#this isn't meant as Serious Literary Analysis

[rememberatyourperil]

The Poets as the Seven Deadly Sins

(Some of these are meant more seriously than others)

Todd is envy. He wants what Neil has, his charisma, his easy popularity. You say things and people listen. I'm not like that.

Greed is how Mr Perry would perceive Neil's ambition. He's given Neil so much, and Neil wants more? You had opportunities that I never even dreamed of. How dare he want choice as well?

Knox is lust, obviously.

Pride seems to fit Charlie best. He doesn't bother consulting the other Poets before he writes his disastrous article in their name, or before inviting the girls to the cave, and there's certainly a kind of arrogance in that.

Sloth seems unfair to pin on Meeks when he's clearly a hard worker - but in terms of character arc, he doesn't change, doesn't strive for anything new in the way Neil and Todd and Charlie and even Knox (for better or for worse) do. It's a feature of his position as a secondary character rather than an innate character flaw - he's not given the same room to grow - but it still kind of fits.

Cameron might be wrath, if he does what he does out of genuine anger towards Keating in the wake of his friend's death. He's certainly the one (alongside Mr Perry) who brings the fury of the Welton system down on Keating.

Pitts is gluttony (he gave us half a roll)

[adarkrainbow]

Are there fairy tales and folk tales with real queer subtext?

I always hear about the existence of fairy tales with queer subtext. I even posted a tale with a subtle lesbian subtext some years ago.

But it was one of the few I could find. This and the one with the transgender Prince Charming.

Are there more of them?

Well there are a lot of those stories around but it is hard to exactly locate and pinpoint them precisely because of how scattered they are and how usually subtle it all is. With mythology and legends of the sort you have much better chance.

Though when it comes to traditional fairytales, the ones we do have are not very queer-coded. Cinderella isn't. Snow-White isn't. Sleeping Beauty isn't. Little Red Riding Hood DEFINITIVELY is about hetero predation with nothing in it.

I did find a quite fascinating article about the lesbian reading of "Frau Trude" by the brothers Grimm! It was contained in an interesting book called "Transgressive tales: Queering the Grimm". I did think the analysis went a bit further than what it should have and some elements were really pulled by the hair, but that's very typical of a lot of scholarly analysis. I remember during my research for writing my memoir, I stumbled across a psycho-sexual analysis of "Cunning Cinders" by madame d'Aulnoy, which wanted us to believe that the oven in which the ogre was pushed was a vaginal symbol and thus the heroine killed the monster... by sex? WTF. That's clearly NOT the meaning intended.

Honestly for this kind of research, go and try to read books precisely about the analysis of queer elements or subtext in fairytales. There is a LOT of those analysis coming around and a lot of books to choose from - try to see if you can reach or access any.

The problem is that the queer elements in the "serious" or "well known" fairytales, in the European sense, are very much missing precisely due to their "classic" nature which meant if there were any, they probably ended up removed, but there probably wasn't any in the first place, else they wouldn't have become classic. It is insitutional, cultural, historical homophobia, but we're not going to remake the world and it is as it is: if you want real "queer fairytales" you have to dig up in the obscure, overseen, forgotten corners of folklore study. I made a post a long time ago about the whole case of "The Sailor and the Dog", have you seen it? Else I should sent it back to you.

There is definitively much, much more queer subtext in literary fairytales precisely due to their artificial nature and how the authors put their personal experiences in it - and it doesn't help a lot of fairytale authors were queers themselves, from the 18th century France authors nobody remembers to Andersen. In general the literary fairytales (at least those of the 17th/18th century France) LOVED to play around with deviant sexuality and erotic subtone and "perversions" of all kinds. After all, Donkey Skin is about an incestuous father! Beauty and the Beast also always was a way for people to play around with zoophilia subtexts (though today it'd just be called "furries" I guess). There is one humoristic fairytale by Catherine Bernard called "The Prince Rose-Bush", about a prince turned into a rose-tree. And the many instances of the princess being caught or hurt by his thorns, crying over his petals while hugging the plant, having her dress torn by the branches... They all clearly were meant to have a little *wink wink* at the reader. You will DEFINITIVELY find more queer subtext in fairytales that involve crossdressing as a plot device - I know French authors LOVED the idea of crossdressing for their plots (usually a woman disguised as a man) and all the romantic confusions it caused, and so you always find in there a lot of queer elements.

Though all of this stayed very VERY subtle throughout the decades, and in France we would have to wait until the second half of the 18th century when the subgenre of "bawdy fairytales" popped up and suddenly everybody was writing stories even more explicit than Basile's Pentamerone or Straparole's Facetious Nights, about men being cursed at having their penis turned into a soup-spoon or a lover being turned into a couch over which his mistress slept, and other weird stuff like that.

Which brings me to another element: the same way queer elements are going to be very hidden, subtle in commonplace and famous stories, go look for the tales of explicitely sexual nature. The dirty tales, bawdy tales, grotesque tales - they are literaly everywhere, they always existed not just in literature but also in folklore since as early as time. And precisely due to being places where everything dirty and grotesque and sexual and gory exploded - that's where you find most easily the queer presence, since everybody always loved to have "sodomy comedy" at every era.

It is not a "fairytale per se" but it is still tied to it all: Le Roman de Renart, Reynard the Fox as the English call him. His adventures and ensemble of texts is not fairytale - it is rather a different sub-genre of medieval literature and folklore... But it did seep and influence the fairytale genre heavily because more than half of the "animal tales" or "fairytales about talking animals" in those fairytale anthologies and collections are actually derived from the Fox's adventures. (You will find in almost every European country, in fairytale collections, a simplified version of Reynard tricking Isengrim in losing his tail to a frozen pond or eating too much so he can't leave the building he just entered in). And Reynard the Fox was a bisexual icon. Well... as much as a rapist, murder, scammer, thief, pathological liar, sociopath-psychopath and necromancer at times can be a bisexual icon.

Because among the many sex jokes and sexual farces of the Roman, there are several tales of Reynard sodomizing as much women as men. Most notably there was one episode of the Fox and the Hare which revolves around gay sex as a joke.

Yes, it's crude, it's dirty, it's dark and rude and there's absolutely no romance whatsoever... But it is another fact of European literature (because again, I speak for Europe here mostly): gay romance is rare, but gay sex abound ; serious queer themes are hidden and erased, but grotesque queer farces did survive to this day. It is just an old phenomenon: whenever something is morally reprehensible or disapproved by a society, it will survive in culture mostly through the comedies and what we would call today "shock value" content. A la Roman de Renart.

[genericpuff]

…Here is something a bit more serious I wanted to ask…

How do feel when it comes the fact that plenty of sexual themes inside LO are being told incorrectly to a young audience (I keep hearing on how most of Webtoon readers are still around 12-16 year old girls)?

Specially with the fact that Rachel keeps on sexualizing Persephone after some scenes showcasing her trauma….

I hope I’m not overstepping my boundaries here…thanks again for listening.

You're not overstepping at all ! This is actually a topic I've gone off about in the past at length on reddit and in chatrooms like Discord so I'm always happy to divulge about it and talk about it. It's a problem that goes way bigger than LO but I'll try my best to keep it focused on LO for the sake of getting to the point.

Before I get into it, obligatory TRIGGER WARNING for discussion surrounding sexual trauma/abuse/etc. and how it's romanticized and marketed in Webtoons media.

There are so many comics in Webtoons library that are just skeevy beyond belief for the stories they're trying to tell. Whether it's gratuitous oversexualization of its characters to the point of being absurd, to the implications of the romances in these stories that often border on non-consensual/toxic, Webtoons seems to be using these types of things as its main draw in a lot of their "big money" series - or at least, the ones they tend to market the most.

Now don't get me wrong, I've got a strong stomach for weird/creepy/dark shit and I'm capable of having suspension of disbelief when reading stories like this. I'm an SA survivor myself but despite this, I'm no stranger to dark romance or stories that 'toe the line' or even overstep it completely between morally acceptable and morally apprehensible, a lot of these kinds of stories have actually helped me overcome and heal from what I've been through. Suspension of disbelief is important and this is, after all, fiction, where we as creators are able to explore taboo or 'forbidden' topics in ways that either interest us or empower us or just feel like fun to write.

But there's still a line to be drawn because I'm an adult person who has literary analysis skills and is capable of picking apart these stories and what they might be consciously - or subconsciously - teaching us or portraying. Kids and teens? They basically are what they eat. This isn't to say teenagers are stupid or anything of the sort, but I was a kid too once and I know I internalized a lot of media that I straight up shouldn't have been consuming at the time. And I do think a lot of webtoons on the WT platform specifically dangerously veer into that territory all for the purpose of money and clout.

Again, don't get me wrong, I love morally questionable or otherwise abrasive characters, I think they're fun to write and fiction is a great way to explore those kinds of dynamics (and I've had pals weirdly thank me for how much suffering I put my characters through LMAO). But I'm also not gonna sit here and bullshit people into thinking my main projects are meant for teens. They're not. My main protagonists are in a shitty toxic relationship that should not be romanticized. My main character is a hyperbolic self-insert reflection of how awful I used to be as a person and how I was at the center of all my own problems for years. You should be 18 at minimum if you want to read my work because the stuff I write about isn't appropriate for or wouldn't be able to be observed and accepted as just fiction the way most mature adults can.

Now I'm not saying my work is "deep" or anything like that, it's stupid fun weeb shit. But it's the kind of stupid fun weeb shit I wouldn't want a teenager internalizing or taking to heart. It's why I'll include plenty of disclaimers to remind people that my stuff is a work of fiction and I simply enjoy exploring these kinds of tropes and dynamics through my characters, but I do not condone their behavior or the things I represent in my work. I fully respect other creators and writers who do the same.

Rachel is not one of those people. Rachel doesn't do this. She tries to claim to be progressive while completely misrepresenting the things she writes. She doesn't actually care about these topics, she just wants you to think she cares about them. Don't get me wrong, there are other series on the platform that are absolutely problematic when it comes to this sort of thing (Webtoons looooves marketing them, blech) but Lore Olympus is the absolute pinnacle of irresponsible, the sum of everything that's wrong with Webtoons.

It gets constant special treatment - often times being put in the banner reel every time it updates and in the prime spots no less that are rarely ever given to other - far more thought-provoking and well-written - series that could really use the ad space.

It markets itself to kids and teens despite having subject matter that either isn't handled responsibly OR should be taken with a level of suspension of disbelief that a lot of teens/kids aren't capable of having.

And the subject matter that it does try to handle responsibly is flubbed entirely because they're leaving it up to the writing 'skills' of a privileged white woman from New Zealand who's either never lived these experiences or, those that she has, couldn't even write them into a narrative when she tries because she still exists with internalized biases that completely miss the mark because she's never tried to look at things with a viewpoint outside of her own.

She's just not a writer, full stop. But because it's Webtoon's golden goose, they market the shit out of it anyways and give it preferential treatment. And of course, they market it to kids and teens because it's cute and colorful, and kids and teens will be more likely to overlook its blatant problems because they don't have the literary analysis skills yet to identify them.

The other side of the coin they market to? The adults who don't think these problems are problems to begin with. These are the same adults who celebrated 50 Shades of Grey and After as if they're masterworks of fiction. Overall very shitty, problematic people. At least the teenagers have the potential to "grow out of it". The adults who defend Rachel like their life depends on it are grown up but not mature or empathetic in the slightest towards those who have found their own stories and experiences trivialized or otherwise misrepresented completely through LO.

I know, that's undoubtedly a lot of hot takes, but this is such a massive problem in romance stories today. I get it, it's "drama", and it's been around since the harlequin novels of old, but the way it's pushed and romanticized and presented as if it's somehow "couple goals" by the people - often women - who write them is getting to be exhausting.

At this point I put Rachel Smythe right up there with Anna Todd and EL James - ego-driven female "writers" who wrote shitty fanfiction that got a lot of views and happened to fail upwards in their success, but when you dig past the subscriber count numbers and the clout, they themselves are not that profound or well-read in any meaning of the word. They're just people with huge deeply-rooted issues who write problematic romances instead of going to therapy.

And that's all I'm gonna say on that.

[ohmeadows]

i hope this doesn't sound weird but, you're like, everything i want to be when i grow up.

you're a taken lesbian in your thirties, you play video games, you have this deep understanding of the characters, AND you write fanfictions about them. like seriously.

in a world where people are expected to be all serious and professional in their thirties, discovering your blog and you was such a breath of fresh air and a reminder that i don't need to be so scared about growing up. thank you for that (and all your incredible writing. truly an inspiration for me)

lmao thank you anon sucky 20s trying to live up to others expectations built this life

i was trying to align with my family's expectations of me as the youngest daughter and study tech. i couldn't do it. i was good at math but Things Happened in my late teens and i collapsed under the pressure. eventually i admitted to myself, yeah, i just want to write and read... and then put pressure on myself to get into the best possible university for that so my family would still be proud. (hint: they weren't.)

so, you know. be kind to yourself. i was a total failgirl in my 20s, btw, for many reasons. people will be disappointed in you. you will be disappointed in yourself. and you recover and have fun again. and fun for me is literary and cultural analysis, researching, video games and writing.

also you'd be surprised how unprofessional and unserious most 30-somethings i know are. finally gave up those supposedly prestigious jobs they were meant to thrive in but were destroying them and now work as something that fits their lives while focusing on hobbies? we're thriving in our own ways, best we can. work isn't that meaningful. it really isn't. i've been too disabled to work most of my adult life and life still has meaning. best thing is you keep discovering so many new facets in your 30s, like it's a whole new blooming.

[greentrickster]

i have not actually watched ml since season 3. but i've kept up with it through exactly 1 ml blog that i follow. they're funny and they make amazing fanart and fanfic and their gushing about ml is infectious. them gushing about the show's writing (all of it. seasons 1-5) in and of itself has endeared me to the show. i like positivity on my feed and i love their specific brand of positivity centered around ml. so then. and i need to preface this by saying this isn't a criticism of either blog. the situation itself is just funny to me. imagine the whiplash when half of the ml coverage on my feed is one fandom writer i really look up to talking about how much they genuinely love season 5 and then the other half of the ml coverage on my feed is the other fandom writer i really look up to talking about how the show sucks so bad but what if it didn't. the whiplash is killing me.

Here's the thing: In many ways, we're both right. Me and that other person. Because, at the end of the day, Miraculous Ladybug is a story, and whether a person thinks a story is good or not is highly subjective.

Is the overall writing of ML good? No. No it is not, overall it tends to average out as pretty mid for its demographic. (This is accounting for the presence of examples of both extremely good writing and extremely bad writing, thus averaging out to something a bit more middle ground.)

Is the high concept of ML S-tier? Yeeeeeesssssssssss~!!!

Is the story of ML good? Now that one's more complicated. To me, it has a lot of potential, but just... flaws. So, so many flaws. A painful number of flaws. However, I'm also not the target demographic - I'm an adult in my 30s with an English degree in literary analysis. Moments of weakness in character writing and plot tend to stick out at me light big ol' glaring lights.

To someone more in the age range the show's meant for, or who's better at turning off their inner critic and just focusing on the good, they're probably getting a lot more out of the show's good moments, like the fun powers, creative enemies and fights, the slowburn agony, a really good cast of characters, and the times the storytelling works well.

I don't like the overall writing of Miraculous Ladybug, how it handles character growth/development, and many other things. I'll fully admit, I'm probably closer to being an anti-fan than a regular fan. I'll also admit that I'd be willing to let a lot more slide if it weren't for a few key details that are very real mistakes that shouldn't have been included as they are (ex: Marinette's stalking being normalized as cute, Chloe being established as a victim of severe emotional abuse at the hands of a parent and then written off as irredeemable, those were seriously not okay writing choices). Most of the rest of the issues I take with it are, in truth, subjective things that other people obviously enjoy (ex: the list I just made adjusting the powers and abilities of some of the Miraculous, which was SUPER subjective). At the end of the day, though, I wouldn't care at all if I didn't think there were elements of this show that are truly fantastic.

TL;DR: The majority of my reasons for disliking this show are super subjective, bar a key few that are serious problems that the writers should have addressed ages ago.

Thanks for the ask!

[zevveli]

Love all the people coming at OP and picking apart their arguments and OP just picks specific lines that they can pretend are linchpins to rebutt as if that negates the rest of the points.

Anyways time for my perspective.

Admittedly I'm not as serious into the literary world as others but there is an experience from high school that I do remember. At my high school 11th grade English class was focused on British Literature. We were allowed a capstone project that could be any publication that fell under the very broad category of British Literature, and one of my friends wanted to do a comprehensive analysis of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." The teacher hemmed and hawed, and eventually decided that yes "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fulfilled the requirements for "British Literature" and that my friend could do his project on it.

The rest of the series did not. And this was an issue for him because he was extremely passionate about the series. And people who are fans of the series know that the ultimate theme of the series is not extremely prevalent in the first book, but in the ENTIRE series, as well as in the various adaptations of that book. So a comprehensive analysis was impossible without the rest of the series and a comparison to the non-book media (a fact which he complained at length about to the rest of us outside of class.)

And this goes back to the main point. OP and plenty of people like OP would dismiss these books as pulp fiction. )Which incidentally is the term for mass produced books, and especially mass produced serials, designed to sell large quantities from low quality wood pulp paper that was not meant to last.) But this was a franchise that a student was passionate about, and he was willing to put in a LOT more effort than the rest of the class was, only to have his ambitions dashed.

And he was not alone in this, lots of students who wanted to do capstone projects for popular literature at the time were told no because it was "Too recent" or various other justifications.

But to address a different point, a lot of the "classics" were published for profit, and many of them were forcibly changed from the author's original vision for profit. Hell the original tale of "Pinocchio" was published as a newspaper serial and was supposed to end with him being killed by the fox, but the series proved so popular that the newspaper made the author change it.

And this isn't even getting into the argument that even if pulp is designed for nothing but sales and is "literary junk food" it still has the power to inspire children to creativity, give them something to be interested in, something to strive for. For example the "Alan Quatermain" books were all pulp, but they provided young George Lucas with the inspiration for what would become Indiana Jones.

the philosophy of “as long as they’re reading” as it is currently practiced has been disastrous for humanity and one of the reasons why we’re seeing a rise in pseudo-anti-intellectualism

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

I saw your transfem Homestuck and can I politely introduce my similar dream about transmasc Danganronpa?

Exactly the same but Hajime/Izuru, Komaeda, Makoto, and Kazuichi were all transmascs that like to hang out with Fuyuhiko, the only cis guy, who shows them only the best men's products

(I don't think he ever realized by the time I woke up)

Thoughts?

I am always happy to talk about Homestuck! I would say I am only familiar with the game from reading about it as a fan of the comic, but I still have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it, and have made (bad) attempts at writing fanfic of it and a few other Homestuck-related fandoms I enjoy (see e.g. here).

One thought is that it's strange to me that there are people who have not played a lot of it who seem to know things about it but don't get all the jokes. This happens whenever something like this happens – there are people who know about the "silly little comic" and the "theory-and-analysis fandoms" and the "long story" and so on without really understanding the core joke of Homestuck – and this is one of the more popular things about the fandoms. The core thing is (I think?) that the comic is meant to be read slowly and thoughtfully, but people are often more likely to read and talk about it "quickly" (for whatever definition of that one is more appropriate in this context). I remember some of the people I read in the fandoms doing this but it was hard for me to keep up. I think you and others who feel the same might be able to get into the jokes more if you tried to do it slowly, with enough space to put off reading just the jokes you don't like and don't understand. It helps that you have been around these people enough to make some of the jokes themselves.

If you can handle that, it's a very well-produced piece of entertainment. (I mean, I don't like it at all, and I suspect it would have been a lot worse than what it is if I hadn't been there but …). The characters are very expressive, funny, and moving, and the art is really cool. If you don't understand most of the jokes, it isn't hard to figure out what you might find cool (like the creepy creepy creepers), even if the central joke of the story is alien to you. This is a good example of why I don't like a lot of the people who post "serious commentary on it from a 'literary perspective'" in the Homestuck fandom. If you try to take it seriously, you have to make a lot of the jokes work in a way that is hard to do with jokes if you aren't "in on" them. This is why I like a lot of what was done in the fansourced story "Terezi and Gamzee are best friends" and the Homestuck subreddit. I get the sense that those people "got it," at least in part because they were there (or at least there in a lot of the same fandoms at the same time) when it was more popular and more in the public eye, and are thus more in the "in group" than the writers of the "higher" fandoms. (Of course they would take it seriously … )

[dreaminterlude]

Hello! Feel free to ignore this if you're tired of speaking about the MV, but I was wondering if it's okay for KPop groups to be using the 1001 nights stories as aesthetic inspiration for their MVs, like, isn't that what people find offensive? Using the culture as just an aesthetic? I know the stories aren't Islamic, so I'm speaking from a cultural view.

“long ago, during the time of the sassanid dynasty, in the peninsula of india and china were two kings who were brothers.”

this is the opening frame tale of shahrazad and shahriyar, the two main characters in a thousand and one nights. shahriyar is said to be the king of india and china. (x)

during the planning of the remake of aladdin, people were having conversations on who aladdin “belongs” to and who should be cast for the role: someone not only from the middle east per se but specifically from the levant (lebanon, syria, jordan, palestine) (so not even iraq or egypt like mena massoud who was eventually cast for the role), south asian, or chinese. because there is actually a history of aladdin, the character, being “chinese,” because in the original story in a thousand and one nights, aladdin takes place in china.

these are depictions of arabian nights. on the left, aladdin is on his way to the sultan’s palace. on the right, aladdin and the princess badr al-budur. (also from the same article, “who was the ‘real aladdin? from chinese to arab in 300 years”)

from “who ‘wrote aladdin? the forgotten syrian storyteller”:

The 1001 Nights has a pretty remarkable genealogy. Our oldest documentation of it is an Arabic papyrus from Egypt, reused as scrap with inscriptions dated 879 CE. There was an earlier Persian book called Hazār afsāna (A Thousand Stories) that did not survive. But key elements of the frame story of Shahriyar and Shahrazad were already common in Pali and Sanskrit texts from ancient India, while another Arabic book called One Hundred and One Nights has an alternate version also found in a third-century Chinese Buddhist text of the Tripiṭaka.

i mentioned in my previous ask that a thousand and one nights is one of the most prolific pieces of literature in the world. it is literally global literature that takes its shape from many transregional interpretations from all the way “west” in pre-islamic arabia and sassanian persia all the way east into the qing dynasty which had control over korea at a few points in its dynastic legacy.

my argument from the beginning of this conversation is that you cannot box these cultural narratives that literally bleed into each other and have such a rich history and genealogy, not in spite of, but because of the way orality functions in shaping these literary narratives. 

my point is that it’s hard to definitively put the brakes on 1001 nights and say that people outside of the middle east or south asia don’t have “claim” to the story. i’m not saying that kpop can appropriate it, but i think it depends on how it’s being done. this is very similar to the point i make on my post about the “appropriation” of bruce lee in the kick it music video, who is a global figure in many ways to many people for many reasons. nct could have gone all out and appropriated bruce lee and a lot of the chinese elements they incorporated, but they incorporated those elements in a nonspecific way. likewise, in the case of this mv, things are so nonspecific, which, in turn, has allowed so many different people to make claims on the aesthetics of the mv. the aesthetics are reminiscent as west as spain all the way “east.”

there is also an element of “camp” that is involved in both this mv and misfit, that my good friend iman brought up, and i think it’s a really important point to consider when you look at the way both were filmed and how the sets/outfits were configured. camp, according to iman, is meant to be a little over the top and a little playful, without being offensively done. think ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical and also playing with effeminate behavior (ie: think about that one scene where they’re playing with putting flowers in each other’s hair, which i just think is so interesting in this entire conversation)

the reason this music video is even more interesting is that it’s not only theatrical and playful, but it derives is theatrics and playfulness from the way 1001 nights is theatrical and playful in and of itself. if you read 1001 nights, you’ll understand what i’m talking about. there are many performances in the story itself that lends themselves to absurdity, even though there are very complex and serious elements embedded throughout. for example, the very concept of genies in that story (and in pre-islamic/sassanian folklore) is meant to represent trickery and michief, which is the whole reason nct go with the trope, not simply for aesthetic purposes, but for what these concepts symbolize and give meaning to the actual song itself, which is meant to be fun, absurd, mischievous, and alluring.

i appreciate that you’re not talking about an islamic perspective, but many people are conflating the two concepts (religion and culture) together, so it makes a difficult task to untangle and analyze this issue properly, so i think “islam” in this sense plays a really important conversation as far as “aesthetics” are concerned. so if i’m going to be honest, those who participate in projecting an image of nct sitting in a “mosque” or misappropriating what the story of a thousand and one nights means to them (as an exclusively middle eastern/arab story), then they are fetishizing/orientalizing what islam/1001 nights seems to THEM. those who are conflating the religion with the elements from 1001 nights, are pointblank essentializing their view of islam and the story as an exotic static aesthetic through a reductive analysis of men wearing black robes circling fire (some derogatorily and offensively equating it to islamic mysticism—they are literally using the word “mysticism” in a classic orientalist way and equating it to the fire scene that takes place in the mv. what the fuck lol), sitting on “eastern” rugs in a “mosque” in “prayer,” and being genies. if people choose to see “islam” or “middle eastern culture” through that imagery, that is their orientalist understanding of what islam and this “culture” is, not what it actually is, and in fact does the harm people think the mv is doing