#unpleasant implications tbh

[innocuously-ostentatious]

There’s a children’s ropes course in my home town, and I wanted to try and take pictures to lend it a sort of liminal and vertigo-inducing effect. I also wanted to make it seem morbid and dangerous, because I am kind of basic and predictable in that way. I feel I was successful in my goals.

I don’t consider myself a photographer, and in fact generally consider myself to be bad at the art form, but I like how these all turned out. It might have had something to do with using an actual manually adjustable camera, and not just an iPhone.

[reachexceedinggrasp]

Why do you prefer the original ending to Pretty In Pink over the rewritten ones? Ringwald and McArthy have apparently not vouched for the original ending from the beginning

My understanding is that Molly Ringwald was one of those who most wanted it be changed. And I think she's completely wrong if so.

I wrote a post about this back when I first saw the film where it was fresh and I could explain why, which unfortunately I can't find, but yeah it was obvious to me watching it that she was not supposed to end up with Blane, that he did not respect her, and the film/her character arc would have been much stronger if she'd gone to prom with Ducky as was originally intended.

I'd have to watch it again to go into it, but I remember it was clearly a theme where she wanted it to be Romeo&Juliet thing, but it wasn't. It wasn't people connecting across a class divide and transcending that, he was an actual snob and she liked an idea of him that didn't exist. It was in fierce contrast to her really genuine connection with Ducky. It was not a 'settling for the Nice Guy' triangle or something where Blane was a foil and equal she's not allowed to have, the original ending was about missing what's in front of you because you're too tied up in trappings and what you're supposed to want. There was a powerful affirmation for her in realising she didn't need approval from assholes. There was commentary on disposable wealth and consumerism versus authentic creativity. Middle school level, but it was there.

Hughes went on to make Some Kind of Wonderful which follows the original outline/themes of Pretty in Pink, just genderswapped, but that movie didn't have the chemistry or strong enough characters to make it very satisfying imo.

[marzipanandminutiae]

Yeah, tbh all the concerns about DracMina ship and how it doesn’t give Mina proper agency or replaces her book agency with newly false created agency to fit the ship and stuff is valid but the minute Dracula/Jonathan is introduced as a more worthy alternative ship somehow I literally go yikes because this ship is as you said has exactly same morally bad implications and in majority of such cases is propelled at the total expense of Mina as character in general which sidelines her sometimes to the oblivion. The notable unpleasant case is when Dracula’s attack on Mina is framed to be about Jonathan somehow for the sake of this ship. 🤦‍♀️

Also it’s very symptomatic that discussion about canonical F/F vampire ship is highjacked by either the sudden concerns about faithfulness to the novel or by bringing non-canonical ships discourse involving male vampire from another novel to the table.

Yeah, the thing about it for me really is just… Look, I can absolutely respect if somebody is like “I ship this for the toxic goodness that makes brain go brrr, and I don’t ship this because it doesn’t scratch the same itch for me narratively.“ I’m not the fanfiction police. They’re not real people. Do what you want

However

If you’re going to say that Dracula/Mina is bad because it’s toxic and horrible in many ways, and then you turn around and say that Dracula/Jonathan is fine and dandy, I think you might need to reevaluate your criteria for a healthy fictional relationship. And also consider whether you actually care about morals here, or you’re just trying to justify shipping one thing and not another on some higher level to make yourself seem objectively correct

(also yes it was extremely tiresome that people couldn’t see how my post was just using Dracula as an example to talk about Carmilla adaptations. But I guess the power of attractive men kissing is just too strong for some people to refrain from making the conversation about them, for one singular post)

[paleturtlecherryblossom-blog]

My thought on the Rise of Ning, Pt 3

I finished 24 episodes of The Rise of Ning, and I wanna add in my two cents about the storyline so far, which, considering that I wake up everyday at 6 am to catch up on, is pretty damn good XD:

I was very pleased they adapted a scene of Lu Jiaxue observing Yining’s calligraphy and noticing that it bears a heavy similarity to Luo Shenyuan’s. This is an often emphasized point in the novel, given how prized a skill calligraphy was for scholars/officials back then, the fact that Yining can replicate his style is indicative of how very close they are. Now whether that’s a sibling thing or not, is anyone’s guess ;) hehehe

At this point, many of the drama plot lines are very different from those in the novel. But the one thing that the drama preserves in full glory, despite all the plotline modifications, is the sheer depth of Luo Shenyuan’s yearning for Luo Yining! And it’s just so!!! The way she is his most important consideration, the detail with which he prepares everything for her in the event of his death, and the extreme passion he is clearly repressing every moment sitting next to her… I’m so very satisfied, I’m giving five stars just for this alone.

Another thing this drama does excellently is to more subtly portray Yining’s extreme levels of attachment to him: the way in all her visuals of the future, he is eternally just accompanying her, reading to her, living with her (girl has truly never accounted for a possible future husband and sister-in-law in all these dreams lolol), her headlong jump into the river to avoid implicating him, even though she has to have heavy trauma of falling off high places… Also her keenness in noticing all the girls who are trying to marry him, while he couldn’t care less. (Also I daresay her determination to matchmake for him is also her oblivious way of staking a claim on her San-ge)

Also, shame they made Lu Jiaxue and Zhao Mingzhu adoptive sibling, putting them on the same generational level. This is because there is a point in the novel where our hot pining Marquis Lu becomes Yining’s godfather without having a clear idea of who she is, and the way he manipulates that seniority is truly a delicious read.

Notably the drama ALSO preserves the forceful and unpleasant aspects of his obsession with regaining Yining; in the novel, he truly cannot conceive that she has a whole life and family she will protect above him. Also in the novel, Yining is reborn in the Luo family after twenty years as a wandering spirit, so by that time, she mostly moves on from her romantic attachments to him, though she does blame him for her death. The blaming for death section is there in the drama, but here I feel that Yining's primary feeling towards him is raw fear, which also biases me firmly against Lu Jiaxue rn.

 Now I’ll begin my usual rambling commentary on plot changes lol. They’ve quite significantly changed Daoyan’s character here, enough that he’s basically a whole new person. While this makes sense with the drama plotline of reopening the Chen Jiuheng case, that’s not a plotline found in the novel. Novel! Daoyan is an eccentric monk who is also a military genius. My first read of him in the novel was that he was very ruthless, but tbh it’s more of that he is unaffected by emotions and is exceedingly practical, and in this he contrasts both Lu Jiaxue and Luo Shenyuan, who have an obsession with Luo Yining in common. So that’s a dynamic we are probably not going to see, oh well.

With regards to the side plot of Luo Yixiu and Lin Mao… I somehow don’t really care for it? Sure, with regards to my personal life, I believe in marrying a person you sincerely like, but in a feudal context like in this drama… it honestly feels a bit out of place. The princess’ son is genuinely a pretty good choice for her, given that he cares for her, has an odd personality that is not likely to take concubines later and has a pretty reasonable mother! Also I just instinctively dislike Lin Mao for always lecturing her about her weight and giving her weird weight loss medicine! Even if she says she likes Lin Mao, it comes off more as a childish infatuation than anything else.

Now that I’ve gotten started on this, novel! Lin Mao is actually shown to have a crush on Luo Yining, which no one except Shenyuan ever takes seriously. He does propose marriage, only to be turned down pretty firmly, and he goes off to a border region. Throughout the novel, he is portrayed as a playful individual who keeps wriggling in and out of sticky situations. He eventually does make his name by securing disaster relief for the border but throughout the novel AND the drama so far, he’s the kind of person I may want to have a short summer romance with, but never the kind of person I can depend on for a steady life. And that is kind of a very important criteria for marriage for a noble lady in those times!

Anyway moving on, regarding the plotline of Gu Minglan’s death, it is not a mystery in the novel: she forces herself to give birth to Yining prematurely, so that Yining’s parentage is not suspected. In a way, the novel portrays her as a very sensitive woman deeply conscious of the social taboos of her time, after Yining is conceived, giving birth to her is the only thing that keeps her tethered to life. 

The drama alters Gu Minglan’s character to be more self-reliant and thus adds in an element of intrigue to her death. I feel this is primarily driven by the fact that they will only reveal that Yining isn’t the garbage Luo Second master’s blood daughter much later in the drama, but this reveal actually happens pretty early in the novel. And THEN all the courtyard intrigue takes place when Yining joins her blood related paternal family (I don’t wanna spoil this, but maybe you guys will guess who it is anyway). In the drama plot, the intrigue continues to happen in the Luo family, after all, as a main character, you NEED to have some family member scheming to kill/ruin/wrong you always. 

Although Madam Chen’s character is more fleshed out here: her resentment is only human, considering that she loses her first son early and has to watch her husband harbor feelings for her sister-in-law, which is probably the highest level of social damnation for her, if it ever came out. Both in the novel and drama she is a person obsessed with maintaining ‘face’. In the novel, her first son is alive and well, and also her husband occupies a higher position than his brother. In the drama, she possesses neither of these comforts, and it’s not illogical that she plays a more vicious role. And the actress is also killing it; her expressions when no one is observing, do give off an ominous feeling.

[jellybeanium124]

Ok something I've literally never seen anybody talk about ever is the fact that Izzy apologizes for his little "insane, unpleasant, shell of a man" speech in episode 4.

To quote: "I said some things I regret last night. I don't think you're a shell of a man... or a twat."

Ed responds: "You were right man, about all of it." Imo the most common explanation for this line is buttering Izzy up to agree to his Stede-killing plan, which is something I agree with. Izzy turns and looks at Ed after he says this and Izzy gives him this look that tbh I can't fucking decipher.

Sad? Confused? Blank stare? ?????? idk

Anyways, what are the possible interpretations of that line? Let's start with the least charitable one and work our way to the most charitable interpretation.

Option 1: Izzy is lying and intentionally manipulating Ed.

I don't agree with this because like most people I agree that Izzy does a lot of things without understanding the consequences/implications. To agree to this option you have to think that Izzy has intentionally been abusing Ed for however long they've been working together, and imo Izzy isn't doing that on purpose here. I think he isn't doing that most of the series. At this point in the show things haven't gotten serious enough. Also he's not that smart and doesn't tend to think about things in the long-term, and to imply Izzy has been playing the long con for years abusing and manipulating Ed on purpose is just something I have trouble agreeing with.

Option 2: Izzy is lying, but just so he and Ed don't part ways on a bad note.

Izzy is trying to leave when he says this. Is he just trying to make sure Ed doesn't hate him after this? Ed's kind of an important connection in the pirate world, and Izzy could just be trying not to burn that bridge with the most powerful pirate. (and also he doesn't want Ed to hate him, I think, for some very repressed reasons.) I think this is a plausible interpretation. However, as I've posted about a loooong time ago, Izzy isn't a big liar. He tends to be weirdly truthful about his own emotions, with some exceptions (lying to Stede so Stede can die "doing what he loves).

Option 3: Izzy is telling the truth and means what he says.

Oh man. Dude. The implications of this one. The way Izzy hurts Ed over and over and doesn't even fucking realize it man. The way Ed acts when Izzy gives his little speech implies that this has happened over and over again and ed hardly notices it anymore (until the decade of repetition gets the better of him in episode 10). Izzy loses his cool and apologizes. Izzy loses his cool and apologizes. Izzy loses his cool and apologizes. Over and over and over. And if he's being honest, what does that even mean for Izzy? We know he cares about Blackbeard. How much does he care about Ed? Is there a difference between Izzy in episodes 4 and 10? I think there might be.

By episode 10, Izzy has doubled down over and over and over. He succeeded in getting rid of Stede, and Ed is, to him, behaving more differently/"weird" (bad, soft, effeminate) than ever. In episode 10, Izzy goes after Ed's clothes. He doesn't make a remark about Ed wearing Stede's clothes once in episode 4. Would episode 4 Izzy bully Ed into being the Kraken? I don't think so. I think it takes all his successive loses throughout the series building on each other to get to that point. In episode 4, Izzy is, at the very least, trying not to end his relationship with Ed on a sour note. In episode 6, in his mind, it has totally ended on a sour note and he has a vendetta against the man who stole his man.

I guess this post is part of my ongoing impromptu exploration of early-series Izzy and why I think he's fucking fascinating. Because early on we see more of an Izzy who, while of course still being an asshole, is a little more human. He's having fun in the woods with Stede. He's apologizing like a grown up to Ed. Starting in episode 5, he gets crueler, targeting Lucius because he's the most effeminate person on board besides Stede (with his most human moment in that episode being his perplexed and strangled "fuck off" at Lucius's come-on). In episode 6 he says "I'm good thanks" (or something like that) to Stede offering a draw and tries to kill him. By episode 8 he's bringing the ocean cops to Stede and Ed's doorstep. And of course, in episode 10, he's verbally attacking Ed and threatening him with murder unless he becomes Izzy's version of Blackbeard. Strangely enough, at the end of episode 10, we have another human moment. Izzy seems very conflicted just underneath the surface after the toe scene. The way Con's acting in that scene makes it seem like Izzy is just barely repressing "oh God what have I done oh fuck oh shit I'm in over my head fuck fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck."

Well... like a lot of my metas (can this be called that???) this has been a stream of consciousness.... thing.... that I don't know how to conclude. I guess I'll say I lean more towards option 3 but if you read it as option 2 that's valid, but I don't think it's option 1. I also can't wait to see what this bizarre little man gets up to very soon. What a guy.

[joannerowling]

Man PinkNews really can't stay away from Jo for too long lol, they're back at it again with more slander, this time with a supposed like of a pretty offensive tweet. And as always people are eating it all up.

Now I went to check and that supposed like wasn't there which makes me think it's fake(either that or much like few years ago when she liked and then unliked that one tweet-I forget what was it about, and if her like was real then it could be the same case again, an acidental like).

But like, I really don't get these people...I get it, they hate her, but why make up stuff? Is it cause perhaps normies are waking up and seeing that Jo isn't this evil person the likes of PinkNews and TRAs are trying to paint her as...it's so weird.

Well they can't exactly go and talk about anything wrong she would have actually done, can they, since when you look up what Jo really does with her money it's all charity and paying her taxes. We're still waiting on that list of anti-trans organisations she would have supposedly funded or donated to - you'd think they would line up to claim her patronage, and yet! Crickets! Strange, isn't it?

So they are reduced to this: dishonesty, defamation, and just making shit up when they run out of ideas. Take this week's example of what has the gendiboos shitting themselves: Jo liking a darkly humourous tweet saying "at least the Talibans know what a woman is". Someone tried to paint that as a) original tweeter was supporting the Talibans (yes, in this era where people can just say "kill yourself" to a celebrity over them claiming to like raisins); b) JKR herself implicitly supports the Talibans by proxy because she liked the tweet. Now, the person who said that claims to have received a cease and desist order. Gee, why would that ever happen??

… Yeah, i guess Jo's a little sensitive about that particular brand of defamation of her character. It's almost like, unlike these bozos, she actually cares about hate crimes against women.

Honestly i wish she'd actually take them to court, just once. She would absolutely wipe the floor with them and that would set the record straight for any more who wants to try her. And i'm not even saying that with her sake in mind tbh.

But for the sake of the ACTUAL WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST SUFFERING THROUGH ISLAMIC REGIMES RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.

Like hey!! guys, gals and nonbinary pals! Maybe… just maybe?? we shouldn't use victims of horrible religious tyranny as pawns in some stupid gender wars?? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I know we're all convinced in our heart of hearts that JK Rowling is a big bad meanie, but maybe we could act like the better people we pretend to be for once and treat this topic with the seriousness it warrants?? ufuckingwu!

And since i had the unpleasant surprise to see that in the tag this morning: same thing with Ukraine. No, JK Rowling is not friend with Putin, she has actually helped Ukrainian refugees since the start of the war, and the fucking Harry Potter store being maybe still up in Moscow on Google Maps is the last of Ukraine's problems even if she had the actual power to shut it down (assuming GM's infos are even actualised).

Like, i can sort of laugh it out when these idiots make up bullshit about the Goblins being antisemitic caricatures. (Except, it's not actually funny, not when you take two seconds to think about the implications that a whole generation of people apparently think that this is what antisemitism is, OR, care so little about antisemitism that they are happy to pretend that this is it.) It's a whole 'nother business to pick victims of current wars and religious extremism and make up a story about how it's all some writer you don't like's fault. Those are real people ffs. Whom JKR is tangibly helping. What the fuck is Pink News doing for them, hmm? Not even showing them an OUNCE of decency and respect, that's what.

Anyways, apologies for this outburst. To answer your question : why do they do it? Hatred. Hatred is the point. It goes nowhere deeper than this i'm afraid.

[ozfi]

misogyny in agito past hojos pathetic useless waste of space behavior begin ... well it was always there tbh! [i think this began drafting at 17?]

seeing hojo as not someone with a specific vendetta against ozawa is a failure of the police by default. but then we bring in his teacher, tsukasa, who immediately addresses hikawa first at the table out of all three SAUL members, asks for his point of view, and then prompts ozawa to follow up on hikawa. like shes not the woman in charge of all of it. he asks if they know why, and hikawa goes uh.. and ozawa says No. We don't know yet. and he immediately says oh so you dont know ANYTHING you USELESS FUCKS. obviously we know where hojo gets it

the thing about ozawa is that she is a genius. she went to MIT young. she invented the entire G3 system with her bare hands. she runs SAUL and its her duty. but it does not Belong To Her. the other officers are all men, her senior officers are all men. and they constantly try to take the wheel out of her hands. they constantly take hojos word over her own despite his constant failures and proving himself to be a pathetic coward. ozawa gets NO special treatment, which in theory is reasonable, but she doesnt get Standard treatment either. no matter how smart she is, she is a woman, and in the police (or anywhere in the workforce) that means she has to tolerate pathetic loser men with no talent and no skill beyond being an obsessive bootlicking dipshit being treated as on the same level as her. IT FUCKING SUCKS!

even the addition of tsukasa as his mentor does not absolve him. take a gander at this very funny screenshot.

see, the plot in the episodes leading to 19 is that tsukasa is rigging the game against SAUL to get away with murder and nepotism, and in doing so being a misogynistic and condescending prick towards ozawa and her unit and their intelligence overall. the thing is that hojo goes along with this! there is no point in these episodes where he is acting differently than usual except when he realizes his mentor Probably killed someone. if he is otherwise, its because hes so happy to torment ozawa along with his mentor. if anything, this shows that hojo is good at detective work when he applies himself. but he doesnt apply himself to anything but trying to make ozawa's life worse because hes obsessed with the G3 unit.

the only person who gets the grace of a bias being removed is another man in a senior position. not a woman. never a woman.

and ozawa is still kind enough to invite him to bbq afterwards. 🖕

then, you know, V-1 with a board full of male builders, the "best in the world", trying to surpass the G3-X. there is no implication that hojo did a smidge of it himself.

"i flaunt you to express my own ability, but how dare you think youre anyone who matters". feeling threatened by her intellect to the point of admitting that if he saw G3-X's proposal he would give up on V-1, to try to knock her down pegs that she earned and deserves. these are all the kinds of people hojo allies with willingly! doubting her honesty and her will and her dedication to her job. not listening to her as a person and going over her head to the men in charge. and there is nothing ozawa can do about it but prove them wrong, over and over, even if they keep doubting the abilities shes proven she has. over and over.

even her own unit member!!!

for hojo, after G3-X proves its worth, this stops his overeager haranguement of them, though hes still unpleasant whenever they meet. at least now hes actually doing his job, and for what its worth, hes pretty good at it when hes not wasting his time annoying SAUL.

ozawa is fantastic because these obstacles are neverending, but she never gives up, and she never truly backs down. she refuses to cede any undeserved ground. and her flaw is exactly the same as her strength: shes too smart, she makes things that are too powerful, and theyre hard for others to handle. G3-X injures hikawa so badly he should not be able to move. in that way, things that are too perfect are dangerous, and human flaw is what allows us to shine. it's not that she believed too much in either G3-X or hikawa, but instead that the pursuit of perfection is, in of itself, flawed. in that way, shes a true agito protagonist.

[quicktimeeventfull]

tbh i think a lot of people fail to understand that being allowed to share in the difficulties and pain your friends are experiencing is a gift. it’s something that is being offered to you & it involves a great deal of vulnerability on the part of the person who is experiencing the difficulties. there are a lot of reasons it’s a bad idea to send invasive and concern trolling messages to strangers but one of them is that it’s an attempt to take something important and precious which has not been offered, often with the implication that doing so is somehow a favour. it’s grotesque and it feels deeply, deeply unpleasant to get messages like these. don’t do this! it’s fucked up and weird. also frankly basically no one who sends patronizing & concern trolling messages to strangers is ever right bc no one with the emotional intelligence required to be helpful would do this in the first place.

[lastoneout]

So a bunch of people in the notes are misunderstanding me so I just wanted to clarify what I mean here. I am not saying that a person who can closet themselves and pass perfectly as cishetallo does not have a slightly easier time in some situations than someone who cannot pass. But my real problem is the implications of calling it Privilege with a capital P and the way these discussions seem to only ever play out as oppression olympics and lateral violence, because what's crucial to understand here is that both types of queer people(those who can pass and those who can't) are still being oppressed. Being forced to closet yourself and hide who you are is a form of oppression, and it goes hand in hand with violence enacted against people who can't.

I've seen the kind of homophobic christian assholes who think we all belong in hell say outright that they don't actually want to kill all of us, that would be unpleasant and difficult, what they want is to make being openly queer such a horrific burden that we all re-closet ourselves until we functionally no longer exist. Assimilation for those who can, and yes, death for those who can't, and tbh in the end the assimilation is also a form of death because we know statistically that being forced to live in the closet and deny who we are, even if we aren't surrounded by people who openly hate us, KILLS US. Trans people who are denied social and/or medical transition have heartbreakingly high rates of suicide. Demanding trans folks hide who they are on threat of death is just making them choose how they want to die. And that's horrid.

And like the fear and self hatred and hyper-vigilance and exposure to constant bigotry that comes from living in the closet is traumatizing, check the notes if you don't believe me, and as someone who has experienced both imo it is not dissimilar to straight up being brutalized while having slurs screamed at you. It really isn't that much of an improvement.

It is really fucking important for queer people to be able to live openly as queer people, own our culture and history and take part in our communities, without fear of backlash and judgement, the same as other marginalized people. We should be able to be openly queer, to take part in our communities and preserve and share our histories, without fear of repercussions. The fact that so many of us are denied that is a form of oppression that does lead to trauma and death. Denying us the right to be who we are freely is oppression.

And like, whatever privilege or leverage those of us who can kinda pass get typically vanishes the second we are outed. Remember, all queers are equally degenerate in the eyes of bigots. You might get treated like a Straight™ person and afforded some benefits if you can pretend to be one good enough, but that goes away the second you slip up, which is more likely to happen the more traumatized you are by being closeted for safety. It doesn't matter how palatable and normal you are, you are just as bad as the most open and unapologetic trans leather daddy with three boyfriends at Pride, and you will be treated as such.

So no I am not denying that people who can pass as cishetallo sometimes have a leg up in certain situations, but it's so much more complicated than that, and the discussions I have seen around passing privilege have almost ALWAYS just boiled down to a bunch of hurt queer people taking their pain out on other queer people who haven't suffered the same way they have, or as a way to attack whatever group is the exclusionist target this year, or just to decide who is "queer enough" and who isn't and deny us the right to speak on our own suffering based on that ruling, and it's often co-opted by TERFs and other bigots to recruit by turning us against each other. It's never about actually talking about the experience of being closeted for your own safety, the pros and cons, how it sucks to have to make that choice, how to preserve your sanity while hiding, the ways passing queer people can maybe use what little leverage they have to help push forward queer rights, or anything like that. There's no sympathy, no understanding, no nuance. It's just lateral violence that fuels exclusionist and TERF/radfem rhetoric.

I wrote a much longer reply to this a while back that ended up filled with a lot of anger so I never posted it, but at the end of the day I think this bit sums my feelings on this topic up: Bigots want queer people to make ourselves invisible to them, I don't think I, or anyone else, should be told I'm lucky--or god forbid less queer--for the times I am forced to give them what they want.

I will never fault a queer person for taking refuge in the closet, you do not have to come out, ever if you don't want to, but imo every single time one of us has to choose safety over embracing who we are is a tragedy that is indeed giving those who hate us what they want, a world without queer people. Those of us who are forced to bend to that are not traitors or at fault, they're suffering. Like consent given under duress is not consent, you know? None of us should be forced to bend to this oppression, and attacking other queers for being able to pass a little better when the boot is clearly on ALL of our necks is pointless and cruel.

Solidarity should be our focus, not drawing lines to figure out which of us has it worse. If you want to have a real, nuanced conversation about this feel free, but I never see those happening, and it makes me wonder why in god's name we're so dedicated to having this conversation at all when things are so fucking hostile to us as a whole already.

Honestly if there's ONE thing I wish I could get all queer people to understand is that if you're in a situation where you know everyone would treat you differently, especially to the point of it putting your life in danger, if they found out you're queer, you aren't experiencing privilege, you're in a hostage situation.

Like sorry experiencing "passing privilege" is actually just being trapped in a room with a bloodthirsty t-rex and having people tell you that you should be thankful because thier vision is based on movement and you can just stand still. It's not a privilege to be erased, to have to lie to everyone around you to stay safe-ish, to have to closet yourself because you know even a single step out of line could be the end of your entire world.

None of us should have to be thankful to stand in front of a loaded gun while the person holding it goes "haha, don't worry, I only use this on faggots, and you're not a fag....right?" Like this is not a net good and it has almost nothing in common with actually being part of a privileged group.

Anyway, Happy Pride, let's leave this shit behind.

[kickmyheadbill]

like i get that and projecting is chill but he is a character not just a thing to put your labels on and the implications of the villain always being the aro one is unpleasant

u r right tbh i get where ur coming from i probably shouldve clarified more … it does suck that a lot of characters that r headcanoned to be aro r villains or js evil and stuff

[total-drama-shark]

Like a month ago I off handedly mentioned in the tags of a reblog that Mike’s ROTI bio lived in my mind rent free and I want to share my thoughts on it in more detail!

The bio in question:

// TW for very mild discussion and insinuation of trauma

First thing I wanted to mention is that alters switching in the bio is represented by ellipses, which I really like! With the ellipses being used both to signal switching and as aposiopesis, it gives a sort of text equivalent of dissociating which I think is pretty clever.

Second is how all the alters featured in ROTI make a cameo in the bio. While I understand why they did that, I cannot imagine the headache that must be rapidly switching five separate times in the time frame of what must be less than an hour.

An interesting thing about the switches in the bio, actually, is how they take place without any of the triggers we were explained the alters had in the series, which could indicate that they have more than the triggers shown on screen or that they don’t always need a trigger to be the cause of a switch (and realisticly would probably be the both) I have some few speculations as to how and why the switches took place in this:

We don’t have much to go off as to why Mike switches to Chester in the first question, my best guess is Chester got pulled to the front cause Mike was anxious or he’s better at dealing with interviews?

Svetlana fronts after Chester at the mention of movies, I like to believe the topic of movies could be a positive trigger for Svetlana.

The switch from Svetlana to Mike is interesting, we never got to hear the end of Svetlana’s dream and I can’t decipher what would bring Mike back to the front besides just, wanting to get back to the front I guess.

Mike is read recalling a childhood memory which is presumably unpleasant in some way, before Vito comes to the front. I personally believe that Vito switched to stop or prevent Mike from fully recovering that specific memory, maybe because it’s traumatic or something Mike isn’t emotionally prepared to confront yet.

When Manitoba switches after Vito his tone reads as frustrated, and we don’t see any switches after this. Possibly Manitoba got sick of all the rampant switching and decided to front himself and stop the other front accessing the front in the meantime, which would best work if he was a gatekeeper.

Something interesting about the interview is that it’s stated twice that Mike doesn’t have the best memory, specifically regarding his dreams and his childhood. The childhood part makes a lot of sense considering the nature and cause of DID and it’s really the only time the show ever seemed to, even if vaguely, acknowledge the implications of Mike having DID.

Different alters also mention different family members; Vito mentions working with an uncle in his first job, which is presumably the body’s uncle, and Manitoba mentions having a wife, which very likely isn’t the body’s wife. Personal interpretation is that Manitoba is an introject and his wife is an exomemory.

Lastly, it seems that the way the alters refer to fronting is compared to driving? Like Manitoba refers to who’s fronting as “who’s at the wheel” in the last question and in AS, Mal (while masking as Mike) tells Zoey that he’s “back in the driver’s seat”. Kinda neat way to describe it tbh.

[hollowwhisperings]

agreed.

the series made a point - multiple times! - that "hawkmoth vs cat noir = everyone loses". it was one of the key elements to maintaining the need for ladbug&catnoir to NOT know each other's true identities (and thus ensure the plot relevance of the love square).

there is no way to write a 14-year old facing their abusive parent in a way both consistent with the show thus far (s5 was all about emotional honesty & the series overall is idealistic)... and "kid-friendly".

it is a very, VERY bad idea to put a child in open confrontation with a parent like gabriel agreste.

not just dangerous in a "boss fight" kind of way but in a "you are putting a kid into a violent situation with their caregiver".

adrien (& thus cat noir) would NOT be able to fight his own father. hawkmoth/monarch could not be "taken down" without secret identities getting revealed because, for one thing, ladybug was only able to locate him because she LEARNED HIS IDENTITY. the "win" condition for S5 was the yoinking of gabriel's miraculous: i was very impressed by the boldness of the show in how the "ladybug vs monarch" finale went down. how much of its "something is OFF here" was deliberate versus being due to "we only planned for 5 seasons but got renewed for 3 more" has yet to be seen.

i suspect that gabriel "winning" was planned well in-advance, though the specifics of his redemption/changed!wish likely changed over time. the wish & "gimmi" were just too well-designed within the series lore to go unused. the full zodiac's worth of extra miraculous? THAT screams "this cartoon is trying to sell you merchandise"... standard practice for modern animation, tbh.

the extra miraculous DID allow the series to narratively set up its audience for how a "villainous victory" would affect the characters, their relationships with each other, and the story being told. shadowmoth's triumph, his claiming most every miraculous, was ALSO a very convenient means for the writers to get rid of all those "made for merch" super allies (from seasons 3&4) ahead of s5's Serious Plot Business.

oh! another reason why "cat noir vs gabriel agreste = everyone loses", aside from "do not try IRL" family dynamics, "hawkmoth is supposed to win" & love square retension for seasons 5+?

adrien is literally incapable of disobeying his father. not just because "do not try this at home" (effects of abusive family dynamics) but, like, actual magic. felix tried to get adrien's control ring from gabriel, like, 3 times? across different seasons? he kept failing. neither marinette nor adrien were going to succeed in ignorance where FELIX had failed (he had a whole villain arc about it). unless the writers wanted to write seasons 6+ of miraculous WITHOUT a lovesquare? ladybug AND gabriel needed to be oblivious as to HOW cat nr's presence consistently resulted in Bad Timelines for everyone: in the s5 finale proper, ladybug is only able to defeat monarch because... gabriel freaked out about how close her cataclysm-ready hand was to ADRIEN'S AMOK (&control ring). since ladybug is an idealistic teenager & gabriel was an increasingly immoral (& privately wealthy) supervillain? the ONLY way ladybug could have defeated monarch is via unwittingly threatening gabriel's son out of existence... or by killing him.

even then ladybug still - technically! - only defeated hawkmoth/monarch by getting gabriel agreste killed. from the POV of [future plot devices] & herself, anyway.

(that monarch was "dying via cat noir" anyway is just more fodder for the continued presence of the lovesquare/"ladybug & cat noir cannot reveal their true identities to each other")

for all the reasons above & more, cat noir could NOT have been present for the final battle against hawkmoth/monarch. it would have been a plot-holed character assassinating scenario RIDDLED with unpleasant, kid-UNfriendly Unfortunate Implications.

Honestly I think my take on the "Chat Noir was not there in the final battle" comes down to the fact that I kind of just don't think a satisfying final battle between Chat Noir and Monarch was actually possible.

I read a lot of fic, for example, and I've read the scenario play out a lot of times in a ton of ways and I've never been fully convinced of it tbh (and not because they weren't great fic!!). It seems just completely traumatic for Adrien in a way that the scenario inherently cannot properly focus on, because it's all happening in the middle of an action scene and Adrien is too busy being Mid-Battle to properly have a cathartic breakdown about it all. I mean, Chat Blanc already showed us what would happen if he did have a breakdown mid-battle (and why wouldn't he?). And though it'd be fun to have a big triumphant moment of him defeating his abusive father, Adrien simply isn't a character who would find that scenario triumphant, or cathartic, or anything other than viscerally traumatic.

Also, I agree that it's unfair that Chat Noir was not present— like it was unfairly tilted in Ladybug's favor— but I don't think it'd be fair if he was present, either. Because Marinette is, in fact, the main character. The main character whose character arc is primarily focused on her finding her footing as a hero and discovering all the responsibilities that come with that power (as opposed to Adrien, whose character arc is moreso about freedom and identity). And let's face it, in a fight between Ladybug and Chat Noir and Monarch, nobody would be focused on Ladybug at all. It's not about her. It's not her fight. She'd just be there as moral support and an extra set of hands, which really doesn't work for her character arc at all and is completely unfair to her!

Basically, it would just be Chat Noir temporarily acting as the main character and having the worst time of his life in the most un-cathartic battle for him possible left completely traumatized with Ladybug in the background awkwardly trying to comfort him after the fact? And then the season ends? And then the next season presumably goes back to Ladybug being the main character? After a time-skip to the new school year? It's just an ending that I feel like is a lot better in theory than actually on paper. And you can probably make an argument for ways that it could be made to work, where it would enhance Ladybug's story in a meaningful way where she still feels like the main character, and would somehow be triumphant for Chat Noir despite it probably being the worst moment of his life, and somehow not make the rest of the series following feel like bonus content as opposed to a continuation of the story...... but, I dunno. I think it's a lot easier said than done.

The fact of the matter is, I've always been waaayyyy more interested in how the aftermath of Gabriel's defeat affects Adrien than the battle itself. Post-Hawkmoth defeat is one of my favorite types of fic for a reason, and it's because the aftermath can be so juicy, especially for Adrien as a character. I think whether or not Adrien is actually there in the battle itself has always been kind of irrelevant to me, because no matter how Gabriel is defeated, his defeat will have immense repercussions on Adrien's life going forward. And the way they did it, Marinette is now a part of it in a more active way, too. Which is good for her character!

( Also, if he was there to triumphantly defeat Gabriel, would that mean he would just.... watch his father die? of cataclysm? a-and.... nathalie would just.... die, too? so he'd have three dead parents after all that? who he watched all die (or, in emilie's case, saw her corpse)? or is this a scenario where MONARCH BEATS CHAT NOIR and still makes the wish? is that cathartic? for Adrien to lose to Gabriel? Frankly, I loved seeing Gimmi and The Wish, it's been teased for so long that I was expecting it, and I loved the fact that Nathalie got to live as her narrative reward for coming to her senses and trying to murder Gabriel with a crossbow. I like that we got to watch a full season of Gabriel painfully dying to a cataclysm— poetically inflicted on him by Adrien, but of Gabriel's own doing. I like that Nathalie has presumably adopted Adrien after having an arc of her trying to be a parent to him once she realized nobody else would, that's so much more interesting than any other alternative. I just don't see how all of these things, some of my favorite things that season 5 gave, can still all exist at once with Chat Noir present in the final battle in any way that's satisfying. )

[2hoothoots]

Have you ever heard of the concept of "reparenting the inner child"? I'd like to imagine that Raz's archetypes can be physical manifestations of that in the literal sense, like seeing his older archetypes comforting his inner child whenever some unpleasant childhood stuff comes up

oh, i hadn't but that's an interesting concept!

i think with the Inner Child, though, it's almost the other way around? like, one thing I do want to clarify is that I'm not trying to make out that Raz had a particularly terrible childhood, because I don't love the implications of that tbh. instead, the Inner Child is more a safe way for Raz to express his feelings without a filter, and almost kind of like a proxy for self-care? one that was inspired by his meeting with his younger self in my fic. hold on i think i can draw it better than i can explain it in words

[utilitycaster]

So… What do you think about Susan Calvin? And do you have any recommendations for people who like to read robot stories (assuming what everyone knows about Asimov already.)

I LOVE Susan Calvin, more so because I'm pretty sure her appeal now (or in the early 2000s, when young me first read I, Robot) is mostly unintentional. I truly love Asimov's writing, I think he had a lot of fascinating ideas, and even his nonfiction essays are worth a read, but he was, as many science fiction authors of the time were, Not Great Towards Women. He designed Susan Calvin to be brilliant...but unattractive and brusque and unpleasant, while the recurring male characters like Powell and Donovan get to be cool and brave. And yet, by making a woman who was in defiance of what a sexist man would find attractive he made one of the most compelling women in classic sci fi. She is married to her work. She is a huge asshole. She's real and complex because he actually had to put thought into her as a character rather than being like "ah yes the woman scientist is a blonde bombshell who echoes all of my own feelings", and I love her and honestly, a lot of my thoughts about Dancer are probably influenced by Susan Calvin - a weird, smart loner who is horrible at interpersonal relationships but actual has a great deal of respect for robots.

The thing is...the part of robot stories I love is more the society around them and how this responds. I'm not actually that invested in robots as the main characters, so the robot stories beyond Asimov's positronic brain stuff/The Bicentennial man that I know of (that was what I was referencing in my tags, incidentally; if you read a bunch of Asimov you will be fine) are mostly also really popular: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (and Blade Runner); Battlestar Galactica (everyone should watch the 2003 BSG because it's fucking phenomenal and it's also a very good companion to everything I've said about pacing, lately, namely, you can have utterly fucked pacing as long as the characters are deeply of this world and given enough space to breathe); The smattering of Star Trek: TNG I've seen indicates that's pretty good. But yeah, it's not actually an area I tend to personally explore.

[this is directly related to the above but it is not what you asked, letting you know so you can bounce if you're not interested.]

What I do think people should do though is 1. Read a shitload of Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin specifically and 2. Go to their local library (might need to make a trip to the central one, actually, for this) and find the battered sci-fi short story anthologies from like, 1972. I read SO MUCH OF THAT as a high schooler, and on the one hand this means that I'm cursed with many memories of stories I will probably never be able to find again (shout out to someone on a weird forum who was able to identify The Silk and the Song from my fragmented memories); but on the other hand I think it just gives you a grounding in classic sci fi you cannot otherwise get. Science fiction meant short stories for a good portion of the 20th century, and a lot of the most interesting and weird stuff that really engaged with modern and near-future technologies is in there.

TBH that is what I'm getting at with recommending classic sci fi short fiction just...in the abstract. I think a whole lot of it tried to engage with the idea of "what happens to our society if this happens" in a way that modern sci fi sometimes does not (for a huge number of sociological reasons and because the immensity/political implications of nuclear and space technologies being obvious in a way that the internet was not). I brought it up in reference to FCG because...look, there's still a lot I feel could have been done better, and that's a separate post, but FCG's presence in the world is fascinating. It's asking the question of "imagine a world where no one even has a proper conception of artificial intelligence - and where you can summon a low-level fey or celestial and require they do your bidding - but there's a bunch of mindless automatons. Ok imagine one of them has a soul now." The people who react most normally to FCG are the people most ignorant of automata! Anyway, I think reading a shitload of shortform classic sci fi is the most efficient way to rewire your brain to automatically go "ok but what is the baseline of this fictional society and what is the change this story is exploring and how would people of various types respond" with speculative fiction in general, and I think it's such an important part of analysis! Also it's fun! If you come across a moderately humorous story from the 60s or 70s where people keep messing with the timeline and keep not realizing they've done so please send me its title because it pops into my mind now and then and I haven't been able to find it in like 15 years!

[misscrawfords]

My Fair Lady is one of my favourite shows (I first saw it when I was about 3 and there is photographic evidence of me dressing up as Eliza and dancing around singing "I could have danced all night" from about that age; not much has changed) and I saw it in London last night, first professional production.

I have mixed feelings about the production tbh but it's made me think about how MFL really is very confused about what it's trying to say and do as a show and how it's presenting its central relationship between Higgins and Eliza. I've always been a shameless Henry/Eliza shipper (don't worry - I've been told off about this quite enough, thank you!!) but they're definitely problematic. Or maybe it was just this production in which I didn't really know what they were trying to achieve.

The first problem is Henry being a raging misogynist. He doesn't really change. He comes to understand how important Eliza is to him by the end of the show and we certainly understand his perspective more and see aspects of its validity - that he treats everyone the same, his genuine belief in speech as a way to level class distinctions, and so on. But still by the end he never really faces up to what his feelings for Eliza mean - as can obviously be seen in the very fact that "I've grown accustomed to her face" is famously a love song without the word love in it. Henry is not yet ready to admit he is in love with Eliza or deal with the cataclysmically life-shifting implications of that. The fact that what he says to Eliza at the end of the show is "What the devil have you done with my slippers?" proves that he has not yet changed. Not that he is incapable of change but he is not yet there.

There's also the fact that he can be really quite unpleasant and that has to be shown for absurdity or it just makes him ultra dislikeable. His first song "I'm an ordinary man" is deeply uncomfortable if played straight. My mother once said that the only time she could deal with that song and didn't actively dislike the show was when she watched my school production and Henry was played by a teenage girl. That casting alone showed all the absurdity of his position and the song, but productions with an adult male Henry have to do that as well. It also means that we actually need Henry to be completely ruined by the end of the show. He... kind of has to be completely head over heels in love with Eliza! If he wins, if he is allowed to continue smugly in his existence, not really changing, then it's deeply unsatisfactory. Not to go too Aristotelian on you all, but he needs some serious peripeteia going on for the audience to be invested in him. If he starts the show with deeply unpleasant and absurd misogynistic ideas then all of this needs to be completely and utterly destroyed by the end. He needs to be absolutely laid low by Eliza and her victory over him. But a lot of productions don't push Henry so far and the script itself and its ending don't help.

I thought the London 2022 production actually did Henry really well, played by Harry Hadden-Paton. They made him young, which was excellent. Young men can be pedantic misogynists as much as old ones! And it made his romantic feelings towards Eliza much more palatable. He played the development of his feelings very naturally. Perhaps I was reading too much into it, but at the beginning around "I'm an ordinary man" he almost came off as defensive and alone, using extreme views about women to hide his inability to understand or deal with women. I felt that was a really interpretation and I wish they'd pushed it further and makes much more sense if Henry's younger and inexperienced than in an older man. (More could have been done with Pickering and his reactions, but that's another story.) Later on, there are a few moments when he clearly has a physical interest in Eliza but doesn't quite know what to do about it- subtle, but present. And he's clearly bowled over by her appearance before the ball. The best moment was in his confrontation in his mother's greenhouse where Eliza says she isn't interested in him romantically "and that's just how you feel about me" and he's like "uh, yes, definitely". It got a laugh. I loved that. This production realised Henry had to be fully in love with Eliza for it to be satisfying and also that he had to be destroyed by it, which is the ending worked, in which he was left alone to grapple with his defeat.

But while Henry on his own was masterful, Eliza was problematic. What does Eliza feel? The script is so contradictory! Eliza is attracted to Henry. "I could have danced all night" spells this out. And this production gave her a delightful moment during "The rain in Spain" where she touched her heart in surprise after dancing with Henry and didn't have time to think about it before Henry is sweeping her off again, denying Pickering a chance to dance with her because he wants to. Very nicely done. And fine. We watch Eliza's growing feelings and her deep frustration because Henry is incapable of reciprocating in any kind of sensible way. But then what to do with what she says to Henry in the greenhouse? She very clearly spells out that she isn't interested in him romantically but "more friendly-like". But that really isn't justified by what the text says previously or her utter disdain for Freddy. (I always think it would be interesting to play "Words words words" as being really addressed to Henry and Freddy just happens to be there.) Either Eliza is in denial about her feelings about Henry or she is determined to squash them because he's so annoying (valid) or she's really got over them, as suggested in "Without you" ("What a fool I was,what a dominated fool, to think you were the earth and sky!"). But if she actually has got over him then WHY DOES SHE GO BACK TO HIM AT THE END? It makes no sense. You see why I find the script itself problematic and contradictory? This production played it as if she was acknowledging his feelings but saying a proper goodbye which was an interesting and not awful decision, but it rang a bit hollow. Why would she do that if she really didn't need him and was as done with him as was suggested in the previous scene? But if you play it as if Eliza was returning to him properly, then it's also unsatisfactory because he hasn't changed properly and she's just said she can stand on her own. They're not there yet!

The best production I saw was a student production in Cambridge when they just went hard on the romance. They conveyed subtext and longing and ended with a passionate kiss when she came back. It worked because they built a completely convincing counter narrative running underneath the script. But I felt like this production didn't quite know what it was doing, mainly with Eliza's feelings.

I suppose the good thing is that I now really want to write post-show fanfiction with torturously slow burn that allows both Henry and Eliza to grow fully as the production teased but the show never allowed them to rise to.

I'll always love My Fair Lady but damn, it's a deceptively tricky show.

[katierosefun]

Howdy, here to pitch in my opinion on hyuk because that ask/anon got me thinking big time (and there's a hyuk wip sitting in my documents, so...). The guy annoyed me so much when I first watched the show, but damn he really is one of the smarter characters. I 100% agree that both han ki hwan and hyuk know how to play the game and, in hyuk's case, the game is socioeconomically rigged against him. Like, meritocracy is one of capitalism's greatest myths, and since he wasn't born rich, for him to socially advance he has to hold onto whatever he can, and han ki hwan's support is pretty much a golden ticket to high society, as long as he can make himself useful. Tbh, I think he'd resent joo won in the beginning, seeing him as this rich kid who knows nothing about real life, until he gets to know both him and han ki hwan (and realizes what a mess he got himself into). Plus, he seems really done with ki hwan's bs by the end of the show 😂 idk. This show def has some interesting social implications, and I think the han family trio is particularly interesting to dissect. (But I guess that's third rewatch material, ahaha) tl;dr: capitalism.

right? right? when i first started watching beyond evil, i remember disliking hyuk--but only because i realized that it was because he was so . . . he represented so much of the every man, the one who's not born with the same kind of social and financial capital that joo won has. but he's not like . . . the Plucky Protagonist who somehow miraculously pulls himself up by the bootstraps--in part because hyuk is a side character, but also because beyond evil has always been unapologetic in showing things for how things really are, in part because hyuk does the only thing that someone like him can do: suck up to people who have some power, play dumb where he can, play the cards he's been dealt with.

which explains why when joo won's throwing a hissy fit (ie. the time he drank champagne so early in the morning, moping about how dong sik dumped him), hyuk offers a bit of advice. he explains about how people are going to use him, and then they're going to make joo won look like the foolish one--which, dong sik and joo won's hilarious relationship aside, is genuinely solid advice, and you don't give that kind of advice unless you a) have witnessed it happen to people around you or b) have personally felt that kind of wrong yourself. which, given hyuk's family background, i guarantee he must have had something like that happen to his family or himself before.

but in any case: yes. hyuk is such an interesting character because he's smart, and he's also not born with a silver spoon in his mouth and seems to have to pay for that every step of the way. the fact that he became a prosecutor coming from his humble background says a lot, because a) going to law school is no joke, and b) given that hyuk was able to tutor joo won tells me that he must have gotten into a very good law school/had a very good education, otherwise ki hwan would have never hired him. given that connections are such a big part of the legal field, my heart personally squeezes thinking about how hyuk must have navigated that world on his own. and how it must have been unpleasant the first time, because the first time's always the hardest--forcing oneself to seem dumber than they actually are, pretending to be meeker than they actually are, etc. which goes to show that hyuk isn't just smart, but he's also got hellishly strong personality traits over all, because i think more foolish people would have been too proud to take themselves down a notch for the sake of some better reward in the future.

anyways! i love hyuk. he's such a compelling character, and park ji hoon is a fantastic actor, and i really do hope i see more from him because he somehow sold me on hyuk even with his few scenes. and hyuk. kwon hyuk ! ! ! i hope he is doing well and that he and joo won are still nabbing at each other and that joo won's named him best man at the wedding and etc etc etc