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lizzybeth1986 · 3 years ago

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Protagonist-Centered Sexuality

(Read the rest of the "Hana Lee: A Study In Erasure" series here!)

Previous: Power Dynamics, Part 3 - Lorelai and Xinghai

CW: Mentions of Bullying, Homophobia, Bi-erasure.

"To be clear, Hana is bisexual, but at this point in the story, that's something she's still figuring out for herself!" - Kara Loo

I don't think there's any better way of starting this essay than the story behind this quote.

(Note: Some who were around at the time of this story mentioned that that the team was under pressure to say Hana was bi instead of gay, partly from discourse with "people who took offence at Hana being coded lesbian". Being in the fringes of this discussion at the time, I cannot completely confirm the veracity of this, but just for clarity I thought I'd add this context as well. For the purposes of this essay, though, I will be mostly referring to Hana as bi and focusing to a larger extent on depictions of bisexuality, but will attempt to discuss whether that is reflected at all in the writing).

Sometime in October of 2017 (a few weeks after TRR2 released), a player had posed a question to the Choices Support Team. Does Hana Lee have a canon sexuality? The response was... bizarre - if I were to put it in the kindest way possible - even if you were someone who barely paid attention to Hana's scenes:

There was plenty of backlash over this response, of course, because when the hell had Hana ever tried to "pursue the prince" and how the hell would that make her straight! Kara Loo, one of the book leads, almost immediately posted a response, apologizing and maintaining that "this doesn't reflect how we view bisexuality at Pixelberry". It was clear from her post that Hana wasn't out to herself yet, forget anyone else, and it seemed to hint at a journey of sorts.

It's 2021 now, and we're on the seventh and final book of the series. The word "bisexual" hasn't appeared in the story once.

Mechanical vs Canonical Bisexuality

Different types of media write about expressions of sexuality in different ways, but the distinct discomfort that comes with openly talking about queer-related issues can be found across the board. A lot of visual media, esp film, has had a long history of erasure when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation, leading to either a lack of depictions of those stories, or having them heavily couched in innuendo. And even though there is more openness to such rep now, the discomfort often remains.

It is possible for showrunners/filmmakers/writers to attempt to cater to two very distinct audiences: the homophobic audience that is uncomfortable with even a hint of something that isn't heteronormative, and the LGBTQ+ audience that would like to see themselves in the characters they watch. Several strategies are employed to gain the attention, and money, of both: queerbaiting, queercoding or queercatching, all of which involve some form of catching the latter audience's interest with tantalizing hints about a character's sexuality, while still being vague enough to make it "safe" for the former type to watch. (Do watch Rowan Ellis' video essay "An Evolution of Queerbaiting: From Queercoding to Queercatching".) An infamous example of this is how J K Rowling announced Dumbledore being gay after her books released, yet you would never learn this outright from either the original HP books nor in the subsequent Fantastic Beasts film series.

For games however - especially choice-focused RPGs - the mechanics of this are somewhat different. For instance as a queer woman playing Choices, I can tell which sexuality is the default and which one is barely written with any thought at all...but what I'm complaining about wouldn't fit too well in the category of "queercatching" because a gay/bi/pan character's relationship is still at the center of the story, if I should so choose. So how do I explain why I'm so dissatisfied with what I'm getting, if at least I'm getting a full relationship with a woman out of it?

This is where we separate the way relationships fuelled by the mechanics of the game, from LGBTQ+ stories that are stitched into canon. Verilybitchie, in her video essay "How Bisexuality Changed Video Games" (seriously, watch it. It's a real eye-opener) goes into detail about this, but here's a small screenshot just to give you a rough idea:

(The essay breaks down many, many concepts - such as how sometimes the games view bisexuality and polyamory as almost interchangeable, and how some of the games negatively equate polyamory to cheating by taking away the option to be honest with the partners. One of the reasons this video focuses on bisexuality is to show how monosexuality is often viewed as a norm in the game mechanics themselves, even equated to faithfulness. But that is not relevant to this essay).

Mechanical Bisexuality - basically put - moulds the sexuality of your romanceable characters to suit yours. If you're gay/bi/pan, and want to romance a same-sex character, they will respond to you romantically and based on what they say in those playthroughs they may be either gay or bi. But if you play the same game as a straight person, you will probably never know. There are ways this can be done well, and still be respectful to those characters. But if done badly, this means that the romanceable character's sexuality is important only in relation to the player and not on its own. Which is to say that as long as you're using fictional bisexuality for my coin as a queer player, but not bothering to explore bisexuality as a lived experience, you're still engaging in a form of bi erasure.

Canonical Bisexuality, on the other hand, establishes a character (who is not the player) as bi regardless of the player's choices. Which is to say that their sexuality - like in real life - exists independent of the player-character's actions or desires, and is a part of their character history by default. Again, this doesn't mean it's completely perfect - Verilybitchie's video shows us examples upon examples of how a lot of canonically bi characters are villainized and othered in gaming culture. But if used well, it can be extremely empowering to see a bi person proudly and by default establish their identity within the framework of that game.

The video establishes three main criteria that a game must meet to be viewed as showing canon bisexuality - the showing of bi attraction across the board, not centering the player-character in the character's bi identity (ie I should see it even in playthroughs where I'm not romancing the character) and - the most important - we shouldn't take into account Twitter canon.

What is Twitter canon? It's when the developers/story leads "out" the character in their interviews, but continue to not address their sexuality in canon. As Verilybitchie explains it, "game developers are much more likely to call their characters bi in interviews than in the actual games themselves. Using the word "bi" is not everything, it's not the be-all or end-all of representation, but games do tend to avoid the word "bi" like the plague. You know, like in real life!"

What Kara Loo essentially did, in the example above, was exactly that. Twitter canon.

LGBTQ+ Rep and PlayChoices

Before we go into whether Hana has a journey related to her sexuality or not, it helps to take a brief look at how queer characters are depicted on the basis of both being aware of their identity, and being public about it. In a game like Choices that has long considered its diversity in representation its USP, you will have at least one LI who is considered canonically gay/bi, at least two books have a trans character, and in a book with a gender-customizable MC, every LI should be assumed at least bi. That isn't even counting side characters who are canonically gay, bi, pan, aroace and non-binary.

So it's not about whether these characters exist. That is the game's setup. What is important then is the way their queer identities are contextualised. And I find that this manifests in four different ways (note: I'll be sticking to LIs here):

1. Mechanical Bisexuality: In Choices, the texts that show this most, are the ones that have gender-customizable MCs. Because the MC could be either male or female (or nonbinary, in one case), it is assumed that the LIs are automatically bi (there is a section of the fandom that would rather view them as "playersexual" but I'm going to pretend they don't exist). In books where the LIs are viewed by their writers solely as male romancing female MCs, the heteronormativity is apparant in the way they're written, esp their sex scenes (eg. when you see carelessly-written pronoun changes for a gender-customizable character). However, we do have examples that show the writers clearly putting some level of thought into that LI's interactions with a male MC. Think of how PM2 has Damien's ex Alana refers to him wanting a "partner" rather than a girl/boyfriend, or the scene where Ethan Ramsey has sex in OH1 with a male MC. However, these strategies are sometimes used in tandem with ones that make the character's queerness less apparent to players who may not be comfortable: think of how, in both OH2 and BSC - Rafael Aveiro and Dallas James' other partners/ex-partners are given the same gender as the MC, meaning that their sexuality would rarely or never be addressed across canon. There is also a disrespect from PB itself in the way coded sexuality is viewed - think of how, for instance, TE allowed for us to choose the MC's sexuality in the beginning, yet in the service of a diamond scene claimed "you can change your mind" and used the split-attraction model as an excuse for this framing.

2. Out and Proud: Queer characters who are either confirmed or assumed to already be out in public. Often this includes characters who romance female LIs in genderlocked books but who never reference their sexuality in the books and aren't treated any differently when they openly romance the female MC. Generally it is assumed that they are comfortable in their identity and publicly identify as such. In most cases, PB does this as a way to not talk about sexuality, but in comparison to the categories following, it can be somewhat mitigated by the implication that this character is out and proud.

There are examples where the character can hint at, or talk about their journey though. Lily Spencer (BB) starts out dating another woman, and tells us by Ch. 3 that she was a "nerdy, bi black girl growing up in rural Wisconsin". You have Emma Hawkins (HSS) mentioning her coming out to her parents, and Zig Ortega (TF) casually coming out to his friends when he says he finds James' friend Teddy attractive. You also have Teja Desai (RCD) speak of romantic escapades with a girl in the first book, and confirming she is lesbian to her friend Seth in the second. We have two transpersons (Aisha Bhatt of BP and Andy Kang of ILITW), two nonbinary people (Cameron of HSS and Wren of AME) and one aroace (Zephyr Hernandez of TE) who are also comfortable in their identities and give us small insights into their journeys. These moments and dialogues may be fleeting, and may have very little to do with the character's current arcs, but they add a lot of rich detail to the characterization and give us an insight into their journey as queer people.

3. In the Closet: Characters who are out to themselves but still in the closet. Usually, they are aware of their sexuality, have been for a long time, but cannot - for personal or professional reasons - come out. The MC is often faced with someone who knows they are gay/bi, but is navigating a relationship with, or supporting them while they deal with whether they can be so in public or not. Struggling with coming out can be a character arc in itself for these characters, and notably PB has focused on some of their journeys.

An excellent example of this is Kaitlyn Liao (TF). In Book 2 she tells us she's been aware of her sexuality since school but had never been in a relationship before the MC ("I knew I liked girls, but it seemed like a total fantasy that anyone would like me, you know?"). The entirety of the second book is dedicated to her coming out - first to her friend from Texas, Arjun, then to her parents - one of whom takes time to get used to this truth, but who unequivocally supports her at the end of the book. You also have Eiko Matsunaga (MoTY) who cannot come out at her workplace but is outed by the homophobic Vanessa. This is also a subplot often used in some of PB's historical stories (as well as the next category) - Annabelle Parsons (D&D) and Gemma Montjoy (TUH) imply their awareness of being attracted to women, but have to keep their sexuality a secret because in their time their identity is not only deemed unacceptable, but also invisible (at least in Annabelle's case).

4. The fourth category is what I sometimes dub as "Baby Gay/Bi/Queer".

Unlike "In the Closet", these characters start out unaware of how they identify, and their realization that not only does the (female, in all these cases) MC capture their attention in a way they don't expect, but that it goes beyond her into who they are and who they feel romantic attraction for. In at least two of these cases, those LIs (both are lesbian) openly say they will never again lie with/date another man.

I won't talk about Hana now, but I will briefly touch upon Sabina (ACOR) and Ava Lawrence (MFTL). Sabina lives in ancient Rome, was married off as a child and is under the thumb of an abusive man. She is a deeply traumatized woman when we first meet her, and the MC must peel through her many layers of pain and repressed anger to finally help her find freedom. A fan-favourite Sabina scene references the poem "One Girl" by Sappho, the poet from ancient Greece so intimately tied to the history of LGBTQ+ literature that two terms came both from her name (sapphic), and the name of her birthplace (lesbian, from Lesbos). Ava, on the other hand, is still in school, overcompensating in her relationship with Mason, battling her confusion and feelings for the MC, before coming out to their classmate, Bayla. In a rare instance of inspired writing from the MFTL team, Ava describes the words as being "ripped out" from her, and Bayla becomes a source of comfort and solidarity when she reveals that she, too, is a lesbian. She is paired either with her or with the MC, who is also written as canonically bi. We are also told that she comes out to her parents later on, and gets their support.

As you can see, Sabina and Ava being "Baby Gays" allows for some great scenes, where they can strongly assert their identity as lesbians and find a happy future. The problem lies in how the writing teams often write them and their journeys as if they are outside the scope of the story, not valuable enough for consistent exploration. In their respective books, both Ava and Sabina are often written out of the events and rarely given much attention. Financially they are given far less chances to rake in money because the scenes are so few and far between, and structurally, they are overshadowed by their male counterparts. Of course that is a factor that affects female LIs across the board, but in the case of this particular type of character, it is even more damaging.

It is important, especially for these characters, to have more space and attention given to this arc in particular, because it is their central arc. We are watching their coming out journey, their discovery that they are not straight, in real time. And it is essential in such cases - if you're a company that cares about representation - to allow that arc to blossom outside of the MC, and to center these LIs first and foremost in this story. And it is important because they tend to be the most vulnerable - often coming from familial/societal structures that don't allow them to even question what their families expect them to feel (in at least two of these examples). In their stories they deserve support, they deserve space to explore that aspect of their identities - with or without the MC - and if narratively possible, they deserve to know that they are a part of a large community. Depriving them of this can send a damaging message, esp if you're a company that benefits from being viewed as acting "inclusive", with a "lack of heteronormativity" in your stories. (HAHAHA)

Hana as a Baby Bi

Hana gets her first proper kiss, ever, in TRR1 Ch. 16 (optionally). She sleeps with someone for the first time, ever, in TRR2 Ch 18. While this is par the course if you're not the person the MC was joining the competition to win (Drake, too, gets his kisses and love scenes late in the story), the story is insistent that these are things she's never experienced before. What does this mean, and why was it necessary in Hana's case to take this long?

If you choose every single romantic option with Hana in TRR1, you will notice a slow, but subtle progression. She blushes and doesn't directly comment on how this affects her in almost all these scenes, but from her room to the Cronut shop to our dancing lessons to playing piano, to...finally...confessing her feelings before the Coronation, we find Hana slowly getting comfortable with the intimacy of touch.

If we were to go by Hana's own account, most of the girls/women she'd interacted with thus far hadn't shown much of a desire to interact with her: they're described as either privileged, pampered women who saw her as a rival (much like Olivia and the other noble women do in the beginning), or as people too wrapped up in their own interests to notice her (as she hints in the dressage scene). Even a "nice woman" is a novelty to her.

The MC turns her notions of how other women act on their head as soon as the two meet, and we find that every word that indicates attraction, and every touch, seems to surprise her with how much it affects her. In the bakery where they have cronuts, she is shocked enough by her own response to immediately withdraw her hand, and she seems to have an experience she didn't at all expect when she teaches the MC the romantic Cordonian Waltz. But by the time she plays piano for the MC, she seems to feel more comfortable around her, allowing the touches to now linger. By the time of the Beaumont Bash, she is enthusiastic to retry her first kiss, showing us just how much she's progressed in establishing a sense of comfort with this woman she is learning to love.

Romantic, sensual touch is a novelty to Hana not only because she's new to the idea of a woman being with her. It's because she is new to the whole concept of sexual desire itself, beyond the books she may have read. She is so new to what it's like to passionately love and be loved by someone, that when she finally confesses her feelings to the MC in her Ch. 17 diamond scene, her words come out confused and almost inarticulate:

In the second book, while she is comfortable with kissing and light makeouts in most of their diamond scenes, she places boundaries when it comes to sex, because the experience is not only new but something she can only feel comfortable doing when she's confident of her relationship with the MC (as implied by the way the narrative stops short of sex in her last two individual scenes before her proposal). But this is perhaps something I will be addressing later on in this essay.

Touch and romance with the MC is central to how we read Hana's sexuality - mostly because it's the only way we can get a clear idea of her sexuality journey overall. The narrative doesn't want to even think about it otherwise. There is no dialogue that refers directly to it, no interactions with other people that directly references her having feelings, no indication of this part of her identity. So a lot of my reading of Hana as a woman learning other sexualities besides "straight" exist...is based mostly on her interactions with the MC.

There is one huge catch to this, though.

There is no scene of Hana's, across the seven books of this series, that references her sexuality - lesbian or bi - by default.

The Discomfort Around A Sapphic Hana

To elaborate on that last sentence - most of the scenes I mentioned above? Are part of diamond scenes. With friendly options. Some of them have more friendly options than romance, in fact.

In the sub-essay on LI!Hana and Friend!Hana, I made a comparison between the three confession scenes at the Coronation Ball. It was clear that the MC would learn about the male LIs' feelings for her by default, and can have Hana openly confess in the free option for the scene, but you have to push the romantic options consistently for Hana to state it in her diamond scene. Her "confession scene" can absolutely be played without ever once referencing her attraction to the MC, simply by the MC friendzoning her first. And unless you choose a romantic option in TRR2, Hana never, ever talks about this attraction for you again. Perhaps the only indication of her feelings that happens by default, is Olivia's calling out of the MC prior to Coronation Ball ("It might be fun to buddy up with Hana...but at the end of the day, she's going to go away heartbroken. And have you ever considered that you might be the cause?"). It hardly even sticks because it's brushed off so casually afterwards.

It is possible - even easy - for you to go through this entire series and the subsequent one, without hearing a single word from Hana herself, about either her love for the MC, or what it means for her to realize that she can love women.

What is absolutely striking about this when you look at these bits of writing as a whole, is how much the comfort of a straight (and possibly homophobic) female player is prioritized in the way Hana interacts with the MC. Hana's love for the MC has to be tailored to fit the player's comfort - Liam's and Drake's do not. A Hana who is told that the MC doesn't love her back is supposed to return immediately to "best friend" mode - no lingering sadness, no regret, her feelings are simply not allowed to have value on their own.

This is disturbing in itself. But perhaps this would be mitigated by seeing Hana's sexuality play a role in other exchanges that may have at least a romantic aim, right? So let us further explore other possible relationships, even the ones where she has no interest yet must enter in with the intention of marriage:

Peter

The Cordonian Waltz scene with Hana in TRR1 is perhaps the only one where Hana's queerness is at the center - or at least hinted to be. There is a compelling collision between her growing feelings for the MC (if you choose to romance her) and the memory of a man who almost married her - who we never see in the actual book, but who is referenced in later scenes as a looming example of her "failure".

Hana speaks of Peter with a mixture of gratitude and pain - she is careful to tell us that he was a nice man who handled their situation more kindly than she expected him to, but is also aware that he had the privilege to expect sweeping romance from a relationship in a way that she never could. Her description of their engagement cuts into the pain of living in the closet - not only does she not love the man, she also feels immense confusion and guilt at her "inability" to do so ("even though I told him what he wanted to hear, I couldn't hold back the tears"). Whether or not the MC flirts with her in this scene, this story (thankfully) features, and has all the power and intensity that you'd expect from a scene about a queer person in a closet.

Back when TRR1 was the only book out, many players found this scene hinted strongly at Hana being lesbian, and I'm inclined to agree. There is an emotional intensity that suggested a realization that she couldn't love a man, couple with her attraction for a woman. And while honestly Bi Awakenings can be just as powerful, I can see why it would be read this way more.

(This is not the only time we learn about Peter. Hana's subsequent stories about him tell us one very interesting thing about her life with her parents - that she is not only closeted, but also a virgin. At truth-or-dare, she describes her first kiss with Peter as a staged performance that crashed into disaster when he missed and punctured his lip on her earring. The first time the MC seriously makes out with her, Hana tells her that her relationship with Peter had always been chaste. Canonically, she has never had sex nor actual sexual contact before the MC. This puts her in a doubly vulnerable position because not only is she in the closet, but she also has no rubric for what sexual dynamics are like, and that can change how certain LI scenes could be read. For instance, when the MC who is engaged to someone else sleeps with Hana, there is an added layer of exploitation, considering there was no readiness for sex when they were not official.)

We are never given a default scene that even picks up on the threads Hana leaves with this story. But ironically, Peter is referenced twice by other women to label Hana a failure. It really goes to show you what the team thought the most important takeaway from this scene was.

Liam

The two things to keep in mind with any interaction that features Hana and Liam is that 1. They're both LIs, and 2. Hana is a lady of the court, and ladies of the court are often given limited interactions with Liam (at least, if you're not Olivia) because the focus of his story is so trained on the MC. So they're friends in group scenes, have a handful of interactions independently, can speak positively of each other to the MC - but there is never going to be any closeness that can be misinterpreted as romance.

Hana's stated purpose when she enters Cordonia is that she hopes her chances at marrying Liam will be better than that of marrying Peter. Yet, romance wise Liam is a non-factor for Hana early on. There is no question of her having romantic feelings for him, and because Liam's story is (from the beginning) primarily about the conflict between doing his "duty" and loving the MC, there is no expectation from his end either, which means the transition into stating they are friends happens pretty soon after the social season ends.

We have dialogue from both of them speaking about each other even outside of group scenes (Liam telling us why he appreciates Hana as a friend in NY, Hana telling us an adorable story of Liam helping her on her first day in Cordonia) but very little that references the brief time when she was supposed to woo him. Which is alright, because it hints at an easier and less painful dynamic than what she had with Peter, and a far less annoying one than what she has with Neville.

Unfortunately, however, the narrative seems to add her not being picked as Liam's bride on her "failure" list, which is egregious when you realize that literally no other woman from the same social season is measured by that ridiculous, sexist standard. It also points to a disturbing aspect of the worldbuilding in general, but I'll get back to that a little later.

Rashad and Neville

These two characters enter at a rather interesting point in Hana's story. She is either interested in the MC, or not interested in any relationship at all, but faces threats from both her parents and Madeleine to either get a male suitor or leave Cordonia. Even the MC, regardless of her feelings for Hana, is viewed positively in this scene only if she stands in as Hana's wingwoman, with her optional offer to be a suitor not even seen as a viable option. No matter whether there is a romance or not - the MC seems strangely distant from the very real possibility that her potential lover may be forced to marry another man, which is a real contrast to the possessiveness and scorn Drake's MC can optionally show when it comes to Kiara.

The one good thing that comes out of this subplot is an awareness from Hana, that these two are not viable options for her anyway. Straight off the bat, she can by default consider them boring, and the few times she speaks about them she can articulate what she finds dissatisfying in her interactions with them. Rashad recedes in the background once it's clear that Neville likes her more (though he briefly features in TRR3 to help Hana with a contact for her father's business). She is eventually allowed to push back at Neville, independent of her argument with her father, and let him know exactly what she thinks of him (on the flip side? She does this in defence of Drake, and Neville becomes the main antagonist in Drake's TRR3 subplot from that point on).

As I mentioned in the previous essay, Neville is Hana's final straw when it comes to obeying her parents. He is disagreeable enough to her that she has to put her foot down. Whether or not the MC takes an interest in her, Hana clearly feels marrying Neville is beyond even her limits of endurance, and the prospect of marrying him coupled with her defence of the MC is part of what propels her to defy her father in Shanghai (Sadly, what could have been a default coming out moment is instead turned into an vague argument about friendship and self-reliance).

This may work...as long as it is a springboard to Hana's self-discovery both within and outside of her romance with the MC. If it is something that opens her up to either dating, or figuring out who she is and what she likes romantically. Which...doesn't exactly happen.

These are the men we see with "relationship possibility" in Hana's story, yet it is clear that she has no romantic interest in any of them. The dynamics with some of the men (esp Neville) revolves around her discomfort with those relationships. We do not see any other examples of this furthermore in the text, and often this is used as an example of how she can't possibly be bi (which is honestly a legitimate argument when you take into account what we said earlier about "Twitter canon"). The MC is the clearest indication for her preference for women...except that it centers the MC more than her, and mostly depends on the player's comfort with her sexuality to even be seen.

With that said, do we have any examples of her having anything romantic with women? Women who aren't the MC??

Madeleine

"But Lizzy," I can hear some of you say, "what about Madeleine?"

Which is a fair point. Every LI had an alternative LI (though Maxwell's was scrapped almost as soon as he became an LI) and Hana was no different. Madeleine was very clearly intended, by TRR3 at least, to be Hana's alternative LI. On the surface, this should sound like a good thing, right? Hana's sexuality and feelings for women could be acknowledged beyond the romance with the MC, right??

Well...if you like bully-victim "romances" that revolve around the bully, I guess.

If you squinted, maybe you could see something that would pass for a hint of romantic symbolism in TRR2 (the bachelorette activity Hana had planned for Madeleine hints at her believing the two are supposed to have a date after the chocolate fondue party), followed by a handful of scenes in TRR3 where Madeleine could imply having a crush on Hana (these scenes only appear in her single playthrough). In between these two things...is Madeleine's admission about wanting to "break Hana".

I've already addressed the chocolate incident and its implications in the essay of "The Ladies of the Court", so I'll be skipping straight to the "romantic" implications of that scene and how that "romance" is framed thereafter.

Many Madeleine stans often treat the chocolate incident as a one-off, which is not only wildly inaccurate but callous in its minimization. Madeleine in her position as Queen-to-be, constantly reminded Hana of their power dynamic and in fact threatened to send her back to China if she didn't manage to get a suitor. The source of a lot of Hana's anxiety in TRR2 revolves around very real threats Madeleine had made. The chocolate incident wasn't just one bad thing Madeleine did that one time, but an escalation in a string of abusive and threatening behaviours. Which means that once the writers established Madeleine and Hana as possible endgame (as they clearly wanted to do), they were faced with the choice to either address what Madeleine had done to her and have her face consequences, or retcon it completely to make the romance easier for Madeleine. They chose the latter.

On the surface you can tell exactly which trope the team might have been going for - the Armoured Closeted Gay/Bi that usually involves a gay/lesbian/bi character dealing with their discomfort of their sexuality by harming another gay/lesbian/bi character. (We've seen a variation of this in ILITW, with Lily Oritz and Britney - except that the situation revolved more around Lily's unresolved feelings for a bully who was once her friend, and she had the freedom to choose differently when Britney disappointed her at the end. It's still problematic, but Lily is given a healthy sense of agency within this dynamic). This trope often involves bullying, which is justified as them coping with their confusions and possible self-hatred. There are ways to ensure the victim is centered in such a dynamic and not the perpetrator (which you can see, to an extent, in an example like Lily's), but it can also center the bully and ignore the victim's perspective. In Madeleine's case, this trope was part of a bigger "redemption" arc - one in which she was a patriot with a neglectful and overly critical father, grieving her lost chances and learning to find purpose in her new job - with Hana being subtly positioned more as a prize for her dedication, rather than as a person with her own opinions and agency. It shows in the way their interactions in TRR3, when the narrative was trying to subtly push the ship, are framed.

There are five distinct scenes total in Hana's single playthrough that hint at the possibility of this relationship in TRR3. Madeleine's "stupidly perfect" dialogue in Fydelia, Hana and Madeleine cross-referencing each other in their scenes at Costume Gala, Madeleine's nonapology and offer for a dance in Vegas, Madeleine's reaction to the Hana MC asking if she's "jealous" prior to her wedding reception (she reacts a bit flustered about Liam - the man she was going to marry - and Hana, versus her casual dismissiveness at the same question from a Drake or Maxwell MC). I'm not including the finale conversation, as that was an attempt from the team to backtrack on the ship completely, post backlash, and therefore features excuses that contradict canon to make Madeleine's reasoning sound legitimate. Three out of these five feature Hana, and you'll find a common thread in at least two of those scenes:

In both scenes, Madeleine hints at her attraction for Hana, but Hana is only ever allowed to be surprised and at the very most say that she never expected that from Madeleine (and while Hana can - thankfully - sound a slight bit suspicious of Madeleine's motives in Vegas, the "tricks" she mentions do not match the intensity of what Madeleine actually did in TRR2. Which makes sense, considering they were already retconning the chocolate incident altogether). The end result usually has Hana say...very very little about what she feels.

There is only one scene among these five that even allows Hana to vaguely imply any interest in Madeleine at all, in fact - at the Costume Gala while talking with the MC and Olivia:

The writers made a subtle distinction between her compliments for Madeleine in her single playthrough, and Kiara in her LI one, by having them be more personal for the former, and more neutral with passive language for the latter. But it is one in four scenes that have Madeleine talk more, express more, articulate her feelings more, with little space or agency left for Hana. Hana almost feels like an afterthought in these scenes.

In each scene that features the two in this "romance", Madeleine is the one whose thoughts and feelings matter. She feels Hana is "stupidly sweet and perfect". She thinks Hana's company is more bearable than most people's and that she would "be willing to let bygones be bygones" when the MC speaks of her earlier behaviour. She feels that mayyyybe she mayyyy have wronged Hana. She is asked if she feels jealous of the Hana!MC. She feels her abominable behaviour towards Hana would actually be justified if Hana had been "fake" like she'd suspected. And you will see this even in the way many fans who support the Madeleine x Hana ship frame the "romance" - Madeleine's feelings are explored more, Madeleine's actions are justified, excused or downplayed, and Hana's feelings and journey are clearly not as worthy of exploration.

We hear so much about what Madeleine thinks of Hana and almost nothing of what Hana thinks of her (until the epilogue, and even then Hana is allowed only a few lines about needing time to forgive Madeleine, while Madeleine's assumptions and excuses dominate the conversation). So even in the one other relationship that would have confirmed Hana's sexuality, the feelings of the woman who harmed her have far more value.

This leaves us with the MC, who is the only person Hana is actually allowed to express a clear attraction for, and who functions as the catalyst for her LGBTQ Awakening (another trope, which shows a queer character emerging into a realization of their own sexuality), yet there is no real space for Hana to move forward if the MC isn't interested. There is no real attempt to have her awakening lead anywhere if it doesn't benefit the MC. The narrative wants to give the MC the credit of being Hana's first, in every way possible, but cannot be bothered to move it away from the MC if she doesn't want to be.

And even if the MC decides to romance and marry Hana, the fact that they're a queer couple is hardly ever addressed. Questions that Hana could have as a wlw, are hardly ever brought up. In TRH1, while the writing changes to accommodate alternative ways of getting pregnant for a wlw couple, a lot of the dialogue seems to remain the same as it is for the male LIs (esp the ones about "making babies" and sex). When she marries the MC, the narrative forgets that Hana was ever in that damn closet to begin with!

In the end what Hana gets is a story that moulds the importance of her sexuality according to the comfort of the player, but that won't allow her to explore her sexuality on her own terms outside of the MC. It's a sexuality that centers the protagonist, rather the the actual person experiencing that journey. The only two romances PB allows her are about the other person, and very rarely about her.

But romances aren't the only way one can highlight a sexuality journey, though they are one of the most effective. Being part of the LGBTQ+ community...is also about community: about realizing that there are many others like you, and that you can find solidarity among people who have experienced similar journeys, about the LGBTQ+ culture of the place you're staying in. So...does TRR attempt to do at least that?

Heteronormativity and Cordonia

There are ways you can address sexuality if you don't want to push forward a romance. Have the closeted character meet other queer people. Have them join communities dedicated to LGBTQ support, and engage in activities that support queer people. Hana is a voracious reader so having someone recommend her books by queer authors wouldn't have looked out of place either (ACOR did a variation of "lesbian character reading lesbian literature" by having Sabina and the MC read out Sappho's poetry). Have her rethink feelings she may have misinterpreted as closeness or hero-worship of someone (eg. maybe a famous female celebrity) to realize that what she had was a crush. Sure, this may not center the MC, but if Drake can spend chapters whining about his sister and Maxwell can spend more chapters believing in the goodness of his obviously-evil dad, then dammit Hana could have been allowed space to see her sexuality beyond how it could benefit the MC.

Not only does the narrative NOT do any of this, but they also reinforce heteronormativity in several sequences, while aggressively retconning previous indications of it so to avoid addressing possible past homophobia.

I've mentioned before that the Cordonian Waltz scene is perhaps the closest Hana gets to speaking about her sexuality, in a roundabout, unaware way. While her engagement with Peter, and the reason behind their subsequent breakup is the center of her story, it is just as much about her parents' heteronormativity - where they would throw only men at her for marriage, where Hana had clearly never even thought loving a woman was possible before, where the traits her mother assumes to be attractive to suitors tend to appeal to men in the court (acting like a damsel in distress, for instance). Everything about her parents' training screams heteronormativity.

The Cordonia of the first two books seems to reinforce this somewhat. It is depicted as a stiff-upper-lip sort of society that focuses on "propriety" and is squeamish about PDA, and most of the relationships we get to see in its world seem to reinforce heteronormativity. Perhaps the closest someone ever gets to openly mentioning they're queer is Maxwell in his TRR2 finale scene, where he speaks about flings with "people", which gave rise to the hc that he was pansexual. Hana herself gets to engage with a queer character or two (such as Marguerite from TH:M in TRH1) and even gets to encourage Kiara during truth-or-dare when the latter is asked to choose women she can date.

In TRR3, the narrative seems to lean more towards theories about TCaTF (equating the Great Houses to the Five Kingdoms, showing us weapons from those times, having more Duchesses than Dukes and having Liam remind us that one of their most iconic rulers was a woman), which didn't seem as heteronormative (eg. Tevan can casually talk about his male and female suitors in the middle of battle, Annelyse is openly flirting with Kenna when they first meet). In addition to this, the choice to make the reception from the public, of the Hana x MC relationship, the same as the other LIs...allowed readers to view Cordonia itself as a society that views relationships that are not openly hetero, as normal. Queer dynamics are okay, I guess, as long as the narrative doesn't have to work to show it.

Unfortunately, the lack of real thought and planning that strategy suggests, leads to moments that would seem out-of-pocket or strange in such a world, yet not treated that way.

A clear example of that is this scene. Cordonia at this point is supposed to not discriminate between men and women, and okay with same-sex relationships. Yet Hana - the closest we have (until the hints about Madeleine) to a canonically queer character - is considered a failure for two men not choosing her! In a narrative where, optionally, she is marrying a woman and on the verge of becoming a Duchess! And this persists even after her goddamn marriage when the queen of a neighbouring country can mock her the same way!

This is bad enough already. But from the same chapter emerges something even more insidious - the erasure of Hana's own background, especially the components of heteronormativity we saw in her Cordonian Waltz scene and the argument with her father:

"New money" was never a factor in Hana's family's reasons for choosing the matches they did - direct or implied. The gender of her expected partner was. Not once did Hana's parents ever try to put forward a powerful, titled woman of old money, and this story was filled to bursting with them. Hell, even the Cordonian Waltz scene shows us that Hana was never even allowed to think in the direction of loving women! Yet the narrative thought it appropriate to wrap up Hana's arc with her parents - whose isolation of her and control over her relationships led to her being unaware of her own sexuality for years - by erasing that very important detail.

The narrative itself treated even Hana's wedding as an afterthought. She was never really viewed as another bride, never given all the perks that the MC got. Their wedding was written (like Maxwell's) with glitches galore, including the infamous "husband and wife" label from the officiant that openly ignored the player's own choices just a few chapters before. And as I've mentioned in previous essays, the writers made no distinctions between bride!Hana and bridesmaid!Hana at the reception, resulting in the uncomfortable image of Hana doing bridesmaid duties in her wedding gown. One book later, people were teasing Hana and the MC about all the sex they were having to make babies, and the only real difference between Hana's single and married playthroughs...was that married!Hana could learn she couldn't get pregnant. In her single playthrough, despite the core theme of her story being self-discovery, she was hardly given any life of her own.

When this is the way the narrative itself treats Hana's sexuality, what hope is there that they will allow her any sense of community with her queer identity, outside of the MC??

Lesbian or Bi?

It is a testament to how little Hana's sexuality mattered to the writing team, that even after the end of TRR3 the fandom was still debating over whether Kara's Twitter canon had any weight.

It didn't need to be this way. They could have made Hana's confession to the MC actually default. They could have allowed her to actively show interest in a woman (or a woman and a man) and center her in the story with that alternative LI, rather than treat her as a prize in a former antagonist's story. They could have even peppered the story with hints that she was going out, meeting other people, learning on her own that she was not straight and letting us know clearly what she identified herself as. And while sure, this may be too much to ask from a company that often sidelines its female LIs, the fault still lies with them for making her a person so deep in the closet that she had to come out to herself first. (Which, btw, they never allowed to openly or subtle reference in canon).

Hana was called bi by a story lead of the book. The same story lead claimed she was going through a journey of discovering this, yet nothing in her actual story supports that. She shows no attraction to any man in the books, but we also never see her show any real, obvious, consistent, canon-supported attraction to a woman that isn't the MC either. The only other possibility of a relationship revolves around someone who'd found joy in harming her, with little to no agency for Hana. Her sexuality was spoken of as "something she is still figuring out for herself" yet it's been six books since and we've heard nothing about what it is she's figured out.

The narrative would have lost absolutely nothing by making her a canonical lesbian, or even a canonical bisexual, yet pushed her into a version of the "mechanical bi" template where she could either show her attraction to ONE woman in particular, or just keep that aspect of herself hidden forever. And while one may assume that her "figuring out" of her sexuality happened offscreen, it is clear that her writers were too uncomfortable with her sexuality themselves, to provide clarity, to even want to give it any value beyond the MC's needs and desires.

In closing, if I were to sum up how TRR treats Hana's sexuality, it would go something like this:

Hana isn't allowed past romances. Hana isn't allowed future romances. Twitter canon claims she's bi yet only has her briefly talk to four men she's not even interested in. The only woman she's allowed to actually date is the MC and even that is moulded for the MC's comfort levels. The only other romance she's "allowed'' is with someone who wanted to break her, and she's hardly even allowed an opinion on that person's interest in her. Her parents are shown to be homophobic but when the team wants to soften them further they erase their homophobia. And then she is never, ever, EVER allowed even a sense of community with other queer people because the fucking world they built is actually so fucking heteronormative!!!!

It is clear, therefore, that even Hana's sexuality is written in a way that it's never about her - it is written for the MC. If the MC romances her, Hana's whole sexuality story begins and ends with this one person, with no future reference to what her closeted past was like or how her journey progresses beyond her marriage. If the MC rejects her, the narrative never bothers with what happens next for that story. It is the MC who romances her that benefits from her attraction, and the MC who doesn't want her love that benefits from her silence.

Hana's story of her sexuality - as with many other aspects of her writing - begins in uncertainty, but ends in erasure.

Next: China, Cordonia and "Home"

#hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #long post #lgbtq #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale

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i-did · 4 years ago

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Do you know when the racism and ableism accusations against Nora started? Because back when I was active in 2016/2017 and don't think they were a thing, or were very low-key. Was it something she said or are people just basing it off the things she wrote in the books?

From what I remember, the first time I heard the blanket statement of “Nora is racist/fetishizes gay men” blanket statement was early fall 2019 (which is so ironic for the fandom to say on so many levels lmao). There wasn’t a catalyst or anything, just she went offline 2016 and no new content was coming out and the aftg fandom is such an echo chamber that… an accidental smear campaign happened.

Before then, I would see occasional “Nora used ableist slur” which… is funny (not that ableism isn’t serious) to me people care more about that than Seth saying the f-slur. IMO this is because with Seth, it clearly shows the character thinking it and not the author who is writing about what will be an end game mlm relationship.

But anyways! Long story short, it's the fact that she’s an ace/aro woman who wrote a mlm book, and based off of the events in canon. There is no “Nora called me/someone else a slur” it’s “Nora wrote a book where slur(s) are used” and “the Moriyama’s are Japanese.”

Below I put my own opinion on these claims and go into more detail:

CW for discussions of: racism, ableism, mlm fetishization

Fetishization: (and mentions of sexism at the end)

To one question in the EC about her inspo for aftg she jokingly responded how she wanted to write about gay athletes. On other parts of your blog you could see she was a hockey fan and an overall sports fan (anime or otherwise) but I've seen this statement taken out of context and framed as “she's one of those BOYXBOY” shippers. Considering how… well-developed both Andrew and Neil’s relationship is, and it takes them until like the 3rd book and there is a whole complex ass plot going on around, you can see how that's just. Not really true. And considering the fandom is like… 85% women (queer women but still women) and I've gotten into a discussion with someone who is a woman and called Nora a fetishizer and was ignoring my opinions as a mlm, and I really just wanted to say “well what does that make you?” it's a very ironic high horse. She didn’t write 3 all 3 books to put Neil in lingerie pwp or crop-top fem-fatal fashion show, fandom did.

Also, I talked to an ace/aro friend about this, and she talked to me about how AFTG spoke to her very much so as an ace/aro story. Neil is demisexual, Nora didn’t know of the word at the time of reading it, but she did get an anon asking if Neil was demi after, and she said “had to look it up, and yep, but he doesn't really think about it” (paraphrased). Obviously it would have been cool if andreil were canonly written as wlw by Nora instead, (which would have increased the amount of wlw rep and demi rep) but tbh I don’t think tumblr would have cared about it nearly as much and everyone would just call Neil a cold bitch–like people do with Nora’s other published book with a main character who's a woman. Plus they're her OC’s, not mine.

The fact is that 50% of all LGBT+ rep in literature is mlm, mostly white mlm, and not written by mlm. I’m not going to hold her to a higher standard than everyone else, she already broke a shit ton of barriers in topics she discusses that otherwise get ignored. I’m grateful to these books for existing even if it's a mlm story written by a woman. I still will prioritize reading mlm written by mlm–and vice versa with wlw– in the way I prioritize reading stories about POC written by POC. But credit where credit is due, this is a very good story, and a very good demi story.

Ableism:

To me, AFTG is a story about ableism and how we perceive some trauma survivors more worthy than others. Neil and the foxes using ableist language shows how people actually talk. Neil thinks shitty things about Andrew, like the others do too, and thinks he's “psycho”. The story ultimately deconstructs this idea and these perceptions of people. Wymack, someone who says the r-slur (which is still not known by the general population as a slur even in 2021 much less the early 2000s when the book was beginning to be written and what the timeline is based off of) is a character who understands Andrew better than most of the others do, and gives him the most sympathy and understanding despite using words like the m-slur and r-slur. Using these words isn't good, but it is how people talk, and this character talks. Wymack is a playful “name caller” especially when he’s mad, the foxes think Andrew is “crazy” and incapable of humanity and love because of it. They call his meds “antipsychotics” as an assumption and insult in a derogatory way, when really antipsychotics are a very helpful drug for some people who need them. Even Neil thinks these things about Andrew until he learns to care about him. All the foxes are hypocritical to am extent, as people in real life tend to be. Nora herself doesn’t use these or tweet them or something, her characters do to show aspects of their personality and opinions and how they change over time.

Racism:

As for the racism, I've seen people talk about how racial minorities being antagonists is inherently bad, which I think lacks nuance but overall isn't a harmful statement or belief. However, Nora herself said she wrote in the yakuza instead of another gang or mob because she was inspired for AFTG by sports anime, (which often queer-bait for a variety of reasons). I haven’t seen a textual analysis acknowledging the racist undertones surrounding the Moriyama’s as the few characters of color who are also major antagonists, but instead just “Nora is racist”. Wymack having shitty flame tribal tattoo’s is just… a huge 90’s thing and a part of his character design. Her having a character with bad taste in tattoo trends doesn’t mean she's racist. There is the whole how Nicky is handled thing, but that's a whole thing on it’s own. The fandom… really will write Nicky being all “ai ai muy spicy, jaja imma hit on my white–not annoying like me–boyfriend in Spanish. With my booty hole out and open for him ofc.” and as a Mexican mlm I’m like … damn alright.

I think there is merit to the fact that she writes white as the default* and unless otherwise stated a POC a character was written with the intent to be white is another valid criticism, as well as the fact that the cast is largely white, but everything Nora is accused of I've seen the fandom do worse. That goes to the debate of, is actively writing stereotypes for POC more harmful than no representation at all? And personally I prefer the lack of established race line that lets me ignore Nora’s canon intent of characters to be white and come up with my own HC’s over the fandoms depictions of “zen monk Renee with dark past” “black best friend Matt who got over drugs but is a puppy dog” “ex stripper black Dan who dates Matt” vague tokenism. I HC many of the upperclassmen as POC and do my best to actively give thought behind it and have their own arcs that also avoids the fandom colorism spectrum of “darkest characters we HC go to the back and fandom favorites are in the front and are the lightest.”

*I however won't criticize her harsher or more than… everyone else who still largely does this in fanfiction regarding AFTG as well as literature in general. This isn't a Nora thing, it's a societal thing, and considering the books came out in like 2014 I'm not gonna hold her to a higher standard than the rest of the world. She's just someone who wrote her personal OC’s and self-published expecting no following. I don’t know her race and I’m not gonna hold her to a higher standard than everyone else just because.

The criticisms I've seen have always been… ironic IMO, and clearly I have a lot of thoughts on it. I think most people say those things about Nora because they heard them, and it's the woke thing to say and do and don’t critically analyze their actions or anything, but just accept them.

#ask #aftg discorse #fandom culture #fandom politics #fandom psychology #mailob #damn cant wait for my words to be twisted lmao #sorry the ableism one is the shortest I wrote that one first actually

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ethernetchord · 4 years ago

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lets talk: popular iwwv criticism

(disclaimer: i know criticism is subjective and thats why im doing this, i wanna look at some common points made against iwwv and dissect them just a little bit in the opposite direction. also none of this is directed at any individual- it’s all based on the general talking points i’ve seen surrounding the book.)

SPOILER WARNING !!

lack of exploration into james and oliver (+ gay characters feel performative)

i’ve seen loads of people say that oliver and james’ relationship felt very performative, a way of including the queer romnce which clearly is very important to the plot but not actually giving it any space in the novel, nor developing it to the same extent which meredith/oliver was.

oliver and meredith had a very strictly physical relationship and while he did love her, he wasn’t in love with her the way he was with james. the juxtaposition in the way that oliver/james is delivered and the way meredith/oliver is delivered is, i believe, far too repetitive to not be intentional. i actually realised upon re-reading how much focus there really is on meredith’s sexuality, even in subtleties in the book. meredith and oliver get more blatant sex scenes, get more physical parts because oliver was (to an extent) using his attraction to meredith to distract himself from his infatuation with james.

we also have to remember that oliver and james didn’t get their real moment of honesty about their relationship till extremely late into the book. i’d honestly see it as more ‘performative’ to then after or in the middle of kind lear throwing in some wild sex scene between the two. it wouldn't have fit.

“why didn’t james and oliver get together earlier then >:(((“ because the slow burn between them, the subtext, the subtle-ness, the yearning, they were all crucial to the decision which oliver made at the end. the fact that they burned so bright for each other but (oliver particularly) were so desperately repressed, that was what made this such a tragic romance. yes its tiring to read stories about queer people being repressed, yes its tiring to see the bury your gays trope. but like oliver says, it goes beyond gender.

if oliver’s second love interest was a girl, and treated this way, we’d be a lot more on board with these tropes- but the fact that james is a man, and this therefor becomes a queer relationship, makes it feel performative. i can’t convince you of anything- but i like to believe that their relationship being treated like this not only makes it so much more “heart wrenching because why! why couldn’t it work out, why couldn’t it be better!” - not because its a queer relationship but because they were soulmates.

alexander wasn’t performative. not in the slightest, rio just didn’t make being gay his entire identity. same goes for colin. just because they’re queer doesn’t mean it needs to be the only thing about them. this isn’t a lgbt novel- characters dont have to be gay just for plot. they can just be gay.

i’ve also seen people complain about not just making oliver bisexual. guys. did you read the book? he was bisexual. he was emotionally and physically attracted to both meredith and james. guys that’s literally what bisexual means.

i'm totally on board with the coming out scenes! and realisation of feelings and all that stuff- but again, not an lgbt centric novel and also- these were things oliver probably did and realised far before this book. remember that its set in 4th year, at an art school. he knew he was fruity ok. not every queer character in every queer book have to have these grandious coming out scenes or realisations. the lack there of doesn’t equal performance.

the ending was rushed and bad

believe what you will, but i don’t think james is dead. there’s a little too much ambiguity in that ending, in the extract he leaves oliver, in the “his body was never found.” so if your main quarrel with the ending is that “bury your gays” situation- please know there’s a chance- and that giving it that chance opens up so much more discussion and reader response.

yes, the ending is sad. but it’s not rushed. “but that is how a tragedy like ours or king lears breaks your heart- by making you believe the ending might still be happy until the very last second.” doing king lear, doing macbeth, doing romeo and juliet, the plays are chosen not only for reader convenience (they’re plays readers will most likely be familiar with) but also because they all, so very deeply, foreshadow a “bad” ending. killing james, makes sense. as much as people don’t want to hear it, from an authorial perspective- from the reader’s perspective and as a human being it makes sense. why do keep arguing that he “should’ve stayed alive for oliver” or that “if he really loved oliver he wouldn’t have done it” - why are we limiting a character’s entire existence down to their love interest. yes, they were best friends, yes they were set up as lovers but that doesn’t mean that that would be enough to keep james around. james was a fragile character- he was always checking with oliver if he had upset him, he was always worried, overthinking, james wasn’t strong minded- and he was suffering. the only person he had left to depend on was in prison, he was plagued with the guilt of causing the death of a classmate and letting oliver take the blame, if he did kill himself, it sure as hell doesn’t have any reason to sound forced.

“its not nearly as good as the secret history!!!!”

to be honest here buds, why the fuck do we keep comparing them so insistently. they are not the same book. iwwv wasn’t trying to be tsh 2.0, yes there are similarities because hey! guess what! books in similar genres tend to do that! always comparing it tsh when they have different motives, different plots and vastly different execution makes no sense. the only reason that they are compared is because tumblrtm dark academics like to group the two together. and yea- makes sense, but stop trying to belittle iwwv because it isn't as grandiose as tsh, because it’s a little more literal, because it’s not as intertextual as tsh. half the people saying iwwv isn’t as good as tsh are practically just subtly going “shakespeare isn’t as complicated as ancient greek huehue” stop forcing the two together and let them be separately appreciated.

the characters were flat/archetypes/etc

sigh. okay.

these characters are actors. this book shows us their transition from themselves entirely into a conjunction of the roles they’ve played and the stereotypes they’ve portrayed.

“we were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.”

“for us, everything was a performance”

“imagine having all your own thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feelings of a whole other person. it can be hard, sometimes, to sort out which is which.”

“far too many times i had asked myself whether art was imitating life or if it was the other way around”

“it’s easier now to be romeo, or macbeth, or brutus, or edmund. someone else.”

are you seeing it now? this focus on their archetypes, this focus on the character they are; the way they see themselves not merely as human but as a walking concoction of every character they have turned into and out of. they depend on their archetypes to give them meaning. rio uses these archetypes to remind us of the submersion of her characters. they weren’t flat, their intentional lack of dimension due to their pasts is what makes them so intricate. furthermore, there's an evident subversion- the tyrant becomes a victim, the hero becomes a villain (they all become villains really), the ingenue becomes corrupted. like mentioned before, i think we forget ourselves easily reading this book but there is a great deal of emphasis on this being their last year- which is so important. the damage has been done and a lot of the issues people have with the content (or lack thereof) in this book has to do with the fact that it’s all things that would have occurred in books focusing on previous years at delletcher.

“it didn't live up to expectation” (also leading on from read tsh to this and being ‘disappointed’)

i cant argue this because its entirely subjective. whatever expectation was created for you, i cannot know that and appropriately respond however- if you liked the secret history and understood the secret history then there's a good chance you also liked and understood this book- even if not to the same extent but you must be able to recognize the authorial approach and its significance. i think a lot of ppl read iwwv (and a lot of “dark academia” texts and films) and hope to be able to romanticize the aesthetic or the concepts and then are disappointed when they are presented with mildly unlikeable and overwhelmingly human characters who aren’t easy to romanticize.

a great majority of these books are criticisms of the very culture you’re trying to romanticize, and the only time you’re willing to admit that is when boasting about the ‘self-awareness’ of the people indulging in them, and then a moment later complain about those same qualities because they don’t serve this idealized expectation.

bad rep for arts/liberal arts/ humanities students as being pretentious/cultish

as a humanities student with a great love for eng lit- all of these things are indeed pretentious and cultish. not all the time and not always and not every person- but it is a common theme. academia is overwhelmingly obsessive and extremely white-washed. people become so fast to believe that they are indulging in finer arts and are therefore a higher standard of person. academia is problematic. and the recent influx of people interested in it is good, very good because hopefully, we’ll be more diverse, more open-minded, more accepting. that's what i hope at least. if you know, as an individual, that you’re not a pretentious academic who places themselves above non-academics then that's wonderful- but there are dangers and negative sides to academia that need to be understood so that we can see to not perpetuating them.

i cant refute all points, mostly because there's a lot of good and well-explained criticism because no book is perfect. and my intentions are not to belittle anyone's opinion. these are merely opposing arguments, food for thought and to be fair- a critical look into why not everything is always going to be what we expect of it and why every ‘problem’ can be assessed.

#iwwv #if we were villains #iwwv critism #book review #tsh #dark academia #fanart

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e-felle-books · 2 years ago

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May the Best Man Win by ZR Ellor

This is NOT a serious book review.

SPOILER WARNING

TRIGGER AND CONTENT WARNING FOR THE BOOK: Homophobia, transphobia, alluded deadnaming and schoolyard violence

Happy Pride Month bitches! For my first dumb little book review I've decided on 'May the Best Man Win' by ZR Ellor as I just finished it recently.

Synopsis: Jeremy Harkiss, a gay trans man signs up to run for Homecoming King, however his ex-boyfriend, Lukas Rivers is also in the running. Both with their own personal goals, their rivalry becomes a hot mess as they do anything to win.

"Review": This book was a trip, both main characters are dicks that you slowly learn to sympathise with as each chapter switches perspectives between Jeremy and Lukas. They will throw their friends under the bus just to win fucking Homecoming King, which I don't get as an Aussie because we don't have that here. They explain how winning Homecoming King is important to them but it seriously doesn't make their actions any better, they're messy bitches who clearly still love each other and I'm all for lovers to enemies back to lovers.

Reading Jeremy's chapters were uncomfortable as fuck as I too am a gay trans man with similar insecurities, but that also made his chapters more engaging for me. He wants to be seen as a real man, but also struggles with the idea of losing his identity as a trans man, and wants to end high school on a bang to make everyone forget he ever was a woman. We also find out he dumped Lukas on the day of Lukas' brothers' funeral by dumping a milkshake on him in front of their friends at a diner because Lukas said something that triggered his dysphoria, but being fair on Lukas he didn't know Jeremy was trans at the time but it was the final straw before Jeremy came out and began his transition.

Lukas has his own reasoning for winning Homecoming King, as he's tired of living in his dead brothers' shadow, especially given how his brother was a major dick to him. Lukas was also diagnosed with autism from an early age which made him feel insecure about his academic abilities. For Lukas, winning Homecoming King would solve everything, from his family falling apart to him getting into a good university. I also relate to this somewhat as someone who has struggled academically, especially as an adult, who is on a waiting list to get tested for autism.

Oh the drama of them pushing the other away while also clearly pining for each other, as well as destroying their own friendships just to be crowned Homecoming King. These two had a lot of shit they needed to deal with, which thankfully they do to some extent, I'm also disappointed that at the end, we only get Jeremy's perspective for the epilogue, would have loved to hear about where Lukas was going with his life, especially regarding university since that was such a big part of his story that just gets dropped at the end. I also found it cool that not only do we get gay, transmasc, bi and autism rep in this book, but the character, Sol, is Latinx and non-binary and is a major part of the story and Jeremy's homecoming campaign.

Make of this review as you will, if this sounds like it interests you I recommend it as I certainly had fun reading it.

#pride month #gay #transgender #book review #nonbinary

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the-gayest-tree-you-ever-did-see · 3 years ago

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i’ve had family members who tested positive and were really sick, so i can’t imagine what it must of been like for you. it’s frustrating bc this whole wave could’ve been prevented with a more competent government.

i feel like the women do more of the running around and getting ready, so the dads and uncle zone is a lot more chill. maybe if one of my uncles wasn’t so creepy I’d hang out with them lmao.

haha, i haven’t read aru shah or finished the magnus chase series. i do remember really like alex and magnus at around book two. i heard they ended up together which is rlly nice!!

also shout out to uncle rick for having so many lgbt characters in his children’s/middle grade books. middle school me definitely benefitted from nico being gay.

me too!! they wanted a warlock and shadowhunter themed wedding 🥺 also having everyone there was so perfect. i do wish alec coming out was more focused in on in the books, instead of the whole clary and jace possible incest storyline. it would have been a lot more interesting.

also on the tollywood thing: you’re so right about low budget movies often being better. in addition to better acting, the stories are often better cause the directors are less formulaic. like some of the best telugu thrillers have actors and directors I’ve never heard of. also jathi ratnalu is one of my all time favorite telugu movies (go watch it if u haven’t! it’s good for when u need a laugh)

a tiny tree babe- you’d be like to below my shoulder 🥺🥺🌳

i.. i thought we were kissing for real this whole time /j

i guess we can kiss officially now *plays wedding orchestra*

mwah! (you’re stuck with me forever now <3)

- indi with an extra heart <3

exactly, modi didnt even do the bare minimum and somehow it's our fault for literally not having enough room to breathe? it makes me even more mad when i read articles from the us bc they clearly did only the basic research and dont seem to understand the extent of it, or they play it up like everyone in india is poor and thats why we're dying like ??? theres a reason this didnt happen before and theres a reason it is happening now. like use your critical thinking skills, they teach you that in first class.

definitelyyyy, if im with the women i get dragged into chores and spend the whole night wrangling kids and serving food to men who are sweaty from laughing so hard, but when im with the men, i can still have fun and chill, but also help out and be useful, and i get to pick the balance. most of my uncles are pretty creepy, but theyre always on their best behavior around me bc im from the us (not bc they want to impress me, but bc they want info on me to tear me down, essentially. they kind of hate me, but jokes on them bc i take and take the juicy gossip and leave before i have to give.)

the magnus chase series is probably one of my favorite books out of the stuff rick's written, and ofc alex has a special place in my heart. i really loved the way the whole series was written, you should read the third book if you can!! and aru shah will always occupy some corner of my mind, it's amazing!! indian rep, indian queer rep, everything is so accurate, and theres a telugu character, plus yk. monsters and dragons and magic and stuff. and chandra!! chandra is The Most god ever, he is So aesthetic.

no but actually, once i read nico's story i was like okay fucker (me) you have to figure this out, no running away and promptly broke down crying hysterically, but!! i came out of gay as fuck so its all okay in the end. plus seeing rick go from white protag, white antag, white heroine, black sidekick, and barely any rep in lightning thief, to an incredibly diverse cast of all different shapes, sizes, colors, sexuality, gender identities, socioeconomic backgrounds, familial situations, and on and on and on, it's just... im almost proud of him? even though he's like 57 lmao

ikr, i couldve cared less about who jace ended up with, and i was cool with whatever clary had going on, but as SOON as alec was in the picture my gay ass took the wheel and shoved any straight remnants of me in the trunk to die of oxygen deprivation. im so happy that the red scrolls of magic series exists bc it gave me literally everything i wanted.

omh yessss, jathi ratnalu is so fucking funny, i loved it so much!! that one guy who was like "if im the problem, then tell me, ill leave" every time (i think lol, cant translate telugu to english very well) that was sooo funny, i lost my mind at that movie.

😌 i am v v smol boi,,,,,,,,,, inside i am ginormous but outside i am. tiny

*wedding bells ring* do you, indiphannon, hereby take this bastard, treeman, to be the most annoying husband ever?

mwah! (i never want to leave <3)

ily indi! <3

#asks #indiphannon #the tree speaks

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squeezeofthehand · 5 years ago

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A (late) Review of Moby-Dick: A Musical Reckoning

I saw Moby-Dick: A Musical Reckoning by Dave Malloy last month, and I can basically divide it into “The Good, The Bad, and the Racist/Queerphobic/Ableist etc”

Some background: As most people who’ve ever spoken to me will know, I have a special interest in Moby-Dick AND Dave Malloy/Rachel Chavkin musicals (I truly believe that Great Comet is one of the best works of all time) and I consider Malloy and Chavkin both to be my biggest heroes and inspirations, at least when it comes to their respective style of writing and directing. That being said, they’re not perfect. I waited for this musical for about two years, and music/set/etc wise it exceeded my expectations, but it also majorly let me down in a lot of ways.

The Good: The cast! The crew! The set! (It was literally The Pequod - like, they got rid of the stage.) The lighting design in particular was really good - thank you, Bradley King. Manik Choksi, Andrew Cristi, and Starr Busby are gods. I do not have a singular bad thing to say about the cast or the design team! Even the stuff that was tacky/campy (i.e. some of the puppets) was tacky/campy in an enjoyable way. And the “fun” parts of the show were REALLY fun - the fact that they invited the audience on stage, the fact that they TRIED to make Moby-Dick more accessible even if they didn’t do it perfectly at times….the music, when not problematic, was BEAUTIFUL. Listen, I’d be lying if I said Dave Malloy wasn’t one of the best composers when it comes to skill. Everyone in that show sure can act, and sing…the band too, was marvelous, I heard no errors from anyone. This is, what, a three hour long show? And the cast/band was just like, “oh, no big deal.” Which makes “the bad” and “the racist” even worse because these people deserve better. This show deserves better, it deserves to be better.

The Bad: Well, as a book fan, I disagreed with a lot of characterization…most of which can fall into The Racist etc, so I’ll just focus on the “bad but not inherently problematic” here. I really didn’t agree with a lot of things about Ahab’s characterization, i.e. I did not read him as just a bad white guy who’s the epitome of privilege. Stubb, on the other hand is, a canon white supremacist in the book and that barely gets acknowledged in the ways that it should. I do get what Dave was trying to go for, especially in re: Ahab & climate change, but this wasn’t the show for it - or at least, Ahab wasn’t the character for it. Which brings me to my next point: Most of the time, I’m a fan of the quirky Malloyian anachronisms and parallels to modern day issues, but I feel like he was trying too hard here and stepping out of line. Loose adaptations can be fun, anachronistic adaptations can be fun, even INACCURATE adaptations can be fun…but this just wasn’t. It didn’t feel like Moby-Dick, but more like a story vaguely inspired by it. If that had been what he was going for, it would’ve been fine, but he really acted like this would be an accurate adaptation of the book, so I felt let down. The only anachronism/breaking of the fourth wall that I somewhat liked were the talks of Melville and Hawthorne, honestly, and even those I’d sacrifice in favor for accuracy to the source.

And now…The racist/etc.

So.

Where to begin? I suppose chronologically. Queequeg. Who, according to Dave Malloy, is a stereotypical flamboyant queer person of color! and also a quirky cannibal! He’s trans in the musical, apparently, but there’s not much indication of that in the show beyond from him wearing a binder and a skirt. Now, I am all for trans Queequeg of course, but he was a caricature in this particular adaptation. I do not blame Andrew Cristi. I blame Dave (and mayyyybe the costume designers to some extent). I felt baited. Also, early production rumors and quotes said that there would be a song in which Queequeg saved someone from drowning. That never happened. It pains me to say it, but he didn’t feel that much like an important character (due to the bad writing -- again, it has nothing to do with the actor).

Additionally, Dave Malloy said that Queequeg and Ishmael would be a clear gay relationship…but the musical left so much room for them to just be interpreted as friends. It somehow became less gay than it is in the original Melville novel. The marriage was excluded, as were the quotes about them being a cozy and loving pair and about Queequeg holding Ishmael like a wife. They were replaced with the “I don’t wanna sleep with a cannibal” song, which was fun to watch at first but way too grossly stereotypical for me to genuinely enjoy it. Queequeg deserves a fun and light-hearted song, but he does not deserve a racist/homophobic one. My advice? Replace it with the actual chapters from the book, please. I do like the fact that The Pacific was a romantic duet and that they sing directly at each other during Squeeze Of The Hand, but those two songs are mere scraps especially compared to, for example, the Bosom Friend chapter of the book. It looked like they were going to kiss during The Pacific and I was very disappointed that they did not. Perhaps the team should keep the songs the way that they are for future productions, but add more romantic staging.

Pip-not-Pip/Elijah/??? (Ashkon Davaran’s character) and Fedallah were also major, major, issues. Not the actors, I love them. Not the book characters, I love them. But the musical characters.

Basically, Fedallah gets this 20 minute long monologue that can be summed up as “religion is bad” and a lot of other things including but not limited to egotistical fake-woke praise on color conscious casting and how badly America is fucked. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that Fedallah is Parsi and Zoroastranian in the book (and it is NOT good rep in the book by any means, trust me, I’ve been calling Malloy out on his racism but I can’t act as if book!Fedallah was anything less than an ~exotic caricature~ either). However, that’s beside the point, at least in this review. Musical!Fedallah is not Parsi nor Zoroastranian. Don’t read this the wrong way, I’m all for Black Muslim rep! But with a character who is already canonically something else? Take a white character and make them a Black Muslim, I encourage that, but when a character is already something else, no.

If the monologue was influenced/written by the actor, that’s one thing and I’d have less issue with it, but I think Dave wrote the vast majority of it, which…yikes…

My constructive criticism: Cut the Fedallah monologue. If the creative team still wants the actor/character to have the same amount of stage-time as he does now, replace it with a different monologue, maybe something from the book? Something about whaling history?

Another thing that needs to be cut or at least completely rewritten: Tambourine. The song starts off with an ableist verse that can be summed up as “you think you’re crazy because you get nervous on the subway? No! I’m more crazy than you!” Don’t take this as me saying that Pip’s trauma/PTSD shouldn’t be addressed at all, but this is the absolute worst way to address it. The song also has a lot of performative lines such as “is god cisgender?” Which, considering this is the same musical that also has trans bait, I truly hate it. Not that I think God should ever be viewed as a cis white man, but much like the “America is awful” stuff in the Fedallah Monologue, this is an offensive and fake-woke way to address such a topic.

Part IV was really heart-wrenchingly beautiful. No criticism there.

To summarize by part-

Part I: Cut/replace the campy Queeqeug song, but otherwise keep it as it is.

Part II: Cut/replace the racist and xenophobic Fedallah monologue.

Part III: Cut/replace Tambourine. The rest of the Ballad Of Pip (starting with Kim Blanck’s beautiful song) is alright. Good, even.

Part IV: Great! No editing needed besides from the typical tweaking that writers may choose to do after their first draft.

In general: Make Ishmael/Queequeg more obvious, make Queequeg less of a caricature, do some major editing to Fedallah and Pip-Not-Pip/Elijah/???. Tambourine and Fedallah’s Monologue need to be completely rewritten, but I get that the creative team may not want to take scenes away from the actors, which is why I encourage them to remove all of the racist bs and create something completely new/different for the actors to perform.

I understand that Moby-Dick is clearly a work-in-progress on all levels. I do not dislike for the show for being a scrappy rough draft. I judge it for its racist, homophobic, ableist, etc messages. Dave has acknowledged that this first copy is far from perfect, and I sincerely hope that the racism/etc. is the first and main thing that he fixes.

#moby dick #moby dick: a musical reckoning #dave malloy #call me sky #reviews

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akechicrimes · 5 years ago

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yeah alright

i’m reading the book called “the dark fantastic” written by a Fandom Old who later became a professor and academic scholar, talking about the ways that fandom outrage over the death of black female characters is a form of protest for justice in our literature. and how people get so fucking mad over these things because, you know, we deserve more. we deserve better rep.

and like, i was thinking today, you know, there’s a strong argument that yosuke was emotionally too raw to go into a relationship after losing saki (that’s a real fucking thing that a good friend explained to me as the reason why his date route was cancelled), and that yosuke wasn’t comfortable to come out as bi just then at that point in his life. which is fucking rich, considering that persona 4 is all about accepting one’s true self, and the way that argument goes, it lines up yosuke as someone who ultimately never did accept his true self.

and i was also thinking today like, akechi’s s link and plotline in royal is so plot dependent that it’s difficult to have a point where you can choose to date him. his rank 9 and 10 are spent in the engine room. before then, he’s got his hands tied with shido, and any relationship he entered into at that point would have been dishonest. so from then on there’s really no good available spots to select to date him.

but then i was also thinking about the intimacy of the cafe scene, where he purposefully requests to be alone with you and you’re talking about something so difficult, and it’s like. that would have been the obvious choice. there’s a reason why there’s 1000 fanfics already with the scenario of shuake first kiss on the last night they’ll have together. plus royal’s entire theme was about the sadness of loss and the embrace of freedom even if it’s painful, and i was like. literally it would have taken you three more lines of dialogue.

akechi’s like, well if there’s nothing left, i’ll be going. akira asks him to stay. akechi says don’t be ridiculous. akira has the little thought bubble of “i better choose my words carefully.” akira has the choice to either let him go or propose for akechi to stay a little while longer. akechi tells him if he knows what he’s getting in to, if he’s prepared his heart for this sort of decision. akira says he has. fade to black “you spent a long time with akechi.”

boom. it’s right there.

i’ve been thinking a lot about how to some extent, i enjoy relationships that are queercoded or even queerbait MORE than i enjoy relationships that are explicitly queer, because i find that relationships that are written to be queercoded tend to embrace the full humanity of both characters. i find that more often than not, literature that’s made for the purpose of being queer ends up with “love simon” syndrome, where everything about the character winds up revolving around them being gay. which isn’t what i want. i want characters who are full human beings with real character arcs about them finding their way in the world as a complex individual, and they are gay. and for that reason, yosuke hanamura was a fucking gift, because he was written to be a complex character with a character arc revolving around his cynicism and difficulties with other people, a character you can befriend and grow closer to, and also he’s bi. and i like akechi for a lot of the same reasons.

but i was also thinking, you know, if i like queercoded and queerbaited relationships more than explicitly queer relationships because of the full humanity it affords queercoded characters, WHY CAN’T I JUST HAVE NARRATIVES WHERE I HAVE EXPLICITLY QUEER CHARACTERS THAT ARE GIVEN THEIR FULL HUMANITY.

WHY’S IT GOT TO BE EITHER OR.

IT COULD BE BOTH AND.

in some better world i could play a fun JRPG with a wild conceit about people’s cognitions warping in jungian fashion and summoning parts of their souls to fight demons and have it contain explicitly queer characters. in some better i don’t have to choose the fun JRPG or milquetoast bullshit like love simon. and in some better world i don’t have to buckle down so hard on death of the author just to extract decent representation from a liberatory queer reading of the source text, and i don’t have to pretend i’m not fucking salty about shuake being so heavily implied and then never made explicit.

because it was!!!! it is!!!!! people saying that it wasn’t implied are fucking blind!!!! and for that matter, akira can canonically date his own TEACHER for WAY flimsier narrative reasons!!!!!! you can basically date every single woman in that game except for your narrative-locked lawyer and the twelve-year-old girls!!!!!!

shuake was written as a romance, a seduction in which both sides attempt to sway the other to their own, and then it was never paid off as one. it’s the fucking textbook definition of queerbait in its original definition, in which queerbait is a narrative plotline that’s intentionally loaded with homoerotic tension for a queer audience to read into and get invested in, only for that plotline to never pan out to appease straight audiences. it’s not revolutionary on atlus’s part to have implied shuake so heavily and then pulled out. it’s what people have been doing since modern media began.

there was literally no good goddamn reason for it to not have been paid off except to appease straight audiences--you don’t even need to heavily restructure the plot--the cafe scene is right fucking there.

im going to stop being bitter in like, two seconds. i promise. (except also i’ve been fucking bitter about yosuke hanamura, and also everyone who tried to tell me that phoenix/miles was not a thing in ace attorney, literally ever since i was fifteen. to have your entire forum gang up on you and tell you that you’re “reading too much into it” and just have “shipper goggles” when yosuke being undateable was a fucking crime to his narrative plot and self-actualization? when you’re fifteen and queer and not sure if you’re queer and every single person you trust tells you that you’re being stupid? FUCK that shit. and i cannot believe it’s happening again. it makes me want to fucking spit.)

ok.

i’m going to stop being bitter.

but i had to get that off my chest.

#negativity #mine #rant about queerbaiting and akechi and also yosuke

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theboywhocriedbooks · 5 years ago

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Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian

[Goodreads]

It's 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing.

Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He's terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he's gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media's images of men dying of AIDS.

Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance...until she falls for Reza and they start dating.

Art is Judy's best friend, their school's only out and proud teen. He'll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs.

As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won't break Judy's heart--and destroy the most meaningful friendship he's ever known.

Thoughts:

Spoiler-Free Thoughts:

This was a book that I instantly became excited for when I learned what it was about. It discusses queer love, HIV/AIDS, NYC, the late 80’s, and those are all right up my alley. I’ve personally spent a lot of time educating myself about this history, be it in classes such as the one I took that focused on QPoC and HIV/AIDS specifically, or online, so you can say I’m pretty invested. I even wrote my own short story that focuses on similar themes (more on that some other time). Those parts of this book were so great, to an extent. One of my favorite historical moments is the St Patrick's Cathedral protest in the late 80’s, the die-in, where an individual can be heard screaming ‘You’re killing us!” and that made it into this book. So many other important historical moments made it into this book and I think that is its strongest aspect.

I was also excited about this book because it discusses this topic AND is by a person of color, an Iranian American specifically and one of the main characters is Iranian American as well. I felt like, ‘who better to explore themes of love and friendship during this time than someone who was alive during that time and also is a person of color’, aka, a voice I don’t hear enough of when discussing this topic. So much of this book is important! The queer Iranian representation, the queer youth rep during this time in history, queer sex + safe sex, the iconic activism, and even just some of the general references. I respect this book for that alone, for attempting to tackle it all and doing some of it very well.

Unfortunately, I had a lot of problems throughout the book. I know one or two might be very biased and personal things, but I know there are some I would like others to know or talk about. This includes: love triangle/melodrama?, general pacing, Madonna, the white characters, cis-normativity, privilege, the pov’s, and more. I will discuss that below, so run to read the book (if you want) or continue to read my spoiler-ful thoughts!

Spoiler-ful Thoughts:

I feel like some of what I have to say might be controversial so bear with me. For context, I am a young queer Mexican-American writer from Los Angeles, and that’s where I’m coming from with this, identity wise.

I was so stoked to hear this history told in a PoC perspective but aside from the author being of color, I don’t actually think I got a PoC perspective??? Let me break that down. First of all, the story is a multi-pov that alternates each chapter from Reza, Art, and Judy. Realistically, 1/3 of the story is told from the Iranian American character’s eyes. Then the other two are white characters. That itself is where I began being a little iffy (because, again, I was excited about a young PoC pov on this topic) but I was open, especially because I enjoyed them all in the beginning. I just didn’t understand why we needed a straight ally’s point of view? Overall her arc fell flat, aside from the cute moments of fashion design or that moment with Reza’s brother surprisingly. I would have been okay/would have preferred if it was just Reza and Art’s pov though.

In relation to Judy, the whole romance between her and Reza and then Reza and Art was so overblown and unnecessary. Reza didn’t need to date her, though that is a valid and relatable gay teen feels. I wish it ended in that “oh!!! you’re gay, wait!! lol let’s be friends then!” thing. Instead, she’s in love with him for half the book, super pushy with sex and gets extremely upset with Art for… liking Reza, and then you don’t ‘see’ her much throughout the rest of the novel anyway? It just felt so unnecessary, and so love-triangle-y. I did really like Art’s “you don’t understand how it is to like someone and be gay” speech cos felt valid to gay teen vibes, but that could have just been said in a way less dramatic argument? It really made no sense to me.

Before we leave Judy, lets touch on privilege, specifically white privilege and class privilege. Reza’s family, was once poor but now filthy rich. Art’s family, filthy rich and white. Judy’s family, allegedly shown to not be ‘rich’ by the two lines that say “my friends’ rich parents gifted us that cos we’re not as rich as my rich friends” and yet there is really no discussion on that any deeper than that. Like why are her parents not shown working, her mother especially? And her uncle? He lives alone in an apartment in the upper east side or whatever, and doesn’t work anymore? I might have missed that but I shouldn’t be able to just ‘miss that.’ Like, how did they pay to go to PARIS. It just didn’t at all feel like a story I could relate to or one that this history could relate to entirely. Like, even them having a whole ass wake/party thing for her uncle in a night club? Most people who died of AIDS complications didn’t get that, especially not ones who aren’t from ‘not-rich-families’. It was subtle and yet the smell of privilege was everywhere.

Then even Art and Reza’s relationship was also weird? It was forbidden then it immediately wasn’t and they were in love, due to one or two time jumps that really did not help to build their relationship at all. Okay though, some teens love easily, especially gay teens who don’t know many other gay teens so it could slide? Then, however, there is this really real and valid fear ingrained in Reza regarding AIDS and gay sex. He is terrified, and I loved (and hurt) for how terrified he was because it felt reasonable. What I didn’t love was, knowing this, Art was also super pushy sexually? Do you realize he, at multiple times, tried to pressure Reza into sex and once even got naked and pushed his body against him? Doing this after full well knowing how uncomfortable Reza was? No, thank you. From the author’s note in the book, I felt like MAYBE this could have been intentional and not meant to be an extremely positive? While that could be a stretch, it also doesn’t at all criticize or directly address this toxic behavior so boop.

This brings me back to not feeling like I get a QPoC perspective. Reza is our main queer person of color, and really the only prominent one (Jimmy was a rather flat character). Yet, everything else revolves around whiteness. I already addressed Judy taking up space as a narrator. Then there is Art, the super queer activist teen. He is mostly where Reza learns all the queer things from, and he is mostly the perspective where we see the queer action/activism from. Then, who is the elder HE learned everything from? Stephen, the gay white poz uncle of Judy. THEN, who do they frame EVERYTHING around? Madonna, the straight white woman.

Sure we hear about Stephan’s deceased Latino boyfriend and, as I said, Jimmy didn’t have much character to him aside from wearing a fur coat, saying “my black ass,” and helping move Stephan’s character along. He also has one of the few lines that directly addressed qpoc, where he says qpoc are disproportionally affected by AIDS but no one is talking about it. Ironic. It almost rarely addressed PoC throughout the rest of the novel. Heck, it almost never addressed trans characters either. What about the qpoc and trans woc who were foundational to queer rights movements that take place before this book? Sure he name drops Marsha P. Johnson, in passing, on the last page of this 400 page book, but why not mention them in depth even in one section?

Someone asked me, why does the author HAVE to do all of this. Why do they have to representing everyone, like Black trans women. Isn’t that unfair? My answer is no, it’s not unfair in situations like this. This author isn’t writing just a casual romance/friendship story. No, he is heavily touching on so much literal queer history and yet leaving out so many key players that are so often left out because of white-washing that happens in history. He didn’t even have to name these people, but just addressing that they are there as a community. Instead we get two or three throwaway lines about Ball culture after they “went to a ball that one time,” a random line from Jimmy, and a Marsha P. Johnson name drop at the end. It is honestly disappointing.

Even framing everything in the words of Madonna was a bit much for me. Sure, I know of her history and importance to queers so this is one of the more biased parts of this review. I just don’t think we needed several references to her every other page. I then screamed when, not only did we time jump like 20+ years (gays don’t do math, sorry) and the last quote is Lady Gaga! Oh, my god. I won’t linger on the white popstar allies because it’s not worth it. In regards to that time jump, though. It felt unnecessary as well, just trying to tie it all up with a bow. It’s reference to Pulse seemed random, and honestly felt a bit cheap, but so did lots of the things I’ve referenced.

Lastly, why did Art abruptly lick Reza’s lips out of nowhere, or when he was angry it was shown by saying “ and his brow sweats”? Anyway, I’m bummed out. I haven’t been reading as much this year or writing reviews but here I am, writing a novel-sized review basically dragging this book. I liked it enough to finish, and I think it’s important. I know some queer kids reading this will love it and learn from it but I just couldn’t help but realize that right under the surface, this book was sort of a let-down.

Thanks if you read all of this, and also sorry at the same time. Share your thoughts!

#this is a pretty blah review - the book was just a bit disappointing #2019 #Like a Love Story #abdi nazemian #the boy who cried books #3/5 #review

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joi-in-the-tardis · 5 years ago

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It’s my experience with any emotional issue I have that resolving it is 75% figuring what on earth it even is that I’m upset about (which usually requires going to the pain of actually talking it through with someone; hello I’m an extroverted feeler) and 25% actually working on the problem. In other words: figuring it out is the hard part. Actually, a lot of the stress and angst evaporates once I pin down the problem.

That doesn’t mean it’s all resolved just from understanding myself a little better. There’s still work to do. But clarity brings a lot of peace, you know?

Good Omens was released a tiny bit more than two months ago. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long... and also hard to believe it’s only been that long. I watched it all in one day because I wanted that first viewing to be mine- I didn’t want to share it. I knew, even then, that I was going to be a bit... touchy... about the shipping of the main characters. Not because I felt that anyone was wrong to ship them, but because they’re a pair I ship very specifically. (Which is not something I do overly much, I tend to be pretty open about my ships. Not just in a ship-and-let-ship way, but in the way that I multi-ship, myself. Tenth doctor, for example, I ship with four different characters. Even though the main one I blog about is Rose. I have two anti-ships, but only one of those actually bothers me to the extent that I have the tags blocked- and that’s more because the other character disgusts me than an overt problem with the ship itself.)

And, not just that, I ship them as being a similar kind of queer to my own. So, they’re dear to my heart. I see them as ace, as I am myself. I see them as nonbinary, like me. As beings somewhere outside the human realm, I don’t think they have to follow human friend/romance rules, and that’s a relief to me. Because I have an incredibly difficult time understanding where all those lines are.

I have a lot of myself tied up in these characters, okay? I related to The Doctor, yes. I’ve related to a lot of characters. But... not like this.

And I have felt, predominantly, unwelcome in the fandom. In the fandom’s defense, a lot of my emotional reaction was from the initial round of “you either ship them or you’re homophobic” that was aimed at not just other members of the fandom, but the author of the story himself. But, in doing so, people alienated aces, aros, and nonbinary folks. It’s not just me. I do understand that this was not everyone’s opinion, and that even if it was it wasn’t intended this way... But, it was a loud enough message that I shut every related tag down for over a month, and still have them filtered. I’m one that’s pretty stable in my identity, but I felt banished for it. I felt I wasn’t queer enough for a space that I wanted to occupy- one that was supposed a queer space, itself.

And, I let it fester.

That festering bled over in to my tumblr home fandom: David Tennant. I dunno if anyone noticed, but I haven’t celebrated Tennant Tuesday in weeks. I mean, a lot of it was tied in with GO, anyway, and I was trying to avoid that. But, the constant barrage of how slutty he and all his characters are... just grated me to the point that I wanted to find a hole. That hole was pulling out of it almost entirely. I’m trying to rally, it’s just taking time.

But still, there was more to it... I was getting increasingly frustrated with myself because of how upset I was. And how much that upset was spreading in to other fandom areas that I love. I didn’t understand it as I have always been a “don’t like, keep scrolling” or blacklist kind of person. And, my goodness, I do want fluff from this pairing! But every time I put my toe in the GO fandom sandbox it was akin to being lit on fire. And not in a slow burn, this is fun suffering kind of way.

It occurred to me a week or so ago what it was that was bothering me: I am assumed to be courting whoever I’m friends with. Sure, laugh it up, but I’m serious. I’m assumed to be in a romantic relationship with my married best friend nearly every time we have a day out. From clerks in stores to kids on the street to waiters at restaurants. I’m not insulted by the insinuation. My best friend is my best friend for a reason- she’s a phenomenal person and I’m very lucky to have her in my life. We don’t even correct them most of the time, anymore. That doesn’t make it any less exhausting sometimes. It doesn’t do anything to make me less paranoid about, not just our friendship, but every friendship I have. In my first years at my workplace I was assumed to be sleeping with multiple married women. How people came to that conclusion, to this day, perplexes me. Here I was going home to tea and TV and I was supposedly out dallying with these women behind their husband’s backs! Even now, I’m hyper aware of some of my friendships with married friends... Because their SOs have made comments... maybe joking, maybe not... that nice things I’ve done for them is me coming on to them. Please, I’m just a genuinely nice person who likes doting on people I care about.

It really fucking sucks that my friendships are misread. I have spent a large portion of my life just not understanding romance. Not knowing how to engage in it. Not knowing where the lines are. Not understanding what might be expected of me- worrying about that. I haven’t really had those kinds of connections, guys. I’ve been in love, yes, a couple of times. But, it’s never been more than a confession that’s either rejected outright or... a slow dissolution of what used to be a cherished friendship. I feel an enormous amount of love for the people in my life, but when it comes to expressing it in any kind of romantic way... I am just at a loss. I’ve always kind of chalked this up to being queer and having a late start, but sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever figure it out.

But if there’s one thing I know, I know how to love my friends. Or, at least, I think I do. And my friends don’t seem to mind. It’s the way that it’s labeled from the outside that bothers me.

And, that brings me full circle to my point: the thing that bothered me was that I saw these two romantically challenged ace/enby characters and I thought “omg that’s me!” Then I saw people shipping them sexually and that was okay! Ship whatever you want. But, then I saw that if you didn’t ship them that way it was homophobic. It was wrong. How could you see it anyway but gay? Yes, QPRs have their place, but this isn’t it (something I actually saw in someone’s tags!).

I was gutted. I understand why now. People ship me and my close friends together all the time, friends. It makes people really happy to do so. They’re getting rep in public. They think it’s sweet. It makes them smile. It makes them engage socially with us when they might not otherwise. It gets us nice tables at restaurants so we “can see one another better.”

But we’re not romantically involved. No matter how much the public may enjoy imagining us being so. We have always been and will always be the best of friends.

Am I right to be mad at the whole fandom for how much this hurt? No. Absolutely not. And I have not, at any time, been mad at everyone. I can separate my own feelings from the situation. To be honest, I don’t even remember who made some of the comments that hurt me to begin with and I’ll never try to find out. I’m not in any of this to start arguments or sling mud. I’m in the fandom life for fun, to escape from real life for a bit, and to make friends if I can.

I say all of this mostly for my own mental health: I want to share it. I want to be understood. And, if there’s anyone out there who feels like me: I want them to know I understand them, too. It’s not just you. You’re not alone.

And I also want to explain that coming to these conclusions and talking about them has made it a bit easier to pat at the sand in the Good Omens sandbox. I’ve been poking and prodding as I feel like I can. So, you’ll likely see some GO stuff on my blog. I’ve still got everything filtered at the moment because I’m letting it in, as I said, as I feel like I can. All at once feels like it might squash me again and I don’t want to ruin the progress I’ve already made.

I guess I’ll end this by saying that I loved GO the book. I loved the series. I’m eternally grateful for Neil Gaiman and how he’s continually put his foot down that we can all make of it what we like: that’s the fandom’s toybox. The only things that are cannon are the words in black and white and that’s all he’ll comment on. They can continue to be your romantic gay ship. They can continue to be my ace/enby QPR. We can all play in this massive sandbox together. Just... pardon my bandaged wounds and my being a bit shy. It’s taken me a while to get up the nerve to be here.

#joi rambles #fandom life #good omens #asexuality #romance #i really don't know how else to tag this!#just... please be kind

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arofili · 5 years ago

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Just curious what your point is then, (in that post about Good Omens rep) that you think the person who replied was missing? Because my own "no, not like that!" about the supposed lgbtq rep in Good Omens is precisely what I think they were getting at too: none of it is truly explicit, and i see no proof of intent in crafting it from Gaiman or anyone else officially creating for the show, and Gaiman himself sees it as just one way to interpret the text.

hey! thanks for being polite :) i may not have been as clear as i thought i was, lol.

from what i’ve seen there’s been no shying away from the “homoerotic” (for lack of a better term) tension between C&A, not from the actors or from neilman? i have seen gifs of tennant and sheen talking about C&A as a couple (i may be misremembering! but that was the impression i got) and neilman’s affirmation of queer interpretations since before the tv show was in the making is proof of intent to me, at least.

(side note: whatever sheen and tennant were acting, i don’t think that in and of itself is makes the rep canon...it’s about as canon as the hobbit fandom seems to think bagginshield is, lmao, which is to say “better than nothing but still not much”)

i’m not super plugged in to twitter, but neilman’s acceptance of everyone’s interpretations to me says: “yes, i am fully aware this reads as very queer; we may not have intended that when writing the book but we knew about it coming into the show and deliberately included it; however it would be inappropriate to claim that we planned this when writing the book and want to remain faithful to that aspect.”

Basically, he is doing the inverse of a JKR: not claiming retconned representation but actively encouraging queer interpretations. that doesn’t mean he’s going to dunk on people who see them as straight (though interpreting them as straight is...Beyond Me) because he’s not, idk, an Asshole,

i think neilman patting himself on the back in his responses to thanks from queer viewers is...egregious, tbh. but the backlash i’m seeing, claiming C&A as queerbaiting and neilman as homophobic, is fucking Always in response to him endorsing an a-spectrum reading of C&A’s relationship. some folks just Dont Want Aces And Aros To Have Nice Things!

looking at their relationship, i cannot say it is anything other than queer. the specifics of that queerness are left up to interpretation, but it is so fucking queer. and yes! explicit queer rep is good and important! but queer vagueness can be good representation too. that’s what i think this is, queer vagueness, not queerbaiting.

i find comfort in vague queerness, and queercoding too to some extent. as an aromantic asexual nonbinary person, the odds of me getting something to represent me in all those areas is Extremely Unlikely, so instead i cling to “vague” representation and implications.

it’s rare that i see queer vagueness done intentionally like it is in Good Omens; usually i end up projecting onto characters like Legolas or Luke Skywalker &etc that are also easily interpreted as gay but not written that way on purpose. (which is another tangential subject i have a Lot of opinions on, but let’s stay in our lane why don’t we)

i think we’ve focused so much on explicit queer rep (which again! is a good thing!) that we ignored characters and relationships that fall into gray spaces that are still very much nonnormative. those are good too, those are wide-reaching and provide ground for transformative works, those are also wonderful places for questioning people to experiment.

representation shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. we should have lots of options. i see now, after writing this mini essay, that i jumped into that post with the idea that it was obvious that there’s more to representation than labels, but it isn’t obvious, and i hope my explanation makes sense.

also: there is ample canon evidence (within the book) for queerness on the part of C&A. aziraphale intentionally presents in a way that aligns himself with the gay community; angels and demons don’t have sex or gender unless they are really trying; the lack of sexual feelings is apparent and imo if you’re going to interpret their relationship as romantic (which is cool, even if it’s not my personal headcanon) you have to acknowledge that this is the only time either of them have had this experience (making them arospec)

ignoring all those things and getting mad about them not kissing is reductive of the queer experience. not every kind of queer is gay. nonbinary, ace, and arospec representation is queer representation. and there is more to any queer identity than just kissing; queer is identity and rebellion and community and self-expression and refusing to fit into the norm, all things that both crowley and aziraphale represent and embody. that in itself is (vague) queer representation, outside of their relationship.

i’ve written too many words and need to focus on the actual essay i have to turn in for class tomorrow, but i hope this makes sense!

#long post #............i don't want to get into a fight about this but i'm okay with good faith discussion so.#keep in mind if you want to talk to me that i Can't Shut Up and my responses will be long af like this one lmao #4-#5-#good omens #anon #answers

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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September 21st-September 27th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from September 21st, 2019 to September 27th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

How would you describe the target audience for your comic? Did you intend to aim at that audience, or did it just happen?

Deo101 (Millennium)

My target audience for millennium http://millennium.spiderforest.com/ was and is LGBT youth. Specifically teens. I know when I was a kid reading a story where gay people are just kind of... There? No jokes, no stereotypes, more than one... That would have helped me a lot. So I'm trying to make that for other kids! I think the story has reached a much wider/older audience then I intended, but I know it has helped at least some LGBT youth/young adults and that's all I could ever ask for.(edited)

spacerocketbunny

The target audience for Ghost Junk Sickness is definitely queer youth and young adults! Much like what @Deo101 (Millennium) is saying, basically we wanted something like the cool action scifi comics we read when we were younger with good queer rep that's integrated and normalized in the universe! As it turned out though, the audience we reached has been all over the place ranging from older women to big biker dudes?? Every time we go to cons we can never guess who'll purchase a book because the range is so varied! I'm sure we still reach the original target to an extent but the rest is all over the map it seems! I don't think it's a bad thing, it's just been pretty unexpected

Deo101 (Millennium)

Not bad at all ^^ more like a pleasant surprise!

spacerocketbunny

Exactly!

Deo101 (Millennium)

I think those other, older people are also looking for a story to reach their inner child... And I think that's great

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Lol, I feel the similarly way about my own story. My goal was definitely to make something me as a kiddo would have loved, which essentially would have been shonen stories but with a female majority cast. I think I already figured my target audience would be similar to me, but I've been consistently surprised by how many male identifying folks like it. I guess I do like that they can hang though X) Anyway, these are my floppy, post work out thoughts. Hopefully they make sense.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

The target audience for Phantomarine (http://www.phantomarine.com/) was never super clear from the beginning - I just wanted to make something I'd like as a teen. Luckily (or unluckily! in terms of describing it to people ) the story is a mishmash of a bunch of different genres. It's not quite a ghost story, not quite a pirate adventure, not quite a fantasy epic, but it has elements of them all. And it does seem to have attracted people who like those different genres. It may not be easy if I ever want to publish it properly (it's a little difficult to describe my 'brand' ) but as it is, it's got everything I would have liked when I was between 14 and 18.

My happiest surprise is hearing about the younger kids who have read it, understood it, and really enjoyed it. Knowing that 10-12 year olds can appreciate my work is really awesome. I try to keep the language and scary/questionable content at Harry Potter levels, but I like having some of the depth/maturity of stories like The Golden Compass. If they like Phantomarine now, I really hope they find extra enjoyment with it as they grow up. It's going to be a ride!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Gosh, I get that feel of being multi-genre and not knowing quite how to describe your Brand X') I feel like I've gotten better at defining it over time but it's still a struggle to briefly describe what my thing even is some days. Also Golden Compass I'm always excited to find other comic folks who were also influenced by that series.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

It's my gold standard for the right blend of fantasy, reality, and maturity. It's just the best

keii4ii

The target audience for Heart of Keol (https://heartofkeol.com/) is extremely tiny, but it does have appeal for people outside of that niche. I make it for myself, and the relevant aspects of "myself" here are: a) Grew up in Korea, is living (or has lived for an extended period of time) in a predominantly English-speaking part of the world b) Bonus points if they spent some time living in rural Korea c) Is into slow burn drama about characters who could be described as being "genuine" and probably "lawful" as well d) Likes the aesthetics of fantasy settings, but is more into the mundane, almost slice of life, side of drama e) Is very much into reading between the lines for more emotional stuff. Reads a lot of heart from sceneries, possibly more than from faces. (I have face blindness and this affects how I experience comics both as a reader and as a creator)

Obviously people who meet both a) and b) are gonna be harder to find! But if one can meet c), d) and e), that's enough to enjoy the comic the way it's meant to be enjoyed, or so I hope.

The reason a) and b) matter is because it affects how the setting/aesthetics come across. To someone like me, the old Korea setting feels homey, warm, nostalgic. It's like a shorthand for "sit down and enjoy this heartfelt slow burn tale." But to others, Magical Asia might feel exciting and exotic, which isn't really what the story is meant to be, so there may be some dissonance.

seetherabbit

I haven't given much thought about the target audience for Vulperra. (https://vulperra.com/) other than then it's probably for people who like adventure, fantasy and cartoony-ish animals

Cronaj

My target audience is kind of all of the place. Initially when I began scripting my comic, Whispers of the Past, I was really into anime and manga, especially ones like Attack on Titan that were a gritty fantasy. However, since then, my style and story have changed tremendously. My target audience now tends to be young women, aged 15-25, who enjoy detailed world building in high fantasy and are definitely into family drama in story telling. Initially, I wrote the story to fit certain perameters that I myself enjoyed. For example, I am particularly obsessed with the idea of the mundane meeting the fantastical and amazing. The quiet lull of ordinary life juxtaposed by the rigor of magical entities. I specifically focus a lot on drawing beautiful artwork for the panels, because I myself am a picky-pants when it comes to selecting comics I want to read. Another one of my obsessions is a fantasy setting so detailed that you feel like if the story ended, the world would still live on. (One of my inspirations was the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini, in which the author essentially wrote several languages, similar to Tolkien.) In reality, my readers tend to be women aged 30+ (probably who watch k-dramas like I do), and a lot of D&D players. It's fun really, discovering how much of my own hobbies bleed into my stories.

AntiBunny

Early on with AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ I was hoping for fans of scifi and film noir. What I got were fans of classic cartoons and furries. Which is fine by me really. Furries are nice people who are passionate about their hobbies (and spend money).

Jonny Aleksey

A superhero audience was always the intention for J-Man (http://jonnyalekseydrawscomics.com/the-undefeatable-j-man/), but specifically, right now, I'm aiming for something all ages. Slightly teen drama, cartoony but grounded. My inspirations were Spectacular Spider-Man and the DCAU so anyone who likes that is the readership I expect. Hopefully I can reach people who are on the fence about superheroes. The all ages aspect is something newish relatively speaking. When I started my webcomic I wanted to stay away from the "deep real edgy" tone I made when I was in high school (shiver). It took me a bit to really get that tone down. I don't use curse words and only mild blood, but occasionally stuff that borders on teen+ go through. (there's one instance in #5 where J-Man's face gets burnt by the villain that might've been a bit much) I don't think the all ages banner is going to restrict me from telling certain storylines/character development. Just means it won't be excessively grim.

Erin/Leif & Thorn on Kickstarter

The target audience for my webcomics is LGBT nerds who want stories that give them strong feelings, and who like SF/F, anime, competent characters that don't have to take turns with the Idiot Ball to keep the plot moving, and cats. Admittedly that last bit might be redundant, since everyone on the internet likes cats.

Ash🦀

I’ll be honest with you, I’m the target audience of my comic. (http://www.fwmgofficial.com/) it’s not out yet (it’ll be out October 31st) but as the writer I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Mostly, it’s just targeted to young adults and autistic people. I never got to see people like me in comics, so I wrote a comic where an autistic person can be the hero too, even in his own way. For me, I figure whoever likes it likes it and that’s good enough for me. (also furries. Definitely targeted furries)

Kay Rose

@Ash🦀 cant wait to read it!

Ash🦀

QwQ thank you!!

MJ Massey

So far Black Ball is pulling in a mix of people who like the vintage aesthetic (1920s and art deco with some old-school macabre for some reason?) and people who like shonen manga, which is great. Even if Black Ball isn't specifically macabre or strictly shounen (though I myself have made shounen battle manga-esque comics in the past)

DaemonDan (The Demon Archives)

Audience of my comic... Per Google it's 18-35 year old men from the US and Russia XD Which makes sense given it's a pretty hard sci-fi with a lot of military action from dudes in power armor and etc. Though I try not to go too "high octane action!1!" and explore more psychological elements too.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble #comic tea party #ctp

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