they were just for dudes though, and that is lamentably true. Women weren’t able to take the same orders as men, which means they were excluded from university training. Plenty of them got tutored if they were rich. (See poor Heloise who just had Abelard, like, do himself at her.) Otherwise there was plenty of sweet stuff going on in nunneries still and always, as the visionary natural biologist Hildegard of Bingen can attest. Monasteries were also still producing good stuff as Thomas Aquinas would be happy to let you know from the comfort of his Dominican order.

Given that all of this is the case, it’s hard to square that circle of “the Church is intentionally suppressing knowledge!” with the fact that everyone actively working on acquiring and furthering knowledge was a member of it and all. The Church was a welcoming home to scholars because it was a place where you got the time needed to contemplate subjects for a long time. If you have your corporeal needs taken care of, then you can go on to think about stuff. The Church offered that.

Having said all of this, there were, of course, plenty of Jewish and Muslim scholars at work in medieval Europe as well. The thriving Jewish communities of the medieval period had their own complex theological discussions about the Talmud, and produced their own truly delightful sexual and scientific theory that I will never tire of reading.

I’ve also talked at length about how Islamic medical advances were very much taken on board by medieval Christians in Europe. The fact that the Christians in holy orders beavering away at the medical faculties of universities across Europe were very much looking to a Muslim guy called Ibn Sinna for medical knowledge makes it hard to see the Church as an oppressive hater of all things non-Catholic. I’m just saying.

What else is at play here? Meh, society writ large. A lot of us in the English as a first language speaking world, and in northern Europe more generally have been raised in a Protestant context even if we ourselves are not Protestant. The thing about that is Protestants, famously, is that they are not huge fans of the Church. Big news, I know. In the Early Modern period this could get kinda wild, with things like the Great Fire of London being blamed on a nefarious “Papish plot”, for example, becoming a nice early example of a conspiracy theory. (That conspiracy theory was still written in Latin at the based of The Monument built to commemorate the fire until 1830 when the Catholics were officially emancipated in Britain. LOL.)

When the whole Enlightenment thing went down, generalised distrust of Catholics was then later compounded by the fact that “serious” thinkers aka Voltaire’s ridiculously basic self began to categorise the accumulation of knowledge specifically in opposition to religious thought. This is the old “Age of Reason” which we currently allegedly reside in, versus the “Age of Faith” idea. The Church as an overarching institution from the age of faith was therefore thought of as necessarily regressive, and it became assumed that it has always been actively attempting to thwart advantage for vaguely sinister reasons that are never fully articulated.

…Now, plenty of people were killed for witchcraft because they were doing medicine. The witch trials were a very real thing, and you know when and where they happened? In the modern period, and usually with a greater regularity in Protestant places. Witchcraft trials peak in general from about 1560-1630 which is the modern period. The most famous trials with the biggest kill count took place in Trier, Fulda, Basque, Wurtzburg, Bamberg, North Berwick, Torsåker and Salem. You know what was going on in most of the places? The Reformation. Witch trials sort of reflected various confessions of Christianity’s ability to effectively protect their flocks from evil. Did Catholics kill “witches” oh you bet your sweet ass they did. So did Protestants, and it was all fucking ugly.

What is important to note is that in countries where Catholicism was static witch trials were largely unheard of. Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy, for example, just didn’t go in for them even though they were theoretically in the clutches of a nefarious Church bent on destroying all medical knowledge or something.

Now, none of this is to excuse the multifarious sins of the institutional Church over the years. In many ways my entire career as a medieval historian is a product of the fact that I was frustrated with the Church after 16 years of Catholic school. If you had to go to a High School named after the prosecutor in the Galileo trial, you might also end up devoting yourself to picking intricate theological fights with the Church, OK? (Yes, this is my origin story.)

And that brings us to the crux of the matter: if you make up a bunch of stuff that the Church did not do it makes it harder to critique them of the manifold things they actually did do and are doing right fucking now. We need to be critiquing the Magdalene Laundries; the international cover up of pedophile priests; signing an actual concordant with Nazi Germany; the regressive attitudes towards abortion and contraception that happen still, now, and endanger the lives of countless women. All of this is real, and calls for the strongest possible condemnation.”

- Eleanor Janega, “JFC, calm down about the medieval Church.”

[thelostgirl21]

Oddly enough, most hate I've seen for the show comes from a specific subset of fans of Henry Cavill (and game Geralt) that are firmly claiming "woke culture" is destroying the Witcher they love, by pushing their agenda onto the show, and that see Cavill as the ultimate alpha male dudebro (hating on "The Witcher" and its feminist and pro-LGBTQ+ themes is an incel's idea of having a good time!)!

They are essentially the same people that are mad Ciri became the protagonist of the 4th videogame and call her looks "ugly".

They hate the women casting for the sorcerresses on the show with a passion, because they are supposed to embody the pinaccle of female beauty perfection, while on the show one is "morbidly obese" (the exact words I've seen used) and black when she's supposed to look like a greek goddess (spoilers alert, she does on the show!), Triss is supposed to be all red hair and white skin, Yennefer a raven haired white lady, etc.!

Before Season 3, in their opinion, Jaskier was given way too much agency on the show (especially in Season 2 when they made him the Sandpiper) when he is supposed to more or less be a womanizer that objectifies (again, mostly white... With the occasional succubus) women, and will refuse to stop oogling their breasts even when asked. But now, they've made him *gasp!* gay (they don't believe in panromantism/sexuality, much less in sapioromantism/sexuality, and it shows)!

And, to "legitimize their hate", they'll tend to say that the diversity on the show doesn't respect the Slavic world of Sapkowski (when the author himself clearly said that his books aren't particularly meant to be read through a Slavic lens, and it's a fantasist, fairy tale world), and twist videogame narrative and character to pretend that not staying true to the game is disrespecting the books.

They'll claim that this is why Cavill left, too!

Sadly, each time you see Cavill defending how he petitioned the writers to stay true to the books, he's mostly defending the game rather than the books themselves. And he's impossibly vague about it (so again, as fans you're the one needing to fill the blanks and decide what he means by that).

I think the only main cast member with some firm knowledge of the books, is actually Joey (because you've got quite a few other books nerds in the ensemble).

And, when you take into consideration that Cavill was refusing to be talkative and say his line on the show, you realize that this specific Jaskier is more or less saddled with an emotionally ambiguous Geralt that won't banter and share with him like the two of them are meant to be doing (if you go back to the source material)!

So, TV show Jaskier is forced to "constantly assume" what Geralt is thinking, feeling, etc., while taking the complete lead in the relationship, and imposing his own vision/interpretation of who they are to each other.

Even on that front, until Season 3 at least, it was a very "You can decide what Geralt feels for Jaskier", because it's all up to viewer's interpretation!

Ex: You can decide that Geralt's abandonment issues are making him fearful of trusting that he's genuinely loved (platonically or alterously, or perhaps even romantically) by the bard, and is causing misunderstandings between them.

You can decide that him refusing to call Jaskier "a friend" (especially refusing to reassure Yennefer on the subject) means that Geralt is confused about the nature of their relationship, because Jaskier behaves with him like a romantic partner would (bathing him, rubbing salve onto his butt while calling it lovely, etc.) while calling him "his best friend in the whole wide world"... Something that would make tons of sense for an a-spec person with a strong squish that would have been looking for a queerplatonic "travel companion" (Jaskier), but less for someone that would typically expect his close relationships to fall either in the clear category of friendship (emotional intimacy, but without the wish to make a commitment as life partners / marry your best friend / share a family with with them, more or less) or romance (Geralt).

Or, you could also decide that him refusing to call him "a friend" is because Geralt finds his pushyness annoying, because Geralt is clearly an "alpha type" while Jaskier is clearly a "beta type", and yet, he tries to "impose" on him and pretend he's the alpha, etc.

The possibilities for interpretation are near endless!

Even with Yennefer, Geralt gives a lot of mixed signals as to what he feels and wants from the relationship.

I think Season 3 is the first Season where he's more open with his emotions, says "thank you", "I love you", etc.

They've started giving him a clearer direction, and there are a lot less sighs, fucks and grunts coming from him.

Oddly enough, that's also when the actor has chosen to leave, perhaps because Geralt feels less and less like his own.

But yeah, it seems that Joey, as Jaskier, had been more or less forced to play and portray that friendship "on his own" in Season 1 and 2, because Cavill wouldn't commit to a specific type of relationship with his character, either, in a sense.

They have tons of chemistry on screen, and would make each other laugh on set. They are reportedly great friends IRL (and I've no reason to doubt it). But professionally, Cavill's portrayal of Geralt feels very subdued and without clear direction now that I look at it.

And I even think that the reason why I identified with Jaskier so much, too, and found him a bit "co-dependent" with Geralt, is because of the lack of clear feedback from Cavill that is sensed on screen.

People that are emotionally manipulative will constantly hold you in a state of uncertainty about the way they feel about you and where you two stand in the relationship - giving you just a tiny sliver of hope to keep you hooked on the relationship while never fully committing to it - to constantly make you prioritize them and nearly obsess about winning their approval / love.

And Jaskier (Joey) is dancing around Geralt (Cavill) trying to get a response / answer out of him all the time, and Geralt is... up to interpretation!

Is that gaze fond/affectionate? Does he care? Is he receptive to my ideas? What for does he yearn, damnit?!

Who knows?! You figure it out, Jaskier (Joey)!

Joey's read the books, he knows where that relationship is supposed to go to technically stay true to the source material™.

Now that I know that he constantly had to improvise lines to try to say everything that Cavill wouldn't, it feels like he's basically taken the responsibility of trying to make Geralt seem more sympathetic than Cavill plays him on the show, and attempting to move the relationship towards how it is in the books, while playing opposite a Geralt that is not book Geralt, and that doesn't respond to Jaskier as he would in the source material, either!

He's not even the TV show writers' Geralt!

He's Cavill's own private Geralt that only exists in his mind, and that everyone watching the show can own and fill in with whatever blanks they want!

He's just there making grunts, faces and sighs with Jaskier (and many other characters), and you're the one that needs to decide what he feels and what it means!

No wonder some people feel like something about Jaskier, Yennefer, etc. feels "off" on the show, Geralt is "off".

But because "Geralt is us", we don't instinctively realise that it's him that doesn't work with the ensemble! We want to be a part of that world, too, and Cavill is giving us that opportunity.

But he's not embodying Geralt. We are.

So, maybe that's why I instinctively trust the character that's emotionally available and more verbal (Jaskier)'s perspective on the show...

And why my constantly feeling that Jaskier is reaching out to an "unresponsive Geralt" in the relationship comes from the fact that Joey Batey is constantly reaching out to a co-star that's letting him drive the whole dynamic of the relationship on his own, and refusing to commit to Jaskier and Geralt's friendship in any specific manner.

Then, you watch Joey act with Hugh Skinner, and Hugh gives back as good as he gets!

He's committed to the role and the emotions of his character without ambiguity. Sure, a lot will always remain up to interpretation. That is true of any dynamic between characters.

But it's a relationship that's very "spoken" on screen, and that both actors appear to be showing a commitment to, at the very least.

The first feeling I had watching Jaskier and Radovid interact together on screen was literally relief. Finally I don't have to make any mental gymnastics to make it work!

I see beauty (and dysfunction) in Jaskier and Geralt's on screen relationship on the show because I chose to fill in the blanks in a way that I'm sure others have filled completely differently!

Again, it's not bad, but it might explain why so many people with so many different ideologies are so protective of Cavill's Geralt... he's essentially theirs!

An incel can relate to him and connect with him - seeing him as a long-suffering wise stoic no-nonsense man trapped in a world filled with woke nonsense.

A victim of parental abuse can relate to him, and see him as emotionally fragile and trying to protect himself from further hurt.

He's no one and everyone!

It's quite fascinating, really.

p.s. Not all people disliking the show do so out of "anti-wokeness". Like with any adaptation, some people will enjoy it, and others will dislike it. They may be annoyed with the non-linear narrative or Season 1 (a friend couldn't even start watching because of that), for example, feel like it's too far off from their own interpretation of the books, etc. There are tons of reasons not to like it! I'm really talking about the most virulent haters that I've come across that will devote entire YouTube channels to worshipping Cavill and destroying the show, and band together to complain on Facebook each time any post with "The Witcher" shows up! There's nothing wrong about being passionate about the videogames and preferring them to the books either, and being put off by the fact that the TV show is ignoring the game. But there's this very specific subset of toxic gamers (one of them I argued with was also trying to convince me Felicia Day was never harassed, and gamergate was justified) that are excessively vocal on various platforms driving the anti-Netflix TV show movement that you seldom find in other adaptations that feel very validated by Cavill's performance and departure from the show and massively identify with his Geralt. Now I'm starting to understand why, I think.

I've been thinking about The Witcher books and tv show recently. Because half of the things that make Geralt seem cool and edgy in the show just don't exist in the books.

In the show he's always so stoic. Most of his exposition has to be told by side characters implying things and you just have to gage his reaction to decide if it's true or not. In the books however, he gives a full lore dump to anyone who's remotely nice to him.

Random Character: So how've you been?

Show Geralt: Hmmmm.... 😒 😔 😒...

Book Geralt: Terrible actually, thank you for asking. Monster hunting is dying out and I have zero transferable skills. Yennifer's left me again and Jaskier's off god knows where. Overall I suppose it could be worse, but that's the life or a Witcher. Also, my perfectly good leather jacket got ruined in a fight the day after I bought it :(

[artfully-charming]

Bling Empire Review

I know I’m like a month late writing this case study, but I didn’t have the time when I first finished the series. Anyway, I have some thoughts while watching the show, which I think are interesting discussion points. This post is long, so if any of you actually reads the whole thing, kudos to you!

1. Apparently rich, gaudy (East) Asians is the current Asian stereotype in US (Western?) media

If you truly know, most super rich Asians don’t show off their wealth the way these people do. Hell, if anything, many of them try to hide it as much as possible, especially the older generations. It’s mind-boggling to me sometimes that this is the only view that some people may have of rich Asians or Asians in general for that matter. These people are a very small subset of the much bigger rich Asian population and the reason why this is now what people know is because of their often times embarrassing antics and ostentatious display of wealth. Sure it sells, but I think it partially also contributes to the recent steep increase of attacks against Asians around the western world, along with so many other reasons. I’m of the opinion that shows like these are in no way helpful to anyone who’s watching; if anything, I think it’s quite harmful. When a minority is painted as a singular stereotype, it’s always harmful.

2. Kevin relies on his good looks alone

We all know that Kevin doesn’t have that much going on above (or at least that’s what he wants us to think of him, so he almost fully relies on his good looks. I guess his naïveté of the upper class world helps him become the new toy and the person to shower with gifts, but I’m not sure that people would’ve warmed up to him that much if he wasn’t good looking. Idk, I get weird vibes from him and I think he’s way more complex than what he’s letting on.

3. Cherie proposing

Not going to beat a dead horse, the whole thing is embarrassing for everyone involved. No one would admit it, but it’s YIKES.

4. Jamie just being there

The only reason I’m writing about her is that a friend of mine said Jamie’s personality reminded me of her. Now that I’ve watched the show, I’m quite offended lol she got no personality

5. Plastic surgery nightmare

You’d think with the supposed wealth of these people, they would’ve gone to either better surgeons or make their surgeries look better because they currently all look like the characters in the recent Cats movie.

5. Anna vs Christine

I’m not a fan of Christine per se, but their rivalry is a classic example of born into wealth vs marrying into wealth. Christine tries very hard to be queen bee, to be accepted in the circle that she married into, and she uses her money and every other mean necessary to get to where she wants. She craves validation from Anna in her core, because Anna is this larger-than-life, born-into-wealth princess. She wants to prove that she’s as rich as Anna and can do anything Anna can do, but I think she’ll never truly be there because she’s desperate. Having said this, regardless of what one may think of her, the story about how she lost contact with her parents and how she married into the Chius family shows enough determination and discipline on her end. I think she sort of had a rough life, and she now wants to proclaim to the rest of the world that she’s made it. She’s far from perfect, but I can appreciate her hustle.

As for Anna, her being born rich makes her think that she’ll always be better than Christine. I appreciate her wisdom and for the most part I think she’s a good person, but she’s just as petty as Christine methinks. She’s older than almost everyone else, and I think she’s mostly bored with nothing to do, hence her getting into these “fights” with Christine. I think she never had a financial hardship since she was bored, so she seems like a trust-fund kid still after all these years. Her life revolves around spending money for the sake of spending money, and I’m not sure how much she still enjoys the things and experiences she’s bought.

6. Anna with Kevin and Florent (is that his name?!)

I think their relationship shows how when you’re new blood in this type of circle and you’re fun, these people will have no problem showering you with gifts because they have the money and what else will they do with their money?! Anna is generally generous, and she enjoys seeing her money being used to spoil those around her that she likes. Florent as her French gay best friend truly enjoys all the finer things in life in exchange of his loyalty and companionship. Many of these people are lonely, and if you’re not a user and you’re open to listening to them and accompanying them, I think they’re happy to not only spoil you but also to open doors for you. It’s important to get these people to like you and trust you and to hopefully never cross their line.

7. Christine with her in-laws

Sure she married rich, but do y'all see how hard that marriage is? I recently commented on a post by @call-me-your-ala that talks about why some still erroneously think white men are still the only high value rich men and I mentioned that many Asian men are rich rich. But their families are extremely difficult to penetrate and please. Even once you get in, you’re held to an impossible standard and you still need to do many awful things to be the perfect daughter-in-law. Honestly, Christine’s story of how she took the blame for her husband is quite heartbreaking. She was blamed all those years for not being able to bear a child, a son specifically. That’s happening in the 21st century!! And I’m sure this isn’t just in Asian families. Marrying rich has its price too, and I hope each one of us realizes the trade-offs and don’t think everything is just roses all the time. 

If anyone actually reads this, I’m curious what you think of the show. I can’t fully talk with my friends from a hypergamous standpoint, so y'all ladies are my only hope lol

[itsclydebitches]

Do you think fandoms have unintentionally made people dependent on certain media? Which leads to either getting truly emotionally distraught when said media goes bad in their eyes or changes drastically in a way they don't want. Or becoming hyper fans and becoming very defensive over the media. Shutting down or being dismissive of any negativity (criticism) of said media. either way heavy emotions get attached to it and can cause issues. Neither option seems healthy.

I know someone who once claimed they weren’t a fan. Nothing against them, they just didn’t fall into that category. Total confidence about this. Then one day they were talking about their favorite tennis player - gushing their adoration, explaining the lengths they go through to tape every game, what they wouldn’t give to see them play in person, how devastated they are when they lose - and, without prompting, they stopped in the middle of all this to go, “Oh. I am a fan.” 

Everyone is a fan of something. Could be sports, vehicles, music, books, bugs... everyone has that thing that they’d throw money/time/energy/emotional investment at in a heartbeat. It’s just that the term “fan” - and by extension “fandom” - has come to be associated with a particular subset of the population (usually gendered) that historically is thought to enjoy their thing too much. It’s weird when women scream over movie stars, but it’s natural when men lose their voices at sports games. It’s concerning when someone spends three hours a day writing about the same movie franchise, but it’s awesome if someone spends three hours fixing the same car. Really, should you be spending all that money on cosplay/fanzines/cons/etc.? Shouldn’t you save it for something... important? But when my friend drops thousands of dollars on his music collection and the tech to play it “correctly,” no one bats an eye. That’s an investment. 

Fandoms haven’t created anything. Meaning, fandoms aren’t some separate, autonomous thing that we can decide is unhealthy and cut out of our lives. Fandom is just human behavior, organized around a community and (usually) one specific topic. Are there people who engage with media in ways that we should be criticizing and attempting to fix? Absolutely, but first we need to acknowledge that the problem doesn’t lie in media fandom itself. We can’t go back to a time when media fandoms are depicted as foreign, harmful, and intrinsically removed from any other intense interest - resulting in a whole lot of grief for those who dared admit that they were a part of these communities. Rather, everyone needs to learn how to engage with the things they adore in a way that doesn’t hurt themselves or others. If someone goes, “I’m not sure it’s healthy how invested you are in this movie...” my response is immediately, “I’m not sure it’s healthy that the football fan last week threw a temper tantrum when his team lost and broke public property.” It’s not a matter of claiming that media fandom never does anything bad (god knows it does) but rather undermining the assumption that media fandom is the only one doing bad things. Or obsessive things. Or financially iffy things, etc. Fans here might be dismissive of criticism about their favorite TV show, but so is the “normal” wine or music lover. It’s just that their interest, knowledge, and the intense opinions they’ve formed from that are framed as being cultured. When fans do the same thing it’s suddenly concerning. 

[westernchords]

2020: a replay & reflection

so... here we are at the near end of a very long, unsettling & strange year. and at this particular moment in time, spotify has released its 2020 wrapped feature, an annual highlight for gay people everywhere (self VERY included). since the world is very large & this is a personal blog with a limited scope, i'll talk about what i know best: the view from my corner of the musical world.

i only had two songs in common with any previous year -- i wish i missed my ex by mahalia & sugar by brockhampton (... i know, the heartache is loud already,)

4 unique rain asmr audios made it into my top 15 (they help me sleep lolol)

show tunes was my #4 most listened to genre and yet not a single one made it into my top 100. (i'm pretty sure it was all of my late night waitress sing alongs)

i discovered 1,012 new artists and 162 new genres

all very fun and interesting things! however, in looking at this year, there are two things to discuss that are most important: the amount of time i spent listening to music (111,989 minutes) and my top song, fake mona lisa. let's discuss both.

on time: in short, music means a lot to me. in long, i mean that music has been central to my life for as long as i can remember. i think of my church choir and my mother singing eartha kitt and corrine bailey rae in the kitchen, my father's surprise talents at piano when he would play in chapel, and how i like to make up little ditties to sing for my dog or while i cook or to solely entertain myself. if one was to take a look at my journals, each entry is annotated with the song i was listening to or suited my mood at the time i was writing. at any moment, i am capable of revisiting the emotional landscape of old memories all set to the very soundtrack that holds that particular past closest.

i still remember plucking violin strings at 5, how i used to stack music books so i could sit up straight on my piano bench because i was too short at 7, picking up woodwinds in highschool and letting my best friend act as conductor, and now, singing endlessly- day in and day out, because it makes me feel like i am traveling home. i think of creole folk songs that connect me to my family, my diaspora. i remember the favorite songs and artists of people i don't know anymore, but still. it stays with me. my friend cj says i have a great emotional sensitivity to music, but more so, music simply connects to every cornerstone of who i am. the creation of it, the listening, the love of it. the constancy.

music is integral to my daily routine and life. since i was 13, maybe younger, i have always believed that the first song i hear in a day sets the tone so i always try to play something i love and makes me feel joyful to start off on the right foot. i will do this my entire life. every day is permeated by sound and the data shows it. 111,989 minutes is almost 3 months straight. this doesn't even count soundcloud listens or youtube tracks or music i play on my own. this felt fitting. music, this year in particular, has been a salve to both new and old hurt. and maybe i am picking at my scabs, but 2020 has amplified so much anger and shame and fear and despite that, there is so much joy in art. music is a balm for the world, it is poetry in its own right.

on fake mona lisa: so .. i am kind of obsessed with this song. fifteen hours worth of listening, i text my friends i'll join the video call soon - i just need one more replay, i got high and played this song while lying in the middle of a meadow and experienced more emotions than i had had in a very long time, my friends lovingly tease me about it so it's sort of like a character trait now, kind of obsessed. my turning to this song was the sort of romance that i didn't anticipate, but fell very hard into and, if you know me, you know that's my favorite kind. let's get into why: when dedicated side b came out, i was heartbroken. there's really no other way to put it. i was alone, back in my childhood bedroom, and harboring a reopened wound from past relationships that maybe had never closed in the first place. i was in this strange, melancholic knee-deep-in-emotions place & if you're an avid CRJ fan, you recognize that's a place she knows and sings about well.

as a song, fake mona lisa tends to be one of carly's more lyrically opaque tracks. which is fine, i'm a storyteller at heart, i'll craft my own narrative. (and honestly, there wasn't much legwork here.) without doing a full blown analysis, here are pieces that i find important to note about the song lyrically and resonate most with me -- big or small.

(transcription at bottom)

what i'm basically saying is that this song is about risk and young love and sex. its about secrets, cheap thrills, fast & easy desires, and the fantastical euphoria of a dead-end-but-still-fun “we're young so what's the matter,“ relationship. (very reminiscent of LA hallucinations, imo) and to me, someone who has been in and out of this same subset of emotional affairs, fake mona lisa stuck with me. vegas is a city of high risk, high reward- where else to chase that superficial, unattainable someone? more so, the song gives you the understanding that the relationship doesn't last, but that was not what carly ever truly wanted out of it. fake mona lisa is, at its core, about over indulgence in pleasure as a stand in for actual love + commitment, something i am oft to do myself & only did more of after dedicated side b dropped. i latched onto the slow and simmering exposition into glittery pre-chorus, starlit imagery, shiny-faraway vocals, and frankly, there was no competition for my song of the year. the song is a dream. i love it and i know what that says about me, but i stand by it. 

dedicated side b, especially fake mona lisa, carried me through the healing process of heartbreaks that crystallized into many other things- indulgence, desire, risk, short lived romances, secrets, joy, kisses i should've kept to myself, spontaneous dance breaks, tears, etc., it is an album about love, recovery, and returning to the self. fake mona lisa is just my favorite stop on a long train ride to an okay-ness with aspects of romance (both with the self and others) that i am still figuring out the messy, rose-tinted, contours of.

and sonically? i just adore the key of d minor.

as a last touch point, fake mona lisa was only the tip of the iceberg of songs  i obsessed over about not-exactly-ideal romances. again and again and again, heartbreak anthems appeared in my top 100, a deviation from my typical warmth towards romantic sentiments that appeared in past years. instead, there is a sense of love-at-a-distance, a painting yourself as the object of desire, a severed attachment, a not wanting to commit at all (see let's be friends, heartbeat, want you in my room, all by crj ... all appearing on the list.) however, much of what appeared celebrated love and having tremendous, special, struck by cupid, feelings. it's all there. what i'm saying is that carly rae jepsen writes music for lovestruck people- both lucky and not so much, hopeless or hopeful -- you name it. she writes about how you can fall in love with almost anyone, soundtracks for the highs of the first throes of intimacy, the first (and last) kiss, the shared moments between two people when they are each other's whole world, and the palpable distance of heartache, separation, and the landscape between. 

she writes as though she is both eros and psyche, armed with arrows of cascading melodies, tipped with a salve for suppressing+healing+amplifying heartbreak, and lyrics so intimate and dreamy, you really can't help but believe in love with the way she speaks of it. love is a venture from shame, a fantasy that is more real than anything else, tender and kind, pleasurable, and escapable into. the world is better in it, the world is better because of it. in carly rae jepsen's discography, love is the defining pillar of experience. a northern star and guiding principle. it is the only thing, no matter what form. & frankly? i cant help but agree.

as a final note, in hanif wills-abdurraqib's emotion review for MTV, carly rae jepsen's public displays of affection, he says this:

thats all for now. bye 2020.

- august

///

transcription of my notes:

verse 1:

city/star light imagery

i am known for wearing a star stamp on my cheek

infatuation & attraction

paints a photo of a starlet and her lover, a fair weather affair

pre-chorus:

always waiting fro a chance the object of desire

a high from love, addictive pleasures

chorus:

sex & art & risk taking (art synonymous with beauty. + seduction)

she knows she cant handle this in a real way, but wants it

desire vs/& (in conjunction with) pain

verse 2:

an idealistic worldview, hoping for the best, always somewhere else not present. 

dreamy lyrics + dreamy state of mind, cloudy even.

specifically the words fake mona lisa:

contrast, beautiful yet fully acknowledged to be unreal/superficial

a stand in for “real art“ aka “real love“

[praisetheaxolotl]

I’d like to get your thoughts on this, hope this is okay!

Look at this quote from this article:

“It’s easy to pick on the “this wouldn’t be happening if these characters were coded as male,” but it’s nonetheless true—as a fan of the unrepentantly (gloriously) awful Bill Cipher, among others, I can promise you I see it regularly.”

I immediately thought of this blog when I read this. 

Not saying you’re misogynist, of course. This blog is just so fascinating, and for someone to dismiss it all like that is frustrating. 

I mean, of course they weren’t referring to you directly, but still. 

For someone to brush off people’s interesting, thought-provoking theories as nothing but misogyny is kind of close-minded, in my opinion. 

But this makes me curious. Do you think you’d still feel the same way about Bill if he was more feminine-coded? Would it matter?

And what do you think about that statement? Are you as annoyed by it as I am?

It’s always alright to get my thoughts on certain subjects, Anon! And lucky for you, I have lots of thoughts on this.

First of all, thank you for liking my blog! I put a lot of work into it, and I still look back on everything I’ve done here fondly. This blog is my only fandom-specific blog that’s still semi-active even after I’ve left the fandom. 

And, about what you said about misogyny... I don’t actually think that’s what the article is talking about. It’s not misogyny for someone to pick apart Bill Cipher, but it’s misogyny if someone offers that level of potential depth to a male character while instantly condemning a female character. 

But... honestly, from my experience? These two groups of people are different groups. 

I used to run in those “anti” circles, back in 2015? 2016? Before the whole “SU criti/cal” thing started to become popular. But I could still kinda see hints of it? It was back when SU was hailed as THE perfect show, before people knocked it off the pedestal they put it on. 

Anyway. These people hated redemption arcs. They saw Bill as this irredeemable monolith of a character, and any alternate interpretations were met with outright malice. I got called out once for, and I am not joking, headcanoning Bill as an abuse victim. They claimed I was “excusing his actions,” but when I asked to please show a screenshot of where I said that this excused him, they couldn’t. Because I never said that. 

(I ended up publishing the whole headcanon on my main blog, and people loved it. That reception is what pushed me to create this blog.)

I don’t doubt at least some of those people became the type to nitpick SU. So I feel that the same people that nitpick male characters are also the type to nitpick female ones. They’re just nitpickers with a black-and-white sense of morality.

But there are always exceptions to the rule- people who love morally gray male characters but hate morally grey female characters. Yes, some of these motivations may be spurred on by misogyny. But what frustrates me is the initial assumption of malice. I’m not saying the article itself is guilty of this, as it seems to be speaking to a general problem, but more those tumblr posts or tweets trying to “call people out” if they gravitate towards more morally gray male characters than female ones.

Which brings me to my answer to your question: No, I don’t think I would like Bill as much, had he been a woman.

But please let me explain first. 

First, you need to know some facts about me:

I am transmasculine. (Not a trans man- I’m nonbinary.)

I have a personality disorder. I’m not comfortable disclosing which one, but it’s one of the cluster B ones.

I was abused, and my reaction to the abuse was extreme anger and irritability. (Hence the PD.)

Another important fact is that my abuser was a woman. She’s my mother. I had to live with constant emotional abuse, gaslighting, neglect and other forms of malice for my whole life. I’m still not free yet, and I’m turning 20 in a month. (No, literally, exactly one month to the day.)

I was abused my whole life by a vindictive, manipulative shit of a woman, and it made me into a vindictive, manipulative shit of a person. The key difference is that I am actively trying not to be a vindictive, manipulative shit.

When I pick apart asshole male characters, I see myself in them. I do a deep dive into the whys, the hows the whos of why they ended up the way that they did, because it makes me feel liberated. It’s personally liberating to see someone like me, whom everyone sees as a monster, have a backstory that shows that monsters aren’t born, they’re made. It’s liberating to see them try and change, it’s liberating to give them someone to help them change no matter what, it’s liberating to look harder. Because that’s what I wanted. I wanted someone to look at me and see past the violent, angry 15 year old that I was, and actually help me. I wanted someone to see I was a victim, that I didn’t like being the way that I was. I wanted someone to help me and be there for me, even though I was messed up and awful.

(But don’t feel too bad for me- A few years ago I met someone wonderful through this very fandom who was exactly the kind of person I needed. And last November I proposed to him and he said yes!)

When I see a morally grey female character... all I can see is my abuser. I see in them the person that hurt me. I don’t want to look deeper, just as I don’t care about my mother’s long rambles about how shitty her childhood was. Was she also abused? Yes. Do I care? Nope! I don’t feel that same drive to pick apart female characters that act like the male ones I like, because of my trauma.

 And honestly? Just because I gravitate towards male characters more doesn’t make me a misogynist. How I treat actual real life women does. I do examine my behavior to make sure I’m not being misogynistic- in fact, it was worry that I was being misogynistic in my dislike of these characters that made me think hard enough to have such a long answer to your question. 

Maybe someone liking only male characters is an indicator of misogyny. Maybe it isn’t. I’m not shy about talking about what happened to me but people should not have to disclose their traumas in order to be “allowed” to consume fiction in a way some stranger doesn’t like. 

And there actually is a specific subset of morally grey female characters I like: my own OCs. 

I guess it’s the fact that I created them and thus can control how they act? They’re all assholes and I love them so much, but I don’t feel that same aversion as I do with characters that aren’t mine. Because the lack of control I had over my own abusive situation is what fucked me up so hard, but now I do have the control. If I watch a TV show, I don’t have any control over what the characters do, they’re not mine. But I do have control over my OCs.

(Psst- if you wanna see those OCs, I’ve since moved to the Invader Zim fandom, and am working on a HUGE fic series for it. (It’s not published yet- I’m working on it behind the scenes.) Those OCs I’m talking about star heavily. Here’s my blog, if you’re interested. I kinda wanna do some metaposting for that fandom, too, but I’ve no idea where to start. I love the Irkens, though, haha. Anyway if any of you happen to like IZ and have a meta-question for me... the askbox IS open!)

Anyway. This got really long. But misogyny in fandom is a thing, and the article does call it out well. I just get frustrated that people immediately assume malice. The statement does annoy me, but because it does happen if the characters are coded as male, too. I see it all the time. People just tend to either be fans of the morally grey, or... not.